uneasy alliance, Final Fantasy XII (Ashe/Vossler)
Title: uneasy alliance Author: cetus_nightmare Rating: worksafe. Ish. Warnings: Half naked Vossler. Word count: 1,315 Prompt: July 17, Final Fantasy XII - Ashe/Vossler (order important) - knives or other bladed weapons - "survivor's guilt makes for uneasy alliances" - 17/7, fic
"Too slow, Princess," Vossler grunted as her utilitarian sword grazed the outer layer of his chainmail.
"Too weak, Princess," he grunted as his great two-handed sword bounced off her shield and slammed its flat against her angular hip.
"What is wrong with you?" he finally demanded as one of his most basic strokes failed to be parried, ending in a straight, hastily slowed, thrust to her exposed stomach.
Her eyes were glazed over, not with tears of sorrow or fury or embarassment - in all the years he had known and protected his princess he had always known if she showed signs of these emotions he would be pounded to a pulp and not vice versa; Ashelia - no, he must think of her as Amalia - had that firmest of beserker souls.
Her sword dropped from nerveless fingers and her buckler slipped from her hands, and Vossler cursed as she fell into a faint into his arms.
She was so strong of soul it was easy to forget that she was thin, almost malnourished; her body was childlike, her features unlined. Innocent, unworldly, naive.
He placed her gently on the ground, sheathed his greatsword, and lifted her back up carefully. She weighed no more than a feather.
Rasler would not have been pleased with him for letting her fail this far.
---
The other leaders of the Resistance were worried. They chattered like a flock of chickatrices, worrying at their mother, asking endless questions. In time, Vossler had to stand outside the doors of where the doctors were doing their merciful work with his greatsword unsheathed, hulking like a wyrm, just so that the doctors could concentrate.
A few, lone Resistance members complained.
They were quickly silenced.
---
"Where...where am I?"
Amalia propped herself up on one elbow, her eyes watering with the scattered pains in her joints. She recognised doctors, but directed her question not towards them, but rather to her protector in the doorway. He did not - quite - turn his head, but shifted his stance a little to face her.
"Healing. You should be resting."
"...I... thank you, Vossler." her eyes, her treacherous eyes, they were filling with tears again, her heart aching when the bruises were in her joints. In the shape of his soul she could see Rasler, noble and loyal -
"'Twas nothing, Prin-Amalia. No decent man would have done aught less." He made a gesture, and a doctor bustled over, holding a small vial.
Her eyes traced his body again; measured his soul.
"No, I suppose not..."
---
"How is she?" his voice interrupted the quiet vigil he had held outside her door for many a long hour.
"Not well," the doctor disapproved. "You should have brought her in sooner. Her health is...poor, her body wracked with the onset of chronic fatigue. In simpler terms," he added, watching Vossler's lack of reaction, "Her body was on the verge of collapse. Her organs to stop functioning. For her death, almost." The doctor shrugged. "Almost. We are working now, of course. Potions and elixirs, remedies and ethers. We have given serious thought to calling in a white mage. And a green one, to keep her sedated. She seems to want to see you, so perhaps it is best if you go in."
He cast an eye out at the thoroughly cowed antechamber full of ex-whining Resistance members and nodded, clanking into the room.
---
Out of the depths of muzzy, fuzzy, dreamful and dreamless sleep she swam. Rasler and Vossler, her father and her traitor; their voices chorused in her mind, talked over things she was not privy to, had swords and lost them, had lives and lost them, protected her and loved her and held her gently in cradled arms.
She nuzzled further into that warm embrace and lifted lips to kiss the cleanshaven cheek, only to withdraw with a jolt as her lips found stubble and the embrace around her jerked.
Her eyelids shot open and she scrambled away from Vossler.
"Please forgive me, I did not mean to do so..."
Vossler nodded gravely as a tear from her eyes ran down his face.
"There is nothing to forgive. You were thinking of Ras-of your husband, were you not? I miss him also." Firmly, reassuringly: "There is nothing to forgive."
Secure in his embrace, she kissed him gently on the forehead.
"Thank you for staying, Vossler. If it please you, stay longer here."
Quietly: "You would not know how much it means to me."
---
It'd been dark for several hours now, the room lighted only by the moonbeams coming in through an open window, the curtain fluttering. The doctors had left Vossler and Ashe alone in their workroom, instructing Vossler only to give her more potions to drink, every hour on the hour unless she was asleep.
Her face illuminated by Luna's soft glow, Ashe shifted and brought Vossler back into awakening.
"Why did you remain to protect me, Vossler? Why did you risk your own life to escape with me?"
"Loyalty to my King."
"But why?" she pressed, almost desperately. "You were the closest of his knights, no doubt, but why did you save me and continue to save me?"
His voice was soft, sad. "Rasler. It was...Rasler."
"I...see."
There was no sound except the whistling of the wind outside and fluttering of the curtain.
---
They sat in silence awhile, Ashe resting her head in the crook of his neck, seeking warmth and finding none.
"...Vossler...would you be so kind as to take off your mail? It is...cold," she shivered deliberately, focusing on his concern.
His arms withdrew from her shoulders, and she could hear the jangle of a mailshirt being removed.
When his arms slid around her again, they were bare and corded, muscular and thick. The padded gambeson acted as another pillow to her head.
"...Vossler...your gambeson is itchy. Would you be so kind...?"
She could almost feel his eyebrows raising as his arms slid away from her once more. She could hear his gambeson being slid off, rusty and musky off his skin.
"Is this better, Ashelia?" Her head now rested on his bare chest, her soul safe in sanctuary, her body raring up for...for she knew not what.
"Much better. I thank you."
She turned over and breathed in his scent, wondering, smiling. Just as Vossler relaxed his guard and his shoulders unwound, she slid up his chest and pressed her mouth firmly against his. He jerked, startled, and his arms wound tighter around her body for a second, gripping her back tightly.
Rasler... his mind protested, but it had been so long since Basch and a willing body...
As his supple mind and body were frozen by indecision she rose out of her bed and covered his chest with kisses. Kisses, bites, and licks.
Down one shoulder, over his neck, across the mountainous outcroppings of sturdy bones, down between the muscles of his chest. South of his navel. Then further.
The only sound she could feel then, half-arisen from feather soft bedding, was the heavy breaths passing through her lungs, the quick movements of a snake, flickering perversion, in that dim unlit room. Finishing with a kiss, she reached with both hands, pressed his head closer, jerked against his tongue; awkward, ungainly, animal.
She came in the doctor-given robes with a jerk, no satisfaction.
Two moments passed. She opened her mouth and took in a breath to try again-
The glow of an Alarm Clock twisted around to a strange, empty colour. Vossler smiled,looking at her with an almost dead light in his eyes.
"Amali- Ashelia. I used the Nihaopaloa. Sleep."
She slept.
"...It is what I can give you best." Removed his arms. "Not what Rasler could have given you."
Still, he remained by her side for the rest of the night, restlessly caressing her unseeing face.