Spirits Whose Work Is Done
May. 12th, 2024 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleniasTitle: Spirits Whose Work Is Done
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Byron/Havel, Quinten
Rating: M
Word Count: 2349
Notes: This was almost a polycule! Re: Triunity Accord was just a marriage pact in disguise. Title is a Walt Whitman poem.
-
“If there is nothing else?” Quinten asks. “No? Good night then. Rutherford, was it…” The sofa groans.
“This way, my lord…”
Byron hears him vaguely but as of through a cloud. The sound of his beard against his hand belies the exhaustion coursing through and he’s enough sense to watch them go. Clive, his wonderful Sir Crandall, turned in before the midnight hour to make an early return, but his mind has only spun between worry and fondness. How lucky it is that Clive should bring him the greatest company among men, even if it means Byron must always be the extra actor.
The heat of the drawing room is higher than he likes. If doors are opened he can’t feel the draft. The excellent wine Clive’s man brought him was a generous Gautland, and because the news was good it was appropriate to drink it before he no longer could. Havel had matched him since it was a good challenge then, and seemingly they were removing the cork from the second. But he doesn’t feel apart from himself, only deeper seated, like a good bird that has come home to roost.
That it would be the peace that would concern him now. Quinten seems a sure-footed man and Havel was amenable when faced with someone he could respect; but there is the case of himself, and what strength he has often seems to come to money or threads he’s made with men and women quicker than himself.
The Twins are starting to feel small, is all. But Havel trades glances with him where he rebukes him for his thoughts without even opening his mouth. Oh, he appreciates him for it. He toys with a nail head on the sofa and listens to the hiss and spit of the flames. On the table, the accord lays. It’s underwhelming. Perhaps he’s disappointed only because there’s not been a party. There will be one later.
“You’ve bitten off more then you should,” Havel says, at last. Critical, of course. Wrong, not. “Your nephew knows how to swing his own weight. A former magistrate of the peace! There’s a story there. One criminal upholding another!” Let the poor man tell his own tale, Byron thinks. He can only speak of one.
“You admit you were ignorant do you? Clive is hardly a degenerate.”
“He’s an outlaw, which is half of what makes a man in these times,” Havel says, waving his hand, but there’s no heat in it. He’s seen the reality before him: a lone nest of the downtrodden have carried more than their share of the weight. Now he shall give him the stare of a field marshal to tell him he believes him so he does not have to say it aloud.
Byron drinks to hide his laugh. “His networking talent is impressive, but that’s his generosity too. If there’s something we lack I don’t doubt his people have already fielded an answer we may call on.”
“To what? Did we not just determine it?”
Byron gestures to the window, then the room. “How we’ll live, after everyone’s had their share of the grain, and the dust has settled. It will be winter though. Much will fall onto the Republic then. But they grow food in the deadlands! That’s a novelty.”
Luckily, Havel is still of few words, so he merely grunts and draws a hand across his face. Ran’dellah had been saved, because bearers and men realized the necessity of combined arms. Ran’dellah lived, because the Sanbrequian prince had sailed to their aid and given them the precious gift of numbers while his blindsided people called for his head. How foolish the young ministers of the Republic were to think because Havel was mean and gray he was unfit, when it was his forced departure that left them unprepared for the hordes and their blood still warm on the palace tiles.
Now he’s the pleasure of putting it right, but the dragoons had burned mass pyres and their armor was not silver after they took back the city. It’s grotesque how one must always contest with another, then suffer more. Havel’s hardly the consideration for one.
“Akashic don’t recognize good trees at least. As long as there’s men to grow them, there will be enough. Though fuck all if the empire thinks they deserve a quarter of it.”
“Hardly an empire left,” Byron hastens, “and you’d best stop giving voice to your ills.”
“This will all be pointless if he fails.”
“Then none of us will be alive to care. Pick your side already.” Havel turns his wrists and idly cracks his fingers. His gold rings glimmer and flash like the eyes of some beast. “After everything he’s done, you think he will?”
“Dominants die all the time,” Havel says.
“But Clive was not always that. What, you don’t remember his charm as a youth?”
“Aye, I remember a boy falling from a saddle and eating sand. Makes no difference now.”
Byron rolls his eyes. “He’s a Rosfield, and a proven investment that might save us all, though we’re undeserving by far! If you doubt his character, why bother being here at all,” he mutters. “I want your confidence Eugen, not your misery.”
“You’re getting my men and those insane knights given by Bahamut — what, you want more?”
“Yes,” Byron says, flat. He’s suddenly tired. “I do.”
Havel leaves his hands against his temple and looks at him in full. His silver hair is lit orange by the fire side, and the darkness under his eyes darker where the sun has aged him unkindly. Byron has seen mirror spots and lines across his own skin. They’ve weathered terror, but so rarely a good thing. Is that perhaps why they never know what to do with it, he wonders. And they must always return to this crossness?
“I hate that you think you know what I need. I didn’t ask — you assume!”
“I assume correctly because you are so predictable!”
“It’s almost winter,” Havel says. “And I’ve yet to even return to my house, and I’m here, with you, shut up in all your hoardings like a bauble on your shelves, drinking another man’s wine over a piece of paper.”
They still, together. Then, the loudest sound is Byron’s dry hands chafing against each other like the slide of paper: “It doesn’t have to be the shelf, my dear.”
Havel looks at him. “I’d thought you’d run away, you know. Back then. I hadn’t said it.”
“No, you did. I couldn’t forget such cruelty. You called me a coward, and never said you were sorry either,” Byron laughs. “And I was. I never did make it to Rosalith again. Founder, it was like a splitting of selves that night! I still remember how the smoke drifted over the marshes and clogged the skies. Further still, as far as Kostnice I recall, because it was made of aether. It was terrible.”
“From the dominants,” Havel says, mouth thin.
“From my nephews, when their eikons clashed.”
It was then that Byron discovered his worth, he’d thought, and it signaled a grief so fierce he transformed. It became the beginning of obstinance, politicking, and concealment; his true heart was set apart for those he may return to whenever he saw them again. Be that in the Twins — or the next world over.
What remained of his brother’s men eventually found him, tired but fierce. It had been worth it then, waiting. It’s worth it now, even if the trajectory is larger, he’s only an actor late in the production, laying out the set. And he’s not even being made to do it alone. That is time rewarding him.
He need not always wait for someone else to move first.
“It’s late,” Byron says. “And that fire is tiring at last, I think.” He stands, body groaning, and sets the cup aside on the table. He’s warm, and comfortable, and the sadness that permeated his earlier mind has quieted — and now settles a silence thick and viscous in his mouth. Byron breathes through the strain. “So, old friend. Will you be sleeping in your room tonight, or mine?”
Havel stands slowly, wearing the face he was so known for. “You’ve rugs in here. There’s more wood, there,” he gestures. “Blankets, there.”
“Aye,” Byron says. “So there is.”
“If I have my pick, I’ll have you here.”
“Will you.”
“What, you give me a choice then rob me of it? Why ask then, you cur?”
Byron laughs and takes off his gloves, then his coat. He goes to him. “We’re only old men now, Havel — you may not feel it, but I certainly am! Try to have some grace, would you. You’ve been a married man. I’ve some self-respect.”
“Bah, what difference does it make always trying to be better,” he protests, pulling off his own clothes.
“A little nicety goes a long way. It’s romantic, for example, to say you’d like some patience. Which I will courteously extend to you, if you shall recognize that in turn.”
Havel guffaws and holds fast to him. He’s leathery from the Dhalmekian sun. “You already asked me what I wanted. Old, indeed. Did you hear?”
They stop talking in words.
Before the hearth they’ve both so carefully stoked once more, Byron believes there will be a day after tomorrow. This world was favorable with its generosity toward them — they can surely extend it to themselves, and they need not split themselves into halves. They’ve grown strong and proud like trees that grew against the wind, and there is no out running sorrow in a gale.
Byron wakes up once or twice to peer at him more closely. When Havel catches him between cracked eyes, he lays his palm along his chest, and kicks the blanket up across their shins. Oh, he’s nice alright.
“You remembered me writing you, then,” Byron murmurs. “After Phoenix Gate. I do not.”
Havel grunts. “Aye.”
“I’m certain I spent that week weeping under that table over there. After that, I must have reinvested everything so I could not have it taken by the crown. Seeing an imperial on that parlor chair, I could have killed the man. I remember that feeling more than what happened, now.”
“Justice is due.”
“Is it though? I suspect it will be after.” Byron lets himself hold his craggy cheek. Havel’s mouth moves against his thumb.
“Ask Cid in the morning for a refresher,” Havel murmurs, then falls silent again.
I will, Byron hears himself say. He gathers himself long enough to throw another log on the fire, watching the coals shatter, the bad night splinter. In the morning.
And it’s slow to begin, and then gone too quickly, and in the end, Havel complains about the stone floor he so favored. That is life. It’s a good thing to have the choice, Byron thinks. It is everything.
Rutherford and Quinten are in the small, private parlor before the kitchen, and they are all shaking the sleep from their limbs.
Quinten looks at them. He’s been doing so for some time. “Wealth is a resource that he's not lacking in,” Quinten advises. “You’ve the signatures already. I am merely an add-on and I shan’t keep you.”
“Shut up and eat.” Scrubbing his unshaved throat, Havel scowls. It’s a fierce, horrendous thing, on a spiteful creature that Byron knows he’s shared his life’s humors with. Oh, he’d laughed at that crush once, and buried it while doing so; now it’s weathered and remade to fit, and a few earthly tortures won’t kill it.
“There’s talents a plenty. And since you two are such fast friends in all aspects, I dare say all parties are willing.” Havel grumbles some more, but his neck is hurting him; it’s a fine thing to be old and responsible for the world, then fuck on a floor.
“You’ve the power and the means,” Byron says, “—former justice. Ever been a minister?”
“A few times. Not that bearers like Greagor’s church or them in turn, but it is easier to say a few words behind the counter anyway. You’re the easiest yet. For that, I’m grateful.” Quinten reclines in his seat. To his right, Rutherford lays the silverware in neat, straight lines, and pours celebratory cider into shimmery cups. The dawn outside is a foul thing, wreathed in gray and red and purple — Clive left before the light even touched down. Byron had risen with him, shaking off the heat from the banked fire, and Clive’s smile was like that he wore when he was Sir Crandall, knightly and kind — knowing, the imp. His spirit was good, and so was his own.
Byron laughs. “You’ve been good to my nephew, and I reckon the Cid before him too. A fine ally you are, Quinten! Indulging us so.”
Quinten lays a thick slab of jam across his bread. “Naturally. We’ve much to do.”
“I haven’t even the papers,” Havel spits. He’s red in the face.
Byron scowls at him. “Nevermind that, you’ve yet to even file the divorce! If your wife doesn’t turn akashic at sea, poor woman. Now, Rutherford! We must settle this quickly.”
His dear butler has not sat to even join them, but he halts with the tea obligingly. “The large rings, my lord?”
“Aye, the silver bands, those. And a stack of my nice paper, will you — there’s letters to write. I look forward to receiving my dowry at last from the high houses. Oh, how they thought I would never take another, and now they shall fund this entire expedition and I shall not lose a talent! Serves them right.”
Havel lays the back of his head across his chair, eyes closed. Quinten eats his bread, then inquires about Rosaria’s mills, and when they should be amenable to distributing the stores. It’s a better story when there’s a pair of usurpers to make clean the path ahead, the better that Sir Crandall might hasten down the road to meet them when they finally, joyfully, wretchedly, cut the rope.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Byron/Havel, Quinten
Rating: M
Word Count: 2349
Notes: This was almost a polycule! Re: Triunity Accord was just a marriage pact in disguise. Title is a Walt Whitman poem.
-
“If there is nothing else?” Quinten asks. “No? Good night then. Rutherford, was it…” The sofa groans.
“This way, my lord…”
Byron hears him vaguely but as of through a cloud. The sound of his beard against his hand belies the exhaustion coursing through and he’s enough sense to watch them go. Clive, his wonderful Sir Crandall, turned in before the midnight hour to make an early return, but his mind has only spun between worry and fondness. How lucky it is that Clive should bring him the greatest company among men, even if it means Byron must always be the extra actor.
The heat of the drawing room is higher than he likes. If doors are opened he can’t feel the draft. The excellent wine Clive’s man brought him was a generous Gautland, and because the news was good it was appropriate to drink it before he no longer could. Havel had matched him since it was a good challenge then, and seemingly they were removing the cork from the second. But he doesn’t feel apart from himself, only deeper seated, like a good bird that has come home to roost.
That it would be the peace that would concern him now. Quinten seems a sure-footed man and Havel was amenable when faced with someone he could respect; but there is the case of himself, and what strength he has often seems to come to money or threads he’s made with men and women quicker than himself.
The Twins are starting to feel small, is all. But Havel trades glances with him where he rebukes him for his thoughts without even opening his mouth. Oh, he appreciates him for it. He toys with a nail head on the sofa and listens to the hiss and spit of the flames. On the table, the accord lays. It’s underwhelming. Perhaps he’s disappointed only because there’s not been a party. There will be one later.
“You’ve bitten off more then you should,” Havel says, at last. Critical, of course. Wrong, not. “Your nephew knows how to swing his own weight. A former magistrate of the peace! There’s a story there. One criminal upholding another!” Let the poor man tell his own tale, Byron thinks. He can only speak of one.
“You admit you were ignorant do you? Clive is hardly a degenerate.”
“He’s an outlaw, which is half of what makes a man in these times,” Havel says, waving his hand, but there’s no heat in it. He’s seen the reality before him: a lone nest of the downtrodden have carried more than their share of the weight. Now he shall give him the stare of a field marshal to tell him he believes him so he does not have to say it aloud.
Byron drinks to hide his laugh. “His networking talent is impressive, but that’s his generosity too. If there’s something we lack I don’t doubt his people have already fielded an answer we may call on.”
“To what? Did we not just determine it?”
Byron gestures to the window, then the room. “How we’ll live, after everyone’s had their share of the grain, and the dust has settled. It will be winter though. Much will fall onto the Republic then. But they grow food in the deadlands! That’s a novelty.”
Luckily, Havel is still of few words, so he merely grunts and draws a hand across his face. Ran’dellah had been saved, because bearers and men realized the necessity of combined arms. Ran’dellah lived, because the Sanbrequian prince had sailed to their aid and given them the precious gift of numbers while his blindsided people called for his head. How foolish the young ministers of the Republic were to think because Havel was mean and gray he was unfit, when it was his forced departure that left them unprepared for the hordes and their blood still warm on the palace tiles.
Now he’s the pleasure of putting it right, but the dragoons had burned mass pyres and their armor was not silver after they took back the city. It’s grotesque how one must always contest with another, then suffer more. Havel’s hardly the consideration for one.
“Akashic don’t recognize good trees at least. As long as there’s men to grow them, there will be enough. Though fuck all if the empire thinks they deserve a quarter of it.”
“Hardly an empire left,” Byron hastens, “and you’d best stop giving voice to your ills.”
“This will all be pointless if he fails.”
“Then none of us will be alive to care. Pick your side already.” Havel turns his wrists and idly cracks his fingers. His gold rings glimmer and flash like the eyes of some beast. “After everything he’s done, you think he will?”
“Dominants die all the time,” Havel says.
“But Clive was not always that. What, you don’t remember his charm as a youth?”
“Aye, I remember a boy falling from a saddle and eating sand. Makes no difference now.”
Byron rolls his eyes. “He’s a Rosfield, and a proven investment that might save us all, though we’re undeserving by far! If you doubt his character, why bother being here at all,” he mutters. “I want your confidence Eugen, not your misery.”
“You’re getting my men and those insane knights given by Bahamut — what, you want more?”
“Yes,” Byron says, flat. He’s suddenly tired. “I do.”
Havel leaves his hands against his temple and looks at him in full. His silver hair is lit orange by the fire side, and the darkness under his eyes darker where the sun has aged him unkindly. Byron has seen mirror spots and lines across his own skin. They’ve weathered terror, but so rarely a good thing. Is that perhaps why they never know what to do with it, he wonders. And they must always return to this crossness?
“I hate that you think you know what I need. I didn’t ask — you assume!”
“I assume correctly because you are so predictable!”
“It’s almost winter,” Havel says. “And I’ve yet to even return to my house, and I’m here, with you, shut up in all your hoardings like a bauble on your shelves, drinking another man’s wine over a piece of paper.”
They still, together. Then, the loudest sound is Byron’s dry hands chafing against each other like the slide of paper: “It doesn’t have to be the shelf, my dear.”
Havel looks at him. “I’d thought you’d run away, you know. Back then. I hadn’t said it.”
“No, you did. I couldn’t forget such cruelty. You called me a coward, and never said you were sorry either,” Byron laughs. “And I was. I never did make it to Rosalith again. Founder, it was like a splitting of selves that night! I still remember how the smoke drifted over the marshes and clogged the skies. Further still, as far as Kostnice I recall, because it was made of aether. It was terrible.”
“From the dominants,” Havel says, mouth thin.
“From my nephews, when their eikons clashed.”
It was then that Byron discovered his worth, he’d thought, and it signaled a grief so fierce he transformed. It became the beginning of obstinance, politicking, and concealment; his true heart was set apart for those he may return to whenever he saw them again. Be that in the Twins — or the next world over.
What remained of his brother’s men eventually found him, tired but fierce. It had been worth it then, waiting. It’s worth it now, even if the trajectory is larger, he’s only an actor late in the production, laying out the set. And he’s not even being made to do it alone. That is time rewarding him.
He need not always wait for someone else to move first.
“It’s late,” Byron says. “And that fire is tiring at last, I think.” He stands, body groaning, and sets the cup aside on the table. He’s warm, and comfortable, and the sadness that permeated his earlier mind has quieted — and now settles a silence thick and viscous in his mouth. Byron breathes through the strain. “So, old friend. Will you be sleeping in your room tonight, or mine?”
Havel stands slowly, wearing the face he was so known for. “You’ve rugs in here. There’s more wood, there,” he gestures. “Blankets, there.”
“Aye,” Byron says. “So there is.”
“If I have my pick, I’ll have you here.”
“Will you.”
“What, you give me a choice then rob me of it? Why ask then, you cur?”
Byron laughs and takes off his gloves, then his coat. He goes to him. “We’re only old men now, Havel — you may not feel it, but I certainly am! Try to have some grace, would you. You’ve been a married man. I’ve some self-respect.”
“Bah, what difference does it make always trying to be better,” he protests, pulling off his own clothes.
“A little nicety goes a long way. It’s romantic, for example, to say you’d like some patience. Which I will courteously extend to you, if you shall recognize that in turn.”
Havel guffaws and holds fast to him. He’s leathery from the Dhalmekian sun. “You already asked me what I wanted. Old, indeed. Did you hear?”
They stop talking in words.
Before the hearth they’ve both so carefully stoked once more, Byron believes there will be a day after tomorrow. This world was favorable with its generosity toward them — they can surely extend it to themselves, and they need not split themselves into halves. They’ve grown strong and proud like trees that grew against the wind, and there is no out running sorrow in a gale.
Byron wakes up once or twice to peer at him more closely. When Havel catches him between cracked eyes, he lays his palm along his chest, and kicks the blanket up across their shins. Oh, he’s nice alright.
“You remembered me writing you, then,” Byron murmurs. “After Phoenix Gate. I do not.”
Havel grunts. “Aye.”
“I’m certain I spent that week weeping under that table over there. After that, I must have reinvested everything so I could not have it taken by the crown. Seeing an imperial on that parlor chair, I could have killed the man. I remember that feeling more than what happened, now.”
“Justice is due.”
“Is it though? I suspect it will be after.” Byron lets himself hold his craggy cheek. Havel’s mouth moves against his thumb.
“Ask Cid in the morning for a refresher,” Havel murmurs, then falls silent again.
I will, Byron hears himself say. He gathers himself long enough to throw another log on the fire, watching the coals shatter, the bad night splinter. In the morning.
And it’s slow to begin, and then gone too quickly, and in the end, Havel complains about the stone floor he so favored. That is life. It’s a good thing to have the choice, Byron thinks. It is everything.
Rutherford and Quinten are in the small, private parlor before the kitchen, and they are all shaking the sleep from their limbs.
Quinten looks at them. He’s been doing so for some time. “Wealth is a resource that he's not lacking in,” Quinten advises. “You’ve the signatures already. I am merely an add-on and I shan’t keep you.”
“Shut up and eat.” Scrubbing his unshaved throat, Havel scowls. It’s a fierce, horrendous thing, on a spiteful creature that Byron knows he’s shared his life’s humors with. Oh, he’d laughed at that crush once, and buried it while doing so; now it’s weathered and remade to fit, and a few earthly tortures won’t kill it.
“There’s talents a plenty. And since you two are such fast friends in all aspects, I dare say all parties are willing.” Havel grumbles some more, but his neck is hurting him; it’s a fine thing to be old and responsible for the world, then fuck on a floor.
“You’ve the power and the means,” Byron says, “—former justice. Ever been a minister?”
“A few times. Not that bearers like Greagor’s church or them in turn, but it is easier to say a few words behind the counter anyway. You’re the easiest yet. For that, I’m grateful.” Quinten reclines in his seat. To his right, Rutherford lays the silverware in neat, straight lines, and pours celebratory cider into shimmery cups. The dawn outside is a foul thing, wreathed in gray and red and purple — Clive left before the light even touched down. Byron had risen with him, shaking off the heat from the banked fire, and Clive’s smile was like that he wore when he was Sir Crandall, knightly and kind — knowing, the imp. His spirit was good, and so was his own.
Byron laughs. “You’ve been good to my nephew, and I reckon the Cid before him too. A fine ally you are, Quinten! Indulging us so.”
Quinten lays a thick slab of jam across his bread. “Naturally. We’ve much to do.”
“I haven’t even the papers,” Havel spits. He’s red in the face.
Byron scowls at him. “Nevermind that, you’ve yet to even file the divorce! If your wife doesn’t turn akashic at sea, poor woman. Now, Rutherford! We must settle this quickly.”
His dear butler has not sat to even join them, but he halts with the tea obligingly. “The large rings, my lord?”
“Aye, the silver bands, those. And a stack of my nice paper, will you — there’s letters to write. I look forward to receiving my dowry at last from the high houses. Oh, how they thought I would never take another, and now they shall fund this entire expedition and I shall not lose a talent! Serves them right.”
Havel lays the back of his head across his chair, eyes closed. Quinten eats his bread, then inquires about Rosaria’s mills, and when they should be amenable to distributing the stores. It’s a better story when there’s a pair of usurpers to make clean the path ahead, the better that Sir Crandall might hasten down the road to meet them when they finally, joyfully, wretchedly, cut the rope.
