InsaneJournal

Discworld/FF7:AC, Granny Weatherwax and the Sephlings

Title: Prudent
Author/Artist: chibirisuchan
Fandom: Discworld and FF7
Pairing/characters: Granny Weatherwax and the Sephlets
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Bad amateur headology
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Granny Weatherwax and the Advent Children boys, weaponkink
Author's notes: the past couple weeks have sucked. After the repeatedly flooding basement episodes two weeks ago, I finally saw an actual insurance adjuster one hour ago. In an attempt at fleeing from the deluge of paperwork and damaged housewares, here I am being irresponsible... ^^;;;

Granny Weatherwax was already irritated by the time she got her broom started. The Widow Halderbeck had filled her ears with tales of eerie elflords dressed all in night's own black riding fire-breathing metal dragons straight through her herb garden. And while ordinarily she would have chalked it up to it being the Widow Halderbeck, the tracks left through the herb garden were ...to put it charitably, more demonstrable evidence than the Widow's usual standard.

They didn't look like any sort of track Granny was familiar with, either. And whether or not they turned out to belong to fire-breathing metal dragons, things that Granny wasn't familiar with were things that needed sorting out, one way or another.

Besides, she owed these black-garbed dragonriders a word or three for setting the Widow Halderbeck on her again.

...Because it wasn't neighborly to allow people to ride dragons through a person's herb garden, she amended that thought firmly, adjusting her hat for the wind's shift in direction as she cleared the trees.

They weren't hard to track, between the "straight on through whatever it used to be" approach the 'dragons' took to navigation and the depressingly familiar sounds of steel on wood or steel that led her to their camp.

She might even, she suspected, owe the Widow Halderbeck something of an apology. Whatever those metal things were, they didn't have enough wheels to be a proper cart, and there were no horses, and the wheels were lined up all wrong anyway but they weren't falling over, and one of them was emitting puffs of smoke and growling. And then something black with a silver comet-tail blurred past her vision; Granny blinked in shock.

"Did your mothers let you out of the house wearing those clothes?" she demanded.

The fey silver-haired younglings skidded to a stop, and three pairs of green cat-slit eyes focused on her.

"Oh, wow," the biggest one said. "She's got one that flies."

The littlest one cuffed the biggest one over the head, and planted himself between her and his comrades -- at least, Granny thought it was a him. Though the one she really wasn't sure about was the middle-sized one with the pretty face and the leather skirt and all that hair. If that one was a her, though, the poor thing's completely flat chest... almost made up for the cosmic unfairness of those eyelashes and that face, and--

"We're looking for Mother," the littlest one said, narrowing his eyes in a clearly amateur attempt at headology. Granny could already tell that that one was going to be a handful. "Tell us where she is."

Granny's first thought was relief that no self-respecting woman had knowingly let her children wander loose in that much skin-tight black leather. Her second was consternation that these children had been wandering around motherless for long enough to get the notion into their heads that this method of behavior was acceptable.

The big one cut in then, those unnatural eyes wide and excited like any eight-year-old... if any eight-year-old came in a body twenty years older than his mind, that was.

"Oh oh oh -- I know! Are you Mother?" the big one asked eagerly, and then flinched back when the little one swatted him again. "But Kadaj, she hasn't got any materia and she still makes things do magic! And she flies! And her hair's just like ours, except for how it's all tied up. But you've got a sword; we can fix Mother's hair for her. And..."

"I am no one's mother, thank you very much," Granny interrupted briskly, since mistaken notions like that needed nipped in the bud as soon as possible. "Because if I were your mother, you certainly wouldn't be wandering around tearing up overexcitable widows' herb gardens and wearing clothes like those."

The three of them traded a silent, stymied look.

"If you're not a Mother, what are you?" the little one challenged.

Granny's brows darted toward her hat. They'd gotten to be this big without knowing what the hat meant? "I'm a witch," she said, lips pursed. "You can call me Granny."

The boys shared more baffled glances with each other, and then the little one said suspiciously, "What's a granny?"

The pretty one said (in a voice deep enough that clearly it wasn't a flat-chested girl after all, except that the skirt was really not on, or rather the problem was that the skirt was on and, well, shouldn't have been, not to mention how it made those eyelashes a completely criminal waste) -- that is to say, the middle-sized one said, "It's short for grandmother."

"Grand-mother?" the little one said, looking at her assessingly. "Something even more than a Mother?"

She didn't like the way his fingers moved on the hilt of that sword, or the way he was clearly thinking about trying more headology on her. If there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was bad amateur headology.

(Well. There were several other things she couldn't stand, of course. But that was the one thing that was most relevant at the moment.)

Granny planted her feet on either side of her broomstick, and adjusted the set of her chin, and gave the little one The Look.

It was The Look that said "I know exactly what you're thinking, you importunate little pipsqueak, and you had best have Another Think coming, because I am the scariest thing you are ever going to encounter in your entirely too brief and feisty life."

The little one didn't blink, which was yet more proof of how bad he was at the headology business. Granny might have admired his determination, if she hadn't been too busy needing to quash his misconceptions before he got too far ahead of himself. He had a sword, and he was stupid enough to think it was going to do him any good, and if the nervy little thing didn't get himself killed before he wised up, it would be a downright miracle.

Keeping his chin up by sheer force somehow, the little one said, "Will you be our Grandmother?"

Granny mulled that one over for a long minute.

Nobody had explained to the boy that if you had any business trying headology on people, you didn't go around making challenges to your elders while you were also sounding lost and pathetic and desperately in need of guidance. And while your big brother was making far-too-earnest puppy eyes despite the cat-slit pupils, and your indecently-pretty brother-sister-thing was all but licking its own shoulderblade in its efforts to look too completely disinterested in the outcome.

Clearly, someone had to sort these boys out properly. Because whoever their absentee mother had been, she obviously hadn't done a good enough job of raising them up right.

"I reckon that would be prudent," she said gravely.

The other two were too self-controlled to admit to their reactions with anything resembling a smile, but they both relaxed a little, and might as well have started wagging their tails while they were at it.

The big one looked worried, though.

Granny wondered whether it was going to be the right kind of worried, until he opened his mouth. ...It wasn't the right kind of worried at all.

"What's prudent?" he asked.

That right there told Granny everything she needed to know about these children's lack of proper upbringing.

"Prudent," she said crisply, "is what sensible people do to stop bad things before they happen. Like taking in the laundry before the thunderstorm hits. Or cutting your hair before you can't see through it."

The little one gave her a pointed look through his fringe. Granny stared right back, not giving a blessed inch. The big one, though, looked like he was wobbling on the verge of tears.

"But... but have we got to know how to be prudent already? The only thing I'm really good at doing preventative maintenance for is engines."

It was really too bad, Granny thought, that the sensible thing wasn't always the same as the prudent thing.

The sensible thing for her to do would be to shoo these boys off to the Unseen University and let them deal with the impending fights, ruckuses, and explosions.

However, the prudent thing was to civilize them first. Because she didn't even want to imagine how big an explosion a place full of wizards could make if they got their hands on an overgrown boy with no upbringing and a knack for engines.

"Don't worry," Granny said, with a grin full of teeth. "I reckon I'll teach you boys about prudence one way or another."

Now the big one looked even more worried. "Is that okay?"

"She already said yes, Loz," the little one informed him, with a huff -- and thereby drove the last nail in the coffin of how much they didn't know about how to read big blinking danger signals that didn't come with something visibly pointy and blunt-instrument-shaped behind them.

Really, how these poor ignorant children had survived so long all on their own -- yes, Granny thought, it was her beholden duty to ...educate them.

"So she'll be our Grandmother even if we don't know how to do prudent stuff yet?"

When the little one nodded just a fraction, the big one let out a whoop of delight and dashed over to rustle and prod at her broomstick, bright cat-eyes shining.

"How do you get it to do that, Grandmother?" he asked, enchanted. "No materia, no propulsion packs, no shock absorbers, but -- it flies, and that's got to be the awesomest thing ever -- Can you teach me how to build one too? Please? I want to fly too! Does anything with that yellow stick-y stuff coming out the end work, or do you have to find a particular base model, or--"

Feeling the throb of an impending headache, Granny decided that the Widow Halderbeck still owed her a good round of cheese and a roasting hen after all.