DISCLAIMER: Final Fantasy VI and its characters are wholly the properties of Square Enix. This story is written purely for entertainment and not profit.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: We're five chapters in, and like I promised, I'm going to be covering resolutions for all fourteen playable characters. Big thanks to everyone who has been reading and/or reviewing. I always welcome your comments.
Resolutions
Written by daBOSSz
Chapter 5: Gau and Sabin
Air travel no longer scared the nineteen-year-old Gau like it used to. Given his fear of heights, the most frightening moment of his life was undoubtedly the escape from Kefka's tower when Setzer had to suddenly drop the Falcon at an alarming speed to catch a falling Terra after she had lost her esper powers. Gau remembered hitting the deck hard and spending a moment or two in a daze, but instantly forgot about his fear when he saw that Terra was all right.
In the previous five years, Gau had traveled aboard the Falcon aplenty, and while his fear was not completely conquered, he trusted Setzer enough to no longer lose sleep over it. Besides, he had Relm to hold down his nerves whenever he felt frightened.
Gau breathed a relaxed sigh of relief and placed an arm around Relm, who was still clutching him by the waist with both of her own arms. He still found it incredible how close he had grown with the spunky girl, primarily because it happened so naturally and gradually that it was impossible to pinpoint one particular moment when he realized he had developed feelings for her.
If he were to guess, he would probably say that it all began when he first saw her artwork. Being a feral child, Gau never understood all the intricacies of art the way upper class collectors did, but he knew talent when he saw it, and Relm was talented. At the same time, Relm was hurting from uncovering her father's true identity, and Gau's heart began aching for her as she tried to rediscover her resolve from the revelation. Although he and Relm were not particularly close then, he still considered her a friend because they had teamed up to save the planet, so he tried to visit her as often as he could to check on her well-being.
Gau never liked to see his friends in pain, and the more time he spent around Relm, the more he wanted to get involved in her healing process. He put up with her constant tantrums, never once escalating any situations because he recognized that their source was her dilemma and not her personality. When Relm finally conquered her grief, he was present to share in her achievement.
After Strago fell ill, Gau watched Relm reveal the selfless soul behind her feisty personality. The way she cared for Strago was unprecedented: feeding him, bathing him, making him comfortable at every opportunity, and never once did she complain about her situation (except jokingly, which he knew was part of her character). He never told Relm that he sometimes felt shameful for realizing that he probably would not be able to care for anyone the way she did for Strago. It was not that he did not want to should an opportunity call for it, but he did not know if he had the seemingly instinctive skills that Relm had.
Putting her life on hold to watch over her grandfather proved to Gau that Relm had an enormous heart that he had seen lacking in so many others, and this heart steadily drew him in. He tried his best to help her with her situation: bringing her supplies, watching for (and warning her about) changes in her own health, and keeping her company when she needed someone to talk to. Still, he always felt as though he was not doing enough compared with her, which was why he was relieved when she pulled him aside one day and ardently thanked him for all his assistance.
It was on that day that he confessed his feelings. In hindsight, Gau realized that it might not have been the best time, considering how focused Relm's mind was on Strago, but to his amazement, Relm told him that she had been feeling the same way about him. The part of him that was in disbelief could not help but ask her why, since he still saw himself in many ways as nothing more than a feral child who had yet to be civilized, but Relm explained that his honesty, kindness, and dedication toward her and Strago had brought her heart closer to his.
He was overjoyed once more when Strago approved of their new relationship, calling Gau a diamond in the rough. Gau still did not understand what exactly Strago meant by that, but he was confident he would learn in due time.
As his love for Relm grew, she became the key motivator for him to continue learning and improving himself. He still considered the Veldt to be his home and did most of his self-guided training there, but he also increased his visits to Cyan and Sabin to train himself in other aspects of life. He had grown to see Cyan as the model gentleman and sponged up the old warrior's lessons on proper behavior in a civilized world, and while Sabin also taught him such lessons, he primarily went to the monk for strength and discipline training.
"What's gotten into you, Gau?" Sabin had asked him about a year ago. "You've been coming to me practically every week, asking me to train you."
"Gau need Sabin's strength," he had said. "Need to be stronger to protect Relm. Gau love Relm too much, don't want Relm hurt."
Thanks to Sabin's guidance, Gau was not only stronger than he would be if he only trained on the Veldt, but he was now disciplined enough to control most of his rages. Prior to seeking Sabin's serious tutelage, Gau would launch into a rage and mercilessly attack his enemies until they were defeated, but now, he could actually cease in the middle of a battle and readjust his strategies. During his training on the Veldt, he knew he had been surprising the beasts when he would pull off such unexpected techniques that Sabin had taught him.
Gau did not doubt that Relm would never actually need his protection—he had seen her in combat, and she was more than capable of defending herself—but it still gave him peace of mind to train with her safety in mind. He had witnessed how Sabin had saved Edgar when Kefka's tower was collapsing, and he knew that, if he ever found himself in a similar situation with Relm, he would want to be ready.
A single punch was all it took for the sharp-clawed monster to fall unconscious. It must have been new to the area, because most monsters in Figaro Cave knew not to get near Sabin Rene Figaro when he was passing through. Over the years, many of the cave's beasts had experienced his unyielding wrath when they attacked, mistakenly thinking he would be easy prey before whimpering back to their hiding spots bruised and beaten.
The thirty-three-year-old monk blitzed his way through the cave like he always did, finding hardly any challenges from its dwellers. Despite having aged past what many would consider their physical primes, Sabin never lost a step thanks to the discipline he practiced regarding his nutrition and training. He was still the same whopping lobster that Edgar had once referred to him as, but unlike his life prior to the apocalypse, Sabin no longer trained isolated from the rest of the world.
Master Duncan had passed away shortly after Kefka's defeat. Sabin discovered him in his cabin when he visited to tell him the good news, but found only a peacefully resting body that adorned a smile. In his final note, Duncan revealed that he had a terminal illness, but he was elated to see that his best disciple had played a key role in successfully overthrowing the source of the world's ruin. He pleaded with Sabin not to mourn his passing, reassured the young monk that his soul was at peace, and reminded him to never forget the lessons that had been passed on. Having already saved the world from its cruelest evil, Sabin vowed to his master that he would never turn his back on the planet and would make sure that Duncan's legacy lived on.
Five years later, Sabin split his time between South Figaro and Duncan's Cabin. He would stay in the latter whenever he needed the tranquility of isolation to refocus and reenergize, but he had opened a school in the former to train his own disciples. The adjustment was not easy; initially, he was flabbergasted that so many pupils would simply come and go seemingly at their leisure without the same level of dedication that he committed to under Duncan, but he had long since accepted that factors beyond a person's control often deprived them of the ability to consistently commit over extended periods of time.
Perhaps amazing (or perhaps not), his most dedicated disciple wound up being Gau. Throughout all five years of the school's existence, Gau had been attending and training regularly, but unlike so many others who gradually dropped their regimens, Gau had increased the frequency of his sessions. Sabin was just as surprised as everyone else when he found out why Gau had grown more motivated, but that shock was soon replaced by elation when he saw the level of care that Gau and Relm had developed for each other.
Once he had bulldozed out of the cave, Sabin headed around the cliff to an area of the mountains with almost perfectly formed rocks leading upward. Most individuals would never dare to ascend by jumping up such rocks, but Sabin was not most people, and the stones proved to be child's play for his agile movements. He bounced his way up the mountain, only occasionally needing to clutch a nearby boulder to steady himself or pull himself upward. He had tumbled down the same cliffside when he first tried to make his way up years ago, but now, ascending these rocks just felt routine to him.
As he reached the top of the highest mountain above Figaro Cave, Sabin peered to the east. Off in the distance, a tiny dot could be spotted approaching him. As the dot increased its size, it began taking the shape of an airship.
"Looks like I timed this perfectly," Sabin said to himself.
He watched a rope ladder being lowered as the airship descended toward the peak he was standing on. Once the ship began passing above him, the ladder swung in front at the perfect position to allow him to grab hold. He made his way up carefully, knowing that the wrong imbalance of energy from his grasp on the ladder could tilt the airship sideways. As he reached the top, he was met warmly by four smiling faces.
"Why do you always insist on boarding my ship this way?" Setzer quipped.
"You don't need to stop it just for me," Sabin responded with a chuckle. "Good to see you again too."
The others all exchanged their greetings with Sabin, who made sure to ruffle Relm's hair for good measure and elicit a curse-filled response from her. He would have done the same with Gau, but the once-tiny child now stood at his eye level.
With the airship now over the desert, Setzer continued descending it gradually, gliding it toward its destination. Soon, Figaro Castle came into view, and the five figures aboard smiled widely, eager for the wedding and reunion that awaited their attendance.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I hope the first half of this chapter did not sound like a rehash of the others. I tried to write Gau's story from his perspective, but in a way, it was a retelling of what Relm's story had already covered.
Anyway, please feel free to leave me any feedback you may have as always. I appreciate all of your comments. Thanks for reading, and see you next chapter!