I'm hopelessly behind on everything but I've a good excuse-- I'm stuck firmly in the land of romantic doldrums. As of 7 o'clock tomorrow evening, I'm parting from my husband for a little over two months. And perhaps that's why I'm sleepless at 3:30 in the morning, putting this strange and melancholy little fic up.

But in any case, this is for the lovely ladyassassin, who requested Ashe/Vaan for the occasion of her birthday. Happy birthday, sweetheart-- I hope it's been a good year for you so far! And much love also goes to safiregriffon, who did an amazing job talking me through this story. I still regard it more as an interesting failure than anything else-- though damn it, I did my best to write it-- but anything even half-way interesting about this fic is likely due to her genius. ♥

(Also, I know Ashe/Vaan is a bit of an unorthodox couple so... are they anywhere near approaching being believable as a pair here? And if they aren't, is there anything I (or anyone else) could have done to make that the case? Thanks ahead of time!)

Title: 20 Reasons Why It's Impossible To Get Over the Queen of Dalmasca
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Characters/Pairings: Ashe/Vaan, Ashe/Rasler, Basch, Vossler, Balthier, Penelo, Larsa
Rating: PG-13
Summary: (Loving her proves that you're meant to be a pirate after all.) Ashe, Vaan, and the legacy of a doomed love affair.

1. Whenever Penelo asks you how on earth you managed to fall in love, get into bed and be dumped by a certain someone by your twenty first birthday, you always have one simple answer.

Because, you always say no matter how hard Penelo smacks you for it, she's the only woman you've ever known that could make hot pink miniskirts look kind of ridiculously hot while also keeping everything really interesting underneath all in its place.

And that's not the real reason-- it's nowhere near the real reason-- but it is the first think that really interested you in the Queen of Dalmasca. And though Penelo always
scowls at you for being so glib and not giving her any real help for her own red hot royal romance, you know what you're saying is true enough.

It'd go along with all the other ridiculous events in your life if you got your heart broken because of two square feet of stretchy pink fabric. And strange though it is, maybe that's just what led to you being the way you are today.

2. But another reason you sometimes tell others when you're drunk enough (though you'll never tell Ashe this for fear of the head still left on your neck) is that she's the only hume woman that can make even a viera seem modesty dressed and forgiving in comparison.

You love a limber and lethal bunny girl as much as the next person over, sure. But no matter how often Balthier rolls his eyes in the face of that comparison, nothing tends to beguile you more than bloodlust under the right circumstances.

3. To a teenage Larsa who's more than willing to ply you with beer, you admit that you fell in love because Ashe had been the first girl to ever let you cop a feel from her in ages and (unlike Penelo) didn't immediately squeal, whimper and start sobbing softly for your brother either. (Which really killed the mood in a big way, Larsa's both pleased and disturbed to hear.)

And probably it is true that the new Queen didn't really mean to so much as let her (literal) robe of office touch you. There'd been things going on beyond her control-- soldiers at her back and a ledge at her rear and had been soldiers and things with pointy edges being pushed in her pretty face and Balthier being the priss he could so often be-- what other landing ground could she have had but you anyway?

But then, what else did she need?

After all, it's pretty damn easy to remember the first girl you ever really rescued, since Penelo's so-called "rescue" was (thanks to Larsa yet again) more of a failed escape. And any opportunity to out leading-hero the so-called leading-hero is one you'll gladly take as well.

4. And to Basch, you finally own that it's partly because she's the one who ended up teaching you how to fight more like a soldier and less like a little boy playing at war. The skin of her calluses had been flat and hard against your hands whenever she had adjusted your grip in your fledgling attempts, whenever she had exhaled behind your ears and a little puff of her breath had hit you at the nape of your neck until all of you had stood at attention for her in the very worst sort of way.

And so what if she hadn't so much as said boo afterwards. And so what if Penelo had sniggered at you when you shuffled off, or if Balthier had offered purring innuendos about little boys and their toys, or if Basch had warily offered to teach you himself afterwards. And so what if maybe the others had more than caught on that you didn't need so much help, that you didn't fuck up quite so much whenever she hadn't been around.

Her hands had wrapped around yours easily in the first days you were together. And Basch of all people knew how easily it was for them to follow you in the nights after.

5. And in the last, though you'll never tell her or anyone else, you know you wanted her for the strangest possible reason of all.

"To protect something," she had whispered, when you had asked her what she had fought for, what her husband had gone to war to, what Reks had died in misery after. And you had waited in vain for her to continue but that's all she had said, all that she had needed to say.

On that rickety bridge in Jahara, on the coldest and clearest night possible, she had given you something you needed-- something she hadn't even known she was offering-- and you had taken at it with your teeth.

And you're not about to quite let go of it now either.

6. To protect something, she had said.

And maybe you were a fool, to cast your eyes on someone so much higher. And maybe you were a naif, to long for a widow with more than enough suitors. And maybe you were a coward, to want to protect someone so well guarded from the first.

But in your dreams afterward-- dreams of being a pirate, dreams of being a hero, dreams of being something so much better than what all the others think of you-- you always think of her first.

To protect something, she had said, and maybe this is what made you want to protect her first and foremost, to look after her ever afterwards.

7. But first you had to learn to respect her, if only because she's the first woman you've ever met that could beat you decisively at war.

Penelo is still the least weakest of your band in term of mere strength, no matter how strong her magic eventually grows. Fran, sword-master though she may be, is firmly in the middle-- though no one dares call her mediocre-- in all she does. And even at 17, you had been good enough-- cocky enough-- to assume you could fight them at least to a draw.

But Ashe-- Ashe had always been something else. Ashe had always been something better.

She can slay with the best of them, can run for miles and miles without a pause, can keep grimly urging the party on with the flat of her blade and the tip of her wand when all else seems lost. You don't know how simply from looking at her-- but you know enough to know if you ever lock blades with her, it'll simply be your loss.

One of the only times you ever saw her falter, though, was before the ghost of her husband, when she held the blades of god-kings in her hand and still couldn't shatter the shackles that held her down. And that was then when you realized that she could cross oceans of sand and kill gods with her bare hands and still not let go of what hurt you.

And maybe that was when you realized that if you were going to protect, it'd be from the past more than all others.

8. Because when Basch had told you in Archades that you're only just now starting to realize how difficult it is to service royalty, all you could do is smile and watch Penelo flirt back with him and figure out how much he had already saw and lost.

Back then, you had known that that'd be just what you wanted to do-- though not quite the way he had done it. And if the job had been any easier, you wouldn't be interested in the prize offered.

(Loving her proves that you're meant to be a pirate after all.)

9. Because you've never been prouder of anyone than when she finally manages to strike the image of her husband down. Because all you can do is smile tightly when Vossler turns out to be a traitor and even the humble street thief among them can leave the noble in his dust. Because you've never felt so terribly triumphant as when you realize that Basch belongs to a new empire and has to leave her now. Because you've never felt more ferociously glad than when Balthier finally-- blessedly-- shows his true colors and runs off.

Because she makes you into a bitter and jealous bastard and even if you don't love who you can be because of her, at least she impacts your heart.

10. And because you feel sorry for all that-- sorry for all the men who have deserted her, who had once put their arms around her and pledged their eternal fealty and had ran off or died or been scattered to the winds, one by one by one.

Nothing but love, you've long since realized, could leave any fundamentally decent person this horribly and awfully flawed.

11. Because when she is finally crowned the Queen of Dalmasca rather than simply the sovereign princess of your nation, she is more untouchable than ever. And when she ascends to her throne at last, in the height of her power, she reminds you, more than anything, of those drawings of fairy princesses you saw so often when you were young. Young and beautiful and so powerful but so helpless-- so out of the reach of anything speckled of the common sort.

She is so beautiful and you are so stupid-- stupid enough to somehow think you'll be able to bring her back down to earth.

12. Because the first time you kiss her, you are twenty years old and you're convinced you're finally enough to count as a suitor.

You are twenty years old and finally a pirate of some renown-- finally a man rather than a play-acting child. You've won your fair share of treasure and carved a miniature kingdom from a rag-tag crew and you think you've finally something of yourself to attract her. You storm into her private chambers because you think you have the right, because you've earned some sort of consideration from her.

You think you're man enough to suit her at last. You think you're enough to please her.

She disabuses you of the notion swiftly with all her skill-- with her lashing tongue and her hissing court and her blade at your own naked throat after. She reduces you to the level of a callow child, a cowering boy, and makes you realize just how far the distance between the two of you truly is, how many cliffs you've left to clamber.

And still, she has a strange sort of mercy. She can hurt you with disarming ease and still take you to bed afterwards.

13. Because even through all the months of passion that follow, you know you're not enough. You shower her with stolen jewels and bribe Larsa (via tidbits on Penelo) to ghost-write flowery letters and still you know it's enough. Every moment you see her, you know all too well that she's nothing you deserve and everything you want and it's hard not to wish you were a better man for her sake, hard not to wish you were just more, deeper, stronger.

And when you say this, she simply smiles at you thinly and says But truth be told, I have no quibbles. I enjoy what I have now.

But for how long, you are too cowardly to say, and she holds her tongue thereafter.

14. Because it doesn't matter what Rabanastre and Dalmasca claim of her, night after night, part after part. Politics leaves bags under her eyes and bits and pieces of her beauty fragmenting, coalescing, being torn up. She is not yet twenty five years old and already, she withers before the demands of a nation, her physical strength drying up.

She is not the warrior she used to be; already, she complains of aches constantly, of weakness in her eyes and nausea in her throat and head-aches from all the political backbiting around her. She has not picked up a sword in ages-- sparring is now beyond her.

But in the end, her fingers are still strong enough to curl against your back and her legs firm enough to cling to your hips near every time you visit her. And if you closed your eyes to the present as it happened, when you denied all else in the time when she kept you, it almost seemed like enough.

15. Because you want to fix her when you see that strength of hers falter; you want to raise her up. Because you're still cocky enough to think you can fill the gaps in her life-- the husband that had left her, the general that had betrayed her, the guardian that had fled her-- to solder the ragged remains of affection all the men in her life have left her.

You never ask her to tell you that she loves you-- you are foolish but perhaps not wholly an idiot. But when she closes her eyes and sometime slumbers in your arms, it's easy to close your own and listen to the sound of her breathing and think this can go on for years and years and years, while you both grow old and your children grown beautifully around you and all the world can come to know that what you have is so much purer than what any of her other men have offered.

Despite all in the world, you are somehow still naïve enough-- oh god-- to think you can always get what you want.

16. Because you can tell her about anything you loved without wincing, about someone who had died when they shouldn't have without worrying, about some even that happened without meaning, knowing she'll know enough to simply let you go on.

And even when you talk of Reks, she doesn't say sorry. She'll say, instead, well bred fingers clenching, How awful. How terrible. How murderous. How dreadful. I hope you gave the man responsible everything he earned.

And when you think of Gabranth's dying face and say I did, she can realize of what you speak and think of Basch with a visible tremor and still say, a hitch in her throat, I'm sure it was well deserved.

17. Because it's not pity in her eyes, even if you are pitiable. Even if the two of you both know all too well that the Queen of Dalmasca deserves the hand of someone better than a sky pirate, someone who could deliver to her the wealth of empires and the nobility of blue blood, you know she never pities you when her eyes greet you the morn afterwards.

She does look at you, though-- long looks, lean looks, hungry and appraising looks that can mean nothing and everything at all. They are looks that say I know where you're coming from and then

(something beneath her eyes you can't understand)

you'll still be strong enough to go on.

18. Because even when she tells you it has to end, her eyes don't drop from yours even when yours fills with tears. And after you scream and beg and ask for another chance, please god another, please this time you'll do better-- even after, she knows that when you say I'm not going to fight for you, it really means I love you enough not to wreck everything you've ever worked for.

So this is it, you say after the tears have dried up and you've nothing left in you but hard little knots. Eight months and this is it. I guess we've got…

Yes, she murmurs and draws back a bit. I suppose we've nothing more to talk of?

I just… And you trail off because you've nothing left to say, nothing left to do. Was it my fault? Was it me? Did I do something wrong?

She turns to the side, her eyes gently shifting close. No. Quite the opposite. I was always the fool, the one who toyed with your heart.

And all you can do is look and look at her and wonder if you had ever known her till now.

19. Because her eyes do not waver from yours during her wedding the summer after, do not flinch from yours when she is large with her young.

You deserve better, she says in her letters after. You always deserved so much better than all that I've given you, Vaan. You always thought me so much braver and wiser, did you know, than I really was. But I was always a coward that loved where I shouldn't, that took more than I truly deserve. And I have hurt you more than I ever should have, taken from you what ought not be sought. If you live in pain now, it is for my sake, for a sake I've selfishly squandered. Forgive me my weaknesses, Vaan, and forget me completely. I've done nothing kind enough to keep in your memory for long.

She is right in everything she says and still.

And still, you've never loved her more or learned to curse at her harder.

20. And because it's the most difficult thing in the world to get over the first woman you ever really loved, the first you ever really understood, the first you thought you could really mend after the world had gone through smashing her. Even if all the world made it hopeless to love her, even if she was more than you ever deserved and so much less than the image you had thought of, even if she left you down in the end--

Somehow, still. It's hard to forget her.

You know this all too well.

In fact, you're learning even now.