Muthafuckin uhhhh children of Maesters solidarity

[presidentheartbeat]

Zelos thinks that the only good thing about Colette being the daughter of a Maester and a high ranking priestess is that she gets her own office in the temple grounds, which is private and quiet and adorable. She leads him here after separating themselves from the rest of the group, locking the door and gesturing him to sit while she busies herself with tea and cookies and other frivolities that Zelos lets her indulge in for the time being. She looks nervous, somehow. Perhaps she is. After all, childhood friends or not, in the eyes of the church she is still housing a degenerate.

That must be so nerve-wracking, hm?

Boy oh boy.

"I must apologize again for the harsh meeting we had," Colette says, finally setting down a plate of assorted cookies on the coffee table in her office living room. She gives Zelos a smile that looks more like an apologetic cringe, hands clasped together on her lap as she sits. "Are you sure you're okay? Really, I can get you a potion for--"

"Colette, I'll be fine," Zelos laughs, waving a hand to cut her off. He goes to pick up a cookie next; the plainest of the bunch so as to not get distracted by the taste. "I'm not dead, I don't have brain damage, and I promise I'm not throwing Anna in jail for damaging my beautiful face when I barely even got a scratch. It's all good."

She cringes again, smile growing. What's with that, huh? The whole smiling even when you feel bad thing she does? "Well... I mean," she mutters, distracting Zelos' thoughts, unclasping her hands and pointing gently at her own forehead. "There's..."

Oh. Oh no.

Oh no no, no. Zelos raises a hand to his forehead, touching the general area where Anna hit him, and winces. "Ugh! Fuck me, I guess!"

"Sorry!"

A sigh, accompanied by a complete slump into his seat, then a pout. "Don't be."

Silence falls, and Colette takes her chance to clear her throat and take a sip of tea. Zelos lowers his hand again, reaching for another cookie just for the sake of having something to distract himself with, too. If his forehead is hurting, then he's probably walking around with angry red bruise where the cup hit him, which means he's been looking like a moron the whole time he tried to look intimidating and imposing earlier. Ah, hell. Well, there goes his fucking mood, he guesses, munching on the stupid, insipid cookie. He probably should ask for a potion or at least heal himself soon.

But not now. There's more important things to do right now.

Like caring about his own safety beyond getting hit in the face with a stupid cup. His, and his summoner's, apparently.

Damn it.

Sobering up, he shoves the rest of the cookie down and sits up again, just about enough to appear relaxed and yet focused, successfully catching Colette's attention once more. "Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about here," he declares, voice low enough to be private, yet loud enough to carry along their distance. "I wanted to talk about Lady Sheena's pilgrimage."

"You're her guardian, right?" Colette immediately asks. Her expectant blue eyes stare at and examine Zelos from across the room as he nods, and so Zelos clears his throat, smiles, and relaxes his body to sell the nonchalant attitude further as she continues, smiling, "When I saw you both enter the room, I kinda thought it would've been the other way around."

From where he sits, Zelos can see the gears slowly turning in her head, the younger priestess still as worrisome and perceptive as always. "What can I say? I love subverting people's expectations," he says.

"Even Maester Mylene's?"

"She knows about me being a guardian," Zelos waves a hand about, then reaches for his tea. It's rude to leave tea sitting and cooling or this long when Colette went through the trouble of making it in the first place. And it feels weird to be telling the truth, for once, so next he goes for a white lie. "In fact," he adds after a sip, "she was right there when Sheena practically begged me to join up! So you don't have to worry about it. It's all fine and dandy."

Of course it's not, but it's not like Zelos can even admit to it aloud, or get to the point without first laying out the groundwork. Just the fact that he's out here in Besaid already speaks of something else being up, and Colette has every right to be nervous about that. But if there's anything Zelos learned in his time locked up in Luca, it's to never let his guard down even for a second; all walls have ears, and even the shadows have eyes. The look Colette gives him after he speaks, the little tight pull of her lips, tells Zelos everything, though; she knows there's more to what he says, even if she cannot tell--or say--what.

What an irony it is that being so surrounded by the church on every side would be everything but safe.

Solidarity between children of Maesters indeed. She's really the only one here who could've understood.

Colette speaks up this time, sighing and setting her cup down, reaching for a chocolate chip cookie on the plate. "I see... Then," she perks up again, and the mask she slips on is visible only for one wearing an identical one, "are you here to ask about a route to Zanarkand?"

A change of subject? Zelos gives her a laugh. "Totally read my mind!"

"Okay!" Colette relaxes against her seat, smiling. "So then I take it you already visited Kilika?"

Pause. "Er, no. We found Anna and kinda skipped right to Besaid at her request." More like Anna found them, but Colette doesn't need to know the finer details. "The plan right now is to get Undine here, then go get Efreet in Kilika. After that, there's only one way to go."

"Back through Luca?"

"Back through Luca," he nods. "I need the safest routes for passage through Mi'ihen, and then some friendly advice on sweet little Bevelle."

Another pause, shorter this time, accompanied by the sound of Colette's humming as she lifts her cup for a sip. Zelos imitates her, lowering his gaze to give her a moment to herself and her thoughts. He knows what Colette is thinking, what she's considering, the questions that most likely plague her. Zelos is aware that this is a problem that has no easy solution until they pass through Guadosalam, but it never hurts to plant the seeds of an idea for later, he thinks. Because asking for passage is the easy part; it's making it to Bevelle when Zelos is, well, Zelos, that is going to be the tricky part.

Leave it to the fucking Wilder family to make everything extra complicated for no fucking reason.

The sound of the priestess' porcelain cup hitting the glass surface of her coffee table snaps Zelos back to reality. "After Luca," Colette speaks, "your next destination will be Djose, right?"

He smiles. "Yep."

"How about I go ahead and then meet you all again in Luca?" Colette says next, smile brightening when Zelos' eyes widen. Her laugh is sweet like birdsong when she clasps her hands together in front of herself, beaming. "Listen! I have contacts in the city. I could get you a couple of chocobos near the border with Mi'ihen for all of you to hurry on to Djose. It would be much more comfortable than walking for days!"

Slowly, as Colette speaks, a smile comes to Zelos' face, something incredulous and hopeful, something that he quickly dismisses with a huff and a laugh, then a vague gesture over his head. "Ain't Besaid gonna fall apart if their high priestess leaves her post, though?"

She shakes her head. "I can leave someone in charge! And if you can wait for me while I arrange for that, I can accompany you when you leave for Kilika, then continue on my own for Luca's temple as an envoy for you."

Zelos stares. Oh.

Hold on a minute.

Obviously, a church official aiding a summoner in their pilgrimage isn't unheard of, and in very few occasions Zelos himself has even come out of hiding to help a few lost fools with instructions, motivation, and even prayer whenever Mylene herself wasn't in Luca. The whole of the church is supposed to make it possible for the little sacrificial lambs to make it all the way to Zanarkand in one piece, so it makes sense that Colette would act in Sheena's best interests. But what Colette says now, what she offers here in private with such a bright expression--it all makes Zelos wonder just why it is that someone like her would want to help a half breed failure like Mylene's unwanted son.

Where are her nerves? Has she thought about how this will look if things go wrong and she's involved? Because Zelos is fully aware of what Colette's aid will mean in the long run, once they enter Bevelle or, Martel forbid, Guadosalam. What she doesn't know, though, is that he's not the one in desperate need of her aid--not the one who needs to finish the pilgrimage, the one whose eyes can tell an entire story just by looking into them.

Oui'na mega sa, ynah'd oui?

Ah, damn it. Might as well just do it for Sheena by this point, Zelos guesses.

Quickly, Zelos decides that she just doesn't need to know. Let her think she's helping the half breed and the half breed alone. He laughs a little awkwardly, shrugging, averting his gaze with a tilt of his head. "Well, damn. Thank you," Zelos says, grinning. "I'll relay the news to the others then."

"Great!" Colette says, finally rising to a stand, indicating that tea time is over. Zelos stands with her, stealing two cookies--both chocolate chip this time--before walking over to the door to leave when she holds it open for him. "In that case," she adds, watching Zelos cast a small cure spell on himself with his free hand, "let me go ahead and look into lodging for the four of you. You guys have a long road ahead, huh?"

The grin on Zelos' face feels taken right out of Colette's own book, the whole smiling even when you feel bad thing she does coming easy for him after all.

"Honey, you got no idea."