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shinonFandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Locke/Rachel
Word count: ~450
Warnings: You know the point where a dead loved one stops being your loved one and starts being a corpse? Existential shit like that.
Notes: GYWO Yahtzee, "patient." I like Locke best when he is being massively fucked-up.
“Wait for me,” he said, folding her unresisting hands over her chest. She was just above room temperature, and no matter how long he watched he never saw her breathe. But – he knew corpses, and she wasn't one. She still had the color of life in her face. Her body hadn't stiffened or sagged or started to fall apart. It'd have to be enough. “I'll come back, okay?” He put his hands over hers again – they felt like clay. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and gulped back something that was either tears or bile.
He'd thought about slipping the bracelet on her while he was here. Girls in Kohlingen would wear a narrow gold band around their wrist for a year before marriage, like “soon I'll be handfasted. This is where the ribbon will go.” But he didn't know if he could move her again without gagging. This gift was for Rachel, not – this smoothly articulated doll, a familiar shape with no one inside it -
And maybe he had no right to give it, even to her. After failing her so many times. He imagined her waking up and feeling that bracelet, not as a pledge for the future, but a manacle.
He bowed his head. “Look. Rachel. I'll – I'll fix this. However long it takes.” His hands tightened convulsively on the linen sheet beneath her. “Everything I stole from you, you'll get it back. I promise. Just wait for me. Just don't” - his voice cracked - “don't let go.”
There was nothing else he could say. Eventually he had to turn his back on her and go. He had to go, or this small ruined thing, lying on a cot in an herbalist's basement, would never be Rachel again. It would just be a body.
He went upstairs, to where the old man was waiting. There was a sly expression on his face that Locke didn't like. “Well?” the herbalist said. “Do I know my work or don't I?”
Locke handed him a bag of money. “She gets fresh flowers, every week. Anything that won't interfere with the effect of your potions. Daffodils are her favorite.” The man poured out a stream of coins into his hand, considering. “Three months,” Locke said. “Then I'll be back with more. You take care of her, or I'll know. Anyone lays a finger on her, they lose that finger. Remember that.”
And he went out, and was promptly sick in a hedgerow. The fumes in that place. The body. What the fuck was he doing?
In three months he came back, with more money and no answers. In six. In nine. In a year. Two.
And Rachel waited.
Characters: Locke/Rachel
Word count: ~450
Warnings: You know the point where a dead loved one stops being your loved one and starts being a corpse? Existential shit like that.
Notes: GYWO Yahtzee, "patient." I like Locke best when he is being massively fucked-up.
“Wait for me,” he said, folding her unresisting hands over her chest. She was just above room temperature, and no matter how long he watched he never saw her breathe. But – he knew corpses, and she wasn't one. She still had the color of life in her face. Her body hadn't stiffened or sagged or started to fall apart. It'd have to be enough. “I'll come back, okay?” He put his hands over hers again – they felt like clay. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and gulped back something that was either tears or bile.
He'd thought about slipping the bracelet on her while he was here. Girls in Kohlingen would wear a narrow gold band around their wrist for a year before marriage, like “soon I'll be handfasted. This is where the ribbon will go.” But he didn't know if he could move her again without gagging. This gift was for Rachel, not – this smoothly articulated doll, a familiar shape with no one inside it -
And maybe he had no right to give it, even to her. After failing her so many times. He imagined her waking up and feeling that bracelet, not as a pledge for the future, but a manacle.
He bowed his head. “Look. Rachel. I'll – I'll fix this. However long it takes.” His hands tightened convulsively on the linen sheet beneath her. “Everything I stole from you, you'll get it back. I promise. Just wait for me. Just don't” - his voice cracked - “don't let go.”
There was nothing else he could say. Eventually he had to turn his back on her and go. He had to go, or this small ruined thing, lying on a cot in an herbalist's basement, would never be Rachel again. It would just be a body.
He went upstairs, to where the old man was waiting. There was a sly expression on his face that Locke didn't like. “Well?” the herbalist said. “Do I know my work or don't I?”
Locke handed him a bag of money. “She gets fresh flowers, every week. Anything that won't interfere with the effect of your potions. Daffodils are her favorite.” The man poured out a stream of coins into his hand, considering. “Three months,” Locke said. “Then I'll be back with more. You take care of her, or I'll know. Anyone lays a finger on her, they lose that finger. Remember that.”
And he went out, and was promptly sick in a hedgerow. The fumes in that place. The body. What the fuck was he doing?
In three months he came back, with more money and no answers. In six. In nine. In a year. Two.
And Rachel waited.
