A Flower for the Spectre
Jul. 6th, 2023 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleniasTitle: A Flower for the Spectre
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion & Harpocrates
Rating: gen
Words: 1631
Notes: Spoilers for end-game side quests, particularly 'A Tail to Tell.' Their conversation left so much unsaid.
---
“Your Highness.”
“Master Harpocrates.”
“You have color in your cheeks today. Your eyes seem brighter. Are you in less pain?”
“A bit,” Dion admitted. “Though I fear it won’t last.”
“No, likely not. Wounds of the physical take a heavy toll when the mind is already exhausted.”
“Indeed,” Dion said. And the conversation waned.
The room was dark from the early morning. Lanterns burned solemenly at the end of each patient’s bed, the curtains not stirring save for visitors walking past. Harpocrates had left his own bed with a well rehearsed script in his mind, an act to soften the blow stemming from several floors below, but the flowers dripping water on his robes in a crystal vase made him pause — these specimens were the first in Nigel’s garden. Short, cantankerous, and bereft of their native soil. His words had shamed Dion when he hadn’t meant to hurt. Was he any better, trying again — or maybe the drudgery of age was finally giving him pause. What he knew of suffering could not be compared, though he could imagine, and had imagined, and what the mind created in the absence of truth was far more terrifying and untrue then the broken boy before him. Like the simple machinery of Mid’s wind-up toy soldiers, they fell over themselves when the gears stopped turning.
“Have you eaten?”
Dion looked at him, smile thin. “Not yet,” he said, soft.
“Might I suggest gently turning down Kenneth’s soups. Creative, he is, but with a palate like that of Clive’s wolf. Oblivious.”
“He has not poisoned me yet.”
“Then consider yourself lucky.”
Harpocrates very lightly clasped the arm of the soft reading chair and sat. The vase he made a careful space for on the nightstand, where numerous other visitors had left books, and letters, and quills with varying small bottles of ink. He wiped the trail of water away with a careful sweep of his sleeve.
“The purple wyvern tail — so you’ve grown them? Here?”
“It is more that I’ve given the seeds to Nigel and he’s spread them out at the ends of the garden rows.”
“You’ve supervised, then?”
“No.” Harpocrates laughed gently. “Like watching ink dry, that is. Though, they did sprout quickly, and I had hoped they’d bloom for Your Highness before you decided to leave this place.”
Dion smiled, a simple turn at the corners of his mouth. “I’m afraid I will not be going anywhere with haste for the foreseeable future.”
“Then you have had a painful amount of time for reflecting.”
“I have.”
“I have always liked being an observer. A philosopher, a draftsman, a teacher, an adviser, a lores man… the world of books and history has always held my attention. But I find I have some regrets now. Regrets for not participating in these roles as actively as I could have. I realized that, upon your arrival here, I had left many things undone. So while these flowers are a gift I’ve wanted to share, they are also my attempt at putting this life right.”
“You do not need to excuse yourself to me—”
“Please.”
Dion’s head rolled on his pillow, his good hand resting over his chest. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He waited.
Harpocrates smoothed over a wrinkle in his trousers. “I have had few students that have endeared to me as much as you. All those years ago, when your step mother bid me farewell from the palace grounds and your studies were cast aside for war time…”
“It broke my heart.”
“And it did mine as well. But I can’t say the journey since has been awful. All of these stories I’ve read, lessons I’ve taught, young minds I’ve met, connections I’ve made… it’s become worth so much more to me than all of the books in all of the libraries in the Holy Empire, save my time with you.”
Dion’s voice strangled itself and Harpocrates lifted his hand.
“Your Highness, you humble me. My pupil, my student, I know you discredit yourself all the good you’ve ever done because the weight of your grief is so personal, but I feel, sincerely, that there has never been a single wasted moment of my time with you. And I cherish it all the more now that you have returned.”
“Like the stories of old,” Dion murmured. “Gilded men returning home to a hero’s embrace. But you must not confuse me with them.”
“Your Highness…”
Dion turned his head against the pillow and closed his eyes, but it did nothing to hide his bared teeth. “No,” Dion whispered. “I don’t deserve it. I destroyed my capital within a single day and Ultima saw to it that Twinside have no place on our maps. Half my people, gone. My family, the families of many, dead by my hand. I am a prince of nothing. I am disgusting.”
Nothing save for the laughter in the halls stirred in the overhanging silence. The breathing of the few in the infirmary were but quiet, tapered whistles.
The crisp bed sheets were tangled in the fist of Dion’s left hand, as if he sought to strangle whatever blessing Harpocrates had to offer. There were moments like this, long before, where the silence was also heavy and neither could look at the other for fear of tipping the balance. Tomes across the table, notes and questions and essays for reviewing written in a carefully neutered Oriflamme hand. All evidence of street urchin, mongrel blood, whore’s child swept away in a single moment of monumental power: an eikon, rippling beneath the skin of a boy of barely four. Harpocrates always knew where he had fallen short. The roots never mattered.
“This history,” Harpocrates began, “is both old and new. It begets the mind, fosters the spirit, and wears the physical.” He clasped his hands and leaned forward in the chair, springs groaning. “What am I?”
Dion lay still. “A riddle, Master? Now?”
“Think quickly, Your Highness.”
Dion cleared his throat. “A trial.”
“Correct. And if say, a leader loses his people due to deeds of his and lives to tell the tale, those same people still looking to them in the aftermath of destruction, what is the appropriate, or even obvious path to follow?”
“Their leader should aid them, because that is the burden and responsibility of his livelihood.”
“And if that leader should let himself die mad, what of his people?”
“They will become ruled by another. Or executed.”
Harpocrates shook his head. “In a world besot by blight and civil war and tyrants, those people who waited will be called fools, and they will rot with or without you. But you can choose to meet them. Because the blight will not advance, and all the magic given to us by the crystals is gone.”
The bed groaned and Dion curved toward Harpocrates, eyes narrow and focused. “Year three-hundred and forty-two. A dominant of Titan tired of his bondage to his country destroyed his capital in a rage. He sunk the whole city into the earth, and over the next century, that crater filled with water that bloomed red from algae. Though the common saying was that it was the blood of the townspeople, trying to rise to the surface and escape.”
“The Blood Rose Massacre, they called it.” Harpocrates shook his head. “And what tools and smart blades Valisthea has made of her bearers and dominants throughout history — even you, Your Highness. What convenient scapegoats!”
Dion held up his hand. “I have always accepted my role as servant to the people with pride. And I have betrayed my servitude to them utterly in one weak moment.”
“I know. But what I speak of is not simply the expectations you’ve had for yourself.” Harpocrates smiled even as Dion shook his head. “For all that the role is absolute, the person is not. Now there is some irony!” Turning in the chair, he drew a single purple wyvern tail from the bedside vase. The petals were still wet with their morning spent in Nigel’s garden and the water he carefully pulled up and emptied between their thin stalks from the lake. “And for someone born into a standing on the same level as his people in Oriflamme, who rose to the heights of his calling and far past even those that could never have been accounted for, straight out of myth and into our sights -- I can think of no better man fit for a task of rebuilding, recreating, and reconstructing all that the Holy Empire was and ever will be. A rootless and lovely home.”
Dion swallowed heavily. “You have always given rousing speeches, Master Harprocates.” He turned his hand palm side up where the flower was carefully deposited. He brought it to his face, the cool petals pressing against his cheek like a ghostly hand, and carefully tucked the stalk under the thin sheets above his heart. “Talking to you, I… I loved my father, but my kinship with you… I treasure it utterly. And miss it terribly.” And Harpocrates could remember the earliest of days, filed away in memory banks long thought lost: a younger scholar alive and well, leaving wyvern tails on His Highness’s desk. That prince had sat enthralled through every lecture, in love with the entire world. Harpocrates turned to gaze at the lantern, if only to make the blindness cool the sting in his eyes.
“I can say it, but it pains me: I want to live, even though I am utterly undeserving.”
Harpocrates laughed wetly and wiped his eyes, breath short and shuddering. “So you’ll accept this old man’s gift, this time, Your Highness. My final, humble offering for you.”
Dion’s eyes glistened and he nodded once, smile gentle and true. “I would like nothing more.”
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion & Harpocrates
Rating: gen
Words: 1631
Notes: Spoilers for end-game side quests, particularly 'A Tail to Tell.' Their conversation left so much unsaid.
---
“Your Highness.”
“Master Harpocrates.”
“You have color in your cheeks today. Your eyes seem brighter. Are you in less pain?”
“A bit,” Dion admitted. “Though I fear it won’t last.”
“No, likely not. Wounds of the physical take a heavy toll when the mind is already exhausted.”
“Indeed,” Dion said. And the conversation waned.
The room was dark from the early morning. Lanterns burned solemenly at the end of each patient’s bed, the curtains not stirring save for visitors walking past. Harpocrates had left his own bed with a well rehearsed script in his mind, an act to soften the blow stemming from several floors below, but the flowers dripping water on his robes in a crystal vase made him pause — these specimens were the first in Nigel’s garden. Short, cantankerous, and bereft of their native soil. His words had shamed Dion when he hadn’t meant to hurt. Was he any better, trying again — or maybe the drudgery of age was finally giving him pause. What he knew of suffering could not be compared, though he could imagine, and had imagined, and what the mind created in the absence of truth was far more terrifying and untrue then the broken boy before him. Like the simple machinery of Mid’s wind-up toy soldiers, they fell over themselves when the gears stopped turning.
“Have you eaten?”
Dion looked at him, smile thin. “Not yet,” he said, soft.
“Might I suggest gently turning down Kenneth’s soups. Creative, he is, but with a palate like that of Clive’s wolf. Oblivious.”
“He has not poisoned me yet.”
“Then consider yourself lucky.”
Harpocrates very lightly clasped the arm of the soft reading chair and sat. The vase he made a careful space for on the nightstand, where numerous other visitors had left books, and letters, and quills with varying small bottles of ink. He wiped the trail of water away with a careful sweep of his sleeve.
“The purple wyvern tail — so you’ve grown them? Here?”
“It is more that I’ve given the seeds to Nigel and he’s spread them out at the ends of the garden rows.”
“You’ve supervised, then?”
“No.” Harpocrates laughed gently. “Like watching ink dry, that is. Though, they did sprout quickly, and I had hoped they’d bloom for Your Highness before you decided to leave this place.”
Dion smiled, a simple turn at the corners of his mouth. “I’m afraid I will not be going anywhere with haste for the foreseeable future.”
“Then you have had a painful amount of time for reflecting.”
“I have.”
“I have always liked being an observer. A philosopher, a draftsman, a teacher, an adviser, a lores man… the world of books and history has always held my attention. But I find I have some regrets now. Regrets for not participating in these roles as actively as I could have. I realized that, upon your arrival here, I had left many things undone. So while these flowers are a gift I’ve wanted to share, they are also my attempt at putting this life right.”
“You do not need to excuse yourself to me—”
“Please.”
Dion’s head rolled on his pillow, his good hand resting over his chest. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He waited.
Harpocrates smoothed over a wrinkle in his trousers. “I have had few students that have endeared to me as much as you. All those years ago, when your step mother bid me farewell from the palace grounds and your studies were cast aside for war time…”
“It broke my heart.”
“And it did mine as well. But I can’t say the journey since has been awful. All of these stories I’ve read, lessons I’ve taught, young minds I’ve met, connections I’ve made… it’s become worth so much more to me than all of the books in all of the libraries in the Holy Empire, save my time with you.”
Dion’s voice strangled itself and Harpocrates lifted his hand.
“Your Highness, you humble me. My pupil, my student, I know you discredit yourself all the good you’ve ever done because the weight of your grief is so personal, but I feel, sincerely, that there has never been a single wasted moment of my time with you. And I cherish it all the more now that you have returned.”
“Like the stories of old,” Dion murmured. “Gilded men returning home to a hero’s embrace. But you must not confuse me with them.”
“Your Highness…”
Dion turned his head against the pillow and closed his eyes, but it did nothing to hide his bared teeth. “No,” Dion whispered. “I don’t deserve it. I destroyed my capital within a single day and Ultima saw to it that Twinside have no place on our maps. Half my people, gone. My family, the families of many, dead by my hand. I am a prince of nothing. I am disgusting.”
Nothing save for the laughter in the halls stirred in the overhanging silence. The breathing of the few in the infirmary were but quiet, tapered whistles.
The crisp bed sheets were tangled in the fist of Dion’s left hand, as if he sought to strangle whatever blessing Harpocrates had to offer. There were moments like this, long before, where the silence was also heavy and neither could look at the other for fear of tipping the balance. Tomes across the table, notes and questions and essays for reviewing written in a carefully neutered Oriflamme hand. All evidence of street urchin, mongrel blood, whore’s child swept away in a single moment of monumental power: an eikon, rippling beneath the skin of a boy of barely four. Harpocrates always knew where he had fallen short. The roots never mattered.
“This history,” Harpocrates began, “is both old and new. It begets the mind, fosters the spirit, and wears the physical.” He clasped his hands and leaned forward in the chair, springs groaning. “What am I?”
Dion lay still. “A riddle, Master? Now?”
“Think quickly, Your Highness.”
Dion cleared his throat. “A trial.”
“Correct. And if say, a leader loses his people due to deeds of his and lives to tell the tale, those same people still looking to them in the aftermath of destruction, what is the appropriate, or even obvious path to follow?”
“Their leader should aid them, because that is the burden and responsibility of his livelihood.”
“And if that leader should let himself die mad, what of his people?”
“They will become ruled by another. Or executed.”
Harpocrates shook his head. “In a world besot by blight and civil war and tyrants, those people who waited will be called fools, and they will rot with or without you. But you can choose to meet them. Because the blight will not advance, and all the magic given to us by the crystals is gone.”
The bed groaned and Dion curved toward Harpocrates, eyes narrow and focused. “Year three-hundred and forty-two. A dominant of Titan tired of his bondage to his country destroyed his capital in a rage. He sunk the whole city into the earth, and over the next century, that crater filled with water that bloomed red from algae. Though the common saying was that it was the blood of the townspeople, trying to rise to the surface and escape.”
“The Blood Rose Massacre, they called it.” Harpocrates shook his head. “And what tools and smart blades Valisthea has made of her bearers and dominants throughout history — even you, Your Highness. What convenient scapegoats!”
Dion held up his hand. “I have always accepted my role as servant to the people with pride. And I have betrayed my servitude to them utterly in one weak moment.”
“I know. But what I speak of is not simply the expectations you’ve had for yourself.” Harpocrates smiled even as Dion shook his head. “For all that the role is absolute, the person is not. Now there is some irony!” Turning in the chair, he drew a single purple wyvern tail from the bedside vase. The petals were still wet with their morning spent in Nigel’s garden and the water he carefully pulled up and emptied between their thin stalks from the lake. “And for someone born into a standing on the same level as his people in Oriflamme, who rose to the heights of his calling and far past even those that could never have been accounted for, straight out of myth and into our sights -- I can think of no better man fit for a task of rebuilding, recreating, and reconstructing all that the Holy Empire was and ever will be. A rootless and lovely home.”
Dion swallowed heavily. “You have always given rousing speeches, Master Harprocates.” He turned his hand palm side up where the flower was carefully deposited. He brought it to his face, the cool petals pressing against his cheek like a ghostly hand, and carefully tucked the stalk under the thin sheets above his heart. “Talking to you, I… I loved my father, but my kinship with you… I treasure it utterly. And miss it terribly.” And Harpocrates could remember the earliest of days, filed away in memory banks long thought lost: a younger scholar alive and well, leaving wyvern tails on His Highness’s desk. That prince had sat enthralled through every lecture, in love with the entire world. Harpocrates turned to gaze at the lantern, if only to make the blindness cool the sting in his eyes.
“I can say it, but it pains me: I want to live, even though I am utterly undeserving.”
Harpocrates laughed wetly and wiped his eyes, breath short and shuddering. “So you’ll accept this old man’s gift, this time, Your Highness. My final, humble offering for you.”
Dion’s eyes glistened and he nodded once, smile gentle and true. “I would like nothing more.”
