Xenosaga, An Interlude: Macht der Erinnerung

By SusanPevensie394

A/N: Third installment title translation is Power of Memory. In this chapter almost all of it was taken directly from the game itself, except for the small parts between flashbacks.

Disclaimer: I do not own Xenosaga or any of it's related characters and themes.

The tears threatened to slip from Shion's eyes in torrents, should she let herself slip for but a moment in time. As she lay upon her bed aboard the Durandal she thought back to what had happened but a few hours before.

-Flashback-

They had just finished opening the giant lock after traveling down the elevator in Cathedral Ship. According to KOS-MOS's sensors, they were extremely close to the Elsa now. Entering the next chamber chaos drew their attention to a gold object in the center of the room.

"Shion," he said, pointing at something in front of them. "Look at that..."

The woman followed his outstretched arm with her eyes, wondering what it was now. After everything they had already seen in this giant Gnosis, she thought nothing would surprise her. But then, she hadn't been expecting to see that thing here of all places.

"...The Zohar?" she exclaimed in surprise.

"We must go," KOS-MOS said, walking in between chaos and Shion, towards the mysterious object.

Shion took a step after her. "Hey, KOS-MOS, wait! Don't you go off on your own."

The android took a few more steps before stopping, her gaze raised to the Zohar.

The engineer scoffed. "I don't recall programming her that way." There was silence for a few seconds while they all starred up at the Zohar. Finally Shion spoke again, "But what's the Zohar doing here...?"

"I have confirmed that this object can be identified with a 99.99998% probability to be the Zohar Emulator that was stored onboard the Woglinde," KOS-MOS explained, though that didn't really answer the question in the right way.

Shion stepped up next to KOS-MOS, her thoughts whirling in her head. "An emulator? Are you saying that a real one exists somewhere else?"

KOS-MOS nodded. "Affirmative."

"Affirmative...?" Shion repeated, turning to face the blue-haired woman. Narrowing her eyes she said suspiciously, "KOS-MOS, how do you know all of this? I never stored any type of information like that in your main data bank..."

"You...you're the creator of that thing... And yet...you didn't even know about that?"

The party all turned to see Commander Cherenkov come out from behind the Zohar. He looked injured, holding his leg and limping slightly. Shion was the first to recover, rushing quickly to his aid.

"Commander Cherenkov! Are you alright?" She looked at him worriedly, her eyes filled with concern. "Let's get out of here."

Just as she was about to reach out to him, his body suddenly became see-through, just like that of a Gnosis before the Hilbert effect was activated. Shion took a step back, fear, shock, and horror in her eyes.

"Commander..." she whispered. "Your body's...?!"

His breathing incredibly labored, the Commander looked up at them, his body fading in and out of existence. "Escape? What are you talking about?" Each word he said sounded pained, as though it hurt to speak. "You think you'll survive...through something like this?" He groaned, forcing himself to walk up the platform in front of the Zohar, using the rail for support. "That's right...I...I was the one behind the disappearance of the planet Ariadne... All that mattered was the recovery of the Emulator. That was the reason for the deployment of Vector and the military."

He had to stop as he reached the control panel. He took a few ragged breaths before continuing, "They were really only pawns... But in spite of all that..." Cherenkov raised his gaze to the ceiling, and broke off. He staggered back, as though seeing something above him. "G-go away!! Don't come near me! You were the ones who rejected me! So why are you bothering me now...?!" A purple thing flew at him. "Nooooo!!!" he yelled, just before it hit him.

"Hmm?" Ziggy said as they all looked up at the ceiling.

"W-what is that?" Shion questioned fearfully.

It was almost impossible to believe that they were seeing what they were really seeing. The same kind of purple light that had hit the Commander were now flying into his body, one after another.

"All photon, lepton, hadron, and graviton scans read negative," KOS-MOS noted.

"Then what is it that we're seeing?!" Shion asked.

As the last of the things flew into Cherenkov's now limp, violet glowing body, his body began to float upwards towards the Zohar of its own accord. The object began to glow in tune with his body, completely enveloping it. When the party could see again there was a large creature in Cherenkov's place.

"Oh, no..." Shion whispered.

MOMO stepped forward. "I sense...?!" She gasped. "It's a Gnosis!!"

"It's the same...just like that day..." Ziggy muttered.

The beast let out a mighty roar and attacked.

-End flashback-

The tears seeped out of Shion's closed eyes, despite her attempts to stop them. Yes... Commander Cherenkov had turned into a Gnosis and attacked them... and... they had had to kill him. It had been a terrible battle, and they had only barely managed to come out of it alive. Her...chaos...and KOS-MOS... if only the Commander too, had been so lucky.

-Flashback-

Just as soon as they had defeated the Gnosis it let out a roar, and somehow Shion was given a vision of the past--and not her past either. What she saw was what had happened to the Commander.

She could only watch as another man spoke to him about things that she didn't really understand. Something about light... Her attention was drawn in when she finally did understand the man's words.

"That's why you never faltered, even after you went through personality reconditioning," the man said.

Shion's eyes widened in surprise. The Commander...underwent personality reconditioning...? she thought. While she tried to wrap her mind around that she once again stopped paying attention to what the man with red hair was speaking of. All of a sudden she felt a surge of emotion overcome her.

Happiness? Were those my feelings just now? she wondered. She shook her head, holding a hand to her heart. No... it must have been the Commander's feelings... The scene faded to just black, showing only her and Cherenkov. "Commander... what was it that you were searching for?"

There was a sudden flash of light and she saw images, images of many things from the Commander's past. Images of her, of KOS-MOS, of the crew on the Elsa, the Woglinde, MOMO, a woman she didn't recognize, that red-haired man, and of himself. When the images disappated they were at an ocean. Andrew sat cross legged in front of her, his back to her, facing the water. Everything was white...except them.

"Commander..." Shion murmured, her voice filled with emotion.

Without turning to face her Andrew spoke, his voice sad. "I never really existed at all... I... 36 years ago... The year after the Zoar incident, which led up to the Miltian Conflict. I was brought into this world as a weapon of Warfare... It happened all the time back then. Killing was my, no...our whole reason for existence. The fortunate ones were those who could adapt to that way of life. Even luckier were those who died on the battlefield. But I was never granted that opportunity. Before I could find some significance to my own life, the war ended, and I was left behind as the world went on."

He sighed. "I tried to adapt..." he said softly, almost wistfully. "But the language I spoke was so different from the rest of the world. I thought the entire world had rejected me. But the Commander... it felt like he really needed me. I saw a future for myself in the Commander... Or I wanted to, at least. But I had to rely on the drugs to communicate with the rest of the world. It was because I hadn't changed... After everything that happened, I hadn't changed at all. Now I finally understand. The world didn't reject me, I rejected the world. Shion..." He looked up from the ground so that he stared at the water. "I like it here. I'm the only living thing that exists in this place. There's nothing else. No anger, no sadness, no happiness, not even a future... The only thing that's here is me... And that will eventually fade away. It...feels good. This is exactly what I've been searching for all this time... Shion... you'll eventually find yourself here, too..."

His body faded away, but his voice remained, like a whisper on the wind. "I'm sure of it... It won't be much longer... I know... I can tell..."

-End Flashback-

After that she was back in reality, watching the Gnosis that had once been the Commander die. She had been in so much shock, she had begged Ziggy and chaos to tell her that they hadn't really done what she knew they had. She begged them to tell her that Commander Cherenkov was all right. But... he wasn't.

Turning onto her side Shion continued to cry silently. The Commander had lived such a sad life... he had been all alone. Even when he died he was alone... she couldn't help him at all, no matter how hard she had tried. She had loved him, and yet he had never known. She had been too much of a coward to tell him of her feelings. And now it was too late. Now he would never know that he hadn't been as alone as he had thought. That he had had her. That... if he had given them a chance, that he would have had everyone else, too. chaos, MOMO, Ziggy, Allen, the rest of the Elsa's crew... them all.

And what he had said... even though she should have been afraid that she would end up like him in the end, she wasn't. Her sorrow for his loss completely overrode any fear that she might have felt.

"Commander..." she whispered, clutching a small trinket, his crest, to her chest. "I wish I had told you the truth... I love you..."

With that she broke down into silent sobs, no longer able to keep herself from doing so.

Beenden(End)

E/N: This chapter ended a lot differently from I had originally thought. And yet I still really like it. I'm really hoping for a few reviews of this story(or one of it's other parts), because I'm curious as to know how I did. I'm especially looking for constructive criticism, ways to improve my writing, and mistakes I made that I should fix. Anyway, final chapter should be up sometime next week.
Final Chapter Title: Xenosaga, An Interlude: Macht der Wiederbelebung (Power of Revival)