Guide (Final Fantasy XII/Suikoden III, Ashe/Yun)
Title: Guide Author: catdevigri Fandom: Final Fantasy XII/Suikoden III Pairing/characters: Ashe/Yun Rating: G Warnings: none Prompt/challenge you're answering: Ashe and Yun: "I'd hate to ruin the surprise." Author's comment: Set many years post-FFXII. Also, this owes a debt to a fic of Mithrigil's about Ashe and Balthier that I can't seem to find or remember the name of at the moment... Sometimes when she dreamed, Ashe saw herself as she had been in her younger days. Other times she saw Rasler too. It was more pleasant than the supposed glimpses of his phantom the Occuria had granted her. And other ghosts drifted through her dreams as well. Vossler, her father, the recently passed Emperor Larsa, and a young, black-haired girl. Ashe was certain she had never met this girl before, yet, the girl, Yun, knew Ashe as well and appeared as often as the other specters. She was clearly more than an imagined figure from the queen's dreaming mind.
Once they had walked through the dreamy form of the palace garden, around floating columns, thin as clouds, Rasler, Yun, and herself. They held her hands and she asked them what it was like to be dead. Was the afterlife what the priests said it would be? Were they at peace? Rasler and Yun had looked at each other and exchanged a smile.
"I'd hate to ruin the surprise," Yun had laughed and squeezed her hand.
Ashe had asked no more about death. Surely as she aged it loomed around her as old friends departed this world one at a time.
In another dream, Yun had been her servant, helping her to don her royal regalia. The cool fingers that touched her back were so tiny. With that knowing smile on her face, the same as always, Yun had brushed the queens' graying hair. Ashe enjoyed her company. She was a quiet girl and she didn't seem to judge, only to observe.
As the years went by, the dreams about Yun only came more frequently. The white-haired queen, a widow once again, lay in bed. She thought she felt a cold breeze brush her shoulder, although she was certain the window was closed. She had personally asked a maid to close it several hours earlier. Indeed, when she looked, she saw that the window was closed. Ashe sighed. To think that the day had come when her once-sharp mind would play tricks on her.
"I hope I haven't alarmed you," piped up Yun's soft voice, a voice Ashe had heard before only in dreams.
"A-am I dreaming? Are you some ghostly apparition?"
Yun held out her hand and Ashe accepted it as she had so many times before in her sleep. "Come with me and find out," Yun smiled, mysterious as ever.