AU, with spoilers for the end of the game.
In All Things
She has long since discovered that the gods have a cruel sense of humor, and thus knows that they are toying with her now. It seems like such a silly thing—that an almost routine jaunt to the Dalmascan treasury would somehow lead to this, but she can no longer find it in herself to be surprised. The fates have never favored her, after all.
The sharp pain in her side alerts her to the fact that at least one of her ribs is broken, but that seems so unimportant compared to the rest of her situation. Her partner—having been clipped in the side of the head with a metal beam—is sprawled haphazardly atop her, and they are both currently plummeting toward the earth at an alarming rate. She knows little of hume physics and sciences, but knows enough that she is aware of how marginal their chances of surviving are, even if—by some miracle or other, and she knows better than to believe in those—the city-sized airship they are in doesn't collapse completely the moment it hits the ground.
Her partner groans, face pressed against her profusely bleeding chest, and stirs just enough to shift his weight onto her splintered ribs, make her vision cloud and blacken from the pain. She tries to suck in a sharp breath, only to find that her lungs are quickly filling with blood and that she can no longer breathe properly.
"Fr—" he begins, but the rest of her name is drowned out by a soft, weak groan.
She cannot see. Darkness has eaten away at her peripheral vision, and all that is left is the dense smoke quickly filling the tiny corridor.
She tastes death in the air, and knows it is her own.
He cannot move, cannot see, cannot muster up the air required for speech. Beneath his skin he feels two weak, fluttering heartbeats and begins to harbor the sneaking suspicion that neither he nor his partner will make it out of this alive. Smoke and ash both gather at the back of his throat, and he thinks there is a chunk of her bloodstained hair caught in his mouth.
There will be no escaping this, regardless of whether or not he is the leading man. He has already managed to expend what tricks were up his sleeve, and thinks hazily that he should really get up and take a bow—his curtain call has finally come. He always liked the tragedies better, anyway.
His tongue feels swollen, but he tries to speak. "Fr—" he rasps, but the remaining two letters die on his lips and leaves him feeling somehow incomplete.
In the back of his mind, he thinks of just how unfair this really is. To be sure, a dramatic end was the only sort of end he had ever pictured for himself, but he is aware of the fact that his dear, loyal companion really did deserve something more. She had helped him break into the Dalmascan palace at his request; she had returned to her forsaken home village, fairly crawling on her hands and knees, simply because he had been determined to see this story to its finale. Never once had she complained.
He becomes suddenly, horrifyingly aware of the fact that instead of two heartbeats, he now feels only one. Her chest is not rising and falling with her breath, and there is no whisper of air passing her lips.
"Fr—Fran," he gasps, cursing the gods and thinking about how she was supposed to outlive him by at least another century. He wishes he had the proper time to mourn her.
Then it is no longer important. The metal beneath him, around him, above him is groaning in protest, and he feels it crumpling from the force of impact. There should be a crashing sound, but if there is he can no longer hear it—he is too far away, not quite apart of this world anymore.
She will be waiting for him on the other side, he knows, and feels the wind on his face.