To See Another Day Chapter 18
Eulogy of Tomorrow
By Kain Servant
It was the catastrophe of the millenium. Of any millenium. It was a life-changing, breath-taking experience. It was death itself.
Some said they saw demons flying from the sky when the two planets collided…others said they were told by their god that this was judgement for their wicked deeds, and that the whole world needed to repent.
Some said they saw a cloud shaped like a hand a week before pointing toward the sky as a sign. Others said they had dreams and visions predicting this inevitable fate.
Some said they saw Kuja, riding through the skies on his silver dragon, his head rolling backward in uncontrollable laughter.
All life stopped as people from every nation stood outside and watched the two atmospheres battle for a few moments, sending flames rolling across the sky. This, the foolish told the blind, was the heroes fighting the evil. It would all be over soon, they should just go back to their homes and thank their gods for the heroes that saved them.
But Necron was right. The heroes weren’t there to do anything about it. Fate had perfectly planned the event…the people ignored the warnings and just stood and stared into the sky…wondering what was happening, what the heroes looked like – if they would ever be able to see their faces.
It wasn’t long before Gaia defeated the grind. Tialtor was a crumbling planet anyway…and as humans and ellians alike watched, Tialtor broke into pieces and hurtled through Gaia’s sky.
They were not fated to land in the oceans.
The largest piece it was said hit Alexandria…a piece larger than the whole city. All that could be seen of the city after that was the proud blade of Alexander rising above a few broken chunks of rock.
Many were fated to die that day, but still many more were fated to live, live the horrible future that awaited them. The tomorrow they had envisioned was shattered, replaced by a new visage of yesterdays they had tried to forget. War, famine and bloodshed.
And above it all Kuja swept, laughing his way toward the sun. There was much still for him to do.
--
Blank felt like he had been staring into blackness for hours. Maybe this was death…the ever mysterious and feared death, a black portal circling for eternity, carrying in its invincible arms the souls of the lost.
That was much….much too boring for him. Death had to be something…atleast entertaining, like a neverending amusement park. Or atleast dreadful. Like…a neverending haunted house at an amusement park. Where the ghosts laughed and gave you lollipops.
So thus resolute that he wasn’t dead (because he sure as hell couldn’t see any ghosts or amusement parks), now the question was where was he. He couldn’t be unconscious…he had never been unconscious that long without dreaming. Maybe the ship had just flown into a gigantic black cloud and it was just about to come out again into the bright sunshine.
What about Eiko? Damn he hadn’t thought about her in hours! There he was, worrying his ass off about her the whole day, and when something actually happened he didn’t give her a second thought. His heart had been beating quickly forever and he tried to settle it down, tried to envision Eiko as she had been…was it the night before? Not naked…gods her body was gorgeous for a sixteen year old.
Sixteen. He remembered a week ago he had laughed and shaken off the notion as a lolita complex. But it had happened…damn it was happening! He was still in the middle of a live relationship that he had to get back to, he couldn’t just black out and fall into the black hole for the rest of his life!
What set her apart? Was it simply the fact that she was a summoner that made her more mature? Was it Cid’s upbringing? Was it living all alone for the first few years of her life and having to do things on her own? She outmatched any twenty…hell, thirty year old woman he knew, always laughing their little heads off and talking as fast as they could about absolutely nothing.
Somehow she was different. Somehow for the first time he could remember he wasn’t just existing with the vague hope that someday he would get laid…he was living, and now he really wanted to live more than anything – just to see her again. Angrily he opened his mouth to damn the black hole to a long and painful death…and dirt fell in his mouth.
“Ptttt…! Blech…” He spat it out and lurched upwards, losing his balance and tumbling…across the uneven floor of the Hilda Garde. Hmm…some black hole. Blinking his eyes rapidly, he cleared them from their hazy slumber and looked around.
What had once been the Hilda Garde. It reminded him distinctly of an event he had taken part of with Zidane once…ten years ago they had crashed into the Dark Forest in the beginning of a train of events that had led them to this day.
The angry hiss of swamp gas escaping met his ears from somewhere behind him and he nodded. It seemed they had landed in the Dark Forest once again. “Hello? Amarant? Steiner? Beatr-“ They had left Beatrix behind… Where was everyone? Amarant had been right at his side at the crash…they had been talking about hope. “Where the hell are you?”
Slowly he noticed that not only had the bottom of the ship been crushed on impact…the top of the ship had been…torn away or something. The warm placid air that clung to his skin spoke of this…he could see where metal had been torn away in front of him, right about the wheel of the ship…and then faintly before him the shadows of trees.
What the hell had happened? What could have torn away the top of the Hilda Garde? Not a tree…not even if it was a kamakazi flying tree with ninja stars! It would have taken…Atomos, or Bahamut to do that much damage…and if that much damage had been done…”Eiko!” He screamed into the night – fear bubbling more distinctly in his throat, “Can anyone hear me?”
Darkness answered him, and he stumbled back into what had once been the doorway to the deck, falling with his back to the rail to stare at the odd sight.
Maybe the black hole had been better.
‘This is the fate that has awaited all of you from the day it began!’ A voice tickled the back of his head. He scratched it. “What, to get lost in the dark forest? I for one…am petrified.” That was an awful pun, but he grinned at himself in spite of it. Something to keep him going, something to keep him from facing the fact that he might be there all alone.
Or should he? Grabbing yet another deep breath, he reached over his shoulder and pulled his sword from its sheath. Perhaps he needed to simply accept the circumstances and work with them. It didn’t matter what happened…he needed to get to Lindblum and find Eiko…no matter what happened. That was his life.
“Fuck you, forest!” He called out into the darkness, “I don’t care if there are twenty million billion of you and I’m all by myself! I’ve got my honey to go find and that means…I’m one hell of a busy man!”
A frightened skitter erupted from some foilage to his left, and he heard wings fluttering away. That gave him courage, “Blank’s here for some payback, trees! I’ll cut you all down this time! I’ll kill you so badly that you’ll wish daddy never met mommy!” Did trees have—nevermind, “I’ll!”
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
--
“I love you forever…”
Had forever ended? Zidane swam in a pit of memories and emotions, waves that crashed against him and pulled at it, wanting to pull him in, to consume him.
He was too lost to be consumed, too dazed…unaccepting. What had he just seen? Could he believe his eyes? Could he trust his mind? He didn’t want to…but it couldn’t…couldn’t be possible that this was happening to him. Forever? He wanted forever to leave him and Garnet with a normal life…he wanted today never to have been, and tomorrow to be again…and her smile…
No. NO! It couldn’t be…not her smile, her laugh, her soul just stolen from the world by a bad twist of…there was no fate, there was no fate, there was no fate!
Zidane thrashed away from his thoughts, grabbing his head as if trying to rip them from his mind. Something hurt. Somewhere deep and side and yet still on the outside…he turned from dreams to memories – every time he had ever seen her…seen her cut her hair, seen her cry, seen her smile at him just before he passed out from the food she had drugged…seen her kiss him goodnight ten years in a row.
As he stared into her beautiful, luminous eyes, the question arose in his mind again…and he took her hand gently, “Come on…Garnet. Angel, please let’s spend this night together. One night enveloped in the love we’ve built over the past few years.”
Her eyes smiled sadly, and she looked away, to the window above his bed, “Look…the full moon is out tonight…and you’re so poetic.” She giggled, and caressed his cheek, “Maybe…”
“Just this one night…and I could spend the rest of eternity just staring at you from far away.” The words he mustered from strange faroff place…the land of true love maybe. He didn’t know. He didn’t speak like that, and never would again. She just stared at him…then slowly crawled onto the bed – and laid her head on top of his chest, her hand still on his cheek.
“Don’t ever say that…never ever. Just thinking of spending any part of my life never seeing you scares me.” She sighed and snuggled closer to him. “I love you, Zid. After so many years we still don’t understand each other…all of the way, but I know I love you.”
“No…no…” He kept muttering to himself, clawing at his chest for the locket he had kept with Garnet’s picture. It was gone. He had taken it off when he had left Alexandria…damn him, damn him! She had loved him…Why was life so cruel? Why did some see fate as a beautiful temptress and others a bitch?
Zidane was still…dimly aware of the shards of trance he had held when he hit his head…and he held on to them firmly…gripped them with all the strength he could muster. That was all he had left…if they left him than the world would be nothing – slowly he bled his energy into the trance. ‘Maybe I can just lose myself…everything will go away if I try hard enough…or maybe…maybe I can make it so it never happened!’
There were no surroundings. He could not see. All he could see was Garnet’s face before him, and the blurry gray made from the white of trance and black of reality. He drew on more power. He could change it, he would. There was no ending to their story…they loved each other forever, and no matter what there was no end!
He drew on more and more, he wanted to kill the black and turn his sky to white…desperately he searched through what he knew…all his knowledge of trance…he could fly, he could destroy, he could speak into the mind…surely there HAD to be some way he could change what had happened.
The world is drifting…you can’t lie there, you have to get up!
Who was that? That was no voice he knew…let the world drift for all he cared. He pulled on more energy, more and more and more, soaking in the very light of it, but there was no spell, no force he could find to change.
THERE
MUST
BE!
Garnet’s hand drifted to his lips…and he softly kissed her fingertips. “Sleep…we are one now in love. As long as I hold you and you hold me, no force on earth can part us.” There was a tearing. Zidane cried out in pain. The ground, the world, fell away. “Kiss me now…and I’ll see you on the otherside…”
Forever. Never. Who came up with those words? There was…no more…ever.