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The envelope landed flat on the table, weighed down by the meager scraps of clues it contained. A few poorly scribbled and hard to read notes, a small iron key, a coded message or a map in need of a cipher, and Setzer's own elegantly scribed, organized analysis of what it might have meant. He never put much of himself into it, leaving it to her to figure out; instead, every so often, he allowed himself the luxury of wondering whether she knew Locke any better than he did.
For her part, Celes pulled the envelope across the table with her fingertips before pouring its contents out and sorting through them. She knew she should have been grateful. Instead, she felt her heart sink. "Not much to go on."
Setzer tossed his coat over the back of the opposing couch and sprawled after it. As Celes went over the notes, he watched her – the way her fingers moved deliberately under the words, the way she pursed her lips, and most definitely the way she was not particularly stirred by his findings.
"Do you ever think," she paused, putting care behind her tone and wording, "Maybe, we're wasting our time?"
"Consider it a blessing to have so much time to waste," Setzer suggested, glancing at the fixed blue sky, replete with distant, drifting clouds framed by the cabin window. "No wars to speak of, no megalomaniac gods, no home to return to and rebuild..."
"Missing friends," Celes added to the list, which he duly ignored.
"Nothing of what dreams are made of." Setzer shrugged as far as he could without compromising his sprawl. "One might even consider it boring."
"I don't know." Celes shook her head. "If he was out there to be found, we should have found him already."
Neutral, he stared at her across the table until she roused from her thoughts. She answered his gaze coolly, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear.
"I am listening," she told him. "You're bored. You know you don't have to help me."
Instantly, Setzer sat up, leaning forward over the table, towards her. Celes couldn't read people nearly as well as she could before magic died, and even then the self-styled Wandering Gambler had always been flippant and difficult for her to understand... But his poise screamed, Yes, I do. Whether she liked it or not. For a fleeting moment, he seemed on the edge of admitting why.
"Even if I didn't help you, you'd still need me to get you from here to there." Instead, he diffused the conversation with a genuine, if weary and near deprecating smile. "Am I right?"
It was past midnight. Somewhere in the world, it was high noon... Figaro, probably. Somehow, it was always noon in Figaro, even in the dead of night. The precise time didn't matter, only that Celes was sound asleep, safe in the lower deck. While she slept, Setzer worked. Wheedling out leads in the back of his mind, he studied the old map... although it was still strange to think of it in terms of the old map, when it was barely so many years ago.
Be honest. It wasn't the map that bothered him – there was something downright epic about living through a cataclysm. The game was getting more and more difficult to endure. He was compelled to check and double check his work, to make certain he hadn't played this clue or that informant before. Even though he had a framework to work with, he had started strong in the beginning and exhausted too much already. He hadn't stooped to making up leads wholecloth, and he hoped he would come up with a better solution by the end that he wouldn't have to.
Finding Locke as he had was a stroke of luck, for good or bad. He hadn't determined that yet, all he knew was that if Celes had gone left instead of right, the search would have ended in that accursed cavern... Instead, Setzer put off telling her. Morals played little part in it; he held no illusions of what he was doing. At the time, he just... couldn't.
Guilt was part of it. Locke had taken to magic. Setzer had struggled with it, though not as bad as some. But the thief had accepted it, rolled it with, and in the end, Setzer surmised, it had gotten him killed when he had come to rely upon it. In destroying the Goddesses and killing Kefka, they had cut his lifeline, quite possibly when he needed it the most.
Until tonight, the ruse was simple. Easy. Tonight felt different. Tonight, Celes' words weighed heavily on him. How long could he keep going, especially if she was losing hope? "As long as it takes."
All at once, the cabin around him felt constricted. Setzer needed to see the sky. He needed to breathe.
The lagomorph peered at her from the doorjamb, and she stepped past it, only to find that the study was empty. As it was, Celes might have turned and walked out again, had the open book on the desk not stolen her immediate attention. The handwriting was familiar, in that she had been tracking it across continents for years.
The leatherbound journal was filled with abbreviated information: latitude, longitude, altitude, legends and folklore and local hearsay, interspersed within firsthand travel notes and dates and distance traveled. The first date was noted as some months after the Fall; the last few entries, undated, were marked Phoenix. The story it told ended abruptly, with a single line on the last page: Fell. No way back. Need better plan.
The rest, a third towards the back, was blank paper.
Part of her wanted to believe that this was an addendum to Setzer's fabrications, but many of the fragile leads they followed in the past years were here in full... if the order was backward. The descriptions of the unnamed cave under Phoenix were enough for Celes to put the pieces together – they had been there, it had been one of the first places they looked, and now Setzer was leading them backwards.
Why?
She heard him coming when he was halfway down the hall. Steeling herself for confrontation, Celes squared her shoulders and waited; she wouldn't indulge his stupid games.
He must have known it. She had the advantage, but she waited for him to recover his shock at finding her squared off and battle-ready at his desk... waited for him to offer some rationalization. What she didn't expect was for him to resign without her saying a word.
"Well, I imagine this ends our time together. I believe you know your way from here, or if you don't you'll soon find it," he said. It was neither explanation nor apology, and delivered in such a tone that made Celes think he must have imagined such an eventuality to the point of recitation. "Farewell, my dear; may Fortune favor."
With that, he tramped off, faster than perhaps was necessary. Aggravated, Celes flipped to the first entry of the journal and began reading deep, looking for an answer.
Maintenance was the last thing the Falcon needed. However, it served to keep his hands busy and his thoughts occupied; it was therapeutic, after a fashion. Setzer pointedly ignored the reshod Imperial boots that appeared in the periphery of his vision, and flat-out ignored the woman wearing them, particularly when she didn't say anything.
Figuring he could wait the ex-general out, he disassembled the same ballast component three times and reassembled it twice. The third time, he languished over the parts, trying to buy himself time. Alas, Celes seemed to take that as an invitation. She crouched by the pit; he knew that if he dared look her way he'd be more trapped than he already was.
"How could you keep this from me?"
"Easily." He had wanted to tell her, at first, but he waited for the right time. And that time had never come. In place of the truth, bluffing came naturally, even if Celes deserved better. "Because I wasn't thinking of you at all. I was thinking of myself and I was thinking of...."
Placing his hands flat before the toes of her boots, Setzer looked up at her. "I know what you're going through. I know how it feels – you have to find him, dead or alive, doesn't matter, nothing matters, because until you know for certain, it isn't real. Until you see it, it isn't real. So you want to see for yourself." Celes didn't budge, only stared at him. He couldn't tell if he was getting across to her. She was stronger than he was, in more ways than one – it didn't mean he wanted her hurt. "But you don't. Trust me on this. No one should ever..."
In hindsight, Setzer had wondered if he hadn't encouraged Daryl on, whether she would still be alive. Of course, at the time, such a thought would have been ridiculous – living fast was the rule. With Locke, he wondered much the same – would he still be alive, if they hadn't killed Kefka? If they had waited a week or not tarried about in their quest, would it have mattered in the long run?
That regret, Celes was not going to drag out of him. There was no moment of weakness or spite where he would lay that particularly gruesome truth at her feet. Fortune favored, and she didn't ask him to. Instead, she was staring at his hands, or the grease that marred the floor between them.
"Do you really want me to leave?"
"No, I...." What? He no longer knew what he wanted out of her – friend, lover, companion-in-adventuring, rival – only that he enjoyed her company. "I don't. But I don't see why you would stay."
Celes retreated, marginally, sitting back and crossing her legs. There was a crack in her defenses, one he hadn't noticed, and he wondered if it had been there the whole while. "Where would I go?"
"Anywhere you want." That was the beauty of life.
"But I'd still need you to get me from here to there."
Setzer scoffed, remembering the parts scattered at his feet. "I'd have to put the damn airship back together, first."
Celes cocked her head. "Show me?"
In response to his utterly baffled stare, she slid from her position and slipped into the pit. He couldn't help but laugh – at the request, at the situation, at life in general.
"My pleasure."