Author's Note: A little something I started about a year ago and forgot about till I found it on my computer last night. From Zidane's point-of-view.

Credits/Disclaimer: All dialogue and text in quotations are taken from the FFIX online game script found at Final Fantasy: Worlds Apart. I do not own Final Fantasy IX or any of its characters.

Being Alexander

Light. Blue light.

Blue light all around me, emanating from the web-like growths stringing along the mirror-smooth path, from the cold crystal sky above and even from the rocks themselves, rocks that have seen the millennia pass by in stoic silence. The light surrounds and crowds my senses to the point of feeling smothered. I feel as if I am drowning in a sea of crystal and ice, staring up at the sun shining above the surface, a tantalizing symbol of freedom. No wonder these people—these "Genomes"— find the blue light unpleasant. No wonder it is the only thing I remember about this place.

But there surely is a lot of blue for a planet whose soul burns crimson.

I follow my guide, the only person in this village with a soul, to somewhere—I don't know where—my destiny or fate, I suppose. Everything about her mesmerizes me: hair like rays of sunlight, that stilted manner of speaking, a face flat and uninviting, her tail stunted from immaturity of age, and pale blue eyes that are a reflection of my own.

I find myself…in her.

It is a frightening thought. She is nothing like me, yet my entire sense of who I am dangles from her fingertips on fragile threads that bind me like iron cords. This girl is the key to finally knowing who I am, what I am. I have spent my entire life chasing and grasping at the smallest clues about my parents and my heritage without any success. And now, the answer is literally right in front of me. And now, I am not so sure I want to know the answer anymore, because I am beginning to see hints of the truth, and what I see makes me want to turn on my heel and flee. Yet somehow I find myself staying and wanting to know, a morbid fascination like watching a struggling airship fall out of the sky to its certain fiery doom.

"We are merely vessels..."

"Where are you taking me?" I venture. There are so many questions: Who? What? Where? Why? I figure that Where? is as good a place to start as any.

"I told you. You are going to see Garland," she replies, without looking back.

Oh. Of course. I am going to see Garland. Garland, the man whose twisted mind is behind this all. Garland, simply a name, another piece of this strange puzzle that I find myself an unwilling part of. I dash a stray lock of hair from my eyes in frustration. Puzzles are usually something I enjoy—they're great for passing time on a long trip—but not when it means being the accomplice of my planet's demise. Gaia's demise, that is.

Or do I mean Terra's? After all, this is where I was born. Made. Whatever. These are my people, whether I like it or not.

Either way, one of them will have to go.

"Once we receive a soul, our bodies begin to grow..."

We are nearing the end of the path, it seems, but the girl continues without slowing. "Where are you going?" I ask. "This way is a dead end."

"There is a way."

She halts in front of an arch that looks like a harp sculpted from the rocky outcropping, strung with thin gossamer strings. Finally, she turns around and steps to one side, gesturing at the arch. "See? You may find him through this portal."

Before I know what my legs are doing, I find myself approaching the glimmering arch. In the crystal formations flanking it, I see my broken image in their hundred bright facets. My reflection appears ghostly and distant, as if the Terran rock had already incorporated me into its memory: The Homecoming of Zidane Tribal. I feel as though someone had already written out my life, that my next step had already been spelled out like dry ink on parchment. Entering the portal would be the beginning of a new chapter in this great game of chess, in which I am merely a pawn.

"He awaits where the souls sleep," the Genome girl intones. "The floating castle, where souls bide their time until their restoration: Pandemonium."

"And when the time comes, the souls of the people of Terra will occupy the Genomes. Such is the restoration of the people of Terra."

I stand before the portal with my nose only inches from its shimmering strands. They appear to be made of crystal-clear liquid; only they do not flow, but seem to be in a sort of suspended animation. I stare at the smooth reflection of my eyes in the strands, slivers of blue that meld with the blue of this red planet, a planet that clothes itself in the spirits of dead worlds. How many times have I seen my reflection since I've been here? In the rocks, in the faces of the villagers below? For as long as I can remember, I had thought my happiest moment would come when I finally found people just like me.

But I am not happy. I feel...cheated. Empty. As empty as the vessels who are supposed to hold souls, but do not.

As empty as the vessels.... I had been like them, once. But not anymore. I am not a vessel; I have a soul. I am Zidane Tribal of Lindblum, a brother of Tantalus, guild of thieves and acting troupe extraordinaire.

"What is the matter, Zidane? You haven't been yourself at all."

My dear Freya, you would not be yourself either if you all of a sudden discovered that you were spawned and grown in a chamber of water on a far-off planet that feeds on the souls of other planets.

"You haven't been yourself...at all..."

But I am myself. I am never not myself.

"Will you not say farewell to your friends?" The girl's voice remains flat, even when speaking of friends and farewells. I carefully study her face for any change in the neutral expression that she wears like a mask. Even her body language is rigid and utilitarian; not a single movement is without purpose, not an ounce energy is wasted in frivolous gestures. There is no shifting of the feet, no playing with the pink ribbons in her hair.

Is this what I would have become, had I remained on Terra?

She looks so much like me, yet she is so different. With her hair arranged just-so and her stark Terran clothing free of spots and creases, she is the picture of order and design. She claims to have a soul, but I don't know if I can believe her. I have a soul, too, and she is nothing like me. Or Vivi, for that matter.

Vivi…

"I don't care what I am... I was born here, wasn't I?" I say, more to myself than to the Genome girl.

She does not reply and only looks at me, waiting.

"If so, then I am an enemy of the people of Gaia," I continue. Just as Vivi was an enemy of the world that lay outside the walls of Alexandria.

"You learn quickly."

But like Vivi, I can also choose my enemies. And my friends. "Make no mistake. I won't join your side."

Again, there is no reply. Not that I was actually expecting one.

"I just... If we are actually relatives, then..." I turn my head to look at the girl, who has my eyes and hair and tail. Then I turn back to the thin waterfalls of the portal. Vivi…you can't help me now. No one can, where I am going. "Then I want to take care of this little family matter myself."

I lift a hand to the strings, which melt together at my touch cling to my fingers like sticky strands of silk. Then, reaching in further to the void beyond, I step through to the other side.

The End