Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VI, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.
Missing
She is dreaming again.
In the dream, she is her Esper self. Fire, ice and lightning, all at once. Energy crackles through her veins; no, not veins, she is not corporeal, she is pure light. Light, and magic, and power.
The world spreads out below her, the old world, before it fell, before it was reborn anew. A world that gave her little, other than pain and confusion. Still, she misses it. It was once a land with magic in its soil, in its skies.
She misses it all. The light, the magic, and the power. She misses her true self. When she was whole.
She awakes, beads of sweat flattened and smeared into her brow. Terra looks at her hands, trembling fingers held in front of her face. No, they are not made from light. They are flesh and blood.
She is missing, again. She is no longer whole.
The sheets are silk, bought from Old Doma with Figaro's gold. The King of Figaro never spares his gold. He has lavished her with finery that she would never, could never, have asked for. Terra is not sure why. Perhaps he hopes she will stay. He is lonely, the King, under his veneer of easy charm. His brother is forever off wandering, his friends and comrades-in-arms scattered all over the world. He offered Terra a place to stay, and she took it. Two weeks have trickled by, and she does not know how to leave. Or where to go, if she did. Where is there now, for her?
He is waiting for her in the breakfast room of the guest wing. Swirling a spoon around a porcelain teacup. He takes cane sugar, imported from Tzen, in his tea. She cannot understand why. The purpose of tea is to clean the palate, to rouse one's senses. Without the bitterness, what is the point?
"Troubled again?" he asks, in lieu of greeting.
She takes a seat, and a pastry from the table. "Why do you think I am troubled?"
"My dearest Terra, you must know that your face tells a hundred tales. Did you not sleep well?"
"I rarely sleep well."
"Perhaps it is because you sleep alone."
He has that look on his face, the one he gives all women, young and old. She ignores it. It is no secret that the King of Figaro is in want of a wife. Maybe he hopes for Terra to fill that role. Maybe, she suspects, he is simply looking for a woman with a pulse. She does not especially care. Such matters are a world away from the loss that engulfs her mind. She has lost half of her self, and half of a whole is little better than nothing at all.
She munches on the pastry, letting flakes fall onto the gold-edged plate. "Alone suits me best."
"I do not believe so. What of the children of Mobliz?"
Terra winces a little. She misses them, yes, but they are all but grown now, and have no need for her to play at being mother any longer. Besides, she was still whole when she was their Mama, hiding away in the caves after the world's end. She is different now. How could half a person find enough love to give to others?
"They do not need me anymore, Edgar."
The King drums his long fingers on the tabletop. His gold rings glint at her, refracting the morning light from the window. He wears too many rings.
"All of us need to be needed, I am sure of that. I am blessed to be needed in ways that I can respond to easily; the people of Figaro give me purpose. Might you join me here for good, and allow them to give you purpose, too?"
Here, at last, it comes. She waits as she sips on steaming tea, hot from the pot, bitter enough to wake an army.
Edgar inclines his head towards her. "I am saying, Terra, that the people of Figaro have a deep need for a Queen. A Queen they would adore and respect, until the end of her days."
"No," she says flatly. There is no need to elaborate. No is enough.
He smiles. "This is not my attempt to win your heart, dear one. I am not fool enough to think you are so easily charmed. It is an offer of alliance, of a shared purpose. A shared home. The other things," he waves his hand, "by which I mean love and romance, can be worked out later. There is no rush."
Terra's cup is empty now. She pushes her chair back from the table.
"I shall go for my walk," she announces.
"Very well." His gaze lingers on her more than she would like.
Back in the bedroom, she pulls on the sand-robes Edgar has given her. Woven cotton encases her hair and limbs, to keep the blazing sun from burning her pale flesh. Even the smallest exposure would leave her skin red raw. She has learned to be careful. She is learning the ways of Figaro. That seems to please the King. Such a dashing desert warrior you make, he has told her, his eyes twinkling with approval. Terra does not reply when he says such things.
She leaves the castle from the western tower, and her boots dig deep into the sand as she walks.
She has taken to exploring the desert, these past few days. It is the stillness, more than anything, that lures her there. She can look for miles all around and hear nothing: no birdsong, no wind, no rustling of leaves. There is only sand and sky, and Terra.
Many would call it barren, dead. But she does not. Terra sees the small pockets of life, and they fascinate her. Squat, wiry plants, clinging to survival in the sand. A desert fox, with stick-like legs and a mangled ear, stares at her before it scampers away. Carrion birds, picking the last scraps of meat from the bones of some unfortunate beast. The flat landscape is punctuated with huge, gleaming white rock formations, their shapes ranging from the fearsome to the comical. She sees likenesses in them, and uses them to navigate. Here, the Chocobo's Beak. Fifty strides to the west, the Blackjack's Prow. An hour to the north, Umaro's Club.
She walks for hours, stopping only to eat the flatbread she has brought from the castle, and to drink water from the silver flask. She often forgets. Neither hunger nor thirst seem to bother her much, here.
The desert pleases her with its stark contrasts. When the sun dips low, the searing heat burns away to leave only a bone-chilling cold, and Terra is shivering within minutes. But it is worth it. The mass of stars in the desert sky is without equal. She turns her head to them, and is lost in their brilliance. Each time, she returns to the castle later and later at night. She thinks it worries the King, though he does not rebuke her.
The stars dazzle her tonight. They are not specks, not even clusters. They are an ocean of light. It is almost - almost - enough to make her forget what she has lost. To allow her to believe that there might still be magic in the world. Almost.
There is a wind rising now, and she is so engrossed in the stars that she has barely noticed. At first, it is a caress that she savors, a crisp, cold touch from the night. Before she realizes, the winds are whipping around her, tugging her robes free from her hair. The wind is lifting the sand from the ground, and suddenly the air is thick with it, stinging her eyes.
A sandstorm has found her, and she is three hours west of the castle. No: three hours' walk in clear weather, she realized. Pushing against fierce winds and blinded by flying sand, it could be six, eight, even ten. She has no idea. She stumbles back, the way she thinks might be east, but she is lost. Her rocks, her landmarks, are invisible under a blanket of sand and dust. It is painful to keep her eyes open, but she must, or she has no hope at all. She shields her brow with her hands and squints, tears forming in defense against the onslaught. Her nose and mouth are burning. She staggers on.
When her snatched breaths become cleaner, she turns around, trying to gauge the proximity of the storm. It is a cloud, a huge wall of sand, behind her. No, it is a heaving mass, almost a humanlike figure. Swirling sands tail off into long, sharp slivers, like the spears of light that her own hair had taken in Esper form.
The figure rears its head, standing tall against the heavens. No, it cannot be. Her red-raw eyes are tricking her, letting her see the shape she yearns for most.
But it is. It is, Terra thinks, wild hope gripping her heart, and she runs headlong towards the storm. She sees only her Esper self, vast and powerful, a figure built from incandescent light. It does not matter that all Espers are gone, that she is running into a sandstorm. This must mean something. It must.
"Come back! Come back to me!" she tries to scream, but the sand half chokes her, so she rages inside her mind, each thought a piercing echo of the last.
Come back to me! We were one, undivided! You left me, left me alone. I am nothing! Nothing!
The cloud of sand presses in all around her, and she sinks to her knees, gasping into her hands.
You left me, she whimpers, but the sands have no mercy.
I am nothing, she says, and the pain overcomes her, and she is a ball curled up against the storm, waiting to be swallowed.
Terra does not know how long she remains there. She starts to lose consciousness, lose the will to keep fighting for each dust-filled breath, and a part of her sighs in relief. At last, she thinks.
But there are hands grasping her shoulders, arms pulling at her, an urgent voice at her ear that her drowsy mind identifies as the King's. For a moment she thinks it must be his brother, that Sabin has returned to Figaro, because she does not remember Edgar's skinny arms being this strong. But he hauls her upright, and it is him, white cloth wrapped tightly around his mouth and nose. He is saying something, but the cloth muffles the sound.
"Leave me be," she tries to say, and gets a mouthful of sand for her trouble.
Edgar shakes his head, and steers her by the shoulders towards his mount. The chocobo's neck is arched downwards, hiding its head from the ferocity of the sandstorm. He pushes her up, and she is too weak to climb, slipping back down into the sand. Edgar's hands are at her waist, lifting her onto the bird's back, and she clutches the harness until he is mounted too, then she clings to the cloth on his back.
Terra closes her eyes against the sands that swirl angrily around her. He is leading them out of the storm, and she relinquishes her fight to him, to his mastery of the desert. He is Figaro-born, a sand-prince, and he is unafraid. She buries her face in his robes.
As the sandstorm eases off, the bird picks up speed. They race across the desert, and the distance covered by Terra's boots is nothing to the chocobo. It is not long before the western tower is in sight, and Edgar dismounts in one nimble leap. He offers his hands, reaching up to take hers.
She is filled with anguish the moment her feet touch the ground. He has torn her away from the Esper, from her last glimpse of her true self.
"Why? Why couldn't you leave me there? I was so close... so close to..."
Edgar unwinds the cloth from his face, and massages his jaw.
"To dying? Forgive my selfishness Terra, but I much prefer you alive."
"Alive? Is this alive?" She is crying now, and the stunned look on his face tells her he does not know, has not imagined, the source of her grief.
"Terra, what do you-"
"Esper," she manages, and it is an strangely sweet relief to say the word out loud. "My Esper. Me. What I was. Gone." She mumbles it all through tears that will not stop, and she is pulled gently to his chest, where she stays until the sobs subside.
He does not say anything. She is thankful for that. He guides her into the castle, and leaves her at the guest wing's washroom, where the warm water cleans the sand from her hair and eyes. There is a stack of folded clean night-robes on the shelf, and she slips into one gratefully. Terra is surprised at how glad she is to be back in Figaro Castle, how familiar and welcoming it has become.
Perhaps she is seeing it as a home. His home, she reminds herself. Not hers. But it is a place of refuge for Terra, and she is willing to let it be so for a little longer.
He is sitting on the bench in the guest wing when she returns from the washroom. He has washed, too, and is dressed plainly in a linen shirt and breeches. She sees him as he truly is, her battle comrade and friend. Now Terra is not looking upon the King of Figaro, but simply Edgar. A young man, still, but with the shadowed eyes of one who has watched the world end and begin again. Maybe all our eyes look like that, she thinks.
He rises from his seat, and beckons her to the balcony. She follows, and they stand under the stars once more. A dim glow to the sky hints at the coming dawn. Terra wonders how long he was searching, in the desert, before he found her. She does not ask.
"Stay," he says, quietly. "Stay here with me, Terra. I cannot give you what you lost, but at the least, I can offer you my home. It is yours. Always."
"I could never be your Queen, you know." There is no spite in her words, only truth.
"Maybe not. But the offer remains. You would be loved as no other."
He is not only speaking of the people of Figaro now; he is speaking of himself, she can see it in his eyes. It pains her even to look, to acknowledge the idea of such a depth of love.
She knows she must choose her words with care this time. "I think... I can neither receive nor give love until I am whole again. And for me to become whole again, with no magic left in the world... I do not know how to rebuild the missing half of me."
He is silent for a while before he speaks again, and his voice is solemn. "You are far from the only one, Terra. We all lost parts of ourselves when the old world was lost. Every one of us that remains is imperfect. Stumbling along with broken hearts and minds. Yes, you lost something that the rest of us cannot fathom, but... I do not think any of us are whole. Not any more. In that, we stand together. All of us."
She cannot find the words to respond. He has taken a sword to her carapace of self-pity, and shattered it. Now she sees the broken shards around her, and she is ashamed. Ashamed that she could only think of her own loss. That even though the world itself has been splintered and broken, the split in herself had been all that mattered.
She leans over the castle parapet, and casts her eyes far to the west. There is a haze out there in the dark: the sandstorm is still raging, angry and ferocious. Terra tries to make out the shape, the Esper. She cannot. It is no longer there, if it ever was at all.
How can I let you go? she asks, silently.
But she knows the question is meaningless. It is the Esper that has already let her go. She is what remains, what is left of the old Terra, and she must find a way to live with that truth.
If Edgar has any inkling of the internal struggle that is taking place beside him, he is tactful enough not to show it. He rests his fingers on the parapet, and looks out over the sands, his kingdom, his home.
They stand together, watching the sun rise slowly over the desert. Rose-gray clouds obscure the disc of the sun, transforming it into a half-eaten ugly shape. Yet it is still bright and perfect, carrying welcome warmth to Terra's face.
The light dances on the King's face too, bringing color to his skin, lively sparks to his blue eyes. He has loosened his long hair, and let it fall to his shoulders. She sees a calmness to him as he closes his eyes against the morning rays. A man who is needed, and knows he is needed. A man with a purpose.
Being his Queen is not hers, she is sure of that. Still, his home is hers for as long as she chooses, and perhaps it is the place where she can learn to live without her missing half.
The sun is fully risen now, and the clouds around it have cleared. Its curve is flawless, whole.
Because it was whole all along, Terra thinks.
"Breakfast?" the King asks, and offers her his arm.
She will try a spoonful of sugar in the tea this time, she decides. A little sweetness, to ameliorate the bitter taste. A little of his love, just the smallest touch - a smile, linked arms, a conversation - to smooth over the jagged edges of the cracks that have fractured her sense of self.
She slips her hand into the crook of his arm, and follows him into the castle, into a new morning of a new day.