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Entry tags:
Unraveling
Title: Unraveling
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: gen, canon-typical violence
Word Count: 2423
Notes: During Belenus Tor and Bahamut's first clash with Odin, Terence keeps his priorities in line, even if he would like to do otherwise. Pining, mentions of death in wartime, and a brief foray into the Ultimania confession scene. A bit of a character study.
-
“This is far enough,” Dion says. His voice, carrying no hint of displeasure, jars Terence to steadiness. “I will discharge my duties. You know your own,” he adds gently.
Dion pivots against the autumn’s wind, watching the far hillside shimmer and twist with the aether of another. The sun brightens large portions of sky that makes Terence squint ruefully ahead and his eyes painful and dry against it; unjustly, that star has always risen over Ash first. He doesn’t like that they’re closer to the ravine below than Odin’s dominant, and he likes less that Dion will allow him no closer to its edge while he lingers, grimly observing the final path Odin will tempt him to follow. Nerves have coiled in his stomach since they left the safety of the garrison behind — never because he thinks either of them incapable to face what inevitably will come, but because every parting is a cord unspooling long and lonely from his chest; this distance sharpens his grim thoughts that what holds them together may be severed at last by forces greater than themselves.
Terence breathes unevenly over the baked grass and the tang of iron hanging in the air; it’s so unlike the sweet woods he’d lead their men through days prior, sleeping against the roots of twined trees so broad they disappeared into a canopy for the birds. Dion had reunited with him before the main camp with dragoon knights still crowned in the blood of Waloed’s scouts, gristle and dry leaves sticking to their spears, and in relief and harsh silence as Terence slid his fingers from the hilt of his sword they’d listened to the last of the summer finches calling their songs in high branches before daring to speak. He thinks the stupor of exhaustion had held him a little; he was, as always, relieved and enchanted at once.
“I trust you found your way here without difficulty,” Dion had murmured. His eyes scanned beyond him, searching. His pale hair seemed the sole light in the early dawn. Their numbers, Terence knew, were not what he would have liked. Danger doggedly pursued them.
“—There was some illness, later,” Terence interjected. His mouth drew low. “Greagor sent them home. The rest are able and stubborn enough.”
Dion looked at him steadily in the near blackness, then tossed his golden head. He could not come closer, even as Terence closed his fingers into a fist to hide his relieved tremble. Duty demanded this, but it also gave him the assured view of the broad of his back, the slow walk that expressed his own restraint. Fallen leaves and then a branch snapped beneath his feet. “Wake the rest. There’s no point waiting for dawn.”
“—My prince,” Terence snapped obediently, and sharply departed until he came across the first captain and roused him with a hand and a murmur. His stomach did not coil with the unease before a long fall, or the nervous prescience of a scene about to unfold. He trusted Dion’s arrival and felt only relief, despite the trail of corpses the war had taken, that he may return to his side after dispatching the enemies that would see him torn asunder. This was the place he had carved for himself when Dion had fatefully departed to serve in his father’s wars. Terence had served only one all his life, and there was no other he could believe in or swear in that he had not seen the courts of Whitewyrm smother in time or turn upon themselves. Servants talked. He listened well and knew where he was needed most.
His days as an attendant were never too far behind him. Terence believes he had known Dion in his entirety then, as a boy who gave more than he received and touched every heart with considered words. He could memorize absurd details Terence dismissed as soon as he lost interest or could not follow — Dion’s vision, focused always around him, found very little time to rest and reflect on himself. It was when Dion had taken a path that drew him away that Terence so sharply noticed his absence and feared terribly he would not recognize him upon his return. But Dion had always been good and firm in his kindness and sensibilities; if the world would deny him his due or hold it hostage above him, Terence would return to where he belonged and deliver it himself. Dion transformed his interest in the world to serve his men with kind pride. Terence picked up a sword. Dion promised to ensure he learned to hold it proper so he may always protect what Dion cared for most. Terence had thought for years he’d meant only their shared foundation, not the organ beating terrified in his chest. Terence had to believe Dion only cared for him as any other; the rest was a rogue fantasy belonging to men and women with more to offer than himself.
It is hard, the men murmured, drawing him back. They crawled on their knees in the detritus and disturbed their own dead who passed beside them. One touched his companion’s stiff back and knelt in prayer. Terence had done his fair amount of time with the shovel and resolutely rose again, hair cold and plastered to his forehead with sweat; what was one more, he thought, let this be over — but another redirected him to rest and put the dead down in his stead. Terence set his attentions elsewhere, but the words drifted over him. Greagor if I forget about you don’t forget about me, the grieving soldier droned. Just give me this day. Good heavens—
One day was not enough. Terence had wanted every single one after. He still does.
Terence jars himself from memory, turning the shaft in his hand and feeling its patterns crease the leather against his palms. Dion turns to look at him, the same as he did then, silky hair trailing like pale ribbons, and the light better serves Terence then to illuminate the path forward. He’s never asked of him anything Terence could not perform, never used the strength given to him to compel Terence or his men to mindless obedience without first confirming the way forward. His house has served the the royal families of Sanbreque since time immemorial; if he is known for anything, let it be that he wrote the score to the music that played. Terence knows what comes next, just as he knows that Dion has seen the resolve in his face: he reaches for his own.
“Yes, my lord.” Terence twists the spear in his grip and extends his offering, trading his nerves for truth, identifying the shallowest curve to Dion’s firm and drawn mouth, the coolness of his brown eyes. He wants to stop his ascent but that’s the conflict in his heart he’s never quite learned to shake, even now, not ever; to part and trust that he will not have doomed or betrayed Dion by allowing him to go alone. Every admission of fear or flash of concern is unbearable when Dion is compelled to follow and soothe it. His enemies belong to spectacle, and Terence’s strength is elsewhere. It belongs and owes itself to the painstaking task of enduring and keeping himself alive. He is human, and Dion is — magnificent. And he knows greater pain. But still: Terence aches.
“If you’re promising yourself to me,” Dion had murmured once, and halted. He was terribly wounded and on the verge of sleep, eighteen summers to the fading end of his seventeen, but Terence rose in his cot where he’d positioned it close to his bedside and laid his ear on his pillow to hear him better. Dion’s breath whistled and he wheezed, soft and no louder than rustling paper. He reeked of medicine and illness and the filth of the field. His hair was tarnished with old ashes. Terence gave in and stroked the strands along his ear to soothe; Dion watched him with feverish eyes.
“If what,” Terence murmured. He’d threatened and wizened his place at his lord’s side in the mounting terror of his grief, using the power he’d worked to acquire to serve as he’d had before in sweeter times; he hadn’t imagined Dion had intended dying first to forestall his own. The tragedy had been equally foolish, but Dion would bear later the reprimand of a commander losing his mind in battle. He would be cast as unreliable for months as soldiers gaped at his foolish maneuvering to save another beneath him. Unthinkable. Terence could stay folded on his knees before him forever it it would avail him of the smallest inconvenience his devotion had wrought.
“—You know you are my finest friend,” Dion whispered. His face contorted and he squeezed his eyes shut. “No, no — that’s not the word,” he said. He was quiet. His blonde lashes fluttered apart. “You know the name of your feelings well. Terence, I am certain you are nothing short of a treasure to me. I do not want this to be the last time I’ll hear them from you. I’ll keep your words forever, so I hope you speak true from now on.”
Terence sobbed once, then breathed harshly through his nose. He laughed. “Don’t be so careless, Dion. I’ll not stop saying them now.”
“Good,” Dion chuckled. Terence pressed his wet mouth against the back of his clammy hand and trembled against it for a long time. It had been a terrible secret to conceal from Dion what he wished to have the most. He may have died hearing them from no one, and that would have been the worst crime of all.
Dion twisted his fingers away after some time and stroked Terence’s chin, brushing his calloused fingers along the wet lines of his face, sliding sticky fingers through the part in his hair, until he shocked them both and groaned and bunched the fabric of Terence’s nightshirt in his fist and pulled and pulled until Terence clambered up and into his bed. Terence gathered the disturbed blankets up over himself and pressed against the solid warmth of Dion’s battered frame. Through the coarse bandages, Dion’s heart was an absurd force to reckon with still, and Terence traced the tips of his fingers from shoulder to shoulder, back and forth, barely there at all. Dion fell into a restless sleep. Terence had done this, even if Dion said otherwise. And he’d determined from it all that he would keep no other so close.
“I’m sorry for this. You will have to keep yourself safe from now on,” Dion murmured. He hooked his hand along Terence’s neck and under the dip in his ear, thumb circling the bone. “Until I am back on my feet, at least.”
“I hope to be here mostly, to help you to standing. The rest I will take care of myself.”
“I should hope you do nothing foolish. But if there is trouble…”
“Don’t invite it by anticipating it,” Terence warned softly. Dion closed his eyes and smiled a little.
“You are right.” Terence could not tell him he’d hoped to be one soul less on a list of them, that his days of soldiering would always end with his safe return. There was no convincing him then, and not now; he did not know safety by anyone’s hands except his own. And it was fair and just to believe that; Terence could not hope to stay a blade from an eikon. But he could kill and barter with other men accordingly, and he may arrive in Dion’s tent in the morning to split breakfast and dress him for battle, listen to his laundry list of stresses that he shared with no other, and press quiet words of assurance against his skin. Dion never let those opportunities be wasted; Terence could believe he had gifted him something akin to joy. He need merely stay alive to share in it.
Dion takes the spear from his proffered reach and doesn’t smile now. His mind is already on the enemy, magic coiling in his spine. Terence turns his to the scouts waiting for his return on the bluffs where they’d left them, but he remains fixed in time in this moment, attending two places at once, paralleling Dion’s ascent with the notion of his own.
The wind tosses the fabric layered in his armor and a quiet storm gathers around him when he bolts forward toward the sun, turning the mythril in his coat silver, the studs in his boots winking with his heavy stride. Terence’s heart plummets in time with Dion’s fall and he stays transfixed, breathing through the tug of the unspooling cord —
Bahamut erupts like a bellow in a forge and streaks forth in a furious ascent of color and sound, his roar and countenance no more or less Dion as he’s ever been: genteel, tempered, and courageous to a fault. No matter how Dion returns or what forces he acts on, he will remain his dearest companion by day’s end. All Terence wishes for is fairness, and mornings where he may consider stillness, days where he must not shield himself from the march of time or the miserable beginnings of the curse. Terence is not asking Greagor for permission, only joint defiance. A good goddess would give him this day. He wants to believe that all is right.
Terence relays his wishes aloud, then observes, shielding his eyes from the clash of steel and claw, walking backward before turning away completely and running. The imperial army roars their joy even as Odin’s blade cleaves the earth, Bahamut’s light ravaging the hillsides, and it carries to his ears as a sudden muted quiet in the aftermath. Pebbles rattle on his path from every explosion and he is exposed and vulnerable on this outcrop if he stays any longer, and he’d promised he would return to Dion. News of reinforcements that should turn the tide of battle will be waiting for him. Yes, that is what he must attend to now.
Turning down the footpath they’d climbed together, Terence falls into form and steels himself for danger. But it does not come. Bahamut’s retreating shadow engulfs him before snaking forward like a low cloud across the rocky land below; trees groans and shake beneath the great spread of his wings. Fond relief surges in Terence’s chest as that familiar gust stirs his hair across his brows. Today, at least, will be their’s.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: gen, canon-typical violence
Word Count: 2423
Notes: During Belenus Tor and Bahamut's first clash with Odin, Terence keeps his priorities in line, even if he would like to do otherwise. Pining, mentions of death in wartime, and a brief foray into the Ultimania confession scene. A bit of a character study.
-
“This is far enough,” Dion says. His voice, carrying no hint of displeasure, jars Terence to steadiness. “I will discharge my duties. You know your own,” he adds gently.
Dion pivots against the autumn’s wind, watching the far hillside shimmer and twist with the aether of another. The sun brightens large portions of sky that makes Terence squint ruefully ahead and his eyes painful and dry against it; unjustly, that star has always risen over Ash first. He doesn’t like that they’re closer to the ravine below than Odin’s dominant, and he likes less that Dion will allow him no closer to its edge while he lingers, grimly observing the final path Odin will tempt him to follow. Nerves have coiled in his stomach since they left the safety of the garrison behind — never because he thinks either of them incapable to face what inevitably will come, but because every parting is a cord unspooling long and lonely from his chest; this distance sharpens his grim thoughts that what holds them together may be severed at last by forces greater than themselves.
Terence breathes unevenly over the baked grass and the tang of iron hanging in the air; it’s so unlike the sweet woods he’d lead their men through days prior, sleeping against the roots of twined trees so broad they disappeared into a canopy for the birds. Dion had reunited with him before the main camp with dragoon knights still crowned in the blood of Waloed’s scouts, gristle and dry leaves sticking to their spears, and in relief and harsh silence as Terence slid his fingers from the hilt of his sword they’d listened to the last of the summer finches calling their songs in high branches before daring to speak. He thinks the stupor of exhaustion had held him a little; he was, as always, relieved and enchanted at once.
“I trust you found your way here without difficulty,” Dion had murmured. His eyes scanned beyond him, searching. His pale hair seemed the sole light in the early dawn. Their numbers, Terence knew, were not what he would have liked. Danger doggedly pursued them.
“—There was some illness, later,” Terence interjected. His mouth drew low. “Greagor sent them home. The rest are able and stubborn enough.”
Dion looked at him steadily in the near blackness, then tossed his golden head. He could not come closer, even as Terence closed his fingers into a fist to hide his relieved tremble. Duty demanded this, but it also gave him the assured view of the broad of his back, the slow walk that expressed his own restraint. Fallen leaves and then a branch snapped beneath his feet. “Wake the rest. There’s no point waiting for dawn.”
“—My prince,” Terence snapped obediently, and sharply departed until he came across the first captain and roused him with a hand and a murmur. His stomach did not coil with the unease before a long fall, or the nervous prescience of a scene about to unfold. He trusted Dion’s arrival and felt only relief, despite the trail of corpses the war had taken, that he may return to his side after dispatching the enemies that would see him torn asunder. This was the place he had carved for himself when Dion had fatefully departed to serve in his father’s wars. Terence had served only one all his life, and there was no other he could believe in or swear in that he had not seen the courts of Whitewyrm smother in time or turn upon themselves. Servants talked. He listened well and knew where he was needed most.
His days as an attendant were never too far behind him. Terence believes he had known Dion in his entirety then, as a boy who gave more than he received and touched every heart with considered words. He could memorize absurd details Terence dismissed as soon as he lost interest or could not follow — Dion’s vision, focused always around him, found very little time to rest and reflect on himself. It was when Dion had taken a path that drew him away that Terence so sharply noticed his absence and feared terribly he would not recognize him upon his return. But Dion had always been good and firm in his kindness and sensibilities; if the world would deny him his due or hold it hostage above him, Terence would return to where he belonged and deliver it himself. Dion transformed his interest in the world to serve his men with kind pride. Terence picked up a sword. Dion promised to ensure he learned to hold it proper so he may always protect what Dion cared for most. Terence had thought for years he’d meant only their shared foundation, not the organ beating terrified in his chest. Terence had to believe Dion only cared for him as any other; the rest was a rogue fantasy belonging to men and women with more to offer than himself.
It is hard, the men murmured, drawing him back. They crawled on their knees in the detritus and disturbed their own dead who passed beside them. One touched his companion’s stiff back and knelt in prayer. Terence had done his fair amount of time with the shovel and resolutely rose again, hair cold and plastered to his forehead with sweat; what was one more, he thought, let this be over — but another redirected him to rest and put the dead down in his stead. Terence set his attentions elsewhere, but the words drifted over him. Greagor if I forget about you don’t forget about me, the grieving soldier droned. Just give me this day. Good heavens—
One day was not enough. Terence had wanted every single one after. He still does.
Terence jars himself from memory, turning the shaft in his hand and feeling its patterns crease the leather against his palms. Dion turns to look at him, the same as he did then, silky hair trailing like pale ribbons, and the light better serves Terence then to illuminate the path forward. He’s never asked of him anything Terence could not perform, never used the strength given to him to compel Terence or his men to mindless obedience without first confirming the way forward. His house has served the the royal families of Sanbreque since time immemorial; if he is known for anything, let it be that he wrote the score to the music that played. Terence knows what comes next, just as he knows that Dion has seen the resolve in his face: he reaches for his own.
“Yes, my lord.” Terence twists the spear in his grip and extends his offering, trading his nerves for truth, identifying the shallowest curve to Dion’s firm and drawn mouth, the coolness of his brown eyes. He wants to stop his ascent but that’s the conflict in his heart he’s never quite learned to shake, even now, not ever; to part and trust that he will not have doomed or betrayed Dion by allowing him to go alone. Every admission of fear or flash of concern is unbearable when Dion is compelled to follow and soothe it. His enemies belong to spectacle, and Terence’s strength is elsewhere. It belongs and owes itself to the painstaking task of enduring and keeping himself alive. He is human, and Dion is — magnificent. And he knows greater pain. But still: Terence aches.
“If you’re promising yourself to me,” Dion had murmured once, and halted. He was terribly wounded and on the verge of sleep, eighteen summers to the fading end of his seventeen, but Terence rose in his cot where he’d positioned it close to his bedside and laid his ear on his pillow to hear him better. Dion’s breath whistled and he wheezed, soft and no louder than rustling paper. He reeked of medicine and illness and the filth of the field. His hair was tarnished with old ashes. Terence gave in and stroked the strands along his ear to soothe; Dion watched him with feverish eyes.
“If what,” Terence murmured. He’d threatened and wizened his place at his lord’s side in the mounting terror of his grief, using the power he’d worked to acquire to serve as he’d had before in sweeter times; he hadn’t imagined Dion had intended dying first to forestall his own. The tragedy had been equally foolish, but Dion would bear later the reprimand of a commander losing his mind in battle. He would be cast as unreliable for months as soldiers gaped at his foolish maneuvering to save another beneath him. Unthinkable. Terence could stay folded on his knees before him forever it it would avail him of the smallest inconvenience his devotion had wrought.
“—You know you are my finest friend,” Dion whispered. His face contorted and he squeezed his eyes shut. “No, no — that’s not the word,” he said. He was quiet. His blonde lashes fluttered apart. “You know the name of your feelings well. Terence, I am certain you are nothing short of a treasure to me. I do not want this to be the last time I’ll hear them from you. I’ll keep your words forever, so I hope you speak true from now on.”
Terence sobbed once, then breathed harshly through his nose. He laughed. “Don’t be so careless, Dion. I’ll not stop saying them now.”
“Good,” Dion chuckled. Terence pressed his wet mouth against the back of his clammy hand and trembled against it for a long time. It had been a terrible secret to conceal from Dion what he wished to have the most. He may have died hearing them from no one, and that would have been the worst crime of all.
Dion twisted his fingers away after some time and stroked Terence’s chin, brushing his calloused fingers along the wet lines of his face, sliding sticky fingers through the part in his hair, until he shocked them both and groaned and bunched the fabric of Terence’s nightshirt in his fist and pulled and pulled until Terence clambered up and into his bed. Terence gathered the disturbed blankets up over himself and pressed against the solid warmth of Dion’s battered frame. Through the coarse bandages, Dion’s heart was an absurd force to reckon with still, and Terence traced the tips of his fingers from shoulder to shoulder, back and forth, barely there at all. Dion fell into a restless sleep. Terence had done this, even if Dion said otherwise. And he’d determined from it all that he would keep no other so close.
“I’m sorry for this. You will have to keep yourself safe from now on,” Dion murmured. He hooked his hand along Terence’s neck and under the dip in his ear, thumb circling the bone. “Until I am back on my feet, at least.”
“I hope to be here mostly, to help you to standing. The rest I will take care of myself.”
“I should hope you do nothing foolish. But if there is trouble…”
“Don’t invite it by anticipating it,” Terence warned softly. Dion closed his eyes and smiled a little.
“You are right.” Terence could not tell him he’d hoped to be one soul less on a list of them, that his days of soldiering would always end with his safe return. There was no convincing him then, and not now; he did not know safety by anyone’s hands except his own. And it was fair and just to believe that; Terence could not hope to stay a blade from an eikon. But he could kill and barter with other men accordingly, and he may arrive in Dion’s tent in the morning to split breakfast and dress him for battle, listen to his laundry list of stresses that he shared with no other, and press quiet words of assurance against his skin. Dion never let those opportunities be wasted; Terence could believe he had gifted him something akin to joy. He need merely stay alive to share in it.
Dion takes the spear from his proffered reach and doesn’t smile now. His mind is already on the enemy, magic coiling in his spine. Terence turns his to the scouts waiting for his return on the bluffs where they’d left them, but he remains fixed in time in this moment, attending two places at once, paralleling Dion’s ascent with the notion of his own.
The wind tosses the fabric layered in his armor and a quiet storm gathers around him when he bolts forward toward the sun, turning the mythril in his coat silver, the studs in his boots winking with his heavy stride. Terence’s heart plummets in time with Dion’s fall and he stays transfixed, breathing through the tug of the unspooling cord —
Bahamut erupts like a bellow in a forge and streaks forth in a furious ascent of color and sound, his roar and countenance no more or less Dion as he’s ever been: genteel, tempered, and courageous to a fault. No matter how Dion returns or what forces he acts on, he will remain his dearest companion by day’s end. All Terence wishes for is fairness, and mornings where he may consider stillness, days where he must not shield himself from the march of time or the miserable beginnings of the curse. Terence is not asking Greagor for permission, only joint defiance. A good goddess would give him this day. He wants to believe that all is right.
Terence relays his wishes aloud, then observes, shielding his eyes from the clash of steel and claw, walking backward before turning away completely and running. The imperial army roars their joy even as Odin’s blade cleaves the earth, Bahamut’s light ravaging the hillsides, and it carries to his ears as a sudden muted quiet in the aftermath. Pebbles rattle on his path from every explosion and he is exposed and vulnerable on this outcrop if he stays any longer, and he’d promised he would return to Dion. News of reinforcements that should turn the tide of battle will be waiting for him. Yes, that is what he must attend to now.
Turning down the footpath they’d climbed together, Terence falls into form and steels himself for danger. But it does not come. Bahamut’s retreating shadow engulfs him before snaking forward like a low cloud across the rocky land below; trees groans and shake beneath the great spread of his wings. Fond relief surges in Terence’s chest as that familiar gust stirs his hair across his brows. Today, at least, will be their’s.