Author's note: That hit an R rating awfully fast. Nothing explicit.
--
There are four hours left when Nooj's glower has run out of steam and turned to disinterest over the deployment orders. The folder is tossed upon a side table. I will collect it later and tuck the papers that had slid out back into order, hiding the exposure of our names and heights and Paine's weight back into their manila shield.
Gippal has gone to sleep. This is because our Deathseeker told him repeatedly to be silent, starting first at clipped commands and then escalating to open threats involving demonstration of his cane.
In revenge, Gippal is snoring.
The Al Bhed is not deliberately trying to get on our nerves, I think. He's not even that annoying except when even I need him to be quiet so I can listen. By and large, though, Gippal is the most talkative of our group and the fact that the rest of us tend to silence must seem like we're as hostile to him as anyone else.
I don't want Gippal to withdraw from the rest of us. At times, rare at first but more common now, the Al Bhed has started breaking off when he talks and simply dropping the conversation. Without him to rally it along, it dies. Then we sit in silence while the hum of Paine's machina whines away the empty sphere hours, recording the truth of nothing happening at all.
I've noticed I've been speaking more around him to compensate. As of yet, I don't think it's a bad thing.
It could be said that Nooj is the worst of us all when it comes to getting along with Gippal. They didn't start on a good note. In this bleak environment owned by Bevelle, it's too easy to see prejudice instead of natural aloofness. Gippal's tried to brush away the catcalls of the other teams in exercise because certain of their members always seek him out quietly, bringing their equipment over to ask about what they're afraid is broken. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but Gippal sits down with them all in the same way, crosslegged on the sands with the knees wide and ankles overlapping. Then he talks them through it. Gippal's more patient than most people give him credit for, at least when it comes to machina.
I knew when it started, could hear Gippal beginning on a lecture of how to hold the machina just right to keep the kickback from leaving your hand an aching mess by the end of the day. So did Nooj. But the Deathseeker's eyes when he glanced back to me said he didn't disapprove; both of us pretended instead like we hadn't heard a thing. Especially not the crack of a trigger being fired while the muzzle was buried against the sand, the swearing of both Gippal and the other Squad trainee as they picked themselves up and promptly tried to attach blame to one other for the accident. When that happened less than fifty feet behind us, Nooj leaned forward to the campfire and asked if I wanted another helping of stew.
Despite myself, I like Nooj.
He also manages to get Gippal to shut up when I need to concentrate. That would be now. Paine has exited our room. Bunking in the cheap barracks has been funded by Yevon, which has customarily cared quite little for our personal wishes but has outdone itself this time in giving one bed with a broken leg, one cot, and half a set of bedding to a team of four. Modesty here is as much of a drawback as food preferences. The rations doled out to Crusaders on the field invariably taste like fish; rooms are expensive, so if you don't like hearing the rhythm of other sleepers' breaths, you'd better get used to earplugs.
The smell of dust and motor oil has soaked into the shirt I use for my pillow. I think Gippal has been stealing it at night as a polishing cloth for his tutorial classes.
I can't say I expected anything different. Special treatment for Crusaders isn't as glamourous as for Summoners, and even they have to rough it. In comparison, we are half-deaths. Our fates are to meet fiends and fall to them but we have a time extension on them that makes it uncertain, unlike the crags of Mount Gagazet drawing closer with a malice hinging on sentient.
Somehow I can't foresee recorders being popularized amidst the Crusaders. Documentaries of the doomed are in poor taste.
Perhaps Bevelle needs to revitalize its applicants, so they want to paint an overly romantic picture of life like this. This implies that they expect Operation Mi'ihen to fail and are trying to prepare in advance to restore Crusader ranks.
There is something I still can't figure out about the rumors I've heard of the Operation, mostly concerning Maesters remaining involved despite how it's said forbidden machina are being brought in. I know Bevelle's temple has firearm machina specifically absolved by the Maesters themselves, and those are the same kinds that we're using in the teams. The Crusaders that are staying with the Operation are supposed to be excommunicated, it's said, but the Maesters haven't left yet.
What else are the Maesters deciding is free from punishment by Sin?
I decide to ask Paine.
When I find her, she's sitting overlooking the coastline. Bikanel's deserts are harsh. Even with encampments next to the ocean, the air at noon sucks the moisture out of you. Only the strictest officers insist that we perform exercises while exposed to the sun during those times; otherwise, the camp is most active in the mornings and at night. The latter time would be a comfort if it wasn't so cold. I have only had to live in the desert for a few weeks and I already hate it.
I would find nothing salvageable about Bikanel at all if it wasn't for the evenings. Now in particular is a memory I think I will savor to replay at leisure, just like a sphere set to repeat during winter nights to remind you that summer used to exist as more than just a word. The roar of the ocean is a tamed beast purring. The lines of a pair of legs drawn up with arms resting upon them, body language dictating that this is private reflection copyrighted as pale hair in a proud ruff, partnership with equally pale skin; all this is turning into silhouette as the day dissolves into night.
Paine does not seem to mind when I join her. This assumption is made purely on the fact that she does not push me instantly into the ocean.
At first neither of us speak. There is no need to, not when the sea is doing it for us. We sit side by side and watch the time disappear unmarked by either of our sets of recording equipment.
Paine's shorts have three buckles on each side. If you survived unsnapping them, you could peel them off her legs like the skin from a grape.
"What are you looking at?" brings me back to the present moment and the present lie, so I take my luxury in glancing up to our recorder. By the time my eyes have settled on her, there is a distraction already on my lips.
"Why did you join Yevon?"
She snorts, derisive, and looks back over the waters. "You're awfully nosy." One hand moves down to rub her leg. I ignore it and continue to watch her face as she speaks. "Shouldn't I be asking you the same thing?"
"I was born in Bevelle. It... seemed natural for me to take part." My mouth is wonderfully earnest. Change tactics. "I guess I should say, why did you join the archival teams? You don't look like you've got a lot of family to guard from Sin--you haven't participated in the mail run, I didn't see any messages," I add in quick explanation, an excuse made on the spot to cover what I had actually drawn my conclusions from. "It's not like fighting. Are you hoping for a promotion, maybe become a priestess after all this is done?"
It's a roundabout insult. It works. Paine turns narrowed eyes to me, feline annoyance that makes me wonder if she brushes her hair with the back of her hand after licking it. "Are you saying I don't deserve to be here?" she demands, imperious, and for one rushed instant I am grateful to her tendancies for misinterpretation. If she is angry, she will not notice as much when I ask my next question.
"Most people have a reason to want to... protect Spira. They have a personal tie." Wait for it. Now. "Did you leave a lover back home?"
"Stop that!" she snaps and now I really have crossed a boundary. Her limbs collect themselves to ready for standing, intent on carrying her away like the doom of an offended plague wind. Instead I reach out and touch her. Just a few silent fingers on her elbow and they mean, I'm sorry.
It's a quiet enough gesture that it succeeds.
So she does not have a deeper tie in the temples already. The chances of a priest pulling her strings directly are lessened, but they are not absolutely eliminated. Homage to the need for a better apology involves switching conversation to something that will be easier to speak about.
"You're fascinated by him. By Nooj. It's like... touching history, isn't it," I say while inwardly debating the verb and noun in that order, feeling the prickle of ragged coastal grasses through my pants and leaning to pluck a stem so that I can roll it between my fingers. "Getting to watch him. Wondering if that'll be you in several years when you've fought so many battles."
"He's got nothing to do with this."
Her voice is strained. She doesn't sound like she wants to talk about Nooj, that's what my hunches tell me, but I haven't yet understood the reasons why.
This entire conversation is going awry by the feel of it. I meant to talk to her about the Crusaders. Now I'm sidetracking myself.
On Nooj.
I drop the piece of grass I have violated into tiny pieces. "It's too bad we have to ship out so quickly. I would have liked to have a better chance to... just watch the sun go down like this. It looks like it's melting away into the water." The ocean's a safer bet than a person, particularly when both are on fire. "Like it's going to drown itself and drag everything slowly with it. All you can do is sit here and watch while it happens."
"The view on the Highroad's better." Paine finds dismissal to be as reliable as her sword. "You don't have all this sand getting in your face when the wind blows. There's the stink of the chocobo stalls in the summertime when it's humid, but I'd rather get bird than this place anyday."
"You're talking about the overlook across from the Travel Agency?" It's the conversation's fault, I decide, even while my words continue on. Its natural inertia is to, "I'm told that's favorite spot of couples," ruin everything I thought I wanted to say.
Her reaction comes as expected within what I have come to predict are Paine's boundaries. She hits me. Then she asks me why I am smiling, and I think of something more creative to tell her than a joke upon her name. War is pain. Friends are a pain.
Love is pain. "I was thinking about visiting there. After the exams, I mean," and my enthusiasm is as innocent and hopeful as a spring-fresh youth's despite how I have just come to that decision seconds before saying it. "Do you think we'll get time?"
"Who knows?" Talking about the future has never won me points with our recorder, not when it's of maybes instead of certainty. She shifts. One toe of her boot digs restlessly into the sand. "Not like it makes a difference. Haven't you heard the saying, you can never see the same sunset twice?"
Paine's voice is as husky as a panther's when she says that. But then again, it always is, no matter how many times I have sat and savored it.
I reply to her in tenor. "Doesn't that mean you should take chances when they come?"
The waves lap at vanilla rocks below us, reflecting back the darkening clouds.
Having something else to motivate the conversation along would be Gippal's field of expertise right now. He would make an observation aloud that none of the rest of us would expect, maybe something about how he's thinking about teaching the other trainees to fish using upgraded machina poles designed from the guns. Or he would do something equally strange just to break the silence and get us talking again. Since he's not here, it's up to me to rally things back on course.
But I'm the one surprised when Paine turns fast enough that for an instant she's a lioness about to strike, eyes fierce in that visage of swept-back fur; one paw is trapping mine where I'd been fidgeting my knuckles in the grass, and then when I'm occupied in glancing down to see if I'll see my bones exposed and bleeding amidst her leather, her fingers go into my scalp.
Sliding around the back of my neck.
Paine's mouth is hotter than I expected. It reminds me of a wound inflamed, burning with its own death; a miniature sun descending to the coolness of the ocean formed by my throat. Her hair is sea-salt. Sweat has mixed with leather and musk perfuming the air while I am busy trying to memorize the taste of Paine's spit on my lip.
Hands are moving down the buckles of my jacket and I am not sure if they are hers or mine because the recording sphere of my mind has been broken on a loop of herringbone patterns. Endless repeat of light on skin. Blinding.
And then my ears are full of the tides, waves of water bleeding into exhalations that eventually become my name while the sky dies.
