SovietSniper92: Remember that Celes is half-Darcsen… with a strange medical condition to reveal that fact. Note that I consider half-Darcsens to be not obviously so – it's just his own particular eye that awkwardly reveals this fact.

And now they escape! A long period of close contact lets me write some fun character interaction.

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Bonk.

Celes hit his head on the tunnel roof for the twentieth time. A small shower of earth fell into his hair, glazing the black and white strands with brown.

With a groan, he pulled himself another length forward. Stride.

Muscles screamed in pain within his legs and arms – meanwhile, his back and hips creaked with earlier injuries. It seemed that his decision to cover Isara had been the right one, given the amount of agony he was in; she probably would have been reduced to so much meat.

Stride. The idea made him shudder.

Upon breaking enough of the floor, they'd rolled through/into the created gap a few feet down– and not a moment too soon. The moment Isara had bounced on top of his own fallen body, the rest of the rubble imitated their move over their originally occupied position. Celes wondered if he should have retrieved his helmet – too late now.

Now they crawled through the tunnel on hands and knees, lit by the sickly blue light of a ragnite rod from Celes's pack, wedged between his shoulder and chest plate so that his arms were free to move. He led, a fact more attributable to the way he'd fallen ahead of Isara than any sense of chivalry. Isara did a sort of hopping movement to avoid putting too much stress on her wounded side, per his recommendations. He was not in any position to conduct a second surgery.

"Celes?" she said softly.

Stride. Even as he pulled himself another length forward, Celes answered. "Isara? What is it?"

"… do you hate me?"

The question was so unexpectedly, Celes stopped in mid-stride. "What? Why –"

Marberry.

The tank that smashed through their lines, butchering his unit –

Blood and broken bodies of teammates all around –

No way to save them all –

Celes squeezed his eyes shut. "I…"

Deep blue eyes –

The scent of oils and steel –

Lips and soft breath upon his cheek –

He resolutely took another stride forward. "I don't believe I'm in any situation to answer that question," he stalled.

"Celes, please." Her voice was yearning, insistent, even as he heard her follow behind him. "I know about Marberry beach and how I pilot the Edelweiss and so many of you died and I just thought that you might think that I –"

"Please stop babbling, it doesn't suit you." Stride. "Look… that was then. This is now."

"Hate springs from memories past," she quoted. "I don't want to turn to you and see –"

Stride. "That was on a battlefield, Isara," he quoted back, thinking of the Lieutenant. "We are not responsible for our actions there."

"Even the massacre of civilians?" she riposted.

Stride. Stride. Stride. He stayed silent, preparing a tirade to defend his position. "Isara, let me tell you this. I am not the entire Imperial army. Now stop treating me like one. I'm an intelligent man, rational and able to think for myself." Stride. "I have morals that I will not break, not even on the battlefield."

Stride. "I'm sorry. That was… insensitive of me." Celes could feel her apologetic smile behind him. "You've already proved that you're a better person than that."

"I should hope so." Stride. "Is it the armor that makes you think that way?"

"Hmm?

"The sight of our armor, that encloses us fully and turns us from human beings into mindless killing machines." Stride.

"… now that you mention it… maybe it is."

Stride. "The best way to desensitize war. You're not shooting living, breathing men – and women," he added, thinking of Gallia's militia, "you're destroying uniforms. Sometimes I wonder how war would be fought if uniforms didn't exist." Stride.

"It'd be confusing. How could you possibly shoot at someone without knowing their allegiance?"

Stride. "Exactly. Perhaps there wouldn't be any war at all, and we'd all go back home, throw away our weapons, open businesses, and only engage in economic and philosophical battle." Stride. "I'd enjoy that."

Stride. Eventually, Isara let out a small giggle at his ridiculously idealistic statement. He joined her, enjoying the sounds of them at peace, even as they crawled for their lives. Str-

Bonk.

"Valkyrur," he cursed – and proceeded to get a mouthful of soil.

The giggles behind him took a more mischievous tone, and after he had spat out the unwelcomed material, he couldn't help but join in yet again, laughing at himself, her, the situation they were in, everything.

Some part of him wanted to attribute the laughter to bad air in the tunnel, bad air that might suffocate them and leave them as two corpses never to be found.

His mind dizzy and confused, Celes wondered if he truly cared.

Stride. Stride. Stride.

Behind him, he heard a distinctly unpleasant but wordless exclamation behind him. It clashed with the mood created earlier, but he decided not to probe. Stride. Isara didn't match his move forward. He stopped, and turned as best as possible in the cramped quarters.

"What's wrong, Isara?

"… this is embarrassing," she let out after a long silence.

"What is it?" A thunderbolt of reason struck him. "Valkyrur, your wound hasn't reopened, has it?! Damn, I've been pushing forward, how could I have forgotten –"

"No, it's not that…" She sounded extremely uncomfortable, more so than she ever had before.

"Well then, what is it?" he asked, shaking off the effects of the first shock, slightly relieved but also completely bemused,

"… I have to go to the bathroom."

A second thunderbolt of realization hit him. The effects from this one did not go away.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"… well, that is embarrassing," Celes finally admitted.

"You did leave me without directions to a toilet, after all."

"Nothing in, nothing out," he riposted. "You wouldn't have needed to go at all any time this morning until after you ate; you hadn't eaten anything while asleep – obviously – and anything that you already had… well, let's just say it must have been evacuated earlier. Most likely when you were shot."

There was a silence, most likely an indignant one. "Are you implying –"

"Your medic probably handled that personally, because, no, I did not have to clean that mess up." An edge of silliness crept back into his voice as he contemplated the situation. He'd watched his unit get blown to pieces, saved a Darcsen town, undertaken life-saving surgery, gotten shelled, and now he was busy dancing around the subject of excrement?

To put them on equal footing, Isara asked, "What about you? Why aren't you… feeling the need?"

"I'm a male. I have a larger set of bowels than you," he hypothesized, "and thus have more space."

"… more obscure medical knowledge?" she jibed.

"Okay, I was talking out of my rear end there. But no, I don't feel anything right now. Eh."

Silence.

"Look," he offered, "I'll leave you the light –"

"Why would I have the light?" she asked quizzically.

"Would you rather make a mess of yourself?" he parried.

Silence – meant assent. Celes fumbled blindly with his bag strap, checking his ever-present duffel for the first time since the shelling – there hadn't been a relevant occasion. With a relieved sigh, he found that it was still intact, if a bit more beaten up than usual.

A swift rummaging later, he blindly offered a roll of tissue paper behind him. "Here…" and when she took it, he unjammed the glowing ragnite wand from his armor and swung it back as well, "…and here. I'll go forward a few lengths, slip this band of cloth over my good eye, and wait. Alright?"

"… alright." Her voice was small. Was it embarrassment at being in this sort of situation? Or was it fear?

"Look, if you're worried about the, er, sounds, I'll sing something, okay?" he offered.

"You can sing?"

"Poorly. But loudly."

Isara giggled behind him, a sound Celes found he enjoyed a lot. "Thanks, Celes."

""Well… I'll be off then." Stride. Stride. Stride. Stride. The blue light gradually disappeared around him into black darkness, although if he looked back, he could see her face framed with light, light that ceased to look weak and instead made her look like a – Valkyrur descended, although the paradox of a Darcsen being a Valkyrur almost made him laugh again. That was not only ridiculously, but ideologically – and biologically – impossible.

It was still a breathtaking sight, though.

The moment she began to fumble with her skirt, though – she was still wearing his "Gallian" jacket, a sight that he found amusing and touching at the same time – he turned around, and, ever a man of his word, dropped his obscuring band of cloth over the other eye, blocking his vision.

Admittedly, he could still see a little bit through the gauze, but it was all indistinct shadows. Again making sure that his eyes were averted, he rolled to a half-sitting position, took in a deep breath – and sang.

It was a wordless melody, partly because he didn't trust himself to fumble over words while curled up so painfully, partly because he didn't trust accidentally conveying a hidden message. So he made his mouth into an instrument, bending and sliding the pitch up and down the scales, stealing motifs and lines from various pieces he had heard earlier – folk songs and shanties from his childhood, classic pieces he'd heard on the radio at the Academy, patriotic anthems that had been broadcasted on the camp speakers daily – although he made up more than a few on the spot.

His breaths were a bit restrained, given his half-bent position and the armor – bent and improperly balanced – dragging his muscles down. He hadn't had the opportunity to exercise this skill in a while, almost months, so more than once, he winced at a particularly egregious crackle or bit of dissonance until his mind changed keys.

It was still a beautiful thing to hear.

Sometime a few minutes later, he was pulling from some tune he'd known since childhood, he heard a light, lilting tone coming from behind him – with words.

Abruptly, he cut off, spinning around, only then remembering that he wasn't supposed to be looking –

"I'm done," she said, interrupting his train of thought. If he could see her, he imagined her face crinkled with confusion, shadows of blue jumping around his obscured vision as she pulled herself back into a crawling position. "But might I ask where you heard that particular song?"

He thought on that, wracking his brains and pillaging his memories for the exact time he had learned that, but he couldn't give her an answer. "… I'm not really sure."

"That's a Darcsen lullaby." Brow knit together with concentration, she pulled herself a length forward, putting herself that much closer to him. "Well, I know that you're not some fanatical racist," she said, softening the interrogation, "but still, it isn't something I'd expect someone like you to have come across."

Celes wiggled his eyeband up to its normal position, leaving his physical secret, the left blue-black eye that failed to match with his other brown one, covered. Wistfully, he wondered just why he had to get struck with such a strange ailment – from his studies at the Vaclav, the odds of having different colored eyes was somewhere in the range of winning the lottery while becoming the Emperor on the same day. It just so happened that this condition showed a background that meant hardship – even death – in the Empire.

He thought about his father, the Darcsen who conceived him and left without ever knowing he had a son, and then thought about the woman in front of him, weighing the value of story – the secret. Even a dozen mental jumps later, he still couldn't think where he had heard that song.

"… I still don't really know," he repeated. He would keep his heritage underneath the lid of secrecy for now – opening that particular can of worms wouldn't help at all right now, and he wasn't sure he was comfortable leaving the information with her. "Come on," he said, changing the subject, pulling himself back into a forward crawling position. "Let's get going."

There was only the noise of her moving forward once again, now only a single length away from him. She shifted behind him – seeing the light dance on the earth walls around him, he reached back and took the light once more, jamming it into its previous position to light the way.

Stride. Stride. Stride.

Minutes passed as they crawled in silence, but as time passed, the silence ceased to be stifling or awkward – a comfortable silence. She didn't pursue his strange knowledge of a song that he never should have heard, and he didn't ask why she was interested, although he could imagine why. Obviously a fullblood Darcsen herself, it was a natural curiosity to have, just as someone from a certain town might ask an acquaintance's experiences of a visit of that town – especially if said acquaintance wasn't supposed to associate with that town at all.

He winced. Bad analogy – the pain was getting to him. Closing his eyes and shaking his head to purge the confusing idea, he reached forward again – touching soil in front of him where there should have been air.

Celes jerked. Dead end? No; the tunnel was sloping up!

He smiled, and communicated the information. "I think we're finally getting out of here. I wonder – just how far have we gotten?"

"Pretty far?" she offered.

The medical student made a face that she couldn't see. "That's not very helpful."

"… keep moving, silly. I want to see sky again."

Stride. Stride. Their pace increased as the tunnel slowly widened – obviously, someone had worked on it from this end. Stride. His pain in his back and legs went away at the thought of finally getting out of this claustrophobic place, and he increased his pace again.

There was an abrupt left turn in the tunnel – and then a mere two strides later, a turn back to the right to return to the original heading.

And after that turn was a wooden panel of a door, maybe a few feet square, outlined by afternoon sunlight. They'd been underground for quite a while, then.

More importantly, though, that was an exit. A minute later, they were side by side, and right against the door.

A lock hung off of it, almost mocking them.

Celes cursed, but Isara was already reaching for her small pouch of knick-knacks. Watching with curiosity, a notion came to him.

"… please say you know how to pick a lock."

She only produced the appropriate tools. "When you're a mechanic, sometimes you have to get at things that people feel obligated to lock." Shrugging, she got to work. "Give me some light here."

Celes shifted to point the ragnite light at the lock at an angle that let her see her work without her hands casting shadows all over it. Isara quietly nodded in satisfaction, metal scraping and clicking.

A few minutes later, the lock succumbed to her clever hands. Eyes alight with eagerness, she threw herself through, or rather tried to; her light body bounced off of the wood like a thrown ball.

Celes had to chuckle a bit at her dismayed expression. "I'll guess that the door hasn't been used in a while," he speculated.

"… probably," she agreed, still laid out on the soil.

"It'll probably take a bit of force…" Turning to put his legs underneath him, Celes braced himself against the wall of the tunnel and kicked at the surface, armor adding additional inertia to his strike.

SMASH. It was a solid hit, but the door didn't budge; instead, his foot went straight through the material. Now his face was the one twisted with dismay, as he soon realized that he was now well and truly stuck.

He heard giggling behind him. "Well, I didn't expect that either!" he complained in a whiny, child-like voice. Dropping back to a more normal and exasperated tone, he added, "Now are you going to help me?"

Still laughing, Isara moved back up to him, grabbed his shoulders, and pulled. With a further crack of wood, they tumbled back, Isara ending on top of him. For just a moment, he felt a ridiculous urge to do something, to wrap his arms around her and enjoy the moment of intimacy –

The spell broke when unconsciously he shifted a leg, a leg that felt weighed down with a huge amount of weight. "Oh, come on!" he groaned as the Darcsen girl rolled off him, still laughing. Admittedly, he noted, the situation was quite amusing – he couldn't blame her.

The good news was that door had broken away, revealing a second hillside. It seemed that the exit had come out in a small valley.

The bad news was that the door was still stuck to his leg. Soil must have settled outside, preventing the door from swinging outward – but not inside the tunnel, allowing the door to come inward.

Ignoring it, their banter gradually floated out into the air as they dragged themselves into the outside – especially dragging with Celes, as he had to fit a huge, heavy, awkwardly shaped object attached to him through the hole that it had once occupied – laying down on the cool grass underneath the sun.

He was glad to be alive.

No – he was glad they were alive.

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Next up: Contact with others, and just why they never get to call back…

This was a long piece of work, hence the delay. Review me for quick response, else I'll force you to wait… although I'll be writing regardless. :3