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flonnebonneFandom: FF4.
Characters: Edge, Rydia, Asura, Leviathan, some Cecil, Rosa, Kain
Genre: Comedy, Romance, a little Angst
Summary: Edge meets Asura and Leviathan for the first time. They're weird, but that's okay. At least Rydia still has parents. Oh, and Cecil and Kain have major daddy issues.
My Girlfriend’s Parents Are Monsters and That's Okay
Being a sneaky busybody might be part of Edge's nature, or it might just be something he picked up from the Ninja Code, Chapter IV, Section II:
Know thy enemy, but know thy companions first.
So it's totally legit. He's doing his best to weasel out the sordid details of his companions' lives because the Ninja Code says he should. If nothing else, the challenge of getting them to talk about themselves helps liven up their little jaunt into the endless and deepening horrors of the Feymarch.
Getting them to talk, however, is admittedly a difficult task even for someone as sneaky as Edge. He's a latecomer to the party, and when three fifths of the party membership (the unholy triumvirate of Cecil, Rosa and Kain) have known each other most of their lives and the other member (Rydia) is...perhaps somewhat leery of his intentions, it's easy to feel like a fifth wheel.
But hey, that's okay, Edge has plenty of chances to catch them off guard. After marching through endless miles of twisting caverns littered with oddly beautiful giant spider webs and being attacked by cackling red demons and oddly beautiful spider women for hours on end, the group is always utterly exhausted - emotional defenses lowered - by the time they finally lay themselves down to rest at end of day. And that's when Edge is at his ninja best.
They take their guard duty shifts in pairs, which makes things easier. Whenever it's his turn, Edge sits across from his drowsy partner-in-wakefulness, the two of them warmed by the intimate shadow dance of campfire flames, and bides his time. He is comfortable in the half-light. When he judges his intended victim to be feeling maudlin enough (or bored enough) to talk, he offers up a few clever quips as an icebreaker, shares stories about his own past (the parts he's willing to share), then asks his questions in a low, soothing voice:
"So, tell me about your childhood, Rosa. Were you a bad little kid like me, or did you listen to your elders?"
The questions change depending on who he's talking to, of course.
"What's up with the knight/white mage combo? Never heard of that one before. And how do you keep your cloak so clean?"
"Do you ever take off that helmet?"
"Heeeey, Rydia - "
He doesn't even mind the glowers from Kain and the glares from Rydia because they always end up talking anyway, at least a little. One night he gets out of Rosa a long rambling narrative about the good old days when Cecil and Kain were bosom buddies growing up under the tutelage of the King of Baron - back when the king was a king and not an evil turtle impersonating a king, that is - and man, that stuff is pure gold. In those idyllic days Rosa was playmate to her two friends, something shared equally between them rather than lover to one and object of jealousy for the other (she doesn't say the last part, but Edge infers it), and her eyes mist over with the remembering of it. It's rather hard to get Rosa to stop talking about her happy childhood, actually, once she gets started.
On another night, as if in counterpoint to Rosa's nostalgic tale, he learns from a matter-of-fact Rydia that Kain once pushed his spear through Cecil's abdomen in the crystal chamber of Fabul.
Ouch.
From Cecil, whose voice grows quiet with remorse, he hears the story of how he and Kain killed Rydia's mother and burned her village to the ground.
Kain tells Edge very little, but that in itself tells Edge (who reads people better than he reads books) that this is a man who is ruled by his past; his silences scream it.
A dreadful lingering darkness here, a bittersweet anecdote there - Edge receives his friends in bits in pieces, and usually via a third party, because it seems they'd much rather reveal secrets about each other rather than secrets about themselves. It's good enough; he has a clearer picture of his allies now. In his mind (which is not as empty as Rydia would have it) Edge connects the dots between the stories he hears, builds psychological profiles, even draws up mental tree diagrams of family and friends and enemies.
And, eventually, comes to a stunning psychoanalytic conclusion:
Edge might be the only one in their little group lucky enough to have received an adequate mix of feminine and masculine influence during his formative years.
He is rather proud of this particular stunning psychoanalytic conclusion. The charts he could draw up! Heck, he's going to draw one up now. Only in his head, of course, because he's not suicidal.
So here's how it goes: Rydia and Rosa have only ever known their mothers, while Cecil and Kain quite obviously live in the shadow of their fathers. Not that Cecil ever knew his real father. Kain's father was probably a noble prick. Rosa's mother sounds very nice, if not particularly interesting. Rydia's mother is dead, but she must have been quite the woman because Rydia got that stubborn strength from somewhere, with a bonus Mist Dragon for her summoning pleasure. (If anyone in their little group deserves the title of One To Be Born From A Dragon it's Rydia, not Cecil, but he supposes legends are not to be interpreted too literally.)
Cecil speaks of the fatherly voice on Mount Ordeals with a deep, if confused, reverence. Kain never speaks of his father, but Rosa tells Edge all about the late and great Richard Highwind one day, and Edge is pretty sure that if Kain could bring himself to speak about his father he would do so in tones of deep, if confused, reverence. The gods of one's childhood and all. Poor baby. Edge would sympathize if he could bring himself to like the guy.
Kain and Cecil actually have two sets of daddy issues, come to think of it; they also clearly loved and admired the father-king who adopted them and whom they lost without knowing it. This is one of the many things they share. Cecil and Kain, however, are not good at sharing things.
His companions' parental deficits and the possible psychological ramifications are pretty depressing, actually. He remembers reading something somewhere, a little spark of knowledge from the dark depths of his school days, about how lacking a mother or a father in childhood can be quite seriously bad for one's health. Yin and yang get out of whack, excessive aggression develops, a total lack of aggression develops, issues with authority or an an overwhelming need to have authority exercised over oneself start to develop, etc.
He can't really remember any of the more specific consequences of parental deficit disorder - ninjas don't take notes in psych class, thanks - but he thinks that if Cecil had had a mother and not just a confusing pseudo-father figure, perhaps he would have been able to conceive of himself as something other than a warrior; perhaps he would not have walked the path of a Dark Knight, become lackey to a false king. Perhaps he would not have slain Rydia's mother and destroyed her village.
If Rosa's father had lived longer, perhaps she have been more carefully guarded from the men she loved so openly, perhaps she would have learned that men do not share a woman's love without bloodshed, perhaps somehow she could have bridged the distance between Cecil and Kain that she helped create.
And if Rydia had known her father, perhaps she would be able to appreciate Edge a little more.
As for Kain...well, if Kain had known a mother's warmth, perhaps he wouldn't be such an asshole.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
He ponders all the perhapses for hours and hours, the twists and turns of their minds and lives, because he'd rather think about their parents than his own.
- 0 - 0 -
Then, one night, Rydia stares into the fire and says quietly, without looking at him:
"The day I lost my mother was the worst day of my life, but the day I learned to love Asura and Leviathan was the best."
For a moment Edge thrills at hearing her speak like this, so simply and openly, and he is amazed at himself because he feels like he really might be in love with this amazing girl - this amazing woman. There's a rush of heady joy in his gut. He might do some ninja cartwheels.
But then he realizes what Rydia said: I lost my parents but I got new ones.
Never mind that the new parents were monsters. At least she still has them.
Edge's parents became monsters, so he killed them.
"Edge? Are you all right?"
Stop it, he berates himself. Stop making this about you. Rydia finally trusts you enough to tell him something this important, this close to her heart, and you're jealous. Edge blinks back the tears that suddenly prick at the corner of his eyes and threaten to spill down behind his mask. He feels like the worst ninja in the world.
Rydia, though not a ninja, notices. And the expression that appears on her face is a wonder, because it's like she's finally seen that he's human, and Edge doesn't even care about this victory right now because he's got no space in him for anything but grief, grief for the parents he can't just replace with humans or monsters or anything, because even now he feels sick when he remembers what Lugae turned them into, scaled skin and too many limbs and madness in their eyes, and he does not want to look at Leviathan and Asura and see his parents staring back.
"I'm sorry," Rydia says in a quiet voice he's never heard before. "I wasn't thinking when I said that."
And just like that, the grief subsides, though Edge knows it's still waiting in the corners of his heart. But he's always been a simple man, with room in him for only one feeling at a time, and right now it's gratitude. Or so he tells himself.
"I'm all right," he says, brushing away the water on his cheeks. It's getting under his mask and it's uncomfortable. "I just got something in my eye."
She gives him a moment to compose himself. Or maybe to compose herself; she's blinking hard, the way he is.
"Yeah," she says. "Me too."
- 0 - 0 -
They're closer, after that.
"When I first came to the Feymarch, I hated them," she tells him, two nights later. The fire makes her eyes black and eerie, like the eyes of the Arachne they fought today. Full of fathomless emotion. To Edge she has never looked more human.
"When I was just a little girl Leviathan took me from Cecil and the others - we were with Yang and Edward, you've never met them - and brought me down here. Can you imagine? I was five. I may be a Summoner, but the Feymarch was a horrible place to me. No sun, no wind. I only saw darkness and danger. As for Leviathan and Asura...I knew they were Eidolons, but I saw them as monsters for taking me away from my friends. Yet..." and here her voice dips low, "they loved me. They took care of me. And I came to love them as much as I ever loved my first parents."
He is still jealous. He still wants to tell her it's unfair of her to offer comfort when his hurt is so close, and he lost them both damn it and she only remembers losing her mother. But she was just a child then, and he is no longer a child, so he says instead, "What are they like? We're going to meet them, and they're royalty, and I'm royalty, so I suppose this is a state visit and I should be prepared."
"Right, a state visit."
She indulges his flippancy, recognizing it for what it is. Before she would have scorned him or insulted him or just left his company, the worst punishment of all. So this conversation is a victory. At cost.
"Tell me about them," he insists, though it pains him.
Rydia considers him carefully. As if she can see under his mask. "Well, Asura is..she has a lot of faces, and arms," she describes. "Her healing magic is amazing - less controlled than Rosa's, I'd say, but her mana reserves are extremely good."
That was definitely not what Edge expected. "Okay...is she friendly?"
Rydia gives him a peculiar look. "Eidolons aren't friendly."
"Oh. That's not good." Edge pictures himself being eaten by a Chocobo or blown up by a Bomb when he gets to the Feymarch. Hilarious.
"No, I don't mean they're unfriendly, but they...they're different from us. They're kind of...you know..."
"Ineffable?"
"Sure, whatever that means."
"Exactly."
She gives him a confused look, and he feels a bit bad; not everyone can have private Eblanian tutors plus a ninja's awesome memory. It occurs to him that Rydia might be sensitive about this topic, having spent her school years a thousand feet underground in the company of monsters, so he puts the conversation back on track.
"How about Leviathan? What's he like?"
"Leviathan? He's a terrifying water/ice-elemental dragon and King of the Seas. He can summon a huge wave - two of them in row, actually - and his Blizzara is quite strong as well. He can probably kill you in two seconds, maybe three."
"Sounds great. So, uh, will he? Kill me?"
Rydia gives him a sly look. "Is there any reason he should?"
"Maybe there is." Edge raises an eyebrow and practically leers at her. That'll learn her. But she doesn't flinch or look away, and he likes her all the more for that.
"Anyway, don't worry about Leviathan." Rydia continues after a moment. "He has an interesting sense of humour."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You'll see."
She's got that sly look again, but it's different now. Almost ninja-like.
Damn. He is in love.
- 0 - 0 -
It turns out it's kind of impossible to feel jealous of Rydia when he finally faces her foster parents.
Because Asura really does have a lot of faces, and arms, and awesome magical power reserves.
And Leviathan really does have an interesting sense of humour.
"This elderly man is the King of the Eidolons?" Kain almost sputters, as if he were capable of sputtering. Maybe if he took off his helmet. "He said he was just an old man!"
"That was before you defeated my wife," Leviathan intones, his voice deepening from the quivering old man quaver it was before. "Indeed, at that time I was not who I am now, for time flows differently here and the Queen guards all paths to my person."
"Right, person," Edge snorts quietly.
Rydia glares at him and he cowers a little. He has lots of reasons to cower. The doddering old man they took for a clerk is actually the King of the Feymarch! Edge wishes he hadn't asked the man to get him a glass of water earlier. How embarrassing - he asked the Lord of All Waters for a glass of water!
"Rydia, my dear," the King says, still in that terrifyingly profound voice like the ageless depths of the ocean. "I am glad you are well."
"And I am glad you are well as well," she answers mundanely, to which Leviathan actually smiles back, so hey maybe this won't be so bad after all except maybe not, oh holy meteor he is turning into a dragon with a long barbed tail and a long sinuous scaled body of unearthly blue and the eyes, oh god the eyes they make Edge see the smallness of his soul in comparison to the ancient power of this ancient godlike beast whose immenseness knows no bounds and oh wait there are bounds, he's finally stopped growing actually that was a pretty damn cool transformation in retrospect but thank goodness it's over now, whew.
Dragons. What can a man say, they are pretty awesomely terrifying.
Cecil stares his mighty Paladin stare, up and up and up at the towering monster above him. His eyes are huge. Kain's well-muscled Dragoon knees have gotten a little wobbly, if Edge isn't mistaken. Bad time for the daddy complexes to be coming out.
Actually, Edge is sweating under his mask, if he has to admit it to himself. He thinks he is probably worse off than the others because he has inside info: he knows Leviathan can kill him in two, maybe three seconds. He tries to share a worried glance with Rosa, who's got her eyes on Cecil and Kain. Stupid daddy issues.
But Rydia...Rydia strides forward, stands tall in her green boots before the King of Eidolons. Her foster dad. Her future summoned monster.
Cecil has nothing on this One to Be Born From a Dragon.
"You are the first to defeat Asura," Leviathan informs them. "But you cannot overcome evil with strength alone. A strong spirit is required to steer one's powers toward righteousness. Will you test your spirit against my powers?"
"We will," Rydia answers in a clear voice that rings throughout the vast chamber.
The waters begin to rise.
Rosa nearly drops her bow in her haste to begin chanting a Protect spell. Cecil's Paladin stare snaps to attention as he unsheathes his sword. Kain's Dragoon knees stop knocking.
Edge takes out a tiny human shuriken and wonders if it will feel more like a mosquito bite or a pinprick to the gigantic dragon he intends to throw it at.
But he takes heart when he sees Rydia. His Rydia. She already has old Ramuh sparking up a storm around her, a curtain of dancing white fire. A moment later she's sending it at her father with a dainty sweep of her arm; the spell leaps from Ramuh's staff, courses through the eddying waters, and engulfs Leviathan in an impressive burst of heat and light.
Huh, maybe I should try out my new Blitz spell, Edge muses.
And he does.
- 0 - 0 -
The thought of Rydia being able to call Asura and Leviathan now is extremely frightening.
It means that his almost-girlfriend's parents are just a few words of magic away from kicking his ass at any time.
"Edward Geraldine of Eblan," Leviathan declares, "we would speak with you regarding your intentions toward our dear daughter."
He is really glad that Cecil, Rosa and Kain have already gone back to the inn. Edge wishes he was with them. Why oh why did Rydia ask him to stay behind? Oh yeah, to "talk."
Edward Geraldine? Rydia mouths while Edge groans inwardly. How did the King and Queen of Eidolons know Edge's real name anyway? He supposes this is where the royal state visit finally starts. Or maybe the royal inquisition.
"So..." he begins intelligently, but Asura cuts him off.
"Are you two yet enjoying carnal relations?"
"What?" he and Rydia say together.
After a moment Edge regains his sense of equilibrium and answers, in a tone of regret, "Not yet."
Rydia gives him a dirty look (but not that kind) before addressing her foster parents. "Why on earth would you even ask that?"
"Why not?" says Leviathan. "We can read it in your auras. You are both young and healthy and in need of a mate equal to yourself in power. Why not each other?" Asura nods one of her heads.
Which is just...well. Edge is pleasantly floored by their open-mindedness. Maybe these two will be pretty fantastic in-laws after all.
Meanwhile, the look on Rydia's face is almost comical. "We haven't even - "
"We like this one you have chosen," Asura interrupts again, and Edge feels all warm and happy until she continues, "because he has magic, which is good for the breeding of more Summoners."
"Breeding!" Rydia explodes, and Edge thinks she's really going to kill him now. He's already bracing himself for impact when she says, "I never thought about that. I'm the last Summoner. I do need to have kids."
Edge is the one gaping now. "Really? You want to have kids?"
"Maybe not right now." Rydia flushes. "But maybe someday. Maybe."
Well, he wasn't expecting that. They haven't even kissed yet and already he's practically married to her. Time really does flow differently down here! However...
"Rydia...I adore you, you know that. But talking about having children already is...moving too fast, even for a ninja. I'm the king of Eblan now, and I can't make these decisions lightly." He's surprised at the words coming out of his mouth; they're the sorts of words his father might have said, and the thought brings on a pang of loss that makes it impossible to speak for several long seconds.
"Oh, then you don't want to?" Rydia looks crestfallen.
"No, it's not that I don't want to, but...maybe we should get to know each other better first? And then we can, you know. Get to know each other better. If you know what I mean."
"Yes, that is well," says Asura before Rydia can express her disgust with him. The Queen seems to be a pathological interrupter. "We approve of this one's bloodline."
"But," Leviathan adds ominously, "if you find anyone with Moon blood, you should have that man's broodlings instead. Moon blood is full of magic."
"Huh?" Edge thinks that is a pretty weird thing to say, even by Eidolon standards. "There are people on the moon?"
"Yes, of course," Asura replies, like it's a fact everyone knows.
"Moon people." Rydia sounds skeptical. "If I find anyone, I'll let you know."
"The Moon also has many dragons." Leviathan's fearsome red eyes are misting up with...nostalgia? Do Eidolons get nostalgic? "My cousin Ogopogo still lives up there."
"Your cousin is a beautiful creature," murmurs Asura.
"He is."
"Okaaaay," Edge says. "Well, maybe I should give the three of you some alone time? Let you catch up on...Eidolon news and all."
Asura nods. "Yes. There is much Eidolon news to discuss."
"There most definitely is," Leviathan adds. "There is the matter of Chocobo breeding as well as your own."
"It will be good to talk. I've missed the two of you so much." Rydia smiles at them. At the monsters - people - who are her parents.
They start talking about Chocobo reproduction in earnest.
Edge, totally creeped out, creeps out of there while he can.
Family will do that to you.
- 0 - 0 -
"So this the place that raised her," Rosa remarks.
They're resting up at the inn - even an ancient eldritch land where beasts of magic dwell has to have amenities like an inn, armour shop, and library, who knew - while they wait for Rydia for return.
All of them are so exhausted they are beyond maudlin, they are schmaltzy.
"It's amazing, isn't it? I remember when she was this tall," says Cecil, his hand about waist high. He pauses, then adds, "That was only about a few months ago."
"I bet she was really cute, wasn't she?" Edge comments wistfully. He's sad that he'll never get to see little Rydia. The rest of them, even Kain back when he was a bad guy, had that chance.
"Yes," Cecil says. "She was such a sweet child."
Kain coughs and mutters something like "who could pull a mountain on your head," but Cecil doesn't seem to hear. The Paladin's eyes have gone distant.
"Back then, she needed a lot more protecting. And now look at her. She's become so powerful."
"But she's still the person she was before," says Rosa unexpectedly. "She was always strong. Even when she was scared."
After a moment Cecil nods in acknowledgement, and Edge thinks there is a story or two here that he hasn't heard; but he doesn't need to pry now. He's fine with not knowing everything about his friends. He has time to learn.
"What did they say to you, Edge?" Rosa asks, turning to him. "They seemed very interested in you."
Edge considers how to answer.
"They wanted to let me know how impressed they were with my with my Blitz."
"Really," Kain drawls. Even Cecil looks skeptical. But Edge doesn't explain more. His friends don't need to know everything about him either. He's still a ninja, and ninjas need their secrets.
They wait until Rydia comes back (she blushes when they ask her what Leviathan and Asura wanted to say, making it quite apparent what was talked about - so much for being ninja) before they all finally bid each other goodnight. Cecil and Rosa smile at each other in their lovey dovey way as they head into their shared room; Kain pretends not to see them as he closes the door to his own room.
Edge watches them, sees the twists and turns of their lives and minds, and thinks of how much he likes them all - even Kain, the big depressing lug - how he might even come to love them, one day, when the grief is all squeezed out of him and there's enough room in his heart for more than just Rydia.
"Good night," she tells him. It's two very distinct words, the way she says it. Her speech is often just a little bit off. He sees now where she got it from. He doesn't mind. She's weird in so many ways - how could he not fall for her?
"Good night," he answers. "I think your parents are pretty cool, by the way."
"Me too," she says.
They close their doors, knowing they'll see each other in the morning.
- 0 - 0 -
It's taken some time, but he's finally begun to define his new friends by what they are and not by what they lack.
Cecil and Kain are brothers estranged, with Rosa the treasure of their childhood, Rydia's childhood the victim of their maturation. Rosa has always been kind and lovely and cannot help but love both of her boys, if in different ways and by different amounts. Rydia, dear Rydia has lost everything and regained everything and come back the stronger for it. Also she shouldjust come out and admit she loves Edge but that's a work in progress.
They all have parental deficit disorder - all of them, even Edge, who can think of his parents now without being swallowed by his loss - but he's come to accept that not being whole right now doesn't mean you won't be whole later.
One night he stares into the campfire and says to himself, with all seriousness, "We are what we have, not what we lack."
Rydia, who hears him, pats his hand gently. "You have lots," she says. For a moment he basks in their moment of connection, at the feel of her hand on his, until she says, "You have at least twenty ninja stars in that bag of yours."
"That's not quite what I meant."
"Me too," she says, eyes soft with understanding.
Yes, still a work in progress. But they can work with that.
- End -
Author's note: I think this is the most un-angsty story you could possibly write about a young man getting over the death of his parents under horrific circumstances. Thank you, Edge, for being you.
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Date: 2013-02-28 02:03 am (UTC)