Disclaimer: still don't own (it would be remade and Edgar would look super hot if it was, and would totally be voiced by the guy who does the voice for Edward in infinite undiscovery... I bet he sounds just perfect when he's not playing angry, brooding characters)

Just a follow up to the last little story, with some Locke thrown in.

"I think I'm jealous." Locke said conversationally to Sabin, setting a mug down in front of the distracted martial artist.

"Jealous?" Sabin asked, frowning and looking at his friend.

Locke nodded, and glanced significantly across the room to where Gerad was holding court at a card table. "He makes a better handsome rogue than I do." and he grinned, sitting down.

Sabin took a gulp of the ale in the mug and looked back to his amnesiac brother. He said nothing, because there was nothing he could really say.

Locke sighed into his own mug before setting out to recapture Sabin's attention. Why he had been volunteered for this conversation he didn't know. "You know, you've got to admire him."

"Because he's a thief?" Sabin asked, and it was easy to read his despair. The Edgar he had grow up with was nothing like Gerad.

"Because he's here."

Sabin frowned. "What?" he asked.

Locke gave him a small smile. "He's here. He's not Edgar, at least, not as far as he's concerned," Locke said the last part quickly to avoid Sabin getting indignant. "He could have slipped off whenever he wanted to. I've been watching him, he could do it easily. But he hasn't. He doesn't know why we're doing what we are, but he's still here."

Sabin was silent. He had been fighting with himself over his selfishness for weeks. Everyone else had long since stopped calling Gerad, Edgar, and they all seemed to have accepted that the man was not the comrade they had fought beside for so long. Sometimes, late at night, Sabin would wonder if it might not be easier to just let the man go, let him return to the life he had made for himself, to stop clinging to the hope that his brothers memory might miraculously return.

Locke frowned as Sabin drifted back into the very melancholy thoughts that had started Celes and Cyan prodding him to talk to him. "You gave him the ring." He said. It had been the first thing Locke had noticed, and he'd felt his own sense of loss at the sight of the ring in it's rightful place, but that the man who wore it could not begin to comprehend it's true significance.

"Yes." Sabin replied.

"It's hard you know." Locke said softly. "Watching someone you love live life as if you aren't important anymore." His own thoughts turned to Rachel, and he shook his head as he realised why Celes had been so insistent. "But he's still here Sabin, that's got to count for something. And even of you can't call him brother, maybe you could start learning to call him friend. Maybe all he needs is the time to make his own decision."

Sabin looked at Edgar. Locke couldn't possibly understand. Rachel had only forgotten him, and while Sabin acknowledged that that in itself was painful, love was not the deepest of all bonds. Twins were the deepest, and losing half of your very soul was so indescribable…

Locke sighed. "You're only going to drive him away Sabin. Just be glad that he's here, for whatever reasons he decides." It was all he could do, there was nothing else he could say, nothing else he could do. It was up to Sabin, it always had been.

Locke prayed, as he had every night, that Edgar would return to them, because watching Sabin self destruct was hard enough, but watching Edgar, who had he been himself would be doing his frantic big brother routine, look on in pity and sympathy was even harder.