When Gippal came to, the first thing he became aware of was just how dry his throat was.
This surprised him. Having spent most of his life in the Desert, he was accustomed to thirst. He knew that he could go for a remarkably long time without water... so why in Spira was he feeling thirsty on the Celsius, where water was plentiful?
Frowning, he started to notice other odd things. His bed on the Celsius was not normally so hard and gritty, and it was not usually quite so hot. Gippal was reasonably comfortable with the heat, being born and raised in the Bikanel Desert, but the reason for the Celsius being this warm continued to elude him.
Gradually the thought that this might not actually be the airship dawned on him, and he opened his eye.
The Desert... of course. He remembered, now, the events that had led up to his eventual collapse. It did strike him as slightly odd that there was rock above him – was he in a cave? He hadn't been in a cave when he fell, had he? – but that did not surprise him nearly so much as the fact that he appeared to be, inexplicably and without any good reason to be so, alive.
He wondered for a moment if he was dead. It would hardly surprise him if some Higher Power had redesigned the Farplane to resemble Bikanel Desert exactly, just to confuse people. He imagined the creator of the Farplane to be sitting on a throne somewhere, watching the bewildered dead – "What? I was just hacked to pieces on the Highroad – how in Yevon's name can I still be alive? How could being torn apart teleport me to the Desert, of all places?" – and laughing insanely.
...After all, if it were up to him, Gippal would probably have done the exact same thing. A little cruel, perhaps, but he had to admit that it would be immensely entertaining.
Interesting as the train of thought was, the Al Bhed had other concerns. Dead or not dead, he was ridiculously thirsty, and this being the Desert (or an extremely convincing replica of it, at any rate), it seemed unlikely that any water was going to magically appear if he just carried on lying where he was.
Gippal propped himself up on his elbows with some difficulty – his joints were still incredibly stiff – caught sight of the other inhabitant in the cave, swore in Al Bhed, and dropped back down again.
Clearly, he was hallucinating. There was no good reason for Baralai to be there in the cave with him... well, obviously he'd come along on the mission, but Hallucination!Baralai had the CommSphere with him. If he were real, he would definitely have been sensible enough to call the Celsius and get the hell out of the Desert. Definitely.
"Gippal?"
...Unless he really was dead. Maybe they were both dead, stuck in the fake Bikanel Desert of the Farplane.
Gippal had apparently gone from ironically speculating about the possibility of someone tampering with the design of the Farplane to being bizarrely convinced that this was the case. He noted this fact with some interest. Perhaps he was going insane.
"You're awake? ...Gippal?"
You can't be dead. Dead people aren't supposed to feel thirst, his mind reminded him, and he grimaced. He felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked up to see his beautiful – his painfully beautiful – hallucination offering him a bottle of water.
Definitely not the real Baralai. The real Baralai would never take his headband off. A pity, really, because if the person wasn't real... it seemed unlikely that the water would be.
Still. Worth a shot.
Gippal took the water gratefully, thanked Hallucination!Baralai and finished it off in seconds. He was astonished to find that the water did, in fact, appear to be real. And if the water was real...
"Baralai?"
"Yes?"
To Baralai's surprise and considerable alarm, Gippal burst out into hysterical laughter before leaping to his feet and hugging him violently. "You're alive!"
"So it would seem," he responded dryly.
"That's great. Where are we?"
Baralai frowned slightly and glanced around him. "...in the Bikanel Desert... in a cave."
"Yeah, yeah. Anything more specific?"
"Brilliant." Gippal indicated the CommSphere with a wave of his hand. "Why haven't you called the airship yet?" he asked, curious. "CommSphere's not broken, is it?"
Baralai laughed softly. "We haven't finished the mission yet, have we?"
Gippal stared at him, incredulous. "...Can't believe that you actually remembered about the mission. After all that stuff with the Angra Mainyu, all I could think about was getting back to the Celsius."
"That's why you need someone like me around," said Baralai, smiling just a little. "If I weren't here, you would never get anything done."
"Yeah, whatever." He paused briefly. "...So, the mission was the only reason you stayed here?"
"Well, obviously I wanted to find you, too."
"Yeah? ...What about the others?"
"They were with me. They went up to the Celsius to have a rest before carrying on the mission."
"And you were the only person who stayed here? Gee, I feel so loved."
Baralai shook his head. "They stayed until we found you. I just stayed behind to make sure that you didn't wander off after you woke up."
"Ah, I see." He smirked. "You were worried about me, right?"
The praetor rolled his eyes. "Actually, Gippal, I gave up a warm bed and decent food just so I could tell you how much I despise you."
Gippal stared at him for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. "...Yeah, you're right. Really stupid question."
"Did you think I was serious?" asked Baralai, sitting on the stony floor of the cave. Gippal shrugged and sat down next to him.
"You didn't use much inflection. It's kind of hard to tell." A pause. "So, uh... how long've I been out for?"
"I don't know how long you had been unconscious for when I found you, but since I took you back here it's been... four, maybe five hours?"
"Boring?" asked Gippal, leaning back against the other man.
Baralai groaned and closed his eyes. "You have no idea."
"Heh." Gippal remembered something, and frowned slightly. "Uh... where'd your headband go?"
"My... oh. After that fiend attacked you, I used it to bandage your arm. Remember?"
"That was your headband?" He raised his arm to check it, and was surprised to find that the bandage was no longer there – the wound had gone, too, only bruised skin and the rip in his clothing showing that there had been an injury there. "Where's it gone?"
"After I cast Cura on your wounds, I threw it away. I felt that people might be a little afraid of me if I went about my duties with bloodstained fabric in my hair."
"You threw it away?" This was inconceivable. To Gippal, at least, the ever-present headband was one of the defining points of Baralai – it was one of the things that made the praetor who he was. Baralai glanced around and laughed at the expression of frozen horror on his face.
"It wasn't my only one, you know."
Gippal laughed a little, relieved. "That's good." He turned around, touched Baralai's hair lightly. "I'd hate it if you didn't have your headband. It really suits you."
"You're strange, Gippal," murmured Baralai with a slight smile, closing his eyes. Gippal grinned and laughed again, softly.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know."
"Baralai?"
"Hmm?"
"Why didn't you cast magic as soon as that dog-thing attacked me?"
Baralai blinked, considering. "I guess it's because I didn't have time to clean the wound. If there had been any sand in it, it would have been sealed into your arm when I cast the spell." He shrugged. "Not the most pleasant thing in the world, so I just bandaged it."
"With your headband."
"There wasn't anything else. Why do you keep fixating on that?"
Gippal shrugged as best he could, lying on his back near the cave entrance. "No reason. Well, no real reason. I'm just surprised that you managed to think of that."
"It was the obvious thing to do."
"Eh. Maybe you think so, but I would never have realised that." He rolled over to better see Baralai, who was sitting against the cave wall a few feet away. "Bet you plan for these things, don't you?"
Baralai flushed. "Maybe."
Gippal laughed to himself, rolling back to his original position. "Prepared for all eventualities, eh? You're turning into Noojie, you know that?"
"Turning into... what makes you say that?" asked Baralai, confused.
"You know Noojie – he's always got to be prepared. 'What if the sphere is across a ravine with a six-hundred-foot drop, suspended above a seven-by-nine-metre area of poisoned spikes, guarded by a Dark Aeon, and connected to an alarm system that will call the entirety of the Thieves Guild when triggered?' To which the answer would be, 'Sod it, I'm going to bed'. Y'see? A plan for every possibility. You're turning into Nooj."
Baralai hid his smirk. "...I doubt that thinking about what to do when a friend is injured is quite on the same level."
"Going in the same direction, though. Come next year you'll be looking for death and having annoying young women calling you 'Barry-Warry'."
Baralai winced. "You're not going to call me that now, are you?"
"What, 'Barry-Warry'?" Gippal repeated the name a few times, experimentally, much to the chagrin of Baralai himself. "...Nah, it sounds kind of stupid."
"And 'Noojie-Woojie' doesn't?"
"Oh, come on. 'Noojie-Woojie' suits him perfectly, wouldn't you say?"
He laughed. "Yes, 'Noojie-Woojie' is an entirely appropriate name for the most serious man I know."
"Look, B, I'm this far away from calling you Barry-Warry. Don't push your luck." Baralai held up his hands in mock-surrender. Gippal grinned and looked back up at the ceiling.
"So, when're we carrying on our mission?"
Baralai shrugged. "I thought we might go up to the Celsius and rest first. I've used up most of my magic reserves, and I left all my Ethers back on board. Anyway, we're almost out of water. I know that you really want to find these Spheres, but I'm pretty sure that you didn't want us all to die in the attempt."
"How on Spira did you figure that out?" asked Gippal, all astonishment and sarcasm. "Most people think that I just organised this whole thing as part of an elaborate plot to kill my friends."
"Nooj probably does think that."
"Yeah, well. He's Nooj."
"I never would have guessed."
"Hey, I'm the sarcastic one. You're just here to look pretty and stop me doing anything stupid."
Baralai raised an eyebrow, looking over at Gippal, but the Al Bhed was facing the ceiling and Baralai was standing on his blind side. He hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged and activated the CommSphere.
Clearly, he was never, ever going to understand what went through his friend's mind. There didn't seem to be much point in trying.