Title: The Bloom Upon the Bough, Chapter 1

Fandom: Final Fantasy XII

Pairings: Penelo X Larsa

Rating: PG-13

Summary: There's a difference between need and desire, between what you want and what you'll receive.

Disclaimer: Nothing but the particular combination of words in this piece belongs to me!

Note: This will (hopefully!) be the start of a series of loosely connected ficlets and drabbles centering on Penelo and Larsa, pending general interest from the public and continuing inspiration from the game. So please, if you've enjoyed or disliked this starting piece, let me know! I love feedback that let's me know what does or doesn't work and what might be an interesting new way to go in the future.

Also, please note that since this series of fanfiction contains some sexual situations and innuedos, most of the drabbles take place a few years AFTER the end of the game, when Larsa is in his late teens and Penelo in her early twenties. I can write a lot of things, but I can't write chan.

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There's a difference between need and desire.

Larsa Ferrinas Solidor knows, perhaps more than anyone else, about the needs of his world. He knows how many pounds of rice must be harvested every year to feed the people of cities and how many taxes can be imposed upon the poor until their livelihood is ruined and how many levies can be placed on the rich until they groaned. He knows how much money it takes to repair roads destroyed by acts of God and buildings by acts of armed resisters. He knows to a man how many soldiers are in his army and how many resources need to be taken from the earth and from the people to keep them securing the boundaries of his empire. He knows, as perhaps only Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca does, of the precise weight a kingdom can exert upon its ruler. And he knows, to an almost painful degree, how much his people still have need from him, from all of the house of Solidor.

Larsa knows need and how it can be met so easily with the body of a Rozarrian noble woman in the throne beside his own. Larsa understands need and the cries of his people and knows how to subdue them both as painlessly as possible.

But desire is a different beast altogether.

Desire is a girl from the gutter, flaxen hair held back from her face and shocked eyes calling to him for help. Desire is a hand tentatively placed in his, short nails raking the fabric of his gloves. Desire is the tip of her fingers, tentatively stroking his face and wiping away the trecharous tears that had fallen after he had truly understood the weight of the legacy he was the only survivor to. Desire is the moonlight that had lit her from within as she had lain sprawled across his bed, gaze absent of any thought of another and arms already pulling him down to her. Desire is her face buried in the curve of his neck, the heat of her mouth pressed against his ear as she had assured him, once and for all, yes, yes, she wanted this, more than she'd ever wanted anything else in the world.

Desire is love and desire is want, mingling together until even the emperor of Archadia knew not what was what. It has no place in his world in the same way, not the way need does, but he can't deny it anymore than he can deny her.

Larsa knows more than anyone else in the world that there's a difference between need and desire. But when he closes his eyes and thinks of Penelo as he last knew her...

(eyes closed, tears beading his shoulder, arms like lilies wrapped around his neck before the world parted them once more, god, once more)

...He can't quite recall how it mattered.