Bonds

TITLE: Bonds
AUTHOR: Wotan-Anubis
DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters and am not making a profit.
RATING: NC-17
PAIRING: Jill/Lethe

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Prologue


Castle Crimea was, all things considered, quite a pretty building. There was an almost dainty elegance to the place with its white stone and carefully kept gardens. In spite of herself, Lethe actually kind of liked it, although she would never admit this to anyone.

At the moment, however, she wasn't very interested in admiring the castle. Hurrying through its magnificent corridors, she looked almost like an angry wife on her way to the pub in order to give her husband a well-deserved scolding. She stopped in one of the outer hallways and took a moment to compose herself, her angry demeanor draining away. She stepped onto the balcony and behind Jill. The girl hadn't noticed her yet, looking out at the gardens below without actually seeing them. Lethe clenched her teeth, struggled over her detestation for touching iron and hugged her.

"Gold coin for your thoughts?"

Lethe could feel the tension draining out of Jill as she leaned into the laguz' embrace. "I'm just... thinking."

"About what?" Lethe asked.

"Home."

Lethe nodded. She wasn't particularly attuned to all the subtleties of beorc language, but she could sense that for Jill, 'home' wasn't the nice place that it was supposed to be. Not that that was very surprising.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" said Lethe.

Jill sighed. "Not really," she said. "But..."

"But...?"

Jill looked fixedly out over the gardens. "Daein's the place where I grew up. It's the only home I've ever known. But I don't think I can go back there. I've got too many... too many happy memories."

"I understand," said Lethe.

"I don't think you do," said Jill. "All my memories are of playing 'hunt the sub-human' with the other kids or listening to my father's stories of great heroes who single-handedly slaughtered dozens of half-breeds."

Lethe stiffened slightly. She knew all about this sort of thing, of course, but it still came as a shock.

"But all those memories, they belong to a different Jill," she continued. "A silly little girl who couldn't think for her own and swallowed every lie she was told. I'm not her any more and Daein's... Daein's not my home any more, you know?"

"I think so," said Lethe.

"So I can't go back," Jill said. "But I don't know where else to go."

Lethe was quiet for a moment. "You know," she said, "when the king ordered me to accompany Ike to Begnion, I hated the very thought of it. The idea that I had to spend so much time amongst humans disgusted me. But I've grown... used to beorc and I've even become particularly attached to one of them."

Jill smiled briefly.

"I can go back to Gallia," Lethe continued. "Be amongst my own kind again. But it looks like Queen Elincia will actually build a country where both our kinds can live in harmony, and I'd like to be there when it happens."

"That does sound nice," Jill admitted.

"Doesn't it?" said Lethe. "And it'd be even nicer if you could be there with me."

Jill turned around in Lethe's arms. "Lethe, do you...?"

Lethe grinned. "Of course I do," she said. "You think I would let you go now that the war's over?"

"I... never really thought about it," said Jill.

"I did," said Lethe. "And I know this nice little place near the Gallian border that I think you'll quite like. So how about it?"

Jill blinked twice, then wrapped her arms around Lethe and kissed her.