FFXII: Agony

[edenbound]

Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Pairing: None
Warnings: Angst
Rating: G
Summary: Fran had thought Humes too transient for true grief. For the_sandsea.


Somehow, she hadn't really thought of Humes as capable of sorrow. They were such transient creatures, their lives a brief bright smear across the map of time. She couldn't imagine that any brief sorrow could cut as deep as a long and slow grieving.

And Balthier seemed that twice over and more. He burned with feelings, with energy, with half voiced ambitions. It amused her to watch him, sometimes: driven to place a mark upon the world somehow, as if it could last. The Humes were only remembered if they built huge things to last and stand guard over their memory for years and years beyond their span. The Humes comforted themselves with their temples, their statues, their homes in which the living green was bent to obey.

They found happiness too easily, and their sorrow was even more transient than they were.

She never thought to see a Hume cry. When she thought of tears she expecting something graceful -- sad and yet somehow beautiful.

Balthier's tears were wrenching, wracking. They shook him with agony that surely cut into him deeper than any knife. Deeper than anything she'd ever felt.

Fran silently withdrew, wondering how every one of those soft sounds could be a cut to her heart.

Comments

[calliopepurple.livejournal.com]

Aww, now I'm wondering who died.

[irish-ais.livejournal.com]

That's gorgeous--the wording is very elegant, very Fran.

[muggy-mountain.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I don't usually read FFXII fic, but the summary intrigued me in its uniquely un-Hume viewpoint. It's a touching piece, of course, but I like the consideration you've given to the Vieran here; their thoughts on Humes allow such a tidy cultural and personal development for Fran (and Balthier).

Bravo.

Also, small bit of a whine: the colors on this layout make the blinky cursor really difficult to see when typing comments and thus it's difficult to go back and make a change without using the mouse.

[edenbound.livejournal.com]

Thank you. ♥

Hm, because I reply to comments through my email, I'd never noticed. This is one of the LJ presets, so in theory it should be fine... D: Thanks for telling me, I'll try tweaking it a bit. xD

[threewalls]

An interesting contrast between her views of humes as a species and in the particular. (I'm guessing this is vaguely post-Pharos, but the unexplained why of his grief isn't necessary to appreciate her reaction to it.)