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fuckyeahfinalfantasy2010-09-27 01:43 am
sexychocobo) wrote in fuckyeahfinalfantasy2010-09-27 01:43 am
FYFF: MISSION ONE, ACCEPT Y/N?
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FFVI, Terra/Shadow, "Reconstruction" (2/2)
(Anonymous) 2011-03-11 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)A patch under his knee is still almost raw. As she applies a poultice, she adds, "I'm glad you're here."
He flexes his hand to watch the interplay of scars, veins, and fine bones. "Why?"
"I'm your friend." Her hand rests on his thigh, above the edge of the wound. "I don't understand why that has to be so hard."
His throat tightens. We're not friends, he should say, but "friends" was his word, spoken in a reckless moment when the beginning of his end liberated him. And what else is she? Even when he traveled with her only for money, she sought his unprofessional advice; it was her voice that cried out for him when he suffered a dangerous moment of heroism. She doesn't act now on anything as cold as obligation.
When the silence stretches so long that it threatens to snap inside him, he says, "Thank you."
The smile that spreads over her face is warm, almost relaxed. "Besides," she adds, returning to her work, "it's nice to have another adult to talk to."
She can't be much older than Duane and Katarin, but he suspects that Terra was never truly young. "I admire your patience with them," he says dryly.
She shakes her head. "It's not patience. When I watch them play outside, I know that the world's recovering. No matter how broken it is, we can rebuild it." Softer, she adds, "They made my heart whole before I even understood how it was broken."
He has a child who isn't broken and doesn't need him. Of all the regrets whispering inside him now, this is the quietest. Few other of his evils can claim to be the lesser.
When Terra leaves to manage her brood, he picks up books and rejects them within a page. He itches beneath his skin.
Moving as silently as he can on his crutches, he leaves his room and lurks in the shadow of the hall. The children are inside for the evening, clustered around Katarin and Terra in front of the hearth. The baby nurses. Terra's knitting needles clack together with the regularity of heartbeats.
She and Katarin chat about the changing of the seasons, the children's vegetable garden, a novel Edgar sent from Figaro. Terra's face is so bright and animated that it scarcely seems to belong to the same woman who stares listlessly at the sea when she thinks she is alone. When a toddler tugs her sleeve and holds up a torn toy, she picks up a needle and thread and puts it right.
In the kitchen, Duane explains to the brash girl that he's baking a "Mommy Made the Monster Run Away" cake and that she can't lick the spoon until he's finished.
In the shadows, he doesn't want to want.
The next day he approaches Terra when she escapes to the edge of the cliff. She nods and waits until he is settled before saying, in a voice that trembles under the wind, "I feel like I've been torn in half."
For the first time he wonders if he should be surprised that she survived. Magic boiled away from the face of the world and must have boiled out of her, as well. He isn't the only one to have outlived himself.
He can't remember how many pieces have been ripped from him, so he says only, "I understand."
Terra nods, sagging slightly as some of the tension drains from her shoulders. "I thought you might."
Her fingers are long and pale and callused against a bare patch of earth. When he sets his hand over hers, she closes her eyes and leans against him. The sea is dark and restless, shattering itself over and over against the rocks.
"I still have trouble dealing with my emotions," she says. "I don't always understand where they come from or what to do when they hurt me. Sometimes they hit me so hard that I forget how to breathe." Her lips quirk upward. "I still wouldn't give them up for anything."
She was a slave and a weapon, he remembers, a machine of blood and bone. She has fought to gain the things he fought to throw away.
With the quietness of a confession, he tells her, "You're braver than I am."
The denial he is braced for never comes. Instead she trusts more of her weight to him and says, "I'm still glad you're here."
This story never ends well, but he's never played it out with another walking shadow, and one determined to claw her way back to solid warmth. Where she presses against him, he can feel her seams, her frayed edges, her stubborn heartbeat.
He can feel the living skin between his scars, the insistent ache of his healing wounds. He wants regardless of whether he wants to. His voice is unsteady as he reaches back through the restless ghosts of past lives: "My name used to be Clyde."
She tilts her head to smile up at him. "Can I call you that?"
The future forks before him, and he is tired of running in circles. He nods.
"Nice to meet you, Clyde," she says, still smiling, but underneath she trembles with emotions she doesn't understand but wishes to, emotions he understands but wishes he didn't. Somewhere in the middle they're set to collide.
Terra shifts until her face is level with his, her hand braced against the ground for balance. Her breaths quicken and her voice tightens: "I'm probably doing this all wrong, but it's hard enough just figuring out what I feel. Will you stay?"
He is tired of running in circles, tired of shedding skins, tired of staying static inside. "As long as you'll have me."
When she kisses him, he forgets how to breathe.
If he is Clyde again, he has a daughter who might want him after all. He also has an itch at the base of his finger where a ring isn't, a tremor in the hand that could not raise his knife, and a restless guilt when he wakes and is not alone.
Perhaps he should be someone entirely new, but kicking away his past has never stopped it from clinging to his heels. Reducing himself to one heel hasn't fazed it.
In the stillness before dawn, he makes his way alone one last time to the cliff, where he addresses the sea and the sky and the broken light: "Baram, I've stopped running. Don't wait for me anymore. I'll find you." He hopes this is enough.
When he returns, Terra is sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing the night's tangles from her hair. A smile warms her face as she says, "I was worried, but just for a moment. I trust you."
He doesn't deserve this. All he has to offer in return is, "I thought I'd try keeping a promise for a change."
"Good. If you run away now, I'm coming after you." She extends her hand, and he takes it, even though his skin is still chilled from the morning air. Her voice is low as she adds, "I've lost too much."
Their fingers lace together as she pulls him down beside her. Kissing is still clumsy—she's learning, he's remembering—but they take their mistakes in languid stride. Her hand has just slipped under his shirt when a child's voice bellows from the kitchen, "Mama, I'm making pancakes!"
"Wait, Gina!" Terra scrambles off the bed, into a robe, and out the door, pausing only to whisper in his ear, "After bedtime?"
This is what it feels like to be part of something; this is the world outside his head, crowded with people, not ghosts. The sun is rising and the shadows are diminishing. Today he should stay in the open and talk to the children. Tomorrow he should ask for his dog and tell the truth about Relm, if Terra hasn't already guessed it. If he is alive, there are so many things he should do.
Clyde straightens his clothes, picks up his crutches, and goes to see if he can help put out any fires.
Re: FFVI, Terra/Shadow, "Reconstruction" (2/2)
(Anonymous) 2011-03-14 05:10 am (UTC)(link)Re: FFVI, Terra/Shadow, "Reconstruction" (2/2)
(Anonymous) 2011-03-26 06:17 am (UTC)(link)