Final Fantasy VI and its characters are © Square-Enix. I'm just borrowing them for our enjoyment.
Sorry to the lovely people who reviewed who I told MONTHS ago that I would continue updating these. I kept putting off reinstalling Office because I go through waves of hating everything I write every now and then and literally want nothing to do with any stories I've written. -KK
- Locke and Celes
- WoR? (Probably, for that level of closeness)
Prompt: Dream
Night was not usually a pleasant time for Celes. Too often, she found herself jerked awake by a terror of her past, her body and sheets soaked in sweat, chilled by the air of the dark bedroom.
During the day, she could throw herself into their preparations and planning, focus on meetings and training and mastering the magics so willingly bestowed by the lingering knowledge in the magicite they had received thus far. She found safety in the light of dawn, focusing on the present and planning for the future, the next day, the next attack, and what would follow. In the waking hours, too many people needed her attention, her expertise, to leave her time to remember the past, what she had seen and what she had done.
In the cold dark of night was when it all fell apart. Not long after drifting to sleep, her mind would remember, would bring back all the times she tried to forget. Over and over again, she would relive the torching of the countryside in Maranda, the stern face of the Emperor as he declared her a traitor for speaking out against Kefka's plans for Doma, imaginings of the augmentation during her infancy. In her dreams, she was forced to recall the faces of all the soldiers she had led and lost, and those who had exalted at the chance to cage and beat her during her travels to and tenure at South Figaro for the execution that never came. Time and again, her dreams tortured and trapped her, bearing witness to the darkest parts of her past, the most tattered corners of her damaged soul.
She awoke screaming, tear tracks already drying upon her snow-white cheeks. Terra merely rolled over in her bed, but Setzer sat up, staring intently at her until he saw Locke was making his way across the darkened Inn bedroom to her side. In moments he had his arms around her, rocking her gently as one hand stroked her hair and back. She shook like a leaf, but had fallen silent with shame as soon as she was aware once more, and Setzer considered that all the cue he needed to return to his own repose. Soft reassurances were crooned in her ears as Locke held her close, muttered nonsenses about how everything was alright when she knew it wasn't, would never be.
She was a paragon of strength in the day, a source of hope and vitality for the others, but as the nights drew on, she felt it all crumble away and she hated it, hated what her own mind turned her into.
She would never be able to make up for what she had done, and she would never be able to forget, for her dreams would always remember.