An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Rating: General Fandom: Radiata Stories (PS2) Characters: Jack Russell & Flora Additional Tags: Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Relationships, Bonding, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss of Parent(s)
Summary: Jack's lingering in the Olacion Order post-sermon leads to a connection between two orphaned protégés that neither of them had expected.
He had never been much for prayer.
Yet she can't help but wonder, when he sits there smiling at her, all shining teeth and goofy grins - why stay after a sermon if not to talk to the gods?
"Is there something on your mind, Jack?" The question poses no threat. Her eyes, however, appraise his reaction with particular interest. An answer existed somewhere beneath the surface of that wide-eyed wonder. Of that, she was certain.
The dopey grin she receives in response, however, would have made anyone wonder whether anything of substance stood behind that absent stare. "Who, me? Nah, I'm just enjoying the afterparty."
Said afterparty, of course, consisted solely of Flora, still sweeping up after Eugene spilled something suspiciously similar to liquor next to the altar, and Alvin, delivering a passionate manifesto about the importance of preparedness to the empty pews. Jack listens in on the lecture with something akin to mock agreement, grin a bit too toothy to pass for plain. Truth be told, Alvin did make for an amusing sight. All that sweat simply from flailing his limbs. He might be the first martyr to die from self-inflicted dehydration should he keep his sermon going.
Turning his attention aside from Alvin, hoping to keep out of the spit zone, Jack rocks back and forth off the edge of the pew. His boots scuff the edges of the holy texts stowed beneath them. Master Kain might have keeled over if he noticed the new dirt stains on the Psalm of Enjela. Flora makes a mental note not to mention where Jack sat in service today. "Why d'ya ask?"
"Because most people don't decide to stay and watch us sweep after service."
Wide eyes etch his shock clear as day into his face. That cheekiness of his has seemed to rub off on her. Master Fernando likely would have laughed from his gut if he heard her give such a quip. A "firebrand", he'd call her, "the spitting image of her father, that's for sure".
Attempting to lighten her tone, despite the sudden tension she felt tighten her fingers, she continues, "if someone stays, they usually speak to the gods for guidance. The confessional booths should be bursting with requests from citizens right about now. It made me worry whether you were alright, or in need of assistance."
"Don't you worry about me! I'm just fine!" One fist beats against his chest. A "macho" gesture, she supposes, or one at least supposed to resemble an act of confidence. Was that supposed to reassure her? If anything, he seemed more a child for it. A boy pretending to be a man. "Besides, you know I'm not really into all that 'prayer' stuff. The gods haven't exactly had a conversation with me. I hear from you, and that's enough for me."
Despite his claim, the silence that followed strangles them. The tension seems all too thick to speak of anything but the imminent storm, a calm before the question:
"Say, Flora?"
She knew where this was headed. It was that same tone of voice Synelia used when she'd stared out at the stars too long, imagining her romantic getaway with a dreamy man. It was the same intonation that coated Cosmo's tone when he asked her what was wrong and she assured him everything was alright. It was the same prying hope her father had used when he asked if she would survive should something to happen, right before his death. She knew what was to come, and so stays silent.
"Your dad used to be a bigwig around here, right?"
And there it is.
Then again, it isn't exactly the way she expected it to be worded. Most others laced their questions with inauthentic care and a restrained sense of nosiness. Only Jack could make it sound so...casual. She almost laughs -- almost. "I don't think Master Kain would call him a 'bigwig'..." His phrasing might not have caused her to crack, but the mental image of her father sporting a giant wig -- and Master Kain's disbelieving sigh sure to soon follow -- certainly does. A giggle slips through the grief. "...but yes."
"Godhand Rivera, they called him. The man with the miracle hands." Her own hands, those that carried the blood of that talented man, grip the broom a bit tighter now. "Priestess Anastasia says I look just like him. Achilles, too. He swears I have that same -- how did he say it? -- light in me that my father had. They all say we are -- were -- the same."
She notices a shift in Jack then, an intensity that had not existed there before. Hunched forward in the pew now, he seems all the more intent on a conversation she assumed he had started only to fill the silence. She stiffens as his eyes bore into her, and so turns herself away from his sight lest she crumble beneath it. He seems to not-so-subtly study her every move thereafter, "hmm"-ing and "huh"-ing under his breath before drawing his conclusion:
"I dunno about that...I can't see it."
She never knew she could spin so swiftly on her heel. Words had all but failed her, lips flopping open and flapping shut just as soon. "You...what?" A surprisingly intelligent response, given her shock.
Jack had closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, now practically shoving pursed lips and narrowed eyes into her face. Spotting similarities, perhaps? Or simply invading her personal space? Then again, Jack never seemed to care for one's "bubble", nor the health of their kicked kneecaps. "Mmm, well, the hair's kinda the same, I guess. And the uniform, too. Guess that kinda goes with the territory, though."
It clicks. "You...knew my father?" Seldom few friends her age had witnessed a time when all of Radiata knew of Rivera's skill and wisdom. Yet he, an outsider, knew his face?
"Well, yeah!" Jack nods, as if she should have known. "Adele used to drag me here to pray whenever my dad had to go away on a mission for the knights. It's kinda hard to miss the guy teaching you how to pray." Before he speaks again, a somberness infects his expression, one unusual for someone so normally sanguine. "But when mom got sick, he came to the house all the time. He tried everything he knew to try and heal her. Guess he owed Dad a favor, or something. He never figured out how to help her. Dad, either, come to think of it."
Compassion clutches at Flora's heart, tearing it asunder from her self-absorbed bubble. She is not the only one here who had lost someone dear to them -- and many were the ones whom Jack had counted as lost.
"I'm...so sorry." The words seem lacking, inadequate in light of his suffering. Still, they are all she has. "I never knew yours was the family he visited out in Solieu. He was always saying what wild children Sir Cairn had. At least, one of them was, anyways." Fixing her face with a smile, she adds, "some things never change, I see."
"Hey!" He feigns offense, hands planted atop of his hips. The twitch at the tip of his lips betrays his threatening posture.
"Am I wrong?"
The challenge causes Jack's bravado to dissipate, now painfully aware of how right she is. Then again, that came as no surprise to either of them - Flora's wisdom almost always won out over Jack's impulsive insistence. He shrugs, defeated.
Flora laughs - genuinely, this time - and dares to inquire. "...do you miss him?"
Jack's eyes lighten then, startled, before fading into a dim cloud of muddied brown. No doubt he had to consider such a lofty question, even if they both already knew the answer. "Well, yeah, I guess." That's what she had assumed all this time. After all, how could someone not? "But, to be honest, I don't really think about it much."
That, more than anything else Jack had ever said, causes Flora to stop dead in her tracks.
"It's not like I don't have family. Mom took care of me until the day she died, and Adele's more than enough to make up for the both of them with how bossy she is." The wistfulness that distanced the warmth from his tone eases then, instead replaced by sincere gratitude that spread to the smile on his lips. "And besides! Now I have all sorts of friends in Radiata. I've got the Captain, and Ridley -- even if she's too stubborn to admit it. Sarge and Daniel seem cool...well, okay, that's pushing it. But I still like 'em! Clive might be useless, but he keeps me company, and, well -- I've got you, too!"
The statement overflows with such genuine joy that Flora curses the flush that rises to kiss her cheeks. How can someone say something so...so cliché and make it sound so heartfelt!? Only Jack Russell.
"Still, it doesn't mean he's still here with you now. Other people can come alongside of you, but they can't replace who was once there." Flora's hand slips into the hem of her cloak, grasping the picture that lay within; the picture that Jack, not too long ago now, hand-delivered to her. He still helped strangers, even then. Now, he helps a friend. "It's still not the same."
"Maybe you're right..." Not at all an unusual phrase exchanged between the two of them.
"...but so what?" A completely unexpected, never-before-been-said statement.
"Dad might not be with me, but I can still make him proud. You know, a legacy, and all that! If I become the strongest person in Radiata, it won't matter whether I got kicked out of those stuffy old knights or not. Everyone will know Jack Russell, son of Cairn, was worthy of wielding the Arbitrator!"
From the sheath dangling at his side, Jack flourishes a sword, one Flora could not recall ever having seen before. Where had he found such a magnificent blade? Prisms of light reflect off of every inch of the metal, cascading down from the stained glass of the temple's ceiling. Hues of amethyst and emerald mingle with the sapphire set in its hilt.
In Jack's grasp, this "Arbitrator" seems strangely at home with a new host -- if even an unseasoned one, for now. With an admittedly-clumsy flourish, Jack extends the blade out towards her. "En garde!"
He...can't be serious, can he?
No, wait. This is Jack. Of course he's serious.
When Flora's reaction amounts to stunned silence and a disbelieving stare, Jack resorts to pouting and pleading. "Aww, come on! How can I be as good a knight as Dad if I don't have a sparring partner?"
Without missing another beat, Flora twirls her broom as if it were a spear, wielding it with all the awkwardness one would expect of a pacifistic priestess.
Within moments, their sparring starts. In seconds, it stops. The broom had been discarded, Flora disarmed in mere moments. Jack slumps against the floor, laughing too hard to stand upright. Flora attempted to pout, to protest that she wasn't prepared for this, but breaks into a fit of giggles as soon as Jack insists he now understands why her father taught her to be a healer, not a fighter.
As their laughter fades, and the two find themselves alone amidst an empty -- and now messy once more -- chapel, Jack clasps his hands upon her shoulders with surprising strength. Flora finds herself too startled to resist the touch, instead staring straight into the face of the world's most overconfident, underqualified, and inexplicably but undeniably hopeful hero-in-the-making.
"We can do it, Flora. We'll be even better than our parents!" The statements escalate to exclamations, declaring their coming glory with a conviction Alvin could never imagine matching. "Just think about it! With my sword skills and your, uh, spirit fingers - we'll be unstoppable!"
She wants to deny him. She wishes she could extinguish his hope, if only to quell the inevitable crushing of her own. But something about the firmness of his grasp, the passion of his speech, and the fire burning right behind those innocent eyes makes her believe in something more. It inspires her to hope.
With all the tenderness she can muster, she lifts one of his hands off her shoulder and sets it atop of her heart, laying her own palm atop of it.
"Let's make our parents proud, Jack."
