One-Winged Angel

(no, this is NOT turning into a FF7 crossover... continue reading, please XD)

The sun burned on Dizzy's face. She opened her eyes, but had to squint against its bright light. Shading her face with one hand, she pulled herself slowly from the ground. Her clear ruby-red eyes scanned the unfamiliar trees around her.

"Where am I…" she said softly, confused. She sat disoriented in the grass for a moment before the memories came flooding back to her.

"Oh! That woman with the guitar knocked me off the May Ship. I must have landed here." The fact that she'd just fallen several thousand feet out of the sky didn't seem to unsettle her in the least.

Dizzy stood up, her feet feeling a little unsteady, and searched the cloudless blue canvas of sky above her. Neither the ship nor her friends were anywhere in sight. Suddenly, she caught sight of the line of dried blood caked on her right arm. She gasped, and as she touched the cut it had flowed from she winced in pain.

"Ouch! Did this happen as I fell? It doesn't look too bad, but… Undine!"

As Dizzy had been looking over her shoulder, she saw one of her wings, not folded neatly against the curve of her back as it should be, but dragging lifelessly along the ground behind her. Its white feathers were stripped away and bloody in places. Still, she felt no pain. Both her wings had minds and feelings of their own.

"Undine… please, be okay." She prayed, holding the wounded wing gently. There was no response.

An unfamiliar voice groaned from somewhere behind Dizzy. "Ohhh…. My neck! Not again…"

Whirling around to face the voice, Dizzy saw that only a few feet behind her was a man laying prone on the ground. As she watched for a second, he made a gallant effort to push himself out of the dirt but failed miserably. Dizzy came to a sudden realization, and she gasped before running to the injured man's side.

"Oh no! My powers must have gone out of control again… I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"

He managed to tilt his head to look up at Dizzy as she knelt next to him. Her words did not comfort him.

"Eeeek! S-she's still here! Get away from me, please!" he yelled, suddenly trying to scramble away from her.

Dizzy looked crestfallen. "Wait, don't go! I promise not to hurt you!"

The man's eyes looked wide and panicked and his body stayed tensed, but he stopped trying to flee.

"That's not…what I'm af-f-fraid of," he said, voice stuttering badly.

With an apologetic expression on her serene face, Dizzy reached over and put a hand on his back. He flinched a little at her touch, but didn't try to run again.

"It's okay. Here, let me help you," she grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him into a sitting position. She could tell that he was pretty beat up; his white clothes looked worn out in spots and old bandages covered parts of his arms and chest. Leaves stuck out haphazardly from his chin-length brown hair, which was held out of his face by a circlet with a cute pink heart on the forehead. Another heart was printed on the slick, skintight fabric of his shirt.

He sighed tiredly. "I passed out again, didn't I? That means… oh, great, now my arm's all messed up, too…" He started fidgeting around with his elbow, which seemed to be bending outward further than a normal arm should.

"You shouldn't do that! You'll hurt yourself more," Dizzy said, concerned. "I'm very sorry about attacking you. All I remember is falling off the ship, then waking up here…"

"Attack me? What?" the young man was extremely confused. "You didn't… wait… you were sitting over there… and this t-thing came out of your wing when I went towards you…"

Dizzy nodded. "What happened?" she asked quietly.

"Well, I guess I just fainted," he said, a little embarrassed. "I don't remember anything after that. But you don't understand; when I faint…I…I…"

He swallowed, but couldn't get the right words dislodged from his throat.

"A-are you okay, Miss Angel?" he asked instead, sounding even more remorseful than Dizzy.

She could only blush for a second.

"I'm not an angel," Dizzy said with a small smile. "I'm just… well…" She didn't quite know how to explain it without exposing something she didn't want to.

"I'm an 'exception'." She concluded.

Her companion just looked puzzled, but for once he didn't ask.

"I'm just a normal guy," he said in response, but he started feeling self-conscious again and had to look away. "I don't think there's anything really special about me. Not like you."

"What's your name?" Dizzy asked, suddenly more curious just because of his comment.

"Zappa," he replied, turning back towards her. "What's yours?"

Though she'd known that he would ask, Dizzy was reluctant to answer.

"I can only tell you if you promise not to tell anyone that you saw me," her soft voice held a strange sense of urgency in it.

"Sure, I promise," he said immediately. "I can tell you're not some kind of outlaw. No way! And I've seen some real criminals since I left home." His eager trust made her feel more at ease, but she couldn't help but think she was taking advantage of him somehow. She was, after all, a wanted woman in a way.

"Okay…"she started quietly, as though someone might overhear. "My name is Dizzy."

"Dizzy?" Zappa repeated, several times louder than her hushed tone, "It's a wonderful pleasure to meet you, Miss Dizzy!"

He extended one black-gloved hand with a smile; she was puzzled by the formal gesture for a moment before she reached out her own, shaking his hand gently. Zappa had a broad, very amiable smile, the kind that comes from a lot of experience.

"You don't need to call me 'miss'…" she said, smiling back.

Zappa's smile suddenly vanished, replaced by a look of horror. "Oh no! You really are hurt!" he cried, pointing at her shoulder.

He'd caught sight of her injured arm and wing, lying limply in the grass behind where she sat. Immediately he went searching through one of his bags, and before Dizzy could say anything he'd pulled something out of them.

"Here, Doctor Faust gave these to me, but you can have them," he said, sounding very upset. In his hand were two rolls of gauze bandages.

"Oh… thank you," Dizzy said, taking them a little reluctantly, eyeing his own wounds. "Are you sure you don't need them?"

"No, I want you to take them! I have more, anyway," he insisted. "'Better safe than sorry,' my mother always says that! And I didn't know for how long I'd be… um…well…" he trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

"Aahh… I guess it's just good to be cautious."

After a few minutes, Dizzy had successfully bound up the bleeding parts of her wing with the bandages and Zappa actually managed to start walking, though his legs looked very wobbly and he kept moaning melodramatically.

"Ow, owww… my whole body's aching again… and I was doing so much better today!" he said, leaning heavily on the trunk of one tree near the edge of the clearing.

As she walked over towards him, Dizzy's wing was no longer dragging in the grass; it was wrapped tightly against her back with clean white gauze. Her black wing still hovered over her left shoulder, casting its long shadow over her head.

"You didn't happen to see anyone around here, did you?" Dizzy said anxiously. "I should start looking for my friends. May… April… they must be worried sick."

He shook his head, apologetic. "I don't think anyone else is around here. But… I guess… I need to go, too."

"Are you looking for something, too?" Dizzy asked, "We could look together."

Zappa turned towards her, and his blue eyes lit up as he smiled in sudden hope, but the light immediately went out.

"I… I can't," he said, sounding miserable.

"Why not? We would be safer if we walked together," Dizzy reasoned. She felt just as concerned about her new, injured friend as she was about her own problem.

"I'm worried about… if I p-pass out again…" he tried unsuccessfully to explain. He was starting to dread the thought of being alone again, now since he'd had his first real conversation with another person in weeks. He started to fear it even more than the thing that he knew would eventually invade his body again.

"…I can't come with you unless you promise me something," he repeated Dizzy's own words, suddenly adamant.

She wondered what kind of secrets someone so normal-looking could possibly contain. "What is it?" she asked, half-curious and half-worried.

"If I start to feel funny… or if I faint, you won't try to help me," he continued. His words sounded ominous in Dizzy's ears. "You have to promise to just run away."

Her eyes went wide with disbelief. "I can't do that!" she cried.

"Please!" pain actually became audible in his voice. "I do want to come with you, I really do, but… I c-can't risk th-th-that!"

One of his hands reflexively moved to cover the red stain on his sleeve.

"Please, Dizzy…" he pleaded.

There was a very long silence, but finally Dizzy relented.

"I don't understand this at all, but… okay…" she said, her face knotted in worry.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Zappa sighed in relief. His whole body relaxed against the side of the tree. With those two beautiful words, all the conflict inside him evaporated.

"Thank you…" he breathed. As soon as he'd spoken, somehow Dizzy knew she'd be sorry she ever made that promise.

"Are you okay now? Do you think you can walk for a while?" she asked.

"Sure!" Zappa exclaimed. Cheer unlike anything he'd felt since the start of his bizarre illness washed over him. "Let's go find your friends."

And with Dizzy leading the way, the two of them took off into the west.

-Author's Note-

I think I needed to write more of a cute chapter after that last one. Well, the next one won't be a picnic for Dizzy or Zappa, either… so I hope they're enjoying this one. XD

I'm in the process of writing chapter 4 as I speak, so if anyone wants to correct some grave mistake I'm making, now is your chance!