Grounded, chapter 7

[shinon]

Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Locke, Edgar, minor Celes
Word count: ~5000
Warnings: Content notes for the fic as a whole on Pastebin. This chapter has some implied bird death.
Notes: Chapter 7 of 8 of a gift for ovely for Yuletide 2020!

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It was an easier pitch than Locke had expected. “There were a few holdouts last time I made it here,” he said. “If anyone's still alive, we can offer to get them out, or bring them supplies, or – whatever. We can't let them be buried here.”

Setzer didn't look thrilled about someone else pledging the use of his ship for this, but Celes nodded. And Celes was the vote that counted. She was basically the boss of this operation now, for reasons that weren't totally clear, but, on merit, sure, absolutely, she deserved it.

(It had kind of stung, rejoining the Returners and discovering how much had changed without him. In the world before, it had been him, and Edgar, and Terra, and then built out from there, but the web of relationships was different now, and it felt kind of like he was intruding – like he was less important than he'd been.

Right at this moment as Celes was approving his plans, Terra was beside her, and Terra's hand idly slipped into hers. And honestly, good for them, he thought. Somewhat less honestly, he told himself, You had to know Celes wasn't going to wait for you forever. If she's happy with someone else, why would that hurt?)

“You can drop me off there,” said Locke. “If you don't wanna commit the Falcon. I know the people there. I can do some poking around -”

“No, Narshe is a big city,” Celes said, frowning thoughtfully. “Searching it will take time, and with storms getting more dangerous, any survivors may not have time to waste. If we're going, we're all going. We'll have a small team sweep each district in parallel.”

“So it's settled?” said Locke.

“We have the ability to help,” she said. “So we should.” She'd always been like that – made her decisions quickly and then talked like they were self-evident – but this sentiment was new. She hadn't softened, exactly, but... Terra was beaming at her in approval, and she looked flustered.

Edgar said, “Figaro's fairly well positioned to offer aid, if it should come to that. We go in formally under my auspices – I can write a letter for each party leader. Lend the project a little legitimacy.”

“Oh, yeah,” Locke said dryly, “legitimacy. That thing you get from running heists all year. Makes people think, 'there's a guy I'd trust.'”

“This is no time for jealousy, Locke. If anything – I'm a hobbyist. Are my modest successes really that threatening to you?”

For all that had changed, at least this hadn't. At least he and Edgar could still count on each other for stupid shit talk. “Threatening? Nah. I'm embarrassed. You're my friend and co-conspirator of how many years, and you learned that little? Your fake identity sucked, your only plan was to turn a bunch of starving thieves loose in your own home and hope they'd be polite enough to leave afterward, and if Celes hadn't backed you up, you totally would've died. You're lucky I even let myself be seen with you.”

Edgar went quiet. After a moment he said, “They weren't starving. However brief my tenure, I did try to look out for them.”

So that hit a nerve, Locke thought. Weird. He pivoted: “Okay. You still almost died.”

“I almost died,” Edgar agreed, more cheerfully. Sabin, passing by, smacked him upside the head.

“Anyway,” said Celes – but she was smiling, a little. It suited her. (Gods, Terra was a lucky woman. He told himself, You're not upset about this. You're fine. We're all adults here. What, are you running out of other things to be sad about?) She said, “Locke, you're local. What's the best way to divide the city?”

*

After getting the lay of the land from a couple guys holding down the fort in the old University building, they split into twos and threes, as agreed. Every party got a letter from Edgar in case anyone doubted their purpose; every party had worked out a distress signal, whether a magical shower of sparks or one of these weird signal flares Setzer had been working on. Couldn't be too careful. Wolves openly roamed the streets, and the tracks of much larger things could be seen in the snow.

Locke's team was just him and Edgar, and for his part, he'd chosen the mining district. People in this part of town might not have had the cash to leave when everyone else did, or might've had nowhere else to go. They might still be hunkering down here, never expecting help. They might have already died in this unnaturally long winter. Either way, they ought to be looked after.

He let himself into a boardinghouse near the mine road. Snow had piled against the door, melted, seeped into the lobby, and refrozen into a skin of ice over the floorboards, which wasn't promising. If anyone still lived here they would've done something about that. Still. “Careful,” he said to Edgar, over his shoulder. “You take the ground floor, I'll go upstairs.”

“Got it,” said Edgar, carefully skirting around the frozen floorboards and moving back toward the dining room.

Belatedly Locke remembered that Edgar, unlike him, had never had to pick locks for a living, and said, “Hang on, I'll find you some keys -”

Edgar turned back. “Thanks, but I don't think your average doorknob will stand up to this.” He held up a hammer.

“Here I thought you were gonna tell me you had a machine for that.”

“Oh, I have several. But considering weight, fuel, startup time...” He shrugged. “Give me a shout if you're about to get mauled by a sasquatch or something.”

“Hammer work on those too?”

“It would eventually.”

There was no one in that building, or in the next five. No survivors, but no corpses either. Just – jumbles of stuff people had left behind.

Edgar was acting weird, too. Never starting conversations, but always answering too fast whenever Locke said anything, like he'd just been waiting for something to pounce on. And Locke caught him staring, at least twice. It was disappointing. He thought, Come on, Edgar, you used to be sneakier than that.

They got to the end of the street, and climbed onto the walkway to the next. Edgar began sweeping snow off it with the butt of his spear. Locke said, “Okay, out with it.”

“Pardon?” Edgar's face was blank.

“Anything you wanna say to me? Anything you wanna ask?”

“Nothing comes to mind. Unless you have any new theories about why everyone's gone.”

“The Elder had everyone evacuate. I just can't tell why. Or if they really managed not to leave anyone behind. Or... if anyone's ever coming back.”

He hoped they would. He missed Narshe, the way it used to be. He used to like sitting up here on the walkways and watching the plumes of smoke curl up into the sky, different shades of blue and gray and white mixing against the white of snow and the black of the mountain. It got to where you could see contrast you never saw before – you could pick out a whole rainbow where most of the time you'd just call that “gray” and never look twice. You could trace the threads back to individual chimneys and think about the individual families living their lives. He'd wanted to bring Rachel here. He'd had fantasies of a little cabin that they'd keep all snug and warm and bright – Rachel could go to the University if she wanted to, and she'd come home in the evenings and he'd have no idea how to help her with any of the things she was studying, they would all be way too complicated for him – Rachel had always been smarter than her family gave her credit for, and she could have done great things if not for...

“That's beside the point,” Locke said.

Edgar raised his eyebrows and paused in knocking snow down into the valley. The snow had this hard icy crust on top, so it took a couple hits to break it up. “I thought it was the point.”

“It's -” Yeah, that had come out wrong. Locke sighed and restlessly snapped an icicle off one of the guide ropes. “Yeah. Okay. Saving people comes first. Obviously. But – do you even trust me with that? You trust me, right?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“No, you tell me.” He gestured with the icicle. “You keep looking at me like you think I'm gonna snap.” He wondered if waving big pointy chunks of ice at people was really the act of an emotionally stable person, thought maybe not, and dropped it off the walkway to shatter on the black rocks below.

“You've been through a lot,” Edgar said neutrally. “Most people have. It's not... a judgment, per se.”

“But you're worried.”

“I have some concerns.”

Locke waited. Edgar didn't elaborate. They were running low on daylight – at this time of year the sun seemed to dive under the mountains between one breath and the next, sometime around 2PM. A breeze was picking up, and the walkway made more noise than it was supposed to. No one had been clearing snow off the boards this season. Meltwater could have weakened the wood. Locke had the sudden mad impulse to shove Edgar back onto solid ground before he lost him, too. Visions of a support beam giving out. A short fall, but long enough.

He made himself keep still.

Edgar said, “Of course, I'd be happy to be proven wrong.”

Locke jammed his hands into his pockets and turned away. “We should get inside.”

In uneasy silence they cleared a path through the snow to reach the street. At the end Edgar slipped on the ice where the walkway joined the cliffside, and for an instant caught all his weight on the injured leg he didn't talk about. He recovered in time, and stayed upright. Still, Locke saw it. Edgar's face went completely bloodless, and the pained breath that hissed out between his teeth hung in the cold air as a cloud of steam. But in a moment he resumed walking as if nothing had happened.

No one in the next building either. They cleared the rooms in silence.

Locke thought sometimes of saying “Okay, fine, you got me, I've been having these dreams,” but it felt like too big a thing to admit to. The dreams where Rachel was back and he couldn't even be happy about it, because it wasn't going to last, and he didn't think he'd survive that again – dreams where he looked the Phoenix in its huge burning eyes and just wanted to scream “Fuck off, you stupid bird, how many times are you gonna make me say goodbye?”

He looked over at Edgar. Edgar looked back at him. Locke said, unsteadily, “I think we can hit a couple more before nightfall,” and Edgar just nodded.

He was fine. It was basically fine. Rachel had always been a long shot, and the idea of explaining any of this, of turning himself fully transparent, made him feel sick.

Edgar was moving slower as the afternoon wore on, and had started leaning on his spear, and Locke felt a weird stab of guilt. I shouldn't have just been trying to prove I'm okay, he thought – I should've checked whether he is, too. It wasn't like you could count on Edgar to complain if something was the matter. Guy just put up with stuff. “What's with the limp, anyway?” he said, and it sounded more aggressive than he'd meant it. “You ever gonna have Terra look at it?”

Edgar shrugged. “She has. She and Celes both. There's only so much magic can do – I was walking around on it for too long before anyone got to it. Might respond to surgery, if you know any surgeons still in practice...?” Locke didn't. “See? Didn't think so.” Edgar shook his head. “Even if there were, this is low priority. I'm used to it.”

“How'd it happen?”

“I don't know.”

“What?”

“My memory is a blank for a few weeks after the crash,” Edgar said, matter-of-fact. “I don't think I missed anything important – the broad strokes were easy enough to pick up. World ruined, obliterated my own connective tissue, et cetera.” He grinned ruefully. Locke did not smile back. Locke was thinking, Why does everyone get amnesia? Am I cursed?

“So it happened in the crash?” he said, finally, with some effort.

“Most likely. It'd be strange if I got out unscathed. Really, it's surprising how many of us did – I had assumed you were all dead.”

“Yeah,” Locke said, subdued. “That's... what I thought, too.” Mercifully, they had reached the next house by now, and mercifully, the lock on this one looked interesting enough to keep him occupied for a minute or so. He blew on his chilled hands, flexed his fingers, and got to work. Edgar leaned against one of the porch columns to wait, staring out at the lengthening purple shadows in the street.

I thought you were all dead, too, Locke didn't say, that's why I went after Rachel instead. I thought it was the one thing I could fix. Damn bird lied to me. All my friends were out here all this time, and all struggling, and I never looked for you. I never even tried.

The tumblers finally clicked into place, and the lock popped open. “Well,” he said. “Here we go.”

The place smelled awful. The air stirred by his entrance wafted a pile of white and gold fluff across the floor. Locke had the single fleeting thought, No, I'm not doing this, and staggered backward through the door. He collided with Edgar on the porch.

“You okay?” said Edgar, and then got a whiff of the air from inside. “Ammonia?”

“Birds,” Locke said. “Whole place is bird shit and old feathers. Someone was – raising a bunch of them, I don't know -”

“Weird. Any signs of life?” Locke shook his head. “Any signs of death?”

“Didn't look.”

Edgar looked thoughtfully toward the house, and then at Locke. “You want to sit down? I can open some windows. Air the place out.”

Locke smiled weakly. “Do I look that bad?”

“In a word, yes. Leave this to me.”

“No, hang on.” Locke shook himself. “I'll, uh... if you're taking this building, I'll go handle the next one. More efficient, right? Yell if you need backup.” And he walked away before Edgar could raise any objections.

This street was all tiny one-story houses crammed in cheek by jowl; going one door over wasn't fully enough to get him away from the smell. But they'd tried, whoever lived here – they'd really tried turning these couple hundred square feet of soot-stained timber into a comfy home. Whitewashed walls, couple nice rugs, bunches of dried flowers hanging from the rafters. “Anybody home?” he said, for form's sake. No one would be.

On the mantel there was a portrait of a woman, one of those two-tone profile views like people got carved into cameos, like someone had done the sketch but hadn't gotten the jewelry made yet. He thought it looked like Rachel. He told himself, It's not very detailed, it could look like anybody, you're shaken up anyway so of course you're going to see connections that aren't there. Birds everywhere, gods damn it all.

He wondered how long it would take Edgar to check next door. He wondered how much poking around in here he was justified in doing, if he really thought anyone would ever come back. He crossed to the fireplace and tipped the woman's picture face down.

When they'd evacuated, the resident had left behind a moderately stocked medicine chest – Celes would be happy to see this haul. More potions and bandages never went amiss. He let himself bask in this thought for a minute – how it'd be almost like she was happy to see him. He put the thought aside and went into the kitchen.

“Shall I spare you the details?” said Edgar, some time later, while Locke was poking through cookware. Did the Falcon need more pans? Did it have the space? “Or do you want to hear something morbid?”

“Sure,” Locke said, “hit me,” so as not to let on he was startled. He hadn't heard Edgar come in. He did not actually want to hear something morbid.

“The previous inhabitant of the house next door was breeding canaries. For the coal mines. Judging by their sales records, though, they didn't have many takers.”

“Nah, they wouldn't,” said Locke, weighing a cast-iron skillet in his hands and then returning it to its hook on the wall. “This is Narshe.”

“Come again?”

“They keep this pretty hush-hush, but the chief mine engineer actually checks in with the Moogles any time the company wants to sink a new shaft.”

Edgar blinked at him. “You're kidding me.”

Locke shrugged. “They know these caves better than anybody. People only mine areas that get the Moogle seal of approval. Fewer accidents, fewer gas leaks.”

“I wonder, then...” Edgar unfolded a piece of paper from his bag. He had not only been poking through the business records of some bird breeder, he had stolen these records and brought them along for later reading. Honestly, what the hell was he? “They started ramping up – well, production, euphemistically speaking – at around the time we went to war. Suppose they anticipated selling coal to one side or the other -”

“'Narshe is neutral,'” Locke muttered, in a snide imitation of the Elder.

“Or both,” Edgar agreed. “The wartime demand would be high. I think they were proposing the adoption of these birds as a measure to cut the Moogles out of it and seek out new veins independently.” He flipped to another page. “They had this mockup bird cage with an oxygen canister, so theoretically a bird could be resuscitated -”

“Huh. That's kinda nice of them.”

“- and taken down into the mines and used again. I don't think a safe and happy retirement was part of the plan, no.”

Locke turned his back on Edgar and tried to find something to do with his hands. Cabinet doors to open and shut. Something. “So these birds just suffocate and die and get brought back and do it again, until they finally stay dead or someone else says they're done. That's the idea?”

“Told you it was morbid. But here, they kept meticulous records up to the end – our bird seller ended up fleeing Narshe with six males and ten females, and released the rest of their breeding stock into the forest.”

“Is that really better, though?” said Locke. “Are a bunch of tame birds gonna know what to do in the world? In a world like this? I don't...” He swallowed. “Is it okay to let them go like that?”

Edgar said nothing.

Locke shut his eyes, and sighed, and forced something like a laugh. “All right. Fine. I give. I... could maybe use your help with something.”

“Of course,” said Edgar.

“Well, first of all, we gotta get all this back to the ship.” He showed Edgar the slightly smaller box into which he'd repacked the medicines. “But then there's...” His hand strayed to the place where the bag of ash lay under his shirt – the ash, and now the magicite. He stopped. It wasn't too late to back off and change the subject. It wasn't too late, yet.

He blurted out, “Would you mind taking the Phoenix off my hands? I'm – I think – probably not the best person for that job right now. I thought it was leading me somewhere, but – maybe I thought wrong.”

Edgar took it in stride. “Okay. Want me to hang onto it for you, or...?”

“No. I mean – magicite's magicite. Somebody ought to learn something from this. Give it to... whoever you think could use it. Whatever magic is going to come out of this thing. Do...” He waved a hand vaguely. “Do something that makes tactical sense. I don't need to know about it. I'd – actually, I'd rather not know. For now.”

Edgar nodded gravely. “I can do that.”

Locke reached for the bag again, but found himself hesitating. Ridiculous. He laughed a little, bitterly. “I just... all these years. And it's over. And I'm just supposed to – do something else now? Like, 'congratulations, you got what you wanted, but you wanted the wrong thing, you dumb shit -'” His voice was getting out of his control. He reined it in. “No. I shouldn't say that. Rachel's at peace, and that's – something. I couldn't have left her there. I shouldn't have put her there in the first place” - this was pointless. This was stupid, and it was pathetic. He tore the cord from his neck and handed Edgar the bag.

“I'll handle it.” Edgar put a hand on Locke's shoulder. “Thank you for trusting me.” Then he frowned. His fingers were dusted with white ash where they touched the bag. “Do you mind if I take a look?” Locke waved for him to go ahead. He opened the bag. His frown deepened. “Locke? What is this?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I didn't tell you. That's the funniest part of the story, right there. When the Blackjack went down, I was holding... I think eight or ten Phoenix Down.”

Edgar stared at him. “And...?”

“When I came to after the crash, a bunch of them were spent. I must've died. A couple times.”

“You died,” Edgar said.

“Yeah. Crazy, right? That's why – I thought it was the Phoenix looking after me. I thought it brought me back on purpose, to go find it and do something with it, but -” He laughed again and shook his head. “It's coincidence. It doesn't mean anything.”

Edgar was still staring at him, the bag hanging limp in his fingers. “You died?”

“You said yourself, it'd be weird if everyone survived that. Turns out I didn't.” Locke shrugged. “Now you know. No harm done in the end.”

Edgar stared at him, saying nothing. Why wasn't he saying anything? What was that look? He shook his head and looked down again, poking through the bag for the magicite. “Locke,” he said again, under his breath, “what the hell?” He finally withdrew the gleaming stone that had once been a bird's heart, the curled and splintered shafts of a half-dozen feathers clinging to his hand. His face was blank. “You kept all the evidence,” he said, in an almost neutral tone. Almost. “Forgive me for saying so, but that's completely unhinged.”

“Yeah, I dunno, I was in pretty bad shape for a while. I kinda thought – they were like relics, you know? A sign that a miracle happened here.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Guess I know better now.”

Edgar did not return his crooked smile. Edgar's expression had turned – cold, actually. “This wasn't a miracle, no. It was sheer stupid chance. You happened to have the Phoenix Down with you. You happened not to lose it all the way down. You happened not to die in any way it couldn't fix. And still. Even with all of that in your favor, if you'd had any fewer than seven, you would still be gone.”

“Yeah,” Locke said, eyeing him warily. “That's kinda how it is. What are you mad at me for?”

“I suppose that's nothing to you?” Edgar snapped. “Well, no, if it were trivial you wouldn't feel compelled to keep mementos, would you?” He made jerky, scornful gestures, and he stepped in closer, so that Locke had to look up to meet his eyes. “But it's normal. It's routine. Carrying around keepsakes from your own demise, thinking you're taking directions from a dead bird – No. That's insane.” Although his tone was tightly controlled, his voice grew steadily louder. “That's something an insane person would do. Speaking as your friend,” he began, and then broke off, searching for words – and finally landed on a harshly whispered “What is wrong with you?”

Locke took a step back. “Okay, first of all, quit looming like that, it's weird. Second of all, I don't think you have room to talk. Yesterday you were telling me you almost died taking the castle back, and you were laughing about it.”

“Yes - 'almost.' I almost died. There's a key distinction here I don't think you're grasping.”

“And you were pretty calm about walking away from a crash where you thought everybody died. No memory? Only one working leg? No big, time to get into burglary -”

“We're not talking about me. You're the one who ... and anyway, what was I supposed to be doing? Wailing and tearing my clothes?” Edgar said scathingly. “I had work to do.”

You sure you have that the right way around? Locke thought. Or did you go invent yourself some work just to avoid thinking too much?

Edgar seemed to realize, belatedly, how far his temper had gotten away from him. A faint blush of shame spread over his face. He took a moment to collect himself, and then said, more calmly, “Yes – I thought everyone had died. When Sabin and Celes caught up to me in Nikeah, when we brought up the Falcon, when we found your trail – I have never in my life been so happy to be wrong.” He put the Phoenix magicite back into the bag, pulled the drawstring tight, and slid it into his tool bag. “And now you tell me I wasn't. Okay. Fine. Carry on. It's not really my business.” He sounded bitter and exhausted, and like a shoddy off-brand replica of the Edgar from before the world ended.

“It is okay, though. You know that, right? We're all here. More or less in one piece. I'm okay, you're okay, Sabin's okay -”

“You're not going to tell me Sabin died, too, are you?” He smiled mirthlessly and looked away. “I'd hate being the last to know.”

In as long as they had known each other, as closely as they'd worked together – to the best of his memory, Locke had seen Edgar tear up maybe twice. Once on seeing Sabin for the first time in ten years, and one time when he'd gotten his hand slammed in a door. And now this. This was the third time. “Edgar – hey –”

“There's no one in this building,” Edgar said, and pointed toward the door. “I'll go to the next one. You know... in parallel.”

“Uh-huh. I don't think you get to play the efficiency card right now.” Edgar raised his head indignantly. Locke said, “It's okay. It really is.”

Edgar closed his eyes. He drew in and let out a measured breath. He made no move to dry his eyes, like he didn't want to concede that he was weeping, or didn't want to call attention to it. From ten or twenty feet away the illusion of self-control would've been perfect. Locke was not ten feet away.

“Right,” Edgar said, and blinked a few times, and swallowed. “Anyway.” It had strong overtones of “this never happened.” But the thought of leaving things there – carrying on like they hadn't seen each other with this uncomfortable clarity – was horrible. Edgar looked toward the door again, like he was seriously going to walk out, even now.

“I don't think so,” said Locke, and pulled him into a hug. Eventually, even Edgar's defenses failed.

What followed was quiet, and it was brief. But for a little while Edgar leaned into Locke's shoulder, his hands knotted in the back of Locke's jacket, and shuddered. Even through the extra layer of armored cloth worn against Narshe's cold winds and roving scavengers, Locke could feel Edgar's breath hitch. Like the grief and horror of the past year couldn't be denied anymore – like the nearness of every near miss had suddenly struck home. And he couldn't do anything about it. Neither of them could. The world had ended, and by sheer chance they weren't among the dead. Life had always been exactly this fragile.

Locke didn't know what to say. Even if he had, he couldn't have spoken around the lump in his own throat. He held on, tighter than was strictly comfortable, and hoped that spoke for him.

And then Edgar pulled himself together, and patted Locke's back as if Locke had been the one crying it out on him, and Locke thought, You stupid bastard. You're ridiculous. Never change. But he also thought: Is this all you're gonna let me do? Does nobody get to be there for you any longer than this?

Edgar raised his head and pushed Locke out to arm's length, and held him there, with a lopsided smile. “Well. However it happened, we're alive, and that's what matters. The world was a much duller place when...” His voice was shading hoarse; he cleared his throat. “When I thought you weren't in it. That's all.”

“Hey. I missed you, too, you big weirdo.”

Edgar laughed, a little shakily. “A much more succinct way of putting it, thank you. Now.” He clapped Locke on the shoulder one more time, with an air of embarrassment, and let go. “We were looking for survivors, yes? Let's get back to it. And – I'll see to that matter you asked me about. Don't worry.”

Locke thought, If I was gonna worry, it wouldn't be about that.