Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Guardian ❯ Midnight ( Chapter 2 )

Guardian, Chapter 2
Midnight

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I stared hard into the dark amber depths of the cup pressed between my palms, drawing comfort from its familiarity even though I no longer required it either for warmth or to slake such a petty mortal weakness as thirst. Everything else seemed to be distorted beyond all recognition in this garishly surreal, overwhelmingly vast city, but at least they still had tea.

I had not seen Jecht's wife since our initial encounter. I supposed that she had retreated to her rooms to grieve in privacy, and I could not blame her, though I thought it strange that her sorrow so consumed her that she had not even a glance to spare for the heartbroken small boy left behind. He stared up at me with large ocean eyes swimming in unshed tears, before he cried brokenly, "I didn't mean it! I didn't really want him to d--" He choked off the rest of the sentence as his throat closed over with a sob and he turned away, huddling miserably on the floor in a wailing ball of complete devastation, the kind one faces when your whole world is utterly destroyed. I well knew how he felt.

At a total loss, after a moment I scooped him up in my arms and strode uncertainly down the hall, searching for his room. His small arms locked around my neck and something twisted in my chest from the unfamiliar sensation, his hot tears soaking my neck. At last, finding a door ajar with a multitude of toys scattered on the floor, I sought to deposit my now-hiccupping burden on the bed. He let go after a fashion, and I pulled the blankets up around him.

Exhausted from the impassioned storm of tears, he quieted except for the occasional sniffle, gazing up at me with the unfettered curiosity only a child could muster up in such circumstances. "What happened to your face?"

"A battle," was my succinct reply. "Now go to sleep." The sleepy half-protest was lost in incoherence as the heavy eyelids drooped shut. I looked at my new charge a moment, so vulnerable and weak, dwarfed by the bed that nearly swallowed his small form. I had little exposure to children; I had spent my life in service first to the priesthood and then to Braska. I had been around Yuna often enough, but she had never been mine alone to watch over. It was foreign and frightening and not at all appealing. But I had promised. Jecht, what have you gotten me into?

I was still brooding into my cup when I sensed light footsteps behind me, and whirled to find Jecht's wife entering the kitchen. She appeared remarkably calm and composed, to my great surprise, until it dawned on me that she wasn't completely here. Her movements were absently methodical and automatic as she slowly poured tea and sat across from me.

"Tell me."

I looked at her, assessing her state of mind as I measured my words, deciding how best to word my reply. My honor demanded that I speak the truth, but something inside me insisted that the whole truth was too much for this one to handle. The full knowledge of Jecht's fate would break her, crushing her like a delicate flower trampled mercilessly under the heel of some oblivious passerby. And suddenly I was determined to do whatever was necessary to prevent the bloom of life from being stolen away from this woman. I had seen too much death, my weary soul could bear no more...and I owed Jecht at least that much. The tarnish the falsehood would leave on my 'honor' meant very little to me at that point, if it would save the life of one Jecht had loved. That night, it was an easy choice to make.

Her eyes bored into me with a piercing sharpness that belied the lethargy in her limbs. They never once left me the entire time that I spoke. I told her that I was from Spira, about the quest Braska had undertaken with me to guard him, and how later Jecht had joined us. I told her about Sin and how it ravaged my homeland, and how the three of us journeyed across the continent to defeat it. I told her everything that time allowed for...everything, except that I was dead and Jecht was not. I let her come to the conclusion that Jecht had died in the final battle against Sin, and I had then come to fulfill the duty he placed upon me. I paused in the telling only to wet my throat with a sip of tea, but her forgotten cup grew cold, completely untouched.

When I at last fell silent, she rose stiffly, hands dangling bonelessly at her sides, as though her soul had all but retreated from her body and only what was absolutely needed to animate the remaining shell of flesh had been left behind. "Thank you," she said absently, as one would speak to a stranger on the street who'd just provided directions. She turned and left without another glance, but not before I caught sight of the crystalline tears that rolled unchecked down her face.

I sat with my head in my hands for a long time, trying to find strength from somewhere within. Searching for my once-strong resolve, for some kind of confirmation that all was not lost and purposeless.

Eventually, I gave up.

I found what appeared to be a guest room adjacent to the child's room. Physically, I no longer required sleep to function, but emotionally I was wearied to the bone. Maintaining the void of detachment, stuffing away all of my own heart-rending pain and loss into a corner where it no longer touched me left me completely drained. Worse, there was never any respite from the discordant wrongness that came from still clinging stubbornly to the vestiges of life, tying a soul to a body no longer meant to hold it. It was a constant strain, trying to hold everything together, and it was unbearably painful at times, as though my soul were being stretched so thin that at any moment it would tear in two.

I collapsed onto the bed with my arms behind my head, sinking leadenly into the mattress, exhausted but unable to still my mind long enough to let sleep claim me. It kept wandering though bitter, bloodstained memories, touching raw unhealed wounds as if to ascertain that they still radiated the same familiar pain.

I don't know how long I'd lain there, at the end, bleeding my life out into the frozen rocky soil at the foot of Mt. Gagazet. The Ronzo finally left at my insistence, to take the child Yuna to Besaid as I had bid him. Such was Braska's wish. I knew that I was dying, but I refused to give in, to let my breathing still. The only thing left to me of all I ever held dear was my honor and the word I had given, and I could not surrender to the chill embrace of death while the task I'd accepted was left undone; my duty lay in Zanarkand. After a small eternity of harsh, numbing cold and crimson-stained snow, I got up, and with one seemingly impossible step after another, began the search for a way there. Death claimed no victory over me that day, I believed, though soon enough I realized the truth. I saw that I did not tire, nor hunger, nor thirst. If I ate or slept, it was to satisfy the habit, not the need.

Eventually, I found him: Jecht. Sin was not dead, and it was worse than I could ever have imagined, seeing with my own eyes that Jecht had become the very evil that he and Braska had given their lives to destroy. It had been one thing to know it...It was quite another to face the reality, to touch it with my own hands. To feel the presence of my friend within the monstrosity that brought so much sorrow everywhere it went, leaving nothing in its wake untouched by total, black desolation.

"Calm down, you whiny bastard," he had said, in my mind. "Stop sniveling over me. I'm all right for now. Just...remember your promise." He caught me up and bore me to the Zanarkand he'd called home, more or less in one piece, and left me with one very clear mental image, of a house and a small boy and a glimpse of something else shining and gold, though I felt he begrudged me even that faint peek at something he treasured above all things.

And now that I'd found them, I was completely unsure of what to do next. Their world was foreign to me, too eerily bright and angular, loud at all hours of the night and consumed by a constant restlessness that made my skin crawl. There were no attacking fiends, no threat of Sin, nothing for me to guard them against. All of my skills as a Guardian, the abilities I had cultivated and honed over a lifetime of service, were of little use here. What hunted them was a driving sorrow that I myself perpetually wrestled with to no avail, and I had no solace left to offer. Darkly, I muttered an impassioned oath under my breath. Not yet thirty, I felt suddenly very old and extremely tired. My last waking thought was an involuntary prayer to a God I mostly no longer believed in. Yevon, help me.

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End Chapter 2

These smaller chapters should work out a lot better for those of you who were frustrated with me for not updating more often...smaller chapters are easier to handle. Don't worry though, I'm not going to neglect Sojourn :)