A/N: This is my first fic... uh, ever. Heh. It's rather on the short side and I'm not entirely happy with it, but here it is. I hope it manages to convey the sympathy I felt for Alex at the conclusion of The Lost Age. Reviews would be greatly appreciated!
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He lay there on the mountain top, watching helplessly as his perfect world crumbled around him, the bitter pain of injustice creeping into his body. Everything he'd worked for, everything he'd fought for... it was all disappearing, torn from his grasp by a fantastic, indecipherable clump of rock. Were he not facing death, he might have found it all rather amusing. As things stood, however, all he could manage was an incredulous kind of outrage.
Aforesaid deity dissipated into the morning air, its words echoing across the mountain: "If you survive, perhaps we will meet again someday!"
If he survived? The filthy thing had drained him of his power, left him crippled on a sinking ship of soil! He couldn't move, couldn't escape from what was quickly becoming a hopeless situation. All he had were his miserable thoughts.
He saw, in his mind's eye, the day he outgrew his tiny hometown of Imil; the day he abandoned it in search of something bigger. It was the first, he supposed: the first in a long line of sacrifices he was to make for his cause. He'd since returned to Imil for the lighting of the Mercury Lighthouse. The snow-capped village had no longer possessed the comforting smell of home. He hadn't missed it.
He saw Mia, Imil's healer and angel. He saw her extraordinary curative abilities, her compassionate nature. He'd loved her, once, before his quest for power had driven her from his thoughts. A faint feeling of regret stirred in his heart. Had it been the right thing to do, leaving her behind? He wasn't so sure now. He felt the biggest of fools, chasing the largest of follies.
He saw the people of Prox. He saw Saturos, Menardi, Agatio and Karst - his co-conspirators and, ultimately, puppets. Unable to concentrate on the purest goal of unleashing Alchemy, they'd been consumed by their emotions and had fallen to Mia's party. They'd received what was coming to them, he decided.
And yet, Mia's friends... her friends had hated him, too.
"You're not like me. You can't simply discard someone who is no longer of use to you."
The edges of his mind stirred at the recollection. Since hearing of the legend of the Golden Sun, he'd known that he needed it to be finally happy. He'd done what he had to, certainly; why hold onto something if it drew you away from the source of your happiness?
He'd thought he'd seen the same thing in those Felix led - the single-minded determination to ignite the lighthouses, whatever the cost. Their behaviour was a paradox, though: they fought for their mission with a rare ferocity but simultaneously refused to sacrifice each other for it.
Now, he saw that their happiness grew from mutual friendship, a joy found in the company of others. They enjoyed it with each passing day and drew strength from it, igniting the lighthouses to protect a happiness they'd already found. Perhaps he should have joined them on that path, he blearily wondered. The path of friendship.
With one final, mighty groan, the ancient mountain sank below its neighbours, darkness covering Alex's peripheral vision. As the last morsels of sky were devoured by tumbling rock, his wistful thoughts were replaced with acceptance, a blissful calm that descended upon him in his final moments.
He hoped that they were happy, somewhere.