time's teachings
[llyse]
Upside-down.
The little girl had loved it; her father had called it inverted gravity, whatever that meant, as he swung her around and around by the feet and her mother had yelled to put the child down before she gets hurt and stop saying that stupid senseless phrase.
The young woman hated it; it was out of control, and the man who had whirled her and the woman who had yelled were gone, the latter dead and the former gone cold stone statue to where he never spoke to her or came back to see her because she did so look like her mother. (unfortunately).
The world was topsy-turvy, spinning around, and when she closed her eyes and reopened them she almost expected to see the ceiling in the place of the floor. The Commander dead, killed by his wife. Almasy, the disgraced, returned, near-dead in the infirmary. His flunky in the Garden. Delyn gone somewhere to sulk. Ceres with nothing to do but think, and she did not like thinking.
She didn't understand Delyn. Her lover was strange these days, quiet and brooding and… well, very much like the accounts of Commander Leonhart back when he was young. Ceres liked Delyn the way he was, polite and rather shy with most people, hot-tempered and prone to fighting when he was with her. Now he kept going to out-of-the-way places to think things over, and he never told Ceres what he thought. It drove her up the wall. Well, right, his mother had gone mad and killed his father, but… she just didn't understand him.
The young woman glared at the gray-clad back in front of her, resentment simmering. Why the hell did she have to get stuck "escorting" Almasy's unpaid slave around the Garden? Ceres didn't growl, but she ran a hand up the smooth metal shaft of her spear. The weapon was quick and elegant, the way she liked it, with the foot-long metal handle and the muted-blue shaft that formed when she hit the activation button. The blade was more scythe than spear, but Ceres did not like calling her weapon a scythe. It reminded her too much of the Grim Reaper, and his intimate acquaintance with her family.
"You don't have to follow me if you don't want to." Fujin said mildly, glancing back at the seething girl.
"What, you can actually talk?" Ceres snapped. Fujin just smiled, continuing to walk, Ceres trailing behind like some obedient dog. Fujin took a circuitous route that seemed designed to irritate Ceres, before finally ending up before Delyn's old room. The older woman tapped on the door, did not wait for an answer, triggered the doorplate and strode right in. Ceres' brows drew into a worse frown than before. Why did she have access to Delyn's old rooms?
Ceres was only marginally pleased when Delyn leapt out of the recess beside the door and attempted to punch Fujin. She did nothing to help either fighter. Delyn could hold his own against most fighters, and the bitch could fight her own battles. Which she did, with breathtaking ease. Ceres assumed that a Garden-trained fighter ought to be good, but she had not expected Fujin to retain her old skills, and she had not paid attention when they had been fighting in the Training Center, having been concentrating on keeping herself alive. The woman whipped out her shuriken (Ceres knew worry) but she only used it to parry, and then to bind Delyn's fists before she kicked his feet out from under him.
Ceres started forward, but Fujin released Delyn before Ceres got a chance to whack her. Which was really too bad, because Ceres really felt like whacking her. Delyn picked himself off the floor, groaning.
"What is it?" the young man snarled, none too gracious.
"Stop sulking." Fujin said crisply. Ceres shot her a sideways glance. That was her phrase. Baiting Delyn was one of Ceres' pastimes, and it usually ended with them fighting. Sometimes she wondered if they weren't so much lovers as mutual punchbags.
Delyn eyed Fujin, with the same kind of look he usually gave Ceres when she said something that provoked but did not merit a physical reply. "You sound like Ceres," he said sullenly. Said girl switched her glare to him. "If you were Ceres, I'd hit you."
Fujin snorted. "Pick yourself up and go help Quistis."
"With what?"
"Wall reconstruction."
"What?"
"The broken wall. Training Center."
Muttering, Delyn headed off down the corridor. Obviously he saw no wisdom in refusing. Fujin after a glance around the room, closed the door and went in the opposite direction from Delyn. Ceres, bound by her orders, trailed her. Fujin's route looked familiar, and Ceres' suspicions were confirmed when the older woman unlocked one door out of the many lining the walls, walked through the living room of the apartment that Ceres shared with Delyn and strode into Ceres' room as if she owned the damn place. Ceres stopped in the doorway, hands on hips as she watched Almasy's flunky stroll through her room like she was window-shopping, assessing everything with a critical eye.
"What are you doing?"
Fujin muttered something to herself.
"What are you doing, dammit?"
Fujin tested the edge of the ornamental (but still-sharp) daggers hanging on the wall. Ceres was on the verge of jumping the lithe woman and pounding her to the ground when Fujin turned to face her, and spoke.
"Don't be helpless," the woman said, something in her remaining eye shining darkly. Ceres blinked, poleaxed.
"What?" she managed. Don't be helpless? One hand tightened on the shaft of her spear. She was not helpless.
Fujin sighed.
"You feel helpless," the short woman said matter-of-factly. "You're a warrior—" wave of a hand to encompass the room "—you think simple. Fight for those you love, support them. Keep them alive, no? You don't understand what Delyn's going through, and you feel there's nothing you can do to help him."
"I do not!" Damn if she was going to let some pale-haired bitch second-guess her.
Fujin laughed softly, a bitter sound. She turned to leave the room, holding out one hand to forestall Ceres as the younger woman started to follow. "Don't. Stay here. Think awhile." She smiled. "You don't need to understand him to help him. You just need to be there."
Perhaps she saw something on Ceres' face.
"Don't envy me my understanding," she said softly. "There's nothing to envy." Funny, how Fujin had never seemed small before. When Ceres had first seen her, she had been eclipsed by Seifer's sunny glory, but she still held strength in her own way. Now, however, the woman seemed frail and weakened, and in her eyes Ceres saw darkness, a tapestry of layered wounds. The kind of knowledge that Fujin held was the kind that time taught, tattooed into milk-white skin with ink the color of old blood.
When the woman had left, Ceres sat on the bed and stared at the wall. She did need to think.
