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When Gaius came to, he felt a headache that could rival the one he nursed in Ultima's fallout. His discomfort was generalized, a full body malaise that seemed to tug at his very skin. He squinted his eyes open, faced with bright sunlight from a window in front of him. The small room and cot he found himself on denoted the safety of the warehouse.
His memory came rushing back all at once.
He and Severa had attempted to infiltrate and sabotage the Weapon prototype as it was rehoused just northeast of where they were, within Imperial territory bordering Ghimlyt. It had not suffered a scratch, despite the explosives having ruined its docking port. The alarm had a pilot jumping into the cockpit immediately, and the massive thing proved itself not a copy, but an improvement. The whip-like claws lashed out at them as they made their escape. He had taken a hit in Severa's stead, and they had barely managed to stumble far enough away before his recollection became hazy.
They had made it back, evidently, but Gaius would not be able to tell a soul how they managed it. He sighed a deep breath as he remembered the hulking monstrosity the Ruby Weapon was. His eyes closed. The guilt boiled bitter in his throat, burned behind his eyes. His mind called him a fool, over and over, an unending chorus of denouncement in his voice and that of a thousand others.
Gaius had to fix it, whatever it was, however it was. He bore the weight of responsibility, and he would do something about it. Whoever it was that had brought the Weapon Project back from the pits of hell Ultima's cast had sent it to, he would have them carry it back in their own arms. Cold anger washed over his back and he sat up with a shuddering breath. Gaius had started this horror, and so he would finish it.
He swung his legs over the corner of the cot, only to come face to face with an exceedingly displeased man.
"Stay. Put." Big ears inclined back as he stared at Gaius, waiting with clear irritation. He held red cloth and a needle in his hands, laid on his lap.
Gaius attempted to say something, a neutral "hello" or a "what are you doing?". Alas, his throat, dry and raspy, didn't allow a single word before he coughed roughly, violently, eyes closed and left hand covering his mouth.
But quickly enough, another hand grasped his wrist, bringing his arm down again as he tried to contain the coughing. The grasp was gentle, delicate as if it feared to break. As his breathing returned under his control, he noticed the fixed stare the other man held towards his arm. His ears had flattened against his skull, his breathing was shaky. Gaius made to reach for him, but he stepped back, eyes still wide, still not looking at Gaius' face.
"Lay down. Wait." Without waiting for a response, the Viera stood up properly, laying his handiwork on the chair he had been sitting on. And out he walked, not a single word more.
Gaius waited, but he didn't lay down again. As eccentric as Fteli could be, his behavior far exceeded his usual margins oddity. Keeping it put, Gaius looked down at his left arm to find it tightly bandaged. He tried to move his hand, if only slightly, and noticed it weaker, less responsive than it should be. Perhaps the situation truly was more dire than he'd initially thought.
The minutes rolled on as Gaius sat there, resisting his mind's circular mazes. He focused on more important worries, instead. Was Severa well? Had she been hurt as badly as himself? How long had it been since they'd returned? The itch of restlessness crept into his legs as he resolutely kept them put. His body still weighed heavy with discomfort.
His eyesight wandered; they must have set up the tool storage room for this. The shelf in the corner held a toolbox he was fairly certain Nero had standardized as military issue. It was clean, unlike the shelves above it, covered in old dust. Someone had put a tall box beside the cot to hold a desk lamp. And there, on the chair beside it, the faded red cloth. On closer inspection, it was quite familiar. Gaius' own coat.
He made to reach for it, but the door opened abruptly and quietly. The piercing red stare pinned him down like a lightning bolt. Gaius pulled back his hand and sat up, eyes glued to the man in the doorway.
His ears shifted as Fteli looked back, going back to an irritated backward inclination.
"I said: lay down." Gaius met his gaze and remained as was until Fteli scoffed in contempt.
Still, the Viera approached with a bottle in one hand and a small bag in the other. He waited for Gaius to take the first before dropping the second on the nightstand box. The first sip of water seemed to kickstart the part of his brain that cared for needs. He had never been hungrier, or thirstier. Keeping the trickle of water at a moderate pace was a fight against his own will. Once he'd drained about half of it, his throat finally felt ready to unstick from itself and allow speech.
"How is Severa?" Was the first thing Gaius could think of saying.
"Well." Was the reply as Fteli took his coat in hands and sat down again. Gaius sighed.
"May you just tell me what happened?" The question had the needle stilling again.
"Don't you remember?"
"Not all of it." Gaius shook her head and sighed. The hunger was getting to him, but he doubted he would be able to wrangle answers from the other man while popping dried berries into his mouth. "Getting hit, running, managing to escape by the skin of our teeth. After that, it's unclear."
Fteli sighed, then, and looked at the coat in his hands. He was mending a significant tear.
"You two came back, somehow. You were almost delirious from blood loss." The Viera paused, and rested his hands on his lap before looking at Gaius again. "You almost died. We thought you would. Valdeaulin might have not had enough Aether for his conjury if…"
A long, heavy pause. Fteli shook his head and looked away, sighing a small, shaky breath. Gaius felt his left hand twitch.
"I see." Fteli hummed, distracted, in acknowledgement. "Where are they, now?"
"Left earlier. Reconnaissance. Should be back soon." His voice was quiet as he went back to sewing. "You should eat."
One look at the actual contents of the bag – as expected, inoffensive dried fruit – and Gaius was overtaken by a wave of nausea. Grimacing, he forced himself to down half a handful, knowing well it would only get worse if he didn't. Most of his focus went into keeping the small portion in his stomach for a while. When he looked up again, it was to Fteli tying the knot after a final stitch.
"Thank you." Gaius sounded a little strained, but he would excuse himself on account of his miserable stomach.
He received a hum in return, and nothing else for what felt like an eternity. Gaius was unwilling to break the silence and Fteli stared at the coat, the needle hanging on to the excess thread. He needed a pair of scissors. Or a sharp knife.
"I made a mistake coming here."
The words snapped Gaius' focus back to the man's face, half obscured by white hair and droopy ears as it were. The sentiment was certainly new, and mildly alarming. Fteli had been with them for two months by the time of the failed sabotage. Despite his role as a non-combatant, he was a welcome addition to their band. Even if someone – invariably Gaius, as the other two would simply leave it to him – had to explain a conversation he was in to him sometimes, Gaius didn't think the other two would be happy to see him go. Ambivalent at worst, maybe. Himself… was his own problem.
"Are you upset with something?"
"Am I— Yes! Of course I am! You almost died!" Fteli looked at him with the irritated confusion of a man asked something that should be obvious. "Are you suddenly unaware of the concept of mortality all of a sudden?!"
"Of course I un—'
"Then what's so hard to understand about it?!" Fteli looked half manic, hands clutching the fabric in his lap, voice loud, ears perked and turned forward.
Unfortunately, Gaius' mouth decided to be more honest than his good sense, getting swept in the other's outburst: "What I can't understand is why you would care so much about it."
The ensuing stunned silence saw Fteli's slack jaw turn into the deepest frown Gaius had ever seen.
"Are you stupid, Baelsar?" His voice was low, cold, and deeply enraged, ears inclined back. "Were you not here the last two months? Do you think I share cigarettes and miseries with just about anyone who approaches me in the middle of a sleepless night? Do you?!"
"Of course not. You're—" A pause to seek the right words. "Good company."
Fteli's eyes narrowed in contempt as he took a sharp breath.
"Well. Even if I'm not yours, you are my friend. That's the damn problem."
It was Gaius' turn to be stunned with surprise. He was unable to reassure the other man, or ask why, how that would be a problem.
"I came here because I couldn't stand their pity anymore. The sad looks." Now, Fteli looked like he had weeks ago, telling the tale of the First and Emet-Selch. The resolute cold of a man facing the gallows. "The sad little hero who gave it all to save the world and couldn't even die about it. As if I didn't kill Emet-Selch because I was angry at what he'd done to me."
Gaius stayed quiet, tried not to focus on the tears clearly gathering at the corner of the other's eyes. Viera had no white to their eyes, their sclera was a soft shade of brown, instead. Fteli's grew darker, then.
"So I left, and when Estinien said he had been working with you, I thought 'Well, that's certainly a place they won't come looking'. The swordsmanship practice is certainly a nice bonus, too." Fteli smiled, small and bitter and crooked, like he was making fun of something. "And it was fine. You treated me far better than I expected. Severa was nice. Valdeaulin made sense. It was a pleasantly simple arrangement working out spectacularly."
"I d—"
"Shut up. Let me finish." Gaius clicked his mouth shut again, back to his silent attention. Fteli sniffled and ground his teeth, like he was trying to pull the next few words from his throat by force. "It was fine, easy. But then you started talking to me as if you actually like it. Just telling me what you all mean when you're being obtuse. And then I felt like I want to be here, talking to you."
A pause as Fteli looked him dead in the eyes for once.
"And then you go and almost die."
The Viera stood up, walked up to Gaius with a heavy gait and a livid fire in his eye. A looming menace with crossed arms and suspiciously relaxed ears. He leaned down until they were nose to nose, faces almost touching.
"The gall you have to ask why I care so much, when you were the one worming your way into my chest is fair grounds for murder."
Gaius was unsure of what manner of humor possessed him to reply with: "Do you want me to make it easy in honor of last time's failure?"
Fteli took in a sharp breath as his eyes went wide in surprise. Then he scoffed, and the tension flowed from his shoulders like water off stone. With a sigh, he knocked their foreheads together before leaning back again, like it was nothing. A cultural difference, no doubt, but still not an action Gaius was expecting, much less prepared for. Yet, as luck would have it, he had no time to dwell.
"Can you get up?" Fteli asked, voice neutral again.
Gaius nodded, pushed himself up with only his right hand to stand on unsteady legs. The feeling was akin to standing on a moving vehicle. Not pleasant in the slightest. His muscles protested the movement, but most of all, he felt weak. As if his body were too loose to keep itself upright.
"Alright, sit down, sit down." There were frigid hands on his shoulders, steadying as they pushed him down. Gaius couldn't remember when he'd closed his eyes. "We don't want Valdeaulin having to fix your arm again."
The cold touch held his elbow in a firm grasp to stop him from leaning onto it at all. Once Gaius had settled back into a semblance of stability, it let go. Gaius opened his eyes again once the room felt like it had stopped spinning. An unfocused haze covered his sight, and all he truly registered was a cascade of white hair around a dark face.
"You should tie your hair up."
The face contorted into an annoyed frown with a noise of confusion.
"I'll find something… more for you to eat. Stop trying to be funny by the time I'm back." Fteli said, turning on his toes and walking out of the room without preamble.
"I'm not being funny." Was Gaius' quiet remark.
"I know! That's why I said trying." Was the loud reply.
Fteli was in honest disbelief at how hard it was to force the grown man to take a shower after eating. At least he had, and walked there himself. Severa and Valdeaulin returned while Baelsar was in the bathroom. Upon seeing Fteli in a less than utterly neurotic state – though, if you asked him, his self-control had been remarkable – assumed the good news correctly.
"He's properly alive, then?" Valdeaulin asked as soon as he'd seen Fteli reading in the sparse "living area" they had arranged; a grand total of three chairs a rug.
Fteli answered with a simple tilt of the head toward the bathroom on the opposite end of the facility. Severa let go of a sigh that sounded like relief.
"Good grace, I was so worried." She out her hand to her heart in a way that reminded Fteli of Minfilia
"Well, at least we can still keep this… operation up, then." Valdeaulin's distaste over their dependency on Gaius was clear to Fteli at this point.
"He was asking about you, Severa." Fteli remarked, folding the edge of the page to keep track of where he was. Miserable manual, yes, but it did explain how engines worked remarkably well. "If you were well. Couldn't remember getting here."
"Oh, I should go talk to him once he's out." The woman replied with a long stretch. "But I have to eat first. Do you want something, Val?"
"Why do you keep calling me that?" The Elezen crossed him arms with a scrunched expression to his face.
"Do you want something or not?" Not that Severa was having any of it.
Fteli breathed hard through his nose in lieu of real laughter as Valdeaulin hung his shaking head with a sigh. They both headed for the kitchen after. He left his manual on the chair to tag after them.
Fteli leaned on the doorframe as he looked on. The two worked silently together to put some form of edibility into the rations they had received from the Alliance the week prior. It was a peaceful rhythm, reminding him of late nights with his sister. Their brothers were never happy to be told to sleep for being too young. Oh, to explain to eight year olds that twenty nine was young, but not as young as them.
It was the trap of reminiscence that had him unaware. When least he expected, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and it was he could do to not scream, lurching away from the sensation as his heart hammered in his chest. He turned quickly to stare at a Gaius with wide eyes and a hand hanging on air.
"Don't do that." Fteli hissed, hand clutching his chest.
"My apologies." Baelsar's face became neutral again as he let his hand fall. "I shall announce my arrival next time."
The chuckling behind him told Fteli he had no allies. All of them had united against him in his misery. Bastards.
"Gaius! How are you feeling?" Severa's voice was bright, light. Happier than usual, if nothing else.
"Well enough." Baelsar looked over Fteli's shoulder to reply, a minuscule smile as he nodded.
"Thank the Twelve you're awake. I couldn't handle the hare's neurosis another day." Valdeaulin said, voice suspiciously… normal. Fteli turned to him, eye twitching. "Say, did you finish mending his coat?"
"He did." Baelsar was the one to answer once Fteli failed to figure out the words in time.
"He didn't leave your bedside the whole time you were out, Gaius." Severa, too? Oh, truly, he was wretched and alone.
"Is that all?" Fteli managed to hiss and Severa had the gall – the gall – to shrug at him about it.
"It's good to see you well, Severa." Baelsar said behind him and Severa beamed.
"Likewise." She replied as Fteli turned around to look at Gaius again.
His face was… soft. Fteli couldn't put his finger on which kind of soft, but it did suit him. His features were angular enough without help.
"Is there anything I should know about the time I was unconscious?" Gaius' gaze switched between all three of them.
"Just the time." Valdeaulin responded. "Three days."
"I see." Gaius frowned the slightest bit. "I'll be in my new room if you need me."
"Sleeping separate from the lowly troops again?" Valdeaulin's voice was mocking, bitter. Gaius sighed.
"Think what you will." He didn't wait for a response before leaving.
"Do you have to do that every time?" Severa hissed out a whisper
"I'm keeping him in check."
"Nevermind." She sighed.
As they went back to their food, by the sounds of it, Fteli left the kitchen as well. He wasn't thinking much of anything, feet on auto-pilot, by the time he reached the refurbished, if one could call it that, storage room. He forwent knocking, more out of forgetfulness than intention. The door opened to a repetitive hissing noise.
Baelsar sat on the bed, Heirsbane in hands, patiently sharpening it; his right hand did the work, the left merely holding it in a loose grip. The gunblade's handle rested on the mattress by a closed bottle and rag, its blade laid across Gaius' thighs. The man in question raised his eyes momentarily before looking at the weapon again.
"Aren't you coming in?" He asked, and Fteli nodded, despite the fact none were looking.
He walked in, closed the door behind himself, and struggled with a sudden lack of words. What had he been there to do? Fteli's mind failed to offer an answer, and he was left to stare at the man in front of him instead.
"Is something the matter?" The question broke him out of his stupor, but still he couldn't reply right away.
"I forgot what I was going to do." He managed after a moment too long.
Baelsar chuckled, shaking his head with a faint smile as he continued to sharpen his gunblade.
Then Fteli's eyes landed on the coat, forgotten on the chair by the bedside box. He walked up to it, turning it over to take hold of the needle before grabbing the coat itself. Turning to Gaius, he took the step to stand in front of him.
"May I?" He held the needle away from the coat, the excess dark thread taut.
Baelsar frowned, seemingly confused. With an impatient sigh, Fteli leaned down, cutting the thread near the fabric on Heirsbane's blade. He poked the needle into the box, then, before shaking the coat out to look at his finished work. The v-shaped, long gash on the left side of its waist was only visible now as two small seams. He'd say it was remarkable work, if not for the sharpness of the blow implied in how cleanly it cut.
Baelsar reached out for the seam, far clearer from the inside of the coat. Fteli lowered it for him as his fingers traces the stitches. He was frowning heavily now. Fteli stared at him, waiting.
"How badly was I injured?" Gaius asked without looking at him, eyes fixed on the seams under his fingers.
"I had to stuff your guts back into you while Valdeaulin cast his conjury." Fteli answered, because it was true. He could still remember the viscous feeling in his fingers, the terrible heat of it.
Baelsar hummed, left hand coming to rest against his waist, where the seam was. He seemed to press into the skin with the tips of his fingers. He sighed, a shaky breath as he closed his eyes.
"He did well."
"Far more than I thought he could, if I'm honest. Teaches me to not underestimate conjury again." Fteli tilted his head to the side with a shrug.
"What's the difference between that and the magic you did?" Gaius question was sincere, but Fteli couldn't help but feel exasperated.
"What's the difference between a mechanic's work and a gardener's?" Fteli hoped that was the right job. He kept confusing the plethora of positions surrounding magitek.
"I see." At least Baelsar had the shame to squint his eyes.
"Though all Aether manipulation – magic, as it were – is the manifestation of one's will, each discipline functions in its own way to mold it." Fteli started, folding the coat in his arms and setting it on the chair. "What I did was Arcanima. In comprehending the phenomena of the world to its most basic functions we can manipulate them. Even my summoning was derivative of formulas, not… attunement alone."
"And conjury?" Fteli breathed out a laugh.
"I could not begin to tell you. I have no clue. I have been told Padjali from Gridania practice White Magic at times, and that I know is Light-aspected." He raised his hand to tap his chin. "In turn, I do remember reading the mages of Mhach would channel energy from the Void for their magicks, and some would even form contracts with Voidsent, rather than simply summoning them."
"There are Garleans who do the same." Baelsar said with a nod, and his neutral judgment struck Fteli as curious.
"Oh? I didn't know there were rituals not involving Aether manipulation." And curious he was.
"I'm not sure of the specifics. Nor do I think they would tell me, should I ask." Baelsar shook his head as if in disappointment.
"They?" Fteli knew he was staring, but he could not care, for once. He hadn't felt this burning interest in years.
"Reapers. An old Order, from before the Empire." Baelsar started, watching as Fteli nodded, taking a sit further up the bed without looking away from the Garlean. "We were a people of farmers, once. But we could not compete in the battlefield against spellcasters even with swords, or so does story go."
Fteli nodded again, trying to prompt him without words to tell him more.
"Conflict was common in the region of Locus Amoenus. Resources are scarce, the climate is unforgiving." Gaius continued, setting aside Heirsbane for the moment. "Some Garleans took up their farmers' tools as weapons and forged blood pacts with Voidsent, borrowing power to protect their people."
"I've never read anything about this. No records mention Voidsent powers in conflicts with Old Garlemald." Fteli felt enraptured, overtaken by the wish to know about these mysterious Reapers.
"They weren't frontline combatants, as far as I know." Baelsar nodded, gaze surprisingly soft again. "Assassins, mostly. Flankers who would overtake the backline from the shadows and retreat before any could react."
"They must be incredibly secretive to not have any records kept about them." Fteli tilted his head, felt his ears brush the back of Gaius' head. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, almost. He hadn't noticed.
"You are quite interested in them." Baelsar smiled, just slightly, as if pleasantly surprised.
"Yes." No need for dressing up the truth. "You seem to know a lot about them. Were there records you studied as a Legatus, or?"
"No. I…" He averted his gaze, and Fteli could swear his cheeks grew a little darker in the dimming light. With a sigh, Gaius continued: "I wanted to become one as a child. We have our tales. Theirs were my favorite."
Fteli tried to imagine Gaius as a small child, little feet running through a house, enraptured with tales of ancient warriors with arts of questionable safety. Bright eyed and – figuratively, because Garleans would never know the joy of having one, poor things – bushy tailed when he imagined himself one of them.
Fteli chuckled. The idea was adorable.
"What?" Was he defensive? Gaius Baelsar, actually embarrassed. That was a new one for him.
"It sounds like you, is all." Fteli said, and didn't elaborate, smiling widely instead.
"How so?" Oh, he crossed his arms. Forget the child, this was almost enough for Fteli to want to pinch his cheeks. But he would be merciful, for once.
"You said they picked arms and forged those contracts to protect their people." He answered, letting go of the smile. "It sounds just like you."
Baelsar eyes grew… sad. He looked sad as he gazed down at his hands and sighed.
"Would that you were right."
"I am." Fteli nodded with a confidence he could not explain, if asked.
Another sigh, a shake of the head. Then Baelsar looked at him with the corner of his eyes and said:
"Tell me more of your Arcanima, then?"
Fteli could feel his heart beat harder with sudden excitement. He could even feel his ears perking up, turning forward. He stood up, strode to the toolbox in the shelf, and opened it to pull out his grimoire, thick and heavy, leatherbound. Resisting the urge to skip, he sat on the bed again, and opened the tome between them, one cover on Gaius' thigh, one on his.
"Arcanima's introductory theory is that of compression and expansion, the basis for what we call the Ruin spell…"
By the time Fteli arrived at the topic of crystalline formations, Gaius was yawning, and they had to turn on the desk lamp. It was bright enough to read by if pointed at the pages, but the room itself remained dark. As much as Baelsar seemed to be giving the subject genuine attention, when he suppressed his fifth yawn, Fteli stopped his explanation.
"You should sleep." He tried to keep his voice quiet.
"Just… finish the part about lightning. It's…" Baelsar pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked hard. Fteli felt the urge to strangle him. Or bite. "It's similar to how they explain the energy powering magitek."
Fteli rolled his eyes, but decided to indulge him. He'd had a bad enough week as it was. And so he started explaining the Amethyst Chapter proper, the currents of lightning, observably as water, following the path of least resistance. Its manifestations were, of course, easy to see during storms, but also present in… There was a weight on his shoulder. There was not supposed to be a weight on his shoulder.
Keeping his movement to a minimum he looked down to see Baelsar clearly asleep, nose digging into Fteli's clavicle. He was almost face down, as unflattering a position as one could take to sleep on another's shoulder. Once again, Fteli had to suppress the urge to enact great violence upon the man. Carefully, he closed the tome on his lap and then almost threw it at the bedside box.
Gently, he tapped the side of Baelsar's forehead. When that wasn't enough, he rapped his knuckles, lightly, on the same spot. The sharp inhale told him that was enough. Baelsar immediately tried to push himself upright with his bad hand, which Fteli scrambled to stop. He had no wish to staple tendons back together if he could help it. Sitting up, rubbing at his eyes, Gaius turned to him.
"I'm sorry." His voice was slow, almost a drawl.
"Don't worry. Sleep, now." Fteli stood up slowly as the other man laid down in turn. "Take off your shoes, will you?"
He turned off the lamp to hear the sound of hard soles hitting the floor. Baelsar must have toed them off. Fteli shook his head and made to leave.
"Finish this… tomorrow." Fteli was surprised he could still sound coherent. Still, the sentence endeared him.
"As you wish. It's a date, then."