All Other Men May Use Deceit

Notes: I am using the DS/IOS version of the game as my basic point of reference. I try to follow the canon timeline as much as I can, but where the timing of events is ambiguous (such as exactly how old Kain was when Richard died) I use my own intuition. The world of FFIV really only gets more ridiculous the more you try to make sense of it, so I'm not going to be too fussed over minor divergences. Like most Final Fantasies the game's setting is a weird mishmash of anachronisms that defy categorization, but I envision Baron and its society as being generally analogous to 14th and 15th-century western Europe (except with flying machines).

This first chapter starts out heavily and involves the death of a child, but the tone will not remain this bleak. Friendship is a major theme of the story and there will be good times to offset the bad. In my opinion this story could probably rate as Teen, but I am marking it M to be on the safe side.

I'm mainly writing this just to flesh out characters and a story that I have great fondness for. I chose to focus on Rosa because I think she has an integrity that is underrated, plus I wanted to extend her role outside that of love interest. I enjoy her relationship with Cecil, but she's more than just his arm candy. Her thoughts, as expressed in the DS version, show her to be concerned about the state of the entire world and her other friends. She's tougher than people give her credit for and I think that the After Years wasn't very kind to her. I wanted to give her some love.

Chapter One: Awakening Heart

That first heartbreak came during Rosa's fifth year. Before then,but not before Kain—there was no time before Kain—Rosa had been great friends with another girl her age named Elissa. Then one day a wagon-cart ran Elissa down in the street, a wheel stalled against her head, one burst eye half-dangling from its crushed socket and gobbets dripping from her nose onto the cobblestones. Before, the act of dying had only been an abstraction, something she only heard her mother murmur about behind the walls of her examining room; she had barely understood that the meat served at dinner had once breathed she same air she did. To see the theory burst into merciless reality—well, her mother always said that the world taught its greatest lessons when its students were most unprepared.

They had been out with their mothers on errands, Elissa and she, and later to meet with Lady Highwind for tea. While their mothers conducted business in various shops, they darted from one attraction to the other: the tray of a woman selling candy, gauzy dresses in a shop window, the smell of bread from the baker's, a travelling minstrel with her dancing dog. Much better than being cooped up day.

It hadn't been Elissa's fault.

If she had not screamed—

Across the way, Rosa had seen the town smith bring a panoply of strange armor out beside his shop for pick-up, an armor so pitch-black that it had no sheen; it sucked the sun's rays into oblivion. She sized up the traffic, saw an opening, and broke away. Her mother barked her name and Rosa had known she'd be in for it once she came back, but she was too enthralled by the inky mass to fear the consequences. Even as a toddler her eyesight had been uncommonly keen—"My daughter can pick out a flea on a pine-needle from fifty yards," her father liked to boast—and she had spied the intricate filigree-like designs soldered onto the suit's plate.

"Come look at this!" she had called out. "It's not like Papa's armor! Look how black it is!" Even as the smith and her mother shouted at her to stop, in her childish curiosity Rosa had tapped one of the rondels. The skin of her finger seared against the metal as if she had put it against a metal pole in winter. The icy burning made her shriek; she could not pull away.

"Here, I'll help you!" Elissa had already started across. Everyone had been so focused on the immediate crisis that they did not heed the shouts from behind until the runaway wagon-cart came exploding through. Another poor woman and Elissa halted its mad course with their bodies. The collision had mangled the woman's legs but she yet lived, howling in pain, while Elissa's corpse twitched in the dust.

Squealing metal and cracking wood gave way to screaming. Screams from all sides: low screams of horror, shrill screams of pain; loudest of all rose the scream of Elissa's mother. That scream Rosa could always recall perfectly, even to end of her own life. She would hear screams just as horrible in the future, but none would ever be worse. It rang in her ears ceaselessly, blocking out all other noise.

Somehow Rosa had settled into a crouch against the smith-shop wall, unable to do anything except gape as Elissa's mother tried in vain to wrest the body from underneath the wheel. Rosa's own mother had knelt next to the wounded woman, hands working in mechanical efficiency. One of the screams coalesced into something like: "Save her!" She could barely understand her mother's response, but it was in a cool, level voice that Rosa had never heard before. It had been as if Joanna Farrell herself had sunk away and someone else entirely new now occupied her body.

"That poor child is gone. I cannot do anything for her now. I must focus on those I can save."

Elissa's mother had stopped screaming; for an instant she moved as if she would attack Joanna with her clawed fingers, but just as suddenly her bulging eyes flickered and rolled up to the whites. She fell into a dead faint and was carried away by two people in the crowd that had formed all around the disaster. Peoples' legs at last obscured the line of sight into the street, but Rosa could still see Elissa's broken face no matter how hard she closed her eyes.

Rosa brought her fingers up to her mouth only to suck on bitter iron: a large chunk had been scooped out of her right index finger, blood oozing thickly from the wound. A dull, icy pain flared through her hand. Before she could finally scream, her mother's voice called once more.

"Take Rosa away, Aoife. I'll send word when I can."

The street disappeared behind a curtain of voluminous curls and the column of a fashionably pale, slender neck as she was lifted up into Lady Highwind's arms. She remembered nothing of the whirlwind trip to the Highwind townhome except that she must have gotten sick on herself along the way because, once they arrived at the threshold only less slightly well-known than her own, Lady Highwind immediately stripped her and scrubbed her all over with warm water. Bundled in a too-large sleeping shift (Kain's spare) and her finger bandaged and plastered, she was ushered into a small room dominated by a bed with no canopy. Kain had recently boasted of having a bed to himself; all of the other children in their playgroup envied him his freedom and luxury.

At that moment Rosa had ached for the bed in her own home, which she still shared with her parents. She longed to be there, surrounded by the warmth of her father and mother, even though her father was still far away on campaign with the Dragoon knights, serving under Lord Richard.

"Rest here, my lamb. I do not know how long you will be here, but I'm sure your mother will fetch you as soon as she's done. She has many things she must attend to."

"But Elissa—"

"Ah, sweet baby, the priestesses of Asura will take good care to send her on her way to meet the Good Goddess. Once they've made her ready you can say goodbye."

"No, I want Elissa!"

She had cried herself into a feverish doze. When she awoke, Lady Highwind was gone and the room completely dark save for a pale patch of flickering light slipping underneath the door. She called out for her mother, knowing she would not come but taking poor solace in the effort anyway. The door creaked open in a flash of false hope: Kain's face, framed by hair that had never been once cut in his life, peered at her with odd hesitance over his candle. He was always loud and pushy when they met to play; trying to keep quiet was something in which he had had no practice.

"Hello," Kain whispered. "Mama told me not to bother you until you woke up by yourself. She's in the central hall now. She's been waiting there a long time. Do you want me to bring her?"

"No." She fell back into the covers. Her body prickled all over with exhaustion but she did not want to sleep. The candle cast crazy shadows on Kain's face; his left eye bulged and drooped from his socket and the shadow over his lips began to run with blood. It made her shriek. Kain climbed onto the bed and grabbed her trembling hands away from her face. Two whole eyes in an unbloodied face stared at her, reflecting her own terror. She did not know what was going on or why she was still here. The shaking in her body gave way to the stillness of a small animal frozen in its hiding spot, not daring to make the slightest movement that would betray its presence to its pursuer. Kain fished around hopelessly for a minute before landing on a chest at the foot of the bed.

"Look at this! Look at the dragon Cid made for me." She remembered Cid, his scary teeth and googles. Her father said he was a friend, but he looked more like a bandit or pirate to her. Normally the memory of that bizarre face would make her cringe but now she welcomed it; it kept Elissa at bay.

Still grasping one of her hands, Kain reached across to pull out a cunningly devised toy dragon. It had working joints and wings that could be unfurled or closed up; tiny rollers concealed in its feet brushed against the bedding and somehow made little crackles of light spew from its mouth. Every handmade copper scale glittered like a jewel. Rosa should have been delighted, but delight would not come. But it was lovely and distracting and took away some of the terror. She fiddled with the wings and Kain did not even scold her when it looked like she was about to snap one in two. Encouraged further, Kain began to rattle off everything he knew about dragons and wyverns and all sorts of wyrms. He had become obsessed with them over the past year. It was all he talked about. Most facts he had told her already, but Rosa latched on to every word.

When he had exhausted his knowledge, Kain peered at her again over a wide yawn. What he saw made him look uneasy. "Do you want to try to sleep now? It's late. Mama says I can sleep in her bed—"

"No!" she had crunched his fingers in hers. Rosa knew she would not sleep that night. Terrible clarity awakened her heart to the truth: out there, in the temple of Asura, the priests were preparing Elissa for burial. With sacred oil they would be anointing the broken head, hands that used to take delight in soft things, feet that had once rushed to hours of breathless play and now would never run again. Everything that Elissa had ever been was now offered up to the Three-Faced Goddess.

"Please don't leave. Let's go on! Where's your other toys? Let's get them all out. I won't sleep until Mama comes to get me."

"I'm tired," he snapped. "You stay up if you want. I'm going to the other bed."

She fell into another crying fit, certain that he was going to leave her alone to wait out the night while blood and wheels flashed through the darkness, not knowing that in the next moment Kain would prove himself for all eternity in her eyes. It did not matter that pity and annoyance played for supremacy on his face—his left hand still grasped hers while the right awkwardly patted her shoulder

"There, it's okay! I'm right here. I'll stay with you, but I'm still going to sleep. Maybe if you try, you can fall asleep too." They both recognized the vain hope in that wish, but it was a small comfort to entertain the possibility.

He ordered her to scoot over and began to arrange things to his satisfaction before blowing out the candle. They placed their heads on opposite ends of the single long pillow.

"Kain," she had whispered, "we can still play later, right? When I'm feeling better. If it's with you, anything will be fun. None of the other children're as fun as you."

"Father said in his last letter that I've reached the age of reason and that I have to go to lessons with the other boys once he returns." She wilted; her desperate plans dashed. "But I'll talk to Mama. She'll tell Father that we need time to play. He'll listen to her. We'll play as long as we can, and I'll help you not to feel so sad." He thumped his hand against his chest. "I swear this on Dragoon's honor."

It was his mightiest oath, the one he never broke, and it had been satisfaction enough.

The terrible visions returned, vivid as they were in the daylight, but she no longer had the strength to cry—and Kain was there. It was all the same in the darkness, so she kept her eyes open, painfully cognizant of every itch and creak. Her limbs became lead-heavy and seized up so that she could not move or take deep breaths; she didn't even start when Lady Highwind quietly eased open the door. Hope briefly flared up but died quickly when Lady Highwind made no effort to rouse her. Lulled by the lack of movement, Kain gave out soft whistles through his slack mouth. Rosa laid there all the rest of the night, dreading the coming day and the funeral. She had only been to one funeral before, for a grandparent, and she hardly remembered anything about it. What would it be like? She did not know, except that it would be dreadful.

She remembered her injured finger and realized it hardly ached. In the morning she would find that no blood had soaked through; in a week the tip would be completely whole, filled in with a bumpy scar tissue that could be pierced all the way through with a pin and feel nothing until it hit where the old flesh had been torn away.

Her mother finally came just before first light, ignoring all questions and taking Rosa straight home to a sleeping draught and their own bed. Rosa did not learn until years later that her mother had come to the temple as soon as she had finished with the injured woman and had spent the whole night helping prepare Elissa's body before the priestesses took it away for immediate burning.

While Rosa had slept, Elissa's parents uprooted their whole household and rode away from the city never to return, cursing the useless healer who could not bring their daughter back from the grasp of the Good Goddess.

Next chapter: Kain and Rosa make the most of their playtime. Rosa's mother makes plans.