Chapter Text
Time: Leaving for Origin
"If that is all?" Dion asked.
Clive paused before answering, knowing the hardest goodbye was yet unsaid. He felt Jill behind him and pain welled up. It would be so easy to give into his fate: to not have to walk away from her to his likely doom. To just stay with her for another hour or week or month or year and not have to forcibly cut away the part of him that had withered over years of abuse but which had bloomed in the light of her love.
But he knew that to give into his fate condemned her to certain death. Because if Ultima got his way, all humans would perish. She would burn to ash in the fire of rebirth, and Clive would be the source of of the flame.
The pain of leaving was nothing compared to the pain of losing her, and worse, being the conduit for her ending. He'd already lived through that torment before he knew Joshua had survived the Night of Flames.
He couldn't survive it again. Not with Jill.
He would be damned before he let her die without fighting to his last breath.
"Not quite," he answered Dion, turning around, meeting Jill's gaze.
Feeling the stares of his gathered friends and family, he walked towards her. Her expression changed, from carefully neutral to a flash of fear, then back to studiously calm. While they hadn't hidden their relationship in any way, they were two intensely private people. There was so much to say, not enough time to say it, and no privacy even if there were time.
"Jill," he murmured, not quite knowing how to start. What would Sir Crandall say? He needed someone to feed him the lines that would ease the hurt he felt from her. It was the same hurt that he could feel in himself.
This was a battle that she could not help with. The most important fight of his life, and she wouldn't be there at his side. She couldn't. It would kill her.
It was tearing them both apart.
"It's time, isn't it?" she said, her voice quiet, but steady.
He nodded. "It is."
Torgal whined, a welcome distraction, so he directed his attention down. "Take care of him."
She nodded, saying nothing, and he crouched down so he was level with the frost wolf. His most faithful companion who had never given up on him. Even as the years and the miles had separated them, Torgal had never given up hope. I won't give up, either, Torgal, Clive vowed silently. I won't let you down.
"And you. You take care of her, too, boy."
He gave the wolf a final hug, confident that at least both Torgal and Jill would watch out for each other. Even if he didn't make it back, neither would be alone. His heart constricted at the thought, and an unbidden image came into his mind: Jill, hand on Torgal's head, watching the sun setting. Just the two of them. Alone.
He stood, facing Jill. And again, his mind went blank, trying to find the words to say what he was feeling. His entire life up until the day Cid had found him had been about denying what he felt inside: confusion, pain, sorrow, fury. Just moving forward one foot in front of the other towards his death which he would have greeted with open arms for most of his adult life.
Dying was to be his reward, release from a life that started with a mother who loathed him and ended with him as a soulless, mindless killer who lived only for revenge. Before Phoenix Gate, at least he had had his father, and Joshua and Jill. After that fateful night....he had nothing but painful memories. So he tried to feel nothing, and he mostly succeeded, with his only desires being a thirst for revenge and a bottomless anger which he had thought was for his brother's killer, but he'd learned soon enough that it was for himself.
His life that day in the Nysa Defile was empty, soulless. His heart had become a barren waste, shriveled and blackened. He'd debased himself, broken his vows, crawled for lesser men. Killed for lesser men. Because deep down, he knew he deserved it. He knew he was the beast that had torn his brother to shreds and brought down his kingdom.
There was nothing at the end for him. No heaven. If he were lucky, there would be no hell, either. Just oblivion.
Until the moment he'd found Jill again. Unconscious, bleeding on the cracked sandy stone in the Nysa Defile, his sword at her neck. He had thought himself beyond saving, beyond caring until he saw her face, and the silent tear that fell down her cheek. Another emotion had suddenly bloomed, a tiny delicate tendril in the vast wasteland of his self-directed rage: hope.
And now, he had no words for he joy she brought to him. He didn't want to just accept his death any longer. He wanted to fight against it, knowing that if he died, he had given everything he had to stay alive.
For her.
Because he had something....someone....to live for.
"Don't forget, Clive," Jill said. "We all choose our own path. Believe in yours."
She paused, a tremulous smile on her face, "I do."
He said nothing for a second, feeling that faith wash over him. Like Torgal, Jill would never give up on him. She was trusting that he wouldn't give up on himself, either.
He put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her closer, tears welling up. He fought them back, mindful of the eyes watching but more mindful of tears making this goodbye more difficult.
"I'll be back." he said. "I promise."
He didn't know those were the words he was going to say, but after they left his mouth, he realized that he meant it. He knew it might not be what happened, but he needed her to know that he would try, try until there was nothing left, to come back to her. That he knew and accepted what she'd been trying to tell him all along: he, too, was worth fighting for. He, too, was worth saving.
And there, at the end of the world, he finally knew what to say to her.
"I love you, Jill."
Her lips parted, and her eyes widened, torn between joy and devastation. She dropped her gaze, struggling to keep from crying, because she couldn't bear the idea of him carrying her sorrow with him. Not when he carried so many burdens already.
And she smiled slightly, because while they had never said the words to each other, they really hadn't needed to be said. There were so many small moments that announced their love as loud as a coeurl roar and as bright as the sun.
In the still of the night, when it was dark and quiet, with the only sounds being their mingled breaths and the creak of his ridiculously small bed.
Him tucking a tendril of her silver hair behind one of her ears when it fell forward as she crushed some herbs for Tarja.
Her bringing him a plate of food from the pub because he'd forgotten to eat while spending hours on correspondence.
Heating the bath water for her using Ifrit's flames, knowing just the perfect temperature, and using Garuda's winds so the hot water burbled and bubbled around her, soothing aching joints.
Running her fingers through his hair while he rested his head on her lap as he read aloud from a book.
Catching him holding her embroidered handkerchief to his cheek, staring off in the distance with a half-smile on his face.
Her laughter at his look of consternation at finding snow daisy petals all in his hair after their chaste hug in the royal meadows had turned a little more passionate. Asking her if that was why Obolus had been snickering the entire boat ride home.
Him waving a freshly baked bun under her nose to wake her up, having cajoled one from the baker just for her.
Them as children running hand-in-hand towards a grove of oaks as the thunder rained down. Turning to each other, laughing while raindrops sparkled in their hair and on their lashes.
All of those moments, and the hundreds more they had shared flashed through her mind. They hadn't needed it said out loud, because it was just a truth, like the sun always rising in the East.
"I know," she said, the smile trembling but staying in place. She didn't need it said out loud, but in the back of her mind, she thought that maybe Metia would hear, and the goddess would take pity on two lovers who had fought so long and so hard for happiness. Protect him, please, Metia. Bring him back to the people who love him. Back to me.
"I love you, too."
They moved together, foreheads touching, eyes closed. The crowd around them now forgotten.
In Rosaria, touching foreheads was the most intense display of emotion there was. It was vulnerable and delicate but steady and strong. It was breathing the same air as your most beloved, symbolically sharing your thoughts and dreams with them with no space or clothing between you. Minds, hearts and souls mingling.
They stayed that way for a moment, love and hope and joy washing over them. Every step on their journeys leading to this, and both thinking that if their pain had dug valleys so deep the bottoms could not be seen, so had their joy built mountains so tall the tops vanished into the clouds.
They kissed, softly, before he hugged her to him. Inhaling her scent--flowers and fresh snow, of course--he burned the feel of her body against his into his memory. He slid his hands off her shoulders and down her arms, squeezing her hands once before stepping back and letting go.
Jill fought to keep the tears in. She wouldn't cry, not in front of him. She would be strong, because he needed her to be strong.
One long second, then he turned away. There was nothing more to say, and he was afraid that if he looked at her, and if he saw her tears, or she saw his, he would falter.
Lifting his head, he looked out over the crowd that had gathered to see them off. All of the people that had helped him on his path. People that he had helped in return.
A long, long time ago, his mother's hatred for him had broken something inside him. While his father had tried his best to counterweigh that damage, it was too foundational. Even before Ifrit's arrival, Clive had accepted that he deserved to be punished, to be alone, to suffer. Because he wasn't good enough. A failure. A disappointment. Taking up space in a world that would have been better off without him.
But the crowd of people in front of him had each, in their own way, helped shore up that broken part of him. He deserved to live and be happy, just like they did.
And whether it was Fate or bad luck, he was the one tasked with making sure that future remained possible.
But through Fate or good luck, every person standing in front of him had given him something to make him strong enough to have a chance to succeed at it.
Ultima wanted him empty, but he was full. Full of a life interwoven with other people. He would not give that up without a fight.
He said, "Now. We have a god to kill."
Joshua and Dion nodded, then turned to start the dash towards Origin.
Clive turned his head, sensing Jill behind him, but he didn't turn the full way around. He took a few slow but purposeful steps away, then steeled himself and broke into a run.
He didn't look back.
He couldn't look back.
Jill didn't see this, because she, too, couldn't watch him go. She instead stared at the ground, feeling the distance between them widening second by second. Every clunk of his boots on the ground as he ran away a nail in her heart, but she kept her gaze downcast.
She didn't see him leap off the edge. She only turned when the flare of Bahamut seared the corners of her vision.
It was only then that she turn her eyes to follow them go. She was shocked to see how far Bahamut had already flown in just those few seconds. It was seeing how fast they were flying away that her strength failed. The rickety front she'd held up collapsed. The reality that this could be the last time she saw him, heard him, kissed him, smelled him. The finality of it slammed into her. With that thought, the wall around her fears broke, flooding into her, and she ran after him, begging, "Clive!"
Now the tears would not be held back, and she bent over, sobbing, knowing it was too late. He could not hear her. He was gone. Unlikely to ever return, her traitorous mind whispered.
Her hopelessness lasted only a moment, before her own words came back and her heart swelled. No matter how terrible the night...dawn would always come. That you would always come. For me. And you have. Again and again.
She folded her hands together as she had as a child and prayed. Prayed harder than she ever had, even in the depths of her torment with the Ironblood.
Help me, oh blessed Metia. Please show him how he can save himself.
Show him how he can live.