For weeks after the hectic ride, Rin was unable to banish memory of the trip to the Moonflow. He had no explanation for his sudden deviance from schedule. Pride could not have justified; it would be been more appropriate to require Nooj to visit Mi'ihen, rather than yielding timeframes. True, Rin had risen to the challenge. Success did not erase saddle-sores.
Why did he make the trip? Six months of hearing nothing from the teenager, Nooj having skipped out on the final parts for his leg rather than wait for them to arrive. Six months of quiet before the terse letter had been delivered to the Travel Agency, and Rin had decided to follow up on it rather than wait another half-year until the next one.
In all rights, Rin should have left the boy to rot and tallied his losses there.
The idea that he might have been concerned about the teenager was ludicrous. Rin considered it once, and then promptly shoved it to the back of his mind, where it was ordered to gather dust.
The previous months-long silence was not repeated. Now Nooj showed up for his scheduled appointments, or sent word ahead of time when he would be late, rather than leave them all wondering if he had finally met his end in a fiend's jaws. The Al Bhed of Mi'ihen's Travel Agency grew to be familiar with his routine visits, accusing Nooj of being impervious to mortality each time they heard his cane scrape across the front stoop.
Nooj, the Deathseeker. Nooj, the Undying.
Rin always made sure to have another translator around; he did not spend any more time in the teenager's presence than was absolutely required.
The irregularity ground against Rin's sensibilities. Through annoyance alone, Nooj had been elevated from financial account all the way into hobby. A particularly contrary one. He lacked the verve of the Al Bhed, but nurtured a rebellious streak that would have done better defying Yevon than working for them.
Nooj could accomplish much more, if only he stayed alive.
"The boy is an idiot," was all Rin said, after each of the Crusader's visits. "He has every opportunity for life, and yet he wishes only for death. At the same time, he is determined to survive. He is independent, motivated to build his own path for his desires, and willing to defy tradition in order to do it. And yet, so stubborn! I have never seen such a mixture before."
The other Al Bhed, used to the impassioned diatribes, only passed the sugar around the lunch table while they each flavored their tea. Several would exchange private glances while they watched the Travel Agency's founder. Occasional comments about similarity and resemblances would drift through.
One would invariably speak up. "How high is his bill now, Rin?"
"High enough," Rin always answered, and then turned his gloom into his cup.
- - - - -
Despite the unresolved issue between them, the teenager provided more profit than irritation. Orders from various Crusader stations kept trickling in. Yevon may have sponsored the defense units, but Bevelle's regulation machina were susceptible to jamming and damp weather. Given the choice between fiends and potential heresy, the Crusaders were slowly gravitating towards the latter.
Their demonstration of a survival instinct pleased Rin. While the Al Bhed's weapons were still openly banned from membership in Yevon's personal army, the owner of the Travel Agency calculated that it would only be a matter of time before the tables began to turn.
The piercing tang of winter was on the air. Mi'ihen was blessed in comparison to its sister locations; warmer than Macalania by far, and more temperate than the Thunder Plains. While storms could wash out the roads and leave swampy ruts that threatened to swallow passing wagons, the weather on Mi'ihen was rarely cruel.
While the seasons rarely changed for the Highroad, the passage of time was still observed through routine celebration. Many Al Bhed had requested leave to visit family members gathered at Home, and Rin arranged extra pay for those who agreed to stay and work through the holidays.
For his part, the creator of the Travel Agencies had no direct ties to concern himself with. There was a distant cousin that connected Rin to other small tribes that ran through the Al Bhed genealogy; a nephew of an aunt by a second wedding on another side, loosely netting him into the collective whole by tenuous fishhooks of blood. He rarely saw them. They occasionally wrote.
With two days to go before the Agency was to be cleaned up, Rin locked himself into his office. Only leaving the room for sporadic meals and to refill his black tea, the Al Bhed pulled tally after tally out of the ledgers, methodically comparing them to previous years and projecting future totals.
Trading with Yevon would be high, as the temples upped their own purchases of garlands and bolts of cloth for their endless ritual banners. Besaid's fabrics, renowned across Spira, required shipping routes that could haul them all the way up to Bevelle. Macalanian performers would be exporting instruments; athletes in Luca would need medicinal ointments from Kilika in time for the blitzball season.
It looked to be a profitable future.
Rin did not look up when his door was pounded upon, one hand splayed over a mercantile record from Kilika and the other fumbling in a desk drawer. He'd stored the customary good-luck charm there last year so that he would not lose it, but in the tribulations of business, it had either been moved or lost.
The charm was not an expensive trinket. It consisted of a parchment with carefully scribbled coordinates--locations of every Travel Agency, safehouses where Al Bhed could request machina parts or send messages to Home. One of his employees had fashioned two thin sheets of bronze to sandwich around the paper and keep it safe. Rin liked to hang it up during festivals as a reminder of how far the Al Bhed had spread across Spira, while still managing to retain a cohesive language and culture. Suspended by a red ribbon in a doorway or underneath an arch, the charm would catch the light and send it spinning out in flash-darts down the halls.
Now. Was it in the other drawer?
Another series of knocks.
When the third round of drumming came, Rin's patience spasmed. "Ku cfymmuf vena!" The curse lashed out against the intruder; his knuckles jammed against a corner of the drawer and scraped against a splinter. Sticking his wounded finger in his mouth, the Al Bhed twisted to resume the quest with his other hand.
He missed the rasp of the door being shoved open. Then a flash of color hooked the corner of his vision, and Rin craned his head back up over the lip of the desk.
The visitor moved in jerky puppet motion, hops of motor control that resembled a crippled bird. A ragged coat of red leather had been sliced at a diagonal angle, leaving half the material absent, running over only one side of its body. One crutch poked out from underneath an arm. Even though the familiar mass of dark hair had finally been reined back into a tight cordon tail, Rin recognized the figure instantly.
Nooj.
Diagrams unrolled in a wing-flap of data, flexing lines of measurements all over Rin's ledgers.
Nooj's hand had flung out a waxy sheet of diagrams upon the Al Bhed's desk. The other was hidden underneath the half-cloak which sulked over his left side and partially obscured the man's artificial leg.
Far too experienced to be at all unnerved, Rin straightened from his search and delivered an unimpressed stare. Silence was the comparative gauntlet thrown upon the threadworn carpet; Nooj eyed him back, defiant rancor already turning sour in the teenager's posture.
"Ku cfymmuf vena," Rin repeated, neatly informative. "It means, please go away. Now."
Nooj did not move. After the brief skirmish of pupils and iris, Rin looked down at the blueprints which sprawled over his books. Measurements jumped out, deftly penned in an engineer's script--too careful with the numbers, gawky with words. He observed the cost of materials listed in the Al Bhed tongue.
Then he noticed the joint type.
"Congratulations," the Al Bhed announced blandly. "The Taydrcaagan has only succeeded halfway. Again."
Nooj's lips performed a twisted curve.
Rin did not retreat. "Show me."
Underneath the scrutiny of black-swirled eyes, the teenager struggled his visible hand over his body in order to tug up the cloak. The motion revealed an empty hollow where a set of fingers should have waved. Wrist, forearm, elbow--all were missing, replaced by a stump that had been torn off halfway from the left shoulder joint. White bandages wrapped around the bulge. The dressings had gone yellow with underlying pus.
When Nooj shifted his weight, the moist smell that reached Rin's nostrils warned of tissue decay.
Rin's eyes slid past the injury he knew had been aggressively neglected. He slapped the backs of his knuckles against the blueprints. The paper made a satisfying tak of protest beneath his fingernails. "This is not a standard model for an arm replacement. It is designed for gripping machina rifles. Who created this?" he demanded. "And why do you want it?"
"There were two Al Bhed staying in the same village as my squad." Nooj's attitude had not changed during the weeks that had stolen more of his body away. An overtone of dry amusement recited the tale. "We spoke with them over dinner--hunted fiends together for a time, before my arm was taken. One of them studied my leg and came up with this idea. As for the second question, do you even have to ask?" Releasing the ragged cloak, Nooj returned his grip to the crutch. "I want something that will allow me back into combat."
Friendship with the Al Bhed. The image of goggles and gas masks mixing in with the stalwart armor of Yevon's Crusaders should have been astonishingly laughable. Impossible.
At least, before now.
"As interesting as I find it to be, how you sell yourself piece by piece to us," Rin remarked, "you have failed to properly achieve your goals this time--and you have lost the arm that is on your wounded side. It will look like our fault. How is that good publicity?"
Practicality was on Nooj's side. "I can't walk with a cane if I don't have a working arm." He rotated his wrist, fanning the crutch wide in display. "The best I can do is use this. I need the replacement in order to walk properly. There's no choice."
"And yet," Rin countered, "if we help equip you, you will only rush out and lose another embarrassing body part. Perhaps your other leg? We may be able to rig you up with a metal cart if you continue like this. Just imagine how Yevon would like that."
All traces of humor faded from Nooj's visage, replaced by a dim promise of a scowl. "Just give me the equipment."
"No." Rin's finger rapped the blueprints, crinkling the lines. "This is a valuable allocation of materials. It will make our products look shabby if they cannot even keep a single Crusader alive.
I will not help you."
"Call the machina builder--"
"Zanni hates you." Swelling anger stripped all decorum out of Rin's throat, twisting each word clear and cold. "He says you have no respect for his work. Anyway, he is in Besaid, and it would take a week to contact him--let alone arrange for his passage back. He is too old for frequent ocean journeys." The tirade tasted like rancid apples as it rushed out of Rin's mouth, but he found he could not stem its tide. "We have been nothing but generous to you, taydrcaagan, and still you have only further demands!"
"Generous?" Nooj's voice matched Rin's higher temper, rising in a flare of defensiveness. "I thought this was business."
Sound rolled around the office, burying itself in the bookshelves.
Rin took a breath.
"You are correct." Teeth wrestled against each other as the Al Bhed felt his jaw clenching tight. "I am here for profit, taydrcaagan. It does not matter to me if you truly wish to perish. I have no particular interest either way." The reminder was tiresome even as he repeated it, but Rin pressed on dutifully. "However, if you wish maintenance and care of your prosthetics, then you must uphold your end of the bargain with us. Stop losing limbs," he spat, plain-tongued for a rare moment. "Most of us are born with four, and we have the good sense to keep them."
"You sound like a grey-haired grandfather, nattering on like that." Joviality mixed with latent hostility formed the brunt of Nooj's charge against the Al Bhed. The teenager's mouth smirked with an adult's scorn. "Are you going to ground me next? Tell me I can't go back out to fight until I have my machina polished?"
"If you were my son," Rin started, bitter enough that he thought he tasted his own stomach acid in the back of his throat before he calmed, and grudgingly reformed his words.
"...I would charge you doubled rates."
Nooj's hair snicked around his shoulders as he turned his head hard, staring fixedly at a spot on the wall over Rin's shoulder.
"You are a unique case, taydrcaagan." Blue eyes ached like overlarge marbles in Rin's skull as he glared; he thought of the Guado's ninety-day chocobo bill, and accused deception. "You lie every single time you go out to fight Sinspawn. You let others believe that you are helping them, but in reality, you are only trying to kill yourself on their time. Because you allow them to think you care about their safety, they support you by giving you food, clothing, shelter. You have been deceiving them all along, taydrcaagan, but you cannot pull the same trick on me.
"Now you wish me to indulge you again at the possible risk of a highly-trained sylrehecd being lost to Sin at sea. Get out of my office," Rin ordered, his face composed of black ice even as he rose to his feet, wiping the blueprints in a crackling chorus off the desk. "Ku yfyo."
- - - - -
Nooj did not leave that evening. He did not leave in the morning either, choosing to scrape his crutch up and down the halls while visitors to the Mi'ihen Travel Agency whispered behind their hands after he hobbled by, eyes upon the metal of his leg. The Al Bhed workers, occupied with the task of scouring the building clean in time for the holidays, only watched the silent war between their supervisor and a pet project that had become anything but.
When the third morning of this methodical resistance continued, Rin finally sought the teenager out.
He found the Crusader in one of the guest rooms that had managed to avoid seasonal decoration, and broke immediately into barter-patter, smooth as a noontide sea. "Everywhere I have gone, my employees tell me that the Taydrcaagan is scaring customers," he declared. "You are making us lose business. Also, I have been told that you have not yet paid for your room. Do you think that clean linens are free?"
Nooj, trapped against the windowsill beneath Rin's scrutiny, only made a careless shrug with his crutch. "I don't have anywhere else to go like this, do I?"
The scant days had been a war for Rin to calm his own temper. Seeing the teenager again nearly revived it.
"We will eat. And then we will talk about this."
One day into the week-long gathering, and intoxicants had already been raided by many of the Travel Agency staff. It was customary to prepare basic stews and breads for the meals--all food that could be gathered easily on the roads, and just as quickly eaten. Machina oil was an oft-joked ingredient, but only added when the Al Bhed were extraordinarily drunk.
Rin stopped long enough by the kitchens to request two trays. He carried both in his hands while Nooj followed him to his office, breathing in the aroma of thick breads meant to sop up the meat broth of the stew. Fresh, raw carrot slices dotted the sides of the bowls. Tradition meant for harsh digestion at times, but for one week out of the year, Rin found that he could manage.
Once inside his office, Rin promptly cleared away room on his desk for the meal, settling the trays down where spatters would not accidentally stain nearby papers. Nooj, bending himself into a chair, paused long enough to retrieve a pair of clear lenses from a pocket before he accidentally sat on them. One earpiece was bent crooked; the Crusader pinched it back into shape, reconstructing the sloping curve.
Rin stared as the teenager slid the spectacles onto his nose. "Your glasses," he began, lifting his hand in an open-palmed demand for explanation.
"Hereditary." Nooj straightened the nosepiece with a push of a finger, and then leaned his crutch against another chair where it would not slide. "My father needed them, and so did both of his parents. When my targeting accuracy began to fail a few months ago, my squad stopped in Bevelle to get me outfitted."
"I imagine that the priests had much to say about your current condition," Rin drawled. Rankled for reasons he could not define, the Al Bhed simply voiced the tail-end of his thoughts. "We could have equipped you with spectacles here in Mi'ihen. Even... with a cheaper rate."
"But I didn't come to you."
The statement dangled in the air and kicked its heels, hung by its neck while it died.
Rin found himself silent, dissecting the six words and wondering why they mattered more than the weight of the air that was used to speak them. Reaching no conclusion that did not verge upon frustration, the Al Bhed uncovered the platter of fresh bread. "What did Bevelle have to say about your prosthetic?" Lifting a knife, he deftly half-cut, half-tore a piece off, using both hands for the task without thinking. He dipped it into his dinner soup, taking a bite.
"They required me to stay in Bevelle for a week so that they could review the use of my heathen machina." Nooj's hand shook out the napkin over his bowl, and set it aside. "In the end, they gave their permission, and warned that they'd be keeping a close eye on me."
Heathen machina. Rin found himself smirking around the crust of his bread. "Did you expect anything else from them? Tell me that you did not expect any help from Yevon, in the event that you became damaged as one of their Crusaders."
"No," Nooj said, voice flushing hot even though his cheeks were plain. "I thought they would ignore me while I died."
Steam from the soup-bowls flattened out and faded away on the air.
Nooj did not try to reach for the bread knife, choosing to go without rather than struggle one-handed.
Openly observing the teenager with a long eye that measured the missing gaps where limbs used to be, Rin let his face grow polished with cynicism. Hard. "You are doing a very good job of that."
"Cleanly. Not like this." Skimming his hand over the platter, Nooj finally selected a fork. He picked at one of the carrots, spearing it in half. "Fighting Sin and giving up my life to it was all I had ever planned for. I'll be seventeen next spring. I was fourteen when I first joined the Crusaders. All this time, and even the monsters thwart me. I don't expect anything better from Yevon, either."
Rin watched the vegetable slice disappear between the teenager's teeth. "The way you are acting now, you will almost certainly become a fiend unless you are able to come to terms with your passing." Reaching across the table for the pepper-grinder, Rin tapped a few flakes out. They drifted like black snow into his broth. "Unless you are lucky enough to be Sent, that is. But since you are a Crusader, I suspect Yevon will provide a summoner. I shall count myself lucky, then," the Al Bhed mused aloud, hearing the melody of his own words play at satisfaction. "If you die on the battlefield, at least I will not have to be concerned over your fiend knocking on my door and being impolite to the guests."
Looking up while he offered the grinder over, Rin stopped short as he noticed Nooj's face. The teenager had gone pale beneath his sun-baked tan.
Years of calculations clicked together.
"Yevon. That is why, isn't it." Rin felt his expression grow equally bloodless as he slowly turned the answer over in his mind, examining what had finally been caught. "You aren't a Crusader to serve Bevelle, or to find an easy way to die. You only do it because you need a summoner."
He expected Nooj's denial. Instead, the Al Bhed watched the mystery of Nooj's eyes dropping away, closing like a bird in a snowstorm to plunge down into death.
"Taydrcaagan." Against that long-familiar reclusiveness, Rin pressed. "Tell me. I have asked you often enough. Tell me, this once."
When the teenager answered, his voice was uncommonly subdued.
"My village... was attacked three years ago by Sin." Down the hall, Rin could hear distant cat-calls as the Al Bhed bantered over dinner. Inside his office, he could barely pick out Nooj's words, faint as candle-smoke. "My father was killed. So was my older brother--they both ran out, trying to defend the farmland as if two bodies could possibly change fate.
"After they died, my mother... was affected by Sin's toxin when we tried to drag their remains away to see if we could find a healer in time. I was affected too. When I fell asleep that night, I didn't wake up for a week. They thought I was dead.
"But my mother never recovered." Nooj lowered the fork in his hand, allowing the metal to tilt off his knuckles and gradually find its rest against the tray. "Her mind was lost in the past--she thought that I was a kid again. They had to have nursemaids to keep track of her so that she didn't wander off, calling out after things that weren't there.
"When I came out of my coma, everyone expected me to be just like her." Nooj's fingers opened. The fork fell out; he kept his hand spread, watching it. "Sometimes, I think I still am affected. Nothing's seemed the same after Sin's toxin. Everything's... unimportant."
Rin, finding his own appetite vanished, set his bread down upon the tray as he listened to the private confession. Nooj refused to look up, reciting his life into his own soup bowl. Toneless. Each word, dropped as methodically as the teenager had forced himself step by step down the Agency's halls, preferring numbed nerves over weakness.
"We didn't have a summoner in the area, so many of the dead became fiends. The survivors were forced to pull together a war band to defend what was left. My mother had to be locked in her room so she wouldn't break out looking for our family. Half of the survivors were killed in the second wave, but they refused their rest at the Farplane and kept wandering, trying to protect the village. Many of them became monsters themselves. No one could tell them apart after a few days. Not from the living, and not from the fiends.
"We were only saved when a band of Yevon's Crusaders came through. The squads always try to travel with at least one summoner nearby, you see. If they don't, the squad pays for one to come, and can receive compensation from the temples. That's how they cleaned out my village. Otherwise, we would have all been wiped out."
"The Crusaders took me in when I claimed I was an orphan. No one expects you to be able to last to old age in the Crusaders--not really. Either you drop out and retire, or the fiends catch up with you." At last, the teenager looked up, wrestling himself out of the distant hallucination of his past. "You've decided that you want to live. I don't. Death takes everything in this world. I know that. But I don't want to end up like my mother--lifeless while still breathing. I can't accept that, and it keeps me up at nights. I think about the fiends of my village, about how the cycle never ends." Brown eyes closed; the teenager shook his head. "When I die this time, I want to make sure I'm Sent. I don't want to have to wake up again. That's all."
The bread was cold against Rin's palm.
"I see." The Al Bhed, speaking, found himself startled at the sound of his own voice. The interjection hovered, uncertain of its place in the weary atmosphere of Nooj's long disclosure. He cleared his throat; finding no inspiration for words, the Al Bhed tried again. "And Yevon disapproves of active suicide. So that is your motivation. I had... wondered why you chose such a contradictory means of leaving this world."
"Now you know." In a failing twist of his mouth, Nooj hunted out Rin's gaze and tried to smirk at it. He only succeeded in appearing tired. "So tell me... are you going to keep trying to convince me that living is worth it?"
Rin met brown eyes with his own. He hesitated, and then wondered if Guado merchants and Crusaders both perceived Al Bhed pupils in the same way.
"I do not like to lie, taydrcaagan." The claim was familiar. Rin offered it anyway, to the resignation of both their years. "So, there is nothing for me to say."
They finished dinner in silence, spoons dipping into the broth. The metal caught the lights of the study and spun it back into glossy reflections on the walls. Night grew in dark around them and consumed the world outside the windows; trapped inside an emptiness that had only one door out, both Rin and Nooj avoided looking at one another, heads lowered while the minutes slipped away.
They sat, isolated, until the torches were set out in rings around the Travel Agency, joining strings of candles as the Al Bhed of Mi'ihen drank to another year of life.
