Chapter Summary : A late-night visit. Whispers in the dark, love poems never sent, and the beginning of a redemption Beatrix never thought of before.

The story hinges around Beatrix's redemption arc.

Timeline: After the destructions of Burmecia, and before chapter 1.

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy IX and its characters belong to SquareEnix.

Longing

I

Beatrix remained still on the bed. Her sight had gotten used to the darkness, such that instead of shadows she saw cool-colored lights filtering from the windows. The moon, which was hidden behind thin clouds, showed itself plainly: the last torch of the night. She breathed calmly and gently, suspended between fatigue and wakefulness. In that state, she felt that her senses were elevated such that she heard everything: the rustling leaves, the distant voices of soldiers patrolling the castle grounds, even the water splashing against the stone at the pier.

The dull noise rose again and formed a soft crescendo. From time to time, she would confuse the pounding of her own heart as footsteps on the winding staircase. She expected a knock on the door. She remained still on the bed, wondering whether her mind was playing tricks on her again this time. Oh, the things that sleeplessness could do! Yet it seemed to be getting more audible each passing second. When it stopped, she heard the knocking. All tension left her body to the sound of the knocking. As she slowly drifted into sleep, she heard the knocking again. Softly, but it was there indeed. She got up idly and walked to the door. Listened. The damp noises, which had seemed almost real before, slowly dissolved into silence.

She walked back and forth for a while, before finally putting on a night robe. She remembered that there was an old bottle of perfume stuffed somewhere in the drawer of her working desk. There it was, indeed, a mix of iris and ambergris. The scent reached her like something from a forgotten time. She then slipped on a pair of worn-out velvet slips by the door. She went through all movements as if pushed by an unknown force.

Once outside, she looked up. The moon, the last torch of the night, shone splendidly in the sky. She knew where to go, as if led by an unseen force. She had retraced the path in her mind so many times before. She felt, as she walked, a tinge of guilt, of shame. But then it was too late...

She stood in front of the wooden door. Such a small, weathered, dilapidated room door for a man who spent his life in search of greatness. It was too late to hesitate. She reached out and knock. Subtly first, then, as if to mimic the pounding of her heart, louder. No response. She knocked even louder. This time, she heard footsteps from the other side. The knob turned, and the door opened with a dull creak.

Steiner looked at her as if he had just seen a ghost, although he managed to keep his composure. He only had on linen trousers, and was barefoot.

"General...," he said in his usual courteous manner. "Is there any emergency, anything that I should know of...?"

She did not reply, but kept her gaze on him. He looked at her slightly gaped lips: tense, but could not hide the longing.

"Anything... that I should tell my men of? An unforeseen threat?"

She opened her robe, let it fall to the floor, exposing the thin silk dress with nothing else underneath.

"Let me in, Adelbert," she said in a low voice, almost a whisper.

He stepped out to the side and opened the door wider to let her in. Before he closed the door back, he picked up Beatrix's robe from the floor then hung it on a porte-manteaux by the entrance. He watched her wandering his room. Every curve of her body was visible through the sleeping robe. The fluid and thin fabric gave them some kind of fragility—even her strong back and her muscular arms—albeit less in the look than in their state-in-itself. Her chestnut hair was slightly unkempt from the wind, and she had to wipe some strands off her face when she turned back to look at him, but quickly looked away. He wanted to look elsewhere—it was not very courteous to look at a lady thus—but despite his attempts he found his gaze exploring the gap between the fabric and the bare skin. He saw how the fabric folded and unfolded around her breasts, her waist, her inner thighs... He gripped his hands, and felt as if he had touched her skin underneath the fabric.

She stood over his desk, looking at some papers. Steiner's heart leaped, both dissatisfied with her impudence and afraid of what she would find. She took a piece of creased paper from the table, then read the verses.

"These are beautiful," she said. "Who would expect that you are quite a poet..."

She was standing against the window through which the moonlight filtered in. The silhouette created by the light let him see the curves of her naked figure even clearer.

"Werden wie große Fackeln unsere Herzen sein...," she read. Our hearts will become two vast torches.

By now, he could no longer look away. He approached her even more, that they could feel the warmth of each other's body, his bare skin almost brushing against the naked figure underneath the silk robe.

He read the rest from memory:

An einem Abend wird ein nie gesehener Glanz

gehen von einem zu den andern.

She smiled. The closeness of their bodies gave away not only the warmth, but also his first sign of arousal. When Steiner realized the contact himself, he backed off. His eyes cast down, he said:

"Beatrix—General. I think you should leave."

"If you so wish, I would...," she said. "Although I am not sure that you are not contradicting yourself."

He replied, after a brief silence:
"And why would it matter if I contradict myself?"

"You are right, perhaps it does not," she said.

He looked away, took a deep breath. He recognized the torn feeling, caution mixed with affection. Sometimes he wished she would get severely beaten in a battle that it crushed her pride. Sometimes he found himself wondering, in the unlikeliest moments, whether beneath the Höllenrose there was a woman; a real, flesh-and-blood woman like any other bodies.

"You come into my room, read my private notes, and disrespect me," he said, his voice constrained. "Does it give you pleasure to humiliate me thus?"

"No, Adelbert," she replied firmly. "And what kind of honorable lady and soldier visits a man in the middle of the night? Is she not worse than the ones for sale in Treno?"

"I... Beatrix, it is not my intention to..."
She walked to the bed then plopped on the edge.

"But who am I to judge... I am worse than all of them combined...," she took a deep breath, then looked up to Steiner. "Frankly speaking... we are both in a rather uncomfortable situation ourselves. I indeed breached your privacy, but I am also breaching myself—as you yourself. It is very obvious. There is nothing to discuss."

His stern expression slowly loosened up.

"You could have refused to let me in," she added. "You are too reasonable to let your desire speaks for you. What you made was a conscious decision."

In the silence, the furniture whose rims lit by moonlight filtering through the window seemed to melt into the darkness. Everything seemed transparent, afloat.

"Take me," her voice cut through the silence that had just started weighting over them.

She rose up, then, with a light movement, pushed the straps off her shoulders. The dress fell off her body in a sweep.

He walked up to her, then seized her where she was. Their lips met hungrily, and they kissed until they were both almost out of breath. She clawed onto his arms, his back, his neck. He grabbed her shoulders and ran his hands wherever he could put them. The kiss ended for a while, and by then she saw the fire in his eyes, liberated this time. She could see his orderly exterior fell into pieces, starting from the look in his eyes down to all of his limbs. It took over him like a trance.

His lips trailed down the sides, then the front of her neck, down to her collarbones and her breasts. He reveled in every contour, and how the nipples hardened to his hungry kisses, which got hungrier as he heard her moaning.

She showed a bit of resistance when he pushed her to the bed, almost crushing her under his large frame. He enjoyed it as well, and realized that he had seen it so many times in his mind before.

"Do you want this?" it surprised her that he asked.

He was on top of her, supporting his body weight with his arms. She looked away. Her hair fell like cascades on her neck, her collarbones, and the linen sheets as she did. They were silent for a while. He was about to let go of her, but she reached out and gripped his right arm.

"This is what I want."

She turned her gaze back at him, slowly pushed her body up with her arms, then kissed him. It was gentle at first, but quickly regained its fire. Their lips melted into each other, their tongues sought each other's, hungry and willing. He gently led her back to lying down. She kept her gaze fixed on him when the kiss ceased, reached out to grab his hand, which she directed to the soft, warm, and moist spot between her legs. His hand froze for a fragment of a second, but very quickly his fingers knew what to do. She enjoyed every passing second. The increasing pleasure drove her into spreading her legs wider. Her moans, he had expected, was a beautiful alto. He then took out the soaked fingers, grabbed the sides of her bottom then down towards the thighs as he leaned down to kiss her breasts, her taut nipples, her stomach, before soaking his lips and his entire face on her wetness, taking in every drip as if he wanted to drain her out. From time to time, she saw the fiery eyes and his soaked lips between her legs as he tasted her.

When she almost exploded, she resisted him with a considerable force. (She did not like the idea of a man enjoying himself for too long, with herself being in a vulnerable posture.) He found it exciting that she did. He felt that he had seen such resistance so many times in his mind. In his mind, he let her have her way, and he indeed did at the moment, by letting her lead him to sit against the bed headboard. She kissed him furiously this time, chewing softly on his lower lips from time to time. He leaned over to kiss her exposed neck, once again cupping her breasts. They fit impeccably to his hands. She slid his pants down, exposing the rock-hard penis underneath. Without hesitation, she took it in her mouth, teasing the tips and the shaft in rhythms that made his breaths race. He let out stifled moans from time to time, and most of the times his eyes remained closed. When she knew that he almost came, she sat herself on the erection.

"Look at me, Adelbert," she said, framing his jaws with her hands. She noticed the shattering of the façade of honor that usually repressed his fiery gaze. It carried only hunger: primitive, animalistic hunger. She moved herself to her pleasure, fixing her gaze on him. He watched her as she moaned, felt the pain mixed with pleasure when she clawed his chest. He saw her breasts offered to him as she arched her back. He watched her running her fingers through her hair, exposing her ear and neck as she did. He had recognized the sight from his own daydreams. She moved faster, thrusting her hips sharper, eventually losing herself as if in a trance. He clenched his fist as he came violently inside her. She came with a throaty moan. It seemed to rise from the depths of the hollow of her throat. They remained like that for a while, reveling in the last traces of warmth, before finally collapsing as if struck by a sudden death.

"I am quite surprised of how potentially possessive you are, Adelbert," she moved her head so that it sat comfortably on his shoulder. The pale light of the moon fell partially on her face. "What difference would it make, had you known everything about my past lovers? Some parts of the past are better left where they belong."

"Fair enough."

"I do not ask you about the women in your past, because I would not like to think of you with someone else."

"It is not like I was that sought-after. There is nothing worthy to tell..."

"See? In the end, the most intricate things are found within ourselves, and the outside world is just a shadow... (she paused for a while) For instance, I find it fascinating... the lengths one would go to cover weakness and shame from another time... I realized that this sense of... weakness... does not go away."

After the sentence, she seemed to drift into herself. He pulled her to him. She sank into his chest and suddenly cried, as if a switch inside her had snapped.

"How could you write something so beautiful... to a murderer...? You had seen it yourself. You had seen how they suffered and continue to suffer because of what I did... in the name of duty, of grandeur," tears flooded her eye. The other, the decrepit one, contorted with the crying. He never thought that he would ever see her in this state. "There was a child... in Burmecia. I sank my sword into his chest. He was just a child, Adelbert. He looked at me with trust... he thought I was there to save him...! But it was not. He even reached out to me. I..."

"I see his eyes sometimes," her voice was hoarse and her breathing syncopated from sobbing. "After having silenced entire cities, until the end, I realized that I never escaped my weakness... (she quickly regained her composure: what she was best trained to do) Is not life a farce, as we all are...?"

He held her closer.

"I do not condone what you have done, indeed, Beatrix," he said gently. "I tried to dampen my sadness by telling myself that there was perhaps a bigger purpose... for honor, for duty... I would have perhaps done the same in your place. The difference was that I was not the one given the task."

"Are you not repulsed by me?"

He reached out and caressed her cheek. She was touched by the gentleness of his gaze. He noticed that the corner of her eye was still damp from tears.

"There is the deed, and there is the person," he said after some time. "There are people that are inseparable from their deeds, but there are also those we can see differently from their deeds. I am aware that it is not a thought that everyone would accept, but I do."

"Do you pity me?" her voice tensed up.
"Not pity. Compassion."
She smiled faintly.
"I would not have expected to hear this from you, out of all people..."

II

doch eine eigne Wärme flimmert

von Dir in mich, von mir in Dich.

They remained on the bed, tangled limb to limb. Pale, transparent light of the moon shone through a small window left ajar. Steiner's papers on the desk rustled softly when a soft breeze blew through the crack.

The moon, the last torch of the night, was hidden behind layers of clouds. The furniture seemed forlorn under the faint melancholic glow.

"If only you would let me protect you, Beatrix...," he said gently, almost like a whisper.

She lolled over, fixed her gaze on his, ran her fingers lightly through his jaws towards the back of his head, then brushed her lips against his.

"Adelbert...," she said. The resonance of her alto voice had become very familiar to him, he could almost grasp it in his hands.

"It does not mean that you need me to do so. Sometimes, it is merely a simple will."

She smiled. As she did, the melancholy in her gaze gently dissolved into tenderness. He took her in his arms. In tenderness, the desire rose. Even so, he was aware of her body tensing up as he took her in his embrace. It was less a sign of refusal than a jolting reflex.

"I am not used to something like this," she caressed his forearms, then cheeks, keeping her gaze on him, "but this is what I want, now, with you..."

Once again, their lips met in a kiss. A kiss of two lovers that seemed to suspend time. This time, he kissed her neck, her collarbones, caressed her breasts as if she was his. By then, her moans had become familiar to him.

Her breaths were tender and steady, from time to time syncopated with light gasps. He took his time etching the feel, the taste, the scent of her skin into his memory. When he kissed her, he reveled in the contour of her lips, the moisture, the warmth. When he ran his fingers through her hair, he considered its texture, the natural curls, even its color under the moonlight and in the shadow. What if everything would be forgotten tomorrow? What if it never happened at all? The anxiety caused by these thoughts almost made him claw into her skin. He felt somehow torn between doubt that Beatrix was giving herself to him, and bewilderment of how delicate the General could look, stripped off all her armors and pride.

Yet she was calm, yielding, receptive to each of his caresses.

Werden wie große Fackeln unsere Herzen sein...

They locked eyes when he slid into her. In the room lit only by very faint traces of glow, they felt as if they were not looking at each other, but rather into each other.

The next morning, when Steiner woke up, Beatrix was nowhere to be found. There was not even a dent on his pillow, no sign of his papers having been moved, no robe on the porte-manteaux. As he paced around the room, he believed that he could smell the last traces of her perfume—but both the scent and his conviction were too faint.

In the brightness of day, the night seemed like a delusion. Steiner headed towards the gates of the city walls, lost in thought. His conscience was torn between the call of duty and the desire to ruminate until he found any fragment left that would anchor him to the night. The pale moonlight, the sight of ink seeping into paper as he wrote the last verses, the last candle burning out, the dull knock on the door... Werden wie große Fackeln unsere Herzen sein...Had he spoken the verse to her, would she remember it? The city had woken up and was feasting, after all, unaware of the dangers outside the walls. Yet the scenes of movement and mirth struck him as a play performed in mute.

"You and your men are requested onboard," Beatrix's command sliced through his reverie. From then on, the brouhaha of the city struck him all at once, in all its depths, its echoes.

They kept their gazes on each other amid the fanfares and the clanging resonance. For a while, the sounds around them seemed to disappear in a flurry, but broken too abruptly by the landing of Red Rose.

"There is no time to be distracted, Steiner. The danger is close."

She quickly walked past him, her boots thudding lightly against the damp grounds. A whiff of wind carrying the scent of mist followed her steps. She turned to glance at him after a few steps. He noticed a tinge of melancholy in her gaze, a longing.

(Further) Author's Note:

I read quite a lot that people feel that Beatrix's redemption arc is not well exploited. In this story, I am trying to exploit the lost redemption arc and "resolve" it figuratively. Steiner's acceptance of Beatrix as a person, despite him not condoning her action, is the first step of her redemption. I imagine it must be the case in the original story as well.

So, what do you think, is the entire night a dream? Again, thanks for commenting and reading :)