ff_exchange | 2013 KISS BATTLE!

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2013 KISS BATTLE!

Final Fantasy Kissing Battle 2013

RULES

This year, we're creating Master Links for each fandom. When leaving prompts, please put it under the right canon! If in a compilation canon, please leave the important details!

To leave a prompt: leave one prompt per comment, with FANDOM: CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIP in the subject line and your prompt in the body.

To leave a fill: reply to the comment in question. Please use the subject line of your comment to label your work: TITLE (if relevant), FANDOM, CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIP, RATING (ANY KINKS, WARNINGS, FLAGS).

There should be kissing! All kinds of kisses are welcome: gen, shippy, smutty, chaste, familial, friendly, angry, happy! We’re pretty open to anything you want to call kissing. We are fans of all of it.

Fanart, fanfiction, drabbles, doodles, live action movies -- whatever you want to supply, we’d like to have it.

Be kind to others regarding character or ship choices and prompts. This should be fun for everyone!

Prompt early, prompt often, and leave as many as you want.

Prompts can be filled multiple times!

To leave a blitzkrieg kiss: If you have something but no one has prompted it yet, blitzkiss away! Just reply to the comment for your fandom, and make sure you use the subject line to label your work.

Be sure to check back often -- new kissing action could be showing up everywhere!

Spread the word! Tell your friends!

FINAL FANTASY KISS BATTLE 2013

We will be running the Kissing Battle on Dreamwidth only. There are two main reasons for this: 1) Dreamwidth’s comment limit is huge, allowing for longer kissing masterpieces; and 2) Dreamwidth still supports subject lines for comments, which are vital to a meme like the Kiss Battle. However, the Battle is open to everyone. Feel free to participate with your Dreamwidth (account creation is invite-free right now~!), your Livejournal or other OpenID account (see here if you want to set up an OpenID), or anonymously.

Have fun! Get smoochin'!

FINAL FANTASY I
FINAL FANTASY II
FINAL FANTASY III
FINAL FANTASY IV COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY V
FINAL FANTASY VI
FINAL FANTASY VII COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY VIII
FINAL FANTASY IX
FINAL FANTASY X AND X-2
FINAL FANTASY XI
FINAL FANTASY XII COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY XIII COMPILATION
DISSIDIA: FINAL FANTASY COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY: CRYSTAL CHRONICLES COMPILATION
ASSORTED FINAL FANTASY
CROSSOVERS (WITHIN FF)
CROSSOVERS (FF/OTHER)
OTHER / ASSORTED

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Please specify whether you mean FFIV:OGC or FFIV: The After Years!

The wind and the water are wild.

Comfort in an unfamiliar place.

Rydia had never thought to fear water. As the adults were talking, their voices low and serious, she'd run down the shore to kick at the waves, lingering past the second time Edward called her until Cecil did so. But the wind whipped her hair around her face, the water hit her like a giant's punch, and the deck slid away beneath her feet. There was nothing solid near her, not under her feet or in her hands, and when she opened her mouth to scream salt water filled it. She heard Edward shout her name then, but there was water everywhere, all around her. Her eyes squeezed shut, she floated, weightless, for a moment, then her head broke the water and she tasted air. Her eyes were open, but the ship was just a hazy shape. When had it started raining?

And then she saw another shape, a dragon, a monster, a sea serpent, a maw the size of a house opening up and coming at her, and she screamed and kept screaming.

When she woke, to solid dryness -- a bed, sheets, clean cloth under her hands -- she sat up, coughing, trying to clear phantom water from her lungs, gasping for air. A hand touched her shoulder softly, and she started back from it instinctively.

"It's all right," a woman's voice said, a gentle voice that reminded her of her mother, of Rosa. "You're safe here."

"Where am I?" Rydia rubbed her eyes. The room seemed simple enough, stone walls and floors, but there were writings on the walls in script she couldn't read that glowed faintly. And the woman with the gentle voice had three faces. The one turned toward her was a pale blue, its expression calm and kind; the other two were on either side, like ears, and looked a lot less calm. The hand that returned to the woman's lap was also pale blue.

"This is the Feymarch," the woman said. "And I am Asura. My consort, Leviathan, brought you here."

"Oh." She might have been too young for more than the most basic lessons, but the name of the Feymarch and its king and queen had been in the very first one. "Why?" she asked, her voice much smaller.

"That's not important right now," Asura said. "I know this place is unfamiliar to you, but no one will harm you here."

"Really?" She knew that the summoner's tools were usually symbolic, and that if you needed to fight an Eidolon it was a test of your strength, not a real fight to the death. But wasn't she a trespasser in their world? Would they really be okay with one of the summoners who interfered in their lives walking around? And shouldn't she go back and help Cecil?

"Really," Asura said, with a smile. One of her pale blue hands reached out to stroke Rydia's hair, and Rydia found herself smiling in response. "For now, you should rest," Asura continued. "Your passage here was not easy."

No. No, it wasn't. Her throat hurt, and she felt sore all over, even though she could feel the traces of healing. "Can I, um, have a glass of water?" she asked, still in the same small voice. She was asking the Queen of the Eidolons for a glass of water, but maybe it was better than asking for a bedtime story.

"Of course." But she didn't get up; she moved one of her other pairs of arms, the gray one, in a gesture, and an attendant Eidolon came in with a glass of water a few moments later. The attendant -- a woman with a head like a lion -- handed the glass to Rydia, then exited the room, silent and almost seeming to glide. Rydia drank gratefully, gulping down almost half the glass before she was done. She held it uncertainly, and Asura extended one blue hand for it.

"Okay," Rydia said. "I'll sleep some more."

"A moment," Asura said, then rose, and reached behind Rydia to plump her pillow. Rydia could feel the warmth of Asura's arm behind her, close but not quite touching her, and remembered the last time anyone had fluffed her pillow; her mother, a few months back, when she was sick with a cold.

The sob felt like a balloon in her chest, a bomb, getting bigger and bigger until it exploded in a wail. Asura sat on the edge of her bed, wrapping one pair of arms around her, then a second. Rydia leaned against her side and bawled in a way she hadn't let herself since her mother had died; her hands knotted in Asura's skirt and she wept until she had hiccups.

"You might like the rest of that water now," Asura said, which pulled a damp, tearful giggle out of Rydia, and she smiled and hiccuped and drank the rest of the water Asura had been holding all this time. Asura took the empty glass from her, and stood up, then bent over to kiss Rydia on the forehead. "You will be all right," Asura said. "For now, rest. I will be back soon."

"You promise?" Her mother had been taken away, and Rosa. The Feymarch should be safe -- Asura wouldn't lie -- but it was strange, and Rydia didn't want to wake up alone.

"I promise."

Re: Stranger In a Strange Land (FFIV, Rydia, Asura, G)

lassarina - 2013-02-17 17:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stranger In a Strange Land (FFIV, Rydia, Asura, G)

stealth_noodle - 2013-02-17 19:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stranger In a Strange Land (FFIV, Rydia, Asura, G)

ser_pounce_alot - 2013-02-18 11:25 (UTC) - Expand

Shattered Expectations.

He finds her sitting by the side of a river that flows backwards, with weeds winding 'round her ankles that hiss when he steps through the underbrush of fire.

"You don't seem surprised to see me," he says, by way of a greeting, and doesn't sit.

Rydia shrugs. "I heard you coming." The truth is, she is surprised to see him, because she never finds others in this world - this half-state, this suspended existence, the line between Eidolons and humans blurred and grayed. And if she was to see anyone in this strange, upside-down world, it certainly wouldn't have been him.

He is sans-armor, and the breeze that smells of sage and sandalwood is playing with the loose ends of his ponytail; it's a splash of yellow against a sky of scorched red. (Or is that the sea? She can never tell anymore which side has floated to the top.) His feet stay firmly on the ground, which is more than Rydia could say the first three times she dream-walked here.

"Do you stay here often?" he asks.

"More often than not," she answers. It's hard to lie here. The truth tugs at her tongue and spills over her lips like red wine, even when she tries to hold it back. "I find solace here, and few other places."

"Even in Baron?"

She looks to him then, fingers clenching back over her palm, hands resting in her lap. The action leaves half-moon marks littered in her skin. "There is no solace in Baron. Not for me. And not for you, either, I should think."

"There's no solace at all," he agrees.

"So what are you doing here?" Rydia asks.

Kain picks up a rock - shaped like a leaf, and possibly it used to be one, solidified into something solid and cutting in the realm that refuses to let anything be real - and tosses it into the river. There is no splash, but after a second, the stone drops back down from the sea-sky and lands a hand span away from his boots. They both watch it as it skips a few paces and then stills against the cracked dirt.

"It is you I most regret," he says, while still staring at the rock and all that he seems to think it represents. (It's just a rock, she thinks, but doesn't voice this aloud. Sometimes, in this world, it's best to let things go unsaid.)

"You regret knowing me?" she asks. "Or letting me live? Or perhaps even coming to find me here, in this godless place?"

His expression is half-amused, and half bordering on something very close to petulance. "No," he answers, patiently. "I regret that you always feared me."

Rydia laughs then; she hasn't feared anything since the flames took her mother from her.

"I don't fear you," she tells him. She sobers, looking down at her fingernails again - they've turned to shells, the looping, spiral shells found on slow-moving snails. "I've never feared you."

"I think perhaps you were the one thing that could have saved me."

She glares at him, hair whipping at her cheek with the force of the movement. "No one could have saved you from yourself."

Kain smiles. "You're probably right."

(Of course I am, she thinks, and hates herself for that.)

"I don't understand what you mean," she says, frustrated; it could be this realm. It warps things, including words, and he could be explaining the use of the feathers on his helm rather than wax philosophical. It might not even really be Kain, though she suspects that it is - real people have a certain air here, like brimstone, like the burning bit of reality that the magic is trying furiously to expel.

He walks to the stone and kicks it, causing it to skitter against the ground again. "I wish I'd told you this. There's something beautifully wild about you. I've always loved that part of you."

"I didn't know you loved any part of me," Rydia says.

"Neither did I," he agrees, and sounds a bit shocked.

The river is flowing faster, and Rydia is afraid to think what it means. She stands, pushing herself up and letting bits of jeweled dirt embed itself in her hands.

"Are you saying that you can't tell me this in the Upperworld?" she asks.

"I think," Kain starts, and then leans in a bit, licking his lip slowly and letting his tongue drag across the flesh, "that I'm not sure what I'm saying anymore."

"But you love something about me," Rydia pushes.

His hand finds her cheek, fingertips grazing the curve of her face. "I love everything about you," he whispers, just before he kisses her.

--

It takes a few days to get to Baron - there are always things to work out, and shipments to go with, and just because she's making the journey, Rydia finds herself in charge of a particularly dull iron trade manifesto from the dwarves. Still, she arrives with her things in order, and Rosa greets her at the gate with a light kiss to either cheek.

"You really needn't have come all the way here," the other woman says, leading her in through the winding hallways that Rydia will never, ever understand. (They are cold, like her blood now, like the awful, stale wind that greets her nostrils as they move through the old treasure vaults.) "We could have sent you all the updates by carrier and saved you the trouble."

"It's no trouble," Rydia says. "I wanted to see for myself."

Rosa leads her to the second tower, the infirmary that isn't connected to the barracks; this one is private, with heavy, gold-lined curtains that Rydia suspected used to be in the royal bedchambers.

"I'm afraid there's been no change," Rosa explains. Her voice is sad. She doesn't move in, but Rydia thinks she wants to push the hair away from Kain's eyes, the bits that have fallen out and are laying across his forehead.

"And you found him at the base of Mt. Ordeals?" Rydia asks, swallowing hard. She wills him to open his eyes. (He doesn't.)

"Yes," Rosa says. "And he's been in this dream-like state ever since."

Rydia sits down, hard. "You don't need to stay."

"Alright," Rosa agrees, and turns to leave without questioning. Rydia's always liked that about her. "There will be a hot meal for you in the kitchens whenever you're ready."

Rydia waits until the other woman is gone. She waits a long time, because in the real world, her words tend to be stuck in her throat more often than not. It's as if she's forgotten how to use her human body after her time spent with the Eidolons.

"Stupid," she chides, finally, after a very long time has passed and she is sure he will not simply open his eyes to look at her. "I love everything about you, too."