Fic -- FFXII, Zecht/Drace Title: only in this prison's garden Author: Mithrigil Fandom: FFXII Characters: J.M. Zecht and J.M. Drace Rating: PG Spoilers by way of foreshadowing.
only in this prison’s garden
She happens on him in the Westmost orchard, where the preserve of conquered trees and brush is cared for most completely; the flora would die were it not for chemical and magickal attention.
Without turning around—he kneels beside one of these sprawls, a tree laden with withered gourds on cable vines—he laughs. “You haven’t sought me out specifically, have you?”
“Nay,” she says, nothing of the kind—she is given to wander before a deployment, and knew not he had returned from Nabradia. Perhaps he has not, in point of fact. Zecht is given to go where he pleases, to traverse the land and skies as something inhuman. A cat, indeed—it suits him and his makeshift House. His helm is propped against a near tree, his swords crossed beneath it. “Though I will ask your business. Is the battle won?”
“The battle is never won,” he chuckles, rising off his knees. His wide arm gestures at the trees, the brush, the plaques beneath him. His white corn-rows plaster to his skull and cheeks with the humidity. “Since youth I have numbered the days according to a calendar not yours. What patterns of worship I still hold to, similarly,” a caustic thrown glance at his weapons, “not yours.”
Drace scoffs. “Do I intrude on you and your gods?”
“Ancestors,” he corrects, “and no.” His nimbleness no longer surprises her as he snatches a gourd—a pitiful thing—from the brush behind him and sections it with a small belt-knife. Scraping out the seeds with his gauntlet, and letting them fall to the earth, he offers the larger half to Drace on knifepoint.
“I have hands, you know,” she chides.
"No fruit is less sweet off the point of a knife," he drawls easy, his thick mouth deliberate around the section of the gourd and the metal of his gauntlet beneath it. She stares.
No matter, Drace thinks, I have done more barbaric things, and she sets her helm on the grass at her feet and bites, carefully avoiding the knife’s edge. The gourd is dry and snapping, and might not even be pleasant if ripe and freely grown—but perhaps that is the point.
And then, as ever, Zecht laughs. “There. Now you’re in it for the rest of the ritual.”
She guessed as much. She will give him this. We all need our concessions, just returned from the field—and his gait is heavy, his voice Mist-thickened. “Sunburnt barbarian.”
“Gruel-skinned old maid,” he counters in kind—and yes, his smile comes slower than she is used to. “And what gods do you care about offending?”
“None. I merely have no intention of honoring my ancestors.”
“You do them honor every breath you take through the maw of that helm,” he says, with the implication that he does not.
“That is not what House Drace says.” It strikes her that perhaps Archadia does practice the same idolatries as Zecht’s homeland, with its totems and creeds and voracious pride.
“That is because it does not actually honor its ancestors.” Knife still in hand, he takes her wrist. His plate slides on hers. “Now, kneel beside me.”
She sighs derisively, but does.
The mutterings she expects do not come; he breathes, beside her, and no more. The planks of his armor scrape along each other, the bands stretch. Her knees ache in her poleyns already, but curiosity and compliance, and that this harms none, keep her here.
And then the juice-slicked point of his knife is on her cheek.
“What in—”
“Just ruminate,” he says low not just in volume and timbre but in plea.
She still flinches away, but does not rise. Besides, that will take time. “What, you think of your ancestors when you contemplate death?”
“That, and other things.” She looks into his face, then—she has never seen his eyes so haunted, but it may be the knife’s glint alone. “This is calming, cool, if dangerous.” He lets the knife retreat to his own cheek, as if to demonstrate, tracing under his eye, back to his ear, all the firm control she knows well.
“What danger there might be is impeded by my trust in you,” she scoffs, and it should be light but is not, not really.
It is almost as if he did not hear; he brings the knife to her cheek again, and leans in after it. “Not only on this day, and in this place,” he whispers, “I listen to the wisdom of the dead. Upon a time I heard them closest when I was near them. This has changed.”
The blade’s edge warms. “Has it, now.”
And nears. “I have been deafening myself for days.”
And parts her skin, but does not draw blood. “The Emperor does not know you have returned, does he.”
“None save you,” he admits as he withdraws. “I return here solely because the fruit of absolution grows only in this prison’s garden, since the rest was burned.”
He begins to rise; his armor is heavier, and he will take longer if she starts now. So she does, and is on her feet the same time as he, looking up past the frame of his cloud-white beard. He leans down—his intent is to kiss her—she inclines her head, offering her brow rather than her lips—he tilts up her chin and takes them anyway—
“Spare your romantic farewells,” she snaps, backpedaling one sturdy step.
He is Zecht; he laughs, though mirthless. “Then find me,” he offers, sheathing the small blade, “or heed me when I am gone.”