Chapter 4: Ice
Am I a toy on a tray?
A soft piece of clay
Queen or clown for the day
Machine ballerina
Soldier of tin
Standing so loyal
While you sit so royal
Then I'm put away?
Suzanne Vega, Machine Ballerina
The General stood silently with her head bowed, poised lightly on the balls of her feet, a thin, glinting blade held easily in her hands. The weapon was ancient, but well cared for and razor sharp. Jagged runes were carved into the darkly gleaming blade – letters in an alphabet that had been forgotten before the General was born, but there were times when they caught the light from the corner of her eye, and she thought in those times that she could almost read the meaning behind the alien shapes. The sense knowledge would dance in the back of her mind and slip away when she attempted to look closer, but that didn't stop it from returning at odd and inopportune moments, like ghostly fingers or the dreams and whispers that had plagued her when she was a child. Now, though, she held the old blade up to catch the sun, standing like a rock in the silence of the morning, and nothing could shake the inner fortress walls of her calm. Cold. That's what they call me… Ice Maiden, Ice Queen, and a few less respectful variations on the same theme that they didn't know she was aware of. And they're right. I am ice.
A dry wind ruffled through her long hair, carrying the scents of smoke and metal. Such smells were impossible to escape in Vector, but wind was a rarity, and though she was fixed in the frigid serenity of her own mental focus, the General was still unable to stop herself from tilting her face up to meet the fierce breeze, nor to repress the quiet sense of pleasure that it brought as her hair was lifted and flung out behind her like a banner. She was standing in an empty practice field in the Imperial barracks – the dry dirt floor tended to empty fairly quickly when it was time for the General's morning practice sessions, though she could sense the watchers peering safely down from behind closed windows. The yard was overlooked by the towering bulk of the Imperial Palace and the less gigantic but similarly oppressive shapes of the Magitek facility and surrounding labs; Everywhere in Vector stood in the Empire's shadow, but this place, perhaps, most of all. The open square was dotted with targets and practice dummies, but the General had little use for such things; real enemies didn't stand still or silent as they waited for you to steady your aim or to force rebellious thoughts into order. Real enemies didn't bleed straw.
The General raised her sword in a mocking salute to the invisible enemies, and to the dark eyes she knew to be staring down from the heights of the palace. His Majesty. The Emperor, he whom she had been raised – created – to serve. A bitter smile quirked on her thin lips, then disappeared back into the stony coldness of the façade she affected. They had forged her into a weapon; she had endured the forge-fire, she had survived and hung on to some thin thread of sanity when too many others had snapped, and she had gone on to fulfill her purpose coldly and willingly. But no more. I can't do it anymore. No, that wasn't true. I can. But I won't. Would she? She had come close to treachery before, closer than anyone ever knew, and in the end she had always backed down, gone on being a weapon.
And yet… Maranda. I can't forget Maranda. And that was true; she couldn't. She had tried. Something had happened that day, in the middle of that brutal massacre battle. It was as though the blood that stained her hands that day had also washed the veil from her eyes, finally and truly, allowing her to see. She thought of His Majesty's face now, saw it clearly, free for the first time in her life from the blindfold of conditioning. She saw the greed there, the subtle cruelty, and a shiver of hate ran up her spine. The General's anger may have been cold, but it was no less deadly for all that.
And then something inside her snapped, and she whirled suddenly, striking at the air like a snake, moving with the speed of lighting and rage. She brought the blade up in a smooth graceful arc, then shifted to a twisting stab, piercing the throat of some imaginary enemy. She spun and slashed, the only sound the whistle of her sword slicing through the brittle morning air. Faster. She threw herself into the dance, seeking that perfect, mindless calm that came to her sometimes in battle, that absolute freedom from past and future, from conscience. Faster. It wasn't rage that swept along her veins, because rage was supposed to be hot, passionate, balancing on that very thin wire between love and hate; it was… clarity. Excess thoughts fell away, sounds were muted, until it was only herself and the flickering blade, caught up in the storm of a deadly dance. Faster.
She sensed him behind her, though his feet made little noise in the soft dirt of the courtyard, and she spun effortlessly, bringing the blade to rest a mere fraction of a centimeter from his unprotected neck. And then she returned to the present, and she saw the man's face. Gods… It was Cid. She had thought… she had thought it was His Majesty, and she had almost – almost – end the whole thing right then by killing the evil old bastard right there in the practice yard. But it hadn't been him. That would have been a fine end to your career as a murderer, she thought, suppressing a shudder, killing the only one who ever… the only one who…
"Professor Cid," she said, hearing and hating the coldness in her own voice, "you should know not to interrupt me during practice." That could be as fatal a mistake as interrupting me in battle. For you, it almost was. She lowered her sword and looked into the eyes of the man before her, feeling sick with hatred and self-disgust. But the hatred wasn't for him, oh no. For this man she felt only a kind of bitter love, a remnant of the days when death had been merely a distant shadow, only touching her in dreams. She could remember his face from before she had had to go away, before the conditioning had begun, so long before she had ever held a weapon or ordered a death. She had never thought, back before those evil days had come, that she would ever miss the lab and all its silently crying ghosts. But she had known from the beginning that she would miss this man.
He looked older now, and sadder, more tired – no, not mere tiredness, the man was bone weary – but he wore the same frayed yellow coat and spectacles, and his face held the same trapped, almost pitying kindness that she had never, as a child, understood. The General turned away. She had not cried in years, not since her first taste of battle. She was not going to start again now.
"Celes," his voice was kind, but… distant? Tinged with fear? "Celes, I'm… I'm worried about you." No, you're terrified of me, and you feel guilty about it. Well, don't. And please don't call me Celes. I'm the General now, I'm the Ice Queen, weapons don't need to be named. She almost said all this, but the words which wanted to pour out of her in a waterfall were caught in her throat, blocked by three years worth of unshed tears.
After a moment of uneasy silence, she simply responded, "Don't be. I'm fine."
He shook his head, and she almost thought for a moment he was going to put a hand on her shoulder, but he thought the better of it, and his hands hung lankly and awkwardly by his sides.
"No. You're not. You've been having dreams again." There was the barest hint of a question to that last, as though he was almost, but not quite, willing to stake his life on the truth of it. And you don't know how close you came to doing just that…
"Lets talk someplace else," she said flatly, and he nodded, eyes flickering up to the palace. His Imperial Majesty had bugs and wiretaps everywhere in Vector, of course; there was no true privacy to be found. But at least she wouldn't have to feel the man's eyes on her as she spoke. She didn't feel like discussing her dreams under that cruel, watchful gaze.
"The lab?" He asked, and it was her turn to nod silently. Going back there would be painful and strange, but it was something she would have to face eventually.
"I'd like to monitor your dreams," the scientist said as they walked, across the dusty practice yard and into a steel-girded back door to the Facility. "Not as an experiment, you understand. Simply to see if there's anything to be done…" he trailed off nervously, and Celes – it was hard to keep up the General's emotionless mask now, in the presence of the only true father she had known – felt a sharp stab of pity for the man. Of course it was an experiment, ordered by the Emperor, no doubt, but she saw no reason not to go along with it. Perhaps he really might find the cause, and some way to cure it. More likely she was suffering from the same… mental degeneration… as Kefka, simply not as far gone. Still, it didn't matter.
"You've been experimenting on me since I was a child, Cid. No reason to start feeling guilty now." No, that was wrong, that was cruel. You don't have to hurt this man. You don't.
"Celes, I'm – "
"No, Cid. No. Don't be sorry. Please." That was hardly better. Do you enjoy sounding like a weak little child?
They walked the rest of the way in silence, sweltering under the oppressive atmosphere of Vector as the sun rose toward its baleful zenith. The air-conditioned halls of the laboratory were blessed relief, though the memories those silent, sterile halls evoked in Celes were less than pleasant. They're still here. They're still crying. I can still hear them. She forced down a cry of dismay, stilling her emotions with ruthless efficiency as she pushed the voices out of her mind. And I'm still as loopy as Kefka. Does that mad bastard hear voices too, I wonder? Perhaps screams are the only way for him to drown them.
Celes didn't recognize the door in front of which Cid stopped, or the room which lay behind. In truth, she doubted she had seen even half of the vast facility, and somehow, she found herself very glad of that fact indeed. She had little doubt that things happened here which would make even someone who had done the things she had sick to their stomach. She wondered sometimes how Cid, who had less cruelty to him than she did, could stand the knowledge. Well, that's easy. He blocks it off. Just like you do, Celes, Ice Maiden, General. Just like you do. She scowled at the spotless walls, stilling her thoughts again with practiced ease. Instead of thinking, she examined the small room, observing every detail with a soldier's eye.
The room looked like a doctor's examination room in some ways, with a wax-paper covered examination table, a solitary chair, and a small, paper-strewn desk pushed up against one white wall. It had the same sense of clean sterility, the same smell of rubbing alcohol and the same harsh fluorescent light. But the far wall was covered with computers and stranger machines, monitors and switches and dials, and at the head of the examination table was an array of wires and electrodes, made to fit onto a human skull. It looks like one of those damnable slave crowns, she thought suddenly, without Kefka's pretty decorations, that is. Did Cid bring me here to brainwash me?
No. Never him. Never that. She could not quite manage to dispel her suspicion, but there was a quiet traitorous voice inside her that whispered that if they did brainwash her, it would be better. Easier. She could forget all she had done, sink into the perfect, guiltless limbo that mindlessness offered… No. Cid won't brainwash me, and I don't want to be brainwashed. I don't. Nevertheless, when he bade her lay down on the table, and when he fit the crown to the contours of her skull, she didn't struggle or protest, or even ask. If Cid betrays me, I don't want to be able to think. Its as simple as that. If Cid betrays me, I don't care anymore.
The scientist flipped several switches on the far wall, and she heard the machinery hum to life around her. He turned and took her hand in his, a gentle smile on his tired face. She could feel herself growing weaker, calmer, sinking into the arms of sleep.
"You're going to dream, Celes. Just like you always do… no, probably stronger. That's what this machine does, amplifies the waves… it won't be any more pleasant for you than your other dreams, but this time we have a chance of understanding…" he trailed off, or perhaps she simply couldn't hear him any longer, because now the room was blurring and going dim. She could feel her mind slipping away from her body, her connections to reality, to the here-and-now loosening and giving way. But she was aware. She had never experienced such a sensation before, not even as a girl, when her barriers hadn't been nearly so strong. I'm dreaming, but I'm not… The small examination room had vanished completely, and now she was floating bodiless in a sea of gray mist. This isn't like my other dreams at all… where are the ghosts? Where is the fear, the rage? Why am I still myself?
But there was no time to ask herself such questions, no time to orient herself to this strange new reality, because somewhere, off in the sea of mist and swirling shadow, she could hear someone crying out in pain and trapped terror. And she thought she recognized that voice.
A/N: Please tell me if I ended up making Celes into some kind of whiny weakling, because I don't think I did, but I hate when people do so I want to make sure.