Written By: Riaki
Concept Created By: Riaki / Kaisuke
Beta-Reader(s): Shiori
Author's Notes: Fluffy with some philosophical thought behind it. Review it if ya get the chance.
Disclaimer: Ragnarok Online and all references related to it are the property of Gravity. AA (Anbu's Analogy) claims no ownership of it.
Semi-Copyright: All character personalities (as well as the concept behind this story) have been created by AA and can not be directly used without requesting permission from the original author of this story. So, basically… Don't rip my isht, bish. .
A Search for Clarity.
She'd loved him since the beginning.
It had started as a simple conversation. Their meeting was "accidental"; he was a knight, searching for clarity. She was a priestess already within it. This time, she was at the end of the line, and he had grabbed it and pulled her back.
One down, two down, three down, and four…
She'd been caught up in the throes of the end when an armored man played the usual role. There was no shining white horse, though; just a ruffled peco-peco, just rented that day. Lucky, since the peco-peco is probably what saved both of their lives.
Chancy, isn't it?
She had thanked him after he had disposed of the hordes, and he had smiled and nodded, a flash of white teeth beneath a silver helmet being all that she had seen of him. He then turned and, with an over-the-back salute, had looked to go on his merry way.
But she couldn't let him go just like that.
"I think I could love someone like you."
He'd been startled; some girl was suggesting love to him, and he didn't even know her name. He cleared his throat, slowly, before speaking clearly.
"Why do you say that?"
The priestess smiled, a wildly innocent smile that surprised the armored man upon his faithful steed. She shook her head, almost sadly.
"The question is never why… The question is, will it happen?"
He left. And their meeting seemed to be something more of an accident than an intended companionship. The knight had thought it over for a few days more, then had disregarded it as nothing more as "something silly".
"Some priestess babbling over love and what not," he had muttered. Just an accident, right?
But what happens when the same accident happens again? Does that mean it never was an accident at all?
And it was this knight-proclaimed "foolish girl" that he ran into over, and over, and over…
The second time, he had saved her again. It was in Orc Dungeon. Why she was there, he never found out; why he was there, he never knew. It was just one of those quick moments of spontaneous thought that he later questioned before bypassing, because spontaneous outcomes were always luck and accidents, weren't they?
Naturally, of course.
Again, he played the hero, and again, he saved the girl. This time the peco-peco he rode was armored; he had bought it some accessories, and was lucky for it. The armor that the bird wore was scratched all over, covered with odd-colored liquid in some places. And now, without the peco-peco armor, both the peco-peco and its owner would be dead.
Once he realized who else would've been dead, had the armor not been there, he mildly raised an eyebrow and asked (in a fairly dismayed voice); "You again?"
Another soft smile appeared on her lips as she tilted her head, allowing strands of hair to topple before her face. She raised both hands and a green glow appeared on each; she healed him, slowly, carefully.
"It is easier to live without questioning life."
He simply grunted back, thinking of no answer to what he thought was a meaningless phrase. When she had finished healing him, he thought to go on his way once more, when just as before, she reached out again. And her voice stopped him.
"I believe I may love you."
He had turned around then, quickly, splays of hair whipping wildly before his eyes. His look was more of confusion than it was of anger; this girl had caused him enough sleepless nights already, and he still didn't know her name.
And now he questioned the nameless priestess, all in hopes of finding a conclusion.
"Why?"
He expected something great, some long, drawn-out answer on perhaps why he was so dashing, and how she loved him for risking his life so valiantly. Perhaps she would take as some of the others did, wishing to attain a stereotypical, happy household in which the mother was the "maiden in distress", the father, the "hero decked in silver". Perhaps she was one of them, he would think, and he would await such an answer with discontent.
But instead she merely smiled a stunning yet familiar smile at him, and shook her head.
"Why not?"
The knight left the dungeon and later that night, slept a night that lacked in slumber. He awoke to himself already being awake, and spent another week wishing for sleep for he could not, so greatly had the lack of answers struck him.
And why he was so puzzled and upset by this girl, he never knew, and never saw for several more weeks…
The third time was different, and maybe, not an accident. It was deep within the dungeons of Glast Heim; he had, as usual, made his way to the place, but rather than remain within the Graveyards, he sought the prison. He wasn't quite sure for why he had, for he knew the monsters were high in numbers and horrendous. He had, at least, the very common sense to not take his peco-peco with him, instead depending on fly wings.
But what happened when they ran out, and you became too weak to even lift one?
He was on the ground, perhaps dying, eyes blanking staring to the prison's "sky". The broken chains hung down from the ceiling and they blurred in his vision. He knew they were coming; their steps were slow, but there all the same. And their stench? …Disgusting.
He wasn't ready to die for he was incomplete, yet life doesn't always agree with your preferences.
Blood skitted across his armor and rolled in torrents down his side. If only he had seen how they had flanked him… He had fought off one wave of them, then another, and another… But the body weakness, surely, when it does not have time to repair. His blade dropped from his hand and he had stumbled, almost aimlessly. Falling then, collapsing; and now he rested on his back, eyes to the sky.
I suppose I'm the only one to blame.
Though, one must ask; was it really his decision? When did accidents stop being accidents and become something bigger? How can an accident exist if something was meant to happen?
This never touched over his thoughts, not yet.
It was in his moment of hopelessness, when they approached them in hordes, when she had appeared. It was sudden, too quick for him to notice; it was her oddly calm voice that brought him from his reverie. The one phrase she said was humorous to him, because in the past, it was him always saying and thinking the words.
"You again?"
His head jerked to the side, eyes wild and widened. She stood there, watching him without so much as a blink of the eye, head gently tilted to the side with concentration. Once she realized he looked at her just as intently, she smiled, white-teeth contrasting heavily against the dank, darkened settings of Glast Heim's prison.
And his voice was just as harsh.
"What are you doing here?" he nearly yelled, but his voice was choking. The dust from the musty ground of the prison had taken to his throat, ripping and weakening the once booming verbalized ascent.
Her eyes never left his, and they held a trace of laughter.
"You ask so much."
The laugh that followed was one of calm reasoning, acceptance; it pained him to think it could be her last.
"Get out of here," he growled, head slowly turning back towards the ceiling. He now watched her from the corner of his eye; "Don't tell me I wasted my time saving you twice before." The hissed phrase came out sharper than intended, but it held the truth. His idea of truth, anyway.
"Nothing is a waste. How can it be a waste if it was meant to happen?" She countered quickly, the humor still evident in her tone. Inwardly he groaned; did she not realizing that they were coming closer, and quickly?
And suddenly, he was asking her something beyond explaining her presence, something that yanked itself from his lips without warning. Suddenly, he was attempting to realize everything and anything all at once, and all amidst what he thought would be their end.
"Why do you do this?"
All she did was smile once more, a trademark look for a trademark question. "Because life has decided so."
He questioned her again, never phasing. "Why do I do this?'
A laugh now, gentle and warming. "Life is for all of us, you know."
He frowned. He didn't think he understood, and his end was drawing too close for comfort. It was a moment of desperate hope to gain some type of intelligent salvation that made him speak again, quicker than before.
"Why do you love…" He paused, and listened; they were almost too close now, and he could hear the crackling of long-broken bones and heaving flesh. He grimaced, then continued; "…and die for that which you never knew?"
In other words; why sacrifice for me?
Light gray eyes placed themselves atop of his, and her voice was the one thing breaking through his brief fog of madness.
"Why not love if I have no reason not to?"
And ragged hands grasped for flesh.
And it was in a sudden, blinding blue flash of light that the knight realized, possibly amidst his death, just what it was he was being told all along. It was never a matter of 'why', never a question of the how it may happen. It was always a suggestion of chance, a possibility of the present. Never lost in the future, but instead realizing just what was wanted in the 'now', and what could happen in the 'current'. His chances were endless, his possibilities, infinite; but suddenly he realized that he could lose it all, and perhaps had. Within seconds, it would be lost, forever beyond his grasp…
But then he realized. That blinding blue light had not been an end, but instead a beginning.
Seconds, minutes, maybe hours later he woke in a bed, covered up to the neck in blankets. The blood that had previously seeped from gaping wounds was gone, and bandages rolled themselves about his body. He could tell that priest's work had been done on him, but hadn't been enough to aid him completely. It was simply caution, one would tell him as they came in for a moment, seeing him awake. Simply caution, and making sure he did not rise so suddenly so as to perhaps awaken the pain once more.
And so he sat in Prontera's church, in the back room, covered in bandages and lost in a bed. And he realized that he was oddly, horribly, and tremendously alone…
Where had the giver of the warp gone to?
With a sharp intake of breath that reached a burning pain against his ribs, he realized. The warp had been placed directly upon the ground on which he'd laid, immobile. He would've thought she had followed, but… The sense of it closing rapidly now touched over his conscious. She had sealed it almost instantaneously, preventing any "mistakes" from trailing after him. For the first time in years, liquid burned beneath his eyelids; the one who had always known was no longer, and the one who finally knew for the first time in his life was the only one left to talk of it.
And life had an odd way of working things…
He suddenly pitied the fact that he was so stuck in the future, never taking a chance. Pitied and hated what others would think and how he'd cared; despised the way he saved himself, as if there was something he was supposed to wait for.
But he knew, now. If you were forever waiting, you would never find it, because how would you ever know what you were waiting for?
And his chance was gone.
It was too late for mourning, for hope was just one guess at reality, and so he lived in the moment and chose to never question again. Though pain burned through him readily, he finally understood something beyond himself; why question, when you can choose to live instead?
He had been a knight searching for clarity; she had been a priestess within it. And within a moment of insanity and pain and loss, she had given him her understanding, sacrificing her own.
A silhouette draped itself quite suddenly over his aching form, a light touch brushing across tightened eyes to whisk away the moisture. He breathed heavily for a moment, slowly accepting an end and his foolishness, and opened his eyes.
And she was there.
The gasp that yanked itself from his lungs sent him coughing, and she looked at him worriedly, reaching forward to steady him with a single hand as he sat up, grabbing at his chest. He eventually calmed, nearly panting for breath, then steadied himself with the palms of his hands as he leaned forward.
"How…?" His bloodshot eyes stared into her own, as if trying to verify her physical reality by perhaps using her eyes as a gate to the soul.
She smiled at him, surprisingly cheerful, and pulled her other hand from behind her back. Its contents were offered to him.
"You forgot your sword."
-----
Later, she would tell him, she had noticed he had forgotten his blade. She had seen it on him throughout all the times they had "met", and so she figured it was of some importance to him. Instead of taking the warp with him, she had went to retrieve the blade, quickly teleporting just as a torn hand had reached for her body, appearing with a flash within the city of Prontera.
She had checked on him, briefly; he had been asleep. So she'd taken his sword to the local blacksmith and had it cleaned, repaired; she returned later, to find him nearly heartbroken.
But fortunately things were mended, just as life had deemed so, and a chance was eventually taken, and life was suddenly lived.
And it would be years, several years, later…
"Why does she love me?"
The words were a jumbled mess spilling from a young mouth, hands reaching up to rub painfully at the temples.
The other had smiled, a familiar one, one gained through a moment of understanding. The knight addressed their son.
"Because. Why not love if you have no reason not to?"
-----
"Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves."
Blaise Pascal.