#ff:r

Who was even talking to her? Either Skye or Evlyn. Maiyu? It was a girl’s voice, she knew that much. “I’m fine. We need to keep moving.”

She was not fine, she knew that, but staying in one place for too long had become hazardous. They had made several dangerous enemies over the last few months, and they couldn’t afford to risk being found by any of them. Staying put for any longer than they absolutely had to was out of the question.

Anya was not about to risk being ambushed because of a head-cold. Even if said cold was currently causing her vision to swim. She’d be fine. It wasn’t her turn to keep watch, so she’d just get a good night’s rest and be better in the morning.

“Okay, if you’re sure. Just speak up if you change your mind.”

Anya tried to come up with something witty to respond with, but all she managed was a quiet grunt of confirmation.

The next hour passed agonizingly slowly, fatigue seeping into all of Anya’s muscles, her joints aching. Her throat had begun to feel like it was coated with sand, and ‘foggy’ could no longer even begin to describe the way her brain was responding to the world.

“Hellooo? Anyone home?”

Or rather, how it wasn’t. A hand was waving in front of her face. She had no idea whose.

“I said, are you doing any better?”

No, I’m really not. “I’m fine,” she slurred out. Her mouth was a desert, and her tongue stuck to her teeth when she tried to talk.

“Anya, you can rest if you need–”

“I said I’m fine!” It could have been louder, but it came out raspy despite her best efforts. Her head swam as she realized exactly how much air she had just used to make herself heard. Since when was something as basic as yelling so difficult?

And why was the sky brown?

Oh, wait. That’s dirt.

So went Anya’s fading thoughts as the ground rushed up to meet her.

Fire. Blood. Blood and smoke and screaming and Sensei please don’t die not again.

“Take the egg and run.”

Everything was burning, the sky was red, her hands were red she took a life she took a human life.

Running. A blade at her neck. Escape. Have to escape.

Did anybody else escape?

Keep going. Keep running. Escape the flames. Escape the fire. Too hot. Too hot.

No way out. The flames had surrounded her. She was burning burning alive please no and then faces, flesh seared away by the fire, unrecognizable dead dead all dead there had to be someone still alive.

She was on fire, the heat penetrated her very bones, so hot so hot make the burning stop please–

Cold.

Her forehead was cold.

The heat was still there, but the fire was gone. Her head throbbed as she became aware of her surroundings.

It was dark. Not the dark of night, but of shade. She wasn’t inside, but she knew that was in some kind of shelter. She felt awful, like she had just lost a fight with a troll. And she was lying down. Though she had no idea why, it felt nice. The muffled sounds of talking reached her ears, distant and fuzzy, even though she could tell they were close.

Anya reached up to feel her forehead and flinched away from the cold, wet cloth when it touched her hand. It wasn’t just her muscles that ached; even her skin was sensitive. She sat up and moved to place the cloth off to the side, then hissed in pain as a pounding headache made itself known.

“Hey, shh. Lie back down.”

It sounded like Skye, but she couldn’t really tell with her head feeling like it was full of beef stew. She didn’t lie back down, but she made no attempt to stand, either. She buried her head in her hands and croaked, “What the hell happened?”

“You passed out. Here, drink.”

She was being handed a water-skin, which she drank greedily from until the same hand pulled it away. “Not that fast, you’ll make yourself even sicker.”

Right. She was sick. She hadn’t wanted to stop for it but–

Stopped. They were stopped. She was in a tent. They had stopped. “Shit. We can’t be here, we have to keep moving.”

“Anya, calm down. We’re fine.”

“No, no, no, we can’t stop. We’re not safe. We have to–”

She attempted to stand but immediately collapsed when the pain shot through her skull again. She braced herself for another impact with the ground but instead found herself caught in someone’s arms.

“Idiot,” the voice said, and Anya could hear a smile in it. “Come here.”

Skye–it had to be Skye, no one else could make ‘idiot’ a term of endearment–sat slowly on the floor of the tent and laid Anya’s head in her lap. Anya attempted to struggle away, but gave up when Skye laid the wet rag across her forehead once more, her fever ebbing away. Fingers wove through her choppy brown hair, and she melted into the touch despite her better judgement.

“Not now,” she rasped. “We can’t stop here. We can’t…”

“Shh.” Skye leaned over and kissed her gently on top of her head. “We’re stopped for the rest of the day, and the campsite is as safe as it can be. We can afford to take the extra time for you to get better..”

Anya opened her mouth to protest, but all that came out was a ragged cough. She hated this. She hated being this helpless. She hated being a burden. A tear slid down her cheek, and she cursed herself for not even having the energy to wipe it away.

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But I’m not… It isn’t…” She was so tired she couldn’t even form full sentences anymore. What had started as a few tears devolved into quiet sobs, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to silence them. Weak. Useless.

“Hey.”

Anya sniffed and looked up to see Skye smiling softly at her. “You’re going to be fine,” she said, wiping the errant tears away. “We’re going to be fine. Just rest.”

Anya turned her head away and coughed. “W-water?”

The water-skin returned, and Anya drank slowly until she felt a yawn climb up her throat. Skye took it back wordlessly as the younger girl laid back in her lap.

“Don’t wanna sleep,” Anya slurred. “Gotta watch for… for danger.”

“You weren’t on watch duty tonight anyway. Just sleep.”

Anya shook her head. Skye sighed and began rubbing Anya’s back. “If you get some rest, I’ll make tea when you wake up. Does that sound good?”

She wanted to protest, to say that it didn’t sound good, but Skye’s hand in her hair was soft, and her lap was warm, and she smelled like pine and the outdoors. And Anya was tired. So, so tired.

“…Just don’t leave me,” she murmured.

Skye pulled her closer and whispered, “Never.”

“You didn’t give her a choice!” She tries desperately to grapple and pin Skye to the nearest tree, but the possessed woman dodges each of her frenzied strikes with ease. “Why wouldn’t you find a willing servant?!”

They scowl. “Disgusting little creature.” Bahamut grabs Anya’s collar with one hand and hurls her to the side, sending her crashing through the trees. She slams hard into a large oak and coughs as the breath is knocked from her lungs. She collapses to her knees, fighting for air as Skye’s body moves to hover before her. “Mere mortals cannot even fathom the true depths of the power I wield. To share it with one of you pathetic insects is no idle thing. An acolyte? Someone so dedicated, so eager? Even if one of those groveling worms had twice the strength of the this one, I could not choose them. A person who would freely, nay, happily accept such a task would be too willful. My power would utterly corrupt any mortal who sought it.” They take Anya’s chin between thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look up at Skye’s – Bahamut’s – cruel smile. “Or have you forgotten so easily the evil your kind can inflict upon itself in the name of proving superiority? In the end, they would destroy themselves, and everything around them.”

Anya snarls and seizes Skye’s wrist, pulling them to the ground and jumping to her feet herself with the momentum. She bares her fists and roars, “Then care for your damn host! She had no choice, so at least protect her from the danger you’re putting her in!” She makes direct contact with Skye’s corrupted eyes. “Skye, I know you’re in there! You have to fight him! Do you hear me?! FIGHT HIM!”

“Ah, but she is fighting,” Bahamut sneers. “I can feel it. She’s begging me not to hurt you, but you seem determined to get in my way. That makes it a rather difficult request to grant, wouldn’t you agree?”

Anya just barely manages to avoid being slashed in the eyes as Bahamut rakes one clawed hand across her face. She rolls to the side, blood beginning to seep from three shallow cuts on her cheek. “Skye, please! You can stop this!” She spies an opening, and dives for their waist, tackling them to the ground.

There’s a sickening cracking sound as Skye’s shoulder smashes against the earth and dislocates, and Bahamut chuckles. “And now you’ve hurt her.” They kick Anya away and effortlessly stretch the injured arm until it pops back into place with another awful crack. “I wonder, then, if I have misjudged you. Maybe you don’t care about her.”

The barely-contained anger in Anya’s stomach becomes an inferno, and a feral growl bubbles up from her throat as her very Soul contorts with fury. Her eyes flash red, her teeth and nails and ears lengthen, and tendrils of dark, ethereal fire slowly surround her.

Bahamut smirks and stands upright. “Touched a nerve, did I?”

She howls and barrels toward them. “GET OUT!”

Bahamut attempts to sidestep the charge, but Anya’s rage drives her forward at blinding speed. She grabs Skye’s shoulders and slams her chest against a tree, twisting one arm behind her back and pinning her in what should be an excruciating hold, but Bahamut makes no sound.

“You can’t even feel this, can you?” Anya growls. “The pain?”

“And what would make you assume that?”

Anya yanks out a slab of tree bark that has embedded itself in Skye’s forearm. “If you could feel her pain,” she hisses, tossing the bloodied bark away, “you would have noticed this.”

The foreign laugh that escapes Skye’s mouth is nothing short of gleeful.

“Very good, human!”

In a split second, Anya has the possessed woman on the ground, both wrists pinned beside her head. Her voice is low and dangerous as she stares into unearthly yellow irises. “Why would you do this to her? She’s your conduit and you’re killing her.”

“Typical, selfish human. So eager to keep her with you. But you can rest assured that she will not die. I will see to that.” The dragon god smiles cruelly. “Pain is not deadly, after all; simply a bit unpleasant.”

The thunderous voice that escapes Anya’s mouth is inhuman. “You fucking monster!” The spectral flames roar and swell around her. “Leave her! I’ll die before I let you do this to her anymore!”

“If I try to leave her before this task is done, she will die! Would you have her perish so?! The woman you claim to care so deeply for?!”

Anya freezes. “That… that can’t… you’re lying. She can’t die, I won’t—”

“I grow tired of this willful ignorance of yours,” Bahamut spits. “If you truly believe that you can alter the destiny that I have laid out for her - alter the machinations of Bahamut himself! - then you may be among the most impudent little maggots that I have ever had the misfortune to come across.”

A heavy pause hangs in the air, and then it’s Anya’s turn to laugh, bitter and subdued.

“Maybe I am, but we mortals do tend to be pretty stupid when we’re in love.”

Skye’s mouth drops open slightly, and yellow eyes flicker blue for a moment. She closes them and shakes her head; when they open again the blue is flecked with yellow.

“A-anya…?”

It’s her voice. Strangled and distorted, but hers.

“Skye!”

“Anya I-I’m here but I … I can’t g-get… I-I’m stuck… I can’t—”

She convulses underneath Anya, and Bahamut’s yellow eyes return, as well as his voice, but now there is no trace of Skye’s voice hidden within the deafening, bestial screech of a god. “Meddlesome creature!” It’s all Anya can do to keep them from breaking free of her grasp. “Filthy, meddlesome insect! I shall devour every one of you pitiful little mortals, and you shall be the first! I—”

More thrashing, and Skye’s voice rips from her mouth in a scream. “No! You can’t!”

Bahamut’s yellow takes over once more, and they fix Anya with a look of primal hatred. Anya yelps as Bahamut finally manages to struggle free. She rolls to the side to avoid a knee to the gut, but suddenly she’s grabbed by the throat and hoisted into the air. She scrabbles helplessly at her neck as Bahamut squeezes harder.

“I SHALL END YOU!”

Skye’s body freezes. Her arm shakes violently, and just as abruptly as she grabbed Anya, she releases her. She topples to the ground, coughing, as Skye cries out, her own voice drowning out Bahamut’s roar.

“You won’t touch her!”

And then it’s quiet. The only sounds are the soft wind in the trees and Anya’s labored breathing, and then a soft thump as the dragoon falls to her knees. Anya looks up to see that Bahamut’s telltale wings and ears have vanished, leaving only Skye, her blue eyes staring blankly ahead, hands limp at her sides.

“Skye, it’s…” Anya’s voice shakes as her Soul begins to calm and the ghostly flames fade away. “It is you, right?” Skye’s eyes are her own, yes, but they are dim, distant, fixed on nothing. Anya approaches and kneels beside her, places one hand on the older girl’s shoulder. “Skye, come back to me, okay? He’s gone. You’re—”

Skye dives into Anya’s arms and clings to her desperately. Her shoulders tremble with sobs, and she mutters into Anya’s chest, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Anya pulls Skye closer to her. “Hey, hey, you’re okay,” she murmurs, rubbing her back. “I’m here. You’re here. I’m right here with you. You’re okay now. We’re both going to be fine.” She wants to cry, too, but not now. Right now, she needs to be strong enough for both of them.

She isn’t sure how long they stay like that, Skye shaking quietly and Anya holding her as close as possible, but eventually Skye pulls away slightly, just enough to look up at Anya with watery eyes. “Anya, did you…” She wipes her eyes with the back of her fist. “Did you mean what you said? About…”

Anya smiles and places a gentle kiss on the top of Skye’s head. “Every word.”

Skye chokes on another sob. She sits back and covers her mouth with her hand. “I don’t deserve you,” she whimpers. “Gods damn it all, I don’t deserve you. I’m such a bloody mess. And I’m dangerous. I can’t control him.” She reaches out and tentatively touches the fresh claw-marks on Anya’s cheek. “How many times have I hurt you now? I don’t know what I’ll do if he… if I…” It remains unsaid, but they both know how that sentence ends.

Anya takes Skye’s hand in one of her own. “Skye, that wasn’t you. Hey.” She cups Skye’s face with one hand and meets her eyes. “Listen to me. That wasn’t you. None of this is your fault. And I’m still here. See?” She places Skye’s hand on her chest over her pounding heart and brushes a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. She chuckles and says, “I’m a bit of a mess, myself, you know. We’re going to get through this, somehow. Together.”

A long silence, and then Skye embraces Anya again, gentler this time, and buries her face in the crook of her neck. “Thank you.”

It’s when she makes her laugh - really laugh - for the first time that Anya realizes Skye is more than a friend..

It isn’t even a good joke. Hell, it’s actually in pretty bad taste, but when you’re trying to stop the apocalypse, joking about near-death experiences is a given. A battle has just been won and Cid is starting to come to from some sort of psychic attack that had turned him into a babbling vegetable. When Alphonse sighs in relief that his friend’s brain is still there, Anya turns to Skye and grins, “He has a brain?”

And Skye laughs. She honest-to-goodness laughs in the way that usually only her sister can make her. It’s a bright, airy sound, not her usual wry chuckle. She laughs with her whole body, the tension in her posture falling away.

It only lasts a moment, but it’s a moment that stretches on forever to Anya. It’s a glimpse beyond the walls that Skye has built up around herself; beyond the military training, the dragons, the abuse, the traumas that she’ll never admit she’s hurting from but that Anya knows still haunt her.

Skye has let her past the first barrier - let her in as a friend and not just a partner in arms - but Anya suddenly realizes how many are left, and she’s determined to tear them down. She wants Skye to bare her soul to her. She wants to see the light buried in her chest. She wants to know every inch of her. She wants to see her laugh like this again, wants to be the one to make her laugh like this again.

She wants to be the one to break past Skye’s walls.

She wants Skye.

-----

The shadows had barely started to lengthen when the doors of the dojo were thrown open with a crash, and a very angry ex-soldier stormed in. Anya’s class halted with ease as she made eye contact with her lover.

Skye and Anya had certainly mellowed out in the few years since their brush with a world-ending force, but the scars remained, and they still had their moments of weakness. Clearly, Anya observed, this was one of those moments.

Skye marched through the crowd of uncaring students - they’d grown used to her occasional outbursts - and yanked Anya by her collar into a furious kiss. She finally pulled a few inches away from a beet-red Anya, a string of saliva hanging between their lips.

“You. Bedroom. Now.”

Anya grinned widely. “Yes, ma’am!”

She shouted back to her students as Skye dragged her out of the dojo. “Practice your Dao Ji Jao kata! Class is dismissed early!”

The next day, Anya was not in the dojo when class was meant to start.

Skye had seen to that.

-----

“Why do you always run into the thick of battles when Maiyu isn’t around?”

“Hey, I’ve never needed white magic before.”

“You’ve never been outside of your village before, either. Now shut up for a second.”

Anya opened her mouth to argue some more, but all that came out was a pained yelp as Skye dabbed at the gash on her arm with a wet cloth. Healing potions could only do so much, and they were rather expensive in this part of the world, much to the older girl’s ire. Basic first aid was all they had after the worst of the damage was healed. They would just have to wait for the rest of the party to come back from scouting and brought their resident white mage with them.

“Honestly.” Skye blew a stray hair from her face as she bandaged the brawler’s arm. “It feels like you forget that you’re not fighting barehanded enemies anymore.”

“Muscle memory.”

“Yeah, well, repress the memory. It makes things harder for everyone else involved.” She tied a final knot and stood.

“I’ve got to help my teammates, right?”

Skye frowned as the black belt hopped to her feet. “Maybe do it by staying in one piece. You’re not much use to us as a pile of guts on the forest floor.”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Let you take the hit? Better my arm than your face. I like your face.”

Said face turned a shade pinker. “You’re not wearing enough armor to randomly take blows like that for someone else.”

Anya cocked her head. “But I wasn’t randomly taking a blow for someone else. I was intentionally taking a blow for you.”

Pink turned to red, and Skye sighed before gracing her partner’s cheek with a quick kiss. “You’re an idiot.”

“But I’m your idiot.”

-----

Silence was something they both enjoyed. They would often slip away from the group and find a quiet spot to sit and listen to the sounds that happened in silence.

In the wilds, it was birds, small animals, the rustling of grass and leaves in the wind, whispering them to sleep. In towns and cities, the ambient chatter of crowds became white noise at the right distance, faint and strangely comforting for all its discord.

In silence there was solace, escape. In their quiet moments, their painful pasts slipped away, and the frightening present faded. The chaos and conflict and blood became nothing more than an afterthought, dreamlike and faraway.

Of course, it was sometimes just the opposite. In the silence, the memories could surface like a long-dormant evil.

One of them might cry softly while the other held them. Both of them might cry, clinging to one another and waiting for the silence to come back. Perhaps the silence would be broken by quaking sobs cut short by a kiss. Perhaps it would be shattered by a shout of anguish, a cry of ecstasy, emotions breaking through years-long facades of happiness and indifference.

Worries, too, intruded on their solace. In those moments, void of distractions, their questions were free to leave their lips. Questions of faith and hatred and love, of life and death and what they were fighting for. Questions that did not need to be answered, but merely heard.

“What if we just let the Revolution happen? We’d still be together. Death is probably quiet.”

That question was answered, with a slap followed by a deep kiss and ten words:

“I want to live with you, not die with you.”

The sounds in the silence changed on that outing. Armor was thrown aside with a series of clanks and thuds. Teeth clicked together in sloppy, needy kisses. Grass rustled beneath them, and ragged breathing was punctuated by sharp gasps. By the time all was said and done, neither felt like making another sound, so they dragged the quiet back to camp with them.