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His face is a mask of blood. One eye is swollen to the point of being blind and the pain from it is muted compared to the ache coming from somewhere in his sternum.
Meteor has endured many beatings throughout the years, but none compare to this. It is dark here at the end of the universe, and between one eye no longer working and that, he struggles to make out anything other than the silhouette of a figure next to him that is just as ragged, just as beaten—
No. More so. They’re both in tatters, but Zenos did not win this fight. He did.
Why does that feel like a mockery of fate?
Lost. Lost.
“How… thrilling.”
The words come out as broken as Meteor feels. Zenos is clearly in no better state but just as is his way, he’s talking. All he ever does is talk. Talk talk talk. Maybe because no one ever listens to him. How sad a thought. How lonely it must be to talk constantly and be invisible save for your might. Known only for fighting prowess. Only for how well he could deliver blows in combat. What good does any of that do now?
Meteor shifts and, despite the pain in his shoulder, slings his arm over to roll onto his side. A sharp tinge of pain flares up through him and he coughs. It is loud in the silence, and the blood that cakes his lips afterwards tells him that he has broken ribs that have likely punctured a lung or something. He will be lucky if he survives this beating, he thinks. None have ever been quite so egregious.
But he won.
That thought drives him to pull himself forward along the ground, dragging his lower body with as much strength as he can muster. Even the smallest inch is an ordeal and Meteor clenches his eyes closed as another wave of heat sears through him, tightening the muscles in his legs, tension thick enough to cut as a reminder that he is too hurt to be moving around like this. He’s too hurt to be trying and yet—
He needs to see Zenos’ face. He needs to look the Garlean in the eyes before they both fade away.
“There is more to life than fighting,” he chokes out, the words hoarse, crisp, like they’re about to break somehow. He is reminded of autumn leaves falling and the way that they crunch under his boots. His voice holds the same cadence. “More to life than this.”
“Does it matter now?”
A good question. Not one that Meteor had put much thought into. Zenos is dying—so what good does it do to try and change his perspective now?
Why does he feel inclined to keep trying?
He might be dying, too.
There is a red smear on the not-quite-there ground. It pools out from under Meteor’s body and it slides forward with each tug of his arms. He’s leaving streaks of his own blood behind as he tries to crawl to the fallen Garlean. There is nothing about this that is sane, but that’s typical of Zenos. Nothing about him is sane. How sad his existence has been. Fighting as a meaning to life. The only meaning. Are they really so different?
“What will you go back to?” Zenos asks. His voice cracks on the word ‘back’ and he swallows thickly. From where Meteor is sprawled, he can make out a pool of blood spreading out from behind Zenos, too. He can also make out that each word is a strain. “Hero. Stay here. Where everything is perfect.”
How… sad. That this is his definition of perfection. Quiet silence at the end of the universe, dark save for the glimmer of stars. Nothing remains. No expectations, either, he thinks. No demands left to make of a corpse.
As if he knows what Meteor is thinking, Zenos continues. “No light burns for all time. Eventually even stars burn out.”
Hadn’t the Endsinger said something similar to that? That even stars died. Yes, they do, but—
“You will burn out too. Or you will come crashing down, fall into your beloved Eorzea, and sear everything in your wake. An inferno to rival Dalamud’s fall—”
“No,” Meteor interrupts. “Shut up.”
He has a point. Everything burns out eventually. He is not called Meteor for no reason. Eventually his fire, too, will burn out. The only way to shine eternally is to die while still bright. Die and stay brilliant forever… or live long enough to dim.
But he’d just convinced Meteion that living was worthwhile. He’d just shown her everything in his life that he fights for. Y’shtola’s secretive smile. Lyse’s brilliant one. Urianger’s books and Thancred’s laughter. Tataru’s business ventures and the twins’ unwavering faith in him. Even Krile, a touch more cynical than the rest. There are so many people in the world counting on him, on whom his happiness depends, and happiness is a fleeting thing worth chasing—again and again and again. Like grains of sand, it slips through fingers, but cupped palms can hold it for a time.
He has not given up.
“I’m not staying here.”
Determination. He drags himself forward until he reaches Zenos’s side. Another cough racks his body, tightening under his ribs. He winces, and as he reaches Zenos’s side, he collapses. His hand snakes out and he grabs the Garlean’s, holding it firmly, despite the fact that Zenos turns to look at him sharply. Confusion is written plainly on his face—but so is resignation.
This is the death that Zenos wants. It is not the death that Meteor craves, though. He’s not ready to stop shining.
“Remember my prediction, then. Remember when I am right.” He does not squeeze Meteor’s hand back. He turns his head back upward, to look at the sky above, to gaze into the infinite beyond. The stars are shining, twinkling in the distance, but there is something else there, too. A burning light streaking through the sky, unmistakably headed their way. “Ah. Your companions…”
Meteion. She’s coming back for Meteor. She’s coming back to help him escape this fate and for a brief moment, Meteor resents her. Even now, they won’t let him have peace. Except had he not just said that he was not staying? That he intended to survive? That he intended to live? His story does not end here, he knows, but Zenos’s does, and there is something terribly sad about the wasted potential there, about what could have been but never will be again, due in large to choices—and some of those were probably not made by Zenos himself.
It’s pity. How offended the Garlean would be if he knew that Meteor pitied him in his final moments. Pitied the creature he’d become in his relentless pursuit of feeling alive. All the wrong choices, with no one to guide him down a proper path.
“I’ll remember you,” Meteor promises. “Not just your prediction. You.”
He’d have the scars that would make it impossible to forget this fight, but that part he does not give voice. What he does instead is muster together his strength to prop himself up on his hands and then he leans over Zenos, meeting his gaze for a brief moment. Delirious from blood loss, he sees not the person responsible for bringing about countless deaths but a lost, confused child, who has never known proper affection, and that feeling of pity swells to an overwhelming level.
“Rest now,” he tells Zenos before gently, tenderly, pressing a chaste kiss to his forehead, right over his Garlean third eye.
The action clearly puzzles Zenos, who stares at him with those dying-eyes before bitterly laughing. “Don’t go soft on me now, hero.”
Soft—
No. Never that.
The streak in the sky grows closer. Meteor flops over onto his back to watch its steady approach, brilliantly blue light cascading toward them. For a heartbeat, he wonders if he can grab Zenos’s hand and take him with, if Meteion will allow that—whatever she attempts to do. Perhaps she’s here to say goodbye. No. She’ll have a plan for his survival. But he will… he will not save Zenos.
It’s not what Zenos wants.
“Never.”
The azure light swoops overhead and then drops—
A control device. It clatters on the ground right next to Meteor, landing button-side down, and he feels it begin to activate. A hoarse wheeze sounds from beside him, then a rattle, and he knows that Zenos is gone. Satisfied, perhaps, with his final promise, or maybe the last vestiges of his strength have finally been sapped away. Who can say?
Meteor lifts one hand and places it on top of the controller. He closes his eyes and whispers, “Goodbye,” to no one before he feels himself slip out of consciousness—and out of existence. Back to the ship.
Back to the real world.