Previously entitled 'Of Sibling Spats and Forging Futures'. I know I said I wouldn't post this before 'Be The Reaper' is finished but meh. Sue me. (I wouldn't suggest sueing me - I own a grand total of £0.00) Enjoy the fic!

warm raindrops
(i can't just walk away, it goes against my nature)

1.

"How are you fairing, Your Majesty?"

Garnet was sad. Sadder than she'd been for a very long time, and she couldn't seem to voice her sentiments. The words wouldn't come. The sensation was familiar, unnervingly so, considering her young age. Few people could relate to a sorrow so profound it snatches the very ability to articulate, yet her depression continued to pile up like the stacks of paperwork she'd yet to sign – and probably wouldn't, not for another few hours, at least.

She wished she could take it all back. She wished she had the power to alter time. She wished she had the power to alter law.

But such thoughts were all but futile and it did little to prevent the splintering of her already splintered heart.

So she ignored the intruder and pressed her forehead against her window frame, always searching, always hoping, thinking that no one else called her Dagger except him, and now he was gone.

2.

The monsoon had hit hard this year.

Well, she assumed it had. She knew nothing of the fickle weather conditions on this planet (neither did the others, for that matter) but she simply couldn't imagine rain falling harder than it was now, nor thunder roaring as loudly, nor lightning ripping the clouds with quite as much vigour. It was all a little overbearing, to say the least.

Strolling with inapt tardiness despite said conditions, the girl stared up at the needle-leaf branches that trembled beneath the weight of rain, occasionally shrugging off the water in startling bursts. Brief respites in overhanging foliage allowed the rain to pummel the sodden earth in heavy sheets, transforming some areas into ankle-deep swamps. The environment was alive with sound.

Weather, climate, heat waves, monsoons: all these were novel to the awe-struck girl. However, she dabbled in all and let none thwart daily tasks - such as collecting apples for the village.

She admired her full basket, sheltered beneath the glossed, animal-hide umbrella she had opted to bring (she enjoyed the fruits of the climate but she found getting dry after getting wet was tedious and uncomfortable) and watched stray droplets tremble on their shiny skins like misty diamonds.

The ostensibly infinite rows of trees abruptly stopped short of a small clearing consisting of thigh-high grass (brushing unpleasantly against her thighs with wet, sticky fingers) and dustings of blue wild flowers. The rain plummeted from heavy, dark clouds with so much force here that her umbrella bowed beneath the onslaught.

And that's when she spotted him and knew something was desperately, devastatingly wrong with nothing more than a glance.

The shock of meeting another person in such an uninhabited area had caused the basket to slip from nerveless fingers, and now the freshly picked apples rolled along the mottled ground in a clumsy attempt to escape. One of them bumped against his foot and tumbled awkwardly aside but he didn't seem to notice.

And that was how she initially discerned that something was terribly amiss: he seemed completely disconnected from his surroundings. He leaned heavily against the wrinkled trunk of a pine, as if he could no longer tolerate standing. His head was drooped so far down that his blonde locks – matted from the rain – obscured his face.

The downpour had drenched him; little droplets slid down his cheeks and dripped off his nose and chin.

Worse of all, his tail was utterly still and she knew, from personal experience, that something must truly be wrong if the tail opts for complete immobility.

Sometimes one hadn't even to glance at a person's expression to know their feelings; observing the movements of the tail can reveal as much; an irritatingly helpful appendage when it comes to deciphering someone's unspoken sentiments (she had spent years meticulously training her own in an attempt prevent the manifestation of emotion through tail-language, but much to her dismay she was yet to perfect the art; the stubborn limb seemed to have a mind of its own).

And the fact that he was here of all places certainly didn't bode well, either. How long had it been? A year? More? She'd lost track of Gaia's mystifying calendar.

So she stood for a moment, basket at her feet, wondering what to do. He either was yet to notice her presence or was purposely choosing not to hail her.

The girl shifted her umbrella and fat drops pattered to the ground.

His outfit hinted at a hurried departure: dirty black trousers, tattered sheaths sporting twin daggers, and a white shirt. A white shirt in a monsoon. What foolishness! It was completely transparent and stuck to him so tight it looked like he was in the process of shedding his skin. And that's when she noticed he was bare foot. Bare foot! What was the reasoning behind such madness?! His feet and ankles were caked in so much mud they resembled brown shoes!

Finally, the shock subsided and she edged forward, wet leaves sticking to rubber boots. He didn't stir as she approached and she began to worry that he really might not have noticed her and would startle violently if she advanced too quietly, so purposely crushed leaves and rattled the umbrella.

But he didn't stir. His eyes were closed - she could see his profile now - and his face was expressionless. A mask.

Knowing that it was too late for such invalid gestures but not really knowing what else to do, she raised the umbrella over his head and listened to the drum of rain against its protective barrier. Felt the precipitation trickle down her now unsheltered neck and cheeks.

"Zidane?" she breathed softly. "Zidane, what is it?"

At first he didn't move. Didn't even show he'd heard. Then he inhaled a great, shuddering breath and opened his eyes until they met hers. Full of sorrow, full of hurt, full of pain. Too much. Swimming, bursting, frothing in those crystalline waters that were frozen now, glacial and cold. So different.

She blinked, unsure of him and unsure of herself, but as it turned out she didn't have to react at all, because he took said initiative and moved forward and embraced her, buried his face in her hair and suddenly there were warm raindrops mixing with cold, pattering down her neck with such flowery softness it left her speechless.

Interlude:
Tantalus' Burden

"Hello. My name is Philippe Gash. I am rather sizeable in comparison to my numerous brothers and am terribly stubborn, especially when it comes to closing my substantial mouth. I also have a disagreeable tendency to vomit blood and pus and –"

"You're fucking disgusting."

"Well, excuse you. I do believe Philippe Gash was talking. My deepest apologies, Master Gash, please continue –"

"Boss! Request permission to gag Zidane!"

"Granted!" a voice bellowed from the other room.

"No, no, no! I'll be good!" the invalid of the two brothers squeaked from his stained sleeping pallet.

"I don't want good," the other snapped, "I want quiet. From you and fuckin' Philippe Gash."

"Okay. Philippe Gash agrees. Don't you Master Gash? Yes, yes I do. And for the record I think Blank is a self-centred, miserable old fart whose short coming is his inarguable incapability to feel anything resembling pity and –"

Blank reached out and swiped Zidane's hands away from the open wound splitting his side. When the redhead had told Zidane to 'amuse himself' while he tended to his wounds he failed to predict Zidane's newfound game of opening and closing the inflamed skin around a bloody gash to make it 'talk'. The blonde thief was simply insufferable at times.

"Doesn't it hurt to do that?" he barked tersely, eyeing the crimson cut while deftly cleaning another.

Zidane shook his head. "I'm am sooo drugged up on elixirs I don't know um… left and right."

"Left from right, halfwit," the redhead corrected, and tore off a strip of bandage with his teeth while miserably surveying the work to come.

Blank had to admit that he wasn't surprised Zidane was too numb to feel anything. Boss gave the boy so many elixirs the redhead was shocked he was still conscious; or perhaps it was because of the elixirs he was still conscious at all, he wasn't sure.

It had been three weeks and Zidane's condition had improved, though not as much as the Tantalus members would've liked. When the girl who resembled Zidane too strikingly to go unnoticed dragged him out of the Iifa Tree they barely recognised the bloody, tangled mess of flesh unceremoniously dumped at their feet. In the moment of silence between the body's disposal and the panicked outbreak upon realisation, Blank actually thought the girl was mad and had bestowed upon them in all her mad wisdom the corpse of a mutilated zombie.

The girl might have explained, but everyone stopped listening past the words: 'I found him in the roots and he's still alive.'

So three days of complete unconsciousness preceded two weeks of tending to the incapacitated genome's needs and then one week of berating the genome for having such needs in the first place and now –

"Gods damn you to hell, Zidane Tribal, if you prod that wound one more time I'm going to wrap this bandage around your fucking neck until your face turns blue and your eyes pop out of your fucking head!"

Zidane cautiously inched his bottom lip out and Blank had half a mind to rip it off, but the poor kid looked so beaten up he bat him round his bandaged head and huffed indignantly instead.

"How're my wounds lookin'?" the blonde asked (or, more accurately, slurred) as Blank moved to his back.

The redhead surveyed the mess of jagged wounds, crisscrossing and rendering tender flesh asunder. A few of the nastier ones were inflamed and pus-encrusted despite the Tantalus members' attentive care and cleaning.

"Like shit," he replied after completing his surveillance. "We're not doctors, y'know. But… some of 'em look better, I guess."

"I'll live?"

"Unfortunately."

"I hate being in bed all the time."

"…"

"…Alone, I mean. Maybe you could run down to the Industrial District and pick up a few of the Morphetto Girls? You know, the ones with the blonde hair and –"

"Shut up, you idiot."

Zidane sighed theatrically. "What's a guy gotta do to get some lovin' around here? All I have are a few magazines and Philippe Gash!"

"Stop calling it that." And just to reiterate: "You're fucking disgusting. Besides, I don't think there's a whore broke enough in the world to touch you with a barge pole at the moment."

"Geez, thanks. I look that bad, eh?"

Blank looked at the skeletal, dirty, stinking, greasy-haired monkey in front of him and snorted, "Worse than Cinna without his morning wash."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

Honestly, Blank was just glad he was alive (though he was far from admitting such sentiments aloud). It would have been questionable to state that Zidane's condition was merely questionable. Everyone had expected Zidane's impending doom aside from the boss, who had squatted beside Zidane's sleeping pallet day and night, as if his very presence would prevent the thief's soul from extinguishing.

And obviously it worked, because despite Zidane's permanently drugged disposition and puzzling reluctance to relay any detail of his fatalistic return to the imploding Iifa Tree, he seemed to be recovering, slowly and surely, and death had receded back from wherever it had come.

"…to see her."

Blank blinked. "Eh? What?"

"Oh, sorry. Were you entranced by my rippling muscles?"

The redhead appraised the bony, sunken flesh on the boy's back and snorted. "Oh, completely."

Zidane ignored the sarcastic quip and said, "I was sayin' I can't wait to see Dagger again."

"Mmm."

"Don't wanna keep her waiting you know? She needs to be introduced to Master Gash." Zidane moved his hands to the wound and Blank slapped them away before 'Master Gash' could resume conversation, reinforcing this with, "Keep that up and I'll beat you so bad it'll make these wounds look like fucking playground grazes."

Zidane looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Master Gash promises to be good. Zidane's jury is still out, though."

3.

All over the floor, Mikoto found herself thinking as she stared at the puddle of rainwater rapidly expanding beneath the motionless genome. And I'd just cleaned in here too.

The sound of trickling water caught her attention and she averted her gaze to a saucepan overflowing with rainwater. She hurried over and picked it up and emptied the contents out the window before replacing it, casting the leaky roof an exasperated look before reclaiming the spot in front of her brother (though she was yet to refer to him by the curious label).

The house was small and quaint, though the thatched roof proved to be dubious, especially under the onslaught of the monsoon. It was noticeably unadorned; Mikoto found the furnishings typical of the mages' home to be 'superfluous' and 'bothersome', and any gifts the mages offered to try and sway her opinion were politely declined or returned (she didn't see this as rude; in fact, she thought she was doing them a favour). At any rate, her abode was more house than home: a table there, a cooker here, a couch there, two bed's upstairs, a rug to cover the dirty planks of wood beneath the feet…

A rug that was soaking up the rainwater of a certain genome whose unresponsive nature rivalled even his soulless kin.

"I'm getting you a towel," Mikoto told him in an uncharacteristic need to justify her actions. "Wait here."

She rummaged around in one of the tall, wooden cabinets Mr. 328 had constructed for her and found two towels. She returned to find him unmoved and grumpily held the towel out.

He didn't take it, just stared through her.

"Here."

No response.

She sighed, considered drying him off herself then quickly vouched against it, so brusquely threw it at him instead. Surprisingly, and most probably reflexively, he caught it before it tumbled to the floor and blinked several times before focussing on the female genome.

"M…Mikoto…?"

"Yes?"

"Where… The Black… Mage Village?"

"You are in the Black Mage Village. In my house, to be precise."

He blinked again and his brow creased ever so slightly. "Your… house?"

"Yes. This is it."

Zidane's eyes swept around the barren hut and he nodded very, very slowly before summarising his appraisal with a simple: "Oh."

"Dry yourself off," Mikoto instructed crisply and then as an after thought she added, "And you may sit, if you wish."

Zidane fixed her with his cerulean gaze and she noticed, suddenly, that he'd grown taller. His previous blank expression shifted into a tiny smirk and she narrowed her eyes, expecting some sort of quip.

"How kind. I think I do wish to sit," he replied in a brittle tone. It took her a moment to realise he was poking fun at her but he continued before she could reprimand. "You look different… um… what is it?" He raised a hand to his chin. "You look a bit more grown up. How old are you now? Fifteen? Sixteen? Oh wait... I know!" He clicked his fingers. "You've cut your hair!"

Mikoto scowled. "I most certainly have not. It… it is the weather…"

"Eh?"

The girl looked away, slight pinkness creeping into her complexion. "The moisture in the air… makes it curl."

Zidane gave her a once over. She was right; her hair, once straight, had reacted to the damp air of the monsoon and transformed into a charming bundle of golden curls that framed her face in wispy coils.

"I think it looks nice," Zidane reassured as he ruffled his own dishevelled hair with the towel. "Honest! Can I sit down now, Goldilocks?"

She turned her gaze back to him, eyes flashing. "What? What does that mean?"

"Goldilocks? I'm guessing you didn't have fairy tales on Terra."

"You confuse me with your foolish Gaian jargon. Why are you here? Have you come to tease me? Is that it?"

Zidane looked away, his eyes glazing and expression drawing down into something defeated and sombre; an awful expression on the likes of him and it successfully silenced Mikoto's chiding.

"I… there's been… a problem," he began. "At the castle. And I – "

A ruckus at the back door severed his explanation and Zidane noticed the inexplicable and exceedingly uncharacteristic spark of fear in Mikoto's eyes as they shifted toward an unseen intruder behind him. He went to turn but she grabbed his arms, halting his twist.

"Wait!" she cried, the note of panic in her voice startling him. "Don't. Not yet. Let me explain."

Zidane raised an eyebrow and went to continue his twist, but the voice that broke the panic-stricken air halted his movements yet again.

"'The brethren, once torn apart by heinous claws of fate, were reunited 'neath skies of lacquered sapphire, and O; they did weep and cling; their love like boundless oceans.' Lord Avon, is it not? Most appropriate, I think. Aside from the blue skies part..."

Zidane swallowed and it was the loudest sound he'd ever heard. It seemed his heart had frozen in his chest, his breath caught in his throat. Oh, that voice. A voice he'd never forget; a voice that haunted his dreams like the wraith he was.

Or at least, the wraith Zidane had presumed him to be, up until now.

"What's this?" the voice mocked. "Speechless? The saviour of Gaia, the champion of the beloved canary, vanquisher of Necron, rendered speechless?"

"Enough!" Mikoto snapped. She returned her gaze to Zidane. Her voice turned soft and apologetic, an odd thing for her. "I was going to tell you..."

Zidane turned and this time the girl didn't hinder his path. She just hoped their reunion wouldn't instigate an all-out battle. She'd just cleaned the place, after all.

Oh yes. He's back. Be afraid, be very afraid. I thought those three siblings are so weirdly different I quite wanted to write a fic consisting primarily of light hearted banter. But, hell, I made a meal out of it, so now it's got it's own plot. Also, I wanted to erase a rather disturbing mental image of Mikoto and Zidane created by Myshu (darn you!! - I do love that fic though ;-p)

Be prepared! And leave a review :-)