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moogle_workshop2011-06-12 08:45 pm
arivess.livejournal.com) wrote in moogle_workshop2011-06-12 08:45 pm
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arivess
Class: Thief
Title: Kings
Summary: It started with a coin toss. Sabin wouldn't let his brother cheat. More specifically: if Sabin were king.
Characters/Pairings: Edgar, Sabin
Word count: 965
Rating/warnings: None really... Everything technically takes place before the game, in an alternate timeline? Small spoiler for how Edgar became king?
Notes: Written for last week's workshop. Also, kinda sucks. My writing got horribly inconsistent. Ah well.
It started with a coin, a simple coin--
No.
It wasn't simple at all, and that was the problem. It started with a coin, and when Edgar suggested using it to decide their fates, it seemed like a good idea. There were two sides to every truth, Edgar said, likes two sides to every coin. And there was an edge, and sometimes, you could balance a kingdom on that edge.
Sabin had no idea what he meant, but agreed to lay their truths, their lives, their kingdoms on the balance of a coin.
“If it's heads,” Edgar said, “then you get to do whatever you want. You can leave it all behind you. But,” and there was always a but, “if it's tails, then I get to go instead.”
Sabin nodded. Of course, that was simple enough. Chance; what better way to decide their fates?
What worse way?
When Edgar tossed the coin up high, Sabin wished it would stay in the sky forever. It almost looked like it did, and in one second, everything was okay. No worries, no decisions, no succession; all they had to do was wait, and that wasn't so hard.
Heads. Of course it would be. Sabin's heart leaped to his throat before he noticed the face, familiar. He'd seen it before, every day, in the mirror, not his father's, but his.
“Brother...” Sabin frowned as he picked up the coin, turned it over; another face. “Brother, this coin...”
Edgar pretended not to notice. “You've won, Sabin.”
“It wasn't fair.” They were the hardest words to say, but Sabin could never leave, knowing he inadvertently cheated his brother out of freedom. “Do it again, Edgar. A real coin.”
When it landed, Sabin almost wished Edgar would choose to stay, but neither of them said a word to each other until the day Edgar set off.
“Don't eat or drink anything somebody else didn't try first,” Edgar instructed, one foot on the stone steps of Figaro Castle, the other on the golden sands of the desert. “Don't give anyone access to you while you're vulnerable.”
And before Sabin could change his mind, and shout, “Don't go,” because he'd never been without his brother before, didn't know how to rule, Edgar gave him a smile, lonely but decisive, and beckoned him closer.
A whisper, for his ears only: “Be good, grow strong. Father was poisoned. I will find the truth.”
*
Figaro would never fall, they declared. Figaro was the crowning glory of technology, the dreamland of machinists the world over. Figaro had a secret, and the Empire couldn't steal it, and King Sabin couldn't fix it, and no one could know.
Sabin slept with a coin under his pillow, and a lock on his door, and his brother's words echoing in his dreams. Tomorrow, they would break their tentative alliance with the Empire. Because Edgar was late, Edgar didn't come home, and Sabin already knew the truth.
The Empire killed their father, and the Empire must pay.
*
Figaro was falling, everyone could see. The end was inevitable, even if they had no idea when it would come. Was it desperation, they wondered, or glory, when King Sabin took to the fields himself, leading his armies?
Sabin heard the whispers, but he was too tired to answer. The truth would bore them, anyway: when one general turned out to be a spy, Sabin simply didn't know who to trust anymore. He didn't know how to strategize, or how to rule; he only knew how to fight.
So he fought. And won. And lost. And lost, and lost, and lost.
The main body of the army would be marching on Figaro soon, they all knew. Scouts reported the ruins left in their wake: burnt cities, stinking corpses, and the calls of vultures circling overhead. Doma, poisoned; South Figaro, barely anything more than an enemy playground, the only survivors traitors and whores.
There were reports of magic. Sabin didn't want to believe them.
*
Sabin woke to loud commotion outside his room. A blast of heat hit him when he opened the door.
“Fire!” echoed the screams; Sabin noticed that himself just fine, the heat, the smoke, the stench of burnt flesh. Death poured in at every opening, an endless fiery embrace.
What could he do, he wondered, but fight, or be roasted in the oven Figaro Castle had become?
It wasn't until he saw the girl that Sabin stopped. Red and gold, she danced in the middle of the flames, and her eyes showed no emotion when they locked onto his. She pointed at him, and too late he realized she was the source of the fire.
“Sabin! Get down!”
As he ducked, Sabin saw a rain of arrows fly over him, bursting into flames on their arching path, the arrowheads falling in useless ruins before the girl. But they had served to distract her.
“Thank you--” When Sabin recovered, his mysterious helper had already walked away.
“There's no time for that. Come on.”
Sabin frowned. “But the castle?”
The mystery man turned back with a familiar grin. “You'll see.”
*
“I've been watching.”
In a cool cave far from the desert, Sabin listened to his brother in a surreal trance. Spies, machines, Figaro Castle hidden under the sands, the Returners... Everything felt like a dream.
“We've known about what was happening for a while now,” Edgar told him apologetically. “I fixed the castle's defence mechanism in secret, but I didn't dare tipping my hand yet. We weren't prepared yet. But now...”
“There isn't a choice, is there?”
Edgar shook his head. “No. The fight begins now, whether we're ready or not.”
Title: Crowned
Summary: People don't act the way you imagine. Reality is pretty mean to your expectations. Uh, less abstractedly: Kain, Rosa, and Cecil go on a picnic. Or something.
Characters/Pairings: Kain/Rosa/Cecil
Word count: 3 sections of 100 word each
Rating/warnings: None...?
Notes: Somehow, I feel like this influx of FF4 is Mysti's fault. And maybe chat in general.
i.
Kain imagined it: the first time he would have Rosa to himself since the King introduced Cecil to them. He would take her outside the castle walls, where the wind could tease her hair and make the grasses dance. She would weave him a coronet of flowers, her chosen; and Cecil, king's child, could keep Baron, for Kain wanted her crown more.
And Rosa said, when he asked her: Sorry. Maybe another time; a vague answer. She had already made plans with Cecil, to go outside the castle, just the two of them.
Without him, he heard all too clearly.
ii.
Rosa dreamed that: Cecil would give her an answer tomorrow. At night, she fretted over her questions: their future, their love. He would not say no, she knew.
She would ask him tomorrow, outside the castle walls; without the whispers of the nobles that she did it for the throne, without her mother's admonitions that he was on the path of darkness.
Rosa could not understand why he brought Kain with him. Or maybe, she thought, Cecil was the one who didn't understand, that one day, she could only make one chain of flowers, crown one man for her heart.
iii.
Cecil always thought: the three of them would be together, beyond even the point of impossibility. So he pretended not to notice the awkward silences, the sidelong glances. And when Rosa offered, he asked: What about Kain? And she crowned them both with flowers.
Kain challenged: I don't need your pity.
So they duelled, Dark Knight and Dragoon, neither very practised yet. How did you fight your closest friend? With darkness, or with envy; how did you fight against reckless abandon?
He wondered: Why?
Cecil heard Rosa's scream, and saw falling petals, white with specks of red.
And then darkness.
arivessClass: Thief
Title: Kings
Summary: It started with a coin toss. Sabin wouldn't let his brother cheat. More specifically: if Sabin were king.
Characters/Pairings: Edgar, Sabin
Word count: 965
Rating/warnings: None really... Everything technically takes place before the game, in an alternate timeline? Small spoiler for how Edgar became king?
Notes: Written for last week's workshop. Also, kinda sucks. My writing got horribly inconsistent. Ah well.
It started with a coin, a simple coin--
No.
It wasn't simple at all, and that was the problem. It started with a coin, and when Edgar suggested using it to decide their fates, it seemed like a good idea. There were two sides to every truth, Edgar said, likes two sides to every coin. And there was an edge, and sometimes, you could balance a kingdom on that edge.
Sabin had no idea what he meant, but agreed to lay their truths, their lives, their kingdoms on the balance of a coin.
“If it's heads,” Edgar said, “then you get to do whatever you want. You can leave it all behind you. But,” and there was always a but, “if it's tails, then I get to go instead.”
Sabin nodded. Of course, that was simple enough. Chance; what better way to decide their fates?
What worse way?
When Edgar tossed the coin up high, Sabin wished it would stay in the sky forever. It almost looked like it did, and in one second, everything was okay. No worries, no decisions, no succession; all they had to do was wait, and that wasn't so hard.
Heads. Of course it would be. Sabin's heart leaped to his throat before he noticed the face, familiar. He'd seen it before, every day, in the mirror, not his father's, but his.
“Brother...” Sabin frowned as he picked up the coin, turned it over; another face. “Brother, this coin...”
Edgar pretended not to notice. “You've won, Sabin.”
“It wasn't fair.” They were the hardest words to say, but Sabin could never leave, knowing he inadvertently cheated his brother out of freedom. “Do it again, Edgar. A real coin.”
When it landed, Sabin almost wished Edgar would choose to stay, but neither of them said a word to each other until the day Edgar set off.
“Don't eat or drink anything somebody else didn't try first,” Edgar instructed, one foot on the stone steps of Figaro Castle, the other on the golden sands of the desert. “Don't give anyone access to you while you're vulnerable.”
And before Sabin could change his mind, and shout, “Don't go,” because he'd never been without his brother before, didn't know how to rule, Edgar gave him a smile, lonely but decisive, and beckoned him closer.
A whisper, for his ears only: “Be good, grow strong. Father was poisoned. I will find the truth.”
*
Figaro would never fall, they declared. Figaro was the crowning glory of technology, the dreamland of machinists the world over. Figaro had a secret, and the Empire couldn't steal it, and King Sabin couldn't fix it, and no one could know.
Sabin slept with a coin under his pillow, and a lock on his door, and his brother's words echoing in his dreams. Tomorrow, they would break their tentative alliance with the Empire. Because Edgar was late, Edgar didn't come home, and Sabin already knew the truth.
The Empire killed their father, and the Empire must pay.
*
Figaro was falling, everyone could see. The end was inevitable, even if they had no idea when it would come. Was it desperation, they wondered, or glory, when King Sabin took to the fields himself, leading his armies?
Sabin heard the whispers, but he was too tired to answer. The truth would bore them, anyway: when one general turned out to be a spy, Sabin simply didn't know who to trust anymore. He didn't know how to strategize, or how to rule; he only knew how to fight.
So he fought. And won. And lost. And lost, and lost, and lost.
The main body of the army would be marching on Figaro soon, they all knew. Scouts reported the ruins left in their wake: burnt cities, stinking corpses, and the calls of vultures circling overhead. Doma, poisoned; South Figaro, barely anything more than an enemy playground, the only survivors traitors and whores.
There were reports of magic. Sabin didn't want to believe them.
*
Sabin woke to loud commotion outside his room. A blast of heat hit him when he opened the door.
“Fire!” echoed the screams; Sabin noticed that himself just fine, the heat, the smoke, the stench of burnt flesh. Death poured in at every opening, an endless fiery embrace.
What could he do, he wondered, but fight, or be roasted in the oven Figaro Castle had become?
It wasn't until he saw the girl that Sabin stopped. Red and gold, she danced in the middle of the flames, and her eyes showed no emotion when they locked onto his. She pointed at him, and too late he realized she was the source of the fire.
“Sabin! Get down!”
As he ducked, Sabin saw a rain of arrows fly over him, bursting into flames on their arching path, the arrowheads falling in useless ruins before the girl. But they had served to distract her.
“Thank you--” When Sabin recovered, his mysterious helper had already walked away.
“There's no time for that. Come on.”
Sabin frowned. “But the castle?”
The mystery man turned back with a familiar grin. “You'll see.”
*
“I've been watching.”
In a cool cave far from the desert, Sabin listened to his brother in a surreal trance. Spies, machines, Figaro Castle hidden under the sands, the Returners... Everything felt like a dream.
“We've known about what was happening for a while now,” Edgar told him apologetically. “I fixed the castle's defence mechanism in secret, but I didn't dare tipping my hand yet. We weren't prepared yet. But now...”
“There isn't a choice, is there?”
Edgar shook his head. “No. The fight begins now, whether we're ready or not.”
Title: Crowned
Summary: People don't act the way you imagine. Reality is pretty mean to your expectations. Uh, less abstractedly: Kain, Rosa, and Cecil go on a picnic. Or something.
Characters/Pairings: Kain/Rosa/Cecil
Word count: 3 sections of 100 word each
Rating/warnings: None...?
Notes: Somehow, I feel like this influx of FF4 is Mysti's fault. And maybe chat in general.
i.
Kain imagined it: the first time he would have Rosa to himself since the King introduced Cecil to them. He would take her outside the castle walls, where the wind could tease her hair and make the grasses dance. She would weave him a coronet of flowers, her chosen; and Cecil, king's child, could keep Baron, for Kain wanted her crown more.
And Rosa said, when he asked her: Sorry. Maybe another time; a vague answer. She had already made plans with Cecil, to go outside the castle, just the two of them.
Without him, he heard all too clearly.
ii.
Rosa dreamed that: Cecil would give her an answer tomorrow. At night, she fretted over her questions: their future, their love. He would not say no, she knew.
She would ask him tomorrow, outside the castle walls; without the whispers of the nobles that she did it for the throne, without her mother's admonitions that he was on the path of darkness.
Rosa could not understand why he brought Kain with him. Or maybe, she thought, Cecil was the one who didn't understand, that one day, she could only make one chain of flowers, crown one man for her heart.
iii.
Cecil always thought: the three of them would be together, beyond even the point of impossibility. So he pretended not to notice the awkward silences, the sidelong glances. And when Rosa offered, he asked: What about Kain? And she crowned them both with flowers.
Kain challenged: I don't need your pity.
So they duelled, Dark Knight and Dragoon, neither very practised yet. How did you fight your closest friend? With darkness, or with envy; how did you fight against reckless abandon?
He wondered: Why?
Cecil heard Rosa's scream, and saw falling petals, white with specks of red.
And then darkness.