![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
manic-intent.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
kinkfestAuthor:
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
manic_intent Rating: NC17
Warnings: AU
Word Count: 3054
Summary: Vayne is not quite sure what to make of the arranged marriage.
Prompt: June 6: Final Fantasy XII, Ashe/Vayne: Reversal of role or fortune - he smiled like he had known all along
Author’s Notes: Yet another fic experimenting with sublimating smut. Not sure how it works out... this was a little rushed, since I was trying to make the deadline XD
[ I feel I should disclaimer this further. I do not usually write het, nor do I usually have any interest whatsoever in Ashe's character. :3 However, after writing Imperial during the last Springkink season, I then meandered on to write a couple more V x A... and I guess somehow a few fic ideas stuck. This one wasn't developed to my satisfaction, and somehow Ffamran snuck into the story, but I couldn't quite think of anything else to go with in order to make the deadline. XD;; Whoever the prompter was... uh, I hope you like it.]
June 6
- Final Fantasy XII, Ashe/Vayne: Reversal of role or fortune - he smiled like he had known all along
Queen’s Gambit
I Summer
When he first meets his wife he is all of eight summers.
Ashelia B’nargin Dalmasca is a small, silent child, with a growing scruff of pale hair over the small dome of her head, and she regards him solemnly in her antique salikawood crib, buried in gold silk and lace, as he peers over its carved edge (with some effort). She sits up, and her large, too-large eyes turn left, to her anxious mother, then right, to her father, then she ambles in a baby crawl up to the edge of her crib, pushes a small, plump palm against his nose, and coos.
It’s then, he thinks-
0.1 and there a toast
“Goddamn but that was the most awkward moment of my career,” Zecht groused, afterwards, when they had lost their tail in the teeming night market in Lowtown and had found a suitable bar. Zargabaath looked highly uncomfortable in civilian clothes, too far away from their charge, and he sat ramrod straight on the crate that served as a makeshift stool.
“What was?” Zargabaath’s eyes cast up, as though he could peer through a couple of lengths of rock to Prince Vayne. Judge-Magister Thurin Zargabaath took his duty as seriously as Judge-Magister Zecht disavowed his, despite the latter’s best efforts, though he did cave easily enough to persistence.
“Introducing our darling little Crown Prince to his future Empress.”
“Oh, that.” Zargabaath blinked, then took a sip of the rich, dark ale. “Why? She appears, er, rather, comely.”
Zecht let out a startled snort of laughter, and his friend hastened to add, if stiffly, “Judging from her ancestry as was evident both presently and in portraiture, I should think that a fair prediction.”
“Old man, you sound like you’re breeding bloody chocobos.”
“Why was it awkward?” Zargabaath smoothly and sternly ignored the slight on his social graces. His colleague spent much of his time either mired in cases or in the Library, far too easily set in his ways; it had taken the best efforts of himself, Zargabaath’s brat aide, and Drace, to convince Thurin to come with Zecht to Dalmasca. The poor bastard, Zecht felt, was growing old far before his time.
“Prince Vayne is a child, and that little chit of a girl cannot even talk yet.”
“That ‘little chit of a girl’,” Zargabaath pointed out mildly, “Will ensure Archadian trading supremacy over Rozarria on Ivalice.”
Zecht stared at his friend until Zargabaath had the grace to blush, then he sighed. “Mayhap you speak true. Royalty is a little like breeding chocobos.”
“Make sure that word never reaches Lord Gramis.” Zargabaath squirms on the crate, glances up at the ceiling, and squirms a little more. “I really think-”
And then he pulls himself up short, as another seats himself at the table. Zargabaath inhales sharply, but it was Zecht who spoke, after a long, low whistle. “Well. Fuck me.”
The mirror image of his chief associate grinned, with an easy good nature that looked bloody out of place on his clean-cut features, and he settled his shoulders with a roll, the oddly sparse plate mail of the Dalmascan Order shifting in metallic slithers. “My apologies. I thought this more polite than hiding in the shadow o’er the stair like a common thief.”
“So the Knights do have a sense of humor,” Zecht drawled, recovering quickly, though his tone stayed a little wary. “Babysitting duty, boy?”
“Please do not leave so suddenly again. Opinion amongst the people is still divided over the… matter, and the Empire is not uniformly liked, at the moment.”
This… this image’s native tongue was almost hidden by Dalmascan, though some consonants still roughened to guttural under the staccato desert dialect. Zecht exchanged glances with his best friend, and Zargabaath shrugged, almost imperceptibly. If Gabranth had never mentioned a twin brother, then it was none of their business.
“So we are set a boy as a guard?”
“I am afraid so,” Gabranth’s brother replied solemnly, with a faint quirk to his lip that showed he was amused – amused by a remark that would have stiffened Gabranth.
“Your name, pup?”
“Basch. My apologies, yet again. My manners must be slipping.”
“You were that helmed guard beside Ser Azelas,” Zargabaath recalled, having a better eye for frame and build than Zecht.
“Aye.”
“How takes Azelas to the match?” Zecht grinned impishly, before Zargabaath could cave to his curiosity. Ser Vossler’s expression had been stormy enough for all to see.
Basch inclined his head, the grin now full on his features. “Oh, I suppose he might become only merely angry in a score of years or so.”
Zargabaath cleared his throat, a sure sign that the staid Judge was growing tired of pleasantries. “Foris, I think we should away, back to Prince Vayne.”
“Thurin, Thurin. ‘Tis a day of royal engagement. The least we could do to honor our lad is to drink this Landissan under the table, aye?”
II Rote
The next he sees Ashelia she is twelve. She sits demure and sidesaddle before him, atop his charger, and if anything, this particular visit manages to be even more awkward than the last. He is nearly one-and-twenty, his first kiss given to a Consul’s daughter in some fete held in honor of the birth of the first Solidor; his virginity to some women he cannot quite recall during his seventeenth birthday. He has weathered two wars and one dressing down before the Senate, and he feels old; too old for this prim and proper little princess all but seated in his lap, her soft hands flat on her pretty frock, and her conversation polite, intelligent, but quite evidently scripted.
He tries his best to reply – at the very least, he can try and appreciate a child’s attempt, however misguided, to please him – but he finds his mind drifting, looking forward instead to the sparring match Ser Vossler has promised him (if grudgingly) after dinner, to how Caesar seems irritable under the Dalmascan sun, to how ludicrous they must all look, on this too-formal, too-contrived little ride out in the sands.
Eventually, her conversation trails, stutters, and dies. He catches the faint frown that crosses her features before she smoothens it away into a small smile with a courtier’s practice, and at that, at least, he can be impressed. Vayne asks Ashelia a question, two, about her studies, about Dalmasca, and listens.
0.2 not your pity
“A trophy wife,” Vossler groused, as they watched the large Imperial fleet fade into the clear distance.
“At least Dalmasca can trade for peace.” Basch said mildly, as they turned their chocobos around to ride for the palace.
“Basch, I-”
“Nay. It was not intended to chide.” Landis is a matter long behind him, which he thinks of but rarely when alone. “The Empire has pledged to leave Dalmasca alone.”
“Aye, we’ve traded our Princess for the right to do what we have always had the right to do,” Vossler muttered, and his steed felt its master’s ill temper, clacking its beak and turning a sidelong, evil yellow eye on Basch. The royal congregation had long departed, the parade was fading, and they walked their chocobos amongst strewn flowers and buntings, staining into discolor against the dusty streets.
“It has been twelve years, Vossler,” Basch stretched a kink from his shoulders, and his armor shifted in a slithering rasp. “You are just upset because his Imperial Highness defeated you on the courtyard.”
Vossler shot him a dangerous stare, but Basch merely smiled, daring him to refute it. Finally, Vossler snorted, and glanced away with a growl. “And you, you are merely in a good mood because that bald, piratical Judge-Magister visited again.”
“Judge-Magister Zecht is an entertaining man,” Basch said dryly, “But your tone gives doubt to our acquaintance. Besides, since we are, as it were, showing our cards, I didst see you watch that boy that Judge-Magister Zargabaath brought with him, the one with the strange name. Judge Ffamran, was it?”
Vossler scowled. “The brat’s fifteen and he loves the sound of his fucking voice.”
“Your lack of denial is noted.”
“Fuck you.” Vossler had the grace, however, to stare fixedly at the crest of his chocobo.
III Ceremony
They marry when she is seventeen, during a long day of pomp and ceremony held ironically in desert Dalmasca. Vayne recalls little of it – he never operates quite at full during the open face of Imperial politics – nor does he recall much of their consummation. He’s careful not to hurt her, but also careful not to touch her any more than necessary. It is nearly clinical, his mind partially elsewhere, on the thorny matter of an insurgent movement growing in Lower Archades.
Ashelia cries out when he takes her maidenhead, but that is all the sound she makes, her nails curled in the sheets and her eyes closed. Idly, he wonders if she will take another to her bed after him, and hopes that she does. He doesn’t know quite how to tell her so, and the thought makes a bubble of startled laughter curl in his throat; he hides his uncontrollable, brief grin against the curve of her neck. At that, he hears a soft gasp, and Vayne considers instructing her that t’was not affection.
She’s seventeen.
He turns that over in his mind afterwards, when he cleans up and returns to the bed to find her sitting up over stained sheets, her robes pulled loosely over her shoulders, and her large eyes turn down to her thighs. Vayne has to struggle not to frown – he does hope that she won’t turn hysterical, or emotional – he’s tired now, and he wants to rest before his flight.
Then her eyes shift, upwards, to his, and the determination gives his brusque reaction pause. “Lord husband.” There’s humor in that, if he cares to look, but her small, red lips are firm. “May I ask one gift of you?”
“You did not like the jewels?” Archades had dug deep into its treasures for the baubles that had been sent Dalmasca’s way. Vayne cannot say he misses them.
“Nay… nay, those are Dalmasca’s,” Ashelia says, and in that flat dismissal, his curiosity stirs.
“What do you wish?”
“Teach me how to use a blade.”
He had rather expected her to ask for a chocobo, or a ship, or a trip around the Empire – this startles him. “Why?”
“I want to learn something for myself than for Dalmasca.” Her tone turns defiant, and he grins; at that, her chin tilts upwards, and her eyes flash at what she perceives as patronization. She does not back down, and Vayne doesn’t know how he had managed to miss the lioness hidden deep under the lace and the vapid public smile. He wonders if her father knows; if her guardians know.
“You are royal born and bred. We do nothing for ourselves.” He kneels on the bed, picks up one of her soft hands, and brushes his lips against her wrist. “And you will ruin your pretty little fingers.”
“I am sure, my Lord, that the state of my fingers is not quite why you bed me,” Ashelia says, her tone just cutting enough to hold reproach, yet not caustic enough to give offense, and her thin smile is knowing. “You want a heir. I will give you a heir. But you’ll take others to your bed and I’ll not have the right to begrudge you – I am a princess from a desert country whom you’ve traded for the right to sell silks faster to the Eastern lands. So, my Lord Vayne, please do not insult me by feigning tenderness.”
“Very well.” He mislikes the idea, as amusing as it is. Were Ashelia to injure herself, a diplomatic disaster was sure to ensue. “In the morn.”
“In the morn, my Lord Vayne, my father intends to present us to the dignitaries gathered today to celebrate our wedding, particularly the Rozarrian heir and the Bhujerban Marquis, of whom are slow friends to Archades. I doubt you will have the time or mood to teach.”
“Ser Basch and Ser Vossler-”
“Vossler is overprotective, and Ser Basch is a sweet man, but he yields too quickly to my father’s will. Will you teach me, or nay?” For a moment, her determination falters: ‘tis clear Ashelia has run out of words, “I will not ask you anything more, I promise you this.”
“You’ll not learn how to handle a sword just o’ernight.”
“Aye.” Ashelia looks as though she wishes to ask further, but holds her tongue, plays the question like a woman, quick and subtle under a sweet smile. “Mayhap my Lord would see fit to continue in the future, if I do not make quite the fool of myself.”
Weary of argument, he instructs her curtly to clean herself up and dress, as he pulls on breeches and takes his blade from the desk. It’s only when he walks into the open space set before the steelglass windows, in the parlor of his personal chambers, that he realizes how skillful the puppeteer had been.
0.3 this you did not see
“Now may I ride about Giza by myself?” Ashelia grinned, breathless and boyish and flushed with triumph. The rapier she held steady, pointed at Vossler’s throat: the knights gathered in the courtyard still, stunned, even as Basch laughed and began to clap.
“Who taught you… no, I have seen that feint and cross before,” Vossler muttered, quick to glare. He hadn’t been fighting quite in earnest, of course, not until Ashelia had slapped the flat of her blade smartly against his arm in reproach and forced him onto the defensive with a flurry of steel. “Your goddamned-”
“Ser Vossler.” Basch interrupted quickly, with a polite cough, and Vossler clamped his jaw shut, though a muscle twitched. “I see good reason, my Lady, to refuse-”
“You may all tail me from a fair distance if you wish,” Ashelia sheathed the rapier, and Basch noted, a little belatedly, how he had not seen its make ‘till today – it was lighter, balanced, crafted to fit Ashelia’s speed, yet as fine as it was, it bore not the hint of ornamentation save for a blue tassel at the hilt. “But I hope I have earned the right to ride properly.”
For all that her tone was jaunty, her eyes pleaded, and Basch sighed, always too quick to relent. “If you wish, your Highness.”
“Basch.” Vossler growled, picking himself up, then Nightmare, sheathing his blade at his back. “I do not believe-”
“If my Lady has worked quite so hard to show you she is capable, Ser Vossler, I do not think it so gentlemanly to refuse, e’er did we have the right to do so.” He did, however, pitch that lower, for their ears, and Ashelia’s grin widened into a proper smile even as the men began to applaud her in earnest.
Vossler rubbed his eyes irritably, muttered something under his breath, then exhaled noisily, and looked up at the sky. “When did you start learning, your Highness?”
“Two years ago.” Ashelia’s smile turned hesitant. “I know I still have mistakes, and that I didst not win quite so fairly.”
“On the contrary, your Highness,” Vossler said gruffly, “The fault was mine, for the underestimation, and I am defeated. Fairly. But,” he added sharply, when Ashelia brightened visibly, “Your stance can use some work, and your follow through.”
“If you have the time to teach me, Ser,” Ashelia said, and Basch reflected wryly that his Princess was yet young enough to betray her deviousness with coquettishness. Undoubtedly, earning the ‘right’ to ‘ride around Giza by herself’ was only the velvet over the mail – this was what Ashelia had wanted all along.
IV Lioness
Ashelia is demure and blushing and ladylike, up until the steel door closes behind them and they are alone in his chambers aboard the Ifrit. Her blade is rolled up in silks and scarves, and it is smooth in its sheath, as though regularly oiled – the very first warning he should have heeded.
“I had to convince the Senate to modify a health care plan before I left for Dalmasca,” Vayne says without preamble, shucking his jacket on the divan. “I do not feel quite like teaching.”
“Then a match, Lord husband?” Her drawl ends with a little smirk, and he arches an eyebrow at her. They’ve had sparring matches before, naturally – there’s no other way of teaching in full – but he had never quite had to push himself to win: after all, all that she had learned had been from his blade. Still, Vayne supposed that he owes his wife something for a year of absence, and he sighs, loudly enough to indicate his displeasure, and draws his own blade.
He’s almost surprised enough, afterwards, for it to show. Ashelia’s smile is imperious, calculating, and there’s nothing in it of triumph, only a catlike satisfaction that indicates that she had known that she would best him.
He would blame weariness later, or politeness, but now all he feels as he pushes her blade to the side and pulls her almost roughly into his arms, to devour her mouth, is a consuming, heady lust that he knows but rarely.
The lioness purrs, claws her fingers tight on his shoulders, and Vayne concedes. Matters are no longer quite so uneven, between them; and as she pulls him down over his brocade jacket, atop him, her hands now curled in the silk collar of his shirt, Vayne is not sure when that particular gambit had come to pass. He’s not altogether surprised to realize he’s no longer displeased.
“For power?” he asks, later, genuinely curious. He’ll not be disappointed were that so: he had seen ambition within her and had expected something of the sort earlier, much earlier, when she had first began to question him about policy.
Ashelia grins at him, coquettish again, but now Vayne is wary enough to see this particular weapon for what it is, and he waits. Eventually, she shakes her head, shrugs, leans forward, and whispers in his ear; and he – he manages to smile, as though he had known all along.
-fin-
no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 04:52 pm (UTC)OOOOHHHHH.
Want next part, please? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-06 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 07:10 am (UTC)I do wish there was more of this pairing ;o! Likely the only het I would read (other than stuff by sheffie, hahaha)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 10:21 pm (UTC)...Back in August. How did it survive that long? *g*Anyway, I love how you portrait their relationship. It's one of the few het pairings I really like and you write them so well. Thanks for taking the prompt. :DAh, and the end was simply squee-worhty! *is happy now*
no subject
Date: 2008-06-07 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 07:33 am (UTC)