Disclaimer: Umm, Final Fantasy IX isn't mine, can you guess? Squaresoft owns it, sad as that may be…

One thing about this vignette is that I don't state the girl's name until the end, and the guy's identity doesn't become painfully obvious until about halfway - though you'll probably guess before then. The couple is not canon, though it isn't too off-the-wall.

Warning: Cursing ahead. I'm talking firetrucks without the iretr part.

Flowers

It never really hit me until she was gone.

Okay, fuck that. Died. There, I said it. She's dead, not gone, and nothing is going to bring her back again.

I don't even know why I'm here. Graveyards are not my thing, you know? I don't like to think about them, about death - maybe because I don't want to be reminded that sooner or later (more likely the former) I'm gonna end up in one too. But here I am.

They say that you never really realize how much you… until they're gone.

I used to think that was so stupid and cliched. But you know, things become cliched precisely because they're true. It's stupid, I hate it, but it's true.

I just keep thinking that maybe, if I'd realized sooner, I could have stopped her, protected her, something. I don't know, just anything. If I'd gotten off my stupid, arrogant, lazy ass and said something.

But I didn't say something. Not a single bloody thing.

I mean, it's not like I would have admitted it to myself, much less anyone else.

I was so stupid, then. God I was so fucking stupid, so self-centered, so…

Ha. How many times have people called me those things? Funny it takes me this long to get it through my thick skull.

They say that you can't change the past, only the future.

Who the fuck is 'they', anyway? Is it some kind of omnipotent presence hanging over us all, dictating how life should be?

…Or is it some beak-nosed, sniveling moron sitting behind a massive desk drowning in papers, scribbling down the comments of the random voices that he hears in his head, then passing them on to his equally beak-nosed secretary?

…What's the difference, anyway?

I learned long ago that life, to put it bluntly, just fucking sucks. Quotations like 'life's a bitch and then you die' come to mind. Life is something you do because you just don't feel like killing yourself, or maybe it would just please everybody else so much that you just can't give them what they want.

Maybe I'm just not a suicidal-type person.

I remember… not much. Maybe I don't want to remember. No, it's not like I had a traumatic childhood or anything. My parents just… didn't care. Or maybe they did, and I didn't. Whatever happened, I ended up just leaving one night. I never went back - I never even thought about going back. Never crossed my mind at all. What could I go back to - more apathy?

I don't even remember where I was born.

I've wandered so long since then; I don't even feel like I have a home anymore. Just places I go.

My profession wasn't really a choice, either. It's just what I felt like doing at the time. I began working as a guard just for the money - I was big, intimidating, and sure, I could fight. I took lessons at some point; it doesn't matter who from. It just seemed like second nature to me - I'd been picking fights with other kids for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory is the face of a man twice my size that I had to fight.

He beat the crap out of me, and that only made me worse.

Sometimes I was angry when I fought - I always fought better angry. Sometimes I fought just to prove I was better.

It was that arrogance that eventually screwed me - well, you know the rest. The monkey-boy tricked me, and so began my life on the run. There were bounties of thousands of gil on my head, and you know what? I didn't care. Just being alive was enough, then - without doing a single thing, I was proving myself better then them.

Kind of ironic that I became a bounty-hunter. Maybe I figured I could hunt myself, turn myself in for an easy couple of thousand gil. Ha, ha, and ha.

Why did I join them? No reason, really. I had nothing better to do. That was the part that I loved about my job: I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and who the fuck was going to stop me?

That Zidane kid… fucking confused me. He still confuses me. But… after a while, I started to get it. He's the one who made me realize what an asshole I am.

But I still don't get him.

The others… man, don't get me started. I thought they were all losers, just a waste of time. Man was I wrong. Every single one of them was stronger than I ever was, but I'd never admit it then. They carried such purpose in their lives - purpose I never had, nor wanted.

One of them - she had more purpose than the rest. I could see it in her. Maybe her purpose was stupid, but it was strong. Maybe she was a stubborn little bitch, maybe she thought I was nothing, but… I…

Stupid. How could I even think that? She had a purpose, all right. She knew what she wanted - to take care of her country. She fucking died protecting it. She knew who she wanted - and it wasn't me. She'd move fucking mountains for him, and probably has.

Searching all over the earth for a man who doesn't even know her name.

Amarant threw a bouquet of flowers at Freya Crescent's headstone and stalked away in disgust.

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I was so tempted to write 'Quina Quen's headstone' in there! Turn a totally serious fic into a laugh riot. (Well, Quina did have a very strong purpose… to eat things! Though I think his/her gender is still in question).