Coru Note: Hey there. Welcome to the story. I'd like to thank you for opening it up. I'd also like to warn you that this story will be a bit dark and a tad depressing, but there will also be some fluff in later chapters. Dark, delicious fluff. (That sounded a little bit dirty. Don't worry; nothing dirty.)
This is also an AU (because I asked "what if instead of the Summoner controlling the Eidolons, they controlled the Caller?"), starting somewhere in the beginning-middle of FFIV and largely ignoring The After Years.

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.

This story begins from Rydia's POV, at about age fourteen, in the Feymarch…

Once upon a time, there was what there was. And if nothing had happened, there would be nothing to tell.

I guess I wake up sometimes. Now and then. I can't always tell. It hurts. I can't always—

Sometimes I dream and I dream and my palms hurt, weaving this magic. Sometimes I dream about my mother's face, about the white dragon that devoured her from the inside. About clutching her icy hands.

Sometimes I dream that I have fallen through the earth and my heart has folded in half, and I can't seem to—

I know what's real, I know. But I have to save them. I can't let them die. These friends, these beloved faces.

I can't control this.

I'm sitting still in this corner of hell. I'm quiet, I'm cloaked, I can't be found. I repeat it to myself: I can't be seen, I can't be found, I can't be seen, I can't be found.

I'm still so small. I'm still so fragile. Just an adolescent girl, living here in these shadows, trying to wrap myself in blizzards of quiet so I can't be heard.

I'm not a child. I'm not grown. My memories are too stained for this small and broken body.

I keep dreaming about them, the kind faces of my friends. I haven't seen a human face, a real one, in so long. So very long, these years that pass in the lands of monsters. Devils.

They say that when I return, not two moons will have passed in the world above. They tell me I alone am to suffer, to bleed with their names until I am a hollow marionette streaked with red. A doll, a broken doll.

A girl, a broken girl.

What am I. What could I be.

The hours pass, and I hear the monsters whispering and snuffling past. They have yet to find their husk, their skin, lying in this corner with only a frail invisibility spell to cling to. I can't be seen. I can't be found.

It's so cold.

Shiva- oh, the tie-less mortal name, the cuff-less title- begins to pass, searching for me. Hunting. She looks into the corner intently, so intently with those piercing inclement eyes. I shudder silently, curled up and pulling my bones together as I hold my breath in a grasp tighter than death.

I will faint dead away before I take a breath with her eyes on me.

She begins to float away...

And I watch as her back stiffens. She turns, breathing deeply. I am sure the faint vibration of my pounding heart is hitting the back of her mouth as she breathes.

I feel my spell begin to unweave at her silent counter-charm. She begins to hiss through her teeth as the painful shape of my body bent into itself appears.

I feel a silent wail slither against the back of my throat as she glides forward... her skin sheds sparkling snow-dust the way mine sheds fear. I shake and hide my head against my knees.

A moment passes. I feel the chill of her skin billowing through the air as she stands over me. Then the nail-tips of one hand, rimed with frost, touch my hair.

"You know what happening shall pass, Rydia."

I pretend that it is quiet inside me and that I can pull that silence out and shove it down my throat until I am full and stiff with it. My eyes crash closed.

"This is not your day to mourn," Shiva finally hisses. "Stand on your feet."

Her open hand curls and fists in my hair, and she tugs harshly. I struggle to my feet because this body is not my own and these legs are not my pillars. I've given away all of my tears long ago or my eyes would drip and drip and drip.

I am tugged through the floating city and the overcast alleyways blind. All I feel is Shiva's frigid claws digging into my scalp as I stumble into the dark.

There… the scent of mildewed text. The harsh numbness of my feet catches the corner of a bookshelf before I am half-carried, half-pushed down the tumble of stairs. I used to cry out, but now I am a little doll stuffed with silence.

I can smell the dark. The icy hands clutching my head are pulling me over a floor possessed with endless vines, and I trip too often for Shiva's shallow patience. The quiet sound of growing things, plant and darkness and mold, presses against me like it wants to creep inside my lungs and steal my heart.

The time passes. We walk, we walk for so long. I remember what Shiva told me:

None can swim against the Lord of All Waters.

At last the furious Eidolon releases me with a jerk; I collapse lifeless against the floor as if my strings have been cut. We are before the throne, the king of monsters and despair.

He begins to speak, to sing his spell, to tie me to another Name. I tremble and bleed and turn inside out—

And I wail until the dark climbs inside and turns me to stone.