Ivalice Returning: Final Fantasy XII
By Maracae Grizzley
Chapter Two
She didn't know how many years it had taken her, but after the whole nightmarish struggle she was finally free. She didn't know who she hated more, Wolf Eyes for trapping her in that God-forsaken deathtrap or the Mother for allowing her to dream of freedom and then wake again alone.
She supposed that she should be grateful for the dream, but she didn't want to be. It was after she had woken from the dream that she had noticed that the seals on her powers were much weaker, so weak that her abilities could leak through and negate some of the age sapping effects of the cavern. She had even managed to gain back some of the time she had lost. She was almost eighteen again, physically, and she had managed to break the last seal.
She teleported herself out of the cavern with a sob of grief. As glad as she was to be free, she hated that she was alone again.
She needed to heal. She needed familiar ground where she could grieve with support. A touch of something from the dream came back to her mind, a promise. She sighed. It was as good a place as any to go. At least she knew that her brother there wouldn't betray her, no matter her fears.
She sent out a thought, touching the mind of a sister she'd seen in the dream. Hey, Ree. I'll be alright. Long story, don't come looking for me. I'll show up when I'm ready. She felt, more than heard, the responding affirmation with a touch of concern. I just . . . I need to be alone for a while.
--
Mirari frowned. "What in the High One's name is wrong with Mel?"
At the other side of the room another friend of hers, Lyonesse, looked up from some needlework. She was starting to round in pregnancy. "What is it, Ree?"
"I just heard from Amelie. She's supposed to be overjoyed. She found herself a Knight in Shining Armor who adored her and last I heard they were going to have a baby. Something's not right. Something is terribly wrong with her."
Lys frowned for a moment. She had something of a seer's gift, uncontrolled and as unreliably accurate as the voice of the Mother. Tears started up in her eyes. "Her child may be lost and she thinks the love never was."
Mirari turned pale. "I'll get Mother. We'll have her back here before you miss me." She started to turn away.
"No!" Lys's voice was slightly panicked. "Matters already gather to resolve themselves. Even now memories filter past blocks placed in violence and one lost and alone approaches."
Mirari trembled in the effort of fighting her need to run to a sister in grief. "You had better be right, Lys. I swear, if I even thing that this isn't correcting itself I'm picking her up and dragging her back to him."
Lys smiled. "I have my Huntsman, do I not?"
Ree slowly nodded. She had a point.
--
The patrolman sighed to himself. Life in Smallville, Kansas could be either very boring or very exciting, and he preferred boring. Between the Kent girl vanishing, though, and the Kent boy running off to Vegas with that freak girl, and all the other things going on, matters were rarely boring for long.
Case in point, all he wanted was a quiet route tonight and here showed up a teenage girl wearing some spandex number like a superhero stumbling down the street. She was probably drunk, or high. The things these kids did these days. He stopped the car and stepped out. "Do you need some help, young lady?"
She wavered on her feet slightly and looked up at him. "Where . . . where am I?"
The officer blinked several times. "Mara Kent? Is that you?" She sobbed and nodded. "It's all right, Ms. Kent. You're going to be alright." He helped her into the vehicle and then got back in on the other side, reaching for his radio. "Dispatch, this is Officer Collins, I found Mara Kent. Inform her parents and have them meet us at the hospital."
--
Martha Kent put the phone back in its cradle with a stunned distraction that had both her husband and her son staring at her. "Martha?" Jonathon started to step towards her and she looked up at him.
"That was the police. They found Mara and they're taking her to the hospital. They want us to meet them there."
Clark blinked in surprise. "Why wouldn't she just teleport over here herself? That friend of hers, Mirari, said that she was alright."
Martha shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know why the police wouldn't just bring her home unless something . . ." Her voice faltered and Jonathon wrapped his arms around her.
"It's going to be alright. Let's just get there and find out what's going on."
--
At least she had a name again, Mara thought to herself as the officer drove her to the Smallville hospital. Even with the world spinning around her, a name gave her something to hold on to. "Call me Mara," she murmured, "for the Lord hath dealt bitterly with me."
The officer frowned, thinking that she was probably OD'd on something. "Stay with me, Mara. The doctors'll fix you up right quick and your parents'll be there for you. Don't you worry any."
The hospital was a blur of voices and questions, some of which sounded absurd to her grief-ravaged ears. She didn't have her cycles in the cavern and the only physical relationship she'd had in centuries was lost to a dream. She let the grief overwhelm her into numbness. She'd held it at bay for years it seemed, but now she could relax. Her Nii-dono would be here soon and he would protect her.
She felt, more than heard, the door open to the room where she had been left. She heard the faint sound of song whispering in her ears carrying the Superman theme behind it. She turned with a sob. "Nii-dono!"
Clark was there with his arms around her. He was strong and warm and he was real. In her grief for a dream, she needed his reality. In a strange way they'd always been more like twins than anything else. Especially in the years since he found out that he was an extraterrestrial and she was something else entirely.
A doctor quietly touched Martha Kent on her arm where she stood beside Jonathon. "Mrs. Kent? Mr. Kent? If I might speak with you in private?"
--
Martha couldn't believe her ears. "You want to what?"
Jonathon felt furious, as much at the insinuation as at the situation. "Did Mara tell you that she was attacked?"
The doctor sighed. "Your daughter isn't telling us much of anything right now and I don't know that anything she could say would be very helpful. A rape kit is standard procedure when a missing female is recovered and particularly when she is found in this condition. That is why I need your permission."
"What do you mean her condition?" Jonathon was livid.
"The preliminary tox screen is still at the lab, but it's quite plain that she is under the influence of some substance or other, probably a hallucinogen of some sort. It would explain the rambling nature of what she is saying and the fact that none of it seems to reflect reality."
"Drugged?" Martha was incredulous. "Mara has been drugged?"
The doctor nodded. "I don't, personally, believe that she would have taken anything of her own volition though, with her vanishing the way she did, I suppose anything is possible. Still, I find it easier to believe that she is the victim of someone else's depravity. When she comes out of the effects we can see what she remembers, but it isn't likely that she will remember anything coherent or useful." There was a pause while the doctor consulted a chart. "I do need to ask, though, about something anomalous. There is no record in her medical history of a stab wound, but she has a bad looking scar on her right side. From the location and the probable depth of the wound she would have bled profusely, though it does seem to be healing well enough. I tried to ask her about it but she wouldn't talk to me."
Martha shook her head. "We . . . we don't know."
"Is that all?" Jonathon asked, his voice full of impatience. "I'm not going to subject my daughter to any further harm."
The doctor sighed and nodded. "Very well. I'll let you know what the tox screen picks up."
--
Mara was asleep when they returned to her room, her hand clutching Clark's as if afraid that he would leave her. Martha hurried over to reassure herself by touch that her daughter was really home while Jonathon watched from beside the door, concern and anger on his face.
Clark looked up at them. "What did they tell you?"
Martha sighed. "They said she's been drugged, or something."
Clark shook his head. "That's not possible. With her powers she could nullify any drugs used on her. She's done it before when someone tried to slip her something in a drink."
Jonathon frowned in thought. "This is Smallville. It could be anything."
"But the meteor rocks don't affect her like they do me. She's . . ." he paused, searching for words, "she's afraid and I think someone hurt her, but I don't believe she was drugged, not as the doctors would understand it, anyway."
Jonathon and Martha exchanged a speaking look. "Clark," Martha asked, "it's possible that she was on her way home to us and someone did something worse to her than just hurt her."
Clark looked at his sister's sleeping face, suddenly afraid for her. "She's never had a boyfriend, never went on a date. Some of the guys were joking about calling her the 'Ice Queen' in the locker room. That's . . . that's why they tried to slip the drugs to her. She never even let anyone take her to a dance." He sighed and looked back at his parents. "We think she's been gone for two weeks. We have no idea how long she's really been gone. And she won't tell me what happened."
--
The medical tests came back negative for anything the doctors could find, which wasn't that unusual for Smallville. They released Mara back to her family the next day and they took her home. By then Mara had stopped the active sobbing and had retreated into a silent, depressed shell.
Martha helped her get settled into her room and then was at a loss for what to do to help the daughter who was obviously hurting.
It wasn't very long at all before Mara snuck out of the house with her CD player in hand to head to the barn and the special hammock she had strung in the rafters as a private nest. She spent most of the day in the hammock, with the CD player repeating songs for hours on end.
All in all, matters in the Kent household were very tense and uncomfortable.
And as much as Mara hurt for the family she knew only loved her, she couldn't talk about the dream, or her grief for it that was reawakened every night when she slept and saw it all happen again.
Well, here's the second part of the tale. I'll get back to the world of Ivalice for the next one and from there I'm still working things out. I'm hoping to follow action and consequences fairly logically if possible, so let me know if anything seems out of place. I'm also looking forward to any sort of response to how the tale is developing. I love hearing from readers. Thank you for your time.
Mrs. Grizzley