Author's Note: So the fandom's pretty damn well dead. So the game's been around for ten years. So I haven't written fanfiction in almost a year. So what? The way I see it... this is sort of a fitting way to end my fanfiction "career," as it were - I started with a fic featuring Kuja and Garland, and I'll end it the same way. Consider this my parting shot. A very short parting shot. -takes a bow-
Losing Everything
by LeFox
"You should have died with your miserable planet," he snarls, as if he had not said the same thing only moments before. I must forgive him. His memory is leaving him now, I suppose - just as his sight left him so very suddenly yesterday, and his magic the day before that. His memory seems to be going now, beginning with events that happened very recently - not but a few moments ago - but eventually, all of his memories will have fled. And will that serve as a blessing or a curse to him, I find myself wondering, he who has so very much to remember, and so many burdens to carry.
This is assuming, of course, that he lives long enough to lose all of his memory.
"You should have died with your fruitless ambitions," I reply at his bedside, knowing he will not hear me, and not caring if he chooses to listen. He does not listen to the things I say, or forgets them if he does. Our coexistence has become mercifully peaceful, in this.
He is all I have left.
Terra lies in ashes, Mikoto has forsaken me, the genomes I created have no further need of me, Zidane was never mine. All that remains to me is my wildest child, the one who sought to destroy me, and instead destroyed my life's work. And yet, he is the only one who has returned to me, and is the one who saved me, when I found myself stranded in the snows of Gaia's Lost Continent... after I had come to terms with the realization that I had not died with the planet I so desperately wished to revive and rule. I had nearly frozen. He was nearly dead, himself, the scars of his fall still fresh. He brought me to this place, "Esto Gaza," as the Gaians have named it. We have been here for two weeks since, and with each passing day... I grow stronger, as he fades.
He is all I have left. And he lies here on a wooden bed, unable to rise. He lies there, gazing at the vaulted ceiling through blind blue eyes. He lies there, snarling and hissing at me like the unbreakable beast he has always been... but he came back to me, when the others would not, and will not. He lies there... slowly, yet quickly dying. He has hours left to him. A day, at best. At worst... perhaps when next he blinks, his eyes will close forever.
"You should have died..." he begins again, but forgets the words before they pass his dry, cracked lips. His voice has become raspy, and scarcely audible - a voice that once sang of power, of authority. This is the man who nearly held an entire planet in the palm of his graceful, pale hand. And he is dying now, slowly withering away to nothing, unable to so much as lift a hand. When next he speaks, if ever he speaks again... I suspect I will be unable to hear him.
He was not my first creation.
Far from it, as a matter of fact. He was merely my first success. The first genome with a soul to last an hour, a day, a week, a month, two months, a year, five years, a decade... and yet, I gave him only a quarter of a century to live. It doesn't sound nearly so bad that way: a quarter of a century. But in the end, what it means is this: I gave this man twenty-five years to live. I realize now the futility of his existence, in that no matter how powerful he became - and he was so powerful, only days ago - it was all for nothing. And now, when I have so little left to me... I find that I would like to keep him with me. Even in his hatred, he is my last tie to Terra, and is indeed the reason I nearly succeeded in my goal.
We had always been bound together, not by love (love was beyond his comprehension, and even more so beyond mine), but by hatred, and by a goal we shared... each to defeat the other, each to find victory over the dreams and hopes of the other. Now, we are bound together by the successful achievement of our respective goals. He has destroyed me... but I destroyed him long ago; I killed him before I ever gave him life. And in this, I suppose I could claim the true victory, but it rings hollow. He is all I have left, and I am losing him.
"...Should have died..." he tries again, runs his tongue over those dry lips, and stops. His breathing has become so shallow. His breath rattles in his chest, and every once in a great while, he gives a weak cough. The wetness of each hack suggests that he is coughing up blood, and choking. He is in a great deal of pain now, and each inhalation is a bit more painful than the last. Soon, though, he will stop breathing, and the pain will end. He could just as easily allow himself to die in peace, yet his strong will (the very will I had so loathed when I created him) makes him try, one last time, "You should have died with..." before he suddenly stops again, and begins coughing violently. Blood sprays his lips, red and harsh against his pale flesh. His blind eyes are wide, perhaps with fear, and his breathing is even more shallow.
Perhaps I spoke too soon, for he does manage to lift his hand then. The small, bone-thin thing rests on my own hand, trembling, clutching me so tightly that, had I been able to feel it, I am certain I might have cried out in pain. "Garland," he chokes, his eyes directed, however vaguely, at my face. And it is then that I understand - he is dying now, and the fight has gone out of him. The fight, the hate, the narcissism, it has all left him, leaving only fear in its place. Fear, and pain. And myself... I feel something that may be fear, as well. The fear that all living creatures know: the fear of being utterly, completely alone in the world, particularly a world they do not understand. Madness makes me want nothing more than to beg him to stay, but the futility of it all, and the cold, cruel irony, stuns me into silence. He is all I have left. The only thing left to me on this planet, and the only thing left from the world I created, and the world I wanted to create.
His eyes close, his breathing quiets, and his hand falls limp. And in that moment, I find that we have one final thing in common, perhaps the most binding similarity of all...
We have both lost everything.