These Graces That Hold Me (It's From You That I Borrow)
(this is our beginning and our end)
Somewhere, a strong, callused hand clasps a smaller, smoother one; they rest side-by-side, and when the light catches them, they glisten.
(your heartbeat, the product of dead mechanism)
"I don't remember," she says, and her pulse thunders through her veins, makes her head throb, with every word in that admission.
Vanille's shock melts into a look of fear, then shifts again into an expression Fang cannot call anything but "hunted." It's a look she's seen in the eyes of feral things; no matter how dizzying and unfettered Vanille is, that expression does not belong on her face.
Fang looks at the dull white of her Brand, all too aware of the black and red tangle burned into Vanille's pale thigh.
"There has to be a way," she says while the very beginnings of a plan spool together in her head, tightening tiny knots in the loose, unravelled mass of threads that her mind has become. "I won't let you be a Cie'th."
(our summers are too short)
Fang's halfway to skipping the village proper on the off chance that Vanille's by the harbor when a blurry reflection glints off steel. It's nothing more than a darting glimpse of color, there and gone again before she's sure what she's seen.
She ignores Dia Blaise's half-assed impression at an immovable wall of angry brick, since he's aiming the anger at the path from Taejin's, and takes a quick glance aside. Just to make sure.
Maybe it's just her, but the red-gold shine as sunlight catches Vanille's hair—and sets it alight—is unmistakable. She even knows how it looks when captured in the gilweight of metal and half ton of polish that makes up Blaise's never-sheathed sword.
Vanille looks up, then, the sea-tide green of her eyes bright even across the distance. She doesn't say anything, just waves and smiles with all the brightness of a thousand spotlights and all the warmth of an afternoon by the harbor.
"She's been asking after you," Blaise says, with his mouth turned down like Vanille's been a sore trial. If there's a touch of smile in eyes almost as blue as the water in Sulyya Springs and twice as emotionless, Fang lets him keep his secret.
She'd rather be talking to Vanille.
(my flesh would become a song for you)
The airship falls and the sky screams at them with the wind's whistling voice. There's no way to stop it, there's no way out but further in. She's sure that Lightning is watching the sky blur blue and white around them, just as she's sure that Snow's eyes are tracing the line of her.
She's even more sure that she doesn't care. Let them watch what they'll watch. She needs to see Vanille.
Fang lifts Vanille's skirt quick and efficient. She takes her inspection of Vanille's brand slower, though. Can't afford to misjudge.
Snow coughs, but she ignores him.
She likes Light and her followers, and she's grown a rough fondness for Snow. He's an idiot, but he means as well as Bakti does when he bumps into the stove and knocks the stewpot onto the floor.
Despite all that, as far as Fang is concerned, there's exactly one important person on this airship.
She happens to be looking at her.
(quod petis est nusquam)
It's a moment of perfect clarity and perfect despair. She sees her choices before her - but they're no choices at all. Endless pain, compounded by Vanille's suffering as well. Or betrayal of everything Vanille thought she stood for and the person she's become through knowing her.
She looks forward, but sees only light. White-hot and fast, screaming as her hand falls, screaming as the world falls. Millions of lives snuffed before they know they're dying.
She looks up, but sees only Vanille. Sees only the sweat that drips along her brow and darkens red-gold strands to a bloodied auburn, only the lines around eyes made too bright by tears, only the mouth open in anguish.
She looks.
She chooses.
(the lioness delivereth a new world unto her cubs)
"Wake up."