Rating: K
Summary: Tonberry is confused and wants to fill the hole that pierced his heart.
Hello, new fandom!
I haven't finished the game yet, but i'm already overwhelmed with massive feels for it and that needed to be poured out. This is set after chapter 6, so of course major spoilers ahead.
Let me cry because this game will be the end of me ;;
Enjoy!
One-shot: Remember and forget
Tonberry was wandering in the classroom after all the students left, and despite not having parasite noises disturbing his focus, he still couldn't understand what was missing.
Class Zero came back in one piece; they weren't severely injured and they brought back, as usual, hope for their victory in the war against Milites even though thousands of the peristylium's soldiers and students died during the battle. The loss of the l'Cie Caetuna was also unfortunate, but Tonberry didn't feel any sadness towards their deaths. For years he saw and got acquainted with many people that eventually fell into battle, and he couldn't recall their faces thanks—or because of—the crystal. He didn't know if he would have better liked to remember the dead instead of just forgetting them as if they had never mattered, because he was certain that to some extent they all contributed to Rubrum.
This was why he currently felt so confused and agitated over the past days, unable to put his finger on what was bothering him so much. Knife in one hand and his lantern in the other, he went down the stairs leading to the desk, where he remembered standing on during briefings while... someone spoke to class Zero. The moogle took over the position since that person apparently died. Tonberry knew he had been here since the beginning, but why? He usually didn't like to meddle with the humans' business and preferred staying back, observing in silence while assessing the situation he stumbled upon. He must have followed someone in the classroom every day to be that familiar with this previously abandoned area of the academy. Something tugged at his heart whenever he thought about his role in this room, and somehow it dug a deeper hole in his already cracked organ.
He couldn't remember.
Slowly, he put his knife down and sat on the desk after he painfully climbed on it—had it been ever so hard to climb it? In the darkness of the classroom he tried to picture how it looked in the day, maybe thinking he could conjure up some other image that would help him find his answers. But he could only see the bored faces of the girl with brown curls and the one with short hair in the front row, the new class Zero member intensely focusing on the lesson, while the boy with the scar sat in the back with no care in the world. The others came easily in mind, he could even hear the shrill voice of the moogle giving his orders and explanations, but something was missing. Tonberry was growing frustrated and irritated with this memory gap, but he didn't have the heart to abandon so quickly in his search. That something was important to him, and he would feel incomplete if he never remembered it.
So he sat on the desk alone, in the classroom for the remaining of the night, clinging to pieces of sentences and sounds that squeezed his entire being with despair.
Morning found its way in the room the same way Tonberry suddenly remembered he could talk about it with an acquaintance of his. He wasn't close with that crazy scientist, but the latter knew him and treated him no differently from any other human—maybe he was simply fascinated by the structure of the body of a monster, but Tonberry wasn't that much bothered by it.
So, instead of roaming in the classroom like he always did on permission, he walked towards the Crystarium, ignoring the stares of the students and the occasional waves or greetings he received. It was true he usually didn't show himself in public like this and kept a rather low profile like Cactuar, but this time he didn't care. He just wanted this suffering to stop.
Most of the students were in class at this time of the day so he found the Crystarium as a place devoid of an important crowd, enabling him to circulate peacefully and to approach without too many watchful glances a bookcase in the back of the Crystarium. He couldn't remember well how the mechanism worked, so he just poked at various books until he found the right one. Two minutes later the whole bookcase moved and let an entrance to a hidden room appear; Tonberry stepped into it and didn't bother closing the door—or whatever wall that served as a door. He didn't utter a word and walked silently, so when he got close to the scientist busy observing something in a yellow tube, the poor man jumped out of his skin with a cry and nearly stomped on Tonberry. The monster wasn't fazed at all and simply stared at the human, expression as blank as ever.
"You should learn how to make yourself announced, little Tonberry," the scientist (Kazusa, Tonberry recalled) said with a playful smile. "Next time you will stab me with that knife and I will die because I didn't know you were here."
Tonberry wanted to tell Kazusa that the movement of the bookcase was loud enough for anyone within ear shot, but he deemed the effort unnecessary since nobody could assert him that humans would understand whatever he said.
(Somewhere, in the back of his head, his mind supplied that there was once or twice someone that understood him.)
Thus his gaze swept around the room. He had not been here often, but he could feel a wave of nostalgia wash over him when he tried to ponder on why he came several times at all. He decided to sit right at the foot of the table, putting his trademark knife and lantern on the floor. He didn't even know where to begin.
Kazusa seemed ready for conversation as he spoke up first—and probably because he knew his green companion wouldn't talk.
"You know, it's pretty rare for you to come here alone," he indicated. "It's already rare that you and... him come to see me on your own will."
At this Tonberry perked up, casting a surprised but hopeful look at the scientist, who smiled sadly.
"I see I'm not the only one trying to remember. Emina and I talked about it, and I find it quite strange that the crystal erases the memory of the dead, but lets us feel that hole in our mind and heart. Don't you think so, too? I know I should remember someone, I sometimes feel what I used to feel when I was with this person, but impossible to clearly picture a face or hear a voice."
And then Kazusa let out a humorless laugh escape his trembling lips, hand clutching his hair in a desperate manner.
"Who am I kidding, sometimes I can't even remember the name I'm supposed to have engraved in my head."
Tonberry watched Kazusa pace in the room, seeing that they shared a mutual anguish over the memory, or lack thereof, of someone that had occupied an important place in their lives. It wasn't fair, he thought—he felt as if that person was screaming at them to remember, but also to forget them to move forward, yet Tonberry found it hard to do either. He remembered that only once he had to undergo the aftereffects of death, but it was a long time ago—the sensation of dealing with them had vanished for years.
"I'm not sure you will like it, but it will help you, I think," Kazusa sighed.
Only then Tonberry noticed how exhausted the scientist was, lack of sleep stretching his face and pulling dark bags under his eyes.
(That someone used to look like that, too.)
Kazusa carefully picked up the yellow tube he had set down earlier, and deposited it into Tonberry's small arms, who then cradled it like he instantly understood how precious and decisive it was for him. Upon touching it a flood of sensations and images overwhelmed him, each one of them pushing against one another before merging together and subjecting Tonberry to a multitude of pains.
He saw different parts of Akademeia. He saw the younger versions of Kazusa and Emina. He saw himself, battered and bleeding on the floor. He saw the glaring light blue of class First.
He saw a man looking at the mirror and covering the lower part of his face with a mask to hide the ugly scars that Tonberry knew had been sustained in a battle full of throbbing memories.
And suddenly his head singled out a name whose pronunciation echoed through his entire being like a shock wave—
—Kurasame Susaya.
The crystal wasn't so merciful to let him keep that piece of information, and as soon as he uttered the name in his own way, all traces of the man disappeared once again and Tonberry was left once more with the sole aching and painful and screaming void in his heart. But he remembered, even for a split second, he remembered the man who saved him and who was his partner and best friend for years and years and years, for whom he swore loyalty and for whom he would die.
The last syllable of Kurasame's name—KurasameKurasameKurasame—melted away and Tonberry broke down, dropping the tube that rolled to the side and he curled onto himself, shaking with sobs he couldn't contain anymore despite the fact he had not found the strength to shed any tear the first few days of that person's death. He let out an agonizing scream while he felt a pair of arms enveloping him in a warm embrace, and he couldn't know for sure if he was the only one trembling with grief and the feeling of being betrayed by fate.
yeaaaah i wanted Tonberry's side of the story. Even though he can't be understood. I love Kurasame and Tonberry together ok
(also i evoked a tiny detail about tonberry's life in the prequel manga of kurasame's story)
A little review? /o/