A/N: This one's actually pretty old, at least parts of it, though I dug it up recently and finished it. Just some pointless Locke-angst, because there's so little of it and we need more.
I failed her, years ago. It was my fault. She didn't start crawling around caves in her brother's old denims until we started seeing each other. She wouldn't have been on that bridge if not for me.
Sometimes I think I can still feel her hands as she pushed me – practically threw me, really – to safety on the other side. I turned to face her, annoyed, thinking it was a prank, and then I heard a scraping that wasn't footsteps, and somehow before I even saw it I knew and threw myself at the loose post, trying to grab it, and I saw her trying to run, losing her balance as the rock and cement gave way and the bridge spilled her into the ravine. I didn't even bother with ropes, just slid down the cliff, scraping my hands and legs and calling her name. She didn't answer.
I couldn't leave her, but I was afraid to move her, and we stayed in there for hours as I waited for each shallow breath, convinced that in the end I'd carry out her corpse, and just wanting not to let her die alone. Finally I heard voices, and waited another eternity as they fetched stretchers and set up pulleys and questioned me. I think they believed me, but her family wouldn't listen or forgive me. I couldn't forgive myself, either. They were right. It was my fault.
I shouldn't have gone away, but all I wanted was to leave behind the past and the guilt and the house I was never allowed to enter. I wandered for a while, and I started picking pockets again. My family had always been poor, and we did poach off the mayor's land and pick from other people's gardens, but that was only to survive. And sometimes I had lifted a few coins from a merchant's pocket in the pub, but those people never missed them. No one had ever completely forgotten about my family's reputation, but I'd lived honestly ever since I met her, trying to impress her parents, hoping they'd let us marry. No point to that now.
I thought I belonged in Zozo, city of failures and criminals. After all, I was both. I wasn't even close to prepared for what I found there, though, and I nearly got myself killed more than once. I had to learn to defend myself; I'd never been a fighter, before. I spent a year there, drifting between whores and bars and knife fights. I halfway wanted to get myself killed, but I couldn't quite seem to shed the damn survival instinct. I eventually left, crawled back to Kohlingen, not caring anymore whether it made it harder for her to start over. I didn't care if she started over at all. I needed her, selfishly, hopelessly, and when I came back she was beyond talking. They'd turned the inn into a makeshift hospital, after the invasion, because the real one only had a couple of hundred beds.
That's where I found her. She'd told the nurse about me, before she reached that point. I tore out of the inn, looking for the crazy old herbalist, hoping he'd survived. He had. I gave her over to him; her parents were dead, her brother had been shipped out with the rest of the new conscripts, all the young men who couldn't prove they were needed here. I was all she had. She was still breathing, her skin slightly warm to the touch. I left all the gold I had in the old man's hands.
I'd been a tramper before, too, so I hid in a boxcar on the train to Figaro, stole a chocobo and headed to Narshe. I don't know what I thought I was doing. I just wanted to get away from the Empire's reach, but instead I met Arvis. I was drunk, talking unguardedly; there, you could say things like "Fuck Gestahl with a sawblade" and not expect a soldier's fist in your gut or a chat with the magistrate. I also wasn't expecting the kindly old man who escorted me out at closing time, put me to bed, gave me herbs for my hangover and asked how much I hated the Empire. I'd had some panicky visions of being sold into life as a male prostitute and had been trying to decide if I could take him and any burly henchmen he might have in a fight, so his question took me by surprise. "More than anything," I answered, and then he told me about the Returners.
In Narshe, they weren't a rebel group, but obviously, within the Empire they were. In Figaro, the Empire's ally, they were criminals, classed as terrorists for lack of a better term. Elsewhere, they were officially just a political group, opposed to "globalization" and "imperialism" with a little i. But for all that, the pretensions of legitimacy, their biggest base in the north was still secret, in the mountains south of Narshe City. The path wasn't clearly marked, but Arvis knew the way. It was lucky I had him to vouch for me, because Banon would never never have trusted me otherwise. I was a scrawny, scruffy kid, sniffling with a cold I'd caught in the mountains, and he was a Doman, as imposing and formal as every other Doman I've met. Maybe it's something in the water there. At any rate, I told them my story of woe, and then I was shooed out of the room while they conferred, and then I was signed on as a spy.
My contacts in Zozo helped. So did a lifetime's worth of practice at sneaking and crawling into places I wasn't meant to be. I helped with the revolt in Kohlingen, sabotaging the armor and slitting the throats of guards. Once I would have recoiled at that, but my year in Zozo and the memory of Rachel's shallow breathing both helped. In Zozo, I'd had to kill; because of Rachel, I wanted to.
After that, almost all contact with the Empire was cut off. Only Figaro maintained legitimate trade, though there was still smuggling. There wasn't a whole lot to do for those of us in the north, not until the northern Returners gained enough strength to go on the offensive, and we couldn't do anything to help the resistance on the southern continent. We couldn't do anything to Figaro, either; Banon said that King Edgar was on our side. I became his liaison with the group, and we came close to being friends, close enough for me to tell him my story. I didn't like doing that with the other Returners. It felt too much like competition. "Empire drafted your brother? Well, they killed my girlfriend!" But I told him. And I told Terra, though I softened it a bit, calling it imprisonment. I didn't want to upset her. Poor girl had enough on her mind.
But I didn't tell Celes. I'm not sure why. Maybe because of the rumors I've heard that she was the one in charge of the invasion. Maybe because she looks a bit like Rachel around the eyes. I don't know. She found out soon enough, once we got here. I couldn't keep myself from visiting her house (now empty, boarded up) and of course I had to visit her. The others left me alone, making their inquiries while I did my thing, but we met up that evening and Edgar ordered a bottle of wine with dinner. With the mood I was in, it didn't take much to loosen my tongue. We're looking for Terra, now.
I promised to protect Terra, too. I seem to be terrible about keeping promises.