No King But A Castle
Title: No King But A Castle
Fandom: FFX-2
Characters: Nooj, Paine, Rikku, Gippal
Rating: G
Format: One-Shot
Status: Complete, (a little) polished, spellchecked.
Words: 2624
Disclaimer: I don't claim ownership of characters or games, only themes within.
Summary: Nooj gets news from Gippal about a past lover, and goes looking for answers to questions he hasn't even asked yet.
Author's Note: I felt a real desire to write this tonight, and to work on getting Nooj's voice right. It makes sense right now, but when I wake up in the morning it probably won't.
No King But A Castle
If the swamps of Besaid soaked a person through and through the minute they stepped on the island, the desert of Bikanel baked the water right out again. Nooj felt uncomfortable, being back on the sand. It was not his territory, no matter how many days and nights he'd burnt and froze in the wasteland. Even the snowy peaks of Gagazet was preferable to this.
But, Gippal had sent him a note, saying that there was something he really should check out in the heart of the Al Bhed encampment. Something, or someone, the note had read, with a cheery little smiley face drawn down in one corner.
So, Nooj had given orders for things to be taken care of in Luca while he was gone, and had ridden the miserable tides to the miserable island. Not only did it bring back festering memories, but the sand clogged up the hydraulics in his limbs and hastened the need for filter changes. With a sigh that landed between disgust and annoyance, he clumped down the gang plank to where a sleek hover awaited him.
“Better prepare to sink into this muck,” he muttered to himself as the Al Bhed that sat behind the wheel waved to him. Shocking white-blonde hair stuck up at every angle as Gippal's man beckoned for Nooj to walk out on the wooden boards.
“You Nooj? Gipster said to look out for some half-machine monster, so you must be him. Taller than I expected,” the man said as he hopped out and looked Nooj over. “You don't got any bags?”
“No, I am traveling light,” Nooj said. “Gippal told me we could reach my destination by twilight?”
“Ah, yeah, not a problem; do you need a hand in?”
“I'll manage.” He lowered himself into the seat behind the pilot's with some difficulty, and buckled himself in. The boat he'd come on was already pushing away from the shore, sounding its horns to any other vessels that might have been nearby. Not that Nooj could see any. Just flat blue sea meeting curved sky on one side, and the endless corn-yellow sands of Bikanel on the other. How he hated this place. Sweat was beading up on his forehead and his glasses slid down his nose over his slick skin.
“What are you here for, anyway?” The Al Bhed asked, slipping into his seat and pulling the safety cage down over them. Nooj felt better with those strong bars surrounding them. “Something gumming up the works so bad that even Gip couldn't fix it?” Two spiral green eyes locked on him, and Nooj froze, not having thought in an advance of an adequate excuse.
“I-”
“Heh, Gipster said you weren't much one for small chat,” the man said and then turned back, hitting a few buttons on his control panel, the fan and motor clanking and then whirring up into life. They shot across the desert, and Nooj found himself pressed back against his head-rest hard, wind making his eyes tear up. The dunes sped by them, and the roar of their motor startled a small group of sand doves into flight when they took a corner too quickly. The small, delicate birds burst into a rush of wings and feathers, but they were going so quickly they soon put the flock behind them.
The hover itself bounced and rattled over the sand, shaking him a little, but soon he fell into the rhythm of it. He reached up and pulled the sunshade down over him, eyes closing. It would be hours...
Movement ceasing was what woke him some time later, that and the cooler bite to the air as the sun was setting over the large dunes to the east. Nooj felt stiff and bruised all over, aches ranging up his spine, and he sighed as he pried his eyes open fully. His pilot was clearly elsewhere, and had left him to his own devices. Well, Nooj really didn't expect better of a flighty Al Bhed, having had plenty of experience with them abandoning their posts. He unfastened himself from the metal grip of the hover and pull himself out, grateful for the strength the hydraulics of his arm lent the rest of his body.
The Al Bhed encampment wasn't small, or large, but around middling size, probably holding about two hundred odd people. Or less, maybe half of the tents were work tents. Gippal's reach was extending every year, Nooj thought, and soon he'd have the whole desert under his command. Well, perhaps there was no one better to tolerate the intolerable thing that was the ever changing desert.
Last he heard, she'd signed on with Gippal and had been working for him, and since the cheerful Al Bhed had said that maybe he should reconcile with his old love, and Nooj had decided he wasn't getting any younger, he'd struck out. Perhaps his heart held something of a melancholy for the things he recognized and missed? Nooj shook that thought away. Things had not worked out well between himself and Paine, and it had been a few years since he'd last seen her. Then why was he here? Thoughts swirled around him like a cloud of gnats, and he determined it was best to leave them behind and start moving. The sun was sinking, and he was unarmed. Spira may have been free of Yevon and Vegnagun, but that didn't make it safe.
There was a boy, rocking back and forth on his feet a few meters from the first tent as Nooj approached the camp.
“Hey!” the child waved and then ran up to him, “Gippal said you was to follow the red markers.” The youth pointed, and Nooj saw the metal pipes stuck into the ground at intervals, rings of painted colour around them. “That'll get you to where you wanna go.”
“Thank you,” Nooj said, and was about to ask how far it was, as the camp itself looked like it stretched quite some ways, but the child took off, racing along the path itself. The red rings were easy enough to follow, and he met several Al Bhed along the path. They all nodded politely, and beetled off in different directions, struggling under the weight of their burdens. He himself worked hard, the sand as always trying to suck him down, and he stumbled a few times before he was on a path with pipes that only had red rings and no other colour. A large tent resplendent with yellow banners was at the end of it and he felt apprehension gnawing hungrily at his gut. With a frown, why had he come all this way to simple stop like a foolish boy, he pushed onwards, clearing his throat and parting the hangings that blocked the doorway.
Paine did not turn to greet him. Rikku, dressed in a short cream tunic that was fitted to a swollen and round belly, did. The shock on her face must have mirrored the one on his. The ground dropped out from under him, and there was a faint ringing in his ears as his cheeks burnt from something other than the sun he'd been under that day.
He counted it up in his head, calculating the months it had been since he'd last seen this particular Al Bhed, the last time he'd been intimate with anyone, and came up with a very unlucky seven. Half of him wanted to spin around and stalk right out, but the likeliness that he would stumble was too great, as familiar tired aches were beginning to crawl up his limbs. The other half of him wanted to shake her. He shoved both halves down and was left with nothing.
“I... uh...” Rikku looked possibly more pole axed than he did, but then she wore her emotions on her face in a way that you could better see the storm coming in her eyes than a barometer on a ship could foretell the coming rains. “Nooj, eh heh... you're... here. Heh, that's a, er, a surprise, um. Chair!” She pointed and he would have moved except he couldn't.
“You're pregnant,” his words came out flat and unhappy. Her expression went from hesitant and shocked to something like he'd slapped her. Her jaw set and her nostrils flared before she turned her head away.
“You're observant,” she said, voice edged with heat and anger that echoed the temperature outside. It was still hot, inside and out, and Nooj felt as if he were burning alive. His cheeks flamed and he took a few steps forward, grateful at least for the steady ground the floor of the tent gave him. Everything else at that moment was shaking, and he needed something to be stable.
“Gippal told me-”
“That useless piece of machina junk,” she said, and then muttered a few curses under her breath before turning back to her worktable. “It's nothing,” she said. “Go home.”
It's nothing?
“It's... you're, with mine, then, I'm sure.”
One shoulder shrugged, as if they were discussing the outcome of a ice-racing competition, the second-favourite sport in all of Spira.
“I guess,” she said, “but no big, you're busy, so'm I.”
Nooj tried to spin this all in his mind in a way that would make sense and couldn't. Rikku had shown up on his door, eyes full of flames about something one of her lovers had done, and she'd ranted at him for a good five days straight before he'd finally found a way to silence her. That had been... seven... eight, maybe, months ago, and she'd stayed with him for several weeks after that.
Enough weeks, he figured out in his head, for her to have known when she'd taken her leave.
“That's somewhat irrational,” he said, trying to be reasonable, “you are not altogether so busy that you could not have sent me a note, or something, so that I could at least be accountable, or perhaps apologize-”
It was a rare moment when Nooj had to regret what he'd said, since he was very much of the you need not unsay anything you have not said school of thought. When she turned on him, marched right up to him, and slapped him hard across the face, he felt a deep sense of regret that went from his gut to his stinging cheek.
“I should've disconnected your oil pump in your sleep,” she hissed out, and Nooj was struck by the way she very much resembled a desert cobra. “I didn't need you anyway,” she said, waving her hand in the air for emphasis, and Nooj wondered if she would smack him again, this time by accident. “I've got everything I need here, y'know? Didn't need extra complications.”
She waddled back to her desk and eased herself onto the stool, a flicker of pain crossing her face. Well, it was a fair amount of weight to be carrying about when she was barely as tall as a month-old hollyhock.
“I am no adolescent boy,” Nooj said, walking towards her as her thin shoulders stiffened and flattened. She looked as if she were reigning herself in, drawing in all the fire she could. He wondered if she would explode or implode. She was always a loaded gun, a grenade with the safety pulled out. He was never sure what exactly to say, and it made him deeply uneasy and displeased.
“Yeah well,” Rikku said, “I'm barely outta my teens, so you should be grateful my Pops hasn't shoved a double barrel up your butt yet.” He ignored her crude words and imagery and put a hand on her shoulder. She tensed but did not brush him off.
“I am no adolescent boy, and I am used to responsibility. If you swear the child is mine, then I will do what I can-”
She cut him off, slapping his hand away, looking like an angered mountain pony, with wide eyes that he could see the whites of clearly.
“I'm not exactly helpless or anything, y'know?! I did save the world a couple'a times, I think I can change some diapers and deal with why mommy for at least fifteen years by myself.”
Nooj felt a pulse in his stomach. Perhaps she could, she was capable and strong, and not to mention the Al Bhed had fairly community minded ideals. She would be fine, he supposed. It was still rattling him, that he'd fathered a child and this thing had been growing and in existence for so many months yet, and he had not known.
When had Gippal, he wondered. And if Gippal knew... who else did?
“What are you so worried about anyway?” she asked, sounding tired and going back to the schematic drawings in front of her. Nooj wasn't sure if it was for an airship or a watership... a new type of deep-sea exploring vessel Gippal had babbled about to him excitedly a few months ago. A few... months ago... had Gippal known then?
“It is mine, correct?” No, Gippal would never shirk responsibility like this, and Nooj did not think that anything had developed between the two... since as far as he'd known, Rikku had never been stationed at Djose for any length of time.
Rikku sighed and looked a little cross.
“A short skirt isn't an invitation to every one who sees it,” she said and flicked a few pencil shavings onto the floor. He itched to clean them up.
“Then let me be of assistance,” he said, “it is only fair.” Rikku looked at him squarely;
“What would you do? I'm not leaving the desert, and you can't leave whatever important things you're doing, y'know? No. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you coming out here full of honour and stuff, and trying to rearrange my life to suit yours. There's a few women in this world who don't mind it, but I'm not one of them.” She got up and put her hands on his chest, pushing him towards the door.
“Rikku-”
“Do me a favour and go find her.”
“Raising a child on your own is quite a lot of work-”
“Don't you think I kinda know that!?” she snapped, and her eyes scrunched up a little, but if she knew what she was talking about, he was quite sure he did not. “Try having two,” she muttered. His eyebrows rose as his heart sank.
“Twins?”
“No! Out! I'm fine! If you need a place to stay the night or something, you can crash on my extra camp bed, but I'd kinda rather not see your face in the morning.”
He stood there, one hand ready to push aside the hangings in the doorway, and she turned, flicking off the oil lamps one at a time. He did not avert his eyes when her dress and underwear hit the floor, although she didn't look at him as she tucked herself in under a thick woolen blanket. The soft whining hum of the cold desert night wind was beginning, and it tugged the door flap out of his hand.
Nooj made up his mind then, watching her in the glow of the single lamp light, her hand reaching out to turn it off, but never doing so. He met her gaze for one moment, then two, before pushing out of the tent and walking down the paths to where the hovers were. One more night in the cold was nothing, after all, he'd suffered worse before. The lamp in the tent behind him went out and left the thin material dark, with no more internal glow to light it from the inside.
Fandom: FFX-2
Characters: Nooj, Paine, Rikku, Gippal
Rating: G
Format: One-Shot
Status: Complete, (a little) polished, spellchecked.
Words: 2624
Disclaimer: I don't claim ownership of characters or games, only themes within.
Summary: Nooj gets news from Gippal about a past lover, and goes looking for answers to questions he hasn't even asked yet.
Author's Note: I felt a real desire to write this tonight, and to work on getting Nooj's voice right. It makes sense right now, but when I wake up in the morning it probably won't.
No King But A Castle
If the swamps of Besaid soaked a person through and through the minute they stepped on the island, the desert of Bikanel baked the water right out again. Nooj felt uncomfortable, being back on the sand. It was not his territory, no matter how many days and nights he'd burnt and froze in the wasteland. Even the snowy peaks of Gagazet was preferable to this.
But, Gippal had sent him a note, saying that there was something he really should check out in the heart of the Al Bhed encampment. Something, or someone, the note had read, with a cheery little smiley face drawn down in one corner.
So, Nooj had given orders for things to be taken care of in Luca while he was gone, and had ridden the miserable tides to the miserable island. Not only did it bring back festering memories, but the sand clogged up the hydraulics in his limbs and hastened the need for filter changes. With a sigh that landed between disgust and annoyance, he clumped down the gang plank to where a sleek hover awaited him.
“Better prepare to sink into this muck,” he muttered to himself as the Al Bhed that sat behind the wheel waved to him. Shocking white-blonde hair stuck up at every angle as Gippal's man beckoned for Nooj to walk out on the wooden boards.
“You Nooj? Gipster said to look out for some half-machine monster, so you must be him. Taller than I expected,” the man said as he hopped out and looked Nooj over. “You don't got any bags?”
“No, I am traveling light,” Nooj said. “Gippal told me we could reach my destination by twilight?”
“Ah, yeah, not a problem; do you need a hand in?”
“I'll manage.” He lowered himself into the seat behind the pilot's with some difficulty, and buckled himself in. The boat he'd come on was already pushing away from the shore, sounding its horns to any other vessels that might have been nearby. Not that Nooj could see any. Just flat blue sea meeting curved sky on one side, and the endless corn-yellow sands of Bikanel on the other. How he hated this place. Sweat was beading up on his forehead and his glasses slid down his nose over his slick skin.
“What are you here for, anyway?” The Al Bhed asked, slipping into his seat and pulling the safety cage down over them. Nooj felt better with those strong bars surrounding them. “Something gumming up the works so bad that even Gip couldn't fix it?” Two spiral green eyes locked on him, and Nooj froze, not having thought in an advance of an adequate excuse.
“I-”
“Heh, Gipster said you weren't much one for small chat,” the man said and then turned back, hitting a few buttons on his control panel, the fan and motor clanking and then whirring up into life. They shot across the desert, and Nooj found himself pressed back against his head-rest hard, wind making his eyes tear up. The dunes sped by them, and the roar of their motor startled a small group of sand doves into flight when they took a corner too quickly. The small, delicate birds burst into a rush of wings and feathers, but they were going so quickly they soon put the flock behind them.
The hover itself bounced and rattled over the sand, shaking him a little, but soon he fell into the rhythm of it. He reached up and pulled the sunshade down over him, eyes closing. It would be hours...
Movement ceasing was what woke him some time later, that and the cooler bite to the air as the sun was setting over the large dunes to the east. Nooj felt stiff and bruised all over, aches ranging up his spine, and he sighed as he pried his eyes open fully. His pilot was clearly elsewhere, and had left him to his own devices. Well, Nooj really didn't expect better of a flighty Al Bhed, having had plenty of experience with them abandoning their posts. He unfastened himself from the metal grip of the hover and pull himself out, grateful for the strength the hydraulics of his arm lent the rest of his body.
The Al Bhed encampment wasn't small, or large, but around middling size, probably holding about two hundred odd people. Or less, maybe half of the tents were work tents. Gippal's reach was extending every year, Nooj thought, and soon he'd have the whole desert under his command. Well, perhaps there was no one better to tolerate the intolerable thing that was the ever changing desert.
Last he heard, she'd signed on with Gippal and had been working for him, and since the cheerful Al Bhed had said that maybe he should reconcile with his old love, and Nooj had decided he wasn't getting any younger, he'd struck out. Perhaps his heart held something of a melancholy for the things he recognized and missed? Nooj shook that thought away. Things had not worked out well between himself and Paine, and it had been a few years since he'd last seen her. Then why was he here? Thoughts swirled around him like a cloud of gnats, and he determined it was best to leave them behind and start moving. The sun was sinking, and he was unarmed. Spira may have been free of Yevon and Vegnagun, but that didn't make it safe.
There was a boy, rocking back and forth on his feet a few meters from the first tent as Nooj approached the camp.
“Hey!” the child waved and then ran up to him, “Gippal said you was to follow the red markers.” The youth pointed, and Nooj saw the metal pipes stuck into the ground at intervals, rings of painted colour around them. “That'll get you to where you wanna go.”
“Thank you,” Nooj said, and was about to ask how far it was, as the camp itself looked like it stretched quite some ways, but the child took off, racing along the path itself. The red rings were easy enough to follow, and he met several Al Bhed along the path. They all nodded politely, and beetled off in different directions, struggling under the weight of their burdens. He himself worked hard, the sand as always trying to suck him down, and he stumbled a few times before he was on a path with pipes that only had red rings and no other colour. A large tent resplendent with yellow banners was at the end of it and he felt apprehension gnawing hungrily at his gut. With a frown, why had he come all this way to simple stop like a foolish boy, he pushed onwards, clearing his throat and parting the hangings that blocked the doorway.
Paine did not turn to greet him. Rikku, dressed in a short cream tunic that was fitted to a swollen and round belly, did. The shock on her face must have mirrored the one on his. The ground dropped out from under him, and there was a faint ringing in his ears as his cheeks burnt from something other than the sun he'd been under that day.
He counted it up in his head, calculating the months it had been since he'd last seen this particular Al Bhed, the last time he'd been intimate with anyone, and came up with a very unlucky seven. Half of him wanted to spin around and stalk right out, but the likeliness that he would stumble was too great, as familiar tired aches were beginning to crawl up his limbs. The other half of him wanted to shake her. He shoved both halves down and was left with nothing.
“I... uh...” Rikku looked possibly more pole axed than he did, but then she wore her emotions on her face in a way that you could better see the storm coming in her eyes than a barometer on a ship could foretell the coming rains. “Nooj, eh heh... you're... here. Heh, that's a, er, a surprise, um. Chair!” She pointed and he would have moved except he couldn't.
“You're pregnant,” his words came out flat and unhappy. Her expression went from hesitant and shocked to something like he'd slapped her. Her jaw set and her nostrils flared before she turned her head away.
“You're observant,” she said, voice edged with heat and anger that echoed the temperature outside. It was still hot, inside and out, and Nooj felt as if he were burning alive. His cheeks flamed and he took a few steps forward, grateful at least for the steady ground the floor of the tent gave him. Everything else at that moment was shaking, and he needed something to be stable.
“Gippal told me-”
“That useless piece of machina junk,” she said, and then muttered a few curses under her breath before turning back to her worktable. “It's nothing,” she said. “Go home.”
It's nothing?
“It's... you're, with mine, then, I'm sure.”
One shoulder shrugged, as if they were discussing the outcome of a ice-racing competition, the second-favourite sport in all of Spira.
“I guess,” she said, “but no big, you're busy, so'm I.”
Nooj tried to spin this all in his mind in a way that would make sense and couldn't. Rikku had shown up on his door, eyes full of flames about something one of her lovers had done, and she'd ranted at him for a good five days straight before he'd finally found a way to silence her. That had been... seven... eight, maybe, months ago, and she'd stayed with him for several weeks after that.
Enough weeks, he figured out in his head, for her to have known when she'd taken her leave.
“That's somewhat irrational,” he said, trying to be reasonable, “you are not altogether so busy that you could not have sent me a note, or something, so that I could at least be accountable, or perhaps apologize-”
It was a rare moment when Nooj had to regret what he'd said, since he was very much of the you need not unsay anything you have not said school of thought. When she turned on him, marched right up to him, and slapped him hard across the face, he felt a deep sense of regret that went from his gut to his stinging cheek.
“I should've disconnected your oil pump in your sleep,” she hissed out, and Nooj was struck by the way she very much resembled a desert cobra. “I didn't need you anyway,” she said, waving her hand in the air for emphasis, and Nooj wondered if she would smack him again, this time by accident. “I've got everything I need here, y'know? Didn't need extra complications.”
She waddled back to her desk and eased herself onto the stool, a flicker of pain crossing her face. Well, it was a fair amount of weight to be carrying about when she was barely as tall as a month-old hollyhock.
“I am no adolescent boy,” Nooj said, walking towards her as her thin shoulders stiffened and flattened. She looked as if she were reigning herself in, drawing in all the fire she could. He wondered if she would explode or implode. She was always a loaded gun, a grenade with the safety pulled out. He was never sure what exactly to say, and it made him deeply uneasy and displeased.
“Yeah well,” Rikku said, “I'm barely outta my teens, so you should be grateful my Pops hasn't shoved a double barrel up your butt yet.” He ignored her crude words and imagery and put a hand on her shoulder. She tensed but did not brush him off.
“I am no adolescent boy, and I am used to responsibility. If you swear the child is mine, then I will do what I can-”
She cut him off, slapping his hand away, looking like an angered mountain pony, with wide eyes that he could see the whites of clearly.
“I'm not exactly helpless or anything, y'know?! I did save the world a couple'a times, I think I can change some diapers and deal with why mommy for at least fifteen years by myself.”
Nooj felt a pulse in his stomach. Perhaps she could, she was capable and strong, and not to mention the Al Bhed had fairly community minded ideals. She would be fine, he supposed. It was still rattling him, that he'd fathered a child and this thing had been growing and in existence for so many months yet, and he had not known.
When had Gippal, he wondered. And if Gippal knew... who else did?
“What are you so worried about anyway?” she asked, sounding tired and going back to the schematic drawings in front of her. Nooj wasn't sure if it was for an airship or a watership... a new type of deep-sea exploring vessel Gippal had babbled about to him excitedly a few months ago. A few... months ago... had Gippal known then?
“It is mine, correct?” No, Gippal would never shirk responsibility like this, and Nooj did not think that anything had developed between the two... since as far as he'd known, Rikku had never been stationed at Djose for any length of time.
Rikku sighed and looked a little cross.
“A short skirt isn't an invitation to every one who sees it,” she said and flicked a few pencil shavings onto the floor. He itched to clean them up.
“Then let me be of assistance,” he said, “it is only fair.” Rikku looked at him squarely;
“What would you do? I'm not leaving the desert, and you can't leave whatever important things you're doing, y'know? No. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you coming out here full of honour and stuff, and trying to rearrange my life to suit yours. There's a few women in this world who don't mind it, but I'm not one of them.” She got up and put her hands on his chest, pushing him towards the door.
“Rikku-”
“Do me a favour and go find her.”
“Raising a child on your own is quite a lot of work-”
“Don't you think I kinda know that!?” she snapped, and her eyes scrunched up a little, but if she knew what she was talking about, he was quite sure he did not. “Try having two,” she muttered. His eyebrows rose as his heart sank.
“Twins?”
“No! Out! I'm fine! If you need a place to stay the night or something, you can crash on my extra camp bed, but I'd kinda rather not see your face in the morning.”
He stood there, one hand ready to push aside the hangings in the doorway, and she turned, flicking off the oil lamps one at a time. He did not avert his eyes when her dress and underwear hit the floor, although she didn't look at him as she tucked herself in under a thick woolen blanket. The soft whining hum of the cold desert night wind was beginning, and it tugged the door flap out of his hand.
Nooj made up his mind then, watching her in the glow of the single lamp light, her hand reaching out to turn it off, but never doing so. He met her gaze for one moment, then two, before pushing out of the tent and walking down the paths to where the hovers were. One more night in the cold was nothing, after all, he'd suffered worse before. The lamp in the tent behind him went out and left the thin material dark, with no more internal glow to light it from the inside.