JEALOUS
He wasn't like the others.
No. He was special. Perfect.
He was created to be perfect.
He alone was to control the very cycle of life itself, to regulate the transfer of souls from Terra to Gaia. He was the emissary of Garland. The Angel of Death, as his creator had called it. He was indispensable, undefeatable, irreplaceable.
He was going to live forever.
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He didn't want to reach Garland's expectations: he wanted to surpass them. He wanted to blow him away, to exceed whatever limits he was predicted to have. He was supposed to be the only Genome with a soul. He was supposed to have superior intellect and judgment; his own, inimitable mentality. So he was that and more. He grew to be independent, growing out his hair and wearing what he wanted and hiding his tail. But it wasn't good enough.
He wasn't good enough. But this…"Zidane"…. He was good enough. Without even trying, without even doing anything, he was good enough. And that made him j—
It was laughably easy to kidnap the brat and dump him on Gaia. "Zidane" was so powerless and insignificant compared to him. It would only be a matter of time before Garland realized it too, but by then it would be too late. Garland had gone too far this time.
He had always worked to surpass his own boundaries: Now he would outstrip his own creator.
"If you were such a remarkable Angel of Death, Zidane," he told him, testing the repulsive boy's name in his mouth before he would dispose of the brat forever, "you wouldn't have been so easy to defeat."
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People were pawns. Simple, expendable, compliant, so easy to manipulate. Love, fear, anger, sadness—the basic, powerful emotions that came with every soul, the easiest to exploit and take control of. It was little more than child's play to ease himself into Queen Brahne's life where the King was missing. He was patient, carefully seeping into the Elephant Lady's mind without her noticing, infiltrating the ideals and twisting the bonds between her and her subjects. There was greed there, beneath everything, and now all she needed was a power worthy to go after.
He was only too happy to give it to her.
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As time went on, going along a routine of bringing disaster wherever he could and leeching what was left behind, he began to hear more and more about "Zidane" and his little friends. It seemed like he was getting along quite well on his own, earning some friends in high places (and more in low places) and growing more powerful than he ever would have under Garland's control. And all the while, Garland could still keep an eye on him, with all the fuss he was making on Gaia. And although neither of them mentioned it, both knew it to be true:
He had unintentionally done the best possible thing for the development of the new Angel of Death's strength.
He fumed, outsmarted and manipulated. More rumors arrived meanwhile, bearing the news of the change of heart that had come over his Black Mages.
No, they weren't even his black Mages anymore. They were Zidane's. Everything he had would be Zidane's.
Zidane had won them over by sincerity alone, done what he couldn't do by force, and that made him feel jea—
Something would have to be done. Now.
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The failure of his attempt to use Bahamut to assault Alexandria and control Alexander meant just two things to him: One, that he would need to obtain, somehow, an eidolon more powerful than Alexander in order to defy Garland. And two, that he had succeeded. He exulted over the victory, giddy with enthusiasm. Finally he had caught Garland's full attention. He could no longer boss him around from afar. They were fighting as equals.
And soon—very soon, if he had anything to say about it—Garland would know well which of them was the superior Angel of Death; and that was one that could kill its own creator.
He just needed more power….
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The eidolons were nothing compared to Trance. This…this was it. This was the power he needed. He relished the rush of energy tearing through his body, simmering and pleading to be released. He smiled indulgently. Yes, he promised it. Soon you'll never have to be contained again. And neither will I.
The irony of it was that the key to everything all along had been hatred. Hatred for one's enemy, hatred for the situation one was in. After all the talk about heart and perseverance, anger was the means to what he wanted.
And if hatred equaled power, well, then this confrontation would go more quickly than he expected.
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No. No. No!
He watched Garland fall down Pandemonium's apex to his demise, his breath short and burning. Zidane and his little friends were speaking somewhere behind him, their vague, disjointed voices sounding horrified, but he couldn't hear them above the chaos howling in his ears. He had finally done it. He had defeated Garland. He had freed himself. And none of it mattered. Not anymore.
All along, he had been nothing but a puppet, a dummy to carry out his master's whims. In the end, he was manipulated just like the pawns he had scorned—Brahne, the Black Mages. He was strung along on immortality and the fabrication that he would someday be even more powerful than Garland.
He was indispensable only until Zidane came of age. He was…he can't…That was all?
Expendable. Enclosed. Human.
Garland's voice reverberated in his skull, and the panic and rage exploded in front of his vision.
It was only after Terra was destroyed and he stood breathless and alone in a mountain of wreckage, his ears ringing, that he noticed that the Invincible was gone.
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His mind was rash and erratic, running in feverish circles and tripping over itself, almost as if on autopilot. He entered Memoria with one objective wedged firmly in his jumbled mind: Destroy the crystal.
Zidane and his various friends reached him before he could get his hands on it, though, and while it was far from unexpected, the sight of Zidane sent his straggling mind over the edge. "It's not fair for everyone else to live if I have to die," he muttered frantically, and he didn't care if the brats' eyes widened at the psychotic edge to his voice, because maybe he was insane, and he didn't care anymore, because he still had Ultima, and at least that was still something under his control.
"It's the original crystal… This is where it all began…. The birthplace of all things. Once I destroy it, everything will be gone. Gaia, Terra, the universe, everything…."
And Zidane tried to stop him. Of course.
He always had been the better Angel of Death.
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"My actions were wrong, but I'll still be remembered by the Genomes for giving them hope, huh?" he muttered to himself. The Iifa tree roots were pinning him to the ground, something he would have thought humiliating if he wasn't so tired. He laughed humorlessly as he recalled Mikoto's earnest moralizing, coughing up blood along with the laugh. "Hmph."
He was still marveling at what he'd done and what had possessed him to do it. He had certainly never intended to save reckless, naïve Zidane; but he supposed it had something to do with the whole dying thing. It put things in perspective.
Immortality….
He sighed, the pain fading and the blackness clouding his vision even as he lied there. He really didn't want to think about immortality while he died.
But it seemed that if not immortality, there was another force refusing to let him die quite yet: "Kuja? Kuja!"
He almost laughed out loud at the irony. Zidane appeared, climbing over a large root looking filthy and disgruntled, and he didn't even bother to reply.
Zidane's expression changed as he made his way over to him. Closer now, he could see that the kid looked pretty exhausted himself. And he had come back to, what? Save him?
The kid was even more of an imbecile than he'd originally thought.
"Do you know when your birthday is?"
It was an odd question, so he probably deserved the strange look that Zidane gave him. Zidane was half-kneeling next to him, an expression he couldn't quite read on the boy's face. "No," he said, after a while. "Because of" –"you," he didn't say— "how I was brought up, I never knew for sure."
"Well, it's tomorrow," he replied, and the two of them fell silent, not really sure what to say to that. Judging by how dark it had gotten, it was more like in a few minutes than 'tomorrow.' "You're going to be seventeen," he continued vaguely. "Too bad Garland died right before you came of age." He laugh-coughed again at that, and more blood came up. Zidane didn't say anything.
There was a long silence. Zidane seemed to know that it would be useless trying to carry him out of the roots at this point. But he stayed next to him regardless. He watched the sixteen-year-old and wondered what in Necron's name was going on in his head.
"Why?"
Zidane looked at him, so he must have said it out loud. "You were still alive," the boy said slowly. The dead silence around them made his quiet voice sound unnatural. "I couldn't just leave you."
There it was again. The stabbing feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with the pain in his chest. It was almost like he was jealo—
Jealous, he made himself think, at last. The forbidden word that he'd never allowed into his logic. Jealous.
"It's not fair," he murmured, almost to himself. "You got to be incorruptible. If I was like that…."
"Nobody's like that," said Zidane, cutting him off. "In fact, if I hadn't…grown up the way I did…I think I would be just like you." His voice dropped, as though it troubled him to admit it. "But because I didn't know who I was, I was able to learn things by myself, and develop my own opinions. And I was able to make friends who I trust, and who trust me. Between all of us, we're sure to do things right eventually.
"It's not about being incorruptible—it's about having people who can help you make the right decisions. And help you move on when you make the wrong ones."
"Hmph." He closed his eyes. It was getting more difficult to keep his vision clear. He wondered if this was what it meant for everything to go away, like Necron had wanted. "There's no way I can move on. Even if I had these "friends." I've done so many things that will never be forgiven…. For me, the only thing I can do now is die."
Zidane didn't reply, and the silence stretched again. He felt himself slipping from the edges of consciousness; he couldn't even feel the pain anymore.
"It's true that there are a lot of people who will never forgive you," Zidane said, breaking the silence. His face was almost expressionless: he knew that the first Angel of Death was dying. "People who had their homes and families destroyed by your greed. The people who died because of you. They'll never be able to forgive you." The tone of his voice, which was all he could see of Zidane anymore, grew angry, a hint of his own bitterness coloring the words. And then he was quiet again, and the silence wrapped around them, calming the last tendrils of dread that still clung to immortality.
"But, for what it's worth, Kuja," Zidane said, so quietly he almost missed it, "I forgive you."
The surprise only lasted a moment, swiftly replaced by a thin, rueful smile.
He had been right along: He made a much better Angel of Death than Zidane ever would.
Though neither of them knew it, isolated in the dark ruins of Memoria, midnight arrived.
Zidane was seventeen; and Kuja was dead.
~Finis