Found a small tidbit on Welkin's mother in the official manga. Unfortunately, Isara's is still a black hole.
And now we finish Isara's questioning, and get Celes into the picture…
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Watching Halsey retreat, the sergeant glared disappointingly his subordinate. "I didn't understand the reasoning for that, but I'll make sure to ask later."
Turning his gaze back towards Isara, he stepped forward, a scowl on his face. "Your little Imp friend here has been singing like a bird after the drugs we pumped into him," he lied. "We've got everything we need to know. Just tell us just what you were thinking, with such a half-assed plan."
He pointedly overlooked the fact that he had given away the exact opposite information a few steps outside. She decided to as well, if only for the sake of saving some face.
"It wasn't a plan," she said. "Everything you saw us doing was what we thought was right at the time. The only agenda you could say we have is to stay alive, and isn't that everyone's?" she posed.
Worrick grumbled a bit. "You really are digging your heels in. Tell us, then. Just what is a militiawoman doing out of proper uniform, in the presence of an Imperial she seems to have more than professional ideas for?"
Isara hotly opened her mouth to protest that she had nothing but rational plans involving Celes, prepared to fervently deny any sort of ulterior motive, but fortunately she remembered that, as a member of the Gallian armed forces, she was supposed to be at war with the Empire's soldiers.
After meeting Celes, she wondered if she could ever think of them as faceless, immoral demons again.
Swallowing, she raised her fingers to her jacket buttons – slowly, to not startle either of them. Halsey raised an eyebrow. "If you're hoping to seduce us, I'll go ahead and say –"
"Mind your tongue," she interrupted. "I have to show you something." The blonde twisted his mouth shut, while Worrick absently reached towards his sidearm, placing the hand onto the butt of the gun in case she tried anything.
The first two buttons came loose underneath their quizzical gaze, and then she pulled her left arm out of the blue sleeve. Their eyes tracked the bare limb as it snaked out of the open front, jacket tilted just enough to preserve her modesty, exposing some white cloth around her still-covered breast.
The dark haired Gallian coughed. "If you really think this is going to work, then –"
She flushed, and snapped, "Be quiet. Now look."
With that, she pulled the jacket a little farther, exposing the white cloth for what it truly was – the bandaging of a wound, a wound that would have killed her, except for a pair of generous hands that pulled her back from the brink.
The two of them were trained soldiers, with enough experience to know what the wound entailed that close to the heart. Halsey let out a low whistle. "Geez, you should have said something about that. What was it?" He wrinkled his brow, thinking – confused. "What'd you get hit with? I mean, obviously you weren't hit with any heavy rounds, else you wouldn't be here –"
"An Imperial sniper round," she deftly corrected.
Those rounds were fearsomely powerful, enough to smash past the integrated armor in a Gallian uniform from almost a mile away. To be hit there was almost assured death, and if one survived, it wouldn't be for long.
Unless someone intervened.
Now Worrick was the one to show interest, eyeing the thin red line that had seeped through the cloth – she hadn't followed Celes's orders to stay completely still, and had probably burst a few stitches. Suddenly, she was reminded that he had been supposed to give her a post-op examination today. "If you'll excuse me, sirs, Celes was supposed to look at the wound again today," she offered, purposefully timid, but making sure to emphasize the "again". "He kept saying things about possible complications and backsliding conditions," she added, putting fear into her voice.
The semi-act was enough to put the two Gallians off balance. Either they refused the contact between their two prisoners, jeopardizing her condition, or they allowed him to see her, and by extension let them exchange information.
She watched them teeter back and forth, and triumphantly she watched a resigned expression flit across Worrick's face. "Fine then, Isara, if that really is your real name," he grumbled. "We'll let him see you – after we finish asking a few more questions."
Smiling with relief, she nodded. She expected nothing less.
"Just how did an Imperial end up operating on you?" Halsey began. "Whatever was wrong with a Gallian doctor…"
And so she answered. She told of how Fina had been insufficient to cure the wound, how she had been rushed to a town in search of a doctor. How Celes, in disguise, had selflessly offered his services – although she left out mentioning Lieutenant Karst and the rest of his unit for now. How they had been shelled out of the blue, how she and Celes had dragged themselves out of the escape tunnel – and how they, the Gallian regulars, had found them.
Throughout the story, she answered questions. Militia squads lacked fully certified surgeons, who stayed instead with the regulars – Worrick looked slightly embarrassed at that fact. It seemed he'd assumed that all the armed forces had them. Why had Celes been in disguise? Marching around in Imperial uniform would be instant death for him. His generosity was a question she couldn't answer, but she did offer simple kindness as a possible reason.
It raised more than one eyebrow amongst the Gallians.
The shelling had been the report of friendly fire and "collateral damage" they had heard she had died in, the shelling she had only escaped (relatively) unscathed through due to Celes's own acts. And then, the moment they'd finally dragged themselves out of the tunnel, a patrol had found them.
And so here she was, trying to get them out of their predicament.
Finally, about an hour later, they were done. A little less than unconsciously, she raised a hand to touch the bandage in a pointed statement.
Halsey stretched uncomfortably, bouncing from one foot to the other – standing for such a long time would do that do anyone. "I'll talk with your friend to confirm your story," he ceded. "If we find the same story from his side, we'll bring him over here to look at you, like you've asked."
Worrick glared at him. "You mean, we, you presumptuous knucklehead."
"You're not stopping me, are you?"
"… that's an order, corporal."
Grinning in a small victory, the blonde slipped through the open doorway, nodding to a guard that had slipped into position sometime during her conversation. She hadn't noticed – she had had other things to focus on.
For somewhere around half an hour, all Isara could do was eye Worrick, and him her. The Gallian seemed to not want to ask any questions without his subordinate around to also hear, which was perfectly fine with her.
And then a flurry of low spoken commands filtered through the door, and Halsey walked through once more, Celes in tow, limping every step of the way.
Isara couldn't help but let a small gasp escape her upon seeing him. He looked horrible. His face had by now completely bruised, staining his entire cheek underneath his covered eye. As he took another painfully stiff step towards them, she saw that no one had bothered to take a look at his previous injuries from the shelling.
She could see that no one had bothered to look at the leg that had had the door stuck around it either; quickly evacuating the chair she had been sitting in, she let him gingerly limp a last step into the chair. Humorous as the situation had been, she'd overlooked the possibility of an actual injury - it seems he'd sprained a joint, the way he walked.
He turned, awkwardly, and assumed some semblance of a dignified position, facing off against not two, but three Gallians. Yet he only had an eye for one of them, as he bored an accusing glare into Isara's own gaze. At that, she flushed and turned away, finding something very interesting about a knothole in the floor.
In a low, tight voice, his only question to her was, "Why didn't you leave me?"
And she felt herself fill with righteous fury, restraining the urge to slap him as hard as she could.
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Next up, Celes and Isara do their best to have a chat, and then the surgery begins.
