Zidaaaane... can you tuck me in? *Grabby hands* Pleeeease?
♡ ▐▒ ━━━ They were camping on the outskirts of Qu’s Marsh, where the humid, suffocating heat of the swamp swirled against the gray depths of the Mist. It was agreed, however, that after the party had slurped through endless thick mud, nearly been eaten alive by bugs as big as their thumbs and of which there were thousands, and fought against fiends that insisted on soaking them every three feet, that not one of them could stand to be in there a second longer. They each wore blotches of brown mud on their clothes, smears of it caked on their faces and hair. Zidane was so tired that his gaze was blurring against the crackling heat of a fire Freya had set up only minutes ago. The warmth of it steamed against the mud upon his hands, but he didn’t care…
He was worried.
Garnet and Rusty had set off for Burmecia (or so he assumed), the princess declaring that she had to speak to her mother–that she could stop war. Zidane had been in enough battles to know that it wasn’t that easy to stop fighting… sometimes there were no words that could quell the passion behind the weapons. Garnet didn’t know this and yet she drugged them with Sleeping Weed and ran off without him!
It stung and he hated to admit that.
I barely know her! Damn, but she’s all I can think about… what is wrong with me?
And then a tiny, timid voice floated from behind him…
“Zidaaaane… can you tuck me in?“ There was a pause as the mage outstretched his small, leather-bound hands, glowing eyes blinking at him blearily. “Pleeeease?”
It was a welcome distraction. Zidane smiled wearily at the mage and creaked to his feet, Freya so consumed in her thoughts of her burning homeland that she barely noticed the exchanged. Zidane slogged over to the small tent where Vivi was nestled and plopped beside him, nodding.
There were times Zidane forgot that Vivi was still only a kid. Maybe it was because his face was always hidden behind shadow, his body the right size for a little boy and yet he looked nothing like the children Zidane had seen screeching through the city streets of Lindblum. There were no smiles on Vivi’s face, only shadow and those glittering amber eyes…
Zidane immediately felt guilty–it had to be so hard to be different than everybody else… and after the ordeal in Dali and then on the cargo ship…
“Yeah, it’s no problem,” Zidane murmured, reaching out to wrap the quilts snug around the little mage.
It was only in moments like these that the thief remembered (with a sudden pang) that Vivi was still so young. And yet he fought harder than any of them, he kept pushing on despite how terrifying it had to be to learn your whole life was a lie…
It was inspiring and it was sad. It wasn’t fair.
But Zidane hoped little moments like these–where Vivi could still pretend he was a child that needed tucking ins or played with toy soldiers–made up for all the time he inevitably already lost.
