The loss of Team Four occurred when there were still many days left to the port. Yevon has us racing there regardless once the fiends claimed the bodies of our comrades, and the minds of many more. Open suspicion is something all the trainees know we will be reported for. Despite this, or because of it, we have begun to grow restless. Team Six is good friends with Team Five, and even though there are no further accidents yet, Five has begun to pitch their march closer and closer to Six. The guards have ordered them to spread out, ordered them repeatedly, and Five has turned a deaf ear to them. Others of us have cast our eyes into the wilderness in hopes that a luckier accident would have the instructors removed and leave us untouched. Even fiends are looking more reasonable by the hour.
There is nowhere we can escape to in this desert. If we do not obey Yevon, we will be left here.
But the instructors force our attention on the path while we try for our half-jogs down to our destination. Such a strain devours our energy for rebellion, making the Teams tame by default. The journey is even harder on Nooj than before. He is too proud to sling an arm over the shoulders of Gippal and I so that we can provide a lift between us; when our Al Bhed suggested it the first time, Nooj snorted and told us that we would lose even more points should our judges decide we are a crippled set.
His reasoning is solid, but I think it is a convenient excuse for his true feelings. Our Deathseeker's pride is understandable. He'd been hauled out of combat once before in much the same manner, suspended between two of his teammates while blood spurted from the stump of his hip, and memory must be aching in his bones now that he has become a liability.
Gippal and I take turns on flank with him, so that he is not singled out as the sole cause of our delay. Paine cannot openly support the three of us so long as the officials are watching; I catch her biting her lip when we stumble beneath the weight of packs divided. Even though the Al Bhed and I have become used to bearing part of Nooj's share, now we must shoulder all of it and hope that it lightens him enough to keep pace.
This is humiliation for Nooj. Rather than be our team leader, he is instead the factor that might destroy us. Our ranking in the pack has rapidly dropped from the middle to last, and we are barely able to keep up with even that standing. Every time the procession stops for noontime break, the four of us must press on so that we can take advantage of the opportunity to cover what ground we can. The other teams are silent as we walk through them. They dare not meet our eyes.
When camp has broken and they pass us in turn on the march, they keep their eyes on the ground.
Heightened patrols have ended Gippal's late-night instruction courses and hence alienated us even further from our fellow teams. Once the shelters have been pitched and the watchfires lit, all the candidates have been told not to stray from their canvas quarters. Paine and I had exchanged a guilty look when Nooj brought back the news. We do not know what caused the new restriction. If it has come about because of us, we could have ripped our team from Yevon's fragile grace and sent us further down on the list than Six.
"Fa'na vilgat," is all Gippal grumbled when he came back in one night, rubbing the sand from out of his hair with stiffened fingers. One guard had shoved him into a dune when he'd caught the Al Bhed sneaking between Three's tent and ours. Gippal hadn't wanted to answer that he'd been investigating a jamming issue with Three's machina, and his reward for guarding their backs had been a bruise purpling on his jaw.
More accurately, his reward for drawling back casual retorts to the guard's questions had been what earned Gippal the kick in the face.
He'd nursed his welt with bravado, saying that it had been prejudice against the Al Bhed again, something he was used to. No big deal in his eyes. Rather than rolling away on his bedding, though, the blonde had just rested an arm over the mark and watched the rest of us pretend to be interested in keeping our machina oiled. Nooj had eventually poked Gippal in the ribs with his cane, and that had been enough to wring a jest back from the blonde; Gippal had tumbled into our sitting circle eventually after that, propping his elbows on Nooj's back in vengeance for the prod.
Paine and I have taken to leaning against one another as long as the tent flap is closed and secure. The temptation of reaching out to one another during the march is strong, but we both have sensibility on our side. Paine is our recorder, assigned to us by Bevelle. She cannot be seen favoring us, not if she wants to possibly escape the fate that may befall us should the instructors decide we have failed.
None of us know what will happen once we reach the dock. We do not even know if we will make it there.
If we do succeed in surviving the tests, we may be able to graduate into Yevon's confidence.
I was born in Bevelle. I know better than any of us that we have no other way if we want to find the reason we are all being put through these maneuvers. Even if we could tear an answer out of our overseers here, there is no basis on which we can believe it. Paine's confusion over me is proof of that. How can you count upon an answer that is given through any means save under a cold night sky?
Nooj is our tactician when it comes to troops. We differ on our methods, he and I; while the Deathseeker might support direct confrontation with the maesters, possibly after unifying the graduating teams under his banner, I believe that we need only use well-placed patience to have them tumble to our advantage. The debate itself is useless for the time being. We only banter it between each other to fill the minutes when no one is looking, and Paine's hair in in my fingers while she slumbers on my shoulder.
Waiting rankles the Deathseeker. It must come from his own impatience with his lifespan. That glower of his has become heavily favored as customary by the time that a scout runner reports back to the main line that Team Three has sighted the shorelines in the distance, the bobbing of masts waiting to bear us away from this desert death. Such an announcement should have reenergized the troops, but the remaining Teams only eyed the messenger and went back to maintaining their equipment. Raucous joking has been banished systematically from the camp since anything else might have a Team reported.
At first, that threat had been cause for laughter too, but now we all are taking it very seriously.
Knowledge that we are nearing the termination of these tests drives Nooj back to speak with me. I have become so familiar with his silent brooding that I do not expect him to speak much when it is my turn walking by his side; because of this, the clearing of his throat is as startling as a machina shot.
"Why are you following me, Baralai?"
Judging from the bald assertion of the statement, I decide that it is Nooj's turn to be uncertain. He is like Paine in that way. After becoming comfortable enough with her that I do not expect her touches to the back of my neck to be only prelude to her snapping it, I find that I have more confidence to play with old warbeasts.
"You block out the sun this way." To say that I play dumb out of a wry satisfaction for our positions reversed is to be grossly unfair, and also utterly true. "Sorry, did you want me to walk ahead?"
A snort, combined with the shake of his head, and it seems as if Nooj does not get the tease. "I mean all of you. Why do you keep working with me? I'm sure you could have had someone reassigned."
Unspoken is the fact that we are all far too deep into the tests to alter matters now. I cover it by laughing. "Do you think you're getting off so easily?" One strap of my packs is wearing a ruddy track into my skin, grating into my shoulder with every step. Awkwardly, I attempt to heft its weight enough to resettle the load. Canteens half-full slosh against my leg while I walk, but I tolerate the rubbing.
When Nooj stops to bend down, I automatically halt, thinking that he's starting to lose his balance with the cane. Instead he only hooks his fingers in the leather loops holding the bottles in place and tugs them off their clip. "Here. Let me."
"They're not heavy," I'm already protesting, but the shadow of a smile plays around his lips, and I succumb to our Deathseeker's need to save face.
The pace resumes, and the conversation lingers behind. I take the advantage to speak first. Experience is teaching me now that cutting off Nooj before he has opportunity to rally himself is better than letting him stew in a self-made construct of pessimism. It has worked for Gippal; I hope it will do the same for me.
"Nooj... you really don't think that anyone's going to give up on you, do you?" A man who is older than I am by a year, and the Deathseeker is already gauging the conclusion of his life. I have barely begun on mine by my own estimation, having built up practice in Bevelle for politics and pandering. Such training was what I used to think was key to society. Then I came to Bikanel.
"Hhn." The steady drag of Nooj's leg progresses forward, and I keep my eyes trained on the distant backs of Gippal and Paine teamed up in the fore. I do not have to stare directly at our Deathseeker to know he is next to me. "Going to tell me more bedtime stories of happy endings, Baralai? That I should accept that the three of you want to keep me around?"
Countless retorts slide through my head, melting into a mental stream stocked with rippling fish. I choose the simplest. "I haven't stopped looking to you when we've needed it."
Gippal really is a bad influence on me.
We are both silent for the same length of time as Paine might use to grit her teeth and stare at her hands rather than answer me, and then our Deathseeker preempts any further observations on my part by speaking.
"Believing in a Deathseeker has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard." Nooj's words are sharp, but he's smiling and can't hide it despite how he turns his head to obscure the expression behind a loop of his hair. "You sure about this? No regrets?"
My relief is as bright as any of Gippal's laughs. A sound similar mixes in with my parrying question of, "Are you saying you'll let us down?"
"I'm saying that anyone who wants me alive for something is a fool. But," Nooj sighs, yielding the point as he shifts the canteens against his elbow, "maybe we're all fools here." There is something different in the way he lifts his head when he says this. He is walking with his gaze to the horizon instead of buried in the earth. It seems that he does not need to watch me to determine that I am still beside him either. "I won't give you any promises," he continues, the worst of his vocal warning being lost by how his mouth is making merry overtones. "I still might die any minute."
"Drop dead just like that?" I make a motion with my hand, flipping it over to imitate a wall falling down. Buckle clips clatter their accompanying laughter with my gesture. "I guess if you did, I'd be able to carry the water bottles again. Doesn't sound so bad."
"You brat," he snarls at me. When he turns his head, our eyes meet. It is too late for me to look away when there is humor that honest on my face, that open, and so Nooj is left exposed to the full of me revealed in my expression. I freeze. Not until his battle-tempered canniness has fallen upon me do I realize that I meant everything I have said to him. My teammates have destroyed my world, a realm of secrets taught and concealed from birth, and I have not known it until now.
Nooj is gracious enough to make no comment.
"Gippal told me the same thing, you know." A toss of Nooj's head and we are walking once more. I cannot remember when we paused, but it must have been about the time I was left vulnerable in his vision. "He came originally because he wanted to know my opinion on sending things to a girl back home--an apology, he said. We ended up talking about life instead." Another sound burrows out from his throat. It is a muffled laugh. "Almost makes me feel like there's something waiting for me too. Despite... everything."
"Careful," I reply, shaking my own head in mock warning. "If you keep that up, I might actually think that you're looking forward in the future."
Luck spares me from being slapped by the cane because Nooj is too busy walking on it. Instead, he smirks. "My advice?" Dramatic effect causes him to pause so that I am glancing over, and it is then when the full of my attention is upon him that he answers me. "Open your eyes, Baralai."
Some dark quirk in his voice snatches me out of my cheer as deftly as a sparrow plucks a fly. "What--"
"Hey! Baralai! Eteud!"
I am kept from demanding elaboration on Nooj's part because Gippal is waving his hand in the air at me, having stopped in place with Paine while they wait for us. It must be his turn for shift. I lift my own fingers to hail back to him; apparently my doing so has caused the Al Bhed to win some kind of bet, because he pumps his fist once and then wags his finger at Paine. She retaliates by batting her hand against his shoulder, and then promptly reaches over to shove him.
A minute's walk will see the four of us reunited, and then we will break off again in pairs, keeping one of us always with the other. That is how we will keep each other safe. Should the Team become separated, we are almost guaranteed to fall out here in the desert. Lost in the golden, blinding sea--to fiends or to Yevon, who knows?
Until we find our answer, we will keep changing partners until we all make it to the dock and board the ship that will carry us away.
I am not afraid.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Author's Note: This concludes the main portion of Blind Spot. Following the theme of the Crimson Spheres, there are two secondary chapters coming after the main eight. They provide the segueway into a quick Baralai story coming up, focusing on the two years after the defeat of Sin, his rise to praetor, and his experiences in Bevelle.
Thanks go to everyone who's read this. I'd also like to thank Death's Messenger, who kept reminding me that I should finish this fic on a timely basis. In fact, anyone who's commented has helped this fic get done a lot faster than it would have normally. Thanks.
