Pain of Remembrance
A/N: When an Al Bhed invokes Yevon's name it is a considered a swear word.
A hairsbreadth of gray glimmered against the darkness, broadened like a waxing moon then closed.
She slept on, allowing her tired mind and limbs to be sucked once more into an abyss of lethargy.
There was no knowing how long she drifted. Yet slowly like moisture returning to a parched land the first glimmers of awareness penetrated. The patter of feet and the unrecognizable rise and fall of voices drew her upward like a drowning man clawing towards the surface. She slowed at the edge of wakefulness, hesitating, and then pushed onward into the light that spun above her like a supernova. Her eyes widened slowly and the light steadied, transforming into a single Al Bhed chemical globe.
"So, you are awake," a calm, steady voice said, drawing her from where she had been floating in relaxed silence.
"Nooj?" she murmured sleepily, shifting to push herself upright. A blur of red stood out against the gray like a bloodstain on a cold blade. In her confusion she wondered where the others were and how she had ended up in the camp's infirmary. "What..?"
Something's wrong!
Bolting upright, Paine gasped as a wave of nausea tore through her gut and her vision spun into sickeningly in and out of focus. She clutched the sheets as dry-heaves wracked her body only to fall back again as a phantom pain seemed to tear her arm from its socket.
All of this was nothing against the sharp and sudden agony of remembrance.
It had all been a set-up. The Den of Woe, the Crimson Squad, all of it. She didn't understand how or why they would have bothered to train the lot of them first but as she ran, only a few steps behind Gippal with the sound of machina gunfire ringing in her ears, her anger at the betrayal was the only thing keeping her from collapsing under the weight of despair.
At the sound of Nooj's machina limbs faltering she spun in time to see him fire a spray of bullets at their pursuers, who only a few hours ago had been their officers. He made no move to start running again, even as the front line fell away. "Nooj!" Paine yelled dashing back to grab his machina arm. "We have to go!" He looked back at her, his brown eyes strangely dead. As if…
She opened her mouth but before a sound could come out she felt his arm jerked out of her grip. "She's right, Noojster, you can croak on your own time," Gippal, flanked by Baralai snatched the machina from his good arm and half pushed half dragged Nooj along with them.
At first Paine had hoped to leave Maester Kinoc and the other Warrior Monks in the dust but with Nooj slowing them down and Kinoc falling back to join the rest of the clergy only the most hardened warriors kept up the chase. As they reached the end of Mushroom Rock Road, gaining only a few precious seconds by reaching the geysers before the warrior monks, Baralai gasped between breaths, "We can't run much longer, we have to make a stand!"
"With what?" Paine barked back. Nooj had the only weapon amongst them and Yevon knew how many bullets were left.
As it would turn out, he had only three.
With making a stand out of the question, the lone survivors of the Crimson Squad were forced into hiding, finding only brief refuge in caves along the Djose Highroad. Paine hoped that the pursuit would lighten the longer they evaded capture and in some sense she was right. The Warrior Monks pursuing them disappeared but by the next day hover crafts were sweeping the Highroad, each manned by five Crusaders armed to the teeth.
Nooj was strangely quiet throughout their harrowing flight. Paine tried to chalk it up to the pain he must be feeling where flesh met machina but whenever she caught his eye she was disturbed by what she saw. They were dark and dead like twin windows into the Den of Woe.
"I think they're done for the night," Gippal whispered, his normal cheery nonchalance buried beneath the days of little sleep and less food. They were currently on the Old Road below Mi'hen after escaping though the entrance to the Djose Highroad before it could be blocked against their escape. Reaching over he shook Baralai out of his doze and Paine moved to help Nooj to his feet. "With luck they'll assume we're stuck behind the blockade. I say we try to make the Travel Agency by dawn."
Paine remembered a time when journey from the Mushroom Rock Base to the Mi'hen Travel Agency had taken only a days travel. If her calculations were right then the amount of time it had taken them to travel the same distance with their injuries, low supply levels and narrow windows of safe travel time was nearly a month.
As they prepared to set out again Paine heard a whispered voice she had almost forgotten the sound of, "Paine?"
She turned to the sound of Nooj's voice and her heart leapt. Even in the darkness of pre-dawn she caught of glint of long-absent light behind his spectacles. As she moved closer, he shook his head slightly as if rousing himself from sleep.
"Where are we?"
Paine's blood ran cold and for a moment she could only stare at him. As he looked at her she saw the confusion in his eyes, his composure held in check by an iron will. "What has happened?"
Yevon, has he gone mad? She walked over and knelt tentatively beside him, her eyes seeking his face "What…" her voice shook slightly though whether with fear or exhaustion she could not say, "What is the last thing you remember?"
His brow furrowed and the coldness in her belly spread. "There was a light and something… a wave of absolute despair, the likes of which I have never felt before engulfed me. I saw… a huge machina and a man who controlled it," his eyes had glazed over as he looked back in memory. "There was a woman-," the last word was garbled as a sudden gasp of pain shuddered through his body. "What have I done?" he whispered. "I didn't mean to… I'm sorry, I-."
"Nooj, what's wrong?" Paine exclaimed seizing his shoulders.
"I never meant to hurt you," he said hoarsely. "But I had no choice, I had to…I'm so sorry."
That's not Nooj, Paine realized. Nowhere in that shivering, quaking shell was the strong leader she had known. Even his voice seemed different and as his eyes rose to meet hers she thought for a moment she saw a flash of blue in his dark eyes.
"What in the name of Yevon is all that racket!" came a loud whisper as Gippal dropped down from the shelf above them. He looked irritated and frightened, only a step away from the tantrums that had typified him when Paine met him as a new recruit. "Are you trying to bring them down on us?" When no one answered he gave an exasperated sigh and said, "Come on, Rin said he'd take us in for a day as a favor to my dad. Nooj, you ok over there?"
"Yes," Paine spun to see Nooj on his feet, cane clutched in one hand with his machina gun strapped to his hip. There was no hint on his face that the breakdown of only a moment ago had ever happened. If anything, the dead look had returned to his eyes.
"You alright Paine?" Gippal asked.
"Yeah… I guess so," the questioning look she shot at Nooj went unanswered and the half-machina man set out on the trail before them.
"You know what's going to happen once we get there, right?" Gippal said falling into step beside her. Only silence met his question and he continued. "It's not safe for us to travel together anymore, they've got our descriptions and they know we're traveling as a group. Rin said he can arrange to get me back to Bikanel but Baralai said he's got other plans…" Gippal took a deep breath, "Whatever happens, we're gonna get split up. You're welcome to come with me but I figured…I figured you'd want to go with Nooj."
She started and a small ironic smile twitched at the corner of her lips. "Was I that obvious? Nevermind, don't answer that."
"I get the feeling I'm gonna miss you, Dr. P, whatever happens. Things aren't gonna be the same anymore. The thing is… I just wish I knew what it was I saw in there. That was one impressive machina…" the last sentence ended in a murmur such that Paine could not hear the last word. In the east the sky was stained a deep blood red as the sun glimmered over the horizon as the Travel Agency came into view.
"Why Nooj?" Paine whispered though it could not be told whether it was to the red-clad figure in the corner or to herself. "Why did you do it?" She sniffled and before hot tears blurred her vision. Forgetting the red-clad figure entirely she sank back against the bed post and cried until she had nothing left though the well of pain remained.
Auron watched the display in silence, not a flicker of emotion showing crossing his concealed features. When she finally wore herself to exhaustion, her meager store of energy spent, he bent to wipe the hot sweat and cooling tears from her face and pull the crisp sheet over her bandaged shoulder.
He left the light on, for he knew she would not want to wake in darkness.
A/N: Yeah, in the end very little editing took place. In retrospect I rather like this chapter, for all its brevity. I can't promise another chapter in the near future, what with my Fruits Basket fic taking up my time. But I would still like to finish this fic in the near future. Reviews are always appreciated.