Disclaimer: Not mine! Credit goes to Supergiant Games. Some parts of the text are taken directly from Bastion, so yeah. Definitely not mine.

Zulf's not conscious.

I'm not too surprised. The Ura weren't going too easy on him, after all.

Kid's got a tough choice in front of him.

Kid drops his weapon, picks up Zulf, and swings him easily over a shoulder, jus' like he used to with his trusty ol' hammer.

It's a long, lonely, road in front o' him, lined with Ura armed to the teeth.

Kid starts walking.

An' Zulf starts wakin' up. He hears a lullaby in his head, the one that Zia sings all the time. It's the same one as the one his ma used to sing him before the sickness got her. He can't remember her face, but he remembers the words jus' fine.

"I dig my hole you build a wall,"

That song always gave me the chills. Almost like the Ura knew what was coming, before Zia's old man even decided to fix the weapon to cause the Calamity.

They dug straight down to the Tazal Terminals, and I built that wall as high as I could get it.

"Someday that wall is gonna fall,"

Damn right that wall fell. The Calamity made sure of that. I wonder if it'll be different, when we wind back time and set things back to how they used to be. Too bad that's the problem with things that bring you back to a bygone time – you never know what'll happen, if anything will change at all.

"Gon' build that city on a hill,"

Caelondia was beautiful, and I was proud to build the wall that protected her.

"Someday those tears are gonna spill,"

Funny enough, Kid and I both haven't shed a tear yet. It's Zia who's done all the cryin' up until now.

"So build that wall and build it strong 'cause we'll be there before too long,"

That wall was strong, but it was nothin' in the face of the Calamity Cannon. We Caelondians darn engineered our own downfall.

Heh. Look at me getting all nostalgic and caught up in the past.

Anyways, back to the Kid.

Kid walks down that path, worlds away from the twisted streets of his youth.

Kid thinks of Zia, of that beautiful voice and the long sad strings of her harp guitar. Well, she did carry that twangy thing everywhere, except for that one time…

Kid thinks of the first he met Zulf, surrounded and all alone in the hanging gardens. Of all of Zulf's naïve and noble efforts, gone to waste, thanks to the Calamity.

Kid probably thinks of me, old man who ain't even asked his name. No doubt he'll be glad to see the last o' me.

Now the Kid's on the last one of his health tonics. Don't know how long he's been walking now – could be a few seconds, could be a few hours. Zulf's heavier than a sack full o' pecker's eggs, an' the Kid can barely keep walkin'. Skybridge beckons to him, bright as the stars themselves.

Those Ura are still shootin' at him, and his vision's startin' to go blurry.

And then, jus' like that, they stop.

Let the Kid pass by.

Weapons still raised, but none of 'em pull the triggers.

Kid would probably wonder why, if he wasn't so tired.

An' then one shouts out at the Kid. Starts shooting again. Can't blame him. Lookin' at all the Ura the Kid got, that one's probably got a good reason to hate 'im.

Another shout, and that Ura lies dead on the floor, killed by one o' his own kind.

Proper story starts at the beginning and finishes with the ending. Now here's a Caelondian kid carryin' an Ura to safety, somethin' I never thought I'd see with my own two eyes. An' once Kid reaches the Bastion, he's got a choice to make.

Too bad Zulf won't get a say.

A/N: This started out as a plotbunny and I wasn't really sure where it was going. :P But yay! Also on my third playthrough of Bastion was when I realized, in the Hanging Gardens, ZULF ISN'T WEARING A MASK. HIS FACE IS ACTUALLY THAT SAD. ahhhh Zulf please don't be so sad. /despairface.