Author: Cyhirae

Notes: I beat ToS quite awhile ago- and have long been debating on a fanfic of it. On seeing the gaping lack of fanfiction involving Yuan (who vanished down the almighty plothole in the course of the game), I opted to write this. So here we go. Oh yes, disclaimers and warning. Yuan's not mine though I wish he were, ToS definately isn't, and yes. SPOILERS. No like, no read.

Also, this is not a cheery piece. Read on if you don't mind something rather depressing. It's a take on why we don't ever again see Yuan after a certain point.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beloved, Bereft

I watch as the little band of misfits runs into the entry way I showed them..the door closing fast behind to swallow them up as if they had never been. The arrogant, idiot son of a once-friend and seraphim..a half elven boy who reminds me far too much of another I knew once...his older sister who- and I so thank the stars for this- is nothing like that boy's own sister..a convict, an ageless girl and a clumsy assassin who failed repeatedly at the task I had once hired her for.

These are what we are relying on to save the world. No...this was what I was relying on to 'save' something far more precious than this mere world. If save is even the proper word. I have sent these children to do what I could not: I have sent them to kill my own fiance, who has suffered so long within the Great Seed. I have sent them to end Martel's life once and for all, and grant her peace.

If only it would come so easily to me. I can do nothing but wait now...and reflect on what has passed.

All of these years...four thousand and a handful more, I have been doing what I thought was right. What I thought Martel would have wanted me to do, presented with her maddened brother and a dying world. And mad I had known him to be, when I saw what he had done to her. He had imprisoned her body- her very spirit- within the Great Seed... No rest was she given.

She was dead. Let her rest, let her go. Both Kratos and I had told him this- and our words had fallen on deaf ears. Still, as his friends and allies..we stayed beside him to try to carry him through his madness. Too long we had allowed it to run, however. Dividing the world had been a needed thing..Mithos had been right in that. But it never should have been a permanent thing. We needed the seed to live, to grow...

But Mithos would have none of it so long as it kept her alive. So long as Martel was near...He would never let her go.

Was I any better than him, ultimately? Mithos had done what he thought Martel would have wished, while persuing his own desires...to try to keep her alive, to revive her even as he kept life in the worlds...barely. He seemed determined that if she was not truly alive..the worlds would not be either. And he would make everyone the same, he claimed..eliminate all but those whom he had ascended into lifeless beings.

And I claimed to have been fighting to restore the worlds to their proper states..attempting to disrupt Mithos' twisted rite of the Chosen, to deny his wish to force Martel into a living body. I wanted her pain to end...I wanted mine to end. If she were truly gone...I could finally let go of that last, pitiful and selfish hope lingering in my heart... The hope she would indeed return. Even if she were wearing a different face and form, it would be her.

But how could Martel ever be happy knowing she lived a the cost of another's life? I was certain she could not...yet there was no convincing Mithos. And ultimately I must admit, as I sit here in the darkness of the hidden passage...waiting for the world to live or die as the actions of a fool and his merry band of misfits bid... I was no better. My desire for Martel's end was as much for my own sake as for her own. The many renegades through the centuries who died at Cruxis' hand...who kept watch over the Desians, knowing full well discovery would mean their end or even worse...

Botta's death in the cold of an ocean grave, in a labratory no one would ever see again...

It was only for one true purprose. To end Martel's life...and put an end to my suffering. Once she was at rest...I could say I was right. I could claim I meant this for her peace, her tranquility and carry on in my assumed purpose to stop Mithos and save this world... And I could do so confident it was what she would have wanted me to do. Knowing, all along, she was no longer there to see it and judge it.

Knowing she was at last forever asleep and blind to the hypocrisy my life had become. I was not the person she had fallen in love with millenia before. He died on the same day she did, I think...leaving behind a rotting heart in a body that could not understand it was supposed to be dead. In the wake of what seems an unlikely victory at best...I am finally honest with myself and open my eyes to the truth of what is before me.

And so in this dark passage I wait...beloved of none and bereft of all...to either feel her death as the world begins to revive...or for Mithos to descend and finally deal with me once and for all. We see each other plain, now: he, the madman drunk on power and obsessed...and I, the traitor and hypocrite... Neither one of us has ever been in the right. In all my attempts to defeat him, I had, true to the old addage, become him in my own way.

Now, however..it was over. For good or ill, it was done. Either way- my time on this world is at an end. I have made up my mind, you see...should that unlikely crew succeed, there would be no place for my 'kind' here. This world was tired of us. Once Cruxis fell, if fall it did, the angels would fall as well...into the hands of the justly angry and betrayed, the bitter and decieved. So should the party of fools win...Derris-Kharlan would depart. There would be no place for us here.

How long does it take? I sit in the darkness for what feels like an eternity...and suddenly the ground has begun to roar- driving me out of my reverie and shelter...to behold the seed high in the sky, drifting down from Derris-Kharlan...

Dead. The seed is dead. All of our work and sacrifice, all of Martel's suffering...for nothing. Mithos' madness damned this world alongside her...there was no hope now. I drop to my knees, tearless eyes closed...and even could a seraphim cry, I feel as though I could no longer shed any, anyway. My hope is as dead as the seed overhead...my failure now complete.

Then a light shines through clenched lids to my eyes- driving me to look up. The sky is filled with it. The light of Mana- not of the pure, electrified body of it that now acted as the home of the 'angels' Mithos had made...but true, pure Mana, as it could only flow from one source. And down below that light...I can see her. She stands inside the shell of a doll made to look as she once did...then that shell falls away, revealing the true Martel beneath...

A Martel even I had not known. She lives, but she is not the one I had known...the one who's name once graced this ring. Martel lives on, but as something greater than a mere half elf, a mere woman who can remember love and hate. What stands below is the true Martel..a perfect stranger wearing my most beloved person's face. I have succeeded...or rather, they have in my stead. My Martel is dead and gone, lost in this Martel...

I cannot hear the words she speaks to the fools standing before her. I do not wish to. I can see the face I once touched so gently, the eyes that had one beheld me so lovingly..gazing out with ancient sadness at those before her, the mere sapling of the great tree rising from the ground...

And as it's fronds spread, so do my wings. A false angel takes flight again as the true goddess charges those before her with the care and guardianship of the reborn tree... I have things I have to take care of now. Kratos, standing far below, needs only a glance up at me to know we share the same thought. Once-friends we would remain..but we knew one another well enough to know what must be done. He would stay here and make his farewells before joining me there...

I, however, have no one to bid farewell to. As the mana of the world begins to flow already, even though the tree is little more than a sapling, my wings gain strength and send me higher than ever they could before...carrying me to Derris-Kharlan...though I cannot resist a last look below. I was born on that world, and I helped it both out of hell and back into it over the millenia. I had to see it one last time...

And I find my eyes locked with those of a goddess far beyond my understanding...a power greater than the simple half elven woman I had loved. And those eternal eyes are sad...the lips moving silently... I don't want to see it. I don't want to hear it. Not the placating words of this not-Martel, this goddess of the tree with her face and her eyes. My beloved is gone, and I am left bereft of all but my pain. I had once wished it gone..but let me keep this at least.

Let me keep what little remained of her, even as it made me wish I had joined her in death. Now, however, I would truly do what I thought best..not what I thought she would have wanted. Mithos, Kratos and I had all decieved these people who had become little more than thoughtless simulacrums of who they had once been. They would awaken in time to themselves once more- it was our responsibility to see they found something akin to a decent existance after all we took from them.

A seraphim could not easily die..not even of a broken heart...but I think I shall never live even so much as these once-dolls of so-called angels do now.

"Farewell my beloved- rest well in your sleep." And may it be long. I will continue on as you would have wished, though I do so bereft and alone.

Fin

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

..Well, I warned you it wasn't cheery. No worries though- this is a oneshot. I couldn't possibly do something this depressing as a multichapter.