Author's Note: I own neither the characters nor the world, and I earn nothing but personal satisfaction from my writing. Please don't sue me, I have no money.

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There was a certain cachet to being one of the "heroes" who saved the world. He snorted to himself at the notion. Heroes? A batch of misfits cobbled together for various reasons. Where the hell else would you find a traitor, a dark knight turned paladin, a white mage, the last living Caller, and a renegade ninja prince?

Still, people recognized him. This was both a good thing and a bad thing. Some of them thanked him. Some spit on the ground when they thought he wasn't looking. It seemed his name was known everywhere.

This was not what he had envisioned when he imagined earning glory as a Dragoon to honour his father's name.

Cecil's trial on Mt. Ordeals had expiated his sins. Kain's seemed to have earned him tolerance, at best, and he wondered how much of that was Cecil's doing.

Cecil had Rosa, the kingdom of Baron, and the eternal glory of being the Paladin who defeated Zemus.

And Kain had nothing, not even his good name.