A/N: My posting and writing plans were somewhat thrown off by festive illness, so no, this isn't complete.

Chapter Seven

Left alone, Locke and Terra made first for the toy store. There was a cart in front of it, being loaded as they approached; they climbed into the cart bed as Locke pointed out the contents of packages he could remember and showed her the ones he could open without disaster. She carefully unlatched the music box and opened it up, jumping slightly as it began playing its tinny melody, the little wooden ballerina rotating.

"Ooh, this is neat! Locke, where did you get this?"

"Just in the toy store."

"Can it shut off?"

He reached around her and gently closed the lid. She opened it again, and smiled as it started back up. "It's meant to be a jewelry box," he said. She took off an earring, laid it inside, closed it, then opened it again, taking the earring back out. "It's for you," he added, on impulse.

"For me? Really?" She beamed at him.

"Absolutely!" He'd actually thought it was a gift for one of her daughters, but she was so happy with it. "Happy Yule," he added, and grinned at her. She smiled at him, and then shut the box and opened it again to hear the music once more.

They finally bailed off the cart and set off down the busy street, Locke wondering what else he could get her; he sort of felt she needed a gift that had been meant for her, but nothing else seemed to delight her quite as much as the music box had. He bought her some new hair ribbons, though, and a scarf she liked, and she proceeded to buy him a pair of gloves from the same stall. "Should I get things for everyone else?" she asked him.

"I... don't know. I hadn't planned to, but I think Sabin was buying stuff for Edgar."

"I need to get something for Celes," she decided.

"I thought she didn't celebrate anything like Yule?"

"Everybody likes presents," she declared, and hauled him into a clothing store, where they decided on a coat – "All she wears is that cape, and I know she says she doesn't feel the cold but I still don't think that's much fun," she said – and sized it by selecting something a bit large on Terra, long in the sleeves and just slightly too broad in the shoulders. White, Terra had declared, but the closest they could come was a cream-colored wool. She seemed happy, though, as the clerk wrapped it up for them. They each paid half. "Edgar, too," she said. "He's done so much for me."

"Something with lots of little gears," Locke suggested.

"A pocketwatch?" And they were off again.

After the watch they'd intended to go back to the inn, but they made a wrong turning somewhere along the way and ended up on a quiet residential street, shuffling through untouched snow, with more drifting down as they walked. "Lucky bastards," Locke said. "People who don't want to go out if they don't have to, and others who were at work when the snow started to fall and haven't come home yet."

"Oh," she said. In the dark, light spilled from some of the windows, yellow on the blue-tinged nighttime snow. "Should we turn back?"

"I guess so," he said, but she cast another longing glance down the street. "Terra?" he asked, gently. Her hood had been pushed back once they got out of the shopping crush, and he watched a snowflake settle in her hair.

"I was just... thinking about home," she said, turning back to him, and didn't quite manage to smile.

"Oh," he said. Nothing could have been further from his mind than smiling.

"I think... I didn't want you to know because you got so mad when Strago said that, but I wanted to know what happens when people die, and Cyan said there's another world, so at least it's not like you're totally gone, right? Or is it only for people from Doma? "

"That's... Terra, I wasn't mad at you, I was— I was mad because of you. On your behalf. Not really Strago's fault, but— I wasn't going to snap at you for asking something like that." He'd just feel like he'd been punched in the chest. "You seemed so calm about it, before."

"I was... It's... it doesn't matter," she said. "Whatever we have to do to kill Kefka is worth it."

Her hair was green as an early leaf, and he reached up to brush away some of the snow caught in it. She looked up just then, her blue-gray eyes meeting his, and his heart seized. He knew how loss felt, and he wasn't sure he could bear losing her too. "Terra..."

"Any of us could die just in fighting him," she went on, unheeding, her arms wrapping around herself. "None of us have any guarantees."

She's scared too, he thought, and he wanted to gather her into his arms, but he just tugged the hood up over her head and made himself smile. "I think Strago's reaching. We've never killed any gods before. We don't know what'll happen. And besides, you're half human too – that has to count."

"I guess that's true," she said, her eyes shining suspiciously. His chest hurt.

"And this no guarantees stuff, I don't want to hear any of that from you."

"But—"

"It just sounds like you're giving up before we've even started. Promise me you won't do that."

"I couldn't give up, Locke. There's so much— I don't want to die."

"Good," he said, softly, his voice thick. A long moment passed as he tried to compose himself, and she waved out and behind her, indicating the street, the row of glowing store windows at the end of it. They began walking again, hands stuffed into pockets. "Terra," he said. "Do you remember, back when we were staying in the Returner headquarters in the mountains? You said you didn't have anyone really important to you..."

"And you said I had people who cared about me."

"You always have. Just... just remember that, okay?"

"I will. I do." She stopped, so he did too, and brushed his gloved fingers over her cheek.

"You have me," he said. "You have all of us. Don't forget."

The sky was just beginning to show early traces of sunset when Setzer thought to go on deck. He'd been relishing his solitude; he'd given the half-dozen attendants leave to visit town as they saw fit, and they'd all promptly deserted him, so he had leisure to play some of his opera cylinders at top volume in the lounge and disturb no one. It had been ages since he'd had an airship to himself, longer still since it had been this one. He and Daryl used to live in it for days on end when they could both get away, just the two of them. Now he used the solitude to listen to recordings – some of Maria, though it was odd the way he disassociated the voice from the woman.

He'd been on the verge of marrying her. The courtship had been a whirlwind whim – divorce was easy in Jidoor, so it was also a reversible whim as well – and the abduction a carefully planned piece of drama; they'd given it more thought than anything else in their relationship. She'd wanted to make a splash with their elopement, which was apparently why she'd informed no one of the plan, and inadvertently introduced him to Celes and a life of revolutionary fervor. Well, a few months of revolutionary fervor. He hadn't had another chance to see Maria until after the world ended; he'd straggled into Jidoor, set up camp in the ruins of his manor house north of town, and convinced her to have dinner with him so he could explain. She'd agreed, apparently solely so that she could throw wine in his face in the middle of the finest restaurant in the city. She still had a beautiful voice, though.

But the phonograph cylinders ran out in the end, and the room was getting a bit stuffy, so he climbed back onto deck, and glanced out over faintly pink-tinted snow to notice a single set of footprints going the opposite direction from the others. He could make a decent guess as to whose feet those were, but there was some curiosity, as well. After going back to find his gloves and coat, he was soon walking west as well, into what little sunset could be seen through the thick clouds, and then into the trees. Snow dropped into his collar, birds startled away at his approach, and just as he was beginning to despair of finding her in the wood, he began to see light and clear ground ahead.

She was standing at the edge of a bluff, arms folded, hair and cloak blowing gently around her from behind, though the wind was less punishing here with the trees to break it. "Celes?" he called. He saw snow in her hair, but as she turned into the wind to face him, it blew away.

"I used to stand at attention for— I think hours sometimes. It certainly felt that way," she said. "I wanted to see if I still had it in me, that discipline. And I wanted to be alone."

"Are you all right?"

"It's odd," she said, flexing her fingers before her. Her hands were bare. "I don't normally feel the cold."

"That doesn't mean you're immune to it," he said.

"No. That's what's odd – my fingers hurt, even though I've been wearing my gloves. I took them off to warm my hands, but then they get cold again."

He fumbled with the buttons of his overcoat, jerked off his gloves in frustration, then fianlly got the buttons undone. He swept it around her shoulders, surprised she was allowing it, and buttoned it at her throat. She reached up to adjust the collar, and when he was done he caught her hand, marvelling at the chill of her fingers. He reached for her other hand, and brought them together between his.

"I suppose I'm not," she said, softly. "I was supposed to be ice, in Vector, with all that that means. Cold and calculating, ice princess... frigid. I don't even remember caring about the presumption, the... all the assumptions being made about me. About what I ought to be."

Her hands were warming between his, and he felt words swelling in him, but she drew breath to speak again. "Locke held my hands too, when he freed me in South Figaro. Chafing my hands back to life – I'd been chained up. I— wasn't used to being touched." She lapsed into silence for a moment. "I always seem to let someone save me."

"There's no shame in it." He wasn't sure he followed the train of thought there, but he realized a thought he'd dismissed when he first saw where she was standing. "That cliff?"

"On the island where Cid cared for me, there was a cliff, steeper than this, overlooking the sea. I threw myself from it after he died."

He surprised himself by letting go her hands, taking her in his arms so suddenly she didn't stop him. She surprised him by allowing it. She was tense in his arms as a drawn bow; he could feel it through the coat and cloak, and he could feel her hands, still pressed together, against his chest, but she didn't shove him away.

"Don't think like this," he said. "We need you, Celes. I need you." He couldn't see her face, and that was the only reason he could keep speaking. "If it weren't for you I'd still be drowning myself in a bottle in Kohlingen, I'd never have faced Daryl's death, I'd never— I may have been trying to bluff when I asked you to marry me but it was the wisest dare I ever made. I—" He felt her indrawn breath. "I'm sorry. Just... please don't."

"I did say I always let someone save me in the end," she said. He felt her lower her head to his shoulder. "I was thinking of the way it felt," she said, barely above a whisper. "Almost exhilarating, but— I gave up control just as I did when the guards came. Love's like that too, isn't it? Turning over your fate to someone else, whether or not they even know it."

"They do call it falling," he said. He could kill Locke Cole with his bare hands, he thought. Cheerfully.

"I was thinking about the future, too," she said. "I've never once had to think about what I'd do with my life, before."

"You have a remarkable singing voice," he said. "When I heard you, I thought Maria was having a bad night, but as you weren't a professional singer and only had a few days to prepare..."

"It's not the way I want to live my life— either trying to conceal my past or using it for notoriety, and living by my looks and voice."

"What were you considering, then?"

"I didn't choose the military, but it seems I'm suited for it – or maybe my upbringing makes me unsuited to anything else. But I think I'll end up offering my services— somewhere. In what used to be the Empire, if I could, I feel it's owed, but I doubt anyone there would have me. I was hardly a well-loved military governor."

"So it wasn't despair," he said. He wondered if Locke had some place in her plans, if she imagined some other future she didn't mention.

"I wasn't thinking of throwing myself off, Setzer, I was just thinking of the time I did."

"Forgive me for not seeing the distinction," he retorted.

"I won't, thank you," she retorted with some asperity. "There is— guilt," she admitted, after a moment. "In a way I miss being cold, and being certain. I truly thought the Empire's goal was right, that we offered something better for our subject territories than they had – technology, order, all of that. I didn't think of their casualties as people, just as enemies and collateral damage, marks on a tally sheet. But Kefka was gaining influence and power, and he got control of Terra— it was like a nightmare, evertyhing was wrong and no one was acting as if it was."

He wasn't sure he'd ever heard her speak this much at a stretch. "You and Terra were friends, weren't you?"

"Almost like sisters. Hair-pulling squabbles and all, when we were younger. She doesn't remember." He knew, but he was too glad she was speaking to utter the sarcasm. "When I think of what Strago said—"

"It's not certain," he said. "The odds may not be good, but we don't know the rules to this game yet."

"Yes, but—"

"She knows," he said, and pulled back so he could look in her face. "Don't feel guilty for forcing her into this unless she decides she can't deal with the possibilities. Let her choose."

"It's all so unfair," she said, quietly.

He just nodded, and she pulled from his arms after a moment to shrug out of the coat and offer it to him. At his initial resistance she shoved it into his hands and knelt to retrieve his gloves, and then her own, half-covered by snow. She offered his to him, and he shook his head – he might want the coat back, but he could retain some gallantry. "If they're not too cold or wet, you can wear them," he said. "Your own will be frozen, and I have pockets." She tried them on, and apparently found them sufficient, since she kept them. After a moment's thought he unwound the silk muffler he'd been wearing and looped it around her neck.

When he was done she began walking toward the airship, not looking back at him. He followed, his chest and arms chilled now where they'd been in contact with her warmth. The silence was broken only by the crunch of their boots in the nearly-undisturbed snow. Their old footprints were beginning to be obscured now. He sped his pace for a few seconds, caught up to her, and said "Celes, you're not cold at all. My chest is freezing now from the cold."

She gave him a sidelong look, then pulled up short at the edge of the trees. "Setzer." He halted, turning back to face her. "What you said, about your feelings..."

"I'd just like to see you in that Maria dress again," he said.

Her expression was a marvel – astonishment, her jaw actually dropped, and then irritation and amusement in equal measure. "You bastard," she said, but she sounded as if she might laugh. "I should have known you weren't capable of seriousness."

Her cheeks were pink, but he thought it was the cold. Her golden hair was windblown, she was within an ace of laughing, and he didn't think he'd ever seen her more beautiful. He was afraid his whole soul was in his eyes, even more than he'd already shown, but he still said "Not for a moment, I'm afraid."

She studied him for a moment in the last of the light. "Let's go home," she said at last, and turned to lead the way.