A Matter of Curiosity

A sequel to Ties that Bind, set... uh, somewhere in Sen III.

Looking back, he wasn't exactly sure when this had become her new way of saying hello.

"Hi to you too, Fie," Elliot greeted the new arrival with a warm laugh, not bothering to open his eyes as the now familiar sensation of a hand batting at his ponytail roused him from the ineffable state between awake and asleep. "Still not bored of that, huh?"

"Nope," the bracer replied, and he could just about picture her customary head tilt in his mind's eye. "Don't think it'll happen anytime soon, either."

"It can't be that interesting, can it? I mean, it's just hair."

"… Hmm."

Her rhythm slowed in seeming consideration for a few moments before it started again, Fie apparently have decided that whatever was under review hadn't been worth her time. "I guess. It's still different, though. Besides, it's fun."

The musician bit back a chuckle. "Fun, huh?"

"Yup," she said, and the slight upward note on the word told him she was probably smirking right now. "Something wrong with that?"

"Haha. Not at all," Elliot answered back, opening his eyes and meeting her half-lidded gaze with a shrug and an easy smile of his own, not feeling particularly inclined to move from his comfy spot on the grass. "I was wondering, that's all."

"Just making sure. Still, that reminds me – I never asked you why, did I?"

He blinked.

"Why…? Oh, you mean why I decided to grow it out?"

She gave a playful tug at that, smirking again at the exaggerated noise of pain he made. "That's what we were talking about, right? Keep up, Elliot. That'd have been a pretty lame segue into something else and we both know it."

"True, but you might be disappointed if you want some grand story. Honestly, I was so busy studying composition for the academy that I just forgot to get it cut, and my sister got tired of me looking… uh, raggy – "

"You and raggy? Can't picture it," Fie teased, her raised eyebrow a clear sign of her skepticism.

"Sis could," Elliot quipped, the memory of her indignant expression bubbling its way to the surface. "Anyway, she told me that hard work was no excuse for looking like a slob, so she grabbed one of her hairbands one day, and…"

"History was made," she finished, punctuating the end of the tale with a light fwip. "Still, it must have grown on you – you'd have gotten it cut otherwise, right?"

He pursed his lips, thinking. "Once I got used to seeing it in the mirror every day, I guess it did."

A snicker. "Huh. And here I didn't picture you for the vain type, either."

"I-I'm not!" he protested, cheeks flushing mightily at her teasing.

"Right. Go on."

"No, seriously! I mean, it was a change, but I – I dunno, I just kind of… felt like it," he finished, wincing a little at how wishy washy he sounded. "You know that feeling, right? Doing something just because?"

Fie's reply was to give his ponytail another tug while fixing him with a look, and he had long ago been able to decipher the miniscule messages in her seemingly blank expressions.

"Right. Stupid question, huh?"

"I didn't say anything," she answered with an air of innocence that was far more appealing than it had any right to be, and the jolt it sent through his stomach was starting to become more and more familiar with each passing day.

He stilled his head with a quiet exhale, willing his gaze to remain fixed on the horizon ahead of him and his mind to remain clear, hoping she wouldn't see.

She saw, of course. Not much slipped past bracers, after all.

"… Hey," Fie started, letting go of his hair to rest her arm on his sleeve, her amber eyes glinting inquisitively. "What's up?"

You mean other than the fact that he was way, way too aware of the fact that she could almost look him in the eye without tip-toeing, amongst a bunch of other things that might or might not get him murdered by two overprotective jaegers for noticing?

"Uh… it's nothing. Really. Don't worry about it, Fie."

Her stare continued unabated for a few more moments before she turned away with an unimpressed sniff. "Riiiiiiight. Pretty sure I've heard that one before."

The tell-tale burning in his cheeks would have tipped off anyone with functioning vision that whatever he was going to say was going to be nothing short of a big fat lie, but to Elliot's credit, he pushed on.

(Whether or not he could have done anything else was beside the point, of course).

"N-No, seriously! Everything's okay. I've just been thinking about… stuff," he got out with no small amount of difficulty, not exactly feeling reassured when Fie somehow pulled off the impossible and looked even more skeptical than before.

"Stuff?" she pressed, and he could only wonder how many poor souls had succumbed to Sylphid's interrogation skills since Thors.

"… Stuff."

After a second or two of deliberation (which Elliot was sure felt a lot longer to him than Fie, much to his bitterness) the white haired girl let go of his jacket with a sigh, blowing wayward strands of hair out of her eyes.

"Well, you don't look even close to as bad as you did in the windmill, so it can't be all that serious," she finally decided, the suspicious expression she wore not fading in the slightest. "You're still a pretty awful liar, though."

He couldn't help but laugh at that, throwing up his hands in mock surrender. "What can I say? Yeah, guilty as charged on that one."

"Some things don't change," Fie snickered again, the sound doing wonders to slowly make the knots in his gut unwind. "You wanna talk about it?"

… And so much for the unwinding.

"H-Huh?" Elliot didn't quite yelp, and the flustered redhead suddenly had a half decent idea of what it was like to be Machias on any given day.

"Talk," the gunsword specialist repeated, an exaggerated air of patience about her now. "Y'know, what you're having serious issues doing right now, for some reason? If you were like this at home it's a miracle your sister ever got anything out of you," she continued, eyes glinting at the dirty look her friend managed to muster up.

"Oh, for - it's not like I told her about everything, Fie! I mean, there's some things you just don't tell your siblings about," he said, valiantly marching onwards before she had time to dwell on *that* particular line of thought. "Just because Sis and I are close it doesn't mean I have a phobia of alone time or anything."

"No, just a phobia of dramatic, manly hugs from dad – "

"Anyway," Elliot interrupted, trying to drag the conversation back on course before it swerved off the tracks entirely. "Sometimes I just didn't feel like sharing, even with her. There's nothing wrong with that, right?"

"… I guess not," Fie conceded with an agreeable shrug, her gaze fixed on a distant point on the horizon, and by now Elliot was intimately acquainted with the expression that came with an unbidden memory. "It wasn't like everyone in the corps were chatterboxes way back when. There are things that I'm sure I don't know about Xeno and Leo, and I know for sure that there are things they don't know about me."

He nodded in understanding. "Family's kinda funny like that."

"Yeah. Can't tell you how many times we'd start off talking about something only to have it end with us prepping our loadouts or looking over maps when things cut a little too close to home for someone. There wasn't a person in Zephyr without secrets… but like you said, sometimes you don't feel like sharing. Though I gotta say," she added with a grin, "I can't imagine you using a knife and a whetstone to tell people 'conversation over'."

"I don't think anyone could," the arts specialist concurred with a smile of his own, pantomiming the playing of a violin. "That sounds too dangerous for me, anyway. I was always happier trying to play or compose something when I had stuff to think about."

She chuckled, the affection in the sound impossible to miss. "Now that I can imagine perfectly. That's so you."

"What can I say? I did what came naturally. Well, either that or play with the neighborhood cats; it was really hard to mope when a bunch of cute strays wanted some attention," he finished with a fond laugh.

There was the eyebrow again. "Huh. I think I remember hearing about Heimdallr's cat population during our field study there."

"Yup, there's always been a ton of them, but only around certain places. It was actually kinda weird; they never really hung around the… uh, nobler areas, I guess."

She rolled her eyes. "I remember hearing something like that before, too. Sure you're not talking about one oversized cat in particular? Green fur, stand-offish, doesn't play well with others until he gets tossed in the pound by corrupt officials…?"

"You shouldn't hit Machias where it hurts when he can't defend himself," Elliot chuckled, his battle with laughter a losing cause. "Besides, he plays well enough with Emma."

"Yeah well, Emma's got a soft spot for strays. Look at Celine," she quipped.

Elliot dropped his head, his shoulders shaking with barely restrained mirth. "And coming in at number one on the list of things you probably shouldn't say to her face…"

"Which one, Emma or Celine?"

"Yes."

"You're no fun. But it sounds like these cats of yours were awfully friendly compared to others out there. Usually they can be skittish around people."

"Normally I think they are, but now they're just a part of the neighborhood. Sometimes they'll just come up out of the blue wanting a good scratch, and they're not shy about it either," Elliot informed the ex-jaeger with a shrug and a brief yawn, thus missing the smaller girl grasping a strand of her hair and studying it, her expression thoughtful.

"… Hmm. That might work."

Elliot snapped back to attention, a little confused now. "What might work?"

She simply pointed at her white locks with one hand while making a patting gesture with the other. "There aren't any cats here, but whatever. If you don't feel like venting, then try it. Consider it a bit of interest on me and your ponytail."

Never before had he managed to choke on air. First time for everything.

"W-W-W-What?!"

She tilted her head. "I didn't stutter or anything, did I?"

He scrambled to find a foothold, to say something that wouldn't crash and burn in spectacular fashion as soon the words left his mouth, but all he could muster up was the verbal equivalent of violent flailing and I promise I'll never laugh at you again, Machias.

Fie, meanwhile, was regarding the spectacle with no small amount of amusement (tempered, naturally, with just the slightest bit of disbelief). "C'mon, Elliot. It can't be that hard. Rean did it pretty much every day, remember? Alisa, his sister, me, probably you at some point – "

"T-True, but that's different!"

"Is it, though?"

"Yeah, because – "

Because. Goddess, he hated that word.

"… It just is, all right?" he finally muttered, his cheeks the color of a fire quartz and his head preparing itself for the wall it was going to be smashing into repeatedly once he found some time and space to mourn over what little remained of his dignity.

Fie tilted her head again, this time in the opposite direction.

"Huh."

His gaze turned upward, wondering what she had noticed, and the growing smirk that greeted him was a dead giveaway that if he wasn't in trouble before, boy oh boy was he in trouble now.

"Fie – "

"Come to think of it," the ex-jaeger murmured, shuffling closer until she was all but sidled against him (was it always this hard to breathe?), "we got sidetracked, didn't we? I was asking about the cats earlier."

He nodded once, slow and uncertain.

"Right. Like I was saying," she continued, for mercy was not part of a jaeger's vocabulary, "Most cats are pretty wary around people, especially ones they don't know. I figure you didn't have that problem a lot, but maybe one day there's a new one in the pack or something. Try to call it over, and…"

Her hand flicked out to bat at his ponytail again in what he could only assume to be a substitute for a claw swipe, only this time her slim fingers lingered within the strands in a way that made his brain short circuit and his mouth go dry.

"Or worse," Fie continued, her voice dropping into a timbre Elliot didn't even know it had but wanted to hear a lot more of, "it decides that it really doesn't like you, jumps up and tries to take a bite."

She exhaled slightly on the word 'bite', her breath ghosting over the pulse point on his jaw, and his silent shudder was felt by them both.

"Even understanding all that, if one just came up to you just like – I dunno, the cat king from before – "

"Mr. Tiddles."

"Ja, why not – you'd still take the chance, right? Whether or not you know what it would do?"

The question was hanging frozen in the air, they both knew what was really being asked, and not for the first time Elliot wished that he were a person of action like Craig the Red, able to charge into the fray regardless of the consequences.

"T-That's kinda tough – "

"Humor me."

He took a deep breath. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

"I think I would. If it ever happened, I mean. Don't get me wrong, it'd still probably freak me out a little – or a lot, depending on how it looks – but if there's anything I've learned with you guys, it's how to deal with worry while you go and do the hard stuff anyway."

His voice wavered but never broke, and though it was a small victory in the grand scheme of things it was one he took pride in nonetheless because it was a victory he might not have won before.

Class VII tended to have that effect on people.

Fie looked back at him, her expression as unreadable as ever, and Elliot could only wonder if it was enough.

He got his answer when she snickered quietly, her eyes going soft. "That's good to hear. Something for me to keep in mind for… after."

"… After?"

"After," Fie affirmed, a familiar air of mischief about her now as the tense atmosphere faded away like dust in the wind. "I wouldn't think too much on it, Elliot."

Like that was even possible at this point. He had a feeling he'd be thinking about this way, way more than what was healthy.

But then again, if she wanted to play that game…

"What's coming after, Fie? You have a secret cat you want me introduce me to or something?" the redhead teased, intent on not letting his sudden burst of courage go to waste, and he was treated to the sight of her jaw almost dropping for a second or two before she threw her head back with a laugh that sounded almost musical.

"Dunno. Maybe."

"Oh, that's reassuring."

She sniffed. "Funny, I'm pretty sure you just finished saying how you wouldn't freak out about it…"

"I'm not freaking out! I'm just a little curious, that's all."

"Curious about what?" she prodded, every syllable daring him to toe the line without going over it.

"… About whether or not it'd bite, for one," he finally answered with a shrug that was a little bit too forced to be casual.

Fie flicked a mischievous glance over at him, clearly enjoying the byplay. "Mm. Hard to call, to be honest. She might, she might not. She's a tricky cat, this one. Likes to keep everyone on their toes."

"Tricky, huh?" Elliot mused, pulling up some blades of grass and letting them drift off in the breeze, watching as they turned to and fro while the younger girl settled against him again, idly playing with his ponytail.

"That doesn't sound so bad. I've kinda come to like tricky."

She turned to meet his gaze head on, open and guileless and maybe just a little bit shy. "… Yeah?"

Elliot smiled, his heart at ease, and if it sped up just a little when his fingers gently swam through a sea of soft ivory...

"Yeah."

... Well, he could deal with that.

AN: This story's actually been more than halfway done for months now – I figured that it'd be easy to just pick up where I left off and complete/post it, but turns out knowing that the finish line's in sight can actually work against you motivation-wise… who knew?

Anyway, felt like cranking out more Elliot/Fie in a nebulous part of the Sen III timeframe, and thus I did. Got at least one more M/E fic in the works after this (shocker of shockers) but at this point I'm just salivating over getting the third game in English. C'mon XSEED…