TTD: Excerpt (fanfiction)

[wallwalker]

I haven't been writing much fanfiction either, and what I have I've posted in this journal under the fic tag. But I have a couple of ideas for Doink! that I haven't posted yet, so I'll post the beginning of one of them. It's about Kefka and Terra, before (or while) Kefka was becoming a general and being infused with magic. It's a different spin on how Kefka manipulated Terra, and the events leading up to the Slave Crown.

You don’t like living in this empty room. It’s so lonely, and so cold.

One day is much like the next here. You push yourself up from the hard stone slab that passes as a mattress. You had a real bed once, until you had a nightmare and burned it up. You were only a child then - you keep trying to tell them that you aren’t going to do it again, you don’t have the nightmares anymore. But no one listens.

They feed you water and cheese and plain dark bread, and it’s not much, but it fills your stomach. You have your lessons read to you through speakers, always through speakers, and pass you sticks of charcoal and paper to write with, and sometimes you do. No one ever comes to take them until after you’re asleep anyway, so you don’t see what difference it makes. You see people from outside, but they never look too closely at you, and if they see you looking at them, they cringe and turn away, and you turn away too so that they won’t see the way your face falls. You have a little bit of privacy - a curtain of metallic mesh that hides a small shower and a toilet - but what difference does that make when no one ever comes?

It’s so terribly lonely, and you wish that you could just talk to someone. Sometimes you call up a little flicker of fire into your palm, and talk to that - explain your lessons, tell it how lonely you are. But it never helps as much as someone who could talk back.

---

You wake up one morning to the sound of footsteps on the pavement, and your eyes jolt open. They don’t let you hear them anymore, not since you burned an old man for trying to put needles in your arm. They use their own powers to keep their steps silent, because they are so afraid. Why are you hearing this now?

You hold your eyes just barely open and see a man in a somber blue suit. He has high cheekbones and a pointed nose and reddish-blond hair, and you wonder if you’ve seen him before. You don’t think so - soldiers don’t come here without their uniforms. They don’t show you their faces. He’s turned half-away from you, looking down at a plateful of food, the usual cheese and black bread. In his other hand is a small pot, and he slowly tips the pot over the bread. Something golden-yellow drips from it, and you see it drizzle down over the plate.

You try not to gasp, but you must have made some sort of sound, because the man sees you. But he doesn’t scowl; instead he looks you over with the brightest, bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. He smiles widely as he approaches the cell, his teeth white against red lips.

“Breakfast is ready,” he says, and you are fairly sure you’ve never heard that voice before. You’ve never heard anyone talk so much like he was about to burst into song, or maybe laughter. “I brought you a treat today, little honeybee. I know you’ll enjoy it.” Then he turns away, and you hear his footsteps fade down the hall.

You wait until you haven’t heard the steps in a while before you dare scramble out of bed, and you take a long look at the food that he’s slipped under the bars. You can see the stuff he poured onto it sitting on the plate, soaking into the bread. At first you want to push it away, but you can already feel your stomach growling in protest. If you don’t eat, it might be a long time before you get any more food. Once when you were younger you burned your dinner plate out of anger, and it was four days before they brought you anything but water.

Besides, for all that they’ve done, they’ve never hurt you. You can only remember one time when someone tried to attack you, and the others pulled him back and said that you weren’t to be attacked. You never saw him again. So if this man tried to hurt you, wouldn’t they do the same thing?

In the end hunger wins out, and you pick up the warm bread, furrowing your brow as it sticks to your fingers. You take a bite… and then you take another, larger bite… and just like that, the bread is gone, and you are running your fingers against the plate to find more of the stuff, popping the cheese in your mouth and chewing it and swallowing it quickly before licking the plate clean.

It’s the sweetest, most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted.

---

After that day you keep an eye out for the man with the bright blue eyes. You sit up eagerly when it’s time to wake up and watch the halls, waiting for him to come again. Or even if he doesn’t come, maybe someone else will, and they’ll tell you. You huddle on your cot in your baggy grey clothes and look around at your empty room and think about bright blue eyes and sweet bread. When the voice that gives you your lessons crackles over the speakers you interrupt it, over and over - “Please, where is that man, the one who came to see me? Can you tell me?”

Part of you knows that they can’t hear you. The speakers only go one way. But you try, because you want to see him again that much.

They still leave your food for you in the morning, but it’s never the kind of food he left you. You eat it anyway, because you need to eat. But you never see the one who leaves it. You can’t even ask who he was; you don’t even know his name.

Five days pass like this, and you’re starting to wonder if it was all a wonderful dream. But then you wake up again, this time to the sound of that laughing voice. “Wake up, little honeybee,” he is saying softly as your eyes flutter open. “Wake up now.”

“It’s you!” You sit up quickly and run your hands through your green hair - it’s starting to get long, and you can’t quite seem to keep it out of your eyes. “I… I mean….”

He laughs, and it’s as bright as you had hoped it would be. He’s wearing the same somber blue as before, with neat black shoes and a red scarf around his neck. His own hair is pulled neatly back, and you feel even more disheveled in comparison. You shouldn’t look so messy, you think. They told you that. You just never had a reason to try. “You remember me, then,” he says.

“Of course I do!”

“Good. I hate being forgotten.” He leans casually against the wall, looks at you through the bars. “I wanted to meet you for a long time, you know. The Empire’s best secret, the girl with the magical powers. I heard that you could create fire with just a thought. Is that true?”

“Um,” you say, and for a second panic races through your mind. Your magic scares people. You don’t want to scare him away.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you, little Terra. That is your name, isn’t it?” You nod, and you would’ve said something if he hadn’t gone on. “I just want to see what you can do. I won’t tell anybody.”

You finally nod, and hold out your hand. Calling fire is as natural as breathing to you, and the flames in your palm leap up almost to the ceiling, betraying your excitement. He doesn’t cringe, though, just grins and shows you his very white teeth again. So you smile to, and let it burn.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” he says, his eyes wide open. “So beautiful, my little honeybee.”

You want to ask him what he means when he calls you that. But you’ve gotten used to not asking question, so you just bow your head and say, “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me. It’s true, after all.” He pushed back from the bars. “But I’m afraid I have to go, before anyone notices I’m here. Cid would be very cross with me, wouldn’t he? And so soon before the procedure!”

“Procedure?” The word calls up needles and screaming women and men in white coats, and you let the fire die. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Oh, I’ll be better than okay. No need to worry.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t have a gift for you today, little honeybee - I was in a hurry, you see. But wait a few days, hmm? You might wake up to find something nice. But for now, good-bye -”

“W-wait!” You call out as he begins to back away. “At least… at least tell me your name! Please!”

He pauses. “Ah, right,” he says, as if it had just occurred to him. “You wouldn’t know, would you?” He makes a fancy little bow. “My name is Kefka Palazzo. I hope you intend to remember it, hm, Terra?”

“I… I will!” You smile at him.

“Good. Now sleep well, little honeybee. Sleep well.”

You glance over at the window as he walks away. It is late at night - you hadn’t even realized. But your heart is beating so fast, you have trouble getting back to sleep for a long time.

When you finally do wake up, it’s bright in the little room, and you sit up and rub your eyes, wondering if it was just another dream. You glance at the window, then look again - is there something else there? There is - there’s something different about the view. You get up and scramble over, and when you press your forehead to the glass you see them - a great box of blue flowers, set up under a tank of water. The flowers have little round petals and are bright against the dark green foliage. You smile, because they’re beautiful. They’re the same blue as his eyes.

---

The days that he doesn’t come seem to drag on, one into another. You spend half of your time staring at the door, waiting for him, hoping that he’ll appear.

The other half you spend looking at the flowers - his gift, because they had to be from him, didn’t they? No one else would’ve ever bothered giving you something so colorful. You look at them, watch as the water from the tanks mists down to water them. Little yellow bugs are attracted to the flowers, busy little things that climb into the flowers and out again, their little bodies covered in dust.
It’s not easy to listen to the lady on the speakers anymore. You have your sticks of charcoal and your papers, but all you can do is doodle, thinking of his wide red smile and his cheerful eyes. You wonder if anyone is reading them anymore, when they disappear from your room. You wonder if anyone will care.

Comments

[winter_poppy]

I decided to start from this one because it's where their story begins.

So one thing I liked about this story, is that, even though Terra's in a cell, here you provide a plausible explanation as to why they *need* to keep her locked in. And I'm pleased it's not the usual because it's an evil Empire, and they do evil things! So, Terra was dangerous, and she had a tendency to accidentally set things and people on fire. So logically, they had to protect both the people she could hurt, and Terra from the people who got pissed at her. I liked that reference to someone who tried to hurt her, and was restrained accordingly because 'she wasn't to be harmed'. My only qualm would be about Terra's diet (sorry, I tend to obsess over the smallest details, and it'll drive me crazy if I don't ask). I mean, why only water, bread, and cheese? Couldn't they feed her something more nutritious? Perhaps some fruit and veggies, some meat? Milk? I kept thinking that for a child who's still growing up it can't be healthy to have no proteins in her diet, and also, the effects such poor diet could have on her stomach and, ugh, yeah, probably not so relevant, but I was wondering if you chose that food for any particular reason, or you didn't put that much thought into it? Perhaps they didn't want her to grow as strong as she could, and they purposefully reduced her diet to just those simple ingredients, but that sounds too much like deliberate torture so maybe not?

Also, it's great that despite her confinement they made efforts to continue her education. Like they didn't just leave her there and forgot about her.

Moving along, I love that you emphasise that Terra was feared. This is someone most people tend to forget about, but the girl can set things on fire with her mind, it's not that they could afford to do whatever they please to her and she would not react. Especially while she's a child and her magic so tied to her emotions, and children having so little control over them, well, that's a recipe for disaster. I like how you illustrated this point with the incident you mentioned in which she burned a scientist.

Aah, your Kefka being amazing as usual. I love his physical description (high cheekbones hell yes!), and: "You’ve never heard anyone talk so much like he was about to burst into song, or maybe laughter." Beautiful line, and that's exactly how I imagine Kefka's voice. I love the emphasis on his blue eyes, and the strong impression they caused on little Terra. Also, the flowers at the end, blue like his eyes.

Other things I enjoyed: Kefka being the only one who likes her magic and is not afraid of it. Terra's excitement making the flame instantly leap up to the ceiling. Terra's innocent crush (a platonic crush of course, since she's still a child, though I've been wondering around what age she's supposed to be here?) on this neat, handsome gentleman with bright blue eyes and gorgeous blonde hair who's the only one who seems to find anything good about her magic, like she can't even focus on her studies and spends her time daydreaming about him?? His calling her 'little honeybee'. I *adore* all the sugary nicknames your Kefka reserves for Terra!

Also, his first gift is honey. That's like…a really intelligent metaphor for what their relationship is about to be. Yep. And how strategically he disappears, to have her longing for him to the point she starts to wonder if he may be just a dream, and then he pops by her place and suddenly he's real again and now she has something to look forward to in that dull and empty existence she's been forced into, and Kefka has made himself indispensable to her happiness.

The bees! This story is full of meaningful little details and each one of them made me smile despite the creepiness of it all, or maybe because of it. You know those mixed feelings, that something is horrible yet at the same time there's a sort of twisted beauty to it? Probably why I enjoy this ship so much.

I hope you find the time and inspiration to continue this story =)

Oh btw, I was wondering if you're going to upload your other K/T fics on AO3 or only FFnet because I'd rather wait and comment on AO3 if that's your plan.

And you mentioned a sequel to Weakness?

(Also, my comments tend to get freakishly long on occasion, um, I hope you're not regretting asking me for input =/)

[wallwalker]

A longer reply may be coming after class is over, but since I'm here:

- I'm probably going to finish this; I'm trying to decide if I'm going to wait and post it as Chocobo Down for Doink! (since that was what it started out as) or if I'm going to go ahead with it.

- Re: Terra's diet - I was really glossing over that! I was planning to go into more detail later, once I figured out the exact circumstances of her imprisonment. I might not make it so bleak, but the loneliness would still be a huge factor; I really was just writing off the top of my head at that point.

- The nickname Honeybee is going to be a significant detail - or it was going to be, when I first conceived of this story. They make honey, they have a deadly sting, and if they do the wrong thing, they die. Kefka knows what he's doing (and I'm thoroughly convinced that he wasn't entirely sane before the procedure, but that it starts showing more once he has the power, and is maybe made stronger by it. I have a really old fic on AO3 called Striking the Sparks, and I've changed my mind about a few basic details, but the Kefka I wrote there is still the one I have in my head.

- I'll upload the others on AO3 at some point. I'm waiting to upload the sequel to Weakness because fan_flashworks asks for users to wait to crosspost until the challenge period has ended, and the others really do need some more formatting first. I'll deal with that later.