This will remain in the Symphonia section until there is a separate section for Abyss. I eagerly await the day.
Spoilers here for up to the second trip into Mt. Zaleho, not Roneal (thanks), possibly just a bit further.

The Only Way

The world is falling apart.

That's all anyone knows, really. In one way or another, whether metaphorically, virtually, or literally – all of which are true – the world is falling apart.

Metal rings. Armies march. Battles rage. One power collides with its opposite, equal power. The earth shakes, signaling the nearness of a very real and very fatal descent.

The only six people left in the world who can claim both understanding and definite good intentions aren't sure they can take it anymore.

Gailardia Galan Gardios – Guy Cecil, to friends, acquaintances, and most enemies – is afraid. His world already fell apart on him once, after all. A person should really only go through that one time in their lives, if even. And here he is, approaching what will be his third experience with such a thing.

There's a part of his life missing from his memory. It's barely a moment, but it occurs amidst all the chaos of the fall of Hod. He has no clue what happened then, but he knows it changed him, affected him in a negative way. There was a war then, too. He doesn't remember, or perhaps doesn't want to consider, if the war really started before or after the fall.

Maybe he could check the Score.

He immediately stomps on that line of thinking. The Score isn't going to help him right now. He's too busy running for his life through a battlefield of soldiers who will see him and not care what side he's on. All they'll care about is whether they can kill him.

Guy knows he's good with a sword, but even he can't take them all on. A good-sized group of them would spell the end for him, even with help from the others. With their forces split like this, each group is at about half strength, and it shows.

So much has happened recently that it's almost impossible to get it all straight in his head. The world – the whole world! – is really just the outer layer of the world, held up by some sort of sophisticated fontech, or fonic arte, or both, that's starting to not work properly anymore.

But even more than that, in a sense, he's afraid of losing it. Not that long ago, he had everything he needed in a mostly quiet life. He had his sword instructor, his job, a place to live, even a friend. In a way, he still has all those. They still exist, in a sense…but it will never be the same. Has he already lost it? No, because if he had, then he wouldn't be so afraid.

They must be close to Chesedonia by now, right? He doesn't want to be anywhere near such unstable land anymore. But Chesedonia is on that same precariously balanced crust as the rest of the Outer Lands. Guy knows that even when they reach the safety of Chesedonia, he won't stop being afraid.

He and his friends – he hopes he has the privilege of calling them that, despite all that's happened – have the best of intentions. But Guy has learned some hard lessons about walking that road. So he's afraid.

What scares him most of all is what he knows he absolutely must do, the only way to survive. He has to trust them, to trust Luke. To trust the son of the man upon whom he has vowed revenge. That's bad enough by itself, but Luke has his own glaring failures, too. It's hard to trust him; it's frightening.

But as he draws his sword to defend himself and his companions, Guy knows that trusting Luke is what he has to do.

xXx

Tear – Locrian Sergeant Mystearica Grants, whether she likes it or not – is afraid. Her voice is also hoarse from so many fonic hyms in such a short time, but that's what happens when you're moving an entire town of people across a war zone. It made sense, if Natalia was going one way, for her to go the other way, so she did. And it's now her job to deal with casualties.

There are a lot of those. Thankfully, in Tear's head at least, casualty doesn't always equate to death.

They have one more night before they reach Chesedonia. She collapsed on the ground practically as soon as they stopped, utterly exhausted. Jade gave her his typical sort of look – she has no idea what it might have meant. He hadn't said anything, though, and that was unusual.

She's had a lot of time to think about what she's afraid of. She doesn't see the reasoning behind it. She can reason out a lot of other things, though.

Anger, first off. Her brother – the only real family she has left – betrayed her. He betrayed the entire world, and now it would come crashing down around them all. Didn't he know that at this rate, the world would take him with it?

Confusion, then. All of them were confused, but Tear's loyalties are pulled in so many directions, and have become so twisted and tangled, it's hard for her to tell which way is up anymore, metaphorically speaking. She's under orders from Mohs, sworn into Ion's order, in debt to Legretta, wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for Van, and owes her life in one way or another to each of the other five people with whom she keeps company. She finds it hard to be loyal to herself, through all that.

Wouldn't anyone? She's really not sure.

But the basis of this fear still eludes her. It isn't death she's afraid of, for the most part. She's an Oracle Knight, a solider trained to face death. And it's not like she hasn't done so since this whole calamity began, either. Death has never frightened Tear in more than the vaguest way. So it isn't that.

Is it the loss of so much human life? The idea that the world will fall to pieces, killing most of its inhabitants, the survivors of that horrible drop into the Qliphoth left to die from the miasma…it's horrifying, certainly. It will be a terrible loss. Not that anyone will be left to know it's lost. Just the people of Yulia City will remain, maybe. Maybe Van wants to get rid of them, too.

Maybe he wants to rule a world of no one but him.

Tear knows she's shuddering now because she's found it. The source of her fear is the not knowing. The anger and confusion and fear are all part of it – of not knowing, of being unable to see what lies ahead. The Score is useless, even, in Tear's mind, because something about what she's heard from it just seems wrong to her, now. Grandfather promised her St. Binah wasn't going to fall…and yet, it's falling. So the Score is wrong.

Maybe it's been wrong before. Maybe it will be wrong again. The only way to find out is to keep going. Tear is afraid because all she has ever depended on has become unstable, unable to be trusted, and she doesn't know what to know anymore. Even if he thought he had the best of intentions, Teodoro condemned thousands of people by not revealing the falls of Hod and Akzeriuth. Even if he thought he had the best of intentions, Van is causing nothing but destruction and havoc.

Luke has asked Tear to trust him, has told her that he will change. Unlike the rest of Tear's snarled web of loyalty, this one thing seems quite straightforward to her. She can trust Luke, and Natalia along with him. She'll have to. Even if it scares her not to know if she's right.

xXx

Jade - Colonel Jade Curtiss or Dr. Jade Balfour, genius on both counts – is afraid. He just doesn't know it.

What he does know is that, if he were afraid, he would be caught rolling in the mud with Peony's rappigs before he'd admit it. And that he's tended a bit more toward bitter sarcasm lately. But really, that's just his style.

Besides, after all that's happened, he figures he might as well. They've noticed, but they won't say anything about it. Luke takes punishment now very easily. Jade thought he'd break out of it eventually, but right now he's not so sure.

Of course – and he'd never admit this, either – right now he's not sure of much of anything. Oh, there are several things he's certain about: the severity of the war; how cold winter gets in Keterburg; the rappig thing; that the world is slowly descending into…into an abyss of miasma. But he can't be sure of a lot of things.

He can't be sure these people, the people he's known for long enough to consider allies, and might even dare to venture, in a rare moment, to call friends…he can't be sure they'll be safe.

He prefers to dwell on other things, though. Currently, his favorite topic of thought is the variety of ways he might annoy Dist. Dist is so much fun to bother, it's almost more than he can stand, and the incident in St. Binah has brought out his love of that again. After he's tired of that topic for a while, he usually goes back to the kinds of comments that make Guy roll his eyes and Natalia turn furious, and Anise giggle. None of those three are around at present, though.

But he'll see them soon. Chesedonia is barely a mile away, and they've finally brought the people of St. Binah and Engeve away from most of the fighting. Not that the group hasn't seen its fair share of it, but Jade's trying to be optimistic.

He doesn't like the feeling he's getting, though. That absence of surety…is it making him nervous? No, he knows nervous, and this is different. Nervous is standing on the edge of one of the places where the world has already descended and feeling the ground shake. This is different.

Jade knows what it is, really. He's felt like this before, though this time it's just the edges of it. This is the feeling he got the one time in his life when he lost control. When he swore, though he didn't really understand that was what he did, that he'd never feel that again. This is the feeling of seeing a blade so sharp it practically makes that clichéd sound of glinting sunlight plunging toward the owner of a head of black hair that barely reaches above his waist, and being powerless to stop it.

This is fear. Jade Curtiss is afraid and suddenly he knows it. His outward expression hardly changes, however, and Tear and Luke wouldn't notice, anyway. Tear has the people to worry about, and Luke is either thinking of himself or nothing, surely.

Jade will have to trust that Anise and Ion have been able to handle themselves. The only way to get anything done was to split up, and there's no one left in Auldrant with better intentions than Ion, after all, he figures. He's starting to be able to fool even himself with fake optimism, too. For the moment, this is an improvement.

Trusting in Anise and Ion and Natalia – she's the head of the other half of the group at the moment – isn't ideal. Jade can't be sure they'll make the right decisions. He can't be sure they'll be safe. But he can trust that they know how to defend and protect themselves. And each other.

xXx

Anise Tatlin – Fon Master Guardian up until a few moments ago – is afraid. Her world is falling apart…and it just fell apart, too.

Ion relieved her of her duties. He doesn't want her to be a Fon Master Guardian anymore. He was formal about it and everything. Anise could cry, if everyone else weren't so busy that she felt she should be, too. How could he do this to her? How could he desert her like that?

…Ion…

It hurts to have your purpose in life torn from you, Anise has decided. It hurts worse than any injury a weapon could give you. Worse even than that time she was so horribly rejected…at least then she'd still had something to work for.

But now…there was nothing. She has nothing left to do with her life, and not just because Ion doesn't want her around anymore. There's a lot more going on in her frantic, deserted mind than anyone else here knows.
Because without her job as a Fon Master Guardian, she can't do her other job anymore, either. She can't be a spy for Grand Maestro Mohs. And if she thinks things are falling to pieces now, life after Mohs gets through with her will be much worse.

Mohs has control of her family, her income, her actions…her life. This is the only way she can keep the things she loves most, the only way to preserve what little she has left. And now, part of that only way is walking away from her, not looking back, and the other part is leading it along.

There is a part of Anise that is afraid for herself. Afraid that without the title of Ion's protector, the rest of the group will feel she's useless – she's young and loud, and she recognizes that she can be childish – and decide she's not worth bringing along anymore. Ion would have spoken for her if they topic had ever come up, but Ion wasn't with them anymore.

There's another part that fears they'll figure her out. That they'll react to her the same way they all did – she did, even, hypocrite that she knows she's become – to Luke at Akzeriuth. That they will turn those cold gazes and hard voices on her and never look back.

The way Ion isn't looking back now. She looks at him again, and knows there's more. Deep down, and also right on the surface – they're often the same for Anise – she's afraid she'll never see Ion again.

Not because something will happen to her, although it's certainly possible, especially with Mohs being present for all this.

Because it will happen to him. To Ion.

Anise doesn't fear her own death, not in the way most people do. But the idea of Ion in any kind of trouble shakes her to the core; his death is unthinkable. The worst possible thing that could happen now would be for Ion to die. He's been the only friend she knew she could count on. She hopes that even if he did find out, he'd still like her, still accept her. Ion's like that.

She'll watch him walk away from her, out of Chesedonia with Mohs, still as gentle and sincere as he's always been. He's told her he has an idea, but he wouldn't explain what it was. Instead, she's supposed to watch over Luke and protect him. …Oh, please. Even if she did like him, Luke has proven quite capable of protecting himself.

She wonders if maybe Ion wouldn't tell her his idea because he's figured it out. And then she stops herself. She doesn't want to know if he's caught on or not. Not unless she hears it from him.

Ion is the most trustworthy person she knows, so Anise will trust him. She'll believe in his idea and his decision. Besides, she intends to follow him to Daath as soon as possible and find out for herself...and then…well, she'll have to tell Mohs. No matter how horrible it makes her feel inside, it's the only way to help her family.

Right now, she has another job to do.

xXx

Natalia Luzu Kimlasca-Lanvaldear – maybe – is afraid. Everything she's ever known has just been torn to shreds. The world she knew has fallen apart.

For one horrifying moment, she wants to let Baticul, Kimlasca, even all of Auldrant fall with it.

She'll stand tall and proud and defiant of all Mohs has tried to say. He's tried to say she's an impostor. That she's not the real Princess of Kimlasca. That she's not King Ingobert VI's real daughter. But of course she doesn't believe Mohs. Mohs is one of her enemies now. Of course he'd try to come up with some evil plan like this.

It would be a lot easier to convince herself of that if she hadn't just referred to the king as His Highness. Instead of Father.

It…it does make sense, in a way. She's never looked like Father or Mother…in fact, Luke…or Asch, really…had remarked on it once, when they were children. It had been a passing thing, of little importance. Such things happened in noble families, sometimes. Children looked like ancestors' cousins that no one remembered anymore.

Or they looked like commoners. Like impostors.

…Like Natalia?

No. No, she could not let her thoughts go down that path. Not when she has already done so much for the people of Baticul…of Kimlasca. Of Malkuth, even. It shouldn't matter what Mohs says. He lies. Right?

She won't find any confirmation in those around her. Guy, Luke and Tear look worried. Anise is off by herself, staring at the ground, and Jade is looking casually back and forth between them, with one of those blank but amused stares.

He really gets on her nerves.

Natalia remembers when she caught up with the group in the abandoned factory in Baticul. How she asked them to please disregard her as royalty for the time being. She never thought that would turn into a permanent arrangement. If she'd known…well, first, she'd take it back.

For another horrible moment, she wishes she'd never left Baticul that day. Never left it ever. She'd rather be by her father's…by the king's side, like she's always been. Even though leaving was the only way to do what she felt needed to be done.

Natalia is excellent at being frightened. She's terrible at being afraid. Frightened is what you are when you hear a ghost story, or walk alone through the empty streets of Baticul late at night, which no one but her knows she's done. Afraid is the deep feeling of absolute terror that you cannot shake, no matter what else you try to think of.

She's afraid of the man whom she has called father for seventeen years. She doesn't want to hear him reject her, denounce her standing as royalty. It isn't the royalty she doesn't want to lose, though. It's the father. It's the family, the relationship with a man as wonderful as His Highness.

Natalia is afraid that when she returns to Baticul, she will no longer be going home. When the rest of the world that was not part of Natalia's world falls apart, though, it might not matter anyway, because there might not even be a Baticul. Though she intends to stop that from happening. Or at least, to try.

She hopes she can trust herself to be brave. She has Guy and Luke, at least. She trusts them, despite Guy's past and Luke's…lack of one. And she knows they trust her in return, no matter whose daughter she is. She wishes she knew if that were comforting or just making it worse.

xXx

Luke – fon Fabre, foolish replica, Van's puppet, the idiot – is afraid. He knows what it's like to have the world falling apart beneath him; he knows what it's like to be helpless to stop it. He knows, and would give everything in the world not to know, what it's like to cause it.

He's finally come to understand what that means. He was only doing as Van said…but even without understanding what was going on, he should have told the others. How else could he expect them to trust him? Not that they did anymore, of course. He said he'll change, and he meant it, but he doesn't really expect them to believe him. He doesn't deserve it.

So when Luke thinks of the world falling apart, like it is now, he first thinks of Akzeriuth. Of how, once he began, there was nothing anyone could have done to stop him. Of how everyone hated him, and the more he tried to deny it the worse it became. This, he knows, is an example of a different kind of falling apart.

Because a world doesn't necessarily mean a giant sphere of land and water and sky and fonons. A world can be four walls and a cold iron gate, stone halls and distant parents and submissive servants. A world can be a solemn, sunken city surrounded by a sky made of miasma. A world can be the inside of a warship, constantly prepared for battle, or the inside of a dark mining tunnel, enjoying such hard and strengthening work. A world can be, and often is, the company of your closest friends and companions.

And while a world can take days, months, even years to build, it can fall apart faster than Luke would have ever believed. But he believes it, now.

That's the second thing he thinks of, when he simply can't distract his mind from it anymore. When he's just too tired or strained or upset to try to focus on something else, he remembers the utter rejection and disgust of that moment. The looks on their faces, the horrified and unyielding pitch to their voices…and the dawning idea, born of Van's words, that he was…

He can't think of that. Instead, he'll continue along the path his mind takes as the world falls apart, always – what he can do, now, to stop it. Whatever he can do, he'll do it. Anything, anywhere, anytime. He's changed, after all.

…Right?

Of course he has. If he doesn't believe that, who will? He asked Tear to watch him, and she agreed. His feeling of relief when she did was so immense it almost knocked him over. And ever since then, he's been trying. Only recently, with the war taking place instead of looming in the distance, and the descent into the Qliphoth looming in its place, has Luke started to wonder if maybe he's trying too hard.

He wonders why it seems that you can only stop one catastrophe by facing an even larger one. If that's the way it always has to be.

He wonders if it was really the right decision to keep the entirety of the Score a secret. If maybe this could have been prevented, somehow.

He wonders, as the sun does not rise over a land that's been lowered into an abyss of dangerous miasma, if that sort of trying is what got him here in the first place. If trying so hard, in a different way, was what led to his personal world – all of his worlds – falling apart.

He was trying to live up to Master Van's expectations. To be what the man had seemed to know he could be. He'd had only the best intentions for Akzeriuth – he'd wanted to save everyone!

No one knows better than Luke the folly that comes of good intentions. No one.

He isn't afraid of losing the trust of his friends, or their respect, or their friendship. Fact is, he's already lost that. Several times over, to judge by the way they've been treating him. He's never seen anyone so angry at him in all his life. …He's never been so responsible, either.

What Luke is afraid of – so afraid his breath catches and it feels like he can't get another one – is that he will never be able to get those things back again. That he will never be able to atone for himself, no matter what he does or for how long. He fears that he will never be able to make up for the mistakes that have become such a part of him they now are him. The mistake that is Luke, from his…creation…to his idiotic actions of not so long ago.

He's trying.

But he's afraid that what his heart tells him is true; it tells him that no amount of trying will ever be enough.

It also tells him to trust in his friends. To believe in them, in their decisions and actions and what they strive for. But in order to do that, he has to trust himself first. If he wants to ask them to place their trust in him, he has to do it, too. It's the only way.

He doesn't know if he can succeed. He's afraid he can't.

But he's trying.

xXx

Ion – Fon Master, head of the Order of Lorelei, gentle and caring pawn – is in a situation so entirely different from those of his six friends that he has no idea whether to be afraid or not. He willingly agreed to go with Mohs, and for now he'll let the man believe that he intends to go along with this plot, after all. He doesn't want to think of the look on Natalia's face when Mohs hit her with his vile dart of poison words, or the emotion in Anise's voice when she begged him not to relieve her of her duties, or the way Luke stared at the ground when he realized that what happened to Akzeriuth was about to happen to these people, too.

Ion is probably the safest person in all of Auldrant. Those that want peace need him as a mediator, and those that want war need him as a hostage, and those that want destruction need him to open the Sephiroth. The world needs him, as he is the only person with the powers of a Fon Master.

He'd much rather be with the people who need him as a friend.

But he has an idea. Now that he's been thinking more about the Score, he wants to go do some research. It isn't unusual to find the Fon Master reading or researching in the Daath library. No one will think anything of it, as long as he also goes along with Mohs, and opens the Sephiroth.

And he trusts them, the people he's left behind. He'll find the information they need – he'll be more useful to them than Mohs or Dist or Van will ever fathom – and when they return for him, because he knows they will, he'll be prepared. And they'll do whatever it takes to preserve the world.

War and peace and prosperity hardly matter when compared to the life or death of Auldrant.

Maybe Ion is afraid. But he may be the only one who can use this information to stop the world from completely falling apart, and he intends to do it. He trusts his friends to be able to find him again. And he can see, in his own way, the way all of this will turn out. He knows what will happen, but he accepts it in a way most others never will.

It's the only way, after all.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it!