Ever At Your Service [Parts V and VI]

[sapphirewings07]

Title: Ever At Your Service
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Basch/Ashe
Warnings/Content: N/A
Summary: Basch and Ashe both hear that the other is dead and find themselves in places they never wanted to be.

Chapter 5

 

 

                Ashe waits patiently for Vossler to return with the medicine for her sore throat. Though it is well known that he is one of the leaders of the resistance, Vossler is still able to move about the city, for the imperials can find no crime to charge him with. She sits on her windowsill – one leg dangling outside the portal – and feels the warm desert breeze come in across her face. She closes her eyes and tries to keep her heart in check, for it is trying to beat wildly with grief and anxiety.

                She’d walked into Vossler’s office to surprise him with some cookies. Simple pleasures like sweets were rare when they were, by and large, in hiding, and they were his favorite kind. She’d intended to sneak up behind him and wait until he smelled the peanut butter to hand over the gift.

                Curiosity, as it does on many occasions, got the better of her. She stood on her toes and peered over Vossler’s large shoulder to the paper on his desk and his ever moving pen. What she saw there shocked her.

                Vossler was filling out a death certificate for Basch fon Ronsenberg.

                “Did you find his body?”              

                Vossler jumped, knocking his drink from the desk. He was on his feet and had his dagger half-drawn from his hip before he realized it was Ashe.

                “No,” he told her, “but it has been long enough. He must be formally declared dead by Dalmascan standards. We were told he’d been executed, but…”

                “But you didn’t believe it,” Ashe finished. Such topics were somewhat of a taboo between them. “And now you do.”

                “If he wasn’t dead he would have come to us.”

                Ashe leans against a nearby table for support. Perhaps more difficult than going into hiding was doing so without Basch, who’d always had a plan for everything. He’d taught to survive on her own incase she ever had to escape anything, but she’d always assumed he would be with her.

                And now even Vossler, who’d held out hope for another conversation with Basch to learn the truth, believed he was dead.

                Vossler got to his feet and moved towards her, cautious as ever. Things had never been as easy between them as they’d been with Basch, but they were friends and Vossler was all Ashe had left. She looked up at him, unapologetic for her tears.

                “He was my best friend,” Vossler said, “and I don’t think he’s the traitor we’ve been told he is. It seems now that we will never get to ask him ourselves.”

                “I cannot believe that he isn’t coming back.”

                Ashe looks out at the sunset, trying to find appreciation for it. She’d sent Vossler out for the medicinal tea so she could have some time alone. She’d cried into his chest long enough, after all.

                It seemed seems to go over everything in her mind and commit what she can to permanent, unchangeable memory. She thinks through everything, but it is a memory of herself with her two favorite knights that finally breaks her.

 

                Ashe stares at the pile of clothing in the middle of her floor with distain. At fourteen years old having little that fits properly has become quite an embarrassing problem. The growth spurt came so fast and so furious that she’d barely had time to buy more clothing before she had outgrown them. She kicks at the pile of her favorite clothes, wishing she could magically make them fit.

                Basch has agreed to take her shopping, which she now understands is a major undertaking and aggravation for him. Basch can replace all of his clothing in ten minutes in the men’s clothing store in town, while she must browse each boutique and shop to find just what she wants.

                She often wonders why he puts up with her.

                There is a knock on her door that she recognizes as Basch’s – three sharp taps and then a strum of his fingers – it is their joke. She calls to him to tell him it is open and he enters, wearing his casual uniform and a large dagger at his hip. He folds his arms and casts an amused look at her.

                “Someone has been cleaning.”

                It is not Basch’s voice. Vossler emerges from behind him and Ashe squeals with delight. She rushes to hug him and he picks her up in his overwhelming embrace. Basch laughs at them.

                “You’re still not too big for me to pick up,” he says, setting her back on her feet.

                “What are you doing here?”

                “Well, I ran into Basch this morning and he told me of your plans for the day. Since I have a day off I thought I would join you. Would that be alright?”

                “Of course!” The men laugh and Basch hands her hat to her. She narrows her eyes at him in contempt, but he simply raises his eyebrows at her and she puts it on.

                “We can’t have you getting a sunburn again.”

                “Again?” Vossler asks. They leave her room and start moving toward the exit of the castle. As they descend the stairs, Ashe slips her hands into theirs and moves between them.

                “I took her swimming a week or so ago during a trip to Landis and she got quite burned.”

                “I wouldn’t think King Raminas would approve of such an activity,” Vossler says, uncertain.

                “He didn’t,” Basch confirms, and he and Ashe finish the thought in unison: “but it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

                Vossler says nothing and only narrows his eyes at the pair of them. It is clear that he disapproves of such frivolity, and Ashe has the nagging suspicion that he will be having a talk with Basch later about proper knightly conduct. She bites her lip and sneaks a look up at Basch and he shrugs a bit.

                “I’m glad you’ve come,” Basch says. “We’ll be needing you to carry the bags too.”

                “You mean you buy the things on the spot?” Vossler’s tone is incredulous. Ashe rolls her eyes, remembering how each potential purchase was written down for her father’s approval before it was actually bought.

                “Yes, why not?”

                “Doesn’t King Raminas need to approve things?”

                “I take full responsibility for what Ashe buys,” Basch says firmly, “She gets what she wants and if the king doesn’t like it he can tell her she can’t have it. Better him than me, after all.”

                “Hey!” Ashe yells. The men laugh.

                As they walk through the city towards the shopping district, they attract many stares. She wonders if she should feel immature holding her escorts’ hands – she is fourteen after all, and a princess – but she doesn’t care so much. She looks between Basch and Vossler s they talk and she notices differences between them. Basch’s skin is lighter, Vossler’s beard is thicker. Vossler’s lips are thinner than Basch’s and his neck is thicker. Their hair has different textures. It isn’t until they reach boutique number one that she stops looking at them. The men escort her in and the fun begins.

 

                By the time Ashe is in the dress shop looking for proper attire for her fifteenth birthday celebration, the men are weary. Vossler sits with his back against the dressing room wall and Basch leans against a rack of clothes, his face in his hand and his eyes closed.

                “Are you almost done?” Vossler calls.

                “Don’t rush her,” Basch says. “You can’t rush these things.”

                “Exactly!” Ashe agrees from behind the curtain. After a moment she emerges, dressed in a long sapphire silk gown. Her shoulders are bare and she’s drawn her hair up from her neck, leaving it exposed. Basch straightens and Vossler climbs to his feet to look at her.

                “Wow,” he says quietly. She looks too old, too mature to be their Ashe, the little girl they’ve protected from the evils of the world. She turns around to show them the low back and laces, then faces them again.

                “What do you think?” she asks. Basch cannot tear his eyes from her. There is no greater beauty to him than a stunning woman who neither knows nor cares how beautiful she is, and in that moment Ashe is just that. A beautiful woman, and he cannot think of her as such.

                “It looks fantastic.” Vossler says. Ashe looks to Basch, for it is clear his opinion matters more to her, but he cannot speak, he only nods to her in approval.

                She smiles at him and retreats to the dressing room, wishing he would have spoken, told her she was beautiful. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so silly for wishing things were different, that she were older and a peasant or he were younger and a prince. She sighs and pulls the dress of. It will have to do.

 

                Ashe swallows down the lump in her throat. She feels guilty, so guilty, for wishing that the world was different, for if she’d had to choose which of her knights had died, she would have chosen Vossler and kept Basch.

                She chokes back the emotion as Vossler enters her room, her tea already made and steaming in his hand. His loyalty and love makes her want to cry, for he is not Basch and can never replace him in her heart.

                Never.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

                “Has no one told you, brother?” Gabranth teases as he paces in front of Basch’s cage. There is a twisted smile on his face – one that Basch hopes he could never imitate, even in the best of circumstances.

                “Told me what, Noah?” Basch goads back. Gabranth glares at him, but then grins again. Basch knows whatever his brother wants to say will sting him in some way.

                “Your princess killed herself nearly a year ago.”

                Gabranth keeps talking, something about broken kingdoms and having everything taken from her, but Basch does not hear him. The air has been vacuumed from his lungs and the room and he cannot breathe. He staggers back in his cage and it sways, rocking him in a way that is far from comforting. He hopes it will fall and drop him to his death.

                “Dead?”

                “Dead.” Gabranth says. “I suppose, in a way, it is your fault. You did ruin her kingdom, kill her father and lead her husband to his death.”

                Basch should shout. He knows he should yell in anger, cry out in grief, but he cannot make sound without air and there is none. He cannot breathe and struggles. His breaths come short and choppy as Gabranth strides away, his metal armor clanging and echoing as he moves.

                He thinks of the things he would say and the wrongs he would right. He thinks of all the things he should have told her and growls at himself for the last year he spent in Rabanastre. He’d let their relationship decay and fall into ruin.

                What he wouldn’t give to tell her he loved her.

                “Ashe,” he whispers, “Ashe, Ashe…”

 

                Basch had been busy with designing the security structure for the wedding. For days he and Vossler had toiled over it, drinking ale and coffee alternately, trying to find ways to let the public be close enough to the couple to feel as though they were a part of the day and keep them far enough away that the newlyweds would be safe.

                It had been weeks since Basch had seen Ashe. Their last conversation had been brief and tense. She was anxious about her marriage. She genuinely cared for Rasler, she’d admitted, but it wasn’t all she had hoped for. She would be faithful, of course, but there was something missing.

                “I just wish things were different,” she had said.

                “You are lucky,” Basch had told her, “Many royals are forced to marry people they cannot stand for political reasons. You like Rasler and you like Nabradia. You like his family. You will be happy.”

                “I don’t mean that I wish my marriage circumstances were different,” she had all but snapped at him. “I know I am lucky. But I just wish everything were different. That I were older. That I wasn’t a princess. That I didn’t have all of this responsibility and weight on my shoulders.”

                “But you bear it so well,” Basch told her, “You are good at this. Had you been the child of a peasant I would still believe that this is what you were born to do.”

                Her expression softened, but it was not enough. As Basch walks to her room on the eve of her wedding, he knows he should have handled that conversation differently. That he should have understood what she was trying to tell him – what she had been trying to articulate for the past six months of tensity between them.

                She wished she was a part of his world.

                He strides up the steps with purpose and fear. He is too old for this – thirty-four is no age for a knight to be confusing princesses and making marriages uncomfortable.

                Especially not when he loves the bride so.

                He knocks on Ashe’s door with a force that cannot be denied. She opens it, and the surprise on her face is clear. Basch steps in without waiting for her to invite him.

                “Come in,” she says belatedly, sarcastic. “I’m not busy at all.”

                “I wanted to see you before tomorrow,” he says, stopping at the center of her room and folding his arms. He is dressed in normal clothes today – his first day of rest in months. “I am not so sure Rasler would take so kindly to a knight spending any quantity of time with his wife.”

                “Does it matter? You’ve made yourself quite scarce lately.”

                His eyes settle on her wedding dress and veil hanging over her closet door. “It matters. I have been busy.”

                “Keeping yourself away?”

                “You know better than that.” He rarely takes a harsh tone with Ashe out of respect for her station and for her as a person. “You know I would have rather stayed as your guard.”

                “Oh, so we’re back to that?” she hisses. She’s distracting in her sundress – Basch had a weakness for her when she looked relaxed and happy.

                “No,” he counters, “Because we’ve been over this. I came here to wish you well.”

                “Wish me well!” she cries. This is not proper princess behavior, Basch thinks, but Ashe had dropped the façade of a proper princess in his company so long ago that he barely recalled it. “You’ve made it quite clear –“

                “There is a war coming, Ashe.” He silences her with the reality. “You are getting married. This is no time to argue.”

                “I don’t want to get married if it means things have to change.”

                He knows she speaks of their friendship. “They already have.”

                She turns from him and folds her arms. “Why?”

                “Because you grew up.” He surrenders his plans of a simple blessing of her marriage and a short conversation. “Because I had to move on and because they were right. I could no longer guard you. You cloud my judgment.”

                She says nothing and continues staring out the window. Her chest rises and falls faster and harder than normal and Basch is sure he has ruined her night. He regrets coming at all. “I care too much for you, Ashe, far more than is healthy or acceptable.” The guilt of his feelings for her – the intense attachment that defied articulation – kept him away from her, but he was out of time now. It didn’t matter any longer what he said or did.

                “I know.” Her admittance shocks him. “I knew when I was twelve that you and I had surpassed the friendship we should have had. We were too close. You were too kind and gentle with me for a knight and I was so attached to you. You were my hero and my protector… quite literally my knight in shining armor.”

                “And you were my princess. Always –“

                “Your princess.” She looks over at him. There are tears streaming down her face – tears he so wants to dry – but he cannot move. He cannot touch her. There are rules he must adhere to, even in privacy. Even today.

                “I had the biggest crush on you then,” she tells him. Her voice is that of a woman, not the child he’d known, and all at once she is an adult to him. She’d always retained a lightness and humor, but now it is gone. She has grown up and she will speak to him as a grown woman. “I was convinced that you were my knight and that meant I would marry you someday. It would be just like the fairytales.”

                “I’ve thought often of what life would have been like had you been born in Landis fewer years after I had been born,” he confesses. “But perhaps we would have never come to know each other as we do in this world.”

                She smiles sadly and shakes her head. “No. I’ve never felt that I was fated to be a princess or a queen or Rasler’s wife. I never thought it was my destiny to befriend anyone I’ve befriended or meet anyone I’ve met, but I am convinced that fate brought you from Landis to me. I cannot even imagine the person I would be had I not met you.”

                “And I –“ Basch’s voice shakes with emotion that he tries to bite back, “cannot imagine my life had I not come here.”

                Silence falls between them like a veil, and the distance between them seems far longer than a few feet. Ashe rubs her own arms and Basch sees that she still wears the ring he gave her a year prior.

                “In your world where I am a Landisian milkmaid,” Ashe starts and Basch smiles, “am I happy?”

                “Very. I cannot imagine a chronically unhappy Ashe.”

                She grins. “Do you and I live happily ever after?”

                “We do.”

                “We live happily ever after in my fantasy where you are a prince.”

                “I suppose I shall have to be content with knowing there is a Prince Basch fon Ronsenberg in your mind that wakes up each morning beside his Princess Ashe.”

                “And I shall have to content myself with knowing there is a Landisian Ashe that wakes each morning beside her Basch in another reality, and I’ll know she is happy.”

                Basch nods silently, folding his hands in front of him to keep from fidgeting. “Are you happy with marrying Rasler?”

                “I am,” she tells him. It both warms and chills him. “He is a good man and we will be happy together. I would have no other… in this reality.”

                They are quiet again and the words Basch must say pain him greatly. “I must go.”

                “I must sleep.”

                They both nod in agreement, and Basch bows to her before walking towards her door. He is intercepted, though, as he reaches for the handle.

                “I do love you, Basch. I do.”

                He cannot say it back. It is against his code and every rule he has ever known. He swallows hard and hopes the pain in his eyes and his hand on her cheek tells her enough. For a long moment he simply looks at her and strokes the side of her face with his calloused thumb. He wants to remember her as she is now – still his Ashe and no one else’s.

                She stands on her toes – for she must to reach him – and presses a kiss to his cheek. He closes his eyes, taking in the warmth of her body so close and the heat of her lips on his skin and he is thankful that she lingers there for a moment. His hand falls to her waist and they are timeless, floating between their three realities, and for a moment, all three are tangible. It is a safe place and Basch tries to lose himself in it…

 

                A million miles and years away Basch cries. He has found his air and he screams in agony. His hands are bound and his feet are shackled. There is nothing around him to hold onto. He simply screams in pain and answers his own echo with more cries.

                As the pain in his chest intensifies he realizes that he cannot live in a world where he is aware that Ashe does not exist. He cannot accept a reality where she does not draw breath. He looks around for some instrument of death to end his own life with, but there is nothing. He is contained. He is trapped, and all he can do is scream, and when his body is too exhausted to continue, he curls up and slips into the Landis in his mind and seeks out his beautiful milkmaid wife…