She was a robot? She was a ROBOT? (mithrigil) wrote in kinkfest, @ 2007-09-24 21:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | a: mithrigil, f: final fantasy xii, p: ashe/vossler, september 25 |
Fic, FFXII, Vossler/Ashe
Title: he sounds the wolf
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: FFXII
Characters: Vossler and Ashe, with Larsa
Rating: R. Violence.
Prompt: the man who would be king
Spoilers for the game entire.
A Note: If you know the AU for this, you will hopefully read the first line and die a little inside. If you don't, the piece explains it, and I will link to the origins of this left-turn 'verse in the comments if you ask.
he sounds the wolf
“I have never met this Amon Hardin.”
“You shall,” Larsa assures her, with the smug complacency of a criminal found innocent. Ashe should be afraid, is not, wonders why. Nothing good takes place in Archadia’s Orchard of the Conquered. “Regardless,” the boy-emperor goes on, “of all my retinue, he is best suited to bend knee to you, and to Dalmasca.”
“Even over—” Ashe cannot say it.
“Yes.” He is two steps past her, nearer the alien Nabradian cluster of trees, and by the Saurians is his look infuriating. “Even over Gabranth.”
It is beginning to rain—it has been beginning to rain for half an hour at least. One of Larsa’s guard steps forward with an umbrella, and Larsa waves him away. Ashe is grateful.
“I have Admiral enough in Zargabaath,” he tells her, “and I require Gabranth. He will not be moved. But Hardin…your people know Hardin. I have faith they will accept him, more readily than Gabranth, for his efforts in evacuating and protecting the civilians, during the skirmish.”
“It is a skirmish now?” Ashe snaps before she thinks it.
Larsa does not openly glare at her, but skirts the gesture. “Your Majesty, I am disarming as best and swiftly as I am able. I may have a mind for peace, but my country does not. War would not have happened at all if the people of Archadia had not willed it so. Three years, I have done to convince them of peace as not detrimental to our power. Remember that a conquering nation becomes so for its own security, it own betterment—not out of spite for the conquered. Archadia went after Dalmasca—”
“For Nethicite.”
“—for its own protection from Rozarria, whatever the means.”
“You dare insinuate that—”
“I want to wed one of my Magister to you, for my own protection. Had I brothers still, I would offer you the same. I no longer do. These men are as my family, Ashe—”
“Time was, I was betrothed to your brother.” Ashe is pleased, more than she ought be, that this stops the conversation cold. “Were you aware?”
The rain comes down in earnest now, the sluices of the palace rushing with it, the flowers bending, the leaves atwitter. The silk of her dress is patterned by it; Larsa’s robes are impervious, but the dragons at his neck bead froth. He looks to his city through the dank smog, eyes like the choking clouds.
“Marry Hardin,” he starts, somber and quiet, “or any other of my cortege, and Al-Cid will take the throne of Rozarria.” The bulge of Larsa’s neck, unfamiliar, throbs once. “That is of worth incalculable to us both.”
Rasler’s ring twists about her knuckle, made slick by the humid air. “I will meet him,” she tells her wrung hands, “and not without this in mind. If he is a man who wants peace, he will have already considered the matter.”
Larsa, blessedly, says nothing. The umbrella is proffered to him upon his gesture. He offers it to Ashe.
-
The rain prolongs and incenses the conversation at supper, and after. Ashe is glad to retire, to be rid of the congested Archadian brogue, if only until Larsa’s man arrives. It is best, she agrees, to conduct this in private—and Magister or no, she will cut him down if he crosses her.
There is logic, there is sense to Larsa’s insinuations. And yet there is an utter tactlessness that offends and fascinates her. He wants this of her enough to ply her sensibilities, risk her rage and grief. He wants this enough to put his own relationship with Dalmasca on the line.
There is a sort of wyrmhunter thrill to that.
“Your Majesty,” says the voice that follow the knock, “his Excellency, and the Right Honorable Hardin.”
“Show them in,” she bids, coming away from the window and sitting in the room’s highest chair.
—Ah, she has seen this suit of armor, the wolf, but once. It glowed then with the Necrohol, the gourd-colored steam coiling about his helm’s teeth and the long, bestial lines of his plate. The sconces and the murk of the rain do no different here. He is plainly strong, inhuman, with a sword and lord knows what else across his back.
Larsa reaches behind them both—“I would let you alone,” he says, almost tense, almost—afraid?—and rests his hand on the doorknob. The Judge, it seems, has also turned to leave. “Hardin,” the Emperor says, almost chiding.
The Judge turns back to her, inclines his head—sets back his shoulders—curls his—his toes—
“You—you dare—”
“Your Majesty,” Vossler, gods, Vossler, how dare he, how did he, protests as he kneels, and Ashe cannot tell who he addresses, who he bends to, and nor does she care.
She springs from the chair, goes for his throat and he lets her, damn him, wrenches his head so that the helm comes off. He’s grey. She hates herself for looking. She’s shrieking, where are her guards, why is he alive, “Vossler—”
His hands clamp on her wrists. “If you mean to kill me, at least listen,” he growls, or she thinks he growls, his hands—
His hand. He has no fingers on it.
Oh.
Oh—
“Yes.” He sneers. “You did that.”
“You deserved worse.”
“Hear me.”
“I don’t believe you, Larsa,” Ashe spits, twisting, ready to break the traitor’s neck, “You kept this. You restored this.”
Larsa, damn him too, Larsa’s not even intervening. “He is a good man—”
“Like Hell.”
Ashe’s elbows snap when Vossler throws her off, flings her arms aside. Free, yes—but still on his knees. “Leave us,” he commands, low, over his shoulder. To Larsa.
“Hardin—”
“If she kills me, I would not have you implicated.” Oh, this is rich, thinks Ashe, delectable. “Your Excellency.”
“Please,” Ashe nearly coos, Archadian wine and mockery on her lips, just like they deserve. “Leave me to kill him in your Palace.” She scoffs. “You truly are Vayne’s brother.”
It was the right thing to say. Larsa’s eyes and lips temper into steel-sharp lines. He also deserves worse, and the cast of his eyes to the floor is the most gratified Ashe has felt since Vayne’s teeth pelted the Bahamut’s tile.
“As you would,” is all Larsa says. He excuses himself. He thumbs the catch to lock the door when it shuts.
It shuts.
Ashe sits. The brocade of the chair, the highest in the room, thrills under her nails. Her breath, the same. Everything is scratched, the sounds, his face, the carpet. He’s grey. Not even half a decade and he’s grey. He’s beautiful and ugly all at once, the same cut of face she remembers, new damning scars, but the sallow skin of one long-imprisoned, like Basch was when—on Leviathan. None of Vossler’s inherent darkness save his eyes is still black. His hair and beard, grey, grey as this traitor’s armor. The shadows of his bones, pulsing like stormclouds. And. And his left hand—
He starts to stand.
“Don’t,” she says.
He stands. His hands clasp behind his back. It’s Archadian. “Have out with it,” she says.
“I said we should trust him.” Him, Larsa. A Judge, on the stand, defending himself, Ashe’s teeth grit to think. But then, irony stalked Vossler like—a wolf. The thought itself is Archadian. The more it fits, the more it hurts.
“So, what? How long?” She lets her voice show him just how much it hurts. “Were you a Judge even as you ruled the sewers?”
“No,” he answers, quick on heavy breath. “What happened on Leviathan is irony entire.”
“Hardly,” Ashe snaps, and means it.
“Ashe.” He sounds the wolf, more than ever he did.
More than when he gave her the chance to turn back, in the Tomb. More than behind her, offering the Shard to that conniving shark Ghis. More than drawing his sword on her, on them, at last. More than every grunt in every training bout. “So your betrayal was all then.” More than beside her, suing for peace. “That moment.”
“I still believe I was right.”
“I disagree now more than ever.”
“Ashe, this is not the way I meant things to be—”
“You should have considered that when you traded my birthright for the promise of a crown.”
“This could have been prevented if you had listened to me!” He—enumerates, flails, with that ruined hand— “Hate me, godsdamnit, denounce me, I’ll not even bother asking you to forgive me, the gods know I draw breath each minute without having forgiven myself. But I did what I thought was best. Not only best, but right. For Dalmasca. For you. For all our futures. And if that meant pain, dishonor, death for myself, then so be it. That is the oath I swore to your father, and I hold to it now.”
“And what had you thought would come of it? What did they bribe you with, Vossler? Am I right? You, king beside me? They wish it even now!”
“They wish peace.”
“They wish complacency.”
“I am not Archadia’s man.”
“Well then whose man are you?” She’s on her feet. She’s on her feet and he’s near, near enough that she can smell the oil on his plate, see the scars that his hand has become when he—when he bares it.
“Take this for your yoke around my neck.” His eyes are on hers. He bows, almost. He is without her collar. Her chest tightens and her heels bite past the carpet and those are burns, cauterized burns, sky-whipped and why isn’t he dead? “The thing itself may be lost, but I live to see you thrive, whatever my disgrace.”
She sits, and scoffs, “And it is disgrace.”
“Ashe.” A panting whisper.
“A Judge Magister of Archadia.” She’d meant to steady her breath. She fails.
“Kill me here,” he says.
She counts her breaths, and his. They are nearly in time.
“You wanted it,” he says. He’s right. “If you still do, do it now.” One more, inaudible breath. Not even his cuirass rattles. “I am yours.”
Ashe stands again, one jolt of motion, graceless. She crosses to him, aligns herself with him. Grabs his left hand, yanks it up between them, doesn’t look, throws down his glove. Twists his arm nearly to snap it. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t cry out. Towers over her. Is grey, is old, is broken more than even the loss of his king could do.
Moments. Breathing. I am yours, he said. She turns up to his eyes. He meets hers.
It is hard to tell which happens first, the kiss, or his arm breaking. It is also hard to tell whether Vossler moans or screams, beneath the growl. But whatever the sound, Ashe bites it and drinks it down, and his kiss is fire, his body bowed over hers, the metal that he is ice-hot on her bare skin. He’s Vossler, his mouth is Vossler’s, just how she expected it to feel, and something in her twists and aches and the cant for Curaga is pounding in her mind.
Curaga. It—the Gambits—
She keeps kissing him, grabs his cheek and yanks him down to her, let him snap her spine for all she cares she won’t let him have those words, kisses him, kisses him, devours him, anything but show him that she—
He throws her off. The spell escapes her, filling the room, the eyes and teeth of his discarded armor, the hollows of his patched, grey face.
“Are we done here?” he pants, when the world stops spinning and his arms hang whole and flaccid at his sides.
The shadows creep in from the corners and doorways again. Ashe shivers, and grimaces, and answers. “Yes.”
Vossler salutes—the Archadian curl of his hands, all one and a half of them, beneath his ribs. He stoops for his helm, leaves the glove. Doesn’t look back even to shut her in.
She stands. Then she kneels. Then she sleeps, there on the floor, in her garb of state.
-
The guards don’t quite keep pace, and no wonder. She beats them to Larsa’s office door and opens it without announcement.
Sunlight pummels her eyes and stalls her. Intentional, no doubt.
“Your Majesty,” he’s saying, where is he, down at his desk, far too composed, “Dare I ask if you have cons—”
Ashe grabs him by the neck and shoves him into the nearest wall. It happens to be a glass window.
“Hold,” Larsa stammers, probably to his readying guards and hers, not that she cares.
“You and I will never speak of this again,” she says low, looking him square in his still steel-lined eyes.
“Your—”
She tightens her grip. His pulse is barely going. “It will be spoken of. But you,” she hisses, “and I will never address this issue.”
“Unhand me.”
She does. The Emperor slides down the glass to the floor. He’s her height now. It disturbs her. She recoils enough for him to move and for the guards, behind her, to unready their weapons.
Larsa dusts his robes off with annoying little slaps, and a taut nasal scoff on his lips. “The gods condone this union,” he says.
“The same gods we dethroned,” she snarls, and stalks away.
---
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