Thorne, Anthy jumble

Sometimes, she knows he is getting confused.

It's all right. They all have the same basic pieces; they all have the same ending. Princess, witch, castle, prince, happily ever after.

"Happily ever after," she says, and the words taste light as clouds, as feathers, as dried petals, things not meant to be taken too seriously or for great purpose.

(Yes, Dios says agreeably, happily ever after. They danced and lived happily ever after.)

When her brother takes her pretty dress off and her magic eyes lie on the table and she can feel the mingled texture of her loose hair and the material of the couch against her back, she sometimes thinks of stories while her eyes are closed. She doesn't want to see the stars because they're fake. She doesn't want to see her brother because... just because. She already knows what he looks like, she already knows who he is, so she doesn't need to see him.

Sometimes the stories run together in her head too, and she thinks she's not herself, maybe she's a boy with short hair and short breath or a woman with her hand on the shoulder of another man, or even Dios. She's been other people. She's lived a long time.

She thinks of stories. But she doesn't tell them to Dios then. Dios is never around when her brother is, certainly never when her brother lowers his head to her breasts and raises her hips with his hands and says, Anthy, Anthy, Anthy while she stares at the inside of her mind and watches the horizon glow.

She never tells Dios a story without being prompted first, just as she never touches her brother, or anyone else for that matter, without being told to first. She does it, of course. She is the Rose Bride, so that's what she'll do, but it's never seemed necessary or right to touch first.

But she's never been out here in the day before, and there's always a first time for everything.

"Once upon a time," she says, "there was a prince and there was a princess. The princess was under a spell that caused her to take the form of something she was not. The only way the spell could be broken was if someone died for the princess, and it had to be someone she loved.”

She could almost feel the way Dios sighed, like wind on a spring day, warm and gentle.

(warped version of swan princess)

The problem with princes is simply that they are princes. You never hear of a king going on a daring quest; it's always a prince because they don't know any better. Princes don't think that they'll be killed by the very dragon or witch that they set out to rescue their princess from; they never think things out. They swear an oath to the wrong person and hurt the one they meant to protect in the first place. Sometimes their bravery carries them through, but sometimes it isn't enough.

And some princes aren't brave.

(Big ol' honkin' insert)

(The prince does? Dios asks, his voice thin with disbelief, and what of the princess?)

"She flew away," Anthy replies, and she leans off the ledge and flies away herself.

Wind rushes past her and it sounds like swords cutting the air. Her eyes are closed but her magic eyes are open and she smiles to feel the wind. It's a well-made world. No one really dies here. They just disappear and go into the Outside.

The Outside is where you go if this world doesn't want you, or if-- but it's never really happened before-- you don't want this world. She knows of people who couldn't live here because the world decided that they didn't fit anymore.

There was a boy who talked about miracles and pushed hair the color of the sky out of his face, whose eyes never left the Duelist who was tall, pale, and gliding-aloof. There was a man-- mostly a boy still, though-- who had hair like roses and eyes a little like hers, magic eyes, magic windows over his eyes. He had scholar hands. But his windows became clouded and he didn't fit in anymore either and he went away.

She wonders if they are happy, wherever they are. She wonders if they are sad that this world didn't want them. It's hard to find a place to belong to.

Utena wasn't on the ledge with her. She's pretty sure Utena isn't in the bedroom. She can't see Utena with her magic eyes, because she can only see what's in this world and...

And...

She remembers swords. The world didn't want Utena anymore. But did Utena want this world?

Didn't Utena want her?

She doesn’t understand.

It's a well-made world but nothing in it is real. She's been falling and flying for a long time and she ought to have hit the ground by now.

She opens her eyes and finds herself back on the ledge, in the same position as before. Not Real. Not Real. Not Outside.

Thorne, FF8 Xu/Quistis

I really hate how I can't figure out what voice and tense I want to use. So, watch out for the errors where I was fooling with it and didn't bother switching back. I swear, I'll clean it up.

When she thinks of colors for Quistis, she thinks they should be something like peach or coral, the woman colors, the ones Quistis wears now. But in her mind, she only sees white, since white is all of the colors, really.

She sees white because that's one of the best memories. Quistis lying on her bed, white terrycloth robe pulled neatly around her, her hair still wet from the shower and making a damp patch on the back of the robe. Sometimes Quistis has a pack of cards, but more often, at this time of night, she has a book. She lets Xu comb her hair and try funny things with it while she turns the pages and pretends not to notice Xu making it into a huge poof or a cluster of braided snakes that pretend to bite her ears. It's a contest to see how far Quistis will read before she starts to smile.

Sometimes when she used to twine the silky flyaway wisps by Quistis's ears around her fingers, she could hardly believe it's her doing this, that she gets to be the one. Sometimes she can hardly believe she was the same person in this room as she is outside the room. The words and actions came quick and easy as a whip lashing.

It's tradition. It's more than tradition, it's ritual.

(and something goes here)

When the robe falls open a little, Quistis doesn't tuck it back or tie the sash tighter, the little bits of customary neatness that she's come to expect from her now. She knows Quistis would do it anywhere else, like how she always has her skirt at the same length in the classroom or the training center, or the way she always gives that little extra flick to her whip on the follow-through motion to keep it from tangling, or the fact that she's never ever seen Quistis forget to dot an i or cross a t. It's just something natural.

So it's good to know Quistis lets her see something even deeper, or maybe that Quistis changes a little, just for her. People say it isn't good to change for other people. But people don't know that sometimes, that's how you know someone is watching you back, noticing what makes you breathe a little more deeply and chew on your lower lip.

Quistis doesn't mind if she sees that shallow curve of breast under the loosening white flap of material. Quistis smiles very slightly on the right corner of her mouth when Xu slips one hand into the fold and around that slightly shadowed curve. She arches her back, lets the robe fall off a little more, and then, twines so they both go flat on the mattress and there's muffled giggles coming from Quistis while she sorts her way out of the sheets and the robe gets twisted and then comes off altogether. If they have a card game lying out, then the cards don't get any special treatment in the tumble, belhelmel and mesmers and grats all treated alike.

Not that their cards were that low.

Thorne, And yet more Anthy.

It makes more sense to post the yaoi when it's all done. Less confusing that way. Back to Anthy.

She doesn't really like that story either, come to think of it.

With her magic eyes, she can see the people who live here. She can see her greenhouse blazing like a diamond in the morning sun. Inside, she can see her roses and which ones need to be watered and which ones need to be trimmed.

Different types are growing, different colors gleam like jewels. Red and green grow intertwined, with yellow buds at the edge. Blue roses curl around each other and bend forward like the shy heads of birds. The peach-colored blossoms grow tall and alone, reaching towards the glass ceiling. Dark purple are also alone, and they are so tangled in the wooden latticework that cutting one free is hard to do. And everywhere, everywhere filling the air with their scent and spreading petals wide are the lavender roses.

All the white roses inside are dead or gone. She hasn't been to her greenhouse yet today but she knows. She doesn't even need the magic eyes to see.

Utena would laugh to know she hadn't been to the greenhouse yet today. Slacking off, Utena would say. What next? Will you forget to make tea for me when I come back? Should I teach Chu-chu to do it?

She knows how Utena's hands look, curled around the teacup. She knows exactly how Utena takes her tea, not too much sugar because it makes you thirsty but enough to make the tea sweet, and sometimes a little milk. Utena even likes to put sugar in tea that shouldn't have sugar in it, like the teas made of jasmine and chrysanthemum.

She doesn't have those flowers in her greenhouse. Anthy doesn't know where they grow. Outside the greenhouse, anyway, outside a forest, maybe even in Outside itself.

(A princess wandered in a forest once, Dios tells her, but she found no flowers. A witch hated her for being a princess because she herself was not a princess, even though she was a queen. So the princess fled her castle, but she fell asleep. She only woke up as a princess again when the prince came for her and she went back to the castle then.)

Sometimes she thinks it would be better if Dios didn't say what he remembered, if Dios didn't only want to talk about what he likes. But Dios's silence would be worse than anything Dios says. So she lets him tell his stories and she tells him her own to keep him satisfied.

She wonders, sometimes, why Dios is always so sad. Then she remembers and she understands why he clings to stories. He can live through them, enter the land where everything is golden and glowing.

Sometimes she thinks he is forgetting and sometimes he mixes the stories until they’re no longer recognizable, a strange hybrid of flotsam and jetsam.

(The princess watched the crowd watch her, Dios sings, because her trial would prove if she was a princess or not. She danced all night until her feet came off and danced away in her shoes. But the shoes were the downfall of an evil witch, so all was well and the prince gave new feet of glass to the princess and they danced on the tower roof.)

Sometimes, she knows he is getting confused.

Dying will do that to a person, though.

Catt, Untitled Vincent Epic

Cloud and the gang recruiting Vincent. Very short, very rough, and suffering from a major gap in the end. Mrrr. Vast liberties were taken with the actions and speech from the game. Deal.

***

Vincent blinked open his eyes, found himself staring at the velvet lining of the coffin's lid. He wondered what could have possibly awakened him after such a long time, but then he heard the noise of footsteps, ringing loud and clear off the stones. The harsh sound of old metal, a key turning in a lock. The old door swinging open. He wondered it if was Hojo again; no, Hojo had said the last time that no one would ever enter this room again, not ever unless...

Unless they wanted to find me...

He waited, listened. A woman's voice. Not Lucrecia's, though; it was too young.

"Ugh... How could anything still be alive in here? Cloud...? Are you listening to me?"

Light footsteps, approaching his coffin; he could feel curiosity and caution in the air, could feel it stronger than the fear. A careful hand touched the lid of the coffin, before suddenly it was shoved aside.

The first thing he thought he saw was sunshine, bright, golden, but his eyes adjusted very quickly and he saw it was only torchlight falling upon the long, blonde hair of... He narrowed his eyes, stared harder at the too-young face, the glowing blue eyes looking at him uncertainly. He frowned, reached up with his claw and grabbed the boy by the front of his shirt, pulling him down closer. He heard a frightened scream and a low growl, but he paid them no attention. The eyes that were staying back at his own were far more interesting and they were glowing, glowing bright eyes. He had never seen anything like them before. And even more interesting was the utter lack of fear, only startlement; there was nothing in those eyes, no real emotion though if he stared hard enough he could make out something...

"You dare to wake me from my nightmare," he murmured, finally, his voice dry and rough; how long has it been since he had had anything to drink? "Who are you?" The question came out harsher than he meant it to but the boy--he can't be any older than sixteen--just shook his head. He felt a cool hand around his claw and the boy pulled it away, leaning back. He realized that the boy was wearing some sort of uniform, and he grew even more surprised to see the sword strapped to the boy's back, a large blade that he had never seen the likes of before. "I've never seen you before..."

"You said you were having a nightmare," the boy said, crossing his arms. Vincent finally realized what it was about those eyes that intrigued him. They were old eyes, eyes that had seen too much for such a young face. He sat up, swept his gaze across the rest of the room and saw the young woman whose voice he had heard earlier, as well as a fire lion--I haven't seen one of those since my last mission to Cosmo Canyon. The dark-haired woman took a few steps closer, absently tightening one of her gloves, while the fire lion stayed where he was.

"How bad was your dream...?" she asked.

He shook his head. "A nightmare is never a good dream," he muttered. "My long sleep's given me time to atone... but..."

"What are you saying?" This time, the question came from the boy, a gleam of confusion in his eyes again.

"I have nothing to say to strangers," he growled. "Get out. Or this mansion will be the beginning of your nightmare." He was surprised by his own ferocity, but while the woman seemed more than ready to leave, the boy simply stayed where he was, turning his head to look at one of the piles of bones nearby.

"...you can say that again," he whispered.

Vincent paused. "What do you know...?"

The boy looked up. "Like you said, this mansion is the beginning of a nightmare. But... it's not just a dream. It's for real. Sephiroth lost his mind when he found the secrets in this mansion--"

"Sephiroth?!" He stood, then, claw clenching at his side when he heard that name. He started to speak, just as the boy responded as well, "You know Sephiroth?"

(Insert.)

Vincent held up his pistol, smiling slight. "Being a former Turk, I may be of help to you..."

Cloud nodded. "All right, then."

Sephiroth kissed Cloud at 06:55 p.m., Wednesday, August 14, 2002.

Thorne, Anthy fic

I feel kinda odd posting this next to the most excellent Vincent snippet. It's like putting a cabbage next to a diamond necklace. Hmm. Cabbage.

Why doesn’t she grow up?

She gets older, she thinks. Maybe. Just maybe. She thinks she remembers being small enough to have to throw her body against a door to close it, small enough not to reach the knob well. And now the doors she goes through open easily and her hands can find the knobs but that could be wrong. It could be that the doors have changed, not her.

This place that her brother made is very special, so it’s very possible for doors to change. She can’t trust them, they don’t always go to the same place. So she tries to think of her birthday, because birthdays are when you get older. Utena said that. Utena says her own birthday comes when it is cold and snow is on the ground but she can’t remember the last time it snowed here in this place of her brother's.

Her birthday comes in a month of... of... roses, of course, although no roses really bloom for real. People give roses to each other and they give their hearts and walk hand in hand like princes and princesses. But her birthday is tricky and it likes to disappear in the calendar pages for years at a time.

Seven years pass between her birthdays. Seven years is an important number, like a seventh son. Princes are often seventh sons. That shouldn’t make them special though, because all the other sons are princes too.

(You already have everything you get when you grow up, Dios whispers gently, reprovingly. You have a pretty dress with a long skirt, you wear your hair up against your head. You have magic eyes and a sword and so many things. Princesses don't need anything else. Why grow up? You have these things.)

She does have them, Dios is right about that. She had short skirts and short hair when she was younger. Her brother gave her these things but he won't let her really grow up. It's like playing pretend.

Dios likes to talk to her inside her mind and she closes her eyes to listen to him. When she closes her eyes, it's just the two of them inside her head, dark and quiet but with a glowing horizon. Things are bigger inside her head. She holds history there, she holds all her memories, so of course it would be bigger. It wouldn't make sense otherwise.

The first thing she does every morning is to put her hair up. It's hard to do, because there's a lot of it and she has to pin it as close to her head as possible and sometimes the pins dig into her scalp and they hurt. But Dios tells her about ladies and how they would pin their hair up high and it was a sign that they were adult, that they had come of age.

(The princesses, Dios says dreamily, they wear their hair long when they are young. But if they wear it long and loose, then their crowns fall off and they are not princesses anymore. So, they put their hair up and wear their skirts long instead.)

She remembers having short hair once, feeling the ends of it brush her cheeks when she turned her head from side to side, but it was a long time ago. She must have been younger then. She is older now. She wears her hair up.

Crowns are heavy and they can hurt also. She remembers wearing a crown and feeling the metal cold against her scalp, the same way the pins feel. But she doesn't know where it went. Maybe Dios is right and it fell off and she lost it. Dios knows about princesses but she isn't sure how.

Put her hair up. That is what she does each morning, the first thing. But her hair is already up. She woke up with it like that. She woke up not in the half-moon bed, or lying on the couch, but sitting on the roof with her feet dangling off the edge and tasting the wind. The last time she was up here, her hair whipped against her back and her nightgown billowed around her legs like she was a kite.

The wind smells like damp leaves and the scent of straw dried hot and gold in the sun, but it feels wild, like cold water. When she inhales sipping lungfuls of it, it takes her breath away, like it’s trying to breathe her back.

She wonders why she’s up there. She thinks it’s probably important to figure out.

(It is a very long way down, Dios observes neutrally. Everything is very small.)

Whenever he comes to see her, Dios falls down from the sky, down from the castle, and she used to wonder if he would hurt himself. Or maybe he came down from her mind, but he never liked her body very much because she was the Rose Bride and not the Engaged. He never used to help her hold the sword right.

(Tell me a story, Dios says almost slyly. She would call it flirtatious but she can’t think of the word. Tell me a story about a princess.)

“I don’t know any,” she says, and the wind snatches the words from her lips as though it wants to hear too, and take the story all away for itself.

(You were just thinking of one, Dios says. Now he sounds fretful, like he doesn't feel well. I heard you. I’m tired of my own stories. I want to hear a new one.)

Her feet hover over empty space. If she swings them out just a little further and leans forward, she would fall like Dios, too.

“Once upon a time,” she says, because all her stories start that way, “there was a princess who lived in a castle. She lived in the castle because the garden in the castle had a rose in it and she had to take care of it because there were no other roses like it, even though flowers grew everywhere outside the castle. She never left."

There is just a spread of blue beneath her, nothing between here and the ground below but air. Her hands are cold and they look paler than usual, fingers splayed against the stone.

"There was also a prince, who didn't live in the castle, because he had to ride through the kingdom and take care of the flowers out there. He didn't ever get to go into the castle and see the princess, even though they were just alike. And one day, the prince came to save the princess because she could never come out of the castle and he couldn't go in."

Utena's eyes are blue, are just this shade of blue, and they looked like the sky filling up with rain when she cried. Cried, not wept, because weeping is what princesses do and Utena isn’t one. And she had cried with her eyes open--- Utena who never cried--- because... because...

"The princess was so surprised that the prince would come for her, that she wanted to give him her only real thing. She took a knife and cut the rose and ran out of the castle to give it to the prince. But the prince died on a pile of straw because the rose was his life and the princess had taken it away by accident. And besides, he couldn't save her because she came out of the castle herself."

Why is she out here on the ledge?

"So, no more flowers grew and there were no more roses ever and the princess went back inside and stayed in the castle after all."

(I am not sure I like that story, Dios says doubtfully, after a long pause. I don't think I do.)

She doesn't really like that story either, come to think of it.

Catt, Untitled Vincent Fic

Vincent and Lucrecia doing what Turks do best: getting drunk and getting... Well, you know you could probably finish the sentence off yourself. ^_^

***

Someone stumbled in the darkness, but he didn't bother looking up; he concentrated instead on the glass in his hand. He took a sip, let the rum burn him on its way down, a little too watery for his taste but he had grabbed whatever had been in his reach. Maybe he'd look for something more interesting in a little while, when he could bother himself to stand.

"Vincent...?" The voice was soft, questing, curious. It was Lucrecia without a doubt, and Vincent murmured something under his breath. He wasn't sure what it was himself, but Lucrecia paused. "Vincent, it is you. What are you doing down here in the dark?"

He chuckled, remembering one of Tseng's sarcastic comments from before. "I'm drinking blood."

A pause, and then a soft laugh. "I see. But that rum's not red enough to be blood, dear, you can't fool me." The woman came closer, set a lamp down on the bar and lit it, carefully sheltering the flame with her hands. He watched her as she moved, watched her as she adjusted the flame and then the lamp's shutters, so that the lamp let out a comforting, warm glow... not harsh, just illumination in the otherwise dark basement. She stood up straight, took off her spectacles and rubbed her forehead.

"Are you alright?" he said, noticing that she wasn't wearing her engagement ring.

"I'm fine... just a slight headache, I think." She dropped her hand to her side, smiled at him. "Akihito's down in the lab again, doing another experiment. You know, sometimes I think he loves that Ancient more than he loves me. The bastard."

"Now, that isn't a very nice thing to call your fiancee," Vincent murmured, surprised when she sat down next to him and reached for her own glass. He handed one to her, offered his bottle. She shook her head.

"No rum. I prefer something a little more… classy." She pointed. "That bottle, that Ambrosia right there… try that?" As he got up to look, she rested her head on her hands, soft green eyes following his movements. "It's not that bad, for the project, I mean. And I love him because he always throws himself into his work, you know? It's just recently..." She sighed, disgruntled, and Vincent opened the bottle and poured her glass full. She blinked at the amount, looked at him with some surprise. "Hey, I'm a scientist, not a Turk. I don't drink that heavily."

"For love troubles, extra alcohol is needed," Vincent said, sipping at his rum again. "It's in the Turk handbook. Now, continue."

She regarded her own glass for another moment, before nodding and saying, "It seems like that's all he does. Work. Back in the university, we'd still have fun with each other, even during those nights when we should have been studying. But ever since we found that damned Ancient... he spends more nights down in the lab than he spends with me. I can hardly stand it. Whenever I see him, he's going over his notes and working on some crazy equations and he won't even let me see what they're for. He still speaks kind words to me, he still says he thinks about me... but, gods, it bothers me. That Ancient bothers me."

"Have you spoken to Gast about this?"

"No, of course not. He's busy enough as it is without my problems. And, besides, he seems to be supporting Akihito's work. I wouldn't dare interfere now… I don't want to get in their way..."

"But it's hurting you." He paused, looking down at his now empty glass and contemplating his next drink. With a shrug, he grabbed for the bottle of Ambrosia and poured some into his glass. "At least, hurting you enough that you came to me to talk about it. If you're willing to come to a Turk to talk about it, then there must be something wrong, and it must be hurting you."

"I don't know..." She ran a hand through her hair, frowning, looking away. "Sometimes I wonder if it would just be best to call everything off, at least until this project is over. Maybe then he'll remember that he's engaged to someone."

"Hojo..." He shook his head, put his glass down. "I'm sorry, I don't really know how to help... but whatever you do, you should do it without regrets. It's his fault for ignoring a woman as beautiful as you."

Lucrecia turned her head at that, looking at him with amusement, her cheeks a little flushed. "Did you just call me beautiful? Stoic Vincent, the man who never falls in love?"

"In my profession, it's best never to fall in love," Vincent said. "But that doesn't mean I can't observe other people and if I happen to find one who I think is beautiful, well..." He shrugged. "And you are, Lucrecia. If Hojo can't see that, then he's more blind than I thought he was."

"That wasn't very nice of you to say about Akihito..."

"I'm being paid to protect all of you, not to compliment--"

"But you just complimented me a moment ago." She leaned closer, smiling still. "You say you're not supposed to fall in love, hmm? So have you ever had a crush before?"

"Of course not," he started, cursing himself mentally when a slight flush rose to his cheeks. Dammit, Turks aren't supposed to blush, either.

"Really? That's not what I heard."

"What did you hear?"

She chuckled, shook her head. "I overheard Tseng and Connor once, awhile ago... I think Tseng was still a little drunk from the night before. Said something about it being a shame that you're so worried about being close to other people, you were such a good..." She trailed off, looked at him oddly. "So, why're you so afraid to get close to people, eh? You and Tseng are still good friends, aren't you?"

Vincent stared at her. Tseng, the next time I see you, I will kill you. "...we're friends, yes. But I don't get close to people."

"But why...?" she insisted, her voice lowering. "Really, Vincent, why not? You're rather handsome, yourself, you know, you could land any woman--or man, considering what I heard--and it's a shame you keep to yourself. I mean, I know I'd--" This time she was the one that stopped short, putting a hand over her mouth and her cheeks blushed brighter than before, and she quickly put her drink down and aside.

This time, it was his turn to grin, and with a smirk he took another calm sip of his drink. "Oh, please, continue, I'd love to hear what you were going to say next."

Her embarrassment being shoved aside, Lucrecia stood and glared at him. "That's not... I mean, I... Oh, hell." And before Vincent could react to her movements, his brain as hindered as it was by the alcohol, her hands were on either side of his face and she was kissing him. He dropped his glass and it fell to the bar with a harsh ringing noise, too thick to really break and he could hear the wine splashing out and it was going to cause such a mess...

Sephiroth kissed Cloud at 01:14 p.m., Friday, August 9, 2002.

Thorne, more FF8

The punch he aimed at Kiros hit the wall when his leg cramped up and he limped his way to the gates. It had rained recently and the puddles splashed in fragments like diamonds as he hopped through. He could almost feel Kiros’s disapproving eyes from the airship window.

Internally, the Garden was just as impressive, all airy vaulted ceilings and the glint of polished metal and the quiet rush of water in the fountain. A few SeeDs were lingering in small clusters around the hall, sharing muted conversations. Their stances were so set and carefully posed to have the best few of the entire open area that Laguna wondered if there were marks on the floor for them to stand on.

“You’re it!”

Some children ran by, playing tag. They were moving about in undeniably individual fashion. He felt a little better.

Directions, then. Couldn’t ask the SeeDs and he knew what it was like to have your game disturbed by an adult. He was the president, dammit, and he could find his own way around, even without a map and he was not intimidated by any journey. He was just adventurous.

Encouraged by this resolution, he strode forward so determinedly that he forgot about his cramps and nearly fell over a small boy who had, to his best recollection of the past two seconds, appeared out of thin air directly in front of his knees.

“Ouufh!” Ass over elbows, a flash of a red shirt and a small surprised face, the stones of the fountain and water beneath his fingers that wouldn’t hold him--

---He could see the headlines now. “ESTHARI PRESIDENT KILLS SMALL CHILD IN BALAMB GARDEN ON STANDARD INSPECTION TOUR, COMMANDER SWEARS REVENGE.” And the subline, “’All I Needed Was an Excuse,’ Quotes Commander.” He could even write it himself, if Kiros didn’t join Squall in the slaughter and kill him as soon as he rushed back to the airship for sanctuary---

“Are you all right?”

Well, maybe he would just sit here for a few minutes first with one arm in the fountain and ringing in his ears before he fled. Ah. Solid ground.

“Mister?”

The little boy couldn’t have been more than five, his shirt a little wet from the tidal wave Laguna had displaced in his fall, but not bleeding or bruised and most of the water had hit his own pants anyway. And they were already wet from the puddles so, no harm done. War averted.

He looked into the solemn little face and nodded, hoping he sounded more encouraging than he felt. “I’m okay.” Then, levering himself to his feet, “You were running fast.”

Pride sprang up in the boy’s eyes. “I can run faster than Jess, even though he’s a year older.”

He grinned, he couldn’t help it. “So he was trying to make you it, huh? You ever get caught?”

“No.” The little boy sounded satisfied, as though all was right with the world in revealing this one fact. “But you have to run pretty fast to catch someone.”

“You said it,” he replied. He was beginning to get his wind back. “So, you’re training here?”

“Yes,” the boy said, no childish ‘yeah’ or nope’ for him. “I’m going to be a SeeD when I’m older. I’m going to be the best SeeD there is. As good as the Commander.” The boy didn’t smile when he said it but he looked assured in the way only the very young could, not bragging but just stating a given.

He thought his own son might’ve sounded like that at this age. He had been a journalist but he couldn’t find a word for the strange pang that squeezed his heart.

“Well, I wish you good luck, then. Maybe I can hire you some day.” He didn’t miss the doubtful look the boy cast at his whole rumpled appearance and it helped loosen the ache in his chest a little.

“I’m going to learn to use the gunblade,” the boy informed him. “So, I’ll help you when I’m bigger.”

He saluted to the boy, and after making sure he wasn’t being mocked, the boy saluted back. He walked carefully down the stairs—he would have a bruise on his hip later, he could already feel the tenderness of the skin--- but he felt better than he had when he had first come in. He waited for the child to leave.

Just as the boy ran off, he stopped, paused, and said. “You can play tag with me later, if you want. But if you’re going to catch someone, you have to run fast.”

He snapped his heels, saluted again and smiled. Finally got back a smile back too, sweet and open and missing a front tooth.

He walked away, wondering if his son had been anything like that when he was five and wishing for what seemed the hundredth time, that he could have done anything more than what he had.

The cheerful memory of his recent encounter carried him as far as the third segment of the Garden before doubt began to creep up in the back of his mind again. He walked in what he hoped was a purposeful manner around the Garden hall, peering into doors in what he hoped, but rather doubted, was a surreptitious manner.

People glanced back at him as he tried to see inside, but their gazes slid over his battered jacket, wet pants, and muddy boots before they could rest too long on his face. Ha. He’d tell Kiros for once his clumsiness had> paid off. Although, really, maybe just one person recognizing him and telling him where the Commanders office might be located...

...well, at least it seemed to be a circular path. He could get back to where he started from if it came down to that. So, no problem.

The sole of one of his boots had begun to squeak irritatingly. He tried putting less weight on that foot, didn’t work. Thought about hopping, thought about what Kiros would say, and stopped. He stopped to rub the sole against a carpet and ended up with a muddy smear and a still-squeaking boot. He backed away guiltily and went on. To make matters worse, his leg decided to get into the act and start cramping again.

So, he limped through the halls, damp and disheveled, and after a few more feet, he caught his reflection in the metal banister. President of Esthar, army veteran (sort of), the one who had defeated Adel, award-wining journalist (well, also sort of), limping his way through the Garden hall like a torama that had been caught in the rain.

He was never good at not laughing at the ludicrous, it had gotten him quite a few reprimands in the army and punches from his friends. But he couldn’t help it and the snickers began to bubble their way out of him as he moved along. Limping along. Hopped along. Ol’ hoppalong, that’s what they would call him. He’d have to remember it for his memoirs, if he wrote some.

Laughing made him stumble and that made his leg hurt more and Hyne, he was giving off an eruption of snickering now. President of Esthar hiking along the Garden, laughing like a loon and scaring all the SeeDs. Hyne, forget what Kiros would say, think of what he would do.

He thought about what /Squall/ would say (or not say, something in his mind reminded him) if he found him now, and for the first time, being lost didn’t seem so bad.

Up ahead of him, he could see another door and the small, neatly lettered sign reading “INFIRMARY.” He caught a hint of antiseptic and soap when he paused outside the doorway. An infirmary had a doctor. A doctor would probably know their way around the Garden. A doctor could tell him where to go; maybe the vows that made them always try to cure someone would also work for promising not to laugh at him.

And if anything else, an infirmary had a bed where he could sit down for a minute and try to massage the stiffness from his leg. Maybe they had a tranquilizer, too. Bless Hyne for the kindness.

He stood in the doorway and peered inside cautiously. “Hello? Sir? Ma’am? Doctor?”

There was someone sitting on a bed already. A white-coated woman, her hair in a tight bun with a no-nonsense look on her face turned from the patient to face him. “Yes?” she asked, her pleasant face at variance with the murderous looking syringe in her hand. “I’m Doctor Kadowaki, can I help you?”

Going for his best smile, he took his hands out of his pockets and tried to stand as straight as he could. “I don’t want to trouble you when you’re with a patient, but could you tell me where to find the Commander? Err... Squall Leonhart?” The name fell off his tongue awkwardly, as though he had no right to say it.

She smiled. “Of course I can. Just a moment.” She bent back to her patient and the syringe disappeared and then came back empty. She dropped the syringe in the wastebasket, stepped back, and nodded. “He’s right here.”

He met cool grey eyes with his own as Squall rolled his shirtsleeve back down. Hyne must be laughing at him after all.

Thorne, aforementioned FF8

The Garden looked well from a distance, great and golden on the plains of Balamb. It seemed to belong to the area of sea and sky and grass, as though he had never seen it flying over a field of flowers on a summer day. When the Esthari airship drew closer, he could see the mark that the original Garden site had left on the plains, a ring of half-grown vegetation.

Kiros’s unspoken words hung heavy between them in the few inches of separating space between their seats. He doodled stick figures on his napkin rather than meet the other man’s eye; he had too much experience with the potency of a single raised eyebrow, the not-quite curl of a lip, the dark ironic look. In a way, Laguna thought, it was kind of comforting, really. If there wasn’t a touch of acid on it, it wasn’t Kiros.

He added trailing bangs to the stickman on the napkin and drew two long triangles on his hands. “Are you sure you’re not going to come in?” he asked. For some reason, he wanted to hear the jibes and the too-long pause before each sentence. Comforting. Familiar.

Kiros came through with the expected pause and he smiled privately to himself. “You said when I was trying to talk you out of it that it was your business.” Pause. “Stand by your words, Laguna.”

He added another stick figure across from the first one and drew a machine gun into his hands. “The Esthari legislation says that “There shall be an annual—“

“---Tour and inspection of the premises and capabilities of all functioning Gardens, to be determined by a qualified inspector in tandem with the Garden’s highest ranking personnel. I was the one who briefed you on it in the first place, Laguna, don’t play dumb with me.”

Bullets from the machinegun dotted the napkin to hit the stick figure with the katals. He added a few lines to indicate speed. “I’m not playing.”

An explosive sigh came from Kiros’s direction and he was almost fooled into looking up. “Anyone could have made this inspection tour, Laguna. Tell me you’re not doing it because you feel guilty. Tell me you’re not doing it because your kid is the Commander except he’s not your kid and you want to change that.”

He put little x’s for the eyes of the bullet ridden figure. “I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Feeling guilty.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

A crumpled napkin came flying at his head and he ducked, letting it rebound off the window into his lap. Sly bastard. Always sounding so cool and collected as though he never threw napkins or got drunk or made a botch of braiding his hair, or... or...

He needed Kiros to screw up more often.

“Ward agrees with me that you’re deluding yourself on your expectations,” Kiros said.

He added a third figure, bigger than the other two, and then drew an anchor falling on his head. “Ward never says anything, so how can he agree?”

“Laguna...” The sigh this time was different and he reluctantly met Kiros’s eyes. “Look. He’s your son. I know. I know you want to get to know him and I know you want to see what he’s done with his life. But he’s grown up without you and never known you before and you have to take these things slowly. Otherwise someone’s going to get hurt.”

That did sting, even coming from Kiros. Bad father. Bad... less than a father. He couldn’t even really claim that title. “You think I’m going to hurt him?” he asked hotly.

The gentleness of Kiro’s voice was the worst thing. “I’m afraid you're the one who'll be hurt, Laguna.”

He stared unseeing at his caricatures and turned his hands palm up on the table. He still wore his ring. It was a comforting weight on his left hand and he played with the light reflecting it off it, like a shower of tears splattered on the tabletop. “What if he hates me for what I did, Kiros?”

“He won’t hate you. He’s not that kind of boy.”

“I don’t even know what kind of boy he is! I didn’t raise him, I let him grow up alone, I made him...” He laughed in a short humorless bark. “I made him save the world. He did, didn’t he?”

Kiros reached across the seats and put a hand on his shoulder. Kiros didn’t hug. Kiros communicated with his hands, through shoulder-claps and friendly punches and the glittering arc of his blades. “He did. He did a good job. You should be proud.”

“He’s going to hate me.”

“No, he won’t.”

Outside, the Garden soared vast against the sky as they came close and then hovered alongside. It was a beautiful day. His son was waiting inside. His son.

“Maybe I could just go back,” Laguna mused out loud. “Maybe we could say we got lost on the way. He’d believe it, he’s seen how we work.”

“You already sent him three letters saying we were coming. And I don’t think he’d believe that the city which can disappear off the map couldn’t produce a presidential ship that doesn’t have auto-navigation.” When he didn’t reply, Kiros stared at him suspiciously. “You did send the letters, right?”

He would not feel guilty. He would not blush. He would not stare at the floor and shuffle his feet and--- oh, Hyne, there went the eyebrow again. “I sent letters saying an inspector was coming.”

“You didn’t even tell him it was you coming?” Kiros asked incredulously.

He squeezed the napkin and watched the grass ripple away in waves as the ship began to descend. “Not in so many words, but...”

“Laguna.”

“I was afraid he’d say he didn’t want to see me...”

“Laguna.”

“Well, he might have.”

“Hyne, Laguna.”

“So it’s not too late to go back?”

Kiros gave him another shoulder-clap, not so light this time. “No. You, my friend, are walking through those nice looking gates as soon as we get on solid ground. And you will conduct the best damn tour and inspection of a Garden facility ever done. Whatever else you care to say to him is your business and not mine, but I’ll be waiting here no matter what you do.”

It was good to lean into the reassuring solidity of the offered shoulder as the airship was lowered. His stomach was turning over and he didn’t know if it was from anxiety or the change in pressure or both. “I don’t know why I hire you. You give me lectures on not coming and then you won’t even let me walk out when I want to.”

“You hire me because otherwise the country would be in uproar in less than an hour with only you to handle things.”

The engines shut off and the sudden silence was deafening. The airship shuddered and then was still. The Garden really was very beautiful, if imposing.

Kiros stood up and offered him a hand. “Go out and slay the dragon, my man.” He leaned closer. “And you have ink on your face. Wash it.”

The punch he aimed at Kiros hit the wall when his leg cramped up and he limped his way to the gates.

Thorne, from Battlefields

The kitchen was so normal in comparison to the living room’s chaos that he nearly forgot what he had come for. He measured water and coffee beans with mechanical precision, familiar actions that his mind didn’t need to follow. When everything was percolating in a semi-reassuring manner, he walked to the into the bedroom, avoided the sight of the bed without quite admitting why he was averting his eyes, and went about relieving more pressing matters.

He wanted to wash his hair and settled for drowning his head in the sink instead. It felt like an ice spell at first, prickling and sharp and uncomfortable, then faded to a cool numbness all over his scalp. After he deemed he had made a big enough dent in the water supply, he reached blindly for a towel, found none—oh, yes, back in the living room--- and settled for squeezing the excess water out of his hair and into the sink.

He wondered which toothbrush belonged to which person. Somehow, the intimacy of using someone else’s toothbrush seemed much less appealing than the way the towel had been shared. There were three blonde hairs plastered to the bowl of the sink in short curves, a razor, a bar of pale yellow soap, and a wash cloth. The shower-drain was mostly clogged with black hair.

There was something strange about bathrooms. It really did feel as though he was invading something more personal than the bedroom and he didn’t know why, maybe because it was where so many of the baser things took place. Little everyday actions that people got used to, things that while might be performed self-consciously in the beginning when done together, slowly became the normal way of things. He was willing to bet they showered together for other reasons than water conservation.

Feeling a little more human, he wandered back into the bedroom. It looked different in the morning, but maybe that was just the light. There was a blanket half thrown over the window to serve for a shade but it was easy enough to see that although the bed had been made, the pictures were still out, although shuffled into a neater pile and flipped over. All that could be seen was the blank back of the topmost photo and the cryptic phrase "Too many daisies."

He flipped it over, expecting to see Strife—somehow, his mind was separating Cloud in the living room from Strife in the pictures--- and wasn’t disappointed. He still couldn’t figure out what daisies had to do with the picture, which was rather normal as the pictures went. Seated on the bed, sitting cross-legged and staring back at the camera. Stiff pose, guarded eyes, but normal. Cloud must have thought it as safe to leave that one on top.

Absently, he held the damp ends of his hair safely away from the pictures and sat down. The bed felt better than the armchair. Sitting was a blessing, let the other two sleep some more.

It didn’t take too much time to go through the stack, even going slow as he did and carefully committing each picture to his mind, taking his time to examine whatever details were there. The ones on top were mostly the two together, or posed pictures. One with both Zack and Cloud soaked to the skin, hair plastered to their skulls and their clothes nearly transparent, like when Cloud had come in earlier from the rain. Both had water guns in their hands. Zack was mugging for the camera, caught in the act of falling backwards with one hand dramatically clapped over chest; Cloud had a rare, delighted smile on his face and was aiming the gun drenching Zack.

Another one with the two standing in the middle of the very room he was in, only the room in the picture was so messy that it was hard to tell. Cloud's moving in day, he guessed. The boy stood, gripping his duffel bag, looking helplessly for a place to drop it while Zack held Cloud's footlocker above his head like a trophy.

More pictures, getting better. The series of undressing, the one with him curled in the bed sheets. Another one that he bet Strife was kicking himself for not avoiding, fresh from the shower with a towel held protectively before his waist and a look of almost comical surprise and distress. One taken unaware from a bird’s eye view in the training hall, small figure with blonde hair and a sword. Noticing what Strife was doing wrong with his left leg was a reflex to the familiar pattern. That was one of his customary work-outs. What the hell was he doing with a sword, though? The troopers trained with guns.

Less than five photos left and he stopped for a moment, remembering how Zack had fished about in the drawer. There was more in there, he was almost certain.

He shouldn’t. He knew that. He also knew he was going to do it anyway.

He had thought the drawer would fight him almost as much as it had fought Zack, as though guessing his intentions, but it slid open as smooth as silk. When had the privacy he valued so highly for himself and distance from others cease to matter? Probably at the same time he started calling Cloud by his first name naturally, or maybe before, when he first felt Zack standing beside him as he examined the bedroom.

There were enough in the drawer for almost a handful and none of them had any notes on their backs. As he glanced at the closest glossy surface, the first thought to cross his mind was that if he had doubted it before, he was wrong because Zack really was a good photographer and apparently knew something about tripods as well. He doubted Zack would trust someone else with the camera in the situation.

No one could convincingly hold that look on their face or quite twine their limbs that way for anything less than the real act. No poses, no pretensions, it felt as though he had just opened the door on them and caught them in the act. He supposed that was the difference between a good picture and an excellent one.

Pornography. Except they weren't, not really. Not like the poster pin-ups with curling corners that were taped on concrete walls of the barracks. Not like white-creased glossies torn from magazines bought under the counter, softened with handling and tattered at the edges, stored under mattresses and traded back and forth. Not like the reading material-- did anyone ever actually read the stuff? It was hard to read with the book held sideways which was how people usually held them anyway--in the bathrooms and the lounges and... and hell, anywhere the Soldiers resided for any period of time.

He finally spread them out next to the others, edge to edge so the bed was nearly covered, a strange quilt of eyes and faces, hands and shoulders, mouths and hair. He had thought they would not fit in--- why else would they be kept apart?—but they did. If he leaned back against the headboard and looked at the sea of color with half-slit eyes, none of the private pictures stand out.

Weaknesses and strengths of the photos. Weaknesses and strengths of the people in the photos. He used to wonder when it had become that way, when things no longer held aesthetic value but military use, or at least, when he could look at land and not immediately plan an attack or defense, seeking hollows and footholds to hide in or obliterate with spells. He didn’t like Junon’s flatlands because they reminded him of the difficulty of moving men across exposed ground, couldn’t see the gray-green grass without wondering what it might hide. Wedge formation would be the best way to advance.

He looked at the pictures and thought about his hands on a waist, touching bare skin. Thought about how to grasp a wrist and turn it so the person couldn’t pull away, how to treat a body like a battlefield and find victory in whatever manner he chose.

He could use any weapon, knew how to disassemble and reassemble any gun blindfolded, knew five different martial arts. He could command platoons and call in an airstrike with one word, lead sword-charges like a cresting wave. He had felt the tingle of nearly every para-magical spell developed passing through his fingers as the materia in masamune flashed and vibrated. He had once lead a raid with a broken arm, switching his sword to his left hand before finally returning to his own tent to set and cure it himself to save time.

A human battlefield was different. He thought about not using force and it made him sit very still for a moment, trying as hard as he could to grasp something that seemed just beyond him.

I could take him from you. The thought rose up unbidden in his mind, and he was almost startled at the surety of it. He knew his standing in the eyes of the young men serving under him and he knew what he could generally do with it, and in this case, what he could almost certainly do with it. He could take him and he could keep him, too. Easy, as easy as breathing, easy as swordplay.

(insert)

Negatives. Where would they keep the negatives? Knowing Zack, they should be thrown in the drawer as well, but when he opened the drawer again, he couldn’t find any. It was never that easy.

(insert)

He put the pictures back. Not haphazard, but carefully; same order, shuffled them around a little so they wouldn't look so neatly stacked in the drawer they had been previously tucked away in. He wrapped a tissue around the three in his pocket and reminded himself not to accidentally sit on them and create damaging creases. Maybe he would want to return them later. But, better to keep them in good condition anyway.

The ones that had already been on the bed, he left spread out. His headache felt worse.

The coffee maker was beeping insistently when he came back. It felt good to be back to an ordinary kitchen, full of ordinary things. Easier to separate his thoughts in here, sort them away for later reviewing. He was not trailing one hand on the wall because he was unsteady or tired or feeling like he’d been kicked in the chest or... The wall was just very conveniently located in a close position to his hand.

More urgent noises from the coffee maker. He hastily removed the pot, poured a cup, and swore when he accidentally splashed some on his hand. The milk in the refrigerator was sporting a suspicious smell and he discarded it, looking for the sugar. As he searched, he drank the first cup black in four swallows. The second cup went down a little more easily and he made it last ten sips this time, gratefully letting the stale taste coating inside his mouth dissolve away. Back in the living room, he could hear movement and a low, steady, almost comforting stream of obscenities.

Leaving the milk and sugar for a lost cause, he scanned the cupboard for a cup that would do for Zack. He finally grabbed a black ceramic mug on the grounds that it was thick enough not to scald the hands, easy on eyes that had been open too long last night, and most importantly, two sizes bigger and deeper than all the other cups. Only one voice. Would Cloud want any?

As he pulled it out, he knocked over a half-empty box of teabags and grabbed for them futilely as they spilled through his fingers to the counter. The noise in the living room was increasing. After scooping the teabags up and jamming them back into the box in a double handful, he hooked one finger through the mug's handle and turned back to the coffeemaker.

By the time he had filled it and made his way back into the living room, the groaning had mounted and then stopped, leaving an ominous silence. He walked in, balancing his and Zack's cup carefully.

Zack had managed to rise to his knees and kneel on top of the triplicate set of Elemental Fire Para-Magical Casting Materia (GFM) master level confirmation reports. He thought that they must have gotten to that set of papers fairly late in the evening; the handwriting on them looked more like the smears caused by spiders killed in a sudden and violent fashion than it usually did. Someone had scrawled--- that wasn't his handwriting, was it?--- across the top page "Fucking FIRE materia."

“Uhn,” Zack said, almost coherently, and stared at him in bleary accusation. “My head.” He rubbed his temples with one hand while continuing to glare. “You drugged me, didn’t you? You drugged me and violated me with a rusty sword while I was unconscious.”

The room did a brief, but graceful dip under his feet and he sat down in the armchair, pretending it was what he had meant to do the entire time. “The way you look right now, I’d rather fuck a Malboro.”

“Fuck.” Zack didn’t lay down so much as he collapsed. “Fuck. Fuck.”

He started to drink Zack’s coffee as well, deciding he needed it more than Zack did. He wondered again if Cloud drank coffee and would want any. He thought of the half-empty box of teabags in the cabinet, smelling faintly of cinnamon, mint, and chamomile. He wished he had left more hot water. Tea was good, made him think of easier mornings that consisted of a warm mug and warmer hands, sitting in yellow sunlight and having nowhere special to be. Probably much easier on the innards, too.

On the couch, Cloud was waking up, rubbing at his eyes with one balled-up fist and pushing the hair out of his face with the other hand. When the boy yawned, he caught the flash of pink and his mind saw an open mouth and stretched lips from another picture in his mind, that same "O" that could have been so many things.

The thought from before drifted through his mind again, soft and steady and sure as a heartbeat. I could take him from you.

Simple, and so quiet that even his mind barely heard it. Could keep him. I could. Keep.

He touched his fingers to his own lips, knowing he hadn't spoken aloud but wanting to reassure himself anyway. His fingertips still smelled of the teabags. Definitely mint, at least. Cinnamon. Chamomile. Anise? Ginger too, like hot, crumbly sunlight. Where did this sudden urge to be unkind come from?

Zack turned to look at him and he closed his eyes against the penetrating gaze, laced with suspicion. Pictures in his pocket, the smell of their bedroom all over his skin, a stray blonde hair on his shirt, what? He had a sudden and exquisitely jolting idea that he had left fingerprints on the hidden photographs.

The suspicious squint narrowed into a glare, as Zack took a step toward him. “What do you have?”

“Mmm,” he replied, noncommittally, and thought about defense moves.

He opened his eyes just in time to see Zack lunging violently at him, fists first. Maybe offense would serve better. Arm across the throat, hit the windpipe and then the stomach. The groin shouldn't be necessary; his opponents usually did not get up after the first two hits. This is your friend, he thought to himself very clearly. This is your only friend.

"Coffee," Zack hissed. He blinked. Relief was like an ether, shiver-silver cool and limb-loosening.

“You will give that to me,” Zack said, hands planted on either side of the armchair and almost nose to nose with him. Across the room, Cloud sat up yawning still and the dark-haired man looked over to him with an affection so natural he wondered how many times Zack had watched Cloud wake up. Enough to know the little habits, the motions and noises of a familiar routine, probably. When Zack turned back to him, the look had become a long, slow, ominous smile. “Or you will die.”

“I could kill you,” he offered back, “if you don’t get off me. That would solve both our problems.” He took another sip. Cloud was stretching his legs out and wiggling his toes and apparently Stilva-free. He wanted to be fifteen again. The world wasn't fair.

“Shut up,” Zack said, and took the cup away. He watched Zack gulp, swallow, and grimace. “No sugar?”

“I couldn’t find it.”

“Milk?”

“Gone bad. Clean your refrigerator.”

“No, the other milk.” Zack finished the coffee anyway, his fingers splayed wide around the cup’s surface.

He shrugged. “If you have other milk, why keep the spoiled carton?”

Zack looked pained, either at some obvious answer to the question or because he had to think in the first place. “Stop talking so loudly. You’ve already had coffee and I haven’t. You’re a bastard, Seph.”

“You just drank the cup I was holding.” He found the lever that extended the footrest on the armchair. Recliner. He wondered how he missed it last night.

“Sugar,” Zack grumbled in reply and padded over to the kitchen, weaving expertly around the clutter. He supposed it was a skill of habit.

Thorne, more Anthy

She knows a story that the shadows did not tell her, about people who don't grow up. She gets most of her stories from the shadows but some of them come out of the books in the room and some of them come from her brother, and some of them come from Dios, and some of them just come right up out of her head like roses.

This story is about a princess. The story tells about how the princess was born and an evil witch cursed her birth and threw magic from her fingertips at the princess. So the princess grew up with a curse over her head like a storm cloud waiting to cry rain. And when the princess was still young, she pricked her finger on a funny spinning thing and fell asleep for a hundred years. The roses grew high around her castle and the princess slept and the people slept and hundreds of princes lost their lives in the thorns of the roses because they wanted the best rose of all, sleeping in the castle. And finally, a prince came and the roses bloomed for him so he got through and woke the princess. And he married her and they lived happily ever after, the prince and the princess.

But it’s all wrong. Wrong, wrong, backwards-wrong.

There are things that are untrue in the story. It was never one princess and many princes, but one prince and many princesses. It was never really the princess who fell asleep but the prince, and it was never really the witch’s fault. After all, the story’s princes died because they tried to find the princess, not the witch.

And the people never really slept that way either. That’s a lie. They got tired of waiting for the prince to save the princess and they went to sleep because there was nothing better to do and they had to dream of swords and revenge.

But she knows the real part of the story, the part that isn’t a lie. The princess doesn’t grow up. The princess sleeps for a long time and she exists for a long time, so she has to get older but she never grows up. She’s always sixteen.

Prince and princess live happily ever after. The story says so. There’s never a queen. Just a princess. The prince didn’t grow up either. Lies.

Her brother won't let her grow up.

She's thought about it before. Once, when she visited her brother and sat on the couch, she had surprised herself by thinking that she could just ask her brother why. But the surprise was so great that it had left her breathless and with eyes closed tight, and any way the question could have been voiced had been lost forever. So she just sat very still and smiled when he offered her some tea, his face behind her eyes.

She doesn't need her eyes to smile. She doesn't need her smile to see. She has glasses to use anyway, magic eyes.

The question never made it out of her mouth. But it turned over and over in her mind after it slipped up as silent as roses and it turns over and over in her mind now as she sits and thinks. It’s not just the question, it’s the question and the questions that fall off the questions like sparks off clashing blades.

Why doesn’t she grow up? She gets older, she thinks. Maybe. Just maybe. She thinks she remembers being small enough to have to throw her body against a door to close it, small enough not to reach the knob well. And now the doors she goes through open easily and her hands can find the knobs but that could be wrong. It could be that the doors have changed, not her.

This place that her brother made is very special, so it’s very possible for doors to change. She can’t trust them, they don’t always go to the same place. So she tries to think of her birthday, because birthdays are when you get older. Utena said that. Utena says her own birthday comes when it is cold and snow is on the ground but she can’t remember the last time it snowed.

Her birthday comes in a month of... of... roses, of course, although no roses really bloom for real. People give roses to each other and they give their hearts and walk hand in hand like princes and princesses. But her birthday is tricky and it likes to disappear in the calendar pages for years at a time.

Seven years pass between her birthdays. Seven years is an important number, like a seventh son. Princes are often seventh sons. That shouldn’t make them special though, because all the other sons are princes too.

(You already have everything you get when you grow up, Dios whispers gently, reprovingly. You wear a pretty dress with the long skirts, you wear your hair up against your head. You have magic eyes and a sword and so many things. Why grow up? You have these things.)

(insert)

The first thing she does every morning is to put her hair up. It's hard to do, because there's a lot of it and she has to pin it as close to her head as possible and sometimes the pins dig into her scalp and they hurt. But Dios tells her about ladies and how they would pin their hair up high and it was a sign that they were adult, that they had come of age.

(The princesses, Dios says dreamily, they wear their hair long when they are young. But if they wear it long and loose, then their crowns fall off and they are not princesses anymore. So, they put their hair up and wear their skirts long instead.)

She remembers having short hair once, feeling the ends of it brush her cheeks when she turned her head from side to side, but it was a long time ago. She must have been younger then. She is older now. She wears her hair up.

Crowns are heavy and they can hurt also. She remembers wearing a crown and feeling the metal cold against her scalp, the same way the pins feel. But she doesn't know where it went. Maybe Dios is right and it fell off and she lost it.

Put her hair up. That is what she does each morning, the first thing. But her hair is already up. She woke up with it like that. She woke up not in the half-circle bed, or lying on the couch, but sitting on the roof with her feet dangling off the edge and tasting the wind.

Thorne, untitled.

Anthy fic. Part of the Anthy snippet previously posted.

The first thing she does every morning is to put her hair up. It's hard to do, because there's a lot of it and she has to pin it as close to her head as possible and sometimes the pins dig into her scalp and they hurt. But Dios tells her about ladies and how they would pin their hair up high and it was a sign that they were adult, that they had come of age.

(The princesses, Dios says almost dreamily, they wear their hair long when they are young. But if they wear it long and loose, then their crowns fall off and they are not princesses anymore. So, they put their hair up and wear their skirts long instead.)

She remembers having short hair once, feeling the ends of it brush her cheeks when she turned her head from side to side, but it was a long time ago. She must have been younger then. She is older now. She wears her hair up.

Crowns are heavy and they can hurt also. She remembers wearing a crown and feeling the metal cold against her scalp, the same way the pins feel. But she doesn't know where it went. Maybe Dios is right and it fell off and she lost it.

Deeper... go deeper...

A bit of Mikage-rambling. Very rough.

When he is tired, sometimes hallucinations will creep around the edges of his vision like shadows and he will remember feeling like he's seen these scenes before. Words come out of his mouth like lines from a play and he finds himself waiting for prompts and cues that will help him deliver them more effectively.

He has never acted before. Acting is about illusion and delusion and he deals with facts, with equations and hypotheses and theories.

Still, he finds it odd to find words knocking in his head that feel significant but for reasons he can't explain. Eternity. Duelist. Signet. The words taste like smoke in his mouth and he finds himself absently writing them on the margins of his notes. There is a smell of roses in the room but there are no flowers to be found.

Curious. But not inexplicable. Hallucinations, though. They're not a good sign. Slip-ups are unforgivable in his line of work.

When he is very tired, he names constellations and tries not to think about why the stars make him homesick for a place he doesn't even know.

And a bit of Anthy-rambling. From near the frigging end of another story. Why can't I write anything in order? This is choppy but it was the only section I could remove without spoiling the whole damn thing.

Packing takes less time then she expects. After the door closes, she goes back to the room that isn't her room anymore and puts clothes in a suitcase, smoothing down the right blouses and the skirts that aren't part of a uniform. They were never there before but maybe she did not look hard enough for them. Utena left some of her clothes behind when she went away and those are the first to go in, the essential things.

Small things take longer to decide. A package of hairpins goes in and out of the suitcase half a dozen times before she leaves them out. Once she decides though, she feels better and it reminds her of something else, too.

She picks hairpins out of the carefully pinned-up roll of hair at the back of her neck and combs through the loosened tresses with her fingers, since her brush has already been packed in the bottom of the suitcase. Walking in the sun has made her hair warm the way it has never felt while hanging loose, and she is used to touching it only at night.

The cluster of pins is the only thing that is not neat about the room. She leaves them scattered on the dresser top, she doesn't need them anymore, for putting her hair up or opening doors or... or anything.

When her hair is undone and warm against her back, she unbuttons her blouse and steps out of her skirt, leaving a little drift of fabric on the floor. Too many people wear uniforms and if she wants to find Utena, she can't just be a face in the crowd. She has never liked the way faces blur together, anyway.

The sun goes behind a cloud outside, and for a moment, she is cold all over. The suitcase creaks a little when she sits on the bed and cups her elbows in both hands under her breasts. Closing her eyes doesn't make it any better.

(Don't go, Dios murmurs, The World will hurt you, the World is different from here. We love you here. I love you. Things will not change.)

Dios is right, in a way. The World will be different. The World will probably hurt, maybe even more than this one does. Maybe she will be even lonelier there, without her brother anymore and she doesn't think Dios will come with her either.

Fear makes her chest clench tight in a cold knot and she has a hard time breathing, like riding too fast in a car, trying to draw rushing wind into her lungs. She doesn't even know how to find Utena, doesn't even know how to find the World. Anthy guesses there isn't a real way to find it, she just has to walk as far as she can and think about it all the time. If she thinks about it hard enough, if she concentrates all her will on it, she can get to where she's going.

The Rose Bride has no will of her own.

But she will not be the Rose Bride anymore. That is a game that children play. She wants to grow up.

So she toes the discarded uniform aside, because she never went to school here anyway, and puts on a different dress, pink. She has never worn pink before. When she goes to hang up the uniform in the closet, there is a pink coat hanging in the corner that wasn't there before and it reminds her of Utena's hair, a little bit. She puts it on and she doesn't feel cold anymore.

The whole room is left neat and impersonal, as though no one has ever lived there before. It always looked like that anyway when she stayed in the tower and she wants her brother to look at it and be reassured. Maybe her absence will not hurt him as much if he has the room to stay in and remember; she wants to leave a clean coffin for him.

(Is this goodbye? Dios asks wistfully. Will you never return to me?)

Anthy feels a quiet ripple of air across her cheek, a caress from a world away that smells faintly of roses. "Yes," she says. "Goodbye."

And then she adds, "I will miss you," because it is the truth. She has always missed the brother for whom she sacrificed and hung on swords for. She will even miss the brother of now because of who he used to be and the fact that he was the only one who ever knew everything she felt. He didn't always care or do the right thing, but he knew and no one else did or could. Maybe no one ever will again. Maybe not, though.

There are roses on the table by the window, a mixture of pink and lavender and dark purple. There is the urge to play with them a little, smooth the petals as though they are clothing or bed sheets. The lavender ones are mostly still in bud, furled as tightly as closed fists, while the pink ones are full blown and have dropped a few petals. But the dark purple roses are in between, caught in a transition of opening and just a little more time will have them open completely.

She thinks about separating the roses so that there are no lavender ones in the vase, but she decides that it doesn't matter. Anthy is glad, though, that she will not be here to see the petals of the pink roses fall.

The fear that makes her throat hurt and her breathing short is good, in a way. Feeling things, she thinks, is probably the way to get to the World.

And I thought about posting Maze of Words, but I want that to be seen in its entirety, all at once. So, the happy Cloudness comes later.

Catt, Untitled Vincent Epic, Random Snippet

Some brief info about the fic before going into the snippet:

This fic is something that's been brewing in my head for awhile. Deals with Vincent's history, from back when he was a Turk, to Gast's discovery of the Jenova specimen, all the way through Vincent's sleep and his eventual awakening by the Avalanchers, and his time with Cloud afterward. As soon as I got images for this one I inwardly groaned; my Vincent soulbond is kicking and screaming and angsting for an epic, and the only way I'll get it out of my head is to write it down.

Now, if only my muse will cooperate.

More snippets from this will probably follow when I have more of it down. Needless to say, this snippet takes place during Avalanche's mission to save the Planet, presumably before the Temple of the Ancients. Vincent's statement at the end of the snippet will be explained later.

***

Vincent sat down, polishing the barrel of his gun, and glanced to his side. His hair fell in the way, mostly, but through the heavy strands he could see Cloud, whetstone in hand, sharpening the edge of the Buster Sword. Odd... He hadn’t seen Cloud use it in battle recently, and generally when Cloud had found a better weapon he sold or simply ditched the one he had been using up to that point. But Cloud had not gotten rid of the old Buster Sword... had not even stowed it away with those few swords that he wanted to keep.

Vincent looked down at his own weapon, pouring a little more oil onto the cloth and continuing to clean and polish. He couldn’t help thinking, however, with another stolen glance in Cloud’s direction, how much Cloud reminded him of Lucrecia. That ideal in and of itself was ludicrous, and he thought he could almost hear Gast’s laughter in his head, telling him not to dote on her too much. After all, she and Akihito had already been going steady for over two years, now...

But Cloud is not Lucrecia. He doesn’t even really look that much like her. So why...?

Disturbed by his own train of thought, the ex-Turk just switched his attention to his gun, instead.

“So tell me, Valentine... Guys or gals?”

“What the hell does it matter to you?”

The soft scrape of the whetstone against the sword stopped, became replaced with the sound of a cap being screwed off the top of a bottle, and then noiseless motion; Cloud was polishing the Buster Sword as well, at this point, and Vincent realized dully that his handgun was very, very clean now, and there was very little reason for him to stay where he was and possibly bother Cloud anymore than he already had.

“Vincent...?”

He hesitated, already in the motion of standing, but Cloud had initiated conversation and, if nothing else, that was a reason to stay. He sat back down, noticed Cloud looking up at him through his bangs, and nodded.

“The Turks... Reno, Rude, and that rookie Elena... Do you think they’re going to give us much trouble?”

“If Tseng is with them, quite possibly.”

Cloud nodded, and turned his eyes again to his sword. “How long has Tseng been a part of the Turks?”

“Much longer than those other three... Tseng and I... often went out on missions together.”

He continued, hand and polishing cloth moving rhythmically, though the expression on his face was considering. “Will there be a problem?”

“No. I have no desire to be any part of the Shinra, anymore. I am much better off where I am.”

Another nod, though Vincent could tell that the young man wasn’t quite satisfied with that answer. However, the cloth was tucked away and Cloud stood, reaching down and beginning to wrap the sword in a long swath of cloth, acting as if this were all part of some ritual. Vincent merely watched as the sharp blade was carefully protected, very carefully handled, before being set down reverently on the ground and the rest of the cleaning materials picked up, set aside. Then, still moving very carefully, Cloud picked up the Buster Sword and headed back toward his tent.

Vincent followed Cloud with his own two eyes, acknowledging the silent dismissal. He gathered his own supplies before drifting back to the tent he shared with the other men, wondering about his brief exchange of words. Nothing much besides that, Cloud asking for some answers regarding their enemy, trying to see how Vincent would feel about facing the Turks himself... nothing more. But still...

The Planet help me if I ever get drunk near you, Cloud Strife... Vincent thought, shaking his head.

Sephiroth kissed Cloud at 05:13 p.m., Wednesday, July 24, 2002.