The Pursuit of Knowledge
Feb. 15th, 2009 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonTitle: The Pursuit of Knowledge
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi
Characters: Hugh, Niime
Word count: 486
Warnings: Mild language
Notes: Possibly for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fe_drabble challenge 12 (Legend), but idk. To be perfectly honest I haven't even gotten far enough in Fuuin to recruit Hugh or Niime, so even though I've read all or most of their dialogue I'm not totally confident characterization-wise. And this one tends to ramble a bit... Parking it here for the moment to think about it some more.
...I am basically an unrepentant fangirl for all three generations of Canas's family. I think they have the ideal balance of dorkiness and badassery (i.e. Niime is a badass and everyone else is a dork)
Hugh didn’t know his grandmother was famous until he went to Etruria. To him she’d always just been a spiteful hag. “Everything worth learning is worth suffering for,” she’d said when he was little, and then taught him enough to fill a small library. And if she found out what had happened to that Nosferatu tome she’d sent him away with, he’d be the most learned man in Elibe.
So it took some getting used to, hearing scholars talking about Niime like she was some big deal. “The Hermit on the Mountain,” they called her. There were other hermits on other mountains, but none of them were capitalized. He would’ve tried to leverage this somehow but for the mortal fear that it would get back to her somehow and she’d realize he’d taken up Anima and flay him alive. That didn’t mean she was a legend, though, and it didn’t have much to do with dark magic, either. It was just that she was Grandma.
And when the Etrurian deal fell through and they ended up working for the same army, well, it was hard to believe she hadn’t planned that. Someone had sold him out and she was here to wreak her bloody revenge, or at least guilt-trip him mercilessly, which was probably worse. First she chewed him out for avoiding her, and then any time he tried to talk to her she’d sniff loudly, announce to no one in particular that she had a headache, and walk away without looking at him.
Bitch.
But somehow she was never far away. He didn’t want to let her know that he knew, because who knew how she’d take it, but knowing that she might be there at any time made it stupidly awkward to try to pick up girls. Sure, she wanted him to get married and have a bunch of brilliant shaman children for her to tyrannize, but marriage wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.
He’d reconciled himself to living with this nuisance when it finally happened. It was a little thing. Lou said he might have found a new approach to casting Elfire, a quicker one, but he hadn’t tested it in battle yet.
“I’ll do it,” said Hugh. “In case anything goes wrong. Kids don’t need to risk getting hurt like that.”
“You’re just like your father,” said Niime.
He looked up. She was standing on the other side of the campfire. “The secret’s out,” she said, and with a weird sort of smile she faded back into the night.
He didn’t remember his parents, who’d died when he was two, or his uncles, who’d gone crazy from dark magic even before that. But Grandma did.
Suddenly he was struck with how much she knew – how much she’d learned in her lifetime. And he thought he understood, at least a little. Legends could bleed, too. But more importantly, so could spiteful hags.
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi
Characters: Hugh, Niime
Word count: 486
Warnings: Mild language
Notes: Possibly for
fe_drabble challenge 12 (Legend), but idk. To be perfectly honest I haven't even gotten far enough in Fuuin to recruit Hugh or Niime, so even though I've read all or most of their dialogue I'm not totally confident characterization-wise. And this one tends to ramble a bit... Parking it here for the moment to think about it some more....I am basically an unrepentant fangirl for all three generations of Canas's family. I think they have the ideal balance of dorkiness and badassery (i.e. Niime is a badass and everyone else is a dork)
Hugh didn’t know his grandmother was famous until he went to Etruria. To him she’d always just been a spiteful hag. “Everything worth learning is worth suffering for,” she’d said when he was little, and then taught him enough to fill a small library. And if she found out what had happened to that Nosferatu tome she’d sent him away with, he’d be the most learned man in Elibe.
So it took some getting used to, hearing scholars talking about Niime like she was some big deal. “The Hermit on the Mountain,” they called her. There were other hermits on other mountains, but none of them were capitalized. He would’ve tried to leverage this somehow but for the mortal fear that it would get back to her somehow and she’d realize he’d taken up Anima and flay him alive. That didn’t mean she was a legend, though, and it didn’t have much to do with dark magic, either. It was just that she was Grandma.
And when the Etrurian deal fell through and they ended up working for the same army, well, it was hard to believe she hadn’t planned that. Someone had sold him out and she was here to wreak her bloody revenge, or at least guilt-trip him mercilessly, which was probably worse. First she chewed him out for avoiding her, and then any time he tried to talk to her she’d sniff loudly, announce to no one in particular that she had a headache, and walk away without looking at him.
Bitch.
But somehow she was never far away. He didn’t want to let her know that he knew, because who knew how she’d take it, but knowing that she might be there at any time made it stupidly awkward to try to pick up girls. Sure, she wanted him to get married and have a bunch of brilliant shaman children for her to tyrannize, but marriage wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.
He’d reconciled himself to living with this nuisance when it finally happened. It was a little thing. Lou said he might have found a new approach to casting Elfire, a quicker one, but he hadn’t tested it in battle yet.
“I’ll do it,” said Hugh. “In case anything goes wrong. Kids don’t need to risk getting hurt like that.”
“You’re just like your father,” said Niime.
He looked up. She was standing on the other side of the campfire. “The secret’s out,” she said, and with a weird sort of smile she faded back into the night.
He didn’t remember his parents, who’d died when he was two, or his uncles, who’d gone crazy from dark magic even before that. But Grandma did.
Suddenly he was struck with how much she knew – how much she’d learned in her lifetime. And he thought he understood, at least a little. Legends could bleed, too. But more importantly, so could spiteful hags.
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Date: 2009-02-15 06:06 pm (UTC)I haven't played Fuuin at all, but I've read a little of the script, and I love Hugh so much. He tries ever so hard to be a badass, but...