Cloner4000: I. Hate. Your. Soul. For recommending Disability Girls (aka Katawa Shoujo). Sure, it was only one act. That just destroyed my entire day. SO GOOD. Except now I need to hurry to write this! Balls! And I have to spend tomorrow packing for the workshop, and then I'm off… crap, crap, crap! Celes's eye is going to, ahem, "stay under wraps" for a while – I'm intending to use it as a plot point for an arc later.
Mr Wang 330: Isara being a bit OOC is probably just the circumstances, yeah. Tell me if I plunge WAY into the deep end, though. As for hell breaking loose, well…
And now, as promised, our viewpoint returns to Isara. But Celes has woken up first. Prepare for their first one-on-one conversation amidst a scene of awkward…
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How humiliating. She remembered feeling triumphant, right before shadows had struck her faster than a speeding Edelweiss. So much for delivering a meaningful blow against Darcsen hatred.
Curled in the fetal position, she mused a bit. She'd felt that rush of pleasure in forcing that pervert to admit there was more to Darcsens than what all the racists said – but she paused. He said he had been following the source that "everyone else" considered disreputable.
Which meant that she hadn't convinced him, but just forced out an uncomfortable fact. Hardly the same thing.
Damn it. At least it had been fun to watch him squirm.
She finally opened her eyes and took stock of her surroundings. What kind of place was this? It was so dark –
Ah. That would explain a lot. She peeled off the blankets she was under, sat up, and instantly regretted acting while still half-asleep. It seemed Welkin had reclaimed his jacket, and kindly hadn't wanted to disturb her further by forcing a shirt on her. Unfortunately, that pervert – Celes, if she remembered her brother's awkward introduction of him – was bustling just in front of her, back turned, stowing away assorted medical-looking tools into a duffel bag.
He was no longer in his strange-looking plain clothes, but in brown fatigues – Imperial issue, no doubt. Agitatedly, he shuffled from point to point along a wall, hurriedly working to neaten up the room. She decided it felt like a basement, cool, and without windows.
It was when she saw him cleaning off a red-stained knife that her stomach turned. Until now, she hadn't really paid much attention to her wound, nor the operation undertaken on it – but now, there was definite evidence that someone had cut her open. Glances around the room confirmed that the tools laid out had probably all been used on her.
The thought of being under that one's hands made her uneasy. He remembered how enthusiastically he'd spoken of a "latest idea in medicine" – a "kiss of life". Ugh. She refused to stay under such a man's care, much less remain shirtless in the same room as him, regardless of how competent he was.
She reached down her body, carefully feeling for the wrench that she had utilized multiple times already on his thick skull.
–Nothing. None of her wrenches were still on her skirt – for that matter, anything able to cause bodily harm if swung had been confiscated from her. No screwdrivers, no wrenches, nothing. She still had her bag of tiny tools, but attempting to fight with those was like fighting with toothpicks.
It was hopeless. Angrily, she sat up, hugging the blankets around her shoulders. For a moment she glared at the apparently clueless Celes's back – then she felt how unbalanced and heavy the cloth felt on her. Almost as if they were dragging to the left. Her eyes followed.
Angry, burning, furious rage.
The futon she'd been resting on was a double. And someone had clearly been occupying it a few minutes earlier. It was still warm.
"I believe this needs to be said," came the man's voice. Celes's back was still turned, but there was an amused tone to his tenor voice. Clearly, he'd heard her thrashing. "I was brought up in an Imperial School. Not only do they teach us to treat our patients with the utmost level of respect, we get etiquette lessons for formal occasions. I'm hardly some sort of lecher, and you can stop attacking me like I am one." He broke off with a slight wince, feeling a spot on his head. There weren't any more signs of medical treatment, but apparently, she'd still left a mark.
Isara stayed mute, but her angry front cracked a little. The frank words were hardly what she had expected after their spat when they'd last been conscious.
"It's morning. There's a jacket on the table behind you. Go on, I won't look." These quick statements answered her first three unspoken questions: what time was it, where was a shirt, and could she trust him.
Taken off guard, all she could do was comply. She rose, still hugging a blanket around her, and walked to the mentioned table. Quizzically, she realized the cloth was pulling at the front of her shoulder, a strange sensation. Picking up the jacket with her right hand, she dropped the blanket, and gaped for a bit at the tight bandaging that shrouded her wound. He'd really cut her open.
More importantly, she was actually alive.
Instantly, Isara began to feel that she'd been way too hard on this Celes. He was competent, much better than Fina, at any rate. She was spinning to fit her left arm through the jacket when she was snapped at.
"Don't force your left arm any higher than your shoulder," came the bark. "The muscle is still healing, and if you insist, at best you might not move that arm ever again, at worst you bleed internally and die."
Interesting. Curious herself, she pumped her arm up to shoulder height. Yes, it was pulling – a lot. In fact, it almost hurt, a dull burning sensation. She continued to experiment, bending the elbow, waggling the fingers. At least those were still perfectly functional.
Movement in her peripheral vision made her look up, and she was treated to the sight of Celes pulling a full three-sixty spin on the spot, the first half of the turn slow and natural, the second half done in a split second. She jumped a bit, outraged at his promise of "not looking".
"Just how long were you planning on standing there, woman?" the flustered voice demanded. "Any other patient with half a brain would have put the jacket on before playing with themselves."
Isara winced at his poor word choice, but decided he had a point. She had been standing there for almost a full minute, after all. Carefully, she stuck a still-stiff arm through the jacket sleeve before more naturally guiding her other, uninjured arm into the other. It smelled of a strange combination of sweat, blood, and ragnaid. A realization made her temper rise yet again – was this his jacket? Just what was he intending, anyways?
Celes carefully turned back around, done with his business – everything was packed away now. "Thank you. Now, before we go anywhere, let me fill you in."
He reached down and suddenly began working with metal plates and straps around his boots – metal greaves. Why was he donning armor? Before she could ask, he continued. "Lieutenant Karst has gone and brought the remnants of my unit to this town – Lia, if you weren't aware." Standing back up to scoop up kneeplates off the nearby table, he smiled a bit before bending down again. "You probably weren't, seeing as you were unconscious, and more importantly, dying, at the time."
She wasn't amused, and only scowled at him, fastening the jacket's buttons up. To his credit, Celes didn't seem to be preoccupied with getting last glances at her now-disappearing skin although that might have been because he was busy fitting said kneeplates around his own legs. Her estimation of him rose a few more notches regardless.
"So why haven't the townspeople kicked you out yet?"
"Lia is a primarily Darcsen town." He waved a hand absently at her appalled expression. "No, we didn't massacre them all, you barbarian. We actually saved them."
Taken aback, she asked, "How?" It didn't seem logical any way she looked at it.
"… you're better off not knowing." Before she could continue badgering him on that enigmatic note, he launched back into his pseudo-briefing.
"We know that Welkin and Alicia know we're here, obviously, but they're willing to overlook that fact." He rose again to grab thighplates now, cocking his head in amusement before he began work anew. This time, though, he kept his gaze on her. "That might have something to do with the fact that you're basically our hostage right now."
Isara felt panic grip her chest. Blast, what had Welkin gotten into? On its own accord, a hand sought her wrench yet again. Smiling, Celes waved a hand to the same table he was pulling his armor off of – oh. Her tools were right there.
"All of us – especially me," he added, maintaining that smile, "decided that it was better if you didn't unconsciously attack me in your sleep."
"Why was that a problem?" she baited him. She knew what had transpired, but she wanted to hear the words from his own mouth. Just to make sure that she was justified when she went over and slapped him.
"… because, as your surgeon, I needed to watch over you in case you decided to start dying again of your own accord in the middle of the night."
"Oh, really? And what does that have to do with sleeping with me?" she snarled, still hoping that there was some pretense on which she could chastise him.
He flushed, which hammered in the final nail in her first impression's coffin. Not a pervert, then – just a bad introduction. "Well, you were quite frankly low on blood. You would have woken up halfway through the night from cold, maybe even gone into shock, had you not stayed warm."
"… so you slept with me to keep me comfortable. My, what a generous man you are," she said, but now only half-sarcastically.
Embarrassed, he finished the breastplate's fastenings and hid his face behind a hand. "Actually, I needed to be heated as well."
Intrigued, she did her best to raise an eyebrow – failing, she could only take on a look of vague interest, as she walked over and slipped the tools one by one back into their appropriate slots. "Oh really? Why?" she asked, curious. She had dropped all pretense of anger or sarcasm now, letting her get a new impression of him.
Celes dropped the hand and looked at her, chuckling a bit. "You really aren't aware of how close you were to death, are you?"
She shrugged. "I'm standing here conscious a day afterward, how bad could it have been?"
"Really bad." He scoffed in annoyance. "Let's just say," and his face flushed even further, "that you had to have a blood transfusion. And I was the only person available at the moment. And you needed a lot of blood." For a moment, he furrowed his brow. "I think. I was too busy trying to keep you alive to measure just how much I gave you, but suffice to say I was loopy enough afterwards." The medical student come surgeon crinkled the corners of his mouth in a smile. "Of course, the concussions didn't help, either."
Sheepishly, she looked down to dodge his benevolent expression. It took her a second to connect the dots, but she felt something new – a tiny, second scab on her left arm. The Darcsen took a careful look at it, and confirmed its existence. He'd given her blood in the middle of an operation?
Satisfied, she lowered the arm again, fully impressed. "I guess you aren't all bad," she began, but then his earlier words came back into her mind, and she felt her opinion tilt once more. Goodness, was she ever going to have a solid idea of this man? "Just what do you mean by hostage, anyways? Where's Welkin? Alicia?"
Sighing, the Imperial began to finish donning his armor. "Well, you're not really a hostage in the malicious sense of the term. The main reason you're here is because I still need to do a post-operation examination before I can let you return to active service." Suddenly, he froze in place, staring straight into the bracer he was about to attach, seeming extremely agitated.
Isara watched, not knowing exactly what was going on. "Excuse me, Celes, are you alright?" She took a step closer and laid a hand – carefully – on his armored shoulder, shaking it a bit, trying to get him out of his reverie.
The response came in a jerk – a hand full of armor barely missed returning the favor she'd paid him twice already. As she stepped back, he spun his head to look her in the eye – one visible pupil dilating wildly before slowly settling back to normal. Embarrassed, he turned his back on her, continuing to finish his work. "Valkyrur, Isara. Don't scare me like that."
She wanted to point out that he was the one scaring her, but decided that was hardly gracious.
"It's just…" he started, but stopped, choosing his words anew. "It's just that… Marberry…" he choked, as if that word was death, "was only a few days ago. And I… you work on and drive that monster of a tank – the Edelweiss, you called it?"
She nodded, urging for him to continue.
"Let's not forget that I had to watch that thing butcher half my unit in front of my very own eyes."
Oh. With all of the other, slightly more important things going on – like her dying – she'd almost forgotten that they'd been shooting at each other a scant two days ago.
"Alicia… she shot the men of my fireteam on the run." He ran a finger in one of the unarmored slots between plates. "That's no mean feat. She was… a devil on that battlefield."
Head swimming with contradictions, she realized just how magnanimous of him it was to have not killed her on the spot – to go so far as to do the exact opposite and save her from death. She even remembered him from Bruhl; she wanted to ask more questions, to probe deeper as to why he was seeing him again here, still in Gallia alive and kicking, but ultimately she decided to refrain from the awkward questioning – for now – and simply nod in agreement with him.
"Well," he started in a new tone of voice, "anyways, there's another reason you're still here. Welkin and Alicia have returned to the beaches with the good news. Your only good radio is in that tank, anyways." He matched her small smile. "If they're decent human beings, they'll be glad to hear you've been saved, although they're not going to say exactly by who."
Isara thought of how Rosie had been opening up to her, seemingly changing her viewpoint from "Darcsen scum" to "friend" up until the point she'd been shot. She widened her smile, nodding again.
"To put it bluntly, though, your presence here also acts as insurance. If Squad 7 reports us – Imperial remnants – to the army, we kill you." He spoke flatly, as if ashamed of the fact.
Isara accepted the information solemnly. It was what she could only expect, after all. She knew that it wasn't going to happen, with her being so important to Welkin, Alicia, and many of Squad 7's non-racist members, and in any case, she would have been shocked to know of such blunt betrayal of goodwill.
"I need to go check up on my squadmates." His dark expression told of exactly which kind of squadmate he would be checking on, with his profession. "You're still in half Gallian uniform – I advise that you not leave this basement. One of us might panic and shoot you. Being honest here." Celes tried a joke, but it fell flat on its face.
"So what if they come in here?" She had to ask. It wasn't as if her admittedly lacking knowledge of hand to hand combat could protect her.
"Oh, they won't. The spokesman – Charles, you haven't seen him – has designated this place a safe haven. He's made sure that all of the townspeople know that we're their friends." He smiled a bit. "I hope."
Almost fully suited up, he grabbed his helmet and pulled it over his head with a gauntleted hand. When he gave her a last glance, it was like Bruhl, all over again, a facemasked helmet, only a single eye giving any emotion. But it did – and it was certainly giving away a much lighter emotion than the last time she had seen it this way.
"I'll come back with breakfast alright? And then we talk about… the past. The first operation." He paused, forcing the word out. "Bruhl."
And on that note, he slipped past her incredulous expression through the basement door and closed it behind him. For a moment, she stared at it, irritated that she had been left hanging, but sighed, and gave up on following. She looked down on her skirt, most definitely part of Gallian uniform. Yes, not getting shot was a good idea.
"I'll be waiting," she muttered.
One of the overhead lamps flickered and died. Now with something to do, Isara began pulling a table and boxes together to reach it.
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Long talk is long. If you see any repeated conversational topics, let me know. I wrote this as I saw it in my head, and haven't proofread it yet – so if you see any egregious errors in grammar or spelling, let me know. If at any point it reads really awkwardly, let me know.
I've dodged past the leadership's conversations and chosen to have Celes expose it, but if it needs more explanation, let me know. Isara and Celes have revealed some facts to each other, getting some important exposition and "what else has been happening" done, but any of it seems out of sync with canon… let me know. If they're acting OOC – well, mainly Isara, but a little bit of Celes, too – let me know.
If you have any ideas for what should happen next, comments on this important first conversation, or complaints that I didn't mention something, let me know.
Oh, and if this repetition of "let me know" is getting on your nerves… let me know. *dodges slap*
