Disclaimer: I don’t own FF12 or rights to the musical Assassins

Little Finger

And all you have to do

Is move you little finger,

Move your little finger and-

You can change the world.

- Stephen Sondheim, Assassins

She can’t fall asleep one night, and to alleviate her insomnia, Ashe decides to take a midnight turn about the Strahl. It is eerily quiet, and the silence unsettles her, but she nonetheless decides to roam the darkened halls of the airship. The others are asleep, most likely peacefully, with little to plague them.

Like dead husbands of fallen countries and lost causes.

She happens upon the Strahl’s cockpit, abandoned, its guardians’ likely slumbering. There is a low humming from the controls that penetrates the silence ringing in her ears. The room is faintly lit here, with all lights from the contraptions glowing softly, and she can determine an easy outline of the room. Some strange compulsion pulls her to the Captain’s chair, and she makes to sit when she realizes it’s already occupied.

There is something greatly disquieting about staring down the barrel of a gun.

Vega sits, propped upright on the chair, pointing upward at her. A small frown graces her lips, signaling her obvious displeasure with the gun’s owner. How careless, to leave the weapon about and positioned in such a precarious manner.

Again, she’s seized with a manic impulse, some strange desire which forces her movement, and deftly she curls her palm around the gun, slender digits securing it in her grip. The barrel is cold beneath her skin, and her heart for some reason skips a beat.

She lifts the gun in one swift move; it’s heavier than she imagined it would be, and to maintain her grasp on it she brings her other hand to cup the butt of it. The wood is polished and smooth to her touch; the craftsmanship of the weapon is detailed and refined. And she quite admires it.

On a whim, she presses the cold barrel to her wrist, where her pulse is throbbing heatedly.

She then adjusts her grip to mimic the gun’s owner, sliding her hand down to clutch the weapon more comfortably. She rests her finger on the trigger.

Such an enthralling weapon, guns were. They were potent; powerful; a force to be reckoned with.

Yet, all it took to fire a gun, to bring about destruction and death, was a little finger.

Exert a little pressure, she thinks, and a gun goes off. A little finger could be indirectly responsible for the death of an enemy or fiend.

Or oneself.

She inhales shakily. Such thoughts should make her ill. Ashe is greatly concerned that they don’t as much as she knows they should.

Of course, she reasons, it doesn’t matter if she dies, today or later, because to her people, she is already dead. Overcome with grief, driven to suicide, that was what her country was told.

So, really, it was of little consequence if right now happened to be the moment those words became truth.

She pauses to think, how would she have done it? With her neck curled in the embrace of a noose? Or perhaps at the kiss of a steel blade to her wrists? Maybe she would have fallen victim to the acidity of some poison or other? Never, though, would it have been a gun.

She shakes her head furiously. How ridiculous – never once in her life, even in her darkest hours, after the deaths of her father and her husband and the utter devastation of her throne and kingdom, had she actually entertained suicide.

Before.

Vega is still clutched in her palms, and her little finger still rests on its trigger, delicately. She remembered learning once, from one of her scholars, that in great tragic literature, whenever a man took his life, he attacked his head, and the woman, her heart.

She tries to picture for a moment how the gun would feel, barrel aimed for her chest. No – that was too awkward, unnatural. And Ashelia deserves more than a woman’s suicide. So instead, she tries to imagine the dull metal against her throbbing temple. But still, even that seems wrong.

Perhaps she would kiss the barrel instead, encase her lips around the bitter steel. Suicide by her own terms. All it took was a little finger.

“Fancy seeing you up so late, Princess.” The unexpected voice shocks her so horribly that she nearly drops Vega, only managing her grip on it at the last second before its fall. She turns to face her uninvited guest.

He’s staring at her, expression seemingly light and carefree, but there’s something in his eyes that tell her that he knows exactly what she had been considering. And that gleam in his eyes is hard and cross.

“I found your gun,” her tone is petulant, and she purposely avoids his gaze. She knows that at that moment, she should make to give it back to him. But she cannot bring herself to relinquish it.

“It’s not loaded.”

Her body involuntarily trembles, and she wills herself not to look at him. She can hear his footsteps crossing to her, and in an instant his pirate hand, warm and strong, covers hers and pulls the weapon from her grasp. He stands there, and she can feel his eyes boring into her. He is so near to her, bodies nearly touching, his breath tepidly brushing against her forehead. She forces herself to take a step backward.

“I’m going to retire, now.” She informs him, still carefully not looking his way. His voice is low as he responds.

“I think that would be for the best.”

She nods, and heart pounding, throat constricted, makes her way out of the cockpit.

As she leaves, she hears the clanging ring of bullets spilling onto the floor.

AN:

First off: I’m not suicidal, I swear. I just get really bored during math.

Secondly: I think I mentioned it above, but the lyrics are from the musical by Stephen Sondheim, Assassins. It’s actually very good, if you’re into dark humor.

Please, read and review.

EDIT: Re-uploaded due to some MAJOR tense issues. I apologize, guys.