2014 Final Fantasy Kiss Battle

[ffexchange_mod]

Final Fantasy Kissing Battle 2014

RULES

• All prompts will be organized by fandom, using Master Links. When leaving prompts, please put it under the right canon! If in a compilation canon, please include 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 2014
<center><a style="border:0;" href="http://ff-exchange.dreamwidth.org/47675.html"> <img src="http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2347/kissbattlebanner.jpg" border="0" /><br><big>FINAL FANTASY KISS BATTLE 2014</big></a></center>

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

Comments

"Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Winter in Vector has never been kind. The cold cuts through coats and scarves, into the city's Fire-warmed halls, and by mid-afternoon, the shadows are already angled sharp, the light distant and etiolated. And there's no Fire magic to heat the rooms here, nothing but a few too-bright galvanic lights, but Celes wears no coat or shawl, only cloak and armor, and her breath doesn't steam in the frozen air. She has not much use for kindness, and cold doesn't bother her, hasn't for as long as she can remember living, but something about the atmosphere here seems to reach deeper. It isn't the cold, but for all her best efforts, she cannot claim to be impervious to every weakness.

Given a choice, this wing of the Palace is not one she cares to visit often. Magic is deadened here, damped by mechanical contrivances born of Cid's genius and set at regular intervals along the walls, and the air feels dull and artificial, leached of something invisible and essential as oxygen. She feels the field settle over her, like the unpleasant tingling of blood returning to a limb that had fallen asleep, but she's been here before, and she knows that the twisting in her stomach this time, the impulse to turn on her heel and run that grows with every step, is more than just the weight of His Imperial Majesty's preternatural prison sinking in beneath her skin. So she doesn't run. She curses herself for cowardice beneath her breath, and presses on, keeps her pace easy and her hands unclenched as she approaches the tower cell that holds the first and last person she ever called friend.

The door to Terra's current habitation is flanked by two guards with rifles at the ready and, more deadly, a pair of magitek-enhanced hounds. The beasts growl at her approach, spittle-flecked jaws and raised hackles, spurred to the edge of violence by the madness that infusions so often carry. The Empire keeps its witch under heavy guard, these days. They have to. The walls are thick, the door locked and barred, but the soldiers take one look at her and step aside, accede to her demand to unbar the way and let her speak to the prisoner alone. The sound of keys turning in one lock after another is heavy and dull as iron, and Celes thinks, as she pushes the door open to reveal a small, bare chamber, that at least they've given her a bed to sleep on, and left her unchained.

At the sight of her there, though, seated on the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees and her hair falling lank across her face, it doesn't seem as much a mercy as it should be. She seems so much like another shadow, drawn thin, too small for her skin, and it occurs to Celes to realize that she's been looking like a shadow for a long time, and she doesn't remember when it stopped seeming wrong and started seeming natural. Terra looks up in startlement, quick indrawn breath and eyes wild with something that might be fear and might be rage, before settling back into a subdued wariness that doesn't fully fade when she sees her visitor's identity.

“I didn't think – ” she says, and falls silent, whatever impetus had momentarily animated her seeming to drain away and leave her emptier than before. She doesn't look away, though. Her eyes are steady, and the light from the high, barred window reveals the pallor in her face and the dark circles beneath her eyes with uncompromising clarity, but despite everything, despite looking for it, Celes can see no recrimination there. She wonders if this would have been easier, if there were.

You didn't think they'd let me see you, she thinks, or maybe, you didn't think I would. And what she wants to say, viciously, is you didn't think, you should have known they'd catch you, that you couldn't win against them, but what she says is, “Are you comfortable? They haven't – ”

A quick shake of her head, a fugitive smile, gone too quickly. “They haven't hurt me yet.”

“Good,” Celes says tersely. She crosses the room in a few short steps, and kneels beside the bed like a mendicant, looking up. She doesn't reach for Terra, but Terra reaches for her, takes her hand, seeking comfort or contact or maybe just the heat that Celes has never been able to offer her or anyone else. But her skin is warm, nearly feverish even in the icy air, and when Celes offers her cloak, she shakes her head, saying only, “I don't need it.”

That shouldn't sting like it does – one more stupid thing Celes has to give that neither of them need – but what she's here to offer is more than a cloak, and when Terra brushes a thumb across the back of her hand, the way she used to before either of them were soldiers, it's almost enough for Celes to make herself hope that this time, she'll listen.

“I've been given the Maranda initiative,” she says. “It's my command, and I pick my troops by hand. You could march beside me, if you chose.”

Terra says nothing for a long time, but her grip tightens on Celes's hand, and when she speaks again, her voice is carefully calm. “I'm a traitor, Celes.”

It's true. She is. And Celes knows the penalty for treachery, just like she knows – or thought she knew, once – that the penalty is necessary, and deserved. But the closer she looks, the more it seems that the woman who believed that is not the one kneeling in this cell with snow piling up on the window-ledge and the heat of Terra's hand in her hand curling the corners of her certainty to ash, and she bows her head and tries to remember who she is and who she wants to be instead.

“If you take it back,” she says, and something catches in her throat, sharp and bitter. “If you swear loyalty, and repentance – You know they'll pardon you. They have to. They need you.”

“You think so?” Terra says, and then, quietly and very clearly, “It doesn't matter. I won't.”

And Celes knows, though she doesn't know how she knew, that she had never expected to hear anything else. No repentance, no recrimination, not even anger, and any of those, Celes might have been able to face, but she cannot stand against this.

“I'm sorry,” she says, and looks away. “I'll see that they get you a fire in here, and something to eat. I'll do what I can. I'll come back.”

But when she tries to rise, Terra catches her by the arms and just holds her there, not even a pace away. She's startlingly strong, even thin as she is now, and traitor or not, Celes knows that if this is an escape attempt, she doesn't have the will in her to fight. But Terra only steps forward, closer than Celes has ever been to another person before outside of the chaos of battle, and looks at her like something inexplicable, a stranger with a familiar face.

“I'm sorry,” Celes says again, and this time, Terra kisses her for answer, leans in and presses one hand to the small of her back, the other to the curve of her hip, unpracticed but not quite hesitant. Whether she's seeking comfort or offering it, Celes can't tell, but she's caught by it either way, the uncanny heat of Terra's skin and the way her fingers tighten in Celes's cloak, the suppressed echo of magic, powerful and desperate and trapped. Beneath her physical nature there's another indefinable quality, like the air outside and the winter light, the taste of snow and metal.

And then it's over, and Terra is stepping back again, the moment slipping too quickly out of reach. But the memory is undeniable, more than some fleeting, half-imagined pang of contact and desire, and the warmth where she had been lingers.

It changes nothing. Maybe nothing can be changed. But Terra made her choice, no matter that it isn't the one Celes wanted, and if Celes had nothing to give her, at the very least she will take nothing away.

“Go,” Terra says, almost gently. It's weakness, perhaps, but Celes cannot disobey her.

When she leaves, she doesn't look back. She lets the door fall heavy behind her, and when she's out of sight of the guards and their mad, chained dogs, she does run, forces her body into motion until her breath burns in her lungs and the tastefully decorated hallway she finds herself in isn't one she recognizes. Candles cast their soft light from silver sconces along the walls, and there are paintings, fruit in bowls and bucolic scenes in shades of green and gold, too idyllic to be real. There's no winter here, in the heart of the palace, no biting cold, no pale light broken by cell bars. Celes leans heavily against the wall, calls up her magic just to feel the purifying chill of it at her fingertips, and she wishes that there was.

Celes is loyal. She has never been anything but loyal. She doesn't know how to be anything but loyal, and she is certain, because she cannot let herself be less than certain, that treachery cannot be forgiven. But when she raises a hand to her mouth, feeling the ghost of a kiss there, she doesn't know whether the betrayal is Terra's or her own.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[deadcellredux]

Oh wow, this is just gorgeous.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Thank you! I'm really happy you like it. XD

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[flecksofpoppy]

Ugghhhh, I LOVE this. This was gorgeous. Just everything about it - all my favorite parts of your writing are here. The little nuances in actions and detail that are weighted with metaphor, and those lines that say so much.

My favorite had to be: closer than Celes has ever been to another person before outside of the chaos of battle.

Screaming. Thank you so much. You know I always adore your Celes/Terra fics. <3

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Thank you so much, I'm so glad to hear it! Especially since I love these two so much, but it seems like I haven't been able to write anything with them for ages, and then your prompt inspired me. :)

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[stealth_noodle]

This is beautiful and my heart is in tiny pieces now. I love so much that Terra is the root of Celes's eventual defection.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Thank you!!! I think Celes's defection came from many places, but I definitely see Terra as one of them, and I'm really glad that came through.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[lirillith]

Oh, this is amazing. I always felt like Celes's treason must have had something to do with Terra, and like Terra had her own backstory of loyalty and treason as well, so this isn't just gorgeous, it's like telepathy as well.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Heh, thank you so much! And yeah, there's so much history there, and so much potential backstory that's really fascinating to think about, and I'm glad that what I came up with here makes sense to you.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[vrazdova]

Oh my god this is wonderful!! I'd never thought of Terra having been the first 'traitor' (though it would certainly explain why, after having raised her nearly all her life, that they would have to use a Slave Crown to control her at 18) but I LOVE it, and I love that she was the one who inspired Celes to defect. Your narrative is just beautiful too, and really paints a vivid picture of the cold cruelty of Vector. The relationship between Terra & Celes here is heartbreaking too, like they've been on the verge of something more intimate for a while now, but neither can bring themselves to really go through with it; military and all getting in the way. AUGH, just, loved this all the way through!

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Wow, thank you so much! I've always thought that Celes and Terra's pre-game backstory has so much heartbreaking potential, and it's really interesting to think about how each of them was shaped by the Empire that raised them, and I love the idea of them being able to form and keep a connection with each other in spite of everything else.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[lassarina]

hffffff wow yes perfect. They are so broken together in the best way possible.

Re: "Recollect the Snow," FFVI, Celes/Terra, G

[sidonie]

Thank you!!! And yes, they really are, aren't they?