Title: 1/100th
Characters/Pairings: Zidane, Vivi, Quina, Beatrix
Genre: Err…drama with a dash of angst
Rating: PG13
Words: 1698
Summary: Guardians, their charges, and the statistics.
Notes: In-game. Prompt: #22 Clerya, #82 fighting
"Now that I have this jewel, I am through with your city!"
Vivi quivered behind her cape. Freya carefully blocked the mage from Beatrix's view, and then forgot him. Your city. My city. Wild, violent things churned within her, mingling with unshed tears. She could feel Burmecian blood on her feet and legs, red flakes crusted between her claws. The inner corners of her eyes were damp. Where was her lance? Dropped with a clatter near where Sir Fratley had stood. Freya cursed beneath her breath.
First failure: never returning.
Second failure: not remembering.
But this: leaving. That she could not forgive.
Zidane made to chase after the knight, but Freya saw and quickly beat him to it.
"Halt, villain!" she cried out. Kamikaze. Disgrace. What else was there to do? Freya ran at the knight, feet pattering swiftly, vaulting into the air, claws extended, landing before her, lunging. Beatrix's cape whipped to a stop and quick as lightening the knight parried the raised arm and slashed at Freya's midsection. She did not account for Freya's inhuman proportions; the rat jumped back, her thick dragon hide coat slashed through but her stomach intact. No time for awe, no time for fear, Freya lunged again.
Zidane skidded a few feet away from them, his dagger unsheathed. He hesitated. Vivi stumbled to a halt behind him, lugging Freya's precious lance in the dirt, its oiled, polished surface dry with dust. Quina peered curiously over Zidane's shoulder.
"Too close," the Qu commented. Freya and Beatrix, the fastest blurs Zidane had ever seen, were caught in a dance of slashes and parries and blood on blades, on claws, on sleeves. An exchange of steel, in eyes and hand.
Beatrix threw a powerful punch that should have put Freya down, but something kept her on her feet, kept her bounding back too fast for him to calculate. His dagger itched to squeeze in and slice the Alexandrian knight from shoulder to belly and back, but it was always Freya's shoulder or arm or thigh in the way. Zidane was not sure who was orchestrating whom— if the Dragoon was protecting him from joining or the knight was protecting herself.
Freya cried out as Beatrix snapped her blade up and sunk it into the Burmecian's shoulder. A terrible cry, keening, before Freya clamped her bloody teeth shut. Her fingers glanced of Beatrix's face with a metallic screech that left red grooves.
It was obvious Freya was losing.
Vivi struggled up from the ground, dusty and burnt with wilting shoulders, and called upon fire.
The runes in the air vibrated with power. Vivi's eyes blinked with fatigue, vanished, and cracked open in tiny crescents.
Zidane saw too late. "No, Vivi! —"
The fire escaped from his fingers. Burning, churning, howling with excitement, it tore for Beatrix in a path of blazing white-hot energy. Freya did not see it, too blinded by the stain of blood on her thighs, on her hands, in her eyes. Beatrix did. Dropping Save the Queen at her feet, she caught Freya mid-lunge by her neck, rocked back, and propelled her with her boot into the flame.
Freya screamed. Shrill, piercing, loud, on and on forever. Zidane clasped his hands over his ears and blood trickled between his fingers. Vivi collapsed to his knees. Quina stared.
The fire cackled and vanished in a whisper. Freya fell to the ground with a jarring thud, limp. Beside her, Beatrix rolled to her feet, snatched up her sword, and swung it down.
"Freya!" Vivi whispered.
Nothing.
Freya opened fringed eyelashes to Beatrix's grim face and God Save the Queen pressed tightly against her throat.
Nothing. Freya stared and said nothing.
After an agonizing moment, Zidane hesitantly stepped forward.
"Move and she dies," Beatrix warned, and he stopped.
Freya gazed behind frozen eyelids and a haze of gray smoke. Beatrix's face played over and over in her head, moving, flashing, no time for awe, but oh god. Her open wounds smoked and the pressure at her neck choked her. She imagined her own head, red and raw, rolling limply on the floor.
What was there to say of this? There were no words. This was nothing like fighting dragons with distance between weapon and teeth, between spear and spear, between body and ground. This was power and quickness and no distance at all, and together like this she could not conquer it. For the first time in her life, Freya could not think straight, could not breathe.
Beatrix turned her steely eye to her. "Villain? You dare to calm me that? You rats could never understand. This is liberation," Beatrix said fiercely.
Something shining caught Freya's eye, and expressionlessly, her head tilted towards it. The Desert Star, the pride of Cleyra, glittered like a small sun a few feet from the Alexandrian Knights heel, flashes of rich brown and yellow casting patterns upon the smooth angular silver of the woman's eye patch. Beatrix noticed, glanced at the jewel, and then with a sudden jerky motion, snapped it up. Freya glanced back at Beatrix, at the dark ruts of the iron sword at her neck, and then to that covered eye, a wall of steel. Iron was in Beatrix's blood.
Oh, Cleyra. Freya thought. With a sudden, startling clarity, she realized she couldn't win.
Her lips parted and her voice was the wind dust settling around Cleyra, fallen, lifeless. "Liberation for whom, I wonder. Alexandria? Queen Brahne?"
Beatrix's stare was long and hard. "The princess," she said finally, breathing heavily.
Zidane gasped. Somewhere beneath them, in the distance, an explosion of fire plumed into a wave of debris. Someone screamed.
"I see," Freya whispered. "One for one hundred?"
"One is enough!" Beatrix snapped.
One is enough. Freya's body tightened painfully, coiling in on itself in resonance. Bodies of monsters skewered by her spear and they stood together in the carnage, Sir Fratley kissing her and smiling and then gone, and she fell to her knees, again, again, again.
Freya shook her head weakly. "It will not work. It is not worth it."
Beatrix stared.
A huge fireball the size of a boulder flashed over Freya, and hit the knight full on, knocking her back. Beatrix snarled, and her eyes narrowed on Freya. The sword flashed silver. Freya closed her eyes briefly.
The splatter of blood.
Her eyes snapped open.
"Where is she?" Zidane fell to a knee beside Freya's prone body, holding a bleeding side. "Where is the princess?"
Beatrix looked at them--shoulder charred, a cut on her cheek--and ran.
Freya stared up at the sky. Failure, failure, again, again this will end in blood, there is no softness in steel, my city is gone, again, everything is gone, damn you Fratley for leaving me here again.
Damn this.
"Freya…damn it!" Zidane turned to her, lifting up her gently, cradling her neck with his large palm. His other hand grasped her shoulder. His face was fierce. "Freya, if you ever try some heroic stunt like that again, I'll kill you myself." He patted her cheek a bit roughly. "We've got to get out of here. We've got to follow her. Can you walk?"
Freya stared at him listlessly. Quina came close and fixed its large beady eyes on the Dragoon. Zidane turned helplessly to the Qu.
"Potion," Quina said finally.
With fumbling fingers, Zidane opened up his pack and grabbed their last potion, popping the cork. He sloshed it on her muzzle a bit before tipping it all down her throat. Then with a little difficulty, he hefted her to her feet.
"Vivi, grab Freya's lance."
Freya returned in a burst of color. Her eyes blinked, focused. Zidane and Vivi stood in her view, back-dropped by a gigantic cloud of flame and smoke. In the distance, she saw a black mage disappear into a portal of churning magic, followed closely by a flash of silver and red. The bobbing straw hats of mages lumbered towards the flashing spot.
She almost collapsed again, but not quite. Wobbling on her knees, she took her lance gingerly between broken fingers, and leaned on it. She pointed in the direction of the mages, and the group turned.
"We go there. We follow her."
"I'm sorry, Freya," Vivi whispered.
"Its okay."
Zidane gave her one last anxious look, before jogging in the direction she pointed. Vivi hiccuped, and stumbled after him.
"You go," Quina said.
Freya stared at the temple, at the trees, at the bodies littering the earth. She listened to the cries for help, the screams, the slow, awful chewing of the fire as it spread. Some part of her still burned in the intensity of Vivi's flame, in a baptism of fire and blood, in the carved fractures of despair in her soul. She wanted to fall to her knees and bury herself with her people, wanted to press damp earth to her eyes and cool away the tight pain of being incapable of crying human tears. Perhaps if she collapsed, they would leave her to die. Perhaps if she collapsed, all her seams would come apart and she wouldn't have to pretend she was whole, or had been whole, or ever would be whole again.
It will not work. It is not worth it.
Zidane, Vivi, Quina? What of them?
One for one hundred. No, one hundred for one.
The answer was simple.
Three for me.
Freya shuddered in a breath and nodded. She wanted to say something out loud, to Quina, to Fratley's empty space, to the ash bodies, to dying Cleyra. She wanted to tell them that this was responsibility—being beaten again and again with inevitability, enduring it, standing up, and taking another step. She wanted to ask why the truth of her own weakness was so unbearable, even when she knew these forces and destinies that held her down raced beyond her control. She wanted to know if this was maturation: withholding despair, accepting the insignificance of her single life, realizing that something essential existed beyond her traditions, her people, herself.
But there were no words for it, to convey this intensity
So Freya stumbled forward.