Premise:
1. Pick a character, fandom, or pairing.
2. Put your iPod on "shuffle." Press play and listen to five songs.
3. For whatever song is selected, write something for your selected character/fandom/pairing. You have until the song is over to finish. Do not go back and change. Then post.
The first entry in a five-part drabble series. In each part, the drabbles are unconnected, save for the fact that they focus around one specific character.
Enjoy! Reviewers win cookies... and possibly a giftfic, depending on the review. ;)
Part 1: Marche - Kingless Soldier
"When blood and water hit the ground
Walls we couldn't move came crashing down
We were free and made alive
The day that true love died
The day that true love died"
-Phil Wickham, The True Love
- - -
Marche lowered his sword.
It was over. They had won.
The soldier's footsteps rang across the stones as he walked past the scattered weapons and rubble, past the shapes huddled like undone laundry on the ground. He stopped before the limp body of a moogle. Its green coat was stained a deep burgundy, once vibrant, now beginning to crust over. Its eyes, glassy, stared at the ceiling from behind a shock of blond hair.
Beside it was a heap of gravel. A stone hand rose from the pile, its fingers outstretched. When Marche touched it, it crumbled into dust.
"We won," Marche whispered to the moogle. The words echoed, hollow and lonely, in the cold palace hall.
- - -
"What do you say
When it's all gone away?
Baby I didn't mean to hurt you
Truth spoke in whispers will tear you apart
No matter how hard you resist it"
-Norah Jones, Humble Me
- - -
Marche found him behind the school that afternoon, long after the yellow buses had pulled away. For a while Marche just stood there, gazing at the figure huddled against the wall, knees tucked up against his chest.
He cleared his throat.
"Hey."
Mewt looked up. There was an ugly bruise under his eye. He looked at Marche, his face empty, saying nothing.
Marche held out his hand. "Let's go home."
- - -
"Odoru get night! Mitsuketa koi
Kore koso are desho kakeru desho
Kimete no feiku wo kasanetara
Jou deki! Koi-wa I jou!!"
—Gravitation, Jounetsu [Passionate] Ballad
- - -
The music in the techno club was loud and pounding. He could feel the bass rumbling through his teeth, rattling his glass. It hurt his head.
It was the newest thing, techno. They'd had it in the town he'd lived in before he'd moved, but in sleepy snowy Ivalice (this Ivalice, not the other), no one had even heard of it.
Until now.
But he was older now, he supposed. They all were.
Times had changed, as they invariably did.
She came across the dance floor and stood there, painted beautiful colors by the rave lights. Her hair hung loose and long around her shoulders. "Hey Marche, wanna dance?"
For a moment, he saw here standing there, hair whipping around her face in the desert wind, sword-shining and blade slim beautiful in a place where techno music didn't exist because it didn't matter, none of it mattered.
"Sure," he said.
- - -
Bara no Shikabane, Yami no Matsuei
- - -
"It's magic," whispered the boy. "This book."
The girl glanced up at him through her fall of pink hair. The three children were crowded around a table, upon which rested an open book. "You think so?"
"I know so," said the first, who was called Mewt.
The last child stared at the book and thought.
Imagine what I could do.
"I could change the world," whispered the first.
"Magic," echoed the girl.
Imagine. Imagine what I could do.
- - -
"I remember the look in yours eyes
When I told you that this was goodbye
You were begging me not tonight
Not here, not now"
-Yellowcard, Ocean Avenue
- - -
There were hundreds of reasons why it wouldn't work out, she told him. Hundreds. They weren't right for each other; they were too different, he always wanted to protect her when there was no danger, when she didn't need or want it. He always tried to play the hero. Didn't he understand?
He said nothing, just stared at his open palms, fingers curled slightly up in their gloves. So different from hers. He thought about the hundreds of times he had held those hands, held—
Whose hands?
She saw him looking. Besides, she said softly, you're in love with someone else.
And the eyes that looked back into hers gave her all the affirmation she needed.
- - -