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Setzer was a man of many talents. He could fight, certainly; he simply chose not to.
Celes was different. The woman was a living weapon, and she honed her edge with an eagerness only barely sheathed. The Empire may have planted the seeds of her skill, but her growth was her own. In a war-torn world of ruin, it only made sense that she would thrive. This unfortunate era was her time to shine; and, may the fates be merciful, such an opportunity would never come to her again.
Of the numerous talents Setzer possessed, he was uncommonly proud of his ability to unravel the threads of his heart so that they might hang comfortably loose. Daryl and Maria could only give parts of themselves, and Celes was cast in the same mold. She burned brighter away from him than she did when they were together, and he did not begrudge her star for shining.
Still, he worried. A weapon Celes might be, but she was human all the same.
When night fell, Setzer remained awake at the helm. He would lean back in Daryl’s old chair and listen to the wind thread itself through the rigging as he imagined Celes’s blade flashing in the torchlight of some forgotten tower. She might fall at any moment to the horrors birthed from the newly riven cracks in the world’s shell, but so too might they all. In the meantime, he would do as he always had to ensure that no guest on his ship would suffer from a lack of hospitality.
As an airship captain, Setzer considered his most valuable skill to be housekeeping. No matter how far afield she roamed, Celes would return eventually, and ensuring that she had someplace to return was a task more than worthy of his talent.
As he flew, Setzer scanned the earth below with an eye for patches of land that still grew green, and he took notice of the thin plumes of kitchen smoke rising from villages that still had food to cook. Dried fish kept well in the ship’s hold, and he made a point to touch down at every coastal enclave he reasonably could. He was canny enough to avoid larger settlements, where bands of armed and hungry men might see a grounded airship as nothing less than a much-needed opportunity.
Coin meant little in a world where food was scarce, and Setzer bartered priceless luxuries for bread baked from the final harvest before the sky sundered. To supplement the treasures his companions carried when they returned from an expedition, Setzer salvaged as much as he could carry from the recent ruins of the now-old world, from gorgeous silver candlesticks to simple bolts of fabric.
More often than not, what villages wanted in exchange for stores of root vegetables preserved in sand were weapons, and Setzer was only too happy to provide. If the metal of a jeweled sword lifted from the hoard of a dragon were later melted down and refashioned into the blades of hoes and rakes, that was none of his concern. Setzer was a consummate connoisseur of quality, but he was nothing if not pragmatic.
Instead of fussing over the care and maintenance of relics, he reinvented the techniques of seabound sailors, shaping the canvas of the upper decks to funnel rain into barrels of water that would then be filtered through charcoal. He walked the length of the deck barefoot, feeling for soft spots in the wood. All manner of corrosive salts and toxic dust blew up from the debris of the violently shifted land, and he used every tool in his arsenal to scrape it away from the metal struts and rigging, as a snapped line could easily mean the end of the entire operation.
When Celes made her way back to the ship, she would need to rest, and Setzer took it on his pride as a captain that she would be able to rest easy. And when she returned, her hair fragrant with ice and fire, the threads of affection he’d spooled out would return to his hands in a delicious tangle. Before the night broke, Celes would seek him, and her lips would inevitably find their way to his, her kiss saying what the former general would never express in words: I’m home.