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“If you were to tell a story about us, how do you think it would go?” Joshua asks.
The skies above are cloudy where Joshua used to be able to trace patterns in the sky, the moon bright and Metia a constant beside it. The world is much changed, but so is he.
Clive is silent beside him, contemplative.
“Once, there was a boy who loved his brother very much,” Clive says softly. “So much that he would have given up anything to see him safe and happy, whatever it would cost.”
Joshua hums. “Once, there was a boy who was blessed to be a brother, loved and cherished and protected by his older brother, from whom he wanted nothing more than to love him, and who would let himself be loved in return.”
“Once, there was a boy who dreamed of becoming a hero, until he learned what it meant to be a hero by losing everything he held dear,” Clive says quietly, and Joshua turns to watch him, the profile that has always been so familiar. Clive's nose is a little crooked now from having been broken one time too many, but good breeding shows, as his mother used to say.
“Once, there was a hero who was once a boy, daring to dream of a better world than the one he knew, who then did what he could to make it real, despite what it would cost him.” Joshua smiles when Clive turns to look at him, reaching to brush his messy hair from his face. Clive, who looks lost and afraid and nothing like the hero everyone makes him out to be, but who still carries their hopes with care. Clive, who looks at Joshua as if Joshua is the only thing that makes him brave and strong and everything that everyone else imagines him to be. “Courage, brother. I am with you.”
He doesn't have words for the way Clive looks at him, almost two decades of grief sitting between them, the desperation to close the distance between them but not knowing how to.
“Once,” Clive whispers, “there was a boy who had always wanted to be a brother, who remembers not a time when he was not a brother.” What Clive doesn't say is what hangs heavy between them, and Joshua reaches out to pull him close, to reassure him, to pretend he doesn't feel the way Clive holds him just a little too tight, a little too scared.
“It would kill him, I think, if you died,” Mid says. “I’ve never seen him so happy before, all these years.”
Joshua wants to ask, because Mid is far more clever than she looks or sounds, in ways that go beyond the workings of mythril engines and thermal displacement stacks. She looks and she sees and she tries to mend and fix and build anew, and for some reason she’s looked at him and Clive and decided that there was something here she needed to fix.
“He weren’t ever happy before, really. Sometimes I think he told himself that this was all the happiness he would ever get and he’d make do. Then you came.”
Joshua simply stares contemplatively out over the lake, its placidity deceptive.
“You know, we’ve been apart more years than we've had together now.”
Mid cocks her head at him, as if she doesn't understand why that matters. And he supposes it doesn't in any of the ways that really matter, but also in all sorts of ways that make Joshua only too aware of how that time has changed them both.
“Me da told me once that Clive’s got one of ‘em bleedin’ hearts. Would do anything for anyone if they asked him, if he could.” Mid snorts. “Stupid bugger.”
Privately, Joshua agrees. While he loves Clive for it, he wishes his brother wouldn't keep taking on burdens that are not his to bear.
“Thing is, Joshua, he does it for you when you don’t ask. Because he's thinking ‘bout you all the time. He’d do anything you asked him, and a whole lot you don't neither.”
“I know,” he murmurs. He knows. He knows that Clive spent years mourning him then trying to avenge him. He knows that Clive then spent the years after Drake’s Head searching for him. He knows that Clive had sat at his bedside after Twinside until he’d awoken, and that these days he looks at Joshua like he’s afraid that Joshua will leave him again. Through Dhalmekia and to Kanver, across Sanbreque and the Naldia Narrow.
“So don’t die, yeah?” Mid asks, elbowing him. “You don’t get to die now.”
Joshua smiles weakly, but they both know. She’d seen him after he’d tried to keep Barnabas off them, the way he’d coughed so hard it seemed like his lungs would escape him, the blood on the deck that the sailors had to scrub off. She would know, he thinks, as someone who had watched a Dominant use his power over and over, watched as it slowly consumed him. After all, she’s here and Clive’s here, but Cid isn’t.
“Were that it were up to me,” he says.
But it's never been at all, or else the night at Phoenix Gate would never had happened, and Joshua would never have been parted from Clive at all, nor would they have this sea of sorrow between them.
“Well, if I can figure out how to build the fastest ship in Valisthea and how to make it fly, you can bloody well figure out how to keep living. You’re the Phoenix, isn't rebirth kind of your thing?”
But even the Phoenix cannot raise the dead. Joshua has died and lived again once, he doesn't know if he can do that again. “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?” he asks, offering Mid a smile that feels far too brittle.
“It’s a promise, yeah? I’m gonna figure out how to make the Enterprise fly as fast as you so you gotta be around to test it with me.” Her own smile is cheery and equally fragile, but then Mid specialises in the impossible, so she may very well do it.
“Yes,” he answers simply, and she smiles, brilliant and real.
Tabor feels almost suffocating with the heat and the eyes that follow him, under Cyril’s watchful eye and Jote’s concern. He knows that Clive and Jill had been watching as Jote fretted with her herbs and tinctures, and he could feel the way Jill’s eyes had flitted between the herbs and Jote and him, understanding something that Clive did not.
She slips in to the room while Clive is washing himself, a silent wraith. She has a pinched look on her face that makes him wonder if she has been speaking to Jote, wondering what she's seen in him when her expression crumples.
“Joshua, look after yourself, please,” Jill says softly. She knows, she can see the signs of the curse in him just as he sees it in her. He smiles at her, patting the space next to hum. She sits and leans back against the wall, the two of them pressed against each other, separated only by the blankets tucked around Joshua.
He takes her hand in his, smaller and cooler than his own. When they were younger, her hands were always just a bit bigger than his, clean where his had been ink-stained from his lessons and practicing his letters. Now they fit easily in his with room to spare, the nails no longer neat like they were in childhood, all the signs of a hard life written into her hands with calluses and scars.
“Did I ever tell you that I always knew I would die young?” he asks. Her face twists at that and he thinks he's a terrible person for giving her more sorrow. “Once I was old enough to know what a Dominant was and what it would mean, I read every book in the library on it, even the ones I barely understood.
“The younger the Dominant awoke, the younger they died. Even the Phoenix, healing and rebirth notwithstanding.” Joshua threads his fingers through hers and curls them around her palm. “What more I, as sickly as I was, blessed as I was? How long would I have?”
“I wouldn't have let you,” she says fiercely, squeezing his hand in her own. “None of us would, we still won't.”
“It’s not our choice,” he says gently. It isn't, hasn’t been for a long time now. It’s something Joshua had always known, but only found the words for recently. “This is one thing that we cannot change, I’m afraid.”
She leans her head against his shoulder and it feels a little like they are children again, hiding in the garden, away from the adults and their demands for a brief minute. “I’m sorry, Jill,” he whispers. He’s not sure what he’s sorry for here—for the grief he’s giving her, for his failure as a child and as the Phoenix, for not being the kind of man who could be selfish enough to make sure she would not shed tears over him.
“So am I,” she answers, squeezing his hand tightly. “It’s hypocritical of me to ask this of you but I feel like all our losses keep stacking and I don’t know if it’s worth it, if any of it will be worth it. I’m so afraid it won’t be, and then I will have lost you and Clive for nothing at all.”
He doesn’t know if any of this is worth it either, but he supposes this is what hope is. Trying, giving the best you can, praying that it is enough. But it doesn’t stop or change the fear, nor can it change what is to come. “We have now,” he says quietly. But he knows what she doesn't say. How long does now last? It's not a question of if but when, and Joshua has made her only too aware of it.
“We just got you back, and here we are, losing you again.” There is a world of sorrow in her words, the way she tucks her face into his shoulder, and he thinks he has wronged her in this too, in making her measure their time together, knowing that it inevitably will run out.
But there is nothing he can say that can assuage the hurt of knowing what is to come, so he leans into her just as she leans into him, taking what little comfort they can from this closeness.
Once, there was a man who had once been a boy who had never wanted anything more than to grow up with his brother at his side. But fate decided otherwise, and his brother was taken from him. As the boy became a man and found that fate had other designs for them, keeping them apart for many years. Despite this, the man dreamed of a day when he could stand at his brother's side again. But fate would catch up to them, slow and silent, eating the man from the inside out.
Once, there had been a boy who had wanted nothing but to stand at his brother's side forever, but forever is a promise that they were never meant to have.
The Phoenix is fire incarnate, setting all ablaze and burning it into ashes. Joshua can feel it inside of him, how the aether crumbles yet another part of him each time he primes. Blood with nowhere to go but out, the stone that creeps through him. He too, will crumble to ash in the wake of the Phoenix’s power.
He could argue with Tarja about the medicine and Jote about his wellbeing, and he's sure they confide in Clive in an effort to try and preserve his fragile health, but Joshua knows what is to come. The ache in his chest where he holds Ultima captive worsens, but he keeps this to himself. Jote would only worry and Clive will get that look of guilt on his face, as if this was not Joshua’s choice but a burden he has placed on Joshua.
Instead, he leans on Clive and Clive wraps an arm around him, the two of them allowing themselves this indulgence. Clive’s hand rubs circles on his back like it had when he was a child, and that soothes the ache of it.
Sometimes, he thinks he should tell Clive that it is killing him. That he can feel the lithification in his lungs and his limbs, that he can measure out his time in months and weeks now. He knows what Clive will say, will do. But he doesn't want to stay behind in the Hideaway, waiting for Clive to return the way Jill does. He's had so little time with Clive, and he will not give up anymore of it for a misplaced sense of duty or the feeble attempt at protecting what he's already decided to give up.
The thing is, Joshua is his mother's son. He does not always have the kindness and goodness that seems to spill out from Clive and Elwin with ease. He is Annabella’s selfish ambition, her ruthlessness, careful with his advantages and concessions. Sometimes he wonders if something burned away that night in him, or if Ifrit had torn open the ugliness inside and freed it.
He listens, he calculates. He charts the falling of empires of Valisthea in his head, the litany of broken promises and alliances, wars of attrition and desertion as the blight spreads and life becomes more difficult. He can do the sums, see the future that is promised to them should they continue down this path. He tries to chart out a future for them, but perhaps there is no charting what is to come.
Joshua has known since he’d awakened again with a deep ache in his chest that his time would run out sooner than others. The Phoenix mended what it could, but it couldn't stop or change the cost of priming. It couldn't change his fragile constitution, and keeping Ultima trapped strained him further. He is burning out and he knows it.
He hasn't said it to Clive, because he doesn't want to know what face Clive would make. If anyone were to say it to him about Clive, he knows that it would devastate him. It's easier to believe that Clive might survive this and make another life for himself, or even that Clive too would die with Joshua in this attempt to defy fate and the gods. But the idea of living while knowing Clive is dead is one Joshua will not entertain. A world without Clive is not one Joshua knows how to live in.
There's a story about two brothers who walked into hell together. Or rather, it's the story of a man walked into hell in search of his brother, to bring him back, to beg him to return.
Joshua wonders if he's the seeker or the missing brother.
“How are you?” Joshua asks. Dion’s expression is as cloudy as the skies above them, and he has been quiet since they returned from Stonhyrr.
“I don’t suppose you would accept platitudes?” Dion asks wryly. Joshua smiles briefly and shakes his head.
“I would hear the honest truth from you.”
Dion looks contemplative, weighing his words with a care that few afford. “I know what I must do, and I will do it regardless what it costs me.”
Joshua wants to sigh at that. Clive and Dion both, so eager to take blame and guilt upon their shoulders for failures that were not of their making. “Have you thought about what comes after?” Joshua asks, because it is something that has been weighing on his mind.
“I must confess I haven't given it much thought,” Dion admits. “It seems so unlikely that we will succeed, and yet we persist.”
“It’s difficult to imagine what this new world will look like,” Joshua agrees. He tries to picture it, and he cannot. Perhaps it is something like the Hideaway, people coming together and making the best of what they can, finding new ways to change and grow. He doesn’t know the people here, but he’s seen enough to know that they’d keep going whatever ways they could.
“The crystals have been so prevalent I scarce can imagine a world without it, though these few weeks here have opened my eyes to new possibilities. But I wonder what of us, when we manipulate aether as easily as breathing? What of Bahamut and Phoenix? Who would we be without them?”
“Dion Lesage and Joshua Rosfield, I hope,” Joshua quips lightly. “Friends, still.”
Dion smiles at that, easing the sorrow on his brow. “Always.”
“I think I would like to go north,” Joshua says quietly. “Perhaps leave Valisthea altogether. I used to imagine it as a child, running away from Rosalith and becoming an adventurer.”
Dion smiles at that. “That might be nice,” he concurs. “It never occurred to me that I would ever leave Storm, let alone the Twins. All I knew were my father's orders.”
There is a deep hurt there, Joshua thinks. Of trust being betrayed, of a slow grief and realisation. Joshua cannot relate to it; he had always known his mother to be calculating in her actions, always considering how it would be perceived. He never remembered her as kind and loving, though he supposed that in her own way, she had loved him, or what he had represented to her. And he had loved her, in the way all children loved their mothers.
“These days have changed much,” Joshua agrees carefully. “I want to imagine that there is something waiting for us still at the end of this, be it as simple as a new day.”
Dion has that look in his eye again, the distant one that tells Joshua that he is thinking of Twinside again. “Do you truly think so?” he asks softly, like this is something he is afraid to hope for.
Joshua folds his arms and leans against the railing, eyes on the distant horizon. “When I woke up five years after that night, they called it a miracle. The rebirth of the Phoenix. When they told me what happened, I wished that the Undying had let me die too, because then I would have been with Clive and my father.
“I was so weak, Dion. I had to learn to stand again, to walk again. What it meant to take that first step on my own two feet, with no idea what I was walking towards, what I wanted to do now that everything I’d known about myself was gone. Did I still owe it to what remained of Rosaria to reclaim her from Sanbreque? What of my mother's plots and schemes? Would it be better to help whom I could in simpler, smaller ways? What if I simply gave up and slit my own throat instead?”
He’d never spoken of this to anyone; not Jote, not Clive. This had been his to keep, his burden to bear. But he thinks Dion, more than anyone, would understand.
“But you didn't.”
“But I didn't,” he agrees. Lake Bennumere is a placid thing, its surface smooth and unbroken. One would never suspect the ruins beneath its waters, the sunken boats and the fallen ships. Just like no one had ever thought to ask Joshua what it was like to rise again from the ashes of Phoenix Gate.
“I am glad for it,” Dion says softly, sincerely. Joshua thinks it is rare to find a kindred spirit like this, true equals in ways that was a rarity.
“One day, the skies will be clear again. The sun will rise and so will the people of Valisthea. And Dion, how I wish for you to see it, to be part of it.” There's a pained look on Dion’s face when Joshua steals a look at him, the grief of someone who has lost his place in the world and is looking for a way to die.
“Perhaps,” he concedes. Joshua wonders where Dion’s thoughts drift to, what sort of future he might imagine for himself. “And what of you, Phoenix? Will you too rise from the ashes of this old world into a new one?”
“One can only hope,” he answers. He can feel Dion’s eyes on him, and he wonders what Dion sees.
“I would be sorry, I think, to find a new world without my friend in it,” Dion says slowly.
“Just as I would be to see the light of a new dawn without you.” Joshua offers him a rueful smile. Dion’s expression is wistful, his gaze cast out in the direction of what used to be Twinside.
“Then, we shall both hope.” And that is all Joshua can ask of him.
“You need to be more careful.” Clive scowls.
“I’ll be as careful as you are,” Joshua quips, and that earns him a glare.
“Joshua,” Clive says.
“Clive.” Joshua matches his tone, only with a touch more mocking. He doesn't even look at Clive, cooing instead at Torgal, who eagerly nuzzles into Joshua’s hands.
“Traitor,” Clive tells Torgal, whose tail is thumping happily as Joshua rubs his cheeks and ears. ”You can't be so reckless!”
“I’m only as reckless as you are,” Joshua retorts. “You think Clive’s too reckless too, don’t you, Torgal?”
Torgal barks in agreement, and Joshua can see Clive’s scowl deepen at Torgal’s betrayal.
“I’m fine,” he argues. Joshua raises an eyebrow at that, because he's had to patch Clive up after one too many hunts. As helpful as the crafting materials are, Joshua is of the opinion they could do without, especially when Clive tries to throw himself in between Joshua and every suggestion of danger.
“As Lord Murdoch said, Shield is a title, not an aspiration.”
“I won’t have you getting hurt.”
“And I’m capable of defending myself from a few akashic monsters. Or non-akashic ones, as it were.”
“That’s not the point!” Clive growls, frustrated.
“Then pray tell, Clive, what is?” Joshua asks pointedly, looking up from petting Torgal. “You cannot hope to keep me swaddled in blankets like a babe. I’m not a peach, my bruises heal.”
“You shouldn't be bruising in the first place,” Clive grumbles, mutinous.
“Arguably, neither should you if you took more care and focused more on the enemy and less on protecting me.”
Clive has a mulish set to his brows, and Joshua releases Torgal with a sigh. Old ground they keep retreading, but then Joshua cannot blame Clive for it. Some days, he too fears it is a dream. He will wake up and Clive will be gone, a memory and a wish for what he will never have. He sees this reflected in Clive's gaze, on nights when he has woken for his turn at watch and finds Clive watching him instead. It's the same look Clive has in his eyes now, despite the scowl. At the core of it is a fear that neither of them will put name to.
“Clive, however you think you have wronged me or failed me, I forgive you. Know that I do not blame you for what has come to pass, and that it hurts me to see you blame yourself so.” Joshua cradles Clive's face in his hands, gently forcing Clive to meet his eyes. “So forgive yourself of that night and all the nights that have passed since, and what is to come.”
Clive makes a soft protesting noise, and Joshua hushes him gently. “You cannot take it upon yourself to protect me from everything that would do me harm. We knew already when we were children that there are things you cannot protect me from, shield or not. And that is not your failing.”
“It feels like it,” Clive whispers brokenly. “Because I would give anything for you to be safe and whole, and that you are not is my failure.”
Joshua shakes his head. “All I ask is that you walk beside me. Not in front of me to shield me, but at my side that I may lean on you when my strength fails, that you too will lean on me if for no reason but to know I am at your side.”
“Joshua.” The way Clive says his name sometimes is halfway between desperation and reverence, supplication and devotion. Joshua wants to swallow it, keep it for himself. He wants Clive to stop saying his name like this, like he's afraid that Joshua will leave again.
“No more of this, please?” Joshua asks gently. Clive looks torn, but he nods eventually, acquiescing. “Thank you. I wish you would have care for yourself the way you do me.”
“I’m fine,” Clive protests again, hands coming to enclose Joshua’s in his own. Joshua just smiles at him, dropping his hands so that Clive can hold them.
“Is it so strange to think that I would like for it to be better than fine? That I would like to see you safe and whole?” He’s never liked seeing Clive hurt, even when they were children. Bruises from training, the flinch when Annabella made remarks meant to cut; Joshua had always tried to make it better.
Clive looks chastised by his words, as if he hadn’t thought about it. As if he does not know how dearly and deeply Joshua loves him, or the things Joshua would do to stay by his side. Like he forgets that this goes two ways, and it would devastate Joshua just as much to see Clive hurt because of him.
“I’m sorry,” Clive offers, tentative.
“No apologies needed.” Joshua smiles, and leans forward to rest his head against Clive’s shoulder. “It is my honour and duty as your brother, but also as your liegelord.”
Clive folds him into an embrace and Joshua wonders how it is possible to be so close and so far apart, even as he reaches for Clive to pull him closer, until they become one again.
If Joshua were to tell a story about him and Clive, this is how it would go—
Once, there was a boy who never knew a world without his brother. All that he knew, he learned from watching his brother, and all that he didn't, his brother knew for him. But fate had other designs and forced them apart, though nothing could ever truly sever their bond, nor could any god keep them apart.
There are things that go deeper than fate and predestination. There are choices that they make that will decide how things end. To Joshua, these choices have always been clear. Whatever leads him back to Clive, that is the path that he will take. Whatever ensures Clive’s happiness, he will do.
And when Clive looks at him like this—the small half-smile that seems like an unconscious gesture, as if he cannot believe Joshua is here and within reach—Joshua thinks that there is no world worth having without Clive in it.
It will not last forever, and he thinks that this time will simply be a footnote in any books that may come after. But happiness is rarely more than a line in stories like these, and Joshua is content to have had it for this moment.