Room 325, Tuesday Evening

[bitchprince]

It had been a good, long, productive day, especially at the reserves, and Arthur had retired to his room with a copy of Le Chemin de France and a bowl of grapes. And his Blackberry. His Blackberry was of some importance tonight. After all, he was still, technically, working.

That is to say he was calling Zack every hour on the dot just to check if he was still running. At the rate things were going, Arthur was starting to contemplate simply telling him to keep going until morning and see if it held.

Sir Dinadan, had he been present, would have had so many things to say, but this was a G-rated post.

[[ half-open door, open post, sure ]]

Comments

[bitchprince]

"Of getting sloppy in general," Arthur said, idly. "The cookies are merely symptomatic."

He was frequently ridiculous, yes.

[puppy_fair]

Zack kind of sighed a little, at that.

"You're talking about Deadpool's class the other week, aren't you?"

Well, that had been pretty sloppy.

[bitchprince]

"You are usually easily distracted," Arthur said, considering that ceiling again. Wow, look at that lack of cracks. "But that was downright disastrous. It's like you took a step back; I know you can do better than that."

[puppy_fair]

"I can," Zack agreed. And then there was another long silence from his end of the phone. Either because he was scaling another cliff, or because he was trying to nerve himself to attempt an explanation that actually counted, and he was failing most miserably. "Something came up back home, that's all. It's nothing. I'll try harder, next time."

[bitchprince]

Arthur grunted something back at him. This... could really only be the fault of him attempting to figure out whether or not he should bother pressing, or whether that would be more trouble than it was worth. "Is it something that will come up again?" is what he settled on.

[puppy_fair]

Zack's end of the phone was silent for another few moments, and another soft huff of air suggested that he was, in fact, jumping among the rocky bits again.

"Only if we ever find Angeal again," Zack answered, his tone a little too casual, especially for a guy who had been running for hours straight, now. "I guess."

[bitchprince]

Arthur sat up. "Angeal's missing?" Wow, more sensitive people would be relieved they'd settled on the word 'superiors' and not 'Angeal' back there.

[puppy_fair]

"Yeah," Zack replied, and there was a strain in his voice that suggested that he was possibly throwing himself a little harder into the exercise now than he possibly should be. "He disappeared after our raid on Fort Tamblin. I had to leave him behind for a few minutes, to escort the director to safety after we were attacked, and when I went back for him... gone."

He mis-stepped, and the next series of sounds that Arthur might hear would be those of two feet and the one hand that wasn't holding the phone, scrabbling for better purchase on some falling rocks while Zack muttered mild curse words under his breath.

[bitchprince]

Arthur rubbed at his temple with a sigh. "Zack, get to steady ground. I don't need you falling to death."

[puppy_fair]

"It's not much of a fall," Zack insisted, looking downward and frowning. "Maybe seven or eight body lengths from here, that's all."

He could handle worse!

[bitchprince]

Arthur rolled his eyes. You could probably hear it over the phone. "Any time now, Zack. Any time."

[puppy_fair]

Which prompted a sigh from Zack, and some more falling-rocks sounds as he jumped off the face of the rock wall, flipped about in the air a few times, and landed in the sand below. "Yes, Arthur."

He didn't have to be prompted to keep running, by this point. He probably wasn't going to stop at midnight, either.

[bitchprince]

"So Angeal left," Arthur said, after a conversational pause that he'd ever sensibly left Zack to get his bearings. "And no word at all?"

[puppy_fair]

"Nothing," Zack sighed (huffed, really) as he pressed onward, heading back the way he'd come from. "Sephiroth, he's another of the 1sts, suggested that Angeal had just up and deserted us, too. There was a mass-desertion a short while back, I guess, and so most of the 2nds and 3rds are missing too. It's kinda what's on everybody's mind, right now."

Careful, Arthur. Once Zack starts forming words, they might turn into nonstop babble.

"But I don't believe Angeal would do that. He's too focused on honour and his pride as SOLDIER to just take off and abandon us."

[bitchprince]

"Then he won't be far."

Arthur could always sympathise with Zack's stories about Angeal, for some reason. "Maybe there's some greater threat to SOLDIER right now," he ventured, "Or the rest of your people."

And now his head was pounding with some worry about what his knights must be thinking, with him gone for as long as he had been.

[puppy_fair]

"There's..." Zack frowned a little more deeply, trying to come up with a way to describe the Genesis copies without treading into weird magic-related territory. Hell, the copies had made him uneasy. "There's reason to believe that the 1st who took all of the 2nds and 3rds with him is plotting against SOLDIER," Zack offered. "The men that Angeal had stayed behind to fight, they belonged to Genesis, the missing 1st. They'd followed us to Wutai, I guess."

Anything beyond that fact, though, just had Zack confused, and more than a little cranky that he couldn't figure out just what was going on.

[bitchprince]

There was a beat.

Then, with more understanding than Arthur would ever be able to admit to aloud without feeling like a massive traitor, he said, "Perhaps there are steps that have to be taken in this fight that Angeal felt wouldn't be welcomed by your superiors."

[puppy_fair]

Zack was going to chew on that for a moment or so while he plodded along through the sand.

"Do you suppose that's where he's gone? Trying to do something about Genesis, on his own?" He exhaled, a note of frustration slipping into his voice for all of a moment. "I should have gone with him. I trust Angeal to do what's right."

[bitchprince]

Arthur brushed his own bangs out of his eyes. His hair was getting long again, he noted. "It's a possibility," he said, "Would you really have been as quick to abandon SOLDIER? Does Angeal hold a greater loyalty?"

[puppy_fair]

"I..." And now Zack was frowning, deeply. "I stand by my friends," he settled on. "I think that's part of what that honor he always talks about really means. That you do what's right, when it needs to be done. For ShinRa, for the people you care about, whichever. You stand by what you need to stand by, otherwise, what's the point?"

[bitchprince]

"It's not always that simple."

Long, long pause.

"Anyway, maybe you're of more use right where you are. And I don't mean 'scrambling around the countryside nearly cracking open your own skull like an idiot'."

[puppy_fair]

"Not even if I'm scrambling around the countryside on your orders?"

It was an attempt at levity. Zack kinda sucked at those, sometimes.

[bitchprince]

"If you were following my orders properly, you'd be hiking, not risking your neck," Arthur said, charitably.

[puppy_fair]

"What, by climbing rocks? It was one mis-step. I can handle it."

Okay, so maybe most people couldn't. Most people probably couldn't jump just about as high as he'd nearly fallen from at a standstill, either. Zack tended to forget these things sometimes.

[bitchprince]

"You'd better," was Arthur's only verdict.

He pursed his lips. "I'll talk to you in an hour," he said, finally. "Pizza or not, you'd better still be going by then."