Disclaimers/Blatherings: All things FFX belong to Squenix.
What to say? Hmm. This is a rather strange, experimental bit of writing that's been sitting neglected on my hard drive for awhile. It is also in a raw, unfinished state (read: full of error). But seeing as how it's All Hallows Eve and like that I thought what the hey, I'll post it anyway. Feel free to send me raspberries or constructive feedback on this thing, as I could really use it. Thanks!



That Which I Was,
I Am No Longer.
That Which I Am,
I Am Becoming.

— Pre-Sumerian prayer



---------------------------------------------
Rem State
---------------------------------------------

It starts with deceptive quiet. Nothing more than his eyes working rapidly beneath their lids. The left moves normally — back and forth — back and forth. The right does not. It jerks and rolls unnaturally; its dysfunction a lasting reminder, sullied and ripe. It moves beneath the brow of a man who will never accept his own worth. A man who will always give more than he takes. Resolute. Strong. But the years of fighting his own demons and the forces at work upon his spirit have worn him thin in places. He is not as impenetrable as he appears. He will continue for as long as he can to be what they need. Expect. The one they all admire and look to — the pillar of experience and fortitude — an unflappable bastion of cool. They accept those traits from him willingly and without question. They won't realize until much later just how important those things really are, but they will never fully understand what it costs him. Even he underestimates the price; how tenuous his hold has become. In that deepest well of sleep past the midnight hour he has grown more susceptible to the murmurings of his subconscious mind. To the voices that speak to the darker side in us all. A poisonous storm roiling like a nest of vipers turned loose from the pit of human weakness called envy. It has been beating at the cage door for a decade and he has always managed to keep it locked up; forced into submission and retreat. Until tonight.

Why can't I?
It hurts.
It hurts to be here.
I need.
I need what they have.
It's cold.
So cold.
I no longer remember.
I want it back.
They tempt me.
With their friendship.
With their touch.
Why must they do that?
They should leave me alone.
I want to be left alone.
I want.
They vex me.
Damn them.
For being warm.

The dream-thoughts oscillate across his brain — alpha waves — their usual pattern of controlled calm erupting into violent spikes. Somehow, he senses the oncoming squall; the blackness rushing toward him in a somnolent wall of fury and he tries to rouse himself but it's too late. It has begun. It will not be denied any longer. It claws and scrabbles its way up — out — and begins to move through his limbs. One booted foot spasms and then the other follows it, twitching and then still again. Now both legs bulging and misshapen jolt in unison as though striking out at an unseen assailant. Then comes a low guttural rumbling. A growl, a moan, and neither. A sound that should never be heard from a human throat. Feral. Full of want and rage.

He comes upright — straight and ready — instantly aware and awake. His skin is crawling and burning as if set afire. Convinced an errant spark has blown free of the campfire and found him he throws off the robe draped across what he thinks is the amorphous charcoal of his pants. A horrified whisper still suited to that of a human being flies past his lips when he sees what his legs have become by the dying light of the embers. Oh no.

Rolling, he lurches to his feet, staggering past the others sleeping around him and toward the dull glimmer of the tree line. Past the warmth of fellowship created by the ring of slumbering guardians around their summoner; united by a common goal and their dependence, one upon the other. For their lives. For their sanity in this carnival-fun-house of death they journey through. By the time he reaches the full cover of woods he is moving awkwardly, so unlike him, hunched and lumbering. Struggling to maintain the last vestiges of his control he crashes through the crystalline undergrowth and falls, sprawling. Sharp edges bleached skeleton white shiver and break beneath his enlarged hands when he rises and lunges on; his will and his shambling tangled gait propelling him forward as he tries to put as much distance as he can between himself and those behind him in camp.

I must not.
Run.
Get away.
I must not.

The shreds of coherent thought are determined, knowing. That he could kill them all while they slept and he would like it. He wanted to do it. Wanted to take flesh from bone — taste their blood — the heat of living tissue coursing down through his gullet in a hot flood. He would be warm again then. He would have what they possessed. What he has lost. His formidable mind turns to do battle; challenging the vicious foe that stalks him: a straining sentience as wild as his will is powerful. Madness meeting hammered iron.

Something flaps and drones through the air just ahead: a buer. Its bloated cycloptic eye regards him for a moment indecisive and then moves on, having recognized its own kind. He is losing. With every passing second he becomes. A new sound half-animal, half-human rips from his throat in a savage rush and he twists to slam his back up against the trunk of a tree, stiff ridges of bark sending a sharp quake of dry pain traveling the length of his spine. The deliberate act fends off the veil of bloodshot twilight descending over his vision. He grits his teeth and does it again — harder and again — harder yet.

If only there was something he could call on — pray to — an omniscient presence beyond himself. For he fears mind alone is not enough. He had once believed that was so. That there was something out there. Just as he had believed he was strong enough to withstand that which ate away at him. But there is, in the end, only he and the terrible monster growing within and this damned everlasting cold. He tries anyway, even though he knows it is for naught. He hesitates before voicing the plea, jaw clenching. He does not want to say it. It hurts so to ask. To admit. When the words finally do come they are forced and raw, his baritone rough with emotion and need. Help me.

Silence. Thick — like his tongue and complete — like his failure. He tastes the bile of self-loathing at the back of his throat but does not reject it. He welcomes it. This is fitting. He deserves this fate. For having followed in blind servitude. For changing nothing. Except himself. Into this. The great circle has been completed: from passion to stone — from stone to passion. It is a far more merciful end than the one his comrade met. He will simply finish becoming and will know no more. Like drowning. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he will be fully aware of what he is doing when he —

Shudders of revulsion engulf him as he forces his unwillingly body to ground and turns to wrap his arms, now bristling with wiry fur around the bole of the tree. Every nerve ending is screaming at him. To get up. Go back. Tear them to pieces.

Like the heavens, there is no comfort forthcoming from his desperate hold on the tree. It does not return the embrace nor recognize a shattered heart; the rutted bark against his chest unyielding and fibrous. Its touch is not cool; it does not soothe the fire burning in his temples beneath the silvered spray of his hair or growing in his eye, the pupil lengthening and contracting with baleful radiance. The tree cannot speak; to offer soft words to the forsaken ear pressed so hard to its side that blood is drawn. There is nothing in these unforgiving woods to tell him it will be all right. To hang on when he feels the bright agony of long curved claws — scythes cutting through the skin of his fingertips. Nothing and no one. He fights alone. Just as he always has.

Tears have begun to course from beneath the unscarred lid, a torturous glissade of effort and pain. Breathe in. Slow. Breathe out. Slower. He opens his eye and chooses a point barely visible in the moonless night just on the other side of the trunk: the ragged stump of a broken limb thrusting up from the ground. He focuses on it, pushing back the dark exultation swelling in him.

Daybreak would find him back at camp as if nothing had happened; his companions none the wiser, totally unaware of his ordeal. The perceptive among them might think he looks a little older than he did yesterday — the frown lines slightly deeper as he waits impatiently for them to be on their way again — prodding them on with his repeated admonitions that there's no time to waste. If one of them had chosen to look deep enough maybe they would have seen it. But none of them do and like the beast, it is deceptively quiet. They have, after all, their own concerns. It is difficult to see suffering in others when you're lost in your own sorrow and fear. Then too, is that they've all grown used to it: the unrelenting disposition of a gruff voice pushing them from behind, the heavy strides out in front leading them forward. On and on. Toward an ending, and a beginning. And they never give it a second thought when he insists on standing graveyard watch for the remainder of the pilgrimage. It's just Sir Auron taking charge — stoic and stubborn and behaving the way he always does.

The cowl hides the self-inflicted wound on his lower lip where he has bitten through it. Glove shields lingering fissures on his right hand. Armor conceals abraded skin. Glasses deflect the unease in his eye. His control hides everything else.

They don't know. They can't know. They'll never know.