A/N: I've been gone a long time, I wonder if I still know how to do this.
Squeenix owns all, I own nothing.
enjoy the fall
by Marigold Futura
prelude
He was dealing with being dead pretty well, all things considered. Or maybe it was just that he was trying not to think about it at all, save the recurrent searing pain of mangled flesh knitting itself together that caused him to grimace every time his facial muscles slid just so, which so aptly reminded him of his present state.
It was the change of venue that was the more perturbing matter at the moment.
He'd woken on a muddy little strand, his clothes and hair sodden and flecked with algae, sugared with grains of drying sand, sprawled half in the brilliant sunshine, half in the shade of a pier propped up on gleaming pillars. Roused by the sounds of shouting children and the tinny victory fanfares of midway games. Druggedly, he half thought he'd fallen short of his goal and been dropped in the seas near Luca instead. Nice going, Jecht.
Only when he'd ambled to his feet, pausing to pull off a rope of seaweed presently trying to strangle his boot, and ascended the concrete steps that provided access up the sand dunes, did he see the truth for himself, and was assured that he was very, very far from home.
He'd seen the crumbling carapaces of these same towers before, had tread the walkways joining them that had sagged under the weight of a millenia, threatening to collapse with the next step. Here the buildings gleamed like new, all glittering chrome and polished glass, studded with blinding artificial lights, even in the daytime. The boardwalk—full of odd machina contraptions that pinged and whirred and beeped to the amusement of the people prodding them, full of unfamiliar savory and sweet scents, full of laughter and strange lingo and even stranger clothes—was solid beneath his feet, not a single crack in the asphalt. Solid and real, and yet…it couldn't possibly be, could it?
He stood there, a bedraggled anachronism amidst the pristine chaos, trying to take it all in with his one good eye, the effort causing a dull throb to hammer away at the socket.
And that was when he first saw her.
Transparent as a veil. Running in slow motion, as if she were treading water, she streaked past him in a blur of bittersweet orange, her movements preserved in a peculiar contrail behind her. Her hair flying like a golden banner on the wind; her arms, clad in long brown gloves, cutting dark swaths through the air. Her lips parted as if to speak, perhaps calling out to someone.
He was close enough to see the trail of blood that trickled from her hairline. The bruises and lashes that marred her pale exposed skin.
The resignation—the calm acceptance of fate—in her crystalline blue eyes. He knew those eyes from another face, and the recognition lodged in his heart like a barb. Braska.
He dared to tear his eyes away long enough to scan the crowd for their reactions—but there were none. The boardwalk denizens were entirely too absorbed in their trilling games of chance and cones of pink candyfloss to notice the diaphanous woman, or the dead man watching her.
He watched her until she vanished completely, until the last of the contrail kicked up by her heels had dissipated from sight. His headache was all but forgotten.
A fayth? A memory? More trickery conjured by the pyreflies?
A ghost, witnessed only by a ghost.