(A/N: This is a remix of stealthnoodle's "Home", written for newgameplus on !)
Home (the Broken Promises Remix)
You stare at clouds a lot, nowadays, because more often than not you see curious shapes there. Lately, it's become easier than ever to find the forms of things you've lost, things that no longer exist. After the end of the world, silly things become exciting. When you lie on your back in the dust and stare (watching airships, flowers, giant fireflies!) you don't tell yourself that it reminds you of your childhood. You don't tell yourself that, ever.
(She rolled over in the grass to watch you pluck fireflies out of the air, deftly placing them one by one into a jar, bodies thumping against the sides. Together you watched neon-yellow lights blink and swirl within confines of glass, and you felt proud—you'd gotten good at finding pretty things for her. Her fingers touched your lips when she asked you-
So when are we going adventuring?)
You've got more scars, now. More than you used to have, anyway. You've lost feeling in several fingertips, but it doesn't stop you from desperately trying to feel everything the world has left to throw at you. It doesn't stop you from what you're best at—holding on to things, be they tangible or mere figments of impermanence.
(Because the last thing you remember is holding on, fingers bloody against the wood of the deck, one arm outstretched towards her. You remembered the sickening lurch in your stomach as the Blackjack had angled down into the impossible pressure of atmosphere and the smell of fire, the world a strange vortex into which you'd both fallen)
It seems logical to start at the beginning. Logical to go back and fix the first promise you ever broke. So you start there, because after counting the days until they turn to months you realize with a sickening heaviness that you'll never find any of the other things you've been looking for. So you decide on home, that place you ran from years ago.
And it's easy to find-disturbingly so, considering these new continents—and you figure it's only because the farther you run from home, the closer you get to coming back.
You find that Rachel's body is still there in what used to be Kohlingen, after you idle your time in a tavern that wasn't there before, after you sit on chairs that are not chairs at tables that are not tables in a broken place you used to know, re-built from the scraps of everything that broke. You can only take so much of it, just the same as you can only take so much of this emptiness, and you talk to strangers who buy you pints solely because they're not actually from here and they don't know who you are. Everyone, it seems, is desperate for connection, trying to fit together mismatched fragments of their personal puzzles. Later you'll look back and choke up at humanity's willingness to know one another, in this world—but right now it seems futile, and right now that's all you see. Uselessness.
You almost wish she weren't there, and you feel sick with it. You're going to bring her back, and it eats away at you—
back to what?
She's just as she was, but when (if) she wakes, what will you have for her? What stories will you have to tell, what hero will you be to her when you tell her that you tried and failed to save the world? That everyone she loves is dead, that even her favorite flowers are now extinct?
At least we'll have each other is what you tell yourself, even as you stare at the roses you've placed around her, long since withered, dried and wilted petals littering the floor.
(I think you'll like what we're searching for, you said, even as you fingered the ring there in your pocket. It was there all along, and you could have just given it to her. Instead you had to give her an adventure. Instead you face years of guilt for all of the misery you wrought, for your failure to catch her when she fell)
The bird falls from the sky. It's hurt, so you help it. You tie your favorite bandanna around its wing-It's my lucky one, you tell the bird, but it hasn't done much for me, how bout you try it?- and when it's able to fly away you laugh for the first time in what seems like forever. You watch the bird disappear into a horizon of land-shapes you no longer recognize, and then you cry, silent and shameless, because using that bandana serves another, selfish purpose, and you know in some hopeless chamber of your heart that no-one you've known will ever find it. Your tears hit the earth in dark droplets like shadows in the dust, and the chill in the evening air reminds you so much of Celes that it actually hurts.
(Edgar had questioned you and you blanched, then, hid yourself from the other Returners even as you defended her.
You're still thinking about that…
But that was am ambiguous word, because you could have been thinking about the night you felt his hair, smooth between your fingers, the night you breathed against one another, whispered your losses into one another's skin. The night you signed your allegiance with Figaro in a deeper way than you ever imagined possible)
His name haunts you too. You think about going to South Figaro. You don't.
The first you see of Shadow is a shuriken. Then you see Interceptor.
Your conversation is clipped. There's a tension you both recognize. Gotta look on the bright side of the end of the world, you tell him, and the words bleed out of your mouth, leaving you drained. You say them for your own sake, really, because for once in your life you're the one who needs something to believe in. For once you've no distractions; for once, you truly have nothing. You've always been the one to smile in the face of adversity, the one to reassure others that there's a light in every dark. But now when you look back—even to when the sky was blue and the grass was green—you don't see any light. You learned back then that even kings can suffer loneliness, that innocent children can become experiments molded to murder, that loss is the one inevitability in life, that the earth can be broken and swallowed by flame.
(It hurt, Celes told you. One night when you were alone, she showed you all her scars, thin lines threading along her skin where they'd slid needles, tubes. She opened up to you and it was the first time you'd ever seen her vulnerable. The kiss you took from her then is the only thing in your life that you regret stealing, if only because of the memory of how she shook as you held her. The way you fell for her; the way you'll never be sure if she really fell for you. The way you told her in the dark: keep breathing.
You like to think you helped her, somewhat; gave her something to have faith in. You like to think perhaps you gave her love. You have a knack for fixing what's broken, after all; you think you learned it from Edgar—he's the one who fixed you, after Rachel. The only difference is he's better with machines, not people. You wonder if that's why Sabin left. You wonder if you're really all that human.)
Maybe it's a good thing that he doesn't take his mask off, because it allows you to imagine whatever you'd like. You don't want to think of him asfaceless, because even though you've never seen it you can find familiarity in his eyes. You can find a hope of sorts, and when you look at him you realize that hope cuts deeper into you than anything else ever has. And when you grasp at the both of you, there in your hands, you realize that you're thrusting towards the most incomplete completion you could ever configure in your mind. It's hard to concentrate, really, because you almostswear you can taste sand in the wind when you swallow it as you gasp.
(I'll protect you, you said. And you can almost remember the first time you saw magic, when she summoned fire in the desert and you almost forgot how to breathe)
He comes. You don't, because you can't stop thinking about Interceptor, lying there, witnessing this, because something about that dog is almost more than human, and you're sure he can sense what's really lying beneath the skins of you and Shadow both. There aren't many dogs around, now, and you're glad that Interceptor's survived—but then again, survival is something you've unequivocally associated with the both of them. Even though they've always disappeared they've also always come back, and the thought hits you hard—things can fade and then return. You come.
You know he's going to run, and you tell him to find what he's looking for. Because you know it has to be more than just a dagger, even as you yourself are searching for something intangible; a legend, a rumor.
But you let him go. Something tells you that you'll run into him again; you always have. Funny how Shadow, of all people, is the closest thing to a predictable constant you've got left.
But you can't think about that now. So you only look forward.
You have promises to keep.