WARNING!: This does contain sexual stuff!

Also, this is shorter than others, but I hope the quality is of the highest standard. If yer gonna review (I know those who will!) please let me know if it's too corny or not right. For I would want any tips to improve. But do it nicely mind, my ego is easily bruised!

Final Fantasy 12

TRUE FEELINGS

LIFE

There was a soft gentle and warm breeze against her skin. There was sunlight radiating a pleasant heat over her body, so Ashe just closed her eyes and relished the moment. It was probably a silly thing to do, but to her, there was never the time. When could a Queen of Dalmasca ever find the time to lay on the grass and bathe in the sun? When had she ever been able to kick off her shoes and feel the earth with her feet, to run like she used to as a child?

But here, the grass was so tall, left unattended for the most part to grow as high as it wanted and it was swamped with a sea of flowering white and peach coloured blossoms. She could hear the rustling of the trees in the distance and the beautiful smell of jasmine in the air filled her nostrils. She wanted to stay here forever.

This felt so good. A total serenity and peace washed over her, she felt it in the air, in the earth beneath her fingertips and the grass as it caressed her.

A new sound interrupted the tranquillity. The birds still lulled their sweet songs, but this new addition was different. They were footsteps. Someone was approaching through the overgrowth, slowly, hesitant as if they were looking for something. Someone.

Ashe's peaceful smile turned to an eager grin, but her eyes never opened. Her heart was beating faster as the footsteps became louder, her palms were slick with excitement and she began to pull at great clumps of the long grass.

She already knew who it was, after all he was the only one who could find her.

The seconds seemed like hours, Ashe felt her body tremble when she sensed him standing over her. His tall bulking frame had blocked the sun's rays, but she didn't move, she couldn't.

He never said a word but her quick frightened breaths became long and deep when he eventually lay down beside her.

Ashe was tempted to open her eyes and look at him, but her mind already knew. With eyes closed, Asheila could picture every part of Basch Fon Ronsenberg in perfect detail. She knew he was shirtless, showing off his now healthy and bulking physique and he was wearing his thin white knee length shorts. His feet were bare, as she knew too well that here he refused to wear any restricting on his soles.

This was his home. This was the re-grown Landis and now they lay in the field that had once been part of his family's vast estate of land. When he worked here, in this heat, it was all the clothing he could bare.

Her hand drifted from her side and stretched out for him whilst she waited to finally take a hold. It took a while, but she wasn't disappointed.

His fingers touched her barely. He stroked her palm, provoking an elated judder of her body.

An euphoric feeling shot up her arm, throughout the whole of her and she couldn't believe he was making her excited just by his simple tentative contact. The closeness of him, knowing they were hidden together by the grasses and blossoms, was making her ache for more. Her fingers interlaced and coiled with his and she clung to his hand to pull him over to her.

He was unbearably close. As she turned her head towards him, she could feel his breath on her face, his lips were on the verge of touching her mouth, but still neither of them would make that first move. It was hurting, Ashe couldn't bare it, her body was aching to devour him, to kiss him hard and lose herself completely in his arms.

However, when she finally opened her eyes, when she saw the curling smile of his lips and deepness in his pale blue eyes, everything else around her melted away.

No one knew they were here alone, they wouldn't come looking for them, so they had all the time in the world. They had the time to wait, but not the patience.

At last, Basch's hand broke the hold, his fingers traced across her face. He briefly pushed some hair out of her eyes and then in light circular motions, he stroked the hand he had held, taking the caress up her arm and to her neck. Ashe responded by resting her hand on his face, feeling the soft golden hair of his beard teasing gently at her skin.

She eventually lay her hand against his bare chest, his skin marred only by the numerous scars that decorated his heaving frame. As she felt the furious pumping of his heart, Basch's fingers raked slowly through her hair and then they cupped lightly against her flushed burning cheeks.

For a while, all they could do was gaze at each other, lost in a trance of fear and want, but enamoured in the moment.

Basch touched with light fingertips over her lips, fragile and tender, he skimmed them around her neck and face, all the while never breaking his gaze away. He was lost in the sight of her, as if there was nothing else in the world but her. Then the patience ran out.

The kiss was strong, so warm and passionate, that Ashe could offer no resistance. She couldn't bring herself to force back into the kiss, for he made her weak, weak beyond the ability to do anything but give into his intense and loving embrace. The slow tender movements of his mouth over hers and the lulling sensation of his tongue inside, elated pleasurable soft moans from them both. Her arms wrapped around his neck and with the little strength she had, she dragged him on top of her.

Basch fell, his body almost crushing her beneath him, but he forced the kiss harder. The gentle caressing of their lips immediately changed, it raged and surged , it became strong and savage, they were driven by so much desire that the insanity overtook them.

What was life? It was his hands in her hair, his breath breathing into her, the hot throbbing aching in her chest and the burning between her legs. It was the arousal that pained so hard for him to be in her and it was the death she knew she would suffer if he ever stopped touching her.

She was now alive. She was so alive that when Basch did indeed pull away, gasping for air, she felt the agony, because for her, he was too far away.

"Don't stop…please…don't stop."

His eyes clenched shut, his face creased as he tried to gain some kind of control over his roaring insanity, but when he gazed upon his queen, the yearning only screamed once again.

Ashe tried to pull him back, to taste him, to savour in the ecstasy of feeling his sweat on her lips, but he refused. Instead, Basch knelt astride her and his hands slicked back his drenched hair and over his flushed face. He sighed, trying to assert a small amount of restraint over the lust screaming in his veins, but it didn't last long. There was no controlling these kind of feelings…there was no stopping their wants. A terrifying strength coursed through them.

She hadn't expected it, but Ashe gasped as the laces that bound her bodice to her chest were pulled and undone by her Knight. The eager grin appeared once more on the young royal's face as his strong hands pushed aside the partings of her white dress.

Her bare chest heaved as Ashe immediately felt Basch's reaction on top of her. Her eyes widened at the hard arousal and she grabbed hold of one of his hands placing it gently between her breasts. She held it there, forcing him to feel her heart and the racing beats that it cried.

She wasn't his queen any more. This was the woman he loved with every inch of his being and Ashe felt it all as he leaned down to where their hands lingered. She felt once again the soft hair of his beard trace on her skin and the hunger of his kiss against her chest as he pushed their hands away. She felt all of him on her.

Could euphoria become any greater than this? A man she thought that she could never have was finally allowing her to feel.

As if he sensed her thoughts, Basch brought his head up. His eyes starred down at her with such adoration and longing; it was a stare that took all doubt from her mind. There was no fear of what was going on between them, their difference in status was no longer relevant as he kissed slowly back up to her lips. There was a hunger and thirst as they locked, every touch that connected, sent the feeling of their skins burning deep and painful.

The remainders of their ruffled and torn clothes were rid of, no longer required or wanted. Now only the grass enveloped around them, the air thick and heavy with the flower's scent and only the inevitable waited for them both.

Ashe allowed her legs to edge open and coil around his waist. Her fingers rested and trembled on his face, her eyes looked up at him and at that moment, time stopped. Nothing else was real, they were the only ones in Ivalice, they were each others existence.

There was only the connection and joining. The penetration.

It hurt. It hurt her so much, but it was beyond any agony she could ever conceive of. It went beyond. It broke through, it became a pain of bliss and such ecstasy that she tensed and cried out in elation. She could barely breathe, her hold on him tightened, pulling him close to her as she possibly could, but already the rocking of his pelvis, the deeper delving of him made her spasm, made her cry and moan. He made her whole.

Every thrust, every kiss, touch and caress became more. The knight and queen were enthralled, lost and drowned in an entanglement of limbs and agonising pleasure. It went on, always escalating, swelling, bursting and thriving. But it had to happen.

The very peak of endurance was reached. He screamed. She cried.

The rapture and ecstasy shot from them both like a burst of immense heat and the pressure of intense eruption forced the two of them to part.

0000000000

"I normally kill your kind. For you corporeal lows are nothing to me. I could end Ivalice in a second, but there is one thing precious still there. You, I have made an exception to. You, are going to help me and this was the only way to make it happen. I will make you suffer. The greatest thing you love, will be your hate and loathing…your hopes and desires will be nothing but despair and misery. This is my gift to you."

0000000000

It was all too real. He had felt everything as if it had happened.

Basch woke from his sleep screaming, gasping in ecstatic cries. His body bolted up from the ground on which he lay and the bitter reality came flooding back to him. Though it did nothing for the awkward stiffness his body had bestowed upon him.

It all had happened, every kiss he had felt, her scent, her touch and the rapture from the peak of endurance. The expulsion left him weak, sweat drenched him as it had in…the dream? It hadn't felt like one. Yet it was all so vivid in his mind and every part of his body certainly thought he had been through it. The calm after the storm, the release and relief, he still throbbed and ached, he still felt and remembered being with her.

But he wasn't the only one that was screaming.

Ashe!

Basch immediately looked to the other side of the camp they had made. She was sitting up, crying out as if she had been taken to and beyond the brink of an orgasm. The rest of the camp had been woken.

"Basch!"

Jiiryn needn't have called out to him. He was up and running over to her as fast as he could. Penelo, who had been lying closest to her had gotten to her first, but the young girl's attempts at soothing comfort were thrown back, by a very hume Queen. A woman, who too was flushed and heaving with exhaustion.

But as Basch only felt himself quivering in with pleasure, there was pain and horror on her face.

There was no darkness in her streaming eyes. Ultima wasn't in control any more. Ashe was back.

Penelo had tried to grab hold of her thrashing and flailing arms, but Ashe responded back with a sharp punch to the young girl's face.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!!" she yelled, spitting with detest.

There was such terror and hatred in her face, it was twisted and angry that Basch couldn't believe it was her. He caught her thrashing body, not caring of the punches and slaps she impaled upon him. His hold against her couldn't stop her writhing panic and hate, he couldn't calm her…but when he saw the fear in her eyes…he could tell she had experienced what he had. There was no love gazing back at him.

"Keep your filthy fucking hands off me!" she screamed, her feet kicking hard at his shins.

"Basch! What's the matter with her?"

He ignored Penelo's tearful cries, Basch only had thoughts of Asheila. The desperation in his grasps at her only made her worse. But how could he keep away from her, when he felt what he did?

"She doesn't want you. She knows."

The voice of his inner demon, he ignored…the craziness and insanity in his head was not wanted, but it was clouding his judgement. It was making him forget who Asheila really was.

"Ashe!" he cried, his grip failed to keep hold of her and the scared queen scrambled away from him. She backed up against the tree, from which she also leapt away from. Her eyes were looking at everything and everyone around her, appalled and sickened. Her actions were really scaring Basch and the others. "Ashe…" His voice could barely contain the anguish he was feeling, as he slowly approached her. His hands held out for her, but she shied away. Her tears were still flowing as she wrapped her arms around her body, an action that caused the queen to sicken at her own touch.

"Ashe…please…tell me what's wrong." Though Basch didn't really want to know. "Did you not…"

How could he explain what he had experienced with her last night, when he didn't know exactly how it was possible.

"Basch! Something's really wrong!" Penelo sobbed as Jiiryn tended to her bruised face.

"That much is obvious." said Balthier, "Just let them…"

"Shutupshutupshutup!!" Ashe screamed. "Shut those putrid vile mouths!! I don't want to hear such shit!"

"Asheila! What is the matter?!" Basch was getting more than scared now. She was like a woman gone insane, everything around her was disgusting her, the slight gust of the wind made her recoil, and even the sound of words or the feeling of her own skin, sickened her.

"She sent me back!" Ashe hissed, pulling and tugging madly at her hair. "She took me away and now She's let me come back to this hell! This world is so hard and cold! There is no life in anything, no soul or colour! It's dead! It's all dead to me! It's gross and vile! This body is nauseating and repellent! I can't bare to be here!"

"I don't understand." Basch edged closer to her, carefully. He reached out, hoping to stop her from shredding more of her hair from her scalp. She sneered back at him, but then eventually she did stop her frantic tearing. "Ashe…I don't understand what you mean…."

"You!" Her hand jabbed a pointed finger at him. "You…violated me!"

"What?!" Basch stumbled back as she threw a punch towards him. Her fist cracked hard against his shoulder, but when the hand began to pulse with Ultima's magic, Basch backed off. "I would never do that! To your or any woman! You know that!"

"He's not like that!" cried Penelo. "Basch would never dream of being so vile!"

"He did!" Ashe sneered. "I know! I remember! I was there! You…you who call yourself a man of honour, to dare touch me like that!"

Basch realised she must be referring to the sex. But such a reaction only made him confused. She had enjoyed it, she had climaxed, he had felt it. It was so vivid, so physical and real. Why was she like this?!

The holy magic was becoming more intense, it crackled around her palms and snaked around her entire quaking body. Basch felt the pain from Zodiark inside at such proximity to the building magics, yet that didn't deter him from now keeping his ground. She wouldn't hurt him. He refused to think Ashe would be capable of it.

"She shouldn't be able to use Her powers! She can't harness this kind of magic!"

"Basch…back away!" Jiiryn pulled at his arm, but he wouldn't move. "Balthier!"

The Viera had her bow in her hands, already armed with an arrow and she was pointing it directly at Ashe as she sparked with energy. Penelo unsheathed her katana, but the fear of using it against her Queen and friend was making her shake.

"Balthier! Your guns! Don't let her use this power!" Jiiryn shouted.

"Huh? What?" Balthier looked a little confused, but then he slowly pulled one of his guns from it's holster. He looked at it, perplexed and puzzled, but then he directed it towards Ashe. "Oh…right."

I think I've used this before. I must have. Is it loaded? Does it need to be?

"Don't any of you dare harm her!" Basch retorted. "She doesn't know what she's doing!"

"I don't?!" Ashe walked up to him. With their bodies so close now, Basch could feel the elemental light weakening the Esper inside of him, weakening himself. His legs began to feel a searing pain, he could barely keep himself standing. "I know what things you did to me…the feeling of you inside me was revolting, it was sick and I want to die at the memory of it! To think I used to dream of such things, to think I could ever indulge in low and inferior acts! No…you will not do that to me ever again! I won't allow your presence to stench my existence any more!"

"Ashe…please…no…"

He reached to touch her face, but the light was too blinding. The pain was like fire burning on his skin.

Then, there was the sound of gunshot.

Asheila B'nargin fell to the ground, blood oozed from the bullet wound and soaked the earth.

"Oh god…." Balthier stood staring in horror at the smoke trailing from his gun. "What have I done?"

0000000000

Year - 733

"Why won't you look at me?"

He couldn't reply. He couldn't bare to turn round and face her once more. He said nothing.

"Look at me! Please! I can't stand this treatment!"

She walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, but it was shrugged off with an irritated jerk. The tears welled up in the Queen's eyes. How could he be like this towards her?

She made no attempt to go near him again, but for all her life, she wished that he could just show that he cared a little bit.

"Do you hate me that much?" She wept, uncontrollable tears streamed down her face. "You don't come to see me, you won't return my letters…instead you spend all your time with Biran and Ronnah. You give them everything! You are so devoted to them both but yet you can't be to me! Do you still blame me for…"

"No." his gruff voice replied. "I never blamed you…how could you possibly be blamed for what happened?"

"Then why do you hate me?!"

"I don't hate you." A heavy sigh racked from his lungs. "I love you more than you could know."

It was just that the pain from all those years ago, was still too strong in his heart. He couldn't tell her, he couldn't bring himself to hold her or kiss her. The memories wouldn't stop haunting him every time he laid eyes on her.