![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Grounded, chapter 2
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Edgar
Word count: ~1100
Warnings: Content notes for the fic as a whole on Pastebin. Don't think there's anything especially objectionable in this chapter.
Notes: Chapter 2 of 8 of a gift for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
ovely for Yuletide 2020!
Edgar decided to believe that his brother was alive. He decided to believe, in the face of all contrary evidence, that he would know if something had happened. This was almost certain to be a lie, but sometimes you had to lie to people to stop them from panicking. He turned his full powers of persuasion on himself and decided, for expediency's sake, to believe that they had worked.
He had no such convenient pretext for believing in the survival of his other allies, which, when he allowed himself to feel it, was acutely distressing. But there was not a person on the face of the planet who wasn't distressed, and he was after all an old hand at carrying on while things fell apart.
He didn't remember the first few days after the crash, and accounted that a mercy. Whatever had happened, he'd come out of it with a limp, but nothing worse. He remembered snapping abruptly into lucidity in the ruined atrium of a grand hotel, and telling a group of shocked survivors, “That's not meant as a load-bearing wall. You need to get out before the next quake.”
People listened to him. Not because he was the king – how would they know that if he didn't advertise it? - but because he seemed to have his head on straight. This was the only one of his talents that had ever counted for much.
The thought struck him again with new force while he was poking around an equally ruined train depot: He did not have to tell anyone who he was.
And there might well be practical reasons for concealing his identity. Pulling rank wouldn't help anyone, and might make him a lightning rod for the justified resentment of the common people struggling to understand their new circumstances. Even in the very best case scenario, even if people still generally thought he was decent-if-stupid and were willing to accept his leadership, no one had time to stand on ceremony. He would be obliged to take back his kingdom -
the prospect sounded unappealing; he pretended not to know why -
to take back his kingdom at all hazards. Order would not be imposed without force. And force – the faces of the shocked, grieving, hungry and dispossessed streamed past him – was the last thing anyone needed right now.
That settled it. But, in lieu of His Royal Majesty Edgar R. Figaro I, who would he be in the meantime? Where would he be of most use?
These past ten years he'd tried to strike a balance. One part too-credulous ally of the empire, one part skirt-chasing fop, all style, no substance, no threat to anyone. In privacy he had tinkered with machines and waited for his moment, but in public – he hadn't had occasion to be serious in public since his father's funeral. It was still instinct, in new or uncertain company, to lean on a pretense of ignorance and frivolity. But realistically, a person as stupid as Edgar pretended to be wouldn't make it on his own. Some new mask was in order.
Some people fled the cities – fearing an attack from Kefka, or abandoning their ruined homes to join family in the country, or simply because they saw others doing it. But a contrary tide began to flow from the country back into the towns, as freak storms, emboldened monsters, or common brigands made an isolated existence no more safe. The population was, on average, running around in a panic. In such circumstances no one looked at anyone else too closely, or remembered them once gone. This took away some of the urgency from choosing a new identity. In the meantime Edgar started disposing of the telltales of the old. He had to cut the straps of his armor to get himself out of it; a greenish bruise remained down the right side of his chest where impact had partially caved in his breastplate.
I could very easily have died, he thought. But the lightheadedness passed, and he prised the surviving gemstones out of his pauldrons and cloak pin and bartered them away, bit by bit. He bought plain clothes. Warmer, against the newly chill wind. He started walking north. He came across a carriage that had broken down, and he got the wheel reattached while the owner ran down a chocobo that had slipped the traces. To return the favor, the man let him ride along for a little while. Edgar thought, I could just be a repairman now. At no time on this trip did he provide a name, whether his own or a false one. When the man turned east, Edgar climbed out and resumed walking.
He thought about cutting his hair, but flinched. He had last cut it the night Sabin left Figaro. To do so now would be like going into mourning again, and for the moment, he had decided not to believe he had cause. He took one of the ribbons down, at least, and carried it in his pocket until giving it away to the next pretty girl he met. She stared at him in confusion and nascent disapproval, which felt so exactly like old times that it lifted his spirits for a solid half-hour.
But he was aware, even now, that he was dodging the question.
One evening on what had once been the Doma road he bought, at an extortionate price, a tiny roast fowl. None of his fellow travelers had been willing to part with anything more substantial. He took it away to eat, in a little protected alcove under a rocky overhang where he'd planned to shelter for the night, and then realized he had no utensils. He stared down at the fowl in consternation, hunger warring with the twenty-seven years of decorum that refused to admit he could just tear into it with his hands.
The world was over, and he was worried about dignity, or getting chicken grease on himself. It was absurd. He thought, Well, Sabin got over having manners, so why shouldn't I?
He thought, If Locke were here I would never live this down.
Thoughts of friends likely dead were not conducive to appetite, but Locke would probably also have taken him to task for wasting food, so he did what he could. His next priority – Locke would appreciate this, too – was to trade for a good knife.
*
He was not aware that he had ever decided where he was going. Maybe he hadn't decided. He was gathering information, learning the lay of the land -
as, indeed, there it lay. The desert, huge as ever, though the sky seemed lower to the ground now, dim and purple, robbing the dunes of their familiar gold. Of course this was his destination. It always had been. The desert, grown unfamiliar – and empty.
Characters: Edgar
Word count: ~1100
Warnings: Content notes for the fic as a whole on Pastebin. Don't think there's anything especially objectionable in this chapter.
Notes: Chapter 2 of 8 of a gift for
Edgar decided to believe that his brother was alive. He decided to believe, in the face of all contrary evidence, that he would know if something had happened. This was almost certain to be a lie, but sometimes you had to lie to people to stop them from panicking. He turned his full powers of persuasion on himself and decided, for expediency's sake, to believe that they had worked.
He had no such convenient pretext for believing in the survival of his other allies, which, when he allowed himself to feel it, was acutely distressing. But there was not a person on the face of the planet who wasn't distressed, and he was after all an old hand at carrying on while things fell apart.
He didn't remember the first few days after the crash, and accounted that a mercy. Whatever had happened, he'd come out of it with a limp, but nothing worse. He remembered snapping abruptly into lucidity in the ruined atrium of a grand hotel, and telling a group of shocked survivors, “That's not meant as a load-bearing wall. You need to get out before the next quake.”
People listened to him. Not because he was the king – how would they know that if he didn't advertise it? - but because he seemed to have his head on straight. This was the only one of his talents that had ever counted for much.
The thought struck him again with new force while he was poking around an equally ruined train depot: He did not have to tell anyone who he was.
And there might well be practical reasons for concealing his identity. Pulling rank wouldn't help anyone, and might make him a lightning rod for the justified resentment of the common people struggling to understand their new circumstances. Even in the very best case scenario, even if people still generally thought he was decent-if-stupid and were willing to accept his leadership, no one had time to stand on ceremony. He would be obliged to take back his kingdom -
the prospect sounded unappealing; he pretended not to know why -
to take back his kingdom at all hazards. Order would not be imposed without force. And force – the faces of the shocked, grieving, hungry and dispossessed streamed past him – was the last thing anyone needed right now.
That settled it. But, in lieu of His Royal Majesty Edgar R. Figaro I, who would he be in the meantime? Where would he be of most use?
These past ten years he'd tried to strike a balance. One part too-credulous ally of the empire, one part skirt-chasing fop, all style, no substance, no threat to anyone. In privacy he had tinkered with machines and waited for his moment, but in public – he hadn't had occasion to be serious in public since his father's funeral. It was still instinct, in new or uncertain company, to lean on a pretense of ignorance and frivolity. But realistically, a person as stupid as Edgar pretended to be wouldn't make it on his own. Some new mask was in order.
Some people fled the cities – fearing an attack from Kefka, or abandoning their ruined homes to join family in the country, or simply because they saw others doing it. But a contrary tide began to flow from the country back into the towns, as freak storms, emboldened monsters, or common brigands made an isolated existence no more safe. The population was, on average, running around in a panic. In such circumstances no one looked at anyone else too closely, or remembered them once gone. This took away some of the urgency from choosing a new identity. In the meantime Edgar started disposing of the telltales of the old. He had to cut the straps of his armor to get himself out of it; a greenish bruise remained down the right side of his chest where impact had partially caved in his breastplate.
I could very easily have died, he thought. But the lightheadedness passed, and he prised the surviving gemstones out of his pauldrons and cloak pin and bartered them away, bit by bit. He bought plain clothes. Warmer, against the newly chill wind. He started walking north. He came across a carriage that had broken down, and he got the wheel reattached while the owner ran down a chocobo that had slipped the traces. To return the favor, the man let him ride along for a little while. Edgar thought, I could just be a repairman now. At no time on this trip did he provide a name, whether his own or a false one. When the man turned east, Edgar climbed out and resumed walking.
He thought about cutting his hair, but flinched. He had last cut it the night Sabin left Figaro. To do so now would be like going into mourning again, and for the moment, he had decided not to believe he had cause. He took one of the ribbons down, at least, and carried it in his pocket until giving it away to the next pretty girl he met. She stared at him in confusion and nascent disapproval, which felt so exactly like old times that it lifted his spirits for a solid half-hour.
But he was aware, even now, that he was dodging the question.
One evening on what had once been the Doma road he bought, at an extortionate price, a tiny roast fowl. None of his fellow travelers had been willing to part with anything more substantial. He took it away to eat, in a little protected alcove under a rocky overhang where he'd planned to shelter for the night, and then realized he had no utensils. He stared down at the fowl in consternation, hunger warring with the twenty-seven years of decorum that refused to admit he could just tear into it with his hands.
The world was over, and he was worried about dignity, or getting chicken grease on himself. It was absurd. He thought, Well, Sabin got over having manners, so why shouldn't I?
He thought, If Locke were here I would never live this down.
Thoughts of friends likely dead were not conducive to appetite, but Locke would probably also have taken him to task for wasting food, so he did what he could. His next priority – Locke would appreciate this, too – was to trade for a good knife.
*
He was not aware that he had ever decided where he was going. Maybe he hadn't decided. He was gathering information, learning the lay of the land -
as, indeed, there it lay. The desert, huge as ever, though the sky seemed lower to the ground now, dim and purple, robbing the dunes of their familiar gold. Of course this was his destination. It always had been. The desert, grown unfamiliar – and empty.