Archive of Our Own

It should have looked strange, in the depth of the night.

At least... that was where Arin had forced his thoughts to snag tonight.

A place where his thoughts could teeter, and still have the chance to fall on the side of lesser hurt. Like the last dregs of sunlight, clinging on before the nightfall collides. A point beyond safety, but not quite among the danger.

It had been the lights, that first night. Or rather, the shocking lack of them.

The council hall hadn't been lightless, exactly - half-bar fluorescents anchored every second alcove, throwing panes of sputtering light inward through the vestibule. Too segregated, too weak to meet at the center - too evidently designed without a thought for the only real place the light would ever need to be.

He'd stopped short of the entrance, that night. One arm outstretched to keep the door from closing, even as his feet had fumbled back a step, because when you've been drowning this long, you forget how living works. You forget that hours aren't seconds, that days aren't weeks, because time loses meaning when it's quickly running out. You forget the core function of the sun, the curve and wane of the moon. You forget that day isn't night, that air isn't optional, because the darkness never lifts and it's agony to breathe.

In the deepest hour of that endless night, you forget that there's nothing close to sunlight to flood the shafts hewn in the ceiling. And in the most lucid moment of that corroding grief, you startle to remember that the stonebound light you're so desperately seeking still exists in a cold, sprawling shadow.

There had been talk of installing show lights, of course - trivial, offhand suggestions, pushed so far down the list of council priorities Arin doubted it'd ever come to pass.

But with the night at his heels, the shadows pressed to every contour of his mind and the promise of light stamped so fast to ash -

He couldn't get past the door, that first night.

Another night his attention had snagged on the tiles at his feet - on the artful, gilded curves of the council's new insignia stamped across it. On the way it served to match the face of the medallion he'd punted through a mirror, in a fit of rage he'd only later remembered by the sting in his hands, and the shards he must have bloodied to rescue it from the carnage. On the way he'd pressed the stupid, cold thing against his chest, and curled up in the silence until the blank, fuzzy pain leeched back into darkness.

Last night it had been the brickwork - the golden slabs accented against the pillars, working overtime to gleam for the adornments that couldn't. Monoliths of grandeur either side of the sullen space, like compensation for things left neglected. 

The closest his eyes had strayed to the monument, since its ceremonial unveiling.

But tonight, he'd made it past the emblem. He'd made it through the pressurized dark, through the pitiful sludge of fluorescence spilled over the tiles. He'd faltered, and back-stepped, but he'd made it up the stairs. Tonight, he'd made it to the foot of the statue.

And now he couldn't look away.

It should have looked strange, here in the shadows.

It should have looked alien and imposing, like the weathered husk of a leafless tree, absent from the moonlight. A shadow elongated too far, still too new to be familiar. It should have looked featureless and bland, like a slab of indecorous stone, or the hazy silhouette of a mountain far away. It should have looked dull where it stood, at the head of the atrium, cordoned off from soul and starlight to serve forever on the side of peace.

It should have looked wrong, but it didn't.

Even now, by the cold, foreboding edge of another starless night, it continued to exist in that same placid aura that surrounded it in the day. Each stroke of the dragon scale gi continued to stand out, painstaking in detail and deliberate in cut. Even engulfed in shadow, up close, the gold of its hands still held a quiet glimmer, like a tiny, residual seed of the power its mortal counterpart had held so long ago. A bare, golden flicker playing over the curve of the solemn jaw, like the last sputtering breath of a candle.

Two weeks. Not a speck of dust on the surface. Pristine.

Arin hated it just that little bit more.

He'd been able to hide it pretty well, he thought, that day on the dais. The sheer loathing that first glimpse of the council's idea of compensation had afforded him - that quick, brilliant flare of emotion that had burned like hot coals in his chest, burned like nothing else had since that day in the courtyard. But in the eye of the public he'd been able to hide it. He'd been able to hold it inside, to push it down and behind his smile like a mask he'd never wanted.

Really, he had to commend the older ninja for the flawless shine on theirs. Cole, who had stood there unflinching, smile pasted steady as if he hadn't been bent on the ground just half an hour earlier, clearing up the splintered remains of the training post he'd shattered. Zane, and the calm, unfeeling curve of his lip, eyes perfectly placid as if he hadn't been wearing them down all week at Pixal's side, rewiring switchboard circuits and configuring microprocessors far into the night if only to keep his hands from shaking. Nya, who had smiled dry-eyed and clapped politely, as if she hadn't spent the week stumbling the Monastery halls red-eyed and hollow, or the last forty-eight hours wrenching every dummy apart with those very same hands. And Kai, who had mustered up nothing but a tight-lipped blankness, the quick tightening of his fists the only outward sign of the embers still blazing within him, incensed and flared by Jay's unyielding denial, and his refusal to be there.

A mask and a mirror, he'd been told once.

That was all the memorial had really been.

Because what they showed on the surface - what they reflected back upon the citizens still dependent on them... it had to be brighter than the truth that lay beneath. A show of no emotion, because emotion proved humanity, and humanity proved nothing but a dull reminder that they weren't infallible. That for as large as they were, there would always be something larger. There would always be something bigger, something sharper, more desperate and more vile.

Arin hadn't understood that, back then. Back when the line cleaving black from white hadn't felt so hopelessly clouded. Back when the shimmering dream of his childhood heroes had still struggled to collide with the raw, flawed reality. Back when the unfiltered truth had felt so essential, and even that small deception had ached like broken trust.

He hadn't understood it, then. The value of appearances.

He hadn't understood that it wasn't a choice they had made at all. That it wasn't a deception that could be negotiated. That it just was.

But there, on that dais - with Wyldfyre's arm quivering with restraint against his, with Sora's stare glazed and unblinking so the tears wouldn't spill, with Frak's fingers clenched to stop the trembling and Euphrasia sniffling quietly through her own wobbly smile -

He had thought, finally, he had understood the virtue of that deception.

He couldn't understand this one.

"You're supposed to be here!" Arin cried now, and then flinched at the suddenness of his own wretched voice. Because he hadn't known that was on his tongue, hadn't felt the words at his lips until they were gone, crackling through the vestibule like a burst of violent feedback.

It pierced the silence like a blade to the skull, stung in every corner it echoed. But the ringing silence that broke in its wake hurt further still, so he couldn't let it settle.

"You said you would always be here!" he cried, jabbing an accusing finger toward the face of inanimate stone. "You lied, you lied and you keep lying!"

He collapsed where he was, slamming his head back against the foot of the statue, pain blooming through his skull where he couldn't bring himself to care. The stone barely creaked at the impact, and Arin let out a low, bitter laugh at the stupidity of the notion - at the violence bleeding and crackling like a storm in his own chest.

Because he wished the stone would crack. Wished it would hurt. Wished it weren't so hard and put-together, and burnished in that unattainable perfection Lloyd had never pretended to have. Wished, like a petulant child, that it weren't such a cruel mockery of everything he had once believed, and everything Lloyd had never been.

"You said you would be here," he whispered, and smothered his face in his knees. It felt safer there, somehow. Curled up in the darkness, small and alone, balled up at the feet of something he hated and wanted, and dared not try to face.

Safe from the shrapnel of his own broken silence. Safe from the fear of the ones he knew it would tatter, no matter the sting of spaces kept empty around him.

They had tried, of course. Tried to push and wriggle closer, the more he'd pulled away. Tried to catch hold of his pieces as they'd sharpened and shuddered in place, as he'd wrenched every part out of reach so they wouldn't have to bleed. Tried to wheedle and plead and beg he let them fall, let them hit the ground and shatter, because at least that way the stone could bear the hurt.

They had kept their voices constant, like they'd known how far his world had narrowed. To bright and dark, without distinction in between. To numbness that could snap by the second to overwhelming pain. To brief snatches of voices, surfacing sluggish through the blackness - too weighted for colour, too broken for meaning - too soft to stay there long.

They had told him that they loved him. That they missed him. That they were scared.

They had told him that they needed him. Needed his soul and his hands and his smile. Needed his spark and his presence and his tears. Needed his grief and his pain and his anger and hurt, because they didn't care which parts he could give so long as he gave them.

They needed him to break.

Had told him it was okay. That they'd pick up every piece. That they'd gather them close, and keep every part, and hold him together for however long it took to rebuild because they understood.

But they didn't understand.

They couldn't.

They didn't understand that when he shattered, he wouldn't do it quietly. They didn't understand that everything within him had become so unbearably pressurized that when he broke, he wouldn't just break - he'd fly apart like the shell of a pipe bomb. All searing heat and blind destruction, careless and untamed and cruel -

They thought they needed him to break.

He needed them to stop.

But even as he thought it, a sob broke past his lips, pain swimming at the backs of his eyes like his own tears held poison. Because he could pull on every altruistic excuse under the sun and it still wouldn't matter, because Arin was bitter and breaking and chronically selfish and he missed them.

Missed Kai, and Nya and Jay, and Cole, and Pixal and Zane. Missed the ease and the closeness that had vanished with the distance, missed the spaces once left so open, and the days not long past, when it hadn't felt so fragile to cross.

Missed Wyldfyre and her blunt, blazing sparks. Frak and his bright, brazen optimism.

Missed Euphrasia, and the warmth of her gaze, her steady, unwavering faith in all the things he'd nearly given up on.

Missed his parents, and the days he'd believed them eternal. Believed them insurmountable, believed they could fix it. Missed the childish faith he'd scraped from the rubble to wrap up and carry through the years. That whatever tears he brought before them, they'd have the words to still them. That there would never be a question too big they couldn't answer. That the pain wouldn't stay, and it would all be okay, if they only held him long enough.

He missed Sora.

Missed her like a limb he'd hacked off, bloodied and gored and taken for granted. Missed her with every cell of his being, even when he'd hurt her and hurt her and hurt her more than she'd ever, ever deserved. Missed her, and ached to protect her, and wanted her in equal measure. Wanted her warmth, and her care, and her endless understanding. Wanted her voice, and her trust, and her arms around his soul.

His own arms felt like chains in comparison. Heavy and cold as the stone at his back. Dragging everything within him to the hell he'd manifested. Keeping everything inside him like a crypt that had to burn.

But to burn was to feel, and to feel was to hurt, and it didn't matter how he deserved it - he was Arin, he was selfish, and he was a coward in the face of pain. So he choked it all back and tightened his grip, safe in his chains and the dark. With his tears blurred to nothing and his back pressed against it - against the stone that wouldn't crumble, the one he wouldn't face.

"He would hate it," a voice said out of nowhere. A voice like a scrape of stone over something softer and way too unfamiliar to be as close as it was.

Arin startled, blinking fast to his senses, bending a sharp, hostile look on the figure that had morphed from the shadows at the foot of the stairs, too far entangled within them to make out anything beyond a fuzzy blur of white.

Then he saw the whiskers.

With his mind so full of Sora, it was hardly surprising. The way his heart leapt to his throat, to remind him it was there. The way his breath drew laboured, as if in response to a threat. The way his blood pulsed faster, burning in his ears, screeching like an outcry and a warning because he craved her and he needed her, and he needed her to stay away -

But this wasn't Sora.

That was immediately clear. There were whiskers on the cheekbones of the woman stood before him, but the resemblance ended there. These were thinner, more defined - red in place of gold, finer in the stroke and pressed to darker skin.

But this wasn't Sora, so somehow those whiskers burned like an insult. This wasn't Sora, so the hurt and longing and overwhelming relief that had bludgeoned rapid-fire through his chest at the thought of her had no choice but to blur unevenly together, manifesting as venom in his tone.

"Excuse me?"

"The statue. Lloyd," the woman murmured, and either she was incredibly blind, or incredibly stupid to dare let that name cross her lips in this precarious place. To press forward one step, and then another, as if she had no cause to fear the ground unstable. And Arin would have bared his teeth at the nerve if he hadn't caught the look at the backs of the woman's eyes as she approached, a quiet glimmer that made him hesitate.

"He cares not for this senseless fanfare," she murmured, cresting the dais and lifting her gaze to the solemn face. "Quite frankly, I do believe he would resent such a loud monument as this. His is a... quiet soul."

"I- I know," Arin choked. His throat felt unbearably tight, scorched with tears he'd had no right to cry. They trembled on his lashes, rendering the woman a white, watery blur before he blinked them away, catching sight of a fuzzy white headdress more familiar than he'd anticipated, and coming fast to the realisation he had seen her before. "You're the Never Kingdom's delegate," he said, too surprised to maintain his own bitterness at her sudden intrusion. "The Formling."

The woman inclined her head, but the motion was oddly stilted.

"A-and you know- knew... him."

"A lifetime ago." The woman allowed the quiet to sit for a long moment, gazing up at the statue with every measure of cordoned emotion held fast in the stone. Then she relented with a sigh, pulling back to perch on the step a small distance from Arin. "We crossed paths briefly, in the Never Kingdoms, before my departure to the Summit. If I had known it was to be the last time..." She drew in a long, resigned breath. "There are things I would like to believe I would have had the courage to say."

"What... kind of things?" Arin wondered, then cursed himself for asking when the woman's chest hitched with the first true crack of emotion he'd seen.

"Just... things," she whispered, and swiped at her cheek. Not of any tears, because none had broken from the glaze of her eyes yet.

Still it was emotion. Emotion so raw, so scattered and blazing it could only manifest as stillness. The kind of emotion Arin couldn't handle, too real in her eyes, too closely reflected in the darkest corners of his. It was everything he'd worked to bury, everything he'd kept at arms length. It was exactly the kind of emotion he'd cut himself away from, the kind of pain his selfish soul ached to turn away from - but he'd done that too many times before.

And what an insult that would be - to sit by the visage of Lloyd, and turn a hurting heart away.

"It's uh..." Arin loosened his arms around himself, scrounging back through his mind for the name. "Akita, right?"

The woman - Akita - inclined her head again, and kept it lowered. Something about the position sat uneasy in his chest, tugging on some numb, tattered piece of his heart, and his body was moving before his head had allowed it. He shuffled closer, perching awkwardly on the step beside her.

Akita barely glanced up, tapping her fingers lightly in her lap in a motion Arin recognised - a deliberate distraction, a way to trick her hands into believing they didn't have to tremble.

Arin hesitated. Rubbed awkwardly at his elbow. "He uh... I don't think he ever mentioned you."

A quiet sound brushed past her lips - a laugh. "He would not have," Akita agreed. "He is not the type to sully his time with visions of what could have been when we are ever cursed to know what is, and what is not."

There was a strange weight to those words, one that Arin didn't quite feel like he was grasping. "You keep saying that," he whispered. "Is." He swallowed hard. "Nobody else- they're not doing that. Anymore."

At that, Akita tilted her head. "I suppose I am not in the habit of moving on so hastily. In my culture... it is customary. To approach the spirits as if they are still amongst us, because we believe that they are. We are to... assimilate them to the wind and the skies. To guide their spirits to wherever it is they are meant to be." She paused, measuring him with a curt, unreadable stare. "You are one of the ninja," she said. "One of his young ones."

"H-his student, yeah." Arin swiped harshly at his eyes with a sleeve. "It's uh... it's Arin."

"Arin." Akita tested the name thoughtfully. "Yes. He spoke of you."

Arin blinked, caught off guard. "Wh-what?"

"There is no call to appear so startled," Akita said, with the barest touch of amusement. "It had been... some time since we had spoken, and he was quite eager to share of the things of which he is the most proud. He spoke of all of you."

"H-he did?"

Akita gave a determined nod. "Frak - the cheerful, excitable one, determined to prove himself in a world historically pitted against him. Euphrasia - the quiet, steady one with a soul as pure and gentle as the breeze. Wyldfyre - the wild one with all the passion of a brushfire, and all the heart of a dragon. Sora - the careful genius, with a soul far sweeter than any walls could ever hope to suppress. And you." She gestured toward Arin, eyes glinting with the turn of her head. "Arin. The foundation and the lifeblood of the new generation. The light he would seek out when he could not find his own. The dependable one."

The words landed like sparks against his skin, stinging not for the heat, but for how he hadn't expected it. "He said that?"

Akita half reached out as if to touch his shoulder, then noted the tension in his and aborted the motion. "Do you disagree with his assessment?"

"Yes? No? I- I-" Arin stuttered. He blinked, finding more tears on his eyelashes. His breath shuddered in and out of his chest. "I just... that's... surprising to hear."

Akita's breath hitched in a tiny chuckle. "Yes. He said you would say that, too."

There was too much to unpack in the words fallen between them. Too much dissonance between all that they meant and all that he knew, that he could only let the thought graze the edge of his mind, like a bullet he wasn't ready to bleed for. Instead, he cast his eyes down, drawn to the palest swath of moonlight that had clawed its way over the tiles at his feet. It's edges were too soft, undulating back and forth from the shadows so that only the tips of his boots caught the light.

And it felt like pity, somehow. A pale imitation of everything he wanted, of every comfort he'd sought, and been so brutally denied.

So he glared at the moonlight and drew his knees closer in.

"You're on the council," he said tightly. "Why is this place so dark?"

"An oversight," Akita sighed, her own eyes tracing the curve of the moonlight. "Truthfully, it is not something we even paused to consider, for we are not present here within the night, and none of us had quite realised just how brazenly this place relies on the daylight."

"Oversight," Arin repeated dully. "For the human personification of light to be cursed to live in a shadow. That's a hell of an oversight."

Akita dipped her head slightly. "It will be remedied."

Remedied.

Arin resisted the urge to snort. It was too big a word for something so small, for a problem so solvable. For the righting of the most preventable of wrongs, because when someone had held back the darkness for so very long as Lloyd had, how could it be anything but blatant disrespect, to cage his memory so far away from the light?

"Right," Arin said. "Remedied."

The disdain must have shown in his voice, because Akita gave a long sigh. "It was not my decision, to commission the memorial indoors. If it had been up to me..." She shook her head slowly. "But you are right. I have always understood Lloyd's as a nomadic soul. Ever travelling. Never resting." Her fingers were moving again, restless in her lap. "And if ever there were a place for his spirit to land, for his heart to still - there is no world in which it would ever be here." A muscle twitched in her lip. "Light or no light. He would not do well, trapped between all this concrete."

Arin managed a choked sound that could have been bitter amusement, if his chest weren't panging so badly.

"But at the same time, I do understand the appeal, of having it here," she went on. "Memorials are for the living, so they say. Eternal reminders of all that a person stood for, and all that they loved. And to have it here, in the heart of this council - to have the living honour him as the monument of peace he has ever strived to be..." She offered a languid shrug. "I find I cannot be upset with that."

Arin turned that over, chewing aggressively enough at his lip that a hand landed steady on his forearm, softer, warmer than he'd expected.

"But it is all right if you are," Akita murmured, patting his arm before taking her hand back. "Upset, that is. It is true this memorial is for the city, but for those select few who knew him for so much more than the title and the gi... it is difficult, to know the truth of what his human spirit might crave, and to not see it met."

There was a brittle edge to the admission, a rawness to her voice - an intimacy that took Arin by surprise. "You really did know him."

Akita smiled, devoid of any humour. "I like to think that I did."

Her fingers were moving again - slow, thoughtless twisting, to suggest her mind had fled elsewhere, because as little as he knew her, he doubted she would be letting her hands tremble this badly if she were conscious of it. And it was instinct, really, to reach over like he would if it were Sora, if it were Euphrasia, if it were Frak, or Wyldfyre, or -

He set his hand over hers before that thought could stretch too far. Just a touch. A soft reminder. An invitation to breathe.

Her fingers tensed at the touch, a breath shuddering loose from her lungs. Her eyes closed as she drew in another, body a little less taut, fingers loosening by the warmth of his hand. Another, and her hand tilted almost as if by its own volition, curving loosely around his.

Arin understood. That ache for connection. The balm that he knew even this small touch could be, while he'd actively deprived himself of it.

"Has uh..." he faltered, not wanting to test the fragile air, even as the words tumbled into it. "Has anyone told you? How- how it happened?"

Akita remained still for several seconds. Long enough for Arin to despair he'd made some horrible mistake before she said, finally, "I prefer not to think of it."

Which was the point where anyone even half as self-absorbed as Arin would take the hint to stop. But he was Arin, and he was selfish, and the weeks of self-inflicted solitude were clawing at the seams of every writhing, seething thought he'd locked away, so he was already bludgeoning on ahead.

"It's all I can think about," he admitted. "All I can picture. The Weapon of Desolation. What it did." He pulled his arms around himself. Cold. An echo of the chains crawling over his skin. "It... makes elemental powers go haywire. Starts to corrupt anyone else. I was the only ninja who could safely touch it. The only one without elemental powers. The only one with nothing left to exploit - no... hidden desires, no bitterness that hadn't already seen the light of day. No ammunition for the thing to poison me with, because I already had everything I had ever wanted and more. And I can't- I can't stop thinking that I could have kept it contained." He swallowed hard. "I- I could have done that," he whispered. "If I had just been there."

Akita glanced up at him, perplexed. "You know that was never an option. The barrier -"

"I don't care about the barrier!" Arin snapped. "I could have... found a way through it, or found a way around it. I've done impossible things before. I could have... broken through with my spinjitzu power, or convinced Sora to build some gadget to let me through, or- or found some way to trick the magic, or just dug my way underneath - I could have done any of those things and Lloyd would still be alive."

The name singed the darkened corners of the vestibule. An ache that echoed through the concrete and bounced back at them from every angle.

The first he'd said said it, since that moment in the courtyard. The moment time had split apart, divided eternally, to then and now. And it was agony, but it was pain that he was owed, so he said it again. "Lloyd would still be alive."

A beat of pressurized silence.

Then, "You do not know that," Akita said.

"But I do," Arin stressed. "I do, I know it because it's happened before. It's happened before and I was able to save him then, I was able to - to bring him back, to undo it and- and I -" His voice cracked. "And I thought I hated him then. I thought maybe that was why. Because if I hated him, then maybe this sick, twisted world would give him back to me." He hiccuped. "And so I'm sitting here, trying so hard to hate him right now, but the universe won't be fooled twice."

The admission sat cold where it landed, taking up the space between them. A cold that echoed on the ridge of his spine, and if Arin hadn't been so certain the statue's eyes had been forged forever shut, he'd have taken it for a gaze burning into his back. Weighted with every judgement he deserved.

Even the spear of sodden moonlight had ebbed back to nothing at his feet.

"I have come to find, the universe does not work that way," Akita said, treading carefully upon the silence. "Fate cannot be so transactional. Nor should life be."

"Well what would you know about it?" Arin challenged.

Akita took a long breath. "I know because I thought the very same. That if I had only gone with him, perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps... you and I would not have to be here tonight."

Arin blinked. "You were going to go with them? To- to the abyss?"

"I would have," she agreed softly. "If I had not already committed myself to attending the Summit. The ninja - they required a Formling guide, to navigate the fog. I sent another in my place. Perhaps if I had not..." She shook her head of the thought. "I understand the route of that particular logic, because I too find myself entangled within it." She gave a dry chuckle. "It was a harsh place, and a harsher time when we first crossed paths. The kind of harsh that neither he nor I could have possibly survived, had fate not set us together. But it had, and so we were able to save each other, many a time. And if I had only thought to accept his offer at the time... perhaps we could have done so again."

She drew in a long, measured breath. "But even before that, I had spent many a decade thinking that way. Thinking back on things I could have done better, obsessing over choices I could have made differently, and existing in the bitter certainty that it would have changed the outcome. But that is no way to live, Arin. It is only a surefire way to drive yourself into -"

"Stop," Arin cut in, his breath rasping in his chest. "Just stop. I- I know this," he said miserably. "But I can't- can't deal with the logic right now," he added, the words half wretched by the sob that broke under his breath. "I can't- just accept that, I don't want to hear that, I..." He made a choked sound. "I can't take that kind of advice. It's- you sound just like -"

"Him." Akita's eyes shone, overbright in the dimness. "I know."

"Then why," he said roughly. "Why are you doing this? Why are you here, why are you trying- why do you even care -"

"There was a time I would not have," Akita admitted. Her eyes were back on the ground, tracing the curves of the gilded insignia. "There was once a time where I would look upon the grief of a stranger, and choose to walk away. To distance myself, because that brittle place between a foreign soul and the grief in their heart was one far too uncomfortable to traverse." She swallowed, shrugging one shoulder as if to lighten the weight of what she meant to say. "But then I remember that I was a stranger to Lloyd when he did just that. And I would not be half the person I am today, if he had not put himself in that place. But I cannot help but fear that that is a quality in which the world was already lacking - and now..."

Arin stared blankly ahead of him. "And now it might be gone," he finished for her. "That's why you're here. In a vain attempt to try and hold onto something we both know is as good as gone."

"But it is not gone," Akita said, shaking her head in predictable denial. "It lives on -"

"In everyone he's ever helped, yeah, sure, like I haven't heard it all before. That's like the bare minimum for a condolence, some stupid tacky... mumbo-jumbo trick to gaslight yourself into believing it means something. Because it doesn't. It doesn't mean anything."

"Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does not. That is a perception left only to the mind of the beholder." Akita tilted her head to glance at him. "But do you know why I sought you out tonight? Truly?"

"On some false righteous side quest to try and prove the world isn't every bit as cruel and selfish and wrong as it is?"

"On the contrary," Akita said through another dry chuckle. "The world is cruel indeed. And though I am inclined to one day lead by his example, I cannot deny my reasons for approaching tonight were the most selfish." She hesitated, fingers twisting again. "Because, for a small, fanciful moment... I thought you might have been someone else."

Arin's breath halted in his chest. "Who?"

Akita tilted her head back, eyes closed, as if to catch a stray speck of moonlight, or a breeze that wasn't there. "A whisper of a spirit," she said finally. "One unlike any I had ever encountered before, and thought I never would again, now that he is gone." She blinked, and Arin caught a glimpse of the moisture behind her eyes before she forced it back, turning to look at him. "And yet, tonight I followed that whisper into this place, and I sense that spirit still. Arin, I sense it in you."

If the dissonance he'd felt before had stung like the graze of a bullet, this one burned like the thing had lodged in his chest.

"What do you mean?" Arin swiped at his face as the press of more emotion spilled from his eyes. "What could that possibly mean?"

"I confess, I do not know," Akita murmured. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of the strength of his connection to you. I just thought that you would like to know." Her fingers trembled as she thumbed at her own eyes. "That where you see senseless mumbo-jumbo, as you say... I see a true reflection of everything he held so very dear. I see a true reflection of him." Gently, she lay a hand over his shoulder, thumb circling soothingly as he shuddered at the touch. "Arin, it did not take one conversation to see how truly he cares for you. Nor does it take one moment to see that he means a great deal to you, too."

Arin slumped into his hands, pressing his eyes closed. "It's complicated," he whispered. "It's... so, so complicated."

"Love usually is," Akita agreed softly.

Something about that word sent a pang through his chest as he curled further in on himself. There was something wrong about it, something awkward and ill-fitting. A connotation that sat too jagged, too violent and sharp for all the softness the word encompassed. Because how could anyone look upon the shards Arin had thrown down to cut and slice them both, and think to call it love?

"I'm not," he managed through the tightness in his throat. "All that."

Akita frowned. "All what?"

"All of whatever it is you think you're seeing," Arin said, surging upright violently enough that her hand fell from his shoulder. "It's not true, i-it can't be because- I-I'm not- I just -" His fingers clenched into fists, and he pressed them tight by his sides. "You don't know me," he said, coldly. "You don't know what I've done. You don't know where I've been."

"No," Akita agreed, taking back her hand, unfazed. "Nor could you know the places I have been. But there is a reason we speak of such things with reference to the past. There are always going to be places that we have been. What matters only, is the place you are going."

"Well maybe I don't know where that is anymore!" Arin said, throwing his hands up. "He- he told me once, that everyone has as much capacity in their souls to cause harm as they do to bring good. That it doesn't take much for hurt and anger to tilt your judgement, and I know that and I - He's already seen what mine can do. Seen how- how far I can fall, so how could he just leave like that? H-how could he leave, knowing how far my judgement could tilt without him?"

Akita turned that over for a moment. "He left me once, too," she said finally. "At a similar stage in my journey." She exhaled softly. "At a stage where I had near succumbed to my demons, and still lived with the idea of them at the very edge of my conscience. At a stage where I had been reunited with all I had lost, but could not help but live in the terror that if something were to go wrong, they would rise once more to claim me. At a stage in my life where I had chosen benevolence over bloodshed, but only by the guidance of his presence." Her eyes roved over her hands at that, tracing the fingers lightly before dropping her gaze. "And then he left. And I found the choice solely upon my own hands. Because he would not be there, the next time it happened. He would not be there to steady the needle of my morality. He had done his part. The rest was up to me."

"Well he's not supposed to do that!" Arin cried. "He's not supposed to just... just make everything better and then leave. Like- like he's nothing but a tool, like he's something less than human, or something superhuman, something separate like- like -"

"Like a hero," Akita said. "A legend. That is what they called him, at the memorial."

"I don't want him to be a legend," Arin hiccuped. "I want him to be here."

And there it was. The compendium of all his flaws. All that selfishness, drawing to a peak.

The selfishness he'd scavenged like blades from the ruins of his own pride. Every tip he'd refined. Every sharp edge he'd turned outward on his own hurt, and inward on his master's.

The blades that had scraped at him for years. The ones Lloyd had let tear at his skin, because that was the other half of the fundamental flaw between them. And still the ones Arin couldn't let go, because he wouldn't be Arin if he didn't find a way to rend Lloyd's sacrifice and his memory with them now.

And whether by the emotion drowning out his voice, or the fact that she couldn't bring herself to disagree, Akita had nothing to say to that.

But there was something frightening about the emptiness that pressed on his chest in the weight of the silence that followed, something nameless and terrible in the idea of letting it sit there any longer.

"He told me once -" Arin started, wincing as his voice cracked terribly and starting again. "He told me that there's no sense in dwelling on what's already happened when there's nothing you can do to change it now. That all you could do was find the positives and learn from the negatives, find a reason to believe that all that pain wasn't pointless." He hesitated. "But what is there to take away from this? There's nothing to learn, nothing to fix, and it does, it feels pointless." Arin threw his hands up. "So he saved the world this time. So he traded his life for the balance of elemental energy and got everyone's powers back. But how long until the world just decides to tear itself to pieces again? How long until his sacrifice comes to mean nothing? What was it all for? For peace that's not gonna last, what, more than a week at best? For- for a monument made in a colour he didn't even like -"

"Arin," Akita said carefully. "If all of that is true - if in giving his life, the balance of elemental energy was restored... Do you know what we were doing, in that moment? The moment right after he died?"

Arin flinched at the word. "We were celebrating," he said roughly. "Because everyone's powers were back, and we'd finally turned the tide on Cryptor and Beatrix. H-his essence was raining down in sparks in that moment, and we were celebrating." He swallowed. "We thought maybe he was back," Arin rasped. "When all their powers started working again. Because- because what other explanation could there have been? But then h-he didn't show and- and we should have known, should have stopped to think but we were all too busy celebrating -"

"We were celebrating," Akita said carefully, "because we were alive." She took a slow breath. "Arin, we were losing. Anyone in that chamber could see that. We were caught with our guard down, disadvantaged by several factors beyond our control, and vastly outnumbered. We were not going to get out of that battle alive. And we would not have, if he had not -" She paused, closing her eyes for a moment. "If the elemental powers had not been restored, in the moment they were. We would have lost that fight."

Arin gave a shuddery exhale, but didn't speak.

"Even so far away, all the way across the realms, in that moment - even if he did not know it. He was protecting us. He saved our lives, Arin." Her hand had found it's way back to his shoulder. She squeezed it lightly, when he made a short, strangled sound. "How could there ever be anything pointless about that?"

It clogged in his throat, the words he almost said then. The ones dredged up from the deepest reaches of his soul, where he kept the darkest things confined.

That if she really meant to dispel this idea of pointlessness, mentioning Arin was not the way to do it. That there was no world where he could imagine any merit to this pain, to the magnitude of the price Lloyd had paid so that he could keep standing. That if it had been a choice of Lloyd's life or his, it should have been Lloyd sitting in front of his picture tonight, because at least that would have been deserved. That would have been fair.

And though he didn't say it, something at the backs of Akita's eyes told him she'd read it anyway. Her hand moved over his shoulder, tentatively across his back. A motion so careful, so painfully familiar he couldn't help the sob that jarred in his chest then. Or the next one that broke from his throat. The next that slammed at the barrier of those weeks of repressed emotion, and choked off to a pathetic keen to keep it from breaking.

"It's not fair," he gasped, shaking his head. "It's not fair."

"I know," Akita murmured, her hand warm against his back, soft as it moved back over his shoulder. Steady, in every way that he'd forgotten how.

"What do I do?" he whispered. "Wh-what am I supposed to do now?"

Akita's hand paused on his far shoulder, her arm across his back a comfort he hadn't anticipated. "Live," she whispered. "That is all there is left for us, tonight. To honour his memory by embracing all that he has allowed us to keep. If you are fortunate enough to have people that love you, let them. Do not drive them away. Grief feels impossible, but it feels slightly less so, when it is borne among the many."

His breath hitched at the words, at the pinprick pain they needled in his chest. The sharp things inside of him, shuddering like a threat. Scraping up his insides to remind him of their violence, and their eagerness to hurt. To remind him why he'd locked it all inside, where only he would be the casualty.

And that must have been reflected somewhere in his expression, because Akita gave his shoulder a sudden, firm squeeze.

"Take it from somebody who spent far too many decades grieving alone," she whispered. "It does not help. Isolation may feel an awful lot like refuge, but a heart so long entombed is a heart that grows in stone. It does not heal the ache, it only solidifies it. Fossilizes it, until it is an inseparable part of your being. Something cold and distant, that will leech at your spirit like a tumour if you allow it to." She hesitated. "And if Lloyd could be here beside you tonight, I think you and I both know that he would tell you the very same thing."

"Yeah well maybe this isn't about me!" Arin cried, wrenching his shoulder away before he could stop himself. "Maybe nothing ever has been, even when I've forced it to be so. Maybe for once in my life I don't want to be that person. The one that doesn't care who gets hurt so long as he gets what he wants. The one that would cut down everybody else so that he could feel even a little better. The one that hurts people, and hurts people, and doesn't see how much they really hurt." He made a choked sound. "Maybe you're right and that pain will become a part of me. But maybe its better that way. Maybe I've built a legacy on my own damn selfishness and maybe I've had enough." He shuddered in place, curling inward as his chest spasmed in pain. "I've had enough. I can't hurt them again."

Another ringing silence filled the void left behind with those words. It was a long, tense moment before Akita moved to fill it.

"And yet," she said carefully. "You fail to see it from their point of view."

Arin blinked, startled. "What?"

Akita drew in a long breath. "My brother," she started. "He spent several decades imprisoned. Isolated from all he had ever known, and left to grieve what we believed to be the loss of our people. Of everyone we had ever known." She swallowed. "But several thousand miles apart, I was grieving too. And had I known he were alive, I would have given anything to be there. To share in that pain with him. To prove to him, and to I, that we still had something left. Something to hold onto. A pinprick of light in between all the layered darkness."

Her hand found his shoulder again. "A large part of grieving is learning to take comfort in all you still have. Learning to lean on the ones that love you, who trust you will be there to lean on in return. You say you do not wish to be selfish, yet you sequester yourself away with your pain. You deny them your presence, in an effort to spare them, and do not consider they do not wish to be spared."

Arin shuddered. Her hand was too warm on his shoulder, but this time he didn't shake it off. "I don't want to hurt them," he whispered.

"They are hurt already," Akita said brashly, wincing as Arin flinched, and softening her tone with a sigh. "Arin. I find it difficult to believe that you are all that you claim, if these are the lengths you will go in an effort to protect the ones you love. And that is a noble thing, but the best of intentions are not always the right ones." She had gone back to soothing his shoulder, her hand gentle as it moved over his back. "Sometimes all we can do is trust another with our pain. Trust that they will handle it with care, even if they are not equipped to soothe it. Trust that they will be there to share it, so in turn you can share in theirs."

"It just- hurts," Arin said, voice cracking. "The others- they don't understand. How much." He tightened his arms around himself. "I made -" he choked. "- so many mistakes. And I thought we had more time... to work things out. Things were finally starting to make sense. I was finally starting to make it up to him. I was going to make it up. But now he's gone. He's gone and he doesn't know -"

He choked off there, pushing to his feet as the weight of the words crumpled into a sob. It broke apart in his chest, pressing up against every broken thing as he tried to wrench it back, pacing the step as if he could stop it, could outrun it, could -

Hands on his shoulders. Akita, a blur of startling white through the heavy press of shadow. Something knowing in her gaze, overbright - a pale refraction of golden hands, caught like a spark in the corner of her eye.

"He knows," she murmured.

And for all the agony he'd turned on himself, all the sharp things held fast in his chest - somehow, that spark of borrowed gold found a way to hurt the most. Because it wasn't real, and it wasn't there, and all they had left now were refractions. Because it wasn't hers, and it never would be. And because - even as he turned fully to face the source, that tiny, flickering glimmer of gold - he wasn't ready to accept that it might have been mirrored in his eyes, too.

"It is not so ugly, is it?" Akita said, tilting her head up toward the monument, just enough that Arin caught a glimpse of the moisture in her eyes. "The statue?"

Arin let out his breath in a shudder, lifting his eyes once more to the stone face and, for the first time since it's ceremonial unveiling, letting them rest there. Letting them trace every edge. The shape of the face, too cold to reconcile. The curve of the eyelids, too serene, too final to recognise. Every calculated cut, every dry, solemn detail. Over-polished and bland in the shadows. Only now a pale wash of moonlight had eked its way over the dais, gliding over the back wall so the stone was backlit in a shy, silver glow. It caught to the gold, casting an edge-glow to the shoulder pads and crowning the hair in a blazing silvery halo.

"I think," Arin started slowly, "maybe, with a little more time. I can learn not to hate it." He watched the moonlight as it eddied back and forth, playing like ripples over the stone skin. "Maybe, one day, I'll be able to see it for more than its flaws. Maybe one day, I'll be able to stand here, and make myself believe that I'm okay with its wrongness. Maybe one day, I could look past it, and find even a sliver of the good. But..."

The moonlight pressed deeper against the gold and he shut his eyes, red-rimmed and aching in the sudden misplaced light. "Just not tonight."

And though he didn't see it, he knew by the quiet rustle that Akita had turned, eyes cast down to the dais as if she too couldn't bear the ache. "Not tonight," she agreed.

***

It was nearing the brink of dawn and the Monastery hadn't yet begun to stir, when Arin let the doors creak shut behind him.

His head was pounding, a dragging weight tracing the path of his heels, making every bleary step a stumble as he faltered through the darkness. It was a weight echoed in his chest, in the curdling blackness pressed up against his skull, in his throat as it burned in the wake of words so long kept silent. A weight that sunk into every fibre, every stubborn string of his soul as it ached for him to stop.

To wait here in the cold and the silence. To curl back up in the heart of the darkness, and forget all the words that had scarred in his throat. To scrape the cool memory of light from his eyes, and forget the touch of a warmth he'd learned to live without.

It was a pull toward the shadows. A warning twinge of the crack shot through the barrier that held back his emotions. A twist of all the sharpest things, still pulsing like the cheapest mockery of a heartbeat in his chest.

Scraping up under his ribs.

Reminding him with every thump.

That the pressure in his chest fell pliant in the darkness. That those sharp things would shudder and buckle, but hold together in the stillness. That the pulsing shape of that shrapnel might tear at his insides, but could go no further surrounded by shadows, like they were the only call to sanctuary in this place left mangled and bare - empty of hope, empty of life, empty of -

Light.

Just a touch of it, a bare flicker down the hall.

And then the weight lost its grip on his heels, because Arin was moving. Stalled by the pain that burst like resistance in his chest as the shadows breathed in hot pursuit, but stumbling for the light. It ached in his eyes, with every corner he turned. Pressed at his temples with every step he fumbled. Needled like hot pinpricks of pain in his eyes when he finally stopped at the threshold of the source, blind by the tears that had spilled over his cheeks.

And though he couldn't see beyond the blur, the scene came to life in his mind anyway. Frak, curved inward on the wall, snoring away somewhere in the darkness at the far end of the room. Euphrasia, a tear-stained lump of frazzled curls, breathing softly where she was curled up in an armchair. And Sora - a bleary mess of pink hunched over the desk, working by the light of a single yellow lamp in the corner of the room - or staring into nothingness under the guise of working.

The sharp things inside him bucked violently in his chest. Because it wasn't too late to turn around and run.

And Arin should - he should run - but his legs had gone numb, the emotion was choking in his throat, and the darkness at his back was too dark for the thoughts in his head, and it didn't matter how the sharp things were screaming and tearing and burning in his soul because he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe so the shrapnel growing and writhing and primed to burst meant nothing anymore, because the barrier was breaking and his heart couldn't take it and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt -

"Sora," he rasped, the sound choked with a sudden, loud sob.

There was a startled clatter across the room. A sharp draw of breath. A sudden, searing warmth in the cold of space around him, because she was already at his side in the way she always had been, wrapping him up in her arms as the numbness reached his knees and his legs gave out. Pulling him closer, so much closer, like even a garbled moment of proximity could make up for all the pain of distance.

And he waited.

He waited for the sharp things to burst. For the pressure to expand. For the shrapnel held taut in the shadow of his soul to rip through his skin, to shudder and slice and burn like the carnage of the bomb he'd expected. He waited for it to ignite. For the heat, and the pain, and the searing agony of his own selfish destruction and -

It didn't come.

Those sharp things in his chest - they shuddered and stilled.

Instead of rending his skin, they began to draw back. To soften. Like the press of warmth he'd so long feared was all the balm it needed. Like the darkest things he'd trapped inside were only hurting for light. Like the pain he'd caged within himself had only ever needed this.

And all at once, the crack split the barrier - a single sob rose unrestrained, and the wall of repressed emotion shattered apart. It burst outward like the crack of a wave, tearing through his better sense, a rush of hurt and shame and pain so nauseatingly terrible that all he could do was sob.

"I know, I know," Sora murmured, soft and steady as a candle to his blackout, letting him bury his face in her shoulder, clutch her like the lifeline he never should have doubted, sink like a stone to her careful hold as he let it happen. As his body heaved for all the emotion he hadn't let himself have for weeks now. As it trembled and gasped for the breath it couldn't get for the sobs slamming so violently through him. As his lungs stuttered and burned for the weight of every broken thing they had carried in his silence.

But Sora was there, and she was breathing for the both of them, digging her fingers desperately into his back as if there were jagged things inside her too, where he'd been too selfish to realise. And still she was there, pressing her own tears to the shuddering warmth of his shoulder, telling him that she was there, that she wasn't leaving, that it's okay, it's okay -

And though they couldn't possibly know it, they were fused together in that moment. Backlit by the golden glow of the lamp Sora had left burning, they clung to each other, every bit as unmoving as that pile of unfeeling stone carved in his honour, but not at all the same.

They were cracked. Messy. Unsteady. True.

And the glowing green orb, unseen behind their closed eyes, slunk silent into the sprawling shadow of the corridor behind them, watching the golden light frame them as one.

His legacy.

His family.

His monument, burnished in gold.