FFXII -- Ashe/Vossler

[mithrigil.livejournal.com]

Title: O Captain
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII

Characters: Vossler and Ashe

Author/Artist: mithrigil
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: Gore. Graphic illness. Sex. Spoilers past Shiva. Not the romance you’re looking for.
Word count: 1500
Summary: Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I, with mournful tread, walk the deck my Captain lies –

O Captain

Mithrigil Galtirglin

O CAPTAIN! my Captain, our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

        But O heart! heart! heart!

          O the bleeding drops of red,

            Where on the deck my Captain lies,

              Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

        Here Captain! dear father!

          The arm beneath your head!

            It is some dream that on the deck,

              You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

        Exult O shores and ring O bells!

          But I with mournful tread,

            Walk the deck my Captain lies,

              Fallen Cold and Dead.

-Walt Whitman (1865)

 

 

I.

 

            The blood will not stop. It is thick and disgusting and threaded with clots and it has been hours, and all Ashe can do is stare at the streak of it between her fingers.

 

            “This is what’s left of him,” she barely manages to say, doubled over her aching belly, cringing, her thighs and the threadbare blanket warm with it, the sweat-sticking warmth of defeat. She has managed not to cry at the pain, managed to refuse the cold, clammy hands of the nomad healers. She will endure this. She will endure this alone.

 

            But then Vossler is here, returned from the sands, an incredulous shadow in the mouth of the tent, and he knows, he deserves to know, that she has failed her dead husband, dead father, dead—no, taken—country. What kind of a Queen is she if she can’t even perform a Queen’s primary function?

 

            She knows if she closes her eyes, the tears will start. So she stares up at Vossler, at the fearsome silhouette of his armor, keeps him with her eyes until they rebel and defy her.

 

            This is no twisted ankle, no broken arm, but he takes to both knees beside her as ever he used to. His gauntlets are hotter than her fever, with all the weight of the sun. She clamors for one, to hold him, and hears the hiss of her blood on the metal.

 

            “I failed him,” she whimpers, and despises it, and what the wetness of the sound means. “I…everyone.”

 

            Vossler leans his forehead into her knuckles, but does not deny the truth.

 

 

II.

 

            She takes to a cincher, to support her back, protect her abdomen, to cover scars that only she can see. She takes to the greatsword with much less regret.

 

            “Again,” he tells her, and she is proud, excited that he knows she can take more, exhilarated that he is not holding back with her nearly as much as he used to. She is not even licensed for such a blade yet, and here she is readying it across from him, a complement to his slaven-stance. Not yet licensed—but whatever gods still care can damn the laws.

 

They circle each other like this—she leads it, he monitors—and then she attacks. Her form is even worse than the pass before, even more distracted, and once she notices that, it’s over. He wrenches his blade around hers, crossguard-to-crossguard, and the knuckles of his gauntlets tangle with her own.

 

            Her sword hits the earth, and she backpedals—which is also wrong, curses, she should be going after the blade, not smack into whoever else could kill her—and grits her teeth at the pain in her hand. But the only blood she sheds now is the same kind he does, the same kind any man does, the kind that a spell or a river can wash away. She has not bled as a woman for months, and thinks she may never again.

 

            She wonders if Vossler can be this free with her because she’s not a woman anymore.

 

 

III.

 

            But she is, and however much it sickens her to be told she is not ready, the thing itself sickens her more, and she survives her first raid only to pass their victory vomiting in the Waterway. She is unscathed, and it is to his credit as much as hers—he is wounded, though not seriously.

 

           When she is empty, she apologizes. He asks what for, still holding her sword and scabbard up out of the filth.

 

            She steadies herself on his bare arm still reeking of potion. His skin is like leather made coarse by the sun. “I am still your burden,” she says.

 

            Perhaps his sigh has some laughter in it, but the rush of the water beneath them is too heavy to tell. “You demean yourself to think that it was ever so.”

 

            Considering this makes her tread wobble worse. She holds his arm tighter—was it once like this, as she bade him teach her to dance? She killed that world today.

 

            He offers her a cloth to clean her face, and she has to let one of her hands off his arm to take it. He has already taken care of her sword.

 

 

IV.

 

            In her dreams, he takes the place of the dead.

 

 

V.

 

            Basch lives.

 

            She charges at him across the Dreadnought’s bridge and knows that one slap is not nearly enough to tell him what he’s done. How does it feel, she wants to shout at him, that your princess’ hand is as callused as yours? And she wishes that Vossler was here, that he could see her put that traitor in his place, that they together could kill him and set her father’s shade at peace.

 

            Vossler is watching her, she thinks—feels, even. His hands guide hers in this, in everything.

 

 

VI.

 

            On the day they buried her mother; when the plague took Teles, Torias, so many others; in a spare bedroom in Nabudis, her body tangled in Rasler’s legs; Vossler takes the place of the dead. But he is not they, and the dreams are always changed, always somehow self-aware of their contrivance. He is a ghost behind her, but then, he has always been. He never laughed with her as her brothers did, and yet she sees their smiles on his face. Even the visage of her father, so distant and cool in his adoration of her, suits Vossler’s deepening wrinkles as well.

 

            But the dreams that would be Rasler’s are the ones Ashe wakes from gasping, unable and unwilling to deny the ache in her hips even as her sweat chills to remember. She looks up into Vossler’s dark, courteous face, his beard streaked with sweat, and she laughs acquiescence, clutches his hand as his thrusts within her grow sharp and sudden and end, where the pain is, where she is empty. And just as it was with Rasler she showers Vossler with kisses when they are unjoined, but his lips crack dry and crumble into her mouth, his cheek sinks hollow and concave, his bones are bleached white as the sands—

 

 

VII.

 

            Her ancestor’s tomb is thick with Mist and the siren rumble of stone on stone. On stone, she thinks, and it is nearly a comfort, that the place has not deterred her, that indeed his voice lures her further in, and though they are a band of strange companions, Vossler is stalwart at her side.

 

            Perhaps this is how things are supposed to be.

 

            They share a watch, while thieves and pirates—and Basch, why Basch?—rest.

 

            “Vossler?” Ashe wonders aloud, her head on his shoulder, her back against his, her voice oddly plangent on the dust-dry ceiling.

 

            He hums in questioning response, and the tremor runs through her as well. His mail is hot on what little is bared of her back, and she thinks that some of the warmth is hers.

 

            “When this is done,” she clarifies, “when we rebuild…” and she is not entirely certain what she meant to say. “We have done much,” she says instead, leaning on her palm into the sand-coarse stone, on her back between his pauldron and collar. He still wears her gift, she thinks, and a chapped flush creeps into her cheeks where the leather brushes against it as she shifts.

 

            “We have,” he agrees. “And with this it ends.”

 

            “And begins,” she corrects, and smiles. “You will still be with me in this, of course…when we are free…” It is not a question, though it could have become one if she finished it.

 

            She glances briefly, and reaches behind her for his hand. It is in repose on the stone, tented, his palm raised. She covers it with her own, and the metal there is cool, and she lays the corner of her mouth to his collar.

 

            A bead of sweat streaks from his neck to her lips.

 

 

VIII.

 

            She does not retch when his fingers hit the transport’s floor. The reek of his blood overpowers everything else, and it will not stop, fills his gauntlet like a goblet. He sinks to his knees on the deck, slides forward in the Mist and the mire of his dripping wounds.

 

He stares at the remains of his hand, at the joints where they have scattered by the hilt of his fallen sword. He cannot raise his eyes to her. Not even when she reaches for him, lets her sword-tip to the tile and reaches for him, can he raise his eyes to her.

 

His blood cakes her own hands as well, her clothing, her cheeks. The body politic, too, has lost her son.

 

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