Copyrights: Kuja, FFIX, and all other references to Final Fantasy just don't belong to me. I doubt I'd be writing this if I did.

Note that later on there will be hints of shounen-ai - that is, two guys in a romantic relationship. I don't plan on going past some kissing, but those of you who don't appreciate that kind of thing should steer clear of this fanfic in particular. The first few parts have none of it, but nevertheless.

Anyway. Kuja doesn't belong to me, but the other characters featured, for the most part, are mine (Sardolasperion and Sariyah, especially). Both their character concepts are mine, as well.
Thanks for putting up with the babbling. On with the show...

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He awoke with a start, though his body did not jerk with surprise. The stiffness that stung his muscles prevented movement.

Cold hands... cold. That was what he remembered. Other than crashing masses of vines, the feeling of unhope - consuming and black as tar; the feeling of a creature covering him, the green vines striking and forming the constricting shell. Blacking out. Scraping at his skin; injuries leaking him onto the rumbling ground of the Tree; tearing. Tearing as he was unconscious, thorns, but the warmth of the other always there, defending him, always.

But how had he made his way here? Here, with the cold hands, the same feeling that had carried him to wherever he was now - but not the same hands. Those had been different hands. These were smoother. But all of them were cold, colder than he would have imagined them ever to be. Hands should never have been that cold, but they were, dreadfully so, and he was struck with a vile disgust.

The disgust was never expressed, though, as his muscles pained him too much to move. His wounds... he was numb all over, and there was no feeling in his skin, simply coldness - the air was cool, that which he lay upon was cold, the hands clumsily touching his wounds. All of them were cold. He could have done with a blanket - or that creature, that selfless genome which had risked his life to protect the terrible cause of the terrible crimes against his adopted home.

There had been warmth then. Now all he felt was ice.

He fell into it, his consciousness swallowed up in frigid blackness.

When he next awoke, the feeling was different. The air was still cool, but he was covered; there was sensation now in his limbs. He could hear fluttering wings through the numb veil that followed awakening: it was there, and he could acknowledge it, but it was blurred. His vision was not present, as his eyes were closed. He kept them that way.

Fluttering wings, again. Soft fur touched a wound in his arm, left uncovered by the blanket; again the touch was numbed, but not by sleep. His arm felt heavy and cold on the inside, as though ice were in the vein.

There was a sharp stab there; not enough to hurt immensely, but it was dreadfully present, and it made Kuja gasp. Whatever was making holes in him - as he was sure it was doing - didn't seem to notice or to care. It simply continued with the rows of stabbing, and the creature laying on the bed was certain it was pulling something through his skin.

The desire to open his eyes prevailed, and he opened them a blurry crack. His vision pushed through the haze and landed on a moogle. It was the wrong colour.

"You're the wrong colour," Kuja croaked, his once smooth voice reduced to a depressing croak. He was answered with a grunt.

"And the wrong size, too, but you don't hear me complaining." The (runty, he had noticed) moogle had a noticeably deep voice, scratchy and rather unpleased. Whether it was with Kuja's care he was burdened with, the fact that the man laying on the bed had reminded him of something unpleasant, or simply nature was beyond him, but he was wary of the moogle's tone and decided not to give him a reason to stab him in an unfrozen area using the needle he wielded.

Kuja closed his eyes, but remained awake. "What is the purpose of this torture?" he asked, more or less aware of the answer to come. Another stab, this one more violent than the rest. The moogle was obviously not in a pleasant mood.

"It's not torture. It's medical necessity," it said, its black fur bristling angrily. Kuja cracked his eyes open slightly and noted with confusion that the moogle's eyes, which normally would have been beady-black, were a powerful shade of bright green. Stab, and he sucked a breath through his teeth. The moogle continued. "You're rather torn up, if I might say so - or you were when my golems found you." The thread - for that was what Kuja noticed it was - pulled the holes together with the moogle's last tug. He winced.

"Golems...?" Kuja asked, his head feeling somewhat half-empty. Yes, golems - constructs. Soulless creatures made of inorganic material and brought to life; though, in this case, he was not so sure they were inorganic. He distinctly remembered skin against his.

The moogle nodded, tying a strong knot in the thread and reknotting it several times as he spoke. "A couple. Golems and zombies, too. All of them reanimated using only the finest in necromantic techniques." With this, the little creature bristled with pride, and Kuja swore to himself he could see a glow of motherly pride in the black moogle's face. He tried to nod, but his head only rolled on the table a little. The moogle bit the last length of thread as close to the knots as possible.

"Zombies. Golems. Are they yours?" Kuja asked, the question emerging from raw curiosity, and sounding nowhere as clean or smooth as he normally would have made it sound. This situation, however, was not very normal.

The moogle spilled a measure of some watery, cool substance on his arm, and as the numbness fled, there was a flash of pain where he felt the new stitches raw in his skin. The liquid managed to chase that away as well, and the pain fled after the numbness, leaving a newness in his arm. The moogle smiled as much as a creature like it could.

"Yes, they are mine. They are my creations. It sounds silly to have a moogle necromancer, doesn't it?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm not a moogle, you realize," he continued, mopping up the orange substance with a little cloth he had pulled from a nearby table. "My name is Sardolasperion, and I was a wizard, many years ago." Kuja tried to nod, this time finding it was possible. Warmth had somehow crept into his muscles. "Sardolasperion. I recognise the name, but it is vague."

Sardolasperion shrugged a little. "I can't say I was popular... but I was powerful," he hissed, eyes gleaming. "The universities rejected many of my proposals, but I did continue to research, to create." He gleamed with pride, then hesitated, and sat primly on the surgical table next to Kuja's head. "You may call me Asper. You can sit up, if you like."

Kuja did so, with relief, his eyes closed - he could only feel a sense of relief, relaxation, freedom flow through him. He felt new, like his arm.

And his eyes opened, and all feelings of warmth and relief were lain to waste.

His arms - once full of numbing tears, the larger of which had been sewn back together - were white and rose and blue with scars. The beautiful, immaculate skin - all but torn away and thrown to the ground. Kuja felt the shock tingle him; he pulled the blanket away from his legs and bottom half, and there he saw nearly the same, white porcelain marred with cracks beyond the repair of a simple cure spell.

There were no words for the shock, hopelessness, or mortification Kuja felt at that moment. His heart skipped a beat; his shoulders, his chest, the palms of his hands... all sewn together. He raised shaky, terrified hands to his face - he felt a thin webwork of lesions keeping his cheeks together, covering his immaculate face... his once immaculate face. The purity, the whiteness of the skin... destroyed. Doubling over to clutch his legs to his chest, he let out a powerful, deep sob and buried his face in his knees. The ruination he felt - the fall from grace - everything; he was supposed to be dead, he would rather be dead than patched together.

After he had had a good burst of crying, Kuja wiped his nose, then his eyes, and muttered, "What have you done to me?"

Asper smiled slightly, untouched by the white-haired man's tears. "I have rebuilt you. Put you back together from being torn apart." Turning and flitting from the surgical table to the floor, Asper continued. "Follow me. I have more suitable accomodations for warm-blooded creatures such as yourself." And with that, he ambled off, flapping his wings to speed his movement.

Kuja sat stiffly for a long moment, frustration and anger blurring his vision with tears again. He reached up to touch his hair - the lengths had been sheared off, leaving him with hair not much longer than his chin. Of all the things the moogle could have left the same... his eyes burned again. Getting up from the table and covering himself in the blanket to render his ruined body invisible, he stepped slowly after the sound of a moving moogle.

finit: premier chapitre