Written in response to a challenge by touchofgray on LJ, based upon the lyrics of "Darkness Darkness", below.

Disclaimer: I do not own FFIV. But maybe you already knew that? Lyrics and title from "You're all I have" by Snow Patrol.

--

Darkness, Darkness, be my pillow

Take my head and let me sleep

In the coolness of your shadow

In the silence of your deep

--

There is a darkness

deep in you.

A Frightening Magic

I cling to.

Twilight. On the human side, anyway. At least, she thinks it is. It's too hard to keep time down here, when the movements of the worlds are so different, but she thinks she's managed all right.

She wonders why she's doing this. Why is she making this journey above ground just to watch the sun set, like she's seen it do so many times before? Why can't she just wait for an invitation from Cecil and Rosa so she can have an excuse to make the trip? Or maybe a visit from Kain.

She looks down and wonders if the dragoon could make the jump from the ground to the world above. He'd always claimed he could leap to the stars if he wanted to, and he'd promised to take her with him once. But that was before he'd started training on Mt. Ordeals, in order to prove himself to Cecil and (more importantly) Rosa. That had put her off the idea rather a lot. Besides, she doesn't really care for stars. And she's pretty sure he was only trying to sweet-talk her into liking him.

The ground is becoming too far off for her liking and instead she looks up. The gaping opening that she's supposed to be aiming for isn't much more than a pin-prick from this distance. She wishes this lift would go faster and yet she's apprehensive about using magic to make it do so. It's old and it creaks, even at this slow pace. The dwarves assured her of it sturdiness and yet they're a lot smaller than she is.

This is madness, she tells herself but she doesn't stop. She doesn't know if she can. She feels drawn to the world above, to that sun set. Nothing can stop her completing this journey, if her fear of heights can't. She feels compelled to keep moving and she can if she just doesn't look down. Because something about that moment when the horizon sort of gives a slight shudder, when the glow of the brink is finally extinguished, when the world gives in completely to darkness- it enthralls her. And she misses it. There's nothing like that down here, where the darkness is eternal. Or rather the twilight is eternal, warding off the night with glowing magic orb, torches and seas of lava.

(The hole is getting larger, and her pulse is racing again.)

She tries to convince herself this attraction is harmless and yet she knows it isn't- and this trip isn't just for pretty scenery. She worries this means she's drawn to darkness. And that darkness is drawing her to this over-world and to him. The irony that the crystals of the underworld are supposed to be the dark ones, and yet their realm does nothing to satisfy this urge does not pass her by, but she can't even force a laugh.

When he had proposed to her, they had been on the deck of the Lunar Whale at nightfall. It was the first time since she could remember that she had been distracted from the twilight even before he'd said anything. And that she's stared into it without seeing after the words had sunk in. But she had pushed him away.

(She tries to do it now, to push the memories away but there's no distraction on this lift and she's absorbed with thought.)

She didn't want to. For once, she wanted to just give into these impulses and say yes- but she couldn't let herself. How could she be Queen Rydia, trapped on a thrown for the rest of her life? Walking five steps behind him at all times? Never sitting or rising until he did so? That type of life was for Rosa, not for her.

(She can feel cool air and shivers, but not because of it.)

Escape was the only choice she had, but it meant escaping all that she loves. And it goes to show that she couldn't escape it. Something about him is calling her back. She knows that this venture will end with him. Somehow.

He let it go, just accepted her refusal without much of an explaination. Probably because he thought she was in love with Cecil- and he was partly right. She was once in love with the idea of the Dark Knight, the strength and the power. She's always been drawn to power. She had idolized Cecil on their journey together and then when she had been separated from him- dark and strong and brave and (behind the helmet), ruggedly handsome. She could not tear her eyes from the disturbingly enthralling beauty of his Dark ability- almost slicing his soul open to protect them. That was devotion.

When they'd met again, she'd almost been disappointed to find him helmet-less; pretty, with pale hair and blue eyes, in an almost fragile way. He'd chosen the white magicks, in both his profession and woman, while she had favored the black. It created a wedge between them that he rarely seemed to notice, not helped by the fact that he still saw her and treated her as a child.

Unlike Kain. Kain spoke to her without the patronising tone Cecil and Rosa usually reserved for her, and as much as she still resented him for her mother's death and the attempt to take her life and the countless betrayals, his brimming power and excitement thrilled her, even when he snatched the crystal from their grasp. But that was soon quenched when she saw his dedication also to Rosa. Indeed, she wondered if any would ever choose her over the strikingly attractive white mage.

(And this jealousy tells her there's a darkness within her too, that she draws her magic from and that gnaws at her to visit this world and see that dusk. And she's scared of it, on the few occasions that she admits it exists.)

Maybe that was why Edward (and she uses his real name because it annoys him so much when she makes the connection and it's really easier to resist him when she likens him to the bard she suspects is gay, despite his apparent great love for Anna) had caught her eye. He treated her as an adult (having never known her as a child) and showed Rosa no more interest than he did any other girl.

(Her head is through. She can tell because her hair is blowing about in the wind, but her eyes won't open- afraid of how much will have changed or how much she'll recognise after all the time below? Maybe a little of both.)

But it's more than that. He's just different from the others. She used to find herself staring at him without meaning to and so getting lost in the pace of battle and getting hit with a toad spell or striking him with lightening by accident. She couldn't let his conceited comments go without reprimanding him and, on an occasion when he got drunk and hinted about the fun they could have in one of the up-stairs room at the inn with her whip, she turned him into a pig. "Now you match your words," she'd said. But she couldn't have taken any notice at all if he had never said them.

When he proposed to her, she pushed him away, not because of any reasons she'd been able to give him (or any reason she dared to give herself), but because the darkness that draws her to him is a part of who he is- he isn't being controlled or forced into accepting it, he is naturally arrogant and chauvinistic and uncouth. It isn't darkness like the others had. It was more a fiendishness that she found oddly comforting- much like the enthrallment of the setting sun. It scares her that something could be so horrifying to her and yet transfixing at once.

Finally, she grasps that the lift isn't stopping, even though she's sure she's through and forces it to do so with magic. Then she opens her eyes. And everything is the same. She doesn't know why she expected it all to be so different, when only several weeks could have passed up here, a few months at the most. But she's disappointed (and maybe repressing relief). After all that she's changed, nothing about this place has changed with her.

She realises at once that all that time underground had caused her to lose track of time. It's a few hours before twilight. Or maybe she had planned for those few hours. She could make her way to Elban to see that wonderful view he'd always bragged about... Combine the world's plunge of darkness with her own?

She's too far above the ruined mountain for her liking and slowly directs herself to the ground, shaking all the while, knowing that this blasted thing could fall apart at any minute. She's going to have to see Cid about it before she even thinks of going back. That should buy her another few days here.

(She's unsure if that's a good thing or a bad. She'll soon see.)

She's panting, and she knows it's with fear. She doesn't want to give in to these compulsions, to give him a reason to smile smugly again, but right now it seems more important that watching a sun set, more important that returning below and living freely with the summons, more important than flying to the moon and saving the world (even though he told her not to, which made it even more crucial).

She throws out her arms and calls forth a chocobo. She's a little rusty at this summoning thing (the result of being able to merely stick her head out a window to get their attention rather than going through complicated hand-gestures to do so) and she's surprised one comes forward at all; only the one that comes to her now is black (well, really purple).

She tries to see the irony in the production of a black chocobo at this time, refraining from worrying whether this summon should be purple (wasn't it supposed to be yellow?) and trying to convince herself it's all for the best ( a yellow one wouldn't be much good to her on this island. Less so than the grumbling elevator which she averts from kicking, because it did it's best and eventually got her up here).

Bracing herself, she clambers upon it and, with a cry and a moan, that tells her she hasn't lost her charm with the creatures, it speeds away- past the town, off the cliff and (after a heart-pounding drop), over the waves. Oddly, she feels no need to close her eyes. Maybe she's getting braver in her old age. Maybe she really has changed.

No, she doesn't believe that. She is no different. She's not going to be Queen Rydia and she isn't giving into her own darkness. She's just embracing his shadow a little, that's all. So what if she isn't ready to accept her own darkness? The way she sees it, he has enough for both of them.

--

(A/N: It's undergone some alterations from what it originally was- but I kinda like it now. Review if you like.)