Present Day.
When Celes woke the second time that night, it was definitely not because of a whispered conversation. In fact, the silence that permeated the woods was extremely reminiscent of the smothering, shroudlike variety she'd been contemplating earlier – the sort that spoke of a danger not native to the wild. Shoving her tangled blanket out of the way, she reached beneath the bedroll for the cold, reassuring steel of her blade. With her other hand she pushed herself up into a low crouch, her gaze roving the perimeter of the clearing. Sabin, on second watch, didn't even look her way; he, too, knelt motionless, muscles tense and readied like a hunting tiger.
The pair of them hovered there for several moments, rigid and waiting. A breeze set several trees creaking deeper in the forest, after which the wood returned to its hushed thrall. Around them, the sounds of the others sleeping were manifested in soft snores and measured breathing. Celes' eyes flitted from side to side, searching for Gau, Sabin's watch partner. Either he was up in the trees, his favorite perch, or he'd encountered whatever danger lurked in the woods and hadn't returned.
Celes took a shallow breath. "Sabin," she whispered, "I think–"
Years of exposure to the barely audible spin-up whine of her personal Magitek unit was the only thing that saved them. Screaming out the runes, she flung her blade out just in time to absorb the tek laser that came ripping through the darkness. She barely had time to comprehend some of the others rolling groggily from their bedrolls before dark figures rushed into the clearing. Imperial Special Forces, she noted clinically, at least half a dozen. And one Heavy. Sabin was already on them, but he wouldn't last long against a Heavy in close quarters such as these. She reactivated the runes, watching the beginnings of a fire beam wink out of existence, then cast a quick glance toward the others. Edgar had roused himself enough to fire off several bleary rounds from the tangled destruction of his bedroll. Cyan was already up and crossing blades with one of the black-clad, faceless soldiers. And where was Locke? There – on the ground with another of the attackers, struggling for his blade –
Celes cried out at a sudden pain in her hand, a vibration so violent she immediately went numb from her fingertips to her elbow. At the same time, her sword flipped end over end through the air and into the dark, thorny underbrush. Snatching her hand to her chest, she instinctively dropped and rolled as a second bullet whizzed over her head. My blade... Firing a spear of ice toward what she thought was the rifleman's general direction, she scrambled to her feet and ran for the trees. If someone didn't pull this battle into cover, into an arena of their own choosing instead of their attackers', none of them stood a chance of survival.
She had just ducked into the darkened treeline when something heavy flew into her from the side, wrapping tightly around her middle and slamming her into the ground hard enough to knock all the breath from her lungs. Celes grappled weakly with the figure, wheezing for air, trying to dig her thumbs into the soft, vulnerable hollows of her assailant's eyes. But now they were rolling, the thorny brush tearing into their clothing and skin but, for some reason, not slowing their momentum. It didn't take her long to figure out why – in the next instant they were tumbling down the sharp scree slope that led to the river. Desperately, she slammed her fist into the man's ribs, only to discover rather painfully that he was wearing light – but highly solid – body armor.
Leo always said when strength isn't enough, use your head, she reminded herself with a wryness that was rather ill-suited for the moment, then rammed her forehead hard into what she hoped was the man's nose. Abruptly he released her, dazed, then began fighting for his own handhold in the steep bank as the rapids roared, closer and closer. Without her attacker's added weight, she finally managed to curb the motion of her uncontrolled acrobatics, steering herself into a more or less upright position. Unfortunately, this only served to provide her a better view of what was coming. With the sharp, flinty rocks slicing into her back and elbows and clattering down the hill alongside her, the momentum of their plunge swept her along inexorably. She only had time to take note of the soldier flailing for his own purchase before gravity tossed her unceremoniously into the river.
For several moments her world was nothing but blackened, dizzying confusion. Icy currents seized her and rolled her like cast-off wreckage, completely destroying her ability to differentiate up from down. Not that it mattered, since she was entirely at nature's mercy now. A second or two passed that felt like a nightmarish eternity before the river heaved her up to its tumultuous surface and back into the crisp night air. Gasping and sputtering, she fought to keep her head above the rapids. Off to one side, about a dozen feet upstream, she caught a brief glimpse of moonlight glinting off a shadowed figure before it vanished into the depths. She didn't see the man resurface. She was in the midst of more ill-timed, albeit satisfied, thoughts regarding body armor and dressing oneself appropriately before throwing oneself into a river when she heard it. The waterfall. Thundering just ahead.
"Oh, bleeding hell," Celes choked, spitting out a mouthful of wave that had slapped her in the face. There was only one thing left to try, the same trick she had practiced so many times during her month trekking cross-country with Locke. Stretching an arm downstream as she kicked hard to remain afloat, she spread her fingers and released her ice.
In a perfect world, one that didn't rain grief on her head for every blessed step she took, her power would have spread in a cold, smooth sheet across the river's surface. This would have either provided her an anchor to a rock or even the shore if it offered the good fortune of actually being nearby, or slowed her progression downstream in order to grant her time to build upon the initial layer. In a perfect world she would have been able to create a large ice floe, giving her something to hang on to at the very least. But since the world apparently preferred her dead, the current pushed the blossoming ice backwards and directly into her body, forming a small, freezing prison that encased her legs to the waist.
With a grating obscenity that would have shocked even Locke's seediest of friends, struggling to stay afloat, Celes turned to her last resort. Pressing her hands against the slippery surface of her icy cage, she channeled fire. Her fingers warmed and two handprints melted an inch or two into the surface. Then her focus wavered; the unyielding cold leeched the warmth away. Because fire was Terra's pet, not hers.
"I hate fire," she growled, seconds before she tilted over the edge of the falls and into the black abyss below.
Celes had never been an emotionally demonstrative individual. But now she screamed in emphatic terror.
.
2 Years Ago.
She had only been sixteen when it happened.
Celes stormed down the naked steel corridors of the Imperial Palace, her two bodyguards flanking her. The finer hair around her face streamed behind her with the force of her passage, matching the billowing of a brilliant white cape. Vicks and Wedge, their appointments marked only by small red and black insignia pinned to their collars, scrambled to keep up while desperately trying to appear not to be. However, their efforts proved vain as she made a sudden sharp turn, bringing the trio face to face with the heavy doors of the throne room. Before the pair of ceremonial guards had even pulled them fully open, she shouldered her way inside, curtly motioning her escorts back into the corridor.
From his throne, Emperor Gestahl glanced up, the resonant tones of his voice trailing off into a questioning silence. His council, seated at the heavy table below the dais, turned in ragged unison to stare, accompanied by the agitated sounds of shuffling papers and scraping chairs. Ignoring them, she halted and stood facing her liege, her back stiff. Though she fixed her gaze in his direction, she did not see – wide and bloodshot, her eyes stared stonily ahead. She felt them begin to water and twitch like they belonged to some wild thing; clamping her mouth shut and breathing rapidly through her nose, she fought for restraint.
Weak, Celes, so weak. Control yourself.
Gestahl's gaze rested on her only for a moment; then he dismissed the council with a mild word. They filed past her, some marking her with sidelong, reproving glances. The Golden General – does what she pleases with no regard for others, they seemed to say. Others – a few of the elders, seasoned political veterans – remained impassive, though their eyes couldn't hide a knowing glint. Most simply slunk on by, fearful of the Ice Queen's attentions.
As the last official shuffled out, the doors closing softly behind him, Gestahl pressed his hands together and brought them to rest lightly beneath his chin. "My dear," he said, his voice gentle yet insistent, his attention for her apparently undivided. It was one of the many traits that drew people to him. "What seems to be the problem?"
She stared at him, lips pursed. And then she lost control. A sob tore from her throat, the emotions that rode it tasting alien after remaining buried for so long. Angrily she tried to force them back, but once unleashed the flood wouldn't be quelled. Hot tears slid down her face as she took ragged, shuddering breaths. Dignity was unsalvageable now, but she could at least get her act together long enough to speak, for the Goddesses' sakes. "I m-made a mistake, My-my Liege," she gasped. "So…so many dead." Her shoulders shook convulsively and she looked at the floor, humiliated that her Emperor was witness to such a pathetic display, yet unable to smother the more immediate misery that plagued her.
Gestahl calmly stood and moved to the table, pulling out a chair for himself and motioning her into the one beside it. Numbly, she sat, clenching her hands tightly in her lap.
"Yes...Maranda," he murmured. "Celes, tell me what happened."
His voice was full of gentle sympathy. She knew Intel would have already provided him with a full report, but this had always been his way of helping her to sift through her occasionally troubled state of mind, locate the offending sentiments, and eliminate them. It was an exercise he had begun with her as a little girl. After all, he had explained, future generals couldn't afford to question themselves. Questioning oneself led to questioning the absoluteness of the Empire's authority, and they had both witnessed the sad, sorry state of those individuals, hadn't they?
So she told him everything, fighting to keep her words from spilling over one another in the rush. As he knew, Maranda's latest rebellion had given the Empire more trouble than they had anticipated, dragging them into a prolonged occupation that leeched at their manpower and tied up millions of gil worth of resources. Even worse, Maranda itself was an occupying force's nightmare: scattered and disorganized, formed atop generations' worth of shops and homes. All were constructed of the airy, parchment-thin lumber local to the area – haphazardly stacked until the entire city became nothing more than a sprawling maze of alleyways, and pockmarked with any number of nooks and crannies. In this manner it was much like Vector, but flimsier and bearing a considerably diminished governmental presence. What was more, the surrounding wilderness provided an excellent haven for guerrilla fighters while its dense, viney undergrowth wreaked havoc on the Magitek units. As the occupation wore on, she'd had trouble keeping up morale and discipline. Even her iron-fisted ice queen reputation began to lose potency as her men watched their friends ripped quickly and quietly out of life, one by one, by faceless assailants in a hostile land, in a war that many secretly did not believe in.
Then the rumors of the stolen weapon had begun. She should have seen it coming; should have given more stock to the precarious emotional state of her troops. Shouldn't have miscalculated the level of control she held over them. Should have recognized the conflicted loyalties in her second-in-command, a Marandan by birth. Shouldn't have underestimated his ability to turn an unsubstantiated report into psychological ammunition. Should have realized that he was the one who had taken privileged information dropped by Intel regarding possible stolen technology and stoked it into a conflagration of hysterical rumors that this technology could, in the hands of the rebels, wipe out their entire force. It had been a guilt-ridden, foolhardy attempt to play both sides and thus save both; a weak attempt to convince her, under pressure of her own troops, to abandon the Maranda campaign.
And yet, she shouldn't have underestimated her own capacity to be taken in by such hysteria. She should have recognized her blindness toward her own flaws and weaknesses, so that when the battle was tearing through the streets and alleyways and the men were shouting and visibility was low and her officers began screaming that the weapon had mobilized – oh sweet Goddesses the enemy was about to activate it and they were all going to die – she wouldn't have reacted with such unthinking, violent force. (A voice deep inside whispered that maybe she wouldn't have panicked.) She would have considered all possible consequences before ordering her Magitek units to loose their fire beams on the streets. She would never have had to watch as the paper-thin walls of homes and businesses caught fire and bloomed across the city like an ignited shockwave, burning soldiers and mothers and children and grandfathers without discrimination.
When all was said and done, when the losses were tallied and the dead buried and the smoking ruins of the city sifted, her one appeasement was that her Second had saved her the trouble of executing him by getting himself killed beneath a falling beam, even though she was as much to blame as him.
Who was she kidding? She was their General. She was the only one to blame.
And when the ashes were cleared away, it turned out the rebels' devastating superweapon was nothing more than a single stolen Heavy Armor prototype. A mostly defective one, at that.
Celes wiped at her eyes with the back of a forearm and waited numbly for her liege's condemnation, for the gentle pronouncement of his disappointment. The silence in the room reverberated in her mind, marked only by the unhurried ticking of an ornamental pocketwatch he kept tucked inside his gold-threaded vest.
She shifted with slight impatience. Even an immediate pronouncement of execution would be better than waiting like this.
Finally he leaned back, relaxing into the rich red cushions of his chair. "Yes," he hummed, voice introspective. "Those Marandans always were such a troublesome people."
Celes' head slowly raised, her eyes meeting her mentor's for the first time that day. His were relaxed, unconcerned. "Y-yes sir," she agreed uncertainly. "But...my Liege...did you hear me? I was responsible for the deaths of thousands of in–"she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, "–innocent citizens. I'm obviously unfit to lead. I wouldn't blame you if you were to call for a dishonorable discharge..." she hesitated for the barest moment, "...or my execution, if you see fit."
There, she had said it. Her fingers clenched reflexively, but they were now the only part of her that evaded her control. The tears had stopped, her gaze hardening back to its customary glacial blue. She faced her crime with squared shoulders, if not necessarily a calmed soul.
"Oh, Celes." Gestahl's voice was so naturally arresting, even alluring. His effortless magnetism was almost jarring in the aftermath of her disgrace. But he reached out and gripped her shoulder, his hand warm and affectionate, and she felt a small measure of calm settle into her heart. "My Celes. No one blames you for being upset. You're still young; you only have a handful of campaigns under your belt. As soldiers, we eventually learn to harden ourselves to such necessary deaths." He smiled consolingly. "One day you will come to see that this experience was for the Marandan people's own good."
She stared at him. "For...for their own good?"
But he continued as if he hadn't heard. "Your Second – what was his name? – No matter. He served us well, even if it was unwittingly. Our troops were lacking proper motivation and even bordering on rebellion. They needed the fire of battle back in their blood; it was crucial that they be reminded who the real enemy was. Of course–" he chuckled warmly, "–we didn't quite expect you to burn down the entire city, but overall, everything turned out even better than we had anticipated." It was said matter-of-factly, without guile. "I apologize for not informing you, Celes, but you had enough to worry about at the time."
Releasing her shoulder with a light squeeze, he stood. "Now, my dear, if that was all you had to tell me, I'm afraid my council and I had some important budgetary concerns to work through before the close of the afternoon." He stepped back and nodded slightly toward the heavy doors through which his councilmen had left. His manner was polite, but it was obviously a dismissal.
But Celes stared, even as the muscles in her legs slowly propelled her to her feet. Her momentary calm had fled; her mouth worked for a moment with no sound. She licked her lips and tried again. Her voice sounded hollow and dead, even to her own ears. "I'm...afraid I don't understand."
He glanced up at her from a sheaf of papers, and this time a bit of impatience hardened his face. "We will speak more of this later, Celes, if you wish. For now, I feel it would be wise if you returned to your quarters. I imagine you have quite a lot of sleep to catch up on." Turning, he motioned to the guards standing quietly at the heavy throne room doors.
"Father, wait!" she cried, but the words stalled in her throat and nearly choked her as Gestahl turned slowly around to stare at her, his eyes glittering dangerously. Celes caught her breath, surprised at herself. It had been a long time since she had lapsed like that. He was not even her birth father, but he had stepped in and played the part – not only for her, but Leo and Kefka as well. But she had been a child then. Only a few short years separated that girl from the rigid general she was now, but the fact remained that Celes the girl was gone forever. Or, so she had thought. Celes clamped her teeth tightly together, angrily forbidding the escape of anything else that would betray her.
Gestahl had set his papers down and now approached her, eyes boring into her face, his movements leisurely but bearing a distinctly predatory edge. "Now Celes," he began, voice mild but nearly humming with danger. "I'm sure I misheard, because for a moment there it seemed as if perhaps you were about to question the wisdom of your Emperor. But I know that cannot be correct, because you overcame such weaknesses years ago. Didn't you, my dear?" His gaze was iron-tinged, relentless.
Celes stared in anguish at this man who was so familiar to her, mentor and teacher and father combined. And then, for the barest moment, something wild and rebellious sprang to life in her chest, shooting through her body to the ends of her limbs, leaving tingling trails of fire in its wake. Her eyes held his, blazing with the barest hint of challenge. Something here was wrong. All of this was wrong!
But then it died, withering away to nothing under the force of his disapproval. She rebuked herself angrily. This is your Emperor! This is the one who cared for you all your life! A man you love and respect! He would know what's best far better than you. Lowering her eyes, she stared at the ground and numbly nodded.
The silence swelled between them, dense and cloying, as he continued to scrutinize her. Even the faint ticking of his pocket watch seemed muted by the tension that now permeated the throne room. And then, finally, Gestahl smiled, reaching out a hand to gently lift her chin. "You are not a child anymore, Celes," he said, his voice gentle once more, "but you have much to learn. I promise you, these few deaths will mean nothing when the greater good – our glorious mission to bring peace to this world – has been fulfilled. Until then, trust your Emperor, won't you?" His eyes gleamed, mirrorlike, and his hand moved up to brush a strand of hair from her face. His voice softened, deepened. "Trust your old Papa."
Shamed, Celes nodded. With a quiet word, she excused herself, motioning the statesmen back inside as she passed. Back in her room, she released the clasp of her filthy cloak, folded it neatly, and sent it down the laundry chute. Next she peeled off the uniform, once white but now smeared with the sooty residue of destroyed lives. Stepping into the shower, she scrubbed at her skin with a bar of rose-scented soap until the water ran cold and her body was chilled to numbness. Afterward she made herself a cup of tea, chamomile with a hint of orange, drank it without tasting, and finally slipped into bed.
But in the dark of the room, the screams of the dying returned to her, clawing at the insides of her head, filling her with horror and sorrow. Sleep eluded her that night, as it would for many nights to come.
She had only been sixteen.
