Author Notes: As much as I adore and love Dissidia till the end of time, I obviously could never own more than a copy of the game. That out of the way, this is a one shot, and quite a bit AU, as well as the fact that it joins into FF9. Hope you all enjoy.

Trading Sins

For millennia after millennia, Kuja had strove and struck against the darkness, against Chaos and those who followed him. He didn't remember all those times, merely that it was constant, he always was sent out into the battle field, and his counterpart would always always be waiting for him, blue eyes burning, lips twisted in a sneer.

And he would hate himself every time he saw him. Because this was his only failure, in all those years at Cosmos's side. Even when he had been struck down by the other, even when he had struck down the other, always, it returned to hit him across the face, more fatal than any wound delivered to his body.

Always, he would be reminded that on the other side of the war was his little brother Zidane, who he forever failed to save.

No words of love or anger, no actions of mercy or cruelty, no pleas and no threats ever reached Zidane's deaf ears. He was bound to Chaos almost closer than Garland himself. He was the Angel of Death that Kuja had not wished to become, had run from each time their lives started again.

Zidane, who he sacrificed again and again to become what he was, to become the good and just warrior he strove so hard to be. Zidane, who he struck down, again and again, every time he failed to save his soul.

Cosmos could no longer comfort him, the others could never understand. Cecil seemed closest to it, but Cecil was like Zidane, the younger, the one Golbez wished to protect, and the one forced into light by that same older brother, who would not give him up to the dark.

But Kuja had surrendered his own to the darkness, again and again and again. Because he always thought he could save him later, do something later.

And even when his fingers just brushed what might have been goodness in his baby sibling, in the end, he always lost.

So when their lives started again, he knew the only thing he had yet to try.

It was a single choice. Even as he held onto that sleeping little bundle of three year old, he was more than aware of that choice. It would be treason, it would be giving up his light and his rights as Cosmos's warrior. It would be sentencing himself into the darkness, likely for all eternity, from this cycle of war, on.

Even knowing all that, he set that tiny burden, his baby brother, on the transporter, and whispered the spell that would free Zidane at last from Chaos's chains. And as he watched him disappear to some unknown part of Gaia, he could feel those same shackles bind tight about his own limbs, and madness, that which he had denied for so long, claw at the door of his soul.

He knew, in time, insanity would take up residence within him. Desperation and despair would chip out his very heart, and he would forget his reasons, he would forget his light. He would forget what being of the good and just had been like.

He'd forget everything except the lonely sound of his own song in his ears, even as it twisted and mutated.

But it would be worth it, to sacrifice all that, for what he'd strove for all this time.

To free Zidane.

And now he could see, the only way to do that in this war, was to take his place.