"There is no happiness if the things we believe in are different than the things we do." CAMUS, Albert
By: Hugo Largo
From: Mettle (1989)
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...This pain... It's nothing. This pain is proof that I'm alive. Take a look at Fratley. He's feeling pain as much as I am feeling it as well. The only thing that differs humans from monsters, like those we've fought earlier, is the sense of pain. To feel the thorns of a blooming rose, to touch the flame and feel the heat burning your hand, to feel the tip of a sword cutting throught your skin... Feeling pain is what being human feels like. Sorry if I seemed to act a bit different, but don't worry. As long as I feel pain, I can still feel happiness too, because I know that I am alive to be able to do it so. How, you ask. I don't know... The uncertainty reigns, as much as this kind of angst comes whenever I'm not able to choose throught different paths, pouring down onto me like the rain used to do. Still does, but I can't feel it on this land above such clouds, above the plains, Alexandria above everything. Even the dead ones, and those who aren't even alive, like Vivi, that 'doll'... he felt no pain as well, didn't have time to feel anything, but to accept that he would 'stop' someday, and had no idea which day it would happen. How easy was for me borrow a rag doll from mother whenever it was a bit tore on it's limbs... how easy was for these limbs of mine to be healed with a single 'Regen' spelled over them, but now I know that not everything can be resolved with magic...
...Do you believe in gravity? I do. Wherever you fall, there's always someone to grab onto your arms. Anyway, you'll fall, and I still wonder how deep I have gotten into this... Bit after bit, slowly comes my decay, and as soon as I reach the ground, so comfortable it is, like a pillow of feathers... and then I woke up. Again... A weary body can be taken care, but a weary soul... it's another thing. You can't touch it, or feel it, the souls is nonethelesss part of you, and part of nothing you touch as well. Without that Dragoon coat and that same helm, sharing of same crimson color, I'm just a tired body, with tired eyes overshadowed by this helm and this hair as well, but as soon as this hair kept falling like this, my vision became a sight for everyone else, besides this search that remains. Shall remain... but nothing lasts forever. Mother didn't, yet I still recall her arms embracing me, same for her tears falling into my shoulder. So did that 'doll'. His memories became part of the sky, unlike Fratley's ones. They became part of me instead... He couldn't be anywhere else, after all...
...To think that I am trying to sleep on this same bed, belonging to this room, this palace, located further into these people's territory, their nation, this place where everything, each house seems like an unbreakable diamond, yet they also took the damage. Alexandria, this same Alexandria... It only took a year to rebuild this place, half a year it took to barely fix all districts belonging to Lindblum, nothing else happened for Treno and it's luxuries, but my home... all the places I had ever been during that journey I led blindly away from home, a place by the name of Burmecia, and my homeland, the nation drawn into that same coat of arms near my heart is the last one to be fixed. Same for its people, scattered across these lands, like... rats. I did my best, no... I just tried, attempted to do it so. These limbs are still bounded to my body, unlike that spear and it's tip meant to be forever attached to that wooden stick, but that kind of metal always get rusty, same for this armor, same for this me...
...Remember the taste of iron coming out of these hands? The red of that outfit is beginning to stink, and that isn't my only blood. There are far many wounds left, some are new, some took an year to disappear, some may last for a generation, if there'll be one... I don't care about the place I am, because this Gaia belongs to everyone, but animals always had, have as soon as I look at the mirror, the need to fight for their territory... Something I call by duty. Murder as well, but never that I would kill those belonging to my same species, like our ancestors used to do... Same for the founders of this Alexandria, that Lindblum, and that Burmecia where I was born; how lucky I am... While so many of us are born, others are meant to die, so young they were, so young I was, so raw that I've became... To be this tired is nothing alike death, in itself. I once said that the past should be left behind, yet those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, and a revenant is always meant to come back, no matter the place were the same was last found... Gosh. I've never felt so tired, and so shameful of myself. I thought the same last night, and yet, nothing changed after all...
...Even without wearing those clothes, I still remain the same. I may have grown up in age, yet I still do feel the same I've felt five years ago. Ten years ago, and I would be jumping on this bed instead of laying on it, unless mother and father came to my bedroom. They aren't here, only shadows, though I used to plead they wouldn't when on that age. Nothing changes, only the intensity, same for the rain of Burmecia, and it's offspring as well... Back at that fountain, where those ripples not only made by the rain dripped there, Fratley holded of my hand. Years later, same Fratley also holded of my hand, but I didn't gave him any support, and so he just holded of my hand, and nothing else. Cold I've became like this window pane, made from the sand melted miles away from Vube, same desert where once the settlement of Cleyra resided, above a trunk, but Alexandria remains atop everything else in this world, except the clouds...
...While it truly pains me to say this as a Dragoon Knight, I, Freya Crescent, will kill you for revenge!... these words echoed into my mind, dark as a cave, full of winged rats alike me, same for those jaws wide open, the scent of the fallen coming from the inside... it happened again, everytime I think about that same day many lifes were taken away, and I couldn't do anything to prevent such. I have just avoided to give them any kind of help, only for the King, a coward who also fled away from his own people... no longer that he is within this world, only his son, a boy by the name of Puck. So young, on that age, for his to became another King of same Burmecia, now in ruins... always had been, even before I've became a Knight by the age of 16. Of the people whom I've followed without anywhere else to go, I was the only one here, inside this castle, who shared of an intent to kill Beatrix, general of the entire army of Alexandria, in cold blood; cold alike the bodies of those victims, who stood outside their homes as the rain falling upon them always stood cold...
...I was about to choke her neck, stab her in the chest, anything I've thought to be possible as much as the destruction of the trunk of what once was Cleyra by the hands of the one who stole of same gem that awakened the sandstorm, the only barrier that protected the people from Cleyran from the outside world... either way, I was about to do it so, for Fratley. Had I known one's death would pain you so, I would have killed more... That's what she said, or what I've heard, but it didn't mattered, nothing else seemed to matter for me and my mind melting like a candle throught the years I've spent carrying on of the unforgettable fire, and that unfatomable silhouette of his. In the end, we joined forces, as I've stood on her side for a matter of survival, so did the trigger of my inner anger from before. The cleyrans, whose bodies vanished in the midst of that smoke rising up in the air... never that they would want me to do such thing, althought I've killed so many monsters and beasts within this continent, and never that I have became one of them...
...Fratley... He may had dissapointed me, yet he was still able to do something, instead of me. I would knew it only a few days later, when Lindlum and it's regent gave of their assistance to aid Burmecia and my people as they shared of same power to aid themselves after the summoning of Atomos, the void that almost took that entire kingdom and its people without leaving nothing but hollow spaces or anything of a structire, unlike what they did to Burmecia, lefting those bodies on the streets, some still alive, wishing to be dead... Laying on those beds, covered by white bandages, while others had found of some refugee somewhere else... If it wasn't for Fratley, whatever he may had done, the entirety of Cleyra would be done. Only his to know... I've believed that the tempest was subsided by the gods, yet where they had been when Odin came from the skies to brought oblivion for those people, my people... From ashes to ashes... I've never saw such thing as before. Only heard of it, yet I couldn't even imagine it, or enjoy like they did. I've just stood there, and then I've fled, as if nothing mattered for me, only me. Where was I to give some aid for they, if he indeed survived? No, he didn't...
...Only his faint memories as a Dragoon Knight brought him there... not me. What a joke you have told, Puck. So crude was that joke, that I couldn't even found a way to laugh at it. Not even you did... and you won't, seeing how much you are working to rebuild Burmecia, as much as I am trying to rebuild what I once was before, and so Fratley as well. Alexandria? I went there many years ago... So vague you were to me, not until that night. Gone to Treno, the hypnosis section, those voices, many years ago... Fratley didn't died there, on that day he left me and Burmecia, or at Cleyra, where we should had met with our demises, but instead, years ago, on alexandrian grounds, he found his resting place there, on such faraway land... Once I complete my journey around the world, I will return to Burmecia... Then promise me, one more time, that you will return... I promise...Who else, other than Fratley, would return to that place? I've saw many of them leaving, to never come back. They also got buried on lands other than Burmecia as well. So did Fratley, or what used to belong to his...
...How fitting it is for that spear to be buried like this... I didn't knew what else to do with that thing. That's a spear, not a person. Not another person's blood stained on this same coat. There are sharp people alike the tip of that javelin, and quick as well, or so he used to be. Fratley and I went on that graveyard, belonging to these Alexandrian grounds we step. Everywhere, any place I used to go along his company, the clouds, gray like us, followed of us as well. Same for the rain pouring down onto us. On this faraway land, we, passing strangers, can only contemplate of the sun, or the orange of the dusk, same orange belonging to my ribbon. His ribbon... I saw the sun so many times since I've left my Kingdom; it brought tears to my eyes, and blindness as well with a black spot. Now I turn myself, and this head as well, to the ground, same were many lay after they had been killed by diseases. Only a few graves for the children could be spotted thee, unlike those who remained in Burmecia. It's a pleasure to be given a soil to rotten for eternity, or to be given an entire beach, as soon as I though about that whale by the name of Brahne, once a queen of Alexandria, also a murderer of many and herself as well, given the weight of that grotesque figure...
...On some cultures, women used to be venerated because of the fat storage, associated with fertility, though I don't need to be that fat to be considered some kind of beauty. Even that statue, whom I despise to have been built, is at least tolerable to look and spit at. With that face covered by lead makeover, I wonder why such thing didn't killed her already. We are even to share of same indifference to another, yet I have done my best to preserve of innocent's lives, as my own life faded on instants, to later be rebuilt. Not only my life, but his as well. I saw a woman once peeing on a grave. How rude of her part, althought people these days seem to cry where they mostly miss the another. It can be anyone, from a father, to a mother, a son, a daughter, brother, sister, Fratley... My hair and those strands are falling, and they also flow alike the tears into my face... It was the right thing to do, Freya. It symbolizes the the end of a life, and the beginning of another; that's what he said. This moment may be new, unnexpected, unlike the memories I wished they could ressurface from the bottom of Fratley's mind, but a sunken sea is never meant to return, unlike the treasures hidden on those chests, who are stolen anyway. Stolen memories...
...Zorn, Thorn... They were once Brahne's servants. I wish I could have stepped with my feet over them, if they were alive. How could they be, after what they had done to Fratley? I can still recall the horror I felt on that same night, the shock that made me stop when I heard of my own name being uttered by Fratley, on a way he would never speak to me same name, not even if he suffered enough for me, so he did within the years I have tried to find his, as we both stood on torture chambers not on our own... never that I'll be able to feel the same who passed throught your mind, and I don't wish such thing to nobody else. Not even to the worse of my enemies, though my worse enemy lies within me, same place where Fratley used to lay as well. Not only as a knight, but Fratley as a person. Now the knight sleeps as a hero, on this grave I have dug for his weapon to be placed. None of us would use it anyway; never that I want to raise a spear to cut someone's throat. That's why I also polished these nails a bit. They are still growing, alike this hair, same for the love I've felt for this man. No, I felt more than that, to cross so many miles and yards to met again with his...
...Here lies Fratley Irontail; 1774-179?... No one else, only us, to reside of same funeral. That question mark engraved on that stone isn't and won't be the last one who seeks me, or his. Fratley's old life may had been gone five years ago, or maybe he survived between these years of same torture. No one is here to tell exactly which year, not even the victim of same. He just forgot that this happened, and I may agree that I would do the same, but to forget everything... those moments where we used to cherish of our time together, while others I tried to prove how much of a Dragoon Knight I wanted to be, but for Fratley, I was already someone else. No more that I felt any envy of his, but now, I don't even know what I do feel for his. Is it guilt, is it remorse, is it part of a Dragoon's duty... am I trying to prove myself to be any better than he was, again? I thought those times would be over, but the past still seeks me. I am condemned to repeat it, as much as I am condemned to be free, yet I am still tied to Fratley and his flaxen chain...
...I can't even left him on his own, afraid that he might get lost not only by this sight. Not only I do this for my sake, but his as well. He doesn't even know that I am awake, as much as he doesn't know what I've meant for his... I still mean something for his, but only something. My presence, this closure we share for this same bed and anywhere we go isn't enough. I still remember how much I've used to see him fall asleep, before I did the same, and when the morning came, he was gone. Later I would met with his, at the beginning of another day working as a Dragoon Knight, but anywhere I had been since them, Fratley would be there as well, besides these thoughts. Things began to have gotten so much personal... like many of the vendettas I've planned, yet they did get nowhere else out of this mind. These thoughts sometimes appear and they are gone, to later reappear when I feel of such anger, but I can't look back in anger... If I did, I wouldn't be any better than those who are willing to pay anything in blood, yet I still have to pay something with my own blood...
...One can improve one's memory simply by performing associations; memory is fundamentally associative... to remember a time when he received other gifts, perhaps a birthday, or Yuletide... Consequently, focusing on small details is important... If one wants to remember a event very well, one need only think on one thing, and remember each aspect of it... not just the visual, but the tactile... Beneath the carpet, resides the dust and only, as much as this hair belonging to Fratley is devoided of any crawlers; yet, I can feel something itchy throught my skin. By a single touch, I feel nothing, but as long as this contact with our skins endures, I know what I do feel, or felt before. Somehow, I want to to live throught his, to become one instead of two, to let him fill in more than the strands of his hair between my fingers, or should I say claws, sharp like my teeth. With a few chairs missing, I know I can still put some order into this house... No, Freya... Please don't... I don't want you to kiss my scars... besides those I've left on his, mainly on that back, I also saw some scars that weren't there. They appeared when he came back after those years. What I've once thought to be remnants of some fights... what is a fight if a coward prevents you from defending yourself? These scars left by another instead of me... though their intentions were the same, never that I would hurt Fratley that much, though he would feel some pain by result, meant to sent some chills onto his spine instead of mine. Like, we do hug each other from a time to another, though not as hard as a snake constricts it's prey...
...Even without scratching of my back with his own claws, only a few times he would do it so, Fratley is still able to tear me apart, below this skin. Even when on his sleep... a deep slumber, unlike mine, who's suffering from this vigilance over the nights, same for the days. Not even the darkness of this place, who reminds me of many times I had been put to sleep, is able to make me close my eyes to see of same darkness. I can't turn my neck like an owl does, but I still remain awoke in the nights, awaiting for the food to come into my claws, or just expect something to happen, other than my sleep, which won't happen. Five minutes later, and I'll be awaken once again, only to look at this same Fratley, and realize that nothing will come out of this blanket, or that mind as well. Fratley... now I am able to envy his, due to such sleep he had gotten so easily, as much as I've thought the same about the title of 'Sir' given to his. But that title didn't mattered, seeing how I only, still I do, call this same burmecian by Fratley, and only...
...He also calls me by Freya, but anyone else does the same. But Fratley isn't anyone else, not even like this... covered by this blanket, the one who lets us share of same warmth from one to another, this is something I can never have, but share instead... Like the love, or something above, I've felt for Fratley before. Always the before, always the same past who still seeks me, on nights like these, blight days like the one belonging to this land. With these same claws, I want to dug that same grave and retrieve of that spear, until I remember that I've became so near, so close of Fratley, same for his in relation to me, away from the Dragoon Knight shell of ours. And then, I remember the moments we've spent, wearing of same clothes, carrying of same spears, one sharper than another, and I can see it, right throught these eyes, into this mirror, so clear, unlike the memories I had when I was a kid, or less than one. Still I am same kid, who had grown up to become like this, another adult being boring with himself...
...I did I had a childhood, didn't I? he asked; a question brought after he saw that grave, and the date of his birth. Yes. You sure had, I said, as his face remained the same. The same he brought later that night, as if that same question remained onto his. Sulky was I, but not of my hopes. As if he couldn't sleep due to that question, I had to answer it. Now he is sleeping, instead of me. Childhood... Everyone who lives or once lived had. Well, except one person. Who? he asked. Typical of a child to demand of many questions as they can't find the answer on their own. Fratley didn't knew about his, and never he should. He is no more with us. Wasn't one of us either when alive. Filty rat, that's how that mongrel called me by, don't you remember? Of course I do. Trembling, fallen on what were once royal grounds, soaked by more than the rain of outside, but nobody noticed it due to that crimson coat I wore. Still I wore that thing, even thought Dragoon Knights can't be found outside of Burmecia, but my duty still remains the same, althought I only seem to be helping an only person, whose damage stands out of any wounds left into my skin...
...That man, said to have been raised without a childhood, suffered from a certain unstability, to which he despised. By using the powers given to his to harm the other selves, to whom he judged to share a life better than his, he redirect such pain away from his self, a self that grew without knowing, or even remembering the world as a child does. For that man, it seemed that life was all that mattered to his, and only. He once pretended to use of the powers within his so he could be the only being in this world that was able to achieve immortality, but in the end, he was mortal like you, me, and his brother. To think he tried to destroy the world we live, but for real, he was destroying himself. After his demise, we still don't know if he was a friend, a foe, or a childish one. All the damage he had done is, unfortunately, his immortality, thought there are a few that see on the redemption of his an act claimed to be of a hero, of someone who accepted the limitations of a being, other who agreed that life, long or short, is tied in to death as well...
...Fratley Irontail; there are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days. But I didn't. Same for yoru mantra, who is still echoing into my mind. He shared of many, alike 'let the fear propel you forward', or 'the road remains wide open while your dreams are alive. Only fear can block the way'. Only the fear... we all feel fear. Same one is what kept us alive. Under the force of his blade, many fell like the leaves belonging to an autumn tree. I believe this is the first time we've met... Fratley said to me, as much as I tried to believe it was his in front of me, after all those years; I knew it was his, because no one else could have, with an only quote, tore me apart, like he used to do on the training sessions. The first time we met... As time kept moving forwards, I am beginning to agree with his, as much as I deny it so. That's what they call by accepting of another's point of view, but I am also another, same for this Fratley, knight or not... Then I close my eyes, and finally, I can sleep soundly, yet in hush. But I know that soon I'll have to wake up, and begin it all over again. And this silence is nothing but the denial of my ears to everything, and anyone else out of my view...
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