"In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present." -Sir Francis Bacon

He thinks she would be pretty with tears wetting her cheeks.

Ghirahim isn't sure she can even cry, being what she is. A sword made human, forced from the steel and magic used to make it, soul ripped from the physical body. He was made in such a way, though his memories of it are blackened with the smoke of war.

He breathes in the scent of decaying flesh and blazing fires. Blood dribbles down his chin and spatters along one pale cheek. The cloak about his shoulders matches the blood on his skin. Wind whips up embers from the charred earth, glittering momentarily, before being snuffed out entirely.

Fi stands before him, a field of dead bodies laid out between them.

She glows with a fey blue light. Amidst the darkness and the flames she stands, like the very Goddess who brought her to being.

Though she tries, she can never be human. This creation which stands before him is not a woman of flesh and blood, but a creation of magic and steel; a poor imitation of himself.

Slowly, he raises the point of his sword toward her, the ebony blade laced with gore. His pale lips smile.

"Poor thing. Your Goddess could not even grant you true human flesh. How does it feel, then? To stand amongst Death, unable to feel it touch your cheek?"

She doesn't speak.

Ghirahim sneers and slings the blood from his sword. He steps over the body of a nameless man, kicking it as he does. She watches him with those blue, peerless eyes. The color of the sky on a spring day.

It makes him sick.

They stand very near one another now, her face tilted up toward his, though hers incapable of expression. She stares at him with a serenity he could never master, and even when he reaches one hand toward her face, Fi doesn't move.

His fingers stray close to her cheek. He wonders if it would sting, to touch his flesh against hers, imbued with the magic to repel evil. Evil like himself, his Master, the death surrounding them.

How beautiful she would be, he thinks, had she real flesh. How wonderful she would look with the flush of death upon her throat.

"Demise will be vanquished," Fi says, voice quieter than smoke.

Ghirahim's slender fingers twitch.

All around them, fires blaze, throwing embers into the night sky.

His lips curl up and away from his teeth, fanged and shining. His lashes lower over dark, moonless eyes.

Then, he chuckles. It grows in fervor and length, shrill like metal on a whetting stone. The air is twisted with it.

He stops. The wind blows.

Ghirahim leans his head toward her, the light from her burning his skin. Her glistening blue lips part in silence.

"Better to be vanquished than to be cursed, my pretty bluebird. That Goddess of yours will use you, and that Hero, until the both of you run dry." He pulls the words long and tight, a hiss not borne of any man.

Fi disappears with a flash of azure, to reappear far up the hill, looking down to him from her perch above. She's his very own Goddess, glowing like a galaxy of stars. He wonders how far she'll fall.

If she's the light of stars, then he must surely be the darkness of the night.

Fi vanishes. He's alone with Death once more.