I'm getting rid of all my older, original fiction stuff. Starting today I want to kind of clean up this journal. Some of the prompts I wrote before were, er...not good.

Plus hecatesbrat  if you're reading, I'm sorry I haven't posted at ffviii_100 for so long :( This summer has been an incredibly horrific/stressful time. 

For the community islandwhispers . I've never written Lost before, so I don't know if it's any good. But I loved writing a young Ben here.

Prompt: "Don’t expect God’s protection in places beyond God’s dominion. It will only make you feel punished....when things go badly, you will blame yourself....Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky." (p 309)
 

 

You say: "ere long done do does did "
words which could only be your own
you then produce the text
from whence was ripped
(some dizzy whore, 1804)

-- The Smiths, Cemetery Gates

Title: Old Chains
Claim: Rinoa/Caraway
Rating: G
Prompt: Digging, hidden, the other side (#9, #42, #71)
A/N: Based on the scene between Rinoa/Caraway at Caraway's mansion in Disc 1.

She felt a chill on the back of her neck, that same familiar chill; it was him, she knew it. It had been, what, a year? He hadn't changed, but he could tell from her expression that she certainly had, become something alien to him. Well, a little more a stranger than before.

 

She was sure Quistis hated her. Not that she had any right to. What did she know? All she saw were the old marble walls, the decorated Father, the sharp defiance in her voice; in one word, spoilt. A spoilt, mean tempered little girl.

 

This place made her want to cry, to claw at the windows and never look back. But she would always be looking back, glimpsing at him, waiting, waiting for that sad old dream of hers'. Not that she'd ever admit it.

 

He cleared his voice.

 

“It'll be chaos out there soon. You'll be safe here.”

 

She could feel those old, cold metal bars. It's good for you, I know what's right, you're so inexperienced, one of these days you're going to be hurt, do you have a death wish? She had spent so long rattling these old chains off of him, feeling her wings unfurl against the bitter breeze.

 

A sharp, electronic beep.

 

“Oh no...he's gonna lock me in!”

 

She slid her hands against the panel door.

 

“I...I can't do it.”

 

She let her cheek rest against the door, imagining the other side, the chains biting slowly into her wrists and tightening, tightening, slowly, slowly.

Title: The Dirty Ground
Characters: Rinoa/Caraway
Prompts: Sin, blood, fever (#25, #93, #70)
Rating: G
Summary: The day Rinoa was born.

---

The day she was born, there had been an uprising. A peaceful protest that got ugly in a hot March; such unrelenting heat with no rain to nourish the wilting trees. I missed the rain. It would have been able to cleanse the air.

A stone was thrown, they fired into the crowd. A catalyst for weeks of agitation, of dirty looks and half-threats. Not my orders. But does it matter? They were my men. They are my responsibility. They caused around fifty injuries, a dozen fatalities. It was messy, it was chaotic, it was angry.

They killed innocent men, angry men, men with missing teeth and bandaged heads. A fourteen year old boy had been killed. Their blood dug deep into the ground. Scattered banners on the floor, mopping up the odd casualty. Some women cried. Free Timber, End the Oppression, Freedom, Freedom.

I asked for the leader's name. Eule. He had a son, they bleated, and a wife named Lenore. I would make sure she was duly compensated for the error, I told Deling. No, she won't talk, no, no. (And even if she did, well, I'd have to do what was necessary).

The boy had ruddy red cheeks and a snarl. The Mother simply stared into the crowd, hands over her belly,  pale white with fear. I bit back the uneasy feeling in my stomach. My position didn't call for emotion, or heart.

Back then, I was an efficient sort, detached. Then, they whispered in my ear that my daughter had just been born. My hands were then reddened, suddenly, as if I had caressed the hot corpses in the midday sun in my regret. I imagined her clean, pink skin and my delicately gloved hands and felt very, very ill. Will I go now? No, I had to have a few minutes alone. A minute with the dead.  

Later on, they would call it Fury's Massacre. I deserve this title, I deserve the nightmares in my old age, I deserve... well, I deserve everything. It was  fifteen years later when she asked me why I had let the atrocities happen, and told me how ashamed she was to have my name, knowing how readily I had dirtied the ground beneath my feet.

 

I don't know whether to post this to ffviii_100 or not, but hell, I like it.

---

Title: I'm Right Here
Rating: G
Characters: Julia/Caraway, Julia/Laguna
Rating: G
Word count: 100
Summary: Julia accepts a bittersweet proposal.

“So, please just consider what I've asked you.”

“Of course.”

“I know... that I'm not an emotional man, and I can be rather a... quiet man... but I would like you to know that I love you, and have for a very long time.”

“Fury--”

“Let me finish, please... And I would like to say, if you would be my wife, I will take care of you.”

“Fury, I know all this.”

“Then...then... are you saying no?”

“...No, it's just...”

“You still love him.”

“Maybe... I'm not sure.”

“But I'm right here.”

“You are.”

“I always have been.”

“......Yes.”

Title: Paper Flowers
Claim: Rinoa/Caraway
Prompts: "I'm sorry", blue, old (#89, #20, #14) 
Rating: G
Summary: In the aftermath of Julia's death, they both find it hard to connect

---

She hated this medicine. It tasted like tar.

The doctors said she was still a little sick, so they made her stay in bed. She had bruises on her back that hurt sometimes and looked like crushed violets. Her Mother used to press flowers in notebooks and sneak them in the corners of bookcases. The flowers ended up as frail as paper.

“Erm, Rinoa.”

She held her hands in her lap. They were still bandaged. Her bones felt older, somehow, as if every movement was slow and tense.

“I, er... I have to go back to work tomorrow.”

She bit down on her lip. It turned white.

“It's just...Mr Deling really needs me back. Do you understand?”

No, I don't.

She smiled tautly. Yes, yes. It's fine.

“I know it's a difficult time, but we should try to return to our normal lives as best we can.”

You need to change my bandages.

“So, I'm sorry...”

Whose going to change them?

“But...”

 

He sighed and shook his head. A small fire burnt in her room; bed rest for weeks; with a mountain of books for company. Frost was forming on the windows, a wintry sigh etched on glass.

She wanted him to touch her, to smooth over her hair, to cusp her cheek in his hand. She wanted him to change her bandages, to wait for a brush of his thumb on her palm and that breathless rush it would create.

No one held her anymore. It felt weird. Was she even here? Or was she a half-shadow, lingering in the window?

 

Title: Knives
Claim: Rinoa / Caraway
Prompts: Deception, saying goodbye, till death do us part (#24, #57, #27) 
Rating: G
Summary: Julia's funeral.

---- 

If anyone here had known her Mother well enough, people would have known she hated black.

 

This was what Rinoa thought as they piled in, pretty pearl necklaces on gaunt necks and eyes being patted with monogrammed handkerchiefs. She didn't know half of them. They whispered and held concession with her Father, muttering vaguely about loss and bravery. He wasn't brave, she thought. Just because he's sitting there and being quiet (like he always is) doesn't make him a "great" man. Everywhere it was 'the great General Caraway', everywhere 'tragic loss for Galbadia's second most prominent statesman'. They tossed around tragedy like a cheap tool to sell more papers, oblivious to the actual tragedy Rinoa knew she was facing.

She felt like she was a firework, ready to whir violently with colour and smoke. He, meanwhile, was a still body of water; you could only gaze long enough before you started seeing things. And when you dived in a million knives dug into your body, deceitfully warm and glowing in the moonlight, edging you closer and closer until--

A shuddering, icy cold.

He had insisted on a closed casket. People went up and touched the mahogany briefly, though as if silently afraid of some curse of the dead. There were lilies everywhere, but she would have wanted roses, ripe and unfurling in the sun, and not in the cold pallor of some anonymous church.

Rinoa thought it was like one of the parties her Father held, in which her Mother would smile politely and people would be whispering and swirling wine in with vicious words. Common, flighty, promiscuous, inferior. And even now, they were shutting her Mother away, because sympathy is nothing without a face.

Women walked to her Father, perfumed and wide eyed, clutching his hand oh-so-tightly and murmuring sweet delicate sympathies. Old women gossiped with gloved hands and stony faces. A good man, and now, ripe for the plucking for the younger 'more suitable' girls of their family.

As he skimmed his hand over the carefully engraved casket, he simply sighed with a resigned acceptance. Rinoa stood by him, warming the golden hinges with her hands. She looked up at him, curious as to what his face would tell her. It told her little. He simply shook his head and walked away, back into the warm hive of people.

 

This is for hecatesbrat</lj> 

List of potentially weird, evil pairings in FFVIII (feel free to add more).

1. Laguna x Rinoa (I'm actually writing this right now) 
2. Edea x Seifer
3. Edea x Rinoa
4. Edea x Squall
5. Ellone x Edea
6. Laguna x Ellone
7. Seifer x Cid
8. Caraway x Laguna
9. Laguna x Squall (seen a few bits written on this...but incest fics aren't really my thing)

For Week 4's prompt over on ffviii_100 the prompt was comfort. I wrote a 100 word drabble featuring on each of the main characters. If you want the condensed version of what to read, skip on over to Seifer or (maybe) Zell's. I really didn't like how Squall or Rinoa's turned out. If you're looking for nothing special, try Selphie/Irvine's or Quistis's.

Selphie and Irvine

Seifer and Edea (PG)

Squall

Rinoa

Zell

Quistis