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 definitely meant to post this last night along with everything else. I've sort of settled into a rhythm of updating all of my fics at the same time (with some exceptions, since some have a lot of chapters already written and edited and some need serious editing before anyone else can see them!) Please enjoy and tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

Chapter Fifty-One: Eroica

It's not a dream; it's more of a sensation: darkness pushing down on the pulses of my wrists and the bony joints of my hips, guilty pain throbbing through me like heartbreak.

No. I'm through with you. I'm finished with you wreaking havoc on my life, forcing me into hatred and jealousy for others when it's you I need to blame, Chaos. My forced purpose came to an end a long, long time ago, and in its absence, I demand the chance to be free. I want it. I want to live so much.

It has a face. I try to wake up again and again, and my limbs won't move. I'm afraid. Very, very afraid. Panicked.

Suddenly, it's pushed off me, and those freeing hands grab my shoulders and seize me from my paralysis.

"Zidane…?" I breathe as I wince, since even the weak sunset momentarily hurts my eyes as I transition from sleep into waking. He wants to fret over me and I let him; I allow myself to come to my senses as he brushes my feathers out of my face.

As he helps me sit up, he says something. Something odd about me perhaps going back to the Garden. I must still be dreaming.

And maybe because I'm still half-asleep, something stunning comes to me and instead of keeping the thought to myself, as I should, I say it aloud. It's nothing new, but I only previously possessed the two halves without any clue as to the fact that they so neatly fit together.

"You can't stand being alone, can you?" I ask him quietly. "And that's why you wanted to die…"

That's the beginning of it. Zidane makes some fragmented attempt to respond, but I don't want him to. I don't want him to interrupt my train of thought, so I stand up. A little too fast, it turns out; I sway as I settle into balance.

"Ultimecia… doesn't want to die," I muse. "She wants to live, even more than I ever wanted to. It's almost the same, but it's so very different—"

"Kuja, what the hell are you rambling about?" Zidane wants to know. He sounds a little wounded; I don't want to voice an apology but I offer my hand to help him stand as well.

If it's something I've done before, I don't remember. All my attempts to keep my thoughts from pausing are thwarted with the shocked face that Zidane makes as he takes my hand.

"Don't even start," I say quickly.

"Sorry for waking you up. But I just—it freaks me out to hear you beg for mercy. I mean—keep going with what you were saying before."

I close my eyes for a moment. Embarrassment and gratitude had never felt so much at ease at the same time, before.

"Her appetite for life is unconditional; she doesn't care about the quality of her life, so long as she possesses it solely in her hands. When I heard that I was going to die, it was because of something inside of me. So I felt that there was nothing I could do; the only option left to me was to end everything along with me. But Ultimecia—it's like some basic animal drive sharpened to obsessive abstraction. She doesn't care that she'll be alone, because… because that which threatened her must have come from the outside. So—she trusts no one. She takes pleasure in using people who potentially pose a threat to her, finds it more amusing than any joke she's ever heard. Like I did."

"So…" Zidane stared at me blankly. I don't think he's an idiot. He knows what I'm going to say, but he wants to let me follow it through just in case there's something either of us leaves out.

"So she isn't the Emperor's ally," I conclude. "She isn't anyone's ally."

"You know, there was a time when we tried to figure out the dynamics of power between the warriors of Chaos. We placed Ultimecia beneath the Emperor. But—we were totally wrong, weren't we? She had us fooled."

"She had me fooled too," I tell him. "If anything, she's his puppet master. Not through an overbearing command, because that wouldn't work. Not with him. She let him do whatever he wanted for the most part. Just a comment or a whisper here and there, to influence him and make him believe that her ideas were his all along, for the big picture…while serving her own interests in the shadows…"

It was when I had thought all was lost. Ultimecia had come to me, claiming to make an offer on the Emperor's behalf. But then it became clear that is was her offer alone, an offer that only the Crystal had been able to best. She had promised me her personal intervention, the mingling of her mastery over time and my genes, so that I would no longer need to fear death. And then she allowed me to steal her fragment of the Crystal.

Brilliant, as much as it pains me to admit it. Either way, she would have achieved something from our encounter, had I refused her or not.

I momentarily turn my back on him and take a few steps away, crushing the summer grass beneath me as I do. It isn't until Zidane calls me out on it that I know exactly why I don't look him in the eye after that conclusion.

"You're talking about how you influenced Queen Brahne, aren't you?" Zidane wants to know. Then he sighs. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for."

I subtly shake my head. No, he's exactly correct. And that makes this easier and harder than I thought: I'm dealing with myself, the person that I once was. I can't evoke the person that I used to be; I'm frightened of my past self, or at least frightened of the parts that shame doesn't dominate.

This is why I never liked Ultimecia; she was an unflattering mirror to my every move, action, motive.

"We may know her motives, but her methods are something outside our awareness," I tell Zidane.

He chuckles harshly. "Wow, you've been such a bright ray of sunshine this whole time and you've never told me? Thanks for holding out, jerk."

I smirk. "So you knew about our world's Crystal the whole time? And about how powerful a Trance could become, if intermingled with the souls of thousands and thousands?"

That makes him scowl. "Point taken."

But Ultimecia and my former self are not exactly the same; while I believed I had all the time in the world, she lives in constant fear that someone, something will cut her time short.

So while I would think nothing of squandering my time with some twisted plot involving Squall and Bartz that had little to do with the big picture other than to break the spirit of the opposition, Ultimecia would be much more efficient with her time.

She feels vulnerable. That makes her as dangerous as I was after Garland had pulled the veil from my eyes, even if she doesn't possess the raw power that I did. Maybe it makes her worse; she'll have to compensate for the lack of power with something far, far more damaging.

Squall was the key to something.

"Hey," Zidane says then. "Did you ever hear about Ultimecia and Cosmos—the other Cosmos, I mean?"

I frown. "No, I didn't."

"Back in the fragmented worlds, right after Terra and the Onion Knight and myself found Squall, Ultimecia came before us and said that she was on the fake Cosmos' side, and the fake Cosmos approved of the whole thing. It was—it was right when the fake Cosmos asked me to kill you."

"She asked you to kill me…?" I breathe. Of course I should have suspected something like that. But it hurts to hear it, because I know that at least a small part of Zidane's thinking agreed.

I'm not hurt by Zidane's thoughts; I'm hurt at the reminder that I had not once, but twice turned into something that wouldn't have minded if my life had been ended at that moment.

What sort of warped place in my mind had I stumbled upon, that I thought that wanting to die was an appropriate, logical reaction to my obsession with life?

"I don't think that Ultimecia was trying to infiltrate our ranks," Zidane kept talking as if my mind hadn't wandered off. Which it shouldn't have. I owed him and everyone else more focus than that. "I think she was trying to send a message. That she was on the inside. That she knew what was going on more than we did. So that thing she knows but we don't? I bet a hundred gil that she's banking on something involving the way that the Origin World works."

Without even thinking, I place my hand over my heart, where the warmth of the Crystal radiates. Or maybe that's just my own living, breathing body. The two aren't quite distinguishable anymore. It's trying to tell me something.

"We can't do this alone, can we?" I muse.

"Damn straight you can't, Cosmos."

Zidane and I look through the wrought iron of the gate at the same time. And judging by Zidane's smile, I'm guessing that he noticed my warriors awhile before I did, the stupid, sneaky little pickpocket.

So this was what I had sensed when I felt that someone, somewhere was doing something incredibly idiotic.

Jecht was the one who spoke. After hearing his voice, I expected Golbez too and perhaps the Warrior of Light, and a small part of me, Terra. I didn't know that I would lock my gaze with Cecil too, and Firion and the Onion Knight, and the Warrior of Darkness.

Even as they stood together like that, their ranks looked so small. I couldn't help but fill in the spaces with those who were gone.

This could be Zidane, I thought with immediate regret. He could be standing in my place—if not necessarily the bearer of the Crystal, here in this perspective—filling in those missing faces, and mine would be amongst them.

"Kuja," I reply. "It's Kuja, old man."

"What did you call me?!" Jecht growled, but it was with a smile.

I owe my warriors at least this much. They deserve to know exactly who it is they're fighting for, and they deserve the chance to decide whether I'm worth their time or not. None of us know how much more we have.