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Grace
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Characters: Colette, Zelos; background Lloyd/Colette and Zelos>Lloyd
Word count: ~4100
Warnings: Mild language, canon-typical depressing childhood nonsense
Notes: Ha ha ha wow I've had this sitting around as a WIP for an age. But I have finally decided to be the friendship fic I wish to see in the world. This was originally for Gen Prompt Bingo Round 5 (prompt: "beauty"), but legit I have no idea whether I'm still doing that or not. It's been over a year.
“Okay, Colette, let's do this. Gimme your hands.”
When it was just the two of them alone, he only ever called her Colette – no “hunny,” no pet names, no terms of endearment. But with anyone else around it was always back to “my angelic cutie” or something. “Darling Colette,” “sweet little Colette,” never just her name.
She'd never mentioned it. If he didn't like people to know he was serious, he must have had his reasons. They hadn't led the same life, not exactly, but it was easy for her to imagine why he felt that way.
She gave him her hands. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I'll probably be really bad at this.”
He smiled and shook his head slightly. “Don't worry about it. That's what practice is for, right?” He put her hands into position. “Here we go. And... one, two, three -”
She tripped immediately. He caught her, just as quick. “I'm sorry, Zelos.”
“Hey, I told you not to worry about it.”
He's so graceful, she thought. Not like me. She wondered sometimes how the mana lineages of the two worlds could have turned out so differently. Zelos was so pretty, and he always seemed to be floating. He reminded her of Mithos sometimes, or the grown-up Mithos pretended to be when it hurt too much to keep being a kid.
Both their bloodlines were meant to make a vessel for Martel. Colette had been that vessel, and still she sometimes caught herself thinking he was the only one who got anywhere close.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It's gonna be fine. We'll try again.”
“Yeah.” She barely stopped herself from apologizing again, and put her hand on his shoulder like last time.
“We can just jump back in the next time the melody comes around.” Then he got that weird look in his eyes. “Hey, relax. Don't you trust me?”
She knew that look. It meant he was making some weird private joke where the punchline was sadness. “Of course I do,” she said, because it was true.
It also wasn't the answer he was expecting. She could tell because he was just standing there, and missed the cue completely.
He shook it off. “Look at that, I completely spaced. Maybe we're a better match than you thought. Okay, listen. Can you hear how the measures break up into groups of eight?” She couldn't really, but she nodded. She was already putting him to enough trouble without making him explain everything. “Then just try to remember that. It'll help if you go wrong.” He paused, and then grinned. “Not that you will, with me around. But our good buddy Lloyd doesn't have my natural advantages. That guy might need a little more help.”
“What do you -” But then he started moving, and she squeaked in surprise and hurried to follow along. She had to concentrate on not tripping and not stepping on him and not getting in the way.
“I'm gonna let you in on something,” he said, “one Chosen to another.”
“Oh? What is it?”
It shouldn't have even been possible to lean in any closer than he already was, but he did. “Lloyd came to ask me for help, too.”
For a moment she stared up at him wide-eyed, and almost tripped again, but he pulled her back before she'd even noticed. “What did you tell him?”
“I said sure, anything for my best bud. As long as he didn't mind learning the girl's part.”
“So you helped him practice, too?”
He laughed. “Well, he would have gone ahead with it, but I told him it wouldn't work if neither of you knew how to lead.” He swept them through a turn. He made it seem easy. “And he said, 'what if Colette's practicing with Sheena? Then it'll be backwards, but it'll all work out.' I had to remind him Sheena's from Mizuho and probably doesn't know all this stuff. Cultural differences, you know? So you probably wouldn't be learning it from her.”
This was getting too elaborate. “So...”
“So I sent him to Raine.”
That's right, she thought. Professor Sage was a really good dancer. “Do you think I should have asked her?”
“Aw, no, don't tell me you'd rather be with her! I can't lose another heart to that captivating -”
“No, I mean... It's her job to teach people things. You have all that diplomatic stuff to do. I don't want to waste your time.”
He spun her around. She hadn't even thought about where her feet were going in a few phrases now. She hadn't messed up in at least that long.
After a while, Zelos said, “Do you know how much of diplomacy is dancing with girls? I should add, girls who aren't even as amazing as you are.”
“Girls who don't have bruises on their shins from crashing into furniture,” she said.
Zelos looked thoughtful. “No, actually, some of them still do. So they just wear dark tights, or use makeup to cover them -”
“Makeup? On their legs?”
“Yep. You can put it anywhere you've got skin. Though there's a couple places that, from personal experience here, I wouldn't recommend.”
“What kind of places?”
“Oh, Colette,” he said with that weird tone of voice that said some kind of perverted reference had just flown by her, “I hope you never find out.”
Well, maybe she wasn't going to let it go this time. Maybe she wanted to know! “But if you don't tell me, what if I accidentally -”
“When's the last time you wore makeup in the first place?”
“Um, that one party?” She bit her lip and tried to remember the preparations. “I know I had – oh. Right. Sheena did it for me after I poked myself in the eye by mistake.”
“Then don't worry about it. Here, try another spin,” he said, and raised his arm over her head. She ducked under it and somehow almost pulled them both off balance – she could see the floor coming closer – but then Zelos pulled her back up. They stopped dancing. “Okay, maybe not that.”
She looked down, feeling her face heat up. “I'm so sorry.”
“Nah, don't worry, I can work with this. Like I said: part of my job.”
“Oh, no! Is this work for you, then? Am I making you spend your free time -”
“Hey. Stop that. I've got your back, all right? If you go to someone else now, you're gonna hurt my feelings.”
There it was again, that look – that “I'm totally serious right now but I'm going to say it in the most ridiculous way possible and pretend it's funny” look. Colette wondered sometimes whether everyone else saw through it the way she did. But would he keep doing it if they did? “Well then, um, thank you. If there's something you need sometime, please let me repay the favor.”
“That's what I like to hear. We gotta watch out for each other, you know.” He looked off into the middle distance, over her head, and muttered, “Who else would?”
Immediately she said, “Lloyd.”
“Lloyd. Okay. Point taken. But he doesn't really know what it's like.”
“But he tries really hard to understand. And not just us – everyone. That's why he could fix the worlds when everyone else couldn't.”
“Yeah.” Zelos sighed. “And I mean, I love the guy, but...”
She didn't want there to be a “but.” She wished she and Lloyd could share everything. And they almost, almost could. But. “It feels so strange, being here.” Her voice came out barely louder than a whisper. “Knowing what I was made for, and all the history – and all those lives –” She looked up into Zelos's eyes. “And I'm here getting ready for a date? Like I'm some normal girl, like all of it never happened –”
“Do you think you don't deserve this?”
She looked down. The music swirled around the empty hall, and they didn't speak. He was still holding her hand.
He said, “I keep expecting the carpet to get yanked out from under me any day now. I didn't want to be the Chosen One, and now I'm not, but now...”
“What's our place in the new world? I never expected to live to be seventeen. What am I supposed to do now?”
“Well,” he said lightly, “we did kinda already both save both worlds – well, okay, you and Lloyd did, but I was at ground zero anyway. That counts for something. So we could just rest on our laurels and wait for the adulation to come pouring in -”
“You'd hate that.”
He shrugged, smiling wryly. “I never thought about what I'd do once I got out, but now I kinda feel like it should be... something, at least.”
“You should invite your sister to Meltokio.”
“Whoa, where did that come from?”
“Well, she's part of the reason you wanted out, right? And if it bothers you that you two aren't closer... now that there's no Chosen anymore, you can start to fix that. I think Seles would be happy too.” He was staring at her. She wondered if she'd spoken out of turn. “Sorry. I shouldn't pry.”
That mocking smile reappeared. “You can stop trying to save everyone you meet, y'know. It's not your job anymore.”
She looked down. “I'm sorry.”
“No, I – I guess I could write her a letter or something.”
“I'm glad. Being part of the mana lineage makes it hard to be a family sometimes. When we first came home from Tethe'alla, my father told me -” She stopped. She wasn't supposed to say. She couldn't remember if anyone had ever told her she wasn't allowed to say, or if she'd just decided she couldn't because it would burden people. It didn't really make much difference.
“Colette?”
She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“You sure? If it's about the Remiel situation, Lloyd filled me in. Pretty screwed up.”
“No, it's not that.” But that wasn't a happy memory either. She had known Remiel wasn't her father, but she had played along with whatever Genis and Lloyd wanted to believe – and been so unfair to her real father by doing it. “Father said that he didn't know what to do either. About the rest of my life. The priests told him before I was born that I probably wouldn't live very long. They said – I had to be raised to love Sylvarant and its people, but he had to be ready to let go, too. When I was twelve...” She looked up to see if she should stop. He was watching her closely and frowning. “Does... did the Church of Martel arrange the marriages for the mana lineage on your side, too?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “But I think my match got lost in the mail.”
“Wow. I can't believe the Church would be that careless.”
“Actually, every letter the Pope ever sent me got lost in the mail.” He grinned. “Weird coincidence, right?”
“That is weird. Why wouldn't the Pope know your address?”
Zelos groaned. “You're killing me.”
“Your house is so big, too. Even if the street number was wrong, wouldn't the mail carrier know what it looked like?”
He stared at her in silence for a few seconds, sighed, and said, “So what happened when you were twelve?”
She was starting to regret raising the subject. Maybe she shouldn't tell him after all. But he'd asked. “Well, every couple of months I had to go to the temple and do some simple tasks while the priests watched. It was supposed to affect the oracles.”
“Were they testing your compatibility with Martel?”
“Maybe. Did you have to do the tests too?”
He shrugged. “Not so much, but I learned a couple things about how Cruxis operates. I'd be a pretty crappy informant if I hadn't. That's just my best guess.”
“No one ever told me what it was about, but that makes sense.” But it was hard to believe that about the friendly pastors she had known as a child. That all along they might have just been collecting data to see whether or not she was a worthy sacrifice. “I'm not sure they knew what it was for. I guess even if they did – it was for the good of Sylvarant, right?” He didn't answer. “Well, a few days after one of those visits, Father got word from the temple. In Sylvarant, if you're in the mana lineage you're supposed to get married between the ages of 18 and 25 and have one or two children. They send out an early list of possible marriage candidates when you're a little younger than that, and then it gets narrowed down. But when I was twelve, Father found out that all my cousins had assigned matches and I didn't. And, well, they'd told him to expect it. But that's when he knew for sure that I was going to die.”
Zelos's eyes went unfocused. Under his breath, he said the single rudest word Colette knew (and he probably thought she didn't know it).
“Nobody told me until a little later. It would have been a lot for a twelve-year-old to handle.” And she laughed a little, nervously, and didn't know why. Zelos had never made her nervous. Maybe it was just that she'd said it. That saying anything about this felt like a sin.
“It was a lot for anyone to handle.” His voice was flat. He kept staring dead-eyed at some point over her shoulder.
“Well, it wasn't so bad.” She wanted to leave. Apologize, beg him to forget everything she'd just said, apologize again, and leave. Another uneasy laugh escaped her instead. “Everything turned out okay in the end, right?”
“Colette. Please.” He gripped her hand tighter and looked her straight in the eyes. “Cut the crap.”
She hung her head. “I'm sor-”
“Nope. I'm not listening to that.” She looked up, hesitantly, and almost flinched away again. She'd almost never seen him get so intense, and the sight was stunning. There was a stern beauty in his anger, no matter how casually he spoke. He was in a totally different class from her. She really was wasting his time, even if he wouldn't say so. “The entire world – no, two entire worlds have been against you from the start. Yeah, you handled it like a champ, but you don't have to pretend it never hurt you. I mean, shit. Tell me you were scared, tell me you were lonely, anything. Because if you can shake off getting sacrificed three or four times over on the altar of some unhinged ancient asshole's social experiment, if that was easy for you, then there's no hope for the rest of us slobs. You're too good to be true.”
Her eyes stung. Of course. She should have been more considerate of his feelings. She'd been doing this wrong the whole time. She should never have opened her stupid mouth. She blinked and bit her lip and looked down. “I'm not. I'm... not good at all.”
And all at once he stopped being angry. “Dammit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean... Please don't cry. Lloyd and Genis and Raine and Sheena would all kill me. All of them. And, hunny, I am not an easy man to kill, but in the face of so much righteous fury? Two minutes tops.”
He'd called her “hunny.” He never called her that when it was just them. She'd made everything weird. She'd put this distance between them somehow. “I'm sorry,” she whispered, staring at her shoes.
“Hey, it's a little early for that. I'm not dead yet.” His voice was too bright. “C'mon, chin up. I was just saying stuff. Were you actually taking me seriously? You have got to know better than that by now.”
The distance was growing. Colette shook her head. “No, that's...” She made herself look up at him. “I don't think you should admire me. I'm nothing special. I try my hardest, but – but it isn't enough.” Zelos didn't respond. “I fall down and break things and disappoint people, and I always seem to need rescuing. I'm really a burden on everyone. I... I wish I was a little more like you.”
He still didn't respond, although he had an odd look on his face. And then, suddenly, he started laughing. “What a terrible thing to – oh, man. No, you don't. You really, really don't. Wow.” It took him a little longer to get himself under control, shaking his head and smothering odd gusts of laughter against his fist. “Seriously. You're the last person who should ever say that.”
“You have a lot of good qualities,” she said, and it came out sharper than she'd meant it to. Almost as if she was mad at him. Maybe she was, a little bit. “You're smart and capable. You make everything look easy. You've survived a lot, and you – you picked the right side, even though it was hard and you didn't have any reason to believe in us. You -”
“Okay, look.” There: the half-lidded eyes, that weird head tilt. The punchline was coming. “Not to be dramatic or anything, but we're both pretty much dead inside, right?”
Someone had said it. No one had ever said it. She had been so, so careful to never tell anyone – the cold bleakness that crept up on her sometimes, the days when she wasn't sure she had gotten her soul back at all, when she thought that no matter what Lloyd had done it must have stayed in that crystal – how she loved Sylvarant, and had come to love Tethe'alla and this new world that contained them both, but at some point she'd stopped feeling like she was part of it. Like either it was fake or she was. Like she really had died, a long time ago.
And there it was in the open. She felt as guilty and ashamed as if she'd been the one to say it. She couldn't say anything.
Zelos went on, airily, “So instead of arguing about who wears it better, why don't we just pick some other person? Someone else can be our mutual unattainable ideal.” He chuckled, in that forced way he had, and said under his breath, “I mean, since we're both so committed to beating ourselves up anyway.”
“Someone else we both admire?” said Colette.
“Yeah.”
After a moment, smiling crookedly, they both said, “Lloyd.”
After another moment, Colette had a thought that horrified her. “Oh, no. Are you – is it really okay with you?”
“Is what okay?”
“That I'm...” She twisted her fingers together and felt herself start to blush. It was still hard to say it out loud. “Going out. With him. On a date.” She cleared her throat and made herself talk faster to get past it. “I know you have strong feelings for him, too. And I came to you for help about this – that was really inconsiderate. I'll cancel it. I'll tell him I can't go. I'm so sorry -”
He rolled his eyes. “For once in your life, will you just take something for yourself?” He took her hand to stop her from turning and running. “You're the one he wanted to see. So go for it. It's got nothing to do with me, and you guys are gonna have a great time.”
“But -”
“No buts.” He took her other hand. “We're gonna get this figured out, and you're going on a date, and you're gonna knock him dead. Okay?” He took her other hand. The music was still playing. It seemed to have started over from the beginning. She had no idea how it worked – there wasn't even anyone around to play instruments in the first place, unless there was a hidden orchestra somewhere behind one of the curtains, or under the floor. Zelos raised his head a little, listening for something in it that she couldn't make out. Then he moved her hands back into position. “One... two... here we go.”
Following his lead, especially on such little notice, took all her concentration. She wondered if he'd done that on purpose just to kill the conversation. She lost count of the measures. But she was doing all right this time – they were still upright. There hadn't been any big mishaps. She chewed on her lip in concentration.
“Doing great, Colette,” he said in a low voice, and smiled at her.
But these graceful movements were all his doing, she knew. All she could manage was to avoid messing him up.
She blurted out, “Can I ask...” And stopped herself, and wished she hadn't spoken.
“Shoot.”
Tell me you were scared, he'd said. Tell me you were lonely. She hadn't said anything, which wasn't really fair. But Zelos understood things. He would know why she was asking. She forged on, despite a voice in the back of her head saying she'd given too much away already, she was dragging him down, she had no right. “Being the Chosen,” she said. “Were you scared?”
“Not after a certain point, no. Then again, I had a way easier job than you.” He spun her around and caught her back up, effortless. “See? You can do this. Just don't overthink it.”
“What should I think about instead?”
“Whatever you want.”
He knew what she was thinking, she could tell. But the question was too personal. She should just stop here. Drop the subject. He didn't say anything. His hands were steady.
“Were you lonely?” she said at last, barely audible.
He snorted. “Oh, hell yeah.”
It was too much. She hadn't expected him to answer at all, much less put it so bluntly. She stopped, and when she didn't let go of his hand he stumbled to a stop half a beat later. She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged him, tightly. “I think that might've been the worst part,” she said against his chest. “And I know, I had Iselia, and I am grateful -”
“I get it.” After a momentary awkwardness, he hugged her back. Suddenly she wondered if he didn't do this very often. He invited girls to his house all the time, but she got the impression they usually skipped right past hugging into... other stuff. He had always used to hang casually on Lloyd's shoulder, but that wasn't the same, either. “I get it,” he said again, softer, and they stood there. The music swelled and faded and started again, and they ignored it.
At some point something went ding, and the music stopped. “Ah, crap,” said Zelos. “I've got an appointment with His Majesty. I gotta run. Sorry.” He gently pulled himself free. Whatever that look was, she'd never seen it on his face before. Embarrassment?
Yes, that was probably it. She was getting embarrassed herself. How had they gotten here from a simple dancing lesson? He'd taken time out of his busy day for her, to do one thing, and instead -
“Don't you dare apologize,” he said.
“How did you know?”
He grinned. “The Great Zelos is very wise. Hey, but...” The grin was fading. “If you ever need help again...”
“With dancing?”
“With anything. You can always ask me, okay?”
“And you can always ask me,” she said. He frowned, confused. “It's like you said. We have to watch out for each other.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. You're right. Y'know... you're something else, Colette.” Then he shrugged and walked with her toward the door. “Have fun with Lloyd, all right? But don't keep him out too late.” That was definitely some kind of joke. She might not get it, but she could at least tell that there was something there for her to not get. “And let me know how it goes. But I mean, obviously you're gonna be fine.”
“Thank you for everything.” He waved a hand dismissively. But it didn't seem quite right to leave it like that. She paused in the doorway, right before stepping out into the sunny Meltokio street, and looked back at him. “I think you're going to be fine, too.”
Characters: Colette, Zelos; background Lloyd/Colette and Zelos>Lloyd
Word count: ~4100
Warnings: Mild language, canon-typical depressing childhood nonsense
Notes: Ha ha ha wow I've had this sitting around as a WIP for an age. But I have finally decided to be the friendship fic I wish to see in the world. This was originally for Gen Prompt Bingo Round 5 (prompt: "beauty"), but legit I have no idea whether I'm still doing that or not. It's been over a year.
“Okay, Colette, let's do this. Gimme your hands.”
When it was just the two of them alone, he only ever called her Colette – no “hunny,” no pet names, no terms of endearment. But with anyone else around it was always back to “my angelic cutie” or something. “Darling Colette,” “sweet little Colette,” never just her name.
She'd never mentioned it. If he didn't like people to know he was serious, he must have had his reasons. They hadn't led the same life, not exactly, but it was easy for her to imagine why he felt that way.
She gave him her hands. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I'll probably be really bad at this.”
He smiled and shook his head slightly. “Don't worry about it. That's what practice is for, right?” He put her hands into position. “Here we go. And... one, two, three -”
She tripped immediately. He caught her, just as quick. “I'm sorry, Zelos.”
“Hey, I told you not to worry about it.”
He's so graceful, she thought. Not like me. She wondered sometimes how the mana lineages of the two worlds could have turned out so differently. Zelos was so pretty, and he always seemed to be floating. He reminded her of Mithos sometimes, or the grown-up Mithos pretended to be when it hurt too much to keep being a kid.
Both their bloodlines were meant to make a vessel for Martel. Colette had been that vessel, and still she sometimes caught herself thinking he was the only one who got anywhere close.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It's gonna be fine. We'll try again.”
“Yeah.” She barely stopped herself from apologizing again, and put her hand on his shoulder like last time.
“We can just jump back in the next time the melody comes around.” Then he got that weird look in his eyes. “Hey, relax. Don't you trust me?”
She knew that look. It meant he was making some weird private joke where the punchline was sadness. “Of course I do,” she said, because it was true.
It also wasn't the answer he was expecting. She could tell because he was just standing there, and missed the cue completely.
He shook it off. “Look at that, I completely spaced. Maybe we're a better match than you thought. Okay, listen. Can you hear how the measures break up into groups of eight?” She couldn't really, but she nodded. She was already putting him to enough trouble without making him explain everything. “Then just try to remember that. It'll help if you go wrong.” He paused, and then grinned. “Not that you will, with me around. But our good buddy Lloyd doesn't have my natural advantages. That guy might need a little more help.”
“What do you -” But then he started moving, and she squeaked in surprise and hurried to follow along. She had to concentrate on not tripping and not stepping on him and not getting in the way.
“I'm gonna let you in on something,” he said, “one Chosen to another.”
“Oh? What is it?”
It shouldn't have even been possible to lean in any closer than he already was, but he did. “Lloyd came to ask me for help, too.”
For a moment she stared up at him wide-eyed, and almost tripped again, but he pulled her back before she'd even noticed. “What did you tell him?”
“I said sure, anything for my best bud. As long as he didn't mind learning the girl's part.”
“So you helped him practice, too?”
He laughed. “Well, he would have gone ahead with it, but I told him it wouldn't work if neither of you knew how to lead.” He swept them through a turn. He made it seem easy. “And he said, 'what if Colette's practicing with Sheena? Then it'll be backwards, but it'll all work out.' I had to remind him Sheena's from Mizuho and probably doesn't know all this stuff. Cultural differences, you know? So you probably wouldn't be learning it from her.”
This was getting too elaborate. “So...”
“So I sent him to Raine.”
That's right, she thought. Professor Sage was a really good dancer. “Do you think I should have asked her?”
“Aw, no, don't tell me you'd rather be with her! I can't lose another heart to that captivating -”
“No, I mean... It's her job to teach people things. You have all that diplomatic stuff to do. I don't want to waste your time.”
He spun her around. She hadn't even thought about where her feet were going in a few phrases now. She hadn't messed up in at least that long.
After a while, Zelos said, “Do you know how much of diplomacy is dancing with girls? I should add, girls who aren't even as amazing as you are.”
“Girls who don't have bruises on their shins from crashing into furniture,” she said.
Zelos looked thoughtful. “No, actually, some of them still do. So they just wear dark tights, or use makeup to cover them -”
“Makeup? On their legs?”
“Yep. You can put it anywhere you've got skin. Though there's a couple places that, from personal experience here, I wouldn't recommend.”
“What kind of places?”
“Oh, Colette,” he said with that weird tone of voice that said some kind of perverted reference had just flown by her, “I hope you never find out.”
Well, maybe she wasn't going to let it go this time. Maybe she wanted to know! “But if you don't tell me, what if I accidentally -”
“When's the last time you wore makeup in the first place?”
“Um, that one party?” She bit her lip and tried to remember the preparations. “I know I had – oh. Right. Sheena did it for me after I poked myself in the eye by mistake.”
“Then don't worry about it. Here, try another spin,” he said, and raised his arm over her head. She ducked under it and somehow almost pulled them both off balance – she could see the floor coming closer – but then Zelos pulled her back up. They stopped dancing. “Okay, maybe not that.”
She looked down, feeling her face heat up. “I'm so sorry.”
“Nah, don't worry, I can work with this. Like I said: part of my job.”
“Oh, no! Is this work for you, then? Am I making you spend your free time -”
“Hey. Stop that. I've got your back, all right? If you go to someone else now, you're gonna hurt my feelings.”
There it was again, that look – that “I'm totally serious right now but I'm going to say it in the most ridiculous way possible and pretend it's funny” look. Colette wondered sometimes whether everyone else saw through it the way she did. But would he keep doing it if they did? “Well then, um, thank you. If there's something you need sometime, please let me repay the favor.”
“That's what I like to hear. We gotta watch out for each other, you know.” He looked off into the middle distance, over her head, and muttered, “Who else would?”
Immediately she said, “Lloyd.”
“Lloyd. Okay. Point taken. But he doesn't really know what it's like.”
“But he tries really hard to understand. And not just us – everyone. That's why he could fix the worlds when everyone else couldn't.”
“Yeah.” Zelos sighed. “And I mean, I love the guy, but...”
She didn't want there to be a “but.” She wished she and Lloyd could share everything. And they almost, almost could. But. “It feels so strange, being here.” Her voice came out barely louder than a whisper. “Knowing what I was made for, and all the history – and all those lives –” She looked up into Zelos's eyes. “And I'm here getting ready for a date? Like I'm some normal girl, like all of it never happened –”
“Do you think you don't deserve this?”
She looked down. The music swirled around the empty hall, and they didn't speak. He was still holding her hand.
He said, “I keep expecting the carpet to get yanked out from under me any day now. I didn't want to be the Chosen One, and now I'm not, but now...”
“What's our place in the new world? I never expected to live to be seventeen. What am I supposed to do now?”
“Well,” he said lightly, “we did kinda already both save both worlds – well, okay, you and Lloyd did, but I was at ground zero anyway. That counts for something. So we could just rest on our laurels and wait for the adulation to come pouring in -”
“You'd hate that.”
He shrugged, smiling wryly. “I never thought about what I'd do once I got out, but now I kinda feel like it should be... something, at least.”
“You should invite your sister to Meltokio.”
“Whoa, where did that come from?”
“Well, she's part of the reason you wanted out, right? And if it bothers you that you two aren't closer... now that there's no Chosen anymore, you can start to fix that. I think Seles would be happy too.” He was staring at her. She wondered if she'd spoken out of turn. “Sorry. I shouldn't pry.”
That mocking smile reappeared. “You can stop trying to save everyone you meet, y'know. It's not your job anymore.”
She looked down. “I'm sorry.”
“No, I – I guess I could write her a letter or something.”
“I'm glad. Being part of the mana lineage makes it hard to be a family sometimes. When we first came home from Tethe'alla, my father told me -” She stopped. She wasn't supposed to say. She couldn't remember if anyone had ever told her she wasn't allowed to say, or if she'd just decided she couldn't because it would burden people. It didn't really make much difference.
“Colette?”
She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“You sure? If it's about the Remiel situation, Lloyd filled me in. Pretty screwed up.”
“No, it's not that.” But that wasn't a happy memory either. She had known Remiel wasn't her father, but she had played along with whatever Genis and Lloyd wanted to believe – and been so unfair to her real father by doing it. “Father said that he didn't know what to do either. About the rest of my life. The priests told him before I was born that I probably wouldn't live very long. They said – I had to be raised to love Sylvarant and its people, but he had to be ready to let go, too. When I was twelve...” She looked up to see if she should stop. He was watching her closely and frowning. “Does... did the Church of Martel arrange the marriages for the mana lineage on your side, too?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “But I think my match got lost in the mail.”
“Wow. I can't believe the Church would be that careless.”
“Actually, every letter the Pope ever sent me got lost in the mail.” He grinned. “Weird coincidence, right?”
“That is weird. Why wouldn't the Pope know your address?”
Zelos groaned. “You're killing me.”
“Your house is so big, too. Even if the street number was wrong, wouldn't the mail carrier know what it looked like?”
He stared at her in silence for a few seconds, sighed, and said, “So what happened when you were twelve?”
She was starting to regret raising the subject. Maybe she shouldn't tell him after all. But he'd asked. “Well, every couple of months I had to go to the temple and do some simple tasks while the priests watched. It was supposed to affect the oracles.”
“Were they testing your compatibility with Martel?”
“Maybe. Did you have to do the tests too?”
He shrugged. “Not so much, but I learned a couple things about how Cruxis operates. I'd be a pretty crappy informant if I hadn't. That's just my best guess.”
“No one ever told me what it was about, but that makes sense.” But it was hard to believe that about the friendly pastors she had known as a child. That all along they might have just been collecting data to see whether or not she was a worthy sacrifice. “I'm not sure they knew what it was for. I guess even if they did – it was for the good of Sylvarant, right?” He didn't answer. “Well, a few days after one of those visits, Father got word from the temple. In Sylvarant, if you're in the mana lineage you're supposed to get married between the ages of 18 and 25 and have one or two children. They send out an early list of possible marriage candidates when you're a little younger than that, and then it gets narrowed down. But when I was twelve, Father found out that all my cousins had assigned matches and I didn't. And, well, they'd told him to expect it. But that's when he knew for sure that I was going to die.”
Zelos's eyes went unfocused. Under his breath, he said the single rudest word Colette knew (and he probably thought she didn't know it).
“Nobody told me until a little later. It would have been a lot for a twelve-year-old to handle.” And she laughed a little, nervously, and didn't know why. Zelos had never made her nervous. Maybe it was just that she'd said it. That saying anything about this felt like a sin.
“It was a lot for anyone to handle.” His voice was flat. He kept staring dead-eyed at some point over her shoulder.
“Well, it wasn't so bad.” She wanted to leave. Apologize, beg him to forget everything she'd just said, apologize again, and leave. Another uneasy laugh escaped her instead. “Everything turned out okay in the end, right?”
“Colette. Please.” He gripped her hand tighter and looked her straight in the eyes. “Cut the crap.”
She hung her head. “I'm sor-”
“Nope. I'm not listening to that.” She looked up, hesitantly, and almost flinched away again. She'd almost never seen him get so intense, and the sight was stunning. There was a stern beauty in his anger, no matter how casually he spoke. He was in a totally different class from her. She really was wasting his time, even if he wouldn't say so. “The entire world – no, two entire worlds have been against you from the start. Yeah, you handled it like a champ, but you don't have to pretend it never hurt you. I mean, shit. Tell me you were scared, tell me you were lonely, anything. Because if you can shake off getting sacrificed three or four times over on the altar of some unhinged ancient asshole's social experiment, if that was easy for you, then there's no hope for the rest of us slobs. You're too good to be true.”
Her eyes stung. Of course. She should have been more considerate of his feelings. She'd been doing this wrong the whole time. She should never have opened her stupid mouth. She blinked and bit her lip and looked down. “I'm not. I'm... not good at all.”
And all at once he stopped being angry. “Dammit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean... Please don't cry. Lloyd and Genis and Raine and Sheena would all kill me. All of them. And, hunny, I am not an easy man to kill, but in the face of so much righteous fury? Two minutes tops.”
He'd called her “hunny.” He never called her that when it was just them. She'd made everything weird. She'd put this distance between them somehow. “I'm sorry,” she whispered, staring at her shoes.
“Hey, it's a little early for that. I'm not dead yet.” His voice was too bright. “C'mon, chin up. I was just saying stuff. Were you actually taking me seriously? You have got to know better than that by now.”
The distance was growing. Colette shook her head. “No, that's...” She made herself look up at him. “I don't think you should admire me. I'm nothing special. I try my hardest, but – but it isn't enough.” Zelos didn't respond. “I fall down and break things and disappoint people, and I always seem to need rescuing. I'm really a burden on everyone. I... I wish I was a little more like you.”
He still didn't respond, although he had an odd look on his face. And then, suddenly, he started laughing. “What a terrible thing to – oh, man. No, you don't. You really, really don't. Wow.” It took him a little longer to get himself under control, shaking his head and smothering odd gusts of laughter against his fist. “Seriously. You're the last person who should ever say that.”
“You have a lot of good qualities,” she said, and it came out sharper than she'd meant it to. Almost as if she was mad at him. Maybe she was, a little bit. “You're smart and capable. You make everything look easy. You've survived a lot, and you – you picked the right side, even though it was hard and you didn't have any reason to believe in us. You -”
“Okay, look.” There: the half-lidded eyes, that weird head tilt. The punchline was coming. “Not to be dramatic or anything, but we're both pretty much dead inside, right?”
Someone had said it. No one had ever said it. She had been so, so careful to never tell anyone – the cold bleakness that crept up on her sometimes, the days when she wasn't sure she had gotten her soul back at all, when she thought that no matter what Lloyd had done it must have stayed in that crystal – how she loved Sylvarant, and had come to love Tethe'alla and this new world that contained them both, but at some point she'd stopped feeling like she was part of it. Like either it was fake or she was. Like she really had died, a long time ago.
And there it was in the open. She felt as guilty and ashamed as if she'd been the one to say it. She couldn't say anything.
Zelos went on, airily, “So instead of arguing about who wears it better, why don't we just pick some other person? Someone else can be our mutual unattainable ideal.” He chuckled, in that forced way he had, and said under his breath, “I mean, since we're both so committed to beating ourselves up anyway.”
“Someone else we both admire?” said Colette.
“Yeah.”
After a moment, smiling crookedly, they both said, “Lloyd.”
After another moment, Colette had a thought that horrified her. “Oh, no. Are you – is it really okay with you?”
“Is what okay?”
“That I'm...” She twisted her fingers together and felt herself start to blush. It was still hard to say it out loud. “Going out. With him. On a date.” She cleared her throat and made herself talk faster to get past it. “I know you have strong feelings for him, too. And I came to you for help about this – that was really inconsiderate. I'll cancel it. I'll tell him I can't go. I'm so sorry -”
He rolled his eyes. “For once in your life, will you just take something for yourself?” He took her hand to stop her from turning and running. “You're the one he wanted to see. So go for it. It's got nothing to do with me, and you guys are gonna have a great time.”
“But -”
“No buts.” He took her other hand. “We're gonna get this figured out, and you're going on a date, and you're gonna knock him dead. Okay?” He took her other hand. The music was still playing. It seemed to have started over from the beginning. She had no idea how it worked – there wasn't even anyone around to play instruments in the first place, unless there was a hidden orchestra somewhere behind one of the curtains, or under the floor. Zelos raised his head a little, listening for something in it that she couldn't make out. Then he moved her hands back into position. “One... two... here we go.”
Following his lead, especially on such little notice, took all her concentration. She wondered if he'd done that on purpose just to kill the conversation. She lost count of the measures. But she was doing all right this time – they were still upright. There hadn't been any big mishaps. She chewed on her lip in concentration.
“Doing great, Colette,” he said in a low voice, and smiled at her.
But these graceful movements were all his doing, she knew. All she could manage was to avoid messing him up.
She blurted out, “Can I ask...” And stopped herself, and wished she hadn't spoken.
“Shoot.”
Tell me you were scared, he'd said. Tell me you were lonely. She hadn't said anything, which wasn't really fair. But Zelos understood things. He would know why she was asking. She forged on, despite a voice in the back of her head saying she'd given too much away already, she was dragging him down, she had no right. “Being the Chosen,” she said. “Were you scared?”
“Not after a certain point, no. Then again, I had a way easier job than you.” He spun her around and caught her back up, effortless. “See? You can do this. Just don't overthink it.”
“What should I think about instead?”
“Whatever you want.”
He knew what she was thinking, she could tell. But the question was too personal. She should just stop here. Drop the subject. He didn't say anything. His hands were steady.
“Were you lonely?” she said at last, barely audible.
He snorted. “Oh, hell yeah.”
It was too much. She hadn't expected him to answer at all, much less put it so bluntly. She stopped, and when she didn't let go of his hand he stumbled to a stop half a beat later. She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged him, tightly. “I think that might've been the worst part,” she said against his chest. “And I know, I had Iselia, and I am grateful -”
“I get it.” After a momentary awkwardness, he hugged her back. Suddenly she wondered if he didn't do this very often. He invited girls to his house all the time, but she got the impression they usually skipped right past hugging into... other stuff. He had always used to hang casually on Lloyd's shoulder, but that wasn't the same, either. “I get it,” he said again, softer, and they stood there. The music swelled and faded and started again, and they ignored it.
At some point something went ding, and the music stopped. “Ah, crap,” said Zelos. “I've got an appointment with His Majesty. I gotta run. Sorry.” He gently pulled himself free. Whatever that look was, she'd never seen it on his face before. Embarrassment?
Yes, that was probably it. She was getting embarrassed herself. How had they gotten here from a simple dancing lesson? He'd taken time out of his busy day for her, to do one thing, and instead -
“Don't you dare apologize,” he said.
“How did you know?”
He grinned. “The Great Zelos is very wise. Hey, but...” The grin was fading. “If you ever need help again...”
“With dancing?”
“With anything. You can always ask me, okay?”
“And you can always ask me,” she said. He frowned, confused. “It's like you said. We have to watch out for each other.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. You're right. Y'know... you're something else, Colette.” Then he shrugged and walked with her toward the door. “Have fun with Lloyd, all right? But don't keep him out too late.” That was definitely some kind of joke. She might not get it, but she could at least tell that there was something there for her to not get. “And let me know how it goes. But I mean, obviously you're gonna be fine.”
“Thank you for everything.” He waved a hand dismissively. But it didn't seem quite right to leave it like that. She paused in the doorway, right before stepping out into the sunny Meltokio street, and looked back at him. “I think you're going to be fine, too.”