[You've been through this two times before by now. You've each spilled enough blood to end two lives apiece, their corpses lying in the room you leave behind one final time. You've watched your friends and loved ones tear each other to shreds, anguished in the split between their fierce and combating desires to live and to protect.
Before entering the cell, a different variable will be introduced to the experiment for both participants.
A memory is implanted in Luke. You're born to a father who hates you more than anything else, for reasons no one can comprehend. He treats you coldly from before you can walk, calling you monster, a wretched blight, never once referring to you by name, always by "that thing". Your station in life - a relatively high noblefamily - keeps you isolated. You know no love or friendship in or out of the walls of your manor, but you still hope for both someday. On your tenth birthday, your father spits on these wishes by hiring assassins to kill you. Your survival is accidental; in your scramble to escape, you set something explosive alight, blowing the entire ballroom to bits. You are the only survivor, and it embitters you. You wanted for so little, and life gave you even less. You never wished to live at the expense of others, and yet, they pushed you into such an awful situation. Spite is your primary driving force now, and has been for years. You refuse to die, because every moment that you're alive is your way of saying fuck you to the cosmic entity that put you in this shitty situation to begin with.
In the cell, the following await you: hedge clippers, a glaive, an oodachi.
But the heart isn’t so simple. The other strong feeling demanding your attention is your relationship with the person you’re in the cell with—what you know, genuinely know of them, and all the feelings that come with that.
It's just the two of you now, no one left to hope for your survival or reel away from the carnage. You've claimed your right to this final fight through strength, luck, and the fuel of your feelings. Someone is waiting for you to answer their question.
But more importantly, the time has finally come to answer it for yourself: is emotion worthwhile, even though it will most certainly destroy you from the inside? Even though it already has?]
[Can he, like, stop surviving for once. That would be nice.
The space outside is a reprieve. It lets him sit with the weight of what he's done, listening to the echoes of screams and sobs that permeate his memories.
He knew what it was like to take a life before the Eudora. He'd accepted those black marks on his soul for the greater good, because the world has never been simple and straightforward. He'd survived mission after mission because he'd sworn to--both in his work, and in his heart.
But that is so, so different from this. And out here, with his true memories pulling ahead of the blur of implanted lives, his justifications don't hold up. How could he want survival so badly? At the cost of Dahut, a clever genius, but weak and terrified? At the cost of Sheba, always so willing to put herself in danger for them? In this room, his victories are personal failings. They are signs of broken promises and a weak will. And he knows it's futile, but as he's collected for one last round, he struggles against the cloaked figures anyway--not to save others from further bloodshed, but to selfishly, desperately, put an end to this wretched survival.
I'll choose to live. But he can't. He's not worth this.
And maybe in the next life, he'll get his wish granted--but not in this one. In this one, more rage is forced into his heart. Memories of disdain and hatred are grafted over the parental love he'd known in his true life, and his skin tingles with the phantom heat of the explosion.
He knows how this goes, and the spite is strong. But he hesitates anyway, lingering, the last rays of goodness within him trying desperately to shine through the cracks in this false darkness.]
[ It's time, Dion thinks, to accept what he is: a curse. In the haze of lifetimes and memories that crowd his head, he remembers one distant conversation he'd had with the Phoenix about the truth of what had happened at Phoenix Gate, and how both he and Ifrit had lost control of their eikons in their grief, burning alive both allies and enemies alike in their sorrow.
Dion had thought to himself in that moment, we truly are accursed creatures.
It had been difficult to separate the idea that such power should not exist from he should not exist. And now, stripped of Bahamut's light and three corpses at his feet, he's beginning to think there was a reason it was so difficult to untangle the two.
But he lives. Despite it all he lives, and he's too far gone for hope or optimism. He doesn't deserve the mercy of death, and he doesn't deserve the mercy of atonement. He cannot change what he is.
That he will live, and that he cannot escape his duty are forgone conclusions. He will kill Luke, and return to his family. Even if he does not love them, he must do as he is bound.
So he takes the glaive, and hardly waits for Luke to select his weapon before lunging forward, aiming to drive the blade through his heart. ]
[Well conveniently he only has one hand now. Damn, they didn't even fix his Reliver body? What's the point of this thing.
But that makes the choice of weapons pretty easy, because hedge clippers are basically the only thing he can lift. He looks at Dion, watches as he goes for the glaive and aims for him, and thinks that perhaps kindness is action, rather than hesitation.
(But what need has he for kindness, when in this life, it was never bestowed on him?)
He ducks and rolls, swiping the clippers up and staying low. The glaive is large, so he knows, already, that he needs to get close. But Dion is fast--this won't be an easy fight.
(He thinks he wants it to be. But it's so hard to know, now.)]
[ There is no purpose in denial now. They could claw at the walls, beg for freedom, scheme some way out of this, and dream of an ending that doesn't involve a body in the ground, but all that hope would bring them back here.
So he's decided to kill Luke and live. It's a kindness, he thinks, since to live is to wander through hell.
He parries the swipe with the shaft of the glaive, using the momentum to strike at Luke again with the butt of the weapon, striking at his head to force him to stagger so that he can follow up with a second blow to his throat. ]
[Some part of Luke wants to speak. Futile or not, those tiny flickers of memory tell him that this is an important person, someone worth reasoning with, worth the breath in his lungs that betray him even in his Reliver body. But those flickers aren't powerful enough to overcome the vicious hurt in his heart, not yet.
This time, instead of dodging, he blocks, knocking the glaive off-course. It works for the first hit, but the second catches him in his shoulder, hard enough to knock him backwards.
He takes advantage of it--he falls back, but he twists, using his position on the ground to try and sweep Dion's feet out from under him.]
[ As before, Dion's resolve falters following the first hit. The glaive strikes Luke's shoulder, and another memory cuts through the haze of confusion he's become. This one, too, isn't his own, but belongs to a young boy, lonely, but not alone.
That boy held so much love. Enough to torture himself with.
He falls forward onto his knees when Luke kicks at his feet, digging his glaive into the ground to keep himself from losing his weapon, though he doesn't bother taking the time to get back up, not when it would only give Luke time to close the gap with his clippers
Instead, he throws himself on the ground to roll and put distance between them, the glaive swinging back out in front of him, blade pointed outward as he comes back onto one knee.
From there, he watches Luke for a moment, as if assessing whether he will really try to kill him. ]
[It's not a hard question to answer. Dion rolls and swings, and Luke chooses to rely on agility. jumping back to his feet and letting the glaive pass under him. He can't manage it as well with a weapon and a single hand, and the blade nicks the side of his leg, but Luke doesn't even slow down--he just tries to take advantage of being on his feet for the split second Dion is down, aiming a hard kick at his head with his long legs.
In his mind, the memory of his cold father flickers. Shifts. White clothes, a blue cloak. All shall bow before their emperor.
[ Dion moves the glaive and catches Luke's leg, but by then the other man is too close to effectively use his weapon, and the blow to his head hits hard.
And for a second, he is stone. For a second, the crystal's curse has crept over every inch of his body, clogging his throat and making blind his eyes and when Luke's strike lands on his temple it feels as though his flesh has cracked at the neck and broken his head entirely from his body.
With a blink, he's on the floor again, and now the bloodlust rises again. The fury and the helplessness from the memories of his parents who had abandoned him, and the followers who persisted to die around him. He is so tired of being broken down.
He doesn't rise first, instead spinning the glaive in his hold so the shaft knocks into the back of Luke's knees to repay the favour and knock him down. In the same swing, as the glaive comes around full circle, he shifts his hold so that he's wielding the blade side now, launching it straight to run Luke through the middle. ]
[Dion is frozen by his body. It stills him enough to overwhelm him with emotion, and Luke knows this would be the perfect opportunity to take him down. The cold agent in his true heart sees the necessary opening. The Institute researcher sees a chance to escape. The man who sought revenge for his beloved, the false prisoner, the hated child--they all see a chance to bestow upon this man the unfairness that has been poured onto him, life after life after life after life.
The rage is all-consuming.
It is, in fact, too much.
Dion is frozen by his body: Luke, by memory. All at once, he's overwhelmed. Who is he? How did they get here? The people outside--weren't they important to him, more than his father(s)? They met ten lives ago, seven weeks ago, today. Is that why he's so angry? Is it at them? For them? At himself?
...Has he always been this angry?
It's not foreign. There is bitterness there that was not implanted, the perfect foothold for this mountain of unfair lives. But didn't love drive him, once? Didn't he feel fear, and determination, and affection, for her, for him, for them?
Didn't he find happiness, even in death?
The glaive runs him through, so quickly that the pain barely even registers. It doesn't hit his heart--but it feels as though it does. It severs the binds of artificial fury, and all at once, he remembers the man in front of him. This man is important. He has suffered. He is beloved. And Luke should be fighting anyway, he has reasons to fight, better ones than this, but...
Maybe this is finally enough. Maybe it's okay to be done. He doesn't want this rage to win. Not like this. And deep down, he is so, so sick of surviving.
...But where would that leave Dion?
He falls forward, supported by the weight of the very thing that's ending his life. It's close enough, just barely, to close the gap. Luke collects himself, and with the last of his strength, he shoves the hedge clippers forward, aiming to jam them into Dion's throat.
He saw the anger in Dion's eyes. The least Luke can do for him is to help him rest, too.]
[ As a prince, Dion had always thought it especially important to keep careful control of his anger. His position and power made that a moment of irritation could cost someone their livelihood—if not their lives—and he had never wanted to make those around them feel as though they had to serve him or please him out of fear of retribution.
But he has been angry for so long, and his control has slipped too many times: the night that he'd killed his father, the night he'd killed Margaret, and now, he can feel himself taking several lifetimes of rage and frustration, and directing them at Luke.
He wishes that he could be better. Perhaps if he had been a better servant to Greagor, or a better friend to the worshippers his parents had left him, he might've found a different end to this. Perhaps if he'd been smarter, stronger, more creative, different—
The glaive runs through Luke, blood splattering on the ground in thick, heavy spurts, but Dion doesn't let go. Not even as Luke stumbles forward, face contorted with pain, he doesn't turn his gaze away.
Luke had always been gentle, kind, easily flustered and remarkably exasperated. Dion had found him charming, and probably enjoyed teasing him too much.
So when Luke digs the clippers into his throat, he sees the act for what it is: a kindness.
The air leaves him in an instant, wheezing as blood pools in his lungs and body running cold as he bleeds out. His head falls forward, uncaring of the way the clippers tear further into his throat, so that his forehead can rest lightly against Lukes, ] ... Thank you.
[ He takes all the strength he has to tear the glaive back out of Luke's body, letting him bleed freely without the weapon stoppering the blood.
It's agonizing. Isn't it always? Luke has never wanted other people to look at him too closely, constantly hiding his pain behind smiles and omissions and outright lies. I'm fine. It doesn't hurt. Forever. The moment he realized his grief could be a burden to his new family, he vowed to do anything it took to protect their peace and happiness, and that creed has guided him ever since. He does not like his truths to be seen.
Dion sees them now. He sees the exhaustion that Luke knows must show on his face, any hope of a facade shattering as the light vanished from Dahut's eyes. He sees the respite Luke wants him to have, and maybe Luke should be grateful that Dion doesn't think him spiteful and cruel--but Dion thanks him with his dying breath, and it hurts. More than Dahut dying in his arms, more than waking up to see he'd failed to protect Sheba, it hurts to be cared for in this way. Seen.
Dion grants him a swift death. But perhaps slow torture would've been kinder.
The glaive is the only thing holding them up. As it's ripped free, Luke can't break their fall. Dion deserves to be lowered gently, with the care and respect a good man deserves. But Luke can't give him that, not with one hand and a gaping wound. They hit the ground together, blood coating the floor as it pours out of them. Luke drops the clippers, gripping Dion's shoulder tightly as he rapidly grows lightheaded. He watches Dion hit the floor first, and thinks, ridiculously, that he hopes it doesn't hurt.
(It doesn't, of course. Dion is dead.
He hopes nothing hurts, anymore.)
Gravity drags Luke down too, in the next moment. And he can't do much but lie here, a lonely chill creeping through his body as his "heart" tries, and fails, to keep him alive even longer, his mind grasping at all the reasons he's kept going thus far, everything that's driven him all the way to this.
He can't do much. But he finds that he can do just a little more. So he reaches out with cold, shaking fingers, and closes Dion's eyes as he closes his own.
His breath leaves him, a jumbled mess of memories flashing through his mind. Every life he's ever lived culminates in this: Luke Pearce is dead.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
DION & LUKE
Before entering the cell, a different variable will be introduced to the experiment for both participants.
A memory is implanted in Dion. You've spent all your life thinking you were someone special, meant for more. Your parents - founders of a small cult who spend their time praying in the cliffside caverns of Arpéchéle - treat you as a godlike entity delivered to them directly from the Heavens. They chose not to continue with their backups when you hit your 15th birthday, instead trusting care of your "family" of around twenty to thirty people to you. And since you're the guiding star, shouldn't it be fine...? ...It isn't, of course. What teenaged shepherd could actually make decisions that would keep a clearly mentally unstable flock afloat? One by one, over the years, your beloved followers die or vanish, overtaken by madness or the curse or simply the misfortunes of living on this island. You find yourself full of anguish for your inability to save them, and full of anger toward the Heavens and your parents. If you're meant to be a savior, why is it so hard? Why can't you seem to save anyone? You're too stubborn to give up, though. You have to keep living whatever the cost, so you can return to your dwindling family and prove yourself - to them, and to you.
A memory is implanted in Luke. You're born to a father who hates you more than anything else, for reasons no one can comprehend. He treats you coldly from before you can walk, calling you monster, a wretched blight, never once referring to you by name, always by "that thing". Your station in life - a relatively high noblefamily - keeps you isolated. You know no love or friendship in or out of the walls of your manor, but you still hope for both someday. On your tenth birthday, your father spits on these wishes by hiring assassins to kill you. Your survival is accidental; in your scramble to escape, you set something explosive alight, blowing the entire ballroom to bits. You are the only survivor, and it embitters you. You wanted for so little, and life gave you even less. You never wished to live at the expense of others, and yet, they pushed you into such an awful situation. Spite is your primary driving force now, and has been for years. You refuse to die, because every moment that you're alive is your way of saying fuck you to the cosmic entity that put you in this shitty situation to begin with.
In the cell, the following await you: hedge clippers, a glaive, an oodachi.
As usual, the rage in your memories is strong. You are now on your fourth falsely remembered life in Arpéchéle, each set of memories stacking atop each other, fighting against the memory of your weeks on the Eudora and time in your home world. They all wrestle for dominance, but a bloodlust permeates every single feeling.
But the heart isn’t so simple. The other strong feeling demanding your attention is your relationship with the person you’re in the cell with—what you know, genuinely know of them, and all the feelings that come with that.
It's just the two of you now, no one left to hope for your survival or reel away from the carnage. You've claimed your right to this final fight through strength, luck, and the fuel of your feelings. Someone is waiting for you to answer their question.
But more importantly, the time has finally come to answer it for yourself: is emotion worthwhile, even though it will most certainly destroy you from the inside? Even though it already has?]
margaret's gonna be so mad
The space outside is a reprieve. It lets him sit with the weight of what he's done, listening to the echoes of screams and sobs that permeate his memories.
He knew what it was like to take a life before the Eudora. He'd accepted those black marks on his soul for the greater good, because the world has never been simple and straightforward. He'd survived mission after mission because he'd sworn to--both in his work, and in his heart.
But that is so, so different from this. And out here, with his true memories pulling ahead of the blur of implanted lives, his justifications don't hold up. How could he want survival so badly? At the cost of Dahut, a clever genius, but weak and terrified? At the cost of Sheba, always so willing to put herself in danger for them? In this room, his victories are personal failings. They are signs of broken promises and a weak will. And he knows it's futile, but as he's collected for one last round, he struggles against the cloaked figures anyway--not to save others from further bloodshed, but to selfishly, desperately, put an end to this wretched survival.
I'll choose to live. But he can't. He's not worth this.
And maybe in the next life, he'll get his wish granted--but not in this one. In this one, more rage is forced into his heart. Memories of disdain and hatred are grafted over the parental love he'd known in his true life, and his skin tingles with the phantom heat of the explosion.
He knows how this goes, and the spite is strong. But he hesitates anyway, lingering, the last rays of goodness within him trying desperately to shine through the cracks in this false darkness.]
no subject
Dion had thought to himself in that moment, we truly are accursed creatures.
It had been difficult to separate the idea that such power should not exist from he should not exist. And now, stripped of Bahamut's light and three corpses at his feet, he's beginning to think there was a reason it was so difficult to untangle the two.
But he lives. Despite it all he lives, and he's too far gone for hope or optimism. He doesn't deserve the mercy of death, and he doesn't deserve the mercy of atonement. He cannot change what he is.
That he will live, and that he cannot escape his duty are forgone conclusions. He will kill Luke, and return to his family. Even if he does not love them, he must do as he is bound.
So he takes the glaive, and hardly waits for Luke to select his weapon before lunging forward, aiming to drive the blade through his heart. ]
no subject
But that makes the choice of weapons pretty easy, because hedge clippers are basically the only thing he can lift. He looks at Dion, watches as he goes for the glaive and aims for him, and thinks that perhaps kindness is action, rather than hesitation.
(But what need has he for kindness, when in this life, it was never bestowed on him?)
He ducks and rolls, swiping the clippers up and staying low. The glaive is large, so he knows, already, that he needs to get close. But Dion is fast--this won't be an easy fight.
(He thinks he wants it to be. But it's so hard to know, now.)]
no subject
So he's decided to kill Luke and live. It's a kindness, he thinks, since to live is to wander through hell.
He parries the swipe with the shaft of the glaive, using the momentum to strike at Luke again with the butt of the weapon, striking at his head to force him to stagger so that he can follow up with a second blow to his throat. ]
no subject
This time, instead of dodging, he blocks, knocking the glaive off-course. It works for the first hit, but the second catches him in his shoulder, hard enough to knock him backwards.
He takes advantage of it--he falls back, but he twists, using his position on the ground to try and sweep Dion's feet out from under him.]
no subject
That boy held so much love. Enough to torture himself with.
He falls forward onto his knees when Luke kicks at his feet, digging his glaive into the ground to keep himself from losing his weapon, though he doesn't bother taking the time to get back up, not when it would only give Luke time to close the gap with his clippers
Instead, he throws himself on the ground to roll and put distance between them, the glaive swinging back out in front of him, blade pointed outward as he comes back onto one knee.
From there, he watches Luke for a moment, as if assessing whether he will really try to kill him. ]
no subject
In his mind, the memory of his cold father flickers. Shifts. White clothes, a blue cloak. All shall bow before their emperor.
--?]
no subject
And for a second, he is stone. For a second, the crystal's curse has crept over every inch of his body, clogging his throat and making blind his eyes and when Luke's strike lands on his temple it feels as though his flesh has cracked at the neck and broken his head entirely from his body.
With a blink, he's on the floor again, and now the bloodlust rises again. The fury and the helplessness from the memories of his parents who had abandoned him, and the followers who persisted to die around him. He is so tired of being broken down.
He doesn't rise first, instead spinning the glaive in his hold so the shaft knocks into the back of Luke's knees to repay the favour and knock him down. In the same swing, as the glaive comes around full circle, he shifts his hold so that he's wielding the blade side now, launching it straight to run Luke through the middle. ]
no subject
The rage is all-consuming.
It is, in fact, too much.
Dion is frozen by his body: Luke, by memory. All at once, he's overwhelmed. Who is he? How did they get here? The people outside--weren't they important to him, more than his father(s)? They met ten lives ago, seven weeks ago, today. Is that why he's so angry? Is it at them? For them? At himself?
...Has he always been this angry?
It's not foreign. There is bitterness there that was not implanted, the perfect foothold for this mountain of unfair lives. But didn't love drive him, once? Didn't he feel fear, and determination, and affection, for her, for him, for them?
Didn't he find happiness, even in death?
The glaive runs him through, so quickly that the pain barely even registers. It doesn't hit his heart--but it feels as though it does. It severs the binds of artificial fury, and all at once, he remembers the man in front of him. This man is important. He has suffered. He is beloved. And Luke should be fighting anyway, he has reasons to fight, better ones than this, but...
Maybe this is finally enough. Maybe it's okay to be done. He doesn't want this rage to win. Not like this. And deep down, he is so, so sick of surviving.
...But where would that leave Dion?
He falls forward, supported by the weight of the very thing that's ending his life. It's close enough, just barely, to close the gap. Luke collects himself, and with the last of his strength, he shoves the hedge clippers forward, aiming to jam them into Dion's throat.
He saw the anger in Dion's eyes. The least Luke can do for him is to help him rest, too.]
no subject
But he has been angry for so long, and his control has slipped too many times: the night that he'd killed his father, the night he'd killed Margaret, and now, he can feel himself taking several lifetimes of rage and frustration, and directing them at Luke.
He wishes that he could be better. Perhaps if he had been a better servant to Greagor, or a better friend to the worshippers his parents had left him, he might've found a different end to this. Perhaps if he'd been smarter, stronger, more creative, different—
The glaive runs through Luke, blood splattering on the ground in thick, heavy spurts, but Dion doesn't let go. Not even as Luke stumbles forward, face contorted with pain, he doesn't turn his gaze away.
Luke had always been gentle, kind, easily flustered and remarkably exasperated. Dion had found him charming, and probably enjoyed teasing him too much.
So when Luke digs the clippers into his throat, he sees the act for what it is: a kindness.
The air leaves him in an instant, wheezing as blood pools in his lungs and body running cold as he bleeds out. His head falls forward, uncaring of the way the clippers tear further into his throat, so that his forehead can rest lightly against Lukes, ] ... Thank you.
[ He takes all the strength he has to tear the glaive back out of Luke's body, letting him bleed freely without the weapon stoppering the blood.
And he falls, one last time.
Dion is finally dead. ]
no subject
It's agonizing. Isn't it always? Luke has never wanted other people to look at him too closely, constantly hiding his pain behind smiles and omissions and outright lies. I'm fine. It doesn't hurt. Forever. The moment he realized his grief could be a burden to his new family, he vowed to do anything it took to protect their peace and happiness, and that creed has guided him ever since. He does not like his truths to be seen.
Dion sees them now. He sees the exhaustion that Luke knows must show on his face, any hope of a facade shattering as the light vanished from Dahut's eyes. He sees the respite Luke wants him to have, and maybe Luke should be grateful that Dion doesn't think him spiteful and cruel--but Dion thanks him with his dying breath, and it hurts. More than Dahut dying in his arms, more than waking up to see he'd failed to protect Sheba, it hurts to be cared for in this way. Seen.
Dion grants him a swift death. But perhaps slow torture would've been kinder.
The glaive is the only thing holding them up. As it's ripped free, Luke can't break their fall. Dion deserves to be lowered gently, with the care and respect a good man deserves. But Luke can't give him that, not with one hand and a gaping wound. They hit the ground together, blood coating the floor as it pours out of them. Luke drops the clippers, gripping Dion's shoulder tightly as he rapidly grows lightheaded. He watches Dion hit the floor first, and thinks, ridiculously, that he hopes it doesn't hurt.
(It doesn't, of course. Dion is dead.
He hopes nothing hurts, anymore.)
Gravity drags Luke down too, in the next moment. And he can't do much but lie here, a lonely chill creeping through his body as his "heart" tries, and fails, to keep him alive even longer, his mind grasping at all the reasons he's kept going thus far, everything that's driven him all the way to this.
He can't do much. But he finds that he can do just a little more. So he reaches out with cold, shaking fingers, and closes Dion's eyes as he closes his own.
His breath leaves him, a jumbled mess of memories flashing through his mind. Every life he's ever lived culminates in this: Luke Pearce is dead.]