Content
Author's note
Disclaimer
Chapter 24 - Waiting
Author's Note
Huhu^.^
I hope everyone is doing fine.
Please note: This chapter takes place parallel to ch. 23.
Dedicated to: Kyubi and Fruity-Fuit-Cups for being the 4% of last chapter's readers to review (pretty sad statistic, isn't it?)
Disclaimer
Final Fantasy IX (and all related content) belongs to Square Soft/Square Enix.
Chapter 24 – Waiting
"All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope"
A. Dumas Père
"What do you mean, we aren't permitted inside the castle?"
"I – I'm terribly sorry, Regent Cid," the young guard looked like he really was, not to mention highly intimidated by the high ranked visitor,"But as long as we have not received the entrance clearance from the castle, I cannot led you pass."
The regent remained silent, while the knight-in-training shrunk with every second he was fixed under his stern glance.
"Well then," the white haired man said, releasing the rookie from his stare,"We shall have to wait. Sent a messenger to the Hilda-Garde VII as soon as the permission arrives."
"Of course, Regent Cid, my apologies for the inconvenience."
Cid Fable nodded and turned to rejoin his family, cloak fanning out behind him. As he reached them, he noticed a small piece of parchment in his hand that hadn't been there a moment prior. He scanned the surrounding inconspicuously from the corners of his vision, before discretely unfolding it.
"Hilda darling," he whispered so his own guard wouldn't overhear, as he guided his wife back towards the airship,"How about we meet with an old friend, while we wait?"
A slender finger ran over the book spines.
After severe coaxing from Blank, Garnet had finally agreed to leave the sibling's bedside for a short amount of time. She stretched her stiff joints and searched for a distraction from her constantly worrisome thoughts. A walk down to the kitchen for a cup of tea would have been nice, but due to recent events – including a handful of tries to break into the room from the outside – she had to settle for exploring her sister-in-law's room instead.
There wasn't much to focus on in the teen's room, which – in its highly unadorned interior – looked more like a functional workplace, than a bedroom. There were no paintings on the walls, no keepsakes or decoration on the dresser or desk.
The only things on display – if one could call it that – were Mikoto's bow on a low table in the corner, a basket of scrupulously labeled and corked potions on the desk, and the very books the young queen inspected at the moment.
Garnet knew a few of them, mostly presents from Dr. Tot to satisfy the blond's desire for knowledge and medical scripts Melissa had given her student for independent studies.
On the other end of the shelf, held by two bookends, was a small assembly of books that appeared untouched and out of place. They were presents from Zidane, mostly plays and fairy-tales.
She smiled, amused by his constant efforts to belittle his sister, who – in return – humored him by openly displaying them on the shelf, instead of stuffing them into a drawer. It was rather sweet, in a way.
Her eyes wandered threw the room once more and eventually landed on a new piece of furniture. It was a drawer cabinet with a glass case on top, framed with beautiful wood carvings. The inside displayed a selection of books, so otherworldly, that the brunet had no doubt where they had come from. She opened the small door carefully.
She didn't feel as guilty as she would have opening a drawer, but still hesitated shortly due to her invasion of the younger woman's privacy.
The books - about a dozen – all looked identical. Thin with dark gray covers, which held no title. The queen took one into her hands, surprised at its atlas-like heaviness. Curiously, she stepped towards the window, to use the last sunbeams to take a better look of her finding's inside. The cover's material was cold beneath her touch and didn't warm even after several minutes.
The pages were black with white writing. Fine lines formed one complex square character after another and they all had the same interval to each other for pages on end. Not once did Garnet come across a free line, picture, graphic or as much as a comma.
It was fascinating.
When the sun took the last bit of light away and an oil lamp was lit on the other side of the room, she placed the book back and resumed her seat next to Zidane, thinking about how much this room resembled its occupants personality. When she had first met Mikoto, she'd seemed unadorned and functional, but as time passed, she'd caught deeper insights at the girl's personality, that fascinated her on some level.
The brunet watched her groom's fingertips twitch, rest against his palm, before returning to a relaxed pause. Her hand slit into his, as she longed for his reassuring touch.
It had been hours ago that he'd 'left' to find out what was happening to his sister.
A warm stickiness on her fingertips triggered her white mage instincts, which began to heal the two cuts on the back of his hands before she had thought about it. With a clean handkerchief, she removed the excess blood from his skin.
As she did, she caught sight of Blank at the other side of the makeshift bed, as he absentmindedly stroked Mikoto's cheek to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
Garnet couldn't stand not knowing what was going on. It reminded her too much of the most painful times of her life.
Zidane's tail whipped aggressively against the floor, taking Mikoto's impassive one with him. After several minutes of rapid eye-movements underneath the closed eyelids, another onslaught of injuries began.
They had split the care of their charges some time ago. The White mage cared for the hero – who, according to protocol, received the most wounds – while the redhead tended to the girl.
Garnet knew him to be as professional a healer as to not provoke unnecessary skin contact during treatment, yet both agreed instantly – especially in respect of the maiden's status in two royal households -, that he would only take care of injuries within certain boundaries. Those were limited to her head and neck up to her collarbones, her legs from the knee downward, and the arms. On any other location Garnet would work her magic.
True to their expectations, Zidane received less, yet worse wounds than his sister. It were long, clean gashes to his arms and torso. Blank frowned at them, but said nothing, like on so many occasions since he'd met the blond.
Mikoto's injuries were of an entirely different nature. Her body was cluttered with superficial scraps, bruises and even an humanoid bite mark on her upper left arm, but nothing a few well placed drops of potion and antidote – the latter just in case – couldn't handle. But she'd probably have to put up with that black eye of hers for several days, probably more than that. He furrowed his brows as he tried to imagin her calm persona in a brawl.
His gaze followed the progress of the cleaned wounds on her arm until he noticed her once again tightly clenched fists. He took her small hand in his own and forced it to open by pushing his thumb underneath her fingers and then upwards, revealing four crimson crescents.
He checked her other hand, too, before he went to Zidane and did the same.
"Here." Garnet caught the broken in leather gloves in surprise, but understood as soon as he showed her the younger man's bloodied palms. Within a heart beat the small wounds closed up under her fingertips and the gloves protected the sore skin. When the procedure was repeated with Mikoto, Blank summarily removed his neckcloth and the bandana around his head to bandage her hands.
Now that his face was in full view – for the first time since she'd met him – Garnet saw what he had been hiding behind various accessories like belts and bandanas.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a black eye-patch covering his right eye completely, but it did little to conceal the two, pinky-wide scars surrounding the socket.
One was horizontal, placed just under the red brow, cutting it a little short on both ends. The other was vertical and its end intersected his cheekbone almost centrally. They were both quite old, she guest at far more than fifteenth years.
Garnet had seen this kind of mark before. It was a T-shaped branding once used to punish and denote thieves, that had been outlawed on the continent for almost two decades. Even before then, the only authorized location to place it had been the inside of the right wrist.
What kind of monster would apply it to an eye – especially a child's?
"I don't like the sound of that." Blank commented, effectively disrupting her thoughts.
Her shoulders squared as she listened intently to the ongoing sounds of clanking, dragging and shuffling in the hall just outside their door. Her companion had not commented on the earlier attempts to gain entrance, having him start now troubled her greatly.
He stood up in the fluid motion she had witnessed several Tantalus members perform, and folded his arm morosely in front of his chest.
"We better barricade the door, before they get a battering ram."
She nodded and went to help him do just that by pushing a heavy wardrobe in front of it.
"...in the end it didn't matter that we had snuck into the King's mansion. Zidane claimed – and I bet he still does – that they were hiding more than that in their house."
Garnet chuckled.
She'd heard this story before, but with a very different ending. In his version, her fiancé had been the successful thief, instead of the gagged little boy his brother claimed he'd been. In contrast to Zidane, the older Tantalus focused his storytelling on the group, less on individuals or himself.
She had found them to be opposites in many ways. While the first was reckless, impulsive and obstinate, the other was usually level-headed, calm and thorough. If Zidane was a gushing river, Blank was the deep lake it ran into.
Without warning, Zidane's whole body jerked violently.
He groaned painfully between clenched teeth and the terrible sound of grinding bones rang loudly in the air.
Garnet instantly leaned over him to search for the injury, when his hands shot up to grab his chest. He curled up into a static defensive position, disabling her to see more than the dark red running through his fingers.
She had to cast a sleep-spell, before his muscles relaxed enough for her to reach the wound, an aggravating obstacle, because it forced at least some part of her mind to focus on it, while she treated him.
A constantly widening red circle appeared on his white cotton shirt.
Her eyes teared up as she felt for the damage with her magic, which gave her a clear impression of its severity. The stab wound been dealt askew and was deeper than her middle-finger and twice as wide. The blade had fractured parts of the sternum on impact and only barely missed his heart, but pierced the underlying lung, which was now slowly filling with liquid.
She knew, she had to distance herself from all surrounding circumstances in order to focus on her healing abilities, but it had never been this hard. Of course she'd treated several serious wounds he'd received during their journey, but that had been before... before he'd become her whole life.
Garnet shook the thought off and concentrated clinically on the patient's medical needs.
Healing deep tissue with magic always involved a great risk, one she had to take this time.
While she worked, Blank pressed his hands tightly over the wound to minimize the blood-loss.
At first she guided her power through the wound's mouth and in a clear bow around his heart, because the foreign energy could unsettle the organ strong enough for it to loose its rhythm. She touched the lung carefully, calculating the entire whole before applying pressure to the edges to temporally stop the bleeding.
With painful slowness, she remerged the tissue together again, trying to match the severed blood vessels as accurately as possible in her current situation.
Years ago, she had realized, that it took her more strength to heal some people than others. Healing Eiko was almost as effortless as healing herself, which her body did automatically. Vivi was the next easiest. It seemed the more magic a being possessed, the easier it accepted the additional aid.
Curing Zidane drained her the most, and she knew Eiko felt the same. Due to his inability to use or store magic, he should have been not harder to treat than Steiner or Marcus for instant. But he – along with every other Genome she had cared for – seemed to somehow reject her abilities. Therefore she had to use twice the amount of energy to get half the result she'd get with a regular human.
She didn't dare to close more tissue than necessary to prevent closed up infection centers, and began to reduce her influence on his body to a supportive minimum.
Zidane reach consciousness so suddenly, that Garnet almost lost the grip on her magic. She'd been so wound up in her work, that she hadn't noticed she'd let go of the sleep-spell.
The hope that his awakening from the unconsciousness, he'd fallen into even under the influence of her spell, might be a good sign, vanished, as soon as she looked at his face. His overall features were a stoic mask of pain. His eyes were glassy and unfocused – staring right through her, while he fought against the fluid that sieged his lung to get another breath of air.
After another horribly rattling breath, his body went limp again.
Tears ran down her cheeks and mingled with her love's blood, as she struggled to maintain her support magic.
A warm hand rubbed over her shoulder blades.
"He's been through worse." Blank reassured her, even if he couldn't quite think of an occasion.
Instead, he focused on very slowly injecting a mud-colored liquid into the blond's blood system.
She watched the syringe sceptically. Noticing her glance, the redhead explained.
"That's Dead Peppers extract to numb the pain, and Gysahl Greens to stabilize the circulation."
The woman nodded, completely trusting his judgment.
When there was nothing left for them to do - for his live rested now in Zidane's own strength - Blank handed her a pyramid-shaped potion bottle, which she eyed curiously.
"Take some, it'll increase the regeneration of magic in your blood."
Garnet tilted her head to the side, but felt too exhausted to question him further.
The liquid tasted sweetish, not toe-nail-curling bitter like the commonly available remedies.
"What is that?" she pointed to the silver hipflask in his hand he'd taken a sip out every now and then during their imprisonment.
"Trice concentrated potion. One flask has the same effect as a good night's rest."
She pursed her lips in disapproval, but said nothing. She didn't feel like she had the right to lecture a grown man's ways.
He raised his left eyebrow – both actually, as his usually hidden right went up as well.
"You shouldn't..." she said quietly, not sure she wanted him to hear.
"Hm?"
"You shouldn't use it as a substitute, you might get addicted." she told the wood flooring.
When the room remained silent, she looked up. He had stood up – how had she not noticed? - and looked down at her with an amused smirk.
"You sound just like Ruby!" he accused playfully.
"Sadly, I've got to admit, that most potion makers are addicted to their own concoctions, but I know my limit. As you can tell," he placed the small tin box under her nose to emphasize his point,"this stuff is even less pleasant than the regular type. Some kind of safety measure, you could say."
Garnet nodded in acknowledgment.
Considering, that an unknown enemy had turned the entire castle staff into sleepwalking zombies, a liquid sleep-substitute was a smart idea.
A deafening sound resounded in the hall, followed by a wall-shaking impact on the barricaded door.
"Damn and blast... bloody..." he muttered under his breath, as the battering ram hit its mark again.
Hastily, he mentioned the queen to grab the other end of the blanket to drag the unconscious siblings toward the back-most corner, behind Mikoto's dressing screen
The ominous sound of bursting wood interrupted their efforts for only a split-second.
The humans held their breath, as something – someone – struggled his way inside. Blank watched the intruder warily from the gab between the folding screen's sections.
It was Steiner.
"Dirty rotten..." he muttered, clearly recognizing the staggered gait.
Quietly, he unsheathed his sword and slipped past the wooden partition, that hid Zidane and his family from view.
As the knight turned his closed eyes on him, Blank heard a faint, high pitched ringing sound. The unmistakeable feeling of thickening and hardening bones ran through his body like warm summer rain. He could even see the milky, multicolored energy crackle over his skin.
Defense magic.
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