joudama (stopthatgirl7) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2009-01-23 03:43:00 |
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Current music: | Lee Jun Ki - Han Ma Di Man (Let Me Say A Word...) |
Entry tags: | ! 2009 eight characters challenge, author: joudama, crossover: ff7/the king and the clown, pairing: angeal/gong-gil |
A Hope in Hell (pt 2) [Final Fantasy 7/The King and the Clown: Angeal & Gong-gil]
Title: A Hope in Hell
Author: joudama
Fandom: FF7/The King and the Clown
Status: 2/4 (Part 1 is here)
Rating: worksafe, but PG to R just for themes. There are hints of canon m/m from The King and the Clown.
Word count: +6700
Prompt: Angeal and Gong-gil with the title, "A Hope in Hell"
A\N: Ahhahaha, see how many parts this is? It's because at +20 pages, it was getting awfully unwieldy, so I split part two into two parts...then split it again when it hit twenty pages again and was still going. Part 3 and 4 are coming, promise--after all, I'm shooting for having it all done by the 28th so I can have the second prompt in this crossover-verse done. Shooting for, at any rate. *dies* I had to truncate bits to keep this from turning into a bloody novel, and I apologize. Damn deadlines! *raises tiny fist, rails at universe*
Since this takes place during the Wutai war, about six or seven years in, it is full of OCs. Also, in case in of y'all care, 'Park' and 'Bak' are technically the exact same name (朴, 박, and it can also be 'Pak'). Fun with romanizations! Rather than confuse the issue, I'm using two different romanizations. I had picked out "Park" long before I tracked down the names of the nobles who had brought down King Yeonsan-gun, and by the time I found those names, Lt. Park was, well, Lt. Park, and I couldn't rename him. So, yeah. x_X
You don't need to have seen The King and the Clown--truth be told, seeing the movie is actually kind of spoiler, go fig for that. XD;;
--
The days slipped into weeks, and there were certain constants: insurgency, paperwork and secrecy. An outbreak of the first that had had to be put down and hard had led to a build-up of the second, and so Angeal was currently in the midst of too much of it that which was in regards to the third, and after three hours of it, Angeal was strongly considering blasting his laptop with a Thundaga just for a break.
And the goddess was truly merciful, because before he could equip his Thundaga there was a knock on his door, and Angeal wondered who under the Heavens it could possibly be. And not caring, because it was a distraction. "Come in!"
He wasn't really expecting anyone, but he really wasn't expecting Dr. Constantin.
"Yeah?" he said, saving his work and closing his laptop quickly. ShinRa medic or not, the man didn't have the clearance to see what Angeal was working on just then. Hel's realm, Angeal wished he didn't have the clearance for it given what it was, but that was neither here nor there. Orders were orders, war was war, being in command had a price, and a conscience never got you very far in ShinRa--the gods only knew how often Angeal had found himself wondering if he was the only person in the whole damned company who ever lost any sleep over the things they had to do. "What's going on?" he said with a frown. Dr. Constantin was looking pretty grim, and a grim looking medic was never a good sign.
"Remember how you wanted me to keep you updated on that mute Wutai man, Gong-gil?"
His frown deepened at the name. Gong-gil hadn't slipped his mind, per se, but he hadn't been able to really follow up on him, not with everything of the last two weeks--two insurgency attacks one right after the other, one of which had been uncomfortably close to the Daerimmun and both requiring more manpower than he had to comfortably spare because the geniuses in Midgar had decided that since they had the castle, they could spare some of his troopers to go to Taishang and Gwongnaam, and Angeal had spent the last two days arguing that if they took any more of his men they might as well give Chochung back to Emperor Kisaragi with a big fucking bow around it. "Yeah. I still need to interrogate him, but I need him not about to pass out for that. Is he finally up for it?" Something about Constantin's expression told him that answer was probably 'no,' but one could always hope.
"Someone tried to kill him. He's been poisoned," Dr. Constantin said grimly, and Angeal felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.
"What?!"
--
It had been stupid, Angeal realized now, to leave most of the Wutai castle workers from before in the kitchens. It was just...they didn't have the manpower, they honestly didn't. It had seemed easier to just set guards in place and let the palace run as it always had, especially since ShinRa hadn't sent over what they deemed non-essential personnel, and was in fact actively shipping the people he did have out. They considered Chochung secure, since the Chochungese themselves had been the ones helping them bring down Yeonsan-gun, but the problem was that "a handful of advisers in Daerimmun" didn't even begin to equal "all of Chochung."
But everything had been going fine, in the castle at least--because all of them had been hit and hit hard by the Yeonsan-gun's insanity and were too nervous by default to try anything...until someone had tried to poison Gong-gil.
In a grim way, it was almost nice to know that whoever had done this hadn't been a terrorist gunning for ShinRa, but someone bound and determine to carry out old vengeances now that they had the chance.
But what it meant was that there was a threat and security breach; one he had to handle and handle fast. And that meant more fucking interrogations.
Never had the idea of summarily executing everyone looked so good, and it highly disturbed Angeal that he considered it for even a split second.
He hated it here.
Angeal shook his head at himself and headed down to the medical facilities. This was on some level his damned fault, and he figured he owed it to Gong-gil to go see him and find out how he was doing.
The castle was large, and one section of it had been dedicated to the medics and had been turned into a semi-decent field hospital.
"General in the room!" someone yelled as soon as he went in, and everyone able whirled around to face him and salute; those in their beds went as close to formal as they could and those that were able saluted.
"At ease, as you were," Angeal said, then looked around. "Where's Dr. Constantin?"
"Just a moment, sir, I'll go get him," one of the medics said, and it never stopped being weird, being called 'sir' by people twice his age.
"Thanks," he said, looking around. He'd been down here only two or three times in the last month--the Wutai had some nasty poisons and weapons and a great love of putting those two together; there were more than a few people here recovering from things Cure and normal Remedies or Esuna couldn't fix. It was insane, how much the Wutai knew about materia, for all they never seemed to use any materia at all. He had no idea how by the Ferryman they did it.
It was the not needing materia that had caused the war to drag on for so long--the Wutai had ways of countering half the things they threw at them with materia; it seemed like only high-level materia and the most powerful SOLDIERs managed to make a dent in things. It was why he, Genesis, and especially Sephiroth had risen so quickly in the ranks; they were amongst the few that could actually make a dent in things, with their affinity for materia and magic and their strength. The three of them also were good with people, as odd as that was when put in connection with Sephiroth--Sephiroth may have been as cold and distant as they came, on the surface, at least, but he knew how to lead troops and would bring the last man out, and that alone inspired loyalty, and there were few men who wouldn't follow as gifted a strategist as Sephiroth. Genesis, well, Genesis just had a way with people; put him in a group and everyone would be following him within the hour, it seemed like. Angeal had no idea what it was that made people so willing to follow him; he wasn't nearly as brilliant as Sephiroth or as charismatic as Genesis, so he just chalked it up to him giving a damn about the people under his command. He knew that they might be killed because of his orders, and he never forgot it. Their lives were his responsibility, and he took that responsibility seriously.
While he waited for Constantin, he spoke to the troopers and SOLDIERs around him, seeing how they were doing and asking if there was anything they needed. Most of them said they were fine, but one kid, who couldn't have been more than fifteen if he was a day, asked wistfully for some paper or something so he could write home, and Angeal nodded, saying he'd see to it.
"Thank you, sir," the kid said. "I'm sure my ma, she's real worried about me."
"Where are you from? Midgar?" Angeal asked, guessing by the kid's accent. Angeal hadn't been in Midgar more than a short while himself, but the kid's accent was pure Midgar slums.
The boy nodded. "Yeah. Ma, she didn't want me goin' off to war or nothin', but I figured, yeah, big glory an' all that," he said, giving a lopsided grin, and Angeal laughed.
"I was the same way," he said. "And I probably should write my mother, too. Mothers are good at worrying."
The kid grinned, then grimaced and tried to cover it. "Yeah. My Ma, she worries all the time. I shoulda wrote her before. Got nothin' but time now," he said, staring down at his legs--or judging by the shape, the leg--under the sheets. "Ain't gonna be fightin' nothin' no time soon, after all."
Angeal patted the boy's shoulder, then looked around when he heard a voice behind him call out, "General Angeal, sir!"
"Take care," Angeal said, standing up. The kid, Jeffries, nodded and gave a small salute, and Angeal went over to Constantin.
"Let me guess, here to check on our Wutai guest?" Constantin said, once they were out of earshot, and Angeal nodded. "I figured it'd be a good idea to keep him away from the guys out here, all things considered."
"Probably a good idea," Angeal said wryly. He was no fool; everyone in there had been injured by the Wutai and were still inclined to "kill first, questions never" where the Wutai were concerned.
"And this way, we can monitor him better--keep an eye on him, and watch his food. The only food he gets is the food we're preparing here ourselves for all the patients."
"Good," Angeal said, nodding once. "What in Hel's named happened?
"Oh, and before I forget...can you get some paper and an envelope for Jeffries over there? He said he wanted to write his mother," Angeal said, wanting to get that straight before he got distracted, glancing over at the boy's bed. Jeffries was staring out at nothing, and Angeal wondered what had to be going through his mind.
Constantin nodded. "Not a problem, sir."
"Thanks," Angeal said with a nod. There was too much happening, and he wanted to take care of that with Jeffries while he was thinking about it. "And back to the poisoning. What happened?"
Constantin's face grew grim. "Someone slipped something into his food. And only his food; no one else in the cells showed any signs of poisoning. And the guy is lucky; the only reason it was found in time was because the guard noticed something was wrong pretty quickly; if too much more time had passed, you'd be dealing with a murder, not an attempted murder."
"Are you sure it was a deliberate poisoning?" Angeal asked, hoping for some other reason to explain this.
"Very," Constantin said, shaking his head. "I ran toxicity tests when I did his blood work, and none of what showed up is anything that could have accidentally gotten into just his food. Hel's realm, I'm not even a hundred percent sure what I'm working with. Normal Remedies don't have any effect. A fully-mastered Esuna helped some, but not nearly enough, and the only ones that do are the Wutai ones--so can you have your boys take out some of the Wutai materia and Master them for us next time they're on a mission?"
Angeal nodded. It made a sick sort of sense, really--materia were the crystallized memories of the Planet; it would seem those memories were location-based in some respects, because how could you expect a materia from Mideel to heal a poison from plants in Wutai? He suspected it was part of why ShinRa was so interested in the Wutai materia; he could only imagine what sort of things they would be able to recombine it with materia from other parts of the Planet to make.
Truthfully, it kind of terrified him--while it was possible they might make amazing advances in healing materia, only the gods knew what kind of weapons ShinRa would make, and weapons really were more ShinRa's style.
"I've also had to order special Remedies from Midgar, with the hopes those will work, since the newer ones have been formulated for some of these Wutai toxins," Constantin continued. "It'd help if had a clue what had even poisoned him, if for no other reason than I could ship it back to Midgar and let the science departments have at it." He sighed. "For now, I'm just fighting the symptoms and hoping he pulls through without too many side effects. His liver damned near gave out," he said, looking disgusted. "We've had to keep throwing Curaga and Esuna at him to keep his liver from completely failing from trying to flush all that crap out of him."
"How is he now?"
"Stable," Constantin said. "Barely, but stable. We've got him knocked out all the time with Sleep and hit him with Esuna and Curaga once his stats start tanking. We're having to do it less and less, thank Odin," he said tiredly. "We actually managed to go most of today so far without it, so he's getting better. Damned if I can figure what the Wutes put in that crap, but they were bound and determined to kill that guy--if we hadn't had fully-mastered Esuna and Curaga, he'd have died. And here he is," Constantin said, and drew back the curtain shielding Gong-gil.
"Grey-eyed Minerva," Angeal let out. He'd thought Gong-gil had looked fragile before, but it was nothing to this--the man looked as if a breath would break him...and so beautiful in that fragility that Angeal was almost glad for it, because it left him unable to breathe that breath for a split second. It was horrible and beautiful, all at once, and it hit him worse than seeing Gong-gil for the first time in that cell had; for the first time, he understood, truly understood, what Genesis had meant about theia mania when he would go off on one of his literary tears...because only a divine madness could explain this, how seeing someone so ill and broken could hit him so hard in a way he couldn't fully understand. It was like before, in the cells, when he had seen Gong-gil clutching weakly at his robes and his bandaged wrist the one image of the man that he hadn't been able to shake. Even now that first image came to him and clawed at something in him, at something in a way he didn't fully understand.
Angeal wondered what the fuck was wrong with him, then decided not think too hard about what Genesis would have to say about this.
Some rational part of him was trying to figure the situation out; he had a nagging feeling that someone had tried this because Gong-gil no longer had Yeonsan-gun's protection. Which meant that Gong-gil was tied to the Mad King, and probably would have to be executed.
Some part of him, looking at Gong-gil so pale and broken and beautiful in the hospital bed, refused. Theia mania, divine madness; some part of him refused, refused all of this, refused that the most out of all of the shit he had had to do since he had first set foot in Chochung and was still having to do, all the things that tore at his conscience and caused him to wake up shaking in the middle of the night and hating what war was making him become. No more, part of him said. Not any more.
He was going to find out what had happened. He was going to figure out this mystery, why someone wanted Gong-gil dead so much, what had happened to make the man try to kill himself. Whatever had happened before was obviously still going on, and he was going to end it. He was going to set something right, by the gods. Everything had been destruction and killing and he was sick of it. Looking at this broken man, broken long before ShinRa had come and shades of whatever it had been still trying to break him, he refused.
Somehow, somehow...ShinRa be damned, he was going to make something better for someone.
"I want," Angeal said, staring down at Gong-gil, "a guard on him at all times. In fact, I want the guy who noticed when he was poisoned assigned to him, since he was so quick before. Access to him is hereby restricted. I am going to find out what in Hel's name happened here," Angeal said tightly, because by all the gods, he was.
--
"We will never be rid of that noxious clown," Yu said stiffly. "Hewley has him under constant guard, now."
Seong shook his head. "ShinRa will not be here forever. If nothing else, we can expel him from the palace once the boy playing at a general ShinRa has installed here has accepted Yi Yeok..."
"We have no proof he will!" Yu said sharply. "The only proof we have is that he's already favoring that clown somehow, and has said he wants 'time' before he sets a successor for Yeonsan-gun! Who knows how long we'll have to wait, and the longer Gong-gil lives, the more chances he has to get his hooks into the Boy General. We knew it was going to take time, but now we can't afford to wait."
Hong, the fifth conspirator against Yeonsan-gun, spoke slowly. "We may have acted hastily, though," he said, knowing no one was going to like what he had to say. "Yes, we all saw his majesty's insanity where the clown was concerned...but we may have drawn unnecessary attention to him. Hewley may have shown interest in Gong-gil before, but now he is most definitely going to have his eye on the clown.
Let us wait," he said faintly. "Let us see what ShinRa's puppet general does."
"Wait for him to discover us?" Yu said sourly.
"He will not," Bak said, just as stiffly. "He has no idea what happened in regards to the king and Gong-gil and no way of finding out what happened, even with his interrogations. Servants and cooks? What do they know? Nothing that will connect any of it with us."
"And the one who delivered the poison?" Hong asked uncertainly. "Was it not one of the 'servants and cooks'?"
"She will not speak," Seong said sharply. "Do you think me a fool? She was given gil for her family and sent away. With so many leaving now that the king is gone and they are not forced to stay, who will miss one fool of a serving girl who has left the castle for her home now that she can?"
Hong said nothing, but knew then that precautions, more than the ones already in place, had to be taken.
The fragile peace would not be broken, nor would succession, nor the mandates of the Heavens, and nor would they lose their positions--not for ShinRa, and not for King Yeonsan-gun's clown.
--
The insurgencies were dying down, slowly--aided in no small part, Angeal thought dryly, with the number of insurgents going down. They had begun a new strategy, one Sephiroth had designed in the Yamato province, of sending in small, surgical strike teams of the more elite SOLDIERs to root out areas that were hotbeds in one fell swoop. It had worked wonders in Yamato--that, and the Sacking of Nankyo.
Angeal was almost jealous of how Sephiroth had handled that, just burning the city and being done with it rather than taking it over, and then he had himself a nice bottle of the stuff they had in Wutai that almost compared to Gongagan moonshine because that beat thinking too hard about things and just what that sacking probably meant. But the insurgencies going down meant less collateral damage, and fewer of his men sent out into harm's way--the shit for poisons and toxins the Wutai loved to use, in Chochung especially, didn't have as much of an impact on SOLDIERs, not with all the mako and whatever else the scientists had cobbled together that they had in them, and a pair of SOLDIERs could in one or two hours do more damage to the Wutai and take less than an entire squadron. Angeal'd been out on most of them and had more than enough paperwork on all of them to sign off on.
And he knew that he should have delegated an attempted murder investigation of a Wutai national to...well, someone what wasn't him.
He knew he could have and should have, that it wasn't his job and he ignored that. This had been one of his prisoners and he was responsible, by the gods. He knew he needed to be focusing on if he was even supposed to be letting Gong-gil live or not, not who had tried to kill him, because if it turned out Gong-gil was to be a "casualty of the fall of the castle," then this was all for nothing
But...but he wanted to know. Know what happened under his watch, what risks there were to him and his men, and, when he was being honest with himself, wanted to know why under the Heavens someone would be that bound and determined to kill Gong-gil of all people. Angeal had only met him face-to-face that once, but it was enough to know that, despite what the advisers and that Jang woman had said, the man was, well, harmless.
Harmless and...broken, so much even now it nagged at Angeal. It wasn't just that he felt sorry for him--it was just...he just couldn't leave anyone like that, looking so utterly lost and hopeless.
Truthfully, he honestly didn't know what he was doing, and knew just enough about why he was doing it to feel like he was lying to himself about something--whatever was making him take this up like he was, it wasn't about a security breach, it wasn't about guilt, it wasn't about fixing a mistake his oversight had caused, all of which he told himself it was, it wasn't even about something as stupid as Gong-gil being beautiful--but fuckall if he knew what it was, or why seeing Gong-gil so broken had gotten to him. It wasn't the first time he had seen broken people, and he knew it wouldn't be the last.
But it had gotten to him.
Badly.
The interrogations ran so long and took up so much time Angeal wondered what in the Ferryman's name he was doing--it wasn't like he didn't have enough to do. But that hadn't stopped him, and Park had been invaluable--Park was working his way through the scrolls that were the court records and questioning the five former advisers to the king...and they, both the records and the advisers, were being, according to Park, less than helpful.
The serving girl now was the last one to be interrogated, and he figured that to be a good thing, because he was starting to get a headache.
"You," Angeal said softly. "How long have you worked in the kitchens?"
She answered quickly once Park finished translating. "About two or three years, sir."
"What was your job?"
"I mainly brought his majesty his food and drink and I helped in the kitchens."
"What do you know about the man Gong-gil? Anything you can tell me would be a help."
The girl faltered slightly. Finally, she said, "The King would call Gong-gil to his chambers many nights. Near the end..." She fell silent, and after it was translated for him, Angeal waited for her to continue. She said nothing more, and he finally pressed.
"So they were lovers?" Angeal felt something inside him twitching with irritation. If someone had tried to kill Gong-gil because he had been sleeping with a guy who was now dead, he was going to strangle someone, because that was fucking ridiculous. It'd explain it, but Minerva's spear, what a stupid reason.
She looked uncomfortable, and finally said, "I would bring them food and drink. Usually Gong-gil was performing plays with puppets or shadow figures. The king seemed always greatly amused, almost..almost like a child. But..." she trailed off, and finally said, "But by the end Gong-gil would only beg the king to let him go or for forgiveness. Beyond that...I don't know."
"Thank you," Angeal said tiredly. The girl was only a servant, that much was obvious. And she would have no more useful information for him, other than painting grimmer details on the picture Angeal was getting in his mind of the whole mess--this had something to do with Gong-gil and the king, for all the king was dead.
He wished he could let it go at that for an explanation. He wished the image of Gong-gil huddled in the cell and of his pale, fragile wrists didn't haunt him, and the image of Gong-gil barely alive in a hospital bed didn't haunt him more.
And he wished, more than anything, that he was anywhere but here, in the middle of a war that never seemed to have an end.
"You can go," he said. When Park translated, the girl bowed deeply and headed to the door, escorted by a trooper.
But at the door, she stopped suddenly, and spoke softly.
"The king," she said, and Park's translation was almost instantaneous, "once ordered Gong-gil to shoot me with arrows while he held me. It was a game to him," she said, and something bitter and angry flared in her voice that Angeal didn't need an interpreter to understand or her to face him to see. "I thought he would not shoot, but finally he did. The arrow lodged in that pole, by the king's head. And maybe it is wrong of me, but I wish he had not missed. I wish he had killed the king. I was one of the thousand the king ordered seized and brought here to act as servants or concubines. My life meant nothing. The king ordered me brought here and he ordered me killed while play-acting the way he killed his advisers. The king was mad. He was as mad as they say, and by the end most of his madness was for Gong-gil.
"Ask about the play and the night the dowager died," she said softly, and Park's own voice was strangely thoughtful. "If you want to know about the madness of the king for his clown, ask about the play."
--
Angeal wanted to rip out his hair, hit things, do something. "A play," he said. "A play. " He put his face in his hands and groaned. "Why did they stick me here and not Genesis? This would have been right up his alley."
"Sir?" Park asked, looking confused.
"Never mind," Angeal said, waving his hand. Lt. Park had never met Genesis, which explained the perplexed look on his face, and it wasn't worth the explanation. "What in Hel's name happened here?" Angeal said, feeling frustrated. "How are you coming with those scrolls?"
"I may have found something, sir," Lt. Park said.
"Thank Minerva for something," Angeal said, looking hopeful. "What did you find?"
"Yeonsan-gun had made Gong-gil an adviser."
Angeal's eyes bugged out. "He what? Wait...everything said that Gong-gil had been a street performer, how--?!" he began.
Park shrugged slightly. "Jang Nok-su was apparently not...completely of the ruling class herself," he said tactfully. "However, what is the most unusual is that he named Gong-gil to be an adviser during the mourning period for the dowager queen. Very, very shortly after she died, in fact. Within only a few days."
Angeal frowned. "'The night the dowager died'," he said to himself. A picture was forming in his mind--that the king had been mad, and Gong-gil, a member of a performance troop, had been so favored by the king as to be made an adviser, and that alone, he figured, might have been reason for someone to have tried to kill Gong-gil...before ShinRa came. Which left him exactly where he had started, not having a clue what had gone on and an even bigger mystery staring him in the face, where an answer either way would either save Gong-gil's life from further attempts on it, or wind up with Angeal having to kill the man himself. Add to that that half the people who had been important at court had killed themselves rather than be captured and all the ones who knew anything weren't talking, and it was turning into an even bigger nightmare. "Find out about that play, lieutenant. I want to know exactly what happened that night."
Park nodded, and yelled a sharp, "Sir, yes sir!"
--
Park was expecting this to be far more of a hassle than it needed to be. "I am looking for information about the night the dowager queen died, and the play that occurred that night."
"What? Why?" Seong said, looking baffled.
Park just stared at him, one eyebrow raised as if Seong had had no business to question his demands. And truthfully, Park thought, he didn't. This was a battle of wills, and he would not back down.
"...Why under the Heavens is he so interested in that clown?" Seong finally burst out in frustration when Park refused to speak.
"That is of no relevance," Park said flatly, but taking note at how instantly Seong had jumped to Gong-gil. "General Hewley has given me my orders."
Seong made a dismissive noise. "ShinRa is run by boys playacting as men," he muttered.
"Boys with the ability to decide the future of the Chochung province," Park said flatly, intentionally referring to Chochung as a mere province of Wutai instead of the autonomous area that it acted like it was. The Kisaragi emperors had let Chochung act like a vassal state rather than a province as some sort of reparations for some wrong done centuries ago--it was a polite fiction they all engaged in, allowing the province to choose its own leaders rather than installing them from the north, but it was still considered merely a province of the empire and not a separate country everywhere else in Wutai and the world. The Chochung were proud and kept their 'king' and ignored the politics allowing them their "autonomy," but Park would allow no such fiction when it came to ShinRa and their position in ShinRa's eyes. "And your future in it," he said, those words pointed for all they were intentionally uninflected, and Seong sucked in air angrily between his teeth.
"Very well," Seong said, and there was something sharp and angry in his voice. "Since you are all so enamored with Gong-gil, perhaps you should see the type of person he truly was." Seong narrowed his eyes, then stood. "You want records, so be it. I will bring you the records. So you can see for yourselves what Gong-gil truly is."
"Thank you," Park said blandly, the words the barest level of politeness possible, and he watched Seong bristle.
--
He was working on about three hours of sleep, and it had not put Angeal in the best of moods.
He'd gone to bed at a reasonable hour; the problem had been the nightmares. He'd had them off and on, growing with more frequency as the war dragged on. Last night had been useless for sleep; every time he tried he dreamed of being lost in the Great Forest, surrounded by the dead. Or worse, lately of the mists, where he was lost and wandering and felt like he would never escape.
He was getting really sick of the nightmares.
He had, once, asked Sephiroth if he ever had them, long before Chochung had fell, when the nightmares were less frequent but more full of death and burning bodies.
Sephiroth had looked completely perplexed--for him, at any rate--and like he couldn't fathom what Angeal was talking about. 'Why would I have nightmares?' he'd asked, and Angeal just shook his head and said never mind.
He'd asked Genesis, too, and Genesis had rolled his eyes--Angeal was sure of it, even from over the phone--and asked if Angeal had hit his head.
It made Angeal feel like a failure--like he wasn't good enough to be and do what he was supposed to. This was all just part of what was expected of him, expected of all of them, and he was the only one who couldn't just suck it up and do his job. And he never mentioned it to anyone else--last thing he needed was to be called in for the ShinRa headshrinkers to try and patch him up.
So he'd had too little sleep, and was now staring rather stupidly at a half-finished report for Lazard and thinking rather wistfully of more coffee.
"Sir!"
Angeal looked up from his computer. "At ease, lieutenant. What's that?" he said, frowning slightly at the large, hand-bound book Lt. Park was holding.
"A copy of 'The Sad Tale of the Deposed Empress', sir. The play that was performed the night the dowager died, sir."
Angeal hit the shortcut commands to save his work so quickly he was glad he had a special model designed to handle SOLDIER reflexes, and shut the machine down. "I hope there's a translation with it, Park."
"You won't need one, sir," Park said, and Angeal just gave Park a confused look, because what did that mean?
He found out pretty quickly--the playbook was not a script, but a picture book. "Why aren't there any words?" he said, blinking as he flipped the pages.
"Most of the poor here can not read, sir," Park said matter-of-factly, and Angeal shook his head.
Couldn't... "That'll be one good thing ShinRa does, then," he muttered, thinking not for the first time about how fucking backwards Chochung was. It was as if the place were still stuck in the fucking Warring Era or something. "Build some fucking schools."
He turned his attention back to the play, trying to puzzle out what was happening.
"That person is the king," Park said, pointing to one character.
"King Yeonsan-gun?"
"I'm not sure, sir" Park said, shaking his head. "I only know it is the king because he has the ouja character for king there," he said, pointing it out. Angeal noticed it then, and was glad for it--it was one of the small set of Wutai characters nearly everyone in Midgar knew, and one he'd picked up after moving there to join the army, and at least it was something familiar, unlike the squiggles they had started using in Chochung for writing...the ones who could write, at any rate. "And this woman appears to be the empress. This," he said, pointing out another character, "is the king's mother."
"Thank you," Angeal said, and started staring at the pictures again. There was a definite story here, two women talking as they looked at the moon, and the king going past them towards another, the empress. There seemed to be some kind of intrigue, the two slighted women talking to the king's mother.
And then things got weird. The king, with his mother behind him, walking him to the empress and holding out a bowl in a way to make it look like the king was giving it. The empress drank it and then collapsed.
Angeal narrowed his eyes sharply. "Wait...wait, was this woman poisoned?!"
"It would appear so, sir, yes."
There was no way this was a coincidence. There was no way it could be. If it was a coincidence he would eat his bloody materia, every last one. "What role did Gong-gil play in this?"
"I'm not certain, sir. He was probably one of the women. Women do not perform in plays here, men do the roles."
"Find out...no. No, I'm going to look into this right now," he said, slamming the book shut. "Come with me," he said, and was on his feet and out the door with the play in his hands before even Park could agree.
--
Angeal headed straight towards the hall the advisers had their quarters. He didn't care who he found; one of the five would know what in Hel's name had happened.
He found someone pretty quickly, so quickly it really made Angeal wonder uncomfortably if the five didn't have spies all over the castle, watching his every move from somewhere.
The paranoia it was causing in him was another reason he really wished Chochung would just fall into the ocean.
"May I help you, General?" Yu said, bowing deeply from where he was waiting in the hallway.
"Yes. Yes, you can. Is there a place where we can talk?"
"If my humble quarters would--" Yu began.
"Yes, yes, fine," Angeal said, not feeling like dealing with the polite bullshit. Yu looked taken aback, but Angeal just didn't care. He followed Yu, and when they reached his outer chamber, Angeal dropped down heavily onto the floor, and dropped the play just as heavily on the table between them.
Yu took one look at the book--at the title written so primly on the left side--and blanched slightly.
"So. What is this?" he said.
"A play, General," Yu said, and Angeal just crossed his arms and stared.
"It is a very badly written and slanderous version of the death of Queen Jeheon. It paints her as a virtuous woman, wrongfully treated, when she was anything but."
"Who was she?"
"The second wife of King Seongjong and mother to King Yeonsan-gun. He inherited her foul spirit," Yu said, looking disgusted.
"She was poisoned?"
"Showing how this play is a lie...she did die, yes. But the dowager, Grand Queen Insu, did not manipulate his late majesty into poisoning her. She was not the victim of scheming, she was the one who poisoned those she was jealous of or feared might take her place. And when she was exiled, there was no grand call for the king to care for her son," he said, looking even more disgusted.
"This is why the king was mad," Yu said vehemently. "He had never accepted his mother's death. First he blamed his father and refused to honor the memory of his father as a son should, or venerate his wisdom. Instead he sulked and exiled all those who reminded him to look to his father's example to rule. And then came this ridiculous play, full of lies and half-truths about the reason she was put to death, and it served only to fuel his madness. He began to see Gong-gil as his mother, I suppose. When Gong-gil 'died' in the play, His Majesty screamed out 'Mother, mother!' and ran to Gong-gil, and embraced him.
"And then," he said, going tense and still, "he looked over to his father's former concubines, the ones slandered so vilely in the play, and killed them. When the dowager tried to protect them, he cast her aside and her heart failed her.
"That very night," Yu said, his fists clinching into fists, "His Majesty called Gong-gil to his chambers and offered him a position at court. We mourned the dowager, who had done so much to aid her country, while he recklessly promoted his...playthings. And once he had spilled blood, he saw no value in anyone's life."
Angeal's PHS rang, and the sound was sharp and jolting. "Excuse me," he said. His PHS almost never rang, and when it did, it was either an emergency, extremely important, or Genesis was bored, and either of the three had to be attended to immediately because the consequences of not could be world destroying.
"Yes?"
"General Hewley, sir?"
He frowned, not placing the voice at first. "Yes, who is this?"
"This is Constantin in medical, sir. The last shipment from Midgar today had all the supplies I had requested, including some bang-up new Remedies. So I just thought might you like to know that our Wutai 'Sleeping Princess' just broke the curse and is finally awake," Constantin ended, and suddenly, things got a lot more complicated.
--
Part Three