I do not own Tales of Xillia
Hope you enjoy it!
If
They didn't understand, Milla knew. They couldn't really grasp the meaning behind it all. How could they? They were humans, after all, mortals, fragile beings whose mind wasn't made for understanding such things; they weren't supposed to get this involved with the working of the world in the first place. They were supposed to go, live, populated the earth, find meaning in their apparent meaningless lives.
Not learn about her, Chronos, Origin and their cruel designs.
She had been mortal, once. But even then she had a better understanding of the world than all them, she had been made to believe herself a god, to act as such. Even when she discovered her upbringing had always been a lie, she didn't feel herself human. She was still Maxwell, even thought the real Maxwell had lie to her and used her as he pleased, she still had the unwavering resolve of helping the world, humans and spirits alike, to reach peace, to be all that they could be. She loved the world, not how the rest of her companions did, she loved the world in some kind of personal way that was inexplicable even for her, she loved it so much and she wanted to protect it. She may not have been the god of this world, but she still had felt the same veracity to treat it as it was hers to protect and love.
So, when she did become Maxwell, her view of the world, of the people on it, didn't change at all. She felt like It should have, like her journey with Jude and the others should have teach her something that she, as a human, should've know.
And she did learn, of course, she learnt of love, and friendship and humanity. She laughed with them, she cried with them, she experimented the world in the same limited way of them; she learnt how it felt to be helpless like them, how it felt to fall and still having to stand up and face what have knocked you out just to be remind of how small, and fragile and feeble you really are. She learnt of loyalty, of companionship, she learnt of stories told around a bonfire, of early, dim mornings with a body pressed against yours in search of warm; she learnt of sharing meals, of sharing clothes, of sharing life…
They were hard, beautiful lessons to learn. She was thankful, thought, that she had the opportunity of learning of all this, of experimenting them with such pure hearted people. It helped her to be a better deity, but it certainly didn't teach her to truly be human.
She suspected, sometimes, that Maxwell, the old Maxwell, made her like this on purpose. That he knew he was letting out some pretty important ingredients to the formula of being human, but that the lack of those would make her better suited for his reasons. The thought made her uneasy, to think that she was inherently incomplete in such a way.
It pained her, too, to know herself so apart from those she loved, to know that it didn't matter how long she stayed or how much she learnt there was always going to be a barrier between her divinity and their humanity, a gap she was unable to cross so risk of becoming unfit for the work of a deity, a gap they couldn't even start to comprehend.
Rowen understood a little, so did Gaius. The first probably because his old age and his well lived live, the later because he was, as a handful of humans were, somehow enlighten. Milla smiled fondly when thinking of how much wiser Gaius could become, with time and proper guidance.
She knew that most of the time she appeared naïve and inexperienced and silly in front of her human friends, but that was to be expected. Despite all she had learnt, all she had read, she was still leagues away to truly understand humans. Milla knew of mana, of spirits, of the order of the world and its tweaks and turns, but humans were mysterious, and so were all of their rituals.
They couldn't see nature, spirits or even other humans the way she did after really becoming Maxwell.
So, while she was stumbling in the darkness of the void between dimensions, while she dreamed foggy dreams of her friends, their new journey and their misadventures, while she saw them meet that one that was her but was not, she knew they wouldn't understand.
She saw the other Milla, and even thought she wasn't meant to be in the prime dimension a part of her, a part that was sometimes torn between being a spirit and being human, wished for her to stay. The other Milla was everything she could have been, if Maxwell had allowed her humanity.
Yes, this other Milla was full of rage and sorrow, was arrogant and dislikeable. Most importantly this other Milla was utterly lost in a world that was not hers, between people that didn't want her, porting a face that, in this dimension, was not hers to use, a face that only remind her and others of how she wasn't meant to be.
She reacted to all of it accordingly, desponded but fiercely, clinging to existence. Milla knew her friends were unable to see it, to grasp it, she knew that in their imperfect humanity they couldn't do better, matter not how wise or good or pure hearted they were. They couldn't do better for this other Milla, it was to be expected.
Milla wished for her counterpart to stay. She had no true desire to meet her, if she was sincere, but she wished she could stay and grow, here, in the prime dimension, here surrounded by people that would eventually welcome her, by people that would show her how there was always more, even after the end. She knew that this other Milla could understand, eventually, humanity better than she did, this other Milla was more human that her, and if only she had the chance…
It was kind of morbid too, to wish for her to stay and to see what she could have become. It was the deity on her, she guessed, the one that wanted to play a little with the fabric of reality.
But, it didn't matter how much she wished for the possibility, she was, after all, the lesser of the three spirits that ran the world. Chronos probably had the power to make her able to stay, Origin surely did, but she, Maxwell, did not. And besides, this was hardly the time to twist the delicate balance of the world.
When the circumstances finally allowed her to come back to the prime dimension, she felt no sorrow for the one she was shoving aside in order to do so (there was a little girl that felt all the sorrow that the other Milla's dead deserved). She felt disappoint, at most, and responsible for honoring her death.
In their brief meeting she nod at the other Milla, knowing it meant nothing, but wanting to assure her that she did well and that she would not be forgotten. She listened to the stray words of the fractured one, but paid them no mind: The other Milla was selfish, of course, in a human way she couldn't be.
Their friends were delighted at her return, and Milla was delighted to be among them once again, despite the state of affairs. They weren't sad for the dead of the fractured one, but they were indeed shaken by it; they were good people, and having to kill someone in order to have her back probably left a bitter taste on their mouths.
Ludger was sad, though, being the one responsible of destroying her dimension, being the one that ultimately put her in this situation. But the only one crying was Elle, the only one who truly felt emptiness in her chest was the little girl. Milla tried to at least assure that the other's dead was not to be waste.
As time and their journey went on she often found herself thinking about the other one, about how she could've fit among these people, if only things were different…Even once their journey ended, she still thought about it.
And one time, years after the fractured dimensions incident, Müzet finally asked her about it, about why she spend so much time thinking about the other one.
"She was human" Milla told her sister, as if such answer clarified everything.
It certainly did for Müzet, who hummed appreciatively at her answer.
"Aren't we all?" Müzet responded with a cryptic smile.
Milla meditated it, and thought of her broken sister crying and sinking in her loneliness after their battler with her and Gaius; thought of the Four defying their master of her; thought about Chronos' fierce love for Origin and thought of Origin and his love for the world.
She thought of herself and how she wanted to stay with her friends, how she wished for things to be other way.
"I guess so." She finally said.
Notice that english is not my first lenguague and that this is not edited, so sorry for typos, grammar mistakes and such, I will edit it...someday.
Anyway, I remember reading someone on tumblr saying that Milla's character development was non-existent...I kinda agree with that, but Milla is a character I like a lot, and I think that her side of the story on ToX was a great missed opportunity to show us a different kind of journey for a protagonist, it would have been a nice contrast to Jude's more traditional one.
I also have seen a lot of hate towards fractured!Milla, and despite her not being one of my faves, I find her character truly interesting and well written for the situation she was in.
And somehow, this was born from these thoughts :v I hope you have enjoy it, I would love to hear your opinions.