Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. I do not profit from this writing.

Author's Note: Yeah, so I borrowed something from the Sword of Truth series. Keep your eyes open and you might notice it!

Prompt 008

Loyalty II

Kefka straightened suddenly and looked at Celes, who was taking a breather from sparring. She shook her head in between gulps of water, and then finally managed to come 'round to an answer.

"You're kidding, right? My spine will feel that for days," she informed him. "You're the master of the cheap shot."

"No, not that," he said, tone irritated as he waved his hand at her. He turned around in a circle, like he was looking for something. "It's like... I can't explain it. It's like something just dropped off."

"What? Palazzo, you take a blow to the head too hard there? I don't feel anything," she announced. Then she paused - "I don't feel... anything..." she said again, her voice careful and low.

"We need to get back to the palace," he said. "Now."

It took a full day and a half for Kefka and Celes to return to the palace. In that time, Terra remained in that room, fielding off a gauntlet of questions that she refused to answer and in turn having radically painful things traded in spades for her silence. The spike had been removed from her leg only because Yfrain didn't want her to get an infection and die from it; he suspected that her magic would heal her no sooner than when the Rada'Han was removed, but he didn't want to chance it. He'd had it cleaned and bandaged, with no anesthetics to speak of, of course.

Then he'd jammed one into her other leg, for sport. It became obvious that she wasn't going to talk, but he couldn't help himself. A girl who could endure that much torture and not break her silence? Or when she did, it was for some strange rhyming gibberish – like she were playing a game with him. It unnerved him, and it made him hit her that much harder.

He'd also taken a crack at her hair, cutting off a large chunk of it. It sent her into a screaming fit that thought might have been the end of it all, but then Gestahl had called him away and he'd not gotten to take it any further. When he was with Gestahl, both Celes and Kefka came into the room at full tilt.

"We can't find Terra," Celes blurted. "Have you seen her? Has she left? Has someone taken her?" Celes may have considered Terra her rival in ever fashion, but Terra was still innocent in her own way, and she would have been a valuable tool if someone had decided they wanted her. How they'd have gotten in and stolen her, Celes hadn't figured, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities.

Kefka, however, had zeroed in on Yfrain. "Why are you here?" he demanded. He could feel something under his skin crawling, like thousands of tiny ants. It made his fingers twitch; it made his eye twitch. It did not go unnoticed, either.

"Kefka, are you feeling well?" Gestahl asked. His tone was almost knowing, as though he suspected something was amiss but would not say.

Kefka's eye twitched again, and he had to fight every ounce of his being not to slap himself to make it stop. "I'm fine. I can't find Terra," he said, echoing Celes. Except, instead of posing questions that would get them nowhere, he bluntly followed it with, "Where did you move her?"

"I needed Yfrain to ask her a few questions," Gestahl said after a long, tense silence. He leveled his gaze at Kefka, expression blank. "Is that a problem?"

Kefka raised his hands for a moment in frustration. "There are... so many things wrong with what you just said right now that I don't have time to go over them all. Where is she?" he asked.

For a moment, Gestahl debated on not telling him, but something about the mage's gaze suggested that he wanted to. Gestahl felt compelled. "Yfrain can take you to her. IT WAS FOR THE GOOD OF THE EMPIRE!" he roared as Kefka grabbed Yfrain by the collar and practically threw him out in front.

"Lead," he commanded through clenched teeth. He ignored Gestahl's bellowing behind him, knowing Celes was at his back in case Gestahl decided to wing something off of his desk at the trio. It had been known to happen once or twice.

Yfrain paused at the door. "I need you to understand, Palazzo, Gestahl ordered me to find out what I could." He fumbled with the keys, and for the first time in many years, he felt genuine fear. Kefka had locked his eyes onto Yfrain's own, and Yfrain saw a very tortured man staring down at him rather than a composed but severely angry mage. He, too, felt compelled to confess.

"She didn't talk. Not once. Rhyming nonsense. Screaming. She didn't beg, and she didn't talk. Wouldn't even say your name," he hissed. He unlocked the door. "Well?"

"Celes," Kefka said, his voice so dark that it caused the tough-as-nails blonde to shiver a little. "Please see this man is handled."

"Kefka, I don't think -" she began.

"Do it, Celes, or I will, and it will be a far less noble fate," he said. He turned his back to them both and entered the room.

Terra was still in the chair, head lowered. One spike stuck out of her left leg, her right banded by gauze and other cloth. It had bled through, though; in fact, she had little blotches of red all over her dress. She looked like a decoration; all blonde and cream and red and white. She also didn't look alive, which caused Kefka to suppress what would have been a rather loud yell.

"Terra?" he whispered. He approached her slowly, kneeling down next to her. He could see the binding spell hanging over her like a spider's web, and he removed it with the most insignificant gesture that he worried genuinely even further. Terra wouldn't have even been bothered by such a spell; how had this happened?

He reached out gently and lifted her chin up, trying to look into her eyes for any signs of life. If she was dead... He spotted the iron thing around her neck and gritted his teeth together so hard they almost broke. He slid his finger between it and the soft flesh of her throat, running it around to the back of her neck. When he found the clasp, he snapped it open, then threw it with some ferocity at the other side of the room; it shattered as it hit the wall.

"Terra?" he whispered again, this time his voice edging on desperation. He could feel part of himself backsliding, like he were being slowly absorbed into a wall of black nothingness where something dangerous waited, and he could think of all of the uses for that danger when he found it; what he'd do to Yfrain, and Yfrain's wife and children and his city and even that general part of the region.

Her eyes flickered with recognition, though it took several minutes of silence for her to come back around to reality. She felt like her own mind had been half-broken, then. She had been made to endure much in the way of research and testing, but she hadn't experienced pain that wild and raw since the time Kefka'd accidentally blown her sky high a few years ago – and even then, her inherent nature of being wouldn't allow her a slow and painful death; not like what she'd been sitting in the chair doing just then. Rotting away.

Was that what it was to be a human? She wondered. She'd wondered that a lot. She used to envy them; she almost pitied them now.

"Kefka?" she asked, not daring to think it. Was this a dream? Was she going to wake up to a needle in her eye?

"Right here," he promised. He took her hand firmly, placing his free one first on top of the bandages that wrapped around her thigh. He would take care of that one, first, and then the other one – he was going to have to pull that damned thing out. He didn't want to do it, either, but he needed to. "How does this feel?" he asked, putting pressure down on her leg.

"Feels okay," she said softly, finding her words hard to form. She had lowered her head, because it hurt to hold it up. "Not like before. Before it burned."

Infection. He couldn't fathom what would have happened if he hadn't have felt that thing wipe her magical signature off of the map. Terra was like a constant blip on his radar; when she just went away, he feared the worst. He'd been right, at least, though he didn't know that he considered it a worthy kind of victory to have.

He put a hand to her face, closing his eyes for a moment. He allowed the magic to pass through him and onto her, mending the delicate structure that Yfrain had worked so hard to destroy. He could see horribly tiny bruises at the base of her eye, in a line directly leading up.

"Better?" he asked.

She nodded, finding it easier to move her neck. "He cut some of my hair off," she confessed to Kefka, feeling small as she said it. She started to cry. She had managed to do very little crying throughout the last few days; she'd screamed, spat, swore, she'd even thought about begging and yes, crying, but in the end she would rather have suffered in a cacophony of her own screams than the alternative.

"I'm sorry, darlin', I can't cure your hair," Kefka said sadly, but he offered her a smile as he tugged on a strand of blonde curls. He saw a flicker of a smile on her face, and gave her cheek a soft pinch. "That's my girl. I've got to mend your other leg, but I need you to understand that this is going to hurt," he warned her. "If you need to scream, you go ahead and do it."

"Okay," she said meekly. She didn't want to scream, and in fact, made a valiant effort not to when he followed through with his word. No lie, it hurt. He wrapped his hand firmly around the spike and yanked it out, trying to make it as quick as possible. Terra caught her own scream in her throat, instead choosing to slam her feet down as hard as she could and dig into his arms with her nails, things she'd been using to support herself. She could feel him flinch under the pressure of her grasp, but then she heard the spike clang to the ground with a loud and metallic noise, and she let go of him.

The healing magic couldn't happen fast enough for her. She nearly swooned, feeling as though she were going to vomit as she felt it literally repairing the gaping hole in her leg. She sank backwards into the chair, trying to breathe in normal, measured breaths but coming up shallow every time. "I want.. to get.. out.. of this.. room," she gulped, feeling like the longer she stayed inside of it the more her mind unraveled. She felt as though she were skirting the edges of madness rather completely right then, actually; had she known how Kefka felt on most days, she might have even succumbed to it, so that he wouldn't have had to be alone. Right then, she'd have done anything for that silly man; and in fact, she had already done much.

By doing the opposite of telling Yfrain, and Gestahl by proxy, anything concerning Kefka, preferring to sing nonsense children's rhymes or to say nothing at all, Terra basically told Gestahl that if she was to be useful to him at all, he'd have to deal with what he suspected to be a very long road of random nonsense from his mage. Kefka's eccentricities had begun to show through in the court; Terra could have given him more insight, or even could have been used as a bargaining chip to straighten him out, but he realized rather quickly that she would find herself in neither of those positions; and actually, was more willing to let herself die than sell Kefka out even for something so stupid as why he'd killed her goddamned Moogle. Truth be told, Gestahl didn't care why he'd killed the Moogle; he'd have killed the nasty thing, too. Damned rats with wings. The point was, if she wouldn't even tell him something so stupid as that, he was never going to find anything else out.

He'd have to figure out a way to use Celes and Leo to his advantage in that area, because Terra was just useless to him at that point. He'd have to keep Kefka happy in order to see any results from her. He'd cope with it for now, but he'd find a way out of that damned bargain soon enough.

But right then, none of that was on Kefka's mind. He was still reeling from the notion that all of this had started on a question that played a pivotal role in their relationship. She'd only been a little girl when that had happened, and she'd still never forgiven him for it (he thought). Regardless, as far as he was concerned, she had ever reason to have told them everything she knew. They'd interpret what they wanted how they wanted, and then he'd have come back and been ambushed (or so they thought; Kefka wasn't the damned first mage for nothing). He bit his lip as he watched Terra sleeping, and tugged the covers up over her shoulders a little more.

Even a young woman now and she still resorted to some of the default behaviour of a child. He'd taken her to his room, where she'd asked to go, because she felt safe there. She'd taken (surprisingly) a doll from his shelf that he'd had since she was a child. He'd collected them before, but they'd been packed away for a long time and someone had unearthed them and brought them to him. He'd put them on a shelf in spite of himself, because he still liked them. Terra said they were creepy; he hoped they ignored her rudeness. The doll she'd taken though, was one in particular she hated, but one he actually considered a favourite. It was a thin-bodied clown, stuffed with soft fluff. Its outfit was colourful like a tropical bird, and it had a big smile and arms outstretched for a hug. He was pretty sure it'd been one of the first toys he'd ever gotten, and how it'd made it that far in that good of condition he'd never know. To say he was surprised when he'd come back from putting the fear of the gods into Gestahl to find her asleep with it tucked under her chin as though it would protect her from harm was a gross understatement.

His door open softly and Celes stuck her head in. "Hey," she whispered. "She out?" With a confirmation from Kefka that she wouldn't wake Terra up, Celes came into his room more. She started when she saw the doll, and pointed at it. "Really?" she whispered, brows lofting. She surveyed the shelf in the far corner of the room, and then gave Kefka a very flat look. It plainly said, "I do not understand you. I do not want to."

He chose to ignore her poor taste for the time being. "What happened?" he asked. It was a nicer way of asking for a report than just saying, "Report."

Celes made a face. "He's not going to be doing anymore of Gestahl's secret torture chamber crap, if that's what you mean," she responded, her voice still barely a whisper. "I gave him a lot to think about."

Kefka shook his head. "Unless you hung him up in a bag of his own skin, you didn't do nearly the damage necessary to get my point across," he hissed.

"Okay – gross, first, and second, he's not ever going to walk again, so I think I did okay," she shot back. "Anyways, how is she? Looks like she's doing better, at least."

Kefka snorted. "Because I have a ridiculous stock in healing magic. If we hadn't have come back when we did... " he closed his eyes for a moment. He looked aged, suddenly, and tired. He wasn't but thirty, if that – Celes couldn't be sure, but he didn't look old. He had youthful features, though, so she didn't know.

"But we did. You did," she reminded him. She placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a rough pat. Celes couldn't echo his sentiment, or she'd have to consider what had actually happened. She didn't want to try and picture it. "So let's stop worrying. And anyways, as I understand it, she wouldn't even tell them your name. They already know your name. But she kept it like it was a precious treasure. That's loyalty if I've ever seen it. That girl... " she trailed off, shaking her head. Celes couldn't imagine a devotion that strong; she was devoted to her magic, to her duty, but to another person? Not likely.

He nodded. "I don't know if it was worth it. I hate to say that I don't think it was," he admitted.

Celes gave him a funny look, and then reached out and popped him gently on the back of the head. When he gave her a rather incredulous stare, she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, her voice more clear than before but still soft.

"It doesn't matter what you think. It was clearly worth it to her." She paused. "I don't know what's going on. I don't pretend to," she began, alluding to the fact that she knew he'd been having little episodes (okay, big ones, but she hadn't technically been there for some of them, only heard about them). "But she's trying to tether your feet to this world as best she can. Don't make it for nothing, Kefka. I promise. It's worth it."

He had nothing good to say in response. Celes had her moments of utter teenage stubbornness where one could forget that she could level a field of men with only a few well-equipped weapons and spells. But occasionally, like right then, his second protege had moments of wisdom so wholly pure and right that it made him want to smack her in the face for even opening his head to the ideas she gave him. It pained him to think that whatever was happening, Terra was fighting against with every ounce of her being. And he was just... tripping the rift, circling the drain. Waiting to go down the rabbit hole. He was as good as quitting on her.

They remained in eachother's silence for a while, Celes feeling strangely better and worse about what she'd finally been able to say, standing vigilant behind him as he sat in a chair by the bed. Finally, she broke his no-doubt horribly brooding thoughts when she leaned down and whispered in his ear, "Okay, what the hell is up with that thing she's holding onto?"

"Visiting hours are over!" he hissed, dragging her to the door as she stifled laughter with her hand so she didn't wake Terra up.