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Entry tags:
FFVIII & FFX-2: Crossing Lines
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII & Final Fantasy X-2
Pairing: Gippal/Baralai/Squall
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: Squall woke up in a desert that was pointedly not anywhere near anywhere he recognised. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ff_flashfic.
"Hey, man, are you okay?"
There was a guy. He was very blurry. Squall felt, as if from a distance, that the guy was supporting him, arms around his torso, and that there was sand all around them, and that the area was completely sandy, hot and dry, and the sun was beating down hard on him and had, apparently, been doing so for some time. The guy wasn't one of his team. His clothes were strange and his accent was completely unfamiliar. Squall tried to speak, but realised that his mouth was too dry. As if reading his mind, the guy produced a small bottle of something.
"Here, drink this and then you might be able to speak. I'm Gippal, by the way, but don't expect such a lucky, not to mention high profile, rescue every time you get too far out in the desert without a hover. Feeling better?"
Squall swallowed the slightly warm water carefully, feeling as if his entire throat was full of scratchy sand. He pulled away from the unknown guy a little, sitting up and squinting a little at the brightness of the sun. "I'm Squall Leonhart, I got separated from my squad on a mission..."
The guy -- Gippal -- frowned a little, as if there was something troubling about the words, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he got to his feet, brushing away sand and leaning down to haul Squall up. "Can you walk, or do I need to call a hover? We're not far from camp here, and the hovers are mostly out getting diggers who're a long way away. There's a sandstorm coming."
"I need to find the rest of my team."
"Someone else will have found them, if they're anywhere near here," Gippal said, grinning. "Don't worry about that. We've got machines that could pick a human out of an expanse of sand from miles away. We need to get back to camp."
Squall nodded slightly, and swallowed carefully before speaking, wetting his lips. "I can walk."
"If you need help, just say so. Here, have this. Better for you than water, right now."
He took the slightly warm bottle. It wasn't quite what he was used to -- the flavour slightly different, the tingling somehow not quite the same, but it was a potion and it sunk into his lips, soothed his parched throat, slipping through his system quickly and curing as it went. He saw Lionheart's hilt and bent down to tug it free from the sand. "I'll be fine."
"Okay. Come on, this way. It's good you have a weapon. I didn't bring my gun, it'd be just some extra weight to haul. I mean, I could easily deal with fiends, but if you can help me out... I assume you can fight with that thing."
Squall frowned. "Of course I can. I'm a SeeD. SeeD commander."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Gippal said, sounding more cheerful than Squall could really handle so soon after waking up in the middle of the desert. "We'll sort things out when we get back to camp, I'm sure waking up like that has to be very disorientating. I don't usually come out here, I'm usually at Djose Temple overseeing the work with the machines, but Nhadala asked me out here to do some work and I couldn't say no. Mainly because I was getting bored of the machines. Whoa, are you alright?"
He shook away Gippal's steadying hand, nodding slightly, a little annoyed that he'd managed to stumble. He barely listened to what Gippal was saying, instead focusing on stumbling along through the shifting sand, getting tireder and tireder with every step.
"Here we are," Gippal said, finally, and Squall looked up to find himself already through a kind of gateway and in a kind of camp, with tents all around. He just about managed to take that in before his vision swam and he fell right into Gippal's hastily outstretched arms, glad only that he'd apparently made it to somewhere at least moderately safe on his own power.
---
Squall woke slowly. This time, he was somewhere more comfortable -- and more shady. Someone was applying something cool to his skin with some gentleness, and his eyes flickered open almost of their own accord to find Gippal there, leaning over him with a look of concentration on his face and a half used bottle of potion in his hands. He kept quiet until Gippal had finished smearing the stuff onto his cheek, until the tingling had subsided slightly.
"You had a pretty bad sunburn," Gippal said, quietly. He poured some more potion onto his fingers, smearing it across Squall's forehead and down over his nose, watching it sink in. "I've put potion over all the burnt areas and now you just have a really nice tan, pretty much all over. Your clothes were rubbish at blocking the sun. Want something to drink?"
Squall decided he didn't trust his voice yet, and just nodded. Gippal reached for something, another bottle of some kind of potion, and also slipped an arm under Squall's shoulders, helping him sit up. At that moment, he realised that he was also naked and that his clothes were in a neat pile at one end of the small tent.
"Water with a dash of potion," Gippal said, in explanation, when he saw Squall's expression twist a little at the taste of the water. "Al Bhed potion, that is. Brilliant for treating sunburn and helping rehydrate a person. You'll be feeling a hell of a lot better in just a few hours, I swear. Do you remember my name?"
There was a pause. Then he nodded slightly. "Gippal."
The guy grins. "That's right. Gippal. The Gippal. Leader of the Machine Faction, one of the guys that fought Vegnagun. We didn't find any other members of your team, but that doesn't mean they're dead or anything. Maybe they have their own camp. We've been kind of focused on damage control for ourselves, and getting our own guys back. There're some machines out searching now, though. Where do you come from?"
"Balamb," Squall said, frowning a little at the unfamiliar names. Machine Faction? Vegnagun?
Gippal helped him lay down again, shaking his head. "There's no such place in all of Spira. Believe me, I've travelled over most of the world by now... You're in Bikanel desert right now. Does that ring any bells?"
"Is it in Centra?"
Gippal shook his head again, slowly. "Don't you remember anything about Spira?"
"I don't understand what you're talking about."
The guy got up and paced around the tent, slowly. Squall watched him, oddly incurious. Everything, he felt, would sort itself out in time. He was so tired. So tired, still, and despite the potion smeared all over him and the potion he'd drunk, he still ached a little all over. He remembered the same feeling coming after long, tiring missions when he'd got hurt, and knew he'd have to sleep soon to allow the potion time to work on him, speeding up his own natural powers of recovery.
Gippal looked straight at him and Squall finally noticed that there was something odd about his eyes -- not just that he wore an eyepatch over one of them, but something strange about the pupil...
"Yes," Gippal said, "I'm an Al Bhed."
"I don't..."
The man came to sit next to him on the bed. "I have a feeling I know what happened to you. I don't know who you are, or how you got here, but I don't think this is your world. You don't seem to know about anything, and for the three days you've been taking up my bed and getting free of that fever of yours, you've babbled stuff that doesn't make any sense if you come from Spira. I've called a friend of mine -- Praetor Baralai of New Yevon -- and he's going to come and help me figure out what to do with you."
"What to do with me...?"
"Don't worry," Gippal said, grinning. "We'll look after you."
Squall wanted to protest that none of it made any sense. And that he certainly didn't need any looking after. Unfortunately, his eyelids were suddenly so heavy he couldn't keep them open, and he didn't really want to say anything at all, all of a sudden. He let his eyes close and let sleep overtake him.
He could find out what was going on when he woke up.
---
Squall didn't open his eyes when he woke again. He knew Gippal was there -- both because of his strange sense, trained into him by SeeD, of another's presence, and partly, and more mundanely, because the man was humming. He tried to remember what had been so odd about Gippal. About his eyes. And what he'd said he was... an Al Bhed. Squall didn't understand any of it any better than when he'd first woken up.
"I know you're awake."
Squall opened his eyes, smiling just a little at the thought of someone catching him out. He pushed himself up carefully, pleased to note that he felt a lot better than he had the first time he awoke in this tent. He remembered what'd been so odd about the man's one visible eye. He hadn't had a proper pupil. Not a normal pupil. The black of his eyes had been a swirl in the green.
He knew, then, that he really wasn't in his own world. It could've been contacts, some genetic defect, but none of it really added up. Squall was sure -- in that deep, instinctual part of him he'd learnt to trust -- that he wasn't in his own world anymore. He didn't understand it, but he had to accept it.
"Hungry?" Gippal asked. He realised that he was -- very hungry, in fact.
"Yes."
"Your clothes are over there, if you get dressed I'll take you over and see if Nhadala'll let me get something for you even though it isn't mealtime. We'll have to get you some better clothes, soon -- more suited to the desert -- but for now... And here, have some sunglasses. The sun is pretty fierce out there."
Squall accepted the sunglasses, which looked somewhat more like goggles, and found his clothes, pulling them on quickly while Gippal finished whatever he was doing, some horribly technical drawing of some machine that Squall glanced at but found he couldn't hope to understand, despite his basic knowledge of machines thanks to a course back at Garden.
"Ready?"
Squall nodded and followed Gippal outside. He immediately appreciated how cool and shady the tent was, the heat hitting him almost like a slap in the face. He looked around, listening to people calling each other from across the camp. He didn't understand a word they were saying. Gippal called out to a young woman, dressed in clothes that looked to Squall outlandish and were no doubt perfectly normal among these people. "Kud yho vuut kuehk cbyna vun dra vunaekhan, Nhadala?"
The woman looked up, looking somewhat displeased. "Tuh'd keja res duu silr. Fa'na muf uh cibbmeac."
"What did you say?"
Gippal glanced at him. "I asked her if there's any food going spare. She reminded me that there isn't much. Dryhg oui, Nhadala -- that means 'thank you', Squall, and Nhadala is her name."
Squall nodded, doing his best to remember. He hoped that most people would talk the same language as him in the way that Gippal did. He didn't want to have to spend months learning a new language just to communicate. "Is that... Al Bhed?"
"Yeah. You don't miss much, do you?"
"I was trained to be observant."
"You'll have to tell me all about your world while you eat," Gippal said, grinning at him. It was a nice kind of grin, Squall thought -- it sort of reminded him of Zell's grin. Open, carefree. Gippal was more cocky than Zell, though, more sure of himself, perhaps. Squall smiled back just a little and nodded.
---
"No, no, you sound like an Al Bhed baby with a cold!"
Squall flushed a little and tried to pronounce the foreign words again, letting Gippal correct him. He didn't mind being corrected -- somehow, didn't entirely mind Gippal's good-natured laughter. He just hated being wrong, and didn't particularly like being laughed at. Finally, he fell silent, looking out at the desert. Gippal shifted closer to him and sat hugging his knees, looking out into the desert with a thoughtful look on his face.
"Is this... Praetor Baralai Al Bhed?"
Gippal glanced at Squall and shook his head slightly. "No, no, of course not. You'll understand why, soon, he's better at explaining than me, but... my people, we haven't been this free in a long, long time. Baralai's people blamed my people for everything that went wrong in Spira. Wrongly, it turned out, though even now some of them don't believe that. But Lai was my friend long before the rest of his people started to accept the Al Bhed."
"I see," Squall said, frowning.
"I guess it sounds strange, to a foreigner."
"It does, but..." Squall shrugged slightly. "That's my problem to get over, not yours."
"Do you think you're stuck here?"
He shook his head. And then he shrugged. He didn't know. He really didn't know and it frustrated him and annoyed him, and he still couldn't remember how he'd got there. They'd been on a mission, in Centra, and there'd been a storm... they'd stopped for the night wherever they were, unable to see in the murk and rain, and Squall'd fallen asleep there. And woken up in the desert.
Gippal put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently, the eternal gesture from a man to a man that always said I'm here. He grinned, too. "If you want", when things've settled and Lai's back in Bevelle and I'm in Djose, we'll both try and look for information for you. There's not much at my fingertips here."
"Thank you."
A hover moved into the camp. Squall barely spared a glance for it, used, now, to the comings and goings from the camp. But Gippal glanced up and then jumped to his feet, grinning. "Lai!"
Squall turned slightly to see this new person, taking in his dark skin and his pale hair with a little surprise. He also took in the way the two embraced, and frowned to himself, suddenly annoyed that he hadn't realised before that this Baralai was, in fact, Gippal's lover, not just his friend. He got up and quickly went into the tent, sitting on the makeshift bed Gippal had made for him.
"So that was Squall?" Baralai asked Gippal, pulling away a little to watch him going into the tent. "He doesn't look all that strange."
"Just wait until you've spoken to him," Gippal said, with a shrug.
"What have you explained to him?"
"Ah..." Gippal looked a little abashed. "Well, not much. I'm no good at explaining things like that, you know I'm not. I start talking and then get too technical or backtrack or go off on a tangent... it'd be much better if you could teach him."
"Someone has to," Baralai said, rolling his eyes. He disentangled himself from Gippal's embrace and went over to the tent, ducking inside and giving the man sat there a critical look. A smile, too, but nonetheless, a critical, appraising look. "I'm Baralai, Praetor of New Yevon. Your name is Squall, right?"
Squall nodded. Baralai smiled at him as reassuringly as he could.
"Gippal's told you about me, I assume. I'm going to do my best to tell you everything about this world, though if you want to learn to speak Al Bhed, I can't teach you that. What do you know about the temples?"
"Nothing."
Baralai cast a look at Gippal as he moved into the tent and sat down next to him -- half amused, half annoyed. "You haven't taught him anything."
"He knows some Al Bhed," Gippal mumbled, defensively.
---
Squall sat out at the perimeter of the camp, Lionheart laying on the sand by his side. His expression was troubled, a faint wind pushing his hair down into his eyes the moment he reached up and tucked it back. He was trying to get away from Gippal and Baralai, away from his thoughts about them and his formless, impossible desires. Baralai watched him for a while, not knowing why he was frowning, and then went to sit down next to him, keeping the silence intact for a few minutes until Squall looked up at him. "You fight very well."
"It's something to do."
"A useful thing, too," Baralai said, smiling reassuringly. "Gippal is always saying that the machines aren't efficient enough at keeping fiends away from the camp -- that there needs to be some kind of human patrol. He does it, sometimes, but he can't get anyone really interested in the idea... You're doing a good job."
"Thank you."
"How're you settling in here?"
"I'm getting... used to it."
Baralai laughed at little at the expression on Squall's face, putting a hand lightly on his arm, feeling him tense a little. "You don't always have to hide your feelings, you know. Don't you miss your home? I know I miss the place where I grew up and I know I can go back there any time."
Squall raised an eyebrow, changing the subject a little. "Where did you grow up?"
"Kilika," Baralai said, quietly. "And then I went to the temple in Bevelle."
"Before you fought with Gippal in the Crimson Squad?"
Baralai had to smile. "You remember everything you're told, don't you? Yes, before I fought with Gippal. At that time, I don't think I'd even met an Al Bhed -- not properly, anyway. I'd seen them, of course, but my parents had always warned me to keep away from them. They were, the temples told us, the reason that Sin kept coming back, so I didn't think they could ever be good. Even when I was friends with Gippal, I thought he was wrong."
"Oh?"
"I had to swallow some pride when it turned out that he was right about the temples."
Squall nodded slightly, moving closer to Baralai and looking at him intently. Baralai looked up at him, realising that his hand was still resting on Squall's shoulder. He smiled again, and he didn't stop smiling when Squall leaned closer and kissed him.
He pulled away, gently. "Gippal is waiting for me."
"I'm sorry," Squall said, quickly, because he didn't even mean to do that and didn't even understand why he did. Gippal and Baralai had been kind to him, good to him, and he should never have let himself get carried away with his feelings --
"Come with me," Baralai said, patiently. "It's okay. We were... expecting that, in a way."
"I don't -- "
Baralai shook his head and got up. Squall bit his lip and thought about it, and listened to Baralai's footsteps moving away over the soft sand. And then he got up and followed him into Gippal's tent, not understanding what was going on entirely, but wanting to find out.
---
"Is this kind of relationship... usual, here?"
Gippal snorted softly, pulling Squall a little closer to him to allow Baralai, on the other side of Squall, some more room. "Not exactly. Among the Al Bhed, it's not unknown, but I don't think it's done openly among Lai's people. How long have you been wanting to ask that question?"
Squall couldn't help but relax, trapped between the two of them. He closed his eyes, getting more comfortable, enjoying the warmth of the others' bodies -- startled at how quickly he's come to trust them, how easily he started to feel for them, but not fighting it. "It just occured to me now. I know... some people do it, where I came from, but it's not usual and it tends to end badly."
Baralai made a sleepy noise, cuddling closer to Squall, pressed warmly against his back. "Does it matter how it will end? Right now, we can be happy. You probably will go home, and leave us, or Gippal will get himself killed by playing with machina that are beyond his understanding or control, or someone might get annoyed and storm Bevelle, but no matter what happens, we'll have had this."
"You've grown up, Lai," Gippal said, quietly.
For a while, they all stayed quiet. Then Gippal spoke again, gently running his fingers through Squall's hair.
"Are you going to go home? If you can?"
"I don't know."
Gippal took a deep breath, pressing a little closer, tangling their legs. "I'd go with you, if you'd let me. I'd like to see another world."
Baralai didn't say anything.
"I don't think I want to go home," Squall said, quietly. He pressed closer, burying his face in Gippal's shoulder. "I think I'm happier here than I ever was there. I miss it, but... I've learned to love Spira already."
"You've barely seen it," Gippal said, laughing a little.
"So show me it."
Pairing: Gippal/Baralai/Squall
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: Squall woke up in a desert that was pointedly not anywhere near anywhere he recognised. For
ff_flashfic."Hey, man, are you okay?"
There was a guy. He was very blurry. Squall felt, as if from a distance, that the guy was supporting him, arms around his torso, and that there was sand all around them, and that the area was completely sandy, hot and dry, and the sun was beating down hard on him and had, apparently, been doing so for some time. The guy wasn't one of his team. His clothes were strange and his accent was completely unfamiliar. Squall tried to speak, but realised that his mouth was too dry. As if reading his mind, the guy produced a small bottle of something.
"Here, drink this and then you might be able to speak. I'm Gippal, by the way, but don't expect such a lucky, not to mention high profile, rescue every time you get too far out in the desert without a hover. Feeling better?"
Squall swallowed the slightly warm water carefully, feeling as if his entire throat was full of scratchy sand. He pulled away from the unknown guy a little, sitting up and squinting a little at the brightness of the sun. "I'm Squall Leonhart, I got separated from my squad on a mission..."
The guy -- Gippal -- frowned a little, as if there was something troubling about the words, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he got to his feet, brushing away sand and leaning down to haul Squall up. "Can you walk, or do I need to call a hover? We're not far from camp here, and the hovers are mostly out getting diggers who're a long way away. There's a sandstorm coming."
"I need to find the rest of my team."
"Someone else will have found them, if they're anywhere near here," Gippal said, grinning. "Don't worry about that. We've got machines that could pick a human out of an expanse of sand from miles away. We need to get back to camp."
Squall nodded slightly, and swallowed carefully before speaking, wetting his lips. "I can walk."
"If you need help, just say so. Here, have this. Better for you than water, right now."
He took the slightly warm bottle. It wasn't quite what he was used to -- the flavour slightly different, the tingling somehow not quite the same, but it was a potion and it sunk into his lips, soothed his parched throat, slipping through his system quickly and curing as it went. He saw Lionheart's hilt and bent down to tug it free from the sand. "I'll be fine."
"Okay. Come on, this way. It's good you have a weapon. I didn't bring my gun, it'd be just some extra weight to haul. I mean, I could easily deal with fiends, but if you can help me out... I assume you can fight with that thing."
Squall frowned. "Of course I can. I'm a SeeD. SeeD commander."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Gippal said, sounding more cheerful than Squall could really handle so soon after waking up in the middle of the desert. "We'll sort things out when we get back to camp, I'm sure waking up like that has to be very disorientating. I don't usually come out here, I'm usually at Djose Temple overseeing the work with the machines, but Nhadala asked me out here to do some work and I couldn't say no. Mainly because I was getting bored of the machines. Whoa, are you alright?"
He shook away Gippal's steadying hand, nodding slightly, a little annoyed that he'd managed to stumble. He barely listened to what Gippal was saying, instead focusing on stumbling along through the shifting sand, getting tireder and tireder with every step.
"Here we are," Gippal said, finally, and Squall looked up to find himself already through a kind of gateway and in a kind of camp, with tents all around. He just about managed to take that in before his vision swam and he fell right into Gippal's hastily outstretched arms, glad only that he'd apparently made it to somewhere at least moderately safe on his own power.
Squall woke slowly. This time, he was somewhere more comfortable -- and more shady. Someone was applying something cool to his skin with some gentleness, and his eyes flickered open almost of their own accord to find Gippal there, leaning over him with a look of concentration on his face and a half used bottle of potion in his hands. He kept quiet until Gippal had finished smearing the stuff onto his cheek, until the tingling had subsided slightly.
"You had a pretty bad sunburn," Gippal said, quietly. He poured some more potion onto his fingers, smearing it across Squall's forehead and down over his nose, watching it sink in. "I've put potion over all the burnt areas and now you just have a really nice tan, pretty much all over. Your clothes were rubbish at blocking the sun. Want something to drink?"
Squall decided he didn't trust his voice yet, and just nodded. Gippal reached for something, another bottle of some kind of potion, and also slipped an arm under Squall's shoulders, helping him sit up. At that moment, he realised that he was also naked and that his clothes were in a neat pile at one end of the small tent.
"Water with a dash of potion," Gippal said, in explanation, when he saw Squall's expression twist a little at the taste of the water. "Al Bhed potion, that is. Brilliant for treating sunburn and helping rehydrate a person. You'll be feeling a hell of a lot better in just a few hours, I swear. Do you remember my name?"
There was a pause. Then he nodded slightly. "Gippal."
The guy grins. "That's right. Gippal. The Gippal. Leader of the Machine Faction, one of the guys that fought Vegnagun. We didn't find any other members of your team, but that doesn't mean they're dead or anything. Maybe they have their own camp. We've been kind of focused on damage control for ourselves, and getting our own guys back. There're some machines out searching now, though. Where do you come from?"
"Balamb," Squall said, frowning a little at the unfamiliar names. Machine Faction? Vegnagun?
Gippal helped him lay down again, shaking his head. "There's no such place in all of Spira. Believe me, I've travelled over most of the world by now... You're in Bikanel desert right now. Does that ring any bells?"
"Is it in Centra?"
Gippal shook his head again, slowly. "Don't you remember anything about Spira?"
"I don't understand what you're talking about."
The guy got up and paced around the tent, slowly. Squall watched him, oddly incurious. Everything, he felt, would sort itself out in time. He was so tired. So tired, still, and despite the potion smeared all over him and the potion he'd drunk, he still ached a little all over. He remembered the same feeling coming after long, tiring missions when he'd got hurt, and knew he'd have to sleep soon to allow the potion time to work on him, speeding up his own natural powers of recovery.
Gippal looked straight at him and Squall finally noticed that there was something odd about his eyes -- not just that he wore an eyepatch over one of them, but something strange about the pupil...
"Yes," Gippal said, "I'm an Al Bhed."
"I don't..."
The man came to sit next to him on the bed. "I have a feeling I know what happened to you. I don't know who you are, or how you got here, but I don't think this is your world. You don't seem to know about anything, and for the three days you've been taking up my bed and getting free of that fever of yours, you've babbled stuff that doesn't make any sense if you come from Spira. I've called a friend of mine -- Praetor Baralai of New Yevon -- and he's going to come and help me figure out what to do with you."
"What to do with me...?"
"Don't worry," Gippal said, grinning. "We'll look after you."
Squall wanted to protest that none of it made any sense. And that he certainly didn't need any looking after. Unfortunately, his eyelids were suddenly so heavy he couldn't keep them open, and he didn't really want to say anything at all, all of a sudden. He let his eyes close and let sleep overtake him.
He could find out what was going on when he woke up.
Squall didn't open his eyes when he woke again. He knew Gippal was there -- both because of his strange sense, trained into him by SeeD, of another's presence, and partly, and more mundanely, because the man was humming. He tried to remember what had been so odd about Gippal. About his eyes. And what he'd said he was... an Al Bhed. Squall didn't understand any of it any better than when he'd first woken up.
"I know you're awake."
Squall opened his eyes, smiling just a little at the thought of someone catching him out. He pushed himself up carefully, pleased to note that he felt a lot better than he had the first time he awoke in this tent. He remembered what'd been so odd about the man's one visible eye. He hadn't had a proper pupil. Not a normal pupil. The black of his eyes had been a swirl in the green.
He knew, then, that he really wasn't in his own world. It could've been contacts, some genetic defect, but none of it really added up. Squall was sure -- in that deep, instinctual part of him he'd learnt to trust -- that he wasn't in his own world anymore. He didn't understand it, but he had to accept it.
"Hungry?" Gippal asked. He realised that he was -- very hungry, in fact.
"Yes."
"Your clothes are over there, if you get dressed I'll take you over and see if Nhadala'll let me get something for you even though it isn't mealtime. We'll have to get you some better clothes, soon -- more suited to the desert -- but for now... And here, have some sunglasses. The sun is pretty fierce out there."
Squall accepted the sunglasses, which looked somewhat more like goggles, and found his clothes, pulling them on quickly while Gippal finished whatever he was doing, some horribly technical drawing of some machine that Squall glanced at but found he couldn't hope to understand, despite his basic knowledge of machines thanks to a course back at Garden.
"Ready?"
Squall nodded and followed Gippal outside. He immediately appreciated how cool and shady the tent was, the heat hitting him almost like a slap in the face. He looked around, listening to people calling each other from across the camp. He didn't understand a word they were saying. Gippal called out to a young woman, dressed in clothes that looked to Squall outlandish and were no doubt perfectly normal among these people. "Kud yho vuut kuehk cbyna vun dra vunaekhan, Nhadala?"
The woman looked up, looking somewhat displeased. "Tuh'd keja res duu silr. Fa'na muf uh cibbmeac."
"What did you say?"
Gippal glanced at him. "I asked her if there's any food going spare. She reminded me that there isn't much. Dryhg oui, Nhadala -- that means 'thank you', Squall, and Nhadala is her name."
Squall nodded, doing his best to remember. He hoped that most people would talk the same language as him in the way that Gippal did. He didn't want to have to spend months learning a new language just to communicate. "Is that... Al Bhed?"
"Yeah. You don't miss much, do you?"
"I was trained to be observant."
"You'll have to tell me all about your world while you eat," Gippal said, grinning at him. It was a nice kind of grin, Squall thought -- it sort of reminded him of Zell's grin. Open, carefree. Gippal was more cocky than Zell, though, more sure of himself, perhaps. Squall smiled back just a little and nodded.
"No, no, you sound like an Al Bhed baby with a cold!"
Squall flushed a little and tried to pronounce the foreign words again, letting Gippal correct him. He didn't mind being corrected -- somehow, didn't entirely mind Gippal's good-natured laughter. He just hated being wrong, and didn't particularly like being laughed at. Finally, he fell silent, looking out at the desert. Gippal shifted closer to him and sat hugging his knees, looking out into the desert with a thoughtful look on his face.
"Is this... Praetor Baralai Al Bhed?"
Gippal glanced at Squall and shook his head slightly. "No, no, of course not. You'll understand why, soon, he's better at explaining than me, but... my people, we haven't been this free in a long, long time. Baralai's people blamed my people for everything that went wrong in Spira. Wrongly, it turned out, though even now some of them don't believe that. But Lai was my friend long before the rest of his people started to accept the Al Bhed."
"I see," Squall said, frowning.
"I guess it sounds strange, to a foreigner."
"It does, but..." Squall shrugged slightly. "That's my problem to get over, not yours."
"Do you think you're stuck here?"
He shook his head. And then he shrugged. He didn't know. He really didn't know and it frustrated him and annoyed him, and he still couldn't remember how he'd got there. They'd been on a mission, in Centra, and there'd been a storm... they'd stopped for the night wherever they were, unable to see in the murk and rain, and Squall'd fallen asleep there. And woken up in the desert.
Gippal put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently, the eternal gesture from a man to a man that always said I'm here. He grinned, too. "If you want", when things've settled and Lai's back in Bevelle and I'm in Djose, we'll both try and look for information for you. There's not much at my fingertips here."
"Thank you."
A hover moved into the camp. Squall barely spared a glance for it, used, now, to the comings and goings from the camp. But Gippal glanced up and then jumped to his feet, grinning. "Lai!"
Squall turned slightly to see this new person, taking in his dark skin and his pale hair with a little surprise. He also took in the way the two embraced, and frowned to himself, suddenly annoyed that he hadn't realised before that this Baralai was, in fact, Gippal's lover, not just his friend. He got up and quickly went into the tent, sitting on the makeshift bed Gippal had made for him.
"So that was Squall?" Baralai asked Gippal, pulling away a little to watch him going into the tent. "He doesn't look all that strange."
"Just wait until you've spoken to him," Gippal said, with a shrug.
"What have you explained to him?"
"Ah..." Gippal looked a little abashed. "Well, not much. I'm no good at explaining things like that, you know I'm not. I start talking and then get too technical or backtrack or go off on a tangent... it'd be much better if you could teach him."
"Someone has to," Baralai said, rolling his eyes. He disentangled himself from Gippal's embrace and went over to the tent, ducking inside and giving the man sat there a critical look. A smile, too, but nonetheless, a critical, appraising look. "I'm Baralai, Praetor of New Yevon. Your name is Squall, right?"
Squall nodded. Baralai smiled at him as reassuringly as he could.
"Gippal's told you about me, I assume. I'm going to do my best to tell you everything about this world, though if you want to learn to speak Al Bhed, I can't teach you that. What do you know about the temples?"
"Nothing."
Baralai cast a look at Gippal as he moved into the tent and sat down next to him -- half amused, half annoyed. "You haven't taught him anything."
"He knows some Al Bhed," Gippal mumbled, defensively.
Squall sat out at the perimeter of the camp, Lionheart laying on the sand by his side. His expression was troubled, a faint wind pushing his hair down into his eyes the moment he reached up and tucked it back. He was trying to get away from Gippal and Baralai, away from his thoughts about them and his formless, impossible desires. Baralai watched him for a while, not knowing why he was frowning, and then went to sit down next to him, keeping the silence intact for a few minutes until Squall looked up at him. "You fight very well."
"It's something to do."
"A useful thing, too," Baralai said, smiling reassuringly. "Gippal is always saying that the machines aren't efficient enough at keeping fiends away from the camp -- that there needs to be some kind of human patrol. He does it, sometimes, but he can't get anyone really interested in the idea... You're doing a good job."
"Thank you."
"How're you settling in here?"
"I'm getting... used to it."
Baralai laughed at little at the expression on Squall's face, putting a hand lightly on his arm, feeling him tense a little. "You don't always have to hide your feelings, you know. Don't you miss your home? I know I miss the place where I grew up and I know I can go back there any time."
Squall raised an eyebrow, changing the subject a little. "Where did you grow up?"
"Kilika," Baralai said, quietly. "And then I went to the temple in Bevelle."
"Before you fought with Gippal in the Crimson Squad?"
Baralai had to smile. "You remember everything you're told, don't you? Yes, before I fought with Gippal. At that time, I don't think I'd even met an Al Bhed -- not properly, anyway. I'd seen them, of course, but my parents had always warned me to keep away from them. They were, the temples told us, the reason that Sin kept coming back, so I didn't think they could ever be good. Even when I was friends with Gippal, I thought he was wrong."
"Oh?"
"I had to swallow some pride when it turned out that he was right about the temples."
Squall nodded slightly, moving closer to Baralai and looking at him intently. Baralai looked up at him, realising that his hand was still resting on Squall's shoulder. He smiled again, and he didn't stop smiling when Squall leaned closer and kissed him.
He pulled away, gently. "Gippal is waiting for me."
"I'm sorry," Squall said, quickly, because he didn't even mean to do that and didn't even understand why he did. Gippal and Baralai had been kind to him, good to him, and he should never have let himself get carried away with his feelings --
"Come with me," Baralai said, patiently. "It's okay. We were... expecting that, in a way."
"I don't -- "
Baralai shook his head and got up. Squall bit his lip and thought about it, and listened to Baralai's footsteps moving away over the soft sand. And then he got up and followed him into Gippal's tent, not understanding what was going on entirely, but wanting to find out.
"Is this kind of relationship... usual, here?"
Gippal snorted softly, pulling Squall a little closer to him to allow Baralai, on the other side of Squall, some more room. "Not exactly. Among the Al Bhed, it's not unknown, but I don't think it's done openly among Lai's people. How long have you been wanting to ask that question?"
Squall couldn't help but relax, trapped between the two of them. He closed his eyes, getting more comfortable, enjoying the warmth of the others' bodies -- startled at how quickly he's come to trust them, how easily he started to feel for them, but not fighting it. "It just occured to me now. I know... some people do it, where I came from, but it's not usual and it tends to end badly."
Baralai made a sleepy noise, cuddling closer to Squall, pressed warmly against his back. "Does it matter how it will end? Right now, we can be happy. You probably will go home, and leave us, or Gippal will get himself killed by playing with machina that are beyond his understanding or control, or someone might get annoyed and storm Bevelle, but no matter what happens, we'll have had this."
"You've grown up, Lai," Gippal said, quietly.
For a while, they all stayed quiet. Then Gippal spoke again, gently running his fingers through Squall's hair.
"Are you going to go home? If you can?"
"I don't know."
Gippal took a deep breath, pressing a little closer, tangling their legs. "I'd go with you, if you'd let me. I'd like to see another world."
Baralai didn't say anything.
"I don't think I want to go home," Squall said, quietly. He pressed closer, burying his face in Gippal's shoulder. "I think I'm happier here than I ever was there. I miss it, but... I've learned to love Spira already."
"You've barely seen it," Gippal said, laughing a little.
"So show me it."