[Star Ocean 2] Fifty-Two Names for Snow
Title: Fifty-Two Names for Snow
Fandom: Star Ocean - The Second Story
Characters: Claude, Dias
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Notes: Thanks to akuma_no_kage for being my willing victim. ^^ maiji, I sincerely apologize for taking so horribly long.
Fifty-Two Names for Snow
Snow is coming.
Dias had said it to him last night, in the light of the campfire, the glow of the flames casting red-golden highlights on his face. He was always the first to notice. Anyone else would have been sniffing the air, inspecting the trees, testing the ground for residual night frost, but Dias never did any of these things. He just knew.
Claude had looked around, noticing the leaves on the trees, colored but not yet dry. He hadn't been able to feel anything, but he had no reason to doubt.
Now, though, out of the valley and halfway up the mountain, he could smell it on the air, a certain harshness hinting at the cold, the wind adopting a peculiar sting that numbed the nose and cheeks.
"Snow is coming," he said aloud, an echo from yesterday's conversation, tilting back his head to squint upwards through the branches, and catching glimpses of a heavy gray sky.
Ahead of him, the steady crunching sound of Dias' footsteps on the frozen leaves stopped, then scraped as he half-turned to look back at him.
"I couldn't smell it before. Now I can. It's funny. I thought I'd forgotten."
There was a short silence. "They don't have seasons, where you're from?"
Claude thought for a moment. He thought about the holidays of his childhood, spent in the vacation home away from the capital with its miles and miles of streets and buildings, side by side, one after the other, packed so tightly that you could walk for more than a day and barely reach the suburbs.
No snow there.
The perpetual heat of the city dissolved everything into rain, so he thought he remembered-or maybe he only remembered because someone had told him, there might even have been a mildly embarrassing photograph-he thought he remembered being surprised at the snow. It had been the first Christmas his father spent on planet, he could recall that clearly-Claude might have been four or five, he was no longer sure-and he had taken them to the small house at the foot of the mountains, not quite a cabin, not quite anything larger. It had smelled of pines and cold, a black lake reflecting the rugged peaks and the surrounding forest.
The next morning, there had been snow, covering everything in a thick blanket frozen over so it cracked when you stepped on it, and he remembered-whether by story or actual memory-tripping and wading through it in absolute bewilderment.
The smell of the cold and snow had lingered, teasing his brain whenever the Earth calendar signaled the coming of the winter months. Universal time meant little, even long after his entrance into the Academy and Moonbase and training on ships, with no time to go home, for which he had been secretly grateful because there wouldn't have been anything to come home to, anyway.
The cold of space had no scent.
He had forgotten a lot, more than half-unaware that the impressions were becoming dull at the edges, melting away, making room for the scent of metal and filter air and the pervasive non-smell of sterility.
Claude thought about how to phrase it, how to explain to Dias things like vacuum and zero-g and space stations, and how they made you forget.
When no answer was forthcoming, Dias turned back around, his eyes following the narrow trail, which was climbing steadily upward, over roots and moss-mottled rocks.
"It might hold for another three hours. By then, we should be about halfway there."
He started walking again, not offended by Claude's silence, probably filing it away as another thing not to be talked about. They had plenty of those.
It was kind of remarkable, that, not being expected to answer. Claude had never met anyone not offended by silence, as if it were a taboo, a grave misstep, to stop talking even when you lacked the words, when you didn't have answers or had too many things in your head roaring to be voiced, each a dozen times more insulting or hurtful than silence.
It felt good, being allowed to take his time.
"Halfway where?" Claude asked, hastening to catch up.
"There is a way station at the pass. We can sit out the worst there."
"Ah."
----
It started snowing an hour earlier than expected, but that didn't really make much of a difference.
It wasn't like there had ever been a choice, unless they wanted to be snowed in halfway to Cross, in the middle of nowhere with no proper shelter. Climbing down a mountain was always easier than climbing up, even-or especially-after snowfall.
It was different from Earth, different from everything related to Earth, where you always had a choice about going or not going, biding your time, waiting for better chances.
The small flakes soon formed an impenetrable veil, the wind whipping them about like a swarm of tiny needles, alternately howling against their backs and flinging them in their faces. The snow was collecting on the ground like a lumpy and steadily thickening blanket, first reaching up to the rim of their soles, then covering their toes, their ankles, and eventually reaching halfway up their shins, obscuring the trail and blotting out their tracks in their wake.
It occurred to Claude that this should worry him, perhaps, and he might have been worried, except Dias seemed to know the way, never once straying or hesitating, and that was enough.
In space, you quickly learned who was trustworthy and who wasn't, and when to follow without asking too many questions, because incompetence or hesitation could take you straight through the core of a star.
One would think that riding in a ship, protected by shields and layers upon layers of its hull, would be safer than stumbling about in a snowstorm, but Claude found there wasn't much of a difference. Space made you forget its dangers because it was untouchable, but its stray debris could still smash an unprepared vessel to pieces.
His soaked socks were chafing uncomfortably, bunching up against his heels, beneath the balls of his feet, but he had no time to stop and straighten them, and after a while, he couldn't have hoped to do so, anyway, feeling the fine, scratching, ice-cold points where the material was simultaneously freezing and thawing.
Wriggling his toes inside the boots, they felt strange, kind of fuzzy, as if they had layers and layers of cotton stuffed between them. That was worrisome, especially since the same thing was happening to his fingers inside their gloves, but it wasn't worth making a fuss about.
Nothing to be done now, anyway. At least the pain from the blisters was fading.
----
After forever and a while, a vague, dark shape rose from the depths of the snowstorm, and Claude admitted he had been completely misjudging the distance, because the next thing he knew, he was half-falling over the steps buried under a mountain of snow.
Dias turned at his rather ungraceful nosedive.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," he said, or tried to, anyway, around the mouthful of icy cold, struggling back up and uselessly brushing the snow off his wet clothes.
"It didn't look like you were dying just yet," Dias said, and by the time Claude realized the deadpan tone had been concealing the spark of humor a little too well, Dias had turned back around, a little jerkily, and was pulling open the door with both hands.
Stumbling inside, they were followed by a curtain of snow, and it took both of them to push the door closed.
Claude couldn't quite feel his hands pressing against the hard wood. He was grateful that Dias handled the latching and bolting, as he wasn't sure his fingers would have obeyed.
Leaning against the door for a moment, he struggled to catch his breath, realizing with dismay that the inside of the hut was not much warmer than the outside, though that was to be expected. Rubbing himself down in a vain attempt to stop the shivers, he surveyed the single room in the dim light filtering from two tiny windows. They weren't made of glass, he noticed, but rather of some kind of animal skin that was stretched across the frames, scraped and oiled to prevent tearing, lending the light a murky quality, as if blinking through dirty water.
The hut itself didn't offer much, but the important thing was that there was a stove and a bundle of dry twigs and branches to serve as firewood. Dias was already busying himself with it, wrinkling his nose at the remnants of ash frozen fast in the wood compartment. He pulled out his boot knife, hacking away at the blackened ice.
"Hand me the tinderbox."
"Uh." Claude fumbled with the pouch at his belt, containing the small box with flint and steel. His fingers were clumsy, slipping from the buttons three or four times before he finally managed to undo them.
Dias was watching him curiously, and he flushed, tossing the box to him. "Here."
Dias turned back to the stove. "Get out of those wet clothes."
"Trying, 'rying," Claude mumbled, catching the tip of one glove between his teeth and pulling. They all sounded like orders, he reflected, tugging the gloves from his fingers; everything, or mostly everything Dias said was sharp and precise, cutting in its lack of politeness, just like an order. Claude didn't mind, was, in fact, used to the tone, but it wasn't like Dias was really ordering him about, expecting to be obeyed. It was just the way he spoke, blunt and without pretense, and Claude couldn't recall ever having met a person who could talk like that.
The second glove came off just as Dias got the fire going, biting fumes escaping from the stove. He closed the small metal door, rising to his feet.
"Better hope the smokestack is clear. Otherwise we'll have to open a window."
"Open?" Claude said, making a face as he tried to get his fingers to cooperate on the clasps of his cloak.
"You'd rather we choke?" Dias suggested, beginning to rid himself of his own soaked clothing.
"Yeah, no. Still, it would make for a piece of news. 'Naked men found dead in hut'."
"You presume that people would find us up here," Dias said, thoroughly unperturbed. "Or consider it worth reporting."
Claude shrugged. "Eventually, I guess. Some mummies we'd make."
"Your sense of humor is simply astounding sometimes."
"I believe that's what they mean when they talk about pots and kettles," Claude retorted, pulling his tunic over his head and smiling at the barely perceptible huff he could hear even through the rustling of fabric.
Dias strode over, dislodging the bed from its place against the wall and pulling it closer to the stove.
"There's still room."
"Only if you want to burn your feet," Dias said, sitting down at the edge and unlacing his boots. "In that state, you probably wouldn't feel warm unless you grilled them."
Dropping down beside him, Claude blinked. "Eh? When did you-?"
Dias shrugged. "Get rid of those socks first."
"Tried."
"What?"
His cheeks reddening, Claude dropped his gaze to his feet, encased in the stiff wool. "I tried. I can't get them off."
Dias frowned sharply.
"I think it might be the blisters," Claude murmured.
"You think?"
"I'm not sure. It's all kind of numb."
"Give me your feet," Dias instructed, and Claude obeyed, with some dread. "If you don't take them off, you can kiss your toes goodbye."
"Wonderful."
"Yes. Grab the bag, I'm going to need supplies for this."
"Where?"
"Behind you."
Claude turned his head. "I don't see your-AH!"
Hissing, Claude reached for his now bare foot, but Dias shoved his hands away. "If you can feel pain, that's good."
"Try seeing it from my end," Claude said, cringing as Dias reached for the second foot.
"I am seeing it from your end," Dias said, lifting his foot higher and inspecting it critically.
Struck by the sudden incongruity, Claude couldn't help but laugh. "Cinderella didn't get such a brutal prince."
"Who?"
"It's an old sto-OW!"
Dias let the second sock drop to the floor, reaching into the bag half hidden behind his leg.
Claude glared half-heartedly. "Cruel."
"It got you distracted," Dias returned, extracting a small pack of medical supplies. Feeling was slowly creeping back into his feet, and he could feel Dias' hands like amorphous spots of warmth, even though they probably were anything but. Testament to how cold he was, Claude supposed.
Of course, then, the prickling feeling from those hands was joined by the sting of alcohol as Dias went about cleaning and bandaging the injuries in the brisk, meticulous manner of a military doctor. Idly, Claude wondered how often he'd had to take care of himself like that in the past.
A part of him still couldn't help but find it strange, taking care of aches and pains in this manner, too used to a world of instant remedies and multi-purpose equipment, taking care of blisters just as easily as of broken bones. He wasn't sure whether this made people softer. He thought of his own feet, so used to the comfortable fit of multi-purpose footgear that they would blister and bleed as soon as they were introduced to something less than perfect.
"It's kind of funny…" he murmured, reaching for the blanket and bundling himself in it as well as he could. It smelled musty, and he wrinkled his nose, looking for mold. Did that stuff even grow at these altitudes? He couldn't remember.
Dias set down his feet again, inspecting his work and apparently finding it to his satisfaction. "What is?"
"I was thinking about it before, when we were climbing. I wasn't sure how to phrase it. It might sound like crazy talk."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Dias said, gathering his hair and squeezing out the residual water. "Mostly everything that comes from you sounds like crazy talk."
"Gee, thanks," Claude said dryly, catching the flash of a smirk just before Dias turned, tugging another blanket up around his shoulders.
"You're welcome."
Rolling his eyes in response, Claude thought for a moment. "We do… have seasons where I'm from. They used to be different. More like here, but that was long ago. And then there are space stations."
Dias didn't reply, instead picking up his left foot again, slowly rubbing it with both hands.
"They're like… giant domes, you could say. Floating in space."
"I thought you said space was nothing."
"In a way, I guess. It's…"
"…Complicated?" Dias supplied, the faintest hint of irritation telling him that he'd used that explanation a little too often in the past.
Claude smiled. "When we get back to Cross, I'll buy a spreadsheet and draw you a diagram, and then you'll kill me for killing your head."
A flat look.
"I'm not making fun of you, I swear. Sometimes, I'm not sure I understand it, myself, and I grew up learning this stuff in school. It's a lot easier if you approach it all with a willing suspension of disbelief." He paused. "The funniest thing is that it's all useless. Here, I mean. Here, it's useless if I can list the classification of planets or explain hyperspace theory or tell you how much a teaspoon of neutron matter weighs."
More silence from Dias' end, though he was watching him intently, his fingers working steadily even without the guidance of his eyes.
"I guess that's what I was getting at. These things… are useless here. We can send a few megatons of metal halfway through the galaxy, but if you dropped us off here, or anywhere outside those environments where it's all safe and warm and nothing's trying to eat you…" He shrugged. "Ever since I came here, I've been remembering a few things. I guess my feet will remember this."
Again, the hint of a smirk answered him momentarily, before Dias' expression became contemplative again. "Quite a few people here would be willing to disagree with you, I think, if you give them the choice to have your kind of technology."
"I know," Claude said. "I know. And I'm not saying one way is better than the other. What I mean is... being here is more the sort of thing I want to do. What suits me, I guess."
"You make it sound like you chose this."
"Well, no. Not really. But... it just seems more satisfying to me. Being able to look back at the end of the day, and to say, 'I survived a blizzard and my feet hurt like hell and don't wake me up till Wednesday'... I don't know how to explain it, but... it feels good."
"An accomplishment."
"Yeah, I guess. But... actually doing things. I mean, where I'm from, you press a button and whoosh, you can go see the Rose Nebula. It's beautiful to look at, like..." He trailed off, searching for the right words, pretty sure that Dias would have no idea what he meant when he started talking about plasma. "...Like light would look if you could give it liquid form. It's wonderful, but you can't touch it. Up there, you can hardly ever touch the things you see."
He reached out to place his hand over Dias', just barely warmer than his own, rough from the cold. It felt like a hand that had seen a lot, something that would be a story in its own. His own hand looked small in comparison, paler and softer, though it, too, was beginning to change, his palms hardening with sword calluses, the skin over his knuckles cracking in places, forming odd little ridges.
"I like that better. Being able to touch."
Dias blinked at him, and Claude realizing with a start how this had to look, how embarrassingly earnest it all sounded, his thoughts running away with his mouth. It all presupposed a certain kind of kinship, an intimacy that seemed almost wrong to fling into somebody else's face, almost like a demand...
"Your hands are cold," Dias said eventually, as if it were the most important thing about this scene.
"Um," Claude said, his face red and not quite sure how to reply to that but making to withdraw anyway. "I. Sorry about that."
"I didn't say I minded."
"Oh."
There was that certain gleam in his eyes again-similar to-the one from before, yet subtly different, an added nuance that Claude wasn't sure how to decipher. Something was tickling the back of his mind, almost like an answer, but it made little sense, so he resolved to ignore it for now.
Dias' fingers began to move again, carefully rubbing the warmth back into his feet, jostling his own hand. He slowly withdrew, the embarrassment lingering, but not quite so bad anymore.
Perhaps the most important thing was really the cold.
- FIN -
----
A/N: Again, I'm very sorry for taking so long. The sudden spell of cold was probably inspiring. I hope it wasn't too bad, but please tell me what you think. ^^" Now, for some authorial blabbing:
1) I like working with both characters immensely, as they are both are both very similar in some aspects and quite different in others. The first few months after their decision to travel together in the ending are some of the most fascinating to me, because I love exploring how their relationship works, and I also like bringing up these themes of culture clash and culture differences.
2) The title is from a Margaret Atwood quote: "The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love." While this story isn't necessarily about love, it's about things that suddenly gain importance, and you have to adjust your views. So you might need a lot of sensitivity and nuances for one thing that was never important before.
3) Although there is an item called "Cinderella Glass" in the game, I can't picture the Expellians knowing the story of Cinderella. It just doesn't make any sense.
4) Since the Second Evo release date is approaching, does that mean I have to re-label my fics to read "Star Ocean - Second Evolution"? What do you guys think?
<< Return to Star Ocean 2 Index | Return to Fanfiction Index >>
Fandom: Star Ocean - The Second Story
Characters: Claude, Dias
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Notes: Thanks to akuma_no_kage for being my willing victim. ^^ maiji, I sincerely apologize for taking so horribly long.
Fifty-Two Names for Snow
Snow is coming.
Dias had said it to him last night, in the light of the campfire, the glow of the flames casting red-golden highlights on his face. He was always the first to notice. Anyone else would have been sniffing the air, inspecting the trees, testing the ground for residual night frost, but Dias never did any of these things. He just knew.
Claude had looked around, noticing the leaves on the trees, colored but not yet dry. He hadn't been able to feel anything, but he had no reason to doubt.
Now, though, out of the valley and halfway up the mountain, he could smell it on the air, a certain harshness hinting at the cold, the wind adopting a peculiar sting that numbed the nose and cheeks.
"Snow is coming," he said aloud, an echo from yesterday's conversation, tilting back his head to squint upwards through the branches, and catching glimpses of a heavy gray sky.
Ahead of him, the steady crunching sound of Dias' footsteps on the frozen leaves stopped, then scraped as he half-turned to look back at him.
"I couldn't smell it before. Now I can. It's funny. I thought I'd forgotten."
There was a short silence. "They don't have seasons, where you're from?"
Claude thought for a moment. He thought about the holidays of his childhood, spent in the vacation home away from the capital with its miles and miles of streets and buildings, side by side, one after the other, packed so tightly that you could walk for more than a day and barely reach the suburbs.
No snow there.
The perpetual heat of the city dissolved everything into rain, so he thought he remembered-or maybe he only remembered because someone had told him, there might even have been a mildly embarrassing photograph-he thought he remembered being surprised at the snow. It had been the first Christmas his father spent on planet, he could recall that clearly-Claude might have been four or five, he was no longer sure-and he had taken them to the small house at the foot of the mountains, not quite a cabin, not quite anything larger. It had smelled of pines and cold, a black lake reflecting the rugged peaks and the surrounding forest.
The next morning, there had been snow, covering everything in a thick blanket frozen over so it cracked when you stepped on it, and he remembered-whether by story or actual memory-tripping and wading through it in absolute bewilderment.
The smell of the cold and snow had lingered, teasing his brain whenever the Earth calendar signaled the coming of the winter months. Universal time meant little, even long after his entrance into the Academy and Moonbase and training on ships, with no time to go home, for which he had been secretly grateful because there wouldn't have been anything to come home to, anyway.
The cold of space had no scent.
He had forgotten a lot, more than half-unaware that the impressions were becoming dull at the edges, melting away, making room for the scent of metal and filter air and the pervasive non-smell of sterility.
Claude thought about how to phrase it, how to explain to Dias things like vacuum and zero-g and space stations, and how they made you forget.
When no answer was forthcoming, Dias turned back around, his eyes following the narrow trail, which was climbing steadily upward, over roots and moss-mottled rocks.
"It might hold for another three hours. By then, we should be about halfway there."
He started walking again, not offended by Claude's silence, probably filing it away as another thing not to be talked about. They had plenty of those.
It was kind of remarkable, that, not being expected to answer. Claude had never met anyone not offended by silence, as if it were a taboo, a grave misstep, to stop talking even when you lacked the words, when you didn't have answers or had too many things in your head roaring to be voiced, each a dozen times more insulting or hurtful than silence.
It felt good, being allowed to take his time.
"Halfway where?" Claude asked, hastening to catch up.
"There is a way station at the pass. We can sit out the worst there."
"Ah."
----
It started snowing an hour earlier than expected, but that didn't really make much of a difference.
It wasn't like there had ever been a choice, unless they wanted to be snowed in halfway to Cross, in the middle of nowhere with no proper shelter. Climbing down a mountain was always easier than climbing up, even-or especially-after snowfall.
It was different from Earth, different from everything related to Earth, where you always had a choice about going or not going, biding your time, waiting for better chances.
The small flakes soon formed an impenetrable veil, the wind whipping them about like a swarm of tiny needles, alternately howling against their backs and flinging them in their faces. The snow was collecting on the ground like a lumpy and steadily thickening blanket, first reaching up to the rim of their soles, then covering their toes, their ankles, and eventually reaching halfway up their shins, obscuring the trail and blotting out their tracks in their wake.
It occurred to Claude that this should worry him, perhaps, and he might have been worried, except Dias seemed to know the way, never once straying or hesitating, and that was enough.
In space, you quickly learned who was trustworthy and who wasn't, and when to follow without asking too many questions, because incompetence or hesitation could take you straight through the core of a star.
One would think that riding in a ship, protected by shields and layers upon layers of its hull, would be safer than stumbling about in a snowstorm, but Claude found there wasn't much of a difference. Space made you forget its dangers because it was untouchable, but its stray debris could still smash an unprepared vessel to pieces.
His soaked socks were chafing uncomfortably, bunching up against his heels, beneath the balls of his feet, but he had no time to stop and straighten them, and after a while, he couldn't have hoped to do so, anyway, feeling the fine, scratching, ice-cold points where the material was simultaneously freezing and thawing.
Wriggling his toes inside the boots, they felt strange, kind of fuzzy, as if they had layers and layers of cotton stuffed between them. That was worrisome, especially since the same thing was happening to his fingers inside their gloves, but it wasn't worth making a fuss about.
Nothing to be done now, anyway. At least the pain from the blisters was fading.
----
After forever and a while, a vague, dark shape rose from the depths of the snowstorm, and Claude admitted he had been completely misjudging the distance, because the next thing he knew, he was half-falling over the steps buried under a mountain of snow.
Dias turned at his rather ungraceful nosedive.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," he said, or tried to, anyway, around the mouthful of icy cold, struggling back up and uselessly brushing the snow off his wet clothes.
"It didn't look like you were dying just yet," Dias said, and by the time Claude realized the deadpan tone had been concealing the spark of humor a little too well, Dias had turned back around, a little jerkily, and was pulling open the door with both hands.
Stumbling inside, they were followed by a curtain of snow, and it took both of them to push the door closed.
Claude couldn't quite feel his hands pressing against the hard wood. He was grateful that Dias handled the latching and bolting, as he wasn't sure his fingers would have obeyed.
Leaning against the door for a moment, he struggled to catch his breath, realizing with dismay that the inside of the hut was not much warmer than the outside, though that was to be expected. Rubbing himself down in a vain attempt to stop the shivers, he surveyed the single room in the dim light filtering from two tiny windows. They weren't made of glass, he noticed, but rather of some kind of animal skin that was stretched across the frames, scraped and oiled to prevent tearing, lending the light a murky quality, as if blinking through dirty water.
The hut itself didn't offer much, but the important thing was that there was a stove and a bundle of dry twigs and branches to serve as firewood. Dias was already busying himself with it, wrinkling his nose at the remnants of ash frozen fast in the wood compartment. He pulled out his boot knife, hacking away at the blackened ice.
"Hand me the tinderbox."
"Uh." Claude fumbled with the pouch at his belt, containing the small box with flint and steel. His fingers were clumsy, slipping from the buttons three or four times before he finally managed to undo them.
Dias was watching him curiously, and he flushed, tossing the box to him. "Here."
Dias turned back to the stove. "Get out of those wet clothes."
"Trying, 'rying," Claude mumbled, catching the tip of one glove between his teeth and pulling. They all sounded like orders, he reflected, tugging the gloves from his fingers; everything, or mostly everything Dias said was sharp and precise, cutting in its lack of politeness, just like an order. Claude didn't mind, was, in fact, used to the tone, but it wasn't like Dias was really ordering him about, expecting to be obeyed. It was just the way he spoke, blunt and without pretense, and Claude couldn't recall ever having met a person who could talk like that.
The second glove came off just as Dias got the fire going, biting fumes escaping from the stove. He closed the small metal door, rising to his feet.
"Better hope the smokestack is clear. Otherwise we'll have to open a window."
"Open?" Claude said, making a face as he tried to get his fingers to cooperate on the clasps of his cloak.
"You'd rather we choke?" Dias suggested, beginning to rid himself of his own soaked clothing.
"Yeah, no. Still, it would make for a piece of news. 'Naked men found dead in hut'."
"You presume that people would find us up here," Dias said, thoroughly unperturbed. "Or consider it worth reporting."
Claude shrugged. "Eventually, I guess. Some mummies we'd make."
"Your sense of humor is simply astounding sometimes."
"I believe that's what they mean when they talk about pots and kettles," Claude retorted, pulling his tunic over his head and smiling at the barely perceptible huff he could hear even through the rustling of fabric.
Dias strode over, dislodging the bed from its place against the wall and pulling it closer to the stove.
"There's still room."
"Only if you want to burn your feet," Dias said, sitting down at the edge and unlacing his boots. "In that state, you probably wouldn't feel warm unless you grilled them."
Dropping down beside him, Claude blinked. "Eh? When did you-?"
Dias shrugged. "Get rid of those socks first."
"Tried."
"What?"
His cheeks reddening, Claude dropped his gaze to his feet, encased in the stiff wool. "I tried. I can't get them off."
Dias frowned sharply.
"I think it might be the blisters," Claude murmured.
"You think?"
"I'm not sure. It's all kind of numb."
"Give me your feet," Dias instructed, and Claude obeyed, with some dread. "If you don't take them off, you can kiss your toes goodbye."
"Wonderful."
"Yes. Grab the bag, I'm going to need supplies for this."
"Where?"
"Behind you."
Claude turned his head. "I don't see your-AH!"
Hissing, Claude reached for his now bare foot, but Dias shoved his hands away. "If you can feel pain, that's good."
"Try seeing it from my end," Claude said, cringing as Dias reached for the second foot.
"I am seeing it from your end," Dias said, lifting his foot higher and inspecting it critically.
Struck by the sudden incongruity, Claude couldn't help but laugh. "Cinderella didn't get such a brutal prince."
"Who?"
"It's an old sto-OW!"
Dias let the second sock drop to the floor, reaching into the bag half hidden behind his leg.
Claude glared half-heartedly. "Cruel."
"It got you distracted," Dias returned, extracting a small pack of medical supplies. Feeling was slowly creeping back into his feet, and he could feel Dias' hands like amorphous spots of warmth, even though they probably were anything but. Testament to how cold he was, Claude supposed.
Of course, then, the prickling feeling from those hands was joined by the sting of alcohol as Dias went about cleaning and bandaging the injuries in the brisk, meticulous manner of a military doctor. Idly, Claude wondered how often he'd had to take care of himself like that in the past.
A part of him still couldn't help but find it strange, taking care of aches and pains in this manner, too used to a world of instant remedies and multi-purpose equipment, taking care of blisters just as easily as of broken bones. He wasn't sure whether this made people softer. He thought of his own feet, so used to the comfortable fit of multi-purpose footgear that they would blister and bleed as soon as they were introduced to something less than perfect.
"It's kind of funny…" he murmured, reaching for the blanket and bundling himself in it as well as he could. It smelled musty, and he wrinkled his nose, looking for mold. Did that stuff even grow at these altitudes? He couldn't remember.
Dias set down his feet again, inspecting his work and apparently finding it to his satisfaction. "What is?"
"I was thinking about it before, when we were climbing. I wasn't sure how to phrase it. It might sound like crazy talk."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Dias said, gathering his hair and squeezing out the residual water. "Mostly everything that comes from you sounds like crazy talk."
"Gee, thanks," Claude said dryly, catching the flash of a smirk just before Dias turned, tugging another blanket up around his shoulders.
"You're welcome."
Rolling his eyes in response, Claude thought for a moment. "We do… have seasons where I'm from. They used to be different. More like here, but that was long ago. And then there are space stations."
Dias didn't reply, instead picking up his left foot again, slowly rubbing it with both hands.
"They're like… giant domes, you could say. Floating in space."
"I thought you said space was nothing."
"In a way, I guess. It's…"
"…Complicated?" Dias supplied, the faintest hint of irritation telling him that he'd used that explanation a little too often in the past.
Claude smiled. "When we get back to Cross, I'll buy a spreadsheet and draw you a diagram, and then you'll kill me for killing your head."
A flat look.
"I'm not making fun of you, I swear. Sometimes, I'm not sure I understand it, myself, and I grew up learning this stuff in school. It's a lot easier if you approach it all with a willing suspension of disbelief." He paused. "The funniest thing is that it's all useless. Here, I mean. Here, it's useless if I can list the classification of planets or explain hyperspace theory or tell you how much a teaspoon of neutron matter weighs."
More silence from Dias' end, though he was watching him intently, his fingers working steadily even without the guidance of his eyes.
"I guess that's what I was getting at. These things… are useless here. We can send a few megatons of metal halfway through the galaxy, but if you dropped us off here, or anywhere outside those environments where it's all safe and warm and nothing's trying to eat you…" He shrugged. "Ever since I came here, I've been remembering a few things. I guess my feet will remember this."
Again, the hint of a smirk answered him momentarily, before Dias' expression became contemplative again. "Quite a few people here would be willing to disagree with you, I think, if you give them the choice to have your kind of technology."
"I know," Claude said. "I know. And I'm not saying one way is better than the other. What I mean is... being here is more the sort of thing I want to do. What suits me, I guess."
"You make it sound like you chose this."
"Well, no. Not really. But... it just seems more satisfying to me. Being able to look back at the end of the day, and to say, 'I survived a blizzard and my feet hurt like hell and don't wake me up till Wednesday'... I don't know how to explain it, but... it feels good."
"An accomplishment."
"Yeah, I guess. But... actually doing things. I mean, where I'm from, you press a button and whoosh, you can go see the Rose Nebula. It's beautiful to look at, like..." He trailed off, searching for the right words, pretty sure that Dias would have no idea what he meant when he started talking about plasma. "...Like light would look if you could give it liquid form. It's wonderful, but you can't touch it. Up there, you can hardly ever touch the things you see."
He reached out to place his hand over Dias', just barely warmer than his own, rough from the cold. It felt like a hand that had seen a lot, something that would be a story in its own. His own hand looked small in comparison, paler and softer, though it, too, was beginning to change, his palms hardening with sword calluses, the skin over his knuckles cracking in places, forming odd little ridges.
"I like that better. Being able to touch."
Dias blinked at him, and Claude realizing with a start how this had to look, how embarrassingly earnest it all sounded, his thoughts running away with his mouth. It all presupposed a certain kind of kinship, an intimacy that seemed almost wrong to fling into somebody else's face, almost like a demand...
"Your hands are cold," Dias said eventually, as if it were the most important thing about this scene.
"Um," Claude said, his face red and not quite sure how to reply to that but making to withdraw anyway. "I. Sorry about that."
"I didn't say I minded."
"Oh."
There was that certain gleam in his eyes again-similar to-the one from before, yet subtly different, an added nuance that Claude wasn't sure how to decipher. Something was tickling the back of his mind, almost like an answer, but it made little sense, so he resolved to ignore it for now.
Dias' fingers began to move again, carefully rubbing the warmth back into his feet, jostling his own hand. He slowly withdrew, the embarrassment lingering, but not quite so bad anymore.
Perhaps the most important thing was really the cold.
- FIN -
----
A/N: Again, I'm very sorry for taking so long. The sudden spell of cold was probably inspiring. I hope it wasn't too bad, but please tell me what you think. ^^" Now, for some authorial blabbing:
1) I like working with both characters immensely, as they are both are both very similar in some aspects and quite different in others. The first few months after their decision to travel together in the ending are some of the most fascinating to me, because I love exploring how their relationship works, and I also like bringing up these themes of culture clash and culture differences.
2) The title is from a Margaret Atwood quote: "The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love." While this story isn't necessarily about love, it's about things that suddenly gain importance, and you have to adjust your views. So you might need a lot of sensitivity and nuances for one thing that was never important before.
3) Although there is an item called "Cinderella Glass" in the game, I can't picture the Expellians knowing the story of Cinderella. It just doesn't make any sense.
4) Since the Second Evo release date is approaching, does that mean I have to re-label my fics to read "Star Ocean - Second Evolution"? What do you guys think?
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