Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

I'm sure you amazing readers have noticed that each chapter title references a piece of music (blame Kuja, you know how he is). A little background info on this one: it's German for 'Eight Pieces'. It's played solo (so no piano accompaniment), and at times, has a particularly panicked mood.

Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

Chapter Fifty: Acht Stücke

"Would it be too much to ask if I were to request that you stay out of this?" Kuja asks me softly.

"You already know the answer to that question."

"But you don't know the reasoning behind it."

"Explain."

We look kind of ridiculous, sitting in the summer grass like this. Nothing to see here, folks, just a god and his warrior from another world, talking strategy. Have a nice day. Kuja and I didn't say anything important to each other between that alleyway and the deserted mansion, and while at first it was natural, it soon took on an ulterior motive that I somehow caught onto: don't speak anymore about Squall, not when we're surrounded by shadows that may or may not have listening ears waiting in their darkness.

"Ultimecia and I don't get along very well. At all."

"What, you mean more than usual?" I want to know. I didn't ever believe he made friends with anyone else except for Jecht and Golbez, but I don't think Kuja said that just to state the obvious.

"You might or might not have noticed that she's oddly possessive of Squall. When we were still in the fragmented worlds, Squall might have told you that we had a bit of a skirmish in which I said some things to Squall that, if I'm correct, inadvertently had a positive effect on his interaction with the rest of you. Ultimecia got a little upset that I had interfered with him, but she didn't do much about it, mostly thanks to the Emperor."

As he says those last four syllables, he keeps them even. Impartial. But I guess he thinks I don't notice the way his once-manicured nails curl under into a loose fist, half-hidden in the grass.

"Anyways," he continues then, "If that's how Ultimecia reacted then to my slight interference, you can imagine that she must have not appreciated the course of events that led me to becoming Cosmos."

"Because now Squall's your warrior. He came out here so that he could take care of Ultimecia for you, you know," I tell Kuja. "I didn't put the pieces together until now, but I don't think he did it just because you're Cosmos. I think it's his way of thanking you… thanking Kuja, I mean."

At that, Kuja sighs in aggravation and momentarily covers his eyes with his hand. "What did I do?! I threatened him. I insulted him. This is how he repays me? By trying to help me? I thought he was one of the smarter ones. You lot are all idiots."

"Hey, is that coming from the guy who wanted to go off on his own to an entirely unfamiliar world looking for Cloud?"

"Chalk it up to prolonged exposure to all of you. The point is, you don't have anything to do with what's going on with Squall, so don't blame yourself. Because I know that if you blame yourself, you're going to want to go do something about it. However, also I know that I'm wasting my breath asking you to go back to the Garden, so…"

"So let's go get Squall."

"It's not that simple! We need to figure out if she took Squall because of Squall, or because of me, or something entirely unrelated. Since she also has Bartz and made a huge display out of telling you about it, I'm going to guess that it's some combination of bait and self-interest."

"So… let's just go. It's worked for me so far."

"Do you know how many times you almost died? Just on Gaia and Terra alone? No, we're not just going after Ultimecia; that's obviously what she wants or she just would have taken him and left you there without so much as a 'hello'."

I stare at him for a long time.

"What?" he snaps.

"You're… really different," I say quietly then. "It didn't quite hit me until now."

"Did you expect me to tell you to go find her lair or hideout or whatever tacky place she's set up shop, and then send you in as some sort of sacrificial scout?"

"No!" I say quickly. "But, uh… never mind. Okay, fine, we'll do this your way. So what's the plan?"

"I don't have one that doesn't involve doing what I just described, except with me instead of you."

"Are you familiar with the word 'hypocrite'?"

He's on the verge of saying something in response. I know he is. But he doesn't, so I ask him about and he shakes his head.

Then he tells me, "For a moment there, I was going to say, 'can you spell 'hypocrite?', but I decided not to. So you really brought that one on yourself."

Kuja looks up at the twilight sky. After a moment of silence, he impulsively lies back on the grass, and closes his eyes and sighs in frustration. "We don't have the time or the resources to take a logical approach towards this, do we?"

"Got that right."

"Someone's doing something stupid…" he murmurs. "Besides us," he clarifies as he opens his eyes. "While Chaos makes it difficult to feel Squall and Bartz unless they're in pain or such, I can sometimes get twinges of instances of spectacular heroic idiocy, and I'm getting one right now."

"So you could tell when Squall and I snuck off?"

Kuja gets a weird look on his face. "I must have been distracted…" he says vaguely.

"By what?"

I can count in minutes—it hasn't even been more than two hours—since I got my brother back. His tail is curled lazily around his thigh; but as the silence ticks by, it unfurls and lays limply in the grass. It hasn't been long, but already know what that gesture means.

"Kuja…"

"It's something I had to do! I have responsibilities, and especially now that Garland is gone, we can't afford to pretend that everything's over. Garland was complacent, but the Emperor is hungry and insane. But he's not interested in Cosmos."

I don't know whether to be angry or to be scared. A sickening pit, curling with fire around the edges, settles deep into my stomach. "You didn't," I say, those two words as heavy as boulders.

Kuja turns over so that he's on his side. But he turns so that he's facing me, not so that I'm talking to his back. "This might not be a reflection of the current dynamics, but Ultimecia and the Emperor were allied."

"That's not important right now!" I practically shout, even though he's maybe two feet away from me. "That just means that since you're Kuja, and the Emperor's after Kuja, then what better way to get at you than with Ultimecia's help?"

"If that's the case, then she would have gone after you—" Kuja starts, but then falls silent. Because we both know that she wouldn't have gone after me. No one would believe that I'm worth that much to Kuja, and vice-versa.

Then he smiles. "My, I wonder what he intends to do with a god of light…"

"Don't even joke about that. I mean it."

No. The real shocker is that no one would believe that Kuja's worth so little to himself. While I wouldn't give up this hour or so of conversation for anything, I can't help but imagine that it wouldn't hurt for a teeny bit of Kuja's old sense of self-preservation to have survived.

"Kuja, even if you weren't the one carrying around the Crystal—"I begin, but I never get to finish.

"Don't say it. You know it's not true," he murmurs, and then shifts a little so that he looks like he could drop off into sleep any moment. "Golbez and Jecht wouldn't have helped me escape if I didn't have the Crystal. They didn't know at the time, but I'm sure that they must have somehow sensed it. I wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for the Crystal—and no one told me that you were the one to take care of my vessel when I was split in two."

"I didn't want you to know," I say as I mindlessly pluck a strand of grass at its base and pull it in half, so that I end up with two pieces. But there's no way to really put them back together again like they were.

"I didn't even want you to know you were my brother. I just wanted to be anonymous to you, just another one of the warriors of Cosmos."

"That's hardly fair, Zidane, I wanted to be the anonymous one," Kuja chuckles. "Give you a better brother."

"Yeah, because soulless dolls are great for conversation," I say and roll my eyes. "I think you've got it backwards, by the way. You changed and then the Crystal happened, not the other way around."

"I don't think so. There's a lot that happened that I—maybe I'll tell you some day. Some of it goes like this: I was collecting the fragments of the Crystal long before the Crystal would have willingly come to me. Both Garland and the Emperor wanted me to possess the complete Crystal, but for their own reasons. I let the Emperor help me—Garland's help was against my will, but he saved my life at the expense of his own. If it had gone any other way, I don't believe I'd be here as Cosmos today."

"So when you say that I changed and then the Crystal decided on me—I don't believe it. I think I… I think I broke and the Crystal thought that if I had enough help putting the pieces back together again, then I might not be the worst person in the world to carry it around for goodness knows how long."

I decide then to keep the Warrior of Darkness' story about the origins of the Crystal to myself for a little bit longer. That's the Warrior of Darkness' story to tell, not mine. Another reason to come out of all of this alive. Although depending on the Crystal, maybe it's a story that Kuja already knows.

"Are you…tired? I've noticed that you aren't exactly energetic, but that's no different from how you were, so I didn't think anything of it."

"Zidane," Kuja says quietly, "It's just further proof that I'm not exactly compatible with the Crystal. The light wears me down… I've spend so much of my life in the darkness. Don't look at me like I'm going to die," he adds sharply.

"I'll come up with a better idea," I say then. "So you don't freak out or anything. Take a nap."

He doesn't even pretend to argue.

As I sit there, staring at the mansion which houses a gate to another world, I don't come up with any better plans. Just a lot of frightening reasons why we need to make them after all.