[TD Week] cast from clay or bread
Jul. 9th, 2026 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleniasTitle: cast from clay or bread
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: gen
Word Count: 900
Notes: Written for day two of TwoDragoons, joy. This is part of a chronological series following a campaign season for Dion and Terence. If you see Kay Boyle in this you are correct. Also: misogyny. Yay.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: gen
Word Count: 900
Notes: Written for day two of TwoDragoons, joy. This is part of a chronological series following a campaign season for Dion and Terence. If you see Kay Boyle in this you are correct. Also: misogyny. Yay.
-
“Your Highness, the grounds are not stable. It’s the timber posts, cracked.” He’s none of the daring or aptitude for danger that compels Dion to obey or respect him.
“What of it? We will find no finer,” Dion replies calmly. The scabs of the church are only themselves, yet his conscience had demanded this of him until it was a torment. The flagstones stick up like grave markers, beckoning him into the vacant, chilled body beyond. Dion hastily steps over smashed stairs into a wide passage bushes have already intruded with their tough roots, and small pines with tufts of needles. Ice cracks beneath Dion’s boots as he turns, constructing reasons to dislike this guard’s tracking eyes; his habits are familiar and modeled, but in vain. “I wish to pray. You may return to your commander.”
A held breath releases from between steel plate and fogs. Dion warns him with his gaze what is good. “As you like. Tis’ a bad omen, is all. The threshold. I mean no offense. Milord.”
His retreating steps are like music; Dion congratulates himself and strides forward in quick, short steps, passing rotten and upturned pews, kneeling hard in the nave on the frozen earth, and entreating patience as he rebukes his men for theirs. It it not their cold steel that drives him to haste, but vanity. He bleeds and petrifies for assurances — then the capital thanks the boy his stepmother parades and attributes Bahamut’s success. It is a pitiless competition between sons — no, between Anabella and himself, for pieces of Greagor’s sacred word. It makes him uneasy, that the cloistered life they uphold may make them ignorant to an environment by which men and women reveal their true nature, and the far war a pretense by which the palace may be commanded by rot from inside.
Dion drives his right heel flat against the earth and leans into his flared thigh, his proud body, and prostrates himself. His brother would be like his stepmother if he amounted to much, he wouldn’t love him — and the Empress, with ambition higher than Greagor’s; she’s a facsimile of their Goddess’s expressionless, down turned face and Dion knows his father had not thought She could ever look at him like that.
Dion trusts he had loved a woman once, or the novelty of one; his heart was moved by her, like good sleep or gentle hymns.
That Greagorian women were not cast from clay or bread, but like men — he could lose to her.
Dion thrusts himself up and wants the confidence of his boot in his lance, and the answer writhing pinned beneath his blow — to strike Whitewyrm to sense and order and humility, to be what it was, to be good; every man he’s forced to barter could be the one he will refuse. But he cannot refuse them himself. He will bear her false equanimity, he knows, just as he weathers his father’s disinterest in a son who’s title alone retains him the dignity of his position. Only that the war is won; only that Bahamut has the final word.
That he will give willingly, but not the rest, not his disbelief. His father’s indulgences speak to his own. It is shame that he despises most.
“New vows?” Terence calls.
“I ran afoul,” Dion returns and rights a dusty, moth eaten chair.
This man, friend, comrade, conspirator, lover, with no help from the church, meant more to him than the fruition of his family. How it was so Dion traces with easy recall.
“I came here to get away,” Dion explains. He stills like glass, and watches Terence watch him, mirroring himself, mirroring his soliloquy. He sits and waits.
“In ruins?” Terence inquires. He strokes the molding lectern kindly and drags his boot through rubble and Greagor’s relief, and squints breathless into the glare of the intangible, afternoon sun. Dion’s heart constricts; he blew over by superstition. “Are you satisfied then?”
“No,” Dion retorts and clasps his hands between wide knees. “The blight should arrive before my peace. I do not invent it. It is the confidence of my officers or Greagor’s word.”
“I hear a different march, my prince.”
“It is your own,” Dion reproaches, low and dulcet.
“You would not hear it?” he laughs.
“Go on.”
“Is it not enough, that you should both love and gamble your life?” Courage stirs hot and guilty in Dion’s blood like the torch bearers had already signaled his approach. Terence’s back straightens, prepared for Dion’s command, or rebuke — ready to meet it.
“That I could bear to lose it—”
“Not this,” Terence retorts, stirring Dion to his feet as if a thread were taut between them, winding him in. But Terence’s gray eyes are lit and reflect what Dion already knows, that each of them could not be anything but what they were; they were becoming incorrigible, happy thieves.
Every act of his life was lived thus to shape the armor of Greagor’s hearth that kept from tragedy another man’s flesh and bone. Dion’s own sickened and wanted and he felt unmoored, distilled. But it was true that it was not all an unbearable indignity; it net him mastery—it gave him pleasure.
Dion goes to him. Between them, the lectern stands indomitable. Dion spreads his hand flat over Terence’s trembling own, where their scriptures would lay. It is as good as any word.
“Your Highness, the grounds are not stable. It’s the timber posts, cracked.” He’s none of the daring or aptitude for danger that compels Dion to obey or respect him.
“What of it? We will find no finer,” Dion replies calmly. The scabs of the church are only themselves, yet his conscience had demanded this of him until it was a torment. The flagstones stick up like grave markers, beckoning him into the vacant, chilled body beyond. Dion hastily steps over smashed stairs into a wide passage bushes have already intruded with their tough roots, and small pines with tufts of needles. Ice cracks beneath Dion’s boots as he turns, constructing reasons to dislike this guard’s tracking eyes; his habits are familiar and modeled, but in vain. “I wish to pray. You may return to your commander.”
A held breath releases from between steel plate and fogs. Dion warns him with his gaze what is good. “As you like. Tis’ a bad omen, is all. The threshold. I mean no offense. Milord.”
His retreating steps are like music; Dion congratulates himself and strides forward in quick, short steps, passing rotten and upturned pews, kneeling hard in the nave on the frozen earth, and entreating patience as he rebukes his men for theirs. It it not their cold steel that drives him to haste, but vanity. He bleeds and petrifies for assurances — then the capital thanks the boy his stepmother parades and attributes Bahamut’s success. It is a pitiless competition between sons — no, between Anabella and himself, for pieces of Greagor’s sacred word. It makes him uneasy, that the cloistered life they uphold may make them ignorant to an environment by which men and women reveal their true nature, and the far war a pretense by which the palace may be commanded by rot from inside.
Dion drives his right heel flat against the earth and leans into his flared thigh, his proud body, and prostrates himself. His brother would be like his stepmother if he amounted to much, he wouldn’t love him — and the Empress, with ambition higher than Greagor’s; she’s a facsimile of their Goddess’s expressionless, down turned face and Dion knows his father had not thought She could ever look at him like that.
Dion trusts he had loved a woman once, or the novelty of one; his heart was moved by her, like good sleep or gentle hymns.
That Greagorian women were not cast from clay or bread, but like men — he could lose to her.
Dion thrusts himself up and wants the confidence of his boot in his lance, and the answer writhing pinned beneath his blow — to strike Whitewyrm to sense and order and humility, to be what it was, to be good; every man he’s forced to barter could be the one he will refuse. But he cannot refuse them himself. He will bear her false equanimity, he knows, just as he weathers his father’s disinterest in a son who’s title alone retains him the dignity of his position. Only that the war is won; only that Bahamut has the final word.
That he will give willingly, but not the rest, not his disbelief. His father’s indulgences speak to his own. It is shame that he despises most.
“New vows?” Terence calls.
“I ran afoul,” Dion returns and rights a dusty, moth eaten chair.
This man, friend, comrade, conspirator, lover, with no help from the church, meant more to him than the fruition of his family. How it was so Dion traces with easy recall.
“I came here to get away,” Dion explains. He stills like glass, and watches Terence watch him, mirroring himself, mirroring his soliloquy. He sits and waits.
“In ruins?” Terence inquires. He strokes the molding lectern kindly and drags his boot through rubble and Greagor’s relief, and squints breathless into the glare of the intangible, afternoon sun. Dion’s heart constricts; he blew over by superstition. “Are you satisfied then?”
“No,” Dion retorts and clasps his hands between wide knees. “The blight should arrive before my peace. I do not invent it. It is the confidence of my officers or Greagor’s word.”
“I hear a different march, my prince.”
“It is your own,” Dion reproaches, low and dulcet.
“You would not hear it?” he laughs.
“Go on.”
“Is it not enough, that you should both love and gamble your life?” Courage stirs hot and guilty in Dion’s blood like the torch bearers had already signaled his approach. Terence’s back straightens, prepared for Dion’s command, or rebuke — ready to meet it.
“That I could bear to lose it—”
“Not this,” Terence retorts, stirring Dion to his feet as if a thread were taut between them, winding him in. But Terence’s gray eyes are lit and reflect what Dion already knows, that each of them could not be anything but what they were; they were becoming incorrigible, happy thieves.
Every act of his life was lived thus to shape the armor of Greagor’s hearth that kept from tragedy another man’s flesh and bone. Dion’s own sickened and wanted and he felt unmoored, distilled. But it was true that it was not all an unbearable indignity; it net him mastery—it gave him pleasure.
Dion goes to him. Between them, the lectern stands indomitable. Dion spreads his hand flat over Terence’s trembling own, where their scriptures would lay. It is as good as any word.
