Work Text:
He stands before you, metaphorical hand extended even with a weapon in it as its constant companion, an invitation to the final dance he desires, and it's -
His selfish desire. This man who claims to be your friend only because he has never understood anything of friendship. And yes, he saved your ass and you are not ungrateful, but you have also spent most of the last five years beating into yourself (occasionally literally) that it's okay to have a line in the sand. That you, too, are allowed selfish desires.
"Zenos," you say, letting the mask fall, letting everything slip out, here at the end of the world, where no one who relies on you to be strong is going to see it. "I'm tired. All I want is to go home."
If there were Elpis flowers here at the end of the world, growing here on this flat coin where sky and mirror meet, they would have drooped around you. But there's just you and Zenos and the endless blankness of his dream of a battlefield, and that's... That's just it, isn't it?
There's nothing there. Not even despair. Just this one emptiness that calls itself glory, and fulfillment, and joy, because there is naught else.
How ironic, for the man who said himself that every person must find their own reason for living. Regardless of what anyone else thinks of it...
In the moment that you realzie this, Zenos has frozen, hesitated for perhaps the first time in his life. Rejecting him is easy, was easy, every time until now. Rejecting things is easy; learning the truths behind them, accepting those truths, that's always been the hard part.
In this place beyond the end, you glimpse that truth, the emptiness that lies beneath, the darkness he's been treading water in so desparately, and you -
(Your selfish desire is simply this: That at the end, everyone gets to go home.)
(Your strength is love, is the flame in the abyss, and it always has been. You have made the dead walk, from love and want of love alone, in places that are both simpler and more complicated than this.)
(The empty battlefield is his, but you have the gift and the knowledge both, and the will required to change it.)
And you step closer to Zenos, your eyes not leaving his even as you have to crane your neck, and you offer him your hand.
"Do you want to see it?" you ask. "My reason for coming this far?"
(You need only ask.)
His expression closes off, minutely, but it isn't a refusal. You can't recognize the emotion in it, even with the air so thick with dynamis that you should be able to taste it. Perhaps it's because Zenos doesn't know, himself.
You (are a bastard, even if it has to be his decision in the end, to take your hand) pull out your trump card, and say, "You're the one always calling us friends. And here I am, offering you the hand of friendship. Take it."
You didn't intend the words to come out in the voice they do, (It's a compliment.) but somewhere between the words, their tone, and the fact that he's categorically incapable of backing down from a challenge, the bastard does, indeed, take your hand.
Even now, trying to boil it down is hard. But in this place, you know already that even as tired as you are, it is so much more your power than his, and you pull from the strongest, not the best, because the world isn't only happiness and that is what makes it worth living.
The anger. (Nidhogg sweeps your victory out from under you, two eyes and a ghost, and takes one of your hard-earned friends away.) (Zenos himself, in Rhalgr's Reach, not even looking at the blood he spilled across the ground.) (Vauthry, and the taste of Lightwardens, and a gunshot.)
The joy. (The sea of stars, spilling open, unending, as the light retreated.) (Hien, standing tall, raising his nation's banner with his own hands over the ruins of his birthplace.) (Ga Bu's voice, trembling and rusty from disuse, and Alisaie's answer, choked with tears.)
The sorrow. (Kairos, your hand outstretched, a scream dying in your throat, because you knew from the beginning that this was how it had to end.) (Wilred's corpse, abandoned in a bog, floating long enough that the water wasn't even stained red.) (A bolt of light, a shield between you and danger, and how can you smile knowing that your power wasn't enough to save even one person?)
The fear and the relief. (Finding two friends in a violet forest as the sky rains stars.) (Matsuya, holding an infant in his arms, and seeing his salvation descend on dragon's wings.) (Alphinaud, in the arms of an old enemy, and taking him into your own, taking him home, and seeing them all on the other side of everything.)
And most of all - most of all, the moments those things all connected. (We did everything right, everything that was asked of us - ) (Tesleen, her eyes turned to the heavens, telling you of the Warrior of Darkness and the sunless sky she would never get to see.) ( - And where you go, fate will surely follow.)
To Zenos, for that transcendent moment, you give all of that and more. You bloom ripples like flowers across that empty field, crystalline petals raining across the dead land.
And in the last, you give him -
(I forgive you. I forgive you. My friend, my enemy. For who else would? Who else could offer him that kindness but you?)
- what is in the end, just a taste of the reason. And for a moment his expression is so open, so got, a childlike wonder out of place on his face, halfway to gaping. It brings you more satisfaction than another round of beating his ass in ever would.
Finally, he exhales through his mouth, too quiet to be called a sigh, and says, "I see. So that is where your strength comes from." Now he sounds as tired as you feel. (Perhaps you projected that a bit too strongly.) "A pity. It is too late to change my path, my reasons - though i do appreciate the effort."
The words are chill, toneless - from anyone less absurdly sincere in all things than Zenos, they would sound like sarcasm. You say, "It's not too late if you try. You made it out here, wading through despair, the same as any of the rest of us. And you have something like the Echo, even if you're shite at using it."
His eyebrows raise, a little accusatory, as if to say who are you to accuse me of being shite at it? You can't even bodyhop.
You continue, "In this place, you can change yourself if you want. Either do it or don't."
"Hmph." But he hasn't let go of your hand. For a moment, he even squeezes, and you feel the sensation of his aether through it, uncannily peaking as his eyes flash from dead-inside blue to ghost-inside red glyph on black.
You don't know if he's actually done anything or not, though the way dynamis feels like it's swirling tighter around him is perhaps tellng. You did your part, and the rest is up to him, the same way it is for every other person.
You say, "Come on, you arserag. Let's go home." And when you extend your hand - the one not still held by his - into it falls a familiar device from the open, endless sky.
Three warning beeps, and together, you leave that empty place behind.