[Final Fantasy IV] The Hard Way (Edge/Kain/Rydia)

[lassarina]

Characters/Pairings: Edge/Kain/Rydia
Rating: PG-13
Contains: Endgame spoilers, implied sexual content
Notes: Written for seventhe in newgameplus
Wordcount: 3435
Summary: Edge thinks something needs to be done about Kain. Of course, he can't do it the easy way. That wouldn't be any fun.
Beta: None

"We have to do something." Edge sprawled across the chair nearest Rydia and propped his chin on his hand to study her. She looked as much at home here, still and solemn amid massive oaken bookshelves and accumulated knowledge, as she did laughing in the face of a thunderstorm atop the castle's highest tower. He wondered how that worked.

Rydia did not look up from the massive tome she was studying. "Tome" wasn't usually Edge's kind of word, but he couldn't think of another description for the book, which was almost the size of Rydia's torso in all dimensions. "About what?" she asked, not sounding particularly interested.

"Kain," Edge said.

That earned him a flickering glance out of deep green eyes, and he refrained—with difficulty—from doing a little victory dance. "Oh?"

She sounded at least mildly curious, so Edge leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table in front of her. "He's been moping around for weeks," he said. "He needs to get out and do something." Rydia made some noise that Edge decided to interpret as conveying interest, and he barreled onward. "I mean okay so he wants to atone or whatever but he's been dripping angst all over the castle and seriously I used to be a champion at brooding but he's threatening my title."

Rydia's lips quirked as she turned a yellowed vellum page with extraordinary care. "Someday, Edge, you are going to learn to think before you talk, and put your foot in your mouth less," she said mildly.

As if on cue, Kain stalked out of the bookshelves behind her, gave Edge one brooding glare, and left the library without a second glance.

Well, hell. Edge went to run a hand through his hair, encountered his ninja veil, and muttered an Eblanese curse. "You could have told me," he said accusingly. "And I think that's the first time I've seen him with his helmet off."

"I could have," Rydia agreed. She used a green ribbon—Edge was pretty sure he recognized it as one of the bits of court finery that Rosa's ladies-in-waiting had bestowed upon her—to mark her page and looked up at him. "What do you propose?"

Edge was slightly taken aback, since he hadn't really expected Rydia to help him. "Well—" he began. "Um. We could take him to Eblan."

"And do what?" Rydia asked, with a faint smile.

"Well, I mean, we could just take him to bed," he joked.

Rydia's expression turned thoughtful.

Edge felt his eyes widening.

"Do you think he would?" Rydia asked, fiddling absently with the trailing hem of her sleeve.

Edge made himself retrieve his jaw from the floor, his thoughts scrambling in all directions like a Thunder-shocked herd of Chocobos.

"Edge Geraldine, speechless? This is truly a banner day," Rydia teased.

"I mean—I don't know if he would—are you saying you would?" Edge finally managed to wrangle one thought enough to get the words out of his mouth. The moment he did, he regretted it.

Surprisingly, Rydia smiled at him instead of unleashing Meteor like he had vaguely (but not really) expected. "I could be persuaded," she said, "if you were very convincing."

"Wow." Edge had to retrieve his jaw a second time. "Just. Wow. I figured you'd, you know, fry me or something. Or at least leave. Not that I want you to leave. Or fry me. But I—" He bit his tongue to stop it running away from him.

Rydia's smile twisted into a wry downturning of her mouth. "At least you're honest," she said quietly, and he didn't have to ask to know she was thinking of Cecil's court, who whispered behind their hands about the "country bumpkin without proper manners" and went out of their way to create situations in which Rydia's lack of formal court training was obviously called to the fore. Rydia had responded not by lighting their clothes on fire—which would have been Edge's preference—but by choosing not to be in their presence, hence why she was in the library while they held yet another interminable formal ball. Or maybe it was a tea party. Edge had lost track, and he didn't particularly care anyway.

"Um," he said. An awkward silence settled between them, but Edge wasn't usually inclined to let silence drag on him. "So are you saying you'll come back to Eblan with me?"

"I'm saying I'll think about it." Rydia stood up and left the library, the lines of her posture clearly suggesting that she didn't want to be followed.

Edge tapped his fingers rapidly on the table for several moments. He was definitely going to need an awesome plan to make this succeed. Rydia's willingness to be involved—well, was it willingness? It wasn't unwillingness but that didn't mean she wanted to be involved, just that she hadn't shut him down, and he didn't want to be making assumptions, and that was a whole different chain of thought that made his head hurt—at any rate, not having to start from negative ground with both of them was a benefit. Maybe he could enlist Rosa. He pictured her reaction to his suggestion of a threesome, and hastily engaged in some mental backpedaling. Maybe he could enlist Rosa to get Kain out of Baron and into Eblan, and then he and Rydia could take care of the rest?

Edge jumped to his feet and grinned. It was time to go harass Cecil until the paladin shared some of Kain's metaphorical weaknesses. Well, weaknesses that weren't Rosa. That would be a bad thing to ask about.

~*~

It took him almost two months to get all the pieces of his plan in place. He had briefly considered just locking himself in a room with the two of them and a few cases of Troian malt whiskey, but that was problematic on several levels; not only would he be at risk of being trapped in a small space with an irritated Dragoon and an angry summoner, both of whom were more than capable of handing him his butt on a silver platter when the mood called (not that he was incompetent but Kain hit hard and Rydia's magic hurt, as he had had ample cause to find out, and sooner or later one of them would wear him down), but he didn't feel quite right about using alcohol to get his way. It felt too much like something Golbez would have done, using trickery and mental influence, and that definitely wasn't okay.

So that left the hard way.

It was made both easier and harder by the fact that he was honestly trying to participate in Eblan's government, rather than leaving all the work to Gramps and flirting with all the pretty girls. For one thing, it was harder to do the flirting when he was trying so hard to impress Rydia. For another, he had had no idea whatsoever that being a king involved so much paperwork. It was beyond ridiculous. He started every day with a stack of documents half his height on his desk. If he worked all day, he could get it down to about a quarter, but the damn thing grew every time he looked away.

However, putting up with the paperwork let him launch the second part of his plan, which was participating in the resurrected training regimen for Eblan's ninja. He let that go on for a few weeks until everyone had settled back into the rhythm of training, and then he picked a lazy summer afternoon to ambush the head of Eblan's ninja.

It wasn't exactly an ambush in the traditional sense—certainly nothing like the sheer panic of finding that the five of them had inexplicably been jumped by two Red Dragons in the confusing crystal-mirrors of the Lunar Subterrane, and he wasn't greeted with a bared blade—but he was sure that Chen Yi had not been expecting him.

"Your Majesty, how may I be of service?" Chen Yi inquired calmly, folding his hands at his waist.

"I have a suggestion for the training," Edge said, and tried his best smile. His mother used to say he'd inherited a full measure of his father's charm. (His father claimed the charm came from his mother.)

Chen Yi barely arched an eyebrow, and Edge correctly interpreted this as an indication that the head of the ninja order thought the king just might be overreaching his bounds a trifle. However, his demeanor remained composed and respectful. "What manner of suggestion, Your Majesty?"

"Well, we're really good at being ninja, because you're really good at being a ninja and at teaching the rest of us how to do it," Edge explained. "But I think sometimes we're at a little bit of a disadvantage against heavily armored troops."

"Such as those in Baron," Chen Yi murmured, and Edge knew he was thinking of the Red Wings.

Since he didn't want to start a debate on the matter of responsibility for the attacks, he hastily plowed ahead. "Right. Well, we're allied with Baron now, and I thought maybe it would—" don't say 'be cool,' Edge "—uh, would help our training if King Cecil would loan us a few soldiers. To practice with. Against. Something." He plastered his biggest grin on his face and crossed his fingers surreptitiously.

"As Your Majesty wishes," Chen Yi said without inflection.

Well. He had hoped for more enthusiasm, but at least he hadn't been shut down out of hand. And it was a really good idea.

Edge bounced back to the castle to write the request letter.

~*~

Edge was pretty sure he had not been nearly as subtle as he ought to have been in suggesting that Kain accompany the Baronian contingent that Cecil graciously agreed to dispatch, but subtlety was overrated (which was kind of a funny notion for a ninja to have but he really didn't have time for subtlety these days, and anyway, subtlety was for sneaking around in combat or trying to avoid combat, not dealing with people who'd been through hell with you.)

Unfortunately, Gramps trapped him in a meeting about taxes on the day the airship was supposed to arrive. Edge reminded himself, firmly, that he was now twenty-six and Gramps wouldn't be around forever to run Eblan, so he paid attention for as long as he could. (He was getting better at paying attention, even to really boring things.) The ministers were debating among themselves the best tax rate to impose, which as near as Edge could tell seemed to involve a balance between leaving the citizenry enough money to thrive on while giving the treasury enough money to rebuild.

Edge wondered if it would be considered—what was that fancy word he'd heard at Cecil's court?—déclassé to hunt the monsters around Eblan and go sell their pelts in Fabul or Mysidia. At the very least, it probably wasn't fair to flood his friends' economies with Eblanese goods. So instead he reviewed the proposals set before him and picked a middle ground, which didn't particularly please anyone but seemed most likely to get the job done.

More to the point, it got the job done in time for him to see the airship fly in over the Eastern Ocean. As it settled neatly to the ground beside the castle, Edge could see the dark-blue gleam of Kain's Dragoon armour and the vivid splash of green that was Rydia's hair. He didn't need Gramps's stern look to know that he was expected to behave like a king to the visiting foreign guests, so he made sure his veil was straight and that his clothes were clean (well, mostly, and no one was going to notice the little smear of red where he'd dropped a strawberry, were they?)

Kain and Rydia were first off the airship, followed by a detachment of twenty Baronian soldiers. Half wore the elaborately worked helms of Dragoons, while the other half looked like the infantry Edge had glimpsed drilling outside the city the last time he'd been in Baron.

"King Edge of Eblan, King Cecil of Baron sends his greetings, and hopes that you will find your arrangement with him to be beneficial," Kain announced. He was solemn enough to be presiding over a funeral. Edge hoped he hadn't tempted the fates by thinking that.

"I return King Cecil's greetings, and trust that we will both benefit from this arrangement," Edge replied politely. "Gramps has arranged lodging for your men. Captain Highwind, Lady Rydia, it is my pleasure to offer you both quarters within the castle."

"Thank you," Kain replied gravely, and bowed. Rydia only nodded her head, but then, as Lady of Mist, she was considered equal in rank to him. Edge liked it that way; despite his faith in his own abilities, he was never quite sure if the girls in Eblan saw him or his crown.

The formalities of such a visit were not to be neglected, and Edge had planned to host a dinner for his guests. That evening, Kain escorted Rydia to a place at the high table with Edge, and the meal began calmly enough, with a toast wishing health to their mutual homelands and a friendly and instructive round of training between their soldiers. Edge kept his wine consumption in check and chattered amiably with one of the elders of a town near the edge of his holdings, though he'd rather have complimented Rydia on her stunning new robes or baited Kain just to see the Dragoon blush. He didn't miss the fact that both of them gave him thoughtful, speculative looks throughout the evening.

Had Rydia spilled the beans on his intention? Or had he inadvertently done something wrong? Edge took a discreet inventory of his garments and confirmed that none of them were gaping open in inappropriate places. A seemingly casual adjustment to his headgear told him that his veil was in place and that his hair had, blessedly, not decided to imitate the petals of a sea anemone, so he was at something of a loss as to what they found so intriguing. He would have liked to believe it was his dashing good looks and boundless charm, but even he wasn't arrogant enough to conflate that which he would have liked to think with that which was.

After the dinner, the various guests split off into smaller groups, and Edge invoked royal prerogative to sweep Kain and Rydia off to the sitting room in what had been his parents' apartments. Gramps had followed his instructions to the letter, and a bottle of Mysidian wine was already uncorked, with three glasses awaiting its bounty.

Edge poured the wine and offered them each a glass, then plopped comfortably onto the thick cushions strewn around the floor and waved for them to seat themselves. "All right," he said, when he had had time to savor the first sip of wine. "What did I do this time?"

"Do?" Rydia asked.

"During dinner." Edge waved his wineglass, careful not to spill. "You were both staring at me. With a look."

"Generally one looks in order to stare," Rydia remarked.

Kain's expression had fallen into the motionless mask he used when he was hiding behind options of protocol to avoid being asked what he really thought. Edge ran roughshod over that choice. "Spit it out, Kain."

"I do not wish to offend Your Majesty," Kain said carefully.

"First of all, in here, we're on a first-name basis. You knocked enough lunar dragons off my ass and I covered you with smoke bombs often enough to call each other by name. Second, unless you're planning to malign my parents or impugn my manhood, you're probably not going to offend me. Third, if you do offend me, it just means I'll call you out to the dueling circle tomorrow morning and we'll settle this the old-fashioned way. So. Spit it out." Edge licked his hand where his enthusiastic gestures had dislodged wine from his glass.

Kain hesitated, seeming to want to think through his words very carefully. "I cannot speak for Lady Rydia," he said at last, "but I confess I found myself—surprised this evening. You have never before shown a propensity for politics, nor patience."

Rydia nodded agreement.

"Oh, is that all?" Edge said, but was secretly pleased that they had noticed. "I thought you were trying to tell me my pants were unfastened and something was poking out."

Rydia looked as if she might be biting her tongue very hard to not take the opening for sarcasm he had so graciously left her. Edge considered offering to bite her tongue for her, but that was several steps later in the plan.

"I am curious about one thing," Kain said, swirling wine absently in his glass.

There was something in his tone that made Edge sit up straighter and look at him. Rydia, too, pulled herself upright, tucking her feet underneath her robes and giving Kain her undivided attention.

"What's that?" Edge invited, when Kain seemed unwilling to continue.

"I wonder why you specifically requested me," Kain said.

There were at least half a dozen excuses Edge could have used. He had practiced them all repeatedly until he could lie without batting an eyelash. But even as he drew in a breath to do so, he acknowledged to himself that he really didn't want to lie to his friends, so instead he told the truth. "Well, to be perfectly honest, I figured you could stand to have a little bit of release, and don't pretend you don't know what I mean. And seeing as you're not so bad to look at, and gods only know why but I'm reasonably fond of you, I thought I might see if I could make that happen."

Kain sat with his mouth agape, staring at Edge as though he had just casually admitted to finding the unholy offspring of Goblins and Needle Rats to be charming pets. Rydia muffled a giggle behind her hand.

"If you are being truthful, rather than having a joke at my expense--" Kain shook his head rapidly as though to clear it, and gulped down half of his remaining wine.

"I had this whole elaborate scheme, see." Edge topped off everyone's wine and set the now-empty bottle back on the table. "I was going to get you here, and show off my manly form and prowess while we sparred. I figured after a little while you'd relax a bit, and then maybe there could be a nice quiet evening and one thing would lead to another, as it does. But I find I don't have patience for that sort of game, and besides—" Don't do it, don't refer to his serving Golbez "—friends deserve honesty," he improvised quickly.

"I—Lady Rydia, my apologies—" Kain began.

"Why?" Rydia asked, with a sly smile. "I was going to help him—which is the part of the plan he failed to mention."

Edge found that the tassels on the corner of his cushion were intensely fascinating. "I sort of figured you were joking," he mumbled.

"Well, I wasn't." Rydia drank her wine with a serenity that a goddess would have envied.

Kain stared at the floor.

"Look, if you're not interested, then say so and we'll pretend this never happened," Edge said. "No harm done, and I'll stop pestering you. But if you're willing, I'm. Well. Obviously I'm interested." He shifted a little on the pillow so that his interest would be slightly less glaringly obvious.

"I am not—disinterested," Kain said very carefully.

Rydia stood up in a flurry of green fabric and made her way over to him, graceful slender fingers deftly unwinding his long braid. "Well, then," she said, and smiled at Edge over Kain's head.

Edge didn't have to lean very far forward to kiss him, and although Kain didn't protest, neither did he respond. Edge was just about to lean back and call it an honest effort when Kain's hands abruptly came up into Edge's hair, gripping hard enough to make his eyes sting as he crushed their mouths together. Distantly, Edge heard Rydia make a humming sound of approval, and felt her hands glide easily from Kain's shoulders to his own, soft little caresses that felt incredible.

One thing led to another, as it tended to do, and Edge reflected that doing things the hard way—the right way—hadn't been so very hard after all.