Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cecil Harvey stood before his closest remaining friends in this second, diminished life.

"All that I have meant to do is protect the crystals. Our legacy," he said, looking them down from his full height. Only Kain Highwind was taller, and as ever lately, Kain stood behind Cecil and did nothing.

"Our legacy," Cecil continued, "and all that remains of what we fought for, and won, and deserved! We-"

Edge's voice cracked like a whip. "Yeah, I know what you meant to do," he said. "What I'm worried about is what you're actually doing."

"That's immaterial," Cecil said, and this was familiar to them all. This was Paladin-king Cecil cooling the temper of Edward the Masked, as he had in meetings and debates at the kings' tables in times of yore. 

But something this time was different.

Edge let Cecil know it. "It's very material," he said. "Germane, even, Your Paladin-ness. Refounding Baron and Eblan? Taking land from people who don't even know those names?"

Rydia placed a hand on Edge's arm and looked at Cecil. She had no lack of practice looking up at Cecil with fear and suspicion. She just had never wanted to use it in this life, and so had given him chance after chance after chance.

"Just one thing," she said.

"Anything," Cecil said, smiling and, as always, looking like he meant it. "I have always said I will give you anything in my power I can give."

"I want Kain to say he is under his own thoughts-" Rydia said.

Cecil's brow furrowed, and the dignified little smile intended to soothe turned in on itself in a grimacing flash. "As he has already, many times-"

"Don't interrupt me, Harvey," Rydia said.

Cecil stopped. Emotions warred on his face, carried up by shock. 

"I want Kain to say it, to Rosa's face, when you are out of the room," Rydia said.

Rosa nodded. Pale and grim, she had said nothing once they had passed the point of no return with Cecil.

"I can't allow that," Cecil said, mouth closing shut with a click of teeth.

It took a moment for the exchange to ripple through everyone's awareness. They had expected more politicking, more wheedling, more perseverating. Even Cecil himself is a little surprised at how fast he was able to say it.

"What? Why?" Edge said, and then shoved himself in front of Rydia.

Cecil was already casting.

Kain only vaguely remembered the first time he suspected Cecil wasn't the same man as that last, glorious lifetime. (Well. It had been more glorious for some than others.) They were arguing over something, and in the middle of it Cecil tutted and shook his head.

"Oh, but Kain," Cecil said, "Kain, Kain, Kain. You've always been jealous. You would have ruined it for everyone again this time, and for what? Just to spite me?"

The only emotion Kain could show was the furious clenching of his jaw. He had to hold it together. He wasn't sure why. His tongue worked at his teeth, pushing at squeezing out some truth from his desperate lungs, but he couldn't find the lie in Cecil's words. He was always jealous of him, always had been. Cecil was right. Kain needed to work harder to be a good friend.

For one terrifying second Kain's chin wrinkled like it might before crying tears. He had not felt that way in a long time. His thoughts caught around it, what could be making him upset, and couldn't answer it. Couldn't settle. Would Cecil see the weakness in him, as he might have in their long-ago friendship? Would Cecil reassure him or use it against him?

Would this new Cecil somehow do both? Kain had the dawning realization it had already happened, and often.

Cecil smiled. "Don't forget," he said. "We are our best when we work together."

And once again, Kain's thoughts dipped down beneath the cover of Cecil's comforting, poisoned reminder, that had stung like a bite at the end of a kiss.

And now he stands behind Cecil like a statue, a golem, a wind-up toy. Like a . . a . . . a pupp-  

When did this go so wrong? he thinks.

Rydia's voice drags him out of his stupor. Her voice becomes words in time to realize she's arguing with Cecil. And Cecil - 

Denies Rydia? 

No, that can't be right. Cecil would never. Even unto a future, reincarnated life, Cecil would have felt like he still owed Rydia. As, deep within, Kain still does.

Something falls out of Kain's heart. It's shaped like the horrified glance of a boy a year younger than him. When they were both still boys pretending to be men, Cecil a dark knight, the kindest soldier in all of Baron, whipping round to shove Kain back from a cringing green foundling.

When did it all go wrong? Kain thinks. He cannot remember if he has thought it before.

They are all moving so fast when he pays attention again. Cecil is saying something to him. Kain cannot answer. His mind is vibrating like a plucked string. It reminds him of something. He remembers the . . . bard? The monk? No, that was in Fabul, when he looked at Rosa and he almost . . . When he first almost . . . 

Edge cannot make it past Cecil's protection spell, and Cecil has also slowed them all. Fine spider-silk threads of white magic pull them down just enough to impede. Rosa does not have her bow and Cecil has armor that resists white magic. Kain shudders, and hears his armor rattle like a pail, and is too busy being useless. 

Then Rydia finishes casting, steps out from behind Edge, and a light as bright as the sun pours forth from her hands. Kain remembers this magic, first from the Tower of Zot, and then the continuous fighting after that. It is unlike any normal magecraft. He cannot sense magic but his teeth hurt and his mind is about to crack like a overbent bow. He can sense this. It is from where destructive black magic and constructive white magic come close to meeting, as a circle, as the two halves of the whole they are in truth. It mirrors another, white magic spell, its only rival, that nameless deliverance known only by its adjective, Holy. 

Rydia whispers, "Meteor," and Cecil screams. 

Kain remembers what this did to him last time, and yet he cannot brace for it -

He passes out. 

Chapter Text

Kain woke up in pain, in body and mind, and even his soul. He didn't have full consciousness yet, more drowsing than awake. 

Someone was in his thoughts. Again. Again and again. Beyond the anger he might have had, or the sorrow, he just felt tired. Like throwing up his hands to shrug and say, "Ah, not again."

It was that realization that sparked a bit of hope under his heart. He had never held so much self-awareness before, in Zemus's thrall, either under Golbez or Cecil - 

Cecil. 

Kain remembered Edge in a private nook of the Lunar Whale, relating to him the story of Theodor Harvey, Golbez, Kluya's elder son and Cecil's brother. Kain's own confusion and regret had fogged up what would have otherwise been an impressive shock. However, only the matters of immediate survival and attack were important to any of them. Still, Cecil could not hide the deep wound it left. In the constant half-dawn of flying through space, as Rydia and Rosa hid in the stairwell, Edge forgave Kain faster than he would have. He needed Kain's help to circle around Cecil's fraying thoughts.

Edge had said to Kain, "It scared him real bad. For a minute all he could say was it could have just as easily been him."

Did that possibility still exist, untold millenia later? When Cecil was not even half-Lunarian in body, but only possibly in spirit? There were always more questions than answers. It seemed they had all moved forward without thinking again, falling right into the motions Zeromus expected of them. Again.

Kain scrunched his face in pain and confusion. "He's waking up," someone said. 

He had a more difficult time sorting through if his head was addled when he was conscious, Kain realized with a spike of dread. He was here, self-aware. He had an important tool. He had moments before he woke up and he needed to use them, because he was here and so was someone else. Someone was here with him, in his head, and he could sense them like a neighbor that might be spying. Familiar, but not pressing down on him, like . . . 

He started to wake up. 

No, Kain thought. No. Tell me who you are.

In a twisting whirl like a shocked animal, the neighbor in his thoughts turned their attention towards Kain and answered him. What? What? Who's there? . . . 

Kain was so surprised he almost opened his eyes. He tried to sink back into drowsing wakefulness, but as ever for disappointed dreamers, such thoughts were more defined by change, and not a single state of mind one could return to by command. It did not exist except as transition. Still Kain pulled himself back down, like the peak of a dragoon jump sending him back to earth. 

The other someone said, Who I am? I should ask who you are instead. You reached out to me, and no one . . . Their thoughts stuttered to a halt. They looked at Kain again, and this time through his head like clear glass. 

Help, Kain said. He struggled. Help. Cecil.

His unknown neighbor, that he knew but didn't recognize, had thoughts that now felt tentative and kind, but slow to react. Their mind crouched low, spooked, as though afraid of Kain as much as Kain was of . . . them, and himself, and Cecil and Zemus and everybody. He thought of Golbez, again, for no reason. 

. . . Kain, the neighbor said. What's happening? What's wrong? 

Help, Kain said. Rosa was cupping his face, and carding a hand through his hair. Do not wake up, he ordered himself, but he couldn't stop it. The way he was speaking, his thoughts pulling on top of each other with no point, he was about to lose it, lose the unconscious waking and the chance to talk, and he needed their help. He needed it. Help. Cecil. Help Cecil. 

Cecil? they said back to him. They hesitated, then gave a sharp but gentle pull at Kain's own head. Kain recognized the insistence. It felt very familiar, but like a secret handshake or tug on his arm given by hands he didn't realize could also be gentle. Cecil's in trouble? 

At the exact same moment Kain answered, Cecil. Cecil, trouble. Help Cecil, he recognized the voice. 

Oh, shit, he thought. 

Wait! Kain- 

Kain woke up. 

"Oh, shit," he said, and then frowned up at Rosa. 

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Kain's thoughts stalled like an airship run aground into a swamp. "I don't know," he said. Had he been talking to someone?

Rosa met his frown with one of her own. "Can you follow my finger?" she said. And she followed white mage concussion protocol as dutifully as ever, which put Kain at a bit of ease, although he was still floundering, and wanted someone to pop open his skull and clean out the bilge of his thoughts. Wait, he never used to use so many damn ship metaphors . . . 

Although once brothers, there were some major differences between being controlled by Cecil and Golbez. 

He hoped having Cecil Goddamned Harvey, Lord Captain of the Red Fucking Wings in his thoughts all the time wouldn't leave too many after-effects, but it seemed that ship had already . . . Fuck.