Mommy Sazh
by Meimi
Prompt filled for Ruaki.
It started off with what sounded suspiciously like a sneezing fit from Fang. She'd waved it off as nothing, but Vanille had stuck to her like glue for the rest of the morning. Then there had been the crap with the chocobos, wherein they had obviously overstayed their welcome as Snow had gotten to rough housing and had ended up dumping both himself and Hope into the spring. That had been fun to clean up. The rest of the afternoon march had been spent with a mostly dry Hope up front with Fang and Vanille and an incredibly disapproving Lightning trailing in the back with a half dry Snow. By then, Sazh had already known where this crap was leading. And sure enough, once they'd stopped to make camp for the night, he found himself sandwiched between a sniffling Vanille and a coughing Snow. Fang was on Vanille's other side, sporting a bright red nose that had to be sore as all hell, while Hope, the poor kid, was on her other side sneezing his head off.
Lightning, thankfully, appeared to still be right as rain. She was busying herself with making the campfire for what was likely to be a long ass night. Good thing she'd managed to dodge this crap too, Sazh wasn't sure he would've been able to be the sole mommy for this group. They were just a tad on the whiny side. "Hey now," Sazh prompted as he prodded Vanille with one of their canteens, "Drink some of this, okay? Your body needs the hydration to fight off this junk."
"Okay," Vanille mumbled miserably as she accepted the canteen and took a swig. Poor kid was already starting to sound hoarse.
Once she was done with the fire, Lightning stood up, stretched, and then raked the entire group with a critical eye. "This is not going to be a pleasant night," she stated oh so helpfully. Sazh felt a muscle twitch in his jaw in pure irritation, but let it lie. Gotta keep things peaceful. He sure as hell didn't want to play nursemaid for these kids on his own. "But we do what we have to," she shrugged then and glanced around the clearing. "Since you've already got that under control, I guess I'll go hunt us down some food."
Uhoh. "Oi! Wait! Come on, don't leave me here alone!" Sazh called out, but she ignored him and strode off into the underbrush. Aw crap. This was not going the way he wanted it to.
Snow chuckled, but was cut off a moment later by what sounded like him hacking up a lung. "Looks like," he managed to wheeze after awhile, "Daddy Lightning left you in charge of the kids, old man. Enjoy your lot in life, I suppose." Sazh scowled at him, completely unamused by the entire situation.
"That makes you the mommy, huh?" Vanille giggled in between sniffles.
"Knock it off," Sazh grumbled as he urged her to drink some more water. "I don't mind taking care of you kids, but that's no reason to start acting like brats about it." That earned him muffled laughter from the rest of the peanut gallery. Joke's on them though. They'd be begging him to put them out of their misery before the night was through and he'd say no every single time. Mommy indeed.