Chapter Text
“Después No Quiero Más Que Paz”
("Afterwards I want only peace.")
-Pedro Mir
Prelude
[The Final Day]
Was my life worthwhile?’ Vanille wonders as she gets dressed in the different layers of her holy robes, preparing for a ceremony that will kill her. In five hours, when the clock strikes twelve, she will summon all of the souls of those who have perished in the last five centuries to the holy clavis. Overtaken by the Chaos, both she and those souls will die and disappear from the collective memory of humanity.
It will be a fitting end for her.
A long, long, time ago, when Vanille was fourteen and still living in her home village of Oerba, she had wanted to be a nurse. She’d wanted to help people recover from injury and illness. But because she had no immediate family, there was no money to send her to Paddra to study at the regional medical school. So she’d settled for the modest goal of becoming a sheep herder for the many farmers around her home village. Like most people, she’d probably choose a long term partner before she was twenty. She hoped that they would have kids; she'd prefer to adopt orphans, to help children that were just like her. Maybe later she'd be blessed with grandkids of her own. If she was extremely fortunate, then she would live to see her own great-grandchildren before passing away.
But a simple life like that was never meant to be. Before her sixteenth birthday the War of Transgression came, a conflict that slowly eroded the local villages and its inhabitants through famine and destruction. Later, the fal'Cie Anima had chosen Fang to become l'Cie, but she had rebelled. Vanille had offered to become l'Cie as repentance for Fang's sin. Anima accepted and tasked them to become Ragnarok, the beast that had the power to destroy Cocoon and end the war.
They probably shouldn’t have fulfilled their Focus; Vanille did nothing, so they should have become Cie’th then. Fang was stubborn enough to become Ragnarok on her own. Everything Fang had done was to help Vanille survive, but at what cost to Vanille? Guilt and five hundred years of sleep. After that, it was guilt and one thousand years of sleep. Then it was more guilt and the curse of hearing souls wailing through the Chaos.
The fight to survive was certainly never worth the pain of hurting so many others.
But exactly ten years ago, she was offered a righteous path through serving The Order of Salvation; the High Priestess and other officials had explained to her the true purpose for Bhunivelze’s plan. On the final day of the world she could stop the suffering of the dead stuck in the Chaos. She could perform the Soulsong. Although she would sacrifice her own life in doing so, it would help create the perfect new world for the rest of humanity that remained. Of course Vanille said yes. It was the only way to cancel out her many sins, the many lives that had been lost due to her actions all those centuries ago.
‘Was my life worthwhile? No... it probably wasn't.’ She shuts the door to her chambers one last time before heading to the altar. ‘Perhaps things would have gone differently if I hadn’t been born at all. Maybe the world wouldn’t have ended up like this.
Guards from The Order flank her from all sides, the clanking sound of metal armor in sync with the pace of her own footsteps. Through the fogged windows that line her path she can just make out the drops of rain falling from the sky: a dreary way to see the world end. Though she can’t see the large Chaos Infusions that the guards have reported from around the city, she can hear the wailing of those who have died. Their misery, much like hers, will be over soon.
It’s hard not to think of the people she’s cared about throughout her lifetime...those she has loved, those she has lost...a few of them will have their own souls destroyed in the ritual. The thought stings. She bites her tongue to distract herself. It’s enough to stop her from crying; she can’t lose her composure now, not during this time that will lead to her atonement.
'What does oblivion feel like?’ Vanille, the blessed Saint of Luxerion, ponders this question not for the first time as they descend lower and lower to the catacombs. Closer and closer to the altar in God’s Sanctum where she will take her final breaths.
‘It will feel like nothing, like all of the lights turned off in a windowless room. And it will probably be a relief.’