A.N: In my opinion, Shadow's story is one of the most poignant things that FFVI has to offer. The choices he made, the amount of pain and effort it took to live with the consequences: I always found it both horrifying and fascinating at the same time. The first in-game visit to Thamasa must have been a crystallization of all these things, which is why I decided to look at it from Shadow's perspective. It was a little hard to find his voice, but hopefully that worked out. Needless to say, there are massive spoilers here for anyone who hasn't finished the game/seen any of Shadow's dreams.

Pillars of Sand

He didn't remember the village being this small. Little backwater place, averse to change, suspicious of strangers; he'd figured it out the very first time he came here. And yet, it was as if he only realized now just how tiny it was. Almost like an assortment of toy houses. Maybe it was the time he had spent away, the added distance, perspective, or whatever else. One thing he was certain of, however: he'd never wanted to come back.

"Shadow?"

The broken chime of Terra's voice made him start ever so slightly. Both she and Locke were observing him inquisitively.

"Is everything alright?" she asked, and her tone was puzzled.

It was only natural. Shadow, the epitome of indifference, the heartless, stoic mercenary had hesitated. Only for a few seconds. But it was enough for Terra. The girl was attuned to pain; she responded to it like a plant responds to sunlight, and immediately sent out soft tendrils of compassion; he knew it. He also knew that this was a quality. He knew that she meant well. He knew that he should be grateful. Knowing rather than feeling. A protective barrier of logic and reason. It had been that way ever since that day, six years ago, when he disappeared into the morning mist, insistently trying to silence the scream inside his head.

"Clyde! How could you!?"

The voice echoed faintly through his mind. He knew that if he let it, it would sweep over his brain in waves upon waves of sickening fear and choking, blinding guilt. And in their wake, the panicked, indignant look of a pair of brown eyes. He knew all too well what it felt like, he'd been through this too many times in the past. And he didn't want to let the images back in again. It was enough to have left him to die once.

"Lead on," and his voice was as flat as usual.

A question flickered in Terra's eyes, but she also had an innate sense of tact. She wouldn't pry. And that was all he needed.

Houses, street corners, flowerbeds…so much that he still remembered. The sign above the shop's entrance with its squeaky, rusty hinges and chipped off corner, the geraniums that almost enveloped the mayor's house, the large one-eyed tabby always sitting on Mrs Sedora's window-sill. He registered as incongruous that the cat was still alive. Not enough to be called surprise though.

What troubled him the most were the faces. He knew every single one, apart from those of the youngest children.

(There goes Jayla; seems she has a son now...Old Mr Pfeil still nattering on to Granny Ezma about the good old days...Leri, the mayor's daughter, grown tall and healthy…The mayor himself, Mr Fraz…I wasn't aware he could become any fatter...Nefir, the carpenter, with his freckled face…)

The only way they could recognize him, beneath his pitch-black outfit, would be if they recognized Interceptor. But the large, agile pinscher looked nothing like the clumsy little puppy that had followed him when he left on that morning. Logic told him he had nothing to fear. Knowledge of Thamasa's customs told him that the ambient distrust they met with, as people stopped at street corners to watch them pass by, was the usual treatment reserved for outsiders. Yet he was uneasy. It wasn't too big of a stretch to take the wary stares personally. Something unnameable started clawing from deep inside him at the wall he had built to ward off his past, trying to make it crumble, disintegrate into a mound of rubble.

"Sheesh," Locke glanced around them, disbelief on his sharp face, "talk about a warm welcome…"

Terra looked thoughtful and slightly confused. Ever since they entered the village, she'd been attentive, as if trying to spot or to hear something. Knowing what she was, he wouldn't have been surprised if she were able to feel that the inhabitants were all mages. Mages who were desperately trying to hide from unwanted Imperial attention.

But then his mind turned blank. The house. They were right in front of it. Somehow, out of all the possible places they could have gone to, Terra and Locke had picked out this one. It looked unremarkable enough. Perhaps it was the fact that no one stared out of its windows at them. Perhaps…

"Clyde…"

The whisper sounded so close to his ear that he couldn't help but start and hurriedly cast a glance around him to check if anybody had noticed. He was aware that it was just his memory, but he couldn't help it. They were too close. Too close to the past, too close to all that blood, to those blind, senseless days spent in a semi-stupor of self-recrimination.

"Let's try asking here."

Terra confirmed their destination by moving towards the building. And then it hit him.

(Old man Magus, of course…the most respected and skilled warlock of the village. She does sense the magical power, doesn't she?)

There was the green door, the worn stone steps leading up to it, the wild rosebush growing under the sitting-room window…He remembered it all, it all came crowding back with the unpleasant inevitability of a nightmare. He could almost see himself as he was back then, sitting on these same steps, gazing vacantly into the distance.

"Clyde, what's wrong? You've barely said a word all day. I know you don't like talking, but this is creeping me out."

A different voice now. It bit at his insides just as much as the first one. She would sit next to him and run her fingers through his hair, trying to coax a wan smile out of him. She could sense that something tortured him, even though he refused to tell her what it was. She knew that he didn't love her and that he stayed on only because he had drifted here and had nowhere else to go. But she didn't care, and he didn't quite have the heart to destroy her oddly lucid illusion. It didn't help with the guilt though. Only added to the headcount.

Terra's knock was answered by a "come in" in yet another painfully familiar voice. The door swung open.

The moment he stepped over the threshold, it seemed as if all the shadows that had populated his slice of life in this place came crowding back into the small room. The house itself hadn't changed at all. The same old, tattered furniture. The same lopsided bookshelf, with its spell tomes camouflaged as recipe and gardening books. Iris' picture still hanging over the mantelpiece…

"So what's your name, handsome?"

"How bad is it? This isn't m-my blood...is it, Clyde?"

It was getting very hard to concentrate. The voices were growing closer, more insistent, and he wasn't used to forcibly keeping them at bay anymore. He hung back, trying to ignore the steady drone in his mind, and to focus on their host instead.

The little old man was much the same as he remembered him. Only somehow more…withered. His face was like a rock, carved and eroded by persistent little rivulets, unforgiving emissaries of time. His stringy white hair had thinned out noticeably. His diminutive, crabbed frame seemed to have grown even smaller. As if something had worn him down over the years. Something weighing on his shoulders, a tired and heavy reflection in his watery blue eyes.

(I took your only daughter, old man. I took her, and I didn't stop to think about it. Just as I didn't stop to think before I ran from that river bank with his curse ringing in my ears…)

"Come back, you selfish coward! You can't leave me like this!"

At this point, he had to repress a frank shudder.

(Baram…I couldn't. You knew I couldn't.)

Fear. Cowardice. Shame. A bottomless ocean of shame that would smother and crush him under its weight. He would remain prostrate for hours on end, or mechanically go through the required minimum of daily motions. And even though she smelled of strawberries and vanilla, and the flood of her red hair on a pillow was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, he barely noticed. Not even when…

"Clyde, we're going to have a baby."