Eye Will Petrify - Final Fantasy IX - PG
Fandom: Final Fantasy IX
Title: Eye Will Petrify
Rating: PG
Word Count: 840
Notes: Romance. Freya/Fratley. Posted December 23, 2006.
Summary: It's morning time. Wonder where you are.
Freya hates mornings in Burmecia.
Every day, when she awakes, the rain patters so drearily on the stone buildings and stone floors that she can not summon the energy to open her eyes. Instead she lays naked in tangled sheets and waits for Sir Fratley to knock on her door.
Knock. “Are you appropriate?” he asks in an embarrassed fashion.
“No,” she replies, and in a curious sort of way, waits to see if he will enter anyway.
He stays outside.
She gets up and throws on her attire and tells him to come in while buttoning up her jacket. He pushes open the door hesitantly, like he does every morning. It is never locked. He says nothing, though, and simply stands awkwardly in the corner, watching. He never sits down on her bed, or leans against her walls or steps closer to her. He certainly never asks her whose claws those are peeking beneath her bed, or the set of unused lock picks on her dresser, or why she has Alexandrian roses sticking out of a cooking pot.
He is so predictable, Freya thinks between buttons, behind the lids of her closed eyes. He always has been. That too, has not changed.
Once they leave her rooms, she and Fratley sit on the hard palace steps for a guard duty they have been assigned since childhood. He is like stone at her side with the same respectful rigidness she admired as a child, and she wants to break him but knows she will only break herself in the process.
So Freya closes her eyes.
It is here, where she hugs her knees and he stares unreadably into the horizon, that present and past lapse and blur. The mornings are always like this for her, unyielding and sturdy, driven by the same uninfluenced forces that directed her younger self in the same pattern. It is as if everything she has experienced between than and now is pointless, as if her efforts to change and be changed were in vain. Now she is stuck in this same past, same memory, with the same purpose, the same man. Oh how peculiar life is, she thinks, that all bends and wends lead to the same unchanging path. Is the world so curved that no traveler can escape its perfect circle?
How can she have thought differently?
Freya curls deeper into herself and hardly feels the chill of the rain. With her eyes closed, she doesn’t have to see that she is slowly petrifying inside.
“Freya?”
Freya opens her eyes with a start. She looks around somewhat bewildered, before realizing it is Fratley who spoke. He is still staring out at the horizon ablaze with red fire.
“I think,” he says carefully, as if testing the words out, “that you should get a lock for that door of yours. Anybody could walk in and catch you off guard.”
She blinks. “What?”
He turns to her. “Your door. It is always unlocked. It makes me feel...uncomfortable.”
She stares at him, a bit unnerved. “I don’t like to lock the door,” she suddenly bursts out, as if her words can no longer stand being caged. “It feels so very final, as if I am locking myself away from the rest of the world. I like to think that I am apart of it still, that it can still be with me, if it only tried.” She is shocked at her words, and even more at their truthfulness.
He does not seem surprised. He thinks on her words, tugging thoughtfully on a lock of his own hair. “Then open your window instead, invite it in,” he says practically.
“Open my window?”
“Yes.”
She gapes at him in disbelief, and then throws back her head and laughs, long and loud and full of life. When she looks back at him, her cheeks red with mirth, he is frowning at her.
“Why do you laugh?” he asks, somewhat miffed.
“I don’t have a window,” she replies between chuckles. “My walls are of solid stone. You have been visiting my room for how long and not noticed?”
He blushes and turns away, rubbing his cheek with the back of his hand in a habit she has never noticed before. “Well,” he says quietly. “I am not usually looking at your room when I visit.”
Freya stops laughing abruptly. A soft blush rises to her cheeks and she looks away awkwardly off into the horizon. “Oh,” is all she says, and the present is awfully real and suddenly she realizes how very different she feels sitting next to him in the same spot they have always sat.
“...I shall talk with the King’s Steward. I doubt he will have a problem with moving you to a room with a window.”
“...Thank you.”
The next day finds Freya in a different room on a different morning with a man who has always been different if only she had looked, she had opened her eyes, she had seen him in the morning light.
Title: Eye Will Petrify
Rating: PG
Word Count: 840
Notes: Romance. Freya/Fratley. Posted December 23, 2006.
Summary: It's morning time. Wonder where you are.
Freya hates mornings in Burmecia.
Every day, when she awakes, the rain patters so drearily on the stone buildings and stone floors that she can not summon the energy to open her eyes. Instead she lays naked in tangled sheets and waits for Sir Fratley to knock on her door.
Knock. “Are you appropriate?” he asks in an embarrassed fashion.
“No,” she replies, and in a curious sort of way, waits to see if he will enter anyway.
He stays outside.
She gets up and throws on her attire and tells him to come in while buttoning up her jacket. He pushes open the door hesitantly, like he does every morning. It is never locked. He says nothing, though, and simply stands awkwardly in the corner, watching. He never sits down on her bed, or leans against her walls or steps closer to her. He certainly never asks her whose claws those are peeking beneath her bed, or the set of unused lock picks on her dresser, or why she has Alexandrian roses sticking out of a cooking pot.
He is so predictable, Freya thinks between buttons, behind the lids of her closed eyes. He always has been. That too, has not changed.
Once they leave her rooms, she and Fratley sit on the hard palace steps for a guard duty they have been assigned since childhood. He is like stone at her side with the same respectful rigidness she admired as a child, and she wants to break him but knows she will only break herself in the process.
So Freya closes her eyes.
It is here, where she hugs her knees and he stares unreadably into the horizon, that present and past lapse and blur. The mornings are always like this for her, unyielding and sturdy, driven by the same uninfluenced forces that directed her younger self in the same pattern. It is as if everything she has experienced between than and now is pointless, as if her efforts to change and be changed were in vain. Now she is stuck in this same past, same memory, with the same purpose, the same man. Oh how peculiar life is, she thinks, that all bends and wends lead to the same unchanging path. Is the world so curved that no traveler can escape its perfect circle?
How can she have thought differently?
Freya curls deeper into herself and hardly feels the chill of the rain. With her eyes closed, she doesn’t have to see that she is slowly petrifying inside.
“Freya?”
Freya opens her eyes with a start. She looks around somewhat bewildered, before realizing it is Fratley who spoke. He is still staring out at the horizon ablaze with red fire.
“I think,” he says carefully, as if testing the words out, “that you should get a lock for that door of yours. Anybody could walk in and catch you off guard.”
She blinks. “What?”
He turns to her. “Your door. It is always unlocked. It makes me feel...uncomfortable.”
She stares at him, a bit unnerved. “I don’t like to lock the door,” she suddenly bursts out, as if her words can no longer stand being caged. “It feels so very final, as if I am locking myself away from the rest of the world. I like to think that I am apart of it still, that it can still be with me, if it only tried.” She is shocked at her words, and even more at their truthfulness.
He does not seem surprised. He thinks on her words, tugging thoughtfully on a lock of his own hair. “Then open your window instead, invite it in,” he says practically.
“Open my window?”
“Yes.”
She gapes at him in disbelief, and then throws back her head and laughs, long and loud and full of life. When she looks back at him, her cheeks red with mirth, he is frowning at her.
“Why do you laugh?” he asks, somewhat miffed.
“I don’t have a window,” she replies between chuckles. “My walls are of solid stone. You have been visiting my room for how long and not noticed?”
He blushes and turns away, rubbing his cheek with the back of his hand in a habit she has never noticed before. “Well,” he says quietly. “I am not usually looking at your room when I visit.”
Freya stops laughing abruptly. A soft blush rises to her cheeks and she looks away awkwardly off into the horizon. “Oh,” is all she says, and the present is awfully real and suddenly she realizes how very different she feels sitting next to him in the same spot they have always sat.
“...I shall talk with the King’s Steward. I doubt he will have a problem with moving you to a room with a window.”
“...Thank you.”
The next day finds Freya in a different room on a different morning with a man who has always been different if only she had looked, she had opened her eyes, she had seen him in the morning light.