Ffamran was an eager student in most things, it seemed, and the politics of bedding proved no exception.

That he wound up in the bed of a Judge Magister was little surprise to anyone, though a few of his classmates at the Akademy lost chops in betting just /which/ Judge Magister's bed it would be.

It caused no small stir in their social circles, for those nobles who still bothered with that sort of gossip: Ffamran so young, not even graduated; and Gabranth, the rising star of the Judges Magister, privy to Emperor Gramis' very ear!

Perhaps only one person in Archadia had precisely no reaction to the fact that Ffamran Mid Bunansa had been glimpsed (not caught, never caught) creeping through the highest-ranking Judges' apartments wearing little but a smirk.

That one person was his father.

#

Gabranth resisted, the first time Ffamran goaded him into the cloistered depths of the Laboratories. Not a place for such a meeting, in more ways than one. But the younger man's eyes were hot and hungry, and Gabranth flattered himself that he was the cause.

It was quick, and /hot/, and Gabranth finished with such strength that he lapsed into Landish without knowing. (Jungen, bitte, Gott!)

Afterward they leaned against one of the many equipment tables, quite spent, most of their armor still on. A few glass jars and dram bottles had toppled, unused to such rigorous activity. Beneath the lingering scent of sex, the room smelled of their spilled contents: unfinished magicks, or curatives gone stale. Gabranth thought to right the fallen vials, but Ffamran waved a hand to stop him.

"I'd wager my helm that the old man won't notice," he said, sounding bitter instead of nonchalant. He checked himself with that self-aware smile. "Not that it matters."

#

"Drace had words for me this morning, I'll have you know." Gabranth was smiling; Ffamran could hear it in his voice, even before the helm came off. "Said I should be grateful that she got wind of us first."

"Rather that, than gysahl-sour old Ghis?" Ffamran ventured, cleaning a fingernail absently.

Gabranth helped himself to coffee. "Rather than Zecht. The man has no indoor voice."

#

Gabranth had marvelous hands. Not so clever or quick as Ffamran's, but stronger, more powerful. They balanced each other well. Ffamran liked to make as much noise as he could, when Gabranth's hands lifted him by the backside, fingers and wrists and bone and flesh; parting, penetrating.

The Judge was better at holding his tongue, but Ffamran was skilled at teasing the breath out of him, a gasp, a hitch. Stealthy surrender.

#

A week passed since the first-- and then the second-- reckless trysts in the Draklor Laboratories. Most of the spilled flasks had been righted. Unmentioned. Though Ffamran stared at his father's face, there was no trace of emotion: not disapproval nor approbation. The trash bin was full of shattered glass.

Ffamran's eyes were hard; his father never once looked up from his work. The conversation was short.

#

"Noah," he confessed, to no particular prompting. His voice was colored with Rozarrian wine. "Though I do not much feel like the young man I used to be."

Ffamran made a thoughtful noise. "It is not a bad name," he considered. "fon Ronsenburg. Sounds very... Landish, though."

He cuffed his shoulder. "All the more reason for me to remain Gabranth, then. I've not spoken Landish for many a year."

There's a quiet amusement in Ffamran's raised eyebrow, and Gabranth feels his color rising. "You're a fine one to talk! 'Ffamran'? Could you be anything but Archadian?"

Gabranth, tipping up his cup to drink the last dregs, did not see Ffamran's face change.

#

Gabranth enjoyed any sort of job well done, and so he prided himself on Ffamran's satisfaction. He often suspected the boy felt the same, tackling the business of lust with considerable enthusiasm.

He'd seen Ffamran stretched tight like a hand-drawn bow, even his toes curled taut-- focused solely within, for the promise of his own release. But the Judge also recognized Ffamran's advance, greed in his wide-open eyes, intent to eke as much out of his lover as he could stand. Or until he could no longer stand. But Gabranth was not so much older that the weight of judicer plate had yet brought him low.

There was a day in spring, when such a midmorning tryst took them to the airship hangars. Not intentionally, thought the Judge; just a doorway to slip into when armored footfalls grew too close. That Ffamran knew the entry-code to the bays never crossed his mind.

They were pressed close, Ffamran's back against the wall, Gabranth hungry for the taste of his skin.

Gabranth was biting back a cry, tossing his head like a restless mesmenir, when he saw. Ffamran's eyes weren't closed. He was looking over Gabranth's shoulder at the airship prototype berthed there. And there was a naked longing on his face that Gabranth had never seen.

#

Not for another few days did Gabranth walk by that hangar again. The entry-doors were locked, and his passcode insufficient to grant entrance. He scowled at the tiny print: /YPA-GB57 Test Combat Fighter. Scheduled dismantling: 48 hours./

It troubled him that he did not yet understand who was using whom. He ought to have known better.

#

Ffamran waved a hand, realizing as he did so just how much the gesture was like his father's. Casual, presumptuous, used to being heeded and not minding the inconvenience of others. It served his purpose, at least, that he might be mistaken for the disinterested Judge, the son of Doctor Bunansa. One last time.

#

At dawning and first shift, the hangar doors were found jammed; the entry-codes themselves had been changed. By the time the engineers forced their way inside, the hangar was empty, of course, the dust settled and the chips of skystone cooled. No conclusive fingerprints: the consoles had been touched and touched again by half a dozen well-intentioned soldiers. Not to mention: Judges Zecht and Zargabaath, and Judge Gabranth as well.

Gabranth spent the morning angry. Angrily he drank his coffee, angrily he scalded his tongue. (The heat and sting of it was not unlike the eager untamed mouth of the missing boy.) He tried to convince himself he was not thinking of another such departure-- such betrayal-- and failed. Snapping at his subordinates did not sweeten his temper. He sat alone in his rooms, watching the airship traffic from his seventeenth-story window.

Not till well after lunch did the other Magisters note the absence of the newest Judge.

#

Any civilized Archadian was having tea. Pouring milk, steeping leaves, making uninterested conversation about the upcoming confrontation in Nabudis. Zecht had never been one for civilization, and his gauntleted fist was clamorous against Gabranth's door.

"What did you do to him?"

Zecht was practically teasing. Gabranth was in no mood for laughter. "What are you talking about?"

"Your boy," he said. "Gone missing just at the same time as my prototype! Games between the sheets are one thing, lad. Have you no--"

"I am not the one playing games." For half a second he weighed the option of censure versus the satisfaction of slamming a door in a senior Judge's face. The latter won.

Reprimand and discipline were not forthcoming; Zecht left for Nabudis before the setting of the sun.

#

Word sped through the barracks, through the Magisters' Halls. It was a small matter to turn rumor on its head and dispel worry. (Lost? Zecht's wing-fold prototype? And how does a man /lose/ an entire airship? Not Zecht, anyway. Sent down to be scrapped a day early, that's all. Paperwork, you know, decimal point in the wrong place. As you were, lieutenant.)

Slightly less common knowledge it was, just how high-ranking that last passcode had been, at the guilty hour. If not Vayne himself, or such another Solidor, then something very close to it.

Doctor Cidolfus got the summon that afternoon-- twist of Fate's knife, that Judge Magister Gabranth himself was tasked with the inquisition.

For the long hallway to Cid's laboratory, Gabranth considered his words. How to put it? /Did you note anything unusual, when you happened to clock into the experimental hangar last night at 0300?/

"Run away, I expect. And have I raised a coward these twenty years?"

Gabranth had not yet spoken, standing in the propped-open doorway. Nor was the doctor addressing him. He spoke to the open air, and where Gabranth had thought he might see grief, or rage, there was only mild curiosity.

He began to understand.

#

Freedom.

The prototype had barely been flown before the Empire figured her shape and design were not cost-effective. Here, under his over-eager hands, she handled like a wild chocobo: heavy-footed, untamed. Unspeakably beautiful.

Before he even maneuvered successfully out of the hangar, he knew her name: A ray of light, a sunbeam. A word in Landish, learned accidentally from a lover's tongue.

Almost as sweet as his first taste of the sky.

# epilogue #

Gabranth would die for the youngest Solidor, in the end: sword and heart pledged to his cause after all. More Archadian than he knew; more Archadian in his surrogacy than all Ffamran's bluest blood.

Balthier had to look away. Just as well that matters required his attention, that the Bahamut struggled masterless, no one at her helm. A finer catch than a scrapmetal heap: the sky fortress itself! He maneuvered into the control room with laughable ease-- the Archadian high-clearance passcodes were unchanged.

He thought of his father, with affectionate words for Venat even at the end.

He thought of Zecht, wrapped in the trappings of piracy; more than one judicial heart buried in a grave of lace, and yards of scarves. He thought of him careening for the sun-cryst, debts paid.

He thought of another Judge Magister lying in the berth of the ship (his ship!), wringing promises out of those who would live.

There was little time for laughter, though the situation may have merited it; this play was not scripted with pauses to mark the audience's enjoyment.

Your prototype, he thought, to each of them. With the clarity of distance, he felt utterly without malice. Your beam of sunlight, your Strahl. May it speed you to your destinations.

He remembered Fran was there. She heard his laughter, mistook it for something else. She squeezed his arm as he carried her, leaving the faltering sky fortress behind. As he coded in their heading, a familiar sense of freedom stayed his hand. Perhaps some day he would reclaim the sullied sunbeam and shape his future out of the remnants of the past.

For now, though, he took to the air in any direction other than Rabanastre, to lick his wounds and remember the taste of sky.