Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Madeline, Terra, Kefka, Emperor Gestahl
Length: 2,694 words
Additional tags: Mother-Daughter Relationship, Angst, Afterlife
Summary: Madeline discovers that life is crueller the second time around, when she discovers the fate of her orphaned daughter.
A Silent Aeon
The moment of death is like a second birth.
Her eyes snap open and she draws in breath sharply, as a babe first slapped – and suddenly, she feels alive.
Excepting the fact that, in the uncomfortably-noticeable silence that cocoons her, she hears no heartbeat pulsing in her ears, no rush of blood coursing through her veins. The inner-workings of her body are as still as the stale air surrounding her.
She pulls herself to her feet; finds that her belly – once bloodied – is clean, though she will later find that it likes to tear itself open again from time to time, either in mourning or mocking. The pain is no longer physical, but it still hurts – even worse so than the moment the blade that took her life breached her barrier of flesh.
She hears a train whistle bellow in the distance. She turns and runs in the opposite direction.
- x - x - x -
Time as a concept no longer holds meaning to her, though she feels she wanders for ages. She is lost; she watches six thousand earthly sunsets, and she only begins to understand the vastness of the world to which she was born. She catches her reflection in the waves of a blue sea, and thinks she should look twice her age by now.
Her face remains round and supple, her hair retains its curl. But she has long since become something her features no longer resemble: she is lonely, angry, and desperate.
Her fingers yearn for something they can touch and hold and tear apart.
- x - x - x -
She happens upon a city made of steel, where the air is thick with ash and the night glows like a factory furnace. Its people are sick with obsession and fear; their lips turn upward in crooked grins as sparks flicker at their fingertips, then they nervously look over their shoulders to make sure the wrong eyes did not see.
Her form is invisible to the living, but she is cautious in this place. These powers they wield – inhuman for sure – are vaguely familiar, and she remembers what it's like to be nauseous. Discomfort manifests itself as a poisonous knot in her stomach – a sensation so strong, she wonders if she's being pulled back into her old world. She hides among shadows in order to watch these strange people, draped in soiled rags, igniting fires with a mere gesture; freezing puddles with a simple wave.
These acts seem certainly harmless; no more than extraordinary games and entertainment. But she knows too well that she stands at the edge of the shallow water, where the next step would plunge her into the depths of something cold and cruel.
She decides she has wandered too long, and so she takes an empty breath and dives in.
- x - x - x -
The clang of machinery is deafening at times. Bronze-armored soldiers stand at attention at each entrance and corner, but they are not so keen as to notice her spectral figure. As she glides up a flight of stairs, she notices several engineers piecing together what looks like a great metallic beast of guns and gears. The sight of it startles her, till she realizes there are soldiers riding on the backs of similar bipedal creatures as well – much smaller in stature, but no less imposing.
Their movement is unsettlingly fluid for their size and build. She has witnessed innovations in technology in her years of wandering – a ship that sails across the clouds rather than the seas (a ride she spent in the unbeknownst company of an inspiringly brilliant young woman); a castle that sinks as though it were built on quicksand (she never realized how much she yearned for sunlight till that week was over) – but nothing that so radiated destruction before as this. The machines of the steel city – guardians, ambulant armors – are crude in ways, yet... unnaturally superior in others. She feels as though something about them doesn't quite fit; that there exists the touch of something not-human in their construction.
Though the dread mounts, curiosity nudges her ever onward, and she slips through the crack of an open door, where she feels she has stepped into the largest prison in the world.
- x - x - x -
She almost longs to feel her heart racing against her chest. The lack of a pulse in terror is all the more nauseating, she finds – and this experience, she believes, is the promised eternal damnation of her soul. Emotions never feel quite right – even after seventeen years she is still unused to it – as every strong reaction is like a game of roulette, and she never knows exactly what sensation she will be accosted with.
Today, in this moment, she remembers clearly the taste of blood that accompanies the sting of a blade in her belly – so vivid, in fact, that when she chances a glimpse downward, she sees her dress soaked red. The wound has opened again.
Vision blurred, she squints and blinks in attempt to make sense of the scene before her.
(Simultaneously, she doesn't want to make sense of it all.)
A short man in garish dress paces and mutters seemingly to himself. The room is austere in contrast to his appearance, and his intermittent cackles of laughter reverberate off the metal walls. A young woman sits, expressionless, in a cold, iron throne, staring at the late afternoon sun beaming through the only window in the room. She bears a crown upon her head – ugly and mechanic in itself – and by the way the man fusses particularly over this adornment, it is apparent that its purpose is more than decorative.
"Stand!" the man barks, suddenly militaristic, and the woman obeys. "En garde!" She braces herself, weaponless. The man grins, and with a swift movement, signals the start of a sparring match.
"Fire!" he cries in command, a snake of light emanating from his hands and rushing towards the slight woman. She dodges mechanically, and returns his attack with a crashing wave of flame. He is knocked to the back wall, laughing inexplicably. He pats at his smoldering sleeves as he rights himself and returns to the woman.
"It's time to show your capabilities to the Emperor," he says. The young woman's eyes are dead; void of reaction or acknowledgement. She silently follows him out the door.
- x - x - x -
This must be madness! Insanity! On her knees, she clutches her bleeding wound, feeling its sting in her fingers, her chest, her head – everywhere the pain should not be.
Was that me? Am I watching myself? she wonders, distraught. The magic-user looked so much like her reflection; a little shorter, a bit thinner. Am I alive, but... under a spell?
A horror so great overwhelms her and she retches. Then, throwing her head back with sudden violence, she opens her mouth to cry out, but hears no voice; feels no vibration in her throat.
She has not spoken in seventeen years – none would hear her, anyhow. Her voice abandoned her the day she died.
(She died.)
...And with that thought, she remembers. She remembers a man with long hair, a long beard, calling himself 'Emperor'. She remembers the glint of his sword, the sharpness of its blade, and how eagerly the blood poured from her abdomen once he discovered that her infant child was born of both human and Esper.
Her mate, the Esper, offered his strength to try to banish the intruders. Their daughter, the half-breed, was taken from her arms out of heartless intrigue – a prize to be won. She, the worthless, common human, was discarded.
Her breathing gruffly quickens. Bracing herself on the floor with her hands, her back rises and falls sharply as she strains her vocal chords till she utters a beastly growl. Again and again, she barks guttural curses, coaxing her withered voice to life. And what should she say after all this time? What would be worth saying?
"Ma...deline. Madeline." The weak, the hated, the human (as though it were a fault) – herself: her very name.
She will not be lost, forgotten forever; helpless as her daughter is stolen from her a second time.
- x - x - x -
The girl with the crown faces an army of two hundred. Her apparent commander, the foolish-looking man, mutters something into her ear before turning to a man in royal garb, his long hair and beard quickly greying.
Madeline snarls at the sight of the Emperor, who sees nothing before him but his own conquests.
A motion is made; the first fifty men in formation step forward. The Emperor expresses doubt to the foolish man, who grins all too widely in response. He again speaks softly to the girl. The Emperor nods.
With a lunging gesture, a ripple of light expels itself from her form and engulfs the soldiers in flame. Those spared panic and scatter, concerned more with saving their own lives than following orders anymore.
Madeline shrieks and the Emperor tics his head sideways, as though he heard something.
"Impressive," he says, ignoring the mayhem. "Your work has paid off. She will be most useful."
The stench of burning flesh saturates the air. He gazes at the carnage for a moment, impassive.
"I've seen enough. You may continue your project," declares the Emperor, and he lifts a cloth to his nose and mouth as he turns to leave the training field.
Madeline stands to block his path, brandishing her hands as though each digit were a sharpened blade. But as she reaches for his neck – fingers thirsting for blood, intending to slice – she finds they do not cut but pass right through him.
He shivers as they momentarily occupy the same space, but he otherwise pays her no mind.
"No...!" she cries, twisting herself around maniacally. "You can't just walk away! You will not use my daughter as a weapon!"
Her voice is so loud it pierces her own ears, yet falls deaf on all others.
"My daughter is not a weapon!" And she weeps and wails hysterically, thrashing about, hoping to ensnare a piece of flesh in vengeance. She finally collapses to her knees, facing helplessness and defeat for not the first time, as the cruel Emperor disappears, unscathed, into his steel fortress.
- x - x - x -
Night has fallen, and the near-full moon casts a glowing silhouette of the window on the floor. Madeline kneels before a sparse cot supporting a mattress so thin it seems hardly fit for a servant, much less the fair young woman who sleeps in it. The metal crown is still firmly fixed about her head, a loathsome contrast to her feathery, jade-tinted hair. Watching her soft breaths – calm and carefree as she dreams – Madeline is moved to tears.
"My Terra," she gently sobs, blinking to clear her vision, "I can't even hold you." As if to confirm her words, she reaches a hand toward her daughter. She feels nothing but air, as though the living girl were the specter and not herself.
"I cannot fight for you, I cannot protect you. It is such torture to stand by and watch this disgusting marionette show." Her fingers grasp dumbly at the immovable slave crown. "I wish I could have known you all your life. I wish you could have known me."
She dries her tears on her sleeve, but they are quickly replaced. "What can I do but whisper courage and love, and hope you somehow hear? I cannot believe they've broken you yet. You will escape this prison."
Madeline pauses to weep, her mind burdened by the day's revelations. Nervously, her fingers fondle the delicate blue pendant she has worn for as long as she can remember – even in the years during which her heart still beat.
"Already..." her voice wavers in confession, "already, I know you are stronger than me. I have wandered for so many years in loneliness, wishing to truly die and fade from this world. I never thought I would find you, but that if I did, it would be a joyous relief, knowing you were safe and well. But what I witnessed today was already too dreadful, and I cannot bear the thought of watching again tomorrow, and the next day. I am more unsettled than ever. I wish to give you strength, but I feel I will be trodden down too quickly, and you will find no hope in me."
Terra shifts in her sleep, rolling onto her back. The moonlight, ever creeping across the floor, begins to kiss her face and sets her hair glittering.
"But you are beautiful; a vision of purity among this corrupted fortress. I love you, my dear Terra."
A surge of excitement or desperation floods her body then, and Madeline suddenly finds herself unclasping the chain from behind her neck. She holds the pendant before her, gazing at the way it sparkles as it slowly sways back and forth in the moonlight.
And then she realizes that the way it catches the light is peculiar – how is it that this unreal object (for when she died, she verily took the jewel with her, or so she always thought) appears as though it exists in the physical world? After all, neither the moon nor the sun nor any other source of light has reflected off of her skin in seventeen years, yet this small, blue stone reveals itself to be her last true connection to the living.
Hands trembling, she slowly leans toward the sleeping girl. As she lowers the necklace, she nearly jumps when the pendant meets resistance against Terra's chest. The chain drapes itself neatly over her collarbone and Madeline takes great care to reach around each side of her neck to clasp it.
She stands back to admire the way the cerulean jewel complements her daughter's fair skin.
"You look so much like me, but you radiate the strength of your father. I hope you come to know of him too... he showed more compassion than any other Man or Esper I ever met. It seems as though this world is in dire need of such qualities."
Tearfully overwhelmed with passion, Madeline closes her eyes.
"I wish to support you, and I wish to be put to rest. Terra, my love, let me stay by your side..."
And she feels herself sinking downward and rising upward at the same time. She is suddenly, silently fearful to a degree she has not experienced since there was life in her veins. She hears her own voice like an echo, somewhere far in the distance, encouraging herself to remain calm, and so she stills herself through the agony. Her vision fades, even as she tries to open her eyes. And as her last earthly sense slips away, her soul is pulled into the pendant.
- x - x - x -
Terra rouses, feeling strangely lightheaded. As she watches herself in the mirror, she vaguely muses about the necklace, cradling it gently in her fingertips. She then wonders – as if she's never considered it before – if this odd crown isn't responsible for her pounding headache; it's too tight, perhaps. She gingerly lifts it off her head and her legs promptly give way.
The sound of her crashing to the floor brings a knock at the door. A man wearing a silk robe and a feather in his hair enters, and, surveying the scene, quickly rushes to her side. He hurriedly replaces the crown.
Terra's mind clouds over once again. Eyelids slack, limbs lethargic, she allows the man to lift her to her feet and direct her to ready herself for the day. As she dresses, her gaze lingers on the view out the window, and a word inexplicably dances about her head: "escape."
She turns back to the mirror and begins to tie her hair up with a ribbon. The pendant at her chest seems to glitter of its own accord and the ghost of a smile forms at the corners of her lips.
An impatient rapping at the door breaks her trance. "Hurry now; we mustn't keep the Emperor waiting!" calls the foolish man from outside.
She drags her feet toward the exit. As her hand falls upon the doorknob, a voice in the back of her mind assures her that hope is not lost.
And she believes it.