[FE] Empathy Is A Feeling

[runespoor]

Title: Empathy Is A Feeling
Character/Pairing: Micaiah, Sothe. Gen.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When she told Ike how she'd met Sothe, Micaiah omitted some details of what happened before.

Notes: Second person. Written for 31_days. Sequel to Noble As Dirt.




You've been aware of the boy's presence for a number of days, now.

You're not sure what to make of it, and thus you do nothing. You don't deal well with people unless they're clients. If they are, it's easy to retract yourself behind your profession.

They come to you because they have heard of a girl who can tell them the future. They come to you more and more numerous every day.

People around here, you're started being aware of this too, like you. They like you enough that you can feel their friendliness when you walk past them. Bad enough that the barman's son has been flirting with you – you had to let him down as gently as you could, and even then you couldn't repress a wince at how dejected he was. You're not fit for human society.

Soon you'll have to move on.

You've been doing that for a while, now, finding a nice town where you can stay and work for a while, and then leaving and starting over someplace else. You don't spend long anywhere, which doesn't bother you because you like traveling.

You've been as far as the southern end of Begnion, and through all the east and south of Daein. You haven't seen much of the west, though, and that's probably where you'll go next. Crimea; perhaps even further, Gallia and the bird islands. Laguz countries would be dangerous for you, but you've never met a Laguz in your life.

This stay in Nevassa is your longest yet. You have to acknowledge that it's nice not having to search for yet another cheap room somewhere, but this is bordering on ridiculous. It's never been like you to be so careless over something so trivial as physical comfort.

It is trivial on the grand scheme of things. Comfort is nice, but it pales next to, say, not being hunted down by Ashnard's police because they heard the rumors of 'extraordinary skills'.

It's ridiculous that you're being held in this city because you are curious about a kid.

When the night begins to fall, the tavern begins filling up, and you know you won't get anymore business for today. Not business of the sort you offer, anyway.

You pay for your ale and make your way to the door.

The cold bites into your face and you hunch your shoulders, pulling of your scarf to wrap it more tightly around your neck. Another good reason to get out of this city before long, then – you've heard Crimean winter is less harsh than Daein's.

Mechanically, your eyes sweep over, searching for the kid. It's become habit to find him here.

He's standing in his usual place, with those nasty gaping shoes that can only mean one or two things, that he's either on his own either working for someone as a beggar child.

You're leaning toward the former; the area's far from nice enough to be profitable for a beggar, no matter how much his appearance could tug at a passerby's heartstrings, and the boy just doesn't put enough emphasis on his vulnerability for that to work. You think he's a boy, at least.

And to cinch the deal, to you he just exudes that kind of frustrated distrust you've come to associate with kids that had to embrace independence after it was thrown upon them. The empathy you have for such kids, you like to imagine, is more than the mere hormonal reaction people's distress tend to get out of you.

Your power forces you to be aware of other people's suffering, and often it wrings empathy out of you even long after you feel like you've been drained of your emotions, and you really just want to be an apathetic, numb shell until you could curl under your blanket and sleep, sleep, sleep, without exhausting yourself with tears because the woman downstairs is getting beaten by her husband again.

You'd like to never have to set foot in a city ever again, but ironically cities are the only places you can get enough business to make a living.

The empathy you have for street-orphans, it's different; their situation resonates close enough to your own that you gladly embrace these feelings. It makes you feel not that different after all.

The boy is talking to a man. No, you realize. A man is talking to him.

And it could be nothing. No, most likely it is nothing. But there's something off. The boy's uneasy, but not uneasy in the way he'd be if the man was a guard. He's uneasy and he doesn't know why. And the man--

Your eyes fly to the nearest doorstep. The woman you've been expecting to see isn't there. Inside, with a john.

--the man is leaning over the kid and cupping the boy's cheek.

“Hey, you!”

The man looks at you. His face says he's surprised, but he doesn't take his hand off from the kid's face. The boy's uneasiness is growing, too, getting thicker in the air. He doesn't get it, and that's really what gets to you; that's why you follow up on that first, reflexive impulse.

“Don't touch that kid,” you order.

The man's eyebrows shoot up in understanding, and he smiles knowingly. He's oozing sleaziness and you very badly wants to recoil. That sort of guy, you tend to avoid them like the plague. They spell trouble. Up to a few years ago, the kid could've been you, if you hadn't been able to feel what they were after.

“He yours, then? He's a bit skinny, but I like him, so let's say—”

“He's my brother,” you cut him off. Your voice is trembling.

The kid's heartbeat picks up. He's unsettled. You'd like to tell him to stop that, but obviously you can't, so you choose to ignore it.

The man's surprised.

For maybe the first time in your life, you wish that you could perceive more.

You've never needed to before, the slightest trace of a threat and you're gone, the faintest curiosity and you'll play dumb, if someone smiles you'll smile back, and when your clients wait for you to read in their future their sorrows are open books that want to grab you and eat you up, when you plunge into them it feels like teeth and knives digging into your flesh.

You need to know how surprised he is, so you can think about how you're going to act next.

You've never wished more than you looked naturally menacing either. Usually you're happy with your appearance; being young and slight and girly means that you slip more easily off people's radar, and to those for whom all those aspects make you more striking, well, they forget you when the next skirt goes by.

None of which is relevant to the issue. Instead of panicking and second-guessing yourself and lending weight to the doubt that's urging you to run away, you cannot win, you simply hold your ground. You give the man your flattest, hardest stare.

He can't win. Not here.

The area's not nice, but it's not that awful either. You haven't seen one child prostitute since you started going to the tavern, that's for sure. And moreover the people here have come to like you, and if you scream that the boy is your brother, they'll all come to help you.

And that man would be lucky to escape with with his life.

He steps back and smirks. He's not convinced by your lie, you can tell from the way he's insistently eyeing your hair. You and the boy don't look that much alike.

“Your brother, uh. My mistake, sorry. No bad feelings,” he adds, and he's half mocking you half pleading for you to stay quiet.

He's not as confident as he was only a moment ago.

You might call for people, and, well. People who go after children are never well-liked.

For a moment he almost looks like he's going to go and ruffle the kid's hair, but he stops himself in time. He grimaces a smile at you, then at the kid, and walks away backwards until he's reached the street corner. When he's gone past the corner, you hear him breaking into a run, dashing away as fast as he can.

He didn't need to, you weren't going to call for anyone.

Attention is the last thing you're after, and it's a mantra that's going through your head while you gaze at the kid.

You don't regret what you've done.

That doesn't mean you think it was wise.

The boy's looking back at you, now. It may be the first time your eyes meet, and it's also the first good look you've had at him. He looks distinctively lost, and wary.

You feel the same way.

In the end you extend a hand toward him.