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sarasa_catThe sky is falling. I've written the undeniable canon pairing.
Fandom: FFXII Original
Title: REMAINS: Falling, Fallen. (The Prince)
Characters/Pairings: Ashe/???, Ashe/Rasler, Ashe/???
Rating: R (NWS: sexual situations)
Words: 2270
Summary: An arranged marriage, a fireplace, a fire. The aftermath.
Notes: stream of consciousness; an experiment.
REMAINS: Falling, Fallen. (The Prince)
I. A Wedding
Ashe is falling.
Falling.
Cherry blossoms float overhead. Falling. Drop to the feet of her cheering crowd. Falling. A pink feather freed from her headdress loosens, drifts, kisses the altar’s oaken edge, sails to and fro until touching the ground. Falling. A drop of blood pricked from her finger drips onto bed sheets and marks where the stain should have been. Fallen.
She’s a woman now and her ladies in waiting and the mother of her prince will come in the morning to verify it.
II. Tales of Doing What is Best
Ashe has fallen.
Her governess told her once, more than once, that a marriage should be arranged by the High Court & Council.
This is the best kind. The Princess Ashelia should see herself lucky, very lucky, for all decisions will be planned and every detailed will be checked. Every tidbit of gossip uncovered, every secret whispered in darkened halls catalogued, every fact, every figure, every financial disclosure, every record of health, everything, everything, everything at all. All of it. All will be known long before the wedding day, long before the betrothal, long before dowery agreements are made. All of it, all of it will be known.
And there will be no sudden surprises, no false promises, no secret affairs, no unnamed lovers, no hidden agendas, no, no, none. None. All will be under careful control. That is the will of the High Court & Council, yes?
And there will be nothing to cause worry, nothing to spark muted whispers, nothing, nothing, nothing at all. This is all for the best, my dearest. Always the best. Not a thing left to chance nor to fate. No, not a thing. Not a thing at all.
And star signs will be checked and many horoscopes matched. The perfect date for the ceremony will be found. Everything will be perfect. Perfect for The Princess, perfect for Our Dalmasca.
In time, all will fall into place, just as we expect, as you should expect, as it should be.
—Will anything fall without someone taking notice?
No, no, sweetie, no worries. No worries at all for you.
...
Long ago, Ashe’s mother had once said this as well. She once said the same words that Ashe's governess repeated. But while her governess had never married, her mother had, of course, and her story was the story Ashe knew well when she was still very young.
Ashe was young when her mother died, when her mother fell, red blood on dessert sands. An accident.
But Ashe remembered the story of how her mother's wedding came to be. Her mother told it many times, told it whenever they were alone and sitting in the garden underneath an oak tree.
Her mother’s parents had searched and searched for the right man. Her father’s parents and the High Court & Council also searched very carefully, waiting and waiting, and many years passed, waiting until they found the perfect bride for their prince, for their young king, and he waited, waited, waited ‘til she grew, ‘til she was ready, ‘til Ashelia’s mother became his bride dressed in lace and a jeweled headdress on the first day of Spring. On the day of their wedding, her mother did not smile, just as she was told, and there was no doubt. No doubt. None at all. The High Court & Council and the priests and astrologers knew. They knew that she was the right woman, he was the right man, and no one else at all should stand beside the other at the altar. And thus she knew. She has been happy ever since.
That was how her mother’s story was always told. And whatever truths were held in her mother’s words, Ashe never saw her father look for another wife after his queen fell. Ashe was young then, young when her mother died, but she likes to think that her mother’s story was true. Never was she given reason to doubt it.
III. Let Not the Palace Catch on Fire
Ashe has fallen.
Fallen in love.
Real love grows over time, her governess said. Ashe’s mother once told her this too. Real love is not a sudden fire that sparks overnight: a roaring blaze, a blinding fire, no, it is not. Love is only real when tended slowly. Then it will grow over time. It will.
If when in passing you meet another in the evening, her governess said, and your eyes alight with interest while your fibers warm with desire, this is not love even though you might think it, even though you might think it when you pass by another in darkened halls as evening turns to night. You might mistake it for love, but you should not.
It is not love.
Your eyes and his eyes might alight with a spark but that light is false. You are only falling for your reflection — a reflection in the mirror of another’s eyes. It is but a pale likeness of what you truly want. When this happens, my dear, it isn’t love. No. It is not. It is not.
It is just the image of what you want reflected in the mirror of another man’s eyes — the wrong man, the wrong one, the wrong time — and if you fall for it, you have fallen into the trap that the darker Scions have laid: a trap baited with the heat of yearning and once trapped we know what will come. It is a trap, my dear, a trap that will hold you in chains if you aren't mindful, if you do not take care. We cannot have this, My Princess.
You should wait. Wait until the right man comes. He will come. He will. We will see to it.
—But if he is already known, could the astrologers check?
Ashelia, My Lady, you must be careful, always careful, always mindful, for if a man stands too close to a lovely young lady like yourself, surely she will catch on fire.
A woman is tuft of cotton and a man is the fire’s flame. This is why a woman must take care. She must, because the woman must tend the flame, after all. The hearth is the woman’s province, not the man’s, and without the fireproof stones of a hearth, the spark of a flame can run ruinous. Without a chimney there is no path for the smoke to rise. No, if there is no hearth, the man’s flame will burn one fallen cotton robe after another. Burning, burning, until the carpets and the furniture catch fire. We cannot have our house burning in flames.
Wait, dear, just wait. Real love takes time and it first requires a careful match.
—Are you certain?
Ashe didn’t ask to challenge her governess. She didn’t ask to question her wisdom. She only asked because she was still young enough to wonder about the sparks from a flame she had already seen.
A grown woman is always certain of these matters, her governess replied. And while you might not see it now, if your hearth is clean and clear then everything is easier for you. Easier for the man too. Then the man can set his kindling within the firebox of the hearth and slowly, slowly, with flint and tinder in hand and the softest blow of his breath he will start the flame. Slowly, slowly, and branches he will add, nursing that flame until it is ready. In little time the hearth will house a bed of hot coals and as long as logs are carefully fed, this fire will never end.
You will see, her governess said. You will see.
And Ashe knew her governess was usually correct. Plus, her governess had always been kind. She was always there for Ashe when the pins in her hair and the hem of her dress never seemed to sit right. She was always there for Ashe when her father sent her protector away and those were the nights that felt the longest. Ashe would call for her governess rather than her ladies in waiting. Her governess would always come to her, always there, just when Ashe asked.
And Ashe thought she believed this story of a well tended fire that would never die. She had seen it, seen it in her father’s eyes. Even though her mother was gone, her father’s face softened when he heard her mother’s name. Sometimes at night Ashe would see him weep. Weeping for her fallen mother.
IV. First and Again
Ashe is falling.
She takes one last look into the gilded mirror on the wall of her bedroom — their bedroom, their bedroom chamber — and she finds that she is falling.
She is falling and her shoulders sink into satin sheets. She lays back, hips turned, pelvis arched, and she knows how to do this, knows what to expect, knows what comes next. Her ladies in waiting showed her and they practiced on each other. While Ashe sought to learn more on her own, she knows enough. Enough for this night. Enough for this moment. Enough for now.
She has fallen and her prince has fallen atop her. First his lips, then his tongue, and Ashe wonders how much he knows. His breath is fast, just like hers, and now he’s pressing and moving forward, slowly pressing into her, inside her. She’s certain, certain, certain he’s in but it is not until his hands push her thighs further apart that Ashe learns what it is like to have her prince inside her. She gasps.
Her body is no longer hers and hers alone. No longer.
All of Rasler’s weight is upon her and he is heat and sweat and racing pulse. His skin blushing red and hair damp, gasping as he pulls back to look at her, gasping and tense. She can see it in his eyes: the spark of a flame. His breath the autumn wind on her face. Dried leaves on a oak tree, shaking, shaking, waiting to fall. Rasler trembles. He calls out her name, elbows locked and rigid, shaking unexpectedly, and falling. His weight crushes her flesh and he cries out her name, his voice loud against the membranes within her ear.
And when he falls, Ashe catches him and holds her newfound prince to her chest.
She's forgotten her other love, her false love, as her governess once called that other man. Ashe had dutifully put out that other fire and kept her heart clean. She has forgotten the heat she once felt for him but she hasn't forgotten that man's face or name. Yet she is certain now that what they had shared had never been like this, never like what she and Rasler have just done.
Never had that man fallen upon her and covered her bare skin with his own naked flesh. No, not like this, not like this at all. And even when her name burned upon his tongue, its sound was a sharp, hoarse whisper cut short. Never was it a mournful moan longing for completion: fuel and fire combusts and then consumed. Consummation.
Rasler gasps her name again and his face is buried in the curve of her neck. Ashe works to catch her breath too.
This is the man she will come to love. She already knows it. She know he knows it too.
And she knows they should keep their pretense in public, acting shy and unsure and unready, blushing and bashful until a year or two has passed and a child has come. Then. Then there will be celebration and they will be expected to have fallen in love.
And they will. She knows it.
She comes to realize this when Rasler’s weight is gone — when he rolls beside her and lies on his back. He looks up at the canopy overhead and laughs. Just laughs. She takes his hand and finds herself laughing too. She asks if he thinks he can do it again.
"Again?"
He looks into her eyes and she wonders what she sees but it doesn't matter. She’s on top of him, biting her lower lip as she tilts her hips. She thinks she knows how to do this. It is natural.
V. To Know One's Own Answers
Years later when Ashe’s thighs slap hard against sweat-slicked muscle and coarse hair, she has long forgotten her fallen prince. His ghost neither holds her nor haunts her. It did once, but that was long ago.
For a brief period of time when she was younger she had thought Rasler's ghost had come to claim her, that he had come to stoke the fire in her hearth and sweep away the ashes of another. But it wasn't Rasler. It wasn't his ghost.
He’s long gone, long dead. She has forgotten.
Sometimes when the light is just right in the same bedroom chamber and the same canopied bed, Ashe will remember Rasler’s name but not until she and this man are done, not until he rolls off of her, not until she looks up at the gilded mirror that hands on the wall. Not until sees this man’s face reflected back in its glass.
Then, if he takes his leave without her to go to the bath, then, sometimes she will look up at the mirror as she lies on her back. When she does, Ashe sees nothing but its silvery surface.
She lets her shoulders sink and fall, falling back, back into satin sheets. Falling. Fallen.
Ashe has never wept when she hears Rasler’s name. She has never wept as her father once wept for her mother. She can hardly recall Rasler’s likeness.
Ashe is not her father.
Nor does Ashe believe in the story of the hearth and the fuel and the fire. It was a story for younger girls and although spoken to her with conviction, words such as those are merely words. She knows she isn’t the hearth nor the embers it contains.
She is Ashe.
And Ashe has fallen.
Fandom: FFXII Original
Title: REMAINS: Falling, Fallen. (The Prince)
Characters/Pairings: Ashe/???, Ashe/Rasler, Ashe/???
Rating: R (NWS: sexual situations)
Words: 2270
Summary: An arranged marriage, a fireplace, a fire. The aftermath.
Notes: stream of consciousness; an experiment.
REMAINS: Falling, Fallen. (The Prince)
I. A Wedding
Ashe is falling.
Falling.
Cherry blossoms float overhead. Falling. Drop to the feet of her cheering crowd. Falling. A pink feather freed from her headdress loosens, drifts, kisses the altar’s oaken edge, sails to and fro until touching the ground. Falling. A drop of blood pricked from her finger drips onto bed sheets and marks where the stain should have been. Fallen.
She’s a woman now and her ladies in waiting and the mother of her prince will come in the morning to verify it.
II. Tales of Doing What is Best
Ashe has fallen.
Her governess told her once, more than once, that a marriage should be arranged by the High Court & Council.
This is the best kind. The Princess Ashelia should see herself lucky, very lucky, for all decisions will be planned and every detailed will be checked. Every tidbit of gossip uncovered, every secret whispered in darkened halls catalogued, every fact, every figure, every financial disclosure, every record of health, everything, everything, everything at all. All of it. All will be known long before the wedding day, long before the betrothal, long before dowery agreements are made. All of it, all of it will be known.
And there will be no sudden surprises, no false promises, no secret affairs, no unnamed lovers, no hidden agendas, no, no, none. None. All will be under careful control. That is the will of the High Court & Council, yes?
And there will be nothing to cause worry, nothing to spark muted whispers, nothing, nothing, nothing at all. This is all for the best, my dearest. Always the best. Not a thing left to chance nor to fate. No, not a thing. Not a thing at all.
And star signs will be checked and many horoscopes matched. The perfect date for the ceremony will be found. Everything will be perfect. Perfect for The Princess, perfect for Our Dalmasca.
In time, all will fall into place, just as we expect, as you should expect, as it should be.
—Will anything fall without someone taking notice?
No, no, sweetie, no worries. No worries at all for you.
...
Long ago, Ashe’s mother had once said this as well. She once said the same words that Ashe's governess repeated. But while her governess had never married, her mother had, of course, and her story was the story Ashe knew well when she was still very young.
Ashe was young when her mother died, when her mother fell, red blood on dessert sands. An accident.
But Ashe remembered the story of how her mother's wedding came to be. Her mother told it many times, told it whenever they were alone and sitting in the garden underneath an oak tree.
Her mother’s parents had searched and searched for the right man. Her father’s parents and the High Court & Council also searched very carefully, waiting and waiting, and many years passed, waiting until they found the perfect bride for their prince, for their young king, and he waited, waited, waited ‘til she grew, ‘til she was ready, ‘til Ashelia’s mother became his bride dressed in lace and a jeweled headdress on the first day of Spring. On the day of their wedding, her mother did not smile, just as she was told, and there was no doubt. No doubt. None at all. The High Court & Council and the priests and astrologers knew. They knew that she was the right woman, he was the right man, and no one else at all should stand beside the other at the altar. And thus she knew. She has been happy ever since.
That was how her mother’s story was always told. And whatever truths were held in her mother’s words, Ashe never saw her father look for another wife after his queen fell. Ashe was young then, young when her mother died, but she likes to think that her mother’s story was true. Never was she given reason to doubt it.
III. Let Not the Palace Catch on Fire
Ashe has fallen.
Fallen in love.
Real love grows over time, her governess said. Ashe’s mother once told her this too. Real love is not a sudden fire that sparks overnight: a roaring blaze, a blinding fire, no, it is not. Love is only real when tended slowly. Then it will grow over time. It will.
If when in passing you meet another in the evening, her governess said, and your eyes alight with interest while your fibers warm with desire, this is not love even though you might think it, even though you might think it when you pass by another in darkened halls as evening turns to night. You might mistake it for love, but you should not.
It is not love.
Your eyes and his eyes might alight with a spark but that light is false. You are only falling for your reflection — a reflection in the mirror of another’s eyes. It is but a pale likeness of what you truly want. When this happens, my dear, it isn’t love. No. It is not. It is not.
It is just the image of what you want reflected in the mirror of another man’s eyes — the wrong man, the wrong one, the wrong time — and if you fall for it, you have fallen into the trap that the darker Scions have laid: a trap baited with the heat of yearning and once trapped we know what will come. It is a trap, my dear, a trap that will hold you in chains if you aren't mindful, if you do not take care. We cannot have this, My Princess.
You should wait. Wait until the right man comes. He will come. He will. We will see to it.
—But if he is already known, could the astrologers check?
Ashelia, My Lady, you must be careful, always careful, always mindful, for if a man stands too close to a lovely young lady like yourself, surely she will catch on fire.
A woman is tuft of cotton and a man is the fire’s flame. This is why a woman must take care. She must, because the woman must tend the flame, after all. The hearth is the woman’s province, not the man’s, and without the fireproof stones of a hearth, the spark of a flame can run ruinous. Without a chimney there is no path for the smoke to rise. No, if there is no hearth, the man’s flame will burn one fallen cotton robe after another. Burning, burning, until the carpets and the furniture catch fire. We cannot have our house burning in flames.
Wait, dear, just wait. Real love takes time and it first requires a careful match.
—Are you certain?
Ashe didn’t ask to challenge her governess. She didn’t ask to question her wisdom. She only asked because she was still young enough to wonder about the sparks from a flame she had already seen.
A grown woman is always certain of these matters, her governess replied. And while you might not see it now, if your hearth is clean and clear then everything is easier for you. Easier for the man too. Then the man can set his kindling within the firebox of the hearth and slowly, slowly, with flint and tinder in hand and the softest blow of his breath he will start the flame. Slowly, slowly, and branches he will add, nursing that flame until it is ready. In little time the hearth will house a bed of hot coals and as long as logs are carefully fed, this fire will never end.
You will see, her governess said. You will see.
And Ashe knew her governess was usually correct. Plus, her governess had always been kind. She was always there for Ashe when the pins in her hair and the hem of her dress never seemed to sit right. She was always there for Ashe when her father sent her protector away and those were the nights that felt the longest. Ashe would call for her governess rather than her ladies in waiting. Her governess would always come to her, always there, just when Ashe asked.
And Ashe thought she believed this story of a well tended fire that would never die. She had seen it, seen it in her father’s eyes. Even though her mother was gone, her father’s face softened when he heard her mother’s name. Sometimes at night Ashe would see him weep. Weeping for her fallen mother.
IV. First and Again
Ashe is falling.
She takes one last look into the gilded mirror on the wall of her bedroom — their bedroom, their bedroom chamber — and she finds that she is falling.
She is falling and her shoulders sink into satin sheets. She lays back, hips turned, pelvis arched, and she knows how to do this, knows what to expect, knows what comes next. Her ladies in waiting showed her and they practiced on each other. While Ashe sought to learn more on her own, she knows enough. Enough for this night. Enough for this moment. Enough for now.
She has fallen and her prince has fallen atop her. First his lips, then his tongue, and Ashe wonders how much he knows. His breath is fast, just like hers, and now he’s pressing and moving forward, slowly pressing into her, inside her. She’s certain, certain, certain he’s in but it is not until his hands push her thighs further apart that Ashe learns what it is like to have her prince inside her. She gasps.
Her body is no longer hers and hers alone. No longer.
All of Rasler’s weight is upon her and he is heat and sweat and racing pulse. His skin blushing red and hair damp, gasping as he pulls back to look at her, gasping and tense. She can see it in his eyes: the spark of a flame. His breath the autumn wind on her face. Dried leaves on a oak tree, shaking, shaking, waiting to fall. Rasler trembles. He calls out her name, elbows locked and rigid, shaking unexpectedly, and falling. His weight crushes her flesh and he cries out her name, his voice loud against the membranes within her ear.
And when he falls, Ashe catches him and holds her newfound prince to her chest.
She's forgotten her other love, her false love, as her governess once called that other man. Ashe had dutifully put out that other fire and kept her heart clean. She has forgotten the heat she once felt for him but she hasn't forgotten that man's face or name. Yet she is certain now that what they had shared had never been like this, never like what she and Rasler have just done.
Never had that man fallen upon her and covered her bare skin with his own naked flesh. No, not like this, not like this at all. And even when her name burned upon his tongue, its sound was a sharp, hoarse whisper cut short. Never was it a mournful moan longing for completion: fuel and fire combusts and then consumed. Consummation.
Rasler gasps her name again and his face is buried in the curve of her neck. Ashe works to catch her breath too.
This is the man she will come to love. She already knows it. She know he knows it too.
And she knows they should keep their pretense in public, acting shy and unsure and unready, blushing and bashful until a year or two has passed and a child has come. Then. Then there will be celebration and they will be expected to have fallen in love.
And they will. She knows it.
She comes to realize this when Rasler’s weight is gone — when he rolls beside her and lies on his back. He looks up at the canopy overhead and laughs. Just laughs. She takes his hand and finds herself laughing too. She asks if he thinks he can do it again.
"Again?"
He looks into her eyes and she wonders what she sees but it doesn't matter. She’s on top of him, biting her lower lip as she tilts her hips. She thinks she knows how to do this. It is natural.
V. To Know One's Own Answers
Years later when Ashe’s thighs slap hard against sweat-slicked muscle and coarse hair, she has long forgotten her fallen prince. His ghost neither holds her nor haunts her. It did once, but that was long ago.
For a brief period of time when she was younger she had thought Rasler's ghost had come to claim her, that he had come to stoke the fire in her hearth and sweep away the ashes of another. But it wasn't Rasler. It wasn't his ghost.
He’s long gone, long dead. She has forgotten.
Sometimes when the light is just right in the same bedroom chamber and the same canopied bed, Ashe will remember Rasler’s name but not until she and this man are done, not until he rolls off of her, not until she looks up at the gilded mirror that hands on the wall. Not until sees this man’s face reflected back in its glass.
Then, if he takes his leave without her to go to the bath, then, sometimes she will look up at the mirror as she lies on her back. When she does, Ashe sees nothing but its silvery surface.
She lets her shoulders sink and fall, falling back, back into satin sheets. Falling. Fallen.
Ashe has never wept when she hears Rasler’s name. She has never wept as her father once wept for her mother. She can hardly recall Rasler’s likeness.
Ashe is not her father.
Nor does Ashe believe in the story of the hearth and the fuel and the fire. It was a story for younger girls and although spoken to her with conviction, words such as those are merely words. She knows she isn’t the hearth nor the embers it contains.
She is Ashe.
And Ashe has fallen.
no subject
Date: Sunday, 16 August 2015 02:54 am (UTC)There's this gorgeous pellucidity to it, like it's through a gauzy lens. And yet it's incredibly immediate and intense even through that filter.
And then, at the end, the absolutely gorgeous and on-point wordplay of fire and hearth and embers and ash and Ashe and falling and the burning and destruction she's lived through to reach this point as well. (And, fuck it, I love that you are subverting Ashe and Rasler's Great Doomed Love as being this lifelong grief for her, thank you for this.) (Also, am I being pitifully obtuse in not being quite certain who her new love is, or are we meant to be uncertain? My money's on Basch or possibly Balthier.)
(Hi, I took advantage of your links-list to go a-reading; while I'm here I just want to yelp with delight about "Don't Let Me Down" and "Requiem", too. Especially "Requiem". Because PENELO and OH OUCH and BASCH BEING AWESOME and just YES. I will probably yelp somewhere else about other fics of yours as I read them, these are just the first ones I dug into.)
no subject
Date: Thursday, 27 August 2015 12:54 am (UTC)Not sure which circles you ran with in FFXII fandom but I remember oceans of Ashe/AnyoneNotRasler. Not sure if things have changed but when I wrote this, it was one of not more than a half dozen Ashe/Rasler stories. XD
Nope, neither Basch nor Balthier. ;) My personal Ashe timeline is complex. Vossler is the person who goes unnamed whom her governess politely NOPES the hell out of that idea in section II. Al-Cid is the person at the end, many years later. There are other people before that and concurrent with it. (but no Basch).
Glad you enjoyed those other two. I think both of those were prompt fics? Unlike this story (points up), my prompt fics tend to be more on the crowdpleaser side. Someday I'll find all of my FFXII fic and archive it in one place although ... well, someday. someday.
no subject
Date: Friday, 28 August 2015 01:46 am (UTC)Vossler? Makes perfect sense to me and I'm embarrassed he did not occur to me first, except that I was kind of with the idea that it was Basch on both ends of the timeline since he's the only one who could be, pretty much. ;) Al-Cid... I have such problems with how Al-Cid interacts with both Ashe and Larsa in-game (namely, fucking well disrespectfully, to other world leaders that he is treating with and whose help he needs--- like, seriously, I do not want to know how awful he must be to subordinates if that is how he is with his "social equals", I just do not) that... this definitely makes sense in this fic, precisely because it does put a darker/creepier veil over the end for me, at least. Ashe is sleeping with a dude who leched at her and treated another fellow governmental representative (Larsa) with equally casual disrespect... yeah, that is... again, I feel it fits with the narrative precisely because it feels kind of sordid to me. (Apologies if this is a total diversion from your sense of them, but yeah, I was like, "that's Al-Cid, okay, this whole thing just became inherently 10x creepier".)
Wow, I'm embarrassed, I fell right for the reader-bait, lol! In any case, I'm working my way through your FFXII fics on ff.net, slowly but surely! (And, oh, I feel you--- at least you post things; I have only just posted two things that I wrote... um, two years and ~5 years ago, respectively, at my journal.)