Title: Until She Wakes
Rating: SFW (undead ickiness)
Pairing: Celes/Rachel
Summary: In the days leading up to her defection, Celes is haunted.
Note: Written for the September round of FFEX's Chocobo Races, for notraffic's prompt "Rachel/Celes. 'Your hands are really cold.'" Many trains left this station, and I took the one with non-stop service to Creepy Town.
It's small things at first: ajar doors that she remembers locking, papers shuffled out of order, lost hair clips turning up under her pillow. Stress, Celes tells herself. Maranda unearthed something weak and shameful in her, and she must not flinch from burying it. Already disruptive thoughts are clawing their way up the hole.
Later it's phantom taps at her shoulder, impossible breezes in her hair, strange chills on her skin. This last one disturbs her the most; she hasn't felt cold since she was very young, before she was augmented. Perhaps something has at last gone wrong with her infusion. There are those who have waited years for her to twist and shatter like Kefka.
If she is going mad, she has a duty to report her condition and let appropriate actions be taken. She tells herself that she isn't. She just need to focus, to bury.
The next time she glances in a mirror, she sees a different face: rounder, swarthier, framed by thick black curls. When she blinks, her reflection returns.
Lately all her dreams are of Maranda, and wrong. She stands in the center of the suffocating heat, unable to move or speak, where the clamor of battle cannot rise above the roar of the flames. She should be barking orders and putting rebels to the sword. Instead she can only watch and wait to burn.
But tonight is different; tonight she feels the chill at her nape, ghosting over her skin as it sweeps her hair aside. It nips at her ear like frostbite.
Cold burns differently from fire, pulsing deeper with a more patient hunger. Numbness creeps down her spine. Maranda burns as Celes shivers; frost seals her eyelids apart, forcing her to watch.
The chill scrapes at her skin, steady and relentless, as if it wants to crawl inside her. She doesn't know whether it seeks warmth or protection from the flames, but she has neither to offer. She was hollowed out, long ago, and filled up with magic. No room left for anything else.
The flames are close now; all she sees is smoke. This is when she's supposed to jolt awake, cool blood racing in her veins. Instead her clothes ignite.
Lately Celes's hands are raw. Once she starts to wash them, she can't stop until they burn. She isn't thinking about Maranda, but Maranda creeps in between her thoughts, into dreams and routines.
She is the Emperor's hand, and it is not the hand's place to question the head. When the hand hesitates, the entire body is weakened. She thinks about obedience and duty and glory and anything but why.
Every night she blazes awake long before dawn and doesn't dare to sleep again. She revises strategies by candlelight, pretending that the shadows aren't moving out of sync and that the air isn't dead still when the flame flickers out. Every reflective surface in her room has been covered. She is hyper-focused, mind whirring to drown out the wrong sounds that slither into the silence.
Maybe this is how Kefka began to crack.
Tonight Celes dreams of an unfamiliar town falling to Imperial forces. Somewhere up north, maybe, where the flowers are pale and strange.
This is not her raid, but it's like any of a dozen she has led in the last year. The story is always the same, even with the backdrop changed: given the chance to serve the empire that they will one day be part of, the townspeople refuse to submit. They see reason only on the edge of a blade. No matter how they struggle, the story always ends with troops quartered and supplies commandeered; rebellion just wastes time and resources.
A child lies dying in the street. The blood is on them and their stones.
Celes can't move, can't speak, couldn't change anything even if she wanted to. She isn't here and never was. She is less than a ghost. At least she isn't burning.
One of the fallen stirs: a dark-haired girl in a ruined dress pushes herself out of a pool of congealed blood. As she staggers forward, Celes feels a sharp chill of recognition. This is the face that steals her reflection, now solid and advancing. Dried blood draws cracks from her hairline to her chin.
When the girl reaches her, Celes expects to wake in a cold sweat. Instead her senses sharpen as the the girl's hands skim down her sides, blazing cold, and settle icicle-sharp on her hips. Breathing frost, the girl leans in close and parts her lips. The towns spirals deeper into chaos behind her.
Her mouth shocks like frigid lightning. Celes has no idea how to react or what's expected of her in a situation like this, but it doesn't matter; she can't so much as twitch. The girl's tongue explores her mouth like a medical probe, methodically numbing. Digging for warmth, perhaps, or words that can end the violence. They've been here before. Celes can't give what she doesn't have.
Liquid warmth prickles over her tongue and down her throat. Celes needs to gag but can't. As her mind whirs with the panic of drowning, the girl pulls back, eyes narrow and hard, with fresh blood pouring out of her mouth.
Cid asks her if she's ill. Her next mission could be delayed by a few days, he claims, though she knows better; delaying the fall of South Figaro would delay the fall of Narshe, and the Empire needs Narshe. Why, she doesn't know. She doesn't need to know. Now that the intel has come through, she has all that she needs for a swift, efficient victory.
A surprise attack should minimize the bloodshed. No time for South Figaro to prepare, no chance to barricade the streets and hole up in the buildings. No need to burn them out.
If the writhing of the candle flame makes her queasy, it doesn't matter; she has no need to stay up poring over her preparations. The way is clear and the hand is steady. Her ship leaves tomorrow. Perhaps she just needs to breathe different air to clear her head. Vector is all Kefka breathed.
Refusing to sleep would be a concession to her fears, so she crawls grimly between the sheets.
When she was young, Celes had a recurring nightmare about the lab where she was infused. Instead of waking up in the recovery room with Cid watching fretfully over her, she'd awaken alone on the table where she was sedated, then wander the empty labs with a creeping sense of dread. All alone, and so cold—the infusion must have failed, if she could still feel cold.
She hasn't had that nightmare in years, but she recognizes the empty room, the deep chill, the darkness that she can somehow see through. The only difference now is that she isn't the one on the table.
It's that girl again, immaculately clean in a new dress, dark hair spilling over the edges of the table. Her eyes are closed and her body limp; if she breathes, she does so imperceptibly.
Magic has a unique smell, something like ozone mingled with old paper. Infusions magnify it into a stink that lingers for days. There's no hint of that in the room now, only an uneasy blend of antiseptic and cut flowers.
Every instinct tells Celes to run. She could; to her surprise, she isn't paralyzed. But running will resolve nothing. She advances, bare feet silent against the metal floor, to the girl's side.
This is another story that always ends the same way, with a kiss and an awakening. It's not Celes's story, and she doesn't know her place in it, but she recognizes its shape. She has always operated within a framework. She has always done what is expected of her. Secure the supply line, end the unrest, make an example; don't step outside the lines, don't hesitate, don't question.
This isn't her place, but here she is. Too late now to step back inside. As she bends, she feels as if she's leaning over a sheer ledge.
The girl's lips are cool and waxy beneath hers, unlike any living flesh she has ever touched. No flicker of a pulse, no hint of breath. But something else stirs; the lips soften like fat in a fire. Celes jerks away from a face rotting into the holes of its skull.
A skeletal hand grabs her wrist with the force of a steel trap. Her body freezes. Everything is wrong as the dead girl bends upright, flesh sloughing from her bones. The air reeks of old meat and decaying flowers.
When the girl opens her mouth to speak, her tongue falls through the collapsing ruin of her throat.
Celes awakens rimed with sweat. Her room is dark and silent. Forcing her breaths steady, she pads into the bathroom and splashes water on her face.
When she glances up into the mirror, the girl is rotting over her shoulder. Celes turns, expecting to see nothing, and watches black curls vanish around the edge of the doorway.
If any of this is real, if she's the victim of some cruel prank, if she's shattering like Kefka—regardless of what's going on, she must see it through tonight. Too late now to bury. After tying her robe around her waist, she gives chase into the hall.
This time it's the hem of a skirt fluttering around a corner. Next it's fingers curled around the curve of the wall, sliding away as she draws near. Eyes reflecting the light at the bottom of a black stairwell. The stench of rot down a hall. At last Celes finds a trail of blood that vanishes drop by drop as she follows it into the archive, which shouldn't be unlocked.
This is not her place, but she pushes inside regardless, holding a healing spell in her palm for light. Files litter the floor; a drawer has been pulled out of a filing cabinet and half-emptied. She can't image any Imperial bureaucrat leaving the room in such a state.
One of the scattered folders has a dark handprint on it, the color of old blood. The air thickens with floral decay as Celes kneels to examine it.
Inside are reports of a company sent north to chase rumors and shadows, in hopes that at least one was cast by an esper. Nothing of value was found. At the end, almost as an afterthought, the commanding officer reports letting the troops sack the village where they had quartered themselves. Didn't want to pack restless, frustrated men into a ship, after all. Better to let the peasants bleed their release.
She wouldn't have done it. Leo wouldn't have done it. But neither she nor Leo was there.
No official censure is attached to the report. Written, filed, forgotten. Blood shed for the advancement of the Empire is the mortar of glory; blood shed without purpose seeps beneath the stones and undermines the foundation. This must be why the floor is unsteady under her feet.
What was the purpose of Maranda?
The sweat of her palm leaves frost on the side of the cabinet. Her breaths are harsh and loud in her ears. When she tries to the open the drawer most likely to contain the report, she hears a sharp click and finds it locked. Frowning, she goes to open the drawer above it and once again is locked out.
The cold tugs at her hair. When she tries another drawer, it bites into her wrists like manacles.
Something more pressing than confirmation, then. Celes turns with the impossible breeze and sees one of the scattered folders trembling like a dead leaf. It stills in her hands.
This one contains not reports, but purchase orders, mostly for Leo's current siege of Doma. Nothing unusual for such a protracted engagement, and she can't imagine Leo committing atrocities. Perhaps this is the all the evidence she needs that she's going mad, that she's chasing hallucinations.
The last page is the most recent and looks out of place after the requests for rations and armor. Kefka's name, not Leo's, is at the top, and what follows is a list of chemicals requisitioned in bulk, with only one discernible purpose. Celes knows her poisons. Anyone of her rank has to.
Her foundation cracks as she confronts the Emperor's seal, authorizing the shipment to Doma.
Perhaps it would make sense to fight sleep, to squeeze the consciousness from every moment left to her. Celes is too tired to care. Part of her her welcomes her end; she deserves a traitor's death, as much for following her orders as for defying them.
Leo must be disappointed in her. Strange how that manages to sting. He has always been the hand that wears the glove, not the bare fist with sharpened nails. What would he have done in Maranda? What will he do when he finds the note she left for him? May he tug at the strands until the web unravels; may his honor tug him in opposing directions until he must betray half his heart.
She's too tired to feel truly vindictive, too tired to tell whether she's slipped into a dream when she feels a chill on her cheek and opens her swollen eyes to see the girl. Lifeless but whole—the girl's complexion is gray and bloodless, but shows no sign of rot. She strokes an icy numbness over Celes's bruised jaw. Too cold for comfort, too gentle for anything else.
Celes opens her mouth to speak, but the girl's finger presses against her lips. What is there to say, anyway? They're both in the borderlands of death, the girl suspended and Celes drifting slowly, and words have no power here. Questions and answers don't matter; cause and effect dissolve.
The girl's expression offers neither gratitude nor absolution, nor even satisfaction. Celes has been on the other side of this look, when she faces her troops across the blood and ash of victory. The thing is done, for good or ill. The consequences belong to the quick and the distant.
When the girl kisses her, nothing probes or bleeds or rots. They commune like snow falling on bare branches, catching and covering, growing slowly solid and heavy. The girl's icicle tongue curls in something like an invitation. Celes opens herself to it and shudders painfully awake.
The door to her cell creaks open.
When she sees the girl in the basement, Celes shivers around the sick weight in her gut. She moves into the shadows, where no one can see her face.
If she were brave, if she were good, if she deserved this second chance, she would return in the night and put an end to it with her sword. She isn't and probably doesn't. The Returners scarcely trust her, and with good reason; if they found her covered in blood, she would expect no quarter.
Maybe it isn't even the same girl. She wishes she could still lie to herself.
After the others have gone, she lingers. The scent of flowers turns her stomach. When the herbalist isn't looking, she bends at the girl's side and presses a furtive kiss to her mouth. The girl's skin is no warmer or cooler than the air and even less responsive; kissing her is like kissing an empty jar.
Of course she doesn't wake. Of course she doesn't rot. There's nothing to say, no point to promises or apologies, but Celes still whispers into her ear, "I will put a stop to it."
Locke is waiting outside, face tight and drawn, looking as if he wishes he hadn't come. Celes wonders how well he sleeps.