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FADE TO BLACK
Life, it seems, will fade away.
Flavors, colors, faces, fond memories… A growing darkness took each of these shreds of light from the young man's life. Privately, he feared that he might yet lose his will to live – an unacceptable thought, for one whose life was no longer his to lose. And yet, his shame, his anger, his grief for things not what they used to be, all had proven insufficient to keep him from drifting further everyday.
At such times when there was nothing left to give, he’d found a place to get lost within himself: the quiet, contemplative halls of the cathedral. Amidst his darkened prayers, he also got to find another who would wither away with her hands clasped and her head bowed.
For her, there was nothing more; no brighter days to harken back to. Yesterday seemed as though it never existed. She prayed only for the strength to say her final goodbyes – but the greater powers of good and mercy consistently proved indifferent to her pleas. All she could do was treat her mind to the imagination of such a day as when death would greet her warmly, drawing a temporary contentment from the fantasy alone.
Common cause and a sense of anonymity brought Dimitri and Marianne together. Although they hadn't yet spoken the depths of their agony, what they did share, free from obligations and expectations, served to dull the pain.
THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE
As the months passed, a slithering chaos underground had upset the spirit of the whole monastery. Dark deceptions left students worried about being injured, killed, or made to vanish. These fears dwelled as far as the cathedral, gripping even the manner of individual with little attachment to life.
Marianne had come to understand the feelings of her friends and colleagues. Although she couldn't understand it, she knew they might miss her if she were to disappear beneath the twisted sound. She had become afraid. Not of death itself, which she still felt that she deserved and would have been better off with; rather, her fear was leaving her friends in the dark should her just desserts come to fruition. She hoped that someone could safeguard her truth, in the event that she found herself no longer around to speak it herself. But hers were twisted truths, knowledge which might cost her these fledgling friendships. The one to be given stewardship of such truths had to be one who had already proven unflinching before her sorrows, who she could trust not to be disappointed or flee when her grim prayers were spoken out loud.
She prayed to Father, then took a deep breath. When she spoke to Dimitri, her eyes stayed locked ahead, never facing his – but the quiet, trembling words were meant for his ears.
With these words, she narrated the tale of a dark, loathsome pall that slept in her veins – slept, but lived. Misfortune, danger, death surrounded her. Consumed all that she dared to touch, all that she dared to love. Hunters of the shadows had now and again accosted her; to keep safe from them, she had been forbidden from leaving monastery grounds - yet at times, she felt tempted to surrender to them, allow them to prevent their fears from coming true. Prevent her blood from summonning the fearless wretch, the insanity, that she might not yet face the thing that should not be.
Dimitri felt to tear apart those messengers of fear who hounded Marianne – felt to crush her misery in his fists. He stopped himself. It was wrong to give leeway to such violent feelings. And mere violence was far insufficient to allay her horrific pain, if it was meant to be allayed yet. All he could do was to acknowledge that pain with his words, with a gentle squeeze upon her hand. She worried that the misfortune might spread to him by touch of hands. He couldn't imagine that a measly curse might be able to meaningfully affect his many misfortunes, he assured her.
ONE
Wickedness and war only ever escalated in the months since. Now, the danger marched in the distance, headed for Garreg Mach at axepoint; a measely few days remained until impact.
In the cathedral, Dimitri knelt and bowed his head in ostensible prayer – while he shook and heaved. Try as he might have to clear his mind and pray his anger away, there was not much left of him; nothing but pain was real. A cracked mask laughed at him; beneath it, traces of one once dear El. A red mist encircled the horrible sight.
When he abruptly felt the touch of Marianne’s hand at the back of his neck, he couldn’t tell if it was true or a dream. Did it even matter? Whichever it was, the comforting presses of her fingers prompted him to expel mutterings of his suffering, barely coherent.
His breaths unsteadily painted an imagery of the flames of torment. Just as real as back in that time, the red fog clouded his senses – took his sight, his speech, his hearing, his arms, his legs, his soul. Beneath the fog, recollection could only retrieve scattered details – scarce, vague, and at times, in contradiction with each other. But amongst all others, one scene stood out perfectly clear: at the end, he stood alone amidst a sea of lifeless bodies. The world was gone. He was just one.
Since that horrible evening, he could not live, and he could not die. All that he could do was look to the time when justice was done unto this senseless slaughter. This revenge would either be what breathed the life back into him, or the end of him.
Marianne’s full embrace across his shoulder, the silent tears that stained his blue cape – perhaps it was all too good for Dimitri to be imagining it. But he couldn’t allow himself to feel this warmth. All that he could see: absolute horror, marching beneath an Adrestian banner.
SAD BUT TRUE
On the day that the monastery was completely engulfed by war, Marianne had fled. Five years after having done so, she resolved to put that particular regret behind her.
She stepped through halls rife with wreckage. Crossed a bridge that she was pleasantly surprised to see in one sturdy piece. Lifted her face to the sight of the front wall of the cathedral – nostalgic, even as the climbing scaffolds hinted discouragingly at the manner of scars it may have been marred with.
Inside, the air was dusty, but fresh – uncharacteristically fresh. It circulated freely through broken stained glass windows and the terrible gouge left on the main dome, starlit skies painting beauty behind damage. The altar was obstructed by a pile of fallen bricks. Something, someone, stood before the rubble. Stiff, apart from a downcast head. Could it be…?
Dimitri turned his one good eye in the direction of oncoming steps. “Who?”, Lambert demanded, but Dimitri silently realized it after a moment. “They’ll betray”, Glenn snapped before any other thought could intercede.
With a newfound fluency, Marianne bid her greetings before the familiar face, made conversation with ease and lightness – even if all she heard in return was the occasional strange whisper.
“They’ll betray. I’m your only true friend now.”
He couldn’t quite hear her graceful words. Not because they were enunciated with any fault, but because the sound of her voice drowned beneath the rush of other voices throbbing beneath his ears.
“They’ll betray. I’m forever there.”
“I’m your eyes when you must steal.”
“I’m your pain while you repay.”
He turned his back to her and spoke out properly, proferring stern warnings. This monastery had become a dangerous place. It was a potential battlefront, and more importantly, it was haunted – this very cathedral, a dwelling for the vengeful, restless spirits of the injusticed dead. Civilians had no business prancing about such a place.
But this was no mere civilian he was speaking to; it was Marianne von Edmund, a noblewoman well-taught in the spiritual arts, whose will to remain there dared to prove its strength against any manner of ghoul.
What nonsense! Risking the only life she had for the sake of some crumbling temple, long despoiled of its majesty by the Empire’s cruelty?
“"Hate!”
“I’m your hate!”
“I’m your hate when you want love!”
Dimitri met Mariane’s unflinching gaze anew, with a manic glare on the half of his face that he turned. Again, he urged her to leave – his urging now blunt, monossylabic, and laced with venom.
She showed no sign of movement, much less retreat, at the brusque warning. He turned his back on her once more. A part of him longed to speak freely, just as he would do around her back in the day – but he resisted this temptation bravely.
“Pay the price. Pay, for nothing’s fair.”
ST. ANGER
Although it had never again reached the heart of the monastery, the war raged on month after month. Several had again passed when Dimitri found himself before facing the mound of rubble in the cathedral, not on his feet and swearing revenge as usual, but on his knees, awash in tears. His world shook, like an earthquake. Was he falling, or surrendering? Was it him? Was it fear?
The usual gallery of restless fallen spirits harried him, fingers outstretched in bitter accusations. A new one towered above them all: a colossal visage of the newly departed Rodrigue, casting blame upon Dimitri in overpowering roars. Behold, this innocent life, reaved before its time! The righteous pay the cost of the prince's foolishness with their blood!
And what of the revenge that the spirits longed for? How dare the fool prince speak of revenge! This monstrous killer, fallen so far from redemption, would need hundreds of his own lives to offer to vengeance before he could ever dare to think of justice being done. And he cried out, what of the gentle words Rodrigue had given his last breaths to speak? Was the forgiveness he'd given in life withdrawn in death? The fool boy pleads in the logic of the living. How dare he speak of the desires of the dead, when he can't preserve so little as the memory of their faces? Dimitri looked around himself -- many of the spirits assembled had crooked facial features, eyes that hung at impossible angles and mouths that drooped beneath their heads. Dear Patricia had no face at all beneath her familiar head of hair.
Behind himself, he found a hand -- calloused, but meticulously clean, extended in an offer to help him rise. Even if it found it hard to see clearly, he could recognize the quality of its touch, from the many other times it'd reached out to him through the red fog. He reached for the hand, but he could sense Rodrigue around his neck, pulling him back to the other side.
Although he hung from the medallion noose, he managed to take Marianne's hand in his and rise to her embrace.
Her shoulders were draped in a pitch-black shawl, and her kind, yet unwavering eyes watched behind a veil. Garb intended for the occasion of offering prayers to those who lost their lives in the recent battle at Gronder Field, she explained; including the dead who she had known and cherished, but not limited to them. The dead which had been taken by Dimitri's foolhardiness, cried out Lambert. The dead who were drawn into a needless battle, the blood of Leicester which spilled only because the fool prince had failed to reach out diplomatically. Anger around Dimitri's neck once again, but he refused to be pulled back to his knees. He searched for a voice to let himself go free.
Placing his trust on her not to be deemed an insane, blathering fool, he dared to speak of the visions that haunted his mind, to denounce the phantoms who hounded him. As he spoke, he could see a distinctive clarity dawn in Marianne's eyes. The phantoms must be real, she concluded. But there are malevolent spirits who disguise themselves as our own loved ones, wield the voices that we trust in to speak words of sorrow and destruction.
Awestruck, Dimitri spared a glance back at the spirits which had so tormented him; they were fearful. Marianne suggested a series of rites that may help to chase them away and nurse the pain that they'd inflicted, although such would be no trivial matter. First, chants and prayers -- of nonmagical nature, which the healer was only meant to guide the afflictee through as they spoke.
And so, guided by Marianne, Dimitri spoke freely to the ghosts -- his anger. He spoke not of merely flushing it out, but sending it where it belongs. No more regrets, no more hitting the lights on these dark sets. He wanted his anger to be healthy. He wanted his anger just for him. He needed his anger not to control. He wanted his anger to be him. Boldly, he spoke, he wanted his anger to be him. The shadows of the dearly departed reached out in one last desperate plea, but they crumbled into dust and smoke. The particles in the air settled into a new appearance: a mirror image of Dimitri himself.
And he needed to set his anger free. He joined hands with the apparition before him, and the hands became one. And he needed to set his anger free. Part by part, the phantom settled into his body, making him whole again. Set it free! For a fleeting moment, his eye was clear of the red mist.
That night was not the end of Dimitri's troubles, or even the last time he spoke to a ghost. But it was the first day in a long time when he could laugh without tasting venom, cry without fire burning down the trails of his tears. Carefreely, he joked about when Marianne had thought of herself as a bringer of misfortune; but to overcome the curse and walk down a healer's path was a choice that she had made, an attitude which she had to keep alive each day -- the same as overcoming Dimitri's phantoms.