I don't know why she did it, and Paine does not make the motion to approach me to explain. Like a cat aloof, she shows me her back with her shoulders rigid, and talks more to Nooj or even Gippal than to me if she can help it.
I think she is trying to pretend it never happened.
The question of our encounter keeps turning around in my mind on the march down to the ship docks. Even though the Squad is not directly in the middle of the desert, it is not an easy trip. Logic would mean we followed the coast. That would keep us from getting lost by accident, but the instructors have insisted that we remain out of visual range of the ocean when we are on the move en masse. We have been ordered to keep unseen in case of ships passing even this close to the island. Though there are ramshackle sheds serving as barrack wards already established, no clues have been left behind in them for us to guess who else has used them before. Even the graffiti of bored cadets has been scraped clean into oblivion, bare patches left behind instead of names.
Here in the heart of nowhere, I wonder if anyone would know if fiends overran us and we disappeared. Then I remember that the instructors report to the maesters and hence are less likely to be disposable, so I pay attention when I see them walking.
When Team Four asked after the need for secrecy, they were told that Yevon feared others spying upon us, on this training for the elite that should produce the best soldiers of all. Team Four did not receive an answer when they pressed further, wanting to know just who Yevon could be so afraid of, and as disciplinary action they were forced to run laps weaponless around the camp outside the range of the guards. The story was circulated around the campfires at dinner as we heard their footsteps count down their onus, coming closer and then disappearing again, all of us talking quietly with an ear out for their return. We marked off the proof that they were still alive by repeating the tally each time. Eighteen. Nineteen.
Silence.
Twenty.
Now that we are close to the final exam, questions have begun to resurface. Many of the other hopefuls are restless. They have stayed in this wasteland for too long without seeing the reasons why and the memory of comfortable beds are haunting some. Running water, others. A few of us miss home.
It is a point of pride in our own Team that neither Gippal nor Nooj complain about that last point. Gippal never talks about his family except in vague descriptives that quickly turn to old anecdotes. I have learned more about his cousin Yimmo and her experiences shoopuf-training than I think I have ever wanted to. By any stretch of the imagination.
Nooj takes any talk about people's personal lives as an excuse to sulk.
Faced with their example, I say nothing. Bevelle is not something I find lacking during this training either; the taste of all this bureaucracy is one that is beginning to turn bitter with each nonsensical requirement. Don't be seen. Don't ask questions. I already know those principles because I have grown up with them in my blood, but I have begun to distrust myself ever since coming here.
Yevon is not acting as if they care if we are willing to work for them after all this is done. Bevelle's institutions are customarily much better about cajoling their higher officers with benefits, but right now they seem to be enjoying how long we can fight exhausted. It is hardly conductive to future loyalty.
There are no answers that I can find in this mess. I would talk to Gippal to see if the Al Bhed has any other misguided opinions, but Paine has been sticking close to his side for the last forty minutes. She knows I want to speak with him because every time she has looked over her shoulder at me, I have glanced up. I think this is why she is taking so long.
She could at least stop looking back so often.
In order to give myself something different to focus on than the way Paine's lashes rim the lid as delicate as a moth's antenna, I slow my stride to meet up with Nooj. He is the only one of us to carry less than a standard share on his back. It is hard enough for him to keep the pace in the sand the way he is, and even though he grumbled that he could heft as much as the rest of us, I know it is all he can do just to maintain position out here. Standing fast with a machina rifle in hand, he is still a terror. An enforced march removes all his dignity.
Daybreak does nothing to warm us with the sun so newly returned to this world. The thin light trickles over the ratted soil of Bikanel and we are bathed in it, but find no comfort. Team Three passes us by while Nooj and I walk in silence. The buckles on their equipment jingle and clank while their leader urges them to jog to point position. One man gives Nooj and I a surprised glance, and I realize that it is Three's recorder; he starts to thumb his machina on and swivel it in our direction before he notices his teammates are leaving him behind and he must now run to catch them. We escape being detailed on Yevon's tally sheet. For now.
Team Four is far back in order, almost to the very end of the marching train. They took being shoved to the rear with far more grace than we would have, bully-punching one another's shoulders as if being the Crimson Rejects was a label to champion. I will not worry about how far we are falling behind until I hear their voices. We have plenty of time until then.
I just need to think of a good way to start a conversation first.
"Just so you know, Baralai, I already talked with Paine."
"What?" My voice is enough of a leap of surprise that I hope it masked what sounded like horror in it. Visions of her discussing our encounter to someone else race through my thoughts, followed by a stab of panic. Why Nooj? Why did she tell him about what we did on the overlook?
Why do I care if he knows?
"She came asking me the same things just before we left. About why I'm here." Unaware of the mixed relief this explanation brings me, Nooj turns his head upwards. The loops of his hair slide over his shoulders and cluster to his neck, fluid as fish in a watersack. "Why I joined the Crimson Squad tryouts if I don't have any interest in rank. After all," he adds, "dead men don't lead companies."
"No. They don't." I'm still off-balance from his announcing Paine's name. It seems like everyone knows what I'd rather hide. Ever since Gippal pointed it out to me, I feel as if my incrimination is painted on my face like an Al Bhed tattoo. I might as well go around telling everyone that yes, just as the odds predict, Paine closes her eyes when you have your fingers up to the palm in her. It would get the matter out of the way so that the betters could collect their winnings and something else could be found for the gambling pool to debate.
The silence is hanging awkward as a convict left to strangle rather than having their neck snapped clean. To repair this, I speak. "Why do you feel like you don't have anything left? Everyone respects you. You must have something to look forward to even if it's not direct combat--that's what the Crimson Squad is for, isn't it?" Or so we were told when we signed up. "Taking a commanding position instead?"
Nooj is unaware of my internal dilemma involving memories of flushed cheeks and possible betrayal. "I've lived a long time, Baralai." His cane makes soft paffs in the sand as he pulls himself along. "Sometimes, a person finishes their work ahead of schedule. There's nothing more to it than that."
"You're only a year old than I am," I reply, unable to keep from rankling as I am exposed to the man's diatribe. "You can't say that you're used up already."
Nooj continues, disregarding my logic. "And what else am I supposed to be?" His grip digs the walking stick deeper in the ground, leaving small divots beside his footprints. The Deathseeker's emotions are kept pent in his hands, just as Gippal's is in the fluidity of his tongue. "I don't want to be a relic of the past that's applauded and then put on a shelf to collect dust. What am I going to do five years from now? What about ten? Withering away in body just because no one wants to let me end a life I'm tired of, even though I'm too stubborn just to put a machina to my head and be done with it."
Nooj's voice is tired, but harsh, like wine left to ferment until it became vinegar that stings the roof of your mouth when you drink of him.
"You're nineteen," I protest, and mean it even though I am smiling. "Your life isn't over yet--"
"Look." He is fed up with my prodding of him and now turns upon me fully. "You came to talk with me for a reason, didn't you? This isn't just a pleasant bonding conversation between two comrades. So what is it? The weather? It's hot again. Congratulations." With that he redirects his bile to the sands ahead and thrusts his cane to yank his weight onwards. If he were intact, it would be a haughty stride away. Instead it is a limp.
Confronted by this calling of my bluff, my mind fumbles. I do not know how to redirect the conversation to Mi'ihen properly from here, not in a subtle enough manner that our Deathseeker will not forget five minutes later. Nooj is an established Crusader in the bargain. For all I am aware, he could be the one meant to checkmate our team if we are also deemed as troublesome as Team Four.
"I don't understand Paine." This comes out of me before I can figure to stop it. "She's been acting odd... ever since a few days ago, and now I can't get her to say why." Once I have blurted it, I am glad that I did because the act was like spitting a seed out of my mouth, one whose shell had split to leak sap on my tongue.
For all that the sentence makes no sense to me, Nooj nods as if he expected such a reply. It slows him down, bleeds open the temper in the air. "I figured. Listen, Baralai. You'll never understand women." He sounds confident. Being jaded is a role he is comfortable in. "If she's not giving you an answer, you'll never get one. I wouldn't recommend trying too hard."
Nooj is more satisfied with speaking from the standpoint of someone who has been enough places that he has literally left parts of himself along the way. Or so I assume. I turn the challenge back on him in return. "Are you saying that just because you haven't had any luck yourself?"
"Luck?" It is Nooj's turn to snort at me. He pings a finger against the metal of his leg and my eye, following, bears witness to the numerous scrapes pitting the surface. "With finding someone who's attracted to this instead of just Nooj the Crusader? Nooj the Undying? Nooj on a pedestal of fame that he'd rather jump from than stand another minute up there? Propped up, no less. What a nice story that'd be. I've outgrown bedtime tales, Baralai," he states sourly, fumbling nerveless fingers on his cane as the metal fingers slip. "There's no future for me as anything other than a walking corpse. I'd be foolish to expect otherwise."
"Hold on." I reach out for the cane to steady it even knowing that I could have humiliated him more easily just by striking him in the face. His gaze when he pins me beneath it is a cold stare, self-hatred rancorously aware of its own limitations. Nooj is a Crusader. By looking into his face now, I am reminded that he has killed enough fiends to become legend, and that fiends were once people before their first death.
I keep talking. Nothing wrong with my sense of preservation. "You say there's nothing for you to look forward to? Maybe not for you, but there's something for the rest of our team. We're not through with wanting to fight yet. Gippal wants to be able to prove that he's as good as anyone else in Spira no matter where his parents came from. Are you just going to ignore that even knowing he'll get disqualified if you go off and get eaten? Even me," and my voice is running on desperation while I think I am dying a thousand times inside his stare, "There are things that I want to be able to do out there, to be able to see. Even Paine wants..." My voice trails off in hesitation over the sentence, and I eventually close my mouth and let it be assumed I meant to end it that way. "The thing is, we don't know how to get there. You're supposed to be our leader. If you're really that caught up in dying, why did you ever sign up to be involved with us at all?"
I'm broken off when Nooj tightens his grip and yanks his cane away from me. He demands that crutch back even as he denies it. "I'm not here to help a bunch of teenagers discover themselves," he snarls back, with all the buried malice of a winter bear. "No matter what you say, I'm old. Maybe I'm not a wizened elder, but I hobble like one already. Isn't that good enough? Take your lesson there, Baralai."
He can't walk fast enough away from me.
I watch him try.
Gippal would be able to say something now that could win through Nooj's stubbornness. Gippal can do it because the Al Bhed himself is resolute in his own way. There is only me standing here, and I do not do an adequate job of this sort of thing. "You're so hung up on the idea that you're already dead." Letting emotion into my voice is not something I enjoy. I have not enjoyed a great deal since enrolling for these tests. Now is no exception. "Why did you start talking about any of that to me if you don't have any intention of your mind being changed?"
"I told you because I want all of you to give up on--" Nooj starts, and his voice is rising in fight before he cuts its tendons and lets it crash to a halt.
Bevelle trained me to see and solve suspicions. I stand watching one now, seeing the long quirk of his hair hang in question-mark punctuation. My performance scores in esoterics were high enough that I qualified for the Crimson Squad, but they give me no hints now.
To this quandary, I can think of only one answer.
"No."
When Team Four reaches us, they offer to help take both our packs, along with the blame for our delay. I let them carry mine. Then I do not ask Nooj before I yank his off his shoulder, and heft it myself.
