A/N: No real rhyme or reason to this. I just felt like writing some Amarant/Garnet interaction and some Amarant/Vivi interaction. No romance, no fancy emotions, but hey, less dialogue! Whee.
Battles with Zidane are always the hardest. He prefers it when he ends up lagging behind his new traveling party, so that the others end up against the monsters of the Outer Continent, but occasionally he's forced to the front and this is one of those times.
He knows how to fight and knows how to win, but it's different when you have to show up a cocky little thief. And he knows Zidane's showing off. The blonde is always showing off for his girl and for his allies and just because that's what teenagers do – he knows, after all, he had been one once.
It's even harder when he has to kind of compliment The Mage's attacks with his own physical ones, and with The Brat flitting around healing her two friends –
He hates losing concentration, even for a second, and as Eiko darts to Vivi's side to cast a healing spell, his eyes are drawn to her and then he suddenly feels pain rip through his chest and swipes his claws at the goblin, catching the piece of shit in the mouth and leaving a trail of blood against the ground.
He swears under his breath and checks the damage as Zidane checks the corpse for money or items. Shitty way to get stuff, pillaging the dead, but he's done it too so it's not a big deal. The cut isn't deep, but goblin blades are deceptive. Sometimes it can look like a scratch and end up bleeding like a serious stab wound.
Eiko comes over to him and makes an annoyed noise. She mumbles under her breath about ragged clothing, and he glances at the rip in the middle of his shirt as she puts her flute to her lips and plays a growingly familiar tune, air warming around him slightly and wound closing up as if it had never been there before. The rest of the group is a short ways back – they had started on further to see what they had needed to do to get where they were going.
He doesn't thank her and simply watches Zidane, listening and focusing solely on how he's acting after the battle. He's pretty much the same but he gives the goblin body a once-over that is either paranoid or just depressed.
They return to the rest of the group to find that they've already set up camp, and The Thing, who he can't discern the gender of, is making food that smells pretty damn good, but hell if he's going to have any.
His shirt's pretty much ruined by now. It had been raggedy when he had gotten it, worn down over the trip to the Outer Continent, and now it's done. He might as well go without it, he decides, and so he pulls it off and tosses it in annoyance to the side. He won't get burned and he won't be unprotected without a shirt – his skin is pretty thick and he works better in the sun.
The Tin Can is clanking about the fire and The Rat is taking care of her pike, cleaning it and examining it and being so good to it that he would have thought it was alive. He glances at his claws, still dirty with dried blood from a few battles ago, and shakes his head, sitting a suitable distance away from everyone on a log that really shouldn't be able to hold him up.
The Thing starts passing out slightly over-cooked meat and the group thanks it. He shakes his head and closes his eyes. People are idiotic. When they're all asleep, he'll go out and get something worth eating. You should only eat what you've caught for yourself.
The sound of sand sifting under soft leather shoes interrupts his thoughts and he opens his eyes, keeping them narrowed and mildly hostile, even when on the inside he's surprised that anyone would approach him. He's double surprised and lets a tiny bit of it show when he sees that it's not just anyone, but The Princess. Lani would have killed the girl without a second thought. He remembers seeing her once when she was little – probably only a little older than The Mage. He doesn't know if he would have killed her and doesn't want to think about it, anyways.
She offers him meat and he stares at it in mild confusion before accepting it slowly, not really giving her any hint as to if he appreciates it or not. She asks where his shirt is and he shrugs, head tilting slightly to the left, and she goes over to the scrap of green and shakes it off, holding it up to get a good look at it. Like she can do anything – even if it weren't completely ripped from that damned goblin, she's The Princess. Princesses don't know how to stitch. Knit, maybe, or that thing where you make pictures on a piece of canvas, crocheting or something, but not fix a hole like that.
She smiles at him and then takes the shirt with her when she leaves him alone, and he rips the meat apart in minutes, focusing on the fact that over-cooked or not, he hasn't eaten meat this well prepared in a long time. He doesn't care what it is, just as long as it tastes good.
He looks through the fire later, after he's finished eating, and searches out The Princess. She's sitting on large rock, using a bone needle (a kind he hasn't seen since he was The Brat's age) and what he thinks is black thread but could be anything, really, to stitch up the gashes left by goblin knives, claws, and fangs. He watches her for a long time, because some part of him is wondering how that little nine year old girl he had seen a long time ago has come along. She's smiling faintly, listening to The Thief recount some past excursion to The Brat, who's listening intently with a star-struck look on her face. The Tin Can is clanking near her but not talking, just observing everything outside their ring of light, and The Rat is now watching the sky, so completely absorbed that if the world were to fall away from under her she would hardly notice.
The Princess laughs softly on a hidden cue from Zidane and he makes some coy remark and then there's a tug at his belt and a half mumbled, "Mr. Amarant?"
He looks to Vivi and asks gruffly, "What do you want?"
"...I w-was just wondering if you were alright." The Mage adjusts his hat and his eyes glow in the dark, unnerving The Bounty Hunter.
"What makes you think I'm not?" he responds, but he doesn't come off as annoyed as he had hoped he would. He hates it when he's genuinely interested in something.
"...I don't know. I just... I-I just had a feeling. S-Sorry."
"Don't apologize to me," Amarant shakes his head, "Never apologize to me."
"...O-Okay..."
He doesn't elaborate and the little mage doesn't ask him to – instead, he sits beside Amarant and watches through the fire too. Amarant doesn't get why The Mage is hanging around – hasn't he made it clear that he doesn't want company? More importantly, why does he want to be around Amarant? He's a big, bad Bounty Hunter, after all.
"Sometimes I get really angry at them," Vivi says quietly, and Amarant realizes that he must be the only angry looking person in the group. He doesn't respond and so The Mage continues. "They're all really happy, and I just... I don't feel happy very much, and I guess... I guess I'm just kind of angry at them for being happy."
"Fair enough," The Bounty Hunter offers, but doesn't ask any questions. He doesn't care and he's not going to let the kid think otherwise.
Still, Vivi must figure it's better to talk to a wall then hold it in. So he tells The Bounty Hunter about how he talked to the mages and how they Stop, and how he doesn't know when he'll Stop. This kind of talk both annoys and worries Amarant, who doesn't like thinking about death until it's staring him in the face. The kid is too young to be thinking about it, he decides. Kids his age should be more worried about whatever it is kids worry about, and shouldn't concern themselves over adult thoughts.
Vivi looks at him again and says, "I shouldn't be mad at them, but I am. I don't know why. It's not Zidane's fault that..."
Again he doesn't respond right away, but Vivi acknowledges it for sure this time and just looks at the ground again.
Amarant hates talking about his personal life.
He leans forward and puts his arms against his knees, watching the fire and feeling a strange kind of intensity. "Don't think about it," he tells The Mage, who looks at him in surprise. He's quiet for a little while longer but before the kid can get distracted by the silence he says, "Don't tell me about your problems, either, kid. I've killed people for gold and I've grown pretty apathetic towards that whole aspect of the world. If you're gonna die, you're gonna die. Did you think you'd live forever?" He grunts, "If you did, you're a fool, just like the rest of them."
"I don't know what I thought. I never thought about it before, I guess."
Amarant sighs and then sits back, crossing his arms. "Then just keep not thinking about it."
The Mage looks at Amarant for a long time, and seems like he wants to say that it's Not That Easy, but when has it ever been easy? He thinks that maybe he's asking too much of the kid – death isn't something you can just toss back in one quick gulp – but then again the kid is so incredibly powerful and mature that he figures he should treat him like an adult.
The Mage gets up and shuffles away and Amarant closes his eyes, though no one would be able to see through his hair.
Sand is displaced by soft leather shoes again and he looks up to see The Princess standing in front of him with his shirt folded up neatly and patched up with black thread. "Here," she offers with a little nod – she must be getting really good at hiding all that royalty in her. He accepts it cautiously again because this is a princess, The Princess, and he still has a sort of... who knows, maybe allegiance? He had seen her when she had been young, and kind of wants to respect that fact.
He nods in thanks and she turns away, before turning back again and telling him, "If you have problems with Zidane, please refrain from taking them out on Vivi. He's just a child – you have no right upsetting him."
There's the royalty and there's a little bit of the fire in her eyes, like some sparks leapt into them, and he responds, "What makes you think he's a child?" Because really, who knows with black mages? Vivi could look eight but be older than anyone here. He has enough power, anyways.
"Because he still..." She trails off and then asks, "Would you have killed me, had Zidane not been there?"
Amarant doesn't wince even though he wants to. Instead, he opts for, "Word to the wise, princess – guys would like you a whole lot more if you didn't talk so much."
She blinks in confusion and then frowns and turns away for real this time. She stomps off and he feels no guilt over it. But when he slips the shirt on and the stitches touch skin, he looks at The Princess with a bit more intensity and decides he probably wouldn't have killed her if Zidane hadn't been around.
After all, who else could he have used as bait for The Theif?
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for.