Awareness flickered weakly again in the endless black stretched behind his sealed eyes. Unwanted....but the more he struggled to drown in the darkness once more, the tighter it roped 'round and dragged him away. Cold....so hard and cold....
....the lab.
....the needle....
....mama....
His gaunt limbs jerked instinctively to curl from the phantoms. Instead, the last sweet numbness burned away as every fiber burst into agony, wrenching screams from his lips to match, and he arched and scrabbled as if to grasp the pain and push it away. His bleary eyes flew open with anguished tears as he spasmed back to stillness.
Damp, shadowed rock hung before them....the only sounds his labored whimpers as his body continued to throb and a trickle of nearby moisture. He groaned faintly, could not bear to turn, but did not need to see to know that was all that surrounded him from all sides. Where....?
....the tower.
....the "heroes"....
....the destruction....
He was awake now, focusing entirely on the pathetic remains of himself.
His power was nothing of what it once was. Scattered....as they'd shattered it....torn as the tatters that still clung to his sickly skin, absurdly carnival in....what they surely believed was his tomb.
His failing heart and eyes smoldered with the remembered hate, sustaining him as his magic could not. Not now, at least....oh, but it will again....and the world will be his tomb.
He laughed softly, broken as his body and mind.
"....u'wee hee hee...."
* * *
"....okay, kid...?"
Relm smiled crookedly up at the ponderous bear paw Sabin pressed on her shoulder. She closed her eyes and turned away, but the slight curve of a smile remained.
"Yeh. M'okay."
And it was true, sort of. She hadn't cried, even....when they found him. Life without Gramps....she had rarely let herself think about it, pushed it away when she did...now....it seemed like a strange, slow dream, but was inescapably real. Such a feeling....emptiness and agony all at once. Everyone seemed to be waiting for long helpless wails, surprised they didn't come. But...she couldn't....even when she all but felt herself shake with them. Even as she kissed his cheek, held his hand....so cold....one last time. Fuddy duddy, always....but Gramps was also her best friend, at every turn. Nothing could ever take that away...could it? He said...he would never ever leave her....he really hadn't, had he?
But...she should have been there....with him....see him....on his way....
She shook off another dry-eyed choke while she watched Sabin's broad back as he slowly strode off. If only....she was glad to see him, but....if only....
....it were Edgar....
She looked automatically to Celes and Locke, pressed close together, not seeing their sympathetic gazes returned. In the nine years since the fighting...there was no one else for her like the King of Figaro. She hadn't even wanted to try finding one. She often wondered how he may have changed, if at all. Amazed to hear Sabin joke how he still had not found someone....ANYONE...
"Lover Boy."
She should get some courage before he did, or she'd be sorry, she knew. More than ever...she saw how she shouldn't wait to take her chance. But....
She looked again to the fresh brown soil at her feet. It wasn't Gramps, buried in the earth.
Gramps was the warm feeling she felt in her heart remembering the good times. He was
there...and he never would leave her. Never ever.
First, she would solve the mystery he died trying to. Why the magic and monstrosities were returning to plague Thamasa....
Sabin rubbed his neck as he left Relm behind and slowly approached Locke and Celes.
"....I don't believe her."
Celes barely nodded to Sabin, eyes averted, lips pressed thin and mute. Blunt and clumsy or the most well-crafted, words of comfort were ultimately useless. Even their presence was lame....there WAS no comfort. She had learned too well the journey through the void could only be suffered and succeeded alone. Not marking time's passing in hours, or even days...only by what is done without the lost one.
Of all times to think of that damned opera!
Oh my hero, so far away now.
Will I ever see your smile?
Love goes away, like night into day.
It's just a fading dream.
He still tied his silvery soft hair with the worn bandanna. Giving her heart was worth any price, but...she would never have succeeded in her path through the darkness....will never. For all her battle-scarred fighter's hardness, she didn't have Relm's strength, or his. When the....time came....if she were left behind....she would die with him, even if her body lived on a hundred years more.
She felt like pulling away, even as she wanted to hold him until he could be no closer...then heaved a disgusted breath. SHE was not the point here!
The thoughts were blown away like much else as her would-be abductor from the opera house made his grand airship entrance.
Setzer almost seemed to stalk his way to Relm...the wind couldn't carry away the reek of spirits that hung potently from him.
"Hey, kid....I'm sure this angel didn't fly far. He's still here. I'd bet everything on that."
Relm had to smile honestly then.
""Kid"?" I oughta start calling YOU Gramps." She almost giggled at the irony, too. As she'd grown, Fuddy-duddy had taken to comparing her in her favored clothing to "one of Setzer's showgirls".
Okay....so she did once have a little crush besides Edgar, kinda. But more than anything, she had felt so sorry for him...
And that was the feeling that remained, seeing him again. The hollowness was still etched into his gray, gaunt face like the scars shrouded under the trailing strands of stringy colorless hair. The deep-set eyes were still reddened and glassy by drink, reflecting nothing of whatever lay behind them. No matter what they had said to Kefka on the tower...it didn't seem Setzer had entirely believed it, after all.
He needed to be shown it was true, somehow....
She could all but hear Gramps nagging her, though, and ground her fists into her hips. "Well....what are we going to do about this?"
* * *
A gasp for lungs that no longer knew how to breathe broke the brittle silence of Ancient Castle.
At last....after too much time to be marked, flaking gray stone yielded to the warmth of smooth, dark skin. Pale blue eyes, milky as though blind, snapped open, long-shuttered windows suddenly pouring in the light that still clung in the shadows.
She fell with a whimper to her knees on the tiled floor, cold and hard as she had been for a millenia....clutching herself with whitening knuckles and head bowed, long crimson hair spilling over her in a fine mantle. She shook violently, but not from the thick chill weighting the stagnant air. The dim awareness was gone, burned away by the searing pain of clarity.
Memories....her mind was consumed with them, scattered ashes. What...she had once been....what....THEY had once been....
And what they had become.
Her anguished howl strained to blow the pathetic remains from her entirely. But every remembered, ravaged inch echoed it back with screaming fresh agony, and she could not close her eyes again. Gone.
Gone.
....all gone....
She coiled, surged to her feet, snarl shocking bright and cruel against her soft midnight flesh. Destroy....destroy it all....all to the dust where....she should be. Should have been....
All the merciless world that continued on while she....she....
....she what....?
Her body twisted as her thoughts roiled, torture writhing like a live thing beneath her delicate face.
It did not matter. She hated....and felt the power throbbing through her strongly as that strangling rage.
The choking rooms of the forgotten dead exploded with a blazing wail.
....the lab.
....the needle....
....mama....
His gaunt limbs jerked instinctively to curl from the phantoms. Instead, the last sweet numbness burned away as every fiber burst into agony, wrenching screams from his lips to match, and he arched and scrabbled as if to grasp the pain and push it away. His bleary eyes flew open with anguished tears as he spasmed back to stillness.
Damp, shadowed rock hung before them....the only sounds his labored whimpers as his body continued to throb and a trickle of nearby moisture. He groaned faintly, could not bear to turn, but did not need to see to know that was all that surrounded him from all sides. Where....?
....the tower.
....the "heroes"....
....the destruction....
He was awake now, focusing entirely on the pathetic remains of himself.
His power was nothing of what it once was. Scattered....as they'd shattered it....torn as the tatters that still clung to his sickly skin, absurdly carnival in....what they surely believed was his tomb.
His failing heart and eyes smoldered with the remembered hate, sustaining him as his magic could not. Not now, at least....oh, but it will again....and the world will be his tomb.
He laughed softly, broken as his body and mind.
"....u'wee hee hee...."
* * *
"....okay, kid...?"
Relm smiled crookedly up at the ponderous bear paw Sabin pressed on her shoulder. She closed her eyes and turned away, but the slight curve of a smile remained.
"Yeh. M'okay."
And it was true, sort of. She hadn't cried, even....when they found him. Life without Gramps....she had rarely let herself think about it, pushed it away when she did...now....it seemed like a strange, slow dream, but was inescapably real. Such a feeling....emptiness and agony all at once. Everyone seemed to be waiting for long helpless wails, surprised they didn't come. But...she couldn't....even when she all but felt herself shake with them. Even as she kissed his cheek, held his hand....so cold....one last time. Fuddy duddy, always....but Gramps was also her best friend, at every turn. Nothing could ever take that away...could it? He said...he would never ever leave her....he really hadn't, had he?
But...she should have been there....with him....see him....on his way....
She shook off another dry-eyed choke while she watched Sabin's broad back as he slowly strode off. If only....she was glad to see him, but....if only....
....it were Edgar....
She looked automatically to Celes and Locke, pressed close together, not seeing their sympathetic gazes returned. In the nine years since the fighting...there was no one else for her like the King of Figaro. She hadn't even wanted to try finding one. She often wondered how he may have changed, if at all. Amazed to hear Sabin joke how he still had not found someone....ANYONE...
"Lover Boy."
She should get some courage before he did, or she'd be sorry, she knew. More than ever...she saw how she shouldn't wait to take her chance. But....
She looked again to the fresh brown soil at her feet. It wasn't Gramps, buried in the earth.
Gramps was the warm feeling she felt in her heart remembering the good times. He was
there...and he never would leave her. Never ever.
First, she would solve the mystery he died trying to. Why the magic and monstrosities were returning to plague Thamasa....
Sabin rubbed his neck as he left Relm behind and slowly approached Locke and Celes.
"....I don't believe her."
Celes barely nodded to Sabin, eyes averted, lips pressed thin and mute. Blunt and clumsy or the most well-crafted, words of comfort were ultimately useless. Even their presence was lame....there WAS no comfort. She had learned too well the journey through the void could only be suffered and succeeded alone. Not marking time's passing in hours, or even days...only by what is done without the lost one.
Of all times to think of that damned opera!
Oh my hero, so far away now.
Will I ever see your smile?
Love goes away, like night into day.
It's just a fading dream.
He still tied his silvery soft hair with the worn bandanna. Giving her heart was worth any price, but...she would never have succeeded in her path through the darkness....will never. For all her battle-scarred fighter's hardness, she didn't have Relm's strength, or his. When the....time came....if she were left behind....she would die with him, even if her body lived on a hundred years more.
She felt like pulling away, even as she wanted to hold him until he could be no closer...then heaved a disgusted breath. SHE was not the point here!
The thoughts were blown away like much else as her would-be abductor from the opera house made his grand airship entrance.
Setzer almost seemed to stalk his way to Relm...the wind couldn't carry away the reek of spirits that hung potently from him.
"Hey, kid....I'm sure this angel didn't fly far. He's still here. I'd bet everything on that."
Relm had to smile honestly then.
""Kid"?" I oughta start calling YOU Gramps." She almost giggled at the irony, too. As she'd grown, Fuddy-duddy had taken to comparing her in her favored clothing to "one of Setzer's showgirls".
Okay....so she did once have a little crush besides Edgar, kinda. But more than anything, she had felt so sorry for him...
And that was the feeling that remained, seeing him again. The hollowness was still etched into his gray, gaunt face like the scars shrouded under the trailing strands of stringy colorless hair. The deep-set eyes were still reddened and glassy by drink, reflecting nothing of whatever lay behind them. No matter what they had said to Kefka on the tower...it didn't seem Setzer had entirely believed it, after all.
He needed to be shown it was true, somehow....
She could all but hear Gramps nagging her, though, and ground her fists into her hips. "Well....what are we going to do about this?"
* * *
A gasp for lungs that no longer knew how to breathe broke the brittle silence of Ancient Castle.
At last....after too much time to be marked, flaking gray stone yielded to the warmth of smooth, dark skin. Pale blue eyes, milky as though blind, snapped open, long-shuttered windows suddenly pouring in the light that still clung in the shadows.
She fell with a whimper to her knees on the tiled floor, cold and hard as she had been for a millenia....clutching herself with whitening knuckles and head bowed, long crimson hair spilling over her in a fine mantle. She shook violently, but not from the thick chill weighting the stagnant air. The dim awareness was gone, burned away by the searing pain of clarity.
Memories....her mind was consumed with them, scattered ashes. What...she had once been....what....THEY had once been....
And what they had become.
Her anguished howl strained to blow the pathetic remains from her entirely. But every remembered, ravaged inch echoed it back with screaming fresh agony, and she could not close her eyes again. Gone.
Gone.
....all gone....
She coiled, surged to her feet, snarl shocking bright and cruel against her soft midnight flesh. Destroy....destroy it all....all to the dust where....she should be. Should have been....
All the merciless world that continued on while she....she....
....she what....?
Her body twisted as her thoughts roiled, torture writhing like a live thing beneath her delicate face.
It did not matter. She hated....and felt the power throbbing through her strongly as that strangling rage.
The choking rooms of the forgotten dead exploded with a blazing wail.