Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in this story except for Neona and Livia, I guess. If I did own the other characters, I would make a special sphere starring Gippal and Baralai… XD Just kidding. The other characters and Final Fantasy X-2 belong to Square.
A/N: This fic is finally holding up to its R rating. Disturbing content and swearing in this chapter. Italics denote flashbacks if everything, including punctuation, is italicized. If it's just a word or two, it's meant as emphasis.
Thanks to: Minamoto Miyuki, Salienne de Lioncourt, Slash Fanatic, and Wai-Aki. You guys rock. Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks.
Chapter Two – Grasp
Laughing. It was all they could do to survive the desert sometimes. Gippal wondered if the reason Nooj was so depressed was because he rarely did. Or maybe the reason he hardly laughed was because he was so depressed. Questions like that made him ponder too much, so he often had to force himself to think about something less confusing.
They were laughing now. Paine covered her mouth with a hand, trying to conceal her amusement, and even Baralai and Gippal were attempting to hold in their laughter. It was generally not a good idea to laugh when Nooj was angry.
And at this moment, he was so furious that his face was a reddish-purple.
Gippal had meant no harm in chasing the desert gulls. After all, this had been one of his favorite pastimes as a child. (This was explained before the gulls released droppings high above Nooj's head.)
"I'm really sorry," Gippal stated in an unconvincing tone, trying not to snort. "Nooj, I seriously am –"
"No, you're not." Nooj began to walk ahead.
So Gippal immediately endeavored to pursue him, boots sinking in the sand, arms flailing in the air. "Hey, waaait! I mean it!"
When he was within a foot or so of him, Nooj at last halted.
"Nooj?"
He mechanically reached out (which was unusual, because it was his good arm) and yanked the back of Gippal's shirt over his head.
"Mmrrf!" his muffled voice came from beneath the fabric. He twisted in a frenzied motion, trying to rip the shirt off his face in order to see where he was going. This ended in abrupt failure as he tripped over a sand dune and sprawled into the hot sand.
Baralai and Paine looked like they were finding it difficult to breathe at this point.
"Cred! (Shit!)" he shouted, which was his reaction to most situations like this. "Vilgehk cyht tufh so vilgehk byhdc! (Fucking sand down my fucking pants!)" Dusting himself off, he stood and glared at Nooj.
"Now we're even!" Nooj shouted from up ahead, not even bothering to turn around.
"What did you say?" Baralai asked, grinning. It looked like he already had a good notion of what Gippal had hollered.
"I swore." He turned away so that they couldn't see him smirk before he said the next thing. "I also said that I got sand down my pants."
Gippal stole a glance at just the right moment to catch their expressions. It was always worth it.
---
"You do know that those gulls were a good sign, right, Noojster?" Gippal smiled, because he had an excellent reason to be glad. "That means we're either near an…uycec (oasis) – How do you say that in Spiran? – or an outpost."
"Uycec?" Paine questioned, raising an eyebrow.
Both she and Baralai had been picking up Al Bhed from Gippal by simply asking him what he meant when he spoke it. As far as he could tell, they had only learned some swear words and a few minor conjunctions and pronouns.
"You know…" Gippal mumbled, waving his hand. "Water…in the middle of a desert… Trees…"
"Oasis?" Baralai guessed.
"That's the one."
Nooj sighed. "You had better be serious."
"I am, I swear," Gippal replied. "Who would just dump a bunch of gulls in a desert?"
"You would." Paine's voice was flat.
"…No way. I'm sure there's some kind of animal cruelty law against that."
"Either way, we can get water." Baralai sounded relieved. "We're out." He added this as if it was an afterthought, although it made their situation dire.
Nooj grunted. For him, this was an expression of alarm. "Since when?"
"Today."
"Oh, so that's why you didn't tell us yet," Gippal figured.
"Yeah." Baralai nodded. "No need to scare anyone."
"Scared? M –" He stopped in midsentence. "Outpost."
There it was, down below from where they were on the hill. The outpost looked relatively small, but Gippal was almost sure it could provide what they needed.
---
They were only a little bit away from entering the settlement when Gippal's contented demeanor changed. Unsurprisingly, it was Baralai who noticed first.
"Gippal?" He lightly touched his elbow. "What's wrong?"
"Something's different. It's quieter." He gazed uneasily at the space ahead and quickened his pace. This was uncharacteristic of him. He normally would have leaned into Baralai's touch.
---
At the entrance, there was a young girl sobbing hysterically, collapsed on the stone-paved path in front of structures that vaguely resembled houses. She had long, shaggy blonde hair and looked to be about five or six years old.
Gippal instantly rushed over to her, his face crumbling with worry. "Neona!" he called. "Frana'c ouin sus? (Where's your mom?)"
"Gippal?!" she cried. The little girl came running, almost tripping over her own feet in her haste, and flung her arms around his waist. She was short enough to bury her face into the fabric covering his stomach. "Susso dumt sa oui mavd! (Mommy told me you left!)"
"Famm, E lysa pylg (Well, I came back)," he explained. And then, "Frana ec ouin sus? (Where is your mom?)"
"Cra dumt sa du reta! Drao duug ran yfyo! (She told me to hide! They took her away!)" she bawled, clenching her tiny hands into fists.
Gippal could feel her nails lightly scraping skin, even through his shirt, but other than that, he was blank, felt nothing. Everything was frozen, time suspended, voices stopped. "Oh. Oh, no. A raid."
"What?" Paine asked, staring at him.
Everyone was.
"How do you know her?" Baralai questioned, his voice one of surprise and confusion with eyes to match.
And Gippal couldn't blame him. The consequences of not sharing his past, he supposed. But then again, no one ever asked. It was a kind of unwritten rule. He knew that he wasn't the only one who had dark memories, terrifying enough to make him bolt up in the middle of the night, gasping for air, sweating, empty of oxygen. The same feeling was now descending upon him like a choking fog.
"I…used to live here…" he stammered, trying to moisten his mouth, dry as the desert they had been traversing. "A raid… I'm going to be sick." He really was. Heaved over, clutching his abdomen, no air. How pathetic must he have appeared?
But Baralai didn't find it pathetic, and neither did Paine or Nooj. They were bending over him, inadvertently shading him from the glaring sun. Their bewildered voices barely registered as echoes, as if he was underwater, and they were above, yelling for him. And then –
His father was stabbed, bleeding. His mother screamed, shirt being torn. Screaming for her husband, herself, Gippal. Gippal was so young. Had both his eyes.
"Gippal! Are you all right?!" Baralai, gripping his arm.
"You little whore…"
Baralai shook him roughly, trying to snap him out of it. "What's wrong?!"
"Gippal!" his mother shrieked, tears streaming down her face and mixing with the blood from cuts on her neck and collarbone. "Nih! (Run!)"
It was too late, and Gippal realized that those dirty words weren't for his mother, but for him. The man's dirty fingernails ripped into his shoulder. Putrid breath, rotting teeth… He struggled, too shocked to even cry out. The knife gleamed in the sun and seemed to be slowed down by some invisible force that he couldn't see. How bizarre that it was coming for him, he knew that, and yet he had to let it do so. The man's hold on him was so tight, too tight to allow any possibility of escape.
He hardly noticed as Paine crouched beside him.
"Gippal!"
"Your eyes are fucking trash! Stupid bitch! You don't deserve to have them!"
"Gippal!" Still Baralai's voice, strained with anxiety. His arms wrapped around, pulling Gippal's body to his own.
An intense pain. He screamed and screamed… Then blackness. Heat. Sun. A searing blinding light from the sun. Only in one eye, though. And his mother was nowhere. Blood, over there. How odd, for that man looked just like his father –
"Please, tell me…" Baralai sounded so vulnerable, so fearful.
And then Gippal was suddenly freed from that horror. He shakily stood up, leaving Baralai by himself on the ground. "I have to go…" Gippal glanced around, searching for… There she was. "Neona, frelr fyo tet drao dyga ouin sus? (Neona, which way did they take your mom?)"
"Gippal, you can't –" Baralai rose from his position on the ground until he was at eye level with him. Well, almost. He wasn't quite as tall as Gippal was. "You don't intend to go alone, do you?"
He was convinced of what he must do, but he still couldn't meet Baralai's eyes. "So what if I do? I have an old score to settle." That was one way of putting it.
"I'm not so sure I think any of this is a good idea." Nooj sounded firm in his decision. From the way he spoke, it seemed as if he wouldn't agree to anything concerning this. "For someone who is supposed to be so smart, you're making a stupid mistake."
"We don't know how many there are…" Paine commented.
"Who the fuck cares?! What's the point of being in this squad if we're not even going to protect the people we're supposed to?!"
They stared at him in silence, apparently too stunned to respond. Even Neona, who only spoke Al Bhed, seemed to sense that something was gravely amiss with Gippal's shouting, for she moved to cling onto Paine's pant leg.
Gippal shook his head and turned to walk away. "I'm going."
"Gippal, stop!" Baralai's hand shot out and grabbed his arm. "I never said I wouldn't go. I just don't think you should do this alone."
"I don't, either," Paine informed him, giving her usual eyebrow-raise.
Nooj cleared his throat. "If we're going to do this, we might as well split up. It'd be quicker that way."
It didn't look like this sat well with Baralai, but he nodded just the same. "Fine."
"Who will watch after this girl?" Paine asked. "She can't come along…" Seeing the looks she was getting, she sighed. "All right, I will…"
Gippal managed a slight smile. "She likes you, anyway." Really, it was because she was a woman. To Neona he said, "Pa kuut. (Be good.)" By this he meant, Don't run off.
---
There were bullet-riddled bodies everywhere… It had never been a very highly populated area to begin with, so even a small amount of the dead accounted for a large percentage of the population. Mostly men… Gippal was well aware of what became of some of the women and children. It was never spoken, but everyone knew. It rarely happened to the men, because they generally weren't as easy to overtake and usually didn't have a slender build. When his parents had died in the first raid he had ever experienced, he had been too young to be concerned about such a thing.
"Anyone…alive…?" His voice was almost inaudible. No one answered. He tried again, this time louder. "Does anyone need help?!"
Just a disturbing hush to answer him. Gippal was about to give up, about to start looking through the structures –
"Gippal?" It was raspy, a woman's voice.
His eyes darted around, finally settling on the only moving object in a pile of bodies. An arm. He crouched down and tried to peer at her face.
"Livia!" It was Neona's mother. Her clothes were almost in shreds, blonde hair matted with blood… "Neona'c ugyo. Cra'c ymm nekrd. Fa vuiht ran – (Neona's okay. She's all right. We found her –)"
"E's kmyt. (I'm glad.)" She smiled weakly and reached up, placing her hands on his face. "Oui cina ryja knufh cehla E cyf oui mycd. Pa lynavim, Gippal. Drao sekrd pa haynpo… (You sure have grown since I saw you last. Be careful, Gippal. They might be nearby…)"
"I see we missed a few," someone snarled.
Gippal whirled around, already expecting this. He had been walking for about ten minutes and hadn't been attacked yet. This man oddly looked familiar…
"You little whore…"
Gippal froze.
But it had to be him. Greasy dark hair, rotted teeth, and most unique, a blurred scar on his temple that looked like it had once been a burn. His thin lips stretched into a filthy grin. Gippal experienced another wave of nausea. Then…a gun lifted in the air and aimed for Livia.
"Livia!" Gippal screamed. He shouldn't have been surprised when the bullet hit him, but he was. The instinct to protect and jump in front of her overshadowed any thought process.
The man raised his gun again.
"Gip –"
And shot Livia dead.
Gippal hadn't cried in so long that the stinging of his eye was a foreign feeling to him. He had been told that he was fortunate not to die at the hands of the man who had killed his parents, but here he was, at the mercy of the same man's gun. All he could do was writhe powerlessly on the stones.
The man bent down, coiled his dirt-caked fingers in Gippal's hair, and gave a good yank. He leered at Gippal's watering eye and rumpled appearance.
"Unngh!" he gasped. "You…son of a bitch… I hate you…! You killed my parents, took my eye… E vilgehk ryda oui! (I fucking hate you!)"
A hand soundly striking his face silenced him.
"You stupid piece of trash. What, am I supposed to remember you?" The barrel of the gun dug into the side of Gippal's forehead.
Gippal stared at him. This was it. He was going to die. Strange how the only thing he could think of was Baralai… How he smiled, laughed, slept. He was beautiful when he was sleeping. Well, he was beautiful no matter what he did. He would never see him again…
"It doesn't really matter. You're going to d –"
Something was wrong with the man who was about to kill him. He was gurgling as a star of red expanded on his white shirt. Expanding, expanding… He fell over.
It was Baralai who stood there now, eyes wide, holding his gun with the bayonet thrust forward and covered in blood. He said nothing at first, just simply dropped the gun and threw his arms around Gippal's neck.
"He was going to kill you…" Baralai murmured in his ear. "I… I never killed anyone before…"
Gippal noticed that Baralai's hands were shaking as he gently rocked them both. He clasped his fingers around Baralai's as tightly as he could.
"Baralai," he whispered. "I'm going to be –" Sick. Like had said earlier. He could only break apart from the embrace and gag into the dust. "We didn't…even…eat anything… I can't stop…"
"It's all right…" Baralai's hands rubbed wide circles into his back.
"All I could think of was you."
The hands stilled. "I was worried about you, too. I'm so sorry… I never should have left you."
"Don't blame yourself. You didn't know." He took a deep breath, not wanting to slip away from Baralai, as close as he was. "We should get going."
Baralai asked, "What about that woman?"
"Livia? Neona's mom?" He lowered his gaze. "She…died. I tried to stop her from getting shot, but I – I couldn't. He still shot her… She's… I can't believe she's…right there." He gestured toward where she lay, cringing as he did so. "We have to make sure Neona doesn't see her…"
"Gippal, you're –" Baralai's hand wavered as drops of red fluid rolled off his skin and into the sand on the stones. "You're bleeding!"
He was numb, could care less. "Yeah. I got hit by a bullet that went for her." The words were mumbled. His lips could barely form the words.
"Come on, we have to stop you from bleeding to death!"
The tan face above Gippal's blurred. "Baralai, I…"
Darkness.
---
Next chapter: The aftermath of the raid brings Gippal and Baralai closer.