Defined Contours

a k a n t h a e - h i m e

Authoress' Note & Disclaimer: Ha, I got my muse back. For real. And Vossler is now officially the love, the delusional arse. It's too bad he died, you know? But even if I do admire him for his good intentions, Vossler is as much a coward as he is a courageous man.

I twisted his death a little to make room for irony.

(No, I don't own Final Fantasy XII. But if I could, I'd totally work for Square if they made a sequel.)

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Is his soul on fire? It feels that way, a writhing mass of metal that feels as hot in the pit of his ribs - one is broken, but he swings his weapon still - as it must seem cold to others. His armor, in more ways than one, has come undone, and he blocks the entrance to Paradise as surely as he knows that it waits for all others but him.

One day, he will thank her for this...this chance to explain why he lives and why his men do not, this chance to proclaim his allegiance without having to die for it to be yelled out to the heavens. He is not as angry at himself for failing to protect Raminas and Rasler as Basch is, and yet he carries an even larger burden: Vossler clings to life like a parasite to its host, drawing on strength he cannot find himself. In a way, he is a parasite, as a father feeds off his daughter's radiance with pride so as to better shame others when they ask of it. But he is not Ashelia's father, though he loved her mother the lady sovereign (Vidina, he calls her in private, which Basch has told him means "precious" in the Landis tongue, which to Vossler sounds like a garbled mass of Rozzarian curses) just as much, and for that she must learn to despise him.

He is stealing her glory.

That is his destiny (to be hated, for theft and much more), if it can be called destiny when he does not want to struggle against it and instead is faithful in the belief that it will never be his choice. Unknowingly, Ashe has not only the entirety of Dalmasca to save, but Vossler as well.

In a moment, she will awaken - it is dawn, though light never shines in Lowtown, and it is as much of a prison as the soldier's barracks at the palace are - and affix him with her deathly rapturous eyes, encircled in black like a common pauper's soot-covered face. There will be a baleful yawn, and then she will wrap the blanket into a small bundle of cloth on her bed and rise to begin what training she must have to wield a glaive as well as she does a blade. (Glaives, like other staves and rods, are more deadly, and she must be as familiar with magick as she is with her rapier. Every blade, likewise, must have two sides.) He has already allowed her the luxury of a sword where others have had only their quick wits and quick footsteps, and a few bits and pieces of rusty metal if the weaponsmaster thinks it a good investment. If she must defend herself to live where no other can, and if she succeeds, Vossler knows that there will be something inside of her that is worth protecting. If she cannot protect herself, how can she expect to protect her people?

But Ashelia has questions.

"Why am I alive when my father is not?"

He answers without hesitation.

"It has ever been your duty to protect your people, Lady Ashelia. Death would be a fool to disallow that fate."

(It is not until her seventeenth birthday that a soldier she especially favors calls her Ashe and she likes it. Before that, it is always Ashelia, and sometimes Vossler slips into his old habits and calls her princess to her face: she answers, as innocent as she can be under the circumstances, "Princess of what, Vossler? Dalmasca was already dead when I came along.")

Vossler knows that Ashelia will never be his. When the time comes and he is old and his hair is white or has already fallen off his skull, Vossler is determined to have forgotten her in at least one way. She is a princess. He cannot love only the image he has conjured up of her, a Valkyrie in shining steel with a trail of blood spatters on her page of history, under her name. She is simply not the woman that Vossler knows that she will someday be.

Not yet.

(She does not know until she picks up his greatsword, which is almost as tall as she is and cannot compare to her lithe elegance, that it has been used to kill for her sake. And even then, Ashelia has lost the ability to cry. Only when she lets the great hulking piece of scrap metal fall from her small hands can she let her lips purse and her eyes slant with the bitter radiance of hatred, tears lost amongst the dirty filth that hide her feet from view in the sewer's perpetual gloom. Vossler keeps the greatsword even after she is gone, when she is assumed dead by comrades who are not truly her friends, and he must go trekking through the sewers to recover her body. He doesn't find it, though he searches for three days and three nights without sleep, and so the deal has already been struck. If she cannot fulfill her destiny, he will do it for her.)

It's the age-old fairy tale all over again. The key difference is that the knight has never been twice the princess' age...and height, though the Lady Ashe will never admit that she has always been shorter than she wants to be. Her pride must be kept intact at all times, no matter how difficult it is to keep the princess from falling apart on the inside. There is another path that the tale will take - Ashe is and always will be a lady of Death's domain, leaving her knight to die on a height in the sky (alone, even), and discarding her past and her marriage in order to take up the sword and shield of vengeance against the man who has enslaved her people.

("You must be strong, my lady, if you ever intend to protect your people.")

Vossler is filled to the brim with love for his country, love for what he sees in Ashe, though he can no longer stop the image of her eyes and her throne from blurring at the edges: a future for a country that would otherwise be doomed to dim darkness. And although they cannot see it - the blinds must ever be kept closed, save for when they know they are safe (they never are) - the sun still shines. It purges what it touches with fingers of shining Mist, drawing strength from the faith that Man has in the possibility that the sun will set one day and never come back up.

It, like Ashe (and Vossler, and Balthier, and Basch, and Vayne, who has never thought to regret something in his life, all to some degree), will not allow itself to die. It must always stoke its own flames, the sun, whether it is a woman or a man, and deny the truth that will catch up with it one day.

Sacrifices, he knows - as he does when Basch runs his own weapon through his stomach - must be always made.