photoshooter | Awash IC Inbox

Right, okay. So it's not like you're bad or the magic's bad. People are just dicks.

[Someone's taken his conversation with Maribelle to heart.]

So what were you saying? About not telling me it was you?

Well. Like I said, some guys see it as there being two acceptable outcomes. A dead witch, or a bound witch. Dead is, y'know, complicated, because you have to get away with killing the witch. But binding them is comparatively easier, if you can figure out how to bind them.

[She shrugs a little.]

One of the ways of doing that is by getting your hands on their true name.

Oh. ...Oh.

[He looks at her with new consideration as that clicks into place, then nods quickly. He gets it!]

It's okay, I can keep calling you Flora if you want. I mean, it's not like I have to change anything around for it, I've already been thinking of you like that for a while. Well, that and Cape Girl. But now I know you're the same person, so. No biggie!

You can call me whatever you want. I'm pretty used to it, just...kind of letting people come up with something that works for them. I figure the more names I have, the harder it is to lock down any real one.

[She rubs at her nose, gaze going askew for a minute as she looks away and down at the ground.]

No way of knowing whether the guy who sent me here is still listening in somehow, or not.

[!]

Someone sent you here? You're sure?

I'm...pretty sure.

[She frowns a little, glancing back up and regarding him carefully with sharp, curious eyes.]

You don't think that's how you ended up here?

[He shakes his head and crosses his arms, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he thinks.]

I've never heard of anyone or anything on Eos that could do something like that. I guess we were all standing pretty close to the most powerful thing on the planet, but... but that doesn't make sense for Iggy and Noct, they came in from way earlier than I did. And the Crystal's for fighting the darkness, not doing crazy interdimensional stuff. So I don't think anything could've sent me from where I was.

[Hmmmm.]

And you didn't see anything like...I don't know. Something that just didn't look...right? A void just kind of opening up, some fierce winds, nothing like that?

It was like I just blinked and I was in the water. ...I thought maybe I passed out for a second or something.

[He wasn't in the greatest shape when he arrived here, after all.]

...So do you randomly pass out a lot, or was this just kind of a special occasion?

[But even as she says it, she's thinking back to the well — how for all that he's taller than she is, and clearly stronger, and leaner, and more physically capable, he'd still sat down in the water and huddled there like he was just waiting to be hurt.

She hasn't forgotten how familiar that pose had seemed, either. How it had resonated with her own memories of huddling in the exact same way.]

Ahaha. Uh, you could call it a special occasion, yeah. I'd had a really, really... really bad day already.

They have a saying about that, you know. Something something true test of a person's character is who they are after one really bad day.

[If by "they" you mean DC Comics but you know what, no one is going to ask her to cite her sources.]

I just figured I'd pissed off a guy and he'd chucked me here. Putting me in time-out or something.

...

[Carefully:]

Does that happen a lot, or was it kind of a special occasion?

[Something comes over her expression, then — a half-smile that never reaches her eyes, and a gaze that fixes itself somewhere in the middle distance — but the most defining part of it all is the way that there's nothing about it that suggests a lie. It's not the kind of smile that pretends to be something it's not; it's too automatic, too fixed, like the facial equivalent of tension seizing up someone's shoulders in a moment of impending apprehension.

It's the kind of expression born of resilience, stubbornness, and perhaps even spite. It's the sort of expression that looks carefully controlled, so as not to allow itself to shift into a different one.]

He likes to remind me that he's better than me. Usually something like this happens when it starts to seem like I'm forgetting.

[That's not an expression Prompto's seen before, no. He's accustomed to hobnobbing with people with all the power and influence in the world, shackled by no one above them but duty.

But he does know a thing or two about automatically tensing up. About the consequences of forgetting what he's not.

His hand comes up, but hers isn't an expression he can touch, so he puts it down again, fiddles with his belt.]

If he's listening, he won't get mad at you if I say rude things about him, will he?

[Her gaze snaps right to his hand when he moves it, abruptly alert, but when he lowers it again she relaxes a little — and his remark manages to get a laugh out of her, fracturing the mask she'd instinctively thrown up just a bit.]

You're a really sweet guy, you know that?

[He laughs a little, ducking into his shoulders and kicking idly at the cobblestones.]

I mean, nah. I'm just saying what anyone else would think.

[Like he's shy or embarrassed, he looks away, rubbing the back of his neck, then holds up a finger.]

Well, should we go hunt us down a deer, Your Floral Highness?

Oh, definitely. Thorg hungry. Thorg want meat.

[A pause.]

Slight addendum. You can call me whatever you want, except Thorg.

[And she grins a little, more of the mask cracking apart.]

Red's okay. Witchy's fine. "Hey you" always works in a pinch. Flora, Sabrina, Elfie, Kitty — I'm not that picky.

"Kitty"? Heheh.

[He's reminded all at once of naming Tiny--Pryna--who he'd known already had an owner, a name.]

I mean, if you don't mind Flora... I should at least change it to Princess Flora, though, now that you've revealed your true identity to me. Don't you think?

Only way I'll ever be a princess is if I marry a prince, wise guy.

[She rolls her eyes, good-naturedly.]

I'm a witch. No more, no less.

What, witches can't be princesses? Comic books wouldn't lie to me, Flora!

[There's probably several seasons of PreCure about this.]

Dude, there are like three strict criteria that you gotta have to be a princess and I am none of those things.

[ASK HER WHAT THEY ARE. THIS IS CLEARLY BAIT.]

[Prompto tilts his head at her and then starts counting on his fingers.]

Nice hair, a magical animal companion, aaannnddd a quest for someone to fulfill?

[He grins and waggles his three fingers at her.]

...

[OR he could just render the chatterbox speechless, as whatever it was she was going to say immediately goes out the window in favor of just kind of gawking at him for a minute, halfway between startled and wanting to laugh.]

...Okay, that's cheating, and also, fuck.

[Even if she won't laugh at him, he does, bringing his hand back to his chest.]

You forget, Your Highness, I've hung out with royalty for years. I know how this stuff works, trust me.

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