[TD Week] plains leap up
Jul. 5th, 2026 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleniasTitle: plains leap up
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: gen
Word Count: 500
Notes: Written for day one of TwoDragoons, front lines/on the wings. This is part of a chronological series following a campaign season for Dion and Terence.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: gen
Word Count: 500
Notes: Written for day one of TwoDragoons, front lines/on the wings. This is part of a chronological series following a campaign season for Dion and Terence.
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Dion’s gauntlets bite into the mail loose against the officer’s throat, hauling and pinning him against a makeshift table wrought from the farmer’s severed door. The hut lay in splinters, brutalized by Waloed’s artillery and Garuda’s storms, and serves their officers now as a grave and billet. Beyond the frozen earth the dead smolder, but inside they stir wearily and wait only to be dismissed.
Terence exhales air between pursed lips and looms in his prince’s periphery. He’s no danger to Terence, but to himself there is a price and that is his concern. The officer, seeing Greagor’s dog, could be alive or dead. Terence scowls with no ambiguity toward who he will defend. “Your Highne—”
“‘My star is in descent,’” Dion repeats icily, transfixed. “Commander Pierroux, it was an enormous slice of conceit. You think your kindness will make better characters of your men. You think it’s clever to give them what they want and that they should reward you with gratitude for their duty. You forget yourself; I am less of a civilian than you. Are you higher than Greagor?” Terence winces, as if transposed. It’s not to him the judgment falls, but he should be so lucky that love’s barbs held him tighter. “Forgive me then. I am less pious than you. Now you may live to learn what assertion will yield and you’d have found it better to die under my command with your men than Hers. Arrest him.”
Terror punctures the evening further — arms raising, Pierroux cries out and collapses at his feet. He holds himself as if wounded, clutching his unearned insignia and rank, humiliating his sponsor, mouth gaping. Dion pulls away with tremendous force. Terence follows his mind, so plain like water: he looks like his father, or a cardinal. These men hold power over sense. He will answer for it all. It hurts him now.
Terence grimly steps forward between sparse, frozen men, who break free their reverie. “Not you,” Dion disposes. “Stay your hand. Sir—”
There are leaders of men Terence may obey under oath; there are few he obeys for belief they are right. Dion knows misery, and shunts it; bound to progenitors that cherish only what exalts them beyond Greagor’s pantomime of stars, he chooses a different path.
Later, Terence touches his cheek with the back of his fingers. Dion turns his face into his knuckles, eyes tightly shut. He bears it, and yet. “Even Greagor makes mistakes, my prince. You know Her stories,” he soothes, sweet. In his heart he knows Dion sees the truth and passes over it. But he startles him, snatching Terence’s hand and confessing against his own better nature:
“I trust my mind,” Dion relents, tired, “but I no longer know Hers.”
“The augers—”
“What of them? They lie.”
Terence squeezes his callused fingers and strokes his broad palm in silence. “You don’t,” Dion says, nodding to himself, and then, to sleep.
Tomorrow, the plains leap up at them like silver fish or spears.
Dion’s gauntlets bite into the mail loose against the officer’s throat, hauling and pinning him against a makeshift table wrought from the farmer’s severed door. The hut lay in splinters, brutalized by Waloed’s artillery and Garuda’s storms, and serves their officers now as a grave and billet. Beyond the frozen earth the dead smolder, but inside they stir wearily and wait only to be dismissed.
Terence exhales air between pursed lips and looms in his prince’s periphery. He’s no danger to Terence, but to himself there is a price and that is his concern. The officer, seeing Greagor’s dog, could be alive or dead. Terence scowls with no ambiguity toward who he will defend. “Your Highne—”
“‘My star is in descent,’” Dion repeats icily, transfixed. “Commander Pierroux, it was an enormous slice of conceit. You think your kindness will make better characters of your men. You think it’s clever to give them what they want and that they should reward you with gratitude for their duty. You forget yourself; I am less of a civilian than you. Are you higher than Greagor?” Terence winces, as if transposed. It’s not to him the judgment falls, but he should be so lucky that love’s barbs held him tighter. “Forgive me then. I am less pious than you. Now you may live to learn what assertion will yield and you’d have found it better to die under my command with your men than Hers. Arrest him.”
Terror punctures the evening further — arms raising, Pierroux cries out and collapses at his feet. He holds himself as if wounded, clutching his unearned insignia and rank, humiliating his sponsor, mouth gaping. Dion pulls away with tremendous force. Terence follows his mind, so plain like water: he looks like his father, or a cardinal. These men hold power over sense. He will answer for it all. It hurts him now.
Terence grimly steps forward between sparse, frozen men, who break free their reverie. “Not you,” Dion disposes. “Stay your hand. Sir—”
There are leaders of men Terence may obey under oath; there are few he obeys for belief they are right. Dion knows misery, and shunts it; bound to progenitors that cherish only what exalts them beyond Greagor’s pantomime of stars, he chooses a different path.
Later, Terence touches his cheek with the back of his fingers. Dion turns his face into his knuckles, eyes tightly shut. He bears it, and yet. “Even Greagor makes mistakes, my prince. You know Her stories,” he soothes, sweet. In his heart he knows Dion sees the truth and passes over it. But he startles him, snatching Terence’s hand and confessing against his own better nature:
“I trust my mind,” Dion relents, tired, “but I no longer know Hers.”
“The augers—”
“What of them? They lie.”
Terence squeezes his callused fingers and strokes his broad palm in silence. “You don’t,” Dion says, nodding to himself, and then, to sleep.
Tomorrow, the plains leap up at them like silver fish or spears.
