Title: Peculiar Tastes
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's teatime in the darkness below thoughts.

Note: Written for the October round of FFEX's Chocobo Down, for notraffic's prompt: "Guardian Forces Tonberry and Cactuar discuss which memories they've most enjoyed consuming, and/or the particular reasons behind why they chose the ones they did. What are those specific memories? To what character did they belong? Bonus points for reasons why Tonberry or Cactuar might prefer certain memories over others. And in sticking with the themes, memory loss as a conscious theft rather than an inevitable side effect of junctioning. Do the GFs only consume memories that are enjoyable, or do they also remove bad memories? Curse or blessing?

"Super open-ended-would love to see this written/drawn as just about anything, whether with actual dialog, or some crazy, abstract fanfic!prose poem (or a hilarious illustration of Tonberry and Cactuar looking philosophical while sipping out of dramatic crystal tumblers)."

It's teatime in the darkness below thoughts.

Tonberry is late, because Tonberry refuses to be rushed. Cactuar is late, because Cactuar prefers to measure time irregularly.

Their meeting works out, regardless. They settle in across from each other and peel open the swollen seahorse curl of their junctioned mind. Even a mind that has been feasted upon for years is sticky enough to trap new experiences as they flit by, and Irvine's mind is still nearly fresh. Their mouths water; it has been a very long time.

Little white cups fill with the essence of memories too deep for a human mind to recall. This is a fine tea, blended from Irvine's first breath and his first blurred glimpse of his mother's face. A clink of ceramic, two long quiet sips, and they are gone.

Tonberry wields its knife methodically, precisely. Cactuar's black maw gapes as it falls face-first into its meal.

They have never understood each other's table manners.

Tonberry savors selectively. Its hunger is for archetypes, which it picks strand-by-strand from the idiosyncrasies that weave through them. The discovery of mortality, the end of childhood, the first strange flutter of desire: these things Tonberry chews down to mush and lets coalescence into primal lumps in its belly. Bite by bite, it builds a universal human narrative.

Tomorrow Irving will find a hole in his sock and be struck by déjà vu, linked somehow to the stickiness of peppermint gum and the nervous pitch of a giggle. He won't remember the first kiss that once glued these feelings together.

Meanwhile, Cactuar nibbles bits of sensation and seldom finishes anything. The only memories it takes in full are stark and fleeting: the electric moment when gazes meet across a crowded room, the first shiver of autumn, the seize of terror at the end of a nightmare. Those who junction it shed details. They remember birthday parties and pet goldfish and lazy summer afternoons, but the food tastes like snow, the smells are hospital-clean, and the colors are muted grays.

The crumbs that fall from Cactuar's mouth mingle haphazardly with other memories. Tomorrow Irvine will think of a morning spent picking white flowers for Sefie and remember it like a scene from a novel, wondering why its edges buzz with static and crumble like wet sand. He will flex his fingers but be unable to recapture the feeling of dirt and dew on clumsy little hands.

Tonberry's blade is teasing its way into Irvine's first pang of loss when golden feathers obscure the work. "That's enough," says Siren, hooking her long talons into Cactuar to pull it away. Her wings block an alarmed burst of needles. "Don't be gluttons."

Although Tonberry and Cactuar don't understand each other's habits, they are united in their greater incomprehension of Siren's. Tonberry tugs at a strand of what is only Irvine's to demonstrate how close it is to another sweet morsel of the everyman.

Siren shakes her head. "I know that you've had none for a long time, but you must not take too much at once. Pace yourselves. He will draw upon your strength, and you will hunger again."

To demonstrate, she laps up a little pool of Matron's voice calling him in at dusk. Tomorrow Irvine will be reminded of catching fireflies with Zell and hear their names like printed words. When Siren licks her lips, there is only silence.

"Take only," she says, "what you need."

Reluctantly, Tonberry seals off the feast. Cactuar rocks sullenly on its legs before darting back to the subconscious space it has carved out. Raising its lantern, Tonberry shuffles off into the dark, toward the deep places where piquant fear suffuses each breath. Siren remains to keep watch; the new ones sometimes can't help themselves.

Irvine twitches in his sleep as his dream seeps into the fresh gaps in his mind. Tomorrow he will remember it vividly.