PRELIMINARIES: None of this belongs to me. Final Fantasy VI, and all worlds, characters, etc. associated with it are the property of Square. Square is not affiliated in any way, shape, or form with the creation of this story (a fact for which, I suspect, they would be profoundly grateful). I have made liberal usage of their characters and settings in this story; this was done without their knowledge or permission, and is technically an infringement of Square's copyright. As this story is, at the most pragmatic level, free promotion of the Final Fantasy franchise, it is hoped that they will regard this story (if at all) with a benign ignorance.
If you paid a wooden nickel for this story, not only have you been drastically overcharged, but whoever charged you has done so illegally, and I disavow any association with said individual(s).
This story is archived in .txt and .htm format at my website, The Codex Scribanus (see author profile). In the highly unlikely event that you wish to have a copy of this story for your own site's archives, you'll find distribution guidelines there.
All feedback is welcome, up to and including line-by-line critiques (provided they fit in my mailbox).
Now, sit back and either enjoy the ride, or (more likely) enjoy thinking of what you'll do to me at the end of it...
I'm not going to run...
People like me...
Never forget...
Be well...
Baram...
"NO!"
With a loud cry, I shot upright in a wordless scream. My head was consumed by a great roaring, while a chocobo the size of the moon danced in my gut. I felt, but did not see, the arms across my chest, forcing me down...down...
And then, there was silence.
The roaring died, and the chocobo slept; free of their tyranny, I passed to lesser masters--the ringing in my teeth, the ragged pain in my throat, the bruises that covered every inch of my body, and the bright light beating down on my clenched eyelids.
I dealt with this last dictator first. With a conscious effort, I relaxed my eyelids. The pain intensified. I wanted it to go away.
I opened my eyes.
At first, I thought the bright flash had blinded me. I squinted and blinked and shied away; but I refused to shut my eyes again, and in time, I was rewarded. The light dwindled until it became a lantern swinging back and forth over the bed on which I lay, suspended by a chain from a ceiling of wooden boards and rotting plaster. I looked up behind me, and saw a round window a few feet above my head.
With an effort, I forced myself up onto my elbows and raised my head. In the distance, I could make out two figures sitting at a table. I considered whether to call out to them; then, the chocobo awoke and made the decision for me.
I fell back onto the bed with a loud groan, clutching my stomach.
"He's awake!"
I felt, rather than heard, the pounding of the footsteps along the floor towards my bed. I opened my eyes in time to see a bright blur become a dark blur. A cool hand went to my forehead as the blur swirled and coalesced into two faces.
The face on the right was a man's face, lean and narrow, with a sharp chin and brown eyes. A shock of pale brown hair drooped over the dark band that crossed his brow. It was this face that spoke first.
"Shadow, are you all right?"
"Who? Wha--"
"Just take it easy." This from the second face, as the hand (which I surmised to be hers) rose from my brow. "From the look of things, you've have a rough few days." Whereas the first face was sharp in a rough, wiry sense, the second possessed a sharp delicacy, bordering on the exotic. A few strands of pale green hair drooped limply on one side, but what I really noticed were the eyes--a deep green, much darker than her hair; slanted slightly, and shot through with flecks of gold that glinted metallically in the lamplight. "How are you feeling?"
"Feeling? I--" The chocobo made itself known. "I've been better. I think."
"You're lucky to be alive," the man said. "Celes told me that if another day or two had gone by, you'd be dead."
"Locke!" The woman elbowed him sharply, eliciting a grunt. "The last thing he needs right now are specters of what might have been." She turned back to me. "What's important is that you're safe, and you'll get better."
"I guess I owe you, then."
She laughed. "Owe me! After all the times we've saved each other's lives, I hope you'd do the same for any of us. What are friends for?"
Friends...
I looked from the one to the other. "Would you mind if I asked you something?"
"Not at all, Shadow. What would you like to know?"
"Do I know you?"
LEAP OF FAITH
A Final Fantasy VI Fanfic
by
Lunaludus Scribex
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
CHAPTER I
The one they called Celes cut a...prominent figure. She was of middling height, with a slightly rounded face, flashing blue eyes, and hair that went down to her waist. Her posture, her voice, and her every gesture exuded assertion to the point of being overbearing--something which, I was learning, did not make for good bedside manners.
"It'll come back eventually?" I stared at her in disbelief. "That's it?"
She gave me an exasperated look that I was already far too familiar with. "Yes, that's it."
Locke, as the man was called, tried to intercede on my behalf. "Celes, can't you give him something a little more concrete, or--"
"Locke, I'm a soldier." Locke grimaced, glanced at me, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "I've seen this a thousand times. A man gets hit on the head or goes into shock from a fight, and when he comes to, he can't remember who he is or where he's from. It'll come back with time. I can't say how long, but it'll come back."
I shifted on my elbows, gritting my teeth and doing my best to ignore the chocobo's pronounced displeasure. "What should I do in the meantime?"
"Stay in bed. Get plenty of rest, and let your body heal. I don't know what you were doing in the week since we last saw you--"
"That makes two of us," I muttered under my breath.
"--but you banged yourself up pretty good doing it. Setzer's going to touch down in Albrook in a few minutes. We'll get you a room at an inn and see about getting you a doctor."
Setzer? Albrook? "Touch down?"
I saw them start and exchange a glance before Locke answered. "You're inside the world's only airship, my friend. A good thing, too--I don't know how you would have taken a three day hike."
"So that's what that buzzing noise is." I grimaced as the chocobo did a cartwheel. "The sooner we're down, the better. Maybe being on the ground will settle my stomach."
That earned me another startled glance. "What?"
"Nothing, really. It's just that..." Locke shook his head. "Nothing."
Well, it did settle my stomach.
I wish I could say that Albrook was at all familiar to me. It might have simply been that I'd never seen the city from stretcher-back before. More likely, it was that I was preoccupied with my own pain as Locke and Celes carried me through the city. I felt every step they took--every uneven step, every turned ankle, every stumble, every texture of the cobblestone street engraved itself on my bones. It was all I could do to think of breathing, and when they set me down and I saw the stairs, I knew I was going to die.
I don't know if passing out from sheer pain counts as dying or not. I wasn't splitting hairs about the difference--I got to go through the same thing coming back to life if I did, which was not something I'd pay gold to go through again. When I next regained my sense of the outside world, it was to an old man's wheeze.
"He'll be all right. There's no internal bleeding and he doesn't have any broken bones--though with bruises like those, that's nothing short of a miracle."
A chuckle. "He's rather resilient." Locke's voice.
"I can see that. But even so--I would never have believed someone looking like that could even be alive, let alone well on the way to recovery. This is a very lucky man."
"...Is he?"
I didn't open my eyes, and neither of them spoke again.
The pain slowly subsided. Bone weariness replaced it, and I drifted off into a dark, dreamless void that I somehow knew. I couldn't say how long it kept its hold on me; when I finally emerged, it was to the moonlight streaming through an open window directly across from me. I slowly, gingerly sat up and peered into the darkness of my room at the inn.
I heard a soft snore to my right, and snapped around; but it took a moment before my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw the figure asleep in a chair next to my bed, head bowed. The sleeper had long hair, and was swathed in a blanket; I couldn't tell who it was, and after a moment, I gave up the effort.
I laid back and closed my eyes, but I was not tired; after only a moment or two I gave up the effort and sat up again. A warm breeze ran through the room, brushing against my face and through my hair, and I had a sudden urge to see what was outside that window.
Slowly, so as not to awaken whoever was asleep beside me, I pushed back the bedsheets. In the moonlight, I could see that all I wore was a loin cloth, and while I suspected that should have bothered me, at the moment I was hot and sticky and grateful I wasn't wearing anything more. I swung my legs over the side and eased my feet to the floor, coming down in an easy crouch on the balls of my feet.
I carefully straightened, though I continued to lean on the bed, and slowly tip-toed forward, placing each foot gingerly in front of the next and testing for creaks in the floorboards. My confidence grew with each step; after about ten, I came to the end of the bed. I straightened completely, and took my next step.
It was almost my last, as my legs gave out from under me. In desperation, I fell back on the bed with a thump that was all too loud to my ears. The sleeper groaned. I froze.
"...mumble mumble Terra mumble mumble..."
It seemed an eternity before the sleeper was finally still again, and another before I could convince myself that he was in fact asleep and shift back, lowering my feet to the floor. When they finally touched, I straightened much more slowly this time, and put one foot forward. I felt my legs scream in protest; but it was not the sudden collapse I had experienced before, and I forced myself to ignore it.
Step after step, I focused all my energies on staying upright, ignoring my progress for fear of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of my task. Eternity after eternity after eternity...and then, I was there, staggering up and throwing my arms on the window sill to look at the world outside.
And I saw Eternity.
All of Albrook spread out before me. I saw cluster after cluster of buildings, glowing with lamps in their windows and laughter in the distance, far into the night; beyond them, endless water glittered before my eyes. I looked up and beheld the jewel-encrusted cloak of the sky stretching out before me. It screamed of the unlimited, of the unexplored, and I soared along with it. My energy was limitless; my boundaries fell away. I was no longer a mere admirer of the grandeur before me--I was the grandeur.
The room suddenly felt unbearably confining. I turned to wake the sleeper--and I saw the mirror.
It was a full-length mirror, propped up in the corner; next to it stood a small table, on which rested a large brush and a number of bottles and implements whose purpose I could not begin to fathom. The man in the mirror stared back at me, hunched feebly over the window sill. I couldn't help myself; I shuffled over for a closer look.
The man I saw was tall, lithe, well-muscled, and black and blue all over. His body was riddled with scars, some littler than others; all were dwarfed by the ancient slash that extended across his chest from hip to shoulder. I leaned in closer for a look at his face, covered by what looked to be a couple of weeks' worth of fuzz. It was not pretty; sharp, but with far too square a jaw for its narrowness, topped by a small shock of sickly pale hair and marred by a fading black eye and an unnaturally angled nose. His eyes were black slits, haunted and piercing and unforgiving. I broke out in a cold sweat as I lost myself in them; they felt detached from me, as if they were not my eyes, but someone else's.
They might as well have been. The man in the mirror was a complete stranger.
I regarded that stranger for a moment longer, then turned back to my bed.
I was tired after all.
UT ANIMAM SUAM QUIS PONAT PRO AMICIS SUIS