Grounded, chapter 1
Dec. 25th, 2020 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Locke
Word count: ~1300
Warnings: Canon-typical post-apoc stuff! I threw together some content notes for the fic as a whole on Pastebin because I had no better ideas for maintaining the very tenuous pretense of anonymity.
Notes: Chapter 1 of 8 of a gift for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
ovely for Yuletide 2020. This is likely to be FFVI's last year of Yuletide eligibility and I have a lot of thoughts about Edgar and Locke, so I maybe kinda pulled out all the stops. Morri came up with the title (I was stuck on terrible bird puns that didn't fit the tone at all) and was an immense help in getting this drafted and revised!
The gas bag was punctured and time seemed to be moving very slowly. A calm and fatalistic voice inside him whispered, “It's happening.” They were losing altitude already, and they would soon be falling faster. The voice said “It's happening again.” He looked toward the bow – toward the stern – dammit, where was he supposed to be? Where could he help? What could he do? What could anyone?
There were coils of ropes amidships – was that good for anything? Any way to slow their descent, or keep these groaning timbers together? He looked at Setzer – no, no use there, guy was staring in glazed resignation at the steering wheel as it jerked and shivered in his hands. Edgar, then? He knew all this physics stuff – Locke turned toward him, but then staggered – the ship's back was broken – fore and aft starting to skew away from each other, the planks yawning wide to show into the hold and then through the hold into roiling gray sky -
And the voice in Locke's head said, dispassionately, “She's going to fall. Again. And you're not going to do anything.”
The hell I'm not, he thought, suddenly regaining control of his limbs. Celes – Celes had been standing by the rail, Celes who he could never make anything up to – he sprinted toward her, not even knowing what he meant to do, but it'd at least be something -
But the Blackjack's broken hulk yawed to one side and the timbers splintered under the strain, like toothpicks, and before he could reach her she was dropping out of view. He threw out his hand and for an instant he thought he saw her staring back, wide-eyed, but – did he not reach far enough? Was she not reaching back?
“You let that happen,” the voice said, and he whirled around in fury, stuffing the despair down for later – he would prove it wrong, he'd do something right, he'd save somebody -
Across a widening gulf in the deck, the wind whipping in their faces, Edgar called to him, “Locke! Do you know Float?”
“No. But if we can get – if we can just -”
“That's too bad. I don't, either.” Edgar was – grinning, actually. As if there were any appearances left to keep up.
“What do we do?” Locke shouted at him.
“Well. Nothing, I'm afraid. Prayer won't accomplish much now, if it ever did.”
Why was he like this? Why was he like this now? “Small words! Talk fast! We need a plan! I won't let anyone else -”
It happened so slowly, in his mind's eye, and he still wasn't fast enough – a mass of blocks and line came down from the hemorrhaging balloon and smashed to the deck before Edgar's feet, and even that slight weight was enough – the two halves of the ship whirling away from each other – every one of them falling, and falling alone.
“Gods, you're stupid,” said the voice in his head. “This is what you get. A rat like you, thinking he could save anyone.”
The gas supply gave out. The balloon collapsed, empty. And that was that.
*
A red explosion of pain, and he saw Rachel, dim and shadowy, going through the steps alone of a country dance that was always meant to be partnered. Unsteadily he ran to take his place at her side -
*
- and woke, in a stand of bramble, his clothes and skin torn to shreds. His mangled traveling bag spilled red-gold feathers that charred to black as their magic spent, dragging him back from the precipice every time. It was morning; it was not worth counting how many times he must have died in the night.
He woke, and wept himself sick, lying in thorns and blood under a flat orange sky. “This is what happens,” said the voice inside him, as he stared sightlessly upward. “This was always gonna happen. You've never managed to hold onto anything.”
Evening came, and the survival instinct won out. He clumsily cut himself out of the thicket, and found he could walk without resorting to the few weak healing spells the dead Espers had drilled into him, and gathered up all the Phoenix down that hadn't yet crumbled. What to do with it now he didn't know.
From the flakes of ash snowing out of his bag, in the second morning of the new world, he might have died again overnight, of his injuries or sun poisoning or the cold. He might have died as much as twice. Or maybe this was leftovers from his fall. Did it matter? He was alive, and in all likelihood, alone. Had anyone else had enough Phoenix down on hand to ward off death from that fall? Not likely. Relm or the old man might have been able to pull something off with magic; Terra could fly if she remembered in time, if she had the strength left to transform; Celes -
- had gone down over that dark ocean and he hadn't saved her, hadn't even been able to convince her he was sorry, he'd never gotten to say “hey I saw you on the Floating Continent and you're a miracle and I feel like shit for ever doubting,” and he wondered now, playing the moment back in his head over and over again, if she had refused his hand on purpose.
It stormed for several days, off-colored clouds dumping their burden of lightning and sleet. He improvised a shelter under the trees and foraged halfheartedly; every animal he encountered seemed disoriented and afraid, easy enough to knock over the head. If he let anything happen to him, the Phoenix would reel him back in again, and he hated the idea of wasting something so beautiful. For the same reason, he couldn't just abandon its gift – walk off into the wilderness and leave the parcel of Phoenix down behind and let what happened, happen. No. He was alive, and he didn't want to believe in a universe where these things happened without reason.
His strength slowly came back, but he lost it again every night, staring into his weak fire and sorting the Returners into the might-have-made-its and the certainly-dead.
Edgar was the latter, right? Had to be. Stupid bastard was flippant to the last, and no one would ever see him again. He had been a friend, and a good one, and now he was just one more person who'd slipped through Locke's fingers. One more person he couldn't protect, if he'd even presumed to try.
Was this all to teach me a lesson? he thought, wildly, one feverish midnight. He had not slept, he had barely eaten, and he had not bothered to fix the gap in his roof that kept dripping icy rain down the back of his neck. (He had thought, Okay, this sensation will help me focus, it's a good reason not to lie around crying, if I can't rest then I'll get up and do something – but it hadn't been a good enough reason. He had still lain around crying and now he was soaked and brutally cold.) He thought, Am I supposed to learn from this? Am I being smacked down for arrogance? For not wanting to let go?
No. That'd be too cruel, hurting so many people just to get at him. Too many people, and amazing people, gods damn it all.
So why had he lived?
And it broke on him with delirious clarity: the Phoenix. He was alive because the Phoenix wanted it, because there was one thing left he had to do. So many mistakes over the years he could do nothing about, so many right things done for the wrong reasons – but if he could go back to the beginning, and make amends for that one crucial failure -
The next he remembered it was hours later, his fever had broken, and one more charred feather spilled out of his fingers.
“Okay,” he said, his voice rusty from disuse. “Got the message. I'll stay alive the normal way from now.”
Characters: Locke
Word count: ~1300
Warnings: Canon-typical post-apoc stuff! I threw together some content notes for the fic as a whole on Pastebin because I had no better ideas for maintaining the very tenuous pretense of anonymity.
Notes: Chapter 1 of 8 of a gift for
The gas bag was punctured and time seemed to be moving very slowly. A calm and fatalistic voice inside him whispered, “It's happening.” They were losing altitude already, and they would soon be falling faster. The voice said “It's happening again.” He looked toward the bow – toward the stern – dammit, where was he supposed to be? Where could he help? What could he do? What could anyone?
There were coils of ropes amidships – was that good for anything? Any way to slow their descent, or keep these groaning timbers together? He looked at Setzer – no, no use there, guy was staring in glazed resignation at the steering wheel as it jerked and shivered in his hands. Edgar, then? He knew all this physics stuff – Locke turned toward him, but then staggered – the ship's back was broken – fore and aft starting to skew away from each other, the planks yawning wide to show into the hold and then through the hold into roiling gray sky -
And the voice in Locke's head said, dispassionately, “She's going to fall. Again. And you're not going to do anything.”
The hell I'm not, he thought, suddenly regaining control of his limbs. Celes – Celes had been standing by the rail, Celes who he could never make anything up to – he sprinted toward her, not even knowing what he meant to do, but it'd at least be something -
But the Blackjack's broken hulk yawed to one side and the timbers splintered under the strain, like toothpicks, and before he could reach her she was dropping out of view. He threw out his hand and for an instant he thought he saw her staring back, wide-eyed, but – did he not reach far enough? Was she not reaching back?
“You let that happen,” the voice said, and he whirled around in fury, stuffing the despair down for later – he would prove it wrong, he'd do something right, he'd save somebody -
Across a widening gulf in the deck, the wind whipping in their faces, Edgar called to him, “Locke! Do you know Float?”
“No. But if we can get – if we can just -”
“That's too bad. I don't, either.” Edgar was – grinning, actually. As if there were any appearances left to keep up.
“What do we do?” Locke shouted at him.
“Well. Nothing, I'm afraid. Prayer won't accomplish much now, if it ever did.”
Why was he like this? Why was he like this now? “Small words! Talk fast! We need a plan! I won't let anyone else -”
It happened so slowly, in his mind's eye, and he still wasn't fast enough – a mass of blocks and line came down from the hemorrhaging balloon and smashed to the deck before Edgar's feet, and even that slight weight was enough – the two halves of the ship whirling away from each other – every one of them falling, and falling alone.
“Gods, you're stupid,” said the voice in his head. “This is what you get. A rat like you, thinking he could save anyone.”
The gas supply gave out. The balloon collapsed, empty. And that was that.
*
A red explosion of pain, and he saw Rachel, dim and shadowy, going through the steps alone of a country dance that was always meant to be partnered. Unsteadily he ran to take his place at her side -
*
- and woke, in a stand of bramble, his clothes and skin torn to shreds. His mangled traveling bag spilled red-gold feathers that charred to black as their magic spent, dragging him back from the precipice every time. It was morning; it was not worth counting how many times he must have died in the night.
He woke, and wept himself sick, lying in thorns and blood under a flat orange sky. “This is what happens,” said the voice inside him, as he stared sightlessly upward. “This was always gonna happen. You've never managed to hold onto anything.”
Evening came, and the survival instinct won out. He clumsily cut himself out of the thicket, and found he could walk without resorting to the few weak healing spells the dead Espers had drilled into him, and gathered up all the Phoenix down that hadn't yet crumbled. What to do with it now he didn't know.
From the flakes of ash snowing out of his bag, in the second morning of the new world, he might have died again overnight, of his injuries or sun poisoning or the cold. He might have died as much as twice. Or maybe this was leftovers from his fall. Did it matter? He was alive, and in all likelihood, alone. Had anyone else had enough Phoenix down on hand to ward off death from that fall? Not likely. Relm or the old man might have been able to pull something off with magic; Terra could fly if she remembered in time, if she had the strength left to transform; Celes -
- had gone down over that dark ocean and he hadn't saved her, hadn't even been able to convince her he was sorry, he'd never gotten to say “hey I saw you on the Floating Continent and you're a miracle and I feel like shit for ever doubting,” and he wondered now, playing the moment back in his head over and over again, if she had refused his hand on purpose.
It stormed for several days, off-colored clouds dumping their burden of lightning and sleet. He improvised a shelter under the trees and foraged halfheartedly; every animal he encountered seemed disoriented and afraid, easy enough to knock over the head. If he let anything happen to him, the Phoenix would reel him back in again, and he hated the idea of wasting something so beautiful. For the same reason, he couldn't just abandon its gift – walk off into the wilderness and leave the parcel of Phoenix down behind and let what happened, happen. No. He was alive, and he didn't want to believe in a universe where these things happened without reason.
His strength slowly came back, but he lost it again every night, staring into his weak fire and sorting the Returners into the might-have-made-its and the certainly-dead.
Edgar was the latter, right? Had to be. Stupid bastard was flippant to the last, and no one would ever see him again. He had been a friend, and a good one, and now he was just one more person who'd slipped through Locke's fingers. One more person he couldn't protect, if he'd even presumed to try.
Was this all to teach me a lesson? he thought, wildly, one feverish midnight. He had not slept, he had barely eaten, and he had not bothered to fix the gap in his roof that kept dripping icy rain down the back of his neck. (He had thought, Okay, this sensation will help me focus, it's a good reason not to lie around crying, if I can't rest then I'll get up and do something – but it hadn't been a good enough reason. He had still lain around crying and now he was soaked and brutally cold.) He thought, Am I supposed to learn from this? Am I being smacked down for arrogance? For not wanting to let go?
No. That'd be too cruel, hurting so many people just to get at him. Too many people, and amazing people, gods damn it all.
So why had he lived?
And it broke on him with delirious clarity: the Phoenix. He was alive because the Phoenix wanted it, because there was one thing left he had to do. So many mistakes over the years he could do nothing about, so many right things done for the wrong reasons – but if he could go back to the beginning, and make amends for that one crucial failure -
The next he remembered it was hours later, his fever had broken, and one more charred feather spilled out of his fingers.
“Okay,” he said, his voice rusty from disuse. “Got the message. I'll stay alive the normal way from now.”
