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seleniasTitle: Undertow
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion & Jill
Rating: gen
Word Count: 1654
Notes: More Dion and Jill interactions, written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ffprompts . Can additionally be read as a follow up piece to Visiting Statues.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion & Jill
Rating: gen
Word Count: 1654
Notes: More Dion and Jill interactions, written for
ffprompts . Can additionally be read as a follow up piece to Visiting Statues.-
Dion senses the difference in strength between them; Shiva is like a knife dulled and discarded. Her dominant’s body wavers from one room to the next as an unraveling thread, though Lady Warrick carries a hoop in her hand today as if to mend what’s frayed. But the steadiness and resolution in her face begs a question of himself that makes him ill to consider for overly long: the difference surely is that she wishes to live and see tomorrow by holding back, wherein he can only seek the same absolution for himself that he bestowed upon the massacred. It’s not a question of strength, but means. He’s the confidence to go alone, but not the strength to turn around and stay. It is why he will take the Rosfields to Origin, and he will not look beyond until that impossible moment arrives.
He’s not the courage for much conversation in these final days, but Lady Warrick passes by him more often alone than not, Ifrit and the Phoenix on adventures of their own. To have a brother one trusts and values is a foreign concept to him. There are other companions that have lit his way forward, so he can’t begrudge the siblings, but they might consider that good company must be made over and over again, and Lady Warrick keeps her ears pricked even more keenly than himself. Though, Dion knows he’s poor company — from his vantage point above the docks, he grimly watches that dark crystal spire spread its purple cloak across the realm. All who remained in the Crystalline Dominion were sentenced to a miserable death. And all, he thinks in agony, worth returning to should he endure this journey and see that darkness dispersed; that would be the true reckoning upon him, where he would be judged not by Greagor or even Ultima, but those living who remained in the realm.
In the quiet of his small room every night and morning, he leans his head on the bed he made and dressed for himself and asks Greagor to judge him accordingly, but not the ones who followed him. He trembles, and holds back a groan as the suffering whips through him once more, untouched and unheard by the guilt obscuring him from mercy from himself — let them know the peace they strove for all along but could never realize. Let their name by lifted beyond mine.
He’s a fool, he knows. His adherence to his own values doomed an entire city, and it had not even saved the one he treasured most —
His eyes sting at his merciless self-loathing. He’s vaguely aware of words directed at him. Lady Warrick locks eyes with him at the bottom of the stairs and the heaving storm within him tempers off to a deep, solemn quiet. He swallows the grief down, collar tight against his throat. He breathes.
Dion knows its poor form to be ungracious to his hosts; he needn’t be unconscionable too.
High above them, a gull cries out and sweeps low through the rafters and a smattering of the Hideaway’s branded children scatter after it and dart around Jill, laughing. All these sounds of life remind him dully of how soon he may lose his own; strangely, he doesn’t believe she’s unaware of this at all. She is not well either.
“Your Highness,” she greets. Her voice is low and casual, almost playful — they’ve done this song and dance, but distance begs they march it together once more.
“Lady Warrick,” he returns gently.
“Jill.”
He bows his head. “Lady Jill,” he insists. She smiles behind her curtain of silver hair before tossing it from her vision so he may see that her eyes are smiling, too. Temporarily, he feels a thaw in his veneer.
The hoop in her hand hangs loose at her side, yellow floss trailing into a bundle tucked between thumb and the divot of cloth. She raises it to inspect with disinterest, then holds it for his own curious eyes. He realizes then she was not planning to speak to him with anything of importance — she’d simply approached him as one approaches a companion. In the same way he knows intrinsically the relative distance of another dominant to himself, surely she always knows his whereabouts and his presence from one end of this hideaway to the other; she could have chosen to ignore him if she hadn’t wished to see him.
“You’re multi-talented, I see.” His voice is low, quiet. Jill flips the hoop over, brushing the ends of her fingers over a rough looking knot. Her face tells him he should not mean it.
“If stitching exercises count as skill, I fear you wouldn’t recognize the real thing.”
“I know doilies and lace require long hours of labor to make beautiful, but one must start somewhere,” he protests gently.
“It’s true, but I might run the gamut for ugliest. I used to sew in my younger years but I had poor interest in it. Hortense has been helping me remember the basics.” Ah. The keeper of the stores. She’s not far from his post, nattering on about this or that and generally brushing past him with a forceful hello before going cheerfully to her work. It’s a relief that he can put a name to the face, though he imagines they will never have more to say to each other beyond a distant call.
“If you are seeking a second opinion, I’m afraid the most thread work I’ve pursued has involved darning socks.” He pauses. “And I’ve no talent for it.”
It has the happy result of making Jill smile. “What, not even Bahamut can escape laundering his own clothes?”
“When circumstances are dire…” he murmurs in jest. But often enough, when his attendant had the patience to unravel his threads and show him correctly, he was too encumbered by how he continued to impress him so as the years got on. My Prince, I suppose Greagor said you must be indecent in one subject. Dion would bite back to the sound of his laughter, So that you may enjoy some superiority of your own! His fingers twitch at the memory; yes, he’d learned in the end the necessity of the work. A good thing can’t go bad when it’s remade over and over.
“I would have liked more practical pursuits in my youth,” Jill continues. “I was bored to tears as a girl. Though, when I get something to look correct now, I do enjoy it,” she murmurs. “It demands patience.” Dion feels his lips draw back a little; he shuffles, rewrapping his arms around himself. “I suppose I was more envious of all that Clive and Joshua enjoyed together while it was determined for me how unsuitable it was for a girl to traipse around in the mud with them.”
“Ah,” Dion says intelligently. “We shared the same step-mother.”
“We did.”
Silence descends. He starts again. “Beg pardon, what changed?”
“Hm?”
He points at the hoop. “Your renewed interest.”
“Ah. Well, it’s no secret I suppose.” She looks at him cautiously. Dion feels the chill return, separating them inch by inch, as the knowledge he feared to be true reveals itself. “I am unwell more days than I am not. Shiva’s extracted her price more than I can take. I need rest. I can’t avoid it.”
Dion feels his countenance stiffen. She doesn’t speak pitifully of herself; it’s a clinical, self-aware, practical retort, as if delivered by the resident physicker herself. Yet it confirms the few concerns he had; Jill is preparing for a fate worse than stone -- she’s preparing to be left behind and walk forward alone.
The grim resolve she displays must be mirrored on his own face; he cannot hide behind the mask like he once did, not anymore.
“I am sorry, My Lady,” he murmurs. He’s met with patient silence.
Jill holds up her hoop as if in a gesture of peace. Dion tries to fixate on the trailing, bright yellow thread and the sad deluge of button-like knots. Servants in Whitewyrm had loved to impart on him small treasures as a boy. He’d lost them in the move from Whitewyrm to the Dominion, or maybe before that — when Anabella arrived, and it was mandated that his chambers be moved a respectable distance from the newly wed husband and wife. Terence kept his room so immaculate, but where had they gone to that wasn’t now buried under aether or rubble? What possessions or small trinkets did he possess that invited memories forward?
“Will you part with that?” Dion asks.
“I thought I might give it to the children,” Jill retorts.
“They should be so lucky,” he says.
“Your Highness, I’d almost think you’d be wanting your own.”
“If it entertains you,” he defends gently. Jill smiles. She should be with her family. From what little he knows of Ifrit, he should be wanting to return to her too. He can contribute a small distraction. He must be capable of at least that for the strength her confidence imparts on him to continue forward.
He will see her companions delivered to their destiny; all these partings must end before they do.
“I’ll be in the ale hall,” she says, “With Gav, if you’ve interest in sitting among peers.”
Dion shakes his head. “No thank you. I may return to my room for some rest of my own.”
“Good day then,” Jill calls. Her silver hair swings behind her, stride carrying her out of his sight, and the last of his energy with it.
Dion stands still for a long while, watching the life slowly moving around him, the peace their kind was, he realizes slowly and with increasing exhaustion, denied. If the world must only require that he suffer the lengths of his own inadequacies as repentance until the final moment, he hopes only to be as graceful as her.
Dion senses the difference in strength between them; Shiva is like a knife dulled and discarded. Her dominant’s body wavers from one room to the next as an unraveling thread, though Lady Warrick carries a hoop in her hand today as if to mend what’s frayed. But the steadiness and resolution in her face begs a question of himself that makes him ill to consider for overly long: the difference surely is that she wishes to live and see tomorrow by holding back, wherein he can only seek the same absolution for himself that he bestowed upon the massacred. It’s not a question of strength, but means. He’s the confidence to go alone, but not the strength to turn around and stay. It is why he will take the Rosfields to Origin, and he will not look beyond until that impossible moment arrives.
He’s not the courage for much conversation in these final days, but Lady Warrick passes by him more often alone than not, Ifrit and the Phoenix on adventures of their own. To have a brother one trusts and values is a foreign concept to him. There are other companions that have lit his way forward, so he can’t begrudge the siblings, but they might consider that good company must be made over and over again, and Lady Warrick keeps her ears pricked even more keenly than himself. Though, Dion knows he’s poor company — from his vantage point above the docks, he grimly watches that dark crystal spire spread its purple cloak across the realm. All who remained in the Crystalline Dominion were sentenced to a miserable death. And all, he thinks in agony, worth returning to should he endure this journey and see that darkness dispersed; that would be the true reckoning upon him, where he would be judged not by Greagor or even Ultima, but those living who remained in the realm.
In the quiet of his small room every night and morning, he leans his head on the bed he made and dressed for himself and asks Greagor to judge him accordingly, but not the ones who followed him. He trembles, and holds back a groan as the suffering whips through him once more, untouched and unheard by the guilt obscuring him from mercy from himself — let them know the peace they strove for all along but could never realize. Let their name by lifted beyond mine.
He’s a fool, he knows. His adherence to his own values doomed an entire city, and it had not even saved the one he treasured most —
His eyes sting at his merciless self-loathing. He’s vaguely aware of words directed at him. Lady Warrick locks eyes with him at the bottom of the stairs and the heaving storm within him tempers off to a deep, solemn quiet. He swallows the grief down, collar tight against his throat. He breathes.
Dion knows its poor form to be ungracious to his hosts; he needn’t be unconscionable too.
High above them, a gull cries out and sweeps low through the rafters and a smattering of the Hideaway’s branded children scatter after it and dart around Jill, laughing. All these sounds of life remind him dully of how soon he may lose his own; strangely, he doesn’t believe she’s unaware of this at all. She is not well either.
“Your Highness,” she greets. Her voice is low and casual, almost playful — they’ve done this song and dance, but distance begs they march it together once more.
“Lady Warrick,” he returns gently.
“Jill.”
He bows his head. “Lady Jill,” he insists. She smiles behind her curtain of silver hair before tossing it from her vision so he may see that her eyes are smiling, too. Temporarily, he feels a thaw in his veneer.
The hoop in her hand hangs loose at her side, yellow floss trailing into a bundle tucked between thumb and the divot of cloth. She raises it to inspect with disinterest, then holds it for his own curious eyes. He realizes then she was not planning to speak to him with anything of importance — she’d simply approached him as one approaches a companion. In the same way he knows intrinsically the relative distance of another dominant to himself, surely she always knows his whereabouts and his presence from one end of this hideaway to the other; she could have chosen to ignore him if she hadn’t wished to see him.
“You’re multi-talented, I see.” His voice is low, quiet. Jill flips the hoop over, brushing the ends of her fingers over a rough looking knot. Her face tells him he should not mean it.
“If stitching exercises count as skill, I fear you wouldn’t recognize the real thing.”
“I know doilies and lace require long hours of labor to make beautiful, but one must start somewhere,” he protests gently.
“It’s true, but I might run the gamut for ugliest. I used to sew in my younger years but I had poor interest in it. Hortense has been helping me remember the basics.” Ah. The keeper of the stores. She’s not far from his post, nattering on about this or that and generally brushing past him with a forceful hello before going cheerfully to her work. It’s a relief that he can put a name to the face, though he imagines they will never have more to say to each other beyond a distant call.
“If you are seeking a second opinion, I’m afraid the most thread work I’ve pursued has involved darning socks.” He pauses. “And I’ve no talent for it.”
It has the happy result of making Jill smile. “What, not even Bahamut can escape laundering his own clothes?”
“When circumstances are dire…” he murmurs in jest. But often enough, when his attendant had the patience to unravel his threads and show him correctly, he was too encumbered by how he continued to impress him so as the years got on. My Prince, I suppose Greagor said you must be indecent in one subject. Dion would bite back to the sound of his laughter, So that you may enjoy some superiority of your own! His fingers twitch at the memory; yes, he’d learned in the end the necessity of the work. A good thing can’t go bad when it’s remade over and over.
“I would have liked more practical pursuits in my youth,” Jill continues. “I was bored to tears as a girl. Though, when I get something to look correct now, I do enjoy it,” she murmurs. “It demands patience.” Dion feels his lips draw back a little; he shuffles, rewrapping his arms around himself. “I suppose I was more envious of all that Clive and Joshua enjoyed together while it was determined for me how unsuitable it was for a girl to traipse around in the mud with them.”
“Ah,” Dion says intelligently. “We shared the same step-mother.”
“We did.”
Silence descends. He starts again. “Beg pardon, what changed?”
“Hm?”
He points at the hoop. “Your renewed interest.”
“Ah. Well, it’s no secret I suppose.” She looks at him cautiously. Dion feels the chill return, separating them inch by inch, as the knowledge he feared to be true reveals itself. “I am unwell more days than I am not. Shiva’s extracted her price more than I can take. I need rest. I can’t avoid it.”
Dion feels his countenance stiffen. She doesn’t speak pitifully of herself; it’s a clinical, self-aware, practical retort, as if delivered by the resident physicker herself. Yet it confirms the few concerns he had; Jill is preparing for a fate worse than stone -- she’s preparing to be left behind and walk forward alone.
The grim resolve she displays must be mirrored on his own face; he cannot hide behind the mask like he once did, not anymore.
“I am sorry, My Lady,” he murmurs. He’s met with patient silence.
Jill holds up her hoop as if in a gesture of peace. Dion tries to fixate on the trailing, bright yellow thread and the sad deluge of button-like knots. Servants in Whitewyrm had loved to impart on him small treasures as a boy. He’d lost them in the move from Whitewyrm to the Dominion, or maybe before that — when Anabella arrived, and it was mandated that his chambers be moved a respectable distance from the newly wed husband and wife. Terence kept his room so immaculate, but where had they gone to that wasn’t now buried under aether or rubble? What possessions or small trinkets did he possess that invited memories forward?
“Will you part with that?” Dion asks.
“I thought I might give it to the children,” Jill retorts.
“They should be so lucky,” he says.
“Your Highness, I’d almost think you’d be wanting your own.”
“If it entertains you,” he defends gently. Jill smiles. She should be with her family. From what little he knows of Ifrit, he should be wanting to return to her too. He can contribute a small distraction. He must be capable of at least that for the strength her confidence imparts on him to continue forward.
He will see her companions delivered to their destiny; all these partings must end before they do.
“I’ll be in the ale hall,” she says, “With Gav, if you’ve interest in sitting among peers.”
Dion shakes his head. “No thank you. I may return to my room for some rest of my own.”
“Good day then,” Jill calls. Her silver hair swings behind her, stride carrying her out of his sight, and the last of his energy with it.
Dion stands still for a long while, watching the life slowly moving around him, the peace their kind was, he realizes slowly and with increasing exhaustion, denied. If the world must only require that he suffer the lengths of his own inadequacies as repentance until the final moment, he hopes only to be as graceful as her.
