Thank you so much for all the reviews, everyone! I've been crazy busy with grad school and planning my own wedding but times like this really makes this whole long fic-writing business worth it. Reviews are encouraging as all hell so I personally adore them. ;)
II. Depression, Vaan for Shuunka Shuutou
Note: This ficlet slots into the Series: The Uses of Enchantment series.
[Clinical depression is a state of intense sadness, melancholia or despair that has advanced to the point of being disruptive to an individual's social functioning and/or activities of daily living.
Whenever he goes to visit her now, she always tells him to open the curtains.
Penelo always does it as imperiously as she can, which is how she's done most things ever since Larsa went around the bend at age 12, developed severe psychological problems and actually married her seriously bossy rear. Of course, nowadays, with her strength waning and her weight hovering somewhere below ninety pounds, even the Empress of Archadia's best attempts at imperialism is half-hearted at best. But when she tells him to open the curtains to her room, Vaan always does it quickly, no matter how little actual power there is behind her eyebrow raising and hand waving now.
"It's as though," Penelo always says afterwards with a sigh, "they think I'm already dead and need an impromptu funeral set up right here. It's the most depressing thing in the world, honestly."
"You look it," Vaan snaps back, just to see her smile. "Woman, you're all skin and bones. Don't you ever eat?"
In turn, Penelo will simply stare angelically at the ceiling and tell him that Larsa's advanced age makes much of her previous diet hard to obtain on a regular basis. And afterwards, she will laugh and laugh and laugh at the expression of horror that comes over his face at the very thought of the royalty in Archades ever having a sex life, no matter how many heirs they've produced as of yet.
This is how it's always like nowadays, with the two of them. That's how it always is when he visits her in her bride bed, her child bed, her sick bed, her eventual death bed, when he makes the long trip to Archades just to be at her side and watch her fight and laugh and speak and sleep, for all the rest of the days that she has left. And even as Vaan tucks her elaborate blankets around her after she falls to dreams and counts every ragged breath she takes, he wonders just how long either of them can keep going on as they have been for the last few months.
He is sixty two years old and the best friend, most devious enemy and greatest sky partner he has ever had is dying. And when she is gone, the last link to his life on the streets of Rabanastre will sever and the last chain of anchoring him to his own past will break and all the world will lose something it will never have a chance of holding yet again.