Disclaimer: I take no credit whatsoever for any element of this piece pertaining to Suikoden: including characters, setting, etc, etc… It belongs, and rightfully so, to Konami.

Dreams of Consistency

by: Dixon Oriole

Sharon's blonde head lolled against his chest, asleep, lips graced by a tiny smile as even in her dreams she engineered something devious. Her lithe, teenaged body casually straddled the white shoulders of the swiftly flying dragon beneath them, held in place only by the protection of his arms, one around her waist, the other resting on one of Bright's long horns for balance. Behind the pair were strapped her weapon and a pack of supplies, his own gigantic sword sheathed across his back. His practiced legs prevented the both of them from sliding clear off of his steed's smooth scales as they winged it eagerly ahead. Bright was like any beast of burden (even if he was never called one) in that, when facing home, they pick up the pace. Consequently, the wind violently lashed everything it came into contact with as it was cut through, bringing tears to the eyes of the Dragon Knight, Futch.

But that might not have been all the wind's doing. He sniffed, face ducked somewhat against the hard, cold air before them and the back of his neck borne to the warm sunlight at the rear. The young man sighed softly, pulling Sharon a bit tighter when she began to fall to the right, out of his grip. The girl murmured and coughed once before receding back into deeper rest and he relaxed somewhat, reassured that she wouldn't wake up to witness him in such a state. He wouldn't have heard the end of it, had she noticed the reddened eyes and nose and heard his rasping voice… and she would have informed Milia. Sharon always told Milia embarrassing things like this.

That didn't matter, because for now he had a little while longer to brood. It wasn't good for him, he knew, but that wouldn't stop the thoughts from coming. For the past two hours and intermittently before (his little charge had been conscious then), Futch had been unable to avoid thoughts of Luc. Naturally, of course, since the Dragon Knight had known the destroyer in two wars gone by, and somewhere in his heart of hearts – had fancied them childhood friends. He felt betrayed, and he shouldn't have felt betrayed, because they'd never really been close. How could you be close to a person that hardly talks, and when they do, it's just to insult someone or make demands? But… against all reason, Futch had thought they were friends, even more than mere comrades.

He snorted, a poor excuse for laughter, recalling how he, Sasuke, and the young Luc had even practiced a group attack ironically named for something the three of them had been called in jeer. The Pretty Boy Attack was a childish attempt at proving that offensive nicknames could be embraced and thus weakened, all the while becoming a rather formidable (if simplistic) combo. It was the way for a trio of lovely boys to get back at everyone for noticing that they were lovely. They had spent afternoons, days on end perfecting that attack. They had spent time together… had lunch under that one oak tree, he and Sasuke energetically speaking while Luc had looked serenely on, sometimes making small noises of annoyance. He had made those noises, but never moved to leave. Didn't that say something? Didn't that say they were friends?

"Futch! Keep that idiot dragon out of the way or it's gonna get killed!" Sasuke bellowed (as successfully as such a young boy can bellow), holding his sweat-soaked bangs out of his eyes with a free hand. The other was tightly fisted on the lapels of Futch's tunic, all the better to emphatically shake him with. The Rokkaku ninja-in-training curiously watched the shame shoved out of his friend's eyes by pure rage and all of the sudden felt himself flung to the ground.

"Bright is no idiot, you idiot!" The chubby arms of the former Dragon Apprentice strained to pin the struggling, dramatically quicker ninja to the dirt in the middle of the clearing where they'd been practicing their combo. The two o'clock sun hung high and burning overhead in a sky the color of a robin's eggshell. It was one of those sluggish, lazy days in which you collapsed on cool flagstones under some kind of shade and hoped a sympathetic soul with a wind rune wandered by.

It was not a day for infuriated brawling.

Obviously the two boys most immediately concerned hadn't received the memo, and continued to viciously compete for strength in the oft underappreciated art form that was wrestling.

"Say it!" Sasuke triumphantly screamed not too long after the fight had begun, sitting on Futch's back with one of the boy's arms twisted painfully behind it. "Admit that your pet is an idiot!" he unreasonably demanded, knowing full well the youth he'd captured would never do so. Sweat teemed on both of their foreheads, tracking defined lines through the reddish dust that had caked itself over every spare inch of skin.

Enraged anew and choking on the ground pressed against his face, Futch bucked once or twice to unsettle the ninja's perch and then in a ditch effort at escape flopped in the direction his arm was being bent, crushing it and Sasuke beneath him. The brunette teenager yelped in pain, wrenching his limb away and holding it protectively to his body as his black-haired companion groaned and shifted in reply, trying to crawl out from under Futch.

The insulted dragon-rider took his opening, dive-bombing Sasuke and hoarsely declaring, "You say it!"

The ninja grimaced, "I don't have a pet!"

Futch rubbed the youth's nose in the dirt, "Bright isn't my pet! He's my friend, unlike you!"

Sasuke had a moment of air, "Guess you can only get friends that aren't even human!"

The two redoubled their efforts to cause one another as much physical pain as possible, but it was short lived. An abrupt and quite powerful burst of air sent them tumbling and skidding to opposite ends of the clearing, only dissipating when they were a safe distance apart. The teenagers both sat up with matching scowls on their fair faces, comical mirror images of utter disarray. Their watering eyes peered widely, whites standing out in contrast to their completely brown flesh. Futch was missing a sleeve and his dragon-winged circlet, Sasuke's locks had fallen loose and a shoe been kicked off.

They regarded one another harshly, and then turned their glares to the earnestly peace-keeping Luc. He was standing at the base of the fence where they'd left him quietly sitting, a stormy look having replaced his generally apathetic visage. "Stop being such babies," the far cleaner mage commanded. "We're out here to practice the attack, not waste my time."

He sneered, an expression from which both of the others involuntarily cowered. "Futch, keep the dragon out of the line of fire or I'm teleporting it straight to Suzu. Sasuke…" Luc glowered forcefully at the ninja, because they both knew how defensive Futch was of Bright, and for knowing it, Sasuke should have treaded more carefully, "stop being an idiot." He turned slowly and gathered his book and empty teacup before climbing over the fence and heading back to the headquarters, obviously having ended their work for that hot day.

"Bright is a he, not an it," the ex Dragon Apprentice quietly corrected Luc's graceful, departing form, before chancing a glance at Sasuke. Eventually their eyes met, and the ninja offered a tentative smile.

It was returned in short order and the Rokkaku native felt confident enough to ask, "Who knew Luc didn't like wrestling?"

Shaking a little in his memory-charged emotions, the much older and stronger Futch of present blinked against the steady saltwater that was picked up and spirited off by the gales before it even reached his chin. That day, with a sky so like this one, had been a rare occurrence of him and Sasuke's boyish disputes getting to such a degree that Luc had felt pressed to intervene (short tempers further shortened by the heat, likely). Still, it had ended up with the wrestlers plotting their righteous revenge on the mage and enacting it the next afternoon by tackling Luc. They'd had no luck trying to spur the surprised and irritated boy into combat, however, because he'd simply teleported away (after emphatically swearing at them) and gone into hiding for two days.

Things had been more or less smoothed over; their combo perfected and successfully put to use several times (with mixed reactions from those witnessing it) and the trio of "pretty boys" been able to leave one another's presence on good terms. They'd been too young in that war to worry about dying, or one another dying, so it had been something of a perfect, careless friendship; the kind that age and experience will never allow once acquired. The kind that said, should they meet again, it would be as strong as ever, and that time couldn't change anything. In those perfect, careless friendships, there are no plans of finding each other, and there is no foresight about letters or keeping in touch or visiting. They had just… gone. All three had different paths to take. All three knew that if they should see one another in some war, some day, it wouldn't be any different.

But Luc had broken that trust. Once positively identified as the masked Bishop, the destroyer, by the officials of the Fire Bringer, word had spread quickly through the ranks. Futch had taken an offhand look at the Budehuc Times and been floored, amazed, enraged, hurt. It had not seemed possible, and indeed he'd not accepted it for some time, reassuring himself and confused others that it had to be some other Luc. Not like it wasn't a common enough name. Not like brooding, snide, harmless boys always had to be adults that wanted to blow up the world. Futch would have known if his Luc was capable of something like that, he would have noticed that kind of pain. Their friendship had been the recyclable kind; sitting under that oak tree, fifteen years later, they could have been the same.

So why weren't they the same? Futch hadn't found Sasuke, and in retrospect, was glad he hadn't been there to witness firsthand Luc's inexplicable mutation from stoic ally to crazed enemy. It had felt severely wrong to fight at the side of some people that didn't keep a young mage with a wind rune at the Stone Tablet. He wouldn't have wished that kind of fear on anyone – because if somebody as tough, strong as Luc had seemed, could suffer in silence and be… overlooked until their hate spiraled so badly out of control… what else were "friends" not seeing? Where was that murderous glint in the green eyes when Futch had looked into them just over a decade earlier? Why hadn't he seen anything?

There had been nothing to allude to this. There had been no way he could prevent it, being just a child, and being blind. Even the new, destroyer Luc, hadn't displayed any truly malicious intent. He'd displayed his own, personal pain, and how it can drive someone into madness. Futch knew he had to have been mad to do all that he had done, showing no remorse, but he hadn't even seemed mad. Staring across what felt like miles of Sindarian platform, the Dragon Knight had wished to rush over and shake those still-young shoulders and demand to know what was going on. What spell had him, what spell was making him act that way. But he hadn't seen any madness, and he hadn't seen any cruelty – maybe compassion and sorrow buried under the usual apathy, but not cruelty. The worst of all, Futch hadn't seen recognition.

He'd taken a step closer, Bright snarling at his side, and almost had the nerve to reach a welcoming hand out to the True Rune bearer that had caused everyone else present so much suffering. He'd almost wished to wrap a bracing arm around the now surprisingly shorter body and tell the psychopath that Sasuke was waiting for them on the ridge and they had to hurry and get a few hours of training in before it got dark. Futch had watched with an expression of lamentable suffering on his handsome, twenty-some face, as Luc's slow stare had run over him with hardly a flicker of reaction. It had rested a moment on his circlet, much like the one he'd worn in childhood, back to his much-changed countenance, beyond to Bright, and returned again. Luc had then looked away, saying nothing.

But the damage was done by that time. The Dragon Knight had known that he knew him, and choked on a hateful cry of frustration that despite all of it, there remained nothing. No explanation! No spell! The agonizing reality that this was his old, ever uninfluenced friend Luc, who he'd never been terribly close to and yet always been close to, that was standing before these people bent on his destruction, ready to kill all of them and kill himself. If they let him, he would kill everyone. They couldn't do that. Futch couldn't do that. He had to put aside all of those feelings and had to forget about the Pretty Boy Attack and had to help them stop this man.

Luc had been acting on his own. He had done all of it out of and for his own feelings. By the time they had stood across from one another, eyes not meeting because there was no spark exchangeable to justify this kind of betrayal of the unspoken promise – of the friendship, there was no way to avoid the certainty that they were still themselves, merely fifteen years later. Seeing him, Futch couldn't deny that this was the same Luc in the same state of mind as always, that somewhere in the unpleasant teenager he'd known before there had always hidden this radical spirit. However wrong it was that they weren't both fighting on the right side, but rather fighting one another, it was necessary to press on. To battle, no matter what, until victory. Luc wouldn't have understood if his old comrade didn't attack with the rest of them, he'd have given that disgusted look of his… Futch owed him a real fight to save the world that he was trying to destroy, if just to show he accepted the way things had become.

He'd felt fleetingly proud, because who else could be brave or ridiculous enough to try and explode the continent when in the past wars were fought for such obvious reasons as borders or power? Who could be as uncouth as to gather all of them there to – to fight one crazy individual! Only Luc would play such a nasty joke. And only Luc would be powerful enough to make it a serious threat; to be a person with nothing left to lose.Battles were never more dangerous and difficult than when your opponent wasn't afraid of anything – wasn't afraid of dying. It was even harder when they wanted to die.

"I'll never forget when we fought together," had been the only thing the Dragon Knight could say to him, and what feeble, useless words they were. How they couldn't even begin to express what he had felt at that moment. They were nothing, but they were true. Futch would never forget their friendship. He would have never been the one to do something like Luc had, and stand on the wrong side. He didn't have it in him to betray the people he'd once – and always would – love. The knight had wished then that he could have stopped the perpetually young magician, somehow prevented any of this from happening, and preserved the memory he'd tightly held (when he hadn't even known he was holding it) for so long up to that point. But he couldn't, and it was too far beyond the time for thoughts like that. It was time to unsheathe his sword and back away and let the Flame Champion take the stage.

Futch had done so, and Luc hadn't looked at him, but he might have – unless it was just imagined –, the bearer of the True Wind Rune might have violently swallowed his own frustrated scream. The battle had started then, and Futch had been too involved and shocked and numb to cry, and just after the combat he'd been too tired to cry and that evening too distracted rounding up Sharon and their supplies to cry and then his smiles and amicability had been needed at the victory celebration. Victory, he'd plainly thought, was a joke. But Franz and Fred had wanted his goodbye cheer and that new unwritten oath of loyalty, that perfect friendship between the three of them wasn't something to be dampened on a night when everybody thought relief was the greatest emotion ever invented. They didn't need to know what he'd thought of Luc. Sasuke would have needed to, but he wasn't there (good for him) so Futch had wrestled his notions down until a safer, more private hour.

That time had come in the air the next day when Sharon had finally nodded off against his chest, and shuddering as if because of cold, her protector had allowed the tears their quarter. What could he do but cry anymore, as if reflecting on a terrible nightmare? A dream in which the characters are plucked at random from events long past and set to music they'd have never danced with. But Futch hadn't woken up, and he knew it wasn't a nightmare so much as reality. He knew the way that strange, familiar Luc hadn't looked at him was the truth – he'd been in those ruins and fled from their collapse, he had the bruises to prove it. So what was there left to do but let the wind drag his tears away in the aftermath and leave his eyes stinging and dry and red?

"Futch… are you okay?"

Her tone of voice was strange enough, but the expression on that small face made him downright suspicious. It wasn't something usual on Sharon – the slightly knit eyebrows, the vague, compassionate glisten in those garnet eyes, the light quaver in the – he winced, "What makes you ask?" and cast a contrived, cheerful expression in the direction of the girl.

"I donno. You haven't yelled at me once since we landed and – you kind of look like you're having an allergic reaction to something, all sniffling and…" Sharon trailed off, noting with no small degree of annoyance that he wasn't listening to her. Futch had turned away, looking over the valley below and distant mountains from his position behind the campfire, leaning against a pillar-like rock. She had her back to the evening scene, cross-legged and glaring through the flames at him. Sharon frowned and sunk her teeth into a strip of meat skewered on a stick, still warm from the fire.

"What? Sniffling?" her older counterpart absently questioned, taking some time to register the meaning of those words through his distraction. But when it hit him, his eyes narrowed in irritation; he'd been trying hard not to make it obvious, but Sharon was right in noticing the man's almost-desperate attempts at biting back the emotions that had threatened to overflow all night. Perhaps in trying so hard he'd been too quiet. Hadn't even yelled at…

Futch looked around their campsite, remembering that she'd complained loudly about the food at one point and then dropped their gear at another turn… protested the need to gather some firewood… all things he'd have loudly chastised her for normally as being high-maintenance. Sharon had a manner that rubbed him the wrong way; she was headstrong and free-spirited to a fault, a type of girl he resented having to look after. She was too much like he'd been at that age.

The Dragon Knight had never pretended he was easy to contend with back then either. "It's nothing, I'm fine," he reassured in a flat voice that alluded to exactly the opposite. The man's veneer of serenity was beginning to crack, and Futch had to turn his face skyward to catch the beads of salt water at the edges of his gaze before they ran and so became too noticeable. "It's nothing… I'm fine," the dragon-rider repeated to himself in an undertone, trying to believe it. He didn't notice Sharon's fixed stare.

"Sasuke! You seen Luc around? I wanted to say bye," Futch chortled, pawing his friend playfully on the shoulder in casual greeting. He leaned past the young ninja to survey those he'd opted to travel back to Rokkaku with, rewarded with a slight, cheerful smile from the brightly clothed Kasumi and an apathetic glance from the much older Mondo. The two were busily organizing their possessions accumulated over the past months into piles for selling and carrying; the carrying pile was, in a word, meager. Apparently Sasuke had been overseeing the operation in his usual domineering manner.

"Eh, Futch? Nope, haven't seen im'. The jerk probably just teleported off somewhere as soon as the fighting stopped," Sasuke distractedly replied, a hint of affection audible in this new conversation. He turned and smacked the one-time Dragon Apprentice on the back of the head, upsetting his circlet, "We're headin' out soon, so you'd better say bye to me while you still have the chance."

They leered at one another a moment, and then, foregoing all sense of shame or adult propriety, embraced. There was a moment of suspended silence as those witnessing the fierce hug battled surprise and "awww", turning to their previous work with renewed determination. They tried to be blind, unused to such public displays of affection between two boys, however obviously young enough not to fear mass opinion.

"Bye, Sasuke-eee, you idiot. See ya round."

"Ye-ah, whatever, watch your back."

The friends broke, Futch to cradle the young, crooning Bright against his chest and Sasuke to emphatically protest the trading in of some souvenir or other he'd come across in the area. "What, you want to carry it?" Kasumi cackled at him, holding the item possessively above her head, before passing it to Mondo where the shorter ninja had no hope of reaching it. Futch was backing up, observing a moment this scene through the swell of noisy individuals preparing themselves for travel away from Dunan and their beloved headquarters, the war and their necessity in the area officially ended.

His departure was paused by Sasuke's sudden yelp, "Futch! If you're going to find Luc, tell the loser I said g'bye, okay? I'd do it myself, but – I don't think he'd care for group hugs!" Futch spun on heel again, throwing the child-ninja an incredulous look, quickly met by laughter. "Kidding, kidding. But really, we're in a hurry, so just tell him, okay?"

The ex Dragon Apprentice nodded and grinned, waving his hand once as the crowd swallowed both and bore them away in opposite directions. They weren't going to see one another again for over fifteen years, but Futch wasn't thinking about any such possibility. He was more interested in locating Luc before Humphrey tracked him down and demanded they go – it wouldn't be long before that happened. Humming tunelessly, the boy sped up to try and outrun his wayward guardian.

"Chaco!"

"What?"

"You seen Luc around?"

"This must be your lucky day."

"You did!"

"Nope."

"Chaco you – you flying rat!"

"If I'm a flying rat what does that make the thing you're carrying?"

"What? Bright!"

"Hahahaha!"

"Get down here, you little freak!"

"Can't even catch a 'flying rat', some Dragon Knight you are! Hahhaaa!"

"I didn't get to say goodbye to him," Futch muttered into his folded arms, laying flat on his stomach where the ground had since warmed by the fire's vicinity, tears long spent. The atmosphere overhead was a wash of sapphire, studded by silver. It had been night for some time. Sharon's light snore drifted over from where she was curled against a boulder, tucked safely away from the cliff edge. Bright's gargantuan form encircled their entire campsite from the overhanging rock above, but thankfully he did not snore. "Humphrey came too soon and he had that expression of his and I knew it was time to leave. But I never got to find Luc and say for Sasuke… or for me… It wasn't all Chaco's fault – I'd been wasting time."

He hadn't thought that this could happen. Their friendship was perfect; they had the Pretty Boy Attack to prove it. Goodbyes aren't as necessary for kids as they are for adults – and Futch just hadn't thought when he saw the magician again it would be on the receiving end of a battlefield… after learning of his insane plot. After learning that he was gonna have to help them fight and kill him. His old friend. At least all those years later he'd stared into that face again and had a chance to say, "I'll never forget when we fought together." Something that was too much like a farewell for his younger self to have bothered with – something that seemed to accept that one or the other of them was going to die. Sasuke hadn't even had that chance. When he got back to the Dragon's Den he'd send a nasel bird to Rokkaku, see if he couldn't get a message through to that idiot. Tell him that – tell him that... all of it. He'd understand.

Luc, and the memory of him, was supposed to have been immortal. For those many months, in those sweltering afternoons, all three of them had been immortal. Funny how things changed.

- Fin -

Author's Notes: Obviously I've taken some liberty with the personalities of characters like Sasuke and Kasumi and Mondo and Chaco, but hopefully didn't end up veering too far out of the realm of possibility.

I realize that Suikoden I took place over a few years, but even though Luc and Futch were around each other then, I don't think a friendship was really possible until the Dunan Unification War. I say as much because isn't it a nice thought that when wars roll around (or even a new school year) you tend to look for faces you recognize among the troops (or students)? I think you do. Those two would recognize one another and instantly form that convenience bond, which could later progress and make room for Sasuke.

The Pretty Boy Attack was used here as both a symbol of the three boy's relationship and the probable catalyst for their extended contact with one another. You never know.

Futch's breakdown is indeed dramatic, but I don't think he'd be able to deal with it the way Viki did. I mean, her opinion was in the Budehuc newspaper and it sounded distinctly… dumb. Other people must be capable of moving from mere confusion to every other emotion, and that transition seems to be more painful than anything our beloved teleportress can conceptualize. I think what's happening is justified by what happened.

So, that's all!