Last Night, Suikoden III (Ayame/Chris)
Title: Last Night Author: Person Rating: PG Warnings: None Word count: 1639 Prompt: Suikoden III - Ayame/Chris - tracing scars - "you'll be gone tomorrow"
Chris was glad, of course, to be returning to her duties as a knight of Zexen after so long an absence, but she couldn't help but feel a little sorry that doing so required leaving Budehuc Castle behind. Since the time she had first stumbled across it while accompanying Percival to his village's festival it had become much like a second home to her; more of one even than her house in Vinay del Zexay after all the effort she'd put into helping it grow and flourish. Had she still been a lower ranking knight she might even have tried requesting to be stationed at the castle. It was doubtful that she could ever have climbed the ranks higher from such an out-of-the-way post, but glory had never really been an aspiration of hers, for all that it seemed to dog her steps wherever she went.
Still, had she been a lower ranking knight she likely never would have come to the castle to begin with. At least as things stood she'd be able to visit on occasion, although it would likely be some time before she had a chance. So she contented herself with wandering the castle one last time on the evening before she left, seeking to fix it all firmly in her mind until the day she was able to return. She roamed it all, from the murky tunnels hidden deep beneath the building, to the sunlit grounds, and, though it was the one part of the building she had no happy memories of and she needed to strip down to the tunic and leggings she wore under her armor to be able to climb the ladder up to it, she even went up to the roof. It was there that she found something which surprised her for the first time that day.
Standing in the shadow cast by one of the castle's chimneys, so still that Chris might never have noticed her if she hadn't been trained to take care in examining her surroundings, was Ayame. For a moment Chris considered trying to leave without troubling her, assuming that nobody would climb to such an out-of-the-way place unless they wanted their privacy, but then Ayame acknowledged her with the slightest nod of her head and she took it as an invitation to join her. "I apologize for disturbing you," she said as she carefully inched her way the slope of the roof towards the chimney, aware that even with her steel sabatons removed her boots offered little traction to help her keep from falling should she lose her balance.
"It's fine," Ayame replied, her eyes never leaving the horizon.
Chris waited in increasingly awkward (at least in her own mind, although Ayame seemed unaffected) silence to see if she would offer any other words, but eventually accepted that if they were going to have a conversation the ninja wasn't going to be the one to provide a topic. "I'm surprised to find you here," she finally said. "When I found out the Watari had left this morning, I thought..." She trailed off, unwilling to finish her statement. As someone who had chosen a life that placed loyalty and honor above all else, admitting that she'd thought one comrade had gone off to kill another, who they'd been fighting alongside mere days before, wasn't a thing that fell easily off her tongue.
There was silence again for long enough that Chris began to think that Ayame herself was unwilling to talk about it as well, then she suddenly said, "One day."
"Pardon?"
"I'll allow him one day to flee. No more. He'll know to be grateful for that much." She abruptly turned towards Chris and changed the subject. "I'd planned to go to the baths. Would you like to join me one last time? You'll be gone tomorrow too, I believe."
Chris hesitated for a moment, remembering that she had come up there for a reason even if it wasn't an especially important one. But she told herself that there was still enough time in the day for her to climb up again later if she wished, and nodded. "I'd like that."
As she turned to carefully begin creeping back up the roof to the trapdoor leading down into the attic Ayame, not even looking at her, offered her a supporting arm. Chris took it gladly.
• • •
Goro was one of the castle's recruits who seemed content, at least for the time being, to remain in Budehuc, so the baths were still as clear and comfortable as ever. Chris had a pack of bath beads that she'd picked up at some point in her travels stashed in the pouch she wore at her belt, and, seeing no point in saving them any longer, threw them all in. Soon the water was dark green and spicily scented.
"I'll miss this," Chris said, leaning back against the curving wall of the bath and allowing the hot water to sooth the aches that always came from wearing her plate mail.
"Bathing?" Ayame asked, tone dry enough that Chris couldn't tell for sure whether or not it was meant to be a joke, although she assumed it must be.
"With other women. The companionship of it." She tilted her head back, allowing the water to soak into her hair even though she knew that the scent of the bath beads would cling to it for days. "There are few other lady knights in Zexen, and those we have are mostly all new recruits who were inspired to join because of me. None of them would ever dream of bathing with 'The Silver Maiden', even if we could have a public bath like this created in Brass Castle. It's not the same as things are here."
"I see." There was a sound of splashing, and Chris could feel Ayame moving a little closer by the currents that briefly formed in the bathwater. "You like this place."
"Well, yes. There are few places that I feel so comfortable these days outside of the battlefield. Even when I hear talk about the 'White Knight' or 'Silver-haired Demon' I know that the people here see me as I am, not as that legendary figure they keep trying to make of me. They've been around me too much to forget that I'm another person like they are; that I have bad habits and ugly birthmarks and scars just like anyone else. That I'm far from perfect."
As she mentioned scars her eyes were automatically drawn towards Ayame's body, and the moment they settled on it she remembered why she had been avoiding looking at it ever since they'd begun to strip for their bath. She always found herself unable to stop staring at the countless scars crisscrossing Ayame's skin, the memory of her protocol teacher screaming at her in her head about her rudeness the entire while. It always made her feel like all the stories told about her were more ridiculous than ever, if someone so close to her own age had been marked so much more by battle, although she logically knew that that was caused in no small part by her wearing armor where Ayame went relatively unprotected. This logic didn't make them any less fascinating to her.
"I see you have a new one of those scars since the last time we've bathed like this," Ayame said, reaching out to touch Chris's forearm, and Chris half-thought that she was reading her mind until she remembered that she'd brought up the topic herself.
It took Chris a moment to even realize what she was talking about, until she glanced down to where Ayame's hand was moving against her skin and saw the large starburst of a scar that Ayame's fingers were carefully tracing. "That one hardly counts. One of Sarah's monsters got its teeth into me and ripped away as much as it could just before it died, but my rune healed it almost before I even had a chance to realize what had happened." The healing had even been a little more disturbing than the wound itself, the way the scab had formed then fallen off within moments enough to turn a stomach. By the time she'd raised her sword to attack again the scar had appeared long healed. "An injury that heals so quickly that you forget you ever received it is hardly worth bragging over."
"Ha, a shame, if you feel that way. I was just thinking that it was a ninja-worthy battle scar."
Chris raised an eyebrow. "Ninja-worthy?"
"We pride ourselves on our stealth and agility. Can you imagine the shame of a ninja who let themself be marked by a superficial wound?" She lightly tapped a scar just below her collarbone which was clearly smaller and thinner than the others that covered her body. "You'd be surprised at the amount of teasing I got for this one."
Chris was more surprised at the thought of ninjas teasing at all. Though Ayame did have her own odd sense of humor, between her and Watari Chris hadn't gotten the feeling that ninjas joked around with each other often, not the way that her knights did. But perhaps that was a result of their strained relationship.
"I'm afraid that I'm unlikely to get many ninja-worthy scars," she said instead of commenting on that. "The rune would make it difficult, even without the armor."
Ayame flashed her a grin that was gone as quickly as it appeared. "That's even better. Nothing is more ninja-worthy than avoiding scars altogether."
Although Chris found herself glad for the implied compliment, she desperately hoped that no one else was close enough to overhear their conversation. She could just imagine the results the next time she did something that made people come up with a new inane nickname for her: Lady Chris, Ninja Knight of the Battlefield.