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Darkness and Starlight

Summary:

A love letter to FFVI, a novelization of the game filtered through a Locke/Celes perspective but not wholly centered on them. Starting with that fateful meeting in South Figaro and continuing onward through the rest of the World of Balance (we'll break the world eventually). It was supposed to stick pretty close to the original — and it follows the flow of the original game story, with all the big pieces there! — but it's a bit more of an adaptation now. I've tried to breathe more life into the world, flesh out the characters and their relationships, and address some plot holes; I hope you'll enjoy my changes and still see the game we love so much at the heart of it.

Alternating POVs between Celes and Locke, but other characters and other relationships are important, too.

MOST RECENT UPDATE: Chapter 31, "The Decisive Battle." In which the party fights to save a place they've grown to call home.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Prelude

Summary:

At the end of the world, hope is hard to cling to.

Notes:

You're about to read the scene of Celes on the cliff. It ends on a hopeful note, but tread carefully, or just skip to the next chapter, which bounces us back to a different place and time.

Chapter Text

Up here on the cliffs, the wind howled, roared, as though it gave voice to the agony of the dying world below.

She had run without thinking, blinded by tears, fleeing the dilapidated shack she had only just begun to think of as home, leaving behind her own failure to make any difference, the last failure in a long line that had started the day she first spoke up against the emperor and that had continued without ceasing ever since. Would they have been victorious that fateful day if her blade had struck true in Kefka's heart? Would the world still live, if only she had been stronger?

And even if not, if that defeat had been inevitable, could she at least have saved her one companion, the only other survivor on this godforsaken island?

Cid's eyes had been open in death, not even allowing her the comfort of imagining he was just asleep. His final breath left her entirely alone, with no companions but the dead and the dying.

Oh, she'd seen death before, many times. Sometimes by her own hand. But there was a difference between the numbed awareness of a fallen foe's life slipping away on the battlefield and the loss of a friend succumbing to illness or despair.

Did you really think it would turn out any differently, any of it?

The little voice had been in the back of her mind for as long as she could remember, save for a very brief period of respite when its jabs had fallen silent under the sway of another's kindness, but now it spoke louder than ever. Once, it had told her she would never be good enough, no matter how hard she trained or how far she pushed herself—that she would forever be just another failed experiment, a disappointment to the Empire. Later, it had questioned her actions—just following orders?—accused her of forfeiting her soul, then mocked her for trying to leave, for wanting to set right some of what she had made wrong.

This, around her, this ruined landscape, this choking haze clogging her lungs, as she stood a single solitary figure silhouetted by the setting sun—quite possibly the only soul left alive in the world—this was never meant to be.

That she would survive, and the world would perish, was the very inverse of what she had long hoped for. Fate had a cruel sense of humor.

The wind howled. The waves, far below, crashed against jagged rocks where the others who gave in to despair had found their release. And here on the cliffside, the air reeking of salt and ash and rotting fish, with a smoky red-hued sky above, she stood overlooking the sea as her hair swirled around her, wild as a madwoman's, and truly she felt mad. Dried tears crusted her cheeks; salt rimmed her eyes.

Something pale and white fluttered among the long, straw-like grass clinging to the rocky cliffside. It drew her attention from the waves, quieted her mind for just a moment with curiosity. And then, because the world was vicious and cruel and unrelenting, she realized that it too was dead, a dove prone in the grass with its neck bent at an impossible angle.

Everything would die soon. The sickly fish who nearly swam into her nets, the gaunt rabbits who found little nourishment from the parched grass, the spiders with their legs curled up beneath webs that had caught nothing in days. The entire world was winding down, as though Kefka had cracked it open and now the last of its essence was slipping away, leaving nothing but the corpse of a planet.

Had anyone else survived? Looking across the sea turned red by the bloody sky above, it was hard to believe any of them had made it. Kefka's light had rent the world asunder, and it tore their ship in half in an explosion of seared, shattered wood and screeching metal. The last memory she had was of familiar voices screaming in terror, and one last glimpse at Locke, at his hand outstretched toward her before he was gone, they all were gone, and then nothing but absolute darkness until Cid nursed her back to health.

And now Cid too was gone, and she was alone.

It felt as though a layer of ice had kept the worst of it from her, chilling her heart so that she would not die from the pain. But what was the point of sparing herself, of trying to keep herself afloat and whole? What was the point of anything, when the world itself was dying and everyone she had ever known, everyone she had ever—ever loved—was gone forever?

Once, a lifetime ago, she had made a promise to live. But the man to whom she'd given that promise had fallen on the day the world ended—and the thought of his broken body dashed to pieces, his voice forever silenced, his smile forever faded, shattered the ice around her heart at last.

She doubled over, gasping, choking on her tears, her throat raw and ragged, her salt-crusted eyes burning; every breath felt like touching an open wound. They were dead. They were gone. He was gone. He had promised her that hope would be enough. For one fleeting moment she had tasted happiness, had believed that there could be a future not just for the world but for her. And then hope, too, had died.

Her body tensed at the edge of the cliff, some final sense of self-preservation, but what was there to preserve? She whispered an apology to his memory for her broken promise, and then she stepped forward, off the cliff into nothingness.

Falling felt much like flying.

***

 

Cold. Pain. Darkness. Thrashing, flailing, coughing. Swallowing water instead of air, coughing again, the world reduced to dark frigid waves raising her up and then plunging her down again. Is this hell? Her mind struggled to make sense of the chaos around her.

Then she was on her knees on slick wet sand, retching and hacking up water, some part of her keeping her alive when the rest of her would not.

Her head throbbed. Her fingers had gone numb, and her lips, and her toes. She collapsed on the sand and was still for a long, long time. You can't even kill yourself, the voice sneered at her.

"Did I ask you to save me?" she muttered—to Cid, to the universe that would not let her die by her own hand but had instead condemned her to a slow, drawn-out death. Did it think it could force her to live, when there was nothing to live for?

When she opened her eyes again, the sky had dimmed, casting everything in pale grey light. 

Time passed. The tide receded, leaving her shivering in the cold. Feeling returned slowly to her extremities, with an old, familiar ache. Overhead, a handful of stars shone through the haze, dim and distant.

A sound startled her, and she winced, instinctively covering her face with her hands. The noise came again, a gull's cry so close it hurt her ears. She rolled onto her side and squinted at the creature standing only a few feet away. It cocked its head at her. When she didn't move again, it let out another indignant squawk.

"I'm not dead yet," she muttered. "Come back later and you can eat me then."

It paced in a half-circle, then approached her with an almost comedic wiggle in its step, unafraid. Strange behavior from a bird—had Cid been feeding them? Surely she would have noticed that. But one way or another, this gull seemed to have learned to trust humans. Someone had cared for it, taught it that humans could be kind as well as cruel, that some might offer food instead of pain. Foolish, foolish creature.

There was something tied neatly around its leg—a scrap of cloth. She scrambled to sit upright, and the bird stepped back with a vocal complaint at her sudden movement. 

"Come here," she called to it in the gentlest voice she could, though it rasped in her raw throat. "I won't hurt you. I promise."

The bird approached her, more warily, eyeing her extended hands as though looking for food in them. To her surprise, it came close enough that she could grab hold of the cloth, which set it squawking and flapping its wings, but it did not pull away.

"Easy," she said. It held still long enough for her to untie the cloth from its leg; then it brought its beak toward her hands as though looking for treats.

The fabric was real and tactile between her cold fingers, pulling her from the fog that had settled over her mind. The threads were only barely frayed at the edges. If this had been on the bird's leg an entire year, or even months, it likely would have disintegrated in the salty air. Someone had tied it onto the bird's leg recently—which meant someone had been alive, somewhere.

The bird continued to protest its lack of food, but she could not look away from the cloth in her hands. The pattern woven into its threads was familiar, distinctive. She could trace the stripes with her eyes closed, could trace the features of the face it belonged to. But this could not be true.

Someone had seen an injured bird and earned its trust through patience, kindness, a gentle touch and a caring heart.

Could it—could it be? Impossible—improbable—and yet…

Through the numbness and the pain, through the bone-deep cold that chilled her veins, the slightest spark lit within her.

And maybe that would be enough.

Chapter 2: Cover Art

Chapter Text

Darkness and Starlight cover art

 

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I'm the darkness, you're the starlight

shining brightly from afar...

 

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Chapter 3: South Figaro

Summary:

A traitor awaits her execution. A spy can't resist meddling.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The soldier wore heavy gloves, and he held nothing back when he struck her across the jaw and then slammed his fist into her stomach, knocking the wind from her. The corners of her vision reddened. She would have doubled over if not for the chains around her wrists keeping her upright. She gasped to fill her empty lungs while the guard laughed and then spat at her bare, blistered feet.

"Traitorous scum," he leered. "The great General Celes, pride of the Empire. Look at you now. You'll be dead at dawn."

Had it been that long already? Her cell was some sort of basement storeroom converted hastily for this purpose; there were still crates of goods in the far corner. The only light came from a swaying lantern, no sign or scent of the outdoors to give her a clue as to time of day. 

Execution by hanging, like a common criminal. She wondered what charge they would bring against her if they made it public. There had been no trial. 

When she struggled to speak, the guard laughed. "Trying to defend your honor? Save your breath."

"Kefka," she gasped. "Is. Gon'. Poison."

It was no use. He silenced her with another blow to the face, and she slumped in her chains. Of course he wouldn't listen—like Kefka hadn't listened, like Emperor Gestahl hadn't listened, all of them too wrapped up in the glory of the Empire to heed a general gone soft, a general turned traitor.

She was born to be a soldier, raised to be a soldier, had known since her earliest memories that she owed her very existence to the Empire. Honor, she had been taught, came from bringing glory to the Empire, bringing the reach of the Empire to the chaotic uncivilized masses. Uniting the city-states of the world under a single banner would put an end to their petty squabbles. If a few had to die to keep the rest from killing each other, it was a fair price. They would fare better under Gestahl's boots than at each other's throats. So she was always told. So she had always believed. Kefka's usual violence was necessary to make them surrender more quickly. An unfortunate reality, but a tolerable one—brief, intense destruction to prevent the ongoing suffering of war.

This belief in the righteousness of the Empire did not allow for genocide.

Oh, she'd had concerns about the war already. Moving from the military classroom to the battlefield had destroyed some of her illusions about glory and honor and the infallibility of the Emperor's decisions. The sullen faces of the men she commanded came not from resentment of her youth and undeserved authority, as she had initially feared, but because many of them had been forcefully conscripted under penalty of death, or had enlisted in the hopes that it would spare their families from starvation. Slowly at first, and then all at once, her conviction that this war was justified began to crumble. The slaughter of Maranda had pushed her over the edge. It was to be her first action as General Celes, the fearsome Magitek Knight wielding blade and forbidden arts to bring down her foes, putting into practice years of training her body and her mind. She and her army rode into Maranda, the shining jewel of its continent, Celes on horseback in glittering armor, her hair streaming like a banner behind her. But Maranda barely resisted.

And yet Celes had been ordered to make an example of the city. 

You don't have the guts to do it, that little voice had said. You're supposed to be a military leader, yet here you are, soft and frightened as a little girl. Maybe you should trade your armor for petticoats and play with dolls instead.

Gestahl was her emperor, and she had been raised since birth to fight for him. It was her purpose and her calling. She would be exalted if she did this, praised by her tutors, and all the effort so many people had devoted to shaping her into a weapon would be justified.

The city burned. The surviving men were conscripted, every last one of them, save for the children and the elders.

Celes had watched as the men marched off, leaving behind wailing, weeping women. Mothers in anguish as their sons were taken from them. Lovers heartbroken at being parted. Celes had turned away, willing her heart to stone. She was meant to be a great general, and generals did not take lovers or build families; they were married to their command, their unshaking obligation to the Empire and nothing else. Loyal unto death. That had been her intended fate, until now.

She couldn't say how long she hung semi-conscious in her chains, her whole body aching, her jaw throbbing, her stomach tight and sore despite her careful shallow breaths. The guards joked to each other, but she did not register their words.

You're going to die here, the voice said, and what will you have accomplished? Slaughtering innocents in Maranda, countless deaths on your hands, and the poisoning of Doma. You haven't saved anyone, not even yourself. Some hero.

One guard left. The other sat watch, but soon enough, he nodded off with a bottle in his fist, leaving her to stew alone. She struggled at the chains—no good.

Nothing to do but wait. If they had planned this as torture for her, they had calculated it well. Writhing in her own powerlessness, unable to free herself, unable to get through to the guards, knowing that she would die for nothing and soon others would die too and all she could do was wait. Blessedly, her consciousness was beginning to blur, from pain and hunger and weak blood flow. Maybe she would drift away in the time that remained to her, and it would pass quickly.

A key turned in the lock, and the door swung open. The guard who shuffled in was unfamiliar, his gait awkward as though the heavy boots were new to him. Some green recruit, she guessed, whose helmet and armor had been swapped out by his fellow soldiers as a practical joke, judging by how poorly they fit him. If he got close enough, she could probably throw him off-balance, maybe hook her heel around his leg and send him sprawling—what good that would do her, she couldn't say. Another woman might be able to bat her eyelashes, wiggle her hips, whatever people did to be seductive. Celes had never attempted flirting, let alone seduction. Even the leering she had endured from the guards here was unfamiliar.

The recruit let the door swing shut behind him, but he stayed a few paces away, as if sizing up the situation, taking in first the sleeping guard with a bottle in his fist and then Celes herself. And then she realized he was no green soldier, as she got a better look at his face. Fearless, confident, yet not unkind.

It was his eyes that caught her attention first, watching her with a quiet intensity that seemed to be listening for something she couldn't hear that he, evidently, could. There were laugh lines forming at the corners of his eyes already, though he must be only a few years older than her.

"Who are you?" she asked.

He chuckled. "What gave me away?"

"That isn't your armor, and you don't act like a soldier."

As if conceding defeat, he removed his helmet and wiped the back of one half-gloved hand over his sweaty forehead. He was handsome, she supposed, if a little disheveled. A mop of gray-blond hair barely contained by a patterned bandana, a mouth that looked comfortable smiling, and those sharp eyes.

"My name is Locke Cole. I'm with the Returners."

She stiffened. "Isn't it a little late for an assassination? They're executing me tomorrow anyway. Kill me tonight and you'll just spare me the humiliation."

"See, and that's why I'm here," he said thoughtfully, conversationally. "Why on earth would the Empire be executing one of its own generals, without even a trial?"

"Treason."

"Really?" His eyebrows rose, but his voice was mild. "Are you thinking about defecting, then? We wouldn't say no to some intelligence, if you're so inclined—"

"Kefka is planning genocide," she said flatly, cutting him off. He inhaled sharply through his teeth at her words, but she continued, all of it pouring out in a cold, bitter tumble. "He's going to poison the besieged kingdom of Doma if he is not stopped. Emperor Gestahl wouldn't believe me, and he did not approve when I took action to stop it myself."

"What did you do?"

"I tried to kill Kefka."

There was a moment of silence, and then Locke snorted in dark amusement.

"It's a shame you didn't succeed." His face was grim, as though her confession had meant something to him. She almost wanted to laugh with relief at being believed, at last. At somebody listening and, she hoped, taking action.

"Will you tell your people? Will you make sure they stop him somehow? Please—someone has to—"

"No," he said, and she opened her mouth to protest, to scream at him if she had to, to beg. But he stepped toward her, his expression resolute. "You are going to tell them, and then we are going to stop him, if you're in any shape to fight."

"I'm to be executed at dawn."

"We'll see about that." He pulled a pin from the bandana wrapped around his shaggy hair, then snapped it in half with leverage between his teeth, a fluid, confident motion. "It's a handy trick," he said, with a slight smile. "It's gotten me out of trouble a few times."

"You're freeing an enemy soldier?"

"You were willing to die to try to stop your own people from committing a war crime. I don't think we're enemies."

With practiced ease, he scraped the rust from her chains and then fiddled around with his pin in the locks. She winced as the shackles rubbed over the raw skin of her wrists.

"Sorry," he said. "We'll bandage those up once you're free."

"Why are you doing this?"

"I like rescuing people," he said with a laugh. It sounded self-deprecating, like this was some kind of private joke. "Anyway, Banon will want to hear this, and you'll be able to explain it better yourself than I could."

"What if I'm lying?"

"You have no reason to lie."

"This could be a setup."

"A ridiculously involved one with little chance of success." He wiggled the pin again until the lock gave a satisfying click. He released the shackle around her left wrist, then turned his attention to the second. "For someone about to be executed, you're awfully determined to ruin any rescue attempt."

"I'm your enemy," she protested. "I'm an imperial general."

"You were an imperial general. But you're not my enemy, I told you that." He gave the chain one more pull, freeing her second wrist. Her arms dropped heavily to her sides, and the world spun. She swayed. He reached to steady her, his hands gripping her shoulders, and he peered closer at her face, concerned. "Can you stand?"

"I… think so."

"Then let's get you out of here before sleeping beauty over there wakes up."


***


She looked nothing like he would have expected. He had imagined her older, gruffer, coarse and quick to anger. She led the butchery of Maranda, after all, an attack so quick and brutal it had cowed many of the city-states on both continents, who took it to heart as a warning against resistance. He thought he might hate that woman, if he met her, for the suffering she had caused to so many.

He had never imagined this slender young woman, bruised and battered and burned, willingly inviting her own death if it meant she had a chance to save others. To save people who should technically be her enemies, innocent though they may be.

She looked innocent herself, a victim of unwarranted violence. She wore only a thin white shift, stained and torn, that did little to cover her lithe figure, and he couldn't help wondering just how the Empire had punished her. Regardless, her spirit was clearly unbroken, at least. He would coax the rest out of her and then see if someone at headquarters could tend to her.

The guard was out cold, and Locke took the liberty of relieving the man of his pants and boots, which he handed over to Celes. She accepted them without comment, or even the look of disgust he might have expected. He untied the sash at his waist and offered it for her to belt the too-large pants.

Soon enough, she was as dressed as she was going to be, her wounds tended as well as he could manage with a field kit—and wounded she was, with crusted blood and spreading bruises and even the blisters of a burn along one arm. Gritting her teeth, she hissed sharply but made no sound of protest at his quick examination. He dabbed the open wounds with medicine to numb the pain and hasten the healing, then wrapped them with bandages. She looked almost like a Narshean, her arms nearly covered in fabric.

"That's all I can do for now," he said.

She glanced toward the door, and he couldn't help wondering if she were in shock, as pale as she was and as little as she seemed to register her own pain. "The next guard will be coming soon."

"We'll be gone before they have a chance to sound the alarm."

He led her out in the hall. To his right, the hallway bent around toward the cellar staircase and up into the house proper. Wall sconces illuminated that direction brightly. Locke turned instead to his left, where the hallway dead-ended into a set of doors much like the one they had just passed through. He paused in front of them, trying to summon up his mental directions—the room on the left, or straight ahead? Behind him, Celes took slow, careful steps, limping in her stolen boots.

Straight ahead. That had to be the answer, given the layout of the town. "This way," he said, unlocking that door with the same key he'd used to enter her cell. Then, for good measure, he unlocked the surrounding doors. Might as well not raise suspicion about any one particular room, should the guards think to check for them here.

Celes watched him closely, but she didn't challenge him, even if she was thinking it. Her unspoken questions followed him through the center door.

Inside, the room was pitch black. He tugged Edgar's mechanical lantern out of his satchel and flicked it on, illuminating dusty stacks of boxes, rolled carpets and wall hangings, forgotten chairs, and other bric-a-brac that filled the room. Celes let out a wordless sound of surprise and confusion, which he found almost irrationally entertaining. It made him feel like a magician pulling things from his bag of tricks.

That feeling only intensified when he snooped around the far wall, which was covered with glossy wood paneling, and found a little latch that sprung a nearly-invisible trapdoor. The passageway beyond was narrow, with a low ceiling, and just as dark as the storeroom had been.

"You've been here before," Celes said.

"Not exactly," he said. "I have an extremely good memory for maps and diagrams. I used to go spelunking, as a hobby. It was useful then. Still is, really."

"You're telling me you have a map of secret passageways under someone's house in the middle of South Figaro." She sounded skeptical, maybe even joking, if she was capable of telling a joke, but if she knew how close to the truth she was...

"You'd be surprised." He couldn't help grinning as he ducked through the doorway and gestured for her to follow him into the narrow brick passage. Damn, but he loved this town. Provided he lived long enough to retire, and the Empire had been sent packing—or better still, eradicated entirely—he might want to retire here.

One of Locke's favorite things about South Figaro was its tenacity. It had started as a temporary waystation for explorers from Figaro proper, a few generations ago. Somehow it had grown into a full-fledged city that politely requested its independence from Figaro Castle, and Figaro, not being run by imperialists or fascists, agreed to let it go. It had a colorful and storied history, most of which Locke only knew at the most basic level, but what he did know was that it had the stubbornness and resourcefulness to survive anything: fire, treachery, illness, invasion. No matter what happened, the people of South Figaro pulled together and rebuilt.

Some slightly paranoid but still brilliant royal ancestor of Edgar's had decided the town should have a system of underground passages connecting many of the major buildings, so that the citizens could band together in the event of attack or emergency. The residents never bothered removing them, and in fact the full network of passages was not well-known to most citizens. Take, for example, the hidden passage in this rich man's basement. The man himself had bought the home some years before, and Locke doubted he knew about any of this. Rich people, in Locke's experience, were either obsessively prone to studying their investments or couldn't be bothered to put in the effort. This rich man had inherited his wealth and sold his city out to the Empire, which meant he was greedy and gullible and likely fell in the latter camp.

Locke had known about the passages for years. They had made his life infinitely easier over the past few days, as he snuck through the city taking inventory of the imperial presence, looking for opportunities to disrupt the Empire's supply lines, and making note of where and how to smuggle help to the people of South Figaro if they rose up in rebellion. The passages had their limitations—some had been walled up, or fallen into disrepair—but their usefulness could not be overstated.

The passage's low ceiling gave him only an inch or so of headroom; anyone tall would have had to stoop to fit down here. Fortunately—in this case, anyway—Locke was not an especially tall man, and while Celes was nearly his height, she too cleared the ceiling with relative ease.

Because his electric torch was the only light down here, Celes followed very closely behind him, her breathing somewhat unsteady. He could see her hand beside him tracing the wall. The tactile sensation of it was probably reassuring for her, if she had little experience being underground like this.

He had certainly passed through less hospitable tunnels himself, caves with sloping ceilings and irregular walls that could become impassable without warning, that he had crawled into on hands and knees and had to back out of in the same undignified manner when he could go no further forward. There was sometimes a certain sense of excitement to the danger of the unknown, but he was glad for the relative safety of these man-made paths.

"How're you holding up?" he asked after they'd walked in silence for a considerable amount of time. He looked over his shoulder at her—there wasn't much room for him to turn around.

Her head was down, as though she was looking at her feet, and she still kept a hand splayed on the wall. "I'm fine," she said.

She sounded winded, and more than that, she sounded anxious, her voice tight and closely held. Not fine, but he couldn't blame her for putting forth a facade, given the circumstances. "It shouldn't be much longer," he said, taking his internal monologue and verbalizing it for her sake. "When we get aboveground, we'll have to see where we end up. There might be guards around—there are a lot of guards in town, just generally making a nuisance of themselves, though luckily not much more than a nuisance from what I've seen—so we'll need to avoid them and get through or over the north wall into the forest. With luck, we'll give them the slip and be out camping under the stars as easy as can be."

"Mm."

The light flickered.

Oh, shit, he thought. He fiddled with it a little, keeping his voice calm as he continued describing whatever came to mind. But no matter what he did, the flickering continued, which meant he had just a minute or two before—

The light clicked off with a little hissing sigh. Pitch darkness enclosed them. It was absolute and sudden and claustrophobic. Behind him, Celes swallowed a whimper.

"Easy," he said calmly. "I've done this before, right? I've just told you all about it. This is nothing to worry about, just a straight shot down a hallway that was designed specifically for us to walk safely down it. It's like sneaking out of your bedroom to the kitchen in the middle of the night and not wanting to wake anyone up—just that safe. Nothing's going to happen to us."

"Mm," she said again, her voice sounding taut and tense.

"Here's what you're going to do." He put every bit of reassurance he could into his words, every bit of confidence and warmth. It helped that he genuinely believed they were safe down here, but he had put on false confidence to talk someone through situations when he was much less confident and much more afraid himself. Don't think about that. Don't think about her. Just breathe. "First, put your hands on my shoulders. We're almost the same height, so that shouldn't be too hard. Just lift your hands to touch your own shoulders, and then move them forward. I'm right here."

After a few seconds, he felt her fingertips on his shoulders, a gentle touch that immediately withdrew like the contact had startled her. Then her fingers rested on his shoulders again. They were shaking.

"Don't be afraid to hold tight if you need to," he said. "It'll help me know you're still there, too."

Her fingers gripped his shoulders more firmly. Long, slender, bony fingers, very unlike the soft ones that had held his shoulders like this before, years ago, a lifetime ago. But her hands stopped trembling after a few moments, and he heard her take a deep breath, very close behind him.

"Now close your eyes," he said. "It's all right if you can't see anything, because your eyes are closed. Keep them squeezed tight, and don't worry, I'll get us out of this."

It was frankly painful to be in this moment, with this familiarity. In the dark, she could be anyone. They could be anywhere. He could, if he let himself, imagine for just a few seconds that he had stepped backward in time to a memory—to terror he couldn't let her know, to being the steady one because it had been his fault they were in that situation at all, and then the giddy relief and almost hysterical laughter when they emerged into a wider cave with light filtering from high above, and a magnificent cathedral ceiling dripping with stalactites, and Rachel had clapped her hands with delight and he spun her while she laughed

"Left foot," he said, stepping forward with his left foot. "Right foot." She stumbled at first, but he started humming a melody and shifting his shoulders against her hands in time with the music, and soon enough she fell into the rhythm and they moved together through the lightless hallway. With his left hand, he touched the wall, keeping himself grounded and making sure they were going in a straight line, with no branches.

Eventually, the hallway seemed to be sloping upwards, until at last it ended in another smooth-bricked wall.

He felt along the wall with the flat of his hand until he found the lever handle. He gripped it firmly, tugged it down, and felt a wash of relief as the door mechanism clicked and then the door swung open.

The light, by contrast with so much darkness, hurt his eyes. The air smelled sweet. He almost tumbled out of the hallway into a shaded, covered alcove between buildings. A step along the entire face of the wall made it likely that no one would place anything in front of the secret door out of ignorance or malice—forethought he appreciated. He held a hand toward Celes, to help her down if she needed balance, but she supported herself against the wall. While he closed the secret door as quietly and carefully as he could, she sat down on the step beside it and stared blankly ahead, hands in her lap. It was difficult to tell what her reaction was, but she seemed all right for the moment.

How long had they been down there? Fifteen, twenty minutes at most. But long enough for Celes's absence to be discovered and for word to begin to spread. Best to assume the guards would be suspicious, looking for her.

"I'll be right back," he said.


***


Celes had looked the possibility of death in the face without flinching for years. Yet she was disturbed by just how terrified she had felt, down there in the dark. This must be what hell is like, she had thought, and hated herself for her weakness, as though she were a child scared of shadows in the corner of the room. Maybe it was just the cumulative effect of days of anticipating her own execution, the physical ordeal they had inflicted on her, the horrors she had imagined, the horrors she had witnessed and been culpable in. She felt drained.

There was something almost uncomfortably intimate about the way he had reassured her through the darkness. Not just the physical touch—although she could not remember the last time she had touched someone in any way that was not violent, sparring or deadly combat, so that was certainly unusual. But also the warm, comforting gentleness in his voice. No one had ever spoken like that to her before.

She was a general, disgraced or not. She was a soldier. Yet he had spoken to her like he was soothing a child, and she, damn it all, had been soothed.

When he said he would scope out the situation, she obeyed his command to stay put. She would be recognized and apprehended if they saw her; she did not know the town; she was utterly exhausted, a wet rag wrung out and tossed in the corner, spent.

He returned after what was probably not a very long time, his expression thoughtful, frowning. "There's soldiers up ahead," he said. "Three of them." He unsheathed one of the daggers at his waist and held it out to her. "Do you think you could fight with this?"

She sized it up. "It's not ideal, but yes."

He looked dubious—doubting her skill with the weapon, or doubting her stamina? If the latter, she had to admit she shared his uncertainty. "Can you… do this without killing them, if it's possible?"

She laughed ruefully. Perhaps her reputation had preceded her. "Yes."

It would certainly be more efficient or effective to just kill the guards and leave their bodies cooling in the waning sunlight. No one would notice they were missing for some time, and even then, no one would be able to say with certainty whether Celes had been responsible. And there would be absolutely no indication that anyone had facilitated her escape, no possible accomplice witnessed and reported. It would be the safest decision, and yet she was relieved Locke had made it clear that he wished to avoid bloodshed.

The alcove they found themselves in had two exits, one visibly blocked by junk and the other seemingly clear. Celes followed Locke as he prowled, catlike and confident, down the remaining pathway.

At least it was dusk, and most of the residents had turned in. But the guards Locke had mentioned were stationed in a cluster down the street, and there would be no avoiding them—nor would waiting longer do any good, giving the troops time to mobilize and plan a strategy to flush her out.

Locke seemed to know where he was going, and he walked without any apparent awareness of the guards, like he had nothing to hide. If he hadn't been accompanied by a known criminal, he might have been able to avoid suspicion altogether. But instead, a voice called out behind them.

"Hey! You there!"

Locke kept going, as though he had heard nothing. Celes stayed at his heels, following his lead.

"That's General Celes! I demand you stop!"

Locke sped up, just shy of a run, and Celes followed suit, though her legs screamed a protest. This wasn't going to work. She couldn't keep up with Locke, not in her current condition, and the guards were gaining on them. She spun to face them as they approached, raising Locke's dagger and shifting into a ready stance. It took Locke a moment to realize what was happening and draw his remaining dagger. But he wasn't a soldier, wasn't a warrior—she could see it in how he carried himself, in the muscles of his body built for speed and agility, not power. This was not his fight. She could end it quickly, without involving him.

Fighting three on one would have been more challenging if they had been officers, but these were just a cluster of unfortunate recruits. Even with the handicap of an unfamiliar weapon and a battered, weak body, she still made short work of them. They tried to surround her. She danced easily between them, dodging their pitiful swipes, stomping their legs, slashing at the weak points where armor did not shield them. They were like children and she was a deadly tornado of violence and death. Wielding a dagger meant fighting at closer range than she preferred, but she bared her teeth and struck again, and again, until they backed away and stood out of reach, uncertain, their conviction clearly wavering as they considered what, exactly, was facing them.

Her breaths came quick and shallow and harsh, and she hoped it made her sound like a dangerous animal and not like she might topple at any moment if this continued.

"If you walk away now, I won't chase you," she said in a low voice.

One of the soldiers stepped forward, sword raised, though there was a quaver in his voice. "You're—you're under arrest. For treason to the Empire."

Brave, and foolish, and entirely unnecessary. Celes threw herself at him, ducked away from his too-late attack, and raised the edge of her blade to his throat before he could back away. "This is my final warning. Walk away now and I will let you live. Or—" She pressed the dagger into his flesh. "I will disembowel you," she growled, "and your compatriots, and I will walk out the front gate and none of you will be able to stop me. Do you understand?"

The whites of the man's eyes were visible, his eyes bulging. "Y-yes, general."

"Go," she said, lowering the blade an inch. When he didn't move, she barked out, again, "Go!"

That seemed to break the spell. The man ran, glancing back over his shoulder twice before he had cleared the end of the street and was out of sight. His companions were a few seconds behind him, but they too fled. Celes flipped the dagger around and offered it, hilt out, to Locke, who was staring at her. She couldn't tell if she saw fear, horror, or disgust on his face. Then his expression smoothed out, and he accepted the dagger and resheathed it.

"Even my own men didn't follow me because they were loyal to me," she said. "They followed me because they were told to, and because they believed I could take on anything. They never loved me, but they do fear me."

Locke shrugged noncommittally with a faint smile. "I hope it won't be a disappointment to you that we won't be going through the front gate."

"Yes, I know," she said. "That was the point."

He chuckled, low in his throat. "Ah. Misdirection. Very good."


***


They did not, in fact, go through the front gate.

As effectively as Celes had managed to scare them—and it was an impressive sight; he had expected he would need to defend her, only to find himself rendered utterly useless as she tore through the guards' defenses without hesitation—it would only be a matter of time before the soldiers reported the incident and something more vicious came after them. So Locke led her through a series of side streets, into shops and out back doors, occasionally waving an apologetic greeting to a shopkeep or resident before hurrying onward.

This technique seemed to be quite an effective one for avoiding guards, as they reached the very edge of town without another incident, thank goodness.

His heart lifted. He could see the forest at the edge of town from here, and once they'd slipped into the woods, especially with the falling night, he could get them to safety. Heavily armed soldiers couldn't move effectively through the close-set trees, and Locke knew the woods well enough to get by. And then the caves, and the countryside, and finally the Narshe mountains—he had made this trek so many times that even an injured companion wouldn't be an insurmountable problem. The worst was behind them.

Except that just as he had started to celebrate the inevitability of success, an incontestable harbinger of failure crashed through the alleyway behind them and leveled its guns at Celes's head.

The soldier at the controls didn't even bother with a speech or a demand for surrender. He flipped a series of switches in his Magitek armor, and the guns started to glow, threatening impending fire.

At this point-blank range, there was no chance of dodging, or fleeing, or doing much of anything except saying a prayer. Regret knotted in his stomach—what would become of Rachel now? Would she fade away, after all? That was what he thought of in his final moments, her beautiful lifeless face, all hope extinguished.

Celes swept in front of him, some final gesture of heroism that seemed in keeping with his impression of her so far. As though she could absorb the blast for him and he would live, instead of it obliterating them both.

She raised her hands toward the Magitek armor, palms out, fingers touching. Around her, the air took on a peculiar tingling sensation Locke had experienced exactly once before, when the impossible had been made real by another young woman. The temperature dropped. The skin on Celes's hands turned white, etched with traces of frost. A moment later, ice crusted over the surface of the Magitek armor. And then Celes snapped her fingers, and shards of ice from nowhere beat a jagged percussion as they speared through the armor's metal casing into its technological heart.

The armor sparked and sputtered, and then it began to emit a high-pitched whine.

"That doesn't sound good," Locke observed. He tugged on Celes's sleeve. "Come on. We need to get out of here, now."

Now, finally, they were on their way to safety. There was just enough light from the rising moon to see by as they fled into the forest. With the city growing dim and distant behind them, and the sound of the Magitek armor fading away under the hum of singing insects, he started to breathe more easily. A permanent carpet of leaves softened their footsteps. The air smelled damp and green and wonderful. Locke loved cities, genuinely loved surrounding himself with people, but there was something about stepping inside a forest and away from civilization.
Behind him, he could hear Celes breathing heavily, and he slowed and turned to face her, though it meant walking backwards.

"Are you all right?"

"You took that better than I would have expected."

"I've … seen magic before," he said carefully.

"Magitek, yes, of course, but—" Her eyes narrowed. "Terra? It couldn't—but, no, I suppose it could. I heard she'd escaped. She found her way to the Returners?"

"Something like that. You know her?"

She was silent. Well, clearly she did, though she didn't seem inclined to talk about it. He ran through what he knew about Terra—that she had been enslaved by the Empire, that she had been hurt by Kefka and forced to murder their own soldiers to prove some sick, twisted point—and what he knew about Celes—that she had turned on Kefka, and that she pointedly didn't seem to want to murder civilians. There were clear overlaps. Presumably a shared hatred of Kefka, but who didn't hate that psychopathic clown, really? Magic, though, that was significant, and rare, and an unquestionable connection between the two young women.

They kept walking. He let her have her space, though he couldn't help wondering what was going through her thoughts.

Magic seemed to have taken what was left of her energy, or maybe it was just that she had finally reached the end of her admittedly considerable reserves, as she was even shakier on her feet than before. He wanted to take this at a kinder pace, to give her time to rest, but the guards would follow them. So he pushed them harder than he would have liked. For her part, she made no complaints, even when she stumbled or swayed or was very visibly winded.

"We've got to keep going," he said apologetically. "If they decide to take your jailbreak seriously, they might send dogs after us, and that will be hard to evade if we're still in the woods. We have to press on for as long as it takes to reach the caves."

She nodded, though she was pale—pallid, even—and sweat beaded on her forehead.

Eventually, though, he realized they needed to stop and rest. It would be simply impossible to expect her to keep going like this. She still pressed on without a word; it was only after the third time he had to catch her arm to keep her from falling over branches that he himself could easily avoid that he realized she wasn't going to tell him if she couldn't continue. But she very clearly could go no further.

He glanced behind them, through the thick maze of trees and undergrowth. He could neither see nor hear any sign of pursuit.

"There's a stream just over this hill," he said. "We're going to stop there."

"But you said—"

"In a perfect world, we'd keep marching straight on til midnight," he said with an easy smile, walking beside her so that he could support her if she stumbled again. "Unfortunately, that would probably mean we're automatons—which we're not, for better or for worse. It's almost night. They won't see us."

Climbing that final hill was brutal, even for him, at the end of a long, long day. But there was the stream, glinting in the dim light, burbling in a gentle murmuring voice that soothed his heart. He settled on the far bank, set his pack down, and dropped beside it with a sigh of relief.

"I'd love to be able to offer a tent, or even a bedroll, but I packed light this trip, and we haven't made it to any of my stashes."

She sat down a pace or two away, letting out a breath between her teeth. "Stashes?"

"This is a trip I make often. I keep gear in a few places in case I need it. We'll be glad for it when we get to the caves tomorrow."

"That's clever." She stretched her arms over her head, rolled out her neck, her shoulders. Her joints creaked and popped stiffly. "Don't worry about me. I think I could sleep on wet concrete tonight."

"It won't be good for your injuries."

"I don't care," she said simply. "Push me as hard as you need to and I'll manage. What matters is getting to the Returners as fast as possible, if you think they'll listen about Doma."

"They should." That confirmed a few things—that he would need to be mindful of her physical limitations because she wouldn't, that she was single-mindedly intent on this mission. He respected her tenacity, even if it might mean extra effort to work around it.

"Good."

"I have to ask." He hesitated, considering his words. "About …. Maranda."

She winced, the first time he had ever seen her wince, as though this pained her more than her wounds. "This is why I said I'm your enemy."

"Why Maranda, but not Doma?"

"Maranda was a mistake," she said, looking away. "It wasn't—it didn't need to happen. Not like that. Maybe not at all."

"So you're reconsidering the Empire altogether, then."

"It—I—" She rubbed at her wrist through the bandages, made a face, dropped it. "I was told we were preventing wars by occupying the city-states. Bring them all under one roof, so to speak, and then there would be peace. Before Maranda, I was still trying to believe it. but even if that were true, the treatment was surely worse than the disease. I can't in good conscience support something so … cruel."

"Did you want to be an imperial soldier?"

That made her stare at him, puzzled, maybe perturbed. "I was never really in a position to consider an alternative."

Something about her haunted expression, so out of place on such a young face, made him think of Terra. The green-haired girl had seemed tormented by half-remembered nightmares of violence she had been forced to inflict. Was Celes likewise haunted?

She fell asleep before he did, before she had even had a chance to eat or drink or wash her wounds. Locke sat with his back against a tree, listening to her sleeping murmurs. The Empire had been cruel to the rest of the world, bringing destruction and suffering everywhere it set foot. But had it been any less cruel to its own people? This young woman had been an imperial general, a high-ranking official by any standard, yet the wounds in her seemed much, much older and deeper than what could be seen with the eye.

Every day seemed to introduce new reasons to hate the Empire, new reasons why it must be stopped, before any more lives could be claimed, before any more souls could be so damaged.

Notes:

The beauty of fanfic is that, apparently, a single chapter can be longer than an entire self-contained short story is supposed to be. I love this very much and am making full use of this freedom, as you can see.

Chapter 4: The Road to Narshe

Summary:

He knows many shortcuts, but it's still an arduous journey at the end of her strength.

Notes:

I want everyone to know that I have a genuine, actual phobia of caves, and yet because this is FFVI I am writing about caves for you. I have a phobia of fire as well. I'm sure this won't come back up later.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Too early, he woke her, and it felt like swimming against deep water in the dark, hardly aware which way was up, sleep still hanging heavily on her, trying to pull her back down.

"I'm awake," she stammered, although she was not entirely convinced of the truth of it herself. Her eyes shuttered. She forced them open again.

Every muscle in her body ached. Not even the acute pain of her injuries, but a bone-deep weariness so intense that being awake hurt. Sleep had been a blessed void—no nightmares, for once—and she wanted to wrap herself up in it and cease to be once more. The air was cold. Or was that exhaustion stealing her warmth? Her hands shook, her teeth chattered, and she wrapped her arms tightly to force her body to stop quivering. Her eyelids drooped again. She wrenched them apart.

Where the hell was she? Who was this figure seated beside her in the dark? Her mind spun, slowly coming on line, like Magitek armor just sparking up, the systems turning on one after another, out of sync, unable to move until the whole thing achieved equilibrium.

"I'm sorry," he said in a low voice. "I know you need more rest, but we can't wait." He—Locke. Yes. That was his name.

Her own Emperor had ordered her to be executed. A man from the Returners had saved her.

Kefka.

Doma.

Oh, gods, no.

"I'm fine," she said. Ah—her body was listening to her now, and she sat up, knees to her chest. She thunked her arms, her legs, trying to jar them into wakefulness and restart her circulation. Her thumbnail caught the ragged edge of a scabbing gash on her arm and she hissed between gritted teeth.

"I've got the salve for that, here." Locke rummaged in his pack of wonders and then handed her a little glass jar. "Do you need a hand?"

"No, I'm fine, thanks."

"I'll, ah—I'll leave you to it." He flashed a smile at her, barely visible in the dark—was it even morning yet, or still night?—and slipped away, leaving her to slather the slick, sticky substance over her wounds. Whatever it was, it contained some sort of numbing agent. She sighed, gratefully, as the pain that had buzzed unnoticed in the background of her consciousness lifted and she could breathe again.

She had fallen asleep wearing those wretched oversized boots. When she removed them, she found a blistery mess on the soles and heels of both feet. More of Locke's miraculous healing salve and she thought maybe she'd be able to walk again after all. She readjusted the padding within the boots, slipped them back on, and took a few experimental steps. Good enough for now.

A few branches cracked nearby, someone else's clumsy footsteps, and a few moments later Locke reappeared, rolling out his shoulders. He'd walked quietly, carefully, before. This must be intentional clumsiness, then, to warn her of his approach. Something about that felt irritatingly patronizing.

"I must seem like a damsel in distress," she said bitterly.

Laughter spilled from Locke like bright sunshine, unexpected and warm. "Hardly."

"You're having to coddle me."

"On the contrary," he said, and she could hear his grin, "I'm mostly having to keep you from hurtling off a cliff pushing yourself too hard. You're human as the rest of us. There's no shame in needing a little assistance. Besides, it seems like they worked you over pretty badly back there."

"You might be the only person to ever accuse me of being human."

"What else would you be?"

She snorted. "Some say the magic took me over, that there's ice in my blood. Or else I'm an automaton. A Magitek soldier, with gears for a heart." 

"That's very inventive. I'm sure whoever came up with that one must tell great bedtime stories. But, no, I don't think you're either a damsel or an automaton."

She wasn't sure quite what made her ask, "What do you think I am, then?"

He laughed. "Complicated. Beyond that, I don't think I know you well enough to say. Ask me again later." The answer was almost glib, off the cuff, honest. Yet it struck her silent, unsure how to respond or even how to feel about it.

They packed up after that, and she washed her face in the cold stream, the water shocking her fully awake at last. Just as her stomach began to remind her that it, too, had needs, Locke handed her a cloth sack half-full of dried fruit.

And then they were off once again, moving through the dark forest at a slower, steadier pace than their initial escape. Moving warmed her muscles, which was both good and bad—good, in that she felt more alive, awake, and invigorated, and bad, because the salve might have soothed the worst of her wounds but it could do nothing for the soreness or ache she felt with every step.

Their footsteps sounded through the songs of crickets and the rustling of leaves. An owl hooted. Sometimes, when she stepped on a particularly loud twig, the forest around them would hush, and then the sound would slowly, tentatively creep back in.

"The forest is very alive," she said after some time—an hour? More?

Locke was quiet for a moment, listening. "The farther out you get from civilization, the less everything has to hide."

"I've been in forests often enough, but always as part of a military exercise."

"You should try camping someday," he said absently. "Real camping, not this."

It was hard not to scoff openly at that. As though she would ever have a chance for something as mundane and recreational as camping—as though she would want to. Yes, that's it, you can murder the villagers and then go camping in the forest next door. No neighbors to scare off the birds, just a pile of corpses and the smell of ash in the morning. Delightful.

An owl hooted again, loud and close enough that it startled her completely out of her thoughts. She stepped back defensively, automatically, bumping shoulders with Locke.

"Rude bird," he muttered, and she couldn't help snorting in amusement.

The hike had become more of a climb, clambering over stone outcroppings or up grassy hills. Faint grey light peeked between the leaves overhead, just enough that she strained to see the forest around her.

"Once," Locke said, "I knew someone who could tell you what any bird was just from the sound it made. It could be just a speck in the sky, and she'd see something about the way it was flying, or how its wings were angled, and know its name and what it ate and where it roosted. Me, I just know a few of the most common ones."

"There's a falconry in Vector," she said. "I could see them out hunting on clear days."

"I always feel sorry for birds like that."

"Do you feel the same way about messenger pigeons?"

"Hmm." He exhaled loudly. "I hadn't thought about that, no. I guess pigeons have always seemed more like—chocobos, to me. Domesticated. Friendly. But falcons, though, they're wild."

They lapsed into silence after that. All she seemed able to offer was recollections of military life, a fact she was all the more self-conscious about compared to his lighthearted observations about the world around him, his memories of old friends or happier times. Besides, it was only small talk, his attempts at politeness. Better to spare them both the energy.


***

 

Locke had never been entirely clear on the exact designation when a large mass of earth was no longer a hill but rather a mountain. What rose above them was at least mountainous, part of a mountain range, even if it itself was not, technically speaking, a mountain. Or it might be. Who could say?

In the morning light, he could read her expressions a little better—exhaustion, maybe, as she considered the mountain, or hill, or whatever it was.

"It isn't the most treacherous hike," he said, warming a little into the feeling of being a tour guide, "but it would be exhausting in our current condition, not to mention slow. Very slow. A slow hike even in the best circumstances, which these are not. But, fortunately, we are equipped with a shortcut."

Her brow furrowed. "Caves, I assume."

"Did I tell you already?"

"You mentioned spelunking yesterday." She squinted. "It was yesterday, right?"

"We're past dawn, so yes, technically speaking, it is already tomorrow, and that was yesterday. But, yes, caves." He gestured to the land mass ahead of them, then to the actual without-a-doubt mountains that rose past it. "There's an entire system running through there, miles and miles of it. Not all of it has been mapped—at least, it's not all known to me, and I've made a point to learn as much of it as I can—but enough. Southwest and we could cut through toward the desert and Figaro proper. Northwest, though, and we'll come out within reasonable distance of Narshe. There's an inn near there, and stables. Mounted, we'll reach Narshe in no time."

He had, during their trek through the forest, collected a few suitably dry branches to serve as makeshift torches. Now, as they approached the mouth of a cave easily twice his height, he dug them out.

"As much as I'd love not to be reliant on these right now, I'm afraid they're our best option." He collapsed gratefully onto an appropriately tall rock and rummaged through his bag for his tinderbox. With practiced ease, he lit one of the branches, handed it to her, then held the tips of another branch to the crackling fire until it too caught flame. "These aren't very good, but they don't have to last long."

Celes glanced warily from the crackling branch in her hand to the cave and the sweeping mountains, and he guessed she was trying to reconcile his statement and the distance. "Your… device…?"

"No, but I've got a stash of supplies a little deeper inside."

He wasn't quite foolish enough to let himself trust instinct—that was inviting memory slips and a great deal of backtracking, at the very least. Working through a cave system, even a familiar one, required concentration and active memory, noting the correct landmarks, keeping track of twists and turns.

While they walked, he made an observation from time to time about the rock formations around them, but she was not, at least in this condition, much of a talker. Some part of him desperately wanted to ask her more about the Empire, the well-taught hunger to know her story, to understand her better and satisfy his curiosity—oh, that curiosity had gotten him into trouble, until he fell into a career of sorts that depended on curiosity and a certain degree of foolhardiness. But how to begin such a question? She seemed reticent to talk. And no wonder! She was without question at least somewhat traumatized by torture and the threat of her own imminent death, not to mention whatever had preceded it. Curiosity would have to be tempered by compassion, and patience, two virtues he tried his best to cultivate when possible.

After a short time, they came to a smooth-walled chamber with a high ceiling, though which a circular hole let a shaft of sunlight through.

"I could, if necessary, get here in the dark. I've done it before." He shuddered involuntarily at the memory—once, and it had been a singularly unpleasant experience and not one he cared to repeat. "But—here."

He jammed his torch into the jagged space between two rocks and then lifted a leather tarp from a shadowed nook in one wall. Underneath it, his emergency supplies appeared to be untouched, thankfully. He crouched beside it and took careful inventory.

A waterproof sack with a bedroll, a change of clothes and spare boots, a warm coat, a wool blanket, and a number of fabric scraps. A glass jar of fresh water, and another of oil, and two of preserved vegetables.

Celes looked genuinely impressed, which sparked a little satisfaction in him. "This is clever."

"I'd like to think so, but it's honestly the result of trial and error. A great deal of error, in some cases. I've been taking this route for years, and I would like to think I'm at least a little resourceful, if I say so myself."

"Have you been with the Returners for years, then?" She cocked her head. "I don't even know how long they've been active."

"Banon has been fomenting rebellion, or at least laying the groundwork for it, since the Empire first started cannibalizing the Southern Continent, so, twenty years or so? But I'm a more recent recruit. I wasn't quite that precocious."

"What exactly are you?"

"Locke Cole, treasure hunter, at your service." He channeled a little of the King of Figaro and bowed to her. Edgar would have added a flourish, but then, Edgar would have been trying to charm the pants off her, no matter how inappropriate the timing or situation might be. Locke was just trying to make her laugh, if he could.

Instead of laughing, though, she frowned thoughtfully. "What does that even mean?"

"A lot of digging around in caves like this one, looking for buried treasure, bandit caches, artefacts from ancient times."

"Ancient…?"

"Not like that," he said. "The Returners aren't looking to replicate the War of the Magi, even if Gestahl seems hell-bent on doing so himself."

She pressed her lips together, and he thought of the forbidden Esper magic she wielded, and what she had mentioned in the forest, how others accused her of having ice in her veins. Magitek meant the Empire's machinery and weapons of death, but it was a part of her body, too. A careless tangent of conversation.

"You can't tell me the Returners have you digging through caves for lost gold, and that's certainly not what you were doing in South Figaro."

His common sense was warring with itself. He was taking her to Banon, after all; he could tell her something, if not the whole of it, that he was a spy, an informant, a go-between. "I do a lot of things for the Returners. Like meddling in other people's business, pissing off Imperial soldiers, and making a new ally."

She snorted. "Ally?"

"Yes," he said, in what he hoped was a sure enough tone to cut off her argument. "Now, we are good and distant from the soldiers, and I don't know about you, but I am exhausted."

"Didn't you sleep before?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Someone had to keep watch, and you needed it more than I did. But I'm about ready to fall asleep on my feet, and this is a safe place to rest."

He spread out the bedroll and the blanket separately, then settled down on the blanket himself. Though the hard cave floor would do his muscles no favors, he was too tired to care. Celes did seem to care, her mouth open in protest.

"This is your gear—"

"Look," he interrupted, yawning, "I understand that you are a soldier and made of strong stuff, but you're also injured, and I'm not. Neither of us is going to feel great when we wake up, no matter what we do, but we've got another couple of days of travel ahead of us and you will need your strength. Please, believe me, you have nothing you need to prove to me."


***

 

They slept well and long, and for his part, it was healing—he had suffered from nothing but exhaustion. Celes was like a cat, he decided, unwilling to let on how badly she hurt. That posed not just a problem but also a puzzle he found himself drawn to solve. Was she afraid of being perceived as weak or lesser? Had she been punished for weakness? Did she simply distrust him that badly? He was disinclined toward the latter. This seemed too deep-seated to be specific to her current situation. With cats, it kept them safe from predators, but Celes might be one of the deadliest warriors to ever cross his path.

The rest of their travels were, thankfully, uneventful. If Celes seemed a little tense about the caves, she voiced no complaint. Oil-soaked rags made for better torches, and his stores of food filled their bellies. At some point in the future, he would need to replenish what he'd taken here, but that was a worry for another day.

Emerging into sunlight at the end of hours in a cave was always a welcome relief, the air fresh and sweet and lovely, the sight of a green varied landscape like water for a thirsty soul.

"Is that … the end of the caves, or will there be more?" Celes asked.

"We're clear for now," he said. "You're comfortable riding a chocobo, right?"

She gave him a look that seemed moderately offended. Of course, it stood to reason that she must have considerable experience, likely not just riding but fighting as well. He held up his hands apologetically.

"I try not to make assumptions." It felt like a weak excuse.

Soon, they reached the well-worn path, not quite a road, that brought them to a stop for weary travelers. In days past, Locke had sought shelter there from storms or when meeting a contact from Figaro or elsewhere, but he could sense Celes's impatience, and the weather was fine. So he refilled his water jug from a pump out front, then haggled with the chocobo keeper for a pair of birds to take them up to Narshe.

"Will we leave them there?" Celes asked, inclining her head up at the bird. These were a stocky breed for travel, good for long distances rather than speed, their pale yellow feathers thick and fluffy to keep warm through cold weather. He wondered if she had ever ridden a chocobo like this, or only the sleeker warbirds.

"They're from the stables in Narshe," he said. "In a way, we're doing everyone a favor."

"Aren't they worried you might steal them?" 

He couldn't help bristling. "I'm not a thief."

"Do they know that?"

"Yes, in fact, they do," he retorted, adjusting the bird's saddle with perhaps a little more force than was necessary. "I'm here often, and they know me. And they trust me."

The lift of her eyebrows was like a subtle shrug. That bothered him, for some reason, and he fought to calm himself. She was trusting him with her life, even though trust did not seem to come easily to her. This was a simple question with no deeper intent. They were just both exhausted, worn out, she was in pain, he was strained carrying the responsibility of their shared safety on this trip—he needed to breathe, and let it go.


***


They arrived, at last, in Narshe. Celes had never laid eyes on it before, but it looked like a scene from a painting, a thriving industrial town nestled in among snowy mountains. At a distance, the lit windows seemed like twinkling stars; up close, they were cozy, promising warm fireplaces and steaming mugs of tea against the frigid night air.

And it was frigid, colder than anywhere she had traveled in her life, especially after the sun went down. For all the rumors that her magic gave her some immunity to the cold, that was no more true than whispers that she was a clockwork soldier. Wrapped in Locke's wool blanket, she had tucked herself as close as she could to the downy feathers of her chocobo and tried to steel herself against the wind, tucking her fingers under her arms to keep them warm. She had long ago lost feeling in her nose. At least the extra padding in her boots kept her toes warm.

A wall blocked the front of town, the only apparent entrance a closed gate with a gatehouse alongside.

"I'll take care of this," Locke said, dismounting. He approached the gatehouse and knocked on the door. A man answered, and the two of them had a heated conversation. Several times they pointed to where Celes waited with the two chocobos.

When Locke returned, he was smiling, darkly amused.

"They're not thrilled about visitors, more than usual, and the guard recognized me as a Returner, so he told me to scram. Banon and the rest are shacked up with our contact here, and no one's happy about it. I think we'll have to take the back way in if we want to avoid attention."

"Back way?"

"There's another shortcut, if you don't mind mines."

She stared at him. "Do you know secret ways in and out of every town on the northern continent?"

He snorted wryly. "Figaro Castle is unassailable."

Of course, he would say that to her—Figaro had always been an imperial ally in name, but the Empire long doubted its loyalty, and no one was surprised when its connection to the Returners was revealed. Even if that revelation had been connected to Kefka attempting to torch the place with all its citizens inside.

Celes shook her head, setting that aside. "So what now?"

"I'll give him the birds to bring to the stables, and the last leg of our journey will be colder and longer than I wanted, but we'll be fine. I expected this might happen."


***


Celes had marched through snow before, but she'd been warmly dressed at the time, well-fed and not weak from blood loss. Locke seemed aware of her exhaustion; he fell into the same bright chatter that had propelled her onward in the caves. Only this time, instead of telling her about stalactites and crystal formations and the risks of cave diving, he regaled her with local legends about fairy creatures called moogles.

Some distance from the town, Locke used his bag to brush snow away from a rusty old metal gate set in a stone wall. There was no lock, and the gate turned out to lead into a side passage to a well-lit mine tunnel which was fiercely cold but shielded from the wind. Another few twists and turns and they emerged back into the snowy night, but now they were looking down on the rest of the town from higher up the mountain. Locke took her arm to steady her, and she realized she had started swaying on her feet again—humiliating, you can't even stand on your own without needing a man to carry you—but after crossing a wooden bridge, they came at last, at last, to the back door of a house at the highest part of town.

Locke glanced at her, his ice-encrusted hair nearly obscuring his eyes. "No matter how they react, I'm on your side, all right?"

"What?"

One corner of his mouth quirked. "I mean, I trust you, and I'll convince them that they should trust you, too. Only, please, do not fight them, even if someone else draws a weapon. Please?"

She nodded curtly. "Understood." As if you could take anyone down in this condition. But he's right to be wary. He's seen you in battle before, he knows what a monster you can be.

He knocked on the door, a very specific and clearly coded pattern that she was entirely too tired to be able to replicate herself. He was halfway through repeating the pattern when the door swung open, and a haggard-looking man ushered them in.

"Arvis," Locke greeted him enthusiastically. "Sorry to barge in so late."

Inside, the warmth was almost too much. A fire crackled in a rough rock fireplace, lighting a room that might have been large if not for the impression that too many people were staying in too little space, judging by the bedrolls and baggage scattered around the room and a slightly stale smell of sweat. A stack of boots rested in a tray by the door, and Locke bent over to remove his own snow-encrusted boots as their host closed and locked the door behind them. Celes followed Locke's example, struggling with the laces of her own.

"Locke," someone called out. An older man with a refined voice, who approached with slow, deliberate steps, hands spread in greeting. His wild hair and considerable beard fanned around his face like a lion's mane, but despite that wildness, he had an unmistakable air of authority. "You've brought us a new friend."

Locke hastily left his boots in the stack, brushed his own dripping hair away from his face, and appeared to present himself—to Celes's eye, as a soldier might greet his superior. "Banon, this is—this is a, a defector from the Empire. She has information you need to hear."

"Ah. Yes. Please, come in, get warm, you've traveled a great distance—"

A handful of others appeared in the hallway at the far end of the room, presumably summoned from deeper in the house by the news of Locke's return. One of them she recognized from his portraits and, specifically, from his profile that had been minted on every Figaroan coin during the ten years of his rule—Edgar, King of Figaro, a dashing figure with sunny blond hair and a blinding smile. He glanced down at Celes, then back at Locke, raising an eyebrow. Locke shrugged with what looked like a self-deprecating smile.

Finally free of her boots, she left them next to Locke's, which were already making a puddle of melting snow. Then she stood tall, and took a deep breath.

Banon had nearly reached them by now, his hands still outstretched. He hesitated, as he came close enough to see her face. Her stomach tightened. Get this over with, you coward. All in one motion, she shrugged out of Locke's old wool blanket and folded it between her arms. Banon froze. Celes lifted her chin and met his eyes as his expression hardened into something fierce.

"Locke," Banon said slowly. "I assume you have an explanation for this."
 
"Yes, ah," Locke responded, gesturing a bit vaguely at her. "Banon, this is—this is—"

"I know who she is." Banon's eyes narrowed. "A 'defector from the Empire'?"
 
You have nothing to be proud about, the voice in her heart sneered, so if this is so important to you, get begging. Behind Banon, she saw King Edgar pat at his hip for a weapon. They'd both recognized her, then.

She dropped to her knees before Banon, though her thighs felt like the muscles might tear wide open. Palms together, she raised her hands in entreaty. "Banon. Please, I beg you to listen to me. Kefka is—Doma…"

"We've heard that Doma is under siege." Banon's hands were at his side now, curling into fists.

"Not just under siege," she said. "Kefka intends to poison their water supply. The Domans are—an honorable people. They would never suspect someone would stoop to that. Please, the Returners need to—"

"Didn't you slaughter Maranda?" That from the king, with a sneer. Even expecting the blow, it cut deep, every time. 

Banon ignored the king's comment, his eyes fixed on Celes's. "If you knew Kefka was planning this, and you're so opposed to it, why didn't you just stop him yourself?"

"I tried," Celes said bitterly. Why did you think this was going to go any differently, you foolish girl? All that time wasted. You could have tried getting to Doma yourself instead. At least then you'd be failing in the right direction.

Locke grimaced, ran his hands through his hair, and then stepped physically in front of Celes, facing Banon, arms out as though shielding her. "Stop," he said. "Shut up, all of you, and listen to me. Here's what happened. Celes here—yes, that General Celes—tried to stop Kefka, she fought him, she lost, and Gestahl was going to have her executed because that's treason. I found out she was going to be executed, did a little digging, and broke her out of jail. I promised her that the Returners would at least hear her out." He tilted his head toward Banon. "Don't make a liar out of me."

"Do you believe her?" Banon stepped back and folded his arms.

"Yes," Locke said, "I do."
 
Banon took a deep, slow breath and let it out, his nostrils flaring. "We have always been able to depend on you to be a good judge of people."

"Banon—you can't be serious—" This from someone else in the hallway.

"We'll discuss it," he proclaimed in a tone that forbade objection. "Take a few minutes to warm yourself. Have some tea, rest your feet. Locke, I'd like to speak with you in private."

"I don't need to rest—we can talk now." Celes struggled to stand, but her legs seized, and she cried out, falling backward. Locke was by her side at once, catching her and taking some of her weight off her legs. Slowly, he guided her to her feet, and she bit down hard on her lip to try to keep from making any more sound, though she could not hold back a quiet whimper that she hoped no one else could hear. Now that her legs had given up, the rest of her seemed on the verge of following suit, the pain of all the blisters and bruises and cuts and burns simmering to a boil. Not here, not now, not after all of that, not in front of all of these people…

"What's wrong with her?" Banon leaned forward, his dark expression softening.

"They were going to execute her, but they tortured her first." Locke sounded furious. "And then we walked for three days with nothing but a first-aid kit. She needs medical care."

"That doesn't matter," she said, her stomach roiling. "Please—"
 
"It does matter. And we couldn't act until the morning, anyway," Locke said to her matter-of-factly. "I'll talk to them first."


***


He left her in the care of a young man who had apprenticed with a doctor before joining the Returners. Her cool blue eyes pleaded with him, and he tried to exude confidence and reassurance as he smiled back.

"It will be all right," he told her. "Banon likes to be deliberate about things, but I think he's already made up his mind to help. You'll see."

Locke was fairly sure this was true. If it was not already true, he intended to make it true—not because he had made a promise to Celes, though that added to his conviction, but because he genuinely believed her himself.

Banon appeared to have commandeered Arvis's dining room into an office, judging by the maps and papers covering the table. No wonder poor Arvis looked so haggard, with the handful of Returners who had convened here occupying his home so fully. Banon and Edgar were already seated when Locke entered.

"Really, Locke?" Edgar smirked at him before he could join them. "A pretty girl in need?"

"I'm not the one with a weakness for pretty girls," Locke chided.

"No, apparently they have to be murderers to catch your interest." Edgar's tone was light and joking, but his eyes betrayed his lack of humor.

Locke glared back a challenge. "Would you call Terra a murderer?"

"No, but you can't compare the two." Edgar shook his head. "They used Gestahl's cursed Magitek to take Terra's free will away from her. They used her, and she had no say in it. General Celes led the attack against Maranda."

"Do you see how young she is?" Too tired to care about decorum, Locke turned a chair backwards and dropped into it, resting his arms over the back. "Maranda was two years ago. She must have been a teenager at the time. No, I suspect the Empire used her just as it used Terra, and it was fully ready to destroy her when she wasn't of use anymore."

"Locke—"

"He is exceptionally good at understanding people," Banon cut in. "But even if she's right, what can we do?" 

"Are you honestly considering this?" Edgar sounded surprised, though not entirely dismissive.

"Yes."

"You don't think this could be a trap?" Edgar asked, and Locke couldn't help laughing, thinking of how Celes had made this same argument to try to undermine her own trustworthiness.

"I am honestly not sure what sort of trap it could be," Banon said. "And she seems sincere."

Locke was thrumming, nearly vibrating, with frustration. "I've spent three days in her company. I've put my life in her hands more than once in that time, and I would do it again."

"I've spent the past few days arguing to Narshe the necessity of taking some action, even if the odds seem poor or downright impossible." Banon had his chin in his hand, looking thoughtful.  "We have few enough men here. The governor still won't listen to us. He's asked us not to leave Arvis's, lest it become known that Narshe is harboring enemies of the Empire." 

"Any word from the rest?" Locke cocked his head at Edgar, softening his voice. "Sabin's not back yet?"

"No," Edgar said. That might explain why he was so on edge. His long-lost twin brother, Sabin, who had reappeared after nearly a decade to join the Returners; now he was missing again, after the Imperial raid on their headquarters that scattered them far and wide.

"He's got to be the strongest man I have ever seen," Locke said, a peace offering. "I'm sure he'll show back up soon and we'll find he spent his time taking out an Imperial stronghold single-handedly and the only injury he sustained is an empty stomach."

Edgar smiled back, and Locke relaxed slightly. King or not, Edgar was one of his closest friends, and Locke hated fighting with friends. Besides, they couldn't afford any in-fighting right now, not with the Empire breathing down their necks and no home base and, apparently, the entire Kingdom of Doma at risk.

Banon considered a well-worn map on the table in front of him. "We could try to send a pigeon to Doma, but it's so far from here."

"Send one to Figaro, then," Edgar said. "We have contacts all over the continent. I'll write my Chancellor and have him relay the message down the line until it reaches the King of Doma. We aren't expressly allies, but I think they'll heed a message if it comes signed by my own hand. And I think we can rally some troops to Doma's aid, too, if need be."

Banon nodded. "Very well. Let's write a letter, Edgar, and put your seal on it. Surely Narshe can't begrudge us a single pigeon down to Figaro."


***


The medic had insisted she needed to wash the grime and sweat from her wounds before he could treat her, and with a businesslike clarity of purpose, he ushered her into their host's washroom and drew up a hot bath for her. Now she stood in the tub in the center of a tidy little room, with a clean white towel waiting for her, but she was so filthy that her footprints stood out on the clean tile floor, dirt and pus and blood leaving awful stains where she had stepped.

Someone rapped on the bathroom door. She tensed, looked frantically around her for anything she could use as a weapon, all too aware of her utter vulnerability at this moment. 

"Celes?"

Locke's voice. Relief flooded her, after the sudden spike of adrenaline, and she sank the rest of the way into the tub and hunched until the water reached her chin, with only her head and her scabby knees above the surface.

"Are you all right?" Locke called through the door.

"I'm—fine." The accumulated grime swirled from her skin to form a film along the surface of the water, turning it nearly opaque.

"Good." A pause, then, "I wanted to tell you I just met with Edgar and Banon and they're preparing to send urgent word to Doma, and there's talk of mobilizing troops, too."

"Oh, thank god," she breathed.

"I think it's going to be all right," Locke said through the door. "You did it."

Celes dropped her head forward, hair cascading around her face, and buried her face in her hands. This one good deed, then, to counteract a lifetime of unforgivable crimes—at least this once, she had done something right, and they would be saved.

If she cried, like this, who would ever see?

Her shoulders rocked, the only evidence of her tears.

Notes:

This chapter was a week late, and what you are about to read was entirely rewritten from scratch in a period of just over 24 hours, right before posting. The previous draft wasn't working and it needed to be replaced. All of it. In a day. No, I don't know why I'm like this. Wish me luck that it won't happen again; I need sleep!

Chapter 5: Shadows over Narshe

Summary:

A brief reprieve to catch our breath and dream we might be able to save the innocent, but sooner or later, bad news catches up to us.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Arvis's house was tense and overfull; a space that might have comfortably housed three people struggled to support twelve. The Returners slept on bedrolls and blankets and piles of clothes. They ate the travel food they'd brought with them and tried to take up as little space as possible. But Locke could tell they were restless, cooped up in here, unwelcome in the town yet with nowhere else to go.

"I'm glad you're here," Banon said to him over a late-night pot of herbal tea, after one more discussion with a distracted Edgar about how to come to Doma's aid. "Meetings with the governor of Narshe have not gone well. I'd like your help."

"I don't think the governor has any love for me," Locke said uncertainly.

"Even so, your insight is usually helpful." He sighed. "The man is so terrified of making a decision that he fails to realize his paralysis is itself a decision. The Empire has grown bolder than I expected, advancing on multiple fronts across the continent. Narshe must stand with us against them or we may all fall."

"The people of Narshe are independent to a fault. They don't take kindly to being told what they must do."

Banon smiled wryly under his mane of beard and raised his cup toward Locke. "And this is why we need you. Do you have any advice, then, on how to convince them without provoking their obstinacy?"

"I'll think on it."

He had too many things to think about, and as he joined the others in the main room of the house and staked out a corner for his own nest, those thoughts raced through his mind. Doma, of course, and fears that even a relay race of messenger pigeons might not arrive in time to make a difference. Doubt, wondering whether coming here had been the right decision or if some other idea that did not occur to him at the time might have been better. Fear of the Empire's might, if it could spare to divide its forces as Banon claimed. Strategy in battle was not Locke's element; he was glad to leave that planning to others. But he had seen enough of the Empire's handiwork in ruined lives and haunted eyes that his stomach churned at the thought of exponentially more towns razed by imperial troops.

And then, of course, there was Celes.

He felt responsible for her in a way that he did not for Terra. Without a doubt, Terra was more vulnerable and less self-sufficient, but her innocence coupled with her power meant that the Returners would protect her any way they could. Even Edgar cooled his flirtation when it became clear she would not reciprocate even in jest. But Celes had no such protection; she was unwanted and unwelcome here, distrusted by men more inclined to fight against her than alongside her. And Locke worried about the injuries she had sustained over the past few days. If something inside of her had broken, would she speak up, or would she suffer in silence, undiagnosed, slowly bleeding out in a way none of them could see?

She slept deeply in a corner of the room, having been settled there by the insistent young medic as soon as he had finished treating her—including stitching up the worst of the cuts on her arms, for which she had had numbing salve and a finger of whiskey that shortly afterward lulled her to sleep.

Locke settled his bedroll near hers, though whether that was for her safety or the comfort of the rest of the rebels, he couldn't say. But she was surrounded by erstwhile foes. Might as well be shielded from them by the presence of one friend.


***


In the morning, Banon and Edgar sent out a pigeon to Figaro, and to the port city of Nikeah—Figaro, to gather troops, and Nikeah in case any ships were setting sail to Doma. Locke suspected that Edgar wished to do more than just send a message home. If he knew Edgar, the king must be anxious to return to his people and his castle, but something kept him here, now—a greater anxiety about his brother, perhaps. When their headquarters had been compromised and an attack from the Empire was imminent, they had escaped downriver at night in an assortment of small boats that could not be tracked, and Sabin had been separated from the rest. They had heard no word from him, nor any sign that he survived, but based on even their short time together, Locke had faith in the man's general resilience.

The intent was to meet up at Narshe. Locke had had other orders, to investigate Imperial plans within South Figaro, which was on the way. He didn't complain; that meant more travel time spent on solid ground, which did not typically have a habit of giving way under one's feet or pitching violently at the slightest provocation. And once he arrived at South Figaro, of course, one thing led to another and he'd followed a thread of mysteries down to the basement of the richest man in town seeking rumors of a doomed prisoner.

At least for the time being, Locke was glad for a chance to rest, without embarking on a journey over either land or sea. Soon enough, he imagined, they would all gear up and head down southeast, to Nikeah and eventually to Doma, to provide what support they could.


***


When Celes finally woke, sunlight was streaming in through the windows. Her body felt stiff, like someone had carved her muscles from wood pieces that fit just a little too snugly together. The stitches on her arm twinged when she tried to sit up. The motion set the room spinning, too, and her stomach growled with a hunger so acute it almost felt like pain.

She was the last one awake, she realized; men milled around, repairing their gear, or burning their cooped-up energy through calisthenics. The pair of men closest to her stopped their stretches and looked at her, cautious, calculating. She recognized that look. And she could not blame them for it, for distrusting the enemy who now occupied space within their camp.

Locke was nowhere to be seen. How dependent she had become on him, as though he were her translator through a strange world in which nothing was familiar and none of what she once knew could help her. Every moment of the past several days had happened because he had guided her. It was as though she had been stripped of not just her rank but her identity, when they sentenced her to death, as though they had beaten the strength and skill and self-sufficiency out of her, and now she was wounded and helpless and unsure.

Now, she owned nothing, had no possessions of her own. Not that she had ever been much of a collector, not sentimental or preoccupied with trinkets, or souvenirs, but still she had had her chambers in the military barracks in Vector, her own sword with its familiar heft and balance, clothing that fit well, a shelf of books, a porcelain teapot and matching cups, and even a collection of pins and barrettes for her hair, her one vain indulgence. That was all gone now. She wondered if they would dispose of it and find some other use for her room, or just seal it away, forgotten.

It was strange and unmooring to think about. Though she had never considered herself materialistic, it did feel rather like she was an interloper or a ghost, with nothing tying her to the real world.

But as lost as she felt, and as tempted as she was to settle back into her corner and make herself invisible under a blanket, the hunger gnawed at her.

In her own world, she had moved through the world with a certain confidence and certainty. Now, she was conscious of how rumpled and disheveled she must look, a far cry from the neat and commanding figure she had tried to cut as a general. Someone here had donated a ratty old shirt to her, as her shift had been hopelessly bloodstained; she wore this untucked over the same stolen trousers as before. As she rose unsteadily to her feet, she was aware of eyes on her, and her cheeks burned as she stumbled and fell back against the wall. Pull yourself together. Locke isn't here to protect you from the mean, scary men, so stop being a fucking coward and let them see what you've become. The great General Celes can't even walk. The great General Celes hides behind a slight spy like a babe behind her mother's skirts. But that was unfair to Locke—he was no warrior, but he deserved more respect than that.

"H-hello," she rasped to the men who were still staring at her. Some of them averted their eyes and went back to their exercise, or their repairs, as though she hadn't spoken. One young man's eyes narrowed, and she recognized the hatred that sparked there. She pushed away from the wall and walked slowly, stiffly, and faces turned as she passed them.

In the washroom, she leaned back against the closed door and took a deep breath, relieved to be out of sight. She rinsed her face in the basin and tried not to stare at her reflection in the dull mirror hanging above it. Pale, bruised, with sunken cheeks and blue shadows under her eyes, a rusty scab where her lower lip had split. She combed her fingers through her hair and bound it up in a severe bun.

In the hallway again, she could hear voices from where she'd come—the men resuming whatever conversations she had interrupted. She fled down a staircase, trying to avoid contact with anyone, ducking into empty rooms if she had to. Are you afraid of them? Would you be less afraid if you had a sword in your hand and were trying to run them through?

It was not a large house, and she stumbled into the kitchen eventually, a brightly-lit room with afternoon sunlight framed by checkered curtains. The room wasn't empty—a familiar waif of a girl leaned over the stove, where a small flame heated a dented but serviceable kettle. In Celes's early memories, the girl had been blonde, but whereas other children's fair hair darkened to shades of brown or red with time, Terra's curls had taken on a distinctively emerald hue. Some belated side effect of the magic infusion, Celes assumed.

"Terra?"

The girl flinched, and Celes worried she would jostle the kettle and burn herself. Her eyes were huge as she faced Celes.

"Sorry," Celes said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

She hadn't expected to see the girl again. To be fair, up until Locke's rescue she had not expected to see anyone again, but certainly not Terra. Yet here she was, dressed in someone else's cast-offs just as Celes was. Two defectors from the Empire—no, Terra was no defector. She was a refugee, seeking freedom and shelter. One defector, then, and one victim.

Terra's brow furrowed for a moment, in confusion. Then a flicker of recognition, replaced by fear, in her wide, guileless eyes.

"I know you." Terra sounded so young, looked so young. But of course she could be no younger than Celes herself, a product of the same dubious magical experiment. And they had both lost any claim to innocence early on, shaped by the Empire as weapons of war.

"My name is Celes."

"You're with the Empire." There was no mistaking the fear in her voice now. "A—general. Like Kefka."

That cut deep. "Not anymore," Celes said flatly.

Terra nodded as if that made sense, as if that were sufficient. "My memory is hazy," she said, still visibly tense but no longer resembling a rabbit frozen with fear. "I don't—feel like we've talked much before."

"No."

"You're the girl with magic."

"Yes."

The kettle surprised them both by taking that moment to sing out, shrill and startling. Terra grabbed a mitt from a hook over the stove and moved the kettle off the flame. "Do you… want some tea?"

Celes couldn't tell if this was asked out of mere politeness, but tea sounded lovely. "If there's enough, yes, thank you." She leaned her hip against the countertop, watching as Terra rummaged through cabinets for a second teacup. Her movements as she prepared the tea were precise and careful, almost as though she were afraid of making a mistake, like a child who had only recently learned the steps. And perhaps she had.

"Do you want a cookie with it?" Terra smiled, tentatively. "Arvis keeps a jar of them." At the thought of cookies, Celes' stomach growled again, and Terra smiled more brightly. "No, sandwiches."

Soon, the two of them sat side by side on top of the kitchen counter, the tea steeping between them and a plate with a sandwich of cheese and cured meat on Celes's lap. Terra seemed quietly pleased with herself. This was the first proper meal Celes had eaten in days, and she forced herself to take only one bite at a time.

"Have you joined the Returners?" Terra asked, watching her closely.

"I—no. I don't think they would want me to." She took another bite, swallowed, sipped at her scalding hot tea.

Terra cradled her teacup in her lap. "You might be surprised. They've been very kind to me."

"It's a little different."

"Is it?" A demure sip.

"Yes."

Celes ate the rest of her sandwich in silence. She couldn't say whether it was a companionable silence or not—could not tell if Terra was glad to have her there—could not even say for certain whether she was glad of it. Relieved, maybe, to have found someone who did not seem to hate her. "Thank you. This was—very good."

"Arvis has been teaching me to cook," Terra said proudly, and this time it was obvious she was genuinely happy, as bland as the compliment may have been. "Meals in the mess hall, you know…"

"And camp rations."

"Not much opportunity to learn to make tea, or bake bread," Terra said, and Celes nodded, although she had had her own tea service in her officer's quarters.

"Did you bake this bread?"

"I don't think I can say I baked it," Terra said, shyly. "But I helped."

"I'm impressed."

Celes knew next to nothing about bread, but she listened to Terra's enthusiastic explanation of the process of kneading dough, Arvis's patience, and the involvement of a few of the Returners whose names Celes did not recognize. It was a pleasant enough prattle, here in the sunlit kitchen, but guilt nibbled at her conscience as she remembered Doma for the hundredth time since waking up.

She could not remember ever seeing Terra smile before. Not that she had spent a great deal of time in the girl's presence, and certainly not in recent years. As small children, they had been called to demonstrate their magical capabilities one after another against practice targets, but, for the most part, Gestahl had seen to it that his experimental subjects were kept separate. The two girls, at least.

"Have you joined the Returners?" Celes asked.

"For now." Terra's eyes fell to her teacup. "I don't really want to be part of a war, on either side. But the war is going to happen whether I'm in it or not. If I can help it end faster, and keep the Empire from doing to everyone else what it did to me—" She glanced sideways at Celes.

That glance was clearly loaded, although Celes did not know Terra well enough to be able to guess what exactly it meant. Expecting Celes to disagree with her? Wondering whether to include Celes among the parties wronged by the Empire?

"You could join, too," Terra concluded. "They really are very kind and understanding people. And—if you stayed with us, maybe we could be friends..."

Celes barked out a laugh before she could stop herself. She should have stopped herself, as Terra's face fell immediately. "No, I mean—I'm not laughing at you. It's just—"

From another hallway, a door opened, then shut, and Celes could hear a few quite animated male voices talking. Terra's hands tightened around her teacup, and she looked like she was struggling to maintain her composure. Then her face brightened as she looked past Celes, who turned to follow her gaze and saw Locke standing there, his cheeks and nose red from the cold and his eyes full of laughter. He ran a hand through his wet hair, which was pressed around his face as though he had been wearing a hat; there were still a few white snowflakes on his eyelashes that hadn't yet melted.

"Locke!" Terra exclaimed, all discomfort or sadness apparently forgotten at the sight of him. Something twinged inside Celes, jealousy at the ease of Terra's happiness, at the friendships she had developed here with the Returners.

Locke grinned toothily at Terra and raised his head in greeting, but his expression was more reserved and his voice softer when he turned his attention to Celes. "Hey, how are you feeling?"

He must have practiced sounding cheerful—no matter how outgoing he might be, she could not believe that it came naturally to anyone to summon such a good-natured voice in the middle of dangerous circumstances as he had on their journey here. At least his sunshine temperament, however much an act it might be, did not seem so out of place here as it had in prison cells or caves.

She gave him a thin-lipped smile. "I'm alive, for what good that may do."

"You'll do more good alive than dead. Anyway, I got you something." He held up a heavy armload of fabric wrapped around something long and slender. "A winter coat, some clothes, and a sword. They'll be organizing a contingent to go to Doma's aid, and I figured you'd want to come with."

She blinked. "Of course—but you didn't have to…"

"Practically speaking," he said, "you needed these things, so someone had to get them, and I highly doubt they left you with any money when they locked you up, so I volunteered myself to take care of it for you. Consider it a welcome gift for your new life."

Celes set down her teacup and took the bundle from Locke. Her hands dug through the fabric to the sheathed sword with a mind of their own, and she unsheathed it, examining it carefully. It glinted in the light. The wrap around the pommel told of its age, but the blade glinted in the light, its edge fine and sure.

"I admit I am not an expert on swords, but I trust the man I bought it from," Locke said.

"It's a little heavier than I'm used to, but I can adapt," she said, testing the weight of it in her palm, seeking the balance. "Thank you."

"Oh, how pretty," Terra said.

Celes looked at Terra in surprise—the sword was functional and well-made, but not especially beautiful—but Terra had taken something small and metal from the bundle of fabric and was holding it up, delighted. A brass barrette, with smudged engraving and a slightly tarnished clasp, set with colorful pieces of glass.

"I could put your hair up for you," Terra said tentatively, and this time Celes heard the nervous offer of kindness underneath the words.

She could, of course, fasten her own hair, just as she could choose her own sword and make her own cup of tea and fight her own battles and, she had always thought, rescue herself from any danger—but Locke had said for your new life and perhaps this was, after all, a new life. Maybe there would be room for her to go with the Returners to rescue Doma, and she could start this life doing something nice, for once.

"I'd like that," she said.


***


Banon and Edgar were poring over a map again, while Locke sat at the table with a tablet of paper and a pencil. Doma had become the first priority, of course, but the issue of Narshe's stubbornness remained a concern. Thus he was gathering all the information he could think of about Narshe, its people, its governor, and its relationship with the Empire. His shopping excursion had been fruitful, giving him a sense that the people of Narshe, if not its leadership, were finally ready to stand up against the Empire.

Someone pounded heavily on the front door, startling them all. Locke glanced at Banon, at Edgar. Without a word, they filed out into the hall and toward the house's entrance.

"Is this Arvis's house?" a man's voice boomed through the door, and all at once the concern on Edgar's face morphed into joyful relief. He pushed past both Banon and Locke just as the front door burst open and his enormous brother stepped inside.

"Sabin!"

But Sabin's own usual grin was absent. He, like everyone who had arrived in Narshe before him, looked a little worse for wear. And he was not alone—following him inside was a swarthy older gentleman and a youth who seemed all elbows and knees.

"We need to talk," Sabin said gruffly.

He marched toward Banon without bothering to remove his boots, tracking snow all through Arvis's house. The rest of the house's inhabitants had gathered to see what the commotion was all about; the place was entirely too small and crowded for something like Sabin's outburst to go unnoticed. Locke lagged behind as the entourage followed Sabin in. The older man was strongly built despite his age, a sword sheathed at his side, his black hair streaked with silver. The structure of his face was not immediately familiar, and Locke's mind spun for a few long moments before he made the connection.

A Doman, here in Narshe? Had he been sent to gather allies? How fortunate that they'd had advance notice because of Celes, that they were at this very moment in the middle of gathering a force to help. Maybe it would be enough. If Doma could afford the time it took for this man to come here and request aid… 

"You!" The man's voice rang down the hallway, followed by the shrill sound of a sword being drawn. Locke could guess the target of this sudden rage. He raced toward the great room, his feet pounding, and arrived in time to see the man raising his sword—for a second time, Locke realized, because Celes stood a pace away from him, breathing heavily, and her arm was dripping blood. Had she blocked the blade with her bare arm?

Locke threw himself between them, facing the Doman, arms out and hands up in surrender. "Peace. Peace!"

The Doman snarled. "There can be no peace with an Imperial dog in our midst!"

"She defected. She's one of us now. She came to warn us, to send a message to Doma—"

The man let out a terrible sound that was half wail, half scream. A choking, tearing, all-consuming grief. He flung the sword aside and pushed Locke, reaching toward Celes. Locke circled with him, keeping his body between them.

"Has Doma fallen, then?" Celes's voice was low.

"They are dead! They are all dead!" The man jostled Locke; there was no grace or strategy in his movements, just a single-minded need for violence with Celes as the ready target. "Her people murdered them."

"Stop." Locke rested his hands on the man's arms, not pushing him nor holding him down—there would be no winning an arm-wrestling match with this old warrior, he could tell—but just trying to calm him, to introduce some gentle control to the situation. "I know you're angry. Please. Let us help you."

"My liege," the man growled. "My wife. My … child." His voice softened by the end, hollow and echoing with pain.

Locke made eye contact with Edgar, whose own face was tightly drawn—if Locke had to guess, he was thinking of Kefka's assault on Figaro, how narrowly they had escaped their own destruction. So the king was indisposed, and either Celes or the Doman might snap at any moment, with potentially disastrous results. There was no room for Locke's own shock or horror, not right now.

"Edgar. Go make tea with Terra. Someone get the medic for Celes. Go." As the people around them slowly creaked into action, Locke led the  Doman away from Celes, toward the erstwhile dining room. It was quiet, secluded. He didn't stop to see if they listened to his commands; what mattered was that the tension had broken.

Banon and Sabin lurked in the doorway. Locke ignored them, focusing his attention on the man whose rage was now dissipating, leaving in its wake the cold, familiar ache of grief.

"Sir," Locke said gently. "I'm so sorry. I've lost someone I loved to the Empire, too."

The man was malleable, spent. Locke guided him to a chair and then sat beside him, a hand still on his shoulder. There would be news of Doma, but Banon and Sabin could discuss that. They could handle strategy, or politics, or whatever needed doing. Locke saw someone in pain, and he would do what he could to ease that burden.

"Tell me about your wife," Locke said. "If you'd like."


***


"We thought it was some kind of sickness sweeping over the castle. We isolated those who fell ill. It was only when they started dying, in great numbers, that our fate became clear to us. I had been away with a detachment of scouts observing the Imperial battalion. It is only the timing of my return that kept the same fate from befalling me."

The Doman—he had introduced himself as Cyan Garamonde, retainer to the King of Doma—cupped his hands around a mug of long-cold tea. Several of the others had crammed into the dining room to hear him tell his story, including Banon, both of the Figaros, and the wild-looking boy who shadowed Sabin and said very little. Celes was nowhere to be seen, which was for the best; Terra had come by with tea but otherwise stayed away as well.

"The sickness you describe," Edgar said, and Locke realized how pale he had turned while the Doman spoke. "It sounds very much like the wasting illness that took my father."

Sabin gripped the table's edge, white-knuckled—it was a wonder the wood didn't just snap under that much force. "It wasn't an illness then, either, and you know it as well as I do." His tone had an almost childish sneer in it, and Edgar gave him a mournful but long-suffering look and shook his head.

"Yes, it was poison, and we knew it then, but what could we have done to confront the Imperials? But—regardless—that tragedy happened a long time ago. I apologize; we should be focusing on Doma."

"There is nothing left of Doma," Cyan said.

The enormity of this statement, and the fact that none of them could refute it, was staggering. An entire kingdom, gone, save for one lone survivor who looked haunted equally with grief and guilt. Locke's mind recoiled from even imagining what such a loss might feel like. Even losing a single beloved soul could destroy a man from the inside out—to be suddenly left entirely alone, mourning every single person one had ever loved, was beyond imagining. It was a waking nightmare.

And what could they do for him? Nothing but time could even begin to heal that pain.

"The Empire must be stopped," Banon said gravely, "before this can happen again."

"And yet you harbor their general!" Cyan gestured toward the door. "How, when you have all been struck by their monstrous inhumanity—how can you give shelter to that witch?"

All eyes turned to Locke. He took a breath, steadying himself. Yes, bringing Celes here had meant he would take responsibility for her—he had known that and accepted it. "She's here because she wants to stop them as much as we do. If we face the Empire, she will be on our side. You have my word for it." He had not, technically speaking, asked her if she would stand against an army with his ragtag resistance, but he could not imagine her refusing.


***


Sleep was elusive that night, of course. Each time she closed her eyes, she was back in Maranda, the smell of smoke and blood and terror, death like blood spilling across the once-beautiful city. Sometimes it shifted and it was a castle she didn't know, the illustrations she'd seen of Doma in war room meetings, haunted by pallid people oozing pus and crying out to her for mercy, mercy, for the life that had been taken from them.

At last, she gave up on it. This was not the first sleepless night, nor would it be the last. Leo once told her that the nightmares meant she was still human, that she still cared. Celes doubted Kefka was ever so troubled.

She meant to sit by the window, or take a walk in the silent snowy night and let the freezing air numb the pain in her heart. But from the little alcove near the entrance, where old chairs with sun-faded cushions surrounded a low table covered with books, she heard the sound of someone crying.

Quiet tears, sniffles, a world away from the violent chaos that still edged Celes's consciousness. She followed the sound automatically, too hollow inside to feel true curiosity. Hunched sideways in one of the chairs was a diminutive figure silhouetted against the curtained window, lit by the glowing embers of the fireplace.

"Terra?" Celes leaned against the far wall and wrapped her arms around herself. "Can't sleep?"

Terra shook her head and then swallowed back tears.

"Me neither."

Terra's voice wavered like a child's. "Sometimes I have these dreams—nightmares. There is fire everywhere and men are screaming and I know in this horrible, terrible, pit-in-my-stomach way that I'm why. And when I wake up, I don't even know if they're dreams or memories. If they really happened." She looked at Celes expectantly. 

What could she say in reply? I'm sorry they wielded you like a blade to slaughter their enemies and doused you in the blood of the innocent? 

"I heard they used a device to control you," Celes said. "I wasn't there. I don't know what happened. But Leo was furious when he learned about it."

"The Returners removed it when they rescued me."

Celes had been aware of it, but distantly. Now the horror of it struck her, the unforgivable cruelty. Of course it never bothered you before. You were trying too hard to be the good girl, the merciless general. You had no time for human weaknesses like compassion.

"Do you have nightmares?" Terra continued.

"Yes."

"Did they make you fight, too?"

Celes let out a breath that puffed her cheeks, unsure how to answer. They had handed her the sword, they had trained her to use it, they had filled her with knowledge on how to kill and how to lead others in killing. But ultimately she had gone to the battlefield of her own free will, ready to kill and die for the glory and honor of the Empire.

"I fought for them," she said.

"I—I think I killed people." Terra pressed her palms to her eyes. "I don't want it to be true, but I think it is. People call me a witch. They're afraid of me. I think—I must be a monster."

"They robbed you of your free will," Celes said. "How could it possibly be your fault?"

"I'm still the one who—"

"No," Celes said firmly. "That wasn't you." Not this sweet girl who wanted to bake bread and make friends and lead a normal life. Terra was an innocent whose hand had been forced against her very nature, a crime of such great magnitude that Celes was only just beginning to realize.

They sat in silence for a time, watching the embers, as around them the house slumbered. When she finally left Terra, she heard footsteps going up the staircase ahead of her—careful, quiet, trying not to be heard, but the staircase was old and cold and betrayed their tread.


***


The fate of Doma hung like fog around the crowded halls of Arvis's home. The former flurry of preparation ceased, and for a few days they all mourned. Terra made tea somewhat obsessively. Locke asked her to keep an eye on Celes—the two had some sort of connection, and Terra seemed grateful for the sense of purpose. Cyan lost himself in his grief, and Locke sat with him and listened to stories of his lost wife and child even after the man's misery had worn down his own reserves and felt like sandpaper against his bare heart. Banon was the only one who seemed to weather it well, maybe because he was older and had lived through his own losses, maybe because he clung to the need to take action. He still left Arvis's house every morning to plead his case to the governor of Narshe.

After several days of this, he returned with grave determination in his eyes.

"The governor has finally agreed to meet with us," he said. "King Edgar, Locke, I'd like for you to be present."

Locke scraped himself together, reviewed his notes, and tried to make himself presentable. Edgar, of course, always looked the part of king. Even pale with grief—reliving his own father's death, maybe—he was still regal and elegant, with a commanding presence that even the mask of foppishness he sometimes wore could not conceal. Next to the king and the leonine leader of the Returners, Locke looked completely average, but in many ways that was why he was here.

The three of them bundled up and trudged through the smoggy, snow-covered city streets to a large and imposing house at the center of town. There, a housekeeper took their coats, led them to a sitting room, and prepared tea.

Locke had just about given up on the governor appearing when the man finally joined them several long, long minutes later. His face was lined, his eyes tired.

They got through the pleasantries quickly. Locke leaned back and let the others do the talking at first, getting a sense for the dynamics of the room. The governor was clearly afraid, despite the closed-off front he was presenting. He distrusted the Returners, but Locke suspected he feared the Empire more.

"Narshe has always remained neutral," the governor said.

"Do you really think the Empire will allow you for long?" Banon's voice rose, full of the fiery passion that inspired his own men but would get him nowhere here. "The only reason they're not at your doorstep is because they've been busy crushing the rest of the world, but they'll come for you eventually, I daresay sooner than later. You have resources they could use."

"And an Esper," Locke piped up from the corner of the room.

The mayor turned to him, brow furrowed. "What?"

"You have an Esper that was found in your mines," Locke repeated with a somewhat apologetic smile. "Fully intact, encased in ice, possibly alive even after all these years."

"We don't—"

"You do." He kept the smile on his face, but he pushed harder with his voice. "I don't know where it is, but I know you have it. And so does the Empire. They've already come for it once, and they'll come for it again. They would love nothing more than to harness its power and make a weapon worse than anything we've ever seen."

"How do you know that?" The mayor looked more angry than impressed.

"It's my job to know things."

"What else do you know?"

"I know that your people are stubborn as hell, and there's no way they would live under Imperial rule." Locke pressed his lips together. "Honestly, that's what has me most worried. Narshe isn't like Maranda, or Tzen. The Empire won't be able to break your spirits like theirs."

"I'd like to see them try," the governor said darkly.

"I wouldn't," Locke retorted. "Because if they realize they can't bend you to their will, they'll try to destroy you utterly. They set fire to Figaro Castle, their supposed ally. They poisoned Doma and now every last soul in the castle is dead."

The governor, to his credit, was silent at that last. Locke wondered if word of Doma's destruction had reached him yet. Finally, he spoke again. "They won't attack us if we don't cross them."

"So if they come and ask for the Esper, will you hand it over?"

"No!"

"And if they steal it from you?"

"We have men stationed at the entrance to the mine. No one will get in or out without us knowing."

Locke had to try his best not to scoff openly. "With all due respect," he said as gently as he could muster, "I know of two back entrances to the mine from town, and one that leads outside of town, none of which have ever been guarded by your men. And if I know about these, it's likely the Empire does, too—much as I'd like to think myself uniquely gifted at finding things out, I depend on sources, and if someone will talk to me, they might talk to an imperial."

"No one here would ever betray Narshe."

"They may not even realize it's a betrayal, or that they're talking to an imperial." Locke himself had worn his fair share of false identities to put people at ease and get them comfortable talking—it was amazing what you could get out of someone with a drink or two and a sympathetic ear.

"Locke's right," Edgar said. "There are spies everywhere. You can't tell me no one from Narshe ever kept you informed of what goes on in Figaro Castle. That's politics, and you know it as well as I do."

The governor's voice was dark and bitter. "What do you propose I do, then?"

"I don't think any of us are suggesting you declare war on the Empire and send your men after them," Locke said, looking to Banon and Edgar for confirmation. "But be aware that they are probably coming for you, and be ready to defend yourselves. Right?"

Banon nodded. "We can assist with that. Your men are a well-trained militia, but we've been fighting the imperials for years, and we have some tricks up our sleeves that might give us an advantage over their magitek."

"If they see us fighting alongside you, they'll know—"

Locke snorted. "Frankly, if they're in your mines, trying to steal the Esper and fighting your guards, it's a little late to pretend neutrality."

"They may still not come," the governor said, without conviction. "But I'll take your counsel today. And if we do need your help, if we do find ourselves under attack, I'll send for you."


***


It was clear that most of the Returners, and all of the Narsheans, distrusted her. This was unsurprising. The sacking of Maranda still hung like a shadow over her, and her failure to save Doma felt just as damning. Twice over responsible for the deaths of thousands; how could she possibly expect her crimes to be overlooked?

She was seated in the corner of the common room rewrapping the hilt of her secondhand sword when Locke emerged from one of his locked-door meetings. He looked exhausted, but he still flashed her a smile as he dropped beside her. "That's looking good."

"It's a solid weapon. You chose well."

"I'm glad." He paused. "I hate to impose, but if we find ourselves tangled up fighting imperial troops, would you be willing to join us?"

"You saved my life," she said. For however little that may be worth. "I'm dead to the Empire, and I have no loyalty left to them. I'd rather not kill their conscripts, but if you need my blade, it's yours."

Locke tapped his lip absentmindedly, thoughtfully. "If they're conscripted, do you think we could get them to lay down their weapons and surrender?"

"Unlikely. Their families back home are collateral."

"We could help with that." Locke was frowning as though he were seriously considering this, as though the Returners had not been flushed from their den like rabbits and scattered across the continent, as though he had both the manpower and the reach to protect the civilians living under imperial rule.

She smirked. "What are you thinking? Setting a bodyguard over every person with a family member forcefully conscripted into the imperial military?"

"Something like that," he said, one corner of his mouth sliding up into a lopsided grin. "It might sound outlandish, but you'd be surprised what people can accomplish if you give them a little hope."

"Hope isn't enough to win against the Empire."

"Is it not?" His voice was gentle, still, but there was something in it she had never heard from him before. It drew her eyes to his, and his gaze held hers, as unwavering as his words. She looked into their warm brown depths and felt the world shift in some barely perceptible way. "Hope is the most powerful weapon we have. Someday I hope you'll see that."

Notes:

I meant for this chapter to be 4,500 words, and yet here we are at 7,200 and I was awake until 3 am finishing it. Such is life. I probably can't keep this up forever, but I want to push forward while I can.

I always wanted to see more interaction between Celes and Terra in the game. They would have so much to talk about, experiences no one else would understand, and I would like to think they'd become friends.

This game has an enormous cast, at least by my standards; I hope you'll forgive me that I'm being deliberate in how I incorporate the rest of the cast. Some of your favorites may only make very brief appearances, and some might not show up at all.

Final Fantasy VI is a story about tragedy, loss, grief, and destruction, but it is also fundamentally a story about hope, and more than anything, that is what I hope to capture in my telling of it.

Chapter 6: The Battle of Narshe

Summary:

The Empire arrives, seeking the Esper hidden in Narshe's mines. A heated conflict ensues.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

She woke up to a hand on her shoulder. In a moment she was sitting upright, barring the offending arm between both of hers, ready to hyperextend the elbow with continued pressure.

"I yield, I yield," Locke said in a rush through teeth gritted with pain.

The rest of her consciousness caught up with her defensive instinct. She blinked, foggy-headed from sleep. Locke had dropped his flameless lantern on the floor; when she released him, he stooped to right it, then shook out his arm, grimacing.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"No, no, I should have known better."

The little voice within her laughed at that. You'll wind up killing one of your supposed friends by accident at this rate. They ought to point you at the enemy and stay out of your way, or you'll destroy them along with everything else.

"Anyway," he continued quickly, because of course he couldn't hear the words in her own heart, "the Empire is almost here. The Narshean militia will be sounding an alarm soon, but I doubt it will be soon enough. They won't listen to me, but you will, and the Returners will, so let's get ready to fight."

He was still favoring his left arm as he took the lantern and slipped back out of the room, presumably to raise the rest of them. No sense wasting time berating herself for hurting the only person here who ever seemed glad to see her—especially with a battle ahead of them, injuring a comrade?—an army was marching on Narshe, and she would at least be able to fight to defend this city, even if she'd failed to do so for too many others. Or been the one leading the assault. Don't forget that—you're no better than the enemy here.

The governor of Narshe had agreed to let the Returners take up residence in the local inn, where they'd spent the better part of two weeks training and readying themselves for the anticipated battle. Celes and Terra shared a small room at the end of the hall, ostensibly because they were two of the only women and both newcomers, but Celes knew nobody else would want to share their space with her.

In her bed on the other side of Celes's cot, Terra sat up and rubbed her eyes. She seemed especially small and frail under the inn's substantial quilt. Celes was not used to sharing a room with anyone, but compared to the crowded floor of the man Arvis's home, this relative privacy was a luxury.

Celes suited up for battle: silk undergarments to ward off the Narshean winter, layers of wool over that, and then canvas pants and a leather jacket with padding. Hardly the armor of an imperial general, and none of it fit quite right, but it would keep her warm and offered some protection. She belted the sheath of Locke's scrounged sword to her waist, stepped into her boots—again, too large, filled with extra fabric—and hurried from her room.

A few minutes later, the rest of the Returners emerged into the hallway. Celes shifted uneasily. Ordinarily, she would be the one inspecting her soldiers, issuing commands, ordering them into formation, and then leading them to the field. She did not know how to be a soldier under someone else's command. She did not know who would lead her into battle today.

That was answered quickly as Edgar emerged in a polished breastplate, his chin held high. Banon was at his side, the strategist to his commander. The Returners were used to listening to Banon, and Edgar had summoned a handful of soldiers from Figaro—presumably the rest stayed back to defend their own castle should the Empire choose to attack them instead. So here was their regiment, then: a couple dozen mismatched Returners, a few Figaroan sharpshooters at the rear with crossbows, and the odd ones out, Locke, Terra, the Doman, the king's bear of a brother, and Celes herself. They filed out of the inn into darkness.

Outside, stars still shone in the sky, although the slightest hint of light was just beginning to edge the horizon. The cold air was crisp. Snow crunched under her boots, and her breath came out in translucent puffs. She was grateful for the warmth of her silk underlayer especially, and for the wool in her boots.

Buzzing with nervous energy, they hurried toward the mines where the Esper lay. Four Narshean guards were stationed around the entrance, half-asleep. They jolted awake, their hands moving at once to their weapons, as the contingent of Returners approached.

"Trouble's on its way," Edgar said. "We're your reinforcements."

"We haven't heard word," the most senior of the guards said doubtfully.

"You're the king of Figaro," one of his companions said. "The governor told us about you lot. Where's the rest of our men?"

"On their way soon, I would imagine. I suppose we're early to the party."

The senior guard finally nodded and waved them through. "You know where you're going?"

"We've got it under control, for now. Let your troops know we'll be hunkered down inside to back them up, and send word if there's any news."

Once they had passed through the mouth of the mine, the tunnel quickly narrowed, its curved walls coarse and pockmarked. Lanterns hung at regular intervals from a cord in the ceiling, swaying so that the light and shadow seemed to dance along the floor and walls. Locke led the way inside, unfazed as always by the convoluted series of twists and turns they followed. With his flameless torch, he indicated which passageway to follow.

"There are two paths that lead to where they're keeping the Esper," he said. "We'll wait at the point where they converge to cut the imperials off, whichever way they choose."

In this space, it would be impossible to launch a full-on military attack, even in the more cavernous chamber they eventually reached, where another small contingent of Narshean soldiers were leaning against the wall and shivering. They seemed glad for the company.

Edgar and Banon positioned their men like a plug in the passageway, clustered in nooks and crannies, ready to pick off the opponents that by necessity would also be limited to small groups. Celes had some doubts that this mismatched rebellion could stand up against the might of the Empire, especially if Gestahl was sending his best warriors—or Kefka. The thought of seeing Kefka again felt like the Narshean wind had gotten inside of her and chilled her heart and belly through.

She took a moment to step deeper inside the cavern, where light glinted off a block of ice in which the Esper must be sealed. In the shadowed cavern, she could only barely make out a darker mass within the ice. Was the creature still preserved—even alive, somehow? Could it sense the magic running through her veins, hers and Terra's? Some part of her had hoped that she would feel its presence, but either it was no longer alive or her own magical attunement was too weak. That's foolish, anyway. Stop dreaming about fairy tales. You have a fight to win.

By the time the imperials had arrived, the Returners were ready. Celes tried not to think about whether any of these men had been under her command. It was possible. She doubted that Gestahl would send his conscripts on a mission of such importance. No, these would be sworn to the Empire in heart and soul—as she had been, once.

She unsheathed her sword and readied herself for combat.


***


If she stopped to think about fighting, she would freeze up. She had learned this as a child the first time she faced a living, breathing opponent with weapons heavy enough to hurt. Practicing at half speed, or with padded weaponry, or wearing thick padded clothing—in all of these situations, she had executed with the skill and strategy they taught her. Sparring for points, she defeated her opponents one after another.

But the first time she felt her blade collide with defenseless flesh, hard enough not just to bruise but to really feel the damage she did to another person's body, she dropped the blade and emptied her stomach right there in the practice yard. After that, she held back with every swing, every parry, freezing right before she so much as touched her opponent.

That was when they drilled her to stop thinking about the person on the other side of her sword. Not bodies, not lives, not individuals to be broken or ended by her blade. Fighting was a dance with obstacles to overcome, a flow of movements, a game like chess, and the bodies that dropped were no more real than chess pieces knocked from the board. What mattered in the end was the pattern on the board, and playing your part to shape that pattern, to win for your side and ignore the pieces that must be scattered in the process.

And once you learned to lose yourself into the flow, you stopped seeing the blood, stopped hearing the screams and the gasping, gurgling breaths. You became clockwork, just one more piece of machinery, unburdened by your own heart.

It had been two months since she was last on the battlefield. Not the longest such period, of course, but something felt different this time. Not just that she stood on the other side of the board now, not just that she was no longer commanding other pieces. She could feel that old, banished hesitation rising up again, closer to the surface than it had been in years. She swallowed it down and threw herself into the fight, into the dance, letting her muscles and the quiet strategizing part of her mind do the work for her. Soldiers fell where she passed, a bloody trail of broken bodies.

There was a commotion from behind the line of imperials. Celes parried a snarling soldier's blade and chanced a look over his shoulder. The Narshean militia had arrived, trapping the imperial soldiers in the mine with no clear exit. The Narsheans likely had even less experience than the Returners, but at least they were more bodies, a distracting force. She could almost sense the unease and shock of the imperials, who had probably expected a quick and easy fight.

Better to press through them quickly, before they realized how strongly they outmatched the forces that surrounded them. If she could get to their commanding officer and force a surrender, she could prevent further bloodshed and bring this to a halt.

She held her sword aloft with both hands, letting the soul-sapping cold of the mine seep into her blood, filling her with the almost itchy sensation of magic. Her fingers felt numb, as did her toes and her lips. The magic within her buzzed louder and louder as she called on it. Then she slashed downward with her sword, and the magic answered her, rushing out from the blade in jagged shards of ice. Some of the soldiers yelped and dove away; others cried out and staggered as the ice pierced through the weak spots in their armor.

There was something different after the magic was spent, almost like an echo. The mine's chill, amplifying the effect of her power? Or something else?

She didn't have time to question, to wonder. This battle needed to be ended, and she wanted minimal casualties. The Narsheans were civilians; the Returners were idealists. They all deserved a chance to live until tomorrow. And Celes herself had more fighting experience than almost any of them, even if she was younger than most of them. She had been training her entire life, her skill and precision honed to a sharp point. She would kill so they did not have to, and kill so they could survive.

The soldiers fell around her as she pushed through the tunnels, seeking their commander. Cut the head off the snake. Soon she was in the thick of it with imperial soldiers on all sides, and they hesitated to rush her as she pressed them.

Then she rounded another bend in the tunnel—and froze.

"General Celes, the traitor. My oh my, this is a delight."

The voice sounded mock-horrified, a dry, high-pitched sound that turned into a laugh that could haunt nightmares. Shit.

Kefka never dressed for the weather. It was as though his mind were detached enough from reality that he simply failed to register what would, in another person, be physical discomfort. Thus he wore his usual garish reds and yellows, his green tunic, his purple sash, the bright dyed feathers woven into his hair. Like so many dangerous creatures that advertised their toxicity with vibrant colors, he stood out on the battlefield, daring foes to approach.

Ice coursed through Celes's blood.


***


Locke preferred to avoid fighting when possible, and usually his work with the Returners kept him far from the battlefield. But this was a war, and bloody battles were a terrible reality of it, however he might wish otherwise. At least this smaller skirmish would by necessity have a lower body count than two full armies. He threw himself into the fray with grim determination.

Not so for Celes. She cut through the enemy line as smoothly and routinely as a farmer threshing wheat. It was a beautiful, terrible horror to behold, far more graceful and controlled than the raw ferocity she had shown in South Figaro. He spared a glance her way and felt more than saw the strange glow and then a chilling burst of ice radiating from her to strike the soldiers that even now hesitated to engage with her.

He wondered if he would ever become accustomed to seeing magic, real magic, not in a story of days long past but here in front of him, undeniably real.

Before long, she and her magic were out of sight, and he had his hands full trying not to die while a Figaroan sharpshooter picked off the foes attacking him. Bless Edgar and his technological wonders, so much more reliable and convenient than a bow and arrow.

Eventually he realized that the soldiers seemed to be withdrawing. Locke's heart lifted—had they turned aside the imperials? Had the battle been won?

No. The Returners were retreating, too, passing Locke as they hurried toward the chamber in which the Esper was kept. The fear on their faces startled him. Everyone was fleeing something, but what?

It was not the first time, he thought as he crept tentatively in the direction of the unseen threat, that curiosity had grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him headlong into danger. He could only hope this would not be the last time, either. The mine's narrow passages seemed strangely deserted now, almost silent except for a low roar that came and went.

His skin prickled. Heat, unexpected heat. Light as bright as a thousand lanterns, casting dramatic shadows, flickering and dying and returning. This was no natural fire, no burning oil.

This was magic, the ferocious power of it enough to send him staggering back.

He held up a hand to block another sudden burst of brightness and squinted through it. A slender figure dashed to one side, a spark glinted, the air cooled again and hissed. Celes, and her shards of ice, but something was driving her back.

Not something—someone, clad in multicolored finery, with a look on his face like a grinning skull.

The man's reputation preceded him. General Kefka Palazzo, product of the same experiment that gifted Celes and Terra with magic, though whether the results had twisted his mind or he had started that way was beyond Locke's knowledge. Regardless, he was singlehandedly responsible for the destruction of Doma, and his soul was stained with more suffering and death than Locke could comprehend. And now he pushed Celes back, burning through her ice like paper. What could Locke do to help? Shout words of encouragement? Throw a dagger over her shoulder?

Behind him, someone whimpered. Terra, the whites of her eyes showing, shock and terror plain on her face.

The fire shot forth toward them. Locke grabbed Terra's arm and pulled her out of the way, but still the heat was terrible, painful. There was nothing to do but retreat deeper, away from this fiery onslaught. The man was laughing now, tossing balls of flame almost carelessly. Celes stood between them and Kefka, backing up, arms raised in front of her, the body language of someone warding off a beating. Even from this distance, Locke could see she was trembling.

Still Kefka pushed forward, and Celes stepped back, back into the chamber where the Esper lay entombed in ice, where Locke and Terra and the other Returners were now cornered.

For the second time since meeting Celes, Locke wondered if he was about to die.

Celes's hands shook. She looked pale, almost white, her lips taking a blue tinge. She turned to Terra, and something passed silently between the two young women. Terra nodded and brought her hands to her chest, to her heart.

The air seemed to crackle, to hum. Locke tasted copper at the roof of his mouth, and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose.

A shock of cold surrounded Celes as countless shards crystalized around her, catching the light. A strange light emanated from Terra's skin.

Kefka reached the mouth of the chamber, his laughter on the verge of shrill hysteria, not a man but a monster. Locke knew this moment would forever be seared into his mind.

The women loosed the magic within them, as fire roared from Kefka to fill the room. A wall of ice solidified to block the fire, and the glow from within Terra brightened and brightened and spilled out against the wall, holding it against Kefka's onslaught.

Something crackled around them, an explosion, an entire chain reaction of explosions. A sudden blinding flash of light, followed a moment later by a deafening boom.

Locke's head spun and his ears rang. What happened next seemed like scenes viewed from underwater, warped and strange and silent. The world shook. Locke stumbled, and hands pulled him from behind—the Returners, grabbing him and Celes and Terra and pulling them away as shards of rock crashed down—the roof asunder—rocks the size of boulders falling around them, and a bright and terrible glow. The roaring and crunching of rock on rock ceased, at last. Then a winged, scaled beast ten times the size of a man appeared, its feathers flapping in a sudden breeze—the chamber was open to the sky now, sunshine reflecting off the radiant, gemlike surface of the creature.

And the creature faced them—no, the creature faced the women—no, the creature faced Terra, who rose from the huddle of injured humans and crossed the rubble-strewn floor toward it as if in a trance.

The creature opened its beak and let out a cry that was both birdlike and alien.

Terra clasped her fists to her temples and shook her head, as if in response. Locke stood, to run to her, but before he could move, something about her changed. She shimmered, and her body morphed, elongating, as something soft and pink erupted from her skin—fur? Feathers? In another moment a strange humanoid creature floated where Terra had been, with a face that was and was not Terra's.

She let out a terrible, ear-piercing shriek. And then she was gone, streaking toward the sky like a beam of pink light. The great beast cried again, flapped its wings, and took off after her.

 In its absence was silence. No one moved. No one said anything. The survivors huddled together in awe and fear long after the two flying figures were out of sight.

Notes:

What's this? A chapter completed ahead of schedule?! In my defense, it's a short one. But I think I'm going to follow this trend and move my updates to Sunday nights, which fit my schedule better! Please forgive me for any inaccuracies in how combat works; I'm not really one for fight scenes.

So many caves (or mines, in this case). So much fire. Why must you do this to me, FFVI >:(

Chapter 7: Following a Star

Summary:

We set off to find Terra, with a stop in Figaro along the way. Edgar has concerns.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The appearance of a living Esper—the destruction of the mines—Terra's apparent transformation—their own salvation from Kefka's surge of fiery power—they had survived it all, even if the impossibility of it lingered.

Narshean miners eventually cleared the wreckage blocking the cavern. Scorch marks blackened the entire tunnel, as though a wildfire had raged through. Still in shock, the Returners followed the miners to freedom. Outside, the city seemed transformed. The wall at the front of town had sustained damage, but repairs were already underway, and the Narshean militia was jubilant, having run off Imperial troops from both the mines and the mountain pass below.

It was too much to hope that Kefka had fallen in the collapsing mine. No, he had retreated with his men.

"If they come back, we'll be ready for them," the lead miner said.

Never mind that Narshe had spent weeks, maybe months, denying the need to fight back against the Empire. They had had their first taste of victory and were feeling bold and powerful. And maybe they had reason to, having turned aside trained imperial soldiers with only a ragtag militia. Or maybe the imperials had fled because of the twin stars streaking across the sky, one bright and pink and the other flapping great and terrible wings to catch it.

Locke found himself glancing at Celes in the aftermath of Terra's transformation, searching for some hint of strangeness in her, some sign that she too would change shape. Her bloodless lips and shadowed eyes worried him, and even when they were all back in the inn, with steaming mugs of tea and blankets over their shoulders to ward off the chill, she shivered.

"Are you all right?" he asked her, sitting beside her on a bench at one of the inn's long, rough tables. It was more of a lodge than an inn, really, accustomed to housing migrant miners rather than ordinary travelers and therefore sturdy, functional, and hardly beautiful.

"Cold," she said.

"Is it because of your magic?"

A shrug. "I'm not sure. It's never happened like this before."

"The Esper, maybe?"

She held the mug below her chin and tilted her face toward it so that the steam rose up around her chin. "I don't think so. I think I might have—called on it too much. Everything I know about magic comes from trial and error. There isn't a primer on how it works. It's never hurt this much before—but I've never had to ask so much of it."

"I wonder, if creating ice freezes your blood, do you suppose Kefka might boil his?" He was rewarded for this observation with a faint but genuine smile from Celes. Encouraged, he continued. "Next thing you know, he'll start whistling like a kettle and then pop."

She laughed, and Locke tried to remember if he'd heard her laugh before. Not like this, with a sudden and unexpected warmth. Some of the color returned to her cheeks.

"Do you understand what happened to Terra?" he asked Celes once she seemed recovered enough.

Celes shook her head. "It seemed like she could understand whatever the Esper was saying. I—I couldn't. She's always had more strength in her magic than I do. It's why they—they didn't really treat her like a person, once we weren't children anymore. She was a tool to be controlled. I didn't question it."

"I don't think we question much about how we were brought up, when we're young. And if you didn't see her that often..."

She frowned thoughtfully. "No, not at that point. They tested our magical aptitude often, and at some point they decided I would be more effective with a sword, around that same time. But, still, I should—should have—I don't know why I never helped her. Never even thought about helping her."

He could see the threads tangled together in this conversation, her guilt as well as her blindness to her own circumstances, but now was not the time to unravel them. "I'm going to follow her south and see if I can find her," he said. "I'm leaving as soon as I can."

She didn't even hesitate. "I'll come with you." 

"Are you sure? You could probably use more rest." But he did not expect her to accept this excuse, and he was not surprised when she shook her head.

"I should have helped her when we were children. The least I can do is help her now. She doesn't even want to be in this fight."

"I would say she doesn't want this fight to be necessary, which isn't quite the same thing," Locke said, but he held up a finger when Celes tried to argue. "We'll just have to ask her when we see her. Pack your things—and hers, too, if you don't mind. I'll see if we can borrow some chocobos."


***
 

When he went to talk to Banon, it was to inform him of the plan, not ask permission. Banon and Edgar had finished with the governor and returned to the inn, Banon looking satisfied, Edgar tired. Locke cornered them before they could retire to their respective rooms.

 "I don't know what happened, and I don't know where she went, but I'm going to find out," Locke concluded. "She's probably scared and alone and she needs our help."

"You're just going to set off and hope you'll run into her?" Edgar asked.

"No, I'm going to ask around. That's what I do. I get information." Locke fought the urge to scowl, aware that impatience was shortening his temper. It made him think of Celes single-mindedly pushing her body past its natural limits in her rush to try to help. At least he had more self-preservation. "Surely people will have noticed her if she passed by, and they can point me in the right direction."

"You should stop by Figaro Castle," Edgar said. "It's on your way south. Someone in one of our lookout towers must have seen her and can give us an update on where she went. Maybe she even stopped there—she's found shelter there before."

"There's a happy thought. I hope you're right."

"You're not going to catch her otherwise," Edgar told him, wagging a finger. "While I respect your dedication to helping her—although really, Locke, two girls is more my style than yours—but judging by her trajectory and speed, not to mention several hours' head start. it would be physically impossible to catch up to her. The best we can do is try to figure out where she ended up and go there."

The little jab mixed so smoothly into the middle of his sentence that it took the rest of his speech for the words to register. "Two—what does that mean, Edgar?"

"I'm only teasing. I meant it to be at my expense, given that I'm all alone and you've been in the company of two beautiful women—no, I'll stop with the jokes. Locke. I know how you are, and—"

His cheeks burned. "How I am?"

"Don't look at me like that." Edgar held his hands up, gesturing for peace. "No, I don't mean you chase women; I know your heart is spoken for. But you just can't resist helping someone who looks like they've been hurt. Even if that someone is an imperial general notorious for merciless slaughter."

Locke crossed his arms over his chest. "Celes has fought alongside us, and she was very nearly killed by Kefka. If not for her and Terra, we'd all have had the skin melted clean off our bones."

Edgar grimaced. "That's unnecessarily graphic."

"My point remains. She's an ally, and she and Terra are friends." That was stretching the truth, as he understood it, but it wasn't wrong, either. He took a deep breath. His impatience really was unreasonable; Edgar was right. But he didn't have to like it. "And she's coming with me to find Terra."

Edgar nodded slowly, his face a mask of kingly serenity that told Locke he didn't like this idea but was hesitant to get into it. "Let me accompany you to Figaro, at least. I'm eager to get back home myself. I've been gone longer than I'd like."

"You're worried about Celes."

Edgar opened his mouth, closed it. "I am… a little concerned about you traipsing off across the continent alone with a former general of the Gestahlian Empire, yes."

"We're following another former soldier of the Empire, if you'll recall, who also happens to be—I think you'll agree—a friend."

"And General Celes is your friend?"

The inclusion of general was surely no accident, a pointed reminder. "I don't know her well enough for that, but I would say we could become friends."

"And what if you do something that angers her?"

"Then we'll talk about it like adults."

"You'll talk about it, of course you will, but what about her? The woman is a killer, Locke."

Why was he pushing so hard? Locke bit back his own frustration. "None of us are wholly innocent. The Empire has seen to that."

"I just worry that you're going to be hurt."

Any argument he could make felt adolescent on his tongue, like a petulant child fighting with a parent, and no matter how sincerely he felt it, he could imagine Edgar dismissing it out of hand. So he set aside his instinct to defend Celes, to defend himself. "Just trust me. That's all I'm asking."


***


The entourage accompanying them as they left Narshe was larger than she expected: the Figaroan sharpshooters and their king and a whole host of desert-bred chocobos in quilted barding against the mountain cold. It made sense that the king and his retinue would want to return home as soon as possible, but she was a little surprised that Locke agreed to delay his own departure to give the party from Figaro time to gear up. Her body was grateful for the extra night's sleep in a solid bed, although it was strange to be alone in the room she had shared with Terra, with her own bag and Terra's packed side-by-side by the door.

What had happened to Terra, and why? What was the magic she had used to strengthen the wall of ice as Kefka approached? What had the Esper said to her, and why had it chosen Terra, and how had it transformed her?

More than that—did this now mean an Esper was loose in the world, for the first time in a thousand years? And what would that mean?

These questions darkened her thoughts all night, and all through breakfast in the morning, and they continued to haunt her as they all set out at dawn. Her borrowed chocobo followed its fellows down the snow-edged mountain path as she stewed in her own worries.

"Are you all right?"

She hadn't realized that she had gotten used to the comfort of Locke's gentle curiosity, or how much it felt like a reassuring touch on the shoulder, until she was startled by someone else addressing her. The king of Figaro spoke lightly, his diction clear and precise, but there was no warmth in his voice. He pulled his chocobo up beside hers, a short distance from the rest of them.

"Yes, thank you," she said, as steadily as she could.

"Something is troubling you." It wasn't a question.

As polite as he sounded, she knew he didn't trust her. Not that she could blame him, though some part of her protested that she had never actually threatened or harmed Figaro. "I was thinking about Terra and the Esper. If Emperor Gestahl goes after them..."

"Do you think he will?"

"I think he'll try," she said. "Kefka will report back, and the Emperor will want their power. I imagine we'll be racing against him to find them, or at least to find Terra, though I'd hate for him to get his hands on either of them."

"What will you do if you get your hands on them?"

The way he said it raised her hackles. "That depends on what Terra wants, doesn't it?"

"And the Esper?" The king leaned closer toward her, watching her closely. "What would you do if you had an Esper's powers at your disposal?"

"You're testing me," she said flatly. "Yes, there is blood on my hands, and I don't know if it will ever wash off. I'm not going to make excuses for what I've done, if that's what you're looking for. Either trust me, or don't."

The aloof look on his face fell away, and his eyes were piercing and cold. "You must understand that Locke is a dear friend of mine."

"Locke? You think I would hurt Locke?" Her voice rose with her incredulity and, yes, a little anger; she couldn't help it. "Why?"

"He's a veritable font of information on the Returners, our allies, our secrets. He would be a tempting prize for the Empire in his own right. I wouldn't want Gestahl to get his hands on him either."

She spluttered. "They would torture him," she said. "How can you even—no! No." Her hands tightened on the reins of her chocobo, the grip so tense it hurt. Her stomach dropped, thinking of what Gestahl might do for the information in Locke's mind—what Kefka might do, and what Gestahl would allow. It made her feel sick, to think of his kindness broken like pottery and thrown away. She glared at Edgar, and to his credit, he met her gaze and did not look away.  "Whatever you may think of me, there are lines I can't and won't cross. What happened to Doma is one of them. And—turning over someone who—no. I won't betray the Returners. And I won't betray Locke."

"I see." Cool, smooth, with a light smile at his lips.

"Do you?"

"Yes. I believe you."

"Good."

Rattled, she pulled her chocobo away from the king, toward the rest of their entourage. Farther down the line, Locke lifted his chin and gave her a little wave, smiling, innocently oblivious to the horrors churning through her mind. Sometimes, that smile reassured her, but at this moment, it just sent chills down her spine.


***


A group this size took longer to set up camp than Locke preferred, staking out ground for several larger tents, each of which fit a few soldiers. As with their time sharing floor space at Arvis's in Narshe, Locke left his bag in the same tent Celes did, guaranteeing her at least one friendly face, even if the Figaroans had seemed largely indifferent to her presence compared to the Returners.

They all settled down to eat around the campfire, though dinner was only dried meat and hard bread and a few winter apples from Narshe. At least they had reached the foot of the mountain and there was no more snow, just a chill in the air and pine needles forming a carpet underfoot.

Celes excused herself early, returning to the tent. Shortly afterward, Edgar took her place beside Locke, almost as though he had been waiting for her to leave.

Locke snorted. "Still convinced she's going to gut me in my sleep?"

"That wasn't really what I had been envisioning—but, no. My fears are assuaged."

"How did that happen?"

Edgar appeared to consider his words for a moment. "We had... a conversation." The way he said it made Locke wonder what, exactly, that conversation had been like—whether Celes herself would describe it as a conversation or possibly an incredibly frustrating argument. "I don't think she's a good enough actress to have been lying to me, and it is true that she's cut her ties with the Empire quite thoroughly."

"I think she'd be rotten at poker. And to be honest, I think she's more likely to fall on her own sword than use it against someone else, even out of anger, unless they had done something to deserve it."

Edgar shrugged. "You may be right."

"I know people, Edgar. I'm usually right." He picked up a twig from the forest floor, poked at the pine needles with it. "I think she's been pretty badly hurt, but I don't think she wants to punish people or lash out at the world because of it. I think, with a little more time to heal, and a little more support, she'll come out of her shell and be kinder to herself, and to others."

Edgar was giving him that look again, that same look that Edgar had given him numerous times in the past.

"Dammit, man, I'm just—"

Edgar hooked an arm around his shoulders, pulling him off balance, and he thought the man might ruffle his hair in a most undignified manner. It was the way an older brother might manhandle his younger brother, and while Locke was a few years younger than the king, they were both too old for this kind of teasing. Maybe Sabin's return had rekindled Edgar's brotherly instincts, and maybe he was directing them at Locke because it was hard to tease a brother who had mastered a martial art and could probably chop someone in half with his fists.

Regardless, Edgar's quick hug tightened a moment before letting go. "It may drive me crazy from time to time," he said, "but I don't actually want you to lose your bleeding heart. I just worry it's going to get you hurt."


***


Figaro Castle looked better than it had the last time Locke saw it, the scorch marks nearly gone, leaving little evidence of Kefka's pyromania. Despite everything, that had been a victorious moment, thumbing their noses at an almost apoplectic Kefka as they rode off into the sunset.

Locke watched as Edgar pulled his chocobo up alongside Sabin's at a gentle trot and then put a hand on Sabin's back, a clear gesture of brotherly reassurance. It was kind of sweet, the king comforting his enormous bear of a brother. They called Sabin the little brother. It was not an apt description, though Sabin resembled Edgar more closely the longer Locke saw them together. Locke had known the king for years, but for all his time in Figaro Castle, other than seeing a painting or two of the boys when they were younger—and my had they both changed since then!—Edgar's twin, the self-banished prince, had never been more than a story. And yet here he was. Visibly nervous, but present and real.

Celes also seemed nervous, and Locke couldn't help but think of Terra's reaction to Figaro. Only days after having that mind-controlling crown removed, she had seemed half-dazed, childlike, overwhelmed and confused by everything around her. Celes, by contrast, had sharp eyes within a stoic face as if she were steeling herself for what she would find inside.

"They won't hate you," Locke said. "You'll get a warmer reception here than in Narshe. Until very recently, they pretended to be allied with the Empire, even though they loathed what the Empire was doing. If anyone understands what it's like to be in a complicated position, it's Figaro."

"It's not the same."

"Maybe not." He cocked his head, smiling at her, then tilted his chin to indicate Edgar. "Regardless, you're with the king, and that will be good enough for them."

She fixed him a disbelieving stare, then softened and ducked her head. "Thank you for… trying to make me feel better." It was a concession, if a small one—maybe not accepting his reassurance, but not rejecting it, at least.

By the time they reached the castle, a welcome party was waiting for them at the gates. Locke recognized the chancellor, whose face lit with joy. "King Edgar," he said with genuine warmth, maybe even love. There was palpable relief, too. Their King had come back to them. Then the chancellor took in the rest of the party, nodding a familiar welcome to Locke, squinting curiously at Celes, and then stopping open-mouthed at Sabin, who appeared to be trying to make himself as small as possible—not an easy feat.

"Young master," the chancellor stammered. "Is it—you've changed."

Sabin let out some sort of sound that was difficult to interpret, maybe a little sadness, a little fear, a little joy. Returning home when you were not expected hurt, even if it were a happy homecoming, as this one was. Seeing what had changed in your absence, seeing how you yourself had changed in your time away, discovering that relationships had changed, everything had changed, without your consent—he did not envy Sabin at this moment, prince or not.

"It's been a long journey and I think we are all exhausted," Edgar proclaimed with a dashing smile, stepping into his element. "Hungry, too, if the kitchen will serve up a late supper. And our guests will need rooms for the night."

He continued with his orders as the great gates of the castle swung open and their party spilled inside, and the soldiers dispersed to their own homes within the castle walls. Figaro shone with artificial lighting, powered by some sort of city-wide generator system Edgar had explained to Locke no fewer than five times, and it would take another five before he had half a chance of understanding. But he didn't have to understand it to appreciate how that same system powered fans to ward off the daytime heat, though the desert nights could be cold once the sun started sinking below the horizon.

Not just the chancellor but the rest of Edgar's advisors and courtiers had appeared, eager to brief their king on whatever had transpired over the past month and a half. They too seemed taken aback by Sabin, who stood quite literally in his brother's shadow.

Before this mass of important kingly business could fully absorb him, Edgar turned to Locke. "I'll ask around about Terra," he said, but there was hesitation in his voice.

"No need," Locke said smoothly. "You've got a lot of catching up to do, and I'm a known quantity in these parts—I can take care of it."


***


She was glad for Locke's reassurance, and gladder still that it turned out to be right. Nobody here seemed to recognize her, or if they did, no one cared enough to mention it. They were too busy fawning over the prodigal prince returning after what Celes gathered had been a very long time—long enough that her study of politics and history only glanced over the lost prince of Figaro—and over their king, resplendent and charming in his own halls.

Figaro Castle itself confused her. The city was entirely contained within the castle, one densely constructed central hub filled with nesting rooms and hallways and staircases, homes and shops and entertainment and greenhouses. She knew all of these because Locke was beside her, pointing out the marketplaces and the residential parts of the city as they passed, following the guidance of someone who was either a servant or a courtier—it was hard to say, as they wore livery the colors of the Figaro flag but did not have the deference she would have expected from an imperial servant in Vector. Locke gestured through a window to a tower visible through the glass, silhouetted against the setting sun.

"We'll go there before dinner, once we've left our things in our rooms, and see if they've seen anything with their telescopes."

It surprised her that he assumed she would be joining him, but what else would she do? Sit in her room and twiddle her thumbs? She hated feeling tethered to him, over her head in yet another unfamiliar location that he seemed to have memorized completely. At least they would only be here overnight.

As it turned out, the room had ample space for thumb-twiddling. The matron, an older woman with a wrinkled face and gray hair, was still readying it when Celes arrived. Celes had known graying generals and courtiers, and even the Emperor himself, but she had rarely found herself in the company of older women, especially not civilians. And there was absolutely nothing military or political about this one, who fussed about, plumping pillows that already looked plump and smoothing sheets that hadn't yet been disturbed.

Celes stood in one corner of the room, awkwardly clutching her travel bag. The matron looked her over appraisingly. "And you and the king are getting on, are you?"

"I'm not sure he likes me very much," Celes admitted, then second-guessed herself. Was it proper to admit something like this to Edgar's staff? Especially as fond of him as they all were? Everyone here seemed to treasure the king on some personal level, not just reverence for his position.

The matron clucked her tongue. "Nonsense. King Edgar is a kind and understanding man. He has been preoccupied with the war and politics lately—he is king, after all, isn't he?—but I'm sure he's glad to have your company."

"I think he is mostly glad to have his brother's company." She still hadn't quite figured them out, the two very dissimilar brothers.

"Ah, Prince Sabin. It's wonderful to have him back, let me tell you."

"He's been gone a long time?"

"Nearly ten years, I'd say. And now he comes back all grown. So strong, so confident, not the wayward lad he was when he ran off." The woman smiled at Celes. "Not like King Edgar. That one was born for the throne. I think there's never been a king more dedicated to his people. And smart, and handsome besides."

"Mm." What could she say to that but meaningless noises of assent?

"You'll have to forgive me for being nosy. Any time we see our king around a pretty young woman, we can't help wondering. He's a terrible flirt, but there's been no sign of a queen on the horizon, and one can't help worrying, eh?"

"A flirt?"

"Surely he's been after you."

"No, I can't say that he has." She wasn't sure whether to be offended or relieved that Edgar had not, apparently, registered her as a woman worthy of bestowing his attentions. Then again, he had somehow thought so poorly of her that he thought she might return to Gestahl with her tail between her legs and Locke in tow—Locke! As if she would ever repay his kindness so cruelly. You give yourself that much credit, do you? He has no reason to think otherwise. You're the butcher of Maranda. Why would he expect anything better from you?


***


There were advantages to being the king's friend. Advantages such as a plush chamber with an enormous bed and a private bathing room. Advantages such as mentioning to the matron that he and Celes would be traveling for some time, and being reassured that she would see to it that they were properly provisioned, and knowing that great care would be taken in the process. 

After he had washed away the worst of the dirt from the road, he knocked on Celes's door. He knocked again, and he was beginning to wonder if she had fallen asleep and if he should leave her in peace when the door finally opened.

She looked a little frazzled, and behind her he could see a trio of women armed with tape measure, a notepad, some cloth.

"Looks like the tailors of Figaro have found you," he said with a smile. "They didn't approve of my fashion choices?"

"It's less the fashion than the fit," one of the women tutted at him. "We'll be after you next, if you're not careful. The two of you don't want to look like vagabonds on the road or you might attract the wrong sort of trouble."

"I am the wrong sort of trouble." He gestured to Celes. "And I wouldn't be afraid of trouble with Celes here at my side. She's fearless."

The thinnest of smiles, then, and she leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed. "Are you saying I'm your bodyguard?"

He wasn't sure if she meant it as a joke, but he let it carry him away anyway. "That's a good angle. I'll be the hapless merchant and you my debonair bodyguard, and woe betide anyone who crosses us."

She blinked. "Did you… did you just say 'woe betide'?"

"I did." He grinned, daring her to challenge him, to play along.

"That sounds more like a scholar than a merchant," she said. "Perhaps you'll be peddling books."

She slipped out the door, away from the tailors and their tools, and followed Locke down the hallway. Navigating the passages of Figaro Castle was vastly easier than caves or mines, and he turned sideways to look at her along the way, only half paying attention to their surroundings.

"Do you like books, then?"

She pressed her lips together. "Would you laugh if I said that my reading was mostly war strategy?"

"No, I wouldn't." He wasn't surprised, either, though he kept that to himself—no reason to make her feel even more self-conscious than she already did. "How did you wind up in the clutches of those tailors?"

"The matron sent for them. They all seem to be hoping I'll make an impression on King Edgar."

Locke couldn't help it—he howled with laughter. "Oh, is that what's going on? That devious matron. She's desperate for Edgar to get married and fill the halls with babies. I think at least half of Figaro is in cahoots with her. Don't take it personally."

"I don't, I just thought it was odd. They don't know me, and I barely know him."

"Royal marriages have been built on less," he said.

Out the windows, as they passed, the setting sun painted the desert sand an even deeper golden hue. The hallway to the tower had ridges spaced at regular intervals along the walls and floor, where the entire space would fold together to retract before the castle submerged in the sand, something Edgar had often pointed out with pride.

"If you asked me, which you didn't—" He glanced at her. "Something about marriage seems to scare him. He certainly loves the company of women well enough, but he's never seriously pursued one, to my knowledge."

"And given that it's your job to know things..." This time her little smile made it clear that this was intended as a joke. Progress.

"Exactly."

Then they were at the observation tower and a series of spiraling staircases up to the observatory itself. In the topmost room, a pair of scholars pored over the telescope, Celes fell behind Locke, standing in his shadow, letting him do the talking.


***


Edgar had not been in his chambers, or any of his usual haunts. Locke carried his news with him, looking for the king to share what he'd learned about Terra's path. In the direction of Jidoor, the scholars had said, eager to share their research and observations with an interested party, confirming their sighting of the pink star overhead, accompanied by what looked more like a dragon than a bird. 

The last place he thought to look, at this late hour, was the throne room. It was unlikely, really—Edgar wasn't the sort to sit in his throne and brood, or gloat. Certainly not when there were beautiful women he could be spending his time with instead, and many of the women here were willing to humor him with a little good-natured flirtation, even if nothing more came of it.

But the grand double-door to the throne room was ajar, and as Locke approached, he could hear voices. Laughter. He peeked his head inside, curious. The brothers reclined in the thrones that had belonged to their parents, their body language looking for all the world like two children having stolen into a room the adults did not permit them, that slight discomfort mixed with gleeful rule-breaking. Except that Edgar was absentmindedly spinning a wine glass, and Sabin had the whole bottle at his feet. Hardly children, in either case.

It was clearly a private moment. Locke had no place here. And the news about Terra could wait—if it had truly been the better part of a decade since Sabin had been home, Locke couldn't begrudge him or Edgar the chance to soak it in.


***


They were up at dawn, and the king rose too to share a quick breakfast and see them off. They sat on a terrace as the sun rose overhead. The sun itself seemed larger here, brighter, but of course that was an illusion, either a trick of the light or, more likely, her own imagination knowing that days in the desert would be hotter than anywhere she had ever been. Having spent most of her life in Vector and along the southern continent, she was still not entirely used to the seasons here in the northern continent, and certainly not what to expect from its different regions.

"Your brother is settling in?" Locke asked the king, as Celes sipped at dark, heavily seasoned tea.

Edgar nodded. "It will take time, but yes, I think so."

"Good. I admit it's a little strange for me to see him here. I can't imagine it's any easier for the rest of you."

Celes kept her eyes on her tea, not sure how to engage with this intimate conversation that carried on as though she weren't there. Joining in, reminding them of her presence, seemed presumptuous. These people had lives and a history she had no place in. You have no place anywhere. Not anymore. Better get used to sitting on the outside of conversations.

As though he could hear her discomfort, Locke turned his calm, disarming smile to Celes, his eyes bright. "And you? Do you have any siblings?"

"N-no." She was caught off guard by the personal question, by how casually he asked it and how he sat listening, actively listening, two words she had never thought to put together before she met him. "Not that I know of, at least."

"That you know of? There's a story there," he said, eyes shining, but he didn't press her for more, though she suspected he wanted to.

"I suppose in a way Terra's the closest thing I have to a sibling," she offered.

"Linked by the gift of magic."

"If you want to put it that way. But I barely knew her before this."

"There will be time enough to remedy that, hopefully soon. Speaking of which," he said, rising from his chair, "I'll head to the stables and see what chocobos they can spare for us. Finish your tea—it'll take me a few minutes anyway." He nodded a farewell to each of them, grinning, and then was off.

She watched him go with a quiet desperation. Part of her wanted to race after him and say she would accompany him to the stables, to spare herself this discomfort of being alone with the king. But that was pathetic, and she needed to wean herself from relying on him to smooth things over with the Returners and the many, many people who needed diplomatic convincing to give her a chance. Soon he was out of sight. There was silence after he left. Celes cupped her hands around her mug and wondered how many awkward conversations she would be doomed to endure over tea.

The king looked like he wanted to say something. Platitudes, maybe. Making conversation. He and Locke both seemed good at that; Celes had never studied the art of talking about nothing and was all too aware that she would not be able to carry her end of it.

But instead of an empty comment on the weather or observation about travel or something equally inane, he finally said, "I wouldn't get your hopes up."

Celes frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

"Locke," Edgar said, glancing toward the closed door as though he needed to clarify who he meant.

"I don't know what you mean," she faltered.

"How can I say this delicately?" Edgar looked up at the sky, pursing his lips. "Locke is a kind and generous man who can't resist helping people, especially women. But I don't think he telegraphs his intent clearly, so there can be mixed signals sometimes. I don't want you getting the wrong idea about his interest in you."

"Interest … in me?"

"Locke is pining away after his one true love," Edgar said, as if he were explaining this to a child.

"That's very sad for him," Celes said, her face burning—did he have to talk down to her? 

"He helps people out of some sort of penance for failing to save her. He's still very much attached to her memory—I wouldn't read anything into his kindness but friendship, or you stand to risk a broken heart."

"A broken—" She sputtered. "What do you think I am? I'm a soldier, not some love-starved twit."

Edgar's patronizing smile made it clear he didn't believe her. "I wouldn't judge you."

"You're mistaken, sir," she said, forcing herself to stay polite and as calm as possible. "Romance is not a concern of mine, and Locke's … romantic history is no business of mine, either."

"So it would seem." He dipped his head to her. "I am mistaken, then."

"Yes."

The conversation left her feeling sour, even after Locke appeared on the sands below, riding a chocobo and leading another. He waved up at the two figures on the terrace, and Celes shouldered her bag and Terra's and left the king and the remains of breakfast behind

Was Locke himself also under the impression that she was swooning over him like a silly girl? Celes had never been one for such sentiments. Admiration, yes—she had admiration in spades for General Leo, who set an example of what it meant to live by one's principles and win the respect of one's men—but love had no place in a soldier's life.

Not that it had ever arisen to be a point of conflict for her. Who could she have been so entangled with? Not Kefka, never Kefka. Leo had been a mentor and inspiration, but he was too old and unreachable to ever be a friend, even after she came into her own as a so-called general. The only other figure in her life had been Dr. Cid during those early days in childhood, running tests, monitoring her growth and how well her body accepted the magic they imbued her with. He had been kind and made her laugh, and so she looked forward to their visits even if the procedures often involved needles and vials of blood. She had a distinct and clear memory of saying something to Cid about not minding the needles because a soldier needed to be comfortable with blades and pain. He grew very quiet, set down the needle, dropped to her level, and said, "Pain is how the body tells you when something is wrong. It's important to listen to what your body tells you, especially if there's danger. It might save your life."

But pain was most often like a voice yelling for change that would never come. Pain shouted a warning about danger too late to avoid it. Pain told you about the blade after it had cut you open. And pain's message was utterly useless when you had no power to get away from the situation, when you were bound and helpless and entirely at someone else's mercy. What purpose did it serve then? Cid understood the medical value of pain, but he was confined to a lab. He knew nothing about what would be helpful or necessary on the battlefield.

Pain had no place in her life. Love had no place in her life.

Notes:

Celes does not believe that love can bloom on a battlefield.

Chapter 8: Alone Together

Summary:

Sometimes the mask you wear slips.

Sometimes the blade you point at your own heart drops.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The blistering sun hung high above them, baking everything between the sand and the sky. Figaro's matron, bless her, had thought to pack coverings to protect them from some of its heat and to shield Celes's fair skin, which he imagined would burn quickly if left exposed.

She had been brooding all morning, and he could think of so many possible reasons why that he could not guess the actual cause. But she was quiet and seemed distracted, and his few passing efforts at conversation were met with little response. This tendency toward brooding appeared to be part of a pattern that would cycle through eventually. Though it made for a duller ride, he was prepared to wait it out.

At least their chocobos crossed the desert sands with ease, and at their hurried pace, they would be out into scrubby plainsland by the time the sun set and they had to set up camp.

This felt different from their furtive escape from South Figaro. Then, they had both been operating on too little sleep, too little to eat, at as breakneck a pace as they could despite Celes's wounds. He had scarcely had time or opportunity to think about anything but the path they would take, the physical limitations of his traveling companion, the pressing urgency of the threat against Doma. Truthfully, that whole period felt like a fever dream in his memory.

Now, they had nothing but time. Not that they were traveling slowly—he knew how hard he could push these rugged desert chocobos, and their current pace skirted that boundary perhaps slightly beyond what was wise. But the ride itself meant hours with nothing to do but observe the sights around him, or to talk with Celes if she was in the mood for it.

Ordinarily, he might seek other travelers on the road for company and to pick up what news they might offer, but it had been a very long time since he had ridden any great distance with a dedicated traveling companion. Most of his missions for the Returners were solitary assignments. But this was not Returners business. This was his own. And Celes was here for the same reason, because they were both determined to find Terra and help her, whatever it took.

And that made it feel more like companionship than he had expected. When they slowed before nightfall and looked for a place to settle for the night, it felt like being out with a friend on an adventure.

It was not cold enough to need a fire, and he worried about Imperial scouts, so they made camp a distance from the road, among a copse of trees that provided at least some camouflage. They took down their saddlebags, fed the chocobos, and then worked together to set up their tent.

The tent wasn't exactly spacious, but it had room for three people, four if they squeezed, so it was easy enough to bring in the saddlebags and set up their bedrolls.

And that really highlighted what was strange and different here, what twisted his stomach just a little. Usually, he had space to himself when traveling—to set down, however briefly, the awareness of others that he always carried. Even in the company of the other Returners, there were enough people around that it diluted the pressure to be present for all of them, and he could retreat into his own thoughts if he needed to, without anyone asking anything of him, most of the time.

But sharing this small space with just one other person, especially someone he had spent so much time fussing over, become so attuned to her injuries, to the tension between her and everyone around her, to how isolated and hurt and, frankly, damaged she was—he could not so easily turn off his worry and slip into isolated anonymity.

He was aware of her in a way that he was not normally aware of his travel companions.

As quiet and impassive as Celes had been while riding, the effort of placing the tent poles and lashing the ropes to hold the canvas taut softened her from stone to flesh, leaving a slight sheen of sweat on her flushed face. She discarded her jacket and sat across from him inside the tent, lit by the mechanical lantern, and drank deeply from her water flask. Slim as she was, the muscles of her bare arms spoke of power and control. The medic's neat stitches still puckered a healing wound by her elbow; it would almost certainly leave a scar. Some part of him wondered what impression he gave, what details about him stood out like this when all other distractions were gone.

Perhaps because he was so on edge himself, he sensed what he imagined was her own discomfort as the two of them readied for sleep. She would not look at him, and her body seemed to be folding in on itself, trying to be small and unseen. He sat cross-legged on his bedroll and fidgeted with the lantern, only glancing at her peripherally. "Are you uncomfortable about sharing a tent like this?"

"No," she said flatly, but her face reddened a little in the light, and she tilted her head even more away from him, pulling her hair around her face and running her fingers through the tangles. A lie. And she was embarrassed about it. He could take that embarrassment from her. It wouldn't be too much to carry.

"It feels too mundane, doesn't it? Like we're on a camping trip, for the fun of it."

"You wouldn't be pushing our chocobos so hard if it were just for fun."

"No, that's true, but." He gestured at the spacious tent. "It's not much like the last time we traveled together. Now that we're not essentially running for our lives, it feels different."

Her fingers halted, wrapped in strands of her golden hair. "I can sleep outside the tent, if it's more comfortable for you."

He smiled to himself, at how neatly this had fallen from her discomfort to his. "No, it's not a problem, really," he said. "I just had to acknowledge it, but I'll manage."

"Is it because I'm a woman?"

"No," he said. "I'm out of the habit of sharing a tent with anyone, these days." Neither true nor untrue, but it was a fair and plausible explanation. "Sometimes when you travel alone, you get in the habit of talking to yourself without realizing you're doing it, or—god forbid—singing to yourself. And I'm not especially good at carrying a tune." He flashed a grin at her. "I'd hate to subject you to that by accident."

She actually rolled her eyes, which felt like a victory, and the tension he had sensed evaporated. "I will forgive you if I catch you singing."

"That's because you haven't heard me sing."

She laughed, which made him laugh, entirely too delighted with himself for how easily he had disarmed her. For the first few weeks he had known her, he might have doubted she would ever laugh in any way that did not sound as bitter and sharp as glass in her throat. Yet here she was almost relaxed, and it was enough to quiet his worries about Terra. Whatever had happened to her, the two of them would find her, and they could help her. He was sure of it.


***


Celes's mind was on Terra the next morning, as they packed up their tent, hurried through breakfast, and then set off with the rising sun at their left. What had happened to Terra, and where was she now?

Again and again, her thoughts returned to that moment in the mine when Kefka's fire bore down on them, when he would have doomed every last soul in that mine without mercy or kindness. When she had reached out to Terra, and Celes had called forth the life-ending chill of solid ice, as always, but what had Terra called on? That other unfamiliar power reinforcing Celes's own—had that been what caused Terra's transformation, perhaps a gift from the sleeping Esper as it woke?

She was still turning through these thoughts when they stopped for a quick lunch. Locke fed the exhausted birds—he was as patient with animals as he was with people—and she took that time to fill their canteens from a nearby stream.

She cupped her hand around the water flask, thought of the biting winds of Narshe, and wondered if the ice that answered her call could ever be anything but jagged death-edged shards or a creeping chill that smothered the breath in the body and froze the heart til it stopped. Could the magic within her serve any purpose but death? Accounts of the War of the Magi told of warriors with the power to close wounds. How much different could her life have been had she been gifted in such a way instead?

Her blood sang, the skin of her fingers numbing, as frost crept around the sides of the flask.

Beside her, Locke chuckled. "Did you just freeze your canteen?"

"I only meant to chill it." Her fingers tingled, and she set the canteen down and shook out her hand, which had gone white with cold.

He was smiling. "It seems like whatever your magic did to you in the mines has passed."

"I think so," she said.

"I wonder if what happened to Terra will pass, too," he said. "Maybe she used too much magic, like you said happened to you. Maybe she's back to herself already, or will be soon."

"I really have no idea," Celes said.

"I hope she's all right. I'm worried."

"What is she to you?" she blurted, and the words were sharp-edged and dangerous inside her mouth.

"Terra?" Locke's eyebrows rose in surprise. "A friend, I would hope, although she'll have to be the one to say if it's true." He dropped beside her and handed over a sack of pemmican.

"Have you known her long?"

"A few months, maybe." He laughed self-consciously and rubbed the back of his neck. "I, uh, rescued her from a rough situation in Narshe. The Empire's first failed effort to get their hands on that Esper. There was an altercation, and Arvis was afraid his own countrymen would try her as a criminal or outright execute her if they found her. I was nearby, so he called on me."

"Mm." She slouched with her arms over her knees and wondered if there had ever been a point when someone might have gone on a mad journey across the continent to find her. Whether someone like Locke, for example, might someday consider her enough of a friend to set his life aside to help her in a time of crisis. Unlikely—everyone expected her to be able to fend for herself, whereas Terra's childlike newness made even Celes herself feel protective of her.

"What about you?"

Celes stared at him blankly. Had she spoken aloud, or had he picked up on her self-focused, navel-gazing train of thought in some other way?

"Terra," Locke said with a smile. "Is she a friend of yours now that you've had a chance to get to know each other better?"

Celes wrapped her arms tighter around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. "I don't know. " Then, even more hesitantly, she asked, "So, she's not—you aren't—interested in her?"

He snorted in disbelief. "No. She's a friend and nothing more."

"I see."

"Why? Did something make you think that?"

"I—don't know. I just wondered."

He shook his head. "There's nothing to wonder about. Besides, I'm—there's someone else already." His expression darkened. "I hope she doesn't—well. It will be fine, I'm sure."

"Honestly," Celes said, grasping at something to make him feel better, to reassure him that she wasn't accusing him of something Edgar had already told her was impossible, something that so clearly upset him, "I shouldn't even have wondered about it. There's something about her that seems so young."

"Much younger than me, at least."

"You talk like you're an old man."

"I'm twenty-three, but sometimes I feel a lot older." He laughed. "Maybe because I spend so much time with people like Edgar, or Banon, with all their burden of responsibility."

Celes pressed her lips together. "I think being at war ages you."

"I wouldn't say I've been at war, really." He shifted, cocking his head at her appraisingly. "How long have you been fighting? I know they started training you as a child, but..."

"Three years, I think?" She watched a bird—a hawk?—circling overhead and not to think of the memories of combat that sprung unbidden to her mind. Breathe. "Since I was sixteen."

"That's a tragedy," he said.

"Why do you care so much?" She sounded—she felt—sullen.

"I like you." There was a gentle rebuke in his tone. "I may not be making myself clear, since you have so far challenged me at every opportunity, but I'm trying to be your friend."

Her ears felt hot, and her throat tightened. Yes, the voice whispered to her, this poor, misguided soul has been attempting friendship with you, and you're lying to yourself and to him if you say you didn't know. Remember what Edgar said, though. This is out of guilt, in someone else's honor, in someone else's memory, the same as his need to protect Terra. His kindness comes from duty. Why else would someone waste their efforts on a monster like you?

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked quietly, smiling, his head cocked.

"You don't need to make me your project." Her mouth was dry, her voice flat.

Locke drew back, and the smile dropped from his lips. "Project? What do you mean?"

"You feel like you have to fix me, or take care of me. That's very generous of you, I'm sure, but I don't need it." She pressed her hands together. "I relieve you of that obligation."

"Celes—" He stopped, reconsidered, tried again. "You genuinely don't believe I would want to be your friend for any reason other than obligation."

She opened her mouth to respond and realized she wasn't sure what the words needed to be. "I—yes. No. Maybe obligation isn't the word, but… Look. I have never had a friend. I am not the sort of person who makes friends. I do not have much to offer, as friendship goes." You hardly even know how to have a reasonable conversation about normal things, like normal people do. All you know is how to kill people and how to lead other people to kill. Hardly friendship material.

He was, as ever, undeterred. "We can start with one thing. You want to help people, too, don't you?"

"I want to stop hurting people. It's not the same thing."

"That doesn't seem fair. Or accurate."

"What do you know?" That came out a little more bitter and accusatory than she intended, but it was the truth. How could he understand her, who she was, what she'd done? "You don't know me."

"Not well, no, but I'm trying." He ran a hand through his shaggy hair, leaving it standing upright in awkward chunks. "When I see you, I don't see a 'project,' or a killing machine atoning for her sins, no matter what you may think of yourself. I see someone who has made mistakes she regrets, mistakes that hurt people, mistakes she wants to make good on. I relate to that, more than you know. In different ways, maybe, but I do."

"Are people dead because of your mistakes?"

His eyes widened in surprise and pain. "Yes," he said simply.

She had somehow not expected that answer. He wasn't much of a fighter—his job was to slip behind the enemy, gather information, avoid being found out. Maybe he'd miscalculated how trustworthy a piece of information was. Maybe he'd been fed bad information, and some of the Returners had suffered for his error in judgment.

That little self-deprecating half-smile returned to his face. "We have two things in common, then. Something we want to atone for, and a genuine desire to right the wrongs we see."

"That's not really what you make a friendship out of, is it?" She frowned. "Friends—have parties? Talk about—chocobos? And dogs? And food?"

Locke's laugh was sharp, startled. "Maybe? I can't speak for anyone else. For me, I'd rather build a friendship on the foundation of what matters to us. Seeking justice. Fighting tyranny. Seeing the world."

"I haven't—"

"Just think about it. Or at least trust me that I can decide for myself whether or not I want to be your friend. It's not out of guilt, or out of obligation. I promise you that."


***


You don't need to make me your project. Even though the conversation had ended well enough, he couldn't deny that he felt taken aback by the accusation in those words.

Edgar said something similar to him, occasionally. Not in as many words, but that constant implication that he did what he did because of Rachel. Sometimes Locke wondered if he should ever have confessed his story to Edgar, but they had been under the stars on the roof of Figaro Castle after an extremely long day, with the too-bright stars overhead and the desert air shockingly cold, drunk on wine and regret, and somehow a conversation about Figaro and the Empire and had turned personal—what had been lost, what future hopes survived—and out the story had tumbled.

Regardless of what Edgar might think, though, the situation with Celes had nothing to do with Rachel. Well, maybe not nothing. He had resolved to help others if he could not help Rachel, and that occasionally meant sticking himself into someone else's business if they needed a hand. But he wasn't helping Celes specifically because she reminded him of Rachel; the two could hardly be more different. Rachel had bright eyes and pink cheeks and full lips that were always smiling, raven curls and soft curves and a playful, teasing laugh. Celes was angular and sharp, thin-lipped, with pale skin and narrow, aristocratic features and a tendency toward deep melancholy. She was as beautiful and unreachable as a statue.

And, anyway, he wasn't even prone to helping women in particular, whatever Edgar might say. He'd helped people of all genders. He'd sat with Cyan through his grief, hadn't he? It was just that Celes and Terra needed more, neither of them sure where to go, each of them lacking so much that the Empire had taken from them.

Celes was like a tangled knot of threads, of pain and sorrow and what seemed like compassion, too, even if she didn't see it in herself. She seemed unaware of the knot, or at least unaware that there was any way to live that did not involve tying your feelings in a bundle and throwing them in a drawer. He wanted to help her begin to untangle them, but not because she was a project.

Right?


***


She woke, and she couldn't say what had woken her. As always, the unfamiliarity of the situation passed through her as consciousness returned. In a tent. With the Returners. With Locke. Nothing will harm you here.

Locke slept with his back to her, as usual, trusting and peaceful and—

No, that wasn't right. He was balled up, his face pressed into his pillow, muffling the distinctive sounds of crying, quiet but still audible despite the drone of insects singing in the forest. Of all the sounds that could have woken her in the middle of the night, she would not have expected this.

She sat up. "Locke?"

The crying stopped at once. He was still for a few moments, then rolled over to face her, propping himself up on an elbow, assuming a posture of comfort and self-assurance.

"Sorry," he said, his voice smooth and round and solid, as though he hadn't just been crying, as though she had imagined it. "Is something troubling you? Did you have another nightmare?"

"I should be asking you what's wrong."

"Nothing, just—you know. Stress from the road. Worry about Terra. The usual. Don't worry about me." He sat up. This seeming calmness disturbed her, and despite her surprise and the lingering fog of having so recently asleep, she began to wonder just how much of a disguise he wore at other times, if he could so effortlessly slip on this mask. It was almost convincing, almost enough to make her second-guess what she had heard.

While she was still puzzling through this, he shuffled out of the tent, only stopping at the entrance to slip into his boots. She could hear his footsteps heading a short ways away from the tent. When he returned, she was sitting with her knees to her chest, waiting for him.

"You were crying," she said without preamble.

"I—" His face was unreadable in the dark.

"Please don't lie," she said. "I don't know if you think you're protecting me from something by hiding it, but I'm not fooled. If something's wrong, I would like to know."

He settled back onto his bedroll and folded his arms over his face, then sighed. "It's—nothing to worry about. Just sometimes you wake up from a dream about something, or a situation reminds you of something, and you're crying when you wake up. You know? But it's fine. It's just a dream, or a memory. It passes."

"What kind of memory?"

He gave no reply.

What would he say to her, if their roles were reversed? Would he conclude it was better to let it slide, and would it be, if it were her? Or would he press her further? If he doesn't want to talk about it, let it be. It's not like you know how to navigate someone else's feelings, what to say or do. You don't even know how to navigate your own. You'll just make everything worse.

Perhaps because she was tired, perhaps because she'd been peppered by so many of his questions for so long, or perhaps because she wanted to silence that voice, for once, she said, "You can tell me about it, if you want."

"I don't, honestly. I just want to forget about it and sleep."

The absence of his usual gentleness silenced her nascent curiosity. When he turned away from her, she let it go, but they both tossed and turned in restless, dissatisfied silence for a long time.


***


They spent another few days on the road, and he was grateful that they passed uneventfully—no imperial scouts, no highwaymen, not even weather worse than a light drizzle. Occasionally, they passed a fellow traveler or one of the numerous inns in the villages lining the road, and at these times he stopped to ask after Terra. The travelers were no help, but the innkeepers or their staff could sometimes confirm that a strange pink star had shot overhead like some strange and unsettling omen, traveling south.

He had hoped Celes might make an effort to open up. Painstakingly, he pulled her enough out of her shell that she asked him occasional questions about the landscape, about his time on the road, about how he seemed to know so much about the countryside. It was hard to carry a conversation while being jostled by fast-moving chocobos, but when they turned in again for the night, he was pleased that Celes did not immediately fall silent. He had commented about a nearby cave complex shortly before they dismounted, and the conversation continued as they made camp. In the light of the setting sun, everything was tinted gold, and her hair almost seemed to glow, framing her face as they sat together on a rocky outcropping beside the tent.

"Treasure-hunting runs in the family," he said, and warmth spilled out from the memories. "My father used to take me into caves sometimes when we traveled. You'd hear rumors in town sometimes, or from other travelers, about some great bounty ripe for the taking. I don't think he ever actually expected to find anything, but he loved the promise of it, the adventure of it."

Celes looked thoughtful, her forehead creased. For a moment he wondered what he had said that bothered her. Then she tossed her head and, somewhat hesitantly, offered, "My father was a soldier, but I never really knew him."

Locke held his breath, waiting for her to continue. This was, he thought, the first time she'd ever volunteered information about herself on her own, without prompting or prying on his part. There was something stiff about the way she talked, halting, hesitant, as though she had little experience with this, which was likely true.

"My mother was some sort of maid. She died in childbirth, and my father was away at war and couldn't raise me, so I became a ward of the Empire. They were looking for a baby with some kind of aptitude for magic, and I qualified."

He waited for more, but that seemed to be the end of the story. Greedy of him to want more when even this was clearly a step for her, but his curiosity was too much to resist.

"What does it feel like?" he asked. "The magic." This almost seemed to take her aback. He pressed on. "Is asking that too much?"

"No, I've just never—tried to articulate it for someone before. Let me think." She looked thoughtful, considering this very carefully. "Physically? It's like—ordinarily you aren't aware of the heat of your body, of the blood flowing through it keeping you alive, but it's always there. When I call on my magic—and that's how I think of it, calling on it, as though something inside of me is sleeping and I wake it when I need it—the warmth of being alive dims, just a little, and the cold comes from within me. It doesn't usually hurt, but it almost feels like my body becomes less my own, like it becomes less human."

"Like Terra, in the mine?"

She shook her head. "No. It's more like—that feeling that comes over you sometimes after a battle, when they're counting the dead and bringing in the wounded, when they've designated who to take as prisoner and who to finish, and everything seems far away, like it's happening to someone else. When you're aware of your injuries, but you don't feel them, or any of the—the tension or—the fear of combat." She looked at him as if expecting this to be a shared and universal experience. The words were so matter-of-fact that he could only gape at her, until he realized that he had been silent too long without responding.

"I can't say I've felt that way," he said, trying to keep his own voice light and his face neutral. "But I haven't really fought much myself."

"You shouldn't," she said with conviction. "Not you."

He grinned wryly. "I'll get myself hurt, you mean? Too soft for combat?"

"Softness isn't weakness," she said, serious despite his light tone. "The arm that wields a sword must be strong enough to push the blade through unyielding flesh to bone, to cut a life short." Her blue eyes pierced him through to the quick—not with intensity but with the depths of their sadness. She touched his wrist gently, just the whisper of her fingertips on his skin, a moment of rare trust and intimacy that took his breath away. "It takes a different kind of strength to care even when no one else does. You should keep that. The world needs that at least as much as it needs those who can kill."

He swallowed. "You mean yourself."

She turned away. "This is what I meant when I said I don't make friends. You don't want to hear about this, and you shouldn't have to, but it's all I have to say."

"Is it, though?" He leaned closer to her, put a hand on her forearm, wondering if the warmth of another person could remind her of her own humanity. She drew a breath between her teeth. "I don't believe you."

"That's too bad, because it's true." She tried to break his grip, but he held her steady.

"No, it's not." His fingers tightened on her arm as though he could pull her back from whatever haunted her. She met his eyes again, sadness warring with something darker, and he thought she might strike him. It was the look of a wounded animal, frozen in fear the moment before it lashed out. But still he pressed on, even if he would come to regret it. "There's more to you than violence. Tell me, what's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

Her eyes widened, searching his face as if looking for some answer there. Her lips parted to speak, but she swallowed the words, whatever they were, and shook her head. "I don't know."

"Then tell me how you came to turn against the Empire." The hand on her arm was too combative, too controlling, holding her against her will. No wonder she felt cornered. He released her, took a deep breath. Quieted himself. "They raised you to fight for them. They indoctrinated you from early childhood. How did you break that control?"

"Because I saw the people I had killed," she said, choking. "Because I saw the people left behind, stricken with grief. Make an example of them, they said, and it would mean less fighting in the future, fewer deaths, less suffering. A cold calculation. But these weren't numbers—these weren't pieces on the board—these were lives ended, not just those we killed but those who were left behind. I saw the fire in their eyes die. I saw the city afterward, not calmed by law and order but broken by it." She made a fist, her entire arm shaking, then slashed downward with an open palm. "The invasion had never been about uniting the continent under one ruler. It was about subjugating people. It was about power, about control, with no regard for the suffering it caused. Because no one who suffered mattered."

"But they mattered to you."

"Yes!" Exasperation, frustration—he had offended her. "Those people loved each other. You want to know the most beautiful thing I've ever seen? It would be that, but I never saw it, because I destroyed it. It was those homes, those families, that I only saw in ruins afterward."

"So now you want to protect them."

"I didn't say that."

"But you do. You care. You gave up everything you knew because you cared so much." He shifted so he was kneeling across from her, so she had no choice but to face him. "Will you join us? Will you help us stop the Empire?"

"I don't—I don't think the Returners want me," she said.

"I do," he said, and he felt his cheeks redden—poor choice of words, that—and hastily added, "to join us, or at least to join me, and put a stop to this. We can keep Gestahl and Kefka from hurting anyone else."

She smiled, but it was a sad smile. "You really believe you can do this."

"I do." He smiled back.

She closed her eyes, drew in a breath, held it a long moment, and then let it out. "Then yes. I'll promise you my sword to protect you on your rash quest to save the world."

"You're more than just a sword, you know."

"Magic, too, then."

He couldn't help laughing. "That's not what I mean, and you know it."

"Maybe." An ironic little smirk—had she been joking? Could she joke? "I don't share your faith or your conviction, even if I want to, but you're right, I do want to help. If you think you and the others can stop the Emperor, I'll try to keep you alive to do it."

"That's all I can ask." 

And it was, for now. He couldn't change her cynicism overnight, only temper it with his own hope, but he would be all too glad to do so, for her sake and for them all. It felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, somehow—and from hers, as she sat a little straighter, smiled a little more easily.

Notes:

This has been, by far, the hardest chapter I've written for this piece. "But Lauren," you might say, "you love these two together; can't you just enjoy writing a fun fluffy chapter of the two of them hanging out?"

No. No, I cannot.

Also, yes, I changed their ages a little. 18 has always seemed too young for Celes, and I don't like the 7-year age difference in the original. So he's a little younger, and she's a little older, and I think it suits them, at least as I've written them. I'm already taking enough creative liberties that I hope you'll forgive me.

I'm sorry this one took so long to come out, but life got in the way, and I really, really struggled with writing this particular chapter on top of everything else. You may be relieved to know that both of the next two chapters have a substantial percentage written, so they should be a bit faster. I may not be able to keep up the weekly posting schedule, though. I might have been a little overambitious. I might aim for every other week?

Chapter 9: Sifting through Memories

Summary:

In which stories are shared — the magical and the mundane.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Zozo was where the hopeless and the destitute landed when they had nowhere else to go. Celes supposed that if she had not fallen in with Locke and the Returners, she might well have found herself here, eventually—this old, rusting city with tenements rising toward the sky, an affront to nature even when viewed from where she and Locke stood, on a hill overlooking the city. The afternoon sun shone bright overhead.

Past Zozo, a broad river sparkled. And on the far shore, distant Jidoor shone mighty and proud, its tree-lined boulevards and spotless facades almost obscene compared to the slums of Zozo. Some pieces of history sifted through Celes's memory—the two sister-cities had both been renowned for their prosperity and comfort, before refugees had come to Zozo—not even refugees from imperial conquest, but from some other petty war—and the wealthy citizens of Zozo fled to Jidoor, leaving their former home to fall into disrepair. She supposed that this recounting of history might have been inaccurate, designed to position the northern continent as barbaric and flawed, needing the firm hand of the Empire to clean up its baser nature. Whatever the historical truth might be, the present reality was that Zozo was as filthy and dangerous as Jidoor was beautiful and pristine.

"If she is here, she could be in either city," Locke mused. "I don't know which would be better or worse. If they don't like you in Jidoor, they'll throw you out if you're lucky, or lock you up if you're not. If you land in trouble in Zozo, you'll probably have to fight your way out of it." He cocked his head at Celes. "Which would you rather start with?"

"I've spent enough time imprisoned already. I'd rather take my chances fighting."

"Fair enough."

The answer to their question revealed itself quite plainly as they drew closer to the slums of Zozo. A short distance from the road, the ground was scorched, the rock flattened and the earth disturbed in a bowl-like shape where an impact had knocked a shallow crater into the earth.

Celes brought her chocobo to the edge of the crater and dismounted. What else, if not the two flying beings, could have caused it? And—yes—there was a strange tingling sensation, the presence of magic, or if not presence then an afterimage, lingering faintly.

"I think I can feel something," she said.

"Good!" Locke clasped his hands together, looking as satisfied as a cat, and swung down from his chocobo with practiced grace. "Truth be told, we were taking a bit of a gamble coming all the way out here, and I was worried. But it's paid off."

"There's no blood," Celes observed, cutting through the crater. "If she were injured, I think we'd see evidence of it."

"If she came all the way here, and landed so close to the city, someone there is sure to know something. She might even be there waiting for us." Locke gave her an appraising look, stroking his chin. "Still up for playing a merchant's bodyguard?"

"If you think I could pull it off."

"You don't really have an intimidating build, but I think we could make you look a little dangerous. Just enough so we don't look like marks." He stood in front of her, sizing her up, arms crossed over his chest and a surprisingly serious expression on his face. It made her think of the tailors in Figaro, an impression that was only strengthened when he reached toward her with both hands. Halfway to touching her shoulders, he stopped, his fingers folding into soft fists. "May I?"

When she nodded, he stepped in closer still, much closer than anyone normally stood to her. She had never realized that she was accustomed to a bubble of space around her at all times until he passed through it, unaware of the barrier he had just breached. No one came within this range unless violence was involved. She tensed, her instincts screaming at her that this was a threat, that she needed to shove him away, knee him in the stomach, strike him in the throat, get away get away get away

Something of her discomfort must have been visible, because he leaned away from her again, and his arms fell to his side, his expression stricken. "I don't—I'm not—"

"I know you're not going to hurt me," she said, trying to smile through gritted teeth.

"If you'd rather I not—"

"Do whatever you're going to do," she said. "It's fine. I promise."

Skepticism clouded his face, but he took a breath and reached for her again. She held herself still as a statue, thinking of Cid praising her for not flinching away from his needles. But that was an unfair comparison. Locke's hands were gentle, as gentle as his voice. He fiddled with her as though she were a mannequin, draping one of his copious scarves around her neck and over her shoulders just so, cuffing the sleeves of her jacket to expose her forearms—"It's good if they can see your scars," he commented absently. "And your arms. You may not be an obvious powerhouse like Edgar's brother, but you're strong enough. Here, keep a hand on your sword when you walk." He put his hands on her waist to adjust her belt and scabbard so that the hilt protruded forward to draw the eye, a warning to onlookers that she was armed and entirely ready to fight back.

Everywhere his fingers touched, her skin grew warmer even through the layers of cloth and leather, and her heart was pounding. This was different from the defensive instinct he had triggered by first approaching her—this was something new, and strange, and it left her feeling a little woozy.

He frowned. "Are you all right?"

"I'm—" She swallowed, trying to make sense of it, of the strange waves of tension running through her. There was an element of panic, but something else, too. The energy coursing through her could be anxiety or giddiness. Yet as the remains of her panic subsided, she felt—lighter in some way than she had for a long time. "I'm not used to being touched unless I'm fighting. I think—my body doesn't know how to interpret this, if it isn't a threat."

"That makes sense, I guess." Locke chewed on his lip. "Celes?"

"Yes?"

"When was the last time somebody hugged you?"

She looked at him blankly. "I... honestly don't remember." Had Cid hugged her when she was a child? Possibly.

"Mm." Now it was Locke's turn to look uncomfortable. She had figured out what that look meant by now—he was feeling sorry for her.

She decided to spare them both the indignity with a change of subject. "So, if you're a merchant, what are you selling?"

He smiled at her, warmth returning to his expression. "Oh, you don't sell in Zozo. There's no money to be made here. No, you buy secondhand from fences and pawn shops for a fraction of what things would cost legitimately, and then you sell it for a profit elsewhere. You can make a fair bit of money that way, as long as you don't sell it in Jidoor."

Again she found herself staring at him blankly. "Why not?"

"Because most of it comes from Jidoor, and the original owners don't take kindly to seeing their belongings for sale."

"But—but—oh. I see."

He smiled wryly. "Anyway, we won't need an elaborate cover story, or anything like that. Don't worry."

Side by side, they rode down the main street into Zozo and the shadows of its great buildings, among the sounds and smells of its busy roads and crowded spaces. The people they passed watched them, but their attention didn't linger. "It's actually quite reassuring to know you're at my back," Locke said brightly. "I could get used to having a bodyguard. Have you thought about a career change?"

"Career?" She snorted. "I don't really think of war as a career."

"A life change, then." He eyed her, his light tone belying the sudden seriousness of his expression. "There's bound to be an end to this war eventually. There's no harm in thinking about what you might do next. And bodyguarding might suit you better than soldiering. You seem more comfortable defending someone than going on the offensive."

"I don't know if I agree with that." He thinks that because that's all he's seen of you.

Maybe that means something.

Maybe this is who I am now.

"Or..." Locke grinned suddenly. "You could do something entirely different. Become a pastry chef, take up pottery, join a circus and train dancing bears. Or just retire to a quiet cabin in the woods and live in peace with the land as a hunter." He ticked off the options one by one on his fingers, then gestured broadly at her. "But first, we track down Terra."

 

***

 

Confirming that something had indeed landed rather explosively next to the city was easy—all he had to do was make a few passing comments about the blatantly obvious crater. People here weren't inclined to gossip about their neighbors to a stranger, even to a seemingly harmless merchant looking to make conversation, but they had no end of opinions they were willing to share about bizarre supernatural phenomena. Some thought it was a lightning strike, or a new weapon from the Empire being tested from all the way across the sea, or the Espers returning as a sign that the world was ending.

Finding out more specific detail proved to be a little more difficult.

Locke rented them a room in a cheap flophouse—only one room, but at least it had two beds—and he tried to put the innkeeper at ease enough to pull information from the woman, with limited success.

He sniffed at a few of the pawn shops along the main drag, ostensibly shopping for trinkets with good resale value while he chatted up the proprietors and their employees. No good. Finally, he found himself at a shop that doubled more directly as a fence, with a proprietor shrewd enough to catch that information was the real bounty he was looking for. The man offered him what he wanted, at a high enough price that he realized with some consternation that he might have to do a little real business to finance this trip, even with just the one room. But at least he had a lead.

What he learned was this: There was a reclusive old man living in one of the many decrepit tenement buildings that had once been reputable flats, and he'd been seen carrying someone wrapped in a blanket through the streets soon after the strange flash of light had torn through the sky. It had earned attention not just because a man carrying an unconscious figure was concerning but also because he had up til that point seemed unlikely to have the strength for such a feat.

Given that it was the only lead Locke had been able to scrounge up, and given that it sounded strange enough that he could believe magic might be involved, and given that Locke had tried very hard not to give any impression that he or Celes would be worth ensnaring in a trap, he pursued it. But he was glad to have Celes accompanying him, not just because the man lived down back roads that made him nervous but because he genuinely wasn't sure what to expect. Celes was nearly unmatched with a blade, and her ice magic offered an excellent trump card for emergencies. And she was just as determined as he was to find Terra, no matter what.

The old man's building had to be at least five stories tall, with boarded-up windows and heaps of discarded belongings and refuse everywhere. His instructions told him the old man's apartment was on the first floor. He approached it with some trepidation.

"Here's hoping," he said to Celes, who stood at the ready, hand resting on the hilt of her sword.

He had to knock three times. Finally, the door cracked open just enough to show an old, wrinkled face, half buried in a massive cloud-white beard. It seemed that all of the hair on his head had run off to join the beard.

"What do you want?" The old man's voice boomed out, surprisingly deep.

Locke stood a little straighter. "I heard you might have taken in a friend of mine who needed shelter."

"There's no one in here but me."

"Maybe you know where she's gone, then. Her name is Terra."

"Who?"

"I—" What should he tell this stranger? Information was currency, and in Zozo, giving information to the wrong person could have unforeseen consequences as it passed from hand to hand, mouth to ear. At the same time, this was his only lead. He had to take a chance. "She's fleeing the Empire. I helped her escape, but I'm—worried they might have pursued her. If you've seen her, or heard anything about her—if she's safe."

The old man opened the door a couple of inches more and poked his head out so that he could see the two of them better. Locke clasped his hands in front of him, trying to look earnest and trustworthy, or at least not suspicious. But the old man peered at Celes and narrowed his sunken eyes. "Who are you?"

Locke spoke up before she could. "My bodyguard. My—friend."

The man's hand shot out with startling speed to grab Celes's wrist. Instinctively, she jerked away. Something arced like lightning between them, and she cried out.

"Shiva," the old man hissed, his face dark with anger. Celes's mouth hung open.

Locke stepped in front of her. "She's not—You've got the wrong—"

"You don't know what you're talking about, boy." He shoved Locke aside, with the strength of a much younger man, and his touch made Locke's hair stand on end. Then the man grabbed Celes by the shoulders. "What did you do with Shiva?"

"I don't know what you mean," Celes whispered, eyes wide.

Magic. The air around the old man shimmered with it, and around Celes, too, whose face had gone white. She was shivering, not with fear but with cold; the breath from her open mouth hung like a visible puff of cloud in the air. The chill of it spread to Locke, too, like a wintry wind. For a moment, he thought she might be transforming, too, as Terra had—taking on some icy form, frosted or crystalline. But her teeth started chattering and she still looked like herself, her face colorless not because she transformed but because the cold looked like it was eating her from the inside out. Frostbite, or worse.

"Stop!" Locke tried to shove his way between them, but an unseen force around the old man pushed him back.

"How do you have Shiva's essence?" the old man demanded of Celes, as though Locke hadn't spoken. "Did you kill her?"

"No!" Celes's voice rasped in her throat, and her eyelids fluttered as though it took a great deal of effort to keep them open. "I—don't know—"

"Stop! Please!"

Locke grabbed her, wrapped his arms around her, and she did not resist. It felt like holding ice in his arms; his own skin ached from the cold. Maybe it would be enough to save her from this. He had to get her away, had to get them both away, before the life ebbed from her.

The old man sobbed, abruptly, and the shimmer of magic fell away at once. "She's gone," he murmured, as if to himself.

Locke pulled Celes further from the man's door. She stumbled and leaned against him, and already he could feel warmth returning to her, the cold no longer leaching from her body into his. He held her, hoping it was not too late to save her from frostbite.

"Shiva was her name?" Celes sounded young, her voice small and tentative. "The—the Esper who…"

"Is this what your Empire has done with them?"

The two of them were talking around each other, tantalizing hints at some greater story that seemed unlikely to take form on its own. Locke's mind raced through possibilities, unable to resist the puzzle even through his worry for his friend. This man had magic and had somehow sensed the magic within Celes—was attributing her magic to the death of someone else, someone he knew, who Celes seemed to think she knew…

"You're an Esper," Locke said to the old man, which was at the same time the most ridiculous sentence he had ever uttered and yet, impossibly, the most likely truth. Though part of him recoiled in disbelief, the other part, the part that stayed calm in emergencies, kept going. "You think Celes has your friend's magic. Another Esper. Celes was part of an Imperial experiment to give her magic when she was a child. These things are probably connected. The girl we're looking for was also part of the same experiments. It wasn't their fault—they were children—"

To Locke's bafflement and some degree of horror, the old man began to laugh. "You think Terra was the product of an experiment?"

"She was," Celes said, her voice a little stronger. She had wrapped her arms around herself, and she did not look up. "There were three of us."

"Oh, no, child. You are quite mistaken."


***


Everything had been dark, and very far away, and Locke's voice sounded so dim and distant. When he grabbed her, she was only aware of pressure against her, no warmth nor softness nor the strange giddiness from before. There was only the cold, so cold it started to feel warm again, and she was so very, very tired and ready to sleep.

Then the singing in her blood stopped, along with the pull on the magic within her that came from without, and her skin tingled and ached and she became aware of Locke holding her, like a warm blanket and a fire banishing the winter night.

And now they were inside, in a small, cramped room poorly lit by a swaying lantern overhead. Celes and Locke sat across from the old man, a chipped tea service on the low table between them, steaming mugs of tea and an old iron kettle.

"I thought you might be someone from your Empire following them here," the old man said. "I am truly sorry to have hurt you. Shiva was a friend of mine and I have wondered about her fate for years. I feared the worst. It would appear my fears were well-founded."

Celes only nodded. She was still chilled to the bone, and that weary darkness that had nearly claimed her lingered at the edges of her thoughts.

On a cot in the back of the room, the pink figure that was Terra lay sleeping, wrapped in an old quilt. Every so often she would thrash in her sleep, murmuring something to herself. Whenever she stirred, the two humans at the table turned to glance at her, hoping she might wake, but she slept deeply.

The old man poured tea for them. "I felt Tritoch wake, and I called to him. I didn't realize he had the child with him until they arrived."

"Tritoch?"

"The other who accompanied her." He gestured to another figure who sat unmoving on a chair near the cot, so still that Celes had taken him for a mannequin or statue, which would not have been out of place among the junk filling the apartment. Celes gasped, and Locke rose from his position on the floor to peer more closely at the figure. The figure appeared to be human.

"But we saw—the Esper. It was…" Locke spread his hands, indicating some considerable size, and the old man laughed.

"We can take a human form if we choose, but it can be exhausting, and Tritoch is old, very old. He is conserving his strength, trying to heal. It is difficult, in this magic-parched world."

"And Terra?" Locke sat down again, but his eyes kept flitting to the back of the room, to the sleeping figure there. "What did he do to her?"

And will it happen to me, too? Despite everything, some part of Celes twisted with jealousy. You've never had a strong enough connection to your magical energy. That's why they gave you a sword, unlike the other two—it's all you were good for.

The old man steepled his hands as if considering how to respond. "Tritoch seems to have awoken Terra's Esper half, and she is struggling to reconcile it."

"What?"

The outburst came from Locke and Celes simultaneously. Esper... half? The shock and confusion was enough to cut through the fog in Celes's mind at last.

"From her father," Ramuh said. It was hard to tell, under the massive beard, but she thought he might be smiling. "Your friend is half-Esper, half-human. The only such creature in all the world."

Suddenly everything clicked into place. Terra's incredible gift of magic, far beyond that of Celes or even Kefka, despite her youth. Gestahl's inhumane treatment of her, as though she were an animal to be worked, not a person with her own mind and her own soul. Not a human being. Celes and Kefka were mere copies of Esper magic; Terra was the real thing.

"But that's impossible," Locke was saying.

"No," Celes said, to him. "It explains a lot."

"But that's absurd."

"There are two Espers in this room right now," Celes said, her voice wavering. "And… Esper magic running through my blood. None of that is supposed to be possible. The Espers were supposed to have been lost a thousand years ago. Magic was supposed to be gone forever. And yet."

"And yet," Locke echoed, running a hand through his hair and looking overwhelmed.


***


The old man—the Esper—Ramuh, he called himself—told them a story. It came in disjointed pieces that Celes struggled to reassemble, even now that her mind had fully thawed. She would need to confer with Locke afterward, to be sure of the parts she might have missed.

The Espers had been part of a war between humans, a thousand years before, and as the war shattered and broke the earth around them, the Espers retreated through a portal into another world and disappeared, seemingly forever. That much Celes knew, from history books and from legend. And she knew that the Empire had somehow found and harnessed magical energy that powered their Magitek armor and weapons, that granted some degree of power to Kefka and to Celes herself.

What Ramuh told, in his convoluted way, was what Celes might have otherwise called the human face of the story, except that none of the players were human. After the war, the Espers had sealed the gate between the worlds and built a society of their own—leaving behind Tritoch and others, unavoidable casualties of the battles they now wished to forget. His descriptions of the Esper world were hard to picture, not reliant on the natural form of the earth but rather harnessing magical energies to construct palaces and cities and remote villages filled with beings whose supernatural abilities bordered on godlike. The seal on the gate waxed and waned with time, and whenever it thinned, the Espers whose duty it was to watch it replenished the magic holding it closed.

Ramuh couldn't say how or why the seal weakened so much that a young human woman passed through. All he knew was that she fell in love with a young and brash Esper man, and the two of them defied all knowledge or expectations and made a baby together. Terra. She had been an oddity among the Espers, the source of much conflict and disagreement.

The human woman feared for her baby's safety—though Ramuh insisted that the Espers would never have harmed her or her child. But Celes, who knew how humans could be, did not blame the woman for her skepticism. Regardless, the girl had tried to flee through the gate, and her lover pursued her, and others tried to stop him, and in so doing they had weakened the seal.

Ramuh had been among these unfortunates, who found themselves in a maelstrom of magic carrying them through to the human world. They became separated, alone in a world quite unlike anything they had known—"magic-parched," as he called it. Without magic permeating the world around them, they had had to find a way to live.

"So you've lived here among humans for years," Celes said.

"I have."

"Why Zozo?" Locke asked. He seemed even more overwhelmed than Celes by this whole thing, and the puzzlement in his voice clearly went deeper than the single question.

"It was nearby. It was different. Here I did not draw attention. I was disoriented after I arrived here, and before I had quite found my footing, I found that I could no longer sense my friends in this world. I did not know if it was distance or if they had perished."

"And now it's come full circle, with Terra returning to you."

"I hope to teach her something of her heritage, once she awakens. But she is at war with herself, hiding from the reality of what she is. It will take time for her to find her peace again."

Celes was not sure that Terra had ever known peace, had ever even had the opportunity to look for it. But, sincerely, she hoped the girl would. If anyone deserved a chance to step away from turmoil and pain, it was this young soul who had somehow held onto her innocence despite the evils the world had beaten her with for so much of her short life.


***


Seeing Terra like that, unreachable yet present, summoned up all-too-vivid memories of hours spent by Rachel's bed, waiting for her to wake. There's too much damage. Her body is still alive, but her mind is gone. You have to let her go, Locke.

But how could he let her go when she still breathed in and breathed out, looking for all the world like a sleeping princess awaiting true love's kiss? But true love could only postpone what he hoped would not be the inevitable, and search for a cure.

More subdued, they returned to their room at the inn. Locke had nothing to say, not even conversation to fill the empty spaces—whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Rachel's face. He could imagine her laughing, her bright eyes and flushed cheeks the most beautiful thing in the world, the feeling of her head resting on his chest as they lay under the stars and thought about the future they would have together. A future abruptly cut short and now caught in stasis, unable to move forward, unable to step back.

It was only after he realized he had been pacing for an indeterminable amount of time that he returned to himself and saw Celes seated on her bed, knees pulled to her chest, looking thoughtful.

"Something's troubling you," he said.

She smiled wryly. She was still paler than usual, her lips faint. "Something is troubling you."

"I'm worried about Terra."

"That's what you said on the road. I don't think I believe you."

"That I'm worried about her?'

"That worry for her is what's making you so–" She hesitated, as if searching for the right word. Broody, he would have said, if it applied to her. Well, he had been broody since they returned from the old man's apartment, but he'd hoped Celes was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice. Had she been watching him this whole time?

The thought made him feel a little sheepish, a little flustered. "It's an outrageous story. It's a lot to take in. Espers. Espers!"

Celes pressed her lips together. "I grew up among Magitek power and Esper-bestowed gifts. I thought they were from—fossils, new discoveries of old dead creatures, not—whatever they've done with Ramuh's friends. But Espers have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember."

"But living Espers! Who look like ordinary humans and speak in ordinary human voices!"

Celes cocked her head at him. "What's really troubling you?"

He gestured broadly. "Espers!"

Celes leaned forward, looking at him quite intently—pale, ice-blue eyes that were paradoxically warm at this very moment, warm and serious and worried. "Locke. Sit."

His name on her lips was surprising, demanding his attention. It felt like a quiet voice close to his ear, as though she were seated right beside him instead of on the other side of the room. Almost against his own volition, he complied, taking a seat on his own bed across from hers, near but not too near her.

I should tell her. Why haven't I told her? I tell everyone—I told Edgar—is it because I'm afraid she'll act like Edgar and blame everything I do on this?

"You have repeatedly saved my life," Celes said, resting her chin on her knees. "Including today." Yes, he should ask her about that; it was unsettling how unfazed she seemed by her brush with death today, more knots to be untangled. But she continued before he could interrupt. "That isn't an invitation to change the subject."

"I wasn't–" Shame heated his cheeks.

"I can notice patterns." She smiled thinly. "My point is that you've done a lot for me, and if something is troubling you, I'd like to know about it. And I'd like to help."

"There's nothing anyone can do to help," he blurted before he could stop himself.

"I can listen, at least, right? If you're—if something is hurting you, you don't have to carry it alone. Isn't that what you would tell me?"

He laughed ruefully. "Yes."

"Then tell me what's been on your mind."

"Rachel," he said, and he rubbed his eyes. Where to even begin?  "Her name is Rachel." I won't use the past tense. "I wandered into Kohlingen a few years ago with no idea what I was looking for, but I found it anyway. We did everything together. Her family thought I was bad news and tried to keep us apart, but I'm… I'm really good at finding my way into places I'm not supposed to be."

"That might be why they thought you were bad news," Celes interjected delicately.

"They thought I was a kind of trouble that I'm not," he said, his cheeks flushed because that was a lie. He had been exactly the sort of trouble they feared, irresponsible and prone to bringing their daughter to dangerous places because he had a young person's sense of invulnerability. Accidents happened to other people. Until they happened to her. "Anyway, one night I spirited her away. We were—we planned to elope. To Jidoor, actually, if you'll believe it. A route I'd taken before. We were crossing a bridge I must have crossed a hundred times before, and on the hundred-and-first time, one of the ropes holding it snapped. I tried to catch her—I tried to hold her—but…"

In front of him he saw not Celes's concerned face in this ramshackle flophouse room but that moonlit night, the terrible creak and clatter, the bridge swaying wildly, and Rachel stumbling, and his own hands reaching after her as the bridge turned vertically and only the remaining ropes kept him from sliding down the wooden planks into the abyss below. But Rachel had never had his quick reflexes. She scrambled for something to grab hold of, reached for him, he reached for her, and if he could have just held her, held on—

"She fell?" Celes offered for him, delicately, pulling him back from the memory.

"I got to safety, made a harness with some rope, and went after her. But she'd been terribly injured." So pale, in the moonlight, with blood caking the side of her face. The single worst moment in his life, seeing her like that and fearing she was dead by his own hand. But then she had moaned and he knew she lived, and in that instant he swore to do anything in his power to help her. "I don't even know how I got her back to Kohlingen, to her parents' house. They called the doctor and told me if I ever set foot in their house again, they'd have me killed."

Celes frowned. "I can't imagine she would stand for that."

"She didn't have a choice in the matter. Her injuries healed, but she never woke up," he said. "Yet. She hasn't woken up yet."

"Where is she now?"

"Kohlingen," he said. "It's complicated. I send back money for her medical care, and I keep an eye out for anything that might be able to heal her and bring her back to us. Her family still hates me, but they accept my help, as long as I stay far away."

"I thought…" Celes was quiet again, gathering her thoughts. "You mentioned you'd lost someone to the Empire, and I assumed–"

"What? No." He shook his head. "Rachel's injuries were my fault, not the Empire's. My father's ship was sunk by the Empire when I was sixteen, for having the audacity to try establishing a trade route south." His hands tightened into fists. "He was a merchant, not a combatant, but that didn't matter to them."

"And your mother?"

"Died when I was a kid, after a mercifully brief illness. So I spent my childhood traveling across the continent with my father's caravan. But he didn't want me to come south on the ship with him, just in case."

"Thank goodness for that." She looked away. "Locke?"

"Hmm?" His temples were starting to throb, and there was a cottony feeling around his eyes, threatening either unshed tears or a massive headache.

"You're still in love with her, aren't you?"

His throat was dry. "I am."

Celes nodded slowly.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, "this has been a very long and very difficult day, for both of us, I know. You should get some rest. And I … need to take some time to feel sorry for myself."

And that's what he did, however self-indulgent it felt—lay on the musty quilt covering a sagging mattress, his arms wrapped around his traveling sack, facing the wall. Behind him, Celes tiptoed from the room, and he was grateful that she gave him his privacy.

Notes:

Who needs update schedules? Not me! I'm just going to keep writing what I can, when I can. I wound up breaking my planned chapter into two pieces, since it was getting unwieldy (can you imagine something twice this length?), which means the next chapter is underway.

Thank you so much to everyone who leaves comments and kudos; that means so, so much to me. This story and these characters mean so much to me, even though I'm making up a lot of it as I go and taking massive liberties. Yes, there are departures from the original, and there will be even more departures in the next chapter. But I hope the heart of it resonates, whether you know and love the original like I do or just wandered into my writing. It means a lot to be able to share my writing with other people, especially in a time when it's hard to connect with people in-person.

I know this one has a lot of exposition, and I hope you'll forgive me. I tried to handle it as gracefully as I could.

Chapter 10: A Storm Brews

Summary:

Locke and Celes have finally found Terra, and for a moment, all seems well. For a moment, at least.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When she returned to their room, Locke was sleeping fully clothed on top of his bed, cradling his bag. She wondered if he was dreaming of the girl he loved, of Rachel. She wondered if she ought to wake him so he could settle down properly for the night, or lay a blanket or a coat over his shoulders to tuck him in for the night, unknot the bandana from around his hair, some tender gesture of friendship. Someone else would know what to do, someone whose life experiences did not inspire looks of pity and horror from their companions.

But she was exhausted, and it had been a long day, and she didn't know how to be a friend or how to comfort or care for someone else.

Her own dreams were troubled, a mixture of bloody battlefields and fire-infested mines and—a new one—a cold, chilling darkness. The worst part was that upon waking to light around the threadbare curtain of their room, she felt disappointment. The cold darkness had been paradoxically inviting, so tempting. Just step into nothingness and fall peacefully into slumber without end, without fears, without nightmares, without crimes or atonement or personal failings.


***


They started the day with a quick breakfast, the first hot meal they'd eaten since leaving Figaro Castle, though neither of them seemed inclined to linger and savor it. No point in dwelling on the night before. Terra needed them, and without even really discussing it, they set off for the old man's apartment again to check on her.

The girl slept on. Now that he knew to look for her face in the strange pink creature, he wondered how he had ever not seen it. Yes, there were changes to the structure of the bones, or so it seemed—it was hard to tell beneath the soft feathery fur that covered her entirely. A longer pink plumage flared out from her scalp like hair, quite unlike her usual greenish curls. But despite these differences, even with her eyes closed, she did look like herself.

Celes stood beside her, head bowed, brow furrowed. He watched her for a moment, her silent contemplation.

"If she wakes up, will she take her human form again?" Celes asked. "Which form is her true form?"

"They both are," the old man replied. He seemed ruffled by their presence. Locke suspected he had never had a human in his apartment before the two of them arrived, taking up space and asking questions. Along with the two unconscious Espers—in this unfamiliar form it was hard not to think of Terra as another Esper—it was quite a crowded space.

Celes's frown deepened. "But how can that be? You aren't born with two bodies. You can't be. You're born with just one body."

"Likely she was born human," Ramuh said, looking slightly amused at this. "She had a human mother, after all. And she looked human in her earliest years, or else the others may not have been so displeased by her presence."

Celes's lips pressed together. "The Espers turned against her because she didn't look like them, even knowing full well that her father was one of them?"

"You have to understand that humans had used our kind as weapons for war, and we were therefore wary of allowing them close to us."

The look Celes fixed on him was as razor-sharp as the sword at her side, as was her voice. "I understand that. But Terra was a baby. She couldn't possibly have done anything to you."

Maybe it was because Locke was completely out of his element, surrounded by magical beings on all sides, but the old man frankly scared him. Ramuh's unrelenting assault against Celes the day before was fresh in his mind, as was her body so cold and stiff and pale in his arms, the realization that she was literally freezing to death and that he was utterly powerless to stop it. What could he do, weak and mortal as he was, against creatures with powers like gods? Yet now Celes stared down Ramuh without fear. This was not her self-destructive disregard for her own safety—it was something else, something stronger.

Celes and Ramuh had gotten into some sort of argument. Locke looked between the two of them, trying to pick up on enough context to jump back in.

"And you wish me to believe," Ramuh was saying, "that the love of a human is something we should have trusted, given everything else they had done to us? After seeing the worst of humanity for generations, it is hard to imagine seeing the best of it. It's hard to imagine that she would not turn on us, no matter how she loved him. Are you telling me that is not the case? That human love is enough for humans to overcome their worst nature? Do humans even truly understand love?"

"Humans don't understand love," Locke sputtered, and both Celes and Ramuh turned to him in surprise. "You can't understand something like that; that's the wrong word. But we know love, and we would—do anything to protect the ones we love. It's perhaps the single strongest driving force in human history, in human nature."

Two lovers whose union was opposed by their people—he supposed there was a parallel there, between the forbidden love Terra's parents shared and his own love for Rachel, whose family sought so intently to prevent their union. Had Terra's mother brought ruin to the Esper she loved, as Locke had to Rachel?

"Anyway," he said, more subdued, "I should go send word to Edgar. Let him know we've found her and that she's still unconscious. We'll wait in town until she wakes up."

"If you're staying until she recovers, you may be here longer than you expect," Ramuh advised.

"We're not abandoning her," Celes said flatly. "I'll stay as long as it takes."

"She isn't abandoned. I'll care for her."

He could sense a fight brewing between them and questioned the wisdom of his leaving, but what could he do to stop it? Besides, the heaviness of his grief had begun to creep up on him again, and he could not let it crush him. Not here, not now. Out on the street underneath the open sky, anonymous among a crowd of strangers, he would have the space to let it go. "We're her friends," Locke interjected lightly. "Celes is right. If she needs us, we'll be here for her."

He waited until they simmered down, at least. Ramuh settled onto a pile of cushions, keeping a distrustful eye fixed on Celes, who took a seat beside Terra's bed. Sending off a pigeon to Figaro would not take long. He'd be back before trouble could strike. What happened after that was anyone's guess. But he had to get out of here, before the grief swelling within him burst.


***


"Terra." She couldn't help trying the girl's name again, as though if she were to call to her enough, she might come back. "Terra."

Terra's eyes snapped open and frantically scanned the room. They alone were unchanged, the same guileless hazel, almost shockingly human in that inhuman face. Sitting up, she clawed at the blankets, at her arms, at the feathery tufts along her arms. She wailed, shaking her head.

"Terra?"

The girl thrashed around, continuing to cry, wordless and terrified.

What would Locke do? He would know. He always knew what to do. When she wanted to tear at herself as Terra was doing now, he could pull her from it, challenge her to stop. Terra seemed beyond the reach of words or reassurances. Desperately, Celes reached for her hand, tugging it away from its frantic pull on her own feathery covering.

Ramuh was by her side, too, and the air around him crackled and hummed. "Sleep," he said in a low, gravely voice. He put a hand on Terra's forehead. The fur, or feathers, or hair, around her head stood on end, and her eyes widened, but then they fluttered closed, and she fell back against the blankets once more. This seemed to be a less fitful rest, at least. She remained clutching Celes's hand, and Celes stood awkwardly beside her, uncertain.

She looked down at the strange, unfamiliar form of this girl she could not be sure she considered a friend. Terra's sharp, claw-like nails poked into her skin. "Maybe you should let her stay awake."

"She's distressed. She is warring with herself."

"Maybe she should be allowed to do that," Celes said.

"Human girl," Ramuh said, "this is outside your knowledge."

Celes bristled at his patronizing words and haughty tone. "I may not know what it's like to be an Esper, but I do know a little about Terra. You can't force her back to sleep–"

"She is tearing herself apart while she is conscious."

"Well, maybe she has to tear herself apart a little." Celes couldn't deny that Terra's expression was more peaceful now, or that her waking panic was terrible to witness, but would forcing her to sleep through it really help? Would it be easier on Terra, or just on the onlookers? "Maybe she has to go through this to get to the other side of it. You don't understand—she spent years of her life with her mind and body controlled by someone else. Forcing her back to sleep seems like taking away her control again."

Ramuh's beard flared out, crackling with static. "I am not controlling her. I would never do that—I am not like your kind."

"Aren't you?" Celes glared at him and sat closer to Terra, as if positioning herself between Terra and this lightning-charged figure would be any sort of protection if he gave in to his anger and threatened them.

But Ramuh settled down quickly, with a long, weary sigh, and he looked once again like a tired old man. "Perhaps you are right. She is half-Esper, but that means she is also half-human."

Celes nodded with conviction.


***


The grief dissipated in sunlight, as he hoped it would. Memories receded to the past, where they belonged, leaving him with the task at hand and lingering concern about Celes and the Espers. But he had to have faith in her common sense. And she had not proven herself to be quick to anger, no matter what Edgar had feared.

He rode one of the desert chocobos downriver and across the bridge into Jidoor. Although he clearly came from the direction of Zozo, a quick, friendly conversation with the guards was enough to get them to wave him through.

It wasn't that you had to look like you belonged in Jidoor; it was that you couldn't look like you didn't belong. Adventurers and traveling merchants might find shelter and a warm enough reception here despite their scuffed boots and patched coats as long as they walked with the confidence of someone who had, at some point, had money and could count on having it again. And you absolutely could not speak with the soft consonants and easy slang of the Zozan dialect.

This was easy enough for Locke, who had no great gift for mimicking accents but was at least blessed with a totally nondescript blended accent of his own, inherited from his father and cemented by intermittent months with his father's merchant caravan as a boy. He could pass for an unremarkable, trustworthy merchant because he had spent so much of his early life among exactly that.

Thus, he reached the pigeonry without incident and sent his message off to Edgar, along with a promise to keep him apprised of any change in Terra. The message itself he had composed in his head on his way between the cities, vague enough to avoid raising suspicion were it to be intercepted. She found out some very surprising news about who her parents were, he had phrased it. The shock of it did a number on her but she seems stable, though still not quite herself. Let Edgar make of that what he would.

Though he didn't want to leave Celes alone with Ramuh for long, he couldn't resist a little basic reconnaissance. Jidoor seemed unlikely to ever become a Returners stronghold, but at least the wealthy and powerful who ruled the town had no love for the Imperials, and he might find some useful knowledge here.

In public spaces around town, tawdry posters had been plastered up advertising the latest opera now on at the famed Jidoor Opera House. Locke paid little attention to these at first; he'd never been much of a theater fan. The fourth or fifth time he passed by one, he found himself stock-still on the street staring at it, while disgruntled passersby had to step around him.

"She's a good-looking young thing, isn't she?" An older voice cut into his thoughts, some worn workman going about his business. "The latest prima donna of the great opera house, that Maria. They say her voice is like melted gold, but if I went to the theater, I don't think it's her voice I would be paying attention to, eh?"

The image was idealized, the woman's face and figure too beautiful to be real, but even despite that, he could get a sense of what she must actually look like—a face that was eerily familiar. It was like looking at someone's fanciful imagining of Celes, if she had had a rounder, rosy-cheeked twin who wore frothy lace dresses and waited wistfully on tower balconies.

"Yes," he said, when he realized the man was waiting for some response. Clearly reading something into his too-long silence, the old man guffawed and clapped Locke heartily on the back before disappearing into the crowd.

Celes would not wait around in a tower for someone to rescue her, as the poster seemed to illustrate. She would find her own way out, or—he thought with grim humor—die trying without someone there to remind her of her own mortality. He had a mental image of her flinging herself bodily out the window and then picking herself up off the ground, surviving due to sheer stubbornness, living out of spite for Death or the Goddesses.

But then he remembered her cold body stiffening as the life ebbed from her—was that only yesterday?—and the humor left him entirely. Instead, he found himself rushing back toward Zozo. His mood darkened again, but at least this was a fresh worry rather than the well-worn grooves of his grief.

Despite his misgivings, by the time Locke returned to Ramuh's apartment in late afternoon, the tension in the room had dissipated entirely. Neither Ramuh nor Celes seemed especially inclined to speak, but the silence between them felt, if not companionable, then at least calm.


***


This became a routine, the troubled dreams, the distracted breakfasts, the visits to Ramuh's apartment. He told them stories of the Esper world. He told them about Shiva, and Celes tried to absorb every word, because Shiva had been a person whose life was stolen by the Empire, and she deserved to be remembered.

And Ramuh expounded on theories of magic, what it was and how it worked. For the first time, Celes could learn about magic from someone who truly understood it, not from the conjecture of scientists, not depending on ancient texts translated and re-translated, but from someone for whom magic was perfectly natural, like breathing. There was something exhilarating about having answers to her questions, about having this strange thing that had always marked her as standing apart now becoming how she connected to another. If she could never be quite like an ordinary human, she could at least learn something about what she was. It lit something within her, something Locke might have called hope, small and insignificant though it might be.

"I want to be able to do more than hurt people," she confessed breathlessly to Ramuh. "That's all I've ever done. I don't know if it's possible, but…"

"Even a knife can be much more than a weapon," was Ramuh's response.

He watched her with a certain sadness in his eyes, and she was surprised how easily the emotions of an Esper mapped to those of a human. Or perhaps it was merely the human face he wore. Then again, Terra had been the result of love between a human and an Esper, and surely that was a sign that the two could understand one another on some meaningful level. The thought was oddly reassuring.

Ramuh's sadness seemed especially palpable when she tried, with his guidance, to call on the magic she had been given. To tap into a side of Shiva's power she had never before considered.

"Shiva was not a fighter," he said.

"What was she like?"

"Slow to anger, but strong-willed." Ramuh smiled, looking both sorrowful and amused. "She would not stand for any injustice."

Locke often slipped out the door during these recollections, especially when they turned into lessons. Returners business, maybe. Listening, meeting people, exploring Zozo.

One day she arrived to find Ramuh and an unconscious Terra but no strange statuesque figure in the apartment. When she asked, Ramuh said gravely, "Maintaining his human form took too much effort for him to heal. He has left to find shelter someplace where he can be himself."

"Will he be all right?"

"I assume so. He is far older than I am, and he has spent a very long time asleep, but he is strong, and I'm sure he will find his way."

 

***


"Locke!"

He was not used to hearing such joy in Celes's voice, and when his eyes adjusted to the dimness of Ramuh's apartment, he saw pure, unbridled happiness on her face as she raced toward him. All the usual tension and solemnity were gone, her eyes alight, her cheeks flushed. An urge struck him to take her by the hands and spin her around, though he resisted, afraid to chase off this sunlight and let the shadows return.

"What's happened?" he asked. "Is Terra awake?"

There it was, the cloud dimming some of her light. He'd said the wrong thing, dammit. She shook her head. "Not yet, no."

"Something has happened, though." He grinned at her, trying to summon back her smile. "C'mon. You can't just hint at something and then keep it from me. That's not fair. Tell me." He was careful to keep his voice light and teasing, not commanding—comically pleading, unthreatening.

A moment's hesitation, and then she ducked her head and smiled almost bashfully back. "I'll—show you, if you want."

"Of course." More reserved now, more serious, matching her.

"Your nose is still sunburned from the desert," she said. "Here. If… you don't mind?" She reached slowly toward his face. He nodded, then held perfectly still, reminded again of a stray cat hesitantly approaching.

Her fingers stopped close enough that the proximity nearly made him sneeze. And then, the slight tingling sensation that set his hairs on edge. Magic. Having seen the damage the ice she summoned could cause, he had to fight to keep himself from tensing up, or she might think he feared her. Trust her. But, of course, he did.

Her brow furrowed and her eyes unfocused, and she seemed to be concentrating very hard on something.

Though she never touched him, his skin nearest her fingertips was overcome with a peculiar cooling sensation, and he struggled to keep his face neutral as part of him was screaming that this was unnatural, this was impossible, magic isn't supposed to be real, this is going to hurt, hold still, but then whatever she was doing seemed to stabilize. It felt soothing, like a cool cloth placed on a hot forehead. When she withdrew her hand, the sensation of magic likewise faded, but the relief lingered. He touched his nose and felt none of the heat or soreness of a lingering sunburn, just perfectly ordinary skin. Celes looked as though the exertion of the magic had taken a lot out of her, but she looked pleased, too.

"What did you just do?" he asked.

"Shiva had some power to heal," she said. "I never knew. Burns, fevers—I can help with those."

"Healing?" That alone was a miracle beyond comprehension. But he thought of her joy, her lightness, and the source of the shadows that so often haunted her. Magic had always been a source of pain for her, a curse the Empire had given her so that she could be more lethal on the battlefield. She viewed herself as a weapon, a bringer of death and destruction, a killer. Now she had physical evidence that she could do—could be—something else. "It suits you."

Now she looked darkly amused, almost scornful, challenging him. "Does it? How?"

"Well…" He had spoken with nothing more than good intentions in mind, but he couldn't show her how he was fumbling to formulate an answer. "You've got these tools and skills you think can only be used to hurt people, but then you use them to defend people instead. This reminds me of that."

She accepted this without argument, thank goodness. He kept touching the tip of his nose again and marveling. Magic was known to be a destructive force. Legends told of how it had torn the world apart, a thousand years ago. But he could not deny that he was awed by its potential to heal instead of harm.

He couldn't help wondering, too, just how much she could heal.

She was watching him closely again, and in a quiet and hesitant voice, as though reading his mind, she said, "Maybe we could go to Kohlingen when Terra has recovered. I—don't know that I could do anything, but I could try."

His heart seemed to skip not just one beat but several, hope and hesitation wrestling for control over his heart. "If—you would. That would mean a lot. Please."

She tilted her head, considering him. "I would. I would try my best."

Even the thought of it sent his head reeling, but he managed to grab hold of the reality around him enough to thank her.


***


The next time Terra woke, they were ready for her. As soon as she cried out in terror, Celes was beside her, and Locke followed quickly, crowding around this little bed in the rubbish-strewn room. Ramuh stood at a distance, at the ready but giving Celes space to prove him wrong. Good.

Physical contact had seemed to soothe Terra before, so Celes touched the girl's wrist. Locke looked from Terra's wide-eyed face to Celes's hand and then followed suit. Terra gripped them both as if for dear life, and once again the sharpness of her clawed fingers threatened to break the skin on Celes's arm.

"We're here," Celes said. "You're safe." It felt strange to be the one giving the reassurance, after what felt like several months of being on the receiving end of it.

"We've got you," Locke echoed, sounding more at ease with comforting someone, of course. His voice was gentle as he put a hand on Terra's shoulder. The girl started sobbing, and he wrapped an arm around her as she bawled.

Waves of magical energy radiated from her like heat, and Celes's skin tingled with it. The chill within her seemed to resonate with it, cooling her throughout, making her think of her first encounter with Ramuh and how he had drawn out her stolen magic and very nearly killed her in the process. But this time she was ready. Terra meant her no harm. Would Shiva be able to calm her with a cool, reassuring touch?

It was hard not to let Terra's panic influence her. Helplessness tightened her throat. Terra sounded like she was in physical pain, her terrible heaving sobs gasping and painful and almost like a scream.

"Shh," Locke soothed her, impossibly calm in the face of this. Celes hated herself for her jealousy at how well and easily he seemed to know what to do and say, unfazed by the strange pink creature sobbing all over his chest. "It's okay, Terra. We're here. You have friends here. It's going to be all right."

"Where am I?" Terra asked, her voice distorted but still recognizable, and it was a relief to hear her speak, if only because it meant the sobbing had quieted. "Who am I? What's going on? What happened?"

"Terra," Locke said as patiently as if he were talking to a child. "You're my friend Terra. You had a shock." He glanced over at Celes. Did he expect her to do or say something now? She didn't know what came next in this script.

"I had a nightmare." Terra sounded young.

"The fire?" Celes asked. Nightmares were something she could talk about, something she understood.

Terra nodded. "Fire, and–" She broke her hands free and pulled away from both of them, beginning to wail again.

"Listen to me," Celes said, and when both Terra and Locke stared at her in startled silence, she realized she had used the same tone that had served her on the battlefield. Well, that was what she knew—how to command, not how to help. It was all any of them had right now, so it would have to do. "You don't recognize yourself right now, do you?"

"No." A quiet whisper.

"That's because you met an Esper, and he woke something inside of you." Celes tried again to think of what to say, how to explain this without sending Terra spiraling down into her panic again. Locke would know how to approach it. He was careful like that. But he was watching Celes, having clearly yielded the floor to her as though she had any idea what to say, and they were stuck with her fumbling. "This is your—your Esper body. That's why you've always had such an affinity for magic, because you aren't–" Aren't human? Don't say that. Even you know better than to say that. "Because you're Esper, too."

"Is it real? Is this real?"

Celes nodded.

Terra stared at her own hands. The palms were bare, without the furry texture that covered so much of the rest of her body, and the skin there was similar to her human skin tone, at least. "Will I... be like this forever?"

"You'll always be who you are," Celes said uncertainly. "But you've always been half Esper, whether you knew it or not, which means that the only thing that has changed is that… now you have an answer."

"An answer?"

"To who you are and where you come from." And goddesses above, at least it was a good answer, so much better than being an unwanted castoff, a vessel to receive someone else's stolen life force. "You know you had two parents who fell in love, no matter how different they were, and they made you—the human part of you, and this Esper part of you."

Terra swallowed. The feathery texture of her cheeks was matted and slick with tears, but she seemed to have stopped crying, at least. "I don't want to be—like this."

"Half-Esper, or… pink?"

That was a terrible way of saying it, but it made Terra giggle. "Pink."

"I think you can change back," Celes said, relieved at this small sign of normalcy. "You'll just have to figure out how. Ramuh—the old man here—maybe he can teach you."

"If it helps," Locke added at last, "it's a very nice shade of pink."

The worst seemed to have passed. They told her what had happened, what she had missed, complete with comical embellishments from Locke. The alliance forged between Banon and Narshe, and Arvis's part in that—because of course Terra cared about the man who had taught her to bake bread, and Locke happily gave news about this mutual friend Celes barely knew. The trek across the desert. Their terrible run-down inn. A glossed-over version of the misunderstanding with Ramuh.

Celes glanced at Ramuh, who had watched this entire exchange in patient silence. He caught her eye, then nodded, slowly, approvingly. Conceding, but glad to do so. She smiled.


***


When they reached the inn, he was in a good mood, and even Celes seemed more cheerful. Helping Terra had proved something to her—made her feel less powerless, if he were to hazard a guess. She seemed to take their setbacks as personal failings, even when what happened was entirely out of her control. It was something Locke hoped she would overcome in time.

Two figures waited in the hallway by their inn room, playing cards, quite obviously expecting them, and Locke's stomach dropped. But one of the figures was broad and burly, and the other had a familiar way of carrying himself–

"Edgar, your disguise is terrible," Locke said, and the king's dazzling smile looked ever so slightly sheepish. Even in plain travel clothes and with his flowing golden tresses bound in a bun at the top of his head, Edgar did not look ordinary.

It was a terrible disguise, but at least the man had had the good sense to try. And Edgar's brother would discourage trouble. Sabin was dressed like a monk, as usual, and seemed more likely to attract attention for his rippling muscles than for any apparent resemblance to royalty.

"It was enough to get us here," Edgar said, standing to greet him with a quick embrace. His brother shook hands formally with both Locke and Celes, then broke into a grin. Ah, there was the similarity—the smile was similarly charming, a shared twinkle in the eye, though Sabin's jaw was squarer, or maybe that was the effect of his well-trimmed beard. "You look well."

"Terra's awake," Locke reported. "I take it you missed the pigeon I sent yesterday."

"Alas, I have not yet achieved nigh-instantaneous travel," Edgar said. "We left Figaro a few days ago. Do you mind if we take this to your–" He glanced at Celes with a little smile. "Your room?"

Locke's jaw clenched. "Sure." He unlocked the door and gestured the assembled party inside, to the room with its two small but neatly made beds, though of course it was otherwise empty; they carried their belongings with them whenever they left, just in case. "How did you find us, anyway?"

"The innkeeper was very helpful when we explained we were meeting friends. A security hazard, that."

"You bribed her," Sabin piped in, leaning against the inside of the door with his arms crossed.

"Still. Not every innkeeper would be so forthcoming."

"This is Zozo," Sabin retorted. "I'm surprised nobody tried to mug us on the way in. Maybe even a little disappointed."

"It's not quite as rough as its reputation would have you believe," Locke said.

The room felt so crowded with four of them that Locke began to imagine what it must be like for Ramuh to find his flat overrun with visitors. Celes sat on her bed with her knees up, all traces of her earlier levity vanished. Locke slouched at one end of his own bed, and after a moment, Edgar perched gracefully at the foot of it. Ah, he would be an asset walking through Jidoor, but here he would certainly be a liability. Even if nobody actually recognized him, they would plainly see that he was a person of some wealth and power.

There was little to report from Figaro, or from Narshe—Banon was still rallying his forces, and Edgar had taken time to oversee kingly business back home. When it came to updating the twins on what all had transpired in Ramuh's apartment, or the revelations that he had only been able to hint at in his messages, Locke was at something of a loss to begin.

"Spit it out," Edgar said to Locke's indecision. "What's happening with Terra? Her 'parentage'?"

"She's, ah." He took a breath. "The long and short of it is that she's part Esper."

Edgar's eyebrows were rapidly approaching the ceiling. "Part… Esper? Is that even possible?" 

"Apparently, yes."

Edgar had questions, of course. And Locke needed Celes to field them, with as much time as she had spent peppering Ramuh with her own. But she seemed reticent, as though the past several weeks of her own transformation had simply evaporated, leaving her quiet and withdrawn. Getting the brothers up to speed took a long, drawn-out back-and-forth, but at last they seemed satisfied.

Edgar wanted to go see Terra at once, but traveling the streets at this late hour would be an unnecessary risk. No, they'd go to see her in the morning. The brothers returned to their own room on another floor, and after trying—and failing—to get Celes to smile again, Locke eventually gave up and turned in for the night himself.


***


In her semi-conscious state, she was aware of someone standing by her bed, leaning over her. She held her breath steady, tensing her arm muscles to keep herself from snapping upright and grabbing hold of him, jerking his arms away, knocking him to the floor—if you attack him again, he's really going to be afraid of you—but it was just Locke. She had shared space with him long enough. She needed to let go of her urge to fight back. Here, she was safe, she was among friends.

When she was sure she had herself under control, she squinted her bleary eyes open. It was so dark in here. Only the faintest hint of dawn light edged the flimsy, flapping curtain over the open window, through which she could hear a downpour and the distant crackle of thunder.

The curtain? Did we open the—

Before she could finish processing the thought, the figure moved quick as a whisper. A hand pressed something soft and pungent over her nose and mouth. She clawed at the gloved hand, but it didn't budge.

Don't breathe don't breathe don't breathe—

She tried to sit up and another hand pressed into her shoulder, pushing her back down against the bed.

No oh no oh no—

She bucked her hips, knocking her attacker off balance. In the moment it took for him to recover, she jerked her head to the side, away from his hand and the drugged cloth. Her head was already spinning, her eyes watering, as she gasped for clean air. The dark figure grabbed for her, faster than she could react—how was he so fast? Was the drug working on her already?—and the cloth was over her nose again.

Outside, lightning blasted bright as day, followed almost immediately by a deafening crack.

This time, he was ready for her, pinning her down as she tried to throw her weight from one side to the other. The bed creaked and clattered against the cold wooden floor. With a furious cry, she thrust her own hands up the figure's chest, finding the collarbone and beyond it, the hollow in the throat—

Jam two fingers in there, twist it in deep, cut his windpipe in half—

She was rewarded by a startled gurgle from her assailant, who snapped his head away at once. But it was his turn to gag and choke for breath, and again she used his lowered guard to buck and twist, knocking him off her. She seized this opportunity and slid to the edge of the bed so she was standing by the time he spun to face her.

They grappled briefly. In the dim light, he was nearly invisible, and nearly silent, and she felt as though she was a moment too late to respond every time he moved on her. Had the drug dulled her senses so much? But she was stronger than he was, and she knew how to fight, and adrenaline was a stronger drug than whatever he had tried to use against her. He reached for her, and she grabbed his wrist, only to find that he had drawn a jet-black knife that made no sound.

Do not let it cut you, do not let it touch you…

A chill ran through her bloodstream. Not fear, not poison. Magic. Shiva, if you're with me, lend me your strength. Ice crackled along the skin of her arms, along her fingers, along the black-clad wrist of her assailant. The air around them was so cold she could see her breath, could see his breath, twin clouds in the dawning light.

He gave a low, guttural growl that sounded like a frightened beast, as the ice spread across his body. She could see the whites around his wide, frightened eyes, all that was visible of his masked face.

His free hand moved, once again so quickly she could barely react. But this time he wasn't reaching for her. Something sparked in his hand, a loud burst and a bright blinding flash. She stumbled backwards, releasing him to cover her eyes. And when her vision cleared, he was gone, and the curtain was half pushed aside. She shook her head, reeling, startled.

The room was quiet again, still, almost peaceful. She staggered to the open window, but her assailant seemed to have vanished into the rain-streaked morning. Other than the low rumble of thunder outside, everything was silent.

She slid the window closed, wondering how it had been opened from the outside. She'd never tried slipping in or out of a room, but given how proficiently he picked ordinary locks, that seemed like something that—

Locke? Oh, goddesses, no.

Celes's desperate struggle with the masked intruder had been neither quiet nor subtle. Even in a deep sleep, Locke should still have been woken by the sounds, by the violent jostling of the furniture in the small room. But his form lay still and unmoving in the other bed. Had the stranger gotten to him first, slit his throat in the night? A chill that had nothing to do with Shiva's magic settled in her stomach.

But he was still warm, still breathing. Bending closer to his face, she could smell the lingering stench of that drugged cloth. Her heart flickered to life, and she expelled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Drugged. Sleeping. Alive.

With shaking hands, she rooted through his bag, which seemed to hold more than its volume full of cloths and boxes and tools, until she retrieved the fireless lantern. It took her three tries to click it on. In its warm and familiar glow, she dressed, then packed, and then stood with both bags over one shoulder, considering the unconscious figure before her.

He was slight, not much taller than her. She doubted she could scoop him into her arms, but she could—with some effort—heave him over her other shoulder.

Thus burdened, with her sword sheathed at her waist, she left their room.

The king and his brother were on the next floor up, and she didn't enjoy trudging up a creaking staircase with someone nearly her same size flung over her shoulder, but she refused to leave Locke alone and defenseless. She was quite out of breath when she finally reached the door. Better hope you're remembering the right number, with your mind as addled as it is. But if she woke the wrong person and they took issue with her, she was ready to clobber anyone who challenged her.

Fortunately, when she pounded gracelessly on the door with her scraped knuckles, it was opened soon enough by a familiar tow-headed man. Even half-asleep, the king's enormous brother managed to look intimidating, but he froze mid-yawn when he saw her.

"Holy shit," he said.

"Pack your things. We need to get out of here." Celes pushed past the man—Sabin, his name was Sabin—and gently lowered Locke to the floor. Sabin was there at once to help, supporting Locke's limp body as easily as if he were a doll.

The king was already out of bed, rumpled with a ridiculous nightcap on his head but a businesslike air. "What happened?"

"Someone came in through the window while we were sleeping. He drugged Locke and then tried to drug me. I fought him and he got away."

"Imperial, you think?" The king knelt before Locke, touching his temple, then his throat, gently. "What kind of drug?"

Celes waved a hand, dismissing his question. She closed her eyes, sat back on her heels, tried to clear her mind.

"If it's a drug, and not a poison–"

"Hush," she hissed, and the king fell silent. And both brothers remained quiet, and the room was still and calm, other than the sounds of packing around her. She tried to tune that out, let ice still her own panic, and thought of—not a touch of death, as she had tried on the assassin, but a cool breath across feverish skin. A kindness, not her own but Shiva's, this person she had never met but whose gift she would not waste. Could she heal Locke? A drug was not an injury, but…

She found herself leaning over him, cupping her hands around his cheeks. How are you planning to wake Sleeping Beauty? Are you thinking of fairy tales, you useless girl? 

She brought her right hand over his nose and mouth, gently. His lips were soft, his breath warm and faint against her palm. Breathe. Breathe this in, breathe the poison out. Her hand grew cold, the fingertips pale and pink-edged, and the temperature of the air around them dropped. The king said something, but Celes concentrated on Locke, on the cool clean air around him, and inside him, expelling the drug from his body.

A long moment later, he gasped, sputtered, and turned his face to the side, coughing.

"Oh, thank god," the king said.

"Was that—did she...?" his brother asked.

Locke screwed up his face and brought his hands to his temples, groaning. Celes sat back, rubbing warmth back into her numb right hand.

The king was armed and ready to go now, miniature crossbow at his hip. "If they came for you, do you think..."

"Terra," Celes said. "We need to get to her. Now."

Beside her, Locke slowly sat up, groaned again, and pushed the hair out of his eyes. "Someone, please, explain."


***


It felt like a hangover, except that his throat was raw and sore as though he'd been running in the cold—which made sense, once he understood what Celes had done. The others hovered worriedly around him, and for once he wished he had Celes's ability to push on no matter how much pain she was in, because he felt awful, and they absolutely could not slow to accommodate how awful he felt. But at least he could walk, and he was uninjured.

Outside, it was dark as midnight and the pouring rain soaked them in moments. The broken cobbles of the street quickly gave way to mud. Thunder rumbled, but at least there was no more lightning—Locke wasn't sure his head could take either the light or the sound of it.

"Something's not right," Celes said, looking at the sky. "Do you feel that?"

Come to think of it, there was that strange feeling of magic buzzing like static along his skin. "Ramuh?"

"It must be."

They tore through the city streets, the four of them, and Locke tried his best to keep up with the rest. An assassin, Celes had said. Likely Imperial, yes. And if the Empire knew where Celes was staying, had dispatched someone lethal and highly skilled to take her out—no, to take her alive, and him too, or he'd have been dead where he lay—this had clearly been a calculated and well-planned attack. Which meant they'd have come with whatever they needed to apprehend a rogue Esper or two.

A couple of streets away, they could hear the clamour of voices over the rain, which was slowing to a drizzle. A great many people shouting and arguing, someone sobbing, a child wailing. Not good.

Ramuh's street was devastated. The entire front wall of his apartment had been torn out and reduced to rubble. Shattered glass from the windows of buildings on all sides now lay in the street, and there were holes where rounds from Magitek weapons had pierced the stone. Blackened char marks arced along the ground and up a wall, and it looked as though one of the buildings across the street had caught fire, though the downpour had doused it. 

Locke didn't need to question the people huddling in miserable clusters around the ruin of their homes to guess what had happened. Soldiers in Magitek suits must have come through here, and they'd made no effort to spare Zozo or its residents. He supposed he ought to be grateful that the soldiers had not caused more damage, that the army itself had not simply marched through the rest of the city and made an example of it.

But they had clearly had their orders. The contents of Ramuh's flat were obliterated. There was no sign of Terra, nor Ramuh himself—just scorch marks and rubble and fragments of what had been his collected scraps of human life.

"We need to go after them," Locke said.

"And do what? Take on a battalion of Imperial soldiers in Magitek armor?" Celes stood in the corner of the apartment by what had been a bed but was now a pile of splintered matchsticks and burned fabric. "We can't just take them on. Not just the four of us, not when they're so well-armed."

Locke looked entreatingly at Edgar. "We could summon help from Figaro."

"By the time they got here, the empire would have too much of a head start. We'd never catch up, and if we did, it would be war—it would be bloody and brutal." Edgar shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Celes's expression was dark. "I wouldn't be surprised if they'd brought another of those crowns with them. They might very well control Terra to fight against us if we pursue them."

"Dammit!" His hands tightened into fists.

Celes strode back to the ruined wall and looked out, down the street, as though she could see the Imperials despite the rusting, crumbling, rain-streaked city that rose up high in all directions. "We're not giving up. I know where they're going. Vector. The Magitek Research Facility."

"Vector? The Imperial capital?" Edgar frowned. "Are you sure?"

She fixed him with a flat stare. "If there is anything I know well, it's where and how the Empire uses the Espers it imprisons."

Locke nodded. "I trust her on that."

Sabin, who had been pacing around the building, looking dubiously at its exposed beams, waved for their attention. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, where some of the crowd had started to close in. "Hey, guys. Whatever we decide to do, I think we ought to get out of here before someone shows us out."

"Let's go to Jidoor," Edgar said. "We'll get medical treatment for these two, if they need it, and make a plan. I have no idea how to get to Vector from here."

"We'll find a way," Locke said, feeling heartened. Celes had said We're not giving up with such conviction. And if she, the one who had openly scoffed at the power of hope, could believe that they would find and rescue their friend, how could he possibly doubt?

Notes:

You thought I was going to give you the opera scene next, didn't you? Alas, instead you have nearly 9,000 words of scenes that never happened in the game, and I hope you will forgive me for that. I also hope you can trust me enough that the nighttime battle felt safe to read without a content warning, but please let me know if I ought to add one and I'll do so.

No, I don't know why this chapter ended up being so long, but at least that explains why it was a challenge to write (although I wrote 2,500 of those words between last night and this morning in a sudden burst of inspiration). Thanks for your patience! The next chapter may be a little late because I'm moving to a new apartment soon, but I really can't ever predict how the writing is going to go...

Incidentally, should you ever need to defend yourself, twisting your fingertips into someone's windpipe at the hollow of the throat like that is very effective.

Chapter 11: Dramaturgy

Summary:

Short summary: It's the opera scene.

Long summary: Locke proposes an idea that is so absurd it might just work. With some reservations, Celes agrees to play along. Things go off script. There is no octopus.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In the best of circumstances, entering Jidoor after spending time in Zozo was jarring. Under these circumstances, the tidy, orderly streets of Jidoor seemed almost obscene—manicured foliage surrounding elegant gated homes, quaint shops, well-dressed people, and absolutely no recognition of the wreckage that had been left behind in Zozo. Even the streets were dry, untouched by Ramuh's unnatural rainstorm.

At least they'd gotten their chocobos from the stable in Zozo. Locke did not have the stamina for such a long trip on foot. His headache faded eventually, but the fuzzy feeling in his brain lingered. Not that he ought to complain. Celes had fought desperately for her life, and though she showed no sign of injury, he had learned not to put much stock in that. At the very least, she still seemed shaken, and he could only imagine what that implied about an attack that could spook even her.

They went straight to another inn, with Edgar in the lead, his head held high. Despite their general dishevelment, Edgar had enough regal bearing that no one questioned whether they belonged here. His profile was on the coins minted in Figaro, after all, and if there was one thing the people of Jidoor knew, it was money.

Edgar paid for a suite, two rooms with a small sitting chamber between them. He tended to be conscientious about his spending, since the coffers that supported him came from his people—not what Locke would have expected from royalty, but there were reasons why the people of Figaro had never revolted, and the love affair between Edgar and his nation was definitely two-sided—but, regardless, there were certain perks to being king. And Locke couldn't argue with the luxury of a clean bed, a private bathing chamber, or a hot meal brought up by the innkeeper's wife herself.

Celes claimed the settee in the sitting room instead of a space in one of the bedrooms. When Locke raised an eyebrow at her questioningly, she looked slightly discomforted, or maybe embarrassed. "There aren't windows in here," she said quietly. "I may be… less effective as a bodyguard this way, but…"

"I think you've been plenty effective already," he said. "That assassin might have killed me if you hadn't valiantly fought him off." He had meant it to come out like a joke, but even his attempt at absurd exaggeration could not bring humor to the statement. More somberly, he added, "I'm on edge, too. I think anyone would be. If staying out here makes you feel more comfortable, then that's what you should do."

She pressed her lips together, and he thought she might argue, but she was clearly exhausted. He left her alone, retiring to one of the rooms so she could have the space to forget about his presence, or his judgment, or whatever was troubling her.

They reconvened after a brief break, in the sitting room, to eat together and make a plan—the brothers seated in chairs at a little table, Celes perched at the edge of her settee, and Locke on the floor somewhat between them, his back against the wall. They had fruit, and boiled eggs, and sausage, and porridge with cream, all of a much finer quality than Zozo could offer, but the richness of it turned Locke's stomach.

"So, Vector, eh?" Edgar asked, while his brother consumed breakfast at a rate Locke could only describe as 'scarfing.' "I can't say I've ever been there before. The southern continent is notoriously hard to reach, given the imperial blockade." He glanced at Celes, as though inviting her to weigh in; she quietly stirred her bowl of porridge around and around. "We might be able to find a ship captain we could bribe to take us on, but we'd have to be smuggled in, we'll have to trust that we won't be turned over, it will take weeks, it will be terribly expensive, and we would be quite vulnerable at sea if something is amiss—"

Celes did look up when he said that, but she didn't look at Edgar—her eyes found Locke's, meaningfully. Right. She knows about Dad. Her awareness of it made him more aware of it, of the perfect parallel, not just any old ship and not just any old route but this journey, this route. Yet, as unhelpful as the reminder was, there was still something oddly nice about someone else knowing, someone else caring. "There's really no way to avoid having to travel by sea," he said with a pained smile. "It's practical."

"Aren't you worried?" she asked him.

He laughed. If only you knew. "I'm always worried. And, yes, I hate ships. But this wouldn't be the first time." He smiled at her, shrugged his shoulders just a little, to reassure her that he was all right, that there was no need for one more worry troubling her. Keeping his voice light, to Edgar, he said, "Well, you can't very well just ride a chocobo across."

"There are flying chocobos, you know," Sabin offered helpfully, taking a brief rest from eating not just his portion but also what Locke left untouched.

"Even a flying chocobo couldn't cross that distance."

"There are airships," Edgar said. "Not many. They're dastardly hard machines to engineer—they practically want to fall from the sky and you have to work so hard to fight their nature to keep them up there—but they're some of the fastest things in the world."

Locke raised his eyebrows. "I don't suppose you have one in the castle somewhere, ready for a test drive."

"Alas, no." Edgar sighed wistfully, dramatically.

"So, what? We write letters to someone who owns an airship and see if anyone is willing to give us a ride?"

"Possibly," Edgar said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "We'll have to figure something out. It's time to call on our contacts—friends of the Returners, friends of Figaro—and see if we can beg a favor."

 

***


Celes had no contacts to speak of, other than present company; the short list of people on the northern continent who would not wish death or destruction on her could all be found in this very room—or out on the street below, since Locke had set out alone on some mission of his own. With little else to offer, she sat at the table, sharpening her sword.

"No one will harm him in Jidoor," the king assured her. "Locke has managed to survive for some time on his own, despite his tendency to leap wholeheartedly into danger and trust luck and goodwill to get him through."

"You mean, like trusting an imperial general."

"That's on the list, yes. Though, as he has pointed out on multiple occasions, you are a former imperial general, which does seem like a fair distinction. Besides, that one seems to have worked out well for him, in the end."

This concession caught her off guard. It did not seem so long ago that he had thought she might betray Locke. Yet he had just seen her heal Locke after fighting off an intruder. That was likely what he meant—even if the assassin might have been coming for her in the first place. "I try," she said, unsure what else to say.

"Do you think there will be trouble for you if we do get to Vector?"

"Probably. They want me dead."

"Didn't you say your assailant tried drugging you both?" The king cocked his head, looking thoughtful. "If they simply wanted you dead, it seems less risky not to bother with any of that."

"I don't know," she said, and her shoulders tightened, rising up toward her ears. "My knowledge of strategy is limited to warfare, not whatever machinations the people behind it all have in mind."

"Well, you're a powerful ally for us, and a piece on the board they would much rather have on their side than ours."

"An ally?" She blinked at him. "Do you consider me an ally?"

"What else would you be?" He waggled a finger. "Locke calls you a friend, though he does tend to claim friends readily."

"I didn't ask him to."

"And yet he has done so all the same." The king shook his head, smiling. "I'm afraid that I must be rather more cautious myself. My friendships carry with them the weight of my responsibility to Figaro—I can't simply decide I like somebody and let that form a connection, or it could be too easily used as leverage against my people. I can't afford to be so cavalier with my attachments. Something Locke has never seemed to fully grasp is that even he has obligations to something larger than himself, and I honestly don't know what would happen to him if that and his loyalty to a friend were at odds with one another."

"I think Locke's loyalty is to humanity, not just the Returners. I think he would choose to be a man doing what he thought was right, even if it meant opposing his friends or his allies."

"You may be right. If so, that's something you two seem to have in common." He allowed himself to smile at her, and it seemed sincere rather than ironic, surprising her. "I do respect that, you know. I'm sorry I judged you so harshly at first."

His acceptance of her had been grudging, and she knew it, so this direct apology and what sounded like a statement of trust surprised her. "It seems like being a king must be exhausting," she said, though she couldn't say what moved her to say it. "At least as a general, I wasn't responsible for my men off the battlefield. I wasn't responsible for what happened in Vector, or what happened to Vector. I could put the responsibility down sometimes." Of course, when she had been responsible for them, the situation was literally life or death, making it a heavy burden. But a king must carry his people at all times.

"It is a heavy weight," he said somberly. "And there are times when I wonder if I can carry it, after all."

"For what it's worth–" She hesitated, unsure whether to proceed, second-guessing herself. What was it worth, coming from her? But he had been unusually open with her, and so she pressed on. "You seem to do well at it. You're dedicated to your people, and they are clearly dedicated to you. I've never seen anything like it."

"It's not much like how Gestahl runs his empire, is it, then?" This with a wry, mocking tone that contrasted with the melodic qualities of his voice.

"No." She looked at the tired, lined face of the man in front of her, whose face was shadowed by the weight of carrying his kingdom on his shoulders, and she thought of the fool, the harmless fop, that she had always been told ruled Figaro. "I think the empire underestimates you. Terribly."

"And well they should. I've worked hard to make it so."

Edgar retreated to his room then, armed with a quill and a sheaf of paper. The king's brother was still out, as was Locke, and so Celes waited alone in the sitting room, crippled by indecision. Should she go find Locke, to reassure herself that he was safe? She thought of the dead weight of him over her shoulder, and the panic of wondering whether he was not drugged but poisoned. The assassin's blades had been poisoned, she was sure of it. What if he struck again?

She was no bodyguard, not really. She could not follow him everywhere to keep him safe, and as she recognized just how badly she wanted to do exactly that, her stomach dropped. This was dangerous for both of them. No sense in getting too attached to another person—that made you vulnerable, and it made them vulnerable, if your enemies caught wind of it. And it meant she might be stupid, making poor decisions or, almost as bad, becoming too dependent on his presence in her life.

He won't die without your protection, she told herself. Trust him to live his own life, and learn to stand on your own. You're not really his bodyguard. You need to—to not need to protect him.

But if something happened to him–

Then what? Bad luck. Too bad. Things happen, you both have powerful enemies, he's been in danger for years, because of his own decisions and his own affiliations, and if something goes wrong because of that–

But if he's hurt, what then?

If he's … killed?

She couldn't say how long she stewed in her own toxic pessimism, furious with herself for being preoccupied with Locke's safety and—despite that—unable to cease thinking about it. She was equally terrified of the thought of losing him and of how upset she was by it.

When the door burst open, she jumped out of her seat. Her sword was drawn and ready before she realized what she was doing. Locke stood in the doorway, his grin evaporating and leaving momentary panic in its place.

"You should knock before you come in," she blurted out. "We should have some sort of code, so we know it's someone we can trust."

"That is a very good idea," he said, slowly. Mortified, angry with him for coming in unannounced and angry with herself for coming so close to attacking a friend—again—she felt her face burning with shame, bristling at his patronizing tone.

"I don't want to hurt you by accident," she said. "Be more careful next time. Please."

"I will."

Belatedly, she sheathed her sword again and then dropped back onto the settee, venting a sigh of frustration. He watched her carefully, maybe cautious but no longer obviously afraid. She thought maybe he would tease her—she could almost see a joke flit across his face—but instead he just smiled, composed, reassuring.

"I've got something, at least," he said, gesturing with one hand, in which he clutched a thin sheet of paper, folded and wrinkled but apparently intact. "Hey, Edgar. Get in here."

The king emerged from his chamber, his back perfectly straight, posture flawless. "What is it?"

"An airship."

"An airship?" The king nearly choked on his surprise. He grabbed for the paper, and Locke relinquished it, chuckling to himself. Edgar's eyes scanned the page. "What is this?"

"Some crackpot gambler who happens to own an airship and is, if this notice is to be believed, on his way to Jidoor soon with that very airship. I already checked it out, and he's the real deal. He has a reputation in these parts." Locke laughed. "Some urchin got paid handsomely to stick these notices on every poster for the opera house in town."

"And what does this mean for us?"

Still burning with shame and irritation and the same mess of exhaustion and lingering anxiety from the assassin's attack, Celes could not bring herself to demand that they fill her in. She was in no position to demand anything. Besides, she was here to be the muscle—the inventor-king and the calculating spy were both better suited to make plans.

"He's coming to Jidoor anyway. If we could somehow get our hands on his ship, we could commandeer it and take it across the sea."

"But how?"

"This might not be the single most outlandish idea I've ever had," Locke conceded, with a bit of pride, "but it's certainly up there."

"Locke," the king said, exasperated. "Don't draw it out."

"All right. But I warned you." Locke clapped his hands together, grinning hugely. "So this Gabbiani fellow is coming to kidnap the prima donna Maria, right? He'll have to fly his airship right over the opera house for the grand entrance—I'm told he has a flair for the dramatic, and the way this note is written, I'll believe it—but while he's distracted with the opera, we get to the roof and get to the airship."

"How?"

"That's where you come in." Locke pointed at the king. "You'll figure out something we can use to get up there, a hook shot with a rope attached or something, I don't know. I don't have to have the answer; I can see the wheels in your head turning already, don't try to tell me they're not."

"No, I can think of something that might work," Edgar said, bemused.

"And here's the kicker. Maria, the opera star—she's on the posters plastered all over town, and she's the spitting image of Celes. I did a double-take the first time I saw it, when I came here last week."

Celes, who had let this madhouse idea wash over her until now, looked up sharply at the mention of her name.

"So what I'm proposing is that we offer for Celes to swap places with Maria as bait, so some poor actress doesn't wind up caught up in any of this and so that, worst case scenario, if she winds up on the airship with him and we don't, she can find some way to commandeer things and force him to land. And then we can catch him."

The idea poured out of him in such a rush that Celes could only stare at him, aghast, without time to react until he had finished. Obviously pleased with himself, Locke dropped into the chair across from Edgar, signaling the end of his plan.

"That's... utterly absurd," she sputtered.

"It is," he said cheerfully. "And I have no idea if it would work. But we're pulling at straws here, and we can't afford to dismiss even our stupidest ideas without at least considering them."

The king, who had listened to most of this monologue without interrupting, spoke up in a voice that was equal parts awed and appalled. "The worst part is that it is absolutely batshit insane, and yet I think it might just have a chance at working."

"You've got to be kidding me," Celes said.

"What have we got to lose?" Locke shrugged. "If the opera house says no, we move on to the next plan. If Gabbiani doesn't show up, we're no worse off than we were. If Gabbiani sees through the disguise and isn't fooled by Celes's performance on stage–"

"Performance?"

"I don't think he'll actually be in the audience, so that honestly shouldn't matter. I'm more worried about if you actually make it onto his airship without us–"

"You want me to do what?" Celes drew herself to her full height, nearly even with Locke, who ducked his head with an apologetic smile.

"I don't mean to volunteer you for a dangerous situation, since we don't know what his defenses will be like on his ship, but–"

"I don't care about that," Celes said. "I doubt he could do anything to seriously harm me that he wouldn't immediately regret. But you want me to sing." She paused for emphasis. "Opera."

"I warned you it's a bit of a wild hare," he said. "And I certainly can't make you do something you aren't comfortable with. We don't even know whether the opera house will work with us on this, even if you're willing to go through with it."

This was absolutely ridiculous. And yet he seemed earnest, and she could imagine why. The alternative was following the route that had led to his father's death. Normal people carry trauma from loss like that. People with families hurt when something happens to those families. If participating in this absurd charade could have even a chance at sparing him that pain, she had to be willing to try it. And if it did, by some miracle, turn out the way Locke hoped—then they could reach Vector, and Terra, and Ramuh, far sooner than she could have dreamed. And those extra weeks could make all the difference in the world for Terra. Celes could not bear the thought of what might happen to Terra in the clutches of Gestahl's barbaric scientists.

"Fine," she said. "We can at least try it."


***


The impresario of the Royal Jidoor Opera House—a ridiculous name, as it had been generations since a royal family had presided over Jidoor, it had passed from monarchy to oligarchy long before—clearly considered himself a most impressive person, judging by the way he dressed, the way he carried himself, and the excessively broad gestures of his hands as he spoke.

"Truly, it is an honor to meet the king of Figaro," he simpered. "And his companions, of course, all of you. You simply must attend this weekend's performance. A matinee, perhaps? A box seat?"

They knelt on cushions at a table inlaid with exquisite detail work. The impresario's house servant had served them tea and then quickly disappeared, barely even registering the smile Locke threw her way. The impresario himself hardly seemed to notice the girl, as one might not pay attention to a door that opened smoothly or a chair that supported one's weight, or a mat that one trod upon.

"I have heard that The Royal Jidoor Opera House is without peer, and I wish that I could accept your generous offer," Edgar said smoothly, making the full title sound exquisite and dignified rather than the dreadful mouthful it was, damn him. His charm and elegance seemed effortless, although Locke supposed that might happen if one had trained in it since birth, just as Celes's skill with a sword was unparalleled. Locke had had no such focus of his own and would just have to do his best to keep up.

"Perhaps you are looking to make a patronage, to support the arts?" the impresario asked hopefully.

"I would like to discuss that, but at a later date," Edgar said. "I am afraid that I must beg a favor of you instead, one that I hope will help solve a problem for you as well."

And with that, he began to explain a simplified version of the plan: that they wished to apprehend this gambler, that they saw his notices around town, that they intended to install Celes as a decoy to save the real Maria and allow a skilled bodyguard to take down Gabbiani and any of his men. Locke had helped develop this half-truth, and he was gratified to see the impresario accept it with appropriate gasps and gestures and clasping his hands to his heart.

Accepted all of it, that is, but the suggestion that Celes could fill Maria's role, even temporarily, even for the purpose of saving the real Maria and, by extension, her future performances. Locke bit back the temptation to point this out to the man—Edgar spoke his language, and Edgar was to manage the conversation. Locke was only here because he liked being at the table when things happened, and because this ridiculous scheme had been his idea and one way or another he meant to take responsibility for it.

"I must admit the resemblance is uncanny, but…" The impresario stared at Celes, sizing her up with haughty disapproval writ larger than life on his overly preened face. "I mean no offense, of course, but do you know anything about opera?"

She swallowed. "I—do, actually." Well, that was news she might have mentioned at any point while they planned this, unless she was bluffing, which did not seem like her style.

"Do you?" The impresario's eyes narrowed.

"I'm from Vector," she said, and Locke inwardly winced, but at least she didn't mention who she had been in Vector, and it wasn't unheard of for imperial citizens to flee the southern continent. "The emperor loves opera. He played recordings over the loudspeakers regularly. It's hard not to become familiar with it, given that."

Locke looked at her in surprise. "Really?"

Celes kept her eyes on the impresario. "Yes."

"Are you familiar with Maria and Draco?"

"Yes."

"You're aware that there is an aria in the middle of the first act? It's not easy to sing…"

"I can't promise professionalism, or a beautiful voice, but I know how it goes."

The impresario rose without a word and went to a keyboard instrument in the corner, which Locke had thought must be only ornamental. But to his surprise, the man began to play—more skillfully than Locke would have expected. He had assumed the impresario, too, was only ornamental. Let that be a lesson not to make such assumptions.

To his even greater surprise, when the impresario held out a note and looked meaningfully at Celes, she was staring at him, wide-eyed. It was plain that the music had communicated something between the two of them.

"Well?" The impresario nodded at her. "Go on."

This was clearly a test. And she seemed to have passed the first part of it, presumably recognizing the music. Her face turned red, and redder still, and she glanced at Locke with panic in her eyes.

What was she trying to convey? Did she want him to rescue her from this, to make up some excuse to get her out of this room? But her eyes flitted nervously to Edgar, to Locke, to the impresario. Nerves. Of course.

"She's auditioning," Locke said. "We should leave her to it, King Edgar."

"She'll have to sing in front of a larger audience than this if she performs," the impresario said coolly. "If she's too afraid to sing in front of her own companions–"

"It's easier to perform in front of strangers than around people you know well, isn't it, though?" Edgar offered this with an ironic smile, and Locke suspected he was not talking about music. That was something they both had in common—the frequency with which they performed what others needed them to be. Sometimes Locke wondered if Edgar was even aware they shared this tendency, or if Locke had him fooled as he often did the rest.

"Very well." The impresario nodded at the two men, dismissing them. "Annie will show you to the gallery."

The servant from before appeared once more to spirit them away across the impresario's ostentatious house. She kept her expression absolutely neutral—no, not neutral. Guarded.

"Do you like opera?" he asked her, as they settled in amongst walls of paintings. Quite a gallery, but he couldn't help wondering if the impresario even looked at them or if he kept them here for show. But that was unfair. The man was clearly passionate about the arts. Even a rich man could appreciate the value of beauty and creativity, even if he failed to value the humanity of the people around him.

"Yes, sir," the maid said mildly, not quite meekly.

And before he could ask her questions, or at least disarm her and put her at ease, she was gone. Edgar shrugged at Locke's frustrated sigh, and they passed the rest of the time in silence.

It was not long before Celes and the impresario joined them.

"She'll do," the impresario said. "She's agreed to come to rehearsal for the next two days. In the meantime, please do not hesitate if you need my help with the rest of your plans."

"Thank you," Edgar said formally. "We'll get to work at once. I appreciate your gracious willingness to assist us."

"It may save my opera house, and my star soprano. And, of course, I am grateful to be of assistance to the king of Figaro."

Edgar's smile took on a bit of an edge, although his eyes were laughing. "Indeed, my good man. I am the one who will be grateful to you, of course. We can discuss my gratitude another time, if you wish."


***


 "I feel ridiculous," she said, the same dismissive voice she had used earlier. But then her tone softened, and she added, anxiously, "Do I look it? Is it… all right?"

All right?! He had somehow not considered, even having seen the costume in the posters, that Celes would be wearing it, or what that might look like. The dress had been made for a bustier woman, so the corset was laced tighter to try to make up for it, with an oversized necklace drawing attention to the cleavage he had never quite noticed before. The voluminous skirt accentuated her slender waist. Her hair was swept back from her face and bound up in some complicated way with a sky-blue ribbon, though delicate golden curls had escaped the binding and framed her face beautifully. He chose to focus on this ribbon. It was the easiest thing to focus on, really.

For the first time, he saw her not as a fellow-soldier and a peer but as a woman—no, he realized with some embarrassment and a little horror, this was not the first time he saw her that way but rather the first time he had no choice but to acknowledge even to himself that he did. And that acknowledgment must be spreading to her, as well, as he felt heat rush to his face, which must be bright red by now. He turned away quickly.

"That ribbon suits you," he said stupidly.

He found himself in the hallway outside the dressing room without being entirely clear how he had gotten there. There had only been an urge to put as much distance between himself and Celes's ribbon as he could, the look on her face as she turned to him for comfort and reassurance, a moment of rare vulnerability—and he had let her down, because seeing a pretty girl apparently made him lose his mind.

A door inside of him had cracked open, and though he desperately tried with all his might to seal it up again, still the doorknob rattled like it might burst open again and this time he would be unable to close it. Like a box sealed tight and banished to the forgotten attics of his mind, only to crack open just a hair, threatening to burst open again. That couldn't happen.

She was a pretty girl, though. And her steely exterior protected a heart that was willing to risk death to save others, a soul desperate to repent for any hurt it had caused others, a walking contradiction of violence and compassion, beauty and darkness, pain and love and—

"Shut up," he told himself, out loud.

The others were waiting on the roof for Gabbiani's airship to come close enough for Edgar to hook it with a grappling hook and climb aboard. Locke had volunteered to stay down here in case Celes needed backup for some reason. Which included pep talks in the dressing room, which, again, he had failed at.

He had just about made up his mind to go back and offer her some real words of encouragement when another man in the hallway caught his eye. Although the man wore the clothing of an opera house employee, something about him didn't seem right. A certain furtiveness in his movements, the unchecked instinct to look over his shoulder, even the man's disheveled look.

Locke had been the suspicious figure enough times to recognize one when he saw one. He pulled the performance program out again and held it up as though he were reading it, tracking the man's movement in his peripheral vision. When the man disappeared down a hallway, Locke shadowed him—down a side path, through a backstage door, up a ladder to the catwalk. Some part of him wondered if this were a legitimate stagehand and he had just turned paranoid after too many years spent as a spy, but he had gotten this far in life partly on instinct, and he trusted his gut.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light of the theater. Music had started at some point while he trailed the man, and now someone far below on stage was singing. Locke had never been one for opera—this was much more Edgar's field, and apparently Celes's as well—but the power of the baritone voice carried it even up here. Impressive.

By the time he could make out his surroundings in the darkness, the man was out of sight. He'd had a head start, since Locke had been trailing him to begin with, and those extra few seconds added up. Maybe he was legitimately part of the crew, up here on some necessary errand, and Locke would feel like a fool for getting entangled. That was a risk Locke was willing to take.


***


Locke's response had been less than helpful. She had expected—well, some variation of his usual reassurance, a smile, a note of kindness. Instead he had stammered out some nonsense and been unable to meet her eyes.

This did little to curb her nervousness about the entire fiasco. How had she let him talk her into this—why had she let him talk her into this? Everything about it was preposterous. That she was impersonating someone else, that she was expected to sing on stage in front of an audience, that this mad gambler would really show up to whisk her away under a case of mistaken identity. It was like the plot of a tawdry dime novel, or a middling opera, and yet here she was, living it.

The quick exit of her one friend in this mess left her feeling somewhat unmoored. But ultimately it didn't matter whether her performance was terrible or not. What mattered was that she served as bait to lure the gambler in so they could hijack his airship. She could sound like a wounded cat on stage and it would make no difference. If this Gabbiani appeared, she would certainly be able to take him in a fight, and any armsmen he might have on his ship. And that, at least, she was confident in.

But it would have been nice, at least, to have had a few kind words to help her get through everything up to that point.

The show must go on, though. Through the open door she could hear that the overture had ended, the narrator's introduction, and Draco's soliloquy. Soon enough she would need to make her entrance and sing the aria, that damn aria that Gestahl had played over and over again and that Celes had, despite herself, hummed and finally sang along with.

She left the dressing room alone and walked past chorus girls and dancers who belonged here. It was a long, lonely journey through the bustling crowds backstage, and she walked it in a strange, dreamy trance, lost in the surrealism of the moment.


***


He was creeping carefully along a thin catwalk over the stage when the music all but dropped away. Just a few delicate notes plucked on a solitary harp, alone while all the orchestra stayed silent. It demanded attention. Locke glanced down almost involuntarily.

A spotlight had been lit, aiming at a figure onstage. Celes. Locke could barely see her expression from this height, but she looked even paler than usual, perhaps because of the rouge they'd put on her lips. The set around her looked like a fairy-tale castle, and everything had a blueish cast, as though it were set at dusk. The backdrop was blue, too, with painted stars. None of it looked remotely convincing, and yet it didn't need to—the colors were more intense, the sets exaggerated, and instead of looking real, it was more real than real, telling the story with its design in a way that pure realism never could.

Celes clasped her hands in front of her. Locke found himself holding his breath, his purpose up here forgotten.

"Oh my hero, my beloved," she began, and somehow her words were clear where the other singers had not been. She did not have the resonance of the deep-voiced man, yet there was something immediately engaging about her performance. She sounded hesitant, and yet she sounded as though she should sound hesitant. Maybe it was beginner's luck, but it was captivating. Locke could only stare. The lyrics were nothing special, a cliché love poem, a woman conflicted about lost love, but there was something

Movement at the edge of his field of vision brought him back to what was happening around him. There, across the catwalk—the man he had been following. The supposed stagehand, all nerves forgotten, the glint of metal in his hand as he pulled on a rope. Locke watched him closely, crouching close to the platform, creeping along it like a cat stalking his prey, edging closer.

Locke had very little experience in the theater, and absolutely none at all with the backstage mechanics of running a stage. But even with all that in mind, he could piece together what was happening. So many ropes criss-crossed up here, presumably pulling the enormous velvet curtains and whatever other devices might need to descend to the stage. The man had his hands around one of the ropes, tugging it gently as though testing it. He glanced down at the stage with a look of such revulsion and rage that it could have boiled whatever it splashed on. Then he drew a knife from under his jacket, unsheathed it, and began to saw away at the rope with the blade.

"Oh no you don't," Locke hissed through gritted teeth, before throwing himself bodily at the man.


***


She was used to the battlefield, to sights and sounds assaulting her senses all at once. In the thick of battle, she could act on instinct, reacting to what was taking place around her even before her conscious mind could interpret the sensory overload around her.

None of that had prepared her for this particular absurd scenario, or the rush of feelings and activity that broke up reality like a surreal kaleidoscope.

First, the sound of fighting far above her—that was familiar, the cry of shock and then anger in the silence after her song. A crash, the clang of metal on metal. Her senses picked up on that immediately, heightened as they already were by the tension of performing something as unfamiliar as music and choreography. Days of intense practice and yet she had been woefully underprepared even so. Her nerves were raw and fraying. And then the scuffle overhead, distant enough that she at first thought it might be backstage, even though this was not the time for sword-fighting according to any of the rehearsals.

And then an enormous sound of wood splintering, and fragments of roof showering her and the stage. A weighted rope, and gallantly descending upon it, a pale figure with flowing silver hair and a billowing black coat. She had just enough time to think, He certainly knows how to make an entrance, before the man reached her. He flashed her a smile, which neither charmed nor reassured her in any way. Before she could respond, he had his arms around her and pulled her to him. With another flourish, he wrapped loose yards of rope around them both and then gave a mighty tug. The rope rose almost at once. Within seconds, the ground was far below. Too far for her to leap and survive even if she'd been able to reach the long knife sheathed within her dress.

As they whizzed up, passing the rafters, she caught a quick glimpse of Locke's startled face. It was hard to say which of them was more surprised at the momentary presence of the other. Isn't he supposed to be up with Edgar? And then she was above the roof, in open air, wrapped in coils of rope with this stranger holding her. An enormous shadow loomed overhead. An airship, hovering in place over the opera house.

Edgar was crouched on a corner of the roof, the device he had spent the past two days laboring over glinting in the sunlight. At least that part of the plan seemed to be on schedule. Celes could only hope that her kidnapper didn't notice him.

The wind whizzed past, so loud she could hear nothing else. It tangled her hair and the blue ribbon and chilled her despite the heavy brocade of her dress. She was flying—flying!—so far above the ground that looking down was dizzying. The urge to close her eyes was strong, but she fought it. tried to turn her iron will against fear.

Her kidnapper, this gambler and airship pilot they were trying to ensnare, had his arms around her. Possessive more than protective, but was that surprising from someone who meant to kidnap a defenseless artist simply because he thought she was beautiful? But there was no particular strength in his arms. No, he seemed slim, angular, perhaps even moreso than Locke. Not a physical force to be reckoned with, at least, which would make the next part of this plan easier.

Because soon they were at the airship, rising up through a hatch in the base, and soon she would have to be prepared to fight him, if necessary.

He laughed with unbridled delight as they rose through the hatch, which sealed up beneath them. Compared to the brightness of the day outside, the darkness in here made it very hard to see at first, and she was caught off guard when he leaned in to kiss her. She managed to shove him away in time to stop him, and she pushed herself directly out of his arms and a good pace and a half away.

"Don't," she said.

"Ah, where are my manners?" He bowed to her, neither as earnest and simple as Locke's movements nor with the king's incessant flourish, but instead with a sort of languid self-satisfaction. "Setzer Gabbiani, at your service, milady."

"I would hardly consider a kidnapping at anyone's service but your own."

He laughed again. "You're a headstrong one. I can't say I expected that. Maybe I should have. Sopranos are meant to be divas, aren't they?"

"I wouldn't know."

He peered at her. "You wouldn't?"

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to register that they stood in a plush hallway with black-and-white tiled floor, intricate paintings on the walls, and plush overstuffed couches placed around low tables.

"You aren't very observant, are you?" Celes could not resist jabbing at him with her words, though she would rather use her sword—but she was supposed to at least attempt diplomacy. What would Locke say here? Certainly not insult the man they hoped to convince to work with them. But Celes, unlike Locke and his seemingly boundless kindness and self-control, did not have the patience for this man. "I'm not Maria."

"No, I suppose you're not." He sized her up—no, he looked her up and down, his eyes taking note of what this ridiculous dress did to her body, and the experience made her feel dirty. But where she expected him to smile lasciviously, he did not, just chuckled and shook his head. "That's quite a disguise. You had me fooled. What a story—try to run off with the prima donna, and instead you end up with a decoy."

"Run off with?" She stared at him. "You were going to steal her away and make her yours."

He regarded her with some confusion. "I thought it was romantic."

"Romantic! Where could you possibly have gotten such a notion?" She advanced on him, furious, and drew the long knife she had sheathed under the stiff bodice of the dress. His eyes widened tremendously. It seemed that having a weapon drawn on him was not a common occurrence. 

"You're very not Maria," he said. "This is quite a turn."

"Would Maria have been all right with being kidnapped like this? Did you ask her?"

"She's an opera singer," the scarred man said with a shrug, as though this explained anything.

What do you even know about romance? that unwelcome voice whispered to her. Maybe an ordinary girl would have enjoyed being swept off her feet. It does sound like something from a dime novel. But go off, if you're going to. Give in to that anger. That is what you know.

"And you're a gambler, a pirate, and a thief," Celes retorted. "A kidnapper and a criminal.  Maybe she'd have been just as inclined to stab you, only she might have been less equipped to do so than I am."

"So you've come to make me pay for my crimes?" He grinned, looking delighted by this, and held his arms out, wrists up. "Very well. Tie me up, then. This might be fun."

Something about his tone of voice and the way he looked at her made her fingers tighten on the knife. "Knock that off or I'll knock you out. No, I'm here because I need an airship."

"Aren't there simpler ways to get your hands on one?"

"If there had been, we certainly would have taken it."

"'We'?"

As if on cue, a voice piped down through a tube emerging from one wall. "Uh, Setzer," it said tinnily, "we might have a problem."


***


Locke and the younger man had grappled for several minutes—neither of them, he had to admit, especially strong or skilled—until the commotion onstage proved such a distraction that the young man stopped fighting and Locke was at last able to subdue him.

"Look," he panted, knife at the young man's throat, "whatever you were trying to do, you can be quite sure the opera is well and fully disrupted. Drop your weapon."

"Even if you turn me in, more will come," the young man said defiantly. "This is just one operation. There are more of us. So many more. And we're not going to stop until we've made things right."

Zozo. A thick Zozo drawl. "So you're a revolutionary," Locke said, sitting back.

"What's it to you?"

"I'm with the Returners. You could say I've got a soft spot for rebellions." This isn't your fight, he reminded himself. This young fool would have hurt Celes, and the rest of the performers, if he'd had a chance.

"You? The Returners? The hell are you doing here, then?" The boy narrowed his eyes. "You siding with those… those pigs?"

"I'm not siding with anyone," Locke said mildly. 

"Then what, huh?" The angrier the boy got, the thicker his drawl seemed. It was a marvel he'd managed to fool anybody enough to get in here in the first place.

"Gathering information," Locke said, sheathing his daggers. "Which is something I'd recommend you do a little more of before you act. If you'd paid attention to either news or gossip, you would have known that this afternoon's show was likely to be interrupted by someone else, spoiling any example you might try to make."

"We have been following the news." The boy sounded sullen.

"Recently? Yesterday, the day before? Have you been around Jidoor, seen the posters, heard what people have been whispering about?"

"And how should we do that, do you think? You think they let us waltz in?"

Locke pinched the bridge of his nose. "Surely there's someone in your group who won't raise suspicion. A—pretty girl, or a younger boy, they tend to come across as trustworthy. Give them a solid reason to be wandering around, get them to work on practicing the accent—no offense, but it probably shouldn't be you—or maybe find allies in Jidoor. I don't think the servants there are much happier than you are. You might find a sympathetic ear." He thought of the girl who blended in with the furniture and wondered if, perhaps, the servants in Jidoor had subversive plans of their own and might be willing to join forces.

"Why should I trust anything you say?"

Locke shrugged. "I don't know. It's just a little free advice, and you can take it or leave it." Below, the din from the crowd had swelled louder than the orchestra had played. Locke glanced down at the chaos. "Regardless, if you were planning to slip out undetected, now's the time."

"I wasn't really planning to leave at all."

"Well, that's a terrible idea. Do you have anything but that usher's uniform with you?" When the boy shook his head, Locke sighed. "Some more advice—if you're going to disguise yourself, try to keep something else neutral on you in case you have to get away. They'll stop an usher who looks like he's shirking his job, but they won't notice someone from the audience." He rooted around in his bag, pulled out a shirt, and tossed it at the young man, who caught it with a stupefied expression on his face. "Good luck. But be smart about it, all right? You've got some goal in mind, I presume. Hold onto that, not an opportunity to martyr yourself in a blaze of glory."

With that, he shouldered his bag, rose to a crouch, and started the slow, painstaking journey back across the rafters and catwalks. Some part of him was screaming that he ought to go back to guide the boy, make sure he made it safely out of the opera house and back to the side of town where he wouldn't be arrested for being out of place.

This isn't your fight, he told himself again. The foolish kid had to learn to take care of himself, and Locke had other responsibilities than getting involved in local politics, no matter how distasteful he might find the Jidoori upper class and no matter how disgusted he might be at how they treated those they considered beneath them. Maybe once they'd gotten Terra back, and they all regrouped with the Returners, he could return to Zozo and Jidoor—just to check in.

But first he had to figure out how to get to the damn airship now, if the plan had in fact succeeded. And he had, at the moment, no idea how to do so.


***


The gambler's airship was staffed by what seemed like a skeleton crew, none of whom had any real fighting skill, so soon enough the king and his brother made their way below deck with what looked like a butler, a cook, and a barmaid trailing behind them. Celes felt a degree of relief that someone with actual skill in diplomacy was here to take over, although she would rather it had been both the king and Locke, who was—perhaps unsurprisingly—absent.

King Edgar took in the scene below, Celes with her knife out and the gambler reclining along one of his plush couches, his coat and hair rakish and disheveled. Self-consciously, Celes sheathed the weapon, wondering what he made of finding her armed against an opponent who seemed uninterested in defending himself.

"So you're Setzer Gabbiani," the king said.

"I am." The gambler squinted up at him, then burst out laughing. "The goddamn king of Figaro himself? I can't say I saw that coming. Is this devilishly handsome swordswoman yours?"

Celes bristled. "I'm not his or anyone's."

"Of course not, milady," the man said with a grin she wanted to smear off his face. "More's the pity. I think I like you better than the real Maria—you seem like you'd be a lot more fun to have around. I like a woman who won't take shit from anybody."

The king stepped forward, angling himself somewhat between Celes and Gabbiani before she had a chance to respond. "We need your airship. We'd prefer that you be willing to take us, of course."

Gabbiani angled his head toward the king, considering. "What's in it for me?"

"We can pay you."

"Do I look like I need the money?" The gambler gestured to the opulent deck around them.

King Edgar chuckled. "No, you seem to be doing well for yourself."

"Lady Luck failed me once, quite spectacularly, and I think she's been trying to make it up to me ever since." Gabbiani pursed his thin lips, and Celes couldn't help wondering how he had gotten so scarred when it seemed unlikely he'd ever been in a fight. Silvery lines split his brow and his lip and marred his gaunt cheeks. "What can you offer me that I'll accept?" His eyes flicked toward Celes, who tensed. Surely the king would not attempt to broker some kind of deal that involved her—or she would run them both through.

"I wouldn't get any ideas about her," she heard King Edgar say. "She'll likely kill you if you try anything."

"The danger isn't a deterrent."

On the other hand, they needed this airship to rescue Terra, and it might go more smoothly if the gambler was willing to play along. The thought of bartering herself as if she were just a chip on the table turned her stomach. But what was she willing to do to save someone? And what could she do, really?

"We can make this ship run, with or without your help," the king said, smiling thinly.

"Oh, I doubt that. You may be a king, my friend, but you can't just command an airship to listen. Airships are like women—you have to know how to talk to them."

"Then I'm doubly qualified."

"Is that so?"

"Stop," she said, her heart pounding in her ears. And they did, all of them, even the king's enormous brother and the airship's hand-wringing crew. Are you going to do this? Are you really going to whore yourself out to save your friend?

No, but I'm going to take a gamble.

"Do you have something to offer me?" Gabbiani asked, looking at her with heavily lidded eyes that she supposed were meant to be seductive.

"No," she spat, "but I don't think you actually want us to offer you something. What are you going to do with it, stick it on display with everything else here? I don't think you'd have known what to do with Maria even if you got hold of her." She gestured to the rest of the hall, to the untouched gambling tables and empty couches, then to the man himself, who had sat up and was looking at her with an expression she couldn't identify. "Were you looking for adventure when you decided to kidnap Maria? Well, you've found adventure. We're going against the Empire. We might all die. Does that sound exciting enough for you? Is that dangerous enough?"

Edgar stared at her in horror, and she could imagine him covering his face with his hands as she shredded any hope he might have had of negotiating.

But then the gambler threw his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And when at long last he finally stopped, he had to wipe away tears. "Touché. Milady, you've read me like an open book. I have to admit defeat."

She stopped herself from stammering out Really? because he seemed to respond better when she confronted him without flinching. "Good," she said instead, sending him into laughter again. 

"You mean it?" The king, at least, voiced her surprise. "You'll help us?"

"I'll follow where she leads," the gambler said, and then he looked the king over and added, "and you, too. You're really taking on Gestahl and his genocidal cronies?"

"We already have, and we won't stop until we've crushed them," Celes said with a confidence she did not feel. "What, are you going to tell me you actually care about what they do to the world down there?"

"War is bad for business," the gambler said flippantly.

"What is wrong with you?"

"Quite a lot, I'm sure," he replied. "No, I'm no friend of the Empire. Even I can see the world would be better off without them. But it's never really seemed like anyone could stop them, so what's the point of worrying about it?"

Celes took a deep breath to calm herself. "Some things are worth trying even if there's not much chance of success."

"Apparently so." He stood and extended a hand, and there was a fire in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "Setzer Gabbiani, then. At your service—truly, this time, at your service. My life's a chip in your pile now. Ante up."

She shook on it when he offered, and his grip was firmer than she expected, though she worried she might crush his bony, soft-skinned hand.

To her surprise—and maybe a little irritation—the king and the gambler quickly fell into an eager conversation about the inner workings of the ship. They made as if to go to the control room, talking about controls and winds and trajectories to Vector.

"We can't just head off right this moment," Celes interrupted them, scowling. "Locke is still at the opera house. We can't leave him behind."

"He's resourceful," King Edgar said. "He'll manage until we get back."

"No." She narrowed her eyes at him. "How do you think we'll get through Vector without him? The King of Figaro, the disgraced former General Celes, and a notorious rogue—"

"Oh, I will be staying with the ship," Gabbiani piped up.

Celes crossed her arms. "The two of us, then, and your brother, storming into the heart of the empire. You think they won't recognize us on sight? Your face is on every coin minted in Figaro. I am wanted for treason under penalty of death. We are hardly incognito."

"You raise a fair point."

"Land this ship. We'll reconvene with Locke, resupply as needed, and set off when we're properly prepared." The orders slipped out without thinking. Both men were staring at her, and she felt her face flush. Maybe there was something about the thought of returning to Vector that set her into old patterns, old ways of thinking.

She had to admit the thought scared her.

Notes:

If I were trying to make a fully functional adaptation of Final Fantasy VI, I wouldn't include the opera, because it's completely ridiculous and implausible. However, this is self-indulgent fanfiction, and I am a Locke/Celes shipper, so here we are. I shamelessly stole an idea from my friend Annie, a dedicated Locke/Celes fangirl (and a fanfic writer!) in her own right, to give Celes prior knowledge of the opera in order to require slightly less suspension of disbelief. Consequently, Annie gets an NPC named after her. Annie was part of the Project Esper writing team this whole thing is dedicated to. Hi, Annie! Thank you for everything!

It took me a whole month to get this ready, but I also moved and had crunch time with work *and* the world has been on fire, so I think it's all right that I took so long. I hope there aren't any more 10,000-word chapters in the future because this feels like a little much. I've also played around a little bit with other ficlets in other fandoms in the meantime, and I might do some more of that before diving back into the next chapter of this one. But I hope you have faith that I will keep posting chapters! I've done pretty well so far!

Please forgive me for cutting Ultros. And the coin toss. Alas, talking purple octopuses aren't really congruent with my style of writing. I'm sorry my Setzer is kind of a smarmy alcoholic desperate for a sense of purpose. Ask yourself "What's the darkest/saddest interpretation possible for this character without contradicting the text?" and you'll have my take on the cast, most likely. I am what I am.

Chapter 12: Taking Flight

Summary:

Infiltrating the imperial capitol is a daunting proposition that requires proper preparation.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Gabbiani made quite a fuss about landing his craft in a nearby field, but she thought he delighted in showing off its technical capabilities to the king, who was full of questions and admiration. Celes had little patience for either of them. As soon as the ship had docked, she hurried down the gangplank and went alone to Jidoor. 

Oh, she hated having to do anything more in this ridiculous dress, but between confronting the gambler and commanding him to land, there had been no time to contend with its complicated laces. She could feel the eyes on her even as she approached the gate, and townspeople murmured and pointed. Her face burned and she kept her eyes fixed ahead. Did they know she was an impostor, or did they think she was actually Maria, the opera star? And what expectations would they have of her in either case?

She was spared further scrutiny and her own churning stomach by the sight of a familiar smile in the crowd, and then Locke was by her side, grinning.

"I thought maybe you'd flown off into the sunset without me." He seemed cheerful, but she wondered if there was genuine worry underneath his flippant tone. Even if they'd left him alone, he would probably have managed to land on his feet like a damn cat and found a safe harbor somewhere. Here, or maybe Figaro, if the imperials didn't pick him up on the way.

"What kind of a bodyguard would I be if I abandoned my charge?" she said.

"I'm relieved you're so committed to your work." He was still smiling, and his eyes lingered on her long enough that she suspected he was waiting for some particular response, but nothing came to mind.

"Were you just waiting here in case we came back?" she asked instead.

"I saw the shadow of the airship overhead, and I thought I saw it landing, so I hoped for the best. And, lucky for me, you came to pick me up before too long." He gestured to her, indicating the dress. "You're easy to pick out in that." 

She smoothed the front of it, resisted the urge to cover the bodice's efforts to give her cleavage, because she did not want to draw attention to it or to her sudden self-consciousness about it. "I do look ridiculous–"

"No," he blurted out quickly. "No, you do not look ridiculous. I should have said so when you asked earlier. I was—nervous—about the plan—but, no, you look..." He paused, as though trying to think of something complimentary to say, but he floundered, because even he in his infinite kindness could not lie. Finally seeming to accept the lack of anything gentler to say, he swallowed, and then said, "Not ridiculous." Somehow, foolishly, even though it was the least important thing to have happened all day, she was disappointed.

"There are ruffles." She looked down at the dress, lifted the overskirt to illustrate her point. "Layers of ruffles."

"The dress is ridiculous, maybe." He cleared his throat. "You, though–"

Again there was that hesitation, as the moment dragged on too long and she wondered what she was supposed to have done or said to fill it.

"Thanks," she said, too late, and it felt like a question.

He was staring at the ribbon in her hair, and she had a sudden fear that there was something wrong with it. The ribbon had been the one part in the whole ensemble that felt like her. But Locke's eyes lingered on it, and her hands rose to pull it loose.

"Don't," he said.

That ribbon suits you, he had said earlier, in the dressing room, before he disappeared into the hallway and left her alone. And ran off to—where, exactly? Which brought her thoughts from focusing on clothes—a stupid thing to be thinking about—to something more relevant to what actually mattered.

"What kept you? You weren't with Edgar."

For a moment he stared at her blankly, but then he seemed to come back to himself. Laughing ruefully, he rubbed the back of his neck, then grinned at her wryly. "Oh, ah—I got a little tangled up in local politics."

"You what?"

He waved a dismissive hand. "It's a long story. I'll tell you later."


***


It was normal to notice a beautiful woman. It meant nothing more than a passing moment of awkwardness.

Anyway, he had more important concerns. Like this damn contraption that defied Edgar's science, this floating nightmare that should not be skybound and yet would be. Being at the mercy of unknown forces and the whims of a total stranger was even worse than sailing, where one could, in theory, hang onto a piece of driftwood in the worst-case scenario and pray. On an airship, if anything went wrong, they would plummet to the earth with no control and no chance at survival.

But he had to remind himself that this was his idea, his madcap plan, and it had actually worked. And if such a cockamamie plan could work, so could an airship. In theory. He sat in a chair that had been bolted to the floor as the crew prepared for liftoff, and he could not make up his mind whether it would be better to look out the window or hide from it.

The ship roared into motion. Everything from his toes to his teeth was vibrating. And then he felt a terrible lurch in his stomach, and a terrible popping sensation in his ears, and for a brief terrible moment he felt that the whole ship was about to come apart at the seams. Just when he thought he couldn't take any more of it and he was about to run screaming to throw himself out a window, the roar leveled out and was replaced by a low buzz.

'You're awfully white-knuckled over there," the gambler observed, with just a hint of a sneer. "Never flown, have you?"

"It's not part of my usual routine, no," Locke said with what he was sure was an unconvincing smile, his stomach too knotted to give him full access to his mental facilities. "Not sure I'll make a habit of it, either."

He distracted himself—or tried to—by taking inventory of the people who either sat in similarly firm-bolted chairs near him or who bustled around the wood-paneled deck while the rattling purr of an engine rose in his ears.

Edgar and Sabin seemed none the worse for wear, Edgar seemed to be having the time of his life with a new contraption at hand, and Sabin lurked around menacingly at the gambler's crew, as if daring them to revolt against the commandeering of their ship. Of course, other than his size, he was almost comically nonthreatening. Locke wondered if the crew members could tell how much it was a charade.

And the crew: an attendant who made Locke think of the butlers he had known in fine houses, who was never far from his employer—a handful of beautiful young women in impractical dresses, laughing and singing and who seemed to be having the time of their lives—an ornery old cook, a gruff engineer and his young apprentice, and a few others who filled roles that all translated to "sailor" in Locke's limited understanding of ships. If he stayed on this infernal device for long enough, he would come to know them all. But right now he was focused on not being sick, on not thinking about what Edgar had said about airships trying to fall from the sky, and so he was only able to devote so much of his mind to cataloging the people who kept the gambler's ship afloat.

As for the gambler himself, he was a pompous dandy in a ridiculously ornate coat—ostentatious, stitched with gilt edging—which he flung around with no consideration for the time that had gone into its detailing or the incredible amount it must have cost. The son of a nobleman, maybe. Likely an embarrassment to his family, legitimate but not the heir, maybe the youngest child given wealth and nothing else—spoiled, heedless of the lives around him, with no purpose in life but the pursuit of his own pleasure. These broad strokes were, of course, just a guess; at some point Locke would corner the butler to confirm his theories or fill in the details.

Gabbiani seemed chummy enough with Edgar—surprisingly so, given that Edgar had had a hand in taking over his ship. He seemed darkly amused by Sabin. He clearly did not like or trust Locke, a feeling that went both ways. And then there was how he regarded Celes.

Once the airship was steadily aloft, the passengers split up. Edgar went to see the engines, Sabin to the galley for a bite to eat, Celes to the open deck to view the clouds, a sight Locke wanted to avoid at all costs. She strode off toward the ladder above, finally in her own clothes, with her hair up off her neck in a loose practical bun, and he was relieved to see that she, at least, seemed comfortable here.

"That's a nice sight, isn't it?"

The gambler was against the far wall, arms crossed over his chest, and he tracked Celes's walk with his eyes and then met Locke's with a thin-lipped grin.

Locke fixed him with a flat stare. "What is?"

"Celes. She's almost wasted as a soldier, don't you think? Slim, but she's got nice hips, and she looks like she could break your neck if you crossed her." He sounded like he meant this last part as a compliment.

Locke had encountered men like this before, who sought after dangerous women and seemed to enjoy the thrill of it. He wanted to tell this man that he shouldn't cross her, because she would almost certainly put him in his place if he tried anything, but Celes was much more than that, and she deserved better. Instead, he said, "She's a person, not a piece of meat. Have some respect."

"You were looking, too."

Locke sighed. This was going to be a long, long trip. "Shouldn't you be driving this ship?"


***


Once the airship was comfortably skybound, the Returners gathered in a below-deck chamber that seemed intended as a dining hall, with plush chairs and wall tapestries and a number of portholes that Locke carefully kept to his back. Aloft, heading generally southward, they had time to plan their rescue of Terra. They had missed any opportunity to intercept the imperial force that had taken her; even an airship would take at least three days to reach Vector.

"I'm positive they'll bring her to the Research Facility," Celes said, with the same unrelenting surety as outside Ramuh's ruined apartment—had it been a week?—earlier. She stood with her hands folded behind her back, as though she were reporting to a commanding officer. But despite the presence of the others, she had not yet transmuted back to stone, nor had she retreated into herself.

"We should probably confirm that," Locke said. "Not that I doubt you, but we don't know what they're up to. It seems like some reconnaissance would be in order before we commit to anything."

 "I'm shocked to hear you of all people say that." Just the faintest hint of a curve on Celes's lips betrayed her straight-faced sarcasm.

That made him laugh. "Alas, I have exactly zero contacts in Vector. I've never even been in the area before, let alone inside the walls." He smiled wryly. "As much as I would love to pull something out of my hat here, I'm afraid I am out of tricks."

She cocked her head at him. "I don't have 'contacts' that would help, but you realize I spent nearly my entire life in Vector, don't you? I'll come with you. I know my way around."

"With all due respect, Celes, they tried to execute you the last time you were there."

"You can't go in there alone," she said. "Vector is heavily armed and patrolled by skilled troopers specifically watching out for dissidents. They will kill you if they think you're a threat, or they will bring you in for questioning, which would be worse."

"I'm quite good at not being killed."

"You're good at not being caught," she said. "But if you are caught, you need a fighting chance of escaping, and you will have to forgive me when I say you're not equipped to defend yourself against what you'll find in Vector. You need someone to protect you." She turned to Edgar. "Tell him he needs someone to come with him."

Edgar's eyes were dancing. "You should bring her with you," he said to Locke. "You should bring all of us."

"You're the king of Figaro," Locke said, and beside him Celes smirked, making him suspect that she had brought up a similar point before his arrival. "You have a very distinctive profile."

"Then I suppose Sabin is out, too?"

Locke squinted between the two brothers. "To be honest, I know you're twins, but I have to look closely to see it. Besides, no one will be looking for a rogue martial artist, whereas you have a—a kingly air everywhere you go."

Edgar scoffed. "A kingly air?"

"I know you've worn different personas before," he said carefully, "but they are all versions of yourself, the king. The only time I've seen you try to be a commoner, you were not very convincing."

"And she can be convincing?"

"It's worth the risk. She knows her way around the city, and she's probably one of the best swordswomen in the world, if it comes to that. If you all insist that I bring someone with me–"

"We do," Celes said flatly. Edgar snickered. Something had happened in his absence to unite her with the king, and he would have been glad of it except that it meant he was outnumbered, surrounded by well-meaning friends—friends? friends—who wanted to insist that he be babysat, as though he hadn't walked alone into danger plenty of times before.

"They know her as well as she knows the city," Edgar added after a thoughtful moment. "You truly think you can disguise her so well they won't recognize her?"

"You saw her in that dress. Would you have thought that was General Celes?"

"I'm not wearing that dress into Vector," she interjected.

"That's not what I mean," he said. "Just—I think we can make you unrecognizable if we present you as something they'd never expect." He flashed her an apologetic smile. "Which means no bodyguard this time, but we'll come up with something."

"But I'm bringing my sword," she said. "That's essential."

"We'll think of something." He stood up, meaning to pace through his thoughts, then immediately regretted it as the airship tilted and his stomach jumped into his throat. He swallowed that back. "What else do we need to know?"

"We need papers, for one thing," Celes said. "Every civilian under imperial rule has papers that state who they are and where they live. The empire doesn't want people moving freely around."

"Of course not," Edgar scoffed. "Freedom, how dreadful."

"Do I get to wear a disguise, too?" Sabin leaned back in his chair, his feet up on the table, looking as though the rocking of the ship and the hum of its machinery did not even register for him. Lucky dog.

"If you want," Locke said.

"They'll want to know why you're not enlisted." Celes gestured at Sabin. "A fighting-fit man who hasn't dedicated himself in service to the Empire…"

"I have an injury," Sabin responded at once. "If I'm on the battlefield, I go berserk and attack everyone, friend or foe alike. It's not safe. So I teach self-defense instead."

"That's actually pretty good," Locke had to admit.

"It's not true, is it?" Celes was looking at Sabin with slight suspicion.

"What? No." Sabin inclined his head toward her. "But I knew someone once who would lose control like that. It's a terrible thing to see. I've got more self-control than that, don't worry."

Edgar held up a hand to interrupt them. "What do these papers look like?"

"Mine were... confiscated." Again just the faintest hint of a momentary pause, and Locke honestly couldn't tell if her understatement was meant as humor.

"If we need papers, then we need a forger," Edgar said thoughtfully, and then he turned toward Locke. No, they all turned toward Locke expectantly.

He laughed, spreading his hands. "Not a skill I have myself," he said, "but if you're looking at me that way because you think I might know someone who could, you're in luck. I know a lot of shady characters. There's someone in Nikeah who would be perfect. Imperial soldiers go through the Nikeah port all the time, so If imperial citizens all have these papers, I can almost guarantee that Reven has gotten her hands on some and can replicate them."


***


Celes had been through Nikeah before, landing with her troops to move into the northern continent. The bustling port town had technically maintained its independence, but the presence of the imperial military was unmistakable. She expected Locke to be scornful of the city's collaboration and therefore complicity in the invasion of its neighbors, but he merely smiled sadly.

"The empire could throttle the port and starve them out," he said. "I think it's less a business decision and more a matter of survival."

They left the gambler and the king on the ship with the crew—Edgar risked drawing attention here as anywhere, and the airship would be a much safer means of travel if the Empire did not yet know it was under control of the Returners. Once again, Locke led them confidently through the streets, around the docks, toward the shipping and receiving office where his contact's thoroughly legitimate business could be found.

Celes had expected to find the forger down a back alley, some sort of shifty-eyed, thin-lipped man hiding in a dark, smoky shop. But Locke's contact worked in a second-floor office overlooking the sea, and she was a softly feminine woman with long hair and a gentle smile that seemed to indicate that she had nothing to hide. Money exchanged hands, and she suggested they spend a few hours at a seaside cafe while she completed her work. As eager as she was to set off after Terra, Celes understood the necessity of proper planning for something as dangerous as infiltrating Vector, so she quieted her impatience and followed Locke's lead toward the cafe.

"I guess we'd better get used to the three of us being together," Sabin observed as they settled down with a pot of tea on a little terrace. The king's brother had a deep voice, though it was not as booming as one might expect from such a powerful-looking man. "I'll be perfectly honest, I don't do any of this politicking or subterfuge. I'm used to a more, ah, direct approach to problem-solving."

"Locke tends to find more roundabout solutions," Celes said with a little smile, "and I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle."

"Roundabout?" Locke raised an eyebrow at her.

"I would call disguises and false personas and questioning townspeople a more roundabout solution than punching someone in the face, yes," she said.

"And what's your way?" Sabin asked her.

"Well, you see, I accompany Locke as he tries to do things indirectly. Disguises, false personas, and so on. But I'm ready to—well, an equivalent of punching them in the face, but with a sword." There was something about the martial artist that put her at ease, perhaps because he was, as he said, a step removed from the calculations of people like his brother, and Locke, and Banon, and even Celes herself. There was something refreshingly simple about him, though not stupid.

"If all goes well," Locke said, "neither one of you will have much call for a direct solution like that. But I'm going to need you to work with me on this."

They picked up their papers at the appointed time, and Celes flipped through them with surprise and admiration—they were virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, even to her, and she'd spent her life with papers like this at hand. Her stomach still turned over at the thought of returning to Vector, of what she might find there, but at least she could put some faith in this step of the process, even if the worst of it was still yet to be solved.


***

Locke spent the three days between Nikeah and Vector perfecting the trio's identities and disguises, raiding closets on the airship and filling out a pack for each of them that would have all the necessities to survive every contingency he could imagine.

For Locke himself, the well-worn and mended clothing of a common laborer. For Sabin, looser clothes that disguised some of his bulk so that he looked stocky more than sculpted. For Celes, the everyday clothes of an unremarkable young woman, with skirts and braided hair and a little makeup courtesy of Gabbiani's companions; her sword would be carried by Sabin, at least as long as they were together and trying to pass themselves off as ordinary civilians. If Reven's papers were close enough that Celes found them convincing, they might actually be able to pull this part of the plan off. What they would do once they were inside Vector was another thing altogether, but this one thing he could control.

Still, he went over the plan again and again, trying to work through every angle, anticipate every challenge. It was late the night before their arrival, with the southern continent a dark blur below them, when Edgar found him hunched over a desk in the guest chambers, scrawling notes to himself.

"Putting the finishing touches on everything?"

"Trying," Locke said, sitting up and closing the notebook. His neck was stiff and sore, and his upper back ached.

"I wish I could go there with you. Don't be so stubborn."

"It's not stubbornness," Locke said. He brushed his palms over his knees, took a breath and held it. Then he looked at this man who had been his friend for so long, fully aware that he was about to tread on what seemed to be the man's greatest sore spot. "Tell me, Edgar, what would happen to Figaro if you were caught or killed by the Empire in Vector?"

"I could have fallen in Narshe, or in that damned rat's nest in Zozo–"

Locke raised his eyebrows. "This is different, and you know it."

"And yet the rest of you can take this risk? You're hardly expendable!"

"I certainly hope not, but—frankly—if any of the rest of us ended up in front of an imperial firing squad, life would go on for everyone else around us, except for a few people who might care." Locke pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to think about who would notice, who would care. This was not about him, what he was putting at risk. "In your case, an entire nation depends on you. You know that."

Edgar sighed. If Locke knew the man less well, he might have thought that the king was looking dramatically off into the distance for effect. But this was what weighed heaviest on Edgar's mind, and Locke suspected there was some regret there, although he'd only caught glimpses of it on rare occasions. Most likely he kept his face turned away so he could hold onto his composure. Locke permitted him his dignity.

"Take care of my brother, at least. I'd hate to lose him so soon after finding him again."

"I'll do my best. I promise."

Notes:

I'm sorry, it's been two months and I only have a shorter chapter to show for it. I wound up breaking a chapter in half so I could more easily finish it, and here's the first part of it; ideally that means the second half will take less time to finish. I moved AGAIN (yes, moving twice in two months) and had other Real Life Issues come up, so I'm just doing my best to keep pushing forward with writing anyway! But I am posting this two days after my birthday, so happy birthday to me, there's Final Fantasy VI on the horizon.

Things will be a little shippier from now on (see, pun, because they're on an airship), but the underlying story is still key, so please bear with me as I strive to balance the two. We can't just waltz into Vector, so I'm expanding a lot on this section of the game, because I overthink everything (where did Locke get that from?) and so I have to have at least half an answer explaining how they pull certain things off.

Reven is another friend of mine, a cowriter from the cancelled Project Esper! There were four of us total, which leaves us with one more Project Esper cameo remaining...

Part of the delay is that I wanted to reread previous chapters to catch back up with my writing, and then the chapters all needed to be revised, so I wound up cutting a few thousand words overall. If you reread the chapters you may notice small changes. Nothing significant has changed, but there's a lot of quality-of-life line edits that were quite necessary.

Thank you again for your patience, and I hope you will enjoy the Vector section of the story!

Chapter 13: The Lion's Den

Summary:

At last, we arrive in the Imperial capital. Locke overestimates his ability to blend in on the southern continent. Celes underestimates Sabin and her own self-control. Mistakes are made.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

They landed out of sight of the city, so that their small party would not draw attention before even arriving at Vector's gates. While this meant it would be harder to flee in a hurry if something went wrong, just having such an escape route less than a day's journey away seemed like a luxury to Locke. Years of infiltrating occupied cities or among people who might have killed him if they knew who he really was gave him a healthy appreciation for the relative safety an airship represented. So he was almost cheerful as they crossed the southern countryside. Unlike the northern continent, it was autumn here, and the entire hilly countryside seemed ablaze in hues of red and orange like the feathers of a phoenix. Even that did not startle him; he'd made the trip between the snow-covered mountain paths of Narshe and the heat of the Figaroan desert often enough. The world was a colorful and varied place ripe for exploring, and this new continent was merely uncharted territory to add to the atlas in his mind.

Unsurprisingly, Celes seemed on edge the closer they drew to her erstwhile home. He was ready to offer words of support or encouragement if she needed them, an outlet for the feelings that must even at this moment be churning through her mind, judging by the set of her jaw. At least she had accepted her disguise with little complaint, despite the petticoats and the floppy, wide-brimmed hat that had been a last-minute addition.

The presence of Sabin alleviated some of the pressure that sometimes built up between them, because Sabin was not just resistant to brooding himself but also somehow able to nullify it even in Celes. During their visit to Nikeah, she had joked easily with the man. Locke had to admit to a little jealousy. Months, now, of trying to draw her out of her shell, and all it took was an afternoon with Edgar's brother to set her at ease.

But jealous or not, he was glad of Sabin's calming effect today as they approached the imposing fortress that was the imperial capital, with its sheer, impenetrable metal walls and the untold danger waiting within.


***


"Reason for leaving Vector?" The guard's eyes were on their papers, not on them. It had taken an hour in line to reach this checkpoint, and the handful of armed guards who checked everyone entering or leaving the city must see hundreds of people each day.

"Camping," Locke said, shifting the pack across his shoulders and letting the gear jostle audibly, just a little. Keep your answers short and simple—that was a good fundamental when lying. 

"Reason for returning to Vector?" 

"Done with camping?" he said, and laughed a little, nervously. The others in line ahead of them had seemed nervous, so he allowed himself to show some of his anxiety.

The guard regarded the three of them with only passing interest, and Locke was once again grateful that Edgar had agreed to stay on the ship. Sabin was staring off at something in the distance, looking hopelessly bored and impatient; Celes was slouching, her eyes downcast, her hands fidgeting with the rim of her hat. Neither of them seemed particularly remarkable or suspicious. Sabin was bigger than the average person; Celes was prettier than the average person; but both of them were within the realm of normalcy.

He thought maybe they would make it through this smoothly, but then the gate guard did a double-take at Celes and narrowed his eyes. "Do I know you?"

"Don't tell her dad." The words slipped out of Locke without any conscious plan, but his mind was already kicking into overdrive, slotting pieces into something plausible.

"What?"

"If you know her," Locke said, his voice raising a little, pleading, "don't tell her dad she's been out with me, please?"

Celes looked at him sharply.

Well, at least this facade was something he knew well, something he could sell convincingly because it was close to his own truth. His throat suddenly felt dry and closed-in. He bounced on his heels, crossed his arms over his chest, and tried very hard to remember what it was like to be eighteen and stupid and in love.

The guard looked between the two of them, shook his head, and stamped all three documents. When he spoke, his gruff voice was less distant, more present, as though instead of a player reading from a script, he was once again his own human self. "You should respect her parents' wishes. Trust me. It'll come out eventually, and things will be worse for both of you if they find out you've been going behind their backs."

Locke winced. "We'll... keep that in mind."

"Lying to them definitely won't earn you their trust. Prove to them you're not whatever they think you are." As if picking up on Locke's discomfort, the guard added, more kindly, "Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there."

"Th-thanks." From someone who's also been there.

Mercifully, the guard waved them through after that, and Locke gathered the feelings that were already threatening to surface and banished them back to the darkness where they belonged.

"What was that all about?" Sabin asked when they were safely through the gate.

"A distraction. Now he's going to be thinking about some poor girl sneaking out under her dad's nose, and he'll have forgotten all about whoever he thought she might be."

Celes was watching him with a worried frown. "Locke…"

"You're more believable when you build on something you know," he said brightly, and he flashed her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "I'm fine, Celes. I promise."

Sabin, oblivious to what was happening under the surface—and why shouldn't he be?—looked impressed. "That's clever."

Locke shrugged. "I do my best."

"I'm surprised it worked," Celes added. "I was sure he'd recognize me and that would be the end of it."

"You think I couldn't even get you through the front door?" Locke placed a hand over his heart and recoiled with feigned surprise and hurt, his tone mock-serious. "You wound me."

Sabin laughed. "You've been spending too much time with my brother."

Locke gratefully seized this opportunity to push the dark clouds from his mind and grinning back. "I have, haven't I? That sounds exactly like him. Well, that won't do. No more kingly speak; you have my word."


***


His first impression of Vector was that it was very clean. Not like Jidoor with its polished, ivy-covered facades, impeccable signage, elaborate streetlamps, and perfectly sculpted shrubbery—Vector was simpler in design, without ostentation. But the cobbles and sidewalks were free from trash or stains; the public benches and fountains looked well-maintained and without blemish. Even the walls of the fairly plain buildings were unmarked by graffiti or even evidence of grime, smoke, soot.

There was something about it that raised Locke's hackles. Human settlements were not meant to be this clean. It ought to look a little lived-in, a little worn around the edges. Maybe not everywhere needed to be as filthy as Zozo, but even Jidoor 's pretentious excess reflected the human fallibility of those who designed it.

Everyone on the streets of Vector had a certain look about them, though Locke could not immediately define it. They didn't cast their eyes down as did residents of occupied cities, but there was something of a hunch in their shoulders, a tendency to look straight ahead, a lack of the usual hubbub he might expect from a city of this size. People did not congregate on street corners. Children did not loiter on the steps of shops. Nobody called out to friends or neighbors. And on every street, there were soldiers, periodically, making the rounds like clockwork. No one paid them any heed; they were the background to everyday life.

There were also posters plastered on the sides of buildings, with prideful slogans about the Empire, showing wholesome blond families, handsome soldiers sitting atop Magitek armor, and of course the face of the Emperor himself, sometimes looking like a stern but loving grandfather, sometimes with a look of fearless intensity.

Towering above everything, at the center of the city, was the imperial compound itself. It looked like a castle, except that every castle Locke had seen had some human character to it—Figaro was especially strange-looking and distinctive with Edgar's inventions projecting from the walls—and this was almost brutal in the unrelenting precision of its lines. It was thoroughly imposing and unwelcoming. The city was built on a slope, and the compound was at the top of the hill. Celes had explained the layout, going so far as to draw out a map on paper with as much detail as she could remember, prompted by all the questions Locke could think of. He'd committed this to memory, and as they walked through the city streets, he tried to overlay her map on what he saw, making mental adjustments to reflect any inaccuracies.

Ordinarily, the first thing he did upon entering a new town would be to track down a room for rent, whether at an inn or a boarding house or even a private home. But they were meant to be imperial citizens with their own homes to return to, and the longer they stayed here, the closer the noose of the empire would tighten around their throats—hopefully not literally. There was no time for a slow stakeout. They needed information, and they needed it now.

"Well, we've made it through the first test," Locke said cheerfully. "Now it's time to improvise. Should we split up? You scope out the Research Facility itself, and I try to gather local gossip?"

"I'm really not sure that's a good idea," Celes said.

"We can't all skulk around their high-security facility, any more than we could attack it headlong, can we? Let me drop into a bar, or a restaurant, or a shop, or—"

"No."

"I'll make small talk. They won't even know they've been grilled."

"Locke—"

He put a hand on her shoulder and tried to project confidence. "I know you're nervous here. I understand. And I'm not exactly a master of self-defense. I get that. But this is what I do. I talk to people."

She shook her head. "You talk to people. But we—here—people here don't. If you just waltz into somewhere and start chatting to someone there like you know them, they're going to think something is very wrong with you."

"I'll take your warning to heart, but don't worry. I can blend in."

"You can't. Not here."

"Stop bickering," Sabin interjected. "We're taking a risk just being here. Let's all just try to do what we do best and make a plan. Worst case scenario, we'll bash some heads in and just keep bashing them until we've got Terra."

"I think we can all agree that a direct attack on the facility won't get us anywhere. Or are you going to argue with that, Celes?"

Thin-lipped, she only shook her head.

"Then let's look into alternatives, gather what we can, and meet back up in two hours."


***


Vector had changed.

That was her first thought, walking the streets at Locke's elbow, with Sabin an imposing and curious shadow behind them.

This was not the city she remembered, neat and predictable and orderly, full of people who followed Gestahl's rules to the letter. Everything seemed a little wrong, a little out of place, as though a young artist had tried to capture the city and gotten it close enough to recognize without actually looking right.

Had things somehow gotten worse here? Was that fear she saw in the eyes of the citizens around them, suspicion written across their faces?

Or was it just that she had spent long enough away that she was no longer used to the way people walked here, to the feeling of being watched at all times, to the guards posted on the street corners who used to snap to attention and salute her when she passed through as General Celes Chere but who now regarded her with scornful, distrusting eyes?

People in Vector did not congregate in the street, or stop and chat with neighbors. They kept their eyes straight ahead or on the ground. They walked fast, their expressions neutral, maybe smiling faintly and lifting a hand in greeting if they passed a friend, but still quiet and reserved. The people of the northern continent were often boisterous, outgoing, wearing their feelings loudly on their faces; not so here in Vector.

She could see this slowly registering for Locke, who adapted as best he could. But there was still a brightness about him that stood out, and even averting his eyes and slowing his pace could not disguise that. Not his clothing; even with his usual scarves and jacket, he wouldn't have been the most remarkable person here based on how he dressed, and in the more mundane clothes he wore now, he might have blended in completely, except that even standing still, he was more animated than anyone else in the entire city. It was like his heart beat a little faster, a little louder. He was too curious, drinking up the world around him instead of keeping a wall around himself. Before, no matter where they traveled, he had always seemed at home, at ease. It was disconcerting to see him so at odds with the world around him.

The whole point of coming here as a group was to prevent him from getting in over his head in the heart of enemy territory, because breaking Terra out of a highly secured military facility would be nothing like his impromptu rescue of Celes herself. In South Figaro, the guards had been sloppy, unsupervised, cruel but clearly not the best the imperial army had to offer. And—perhaps more importantly—Locke knew South Figaro intimately. Even under imperial occupation, it was still a relatively safe place for him. Vector, by contrast, was more dangerous than he seemed willing to accept.

He was being foolish. That cocky grin, that untested self-assurance that he would fare as well in Vector as he had on the continent he'd spent a lifetime traveling across—she couldn't set aside her worry. Not to mention the story he'd chosen at the gate. It felt strange to have had that story placed around her. It felt as though she were wearing someone else's life as a costume. She would not have expected him to pull that memory, of all things. It had to be a sign that he was out of sorts; why else would he choose to make himself so vulnerable, when he had tried so hard to avoid even telling her about Rachel in the first place?

If Sabin shared any of her worry, he made no sign. At least he followed her lead once the two of them had left Locke behind, walking purposefully, without gawking at anything around them. There were a great many people in the streets, as always, and with luck, the two of them would be able avoid drawing any attention. Whenever she spotted a patrol, Celes took deep breaths and willed herself to relax.

The Magitek Research Facility was not, strictly speaking, within the military complex itself. It was adjacent, and of the four entrances Celes knew of, two could be accessed directly from the gated military compound—these were the entrances she had used as a child, a ward of the army who lived in the barracks and who seldom set foot outside the compound. But civilians worked at the Facility, and thus the main entryway opened onto a major city street.

As they rounded the corner and the plain rectangular building came into view, Sabin observed, "I thought it would be bigger."

"Most of it is below ground," Celes said.

That made Sabin grimace. "So much for blowing a hole in the wall and making a grab-and-go of it. If she's being kept in some creepy basement…"

The cell where Celes awaited her own execution had been a proper basement, but she would never think to apply that word to the underground laboratories with their indecipherable devices and bustling personnel. She wasn't sure she agreed with the simplification. "She's likely being held in one of the lower levels, yes. But how would you blow a hole in the wall, anyway?"

"There's Magitek armor around here, isn't there?" Sabin shrugged as if this ought to be all the explanation she needed. She stared at him, puzzled, and he continued. "It turns out you can take out a wall with one of their cannons."

"How do you know that?"

"Doma. We had to break through the Imperial encampment there, and there was some armor laying around, and—" He grinned suddenly. "If you're not trying to be graceful with it, it's pretty easy to drive it around where you want it to go. Then just hit the big red button that says 'shoot' on it…"

"There isn't a 'shoot' button on any armor I've ever seen."

"Well, no, not exactly," he said, undeterred. "But it might as well. It's really not that complicated. I guess they have to keep it simple enough that your average soldier can figure it out."

"Average soldiers don't pilot Magitek." She cocked her head at him, regarding him in a new light. He appeared to be all brawn, and so she had not really stopped to consider his brain. There was something straightforward about the way he spoke that continued that impression. And yet… "The soldiers who do so have to train for years, and you just jumped into a machine and operated it?"

"I mean, you've seen Figaro Castle," he said. "You've met my brother."

"I didn't realize—" She cut herself off from insulting his intelligence, her face heating with the shame of it. "Didn't realize the technology in Figaro Castle was similar enough to Magitek," she finished instead.

"They're both invented by people, and people have similar ways of solving problems," he said. "I could take some guesses, based on that, and it worked."

"That's good to know."

She couldn't help trying to mentally run through what an outright assault on the facility would be like. It was an unembellished gray building, two stories tall, with metal grates on the windows and guards posted at the main entrance. Unless things had changed since her last visit, there were no guards actively roaming the halls or labs, and she doubted most of the researchers could hold their own in a fight. The most significant danger would be if the military sent someone in after them and they had to contend with assailants either as they tried to find Terra or as they fought back toward the surface. They would be trapped underground, at the mercy of an unmerciful army, unless they could fight their way free.

There was no time to hesitate in front of the facility without drawing suspicion, though she slowed their pace as much as was reasonable. All too soon, they had left it behind, and the side of the street instead overlooked the training grounds, the barracks, and above it all, the imperial headquarters.

Through the metal fence surrounding the military compound, the base was teeming with activity. Soldiers reporting to duty, or training, the distant sound of voices repeating commands in unison. Celes had spent many, many hours of her life at the training grounds, performing calisthenics, running across the compound to build stamina and strength, honing her swordfighting in endless practice matches. This had been her entire life, and yet months ago she had left with doubt in her heart and never returned. Coming back now was disconcerting.

"You grew up here, didn't you?" Sabin was watching her watch soldiers sparring in the distance. "It's weird to return when you've been away a while. Everything's different. It seems smaller than you remember it. Yeah?"

There's a difference between leaving home to find yourself, and betraying everything and everyone you ever knew. A prodigal prince can return home to open arms, but traitors are executed. Get caught here, and they'll be all too glad to finish what they started in South Figaro.

Her halfhearted, murmured "Yeah" felt unnatural on her tongue. She was at risk of being killed by the very people who had raised her, overseen her education, made her what she was now. And what is that, exactly? A woman broken and reforged into a weapon? A soldier with nothing but violence in her heart?

But the next time the little voice inside her spoke up, it was with a note of laughter. You can't even make up your mind whether to hate yourself for betraying the Empire or for having been part of it. Can you admit that you're just looking for an excuse to hate yourself?

And you're doing it, still. Stop.

But this time the voice was not unkind or cruel. There was no bite to the words. She thought of Locke, gently challenging her, countering her whenever she gave voice to her fears or self-loathing.

He wasn't here with her now, yet something of him, the gift of his compassion, lingered.

And this was why she couldn't let anything happen to him in Vector. He had so much to give the world, and people like him were so rare. For all that he had chosen to walk a dangerous path, she could not, would not, allow danger to snuff out his light.


***


Things, he had to admit, were not going as well as he'd hoped.

His usual methods met with limited success. Usually, he could make small talk, sprinkled with just a hint of flattery. Talk about the weather, talk about the region. Air some sort of universal grievance about work, or taxes, or neighbors, or whomever the local scapegoat was.

Except that Locke himself was the local scapegoat, and he knew very little about the weather or the culture, other than what Celes had tried to convey to him on the three-day trip over. He kept reaching into his memories for a relevant tidbit and coming back empty, or realizing at the last moment that what he was about to say would give him away as being an outsider.

And what Celes had said about the people here not making conversation in the way he was used to—he had attributed that to her own reticent nature, but there was more truth to it than he wanted to admit.

He visited a shop, then a cafe, before finally finding himself in a bar. It was getting midafternoon, yet a few locals were gathered at a table in one corner of the dingy little room, drinking. Locke ordered what he heard one of them order, paid in local coin provided by the gambler, and tried to listen in. 

They noticed him despite his efforts to seem nonchalant, and he offered them a bright but hesitant smile, lifting a few fingers in greeting. Not too much, he reminded himself. No loud hellos, no inviting himself to their table. He tried to imagine what Celes might do in this situation, how she might act. She would have avoided drawing attention to herself in the first place. Well, too late for that now.

The woman he'd pegged as their ringleader leered at him. She was swaying slightly, but that didn't prevent her or her friends from being imposing. They all had broad, well-muscled shoulders and beefy forearms. Soldiers, or day laborers? He wasn't sure.

"Out-of-towner, huh?" she slurred at him.

He hadn't said a word, but something about him had clearly marked him as an outsider. If he spoke, would he give himself away? There was something distinctive in the accent here that he couldn't identify, something that had seemed like a peculiarity of Celes's until he found himself surrounded by it. A better actor might have been able to emulate it, but Locke had no such talent.

"Leave him alone." That from the bartender, a mild-seeming man with the kind of smile that might have put Locke at ease if he weren't increasingly aware every moment just how alone he was in wholly enemy territory.

The big woman turned back to her friends, and Locke nursed his drink slowly. It took no self-control; the beverage was bitter and strong, not the sort he would normally choose for himself. Other than the belligerent cluster in their corner, the bar was essentially deserted. Normally, Locke might say something to the bartender about it, an offhand "Slow day?" that invited conversation, but he was hesitant to open his mouth and expose himself further. So he sat, and he listened, but he learned nothing but a handful of slurs against foreigners and what sounded like a oft-repeated toast to the emperor.

When it became apparent that information would not be forthcoming, he dropped an extra coin at the bar for a tip, nodded his thanks to the bartender, and slipped out. The sky was a deep shade of blue already darkening to night, though the lights of the city kept him from seeing the stars. Not that he'd recognize the constellations down here. And that thought only reinforced his feelings of alienation. A cold pit dropped in his stomach as he thrust his hands into his pockets and started down the street.

They caught up to him quickly. He should have expected this, in hindsight—the hazards of a city in which everyone was slavishly devoted to the empire were not limited to the military presence itself.

The woman struck him across the face before he'd really been able to register what was happening.

"We don't like foreigners here," she hissed.

One of the others grabbed Locke from behind, pulling his arms back and holding him still. He tried to twist out of their grip, but they were stronger than him, and his struggles did nothing more than pull his clothes so that the neckline of his shirt was uncomfortably tight around his throat.

When one of them slugged him in the stomach, he at least had the reflexes to exhale first. Not that that saved him from the pain or the dizzying blackness of being completely without oxygen. But it would have been worse, somehow, if he hadn't. He remembered that much.

They were laughing. Locke's mind was foggy as he gasped to fill his lungs once more.

"S'not… what you think…"

They laughed at his mumbled protests.

What a way to go. Dragged into a back alley and beaten to death by a few drunken imperial loyalists. He'd talked his way out of confrontations with armed militiamen, angry deputies, the occasional territorial and belligerent father or husband who objected to innocent conversation. He'd fled troops and attack dogs. More recently, he had survived staring down the cannon of Magitek armor; he had survived an onslaught of Kefka's uncontrolled fire; he had survived the poison of an assassin—because Celes had been there to save him, every time.

As knuckles skimmed his jaw and pain exploded along the side of his face, he imagined her sweeping in to rescue him once more. But luck seemed to have abandoned him this time.

There was nothing especially cruel about the beating—a garden-variety assault by angry drunks, no broken bones, no permanent damage, as far as he could tell. Which meant they wouldn't be what did him in at last. No, that would be whatever awaited him when they turned him in. He'd seen the haunted look on Celes's face when she considered this fate for him, and though he'd tried to bravely sweep it aside, now that he was confronted with its imminent appearance in his life, he found that he did not like the thought at all.

"That's enough of that."

A warm, golden voice—the bartender. He walked with a cane, but there was an air of quiet dignity that made the other three hesitate. "Does this look like order to you? If you're suspicious of him, by all means report to the authorities. But don't sully your hands like this. We are better than this."

Inwardly, Locke scoffed; this was exactly who the empire was, hateful and xenophobic. But outwardly, he tried to look contrite, afraid, confused. It was not hard to paint a pathetic picture in his current state.

"Off with you," the bartender said, shaking his walking stick at Locke's assailants. "Picking a fight in the street, really. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

The three of them hesitated, but then, with one final round of jeers, they dispersed. Locke staggered to his feet, rubbing at his sore jaw. Something was dripping down his nose—blood, he saw, when he touched it.

"Let's get you cleaned up," the bartender said, before Locke could slink away with the rest. 

"I'm fine."

"So he does speak," the man observed, amusement tingling his voice, and Locke almost wanted to laugh that he had given the impression of being silent, when ordinarily he filled the air with words. Almost. But he was still perilously close to being handed over to the authorities for the crime of not belonging. 

"Thanks," he said. "But I'm fine. Really."

"At least come back inside to get something to stop the bleeding."

Truthfully, Locke wanted nothing more than to slip back into the gathering night, catch back up with his friends and the protection of Celes's sword and Sabin's fists, and maybe see if a touch of Shiva's magic could help him. But then he thought of Celes's face if she saw him like this. And to return with absolutely nothing to show for his efforts but bruises and blood—his pride wouldn't take it.

Besides, the bartender had a hand around his arm now, helping him up. Extricating himself would be harder than going along, for now.

"Where did you say you were from?" the bartender asked conversationally as they walked. Of course Locke had said nothing of the sort, but the man's affable manner put him at ease despite himself.

He couldn't say what made him say "Maranda," but the word slipped from his lips unbidden. A moment later, as he realized what he had said, he cursed himself and the momentary lapse. Maybe they'd hit his head harder than he realized. His paperwork said Vector; Maranda itself was a very loaded choice he would never have requested from Reven, especially not with Celes as a traveling companion.

The man held his arm tighter and looked at him through narrowed eyes. Clearly, the name had registered and made too much of an impact to be taken back. "Conscripted?"

Locke laughed uncomfortably. "N-no, thankfully."

"Did you pay your way out of it?" A tense, taut voice. There was very clearly a right answer and a wrong answer to this question.

"No," Locke said. "I'm a—a merchant. I wasn't in town when… Well. I was lucky."

"As lucky as anyone from Maranda is."

"Aren't you worried about talking like that in front of me?"

By this point, they had reached the bar, and the man unlocked it and pulled a stumbling Locke inside. Locke half expected another ambush, but there was no one else but the two of them.

"Really, I'm fine," he said, keeping a hand on the door handle, hesitant to go inside further but not quite sure he trusted his legs to hold him without someone or something supporting him. Once again he wished for a rescue from his knight in shining armor, or avenging angel, or whatever she was. But he'd ignored her warning, and now here he was.

"Sit," the bartender said, gesturing to a stool. "I'll get you a cloth and some alcohol to clean that off."

"Nothing top-shelf, I assume," Locke said.

"No, but the cheap stuff works just as well to ward off infection." The bartender slipped behind the bar. Locke gratefully dropped onto a stool—was the world spinning, just a little?—and tried to scrape together what was left of his brain.

"Thanks," he said, as the bartender passed him a clean but potent-smelling cloth. He was already wiping blood from his face, wincing from the sting as well as the pungency, when it occurred to him that the cloth might be drugged or poisoned. He froze.

"You're not from Maranda," the bartender said confidently, and Locke's stomach dropped. "If I were a betting man, I'd say you weren't from this continent."

Locke pressed his lips together, then tried to interject. "My father–"

"Which forces me to wonder, what are you doing here? What's a northerner doing in Vector, doing a piss-poor job of pretending to be a local?" The man peered at him. "Please don't tell me you're a spy."

Ruefully, Locke laughed. "No," he lied. "I'm just trying to find a friend."

"There's a lot of people in Vector. Does your friend know you're here?"

"No." He squinted at the man. "You're not going to turn me in?"

"For what? Have you done something that deserves imprisonment?"

"No."

"Pity," the man said, with a small smile, and Locke cursed his mental state as well as the strangeness of this damn city, because something was happening here and he couldn't keep up with it.

"I promise I'm not doing anything suspicious," he said. "I realize... that's exactly what someone suspicious would say, but I'm not."

"How did you get through the gate? Forged documents?" The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully, leaning against his bar. "What's worth risking your life coming here? Is your friend in trouble somehow? Another northerner, needing your help? Or are you lying about the friend, and you really are just here for reconnaissance, but you got in over your head?"

Locke's face burned. How many times had he been on the other end of an interrogation like this, holding the pieces and turning them this way and that until they slotted together to reveal the truth? He found being on the receiving end of it deeply unpleasant, and not just because this man held Locke's life in his hands.

"Whatever your story is, you're no friend of the Empire," the bartender said at last, with satisfaction, and Locke stumbled off the stool and to his feet. He was taking a step backward when the man continued, "Fortunately for you, neither am I."


***


The bartender's name was Hassan, and he was part of a cell of locals who opposed the empire's violent expansion abroad and its tyrannical rule at home. It made Locke think of the clueless young saboteur in Jidoor, or the stories Banon had told about the early days of the Returners — pockets of dissidents without power, direction, or experience, yet stubbornly trying to enact change in their corners of the world anyway. Hearing him speak rekindled the hope in Locke's heart. This was how they would save the world: by giving people the tools and support they needed to rise up and save themselves.

"Why are you trusting me with this?" Locke asked, after the man had finished his explanation. They sat side by side at the bar, each with a mug of that awful bitter drink that seemed so popular with the locals here. "Aren't you afraid I might turn you in?

"Nobody here would trust your word over mine, and you'd be in more trouble than I would be if you tried to take this to the authorities."

"Practical," Locke conceded, and he took a long gulp of beer. It was weak, clearly watered-down, but he was grateful for that. "What gave me away?" he said at last. "The accent?"

"The accent. The way you sit. And we don't leave tips down here."

"Shit." Locke leaned back in his chair. "It's been a long time since I've been so out of my element. I feel like—like an octopus in the middle of a desert, and I'm not used to it."

"I hope for your sake you don't have to stay long enough to get used to it," Hassan said. "Tell me about your friend, if that part of your story's true. Maybe I've seen them around. It may not look it at this time of day, but a lot of people come through her."

Locke considered the mug in front of him, considered the stranger seated beside him. At least the fuzziness in his head had finally cleared. "She's being held captive."

"In the imperial prisons? Not an easy jailbreak."

"Oh, it's worse than that, my friend. I need to get into the Magitek Research Facility."

"Oh, is that all?"

Locke grinned, delighted by the man's dry humor if not by the situation. "I told you it was worse."

"What do you think you're going to do when you get there?"

"Rescue my friend. Hopefully fuck the place up in the process."

"Really? You're not here by yourself, are you?" Hassan sized Locke up. "Unless you're hiding something better than you hid your identity, I'm not sure I believe this is anything but a suicide mission."

Locke laughed at the man's frank and not inaccurate assessment of his strength. "It's not just me. I've got friends with me who are much better at providing the, well, brawn and firepower. And they're more familiar with the area, too."

"From Vector? Ex-military? A deserter."

That rapidfire deduction—a man after Locke's own heart, a mind he would love to have on his side. Again, he found himself grinning. "Something like that."

"How mysterious."

Outside, a bell tolled loudly, and a muffled voice crackled over some sort of loudspeaker. Locke set his mug down with a bang, sloshing some of the awful liquid over the rim. "Shit. What time is it? I'm late."

"Wait." Hassan held out a hand to catch his attention. "Before you go. Bring your friends to the warehouses near the Facility before curfew tonight. Split up, if you can, so you don't draw attention."

Locke's eyebrows shot up. "You think you can get us inside?"

"We can try."


***


Between sundown and curfew, the city streets came alive, and so did the tree-edged parks that provided an escape from the otherwise endless concrete and metal of the city. Families strolled past, some of them dragged along by dogs on leashes. Young couples courted walking arm in arm, speaking quietly, laughing and stealing glances at each other. Off-duty soldiers left the military compound to visit family, to dine with parents or siblings and enjoy a few hours of normalcy.

Sitting on a bench under the watchful eyes of Gestahl's larger-than-life face on a building across the way, Celes was made aware once again that there truly was no place in all the world she belonged. Had she ever really been at home here, as a girl and as a young woman? Yes—at some point she had. Her room in the barracks was her domain, the center of her world to which she could always return, no matter how far afield she traveled. Yet Celes had forever closed the door to what had been her home, and now she wandered adrift.

Locke seemed at home nearly everywhere he visited; Celes did not feel at home even here in Vector. Terra, that poor girl, had been denied any home, even ownership of her own mind—but she had friends in the Returners now, and once she had been rescued, she would have a home with them. Celes had no such optimism for herself. She had no family, found or otherwise. No roots bound her to any place, any group, any person. 

The bell tolled the hour, and the loudspeaker crackled to life with a recorded message from the Emperor himself. Sabin sat beside her, staring up at the speaker mounted high above them. No one else even looked at it, though they all fell into respectful silence, so that the Emperor's voice could be heard clearly, unchallenged.

Where was Locke? She shouldn't have let him go off alone, no matter how insistent he was. He was late, and while she was willing to go door to door visiting every store or bar on the main drag looking for him, that seemed unlikely to end well for anyone.

But then, as she was worrying the brim of her hat into frayed edges, he appeared at the entrance to the park. He did not see the two of them at first, so she rose and raised a tentative hand, and then she called out, "Locke!" His head lifted in recognition, and he started toward them. Was he limping? What kind of trouble had he gotten himself into? Her feet closed the distance between them before she'd realized she was moving.

The park's lamp illuminated his face, showing a splash of angry red darkening to purple along his jaw and cheek up toward his ear. He was grinning, despite the bruise; his eyes were dancing.

"Someone hit you," she said.

"It's nothing. Just some drunks. I'm fine."

She brought her fingertips to his cheek, and he flinched at her touch. But instead of removing her hand, she prodded the swelling, making sure nothing had been broken. No, thank goodness. Her own blood sang, and she gave into Shiva's healing magic gratefully, feeling the familiar chill pour through her fingers and wash over Locke's too-warm skin.

His hand closed around hers. "What are you doing?"

"It needs to be iced."

"Not like that!" He pulled her hand away, surrounded it with both of his as though that might quell the magic. She swallowed; his touch felt like fire against her palm. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but what if someone notices?"

"You got hit in the head," she said. "Are you concussed? What happened?"

"I met a few grumps and made a new friend." His smile was a little too wide, a little forced, which meant he was most likely downplaying the truth. "Really, I'm fine. The important thing is that I've connected with the local rebels—I told you there's always someone ready to fight back—and we've got a plan for them to sneak us in. Tonight."

"Can we trust them?"

"Yes."

"What's this about a plan?" Sabin asked from behind Celes, and both she and Locke jumped, startled. Locke released her hand at once, and she pressed both palms to her hips, as though the soft linen of her skirt could somehow calm the burning sensation where he had touched her.

"F-friends," Locke stammered, wide-eyed, and she wondered if he did have a concussion, after all. "Allies. A plan. Before curfew. Tonight."

The big man grinned toothily, and he clapped Locke on the back. "Great!"

Locke seemed to come back to himself as he recounted a no doubt sanitized version of his afternoon's adventure. But he did not look at Celes once, even as the three of them huddled together beneath the park's artificial lights. Did he feel guilty for having ignored her warnings? Angry, reasonably so, that she had used Shiva's gift openly? Something about the imperial capital had made them both a little stupid today. At least they'd made it through unscathed so far—she could only hope for this luck to hold.

Notes:

This took a long time. I'm sorry. It's been another hectic month, but I'm really glad to be posting a chapter before February is over! Please let me know if you see any errors, because I didn't even have a beta reader for this chapter; I got impatient and really wanted to push it live ASAP. This turned out to be a big one, and things aren't easing up for next chapter either. Also, my little shippy heart is having a great time. You wanted a slow burn? We're getting there.

Featuring another of my Project Esper teammates, Hassan, who is extremely clever (and nice!) in real life as well. To my knowledge he's not actually the leader of a secret rebellion, but maybe that's just what he wants me to think.

Chapter 14: Devil's Lab

Summary:

Into the belly of the beast.

(It's a long one.)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The sun had disappeared entirely by the time they set off for the warehouses, but the artificial lights gave the streets the appearance of a false daytime, as unnatural as Vector's impossibly perfect neatness. Dusk or dawn, perhaps, rather than noon—but still far brighter than Jidoor and South Figaro's streetlights.

"And I thought it was strange being back home after so long in the mountains," Sabin commented as the three of them joined the thinning crowds on the street. "Out there, you can see every single star in the sky. At least the lights in Figaro have the decency to be dim. This is ridiculous."

"They can't control what they can't see," Locke observed. "It wouldn't do for nighttime to give the people of Vector cover and anonymity. Just think of the trouble people might get up to if you can't watch their every move."

Celes had withdrawn again, brooding over their present danger or angry that he'd gotten himself hurt, he couldn't tell. It wasn't like her to be so careless as to call on her magic publicly like that. Maybe she was angry with herself for such a rash decision, or angry with both of them.

His stinging jaw appreciated the relief her icy touch had granted him; the swelling had gone down, and the bruise felt less spectacular than he might have otherwise expected. With the luxury of privacy and time, he would have asked her to take a look at his shin where one of the drunks had stomped him; the leg still twinged with every step he took. But instead he tried to disguise his gritted teeth as a smile, and he was grateful that Celes's intervention and Shiva's gift had at least lessened his pain.

"Well?" he asked. "Ready to become the kind of trouble these lights are supposed to prevent?"

But they weren't on the street long before Celes murmured, in an anxious voice, "We're too suspicious. We don't look like we're heading back home, or off to work, with three of us walking together."

"Then we should split up," Locke said. "If we all know where we're going..."

"I'll be fine," Sabin said. "I'm not bad at directions, and everything here is very straightforward. Some cities, you think maybe they were designed by someone drunk out of his mind, with dead ends everywhere. But here, everything is nice and neat on a grid."

"I'm the one with the directions, so I'll be fine. And Celes knows the city better than either of us."

Celes shook her head. "I don't want you to go alone. Look at what happened last time."

Locke grinned. "I got us the help we were looking for, didn't I?"

"And now half your face is swollen, you might be concussed, and you're limping."

Sabin was smirking, an expression that Locke had seen entirely too many times on Edgar's face, reinforcing the similarity between the brothers. "All right, so you two are together, and I think I can manage by myself." He clapped them both on the back. "See you on the other side, then."

"If there's an announcement on the speakers, stop and listen to them," Celes said. "Don't just keep walking."

Sabin waved a dismissive hand. "Got it, got it. Just follow what everyone else does."

Locke wasn't sure why Celes seemed less worried about Sabin traveling on his own. He had no more experience on the southern continent than Locke did. He was no better at mimicking the mannerisms or accent of people here. True, if he got jumped by a pile of drunks, he would be more likely to leave them in a heap on the cobblestone and emerge unscathed himself, but if it came down to that, the jig was up anyway.

"But–" he said.

"If the guards seem suspicious of just the two of us, we can split up further," she said. "Unless that happens, I'm not leaving you."


***


To keep up the charade, he should have taken her hand. Instead, he just walked close beside her, focusing on not looking everyone around him in the face. It was a habit he had not known he had until coming here, and it was a hard one to break.

Still, they made it all the way to the edge of the warehouse district before he noticed a trio of guards tailing them.

"Don't look back, but they're on our tail," he said to Celes, though he kept a smile on his face. "Follow my lead." They turned at the nearest intersection, and as soon as he figured they were out of sight, he grabbed her hand and sprinted towards an alley between two large, boxy buildings.

 The booted feet hurried louder across the cobblestones after them. Shit. This had been a miscalculation. Having already drawn suspicion, to continue with suspicious behavior, in a town already under high alert at all times? You know better than that. But what else could he have done? Confronted the soldiers in the middle of the street? Disappeared into thin air? Their options were limited, and the footsteps came closer, running now.

Soon the soldiers would be upon them with questions Locke was not entirely prepared to answer, and likely one of them would recognize Celes up close, and that would be the end of this little misadventure. There had to be a way out of this, a way to protect her, to keep both of them safe.

Locke did the first thing that popped into his head. He slipped one arm around Celes's waist, cupped his other hand around her neck, and pressed her back against the wall of the nearest building.

She stammered out his name, shocked and confused, and instinct told him to muffle her cry with his own lips. Don't. You can't. Instead, he brought his mouth to her ear.

"Play along," he whispered.

She nodded, though her body remained tense against his. He dropped his lips to her jaw and gently tilted her face away from the street, and at his touch, she drew in a sharp breath. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her, to put her in a position like this without her consent. More than trembling—she was shaking. But she slid her hands over his shoulders and wrapped her arms around his neck, closing the distance between them. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck, the tension in her arms as she clung to him, the taut muscle and soft curves of her against him, and–

The boots echoed on the cobblestone, close, closer, and then the soldiers were at the entrance to the alley. One of them sniggered, and against Locke, Celes stiffened. Was she afraid of him, too, or just of them? Her arms tensed, pulling him closer—and despite himself, he tightened his arm around her waist, trying to reassure her that she was not alone.

"I've got you," he murmured.

"Stupid kids," the man muttered, but there was a note of amusement in his voice. "An alley's no place to bring a nice girl," he called. "Get a proper room."

Locke laughed nervously—the nerves were real, even if the laugh wasn't. He wondered how young he must look with his hair covering his face, how stiff and awkward this stolen moment must seem, like two teenagers caught bumbling together in the dark.

The soldier laughed, too, and waved a hand. Then he rejoined his companions on the street, and there was more laughter, and the voices and boots carried on, drifting away.

Locke stayed against the wall with Celes, in case the men returned. She did not push him away, nor did she quiver with anger or terror. She was still tense, yes, but that was to be expected. His own nerves were jangling, too. His breaths sounded loud in this quiet place. Hers were louder still.

He dared to look down at her in the dim lighting of the alleyway, her face less than an inch from his. The moment hung between them. Her eyes met his, wide and intent and such a pale blue, the color of the sky in winter, and he could not look away, even as he was aware of her parted lips, her flushed cheeks, the catch in her breath, the feeling of inevitability like gravity pulling him toward her—

The look in her eyes was not fear, it was—

"We should—we should go," he stammered. "It's probably safe by now."

He stepped back from the warmth of her, his stomach tying itself into knots.


***


Play along, he had whispered, the closeness of his voice tickling her ear.

There were other things to worry about, things like the soldiers everywhere and how close they'd come to being caught and whether Locke's contacts might turn them in, not to mention the inherent dangers of the Magitek Research Facility, their lack of certainty of how to rescue Terra, the likelihood that being recognized by the guards would lead to her own execution. Life and death things. Real and present danger. And yet she could not let go of those words, and of that moment, and of how it had felt to be so close, so intimate, with someone—not just someone, but with him.

Every inch of her was on edge, and it had nothing to do with Vector.

Play along.

It felt like someone had scraped a blade across her skin. Where his lips had touched her neck burned and radiated out a warmth, and she found her own fingers tracing the gentle path of his breath against her skin. Her own touch seemed to deactivate whatever he had done to her, quelling the heat but not the strange shaky sensation that was not quite fear, not quite pain.

Play along meant that this was an act, a performance.

What had that look in his eyes meant? It had seemed like he was about to speak to her in that moment, before something had changed and he pulled away, and at least she could recognize that as fear. But it was just… pretend intimacy. What was there to be afraid of?

Even pretending probably feels wrong to somebody who's already in love with someone else.

It was like an ache that had been at the back of her mind for months now screamed for attention.

You stupid, stupid girl. The first man who shows you real kindness and you're swooning because you've gotten a glimpse of how he thinks about his dead girlfriend?

And now they were going back through the streets of the city, her hand holding the loop of his bag, neither of them saying a word, and yet that one strange moment was louder than anything else, louder than the voices on the street or the marching of boots on cobblestones or the occasional crackle and blare of an announcement.

Locke did not look at her. She could feel it, whatever it was, like a cord drawn taut between them. There was something about how he ignored it that only made it louder. Had she offended him somehow? But it had been his action, his idea, and…

They reached the designated warehouse soon afterward. It was anticlimactic, just a large squat building. Locke rapped on the door, then poked his head inside.

"I should be going first," she said. "In case it's an ambush."

"It won't be an ambush."

He strode in with confidence toward a group of people—more than Celes expected, five or six of them, plus Sabin, who stood easily a head taller than the rest of them.

Locke spread his arms, hands up, a gesture of greeting that looked patently unthreatening, as if greeting a friend and demonstrating that he was unarmed, all in one smooth, natural gesture that gave no impression of being as calculated as it must have been. And how much in his life did he calculate? How much was an act, a pretense, really?

"I see my rather large friend has made it here already," he called out cheerfully, as two of the cluster of strangers approached with Sabin.

"We didn't set up any sort of password or anything," Sabin said. "And I didn't know how much of anything you'd told them. It's been kind of awkward."

"My mistake," Locke said. "I'm sorry."

"When it felt like it was going to be more than just a few minutes here, I got worried."

"No, no, it's fine," Locke said breezily. "We, ah, attracted the attention of a few guards and had to duck out of sight for a while. But don't worry, we made sure no one was tailing us before we came here."

Such a smooth oversimplification. She almost expected him to crack a joke about the whole thing—we had to fool those damn idiots into thinking there was something between us; can you imagine, convincing them of something like that?—but he said nothing at all of it, as though it hadn't happened.

"I didn't tell them about her," Sabin piped up as the groups converged. "I felt like that might be something you hadn't told them."

"Yes, he pointedly told us he wasn't going to tell us about her." The man she assumed to be their leader smiled wryly, his eyes flicking to her face. "A military deserter, you said. Well. That's one way of putting it. I admit this isn't who I had in mind."

"It's not technically incorrect, though." She knew Locke well enough to read the slight hesitation in his voice, the caution. He wasn't sure how they were going to take it, since they—or at least this man—had recognized her.

"You're taking this rather well," she said. "You don't seem like you're thinking about cutting my head off."

"On the contrary," the man said, "it takes a lot to stand up to the emperor. You have my respect."

"Despite everything I may have done prior?"

"We live in Vector. We are all complicit, in one way or another, in the evils the empire commits. Until we decide to stand against it. Which you, and we, are now doing."

This unexpected support, after months of encountering hatred and distrust—not that it's undeserved—triggered a surge of relief so strong her knees almost buckled from it. She chanced a smile at the man, who returned it.

"As much as we'd love to stay here and talk philosophy," Locke cut in, "we have a government facility to infiltrate and a friend to rescue, and time is short."


***


He was impressed with how quickly they pulled together a plan, and with the connections they had that allowed them to do so. There were clearly a not-inconsiderable number of them throughout Vector, far more than just Hassan himself and his scant handful of companions present in the warehouse.

"We do small things," he said. "Interrupting violence, like when you were attacked by those drunkards. Helping people get in or out of the city. Supporting soldiers who aren't supposed to admit how deeply the war has scarred them. But we've wanted to do something more direct, and you're giving us an excuse to do it."

"Happy to help," Locke replied.

Celes was looking at Hassan very seriously, frowning. "I had no idea any of this existed."

"Of course not. You were a general. We do our best to keep the brass from having any idea we exist. The last thing we want is their attention."

"No, that's not what I mean." She pressed her lips together, deliberating. "I just—I wish I could have helped. I felt like there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening around me. I felt powerless, and alone, like it was just me. And when I did try to do something about it, I just came face to face with how powerless I really was. I wish I could have helped you then."

Locke stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked away from the pain in her eyes.

Hassan shook his head, with that kind but slightly distant smile. "Well, you're helping us now. Your friend here says you intend to 'fuck the place up.' I think those were his exact words." Then he gestured across the street. "That's our signal. Ready?"

"Yes."

"If I don't see you again, thank you, and good luck. But I do hope I see you all again." His handshake was firm.

It was smooth, much smoother than anything Locke could have arranged. Hassan's acting as he crossed the street and approached the guards, his exaggerated limp, his pleading for help—Locke might possibly have been able to pull it off himself, though not as convincingly, and certainly not here in Vector. But what impressed him the most was the rest of them, the silent girl at the side entrance who ushered them through the door, the young scientist who led them with hasty confidence right past another pair of guards indoors, the loudly bickering couple whose voices on the street disappeared as the heavy doors swung shut. Locke would never have trusted his colleagues to be part of something like this. He always worked alone. If there was anything to be taken from this time with Hassan's crew, it was the importance of working together, of trusting your teammates to do what you needed them to do and to have your back.

Getting inside the facility was almost comically easy, compared to what he had feared they would need to do. He knew full well how much you could accomplish if you just projected confidence and acted as though you belonged, and the young man in what appeared to be some kind of regulation lab coat, unmistakable bright yellow, did actually belong here, lending additional credibility to their party.

He brought them to a service shaft, a crawl space between rooms where carts of tools and vials and other mysterious contraptions lay forgotten in the hallway. "Here's where I leave you," he said. "There are stairs down, and half the labs connect to one of these halls. Just try not to be seen. Good luck."

In the relative privacy of this hallway, the three Returners made a hasty plan.

"There's no way they are keeping her anywhere near the surface," Celes said. "I'm sure she's down where the most secret labs are, the ones I never went to."

"Then we go down."

The narrow behind-the-scenes hallway eventually led to a stairwell, equally narrow, and clearly not intended for many people walking together. Celes counted the floors as they descended, but she shook her head when they reached the bottom.

"This isn't low enough. There has to be another staircase somewhere."

That meant emerging back into a hallway much like the one they had started in, with harsh gray walls and sickly overhead lighting. There was only one way to go. The first pair of swinging double doors they passed let the sound of scraping metal and raised voices through. Locke peeked through the crack and saw many figures in yellow coats at Magitek terminals, and beyond them, what looked like an assembly line for Magitek armor.

"Not this one," he said.

They kept going, past different doors into labs with nasty-looking Magitek weaponry in different stages of completion. Locke wished for some sort of firepower of his own to destroy the place—with this many weapons at their disposal, it would be child's play for the Empire to crush every city on the northern continent as thoroughly as they had the south.

This hallway fed into another, and another, and Locke filed it all away in a mental map. It was a maze, but he'd been in worse—as mazes go, at least.

Voices echoed down the hallway. Locke pointed at a nearby door, so close between two others that it had to be some sort of closet. He was gratified to be proven right, and the three of them crammed into the space with whatever spare equipment the mad scientists behind an evil empire kept lying around.

"We're going to wind up being seen eventually," Celes said in a low voice. "What will we do then?"

"I doubt they're used to fighting," Sabin said. "It shouldn't take much to intimidate them into letting us pass."

"The moment we're out of sight, they'll sound an alarm."

"Setting off an alarm isn't a bad idea, actually." Locke tapped his chin thoughtfully. "If we can get them to clear out of here…"

"How? Setting fire to the lab?"

"Or we could cut the power somehow," Sabin piped up.

"Is that possible?"

"I can't promise it, but like I told you earlier, Magitek isn't all that different from the steam power we use in Figaro." Sabin spoke with confidence, though Locke couldn't help a prick of frustration that he'd missed out on some earlier conversion between the other two. "The source is different, sure, but there still has to be a source somehow. We find that, we cut it off, we get them to clear out without endangering Terra or anyone else trapped down here like setting things on fire might."


***


With two goals in mind, and no clear direction how to achieve either, they did their best to scope out the size and shape of the building and make a plan. Celes was grateful for Locke's memory, which seemed to retain locations in perfect detail, and for his intuition, which let him speculate—with surprising accuracy—where hallways might lead and what doors might open into.

Returning to Vector itself had been uncomfortable, surreal, but finding herself once again in this place was something else entirely. It was hard not to think about a childhood spent undergoing tests here, about Cid's treatments, about being a little girl facing off against Kefka, a grown man who was not remotely tempted to go easy on her.

But however terrible her memories of this place might be, they were nothing compared to what Terra must have gone through—and what Terra might, at this very moment, be suffering.

Once more they heard footsteps coming down the hallway, and for the third time this day, they had to find a place to hide. She wondered how much of Locke's spy work involved sneaking around like this, with how easily he took to finding them nooks and hideaways. Once more he signaled to a door, a few paces back the way they'd come, with a few carts of supplies outside it.

Celes reached it first and dove into the darkened room. Sabin was close behind, moving surprisingly fast for someone who looked built more for strength than speed. But instead of Locke dashing in to join them, she heard something clatter outside, followed by a muttered curse.

She cracked the door open to see him on the floor, clutching his leg, face screwed up in pain. Ignoring the look on his face, she hooked her arms under his and tugged. It wasn't graceful, but with Sabin's help, she dragged Locke from the hallway into the room just in time.

The three of them huddled in the corner of the room nearest the door's hinges, to buy them time if the door opened. Inside, the room was nearly fully dark, with only a thin line of light from below the door.

"I thought I heard something," a voice in the hallway said.

"Looks like the cart fell over."

"It's not like there's a breeze down here, though." The doorknob turned, and the three of them huddled behind the opened door. Celes's hand moved to the hilt of her sword; her other arm tightened protectively around Locke, whose back was pressed against her. When did you become so comfortable touching another person? An idle and irrelevant thought. She held her breath. But the person at the door, whoever it was, only gave a cursory glance around the dark room before ducking back out again and letting the door slam shut. The sigh of relief was matched by all three of them. A moment later, Locke had pulled away from her and bounced nimbly to his feet. Celes and Sabin stood up more cautiously, afraid to make a sound.

Then laughter in the hallway that made her skin crawl. A laugh she would recognize anywhere, hysterical at the edge of madness. She froze.

"Kefka," Celes said, her heart racing.

"You think he's checking on Terra?"

"Probably."

"Then we should follow him," Locke said, and he crept toward the door.

"Don't be stupid," Celes hissed. "If we run into him here, it's over. You can't—follow someone on the roof, or wear a disguise, or whatever it is you might do to spy on someone. If you follow him in these narrow hallways, he will see you, and he'll kill you."

"Then what do you propose we do?"

"We stick to the plan. And we pray we don't face Kefka. Anyway," she continued, "you're not in any condition to be tracking after anyone, are you?"

"I'll be fine." The tone of his voice dripped with so much reassurance that she could guess just how badly he must be hurting underneath the pretense.

"Let me see your leg."

After a moment's hesitation, followed by a resigned sigh, he sat beside her and cuffed up the hem of his pants leg. In the darkness, she couldn't see the condition of his leg, but she could feel the excessive warmth of it, the tender swollen bruising along the shin. He sucked in a breath at her touch, but at least he didn't pull away from her.

"If you're going to try to heal it, I really don't–"

"It's either that or let your injury be a liability we really can't afford, and it's only going to get worse the longer you walk on it." She pressed her palms against his shin and, thinking of Shiva's calming touch, tried to summon up what Ramuh had taught her. A chill pooled like liquid at the center of her palms and flowed out from her fingers, pouring over and around the angry heat underneath his skin. Swelling, yes—broken blood vessels, damaged muscle, a bruise that went deep. She had a basic knowledge of anatomy, but this went beyond her understanding; she had to rely on her senses, on the feeling of cooling, to reduce the swelling, reduce the inflammation, calm the injury and dull the pain.

Locke sighed again, relief, as the pain unknotted itself beneath her hands. "That hurt more than I realized."

"You still haven't told us what happened."

"Good old xenophobia," Locke said, as though that were any answer at all. His voice had a cold, dry humor in it.

"Any other injuries?" She reached for his cheek, for the bruise she had only started to heal in the park, but he abruptly shifted out of her reach.

And there it was again—the silence, the sudden intense awareness of him, the sound of his breath in the darkness, the faintest play of the light on his jaw and reflecting in his eyes. She was frozen, reaching for him, and he was frozen out of her reach, both of them staring at the other, and she wondered if he felt this too. It was hard to breathe.

"So," Sabin said, and his voice startled her—startled both of them, as Locke almost jumped out of his skin. The big man chuckled quietly. "Do we wait and see if they come back, or do we charge on ahead?"

"Hmm." She put a hand to her temple. Now that the moment had passed, her senses came rushing back to her. Now's not the time to lose your head. Better start acting like a soldier, or you're going to get everyone hurt or killed. But there was something else there, something she hadn't noticed, so focused had she been on Locke, and on– "That's strange."

"What is?"

"There's—I mean, I can feel something." It was as though she had rung a bell and now the echo of the sound came back toward her, but instead of being something she heard with her ears, she felt it, almost like an itch. Magic. There was magic here, close enough that she could feel it, like nothing she had ever sensed before.

"Feel…?"

"I think I know where the magic is coming from," she said slowly. "Maybe it will lead us to the Espers. To Terra."


***


He was doubly glad for her healing magic. First, because his leg no longer burned with every step—he couldn't imagine how she ever managed to push through worse injuries, when he could barely hold it together with just this. Successfully pretending not to be in pain was clearly not his destiny. But it also seemed like she could sniff out magic in the air around them now, like a hunting dog sensing something the rest of them could not detect.

"And you're sure he can't sense you?" he asked for the third or fourth time.

"I can't sense him, and I doubt he can do anything I can't."

"It's too late to worry about that now, anyway," Sabin said. "It happened. No sense in stressing out over something that can't be changed. If he comes for us because of that, we'll deal with it."

Locke didn't want to point out what had happened the last time Kefka came for them with his magic in the Narshe mines—Celes's panic, the cave-in, the likelihood that the only thing that saved their lives was Tritoch waking. But maybe Celes's study with Ramuh had made a difference. Maybe understanding Shiva's magic would allow her to put out Kefka's fire.

He had a healthy fear of the madman. Celes's fear seemed much less healthy, but Locke hadn't probed just how deep that went, and now certainly wasn't the time.

The door she eventually led them to, down a series of hallways that all looked the same to him, was locked.  "Figures our luck was too good," Sabin muttered. "Are you sure it's through here?"

"Something is," Celes said with a frown. "I don't know if it's Terra or not, but a lot of the magic leads to here." 

"Your turn, then." Sabin looked meaningfully at Locke, who frowned at him.

"What?"

"I figure you can do something about the door."

"I really think you're better equipped to be a battering ram than I am."

"Can't you pick a lock?"

"What makes you assume that?"

"But you can," Celes interrupted with some exasperation. "You freed me in South Figaro."

"I have some proficiency," he grumbled. "It's a useful skill in my line of work. Which, I have to point out, is not burglary, before you get any ideas, nor has it ever been. I'm a treasure hunter, a spy, and a saboteur. I have scruples."

Celes was smiling. "No one said you didn't."

With a sigh, Locke rummaged in his pack and pulled out a few tools, and then he crouched beside the door and got to work.

Sabin laughed, out of the blue, and then he said, "Don't you think it's a little on the nose? You're here, picking a lock, and your name is Locke…"

Locke sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have to be able to hear the mechanism. If you'll let me concentrate…"

They did, falling into blessed silence, and soon he'd lost himself to the work. This was a complicated lock, vastly more elaborate than the simple device that had bound Celes all those months ago, and it took all his concentration to note the subtle change in the feel and the sound as he worked the mechanism with his tool.

"This is taking too long," Sabin said.

"It was your idea," Locke reminded him. "Unless you want to try pummeling the thing down with your fists? But it's made of metal and I'm not sure it'll budge."

With a grunt, Sabin turned away, his attention shifting down the hall. Locke resumed his work. Celes hovered over his shoulder, watching him, and his fingers seemed to slow and lose their nimbleness under her gaze.

"May I try?" Her voice was cool and patient, and the corner of her mouth quirked as she smiled. She looked almost sad, despite that smile. 

"Of course," he said, though if lock picking was in her skill set, this would be the first he'd heard of it. He held the tools steady so she could pick up where he'd left off, and her hands wrapped around his. They were calloused, more calloused than he had ever realized, coarse against the back of his knuckles. One of her long braids fell across his arm, smooth as silk. That contrast, the battle-hardened toughness she thought defined her, at odds with how delicate the rest of her looked—and he had a sudden memory of Rachel's hands, her soft palms, her giggles as she traced his own callouses, how his heart had soared and he had fancied himself worldly enough to protect her, to show her wonders and delight in impressing her with his skill and daring–

Meanwhile Celes took the tools from him, and he released them at once, pulling his hands away from hers to let her work. But instead she withdrew the tools and dropped them into his empty Palm, and then she cupped her hand around the lock. The hair on the back of his arms lifted with the strange teeth-tingling sensation he was beginning to understand as the presence of magic, and a moment later, frost crept along the surface of the door and the doorknob.

"Sabin, you're strong. Can you break this off?"

He did, and the whole lever came off with a terrible sound of metal creaking. Then he set the handle down, reached into the hole where it had attached, and pulled out the sliver of metal that had latched the door, which now slid open toward him.

"I wasn't sure if that would work." Celes sounded relieved.

"Seems like you could have staged this rescue mission all by yourself," Sabin said.

"No," she said. "We needed help to get inside, and there's no way I could have done that. Locke is infinitely better with people than I could ever be." She smiled at him—again that sad, almost shy smile.

"Teamwork, then." He gestured to the door. "Whoever's inside will certainly have heard us, so we shouldn't take too long congratulating ourselves."

But the whoever's inside was in no condition to respond to them, as it turned out. The door opened into a chamber lit by slender tubes that pulsed with the same sickly yellow light that lined the halls down here. The lights and wires converged around a contraption at the far wall. Stepping inside, his teeth buzzed—the air was so thick with magic here that even he could feel it, and a quick glance at Celes showed that she looked stricken.

And no wonder, because held prone against the wall by a complicated series of metal restraints were a number of humanoid figures.

Humanoid, but not human. Even in the sickly lighting, even at this distance, even with the empire's technological torture devices winding around their bodies, they were clearly somehow other, their shapes recognizable but strange. He rushed in, scanning the figures for someone familiar, for Terra.

"Holy shit," Sabin said.

"They're Espers," Locke choked out.

Celes approached them with horror written plainly across her face. "Can you hear us? We're here to help."

"How, though?" Locke could not even begin to imagine what to do, where to begin with deconstructing this machine, even if the figures bound to the wall were still alive. One of them, with horns curling on either side of his face, suddenly opened his eyes. So, then, they were alive.

Sabin, meanwhile, was sizing the situation up with more confidence than Locke felt. Then he reached toward Celes. "Your sword."

"Do you—is it safe?"

Even as she asked the question, though, she handed over her sheathed blade. Quickly, wasting no time, Sabin used the pommel of the sword to bash in a part of the contraption with knobs set into it, crumpling metal and tearing wires. Sabin smashed it again and again, and a spectacular—and terrifying—shower of sparks rained down. Then the lights in the room flickered, and everything went dark.

Completely dark. Eerily dark. And quiet, too, as an ever-present hum Locke had not noticed before went silent.

"Locke," Celes started, but he was already reaching into his bag, feeling for the loop where Edgar's fire less lantern was hooked to the side, ready and waiting for emergencies just like this. He clicked it on, and a blessed radius of light splashed across the walls and brightened the floor around him.

Sabin touched the wall by the figures experimentally. Then he wrapped his hands around the tubes and wires and tore them from the wall with great heaving motions. Finally he wrenched the restraints apart, helping first one figure and then the others from the wall. They stumbled weakly. The reddish man opened his mouth, and a flame burst from it, small and yellow but still hot enough that Sabin stepped back. The other figure, a pale and slender woman, leaned against the man, and her trembling blue hands whitened, banishing the heat from the air.

"Shiva," Celes breathed. Then she stepped forward, palms pressed together. "Shiva, please. We mean you no harm."

Maybe she recognized the magic, maybe she took an educated guess. It made sense that this would be Shiva, and Locke wondered who the other figure might be. But the Espers were so pale, so hollow, a far cry from the nearly godlike power Ramuh had displayed, or even the power that Kefka wielded. Seeing them so reduced made him shiver at the overwhelming wrongness of this place.

"I did not expect… that humans… would ever release us," the woman said huskily.

"We aren't associated with the people who have kept you here," Locke said.

Sabin snorted. "No, we're here to kick their asses and free their prisoners."

"Do you have any more friends here?" Sabin asked.

"Others like us?" Shiva asked, cocking her head to one side. She was beautiful, less frightening than Locke might have expected. "There were others captured with us. Whether they remain here or not, I can't say. We have been here a long time."

"We'll break every last Esper out of here," Locke said. "We'll get you out of here, all of you, and then we'll destroy this place so they can't hurt anyone like they hurt you ever again."

"They are treacherous."

"We'll find a way."

"They gave me your power," Celes said. She took Shiva's hands, and the Esper allowed it. "When they drained it from you, they implanted it into me. I was a child. I'm sorry—I didn't understand—and I'll give it back to you, if you only tell me how."

Shiva laughed, like the faint tinkle of bells. "It's too late for that, I think. Maybe years ago, but I think not even that could save me now, even if I knew how it could be done."

"I'm sorry."

"Was it your sin? No. You were a child. You are a child. Just promise me you'll do good with it."

Celes nodded solemnly. "The Empire wished to make me into a weapon--"

Shiva laughed again. "They only see weapons and tools for control. Magic is so much more."

"I know. Ramuh was beginning to teach me. He–" Celes's expression suddenly grew hopeful. "Surely I could heal you?"

"No," Shiva said gently. "There is not much left to be healed. These forms will not last long."

"Your human forms? Then set them aside, and be yourselves–"

"She doesn't understand." This was the first thing the man had said to them, and he appeared to be laboring to breathe. "There is no time to explain."

"They thought they could wield the power of our bodies. But the true power is that of the spirit, freely given." Shiva took Celes's cheeks in her hands. "Find our friends and yours. Stop this Empire from the harm it causes. Do good with my gift." Then in a moment she was gone, nothing but glittering dust motes sparkling through the air like snowflakes. A sound like shattering ice. Celes gasped.

Before any of the humans could react, the horned man held out an arm to Sabin. "You. Come here." Sabin approached him warily. "You are direct. I like that. Take my strength. I have little left to give, but you will use it well." He roared like an inferno at Sabin's chest, and the martial artist cried out as Ifrit dissipated like smoke.

Locke could only watch as his companions staggered under whatever had been done to them in the Espers' last moments. "Are you all right?" he asked, feeling utterly useless.

"Yes," Celes said, which was not, he concluded, an indication that he should not worry.

Sabin winced. "I honestly don't know. But I'll live. At least, I think I will."

"You'd better, or your brother will have me strung up from the highest point in Figaro Castle," Locke said mildly, though his heart was racing as he considered just what might have happened to his friends. Would they be transformed? Would they survive the Espers' interventions?

"We need to keep going," Celes said. "They'll be coming to investigate the power outage soon, but for now, there must be chaos going on outside. Let's see if we can find the rest of them."


***


It took the chaos a little while to catch up with them. Outside, the halls were entirely dark except for Locke's lantern. It reminded him of endless hours spent in unlit caves, except that these circumstances were slightly different. Short of the Emperor's own bedchambers, it was hard to imagine anywhere on the planet that was more central to the Empire than several floors beneath the surface in this Magitek stronghold. It was not a comforting thought.

Still, at least the three of them had not been caught unawares by the power outage, and the other two seemed fearless, Celes ruthlessly determined and Sabin cheerfully undaunted. There was something heartening about having such strength on either side of him, though he worried about what, exactly, Shiva and the other Esper had done to them.

That answer came soon enough, when they happened upon a duo of imperial soldiers rounding a bend ahead. Lanternlight illuminated the two men's shocked faces moments before Sabin went in swinging. Locke was just thinking about suggesting they plan first and act second when he realized that Sabin's fist was glowing.

Sabin seemed to realize it belatedly, just before his fist hit the man's jaw. With a yelp of pain, the soldier crashed to the floor, and his startled companion took a step back, wide-eyed.

"What–"

"Where are they keeping the Espers?" Sabin demanded, his eyes wild and his chin lifted as he loomed over the man. "Show us or I will set you on fire with my fists."

Well, that didn't take long to sink in. Locke was not surprised when the soldier gulped and nodded—if Sabin had been threatening him, he would have seriously considered going along, at least until he'd had time to think of a way out. He wondered if the fiery Esper had rubbed off on Sabin somehow, but no, this seemed in line with what he'd come to expect from the Figaroan prince: a strong and determined friend, a formidable foe.

Sabin didn't seem inclined to give this soldier a chance to find a way out. He hefted the man up by the collar of his shirt, turned him down the hall, and gave him a shove. "Lead. If you try anything, you'll be sorry."

This was decidedly more efficient than the trial and error that had been their earlier effort to find their way through the facility. Locke's lantern glinted off Celes's drawn sword, and he glanced at her, at her resolute expression, and wondered how anyone had ever believed that she was just an ordinary girl. Even in someone else's borrowed clothes, with her face painted up and her hair in beribboned plaits, she was extraordinary. She shone, fearless—no, she was afraid, without question, returning to this place that held great danger and so many memories of unspoken pain, and yet she was still here, unflinching, to save her friend.

They met no other resistance before arriving at a laboratory door that looked the same as all the other doors around it.

"This is the one," the soldier said in a shaking voice. "They're in there."

"He's right." Celes took a deep breath, as if to steady herself. Then, without waiting for the others, she shouldered the door open and pushed through, sword at the ready.

Sabin looked down at Locke and gestured to the soldier. "Do we bring this guy with us?"

"I, uh." He spun through possibilities—turning the man loose risked alerting more guards, keeping him could mean having a hostage that could be handy in a tight spot, binding him and leaving him down here meant he might have no chance of escape if they did manage to wreck the lab on their own way out. It seemed unlikely to the point of impossible that the imperials would actually negotiate for the return of any common soldier, but… "You'd better come with us. There's more of us out there on the other floors, and I'd hate for you to run into them. They're not as reasonable as we are."

The soldier eyed Sabin nervously, then nodded. "Sure. Yeah."

With that settled, Locke followed Celes, the other two close behind. The lantern would have been insufficient to light this chamber, but a faint glow emitted from two rows of massive glass tubes, each tube easily large enough to hold two or three bodies. An apt measurement, as he realized that was exactly what each tube contained—a body, suspended in clear liquid. Locke walked between the rows of tubes, mouth agape. Some of the forms were more human, others less so—one that resembled a unicorn, another almost feline with a long tail and huge ears. They turned to watch him as he passed them. At least they were more conscious than Shiva and Ifrit had been. He could only hope that meant they would recover from the empire's torturous treatment.

Celes was already at the far end of the row, her sword sheathed, her hand pressed to the tube there. Locke recognized the form within: Ramuh, the old man's beard swirling around him. Slowly, as if the liquid surrounding him made movement difficult, he pointed at a door set in the wall. Celes nodded and moved toward the door.

"Do you have any idea how to get them out of these things?" Locke asked, trailing behind her.

Celes paused just long enough to turn back and call out, "Sabin?"

"On it." The big man stopped at the console at the base of one of the tubes, whether to coax the technology into obeying him or bludgeon it into pieces with his fists, Locke couldn't say.

He had to hurry to catch up with Celes as she turned the door handle, sword out again. Part of him expected this door, too, to be locked, but instead it swung right open without so much as a creaky hinge.

Inside was an unwelcoming cot made of metal, on which a familiar green-haired figure lay. Beside her was an array of machinery and what looked like medical devices, and a stool on which an older man in a yellow laboratory coat was just beginning to stand at their arrival. If not for the setting, he might have seemed affable, with a bushy mustache and shiny red nose.

"General Celes," the man said, clearly caught off guard. Locke eyed Celes, gauging her reaction. She hesitated, but he guessed it was more out of surprise than fear. Nothing like Kefka, then. Locke relaxed, just a hair.

"Doctor Cid." Celes pressed her lips together, and her sword dipped a little.

"It's been a while," he said, squinting at her, seemingly unfazed by the naked blade in her hand. "They told me you joined up with the Returners. They've been treating you well?"

"What?" She frowned. "Yes, I suppose. Cid, I–"

He pushed on, sounding for all the world as if he were catching up with an old friend, or maybe like a teacher who had unexpectedly encountered a student outside of the classroom. "A secret mission, right? Infiltrating the rebellion for Gestahl?" Celes only shook her head, and Cid turned a benign, even patronizing smile to Locke. Something in that smile tied his stomach in knots. "Ah, of course, of course. I didn't see you there. Pay me no mind." As if he thought Celes was only answering this way because Locke was here with her.

That's impossible. I've spent too much time with her—I would know if she was lying.

"I'm here to rescue Terra," Celes said through gritted teeth. "With the Returners, yes."

She can't be that good an actress. Nobody could.

"If you'll excuse me," Locke added, "I'm one of those Returners, and I'm going to do some of that rescuing, if you don't mind." He slipped past Celes to Terra, who lay unconscious and unmoving on the cot. At least she was breathing, and she did not have the hollow look of the doomed Espers.

"Help us," Celes said to Cid, behind him, and she certainly sounded like she meant it. "Please. You have to let her go—you have to let all of them go. You can't torture them any longer."

"It isn't-"

"You shouldn't have done any of this—not to them, not to her, not to me."

This confrontation, too, sounded genuine, as though she were speaking words straight from her heart, words that had gone too long unsaid. A touch melodramatic, perhaps, but still real. Locke considered the machinery beside Terra; fortunately, none of it seemed connected to her directly. He touched her cheek gently, and she stirred. Restraints bound her arms, and he ran a finger over their surface, looking for the catch.

Cid and Celes were still at an impasse, neither of them paying Locke much mind. "I regret letting them send you to the battlefield, I do," Cid said. "You were too young, and we never gave you a choice about any of this."

"Then help us now. You can make it right."

The infiltration had gone so smoothly. Almost too smoothly, and much of that because of Celes herself. And before that… when they found Terra in Zozo, had Celes been the one to send word to the Empire? No—they tried to drug her, when they drugged him—except the Returners had only her word on what had happened in that room. She could have drugged him herself, gotten some sort of information out of him, then played it off as an attack to avoid raising suspicion—and then she brought them out to Ramuh's apartment just in time–

That's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.

They couldn't have known he would be the one to rescue her in South Figaro. He doubted they even knew who he was. Yet they could hardly have planned it better if they had tried, setting him up to cross paths with a defenseless young woman in dire circumstances who could still, through his actions, be saved. If it were an act, he had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

Not to mention that she was one of the most beautiful people he'd ever seen.

Shut up.

It couldn't be possible.

"Let her go," Celes said, leveling her sword at Cid. "Please. You can do that, at least."

Locke wanted to set loose his anger at this man, to seize the opportunity to hold someone accountable, after months of seeing the trauma that had accumulated in Celes from a lifetime of being used—but had that, too, been an act? Was it even possible to pretend something like that? No, it couldn't be. Not that, not Celes. Yet still he said nothing, turning his attention instead to the mechanism of the restraint on Terra's arm.

The scientist's shoulders slumped in defeat. "Very well." He took a loop of small keys from his pocket and used one of them to unlock Terra. While he was doing so, he gave Locke a measured look, as if sizing him up.

Soon, Terra was freed and groggily awake. She leaned heavily against Locke's shoulder for support—Celes was doubtlessly stronger, but Terra was slender and light as a bird, and Celes had other things to be doing, like wielding a sword against any trouble that showed up. So he helped walk Terra from the smaller room into the chamber with the massive tubes, where Sabin was still fiddling with the controls. Celes backed out of the lab behind him, sword still facing Cid.

"No luck," Sabin said, as Locke approached with Terra. "There's got to be some sort of a release somewhere, but either there's not enough power to make it work or I just haven't found it."

From the tube beside Ramuh's, there came a muffled tapping. The figure inside, who looked more like a man than most, was pounding his fist against the glass. He had pressed his face to it and was looking straight at Locke—no, at Terra. Is that…?

"I can try to freeze it, but I'd be afraid of hurting them inside," Celes said.

Cid was observing them from the door to his lab. "The glass is impervious to magic," he called out. "Otherwise they'd have broken out themselves, long ago."

"Impervious to magic, huh." Sabin stood and pressed his fingers against the glass, looking thoughtful. "Celes, if I break my hand, will you fix it?"

Locke barked a laugh. "Are you going to try to punch your way through it? You don't think you'll need both your hands on our way out?"

 "I might be able to heal it." Celes sounded uncertain. "I haven't really tested my limits. But–"

"I can fight with just one," Sabin said, undeterred. "It wouldn't be my first time."

One hand still on the glass, he shook out his other wrist, then rolled out his shoulders. But Ramuh shook his head, his massive beard floating wildly with the motion. With both hands, he gestured to the other Esper who was still pounding on the glass as though he could break it down by sheer force of will.

"Sure thing, old man," Sabin said, focusing on that tube instead. And then, forever cementing himself in Locke's mind as someone utterly unafraid of pain or danger, he hooked a punch at the glass, his entire body twisting with the motion in one perfect arc.

But it was more than just a punch, and more than just a fist. To Locke, it seemed that his vision had blurred and he was seeing double, every movement Sabin made preceded by a glowing red form that looked like a copy of the man. The force of his fist colliding with the glass sent a shockwave that staggered the Returners and reverberated off the surrounding tubes. And then the glass shattered with a tremendous and deafening sound.

Gooey liquid surged out from the fragments of glass that fell around the tube's base in every direction. For a moment, nobody moved, staring in shock. The man inside the tube fell to his knees and dragged himself to the edge of the tube.

"Terra," the man croaked out. "Terra. That's Terra. That's my Terra."

Sabin helped the man down. Outside of the light of the tube, his face was more gaunt than Locke had realized, though he looked like less of a shell of himself than Shiva or Ifrit had.

"You know her?" Sabin asked, though an idea of the answer had already formed in Locke's mind.

"My daughter," the man—the Esper—said, confirming it. The resolve of his spirit warred with the weakness of his body as he hobbled toward Terra, who stared at him, transfixed.

"Father…?" She sounded like a little girl. "D-daddy?"

Locke let her go, and the man folded her into his arms. They clung to each other with a hungry desperation that was so personal and spoke of so many years of suffering that Locke had to look away, to give them the privacy of this moment together.

Instead, he joined Sabin, who was breathing heavily as if from exertion, and Celes, who was looking over his bloody knuckles. The air crackled with magic and with the strange intensity of emotion—Celes confronting Cid, Terra reunited with her father, the horrors of the lab, the fear of an elaborate betrayal

"I think I can take out the rest of them," Sabin said cheerfully. "Just… give me a moment."

"That might be one of the craziest things I've ever seen," Locke said, and Sabin laughed.

"Just you wait. I'd suplex a—a train—if it got in my way."

"I'll believe it."

"Nothing's broken." Celes passed her hand over his knuckles, closing the wounds.

Sabin opened and closed his fist a few times, testing her handiwork. "This is amazing. Thank you." He grinned. "Wish me luck, then."

Locke stood holding the lantern, feeling a sense of inexplicable dread. Terra and her father sat together, sharing a lifetime's worth of stories, words pouring out from both of them like the tears that streamed from their eyes. Sabin hopped lightly on his feet, steeling himself up, and then threw himself at the next tube as his body blurred and doubled again. Only Celes hung back with him. She sidled closer to stand beside him, close enough that he could wrap his arm around her shoulder, if he wanted to. Could pull her to him, and—

She inclined her head at him, smiling shyly. "I think... maybe we've done it?"

Part of him rejoiced to hear this optimism, this happiness, from her. He'd been fighting for months to bring this out of her, hadn't he? It ought to be cause for celebration. And she waited, for his response, for his validation. When he hesitated, her smile faltered.

"I'm just… I'm a little nervous," he said.

Sabin took down one tube, then another. Each time left him panting and bloody, needing to be mended with Shiva's lingering magic, and it was clear the effort took a toll on him. The Espers, too, seemed much worse off than Locke had realized. Though they had appeared healthier within the tubes, once they emerged into the chamber, some of the life in them seemed to drain away as he watched.

Leaving the lantern propped up on a desk, Locke and Celes helped the Espers away from the shards of glass that littered the tile floor, flecked with Sabin's blood. There were six of them in total: Terra's father; a glowing, golden-hued unicorn; a wispy translucent being like the shadow of a man surrounded by a floating veil; a porcine shape; a fishlike beast so massive it had barely fit within its tube; and that strange little blue creature, which did not touch the ground but rather levitated, looking over each of them with an indiscernible expression on its sweet face. It would have been like something from a wondrous storybook, except that they seemed faded, as though the illustrations had been sun-bleached.

"Celes, can you heal them?" Locke asked her. "We need to get out of here. I feel like we're on borrowed time…"

"They won't last long outside of their containment devices."

Locke had almost forgotten about Cid until the man's voice cut into their conversation. The doctor had come closer, though he still stood a distance from them all. There was a notebook in his hands now and a pen, though they were still.

"I don't understand. What's happening to them?" 

"The fluid in the tubes sustained them," Cid said. "With so much of their magic gone, they can't live without support. Look, they're fading already."

Terra clutched at her father. "Daddy?"

"So, you see–" Cid started, but Celes whirled to face him.

"You did this," she choked out. "Their magic is gone because you drained it, because you've used it to power this terrible Empire, and to turn Kefka and I into—into monsters!"

"Listen to me, Terra," her father said. "You must understand that we are never entirely gone. We join the lifestream, but a part of us lingers in those we love. The last gift we can give."

"You can't leave me!" Terra howled. "I only just found you!"

"Shh, shh," her father said, cradling her in his arms. "I'm not leaving you. I will never leave you. A part of me will be with you, always." He kissed Terra's forehead. "I wish I could do more for you. I wish I could have spared you this, and I wish I could spare you the pain to come. But I will give you this, my heart."

And it was just as it had been with Shiva—one moment the man held Terra close, and then he was gone. Light shimmered around Terra and pulsed within her, even as she cried out, "No!"

Ramuh, who seemed stronger than the rest, nevertheless took Celes's hands. "I am very old and tired," he said. "Take my power and use it well, as I have taught you. I believe in you." Then he, too, vanished.

A wordless conversation seemed to pass between the other Espers, and one by one, they too touched Terra or Celes before disappearing. Locke felt tears welling up in his own eyes. This was so wrong. Yes, they had come here to rescue Terra, and that part of the mission promised to be a success, if they made it out of here alive. But to find the Espers, too, only to have them pass away almost immediately after being freed—it was a tragedy, yet another reason to hate the Empire.

Terra and Celes both looked dazed. Sabin was still ragged from expending so much energy—physical and magical energy, as far as Locke could tell. Despite their condition, though, every moment that passed put them all at greater risk and they could not afford to wait longer.

He had just opened his mouth to suggest they leave when an all-too-familiar voice spoke from behind them.

"So that's how it's supposed to be done. Those damn Espers have been holding out on us all this time."

Of course it was Kefka. Of course it was Kefka. The crazed clown stepped through the door—had he been eavesdropping, watching this play out from afar?—followed by at least ten soldiers who crowded the entrance, making any hope of slipping past them moot.

Sabin swore and shifted into a battle stance. Belatedly, Celes stepped up beside him and did the same. The two of them stood before Locke and Terra, shielding them.

Kefka spread his arms out, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear. "General Celes! The game's over. You can come back home to us now."

"What?" Her face had gone pale.

"You don't have to pretend to be one of them any longer," Kefka said. "I'm sure the Emperor is just itching to hear what you've learned."

Was it true, after all? Had she been a double-agent all this time, planted in the Returners until the precise opportune moment, when she could press at their weakness and they would fall? Had he placed his trust falsely, fooled by a pretty girl in need—his own weakness, it would seem? Was she not friend but foe, after all?

He wanted to believe in her, but was that founded in reality or was his pride—or his heart—leading him astray?

"Celes?" His voice wavered, exposing his doubt.

She turned to face him, and there was such pain in her eyes, searching his, looking for something she did not seem to find. "I swear to you, he's lying," she said bitterly. "Have a little faith…"

"Come now," Kefka's words were edged in laughter. "Drop this charade."

"I never lied to you!" Celes looked at Locke without flinching, without even considering the rest of them, her words for him and him alone. "Please—I—"

The tips of Kefka's fingers glowed, and an unseen wind ruffled the feathers on his ridiculous cap. Locke's mouth hung open. He clamped it shut, his mind churning. No, she wouldn't—there was no way—it was preposterous, it would have been such a long con with such limited chance of success—she had put her life on the line for others too many times to be anything but sincere—

Celes shook her head. "You don't... have to believe me. But let me protect you, for once."

He meant to protest, to tell her that wasn't why he hesitated—why are you hesitating, then?—but there was no time, and the words caught in his throat.

There was something of a farewell in her voice and the sad way she looked at him. He stepped toward her, but it was too late. She charged at Kefka, whose hands and arms were almost incandescent, as though he would soon burn the whole facility down. Though he flinched from it, Locke had an image suddenly of that incandescence targeting Celes and incinerating her, taking her from him in an instant of unimaginable pain.

There was a blinding flash and what he now recognized as the scent of magic in the air. His vision seemed to blur—no, that was an illusion—and then a blinding flash of light he squinted away from. Then a strange, terrible sensation of the entire world whirling around him, and there was no sense of up or down, just light everywhere and a nauseating pit in his stomach.

When the world finally stabilized, she was gone.

Gone entirely—not burned up, but absent. And Kefka gone, and the guards as well, and the entire facility, leaving just the afterimage of Kefka's incomplete spell burned onto his retinas, and the lingering feeling of magic.

No, it was more than that. They were in an open field, with the moon overhead and crickets singing. The stillness of it after the cacophony of magic was almost horrifying. 

In the silence, Locke stared at the emptiness where she had been.


***


The small blue creature had whispered to her, thoughts as quick as wind, offering her a chance. She had never used magic like this before—and she was afraid. But more than her fear of this strange and unfamiliar power, she feared what Kefka would do to them all, trapped here so many floors below the surface, with no chance at a quick escape but what the creature offered.

You can only send others, it said to her in something less and more than a voice. You cannot send yourself.

Do it. Not a moment's hesitation.

So the wind shimmered within this isolated space where no wind should have been, and Celes gave herself to the creature's power, let it course through her and pull from her breath. Her lungs compressed and could not draw air, but despite that, she dashed toward Kefka, distracting him from the Returners, buying them just a little time for the creature's magic to carry them away. She ran toward the unbearable heat, using what little she could spare of herself to form a shield of ice over her skin.

I'm sorry, Locke.

There was too much magic here. Kefka's fire, brighter and hotter than ever before. Her own pathetic shadow of Shiva's power. The small but powerful Carbuncle's winds of movement. And fragments of all the poor Espers twisted and tortured here, remnants of the Empire's mad experiments echoing across every surface like memories of agonized screams–

When Kefka released his flames, the magic resonating throughout the facility burst. The force fields containing the Espers crackled. Glass screens and glass canisters shattered. Metal buckled and tore like paper. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, began to shake.

Kefka was laughing, that terrible mad laugh that haunted her darkest nightmares.

"I'll bring you down with me," she screamed over the roar of destruction around them.

"Like hell you will." Kefka gestured to one of his guards. "Take her. And get us out of here. I don't care how, but do it now."

For all her bluster and bravado, she had spent every last ounce of strength she had. Fenrir had taken most of it to whisk Locke and the others to safety—at least, she hoped they were safe now—and the inferno that consumed the chamber in which they stood sapped at the ice in her blood and weakened her still.

She drew her sword to fight them, but they overpowered her quickly. Someone yanked at her hair, and something cold pressed against her temples, and she had only a dim impression of chaos and howling and destruction around her before everything went dark.

Notes:

Here is your slow burn, here is my semi-dysfunctional OTP, here is nearly 12,000 words of a chapter that could probably have been broken into pieces but I didn't so now I'm a puddle on the floor. If you ship them, I hope you will be satisfied with the direction I'm taking them. I also really wanted to make sure Sabin got some time to shine in this chapter. Yes, he absolutely opens up a can of Fire Dance on those Magitek tubes. I am always heavily dependent on Fire Dance to get me through FFVI and I feel it deserves a moment here. Also, I now feel that I have *been in* the Magitek Research Facility, thanks to an overactive imagination. Whee! What a fun location to visit!

I realize that this is becoming less "novelization" and more "adaptation" and I hope you'll all forgive me for that. I'm still following the plot of the game MORE OR LESS, but I'm doing it my way, for better or for worse.

I am learning so much about how to write scenes with 3+ characters in them. Also, can I just state for the record that I love how fanfic lets me indulge in things like what my beta reader calls the "fakeout makeout" and other gloriously shameless trope usage? We're here to have fun and have feelings, and by golly, that's what we're going to do.

Chapter 15: Parting

Summary:

Loss compounds loss and becomes too much to bear.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In the distance, something was burning.

He could see the plume of smoke rising even through the trees, and a muffled crackle like thunder boomed once, twice, three times. It was too far away to see, but even stunned as he was, Locke's racing mind connected the dots. The Magitek Research Facility was coming apart. Which meant–

"We have to go back," he said.

"No, we really don't," Sabin said. The prince had stooped beside him to shoulder Terra's weight. She must have gone unconscious sometime between the disappearance of her father and the appearance of Kefka and–

"We can't just leave her," Locke said.

"We can," Sabin said. "We have to."

"You can, maybe," Locke said bitterly. "Fine. Take Terra back to the airship. I'll—we'll make our way up to Tzen and stow away to Nikeah. Or send you a letter. Or you can come back for us. Just–"

"Don't be stupid."

Locke recoiled, stood unsteadily, backed away. "If—if—there will be chaos in Vector. I can slip in—I can assess the situation—I'll find her and—and we can meet up with Hassan, he's got—we can lay low…"

"What are you going to do, throw your life away? She just bought it for you, Locke. "

"And that's why I can't leave her." A dark thought whispered in his ear, an impression of Celes crushed beneath metal and falling rock, or perishing in flames, her last moments excruciating and alone, and all because of him.

"She'd want you to."

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I should," Locke said, and even he was dimly aware of the hysteria rising in his voice, the madness of the grin that pulled the corners of his mouth painfully upwards, the laughter bubbling up in him that was not humor. "She's been trying to martyr herself dramatically since I met her. You learn not to listen to it after a while."

This was pointless. Every moment he spent arguing with Sabin was another moment longer for Celes to be in Kefka's clutches, at the mercy of the merciless Empire, or under the rubble waiting for a rescue that might never come, if the whole facility had come down around her. She'd sent her companions closer to the airship than to Vector, but if he ran as much of the way as he could–

He slipped into the shadows, away from the burdened Sabin, fully prepared to take off through the forest as fast as his legs would carry him.

But something grabbed at the collar of his shirt and held him still. The man's reflexes must be better than Locke imagined from someone of his size. For one long, frustrating, humiliating moment, Locke flailed his limbs and tried to squirm away, pushing hard into the ground with the balls of his feet, trying to break Sabin's hold on him and get away.

The fabric dug into his throat, making him cough and sputter, as Sabin spun him around so they were facing each other. For the first time, Locke got a sense for just how powerful the man was, not just the hulking mass of him but the strength, the force, in that mass. Some small animal part of Locke's brain recognized danger, and he froze, limbs locking, the jittery panic stilling.

"I will carry both of you if I have to," Sabin said through his teeth, "but I would really, really rather not."

"Then let me go."

"Will you run off if I do?"

"No," Locke said. "I promise. I'll stick to you like glue."

Sabin sighed. "You're full of shit. All right, let's get moving."

He did not release Locke's collar as they marched away from Vector. After the fourth time Locke tried to break away, he made good on his threat, hefting Locke over his shoulder like a sack of grain, despite much protesting and kicking of limbs.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Sabin trudged on through the forest with both of his companions draped over his massive shoulders. This method of transportation was bumpy and not conducive to conversation, and Locke really doubted either of them was having a good time, but Sabin was nothing if not stubborn, and Locke had to admit that he had not made a very good case for his own trustworthiness at the moment. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes and tried to crush the panic squeezing at his heart.

"I get it," Sabin said. "I really do, all right? If I thought we could get her back without all four of us probably dying, I'd do it. But Terra is out cold, I just beat up giant glass tubes with my fists for an hour, and you are not in your right mind right now. Even if Celes is somehow in one piece and away from that psycho clown, we'd still be screwed."

"She's in one piece," Locke choked out.

"Yeah. Of course she is. She's a tough girl. She's been through worse."

Had she? Torture, war, fire, imprisonment and an impending execution—which would almost certainly await her now that she was in the Empire's clutches again—and up til now, she had somehow stayed alive despite the odds. He was torn between reassuring himself that she was a survivor and screaming inside that even if she did not perish in the ruins of the facility, the Empire did not take kindly to deserters or traitors.

Because of course she hadn't been a spy, or a plant, and he had been an utter fool to doubt her even for a moment.

Something he would regret for the rest of his life.

Another regret to take to the grave. Another life lost because of him.


***


When the airship was at last in sight, a hulking shape silhouetted against the night sky, Sabin finally put Locke down and allowed him to walk the rest of the way himself, with some small shred of his dignity intact. Sabin did keep a hand on his shoulder, discouraging any effort to run away again. But at this point that would be futile. He couldn't just run back to Vector, not from here.

"Hey," Sabin called out to the waiting vessel. "Hey! We're back."

His voice was loud in the nighttime forest, and someone must have been waiting up for them, because a little window opened, letting out a square of yellowy light, and then the entrance ramp unfurled from the side of the ship.

By the time they'd reached the top of the ramp, Edgar was waiting for them in the doorway. He breathed a sigh of relief and gestured them in, his face lighting up at the sight of Sabin and then Terra, before his forehead knitted thoughtfully at Locke.

"They've got Celes," Locke said before anyone could interject. "Drop me off in Vector and I'll bring her back."

Edgar glanced questioningly at Sabin. "You're wounded," he said. "Come inside and we'll get Setzer's doctor to take a look at you, and you can fill us in on what happened along the way."

Sleepy-eyed attendants in their nightclothes stumbled into the hallway as Edgar led the trio of Returners farther into the airship. The gambler himself arrived shortly afterward, hair in disarray, eyes red-rimmed, his breath smelling of cheap alcohol.

Soon enough they were all crowded into the doctor's chamber. Locke leaned against the door, arms crossed, as the doctor examined first Terra and then Sabin, who began to explain what had happened to them when it became apparent that Locke himself would not be providing the recap this time.

Once again he felt the moments ticking by as though they were drops of blood dripping from a wound, and when it all ran out Celes would be–

"Please," Locke said, interrupting Sabin mid-sentence. "If you can't bring me closer to Vector, then let me off here. I'll—restock my provisions, make sure I've got everything I need—we have allies in the city who could help me–"

The king exchanged a glance with Sabin, whose responding grimace and shrug carried a message, which Edgar acknowledged with a faint nod.. Then Edgar put a hand on Locke's arm, cutting off the rush of words spilling out of him. "Here, walk with me."

Locke let himself be led from the room and down the hallway, away from the gambler's curious entourage and the crowded room that smelled of cleaning solvents and medicinal herbs and blood. Edgar's presence at his elbow was comforting, the silence as they walked companionable and familiar.

"So," Edgar started in a gentle voice, and he paused to breathe as though about to launch into something much longer.

But at that moment, the engine stirred and came to life, and the airship thrummed beneath their feet. Locke's stomach lurched as the vessel heaved, the unmistakable motion of liftoff.

"No," Locke cried. Pushing Edgar aside, he dashed down the hall, toward the narrow winding staircase that led to the upper decks.

Edgar raced after him. "Locke, stop."

But Locke did not stop. He flung open the door to the staircase and then threw himself upward, taking the stairs two at a time and clinging to the railing as the ship was tossed around by the rushing air currents. Edgar followed close behind, his stockinged feet silent compared to Locke's clattering boots.

The king caught up to Locke as he was struggling to throw open the door leading out to the top deck. The ship rocked again, sending him careening backwards, and only Edgar kept him from toppling down the winding stairs.

"What are you going to do, throw yourself off the ship?"

"We can't leave her," Locke said again.

"So you want to put everyone in danger on the slim chance that you can find her and bring her out of Vector, in the middle of all of this?"

"Not everyone," Locke said. "Just me."

"I can't let you do that," Edgar said. "As your friend, and as one of the Returners—no." He put his hands on Locke's shoulders, looked him full in the face. "Practically speaking, we can't afford to lose you, neither your skills nor your knowledge. If we're to free everyone from the tyranny of the Empire, we need you. There's too much at stake for me to let you throw your life away."

Locke hunched guiltily. Edgar was right, and he knew it—they were fighting for something much larger than any of them, larger than him or Edgar or Celes, and he owed the rest of them—and the world—that much. But his mind kept reliving Celes's stricken face, her despair, and how she had walked into death without hesitation to save them.

She was gone. For them. For him.

"Besides," Edgar said, smirking darkly, "Celes was half out of her mind at the thought of you going to Vector alone last time. She wouldn't stand for it now."

"This is different."

Edgar pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "I know how you feel about her, but..."

"What is that supposed to mean?" His voice buzzed low and harsh in his throat.

A level, disbelieving stare as Edgar scoffed. "Are you serious, Locke? I've seen you two together. If you're pretending there's nothing there... I'm not going to humor you."

Her blue eyes on his, her lips parting, a breath away—"Celes is my friend." His hands formed into fists of their own accord, and he could feel heat rising in his cheeks, one part anger, one part embarrassment. "I may be her only friend, too, and I've let her down so profoundly that I may never be able to make it up to her. But I can start by saving her now."

"She may be beyond your reach," Edgar said.

"Maybe! But I still have to try." His shouting voice echoed through the enclosed space of the staircase. In a more level tone, he went on. "I can't let them execute her. If she—even if she–"

"I understand this is hard," Edgar said. "Probably harder for you than for most. You care deeply about other people, and there are... parallels."

"Parallels?"

"With–" Edgar hesitated, took a breath. "With Rachel."

"I'm not doing this because of Rachel!"

"Not because of her, no. But I know you, Locke. You think you should have saved her, and now the same thing is happening with Celes. "

Is that what Edgar was thinking? Another girl presumed dead, with only Locke fighting for her to be saved, insisting that there was something left to save? "This is nothing like what happened with Rachel. This is—Celes is—we're fighting this war together, dammit, and if you think I wouldn't charge in there to save you if it were you instead–"

"You're allowed to be in love with her," Edgar said.

Locke whirled and swung, a wild and uncontrolled haymaker, at Edgar's face. It was probably only the king's surprise that let his fist find his mark. Edgar stumbled backwards, clutching his nose with one hand, steadying himself against the wall with his other.

"I am not," Locke said, shaking with fury, "in love with her."

"Locke," the king said, his voice nasal and muffled.

"I know you've never committed to someone before, but not all of us can just flirt and move on. To some of us, it actually means something." That was cruel, and he regretted saying it a moment later, almost as much as he regretted punching a friend. 

"I know more about commitment than you could possibly imagine," Edgar hissed. "You are not the only person who knows what grief is. But some of us don't have the privilege of losing ourselves to it."

Locke dropped heavily onto a cold metal step and buried his face in his hands. The anger in him was burning out, leaving him cold and aching, walking a tightrope over a bottomless pit of sorrow that threatened to consume him if he made a single wrong move.

Edgar took a deep breath and steadied himself, and he was the poised, unruffled king once more. "I'm going to give you space. You're not in your right mind at the moment, so I will forgive you. But please do what you must to come to terms with this. We need your help as soon as you're able."

Locke stayed alone on the staircase as the rushing wind howled just overhead, freezing and miserable and sick to his stomach, for hours.


***


Her head ached, and her mind was hazy, every thought bubbling up slowly through the depths as though there were some resistance interfering with her awareness. As though something was strangling her mind, whispering words that tangled with her own thoughts, ideas that did not belong and yet disguised themselves as hers. She pushed it away, pushed all of it away.

Something held her body down, too. She struggled against restraints that did not budge even as she struggled. Every movement hurt, but she had hurt before, and she was not broken. Around her, familiar voices were arguing—she thought she heard Kefka and Cid, but this must be a nightmare, the worst of her memories returning to haunt her and nothing more.

When she opened her eyes, she expected to see Locke seated beside her, slipping a mask of reassurance over his own worry when he realized she was awake. But no, Locke was not here. He was away, safe, with the rest. A brief moment of relief.

And then she remembered, and her heart split in two. Locke's doubt, his hesitation, his distrust. A traitor. He thinks you betrayed him.

It's what you deserve.

This time, when the darkness reached for her, she did not fight back.

Notes:

Shortest chapter ever, but it needed to stand alone.

Please forgive me for my departures from the original, and please trust me to get us back on track eventually. I didn't plan for this to happen, but the story has taken on a life of its own, and I can only shape it as it grows.

Chapter 16: Aftermath

Summary:

Grief can only sustain itself so long in the middle of a war.

He, as always, tamps down his sadness by helping others, as though he can lose the guilt that haunts him every moment.

Alone and lonely, in a familiar place that no longer fits her, she rages against the tyrant who has taken so much from so many.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It took him two days to scrape himself off the floor and shape the flattened remnants of himself—the remnants of what, exactly? his heart?—into something resembling a man once more. Meanwhile, the airship and its crew had continued the journey toward Narshe. In the end, Locke joined Edgar in the dining hall wearing a smile that was maybe a little frayed at the edges. What else could he do? There was still work to be done.

"I was just trying to figure out what, exactly, we'll be reporting to Banon," Edgar said, after a round of inquiries into Locke's mental state that Locke evaded with practiced ease.

"The Magitek Research Facility has fallen," Locke said. "Possibly taking Kefka with it, if we're lucky. But either way, that's bound to have repercussions for the rest of the Empire, don't you think?"

"And you're confident in that?"

"Even if it didn't physically come apart, which I do think is a likely possibility," and he exerted enough control that his voice barely wavered at this, "we… freed... the last of the Espers they were using."

"But how much do you suppose they were reliant on those Espers?"

"I don't know," Locke said.

"Sabin said they were using some of them as a power source, and the whole facility seemed to shut down once they were gone."

"It did seem that way. I'm no expert." Locke shrugged with a little self-deprecating smile. "But we can dream, right? Maybe the Facility is gone forever and the Empire itself is crippled. Maybe the source of Magitek has dried up for good."

"If that's true," Edgar said, wonder in his voice, "that could turn the tide of this war."

Locke didn't have the stomach for much more of this. Besides, he was sure they'd both be rehashing everything they said in this room soon enough when they arrived at Narshe. Banon would want every detail, and then he'd lock himself in a room with Edgar and whomever else had a sense of military strategy and figure out what the Returners would do next.

So instead he found Terra, who was on one of the uppermost decks. She sat on a plush upholstered couch with her knees to her chest, her face pensive as she gazed out a porthole window. Locke's throat tightened as he thought of what she must be feeling. He had been lost inside himself for two entire days, self-indulgent, as though he were the only one in the whole world who had someone to mourn. But Terra's loss was infinitely more profound, and she had less to carry herself through loss. Locke took a seat on the other end of her couch, and she glanced up at him.

"How are you feeling?" He knew he was echoing the same pointless line of questioning that Edgar had tried on him, but Terra deserved someone to listen to her. And this wasn't just a pleasantry.

"Sad."

"I bet." What could he say to that? Normally he'd ask about the person someone had lost, offering them an outlet for their grief, but Terra had spent so little time around her father that he worried that might only serve to remind her that she had no stories to tell or memories to recount.

"Are you angry?" she asked suddenly.

"Angry? Why?"

"It feels like… she traded her freedom for mine. I thought… I mean. I think I could understand if–"

"If there's anyone to be angry with, it's Kefka. It's the Emperor. It's the whole goddamn Empire. But not you." He smiled at her, with as much reassurance as he could project, trying to spread the warmth into his eyes. "Besides, she would be really glad you're safe. You should have seen her when we realized they'd taken you. I thought she was going to march right into Vector by herself and demand they release you at sword point."

"That's pretty much what you did, isn't it?"

"Not quite." He cocked his head at her, grinning. "There was a lot of sneaking around, first. Disguises, secret identities, the whole nine yards."

"But then Sabin started breaking things."

"Oh, yes. Very explosively. Although, come to think of it, there was some threatening-at-sword-point for your freedom…" He swallowed back the guilt that wanted to choke him, remembering how Celes had stood up to the scientist she called Cid, confronting some shadow of her past to free a friend while Locke had spent the whole time doubting everything she was and everything she had done. "And we don't know that they've captured Celes." Or worse. "We've got allies in Vector. For all we know, she and Hassan and his friends are toasting the fall of the Magitek Research Facility at this very moment."

"I really hope so."

"Me too."

Silence fell over them both for several minutes. With Terra, it was nothing like Celes's brooding. The girl's sadness permeated the air around her, but there was nothing seething or churning within her, just a sense of loss and emptiness.

"Look," Locke said, slowly. "Grief is… hard. I can't imagine what it's like for you, so I won't pretend I do. But whatever you're feeling, it's OK to feel that way. It will come and go. Sometimes it will crash over you and be everything, and sometimes it will recede and you can breathe again."

"It doesn't really feel like that," Terra said. "I think maybe if I'd known him longer, maybe it would? But it's just—it's strange. It feels kind of like a headache, somewhere deep inside me, but it's not everything."

"Ah, I see," he said, and of course he should not have assumed he knew what to say to her, should not have assumed that her grief would be the same as his.

"Mostly it just feels really unfair," she said. "Does that make sense? I think I'm—more angry than sad, maybe. He was there for years and I didn't get to know him. He was there, and I was there, and we never saw each other. I didn't even know he was there. I didn't… didn't even know my father was an Esper. And I have—a piece of him with me, in a way I don't know how to describe, and I know I'm lucky to have that, but the rest of it is just..."

"It is unfair, and it shouldn't have happened. None of it should have, to any of you."

"Do you have a dad?" A moment later, self-consciously, she added, "I mean, of course you have a father. Everybody has a father, at least at some point. But is your..."

"No, he died years ago."

"Your mother?"

"Passed away when I was young."

"I'm sorry."

"This isn't about me," he said. "It's… been a long time for me. It doesn't go away, exactly, but it's distant. It's like a broken leg that mostly healed, but you still notice it sometimes if you step just wrong. Which is to say, don't worry about me."

"I guess a lot of people lose their parents."

"In war? Yeah, there's probably a lot of that going 'round. But that doesn't mean you don't get to be angry, or sad, or both."

She sniffled. "I think it's both."

"Well, if you need to cry, you can. Or if you want to yell, you can do that, too. I'm here for you, either way."

For the first time, she smiled, that sweet smile full of childlike innocence that broke his heart, knowing how much of her innocence had been stolen from her. It was that smile that won over so many of the Returners, that made their ragtag group so protective of her even though she likely wielded enough magical power to blow any of them away. "Thanks."

For the rest of their trip, he stayed close to Terra. She needed the support, although Locke knew he was rationalizing this to himself, even if it was true. Letting Terra cry on his shoulder gave him a feeling, however fleeting, that he could at least not fail someone.

As they approached Narshe, Edgar expressed surprise that the airship could sail on unaffected by the thinner mountainous air, but the gambler—when had Edgar started calling him by his first name?—just grinned wolfishly and seemed to take that as a challenge. Locke wasn't sure he trusted Gabbiani not to take unnecessary risks, but the thinner air was at least less prone to turbulence, and so Locke and his poor stomach could only complain so much.

They landed in the snowfields north of Narshe. By then, Gabbiani had admitted this wasn't his first visit to the mountain town, and indeed the few townspeople who gathered at the landing site seemed mildly interested but not awed by the mighty vessel.

"They're neutral, I'm neutral," he said with an offhand shrug. "Or we were, until your little rebellion got your hands on us both.

There had not been a chance to send word to Banon of anything that had happened afterJidoor, and even the few missives sent by either Edgar or Locke had been vague and coded by necessity, lest a message with vital information fall into the wrong hands. Arriving in Narshe via airship, with the gambler and his crew in tow, Terra recovered and safe, Celes missing—though Locke was not sure that the Returners would count that as much more than a tactical disappointment—it was all quite unexpected, judging by the look in Banon's eyes when he caught up to them midway through town.

Banon took Terra's hand between both of his. "It is a relief to see you back again."

Back in Narshe? Back in her original form? Locke wasn't sure what Banon meant, or even if the old man understood quite what had befallen Terra, but he squeezed her hand with a grandfatherly fondness that surprised Locke. Banon was too much of an idealist to be described as cold or calculating, but he had never seemed tender or especially prone to sentiment.

"We have much to discuss," Edgar said.

"Over dinner," Sabin piped up. "Or breakfast. I don't even know what time it is, but my stomach tells me it's time to eat something."

"That can be arranged." Banon had released Terra, and his expression returned to his usual concerned practicality. "I trust you've just come from Vector?"

"We come from Vector, leaving—if we're correct—its Magitek Research Facility in ruins, its source of power lost, and—if we are very lucky—possibly the fall of Kefka Palazzo as well." There was a note of triumph in Edgar's voice, though Locke's heart was heavy to hear it. If Celes had truly given her life to win that victory, she would have considered that a fair trade, her true redemption after everything she blamed herself for, and looking at the war as a whole, one life lost to turn the tide was a small price to pay. But oh, he did not have to like it, even if it were true.

Banon's bushy eyebrows disappeared into the mane of hair framing his forehead. "Much to discuss, indeed. It is not my place to tell you how to rule your kingdom, but Edgar, to have taken on such a danger personally–"

"Edgar didn't set foot in Vector." Locke swallowed. "He stayed on the ship. The only ones who went into the city were me and Sabin—and Celes."

"Who is not among you, unless…?"

"No," Locke said, his voice choking. "She… she…"

"She's missing in action," Edgar finished for him. "Something to investigate, and I'm sure Locke can take the lead on that when we're ready. But we needed to return and debrief you as soon as possible. And I'll be returning to Figaro soon, too, even if only temporarily."

By then, they'd reached the inn that had housed the Returners. It seemed to have transformed more fully into a proper headquarters in the weeks since Locke had been here last, perhaps because few visitors would travel with Imperial troops so recently sighted in the vicinity. Come to think of it, the city itself had looked a little different as they walked. It had been readied for war.

Soon enough, the five of them were sharing a table in the dining hall, with a hurried meal between them that Locke suspected had been cobbled together from leftovers but that was satisfying enough, if unremarkable—the ubiquitous Narshe stew, some crusty and slightly stale bread that served to soak up broth, and steaming mugs of cider.

Banon listened intently, peppering them with questions or asking for clarification. Terra, for her part, sat in silence, listening no less intently. The story had to be told at the beginning, following Locke's journey south with Celes following Terra. He summarized it quickly, without the embellishments or jokes he usually relied on to make a telling more palatable to the audience; revisiting these memories felt like handling a piece of broken glass, its smooth planes safe but those sharp edges on all sides ready to slice him to the quick if he slipped at all. Ramuh, the revelation of Terra's birthright, Celes studying magic, the arrival of the Figaro brothers, the assassin—he told of it as though it had happened to someone else, and he was grateful when the others were able to take up some of the telling for him.

When at last they reached the end, their flight back, Banon's eyes were glittering with hope. "This could change everything," he said, on fire with the possibility of it all, as though it had not been bought with a companion's life.

But it was true, and Locke could not deny it, no matter how much it hurt.

They could not know, yet, whether or not this was truly a crippling blow to the Empire.

But they could hope.

He could hope.

Hope.


***


"Take that thing off her."

The voice came to her as if underwater. Dimly, she realized she knew that voice. Leo. And he was furious, his anger red-hot, barking out the words, every one a threat.

"Yes, sir."

"And get her out of this cell."

"But sir, Lord Kefka said–"

"I will accept full responsibility for anything that happens, including Kefka's displeasure. But remove that thing, and dispose of it. Destroy it so it can never be used again, if you can. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir."

She thought maybe she ought to care about this exchange. The words meant something that seemed important. But she was very tired, and thinking hurt.

There was a blinding flash of light, and a stabbing pain in her temples, until she mercifully lost consciousness again.


***


When she woke next, the world had a clarity to it, a definition and shape and certainty that it had lacked while she swam self-empty at the edge of oblivion. She knew herself once more, and wished she did not. A wave of loneliness spread through her, and while being alone had once had a numbing effect on her, she had briefly tasted what it was like to not be alone, and losing that fleeting sense of companionship was worse than never having known it.

She sat up and buried her face in her hands, and her head throbbed, but at least she could move freely, without restraints.

Light slitted through the metal shutters over the window, bright enough to illuminate the furniture in this small space, but she did not need to see it to know it. A narrow rectangular room with just enough space for a narrow bed, a desk and chair, a dresser, and a slim bookshelf. Standard issue for anyone deemed worthy of their own room in the barracks, and her home for as long as she could remember.

If not for the new scars visible on her bare arms, and the gaping hole inside her heart, she might imagine that the past few months had been some sort of fever dream, a fleeting story dreamed up by an unquiet mind, and soon the loudspeaker in the hall would summon her to resume her training.

What was she doing here, in this room, in this bed? Did they think she would join their army again, become their tool again?

The last thing in the world she wanted was to be part of a genocidal, megalomaniacal force that had somehow not relieved Kefka of his duty despite the tragedy of Doma. She would rather die than join them—a choice she might be forced to make. At least she knew where she stood on that front. She could face it with cold certainty. They had sentenced her to death already; if they came to collect at last, she would accept it if the alternative was conscription.

And you're scared of proving Locke right, that you're a turncoat, that you can't be trusted. Admit it, that's the real reason you wouldn't go back. You're so desperate for his approval that you would die trying to gain it.

And you will never earn that, because you will never deserve it.

She had no relevant experience, no basis of comparison, and yet she thought that it was not supposed to hurt this much, realizing you loved someone.

Love, or just infatuation? Maybe she was the love-starved girl Edgar had accused her of being, months ago. Charmed by the first man to show her kindness, latching on to Locke as desperately as a baby bird to a caretaker.

But foolish and as it was, this feeling inside of her had to be some kind of love. That was why, even now, even in these circumstances, the memory of his hands against her, his lips brushing against her ear as he whispered to her, the magnetic pull he had on her, made her cheeks burn in the darkness. And now, as she huddled in a pathetic lump, she felt a dry hollow ache like someone had carved a piece of her out and left her empty, because he was not here and she needed him to be here, in a way that scared and shamed her, and yet she knew two things.

One, that he did not trust her.

Two, that he did not love her.

And whether she would ever see him again or not, she needed to accept these things, accept that she was not and likely never would be the sort of person who could earn his trust. Not even Locke trusted her—Locke, who seemed so stubbornly determined to believe the best in anyone. He had seen her, more clearly than any other person in her life. He had seen her for what she truly was, and he had not found her worthy of trust, because in the end, what was she but a broken blade that had been used to kill innocents? Designed for one purpose, her soul forever tainted by her sins.

This was who and what she was, and what she would always be.


***


She couldn't say how much time had passed before booted footsteps clopped down the hallway and someone knocked on her door with a firm hand. Not the heavy staccato of a demand, nothing that might precede the door being flung open and someone hauling her bodily from the room to her execution. Just a polite but strong knock, and when she did not answer, that same knock again.

"General Celes?"

The voice carried clearly through the door, accustomed to projecting across the battlefield to his men. She could imagine him standing on the other side of it, rigid-spined, as precise in his manner as ever.

"I'm not a general anymore," she said, and the walls here were thin enough that he could hear her.

"May I come in?"

She sat up again, looked around the room, pushed her hair out of her face. She was still wearing the clothing she'd arrived in, the borrowed shirt and top that Locke had scrounged up for her disguise, though it smelled now like smoke and blood and dirt. It made her look like a civilian, and for a moment she felt vulnerable because of it—but she was a civilian here, now. And Leo had seen her covered in blood and grime from the battlefield so many times. What dignity did she have to preserve in front of him?

"All right," she said, and he entered.

Leo looked much the same as he always had, with perhaps a few more wrinkles on his weathered face. As always, he wore his uniform, a loosened collar the only concession to being off-duty.

Instinctively, she wanted to stand and salute him. For all that they had ostensibly held the same title for a year or so, his role as her mentor carried through, and she had never fully adjusted to speaking to him as an equal. But she was weak, hungry, exhausted, and heartbroken, so she stayed seated.

"Celes, I'm so sorry." Leo sounded sincere, as always. "We've treated you like a prisoner."

"Isn't that what I am?"

He visibly considered arguing, then hesitated. "Your situation here is complicated," he said at last. "But there's no reason for us to treat you like an enemy."

There it was again—how many times had she argued with Locke about this very thing, when he had insisted that she was not his enemy despite all evidence to the contrary? How strange to be approaching it from the other side. But had she ever really been anyone's ally? She had abandoned her home and her own people, gone so far as to raise arms against them. "Leo, I joined the Returners. I've been fighting your army for months." She paused before adding, "I've probably killed some of your men."

"I trust you were fighting for what you believed was right." Leo crossed his arms in front of his chest. "We all put our lives on the line for that reason, knowing that's a risk. We accept it."

"The conscripted Marandans didn't. It was forced on them, and you know it—join, or die. That's what this Empire does."

Leo sighed. "It's not so simple."

"Isn't it? If you won't take part in its bloody expansion, it will destroy you for daring to say no, and it won't be gentle." She stared levelly at him until he looked away. "Gestahl sentenced me to death for that crime, and his soldiers stripped me naked and beat me bloody and left me in chains to die at dawn."

"I… I didn't know."

"If you think I'm exaggerating, I promise you I am not." She held out her arms, showing the gash that had healed crookedly despite the efforts of the Returners' field medic, the burn marks and the silvery scars from lacerations, and she thought of the wounds that had healed completely and yet left damage she could still feel. "When someone fights you on the battlefield, they want to stop you, but their intent isn't to make you hurt. It's different when the point is to cause pain."

He grimaced. "You shouldn't have been sentenced in the first place."

"He wasn't wrong to judge me a traitor." She stared at the window, at the tiny puckered flaws in the curtain that made such a familiar pattern, and wondered how a place could feel so known and yet so alien. "I tried to kill Kefka. I wish I'd succeeded then; it might have saved Doma. But my crimes are worse than Kefka's, I suppose. It's worse to try to kill a genocidal maniac than to be a genocidal maniac, if the perpetrator is on your side and the victims are not."

"What happened to Doma was—a crime beyond forgiveness."

"Then why is Kefka forgiven? Why is he free?"

"Gestahl wants to end this war conclusively. He's using the weapons at his disposal to do so."

"You know better than that. Leo, you're too good a person to blind yourself to what the Emperor is doing, has been doing. What we were—are—guilty of."

They had never come out and said any of this before. A younger Celes had skirted around asking about it when her doubts were still new, but she had feared disappointing Leo, feared being labeled as what she later unquestionably became, a traitor. Now that the subject was broached, she felt—relief, and anger, in equal measure.

He sat down at the foot of her bed and let the air out between his teeth, and she realized that he did look different—older than she'd ever realized, and tired, as if he'd been carrying something heavy and his legs would give out soon. War crimes tend to age a person, she could imagine Locke saying. And of course Leo had not been personally responsible for much of that, but surely it weighed on his conscience at least as heavily as it had on hers.

"I admit I came up here hoping I might be able to talk you into joining me," Leo said. "The loss of the Magitek Research Facility might mean we stop our expansion and focus inward, and I—would like to have someone I can trust to help keep order in our territories."

By someone I can trust, she knew he meant not Kefka, that he wanted someone else who wasn't a sociopath to help enforce the Emperor's rules in less overtly destructive ways.

"Before you start arguing with me, let me finish," he went on, with the faintest hint of a smile. "I don't really expect you'll actually say yes. And… maybe you're right."

"Then let me out of here." She gestured to the window, with its locking shutters that gave the impression of bars. "Tell Gestahl you executed me for being a traitor—that's probably what he's going to order anyway. Or tell him I found a weapon and killed myself before he could finish the job, and let me get away."

Not that she would be able to run back to the Returners and expect them to trust her, when Locke had been the only reason they trusted her in the first place and even he had changed his mind. But surely she could do something if she got away from here. Sabotage the Empire somehow. Serve as the muscle for Hassan's group, or find her way to Maranda or one of the other occupied cities and harry the soldiers there, or–

You sound like Locke. Who do you think you are? No one's going to listen to you, and it's not like you could make any difference doing that anyway. You want to try to martyr yourself, like that will redeem you in any way?

"You'll join up with the Returners," Leo said, "and I would rather not face you on the battlefield."

"So you'll keep me here to be executed instead?"

"I didn't say that." Leo looked down at his hands folded in his lap. "I don't think Gestahl would order your execution, but I'll talk with him to make sure he won't."

"And you'll keep right on serving him as he orders you to move into yet another city-state, or tighten his noose around one of his 'territories,' and you'll both look the other way when Kefka murders innocents?"

Leo inhaled sharply at that accusation, but she didn't make any effort to soften the blow. He could not make a good case in his defense, and they both knew it.

Celes pushed harder. "I've been to the cities on the northern continent, the places he tried to subjugate, the places they tell you are uncivilized, riddled with crime and poverty. And that's all a lie. They don't need his so-called 'order,' his control. This war is unnecessary, and Gestahl is a tyrant. And they will rise up, everywhere, to stop him."

She couldn't say what she expected—of him, of this conversation. But he rose, abruptly, to leave.

"There could be peace," she said. "We could stop this war. We could bring peace."

"You've grown to be a strong woman," he said. "Such strong convictions. Gestahl... is my Emperor. He's not a gentle man, but he's trying to do what is best for his people. As I do. As we all do. I'll talk with him."


***


Days passed, and she remained under house arrest, pacing the floor of her room, rereading books she had read countless times before, practicing the calisthenics she had space to do. Confronted by the contents of her bookcase, she could hear Locke's gentle teasing—not a single work of fiction, and only one slim volume of poetry. History and geography, which she read now in growing horror as she compared the version presented in these texts to what she had seen with her own eyes in her travels. Had Leo ever been to a foreign city-state as a civilian, as a visitor, and not as a conqueror considering the fallen? Did he still hold in his mind that the rest of the world needed the influence of the Gestahlian Empire?

They let her out to bathe, though armed guards escorted her there and back. She half expected, the first time, that someone might go in to supervise her, but she was at least afforded that much privacy. Her scant possessions remained just where she had left them all those months ago, and so she wore clothing that had been tailored to the body of the general she had been. They almost fit, but not quite as they had before, just like everything else here.

When the emperor summoned her, she was laying in her bed again, staring at the ceiling, feeling the smallness of the space, how cell-like it was and always had been. Narrow bed, narrow window, narrow outlook, all perfect to keep her walking the narrow path of obedience that Gestahl required. These walls had begun to close in when she had first started to question everything about this war, when the world she had known crumbled to dust and she realized she had been raised as a bringer of death without justice. They closed in on her now.

Was he summoning her to make another proclamation, another judgment against her treason, despite Leo's efforts? But the soldiers who escorted her down the hall kept a respectful distance beside her, and no one clapped irons on her wrists. She could probably take them both down before they could respond—one of them wore a sword at his hip, standard issue, and it would help her cut her way out.

Not that she had a chance of escaping before they stopped her. Not her against the entire defense squadron in the castle. But she could take as many of them with her as–

No. She couldn't. None of the emperor's personal guard were conscripts; they were born loyal, following what they'd been told all their lives, as she had. They were not victims of Gestahl's cruelty—they had perpetuated it—but they were still human. She could not slaughter them. She didn't have the heart for it.

But she would go to Gestahl with her head held high, and if he sentenced her to death once more, she would go to it without conceding an inch of her soul, or of her humanity.

Notes:

Oh, what, it's been less than a month since the last update? I don't know, I guess that's what happens when chapters are under 10k words.

We'll get somewhere with all this soon, but I wanted to give a few other characters some meaningful moments on screen. (Also, I might be stalling a little as I try to untangle a few threads down the line...)

Things are sometimes too easy in the game. And of course they have to be, but when the story gets fleshed out and made more plausible, there are more complications to be negotiated. I'm doing my best here. My beta reader said I'm trying to Suikoden-ify my FFVI, and I don't think he's wrong.

eta: If you read this earlier and are reading it again, yes, I cut out a paragraph at the end. I think it's stronger this way.

Chapter 17: The Tide Rises

Summary:

Locke organizes an uprising. Celes tries to confront the Emperor himself.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

If there were consequences following the fall of the Magitek Research Facility, the ripple effects of it did not reach the northern continent immediately. While Edgar set off for Figaro, Locke paced grooves into the floor of the Narshean inn, waiting for something to do.

"You don't take well to sitting still, do you?" Sabin said to him. The prince had remained in Narshe rather than following his brother. Locke suspected that he, too, hoped to act on what had happened in Vector. The two of them had been there; they had seen the facility lose its power and fall dark and silent, had heard the distant rumble from outside that must have meant it was damaged in some meaningful way.

"I can sit still when I need to," Locke replied, which wasn't completely a lie. "I'm just not convinced this is the time for it."

"Me neither. We should be out there busting some imperial skulls."

Locke made a face. "I'm not really a skull-buster."

"Right, but, you know. Something like busting skulls. Something."

Strategizing was Banon's job, Edgar's job, not Locke's. But again and again he kept going back to what had happened in Vector, that it had to mean something, it had to have been worth it. And if that were true, operating as though nothing had changed would be a wasted opportunity.

So he barged into Banon's makeshift office in one of the smaller inn rooms, pulled a chair out, and dropped himself heavily into it.

"We hit them hard, Banon. We should seize this chance."

At Locke's interruption, Banon looked up from a notebook in which he'd been writing. Likely tracking enemy troops, or maybe taking inventory of the Returners' resources. The lines on his face seemed deeply etched, and he sighed. "The Empire is still occupying South Figaro, and they've made camp near Zozo and Jidoor, to say nothing of their troops near Doma."

"But doesn't that mean they're spread out thin?"

"With their firepower, being spread out isn't much of a handicap."

"We destroyed their firepower."

"We can't make that assumption," Banon said. "You know that you took out the power source. But we don't know those were the only Espers in their grasp, and we don't know whether the Magitek Research Facility was truly destroyed, or whether they have the capacity to rebuild it."

"Then shouldn't we strike now, before they have a chance to recover? Press them hard, right? Get them to turn tail and head back to the southern continent."

"We simply don't have the numbers for a battle on that many fronts."

"We don't," Locke said, "but…" He made a sweeping gesture with one arm. "People are rising up all over the continent. All over the world, even. If not for the resistance den in Vector, we would never have made it through." His open palm slammed on the table. "The world is a powder keg ready to shake off the shackles of the Empire once and for all."

Banon was smiling at him, and he supposed there was fondness in it, but it was a patronizing smile, too, that made him bristle. "You're talking about people who have likely never held a weapon in their lives, facing the most powerful military might in the world. These are civilians, Locke."

Locke thrust a finger at the map on the table, at the cluster of pebbles representing their allies. "So were many of the Returners, before they found their way to us. Give the people a chance to choose to fight for their homes, for their freedom. None of them can fight the Empire alone, but none of us can, either. It's only together that we're strong. We've already accepted that we might die fighting, but our freedom is worth that risk. Others are already making the same choice—shouldn't we invite them to join us and add our strength to theirs?"

Banon was silent, and Locke bit his tongue, wondering if the older man was deliberating or simply thinking of the gentlest way to turn Locke down. But his brow knitted, a sure sign that something Locke said had stirred the cogs in his mind and he was even now working through the logistics. "Coordinating multiple fronts would be difficult, even with trained soldiers, but it could be done. I know who to contact in South Figaro. We can count on Edgar's troops. Nikeah is full of allies who are choked by the Imperial presence there, but if we can get them to retreat, the Nikeans will be all too happy to tighten the noose with us. If you think we can rally the people in Zozo and Jidoor, maybe even Kohlingen..."

That Locke kept his expression pleasantly neutral at the mention of Kohlingen was evidence that he had put the emotional struggles of the past few days behind him. With as much conviction as he could muster, he said, "We can."

"We could strike together…" Banon was already moving pieces on his map, his face lighting up as the possibilities began to churn in his mind. "Thank you, Locke. I think I am so used to being outmatched by the Empire that I recoil from going on the offensive. I fear losing innocent lives in an all-out attack, but we must push back eventually, and this is the best shot we've ever had." With a wry smile, he added, "Age can make you wiser, but experience can make a person too cautious. I'm glad to have fiery young men like you and Edgar to keep me moving forward even when I hesitate."

"So you're going to do it?"

"If I can put together a plan." Banon chuckled. "Now might have been a good time to have the tactical genius of a well-trained general at our disposal."

Locke sucked in a breath through his teeth. Was this the first time Banon had referred to Celes as an outright ally? He thought perhaps it might be so. "Do you think we could get a letter through to Vector somehow? If we could reach Hassan, we could… confirm the situation there."

"It's worth trying. I would like to know the magnitude of the damage the Empire has sustained, before we ask civilians to put their lives on the line. And… maybe your friend there will know what has befallen Celes."

Once more Locke held his face and his voice steady. "I can—I can write a letter."

"Good. I'll get in touch with Edgar and some of the others and see if we can formulate a strategy together. I'll send word to the allies I know in South Figaro and Nikeah. As for the rest of the continent…"

Locke stood up, grinning. "I'll pack my bags."


***


In times past, Locke might have saddled a chocobo and ridden off solo into the sunset, camping alone under the stars and riding hard during the days, and then gone alone into the cities as nondescript as you please to disseminate information or make connections by himself. But he had seen how much more effective Hassan's group was because of their coordination, and the weight of abandoning Celes had driven home to him the importance of trusting your companions.

So he rallied the troops, so to speak. Which meant, in his case, asking Sabin to escort him in case of trouble, as he remembered the look on Celes's face whenever he talked about going somewhere dangerous alone. And he recruited the Doman and, by extension, the wild child who had first come with the Doman and Sabin to Narshe what felt like half a lifetime ago.

The Doman's fervor to stop the Empire might inspire others to take up arms, and he knew how to train others to fight. The child came because he did not seem comfortable among the Narsheans, a feeling that appeared to be mutual. Locke would have doubted that the boy could actually speak a human language, except that he communicated in very simple sentences to Sabin and Cyan and no one else. Even his name, Gau, sounded more like the call of a wild animal than any name Locke had heard before. He could only hope the boy would stay on the airship as much as possible.

That was the last part of his plan, the only way that visiting so much of the continent in a short amount of time would be possible. He had to admit a little anxiety about asking Gabbiani to ferry him around from city to city, especially since the gambler had joined them with the expectation of being ordered around by Celes—strange man—and she was not here, at least for the foreseeable future.

But the gambler only laughed when Locke asked him. "What else am I going to do, sit up here on this godforsaken mountain and listen to old miners complain about gout all day? I'll take you where you need to go. I like a change of pace."

Locke did not suggest that he had expected the gambler to give up on them altogether and set off on a freewheeling adventure across the globe. Better not to give the man ideas that had not yet filled his head.

Thus equipped with a proper traveling party, Locke set off to fulfill his part of the plan. Banon and the others would figure out the rest.

Truth be told, he was a little sorry that Banon could take care of South Figaro without his help; he loved the city, occupied though it may be. But, then again, he would not be able to return there without remembering his escape with the woman who had once been an utter stranger and yet now was a very dear friend—or would be, if she still lived, if she ever forgave him for losing faith in her. Forgiveness had to not just be earned but also deserved, and he could not say he did.

Taking to the skies in the airship did not improve his mood, especially not the terrible rumbling of liftoff when it was all he could do to keep his stomach and its contents intact. He gasped deep breaths, gripping the arms of his chair, and tried to reassure himself that the airship had not self-destructed during any of its previous lift-offs and seemed unlikely, from a rational perspective, to do so this time. The nausea lessened after long enough in the air, though it still struck him at unpredictable and inconvenient moments.

First, they went to the sister cities of Zozo and Jidoor. The trip that had taken him and Celes weeks to cross the desert and work their way southward passed in a little over a day. The derelict old tenement buildings reaching toward the sky looked like children's toys from up here, and the gleaming streets of Jidoor seemed even more unreal.

They left the airship on the Jidoor side, in a field that Gabbiani said he'd used before many times. It was not surprising that the man had visited here before.

"So how do we want to tackle this?" Locke asked, once they'd landed and his legs and his stomach were both fully under his control again. "Edgar gave us a few letters of introduction, but I don't know how much the wealthy Jidoorians will listen to me, even so..."

"You're the one who suggested we come here," Sabin said, and Locke winced. "Don't look like that. I meant that you must have had something in mind before coming here, so let's do whatever you had planned. Let's talk to the people you do know, and who cares if we don't talk to the rich people? Nothing lost there. We don't need wealthy benefactors, we need people who are actually willing to step up and fight."

Sabin's confidence in him gave him the boost he needed to take charge again. Unlike either Edgar or Locke himself, Sabin spoke his mind plainly rather than with the intent to sway someone's feelings, so any words of support from him were genuine or would not have been offered at all. Grateful that he was not here alone, Locke led Sabin, the Doman, and their unruly child, who had been stuffed into something approximating real clothes so that he would not draw too much attention on the pristine streets of Jidoor.

"Don't tug on your boots," Cyan said to the boy, who had been doing exactly that.

"Boots hurt feet."

"I don't like boots, either," Sabin proclaimed, and Cyan gave him a clear you're-not-helping look that made him laugh. "We'll get you some proper slippers when we get the chance. They're a lot lighter. Easier to run in, or fight in."

"Gau fight!" the child exclaimed gleefully, in a loud enough voice that the people around them stared and gave them a wide berth. For what he hoped might be the last time this visit, Locke regretted bringing company with him—or at least this company. He could only hope that they proved to be helpful when the time came to speak with the people of Jidoor, or Zozo, or both.

Truthfully, he was taking a chance here, with little solid connection to build from. But what he did know was that there were people in both cities who were tired of the status quo, who sought change even if it put them at risk. 

First, he wanted to talk to the servant girl, Annie, who had been present for that meeting with the opera house impresario. For all that Locke had failed to connect with her that day, his gut told him that her attitude toward the impresario and his guests was more than just run-of-the-mill dissatisfaction with an employer. He suspected she might be part of something larger, some sort of revolutionary movement within the sister cities—and if he could get through to her now, she might lead him to new allies and a chance to make his case.

As luck would have it, when Locke and his companions knocked at the impresario's door and asked after her, she was available to be summoned from within. She met them just outside the house, giving Locke a disgruntled look without any sign of recognition.

He'd had the airship ride to think of how best to approach this and concluded that simple honesty would work. No wheedling or flattery, no circumlocution. So he explained himself, his ties to the Returners, and his mission.

She regarded him flatly, a raised eyebrow the only indication of her emotions. "What makes you think I can help you?"

"A hunch." He shrugged. "I know there are people trying to rise up against the wealthy citizens of Jidoor. I encountered one of them trying to sabotage the opera. Not the tactic I would have chosen, but he was dedicated enough. But I wonder how he managed to get hired at the opera house, given how clearly he was from Zozo. His accent was a dead giveaway. I thought he might have friends connected to the opera house somehow, and you seemed a likely candidate."

"Really."

"Working as a servant for people like this, they treat you like you're part of the furniture. You can learn all sorts of things just by quietly doing your job in the background. If I wanted to find out what the gentry of Jidoor were up to, I'd plant someone in a house like this."

She narrowed her eyes, and he was not surprised when she said, in a wary tone, "And if that were true, what then?"

"Then I'm asking you to hear me out," he said. "Introduce me to your people, let them hear what I have to say, and let me learn what it is that you need. I want to free people everywhere—from the Empire's control, but also from injustices closer to home. And I don't think I'm the only one in the Returners who feels that way. Maybe we can help you, if we form an alliance."


***


The next day, in an open square in Zozo, Locke stood staring into a sea of hopeful young faces and weary, wary elders and everything in between. It was more people than he'd expected, which meant that the conflict here was likely more of a crisis than he'd realized. Or maybe some of those in attendance were not affiliated with the half-baked uprising that had tried to target the opera house; if word had gotten out that the Returners were here recruiting, more people might have been interested in learning more..

He could have put out a general notice in the city, stood on a street corner proclaiming that everyone should band together to rise against the empire. But that might attract the wrong sort of attention from imperial sympathizers—those were everywhere, even in South Figaro—or get him written off as a madman.

The Returners themselves had primarily recruited in secret, young idealists hearing about this resistance and finding their way to the group's headquarters or flocking to those around whom rumors swirled about rebellions and Returners connections. When Banon had first founded the Returners—so called because they were meant to be the people returning power and peace with their own hands instead of expecting someone else to save them—he had been labeled a fool, reading dangers where none existed. Surely it would not happen here, people said. The Empire had been so far away, keeping its attention focused on its own people. Their problem, not ours. And by the time the Imperials established a presence on the northern continent, the objections to the Returners had shifted but were not weakened: Fears that they would draw retaliation from the Imperials who wanted to root out opposition before it had time to set down roots. Worries that the Returners would attract idealistic young people to throw their lives away for a cause that was either pointless or hopeless.

But this fight, here and now, was neither pointless nor hopeless. Locke could speak confidently not just of his faith in the Returners but also the blow that had already been struck against the Empire, what he had seen with his own eyes, and the opportunity that had been won to push back once and for all and expect to win.

The people here had questions, of course. So many questions, not all of which he could answer. Demands for promises he couldn't yet make. The people of Zozo lacked infrastructure, resources. A portion of Jidoor's wealth and resources should have been theirs, and without it, they could not address the myriad ways in which their city was coming apart at the seams. No jobs, no education, no repairs for housing, nor even totally reliable sources of food. These needed to be addressed. The people here were not unwilling to fight the Imperials, but they feared being used as cannon fodder, abandoned and left to die as they felt they had been when those who now lived in Jidoor had taken everything with them and fled the city years ago.

He carried these worries with him the next day when he used Edgar's letters of introduction to call on some of the wealthier citizens of Jidoor. He'd spoken with lower-class Jidoorians who mingled with residents of Zozo and shared some of their concerns, but these people might as well operate on a different planet. He had much less luck speaking with them; some of them could not be reached by calling on their general humanity, and he found himself speaking in terms of business and costs and consequences in a way that made his skin crawl. As the son of a merchant, he had some familiarity with how people like this operated, but it ran so counter to who he was that it hurt to use these ideas and these tactics about human lives instead of just trade.

This required the development of a new mask, one he didn't especially enjoy wearing, but he calibrated it as quickly as he could within the first few minutes of his meeting in Jidoor, and eventually he had the Jidoorians at least listening to him.

Whereas the people of Zozo had worried about being asked to lay their lives down without regard for their inherent worth as living people, and without the resources to give them a fighting chance, the people of Jidoor—or at least these people, who he hoped were not entirely representative of the city at large—feared that the people of Zozo would rise up against them instead of the Imperials.

He rubbed his face with one hand, swallowed back his grimace, and did his best to take the worries and needs of both cities seriously.

The message he wanted them to take away was something he repeated again and again to both sides: "Divided, we'll all fall. But if we work together, we can do this. We can take back our land, push the Imperials back where they came from, and make a better future for ourselves. For all of us."


***


In the end, after several harried days going back and forth between the two groups, he had worked out a tenuous agreement. Whether it would stand longer-term was beyond the scope of his judgment, but he believed both cities would stand by the Returners and take part in whatever assault Banon developed. Jidoor would provide funding and resources, both to arm the people of Zozo and to invest in the city afterward. He'd managed to speak with more of the general populace in Jidoor, as well, and many of the merchants and common people there were willing to take up arms against the Empire directly, even if it meant fighting alongside their less savory neighbors. And the people of Zozo were fighters, if cynical and not prone to hopefulness, and they were ready and willing to throw themselves at the Imperial camp so long as they had the equipment to stand a chance of surviving.

Negotiation like this was new to him, and it gave him a splitting headache. Not that he'd deluded himself into thinking local politics was for him, but this brief taste of it cured him of ever wanting to go near it again. Yet he feared he'd volunteered himself for the role here in the future. Someone had to make sure Jidoor didn't go back on its promises, and Zozo needed connections to the outside world through someone they could trust.

That was a problem for his future self to deal with. For now, he had to report back to Banon. Back on the airship at last, he gave the order to return to Narshe, all too ready to let someone else do the thinking for a little while. But the gambler, leaning casually against the wall in his control room, only laughed.

"We're supposed to go to Kohlingen," Gabbiani said, and he clucked his tongue. "Or are you going to shirk that part of the assignment? Not that I'd tattle."

"I don't think it'll be necessary."

"I mean, you are asking all of these other people to put their lives on the line, aren't you? Rich people, poor people. Seems like everyone would be more likely to survive with a few extra allies." He grinned wickedly. "Did you run out on a debt in Kohlingen? Trying to avoid some girl you knocked up?"

Locke grabbed the collar of Gabbiani's jacket and shoved him, surprising both of them. He generally did his best not to rise to the gambler's bait. He'd been doing well, up til this point, but the insufferable man's mocking cruelty was more than he could comfortably bear, and this cut right through him to the quick. Ordinarily, Locke would not have chosen to spend much time in the company of someone with such a barbed sense of humor, but he needed the man's airship.

Of course, he had to admit to himself, he was trying to blame this on the gambler because it was easier to think the man deserved it than to accept that Locke himself had now struck two people in anger in a short period of time. He'd never been a violent person, nor quick to lose his temper. This was unprecedented, and it couldn't keep happening. Why was he losing control now, when he'd never before even felt enough anger that control was a concern? It felt like something in him had broken, or maybe shifted so that wounds he had once thought healed were now raw and exposed at the surface of his soul.

Gabbiani's eyes were wide with shock and fear that quickly faded into dark amusement. "So there is a reason you're avoiding that place. Funny, Kohlingen never struck me as anywhere particularly interesting. It's a sleepy little town. But now I'm dying of curiosity."

"There's nothing to worry about. We can go there next." Locke wrestled with neutrality on his face—wearing anything resembling a smile would be impossible at this point, be nothing more than a grimace, just as he had to fight to keep his voice from coming out like a growl. He couldn't say how successful he was. "Go ahead and chart a course to Kohlingen."


***


Was there even a point in trying to disguise himself here? He desperately wanted to put on someone else's face, come here as an unknown representative of the Returners calling on the people of Kohlingen to join their neighbors in an uprising against the Empire. Put aside being Locke Cole, put aside everything about who he was and pretend to be another person altogether. A fresh start, and no memories, and no recognition from the people of this town. But the only thing worse than walking into Kohlingen as Locke Cole would be pretending to be someone else and then being revealed to be everything they already thought he was: a no-good liar, a thief and a scoundrel, the useless ne'er-do-well who had ruined the life of a beloved young woman and devastated her family.

Her family, who had threatened to have him forcibly removed if he ever returned. And yet here he was returning, not with the cure he had searched so long for—the only cure you've found might be dead beneath a pile of rubble in Vector—but to ask the town to give up even more of its promising young people for his reckless and destructive ways.

A disguise would make things worse. Pretending to the other Returners that he had no history in this town would not help, either. Feigning illness and asking Sabin or Cyan to take point on this visit without any context risked stirring up that history without his even being around to mitigate it.

There was no way around it. He was going to have to tell them the truth, or some part of it.

"Before we land, I have to tell you all something," he said to them as they sat together in the steering room in an assortment of chairs cobbled from different parts of the airship. Gabbiani was at the wheel, for once, something that would have made Locke nervous except that Edgar seemed quite confident that the man truly knew what he was doing, and Locke trusted Edgar, even if he had no faith in the gambler himself.

All eyes were on Locke, expectantly. Even Gabbiani glanced at him. If he could have talked to the rest of them privately without making things even more awkward than they were, he would have done so. The idea of that superficial alcoholic cracking jokes at his expense while he bared his soul about the greatest pain and greatest mistake of his life turned his stomach, but he would just have to weather it. Still, he couldn't help cursing the man as a spoiled, sour, cynical asshole who had probably never actually cared about anything or anyone but himself in his life.

But Cyan would understand—he'd known love and loss. And Sabin would care, even if he'd never been in love before, because Sabin was a fundamentally good person who was just as worthy of Locke's trust as his brother was, and somewhere between their initial trek to Vector and now, he had come to think of the younger Figaro brother as a friend of his own accord. If Gabbiani got out of line, the two of them would shut him down. Locke was fairly sure of that.

"I can't be part of recruiting the people of Kohlingen," he said, to start with, and then he gestured emptily with his hands a few times, waiting for the words to come to him. "It would be, ah, counterproductive. They don't like or trust me. There's… there's a girl here I was involved with, and, ah… It didn't end well."

At the wheel, Gabbiani snickered.

"Oh, shut up," Locke snapped. "We were out together one day and there was an… an accident, and she… And she…"

It was impossible to continue. He hadn't meant to say even this much. The room was suddenly too small, too full of questions that his companions had every right to ask but that he would not be able to answer, not now, maybe not ever. His stomach turned, and he rushed outside onto the deck.

The wind whipping past his ears didn't help him feel any better, nor did emptying the contents of his stomach over the railing of the airship. The world spun dizzyingly far below, and he closed his eyes and willed everything to stop.

"Hey." A familiar and very unwelcome voice behind him, close enough to be heard despite the wind. Ah, fuck. The gambler had followed him, leaving this nightmare monstrosity unpiloted as it hurtled through the sky into hell.

"Go away," Locke said, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swallowed more bile.

"If I'd known, I wouldn't have pushed you back there."

Locke grimaced. "What do you know about it?"

"More than you might think," Gabbiani said, and there was no trace of humor, not even of a dark sort, in his voice or on his face. He leaned in closer, his expression astonishingly sincere. "Here's a suggestion. Let those two take care of this for you. Worst case scenario, they'll still do better than if you went down there yourself. Stay up here with me. You might hate me, but try to trust me, for once."

"I don't hate you," Locke said, realizing it was true.

"I don't really mind if you do." There was his dark humor, his wolfish smile, and it suddenly occurred to Locke that he could read between the lines of that sentence and see what was underneath it: You can't possibly hate me as much as I hate myself. And that nuance, which Locke had previously been blind to, threw everything he'd thought about the man into question.


***


He had to have faith in his teammates. He had to trust that they would be able to handle this on their own—they were competent and capable adults, Sabin had at least some of the royal training that made Edgar such an effective king, Cyan had served as a leader and been a family man, and it wasn't as though Locke himself had any special gift or even experience with recruiting people to their cause. Up til this moment, he had never realized how hard it was for him to let other people handle work that he thought was meant to be his. Had never had to confront it before, maybe. Banon and Edgar were generally all too happy to let Locke do his thing and leave him to it, and he'd enjoyed a great deal of independence. It had led to a certain degree of overconfidence that Vector had demolished, as he came face to face with his own limitations. And seeing Hassan's team in action had certainly made an impression on him, another better way to do things, another example of an area he had to work on.

So he tried to swallow his discomfort when Sabin and Cyan set off across the hills to Kohlingen, the town itself visible on the horizon but far enough away that the airship would not make its citizens feel uncomfortable. He tried to remind himself that it would be all right. The Empire had attacked Kohlingen once but not occupied the region, so there was nothing to fear. No one but he had anything to fear here.

There was more to the heaviness he felt, though. Even at this distance from the town, his heart twinged. He remembered the joy that lightened his step whenever he saw it on the horizon, knowing that Rachel waited for his return every time he left. And when he closed his eyes, he could see her face, her vivacity as he remembered her and then the knowledge that she now lay perfectly still and unmoving. He could step off the airship, follow his comrades into the city, let his feet guide him to her house along a path he had walked so many times it was etched into his soul—he could see her, today, now, and imagine it was nothing more than ordinary sleep.

He could, and he couldn't. Her parents had made it abundantly clear that there would be consequences for him if he returned. What would he do if they cut him off completely and he never knew what became of her? What if she woke and no one let him know, and they lived the rest of their lives apart when they could have been together?

What if, in visiting Kohlingen, he drew the town's ire and ruined their opinion of the Returners, and they refused to offer their support, and the people of the northern continent fell against the Empire? More was at stake here than Locke's own feelings.

So he waited in one of the abandoned chairs in the navigation chamber, staring out the window—a classic brooding pose, he thought self-reproachfully—while the gambler poured two glasses of red wine from a bottle that was possibly worth more money than Locke had ever held in his life. Or it could be cheap swill, closer to vinegar than anything worth drinking. Locke could imagine it going either way.

"You don't strike me as someone who drinks hard liquor," Gabbiani said, as the claret liquid sloshed into a fluted wine glass that seemed entirely too delicate to have any business on a moving vehicle. He lifted the stems of both glasses in one hand and held them out to Locke, who belatedly and begrudgingly accepted the one closest to him.

"I don't really make a habit of it, no."

"Do you ever wonder why I drink so much?"

"Not really."

The gambler took a seat in the plushest of the chairs on the deck and slouched into the cushions, the very picture of an aristocratic degenerate, with his frilly shirt and rumpled hair and wrinkled trousers. "So the preternaturally nosy spy has never once taken an interest in sussing out my secrets? I'm offended."

"I've had other things on my mind," Locke said, bristling not just at the insult but at its accuracy. And he should have investigated the gambler, as he would any other potential ally with questionable motives.

Gabbiani twirled the wine in his glass with practiced ease, reclining as though he expected someone to paint his portrait at any moment. He did not drink. Neither did Locke. "I upset you when we first met, because of Celes."

How to respond to this when he could not deny it? "You were, and are, disrespectful to her."

"I'm not going to hurt her. I couldn't, even if I wanted to, which I don't." The man sipped from his glass, managing not to spill a single drop on his frothy white shirt, although Locke suspected he'd already started drinking before this conversation. "I can appreciate a beautiful woman. I saw you appreciating her too and thought I recognized a kindred spirit."

"But—I wasn't–" Locke sputtered.

"It doesn't have to mean anything," Gabbiani continued. "I think we can agree that, objectively, Celes is an exquisite creature who is a delight to look at, who could certainly break us both in half if she so chose, and maybe it's a nice distraction to think of what that might be like."

"I... can't say I've thought about that sort of thing."

"I'm not asking you to divulge your fantasies. You seem like the sort of man who keeps that to himself." Gabbiani grinned and gestured with his glass at Locke. "Don't deny it, the color in your cheeks is exposing you. But I won't judge you for it. Thinking about another girl is natural. It doesn't mean your heart doesn't belong to this one—what's her name?"

He used the present tense, Locke noticed, and despite himself and everything else the man had just said, he was grateful for that detail. "Rachel," he said, and swallowed back what saying that name aloud did to him.

"To Rachel." There was no mockery in Gabbiani's voice, for once. He raised his glass as though this were a toast, then took a long drink of it. When he finished, he slouched backward in his seat and twirled his glass, watching it with a melancholy expression. In a quieter voice, he said, "Her name was Daryl."


***


Emperor Gestahl looked both old and ageless, with a gravitas befitting his station. Once, he had inspired awe in her, outright devotion, though recalling that now made her feel sick. His garments were perfectly tailored, grand robes of red and black with golden embroidery, and a purely ornamental gilt-edged breastplate, a reminder that he was not merely a figurehead but a bringer of death sitting at the head of unparalleled military power. The folds of his clothing obscured his limbs, making him seem much larger and more physically imposing than she suspected he was in truth. Long white hair and a grandfatherly mustache did little to soften his imposing presence.

She stood before him in his state room, surrounded by cold steel walls, the only break in the severity of metal a splash of aggressively red velvet cushions on his throne and blood-red tapestries bearing the insignia of the Empire reaching from floor to ceiling at regular intervals on either side of the chamber.

She would not grovel, or plead. Not this time. It had not saved Doma, and it would not save her now.

He sat, as though she were not worth even the effort of getting to his feet. "Celes." No title, no surname. His voice boomed, so shockingly deep it seemed it might shake the earth.

She would not use an honorific. He did not deserve to be so honored by her. He was no longer her Emperor. She said nothing.

"I didn't expect you to return like this, or to cause us so much trouble. I knew you had joined the Returners—Kefka reported fighting you in Narshe..."

"Kefka murdered the entire nation of Doma in cold blood," she said. Fitting, really, to say this now—the last words she had said to him were screaming to save Doma, for all the good that had done anyone.

Gestahl stood at this. He wasn't used to being interrupted; peons did not interrupt an Emperor, and even his generals knew their place and waited their turn.

"I did not order Kefka to poison Doma," Gestahl said.

"It was done in your name," Celes retorted.

"Am I to blame for everything my soldiers choose to do of their own volition?" Gestahl's mustache exaggerated the movement as he spoke. It might have been comical, on someone else.

"You knew he was planning it," Celes said. "I warned you. Yet you didn't stop him. You let it happen. Did their lives not matter? Were they not even human in your eyes?" Like Terra, like the Espers, to be controlled and used or discarded, whatever served him best, as though none of them were people as deserving of love and life as anyone else.

"So you've returned to punish us all, to murder our scientists and soldiers and destroy your own childhood home."

"I wanted to put a stop to the evil you do here."

"We all come up with justifications for our own violence," Gestahl said. "Good and evil—it's all relative. I'm sure the families of the scientists who perished when the Facility fell would have something to say about your sense of good and evil."

"They were making weapons of war!"

"And the people of Doma would have killed many of our soldiers if they had the chance," Gestahl continued gravely. "Even Kefka rationalizes his actions. He does what he believes is best for his countrymen."

"I very much doubt that."

"What would you have me do, then?"

"You could start by withdrawing your troops from the places you're occupying," she said. "You can't undo the damage you've done, you can't bring back the people who have died because of you. But you can at least stop doing more harm."

Gestahl's tone was gently chiding. "You propose that we not only cease our activity but that we actively relinquish territories that have already fallen under Imperial jurisdiction."

Such fancy phrasing obscuring the meaning of his words. "Yes. Yes, I think you should stop killing people. And you should give your territories back to the people they belong to. But even if you don't, it's only a matter of time before they take care of it for you."

"The Returners are planning something?"

"Not that I know of," she said, "but they don't need to." She lifted her head to meet his eyes and held them, without flinching, without blinking, willing him to feel the intensity of her anger toward him and everything he stood for. "People hate you, Gestahl, and they're tired of your senseless killing. You may have fooled your own people into believing that you're doing this for some greater reason, but the rest of the world sees through you, and they've had enough. Sooner or later, they're going to stand against you, and you're going to fall."

Gestahl stepped down from the dais, approached her, and she tensed, wondering if he would strike her or command the guards to kill her where she stood. He circled her, his arms folded in front of him, and she turned to keep her eyes on him. "Someone must have helped you get into Vector. Who?"

Every word he spoke sounded like a command, but she would not obey. Celes scoffed. "What makes you think I would tell you anything?"

"I thought you might feel some sense of lingering loyalty."

"Loyalty goes two ways," she said, and she thought of Locke, of the betrayal on his face. She had done nothing to earn his distrust, except being herself, and if that mere fact had made her untrustworthy—after everything she'd tried to do for the Returners, after everything he'd said to her for months about her own worth—were those nothing more than pretty words spoken by someone who wore countless masks and wove elaborate charades to keep other people happy and get what he needed from them?

Gestahl paused, considered her scornfully. "You expect me to have been loyal to you, when you committed treason by turning your blade against a countryman? And now you've joined the Returners, and tried to strike directly at the heart of the land that birthed and raised you."

"And tried to have me executed. Yes."

"So you want to punish us. You're still taking part in war, Celes. You're still killing civilians, behaving as terrorists, in an impotent attempt to destroy us with your little so-called rebellion."

"They're not—I–"

"Why the Returners?" His voice was milder now, curious. "Is it that young man you were with?

Celes turned her face away from him as heat rushed to her cheeks, her ears buzzing. "No! I—I joined the Returners because they are trying to stop you from doing any more harm."

"By doing their own harm?"

"It's not the same!"

"Isn't it?" He shook his head. "That, I'm afraid, is a matter of perspective. You're young, Celes, and you have been following your heart instead of your head. An understandable path, but an unfortunate one, and it has led you astray."

"No, I–"

"They're using you, you know," Gestahl said. "A former general from the enemy camp, delivered into their hands with knowledge they can use to strike against us? They would be fools not to take advantage of a windfall like that. I assume you led them through their assault on Vector and the Facility yourself."
 
"They're not–"

"Kefka tells me they turned on you, in the end," Gestahl said sadly. "And I'm sure they have their own justifications for that, as well. Perhaps they tell themselves you deserve it because of Maranda."

"I–"

"But you were just following orders then," Gestahl continued. "If you wish me to take responsibility for what my soldiers do—very well. I accept that responsibility, even when mistakes are made, even when, as you say, evil is committed. I am Emperor, am I not? That is the burden I must carry, as a father takes responsibility for the actions of his children. We are all merely trying to protect what we care about, aren't we? The Returners, our own soldiers, even you and I."

But that—that wasn't right. Right? They wouldn't—the Returners wouldn't—Locke wouldn't—and it was different, anyway, but–

The anger had left her, replaced with something she couldn't name. Or maybe it was still there, lost in the swirling clouds of darkness that wrapped around her and chilled her heart. She wanted to argue somehow, but her words had been cut off, and they crashed against each other inside of her and could not escape her lips, her mind dulled by pain and frustration and confusion.

"Why don't you go back to your chambers?" Gestahl said kindly. "You've been through so much. Rest, and try not to worry. You'll be safe here, and we can talk more about this another time."

Notes:

OK, so, literally none of this happens in the game, and I don't know whether to be sorry or not. I've written 7,000 words that are made up out of whole cloth. I didn't mean to do this when I started this fanfic, but it took on a life of its own, and I have to roll with it. Even while writing this chapter, I expected the scene with Gestahl to go in a completely different direction until I was in the middle of writing it. Please forgive any messiness; I wrote half of this after 2 am last night and have only gone over it once since then because I am too impatient to get it out into the world. Whoops.

Also, I drew cover art for this story. I made it its own chapter between the prologue and first chapter, but I can't figure out what the etiquette is on AO3, so if that's completely wrong, let me know and I'll do something else. It just doesn't make sense for either of the chapters surrounding it. I might make some sketches for other chapters here and there, but they'll be smaller and horizontally aligned, don't worry. It's been a while since I did art! I hope you like it!

Chapter 18: Winds of Change

Summary:

Locke hopes. Celes rages.

(also we go to Albrook)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It worked. It all worked. Better than he expected, better than he had allowed himself to hope.

The people of the northern continent were like dry kindling after so many months of invasion. All it took was one small spark and the countryside erupted like wildfire. United against a common enemy, by their own shared humanity and their love for their homes and their people, they rose together against the Imperial troops, and they were victorious.

Not an all-out frontal assault, not with frail human lives against the power of Magitek armor. Not at first. Not until it became clear that the Magitek weapons were losing their potency, that something had changed after all.

Near the twin cities of Jidoor and Zozo, a small group of rebels sneaked into the imperial camp in the dark of night and stole food and supplies, setting the soldiers' chocobos loose before fleeing the enemy base. And in the ensuing chaos, Sabin made his way to the unmanned Magitek armor, pummeling anyone who tried to stop him, and then he unleashed against the hulking suits of metal the same magic-fueled assault that had brought down the heart of the Magitek Research Facility.

Not that Locke witnessed this with his own eyes, as he had been in the thick of it guiding the saboteurs out of camp. But he heard Sabin tell of it afterwards, when they were safely free. They distributed their stolen Imperial goods among the people of Zozo, who welcomed the motley bunch of rebels with more enthusiasm than Locke had ever seen among the usually closed-off people of the downtrodden town. The group that Locke and Sabin led had gotten away from the imperial camp with hardly more than a scratch, and they toasted themselves and each other in a seedy Zozo bar, and Sabin told of his encounter with the Magitek armor again and again, the embellishments growing with each retelling. But Locke could not fault him. They were all drunk not on moonshine but on hope, on the momentum of what had once been called impossible.

And when the rest of the rebels joined them, a few hundred from Zozo and Jidoor and even a handful from Kohlingen, led by a small contingent of armored Figaroan soldiers—when they all came together and rose up against the imperial troops following Banon's plans, the battle was won almost before the two sides clashed against each other. Hungry, homesick, weary, without the Magitek weapons that gave them that invincible edge, the disheartened imperials could not hold their line.

More than that—many of them threw down their weapons, tore the imperial insignia from their garments, and took up arms alongside the rebels. These soldiers were conscripts, men and even a few women from Maranda and Tzen and elsewhere under imperial rule. Stolen from their homelands and forced to enlist under threat of death to themselves or their loved ones, they had fought because they had no choice. Here, now, the Returners gave them a choice, and they took it.

Locke and the rebels welcomed them with open arms. This is what we can do together, if we believe in ourselves and each other, he thought, and his heart glowed with fierce love for these people. Though there were casualties from the battle, still it ended so much less painfully than he dared expect.

And this was only the beginning. If the rest of the Returners-led uprisings had been as victorious, then the tides were turning—had turned, and soon the Empire would fall. Why stop at freeing the northern continent? The former conscripts gladly joined the ranks of the rebels. With their numbers, surely they would have the power to free even the cities of the south. The Empire's tyranny was at an end. Soon, they would all be free.

Back they pushed the straggling imperial forces, until all the rebel groups, not just Locke's and Sabin's but also those led by Banon and Edgar and supported by Terra's magic, united outside Nikeah. And there Banon's call to arms had found its mark. Locke knew Reven and others there who worked against the Empire in subtle ways, so he knew the spirits of the Nikeans were not crushed despite how thoroughly entrenched the imperials were in their city. But even so, he was surprised by the response from within Nikeah, as though the people there had been fully prepared and just waiting for an opportunity to strike back.

Had this freedom always been in their grasp, if only they had been brave enough to reach for it sooner?

No, this push was possible because the Magitek Research Facility had fallen, taking with it the devastating power that made the Empire an invincible force. A number of pieces had fallen, one after another, each smaller victory hard-won and necessary to enable the final great victory that was now so close he could smell it.

Some of the imperials fled south in their own ships. Others lay down their weapons and surrendered. And, of course, the conscripted soldiers gladly allied themselves with the rebels and turned against their commanding officers.

In the aftermath of the short-lived battle within the heart of Nikeah, when the imperials had been thoroughly routed from the city, he pulled away from the cheering crowds and noticed the somber face of Cyan, the Doman, standing apart from the others. Locke's own heart quieted at the sight of the man, at the understanding of what this moment might mean to him, in the context of everything he had lost.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, drawing closer to the man so that he could speak in a quieter voice.

"Victory is upon us at last," Cyan said gravely.

"But it isn't a simple celebration for you, is it?"

"I wish my countrymen could be standing here with us." The old warrior gestured at the younger faces bright with hope surrounding him in the city streets. "Doma would have joined in this fight, and she would have dealt the Empire a decisive blow."

"I don't doubt it." Locke thrust his hands into his pockets and stood beside the other man, trying to see things as he saw them. "I always heard the people of Doma were formidable warriors, and if your skill with a sword is any indication, that reputation is justified."

"Less a reputation than a memory, now."

"We may yet find others," Locke said. "Travelers, refugees, those who moved away for their own reasons but whose hearts will always be Doman."

"That will not bring back what has been lost."

"No. No, it wouldn't."

"But it would be something." The older man rested a hand firmly on Locke's shoulder with a faint smile that was, perhaps, a concession—if not to Locke's efforts to lift his spirits, then to the mood of the day around them.

Once Nikeah was wrested from the Empire's clutches, there was no denying that victory was inevitable. Their numbers swelled every day, and even though some of the temporary rebels set down their weapons and returned to Jidoor or South Figaro or wherever else they called home, still others wanted to proceed southward, cross the sea, and put an end to the Empire's conquest once and for all. Fired up by their success so far, and moved by the stories they heard from their new allies from the southern cities of Tzen and Maranda, the Returners were ready to keep fighting.

This military action was outside of Locke's purview, and he had other ideas of how to spend his time. Bringing down the Empire would be easier with friends on the inside, and he had not yet made contact with Hassan.

So while the growing ranks of the Returners commandeered imperial boats from the Nikean docks and set off on the weeks-long journey south by sea to Tzen, Locke and a smaller group of rebels caught a ride on Setzer's airship and took another route. 

Sabin insisted on joining him, and he was glad to accept the offer of support from someone who had been to the southern continent before, someone who knew what they might face there and who already knew their allies there. He considered Sabin a friend by now, too. He was surprised, though—maybe he shouldn't have been, but he was—when Terra also showed up at the edge of the airship's docking plank with a bag slung over her shoulder.

"I want to come with you," she said.

"It might be dangerous," Locke responded, mostly out of obligation, because she knew that as well as anyone.

She was undeterred, which he really should have expected; Terra was not weak or powerless, however gentle and delicate she may seem. "I want to find Celes. She came to rescue me, right? You've both done so much to try to help me. Let me do the same thing for you."

She was conflating helping him with helping Celes, and his mind got stuck on that in a vague and undefinable way that he could only tiptoe around. But he welcomed her on board, and soon enough they were off.

There were twenty of them in all, crammed onto Setzer's ship for a few seasick days that Locke spent mostly above deck, letting the wind against his cheeks quiet his heaving stomach.

It was a far cry from the last time he'd crossed the sea by airship, but it sobered him a little. The commandeered fleet sailing from Nikeah to Tzen were following the same route that had gotten his father killed so many years before. He was glad to be traveling by airship himself, not only because the journey would be over so much sooner but also because he would have felt the shadow of his father's final journey hanging around him every moment on the sea. 

They wound their way northward, past the peaks of Narshe, then across unfamiliar countryside to the east, and finally to Albrook, a southern city still under imperial control but a safe distance from Vector. 

The journey gave him time to think again about what he might find on the southern continent—and of Celes.

She had to be alive. Surely he would reach out to Hassan and hear how Celes had not only survived the destruction of the Magitek Research Facility but also joined back up with the rebels there. Maybe she would be ready to hand over the key to the city to him and the rest, and soon enough they'd all be celebrating together. 

He could not accept that the rest of them could taste this victory and she would not. She needed to see that she had been able to make such a difference, to see the people of Maranda joining hands with the Returners and fighting for their freedom because she had made it possible. Whatever crimes she thought she had committed, she had made good on them tenfold, and he desperately wanted her to be able to see that.

Until then, he would believe in her safety— just as he would believe in her.


***


When she was alone in her room once more, her mind finally began to clear of Gestahl's influence. His words picked at the scabs of her own insecurities, played to her innermost fears. And maybe there were truths in what he said, but they were folded among so much utter rubbish.

Some of it found fertile soil in her imagination and took root—Locke had doubted her, and now she found herself doubting him, wondering if his trust were truly so superficial, torn away by the merest suggestion of betrayal, as easily as the silken strands of a spiderweb pulled apart in the breeze. Were the Returners even now pushing forward with their own plans in her absence, glad to have washed their hands of her? They had seen her as the Butcher of Maranda when she first darkened their door, and had any of them but Locke given her reason to believe their opinion of her had ever changed? And, in the end, had even Locke himself truly seen her any differently than the rest had, quick as he was to believe the worst of her?

But the Returners themselves, however they might think of Celes, were not the terrorists Gestahl had accused them of being. They were fighting for their own freedom, pushing back against invasion and occupation. They would not have gone to war without provocation; even after the Empire brought violence to their door, their skirmishes had been largely defensive, up until the day she led the band of people she might have considered friends here to Vector.

About this one thing, she had absolute conviction that Gestahl was wrong: The people of the northern continent had every right to resist his army. And even if civilians were caught in the crosshairs sometimes, as had happened in the Magitek Research Facility—if Cid's scientists could really be considered civilians instead of military noncombatants—there was a difference between collateral damage and the active and wanton destruction of civilian lives that Gestahl's army had wreaked among not just their own neighbors but the farthest corners of his ambition.

The day of her audience with Gestahl, her dinner was served with tea. It tasted like nostalgia, lingering in the back of her throat, reminding her of the girl she had been—how she had poured herself into her studies, proud to have been chosen to serve her people, to carry the honor and responsibility of wielding the magic that would transform the face of the world. How young she had been, thinking herself grown and powerful, eager to prove herself on the battlefield. How completely she had accepted the life she'd always known, the necessity of Gestahl's army, the righteousness of his cause. She had never questioned the black-and-white stories of Imperial magnanimity and cultural superiority she had been raised with. She had never questioned Terra being used like a mindless puppet, or what any of them had been asked, or forced, to do. 

Was Gestahl himself a true believer of the lies he peddled, the falsehoods his propaganda spread through his people? Would it matter—would it change anything at all—if he truly did want what was best for his subjects?

She dreamed that night of gathering storm clouds that blocked every star from the sky, of wind whipping through the few trees and clattering shutters throughout the town. She dreamed of Ramuh floating before her, his hair and beard nearly indiscernible from the clouds swirling overhead. The Esper crackled with his fury, and she felt it running along the base of her neck and behind her eyes.

Without a word, she knew what he was asking—for her to be a conduit for his rage, for her to channel his power in a way that he, lacking a body, could not.

And it scared her.

The clouds dissipated. She slept fitfully, with troubled dreams, and when she awoke at dawn, she was restless and troubled. The shutters over her window seemed more than ever like the bars of a cell, and her heart beat against it painfully. She thought of the Espers, trapped for so long, how hopeless and powerless they must have felt. Thoughts of Locke, too, and that fleeting moment when she had thought they had won, had freed the Espers and won back their friend and taken out the Empire's firepower all in one, and she had stood side by side with her friends—with the man she loved, damn him—and another future had risen for the first time in her mind, only to be dashed against cruel reality so soon after.

She spent a few more days mostly alone in her room. Along with the tea, her morning meals began to be accompanied by slender volumes of poetry or plays, as though someone were taking pity on her solitude and offering companionship in written words. Sometimes there was a small cut flower in a glass of water on the tray. She pressed these between the pages of one of her old military texts and left them to dry, and there was something poetic about the irony of something beautiful being made in a treatise on violence. It spoke to her soul. If anyone had seen her, or heard her thoughts as she flipped through the pages to reveal the flashes of bright colors so vibrant against the stark contrast of ink on paper, she might have been ashamed to be seen being so foolish. But alone like this, she could indulge in moments of childlike simplicity.

One afternoon, her lunch was accompanied not by the usual soldier standing guard but instead by Doctor Cid himself. He smiled sheepishly at her, holding the tray in both hands, a satchel slung over one shoulder.

By this point, she was so starved for company that she could not turn him away, so she allowed him inside. He set both the tray and the satchel on her desk.

"I suppose I have you to thank for the reading material," she said.

"I thought it might make being stuck in here more bearable. You were always an active one; I don't imagine being confined to a room like this is as easy for you as it might be for me and my books and experiments."

"It's at least better than spending a decade in a test tube," she said. He winced, but she was not at all sorry. "I have a vague memory from before they brought me here. Did they … use the same device on me that they used to control Terra for so long?"

Cid sighed and did not meet her eyes. "Kefka led the soldiers that carried you out, and they were following his orders."

"Why does anyone follow his orders?" she muttered. "I assume that's a yes?"

He sighed. "Yes. But Leo put a stop to it. We're not all like Kefka here, and you know that—you have allies here."

"Gestahl thinks I'm confused. He thinks if he sends me tea and enough of you to talk me into it, I'll remember my place and be a good little girl again." She glanced at Cid. "That is why you're here, isn't it? To try to convince me that the Emperor isn't so bad and that 'my people' in the Empire need me?"

"No," Cid said. "I'm … worried about you."

Celes leaned back against the desk and glanced out the window, at the courtyard below glowing in the noonday sun. Beside her, the tray Cid had brought with him lay untouched. She wasn't hungry.

"Regardless of your relationship with the Empire or its people, I really am worried about you, Celes. We monitored your health all those years because your life has been… one long experiment, from the moment we infused you with magic, and we have tried to be very careful to make sure it didn't hurt you."

She wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that he truly did care about her, because sometimes it felt like he and Leo might have been the only people in the world who did—who ever had.

"This is entirely off the record, and I trust you won't repeat it outside of this room, but I think the infusion broke something in Kefka, and I told myself I would keep that from happening to anyone else." Cid pulled at the strap of his satchel nervously. This was the first time he'd ever spoken so freely like this in front of her. "The way he is—he's a danger to others and to himself. He's like a rabid dog we keep penned except to set him loose on our enemies. He's very powerful, but I think inside him something is very wrong."

"Rabid dogs get put down, not given more power to do harm."

Cid stopped, opened his mouth, puffed out his cheeks. "None of these are my decisions to make," he said.

"I made that decision," she said. "I wasn't given a choice at any point in my life, not really, but I chose anyway. You and Leo are cowards, afraid to speak up even though you know something is wrong, and now even more innocent people are dead."

"I'm not here to discuss Kefka or Leo or the emperor. I'm here for you." Cid unbuckled the closure of his satchel, then hesitated. "It's been almost a year since your last tests, and much has happened since then. If you really did receive some sort of magical transference from the Espers themselves…"

Suddenly the satchel made sense. She drew away from him. "I would've thought all your gear was destroyed when the facility came down."

"Most of it, yes, but not everything." He pulled a few familiar devices from the bag, a sharp needle, a stethoscope, some of the same tools he had been using to monitor her for as long as she could remember. "Here, roll up your sleeve."

"No."

"Celes, please–"

"I don't want to."

"We don't know what this new magic is doing to you. Please, let me-"

"No!"

She wrapped her hand around the device, and electricity arced between her fingers. CId's eyes widened, watching this display. Then she threw it to the floor and smashed it beneath her boot—and there was something satisfying about that conclusion, destroying it not with the Espers' borrowed power but through the force of her own body.

"Get out of my room," she growled to Cid. "And tell Gestahl I'm not going to let him—or you—any of you—use me, ever again."

She pushed him bodily out the door and slammed it closed behind him.


***


It was like the magic had awoken in her; she was practically thrumming with it, as if the Espers who had entrusted their souls and their beings to her had been waiting for her to be ready and now filled her, impatient and ready to be wielded.

In a way, she supposed, as she stepped into the hallway, the Espers wanted to use her, too. But they had a claim to her, and to this vengeance, that Gestahl and his cronies never would. She would willingly serve as the outlet for their vengeance, not just as punishment for the devastation the empire had already wrought but to prevent future suffering. 

The guard on the other side of the door turned to her, his mouth open. He looked younger than she expected.

"Please, ma'am, you-"

She pressed a hand to his chest, and the little blue carbuncle laughed low in her ear and whispered, Yes, this one should live, and the blue winds took him and carried him somewhere else.

There were other soldiers in the hallways, off-duty and unarmed. If she had had her own sword at her side, she could have cut through them. Through all of them, maybe, leaving a trail of carnage in her wake, as Gestahl's army had done across so much of the world. But she was not Gestahl, and she did not revel in killing, and the men must have seen something in her eyes or in the crackling of energy around her. To a man, they stood down, letting her go unchallenged down the hallway and the staircase to the door leading out from the barracks.

It felt good to leave the cell her bedroom had become, to feel real wind on her cheeks; so much stillness was maddening, and her muscles ached from disuse. Outside, it was twilight now, the very edge of the setting sun just over the horizon, leaving the sky a strange and surreal golden color mixed with a deep blue lightened by the presence of streetlights across the city. The rest of the city itself could not be seen from this vantage point, but it was no more the target of her ire than the soldiers in the barracks had been.

"Do as you will with me," she murmured, to herself, to the Espers whose magic sang through her blood. Her skin itched with it, and the hair on her arms stood on end, and even her hair hovered wildly around her, crackling with energy.

Some part of them lingered in her, their presence not quite life, yet more than a shadow.

Shiva, long-suffering and broken by so many years of agony and hopelessness, no longer the gentle pacifistic creature she had once been—now full of anger so cold it could stop hearts. Ramuh, wise yet not omniscient, commanding magic with confidence and the strength to tear the world asunder. Little Carbuncle, an unassuming creature with a sweet face but depths of power she could barely comprehend.

They accepted the offering of her body as a vessel.

What happened then she saw as if from a distance: Ramuh's electricity arced from her hands and arms to shatter windows and blast walls of surrounding buildings, arcing between lights and shattering them. The Imperial compound flickering as embers caught and ignited.

Above her, the sky swirled, the clouds darkening and swirling to converge on a point directly overhead. The wind howled. The sky was blotted out. The air hummed and crackled, and the tang of ozone filled the air.

It felt hot, like she was being burned from the inside out. Her body was not meant to channel so much power, she was not a creature of magic as any of the Espers had been, her physical form ached and screamed out as power she could not withstand coursed through her.

There was one man at the heart of all of this, one man on whose orders so many lives had been destroyed, one man who had caused so much anguish and pain. And the Espers, even as lingering shades, were angry.

Celes's arms extended toward the sky, churning the clouds overhead into a frenzy.  Then her hands fell toward the horizon, toward the Imperial headquarters. A pillar of light poured from the heavens to encompass the metal-and-stone building that had had the audacity to reach toward the sky.

She could see nothing but the afterimage of the lightning strike, and the all-consuming crash of thunder that followed it a breath later knocked her to her knees. She could not say how massive the bolt had been, or what it did. Her bones were searing within her flesh, and her vision had closed in and nearly gone totally dark except for the afterimage burned onto her eyes.

Her legs buckled under her.

No, she thought, I can't lose consciousness here, not like this, not with so much left undone, not with the empire still standing, not while surrounded with enemy soldiers, not like this

But she swayed, and this time there was no one—not Locke, not an Esper, neither friend nor enemy—to catch her.

She opened her eyes to chaos and movement around her, voices rising in panic as people surged around her. An alarm was blaring, distantly. She could smell smoke and ozone. The inside of her mouth tasted like copper, and her bones ached.

Where was she? When she sat up, the world shifted and her head throbbed, and it seemed for a moment that all the colors separated and then blurred together in her sight. Eventually, her vision cleared, and she realized that she had been curled up in a nook beneath the staircase to Gestahl's great hall. Beneath her, the dry earth shifted like ash.

How, exactly, she had ended up here was unclear. She remembered the surge of magic, the sensation of the Espers taking control of her, using her life essence to fuel their rage. There had been an impression of their presence within her, and an echo of their presence in the world. In the end, she had been too weak to contain the power they channeled through her, and yet something had protected her in the end. Luck, perhaps, or maybe some small blessing from the Espers kept her safe.

She stumbled out from under the staircase into a cacophony of raised voices and roaring flame and for the first time took in the aftereffects of the Espers' fury. This great hall was burning, its metal roof misshapen and molten, dripping down the walls, showing the result of a direct lightning strike. But some of the construction must have been made of wood, which smoldered and sent up plumes of vile smoke. Other buildings in the compound made of more flammable stuff were fully aflame. In the darkening twilight, the electric lighting had not come on, and even the light remaining in the sky was obscured by clouds of smoke. Sections of the buildings had come crashing down, perhaps because of the fire, perhaps because of direct magical damage to their structure—she had dim memories of blades of ice cutting through the buildings around her. Even as she watched, pillars and sections of wall crashed to the ground, and the men nearest them cried out and scrambled to avoid being crushed.

Yet the soldiers' movement calmed and became more orderly as she watched. They fell into line, carrying buckets of water to the open flames, or beating out burning embers with thick wool blankets. If she had wanted it, she could extinguish the flames by calling on Shiva's magic, but she would not ask the Espers to undo the damage they had caused.

Officers issued commands and worked with their men to extinguish the fires. It was, she thought, the most human she had ever seen the imperial military—no aggression, no violence, just ordinary people trying to survive and save themselves from disaster. Even though the eventual efficiency of their lines stole that impression of humanity, it was still a moment that moved her. If these people could set aside Gestahl's bloodthirstiness and greed, could they live in the world without causing harm?

The soldiers did not stop her as she made her way through the compound. Perhaps they thought she was simply another victim of the fires fleeing a burning building. But she was no victim here. Yet she could not fault herself as the perpetrator, either. Justice, or perhaps the very beginning of vengeance, had been enacted through her, but not by her.

Leo stood in the middle of the courtyard, supervising lines of men, his voice raised but reassuring. How nice it might be to trust in his guidance and teaching, to allow him to decide what was right or wrong, what actions needed to be taken, to absolve oneself of the responsibility of thinking for yourself. But the temptation was fleeting.

"Celes!" Leo sounded surprised to see her, but not displeased. "Did you get caught in this?" He left his men, who smoothly continued following orders, and approached her with grave worry on his face. "You're injured."

"I'm not."

He took her hands and turned them, palm up. "Look." And she did, for the first time since waking in the dirt. Fine red lines from burst blood vessels were purpling along her hands, her wrists, her forearms. It looked brutal, and it stung, but that was all.

"It's nothing," she said.

"We need to get you looked at."

"No," she said, pulling her hands away from him. "None of your doctors. Not Cid and his needles and notepads. I'm through being a prisoner and a science experiment here. I'm leaving."

"In the middle of all this?"

"Yes."

"You're not in good condition to travel. You can't go far."

"I don't care." She was tired, and she hurt, and she suddenly wanted to talk to Terra, to tell the girl about the presence of the Espers inside her, in case some part of Terra's father still remained, dormant but present.

"Celes, please," Leo said, echoing what Cid had said to her—had it really been earlier today?

"I'm not taking orders from you anymore," she said.

"A request. As a friend, not your commanding officer." He reached into a buckled pouch at his waist, drew out a few coins, pressed them into her hands. "At least spend a night here in town before you set off. You're in shock. I'd take you there myself, but I'm needed here right now."

He did not seem to realize that she was responsible for the very destruction he and his soldiers were trying so hard to mitigate. Locke would have known it immediately, even lacking some of the details—but Leo's mind was less nimble, focused more on battlefield strategy than solving puzzles. Of all the things to miss about Locke, she found herself thinking of being around someone who knew what she was feeling and why, who understood some of her motives and could piece together even confusing events without her having to say a word. Being seen like that was simultaneously disconcerting and comforting, and she missed it.

Locke, too, would have urged her to take care of herself. If she were being honest, she had to acknowledge that Leo was right. Some part of her mind was as numb as her body, and that seemed dangerous.

"There's an inn down the street," Leo said. "They won't give you trouble."

She sighed. "All right."

Leaving Leo and his soldiers to their work, she stumbled in the direction Leo indicated. The innkeeper took one look at her and asked some young serving boy to help her get to her room, and she had no sooner been left alone in it than she collapsed on the bed into a deep sleep.

Her dreams, predictably, were troubled. Ramuh's lightning surged against Kefka's flames, and mad laughter crackled through her nightmares. Locke was there, and the rest of the Returners, fighting Kefka's soldiers. They raised their weapons against her, too. Even Locke, who could scarcely wield a knife to save his life, raised his dagger toward her.

"I'm not with the Empire," she pleaded, yet still he advanced on her, resolute.

When she awoke this time, tangled in her sweat-soaked sheets, there was morning light streaming in through the window. The room seen in daylight was as military-efficient as any room in the barracks, which only reinforced that she had come here unprepared, leaving behind even the few possessions she had been so briefly reunited with. If she set off on the road today, unarmed and unequipped and weak, she would fall on the road and likely never rise again.

Leo had been right—not just about her lack of preparation but also the shock that was only now beginning to fade. She saw a tray set just inside the door, and her stomach growled. Soup and tea, long cold. Perhaps the innkeeper had sent it up to her after her arrival, but she'd slept right through it—another sign that she was in no condition to protect herself, if she had not even noticed someone opening her door in the middle of the night. But the soup was nourishing and adequate, even chilled, and she drained it and the pot of tea quickly.

Her hands hurt any time she touched anything. Now that her vision was clearer, and her mind as well, she could see the ugly lines along her fingers winding up toward her elbows. It was the most visible source of the pain she felt, but not the only pain. And on top of the pain, she also lacked a plan.

There was a knock on the door. For a moment, she expected it to be soldiers come to arrest her. But instead it was the innkeeper's boy letting her know there was a guest to see her. She wanted it to be Locke, or even Hassan, but neither of those were realistic. Instead, it was, of course, Leo. His face was sooty, and there were shadows under his eyes.

"I'm glad to see you took my advice. I paid for a couple of nights here," he said. "It's the least I can do for you." There was something unspoken there, of guilt.

"I can't stay in Vector, Leo."

"You want to go join the rebels again?"

"If I can, yes," she said, realizing it was true. "But if not, there's surely some good I can do in the world for someone."

Leo stood in the doorway without entering, arms crossed over his chest. "I've been considering what you said to me before. And I've been speaking with the emperor."

"For the last time, I'm not going to–"

"I'm not asking you to join us. I know better than that. But he and I have been discussing—this war. The rebellion. Our future." He looked her in the eye, and with the earnest confidence and goodness that drew people to him and inspired such devotion in his men, he said, "The emperor sees that he may have passed his limits and that the people we have … occupied… do not want us there. I think he would be open to discussing peace. To stepping back, conceding territories, and stopping his expansion."

"What's changed?"

"The war… has taken a turn. There have been uprisings abroad, and there are rumors that they're coming to our own shores. Between that and this most recent destruction of the imperial compound–" His brow knitted as he considered her. "Do you know about that? It seemed to be magic…"

"It was the Espers."

"I thought they had all perished?" When Celes shook her head and gave him nothing more, he shrugged. "Will you come with me to speak to him?"

Celes thought of her last audience with Gestahl, the way his words had crept around her heart and clouded her mind. And Leo was still in his thrall. The two of them together could overpower her if she wasn't careful. And yet the possibility of peace—she could at least give it a try.

"Fine," she said. "But I will walk out if I need to."


***


Instead of the imposing throne room, they met in the emperor's meditation garden, or what was left of it. The entire central building in the compound had sustained damage, and while the fires were now all out, the shapes remained warped and twisted from the massive bolt of lightning that had struck it at her—at Ramuh's—command. The garden was mostly untouched, a space of smooth stone and carefully pruned plants in elegant pots and fountains that would normally murmur soothingly in the background but that were now still and silent.

The Emperor looked older than she had ever seen him, tired to the point of seeming frail. He still wore his majestic robes of state, but his eyes were tired and shadowed, and his shoulders slumped.

A servant poured tea for the three of them from a steaming ornate teapot, and they knelt around a low table. The passing wind rustled the leaves of the shaped hedges, quiet and soothing. This was a place of peace that should not have belonged to a bloodthirsty warmonger.

Celes did not accept the cup she was offered. She sat, fuming, barely controlling the urge to rage at the emperor once more.

"Leo tells me you say the Espers struck at us," Gestahl said to her.

"Who or what else could do this?"

"Kefka reported that you seemed to receive some sort of gift from the Espers when they escaped their containment tubes."

Celes pressed her lips together. "Are you accusing me?"

"No, merely observing." The emperor cupped his ringed fingers around the delicate porcelain in his hands. "Their anger against us would be… understandable. I did not think to consider them the same as us. There are many creatures out there that humans have put to work, harmed or even killed for our own well-being. Even the meat we eat comes from the flesh of creatures we put to death—for our health, for our enjoyment. So I considered the Espers to be creatures with resources I could use to protect and serve my people. But I see now that I was wrong to think of them as no more than animals."

"And what of the people of Maranda, or the northerners? Have you thought of them, too, as animals?"

Leo's nostrils flared at the venom in her voice. "Celes–"

But the emperor was smiling. Not cruelly, but she could not say what emotion moved him. "No, she has a point, Leo. Yes, I thought the people of the north were barbarians. I thought we could save them from war and hunger and savagery, that we could tame them and bring them peace. But I see I was wrong about that, too."

Celes snorted. "How convenient that you find your conscience after your own palace comes crumbling down around. you."

"These thoughts have been troubling me long before this wrath of the Espers, if that is what happened." He glanced at her over the top of his teacup. "You said the people would rise up. Apparently they've started, all across the northern continent, and I have heard they are coming here, to us, to Vector."

Her heart skipped. "Who? The Returners?"

"I believe so. And they've gathered rebels and civilians from every territory." Gestahl looked grave—sad, even. "I've misjudged them. It is awe-inspiring to see how they have united so many different peoples under a common cause."

She scoffed. "I doubt they care about your awe."

"No, they are angry with me, and they have good reason to be, as do the Espers." He set the teacup down and folded his hands in his lap. "I'm tired. I am an old man, Celes, and I've been at war for a very long time. My people are tired. Let us put this war to rest and finally know peace. I wish to discuss peace with them, and restitution. We can't withstand an assault on Vector, not after all this."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you are their friend, are you not? I would like to send Leo as my representative to meet with the Returners and their allies. A group of them are in Albrook as we speak. If you would accompany him, to make introductions, as a neutral party—I would be in your debt."

Peace. Not just peace, not just an end to the fighting, but some way of making good on it.

A little voice in her head said, He told you earlier that the Returners must hate you now—what has changed? But the world needed this peace, and healing. If the Returners brought the fight to Vector, what would come of it but more death? If Gestahl was ready to surrender, to put an end to this nightmare that had scarred the world for so long, she had to allow that to happen.

"I'll go," she said, "but not because of you, and not as an ally of the Empire's. If it can stop the war, I'll do whatever I can."

"Of course." He smiled again, relieved, and to her it looked genuine, though she wondered if Locke would be able to see through him. "And one more thing—I would like the opportunity to apologize to Terra, personally, for all she has suffered under my command. I would like to know what I could do to begin to make amends for what I have done."

"I don't think she'll want to listen to you."

"That may be so. If not, then please relay my apologies."

"I am not your mouthpiece," she said. "I'll go to make the introduction to the Returners, and I'll facilitate a conversation if needed, but that's all."

"Of course." He bowed his head ever so slightly, a show of apology and humility she would never have imagined from him. It was enough to convince her that perhaps he was sincere, after all. She hoped so—for all their sakes.


***


The journey to Albrook was quick and uneventful. Celes kept a distance from the Imperials, even Leo. She was not one of them, she was not on their side—Leo said he wanted peace, and she believed him, but she would not, could not, allow them or herself to think of her as among them.

You just don't want the Returners to think they were right about you.

You don't want Locke to think he was right about you.

At least the rest of them respected her boundaries. Leo led his soldiers, back ramrod straight on his chocobo, his face grave—no, determined. She wondered if this would seem like surrender to him, like defeat, or if he would take the prospect of peace as the victory it truly was.

Her stomach tangled itself into knots as they passed the outskirts of the town, and her heartbeat quickened when they neared the designated meeting place, a building at the center of the town that was used for community functions. Something was choking her at the thought of going inside. Fear? Excitement? Guilt? Anger? Some sort of terrible combination, no doubt.

Why am I here? Why am I doing this?

Because you're the only person who knows everyone involved. Because Leo trusts you, and the Returners… might be able to trust you. Because peace is worth risking everything, even your pride, even your friendships.

Through the window, she could see that the place was teeming with people, and there was a celebratory air. A pair of Returners she dimly recognized leaned by the front door, swords at their waist, though an assortment of other weapons had been stashed in crates by their feet. They paused mid-conversation, their smiles falling when they took in the Imperials in their formal uniforms.

For a tense moment, the two sides regarded each other.

"Weapons outside, if you please," one of the guards said at last.

Celes spread her hands, smiling faintly. "I'm already unarmed," she said, and she wondered if they would see this as the symbol she intended it to be. I am not your enemy. I have not betrayed you or your trust. She wore a white shirt in some pathetic attempt to show neutrality, however ill-advised it might have been as a travel garment; now she was suddenly self-conscious about it, about herself, about coming here with Leo, instead of alone ahead of the imperials. You don't even know if Locke will be here. It might be strangers, or Edgar, or Banon...

Did the guard return her smile before waving her inside? If they knew her—of course they know who you are—then they must know that she could never truly be disarmed, not as long as the power of the Espers slumbered within her. But they said nothing of the sort. Maybe they didn't fear her, after all. That was a rare, happy thought.

She opened the door. And all at once he was there, filling her vision. He sat atop a long table, laughing, surrounded by people, clearly in his element. His eyes were shining, and there was a lightness about him that she had never seen before, as though she had only known him while burdened and yet now a weight had been lifted from him. It seemed that he spoke easily to the others at the table, untroubled by worry or fear or pain. And as beautiful as his smile was—and with a sinking feeling, she had to admit to herself, now, that his smile was beautiful, lighting up his face and making his warm eyes even warmer—it still hurt to see him so unaffected. Had she been part of that burden that he was now relieved of carrying?

He looked up, saw her, and the levity disappeared from his face at once, as though a cloud had blotted out the sun, and she was suddenly cold.

The room grew silent, and maybe it was because the blood filled her ears, or maybe it was because the enemy had just stormed into the Returners' camp, with Celes among them. She stood still as a statue, frozen in his presence, feeling the stark agony of his distrust as fresh as it had been that day in the Magitek Research Facility. Her lungs seemed to have stopped working, and her heart, too.

"Celes," he called out, and the spell was broken.


***


Just the flash of her in the doorway, white and cream and gold. Their eyes met, and hers widened in shock and pain, as they had in that terrible moment when his own doubt had betrayed her, but this time it was her turn to disappear. He said her name, and then she was gone.

"Wait, Celes, wait!"

He was on his feet, he was running after her, through the mass of soldiers that had parted for her, into the blinding afternoon sunlight and the quiet bustle of the town. Down the cobbled streets he ran, following her golden hair streaming behind her like a banner until he lost her.

He found her, eventually, on a bridge overlooking the river that ran through the city. She was leaning against the railing, looking down at the water, breathing unsteadily. When he approached, she turned her head away from him.

"Celes, I–"

He wanted, more than anything, to put a hand on her shoulder. To turn her to face him, and—what? Make her look him in the eye? Touching her would make her real, would prove to himself that she was truly here in front of him and not lost as he had tried so hard to avoid believing, but she had not wanted physical contact even before he had hurt her, and she certainly would not want him to touch her now. 

What could he say to her? I wanted to save you. I tried to come back for you. I thought you might be—they told me you might be—I'm so, so glad you're alive and well. Or at least alive. She was thinner than he'd ever seen her, and her hands were bandaged, telling of some more recent pain he did not know and could not ease. He wanted to take those hands in his own, and knew he could not.

"I'm sorry," he said. Useless, empty words.

She said nothing. Wouldn't even look at him. He shouldn't have followed her, should have left her alone if that's what she wanted.

But she always tried to be alone, the same way she flung herself into danger heedless of the toll it would take on her, the same way she disregarded her own safety and her own pain, and-

Did you follow her because you're thinking of her, or because you're trying to make yourself feel better?

He was making excuses. She deserved better.

"Look," he said at last, "I'm not asking for your forgiveness, but I want you to know… that I was wrong, and I know I was wrong. I doubted you, even if it was just for a moment, but I should have known better. I did know better. And I'm sorry."

She was shaking, and though her face was turned away, he could see her eyelashes fluttering as though she were blinking back tears. But surely not. Had he seen her cry, even once, in all the months they'd spent together? If those were tears, then he had done what the Empire's torture, the horrors of war, assassins, even Kefka himself had not done. Of course. She'd trusted him, and that was why his betrayal crushed her in a way that none of the rest of them had. He reached for her but stopped short of touching her, though he ached with wanting to pull her to him, a purely selfish urge to reassure himself that it was all right. But it wasn't all right, and he had no claim to her.

When she turned her back on him and walked away, he only stood and watched her go.

Notes:

This was supposed to be done weeks ago, but then it spiraled out of control and *gestures helplessly* ... if I could go back and revise chapters, I might have written that the Espers destroyed part of Vector during everyone's escape from the Magitek Research Facility, but I didn't, and it had to happen somehow, so here we are. Oddly, I feel like this is probably my least visceral, least in-the-moment chapter ever, but that might be because Locke's is mostly summary (sorry!) and Celes is basically dissociating the whole time.

I think we're back on track with the game now, mostly. For a while. I'm untangling some story threads to attempt to streamline a few things going forward, so please continue to have patience with my departures, but we're going to be mostly moving in the same direction.

I've drawn the scene on the bridge in Albrook no fewer than four times over the years, starting with when I was in middle school and the game was a new release. I feel like, however unnecessarily extra this fic may be, it would make tiny Lauren proud (if confused), and isn't that really what we're going for with things like this anyway? I thought about drawing the picture a fifth time and putting it up here, but then the chapter itself was taking so long ... but maybe at a later date I'll go back and add some quick illustrations. Maybe. I'll let you know if I do.

Chapter 19: Negotiations

Summary:

In love, as in politics, some truths are exposed, others concealed.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Locke had the maturity and self-awareness, at least, to be ashamed of himself. It was irresponsible to leave an imperial general and his soldiers in the midst of the gathered Returners, even unarmed, outnumbered, and ostensibly here to offer a truce. The two people who probably ought to handle this situation had instead abandoned it—in Locke's case, it was a purely selfish act that likely only made things worse with Celes anyway. But seeing her alive after so many weeks of secretly fearing the worst, his feet had led him after her of their own accord, giving him no time to think better of it. And though she had turned her back on him, just knowing she was alive and well buoyed him out of his shame and worry.

Or—as he opened the door to the hall and suddenly every eye in the place was on him—maybe not. Maybe he was still quite thoroughly mired in it. His face burned at the open curiosity and surprise on the faces, familiar and unfamiliar, staring right at him. What did they imagine had happened? He swallowed back that thought as well as his shame and plucked a smile out of the air to wear instead.

"Well," he said, brightly. "I think I missed the introductions. But you must be General Leo…"


***


When she was finally presentable enough to return, having washed her face at a public pump and scrubbed the damn tears from her eyes, maybe twenty minutes had passed. She slipped in through the door to find conversation already underway. Locke looked to be chatting easily, casually with Leo, while Sabin hovered beside him like a bouncer waiting for trouble. Of course Locke had the conversation under control, even though Leo's military actions had caused so much of the damage Locke worked so hard to undo. None of that tension was visible in his face; he smiled at Leo as though they were neighbors talking about whatever normal people said to each other. He would put everyone here at ease as naturally as breathing, sworn enemies or not. That was what he did and who he was.

She wanted to fade into the background like wallpaper so that she could watch him without being seen. She wanted to walk out the door and never see him again. She wanted him to talk to her, to see her, as he always seemed to do so clearly before.

Stop being so self-pitying. You're here to facilitate this introduction, not fall into a useless pile of your petty, pathetic feelings.

Why was she here, though, when Locke and Leo seemed to be so comfortable already? The two sides could not have picked better representatives—two men strongly driven by a sense of justice, both able to see the humanity in their opponents, both of them charismatic in their own ways, Locke through charm and compassion and listening, Leo through his conviction and his concern for everyone under his command. Banon and King Edgar might have been the brains behind the operation of the Returners, but for all that Locke served as a spy, he was their heart, just as Leo was the closest thing the soulless machine of the Gestahlian Empire had to a conscience. If any one man in either group could come to a meeting like this openly, honestly, and without being lost to anger or hatred, it would be these two.

They were also, as it turned out, arguably the two most important men in her recent life—the man who was the closest thing she had to a father, and the man she loved, however foolishly—and it was utterly surreal to see them standing side by side now. She genuinely did not know how she felt about it.

But she was only permitted so much time to wallow in her discomfort before Leo noticed her return and waved her to them. Something passed over Locke's face when she approached—a widening of the eyes, maybe panic or surprise—but he slipped on his mask again before she had any chance of reading it. For a moment, she worried that he might say something about their encounter on the bridge, but instead he smoothly wove her into the existing conversation.

"Setzer is on his way to Narshe," he told her. "He's going to retrieve Banon and whomever else needs to come negotiate this properly."

"Already?" The word slipped out before she could catch it.

"When I heard you were part of this, I figured it was something to take seriously." He looked her in the eyes, and her breath caught in her throat at the intensity of what she saw in his. Being seen like this again, it hurt, and god help her but she wanted to look away and yet was held prisoner by his gaze. His voice was low, calm, rich with the familiar warmth that had melted through her defenses. "Do you think the Emperor really means to discuss peace?"

She didn't want to break her silence, didn't want to address him directly, wanted to disappear again, but she had no choice but to answer. "I do."

"And you don't think it's a trap."

"I can't promise anything," she said honestly, though Leo's forehead creased and he opened his mouth to protest. "But… I do believe it's sincere, and I don't think Vector would be able to withstand an assault if they tried something and you retaliated. They are demoralized and at a disadvantage. And," she added, making Leo cringe again, "I will personally stop the Emperor if he tries anything."

Locke chuckled at that and nodded approvingly. "That's good enough for me."

She felt herself withering under the force of his attention. He seemed to sense this and shifted abruptly from looking at her to the room at large. A few moments later, he had gotten the imperial soldiers to talk about themselves, to find common ground with the Returners who regarded them somewhat stiffly from around the room. And though he kept glancing at her every so often, it was furtive enough that she could ignore it and let the whirling feelings in her mind and her heart quiet into something approaching equilibrium.


***


Later that day, the airship returned with more armed Returners and an assortment of representatives from the various city-states of the northern continent. Locke had never seen the airship so packed, and Setzer's red-rimmed, heavy-lidded eyes and drunken swagger indicated that perhaps it was time to give him a break from ferrying Returners willy-nilly around the world. Terra left her place hidden in the back of the hall to go join the crew on the airship, as though she wished to be present but was afraid to get too close to the imperials. Locke really couldn't blame her. He was surprised she'd hung around at all when Leo arrived, but he suspected that she, like him, hoped to catch a glimpse of Celes.

Honestly, Locke was glad for the sudden influx of people. Celes's silence was like a vacuum that sucked away his focus from the task at hand, no matter how he tried not to dwell on it. He had never encountered such loud silence before.

What he really wanted was to talk to her—no, what he really wanted was to be heard and forgiven by her, but he had no right to expect that. But he wanted to hear her voice, at least. He wanted to know what these past weeks had been like for her, whether the imperials had treated her well, how her arms had been injured. He wanted to know what she was thinking, if she was furious with him, if she hated him, if he had destroyed any chance of her trusting anyone ever again—any window into her mind, any opportunity to see past her walls.

It seemed unlikely that she would share anything with him, and so he welcomed the addition of so many others to dilute the effect her presence and her silence had on him.

They had come from all over: Banon, and Edgar, and a young wealthy patriot from Jidoor, a cluster of firebrands from Zozo, someone Locke recognized as the Narshe governor's right-hand man, and familiar faces from South Figaro and Nikeah. General Leo greeted each of them seriously—Locke got the feeling he did everything seriously—and he shook hands with whomever was willing when the introductions were made.

"I have never seen so many parts of the world represented under one roof before," Leo observed.

"It has likely never happened before," Banon responded, and this was an interesting pair to see in conversation. Banon had been fighting the Empire longer than any of them, and Leo was the most senior general in Gestahl's army, but if either of them felt animosity toward the other, they showed no sign of it. "There's a man from Doma among the Returners, but he declined to join us here. I think he'll be glad if there's peace in the rest of the world, but it's too late for his people, and I don't think he can forgive that."

Leo hung his head; he at least had the decency to find atrocities shameful, however low a bar that might be. "I understand."

 Before Banon's arrival, Locke had been stalling for time; Locke himself was a placeholder, nothing more, and he was glad to relinquish his post. Small talk, he could manage—airships, weather, the beauty and culture of Albrook. But with Banon here, they could get to the heart of the matter, all of them seated at a long table that Albrook used for meetings of its city council.

"The emperor wishes to host a banquet in honor of the peace negotiations," Leo said. "I'm here to extend an invitation, as a show of friendship."

Locke had taken a step back as the others found their conversational footing, but he couldn't keep quiet at the audacity of this offer, which was enough to make him laugh in disbelief. "With all due respect, the empire doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to not poisoning their enemies. I'm sure you wouldn't put something noxious in our wine, but…"

"I can't say I disagree with Locke," Edgar said, and he offered the general a thin-lipped smile that had an edge. Sabin looked about ready to put his fist through something. Of course. Though Cyan was not here, he wasn't the only one who had lost someone to the Empire's toxic handiwork.

"We've placed Kefka under arrest," Leo said gravely. "No harm will come to any of your people."

"Kefka is not the only imperial who has relied on poison to get the job done," Edgar said, with that same humorless smile. In all the time Locke had known the king, Edgar had never come close to even mentioning the death of his father to an imperial. For him to stop just short of making a direct accusation told Locke that Edgar was through with delicate politicking and was prepared to fight.

"Very well," Leo said. Locke didn't envy him being the sole imperial leader here, bearing the full brunt of the rebels' distrust. Didn't envy him—but also didn't pity him. Leo seemed like a decent fellow on a personal level, but he was still a fascist with blood on his hands.

Eventually, they came to an agreement that the entire rebel contingent would ride to Vector together immediately and meet with the Emperor without any food or drink being involved. There was no sense wasting any more time on pleasantries, and Locke suspected that Banon wanted to catch the Emperor off guard, to keep the balance of power from skewing in the empire's favor in case things went south.

He wanted to tell Celes that none of them distrusted her, that they were only being cautious, just in case, and that any treachery on the part of the empire would not reflect on her in any way. But she was still conspicuously silent and avoiding eye contact with him, and so he hoped she understood. At least there would be time to talk to her in Vector.

Edgar and Banon cornered him while the others were loading onto the airship. Locke held up his hands in mock surrender when he saw their determined faces. Had he been visibly brooding? Were they going to confront him about his distraction?

"Easy, easy, I yield," he said, grinning. "What have I done this time?"

"I want to believe Emperor Gestahl will negotiate honestly with us," Banon said, and Locke relaxed a fraction. "But he gained his throne at least partly by playing politics, and I suspect he can be a crafty old fox. And I'm sure it goes without saying that I do not trust him. I doubt any of us do."

"We'll all be on alert in case there's an ambush," Edgar continued, "but we need you to use that nose of yours to sniff out anything more subtle."

Locke grimaced. "I don't know anything about politics or treaties."

"You don't have to. I've studied both since I was a child, so we are more than covered on that front." Edgar clapped Locke on the shoulder as though bequeathing an important assignment, which Locke supposed he was, in a way. "Your job is to keep your eyes and ears open, if you think he's lying or trying to manipulate us, or if anything seems suspicious."

That seemed easy enough. He'd filled this role plenty of times, albeit usually with lower stakes. So he nodded. "I'll do my best."


***


Flying from Albrook to Vector in such cramped quarters should have been miserable, but there was a strange nostalgia to it, remembering prior journeys during which she had felt like she belonged. Dealing with the gambler was always unpleasant, and she'd been as sick with worry about Terra then as any of the rest of them, but it was still in some ways part of a brighter period in her life, no matter how brief.

Terra was here. That shocked her. She'd been so intent on avoiding Locke in Albrook that somehow she'd overlooked the girl altogether, but it was impossible not to notice a flash of bright green hair among the crowd of Returners milling about the decks.

Especially when said green-haired girl flung her arms around Celes's neck in a quick and unexpected hug.

"O-oh," Celes stammered, caught completely off guard by this.

Terra grabbed her hands and squeezed them, her doe eyes bright and delighted. "I'm so glad to see you well," she said, although Celes's hands were still bandaged, and the contact sent a new wave of pain stabbing through sensitive nerves.

Celes smiled, thin-lipped, a little overwhelmed by the girl's enthusiasm. A response seemed to be expected, so she offered, uncertainly, "Thanks?"

"You saved my life," Terra said. "They told me you saved all of us, in the end, but none of you would have been there in the first place if it hadn't been because of me. Locke says you charged in there with your sword drawn and demanded they release me or else."

"It wasn't-" She winced at the thought of her confrontation with Cid, the lies he'd started spinning, the ideas he must have planted in Locke's head if they hadn't been there already.

Belatedly, Terra seemed to remember to be self-conscious. She stepped back, folded her arms behind her, and bit her lip. "We were all so worried. I guess they must have captured you and held you for a while."

"Something like that." She wasn't going to tell Terra that they'd used the crown on her. Better to let that nightmare recede into history if it could. "Are you… feeling better?"

"Me? I mean, I'm a little nervous to be going back."

"Yeah, I admit I'm surprised to see you here. I didn't think you'd ever want to set foot on this continent again, let alone be heading into Vector."

"When Locke said he was coming to Albrook to look for you, I had to come with him. It was the least I could do after everything, and I wanted to make sure you were all right." She laughed, the gentle ringing of a little bell. "We didn't expect you'd come looking for us instead, but maybe we should have."

Celes shook her head. "I thought you were in town for the Returners. A reconnaissance mission about Vector."

Terra waved a hand dismissively. "You can do more than one thing at a time, can't you? I'm pretty sure Locke is working on at least three or four things every moment of the day, except maybe when he's sleeping, and even then, his brain is probably still going."

"I–" Celes pushed the image of Locke's sleeping face, peaceful and at rest, out of her mind. "Are you sure you're going to be all right in Vector? Are you staying on the airship, at least?"

"I don't know." Terra sighed. "General Leo has already apologized to me. He says the Emperor wants to apologize to me, too. And … Kefka won't be there. And all of the Returners will be there, right? Locke and Edgar and Sabin and Banon and all the rest? So I'll be safe."

"Things don't have to be physically dangerous to hurt you."

"I know." She shook her head. "I promise I'm not as weak as you might think."

"I didn't say–"

"You want to protect me. Everyone does. And I appreciate it, really, I do." She smiled again, a little sheepish. "And that might have been unfair of me to say—I know you actually understand what this is like. They hurt you, too. But don't you think it might be nice to see it through? To hear them say they give up? To watch them promise never to hurt anyone like that ever again, because our friends are there to stop them?"

Celes might have argued with her about whether the Returners considered her a friend or not, but the girl had a point about the rest of it.

But before she could say anything else, Locke came through a doorway down the hall. That same look of panic flickered in his eyes, so Celes decided to do them both a favor and leave. She slipped away just as Terra's face lit up with a smile at the sight of him, stabbing now-familiar jealousy into her heart.

You can't avoid him forever.

Can't I?

You won't, though.


***


The Returners decided to camp just outside Vector, surrounding the airship, which stood mostly empty while its crew stretched their legs after weeks of near-constant travel. While some of the soldiers and volunteers set things up, their representatives joined Leo and Banon heading into the city proper, and Locke tagged along.

Vector was, without a doubt, worse for the wear since the last time Locke had seen it. The city itself seemed mostly unharmed, though someone had taken down the horrid propaganda banners that had previously lined the streets, and the people seemed tense in a more immediate way than before. They watched warily as Leo led the procession of Returners through the city. It was no wonder that they seemed uncomfortable with dozens of armed rebels passing through, but Locke could only hope that their general's presence would be enough to deter conflict. If the xenophobia he'd encountered himself during his last visit was any indication, the people of Vector might not take kindly to an offer of peace with the outsiders they viewed as their inferiors.

But as they approached the imperial compound, he began to understand what Celes had meant by "unable to withstand an assault." It wasn't just the rubble where the Magitek Research Facility had once stood—as satisfying as that was to see with his own eyes, now that he knew it had not cost a friend's life. The entire military compound looked like someone had set it on fire. There were half-patched holes in buildings everywhere, scaffolding, scorch marks, scattered remnants of brick and cement that seemed to have been blasted to smithereens…

"What happened here?" he asked. He walked near the front, of course, partly because keeping an eye on Leo seemed in line with the rest of his assignment and partly because Celes was here, though she walked a pace away from the others. In the past, Locke might have fallen in line with her, but now she was on her own.

Leo followed his gaze. "We believe it was caused by the Espers somehow."

"When that cursed Facility fell?"

"No, more recently than that."

That surprised him, unless the Empire had another secret cache of Espers held prisoner elsewhere in the compound. "How?"

Leo frowned thoughtfully. "We're not sure exactly. There might be something lingering behind—like ghosts, maybe. Or there might be other Espers out there who attacked us in retaliation. We're investigating."

After the Magitek Research Facility fell... They stopped in front of what he could only assume was the emperor's own great hall: an enormous pyramid-like structure that must once have been imposing, a stark metal-and-cement monstrosity of unnaturally severe planes set among concrete steps and walkways devoid of natural life. But the roof and the walls were black with soot, and the metal had warped and twisted away from a central focus—like it's been struck by lightning.

He thought of Ramuh, the old man crackling with electricity, the torrential downpour and sizzling lightning that had been summoned when his home in Zozo was attacked. Ramuh had made a final gift of his magic to Celes. Locke glanced at her, walking beside them in silence. Her face was impassive as stone, but her bandaged hands tightened on her arms.

Well, he thought, lucky for us the imperials don't seem to be too bright. Leo seemed too simple and straightforward a man to be playing dumb, unless he'd been kept intentionally ignorant for that exact reason. But Locke couldn't think of any reason why the imperials would pretend not to know that Celes was responsible for the destruction that had rained down on them from the heavens, so he filed it away and assumed, for now, until proven otherwise, that the imperials were fools.

Out loud, he said, "That must be awfully unpleasant when it rains."


***


The hall was severe and stark, hung with red tapestries that looked like they'd soaked in the blood of every person slaughtered at the Emperor's command. If the high ceilings and large expanses here were meant to be intimidating, they failed—the hasty repair work could not patch up the damage Celes had wrought with Ramuh's power, and if anything, the hall as it was now was a monument to the inevitability that justice would prevail even in the face of impossible odds.

Locke held onto that thought as he and the others were led on a tour through the building. There was no banquet, no feast. The Emperor did have a buffet placed hurriedly on long tables lining the halls, and Locke made a note of this as a subtle and possibly—though doubtfully—well-intentioned disregard of boundaries. "If someone says they don't want to eat your cooking, you don't give them a plate anyway," he muttered to himself.

None of the Returners touched the meal, though the imperial soldiers and commanders tucked in with gusto. The two groups were supposed to mingle, to humanize themselves and each other, because war required you not to think of your opponents as people, and—conversely—peace was easier to maintain if you realized the people around you had hopes and dreams like your own. Locke did his part to try to facilitate conversations between soldiers on both sides. Celes had followed orders gladly at first, because she'd been immersed in imperial propaganda her whole life. Even the most zealous soldiers here likely had a similar story, and like her, maybe they would break free of it given the opportunity. It felt like a stretch to interpret the entire imperial military as the victims of Emperor Gestahl's cruelty, and yet Locke felt it was perhaps better to err on the side of forgiveness, for the sake of peace.

Finally encountering the Emperor himself in person felt unreal. Decades of death and ruin spanning multiple continents, all to fuel the ambitions of this one old man. Locke wanted to spit on him. To be honest, it scared him a little how the fury rose up in him unchecked, a well of anger he had not realized belonged to him.

How can you live with yourself? he wanted to ask the man. How do you not just fall over dead under the weight of your guilt?

Gestahl ought to be tried for his crimes. He ought to be chained and led naked through the city streets so that every person who had suffered because of him could hurl trash and insults at him, so they could strip away his pride and his greed and let the elements take the rest of him, too, until he was nothing more than bones bleached by the sun.

But vengeance only perpetuated violence, and the violence had to stop.

So when he could not swallow his anger, he turned his back on the Emperor and found a glass of water on one of the side tables instead—anything to distract himself until he could calm down, so he would not do or say anything he'd regret.

The Emperor made his rounds, talking to Edgar and then to the group from Zozo, who clustered together wherever they went, clearly feeling out of sorts even among their allies. Locke downed the glass of water as if it were a shot as Gestahl then approached Terra.

"I owe you, above all others, a thousand apologies," Gestahl said, and he bowed—actually bowed, as low as his aging frame would let him—to her. An excessive show of humility, much too much to be believable. Seeing the Emperor being obsequious to this woman he had previously enslaved turned his stomach. This was not genuine remorse. He was trying, rather hamfistedly, to manipulate the audience within earshot into trusting him. Maybe he was used to being surrounded by people who were already under his sway, but on Locke, the attempt backfired splendidly.

Across the great hall, Locke caught another glimpse of Celes. Her face was pained and drawn. She looked around furtively, then slipped out a side door.

It wasn't just wanting to follow her that led him through the same door a few moments later. In his current frame of mind, he wasn't in any condition to fill the role Edgar and Banon needed from him. Fresh air would let him recenter himself.

And, yes, he did want to follow her.

The door opened into a yard, and the hubbub of voices inside fell silent as the heavy door swung shut. Outside, the light was cool and blueish, twilight falling over the space between buildings, and someone was going around lighting the torches. Vector was anything but still—ongoing construction on the damaged buildings, guards patrolling the compound, and every so often a cluster of Returners touring the place with an imperial guide showing them around.

He asked the soldiers where she'd gone. What else could he do? It wasn't like he knew his way around, or had any sense for where she might go to seek solace here. She'd never mentioned any sort of favored place, no library or garden or even a sparring ground that had felt especially like home to her. Fortunately for him, every single soldier in the Empire knew who Celes Chere was, and those who had seen her could show him the way, though some of them seemed a little afraid to do so.

They pointed him to a squat building he took to be a barracks, and from there he followed her trail down a hallway, up a staircase, up another staircase, and to the very end of a hall. Even here, in Vector, she was set apart from everyone else.

He stopped in front of the door. It looked like every other door in the building, flat unremarkable boards painted white, set snugly into its frame. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a few of the soldiers watching him curiously. They turned abruptly back to their business or darted through their own doors when they realized they'd been noticed. A few muffled voices drifted from down the hallway, but it was mostly quiet here, and no sound came from her room.

Knocking on the door would be such a simple thing, and yet his fists felt made of concrete, too heavy to lift. She might not answer. She might not even be here—it seemed unlikely that the soldiers would prank him, but maybe she'd gone out another exit unseen. Worse than that, she might open the door and tell him never to speak to her again, and that would be that.

If she asked him to step out of her life forever, he would. Wouldn't he?

He took a breath. Another breath. Stalling, because ultimately he was a coward and he dreaded either her anger or her continued rejection, and besides, she had made it clear that she didn't want to talk to him. Even his being here was disregarding every bit of silent communication she had so clearly expressed, and he wasn't good enough at lying to himself to pretend he had missed the signals.

And yet he was here. Selfish or not, coward or not, he needed to talk to her. They needed to talk, if for no other reason than to give them both closure. But, if he were honest, it was mostly for his own benefit.

Finally, he forced his arm to lift, his knuckles to rap against the door. The sound echoed hollowly, as weak as the knock had been. He knocked again. No answer.

"Celes, please," he said, leaning so close that his forehead rested against the door. "Please." Ah, that was a pathetic-sounding entreaty, his voice rising in pitch and catching in his throat.

The door handle turned. He straightened away from the door, just in time.

And there she was again, her ice-blue eyes flat and tired, but at least she was looking at him. She stayed blocking the half-open doorway, one hand still on the doorknob.

"Can we… talk?" he asked.

She closed her eyes, and he could count  to three before she exhaled sharply and nodded. "Fine. Come in."

Stepping back, she gave him room to enter, but she folded her arms loosely and her shoulders drooped and she tilted her head away from him and made no gesture of welcome.

Closing the door behind himself, he took in the tidy chamber, with its sparse efficiency. And yet it was not wholly without character—a large ink painting of a crane hung over the desk, and a brocade tapestry occupied the wall by the narrow bed, and a small porcelain dish atop the dresser held a glittering pile of earrings and hair baubles. A dying ivy snaked along the window ledge.

With no indication of where he ought to stand other than her body language indicating that she did not want him near her, he wound up positioning himself between the desk and the dresser. He stuck his hands in his pockets, not sure what to do with himself or how to even begin talking, now that the opportunity for conversation was actually in front of him. Usually words came forth unbidden, but they had dried up, and his mouth felt thick and full of cotton. And she still wouldn't look at him, so he did the polite thing and averted his eyes, which was easy enough to do in this little chamber full of tantalizing secrets.

Like the dish full of hair baubles. Most of the clips for her hair were simple enough, efficient and to-the-point. But one stood out among the rest, more intricately shaped, set with bright bits of glass and iridescent pearls. He could not resist touching it.

"That was my mother's," she said, coolly.

"Really?" He looked at it with renewed interest, mentally placing it among the catalog of what little he knew of her history.

"It's the only thing of hers that I have."

These details were literally impossible for him to resist. For what had to be the better part of a year by now, he had tried to tease more out of her, had tried to coax enough to paint a picture of who she was and where she'd come from. And now he was surrounded by answers to all his unasked questions, and like a curious cat, his mind was going to seek every scrap of information even if it knocked things over and made a mess, metaphorically speaking.

The desk, for example, was neatly kept. A few pens stuck out from a metal cup, and old notebooks stood in a tidy row along the wall. The only thing out of place was a hefty tome sitting askew at the center of the desk. He read the cover. "Classical Battlefield Strategies. A little light reading?"

She huffed at that, or maybe it was actually something of a laugh. He wanted to believe it was a laugh. Heartened by the possibility, he flipped idly through the pages of the book, with a wry smile.

"I promised not to tease you about your literature collection," he said, "and I won't. I just think it's a shame that—oh, hello. What's this?"

Before he could stop himself, he'd teased the book open to the page that had caught his thumb, where some inclusion kept the pages from closing flat. He knew he had no right to invade her privacy like this, but the curiosity overwhelmed him and he was powerless against the temptation to know this side of her, to see that she had not sprung into being in that basement in South Figaro but had in fact been a child once, however strange and tragic her childhood might have been.

There, pressed among the pages, was a dried flower. Its sky-blue petals remained vibrant even though it was now dry and delicate as the paper surrounding it.

"Pretty," he said, and it was. Surprising, to be sure, but beautiful. "You keep flowers in your old war tomes?"

"I–" She winced, hesitated, shrugged with her palms up and empty.

"I promise I'm not teasing you for this, either," he said. Gently, ever so gently, he lifted the fragile blossom toward the light. And despite himself, he grinned.

"What?" Her voice fell. "Now you are laughing at me…"

"No, I'm really not. It's just," he started, and the words tumbled out to reassure her, voicing his thoughts without the time or space to consider whether they were wise. "It's just that, I guess, this flower is a little like you, isn't it? Even if someone tries to crush it with—I don't know, war tactics and martial training and God knows what else this book could flatten you with—but even so, the essence of it is still there, you know? Beautiful. Colorful."

He was surprised to see that her eyes were wet with tears. His words had been graceless, sure, but had they seemed cruel to her? He tried to replay them in his head to catch what might have given offense.

"I'm about as colorful as snow," she said, which was clearly not what she really meant to say.

"Have you ever looked at snow at dawn, or sunset?" He thought about Narshe, waiting in nervous anticipatory silence with her and the rest of them one snowy predawn morning. How very long ago that seemed. "The way it reflects the sunlight, golden light and dark blue shadows? It's like a painter poured his whole palette over it, with not a speck of white anywhere to be seen." Your hair is golden like the sun, he wanted to say, and your eyes are bluer than the sky, bluer than these petals. But he remembered what Setzer had said, over a bottle of wine, and he let it go.

She scoffed. "You're in a poetic mood."

"It strikes me sometimes, I suppose. But I'm not teasing. I mean it."

"I didn't betray you."

"I know."

"I've done terrible things, and I've hurt a lot of people. I'll shoulder that guilt for the rest of my life. But I would die before I betrayed you, and I hope you know that."

"I know. I know."

 "Then, why?"

And that was not an easy question to answer. "I don't know." But she deserved more than that. He had come here to apologize. He owed her more than that, and he was going to scrape together an answer even if it meant cutting himself open and digging painfully deep. "It was my own folly, because I doubted myself, not anything to do with you. Everyone counts on me to read people, and I'd just done such an abysmal job all through Vector, and it turns out I'm terrified that I'm going to get it wrong and people will be hurt because of me. Edgar is always onto me for acting rashly based on my emotions instead of my common sense, and I worried he was right. Worried that maybe I'd actually let my feelings get the better of me, after all."

"What kind of… feelings?"

"Well, friendship, I should hope." He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling sheepish, and wondered if it was just his imagination or if she winced just a little at that, barely perceptible.

"And were you wrong?"

"About what?"

"About me," she said, and she sighed again before visibly forcing herself to meet his eyes. "What do you think I am?"

"I think…" This was another difficult question, and he was keenly aware that his answer mattered a great deal, and so he chose his words carefully, thoughtfully, honestly. "I think my first impression of you, that you are driven to do the right thing and that you value the safety of others over your own, was correct. Every action you've taken since I met you has confirmed that. I almost wish you'd be more selfish, if only so you'd stop throwing yourself into so much danger."

"If I'm trying to do the right thing, it's just because I'm trying to make up for my past," she said. "I'm not a good person, Locke. And I never will be. The closest I can come is trying to use my life to make amends somehow."

He half-smiled at her. "You think of yourself as some kind of villain seeking redemption, don't you?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Well, that's bullshit. You're not a villain, you're just another human being who's done some good things and some bad things, the same as any of us. More good than bad, from what I've seen, once you started having any real control over your own life. And I think that makes you a pretty good person."

"But... the things I've done–"

"We all do bad things. We all hurt people." He swallowed. "Like I hurt you. And I've spent every minute since then regretting it, that my own idiocy might have gotten a very good person killed. A person I care about, who I would like… to be friends with again, if you'll have me. It's up to you."

She took a breath. "I'm… not very good at being a friend."

"Well, apparently neither am I, or I wouldn't have let you down so profoundly. But if you let me, I'll make it up to you." He didn't realize he was holding his breath until she nodded. Warm relief bubbled up inside him and, giddy, he held a hand out to her to shake. "Friends?"

She considered this, looking first at his offered hand and then at his face, and he wondered what she was thinking, what fears or distrust fueled her hesitation. But then she took his hand with a little smile. The callouses on her palms always surprised him; her long slender fingers, so pale beside his own, looked like they ought to hold paintbrushes instead of swords. His grip tightened around her hand, too tight, as if she were falling and he needed to hold on for dear life to keep her from slipping away from him–

And he couldn't say which of them started it, if she stepped closer to him or if he pulled her to him, but suddenly she was in his arms with her face pressed into his shoulder, her whole body tense and taut, her arms around him, so close against him he could barely breathe, and he buried his nose in her hair and closed his eyes and rubbed a hand down her back.

It happened so fast, there wasn't time to be ashamed or awkward, or to worry that she would be angry or push away. They clung together as tears welled in his eyes, and anchored by her presence, he could finally confront the fear and pain that had come close to driving him mad.

"I wanted to come back for you," he said at last, his voice muffled by her hair. "I kept... trying to run back to Vector. Sabin had to pick me up and carry me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes til we got to the airship." He laughed, but it was half a sob, and he was shaking. So was she. "Then—then I punched Edgar in the nose when he said we had to go. It wasn't my finest moment. I just—I kept thinking about you—being trapped down there, or Kefka and his fire—and what a fucking wretch I'd been to you…" He was squeezing her too tightly, but he couldn't bring himself to let go, not even a fraction. "Don't you dare think your life doesn't matter. It does. You do. So, so much."

 

***


His arms around her were the only solid thing in a world that had been shrouded in fog. She clung to him, and he held her tight, and it was like he was pressing her soul back into her body and she was truly herself for the first time since she had woken with her thoughts stolen away. For so many weeks she had existed in her body at a distance, viewing the things that happened around her through a pane of glass. Other than a detached anger, she had not really felt anything, except for rare moments when pain or sorrow slipped through the cracks to reach a heart that otherwise seemed to be turned to stone.

Now, her senses were once again her own, and her mind and her body came alive. The clean scent of his soap mingling with the slightest hint of sweat. His soft cotton shirt, the rough canvas of his jacket, its weight and warmth enveloping her as she held him close enough that she could feel his wiry body against hers, the warmth of his throat against her cheek, the pounding of his heartbeat pulsing through her as strongly as her own—the wonderful, addicting sound of his laughter, of his voice, echoing through her because this close she felt it as much as she heard it.

If she pulled away, would he let her go, or would he pull her back to him? If she tilted her head up toward his, if she looked into his eyes, what would she see there? She was afraid of it—afraid of what she would see, even more afraid of what she wouldn't see.

And if she kissed him? What then?

With her face pressed into his shoulder and his arms around her back, she could imagine it—the softness of his lips on hers, his hands on her body, the two of them tangling together in some way that she could only barely begin to imagine. She had never kissed anyone before, never even wanted to kiss someone—had always thought that that kind of wanting was something other people felt, had even wondered if perhaps the infusion process had killed something inside of her—and the ache she felt now scared and confused her. She did not fully know what it was that she wanted, only that there was a hunger in her so powerful it hurt.

Locke would know what it was and what it meant. He would understand it, for the same reason that she could not kiss him, because he had shared his heart and his kisses with someone else, and even now they belonged to Rachel.

And just like that, the moment was over. She loved him, and because she loved him, she was glad for his friendship, and she understood that it was not and never would be more. But he had looked into her soul and he had found her worthy of his friendship and his respect after all. That was enough. It quieted the bitter little voice inside her head and dulled the daggers she turned against her own heart, at least for now.

Regretfully, she let him go, though her fingers traced down his arms as she released him. "How do you think the negotiation is going down there? The peace treaty?"

Locke swore. "Hopefully they haven't started yet, or Edgar will kill me."

"He can't do that. I won't let him." With a little smile, she patted his cheek. "I'm your bodyguard, after all."

"And I am grateful to have you."

And you do, she thought, more than you will ever know.

 

***


"Where have you been?" Edgar was scowling.

Locke gestured broadly toward the doors. "Talking to soldiers," he said, which was not entirely a lie. Edgar would almost certainly roll his eyes if he knew the whole truth, so Locke just shrugged with a self-deprecating smile. "I lost track of time."

"Now isn't the time to get caught up in some poor sap's life story," Edgar said. "Come on. We're about to sit down and talk terms."

But despite Edgar's anger, Locke had no regrets. As he followed the king to where the rest of the Returners waited, his heart felt lighter than air.

Notes:

Why did I write another 7,500-word chapter in a week? I don't know, but here we are. I guess I had more free time this week, and who needs sleep? I'd actually written snippets of the scene in Celes's room months ago, but I had to throw them all away because the characters have grown and changed and it no longer suited them or where they are in the story and their relationship. I think that's a good sign? But it did mean more writing. I've been looking forward to that part for a long time. (Please forgive me if there are factual inconsistencies between chapters; I'll go back through and reread the whole thing at some point, and I'll quietly correct whatever I notice. I suspect Celes's room is described differently in two chapters and I'm too tired to check. There are also a few moments where I remember what happened and why, but Locke either doesn't remember or doesn't want to acknowledge it, and that is entirely on him.)

Locke's hatred of Gestahl surprised me. I kept trying to make him talk to the Emperor before leaving, but he refused. Stubborn boy. It's probably for the best, though.

What if I made a podfic of this story? It would be a lot of work, and it's not a very practical decision, but also I kind of want to do it, and I have a lot of friends who might be interested in performing the character dialogue (I'll do the narration; I don't want to subject anyone else to my idiosyncratic sentence style). Anyway, that might happen.

Thank you all so, so much for your kind comments along the way, and especially on the previous chapter! I was so unsure of it, but you made me feel much better.

Chapter 20: Peace

Summary:

The fighting has stopped; the war may be over. For now, we have a moment to breathe.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

As glad as he was for the peace to be negotiated, the process was grueling. Sitting in the same room as the Emperor set his teeth on edge, and it was only by firmly reminding himself that peace mattered more than vengeance that he was able to bite his tongue.

He honestly wasn't sure that they needed him here after all. When Edgar said he'd been training for this his whole life, he wasn't joking. The king was unrelenting in his demands: not just withdrawal from the occupied towns but reparations for their recovery, especially those who had been absolutely brutalized by the war. Especially Maranda.

"We won't be able to withdraw all our troops immediately," Gestahl said matter-of-factly. "It would be logistically impossible."

"Then put together a timeline of what's realistic and communicate it to us," Edgar said with a thin-lipped smile. Oh, but he was out for blood, however polite he might seem about it. "And your conscripted soldiers can surely be released at once."

"Yes, of course. Although it will take longer for us to give them the payment you've requested."

Locke kept his eyes on the Emperor, trying to determine if the man was being genuine or if there was something else behind his words. Logistical concerns seemed a plausible excuse, and Edgar wasn't voicing any complaint against them. Gestahl could be hesitating to recall his troops because he had something planned, but what would he be stalling for? He lacked the unfair advantage provided by Magitek power, his troops were spread thin, and morale had to be at an all-time low. And in the absence of the conscripts, they would be spread even thinner. Edgar and Banon didn't need Locke to tell them any of this, though, and so he leaned back in his seat and let the words wash over him.

Celes would be glad to know the Empire would be paying for its crimes, literally, to the people of Maranda. Nothing would ever be able to undo the damage that had already been done, but the survivors deserved every chance to rebuild their hearts and their homes from the wreckage. He wondered if Celes would come back down from her room to this massive imposing chamber—wondered what she planned to do next, what any of them planned to do next, if this peace held.

Gestahl was making bold promises, his expression and body language a little sheepish, a little humbled, and something about his seeming frailty was so dramatically at odds with his portrayal on the propaganda around Vector that Locke would have been skeptical of it even if he didn't implicitly distrust the man already. He was almost demure, just as he had been obsequious to Terra, an over-the-top effort to earn trust and forgiveness he most assuredly did not deserve. He promised to make amends as though he had seen the error of his ways and not because the Returners and their allies had surrounded him and placed a knife at his throat. Not literally, unfortunately, but at this point Locke was fairly certain they could take Vector if they needed to, though it would be a long and bloody battle no one wanted.

"Of course, you'll be welcome to monitor our progress and ensure we're following the terms of our surrender," Gestahl said, and there was a glint in his eyes. "Perhaps you wish to designate an ambassador from the Returners to remain here in Vector with us? Or perhaps one of your allies in Vector..."

Locke sat up straighter. The man was fishing, hiding it behind the innocence and earnestness with which he purported to be approaching this conversation. He had to cut this off before anyone said anything that might incriminate Hassan.

"I think the Returners can work out how they'll keep an eye on you on their own," Locke said. "That's not what's being discussed here."

Edgar looked at him sharply, and Locke inclined his head, a faint nod he knew the king would pick up on. Gestahl was plotting something, or at the very least was holding out for contingencies, if he was actively trying to suss out who had helped the Returners infiltrate the Magitek Research Facility. That was good to know, even if Locke wasn't sure of his angle.

Of course the Emperor who had colonized so much of the world would resist letting go of his chokehold on his territories. Destruction and genocide must be a difficult habit to break. But the resources that had granted him the power to overcome all opposition were no longer at his command, and fighting back against the Returners would be futile at this point. Gestahl might continue seeking opportunities to reclaim what he'd lost—any tyrant would—but the Returners could ensure that no opportunities appeared. The tide had shifted. The Empire had lost the war.


***


Vector's unnatural glow had been extinguished when they'd cut out its evil heart, and as her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness outside the city walls, she could see stars overhead for the first time she could remember. It felt like a symbol, somehow, that the cold light that had polluted the sky for so long was no more, Vector no longer leaching out into the world around it.

It was impossible to miss the Returners camp. Rows of tents filled a field not far from the gate, and on the far side, the hulking shape of Gabbiani's airship rose above them all. There were enough people staying here that they could not all gather around one central campfire, and her heart quickened when she passed the outermost tents. It felt like she was stealing into an enemy camp. And yet—no, it didn't, because for all that there were enough people here to form a combat unit, the atmosphere was anything but military. The people were not quite jubilant, but the energy was unlike anything she'd experienced in all her years of military conquests.

The travel bag of her belongings was light across her shoulders, heavy with memories but not much else. At her waist she wore a sword that had been made for her, years ago, weighted and balanced precisely for her needs, though she would have rather had the bulkier, imperfect blade Locke had bought her in Narshe. Peace was well and good, if peace truly happened, but danger still lingered in the world, and she needed to be armed if she was going to defend the people who needed defending. To defend Locke, if he would let her. You're really taking this ridiculous bodyguard thing a little seriously, aren't you?

Come now, be honest; is guarding what you'd really like to do to his body?

She stepped into the light of the first campfire, and the strangers gathered there looked up at her curiously. At least some of them would surely recognize her. Instinctively, she winced, waiting for their revulsion and distrust.

But instead, a young man by the campfire raised a hand in greeting, a hesitant smile on his face. "They're that way," he said, gesturing further into the camp.

"Excuse me?"

"You're looking for Locke, aren't you?"

Was she really so transparent, that someone whose name she did not know had read her so utterly? She wondered what reputation she had here among the Returners. From the moment she arrived in Narshe, she had followed Locke around like a lost puppy, and it irked her that it was still true.

They were all there around the next campfire, familiar faces and a few unfamiliar ones, and Locke—as always, it seemed—was telling a story while the others listened. No, that was unfair; he spent at least as much time listening as he did speaking, in her experience, or maybe he only gave that impression because of just how fully he listened when he did.

He stood up at once when he noticed her, and though she tensed at the sight of him, anticipating the same panicked look that had come over his face every time he saw her from Albrook onward, his expression changed from surprise to delight. Her heart skipped a beat at his smile. Stupid, stupid girl. Stop that. His hair was in his eyes, and she wanted to brush it away, so she could look him in the face and see his eyes warmer than the campfire that sparkled in them.

"Celes," he called, and though she wanted to run away again, she fought that instinct. She'd come here of her own volition. Running away had gotten her nowhere, and she had to believe that she'd be welcome here. It was so hard to trust that, so hard to trust that this wouldn't just evaporate when the Returners collectively came to their senses about her. But if she didn't trust them, trust him, what else did she have?

So she approached him, and his grin was dazzling. He held out a hand, and she took it. She couldn't help wondering if he would pull her into his arms again, as he had earlier; she was equal parts relieved and disappointed when he squeezed her hand and then let go. 

He tugged playfully on the strap of her travel pack. She could only hope that the harsh light and flickering shadows of the campfire hid the red in her cheeks. "Can I assume this means you're here to stay with us?"

"Yes," she said, her face flushed. "If that's all right?"

"All right? Of course that's all right. That's more than all right." He turned pointedly to the others around the fire who were watching them with some amusement. She'd tried not to notice them, but there was the King of Figaro looking regal as ever, his expression pinched and disapproving. Locke grinned at him, oblivious. "We'd all be glad to have her here with us. Right?"

Edgar shot Locke a dark look, and Celes's stomach dropped, wondering if he would turn her away, but then he flashed what felt like a genuine smile at Celes. She'd been on the receiving end of his false politeness enough that she was somewhat shocked to find that this was not, in fact, more of that. "Of course you're welcome here," Edgar said. "I haven't really had an opportunity to express how glad I am to see you again. We were all very worried."

Before she could respond, Sabin appeared on her other side. The massive martial artist wrapped his arms around her in an enormous bear hug that lifted her from the ground, eliciting an involuntary startled "Oh" from her that would have been embarrassing if wriggling and kicking her feet like a child in the grip of this enormous man was not already embarrassing enough. Something in her back cracked and popped, and Sabin laughed.

"Don't go scaring us like that again," he said.

It was only after he'd put her down that she realized she had felt only the briefest moment of panic at the physical contact, that she had not tried to reach for her sword automatically in response to a threat. And he was grinning, and Terra stood there beaming beside him.

"Did you ever doubt me?" The words slipped from her lips before she realized she was saying them, before she'd even known she was thinking them. That fear gnawing away in her belly, the need to know where she stood with these people.

Sabin's laugh boomed out, his entire body quaking with it, startlingly loud. "Believe that lunatic over you? Nah. None of us did." With a jerk of his thumb, he indicated Locke, whose eyebrows disappeared beneath his mop of hair as if in surprised anticipation of an accusation. "Not even this jerk."

Locke chuckled ruefully. "I, uh…"

To spare him his discomfort, Celes changed the subject, smiling primly at Sabin. "I heard you had to carry him back to the airship."

Now it was Edgar's turn to look startled. "Oh? This is the first I've heard of it…" Locke grimaced, and Celes wondered if she had overstepped, if this effort at playful teasing had been a mistake.

"Celes, if you need somewhere to put your things, you can share my tent," Terra interrupted. "There's room for you."

Disappointment settled in Celes's stomach, but sleeping near Locke would be awkward and strange now as it had not been in their travels together, now that she recognized what she felt about him, and she knew she ought to be grateful to Terra for rescuing them both from her verbal misstep. "Yes, please, if you don't mind."

"It's right over this way."

Celes followed the girl through the rows of tents lit by swaying lanterns, resisting the temptation to look over her shoulder. Being here felt like she had stepped into someone else's life. Everyone else belonged here, knew each other, had a close companionable relationship. And yet they had not sent her away when she appeared. They had greeted her warmly, like she was one of them.

Terra's tent was small, especially compared to the big army tents around them emblazoned with the Figaro crest or else rugged, secondhand, and likely belonging to the Returners. She lifted the flap and Celes ducked in behind her.

"We'll need to get you a bedroll," Terra said, frowning. "I think Locke usually has an extra…"

"I wouldn't want to impose…"

"Do you really think he'd think it was an imposition?" Terra cocked her head at Celes, who unloaded her traveling back heavily onto the ground so she wouldn't have to make eye contact.

"I don't know," Celes said, but even as she said it, she knew it wasn't true.

Back at the campfire, the others were drinking some sort of ale in metal cups, and someone Celes didn't know was strumming a stringed instrument and humming a wordless melody.

Locke shifted over to make room for the girls, and they settled in between him and the Figaro brothers. It was so hard to think of Sabin as a prince, as unrefined and blunt as he could be, and the contrast between the two of them was striking. Sabin downed his ale and then held his cup out expectantly for more.

"Remember your manners," his brother chided him. "There are ladies among us now." There, finally, Celes saw the dashing, flirtatious king she had heard him to be, as he made a show of filling two cups and handing them to the girls with a flourish.

"How did things go today?" Celes asked, taking one.

"Well enough," Edgar said. "Everything sounds good on paper, but it remains to be seen whether they follow through with anything. I wouldn't be surprised if they squirmed their way out of it, or they found some way to make another grab for power." They, he said, not you or an ambiguously inclusive noun, making a clear and automatic delineation between the Empire and Celes herself.

Sabin scoffed. "We'll be ready to stomp on them if they do. They're weak right now, and we'll be watching them to make sure they stay that way."

"I wouldn't underestimate them. We must remain on our guard."

"Let's set aside cynicism tonight, can't we?" Locke protested. "For now, the fighting is over. Maybe it will stay that way. Maybe we'll be able to rebuild, and the world will have a chance to heal. Can't we just dream of that, now that hope is actually on the horizon?"

Edgar chuckled fondly. "Very well. No cynicism tonight."

"To peace," Locke said, in a firm and solemn voice that carried, and even those who were outside of their conversation grew quiet, and he raised his cup toward the fire in a toast.

"To peace," the rest of them echoed, and Celes joined them.

In the still and peaceful night around them, crickets sang a symphony, and voices throughout the camp filled the air with a pleasant babble. The campfire crackled and flickered, illuminating these faces that had become known to her, these people who had fought beside her and trusted her and now, tonight, even after months apart, greeted her for the first time in her life as a friend. She sat among them, knowing in her heart that if she retreated into the shadows, they would find her and bring her back, as they had come looking for her before and would do again. She was not, after all, alone. Not anymore.

What a strange sensation, to be known and not despised, to be seen and not cast away, to be viewed as a person and not a tool.

The smoke from the fire rose up toward the glittering stars. If Celes had been braver, she might have made a wish on them—but that would be greedy, as if this gift of friendship were not enough of a miracle, something precious she had not earned and would never deserve.

No. None of that. Peace, Locke had pleaded, and how could she deny him? Let there be peace in her heart, for once. To enjoy this stolen moment, here among these people whose goodness had toppled an empire, with the kindest man she would ever know at her side. She could let herself forget, for this evening, for his sake, that she had been the Butcher of Maranda. Just this once, she could find stillness, and grace, and peace.

Notes:

Happy birthday, Darkness and Starlight!

I originally wanted to hit the end of the World of Balance at this point, but as you can see, that didn't happen. However, I have delivered three chapters in one month, and another one (it's a long one) is waiting in the wings, so I will take this as a victory anyway. The next chapter is really what I have spent most of my time on lately, but this one wound up being a necessary addition, and I think (hope?) it stands alone, even if it's short.

I put out a casting call to some friends to see about maybe doing a podfic version after all. I won't be able to listen to any auditions for a week or two because I'm moving (yes, again, again) but it's all an experiment and I don't know if I'll even want to have character voices after all. But I think it might make it easier to follow. I did record demos of the Prologue and Chapter One as a proof-of-concept, though it's just my voice reading everything. I don't know why I want to do this, but occasionally I get crazy ideas into my head and they stick around. You can hear those demos here if you're curious, but please don't judge; I'm not an actor:
https://soundcloud.com/laurentheflute/sample-demo-darkness-and-starlight-prologue-final-fantasy-vi-podfic
https://soundcloud.com/laurentheflute/darkness-and-starlight-chapter-one-demo

(Why yes, the "flute" in "LaurentheFlute" does mean I play flute, so there might wind up being some music in this if I go forward with it)

Anyway! The chapter. This chapter. It's a short one, but I hope it's satisfying. I realized as I was writing the campfire scene that these characters really do know each other and have somehow developed relationships over the course of the story. One of my biggest fears when I started this project was that the characters wouldn't have believably forged those relationships by the time the story demands them, meaning that it would feel forced and fake, but I tried to take opportunities to build relationships where I could, and I feel like I might have pulled it off better than I expected.

Please look forward to the next chapter! I'm both excited and nervous about it!

Chapter 21: Vestiges of an Empire

Summary:

Before peace can be realized, a few loose ends must be tied up.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The rest of the negotiations passed much as they started. Gestahl offered reassurances and platitudes, and Edgar dismissed them with unflappable resistance, turning vague statements into concrete promises or rejecting them out of hand. Locke occasionally steered them away from any topic Gestahl seemed too interested in, and he made a mental note of these potential preoccupations—traitors in his midst, how the Returners planned to monitor his progress, and Terra and Celes.

When Gestahl mentioned his former general's name, it wasn't surprising, though Locke took note at once. The emperor said, as though it were an offhand comment, "I'm so very glad she agreed to help open these negotiations. But she's a friend of yours, of course—I have heard that she went down to your camp…"

Locke stiffened. "What she does and where she goes is no concern of yours."

"I merely want to be sure she is cared for. She's been through so much these recent months—I worry about her well-being."

"Oh, I doubt that." He couldn't keep the venom from his voice. How dare Gestahl mention Celes's trauma so casually, as if he himself were not directly the cause of so much of it? The man was still trying to get his hooks in these two young women whose lives he had controlled, who could never fully undo the damage he had wrought in them both. Even with the war over, he seemed unwilling to release his grip on them. The habitual control issues of an authoritarian, maybe, or else part of some desperate last-ditch scheme to reclaim his power. 

Either way, it was infuriating. But Gestahl conceded before Locke could have an excuse to reach across and throttle the old man, and the discussion continued in other directions—troop withdrawal, reparations, ambassadors.

That evening, when the Returners reconvened around the campfire again, Locke was a little surprised to find Leo among them. His read on the man told him that Leo was sincere and earnest to a fault—surprising qualities in someone so thoroughly under the Emperor's thumb. He wasn't even young enough to have been indoctrinated with imperial propaganda since birth. Was he not very intelligent, or not very thoughtful, or had Gestahl managed to tap into something personal within him to convince him to fight on, and then remain on, his side?

Then again, maybe fascism was nefarious and rarely so obvious when it first emerged. Maybe Gestahl had been more reasonable in his youth, and the slide toward totalitarian dictatorship and imperialistic conquest had been gradual enough that Leo and others like him became accustomed to it over time. Locke wanted to believe that he himself would be immune to such a thing, but he hesitated to overestimate himself, however transparent Gestahl's machinations might seem to him now.

Regardless of how Leo had gotten into his present situation, Locke was wary of the man and not inclined to be his friend. Leo seemed occupied in hesitant, earnest conversation with Terra; Locke listened in, more out of concern for Terra than his usual curiosity, but it seemed harmless enough—Leo asking Terra how she had fared with the Returners and what she hoped for the future, Terra asking Leo why he followed Gestahl. Locke chuckled; he himself might have approached the subject by dancing around it, to put Leo at ease, yet Terra asked directly, at point-blank range.

"Emperor Gestahl has made Vector strong," Leo said. "It may be hard to believe now, but it wasn't so long ago that Vector was struggling, and our neighbors haven't always been peaceful."

Locke bit back the quick retort that leapt to mind, but Celes had no such restraint; she piped up angrily from across the fire.

"Vector isn't strong, any more than a man who beats his wife is strong."

Simple, evocative, and much harsher than what Locke would have thought to say. Leo flinched at that and shook his head. "It began as self-defense," he said, "even if you have a hard time believing that. You're all much younger than I am…"

"You're still making excuses." Celes rose to her feet, her exasperation clear even in the fire's uneven light. "Good night."

"Celes, wait-" Leo held up a hand.

"Good night." She disappeared into the shadows, perhaps to sit alone in her tent, perhaps to brood somewhere farther from the crowds. Locke thought of following her, but he was loath to leave Terra alone with any imperial, even one as seemingly well-intended as Leo.

Celes's departure silenced Leo, who frowned intently into the flames. For several long moments, Locke sat silently beside him, wondering if he would take this as a cue to leave. 

When it became apparent that he intended to remain, Locke could bite his tongue no longer. "Why did you come here tonight?" He'd spent most of his patience for the imperials already, and the mask of his civility was wearing thin. "What are you looking for? Celes's forgiveness?"

Leo turned to him, a pained expression on his face. "I want to understand. She chose the Returners. She believes in you—in all of this," he gestured vaguely with one hand, "everything you stand for, everything you're doing. She's… she told me about her experiences traveling with you and seeing the world. She took me to task for what we've done, what I've been part of, and I've been reckoning with feeling like she's probably right." Guilt made his voice as heavy as his words.

Locke smothered a temptation to roll his eyes. "Then stop explaining to us why the Empire isn't at fault. You're talking to people who have suffered terribly at the Empire's hands. They don't need excuses or explanations."

"No," Leo said slowly, "that's—that's fair." He paused. "And you're including Celes in that, as someone the Empire has hurt."

"Oh, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. She is–" Locke realized his hands had tightened into fists; he forced them open. "Do you have any idea what your Empire has done to her? They turned her into a child soldier, sent her onto the battlefield, made her responsible for other people's lives when she was just a teenager, turned her into a scapegoat for your bloodthirsty Emperor's destruction of Maranda, and then sentenced her to death when she tried to stop a genocide."

"We didn't–"

"Stop trying to defend yourself," Locke said, and it was all he could do to keep from grabbing the man's shoulders and giving him a hard shake. "When I met her, she thought she deserved to die for what the Empire had made her do. Do you realize that? That she was seeking death to atone for sins that weren't even her fault?"

Leo was silent. At least he didn't try to argue again. Finally, he said, "You care a great deal about her."

Locke closed his eyes, took a deep breath, released it. "I do."

Another long pause, then, "Will you keep her out of trouble?"

There was something immensely frustrating about how paternal this question felt, as though Leo were a man asking another man to protect his daughter. And yet the way Celes had argued with him was reminiscent of someone bitterly disillusioned with a parent. Locke shook his head. "I can't promise that. She's a grown woman; she can pick and choose her own trouble."

"She's so angry."

"She has every right to be angry."

"I don't want her to be consumed by her anger. I want–" Leo cut himself off, and then, before Locke could chide him, he sighed and shook his head. "No, it doesn't matter what I want, does it?"

"Not really," Locke said, but despite himself, his heart softened, because the man really did seem to care. Might even actually love Celes as a daughter, in his own damaged imperial way. "Look. I don't think you're a bad person, even if I believe the Empire is fundamentally evil and nothing you say could ever, ever change that. I can't erase your guilt, and I can't say if Celes or anyone else will ever forgive you. But if you really, truly want to understand why we've been fighting the Empire with everything we've got, if you truly want to reckon with your own past…"

"I do." Leo sounded sincere, as usual.

"Then listen," Locke said. "Listen, and learn, and if you want to make amends for what you've done, find something to do to make good on it."

"How?" 

"I don't know." Locke shrugged broadly. "Ask people why they fight. Ask them what the Empire took from them. Ask them what they need. And listen."

Leo digested this quietly. After a time, he turned to Terra, who had been sitting beside him watching their conversation intently; it was hard to guess what she might be thinking, what she made of all of this. "Terra," Leo said, "I'm… almost afraid to ask this, which probably means you're the first person I should ask, but… what about you?"

"Locke's questions, you mean? Hm." Terra pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "I don't really want to fight, honestly. But I think the Empire needs—needed—to be stopped before it hurts anyone else. Because… what the Empire took from me–" She swallowed, and her eyes shone with sudden tears. "Everything. Myself. My childhood. My father."

"I'm so sorry," Leo said, looking stricken. Something about his words felt empty and hollow, and maybe he was aware of that, as his expression darkened with shame.

"There's no point in even saying what I need, because nobody can give me that." She clutched at her heart as if grabbing hold of something there, and the air briefly buzzed with the faintest whiff of magic. It was true—the Empire had robbed her of a chance to know her family, to be with her own people, and even if she were now free of their control, she would never regain what had been stolen from her.

"If there is anything I can do, if there is ever anything I can help you with, I swear I'll do it," Leo said.

Terra narrowed her eyes. "To make Celes forgive you?"

That made Leo laugh, once, without humor. "I guess I deserve that. No. Because I told myself I was only doing my duty, and I told myself I was an honorable man. An honorable man wouldn't have stood by and allowed that to happen. All I can do now is try to make amends."


***


When they told her Kefka had been imprisoned for his crimes, she thought it might just be another piece of propaganda, another of Gestahl's lies. But there could be no peace as long as he was free to cause destruction and wreak havoc on the world, and apparently the Returners were quite insistent that he be locked up or else all their talks and negotiations would amount to nothing.

So she returned to Vector one afternoon while the others were occupied with Gestahl and his cronies. They had offered, more than once, for her to join them; Locke particularly seemed to want her to be present when they discussed reparations for Maranda, as though she had any right to be seated at that table, to face the representatives from Maranda itself who had been summoned to shape the future of their ruined city. But something drove her to the imperial compound anyway. She had to see Kefka with her own eyes, had to prove to herself that he was well and truly restrained.

The imperial prison was unfamiliar—Celes's own captivity had taken place a continent away in a basement hastily converted for the purpose, after all, and if they brought her to a cell in Vector after the fall of the Magitek Research Facility, she had not been in control of her own mind enough to notice it, and so she did not recognize this dreary, dismal place. Cement walls, metal bars, flickering lights. A musty smell that made her nose itch. And no windows, no sunlight; the prison was beneath the center of the main hall, surrounded by dirt and more concrete. It felt a lot like she might imagine hell. So much about the Empire was hellish; why would this be any different?

Beside her, the soldier-jailer shifted uncomfortably. "He's not—I mean—they said you could come down here, I know that, but…"

"I just want to see. I won't be long."

Why did she want to see him? Not just want, but need—some sort of compulsion had brought her down here.

There was an answer, at least. It was because Gestahl might be horrible, but at least he was a man, a mundane person of flesh and blood, whereas Kefka was a monster. A figure from nightmares, more beast than human, with an empty hole where his soul should be and fire in his veins. He had killed more people than any other murderer on the planet, probably more than any one person in all of history since the War of the Magi, and he could and would do it again if no one stopped him. It was essential that he be stopped.

Locke would not want her to be down here. He would worry about her, as though she were like Terra, haunted by what Kefka had done to her and what he had made her do. Kefka was Terra's boogeyman, not Celes's. Her own worst memories stemmed from the battlefield, from Maranda, not from Kefka. She had nothing but loathing for Kefka, but she had no reason to fear facing him like this.

Still, she was taken aback when she saw him in his cell. Scorch marks covered every surface, including the floor. A wall of something that looked like glass reinforced the frame of metal bars at the front of the cell. Only a few holes within the cell door allowed sound and air through.

He turned to face her when he realized he had company. "General Celes," he said, and his ecstatic grin looked like a skull's, though his usual face paint was smudged and dirty. His voice sounded muffled and strange through the glass.

What could she say to him? Nothing she said would hurt him, awaken even the faintest shred of a conscience within him.

"To what do I owe this honor? Did they send you down here to lock you up, too?" He sneered. "But no, they won't punish the treasonous turncoat. How dare Emperor Gestahl imprison me—me!—and let you go free, you sniveling coward."

She raised her chin to meet his challenge. "You're lucky they've only put you behind bars. What you deserve is death for your crimes."

"No more than you do!" He laughed, and the sound chilled her as it always did, as though she were prey hearing the call of a predator on the prowl, a wild, warning sound that had long since descended into madness. "How rich! Little miss Butcher-of-Maranda, getting all high and mighty with me!"

Is he so wrong? whispered the voice of doubt that tormented her.

As if sensing her weakness, he stood tall, and the air trembled with power even before a glow flickered in his manacled hands. His fiendish grin widened, exposing all his teeth. "Someday, little girl, I will make you rue the day you ever crossed Kefka Palazzo. I will make you pay for your impudence."

And for a moment, she was a little girl again, out on the training field, facing a man who towered over her with flame at his fingertips and burning in his eyes.

The fire roared up around him, racing toward her, blue-tipped in its intensity, hotter than hot, and there was no way mere glass could contain it, and soon molten glass and a wave of flame would consume her, and she shielded her face with her hands and prayed for Shiva's blessing, however inadequate her own power might be–

And the fire crashed against the glass and was contained.

Her throat hurt. With shame, she realized she must have shrieked. She could not remember the last time she'd screamed in terror. At least no one had been here to witness her, other than Kefka himself, who laughed and laughed and laughed without end.

Except there was a commotion behind her coming down the hall from above, loud enough to be noticeable even above Kefka's laughter.

Locke was at the front of a small crowd of people, his walk accelerating to a jog as he saw her. The royal twins flanked him, Sabin ever so slightly in the lead. Imperial soldiers and officials accompanied them, and Celes's stomach dropped when she saw Gestahl himself among their number.

"What on earth is happening here?" Edgar demanded as they approached. "I thought you said Kefka was imprisoned."

"He is," Gestahl said. "As you can see for yourselves."

She thought Locke might be angry, or disappointed, and maybe he was, but what she saw on his face more than anything else was pity. The same look he had given her so many times before, whenever she showed him some facet of how irrevocably broken she was. Why was he looking at her like that now? Did she really seem so pathetic? Had he seen her cower away from Kefka's fire like a child? Was he thinking that he should have been her babysitter, protected her from coming down here, as though she needed him to carry her?

"Are you all right?" he asked her softly, so no one else could hear, while Edgar whirled to face Gestahl, furious.

"We cannot remove his magical abilities, but he's quite harmless here," Gestahl reassured the angry King.

"I'm fine," Celes said stiffly to Locke. "I can handle myself."

Behind them, the king gesticulated dramatically. "Glass?"

"Reinforced glass with magic-dampening properties," Gestahl said, calm and unflappable. "What we used to—contain the Espers. I think you'll agree this is a much better use of our technology."

"I know you, Celes," Locke said, in that same low voice, and her stupid heart fluttered at both his words and his tone. "You're strong as hell, and usually fearless, but… it's Kefka."

And of course he wasn't angry, or disappointed, or thinking of her as some foolish, emotionally incapable burden, because he was Locke and he cared, and he understood her like no one else ever had. No matter what the twisted little voice in her head whispered about him, he was kind, and he was patient, and by some miracle he did not judge her for her many, many flaws.

"Kefka is quite thoroughly contained," Gestahl said. "No one ever needs to fear him again."

"No execution for his crimes, of course." Celes thought, bitterly, of that long, hopeless night when she had awaited the dreadful sunrise.

"An execution might not be an auspicious beginning to a more peaceful future." Gestahl inclined his head toward Edgar. "Unless the Returners disagree? I thought more bloodshed would go against both the terms of our agreement and the new era I hope we can usher in."

"Why didn't you use the crown on him, then?" Celes crossed her arms over her chest. "As payment for what he did to Terra with it? You put it on me, not that long ago. Why not Kefka?" She was not a forgiving person; the thought of Kefka being robbed of his own mind, his own power, filled her with a dark satisfaction.

"We destroyed it," Gestahl said. "Leo insisted. He was right, of course."

Celes had her doubts; she didn't trust Gestahl to actually dispose of such a useful, if terrible, tool without being forced to do so. But Locke distracted her from voicing this with a hand on her shoulder. And now he was angry, though not with her.

"They used…? On you? Why didn't you tell me?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"It does!"

"I'm fine now," she said, and she tried a smile to put him at ease. "Don't tell Terra. Please? I don't want to remind her of that time or make her worry."

"If you say so."

"Before our talks conclude, I want to see your arsenal," Edgar said darkly to Gestahl. "I want to see what Magitek you have remaining, including anything like that godforsaken crown. I want to review your weapons. And I want to tour your prison, and any other holding cells you may have. No secret weapons, no secret prisoners. Understood?"

"Of course," Gestahl relented.

Within his cell, Kefka leapt onto the seat of his toilet, beyond indignity, beyond pride, and the image was so utterly absurd it might have suited a comedy except for that mad grin twisting his face and the glow of his hands.

"Ah, Returners!" he hollered. "Your days are numbered, fools! I will bring this world down around your heads! I will dance on your corpses and lay waste to your homelands! I will bring your worst nightmares to life! I will be your undoing!"

"Like hell you will," Locke muttered, and he turned away, shaking his head. "C'mon. Let's not give this clown the attention he's looking for."

Kefka's laughter followed them like a bad omen down the hall, up the staircase, until distance and slabs of concrete shut him off and they could breathe fresh air and see the sunlight once more.


***


At last, after too many long days of grueling negotiations and strange campfire nights that felt like being trapped in limbo, it was done. The papers were signed, the soldiers dispersed, the weapons disassembled. The first of the reparations payments were on their way.

Peace, however tenuous it might be, had been achieved.

The enormity of it was too much for him to believe. Years of fighting were now, finally, coming to an end—the long-imagined future without war was on the horizon, and he struggled to believe it was real.

"I guess it's time to start that career as a pastry chef," he said to Celes, as they all sat together in the bright morning sunlight, eating one final breakfast before camp would be broken down and the assembled Returners would go their separate ways. "I assume you're not staying in Vector."

"I don't know where I'm going," she said. "Where are… you going?"

"I thought I might take a vacation," he said. "Track down some caves I used to visit with my dad, maybe go on a wild goose chase or two following tales of hidden treasure. Harmless adventures, for once."

"I hear treasure hunting is dangerous work, so if you need a bodyguard…" She smiled shyly, and her fair skin was flushed, as though joking made her self-conscious.

"If I need a bodyguard, I know who to call on." Locke looked to Terra, who was stirring a bowl of oatmeal thoughtfully. "And you? Going back to Narshe? Arvis would be thrilled to see you again…"

"Actually, I was thinking Thamasa," Terra said, and Locke sat up straighter, frowning.

Edgar cocked his head. "Where?"

"Those are only rumors," Locke said to Terra, somewhat puzzled. When Edgar looked at him for an explanation, he shrugged. "A supposed land of magic, but there's nothing in the area. I've been there and it's just a little hamlet with poor subsistence farmers. Where did you hear about Thamasa, Terra?"

Her cheeks colored, and she looked away. "The—the emperor told me. He said that—that the people of Thamasa have Esper blood in them, like I do. He thought I might want to know, in case I wanted to visit them."

Locke scoffed. "The emperor doesn't do anything unless it could benefit him somehow. He's manipulating you."

She thunked her spoon against the side of her bowl. "I don't care! If it's true, I have to know. If it's just a little village, like you say, then there won't be any harm if I go there." Her voice was a little quieter when she added, "I'll know, I think, if it's true."

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"That doesn't matter." Terra's nostrils flared. "I'm going, and you can't stop me."

"How will you even get there?"

She tilted her chin up, challenging him. "If you'll remember, I can fly, Locke. I'm not totally helpless. I know you all think you have to protect me, but I can take care of myself."

She had a point, and he had to concede that. He could not order her not to go. None of them could. Her stubbornness caught him off guard; she had always seemed agreeable in the past, happy to go along with whatever the others thought was a good idea. This was the first time she'd really pushed back. But she wasn't a child, however much he might think of her like a younger sister, and she was within her rights to do so.

"You don't have to come with me," Terra said. "I'm sure you've all got important Returners business to do."

"I don't," Celes said firmly. "I'll come with you, if you want. I can't fly, but…"

"I can give you a lift," Setzer said. The gambler and his crew had joined them all for breakfast more mornings than not, and for once he didn't seem hungover, maybe in honor of the day. Celes's jaw visibly tensed when he spoke, but he grinned easily. "I've got nowhere better to be, and I can think of worse company to be in. It's a coastal town? I like sunsets on the beach."

Locke sighed. "I'll come, too," he said, "even though I do worry about acting on anything the emperor told you. I don't know what he's planning, but he's planning something."

"If we're volunteering dramatically one at a time, I guess it's my turn," Sabin said with a grin. "Edgar? You want in on this?"

His brother shook his head. "I'm not sure. I think Banon may need me for a little while, and I can't be too long away from Figaro. But you should go with them. They could use another pair of hands that know how to fight, just in case Locke's hunch is correct and there is trouble."

"Then pack up your things and come aboard when you're ready," Setzer said more brightly than Locke would have expected. "The more the merrier. We could all use a seaside holiday after this dismal business."

"I do have one request, though," Celes said, and the rest of them looked at her expectantly. "Before we go to Thamasa, could we go somewhere else first?"

"Where?" Setzer asked.

"Kohlingen," Celes said.

Hearing the town's name dropped his stomach down a pit every time, and this was no exception. Hearing it on her lips, of all places, caught him completely off guard.

"Kohlingen?" Setzer's eyebrows rose, and he looked pointedly at Locke. Of course he did. He knew, and he understood, as much as anyone had ever understood.

Locke's mind drew a blank. "I, uh–"

"Locke isn't going to speak up for himself, but there's something we have to do there." Celes's eyes flashed, daring him to argue.

"I mean, but Terra wants–" he blustered.

Terra laughed, but she sounded genuinely amused, not angry. "Now suddenly you want to come with me?"

"I don't—it's not…"

"Please," Celes said. "It's important, Locke."

The two girls exchanged a look, and then Terra nodded. "If it's important to you, it's important to me. If Thamasa really exists, it will still be out there next week."

"But, I mean," he started, because it did feel awfully selfish to ask everyone else to put their own plans on hold for him. "We don't…" But every face was turned to him, smiling at him—Setzer's was only just barely a smirk, Terra's earnest and sweet, resignation in Edgar's, and Celes… Celes looked a little sad, a little worried, as though she thought he might refuse this. And he did not want to refuse. He thought that perhaps he ought to, for everyone else's sake, but they were at peace now, right? They were free to do something that wasn't war. And Rachel had waited long enough. If he could do something for her now, finally… "All right. If you don't mind."

"We don't mind." Belatedly, Celes glanced at the others. "Do we?"

"No," Edgar said, "though I admit I'm curious what you plan to do there."

Celes folded her hands together and looked down at them, her upturned palms cupping as though holding some precious unseen fluid. "Healing magic," she said in a quiet, bashful voice.

"Oh!" Edgar's eyebrows rose. "In that case, I'll come, too. I'm sure Banon will understand."

"Kohlingen it is, then," Setzer said with a fierce grin, and he snapped at his crew, who were busy downing breakfast like their lives depended on it. "Come on, lads. Let's get her fired up and ready to go."

Notes:

This isn't the chapter that was supposed to go here, but I needed to fill in some holes, and then the chapter ran away from me, as so often seems to happen with these things. I hope it works. Everyone is fraying and a little exhausted by this point, so tempers are maybe a little short. Yes, Kefka jumps on the toilet; it's an iconic moment and I had to keep it, even if it's really weird. You've been asking me how the plot is going to continue without the Sealed Gate as written in the original — we're getting there, although we need to take a detour first.

Since my last chapter, I came back home to Canada, moved again, and am now finally settling into a place I hope to stay for a while. Hopefully having some relative stability in my life will mean regular chapter updates!

And finally, the podfic is actually going to happen. I've cast a few of the main characters and am going to put together Chapter One relatively soon, so if that sounds like something you'd enjoy, please look forward to it! I'm a little nervous but excited to be working on it. It is totally silly and self-indulgent to be pouring so much time into this story, but as I'm sure is readily apparent by now, I love it very much.

Next time: Kohlingen! Oh boy.

Chapter 22: Forever Rachel

Summary:

Here, in my heart, your soul will live forever.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The panic started to set in as soon as one of the airship crew announced that Kohlingen was in sight, and Locke's nerves had all but consumed him by the time they got through the grueling process of landing. "Someday," he grumbled queasily, "I will keep my feet on solid ground and never have to get on this infernal machine again."

"I can stop ferrying you around, if that's what you want," Setzer said, his smirk fully operational again. "Back to boats and chocobos and weeks of traveling."

"The convenience is fantastic," Locke conceded. "I will give you that."

He did not feel any less sick descending the gangplank. If anything, his stomach churned worse than ever. With fear—of Rachel's parents turning him away, rejecting this opportunity to change everything—of Celes's magic failing, and this tiny fragment of hope forever extinguished—of Rachel finally waking after all this time, only to break his heart. For all that he talked of hope, for all that he had believed in the Returners overcoming the Empire's might despite all odds, and for all that he would not give up on Rachel no matter what people like Edgar said, he found himself deathly afraid of allowing himself to hope about this one particular thing.

Terra took his hand and squeezed it. "It'll be all right," she said. It was a little strange to be receiving comfort from her instead of offering it, to hear this almost maternal reassurance, and yet it calmed him just a little.

His instinct was to pull away from her, but he fought the urge and allowed her to hold his hand in both of hers. "I—but what if her parents—the people of Kohlingen don't want me there–"

"Which is why we're coming with you," Edgar said, stepping up beside him and taking his other hand. "We don't have to, if you'd rather we stay behind, but … I know this must be difficult for you. You deserve to have your friends standing with you. You've done so much for the rest of us. Let us be there for you."

"I'll clobber anyone who gives you trouble," Sabin added helpfully. When Edgar shot him a look, he held up his hands in defeat. "A joke. It was a joke. But I've got your back. You know that."

Celes just stood a pace away from them all, an inscrutable smile on her face—sad, worried, thoughtful, maybe? But for once he could not spare the energy to decipher her mood.

Locke looked from one friend to another, all of them equally serious, their grips on his hands solid and reassuring, grounding him. "Thank you," he said, though the simplicity of his words seemed inadequate.

"Whenever you're ready," Edgar said gently.

There was no point in putting it off. He squared his shoulders, released his friends' hands, and took a deep breath. And then, plunging headlong into his fears, he started down the path into Kohlingen.

Various arguments cycled through his head, what Rachel's parents might say and how he might respond, any way to convince them to listen to him. Celes's magic had saved him more than once; surely it had a chance to heal whatever kept Rachel suspended beneath the surface. It would risk nothing and yet might solve everything.

As he walked through the center of town, he could feel eyes on him—imagined or real, he couldn't say. Maybe neighbors peeked disapprovingly through their windows, wondering why that damned troublemaker was back to torment them again. He had not changed so much in the past few years that they would fail to recognize him, and his last visit had ended so disastrously and made such a scene that he doubted anyone in town could have forgotten it.

The cornflower blue sky seemed even bluer with the contrast of puffy white clouds drifting lazily overhead. Insects droned in the trees, and birds occasionally twittered or warbled in cheerful melodic voices. These sights, these sounds, these colors were all achingly familiar. Here, for a brief while, he had known heaven.

How long had it been since he'd last seen Rachel? Two years? Yet his feet still knew the path to her house, leading him past a neighbor's garden where he had once stolen roses for her, and up a hill on the north end of town.

If Kohlingen itself was a picturesque little country village, with beautiful architecture and tiled roofs and charming gardens and stained-glass window panes, Rachel's house was the most beautiful, most charming home of all. A patterned stone walkway led up the hill, and patches of flowers blossomed along the front lawn. Window boxes spilled over with the vivid petals of petunias and marigolds. The house itself was a sunny shade of yellow, the steep gabled roof a deep navy blue. Rachel's father had built it for her mother, and love was visible in every inch of it. It was meant to be Rachel's, eventually, to be shared with the husband they expected her to have and the children they assumed she would raise. Locke had not fit into the future they imagined for their daughter. Then, with his carelessness, he had destroyed the promise of any future at all.

Once, he had leaped up the steps to the porch two at a time. Now his feet slowed the closer he got. He steeled himself at the front door, then knocked before he had a chance to second-guess himself.

"Coming," a pleasant baritone voice called from inside. Oh no. Soon enough, a portly dark-haired man answered the door. The smile on his face vanished as soon as he saw who stood before him. "I told you to stay away," he snarled. "You've caused us enough grief."

"I told you I'd keep looking for a cure," Locke started, but the man cut him off.

"And you've sent a few tonics and medicines back, and we've tried them, but none of them did anything. We're not looking for more snake oil cures." He looked like he might slam the door, and Locke thrust his arm forward, spreading his fingers across the doorframe.

"This is different." And that wasn't true, anyway—not that he expected them to treat him fairly, really. "Please."

Rachel's father eyed Locke's fingers as though relishing the thought of shattering them with a forceful slam. "You're not wanted here. I don't know how to be any more direct about that. Go away before we call the town guard."

Celes had been standing at a respectful distance behind him, but she marched towards them, up the steps, her eyes flashing. "How dare you?"

Locke winced. "Celes, please…"

"Who are you? His new girlfriend?"

Celes's face turned crimson at the accusatory barb. "No, of course not! I'm a friend, and I'm here to help, if you'll let us try."

"We don't want any more help from a—from an irresponsible vagrant and a troublemaker, or his friends."

Celes was practically spitting. "'Irresponsible?' This 'vagrant,' this 'troublemaker,' was responsible for bringing an end to this war. Did you know that? He's one of the Returners. He united the people of this continent against the empire. That's who he is. You should be proud. I'm sure Rachel would be. Your daughter gave her heart to a good man, and if you stopped pushing him away, maybe you'd see that!"

Celes's tirade left him stunned. As flattered as he was by this undeservedly positive assessment, now was not the time for a friend to sing his praises, true or otherwise. She had given him little room to defend himself or state his own case. Antagonizing Rachel's parents would only make things worse.

As tempers rose on both sides, the threshold of Rachel's house reached an uncomfortable standoff. Rachel's mother appeared in the hallway behind her husband, her face so much like an older version of her daughter's that Locke had once teased Rachel for it, the same plump cheeks and bright eyes that, at this moment, did not yet reflect any recognition of who stood on her porch. "Honey, what's this commotion?"

"Him." So much anger in that one word, and Locke felt himself shrinking away. This had been a mistake. After a spectacle like this, again, they would never let him near Rachel again, and he would never know what became of her, would be forever powerless to help her...

"Here, you can ask the king of Figaro himself," Celes said curtly. "Maybe you'll listen to him."

Their scornful disdain transformed as Edgar came upon them. It was really remarkable how kingly he looked, even in his traveling clothes; it took only a few moments for Rachel's parents to recognize the man who stood before them, the distinctive profile that could be found on every modern Figaroan coin. The effect his presence had on them was immediate.

"Your highness," Rachel's father stammered.

Edgar clucked his tongue. "None of that, sir. I'm here not as a king but as a man, supporting my friend. Locke has told us so much about your daughter. If there is anything we can do to help, anything at all…"

"Of course, of course, you're very welcome," Rachel's mother murmured.

Edgar put one arm around Locke's shoulders, and the other arm around Celes's shoulders, seamlessly alleviating the tension and extending his royal immunity to his two companions. "We have just finished negotiating peace in Vector," he said. "I pray that it holds. The world needs a chance to heal. As do we all. Locke has selflessly let us monopolize his time these past few months, but the time has now come for us to return the favor. I know how much this means to him."

Locke stared at Edgar, at a loss for words.

The king smiled his winningest smile, dashing enough to steal the heart of any lady who looked at him. Even Rachel's mother seemed besotted. "May we come in?" he continued. "I don't mean to impose, of course, but my friend here has a gift. She believes she may be able to heal Rachel–"

"I can't make any promises, but I would like to try," Celes said meekly, as if self-conscious and regretful about her earlier outburst. "Please."

Rachel's mother glanced at Edgar. "If your highness thinks it would be a good idea…"

"I of course defer to you, milady, as her mother," Edgar said, inclining his head. "But Locke has been questing for a cure as long as I've known him, and if this has a chance at helping, I would say, let them try."


***


Ever the gracious hostess—to guests who were welcome in her home, at least—Rachel's mother invited them all inside. "You've traveled such a long way, you must be hungry. At least have some tea and cookies."

Thus Locke found himself in the cozy, well-used kitchen, crowded with his friends around a circular table covered in a lace doily that had likely been crafted by Rachel's mother, or maybe by Rachel herself. As Rachel's mother bustled about preparing tea, Edgar held court, recounting a somewhat sanitized version of the Returners' recent actions, from the fall of the Magitek Research Facility to the uniting of the northern continent and finally the negotiations in Vector, full of flattering embellishments that painted Locke in the best light. He felt embarrassed, yet grateful. Without Edgar here, none of this would be possible; Locke could not remember the last time he'd had a civil conversation with Rachel's parents, even with Rachel's intervention.

Something in him broke, a little, that it had to happen now, instead of years ago when it might have saved them all from tragedy. Could he have sat down with her parents then and convinced them to give him a chance, convinced them that he truly had the best of intentions for their daughter? Would they have given him their blessing to court her, if he'd just said the right words?

But he hadn't had the words then. He had been young and foolish, and it seemed easier to sneak around than to win them over. Maybe he'd imagined some romance in that side of it, in defying their rules. And maybe it would have been impossible to sway them, after all.

"That's a beautiful painting," Celes said, looking at a watercolor hanging on the wall, one of Rachel's works, a mermaid perched on a rocky outcropping, eyes closed, head tilted back, smiling in the sunlight. It was unsigned, but the delicate line work and saturated brush strokes were distinctive. "Is that your daughter's?"

"Yes," Rachel's father said, his voice rich with pride. "She always loved fairy stories and folk tales. If she wasn't writing them, or reading them, she was painting them…"

"Her room is full of them," Rachel's mother added, setting a plate of homemade cookies on the table. "Books and paintings, and so many knicknacks… she loved collecting things from all over the world."

"Did she travel much?" Celes asked, innocently.

Rachel's mother hesitated. The smile slipped from her husband's face. Locke could guess what had soured the man's mood.

"I did," Locke said, to fill their heavy silence. "I brought her things when I visited." Books, trinkets, anything that seemed magical, like it might have a story, something exotic and far away, wind-up toys made in Figaro or illustrated fables from Jidoor, beautiful stones brought up from deep within the earth, gifts from all over the world found in the portside markets of Nikeah. Even the simplest object seemed like a treasure when she received it. He had wanted to show her the world—to give her the world, and see the wonder of it reflected in her eyes.

The awkwardness in the room was palpable, but it was still better than the naked animosity at their initial arrival. As if on cue, the kettle on the stove started singing, and Rachel's mother hurried to pull it off.

Terra stood up at once. "Let me help," she said.

"Oh, no, dear, you're a guest…"

"Please," Terra said. "You're being very kind to us. I want to help you. Besides, I like making tea… I find it soothing."

Their hostess acquiesced, after some more hesitation, and soon the table was set with delicate teacups and a fat little teapot from which a sweetly floral brew wafted. He was grateful it wasn't Rachel's favorite blend; he thought the scent of her tea might carry him too deep into long-lost memories, those precious moments surrounding him in this house and yet now so far away.

"So, what is this… gift?" Rachel's mother asked, sitting down at last.

Celes looked at Locke as though she expected him to field this question, but he shrugged helplessly. He knew so little about Celes's powers, far too little to have any answers but the faintest hope. "I was part of an experiment as a child," she said, when he couldn't answer. "The Empire wanted to make me into a weapon. But they gave me some power to heal wounds, too, although none of us knew it until recently."

"Is this like… Magitek?"

"Yes and no," Celes said. "It comes from the same Espers the Empire was using to power their Magitek, but…"

"Espers," Rachel's father said with obvious skepticism. "You mean magic."

"Yes."

Rachel's mother seemed to have other concerns. Her voice lilted upwards with desperate hope. "What sort of things can you heal with this… magic?"

"Burns, bruises, damaged muscles, poisoning…" Celes shifted in her chair. "I don't know what your daughter is afflicted with, but I might be able to help. And I would like to try."

The man was clearly not convinced by any of this. "Is there a way we could see it for ourselves, first, before you try anything on Rachel?"

Celes ducked her head in patient agreement. "Of course." 

After some discussion, they determined that Celes would heal a scabbed wound where Rachel's mother had recently cut her thumb while cooking. Locke was reminded of the first time Celes had demonstrated her newfound gift to him, how she'd searched for some small injury to prove herself—how it had filled her with such joy to show that she had the capacity not just to harm but to heal—how he had thought immediately of Rachel, and Celes had understood, and now here they were.

Here they were, indeed. The tingling sensation in his teeth told him of the presence of magic as Celes cupped her palms around the injured thumb. The cut began to fade, first its edges and then the center of the red-brown line, until no sign remained that the skin had ever been torn. 

Rachel's mother gasped. She turned her hand this way and that, staring at the unbroken skin in disbelief.

"Unbelievable," her husband said. "How does it feel?"

"A little chilly, but no pain," she said. "It was a bit swollen before, but that's all gone now, too. I never thought something like this would be possible. Do you… do you think…?"

Locke eyed Celes. She seemed quiet and thoughtful, and he wondered how much this display of magic had drained her. As eager as he was for her to turn her efforts to Rachel, he worried about her pushing herself too hard. "You should probably rest," he said to her. "Gather your strength again."

"I'm fine."

"You're shivering."

"I'm fine." Celes downed her tea without her usual decorum, like someone throwing back a flagon of some stiff drink before marching off into danger. She set it down in its saucer with a solid clink. "Let's… let's do this."


***


Up the stairs they went, their strange procession—Rachel's parents leading, Celes behind them, Locke at her heels, with Edgar and Sabin and Terra lagging behind, as if aware that they were interlopers here in someone else's story. Out of habit, Locke stepped over the creakiest parts of the staircase. Amazing how muscle memory lingered even years later.

Rachel's room had changed little since the last time he was here. Even the trinkets on her shelves had been faithfully dusted, awaiting the day their owner could admire them again. The only difference was the little machine beside her bed that tracked her steady heartbeat, and the small shelf of medicines and tonics below it. Some of those had been Locke's contributions, all of it guided by a doctor he had found not long after Rachel's fall, a man who specialized in treating comatose patients and who returned every so often to assess Rachel's condition.

Rachel herself looked for all the world like she was sleeping peacefully, her chest rising and falling with every gentle breath. He was not fully comfortable letting so many others into this intimate part of his life—into this room haunted by such sacred and personal memories—and yet there was relief, too, in finally sharing his pain with others, with his friends. And they were his friends, every last one of them. They had come here to support him, and together they formed a wall of love that moved him almost to tears.

At the sight of Rachel, Edgar said, in a quiet voice, "Oh."

Locke wondered with a touch of bitterness whether this would end the man's judgment against him. It was one thing to hear the story and conclude that Locke was clinging to lost hope. Another thing to see her there, alive and slumbering like a princess in a fairy tale. Look at her there and try to tell me I should give up on her, Locke thought, silently fuming at him. Tell me I need to let her go. I dare you.

He reached down to caress her face, just a delicate whisper-touch. Her cheeks had lost their roundness; her raven-colored hair had lost its shine. But she was still beautiful, and he still knew every line of her face, every freckle on her body, the sweet sound of her laugh, how her eyes glittered with mischief when she was planning something, the way she bit her lip when something delighted her. She was so often, so easily delighted, in an infectious way that had guided him to find joy in the world again, cutting through the fog that enshrouded him after the loss of his father.

"How will this work?" her mother asked, nervously.

"I'll need quiet so I can concentrate," Celes said. "You can… stay here, if you want, though it might be crowded with everyone. I don't know how long it will take. But I'll do everything I can to help her. You have my word." She put a hand on Locke's shoulder.

"Thank you," he said.

Once again she wore that unreadable expression. Even when she smiled at him, it lingered in her eyes. "Of course."


***


They brought her a chair from the kitchen, and she sank down on it beside Rachel's bedside. Locke leaned in the doorway, watching from a distance. The girl's parents remained in the corner of the room; she could feel their eyes on her, making her self-conscious of every move she made, but there was no way she could ask them to leave their beloved daughter alone in her care. So she tried her best to block them out, to focus on Rachel herself.

"Hello, Rachel," she said, feeling oddly shy. "My name is Celes. I'm... one of Locke's friends. He brought me here to try to heal you."

She looked down at the angelic face of the sleeping girl. Could Rachel hear them? Was she really still present, trapped in her body but unable to communicate? Or had her spirit moved on to wherever spirits went after death?

"He loves you," she said in a low voice, just in case. "He loves you more than anything in the world. He's never forgotten about you."

She paused, hesitated, afraid to say any more, then leaned in closer. "And I love him," she said softly, bequeathing her secret to this girl who even in her strange half-death could still claim as her own what Celes wanted most. Saying the words out loud for the first time felt like a sin, but perhaps telling Rachel was her way of making it right. "And that means that I'll help him however I can, because I want him to be happy, and you make him happy, even now." 

Summoning Shiva's power had become easier now that she could use Shiva's kindness as a blessing and not as a weapon. She sank into the refreshing coolness of it, like plunging into a river on a hot summer day.

Please, please, let me heal this girl.

There were distinct limitations to her abilities, and so she had not expected a quick miracle. Much as she might want to lay her fingers on the other girl's temples and see Rachel healed instantly, she was not surprised when her touch had no visible effect.

So she closed her eyes and tried to focus, to sense Rachel's wounds as she had when Locke had been poisoned or injured. Nothing jumped into her awareness, though she could feel the weariness and degradation of a body that had lain still for years without moving of its own volition. Bedsores, muscular deterioration, but nothing so dramatic as to keep her unconscious. Any injuries she sustained in her fall had long since healed.

By all accounts, Rachel had been a good, kind, loving, joyful person. She had created beautiful things and brought happiness to the people around her. And she had a full life waiting here for her, everything Celes might have wished for herself, if wishes came true—parents who loved her, friends, a community of people who had known her and cared about her for her entire life. And, of course, Locke. Everything he did was with her in mind. He was willing to fight death to save her.

Celes loved Locke enough to realize he would never be hers. She wanted to see him happy, and he was never going to be happy with her. To be honest, she wasn't sure that she could give happiness to anyone, even herself. But he had a chance at real happiness, a fairy-tale happily ever after, with Rachel.

And if Celes could make that happen, she would do whatever it took.

She opened herself as a conduit to the magic, and it sang in her blood, crisp and clear and sharp. It filled her, so much stronger than what she had known as an instrument of the Empire's wrath, before Shiva had bequeathed her full power to Celes with a touch. Faced with the untold depths of it, her mortal human mind shied away, but Shiva had trusted her with this power, and Locke was depending on her. So she directed the wave of cooling energy coursing through her body to enter Rachel's and heal what she could, guided by the motion of her hands above the other girl. 

She had never before sought to heal so much, and as the magic unspooled from within her, it pulled more of her warmth than she expected. When she finally sat back, satisfied that she had covered the entirety of Rachel's body and healed everything she could find there, she felt weary and chilled to the bone.

The magic was working. She could see it in the brightness of Rachel's skin, her even breathing, the way she now looked as though she had just fallen asleep instead of having lain there for years.

But she did not wake.

Nothing Celes could sense within her would cause her to be unconscious—no injury, no obvious wrongness. If Celes had had more training, if she knew anything about medicine, or if she'd at least had a chance to learn from Shiva herself…

Please, Rachel, open your eyes.

Rachel lay still and unmoving, though Celes enveloped herself once more in the brisk, crystalline weave of magic and channeled it again gently through the form of the sleeping girl, seeking something else, something unseen, that she could heal.

She tried calling out to Shiva, the way that Ramuh had spoken to or through her. She closed her eyes and quieted herself, trying to reach a state of calm, of openness. Perhaps the Esper woman was still within her, with her wealth of healing knowledge, if only Celes could access it.

Silence. No response, not even the fleeting presence of the Esper, just Celes's own meager understanding of the gift she had been given.

That well of magic inside of her remained untapped, a crystalline core as deep and endless as a winter night. She had no choice but to plunge into its depths and fill herself with its power as she had never done before. Its chill spread from her heart to her limbs, closing her throat and making her chest ache.

Please, Shiva, save this girl. I'll do anything you ask, anything you need of me. I will be your vessel. Just heal her, if it's within your power. Let me. Please.

But she had spent too much of herself already. The cold was seeping into her, the pain turning to numbness. But there had to be more. Somewhere within her, she could find what she needed to revive whatever had stopped within Rachel. Maybe Celes's own spark, somehow. This was far beyond her understanding—of magic, of life, of death. But if she could use her own essence, somehow, to revive Rachel, wouldn't that be a fair trade?

One broken, jagged human soul who would never be happy, who did not deserve happiness, who had been such a terrible force of death and destruction—how much was that soul really worth?

Rachel was bright and beautiful as springtime, and Celes herself was like the worst of winter, ravaging the world, made of sharp edges and bitter winds, hollow and hopeless; was it not fitting for winter to take her, that the spring might live?

So even after the ice spreading through her limbs began to burn, she plunged deeper and deeper into Shiva's magic. Fear kept part of herself back, and she battered at that fear until at last it gave up and let her fall and be consumed by the magic. She could feel the slowing of her heart, the freezing of her blood, a throbbing pain beyond pain that would have brought a scream of agony to her lips except that she could no longer move, as she sought to give the very essence of her life so that this girl, full of promise, could live.

Rachel, she called in her heart. Come back to us, Rachel…

Someone was shouting at her. She felt the faintest pressure on her hands. But she could see nothing, and soon she could feel nothing, just a cold black void that consumed her from the inside out.


***


He should have stopped her sooner. He could see the toll this was taking on her, but he had been captivated by the changes in Rachel. Her serene expression was unchanged, but everything about her seemed brighter, healthier, her breaths coming more easily, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted. He expected her to open her eyes at any moment, to look at him and smile, and he needed the sight of her smile again. And so, although Celes was visibly fading before his eyes, he allowed it to happen, thinking one moment longer, she'll be healed in just one moment longer, until the moments had stretched on far too long.

The air was so thick with magic it made his spine tingle. Rachel did not open her eyes. Beside her, Celes began to sway.

"Celes!"

He dashed toward her, knowing in his heart that he was too late. She collapsed onto Rachel's bed before he reached her. The girls lay side by side, Rachel breathing even and strong, Celes stiff and unmoving as a corpse. 

Had Celes… was she…? No, no, no. He pulled her to him, breaking the connection between her and Rachel. She was cold, so cold, cold as death. And as he looked down at her face, he feared the worst. She was pale and bloodless, her lips turning blue, her skin nearly white. Had she succumbed to Shiva's frigid magic?

In trying to save Rachel, had he lost them both?

But she was still breathing, however shallowly. The faintest warmth escaped her with each breath. She lived, for now.

Her body did not seem to be generating its own heat, though. Hypothermia?

"She needs help," he said. "Now. She needs—she needs blankets. Hot water. Help me. Please."

The house set into motion. Rachel's parents surrounded their daughter with love and worry, but Rachel seemed unharmed, and so his own focus was solely on Celes. He tried to lift her, but his strength failed him; as slender as she was, her body was heavy with powerful muscles. Not for the first time, nor the last, he wished to be stronger. But he could not simply will himself into being more capable. And then Sabin was there, with his infinite strength, carrying Celes as easily as a child.

Locke heard himself issuing commands as if at a distance. They carried her across the hall to what he recognized as the spare room for guests, where he had once stayed, in his first visit to this house an unimaginable lifetime ago. It was strange to be there again, so many years later, in such different circumstances. The room was narrow, with just enough space for a quilt-topped bed and a dresser. He had Sabin place Celes underneath the quilt, and as more blankets came in carried by hands he didn't notice, he piled these on her too.

"Is she going to be all right?" Terra asked at his elbow.

"Yes," he said, though he wasn't sure. He just hoped that the conviction in his voice would somehow convince the universe to save her.

Because she was so still, so cold, so pale, that he was not even sure she held on to life. He kept placing his hand against her lips to feel the faintest hint of warmth in her shallow breaths.

"I'll sit with her," he said. "Let her rest." He ushered them all out of the room, ignoring their looks of concern, and quietly turned the mechanism to lock the door.

Hypothermia. His father always said that anyone who spent a great deal of time on the road ought to know how to protect themselves and their companions from common dangers. Hypothermia wasn't common, but it wasn't uncommon, either, and it was deadly. The repository of knowledge in Locke's mind told him what to do, and he did it without question, following directions because he had no choice but to trust himself.

She needed warmth, more than anything. Not the wild heat of a fire, not the rubber bottle of boiling water someone had given him at his request. What she needed was gentle warmth to regulate the temperature of her body and bring her back from the verge of death. There wasn't time to be squeamish or skittish about it. No time to second-guess himself. He stripped them both to their underclothes without a thought and then slipped beneath the mountain of blankets beside her.

Even trapped in this fabric cocoon, the air held little warmth. He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, nestled her icy hands at his sides, pressed his feet against hers, though her frozen fingers and toes hurt to touch. Her breaths were so shallow that he could barely feel the movement of her chest. He held her closer, and closer, and willed the warmth of his body into hers.

Had she lost control of Shiva's magic? Or had she chosen to push herself too far, to risk her own life to save Rachel's? With a sinking feeling, he feared the latter might be closest to the truth.

The fabric around them muffled the sounds of the house on the other side of the door, and all he could hear was his own breathing. How strange to be here, of all places, with not Rachel in his arms but Celes. But he couldn't think about that right now, about what the others would think if they saw him, what Rachel might think if she knew. He could only lay here and hope he had not lost Celes through his selfish, careless hesitation, hope it was not too late to bring her back from the brink. He leaned his weight into her, to press as much of his warmth into her as he could, rubbing his hands on her back, her arms, her cheeks so that friction could build heat.

Eventually, the air beneath the blankets began to grow warmer. Her skin no longer felt quite like ice against him. It no longer hurt to touch her—at least not in the same way… He pushed the thought away.

As the life returned to her, she unfurled against his chest, leaning into him more naturally, not like a statue but a warm body once more. She draped over his bare chest, her limbs entwined with his, and her closeness set his heartbeat pounding so loudly in his ears he wondered how it didn't wake her. Relaxed in sleep, she was softer than he might have expected her to be, and he hated himself for how suddenly aware he was of the presence of her body with every inch of his. Without realizing what he was doing, he found himself tracing a long, silvery scar on her side.
 
She shifted like someone asleep, then nestled even closer against him, her head resting beneath his chin, her lips brushing against his throat. His breath caught.

"Locke?" she asked sleepily.

There was something different about her voice. This was the first time he'd ever heard her without fear or tension or anger or pain. Even in her sleep, before, she had always been on guard. Now, as she settled into his arms, for a moment he had a glimpse of who she might have been in another life, who perhaps she could still become if only she could set down the blade and armor she wore every moment. Something in his chest tightened, grew taut like a bowstring. It stretched and pulled and threatened to break. 

"I'm here," he said, his own voice raw with emotion.

"Good." She sounded barely conscious. "Am I... dreaming?"

"No," he said, and he swallowed. "How are you feeling?" 

But she didn't say anything more, just gave a faint, satisfied sigh, and then she drifted back to sleep in his arms, and he held her and drowned in his guilt.

Just a beautiful woman, he told himself. Like Setzer had said. It meant nothing else. She was his friend. He tried to tamp down the feelings that rose in him at the touch of her body against his, but he was all too aware of how thin the layers of cloth between them were. Everything about this stolen moment of intimacy was wrong—to be like this in Rachel's house, and without Celes's permission, and after such a close and terrifying brush with death. Maybe this was his body finding some way to release the fear of losing her, channeling its relief into something else, but it was still wrong. And yet… and yet his arms cradled her as if with a mind of their own, and he buried his nose in her hair, and his fingers pressed into the bare skin of her back and waist.

A knock at the door jarred him suddenly out of his torturous, indecisive self-loathing. He extricated himself from the tangled knot their bodies had made, slipped out from under the blankets, and dressed hastily. In his place beside her, he left the hot water bottle, a better—safer—easier source of the warmth she needed. When he opened the door too many long moments later, Terra was waiting for him.

"Is she all right?" she asked.

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, worried that the heat in his cheeks and his pounding heartbeat would give him away.

"I… I think she's on the other side of it," he said. "Can you sit with her now?"

"Of course."

"Thank you," he said.

He fled.


***


He left Celes under Terra's watch, relieved to put distance between himself and the guilt tying his stomach into knots. Rachel's door across the hall was still open, and he stopped at the threshold, afraid to step inside. The thorny web of his emotions threatened to draw blood if he touched them, so he stood in the hall, smoothing them down, until he no longer felt so storm-tossed and askew, until he had pushed aside thoughts of Celes and was once more himself, the man who loved Rachel, the man who would wait for her forever.

Rachel's parents had left her alone, and he was grateful for the chance to be with her without the audience from earlier. He sat beside her on the bed and smoothed her hair. If this had been one of the stories she lived for, he could wake her with true love's kiss. He bent and brushed his lips to her forehead, just in case, but of course she slept on. At least her breaths were deep and easy, her face calm and unlined.

"I miss you," he said, and just being able to say the words to her lifted some of the burden from his heart. "Every single day, I miss you. I think about what you'd say about the direction my life has taken. I think about the things that would make you laugh, and I wish I could share them with you. I've had adventures, you know? So many adventures, just like we used to dream about. You wouldn't believe the things I've seen, the places I've been… I wish I could tell you all of it. I wish I could show you all of it. I wish you could have been there with me through it." He dropped his head. "It's been hard, so hard, without you."

The floorboards outside the bedroom creaked, and then Rachel's father said, from the doorway, "I think she would be proud of you."

Locke stiffened and faced the man with that old familiar fear of being discovered. This was the first time Rachel's father had been anything but angry with him in a long, long time.

"Don't look at me like that," her father said. His expression was pained. "I talked with your friends while you were sitting with that girl—with Celes. They told me about what you've been up to the past few years. I had no idea. You've… I think Rachel would be very proud."

"Oh." Locke genuinely wasn't sure what to say. He had been so afraid of Rachel's parents, especially her father, for so long that just having a casual conversation with the man seemed impossible.

Rachel's father joined Locke, standing beside the bed, looking down at his daughter with grief and love that Locke knew all too well. "She always told us we weren't being fair to you, that there was more to you than we saw. She begged us to give you a chance."

"I think I proved myself to be no better than you thought I was," he said bitterly.

"I'm not so sure. I think you were an idiot, but you were young. You seem like you've grown up to be the good man she insisted you were. Tell me, were you really planning to marry her?"

Locke swallowed. He couldn't lie, not here, not now. "We were—we were eloping when…" He broke off, unable to say the rest.

"I see."

"And if I can find a way to bring her back, I'll still marry her, if she'll have me." He took a deep, shaky breath, willing the storm within him to stay quiet. "I've changed. We'd have to get to know each other again, and I know that. But I still love her as much as I always have."

"You've never given up on her."

"No, sir." He closed his eyes, took another deep breath, then looked back down at Rachel. Gently, he stroked her cheek. "And I never will."


***


She had dreamed of being in his arms, and in her befuddled, unconscious state she thought Shiva had given her this dream as a parting gift in her final moments. When she woke, she ached, but she had woken to pain so many times in the past that even the throbbing in her fingers and toes was tolerable.

Alive.

She couldn't say if she was relieved or disappointed.

The room she opened her eyes to was unfamiliar but homely. A heavy weight pressed down on her, and as she stirred, she realized that she was covered by a thick stack of blankets, and what she had dreamed to be someone else beside her was just a rubber bottle filled with cooling water.

"Oh, there you are," Terra said. The girl was seated in a chair beside the bed, with her hands folded in her lap. She broke into a smile.

Celes's heart fell. Foolish to think Locke would be the one waiting by your bedside. You're here because of Rachel, remember? He'll be with her now, where he belongs.

Out loud, she asked, "Did Rachel wake up?"

Terra shook her head. "No. I'm sorry. I think she's better than she was before, but it's hard to say."

"I can try again." Celes tried to sit up, but her muscles were weak, and she dropped back onto the pillow.

Terra made a face. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Are they running us out of town?" 

"What?" Terra frowned, as though she were having trouble following Celes's train of thought. "Oh, no, not that. I think things went better than Locke expected, on that front. But…" She looked down at her hands and said her next words in a very measured, very careful tone. "I don't think whatever's wrong with Rachel is the sort of thing you can heal. It's not like broken bones or an open wound. I think… I think she's gone."

Celes shook her head and immediately regretted it. She shoved the stack of blankets off her chest—what had happened to most of her clothes?—and then propped herself up on her elbows. "There has to be something we can do. Locke–"

"He's very stubborn," Terra said. "But, even so, I don't think Locke would want you to die trying to save Rachel. Did you… know that was going to happen?"

Celes looked away, unable to lie directly to Terra and unwilling to tell the truth, because the voice inside her was torn between taunting her with you can't even kill yourself properly and screaming internally at how very close she had come. "I just wanted to heal her, that's all. But I don't think human bodies are meant to wield magic. It breaks them so easily." A convenient excuse, side-stepping the actual question.

Terra frowned. "It doesn't seem to hurt Kefka."

"The process they used for him was different." Celes shrugged with a humorless laugh. "Maybe it's a tradeoff—your body doesn't get destroyed by the magic, but your mind snaps and you turn into… that."

"Well, I'm glad they didn't do that to you. Whatever they did to him, I mean." Terra ducked her head. "I'm glad you're who you are." 

She smiled weakly. "Thanks, Terra."

"I mean it." Terra returned her smile, took her hand and squeezed it, and Celes bit back a cry of pain; her fingers had taken such a beating these past few weeks, between the lightning and the cold. "I mean, we're friends, right? You're the first person who offered to go with me to Thamasa. You charged in to rescue me in Vector. You're my friend, and I'm glad of it. And I'm glad you're safe, now. I was worried—we all were."


***

Rachel's parents were good enough to have the town's doctor look at Celes. He seemed puzzled as to how she could have developed hypothermia on such a fine spring day, which Locke pushed aside with a half-baked story about airship travel and Narshe snow that, to his surprise, the doctor accepted. After some poking and prodding, the doctor declared that she would recover well, as long as she stayed clear of cold weather for a time, to let her body heal.

Avoiding "cold weather," he assumed, would mean not using Shiva's magic. He wondered how well Celes would follow those instructions, if the only thing at risk was her own health. But he'd already spent months standing between her and every convenient cliff she might hurl herself off of—he'd just have to get Terra's help this time, since magic was much more her area of expertise.

While Celes slept again, proper sleep that the doctor assured them would be restful, Locke tracked down Terra. The green-haired girl was sitting on a bench outside in the garden, watching bees drift lazily from flower to flower.

"Hey," he said, taking a seat beside her. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure." She smiled at him expectantly.

"It's about Celes," he said, and her expression darkened immediately, but she waited for him to continue. "What the doctor said—whenever she does anything with Shiva's magic, it hurts her, and it sounds like that could be dangerous right now."

Terra nodded. "I don't know if she'll listen to that, though."

"That's what I'm afraid of." He picked at the skin on his thumb, trying to figure out how to say this. "She… doesn't seem to care what happens to her, but I—we do. And I think we're going to have to keep an eye on her to keep her safe."

"I think you're right," Terra said. "I'm worried about her. I don't think that was an accident. I think she was trying to trade her life for Rachel's."

Locke flinched. He'd suspected it himself, of course, but hearing someone else have the same thought made it more real. "She… blames herself for a lot of things that aren't her fault. She thinks she needs redemption for what the emperor made her do."

"I don't think it's just that." Terra cocked her head at him. "Locke, what do you feel about Celes?"

"Right now? Worried, mostly."

"That's not what I meant." With a little exasperated sigh, she turned away from him. "What about Rachel? What do you feel about Rachel?"

He sucked in a breath. "Disappointed that this didn't work, but I'll keep looking for an answer."

Terra's shoulders hunched, and she squirmed, visibly uncomfortable. "Locke, I—there's something I need to tell you. About Rachel."

He narrowed his eyes. "What about Rachel?"

"I… I think she's gone, Locke."

"No." His voice was iron-edged, as unflinching as the resolve that rose suddenly in him at this unexpected attack. "You've seen her. She's here. How would you know, anyway?" His words came out harsher, more accusatory, than he meant them. He ought to apologize, to regulate his tone.

Terra shrank away from him, but she pressed on. "I can… I can sense something. Or, I mean, I can't sense something. And I think I would, if she were there."

"You don't know that, though." He blinked rapidly, trying to push back the tears that started to fill his eyes. "As long as there's a chance, no matter how small, I'm not going to give up on her. I didn't give up on the Returners, and I'm not giving up on Rachel. We've beaten impossible odds before. It can happen again."

"I might not know what it's like to be in love with someone, but I do know what it's like to miss someone and want them back," Terra said, and guilt pricked at Locke's conscience, because she did. "No matter how much you miss them, you still have to learn to live without them, don't you?"

"If there was a chance to bring your father back, and someone else told you it was impossible, are you saying you would give up?"

"It's not giving up," Terra said, her shoulders slumping. "I just… I'm sure Rachel was a wonderful person, but…"

"No."


***


They fed her soup and tea until she was well enough to be relocated to the airship the next day. Returning to familiar quarters was a relief, even if it meant being around the gambler, who cornered Locke for what looked like a quiet and surprisingly serious conversation and then loudly offered to get them all drunk.

Celes kept to herself in a mostly-unused wing of the airship, hidden among Gabbiani's ridiculous gambling paraphernalia, while the others bustled about, planning their trip to Thamasa. She was utterly exhausted in every way and just wanted to lose herself in sleep for a hundred years, however pathetic that felt. In case you dream of him again? the voice taunted her. You've really turned into a lovesick fool.

As if reading her mind, a familiar mop of shaggy hair peeked around a corner. "Oh, there you are," he said. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to avoid company." The playful smile on his lips should have made her feel worse, but she was glad for it instead.

"What gave you that impression?" she asked.

"Everyone else is on the upper decks, and you're down here with the card tables and roulette wheels," he said, gesturing at the empty casino around her. "Unless you've decided to become a card shark in your free time…?"

"No."

His smile faltered and then fell away. With his hands in his pockets, he slouched against the nearest wall, not quite facing her. "Look, Celes…" He was ominously quiet for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. She tensed in anticipation of whatever had brought him down here. "The doctor said that extreme cold could hurt you until you've fully recovered," he said. "I assume that means Shiva's magic, too."

"It's fine."

"No, it's not," Locke said earnestly. "You need to be careful, all right?"

"All right."

"I mean it," he said. "You're very bad at keeping yourself safe, you know that? I worry that one of these days you're going to go running off a cliff and I won't be there to stop you." He glanced away from her, and his shoulders tensed. "I worry… that it already happened. We almost lost you this time."

"I got carried away," she said. "I wanted to help Rachel."

"Is that all?"

She felt the heat rising in her cheeks. "What does that mean?" Does he know? He was always so observant, so good at reading her; had he seen through her, and come to let her down as gently as he could?

"I mean," he said, and he made a face as though working through the words, "I mean that I think maybe you meant to run off that cliff."

"Oh," she said.

"And I'm worried about it happening again." He turned to face her, looking down at where she sat on one of Gabbiani's ubiquitous couches.

Of course he was worried. She wanted to laugh—she wanted to cry. For most of her life, she had been surrounded by people who expected her to throw her life in whichever direction they pointed, and if she was struck down on the battlefield, it would be a waste of a good tool and nothing more. But Locke, sweet and misguided as he was, thought he should protect her. He thought he had seen something in her worth saving, in the same blindly optimistic way he clung to the hope of reviving Rachel. He ought to be the patron saint of lost causes, she thought bitterly.

"It's all right," she said. "I'm sorry if I worried you, but I'm fine."

"Celes. Stop."

"It doesn't matter, really."

"Yes, it does."

"Why?"

She was startled when he took her cheeks in his hands, and it was all she could do to choke back the cry that rose in her involuntarily at his touch, at the way their eyes met when he tilted her face up to his. 

"I don't want to lose you," he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "You've been courting death since the day I met you. Whatever is telling you that you don't matter, that you don't deserve to live—it's wrong. We need you here."

She could feel herself trembling. His eyes were bright and wet with tears, and the fervent kindness in his voice cut through layers of flesh and bone and pierced her heart truer than any blade. She tore herself from his gaze and found herself looking at his lips again, those lips so quick to quirk upward in a crooked little smile, though they were somber now. Don't do this to me, Locke. Please.

"Promise me," he said. "Promise me you won't throw yourself at death again."

"Why?"

"Because I–" he started, and her eyes snapped to his. He looked briefly overwhelmed and lost. Hope—foolish, stupid, senseless hope—warmed her chest for one impossibly beautiful moment. But the next words never came, extinguishing that warmth just as quickly. She knew better. She knew he loved Rachel, had seen with her own eyes just how deeply he did. There was no room for anyone else in his heart. And yet...

The question escaped her lips before she could form it into a coherent sentence. "In Kohlingen," she stammered, "when I was… after… I thought you… I wasn't fully awake, but…"

This was a mistake. Abruptly, his hands fell to his sides, and he took a step back, eyes downcast, face reddening. She thought he was angry, at first. But—no, was it guilt that hunched his shoulders and turned his face from hers? Did that mean it had been real, after all? That he had brought warmth to her with his own body, as he had melted her icy heart? What did that mean, and what did this reaction mean now, if anything?

"You deserve to live," he said quietly, instead of answering her. "And I… I wish you believed that."

"I'll try," she said.

"Will you?" Finally, he looked at her again, though he did not touch her, however much she might wish he would.

"Yes. I… I promise." She choked on the words.

His eyes were intense, his voice quiet but firm, insistent. "What do you promise, Celes?"

I promise that I will love you until the day I die, she thought, though the pain of it may kill me. Out loud, she said, "I promise… I promise I'll stop—I… I promise I will try to live."

Gods help me, I will try.

Notes:

Hello, I tried to delay posting this because it seemed excessive to post such a long chapter so soon after the previous one. If this goes live at any point after Sunday or Monday, then you can congratulate me on my restraint.

Soooooooooo.

This is the chapter I was so scared of posting. It is probably the most personal chapter here; it is probably my favorite chapter I've written; I love it, but I'm afraid of how others will feel about it. I wrote most of it a month and a half ago (and had to spin two entire other chapters off of it; both previous chapters started life as part of this one).

I wanted to show why Locke loves Rachel so much, because it is so central to his character that it can't just be "because the story requires it." I wanted her to feel real, like someone you could fall in love with and never forget. And along the way I stumbled into (I hope) emotional payoffs for the relationships I've been building this whole time, not just between Locke and Celes but with both of them and Terra, and with Edgar.

I didn't plan for the chapter to go this way. I just knew they had to get to Kohlingen eventually, once the idea was broached all the way back in Zozo. And then I was thinking about how that would play out, and at some point in July I was driving down the highway and I realized Celes would be willing (even eager) to sacrifice herself for Rachel, and that her magic has always taken a toll on her, and I thought about how dramatic it would be if she almost died (look, I am what I am), and then I remembered something I'd read many years ago about caring for someone with hypothermia, and I found myself dictating those parts of this chapter into my phone while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Some of my stream-of-consciousness spoken-out-loud sentences actually made it into the final draft! (Not the first initial recorded notes, though; according to my speech-to-text, the first thing I "wrote" for this chapter was "Sally's should defend lock when she goes with him to Rachel's Place," so there you go. Celes is also "Silesia" and "Phillies" and "Silly's," according to my phone.)

Just so it's clear, you know, I didn't write this chapter as an excuse to put these two characters nearly-naked in bed together. That happened organically, and then I worried for a while that it would make the chapter seem cheap and tropey, but I couldn't convince myself to take it out, so here it is, in all its torturous, emotionally tangled, unresolved-sexual-tension glory.

(What does it say about me that my take on the "there's only one bed!" trope involves someone nearly dying of self-inflicted, borderline-suicidal hypothermia?)

The next chapter may take a while because I have to figure out what happens in it. I have some vague ideas and half-sketched conversations, but I am quite thoroughly off the rails now and that scares me. I'll get there. I think. So please be patient with me.

The podfic is coming along. I have Locke, Celes, and Terra cast already and we're working on the first full chapter, and we'll go from there. I also got a couple of my bandmates (yes that's right my band The Returners) to agree to recording some parts for me, so there will be music, too. FFVI owns my heart and soul.

The chapter summary is a line from some lyrics I wrote to Forever Rachel all the way back in 2014. I'm really not a poet. If you're ever like "How much does Lauren love Locke and Celes," I present this video evidence, in which I am dressed as Locke Cole singing needlessly melodramatic original lyrics to an arrangement of Forever Rachel.

Or (top secret, don't share this link, I'll take it down eventually) here's a draft of me singing my heart out to the Aria with The Returners on our hopefully-out-soon album.

Not pictured: Me dressed as Terra performing a movement of Dancing Mad with the band, but rest assured, that exists too.

Anyway, these end notes are quite long enough. I thought about putting something short and sassy, like "Sometimes you have to give the people what they want!" because the slow burn is beginning to catch fire, but that wouldn't be nearly enough words for me. (Fun fact: This chapter is 9,300 words! This note is 700+! Together, that makes about 10,000 words!)

Chapter 23: Circumnavigation

Summary:

A long and winding path toward a destination, within and without.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Kohlingen hung like a shadow over them all. No—she had to correct herself—Sabin seemed unfazed by it, at least. But Locke and Terra were both unusually attentive toward her, bringing her tea, and a jacket Locke had scrounged from somewhere, as though they worried she'd catch her death of cold simply by existing. She was seldom out of sight of at least one of them, even at night, when she shared a berth with Terra.

She did ache the one time she tried going above deck mid-flight—bone-deep pains in her fingers through to her wrists. And sometimes her hands woke her in the middle of the night, with an ache that seemed like it would never pass, and she wept silently for her hands and her heart. But she kept her pain as secret as she could.

Something had changed between her and Locke in Kohlingen, though she couldn't say what or how. He would dote on her as though she were an invalid who might come apart at a moment's notice, and then suddenly something inside him would shift and he would become cold and distant, leaving her in Terra's care. Not that he could maintain coldness for long—he was not carved of ice, as she had always been. She assumed this stemmed from his guilt, from feeling responsible for what had happened to her, as though she herself were not solely to blame for it. She had brought them to Kohlingen, insisted on healing Rachel, decided of her own volition that she was willing to make a sacrifice for the woman Locke loved.

It felt selfish to be receiving so much of their attention, and to be ungrateful for it, but it was suffocating. She just wanted to sleep, and not wake up. And maybe that was the problem.

"You don't have to be my nanny," she said to Locke, who hovered near her while pretending not to be, and was making a rather poor show of it. "I'm fine, I promise."

"Celes, you almost died."

"Yes, but that's happened enough times that I ought to be used to it by now," she said without thinking, and immediately regretted it, as Locke turned to her with such plain horror on his face that she wished she had a shell to withdraw into.

"I don't think almost dying is the sort of thing a person gets used to," he said.

Once again she was reminded that her very existence inspired disgust, that something in her was so fundamentally broken that ordinary people recoiled from her. She felt useless and despised her own weakness, how tired she was, how empty she felt. Some great warrior, the voice taunted her.

But she had made a promise. And as tempting as it was to wallow in misery, to lay down and let the darkness take her, that promise needled at her.

I will try to live.

And that meant finding something to cling to, a raft among the churning waves that threatened to crash over her head at any moment and drag her down into the depths of despair. She needed a hand to hold, if not to pull her out then at least to show her the way from darkness into life.

Because this wasn't the same kind of almost dying that had faced her on the battlefield so often. It wasn't like the neglect of her own needs that had pushed her onward to Narshe without heeding the toll it took on her body, passively risking her life with little care if she lived or died—courting death, Locke had called it. But she had never before, no matter how she despised herself, no matter how the guilt of what she had done hung like a weight at her neck, no matter how lonely or betrayed or abandoned or hopeless she felt, not even in the aftermath of Maranda or in those strange days imprisoned in her room at Vector—never before had she come so close to taking her life with her own hand.

No, coming close didn't describe it. She'd done it. If not for Locke bringing her back somehow from the brink, she would be dead. Of this she was sure.

Living hurt. Not just the throbbing in her fingers, but the bloody stains on her soul, the corrosive thoughts that whittled away at her mind, the emptiness in her heart. And she had tried to end that pain. She had seen herself falling, she had known how close to the edge she skirted, and she had chosen to leap into the void.

And then Locke had saved her—from the cold, from death, but also from herself.

Now she had a promise to keep. I will try to live.

But how?


***


Without the pressing urgency of a never-ending war, they had the freedom to plot a leisurely journey by airship. As much as he hated flight, especially during takeoff and landing, it was marvelous how it revolutionized travel across great distances. It would be hard to go back to weeks-long journeys after being spoiled by such speed.

Thus they planned a quick trip to Figaro for Edgar's sake, a stop in Narshe to refill the airship's fuel, and then back across the sea to Vector again before continuing on Terra's wild goose chase to Thamasa. Locke remained skeptical about what they would find there, but he intended to keep his word to his friend.

Celes was so like a ghost for the first couple of days out of Kohlingen that he found himself touching her—her shoulder, her wrist, the back of her hand—just to prove to himself that she was warm and alive. The shadows in her eyes and her heavy silence made him wonder if some part of her had been lost to the cold after all. He could only hope that, if so, it was merely hibernating, waiting for spring's thaw to return.

They landed delicately on a rocky outcropping near Figaro. When they reached the castle itself by foot, the usual retinue of courtiers, attendants, and advisors emerged to greet their king, full of news and updates and questions.

"Is it always like this?" Sabin asked Locke as they all paraded through the castle gates. There was a childlike desperation in his voice that was not so different from how he had seemed on that first return, months ago. Locke would have expected him to be accustomed to Figaro Castle by now, having spent time at home with Edgar, but then again, coming home and the ensuing commotion must still be new.

"Every time I've been here, this happens," Locke said. "Mostly they focus on Edgar, and the rest of us can just sneak past in his shadow."

But Sabin did not seem comforted by this. He frowned, watching his brother as the sea of supplicants swept him away, leaving the others to follow the matron to their chambers for the night.

Even Setzer joined them, with a wolfishly delighted grin. "It's not every day you get to live like a king," he said. "The Blackjack may be luxurious, but do you really think I'd miss an opportunity like this? Besides, Edgar has talked up Figaro as some marvelous technological wonder that puts my ship to shame. I have to see for myself if it lives up to his boasting."

They were given a cluster of rooms within the part of the city that was officially considered the king's immediate domain. Sabin, of course, had his own room near his brother's in the royal suite. Such distinctions were mostly a formality here where every living and working space existed within the walls of the castle, but the Figaroans understood the need for boundaries and respected them almost religiously.

In a low voice, Locke conferred with Terra, then the matron, and a cot was discreetly moved so that Celes and Terra could share one room. He thought Celes might object, or at least question it, but she merely deposited her things by the bed and sank down into a chair by the window without comment.

That worried him—he wanted her to protest, to push back, to fight. Anything but the distracted sadness that made her listless and blank-eyed.

How long had she been like this? When had she broken so badly that the fight in her went out? Not when he'd met her in that basement in South Figaro; she was still driven then, and she remained so throughout the Returners' battle with the Empire, across the continent in search of Terra and across the sea to Vector. In the absence of something driving her, in the aftermath of the war ending, had she found herself unmoored, without direction or purpose? Was the momentum of fighting the Empire all that kept her moving forward, and without that momentum, had the damage from a lifetime as the Empire's tool caught up to her at last?

No, that didn't seem quite right.

There had been hope in her eyes sometimes in their travels together. Zozo, in Ramuh's apartment, when she learned of her power to heal. Vector, in Cid's lab, when it seemed they would free the Espers. Hope did not easily take root in her heart; these rare instances were short-lived, because she had desperately needed reassurance, for someone to protect the flickering little flame before the wind could extinguish it, and in both cases he had failed her.

He had told her, so many times, to believe in hope. But whenever it had kindled within her, he let the flame die, again and again, just as he had seen her flame go out at Rachel's bedside, and he had done nothing—nothing—until it was almost too late. No, not almost. It was a miracle she had lived.

Foolish of him to think he could save her, somehow.

What she really needed was support, not saving, but he'd done such a piss-poor job of either at every moment when it really mattered. Had she given up on herself because she thought everyone else had given up on her? He could see their worry for her, how glad they all were to see her safe—but could she?

He was at a loss, and so he was grateful when Edgar invited him to join the twins for a drink and some company that evening, a welcome distraction.

Edgar's parlor was handsomely appointed but not garish as the gambler's airship was—not flaunting its wealth, just well-made and tastefully decorated in the Figaroan style. Locke had been here often enough to feel comfortable despite its regal furnishings, though this was the first visit since Sabin's return and the prince's presence made it strange once more.

Locke crossed his arms over the back of a chair, eyeing Edgar, who was seated at a table with a ledger of some sort open in front of him and a pair of little spectacles on his nose. They'd all had some fantastic Jidoorian wine, although the three glasses scattered on the table were not empty and the bottle was still half full. It had been just enough to take the edge off, leaving him a little tipsy but mostly in control of himself. Edgar seemed unaffected; on the other hand, to Locke's surprise, Sabin was a little broody. The prince lay on his back on the floor with his legs propped up against the wall, a stark contrast to his brother's rigidly proper posture.

"Are you sure you should be leaving Figaro again so soon?" Locke asked. "It's one thing to travel because there's a war going on, but we're at peace now. Ostensibly. And the trip to Thamasa is personal, not strategic, unless something goes terribly wrong. Which it might."

"If Thamasa is what you say it is—and I'm more inclined to trust your instincts than Terra's—it will be perfectly safe." Edgar didn't look up from his work, scanning down the page with the tip of a pen. "If it's secretly home to the descendants of Espers, then consider it a diplomatic mission. I'd want to offer Figaro as an ally to them." He gestured with the pen to Locke. "And if it turns out Gestahl is up to something, then we're still at war and I'd like to know about it."

"You do spend a lot of time away," Sabin observed from the floor. 

His brother glanced down at him over the rims of his eyeglasses. "Figaro is generally self-governing. They need someone to guide their direction, prepare contingencies in case of emergency, and so on, but they can handle the day-to-day on their own."

"You're not just trying to get away?" Sabin was tossing something small in the air; it took Locke a moment to realize it was a coin, flicking up and down, catching the light from the electric wall sconces. "I don't think anyone would blame you if you needed a break. That crown has to chafe sometimes."

"I admit it can be a weighty responsibility, but it's one I freely accepted." Edgar used his kingly voice, bright and artificial, a sign that he was hiding the truth beneath it.

Sabin snorted. "No one could ever accuse you of being a sore loser."

Edgar's smile was pained. "You know, I don't think most people would consider becoming king to be 'losing.'"

"That's because most people don't actually know what it's like to be a king."

Edgar pressed his lips together and gave no response. There was something here, some piece Locke was missing to a puzzle he had not been aware of before; he could feel the importance of what was going unsaid, and he had no idea what it was, and not knowing made him squirm.

It wasn't any of his business. He shouldn't even be here; surely the brothers would prefer to be alone for this private conversation, without an outsider intruding on their space. Yet his curiosity got the better of him even at the best of times, and right now his mind was eager for something, anything, to think about that was not connected to the thorny tangle of his worry for Celes, his grief over Rachel, and everything that had transpired in Kohlingen.

He deliberated for several minutes on the best way to ask without offending either brother or exposing his own curiosity too plainly. A casual tone, a casual question might give him an opening. He tried his best. "So are you the older brother, Edgar?" 

"On a technicality, yes, I was born first."

"And that's enough to determine succession?"

Edgar sighed. "Not necessarily. Our father wanted us to split things evenly and rule together."

"But…?" Dammit, that wasn't at all subtle. Was it the wine, or was he losing his touch?

Judging by Edgar's laugh, the king was choosing to be amused rather than bothered by Locke's barefaced nosiness. "You're going to get at it one way or another, aren't you? Very well. No, we decided not to follow our father's wishes. Sabin had other dreams–"

"You make it sound like the whole thing was my idea!"

"—and naturally someone had to lead Figaro, so we came to an agreement."

"He wagered his future on a coin toss," Sabin said to Locke, flicking the coin in his hand hard against the wall as if in illustration. Derisive wasn't quite the word to describe how he said this, but Locke was hard pressed to think of a better one. "Heads, my freedom. Tails, his. I won."

Something about this didn't sit right with Locke—either he didn't know his friend as well as he thought he did, or there was more to it. Edgar had never struck Locke as the sort of man who would leave something so important to random chance. He wouldn't have gambled with his people's lives. And there was no question that between the two brothers, Edgar was better suited for the responsibilities of ruling, just as it was plainly apparent that Sabin had no interest in the crown. Had the whole thing therefore been a charade for Sabin's benefit? If so, the prince seemed none the wiser.

"Neither of us won or lost," Edgar said patiently.

"Didn't we?"

"I love Figaro," Edgar said, "and I'm proud to serve my people as their king. Besides, what would you have had us do? Walk away together and leave Figaro with an empty throne? That would invite invasion or civil war. I may come and go when other responsibilities call me, but Figaro needs a king."

"And that king has to be you."

"I would like to think I'm good at ruling," Edgar said stiffly, "and that I have done well with my kingdom, all things considered."

"You have," Locke said, offering up what honest support he could. "You did some fancy footwork for years to keep Figaro safe from the Empire. That can't have been easy. And your people love you—that's easy to see. You've been good for Figaro."

"What about you, though?" Sabin asked his brother. "Are you happy?"

"Yes." Edgar's curt response was punctuated by the closing of his ledger. He removed his spectacles, making it very clear that the conversation, too, was closed. Locke wondered if Sabin noted the evasiveness in the king's reply. "Alas, I am also tired, and we have more travel ahead of us. Good night, both of you. I'll see you in the morning."


***


He returned to his room and readied for bed. Sleep was elusive. For a few hours, he tossed and turned, and the sumptuous linens of the guest chamber might as well have been ropes tangling him as surely as his own worries. Finally, just before dawn, he gave up on getting more than fitful rest.

Some instinct told him to check on her. Just a peek into the chamber to see her sleeping soundly, to reassure himself that everything was all right. But the covers of her bed were thrown back, and she was nowhere to be seen. He stepped fully into the room, at a loss. Her boots were gone, but her possessions remained—there was her sword in its sheath hanging from a chair, there was her knapsack beside it, but no sign of Celes herself.

Terra sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Locke?" she asked, half-asleep. "What are you doing here?"

"Celes is gone," he said. "Did you hear her leave?"

That was enough to shock her into full wakefulness. "No."

She joined him in searching the surrounding halls, with no luck. They split up to cover the most ground; though fully contained in its castle walls, the city was not small, layered with living spaces and shops and workshops and classrooms, though most of them were closed at this hour. Better to get through it all as quickly as possible, to find her wherever she might be found.

Panic took him through the sleeping city just beginning to wake, down pathways made eerie by their sleepy silence. The few citizens already stirring had not seen Celes, as he kept asking after her with increasing dread. She could not simply have vanished. Surely someone would notice her.

Finally, he found her standing alone at the railing of one of Figaro's tallest towers at dawn. The gold of her hair caught his eye, shining as it fluttered in the wind around her. Her eyes were closed, her face tilted up to catch the rays of the early desert sun.

Fear quickened his heart, and his bare feet slapped across the stones of the parapet. "Celes," he called. She was turning to face him when he reached her. He pulled her bodily from the railing and crushed her to his chest, a safe distance from the edge and the rolling sands so very far below.

"Locke?" she asked, sounding genuinely puzzled, her voice muffled against his shoulder. "What...?"

"I was worried—I thought—I thought you were–" He couldn't finish the thought.

Silence marked her confusion for another long moment. Hesitantly, she brought her hands up awkwardly to his waist. "Thought I was…?"

"It's a long way down," he said, which was not at all what he should say.

"Down? What do—oh." She breathed deep and let it out in a slow exhale. "I wasn't… I wasn't going to jump. I just couldn't sleep. I wanted to see the sun rise."

His relief turned into self-conscious laughter. "Oh."

"I promised," she said, sounding a little hurt. "I'm… I'm not going to break that promise, all right?"

With a start, he realized that he was still holding her, that his arms were too tight around her. She might think he didn't believe or trust her, might feel stifled or condescended to. He let her go at once. His elbows jostled her hands, and she winced and pulled them away, grimacing.

"Your hands," he said, taking them and turning them so he could see the palms, the yellowing lines of bruises that still marred them, winding around the veins in her fingers. With a whisper-light touch, he traced the bruises and noted how tense she grew, the way she bit her lip as if holding something back. "They're still hurting?"

"Sometimes."

"Is there anything I can do? Maybe there's a salve, or… oh, this probably isn't helping, is it?"

But when he released her hands, she protested, "No!" A moment later, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment, she added, "Your hands are warm, and… mine are cold."

At last, a concrete problem, something he could actually solve. After days of struggling to know where to even begin helping her, he jumped on it. "I'll get you some gloves. Would that help?"

She laughed, but there was sadness in it. "Maybe, I don't know." A moment later, the rueful smile slipped from her face, and she added, "Thank you for looking for me. I'm sorry I worried you."

"I just… I don't want anything to happen to you." Again. "Please let me know if there's anything you need, anything I can help with. I know maybe it's hard to ask for–"

"Look," she interrupted, as if forcing herself to speak up, "if you really want to help me, give me something to do other than be trapped in my own head. It isn't a good place to be."

"I can work on that." 

He could, and he would. This might be the first time she'd ever asked for help, and damned if he would let her down as he had too many times before. If he could somehow drown out the thoughts that had tormented her to the point of seeking to end them—you're not saving her, you're helping her save herself, that's how it needs to be…

He would catch hold of her before she fell, and he would not let her go. Not this time.


***


I used to be a general, she thought. I could give commands. I could make decisions. I used to be strong. What happened to me? But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn't the whole truth—the same fault lines that had now shattered were already beginning to crack long ago, fracturing from too much stress placed on a mind that couldn't withstand it, any more than her body could withstand the magic infusion it had been cursed with. And if that made her weak, at least she had someone else to sweep up the pieces of her and gather them together.

Locke was true to his word. Before they set off for Narshe, when the airship was all but loaded up and everyone was taking their seats for takeoff, he brought her a small stack of books from the shops in Figaro. "I don't know how fast you read," he said. "But I thought you might want somewhere to escape, something different."

She glanced through them. A field guide to desert plants and animals, a history of South Figaro, a self-proclaimed adventure story, a little chapbook of poetry, and a tawdry dime novel with well-worn pages.

"I didn't know what you liked," he said self-consciously.

"Honestly, neither do I," she said, and there was that wincing pity on his face again. She was tired of inspiring that look, not least because she was no longer convinced it was unjustified. Tentatively, experimentally, she added, "Yet."

Encouraged, he stepped into the opening she had given him. "There's something exciting about that, though, isn't there? An entire world of books out there, and so many of them will be a new experience for you. It's like traveling to a new part of the world and discovering an entire cuisine you never knew existed. Like I always wondered what the food might be like in Mobliz, all the way on the Veldt—I've never been there before…"

Despite herself, she laughed at this sudden, earnest outpouring of entirely irrelevant words. It was as though he'd tapped straight into his own stream of consciousness by accident, and from the reddening of his face, she could tell he realized it, too.

"Sorry," he said. "That was…"

"Don't be sorry. Maybe we can drop by Mobliz when we're done with Thamasa."

She flipped through the first few pages of the adventure story. Some previous owner had penciled a name inside the front cover in blocky letters, and she imagined what Locke would say about this—that the book itself had a story, too. Rachel would have loved that, Rachel who had received so many gifts just like this from him. The thought stung, realizing the best she could hope for was a small piece of what Rachel had had, but that wasn't his fault.

"Thank you," she said, and a sudden proud grin lit up his face, like a child who had just received hard-won praise.

"Oh!" he said, clearly remembering something he'd forgotten. "I couldn't find any gloves on short notice, but we'll be in Narshe soon and they'll have all the warm clothes you could ever need. In the meantime, I thought maybe these could help? They're at least better than nothing."

He handed her a pile of cloth, and she unfolded one of his many scarves and a pair of his own gloves, supple leather lined with soft fabric—durable protection against the elements, ending at the first knuckle to give him full use of his nimble fingers.

"Don't you need them?"

"I have an extra pair." He shrugged. "You never know what might happen, so it's best to be prepared. Anyway, they might be a little big for you, but…"

Her fingertips were what hurt the worst in the cold, which meant that his gloves, so very functional for his purposes, were nearly useless for hers. But she slipped her hands into them, feeling the shape his own hands had worn into them, and smiled. "They're perfect. Thank you."


***


They insisted she stay on the airship in Narshe, in a warm room away from the windows. The others took turns keeping her company, playing cards at one of the gambler's tables.

Being treated like she was fragile, like she might shatter like dropped glass if they looked away from her for even a moment—it felt insulting, patronizing—not unwarranted, but enough to drive her mad.

And yet the simple fact that they were babysitting her, so to speak, meant something. She had not consciously considered that other people would miss her if she never woke up. She had thought only of how much Rachel deserved to live, of how unbearable her own heartache was, and the overwhelming guilt that ate at her every day without ceasing. These familiar faces and their feelings had not been part of her consideration.

She sat wrapped in Locke's scarf while these people chose to give up rare time among their friends in Narshe to sit with her in this stuffy little room, teaching her card games that everyone except her and Terra seemed to know already.

Locke excused himself once he saw she was thoroughly occupied in yet another card game, no doubt for a shopping trip that was as much for information-gathering as anything else. She remembered Terra commenting on his multitasking, and suddenly it struck her that through so many conversations and shared experiences, she had come to know these people. Locke's inability to keep his mouth shut, and Terra's quiet concern for the people around her, Sabin's humor, Edgar's slightly bookish manner even when he tried to be casual—she knew that Locke sometimes cried himself to sleep at night and she knew why; she could draw Terra out of her shell by asking about baking, or tea; she had seen the royal twins bickering but despite how different they seemed, she was quite convinced that Sabin was every bit as intelligent as his brother and that they loved each other fiercely.

Despite all her years as a soldier among the imperials, she couldn't say what brought Leo joy, or what Cid feared, or where the men in her unit had called home. And she doubted any of them would have been able to answer any such questions about her. Had she felt alone because her heart was made of ice, or because no one had ever even tried to connect with her as this little cluster of misfits had?

They would talk to her, if she spoke to them and often enough even if she didn't. They would cross the world to find her. She had wondered, once, if anyone would rescue her if she'd been in Terra's position, and so they had, after all. What a peculiar thing. She had found friendship, somehow, not among the people who had raised her but among her sworn enemies.

That thought, once it lodged in her brain, soon spread to fill her with a warmth that made her think of how she felt about Locke, but a quiet radiance rather than a flame as likely to burn her as warm her. There had been moments during her time with the Returners over the past year when she had felt a sense of belonging, however fleeting. But it had never stuck with her for long. Never seemed permanent, never silenced the voice that dripped acid on her heart.

Now, she was looking for reasons to cling to life, and for the first time she wondered if the threads binding her to these other souls were indeed temporary, or if they would hold strong through the storm.


***


It was nice to see her among friends, not hovering at the perimeter as she so often did but actually sitting with them, talking to them, with a smile, however faint, on her lips. He stood awhile just outside the open door looking in, watching her fumble through a card game. Her fingers were long and elegant, their pale grace contrasting against his own ugly, well-worn gloves—but it did his heart good to see her wearing the gloves anyway and to know that in some tangible way he had eased her pain a little.

"Just sleep with her already," Setzer said over his shoulder, almost in his ear.

Startled, Locke turned to him. "Excuse me?"

"You've been following her around like she's a dog in heat," the gambler said with a smirk. "Not that I blame you. She's distracting, that hair, those thighs–"

Locke closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please don't talk about her that way."

"I'm just saying, she's a damn fine woman. No one would fault you for wanting her."

"I thought you understood," Locke stammered, his face burning, "I'm not—I just—if I'm following her around, it's because Terra and I—Celes tried—we're worried about her."

The gambler shook his head. "There's worry, and then there's–"

"There's nothing!"

He had not meant to raise his voice. The sound of chatter on the other side of the door abruptly stopped, leaving an awkward, listening silence. The blood pounded in Locke's ears, hot with anger and humiliation. After a moment, the card game seemed to pick up again. He took a deep breath to calm himself.

Setzer held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'm just trying to help. It doesn't have to mean anything, you know. Your heart is your heart, but the rest of you isn't bound to it."

"Doesn't have to–" Locke echoed in horrified astonishment. "Is it really like that for you? The women in your life mean nothing to you but… just a moment of passing pleasure?"

With a scornful chuckle, Setzer shook his head. "You make it sound dirty, but is it any different from any other kind of happiness? I'm honest about what I want, and anyone I sleep with is on the same page. We're all entitled to a little pleasure to get through the overbearing misery that is life."

Locke stared. "Have you always been this depressing?"

Setzer surprised him with a simple, honest, "No." His expression was uncommonly serious for a moment, as though the question had carried him deep into heavier memories of loss. With a grin that was more of a grimace, he continued, "There was a period of time when you might have found me insufferable in other ways, but not this one—but then life shat on that for me, as it does."

As usual, the gambler's self-deprecation cut through whatever furious insults were churning through Locke's head. The sudden shift in mood and the other man's very obvious pain threw him off balance, though. And he had not yet found his bearings when he heard Celes's voice calling to him from the card table in the next room.

"Locke? Is something wrong?"

He couldn't remember what he said to Setzer, if he even said anything at all, or if he encountered anyone else on his way off the airship. It wasn't until he was outside in the brisk mountain air of Narshe that his blood cooled enough for him to think straight once more.

 Running errands was a diversion. Talking to strangers was a diversion. The morning sun reflected off the snow into his eyes and brought him back outside his own head. He managed to make some of the Narshean miners laugh—no small feat among these reticent northern people—and regaled them with tales about the fall of Vector, and how their victory up here had snowballed into something much greater than any of them and brought the Empire to its knees. By the end of the morning, he felt like himself again. But then he filled his lungs with air so cold it burned his throat, and he thought of her again, and how the same cold that was so invigorating could be deadly, and the sunlight and the snow was spoiled for him.

Among other trinkets and tools, his bundle included warm clothes for Celes, not just the gloves she needed so badly but thick knitted outerwear and a silken underlayer to trap heat against her body. He tried not to think about how he could guess what size she would wear, about the scars and muscle and surprising softness of her, of holding her tightly enough to know the space she took up in his arms.

He was surprised but not displeased to find a cluster of veteran Returners gathered by the airship upon his return, those who had lingered in the lodging house in Narshe, awaiting word from Banon before they would feel comfortable disbanding. Some of the newer recruits and younger rebels had scattered across the continent and gone home already, but these men had been through too much to expect the Empire to honor its promises, and they remained at the ready. After so long without peace, it was hard to believe in it.

The Doman was with them, too. Locke was glad to see him, deep in conversation with Sabin. Cyan looked less haunted than the last time their paths had crossed; his grief was less fresh, and perhaps working alongside the Returners had given him some sort of renewed purpose. Maybe he'd even had word from other survivors.

"Are you sure?" Sabin was asking him as Locke approached. "I don't think we'll mind taking you, or anyone else, but you had good reasons to want to stay here last time…"

So Cyan and the others were hitching a ride to Vector, then. Locke doubted the Doman had forgiven the Imperials for what they did to his homeland, which meant something else had changed.

Cyan's expression was grave. "I want to look in the faces of the men who killed everyone I loved. I want to see for myself that their power has been stripped away. And I will push for  that monstrous magician to be tried for his crimes and executed. He is too dangerous to live, even imprisoned—if ever he gets free, there will be grave consequences for all of us."

Locke, who normally opposed execution on general principle, could not really disagree. It wasn't his place to tell Cyan how to channel his grief, but more than that, he could not truly fault the man's reasoning. Kefka had seemed well-contained in a cell designed specifically to render him harmless, but what would happen if he were freed, perhaps by a sympathetic guard, or by Gestahl's own treacherous order?


***


When the men returned with an additional smattering of soldiers, Celes welcomed the chance to dilute the attention that her friends—yes, they were friends, hard as that might be to accept—focused so sharply on her. Ordinarily she might have found so many people to be overwhelming, but their presence added warmth and life to the airship, and her own mind quieted among their noise. So she did not retreat, and to her surprise and relief, they did not avoid her.

Someone, probably Locke, seemed to have told them that she'd been unwell, or else perhaps they noticed her wrapped so warmly in the ridiculous sweater Locke brought her, even within the airship's heated rooms. Regardless of how they knew to do so, they checked in on her, and it was nice. Nice. It felt ordinary, and that made it extraordinary.

There was one notable exception. Out of habit, she tried to avoid the Doman, the walking embodiment of her crimes and her failings. Choosing to live meant drowning out the guilt that plagued her before it could drown her first. Her weakness, her foolishness, her brokenness—she had a chance at tamping those parts of herself down. But not the guilt. Not the knowledge of the blood on her hands. She had not slain a single Doman herself, and yet their deaths were on her conscience, because she had not turned on the Empire sooner, because she had not succeeded in slaying Kefka, because she had been too slow in bringing her warning to someone who could and would help. If only she had gone directly to the Returners somehow, or to Doma itself, rather than thinking Gestahl might listen…

Luxurious as the airship was, it was not so large as to allow her to stay away from the Doman forever. Even so, she was surprised when he sat beside her in the dining room two days into their journey to Vector. She stood up, ready to relinquish the table to him, abandoning her half-finished bowl of stew. But he raised a hand, gesturing for her to wait.

She didn't want to wait, to find out what he would say. Would he direct his righteous anger at her, as a representative of the Empire that had taken everything from him? The memory of his drawn sword swung in fury at her was still fresh.

"You have been avoiding me," he said.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I'm sorry for—for everything. I'm sorry I couldn't stop it—couldn't save your people–"

"Stop," he said. "You did not attack Doma. You—and you alone—turned from your Empire to save us, even if it meant your own death. And for that effort, that intent, I am grateful."

"I don't deserve gratitude for something I failed at," she said bitterly.

"Nevertheless, it is proof of your character. I should not have judged you. You are an honorable woman."

The emphasis he gave the word honorable spoke of the weight of the idea to him, and it would be wrong to scoff outwardly at being awarded such unearned acclaim. Still, she squirmed under his gaze and could not meet his eyes.

"I, too, have killed men under the command of my lord," he continued. "I trusted him to lead us only into honorable combat, and I believe he did, but there are deaths on my conscience—on all of ours."

It was true. They had been at war. Likely every last man on the airship, save for possibly Locke, had ended a life. You don't have a monopoly on killing, you know. You are not uniquely tainted here, not like that. But the voice was unfocused, as though it could not decide whether this was meant as scorn or reassurance, and so its barbs—for once—did not sting.

Happiness, she suspected, would forever elude her. But numbness could ease the pain, and something—whether it was friendship, or love, or just the obligation of a promise made—could protect her against the cold.

Notes:

OK, it turns out I needed to work on four chapters simultaneously (not all polished, but the general shape and key scenes) because that's the only way I can make sure I lay the groundwork I need and pace it properly as we build toward a climax. But here you go, something a little quieter, for now.

I underestimated how emotionally difficult it is to write someone who is wrestling with the aftermath of what is essentially a suicide attempt. I wanted to respect the gravity of that, while also showing momentum towards healing and recovery. Celes has been skirting her tendency toward self-destruction for so long, but now she has to face it. She's a lot stronger than she gives herself credit for, as so many people are. Strength doesn't mean never hurting or never falling, and sometimes it means having other people to carry you when you need it.

Sorry Setzer is so crass. He's genuinely trying to help, he and Locke are just very different people and this is not an easy topic. I am picking up my ensemble cast more (I've been wanting an excuse for a little more Cyan, and the twins have their own lives and their own problems) and I am doing my best to balance it.

On the podfic front, I'm still casting most of the main parts. The prologue and first chapter are mostly recorded, though; Locke and Celes have done a great job with their lines, and I'm learning a lot. I'll keep you posted in case you want to hear it when it's eventually up! There's a lot of work to be done still before even that section is ready to go, but I'm stubborn, so I'll get there.

Chapter 24: Off Course (REVISED)

Summary:

Unexpected news and unpredictable chance throw a wrench into even well-made plans.

Notes:

If you saw an earlier version of this chapter: no, you didn't. Nothing to see here. (Yes, I took it down to revise it. If you read it before, you may want to read it again.)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

They arrived in the field outside Vector, and their own men were waiting with Banon at their head, having sighted the great shadow of the airship approaching in the distance. Locke was grateful that Edgar glossed over the visit to Kohlingen in recounting their travels to Banon and the others. Despite the passage of time, his feelings remained thorny and tangled and tender, and the thought of sharing something so personal with the Returners was uncomfortable at best. So he sat in uncharacteristic quiet while the others talked through their plans.

"And next, I suppose, we'll follow Terra's wishes and go to Thamasa at last," Edgar concluded, as they sat together within Banon's tent, which had begun to feel a little shabby and cramped after such a long occupation.

"We may be already on our way north to Nikeah when you return," Banon said. "Everything appears to be going as it should. We'll leave representatives here, of course—and we connected with your friends in the city at last—but I can't keep these men here indefinitely, not if the war is truly ended."

Knowing that Hassan could depend on allies in the Returners if things went badly in Vector gave Locke some relief.

He was relieved by a change he saw in Celes, too. Some light had returned to her eyes. It might have been thanks to the passing of time, or the way even the Returners who barely knew her had taken to heart his request that they be kind to her—he had wanted her to be surrounded by kindness—but whatever the cause, she seemed less haunted, less gaunt, a little more ready to smile. He wondered again what she would be like without pain or fear, like the girl he had once heard in her voice, safely cocooned from the rest of the world—he wanted to hear her like that again, to...

As Edgar and Banon conferred over final details, the rest of them slipped into Vector for the day to tie up loose ends, and he was grateful for an excuse to keep his mind occupied. Cyan set off for the Imperial compound with Celes, and it was wonderful to see the two of them relatively at ease in each other's company. Locke felt a little apprehensive about letting them go unsupervised—they had both proven themselves to be impulsive and perfectly willing to use violence against the imperials, and Locke had yet to confront Celes about the magic she had unleashed on Vector—but he had his own concerns to deal with first. He'd reconnect with the others afterward.

Thus he took a roundabout journey down the streets of Vector, pointedly avoiding any alleyway or part of town that looked suspect. The memories of his own back-alley beating here were all too clear. Eventually he found himself at Hassan's bar again.

The bartender grinned up at him as he entered, though he was busy tending to customers. In the back of the bar, Locke recognized one of the young women who had assisted in their infiltration of the Magitek Research Facility, sharing a little table with one of Banon's men. An alliance, or a security risk, or just friendship—or something more—between two people who had each risked everything to fight a common enemy.

No, not a security risk. They had to trust in their allies, and in each other. He'd learned that.

The world was changing. The Empire had fallen. Hope would prevail.


***


Honestly, she was surprised Locke had let her out of his sight without insisting that Terra accompany her. Maybe he thought the Doman would be a good enough influence to keep her out of trouble. If so, she would believe it; now that he wasn't swinging a sword at her with rage in his eyes, he had a stoic, mature presence that reminded her of Leo.

She could see how just being in Vector set him on edge. And that was why she'd volunteered to show him the way, so he wouldn't have to stumble through enemy territory alone without guidance. Part of her relished the thought of seeing Gestahl taken to task for the very worst of his crimes—and, too, she understood why Cyan would want to see Kefka imprisoned with his own eyes. She'd done the same herself. In their hatred of Gestahl and of Kefka, she and the Doman were united. Maybe accompanying him here for this confrontation would bring some closure to them both.

The worst of the damage to the imperial compound had been patched up since she had last passed through its gates, no more gaping holes and crumbling walls, though she felt a degree of satisfaction that the burn marks and the twisted metal still remained. Cyan was saying something in a language she didn't understand, but from context she assumed he was muttering curses.

"You said the place where they make the Magitek armor is destroyed," he said to her as they approached Gestahl's great hall.

"Yes," she said. "We passed it earlier. It's just a ruined pile of rubble now."

"Good."

The guards here recognized her, and perhaps they could tell that the stranger with her was not just a foreigner but a Doman because they seemed quite thrown off by his presence. They were polite when they told her she could not go down to the prison where Kefka was being kept, even after she raised her voice and found herself issuing orders as a commanding officer. Finally, she pushed past them and down the stairs, and the Doman followed her, ignoring the guards' protests.

This was so different from her previous visit that her hackles were raised. Something was wrong. And her suspicions were confirmed when she finally reached Kefka's glass-lined cell—and found it empty.

Again the Doman swore. "You're certain this is the one?"

"Yes," Celes said, beginning to shake with fury and terror. Empty. Kefka's cell was empty. Which meant he had gotten out, or been let out. The floor and walls were charred; the furniture was metal, with only a pile of ash on the bed where a mattress and linens had once been. But there was no trace of the man himself.

There were footsteps in the hallway behind them. Celes spun, drawing her sword, expecting to see Kefka's mad grin. To confront him, without Shiva's gift to protect her—to die by his flame, or by her chill—but she would not go down without a fight. Beside her, the Doman too stood with his blade at the ready.

Not Kefka, but Gestahl himself, alone, with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

"Where is he?" she cried.

"Gone," Gestahl said, and he flinched when she gripped her sword tighter and shifted her stance. "No, not like that. He has not escaped, as you fear. Nor have we turned him loose."

"Then where is he?" Her voice dropped into a dangerous hiss.

"He attacked the guards who were tending to him." Gestahl leaned forward, as though telling a secret. "He could not be rehabilitated, and he proved himself to be unstable and beyond reach. There was nothing else we could do."

She stared at him in disbelief. "You mean… you killed him?" Again the emperor flinched. "You executed him!" Her heart was racing, her breaths shallow and too quick. "Do—do the Returners know?"

"It was yesterday," Gestahl said quietly. "It wasn't planned. We haven't yet released the news. If it gets out, something like this might threaten the peace we've all worked so hard to achieve. It must be revealed carefully, when the time is right."

Shock kept her from saying anything else, a numbness that spread through her as her mind spun, trying to make sense of what she had been told. For as long as she could remember, Kefka had been a dark threat looming in the background, waiting for any opportunity to hurt her. A world without him was inconceivable, as impossible as if someone had claimed the sun would no longer set.

"Then justice is served," Cyan said gravely.

"You must be from Doma," Gestahl said, and he bowed low. "No apology will suffice, I know, but I hope you will find some comfort in knowing that the man responsible for your nation's fate will trouble the world no longer."

Celes was still trembling. "Kefka is gone..." 

"Yes," Gestahl said. "Please, come upstairs. Let me call for tea to be served. The least I can do is offer Vector's hospitality. And perhaps we can discuss the future..."

"I do not want your hospitality." Cyan had sheathed his sword, but there was an edge in his voice all the same.

"We need to tell the Returners," Celes said. "Does Banon know? Did he keep it from us? Or did you keep it from him?"

"Please." Gestahl was wringing his hands. "You must be careful with this information…"

"Why?"

"The people of Vector are still uneasy. Some of them have not taken well to the calls for peace. If they find that their leaders have turned on their own, they may rise up—which would lead to more bloodshed and misery. Please," he said again. When he met her eyes, she saw genuine fear on his face, with none of an emperor's pride. "I know you're angry with us. You have every reason to be. But there are innocent people in Vector who could be hurt if there's an uprising here…"

"Fine," she said, punctuating this by sheathing her own sword. "We're leaving. Cyan…"

The Doman was by her side still, and he stayed with her as she strode down the hall, up the stairs, past the servants and imperial soldiers who parted before her like water.

She was dazed the whole way back to the Returners camp, absolutely stunned by Gestahl's revelation. It shook the very foundation of how she saw the world and her place in it. Kefka was gone, had disappeared completely, with only the wreckage he left behind to prove he had ever lived.

They had meant to execute her, and however much she hated Kefka, she could not help thinking how close she had come to the same fate. If not for the unlikely providence of Locke's intervention, she would have died without ceremony, and no one would have ever known what befell her. This horror chilled her, and with some surprise she realized that she was glad to have survived, to have had a chance to meet these people and find some sort of salvation. Could Kefka have been saved, if someone like Locke had walked into his life at the right moment?

Was there even anything in Kefka to be saved?

Or was he a monster? Had he been born monstrous? Was something fundamentally different between him and Celes and the rest of the world? If his death was justice, as Cyan said… would her death have been justice for the people of Maranda? And what would it mean to them that she had lived?

She wanted Locke to comfort her, but he was not yet back at camp. Terra was there, but how could she tell Terra that the bogeyman of their waking nightmares was gone? That there could be true peace now, not just for the world but for them?

And who could she safely tell, if Gestahl's fears were justified?

Cyan seemed unhindered by these thoughts. He went straight to Banon's tent, and Celes let him go.

Instead, she went back to the airship, to the little berth she shared with Terra. She sat in shock on the bottom bunk and stared at the open doorway, seeing without seeing, until the green-haired girl came into view.

"Celes? Are you all right?"

"Kefka is dead," she said in a monotone. "Gestahl had him killed."

Terra dropped to sit beside her, her small frame barely shifting the quilt. "Oh." There was a heaviness to the word, pain and shock and fear and horror and relief contained in one single syllable. And that was all it took—just that one word—and Celes knew that the other girl shared her own complicated feelings. 

There was a profound comfort in knowing that someone in the world understood, without having to explain. And when Terra leaned into her, Celes wrapped her arms around the other girl, and they clung to each other in the storm.


***


"You know he's up to something," Locke spat, after Edgar had told him Cyan's news. "Keeping it secret? What's he trying to do?"

"There may be an internal power struggle he doesn't want us to know about," Edgar said. "Maybe Kefka turned on him, and he's worried that the rest of his army will follow suit if they find out. Maybe his hold on Vector is weakening, and there really will be a civil war. Or he may just be a vicious little man who got tired of keeping a loaded weapon in his prison and decided to dispose of it."

Locke could feel a headache coming on. Visiting Hassan had left him more at ease. The rebels within Vector were cautiously optimistic, and they'd been working to deepen their relationship with the Returners, laying the groundwork for a cross-oceanic network of allies that could unite against any future threat before it rose to power. Hassan was fired up about the idea, and his enthusiasm had rubbed off on Locke. Kefka's apparent death, specifically Gestahl's efforts to keep it secret from everyone, called that optimism into question.

"Either way," Edgar said, "There's enough manpower here should anything go wrong—we can go ahead with Terra to Thamasa as planned. The poor girl has waited long enough, and it will only be a few days' travel."

Locke squeezed his eyes shut and ran his hands down his face. "We can't just up and go to Thamasa if Gestahl is plotting something, which he is! You know it. I know it."

Edgar sighed. "I'm sure he is. But think about it practically–"

"What if Kefka isn't dead? Or what if Gestahl has turned him into a superweapon?" Locke gestured broadly with his hands, his tone rising with each word. "What if he's… used some sort of Magitek to drain the magic from Kefka's body and give it to the rest of his soldiers?" That was too much; it felt like the sort of ridiculous, over-the-top thing Sabin might say. Yet the Empire had birthed so many horrors already. Who could say what new nightmare would be beyond Gestahl's imagination?

"I think politics are a much more likely explanation," Edgar said, unruffled. He sounded tired and maybe a touch amused. "He may wish to pin it on us as an assassination."

"Then let me get to the bottom of what he's planning before he can go through with it."

This time Edgar really was amused; one corner of his mouth lifted in a dimpled half-smile. "A little reconnaissance?"

Locke bristled at the clear mockery. "Yes!"

"What will you do? Find a bar full of imperial soldiers and ply them with alcohol? I'm sure they'll spill their secrets to a known Returner with a distinctly northern accent." Edgar's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"There's—I mean–" Locke spluttered, red-faced.

"Locke." Edgar grabbed his shoulders and gave him a little shake. "Breathe. Listen to me. You've been through the wringer these past few months."

Locke glared at him. "No more than anyone else has."

Edgar sighed again. "I'm not sure I agree with that, but my point remains. You tend to carry too much on your shoulders, even without taking into account your own personal tragedies. But not every fight needs to be your fight, and in this particular instance, I think we will fare just as well without you. Please—take an opportunity for rest."

"But—"

"Besides, if something does go wrong here, do you want Celes to be in that fight, in her condition?" His gaze held Locke's in a clear challenge. "Do you really think you could talk her down from throwing everything she has in our defense, no matter what it costs her?"

Locke turned his face away, trying to banish the thought before his imagination could take it to its tragic conclusion. "... no."

A slight smile flickered across Edgar's lips again. "And she won't leave without you. Take her and Terra to that sleepy little hamlet and keep them safe. The rest of us will be here to quash any imperial scheming before it gets out of hand."

Locke took a deep breath. "You're staying behind?"

"If it will ease your mind," Edgar said. "You can take my idiot brother with you, keep him out of trouble. And Cyan, too—while his short fuse about the Empire is fully understandable, it would not make him an asset in a delicate situation."

Knowing that Edgar was at least taking this seriously relieved some of the panicked energy that had filled him, and he deflated a little. "All right."

The king pulled him into an off-balance and undignified embrace, then ruffled his hair in that irritating brotherly way. "Thank you for not punching me this time." When Locke opened his mouth to protest, Edgar grinned. "Try not to worry. Go enjoy your vacation in the company of two very beautiful women, and when you return, we'll have a drink with your friend Hassan and tell you all the juicy reconnaissance you've missed."

Locke wanted to argue with Edgar that talking about this like it would be a pleasure cruise for any of them was both inaccurate and inappropriate—but there were more important things to think about, like how the two women would be handling the news of Kefka's death. He ought to look in on them. He had no idea what to say to either of them, and suddenly he felt very, very tired.

Edgar's expression softened, looking at him. "Go on," he said in a reassuring voice. When Locke cocked his head, Edgar's mouth quirked once more. "Your... friend is probably in need of some support. Don't let me keep you here."

"I'm not—she's…"

But he didn't know what he meant to say to Edgar, either, and he left the tent in tongue-tied shame. Tomorrow, they would set off for Thamasa, which would likely be a quick journey that left Terra disappointed and broken-hearted, only to return here to Gestahl's impotent machinations and…

No. It was going to be all right. Maybe Terra would find what she was looking for, and maybe Gestahl was just an old tyrant set in his ways.

There was peace. There would be peace.

All this talk of hope, for so long, and now that peace had finally arrived, he struggled to hold onto it. 

How long would it take for the trauma of war to leave them—to no longer respond, as Celes did, as though every offering of kindness or hope needed to be received with suspicion, to no longer lash out by instinct at even a friendly touch?

Edgar's assumption that he would want to tend to Celes rankled him. Worst of all was the realization that the king was correct, however much he might hate to admit it. His instinct was to take her into his arms and tell her it would be all right, that she was safe, that Kefka couldn't hurt her anymore. But that was patronizing, as though she were a child needing reassurance that the monster under her bed was gone, rather than a grown woman who could defend herself against almost anything—except for the monsters in her mind. She had limited defenses against those.

And thus he found his way to the berth where Celes and Terra stayed, carried by obligation and guilt and worry. Unsurprisingly, Terra's eyes were red-rimmed when she answered Locke's knock on the door.

"I thought I'd check on you both," he said, hoping he didn't sound as tired as he felt. "I heard the news…"

"Word travels fast," Celes said with a touch of bitter amusement, from behind Terra. She was seated on the lower bunk, knees pulled to her chest, slumped against the wall. "Who told you?"

"Edgar. Cyan told him." Locke stood awkwardly in the doorway, shoving his hands in his pockets because he wasn't sure what else to do. "I didn't—I mean—are you all right?" Realizing he had directed this question solely at Celes, he turned his attention instead to Terra, who leaned against the wall just inside the door. "Both of you. I don't even know what this means or how you feel…"

"It's complicated," Celes said, at the same time that Terra burst into tears again. This was something Locke was equipped to handle, at least; he gave Terra a gentle hug, and the green-haired girl sobbed into his shoulder.

"I hate him," Terra wailed. "I'm glad he's dead. Does that make me a bad person?"

"You're allowed to hate him," Locke said, rubbing her back. "I think most people did, and we didn't even have—well, as much experience with him as either of you did."

"But you don't hate people," Terra sniffled.

He couldn't help laughing at that. "Oh, I certainly do. Kefka was one of them. Emperor Gestahl could drop dead tomorrow, too, and I'd dance on his grave before I'd shed a single tear."

"Really?"

"Yes," he said. "They've done a lot of horrible things to a lot of people, and it's hard to believe they'd ever change. I think the world would be better off without either of them in it."

Celes was quiet. Ominously quiet. He stole a glance at her over Terra's shoulder; she had turned her face away, but even so, he could see something dark in her expression that chilled him.

"Celes," he said.

She looked up at him. "What?" Her tone was sharp.

He couldn't say what guided him to keep talking, other than instinct. "You're not like him," he found himself saying. "Kefka enjoyed hurting other people. He was a monster. You're not." Judging by how she flinched, he had landed close to what was bothering her. After a moment, he said, "Come here."

Begrudgingly, she got to her feet and shuffled toward where he stood with Terra. When she didn't move any closer, he lifted a hand and gestured to her, and then she did come close enough that he could fold an arm around her, too.

Finally, her tension eased, and he thought she might be crying, too, though she was quiet and her shoulders did not rock with it as Terra's did. The green-haired girl cried herself out soon enough; she'd clearly gotten a head start before he showed up.

There was something grounding about offering support like this. A reminder, maybe, that he could do this. He could be there for the people he cared about. The war was over. Kefka was gone. The Empire had fallen. He and his friends remained, and they could help rebuild the world and each other. Eventually, the two young women both calmed enough that he released them, though a lock of Celes's hair slipped through his fingers as she pulled away.

He cocked his head at Terra, asked gently, "Do you still want to go to Thamasa tomorrow?"

"Yeah." She sniffled. "If you'll come with me."

"Of course," he said with a smile meant to reassure. "And, hey, at least we don't have to worry about Kefka when we get back."

"It's hard to believe he's gone," Celes said.

"He can't hurt either of you again," Locke said, and the heavy intensity in his own voice surprised him. Too much, far too much, just when things were beginning to brighten up. He waggled a finger at the girls and grinned, pointedly shifting the mood. "And if he comes back as a ghost, I will personally sock him in his ghost nose before he can lay a finger on either one of you."

Terra giggled, and Celes raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him, smirking. "Is that so?" she asked.

"Ghost-punching seems more Sabin's style, honestly," Terra said.

"You've got me there." He shoved his hands in his pockets again and shifted his weight back onto his heels. "Get some rest, if you can, all right? We've got to be up bright and early tomorrow. Setzer will certainly be hung over, but the rest of us should probably be awake."

"I'll try, but no promises," Terra said. "Thanks for coming by. I think it helped."

"I'm glad."

He took a step backward, but familiar shadows were creeping across Celes's face already, and so he paused in the doorway.

"Celes," he said softly, reaching out to lift her chin so she would meet his eyes. "I mean it. No dark thoughts. Whatever lies your mind is telling you, let them go."

Her eyes filled again with unshed tears. Whatever she was going to say, she bit it back, pressing her lips together in a tight line. The moment stretched on, longer than it should. At last, she smiled at him, sadly.

"Good night, Locke," she said.


***


She dreamed of blood and fire and smoke and steel, of laughter that split the sky and tore her open. She dreamed of fear, and she dreamed of death.


***


They filed onto the airship the next morning, and he took his seat in one of the nailed-down chairs and bound its restraint around his waist and tried to steel himself for takeoff once more. Rationally, it seemed like it ought to get easier each time, as he proved to himself again and again that this damn machine would leave the ground safely, breaking free of gravity and sailing off into the sunrise. Reason, however, did not have a solid hold on either his stomach or the animal part of his brain that started screaming when the engine roared to life.

He had not eaten a single bite at breakfast, as though that would make any difference once the airship rumbled aloft. The rest of the traveling party seemed equally worse for wear; Terra looked nervous about the trip, Celes had telltale shadows under her eyes, Sabin was loudly disgruntled about his brother's decision to send him alone, and Cyan was full-on brooding about Vector.

"I will be glad to get out of here," he commented as he settled down beside Locke. "If I never see another piece of Magitek again, I will be glad. This cursed place reeks of all the blood that has been shed, here and abroad."

All too soon, the airship began to whirr, first a low vibration and then a louder buzz. Locke closed his eyes, leaned back into his seat, and tried to think of something else—anything else.

He had almost convinced himself to relax when the odor of smoke filtered into the room, and an alarm clanged, a head-splitting klaxon that left no ambiguity; something was terribly wrong.

They evacuated the airship, all but the gambler himself, who rushed into the heart of the machine with a grim look on his face.

"That damn fool better not get himself killed," Locke muttered.

But Setzer did not, in fact, get himself killed. He joined them all at the grassy knoll where they waited, a good half an hour later, long after the alarm had stopped. Over his usual flamboyant shirt and rumpled slacks, he wore a leather apron with tools strung along the waist. Something black and foul was smudged all over the surface of the leather and spattered along the frills of his sleeves, and there was a comical smudge on the side of his nose that undid the effects of his heavily scarred face.

"Bad news," he said with a grimace. "Something's wrong with the engine, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to fix it."

Edgar, who had by this point followed the trail of smoke from camp, stepped forward. "I'll take a look, if you'd like."

Setzer clapped him on the arm. "Delightful. You're more of a mechanic than I am—you may be the one man in all the world I'd trust with my engine." Something in his smirk and the tone of his voice imbued his words with an extra layer of meaning that made the king laugh nervously, startled.

"I'll... do my best," Edgar said, nonplussed. "We must have pushed her too hard. Trekking all over the world on our little errands…"

Setzer's grin was lascivious. "She's always had more than enough stamina—she's never met her limit before. But I'm afraid I may have misjudged my own lady. Perhaps we did work her too hard. In which case, better here and now on the ground than in the air."

A midair engine failure was a nightmare Locke would rather not consider. He had tried to put his faith in Edgar's judgment that the machine was sound. Being confronted with how little it would take for the whole thing to come apart veered too close to reminding him of his own mortality. He was nervous about riding this death box up in the sky again, however convenient it might be, and so he was somewhat irrationally relieved when the two men announced—after several more hours locked in the engine room, looking exhausted and disheveled and covered in engine grease—that the ship was grounded indefinitely.

Cid, the scientist, came out from Vector not long after, bringing a team dressed in the telltale yellow coats of what had been the Magitek Research Facility and armed with boxes of tools. Locke shadowed this imperial contingent through camp to where Setzer and Edgar met them at the airship's loading ramp.

"If we can be of assistance," Cid called out, "let us."

Setzer crossed his arms over his chest and leaned in the doorway at the top of the ramp. "I'm not letting any of you near my ship. You don't let strangers touch your engine."

"I thought you were some sort of biologist, anyway," Edgar sneered. "Experimenting on children, not on machines." Oh, that was unusually sharp-edged from the king; he must be at the end of his patience.

Cid flinched. "Tinkering with machines has been an interest of mine for a long time. Magitek is—was—a sort of interdisciplinary field. I didn't design most of our weapons, but I do know machines…"

"Thanks, but no," Setzer said, grinning wickedly, as though Cid's discomfort amused him.

"At least see if any of our parts or tools would be helpful," Cid said, literally wringing his hands. "We've had little to do for a long time. And none of us got into science because we wanted to make weapons."

Locke opened his mouth to protest, for all that he meant to stay on the sidelines himself this time, but Edgar beat him to it. "You turned human beings into weapons," the king sniffed.

"I didn't want to," Cid said bitterly. "I know that probably doesn't make it any better in your eyes, but I'm not some cackling sadist torturing children for fun. I tried to make sure Celes was healthy and safe, but what else could I do? I told them she was too young..."

"And Terra? The Espers?"

Cid dropped his head forward. "I don't have an excuse for that one. We needed them—but I don't expect you to accept that."

"No."

Eventually, Cid's team gave up and retreated back to Vector, leaving some of their tools behind along with an open offer of help that Edgar and Setzer seemed unlikely to accept. By this point, the sun was beginning to set. Locke called out to the two exhausted men before they could disappear back up the ramp. Edgar seemed startled to see him, as though he had not noticed Locke once during the exchange with Cid, surely a sign that he needed a rest.

It took little effort to convince them to stop for the night and return to camp for dinner. As much as Locke was glad to have another meal on solid ground, he worried that potentially losing their airship would affect not just Edgar and Setzer but also the morale of many of the Returners—best not to add exhaustion and hunger to the mix, too.


***


The gambler's cook pulled from the airship's stores to make a meal that managed to brighten everyone's spirits a little, so that was something, at least. She sat next to Terra, a half-finished bowl of apple cobbler on her lap, as Edgar stepped up to try to make a new plan for the group that had been meant to fly out that morning.

"We have a few choices here," he said, as though he were presenting some sort of proposal to his advisers in Figaro. "We can keep working on the airship, and if we get it up and working again, you can fly as planned to Thamasa–"

"Frankly, I'm not sure I feel up to flying after this," Locke said. Just the thought of it seemed to spook him; he looked a little pale.

Edgar frowned in disapproval. "I wouldn't allow the airship to take off if I wasn't confident she was seaworthy, so to speak. Setzer's a gambler, but I'm not. I wouldn't play with anyone's lives like that."

"Of course not," Locke murmured.

"The other option would be taking a ship to Thamasa," Edgar continued.

A terrible option, she thought. Subjecting Locke to a ship, taking all that time, and with no ideal ports to sail from… "Terra could just fly directly to Thamasa instead," she offered.

Terra shook her head. "I'd rather not go alone, and," she added with a faint smile, "I doubt I could carry any of you all that way." Celes couldn't help laughing at the thought of the small girl carrying Sabin across the sea—though in her Esper form, perhaps it was not as preposterous as it seemed.

Edgar nodded, perhaps missing the humor altogether. "Then it's either waiting for the airship to be ready, or going the old-fashioned way. I honestly don't know which would take longer, at this point."

"We could catch a boat from Tzen?" Locke got that look on his face, the one that meant he was consulting his mental map, but he would come up short if he tried that here. That never stopped him from trying anyway, though the results always seemed to frustrate him. "Not Albrook—that's the wrong side of the continent."

"No," Celes said quietly, and she swallowed, steeling herself for it. "From Tzen, you'd have to go the long way around the eastern peninsula. The fastest route is… from Maranda, to the west."

"Maranda? Do they even have a working port?" Quickly, before the barb in his words sank too deeply into her heart—maybe he realized belatedly what he had said—he added, "Hassan told me there's been a huge push to repair the city. He said even General Leo answered the call and has been there for a couple of weeks..."

If Locke had meant to distract her, he succeeded. "Leo is in Maranda?" Did he think it fell to him to fix her mistakes? Did he feel responsible for them?

"Let's not leave Setzer and his airship grounded here alone," Sabin said, interrupting her thoughts. "Not with the Empire right there."

"He won't be here alone," Edgar said, as patiently as if he were explaining something obvious to a child. "I'll be helping with repairs."

"What I mean," Sabin said, in a mocking mirror of his brother's patronizing tone, "is that I am going to stay with you, and you can't tell me no. Someone's got to be here to kick their asses if it comes to that."

Edgar closed his eyes. "Thank you, Sabin…"

"Don't think I won't do it. I'm itching for an excuse to set my fists on fire again, and if these knuckleheads give me that chance, they won't know what hit them."

"Ideally," Edgar said in a long-suffering tone, "we will not be fighting any imperials, the peace will hold, and we'll send someone to pick you up in Thamasa once we've got the airship flight-worthy again. With any luck, they'll beat you there."

"And if we don't beat you there, it'll be because we're beating up the imperials," Sabin said, sounding quite pleased with himself.

"I don't really expect any trouble," Edgar continued smoothly. "We're all a little paranoid after being at war for so long. They've sent their soldiers home and dismantled their remaining Magitek, and Kefka's gone. I'm not sure what else they could do against us. We should be safe." With a harsh look at his brother, he added, "But I'll ask Banon to leave some of our men here just in case."

She suspected that Edgar was downplaying his own concerns, whether to keep everyone else from worrying or to spite his brother. There was something amusing, if odd, about how the usually-dignified king was reduced to such childish behavior sometimes around Sabin, but then, she herself had no experience with siblings. Maybe this was to be expected.

They were all sharing tent space with the other Returners for the night, not wanting to stay on the airship in case whatever had gone wrong might risk their safety. Before Celes could slip off, Locke put a hand on her shoulder.

"Maranda?" he asked again, quietly. "Are you sure about this?"

She had expected an intervention from him, the result of his constant worry, however hypocritical it might sometimes be, and she was prepared to argue it down. "It's the best route," she said, "and the port has been operational even when the city was at its worst. Our orders were to spare it for strategic reasons." 

"Will you be all right, though?"

She sighed. "You hate ships, but you're willing to sail for Terra, aren't you?"

"I'm not sure that's the same–"

"We all have our own ghosts," she said. "And sooner or later we have to confront them."

It wasn't the same—he feared ships because of something outside of his control, because someone he loved had been lost on one, whereas she had long avoided Maranda because of what she herself had done there. Just the thought of seeing it again gave her a cold, clammy feeling.

But she couldn't—shouldn't—run from it forever.

Then again, maybe they would repair the airship in time…


***


In the end, they decided to set sail if the airship hadn't been repaired in the time it took to gather their supplies. And Setzer and Edgar were still hard at work two days later, having taken apart not just the delicate pieces of the engine but a good bit of other mechanical workings of the ship. Strangely, for all that Setzer was clearly exhausted to the point of irritation, Edgar seemed invigorated by the challenge, and by having someone to discuss schematics with who did not defer to him as his own engineers back home did.

Locke kept a close eye on both Celes and Terra. The former seemed ready to face what awaited her in Maranda with a grim determination; Terra, on the other hand, wavered between nerves, excitement, and sudden bursts of tears.

The one remaining member of their travel party was Cyan, who was if anything even more eager to see Vector behind him than before.

They set off on chocobos, stocked with a tent and travel supplies and enough money to charter passage for all of them on a ship. Honestly, Locke was glad for Cyan's sword as well as Celes's, in case they encountered bandits on the journey. While he had no doubt that Terra could defend herself if necessary, he desperately wanted her not to have to. The other two cut intimidating enough figures to discourage any trouble Locke couldn't talk them out of.

Fortunately, they encountered no such trouble on the road, only their own dread. Celes clearly did not look forward to Maranda, Locke himself hated the thought of being stuck on a ship for two weeks, Terra seemed worried about what she might find—or not find—in Thamasa, and Cyan… the man had not relaxed for a moment since he first set foot on the southern continent.

And yet they were all going anyway, and he was proud of them for it, for confronting their fears—their ghosts, as Celes had described it—and for answering the call of a friend in need.

The imperials might turn on their own, but the Returners stood by each other's side. That was why they had been victorious, and why they would triumph.

After winning a war, defying death, staring down impossible odds and emerging triumphant, what threat could a trip like this really hold for them? If Terra found her people, he would be glad to witness that joyful reunion; if his fears held true, at least she would have friends to help her through the disappointment. And weeks away would give them all distance from the Empire, from the terrible memories of Vector and what Gestahl's war had cost them all.

Maybe Edgar was right. Maybe this journey would be a chance for healing, in the end.

He could hope.

Notes:

I posted this last week against my better judgment, after writing 3,000 words in a day and rushing to push it out. Then I took it down and tinkered with it some more. It's different and, I hope, a lot better.

I keep thinking we're just a couple chapters away from the end of the World of Balance, and then I wind up with even more chapter mitosis. Sorry! Oof. I am going to try to push through and get the next two chapters written quickly, since they were supposed to be this chapter but, I mean, you know how it goes.

It is exhausting trying to go parallel to the original game story while having departed rather significantly from it. I am getting us back on track! Sort of! And please forgive any changes I have made to the geography of the World of Balance! (It makes sense, though, if you consider that the map wraps around...)

I've had a lot going on in my life lately, which has gotten in the way of writing, but I did manage to do a lot of work on the podfic! I've finished casting the five leads (Locke, Celes, Terra, Edgar, Sabin) and even completed recording and mixing the Prologue. I'm still working on Chapter 1, but my goal is to have it done and released by the end of November. And I am still casting more of the characters, in case you or a friend would like to audition.

Here's a preview of the Prologue, directly hosted on Google Drive for now, I still don't know how I'm going to host it other than YouTube

Yes, that's right, I'm making music, basically working my way through a substantial amount of the FFVI OST, so you can look forward to that! So much music. I have to figure out more art to use for the podfic, too...

I am keeping myself busy. I love FFVI so much.

Chapter 25: Ghosts

Summary:

How do you live with the ghosts of your past? How do you imagine any future when you are so haunted?

(Or: facing demons and dreams in Maranda.)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

As they drew closer to Maranda, Locke had to admit that he was anxious not just about Celes but also whether they'd be able to find a ship that sailed far enough west to reach Thamasa. It was an uncomfortable, unsettling realization—he had lost some of his natural optimism. Was this what Edgar had been worried about? Had he sensed a difference that Locke, however self-aware he prided himself on being, had not noticed? 

He had no choice but to feign that optimism, really, because this group could use it. If Sabin had been here with his guileless cheer, the whole thing would be easier, but his current companions tended toward sadness or brooding—not unwarranted, of course, but still. 

So he offered up a few silly stories while they set up camp for the night, trying not to be disoriented by the strange southern chocobos, whose unfamiliar beak shapes and different feather texture did not help his discomfort. At dinner around the campfire, he gave up on attempting humor and tried another tactic to keep their spirits up.

"The last time we went camping together," he said, wagging a finger at Celes, "we were on our way to look for Terra, weren't we? Not that I minded the company, but these are definitely better circumstances."

Of course, that set up the telling of their quest to recover Terra, since Cyan had never heard it—not directly, anyway. As Locke had expected, the older man expressed some degree of curiosity, and Locke seized the opening before handing over as much of the story as he could to Celes and, eventually, Terra.

The happy ending of Terra's homecoming made it a safe choice despite the tension and difficulties getting there, and it kept Celes distracted from whatever dark path her mind might otherwise have wandered down. Locke found himself relaxing as she went on, though he had to bite his tongue repeatedly to keep from stepping on someone else's toes whenever they got a detail wrong or missed a chance for drama or humor, or when there was a particular way he liked to tell the story and someone else beat him to it. After a while, Celes burst out laughing.

"Well, go on, Locke," she said, and he welcomed the gentle teasing. His heart sang with every smile, every laugh, hoping they would protect her from the darkness lurking at the edges of her mind. 

He kept his tone easy, maybe a little apologetic. "No, no, you've got it handled."

"You look like you're going to explode from the effort it takes to keep your mouth shut." She smirked. "Besides, you're better at telling stories than either of us. Well, than I am, anyway; I think Terra can hold her own…"

Terra laughed. "No, Locke still wins."

They finished the story and the meal, which ended with campfire apples—a childhood favorite he was glad to introduce to the others, much to Terra's considerable delight. 

They successfully avoided brooding all evening, and he mentally congratulated himself when they turned in for the night. If this kept up, he thought, maybe they could get through Maranda and onward to sleepy Thamasa without difficulty. It was quiet in the tent, pleasantly crowded but not claustrophobic, and he drifted off easily enough. 

Then Celes's nightmares started.

The fog of exhaustion clouded his mind the first few times he heard her, and he had only a dim impression of mumbling something reassuring before slipping back to sleep himself. But the third time, she cried out "No!" with such terror the word slid like a knife through his dreams and woke him.

He sat up in the dark. "Celes?"

She gave no answer. But in the quiet of the tent, beneath the nightsong choruses of insects and the occasional hoot of an owl, he could hear her harsh, whimpering breaths. He touched her shoulder, tried to gently shake her awake. Her entire body had locked up, muscles tense as stone under his hand.

In all the months he'd known her, the many nights they'd shared a tent on the road or a room in an inn, he had never seen her overtaken by nightmares, never heard her whimpering in fear. Once, a long time ago, he had crept down the stairs in Arvis's house in Narshe and heard her talking with Terra about the nightmares that tormented them both, the blood and the fire and the death—but in his time with her, always, she had seemed rigidly in control of herself when she slept. He knew that the war had broken her, but never before had it revealed itself so plainly as the aftermath of trauma. What horrors were playing out in her mind, drawing not from imagination but from her own unthinkable memories?

Everything that had transpired over the past few months must have left her raw—her imprisonment in Vector and whatever they'd done to her with that damn crown, how she'd almost slipped away in Kohlingen—and now they were nearly at Maranda, the place that had haunted her for years. She stirred, not waking, turning sharply this way and that as though struggling with literal ghosts.

He stroked her tear-soaked hair and brushed it from her face, gently, hesitantly, hoping the touch would not trigger further panic. If she fought back—well, he'd take that risk. But to his relief, she lay still. Her breathing eased. The stone beneath her skin softened again, ever so slowly, to flesh.

After a while, she turned toward him, and this time her unconscious whimper was like that of a child seeking comfort. His heart ached for her, and he draped an arm around her shoulders, lowering himself to be level with her. 

"It's all right," he murmured. "I'm here."

He meant to lay like this for only a few minutes, just long enough to lull her to a peaceful sleep. But what seemed like mere moments later, the sun was shining in his eyes through a crack in the tent flap.

Celes was still asleep. When he pulled his arm free and sat up, her eyelids fluttered.

"You had a nightmare," he said, his face burning.

It had felt natural, in his exhausted state, to offer a comforting and reassuring presence to a friend in need. But what would she think had happened? He ought to offer more of an explanation, or an apology, but he needed to stretch his legs—his neck was stiff from sleeping at an odd angle, and the rest of him was sore, and he could hear voices from outside.

That meant the others were blessedly out of the tent already, and he wondered what they thought, if they'd noticed. He stumbled out and found Terra and Cyan both drinking tea by the fire. Terra offered him a mug that he accepted, grateful both for the tea and for her polite silence.

To fill the air, he said the first thing that popped into his head, which turned out to be the beginning of a story about his father. No wonder—sipping tea with travel companions like this made him a little nostalgic for those childhood days with his father's merchant caravan, for the little metal kettle that went everywhere with the man. The kettle's distinctive exotic shape had fascinated young Locke, speaking as it did of some foreign land with cultures and art different from his own.

He wondered what had become of it. No doubt it was down at the bottom of the ocean, scattered with everything else among his father's bones.

Well, that was morbid.

Then again, Celes wasn't the only one who would have to confront memories this trip, though his own were markedly less awful than hers. Still, he could only hope they were both up to the task.


***


She wanted to prove to them all that she was not a fragile doll to be shielded from harm, and judging by how Locke seemed afraid—of her, for her, did it make any difference which?—she had failed miserably. 

They needed to get through Maranda to reach Thamasa in good time, and she had made a promise to Terra—and, besides, Maranda had been her fault. She was not some poor wounded thing, some innocent victim. She had been the culprit, and now she was afraid to return to the scene of her crime and face her own victims and the consequences of what she had done. Cowardice, not tragedy, held her back.

She had not returned to Maranda since its destruction. Her only memories of approaching the city were as a general leading an army to destroy it.

How beautiful it had been that day, a jewel on the horizon, with its careful architecture and well-tended gardens. It did not seem like the sort of place that posed a threat. Yet, incredulously, its people had dared to defy the Empire and declare their independence. That mild-mannered Maranda, of all the cities under Gestahl's thumb, had been the one to rise up against him must have hurt the emperor's pride.

Burn it, he had said. And burn it she did.

The city on the horizon as they rode across the landscape today bore little resemblance to what she had seen then, just as Celes herself was no longer the girl who had carried out its devastation. They were both scarred now, bearing new injuries within and without. But at least the city still stood, quiet and calm.

Then, suddenly and without warning, everything shifted.

First, the smell of smoke. It's burning—it's burning again—did I do this?

No, I didn't—it's not—I didn't…

She closed her eyes.

They were unarmed. They were civilians. Her men were trained soldiers.

How easy it is to cut a man's head off when he does not fight back.

The arc of his blood through the air, the flash of sunlight on the blade, bright tongues of fire and billowing smoke filling the blue sky.

A spatter of dark red on the pale cheek of a young girl, her mouth open in a scream that makes no sound.

Her hands gripped the reins of her chocobo so hard it seemed the cord might bite through to the bone.

"Celes?" Locke's voice reached through time to pull her back, and the fires receded. A fresh-smelling wind ruffled the grass, the trees, her hair. The sky was smudged with clouds but not ash, and he was beside her, not a soldier awaiting orders but her friend with concern plain on his face. Farther ahead on the road, she saw Terra and Cyan bringing their chocobos around, as though just noticing that she and Locke had come to a standstill.

"I can't do this," she choked out. "I can't go in there."

He put a hand on her arm. "You won't be alone."

"They'll kill me if they recognize me. And I don't blame them."

He frowned. "If you want, I can try to work out a disguise…"

"No! It's not—I—I'll stay out here. Go—go on, and I'll… I'll meet you at the docks." She was babbling, so far from the general she was supposed to be.

Locke sighed, in exasperation, maybe. "Celes, how will you get to the docks without going through town?" He shifted in his saddle, nodded as the other two finally caught up. "We can just head to Tzen and sail from there instead. The long way's fine, right? It's not like we're in a hurry."

"I—I'll just go back to Vector," Celes stammered. Like the coward you are, the voice in her mind sneered. She had not noticed its absence over the past few days until it returned. "I'll just—I'll wait for them to fix the airship and catch up with you later."

Locke's grip on her arm tightened. "No," he said, in a harsh commanding tone that caught her off guard. Whatever he saw in her expression in response to that clearly hurt him; he winced and then said, more gently, so much more gently that it was clear he was putting forth a great effort, "I don't know what you're feeling right now, but I understand that you're hurting and you're scared."

"That's not it."

"Then what is it? Let us know how we can help you." Soothing, almost patronizingly so, as if to a child.

"I can't go into Maranda. I'll ride back to Vector. It's fine."

"You're not going back to Vector," he said in that same sharp voice. "We can sail out of Tzen."

"We're already here. The three of you can go–"

"And leave you alone? No."

"Why not?"

"You shouldn't be alone right now, and you know damn well why." Was he angry? He had never been angry with her before. "Dammit," he snapped, "it wasn't your fault, all right? None of it was your fault. Could you stop tearing yourself apart for a moment, could you stop torturing yourself with guilt, and just think about forgiving yourself? You can't change the past, you can't bring them back, but if you just—if you just–"

He was angry, uncharacteristically so. Stunned by this furious outburst, she shrank back. His face fell. He looked stricken.

"Celes, I…"

Terra guided her chocobo between the two of them. "Locke," she said quietly, "why don't you go into town and see what the situation there is, and I'll stay here with Celes and we'll wait for you and make a plan when you get back." It was not a question.

Red-faced, he turned away. "I don't want to leave…"

"I think it would be a good idea to get away for some time," Cyan said from his other side. "Come. Let us enter Maranda and seek the docks."


***


Shame and horror filled him as what he had done began to sink in. The look on her face, when all he meant to do was help—he had sworn never to hurt her again, and already he had broken that promise, again. When she needed the support of her friends, he had failed her. And why? He had lost control of himself, like the time he'd struck Edgar, like the time he'd shoved Setzer—this time he had used his words instead of his hands, but the damage had been so much worse, and yet he could not even say why it had happened.

"Let it go," Cyan said beside him, as they rode toward the city.

"I didn't mean it like that," Locke muttered. "I just…"

"Let it go."

"We shouldn't have come here. We could have gone to Tzen."

"We may still go to Tzen." The Doman's voice was cool, reflecting tacit disapproval that Locke knew he deserved.

"I just… I'm worried about her. I'm so worried about her."

"I understand that."

"If she goes back to Vector and the imperials try something, she's going to get hurt. She'll use her magic and it could kill her and she knows it and that won't stop her. But being here is hurting her, too." Saying the words out loud helped him make sense of the churning confusion spiraling within him. It felt like something was hidden underneath this horrible knot of feelings, and if he could just spin all those feelings out into words, eventually the knot would untangle and he would understand why he'd hurt her, so he could apologize to her properly. "I'm worried she's going to hurt herself no matter where we go, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"You cannot keep her safe by closing your hand too tightly around her. You cannot protect her from all harm."

"Can't I?" It was a close enough parallel to what everyone had told him about Rachel—you can't save her—that for a moment he saw red. But it faded just as quickly. "I have to do something."

"If you try to control the world, if you try to control her–"

"I'm not trying to control her!"

"–then you will end up losing control of yourself," Cyan continued, unruffled. "There is no way to guarantee the safety of the people we love. It is one of the hardest lessons in the world, and one of the heaviest. But you must accept it, and accept the inevitability of loss, before you can find peace."

Locke drew in a breath and held it long enough to calm himself down. "Do you think she'll ever find peace?"

"She may."

"You've forgiven her. And they might forgive her, too." 

"It is hardest to forgive ourselves." The older man eyed him in what he could only describe as a fatherly way. "I suspect you know that."

The truth—and a pointed reminder of his own hypocrisy, of the burden he carried every day. He looked away. Honestly, he wasn't sure that the people of Maranda would forgive her. And if he didn't know Celes himself, he might have accepted this as justified. But she was his friend, and he knew how wracked with guilt she was, what the attack on Maranda had cost her, how her hand had been forced by the Emperor when she was barely more than a child.

Gloomy—brooding, even—he went through the town's gates with the Doman at his side. Maranda surprised him. Scaffolding rose around the taller buildings in town, and the air was full of the smell of plaster and fresh-cut lumber. The repairs gave the town a decidedly patchwork look. Judging by the number of said repairs, and how recent they all were, it seemed that Maranda had been allowed to remain pockmarked and broken for years. He would not put it past Gestahl to destroy the town and then forbid anyone from fixing the damage he had wrought. That was his strategy, after all; damage could serve him.

Able-bodied men, and some women, were hard at work mending buildings, filling gaps in the cobbled streets, planting trees. Their presence made the town feel less deserted than Locke expected. He suspected many of them would leave as soon as their repairs were finished, but maybe some would stay, bringing new life to a town that had been prevented from healing for so long.

Cyan took in the town around them with active interest. Eventually Locke's curiosity got the better of him, as it so often did. "You seem like you're looking for something," Locke said.

"No. I am thinking. Maranda and Doma are sisters, in a way. Yet Doma will never be rebuilt like this."

"Oh." Once again, Locke was out of his depth. Ordinary tragedy, ordinary trauma, he could help with—the loss of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, even the shattering of one's hopes for the future. But the sheer scale of what had happened to Doma was beyond his comprehension, just as he was powerless to ease Celes's pain.

His friends had known such profound loss and suffering, all of them. Next to that, his own little grief seemed so petty and personal. How could Edgar have ever considered it worthy of concern?

"I am glad for them," Cyan continued.

Locke blinked in surprise. "Really? I think I would be out of my mind, in your position. With jealousy, or—something, anyway."

"You are young."

"Am I?"

The man glanced at him with amusement. "I am twice your age. It gives one perspective. But there are disadvantages, too, of course. It is hard to face a new beginning when one has spent so many years on a known path."

Locke took a breath. Better tread carefully. "What do you think you might do next?"

"If I knew that answer, perhaps I would not be following the three of you around." A sad smile flickered across Cyan's face.

"If there's anything I can do to help…"

The man chuckled. "You are one who always tries to help. I do appreciate that."

Always seemed a little generous, especially with his recent actions, and the shame rose in Locke again. "I'm sorry, I've been selfish today, haven't I?"

"Perhaps a little, but we are all human."

It was not long before they reached the docks. Maranda was not a port town, but it had a small shipyard with a scant handful of offices for merchants, sailors, and the like. Nothing like what Nikeah or Tzen offered, but enough for their purposes. Asking around led them to a squat nondescript building that was clearly more function than form. It seemed almost military, and he wondered if the imperials had set it up for their own convenience after sacking the city.

The man in charge did not seem military, at least. He had the brusque manner of a sailor and a certain coarseness that made Locke feel a little more at ease. Mindful of what he had learned about southerners in Vector, he kept his natural tendency toward small talk in check. At least here, being clearly associated with the Returners did not seem to be a liability, and the man confirmed a ship would be sailing for Thamasa in two days' time—Locke could scarcely believe their luck, a sign that maybe he ought to find his old optimism again—and that even a former imperial soldier would be welcome, as long as she didn't cause trouble with the sailors.

"After all, there's a fucking imperial general out there on the docks in his shirtsleeves," the man had said, and Locke had to admit it was not entirely by accident that he wandered outside afterward and found Leo among a cluster of other soldiers, hammering down boards on the dock.

The general stood out, not because of his physical strength or his age but because his commanding presence radiated even off the battlefield. It made Locke think of Celes in those moments—they seemed very far away now—when she had issued commands or proceeded with absolute conviction and those around her were swayed into obedience. Was this something the empire trained in its commanders, or did they self-select into the role?

 Regardless, the man looked a little more disheveled than usual, sunburned and sweaty, his hair less precisely maintained and his clothes not military-pressed but stained with paint and worse for wear. It did not seem that he'd held anything of himself back from his work.

Somehow, even having been told Leo was here, he hadn't fully expected to see the man sweating like a common laborer. For his part, Leo did a double-take when he noticed Locke, who wasn't approaching him but also wasn't not approaching him.

"You're the Returners," Leo said, and Locke was about to rib the general for having forgotten his name when he continued, "Celes's friend, Locke."

"One and the same," Locke said, inclining his head. "What are you doing here?"

Leo wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of a hand. "Helping. You all said I should listen to what the people needed, so I did. This seemed like a good place to start. I've spent so long breaking things down, it's a nice change to put them back together."

"Awfully philosophical way of looking at day labor."

"I've had time to think." Leo squinted up at him. "What are you doing here?"

Ah, even if Leo was not the brains behind the empire, Locke had no intention of answering plainly. Old habits, and all that. "Traveling with some friends," he said mildly.

"Is Celes with you? In Maranda? Is she all right?"

Locke hadn't even had a chance to confirm or deny her presence, to decide whether to lie or tell the truth—Leo seemed to have convinced himself, and he was right, after all. So Locke didn't argue. "She's… I mean, as could be expected." Noncommittal, but he really wasn't sure what to say, what she would want him to say, and it felt like a betrayal to confide in Leo given her complicated feelings about him. "Speaking of, we should be getting back to her. But it's good to see you here." He was surprised to find that he meant it.

"Be well," Leo said gravely. "And… tell her to be well, too."

"I will."


***


Terra wasted no time in setting up camp in a clearing a little ways off the road. Celes silently followed her instructions—lift this, move that, hold the support for the tent there—and the routine's familiar rhythm soothed her. Something about Terra's steady, gentle insistence made her think of traveling with Locke. Maybe after being comforted by him for long enough, you got a sense for how to comfort other people, if you had it in your nature to do so. Celes herself felt just as cold and prickly as ever, but Terra took to this role with surprising ease. 

With only two of them, and the bigger tent, it took a while and several tries to get everything right. When they had lashed the tent poles together and left their bags inside, Terra had her assemble a campfire. Then the green-haired girl crouched beside the wood and extended a hand toward the tinder. A spark lit within her palm.

"I incinerated an entire regiment of men," she said, in a voice that was tight with concentration. "I heard them scream as they died. I thought for a long time that it was just a nightmare, but it happened. Those men are dead because of me, and their deaths were terrible and painful and happened for no reason at all."

They had discussed this before, a long time ago, when Terra had drifted like a lost, wounded child through half-understood memories. Now, she sounded melancholy but sure of herself in a way that Celes would not have imagined then.

Celes's own argument hadn't changed. "You were under Kefka's direct control."

"Even if what happened to you isn't the same as what happened to me, I understand, more than the others could. I know it hurts, and I know it never goes away."

"Why, though? I mean, I was the one who did it. Why am I acting like I'm the one who was hurt?" Celes dropped her head over her knees, burying her face in her hands. A moment later, she pawed at her face, at the weakness streaming from her eyes, and wailed, "Why am I crying?"

"Because it hurts?"

"It shouldn't! Sailing out of Maranda was my idea. I thought I would be able to handle it like an adult, like a soldier."

"I don't think it just goes away because you want it to," Terra said. "I don't think you can just say, 'I don't want this to hurt anymore,' and be better."

"Locke said–"

"Locke may know many things, but he's wrong about this. You can't just stop being hurt by it, or stop feeling guilty about it, just because someone else thinks you should."

"I don't know why he's angry with me. I don't know what I did wrong."

Terra screwed up her face. "I think he's just worried. But he's wrong. I don't think he understands what it's like to have lived through what we've lived through. We aren't… normal. What happened to us, and what we've done—it doesn't work like that."

"How do you live with it?"

"I don't know. I guess in some ways, most of the time, it feels very far away. Being around friends helps. It would be a lot harder to do this on my own." She glanced sideways at Celes. "I think it's going to take a long, long time before any of us aren't hurting any more. But it gets easier over time, don't you think?"

When Celes didn't respond, Terra pursed her lips and blew the little flame from her palm to the bundle of wood before them. It sparked and then caught fire with an ease and quickness no natural tinder could achieve. Though it was still afternoon, and there was no reason to light a campfire so early, Celes was grateful for its heat. The cold never really seemed to leave her fingers or her soul these days.

But then the fire crackled and a twig jumped, and she could hear again the roaring of the flames as they consumed the city, and the desperate cries of the wounded, and she covered her ears with her hands to block out the sound. Breathe. You're here, now, with Terra.

The other girl scooted closer to her and pressed her shoulder against Celes's. And she was right—having someone around, especially someone who actually understood, did help the memories recede.

"I should have refused to burn Maranda," Celes said. "I could have said no. They might have imprisoned me for insubordination, maybe even executed me, but the Marandans would have lived. Or I could have fought alongside the people of Maranda, if I defected, and we could have driven the soldiers off…"

"Maybe. We don't know. We can't know, or change what happened then." Terra shook her head. "But Kefka is gone and the empire is crumbling. Things are changing. That's why we're here, right? Our futures can lead somewhere else now."

Time passed. Once more, Terra prepared tea. It seemed to be a ritual she took comfort in, and Celes couldn't help wondering what could ever bring her comfort like that. Nothing came to mind. For all her talk of not being normal, Terra had at least this one very real, very mundane thing, and Celes envied her that.

Hands cupped around a mug of tea, Celes asked, "What are you hoping we'll find in Thamasa?" Enough talk of death and fire; let Terra think of something happier.

"Family," the girl said wistfully. "They don't have to act like family to me—I just want to see that other people like me exist. I want to learn from them what it means to be both Esper and human. I want to see for myself that they can live normal lives, settle down, make friends—fall in love." Her cheeks reddened, and she looked away.

"Love?" With a twinge, she remembered asking Locke about Terra ages ago, on the road from Figaro. At the time, she hadn't understood what prompted her to say it. Perhaps it had been jealousy, even that early. How ironic it would be for both of them to have fallen for the same unattainable man. Carefully, she asked, "Are you… in love with someone now?"

Terra shook her head, putting that concern to rest. "I've never been in love before. I don't think I would even know what love was if it happened to me! But it feels like it's so important to other people. Locke wants to do the impossible for Rachel. My parents defied their worlds to be together. I want to know what it's like to feel something so powerful." She paused, then added, "It seems like part of being human. If I can't fall in love, does that mean I'm not human?"

"Your father wasn't human, but he still fell in love."

"Then am I less human than he was? It feels like something's wrong with me."

"Nothing's wrong with you." Bitterly, she added, "At least you didn't fall in love with the first person you ever met outside the Empire."

"You mean Locke."

"I… yes," she stammered, and Locke had been the first person that Terra had met, right? She suddenly worried that she had revealed herself and hastened to make it clear that she'd been referring to Terra and not to herself. "You didn't. If you had, I think that might have been a bad thing, like you were rushing into it or starved for kindness or—anyway." She plastered on a smile that was probably not very convincing. "Maybe you're just… taking your time, and the right person will come along when you're ready, and you'll actually be ready. I think that's the right way to do it."

She wanted Terra to be comforted by this—it was meant as reassurance, after all, even if Celes wasn't very good at reassuring people. But instead Terra just looked at her curiously and asked, "Does it hurt?"

Does what hurt?

You know what she means.

Celes was silent, unwilling to confirm Terra's implication, but unable to deny it either. Was it so obvious that even Terra, who claimed not to even know what love was, could see it? How pathetic she must seem from the outside. She turned her face away.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

Panic rose in her at being discovered, at this terrible secret being known, and while she could not imagine Terra laughing at her for it, still she was ashamed. And if word reached Locke himself—no. He would withdraw from her if he knew. Her inconvenient feelings were disrespectful of him and his very clearly stated wishes.

"I wouldn't recommend it," she murmured, "love, I mean," but then she heard voices approaching, interrupted by a bright cheerful whistle carrying across the wind—a fragment of melody she recognized. I'm the darkness, you're the starlight, her heart sang along, and he was bright and hopeful as a star shining through the endless night within her, and though not even he could shine bright enough to cast off the shadows in her soul, still his glow warmed her and she was drawn toward it, drawn to the edge of the tent, to see him swing down from his chocobo and greet her with a sheepish, apologetic smile.

He would break her heart again and again, she knew, but if being in love meant you were human, then human she must be. No longer the ice queen, nor a Magitek weapon, but warm, alive, fragile and flawed and doomed—cursed—to be terribly, painfully human.

It was, at least, an easier pain to bear than the guilt of what she had done, the weight of the ghosts upon her heart.


***


Groveling seemed excessive, but he worried that a simple apology wouldn't be sufficient. To his tremendous relief, she seemed more grounded when he and Cyan returned. However unequipped he may have been to help her through her fear and pain, Terra had apparently been up to the task. Not that Terra needed his gratitude—Celes was her friend too, after all—but still he was grateful to her.

If he was the sort to wear a hat, he would be holding it in his hands and worrying at the brim of it. Instead, he picked at the edges of his gloves. Celes had taken the reins of his chocobo, but she held them without moving, as frozen in place as he was. "I was out of line, and I hurt you, and I'm sorry," he said. "You don't have to forgive me–" 

"I do," she said in a strange light voice, breaking the tension. "I do forgive you." 

"Just like that?" 

"Yes." 

The ease of her response surprised him. He had expected her to lambast him, or maybe that was just his guilty conscience wanting some sort of punishment so he could feel like he'd earned the chance to make amends somehow. But it wasn't his place to second-guess her. He only hoped that her forgiveness came from a place of stability and not from either obligation or desperation.

The four of them settled down by the campfire once the chocobos were fed, and he recounted what had happened, what the sailor had said, what Maranda had been like. He couldn't help coloring his words with a little rosy embellishment, in case Celes might be comforted to know that the city was indeed recovering. 

"Do you want to sail out from here?" He tried to catch Celes's gaze and hold it. "It's all right if the answer is no. We can go on to Tzen instead." 

"We're already here," she said, sounding very tired. "The day after tomorrow? I'll be all right. If it was going to take an entire week or more, I can't promise how well I would hold up, but one more day, I can manage." 

"If you're sure."

She nodded assent. As far as he could tell, she was not hiding her true feelings nor trying to sacrifice herself for everyone else's convenience. And if Cyan was right and he'd been trying to control her to protect her, he had to learn to let that urge go. There had to be a middle ground between letting her self-destruct and worrying constantly about her, and it would probably be good for both of them if he found it.

There was one more piece of news to share. "We ran into Leo," he said carefully. "He was working on the docks, if you'll believe it. A nice change from his usual, I imagine—good honest work. I asked around, and it turns out this whole rebuilding thing was his idea, and the soldiers who came here from Vector were following him." 

Celes's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "I guess he finally listened."

"That's what he told me, anyway," Locke said. "Maybe he's turning over a new leaf. Giving up his soldierly ways. Giving up the Empire altogether, if we're lucky. That would be handy if Gestahl decides to revive the war and Leo doesn't come when he's called."

"I wish he would." There was only the hint of an edge in Celes's voice, less pronounced than the bitterness that usually poisoned her words whenever Leo came up. "If he renounced Gestahl, maybe some of his men would follow suit. They've always looked up to him. I think some might follow wherever he leads, even if it means deserting."

Cyan was quiet, thoughtful. Locke could only guess what might be going through the Doman's head. Locke had kept their encounter with Leo brief by necessity, worried that prolonging it might lead to some sort of conflict between the two older warriors that he would rather avoid.

"Do you think Leo would come with us to Thamasa?" Terra blurted out, interrupting Locke's musings, and everyone present turned to her with some measure of surprise and confusion. 

"Excuse me?" 

Terra shrugged. "Well, if he's not on the continent, Gestahl can't very well use him as a general, can he? He doesn't seem like a bad person at heart. Besides, being around the Returners is a great way to escape the Empire." 

Locke snorted in amusement. "Is that so?" 

"It worked for us," Terra said. "Maybe you can save him like you saved us." 

Locke laughed, self-consciously rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean, I had a hand in getting you out of a tight spot, sure, but I can't take any credit for either of you leaving the empire. You did that yourselves." 

These two women were strong beyond anything he could imagine, to go through what they had and still save themselves, and yet they did it all the same. It was tempting to try to explain his admiration for them both, but experience had taught him that praise like that tended to be rebuffed. 

"I think Leo should come with us to Thamasa," Terra repeated firmly. "It's a chance for him to make good on his promise to help me, although I think we'd be helping him more than he realized. If we can free one more person from the empire's grasp, and if that spreads to the people who look up to him, like Celes said…" 

Locke stared at her with some degree of wonder. When had the frightened girl he had once known been replaced by someone so outspoken?  "If you really want to do this, we can try asking him, if the others are all right with it… "

"I believe in anything that will weaken Gestahl," Cyan said, "however distasteful it may be to be in the company of one of his soldiers. Leo is reputed to be an honorable man, but I will not hesitate to draw my sword against him if I must." 

Locke had assumed as much, to the point of worrying it might be a liability, but he diplomatically kept this to himself. "And you, Celes?" She hadn't said anything, which worried him. He had anticipated that mentioning Leo might set her off in some way, given the state she was in when he left her, so that had gone better than he expected. But Terra's suggestion was something else entirely.

She drew a long breath. Would she rage about him again? Would the thought of Leo stir up memories of her time as a soldier just as she had begun to calm? Locke tensed, dreading some sort of melancholy or self-destructive outburst. But instead she sighed and looked away. "We can try. It would be nice if it worked out that way."

This seemed to surprise Terra. "Really? You think it's a good idea?"

"Maybe," Celes said quietly. "Maybe I'm being foolish because I want it to be true. But maybe it will. Maybe he'll turn on Gestahl. Maybe he's changed."

There it was—a spark of hope, on a day when she had seemed like she might never know hope again. If he had doubted Terra's suggestion before, now he could not help but support it. Whatever it took, he would have to throw his weight behind winning Leo over, not just because it would be a blow to the empire but because it meant so much to Celes—because Leo had been important to her, and because maybe she saw her own redemption mirrored in his. And Locke would not let her be disappointed again. 


***


Locke had insisted that someone stay behind with her, and Terra insisted on going with him to meet with Leo, which meant that Cyan was assigned babysitting duty that evening. Celes wondered if there would come a time that Locke trusted her to be on her own. She was still not used to being worried over, and she was not used to thinking of herself as someone worth worrying about. It was nice, in a way, but it was stifling.

Whatever had come over her when they approached Maranda had been apparent to her companions, and she expected the Doman to say something about it. Perhaps not to mock her, however much the voice in her head insisted she deserved it, but surely he would see parallels between Maranda and Doma. Surely he would be thinking of her culpability in the massacre here. If he did not want to be in the company of Leo, who at least to her knowledge had never committed such a grievous sin, how could he possibly tolerate her presence?

But he said nothing at all. He sat cross-legged on the ground, mending a seam in some strange Doman garment she didn't recognize. At first she thought he must be ignoring her, but there was nothing cold or angry in his expression and no tension in his movements. When he caught her watching him, he gave her a faint but genuine smile and went back to his work.

So this was what they meant by companionable silence. Locke would have filled the air with chatter—silence seemed to make him uncomfortable, especially if he was worried about someone or something. He chattered often around her and she was not foolish enough to pretend she didn't know why. But Cyan simply existed near her, understanding that she might succumb to her ghosts and her misery but accepting that some things could not be solved with words. It was oddly reassuring after days of Locke's claustrophobic overprotection. Eventually, she too busied her hands, sharpening her blade because that came more naturally to her than mending anything, though it was much less useful.

After a time, Cyan broke the silence. "What do you think of this man, this Leo?" 

"It's complicated." What did she think of him now? She couldn't say.

Cyan pressed on with mild curiosity. "Is he a friend? Was he a lover?" 

"No!" She recoiled, unable to keep the distaste from her face or her voice. She calmed herself, trying to match the Doman's temperament. "No, he was—a mentor to me. I looked up to him, even if perhaps I shouldn't have. I thought he was honorable, like you said, and I wanted to be like him. But in the end he was just Gestahl's mindless servant, wilfully refusing to see what he had done."

"So you do not believe in Terra's hopes after all."

"I want to. I really do." She sighed and set down her sword. "How… how is Maranda, really?" 

"I cannot ease your conscience, if that is what you wish." 

"No, I suppose not." His honest words made her wince, but then again, she'd been the one who asked. Locke's descriptions had struck her as somewhat unreliable. She wanted to know the truth, or thought she did, though it would not change the pit in her stomach whenever she thought of Maranda, or banish the darkness of her guilt.


***


He hadn't spent much time one-on-one with Terra since their early days together, and he was suddenly self-conscious about this fact, about how much time he had spent largely focused on Celes when Terra was equally in need of his care. He'd rationalized it that others were inclined to protect and aid Terra, whereas Celes had been more or less on her own from the moment he found her. But he had promised to be by Terra's side during those first painful weeks when the effects of the slave crown still clouded her mind, and he had failed to be true to his word. Had he simply traded one girl in need for the next, as Edgar had teased him?

None of this seemed to bother her—she was clearly on a mission, with little attention paid to small talk or even to her companion. Locke led, and she followed. He wasn't sure whether Leo would be where they'd seen him last, given that the sun hung low in the sky, but the soldiers were still sweating on the docks and Leo, thank goodness, was still among them.

He paused in his work when Locke approached. "Back already?" There was some humor in his voice, which surprised Locke, who had been under the impression that the man was always serious. And his face did grow serious again when he saw Terra. To be honest, he seemed a little afraid of her, or maybe of what she represented.

"General Leo, I have a request," Terra announced formally.
 
He set down his hammer and stood up, and the gesture was as attentive as if he had saluted her, though he did not. "Yes?"

"We're traveling soon to Thamasa, and I'd like for you to come with us," she said.

He started at this, as caught off guard as Locke and the rest had been when Terra first brought up the idea. "What? Why?"

This was something Locke had discussed with Terra on their way into town. They couldn't very well tell Leo that they were trying to cripple Gestahl or that they hoped to turn his most popular general traitor and instigate a mass desertion. Locke suspected that this would not go over well. Instead, between the two of them, they had shaped a story that was true enough, but that kept their ulterior motive hidden.

"We're going to meet with descendants of the Espers there," Terra said. "Locke told me you're trying to help the people of Maranda after everything the Empire has done to them. Well, the Empire has done greater harm to the Espers than to anyone else. You could help us help them, if they need it. And I think you should."

"Hm." Leo pressed his lips together. "How long will you be gone?" 

"A few weeks, maybe a month," Locke said. "Depends on what we find there."

"Why?" Terra narrowed her eyes at Leo. "Will you need to get back to fight? I thought the war was over and that's why you were here in Maranda instead."

"I'm just surprised. I'll need some time to think about it."

"Celes didn't think you would do it," Terra said, and Locke had to cough into his hand to cover his sudden bark of amusement at this unabashed low blow and the look of determined innocence on Terra's face. This they hadn't planned. "I think she was hoping you would, though."

"What did you have in mind?" Leo asked, apparently taking the bait.

"Come with us. Just you, no weapons, no soldiers. When we get to Thamasa, you have to follow my lead. But if there's anything we can do to help the people there—something like what you're doing here, maybe—I'd like to have you by our side." She smiled sweetly. "Wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere new for the first time as a friend, as an ambassador, maybe, and not as a conqueror?"

The look on Leo's face was the first glance Locke had at a man he could truly respect after all, the man Celes had grown up thinking Leo to be. Terra's words, even more than her offer of Celes's approval, had clearly touched something deep within the general's heart. "Yes," he said, with solemn, simple honesty. "Yes, it would."

Notes:

This was a really, really difficult chapter to write. I finished a draft of it, sat on it an extra week or two, decided to combine it with part of the next chapter, and then did extensive revising and rewriting to find the right shape for it. I'm still not sure about it — or, at least, I'm not sure what any of you will think about it. Is it plausible? Is it in character? Is it too much, or too little? I can't say. But for me, at least, it feels true to the characters and to the story, and I couldn't cut out any of these scenes; I've already pared it down to remove the inessentials (there were quite a few of those) so that only these necessary pieces remain. In a way, nothing happens in this entire chapter, and yet it's one of the longest chapters in the fic, and I can only hope it works. There will be more action and drama soon enough.

We're now entering a very precarious part of the story, in which I am balancing my own creation with the original game story in an effort to bring the two together again. I think I've mapped it out, and there are sections I am very excited about sharing with you. I'm just nervous, but I think that's a good sign; I am so invested in this story, and I really hope I won't let you down. A few moments of conversation in this chapter have been drafted for over a year, but there hasn't been a chapter in which they fit until now — and that's going to keep happening as we build toward the climax of the World of Balance. This whole story has been a fun puzzle to put together, if a challenging one.

Podfic news: By the end of December, I hope to have at minimum a brief audio introduction to the actors performing the five main characters. With luck, I'll also be ready to share the prologue (which is finished) and the first chapter (which is not quite there). I've been working on the art and music I'll need to pull all of it off!

Speaking of art, I reworked the cover art and I'm much happier with it. And I will be trying to put together some illustrations for each chapter so I can use them with the podfic. I'll add the art to the written chapters, too, when it's done! (I did get one piece of fanart from a friend for last chapter, which I might get permission to post too — that was an extremely, extremely cool experience.)

Be well, and perhaps we'll have more Darkness and Starlight before 2021 is over!

Chapter 26: Across the Sea

Summary:

In the enclosed space of a sea voyage, it's hard to avoid confronting ourselves and our companions.

Notes:

Content warning: if motion sickness and nausea are triggering for you, proceed with caution! There's only one section of this chapter that goes into detail, so you can skim/skip that section (I think it's pretty clear which part it is) and you should be safe for the rest of the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

They booked passage for five, then—though the bookkeeper would take no payment from Leo, as thanks for the general's work on the docks—and the four Returners made their way to the ship at dusk.

Celes hid her face under a floppy hat much like the one Locke had procured for her during their infiltration of Vector. The hat was ridiculous. She was grateful for how ridiculous it was. Grateful for Terra commenting that it was her favorite shade of pink and now they could match, for Locke's inane stream-of-consciousness recollection of every dog he had met in the past ten years, for Cyan's silence as well as his presence.

Terra's arm grounded her. Locke's voice carried her. That was all there was to say about passing through Maranda, because if she allowed anything else to enter her mind, she would spiral quickly, beginning with what a coward she was to require such coddling just to walk down the street, and ending in cold and darkness and–

Nothing to say about Maranda. A blank space in her mind. A voice outside her, an arm supporting her, and nothing within her.

They settled in the same berth as the crew. Locke took one look at the swaying of their assigned hammocks and turned a little green, and he excused himself while the others stowed their belongings in footlockers against the wall. Celes took refuge in a hammock, warding off the cold and her own thoughts with a barrier of too many thick wool blankets. The itchy, stifling material formed a cocoon from which she could imagine emerging in the morning as someone else entirely, someone new and soft and good.

Around her, muffled voices kept the silence within her at bay: low conversation between Terra and Cyan, and eventually a ruckus as strange men filled the room, and a hesitant back-and-forth between Terra and a sailor. Locke must still be out; she would have expected him to referee if he were present.

Even though it hurt, she allowed herself to think of him. He would be angry if he knew, but still she let herself sink into imagining that he was here, his arm around her, warding off her ghosts. He could not protect her from real dangers, but her fear and her grief slipped away sometimes when he was near. And maybe he would forgive her for this indulgence, if it kept her safe—maybe he would understand. So she thought about washing herself clean in a river of tears and drying herself in the warmth of his light, and eventually her consciousness fell away.

It was better in the morning. Sunlight drifted through the tiny porthole windows, banishing some of the shadows within her. Terra was asleep, and Cyan, and several unknown figures slumbering in hammocks nearby. With a prick of alarm, she realized that Locke was not among them.

That was enough to rouse her from her daze. She stumbled out of the hammock and fought free of her blankets. Her hair had partly fallen out of the bun she'd bound it in the day before, trying to make herself anonymous by hiding the one feature that might be recognized. She ought to cut it all off. That seemed symbolic, somehow. But not now. She belted her sword, tugged on her boots, and headed for the deck.

It was just past dawn, pale yellow light and soft pink clouds in a delicate blue sky. A sailor was seated on a barrel on the deck, smoking a pipe.

"You're up early," he observed in a rough voice.

Celes hesitated to speak, to reveal herself, but worry pulled the words from her. "My friend is missing. The one who…talks a lot."

The man guffawed; Locke had apparently made an impression, even passing through. "Aye, I know the one. Didn't come back last night? Don't worry, lass. Maranda won't swallow him up."

"He's a Northerner. A Returner."

"And what of it? This place is past caring. He'll be fine." A dismissive wave of the hand, gesturing with his pipe, as if this were any reassurance. "But if you're going down to look for him, don't you dally—we'll be casting off as soon as everything's squared away."

Did she really mean to go into Maranda alone to find him? Her sword was on her hip, because the last thing she could survive after everything else was losing him to some cutpurse in an alley—if Maranda wants its revenge, take me; he is innocent! But the cruelest way to punish her would be to hurt him and make her live through it.

"I'll be quick," she said. "He stands out." She hoped it was true.

Except she couldn't bring herself even to step onto the ramp leading from the ship to the dock. How ridiculous she must look, frozen solid after making a proclamation like that. Fortunately for her, Locke rescued her from her embarrassment, as he rescued her from everything—sauntering up just as life was beginning to stir down on the docks. He looked none the worse for wear, really, other than being dressed as he'd been the day before, with his hair even more mussed than usual and a wide easy grin on his face.

"Hello there!" he called out, and she was glad he did not use her name. "Good morning!"

She smiled wanly back at him as he came up the ramp toward her. He had definitely been out all night; had he gone without sleeping, then? What had he gotten himself into?

Behind him, an oddly familiar figure followed, shouldering a pack. It took her a moment to recognize the man, just as Locke helpfully offered, "Ran into Leo."

She had never seen Leo like this. Even when he wasn't in uniform, his off-duty clothing still had a military cut that matched his usual rigid posture. Now, as he approached the ship in civilian clothes, the disconnect of it was jarring. Did she seem that out of place when she tried to dress and act like an ordinary person? Is that why others seemed so uncomfortable around her? He wore a green linen shirt and dark trousers, and his hair had not been trimmed with his usual military precision. The result softened him a little, as did his apparent discomfort.

"Leo," she said. The urge to salute him came and went. Old habits. It had taken a while to shake it when they first promoted her to general. A strange decision—she had been so young, so green, having only commanded smaller units of men for a year or two before. But she was a Magitek knight with military theory crammed into her brain and enough experience killing people on the battlefield to know where theory ended and reality began, and Gestahl liked to use his weapons well.

Leo smiled when he saw her, but it was a tentative thing. "I hope you don't mind that I'm joining you. Your friend Terra was very firm about it."

"No, it's fine. I think it's a good idea." True enough, if only for the chance that Terra's hope for Leo's rehabilitation—if that was even the right word—would come true. "She's down below with the Doman, if you want to stow your things."

No pleasantries, no small talk, just military directness. Leo looked like he wanted to say something else, but he second-guessed himself and disappeared down into the hold. Locke moved to follow him, but Celes blocked his path.

"How are you feeling?" he asked in a low voice, before she had a chance to speak. "Does this mean you're feeling a bit better?" His gaze traveled to the sword at her hip. "Although I see you're armed. Expecting trouble?"

"I was worried about you."

"That's very kind of you, but I'm in one piece, as you can see." He patted himself down to demonstrate. "I learned enough in Vector not to make an ass of myself here. Just getting an early morning walk in before we set sail and there's no more space to stretch our legs."

"You didn't come back last night," she said, but when he looked like he might offer up an excuse or an evasion, she pushed harder. "Locke. What were you up to?"

He held his hands up in surrender. "Nothing! It's our last night on solid ground for a while, so I took a nap near the dock. That's all."

"You slept out in the open, in the middle of a strange city, unarmed, alone?" She stared at him, incredulous, trying and failing not to imagine a mugger slitting his throat, or a kidnapper pressing him into servitude on another ship, or–

Locke just shrugged, with a sheepish grin. "It wouldn't be the first time, and I hope you won't kill me yourself if I say it probably won't be the last…"

"It's dangerous," she said. Please do not tempt the universe to hurt you. It is not a kind world, and you are soft and gentle and easily hurt.

"I can assess danger," he said a little defensively. "It's all right. I promise."

Then, he screwed up his face as if gathering his courage, or steeling himself up, and stepped very, very deliberately across the deck.

The same sailor who had been out when Celes first emerged from below was still smoking his pipe. "No sea legs," he muttered, as Locke disappeared down the hold. "Poor lad, he's in for a rough trip."


***


It was really ridiculous just how much he did not want to be on this ship.

The airship was hardly his favorite means of transportation, but at least it still held novelty, an experience he associated solely with his time with the Returners. And, generally speaking, he seldom found himself aloft for more than a week at a time, at most.

Being on a boat out at sea, on the other hand, was a worse kind of hell. At least this ship wouldn't have a sudden engine failure and crash into the ground, killing everyone on it in a fiery wreck—but he was all too aware that ships could instead sink below the waves, taking every life aboard into the depths for eternity.

No. It was fine. It was going to be fine. He'd survived the airship; he would survive this damn boat.

He managed to hold it together as the ship set off. Fresh wind on his face helped him a little, though the salty breeze would tangle his hair into an awful rat's nest by the end of this journey, he was sure. One point in favor of sea travel over the airship: the air up high was thinner and rushed past too fast to be comfortable, though it was technically possible to stand above deck there. But the sea churned as the ship cut through it, and the deck beneath his feet tossed and turned. On second thought, no points in favor of sea travel.

Normally, he'd be peppering the sailors with questions by now, but they were spared his attention. Just as well.

There was so much hubbub with the ship departing that he could sit by the railing and let the voices wash over him, close his eyes and feel the wind and the sun, take deep breaths and put himself in the moment as much as he could, separate himself from the discomfort in his body and the worries in his mind.

Celes had been going to look for him, in Maranda, or at least she seemed to have intended to do so; he got the impression she'd been stalling when he arrived. He worried about her; she worried about him; eventually that cycle was going to have to break, one way or another.

Terra, at least, was in fine spirits. She seemed thrilled to be on the open sea at last, for the journey to Thamasa to be truly underway. He guessed that she might lose some of that enthusiasm as the reality of it hit her—maybe doubt would creep in, fear of rejection or failure. But for now she was giddy as a child, setting off on her first big adventure, and he tried to let her joy lift his own spirits.

Cyan and Leo kept their distance from one another. He desperately wanted to help navigate that, but it was all he could do to hold himself together throughout the day. He skipped breakfast, and lunch as well, but he was feeling faint by the time dinner rolled around, so he chanced a few bites of food. It did not take long for him to regret this decision.

The moon was rising when he sought respite by the railing once more. Half the sailors had gone below; others worked the ship despite nightfall, stepping nimbly around ropes in the flickering lantern light, but they were too focused on their own work to pay much attention to him in his misery. And his own companions were safe in the hold, reading or playing cards or staring dramatically out a porthole. That gave him a little privacy to reckon with his stomach, which was not shy in expressing its displeasure at his dinnertime audacity.

He gripped the railing and tried to calm himself. Breathe in. Breathe out. If the damned boat would just stop rocking for one moment

Footsteps creaked on the deck behind him. Moving his head to look over his shoulder would not be a good idea. He could only hope it was a sailor doing whatever sailors did. Maybe they'd tell him to move along, but most likely they'd recognize what was happening and give him the space to deal with it.

No such luck. An all-too-familiar voice. "Are you all right, Locke?"

Oh, no. He took a deep breath, willing his stomach to calm, willing his throat to stay closed, desperately pushing down his body's panicked need to empty itself of what it thought must be poison. Eyes screwed tight, he tried to focus on the wind on his cheeks, not the rocking of the boat.

"I'm fine," he said in as bright a voice as he could manage. "Just—just enjoying the stars."

Speaking was a mistake. The moment he stopped fighting his throat, it clawed back upward, bringing his stomach with it. His fingernails dug into the wooden railing. Not here, not now, not in front of her. He did not want her to see him like this. Yet his stomach seemed intent on humiliating him.

"Locke–"

"Really, it's a beautiful night," he said cheerfully, and he did a damn good job of keeping the sound of it out of his voice, all things considered. "It's–"

But whatever else he was going to say was cut off as his stomach seized the moment of his weakness and charged on ahead. He leaned over the railing and allowed nature to run its course.

No matter how many times it happened, it never stopped being so unrelentingly miserable. There were tears in his eyes, and his throat ached, and a chill touched his spine and his face was clammy like he was actually feverish. Only after the worst of it had passed did he realize that Celes's hands were holding his hair back, that she had been right beside him the whole time. He closed his eyes again and wondered if he could just toss himself into the ocean right now, if that might be easier than dying of embarrassment on the spot.

"Better?" she murmured. Her fingers smoothed his hair over his temples, gentle and reassuring. And that distracted him a little from the rocking waves. 

He took a deep breath, experimentally. "I… think so."

"Here," she said, unwrapping a little paper-wrapped knob and offering it to him. "Try this."

He eyed it warily. "Is that candy?"

"The sailors say it'll settle your stomach."

He laughed ruefully, his voice rough and raw in his throat. "You, too?"

"No," she said. "I got it for you."

"Oh."

That surprised him for some reason. He was supposed to be the one who came prepared, the one who took care of his traveling companions with his handy bag of tricks and a knack for knowing what people needed. That was his job. And yet here she was, with her gentle fingers and her sweet candy and—and wasn't she the one who needed caretaking, anyway?

"Take it," she said, more of a command than a request, and he did.

It tasted as fiery as it smelled, the heat of it burning not just his tongue but up into his nasal passages, and he coughed. "That's strong," he gasped.

"Is it helping?"

"I think so," he said, mostly to reassure her.

He did feel a little better, though, whether it had anything to do with the candy or not. The boat kept swaying underfoot, but at least his stomach stayed where it belonged. He closed his eyes and leaned against the railing, listening to the chatter of sailors elsewhere on the ship, trying to find some sense of stillness that would hold him steady inside.

"Locke," Celes said, in a strange and quiet voice, and his stomach twisted again for an entirely different reason.

"Mm-hmm?"

She was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel the storm rising inside her, and it filled him with a dull sort of dread. He wasn't sure what he expected her to say, but certainly not the sad, somewhat frustrated question, "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Why do you always pretend you're all right? It's like you put on a mask and expect no one else will notice."

He tested an apologetic smile. "I don't–"

"You do! You're doing it right now." The genuine hurt in her voice wiped the false smile from his face. "You don't have to hide how you're feeling from me. You've seen me at my worst plenty of times. You're allowed to be in pain, too. You're allowed to ask for help from your friends. So why can't you?"

"I…" He swallowed back the instinctive I'm fine. "I don't know."

She snorted. "I don't believe that. You spend too long thinking about how other people work; I don't believe you've got a total blind spot about yourself. Just… think about it. And be honest with me, at least. Please."

The word honest picked at a scab on his soul; he mentally swatted it away. "Fine. I'll try."

Her exasperated sigh told him she wasn't convinced, and he couldn't really blame her; he hadn't even really convinced himself. If there was an answer to her line of questioning, he wasn't in the mood to find it. Mercifully, she let it go. After a while, she left him to the rocking of the waves, and he slumped down against the railing and watched the stars dance overhead.


***


Days passed, and she felt more like herself the longer they were away from Maranda. She kept an eye on Locke, who seemed better after that first night, though choppy weather always sent him rushing above deck. Terra was stubbornly determined to talk to Leo every chance she got, and Cyan never let either of them out of his sight. For the first time in a while, nobody was watching over Celes herself, and she could just be. She took to reading the books Locke had bought her in Figaro—out loud, at Locke's request, to distract him from how he was feeling. Though she'd never been much of a storyteller, she did her best, and they slowly progressed through the dime novel.

The sailors rejected Leo's repeated offers to help them with their tasks, no doubt wanting to avoid an inexperienced pair of hands mucking with their well-trained team. But it was clear that the general, who had been a very active man in all the time she had known him, did not take well to the stillness of a few weeks on a ship. He would shift and stand and sit again and never seem to get comfortable. 

They were all down in the hold, playing chess with a dented old set borrowed from a sailor—a much better game by Celes's estimation than any of the endless card games the others seemed to know—when Locke spoke up to Leo in a voice she recognized. Not just idle curiosity; he was trying to fill the air and the silence. The teasing grin on his face was strained. Maybe Leo's incessant movement made him think of the waves. "You don't sit still, do you? You'd think this was the first time you'd traveled by sea."

Leo shifted again with a faint grimace of embarrassment. "Usually, my men and I run through exercises to maintain our conditioning."

Cyan sat quietly working a knife over a piece of driftwood. He'd already crafted them a crude replacement for a missing pawn, but the piece taking shape under his fingers now showed a great deal more skill. He paused for a moment, listening, but said nothing. Celes could guess what he was thinking: ships had sailed carrying imperial soldiers under Leo's command from Nikeah to Doma.

Locke pressed on. "Would it help you to try something like that here? The sailors have been pretty accommodating. I don't think they'd mind as long as you kept out of their way. Borrow a broom or something for a sword and do your exercises on the deck."

"Would you join me?" Leo asked, sizing him up. "A man should be able to defend himself and the people around him." He glanced at Celes during this last part. Did he mean that Locke should be able to defend her? Despite herself, she laughed, which was only exacerbated when she saw Locke's eyes widen with momentary panic.

"I don't really…" he sputtered.

Celes decided to spare him. "If you need a sparring partner, ask me," she told Leo.

"It would probably be good for all of us, actually," Terra said. The green-haired girl smiled sweetly when the others looked at her in surprise. "What? We're all cooped up down here, and Leo knows how to train soldiers, right? Maybe he can teach us a few things."

They carried on with their game and their story, but the next day they convened after lunch had settled in their stomachs. The afternoon sunshine warmed her cheeks, and the rocking of the boat was gentle, calming. It was hard to imagine what it must be like for Locke, for even the minute movement to set his body in such a state as he had been the first night. How strange that two people could experience the same thing so differently. Yet he seemed all right today, with the wind ruffling his hair as he stood at the railing with Terra, gesturing up at the sky. They seemed to be cloud-watching together, and for all that Celes knew perfectly well that Terra felt nothing for him but friendship, still she couldn't help a twinge of jealousy.

Beside her, Leo cleared his throat. "He seems like a good man."

Suddenly aware that he must have been watching her watch Locke, she felt the embarrassed heat rise in her cheeks. "He is," she said. "A very good man."

"Is he…" Leo hesitated.

She blinked at him. "Is he what?"

"Are you… Are the two of you…?" He gestured between her and Locke, who was now laughing at something Terra had said. His laughter animated his whole body, and there was no way this unbridled joy was an act. He deserved someone who could make him laugh like this—he had someone who could make him laugh like this, even if what Terra had said about Rachel's departed soul was true and Rachel only lived on in his heart.

Celes's cheeks grew hot. "What do you mean?"

"You light up when you're around him."

Can everyone tell? Am I that transparent?

She turned her face away. "No, we're just—just friends. He's engaged." He's not mine, and he never will be.

"Ah. That's too bad." Leo sounded disappointed. "If you did find someone—I hope he'd be a good man, too. I hope I'd get to meet him."

She raised an eyebrow and could not keep from retorting, with some degree of acid, "For your approval?"

Leo's shrug was apologetic. "I would just want to know him."

The other two noticed them before she had to give an answer, and the conversation mercifully dissolved as they all took their places on a mostly-empty patch of deck. Locke, of course, had been the one to secure this space from the sailors, who seemed to find their mismatched collection of guests amusing on some level. No fake weapons were necessary; Leo took Terra's idea to heart and chose to teach them unarmed self-defense instead, which was likely to be more useful off the battlefield than armed combat would.

Celes had worried that her body would not respond well to strenuous exercise, but the familiar ache felt good as her muscles remembered how to move. It felt like ice breaking atop a lake, revealing free-flowing waters underneath. In the heat of the afternoon sun, the blood raced through her veins. She had almost forgotten what it was like to feel warm and alive and human.

Locke and Terra were the least experienced, by far; Terra's military training was more limited than Celes's own, and while Locke had some competency in self-defense, it was rudimentary. So Celes partnered with Terra, and Leo with a somewhat green-looking Locke. As always, Cyan sat within view, a quiet observer, the knife in his hands fluttering over half-carved wood.

Terra's shyness was replaced with single-minded intensity, and Celes gave it her all in return, and the two girls grappled and struggled until they collapsed against each other, laughing. Celes had never trained with a friend before. Others on the Vector training grounds had made games of it, challenged each other to playful contests, gone out drinking together afterwards. Compared to that, hers had been a lonely existence—though of course Terra's had been far, far worse. At least now they had each other, and the Returners, and a future far removed from the solitude that had haunted them both for so long. They were safe from Gestahl's grasp—and from Kefka's reach, forever.

The thought of the mad clown sent ice through her heart. But she looked at Terra's smiling face, and at Locke laughing once more as he tried to push Leo, and she clung desperately to that fleeting sense of warmth.


***


Facing off with General Leo Christophe, of all people, was not how Locke would have expected or chosen to spend his days. Some part of him feared that the man might break him in half and toss the pieces over the railing—not that it was a realistic concern, but Leo was massive and sculpted entirely out of muscle and iron, and accustomed to turning civilians into soldiers, and he had slaughtered Locke's allies for years. 

That last part was easy to forget in this context. Leo was unrelenting but not unkind. He clearly commanded his men through respect and not fear, and that respect went two ways—he demanded that his students do their best, yet he seemed aware of their physical limitations and never pushed them past the point of safety.

Judging by how effortlessly he manhandled Locke, it was no surprise that he had cut through legions of enemies on the battlefield. His strength was terrifying. It reminded Locke of Sabin, except that Leo was older and more precise in his motions; Sabin might be a formidable martial artist, but Leo had been a warrior longer than many of the Returners had been alive, and age did not seem to slow him down.

On the second day of their practice, Leo started them with a series of warm-ups, and Locke did his damnedest not to groan about his bruises. Leo's voice followed a familiar, well-practiced cadence; Locke had heard other teachers use the same tone with students.

In the middle of an exercise, Terra piped up a little breathlessly, an unexpected interruption. "Can I… can I train with you today? I think I'm more likely to have trouble with a man like you than someone like Celes." She tilted her head at Leo. "It would be good practice."

Locke couldn't argue with the girl's logic, though he was surprised all the same—Terra might be committed to winning Leo over, but he was a terrifying figure, and Locke couldn't imagine what untold horrors she might have experienced at the hands of imperial soldiers. Yet the girl looked up at him fearlessly, and Locke had to admire her resolve.

"I don't see why not," Leo said, obviously nonplussed, and Terra nodded in satisfaction.

"Don't let Locke off the hook," Terra said to Celes with a devious glint in her eyes. "Make him practice with you. He needs it as much as I do."

Celes seemed startled by this, maybe even upset. But before he could determine what, exactly, was bothering her, she nodded and gave him an appraising look.

When they had finished their warm-ups, and Leo gave the order to divide into teams, Locke and Celes stood and faced each other. "Are you all right?" he asked her. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"If you insist on doing stupid things like sleeping in back alleys, someone's got to make sure you don't get your throat cut." There was an edge in her voice that kept this from being wholly a joke, though she seemed like she intended to tease him.

He chuckled. "I'm not totally helpless, I promise."

"You rely too much on talking your way out of things, or sneaking away—or on people meaning you no harm in the first place."

He gritted his teeth; talking her out of her pessimism would take longer than he had, and she certainly had more valid reasons to distrust people than he did. With effort, he pushed a smile back onto his face and into his voice. "Ideally, my days of spying and sabotage are behind me now."

"There's still danger, even outside a war. Please. I don't want something to happen to you." Her voice wavered for a moment. Though she'd bound her hair back before their training, it was coming loose, and she busied herself catching stray golden curls and tucking them back out of the way. Then her eyes met his, and they were cool and steady and solemn. "There are… some things you've asked me to take seriously; I do. I'm trying. I promised. But you have to take this seriously, too. All right?"

Some things—she meant her own life. How could he argue with her, in the face of that? A grin would be out of place here; it would feel too much like the mask she accused him of wearing, the mask he did wear around most people, but especially her. Instead, he offered his hand to her. "All right."

Once again, she hesitated, then clasped his hand briefly. "Thank you."

They squared off, both of them flushed from exertion and the sun. He smiled encouragement at her as she reached for his shoulders, and she faltered before touching him. Her calloused fingers gripped his bare shoulders only loosely.

"L-like this," she stammered, and she crossed one heel behind his opposite knee and pressed just enough for the knee to buckle. She released him and took a deep breath. "Your turn."

Something was troubling her. Whatever brave or stubborn front she put forward, she was still recovering from serious injuries. He would have to be careful with her, without letting her realize he was being careful, somehow. Frowning in false concentration, he mirrored her earlier motions as delicately as he could.

She tossed her head, and her nostrils flared. "You're not going to break me, I promise."

After a few more half-hearted attempts on his part, as she barked at him to go again and again, she started fighting back, maybe to prove to him that she had the strength to withstand whatever he threw at her. She shifted her weight, bent her knees, grasped at his elbows, pressed her heels into the deck and pushed at him to throw off his balance. Finally, grunting in exasperation—she had irritated him enough that he forgot to be careful with her—he shoved her, hooked his heel behind her knee, and brought her crashing down to the deck with a triumphant cry.

He caught himself on his hands at the last moment, his reflexes saving him as they had done so many times before, and he grinned down at her. Her eyes locked on his, pulling him into their depths, as open and exposed as a cloudless sky.

The blood rushed to his ears, and that feeling of triumph emptied away. For too long, they stared at each other, blue eyes on brown, and the entire world faded. Their legs were still entangled, their bodies inches apart, too close. Suddenly he needed to put as much space as possible between them. He bounded to his feet. His voice when he spoke was strange and unsteady. "I think… I think that's enough for today."

Before she could say anything at all, he fled to the security of the railing. He'd already spent enough hours clinging to it; what was one more? He leaned over the weathered wood, releasing his weight into it, hoping the others had been too busy to pay attention to him, hoping Celes would excuse any oddness on his part as the effects of the sea.

The sunlight and the waves and the exercise had left him feeling out of sorts, but it was more than that. When his eyes were closed, he saw the afterimage of her face, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, the hollow of her throat, the elegant line of her collarbone, and they were sparring partners and friends and it was entirely inappropriate for him to even notice anything beyond that.

The Doman sat against the railing a few paces away. His carving was beginning to take shape, some kind of a bird—maybe a seagull, Locke really couldn't say. The two men exchanged a glance, and the look he gave Locke was melancholy, betraying some inexplicable pain.

Back on the deck, Leo helped Celes to her feet. And then, to Locke's dismay, rather than letting him have more than a moment of solitude, the others joined him.

"Could you see yourself doing this? Instead of fighting?" Terra was saying to Leo, and it was only her natural innocence that kept this from sounding as calculated as it must have been. "If there's no more war, then you don't need to be a soldier any longer. You could teach civilians instead, maybe even children."

Leo seemed dubious. "I'm not really a teacher…"

"Don't be obtuse. You've trained too many soldiers to claim that." Celes sounded tired, unsurprisingly—whatever she might claim to the contrary, she was still recovering. As always, she was short with Leo, though less sullen than in days past.

The conversation had come to him, and as much as he was kind of considering throwing himself over the railing to avoid having to deal with the ship and everything—and everyone—on it, he could not resist the urge to dive into the flow of their words instead. At least it was easier for him to stay afloat in words than in water. "They've got a point," he offered, before he could second-guess himself.

"You're all ganging up on me now?" Leo asked with some amusement. "I'm not a teacher, and I certainly don't have much experience with children."

Celes snorted. Locke dared a glance at her and saw her raising her eyebrows at the general. "Don't you?"

"Children, no." He frowned. "You're the last person I would expect to encourage me to work with children. I thought I ruined your life."

"Your training wasn't what ruined me. The empire itself doomed me from the start." Celes stretched her arms over her head, then rolled out her shoulders. Stray strands of hair clung to her neck, just as her thin undershirt clung to her back, revealing muscles that remained taut and wiry despite her long convalescence. "Anyway, it's just an idea. You don't have to take it."

This pattern sounded almost like a father and daughter, and if the subject hadn't been turning Celes into a child soldier, the intimacy of their argument might have been endearing. But that was a can of worms best left unopened at this point.

"I don't want to ruin any more lives," Leo said.

"Then don't," Celes said.

"You said you liked building things in Maranda," Locke added. "What about that? Although you've definitely got a knack for teaching, whether you see it or not, and I'm sure plenty of people could stand to know how to defend themselves. It's a brave new world out there."

 

***


Quiet voices woke her from a light sleep, and she rolled over in her hammock, her muscles protesting the cumulative damage of a solid week's training. The blanket over her head was enough to block the ever-present lanterns lining the staircase to the deck—she couldn't fully begrudge anyone the need for visibility in case of emergency—but the wool wasn't thick enough to muffle the sounds of the ship's night crew. Still, she had slept through it until now. Perhaps it was the proximity of the voices that startled her awake.

"Can't sleep?" she heard Leo say, and she was about to respond to him herself when someone else beat her to it, Terra's gentle soprano.

"Just a nightmare," the girl said.

"That doesn't surprise me," Leo said, "but I'm still sorry. Do you want to talk about it?"

Leo had never asked her so casually about the content of her own nightmares. He knew that she had them, had assured her that all good soldiers did from time to time, and certainly all good officers—but this mundane statement of concern was different. Speaking to Terra, Leo sounded not like a commanding officer but like one ordinary person to another. A prickle of anger rose in her, and something more—grief.

"No, thank you," Terra continued, unfailingly polite.

"Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you." He paused, then added, "That's why you've brought me along with you, haven't you? You've got something specific in mind. Not just Thamasa. The lot of you, you're up to something. Trying to recruit me to join the Returners?"

"I want you to help me help people," Terra said.

"I'll do everything I can, in that case. You're strong, you know, even if you seem gentle. You remind me of someone."

"Celes?"

He laughed, and Celes eavesdropping on this conversation could not tell what had made him laugh, or what he meant by it. 'Gentle' is hardly a word anyone would use to describe you, and you know it. Funny that Terra might even think he could have meant her. Her cheeks burned, and she shifted to try to block her ears with the pillow, but Leo's words reached her anyway.

"No, you two couldn't be more different." That stung, but he continued. "I meant someone I used to know, a long time ago."

"Who?"

"A woman I courted once, if you can believe that. When I was much younger."

It was hard to imagine the grizzled warrior in love. He had never mentioned it, and Celes had never even seen him near any woman outside of a professional capacity. There were few enough female soldiers, and while Leo was kind to the cooks and maids and others around the imperial compound, Celes could not remember a single time he seemed to take a personal interest in one.

Terra sounded as surprised as she felt. "What happened to her?"

"I was busy with my responsibilities to the Empire. I was just a lieutenant then, at first, but then I was promoted and there wasn't much time for courtship anymore. Eventually she got tired of waiting and moved on, and in a way, I guess I did, too."

"At least you've been in love," Terra said wistfully. "I can't even imagine it."

"You're young, and you've spent most of your life—well, not really in a position to meet someone. Give it time."

"Celes spent most of her life as a soldier, but she's… even she has…" There was a meaningful pause, as if Terra were deliberating over what she was trying to say. Tired as she was, Celes still winced at the mention of her own name, and what Terra seemed to be referencing.

Leo chuckled. "I asked her about that, but she says they're just friends."

Panic flooded her. This late-night chatter had woken her; what if Locke, too, was awake and listening? What would he think if he heard any of this?

"I can hear you," Celes said, a little louder than she needed to, and the two speakers stopped immediately. It would be awkward in the morning as they considered how much she might have overheard, but she hadn't tried to eavesdrop, and it wasn't her fault. Better to cut them off now, before they could share their speculation about her—truthful or not—here in the open, where anyone might be listening.

It was a long time before she could sleep again.


***


They continued their exercises under Leo's guidance for the better part of a second week, and the fair weather held steady and true. But when a storm finally struck one afternoon, it hit hard and suddenly, and the ship was enveloped in darkness. Around them, sailors sprang into action with precise efficiency, moving as one unit to adapt to the whims of the weather.

"Get below," the captain told her grimly, shouting over the wind and the waves.

"Should we be worried?" Celes asked.

The man paused on the deck just long enough to answer her. "Storms are never routine. You give the sea your respects or she'll teach you better." With this questionable reassurance, he joined his crew, and Celes took this cue to gather up the rest of the passengers. Leo was striding toward her and the staircase down with a serious look on his face; Terra followed him, already drenched, and Cyan trailed behind them.

Locke, when she finally found him huddled in a far corner of the hold, looked absolutely bloodless and pale despite the ruddy tan so many afternoons under the sun had baked into him.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," he muttered to himself, the words pouring out in a rush like a prayer or an incantation. This wasn't just seasickness, then. Nor was it the ordinary nerves that he struggled so hard to tamp down sometimes when they hit a patch of turbulence on the airship. When she touched his shoulder, he stared up at her with wild, uncontrolled terror showing the whites of his eyes.

The ship pitched to one side like a giant hand had knocked against it, and Locke yelped and covered his head with his arms. In the lamplight, she could see his fingernails digging deeply into his flesh. He did not respond when she said his name, but when she wrapped her own arms around him, he clung to her so tightly it hurt. For a moment, she could imagine he was seeking comfort from her, that it mattered that she was here, that he was hers to soothe and protect. But it was only his panic grabbing hold of the first thing he found. 

There had to be something she could do for him.

She took a deep breath and reached inside herself, feeling for the presence of what the Espers had left to her, opening herself to their power if any of them yet remained within her.

The buzzing of magic around them both seemed to snap him out of it. His eyes focused on her face as if seeing her for the first time.

"Celes, no," he protested weakly. It was too late to stop; the magic whispered in her heart and then bubbled forth from her hands to wrap itself around Locke's body, with a promise of buoyancy she sensed as a possibility more than understood. Her tongue tasted salt, like tears or the sea, and her muscles ached anew as though she had lifted some terrible weight.

And, in a sense, she had. The ship rocked back and forth, but Locke hovered almost imperceptibly over the floor, cushioned by a pocket of air that remained steady and sure, unaffected by the heaving around it.

"Oh," he said, blinking in disbelief. The fear seemed to have left him, or perhaps surprise had distracted him from it.

Celes felt very pleased with herself despite her sudden weariness. "I don't… know how long it will last—I don't think I can do any more right now—but…is it better? Better enough?"

"If I close my eyes, I can forget I'm on a ship at all." The relief on his face warmed her heart. Then the ship heaved suddenly, and he blanched, squinting one eye at her. "Well. Almost."

The hold was not so large that the others had missed this display. Terra crouched down beside them, staring at the minute distance between Locke and the floor, then at Celes, with wide eyes.

"How did you know how to do that?"

"I didn't know anything," Celes said, "but I had a feeling. It's not Shiva. Not the one who carried you out of the Research Facility, either. A different Esper. Bismarck." The name echoed in her mind as she said it aloud.

"Do they… talk to you?" Misery contorted Terra's face.

Celes recognized that look. Jealousy. She'd felt it plenty of times, sometimes toward Terra herself. "No, it's not like that. It was just a guess. Maybe it's because I learned to work with stolen magic in the first place, or maybe something Ramuh taught me helped."

"My magic is mine," Terra said bitterly, "and now I've got my father's magic, too, and I don't even know what to do with it. I wish he'd been able to teach me something—anything."

"Maybe someone in Thamasa will be able to. If it's their heritage, too, they must know something."

"I hope so," Terra said with such sad desperation that Celes had to believe that Locke was wrong, that Thamasa would have the answers Terra sought, that something would fill this void in her friend's heart. Was this why Terra seemed so preoccupied with finding love—because the family that was her birthright had been violently taken from her, but she might someday be able to make a family of her own?

"I hope so, too," Celes said. "And if they don't… we'll find someone who does, somehow."

"What did Ramuh teach you?"

And while she wasn't sure how well she trusted her own memory of his lessons, or her mastery of them, she couldn't deny Terra's curiosity. So they settled down in hammocks that rocked and swayed with the ship, and Celes shared everything she could remember. Locke, who seemed to feel much better between the effects of Bismarck's magic and the distraction of a story being told, weighed in whenever he had something to add about the history Ramuh had explained. His memory for details was exceptional, and Celes leaned on him gladly, feeling her own confidence lift alongside it.

Leo and Cyan listened, too, in polite silence. And there was something poetic, really, about recounting Ramuh's lessons while a storm raged around them. She couldn't say whether any part of him truly lingered with her, but she thought he would be glad to be remembered.


***


It was at the end of the second week, when they had nearly reached Thamasa, that Cyan's silence finally burst.

Locke was impressed that the man had kept himself together the whole journey, especially in such tight quarters. Cyan's feelings had betrayed him only in the tensing of his jaw, the flashing of his eyes, a sudden intake of breath sometimes when Leo spoke—subtle details Locke only noticed because he was looking for them, and because he was someone who noticed these things.

It wasn't that Leo had baited the Doman. If anything, the opposite was true; Leo seemed inclined to give Cyan his space, and it was clear that the general was doing his best to be receptive to the younger Returners. He was gentle with Terra, and the awkwardness between him and Celes had begun to soften.

But Cyan held a quiet, potent rage at bay, and he had no love for this imperial who stumbled so often into sensitive topics out of ignorance if not cruelty, who seemed determined to do better but who had done so much wrong to make up for.

Thus there was an edge beneath the politeness of his voice when the Doman set down his knife and the little wooden gull he had been carving and interrupted the end of their daily exercises.

Locke didn't hear what he said to Leo, or what Leo said in response. All he knew was that they both looked grave, and then Cyan went below deck and returned with his sword at his hip. Celes stood up at once, looking from Cyan to Leo with her mouth open.

"What is-"

"Nothing to worry about," Leo said with what Locke supposed was meant to be a reassuring smile that had no warmth to it. "Cyan has invited me to spar with him."

"Armed?"

"Sheathed."

Locke expected her to protest. He expected himself to intervene, because it was clear there was more at stake here than just two companions passing the time, and it made him nervous. But his resolve faltered when he approached Cyan, whose steely expression left no room for conversation or disagreement. The men would fight, and no one else had the right to stop them.

The two swordsmen faced each other in silence. Cyan bowed deep, slow and deliberate—a surprise to Locke, who was half expecting the man to try killing the general, but no, that would be dishonorable. Wouldn't it? Locke circled around to stand beside Celes, whose hands at her sides had tightened into fists.

"It's going to be fine," he said, as much to himself as to her.

Leo bowed back, stiffly mirroring his opponent. When both stood straight and tall once more, Cyan raised his sword, still in its sheath. Leo did the same. A sharp intake of breath from Celes. Then the match—the battle—began in earnest.

Even fighting with sheathed weapons, the two older men were terrifying to behold. Each moved with expertise, confidence, earned over decades of practice. Their styles could not be more different, even to Locke's untrained eye. Leo practically radiated power and strength, his movements concise and direct, wasting nothing; Cyan had a fluidity and grace that was by no means weak, but he seemed to be biding his time, evading and then striking in a flurry of blows that flowed together like the moves of a dance.

"Are they well-matched?" Locke murmured to Celes.

"Yes."

No one could mistake this for a sparring match. The men were both deadly serious, no playful smiles or friendly quips. With silent ferocity, they battled back and forth across the deck. Even the crew members who had started off heckling or making bets fell off. It really looked like these two were fighting to the death. But nobody dared intervene.

Was Cyan trying to prove something to himself? Would he avenge his family and his people on the sole member of the Empire within his reach? Had Leo's efforts over the past two weeks to learn from them not convinced the Doman that there was a chance at his rehabilitation? Or had Cyan's grief and anger taken him over, pushing aside all reason? A thousand possibilities flitted through Locke's mind as he watched the two grizzled warriors engaged in a struggle, or a conversation, he could only guess at the meaning of.

If Cyan fell, maybe the man would know peace, but it would be the end of something. If Leo fell—it would be a blow to the Empire, no question, but also to Terra's hope, and to Celes's.

At last, with one great and terrible flash of strength, the Doman knocked Leo's weapon from his hand. The general fell to his knees, head bowed, shoulders heaving. For a moment it looked as though Cyan might execute him; a dark cloud seemed to have possessed him, and Leo made no move to defend himself further. The Returners and the sailors alike had all frozen where they stood, mid-movement, as if turned to stone.

Stop them, Locke told himself, but his limbs and his lips did not respond.

It was Cyan who broke the heavy silence, not with blood or violence but with words. "Well fought," the Doman said, breathing heavily, and he belted his sword. "I would rather have you on my side than against me."

"Thank you," Leo replied gravely, and Locke understood that whatever had happened was a test, and Leo had passed. Cyan extended a hand to help the general to his feet, and those gathered around them could finally breathe again.

Life returned to the ship. The sailors resumed whatever tasks had been interrupted by the battle, calling out to one another, egging each other on about whatever sailors did. Beside Locke, Celes watched the two swordsmen, her eyes alight with something fierce and indescribable. Terra just looked relieved. As for Locke himself, he was—worried. Awed. Glad.


***


The tension between the two old warriors seemed to be resolved. Cyan had taken Leo's measure and found him worthy not just as a foe but as a companion, and in the process he had channeled his own grief and rage and forged them into understanding and, perhaps, the beginnings of a friendship. In the morning, when the rest gathered on deck for what had become routine exercises, Cyan joined them, not to watch from the sidelines as usual but dressed down as any other student ready to learn.

If Cyan could agree to give Leo this chance, despite everything—if he could accept Leo's messy, imperfect efforts at changing—then maybe she could, too. And maybe she could accept her own. Not for Locke's sake, to keep her promise to him, but for herself.

With some surprise, she found that she was proud of Leo, instead of angry, for the first time in what felt like many years. Perhaps he was the good man she had grown up believing him to be, the man she had admired and looked up to. Perhaps there could be salvation for them both, at the end of this, a quiet life rebuilding instead of tearing down, mending instead of breaking.

She partnered with Cyan, glad for another opportunity to avoid touching Locke and seeing the fear in his eyes. Even without sharing his gift for reading people, she had recognized his discomfort and understood herself as the cause of it, and she wanted to spare herself how much it hurt to be so close to him and spare him whatever that closeness did to him in turn. She could respect his boundaries and protect herself.

Training with Cyan was easy. He didn't ask her about Locke; she didn't ask him about fighting Leo. They understood each other without words. It was nice.

At dinner that night, the conversation was light and comfortable for the first time, and Cyan joined in, telling them stories of life in Doma. Locke sat up with sharp interest and carefully shadowed Cyan in the conversation, like a partner spotting someone trying a dangerous new exercise. She had enough experience with Locke's unseen support during difficult topics to recognize it happening when she saw it, this time from the outside. Yes, he was kind and supportive to his friends, to all of them; she had been on the receiving end of that friendship and that kindness, and now she would be sharing it with the rest of them. That was all.

After dinner, they sat as a group in the hold, a little tipsy off some rum one of the sailors had given them—part of his earnings from betting on the swordfight, apparently. Celes had her trashy dime novel to read out loud by lantern light, while the two older men knocked pieces around on the chess board. Their conversation was more interesting than the book, though, and Celes paused between paragraphs and noticed that Locke and Terra, too, seemed to have turned their attention to it.

"I do owe you an apology," Leo was saying to Cyan. "We should—we should still not have been attempting to invade Doma, and I recognize that now. But the siege of Doma was meant to be my responsibility, under my command, until Gestahl called me back to Vector and Kefka stepped up to relieve me. It was only meant to be temporary. Only now, I wonder…"

Cyan's breathing was controlled and even, perhaps too controlled. Celes exchanged a look with her friends and saw her concern mirrored on their faces.

"I wonder if Gestahl knew what he had planned," Leo said with slow-dawning horror. "And I wonder if he called me away so that Kefka would be free to act."

"He may have." Cyan lifted a pawn from the board.

"I'll confront him about it when we return to Vector."

"Maybe that's why he had Kefka killed," Locke sneered. "To cover up the truth so he can't be held accountable for his own involvement…"

"Killed?"

Leo's tone of voice sent a chill down Celes's spine, and for a moment she felt as unmoored as she had when the news was fresh. Terra reached for her and she squeezed the other girl's hand, grateful that she was not alone, that someone else understood the pain and fear of it that she could not put into words.

Locke's face went pale. "Oh. It might have happened after you'd left for Maranda."

She was glad he was here to give the explanation, with his memory for details and his distance from the situation, even if he muttered good riddance at the end and she tried not to wonder how many people would have said the same about her.

To Leo's credit, he did not argue or try to defend either Kefka or Gestahl, not this time. He fell silent, glanced at Celes, looked away. "I wish I could disbelieve it, but I can't. He tried to do the same thing before. Without a trial. Not that there's really any comparison–"

"Of course not," Locke said defensively, before Celes could say anything.

"No," Cyan said in agreement. "The Empire has committed grievous sins, even against its own people."

"It has," Leo said simply, and he had never sounded or looked so old to her, his eyes tired, his face lined. "I'm so sorry." And for once, the apology did not feel empty or hollow. It carried in it a lifetime of regret, a wish that things could have been different. For him, for her, for all of them.


***


Arriving at the island and going ashore was almost anticlimactic, at the end of the sea voyage. Oh, he'd been thrilled—thrilled—when a gull flew overhead, signaling that land was nearby, if still unseen. Knowing that Celes could help him through the worst of it had alleviated a little of his worry about the ship, but he worried instead about what it might cost her, even if this power didn't come from Shiva.

Crescent Island was much as he remembered it, maybe even shabbier without being colored by a boy's sense of wonder and adventure. The others seemed as underwhelmed as he by the seeming inhospitality of its scrubby shore and shaggy forests, surrounded by jagged mountains too low for snowy peaks.

"And you've been to the village before?" Terra sounded nervous, and she appeared to be chewing the inside of the cheek. Not surprising, now that they were finally here and the reality of it was hitting her.

"Yes," Locke said. "A long time ago, but yes."

Leo stood by them at the railing, watching the land growing nearer. "What on earth brought you all the way out here? Surely not Returners business."

"No, it was before I joined the Returners," he said.

"Searching for a cure?" Celes asked, and Locke couldn't help wincing as she prodded what was now layers of emotional scar tissue he would really rather not confront, certainly not now.

"No," he said. "When I was younger, with my father. The people here don't trust strangers, like most isolated little villages. They'll trade for finery they can't make on their own, but it's almost like they resent you for being there. We didn't come back again. They were polite enough, though, so I don't think they'll run us out of town."

"Do you think they'll listen to me?"

"I have no idea," he said. "But there's only one way to find out."

Notes:

It's been over two months since I posted the previous chapter, and I appreciate your patience! I had a whole lot going on (traveling internationally, the holidays, my birthday) and also I put the fanfic aside for a bit so I could work on the audiobook version. But also this chapter was a doozy and it just kept stalling out. Most of my chapters have long scenes and then some summary in between; this chapter is extremely long (I think it's the second-longest chapter?) and full of many, many little scenes, and I didn't know what I was doing with most of them til I'd wrestled with them for several days each.

Fun fact: I wrote part of this chapter on a plane to distract myself from turbulence; I am prone to motion sickness myself and inexplicably started having panic attacks on planes a few years ago! You're welcome, Locke.

Fun fact: Why yes I did take the original game's moment of comic relief on the boat and turn it into a needlessly dramatic character moment!

Fun fact: I don't know much about ships, so I did some research to make sure the structure of the thing was roughly correct but I'm sure I used words incorrectly. I may go back and try to fix that later. Please forgive me. Locke insists on calling it a boat to express his frustration with the existence of sea travel and I cannot blame him, given that this is another weird trait we share.

Fun fact: I could probably have just summarized this entire chapter in three or four paragraphs and then moved on to Thamasa, but for whatever reason I chose not to. I regretted this choice intermittently over the past two months but I pressed onward anyway, and I do think I needed to develop some characters and relationships at this point, so! Here's over ten thousand words that maybe didn't need to be here, but they are. I hope you enjoy.

I'll try not to take another two months with the next chapter, but please forgive me if I take at least a few days off writing. I am tired. Haha. I've written chunks of Thamasa already, but there's a lot I want to do with it and a lot I want to get right, so it might take a little extra care.

Do you want to see a trailer for the audiobook version of this story, including a preview of the casting for the first five characters? Of course you do. You can see that here. Yes, I drew all those pictures. It's a lot of pictures. I guess I'm going to be drawing more art for the audiobook version, too. And making so much music. Apparently I don't do things in halves.

Thank you so much for reading. Your comments help me power through writing this. It's an awful lot of work, to an impractical degree, but it's worth it to know I'm connecting with my fellow FFVI fans.

Who's ready for the Pixel Remaster this week?!

Chapter 27: Thamasa

Summary:

The people of Thamasa are evasive and unwelcoming—until a particularly chatty duo intervene and offer a glimmer of hope.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Even after the ship dropped anchor, the sailors bustled about for an eternity, loading crates of goods onto the rowboats that would take them through the shallows to shore. No actual docks here, of course; the Thamasans wouldn't dream of making their island more hospitable to visitors. Locke tried to manage his own impatience to get on solid ground—whether he succeeded or not was debatable—but poor Terra seemed like she would go out of her mind if she had to wait much longer. All of the confidence that had carried her this far seemed to evaporate as they finished packing their bags and then found themselves with nothing to do but wait.

"What's taking so long?" she huffed, though even in her current state she was too considerate to say this within earshot of the sailors.

Locke chuckled. He couldn't help it; she reminded him of a child, not because she was throwing a tantrum but because she was such a ball of nerves that it seemed like the slightest burst of wind might make her explode. And no wonder—they were so close to finding out whether this wild hope of hers would come to fruition or fizzle out. "I imagine they have a lot of cargo to sort out, to warrant taking a trip all the way out here."

Celes leaned with her back against the railing, watching the sailors instead of the waves. The three of them stood at the bow of the ship, the only place they'd found where they could be above deck and still out of the way. "What is all of it, do you think?"

"Orders the townspeople have put in with merchants abroad, and whatever else the captain thinks he can sell to them," Locke said. "They've got to import some things regularly, maybe food or fabric or tools. Our captain isn't a merchant himself, so it's probably an assortment of things from various merchants who wait til they've accumulated enough to be worth the trip."

With a little smile, Celes shook her head at him. "Sometimes I forget that you know about things like this."

He grinned back. "I know about a lot of things."

"That's true." She hesitated, and it looked like she was considering saying something else. But before she could, Terra's nervous prattle continued.

"Do you think they'll be done today? Or is it going to take until tomorrow?"

This time Locke laughed outright. "We could try swimming out there if you're in such a hurry. It's not that far. We might beat the rowboats…"

"Salt water would ruin leather and metal," Celes said, and he couldn't tell if she was just playing along with a deadpan expression or if she actually thought he was serious.

"Then take your boots off first," Locke replied, a challenge, in case she was joking. 

"Boots, belts, weapons—"

"Weapons? Come on, you're not going to go swimming with a sword anyway!"

"I just think that swimming ashore would be impractical," she said. "Wet clothes will weigh you down, but swimming with your things bundled up would be hard, too…"

Locke guffawed, and her face turned crimson. "Sorry," he said, "you're just putting a lot of thought into this."

Celes gave him a pained look. "I…"

"I don't know how to swim anyway," Terra said. "So it doesn't matter."

"You really ought to know how, for safety's sake," Celes said, and Locke wondered if she was about to go off on the dangers of embarking on a sea voyage without being able to swim. But instead, she added in a surprisingly reassuring voice, "It takes some practice, but I'm sure you could learn. It can't be any harder than learning to make bread, and you've already done that."

Terra smiled, momentarily calmed. "All right. You teach me to swim, and I'll teach you to bake. How does that sound?"

"I think I'd like that," Celes said.

Locke just smiled to himself, watching the two of them relaxing like ordinary friends on holiday together, dressed down in casual clothes, hair teased by the breeze, cheeks sun-kissed and healthy. Who would have thought six months ago, even one month ago, that either of these two would be capable of living a moment like this, making plans for their own mundane future that did not involve a war? 

Maybe Edgar had been right about this trip. Maybe it would be healing for them both—for them all.


***


Small boats were almost always worse than a proper ship, but at least the cargo weighed their rowboat down as they set off through the shallows toward the rocky shore. A pair of sailors manned the oars, leaving the five passengers to mind their own luggage and anticipate their arrival and what they'd find in Thamasa.

Terra sat nervously chewing her fingernails. "Thank you all so much for coming with me," she said.

"I doubt I'll be much help," Celes said. "I'm not good with people–"

"That's what Locke is for," Terra said, giving him a playful nudge; startled, he grabbed the side of the boat to steady himself with an involuntary groan. 

"You underestimate yourselves," he said through gritted teeth. "Both of you. Anyway, it's not like you look like a soldier, Celes—when they look at you they'll just see a pretty girl who–" He coughed, cutting himself off.

"Who what?" Terra prompted.

"Oh, hell," he muttered.

He could see shell-dotted sand beneath the churning water now. Without another word, he tugged off his boots and socks, tied the laces together, pulled free of Terra's grasp and then toppled over the side of the boat feet-first with his boots over his shoulder.

For a brief terrifying moment he worried that he had sorely misjudged the situation, but then his toes found solid ground and he righted himself, standing up. The water reached his waist. The little boat rocked in his absence, and the others had to steady themselves as he sloshed away from them, toward the shore, in a most undignified manner. Not like I have much dignity left, at this point…

Sure, the sand gave way under his feet with every step, and the water pushed and pulled at him, and the world was still kind of swaying even after he was sloshing through only ankle-deep water, but at least he was no longer in a boat. No more ships, no more storms. Solid ground. Solid enough ground, anyway. He'd take it.

The little boat's nose rammed into the sand eventually, and he made his way toward them. Each time the tide came and went, it tried to steal the sand between his toes, but he stubbornly persisted. Celes was trying to hide her smile; the others were less considerate.

"You look drunk," Terra called out.

"It takes a minute to trade sea legs for land legs," he called back.

"You never had sea legs," Leo boomed, and they all laughed, so he made a rude gesture at them, but his heart wasn't in it and he laughed too.

When he reached them, he felt solid enough himself to offer a hand down from the boat. Terra looked dubious, but at least she had forgotten to be nervous, which made humiliating himself and getting thoroughly soaked worth it.

Celes shrugged, as if to say 'oh well,' and then accepted his outstretched hand. He grinned and tensed his arm to steady her as she hopped over the side of the little boat. At first it all seemed like it would work out beautifully. But the world was still swaying for him, and maybe he wasn't the only one struggling, because she misjudged her jump, and he wasn't as steady as he thought, and next thing he knew they were both on their rumps in the wet sand as the tide came rolling in right on cue to soak them.

A beat later, Terra landed in a crouch beside them, her own boots sinking into the sand by a good inch.

"Low center of gravity," Leo said approvingly. "It will help keep your balance."

"I'll remember that for next time," Locke grumbled, as Celes stood and dusted herself off and then reached down to help him up. She wore a prim little smile that he would bet anything was the Celes equivalent of a shit-eating grin.

Leo and Cyan stayed behind to help the sailors with their cargo, intuiting that two young women and a pointedly nonthreatening young man—yes, thank you, my dignity is entirely intact—would make a better first impression than all five of them tromping in at once. The other three set off down a winding footpath from the beach through tall grasses toward the village. If it rained, the entire thing would turn to impassable mud, one more potential barrier warding off visitors. At least today was dry, the sun still high overhead despite the delays on deck.

They trudged up the path away from the sea. Seagrass blew in the breeze, seagulls cried overhead, and the distant roar of the waves filled the air with white noise. This quiet little place felt an entire world removed from the war.

When the town was at last in sight, it was just as he'd remembered it, a sleepy little hamlet of wood and stone houses surrounding a small village green, with a few small farms dotting the landscape at the outskirts. No wonder he'd been underwhelmed when he came here as a child—it felt like stepping backward in time by at least a century. He'd been to plenty of other podunk towns with his father, but none of them had ever seemed quite as dated as this. It was almost as though the residents had refused any sort of change for generations. Hard to imagine magical powers in the hands of anyone who would choose to live like this.

Or maybe that was the point.

On a sunny afternoon like this, he expected to see kids playing on the green, or old people on their porches knitting or shucking peas or something. And that did seem to be true, at first. But as they approached, he saw the distant figures head inside one by one, so that when they finally reached the village, it was almost deserted.

One woman was hurrying across the dirt path with her head down, as though she'd been caught out in the rain and was hurrying home. 

"Um," Terra said. "Um, excuse me."

"I'd best be getting back inside," the woman said apologetically. "Left my oven on, you see. Take care, now."

The rest of the villagers they tried speaking with were no better. Locke had expected them to be unfriendly, but this seemed excessive. Soon the three outsiders stood alone in a grassy square in the heart of a village that seemed empty of life.

"Do you feel it, too?" Celes asked Terra quietly. The other girl nodded.

"If you mean they're doing this intentionally, yes, and it's not very subtle–" Locke started, but Celes gestured dismissively at him, cutting him off.

"Not that." To Terra, she added, "There is something here, isn't there?"

"Something…?" he prompted, as a look of understanding passed between the girls that left him completely in the dark. Which could only mean one thing. Magic. They'd sensed it, or thought they had.

Before he had a chance to ask either of them to elaborate on what specifically they'd noticed, a door slammed shut from high up on a hill, and this time someone actually came toward them instead of running away. A nice change, for the variety of it, if nothing else. As long as it wasn't accompanied by a guard dog to literally run them out of town, he'd take it.

The figure approaching them was a dour-faced old woman, no dog in sight. "The welcoming committee," Locke muttered. "Do you want me to handle this?"

"I don't know." There was a note of panic in Terra's voice.

The old woman intercepted any chance at further conversation before she'd even fully reached them. "Who are you?" she called out, in a tight, demanding voice that made Locke think of an old schoolmarm. "What have you come here for? Are you merchants?"

"No," Terra said. "I'm… I'm…" She seemed determined to take charge of this encounter herself, but her confidence had clearly been undermined by repeated rejections from the townspeople, and she stalled out.

"We're looking for… her long-lost family," Locke offered, which was mostly true—the best sort of lie, of course, was one crafted around truth.

"You're looking in the wrong place."

"We might be," Locke said. "But she's come a very long way, and she doesn't have any surviving family anywhere else. We'll just ask around, see if anyone fits, and–"

"We can't help you."

Celes very visibly bristled at this, and Locke touched her arm gently, remembering how she had gone off on a tirade in Kohligen on his behalf. Edgar wasn't here to make amends this time, and Locke frankly doubted that the crotchety elder brigade would be especially moved by his dazzling smile and rank, anyway.

"I promise we won't cause any trouble," Locke said. "Just for a day. We'll stay overnight while the sailors unload their goods, and then–"

"We don't have any sort of inn or boarding house here, so you'll just have to go back to your ship and wait it out."

"We've got a tent..."

The old woman's smile was all teeth; Locke wouldn't have been surprised if she revealed fangs. "Oh, I doubt you'd want to do that. There are all sorts of ferocious beasts on this island and they'll just gobble you right up. Best to stay on the ship."

Celes looked like she was considering showing this woman just what a ferocious beast she could be herself, and Terra's lower lip was trembling. Locke sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry. We've gotten off on the wrong foot here. I mean no disrespect, of course–"

"No. Now, will you leave quietly on your own, or should I round up some of our farmer boys to show you the way out?"

During this exchange, another figure had wandered down from another side of the small village. Locke bristled, anticipating one of the threatened farmer boys, but it was only a wizened old man so small he could be mistaken for a child, except for his bushy white beard and shock of white hair shining brightly in the sunlight.

"What's all this?" the old man called out, hurrying down the dirt path. "Are these strangers?" He sounded curious, a far cry from his closed-off neighbors.

The woman stiffened. "Strago," she said in a voice that was a warning.

The old man seemed not to notice her tone at all. "Well, you certainly don't look like sailors," he said, sizing the outsiders up. "What kind of trouble are you here to get into?"

"No trouble at all," Locke said hastily, straightening and trying his best to look trustworthy. "My friend here–"

"Strago."

"Come now, Agatha, it's rude to interrupt, don't you know that?" The little man came only to Locke's shoulders, if that, but he was surprisingly animated for someone so old and frail-looking, and his manner was downright boisterous.

"She's looking for her family," Locke repeated, seizing on this new, potentially more receptive outlet and gesturing to Terra, whose cheeks were still wet with a few stray tears, making his case perfectly. "She lost what little family she had, and there's a rumor that she might have family here… It's a long story."

"I do love stories," the old man said, taking Locke's bait with enough enthusiasm that he was literally rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Before the old woman could disagree, the man snorted. "What are you going to do, kick them out? She's a child. An orphan."

"So she says, but…"

"You do not rule Thamasa, Agatha, and you are not the only person who can decide what's best for us all. We can at least hear them out." He held out an old leathery hand to Terra, and she took it, looking somewhat dazed. "Pleased to meet you. My name is Strago. My granddaughter is also an orphan, and I would hate for someone to turn her away if she'd been left all alone. I won't do that to you. Come with me, please, and let's see if we can't sort this out."


***


She had, on occasion, been impressed and a little intimidated by the sheer number of words that tumbled out of Locke when he was excited or nervous. This old man redefined her understanding of the world "talkative." By the time they reached his house, she knew all about his granddaughter, a brilliant artist—his fiery-tempered daughter, lost several years earlier—his life's work, documenting the flora and fauna of the world, with a particular interest in the great beasts like dragons and behemoths, lingering though rare evidence of the magic that had once torn the world apart.

"So you've left the island before?" she asked, and he laughed.

"Of course. Many of us do, from time to time. Most go to Nikeah for trading, but I've been as far as the Figaro desert in my day."

So much for Locke's intelligence about this village. But he hadn't been here since he was a boy, and only once at that, so perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that he was mistaken. He seemed to be mistaken about the presence of magic here as well; the awareness she and Terra had noted earlier only grew stronger the longer she spent here.

"We're friends with the king of Figaro," Terra said. She seemed surprisingly comfortable around the old man, who talked too much and too freely to be hiding anything, as far as Celes could tell.

"Oh really? How on earth did you manage that?"

"We're members of the Returners," Terra said. "And so's he. We've been fighting the Empire together, only now the war is over and–"

The old man interrupted her without any apparent self-awareness. "My goodness, you've led an interesting life for such a young person."

But then he himself was interrupted by the front door of his house bursting open and a young girl screeching "Gramps!" and flinging herself down the stairs toward the lot of them. Celes had no idea how old the child was; she had little experience with children. The girl's voice was just beginning to take on the quality of an adult's, though she hadn't yet grown into it. A halo of blond curls spilled out from underneath the large, floppy cap she wore, and there was a smudge of what looked like charcoal on the side of her pert impish nose.

"My granddaughter," Strago said, unnecessarily, as the girl peered curiously at them and then held her hand out to each of them in turn. Celes accepted the handshake, which was delivered with the same exuberance that had vaulted the girl out the door.

"You're all so pretty!" she exclaimed. "Where are you from? Would you mind if I sketched you? It gets so tiresome drawing the same faces over and over again, but they won't let me leave the island. 'You're too young, Relm,' they say. Bullshit!"

After the evasive silence of the other Thamasans, this continued onslaught of words was jarring. Even Locke seemed a little taken aback—maybe by the girl's candidness, or her language, or at being called pretty, though Celes couldn't disagree with that assessment.

"Let them be, Relm," the old man chided, ushering everyone inside. "They came here for tea, not an inquisition."

The home was cozy, though it looked even more foreign to Celes than any of the places she'd seen on the northern continent. Not that she'd really visited a lot of homes, other than Arvis's at the start of her time with the Returners, months and months ago, but this place still felt different. It was certainly odder-seeming than Rachel's house in Kohlingen, which had felt like the quintessential concept of home brought to life, although she couldn't put her finger on why this place seemed so strange.

The front hallway opened into a kitchen against one wall and a spacious living area on the other side, with no distinction between them. Celes watched Locke take in the furniture and decorations and wondered what he was able to glean from them.

"Are you sure it's all right?" Terra asked, still frowning in worry. "There won't be trouble?"

"If you mean Agatha, don't worry about that old hen. She won't actually throw you out," The old man tutted at them, then put a kettle on the stove. He froze mid-gesture, one hand raised halfway toward the burner. After a moment's pause, he pulled a box of matches from beside the stove and lit one. "So you're in town for a couple of days to investigate, and then you'll sail back with the merchants."

"Not… exactly," Locke said, with the tone of voice he used when he was trying to smooth something over. "We have friends who are supposed to meet us here on an airship soon."

"An airship?" Relm's eyes were wide as saucers. "For real?"

"Yes. We've been using it to help us fight the Empire, but now that there's a ceasefire..." Locke shrugged. "They had some engine issues, hence us having to catch an ordinary ship out here. But our friends should be arriving any day."

"Including the king of Figaro, I'm sure,"

Locke smirked in response to the man's sarcasm. "Actually, yes. His brother, too."

"You know a king? And he's coming here?" Relm's eyes were shining, and she was looking at them like they'd just stepped out of the page of the absurd adventure novel Celes had not yet finished reading. "Can I meet him?"

"I'm sure he'd be open to that. He's very friendly," Terra said. 

Predictably, Terra offered to help Strago prepare tea, and for a few minutes that preparation occupied them both enough that the old man was actually relatively quiet, for once. Locke seized this opportunity to investigate the contents of a bookcase, making Celes think of how he'd examined every last possession in her chamber in the barracks, as though he were cataloging them as part of a study. Except that was too impersonal a comparison, really. He wasn't cold or methodical like a scientist or doctor. Nothing about him was cold.

It took her a moment to realize that the little girl was watching all of them with the same intensity with which Locke examined the bookshelf. She stared at him from the corner of the room, then turned her thoughtful gaze to Celes, who found it a most peculiar sensation to be watched so closely by a stranger.

Eventually the girl vaulted to her feet and disappeared down a hall, and her footsteps could be heard hammering up an unseen staircase. Locke looked up at this, caught Celes's eye, and smiled. And her heart—her weak, pathetic, treacherous heart—felt a pang at the touch of that simple, easy smile.

She wanted to stand beside him, to look over his shoulder and see the world as he saw it. To touch the books he touched, following the shadow of his fingers, and hear his voice close in her ear, explaining, making sense of people as though they were a puzzle to be assembled. 

But before she could will herself to take even another step closer to him, the girl thundered back downstairs and emerged with her arms wrapped around a book and a triumphant look on her face. She dropped herself onto a nearby couch, pulled a pencil from behind her ear, and opened the book in her lap. Every so often, she would glance up and steal a look at either Locke or Celes.

Locke leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, lips curved in a delighted smile. "Aren't you supposed to ask permission before you draw someone's portrait?"

"And give you a chance to say no? Don't be silly."

This made him laugh. "At least you're honest. Can I see?"

"No!"

"But it's my face," Locke said weakly, still grinning.

"Too bad." The girl resumed sketching, pencil scratching audibly across paper. "You know, it took me begging forever until gramps would buy me a sketchbook. 'Paper is imported, paper is expensive, just use a chalkboard, it's reusable.' I don't see you using a chalkboard for your endless books and treatises on the history of magical creatures!"

"Relm," Strago chided from the kitchen, entering with teacups in both hands. 

The girl stuck her tongue out. "What? You don't! If you can fill your notebooks with all that chicken scratch about ancient things nobody cares about, the least you can do is buy a sketchbook from time to time to encourage the burgeoning young artist in your midst!"

Strago tutted at her affectionately and began passing out cups and saucers. Celes wondered just how much of this was merely an act put on for their entertainment, or if these two cut up like this every single day. Just the thought of it was exhausting, and yet they both had such boundless energy despite Strago's age that she could imagine them keeping up with this regularly.

The group of them settled among an odd assortment of plush chairs, an overstuffed couch, and a worn wooden rocking chair. "Now, tell me about your family," Strago said to Terra, though at this point Celes doubted he would let her finish her story. "It's not impossible for you to have an ancestor from Thamasa, but I can't think of anyone who's left in a generation or two, at least. Not up and left for good. Unless someone from here had an affair with your mother, if you'll pardon me for the implication."

"I never knew my mother–"

"I never knew my father," Relm interjected before Strago had a chance to. "He died before I was born. My mother's dead too, but I did know her. I'm sorry you didn't know yours. My mother was pretty great."

Terra perched delicately on the edge of her chair. She kept her eyes on her teacup. "I didn't really know my father, either. He was… a captive of the Empire's."

"But you think one of them might have been from Thamasa?" the old man prompted. "Or maybe a grandparent? A great-grandparent?"

"I don't really know how else to say this, but…" Terra took a breath. "My father was an Esper."

The old man choked on his tea, and he nearly dropped his teacup. Spluttering, he stammered out, "An Esper?"

"Is that why your hair is green?" the girl asked.

"Relm!"

"Sorry," she said, though she didn't look at all sorry.

Her grandfather tried to hold onto his composure, his tea entirely forgotten. His expression had turned stormy. "That's quite a story, but I'm afraid I don't see how that would bring you here, unless you think your mother was descended from a Thamasan..."

Terra ducked her head meekly. "I, um. I've heard—I've heard that the people of Thamasa also have some Esper blood in them. So, I thought–"

Relm was practically vibrating with impatience. Her grandfather gave her a very stern look, and she scowled at him and looked just shy of sticking out her tongue again.

"People come up with all sorts of crazy rumors about anyone they don't understand," he said, and Celes was not sure whether this was his usual loquaciousness or if it had more in common with Locke's nervous babbling, trying to change the subject. "Thamasans keep to themselves, so it must be that they're secretly monsters! What else do they say about us? Can we summon meteors? Do we eat visitors?"

"But I can feel the magical energy here," Terra insisted. "In you, in your granddaughter–"

"I have a name," the girl muttered.

Strago shook his head. "An overactive imagination, I'm afraid."

Terra had wilted over the course of this conversation, and Celes wanted to scream at these people that she knew perfectly well there was something magical here—she could sense it, same as Terra—but Locke rested his hand on her arm again, as he'd done earlier when she was close to bursting.

"I said it was a long story," Locke said to the Thamasan, "and there's more to it than what Terra has said so far. Relm mentioned you're a scholar of magical creatures? Maybe you've found something in your studies that could help." 

Celes might not have had a gift for reading people, but she knew Locke well enough to know when he was up to something. Whether he believed the girls that there was magic here he couldn't sense, or something about Strago made him think the old man wasn't telling the truth, he was pushing. Perhaps he thought that Terra's story would convince them to open up.

"Very well." Strago shifted to sit cross-legged in his chair, assuming a more restful position. "Go on."

Terra looked to Locke; he nodded at her in reassurance, and she began. "My memory of things is hazy," she began, "but I guess the best way to start is that the Empire captured me when I was a baby, and they used a device to control me, and they made me into one of their weapons because I was born with the power to use magic…"

This time, Locke seemed better able to keep his own storytelling instincts in check, allowing Terra to tell her story with minimal interruptions—only occasional details he provided or confirmed, at her prompting. It was the first time Celes had really heard the whole thing from Terra's perspective, had seen her relive the pain and the fear and the tragedy of it, as her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears. Somehow there was a difference between knowing it in theory and hearing it spoken out loud, making a sharp contrast between Celes's own recollections of the girl she barely knew and her understanding of Terra now, as a friend.

Terra didn't have a practiced storytelling cadence, but the rawness of her emotions came through and gave the story power anyway. When she finished, there was silence. Strago's eyes were closed, as though he had somehow had the audacity to fall asleep. But he let out a low sigh, and Celes realized he was wrestling to hold his emotions in check.

"I'm sorry we can't help you, I truly am," Strago said at last, his voice uncharacteristically melancholic and brittle. "The best I can offer is for you to stay with us for a night or two. But when your ship heads out, you'll have to sail out with them, too."

Locke spoke up, taking charge of the conversation, lifting any responsibility from Terra's shoulders. "That's a generous offer, but we should warn you we've got two other friends with us, who stayed behind to help unload their cargo. A… soldier, and a samurai from Doma."

"Doma!" Relm's eyes were shining. "Where are they? Are they coming? Can they stay with us too?"

"We can't just take over your home–" Terra protested.

Once the old man had made up his mind, he seemed determined to follow it; he waved a hand to dismiss these concerns. "Nonsense. We'll just have to get cozy. Relm, you're staying in my room—the girls can stay in your room, and the men can take the guest room, if they don't mind sharing."

"They can have my room, but only if I can visit their airship later."

"Relm," the old man said, "you can't just invite yourself to someone's airship. Go make up the guest room."

"Go make it up yourself," the girl retorted with such gleeful impudence that it burned away the lingering sadness of Terra's story, and Celes tried to suppress a laugh, which was pointless anyway because, beside her, Locke howled with laughter. Even Terra was giggling, and it looked like this reaction from her audience only encouraged the child further.

Eventually, she acquiesced, albeit with a great deal of grumbling. Locke headed out to find Leo and Cyan, and Celes sat with Terra and once again felt terribly ill-equipped to do anyone any good. 

A normal person would offer to help with the dishes, she suspected, and for once she was tired of being abnormal. So she made the offer, and the old man accepted, and for the first time in her life, former general Celes Chere got to impersonate a scullery maid at the kitchen sink. She found it an oddly meditative experience, much like how Terra had described the feeling of making tea.

Locke returned with the other two in tow, and there was a great deal of fuss made during their introductions. For a moment, Celes worried that ever-polite Cyan might be put off by the girl's rudeness, but then again, the man had had a child of his own, once. He didn't seem to mind her boundless questions, in any case.

Once their belongings were all stashed in their borrowed rooms, Strago put the whole lot of them to work preparing dinner—dicing onions, chopping potatoes, cubing chunks of meat for a stew. It quickly became clear who had done this before and who had not; Celes had to watch Locke's quick hands carefully for hints on the best way to wield a knife against a vegetable instead of a foe. Cyan sliced carrots with grace and elegance, whereas Leo's methodical chopping left a pile of parsnips of only roughly equal size.

"I don't think your neighbors are too happy to have us around," Locke commented, absently peeling a potato with the familiarity of one who has repeated a task ad nauseum. "I've never actually had someone grab their children and hide at the sight of me before."

Strago did not look up from considering a stained and wrinkled recipe book. "Don't take it personally. They don't like outsiders."

"I know. It's fine."

"You're taking it personally anyway. I can tell." Relm grinned. "You're used to people liking you, aren't you?"

At that, Celes burst into startled laughter. She couldn't help it. When Locke turned to her wearing an expression of exaggerated betrayal, she laughed harder. "What? You don't like it when someone turns your own tactics on you?"

Relm squinted at him. "What does that mean?"

"Locke is a bit of a busybody," Celes said, with warm affection. "He makes it his business to understand what everyone else is thinking."

"I'm a spy, not a busybody," he said, running a hand through his hair and looking utterly caught off guard by this. "I have a healthy sense of professional curiosity, that's all."

"Professional curiosity," Relm echoed, as if trying the words on for size.

The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough, although it was odd to spend it with a family. The old man and the young girl, who looked nothing alike—Celes wondered if that were common, skipping a generation like that—shared the home so comfortably that they finished each other's chores without thinking. Their well-worn routine was clearly not regularly interrupted by strangers.


***


When the time came to get ready for bed, Celes and Terra took the little girl's room, and Locke crowded into the guest room with Leo and Cyan. Truthfully, he would have felt infinitely more comfortable sleeping on the floor of the girls' room; at least he felt like he actually knew both of them. Nothing against the two older men, of course. Leo appeared to have come around to the other side of fascism and was finally living up to his reputation as a decent person, and Cyan contained multitudes that Locke was only beginning to really understand. But even after two weeks in their company on the ship, sharing a small room with them felt awkward and forced. He was several decades younger than both of them, with wildly different life experiences. With Cyan alone, it might have felt companionable—they'd spent enough time in each other's company, they had fought for the Returners and rallied the northern continent together and Locke had come to know both the man's pain and his kindness. But still he found himself wanting the more comfortable companionship of Celes and Terra instead, and so he made an excuse to himself—fully aware that he was making an excuse—that he needed to see how Terra was feeling about Thamasa.

The nondescript guest room was down the hall from Relm's room where the two girls were staying. He tiptoed along the edge of the hallway, hoping to avoid stepping on any creaky boards, and knocked on the door.

Their room was as colorful and over-the-top as he might have expected from a self-professed budding young artist, stuffed to the brim with paintings and clay sculptures and stuffed toys and colorful cloth and interesting shells and a wire tree from which beaded jewelry hung beside a mirror. It was a bizarre contrast behind Celes when she let him in. All this gaudy excess gathered by a child full of life and creative energy, and it was the backdrop against which Celes's almost austere paleness—even after their ocean voyage, she was still pale, with pale hair, pale eyes, a pale smile on her thin lips—stood out even further. Quite unlike her own room back in Vector, and he couldn't help wondering what a room decorated by her hand now would be like.

"Hey," he said in a low voice, returning her smile. "Just wanted to check on Terra now that things have calmed down." Celes stood close enough that he could smell the floral note of the Thamasan soap wafting off her, her skin still a little pink from a good scrubbing, her wet hair finally free of salt. His own hair was still coarse with the sea wind and stood up in wild chunks around his head; he hadn't taken the opportunity to scrub himself down now that they were on solid ground, and he found himself regretting that now.

Celes actually flushed a little, and he wondered if he'd intruded on them unexpectedly, but then Terra invited him inside and next thing he knew he was sitting at the foot of the bed listening to the green-haired girl talking nervously about magic and the old man and sketchbooks and he was watching Celes's slender fingers tease out the knots in her long golden hair and–

"Locke?"

"I mean…" he stammered, flipping through what Terra had just said, catching the words lingering in his recent memory, noted but not absorbed. He should be listening to her untangle her feelings, not watching Celes untangle knots in her hair. "Sorry. Long day, but do go on."

Terra was in the middle of another sentence when footsteps in the hall outside interrupted her. A moment later, the door creaked open, revealing Relm's wide eyes.

"Sorry," Locke said again, sitting up straight. "Were we too loud?" 

"No," Relm said, and she closed the door behind herself with no shame or self-consciousness. "I heard you were still up and I wanted to talk to you. Gramps will be mad as hell if he finds out, but he's out cold—I'm surprised you can't hear him all the way over here!" 

Sighing, Locke pinched the bridge of his nose. "Are you sure you should be here, then? We don't want you to get in trouble." 

The girl waved a hand. "Gramps will live. I think it's stupid that he doesn't want me to talk about this. They're all like that, 'don't talk to strangers, don't tell anyone anything, don't trust anyone.' I can take care of myself. I'm not a little girl."

She was such a petite and delicate child, despite her occasionally foul mouth, that Locke had to fight to keep a straight face. "Why do you trust us, when no one else does?" he asked.

"Because my father was an outsider, too," Relm said proudly. "Of course no one will tell me that, but do they think I'm stupid? There's nobody else on the island who claims me, I've only got the one grandparent, and I'm pretty sure I'd have figured it out by now if I were someone's bastard child. I've memorized the faces of every person in this stupid little place and I'd know if one of them looked like mine. So unless I showed up by magic in my mother's womb, it's got to be that he was some sort of mysterious and tragic outsider."

Locke could think of several other explanations that might have introduced Relm into the world and inspired everyone else to tell her her father was dead, but none of them were particularly pleasant, and she was too young to be concerned with the details of how such things worked. Celes looked like she was considering the same thoughts, so Locke placed a hand on the side of her foot to catch her attention and shook his head before she could voice them. Let the child keep her romantic story; it might even be true. 

"Anyway," Relm continued breathlessly, oblivious to this silent communication on her behalf, "do you want my help or not?"

"Help with what?"

"With Espers," she said, clearly exasperated.

"Oh." Terra's eyes lit up. "Is it—is it true, then?"

"That we're descended from Espers? Yeah, something like that." Relm waved a hand as though this were old news and nothing noteworthy at all. "But there are real Espers on the mountain. It's supposed to be a secret, but if you're an Esper, I don't see why it should be secret from you."

"I'm not…" Terra hesitated. "I don't know if they would see it that way. They're really there? I thought the Empire captured all of them…"

"I guess not!" Rem grinned. "That's why it's secret. Do you want me to take you to see them?"

"Yes," Terra said, with tears forming in her eyes, and Locke bit back any sort of practical objection he might want to raise, because if this were true, then come hell or high water, he was going to find a way to make it happen. Let the old man rage, let the people of Thamasa kick them out, let him be stuck on a ship for another month with storms every single day—he'd pull out every trick he knew to give Terra a chance at seeing more of her people.

Notes:

It's been nearly three months and I apologize. I kept writing and writing and writing and the chapter wouldn't end. Finally, I consulted with a friend to ask advice on where to break the chapter in half. This is the first half. I'll hopefully share the next part soon, and we'll go from there. I didn't intend for Thamasa to be as many pieces as it will be, but this story refuses to obey me. It has been extremely uncooperative since soon after I started it, and I really ought to know better by now than to try to control it. You can be glad you're spared an unnecessarily 12,000-word chapter and will have possibly two 7,000-word chapters instead. Much more manageable for all of us. In some ways, a whole lot of nothing is happening, but I couldn't bring myself to cut out any of these conversations.

Some of you have asked me how much of Locke is based on me. Apropos of nothing, I will say that I loved Relm when I was her age, and then once I was a teenager myself, I found her insufferable and obnoxious and could not stand her or Strago (I'm not a fan of comic relief!) until someone talked me into seeing them from a different angle a couple of years ago. I'm working that new perspective into Thamasa and the Thamasans, though you haven't seen much of them yet. I hope it brings them to life.

Thank you as always for your comments and your support. When I'm really struggling to write anything, sometimes I read over what you've said and it helps me pull myself together and put more words on the page.

I admit I'm a little nervous here because we're hitting the point where all my changes are going to converge and either I will stick the landing or I'll fall on my face. But we're not quite there yet, so I've got a little more time to weave things together and hope for the best, and I hope you enjoy the journey along the way.

Chapter 28: Secrets

Summary:

In which we try to uncover hidden truths about Thamasa—although it might require hiding other truths to do so.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He must have dreamed of Rachel, though all he was left with in the early morning light was grief at the realization that his arms were empty, without even a foggy recollection of the dream itself to comfort him. He rubbed his face as rain pattered against the roof overhead. When he rolled onto his side, his stiff muscles complained that he’d spent the night on the floor wrapped in an old quilt—peacetime was clearly making him soft. At least the world around him stayed perfectly still like it was supposed to. Whoever invented the idea of sailing ships had committed a sin against the universe and ought to be tried for their crimes.

Locke sat up, yawning. The girls had let him sleep on the floor of their room, with the expectation that the three of them would slip away with Relm at dawn's first light to go up the mountain and find her mythical cache of Espers. None of them had anticipated rain, however, and he wasn't optimistic about the state of any Thamasan trails in this weather. The girls still slumbered peacefully side-by-side in the bed, and he couldn't bear the thought of waking them for nothing. Might as well let them rest.

He stifled another yawn and tiptoed out into the hall, his sleepy mind already picking through the beginnings of a plan to excuse a trek up the mountain later in the day with Relm but not her grandfather. Surely the rain wouldn't last long, but what then? It would have been easy enough to excuse the child waking early and impulsively leading her guests on some wild adventure when she hadn't been expressly forbidden to do so, given how impetuous she seemed to be in general—and if they did encounter the promised Espers, then Terra could explain it to them and all would likely be forgiven. But if Strago caught wind of it before they left, they'd have to convince him to give them permission. As friendly and easygoing as he'd been, Locke suspected he would not be easily persuaded on this matter.

Maybe he could catch Strago alone and have a chance to try to win over the old man. Older people seemed to wake ridiculously early as a matter of course, so he padded downstairs, intending to seek out his host.

At the bottom of the staircase, he heard voices coming from the kitchen—Strago, as expected, and the woman he had called Agatha. Not good. Well, if trouble was imminent, best to have advance notice. Locke crept forward, ears straining to hear more. He leaned out into the living room and almost tripped over Relm, who was crouching in more or less the same place he had planned to stand himself, just out of sight but close enough to hear everything.

She grinned up at him. "Oh, are you eavesdropping, too?" she whispered. "I thought adults weren't supposed to do that."

Between this, and Celes calling him a busybody yesterday—and when had she started teasing anyone, even him?—not flirting, definitely not flirting, but anyway—anyway—he gestured for silence with a finger over his lips, and Relm obeyed, though not before sticking her tongue out.

Was I this insufferable at her age? Oh, probably.

"You can't just let them stay here, Strago," the old woman was saying. "The longer they stay, the more of a risk you're taking for all of us. They must be asking all sorts of questions they shouldn't be, aren't they? What if the Empire sent them? What if they're spies?"

Only one spy in your midst, lady, Locke thought begrudgingly, and he's hoping to retire soon. And certainly not an Imperial.

"Nonsense," Strago spluttered. "One of them used to be the Empire's prisoner. They did terrible things to her…"

"All the more reason to keep our distance." The old woman sounded tired more than angry, and her next words finally brought the coldness she had shown them yesterday into focus for Locke. "You know what they would do to us. It's what they always do to people like us. And we can't allow that to happen, not to our children and grandchildren. And not here."

Not just xenophobia, then; not just small-town close-mindedness. What Relm had mentioned the night before in such an offhand way—that her people were in fact descended from Espers—and the magic that Terra and Celes said they sensed here… what would the Empire do to the people of Thamasa if it knew about them? What had people like the imperials done in the past? Even lacking knowledge of their specific history, Locke could imagine it, and his frustration and scorn began to fade, ever so slightly. But why, then, were they resistant to the possibility that Terra could be like them? Why did they not welcome her?

Suddenly Relm sneezed, a shrill and distinctive sound despite her attempts to muffle it, and both adults in the kitchen grew silent at once. The little girl glanced up at Locke apologetically. For a moment he panicked, afraid she would turn him in or else that her grandfather and Agatha would come to find her and notice Locke lurking beside Relm, clearly—yes—spying. But then Relm's smile turned sly, and she pushed to her feet and skipped toward the kitchen.

"Gramps," she cried out, "can I make breakfast for everyone today? Please? Please?"

Her voice was loud enough to cover any sound Locke might make as he retreated up the stairs and to the room he was supposed to have been staying in, and he had a strong suspicion that she was doing this intentionally. A handy accomplice, then, but also someone who was not to be trusted, if lying and sneaking came so easily to her—not, he had to admit, that he was really in any position to be judging someone else for such a thing.

On the other hand, that would make it easier to sneak up the mountain to this supposed hideout of the Espers, or whatever it was. Relm had been vague on the details. It was possible she was the one with an overactive imagination; it was one thing to believe that the people of Thamasa might harbor some secret magical power, and another thing to buy that some indeterminate number of Espers had somehow hidden nearby and escaped the Empire's notice.

When Locke entered the guest room, both Leo and Cyan were predictably awake; Leo was making the bed with military precision, and Cyan was folding a pile of blankets in the corner of the room. The Doman politely minded his own business, but Leo gave Locke what seemed like an appraising look, not quite accusatory, but…

"Did you sleep well?" the general asked mildly, eyebrows raised.

Oh, hell, they had noticed he left and just never came back last night. That shouldn't matter; he could have gone anywhere, done anything, and it's not like either of them were his father to keep tabs on his comings and goings. Leo might be the closest thing Celes had to a father, but that was… completely irrelevant. In all ways.

And yet he realized his cheeks were burning, and his ears—why the hell was his face on fire? What were these two going to think had happened, if they noticed how red his face must be? Yes, he had spent the night in a room with two women, but it was only Terra and—anyway, he'd slept on the floor, and he'd already shared plenty of inn rooms and tents and a bed don't think about Celes don't think about that

There were other things to worry about. It occurred to him suddenly that Leo would have an absolutely terrible poker face, and Cyan was governed by his own code of honor, and if either of them knew about Relm’s revelation from the night before, it would only be a matter of time before it reached Strago.

“Oh, yes, splendidly,” he said with a pleasant smile that he tried very hard to spread to his eyes. “No rocking, no lurching. There’s been rainy weather all morning and yet the ground is perfectly still. It’s magnificent. I slept like a baby.”

“I hope for your sake that the airship arrives soon,” Cyan said with a look of mild amusement. “You seem to fare better in the air than at sea.”

“On a scale of bad to worst, ocean travel is off the chart,” Locke replied, grinning. Anyway, there was currently no active plan to follow Relm, so he wasn’t withholding anything from his companions here. If it became relevant, he’d tell them, but regarding keeping secrets from their fellow old man, they would be a weak link—no sense taking that risk without good cause.


***


Soon enough they were all eating burned toast and scrambled eggs at the kitchen table as rain poured down in abundance outside. Relm kept up her neverending prattle, which Locke himself would normally sink gratefully into, but his mood had darkened to match the storm clouds outside.

Terra, at least, seemed to be enjoying herself even if their initial plans to escape to the mountain had been foiled for now. Relm's revelation had given her a much-needed injection of hope, and her laughter was light as she tried to banter with the two Thamasans, who pelted her with questions they never let her answer.

"Gramps," Relm said, raising a forkful of skewered eggs, "you haven't told Terra any of your stories. Not even the ones with Espers in them, which I think she very clearly ought to hear." When Strago's eyes widened in a recognizable I'm-going-to-throttle-that-child way, she smiled innocently. "All that ancient history has to be good for something. Like the shrine?"

"Shrine?" Terra asked.

Strago opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to mention it. There's a very, very old shrine on the mountain, from long before my grandfather's grandfather's time. But I'm sure you don't actually want to hear about any of that. Relm, if you could clear the table…"

He evaded Relm's repeated efforts to get him to talk about Espers throughout the morning, as the rain continued to fall and the Thamasans and their guests tidied up and then found ways to entertain themselves indoors. If Locke had known the little girl better, he would have found a way to signal that she ought to ease up or else the old man would almost certainly grow suspicious. But instead he could only hope for the best. When she pulled out a small stack of her sketchbooks, he did the polite thing and looked over her shoulder as she showed them off—but it quickly ceased to be mere politeness.

"That's incredible," he breathed, as she held open the book so everyone could see an ink drawing of the landscape surrounding the village. In all his travels, he'd seen gifted artists before, but none so young, and there was something about the picture that seemed more alive than a mere sketch.

That liveliness carried over into sketches of animals and of people who looked like they might take a breath and step right off the page.

"I am reminded of poetry," Cyan said. The old warrior sounded just as awed as Locke felt. "It is not to capture an exact likeness in words—it is to capture the essence of a thing. I believe you, too, capture the essence of what you draw."

"I didn't realize you liked poetry," Terra said.

"Doma is—is known for her poetry," Cyan said, and the hitch in his voice made Locke imagine he had been wavering on the tense to use. Hard to speak in present tense about a country that was no more, but harder still to face the death of that kingdom.

This was emotionally treacherous territory that Locke was not terribly inclined to navigate, and he could see regret and sadness bleeding over onto the Doman's face. The compassionate thing would be to change the subject. "Can we see the portraits you made of us?" Locke asked, and Relm laughed. Of course she laughed; she couldn't know or understand the chasm they so narrowly skirted.

"Not yet. They're not portraits yet, anyway. Just studies." But she seemed to enjoy the attention, and he wondered if she showed her art to the townspeople often or if this were some sort of rare show of trust among people she might never see again and who therefore had no power to hurt or embarrass her. If she really had one lost parent who broke the town's no-outsiders taboo, was she a pariah here?

Relm's sketchbooks served as a perfect segue to the tomes of her grandfather's studies, which also included detailed drawings of beasts and locations, though they were more workmanlike than the artistry of Relm's creations.

And then Locke had to admit that the little girl had known what she was doing, because once Strago's texts had been opened, it was only a matter of time before the old man started to explain not just the pictures he'd drawn but the adventures he'd been on and the stories behind these discoveries.

"Once upon a time, of course, there was magic in the world and it was wielded by humans and Espers alike. That's quite behind us now, of course, isn't it? But I have dedicated my life to the study of magical creatures, past and present, all that remains of that era. Dragons that speak like men. Great behemoths able to destroy an entire army without taking a single scratch. Phoenixes that can call the spirits of the dead back to life!"

Locke looked up sharply from trying to decipher some painstakingly scrawled caption. "A phoenix?"

"So they say, though I haven't come across that one myself, despite searching for years." Strago sighed. "I had a very promising lead, but then I had a granddaughter to take care of, and, well, I'm afraid my adventuring days are behind me."

"Still, I’d like to hear about it.'

Strago squinted at him. "These are just stories, of course. You're not about to run off chasing a fairy tale, are you? Surely you have other things to do."

The old man was trying too hard to convince them that he didn't believe in the presence of magic in the world, despite having spent much of his life in pursuit of knowledge of it. From this, it seemed obvious that he did believe in the truth of these tales, and Locke was not in a position to rule out even unlikely possibilities.

"I'm serious," Locke said. "Whatever you know, I want to hear it."

"You're just trying to flatter an old man; I see right through you."

"On the contrary," Locke said. "I have a… personal interest in stories like the one about the phoenix." Too many memories flickered through his mind—Rachel's laughter, her scream as she fell, her silence, Celes—no. He grabbed his emotions and heaved them bodily onto another track. Better not to get derailed here. Instead, he grinned and waggled his eyebrows at the old man. "Besides, this is all hypothetical, right? Just a legend. I'm a treasure hunter. I've always loved following clues that might take you nowhere at all but might, might, lead to something amazing. You wouldn't believe some of the places I've been already."

"Very well, if you mean it, I'm sure I can rustle up my notes…" For all that he was talking like he wasn't fully convinced of Locke's enthusiasm, that was clearly an act, and not a good one—the prospect of expounding on his field of study to someone who might actually listen was too tempting to resist.

"Well, if you're going to do that, I am going on a hike tomorrow," Relm said with distaste. "No way am I sticking around for another of your lectures."

"You can't go on a hike by yourself," Strago protested.

"Terra will come with me." Relm's smile was sweet, angelic. "And Celes. I want to show them the woods. Or the waterfall! I'll bring my paints. It will be a girl's day out. I never get to do anything like that." Then she pouted, her baby cheeks puffing out and her little cherubic mouth drooping, and absolutely no indication that everything she had just said was a lie.

By all outward appearances, she was trying to guilt-trip her grandfather into letting her take a safe little trip with some harmless new girl friends. But Locke was absolutely confident that he knew what she was actually doing, and suddenly he worried about karma and the risk of having kids of his own someday.

Strago made a show of hemming and hawing over this, but his granddaughter was clearly his weakness, and she was laying the charm on thick. "Very well. The woods, or the waterfall. But stay close to town, you hear me? I want you home before supper."

Relm stuck her tongue out. "Fine."


***


And just like that, they had their excuse. The three girls rose early to get a head start, so no villagers would notice them going too far afield and report back to Strago. Celes hadn't expected the old man to agree, and she felt guilty about lying to him when he had been so kind to them all. The previous day had been an odd one that left her feeling off-balance. Locke barely acknowledged her presence all day, though she could think of nothing she had done to hurt or offend him. It was a relief to have several hours away from him.

Relm was in fine spirits, skipping over the grass in the early dawn light, carrying a satchel full of art supplies and a hastily packed picnic lunch. Terra worried at her fingernails as she'd done on the boat ride, perhaps nervous about what they would—or wouldn't—find.

They followed a well-worn path out of town into the woods, pretending obedience to Strago's demands. The forest was beautiful and well-maintained, with a few trees and plants that Celes vaguely recognized and many she did not. Here and there, Relm paused to sketch a flower or a bird or a tree, and the image on the page would come to life like nothing Celes had ever seen before.

A faint roar in the distance grew louder and louder still, following a little creek until they rounded a bend and there was the waterfall itself: brown silt-rich water rushing down from a hill and crashing into the surface of the creek, sending spray everywhere. It was beautiful, in its own way.

Relm hopped across stones in the creek to the far bank, then settled on a high rock and pulled out her sketchbook. "We can stop for a minute if you want."

Celes highly doubted their stopping had anything to do with what anyone else wanted, as the girl was already setting up her art supplies without waiting for a response from the others. Relm situated a little jar of water and a hinged metal tray full of colored squares on the rock beside her, pulled a brush from a bag in her pack, and licked the tip to a point.

Terra gladly seized the opportunity to explore, examining the creek and the waterfall and some pebbles and wildflowers with her usual childlike curiosity. Celes sated her own curiosity much more quickly, and she pulled herself up to sit near Relm.

She had no idea how to talk to children or what to say. This trip was for Terra's sake, anyway; Celes was here as a formality, maybe as a bodyguard, if necessary. She felt a little naked without her sword, which she’d left behind because setting off on a “girl’s day out” fully armed seemed likely to arouse suspicion. Knives, though, came in every size imaginable. Surely she could find one she could carry unseen, to quiet the watchful wariness that set her teeth on edge. She might have borrowed one of Locke's, if he hadn't been so closed-off and cold.

"What are you thinking about?" Relm asked.

"Swords," she answered, truthfully enough. "That old woman mentioned wild beasts when she was trying to scare us into returning to the ship, although I'm more concerned about human threats."

"What, like vagabonds and highwaymen?" Relm laughed. "We don't have those here. I know literally everyone on the island."

"There are more ordinary threats than highwaymen."

The look in Relm's eyes was patronizing, which would have been annoying if the girl were not so young. "That doesn’t happen in Thamasa. People don't follow you and murder you here. Everybody knows everybody."

"Even someone who knows you can and will hurt you."

"Not here," the girl said with a dismissive toss of her head. Perhaps children who lived outside of the Empire's reach were able to grow up with such innocence. No wonder the girl was so fearless. She was like a wild creature in a small territory without natural predators—some of Cid's biology lessons had told of those, of finding little islands at the outskirts of civilization, where humans had never set foot, and how very trusting the animals there had been of the scientists and explorers until they learned, eventually, what humans were capable of. 

Celes did not truly believe that Thamasa was without crime or danger, despite Relm's claims to the contrary. After all, she had her own theory as to the girl's origins, and she was sure that some of those strange little houses held terrible secrets behind their doors.

But before she could voice any of this, Terra clambered on the rock beside them. Relm kept spreading swathes of color across the page, capturing some approximation of the landscape in front of them.

"You'd think that watercolors would make it easier to paint water, since it's in the name, but they don't," the little girl muttered, thoughtlessly shifting topics, and Celes was glad to let her. "Someday I'll try oils, but they're so expensive…"

Terra’s eyes tracked the paintbrush flowing across the page. "Did you know there's magic in your art?"

Relm frowned. "How can you tell?" Not denial, now that she was far away from the watchful eye of her grandfather.

"I can feel it. Do you know you're doing it?"

"It's not cheating…" the girl said defensively, squirming.

"Of course it's not! It's just a part of you." Terra smiled at her with sudden reassurance. "It's a part of me, too. See?" She cupped her hands, and soon a little flame kindled within her palm. No recollections of men burned alive this time, no statement of what magic had cost any of them, just gentle innocence that matched the child’s. The light danced over her skin like a fluorescent bloom.

Relm's eyes were wide, but not with horror or disbelief. It was clear the girl had seen magic before. "Gramps can do something like that, only it's not so big, just a little tiny spark. Maybe yours is bigger because you've got more Esper in you.”

"I’m not sure that’s how it works," Celes said.

"Maybe he can use fire like you because we're related," the little girl barreled on, ignoring her, spinning a story out of nothing. "Maybe we're actually cousins of some sort. Really distant ones, sure, but maybe we are."

"Maybe," Terra echoed wistfully.

"If you are my cousin, do you think you could teach me how to use magic the way you do?"

"I don't know if it's possible, but I would be glad to try."

"Pinkie swear?" Relm proffered a crooked pinkie and waited with an expectant look on her face until Terra, clearly at as much of a loss as Celes herself, held up her own pinkie. This seemed to be the right action, as Relm hooked their pinkies together like a handshake.

This set the little girl off on another barrage of questions that Terra was only somewhat able to answer, that continued even after Relm packed up her paints—"I think we've killed enough time to convince gramps we stayed here for real"—and then looped her arm through Terra's and led her in the opposite direction, down another path. Celes followed behind them. In the middle of Relm's next tirade, Celes started laughing, and the little girl paused mid-step and leaned backward to look up at Celes.

"What?"

"Nothing," Celes said, because you talk more than anyone I've ever met would be an exaggeration, but only barely.

Relm stuck her tongue out again. A moment later, she reached over and tugged on Celes's arm with her free hand. "Do you think we're cousins?"

"Definitely not," Celes said. "I’m not part-Esper. Just the product of scientific experimentation."

"Mad science!" Relm exclaimed gleefully, undeterred. "Well, that's all right. You can be family without being related, you know?"

Celes shook her head. "That’s a very sweet sentiment, but…"

"Oh, come on, you’re not anywhere close to old enough to talk like that. ‘I’m a mysterious and beautiful grown-up and I am too worldly for feelings,’" the little girl sniffed in a haughty mocking voice, while Celes stared at her, open-mouthed. Relm turned a disarmingly innocent and charming smile on her, hooked her arm through Celes’s just as she had done with Terra’s, and pulled them both forward, up the mountain path. "We’re all cousins now. You don’t get to argue with me, because I said so, and I’m too cute to refuse."

Terra, at least, seemed comfortable with this ridiculous ‘cousins’ business, perhaps because she hadn’t been outright insulted. She giggled, then fell back into talking with Relm about magic, and travel, and the people she’d met.

It’s just a bratty child who disrespects everyone she meets, Celes told herself. And you’re just feeling defensive because Locke is giving you the cold shoulder again.

She sighed. Maybe things would be better if she were too worldly for feelings.

All told, they trekked for less than an hour uphill on a well-worn, well-maintained mountain path wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast. Tree branches joined overhead to form a sort of archway, and a carpet of pine needles softened the sound of their steps. It was peaceful, calm, meditative.

At the end of it, the path wound up toward a cliff face, but there was no mistaking this for plain rock. Set into the cliff side, two doors formed a circle cut in half, each door carved with letters of some ancient-looking language Celes had never seen before and silhouetted figures of people and fantastical creatures. The artistry was stunning.

"It’s hundreds and hundreds of years old," Relm intoned seriously. "Maybe a thousand years old. I don’t know. Maybe it’s older than the War of the Magi."

"What is it?" Terra asked, wide-eyed.

"The shrine," Relm replied with irritation, as if she were stating something Terra ought to know. "Where the Espers are."

At this, she finally released the others and made a show of rubbing her hands together and pushing up imaginary sleeves. Then she grinned in delight and pressed her palms to the door, muttered some unintelligible syllables under her breath, and tugged on the massive wooden handles.

But nothing happened. The doors didn’t budge. Relm frowned and tried again, and again. She shouted the words, spitting out very careful enunciation; she grabbed one handle, braced herself against the other door with one foot, and threw her whole weight into pulling at the door. Again, nothing. Finally, she howled one loud, terribly inappropriate fuck and sank back against the door, looking defeated.

"Is it locked?" Celes asked. It was hard to say whether the child’s theatrics had been some actual attempt at magic or just her imagination run wild, but it seemed more feasible that the doors were simply barred with a regular mechanism and Relm merely lacked the key or Locke’s less reputable skillset.

"It’s the barrier," Relm said, her lower lip trembling. "I thought I knew how to lift it. I snuck up here and watched them do it before, but it’s not working."

Terra traced the etchings of the door with her pale fingers. "It's all right."

"No, it's not." Relm crossed her arms over her chest and stomped her foot. "It's not fair! You came all this way and they're just on the other side and you can't see them. You don't even believe me, do you? You think I'm just a kid making up silly stories like my grandpa and his stupid fairy tales."

"No," Terra said with a sad little smile. "I can tell they're there. I can feel them. Although that makes me wonder if they can feel me too, or maybe… maybe if I…"

If there was magic to be sensed here, it was beyond Celes’s own abilities; she had felt magic in Thamasa, but nothing here. If anything, there was less of a feeling of magic here than the surrounding countryside, almost as if… as if something were hiding.

Terra closed her eyes and focused herself inward, in a way that reminded Celes of her own efforts to get in touch with Shiva. But Terra was seeking something else—and she found it, as the magic within her sang and grew brighter and stronger, morphing her body as her limbs elongated and her fingers sharpened like claws and that soft downy pink covered her skin. She opened her eyes and they were red, with slitted pupils, but they were still hers.

Relm gasped, then clapped her hands. Her eyes were shining, and her fingers fluttered in that way that meant she was itching to draw something.

"Oh, she's beautiful," she breathed. "Oh, wow."

And truly Terra was, though worry rose in Celes as she thought of the last time she had seen her friend in this form.

"It worked," Terra said in wonderment, sounding different but also somehow like herself. She turned her hands and arms, examining them. Waves of power radiated from her, enough that standing beside her set Celes’s own teeth buzzing.

For just a few seconds, waves of magic flowed from Terra and were broken and quieted against the unyielding door. Then, abruptly, Terra stumbled, fading back into her familiar green-haired self, and Celes caught her before she fell.


***


For all that the little girl had given him endless grief about it, the old man actually wasn’t half-bad as a teacher. Sure, he went off on unrelated tangents and sometimes had to be reminded of the point he was trying to make, but they were at least interesting tangents, and he was so animated as he recounted whatever story he wanted to get across that he brought it to life. It was really too bad that Locke couldn’t be sure how much truth was behind any of it.

"But even if this awe-inspiring power is real, one would be wise to use it with caution!" Strago concluded, punctuating his words with a pointing finger. "Raising the dead is a dread, dangerous undertaking."

"I’m not looking to raise the dead," Locke said wearily. "Just… healing a very difficult case."

Strago raised clearly skeptical eyebrows. "Mm-hmm." But he didn’t dwell on this point, to Locke’s relief, choosing to dive into the next opportunity to show off his knowledge. Locke had made mental notes about the likely location of this reported treasure, and the hazards to expect in reaching it, and soon enough they’d moved on to a no-doubt-exaggerated recollection of the old man’s own treasure hunting days of yore, where he’d catalogued the many fantastic beasts that showed up in his journals.

As the day wound on and the shadows began to lengthen outside, the old man became more and more distracted, looking to the door as though waiting for his granddaughter to appear at any moment.

"You are worried about her," Cyan observed with sympathy.

"She doesn’t usually go off on her own like this," Strago said. "And I really think she’s a little young for it. Of course, she’s in such a hurry to grow up–"

"They do tend to be," Cyan said, and the two of them exchanged some sort of knowing look, the father and the grandfather sharing an understanding that made Locke feel like the odd one out. Leo had lost interest in hearing about the phoenix and was engrossed in reading some other book.

Suddenly Strago sat upright, his eyes snapping to a position on the horizon. "Oh no," he said. "No, she didn't."

"What?"

"She wouldn’t," he muttered. "She knows better."

But he was too distracted by whatever was troubling him to pick his lecture back up. Instead, he puttered into the kitchen to make tea or start on dinner. Locke followed him, feeling on one hand like he ought to cover for the little girl—she was lying and putting herself at risk for Terra’s sake, after all—but also realizing that he didn’t understand what, exactly, the old man suspected had happened.

Honestly, his level of panic rattled Locke. Surely this was just an overprotective granddad unaccustomed to having his granddaughter out of his sight. Surely the girls wouldn’t have run into trouble, certainly not anything Celes couldn’t handle—except that she’d left her sword in the house, and it probably still wasn’t safe for her to defend herself with Shiva’s magic, and…

All right, so now there were two of them in the kitchen trying not to fret about some unspecified Bad Thing happening. Admittedly, Celes could probably take down any danger with one hand behind her back, and she’d need less time and effort than most fully armed soldiers to do it. Not to mention that Terra could set things on fire, if she so chose.

They’d be fine. They’d be fine.

A pot was boiling on the stove with dinner finally underway when Strago flung his wooden spoon aside mid-stir and stormed out the front door. Locke had heard nothing, no footsteps on the porch or anything, but he stayed on the old man’s heels and was not entirely surprised to see three figures on the horizon in the waning sunlight. What did surprise him was that one of them was clearly supporting another, and his heart sank. When the girls came fully into view, he realized that Terra was leaning on Celes, while a dejected-looking Relm took point, leading the way down the road.

Strago raced toward them. He grabbed Relm once she was in arm's range, pulled her into a hug, and then shook her by the shoulders as Locke and the other two men caught up.

"Going for a hike," Strago said furiously. "A hike! You've been gone for hours! Where did you go?" Relm just pulled a face and struggled to free herself from his grip. "You didn't take them up the mountain, did you? Did you?"

"And so what if I did," Relm retorted, her face red. "The rules are stupid. It’s stupid that none of you will help Terra, and it's not fair."

"Not fair! She complains it's not fair!" Strago fumed. Stripped of his usual excessive theatricality, he was almost unrecognizable. "We don't just follow tradition for tradition's sake. These rules exist to protect our safety, as a community. Do you understand me?"

Relm's lower lip quivered, and these might even be real tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. "Terra is an Esper! She's got an Esper form! It's pink and feathery and gorgeous! You should see her."

Well, Locke hadn't expected that, but it would certainly explain how drained Terra looked now, exhausted though not visibly injured. Strago seemed caught off guard by this argument, his eyes flitting from his granddaughter to the fatigued young woman with a crown of ethereal green curls, the unmistakable mark of her Esper blood.

 "That is beside the point," Strago began, but his tone was softer.

 "Please don't fight," Terra said, cutting off whatever lecture might have been brewing. "I'm sorry if we overstepped. We meant no harm."

"Whether you meant harm or not, it certainly doesn't inspire confidence in your judgment." The old man sighed. "Oh, what to do, what to do. I sincerely doubt you're spies for the Empire, or whatever Agatha thinks you're up to, but perhaps it's for the best that you go back to your ship. Relm doesn't need a group of teenage delinquents encouraging her bad behavior.”

 Of course this led to more protestations from his granddaughter—and an offended Celes drawing herself to her full height, as though she might try to pull rank on this miniscule old fellow, who clearly regarded her as no more than a child herself, rather than a great and terrible general. Locke doubted she had ever been chastised like this, not as a failed military student but as a young person scolded by an elder for some mundane disobedience. But Strago had all the power in the situation, and he wasn't wrong, even if the whole thing had been his granddaughter's idea.

To Relm's credit, as the group of Returners started packing up their belongings, the little girl tried to argue that she, and she alone, deserved punishment. When she couldn’t persuade her grandfather to let their guests stay, she slammed the door to her room with a rising sob.

On the porch again, Strago mumbled something self-consciously as though having second thoughts already about kicking them out. He shook their hands, and wished them well.

Relm’s face, unsurprisingly, peered down from her window. Locke could imagine the drama of this scene playing out in her head, spiraling into some great and terrible injustice. She wasn’t even a teenager yet—he didn’t envy her grandfather what she might become as she grew older, turning into a too-clever little manipulator raging against a cruel world that didn’t understand or deserve her. For now, he’d be very surprised if she remained in her room like she was supposed to for long; if she was anything like him, she’d be scaling the wall and fucking off into the woods, or a friend’s house, or something.

In the end, they decided to camp a little ways outside of town until the ship was ready to set sail, because Locke didn't want to spend any more time on board if he could help it, and they were all holding out hope that Edgar and Setzer would bring the airship around before they were forced to.

“Do you really think there are Espers here?” Locke asked, as Celes threw herself into setting up their tent with mechanical, military precision and the others hovered around about as uselessly as he felt.

“Yes, there are,” Terra said.

“Then what are we going to do about it? Go back up to this shrine and try again? Hope Strago comes around and helps out? I can’t be the only one who thinks he’s overreacting, and…”

“Let it go,” Leo said, in a warning tone. “He’s allowed to set the rules for his house and his family.”

They settled down in the tent, and Terra set out to write a letter of apology to Strago, with guidance and reassurance from Cyan and Leo. Locke found himself seated near Celes, who had one of her books open in front of her—really remarkable how she’d managed to hold onto those after all this time, though she didn’t seem to be turning the pages.

“How does it feel to be a juvenile delinquent, eh?” he asked her. She fixed him with a look that made it very clear his humor had not landed. “Sorry. It’s just a strange accusation, since none of us are children anymore. And I’ve certainly been called a delinquent, but you…”

"But I was always too much of an obedient young soldier to get in trouble?” she finished, with a note of bitterness.

“No, actually; if you’ll recall, my time knowing you has been defined by your refusal to do what you’re told,” Locke said. “For better and for worse. But none of it has ever been petty enough that I’d call it delinquency.”

She snorted. “From you, I’m not sure that’s praise.”

There was a pounding on the tent flap, before he could figure out how to respond to that. "Relm," Locke called absently, “go home. At least give it a day before you run away, or better yet, just stay home and figure out another…”

The flap burst open, but instead of the little girl’s blond halo, it was Strago himself, red-faced and breathless. “Wait, is she not here with you?”

They all sat up at once. A pit of dread took root in Locke’s belly. As much as he wanted to tell the man that he was sure his granddaughter would be all right, the truth was that the child was precisely the worst combination of disobedient and convinced of her own infallibility, and he fully believed she could get herself very, very hurt.

With growing panic, the Returners emerged into the Thamasan countryside at dusk. Any anger Strago felt toward them had transmuted into fear for his granddaughter, and he seemed glad to be able to call on their support. 

“I left dinner outside her room, but she never brought it in,” Strago said. “I thought she was just being stubborn, not answering me. When I finally checked on her, her window was open and she was gone. I don’t even know how long ago she left, or where she might have gone.”

“Unless she has a particular hideout, like a treehouse or something, I don’t imagine she would just run away with no plan,” Locke said.

“The shrine?” Celes offered. “To try to reach the Espers again?“

“A friend’s house, perhaps,” Cyan added.

“I checked with our neighbors already, and they’ve seen no sign of her,” Strago said. “She has always been a bit of an odd one out, so there’s no best friend for her to run to. Oh, I shouldn’t have been so hard on her!”

“We’ll find her,” Terra said, determined.

They divided up, joined by an increasing crowd of Thamasans, who seemed willing to put aside their distrust of strangers if it meant having more pairs of eyes to look for the lost child. A contingent of these set off up the mountain, despite the darkness, in case Relm had gone to the shrine there.

Darkness fell, and they held torches aloft—Locke was glad his frameless lantern was working again, convenient as it was—and combed through the village and the surrounding area, calling Relm’s name. For all that she might be a pariah, or at least an oddball, her neighbors searched for her with genuine concern. Locke knew small towns, knew how fully they could turn their backs and leave someone utterly alone, but this was a community that had known some generational pain binding them to one another more closely than that, and they would not let harm come to this child; she was theirs. It gave him some comfort, knowing that.

On into the night they searched for her, farther and farther out, as though she might be camping in some little hollow in the countryside or taken up residence in a barn somewhere on the outskirts. A chill crept in, in the sun’s absence, and Locke noted Celes shivering. Still sensitive to the cold, and in too much of a hurry to retrieve her gloves or scarf. He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Don’t be a martyr,” he told her gently. “I’m worried enough about the kid—don’t make me have to worry about you, too, all right?”

The pained look she gave him after that was impenetrable, though he could see her face clearly in the flickering light of his lantern. But she took the jacket at last and shrugged into it, and while this meant he was cold, he could handle a little cold. Just bounce in place a little and soon he wouldn’t even notice the brisk night air.

Panicked shouting echoed down from further up in the hills, the farmland beyond the village proper. Flickering torchlight showed villagers moving in that direction. Locke gestured with his own lantern, and his friends took off with him, up the path leading to the farm.

Before they could see it, they could smell it—not the cozy scent of woodsmoke in a fireplace, but something sharper. Burning straw. A barely perceptible haze obscured some of the clouds, but the sky out here was so dark that even billowing smoke was hard to see. The flickering flames themselves were impossible to miss, though, once they’d come around a corner past a wooded area and into the cleared fields. It had to be coincidence, he told himself. A passing spark. But no, the rain from the previous day still saturated the ground and, no doubt, the buildings; no casual fire should have been able to spread by accident.

Terra cried out beside him. “Relm,” she said in a shaky voice. “That’s… oh, that’s her magic. I can sense it. It’s her.”

There was no point in asking if she was sure. Villagers clustered around the outside of the building. Some of them had already started a line with buckets of water. There had to be a pump around here somewhere, or a well. A tension filled the air, not just fear for the child, but something more, as though something were being held back.

"We can't,” someone hissed. “It's forbidden."

“Buckets aren’t enough.”

“You know the rules. We can’t. There’s too much at stake.”

"She’s a child!"

Terra pushed through the crowd with a grim look on her face. Locke followed beside her, his attention torn between minding Celes for the telltale signs of summoning Shiva—it’s what he would do in her shoes, after all, and it would be a fine idea, maybe even an excellent one, if not for the likely chance that it would kill her—and worrying about whatever Terra was plotting.

Magic, he thought, the whole thing had to be about magic. That’s how Relm had caught the barn on fire despite the rain; that was what the villagers were forbidden from using; that was undoubtedly what Terra was up to now.

But she caught him off guard even when he thought he’d pieced it together. Terra shimmered. He thought it was the heat from the fire, but it didn't stop. Then suddenly she changed. In place of her green curls, pink feathers—in place of her smooth skin, the soft fuzz he had last seen in Zozo.

"I'll be right back," she said, and her voice sounded strange, coming from a different-shaped body, but there was still enough of the timbre and inflection that he could recognize her. And then she took off flying toward the upper window with a strange, inhuman cry.

The hubbub silenced immediately, leaving only the crackling of the fire.

"Okay, you can't tell me it's forbidden now," one of the women cried out. "Not after that."

The whole village sprang into action not a moment later, and the air shimmered with magical energy. And for all that Locke had considered the possibility that the people around him might carry some capacity for magic—as much as Terra and Celes had whispered about sensing something in Relm's drawings, as much as he had been aware that the old man was trying to obscure the presence of magic in his life and his community—Locke was not prepared for the reality of it.

They called forth winds and water not with the overwhelming power he had seen from both of his friends or from the Espers themselves, but with a comfort and certainty borne of a lifetime spent commanding these forces. Some of them seemed to focus their energies on the flame itself, though Locke couldn’t say what exactly was transpiring, only that there was enough magic in the air to make his nose twitch. And the villagers coordinated together as well as any trained firefighting group in one of the great cities. Some of them still carried buckets of water, and Leo and Cyan had joined their number.

In the midst of all this impossibility, Terra reemerged with the child cradled in her arms. There was a collective gasp, a sigh of relief, from the assembled villagers. But she hadn’t yet made it to ground when she flickered and grew faint around the edges, and then she was just green-haired human Terra plummeting toward earth–

Except that Celes had already noticed them, had anticipated this, all her concentration suddenly directed their way. With all the magic buzzing around, it took Locke too long to realize what she was doing. Before he could stop her, she was directing her hands to them, and he cried out, except—no cold, this time. A soft bubble of air surrounded the figures, cushioning their fall, and when the bubble did seem to burst, it was from only a few inches above the ground, and by then others were there to take hold of them.

Celes staggered as though she had caught them in her physical arms and could not bear the weight, and maybe something like that had happened, some sort of magical exchange. But she looked satisfied.

Locke, frankly, lost track of what happened after that. Relm was tended to, and he could not help but be startled when that meant some sort of magical healing he could only barely follow. There was the fire to be put out, and the building to be rendered safe so it would not fall down around any more foolish children. And there were the townspeople, registering these two strange girls who had saved a child with not just forbidden magic but the power of an Esper.

Oh, right. Espers.

He was dazed enough that when a cluster of impossible figures appeared on the horizon and landed among the villagers, his mind just thought Oh, of course, Espers, with a dry little chuckle, instead of the Holy shit, ESPERS that would perhaps have been a tad more appropriate for the situation.

All of this was really quite outside his expertise. For the first time in a long time, he was aware just how much existed in the world beyond his understanding, just how small and insignificant he was as a person. But he could care for his friends, and he did, tending to Terra and to Celes while, around him, those born with the gift of magic brought safety and security to this land they called home.

Notes:

Sorry for the delay. I've had COVID twice in the two months since the previous chapter was posted, and then I've really struggled with writing on top of that, too. Getting sick is not a lot of fun, and I do not recommend it.

I almost gave up on this chapter several times, but I kept poking away at it, a little at a time. I wrote out scenes and cut them back, introduced topics of conversation and deleted them, waffled and wandered in circles and second-guessed myself. It wasn't until I finally got to the fire at the end, which I'd drafted part of but which lacked any actual situational context until well after midnight the final night of writing the chapter, that I started to think maybe the chapter would earn its keep. And maybe it does. I hope so. This is Terra's chapter, because the first half of the game is Terra's story and Thamasa is (at least in my version) where a lot of Terra's story comes together. Locke and Celes are of course full of their own drama, but it's behind the scenes right now, secondary, as they support their friend.

In the original game, Thamasa is a bit flat; the fire is arbitrary and follows the need of the plot, but it doesn't have weight or context or purpose on its own. I hope it feels like it has purpose here. I couldn't cut it. I love that moment in the game where the whole town comes together to put out the fire and save Relm. It's really a beautiful setting-defining moment.

The author's notes of the previous chapter joked about Locke's "oh no, she's like me but worse" experience with Relm, because I forgot some of that broke off into this chapter when I cut them apart. Whoops! Hope it makes more sense now. They are both obnoxious, nosy good-for-nothings and I certainly don't relate to that at all, no sir. Still attempting a little comedy here, but you know me and my tragic melodrama. I didn't expect the chapter to become so dramatic at the end. Whoops! I'm really, really looking forward to the next chapter. It will give me some opportunities to indulge myself, and if you've noticed some changes here vs what happens in the game, I do have plans to address some of that next time. Let's just hope it doesn't take another two months. It shouldn't, but then what do I know, really?

Happy second birthday, Darkness and Starlight!

Chapter 29: Found Family

Summary:

A taste of peace, after so much war.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

For just a moment, she had been in Maranda again, the city fire-wrought and bloodstained by her orders, surrounded by terrified civilians destined to be cut down one by one, and if she had her blade at hand she might have drawn it. But mercifully she was unarmed, and Locke's hand on her shoulder pulled her back from that nightmare to Thamasa.

This was not Maranda. This was an accident, not an act of war. And unlike Maranda, here she could help, and so she did. Not grand heroics—this was Terra's shining moment, not hers—and likely they would have been all right even without Celes's intervention, especially once the Thamasan healers got to work. But Celes had been able to do something, and she had helped, instead of hurting anyone, and that was good.

Terra's decision to fly into the barn was a little mad, given how quickly she had lost hold of her Esper form earlier that day, but people did strange and dangerous things to defend those they cared about, and somehow the bond between Terra and Relm had been enough to give Terra the strength to do what she'd failed at before.

Now Relm was safe, and Terra was safe, and Celes did not worry whether either of them would recover because something in her needed them to be safe, needed this clear instance in which good triumphed and nobody was hurt.

It was breathtaking, really, how effectively the Thamasans worked together as a unit—no, this wasn't military, there were no units here. They worked together as a community, and she had never even in her wildest dreams imagined seeing so many people wielding magic. It had never occurred to her that such a thing could exist in all the world. The strength of each of them as individuals would not have impressed her, not as General Celes who worried about her own abilities and how they stacked up against Kefka's and even Terra's—but she wasn't here as General Celes, and what mattered wasn't the power of any one Thamasan. Their strength, their power, came from this communal cooperation. Alone, they would have been so weak as to be nearly inconsequential; together, she might believe they could work miracles. Actual miracles.

There were Espers here, too. Would they sense Shiva's magic in her, would they know that another's life force had been sacrificed to give her this gift? Or would it be different now that the Espers in the Magitek Research Facility had chosen to bestow their strength within her of their own free will? Did she reek of dead Espers?

Suddenly claustrophobic, she stumbled away, down the hill. Her legs and arms ached, as though she'd caught Terra and Relm with her physical body instead of stolen power. A wave of dizziness overcame her, and a moment later she realized she was on her back in the grass, looking up at the stars.

"Oh my god," Locke said from behind her, "are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said unconvincingly, and she had said those same words—they had both said those words to each other—so many times that they'd ceased to have any meaning at all. So instead she glanced up at him, tried to make eye contact from this angle as he crouched beside her, face creased with worry. "I'm not hurt. You don't have to mother me, you know."

He caught his breath, visibly tried to regain his composure. "I… I know that. But, look, one of my friends just flew straight into a burning building, and the other one did some sort of magical thing to help and is now lying down in the middle of the road."

"It's not the middle of the road!" she protested.

He laughed. "Okay, fine, lying down on the grass beside the road. Really, that's not much better. You can understand how someone might be concerned?"

"I suppose so. But I promise you, I'm all right." She pushed herself into a sitting position. "Terra? And Relm?"

"A little smoke inhalation, but that's all. Apparently the Thamasans have healers, magical healing, like you…" He trailed off, coughed into his hand, glanced away and back. "Anyway. Yes. They're in good hands. So can I help you somehow?"

"I just need to rest."

"I'll walk you back to the tent, then. Please let me do something. I feel so useless." Maybe he'd meant this as a joke, but it sounded sincere, and the warmth and compassion in his eyes twisted her stomach. She acquiesced.

They hadn't made it far before a Thamasan stopped them, a middle-aged woman with a gruff voice. She took one look at Celes leaning on Locke's shoulder and beckoned to them both. "Looks like you overextended yourself at the barn, love. Let's get a warm drink in you."

Before either of them could argue, she ushered them down the hill into town, leaving the smoldering frame of the barn and the rest of the villagers behind. Celes half-expected the stranger to turn on them once they were out of sight, claiming vengeance against the Empire, but even she realized this was nothing more than absurd paranoia. Instead, they soon found themselves inside another Thamasan home that looked somewhat like Strago's in design, though it was smaller and more simply furnished, without the shelves or knickknacks that filled every inch of his space. The woman settled Celes into a cushioned chair; sitting down was more of a relief than she cared to admit. Locke perched on a window ledge nearby, arms crossed over his chest.

The Thamasan placed a pot on the stove, filled it with milk and honey and a bundle of something strong-smelling and herbal, and flicked a tinderbox until a fire sparked merrily beneath it. 

"I kind of expected you to light it with…" Locke started, and the woman laughed and shook her head.

"That's a gift I don't have. Oh, we've all got a little something, or I reckon we wouldn't be here. You get marked by the Magi somehow. But fire isn't my gift. I didn't think it was Relm's, either, but that fire wasn't caused by a tinderbox."

"No, it was her," Celes said. "She might have been trying to emulate our friend."

"The Esper girl?"

"Half-Esper," Celes corrected.

Something about the lamplit room, when darkness peeked between the curtains, made everything feel a little hollow and fake. Celes leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

"And you're the one they held captive?" the woman asked.

No need to ask who they were. Even this far from the center of things, the Empire was inescapable. Celes shook her head, and regretted it. "No, that's her too, Terra. I was just one of their experiments, a soldier. But I'm not anymore. I've done some terrible things and I just want to get away from that."

The silence afterward was broken eventually by the sound of the woman stirring her pot of tea, and the little hiss as the stove went out, and then liquid sloshing into mugs. Would any of this ever become familiar? Soft footsteps cued her to look up and see a mug extended toward her. The woman was watching her with a little knowing smile. Locke, too, seemed to be studying her, but he glanced away as soon as she noticed him.

"Not that many years ago, the Empire passed through here," the woman said, and Celes started, sloshing a little tea from the mug. "They took some readings, seemed very excited about our countryside, but I don't think they found what they were looking for. They wanted some of us to come with them, but we're not fools."

Locke scoffed. "I'm surprised they only asked."

"Well, they might have done more than that if they could, but we scattered." The woman's expression darkened, remembering. "These hills have ways of keeping us safe. We thought they might flush us out, but eventually they left."

"So that's why your people thought we might be Imperials," Locke said.

"Yes." Without warning, the woman turned her attention back to Celes. "Does it happen often that your magic drains you like that?"

Another startling change of topic. Celes looked down at her hands, still covered in the gloves Locke had gotten her—weeks ago? Had it been months, by now? "Often enough."

The woman clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "You ought to be careful. That's a hell of a lot of power to call on. You're not telling me you do that every time?"

"Well," Celes began, ignoring Locke's strangled reaction. "No, not every time."

"We should really get you some proper training, then. Children here start learning as soon as their magic comes in and we know what we're dealing with, because it's different for everyone. It's a wonder the Empire didn't train you…"

"I am the most highly trained Magitek soldier the Empire has ever produced," Celes said frostily, prickled enough by this unfounded judgment that it cut through her weariness. "I spent nearly every waking moment of my childhood and young adulthood training. If the imperials overlooked this part of my training, it is either because they did not understand that the toll it takes on my body could be avoided, or their priorities lay elsewhere."

"And do your priorities lay elsewhere?"

The woman was watching her with shrewd eyes, and Celes scratched at her hands under the gloves and glanced away. She caught a glimpse of Locke's face and wished she hadn't.

Instead of answering, she drank her tea, which was marvelously warming and filled a hollow space inside of her she hadn't realized was there.

They must have been seated here for no more than half an hour, and yet Celes found her eyelids growing heavy as Locke and the woman engaged in stilted but not unfriendly conversation that warmed, like the tea, as it continued. It became harder to concentrate on what they were saying. The third time she caught herself yawning, she began, "I'm sorry, I should be going…"

"Where are you staying?"

"We're camped on the edge of town," Locke said.

The woman clucked her tongue. "Nonsense. You can stay in my spare room."

This seemed to be directed at both of them, but perhaps this was mere politeness on the woman's part, because Locke nodded at this and said, in a bright and cheerful voice, "She could probably use a real bed. If you want to stay here, Celes, I'll let the others know and we can catch up with you in the morning."

She was exhausted. She was tired of being tired, tired of hitting her limit, but at least this time she'd been helping someone instead of causing destruction. And it had worked, unlike the last attempt, when she had… oh, that was a dangerous train of thought.

So she let the strange Thamasan lead her to a room, and she was barely conscious when Locke kissed her quickly on the forehead, just a brush of his lips that she wondered if she had imagined, and then she was asleep.


***


Finding Terra and Relm was easy; the Thamasans had brought them both to the most obvious place, and as Strago's front door was unlocked, Locke let himself in and was soon among a fussing contingent of nosy neighbors. It was as though the whole town were part of some poorly-acted play, and now the curtain had fallen and taken with it those false personas, revealing the Thamasans to be perfectly ordinary people who made conversation freely and meddled in each other's lives. Ordinary people who happened to be able to use magic, but he had almost, almost gotten used to that.

Nestled in her own bed and surprisingly awake, Relm was completely unrepentant. Her eyes shone with satisfied glee. The little girl seemed to be holding court over the villagers who had come to check up on her.

"Be honest with me," Locke said to her in a low voice during a break in the crowd. "Is this what you were aiming for?"

"I didn't mean to burn down the barn, if that's what you're asking. I was just trying to run away, and it was cold, and Terra showed me how to summon fire. But it worked out in the end, didn't it?" She crossed her arms over her chest and smiled. "Look at everyone. No one can be mad at me because I could have died, and now they've finally stopped acting like assholes to all of you."

The kid said 'could have died' in such an appallingly cavalier tone that it was clear this did not register as an actual possibility. What a nightmare. Were all children so confident in their own infallibility, in their immortality?

"And the Espers are taking care of Terra, so that worked out, too," Relm continued, insufferably smug.

The handful of people he had caught a glimpse of in the spare room with Terra looked mostly human, reminding Locke of Ramuh, what the old man had said about Espers taking human form. Even so, there was something just a little bit off about each of them, unless he was fooling himself into thinking he could sense anything magical so that he would feel less out of place here.

Oh, yes, obviously the half-Esper girl will see her human doctor and her Esper doctor just to make sure she's fine, that's perfectly normal, isn't that what all the half-Espers in your life do?

Afterward, he returned to the tent, where Leo and Cyan were settling in after their own nighttime adventures helping the villagers secure the damaged barn against intrusion. He had expected that he would feel relieved to be among the only others on the island with no connection to magic, but even here he was a little out of place; the tent felt empty without the girls. At least he could be sure they were well looked after for the night, no matter what the next day might hold.


***

Gossip—especially new gossip, a rare commodity—spread faster than flames on kindling in small towns like this one, and for once, Locke was grateful for it. 

He could imagine how the story might ripple through from house to house, some semblance of the truth Celes had shared over tea combining with whatever apprehensions and misconceptions the villagers had started with. 

That girl is an Esper, and that one wields magic. They are seeking shelter. They have been tortured and controlled like our ancestors, and they have come to us for protection. We cannot turn them away. Thamasa exists to protect our people, and these two are our people, and they need us. They have suffered so much, and yet there is still goodness in them. They are not the weapons they were made to be. They need a home, safety, protection, and they will find all that here. They must. We must offer it to them.

Some of this was his imagination filling in the gaps. But it could be seen in how the villagers responded after the fire, not just to Celes and Terra but to the rest of them as well. 

He had worried that they might blame all of this on the bad influence of the Returners. After all, while Relm certainly seemed to have been a troublemaker prior to their arrival, he suspected that burning down a barn and nearly killing herself in the process was probably a first. And yet someone showed up at their tent the next morning and insisted they all come away from the swampy ground outside because surely the village could shelter them.

Locke volunteered himself to tell the sailors; they'd lingered a few days out of the goodness of their hearts and the size of their passengers' purse, but it was past time for them to resume their own journey.

"We'll be back in a couple months, if you still need a ride then," the captain said with a grin. "You're a good lot. A bunch of fucking oddballs, but that ain't so bad."

Honestly, Locke was more than a little concerned that it had already been almost a month since they'd left the airship behind in Vector. It wasn't like Edgar to dawdle, which could only mean that the repairs were taking much longer than anticipated or some serious trouble had shown up—or maybe the king had decided they needed an enforced vacation, or he learned that Leo had traveled with them and for some political or military reason Edgar needed the general off the map, even if it meant leaving his friends to stew for a while.

Besides, prior to meeting Setzer and his blessed—and cursed—wings, Locke had had plenty of assignments that lasted well over a month, especially including travel time. He was getting soft and spoiled.

Terra remained in Strago's spare room, and Celes stayed with the woman who had given her tea—Locke dropped off her things and was rendered speechless when the woman asked him if he wanted to join Celes, with a wink and a "we might be old-fashioned, but we're not prudes"—and the three men split up wherever there was space for them. For his part, he ended up in the home of the cantankerous distrustful older woman Agatha and her husband, on a cot tucked away in a little sitting room.

It felt like she'd identified him as the troublemaker of the group and wanted to keep an eye on him, although he'd done nothing here to warrant that kind of treatment. There was apparently something unsavory about him that nosy old ladies had always been very good at sniffing out.

"What are your plans here?" she asked him.

"Help Terra," he answered truthfully enough. "We'll stay and help the rest of you, too, if you'll let us, and our friends should be here soon…"

"How many of them will there be?"

He laughed at her accusatory tone and the implication beneath it. He couldn't help it. "We aren't bringing an invading army or anything of the sort. Just a few more good-for-nothings who have spent the past few years trying to undermine an empire and stop a war. Since Thamasa doesn't seem to have any aspirations toward imperial conquest, I think we'll all get along fine."

Enough about the village reminded him of Kohlingen that he wasn't sure whether they actually distrusted him in particular or if he was just overly sensitive to it, but the villagers seemed welcoming of Cyan and Leo's offered help rebuilding the damaged barn.

Locke let them put him to work, too, though he was less handy as a carpenter than either of them. He was a little surprised to see Cyan handling tools with such skillful comfort. "So was building things part of your samurai training, or…?"

"No," Cyan said, a wistful twinkle in his eye as though he were caught in some fond memory, "but as a father and a husband, the man of my family, it was my duty to maintain my home." Then his face fell, and Locke turned his attention to sorting the nails in the box so that the Doman could regain his composure in private.

That evening, the Thamasans laid out a picnic for their guests at the heart of town. Nothing formal, just the sort of dishes he assumed they ate every day, noodle casseroles and fried potatoes and far too much preserved fish for his taste. Terra sat with Relm and a slew of other kids, and judging by the way her hands moved as she spoke, she must have been telling them about her adventures. It was delightful to watch how they hung on every word she spoke. And he was reassured to see her and Relm here and clearly much recovered.

Celes, meanwhile, had apparently decided she was well enough to work in the fields, despite everything. Locke was surprised to come across her not resting like Terra and Relm as he might have expected—hoped, even—but instead leaning against a fence drinking from a Thamasan canteen, her cheeks red from the sun and her wiry arms slick with sweat. 

"Shouldn't you be–" he started, but she cut him off.

"Locke. Stop." Her eyes flashed. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not made of glass? I won't break just because you let me out of your sight."

There wasn't much he could say to argue. His own muscles were aching, his thumbs smarting from using unfamiliar tools; she, on the other hand, looked downright majestic, like a statue of a goddess brought to life, daring him to accuse her of being unfit. But it had not been long enough that he could forget her lying cold and still and pale as death in his arms. He shivered.

"I hope you fared better as a farmer than I did as a carpenter," he said with a loose grin, by way of a peace offering. "I'm lucky I didn't whack my own thumb with a hammer."

"That would make it difficult to pick locks." She smirked.

I can do a lot more with my hands than pick locks, he was on the verge of saying, but it was—well, it was the sort of thing Edgar would say as a plausibly deniable double entendre, or maybe it was more Setzer's style of trashy come-on—yes, it was definitely Setzer, and the suggestive second meaning only popped into his head because the man had given him such baseless shit for so long; it certainly had nothing to do with the way Celes's damp shirt clung to her, to the soft curves of her…

Belatedly, he realized he had left a wide open silence where a witty comeback was supposed to go.

Celes apparently interpreted this in the worst possible way. "Sorry," she said, "that was rude, wasn't it? You're not a thief; you're a treasure hunter, saboteur, and spy, and so on… but, really, I'm not in any danger. It would make more sense for you to be fretting over Terra." Cocking her head at him, she asked in a different voice, "Why don't you hover over Terra instead of me?"

Those piercing blue eyes regarded him with a delicate but insistent curiosity. Not 'why aren't you,' but 'why don't you,' deliberately asking about the habitual and not the circumstantial.

He coughed and turned away, feeling his face heat up. "She has marginally more self-preservation instinct," he heard himself saying, "although her flying straight into a burning building does kind of make me question that." Of course he worried about Terra, had since the moment he first met her—but Celes was the one he'd almost lost, and even just thinking about that sent something in his mind crawling up the walls and howling like a caged and wounded animal, and he fled from the thought at once.

"I see," she said, in a distant voice, and drank from her canteen.


***


The next morning, an Esper came to Relm and Strago’s house and invited Terra up into the mountains. 

Celes learned this not from Terra herself, who had taken the invitation with a promise to be back by sunset, but from their resident busybody at lunch. Locke was chatty as ever, though he paused after he told her this and cocked his head in that peculiar way that always made her feel like he was listening to something she wasn't aware she was saying. 

Whatever he was expecting her to do or say in response, she couldn't say. Did he think it would hurt her feelings that Terra hadn't told her directly about something so important? Perhaps. The most frustrating part was that it did, a little. 

He had no right knowing her better than she knew herself, no right understanding her better than she understood herself. There was an uncomfortable intimacy in being known so well that someone might anticipate your subtle hidden feelings before you became aware of them yourself. Worst of all, it was over something as petty as baseless insecurity. 

Emotions swirled inside her, jealousy and disappointment and frustration and worry, but it was hard to hold on to those feelings in the afternoon sunlight, surrounded by Thamasans who sang as they worked. 

Not that Celes had a great deal of experience singing in front of other people, aside from one noteworthy exception—and what a strange exception that had been in every way—but there was no danger in joining in, here, was there? No expectations, no consequences of failure, no audience. She didn’t know the words, but she could follow the melody well enough to suit herself, and she was the only person she would have to please.

Her voice stopped in her throat as though it were a performer waiting nervously in the wings, but she pushed it forward, humming a verse to ease herself in because what was there to be afraid of here?

Eventually, when the Thamasans in the fields repeated their verse, she dove in with her full voice, surprising herself; she had only meant to sing quietly. But her voice, though it lacked the control or skill of a truly trained singer, nevertheless held power that defied her lack of experience. The moment she stopped holding back, the fullness of it spilled out and rose to join the rest. Heads around her paused in their work and turned to look at her, their own song faltering, and she worried for a moment that she had ruined something. But it was only a beat, nothing more, and they resumed singing as though she had always been among them.

Not an opera floozy, she had once protested, and it was true, but she was no longer an imperial general, she was no longer a soldier, she was simply one more person trying to find her way, and today she wanted to sing and hold nothing back.

Strange, to let this part of herself out—to loose a voice that had once, only once, soared and been heard above an orchestra—but how liberating.

Somehow, despite the novelty of releasing her voice like this, it had never occurred to her to hold back with her magic. Was that her own natural tendency, or a product of how the Empire had raised her, or some subconscious decision that had taken over as she came to despise so much about herself? Self-directed punishment, an expectation that magic should hurt her, because her magic was the source of so much destruction to the world around her and she deserved it, and especially once she learned from Ramuh that her magic had come at the cost of someone else's life?

Her mood dipped again as the day drew to a close, as she began to ruminate on magic, on Locke's obsessive worry and the Thamasan woman's gentle, patronizing concern. The latter especially had stung, as though she had never been taught, as though she had never learned! As though she was not in some ways a master of her craft, of wielding blade and ice to devastate her foes.

But, she reminded herself with a set jaw, the Thamasans had been born to magic, and they had lived with it for generations. Weak as their power might be, they had knowledge. They had skill. They had lived with it for generations. And living was what she had promised to do, after all.

Working in the fields exhausted her in a good, satisfying way that made her sleep without dreaming, but she had time and energy still, in the waning sunlight of early evening, to do something more.

She followed the muddy trails away from Thamasa to the abandoned beach where their ship had come in. No one could see her here, judge her for her failings or criticize her mistakes. And there was no one to hurt, by accident or by instinct.

In the dying light, she started small, or tried to. Whenever she thought of Shiva's magic, Locke's admonishments echoed in her mind a moment later, so instead she turned to one of the other Espers who had so hastily gifted her magic in that cursed research facility. The creature had been some great and majestic fish, compared to which she felt tiny, insignificant, young and landbound and inexperienced. But its strength had helped her relieve Locke's panic on the ship and soften Terra's landing here in Thamasa. And standing here on a wild, untamed strip of beach seemed as good a place as any to honor its power.

So she closed her eyes and thought about the bubble of air that had lifted Locke ever so slightly, that had cushioned Terra and Relm as they fell toward the earth. Not true flight, nor even proper levitation, but something useful, in its own way. Had she been exhausted both times she'd called upon it? Well, that stood to reason. Locke's mass was at least close to her own, though she could lift him and carry him if necessary—had done so before—and she remembered that she had felt exertion then, but not drained. Terra and Relm had been actually falling, and she'd needed to use more magic not just to lift them but to fight the force of that fall.

Then she would start by lifting something small. A shell, maybe? No—there was small, and there was too small to be useful. She found a chunk of driftwood instead and set to slowly raising and lowering it by an inch or so. Nothing that would impress someone else, nothing that would have earned praise or approval for her child-self, but it did seem to take less of her energy.

She was so focused on the experiment that she didn't notice anyone approaching, until Terra said, brightly, "There you are." Celes blinked up at her in surprise. The other girl stood atop a hill overlooking the beach, the coastal wind making a mess of her green curls. “Locke said I’d find you out here.”

Celes bristled. “How does he know where I am?”

“He generally likes to know where everyone is,” Terra said, then added with what might have been a teasing smile, “and he pays closer attention to you than to anyone else.”

She couldn’t even say if she wanted that to be true or not—if it were true, it would be because he was worried she would hurt herself somehow, the way people worried about children who wandered off on their own. But she wasn’t in the mood to dwell on that, so she grounded herself with a deep breath and changed the subject to something vastly more important and worthy of discussion, as Terra hopped down from the hill and landed in a slight explosion of sand a few paces away. “You went to see the Espers?”

“I did,” Terra said, suddenly shy.

“Do you… want to talk about it?"

Terra was quiet for a moment, considering. "I think I'd like to sit with how I feel about it on my own, first," she said at last. "But it was… it was good. Some of them knew my father. Some of them had even met me when I was a baby! And Tritoch was there—the one from Narshe, at the beginning of all of this…"

"That's marvelous. I'm sure they're glad to see you." Celes was not fully clear on how the Espers had ended up here, if they had come into this world at the same time as Ramuh and Shiva and even Terra herself had, but now was not the time to grill her friend on logistics. She opened her arms, offering a hug—it seemed the appropriate thing to do—and Terra gratefully accepted. The petite girl always seemed so frail and delicate, but her hugs were warm and reassuring.

She sighed into Celes's shoulder. "On some level I can't believe they're actually here, that I actually get to see them. That I'm not alone here. I was afraid… that Locke was right, that it was just a rumor."

Celes snorted. "He doesn't actually know everything, even if he thinks he does."

"That's very true." Terra released her and gave her a curious look. "What are you doing out here, anyway?"

Celes tensed, prepared to justify herself, but nothing more than curiosity shone in her friend's eyes. She relaxed ever so slightly. "Just… practicing. The Thamasans had some things to say about my approach to magic."

"What are you practicing?"

Celes faltered. "I just—it seems like it would be disrespectful to let the power I’ve been given go unused, and since there are applications beyond fighting… such as rescuing people from burning buildings, I suppose..."

"Do you mind if I join you?"

"Of course."

They spent the better part of an hour together, and as much as Celes hesitated to ask for help, as though she were an inexperienced and ignorant student, Terra was so genuine, so lacking malice or judgment, so open to considering Celes's perspective and listening to Celes's ideas, that soon Celes fell into collaborating with her before she'd even realized she was doing it.

Terra followed her intuition with magic, which was a part of her in a way it would never be for Celes, who had to ask, and question, and hypothesize, and attempt—but that no longer felt like a weakness, merely another way to engage with magic, complementing Terra's.


***

 

What was it about good times that made them pass in a blur? Why couldn’t pain become numbing, so easily forgotten? She had never known anything so close to peace before and she wanted to catch hold of each passing day and press it like a flower in the pages of a book.

Those around her all seemed to feel it, too. Cyan told the stories he must have told his own son as the children of Thamasa sat in rapt attention, and some of the elders of the village recounted their own experiences of visiting his lost homeland. During the days, Terra often disappeared into the mountains while the rest of the Returners assisted with whatever chores needed doing around town. They came together sometimes for meals and in the evenings, as they had on the ship. But while the pattern of their days on the ship had arisen to fill time, here there was so much that genuinely needed doing, and these people genuinely seemed to appreciate the help. Even the sour-faced old woman Locke was staying with seemed to run out of complaints against the newcomers after a few days of help in the fields, with the animals, with construction projects.

The burn of her muscles after another long day in the field put Leo's ship-bound training in her mind. “You could train the villagers,” she told him one evening over a bowl of vegetable and dumpling soup, as they crammed into Strago's house for dinner. “Show them a few things about self-defense. Relm claims there’s no crime on the island, but she’s a child. In case of trouble, or if the Empire comes back…”

Leo considered this with his usual gravity and then nodded. “If they'll accept my help, I would be glad to."

The Thamasans, when asked about this, were more receptive than Celes had feared. Perhaps it was because the Returners had already made a point of contributing to their village. Perhaps it was because of Terra, who couldn't go anywhere without a gaggle of children at her heels. And—she found herself unable to deny this, either—perhaps it was because of the magic that Celes herself was using now to help hold boards in place and assist with repairs on the old barn. The crotchety old woman might have scolded her for that, but the woman who'd taken her under her wing just smiled approvingly and told her not to worry.

At Leo's first self-defense class the next evening, a smattering of villagers of all ages showed up in the cobblestone square at the heart of town, ready to learn from the man who would have been their enemy—was still their enemy.

One of the Thamasans seemed to have a similar thought. After Leo had finished his formal introduction, the younger man laughed and said, “I can't be the only one who thinks it's funny we're learning to fight from an imperial general. You promise you're not going to teach us to punch our own noses?”

“I’m through with war,” Leo said gravely. “I intend to offer my resignation when I return to Vector.”

Celes, who had agreed to help assist the class along with Cyan, could only stare in shock. Leo met her eyes and smiled, and something in her chest swelled. Pride, and a greater warmth that brought tears to her eyes. This was the man she had thought Leo to be, the man she had needed Leo to be, the man who had taught her about justice and honor and compassion. He belonged here, like this, teaching the defenseless to defend themselves.

Some evenings, she worked with Leo and the villagers; occasionally she returned to her solitary training on the beach instead, and sometimes Terra joined her. Yet despite how busy she was, and despite her tendency to keep to her own company, she found herself getting to know the villagers, not just the woman who had opened her home to Celes, but also those who worked alongside her in the fields, or who joined Leo’s class. They greeted her each day with a certain fond familiarity. To be known but not feared was a new and wonderful experience, and she thought she might be able to get used to it, eventually.

At no point in her life had she engaged in menial labor—it would have been considered beneath her in Vector—but for the first time, she understood what Leo had meant about his work in Maranda. It was one thing to understand, in theory, the satisfaction of creating something instead of tearing it down; it was another thing to put her whole body into something mundane and human and necessary for survival and see it pay off.


***


They'd finally completed enough of the repairs that he could actually climb into the hayloft, its new timber so pale and fresh compared to the outer wood of the walls that it didn't seem like the same building at all. In the afternoon heat, the loft was pleasantly warm, and relatively quiet—the livestock that would normally be kept here had been moved elsewhere until construction was complete, and thus it was the perfect place for a moment away. 

It's not that he objected to being around people, even the Thamasans, though he could do without a crotchety old woman criticizing his every move. But Locke didn't want to be a farmer, didn't want to spend his days completing the same routine chores. The world felt so very small here, small and removed to the point of claustrophobia.

So he hid in the loft, as young men had been doing since time immemorial to get out of their obligations—although technically they were not obligations in this case, as he was merely a volunteer helping out of the goodness of his heart—and he dozed.

Sometime later, he was startled awake by laughter and by Celes calling his name. For a rather disconcerting moment he thought this was part of the dream, as her singing had been part of the dream, likely because her voice carried over the others when she was working, even up to the loft, and was it really so late in the day that she had finished, and why was she here instead of on the beach where she sneaked off from working to go work some more?

He opened his eyes and squinted up at her. She was seated by the ladder, grinning at him with what he hoped was fondness and not exasperation. Normally, one would not squint up at someone else sitting down, but given that he was sprawled on the hayloft floor with no dignity, giving him a most peculiar angle to observe her from…

“You’re sopping wet,” he said, noticing the tendrils of hair framing her face and clinging to her neck.

“It rained.” She smirked at him. “I’m a little surprised you slept through it.”

“I’ve always found that I sleep better when it’s raining outside, as long as I’m inside,” he said, pulling himself upright and rubbing his eyes. “If I’m outside, it’s more or less a lost cause to even try.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever attempted to sleep in a downpour.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.” He stifled a yawn. “You’re in a good mood. Did you get the afternoon off because of the rain?”

“There’s not much to do when the fields are all muddy,” she said, “but it’s a good thing, as long as it doesn’t rain too much. Apparently the crops themselves can get waterlogged if it rains too much this late in the season, and…”

She was talking with the sort of earnest seriousness he might have expected a previous incarnation of her to use to discuss military strategy, and the strangeness of it made him laugh. Swords into ploughs, indeed.

"What?" she asked him, her face falling.

“It's just—you really like this,” he said. “Farming. I can't say I expected that.”

“It’s new to me,” she said, maybe a little defensively. “Cid had a greenhouse where he grew flowers and ornamental plants, but—you’ve seen Vector. It’s hardly agrarian. Cultivating things isn’t really something I’ve ever done before. War will eventually turn fields barren.”

“So… do you think you might settle down here?” He meant it as a casual question, to prompt her to think about the future at a moment she was feeling good about something, but the words fit strangely in his mouth.

She blinked in surprise. “Here? Out in the middle of nowhere?”

“I mean, that’s not necessarily such a bad thing, is it?”

And it wasn’t, really. It would keep her out of danger, which was something she could use after a lifetime as a totalitarian emperor's wartime plaything. War could rage in the outside world and Thamasa would be none the wiser, and Celes really could put her sword away for good if she wanted. There was plenty to argue in Thamasa's favor, and given how happy everyone else seemed to be here, he didn't want to seem like he was judging them for it. The last thing Celes needed was to feel discouraged if she'd finally found someplace to feel at home.

He must not have kept what he felt entirely out of his voice, though, because now it was her turn to laugh at him. “I can’t picture you settling down here,” she said.

Rubbing at the back of his neck, he chuckled. “Well, no, I can’t say it’s really my kind of scene.”

"You'd rather be somewhere like South Figaro."

"Yes, provided it's not occupied.” He grinned at her. “Hell, maybe even if it is. Keeps things interesting, having to sneak around the guards. And you meet all sorts of interesting people that way."

Celes gave him a considering look. “All this talk about what I’m going to do without war, but there’s really not much call for spies and saboteurs during peacetime, is there?”

“You’d be surprised. I’m friends with a king, after all; I could join Edgar’s spy network.”

“I think your cover was blown on that front the moment you flew around the country on an airship rallying people to join the Returners,” Celes said. “You might as well have put your face on recruitment posters.”

“Maybe I could be a diplomat,” he said.

“Maybe,” she echoed thoughtfully, watching him closely.

And he couldn’t help wondering what the future would hold for them, for all of them, if the war truly was over. So Celes might want to settle down and become a farmer in some remote village. She had certainly earned the right to do so. Maybe she’d find some nice farmer eventually, some quiet steadfast fellow she could rely on. That was the sort of thing she needed—stability, reliability, peace and quiet, someone who could be her rock.

He cleared his throat. "We should… we should head out soon, or they're going to think we've been up to all sorts of shenanigans in the hayloft."

Celes scoffed. "It's already been set on fire. I don't see how we could do anything worse than that."

"That's not… usually what people are up to in haylofts."

"Then what?"

Inwardly, he groaned—gods, why had he brought this up? "Usually, ah, the sort of shenanigans that have to do with virtue and the loss thereof."

Celes pressed her lips together, not dignifying this with a response, which was fully warranted, really. Embarrassment set his heart pounding in his ears. It had been a stupid thing to say, and he’d phrased it to make it worse, somehow.

Outside, it was already growing dark, a sign they'd been on this island for too long already. Soon enough it would be harvest time, and then winter, and the thought of spending more seasons in isolation from the rest of the world here was not something he relished, even if he was fully aware that was selfish of him.

He’d promised Terra he would be there for her, and he kept his promises to his friends, so he would stay as long as she needed friends here. She certainly seemed like she might want to stay in Thamasa, long-term. What little she told them of her time in the Esper Cave over the past few days made it clear that this was the closest thing to a home she had, with the closest thing she could find to family in the human world, unless she wanted to make a family of her own someday.

Something overhead caught his eye. A bright speck on the horizon, a star moving across the heavens. He grabbed Celes's arm and pointed up, over her shoulder. "Look! Make a wish."

She leaned into him, following his arm and his line of sight. "Aren't we a little old to be wishing on stars?"

He shook his head in mock dismay. “We are not, thank you very much. At least, I certainly am not, and given that I’m older than you… c’mon.” His grip tightened around her, and he swayed her back and forth a little, trying to loosen her up, until she finally laughed and relaxed.

"Very well.” She closed her eyes. “I wish that the peace will hold."

There was no point in telling her that wishes were not meant to be spoken aloud; this particular wish seemed more like an obligation than anything personal or heartfelt. He wondered if she was voicing the obvious choice to cover up what she secretly wanted, and he suddenly burned with curiosity to find out what that might be, if so. "You know," he said wryly, "you can wish for something selfish, too."

She glanced sideways at him, giving him an inscrutable look that was almost… wistful. “No, I really can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Sometimes wishing to have something means taking it away from someone else.”

He wanted to say something to that, some reassurance that she deserved to be selfish, that she deserved to have what she wanted, that she deserved as much happiness as the person she worried about depriving did.

He wanted to, but he couldn’t think of the right way to phrase it. And suddenly he realized that they had been standing together like this for too long, his arm around her, she leaning back against his chest. It had seemed natural to grab hold of her, but they were no longer looking up at the stars, and she was still a little damp from the rain, making him even more aware that she was pressed up against him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not even sure what he was apologizing for. Celes sighed, a long, sad exhalation, and nodded as if she understood him anyway. They released each other, and walked in silence to join the others.


***


The next day, Relm rounded them up for dinner. She showed up to retrieve Celes with Terra in tow, and the moment Celes saw them at the door, she could tell something was amiss. No—that was her own tendency to assume the worst. But Relm was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, and Terra’s smile held something hidden.

“What is it?” she asked, as she tugged on her boots.

Terra opened her mouth to answer, but Relm cut in. “Don’t tell her! Grandpa wants to tell her.”

“I can tell her about some of it,” Terra said evenly, “and you can’t stop me. It’s my story to tell.” There was something easy and familiar about their exchange that made Celes conscious of how much time they must be spending together, sharing a house. As much as Relm’s occasional comments that they were cousins could not be founded in fact, there was still truth to it now.

Relm grumbled to herself and threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said, “but do it on the way. We’ve still got to pick up her young man.” The way she said it made it clear that this was a phrase she was repeating from somewhere else, but Celes didn’t know what she meant until she added, “I just don’t understand. You know an actual, honest-to-god king and you choose some nosy troublemaker who spies on people, sneaks around, and doesn’t believe in brushing his hair…”

Celes burst out laughing. “Locke?” It wasn’t an inaccurate description of him, which made it all the funnier, although she disagreed on the point of his hair—it was a bit wild, but not entirely unkempt.

“Who else?” Relm rolled her eyes as though Celes were being particularly dense.

Terra shook her head at Relm in a pointed way that seemed like she was shushing the little girl, who just sighed and dashed off down the path away from the house where Celes was staying.

Celes shut the door behind her—it would never stop bothering her that the people here did not lock their doors, as if they too believed in Relm’s assertion that crime simply didn’t happen here—and set off at a more reasonable pace beside Terra. “So,” she said, “what is this ‘story’ I’m not supposed to be told about?”

Terra’s eyes widened for a moment, and she seemed to think through her words. “The Espers… have asked me if I want to stay with them.”

“I’m not surprised. Are you going to?”

“I… think so.” Terra looked down. “Would that be all right? Do you think anyone would mind? I don’t want to turn my back on the Returners, but…”

“The Returners want to see you happy, too.” Celes smiled encouragingly. “We all do. If you want to stay, then stay.” There seemed to be more that needed to be said, more that Terra needed to be reassured about. Locke would know what to say—or maybe he wouldn’t, since he’d been at a loss for words more and more often in recent days. Strange. “You won’t be turning your back on us. We can always visit you, or you can visit us.”

“I guess that’s true.” Terra laughed, bright and bell-like. “I can just decide to stay, and no one can tell me no. That’s what it means to be free.”

“Yes, it is.”

“If I came to visit you, I probably wouldn’t even need a boat or an airship,” Terra continued, warming to the idea. “The Espers have started teaching me to maintain my Esper form. Eventually, I should be able to fly all the way across the sea myself. So wherever you are, if you… go back to Vector, or if you go to Narshe, or…”

“Vector is unlikely,” Celes said. “Maybe I’ll start an opera career in Jidoor.”

“Oh, maybe,” Terra said, accepting this so readily that Celes couldn’t bring herself to say that it had been a joke. “I’m sure I could find my way to Jidoor.”

“And Strago didn’t want you telling me this…?”

“Oh! No, this isn’t—that’s something else. I asked the Espers if you could come with me into the cave sometime. It’s not just a cave, Celes, it’s… it’s marvelous. I want you to see it, before you go.”

Something twinged inside Celes. “I’m not sure-”

“Please don’t start doubting yourself. They understand where your magic comes from, and they don’t blame you for any of it. Don’t you realize that many of the Thamasans have a similar story, if you go back far enough?” Terra cocked her head at Celes. “So we talked about how to make that happen, if you wanted to do it, and they had an idea. And that’s what Strago wants to talk to you about.”

“Oh.” Celes blinked. “I… I see.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to any of this, or even how she felt about it, but while she was still putting her thoughts together, Relm darted up another path in the village and knocked on another door, and soon she was dragging Locke bodily out by the arm toward them.

“Why is Locke coming, if Strago wants to tell me something?” Celes asked.

Terra winced. “They… I’ve tried explaining to them that you two aren’t… but they… well, Strago thought it would be nice to have him there. Leo and Cyan are working with the villagers tonight, or they would have come, too.”

Inwardly, Celes sighed. Had she been doing something she shouldn’t, to give the villagers the impression that Locke was her young man? Was that why he had been so uncomfortable lately, because he wasn’t sure how to confront her about it without hurting or upsetting her? He had apologized to her, as though it were his fault that his heart belonged to Rachel, as though it were his fault that Celes had fallen for him anyway.

Locke waved at them as Relm hauled him forward. “Evening,” he said with a typically warm grin, no sign of discomfort visible, though he could sometimes mask his feelings enough that she didn’t trust it.

Celes nodded. She kept her eyes on the dirt path under her feet as Terra filled him in on the Espers’ offer, and he radiated good cheer, and Relm ran circles around them like an overeager and impatient animal.

When they finally reached Strago’s house at the outskirts of the village, Relm was a few paces ahead of the rest of them. “There’s a dog on the porch,” she shouted, immediately before stomping up the path, leaping over the stairs, and throwing herself in the direction of the presumed pup. Celes wanted to call out a warning, that not all dogs were friendly—many were not—but this was a small town and most likely it was a neighbor’s mutt off the property.

The little girl was cooing with absolute delight when Celes joined her on the porch. She kept a safe distance, because while the dog might know Relm, Celes herself was still an unknown around these parts, and she didn’t trust dogs and imagined they would feel the same way about her. Locke, though, seemed just as delighted as the little girl. He fell to his knees beside the animal with the kind of confidence that indicated he expected to be liked by dogs, the same way he expected to be liked by people. But the dog growled a low warning at him, and he retreated to a polite distance.

The mutt honestly looked more like the patrol dogs Celes had known than what she imagined a farm dog would be, not just in its sleek short-furred build and lean, pointed shape, but also the noticeable scars along its body. This creature had known more than its share of fights.

“Hm,” Locke said, watching the animal closely. “Do you know this dog?”

“She looks like the dog we had when I was a baby,” Relm said.

“He,” Locke corrected. He held his hand out, slowly, palm down, and the dog sniffed at him but did not growl this time. “You’ve gotten into some trouble, haven’t you, friend? These don’t look fresh, at least…”

The front door opened, and Strago stared at the commotion. “What’s going on out here?” 

“A puppy,” Relm said, even though the dog was decidedly not young. “I already said. Can we keep him?”

Strago stared at the dog and something passed over his face, though Celes wasn’t sure what. She might have thought she imagined it, except that Locke was watching the old man with narrowed eyes that meant his curiosity was piqued.

The old man tutted. “I’m sure his owner wouldn’t like…”

“He looks like Mabel!” Relm said, cutting him off. “Doesn’t he?”

“Not really.”

Relm stuck her tongue out. “You’re full of shit, gramps. I’ve seen the drawings you did of Mabel. Maybe this is one of her puppies! Maybe he wandered off and had adventures in the mountains and now he’s come back to tell us all about them.” She turned back to the dog and ruffled his ears, speaking to him with a ridiculous cooing voice. “Haven’t you, boy?”

Strago crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t keep him. I’m sure his owner will want him back.”

“Well, his owner, if he has one, has done a shit job of taking care of him.” Relm pulled the dog to her, and to Celes’s surprise, the animal actually licked her on the cheek. “Just look at him! Who lets their dog get hurt so much and then run off? I think he should stay with us. Either he lives on his own, or he lives with a person he’d be better off without.”

“No,” Strago said, in a tone of voice that did not permit argument. “Now bring our guests inside for dinner, and leave the dog on the porch.”

They filed into the now-familiar house. Celes raised a curious eyebrow at Locke, who had been watching the entire exchange with a keen and unmistakable interest and was almost certainly developing a theory of his own.

“He knows this dog,” Locke said to her in a hushed voice. “And he’s afraid of something."

Whatever else he might be thinking, he had no time to share it; Strago put them all to work bringing dinner to the table, and then they were all jostling together around the meal with the usual loud banter back-and-forth between Relm and Strago filling any gaps in conversation. Relm was clearly still frustrated with her grandfather, but not enough to keep from mocking him and finishing his stories in turn.

Dinner was delicious, the same piles of fish and noodles and pickles that she now knew to be a trademark of Thamasan cuisine. As the meal drew to a close, Relm began visibly vibrating with impatience, and Strago at last laughed and set down his utensils.

“We invited you here to ask you something,” the old man said, settling into his chair. “As you know, Terra has been spending time with the Espers in the cave where they dwell on the mountain. She’s asked them, and us, if you can join her. But you must understand that it is sacred to all of us, and more than that, we are its caretakers. We have a calling to keep it safe from outsiders.”

“I know there’s a powerful magic inside,” Celes said. Her throat was dry. “I do not blame you for wanting to protect it from those who might abuse any power they can find.”

“Yes, exactly,” Strago said, nodding in relief. “I knew you’d understand. But that does not mean the door must always be closed to you, particularly. In some ways, you’re already one of us—marked by the gift of the Magi, if you will. And I think by this point we know your heart, and we know that Terra trusts you absolutely.”

Celes felt heat rising in her cheeks. She spared a glance at Terra, who smiled shyly back. Yes, this was friendship, this was trust, whether she deserved it or not. She could only hope that Terra understood the feeling was reciprocated.

“Ordinarily, when a Thamasan turns thirteen, there is a coming-of-age ceremony held within that selfsame cave, recognizing their place in our community and welcoming them into our history and our heritage,” Strago said, and Celes’s heart beat faster. 

“You can’t be saying–” she started, but the old man barreled on.

“Given that Terra will be staying here, the Espers have suggested that she take part in this ceremony. And it seems like a very nice way to welcome her to the family, so to speak. She belongs here and she deserves to be included in our community—for, you see, the Espers and the Thamasans are, in a way, two halves of the same family, divided between two worlds but united not just by the magic in our lives but by what we value, and who we are, and our role in the world. We have a shared history and shared sorrow.”

“Give it a rest, gramps,” Relm groaned. “Nobody wants to hear your pretentious lecture. Let’s get to the part everyone really cares about.”

Strago’s mustache twitched with irritation. “Yes, well. After some discussion, we thought perhaps we would extend a similar offer to you, given that you also share some of that history and that sorrow. You may as well share the joy, too.”

“I… don’t know what to say,” Celes faltered.

"Well, normally you wouldn’t have to say or do anything, you'd have a family taking care of the ceremony and everything for you," Relm said matter-of-factly.

"That's not entirely true," Strago interrupted in the voice that meant another lecture was almost certainly about to follow. "Our history is full of descendants of the Magi who come to us fleeing persecution, many of whom have no living family, or none that will claim them. So, you see–"

"What Gramps is getting at is that you're also allowed to get claimed by a family," Relm cut in. "So we're claiming you." A moment later, she undercut her own bravado with a nervous, hasty, "If you want?"

“Oh,” Celes said. She swallowed around a lump that was forming in her throat. Dimly, she was aware of Locke’s eyes watching her with laser focus, of Terra’s bright-eyed hope and Relm’s anxious energy.

"You don’t have to," Relm said. “And just so you know, it’s not like you’ve got to stay here forever with us, or anything, if you’re worried about that. You don’t even have to actually be my cousin, if you don’t want to be. But this is… it’s a Thamasa thing. It’s one of the good Thamasa things. If you want.”

“Oh,” Celes said again, as a peculiar but not unpleasant feeling began to take root inside of her. It reminded her of… it reminded her of how she felt thinking about Locke, warmth mingling with pain. And then she was crying—here, at this table full of other people whose attention was entirely on her, she was covering her face and tears ran down her cheeks and there were hands squeezing her shoulders and stroking her hair and holding her, familiar and reassuring and loved.

Notes:

This chapter has been a long time coming, and it just covers so much ground, I kind of feel like I've run a marathon.

I have had a few of these sections partially written for months and months and months, long before the party actually arrived at Thamasa; I've had several ideas for how I wanted this chapter to go, and it's variously been one chapter, two chapters, three chapters, just a massive heap of half-finished scenes in no order and an utter lack of direction. I've been slotting them together in different combinations, looking for the right order — talking myself out of my original idea for Thamasa, and then spinning around in endless circles trying other things before finally arriving right back where I started — and then finally, finally, it all clicked into place last week and I've been furiously trying to finish it ever since. I hope you'll enjoy it and not feel it is too out-of-character. IF THERE ARE PLOT DISCREPANCIES or IF I HAVE CHARACTERS REPEATING A CONVERSATION FROM A PREVIOUS CHAPTER, please forgive me, I did not reread the fic prior to posting this, I have not even gone back through to revise the last couple sections that poured out of me in a hurry, and I cannot tell what I have written before vs what has just lived in my head! So I might have to come back in and edit things if there are errors.

Locke is an idiot and I love him. I wanted to do more with Leo and Cyan, but I couldn't fit any more scenes without it feeling overstuffed.

I admit I've been reading a lot more more FFVI fic in recent months, and there are just so many good stories out there with such compelling plots and such interesting and authentic interpretations of the characters, it's made me feel deeply self-conscious about just how much of an adaptation this has become. I swear I wanted to write a fairly close novelization! I feel like you can tell, in the early chapters, that I was trying very hard to stick close to the original plot! And yet here we are, and I can't help myself, I can't force the story to obey me and adhere to the original, and now I don't even know if we're still in the land of Final Fantasy VI and if these are even the same characters I started with. I've felt an embarrassing amount of despair over this. But either I admit I've failed at what I originally intended to do and I quit, or I accept that it is what it is and I plunge on ahead, and I don't know about you, but I feel like I've gone too far to stop now. So here we are.

The next chapter will be much more straightforward and has a lot less ground to cover, and most of it's already written, so maybe it'll take me less than three months to post it. Then again, NaNoWriMo is coming, and I've started working on an original novel in earnest, so who can say???

I've been poking away at a self-standing FFVI fanfic that is not D&S compliant but much closer to the original canon characters, and it's a very fun exercise, but it's also spicy and I'm not sure I feel comfortable sharing that in public. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

Speaking of side stories, I desperately wanted to show more of Terra and the Espers in this chapter, but I just couldn't make it work. I've thought about maybe writing little sections of things that happen off-screen and can't be shown because there's no way to put Locke or Celes in the room, and having kind of ... a D&S side-story collection? I don't know...

Thank you, as always, for reading and not giving up on me!

Chapter 30: Sparks

Summary:

In Thamasa, an opportunity to make peace with the past and begin to dream of the future.

Everything is going so well.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Celes broke down, every fragment of Locke’s self had itched with the urge to pull her into his arms and let her cry on his shoulder, as though someone else’s pain was a magnet and he was unable to resist the pull of meddling, as if he really were the nosy asshole Edgar always teased him for being.

They had surrounded her with gentle hands on her shoulders or her arms while she cried herself out. Afterward, Strago put the kettle on for tea. Locke hovered an arm’s length away, not sure how to make himself useful without also being a nuisance. Relm apparently had similar concerns; she cornered him and dragged him away before the water could boil.

"They're going to talk about the ceremony, and you don't get to eavesdrop on that," she hissed, pulling him into the hallway and up the stairs.

"I wouldn't—"

The look Relm gave him showed just how little she believed him. If she hadn’t been an actual literal child, he might have laughed and conceded her point, but it smarted to be lectured by a kid less than half his age. His shoulders hunched despite himself.

"I can leave."

"No. I need to talk to you."

That was all he got out of her until they’d reached the privacy of her room. With a sigh, she flopped down on her bed; he leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms, waiting for her to finish chewing over what she wanted to say.

"So, here’s the thing," she started at last. "This whole ceremony is about your past, like, where you came from and what your history is, and bridging that to where you’re going." She gesticulated in a way that reminded him of her grandfather, illustrating a journey with the movement of her hands. "For someone who’s born in Thamasa, your parents are supposed to put together a record of your life, or the rest of your family does it if you don’t have parents. Gramps has been working on mine for as long as I can remember."

Locke nodded; he could picture the old man pouring years into something like that. "And that’s what you two will be doing for Celes?"

"Not exactly." She bit her lip. "I mean, we can make the record, but we don’t know what to put in it. We could just ask Celes, but she’s going to be busy with other things, and also she’s not exactly good at answering questions or talking about herself, you know?"

That made him smirk—Relm lacked the tact and sensitivity necessary to get Celes to open up. Maybe someday she'd grow out of her steamroller tendencies, but she needed a little coaching to get there. "You have to get past her guard first," he said, "and you sometimes have to, ah, filter out her bias a little."

"Right," Relm said, nodding and pointing at him, "you can do that. Which is what I’m getting at here. It doesn't matter that gramps and I don’t have the whole story, because we can ask you and Leo."

The pieces that had begun to come together in his head suddenly clicked out of place. "Wait. Me?"

Relm rolled her eyes. "Uh, yeah?"

"Really? I’m not sure I'll be much help. I’ve only known her for a year? Maybe a little longer? And even then, there were whole months when we weren’t…" He trailed off when he realized that Relm was staring at him with a look he could only describe as fascinated horror.

"Huh. Terra wasn't kidding." Before he could ask her what the hell that meant, she grinned, all teeth, and continued. "So, anyway, Leo is basically her weird army dad, and you’re…" A derisive snort, then, "You're an idiot, apparently. But, sure, Leo can cover all the Empire stuff, you can cover everything that happened once she joined the Returners, and don’t you dare tell me you haven’t memorized all the details of that. I've seen how much attention you pay to her, Mister Busybody.”

He felt like a cat whose fur had been rubbed the wrong way. "Terra knows her—"

"Terra's busy, too."

He bristled. "This is important. It ought to be done right, and I don’t think that I—"

"So do it right, stupid." Relm threw a pillow at his head; he caught it and tossed it back. "You're not going to half-ass this, and we both know it. Quit making excuses and just tell me you'll do it."

It was almost intolerable how patronizing the kid could be, as though she were much older than her eleven years, with the attitude and unearned confidence he usually associated with teenagers. Locke pinched the bridge of his nose, summoning patience. "Fine. Yes. Of course I'll do my best. How does this work?"

"Some people carve things, or do fancy-ass embroidery, or write it all out like a story, but in our house, we do art. You tell me what to paint, and then I make something out of it."

He took a deep breath. "All right. I can… I can try."


***


Part of why he’d always been impressed by Celes's iron will and sense of justice was because they were somehow enough to propel her forward when she had nothing else. But now he could see a faint glimmer of hope within her, a fledgling optimism as vulnerable as new shoots in spring.

Terra, too, had found the confidence and sense of belonging she needed in Thamasa. Even Cyan and Leo both seemed more grounded than at the start of their journey. Not that Leo's scars had been as evident as those of the others, but being deprogrammed from the mindset of a fascist dictatorship was doing wonders for his warmth and humanity.

So, yes, Edgar and Setzer really ought to hurry up, but Locke was glad they'd stayed away for so long, or else Celes might not have allowed herself to be so vulnerable, and Terra might have stepped back and let others make decisions for her. Instead, the girls finally had space to become themselves. The trauma of war fell away from them, just a little, and the haunted look on their faces began to fade. They got to be ordinary young women preparing for an ordinary coming-of-age ceremony—well, as ordinary as anything with magic could be—being fussed over by an entire village as though they were daughters of Thamasa born and raised, and not a couple of interlopers who had shown up just weeks earlier.

This was not the cold, unwelcoming community that had refused to do business with his father. Whatever uncharitable things he had thought about the village now felt unfair. Every part of Thamasan culture was permeated with sadness, and yet they persevered in the face of it all. Here was a community entirely founded on the premise that no matter how much the world hurt you, you could live on, and find your people, and make a future and a home for yourself and others. In short, he thought, it was precisely what Celes—and Terra—needed.

And that, as Relm had perfunctorily explained, was at the heart of the ceremony: honoring who you had been and looking toward who you could become. It recognized how the past had shaped a person, accepting both the good and the bad as history, but not letting that define one's identity or future. He suspected that the tradition had arisen for exactly the reason why it was so appropriate for Terra and Celes; so many Thamasans over the generations had found their way here fleeing abuse, violence, genocide, war.

He was grateful that he could contribute somehow, both because it gave him something to do other than chores and because it let him channel his urge to help into something productive. Celes had accused him of mothering her, of smothering her, and maybe he was a little overprotective of his friends, a little too afraid of losing anyone else. So he kept himself busy, and he gave her space.

Locke sat with Leo and Relm in Strago’s living room for hours at a time, the two men cradling teacups and the little girl perched on the couch, sketchbook in her lap. If Relm had continued with her out-of-control sass, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to work with her. Fortunately, she seemed to slip into business mode once she had a pencil in hand, and that made it bearable. 

Leo talked exhaustively, and Locke realized for the first time that his customary seriousness and dedication were familiar—Leo might not be her father by blood, but Celes had inherited things from him all the same. This revelation delighted him, and he wondered if she would be pleased by it, too. He’d have to point it out later, maybe even tease them both for it.

In a way, it was nice to hear about Celes’s early life without her own bitterness or self-immolation. How serious she had been as a child, how eager to live up to impossibly high expectations. How she practiced over and over and over again, absorbing everything Leo taught her by force of will. The rare tantrums when she disappointed herself. To Locke’s surprise, Leo knew nothing more about Celes’s parents than Celes herself had shared a long time ago, but he supposed they were only a footnote in the pages of her life, really.

Eventually, it was Locke's turn to recount everything from their harrowing escape from South Figaro onward: Celes begging on her knees to save Doma, her determination on the path following Terra, the time they’d spent in Zozo with Ramuh. The opera, her nerves, her bravery, and the return to Vector. When he got to her standoff with Kefka and how she’d egressed the rest of them at great cost to herself, his voice broke as claws squeezed his heart again, and he had to remind himself that these were just memories, she was safe, everything was going to be all right.

Their only real disagreement was about Maranda. Locke didn’t want it to dominate Celes’s story; what would she think, what would she feel, if she saw the flames taking over Relm’s painting? But that was just him trying to protect her again. If this were meant to accurately represent her life, there really was no overstating the importance of Maranda as a tipping point.

All he could do was ensure that the good things made it in, too, like flowers pressed between pages of a treatise on war. Her delight when she learned she had the power to heal. How she had stubbornly challenged Ramuh’s preconceptions about humanity. How she had faced off against Kefka again and again to save her friends’ lives, first in Narshe and then in the belly of that cursed facility. And he tried, oh he tried to say something about Kohlingen, because it felt important. It was important. But his words failed him.

As for what kept Celes and Terra so busy, Locke wasn’t privy to the details of that. If he were to hazard a guess, based on just how uncomfortable Celes seemed to be when he checked in with her, they were supposed to talk about themselves. Part of him wanted to let her copy her answers from him, let her see herself the way he saw her, noble and strong and capable, a magnificent flower that had somehow taken root and flourished despite the inhospitable stone and metal landscape of Vector.

But, he supposed, that was what he was already trying to do with Relm. The rest would have to come from her.

He caught her mulling it over one evening on the beach she’d used to practice magic. She was pacing, clutching a little notebook in both hands, and staring up at the sky in frustration.

“They designed this for thirteen-year-olds,” he told her brightly. “Whatever you come up with, it will be leagues better than what a kid could think of. You’ll be fine.” She gave him a withering glare, and he couched it by adding, “I’m not saying it’s not important! I’m just saying that you don’t have to worry about it. You’re not going to be punished for getting an answer wrong. Just write from your heart.”

“From the heart,” she echoed in a sarcastic tone that made him suspect she was mocking him somehow. But she was clearly nervous about this, so he let it go.

“Look,” he said, gesturing upward at a streak of light overhead in the darkening sky, “you got two shooting stars in less than a week. I’m pretty sure that’s a sign of good luck if I’ve ever seen one. So don’t sweat it, all right?”

Of course she was going to sweat it anyway, and they both knew it, but he had to try. Even the rest of the village felt frantic, anticipatory; various Thamasans kept dropping by to consult with the girls. They were also planning a feast for the evening after the ceremony, and Locke allowed himself to be roped into preparations for that, too, hauling things around and setting up the village square with tables and decorations. 

Relm painted feverishly for two days. On the morning of the third she unveiled her canvas to Locke and Leo for approval. It was as tall as she was, covered by countless scenes and symbols woven seamlessly together. Somehow she had distilled the entire lifetime Leo had recounted, the moments and observations Locke had shared, and turned them into a thickly colorful impression of a life’s story. Yes, Maranda streaked black smoke and red flames across one side of the canvas, but it was balanced by intricate patterns of ice that split to form a protective shield in one image and to heal wounded figures in another. Beside a broken chain, two hands were clasped in the darkness, as if one were helping the other up; with a start, Locke recognized the first hand as his own.

“Exceptional work,” Leo said, as if approving some young soldier in his command.

Locke nodded dumbly. “It’s… it’s really, really… it’s perfect.”

“It better be,” Relm retorted. “I didn’t sleep.”

The real test would be what Celes thought, of course. Relm invited her next to look at the uncovered painting. Celes just stood silently as Relm twisted in on herself, her nerves becoming more and more apparent. Finally Celes touched the painting with her fingertips, saying nothing, no criticism, no suggestion, no compliment. Then she turned and left the room.

Relm’s face had fallen. Her lower lip was just beginning to quiver, and Locke was reminded that for all she might be an insufferable brat with a runaway mouth, she was just a kid, and sometimes the adults in her life needed to say the right thing, and now it was his turn. He nudged her shoulder, and she looked up at him with wide, hurt, hopeful eyes.

“It’s not anything wrong with your painting,” he said. “If anything, I think it’s a sign you got it right. She’s not—she has a hard time looking at herself. In the mirror, and in her memories. But I think it meant a lot to her, even if she doesn’t know what to say about it.”

“Thanks,” Relm mumbled, and for once, she sounded like she meant it.


***


Then all that remained was the day itself. Even if Locke couldn’t actually follow them into the cave, there was no way he would just sleep in and abandon Celes to her nerves. No, he fully intended to make a nuisance of himself while they were getting ready, and then escort her and Terra with everyone else.

At dawn, he let himself into Relm and Strago’s house and found the place already bustling with activity. Breakfast was a pile of pastries and dried fruits and mugs of tea gulped down before the girls went upstairs to get dressed for the day. Ceremony usually involved dressing up, so he wasn't surprised that they were both borrowing something from Relm—dresses that had belonged to her mother, which the kid seemed thrilled to be sharing. 

He had expected stuffy traditional robes of some sort, but Terra came back downstairs in a dress that might not have been fashionable but that certainly wasn't matronly, high-necked and bare-shouldered and belted with a broad sash in a contrasting red against the dress's cream and pink. 

"I've never worn anything fancy like this before,” Terra said bashfully, spinning to show off the skirt. “Do you like it?”

“The more important thing is if you like it,” he said, and she laughed.

“I think… I think I do.”

Around this time, others began to arrive. Leo joined them at the table, making quiet conversation with Terra about how she was feeling—nervous, of course, but excited. Soon Cyan showed up, followed by assorted Thamasans. The locals came bearing more treats, which Locke dutifully helped himself to, doling out compliments in turn. He kept his eyes on the base of the stairs, waiting, as the voices of neighbors filled the air with an anticipatory din.

Still no sign of either Celes or Relm. Locke was beginning to worry when the little girl finally appeared in an apparent state of panic. She searched the now-crowded room, then rushed toward Locke. 

“I think she’s freaking out,” Relm told him with her usual lack of tact or grace. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, already rising to his feet. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d talked Celes down from stage fright or second thoughts or whatever was racing through her mind right now, and he doubted it would be the last. Sure, he’d sworn to give her space, but in this case, she actually needed his support. 

Upstairs, the door to Terra’s room was closed. He rapped gently with his knuckles, and when she grunted something he interpreted as an affirmative, he let himself in. “Celes?”

She was standing by the window, clutching that damn little notebook, though she turned at his entrance, frowning, and… well. Locke swallowed as something inside his chest tightened.

Her hair had been brushed to a sheen and pulled back to frame her face; the rest of it fell in golden waves down her back. Instead of her usual pants and jacket, she wore a fitted green dress with embroidery along the neckline and hem. A sash accentuated her slender waist, tied in a bow. His eyes went to the embroidery again—he’d seen that same kind of needlework on garments worn by the Thamasans, and this was—

Oh. Oh, no. He’d been staring at Celes for too long. Not just ‘at Celes’ as a general thing, either. She was probably going to think—it wasn’t the embroidery he must seem to be staring at—

It wasn’t the embroidery he was staring at.

Well, shit. Yes, she was a pretty girl, but this was uncalled for. Besides, he’d had plenty of female friends whose bodies didn’t send all the blood rushing to his face like this. Why did seeing her like this trigger such a reaction in him?

Celes wasn’t even his type. She was tall and slim, all wiry muscle and long limbs and pale elegance, where he'd always been drawn to curves, to softness, to warm smiles and lively energy and dark eyes. That blasted frothy dress she'd worn in the opera, or her disguise in Vector—he had looked at her differently then, had struggled to reconcile it there, as he had when he held her in his arms in Rachel's house—

Ah. That was why. The moments that made him think of Rachel—sweet, girlish Rachel, strong-willed but in need of his protection—had stirred memories, nothing more. But Celes was strong and tough and could kick his ass five ways into next week and, most importantly, she was not Rachel, was nothing at all like her, and if the lonely part of his brain sometimes imagined a parallel that wasn't there...

No. No, Setzer was full of shit, and Celes was her own person who had nothing to do with Rachel, and Locke was just fine, thanks.

He ran a hand through his hair and crushed the urge to turn around and leave, because he was not going to abandon her, not now, not this time. So instead he cracked a faint smile. “Ready?”

“I don’t really have a choice at this point, do I?”

“You always have a choice,” he said, his smile widening fondly at her predictability, the cynicism and bitterness she projected to hide the vulnerability underneath. All her life, she'd expected herself to be a perfect soldier whose emotions were as impenetrable as her armor; he understood that now more than ever, having heard the story of her early years laid bare. “I would understand if you’re nervous. But you deserve to be here if you want to be, all right? It’s not my place to say whether you belong here or not, but I can say with absolute, one hundred percent confidence that the people who can make that call do believe it. Not just Relm and Strago. The whole damn village. They mean it.”

“They don’t even know me.”

“They’ve made one hell of an effort to get to know you in a short amount of time, and they’ve decided you belong here.”

Someone else might bite their fingernails or tear at the skin of their hands, but Celes was too well-trained for that; her tension was apparent only in how she made fists and released them. Though her sleeves were loose and flowing to the wrist, he could picture how the tendons in her arms would stand out like raised cords with each motion. Her voice was tense. “What if I think they’re wrong?”

"You’re allowed to think that, sure." He shrugged noncommittally, still smiling. “Give the rest of us a little credit, though? People can know you and think good things about you because they know you, hard as that may be for you to believe.”

“I wish you could come with me,” she muttered in a rush. A moment later, she looked like she regretted saying it. Of course. She hated showing weakness.

“The Thamasans have made it abundantly clear that their secrets will remain forever shrouded in mystery for me,” he said lightly. “Believe me, I am dying to know more. If you want to spill anything afterward, I’m all ears. But you’ll be fine.” He grabbed her hands in his, stilling their nervous motion, and she inhaled sharply. He kept his eyes not on her face or her body but on their joined hands; unbidden, the sight brought Relm’s painting to mind. “Whatever you’re afraid they’ll judge you for, you won’t be the only person in Thamasan history whose story includes a Maranda, or a Shiva. They know, and they understand, and they accept. It will be all right.”

A self-deprecating laugh rattled in the back of her throat. “Promise?” She sounded like she’d aimed for sarcasm and missed, landing in pained sincerity instead.
 
“I promise.”

“Then I guess it’s time.” Quietly, she added, “Thank you, Locke.”

“Any time.”

He felt a strange and inexplicable urge to press his lips to her knuckles before he released her hands, the sort of gesture that had no place in cheering up a friend. Something was getting mixed up inside of him. The effect of that green dress, maybe. Dammit, he needed to get this under control before it became her problem.

Downstairs, the crowd had quite thoroughly filled Strago’s house despite the early hour. Locke watched Celes take a deep breath and steady herself before stepping off the staircase into the metaphorical spotlight, and oh, he wanted to take her arm and let her lean on him, but she would refuse, and he couldn’t trust his own motivation anyway, the way something in him fluttered at the thought of having a pretty girl on his arm, her body brushing against his, warm and soft because he was thinking of Rachel, not of Celes, and... So he just swallowed the knot forming inside of him and let her go on alone, though he stayed only a few paces behind.

Relm insisted on sketching the girls before they left. She rushed through it, her pencil flying over the page. When Locke tried to hover over her shoulder, she glared up at him and then prodded him in the chest with the blunt end of her pencil.

“If you’re going to be such a pain, go stand with them.”

“But I–”

“You’re all going to abandon me when this is done,” she spat, blinking furiously, “so the least you can do is pose for me so I’ve got something to remember you by. Now fix your hair and go stand by Celes and for fuck’s sake, don’t be weird about it.”

He could feel his whole face burning—was it so obvious that even the kid noticed something was off? At least raking his hands through his hair gave him an excuse to hide his face while he regained something theoretically resembling composure.

Celes raised an eyebrow at him as he took his assigned place beside her, and he shrugged helplessly, prompting an amused snort from her. Terra leaned into Celes, pushing all three of them closer together, and Locke laughed at Celes’s expression until Relm yelled for them all to take it more seriously. Eventually she turned the page again and called for Leo and Cyan to join in, and all five of the outsiders dutifully posed while Relm scribbled away.

Something almost imperceptible happened as she drew, making the hairs on the back of his neck and his arms tingle. It was much fainter than when either Celes or Terra called upon the magic within them, subtler, but unmistakably present, her inheritance from those ancestors who had come here long ago seeking to secure the safety of their family. He wondered if Celes would pass along some sort of magic like this if she bore children someday, if her family line would be so blessed—and cursed—and if they would have to hide themselves away.

No. The future would be one in which those with the gifts of the Magi, the gifts of the Espers, could carry themselves without fear of persecution. He would see to it, somehow. Standing here with not one but two ex-imperial generals, the Doman who should have been their sworn enemy, and a half-Esper girl born of two worlds, it was not hard to imagine that such a future might be possible.

When Relm had fussed over the last of the lines on the page for too long and Locke was feeling like himself again, she set her sketchbook down and declared that they could go.

This must be a remarkable day for her, Locke realized—something to be treasured for a lifetime. Even at his own relatively young age, Locke had committed memories like this to the scrapbook of his mind, returning to them again and again when he needed comfort or nostalgic familiarity. He had lost enough people he loved to be grateful for the collection of memories he could only hope would never fade.


***


She and Terra walked at the front of a retinue that made her think of leading a battalion. Of course she thought of a battalion; what frame of reference did she have that was not military?

Despite Locke’s best efforts, there was still a pit at the base of her stomach. The past few days had been strange enough that she thought she might have dreamt them, was dreaming still, except for the morning chill on her bare shoulders—such an impractical garment, useless in combat, with a skirt that flared out and flowed with her movements, and sleeves that would make it impossible to wield a sword.

Terra looked beautiful, not like a fragile doll as she often seemed but like a graceful and elegant, if petite, woman. Celes was aware of her own height, the wiry muscles that took all softness from her body, the rushed alterations necessary to make this dress accommodate her. Relm had insisted that they wear her mother’s dresses, but her mother had been of ordinary height and build. At least the new seams defacing the dress could be easily removed.

Did she really belong here, or was she merely borrowing Terra’s invitation just as she was borrowing the dress, and just as ill-suited for it?

She would not dwell on Locke’s initial reaction to the dress, would not allow herself to read into it; he had settled so quickly back into his usual self, becoming perhaps more himself than she'd seen him be in weeks.

He walked behind them, with Leo and the others, carrying Relm’s painting. Celes was grateful that it would remain here, inside the mountain, joining generations of other memories that were better off left behind. Something about it made her feel the same way she did under the scrutiny of Locke’s full attention, when she could feel him listening to her even when she said nothing. She did not enjoy being so completely seen—her secrets, her life’s ugliest moments and most terrible pain, laid bare in perfectly rendered symbols for anyone to witness.

And yet… there was something reassuring about it, too. She dreaded being seen like this because she was afraid she would be despised if anyone truly knew her, but Locke was right; these people did know her, and they did not despise her. There was blood on her hands, yet they accepted her for the flawed person she was, and they believed she deserved the chance to start over, to become someone and something new.

Was that what would happen here? A second chance? Did she deserve it?

This time, when they approached the gate, someone was ready and waiting for them: an entire contingent of Espers, silently standing watch.

Because this was a ceremony, and because Celes had spent most of her life in Gestahl’s rigidly structured army, she expected that everything would be handled with absolute precision, the movements choreographed and rehearsed, the faces somber and resolute. But the Thamasans hailed the Espers as familiarly as they greeted each other, and her painting was handed over with great care but no formality.

The now empty-handed Returners made a sort of receiving line to wish her and Terra well. Cyan shook their hands. Leo embraced Celes as he’d seldom done, a great big bear hug, and if she closed her eyes she could imagine for a moment that they were truly father and daughter, instead of two soldiers who had served together on the battlefield. “It has been an honor to be part of this,” he said.

“I'm glad you could be,” she said.

Locke hovered awkwardly beside Leo, arms crossed over his chest. Instead of hugging her, he took her hand and clasped it in both of his. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something, but then he just grinned, wagged his eyebrows at her, and winked. Well, she supposed he’d already doled out words of wisdom when she needed them most. He seemed like he was trying too hard to relax, as though he might guide her by example. Then he squeezed her hand and let her go, and she turned away from the little group of people who were the closest thing she’d ever had to a family.

No—that was an incomplete thought. Terra was going through this with her, and Terra was a friend, perhaps even something of a sister, both of them raised together by the Empire’s cruelty and finding respite from it in the same place.

Terra’s hand slipped into hers, interrupting her thoughts. Celes glanced over in surprise and saw the other girl’s nervous smile falter.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

Celes realized that she did not; the past few months had eroded the wall between her and other people, just enough for a select few to reach through and touch her.

“It’s all right,” she said.

With a dull groan, the heavy stone doors slid apart, seemingly of their own volition, and disappeared into the cliff side. She and Terra followed the Espers through the open doorway and into the unknown.

Celes had expected perhaps the rough-hewn walls of a natural cave, or else careful paneling like something made by human hands. But the space within was neither. The high ceiling hollowed out more of the mountain space than seemed physically possible. A sourceless light filled the chamber from nowhere, as if the very air itself brightened the room.

And it was a room, a high-walled chamber with other doors set into its walls, and vivid jewel-hued waterfalls pouring past crystalline trees that sparkled and shone. It was only because she had recently spent so much time becoming acquainted with Thamasa that she was able to guess that this room served a similar purpose to the Thamasans’ town square, and that the other doors might lead to housing of some sort. No wonder the Espers were able to live here without losing themselves to claustrophobia. It was like another world held together with magic, like the world Ramuh had recounted to her so many months before.

A shiver ran through her as she stepped over the threshold into this place of wonder. Terra watched Celes with shining eyes, as if waiting for her reaction to the mountain’s mysteries, and Celes paused to consider what her reaction was.

It was hard to name the feeling that overtook her. Not fear, though that was the closest comparison she could think of. It was more than just the presence of magic, which made the magic in her own blood buzz in sympathy. No, this was a presence, a power that was deeply wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

Awe. She felt awe.

Straight ahead, toward the inner heart of the mountain, a passageway deeper into the darkness commanded her attention. She knew at once that something very important was located here. For all that Gestahl ensured that his subjects shared his scorn for the peasant superstitions of the uncivilized lands beyond Vector, she did not for one second doubt that this was a sacred place.

“You feel it,” an Esper said, sounding satisfied, in a strange, reedy voice. It seemed that the Espers did not bother assuming their human forms here, though this figure was at least humanoid: a child-sized being hovering at eye level, held aloft by a pair of gossamer wings that flapped with a nearly imperceptible whirr.

“Of course she does,” Terra said with absolute confidence. 

“What is it?” Her own voice came out in a whisper.

“The presence of the goddesses,” a deeper voice intoned on her other side, languid and sonorous, from a great and majestic beast. “Mothers of magic, originators of us all. They chose this land as their final resting place.”

Celes shook her head. “I don’t understand.” Gestahl had acknowledged them as powerful beings like the Espers themselves, but what she sensed here was beyond her comprehension, and utterly unfamiliar.

For once, she was grateful for Strago's long-winded explanations; the old man settled in beside her as their retinue continued onward, and he began to tell a story that would have seemed like a fairy tale if not for the impossibility that surrounded her on all sides. "Long ago," he said, "the goddesses warred endlessly amongst themselves and used humans and Espers alike as pawns. What they fought for, or over, is not for us to know. Their battle was destroying all of their creation, and they were too perfectly balanced; none of them could win, and none of them could lose, but the world around them would pay the price. So they agreed to abdicate their place and leave the world in the hands of mortals, and they dove into the earth, creating this mountain. Deep within, it is said, their presence remains, dormant.”

“Meaning that they are sleeping, and they might wake someday?” Celes cocked her head. “What if they resume their battle, or they unite against you?”

One of the Espers laughed. “So many questions.”

“I’m sorry—I don’t mean to disrespect—” Celes faltered.

The Esper silenced her with a raised hand. “No. It is good to ask questions. Accepting without question is dangerous."

"No one worth having in your life will insist that you stop asking questions,” Strago added, his mustache quivering with disapproval. "Sometimes the answer will be 'no,' and oftentimes you won't get any answer at all—but that doesn't mean you shouldn't ask."

This felt so fundamentally right that it lodged itself in Celes’s centermost self. She thought of how Leo had encouraged her analytical mind until it led her to question something that he considered unquestionable. She thought of how Gestahl had deflected and discouraged and accused her of disloyalty. And, by contrast, she remembered the first time she had seen Locke among his fellow Returners, how he had challenged Banon in her defense, and how many questions he had peppered her with over the following months without ever forcing her to answer. It always comes back to him, doesn’t it? You’re so predictable.

Beside her, Terra was shaking. Not with fear, Celes realized, but with excitement, with anticipation. They had reached another stone doorway, and once again the gate opened as if of its own free will. The pull of magic intensified. Once more she stepped across a threshold and found herself rendered speechless.

In this deeper chamber, surrounded on all sides by sheer walls descending downward into true nothingness, a raised platform held three golden statues of such grace and beauty as to defy description or even comprehension. 

Terra laughed, a delighted childlike peal that broke the spell holding Celes’s tongue. She had clearly been here before; this was one of the secrets she had convinced the others to share with Celes. She turned to Celes again, radiant with joy. "Isn't it wonderful?"

“Are they… the goddesses themselves?” Celes’s cheeks burned with the foolishness of her own question.

“No," the deep-voiced Esper said, with no trace of judgment in his voice. "These were crafted by mortal hands, far older than any of us can imagine. But they do hold some of the goddesses’ power, and they act as a focus for us.”

The assembled Thamasans took their places on the platform, and the Espers too, though several of them hovered above the nothingness instead, which made Celes dizzy. And thus the moment arrived, slowly and then all at once. Celes was grateful for Terra's hand in hers, for Strago standing beside her with little Relm on his other side, for the other Thamasans she had come to know over the past weeks, all smiling reassurance at her.

"You stand with us," Relm whispered to her. "Here."

"I am sorry that we could not bring your family with us," the reedy-voice winged Esper said. “Or the young man who is courting you.”

Celes blanched. “He’s not—we’re close friends, yes, but he’s… just a friend.”

Relm snorted, an ugly sound of derision. Strago shushed her.

"I could not ask you to invite anyone else here on my behalf," Celes continued hurriedly. "If Gestahl had any idea what this mountain contained, he would stop at nothing to make it his. It's a tremendous act of trust that you've allowed me inside. I'm… I'm grateful for that, and I could ask nothing more of you."

The impression of a raised eyebrow on a dragonlike face. "Is there a reason we should not trust you, Celes Chere?"

"I have done… terrible things," she said, the taste of blood and smoke on her tongue. They know. They know, and yet you are here still. Remember that.

The Esper's laugh, tired and old and amused, surprised her. “As have we, child. Our people have been used as weapons since the time of the Magi, one thousand years ago. But we take our destinies into our own hands, and we become who we choose to be, not what we were made to be.”

The words were still ringing in Celes's heart when a Thamasan elder spoke up. "Should we begin now?"

Here, at last, was the ritual they had prepared for, with its patterns and its traditions to be followed. She expected them to begin with Terra, whose claim to this ceremony without a doubt outranked her own. Yet after a pregnant pause during which the gathered Espers appeared to be waiting for something, the elder gestured instead to Celes.

"Who tells the story of Celes Chere?"

"We do," Strago intoned. "Strago Magus and Relm Arrowny of Thamasa."

Celes had not realized the two had different names. Did they not share blood, either? After all, there was no visible similarity between them. The thought that Strago had perhaps adopted Relm, or Relm's mother, gave her a strange sense of true kinship with them both. These past days had been so focused on an invasive exploration of her own life, and she was not like Locke, not prone to interrogating others about their secrets to satisfy her own curiosity. But if these two were—in a sense—becoming family to her, then before she left Thamasa, she resolved to ask their story.

It was time for her to rise, as Relm’s painting was presented. Blessedly, Relm did not narrate the painting, letting her art stand by itself. This time, Celes did not flee or hide her face in shame. Those around her regarded the painting with all the solemnity of formal witnesses; the Espers flew or shuffled closer to examine it until all had seen what needed to be seen.

“Celes,” the eldest Esper commanded, “tell us who you will become.”

The answer to this question had kept her awake long before she had ever set foot in Thamasa, and having to answer it now was what she dreaded most about the ceremony.

“I will…” she began, but the words would not come. How presumptuous, how false, to assert any claim to a better self. Yet she was compelled to continue. “I will become…” She closed her eyes, tried to remember how Locke and Terra had each reassured her in the past, but their kindness slipped like smoke through her fingers and she stood alone over the precipice of her own self-doubt.

The Espers were amused; they had likely seen generations of children struggle with this question before, though she was no child and ought to be better prepared. One of them prompted her, “Will you use your gifts to help heal our broken world, perhaps?”

“Yes,” she hastily agreed, relieved. “I swear it.”

The voice chuckled. “We aren’t asking for your allegiance, Celes. You need not take an oath to prove yourself to us. But your story is one of redemption, isn’t it?”

“It… is,” she said, and her stomach churned. She had answered wrongly. No, there were no wrong answers—she needed to release that fear. “I… I wish to become the person my friends believe I am. I wish to become worthy of the second chance I’ve been offered. I wish to become worthy of you.”

“Not what you wish,” the Esper said. “Will you become this?”

“I can’t promise that,” she said in despair. “None of us can promise the future; too much is out of our control. But… I’ll try.” She took a deep breath and reached within herself for the certainty that kept eluding her, and at last she took hold of something solid. “If I’m to be a blade in someone’s hand, I want to fight for what I think is right. I want to fight so that other people don’t have to, to keep the world safe. To become a… a warrior for justice, even if that’s a pretentious and presumptuous thing to say.”

“No one here would accuse you of such a thing. Well spoken, Celes.”

She recognized the dismissal and took her original place. Her turn in the spotlight had ended, and she settled down with both relief and disappointment. Other possible answers, better responses, floated into her mind once the time had passed to speak them aloud, and the voice needled at her. Does it matter if you said something foolish? You’re only here as a formality because Terra asked. You could speak nonsense and it would change nothing. But there was no reason to doubt Terra, or the Thamasans, or the Espers. Her insecurities were an insult to them.

"Who tells the story of Terra Branford?"

Terra reached out and squeezed her hand, then rose to stand among a cluster of Espers. Celes had refrained from asking about Terra’s life record. If Terra had wanted to discuss it, she would have. And, Celes was a little ashamed to realize, she had been so preoccupied with her own struggles that she overlooked her friend’s.

The record took no clear physical form, yet Celes was aware of its sudden presence on the dais with them. Somehow it had been sculpted of magic, in a way Celes could not really explain, nor could she explain how it was that she understood it. But it might as well have been woven from tangible threads with colors she could make out. There was Terra’s earliest childhood, like a color she could taste on her tongue, and the long dark years of Kefka’s control, and then—the rescue, her friendships with the Returners, individual threads Celes recognized as the people she also knew. None of the content itself surprised her. But there was something else about the weaving…

"I do."

The voice chilled Celes. No, that was not correct—she shivered, and there were goosebumps on her arms, but not from fear. From shock. From power. From the strange and inexplicable otherworldliness of that voice, even beyond the Espers present here. She recognized that voice; she had heard it once before.

"Maduin of the Espers," the eldest said, with a wry smile. "Good. You are here."

"I am here."

The shade of a figure stood beside Terra and placed a hand on her shoulder. Celes's heart pounded. When she looked straight at him, she could not make out his face, as though he were a memory only half-seen, yet somehow she knew he was smiling. Tears poured down Terra's cheeks, but she too was smiling. She did not look surprised—relieved, but not surprised. She had known he would come.

Once more the gathered Espers and Thamasans bore witness to Terra’s magic-woven record. Celes at first tried to catch her friend’s eye, but this was not the time to ask; this was not about her own feelings; this was Terra’s moment, and so Celes sat back and let the spotlight shine on the half-Esper girl basking in her father’s presence.

“Terra. Tell us who you will become.”

Terra did not hesitate, as though drawing strength and confidence from Maduin’s hand on her shoulder. “I will become a bridge between the human and Esper worlds,” she said. “I will travel between here and the rest of the human world. I’ve made friends who understand human politics who can help me, and I’ll learn everything I can from the Espers, and together we’ll find a way to make a peace that will actually last. It won’t be easy, but I’ll keep trying until we succeed.”

From anyone else, Celes might have written off these words as hopelessly naive, but Terra knew how dark the world could be, and her conviction and hope rose from defiance, not ignorance. Celes wanted to cheer for her. How far she had come from the lost girl with haunted eyes Celes had encountered so long ago in Narshe, her clouded mind shadowy with nightmares. 

“We are proud to know you both, and proud to add your stories to the tapestry of our history. Let us sing together.”

So much of Thamasan tradition was shared in song, Strago had explained to her, and this was part of the culture they shared with the Espers. Their many voices rose together in one, harmonizing and spanning a range beyond the natural human register, and the beauty of it filled her eyes with tears, even if she could not understand the words.

At the end, everyone present sang their own name, one after another. Some of the names she knew, of course—the Thamasans, except Relm, who was still too young. The Esper names were unfamiliar, except for Maduin, and—and a strange, strange shivering feeling, her whole body quivering, as she heard a little tinkle of bells and a deep thunderous sound and knew, without seeing them, that some part of Shiva and Ramuh were here, too.

The final names to be sung were those of Celes and Terra. And then for a long, long moment afterward, they waited in stillness as the echoes swirled around the cavern and seemed to carry through into the darkness impossibly far below. Did the goddesses themselves hear their people? In their sleep, did they learn this story, and did they dream?

After the last note had faded away, they filed off the dais and retraced their steps toward the entrance of the mountain. No one had much to say, not even Strago; the significance of what had transpired settled over them like a thick winter coat, and Celes followed the others in a comfortable daze.

It was not until they were once again in the massive crystalline entrance chamber that the mood lifted enough for conversation to resume. Celes had never been hugged so many times in her life, as every single adult Thamasan seemed compelled to embrace her and gush congratulations and welcome. In the face of so much clearly stated support, not even the wavering uncertainty at her core could find room for doubt. In fact, the little voice had fallen utterly silent.

Terra, however, was not silent. Celes had never seen her so animated, so delighted, walking with her father’s arm around her.

“Maduin,” Celes said to the familiar, unfocused figure, “I’m glad to see you.”

Terra ducked her head, looking suddenly shy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he was here,” she admitted. “I wasn’t sure how to say it, and I felt—selfish, or greedy, and wanted to keep it my own secret. But I’ll have more time here in the mountain with him, and I wanted you to be part of this today…”

“You have nothing to apologize for!” Celes put her hands on Terra’s shoulders and looked down into the other girl’s guileless eyes. “This is your day. This is your family.”

“It’s yours too, now, if you want it…”

Celes smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “For letting me be part of it. I’m going to miss you so much—of course you want to stay here, your father is here, I’m so happy for you, but I will miss you…” Tears were welling up in her eyes again, and she dabbed at them, worried that the water might stain the silk of Relm’s mother’s dress.

Terra took her hands. “Let’s not think about that right now. We don’t have to say goodbye yet. And it won’t be a proper goodbye, anyway—just a ‘see you later.’ I promise you that.”

“I will hold you to that,” Celes said, and she could imagine it, suddenly—a bright future in which she was helping Leo rebuild Maranda, then visited the others in Figaro Castle and every so often a rose-hued star would shine overhead and land among them, and there would be tearful hellos and grateful reunions and friendships that would last, and last, and last.


***


They would not let him wait on the mountain all day. Once the gate slammed shut, locking its forbidden secrets out of his reach, the Thamasans who remained behind dragged him with the others back to the village and put him to work again. He didn’t mind, really—it was maddening knowing that something amazing was happening down there and he would never get to know what it was, and keeping busy kept him from dwelling on that.

Relm had grinned wickedly and offered to sneak him in on the way there, but they both knew she was just trying to get a rise out of him. Insufferable little goblin.

The worst part was that he probably could have at least gotten through the initial gate before he set off their magical tripwire, or whatever protection the Espers had rigged up, and that first glimpse of the interior would have given him something to go off of. Right now he knew nothing except that it was a cave and the Espers lived there, but he could hardly imagine them camping out in smoky caverns or sleeping beneath dripping stalactites on a hard stone floor. Maybe it was a fabulous palace, or an upside-down world, or…

Not that he needed to know. It wasn’t any of his business. Probably it was safer for everyone if fewer people knew. But he was inconsolably, frustratingly curious, and he doubted either Celes or Terra would breathe a word to him about it, and knowing that this curiosity was never going to be satisfied felt like a most unpleasant ache.

So he worked with the others to finish transforming the village, and by the time the celebrants came down the mountain at twilight, Thamasa was nearly unrecognizable. Garlands and lanterns hung between the houses and around the town square, casting it all in a twinkling glow.

Locke stood a distance apart as Thamasans and Espers—Espers!—mingled in the lamplight. It didn’t seem safe for them all to be out in the open like this, but Gestahl was defanged, at least for now, and this many magical beings in one place could probably pack one hell of a punch, far more than poor Ramuh defending himself alone in Zozo. Besides, they’d all taken human form, which seemed like a reasonable precaution.

The tables throughout the town square were laden with different dishes, and Locke let the Thamasans pile his plate high with their customary cuisine. He could see himself becoming fond of it eventually, associating the tastes with the memories of a strange and wonderful time, and it was easy enough to be effusive in his praise of each bite. He ate absently, his eyes on Celes and Terra. Something had changed in them during their visit to the mountain. The nervous energy had faded from them both, leaving them calmer and more grounded than he had ever seen them. But they were surrounded by the rest of their village now, and that was where they belonged.

The Thamasans poured round after round of a strong, dark wine served in tiny cups, and he drank just enough of it to give the night a warm rounded feel. Even the Espers drank, toasting the new members of their community. There was singing, too, and he cheerfully joined in, even though he felt like the only one who didn’t know the melodies or the words, and he certainly couldn’t carry a tune.

Celes’s voice soared over the rest, of course, as beautiful as the rest of her and as strong. When had she stopped holding herself back? She ought to do this more often.

Eventually, a handful of musicians began to play, like nothing Locke had ever heard before in all his travels. The two fiddles he recognized, of course, but there was a woodwind with a mournful cry that was entirely new to him, and some kind of banjo, and a low-voiced string instrument. The melody sounded like a dirge, haunting and dark, but the beat was fast. A hint of melancholy tempered the joyful energy buzzing in the air, and that was somehow perfect—with all that the Thamasans and their ancestors had suffered, was it no wonder that even their celebrations had an air of sadness? Yet the rhythm of it filled him and he found himself tapping his feet in time, and when the dancing started, he was swept away in it.

They all paired off, not by gender but by who was closest to hand. Even tipsy, he had enough sense to avoid Celes and her embroidered dress. Best not to risk a repeat of the morning. Thus he passed around a number of partners, elderly Thamasans and ageless Espers, in some sort of intricate pattern he couldn’t quite follow.

Briefly, he danced with Terra, and the look on her face was brighter than any star. Her emerald curls bounced with every movement, despite Relm's efforts to constrain them, and it was like her entire spirit was dancing. Here, surrounded by friends and by family—because the Espers really were her family—she had finally found the answer she was looking for. He had always wanted to believe she might be happy someday, and now at last she was, with a contagious joy that spread through everyone she came in contact with.

He danced with an Esper whose touch nearly made his hair stand on end, then with Relm, who kept trying to pull him off the beat and laughing, and then with Leo. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Terra and Celes arm in arm, both of them laughing. Then Terra spun Celes one last time—and sent her careening right into Locke.

Instinctively, he reached to steady her before she could lose her balance. Celes met his eyes with that gaze that always pierced like a lance right through to the quick of him. Her face was flushed, and she seemed winded from exertion, but there was no darkness in her eyes. No armor, no ice, no pain, just… peace.

He was still processing what he was seeing when she ducked her head sheepishly and giggled—Celes Chere, former imperial general, giggled with embarrassment.

"Having fun?" he asked her; his own cheeks hurt from smiling.

"I don't know what they put in Thamasan wine," she said, "but it seems like it ought to be illegal."

"I don't think it's the wine."

She leaned closer and tilted her head at him with a little inquisitive grin. "Then what is it?"

He was sure he’d had an answer prepared, but it disappeared, banished by her lidded blue eyes and playful tone. What had he meant to say? That they were drunk on life? Drunk on the magic whirling around them, on how strange and dreamlike it was to be surrounded by not just Thamasans but Espers?

"Dance!" Terra called to them, making a little shooing motion with her hands.

Bodies moved around them, changing partners or not, most of them having long since given up on the structured dance that too many people here didn't know. Locke didn’t move, and neither did Celes, and as long as that was true and he only touched her arms…

“We don’t have to,” she said.

"I'm just not used to dancing with someone my own height," he said, which was simultaneously the stupidest excuse he’d ever uttered and also a true statement.

She flushed. "Is it… a problem?"

"No! It's fine, it's just…"

"I've actually never danced before tonight," she said lightly. A moment later, her face fell, the sheepish smile fading into a scowl as she glanced away from him, her self-consciousness pulling the armor back into place. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm some poor orphaned puppy who's never seen the sun. I wasn't going to tell you, I just—I knew you'd…"

Oh, hell. This was going all wrong. For once, she had lowered her guard and forgotten about her pain and her scars, and he'd ruined it. Something wonderful had happened to her up there in the mountain, something wonderful was happening to her here in Thamasa and he was ruining it because he was acting like a big dumb oaf. There had to be something he could do to cut this off before she spiraled back into an ice queen masking her pain behind a cold facade, or worse.

A moment of sudden inspiration. He bowed low with a sweeping flourish that would have made Edgar proud, then offered her his hand while still bent at the waist, fully aware of just how ridiculous he must look. Counting on it, in fact. He smiled primly at her, tried to affect something resembling Edgar's tone, and said, "Milady, if you'll do me the honor…"

She scoffed. "Locke, what are you doing?"

"Asking you to dance." He beckoned with his outstretched hand. "Please. You can’t leave me hanging like this." Even if I deserve it right now.

She seemed flustered, but it was an ordinary sort of flustered; he could work with that. "I don't know how–"

"And I don't know the first thing about defending myself, as you're so quick to remind me, but that hasn't stopped you from trying to teach me anyway. C'mon. This time, I can teach you. All right?"

Hesitantly, she took his proffered hand. "But…"

"What's the matter?"

A little of the earlier mirth returned to her eyes. "The last time I took your hand, we both fell over."

He laughed, caught off guard both by the sudden shift in her mood and by the unexpected memory. "I guess I can't technically argue with that, can I? However..." He slipped a hand to her waist, positioned his other between her shoulder blades, and—she might kill him for this afterward—dipped her backwards before she could stop him. For longer than he ought to, he held her there, grinning down at her, relishing the feeling that he had surprised her. "I promise I won't drop you again, all right?"

Though he thought she might fight him, or laugh, she had instead gone quiet; he realized she was trembling. He bit back an apology, trying to keep the mood light. Belatedly, she nodded. He righted her but did not release her; he could feel her tightly-coiled muscles through the shimmering fabric of her dress.

"Other hand on my shoulder. Good. Now, follow me. Left foot. Right foot. Back—yes, like that."

She was a quick study, and oh, was she graceful. Even if she didn't know the steps, she was in absolute control of her own body, moving so fluidly—all the smoothness and elegance she showed on the battlefield, but here it was a thing of beauty through and through. He led her, but she didn't follow, she answered, mirroring his steps and returning them to him in a way that kept him on his toes. It didn’t matter what anyone else was doing, if the rest of them were changing partners or not; he was dancing the way he’d danced all his life and she challenged him to think of it in new ways, as if their bodies were deep in conversation together.

And then a devious glint came into her eyes. She mirrored his hands with her own and then leaned forward, and suddenly he realized that his weight was entirely in her control, not his. Desperately, he wrapped his own arms around her neck to try to maintain his balance as she dipped him, just as he'd done to her a few minutes earlier.
 
"Well, this is new," he sputtered, looking up into her laughter. Her arms held him strong and sure as iron. Her blue eyes crinkled with delight.

"It's only fair," she said with a prim smile.

When she straightened, he fell completely against her with an embarrassing little 'oof.' With his arms tight around her neck and shoulders, and his body pressed against hers, and their cheeks nearly touching, they stood so closely together that dancing would be impossible. Blood rushed to his ears.

Slowly, so slowly, her hand slid from his waist up his back, fingers tracing his spine, and where she touched him it burned, every part of his body touching hers burned, he would have sworn it was heat from magic except that when he glanced back at her face, he forgot how to think.

What he had heard in her voice that day he'd almost lost her in Kohlingen—that gentle ease, that warmth and openness, the pure spirit trapped beneath her armor, glimpsed only in stolen glances for all these months, without the shadows of the empire haunting her—he saw it now in her clear blue eyes, her flushed cheeks, the slight smile on her lips. Ordinarily, she was beautiful, but the radiance of feeling so plainly on display on her face transformed her. She shone. He understood why Relm had fussed so much about drawing their portrait. If he could capture this moment for himself forever, somehow…

"Celes," he said, and his own voice was rough and low and thick with emotion. He brushed the hair from her eyes, rested his hand on her cheek.

Her lips parted. He traced her bottom lip with his thumb, and her chest rose and fell against his as she drew in a shaky breath. Her fingertips cradled the back of his neck, and he leaned into her and she closed her eyes and–

 "Do you two need a room?" Relm jeered, and it was at that moment that he realized that most of the dancing had stopped and all eyes were on them. Someone snickered.

His heart was pounding and his face was on fire when he dropped his arms away from Celes. Her shoulders hunched, though her hands lingered at the base of his neck. The music was still playing, not that he could really hear it over the sound of the blood roaring in his ears.

No—that wasn't just his ears. A strange, keening whine sparked and stopped in the distance. He wasn't the only one who heard it, either. Celes's hands tensed as it went off again, and her whole body stiffened in obvious fear. Without thinking, he pulled her closer, the instinct to protect her too strong to resist.

"What's wrong?" he asked in her ear. 

"That's Magitek," she said in a hollow, dumbfounded voice. Whatever lingering effect of the wine and the music and the dance dissipated at once.

"Out here?" He searched her face. "Are you sure?"

"I know that sound."

Again, a crackling noise, a metallic groan, and then a roaring explosion in the distance, and over the hills, he thought he saw the spark of a fire.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”

“Celes.” He cupped his hands around her cheeks, made her look at him before she could spiral again. “We’ll figure this out. You’re not alone here. We’ll investigate what it is and then we’ll make a plan. All right?”

“I need my sword,” she said.


***


She wanted to believe that there was no more Magitek left in the entire world. She wanted to believe that she was just imagining things, as Locke thought she was—she had seen the doubt in his eyes, the worry not for what lurked out in the hills but for what he thought was going on in her mind, and it made her want to scream.

It was not the only thing that made her want to scream.

At least he didn’t try to stop her. She tore down the road, leapt up the porch steps, and flung the door open. No one was home, of course; everyone else was still celebrating, though the music that reached her ears now sounded distorted, twisted. It was a wonder she hadn’t torn the dress in her hurry. Well, it had never belonged to her anyway, not really. None of this was meant to be hers, but that didn’t mean she would let harm come to it without a fight.

She changed quickly, left the dress on Relm’s bed, fastened her scabbard at her waist, and then hastened back downstairs.

Along the edge of the porch, she caught something out of the corner of her eye, a shape that was darker than the darkness around it, almost imperceptible. For a moment she doubted herself, but there was something familiar about this lurking shadow that she choked on, as she remembered hands trying to choke her, trying to…

"You!" she snarled, vaulting over the railing at him.

He was fast, just as fast as she remembered, but she was in full possession of her facilities this time, and she had something much more important than her own life to protect this time. Before, she had been too addled to think of saving Locke; now she stood between this assassin and not just the man she loved but her friends and the village that had opened their hearts even to the likes of her.

With unrelenting ferocity, she swung at him, feinted and jabbed, dashed in to try to kick at his legs and throw him off balance. He nimbly sidestepped, bobbed his head. Her blows had no more chance of landing than if he were as insubstantial as smoke.

Yet as this went on, she realized he was neither attacking nor fleeing. Was he biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike her down with a poisoned blade? Stalling to distract her while someone else completed the assassination she thought he was here to enact?

There was a distinctive, audible roar from down the path, and a sudden burst of heat against Celes’s back.

"Drop your weapons," Terra called out, though her voice was shaking. "Put your hands over your head or I will set you on fire before you can come after either of us again."

The assassin hesitated. His masked face inclined ever so slightly to take in this new threat—Terra, still wearing the dress she had borrowed for the ceremony, cupping between her palms an inferno that glowed white-hot and promised pain.

To Celes’s surprise, the assassin took a step back and slowly raised his hands, though they still held firm to his knives.

"Drop your weapons," Terra repeated.

The assassin gestured toward Celes, a slow and nonthreatening motion, though she shifted her stance in anticipation of a sudden attack.

"You should be more afraid of me than of her right now," Terra said. "I've burned a lot of people before and they weren't even threatening my friend. Give me one reason why I shouldn't burn you now."

It was impossible to interpret the man's hesitation, shrouded as he was. But then he opened his gloved hands, and the blades clattered to the ground beside him. His arms remained raised, and he did not move.

When he spoke at last, his voice was low and gravely as if with disuse. "The Empire is coming to Thamasa. I'm making a stand against them here."

 

 

Locke and Celes dancing in a forest clearing, lit by lanterns

Notes:

"Narrative (or dramatic) irony occurs when the reader or viewer knows something that the characters in the story do not. This can create a sense of unease or anticipation as the audience waits to see how the characters will react to the situation they are in."

 

(my beta reader said I should just let that be the entirety of the notes this time, but I have too many things to say for that)

My birthday was this past Sunday and I'm celebrating by finally posting a chapter. Thank you all so, so, so much for your words of patient reassurance. I think I finally understand why I struggle emotionally with my inability to follow canon despite intending to. I don't know if this will mean I stop struggling with it, but, hey, we have a chapter, and I'm not sure this would have been possible without some much-needed words of support from you folks. Thank you. I hope you enjoy it.

This one's a doozy. At almost 12,000 words, I think it might be our longest or at least second-longest chapter so far. Took a while to write, too. The dance scene came to me in April 2022; the closing scene with a certain shadowy figure first showed up in my drafts in August 2021 (but back then I thought the airship would bring them to Thamasa and I therefore had Edgar in the scene, don't ask why or how, I just dump ideas on the page when they come to me and fixing them is Future Lauren's problem). Figuring out what the ceremony in the mountain needed to be has occupied my brain for months now, because much of this I'm making up as I go, but it has to fit what came before and what comes next. An interesting exercise. Did Ted Woolsey write them as the "goddesses" instead of the Triad? I don't know why it's in my head that way but it is, and we're rolling with it. I might retcon it later if I absolutely can't live with it. There's a lot of ambiguity around the Triad, the Esper World, and so on, depending on what translation you go with. I've had a hard time with that.

There are things I could say about the actual content of this chapter but maybe I'll let it speak for itself. I just love these characters so, so, so much.

So, hey, I made a new Locke costume (complete with a phoenix patch on the jacket) and wore it to perform a concert with friends at MAGFest.

Naturally, we played some FFVI music. When I've got video, I'll share a link.

And yes, more art. Is this the most important emotional moment in the chapter, or the most visually inspiring scene? No. No, it is not. But this is a roxeri fic underneath everything and I am a roxeri fan, and just be glad I'm not inundating you with my endless Celes pinups (and if you follow me on social media and saw earlier drafts of this picture, did you ever guess that it was actually an illustration from the fic because it totally is, ohohoho — kinda, anyway, though it also looks like a romance novel cover and this isn't quite a romance novel, is it?)

Chapter 31: The Decisive Battle

Summary:

In a just world, the Thamasans could go on living in peace, with Terra safely among them, and none of them would have to risk being broken by the horrors of war. Celes’s fury that Kefka had forced this imminent nightmare on them was powerful enough to burn away all of her fear.

Let them come. She would not allow Thamasa to fall.

(hi, I'm back, and so is this fic!)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Something about the evening had left him feeling jittery and out of sorts.

It wasn’t that he disbelieved her, exactly. He had sworn never to doubt her again, and he intended to keep that promise. Celes could certainly recognize the sound of Magitek armor, even from a distance. And pessimist though she might be, he'd never seen her hallucinate before, nor was she primed to imagine Magitek armor of all things here in Thamasa of all places — except that things seemed to be going well, and an Imperial invasion would be the embodiment of all her worst nightmares.

And therein lay the problem; he didn’t want her fears to be true in Thamasa, of all places, precisely because things were finally going well for her and Terra. The thought of Gestahl snatching one more thing away from them was… intolerable. But pretending it was not true would not make it untrue, and Celes seemed sure, and even Locke himself had heard something echoing from the hills.

Thus while she left to change clothes and retrieve her weapons, he dutifully rounded up Leo and Cyan, as well as Strago; he asked the old man to assemble the Thamasan elders while the other Thamasans ended the town’s festivities. He would have collected Terra, too, but a quick investigation rendered that moot.

“She went after Celes, probably because she thought Celes might need to talk to a friend,” Relm said, frowning at him while surreptitiously slipping food underneath the table without nearly as much stealth as she intended.

“That’s astute of her,” Locke said a little absently. He couldn’t help it; he was running through a mental checklist of what else Celes might need when she returned.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure anyone who was paying attention would think the same thing. Is it that you’re scared of commitment or something? I’ve read books where–"

“That dog,” he interrupted, jarred out of his distraction.

Relm let out a groan of frustration. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“That’s the dog that was on your porch the other day.” Locke knelt beside the table and considered the vicious-looking mutt hovering protectively at Relm's feet. “What’s it doing here?”

“Begging for food, obviously. Don’t change the–"

“Your grandfather seemed upset to see it. And you said it looks like a dog you used to have when you were a kid?"

"Yeah, but…"

Locke very, very, very slowly extended a palm in the dog's direction. "Doesn't that strike you as a little odd, that this dog you almost recognize comes out of nowhere, covered in battle scars? When did it arrive at the party? I didn't notice it earlier."

Relm snickered nastily. "I mean, you were busy staring at–"

The dog barked suddenly and shot forward, interrupting whatever else she was going to say and sparing Locke from the sensation that he had swallowed a hive of angry bees. Squealing and shouting obscenities, Relm flung her arms around the dog's neck and was dragged bodily toward a cluster of figures approaching the village square.

He recognized Celes and Terra immediately, of course. Marching between them like a prisoner being escorted was an unfamiliar man dressed all in black with his face shrouded. He looked unarmed. Something about the stranger's appearance set Locke flipping through the pages of accumulated memories and hearsay in his mind, though he was sure he'd never laid eyes on the man before himself.

“Fluffy,” Relm huffed to the dog, “stop — what are you — wait, is that a ninja? I've read — wait, Fluffy!”

The girl yelped as the dog finally shook her off and then lunged at Celes. Relm threw herself after it, but Terra intercepted her and held her tight. Celes shoved the snarling dog away with a booted foot. It growled and snapped and was tensing to strike again when the dark-masked man whistled three low notes. Whining in complaint, it stood down, hackles still raised, teeth still bared. Relm struggled in Terra’s arms.

“You,” she hollered at the man in black before any of the adults could speak, her innocent curiosity replaced with self-righteous fury, “this is your dog? You let him get hurt and then you abandoned him and now you have the nerve to come back for him?”

Instead of drawing a hidden weapon to defend himself or his mutt, as Locke might have expected, the man in black flinched and turned away. Curious.

A crowd of Thamasans had thronged around this spectacle, murmuring in concern and outrage. Locke tried to push through them, but it was Strago's voice that broke through first.

"Stop," the old man bellowed in a tone that brooked no disobedience. In the ensuing silence, he turned his attention from his granddaughter, not to Celes and Terra for an explanation, but to the masked man. So you do know each other…

The man in black bowed his head, confirming Locke's suspicions. “Thamasa is in danger.”

“And you’ve come to defend us, have you.” Weariness, maybe even defeat, in the old man’s face. Not a happy reunion, then.

“Yeah.”

Locke had reached Celes's side by now. With her sword belted at her hip and her hair pulled severely away from her face, she looked martial in a way she had not in months, all softness banished in favor of sharp edges and rigid lines. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly, hoping for an explanation, but she shook her head at him.

“Elders, please,” Celes said instead, in a voice that carried over the murmuring crowd. “We have news. It's urgent.”


***


She could not help thinking, looking at the elders and Espers gathered at one of the long tables, that they resembled generals preparing for a war meeting, though no such war party had existed for a thousand years. This was not a second War of the Magi, she reminded herself; this was merely another imperial invasion like so many before, not an apocalyptic war to end all wars, and it could be routed.

Celes stood at the head of the table beside the stranger, arms folded behind her back. "Tell them," she said to him.

He nodded curtly in acknowledgment before addressing the others. “The imperials have been hiding in caves on the far side of the island, waiting. They'll strike before dawn today, while you're sleeping this off." He gestured to the remnants of the celebration, the lanterns still swaying between the trees.

"How many?" she prompted. "What are we facing, exactly?"

The man shrugged. "A couple hundred men. A heap of machines. Ten suits of Magitek armor. Might not all be operational now. I rigged explosives before I left them.”

"Under whose leadership?" Leo asked calmly, as though this were not an act of betrayal from the emperor he had once believed in, as though the enemies he was discussing were not men he had likely trained himself.

"Kefka," the masked man said. "Who else?"

"That fucker!" Locke leapt to his feet and slammed his hands on the table. "I have never wanted to be wrong more in my life."

Cyan hissed a Doman curse. “Gestahl claimed he had been executed.”

"Then Gestahl lied," the masked man said.

Blood roared in her ears. She could feel a laugh building within her, a laugh that did not belong to her, that would cut her like razor wire if it escaped her throat. Kefka is alive, and Kefka is here. Gravity disappeared, and she was falling, she was dissolving, she was folding into herself. Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her arms; the pain held her tethered.

"Celes?" Locke murmured, and she shook her head at him. Now is not the time. She gestured to Terra, who was pale and wide-eyed with terror — save your concern for her.

“I don’t understand,” Leo was saying.

“That’s because you’re an honest man,” Locke muttered, taking a seat again. He kept watching Celes, head cocked ever so slightly, as if he could hear the hammering of her heart. But she was a soldier. She didn’t need his pity or his comfort. Her spirit was made of steel and ice, and she let herself harden and go numb.

Terra balled her hands into nervous fists and brought them to her lips. “Did they… follow us?”

Locke puffed out his lips thoughtfully. He pantomimed pulling something on his head, as though he were play-acting for children. “If I put on my evil emperor hat and try to think like Gestahl," he started, in a jarringly silly tone.

"Locke," Celes snapped at him. He shot her a wounded look, his shoulders hunching up toward his ears.

At least he sounded appropriately serious when he continued. "We know they went after Thamasan magic years ago and it didn’t work, right? They lost most of their Magitek capability when their Research Facility was destroyed. They're desperate. Maybe they were hoping we'd get the Thamasans to open up, and then they’d be vulnerable to an attack.”

“Well, they’re not vulnerable, and Gestahl’s a fool," Celes spat. "We're here to defend them, and that's exactly what we'll do.”

“You plan to lead us into battle,” one of the Thamasans said.

She realized that they were all focused on her, not with disapproval or annoyance but as though they were looking to her, with the same expression she had seen on the faces of Leo's men so many times before. For a moment, she felt keenly aware of her youth, her failings, but she could not afford to indulge insecurity now. Leo himself met her eyes and nodded familiar reassurance — go ahead. A little stirring of pride warmed her.

"I am — I was — a military commander," she conceded. "I have led men into combat and kept them alive. But Leo has more experience–"

"I don't know how to work with magic like you do," he interrupted her.

"Good thing we've got both of you, then," Locke said, as though that settled the matter. "But are you sure we can trust the mysterious masked assassin?"

"Yes," Strago said, and the masked man turned to him with what might have been surprise. The old man stared back levelly. "I … know him. From the outside world. If he says we're in danger, and he is here to keep us safe, then I believe that."

“Wouldn’t it be too dangerous to stay and fight?" Terra’s eyes were still wide and frightened. "The Thamasans have fled to the hills and escaped before…”

Celes shook her head. “That was a research party. This is a legion of soldiers led by a madman. He’ll torch the village and then wait them out. He could set fire to the entire island, destroy every last living thing until he’s smoked them out of hiding. Kefka cannot be intimidated, or reasoned with. We need to stop him, by any means necessary."

Perhaps she should have held some of that back — the green-haired girl had gone pale, and she looked around the village with open despair. But however well-founded her fear might be, now was not the time to hide and hope that Kefka might give up. Of this, Celes was sure.

"He is only a man," Cyan said bitterly. “He can be defeated. If we stand and face them, he and his soldiers will be no match for us.”

Celes nodded at Terra, hoping she would be reassured by the Doman’s conviction. “It’s our best opportunity to take out Kefka and save Thamasa. This must be Gestahl’s final, desperate gasp. If we rout them here, we cut off his only chance of recovering. This would be decisive.”

The ninja spoke up. “You should know they’ve sent scouts to spy on you. I fed them bad information, but expect them to know more than you want.”

“Damn!” Locke slammed the table again. “I never noticed anything.”

An old Thamasan woman shook her head in disbelief. “How long have they been preparing for this?”

“Landed a month ago. Word came last week to schedule the attack.”

"But the Thamasans,” Terra insisted. “They're… they’re just people. Only a handful of us here know how to fight. Can we really protect them all?"

"We aren't soldiers," one of the Thamasans said, "but we’ll fight with everything we’ve got. Our people have been defending themselves and each other for a long time. Just tell us what you need from us."

"Then we need to get the children somewhere safe until the fighting's over," Celes said, "and gather everyone who can fight, and fight like our lives depend on it."

"What would you have us do?" asked one of the Espers.

Celes pressed her lips together, thinking of the tortured bodies floating in tubes in the Magitek Research Facility, millennia of history and her own complicity in it. “I can’t ask you to fight with us. After what was done to your people…”

“Much has been done to you as well. Yet you choose to stand and fight alongside people who have no birthright claim to your protection.” The humanoid Esper raised an eyebrow. “Can we not choose to do the same?”

“What if the Empire captures you?”

“If we join together, we can defeat them.”

“Even if we do, if they get away and report that they’ve seen Espers here with their own eyes, Gestahl will not stop his assault on your shores. I can’t let that happen to any of you.”

“What would you have us do? Sit in the safety of our cave while our friends and neighbors are slaughtered?”

“No.” An idea came to her, the pieces in front of her beginning to form into a pattern, a plan, a strategy. “Take the children with you to the mountain and keep them safe. It’s the most defensible place on the island; you’ll be safe there. We’ll do what we can to rout the imperials and stop Kefka. If you want to join us in the battle, you may, but we need it to be decisive, for everyone’s sake.”


***


He didn't really have an ego about his fighting ability — he wasn’t that delusional — and he couldn't argue that his presence would change the course of the battle. But he hated the thought of Celes, and Terra, going off to fight Kefka of all people without him there to provide the kind of emotional support that he was good at. And yet that was precisely what was going to happen, apparently.

While the Thamasans hurried to prepare their children to flee, the elders and Espers and Returners argued some more, working out the logistics of what had to happen. Those Espers who could fly, or teleport, or race quickly up the mountain carrying passengers with them did so — starting with the youngest children, the pregnant Thamasans and those still nursing their babies. The oldest children would have to go on foot later, as quickly as possible, a much smaller and more manageable group.

And Locke was meant to escort them, along with the ninja, for some reason. At least put the professional killer in the middle of a war; he belonged there more than the rest of them. But Strago insisted that the man would protect the children at any cost, and Locke had to concede that if the man could be trusted, having an armed guard would make them all a little safer.

“You’re good with people, good with kids, and also good at sneaking around,” Celes said, too deadpan to be teasing him. “Besides, if you run into trouble on the road, brute force won’t be enough to keep everyone safe. You’re clever, you’ll think of something.”

He was flattered by her faith in him, of course — and he took seriously the enormity of the responsibility they were all trusting him with. It felt like there ought to be some way to express all this to her, and to cheer her on against Kefka and somehow fortify her against the fear he knew must be roiling inside her, however stoic she might seem on the outside. But words failed him, and she bustled away, back to Leo and Cyan and the others.

A scout confirmed that Kefka’s troops were approaching the village, with little time to spare. And by that point the Thamasans had readied their children for evacuation; this was clearly not the first such occasion, judging by how depressingly quick and efficient they were at it. Most of them were spirited away by Espers of varying shapes and sizes, leaving Locke, the ninja, and ten children not quite at the cusp of adulthood.

”I don’t know if I’m going with you so you can keep an eye on me, or so I can keep an eye on you,” Relm muttered. She seemed tense and worried, but the fact that she was still up to her usual sass was a good sign, at least.

All too soon they set off in the darkness on the trail toward the mountain, and evidence of civilization slipped away quickly with the night. Countless stars glittered overhead, and enough moonlight poured down to light the path under their feet without torches. That was a piece of luck, at least. Crickets and frogs and the occasional hooting owl made a sort of musical accompaniment broken only by the sound of creatures scampering through the brush and low murmured voices from the children.


***


After all the Thamasans had done for her, she owed them a great debt, one she fully intended to pay even at the cost of her life. Yes, she was defending the useless man who continued to break her heart, but something much bigger than him was at stake, and she would not allow Thamasa to fall.

Let Kefka think of them as weak, helpless civilians. Let him think of the Returners as soft and ineffective. The more inclined he was to underestimate them, the harder they could strike before he realized just how deeply mistaken he was.

For one thing, every resident of Thamasa wielded magic with a fluency that still astonished her, and they had shown their ability to coordinate during the fire, making up for any lack of individual strength. They had learned some self-defense from Leo, which was better than being wholly unprepared. And they were accompanied by Bahamut, greatest of the Espers, whose power was dizzying. Leo and Cyan were both extraordinary swordsmen. And perhaps Leo’s presence here could even encourage some of the soldiers to defect, or at least to lay down their arms. Together, they were a force to be reckoned with, even against Kefka.

As a soldier, as a general, she had kept the scared little girl within her behind glass. Fighting was what she’d been raised to do, and the process of becoming the Emperor’s blade meant learning to banish fear and guilt and doubt. She could not afford to be squeamish about blood or disembowelment. But, she recognized now, she had never before had anything to lose but her own life. She fought because it was what she had been trained to do. She fought because she enjoyed praise and feared failure. She kept her men at a distance. Of course she cared if they lived or died — and Leo encouraged her to do so — but it was abstract. They, like Celes herself, were a resource to be spent in defense of the Empire.

Even when she’d fought alongside the Returners, they had been strangers to her. She was fighting someone else’s battle, as an ally of circumstance. Oh, it would be a blow to their rebellion and their chance against Gestahl if too many of them fell, but she didn’t know them, had only been welcomed begrudgingly by any of them except for Locke and Terra; again, their loss would have been abstract.

This time, for the first time, she was fighting to defend something that mattered to her. Really mattered to her. Not loyalty or obligation, not theoretical ideals, but real flesh-and-blood connection and caring. The feeling was alien and terrifying and debilitating. Thamasa had given her her first taste of what it must be like to belong somewhere because of who you were, not for what you had to offer; had truly welcomed her, even in the short time she had known them. What she felt about the village was complicated — this wasn’t home, this wasn’t her family, she didn’t know them well enough, and yet they had given her something she could not name and she would be eternally grateful to them for it.

Thamasa represented a fresh start. It represented a chance to call a place home. Not for her, but for so many people over many generations. And the Thamasans were just people. Not soldiers, not warriors, not rebels. They were families, they were children, they were mundane normal people who deserved to live and die naturally, not cut short so that Gestahl could resume his chokehold on the world.

Now those lives were on her shoulders, and their deaths would be on her conscience, and she was terrified, and she couldn’t even turn to Locke for comfort because she had sent him away. At least she and Terra had each other, and she could count on Leo's unshaking confidence in her when her own began to flag.

Terra posed a bit of a challenge — the other girl’s magical abilities easily surpassed any of the Thamasans and possibly even some of the full-fledged Espers, but she did not have the coldness of a soldier. Faced with the different groups at her command, Celes found herself wanting to place Terra with the civilians, to shield her from the worst of the front line. Truthfully, she would have rather sent Terra with the children, but she knew the girl would object.

Thamasa meant more to Terra than Celes could understand; she had accepted this place as home, a home she had never expected to find in all the world. Celes could not ask her to stand down and let others protect it for her.

This entire battle should not be happening. In a just world, the Thamasans could go on living in peace, with Terra safely among them, and none of them would have to risk being broken by the horrors of war. Celes’s fury that Kefka had forced this imminent nightmare on them was powerful enough to burn away all of her fear.

Let them come. She would not allow Thamasa to fall.


***


Locke did his best to keep the children entertained — a bit challenging, since ordinarily he would sing a nonsense song or something to distract them, but they needed to keep quiet in case imperial spies were afoot — and it did seem to be working. Kids were kids, magical or not, and they picked up on Locke’s projected confidence and seemed less uneasy, as far as he could tell.

The ninja had begrudgingly offered a name, Shadow, which definitely was not what his mother had called him. Not that it didn’t suit him, with how silently he moved and how even the moonlight seemed not to touch him. Locke kept a close eye on him, not quite able to believe that he wouldn’t somehow lead them into a trap.

He tried so hard to keep his own curiosity in check, but when he found himself walking in line with the man — purely a matter of coincidence, of course — he couldn’t help it from spilling over. "If you don't want the empire attacking Thamasa,” he said in a low voice, “why did you take an assignment to come with the empire to Thamasa?"

"So I could stop them when they tried.”

"Oh. Well, that's actually a very reasonable answer." Locke was almost thrown off balance by just how reasonable it was, really. But that only explained part of the story. "Why Thamasa? It’s awfully out of the way, and they don’t seem like they’d have much need for mercenaries out here…”

The ninja sighed with exasperation. "Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Yes, he does,” Relm piped up behind them, and both men looked down at the girl, who stared back, insufferable. “He never stops asking questions. He has to know about everything.” Before Locke could protest her hypocrisy, she made his own point for him by continuing, leaning closer to the ninja, “It’s a good question, though — what is your thing with Thamasa?”

The ninja was silent. For a while, Locke was afraid that he wouldn’t answer. Then, as though two curious and expectant faces watching him were too much, he conceded with a shrug. “I… owe a life debt here.”

“You know gramps, don’t you? Are you in debt to gramps? Were you one of his adventuring buddies from long ago? Or is it the dog? He’s Maisie’s pup, isn’t he?”

Locke had never seen someone just disappear out of a conversation. Usually they’d mutter a half-assed excuse to leave, or get angry and storm off. But the ninja simply turned and walked away from them, falling to the back behind the children. It might have been the single most awkward thing Locke had seen in his entire life.

Relm turned to him, her lips pressed together, fierce determination in her eyes. “You’re going to get to the bottom of this for me,” she said. It was probably supposed to sound like an order, but it came out like a question.

“Oh, absolutely,” Locke said. “He owes me an explanation anyway, from the time he drugged me and was absolutely not going to assassinate us.”

Relm nodded, clearly satisfied by this. “That was when you were chasing after Terra, right? Celes talked about that. What an asshole.”

To his surprise, she kept walking beside him, chin up. After several long and uncharacteristically quiet minutes, he realized she was emulating his body language, the false confidence. When another kid let out a loud sneeze, she turned and shushed the younger girl with an air of harsh authority.

Locke put a hand on Relm’s shoulder. “Be nice to them. They’re scared.”

“If they make too much noise they could get us killed!”

“That's hardly a helpful way of looking at it,” he said mildly. “Yes, we need to be quiet, but don't be a jerk to kids who are trying their best! Besides, practically speaking, a scared and upset kid is more likely to lose control than one who knows they can trust you to keep them safe. It’s just smarter to take a gentle approach.”

"Really?"

"Really."

"Are you trying to give me some kind of fatherly advice or something? I've already got a grandpa for that, you know."

"I know. No, it's just people advice, kid. You're nosy. I'm nosy. And I'm better at it than you are. Which is fine, nothing wrong with you — I've just got a few years on you, that's all."

She snorted. "You certainly do."

He felt eyes boring into him — the ninja, keeping close watch. Presumably the man had overheard him mention the assassination attempt, or kidnapping attempt, whatever it had been intended to be back in Zozo. Well, there could only be so many ninjas working for the Empire, and it didn't take a genius to put it together. And that wasn't the only reason Locke distrusted the man, but it certainly contributed.


***


The sound of Magitek armor moving through the wilderness carried on the night breeze, a distant series of creaks and dull thudding steps. Soon, they would be here.

If she let herself sink into the familiar coldness before a battle, she could reduce the enemy to numbers and tools. Kefka himself was a wild card with troublesome abilities, nothing more. Nothing personal. His appearance caught her off guard, but now his presence was known and she could take him into consideration — no more surprises.

If she’d had a full platoon of her own, she would have hidden archers on the rooftops, ready to pick off the soldiers at a distance. The Thamasans had no such practice in aiming or in taking lives, so her plan required less precision and less immediate brutality. The urge to kill had to be coaxed out of most people, as she well knew — a memory she did not care to revisit — and striking someone wholly unaware of your presence would feel a lot like killing someone in cold blood. She could not ask these untrained, unbroken civilians to do such a thing.

Instead, she had them set traps. She instructed them not to kill but to disarm, first. Shift the ground under the soldiers’ feet, send rainfall or fallen branches down onto their heads, lift them up off the ground so they couldn’t actually reach any of the Thamasans. These tactics required less precision than an assault with mundane weapons, and preventing the Thamasans from landing the killing blows would preserve some of the goodness and innocence of these people.

She didn’t feel good about any of this. But it was the best she could do, the best any of them could do, and it would have to be enough.

Leo was making the rounds, lifting morale and offering last-minute suggestions as he always did before a battle. She doubted he had ever done so to civilians before, however, and she wondered if he felt as unsettled by it as she did.

He stopped beside Terra, and Celes watched their silhouettes in the darkness, her ears straining to hear whatever wisdom or comfort Leo had to offer. But these words belonged between him and Terra. Celes could live without knowing; she was not as unrepentantly curious as Locke.

She did, however, stop beside Terra during her own rounds. “How are you? Are you… are you ready?”

Terra swallowed. ”He’s only a man, right?”

”That’s right.”

”And we can stop him.” A faint waver in her voice.

”We will,” Celes said. “And he will never terrorize anyone else, ever again. This ends tonight.”


***


Relm seemed to have taken his warnings to heart; she still watched over the other kids with the same overbearing presence, but she was gentler about it when she had to admonish someone. He waved her over, and she trotted dutifully next to him with an expectant look on her face.

“Hey, kid,” he said, “If something goes wrong and we need to split up, can I trust you to get the other kids to safety?”

Her expression turned to skepticism. “You’re pulling an old one, trying to get me to behave by pretending that you’re giving me responsibility. It won’t work. You aren’t fooling me.”

“No, you twit, I mean it. You may have no common sense, but you’re also smart as hell, and you have a different way of thinking about things. If the kids get separated for any reason, I need to know that you're going to keep your heads down and stay out of trouble.”

“Do you expect we’ll get separated?”

”The rest of you are going into the Espers’ cave,” Locke said, “which means the ninja and I will–”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Relm said in a tone that sounded exactly like her grandfather. “The really secret stuff is deeper inside. You come into the cave with us so you don’t just immediately go splat if the bad guys show up. You’re keeping us safe. It’s fine.” She thought about it for a moment. “Maybe not the ninja. But you can.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise.”

”What, don’t you want to come inside and see it?”

“Oh, desperately. But there are reasons why your people don’t let strangers in there, and especially with danger around — it would be better if you don’t tell me.” He was not confident enough, or perhaps naive enough, to disregard the possibility of torture at the hands of Kefka and his men. The less he knew, the safer it would be, for everyone. 

Relm was silent, head cocked, evaluating the truth of what he had said, clearly mentally prodding at it for holes. “You’re sure.”

“When we’re out of this situation and the elders get to have a say in it, if the people of Thamasa decide it’s okay, I would love to have a grand tour and uncover all your juiciest secrets. But not now, and not like this.”

“Hm.” But she smiled. “I guess you’re a decent enough guy, after all.”

He shrugged. “I try.”

“You know,” she said sweetly, “if you and Celes got married, then you’d be Thamasan too and you could come learn everything you want to know about here.”

He turned to stare at her in bewilderment. “What? No! We’re not — that isn’t how it — anyway, I’m… I’m engaged to someone else.”

Relm gave a low whistle and shook her head. “You’re a mess.”


***


She ought to have been the one to engage the enemy first. But instead she felt the web of magic being cast some distance away. By the time she heard the roaring consequence of that magic, she was already moving toward it.

Early rays of morning light glinted off armor and blades, visible at this distance. After each flash of spell or Magitek projectile, her eyes had to adjust to the predawn dimness over again. She raced between trees and found herself face-to-face with an imperial soldier who had only enough time to open his mouth before she slashed through him. Another moved to take his place, but Celes was ready for him, already sinking into calmness like a still pond.

The two sides clashed. Not in a bloody free-for-all as she had seen often enough on the battlefield, but brief bursts of engagement that scattered and reformed. Magitek cannons fired and the Thamasans hastily constructed a magic shield against the blow. Espers dove at squads of soldiers, who scattered and regrouped and scattered again. Great Bahamut had shifted from his human form to resemble a massive dragon, and he roared a fire-that-was-not-fire that seared through armor and left men shrieking in agony.

If the Thamasans had been ordinary villagers, it would have been a one-sided slaughter; Celes knew all too well what imperial troops could do against civilians. But magic in the hands of people who had wielded it for generations leveled the odds. And it seemed that the Espers had the Magitek armor well in hand; the technology powered by their fallen brethren was but a pale copy of the genuine thing. Leo and Cyan raised steel against steel among the common troops. And Terra… Celes saw her among the Espers, arcing fire and ice and lightning all intertwined toward the troops.

Could these small pockets of imperial troops be the full force? She glanced at Leo and wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Was this merely a preliminary attack, meant to sneak into the village and surprise the sleeping Thamasans, with the rest of the heavy machinery to follow and mop up later? The strategy would make sense, but it did not explain why the Magitek was present at all.

Perhaps the ninja had miscalculated. But if the soldiers were coming in waves, let them come, and meet their doom.


***


As delightful as children often were — perfect angels, innocent babes, with a devilish streak that made him laugh — he found himself at his limit trying to manage them all. Even the oldest children of Thamasa had neither the stamina nor the coordination for a moonlit hike through a forest at the end of a long day, and they grew weary.

As faint light crept up the horizon and began to touch the branches of the trees overhead, he could not help wondering if the battle had begun yet. How many of the children around him would be orphaned by day’s end? And how had they gotten here when so recently they had all been celebrating? The emotional whiplash gave him a headache.

But he had to keep from following that train of thought any further. He had to protect these children from the reality of what was happening behind them for as long as possible.

As usual, that meant falling into stories. Children loved stories. And Locke had heard more than his fair share of them, over the years, picking up folk tales and legends from around the world. This was not the time for realism, for recounting the adventures of the Returners at war; these children needed to escape to a simpler world in which good fought and vanquished evil and then went home for supper.

And so those were the stories he told. Wish-granting creatures from the Figaro desert who played pranks on the humans unlucky enough to cross their paths; youngest sons winning the hearts of princesses in tall towers or under the influence of terrible viziers; young boys and girls taking down giants or demons or evil kings. The same stories he had gathered and brought to Rachel like a bouquet of so many wildflowers now comforted the terrified children of Thamasa.

There were sounds in the distance that might have been combat, or just his imagination. He did not want to turn around, to look down the mountain. Whatever happened in Thamasa this night, it was out of his hands. His responsibility was to deliver the children safely, and he meant to do exactly that, and to have faith in his friends that dawn would break on a brighter day.


***


She had never wanted to kill someone before. Achieve targets, do what was necessary, accept the inevitability of casualties, yes — she could take chess pieces off the board, but she had never enjoyed the process.

This? She did not enjoy this. But as Thamasa began to burn around her, as the innocents who depended on her for protection bled and suffered and were forced into violence that would change them forever, she realized that she would kill every last soldier who had come with Kefka, and then she would destroy Kefka, and she would be glad to have done it.

The Thamasans mostly stayed out of direct combat, and Celes ran interference for them as best she could, throwing her body between the armed troops and the civilians who flung spells from trees and rooftops before dashing to safety elsewhere. Leo and Cyan and the small handful of Thamasans who were protected by armor — magical or real — joined her. And it was working — it was really working. The soldiers fell. The Thamasans remained standing.

Something rather like hope filled Celes, and she found herself laughing, not madly in celebration of violence but rather incredulous that the impossible was coming true.

“What if we went to the people of Maranda, or Albrook, and we taught them like this?” she called to Leo, between breaths. “What if we showed them how to fight back, and we fought with them? What if we went into Vector and partnered with — there are revolutionaries there already; what if we partnered with and trained them?”

The feeling was so bright she thought she might be glowing. This was where Leo belonged. This felt right. Both of them together, throwing off the shackles of the Empire and taking up the mantle of true justice and freedom for all.

“We could do this,” she said, the words flowing out of her faster and faster. “We can save Thamasa. And then we can destroy any chance Gestahl has at controlling those around him — and not just him — we could make them all impervious to bullies...”

Leo grinned at her. “First Thamasa, then the world,” he agreed, and perhaps it was the endorphins of battle coursing through her, but for this moment she felt fearless. Invincible. What chance did Gestahl have against this?

She stood, back-to-back with her old mentor, swords drawn. And even Gestahl's hand-picked warriors hesitated to take on the two of them together.

"Stop this madness," Leo barked to the soldiers in a voice that carried over the sounds of battle. "Listen to your conscience, men. You've been asked to burn a village to the ground, to slaughter innocent civilians. This isn't who you are. It isn't who you have to be."

The men looked spooked, hesitant, as though their consciences were at war with a fear of punishment. But what did they have to fear here? Who would punish them when they could stand with Leo himself?

The man they feared so much was not here.

“Kefka,” Celes hissed, raising her sword aloft. “He’s not here. He should be here. Where is Kefka?"


***


"Oh, shit," Locke said, without thinking.

The pre-dawn light reflected off metal where metal should not be — armored soldiers, two suits of Magitek armor, and some sort of mechanical monstrosity he didn't recognize, in the clearing beside the sealed gate. An ambush?

He pulled the kids away from the road, deeper into the woods beside it, and prayed that the imperials hadn't noticed them.

"Did you know about this?" he asked Shadow in a low voice. The masked man shook his head. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The children all watched Locke for direction, for hope, and damned if he would let them see how panicked he was by this. You're supposed to be good at thinking on your feet. Come on.

Send the ninja to sabotage the armor and run interference while the children fled back down the mountain, banking on Celes speedily routing the imperials and making Thamasa safe once more?

"Looks like they've got hostages," Shadow said beside him.

"Children?"

"Not sure."

That changed things. For a brief moment, a tumult of rage and horror and fear threatened to overcome him. But he was a master of masks, and children's lives depended on his calm, and there had to be a way out of this.

"We can fight them," Relm piped up. "Cause some chaos… throw a rock…"

Something shimmered against the trees, and Locke almost yelped before he got control of himself again. Maybe he was hallucinating, now, because his eyes could not focus on what he thought he saw, and yet his hackles rose and he felt certain that something was present at the edge of his vision.

Relm, though, immediately relaxed. "Maduin," she said.

"What?"

"Terra's dad. He was inside the mountain. He sensed us and came here."

You know, fine, whatever. They're Espers. That makes as much sense as anything else. He swallowed back his questions and his incredulity as the girl spoke in a low voice to something Locke could never quite see or hear. He glanced at the ninja, who just shrugged in response.

"Can he help?" Locke asked. "If he's really here. Not to doubt you, sir, it's just a little weird. But we need to get these kids to safety."

"He says yes," Relm said. "There's another way–"

"Perfect," Locke said. "Don't tell me anything else. Just follow him, if you trust him, and keep your heads down. The ninja and I will try to help the hostages."

"He says Kefka is controlling them somehow–"

"Fuck!" Locke winced. "Don't repeat that. It's fine. We'll figure something out." He flashed her his most reassuring grin — considered adding a thumbs-up, but that seemed to be laying it on a little thick — and was rewarded with a quick and unexpected hug from the girl.

"Don't die," she said.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Quick, now. We'll see each other later."

The shimmer moved further into the forest, away from the clearing, and Relm followed with the other children and soon they were out of sight. Locke turned to the ninja and found himself faced with — nothing. No one. He was all alone.

"Figures," he muttered to himself. But stealth was his thing, and unseen sabotage, and it would be much easier to manage that without having to coordinate with someone else.

Carefully, he crept through the forest toward a raving violent lunatic with enough firepower to take down an entire city-state and the disrespect for life to use it. If Kefka had children prisoner, that was bad enough. If he was controlling them — if he was controlling Espers — Locke sucked in a breath as a very bad thought occurred to him.

When he got closer, he could hear children wailing, which at least meant that they were alive. A little closer and he could see them, surrounded by soldiers but apparently unharmed. There were also Espers, yes, including the small one he had danced with mere hours ago. Yet something about them seemed off. Though Kefka's men stood guard near them, Locke could see nothing binding any of the Espers. He crawled closer, and closer still, shuffling slowly to avoid drawing attention or making sound as he moved over the leaf-strewn ground, until at last he was close enough to make out the soldiers talking, to see the way their hands tensed on the hilts of their swords, to look at the Espers and see the hollow look in their eyes and the dull rings of metal encircling their foreheads.

'We destroyed it' — that fucking liar. Quite to the contrary; Gestahl appeared to have commissioned more of his cursed soul-annihilating crowns.

At least it seemed that most of the children and Espers who fled to the mountain had escaped and presumably hid safely behind the sealed gate, or at least they were nowhere to be seen here. But even one child held captive by Kefka was too many, and even one Esper commanded by him was a complication Locke lacked the skill or power to contend with.

If the ninja had stuck around, one of them could have served as a decoy while the other freed the kids. As it was, he had little idea what to do to save them.

Kefka, meanwhile, was raving out of sight. His loathsome voice rose and fell at manic speed, coming and going as though he were pacing back and forth. Locke tried to tune him out, counting the terrified children. Five of them. His initial assessment that they were unharmed seemed accurate. Small blessings.

A familiar high-pitched whirr started up, chilling him. The hairs on the back of his arms rose. Before he could respond, searing white light flashed at his periphery, followed by an ear-splitting roar, and the world seemed to shake. The children shrieked and ducked.

Heart racing, ears pounding, Locke took inventory of the situation. The Magitek armor had fired at the gate — not for the first time, judging by the sear marks charring what had once been beautiful hand-carved designs. The soldiers were looking over with interest, as if to see whether their weaponry had succeeded. Fortunately, it had not. The whirring began again.

It was as good as he was going to get. After another couple of blinding, deafening bursts, he had worked out the timing. On the third whirr, he dashed forward between the distracted soldiers, grabbed a child, and dashed back into cover.

Three times he managed this, grateful that Kefka seemed to be trying a rapid-fire approach. But even imperial goons couldn't remain oblivious forever, and his luck ran out.

A blade slashed his side before he could grab the fourth child, and goddesses did it have to hurt so much when flesh got torn? He was still reeling when a gloved fist smashed into his chin, sending him sprawling.

The soldier looming over Locke was a particularly nasty-looking fucker, leering with the sort of grin that suggested Kefka had hand-picked him for his cruelty. He hefted his sword, ready to cut Locke in two. Locke groaned and pushed a hand beneath himself. If the world would stop spinning, if the blood would just stay in his body…

A knife handle appeared in the soldier's throat. Blood flowed out around it. The wide-eyed man grasped at it, sputtering, and then he swayed and toppled sideways.

Locke glanced over his shoulder, to the forest, and saw a pair of eyes surrounded by darkness. The ninja nodded at him, and a little knot inside him loosened, ever so slightly.

"Run," he hissed at the remaining children. "Now. Into the forest. We'll get you out of here."

The kids looked from him to the forest, and maybe they recognized the ninja from his initial appearance in the town square. Before Locke had to yell at them again, they took off, the older one carrying the toddler on her back, and then they were all in Shadow's hands. Locke could only hope the old man's promise was correct.

One of the other guards grabbed Locke and pulled him roughly to his feet. "Fuck you," he muttered, but he couldn't keep from whimpering in pain.

And then, because this day was not bad enough, a vomit-heap of garish colors sauntered over to him, all sharp-toothed grin in a face not even a mother could love. "Oh, what have we here? A daring rescue by our dashing hero?"

One of the soldiers saluted him. "Should we chase after the children, sir?"

"No," Kefka said, his eyes alight with a fierce and terrifying joy. "We'll burn them out. Their dying screams of agony will be like a beacon summoning the rest to us."

Locke coughed, "Don't you fucking dare," but Kefka only laughed.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he called to the forest in a stomach-churning mockery of a child’s game as his hands grew bright and hot with flame. A fiery wall burst forth, enveloping the nearest trees. Run, run, run, Locke thought hazily, fervently. Run like the wind, kids.

"And do you want to finish him off yourself, sir?"

“Oh, not this one.” Kefka considered Locke for a moment and then, with a look of bored disgust on his face, kicked him hard in the side. It would have winded him even without his injury, but as it was, his vision blacked out and everything exploded with pain. 

He heard himself choking for breath. Dread filled him, terror and defeat as he realized that there would be no way out from whatever Kefka had in store for him, and living might not actually be preferable to a quick and painless death. 

“The traitor's little pet. Rough him up all you like, but don’t kill him yet. We can use him.”


***


Celes felt it — a tearing sound that made her gasp. Those around her registered it, too. They turned as one to look at the source, up the mountain.

“They’ve breached the gate. How?”

“We must not let them reach the statues.”

"But we can't possibly get there in time to stop them."

Bahamut still wore the form of a great dragon, and he knelt before her in this form, stretching out his long neck. "Fear not, little one. Climb aboard. Your friends, too. We may need all your blades."

It felt almost disrespectful to get on the back of an Esper like a common chocobo, but the invitation was clear, and Celes was pragmatic enough to set aside her uncertainty. Leo hesitated, perhaps mulling over the same thing, but Cyan bowed low to the Esper and Leo followed suit, and then both men clambered up behind her.

Flying was glorious, even given the circumstances — her stomach leapt and the adrenaline coursing through her veins was mixed with delight, not horror, for just a moment. Did it feel this way for Terra? Or was it grander, somehow, to be able to part from gravity and soar through the sky with no assistance but your own strength? The vanishing stars overhead were crystal-clear and seemed so close she could reach out and touch them. There had been two shooting stars the past week, but this night the only reason they seemed to move was that the Espers streamed past at great speeds.

As they reached the mountain, her childlike joy faded at once. Smoke billowed up, filling the sky, obscuring the stars. Fire spread like lava, ravaging the mountainside.

Had the children made it to safety, or were they down there trapped by flames?

Bahamut raced onward, flanked by other Espers, some carrying Thamasans toward the gate, others like Terra flying alongside. From the air, she noted Magitek armor, several dozen soldiers, a machine she didn't recognize, and Kefka. The monster himself, laughing at such wild uncontrollable volume that the sound carried even across this distance, over the roar of the fire, echoing across the scar tissue that made up her ruined soul. She gripped the hilt of her sword and gritted her teeth.

The Espers were beautiful, colorful streaks tearing through the sky, bright and bold, and hope rose in her, and awe. Terra was at the head of their formation, radiant pink, in full control of her power now. It was magnificent. They were all magnificent.

But the imperials were ready for them, aiming massive cannons up at them. Gestahl must have been planning this for a long time. How had all this happened without anyone in the Returners noticing? How long had the imperials been here on the island, biding their time, waiting to strike?

"Terra," she cried out, and the pink figure shot down toward Kefka, shrieking that bloodcurdling scream.

The cannons flashed. Something whizzed through the air — at Terra, at the other Espers racing to converge upon Kefka. It was too much to hope that the soldiers would miss. Several of the Espers were able to veer off course and evade what shot toward them, but most were not so lucky. They tangled in what looked like woven nets and then toppled to the earth.

Bahamut was too massive and too powerful to fall. He roared blue fire down on Kefka, who only laughed and laughed, somehow untouched. As soon as the ground was close enough, Celes leapt from Bahamut's back, and she was aware of Leo and Cyan following suit.

She rolled as she landed and then popped to her feet. Her joints ached and her shoulder had definitely taken the worst of it, but she could fight.

"Kefka," Cyan cried, the pride and loss of an entire people booming in his voice.

Celes had no words. She could feel the power of the fallen Espers brewing within her, a storm raging for release, Ramuh's electricity building and crackling, hungry, furious.

"Do you want us to kill this one?" Kefka gestured to one of his soldiers, who was holding — no. Blood soaked Locke's clothes, and he was unnaturally pale. Her knees buckled, and Kefka grinned. "No? I didn't think so."

"Now?" called out a soldier.

"Not yet," Kefka said, and then he laughed again, as Espers and soldiers around him clashed, and Thamasans tried to free those Espers who had been shot down by some sort of cruel netting. "You fools, did you really think we'd lost everything? You bought Gestahl's boo-hoo surrender?”

A hoarse voice choked out, “No, you dumbass, of course we didn’t.” Locke — he was alive, miraculously. Her heart started beating again.

The Thamasans and Espers rallied the best defense they could, though too many of them were incapacitated. A wall of stone rose to protect them, only to be shattered by Magitek artillery. A gloomy haze briefly obscured everything and everyone before being blown away. Some of Kefka’s men fell, but Kefka fought back with a fiery wall of his own, its heat intense and terrible, almost unbearable.

She felt a surge of magical power from the ruined gate. Espers poured forth, alive with righteous fury, ready to turn the tide of this battle. With such power, they could still crush Kefka and his unit. Heartened by their presence, she raised her sword, summoning Ramuh's strength.

"Now," Kefka roared over the crash of battle around him.

And then… it all… stopped.

Her body was suddenly too heavy to hold upright. The sword clattered from her hand as she fell and lay prone on the ground. Each breath was laborious as the very air seemed to press down, an unbearable weight. All around her, Thamasans and Espers collapsed too. All of them — great and small, strong and weak, human and nonhuman — toppled and were still.

Kefka, somehow, remained standing. His laughter filled the air.

"You have no power!" he barked. "I can feel it, and you're all weak. Pathetic."

With great effort, Celes inclined her head to watch him as he bent over Terra, who appeared trapped between her lovely Esper form and her green-haired self.

"Don't you dare touch her." Leo, in his war-battered armor, broadsword held at the ready as if it weighed nothing at all. Whatever was suffocating everyone around him, he seemed as unaffected as Kefka or the other soldiers, and it was clear he intended to fight, however outnumbered and outmatched he might be.

Kefka laughed, tightening his grip on the half-transformed girl who hung limply in his arms. "Are you threatening me? Do we have a second traitor in our midst? Emperor Gestahl will be so disappointed." He clucked his tongue.

"Gestahl is the one who betrayed whatever ideals he might have believed in, if he ever did," Leo said.

"Ideals," Kefka echoed, sneering.

"Put the girl down and fight me," Leo said. "Or are you afraid?"

Lazily, as though uninterested, Kefka reached a hand toward Leo and shot fire at him. He shrieked, and she had never heard Leo in agony before, never seen him recoil with pain like a mortal man. If she could summon Shiva’s power… yet Leo seemed to toss aside the pain after a moment, resolute.

“You can do better.”

Leo was taunting Kefka. Fighting back, but mostly provoking Kefka, riling him up, getting him angrier. Why not just attack him? Why not just kill him?

Leo looked to her — not to the rest of them, the Espers and Thamasans all around them, but to her, his eyes searching her face, and then, as if seeing her safe, he smiled. An oddly incongruous smile, lightness, gladness. Before she could move, fire erupted around Leo, a flame of such scorching heat, blue-hot, searing her although she was not beside it.

Then there was a clang as metal struck metal, and she glanced to the side to see Cyan’s blade impaled within the strange machine, which sparked and sizzled and then smoked.

Suddenly the weight crushing air from her lungs was gone, and she rose shakily to her feet. 

She had always assumed that if he fell, it would be on the battlefield, that he might die in her arms, gasping his last breath. That he might touch her cheek and whisper how proud he was of her, implore her to take up his mantle.

Instead, he was simply gone. Everything soft in him turned to ash. All that remained was his naked blade, gleaming with the heat.

“Leo,” she cried, as if speaking his name could bring him back. But he was no Esper, and there would be no miracle, not even here at the doorway to the goddesses. He was gone forever.


***


What good was it being one of three people immune to the effects of Kefka’s machine and yet be barely able to stand? Not that he could do much good if he’d been well, but at least he would be able to do something. Instead, he could only watch and crawl pathetically toward Celes. Maybe he could prevent Kefka from capturing or killing her, somehow, even if only by covering her with his own body.

From his angle on the floor, he could see Leo approaching Kefka — and, on the far side, Cyan. A knowing look passed between the two men. Locke didn’t know what it meant, until Leo started taunting the madman, glancing back at Cyan twice more. Cyan flinched when Kefka’s first flame struck Leo, but the grizzled general shook it off and nodded at Cyan, and that was when Locke realized that the Doman would soon be within easy reach of the machine. So that was the plan here — Leo was bait to keep Kefka from noticing Cyan. If the machine was destroyed, the Thamasans and Espers who were uncrowned would be free, and unless Kefka had another one up his sleeve — in which case they would all be royally fucked, without question — that would give them a fighting chance of escape, or taking Kefka down, if they were lucky.

Still, Locke believed Leo might actually make it through, right til the moment Kefka’s flames consumed him. Even then, he kind of hoped righteous spite might be enough to resist it, maybe Leo would discover some previously-untapped magical resistance to fire, but… no. No. No, he was dead. There wasn’t even much of a body left, char and ash and metal.

He heard Celes cry out, saw her fighting like a madwoman consumed by grief and rage.

Locke was in no condition to take part in the battle that followed. Soldiers against Espers, Thamasans against the Espers ruled by Kefka's command, magic flying everywhere in a terrible and deadly haze.

It might have been a stalemate, but Kefka's true aim seemed not to be victory.

"There's power here," Kefka howled. "Real power. You'll take me to it and you'll show me how to wield it."

And he and his enslaved Espers disappeared through the ruined gate into the cave beyond, and rocks toppled behind them and the earth shook and Locke closed his eyes and slipped away.


***


In the aftermath of the battle, it became clear that they could not follow Kefka immediately. Several of the Espers chose to remain behind and dig through the rubble. Others fought the rampaging fires with the Thamasans, who worked their way down the mountain, carrying their wounded and their dead down toward the village.

If Kefka reached the Statues…

Only the Espers could do what must be done here, as quickly as possible. In the meantime, the Thamasans would tend to their injuries, see to it that their children were safe, and prepare for the inevitable battle to come.

Locke was fading in and out of consciousness. If his wounds went untreated for much longer, he would die. She knew it. She'd spent enough time with field medics and wounds. There wasn't time for a proper dressing, and she didn't have enough first aid to tend to something like this. But she couldn't lose them both. Both. Leo's final moment, the flame, the ash, filled her mind and she was a screaming child with no ground beneath her feet. No. Not like this.

"Wait," she called to the others, and they slowed, turning to face her. No time to spare, no time to spare, but she couldn't let this happen. She eased Locke to the ground, and he groaned and winced. His face was so pale. Her eyes blurred with tears. She pressed her hands against the wound in his side, but no sooner had she done so but he grabbed her hands with both of his.

"None of that," he hissed, and grimaced, though he tried — not very convincingly — to turn it into a grin. "I'll live. Don't you dare."

“Hold still.”

Panicked, he reached for her wrists, fear overriding the damage and pulling him to full consciousness. “Celes, no, don’t!” 

“Shut up,” she said. “Trust me, for once. Let me fix something.”

The magic flowed through her, slowly, a careful trickle that emanated from her palms into his flesh. She could feel it seeping past the clotting blood on his side, knitting together tissue that had been torn open.

“Don’t do this,” he begged. “Please.” His voice hitched, rising toward hysteria and he struggled to move, naked panic on his face. He wrapped his fingers around hers, the warmth in his palms fighting against the cold in hers. He tensed to rise, and she planted a knee squarely in his chest to pin him down. 

“Hold still.”

When it was done, she shook out her hands. They smarted, but it was a tolerable ache. Locke took her hands in his, pressing his own warmth into her, placing her hands on his cheeks. Her aching heart twisted. It would be so easy to kiss him right now, as if she knew anything about kissing.

“The Thamasans taught me control,” she said, and because his hands were still on hers and the fear in his voice still echoed in her ears and her heart, she added, “and you taught me that I have to be careful. That I can’t just throw my life away.”


***


Celes carried him on her back the rest of the journey down the mountain, and he had little energy to protest. By some miracle, they were both alive and seemed likely to stay that way, but his entire body was heavy and cold, like he’d lost enough blood to hollow him out.

The Thamasans walked alongside them, carrying their own wounded and dead. Someone was singing a slow, mournful tune. The sun crept up into the sky. A lone bird called once, but otherwise the creatures of the forest were absent.

Celes was silent. He tightened his arms around her neck and let his head droop over her shoulder, trying to push what little comfort he could into her.

”Celes, I’m… you’re not alone,” he murmured.

Still she said nothing, but this close to her, he could hear the muffled cry she choked back, and he could feel the tension rippling through her muscles as she struggled to control herself. He pressed his cheek against the side of her throat and closed his eyes.

Voices woke him some time later. Many voices, some of them familiar.

It took him a few confused moments to realize that they were in a field beside Thamasa, and that the Blackjack was here, and that he was not dreaming.

The airship seemed to have skidded to a halt, churning the earth beneath it. Not that Locke was an expert on airships, but this one had clearly taken some kind of damage, with visible repairs on the outside and a faint trickle of smoke from the engine that he didn’t remember seeing before. But it was here, thank the goddesses.

People poured down the gangplank — Sabin, and a number of the Returners, those who must have remained behind when Banon and the others left Vector. And — to Locke's massive confusion — there was Hassan, walking with a limp, and at least a dozen of his fellow rebels.

Celes gave a cry of relief and stumbled forward.

"Oh, there you are!" Sabin waved them over with a grin that was incongruous given the situation. A child was seated on his shoulders, and another clung to his leg. "Get your asses on board the ship–"

"Language, mister," one of the kids piped up.

"Not that I'm not grateful, but where did you come from?" Celes said, sounding more than a little dazed.

"We've been trying to get here for days, but the airship's still half-broken. Finally arrived in time to see the fire on the mountain and figured we ought to evacuate the town — found the kids.” He shook his head. “That spunky little one you put in charge filled us in, once she figured out who we were. Clever kid. I think she's trying to negotiate your rescue with Edgar and Setzer right now."

Celes glanced between the airship and the Thamasans who seemed to have followed her here. "Do you have room for all of us?"

"Is this everyone?" Sabin looked them over.

"It's…" She took a breath. "It's…"

"It's everyone who can make it right now," Locke said gently, over her shoulder, lifting this burden from her. "Kefka's taken prisoners, but we can rescue them when we've regrouped."

”Kefka?” Sabin asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

”I think we have a lot to catch up on,” Locke said, “on both sides.”

Word spread quickly. The Thamasans seemed torn — while some were prepared to put as much distance between themselves and Kefka as possible, most wanted to stay. Locke couldn’t blame them; as eager as he had been to get away from this island, their business here was not finished. Ordinarily, he might have tried to help the negotiation, but he was fading. Every time he opened his eyes, the people around him had changed.

“Once the Espers have broken through, they’ll need our help to fight Kefka,” Strago was saying.

”Then we’ll join you, if you would take the reinforcements,” Edgar said, entirely the serious king. “We may be a little worse for wear, but we’re seasoned warriors and we will be fresh enough to fight alongside you.”

”Thank you,” Strago said.

Suddenly Celes stumbled, nearly dropping him, and Locke clung to her shoulders, startled awake.

"What was that?" she asked.

Exhaustion seemed the most likely explanation, in his opinion; he could barely keep his own eyes open, and she'd been fighting and wielding magic and had to be near her limit, if not past it. But the others also seemed to have felt it, looking around in confusion and murmuring among themselves. No, not murmuring. The sound he heard was not voices but a low, low rumble at the very threshold of his hearing.

The Espers and the humans alike looked to the mountain, and Locke followed their eyes a moment later, though he could see nothing but flames in the distance and the faintest rays of dawn on the horizon.

"Goddesses preserve us all," Strago said.

"What's going on?"

This time even Locke felt it as the world seemed to buckle under them all. In all his travels, he had felt the earth quake before, but nothing like this. Something terribly, terribly wrong was happening.

Voices rose in a panic. Locke was glad for Edgar’s presence; they all needed someone to take charge, someone who was not still in shock from the battle on the mountaintop. The king signaled something to his brother, who leapt atop the railing of the gangplank and shouted at the top of his considerable lungs.

"Everyone, get aboard now!"

"Can the airship hold this many people?" Celes.

"It'll have to. We need to evacuate." Edgar.

"They've still got prisoners — Espers and Thamasans." That was Terra.

"We can't save them. Not now. I'm sorry, but either we save who we can and get away and try to come back later, or we lose everyone and our own lives besides."

They filled the airship. Locke squeezed Celes’s shoulders once more and then slid from her back, freeing her up to help with the evacuation. He dragged himself up the gangplank and let someone guide him to the first available chair. All around him was movement — Thamasans bringing their wounded aboard, Returners and crew members helping them, everyone willing and able from the village cramming into galleys not designed to hold so many people.

The horrible roaring continued, nearly drowning out the sound of the airship’s engine sputtering to life. Locke slumped against the wall as the airship shook around him, but it was only the familiar feeling of ascent, miserable but safe.

Those who stood near the windows let out a collective gasp. His curiosity was more powerful than weakness, and he dragged himself until he too could see what was happening outside.

There was a horrendous tearing sound, like an enormous limb being wrenched from its socket, a sound so utterly wrong that it set his teeth on edge. Then the island rose, lifting free of the earth. Rivulets of water and clumps of earth tumbled from its edges and fell into the frothing, chaotic whirlpool that the ocean had become in the island's absence. The airship lurched from side to side to avoid the debris and the crashing waves reaching up their greedy fingers toward the sky.

And then the enormous mass of the island flew, at terrifying speeds. And their little airship, dwarfed by its shadow, struggled mightily to remain aloft despite the turbulent air left in the island's wake.

By the time the airship had steadied, and the people on board no longer had to cling to railings and bolted-down furniture for dear life, the island was nothing more than a dark patch on the horizon. They watched it in stunned, horrified silence.

Notes:

Hello! I'm still alive!

Normally I might want to let a chapter like this sit by itself without chapter notes so the ending has space to ring out, but it's been over a year since I last posted, and I feel that I owe a little bit of an explanation/apology, in true AO3 fashion. Sorry this took me so long, but the intersection of hypothyroidism, endometriosis, and iron deficiency came to a head last year and knocked me on my ass, and neither my brain nor my body was working right, and I'm still trying to get things under control. Don't worry, none of it is particularly severe, it's just multiple issues stacking on top of each other, and especially that they had apparently all been building for years unnoticed, that has made it so hard.

I might have been able to put out a chapter in the meantime anyway if I could just write something easy and simple, but unfortunately what was up next was this chapter, and, well. I'd already been struggling with the choreography (of sorts) in this chapter even before my brain gave out.

So, there you go. Easily the hardest chapter I've ever written. It's been coming together in bits and pieces for years, but a lot of what I wrote before was unusable due to changes in direction or character development. I so desperately wanted to make it plausible and I asked myself a million questions and looked at it from a million different angles and still wound up with a deus ex machina or two for drama's sake. I hope you'll forgive my imperfections. This is the culmination of all my big plot changes over the years and all the extra development I've tried to give Leo, and I sincerely hope that I have come close enough to sticking the landing that your trust in me has not been misplaced. I really don't want to let you all down. You've been so supportive and so patient, with some of you leaving me comments on every chapter since 2020. Thank you. It really, really means a lot. When I couldn't write anything, I would sometimes revisit old chapters and the comments you've left, and that gave me some strength to keep trying.

On a fun note — I'm participating in my first-ever fandom zine as a writer! It's called Lucida Sidera: A Final Fantasy Ladies Zine and you'll never guess what characters I'm writing about. You can find links to follow it here.

I hope you've been well.

More soon. I hope. It will at least be less than another year, I can promise you that. The next chapter ... oh, the next chapter. I am very excited about it.