Disclaimer: I don't
own Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, or any of the characters associated with
it. I just torture them, is all.
TORMENTED SOUL
Blackness. Flowing
around him like water. Dark water. Anna had once told him the name Douglas
meant "dark water" in ancient Gaelic.
How appropriate.
He didn't know where he was. He could only vaguely remember seeing the habitat section of the
Zeus Cannon come crashing towards him, death finally coming to claim him. He wanted to welcome it with open arms as
the station exploded around him.
But instead, he found himself floating in darkness, his body
wracked by pain. He was strapped to
something, the belts cutting sharply into a shoulder that was on fire with
pain.
He fumbled around with his right hand, releasing the
constricting straps, giving a hoarse cry as one tore loose from his flesh. He floated weightlessly, his right hand
clutching his left shoulder. He
couldn't even feel his left hand.
The world around him slowly came into focus as his eyes
began to adjust to the dark. Or rather,
one eye… While he could dimly perceive
shapes out of his right eye, his left was a total blank.
He lifted his gloved hand and rubbed the side of his face,
feeling the torn flesh that seemed to flake off at his touch. He followed the broken line of his cheek to
his eye, then yanked his hand away.
He wouldn't be seeing anything out of that eye ever again.
Because Hein couldn't feel anything on that side of his
face, he continued to explore the damage.
The skin felt burnt, from the line of his throat to his temple. His long black hair had pulled free from its
gelled confinement to stick to his wounds.
This was going to hurt when the numbness went away.
But why was he still alive?
Why? Once again, death had come
so close, only to elude him again. He
recognized the area around him now as an escape pod, and realized his survival
instincts must have taken over and once again saved his worthless hide, as they
had in the barrier control room.
He still lived even as everything and everyone around him
had been destroyed. Again. How cruelly ironic was that?
Suddenly, Hein began to laugh. The hysterical sound tore itself from his throat, echoing madly
around the empty pod. It was all too
much for him, and he couldn't help himself.
He must be an angel of death!
Everyone around him, everyone he'd ever cared for were all dead while he
still lived on.
The laughter dissolved into gasping sobs as Hein grasped for
the first time how truly alone he was.
He'd lost everyone. He was
nothing, no one. How had he even made
general? He was worthless! He was worse than the Phantoms. And he'd done it all in the name of good!
The road to hell is paved with good intentions… The old saying seemed very appropriate. He was walking that road now, his every
action bringing him closer and closer to hell.
He must nearly be there by now, he thought.
Good. He didn't want
Anna to see him this way, to see the monster he had become. If she knew he had done it all for her, she
would hate him. Even little Sarah, too
young to understand what her father had become, would know of his
betrayal. It was better if he just went
straight to hell and saved them the suffering.
Maybe he could hurry that along. His finger groped for his gun, which he thought he'd left
holstered at his side. But the weapon
was gone; had he even picked it up after his aborted suicide attempt?
Why hadn't he succeeded with that attempt? Why wouldn't the world let him die?
His fingers curled into a fist and smashed the pod's
console, the force sending him upward in the zero-gravity. Angrily, he pulled himself back into his
seat and wrapped his good arm around his chest and began to weep. Why couldn't he end it all now?
There had been a joke going around the USMF barracks that
General Hein was perhaps the only person who could survive an encounter
with Phantoms. After all, the joke went on, how could they
steal the soul from someone who didn't have one?
The joke had enraged him, but now he wondered if it wasn't
true after all. Would someone with a
soul have done the things he had?
Was that why death wouldn't claim him? Because he was as good as dead already?
He shut his good eye and buried his ruined face in his
hand. His shoulders shook, and tears
rolled down his face. How could
everything have gone so wrong for him?
He was brilliant, a prodigy. His
career had been filled with glorious victories. He'd had a beautiful wife and a perfect daughter. His peers had listened to him, his superiors
had respected him, and his family had loved him. And he'd lost it all.
His career had kept him from his family in their time of
need. And instead of trying to rebuild
his life, he'd destroyed the rest of what life he'd had left by scorning his
closest friends and turning away from those who'd only wanted to help, all so
he could take revenge on those who had hurt him.
He was a fool! The
worst kind of fool; one who knew he was wrong but went on with what he was
doing anyway.
He didn't deserve to be a general. Not only because he was still relatively young and inexperienced
compared to others of his rank, but because he'd used that title to get his
way. He'd refused to listen to reason
and had manipulated others to follow his strident views. Hein's hand flew to his collar and tore the
rank tabs free, then yanked off the USMF insignia on his chest and flung the
pins away.
The pod's computer gave a beep and flared into life, the
screen's dull blue glow illuminating the cockpit. It was asking for a destination.
He didn't want to go anywhere. If he drifted in space long enough, he knew he would starve to
death and there would be no way he could escape that. And there was no one here in space to see his shame. He didn't want to go back and face what he'd
done, even though he knew he deserved it.
He wanted to die alone, where he knew he wouldn't hurt anyone else in
the process.
But the pod was programmed to land with or without specific
coordinates in case the passengers were too injured to input them, so it began
to descend towards the nearest land mass.
Hein swore and tried to override the commands, but the fingers of his
right hand felt awkward and didn't respond quickly.
He did manage to confuse the systems, however, and the pod
didn't slow once it entered the atmosphere.
The pod rapidly raced toward the ground, and Hein felt a small feeling
of satisfaction. The pod was going to
crash and there was no one around to stop it.
Unfortunately, the pod was strongly built, with emergency
landing procedures programmed into it.
The pod hit at an angle, bounced, then hit again, skidding along the
ground and dragging a deep furrow in the earth. I'm hurting Gaia again, Hein thought distantly as the pod
continued forward. It hit a large
outcropping of rock and Hein's head smashed against the console, and all went
dark.
But not forever.
Death had once again refused to take him. He came to surrounded by men in uniform, lifting his body
carefully into their ship. No! Hein thought in horror. Let me die!
Let me die! He opened his mouth
to scream, but no sound came out.
Something in his mind seemed to break. The memories of everything he'd ever done
swept over him like water. Dark
water. They filled him, drowning him,
and he gasped and choked as he tried to escape. It was no good, he would never be free!
He fought the memories before realizing that, just maybe, if
he let them overwhelm him, he'd find what he so craved. So he stopped struggling, letting his mind
sink beneath the surface of the horror he had caused.
Maybe now, he thought dimly, I can finally escape from it
all.
The End.
Author's Note: Sorry
this is a little weird. It's the
prequel to a potential Hein/Aki story I'd love to do. I've been wanting to see them together ever since I saw the movie
the second time, which is why I've so enthusiastically supported Severus and
Raine's story "Five Spirits." I've got
some ideas to make it different and hopefully interesting. Such as, oh… amnesia. What do you think? Is the idea worth writing?
Oh, and special thanks goes out to RelmJordyn of the General
Hein fanclub on Yahoo for the Douglas/dark water thing.
