Masterlist: Character Study Table (FFIII, Arc)

[meruhen]

Character Study: Final Fantasy III, Arc.

001.	a mountain of violent sins	002.	foreshortened view of everything	003.	emotions and hunches	004.	"Who in the world am I?" Ah, that's the great puzzle.	005.	the simple and loving heart of childhood
006.	desire of the artist to express himself	007.	I can only tell you my side of the story	008.	a friendly eye could never see faults.	009.	but what can you do when you have to deal with people?	010.	Crossing swords
011.	Willingly walking into a wall	012.	Sleeping with ghosts	013.	Synesthesia	014.	Mercy is bad for the vision	015.	I love you when I forget about me
016.	How terribly strange to be seventy	017.	His dreams have lost some grandeur coming true	018.	Did I dream this belief, or did I believe this dream?	019.	You will excuse me if I skip the masquerade	020.	Safe and dry in my sea of troubles

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008. a friendly eye could never see faults.

[vacivity.livejournal.com]

Arc watches people; he's made a great habit of watching people, growing up as he did. He does understand human nature, at least a little, and this trip has given him an even deeper understanding, especially since it has brought him into contact with so many different people.

Aria, he thinks, is the sweetest of the people they've come across; some are not sweet, or friendly, or even civil; and others are nice, but not in the same Aria is. But even for all her sweetness, there is something that throws Arc off a little about her.

It's the way she watches Luneth; well, the way she watches them all, but mostly Luneth. As though she is desperate for a hero, to save the world. Which, obviously, she is; distressed by the darkness surrounding her world, when all Aria has known was light. But there is something more - she watches Luneth, Arc thinks, with eyes that are glazed over, refusing to see anything bad about him. Were things different, were Aria not what she was, there would be hunger in her eyes, the same hunger that lingered in the eyes of the girls back in Ur, when they studied the boys they liked.

She can't see the fact that they are still teenagers, young and terrified with no clue of what to do. Even Ingus, for all of his skills and the years he spent as a knight, was little better than the rest of them: still young, still inexperienced. And Luneth was even worse than Ingus, or Refia, or even Arc himself: Luneth had been loved and never bullied, never forced into something he didn't want. There had been no heavy trials that Ingus experienced; there had been nothing like what Refia went through, a girl who did not take to her position easily; there had been little bullying, like Arc experienced nearly daily.

And that, Arc figured, watching Aria watch Luneth, was probably why Luneth was their unofficial leader: bright and optimistic and never doubting, he was, never thinking that anything was impossible. Even if he hadn't a clue on what to do, he'd force his way forward. There was little of the cynic in Luneth. And if the reasons behind being part of this journey were different for the rest of them - proving worth, proving their places, protecting something - Luneth's were simple, if hard to understand: he just wanted to save the world.

Arc shakes his head, drawing his gaze from Aria and back to the orb he held, a summons according to one of the shopkeepers. He was just as bad as Aria, he realized, thinking of Luneth the way he was, especially when he knew Luneth; knew his faults and his quirks and his oddities. It wouldn't do to get dreamy at that stage of the journey: there was still a thousand miles and a thousand more adventures before they'd reach the end of it. And Luneth might have been their unofficial leader, but he needed the rest of them just as much as they needed him: they were a team and a team that worked well together because of all of their faults, balancing each other.