#Scions of the Seventh Noonish

[thefreelanceangel]

[thefreelanceangel]

FebHyurAry #19 - Memory

They'd left the others at Fortemps Manor, enjoying the end of the dinner that'd been so graciously thrown for Meli Iliakos and her adventuring friends. In a rare mood, Capricia took Renaux's arm and told him they should walk about to see if any of the atrocious city had changed.

For a blissfully quiet quarter of a bell, they walked together with her hands clasping his forearm. Capricia looked up at the stained glass windows, the lanterns, the stonework that hadn't changed since she'd left the city.

Renaux looked at her.

And even later when she idly turned the memory over, drinking her way through a bottle of white wine as her bedmate for the night turned over and snored, Capricia wondered just what he thought he would find by watching her.

[thefreelanceangel]

FebHyurAry #11 - Raid

The last thing any of them expected was for her to run forward, towards the thrice-damned laughing clown they'd been struggling to defeat.

Why now? She'd been so useless throughout the fight that only Eva stepped forward, called out to her as she ran towards his metallic echoing laughter.

And all of them fell silent, stunned into wide-eyed motionlessness, as that which they'd been striving to kill reached out in answer to her.

Renaux broke from the horror soonest, hurling himself after her with a hoarse yell, and Smooth Shadows bolted after him, automatically moving to take whatever blow Kefka would land upon them for interfering.

Meli, their Warrior of Light, their (not-so) secret weapon, moved last of all, watching with a furrowed brow as Capricia's hand grasped the extended forearm.

Capricia screamed when Renaux wrenched her away, reached over his shoulder as he ran with her behind Temujin. Shadow lifted her shield, diving into the path of Kefka's wide swing, and grunted as the blow knocked her nearly to the edge of the unstable platform.

Eva cried out herself, aether looping about Shadow's ankle and wrenching the heavy Roe back from the edge. Meli shook off the thought that'd rooted her in place and ran forward, shouting up at Kefka to draw his ire once again.

She couldn't help wondering briefly if it really had been recognition she'd seen in both of their faces.

[thefreelanceangel]

FebHyurAry #10 - Dragon

She understood.

Oh, how she understood.

[thefreelanceangel]

FebHyurAry #6 - Element

Now I bleed for you - burn for me

[thefreelanceangel]

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

He left her.

Not simply left her, but took her hand in his, drew the ring from it, laid it in her palm and walked away.

She ran after him, calling his name. Not because of the money he possessed or the home high in Ishgard. Not because that home of his held their infant son or because she feared the cold.

Capricia ran after him because he'd given her his word that he would not abandon her as Nicolas had. The word of Laurent Leroux could not, would not be broken.

...so how could he possibly break his promise to her?

After the failure of her arranged marriage with her first husband, who she fell deeply in love with, Capricia faced a struggle of surviving on her own. Having been brought up to quietly run a household, she had few options for supporting herself.

Capricia's skills with a rapier, taught to her by Nicolas before he abruptly divorced her in favor of a younger woman (presumably to procure an heir, as he claimed Capricia to be barren), were what she had available. They impressed Laurent, enough that he courted her, wed her, proudly showed her off to his peers.

She understood why Nicolas abandoned her. They were, despite all their efforts, so wildly incompatible that it came as something of a relief to end the marriage.

...but Laurent...

Capricia never learned why he'd divorced her so abruptly, why he informed the household guards she could not even see her son. Laurent never replied to her letters, had her driven away when he appeared in public, told all of their friends that she'd lost her mind.

In a way, he didn't lie.

Bereft of what small comfort she'd carved out of life, given no reason for having it torn so rudely away, Capricia snapped.

Now she rushes from assignation to assignation, from battle to battle. Being one of the adventurers who fights alongside the Warrior of Light provides plenty of opportunity for Capricia to take out all of her rage on publicly acceptable targets.

And she cannot sleep alone.

Every time she cannot subconsciously feel a warm body near hers, the memory becomes a dream she can't escape.

[thefreelanceangel]

FebHyurAry #3 - Dream

She wouldn't explain it to anyone else. And... in truth, the opportunity would never arise. Capricia kept everything to herself. Everything.

Even the dull emptiness that she'd seen reflected in only one other person in all her life.

When she did dream, when she allowed herself the absurd luxury that always circled back to that same hollow feeling, it was of a 'could have been' that in truth... never could have.

Capricia knew that. And yet, she dreamt it anyway.

[thefreelanceangel]

It'd been the delight of his life to show her the beauty of his home. And a memory he disliked greatly now, for it'd become so mingled with horrors that even he looked on the landscape with sadness.

{#AuRaAugust: 19 - Scenery}

[thefreelanceangel]

He'd warded off fangs and claws, blades and bullets. And with Imayo's blood soaking into his sleeve, he braced himself and raised his sword.

He'd ward off the dead, too.

{#AuRaAugust: 13 - Fang & Claw}

[thefreelanceangel]

FFXIVWrite2023 (#26 - "Last")

"...that's all you're going to say to me?"

Aware that the glass clasped in his hands would shatter if he let his temper slip his control, Renaux drew a slow breath and looked over his shoulder at Capricia.

She paid him no heed.

She never truly did.

Even accepting his invitation to the small art gallery he'd stumbled across, even agreeing to spend an evening with him somehow came across dismissively. Pity would've been something, at least. He didn't even merit that from her.

Capricia rolled the stem of her glass between her fingertips, gaze focused on the geometric painting before her. She didn't tilt her head nor turn towards him, gave no sign of even having heard him speak. Renaux gritted his teeth, putting the glass down lest he snap it with a convulsive clench. "Capricia."

"Mm?"

She didn't turn. Still didn't turn. Renaux picked his glass up off the floor, considered draining it, held it instead to keep himself calm.

"Capricia, I did not invite you on an evening out to be ignored."

She sipped her champagne, still looking at the painting. And then glided on to the cold steel sculpture embedded in the wall, giving Renaux nothing more than her back.

His hand clenched on the glass again. "Capricia."

"This is why I rarely answer your letters, Renaux," she said, her back still to him. Despite the small plaques requesting patrons not touch the artwork, Capricia reached out to smooth a hand up and down one cold, flat metal plane. "You want something from me that I simply do not possess."

And still she did not look at him as she drained the champagne from her glass and carelessly dropped it at her feet. "I am not going to love you. I love no one. At all. And I never will. So let's just drop the foolish pretense, hm? Let this be the last it ever comes up."

"Who said I want your love?" He set his glass aside firmly, rising to his feet, and set his jaw. "What ignorant assumptions give you that impr- Wh- Capricia!"

His startled exclamation fell only on a closing door, as the woman he'd intended to verbally nail to the wall just... left.

He paced the small space with curt strides, hands flexing in and out of fists, and finally stopped to plant his hands on his hips. Exhaling slowly, Renaux looked through the art on the walls, seeing nothing of artistic intent or beauty.

"The last..." His teeth ground together as he drew a slow breath. "Let it be so then, this is the last polite attempt I make."

Now... he'd focus on the impolite methods.

[thefreelanceangel]

FFXIVWrite2023 (#5 - Barbarous)

He narrowed his eyes, head tilting back slightly, and pulled the strap a bit tighter. Satisfied that no writhing, struggling, or kicking would loosen the bonds, Renaux turned away from the table to the neat stack of parchment sitting on the sideboard.

As much as he abhorred turning his dining room into a makeshift laboratory, Renaux couldn't afford the chance of being discovered at this. Renting a room in some back alley hovel came with the benefits of anonymity--gil could pay for nearly anything--but too many security risks.

For this, for the possibilities it may afford, he would sacrifice the sanctity of his home.

Drawing a deep breath, he planted his hands on either side of the parchments and stood, head bowed and eyes closed. For this, he needed focus. Absolute and complete focus. Renaux certainly understood disappointment on a theoretical level, but these recent wranglings with it on a personal level...

Intolerable.

And so he stood, with a random woman tied to his dining room table, and waited the prescribed period of time for the alchemical tonic he'd forcibly dosed her with to take effect.

Exhaling slowly, he opened his eyes and reviewed the notes once more, running a fingertip lightly along the meticulously outlined ingredients, notations, batch notes. He would've applauded his colleague's precise testing if he'd not been so very aware of how he would've done it better.

While he'd been part and parcel of the events that'd led to Sharlayan now being far more open, Renaux didn't believe the 'commitment to change' to be anything more than lip service. The Studium, and the intractable blocks that ran it, would be slower to change than even she would.

Renaux looked for progress, and at times, one needed to be a bit... barbarous in order to enact real change.

He glanced over his shoulder, noted the woman's eyes remained closed, and turned to the page once more. A few additional notations mentioned a Garlean researcher to contact should something go 'awry' with the tonic--highly unspecific, that--and Renaux took careful note of the name and address before reaching for his pen to let ink soak into the page, blotting it out.

A few hitches in the breathing behind him straightened Renaux up. He moved the ink-sodden page onto a blotter and dropped the pen into the holder as he turned.

Where there's a will, there's a way, and his will could only be described as indomitable.

[thefreelanceangel]

And hungry still for our reunion, I rode the light of the stars to you.

[thefreelanceangel]

17. Taking a step away from "canon", do you have any wholly unique side quests and adventures your Warrior of Light has gotten caught up in? Did they chase down ghosts of their own past, get married, open a bakery, or fix an ancient blood curse on their family line? Have they reunited with loved ones or buried old hatchets? If there's some unique story behind your character, how does it show up and how did it play out?

At one point, the Scions of the Seventh Noonish (Eva refuses to call them anything else and constantly corrects the other members of the adventuring party) were left with little to do when Meli was bedridden, recovering from injuries.

After all, retaking a castle from the Empire wasn't all that simple and sometimes, even the Warrior of Light needed a little time to heal.

With things still very obviously needing to be done, they couldn't scatter to the winds as they usually did. And with a wildly different mishmash of personalities, the Noonish team needed something to unite them while waiting for Meli's recovery.

This led them to a search throughout Kugane for the Ultimate Dessert.

Dango, papanasi, persimmon pudding, Steppe tea, mochi ice cream, taiyaki, mooncakes, daifuku, dorayaki (which led to a fight between Renaux and Isamu when Renaux said it was the same thing as dango so why would they give it a different name), and more.

By the time Meli was able to get out of bed and prepare to return to Gyr Abania, her adventuring party greeted her with a wide, choice selection of sweets, one fading black eye, a few mild grudges, and Smooth Shadows' assertion that she didn't care what anyone else said, sakuramochi was the superior choice but Meli couldn't have any of it.

[thefreelanceangel]

[thefreelanceangel]

MiqoMarch #23 - Market

Between traveling with the Scions-ish, Eva kept an eye out for smaller jobs that two or three of them could do together, without the weight of Meli behind them. 

And occasionally, she noted down a few things to spend their accumulated funds on.

[thefreelanceangel]

MiqoMarch #2 - Sprout

She’d never dreamt of taking her skills out into the wider world, leaving her mother’s protective custody behind, but when she did... Eva wondered how she’d endured being the coddled child for so long.