A World Internal
Segment VI: Locke Cole
ATONEMENT
The heat in this cavern is incredible.
It's constricting, really. It pushes in on you, makes it hard to breathe. What is it about rare treasures that makes it law for them to be hidden in the most obscure, difficult places to reach?
But that doesn't matter as much now. I've finally found what I've come for… what I've been looking for all these years without even knowing it.
It's warm, the stone. The essence carried within it. Even through my gloves, I can feel the power and energy emanating from it, pulsing within it. It glows red within – the spirit, I know from experience, of the Esper that lost its life.
But this is no ordinary Esper.
I'm in awe, and that's saying something. I'm not often struck dumb. Those people I call my friends – or called my friends, I should say… I don't even know whether any of them are alive now – they know me as someone who makes a never-ending joke out of life, who lives by the creed that anything can have a bright side if you try hard enough to find it. And, well, it's true, I suppose. I do look at life that way. I have to. If I didn't, I'd probably go mad with guilt.
But even someone like me has to take a moment at times like these to appreciate the sheer magnitude that is this world, and how small we all are as we make our way across it.
Not that the world is what it used to be. Even an optimist like me can admit that. I think what I miss most is the water… the deep blue that the ocean used to be, which is now dark and uncomfortable. And the grass… the grass doesn't exist anymore, really, it's all death and decay. Even the desert by Kohlingen seems remorseless compared to what it once was.
Remorseless… an interesting choice of words. Appropriate, I guess, remorse. After all, that's all I've been feeling for years now. I think I may have loved her too much.
Edgar… he told me time and time again that it wasn't my fault, that I couldn't have possibly expected to save her life when it… when it all happened. But I don't believe a word of it. I never should have left her side. Ever. Even if the townsfolk came and tried to drag me from in front of her place by my ears, I shouldn't have left her side. If I hadn't… if I hadn't, I might not even need the stone in my hand.
It's really all I have left to hope for, now that everyone's gone. The Empire no longer exists, and the idea of taking on an insane megalomaniac like Kefka when I'm just one person – just one lowly treasure hunter! – is enough to make me wonder why I was lucky enough to have survived. There are no more returners… Narshe is a wasteland. Everything is different. And until I heard about this… about this stone… I had nothing left to be optimistic about.
And now, after all my searching, after a full year, I've finally found it: the one thing that might bring Rachel back to me.
Ever since the world ended, I've found myself longing for her. Longing even more than I did before, if only to tell her how sorry I am… to tell her that I love her. I realize now that when we were fighting our battle against the Empire, she left my mind. Well, not completely, but more so than now. I didn't think about her as much. In fact, I'd almost managed to move on completely, until…
Until what?
There was something. There was something that made me think about her again, something that put her back into my mind like nothing else. But I can't remember right now what it was. I can't remember.
I think the whole mess started when Arvis called on me to help Terra. But that wasn't it. I remember fighting past the guards, escaping from Narshe, going to Figaro – and that fire… Kefka, you rotten bastard – and then going to the Returners' hideout, finding Sabin, seeing Banon…
It all happened so bloody fast. One minute I was doing reconnaissance work for Edgar, and then the next I was wrapped up in the mystery of the half-Esper Magitek Witch. I never asked for that.
But then again, would I really have done anything differently? Terra, Sabin, and all the rest… would I have changed anything? No. Probably not. And there was Shadow, and Setzer, and…
Celes.
My fingers fumble and I drop the stone as I think about her. Celes. That was it. When I went to South Figaro, when I rescued Celes from her imprisonment and her sentence. That was what did it. That was when I started thinking about… about Rachel again. What was it about Celes that reminded me so much of her?
Maybe it was her spirit. Maybe it was the way she wore her hair, or the way she laughed. But she just… she brought Rachel back to me in ways I hadn't imagined were possible. When we escaped, and she asked me why… why didn't I just tell her the truth then? Why couldn't I have just told her about Rachel and what happened, and told her I didn't want to make the same mistake?
That was the truth, after all. Maybe I wanted to prove myself, maybe I wanted to show myself – and her – that I wasn't just some screw-up, a treasure hunter who couldn't do anything right. That was how it all started. That was all. And that was what made me want to come here, to find… to find this.
But then…
I look at the gleaming surface of the Magicite shard in my hand, running my fingers over it. It's beautiful. Green… green like her eyes. Eyes that could pierce every inch of you, eyes that looked alive with fire whenever she talked, or when we were making plans with the others, and when we were going to Vector—
Wait.
Rachel didn't have green eyes. Celes did.
I hold the Magicite for several moments. I don't move. What does this mean? What have I been feeling? Had I even known…?
More memories of Celes… her banter with Edgar on the way up to defend the Frozen Esper from the Empire… the way she laughed as we travelled to Jidoor, when I said something funny that I can't even remember… how stunningly beautiful she looked in that dress, singing the Aria on stage… that look in her eyes when I thought she had been spying on us, such anger and yet such sadness… and the day she stood by my side as I looked down upon Rachel in her bed, so overcome by my own grief and remorse that I didn't even notice her next to me… and she wasn't looking at Rachel… she was looking at me…
Before I know it, there are tears in my eyes. Now, it's too late. Now, both of them are gone. Celes is gone. I remember her hands slipping out of mine as the Blackjack was ripped apart. Watching her fall… did I see Rachel's face? Even for a split second? Did I see Rachel falling down, away from my outstretched hand?
No.
There was only Celes then. There were no stabs of regret over Rachel, how it was the second time I let a woman I cared for fall away from me, the second time I let her leave my side. There was only the mad screaming in my mind that she was leaving, leaving me forever, and I'd never be able to find her back.
I just didn't know what that screaming meant back then.
I look at the Magicite in my hands once again. It's difficult through eyes that are bleary with tears. The Phoenix… its warmth still spreads through my hands, a very different kind of warmth from the heat in the cavern. The whole of the place is like this: overwhelmingly hot and stuffy. Kind of like the Blackjack, really, only maybe a little less dangerous; monsters are nothing compared to Cyan in a bad temper.
I laugh to myself, a choking, sputtering type of laugh that shakes one or two tears from my eyes into the empty wooden chest. How can I laugh at a time like this? How can I make jokes?
Maybe that's just the way I am, the same as the perpetual guilt I live with.
As I think about that, I remember something Arvis said to me once. We were arguing about my profession. And I remember that Rachel came up, and he said to me, "I don't see how a thief like you can feel so much remorse! Of all people, surely you'd be the first to let the past stay the past!"
But I'm not like the desert. I'm not remorseless. I have too much love in me.
So maybe it's remorse that makes me who I am. Maybe that's why I was fighting so hard against the Empire: to make up for what I did. Or… well, didn't do. Maybe it's all about atonement.
There's an interesting word. Atonement.
It seems to fit somehow… all that time I was staying so close to Celes, helping her, trying to protect her, all I thought about was atonement… atoning for what I had not done when I could have, atoning for the loss of the woman I loved. And through all that mask of atonement and remorse, I was blind to what was standing, living and breathing right in front of me.
Another tear falls and I shake my head. It's too late now. I failed Celes like I failed Rachel… but at least, I think, holding the Magicite tighter in my hand, I might be able to bring Rachel back to me. At least then I might have some peace… what little peace is left in this wretched world.
The Magicite in my hand, I stand up and I turn around. I can't believe what I am seeing.
There's Edgar, looking the same as he always did with maybe one or two cuts and scrapes and a bit more sweat; there's Cyan, clad in that same dark armour of his; there's a robed figure I don't even know… I can't even see his face – or hers, maybe – under all those scarves. And there's…
My breath catches. There's Celes. Alive and well, watching me curiously, trying to see what I'm holding in my hand, but her eyes… those ferocious green eyes… she tries to hide it, but I can see what's in that emerald fire as clearly as though it were written on her perfect face.
And out of all the thoughts that run through my head, only one comes to the forefront, reassuring me that I was myself, that my head was clearer than it ever had been:
Not one Goddamned scratch on her, anywhere. She really is a general.
I grin as I leave the little wooden chest behind and carry the Phoenix to my future.
