Zidane left not long afterwards, northbound for Alexandria. He planned to surprise his dame, and he was eager to leave. The man with him, the man who he claimed was his brother though, was in no shape to go anywhere. Blank was a good deal shorter than the silver-haired stranger and didn't have any spare clothing, so he bit his tongue at Zidane's quick departure and focused on making the stranger a decent set of clothes from spare sheets. Blank's talent with a needle was at the very least humble, but he managed to cobble together something that looked vaguely like a shirt and pants. He, for the umpteenth time since his departure, cursed his lack of survival skills.
The man didn't wake until almost a week after Zidane left. He was sleeping on Blank's bed because he had a recurring fever and Blank thought that the floor would be too drafty for the sick man. He woke slowly, and during the week he seemed to suffer from various different types of dreams, including impossibly terrible nightmares.
Blank was in the garden wrestling with a squash vine when the silver-haired man came out of the house wearing a sheet wrapped around his shoulders, his arms holding them in place. He looked vaguely lost, confused as he looked around.
Blank stood and the squash vine fell to the muddy ground. "You okay? You hungry, or something?"
The man suddenly turned to look directly at Blank, his blue eyes foggy. He ignored the questions and instead asked, "Where's Zidane?"
Blank sighed and spoke softly, his voice gentle, "He left. A week ago, for Alexandria. He left you here with me."
"Ah." The answer was simple, quiet, but the syllable held an unbearable amount of pain. The man looked around and they were quiet for a while, before the man softly uttered, "I'm Kuja."
"Yeah? I'm Blank. So…you're Zidane's brother?" Blank kneeled next to the squash and paled when he noticed he had broken one of the thick-skinned yellow fruits.
He swore mildly to himself and almost missed Kuja say, "He's a liar, isn't he? His promises are pretty until something more interesting comes along."
Blank went silent and turned to see the pale-haired man looking out at the distance. He pretended to be unconcerned as he twined the vine along the support frame made of branches. "He's not a liar, not really." Blank protested softly, supporting his argument, "He's just a guy with priorities. We're not his priorities, I guess."
"Did he make you pretty promises? Did he say that he wouldn't abandon you?" Kuja's voice was harsh, but still soft and lilting. "He promised me that he wouldn't leave me."
"Yeah. Me too." Blank admitted and got up. "You sure you're not hungry? I could make something," he looked down at his meager garden, with tomatoes, squash and cucumber in season, "like, maybe a small salad?"
Kuja turned and shook his head, and headed back into the house. "Not even my own brother wanted me."
Blank watched him go into the house and turned back to his garden, his belt thick over his eyes as he went back to tying up the squash vines.
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Time went by slowly, dragged in the thick, sunny, mist-free days of the coast. Kuja was quiet all the time, and fairly useless when it came to chores; more useless than Blank himself. The things that he did do well were outnumbered by the things that he did badly – he was a resourceful sort of man intellectually, but vaguely unaware of the world around him. While Blank was convinced that nine times out of ten he did not mean to let the food burn, the man was decidedly scatterbrained when it came to any sort of menial labor. He got frustrated easily because his body was not as strong as Blank's, without any sort of the same endurance levels. Blank felt this was a ridiculous notion. Kuja's talents obviously lay in magic, intellect and strategy, not in cooking and in the raising of gardens, and certainly not in sewing.
Blank found him otherwise good company most of the time. He would fall into sullen, quiet moods, or into highly egotistical airs, but mainly he had a dry, cynical outlook on life. And while Blank found him beautiful in an alien, almost surreal way that was not an aspect of life that he wanted to share with the cold man. He was content with the man's friendship, but found himself not desiring Zidane's older brother. For him, only Zidane would do.
Three months after Zidane had left, when the two were preparing for winter by smoking and preserving as much food as they could, a message arrived by a chocobo carrier presenting the invitation:
You are most cordially invited
To attend the gracious wedding of Her Royal Majesty
Garnet til Alexandros 17th
To
Sir Zidane Tribal
On the day of the Harvest Moon
At the Royal Palace of Alexandria
Blank and Kuja had spent the evening talking about if they should go or not, but had not been able to agree on any particular reason not to.
They spent the night in silent melancholy.