The forest is oddly silent as they pick their way through, back to what she supposes is this – this – squad? Unit? Ragtag group of remnants of other units? – these men's base camp. The Captain goes on ahead and Shera alternates between watching him and watching where she's going. These boots fit worse than the footman's, and she can feel the stickiness of blood in her socks. But she doesn't complain, because complaining will get her nowhere, even if every step feels like her boots are filled with knives. It's – the Captain's armour is dirty, which she should have expected, but the pearlescence of it still shines through the dirt, blue shimmering and shining as it catches moonlight in the trees. Once, he turns back to make sure the others are still following, and the dragon's eyes in his visor flash red, making her flinch. If he notices, he doesn't say anything, just carries on walking.
She doesn't understand why she wasn't aware the dragoons had been called in. For centuries, they'd refused to fight in any war, any skirmish, any disagreement. They were a true neutral force, refusing to engage with anybody beyond the barest of necessities. An envoy from all of the kingdoms had been at her birth, so she was told, but Deist hadn't sent even one of their civilians. That there's a dragoon here, now.
She studies the lines of his armour, the straightness of his back, the easy stride he walks with, so graceful and confident, but so tense, so ready to move. The way he holds his spear, point to the ground and fingers wrapped in a way that he can move at speed. The little details had always interested her more than the large, and she supposes that is what gets her into these situations. Thinking of the little things instead of the grand plan.
As they walk, men make a vague attempt at conversation, in so much as introductions can be considered conversation.
'My name's John,' the large man says, lumbering along beside her, though his feet make very little noise on the bark beneath them. 'And that there's Livas, and the Captain is Cid.'
'Fuck off with this shit,' Cid calls over his shoulder, without turning back. Shera watches the roll of his shoulders, the scale of his armour flickering in the moonlight.
'Ignore him,' Livas says, jovial enough, 'he's been sour for days.'
'Smells it, too,' John adds, in the kind of tone Shera suspects is meant to elicit a response.
She can almost hear Cid open his mouth, just from the way his step almost falters, but he ignores the jibe and carries on.
'I don't understand,' Livas says, scratching at his jaw as he climbs over a fallen log and glances back at her. 'The Princess of Midgar is just – here, in the fucking depths of Wutai, looking to – to what?'
'Leave it alone,' Cid barks, and Livas spares the Captain a glance before doing as bid.
Shera stares at her toecaps, dusty and scarred, doesn't answer.
The camp is invisible until they break the treeline, and then there's a fire and a tent, and someone's pulled some logs around to make seats. She hesitates at the edge of the circle of light as the three men stomp and clatter their way to the fire. There's another man sat there, a tall, thin fellow with hair that shines gold in the firelight, freckles standing bright against his nose and cheeks. He's wearing the same armour that Shera is, the standard boots and trousers and breastplate and pauldrons of the infantry. He looks up at their arrival, brightens.
'There you are!' he says, 'I was beginning to think something had happened. You left in such a – you found another trooper?'
Cid yanks his helmet off again, jabs his spear into the dirt and sets the helmet atop it, looks back at her with a scoff. Shera can hardly bear to look at him, instead looks at the helmet, hanging lopsided, its fins shining in the firelight and dragon's eyes blazing, staring into her without hesitation. She swallows, rips her gaze away to stare at the floor.
A dragoon. Here.
'Did one better,' he snorts, 'found the fucking Princess.'
Shera, who had put the helmet back on her head at John's suggestion, holds it tight by the straps.
Livas glances back at her as he takes a seat by the fire, holds his hands out to it. 'Yeah, she was about to walk into an enemy encampment. We have to thank her for finding them, they were too close to us. Would have come across us in the night, no doubt.'
The Captain rifles through a bag and pulls out a cigarette and a pack of matches, lights it and jabs it in his mouth.
'Fucking miracle she didn't get herself killed sooner,' he says, waves the match at her to extinguish it before tossing it aside.
John turns back, realises she's still at the edge of the camp, and gestures at her.
'Come on, sit down,' he says, gentle and with a smile. 'Despite the Captain's language, I promise we don't bite.'
The Captain makes a noise in the back of his throat and stomps off to the other side of the tent. Livas snorts and leans forward to fiddle with a pot on the edge of the stove.
Shera watches them for a moment, and then approaches, slow, ready to run. She's not sure she'd outrun any of them, given how quickly they'd arrived and dispatched the enemy. She scans her options and chooses to sit next to John. Getting off her feet feels good, even if the log is hard, and she can't help the sigh as she takes the helmet off and cradles it in her lap. Though she knows she must look a state, having not brushed her hair in nearly a week, and having not washed neither it nor anything more than her face and hands in just as long, she feels more than hears the intake of breath from the freckled man on the other side of the fire.
She supposes, though she resolves to ignore it, that it isn't every day one meets the Princess. Being around people while in disguise had been easy enough, but now she's been found out, again, and she isn't sure how she should act. She is at their mercy, their kindness. They are under oath to serve her, for the most part, she supposes, excepting the Captain and Livas' whims, but nobody knows she is here, and she suspects they would never tell if something bad were to happen to her.
Not that she gets the feeling, in her gut, that something bad would happen to her here. Even for all the Captain's foul language and fouler manner, his eyes scan the treeline.
'You must have been travelling hard,' John says, 'to reach Wutai as quickly as you did. It's not even been a week.'
She picks at her nails, stares into her lap.
'I,' she starts, and then stops, bites her lip to stop the wobble.
'You're tired,' Livas offers, almost as a question.
She nods.
'Not used to hard graft,' the Captain snorts from some feet away.
He stamps out his cigarette and comes stomping back to sit on the other side of the fire. Without his helmet, he's not as intimidating, but the fire sends sparks through his eyes, and Shera watches him through the flames. There's an age to his face not shown in lines or creases, just dark circles and unshaven jaw and a weight on his shoulders. She wonders how young he'd been when he first arrived on the battlefield, how many years it has taken from him. He cannot be much older than her, if he's older at all. There is still youth in his eyes, blue as the sky when the light catches them just right, but they're tired, aged by the things he's seen. Shera thinks of the fire at Gongaga and shivers.
'It's not that,' she says, when she realises he's waiting for an answer, and he cocks his head, eyebrow raised.
'No?' he asks, challenging, arrogant. She's always hated arrogance in a man. Rufus was the worst culprit of it and had been all of her life. 'So you regularly trek cross-country dressed in a dead soldier's uniform?'
She opens her mouth but can't argue. She doesn't. The journey has been hard, and she's been very unprepared for it.
The Captain snorts and folds his arms.
'What were you thinking?' he asks, 'more to the point – were you even thinking? Five million they've got on that pretty little head of yours, and if we've heard about it, so has every other motherfucker in a fifty mile radius.'
She glances up to find his eyes on her, hot and hard, and she flinches. Resists the urge to smooth her hair.
'I had to try,' she says, 'I had to – so many people are dead.'
'So why now?' he asks, 'it's been a fucking decade, and you've sat on your arse doing fuck all to help us.'
'Cid, that's not fair,' John says, and the Captain snorts, waves him off.
'It's perfectly fair. How am I being unfair? Fuck her and fuck her family.'
Shera opens her mouth. What comes out is not a rebuttal of her inaction, but a choked sob. One turns into two into five, and before she knows it, she's wailing into her hands.
John rubs her back. Cid remains unmoved, except for a twist of his eyebrows, a twitch of his mouth.
'That was so unnecessary,' the freckled man says, but backs down when Cid turns to glare at him.
They wait her out, until the ugly sobs peter out into hiccups and then sniffles.
'Have you eaten?' Livas asks, when she's raised her head, rubbing her eyes on her sleeve.
Her stomach gurgles.
'No,' she admits, 'not since – not since I was at Gongaga.'
'Gongaga?' the freckled man asks. 'Isak, by the way, it's an honour to meet you, Your Highness.'
Isak. He smiles at her, nicely, softly. Something kind in his eyes. Shera finds herself smiling back.
'Isak,' she echoes with a nod. 'I went to Gongaga, when I left the palace. Through Junon. I walked around the coast to here.'
'We heard Gongaga was burnt to the ground, a few days ago. Odd you were there,' Cid says, his chin lifting.
Perhaps it is his way, to challenge her every action, or, more likely, inaction.
Though she feels a scream bubbling in her chest, Shera swallows the taste of bile. 'I was there when it burnt.'
Her voice wavers, and she swallows again to steady it.
John touches her wrist; her palm is turned up.
'That how you got this?'
She closes her hand, though the blisters won't let her close it all the way, and she turns it over. She rubs her nose with her other hand, wishes she had a handkerchief.
'Yes.'
Cid eyes her. She stares back, feels trapped, but keeps her shoulders straight.
'Well!' Livas exclaims, too loud. 'I think I'd better get another plate!'
'She can use mine,' Cid grunts, gets to his feet. 'I'm not hungry.'
He yanks his helmet back on and though he's visibly stomping, his feet make no noise as he heads into the treeline.
'Ignore him,' Livas snorts, and rounds the fire to hand her a plate of something hot and vaguely stew-looking. Though she isn't sure what it contains, it's hot, and edible-looking, and they haven't had time to devise a plan to poison her.
Shera accepts the plate, and the spoon, and thanks him quietly.
They eat in silence. It's good food, and she finds that she's ravenous, clears the plate in a far shorter time than manners dictate she should, which makes John chuckle. She glances up and finds Isak watching her from under his lashes, as if he doesn't want her to know. But they lock eyes, and she feels something like heat in her cheeks.
She wipes her mouth with her sleeve, and feels her eyelids drag.
'You need to sleep,' John says, softly. 'Use my bedroll, I'll take first watch. It's the second on the left.'
She blinks at him, but he takes the plate and her helmet, and nods his head at the tent.
'Sleep, Princess,' he says, 'we won't move out until the morning. You'll be safe here.'
She studies him, and then nods, gets to her feet and goes to the tent.
A noise outside wakes her, the snap of a twig. She startles half-upright, and a hand catches her arm, then another slams over her mouth when she goes to scream.
'It's just me,' Cid whispers, his eyes bright in the almost-not-there light inside the tent. She stares at them staring at her, and she nods against his hand. 'Livas is changing the watch.'
Slowly, he peels his hands away, and she lies back down. He follows suit. She becomes dimly aware of heat against her back and turns her head to find Isak asleep. In the shadows of the tent, she can just about see that he's facing her, his hands in the space between them, but not touching her. He looks peaceful, she thinks, deeply asleep. She turns back to find Cid watching her.
There's heat in his gaze. She shivers.
'Are you cold?' he whispers, and she sniffles a little; the cold of being caught in the rain has not quite left her.
'A little,' she whispers back.
He grunts and then she hears movement, the shuffle of fabric, and something heavy settles over her. It's not big, but it has weight, warmth. A coat, she supposes, finds it with her fingertips and pulls it up towards her nose. It smells of cigarettes, and though she doesn't have any association with the smell, she breathes it in. It offers no comfort.
'Thank you,' she breathes, and Cid grunts again.
They lie in silence for a few moments. Shera wonders if he can see her, if he can see the way she's watching him.
'Close your eyes,' he breathes after a minute. 'You won't sleep if you don't.'
She does as she's told and closes her eyes. The ground beneath her is hard, and the bedroll not particularly thick, but it's more than the dirt, which is all she'd had for the last few nights. She's grateful for it.
'Thank you,' she whispers, and Cid hums, low in his throat.
'You're welcome,' he whispers back, and that's the end of that.
She wakes to the sound of shuffling outside, and light pouring in through the open flap at the end of the tent. She's alone now, the bedrolls gone. She's still curled beneath Cid's coat, barely more than a quilted jacket; she supposes it's what he wears beneath his armour to stop it rubbing. It's a deep azure, worn white at the creases, and she runs her fingers across it. It feels sharp against the blisters on her palm, and she presses her other thumb into her skin, centres the pain.
Shuffling to her feet and then outside, she finds the men outside, looking casual enough for the battered tin mugs in their hands, but all of their eyes snap to her as she straightens.
'Good morning, Princess!' Isak says, with an extraordinary brightness that takes her aback.
She feels stiff, sore, filthy. He looks at her as though she is something precious, which makes her, against her conscious will, smooth her hands over her hair, feel the snags in it even as she pushes it flat to her scalp.
'Good morning,' she says, and looks for her boots, left by the tent.
'Ah,' Isak yelps, and she flinches away as he bounds over. 'I thought – I saw the blood in them this morning, and it looked fresh, I thought – here.'
He sets his mug down and turns to one of the packs by the fire, rifling through it, pulling out a bunched-up pair of socks.
'They're clean, I promise,' he says, and then flushes in his ears. 'And they're probably too big, but I thought. If you folded them down to where it rubs. It might be a bit more protection!'
'Planet forbid the Princess get sore feet,' Cid snorts from behind his mug, before tossing the last dregs into the bushes. 'There's enough tea in the pot for you, Your Highness.'
He says it with a level of sarcasm she doesn't think she deserves, and she screws her mouth up tight, trying to think of a rebuttal, but the moment passes too quickly. There had been a hint of kindness in him last night, a warmth in his hands, in his jacket, but it seems to be gone this morning.
'I suggest you drink quickly; we'll want to make a move soon.'
'Where are we going?' Shera asks, and picks her way across the dirt to get to the pot and the empty mug there. She doesn't want to ask why they have a spare mug, or indeed, by Livas' suggestion last night, a spare plate.
'We?' Cid scoffs. 'We aren't going anywhere. You're fucking off out of my sight, and we're continuing to survive before you get us all killed.'
At this, John and Livas turn to him. Isak is still holding the socks, looks a little lost. Shera pours herself a cup of heavily steeped tea. It's far too over-brewed, and bitter, but it's hot, and warms her blood, so she downs it as fast as she dares.
'Cid,' John says, 'we can't leave her. Not now.'
'She isn't my concern,' Cid shrugs, 'I don't give a shit about her. She ain't my princess, and she ain't my problem. I'm here to do a fucking job, and she's not it.'
'She is my princess,' John says, 'and if we've heard about the bounty, then so has everyone else. You want to leave her out here on her own? She'll be dead in a day.'
'Good!' Cid crows, turns away from them to pad to where his armour sits, dirtier in the sunlight.
She only now, really, becomes aware that he's half-dressed, and she can't help but stare as she watches him pull his armour back on, the intricacies of the buckles and straps and clasps holding it about him almost lost on her. It fits him like a second skin, and the line of his back as he stretches to pull the jacket on could have been carved by one of the royal artists. As he shrugs his breastplate into place, levering the buckle at his ribs shut, she realises she's still clasping the mug, and the heat of the tin has seeped into her palm.
Yelping, she drops it. Cid whirls back to face her, hand out as if to – to – she's not sure what. Snatch an enemy, or her, or just to keep his balance.
'Sorry,' she whispers, and forces her hand closed, despite the blood dripping from it. 'Sorry. The mug was a little hotter than I thought.'
The Captain eyes her for a moment, and doesn't look quite so intimidating in daylight, without his helmet, still on the spear and hanging lopsided. He looks tired, as though he hasn't slept. A cigarette hangs from his mouth, and he could be any man in the city, when she'd been able to see it.
'You're bleeding,' he says, and she forces her hand shut tighter, though it hurts to do so.
'It's nothing,' she assures him, and something in his eyes, in his face, changes. She can't quite name the expression, can't quite name what the look in his eyes is, but she knows it, in her gut. The intensity of it, the heat that burns behind the softness at the corner of his mouth, it coils low in her gut, dries out her mouth.
Livas scoffs and rounds the remnants of the fire to her. 'Let me see it,' he says, pulling her gaze from the Captain, who turns back to his armour, 'it'll do you no good to get an infection and lose it.'
His hands are warm and dry, calluses on his palms as he takes her hand and peels it open. He tuts.
'Ripped half the skin off,' he says, more to John than anyone else, 'can I get a potion and a bandage?'
'Fucking idiot,' she hears Cid say, but she swallows thickly, does her best to ignore him.
She watches Livas apply the potion and wrap the bandage, his fingertips soft even as he pulls it tight to her palm, and listens to Cid clattering about settling his armour into place.
'Cid,' John says, 'we have to take her with us. It's too dangerous here.'
'She can't fight,' Cid says, and Shera has to agree with him there.
'Then we take her to safer territory,' John tells him, and Cid purses his lips, takes a deep drag of the cigarette, and Shera hears the paper sizzle even from this distance. 'Back across the border, to where she'll be safer, and then if you like, we'll leave her there. Someone can pick her up, claim the five million.'
'I'm not a lost puppy!' she exclaims, so loudly that Livas, tying the knot of the bandage, flinches. 'I made it this far! I'm not going to – to – to go back, when I am on the doorstep of ending the war!'
At this Cid laughs, flicks the cigarette away and chucks her helmet at her. She fumbles to catch it, and it nearly knocks her off her feet.
'Then get dressed, find a sword, and see how long you last,' he tells her. 'We all thought we were on the doorstep of ending the war, Princess. We all thought that.'
She licks her lips, swallows. Stares at him. He watches her for a moment, his eyes hot and cold at once, and then he turns, scoops his helmet off the end of his spear and jams it on his head.
'If we leave her alone, she's going to get herself killed.' This, he says to John. 'Where is going to be safe for her?'
'It's a way,' John says, after a moment's consideration, 'but if we take her to my farm, she'll be close enough to Midgar there, and she'll be safe. Among her own people.'
'I am right here,' she tells them. 'And I am neither a puppy to be returned nor a commodity to be sold.'
'You're a pain in my arse,' Cid replies, whip-quick. 'But he's right. Kalm will be the safest place to leave you. The war hasn't really affected that area yet by the newcomers, and they're all such adoring fans. No doubt everyone and their fucking mother is on the lookout for you now, and most of them with bad intentions. At least in Kalm, they'll be more inclined to kindness.' He rubs a hand over his mouth. 'Fuck sake.'
'I'm not going to Kalm,' she says.
'Yes, you fucking well are.'
For a moment, she doesn't say anything, stares at the finger he's got pointed at her. Her mother had said, the night before she left to take her father to Mideel, back to her family home, where he might find respite, she'd said to become hard, to become strong. To let her heart be forged like steel. Her instinct is to cow, to let Cid drag her to Kalm and let her be returned to the palace, where she will never see the light of day again. The Regent will not let her out of his sight again, and she – she will never be able to do anything alone. She will never be able to find a way to end the war.
'No!' It comes out of her loud, and hard, and with the definite snap of anger. 'You – you listen to me, Sir, and you listen to me now. I am not going to Kalm, and I am not returning to the palace. I – I.' She falters, her breath hard in her chest, hot and burning as if full of smoke. 'I thought perhaps I could save lives, help get soldiers home. I saw the graves at Gongaga, their list of war dead, and Aer – they thought it was Wutai. That the war had reached that far inland. I watched that village burn and I swore that I would not stop until I saw the war ended. If that means I have to go to the Emperor alone, then I will do that. But I am not going to Kalm and I am not being returned to the palace for five million or not! I can – I will offer you ten to take me to the Emperor!'
Cid waits to see if she's finished, and then offers her a few paltry claps.
'Incredible,' he says, 'you're just as fucking stupid as you look. You don't understand at all, do you? I am trying to save your fucking life. This war is not going to end. Not by you, and not by some grand idea of talking to the fucking Emperor.' He huffs a laugh through his nose. 'I am the last dragoon left.'
He could have slapped her, and she'd have had more breath left in her chest than she does.
As it is, she can barely gasp out, 'what?'
The dragoons are – were! – the best of the best. They were considered, for centuries, the last resort. You only summoned dragoons to war when you wanted it ended within a week. That they've been killed, that this man stood before her, that he's the only one left –
'All of the other dragoons are gone. Wutai is – there's a saying now, a joke. Once you get onto Wutai soil, you don't get off it. You never leave.'
'That doesn't sound very funny.'
'It's not a joke you laugh at,' Livas says, and she glances at him. He looks tired, harrowed. He has seen people die. 'But it doesn't make it any less true. The war's a fucking joke.'
'If we stay here,' John says, soft, placating, 'you're going to die. Last night we were very lucky, but I can't guarantee that we'll be so lucky again. Reward or not, we have to get you back to safety. This isn't about whether you want to stop the war or not, it's about not plunging Midgar into a civil war on top of everything else.'
'I was being held prisoner in the palace,' Shera offers then, and flops to sit on the log, the helmet cradled in her lap. 'Ever since the war started, I was accompanied everywhere, but since my father took ill, and the Regent took over, I – I wasn't allowed to even enter the gardens. I was kept a prisoner, so that I couldn't – the war is wrong. It should never have been started. And I've been so powerless this whole time. But now that I'm here, I can do something.'
Though she can't see his eyes, she sees Cid's jaw work, his mouth twist. He heaves a sigh, rubs both hands along the bristle of his jaws.
'Princess,' he says, sounds defeated, 'I don't know how to make you understand. The war is not going to end because you think you can – what? March up to the Emperor and tell him to stop it? We haven't even seen the capital, and I've been here nearly ten fucking years. We haven't made any progress in the last five. Fuck, at this point, we're just trying to stay alive. It's a war of attrition, and it's one Midgar is going to lose.'
Shera's lip wobbles, but she closes her eyes, breathes, straightens her shoulders. Meets the dragon's eyes in the visor, knows Cid's are behind them.
'You can't lose if you stop fighting.'
'That's called surrender,' Cid says, 'and it's losing.'
'No, it's a peace treaty, and one I can broker.'
'For fuck's sake!' It comes loud, and angry, a rumble of thunder in her ribcage.
She flinches back, can't move quickly enough to stop him storming across the space between them and grabbing the front of her jerkin, lifting her to her feet. She's only a few inches shorter than him, but the way he lifts her puts her on the tips of her toes and nose to nose with him. Though she can't see his eyes behind the opaque eyes of the dragon, she can feel his gaze on her. Her blood thrums hot in her veins.
'I've tried to be – polite, about it. Because I don't think you quite fucking understand what is happening. This war is not going to fucking end, whether you are here or not. If you stay out here, you will be killed by Wutai troops before you get anywhere near the Emperor – if something else doesn't get you first! – which will set off a chain reaction of absolute fucking bullshit that will get everyone in this sack of shit military killed. If we don't take you to Kalm, someone else is going to find you, and they are not going to be as kind to you as us.'
She's finding it hard to breathe, the grip on her jerkin pulling it tight at her neck, his knuckles digging into the base of her throat. She clutches at his wrist, but the grip doesn't loosen.
'Do I need to explain what they will do to you, Princess?' His voice drops an octave, two, becomes quiet, and she tries to pry his fingers open, but can't get purchase. 'Do I need to tell you what they will do to a pretty young woman they discover all alone and with nothing to defend herself with? Your bounty is for your safe return, but there's nothing about the state you need to be in. I'm sure the Regent would love to have a bastard child to raise as his next idiot king. Just think of the control he'd have!'
She chokes, swallows the bile welling in her throat. She hadn't really thought of it, of course she hadn't. She hadn't thought about what kind of villains there were in the world, because why would she! She was here to stop the war, everything else hadn't mattered! If something bad happened to her on the way, that was – that was just what happened!
'Cid, let her go,' John says, his voice too hard, too loud.
Cid drops her, and she crumples at his feet, clutches at her chest. She was never in danger of breathlessness, she realises. Her lungs aren't hurting, her heartbeat is panicked, not endangered. She's not stupid, no matter what he thinks of her.
'The palace isn't safe for me,' she chokes.
'Better a prisoner in your own home than dead in a foreign land,' Cid replies, and his tone makes her breath stutter, her eyes well.
He knows that feeling, knows what it is to be trapped in your home, to see your four walls as a cage.
A moment passes, and then he drops to his haunches, extends a soft hand for her to take. She swats it away, moves to sit up on her own. He doesn't say anything to it, instead just waits until she looks at him.
'We will take you to Kalm,' he says, soft, an apology.
'I need to stop the war,' she says, and he shakes his head.
'You can't.'
Something about the way he says it, the softness in his tone, the sadness in the downturn of his mouth, it cracks in her chest and tears her apart from the inside out. She doesn't say anything, though her mouth opens and closes a few times. She sucks her lips into her mouth, clamps them between her teeth, screws her eyes shut. A sob tries to break free, but she swallows it.
She hears him rise, and for a moment, there's stillness. Then a shift in the air as he steps away.
'Isak,' he says, 'sort out those socks or whatever the fuck you're doing, and we'll pull the tent down. Get her dressed, and then we'll move.'
She'd slept in the uniform, but John had had to help her out of the breastplate and pauldrons. With her hand bandaged and blood already seeping through it, she's going to need help getting into it again. She doesn't say anything as Isak approaches, and he hesitates before putting the socks on her feet, folding them down around the back of her ankle, mumbling something about how he hopes it stops her boots rubbing. She nods blankly at him, and he flushes, places the boots down in front of her. She gets into them, and Isak helps her lace them before helping her into the breastplate, his ears and cheeks burning at having to touch the royal body. If she had the energy left, she'd think it sweet. The only people to touch her were her maids.
A small part of her misses the palace, just for the maids. She misses daily baths, and clothes that fit, and the down in her pillows. She misses the way the maids would brush her hair, so gently that she almost couldn't feel it. She missed being able to read books. She misses her glasses, which she didn't need, but made things so much easier. She misses three square meals a day, even if she had to eat with the Regent and his son. She misses so many things. But she'd made the right choice, the only choice. She regrets that she wasn't able to do anything more than she did. All she's done is destroyed a village and caused trouble for the Captain.
'Thank you,' she says, as he finishes tightening the buckles at her ribs.
'It'll take us a week or more to get to Kalm,' Livas is saying, quiet, as if he doesn't want her to hear, when she finally gets her attention elsewhere. 'Are you going to be able to keep your temper for that long? You're a fucking savage.'
Cid, yanking at a pole to get it out of the ground, grunts.
'Fuck off,' he snaps, 'she had to be told.'
For a moment, they say nothing. Shera shuffles in her armour, bends over to adjust her boots. Her feet feel odd in the extra pair of socks, too thick and bulky around her ankles, but she hasn't the heart to take them off.
'If I hurt her, I'll apologise,' Cid says then, almost under his breath. 'But not for telling her the truth.'
She looks at her hands, at the blood under her nails and the bandage already red and yellow with pus, and she takes a breath.
What's done is done.
'Do you need any help?' she asks, and Cid jumps.
'No,' he says, 'don't worry yourself. Focus on staying alive.'
Livas clears his throat, and Cid hesitates, steps away from the tent, which collapses as soon as he lets go of the pole. John, on the other side of the tent, lets out a string of curses that would make a fisherman's wife blush. Isak scurries around to help him get out of the mess.
'Princess,' Cid says.
'Shera,' she corrects. 'Addressing me by title is probably – going to draw attention to me. At least like this, I can be one of you.'
She plucks at the uniform, which, now that she's looking at it in proper sunlight, instead of the shade of the forest, has a hideous bloodstain along the ribs, and she realises the man that had worn it before her is probably dead.
Cid almost laughs. His lips twitch into something resembling a smile.
'I – I didn't hurt you?' he asks, and she tilts her head to look at his face, though she can't see his eyes beneath the helmet.
She shakes her head. 'No, Captain. I'm tougher than I look. Just frightened me, is all.'
She picks at her nails, drops her gaze to their feet before bringing it back up.
'I'm sorry,' she says.
'Fuck are you apologising for?' he asks, incredulous.
'You – your brothers-in-arms. The other dragoons. I – though I didn't know. It's my fault. I should have – done something sooner. Tried to stop the Regent.'
Cid wipes the corner of his mouth with a thumb.
'No,' he says, and he doesn't scuff his toes, but he looks like he wants to. 'No, that's not – you've got a lot to blame yourself for, but that's not one. We knew we were walking into shit, but we didn't know how bad it was going to be. Every soldier knows the next battle could be their last. We accept that fate the moment we put on armour and take up a weapon.'
She purses her lips, twists her fingers.
'Even so,' she says.
'Listen,' he says, and his hand lifts for half a second, like he's about touch her, then he thinks better of it, and drops it again. 'Just keep the helmet on your head, try and stay in front of whoever's at the back, and don't open your mouth to anyone except us.'
She opens her mouth, and then closes it. Opens it again, takes a breath. She heaves a sigh, looks back at their feet. The toes of his boots are sharp, pointed, articulated to allow him to move without damaging the integrity of the protection. She wonders how sharp they are.
'Why are you helping me?' she asks.
Even though he's not, not really. Helping her would be getting her to the Emperor, not the Regent.
For a moment, he doesn't say anything, just watches her from behind his visor. She wishes she had hers to hide her eyes in turn. She's never been good at hiding her feelings, and she feels exposed.
'Captain,' John calls, and he whirls. 'We're all done here, you wanna lead the way?'
He looks back at Shera and then nods. 'We'll go back to the crossing, wait until dark, get back onto the mainland and go from there.'
Without waiting for a response, he starts walking, and Shera hurries to follow him, heeding what he said about staying in front of the back of the party.