Author's Notes: ... um... yeah. I haven't been able to write anything for weeks now, and I really miss it, so I tried to get back into the mood with this random thing. I didn't know where I was going with it, just that I liked Sain and Kent (as friends or more; either way they rock!), and that I needed to write something— anything. It turned out to be halfway decent, so I decided to post it.
Warning: ... none, really. Maybe OOC-ness. And if you squint really, really, really hard, there might be hints of shounen-ai. Because shounen-ai and yaoi is always on my brain, even if I didn't intend for it to be.
"It's a Question of Change"
by: Rosalyn Angel
"You ever wonder, Kent?"
It wasn't unusual that this particular voice, the one currently yapping and grating at whatever nerves he had left, sought to probe answers from him. The answers could be for something trivial, or maybe something about life and the universe—but the latter kind was rare, since they actually required some sort of forethought on the speaker's behalf. Therefore, when this dreaded medium-pitched voice spoke up in the calm of the night, Kent couldn't help but let out a sigh.
"Wonder what, Sain?" he asked lowly, sitting on a spread-out blanket and stoking, with a rather long stick, the fire that separated them. He briefly thought about the usefulness of said stick—mostly how convenient its pointy end would be when he decided Sain no longer needed both of those curious green eyes.
"You know," Sain began, shrugging. The green armor he wore clinked. "About what's gonna happen next."
Kent, raising one reddish-orange eyebrow, took only a few milliseconds to translate: "You mean the future."
"Yeah," Sain confirmed, grinning widely as if he had progressed immensely with Operation: Communicate With Kent. "The future. You ever wonder 'bout it?"
Kent's brown eyes lowered from his traveling companion and chose to settle on the stone-surrounded fire, so much the same color of his hair. His hand moved the stick again: the flame crackled and hissed in return, keeping them warm on the open plains of Sacae. The air was chilly at night in this region. When the sun decided to become scarce and let the moon reign, temperatures dropped quickly. But it's probable, Kent thought, that the Saceans don't notice it as much as Caelin knights might.
Kent's eyes snapped up from the fire and looked at Sain again, recalling that the green-armored knight had indeed asked him another question, as was his wont ever since they had met. Kent noticed, though, that most of Sain's queries were directed at him and not really anyone else. And to him, Sain didn't seem like much of a thinker. He was loud, rash, flirtatious, and everything else that a thinker shouldn't be. Yet that mouth kept opening in a demand by a curious mind. Maybe Sain's questions were just that: childish curiosity. Ignorance suited him well.
"Hey, Kent?"
Brown eyes focused. "Yeah. My apologies. You were saying?"
Sain scrutinized Kent as secretly as he could, which wasn't very subliminal anyway since his eyes were obviously squinting. After all, the only light he had to go by was the stars and the fire. Then, seeing the usual straight countenance plastered onto Kent's face, he resumed the earlier topic.
"Right," Sain started out slowly. He was still getting used to his new traveling partner: usually he was teamed up with someone a little more open. It was like he had to take a crowbar to the redhead to pry from him more than a few words. But he liked to think that he was getting through. Just a little. "I asked you if you ever thought of the future."
"No," Kent immediately replied, lips pursing. "Not really."
Sain tilted his head, sandy brown eyebrows furrowing. He shifted on his blanket (each had his own, as well as his own horse, both of which were grazing around them), feeling the grass underneath him and not liking it. "Why not?"
Kent was tempted to roll his eyes, but resisted. "What's the use?"
"But it's interesting to think about," Sain protested, using only the tiniest bit of force in his voice. "Don't you ever wonder about tomorrow? I mean, what if we never find this Lyndis girl? What then?"
"Then we'll figure that out when it happens," Kent said, locking his brown eyes with Sain's green ones, mentally urging him to drop the subject. "Won't we?"
Sain didn't know quite what made him grow silent whenever Kent looked at him like that—like he was a naughty or stupid child. In truth, he probably was, but Kent didn't have to act like the stern parent all the time. This thought made Sain swell up his chest in defiance. His armor clinked again as he crossed his legs, leaning forward and peering through the flames that kept them from freezing.
"Why don't we think of all the possibilities and figure out all the solutions right now?" Sain retorted. "I thought you liked to be prepared, Kent." He thought that was rather clever.
"There's infinite possibilities. We'd never think of them all anyway," Kent replied, clearly unimpressed. One of the horses snorted as he stoked the fire again. It hissed back and coughed out a small spark.
"Well, why—"
"That's enough, Sain," Kent said firmly, giving that same look again, the one Sain so strongly disliked. "In order for us to 'be prepared', then it's also a good idea to be well-rested, and you yapping all night will not serve that purpose."
This quieted him. Sain knew Kent was right: if they happened to run into a battle, for whatever reason, then having baggy eyes was not ideal. But he just hated it when everything was so quiet, especially out on the plains. The plains were always so . . . so . . . quiet. And he knew that neither of them was actually going to sleep anytime soon. It was instilled into a knight to be on-guard in foreign lands.
Sain sighed.
At this rate, he'd end up talking to his horse. And if that didn't work out, then he'd talk to himself. At least he'd like his own answers. But that just wasn't the same as speaking with another person, even if that other person was Kent.
So after a few minutes had passed, he asked again: "What about your own future? Like, way, way into the future. Ever wonder about that? Wouldn't it be neat to know?"
"Go to sleep, Sain," was all he heard.
He had the sudden, strange urge to pout. But he knew that wouldn't work well in his favor, so he kept his frown. He continued, a little quieter: "Don't you wanna know? Where you'll be? What you'll be doing?"
It took a while before Kent answered, the fire reflecting off of his armor and making it appear even redder than it already was. But he did, eventually, and this he said: "No."
"Why?"
"I already said why," Kent said, his quick glances away showing that he was growing rather irritated. "It's no use to wonder about it. You can't change what will happen, so why bother?"
"If you knew, though," Sain ventured unsurely, "couldn't you change it? Stop something bad from happening and make something good happen instead?"
"That's a stupid idea," Kent said plainly as he straightened his shoulders from hunching over before. "In order to do that, we'd probably have to change people as well. And changing people is a dangerous thing to do."
Sain suddenly fell back as his armor landed with little clinks and clatters and crashes all about before he stilled again, laying out his arms and legs. Kent winced at the noise, glancing about instinctively to see if anyone had heard it, but the plains were as lifeless as ever. The same waving grass, some green and some dry, and the same rolling hills for miles on . . .
"You think so?" Sain said, almost dreamily, as he stared up at the black, star-studded sky. "Changing people is dangerous? What if a change would do them good?"
"They usually don't want to be changed," the redhead replied, now concentrating on the fire once more. "And you can never tell what a change will do to them. It's better to leave them to their own devices."
A yawn stretched itself out across Sain's mouth. "But what if—"
"Go to sleep, Sain."
This time Kent didn't hear much resilience. He glanced at his brown-haired companion to see the emerald eyes already closed, and the breath to be even. Sain was asleep.
Changing people is dangerous, Kent heard the words in his head again. Brown eyes fixed onto the dancing embers, stoking it once more. Just a few days with Sain had made him speak more than he had in a month with anyone else. Those confounded questions—just like a little kid . . .
Sain is a very dangerous person, Kent concluded. Very dangerous, indeed.
-end