Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
Author's Note: Back from Miami and I had an awesome time. Beaches, pools and awesome food; what's not to love?
Got past the part I was stuck at in Arc Rise Fantasia. The damn plant thing has gone down! *pumps fist in the air* Aaaaand I got stuck again on the next boss. I feel like I'm playing Fire Emblem and getting stuck on every other stage, but I'm really starting to get into the storyline now, so I have lots of motivation to beat down Crabby McShrimperson (AKA the boss)
-/-/-/
"Armand is not who you think he is."
"You have no idea who I think he is."
"Well I think I know who you think he is."
"No, no, no, because you do not think."
-Zorro and Elena (The Legend of Zorro)
-/-/-/
A sudden flash made both of them fumble for their weapons, instantly awake. Zelos' pale blue eyes seemed to hover in the dark, glancing in every direction as he tried to find the source of the flash.
"What in Martel's name…?"
Sheena stood slowly from her tangled nest of blankets on the floor. Zelos had been ready to roll a die to decide who would get the bed, but she'd let him have it. Sheena had never been able to get truly comfortable on a bed anyway. After half of her life sleeping on the ground and the other half sleeping on straw mats, an actual mattress seemed uncomfortable to her.
"I've no idea. You ever seen anything like that?" She asked him, heading for the door.
"No, I haven't." Zelos concentrated on Sheena's voice to make sure he didn't crash into her. The woman was otherwise nearly impossible to detect in the darkness.
Another flash briefly illuminated the room and Zelos was surprised that Sheena was little more than two, perhaps three steps in front of him. She was stealthier than he'd thought.
The door opened with a soft squeak and they both slid into the hallway. Opposite them was the Sage siblings' bedroom and to the left of that, the bathroom they all shared.
Zelos and Sheena glanced at each other. "We're not imagining things, are we?"
"No, you're not."
They both looked at Raine, quietly shutting the door behind her. The candle in her hand illuminated them all. "Then what is all this?"
"I told you we'd been having some bad weather lately."
"No way. That isn't thunder. It's too…" Zelos searched for the word. "Untamed for thunder and lightning."
"That's kind of an oxymoron, don't you think?" Raine remarked.
"Whether it's an oxymoron is beside the point. If there's a storm with this kind of fireworks, there should be rain with it. But I can't hear the rain."
"There never is any kind of rain when this happens."
"And it happens often?"
"At least once, usually twice a week."
"This can't have been going on forever. Someone would've reported it to the King." Zelos pointed out.
"The King wouldn't respond nearly fast enough to stop it." Sheena argued. "And besides, what are you going to ask him to do? Stop a thunderstorm?"
"Do you have a better idea?" Zelos demanded.
"I do." Raine said. "Some tea and then some research for me."
"Not going back to sleep?"
"If I could sleep through this, I would. But seeing as how I can't, I might as well get some work done."
Zelos slid the dagger he'd snatched from beneath his pillow into the pocket of his sweatpants as he followed the women into the small kitchen. There was no dining table, just stools at the counter. It's only now that they're all in the full light of the kitchen that Zelos can really see the women.
Raine was wearing a sweater over her sleep shirt and the cotton pants were a tad too short. Zelos knew that Raine had been saving money, but he hadn't thought about just how much the university cost or how much she got paid for working the shop.
Sheena was wearing a button shirt that was big enough that the hem came down past her thighs. It might have started crimson-colored, but it was worn and faded now. Zelos couldn't tell if she was wearing anything else. His eyes instinctively followed the long line that her legs made as Sheena leaned against the counter, from the small bare feet to smooth, muscular calves up to…
Zelos breaks his gaze away before she catches him staring. It doesn't escape his notice that the shirt that Sheena's wearing is a men's shirt and he ignores the question nagging at the back of his mind that asks who, exactly, she got that shirt from.
No questions, no lies, Zelos reminds himself.
"So what are you planning to study in the university?" Sheena asked Raine.
"Archaeology." Raine replied.
"That's not what I was expecting." Zelos commented. "Most beautiful, smart women want to be doctors or lawyers. Which means there's something specific driving you to study archaeology. So what deep dark secret are you hiding?" Just because he and Sheena's policy was no questions, no lies, didn't meant that that applied to everyone else.
"So I can't just have a love for the subject itself, can I?"
"If that was the case, you'd be going to a cheaper school. Sybak is mostly isolated from any ruins. There's some out by Altamira, two a few miles in either direction of Meltokio, which has its own prestigious university that's more open to the public, thus cheaper. But you want the best minds in archaeology, the ones with the most information, the most details. Why?"
Raine's eyes steeled. "That's none of your concern."
Sheena sighed. "You had to go there."
Zelos met her eyes. "You can't tell me you aren't the least bit curious."
"You have no idea of boundaries, do you?" Sheena knew that that wasn't entirely true. Zelos had never dug into her business, even if he had a reason.
Zelos didn't flinch away from her glare. He could tell her that he only ever respected boundaries with her because she was so refreshing and opinionated, so…absolutely Sheena…that he didn't want to mess it up. And he knew that if he respected boundaries, so would she and he had no wish for anyone to go digging into his past.
The room lit up even more with another flash.
"Seriously, what causes that? That's not normal lightning."
"Whatever it is, it gives this town most of its power through the generators and the power cells. It's been going on long enough that they've become accustomed to its occurrence. Part of Sybak's industry is dependent on the flashes. There are blackout curtains and ear plugs; contractors make lots of money off of repairing buildings."
"How long's this been going on?" Sheena asked, arms crossed over her stomach.
"Longer than I've been here."
"And how long have you been here?"
"Eight years."
"Interesting." Zelos said.
The women turned to look at him. "What's interesting?"
"Either you look remarkably young for your age, like your brother, or you age slowly."
Raine's hand tightened on the mug of tea in her hand. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
"How old is Genis?"
"He'll be turning thirteen in the spring."
"Which would make him…what, four, five years old when you moved here?"
"Right."
Sheena ran a hand through her hair, not liking where this was going. But it wasn't as though she could stop him. When Zelos got started on psychoanalyzing someone, stopping him was about as likely as asking the rain not to be wet.
"You wouldn't have been able to make the university costs for two, even cutting down as much as you have in eight years. Not if you had to raise a child too. So you're a slow ager. Why? "
"I'm an elf. Are you happy now?"
"Now that doesn't make any sense." Sheena frowned at him. He looked back at her. "It doesn't. She's here to study archaeology. If she was really fully elven, she would be studying with the elves in Heimdall. Who better to learn about the ruins from than those who've been around longest? And the only people that the King gives out visas to go into Heimdall are humans. And since you don't have one, it's easy to assume you aren't human. And the elves don't refuse passage to their own kind and you're clearly not a dwarf, so the only option left is that you're a half-elf. And half-elves aren't allowed to be in school, which means you're hiding it."
Raine's face was carved of ice as she turned on her heel and left the room. Sheena massaged her temples. She knew this couldn't have ended well.
"Well done, Zelos. Do you want a reward?"
"It's an automatic execution for half-elves who break the law, Sheena. You know that as well as I do. And this is one of the biggest laws."
Sheena's eyes narrowed. "Yes, because neither of us has ever done something illegal."
"We're not half-elves!"
"There it is. I never would have pegged you for prejudice and racism, Wilder."
Zelos pressed his lips into a thin line. "That's what you get for assuming."
"So you're pinning this on me?"
"No. I'm saying you shouldn't assume things that you're not sure about."
"So a couple of days after we met, when you asked me how I was able to summon and I told you even though I've been shunned for the ability half my life and you said that you didn't care what I was, that doesn't extend to half-elves?"
"No, it doesn't."
"What did the half-elves do to you to make you hate them so much?" Sheena asked, hands on her hips.
Zelos' eyes steeled. "What did they do to earn such a powerful defense from you?"
"They haven't done anything, Zelos! That's the point! They're people, just like everyone else and they deserve the same chances."
"No. Not them." Zelos turning on his heel and going for his coat.
Sheena called after him. "You never answered my question. What'd they do?"
Zelos shrugs on his coat. "Get some sleep, Sheena. There's another day of work tomorrow. It's been a week, but you know that neither of us are still good at this."
"Are you going to find the nearest bar?" She can't be angry with him for this part. Sheena knows very well the need to forget.
He looked back at her. "…Don't wait up for me."
-/-/-/-
He doesn't come back the next day. Sheena hadn't actually expected him to be on time for the morning shift; she knows that after a night of drinking that it's difficult to wake him. With no one to wake him, he wouldn't be awake until nearly eleven, at the earliest.
But when his familiar form doesn't come through the door at all, Sheena finds herself a little concerned. Zelos is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but Sheena wouldn't be surprised to find him passed out in some gutter.
"You're really going to look for that guy?"
Sheena looks back at Genis, whose anger makes him seem older than twelve, if that was his true age. Sheena knows that the longer-lived races have periods of rapid growth with long plateaus without change. "Yes."
"I don't see why. He…" Genis hesitated before continuing. "He hurt my sister. She won't show it, or tell you, but he did. We thought we'd finally outrun the prejudice. No one's figured it out since we came here. Not 'til him."
"Genis, listen. I'm totally with you on the fact that what he said he was wrong. But…for better or worse, Zelos is my partner. And partners watch out for each other."
Genis shook his head. "I don't get it."
"What?"
His pale, gray-blue eyes are looking at her intently. "You're human, right?"
"Yeah."
"And so is Zelos. I'm never going to get why people of the same race can think so differently. You don't hate us, do you?"
"'Course not. Zelos though…still hating him a bit right now."
Genis cracked a smile at that. "You're not in love with him, are you?"
Sheena laughed out loud at the thought. She wouldn't deny that Zelos wasn't good-looking, but there'd never been anything like that between them. "Goddess, no. No way. He's my partner and a friend, most of the time."
Genis doesn't know what to say to that. It had been just him and Raine for as long as he could remember and you were supposed to be there for family.
Sheena's out the door before he can think of a reply.
-/-/-/
It takes her nearly an hour to find him. She doesn't know Sybak, had never been there before, and it's one of the biggest towns in the country. Her entire home village could fit in the town square alone. She starts with the bars, looking for any trace of him and asking people whether they'd seen him. Most of them said no, not that she was surprised about that. It had been late when he'd gone.
When she does find him, he's slumped on a doorstep in an alley looking rather miserable. But at the very least, he wasn't dead. He looks up when her feet come into view. "You found me."
"Surprise, surprise. I was always rather good at chase me, find me when the village kids would play." Sheena moves to sit beside him, though there's hardly any room left on the doorstep. "You look like hell."
"Thanks so much, darling."
"Were you planning on coming back sometime today?"
"Apparently you didn't think so or else you wouldn't have come lookin' for me."
"I thought I should make sure that you didn't get killed by a stray cat or something."
Zelos smiled a little. "So considerate."
"How long have you been awake?" His voice was still a little rough, but there was no slur to his words and his eyes weren't bloodshot.
"Couple hours, maybe."
"Do you know the way back?"
Zelos snorted. "'Course I do. I've got a photographic memory."
"Really?" Sheena said, surprised. "I didn't know that." Zelos gives her a look. "Well, it's not like you know everything about me either."
"It's the Traveler's Code." He was only half-joking. They'd never spoken of their code aloud, had never given it a name, but they both knew it existed.
"I guess."
They sat in a slightly awkward silence, twiddling their thumbs and not looking at each other.
Finally, Sheena shifts a bit and turns just a bit so she could see him. "Look, I don't think I owe you an apology or anything. I meant what I said."
"We both did." The warning in his voice is subtle but there. This subject is dangerous and he knows that if Sheena were to dig, really dig, into his past, he wouldn't be able to lie to her and he knows that she would hate the truth.
"So why didn't you come back?"
Zelos shrugs a little. "I woke up here and…it felt peaceful here, I guess."
Sheena looks up and down the small alley. There are lines of laundry hanging from lines, some singed and others burnt straight through. There are tiles missing from some of the roofs and there are new cracks in the pavement. But the bustle of the town is a distant sound and the small strip of sky above them is clear and cerulean. It wasn't peaceful the way most people thought of it, but it had a certain serenity to it that Sheena appreciated.
"So it had nothing to do with guilt over what you said to Raine?"
"There's no point in feeling guilty over telling somebody something they needed to hear."
"She didn't need to hear that, Zelos! That's my point. She knew all of that, she'd lived it. You were being an ass, is what you were doing with your psychological jumbo."
"She lied to us."
"No, she didn't. You forced her to lie, forced her into a corner to play your little mind game. Raine wasn't doing anything wrong."
"She's breaking the law as we speak, Sheena. Half-elves aren't allowed to study."
"And you're a sudden advocate of the law, aren't you?" Sheena got to her feet and held out her hand. "I'm not going to keep arguing with you on this, since we can keep going in circles all we want. Come on. You need to eat."
Zelos takes the offered hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet. He knows why they'll keep going in circles. It's because they knew nothing more about the other and it would be, quite literally, the same argument each time. He doesn't want that. He likes to argue with Sheena, likes to hear her thoughts and her anger and her stubborn insistence in her beliefs, whatever they were.
They're walking back to the coffee shop, avoiding the big crowds because they're both uncomfortable in them. Not that they've ever said as much. Anything they know about each other is observation. Sheena's eyes are always glancing around, never only focused on one thing. She sees the uneven cobblestones on some of the older streets, sees the grimy, cracked windows and the brightly-colored ball that a group of children were playing with.
"Sheena?" She turns to look at him, but she only focuses on him for a moment. Oh, her attention is on him, but he knows that some part of her mind is everywhere else and he wonders why she did that. "Tell me something true about you."
Suddenly, everything snaps back to him and she's far too still. "I hate asparagus."
Zelos chuckles a little at that, but he makes sure to keep his mind focused on her responses. "Something real, darling." He wants to start easy, wants to not get too deep into this. "Where were you before you started traveling?"
Sheena stuffs her hands in her pockets and tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear. "You won't know where it is."
"Try me." He said encouragingly.
"It's a little village. Most people don't even know it exists. Hell, I don't even think it's on a map."
"So you're a country girl." He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it fits rather well in the puzzle of Sheena Fujibayashi. "Do you want the white picket fence and two point five kids too?" Zelos teased gently. She glared playfully at him and he laughed.
"Well, what about you? Where were you before you started traveling?"
"Meltokio. I grew up there."
Sheena scoffs a little. "Figures that you're a city boy." Zelos wouldn't have fit in anywhere else but the city. Even after traveling with him for three years through the country, it was still clear that he didn't fit there.
"We're not so bad."
"Uh-huh. I didn't think that word of our scams would get this far though."
"It'll surprise you, how much people like to talk."
"I doubt that many more people could talk as much as you." Sheena said, smirking sideways at him.
Before Zelos can retort, someone scream and immediately they both whip their heads towards the source of the sound. There's no one injured, no one getting attacked. There's just a girl who's beaming and pointing at Zelos.
"It's the Chosen One! Chosen One, look here!"
Immediately there were quite a few girls surrounding him, Sheena having been pushed aside by the force of the wave of girls. The smile hooked on Zelos' lips is only there by long force of habit. His eyes are seeking out Sheena, who looks like she's fighting laughter.
He knows she wouldn't look like that if she knew the truth.
She'd snarl and rage at him for not saying anything, for not telling her something that was the equivalent of her being a summoner. But that person wasn't who he was. He'd spent his entire life disproving that. He wondered if she could understand that.
Zelos makes his excuses, charming his way out of the girls before he joins Sheena once more. The vestiges of her laughter are still on her face when she says, "Are your adoring fans so terrible that my poor company is better?"
"Come now, darling. What kind of man would I be to pass up on the country girl goddess standing right beside me?"
She slaps his shoulder, but not hard enough to hurt. Zelos smiles it off because he knows that if she were to ever find out the truth, she'd hate him. Not forever, but enough that what they had might break. He's not sure what he would do if that were to happen. Continue to travel, perhaps, but Sheena had become a large part of his life now, and he knew full well that there would be no other people like her.
In that case, Zelos thought, it was best that Sheena didn't find out the truth then.
-/-/-/
Zelos doesn't offer an apology to Raine when they finally walk through the door and Raine doesn't ask for one. Sheena knows that they won't like each other now, won't be able to respect each other, but she hopes that they can at least work together.
The days are monotonous and frantic with the serving of coffee and trying not to trip and spill anything, or forget people's orders. But as Genis had promised, the work slowly got easier and it didn't take long for Sheena to be able to laugh off the uncomfortable feeling that meant she'd spilled the coffee on herself once again.
She still hated that cappuccino machine though.
Zelos is surprised when a knock comes at the bathroom door. They tried not to take showers too close together or for too long to save some hot water for everybody and they didn't usually bother each other while they were bathing.
"What's up?" He calls over the powerful jets of water.
"Someone downstairs to see you." Sheena replies just as loudly. "And hurry it up. We're set to open soon."
Zelos hurriedly washes the soap from his body, his mind running over the options on who had found him. It could just be one of the girls from town, but there was no way that they knew his whole name to ask for him. That only left the people he'd left behind in Meltokio and he prayed to the Goddess (For the first time in almost a decade because he doesn't actually care much about praying and he doesn't think it really works anyway) that it wasn't them.
He dresses and runs a quick brush through his hair before going downstairs. The morning rush had yet to hit and there's a professor from the university sitting with his usual morning cup of coffee and Zelos knows that he'll order another one before he leaves. There's a couple of night watchmen, just off their shift, and a few students who chose to woke up early.
But when he sees who's speaking to Sheena, he freezes. Sheena catches his eye and motions him over. Zelos follows automatically, though his mind is raging at the thought of him being here.
"This guy says he knows you." She'd noticed that something was off about him from the slight twist at the corner of her smile and the look in her hazel eyes.
The middle-aged man standing just behind the counters hair was dark brown with a few streaks of gray that hadn't been there the last time Zelos had seen him. He wasn't much taller than Zelos, but his shoulders were broader. He was dressed in Meltokio's finery and Zelos wanted to hate him just for that reminder of where he came from.
"Richard." Zelos greets, with a slight nod. It takes all of his self-control to remember his manners. "What brings the Head of Civil Defense out here?"
"Well, there've been rumors for years on how the Chosen One was helping rid the smaller villages of evil spirits. Naturally, I thought of you."
Zelos feels the crystal he keeps on a chain long enough to hide beneath his shirt burning against his skin. "That doesn't explain why you're here."
"I'm assuming that you've experienced the storms here?"
"Sure. Why?"
"Well, I've been getting plenty of complaints on them. We've tracked the source."
Zelos and Sheena both stared at him. "And the source is…?"
"There's an island not too far out from here. The storms originate from there. Our scholars and tacticians have all looked through the history and records of that island and they've come to the conclusion that this is all the doing of a Summon Spirit."
Zelos crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. "What does this have to do with me?"
"Seeing as how you were doing so much for those villagers and ridding them of their 'evil spirits', we thought that the Chosen should be able to take care of this spirit too."
Zelos knows that Sheena is going to sit him down and interrogate him as soon as Richard leaves and he's already bracing himself for it. "Who's 'we'?"
Richard smiled and it wasn't a cheerful one. It was one that Zelos had long ago become accustomed to seeing on Meltokio nobles, most often in their politics. "The King, the Pope and I, naturally."
Zelos catches a motion, hardly there, out of the corner of his eye. It's Sheena's hand clenching into a fist and her entire body tensing. "And if I were to refuse?"
"You'd be charged with treason and sedition. And dear Seles…what would happen to her, I wonder?"
Zelos' eyes steel and his voice is harsh. "Keep her well away from this, Richard. Are there any specifications for this thing?"
"We'd prefer that you didn't kill it. I hear that the Imperial Research Academy wants to study this Spirit, seeing as how it's been such a powerful source of energy for Sybak." Richard nodded to both of them. "Remember to report to the King once you're through, Chosen One."
The bell on the door jingled cheerfully as the door closed behind him. Sheena had a hand on her hip and the other on the counter. Her eyes were full of roiling anger. "Zelos, I need to speak with you upstairs."