Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Author's Note: Happy New Year's everybody.
-/-/-/-
You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself. - Galileo Galilei
-/-/-/-
Sheena accepts the meat buns wrapped in a napkin that Regal hands her gratefully. They'd bought them at the train station, since they'd been a bit early. "So how did you meet Wilder? You two don't exactly strike me as fast friends."
"We worked together, back before the Pope took over."
"But you're from Altamira." Regal glances up at her and she smiles. "Your accent's hard to spot, but it's there. How long've you been away?"
"It'll be nine years in the spring."
"I'm sorry. I know it might not mean much, but I am. I know how hard it is to leave home."
Regal hesitates before saying, "I didn't leave. I was forced out."
Sheena swallows the bite of her meat bun before asking, "How come?"
"…I was accused of attempted murder on someone I loved."
Sheena doesn't say anything for long moments. What could she say to that?
"Thank you."
Sheena looks up at him, startled. "What for?"
Regal's smile is sad and a little bitter. "For not asking whether I did."
"…Well, to be honest, I don't think it really matters." Sheena said slowly. Regal looked at her, puzzled. "Regardless of whether or not you tried to kill that person, I've chosen to travel with you. For better or worse, I'm stuck with you and Wilder. And if you did do it, I've got no moral high ground. I've done things I'm not proud of. Everyone has. Some people's are just a little worse, that's all."
"How sweet." Zelos says as he comes into the train compartment.
"Well I wouldn't expect you to get it, oh King of Compassion."
"Your words wound me so." Zelos squeezes between their legs and moves to sit by the window when a low growl stops him. He glares at Corrine. "The mutt gets the window seat."
In the few days that they've been travelling together—after the men had gotten over the initial second shock of a talking fox-it's been made clear that Corrine and Zelos have no patience for each other. Then again, neither did Sheena and Zelos.
Zelos let himself fall into the seat beside Sheena. "Why're you always fiddling with that thing?"
Sheena looks up at him, hands still on her pendant. "Do I need a reason to fiddle?"
"I'd call you a fiddler, but I think you're tone deaf."
Sheena snorts and has to slouch a bit to relieve some of the stiffness in her back. The train was due to arrive in Palmacosta by tonight, where they would try to see if they had some of those newer boats, the ones that could cut through ice. "Right. I'm as tone deaf as you are blind."
"Stop slouching. Sit up straight. Remember, you're an Alesandre. They're high class people."
"And how is it exactly that you know what high class people do or don't do?"
Zelos ignore the barb in that. This isn't a subject he really feels like broaching with her. "I make it my business to know."
"Uh-huh." Regal glances between them and can see an argument already starting. He looks over at Corrine who gives his version of a shrug. The two of them had begun keeping tallies of who won these spats of Sheena vs. Zelos. So far, Sheena was up by three. "…Zelos, do you really think I could be...a noblewoman?" Sheena's nose wrinkles at the very thought.
Zelos flashes her a smile. "You know I do, darling." It's the only one of his pet names she'll allow him to call her because, according to her, it was the only one that didn't make her sound like a common whore.
Sheena smiles and it's poisonously sweet. "Then stop bossing me around."
Bossing? He wasn't bossing. He was suggesting. There was a difference. Regal snorted a laugh at the expression on Zelos' face and ticked off another win for Sheena. "You're quite the independent, Sheena."
Zelos offered her a razor smile. "Yeah, I hate that in women."
Sheena glared sideways at him. "That's because you can't handle one."
"Excuse me?"
"You're so busy being misogynistic and sexist that you've forgotten that women do, in fact, have brains and that yes, we can use them and no, we weren't put on this earth to wait on men hand and foot. So when one of us does something that suggests that we can think for ourselves, you think we're being too bold."
Regal is fighting not to smile. Sheena was going to turn Meltokio on its ear with that attitude. Maybe that was for the better.
"So now you know what men are thinking?"
"It isn't hard with brains that size. No offense, Regal." She adds hurriedly. Sheena likes Regal. He's quiet and polite, but he says the most interesting things if you could get him to talk.
"Don't mind me. Please, continue with your rant on the black marks of men." Regal says, amused.
"Don't encourage her." Zelos isn't sure why Sheena rubs him the wrong way. She isn't an annoying person. But she challenges him and doesn't think twice about rising to his challenges. Perhaps it's because no one's ever really done that before. Regal, good company though he is, is a calm soul and didn't usually argue with him much.
"From what I've seen, I don't have to."
Sheena shook her head, wondering when the arguing shifted from her and Zelos to him and Regal. Not that there was really much comparison between the two. Regal responded with complete calm in the face of Zelos' jabs.
"I'm going for a walk. Corrine, you coming?"
The fox shakes his head. "If I move, he'll steal my seat."
Sheena laughed. Corrine had a point and while her seat was open, she wouldn't put it past Zelos to steal Corrine's just to spite him.
-/-/-/-
Zelos gets volunteered to find Sheena so she doesn't miss lunch. Really, the train wasn't so big, so it shouldn't be this hard to find her. He goes all the way to the front of the train and finds nothing. So he starts towards the back.
There's laughing and giggling in one of the back compartment. Zelos opens the door to third class, where they're sitting on locked crates covered in threadbare blankets. There's a crowd of children towards the back and in the center of the crowd is Sheena.
He can't make out what she's saying, but the pitch of her voice keeps changing and she's making strange motions with her hands and then he realizes that she's making shadow puppets using a lantern with cracked glass. The kids are laughing and listening intently.
"Do you know that girl?" A woman with lines on a face too young for them asks.
"I really don't." Zelos replies. This wasn't the fiery young woman who argued with him, wasn't the slightly embarrassed one that had fallen through the floor. This Sheena was vibrantly alive.
"This is the first time in a while that I have seen those children smile like that."
"Where are you from?"
"Izlood. But there hasn't been enough fish for awhile now. We nearly starved last winter. But Palmacosta will bring new opportunities for us. It will be hard for a time, and perhaps these children will not be allowed to be children for some time, but she's brought them some childhood back. It's more than I've been able to do."
Zelos doesn't know what to say to that. He knows that Sylvarant is a poorer country than Tethe'alla. Hell, he'd been living there for the past ten years. But he hadn't known things were quite that bad. The Pope had no power in Sylvarant, but the two countries did so much business together, were so entwined in terms of economy, that his decisions in Tethe'alla affected Sylvarant.
But Sylvarant was a fundamentally different country than Tethe'alla. Sylvarant has richer farming land, is much more natural than Tethe'alla, from whom a large fraction of business came from tourism to the big cities. Sylvarant, whose government had been overthrown several times in the last few decades because of rebels, couldn't support businesses like that so when the Pope made decisions that were better for Tethe'alla, the Sylvaranti couldn't keep up.
Sheena glances up and catches sight of the redhead standing in the doorway. He doesn't fit in this car. Not literally, of course. There was room in the car for several more people. But he doesn't fit. Something about his posture is too straight, the pale skin and vibrant hair too bright for these people who have lived in small places where colors are subtle rather than bright.
Zelos doesn't say that it's time for lunch because these people don't look like they've eaten in a while (They're thin, so thin. They're bone lightly sheathed in skin, nothing more), but Sheena seems to understand because she smiles apologetically at the kids.
"Sorry, guys. I've gotta get going."
Immediately there are protests. Why, Sheena? Can't you stay a little longer? We'll miss you! Remember to come back, Sheena!
She ruffles their hair and pats some of them on the head as she carefully steps her way out of them. She stumbles a bit towards the end and Zelos moves instinctively to catch her arm to help her regain her balance.
Zelos can remember the noblewomen in Meltokio and they'd moved like they were walking on air. Sheena isn't graceful, not by a longshot. Although, if she managed to fall through the floor of one of their dinner parties, Zelos might not mind so much just because the looks on the nobles' faces would be completely worth it.
"You're a little clumsy, you know that?" Zelos tells her.
"Truly, your observation skills are of the greatest in the world, Wilder."
He's not sure why it bothers him that she calls him by his last name more than half the time. Most people never use his last name, even if they know it. The rare times that they've gotten along, that's when she uses his first name.
"…I think we got off on the wrong foot." Zelos says slowly.
She looks sideways at him. "Is this an apology?"
"Hey, who said anything about an apology? I'm just saying that maybe we should start over."
"Oh really? So, what, you can try again to make me one of your hunnies?" Sheena had known as soon as he'd spoken that Zelos Wilder is a ladies' man. Or he thought of himself as one.
"Yes, why would I go after a cultured woman who actually likes me when I have a sarcastic, violent banshee who hates my guts standing right here? It's such a mystery."
"Hey, I am not a banshee."
"All evidence to the contrary, darling."
-/-/-/-
They play cards for a bit—really, there weren't many things to do—and they're convinced that Sheena cheats because really, how could she win every time? When they ask her, Sheena just grins. "I was taught cards by the best card player in my village."
"You mean you were taught how to cheat." Zelos grumbled.
"It's only cheating if you get caught." She'd said.
They're set to arrive at ten in Palmacosta. The sky darkened about an hour ago and Sheena is curled into her seat, coat thrown over her to keep warm. Corrine is snoozing on her stomach and his body rises and falls with her steady breathing.
Zelos has taken the other window seat. The book in his hands has worn, yellowed pages. Some have tears on the sides from flipping a page too fast and others are dog-eared to remind him of his favorite parts. He must have read this book a hundred times by now and yet he never tires of it.
The train is stopping and Regal slides open the compartment door. "They're coming around to check visas."
Zelos looks up, startled. But this was within Sylvarant. Visas weren't necessary. "What?"
"They're papal soldiers. The Pope's crest is on their armor."
"The Pope has no jurisdiction here."
"Now isn't the time to be worrying about that. We need to come up with a plan. I say we go to the baggage car until we start moving again." The entire point of going this way was that they didn't have visas. Zelos had planned to forge them some in Palmacosta.
Zelos shakes his head. "Too risky. Papal soldiers are careful. I say we get off here and walk the rest of the way."
They get their stuff together and Zelos shakes Sheena's shoulder hard. The next thing he knows, there's a fist cracking across his face and Sheena's sitting up, looking like she's ready to bolt. Zelos touches his nose tentatively and winces. "We've gotta go." Sheena grabs Corrine, who's still waking up, under one arm and is dragging her coat and pack behind her. "I think you broke my nose!"
Sheena rolled her eyes as she followed Regal towards the back of the train. "Don't be such a baby. What's the problem?"
Regal's voice floats over his shoulder. "Papal soldiers are on the train."
"In Sylvarant?"
"That's what we said."
The baggage car is freezing and Sheena swears that she can see icicles forming on the ceiling. The rusty train doors groan and moan as they slide them open. It's as they're hopping down and grabbing the luggage that Sheena brings up a point. "Do we know where we are?"
"Somewhere between the middle of No and Where." Zelos replies. "Why?"
"We can't follow the tracks to Palmacosta."
"I don't see why not."
"No, Zelos. She has point." Regal says. "The Papal soldiers won't stay on the train and they had to get here somehow. We can't use any of the main roads."
Sheena looks around. Frost is coating the ground and a good portion of the trees had already bared their leaves. "We can go through the forest. It would cut down on time."
"No way. None of us knows Sylvaranti forests. We'll only end up getting ourselves lost."
Sheena sighs. "Do you have a better idea, Wilder? Or are we just going to stand here until we get caught?"
Zelos can feel a restlessness, a need to move (It feels like grains of sand draining out of an hourglass). He knows it won't take the papal soldiers long to check everyone's travel papers and he doesn't want to stick around for any confrontation between them. He and Regal, they're wanted men.
"…Fine. But if you get us lost-"
"You'll what?" Sheena interrupts, eyes glinting.
He can't hurt her because she's his way back into Tethe'alla, to the reward money (Not that he would. He was raised better than that). And she knows that.
Regal is about to interrupt them when someone shouts, "Hey! You three!"
None of them stop to think as they bolt, almost as one, towards the trees. There's more shouting and pounding of armored feet. Corrine has disappeared from Sheena's arms and she's working on instinct. The tree's bark is rough and cold beneath her hands, but she ignores it as she climbs.
She can hear Zelos already. Did you have the sudden urge to build a tree house or something? What the hell were you thinking?
But Sheena knows that they can't stay ahead of the soldiers for long. They're burdened with luggage and the soldiers are fast. But their armor makes it awkward to climb and she leaps nimbly from branch to branch, keeping speed with Regal and Zelos on the ground.
It's when they start shooting at her that she knows they're in trouble.
The second the first shot goes off—and the bullet hits the branch not three inches from her foot—Zelos and Regal are turning around and it's suddenly a blaze of motion. Regal is all quick jabs and powerful kicks where Zelos is speed and the point of a sword. Sheena had thought that Zelos had simply picked the sword up from somewhere—as many people were want to do in days like these—and that he had no formal training.
Sheena was proven wrong. She'd received some instruction on swordsmanship, but the weapon hadn't felt right in her hand. Still, she knows that Zelos' style of swordsmanship is very different than the one she'd failed to learn. Mizuho's had been all about pushing and pulling and creating sharp arcs with blades. Zelos' used the tip more than the blade and it wasn't as grounded as Mizuho's.
As one of the soldiers makes the mistake of running under her branch, she drops down, being sure to give the soldier a vicious kick to the temple as she does to knock him out. She has her cards in her hand which—over time, if she used them often enough—they'd drain her energy.
Her body's on autopilot as she flips and twists and uses small bursts of power to push the soldiers back a foot or so. Just enough so that she can knock them out in the next blow.
Somewhere along the way, Zelos has moved apart from the others and there are three guards closing in on him. There's a brief flash of flames and two of them are on little more than ashes, but the third is behind him and he can't see him.
"Duck!" She yells at him and she flings a card past him. Zelos' adrenaline makes him listen and he feels something whiz by his head and there's suddenly something electric charging the air. He turns and sees the card plastered to the soldier's armor, his body still twitching as electricity ran its course through his system.
His tongue burns to ask what she'd just done, but he puts it aside as they take care of the last remaining guards. They're all panting and looking at the bodies when Regal and Zelos both turn to look at her.
The first words out of Zelos' mouth are, "What was that?"
"You act like you've never seen someone fight before. And I could ask you the same question! You used magic!"
He'd hoped she hadn't caught that. It had been instinctive, the spell out of his mouth and magic bursting from his hands before he could think to stop it. "I don't see why I'd have to answer the question since you already know it."
"Are you a half-elf?"
The woman was as subtle as a battering ram. "No, I'm not." Zelos snapped.
"So how'd you do it?"
"I could ask you the same question."
"I asked first."
They're stubborn enough that their arguments often end up this childish. Regal sometimes wonders that if he let their arguments run their course, if they would ever end.
"…I was injected with elven blood, back in Tethe'alla."
Small creases form around Sheena's eyes as she frowns in confusion. "Since when does Tethe'alla have technology like that?"
Zelos shrugs. "No idea. But they injected me with it and now I can use magic." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Your turn. How do you fight with…what are these, cards?"
Sheena rocks onto the balls of her feet and she looks like she's getting ready to run. But she doesn't. "…I'm from Mizuho. It's one of our arts there. We inhibit the cards with seals, like the kind that are on your magic circles, and with some mana, we can release the magic."
They both stare at her until she grows uncomfortable. "What?"
"You're from Mizuho?"
"Didn't I just say that?"
"They're outlaws under the Pope's rule. He says they're traitors and that they use unnatural magic to commit assassinations."
Sheena's face grows stony. "Do you believe everything you hear?"
"No. But considering what you just did…."
"What, am I unnatural too?" She asks, temper rising.
Regal shakes his head almost immediately. "Of course not. But you have to understand, we were raised on the rumors of what Mizuho did behind the curtain…They were never any good rumors."
It angers Sheena, the human need to find the worst in things they didn't understand. The world only head about the aftermath of Mizuho's actions, the aftermath of the assassinations and the spying. They never heard about the assignation victims' crimes, never heard about the plans the people had for the secrets they'd stolen.
They don't know about the Mizuhoan people. They don't know about festival time, when the entire village strung up handmade lanterns and everyone wore their finest clothes—even if their finest clothes were threadbare and worn. The way they shared what wealth they had. They never heard about the way that everyone worked, everyone sewed, everyone fought. It was an equal opportunity place and Sheena thinks that there's no village that she could be prouder to hail from. (But it's not her village because she wasn't born there. No one knows where she was born, but it wasn't there)
Sheena turns to Zelos, who hadn't answered. "Do you think I'm unnatural?"
The look on Zelos' face as he observes her isn't one she's ever seen before. Something's changed, Zelos thinks. The Sheena he'd known before wouldn't have known to fight like that. But it did explain something. I think you broke my nose! It had been an automatic reaction to waking with someone too close to her, not a sleepy one.
Sheena is fire and steel and feminism, but that's not all she is. She's laughter and compassion and mischief and it's an offsetting combination. But it isn't unnatural.
Zelos shakes his head. "Not at all."
-/-/-/-
When Sheena wakes, Regal is already going through the cool-down of his workout. Zelos is the heaviest sleeper of all of them and has a firm rule that he doesn't wake up until at least dawn. Sheena watches Regal until he's finished.
It's only then that she asks, "Where did you learn to fight like that?"
"I was Master of the King's Guard in Altamira."
"Really? So you're in no way related to the Lezareno Company?"
Regal stills. "What makes you say that?"
"The Bryant family has been in control of that company for generations. I figured you might be related."
"You're very perceptive." It's the closest Regal will come to admitting it. His family disagreed with the King even before the Pope was pulling the strings. When Regal joined the King's Guard, they'd promptly disowned him.
Sheena smiles. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"And who taught you to fight?"
Sheena chuckled a bit. "Pick someone in Mizuho and one of them probably had a hand in my education, one way or another."
"Everyone knows how to fight?"
"Just about. We start learning from when we can walk." But she'd already learned how to walk and talk and run and dance by the time she came to Mizuho.
"Why did you leave?"
"I wanted to find where I came from. Mizuho will always be home, but sometimes I wonder if my parents are still alive, if I had any brothers or sisters."
"Well, if you are the Alesandre heiress…no to all of those."
"They're all dead?"
"The Pope ordered them killed."
"What for?"
"No one knew."
"Where do you get your information, Regal?"
"I was jailed for some time after they suspected me of killing Alicia."
"Alicia…that's a nice name. Is she your lover?"
"We never got to that stage, but yes."
Sheena rests her arms on bent knees. "What's she like?"
Regal tries to find words to describe Alicia. "She's a bit like you, in a way."
"How so?"
"She's snarly when she gets backed into a corner." That makes Sheena laugh. "She's…lovely."
Sheena smiles. Regal talked about her like he'd never seen anything like her, like he never would again. "You're a romantic."
Regal looks down at her, surprised. No one had ever thought to put that word to him. "Most people wouldn't say so."
"Well I'm not most people, am I?"
"And thank the Goddess for that." Regal and Sheena turn to Zelos, who's stretching and cracking his spine. "One of you is far more than enough."
"Good morning to you too."
"Shall we get going for Palmacosta then? If we make good time, we might catch the boat to Sybak."
"Sybak? I thought the old lady was in Meltokio."
Zelos shook his head. "Not during winter she's not. She goes further south to Sybak. And no one gets near her without convincing her first cousin."
"You're telling me that I have to prove I'm the heiress? Show up, obviously. Look nice, yes. But lie?"
"How do you know it's a lie? What if it's true?" Zelos retorted.
"You don't even believe that yourself!"
Zelos doesn't like that she can read him like that. "All it is is one more step to finding out who you are."
Sheena put her hands on her hips. "Look at me. I'm not exactly heiress material."
"Clearly. But we can help with that."
"Oh really?"
"Yup. We can teach you while we walk."
"If you say so."
Their teaching is intensive and includes lots of detail-memorizing. Luckily, Mizuho had already trained Sheena's memory to the point where she remembered just about anything after hearing it once or twice.
Shera Alesandre had been born in the Alesandre summer family home that stood on a cliff overlooking the sea. It was two days' ride from Meltokio. And the first time she rode a horse, she'd been four years old and had very nearly fallen off.
"You spent a lot of time in the kitchen." Regal tells her. They speak as though they're telling her things that happened to her rather than this Shera Alesandre. They need to. It's part of getting her into the role. "And you used to scare the living daylights out of the cook when you were in there without him."
"Why?"
"You'd make the most incredible messes when you were trying to cook."
"And one time, you ran out from the kitchen into the forest because the cook was so mad." Zelos tells her and there's a slight softness in his eyes when he says that that Sheena doesn't quite know how to describe. "You hopped across rocks to get across the brook since you were so small, but the cook just tried to run through it. He ended up slipping and falling. And you wrote the book on being adventurous."
"But you were always very respectful of your father." Regal says.
"He used to give you the sternest of looks after you got into your mischief."
And if it's not memorizing details, it's learning how to walk and talk. "You slouch when you walk." Zelos tells her.
"I do not." Mizuho was very strict on posture.
"You're right." Regal says, studying how she's standing. "But it isn't a noble's posture. It's military."
Sheena nearly jumps when Zelos has one hand on her shoulder and one gently pushing on the small of her back. Instinctively, she arches away from him. "That's how you're supposed to stand."
"The other problem is balance." Zelos says the next day.
"I have balance." Sheena says hotly.
Regal and Zelos both give her raised eyebrows. Sighing with frustration, Sheena climbs a tree and walks along the branches. "See? Not falling."
"Now do it with posture!" Zelos calls. Sheena arches her back that little bit and nearly falls over. "I rest my case."
"You have to learn to curtsy too."
"And you two know how to do that?" She says doubtfully.
"I had to watch my sister train like this, so yeah, I do." Zelos says. "Keep your back straight and bend your knees."
Sheena obeys and finds it very awkward. "Can't I just bow from the waist?" That was how things were done in Mizuho.
"Sorry. That's for the guys to do." Zelos demonstrates, sweeping one arm outward, and it looks graceful, but the kind of grace that only lots of practice gave you.
Sheena is clumsy eating with a fork and knife. She's used chopsticks for as long as she can remember. She isn't allowed to go to bed until she can be at least adequate with 'normal utensils' as Zelos called them. (He's still trying to figure out how people ate with just two sticks)
"How old's your sister?" Sheena asks Zelos as they're laying out their bedrolls.
Zelos stiffens. "…She's turning fourteen next summer."
"She's a 'proper member of society'?"
"Why all the questions?"
"Just curious. You know so much about me, but I don't know anything about you."
"And I'd prefer to keep it that way."
"Fine. 'Night, Wilder."
