Fable - Ask Pinnacle

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"Don't you 'Yuna' me!" she shouted.

In the fiery grip of her anger she once again thrashed her hands upon Zael's chest. His upper body rocked slightly, but still he stood.

"I defended you, Zael! I fucking DEFENDED you! And you wait until now to show me this!?"

She vacated his immediate proximity, a hand clapped to her head in disbelief and rage, walking about the confines of her room to vent some of that anger but it just wasn't working. Her mind, her heart, were each their own storm.
 
Zael held the letter that had been shoved back into his possession. Calmly, as Yuna whirled about in her throes of anger, Zael used a bit of his magic to set quick fire to the letter. The parchment vanished from the face of Arethil in a bright orange flash, a whoosh, and a small puff of smoke.

Zael had been in Elbion for a little while now, attending to all manner of tasks to help Archon Gilram's cause—tasks both large and small. Much like Zettal, a small town back in Anirian territory, a dead drop system had been set up (or maybe it had always been present, Zael wasn't sure). The day Zael visited the dead drop, saw that letter in it, broke the seal and read it for himself, he knew this confrontation would come.

Those eleven words writ upon the letter:

The College will be pursuing an artifact called Pinnacle.

Take it.​

He knew what he had to do. Didn't take him all that long too settle on it after reading the letter. And, yeah, he anticipated that there would be a lot of anger involved with this, Gier's being the least of it.

"This wouldn't work any other way, Yuna."
 
"Oh? Really? Is that right!?" Yuna said with unfiltered indignation.

She stomped back up to him.

"So you just came back around to use us again? To use me again!? Is that all we are to you, Zael? Just a means to an end!?"
 
Zael stayed firm and calm.

"It's not like that, Yuna. I'm not here to use you. I'm here to do exactly what I said. I haven't lied to you about any of this."
 
Yuna scoffed. He hadn't lied!? The audacity!

"Sure. Right. Then why'd you tell me that you don't have orders from the Republic this time? Huh? You liar. Liar, liar, LIAR!"
 
"These orders aren't from the Republic."

WHAP.

Yuna delivered a clean and vicious slap so hard across his cheek that his vision exploded into stars and chaos for a second, and his head had jerked roughly to one side. Make that the second time this had happened.

Zael turned his head straight again.

"I'll give you that," he said.
 
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"Oh how nice of you. How nice of you to just 'give that' to me," Yuna spat.

She huffed, and she felt the pulsing heat in her face and knew she had to be bright red. Maybe even a brighter red than the handprint she'd left on Zael's cheek.

"You know what would have been nicer? Telling me this. From the beginning. Why couldn't you just tell me!?"
 
"It's just like you told Gier about the Burnin Heart, how he never would have agreed to work together if me and Ollie had been upfront that we were after it."

Steady. Just stay steady. Yuna was angry, and she had every right to be. Let it play out and stay the course.

"You never would have helped me get good with Gier and Herrim, or even with you, if I had shown you this upfront."
 
Yuna's face twisted with unleashed fury. Her hands flew up into the air and then came crashing down on Zael's chest as she threw her strength and her weight, meager as both were, into shoving him. He staggered back a step, but with his backfoot braced himself from going back further, and he was steady again.

"SO YOU ARE USING ME!" she shouted, her eyes growing glossy, their edges now host to a building reservoir of tears.
 
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"I'm not usin you, Yuna," Zael said, again being the immobile rock amidst the storm, the stable center which was the bulwark against the swirling motion all about it.

"I showed you that letter to make a point. And now that you've helped get me in on this expedition for the Pinnacle, I can prove it to you."

He regarded her deeply. Seriously.

"I can prove to you that I am a better man than I was yesterday. But only if you trust me. Only if you let me."
 
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Yuna barked out a wounded, spiteful laugh. "And why wouldn't you just be saying that? Huh? Buttering me up the way you wanted me to butter up Gier? Doing it just to get what you want?"

She wiped at her face with a furious energy, as if her anger now extended to her tears themselves, their very presence enraging. With flicks of her hand she tossed them away.

"That war of yours. You'll do anything to win it. You Anirians..."

Her voice caught in her throat.

"...you Anirians are all the same."
 
Yuna stood before him, her hand now covering her eyes, weeping. Her agonized breaths, hitching with an awful regularity, filled the dorm room. Her head came to hang low on her shoulders and a few tears which seeped out from between her fingers dripped down to the floor.

Zael let her anger, her sadness, work its way through her for a long moment.

And then he slowly reached up with a hand and touched her cheek. Cradled it. Guided her head back up with it. Her hand slid away from her eyes and their gazes met.

He said, "Some things ain't worth the cost."
 
Yuna swallowed heavily. Her eyes burned with a terrible pain. Her lips hurt from being twisted into such an ugly and intense frown.

"What are you fighting for? Tell me."
 
"God damn you," Yuna said in a fragile whisper, jerking her head and her cheek out from Zael's palm and turning around and walking away. After some few steps she stopped, planted her hands on her hips, and let her head hang.

Her back was to him.

"God damn you, Zael Castomir."
 
Zael didn't move from where he stood.

"You know as well as I do, Yuna," he said, "that my word doesn't mean nothin to you right now."

She stood across the room, her back to him still, and she said nothing.

"You have to let me do this."
 
"And I've disobeyed orders before," Zael said. "It's a little somethin I'm known for."

A rebel from his earliest days.

A rebel today.
 
Yuna looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes stung with a deep hurt, and her tone was wounded by the spear of doubt.

"Will you? Will you really? When those orders are going to help you get what you want? 'The freedom of all Vel Anir's Dreadlords'?"
 
Zael dipped his head slightly. Took a step forward.

"You see, that's the thing. That's the difference between where I used to be with the Republic, and where I am now with the Rogues."

He took another step forward.

"I got choice."

Another step.

"It's my war."

He stood just behind her now, his eye looking down into her upturned gaze.

"And I'm fightin it my way."
 
"I want to believe you," she said, turning around to face him then. "But I can't. Not right now."

She pointed past him, to the door behind him.

"Get out."
 
Zael just gave her a nod, turned, and walked to the door. He said without looking back, "I'll see you tonight."

And with these parting words, Zael left Yuna's room.
 
No sooner did the door to her room shut than Yuna collapsed onto her bed, burying her face into her pillow and with her arms folding up its sides to encase and shelter her head as much as she could with it. Building and building, there came in short time the bellowing cry she smothered with the pillow's muting embrace. For a time she couldn't even think. For a time she merely lay with her face pressed to the now damp fabric.

Yuna didn't know when she had rolled over, when the dividing line between near-suffocating herself with her pillow and staring up at the ceiling had been crossed. But it had. Similarly shrouded, the first of her thoughts on the whole matter—she found herself wholly swept up in the middle of them.

What was she going to do? What was she going to do? Was Zael merely toying with her? Did he show her that letter to gloat, to say "I can tell you straight to your face that I'm going to betray you and there's nothing you'll do about it"? Did he have something else in mind? Why even show her the letter at all, or even bother with any of this, if he was just after the artifact? Why not just swoop in with that fancy fire magic of his while the expedition was on the way back to Elbion and take it then, after all the hard work was done? Was it just somehow easier to backstab them all during the expedition? And Gier! And Herrim! She was going to look like such a fucking idiot to them! She was going to look like an idiot to everyone! A big stupid idiot with smitten eyes and rosy cheeks who got played like a fiddle and taken advantage of by the one person she ought to have known better about.

Or...

...could Zael have actually been telling her the truth?

She didn't know. She just didn't know. She wanted to believe it, yes. But how could she? What room was there for hope when the memory of Rostok was so strong? They had by chance encountered one another in the One-Legged Flamingo, and there she saw that Zael was a different man: his hair longer, his one eye gone and the other turned blue, his face seemingly older beyond just the single year's difference. But these were superficial things. Could he really be a man so changed? He had followed orders from "the Republic" in Rostok, and if he wanted to fight for the "Rogues" more than for the Republic, and it really seemed like he did, then why on Arethil would he disobey their orders?

But only if you trust me. Only if you let me.

She wasn't sure she could do the former. Not yet. But maybe...maybe she could do the latter.

Let him prove once and for all...everything.

Everything.
 
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