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ffxii, fic, life, multipart: penelo's navel, penelo's navel

Snowed in! Plus fic.
Sooooooo. It appears that my car is approximately four inches taller than normal.

And when I say "approximately", I mean "at least".

I think, for the first time in my life, I am actually snowed in. I see no way of getting into work this morning.

In honour of this, have a fic snippet. Anyone remember the Penelo's Navel fic beginning thingy I posted ages ago? Well, this is the first bit of the next part. Or something like that.

Edit: forgot, standard warnings apply: is neither finished nor edited, therefore may be subject to spelling errors, grammatical errors, gibberish, bad plotlines, stupid metaphors and/or discontinuation.

A Tale of Archadian Passion
or
Penelo’s Navel

Part two

“I’ve worked it out,” Penelo declared, two weeks later.

Larsa looked up from his work and blinked at her, trying to relate her words to the annual accounts the military forwarded him. They were currently attempting to justify some of the most bizarre experimental weapons ever seen with a torturously complicated accounting system, linked to an even more torturously complicated risk assessment system.

“You have?” he said, confused but more than happy for any insight Penelo – or, indeed, anyone else – could offer.

“Yes.”

Larsa waved a pen at her distractedly, his eyes already returning to the page in front of him. “I’m listening,” he said.

A petite hand appeared on the page in front of him. Larsa’s gaze darted up to see Penelo leaning over his desk (look at the face, the face!) and giving him a knowing look as she took his paperwork away.

“I know the reason the other ambassadors all ran away,” Penelo said, smiling at him and piling papers on the edge of his desk.

There was something about Penelo’s smile, Larsa thought, that simply caused his brain to stop functioning. It was like glancing out of a window early in the morning to see the most breathtaking and delicate sunrise, a sight that truly took the breath away and left his mind blank of everything but the thought, Oh. So that’s the reason I get up every day.

It was thoroughly distracting and Larsa wished it would never stop.

“The other ambassadors?” he said, still only half-conscious of the conversation. Between the military accounts and the part of his mind still waxing poetic on Penelo’s smile, he was having a little trouble focussing.

“From Dalmasca,” Penelo said, a fond and somewhat exasperated cast to her smile. “The ones who all, um, had to leave? You know, Larsa, when you start working on something, you’re really difficult to distract.”

On the contrary, Larsa thought Penelo could distract him all too easily. He put the pen down anyway. “Go on,” he said.

For a moment, Penelo didn’t say anything; instead, she stepped back and dropped into her seat, rearranging her filmy skirt so it wasn’t caught under her legs and, incidentally, leaning so the bare line of her lean, athletic waist was right in Larsa’s line of sight. He swallowed and decided to examine the ornate leg of her chair instead.

When he finally looked back up, Penelo was smiling at him again.

“It’s because you’re too smart,” she told him.

Larsa blinked. “Sorry?”

“The reason that the ambassadors ran away,” she said patiently.

“I’m afraid I don’t see how that could be the case, Penelo,” Larsa said, frowning. He didn’t feel particularly smart – not around Penelo, anyway – but that wasn’t really relevant, since being intelligent didn’t normally make people ride with cockatrice manure in order to avoid you. “Surely being intelligent is a desirable quality?”

“Well, yes,” Penelo said, “but not when your job relies on being able to outmanoeuvre other people. It’s not that you’re smart, Larsa,” she said earnestly. “It’s that you’re too smart, and you don’t even realise it – you expect everyone to understand what you’re talking about, and most people really don’t.”

Larsa blinked. Oh. Okay. It did make a sort of sense – there was a reason Larsa preferred talking to the professors and more enthusiastic students at the Akademy than most of the members of his court. “But—”

“You also remember everything,” Penelo continued. “Like you remember things I said years ago, when I can’t even remember half of what I said.”

Well, yes, Larsa wanted to say. But that’s just when it’s you who’s saying it. But, of course, it would be far too embarrassing to tell her that.

The last two weeks with Penelo had highlighted that Larsa really wasn’t as far over that twelve-year-old crush as he’d thought he was.

“So you see, you’re too intelligent,” Penelo concluded triumphantly, and Larsa was back to feeling lost.

“I’m afraid I really don’t follow,” he said weakly.

Penelo rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded like, ‘Really smart, but so dense’ – but it couldn’t be. “It’s like this,” she said, leaning forward. Larsa kept his gaze firmly on her face. Her face. Yes. “After the whole occupation thing with you ending up on our side, most of Dalmasca is pretty ambivalent towards Archadia. The ambassadors are under a bit more pressure than maybe is usual, just from people wanting them to put something over you. Not over you personally,” she added hurriedly. “Just ... getting something back, you know? A few cuts on trade levies for us and a few increases for you, that sort of thing, so Dalmasca can be proud that we’re not cowed or in debt or – or still ruled or anything like that.”

Larsa nodded slowly. He knew all of this; he had had several long discussions with Basch on this very topic, back when he had just been crowned Emperor and was wading through the consequences of his brother’s bad decisions. He hadn’t known that Penelo was aware of it, although in hindsight he really shouldn’t have been surprised – if there was one thing Penelo was good at (which was a ridiculous thought, because there were many, many things Penelo was good at, distracting Larsa coming somewhere near the top of the list), it was understanding people.

“So the ambassadors were looking to get more than usual out of you from the very start, and I think they would have thought it’d be an easy job, what with you being pretty young for an Emperor and all,” Penelo continued. “So they come to Archadia planning for everything they can possibly get, and then you go and confuse everything by just being so much smarter than they are.” She giggled. “I’ve been talking to Miels – you know, the man who’s been looking after the Dalmascan ambassador’s rooms the last couple of years—”

Larsa really didn’t, but he should have thought about changing the servants if he wanted Penelo to believe that thing about her actual suite being redecorated. He’d have to move this ‘Miels’ somewhere more appropriate.

“—although Miels says it’s really strange having to look after another set of rooms now—”

Ah. On second thought, perhaps he wouldn’t. He’d just give Basch another raise, interfering genius that he was. Miels would get a raise, too.

“—but anyway, Miels said that I’m the first ambassador who doesn’t come back from a meeting with you panicking and trying to write down every single thing you said so they can spend half the night trying to work out what you’re pulling over them now. So you see, you’re too smart. You made the other ambassadors realise that they weren’t going to be able to outsmart you, which kind of made them lose their purpose a bit. And then they ran away.”

Oh, Larsa thought, somewhat dumbstruck. That ... made entirely too much sense. If he assumed that the ‘too smart’ bit was true, of course, which he was conflicted over because he didn’t think that was so but Penelo did and Penelo was almost always right, but he didn’t... Larsa stopped there.

It did leave him with one very important question, however.

“Assuming that your hypothesis is correct,” Larsa said slowly, “am I going to frighten you off as well?”

It was a serious question, one that Larsa both dreaded and needed the answer to.

Penelo, however, just giggled at him. “Defeated by socks,” she said, and Larsa relaxed.

“Well, then.” Larsa rose from his seat and walked out from behind the desk. “Now that our professional relationship is assured, would the Lady Ambassador care to join me on a tour of the gardens?”

Penelo giggled again and took his offered arm. “Only if the Lord Emperor promises to show me his exploding statue,” she said, and Larsa would never stop being amazed at how she could read his mind.

End part 2.1

AND YOU CAN MAKE THAT PART AS EUPHEMISTIC AS YOU LIKE.