Post by Yeager on May 20, 2011 11:16:12 GMT -5
Sooo, I was into TOV for about two years before heading off into Hetalia and just recently came back to this fandom. I used to roleplay on a group called Tales of Niteo and wrote a couple drabbles for different characters, and figured they were good (and short) enough to paste over here.
"Untouched"
(TOA spoilers for Jade and Dist's backstory. Basically, youngDist tracking down the Nebilim replica.)
The snow lays thick tonight, the field before him stretching like a wide, pallid canvas in the dull light of the moon. The path he walks is yet untouched, and as his boots crunch soft shadows into the white, he has a strange, remote sort of feeling, as though he is cutting through some silent sea beyond the reaches of humanity.
He makes his way without a word. He finds her huddled in an island all her own, a small dark sun burned into the page, radiating cloud-trails of bygone footprints. The prints approach but do not leave, and as she glances up her lithe hands clutch at an arm and a leg, two fallen men.
In the night and the silence there is no time. He stares at her for what could be a second or an eternity, watching flurries collect on the sweat-damp strands of her hair. There is a dribble of rouge at the corner of her mouth and something like desperation in the gold of her eyes. Her fingers are tight on the still limbs, her knuckles gleaming red.
She is desperate and it is unlike her but he can see that old edge in the furrow of her brow and the line of her jaw, that sharp, keen will that had brought fervency to her lectures and power to her demonstrations. He sees that edge, that strength he had always admired but never touched, never been close to touching—so he extends a gloved palm.
“Professor.”
She looks at him and the anxiety fades a little, the golden eyes widen a little, and it occurs to him in a little whisper of thought that she is beautiful there, pale hair and pale skin crouched against her self-made darkness.
She takes his hand.
The snow lays thick tonight, thick enough to muffle sounds and screams and to make gentle the crunch of feet as Saphir returns from uncharted territory, departing without remorse from the land of the dead.
"Limbo"
(Yeager and Cumore, and Yeager's thoughts on their business.)
“All of this will be under my authority,” Cumore says, and brings his arm around in a broad sweep, across all the half-built buildingtops haloed in fog.
His lips curl into a smile and Yeager looks out to the horizon, wondering if he means to there or further, deep into some unseen dreamland. He doesn’t ask, though.
“I’ll do better than Alexei ever did, even putting the Union in their place.”
So it is further, into the heat and ember-tinted light of Danghrest, Yeager thinks. He thinks but he doesn’t say a word, because there is nothing in the black ink lines of his pocketed contract about an advisory role, only bulk orders jotted neatly onto blanks and the flourishes of signatures below a block of small print. He doesn’t say a word about manpower and resources, about risk assessment, about realistic goals.
“And I’ll be sure to reward you, Yeager, of course.”
Cumore glances back at him and Yeager returns his smile, but his smile is too close to Yeager’s own and Yeager knows, were the dream come to pass, Cumore would forget. He would buy and use and forget, making roundabout promises with muttered words like guild and barbaric, and the extended benefits would be few and insignificant. There would be little from the empire and the other half of the market would be a crapshoot entirely, depending on the nature and direction of the fighting, on how much money would remain in the system after the Union was sliced through.
But Yeager also knows all about risk, about the guilds and about war, and therefore knows it will never come. The sweep of Cumore’s arm covers few buildings now and will soon contain only empty air, because Cumore knows none of these things, really, only desire and greed.
“Soon, it will be possible. It will all be within my reach.”
Part of Yeager wants to say something, give some little hint or tip, but he keeps his mouth shut tightly. There is nothing in the contract about talking sense, about ensuring a client’s venture is successful, because he provides but does not use, gives but does not help. If he went any further, it would jeporadize his business. He can only stand in the middle, in the limbo between insanity and reason, and watch such power-starved men fling themselves from cliffs in their ecstacy.
“Thank you for your aid, and good luck in your business.”
Yeager nods as Cumore walks off into the vague, incomplete metropolis, and, only when he is suitably out of earshot, allows himself a whisper.
Good luck to you…goodness knows you will need it.
"Gray"
(Yeager and Sodia. They ended up having a pretty weird confidant kind of relationship on Niteo because Yeager felt bad for making her cry at one point. It was kind of cute, honestly.)
There has to be a law against this, thinks Sodia.
She has hundreds of pages of the imperial code memorized for times like this, when her heart stumbles ahead of her brain. She has lines and lines stored away like sacred verse to call up in her times of weakness, to recite sternly and seriously, propelling herself back with cold logic and rational thought. She has all that information branded hard and fast into her mind, but for the life of her she can’t think of a single precept that covers this.
There are laws against guilds doing business within the empire and laws against guild presence in certain territories and laws against assault or molestation of an officer with addendums for cases involving guildsmen but there is nothing, nothing that quite fits this situation. There was no verbal abuse that would qualify as verbal abuse, no use of a weapon or force, no harm wrought to her person in any apparent manner…only an overlying feeling that his actions were wrong, a feeling she can’t find words for.
She doesn’t know how to react. There is no outlined, professional solution to this. She stays there and tells herself that waiting it out is best, yes, and pretending to enjoy it is better, and pretending involves putting her arms around him and burying her face in his chest.
It’s all just pretending to shorten the duration of this violation of her personal space, and never mind that his arms are strong and warm and the hand rubbing her back is gentle, and never mind that his shirt smells faintly of soap when she’d always imagined guildsmen as being unhygenic. Never mind that her face is ablaze and her eyes are damp, and never mind that she feels understood for the first time in months, because she is only pretending, taking the logical course of action in response to his obvious misjudgment.
He is a fool for doing this, and if only there were a law against it—then she would have the strength to tell him so.
(But there was no law condoning stabbing a wanted man prior to attempting an arrest, either, so perhaps Sodia is becoming used to living in areas of gray.)
"Dreams"
(TOA Jade spoilers. Darkfic about Jade trying to resurrect Nebilim and what eventually makes him stop.)
In the beginning he dreams in memories.
His dreams of her are the days spent in class and after, and in them he watches her hand move, sketching glyphs and equations in slender strokes to satisfy his curiosity. He sees the movement more than her form, hears her soft, calm voice and the tap of the pen, feels her fingers settle on his shoulder as he tries with childish hands to draw light from the air.
He dreams of these things because they are apart from the failure that had her face. They are what he misses and what he assumes as motivation, leaving a paper-trail of manipulated numbers and neat lines of notes documenting the rats—the ones with half-formed organs, bruised skin, lolling eyes. He records what happens when he alters formulas or changes ingredient proportions, and reminds himself when his creations cough blood or convulse in seizures on the lab table that it is for her, for her, for her.
Years pass, and gradually, he stops dreaming in memories.
At some point the mathematics of fomicry stop being relegated to the day. He works late into the night and dreams in equations, solutions floating just out of reach. When she is there, he finds himself analyzing the makeup of her body, looking for aspects to keep in mind, things he will have to improve upon. He pays little attention to her movements, having seen them replayed a thousand nights before.
In one recurring fantasy, he has her body lying still and cold upon a table, and by measuring its parts alone he can find a grand, perfect equation for her ingredients. There are numbers for each arm, each leg, her closed eyes, her slightly open mouth. Everything is defined separately in numbers and she is more like a thousand-piece puzzle than a person—and that, somehow, is a relief.
He stops dreaming in memories and creates with more frequency, dead rats piling up in still poses of agony, and he does not think much of it because science is patient but unkind and feelings hamper efficiency. He works and works and works until the morning that, standing with bloodied hands over bloodstained notes, he finds he can no longer recall her face.
That day, he realizes it is not for her, for her, for her, and maybe it never was.
That afternoon, he puts away his paperwork and packs up his belongings.
That night, he turns his back on cheating death.
Yeah, who knows. Maybe I'll get some inspiration from roleplaying with you guys and write some more. :3 Hope you enjoyed.
"Untouched"
(TOA spoilers for Jade and Dist's backstory. Basically, youngDist tracking down the Nebilim replica.)
The snow lays thick tonight, the field before him stretching like a wide, pallid canvas in the dull light of the moon. The path he walks is yet untouched, and as his boots crunch soft shadows into the white, he has a strange, remote sort of feeling, as though he is cutting through some silent sea beyond the reaches of humanity.
He makes his way without a word. He finds her huddled in an island all her own, a small dark sun burned into the page, radiating cloud-trails of bygone footprints. The prints approach but do not leave, and as she glances up her lithe hands clutch at an arm and a leg, two fallen men.
In the night and the silence there is no time. He stares at her for what could be a second or an eternity, watching flurries collect on the sweat-damp strands of her hair. There is a dribble of rouge at the corner of her mouth and something like desperation in the gold of her eyes. Her fingers are tight on the still limbs, her knuckles gleaming red.
She is desperate and it is unlike her but he can see that old edge in the furrow of her brow and the line of her jaw, that sharp, keen will that had brought fervency to her lectures and power to her demonstrations. He sees that edge, that strength he had always admired but never touched, never been close to touching—so he extends a gloved palm.
“Professor.”
She looks at him and the anxiety fades a little, the golden eyes widen a little, and it occurs to him in a little whisper of thought that she is beautiful there, pale hair and pale skin crouched against her self-made darkness.
She takes his hand.
The snow lays thick tonight, thick enough to muffle sounds and screams and to make gentle the crunch of feet as Saphir returns from uncharted territory, departing without remorse from the land of the dead.
"Limbo"
(Yeager and Cumore, and Yeager's thoughts on their business.)
“All of this will be under my authority,” Cumore says, and brings his arm around in a broad sweep, across all the half-built buildingtops haloed in fog.
His lips curl into a smile and Yeager looks out to the horizon, wondering if he means to there or further, deep into some unseen dreamland. He doesn’t ask, though.
“I’ll do better than Alexei ever did, even putting the Union in their place.”
So it is further, into the heat and ember-tinted light of Danghrest, Yeager thinks. He thinks but he doesn’t say a word, because there is nothing in the black ink lines of his pocketed contract about an advisory role, only bulk orders jotted neatly onto blanks and the flourishes of signatures below a block of small print. He doesn’t say a word about manpower and resources, about risk assessment, about realistic goals.
“And I’ll be sure to reward you, Yeager, of course.”
Cumore glances back at him and Yeager returns his smile, but his smile is too close to Yeager’s own and Yeager knows, were the dream come to pass, Cumore would forget. He would buy and use and forget, making roundabout promises with muttered words like guild and barbaric, and the extended benefits would be few and insignificant. There would be little from the empire and the other half of the market would be a crapshoot entirely, depending on the nature and direction of the fighting, on how much money would remain in the system after the Union was sliced through.
But Yeager also knows all about risk, about the guilds and about war, and therefore knows it will never come. The sweep of Cumore’s arm covers few buildings now and will soon contain only empty air, because Cumore knows none of these things, really, only desire and greed.
“Soon, it will be possible. It will all be within my reach.”
Part of Yeager wants to say something, give some little hint or tip, but he keeps his mouth shut tightly. There is nothing in the contract about talking sense, about ensuring a client’s venture is successful, because he provides but does not use, gives but does not help. If he went any further, it would jeporadize his business. He can only stand in the middle, in the limbo between insanity and reason, and watch such power-starved men fling themselves from cliffs in their ecstacy.
“Thank you for your aid, and good luck in your business.”
Yeager nods as Cumore walks off into the vague, incomplete metropolis, and, only when he is suitably out of earshot, allows himself a whisper.
Good luck to you…goodness knows you will need it.
"Gray"
(Yeager and Sodia. They ended up having a pretty weird confidant kind of relationship on Niteo because Yeager felt bad for making her cry at one point. It was kind of cute, honestly.)
There has to be a law against this, thinks Sodia.
She has hundreds of pages of the imperial code memorized for times like this, when her heart stumbles ahead of her brain. She has lines and lines stored away like sacred verse to call up in her times of weakness, to recite sternly and seriously, propelling herself back with cold logic and rational thought. She has all that information branded hard and fast into her mind, but for the life of her she can’t think of a single precept that covers this.
There are laws against guilds doing business within the empire and laws against guild presence in certain territories and laws against assault or molestation of an officer with addendums for cases involving guildsmen but there is nothing, nothing that quite fits this situation. There was no verbal abuse that would qualify as verbal abuse, no use of a weapon or force, no harm wrought to her person in any apparent manner…only an overlying feeling that his actions were wrong, a feeling she can’t find words for.
She doesn’t know how to react. There is no outlined, professional solution to this. She stays there and tells herself that waiting it out is best, yes, and pretending to enjoy it is better, and pretending involves putting her arms around him and burying her face in his chest.
It’s all just pretending to shorten the duration of this violation of her personal space, and never mind that his arms are strong and warm and the hand rubbing her back is gentle, and never mind that his shirt smells faintly of soap when she’d always imagined guildsmen as being unhygenic. Never mind that her face is ablaze and her eyes are damp, and never mind that she feels understood for the first time in months, because she is only pretending, taking the logical course of action in response to his obvious misjudgment.
He is a fool for doing this, and if only there were a law against it—then she would have the strength to tell him so.
(But there was no law condoning stabbing a wanted man prior to attempting an arrest, either, so perhaps Sodia is becoming used to living in areas of gray.)
"Dreams"
(TOA Jade spoilers. Darkfic about Jade trying to resurrect Nebilim and what eventually makes him stop.)
In the beginning he dreams in memories.
His dreams of her are the days spent in class and after, and in them he watches her hand move, sketching glyphs and equations in slender strokes to satisfy his curiosity. He sees the movement more than her form, hears her soft, calm voice and the tap of the pen, feels her fingers settle on his shoulder as he tries with childish hands to draw light from the air.
He dreams of these things because they are apart from the failure that had her face. They are what he misses and what he assumes as motivation, leaving a paper-trail of manipulated numbers and neat lines of notes documenting the rats—the ones with half-formed organs, bruised skin, lolling eyes. He records what happens when he alters formulas or changes ingredient proportions, and reminds himself when his creations cough blood or convulse in seizures on the lab table that it is for her, for her, for her.
Years pass, and gradually, he stops dreaming in memories.
At some point the mathematics of fomicry stop being relegated to the day. He works late into the night and dreams in equations, solutions floating just out of reach. When she is there, he finds himself analyzing the makeup of her body, looking for aspects to keep in mind, things he will have to improve upon. He pays little attention to her movements, having seen them replayed a thousand nights before.
In one recurring fantasy, he has her body lying still and cold upon a table, and by measuring its parts alone he can find a grand, perfect equation for her ingredients. There are numbers for each arm, each leg, her closed eyes, her slightly open mouth. Everything is defined separately in numbers and she is more like a thousand-piece puzzle than a person—and that, somehow, is a relief.
He stops dreaming in memories and creates with more frequency, dead rats piling up in still poses of agony, and he does not think much of it because science is patient but unkind and feelings hamper efficiency. He works and works and works until the morning that, standing with bloodied hands over bloodstained notes, he finds he can no longer recall her face.
That day, he realizes it is not for her, for her, for her, and maybe it never was.
That afternoon, he puts away his paperwork and packs up his belongings.
That night, he turns his back on cheating death.
Yeah, who knows. Maybe I'll get some inspiration from roleplaying with you guys and write some more. :3 Hope you enjoyed.
