7.02 - Villain Fic Challenge (Voting)

[lightofeilia]

7.02: Villain Fic Voting

ENTRY #1 -- Mykonos (FFX)
He's not –

He is –

He cannot – he can't not –

He remembers.

He remembers the pain, the way it bloomed within him, consumed him and all he was. This shell, this foreign being – this agony, how it surges, how it seethes. It is familiar as old bones; as new as a silver dawn. He is made of salt and sin.

This shell knows nothing but pain, and in that knowing, there is nothing but desperate fear.

The fear. The fire.

He is –

There is fire within, and water without, and he knows the rush of that eternal touch. The kiss of life against obsidian flesh, that hiss unending given up to the sky, as blue and restless as the tide.

The tide pulls him. It guides him. At its mercy, he drifts.

And in his drifting, the world is torn asunder.

There is no hope. No hope for such as he.

All that hope – all that intent – all that sacrifice –

Nothing – for nothing –

And in his haze of fire and water, he knows for true.

The cycle continues, and all must play their part –

And for his part –

He never means – never meant –

He is trapped, and his courage becomes his doom. His bones have long turned to stone and his flesh has burned away. He is ash on the wind, he is dust. Caught, floating, spiralling somewhere in the everlasting between, this endless rusted city of dying dreams. The pyreflies wail and he cannot escape their mourning. They do not mourn for him. His greatness, his purpose, it fades to nothing in the wake of this – his part – must play our parts – and his was to be the saving of the world –

And now he will be its destruction. A cruel fate he's chosen.

Chosen. His choice. He didn't want – he doesn't want this –

To watch with eyes that do not see, listen with ears that do not hear. His body, gone, that husk of tender mortality that could not survive the giving; this shell, this great, hulking shell, the world's destruction. Always there, this beast that curled within him, born of fire, this child of fayth and fury and failure.

With eyes that do not see, he sees the world as it breaks beneath him as waves against the shore.

With ears that do not hear, he hears each scream and anguished cry.

And sometimes –

Sometimes, its the call of the gulls in the quiet of morning. And the sun –

To blackest depths, he sinks. Sinks and sighs and lives on, he, the harbinger of divine justice, the most cruel of all those who have come before.

He is shamed beyond reckoning.

He can no longer abide the sun.

ENTRY #2 -- Regret (FFXII)
“Have you your fill of this?”

There was always hesitation. He would be a fool to not say so.

He wondered how many others would admit to it so easily. How many others second guessed their actions? How many others acted without confidence?

He saw how easily some moved. He saw how readily they took to arms and how quick they were to act.

With every footstep, he wondered. With every footstep, he faltered.

“Am I doing the right thing?”

The arm holding up his sword would waver. He would often wonder how visible the shaking of his hand was. Did others notice that his blade wobbled? Did they notice that his sword was not held steady?

Did his doubt make his actions look sloppy? Did it make him look weak?

“What is the right thing?”

He didn’t have the answer to his own question. The lingering regrets, the haunted memories, and the lives he had taken: he felt they were pulling him all in different directions.

He was being pulled apart.

There were moments when he lingered, unsure of what to do. However, he always acted in the end. He always picked a path to walk. He never decided to not move.

“Were my actions wrong?”

Quietly, he tormented himself. His actions tortured him. He would be his own downfall. He realized he would never ask for his own redemption.

He was used. He was a tool to be tossed aside once he was no longer necessary. He was only here because he was needed to play a part. Like everyone else in this damned world, he had a role to play.

“All was stripped from me.”

He had to take part in the tragedy. He wanted to say he never had a choice.

Perhaps if he told himself it enough he would start to believe it to be true. But, he knew. He knew that he was lying.

He knew he didn’t believe his own lies.

“I am sorry.”

Always. He always had a choice. He accepted that he usually just chose wrong.

He could never say it, but he was sorry all the same.

The blood seeped into the floor from his blade.

It stained the ground, stained the metal, and stained his hands. He couldn’t clean them. He didn’t think it was right to clean them anymore.

He wanted to say that he regretted nothing. He wanted to say that he did what he did because he believed his actions to be right. That he believed himself to be just.

“Only hatred for the brother who fled our homeland remains mine!”

He wants to say these things, but he knows they are not true. He has regrets.

He regrets everything. He has done so many things, but not one of them he is proud of. He wonders if others feel the same.

Are they broken by the lives they picked to live? Are they too so easily destroyed by the decisions they have made? Do they too find no resolve in their own actions? Are they too so drenched in sins?

“Yes, I will defend Lord Larsa.”

He knows that one action does not make up for all that “Gabranth” did wrong. He has done so many things wrong over the course of his life.

But it was the first time he moved without hesitation. It was the first time his sword did not waver.

As his eyes close one last time, Noah realizes it was the first time he has ever acted without regret.

For a moment in his life the torture ends and he feels peace. Then his breathing stops.


ENTRY #3 -- Existence (FFIII)

Once, there had been nothing and it was aware of nothing.

Those were peaceful times. Bliss in the all-consuming presence of The Void.

"Balance" was maintained across worlds. Order was kept. There was nothing to awake to. There was nothing to think on.

Perhaps that was "peace."

Then there was something.

Awareness. Presence. Being.

Existence.

Existence was painful. Existence was nothing but contradictions, logic, and emotions running rampant.

Existence was chaos and order in constant conflict: always present and always repeating in cycles that made no room or time for them so they would then spill over into the next to carry on with different places, different stories. The themes were always the same though, an endless repetition with no sense of reason.

It existed as a cloud on the brink of everything: existing everywhere and across worlds in a way, but never able to touch or interact with anything. Only observing, distant and close at the same time.

Living beings continued taking actions that proved pointless in the face of the inevitable, cheering at the time in the face of their accomplishments and never understanding the ultimate futility behind them.

It did not understand, and it did not tolerate.

It wished for The Void, for nothingness. A "peace" that it could make sense of.

A chance for rest.

So it set out to use Existence against itself: a tool to bring about its own end.

Emotions were chaotic, tumultuous.

Some it did not understand and deemed useless.

Love, hope, mourning. Concepts based around intangible bonds were foreign and far too bizarre a notion to one that had no sense of attachment to them.

But there were other emotions it could almost understand, in a way. Perhaps not in the same manner as the pointless creatures who focused far too much on them, but enough.

Hatred, fear, desperation. In the face of the looming inevitable, these were pointless concepts as well.

But it could use them: use the beings’ that those feelings ran most deeply in.

Fear and anger over one’s own mortality. An unknowing tool to bring about the end of everything.

It almost understood then. At least a little.

After all, all it craved was nothingness once more.

It wanted its own "balance." It wanted its own "peace."

It simply wanted Existence to return from where Existence came.






Due to the number of entries we're only going to be picking one winner out of the three! Please use this form to vote:
First place: Team:

Voting is worth 5 points. You may not vote for your own entry.

Voting ends: Thursday June 12 @ 11:59P EDT (3:59A GMT)