Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note: This started off as just an exploration of what Yuan and the Renegades were going through at the end of the game. It quickly veered left into a very different territory, but one I loved exploring nonetheless.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there."

mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

Yuan waited in his office while Lloyd and his friends went to Derris Kharlan. The base in Triet was largely empty, now. His Renegades had escaped while they could, fearing retribution from Yggdrasill after being discovered. They had fled to safe houses and families. Some had cautiously poked their heads back into the base.

"We wanted to make sure you were okay, sir," one of the kids said. Well. Kid was a general term. Victoria turned thirty-seven several months ago. A base baby, born and raised among the Renegades. Quick as a whip, with clever fingers suited to technology.

Despite his assurances, she'd chosen to stay on base regardless of any dangers that Cruxis presented. She was down in the labs now, tinkering and experimenting as if there wasn't a very real chance that the world could end today. Yuan had his senses stretched so he could hear her moving about. There were a few others; a friend of hers recruited from the Desians two years ago, Khary, was fixing a simple lunch in the kitchens. They were a pretty solid cook, honestly, if a bit prone to experimentation. Johan was in the Rheaird bay, with a bottle of Triet's finest. Likely not to get drunk, since the man drank like he breathed, but even if he did, Yuan couldn't blame him. Not today.

(He tries not to think of Botta, of how he wouldn't have even left with the threat of Cruxis. The man had honestly been one of the most stubborn sorts that Yuan has ever met—which is saying something, in four thousand years. He would have been damned if he would let the enemy into his home. No, Botta would have very likely planted himself in the entryway, sword in hand and a glass of Palmacosta red in the other, daring any to get past him)

The worlds shuddered together. Not the terrible earthquakes of the mana links being broken, but lighter shivers and shaking, a bird ruffling its feathers before settling back into stillness. Yuan heard Khary holding their cooking pot and bottles still through the shakes, heard Johan muttering a prayer. Victoria's breathing was very controlled, and Yuan knew that if he narrowed his focus more, expanded his senses more, he would likely hear her bones creaking with the strength she was gripping onto her tools with. Victoria had never been a panicky type, she was too controlled for that.

Yuan let out a breath, relaxed his shoulders. If the worlds had united, then it was all over. Lloyd had won.

His intercom buzzed. "Sir…Yuan. Is it done? Did they succeed?" Victoria's voice was hesitant and so afraid of the answer. She had no known no other life, after all. What did one do when the thing you've trained and worked for the entirety of your life has been done? Yuan knew the answer, had had to do it four thousand years ago, when the War ended. But Victoria needed to learn it herself.

"I'm going to get confirmation. Hold down the fort."

"Yessir."

The trip from Triet to the ruins of the Tower, by Rheaird, still took the better part of four hours. Yuan stepped carefully around the ruins, going by memory to where the Tower had once stood. It was only as he approached the epicenter of the ruins that he felt it. Mana. Clean mana. A trickle of it spreading through the air.

And standing at the epicenter was a ghost.

Yuan wrenched his mind back on track. Ghosts were indeed a thing, but this couldn't be a ghost. They didn't come out in the sunlight, first of all, and there had never been a ghost so serene. But it wasn't Martel. It couldn't be. As Yuan approached, he forced himself to catalogue the differences, ignoring the similarities.

Martel had been tall, yes, but this woman was a bit shorter than Yuan, whereas Martel had never stopped teasing him about the inch of height she had on him. The hair color was the same, but the skin wasn't. Martel's skin had been sun-browned and scarred, not pale and unbroken. Her face wasn't quite correct either. Something about her too straight nose and high brow, something in how she held herself so still, was not Martel at all. But at first glance, and even second glance, it could be.

The clean mana was coming from a little sapling that came no higher than her knee.

"Who are you?" Yuan asked.

She blinked long and slow. "I am the Spirit of the Tree. My name is Martel—"

"Of course it is," Yuan said bitterly.

"I am not Mithos' sister, if that is your next question."

"I know you're not." She looked taken aback by the statement, her fingers fumbling a bit on the whitewood staff in her hand. "I imagine that was Lloyd's first question when he heard your name. But they never met her, they wouldn't have any way of knowing. But Spirits choose their appearance. Why did you choose her?"

"I am made of memories. I am…an amalgamation of the souls of humans, elves, everyone caught in this war."

"But why her specifically. If you have all those souls, you have—I'm going to go with billions—of them inside you. Why her?"

"Many of those souls have been forgotten. They are so old that the people who loved them, and spoke of them, are no longer alive. Martel has some of the strongest memories of them all."

Four thousand years of fervent wishing, fond reminiscing, and desperate prayers to a false Goddess would do that. After all, they had not exaggerated Martel's actions very much, or her personality. But people had passed on those tales, and shared and added their own twists until Martel's memory became one of the benevolent goddess. And she had been so kind, so loving, but the Church had never been able to capture her violent wrath upon those who threatened her family, had never captured her razor sharp intellect, or the steel-boned force of will.

"I see." Yuan strode past her, crouching in the dirt. The sapling was so small, hardly a foot high, with a few sad leaves. But the leaves glowed like Yuan remembered the leaves of the Great Tree glowing, full of mana. "And this is the new Tree, I take it?"

"Yes. It needs love, and nurturing, or else it too shall wither away."

A fragile little Tree for a fragile new world.

"We just won't let that happen, will we?" Yuan rose and let his wings expand, reveling in the release of mana that he kept bubbled at his spine. If he was going to hazard a guess, Lloyd and the others would go back to Iselia soon. Likely not tonight, they would be too exhausted for that. But Lloyd would go back to Dirk's house as soon as he could. Kratos was waiting there, as of Yuan's last intel, but who knew if Kratos had chosen to stay.

Only one way to find out.

Kratos had indeed chosen to stay. He had parked himself on a bench outside Dirk's house, his customary sword nowhere to be seen, and it made him look odd to Yuan. A weapon had been Kratos' constant companion for most of the time they'd known each other, ever since they ran away from the plantation as teenagers.

It hadn't occurred to Yuan, how it would look to Kratos if he arrived before his son did.

"He's okay," Yuan told Kratos as soon as he saw the flare of horror in his eyes.

"You saw him?"

"No. But I spoke to our new Spirit of the Tree, and she did, so I imagine they're all sleeping off the exhaustion at an inn somewhere. They'll be on their way back here soon enough."

The tension relaxed somewhat from Kratos. "….Spirit of the Tree?"

Yuan motioned for Kratos to scooch over to give him some room to sit down so that he could tell Kratos everything. Kratos was a good listener; he didn't interrupt, and waited for Yuan to be completely finished before he asked for clarifications.

"And she looked like Martel," Kratos repeated, glancing down at the ring on the fourth finger of Yuan's left hand.

"Like a bad copy," Yuan corrected. Once, he would have been able to tell Kratos everything—and he had. They'd been closer than brothers once—but it had been a long time since those days. He would have been able to tell Kratos about the drop in his stomach when he first saw the Spirit, would have been able to assure him that his sanity was well in place. Martel was dead, and she wasn't coming back.

(He firmly does not think about what the Spirit said, how she was made up of multiple souls. He does not think about, if Kratos meets the Spirit, would he be able to see the similarities to Anna in her features as clearly as Yuan had been able to pick out the differences in Martel?)

They were silent for long hours, minutes for people who had lived as long as they had. Dirk came out once, to offer tea, or some stew, but they both politely declined. The silence should have been peaceful, in a place like this. Surrounded by nature, with no looming threats. Neither Kratos nor Yuan had ever been good with peace though.

Finally, Yuan said, "Mithos is dead."

Lloyd wouldn't have wanted to do it, Yuan knew. Lloyd was fundamentally good like that, believing in redemption and the ability for change. And Yuan wanted to believe he was right, was willing to believe all that, except for the one caveat. The person had to be willing to change, and Mithos would never have chosen to deviate from his path, which only left one option.

"He needs death rites," Kratos murmured.

It didn't matter what the three of them had done to each other in life. If there was one thing they could trust each other with, it was their deaths. No lingering in their Cruxis Crystals, no becoming a ghost or other sort of undead monster, roaming the battlefields searching for peace because the proper rites had never been done.

"We will. After." Yuan was well acquainted with Kratos' particular brand of loyalty and love, and there would be nothing that would move Kratos from this spot until he'd seen his son safely home.

Night came and went without sign of Lloyd and his friends. Yuan wasn't concerned; they'd made it through the worst of it. Now was simply healing and sleeping it all off. Kratos didn't move either, but Yuan could feel the growing tension beside him as the moon crossed the sky.

Morning came, and Dirk bid them come inside. "Ye need breakfast. Can't be lookin' starved when they come home."

How did people do this, Yuan wondered. Normal people who didn't have eternity on their hands. He had always been horrible with waiting, had hated pacing around in the tents, out of commission with an injury, waiting for his family to come back from the front. How could Dirk be so patient, so full of faith that Lloyd was alive, that he would be home and everything would be alright?

Dirk fed them sausage and eggs, with a bit of rice. The sausages were spiced, and the rice had black pepper and green onions mixed in. He also gave them a mug of tea each without asking. Yuan had never really spoken to Dirk. He knew of him, by reputation as an artisan and blacksmith, and from surveillance reports, but they had never met face to face. And yet, here was Dirk, allowing Yuan into his home, and feeding him. It was a kind of hospitality that Yuan was unaccustomed to, one he could very rarely remember.

Yuan and Kratos insisted on doing the washing up after breakfast; they weren't completely mannerless barbarians. Yuan washed while Kratos dried, and they both kept their sense tuned to outside. Dirk swept up the kitchen and watered his plants as though it were any other day. Did nothing faze him?

It wasn't until nearly noon that Noishe came barreling over the bridge, towards Kratos. And not far behind were a set of four Rheairds. Kratos allowed Noishe's inspection of his injuries—the protozoan was ever protective—while Yuan interrupted Dirk at the forge to let him know his son was home. (If Dirk spends a bit more time organizing his tools and cleaning the workstation than normal, well. The angels will never know about his nervous hands and the horrible imaginings of his injured son coming home that have been roiling violently in his mind since they'd left several days ago)

Lloyd nearly fell to his knees in his haste to greet Dirk, wrapping his arms around him. Yuan saw the tension in Lloyd's shoulders leave, watched his body register the fact that the battle was over, that he was home.

"Welcome home, lad,"

Lloyd buried his nose in Dirk's shoulder. The others were all behind him, a bit worse for the wear, but alive. Fortunate, for facing off against all of Derris-Kharlan's traps and Mithos himself.

Dirk pulled back a bit, eyeing his son up and down. "Are ye injured?"

Lloyd got halfway through a lie, before sighing as he pushed himself to his feet. "Yeah. Raine and Zelos Healed the worst of us, though."

"Get inside, the lot of ye."

"What's the worst of the damage?" Yuan asked Raine as she neared. "Kratos and I aren't Healers, but we'll help as much as we can."

Her lips thinned, but she replied, "Regal and Sheena got hit heavily. Regal had a broken knee. It's not broken anymore, but he's still in bad shape. Sheena's elbow was dislocated and one of her ankles wasn't working well. I didn't have the mana to patch that one up, but we bound it as best we could. The rest of us are largely surface wounds. Burns and gashes."

Yuan met Kratos' eyes. Of the two of them, Kratos was the stronger Healer. Lloyd needed Healing too, and Kratos would want to be the one to fix him up, but the others needed more help. Raine had been stretched to her limits in Derris-Kharlan. She couldn't be doing such complex Healings right now, unless she wanted to suffer from mana overexertion which would have her bedbound for several days.

There was a moment where Kratos wanted to fight this. His son was right there, and he's injured. But his other father was right beside him, and Dirk was perfectly capable of helping with the injuries he had.

Kratos nodded in silent agreement to Yuan and called Sheena over. Even if Kratos wasn't in the best of physical shape right now, with his back still damaged from Yuan's attack and the battle with Lloyd, he could still use his magic.

Once everyone was Healed up a bit more, with fresh bandages and braces wrapping what wasn't urgent enough to Heal, Dirk was putting a frankly massive pot of rice on, and pulling strips of mutton from the ice box. Lloyd moved to help automatically, but one sharp look from Dirk had him shrinking back into his seat. He'd stripped down to his undershirt, and his arms were a mess of bruises and burns. Very few cuts, which was to be expected when fighting against Mithos. Even though Mithos was—had been—a very accomplished swordsman, thanks to Kratos' training, he hadn't really used a sword very often since he'd convinced Origin to make the Eternal Sword.

(A lot can be said about Mithos, but that he was unfeeling could never be one of them. Mithos' problem was that he had learned very early on to not look back. Mistakes happened, you kept moving past them. And so it had been with the betrayal of Origin, with all the ranches, every step of creating his perfect world)

The kids—and they're all children. Even Regal Bryant, who was on the other side of forty, if Yuan remembered the files correctly, was a child to Yuan and Kratos. Dirk was perhaps closer to an adolescent, with Yuan's vague familiarity of how dwarves aged—all inhale the food like it would disappear. There was a hardness of tired desperation around some of their edges—Wilder, for certain. The little Sage boy. Even Lloyd, a little—and the summoner jumped when Presea dropped her fork.

Yuan nudged Kratos, whose eyes hadn't left Lloyd. Wordlessly, Kratos followed Yuan out back behind the cottage. The look in Kratos' eyes was too familiar. Shell-shock, was the term used back in the War, when bombings were common, and no one had ever known a night of peaceful sleep. The Renegades got shell-shock fairly often too, and Yuan was so used to helping them through it.

Yuan touched Kratos' shoulder; he'd always been the rare type of soldier for whom touch hadn't sparked an automatic panic response when jarred out of his nightmares. "He's alive, Kratos. Lloyd is alive, and he's home, he's safe."

(It's been fourteen years since he'd done this for Kratos. Fourteen years since he'd found a massacre of Desians in the Iselia mountains not far from the little abandoned house that he Aurion-Irving family had been staying in. Fourteen years since Kratos had stared, empty-eyed, at his bloody hands around his toddler's shoe.)

"He's safe," Kratos repeated, and he looked more solid at the words, less likely to blow away with the wrong word. "It's over."

"Almost." Yuan stuffed his hands in his pockets. He still had much to organize with the Renegades after this, but first… "Are you ready to go?"

Kratos nodded. "We've waited long enough."

Derris-Kharlan was a wreck. They could see damage from the remains of the Tree, from the battles fought. And yet, still, there was the terrible silence. Not a natural sound to be heard. Only the machines, and lone angels with the almost mechanical rhythm of their wingbeats.

They reached that ruin of a throne room, and had to stop when they first entered.

They had seen this throne room in its original grandeur, kneeling in front of it, shaking with terror and borrowed courage. They had seen kings and queens on that throne.

They had seen this throne room as they stood beside it, with a king proclaiming peace.

They had watched Maxwell tear that castle apart for the creation of Exire.

They had sat here with Mithos, coming up with plans and strategies.

And now they stood here and saw Mithos' body crumpled on its steps.

Kratos moved first, kneeling beside the body, gently turning him on his back. He thought he'd be prepared. He'd known for over twenty-four hours that Mithos was dead, that Mithos had been killed, had died in battle.

But it had been a very long time since Mithos had been seriously injured. Since well before Martel had died, during the War.

Violent bruises were all over his body—the results of Gravity Wells, most likely, yanking him down—and blood stained his clothes. Blood had pooled and congealed beneath him from the stab wound in his abdomen. The Key Crest for his Crystal was empty, the shards of the Crystal shattered about the room.

Once Yuan came to crouch beside Kratos, he reached his hand out to Mithos' neck out of ancient habit, checking for a pulse. Not that angels had much of one, their heartbeats were so slow. (He remembers trudging through the battlefields. After. Hoping to find survivors, but never surprised when they didn't)

Yuan removed his cape, and carefully wrapped Mithos in it.

(He's small. Of course he is. He hasn't grown in four thousand years, still caught in that awkward half-grown stage of fourteen. He doesn't have the muscle mass that a human can put on, and he's never gotten a chance to fill out properly, the remnants of a life of malnourishment despite Martel's best attempts. His hands are small, with long fingers, and Yuan remembers long nights of staying awake and experimenting with magic and technology with him, those clever fingers winding wires and sketching out diagrams.

He weighs so little, for someone who had been so much to them, to the world. Mithos Yggdrasill has been god, and worshipper. Has been inventor and censor. Captor and jailer, politician and warrior and Healer. Has been a student, a friend, a brother. But all he is now is dead. A too-light corpse in the arms of his family who had betrayed him)

After Yuan stood, with Mithos in his arms, Kratos smoothed away what blood-sticky hair he could from Mithos' face, memories of Martel tutting at the length of it echoing in his mind.

"Where are we going to do this?" Yuan asked quietly.

There was no familiar place for them anymore. No unifying place whose memories they shared with Mithos, no place where Mithos would have liked to live out any afterlife he got. The only place he'd ever wanted to be was where Martel was.

"The Tree?" Kratos suggested.

Putting the old world to rest where the new one began. That felt as right as any decision could.

"Let's go."

The Spirit stood by the Tree. Yuan saw Kratos flinch minutely at her face, but he doubted anyone else would notice. Her eyes went to the bundle in Yuan's arms.

"Mithos deserves a funeral," Yuan said tightly. He'd hated Mithos for a lot of things, at the end, but they had been too much to each other to say he didn't still love him also. "And we aren't asking permission."

Her face did something strange, for a moment. On a person, Yuan would have just called it an expression, but on her, it was almost like her very features shifted beneath her skin. "…How can I help?"

Yuan set Mithos' body down, out of the way. With the Spirit's assistance, the three of them built a pyre. The four of them had never had any particular burial rites they'd ascribed to, nothing discussed. Traditionally—over four thousand years ago, not whatever passes for tradition these days—in Asgard, they didn't bury their dead. They took them up to the mountain peaks and left the bodies there to decompose so that their spirits would join the Sylph. But Yuan had been taken and enslaved too young for those traditions to take hold and really mean anything to him. The War had never left them very many options. Not enough time to bury the dead, more often than not, so they were often burned on massive pyres. That had been the only tradition they could count on, really.

Once the pyre was built, Kratos laid Mithos upon it, gently unwrapping Yuan's cloak from his face. A proper funeral shroud, like the kinds that had been made once the War was over, when there was time for such things, would have been embroidered by the dead's loved ones; wishes for their afterlife, blessings, and final words. Kratos and Yuan had very limited ability to sew, and this funeral had been too long in coming. All that had needed to be said between them had been said anyway. Or had been known, at least.

As it was, Yuan's old cloak was the only shroud Mithos would get. Fitting enough. That cloak had seen them through their worst and best days, had been patched and resealed with wax and spells to keep the rain out.

"Wait," the Spirit said, stepping forward. Blades of grass and flower buds grew where she stepped. She stood over Mithos, and her face shifted once more until all Yuan could see was Martel. It was in the shape her sorrowful mouth made, in the trembling lines of her arms as she reached out to lay those delicate hands upon the body.

Sprigs of tulsi grew behind Mithos' ears. Lotuses blossomed about the pyre, while white lilies and roses bloomed at Mithos' feet. Branches of sandalwood creaked and groaned their way out from the center of the pyre. Red and white poppies unfurled about Mithos' throat, and a single poppy budded from the Spirit's fingers as she placed it over Mithos' lips.

The Spirit then took a step back. (In this moment, Martel is written in every line of her body, in every movement and every expression. Mithos would have preferred this, that Martel is with him here, at the end, in some form) "I know it's customary to speak at events like this," the Spirit said softly. "But those words aren't mine to give."

"I don't think he would have wanted any words said anyway," Yuan told her. "Too much dawdling, he would have said."

"I agree." Kratos met Yuan's eyes. "Together?"

"Together."

They stood across each other, summoning flames to their hands with old ease and placing their hands into the wood to let the fire catch. Once it did, they stepped back and didn't move, or say a word as the fire licked across the shroud, up through Mithos' face. It took hours for the body to finish burning, the smoke staining the stars until there was nothing left of Mithos Yggdrasill, but memories.