Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage.
Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.
- Anne Carson
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Luxerion, 831 AF
Daily Death Toll: 756
(Classified) Total Death Toll Since 500 AF: 80 million+
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Total L'Cie Still Frozen: 3
Total Bhunivelze Researchers Remaining: 1
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I feel it! I feel grief! And pain! I feel anger!
No! No! I will not accept it! I will not allow it!
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"Smile, Vanille," he says lightheartedly, gently closing the door behind him, balancing the new bouquet alongside all the previous ones that have already wilted. He's running out of incense to make this room smell like Pulse. "I brought you flowers. You've got to tell Fang to turn and look at me."
The first day that he heard a child refer to Bhunivelze as a moon was the beginning of the end.
He supposes it's inevitable, that people will forget; it has been several dreadfully long centuries, after all, and if you've been a child in Bhunivelze for ten years and Luxerion for three hundred, you'd forget Bhunivelze, too. The atmosphere in Bhunivelze had always been gloomy, but now, it's become utterly permeated by loneliness and sacrifice: the researchers who have secluded themselves often jokingly refer to each other as orphans. He still sees their families occasionally, if they are still alive. He never hangs around for too long, though, lest he lets slip something about the supposed-dead. How's the mother, where's the child, is everything all right: the conversations nearly never go past five lines. Most of the time he just ends up collecting memorabilia in the team's stead, ferrying memories and wedding rings between the decaying earth and the abandoned sky. Three hundred years since the fall of Bhunivelze, the researchers' still-occupied work desks have come to resemble haunted burial sites, and instead of the Director, he's become a harbinger of despair. A black bandage around his wrist instead of a yellow one means a death. A striped bandage – multiple deaths. A checkered bandage like a board of chess – does anyone even want to know?
(He spends a few hours or days in the final craze trying to dig graves for them on the surface, long after they've failed to leave bodies behind.)
"Don't go looking for trouble, Hope," Snow warns, discreetly passing him a loaf of bread. A part of the thinner man wonders how the food quality for something created from chaos can even go down, but doesn't say it out aloud. "Things are getting worse."
"When are they ever not?" A tired joke. Both their faces are wan. Snow lifts his sleeve, stares down at the snarling arrows of his l'Cie mark. The poor man's had to summon Shiva five times in the past week.
"I'm just telling you, I want you to stay here with me."
"I can't stay in Yusnaan, Snow."
"I don't mean Yusnaan. I mean stay. In general." The blonde's eyes are piercing. It's enough to make him gingerly drop her hand. "You know exactly what I mean."
A mob corners him in one of the back alleyways, pinning him against a wall and knocking the scientific instrument from his hands. The dark protective glasses slide past his face and crack against the stone tiles, a small sorry pile in the whole mess. He squints, all-nighter sensitive eyes not used to the burst of sunlight. They punch one eye straight back into darkness.
"Is it really him? Director Hope Estheim?" The voice is a sneer, his title an insult.
He waits patiently. Sometimes someone'd feel pity for him and let him go, satisfied with using him as a punching bag. After all, even those who hate him the most usually want him left alive – God and Hope Estheim are the two things in the world that have a track record for producing miracles.
"What a honey-tongued coward and liar."
Snow is not coming today. The l'Cie has his own share of issues to attend to, and bless his heart, even if Snow may lose his composure, he'll never turn into a tyrant. Hope exhales, smothering anger with what's starting suspiciously to feel like despair. It won't be long now.
"Why even hate him? Why even keep him alive? God has abandoned him. He's never been loved by the Gods, never done anything for us –"
The next blow nearly crushes his windpipe, makes him choke on his own blood. He closes his eyes, soundlessly curses the day, and forces the device to release.
The shockwave clears the path; if no one in Luxerion knew of this incident before, they knew now. He needs to get out, before he starts a civil war on the streets. He forces himself to get up, swallow the blood and filth. The eyes staring back at him are defiant and full of centuries-long anger, disgust and disappointment. I can't die. Not here.
The realization that his people are finally willing to kill hurts, takes away his breath more than the wound itself. The clock is tolling, calling forth all of God's followers and children. He is unwanted.
"Leave…"
No one moves an inch.
He doesn't know what he has been expecting from the world: gratitude, or, more paradoxically, faith.
"Leave, or I'll…" his hands move down again towards the storage packs. The crowd scatters at last, a flurry of commotion and profanities.
Yes. Fear me. The sickness in his heart is threatening to make him throw up. He might as well die choking from his vomit at this point. He squeezes her hands as she leads him out of the clearing, her presence a lifeline. What would they say if they could see her? Call me mad?
"I'm sorry."
I'm doing this…
(For whom?)
(For you.)
He attempts to bandage the wound alone in an abandoned house, wincing as waves of pain shoot up towards his brain. Tears well up suddenly, as he chokes on names that he can remember and names that he can't. He shouldn't resent anyone. How could he resent anyone? Everyone has been so brave. Everyone has tried so hard to make it to the next century and the next year.
I'm doing this so all of this would have meant something, the plea echoes within his skull, fourteen then seventeen then twenty-four and twenty-seven, ageless and childlike and so, so pathetic. Just show me a way.
He collapses onto the ground right in front of Fang and Vanille's frozen forms with ears full of Order followers' renewed chants and redemption songs, and he's too tired to think shut up.
The irony doesn't escape him. He's fighting a war on two fronts, death on one end and eternal life on the other. They are choking sanity out of him, life and confidence and the will to resist God. Their chants are rising, a faith like a sun that dwarfs the glimmer of love in his own chest. A hollow ache is resounding in murmurs and echoes behind his ribs. I want to be saved, too. I just want everyone to live.
If only eternal life wasn't so fucking conditional.
His final steps in Bhunivelze are broken and stumbling, made in haste and vain wishes. He can't feel his body, though the wounds have begun to crack and bleed. If she's no longer there… If she's no longer there…
The door opens. His vision blurs into a heart-shaped face, concerned and lined with fatigue.
"Director – you're hurt –"
You're alive. By Cocoon, you've alive. He throws his arms around her and pulls her close, never mind the blood still flowing down his neck and staining her clothes. "I'm fine. Sandra, please, you must leave with me." The incredulity on her face churns his stomach. God laughs. You think you can defeat me? "You're the last one left."
"But I have to work on this, Director. If I can somehow crack this code, you can finish the rest on your own –"
"It's not worth it," he rasps. Silence falls. She's lifting a hand to touch his cheek, and he realizes, belatedly, that he must look like he's about to start crying. "Don't die for it."
"But the world, Director," she argues, even as tears are also beginning to leak from her dark eyelids. "Everybody down on the surface –" she's getting upset now, her hands balling into fists. "My niece and nephew – you can't –"
"I'm sorry."
"Director!" She seizes his shoulders, shakes them the way Vanille used to, and he lets her. "We can't give up on this, not when we've finally gotten this far!"
"I don't… I don't mean that." It's then that she finally notices the bandage on his hand, the hastily-drawn black streaks through it. "Your family was lost in a cyclops attack two hours ago."
She stops. He pulls her back into the hug.
"Did they go… quickly?"
What difference would one more lie make? "Yeah."
A pause before the next sentence. Her voice is coarse. "Are you alright?"
No, don't ask, not this, not here, not ever. He closes his eyes, counts the seconds. "Why do you all always ask about me? I'm always alright."
Her voice is cracking, fading away on the wind as she shakes in his grip. All he wants is to protect her. "I'm so, so sorry."
He knows that when he opens his eyes, he'll see that he's hugging air.
Burn it all down, his heart whispers, as he trudges his way through multiple chaos infusions in the Yusnaan warehouses, freely letting his Augur's Quarter access card slip through his numb fingers. Pandemonium hears him, breath hitching in what can only be fal'Cie's fear as he stops abruptly and slowly runs his hand down the length of rusted pillars, listening to divine breaths and energy vibrations. Even she next to him can only remind him of a time back in Palumpolum, a nutriculture complex and a butterfly-shaped child of Cocoon: they had come so close to slaying the fal'Cie then, and he's not sure he wants to stop now.
He's unarmed. There's only a screwdriver in his storage packs, a maniacal, feverish mind in a labyrinth lost for thought and words. His lips curl up into a mockery of a smile. It's when he's pushed into a corner that he is the most dangerous.
Don't do it, Hope, she pleads without her voice, an edge of God's concern creeping into her visage. He senses her presence probing the rabbit holes of his memories, scavenging for something Lightning Farron should know. People have enough reasons to hate us, don't you think?
I have enough reasons to hate you, don't you think? He shrugs, smiling widely and baring his teeth, before brusquely pulling her in for a kiss. They've somehow reached the Wildlands by the time he finally breaks from her lips.
He clicks the buttons into place for the last time, severs for good the ground connection to the one grand secret he's held for over three hundred years. Up now to Bhunivelze, in every way that counts. Although he's traveled this path countless times by himself, the loneliness has never quite hit this hard. Is it because there's no more false hope? Is it because he's walking willingly to his death?
Well, if anyone deserves to be hammered into stardust…
He laughs at the utter farce of it all, the irony, the meaninglessness. God wants me. That one final good look in the mirror, the telltale flickers of gold behind pale green irises – desires and nightmares have finally come together and made sense. The God of the Cathedral is known to possess a youthful face and emerald eyes. Why wouldn't you just reveal this to me sooner? Why don't you have a heart?
Hysterical shouting at gods have never gotten humans anywhere.
Imagination dreams boldly of throwing spells at the creator, fira and thundara and poison, and he chuckles quietly to himself, remembering inert time gates and charred capsules. Waves of chaos have begun to encroach upon the shores of Yusnaan and the Wildlands, and sooner or later, it'd be visible from the North Station of Luxerion. If God wants a new world –
It all comes in a rush.
Give my friends back. Give back Vanille, give back Fang… and set her free. The world spins in black and white, the trees and ruins pawns and knights. He cannot crush the phantom by his side with his weight just as he cannot banish the God with the power of his mind. Don't… Don't let her continue to die.
Is that all?
The Queen's gambit: two queen-protected white pawns against one in black. He turns away to stare down one last time at the world, ignores God in his fancy. It's time to say goodbye.
I'm sorry.
I never quite realized… how beautiful this world is.
How do you even address a God?
He steps forward, hesitant-awed-hollow, the shell-shocked husk of a failed general. This world hasn't seen surrender terms for a millennium; gods and fal'Cie have all gone for total war and left only wastelands in their wake. If what this God has been cooing in his ear is correct – if this has been meant to be all along –
Would there even be a waste land at the end of this, a home to return to?
(the other unsaid question: do you even know what you'll become?)
The chill freezes his breath, turns it into whispers of light and snow. Up here, unknown and unblessed, thirteen cycles of thirteen years from year one thousand, he's surrounded by ghosts. Their gaze follows him, turns as he approaches the central monitor with the rose-haired goddess of the dead. God's mother, daughter, fear, beloved – that's what he'll know, and so that's what the real her will become. That's what these ghosts would want her to be, anyway, having been taken into the chaos by her hands –
(You'll be more than that, won't you?)
The phantom turns, wanting. His adoring expression doesn't waver, but he sees through her, remembers light with the final skips of his heartbeat. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Hope, she inquires, stepping away from him at last. He doesn't listen. Are you ready?
Pain. So much pain. But that one wish, that one prayer, more radiant than crystal and more powerful than God…
Light, tell me… is this… how you felt when you walked up to that abandoned throne?
Come, Bhunivelze, he says finally, opening his arms above the heart of a Bhunivelze that is and will always be his, raising his head defiantly under a ceiling of stars drowned out by despair and chaos. The God stirs in his cosmic presence, scintillating-intense-wanting. The invisible l'Cie mark etched above his pulse once again feeds on human blood, yearns now for his whole soul.
The God will consume him. He has no illusions of mercy and grandeur. His soul will be thrown carelessly into the chaos; if he is lucky, light will shatter his heart into a million pieces. Pain will be as breathing, loss as heartbeat. To step into the radiance of divinity; never forget that you will burn.
The last few exhales are filled with longing, the stain of love and sin. He produces something from his hands and wraps all his sins tightly around his neck. Memories flicker by in a flash, laughter and embrace and human belief. There are things that he must remember. There are things in this universe worth dying for.
This is not the end of the war. It's the beginning of the next one.
God's satisfaction looms. The first touch illuminates and warms his skin; the second one incinerates his final words in a searing supernova down to the nerve endings of his fingertips. The phoenix always chooses to die; it is only through its faith that it gains the right to rise. His obstinacy spits out the words, demands the price. Let us form a covenant.
God's will reverberate back in his own tone within his own skull, hurling him, as a comet, straight into the next two centuries of perpetual night. The worlds are mine.
But I have looked too long into human eyes.
Reduce me now to ashes – night, like a black sun.
- Marina Tsvetaeva