Suzaku Memorium: Memories Etched in Crystal
By Chronic Guardian
[04]Compassion
-[Cater, Alternate-Cycle] [Written for Twelve Shots of Summer: Second Raid week 4: Valiant]
Heroes were a funny subject in Orience. They didn't get to leave much of an impression when it came to a legacy, and last minute heroics were never rewarded with recognition. Not everybody articulated it, but deep down, everyone knew. The only heroes they really knew about where the L'Cie, people who had traded their humanity for power; thralls of the Crystals.
L'Cie didn't die.
Of course, if they did, then nobody remembered it, but most cases recorded a different ending for those chosen by the Crystal. Instead of the usual drifting out of living memory, L'Cie were privileged with crystal stasis. Even as they lost the heart to care about anyone around them, they were given the consolation that nobody would forget their sacrifice.
The only other option for honorable mention was doing something big enough to get noticed by the written records before everybody forgot you existed.
Needless to say, this wasn't conducive to a culture that revered heroes. Individuals would make their own attachments, regardless, but clinically speaking it was an irksome task to try to track down and record anyone who might end up having an impact on the world. History was full of events reconstructed according to living reasoning and names found on knowing tags. Whatever was left for the living to find, there was always the lingering feeling that something else was being left out, that someone who could have been important was being forgotten.
Cater didn't think it was sad. Nobody did. Nobody in their right mind, anyway. What was the point of heroes if all you ever did was mourn over them? Cater had seen people lose it over family members they'd forgotten, only reminded by knowing tags. Few things put her in a bad mood faster.
Don't you crybabies get it? They're not coming back. They might as well not have existed.
Cater wasn't afraid to say it. Cater didn't care what they thought. Even if they hated her with all their hearts, she wouldn't remember them when they were gone. That was the advantage of the Crystal induced memory blocking; It didn't matter who tried to make you bleed, all wounds were forgiven with time, so long as you were the last one standing. And for all intents and purposes, Class Zero would indeed remain the last ones to leave the battlefield alive.
And yet, there was something eerie about meeting someone and knowing that one of you would eventually forget the other. Cater pushed the thought down whenever it tried to come up. It didn't help her, and it certainly didn't help whoever she would be forgetting. The only ones she really cared about were the ones with knowing tags connected to her, and that was more concern for professional performance than personal well being. If an agent connected to Class Zero died on her watch, it would reflect poorly on Mother. Thus, Cater was generally more attentive to troop assignments than she was to individual names. Whoever the numbers where, the point was that they didn't make her look bad once they were gone.
}-{
"Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?"
Cater kept up her clipped trot until the same voice cleared its throat and she realized it was following her. She didn't even try to stop the curt scowl and emphatic eyebrow pop as she gave her unwanted companion, a gangly, strawberry-blonde, a passing glance. "Make it quick," she sighed, unholstering her magicite pistol so she could prime it before she got to the arena. "I got stuff to do."
You know, just preparing to save the Dominion. No big.
"H-Hey! We're gonna be working together on the next operation!" The other girl sounded offended. Cater wondered if it would be worth it to look at her face and try to siphon amusement for the ridiculousness of it. "Don't you think we should get to know each other a little?"
"Just you?" Cater gave the girl, one of the teal-scarfed Class Twelfth cadets, an incredulous look. Class Twelfth was a band of free-spirited ne'er-do-wells and similar chumps. That was all fine and dandy, but Class Zero generally didn't have the time to protect dead weight. Every member could handle themselves in a pinch, having a support unit would just make it one big escort mission.
Maybe the girl hadn't meant it that way. It was all the buzz around Akademia that the next two operations would be involving just about everyone the Dominion could manage; but Cater had the feeling this girl meant a direct connection to Class Zero rather than a general participation.
She also had the feeling this had happened before.
It wasn't the first time Cater had gotten deja-vu. In fact, she'd been getting a pretty bad case of it from just about everything recently. It was like walking back to the classroom after you thought you checked something. Whether or not it had really happened before didn't matter, just that you felt you knew the ending before you got there; like knowing where a well aimed bullet would land before it hit its mark.
Mother had said it was fine though, so Cater refused to let it bother her.
Still, it hung at the edge of her mind as she calmly cleaned her pistol's barrel and patiently waited for the other girl to stop giving a flustered defense of Class Twelfth. Trey said that deja-vu happened when the brain tried to subconsciously recognize things based on the past. Or... something like that. Cater didn't usually have the time to sit through the scholarly archer's lectures. What was familiar? Had she known someone from Class Twelfth before? Or was it more because of the marching orders?
Eventually, Cater gave it up, reminding herself that Mother had said to let it go and moving on to the arena with the Class Twelfth girl still following.
She practiced saving her unwanted charge from simulated soldiers for the rest of the day.
}-{
"Who's that?"
Deuce's query hit Cater like a bullet she should have seen coming. She looked over her shoulder, already knowing who the quiet brunette was referring to, and let out an exasperated sigh when she confirmed the Class Twelfth cadet from a few days back was following them. The girl took on a subdued hunch at Cater's response, but kept on stalking.
"Don't ask," Cater muttered to her classmate. "I think it's the bigwig's little way of saying we need a handicap on the battlefield."
Deuce, ever the open book, jerked back slightly and blinked in surprise. "She's assigned with us?"
"Well... not inducted, like Crybaby and Coughs-a-Lot," the ginger haired gun mage explained, listing the two other non-original additions to Class Zero the administration had seen fit to shoehorn into their ranks. "But we might be working with her unit," Or her specifically, "so she's been crashing my training sessions."
"Class Twelfth... they're Blue Mages, right?"
"Blue mages?" Cater made a face. "What? Like they're eternally depressed over their awful report cards? Hell, I would be too if I had their track record."
"No, like, well... there used to be some sort of classification for mages back when Akademia first started. Queen explained it to me. Blue Mages learned by watching others. They learned how to do things no one else could figure out, but they also have trouble with normal methods. They're kinda... Different."
"Different, huh..." the gun mage snorted and threw another disdainful glance over her shoulder. "Can't argue with that one, Deuce." It explained why the girl still approached her. Most people in Akademia still used ten-foot poles around Class Zero, especially after the whole Ingram incident thing. "Still... I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here. Are we getting sent on a suicide mission with the Twelves? I mean, I know they're trying to get rid of us, but do they really need to be that obvious about it?"
The next few days, Cater felt as if she were missing her shadow.
}-{
When the final marching orders were finally issued, Cater found herself moving out with the ground units. The airships were all headed east towards the Concordian front and Cater had the bad luck of getting sent to hold the line at Meroe. In fact, most of Class Zero was flying to the eastern skies, only Cater, Nine, and Jack were selected for the ground campaign.
It was a long walk from Akademia to Meroe.
They moved with the legionaries to conserve supplies and minimize energy spent on skirmishes. The monsters of the land were still in as bad a mood as anyone given the state of things, but they gave a wide berth to smaller creatures that moved in big enough packs. Reluctantly, Cater conceded that plodding alongside the Dominion war wagons was better than dealing with Wild Tauricorns.
Unfortunately, that also meant she had to bear with the company of the other classes getting sent to the front; most of them taking advantage of the prime opportunity to whine about the doom and gloom waiting around the corner. Jack tried to fight the sentiments with his typically sunny personality and a round of bad jokes. Cater studiously tuned both out and occupied herself counting feathers on the Chocobo ahead of her.
She almost didn't notice when her "friend" returned.
"Not now, Nine," she said off-hand to the approaching footsteps. "I'm busy."
The high voice that answered definitely wasn't Nine's. "Are you always busy?"
Cater frowned and looked behind her. Someone vaguely familiar with a teal-scarf was awkwardly ambling in her footsteps. The ginger haired gun mage tilted her head. "And you are?"
"I... Um... I'm with your support unit," the stranger said stiltedly. The way the girl didn't meet Cater's subsequent measuring look didn't do much to reinforce the claim. Rallying to a determined pout, the teal-scarfed cadet did a salute with the wrong hand and looked forward, but not at Cater. "Viventa Elysium, at your service!"
"My what?" Cater gave the girl a pointed look. Of all the times it could choose to strike, Cater's deja-vu chose then to hit her with a waterfall of its nagging sensation. "You're telling me they sent a Twelfth to—?"
"I-I volunteered!" Viventa asserted, sounding somewhere between desperate to explain herself and hurt at what Cater was about to insinuate. "I... I wanted to reach my potential. We're not that great with textbooks in Class Twelfth, but I thought if I could get a look at a real pro..."
"You mean like those knuckle heads in Class Second?" Cater resumed her march full force and tried to keep her place in the ranks. "Or were you hoping for someone not so likely get themselves killed? 'Cause y'know the Consortium has it out for us in Class Zero, right?"
"I know that!" Viventa brushed back her hair, an unruly strawberry mess, and pressed on after Cater with long, determined strides. "But I... I won't be able to learn from you if you're dead! I've got to get in the experience while you're here! Who knows when Orience will see another hero like—"
"Whoa there!" Cater tried very hard not to stumble as Viventa confirmed all preconceptions the Twelfths didn't think things through. "First: Maybe you didn't notice, but Class Zero got the boot from the whole 'hero' gig when everybody decided to blame us for what happened in Ingram. You want heroes? You can shake hands with a L'Cie when we get to Meroe.
"Second: Why the hell would you choose me? I don't do lessons, kid."
"I don't need lessons!" Viventa countered. "I'm a Twelfth. All I need is someone to look up to!"
Cater felt her stomach turning from the sickly sweet idealism of it all.
"Look, Twelfth... it's like this," Cater sighed, shaking her head. In hindsight, maybe talking to Nine wouldn't have been so bad. "We're heading for a meat grinder. They're counting on us to break a deadlock, so I need to be ready for anything, alright? I don't got time for babysitting."
"No, I totally get it!" The strawberry haired Twelfth nodded enthusiastically. Where'd her shrinking violet side go? "That's why I need to learn from you! You're not afraid to do anything! That's what Class Zero means to me. But you especially! You're not afraid to stand out, or speak your mind, or go in where everyone else is dying... I-I've read your reports! You've got one of the best records in the Dominion, did you know that?"
Cater forced her eyes ahead and tried to tell herself the perspiration was just the march in the sun getting to her. She did know she was one of the best in the Dominion. What she didn't know was that someone else had been watching.
"Listen..." Viventa went on, but her voice had lost some of its ravingly fanatic edge. "I know us Twelfths don't really have the best reputation, but part of that is that we need a good teacher. We're only as great as what we let in. I... I want to be like you, Cater. I don't want to be afraid of anything. I want to be a hero."
"...Huh," Cater forced a shrug and kept walking. It was a good speech, especially for a Twelfth, but words didn't mean much in the real world. On the surface, Cater almost felt like just giving it up and taking the girl along. On the inside, her gut told her the words would be gone soon anyway. Viventa was wrong. Cater was afraid of something.
Cater was afraid of losing.
}-{
Jack gave a low whistle as they approached the battle lines. A greyish-white sea of Imperial Magitek Armors was rippling its way out of the Militesi gates. "Well, the odds aren't lookin' so good on this one," the boy noted, some of his usual good humor flickering cold for a moment before a smile spread again. "You ready to set a new record, Cate?"
"You serious?" She gave her classmate a tight grin. "I've only got you and Nine to compete with, right? Try not to slow me down out there too much, alright?"
"Hey! I ain't slow, yo!" Nine, a scar faced delinquent who towered over Cater at six-foot-one, pounded his chest with his fist. "two thousand gil says I show both a' you up."
"Heeeey now," Jack held up his hands defensively. "You know what the class president said about gambling, right? No gil, just skill. Besides, we're not just tearing into the Milt's this time. We've got to keep the front lines long enough for the rear unit to complete the summoning."
Cater felt a dry joke about escort missions die in her throat.
}-{
Bullets punched through the muggy fog permeating the coastal battlegrounds. A heat storm was headed in against the icy gates of Milites, almost as an ironic omen as the Dominion line wilted and tore under the Militesi assault.
Cater stood at the front, continuously firing into the mist as Imperial silhouettes emerged only to stumble and go still. Somehow, she'd gotten sidetracked into defending an isolated cadet unit. She could hear Nine and Jack a ways off. She didn't have to worry about them, they could handle an army or two if it came down to it.
So why was she fighting for this cadet unit? Intel said they were a detachment from Class Eleventh that lost their way. Class Eleventh. Professors. The least likely unit to do any good on the front lines right next to Class Twelfth.
And yet, Cater was fighting for them. Cursing herself half the way there, but fighting for them none-the-less. Something inside her said it was what she was supposed to do.
It wasn't until Jack told her over the COMM to cut the heroics that she realized the word she was looking for.
She still didn't know why she was thinking of it, but she did pull back.
}-{
The second battle of Meroe, or the Battle at Big Bridge as it later became known, ended on a melancholy note. The Militesi invasion force was completely wiped out, but the Dominion still sustained substantial losses. Withdrawing to lick their wounds, the remaining forces retreated back to brood at their respective capitals and count their losses.
Cater came out with a marginally notable performance evaluation marred by what was recorded as a judgment error.
A few days after the battle's end, Cater was called out of class to the Class Eighth intelligence sector on pretenses of debriefing.
"I already gave my report to Class Ninth," she told the orderly who had been sent to retrieve her. "If you wanna know what happened, you can talk to them."
"Well... it's not quite like that, actually," the orderly, a short, freckled munchkin, played with his crimson shorts and looked away. "It's more like... inheritance."
"Inheritance?" Cater raised an eyebrow. "Forget it. Nobody owes me anything."
"H-hey!" the orderly grabbed at her sleeve.
She raised the back of her hand and gave him a pointed look.
"It's... it was in her journal. The last page said it belonged to you."
Again, Cater had the feeling of the bullet she should have seen coming.
By the time they made it to the Class Eighth classroom, Cater felt like her inner ear was checking out for the day. Her head was reeling and she couldn't tell why. She was tempted to just tell the orderly "forget it" and turn around, but something kept her mouth shut and her footsteps forward.
It was agony.
A yellow-scarfed Class Eighth member handed her a simple leather bound collection of pages and a knowing tag. Cater frowned at the tag, noting with annoyance that nowhere did it list her as the recipient in case of death, but grudgingly accepted the items.
}-{
Most of the time, Cater's deja-vu came and went. There were prolonged periods, but usually nothing longer than a day.
The feeling hung over her like a death sentence now.
The book was a journal. Cater found her own name a few times, but it was usually in relation to the rest of Class Zero. Actually, the former owner seemed to have a crush on Jack. Cater idly wondered if a confession had ever taken place.
As she got further in, Cater found more entries with her name. It was almost embarrassing, considering the owner had the undistinguished honor of hitting rock bottom in Class Twelfth. Sometimes, Cater felt like just putting the Journal down and forgetting about it, but something about it kept drawing her back. The owner kept talking about courage. Courage to talk, courage to take tests she knew she would flunk, courage to stand up and volunteer for an assignment instead of just waiting.
Courage to care.
At first, Cater thought it was kind of ridiculous. She'd actually given the journal a derisive snort when the owner put those words down the first time. Soon, she thought it more than ridiculous. It was suicidal. It was investing in things that would inevitably be lost. It was getting ready to lose.
Cater couldn't take it. She didn't like to look death in the eye and think she would lose. She didn't like to think in that situation in general. As far as she was concerned, her gut had gotten her this far. She needed to care more about winning than she did about why she wanted to win. Her heart burned to become the best already. Wasn't that enough?
Still, the deja-vu seemed to lessen after she read it. Apparently there wasn't any getting off this train until it reached the end of the tracks. With grim determination, Cater pressed on.
}-{
It was the middle of the night when she finished. The last entries were leading up to the Battle at Big Bridge. It was weird to see entries about meeting herself. The owner had an eye for quality at least, they were well acquainted with Cater's previously unblemished record.
At the edge of her consciousness, she knew the end was coming for the girl who passed her thoughts to Cater. She wasn't really sure what she would find there, but she was half expecting to read the details of the death.
The owner didn't know what she was getting into. Or at least, it seemed that way. She was apprehensive about the looming conflict, but not enough to quit while she was alive. She'd never been in a sortie that size. She'd tried to convince Cater to bring her along though. Apparently that hadn't worked. Cater grudgingly crossed out the possibility that this girl had caused the smudge on her record.
The last part was written before the battle.
Gun-Mage Cate, it began. Cater rolled her eyes in an attempt to maintain her distance. I've decided that if I want to be a hero like you, I have do more than dream. I have to think. I can't care if I don't think. I was really sad that I couldn't train with you, but I think I understand. You've got an important job to do. If I tried to learn from you, I'd probably get in your way. I still hope I'll get to learn from you sometime, but it looks like training's over. I wish I'd tried sooner. Cate, I know everyone else says I'm a coward, but I never really admitted it. So... there. I said it. I don't know if I could've been a hero, but whatever I can give this time, I hope it helps you. You really helped me think about being more than a coward. If I make it through this, I'm going to ask you to teach me again. I know you're tired of it, but I've got to do this. I want to be a hero like you, and I've got to do more than dream to do that.
You'll probably never read this though. Haha. I'm looking at the back of your head right now, actually. You don't know it, but you were a good friend. In your own way, I think you did teach me. Thanks Cate. See you out there, I'll try to be back to write again.
-Tem. XVII, 842 RG.
Cater closed the book. She didn't feel deja vu any more. There were tears in her eyes, but she promised herself it would pass. She would forget. She wouldn't have to care.
It was then that she realized there was a performance slip folded in with following blank page.
Viventa Elysium, Class Twelfth. Killed in Action retrieving a derelict squad from Class Eleventh, Tem. XVII, 842 RG.
Cater held up the slip and felt her lips twist into a grimace. Idiot. Why didn't you leave it for someone else? Why didn't you just live?
Why were you watching me?
But Cater already knew the answer to these questions. It burned to think about it, but she couldn't stop herself now. She couldn't stand ignoring it like a coward anymore.
}-{
The next morning, Cater opened the book one last time and touched the opposite blank page with a trembling pen.
You didn't have anything left to learn.
With that, the ginger haired gun mage once again closed the journal of Viventa Elysium, but this time knowing she wouldn't forget what it said.
And hoping that it stayed that way.
-}End[04]{-
Author's Note:
You know what? I think I'm slipping into psychological angst in response to schoolwork induced mako poisoning. I say right now: I am already sorry if I did my job right and you cried or something*. On the other hand, I guess it shows some degree of skill to be able to write this much under pressure. Just one more week and I can coast till the fall semester.
Also, I apologize if Cater sort of seemed like a little snot for most of this. I actually really like playing as Cater. She's very agile and adaptable, making it so you almost never have to commit to a set stance for long and are usually guaranteed to get out of harm's way by the time it gets to you. I guess I twisted that into a personality that fears attachment somehow. I must be an awful person. I need to stop Joshuelmeyering this and write a happy ending here or there.
...Or something.
Anyway, thanks for reading another week. Sorry if this one hurt. Go and read some of the fluff infesting the Type-0 section of Fan Fiction dot net and try to feel better. Oh, and check out the other Twelve Shots of Summer. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if you're gonna be finding much comfort there this week, but you can always give it a shot, right?
Till next time,
-CG
*I also apologize if I did my job wrong and wasted your time. Is there any winning?