Ringabel aches.
He aches and hurts and every single part of his body is alive and screaming in pain, it seems. He can feel the pain in excruciating detail - in his fingers, his back, his ribs, even his hair. He had felt agony like this only once before, when he had fallen into the magma at Mt. Karka and the torture at the hands of that fat pig that had followed. It's a pain that tells him that he should have died, and a pain that makes him wish he were dead. Not even the cool cloth on his face can save him from the heat of the pain.
It hurts to breathe, even to think, to listen to the quiet buzzing around him and he forces out a quiet, tortured sob from his parched throat to make it stop.
To his relief, the buzzing stops.
With that pain gone, he whimpers and it hurts as a tear falls down his face to wet his ear and hair.
A warm, wonderful, healing glow overtakes his sense and he sighs quietly as the pain begins to fade. It fades enough that he slips back into sleep, and as darkness overtakes him again, he wonders what on earth had happened.
He can't even remember anymore.
Edea had woken up feeling empty and dead inside. Over and over she kept mentally replaying the image of Ringabel disappearing out of her sight over Grandship's railing. Was this how the man had felt when her counterpart in his world had perished? Seeing a loved one die right in front of her eyes, unable to do anything. Her fault. There's a giant hole in her chest, too big to be filled. A Ringabel shaped hole. She couldn't stand him most of the time, but he was her friend. He'd been there for her when she needed him, and now he wouldn't be there again. Never in her life had she thought he'd just… he'd just.
Her lip trembles and she turns her face into the pillow again, mentally apologizing to the Proprietress for getting her pillow wet. She'd faced the death of her friends and her family, multiple times over multiple worlds. She'd held both Master Kamiizumi and Einheria as they passed. She'd prepared herself for it as inevitable; all of them had ideals so important they would give their lives. Seeing Ringabel just vanish into the void like that was shocking. Realizing that he must have chosen that path, suffering silently despite laughing their side, and dwelling on his long fall, wondering if he had heard her scream for him - she wasn't prepared for this.
How could she have been? People weren't supposed to just disappear like that. She could understand if he died for his ideals, died for a purpose. But his death at his own hands was senseless. Meaningless. She just couldn't understand what would make him choose death over them - over her, after all his claims of love, why he'd been laughing and joking with them just the night before, why she hadn't been faster to follow him, why she hadn't yelled out his name to bring him back over the railing.
Her sobs start anew as she thinks about Alternis going over. Twice. Three times. Ringabel had fallen from Grandship once before, with no one to cry out for him. Ringabel was… was…
Gentle hands push her hair away from her splotchy face and she looks up to see Agnès resting beside her. Tired, worn, but awake.
"Don't cry, Edea." Agnès tries to tell her, but there are tears in the vestal's eyes as well. Edea rubs at her face, feeling foolish for weeping, and inches closer to her friend. There's just the three of them now. Ringabel would be upset to know he'd made her cry, even if it was his fault, the idiot.
"I'm not crying," she lies. "I just… why didn't he let us know?"
"Ah, Edea…" Agnès tries to continue, but is interrupted as Edea continues on, anger rising in her to drown out the grief.
"He always looked out for us! Was always meddling whenever he thought we looked tired or sad! Telling me how angels shouldn't cry, or that his shoulder was always there, or his bed was always open. He was being an idiot. He was lying to us the whole time." Her chest begins to heave again, aching, and she fists her hands in her nightgown, thinking in the back of her mind that she needs to change. Had they found him and brought him onboard? If so, she'd like to take him back to Eternia. Father would want to know.
"Edea…"
"He lied to us. He lied to me. I thought I could be ready for the deaths of my friends. Even my own. But I thought we'd die in battle, fighting for what we believed in. Not…. he just jumped. Just… jumped. How could he do that to us?!" She's being irrational, she knows. But the grief in her chest is making way to anger. He'd been all smiles, even weak ones, when his friends were upset or having problems, but the darkness had been eating him away inside. It just wasn't *fair*. He would protect them, but hadn't allowed them to protect him in turn.
"Edea," Agnès says a little more firmly to pierce through the blonde's ranting, rolling over onto her forearms and touching the other woman's shoulder. "He… he's alive."
The vestal's words are heard but they take a few moments to register through Edea's cloudy thoughts. When she understands exactly what Agnès has just said, Edea stares at her with wide, confused eyes. "He's what?"
"He's alive. Severely injured, but alive… I believe they took him to the inn." Tiz had tucked Agnès back into bed with Edea and thanked her profusely before running off again, but she knew they only had one place to take the horrifically injured Ringabel.
Edea can hardly believe what she's hearing. Ringabel was alive? After the distance he must have fallen, he was alive? After scaring them, after jumping from Grandship like he was some dumb Dark Knight, he was alive?
"I'm going to kill him," she says as she throws the heavy covers off of her and sits up. Enough of this moping around!
"... I beg your pardon?" Agnès sits up in bed as well.
"We're going to heal him up until he's good as new, and then I'm going to kill him." Or at least pummel him to a pulp for worrying them all like that. Edea growls slightly under her breath. Of course, the threat is an empty one, but he won't know that.
And her chest hurts again, though she's thankful that somehow, miraculously, he'd survived the fall. Maybe then she can get some answers out of him, why he'd do something so stupid.
"I really don't think…" Agnès' protest is cut off when the door, already slightly ajar, opens.
"Ahaha!" The Proprietress, likely drawn by the commotion, has come to check on them. "Feeling a little better, girl? Heard the news?"
"Yes!" Edea beams at the older woman, and her stomach growls, having come to associate her with food. "We're going to go beat him up. You can come join us, if you'd like."
The woman laughs again and stands aside so that Edea can leave her bedroom, a small room that's tucked above the storage area in the tavern. There's several others, that she's used for rowdy and well-liked patrons and for when Datz, Zatz, and Ringabel crashed after a night of drinking games. "Then you'll need your strength. I've got lunch waiting for you. And you as well, Lady Vestal." She nods to Agnès, who is scrambling to get out bed.
"Thanks!" Though to be honest, the idea of food still makes her a little sick, which is just another reason to be mad at Ringabel. He's ruined her appetite!
But she can scarf down at least a little bit of the light lunch the Proprietress has set out for them, crackers and berries and warm soup.
"You're not going to really hurt him, are you?" Agnès asks her while they quickly eat.
"Of course not," Edea reassures her. "Not badly."
"Edea…"
Edea sighs. She shouldn't joke around with Agnès, not like this. "I'm not going to hurt him. I mean, I'm mad. Really mad, and I feel like I could. But I'm not about to go beat up an injured man. Give me some credit, will you?" Even if the man was Ringabel, and he'd gotten himself into this situation, she had *some* scruples. She'd wait until he was fully healed from this. Healed and truly better.
They drink several glasses of juice to re-hydrate themselves before the Proprietress lets them leave with a pile of food on a tray for the men.
"I healed him some already," Agnès says quietly as they make their way up toward the inn. "But he's still horribly injured. I don't know how on earth he even survived."
Edea feels her stomach turn over, threatening to lose its lunch. Maybe she shouldn't have eaten? "He's got the devil's luck, that one. Don't they say that only the good die young?"
"Edea!"
"Sorry," Edea apologises, feeling a little chastised. She's just had a shock, she's allowed to joke about it. It's better than continuing to torment herself over the why. She's very thankful that he's alive, because she hadn't been ready to accept one of her closest friends had killed himself. Maybe now her mind can stop replaying the scenario in her head, blaming herself for all the things she had done wrong. "Sorry," she repeats, and a lump forms in her throat.
She was never going to forgive him, especially if he somehow managed to die after all of this. He had to survive - she even wanted him to outlive her at this point, even if he might hate it, just so that she never had to deal with this again.
The inn was quiet as usual, long abandoned. They'd cleared out a section for their own use, but there were still plenty of rooms that were full of cobwebs and dust. Edea checks the room they usually sleep in, but it's empty.
"We're in here." She turns around to see Zatz poking his head out of a room just a few doors down. "They're both asleep." They?
When she enters the room, she sees that Tiz is still wearing the Salve Maker costume, even though it's mostly covered by the blankets he's tucked into. Datz is sitting on the edge of that bed, a folding table with a deck of cards in front of him.
The other bed in the room is taken up by Ringabel. Edea feels that lump in her throat rise at the sight of him.
Oh, he's battered. Broken. His face and shoulders and arms are bruised, and there's bloody bandages around his forearms. Judging by the pile of rags by the door, they'd had to cut his clothing off of him, and he looks so pale and vulnerable. There's something wrong with his legs, she thinks as she sets the tray down and carefully approaches him. The blankets on his lower half are thick, almost abnormally so, to cover him and keep his injuries from being so obvious.
Edea's eyes are burning as she smooths some of the covers over his side. The other men have cleaned him up somewhat but there's still dried blood on his arms, down his chest… he looks terrible, half-dead and torn up, and this is after being healed? She can only imagine what he'd looked like when they first found him, and forces herself to focus on the even movement of his pale chest as he breathes. So focused in fact, that she doesn't hear Agnès speaking to Datz.
"Tiz?"
"Fell asleep just a little while ago. Tried to make a few medicines that might help Ringabel heal a little faster, or fix his legs, but it's slow going. He's okay, just tired. Don't think he slept well last night."
"His legs are still…"
"Probably shattered. He'll be lucky if he walks again." Datz sighs. In the army, he'd seen plenty of men who'd lost use of limbs. It was always a terrible thing to behold. Granted, they were lucky that Ringabel was even alive, but if they didn't fix his legs, the other man might want to be dead anyway.
"He'll be fine," Edea says softly, nudging the back of his hand with one of her fingers. "He's gone through worse, you know. Fell into lava, tortured, nursed back to health. Then he lost his memory after falling through the Holy Pillar." After realizing that Ringabel was Alternis, and that the journal was literally his journal, she'd gone back through the pages. In hindsight, the amount of things he'd been subjected to were horrifying. Too much for one man in one lifetime.
"Yeah," Datz agrees. "He's strong guy. He'll pull through."
Zatz has gone into another room to bring chairs for Edea and Agnès, and sets them down now before sitting at the other end of the card table.
But before sitting, Edea crosses over to the basin of water near the door so that she can wet a cloth. Ringabel's a mess. She knows he'll be mortified to learn that she or Agnès had seen him in such a state, but she can try to clean him, just a little.
"Thank you for staying here with us," Agnès says as she sits in the chair, angling it so that she can lean against the bed Tiz is sleeping on.
"Hey, don't worry about it. Ringabel's a good friend. And you kids have enough on your mind. Let us take care of this as much as we can." Datz smiles at her.
Zatz is grinned at her too. "Yeah, we've got this! We're good for more than just our brawn, you know. With the two of us involved, Ringabel will be back on his feet and annoying us all before you know it."
Agnès giggles. Edea smiles as well as she wipes Ringabel's face gently with a wet cloth. The bruises aren't so easily cleaned off, but at least the blood can be washed away - it's a start. She listens vaguely as the others continue to make small talk behind her back, Agnès asking them if they have any experience in this sort of thing.
"This is where you've been, Agnès!" Airy's light announces her arrival just moments before her voice does.
Tiz stirs in the bed and opens his eyes, rubbing at his face.
"Ah, Airy…" Agnès feels a pang of guilt. In the commotion from last night, and in the exhausting hours that had followed, she hadn't thought to find Airy. The fairy usually slept separate from them, her flickering light a distraction at best.
The fairy circles around the room, hovering in front of each of them in turn to examine their worn, tired faces. Finally, she covers above Ringabel, before settling on his pillow. "What happened? What did I miss last night?!"
"There was… an accident." Edea explains. A part of her doesn't know if she wants to tell Airy exactly what happened. Airy doesn't need to know, does she?
"I didn't hear anything at all," Airy shakes her head. "And no one thought to come get me? What if Agnès had been injured?"
Tiz speaks up before Edea does. "Agnès was fine. We would have gotten you if there was any worry." He too, didn't feel right telling Airy exactly what happened.
"Is he going to be okay?" Airy asks, flitting off the pillow to land on Agnès' lap. "This isn't going to take too long, is it? We still have Crystals we need to awaken."
Edea's hand twitches as she imagines reaching for a flyswatter. "The Crystals can wait. We can't even go anywhere with him like this. He needs time to heal."
"The Crystals can't wait. The world could be swallowed in darkness. I'm worried about Ringabel too, but we can't wait forever for him to get better. Don't you care what happens?"
Datz and Zatz stay wisely quiet, eyes flicking between the group, though when Edea stands and advances on the fairy, the taller man tenses.
"Of course we care!" Edea insists, her hands balling into fists. "We want to finish awakening the Crystals just as much as you or Agnès." Even if their efforts had not yet borne fruit and they kept being sent to new worlds, she held out hope that the next Holy Pillar would be the last. "But Ringabel's the only one with the experience to fly us around Luxendarc, and I'm not fighting without him."
Hardly one to be intimidated, the fairy flies up so that she's eye level with Edea, her own tiny fists straight at her side. "He'll be fine! And we can pilot Grandship without him."
"What, no we can't! Can we?" Edea glances over at Datz, who shrugs.
"He's been teaching us the navigation, but there's a difference going over open water and trying to cross Eternia's peaks." If it were just himself and Zatz, he'd have no problem attempting it. But with the Lady Vestal and her crew on board, as well as the Proprietress, he's a little more wary. It's not unlike piloting a seafaring vessel, just a hell of a lot bigger and with an extra dimension. He also doesn't know if he wants to get into the middle of this argument.
"See?" Edea glares at Airy.
"We can definitely pilot Grandship without him," Airy insists. "And we can fight without him, too. We just need to train up a little and -"
"Airy," Tiz interrupts, tugging a little at his hair. He feels nervous suddenly, but he has to speak before Edea tries to punch Airy or something. That's a bad idea. "How could you possibly know this? No one else has piloted Grandship, have they? And we've never fought without Ringabel, have we?"
"Yes, Airy." Agnès pipes in. "He's always been there." Agnès cannot remember a time when he wasn't, even if he had been knocked out in battle for a few moments, or feeling sick.
"Well…" Airy hesitates. "I still think we need to focus on the Crystals."
"We're not leaving him," Edea says, crossing her arms. "We'll try and get around if we need to, but Ringabel's our pilot. If you don't want this to take too long, try and help!"
She's so small that it's hard to read the expression on her face, but Airy flutters around Edea's form for a moment before she lands on her shoulder. "It's fine as long as it doesn't take too much time…"
But no one bothers to ask her what would happen if it did, because at that moment, Ringabel lets out a quiet, pained sound, and all eyes fall onto his form as he shifts uncomfortably in his sleep. The sound is music to her ears, but Edea quiets all the same. Had they woken him? She reaches out to smooth his hair back out of his face, but stops when she sees him begin to cry, a tear falling from his eye toward the bed.
"I'll cast Cura," Agnès whispers, and stands beside the other woman to work her magic, the healing glow only serving to highlight the harshness of his wounds.
Edea stands and waits, watching as he seems to relax and drift off again. Only then does she take his hand in hers.