De Profundis
Their breaths were heavy and labored as they sparred. They'd emerged from the desert to the lush greenlands surrounding the mountain ranges of Narshe. The moisture of their lush surroundings left them covered in sweat from the moment they'd opened their eyes at dawn, and was exacerbated by the acceleration in their heartbeats.
"I suppose the teach Generals to cheat these days." Locke huffed at her breathlessly, and her eyes fell to the feeble footing he now had on a fallen tree, barely maintaining it's position as a crosswalk on a riverbank under his weight.
She smiled in satisfaction: She'd outsmarted him despite the grueling recovery from her wounds. "It's not cheating."
She took a step further, planting her foot levelly over the base of the tree trunk, forcing him to move backwards across it's base, placing him directly over the rapids of the river.
"Do you concede?" She taunted him.
"Of course not." He countered, swinging forward in an attempt to startle her into losing her footing.
"Then you know how this ends?"
Locke gulped. "I die a horrible death in the rapids below?"
Celes would laughed had it been in any other context, but in this one she knew that he wanted to watch her off guard.
"Perhaps you will." She stated, her sword pointed directly at him.
He opened his mouth to say something- perhaps to offer a surrender, and by doing so lost his footing for a moment against the slick moss of the tree, he tilted backwards and she dropped her sword and reached for him with her opposite hand, stabilizing him with the strength of her forearm and shoulder flexed. He dropped a knife into the rapids below to grab the appendages with both hands as his legs stiffened.
"Alright. Chere," He declared somewhat breathlessly, "You get to pick the campsites from now on, alright?"
The night she was reinstated as a General was a strange one.
Celes entered the hall lined by Imperial figureheads who saluted her in unison as she passed, a far cry from their jeering that took place when she stood on trial only days earlier. Leo had welcomed her with open arms, but no one else certainly did.
She felt alone as she stood in the shadowy hall lit by mere primitive torches behind the backs of the soldiers that lined the wall, all standing at attention for her.
Her ceremonial armor clinked with every step, echoing in the silence of the chamber where the only breath that could be heard was Gestahl's.
She stopped a mere few feet from where he stood waiting for her, and knelt with her head bowed. Her hair was donned in an unfamiliar tightly wound bun, one like what she wore in the early days of her tenure, when her head was concealed under the confines of a helmet.
"You left us a traitor." Gestahl declared to the chamber, and she only listened submissively.
"But you've returned to us an invaluable and wise advocate for peace and for the future of our Empire."
The bitter taste of her own urine returned to her in that moment, when it was forced down her throat by some low ranking privates who found humor in her every sputter and gasp. Sure, her return was somewhat voluntary, after she gave her terms to Leo who in turn related them to Gestahl who called for Kefka's arrest and inprisonment.
"I hear you will be a General again tomorrow." He told her that morning, when she gathered the motivation to visit with him in his cell one last time. "Doesn't it terrify you?"
Celes sat on a stool across from him. They were alone in the cell, sure, but the guards directly outside monitoring their communication made it hardly a private conversation.
"Why would I be terrified?" Celes asked him flatly. She was used to Kefka's games enough to know that emotion was not something she'd wanted to show him. Her request to seek for him had raised many eyebrows amidst her return. She knew how to handle Kefka, and he saved a particularly more humane side of himself fo her, despite the fact that he was sitting across from her chained in exchanged devices, where all she would have to do it lift a finger and his own Magitek ability would be used against him.
She didn't do that.
"Because whatever direction Gestahl takes, your friends will always be rebels." He jeered, giving the last word prominence in his point.
"My 'friends'?" Celes blinked twice and cocked her to the side, emotionless.
"Don't be coy, darling. It doesn't suit those lovely eyes."
Celes said nothing.
Kefka sighed and continued. "Yes, your friends. The wretched traitor King and his brother, the fugitive magical wench, the dumb-witted thief, the..."
Her thoughts wandered as he cleverly listed off the remainder of her comrades, and she allowed him to do so without much stir from her. There was a certain danger in seeking an audience with Kefka.
"I will accept the order to carry out your execution when it comes time." She cut him off.
Kefka looked at her for a moment, eyes blank as he interpreted her statement.
"Oh dear... does that mean it's over between us? No wedding? No insatiable fucking? No kids?"
Celes twitched visibly. "What did you say?"
Kefka's lips curled.
"You mean Cid never told you? That's why Gestahl will never execute you. He'll do what it takes to keep you around. And he won't execute me either."
Celes dismissed him immediately. "I am not a biological experiment for breeding. Don't be so ridiculous with your lies."
Kefka didn't acknowledge the rebuttal. "Making me and you what we are was costly. The intent is to create a master race, with you as it's mother."
Celes' thoughts were swimming. His musings were ridiculous and distracting, though they held some credence.
"Your womb will carry my fruit someday." Kefka hissed, thrusting his head forward through the restraint of the chains, "And I'll take you willingly, or otherwise." He grinned.
Celes rose, motioning for the guard to unlock the cell. She closed her eyes and brought her hands to her temples.
"I was hoping for a different sense of closure, Kefka. I'm afraid I've had enough of you already."
Kefka's expression changed as a series of locks clicked and turned behind her, the preliminary to her exit from the chamber.
"Blue skies. Sweet apple trees. Silk dresses. Grandchildren by the mile, running on top of piles of buried corpses, unknown to them. We wait out the rain under a lovely canopy. Blue eyes under blue skies."
Kefka's eyes were wide as he spoke, the costume makeup running down his face by his sweat.
"Pardon me?"
Kefka continued. "These were the things promised to you, and your birth parents, as long as you were promised to me."
Celes narrowed her eyes, maintaining contact with him as the cells doors opening and released her. She exited the dungeon, feeling the maddening eyes that watched her the entire way.
Celes accepted the honors and turned to face the silent room as a military medal was fastened about her neck. She turned and saluted Gestahl and left the chamber as slowly and painfully as she'd come.
That night, she awoke suddenly; she wasn't sure if it was nightmare or a dream that simply stressed her out to experience.
It was a memory, however distant she wasn't sure, where she was little and had been dragged by a hyper dog across the ground, and a younger, milder Kefka pulled her to her feet despite her skinned knees and the tears that ran down her face.
"Don't cry," He pleaded with her, "Look, the birds on your dress are kissing."
She'd looked down at her dress and sure enough in blue embroidery over white cloth, two bluebirds kissed by the beak.
She didn't recall seeing him, though she felt his presence as she resumed climbing a tree limb by limb, scanning the ground below.
The morning after she swung a sword at a trainer. He was larger man, though he was quick enough the dodge her when she rushed him and to parry her every swing. He was an Imperial Captain trained in swordplay.
"Your technique has remained flawless." A booming voice reverberated against the stone walls around her.
Celes paused, causing her sparring partner to drop his defense.
"It appears that time has changed, but not much else." Leo descended the stairs before her, sword drawn and in hand.
Celes smirked. "It certainly has. I can still take two of you." She motioned to the sparring partner who silently raised his sword to Leo's height as the two closed in on her.
Celes raised and angled her own sword accordingly, knees bent and stepping backwards.
"Your mother was a great beauty," Gestahl told her one night when he requested her company for a private audience.
"She died during childbirth, and your father was a wealthy trade merchant- hardly equipped to care for a child on his own."
"So he offered me willingly, in the name of science?" Celes questioned, standing still in the throne room as the elderly man paced around her in circles.
"Yes. Cid himself knew him by name."
"What was my mother's name?" Celes queried.
"I don't know."
"Does Cid know?"
An almost wicked smile spread across the Emperor's features. "He ought to. He loved her for years before then. It was how he got the referral."
Celes stiffened, sensing a hint of Gestahl's manipulation. She was still interested in what he had to say.
"How come you never spoke of my parents, all the times that I asked for them?"
"Dear Celes," Gestahl's features softened as he faced her, illuminated only by the lone stream of moonlight above from the chamber's window. "I think of you as a daughter myself. I couldn't bear to bring you such pain."
"And now is different because..." She questioned boldly.
Gestahl nodded. "Because you've proven yourself. As a warrior, a woman, and a daughter."
Gestahl was plotting something. She didn't know what, and wasn't entirely sure that he meant her former comrades' goodwill as he welcomed them into the Capital. She watched from a window, sipping a glass of wine in her hand.
She felt stronger, safer, happier than she had in over a year, since before her supposed 'betrayal' of the Empire.
But she watched as a familiar handsome face strolled up the steps of the citadel, and she could instantly mark where every hidden weapon on him was retained.
She frowned. She didn't want to see him again, she wanted him to be but a distant memory who appeared in sweet dreams like the teenage Kefka. A dream where the stained glass windows of the Opera House danced across their naked bodies, after he'd unlocked her chains and camped as she bathed in the river afterwards.
A/N: Thanks for reading! The game left Celes' transition back to the Empire somewhat ambiguous, and though I planned on offering more explanation to that I'm afraid I've still left it so. More to come however! Now that we are caught up to Locke's original one shot chapter there's plenty more to go around.
The title and the nature of this chapter was inspired by the letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol.