Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note: Finally finished Zestiria. I have a few ideas running through the works, so I'm trying to flesh them out into an actual story. Overall, I liked the game, but I thought it was lacking particularly in the story department. It was pretty straightforward, and even though it had so many sidequests, I felt like they were rushed and you didn't really get enough expansion on a lot of them. The dungeons were pretty lackluster too, but I have to say, the battle system was fantastic. Very smooth and it felt really natural.

Years ago, we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the war came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts?
-Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

After four thousand years, ghosts and hallucinations are little more than par for the course. Yuan has become accustomed to seeing and hearing them, has gotten very good at ignoring them and focusing on his sanity. He's fought too hard and lost too much to allow himself the luxury of insanity once more.

It's after the first mana link breaks that Yuan starts to see her. She is an old ghost, the ghost. The one who haunts every action, every word, every breath. But it has been a very long time since she has been something that fools his eyes.

He only ever sees her in his peripheral vision, and when he turns to face her, she vanishes. He sees her in the hazy morning fog in Flanoir as he drinks his coffee, and the soft evening shadows of twilight. The ghost is something easy to ignore, easy to dismiss. After all, sanity is something that comes and goes, and Yuan has trained himself to be very good at reasserting his grip on it.

(If his ghost looked lost, sometimes, her eyes—which would be hazel, were she not in a form of mist—wide and constantly glancing in every direction, well, that was just a quirk of nature. If his ghost ever laid eyes on him and sometimes had to squint and if her face lit up, well. Old men could still dream, couldn't they?)

The second mana link breaks and the worlds groan and grumble beneath their feet. Yuan has to act fast to avoid having wine spill across the floor. The floors are wooden, so there is no chance of a stain, but Yuan hates to waste good wine. He hears Botta a few moments later, his voice crackling over the base-wide intercom.

"This is Botta. Report any injuries or malfunctions. There should be little chance of an aftershock." It only takes him a moment to switch to Yuan's office intercom. "Sir?"

"Everything is fine, Botta."

"That earthquake felt stronger than the last. Another mana link?" Earthquakes, after all, aren't uncommon in the Triet region.

"Most likely, but not necessarily. Check for other areas affected by the earthquake, if there are any unusual ones."

"Yessir."

That night, as Yuan is dressing for bed, he sees his ghost again. She seems much more solid now, color returning to her, even if it is only a pale imitation of the vibrancy she'd had in life. He ignores her once again, but sleep does not come easy that night, for he can feel her eyes on him, an almost physical weight.

Martel is dead, he reminds himself. Four thousand years dead. What she is now, in a horrible limbo, isn't alive.

Yuan can feel her watching him during the day as well. Her eyes are sorrowful and so full of longing that it hurts to glance to her, to see if she is still there. (He knew that pain, knew what it was to want something so badly. Those times that he was tempted to speak to her, to just talk to what he knew, logically, was an empty room, he clenched his left hand hard, missing the texture of his wedding ring)

The next time he sees Kratos on Derris-Kharlan, Yuan thinks about stopping him, about asking if his ghosts are becoming more solid too. Does Anna visit him during the day, does she try and get his attention?

Even if Yuan were to ask, and even if Kratos' answer would be 'yes', he doesn't think that Kratos is a safe gauge of sanity to use. Broken as Yuan is, he is nowhere near as shattered as Kratos has become. Not that he blames him, of course. Yuan has nightmares sometimes, of Martel's death. Those are common nightmares, but the truly horrible ones are the ones where it is his blade through her belly, his hands soaked in her blood.

At first, Yuan is too busy to deal with his ghost with the third mana link breaks. He is bruised and bleeding, and so is Botta, staggering to his feet across the hangar bay as Lloyd and the others escape on stolen Rheairds. This earthquake is stronger, much stronger; Yuan sees the damage in Flanoir later, with fallen chunks of ceiling, and collapsed houses. The Renegade bases are thankfully still in one piece.

Botta leaves the infirmary first; Yuan had insisted that he get treated before him. It takes much more than his current injuries to do any serious damage to Yuan, after all, but Botta had been injured rather badly.

It is as Botta is leaving, with stern orders from the Healer to rest, that Yuan sees the ghost again. He almost smirks at the irony; of all places for her to appear, an infirmary is most appropriate. The smirk never actually comes to his face though. He has no desire to get on the bad side of Noana—the best Healer the Renegades have.

Noana leaves him sitting on a cold chair—everything in the Flanoir base is cold, which Yuan grumbles about many a day—and that is when the ghost steps close.

And she opens her mouth and a familiar voice comes out. Yuan has not heard this voice for four thousand years, save for in his own mind, and yet, he has never forgotten it. It takes him a moment to realize that, yes, the noise is actually there. This is not in his mind. That doesn't mean he isn't insane.

He feels, somehow, ancient and heavy with every single one of his years, and so much younger, with his ghost scolding him like that. Her freckled cheeks are red with frustration, her jaw set. Yuan opens his mouth to argue back, to say that what he'd done was necessary, but then he remembers that he is sitting in the infirmary of the Flanoir Renegade Base, and the precise reason why he's there, so he snaps his jaw shut and ignores his ghost.

(Martel was dead. It's a mantra he kept repeating to himself, showing himself the memory of her corpse on the bloody ground, of her sightless eyes to give himself a vicious reminder that his wife was dead, and the dead didn't come back)

If her expression falls, if he can watch her heart break on that lovely face, well, Yuan has always had a very active imagination.

She tries to get his attention often, his ghost. The first time, she shouts across the small room, making his hand jump, the pen falling from his fingers, and Botta stares at him over the lip of his mug. "Is everything alright?"

"Absolutely fine."

Botta doesn't believe him; Yuan can see that quite clearly. But he can't blame him, exactly. He thinks about telling Botta the truth, thinks about telling him about his ghost—maybe even all of his ghosts, over the years because the list can be quite extensive—but he decides against it.

Yuan sets the pen down, narrowing his focus down to Botta's voice. "You were saying? About Arnold Rothfiel's new book?"

(He pretended not to see Martel collapse a little on herself, that he didn't hear her voice go hoarse from shouting for him, that he didn't hear her choke on a sob)

Hell breaks loose when the fourth mana link is shattered. The Great Tree—or, the warped version of it, terrorizes Sylvarant. In a sick, horrible way, Yuan is glad that Botta isn't alive to see this, that he doesn't have to watch his hometown of Palmacosta sink into the waves.

He helps organize his Renegades, helps them get to the mana reactors, helps them set up the Mana Cannon, and instructs the Mizuho girl in how it works. Then he goes back to his base in Triet to take in the many wounded on their side, to help patch them up because Noana and her few students are already helping not just their people, but the people in Flanoir and Triet as well.

The mana being charged in the Cannon is incredible; Yuan can feel the difference even all the way out here, though he isn't sure that most people can. He returns to his office, waiting for communication from the team that went to the ranch.

Moments later, he hears a piercing, echoing cry and his fist clenches because while the voice is warped from being tied to the Tree, he can still recognize it.

When no communication comes, Yuan decides to contact them. He doubts that Forcystus would have been able to defeat all of them, particularly with Kratos there, but stranger things have happened. "The Great Seed is once again bound in the Holy Ground of Kharlan. For that, I owe you my gratitude. Thank you. It seems as though you've been able to save the Great Seed as well as this world."

Kratos' voice crackles over the speaker. "If the Great Seed is intact, then I presume Martel, who's fused with it, is safe as well?"

Martel is dead, Yuan thinks savagely. Has been dead for millennia. "…I'm sure that's good news for you. I wish I could say the same for me."

Yuan sinks into his chair, breathing deep. It's been a long day. A long year, if he's being honest. Time tends to blur together and seem quite short in Yuan's mind. It's not a fact that surprises him; four thousand years tends to bring Time into perspective, but ever since the oracle in Iselia had happened? Time has slowed and sharpened, and it leaves Yuan with a heavy sense of exhaustion.

His ghost doesn't appear that night. Or the nights after. He checks his peripherals, looks in the mist and the shadows, and—once—he calls for her. He drinks himself into a stupor that night—or he tries to. He's not sure whether angels are incapable of intoxication or if it simply takes a massive amount of alcohol. Either way, he's left with the burn of whiskey down his throat and his mind horribly clear.

(She's gone. Why call for her when he knew she wouldn't respond? The ghost was his old, twisted mind trying to regress back to insanity. This year had been a hard one. It was a response to stress, was all. Martel was dead)

The next time Yuan speaks to Kratos, he's nursing broken ribs in the empty Triet base. Cruxis has already been through here; he can see the destruction left behind in their wake, but there are no corpses. He'd managed to get the message to his Renegades in time for them to evacuate.

Cruxis won't return here. Yuan knows Mithos, and Mithos thinks he's already too far gone to be much of a threat, thinks that the Renegades are dismantled. They are, but it's not a permanent thing.

Kratos' footsteps echo in the empty base. The noise is deliberate; Kratos can move almost silently if he wants to. His footsteps are off, Yuan notes, not getting up from his chair. But then, Kratos had been injured too, had taken Yuan's spell directly to the back. (Martel would scold him for being on his feet so soon, would tell him he needed to rest more. Back injuries weren't flexible; they needed their time to heal, no less. You couldn't cut the recovery time short. But Martel was dead and here they both were)

Yuan shift a little in his chair, trying to get a little more comfortable, but it isn't happening. He's tried healing his ribs, and the pain had lessened slightly, but he's never been very much of a Healer, so he'd wrapped them the best he could and resigned himself to healing the old fashioned way.

Kratos takes a seat across from him, moving stiffly and not bothering to mask it. Yuan snorts as he pours another glass of wine; there's no point in masking anything anymore. Neither of them have anything left to hide.

"Did you hear her?" Yuan says finally, not looking at him. "When the Tree—"

If Kratos finds the question surprising, he doesn't show it. "Yes. We all did."

That makes Yuan turn to stare. They'd all heard Martel? Kratos might still be more than a little insane, but Lloyd isn't. Neither are the rest of them. Well, not in the way that makes hallucinations. One can argue that taking on Cruxis is something only the insane would do.

"She screamed," Kratos adds quietly. "When the Mana Cannon hit her."

"…I thought it was in my head."

Kratos doesn't ask, not outright. Once, he would have. He would have asked Yuan what he saw, or what else he heard, but that isn't a part of who Yuan-and-Kratos are anymore. "Not this time."

He might not ask, but Yuan still will. Because he needs to know, even if the person he's asking isn't one hundred percent reliable. "…Do you see her? Anna?"

Kratos' hand clenches on the arm of the chair, his shoulders going tight. (Martel's death destroyed the world, but Anna is the only woman that could ever be powerful enough to destroy Kratos) "…Sometimes." He relaxes marginally, but it's a conscious effort. "I saw Martel more often."

It has never been a secret that Kratos loves Martel; never romantically, but the two had been close. Yuan has known this for as long as they had known both of the Yggdrasills, but somewhere in all these years, he's forgotten, the knowledge dull with familiarity. It's a sharp reminder, now, that Kratos has lost so much too. And yet, here they stand on opposite sides.

No, not opposite. Not anymore. Different facets of the same side, perhaps, but certainly not quite enemies.

"…what did she say?" (He hadn't listened. It's all that kept him sane all these years, but it hurt to ignore his ghost. Sometimes, insanity just hurts less)

Kratos' eyes flicker to his. There are ghosts in his eyes too, and old sorrows. "Lately, she was upset. She said you wouldn't listen."

Martel is dead, Yuan repeats to himself. But he knows as well as Kratos does that people trapped in an Exsphere or Cruxis Crystal aren't necessarily gone. The early days of the experiments, when Exspheres had been so widely distributed during the War, with people being trapped and slowly fading away. It's why Mithos had hooked Martel up to the Seed, so she had a continuous loop of her mana and the Seed's refreshing her.

He'd started seeing his ghost again after the mana links broke, Yuan remembers. That much mana seeping out might have given Martel the range from her Cruxis Crystal to find them. (And it made him feel disgusted with himself for having ignored her so vehemently, while still feeling a familiar curl of love and fondness because she'd still found them. Thousands of miles between Derris-Kharlan and the ground, and she'd still found them to try to talk)

Yuan closes his eyes and his hands clench around the wine glass. The pressure of his wedding ring against his skin is familiar and anchoring. "I didn't think she was real."

"I explained that to her." Kratos hadn't even known, but he'd been able to figure out the truth. Then again, they're both far too familiar with their minds playing tricks on them. There is something else in Kratos' eyes, a dusty fondness. "It only made her try harder to get your attention."

He remembers her shouting for him, remembers her arm waving, her dozens of attempts to touch him, trying to grab his shoulder, his hand, his face, and the hollow look that would follow when her hand went right through him.

"And Anna?" Yuan asks. "Was she real too?" (He didn't want to keep talking about Martel. The heartache—old, but never gone—was clenching in his chest again, seizing his lungs. If he needed to breathe, Yuan would be dead by now. Even after her death, Martel was still able to take his breath away)

Kratos' eyes are on the wine left in his glass. "…I doubt it. Just my imagination."

The Spirit is wrong, but she's almost right enough that Yuan's breath catches at the sight of her. She is something more primal and elemental than Martel had ever been, but her appearance…it's almost a copy of her.

Almost. When the Spirit nears to speak to him, flowers and blades of grass blooming beneath her feet, he can see the differences.

"Someone knows you" she says, and her voice is lyrical, lovely, but not Martel's and Yuan feels his heart untwist a little.

"Many people know me," Yuan tells her. There is something…unfocused…about her eyes, like she's seeing him, solid in front of her, but that's not all she's seeing.

(The thing about being made of memories was that you saw it all. She saw the man before her now, unaged, and yet, matured, his mouth a bitter slash, and his spirit battered, mind broken and not quite put all the way back together. But she also saw this man, younger, a joyous smile spreading on his face, laughter in his eyes and on his lips, spirit bright and strong with youth. She saw him soft, and quiet, and loving, eyes fond, and the ring new, etchings still legible, on his finger)

"But someone inside me knows you."

Yuan hadn't been here for her initial introduction, but the information has been relayed to him. The Spirit says her name is Martel, and she is made of the souls of everyone who has been caught in the middle of this war. That Martel is only one of the souls inside her.

Before Yuan can open his mouth to respond, something about the Spirit shifts in a way he has no words for, and suddenly, he can see Martel in places she hadn't been before. In the sorrowful tilt to her lips, the angle that she holds her head, her posture.

"Hello, Yuan." It's Martel's voice, traces of a Heimdall accent and all, and Yuan is so tired, and still reeling from disbelief at it all that he nearly drops to his knees at the sound of it.

(Martel was dead, he told himself. He couldn't have his wife back, but this was better than a ghost)

"Martel—"

Her arms are around him, holding tight enough that his still-fragile ribs creak, but he wraps his arms around her, uncaring because she's solid and real. A too-pointy nose is poking his collarbone, but he kisses her hair, shutting his eyes to the world because he needs this.

An apology is caught in his throat, thorny and painful, but he can't make the words come out.

She pulls back a little—Yuan's hands tighten momentarily, not wanting to let her go—but she's just moving enough so she can look him in the eye. (Shame rushed through him—a sensation he was not accustomed to. Could she see all that he'd become? Could she see every twisted and broken piece of him?)

One of her hands trails up his chest to cup his cheek, thumb rubbing at the skin. A smile curls her lips and it hurts to look at. It's a clean kind of pain though, a healing kind. "My husband—speechless. Who would've thought?"

That forces a choked laugh from him. Once, he would have flirted back, would have been able to say something to make her laugh, maybe roll her eyes, but she would've kissed him anyway. He doesn't know how to do that anymore, doesn't know how to respond to his own wife.

But her smile is still fond, and still sad, and she presses close enough that he can feel her breath on his lips, an almost-kiss. "I forgive you, Yuan."

She does kiss him then, light and chaste and it's not enough, but nothing ever would be because she's gone. When Yuan opens his eyes—and he doesn't remember closing them—the Spirit is in front of him again, not Martel.

(And that clean hurt was back, like losing her all over again)