A/N: Still trying to figure out what happens next, sorry. :(
This takes place before Chapter 19
Interlude
There was nothing like dawn to shatter Rusl's middle-aged cynism. It was a time of magic, when the sun first mingles with the gloomy dark. A balanced answer to the sublime twilight.
He stood outside the cheap motel they'd rented, absorbing the growing warmth, reveling in the freshness of a new day.
He knelt down to begin his stretches. The damp grass, still chilled from the night, brushed against his bare knees. In the fire of his youth, he had thought such exercises were for people not strong enough to work out properly. Now, with his ruined leg, his ability to navigate the flow of stretches was a sign of his strength.
He moved slowly, feeling his muscles and tendons strain with every full breath. Heated both by the rising sun and his constant exertion, he soon achieved a light coat of sweat.
It was halfway through the Rising Swordsman pose that he noticed the girl watching him.
"You are welcome to join, if you are curious," he called to her.
Irene ambled over, not her usual posturing stride. She almost crept, hesitant.
"It's not the stretches you're curious about," he guessed.
"So, I'm here because I'm a dumb teenager, yeah?" she said, sliding into a reasonable approximation of the pose. "Aghreal- argh!" She tottered, then recovered, widening her stance a bit. "Aghreal has some stupid infatuation thing or loyalty bullshit or whatever. And Link's kinda this weirdo, which explains about everything he does.
"That is certainly..." Rusl searched for the right word. "... a summary."
"So what about you? You're like the wise adult person, right? Why are you here?"
A good question. He shifted poses while he thought, bringing his arm around in an arc over his head. His chest expanded fully, allowing his breath to deepen.
"Have you ever had a moment of faith, Irene?"
She scoffed. "The goddesses literally connected us all together from the other side-"
"No, that's not faith. It is not by faith that I know the ground is sturdy, that water is wet."
"So... what? Have I ever believed something without having a bloody good reason to believe it? Because that's like the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I was lab-partners with Groose once."
He eased out of the stretch, turned to look at her fully.
"No, that's not quite it either."
"Are you gonna tell me?" She almost snapped the question; Rusl could feel her impatience building. Had he been that abrasive as a youth? Probably. Still, he hadn't found the words he wanted.
"I'm sweaty," he said. "I'll have a shower and a think, and let you know at breakfast."
Her sigh was rather audible as he walked back to his room.
Irene contemplated the dingy motel's complementary breakfast. It probably wasn't poison, because then they would go out of business. But there wasn't much nutritional value she could see in a lumpy bran muffin with less color than dusk in winter. A couple apples and other assorted fruit lay out of the narrow counter. She eyed them, unsure how courageous she felt.
In the end, she settled on the muffin and a mug of coffee. The muffin was lumpy, and the coffee tasted burnt and dark.
"Good morning!" Flueckli chirped, floating into the lobby.
"Well there's an oxymoron," Irene muttered. The entire point of getting up early was to grab a chance to talk to Rusl before anyone else got up and life got annoying again.
"Excuse me," the fairy snapped. "I know you enjoy your jokes, but there's no need to be calling me a moron. I'll have you know I studied with..."
Ugh. Why couldn't people just shut up. People? Well, fairies. Whatever. She stirred her coffee while Flueckli ranted.
"...could at least have some basic manners. And-"
"I hear people moving around upstairs," Irene interrupted. "If you don't want to surprise the locals and make it into the paper, maybe hide before they come down for breakfast."
Flueckli drifted off with a high-pitched harumph. Finally. She sipped at her coffee and grimaced. Whoever said early mornings were peaceful obviously didn't have a fairy.
Rusl soon came into the dining area, dressed in his normal drab outfit. He grabbed a bowl of oatmeal and some milk, and sat down across from her.
"I passed Flueckli on my way over," he said. "She seems rather out-of-sorts this morning."
"I don't want to talk about it."
She watched him stir at his oatmeal for a few seconds. Then she got tired of waiting.
"My question?" she asked.
"Ah, right. Faith." He blew on a spoonful of goop, stuck it in his mouth. Did adults actively try to be insufferable, or was it just something you kinda grew into?
Rusl set the spoon back in the bowl and settled into his chair. "Have you ever stopped to wonder what sort of person decides to join an army in an epoch of peace? A lot of them, most of them maybe, were what you might call drifters. Couldn't figure out what to do with their lives, so they signed up for a steady paycheck.
"Then you have the tough guys. People who need to prove their strength, to themselves or to everyone else."
"And then you're in some third group," Irene said. She knew this pattern well.
"The fanatics," Rusl said nodding. "Convinced that evil would one day return, and that good Hylians must stand ready to face it."
"Well to be fair..." Irene gestured vaguely about them, as if to say What do you think we're doing here?
"Fair," Rusl agreed. "But still insane. And still powerful. My friends and I would wake before dawn for extra training. We found every one of our limits. We cared for our bodies as carefully as we would the Goddess Shrine, and kept our brains supple." He snorted. "But that's not the point."
Irene wondered how much longer he would reminisce before coming to said point.
"I remember waking up each morning, fired by the belief that all I had to do to build a better world, a safer world, was to cling to the army and become the best soldier I could be."
"So what happened?" she asked, hoping to hurry on the narrative.
"I opened my eyes. I saw the corruption, the apathy, the posturing around me. I saw that this could never be the force to stand against our ancient enemy."
He sipped his milk and seemed to grow in color, to sit straighter. It did that to some people, even more than coffee sometimes.
"Without purpose through faith, life loses color. Do you know Rauru's The Divine Scale?"
Irene snorted. "All I care about in school is chemistry. Medicine." What did it matter what some ancient sage said? Would reading old books stop people from dying at thirty?
"There's faith there too, is there not? I hear the steel in your tone; you aren't just studying for fun."
"Don't need faith. Science works. And before you start spouting relativistic nonsense like But how do you know that?, take a look at that beat up toaster, or the lights in the ceiling. It works."
There it was, his soft smile, like a friendly smirk. She fought to keep her breathing even. Did he realize how patronizing he was being? She almost regretted asking him for advice, but everything was so jumbled in her head, she had to talk to someone.
"You have faith that your problem has a solution. You have faith that you can be useful in the field."
She grunted.
"Tell me, how much do you study?"
"Don't need to," she said.
He looked at her.
"Fine. Fifteen, twenty hours a week? But not like the dumb school stuff."
"That is a large sacrifice," he said. "If faith does not motivate this, then what? Don't tell me work that hard because it's fun."
"Look, this isn't about me. Why are you here? Why are you throwing your life away and risking everything?"
"On that day, when Link drew the sword, we heard the goddesses speak. Losing my faith was as hard as losing my love. But now..." He faltered.
"They gave you something to believe in."
"Link gave me something to believe in."
Irene looked down. Then, softly: "So I'm not crazy for feeling this way too?"
He patted her clasped hands. His fingers were rough.
"Irene, I'm just an old fool who jumped too early and too often. You don't need me to find your conclusions."
Rusl picked up his tray of half-eaten breakfast and sauntered off with that half-limp of his.
"And since when are you an idealist?" she asked herself. In any case, she was too far in to turn back. If she drove to her death, she would do it with her defiant flare.
She could hardly be Irene otherwise.
