/Author's Note: FF6, being my favourite game of all time, has always been something I've been a little bit afraid to tackle in the arena of fanfiction; I've started plenty of fanfics but never really completed one. This one was started in 2011 and I decided to clean it up, finish it, and finally post it! You can thank my current replay of FF6 for that. It's titled after Ayumi Hamasaki's song 'Like a Doll', particularly the line:
'Throwing away the persevering heart, Throwing away the faithful heart – You knew from the start that doing so would be more painful than anything else, didn't you?'
So, here is my first offering (of hopefully many more) to the fandom of my favourite game from my favourite series. Enjoy! End Author's Note/
The Persevering Heart
Shiva pulses within her – but her numbing presence was something Celes had long grown accustomed to. Now, pumping through her veins was the blood of dozens of others: their myriad emotions simultaneously burned and cooled, roared and whispered. She wasn't alone – it must have been the same within each of her comrades, each augmented with the power of the Espers, like she - and yet there was a world of difference between them.
Her companions bore the weapons, but she had lain among the coals to becomeone. The metal tables, the syringes, the punctured skin, the machines that probed and pierced, the magic that spilled wildly from her body as if she was a thimble trying to contain water; The unnatural dryness of her skin, more stone than flesh, and the luminescent paleness that had replaced the healthy honeyed tones of her hair; Shiva's shrill cries, permeating the young girl's body, ringing out in echoes evermore. 'Magitek Infusion', they had called it, but all Celes remembered was violation, pure and simple.
None of her companions had paid so steep a price for the hallowed gift of magic; not Terra, who heard only gentle murmurs and tender whispers, her father warming her heart from within. Not Locke, blessed by Phoenix, rewarded for his unerring ability to love. Not anyone else, gifted with Magicite and the willing symbiosis between mage and magic. There was only one other who had, and he was calling to her.
But there was something more, this time. Dashing across platforms that seemed to alternate between metallic and organic in a twisted checkerboard of the grotesque, Celes felt something stronger, something familiar beckoning to her. Her boots thudded against sinewy ground and clanked against cold steel. The entirety of Kefka's tower seemed to pulse with her, every step of the way; she led the ascent, following an internal compass that linked the two in ways neither wanted.
On more than one instance, she felt as if the tower was closing around her, absorbing her into its being. Cranes and girders welcomed her like skeletal arms of silver and the ravaged earth pulsed under her feet as if she were running along living flesh. It was a womb of decay and deformity, and it wanted nothing more than to take Celes in – and she found her resistance waning. After all, she, like it, was nothing more than the machination of a madman.
"He's up ahead," breathed the Magitek Knight, her heart persevering to maintain its own beat, to resist the pulsing tower and its demonic rhythm; to resist throbbing with the heart of its maker. She would not stop; Celes marched on, the general leading her charge, feeling her heart swell to bursting.