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i.
Kuja’s hair is dyed rose, hiding the musky blond underneath. A pronounced, delicate smile crawls across his face as he examines the thing Garland passes to him. He holds it awkwardly in the crook of one arm and shifts his weight to one hip, the baby’s warmth feeling like a burn.
“What,” he says, “is this?”
“Your brother,” Garland says. “That is the… Gaian word, no?”
Wide-eyed, Kuja stares down at the pudgy face. He can imagine those chubby fingers clawing down the stones of his kingdom, the one he built himself.
This miserable, mewling infant will never replace him.
ii.
The water is cool on his toes. Sitting on the edge of the dock, Zidane swishes them back and forth. The stars overhead are crisp, pure; the two moons, baleful eyes that watch him and his friends play. Gooseflesh spreads over the back of his neck.
“Zidane!” Blank, no more than ten, tugs at his ankle. “Come and swim, before the guards catch us!”
Zidane gives a half grin, chancing a glance over his shoulder. “Maybe in a bit.”
If he thinks about it, screws his eyes up and imagines, the ocean looks like it’s glowing a pure, cold blue.
iii.
The Genomes are taught how to wait, the kind of waiting the hot-blooded souls of Gaia would not understand. The dull ache that accompanies it. Patience and pain are the only things they are taught how to feel.
She knows to stand on this bridge and usher in the harbinger. She sees him coming, now – and how Gaian he is, with his blue clothes and temper.
She was not taught the feeling that follows him. It burns like the blue light, and she turns away.
“Welcome home,” she says. He bristles, and she wonders why, for don’t all seek home?
iv.
How was he born in this place? Here, where the only company is cold knowledge and macabre certainty?
His fingers twitch; his eyes stare blankly ahead. The throne cradles him. Did Kuja once sit here and stare at the emptiness and decide he couldn’t stand it? Fill it all up with screams and bloodshed?
Did Mikoto sit here, Garland’s hand on her shoulder, and embrace emptiness?
He shudders, but Terra calls to his very soul. Bathed in the blue light, he thinks over and over again, This is what I’m made of. This is who I am.
I’m sorry, Dagger.
v.
Kuja breathes. Eyes closed, he listens hard across the field of nothingness, to the sounds of a battle he was too cowardly to wage. They’re fighting death itself, are they? he thinks, and then, unbidden, Perhaps Zidane will succeed. Hope blooming in his chest – Perhaps I’ll get to live, after all.
One last lie.
Zidane will carry on, he thinks bitterly. He fought death by living. That’s all. What a silly secret. I could have figured that out.
He is dying, and maybe Mikoto is already dead, but Zidane will live.
His final act of rebellion will see to that.
vi.
Mikoto stands up, nails caked in dirt, the sun hot on her back. Black Mage No. 288 stands behind her, silent.
“There,” she says.
She opens her palm, a handful of silver hair floating gently down on the fresh grave. Another burning feeling emerges in her chest, like when she first saw Zidane – but this time, she has a name for it. Grief. Sadness.
And, perhaps, hope for the future.
“Maybe Zidane will come back soon,” Mr. 288 says, his yellow eyes soft.
“I’m sure he will.” She gives him a tiny smile – her very first. “We’re family, after all.”