He's awakened by Drace tugging his arm sharply. His first action is to reach for his sword, other hand already grasping beneath his pillow for the small stiletto he always kept there, but then the woman's stern face comes into focus and he relaxes slightly.
"What is it?" he asks, sitting up. Drace, as ever, looks alert and tense, but he can see the telltale rings beneath her eyes.
"Lord Larsa awakens," she sighs. "He had a bad dream."
They sit with the toddler till the early hours of the morning, until the boy's older brother finds them; Lord Larsa sprawled across both their laps and drool collecting at Drace's thigh. They must not have slept for a whole ten hours, but they are still awake, hands resting together on the small of his back.
--
There's a few hassled shouts, a loud clang, a wail, and various training soldiers glance up to see a small Larsa Solidor on the ground, face red and tears rolling down his cheeks as he clutches his scraped knee. It's less than a split second later Drace comes tearing across the grounds, scooping him up with one arm and examining his knee with the other, the stack of papers she had been so meticulously sorting scattering away into the wind.
--
Gabranth glances up when two small-gloved hands appear at the edge of his book, closely followed by a mop of black hair and bright blue eyes. His eyes follow the train of scattered toys to the study doorway, where Drace stands as a silhouette, eyes fixed to the hallway outside.
"Good evening to you, my Lord."
Larsa peers up at him innocently for a few moments, before raising his arms above his head. Gabranth stoops in his seat immediately, taking the boy gently beneath the shoulder and raising him onto the leather arm of his chair. He shifts the book so its spread across both their laps, and Drace enters the room, shutting the study door behind her quietly.
"Doubtful he would be interested in such texts," she murmurs, leaning against the scroll-covered desk and folding her arms. "At such an age."
"Ah but he is a Solidor." He replies, with a grim smile, as Larsa's pure white fingers ghost across Tombs of a Dying Age, and he slits one on the corner.
--
He's eight now, at that age and rank where he can be indignant and still pass as a pleasing young child. He had bare been on the Chocobo for five seconds before it shrieked and gave a wild buck, the small boy tossed off its back and towards the shrubs violently. Gabranth is there before the beast's claws hit the dirt, catching Larsa safely in his arms and slinging him over his right shoulder, jogging away from the sudden crowd of shrieking birds.
"I'm fine," the small Lord protests with a huff, making a difficult spectacle of himself as he tries to cross his arms with annoyance against Gabranth's shoulder. "Look! Naught a bruise!"
"Because you have such watchful servants," Drace tells him calmly, as the man sets Larsa down beside her on the bench. He could see a small tenseness leave her body, as she had also been halfway from her perch when Gabranth had caught him. She casts Larsa a fond but strained smile. "Please, my Lord, you have some dirt--"
She takes a kerchief from her breastplate (a common thing for her to do but Gabranth and his peers thought best never to ask how exactly) and offers it to Larsa. There's a moment of silence as he stares at her.
"My Lord?"
"Where?" he asks, tilting his head slightly that has become a trademark of sorts. "Where is the dirt?"
"… On your cheek, my Lord." Drace replies, somewhat hesitantly. Gabranth sees her hand is shaking slightly, she is restraining from wiping it herself but such contact was prohibited. Lord Larsa knows this. He smiles. A beautiful, innocent, intelligent smile that isn't customary to the rest of his family.
"Then clean it for me."
She does.
--
He moves fluidly, raising his rapier left, then right, then a parry, then an attack. But it is flawed and childish and they all know its just play, as Drace is going much too easy on him, not even unsheathing her second weapon.
Lord Larsa trips, stumbles, she drops her weapon for a moment to assist him, and suddenly there is a rapier at her throat, and a tense moment of silence passes across the watchers. Gabranth's body goes cold.
Then Larsa grins, laughs, and places a kiss to Drace's temple, dropping his rapier and running off to Gabranth, flinging his arms out wide and beckoning him to play.
--
It takes them a while to find him, and they berate themselves savagely later for it, but they eventually find him in the garden hiding behind a beech in a thin threadbare cloak.
Drace settles to one side of him silently, glancing off into the distance, but Gabranth kneels beside him, and silently begins to check him over for wounds. The fields are gaining twilight, and Larsa raises his head, jewel eyes blinking out from the shadow. He is unmarked, and Gabranth lets him retrieve his arm. It disappears quickly into the shadow of his cloak.
They sit for a moment's silence, and then there is a pressure against Gabranth's chest as the boy leans against him. There's a blossom caught in the darkness of his hair.
"Such is my family," he murmurs. "Such are we."
Because, of course, Drace isn't really there at all.
--
And here he sits with him now, his hands gloved as they always were, clasped around his cold one.
"My – Lord- - " he gasps, but Lord Larsa, now twelve, shakes his head silently and places a white finger against his lips. It is twilight in the Strahl, his face is aglow and holds maturity far beyond his age.
"Be silent, Noah." He whispers. "Don't strain yourself, we're nearly away from Bahamut."
"No, my Lord – I wish – to t-tell you-"
Larsa smiles suddenly and tips his head, a sad but familiar look on his face as he applies more pressure to the finger at Noah's lips.
"Enough that is enough." Blue eyes suddenly widen. His lips twitch. "Look, you have dirt on your face."
He watches with growing bemusement as Larsa suddenly conjures a kerchief from beneath his blouse, and rubs it gently against Noah's cheek.
"My Lord-"
"Thankyou, Noah. Gabranth," he's gentle, caring, there's a blue glow emitting from his rucksack beside the bed where the Hi-Potions rest. "Thankyou."
"Your welcome…My…Lord…"
He dies with the gentle caress of cloth against skin, and the embroidered letter D next to lace and soft blue eyes.
--
Basch enters the back of the Strahl and finds Larsa asleep across Gabranth's dead body, clutching a dirty kerchief and drool collecting at the corner of his lips.
Fin