CHOCOBO DOWN - FIC - BACK AND FORTH (FINAL FANTASY VI)
Title: Back and Fourth
Medium: Fic
For: Moogle fluff!
Request(s): Kefka/Celes - I just love these two and I'm down with anything involving them! They can be enemies, friends, lovers; it can be pre-game (growing up in the Empire, Magitek infusion), in-game (what happens when Kefka jails Celes? What happens after Celes teleports him out of the Magitek Research Facility?), post-game (AU where Kefka survives?), alternate universe, any rating. Art or fic or anything at all! I'm sorry this is really open but if you want to go crazy and be super creative here, go for it! <3
Fandom(s): Final Fantasy VI
Characters/Pairings: Kefka and Celes, Leo, Gestahl, Locke, Terra and cast of guards and civilians
Rating/Warnings: PG for magical violence and injuries
Feedback: Yes, please!
Spoilers: For the entire game.
Word Count: 7485
Summary: Celes can’t save Kefka from himself, but she can stop him from destroying the world.
Notes: Thank you, starsandtildes andcelesjessa, for betaing and tolerating my ficspam!
Celes waits five minutes before entering Kefka’s office.
She’s done so so since he started having the migraines; they came and went quickly, like ill-tempered ghosts, and left his office a mess afterwards. One time, a few months ago, she had ignored the five-minute rule and seen one for herself: his hair a corona around his head like a dandelion; his green uniform crackled with static electricity; his eyes rolled back in his head as poison leaked from his mouth and offshoots of wild magic unhinged picture frames and shot out cabinet doors. She had slammed the door shut before the magic could leak outside, and sat next to the door, quiet and shaking, until Kefka had staggered out and told her that it was safe to come inside.
And that had been that. She doesn’t ask about the side effects of his magic infusion except for the purely biological. He likes the distraction of talking about magitek and she liked hearing him talk. He has a good voice, Celes thinks, especially when he’s drunk enough to try belting out arias. It was so unlike him, to be caught being loud in a place that wasn’t the war room or the battlefield, that she tagged along at parties in case it happened again. It hadn’t yet-the one time he’d let himself go was at his promotion to prime minister, and the Emperor was offering the drinks and Kefka never refused the Emperor-but Celes had big hopes for her own upcoming promotion feast. She couldn’t drink yet, but she’d bothered Cid into buying Kefka’s favorite sweet wine. Just in case.
Either way, she has plans. Good plans. She thinks about them as she waited in front of his door. Five minutes, four, three; she hoped he would be well enough to come to the feast. Between making plans for the invasion of Doma and his own investigation of ancient magic, Kefka busied himself so much he had little time for what was once their daily game of chess. Cid said the stress was making the side effects worse. Celes wants him to be wrong.
Two, one; Cid and Kefka fought more these days. Cid would yell; Kefka’s voice would get quiet and low and sometimes he would start to flare magic. Kefka usually won. Not that Celes watched them fight that much, but they all lived in the same quarters above the magitek tab and the walls weren’t that loud and there were lots of crawlspaces she could still fit in and spy on the labs through.
Zero. “Celes, you can come in now.” Kefka opens the door slowly so that Celes doesn’t unbalance and fall. His hair is pulled up messy, with ashen strands falling free over his face, and she can’t resist pulling one behind his ear. He waves off her hands but he’s not frowning, which is enough for her to know he’s pleased to see her.
She follows him into his office. He’s set up a series of maps over his desk, the eastern half of the Southern Continent sprawling over the side in all their papery glory. He’s set saltshakers (which she knows he stole from the cafeteria over a period of two wars and ten years) at important cities and bases, a messy stack of books where the Esper Mountains towered on the coast. Little pushpins line where armies rest; red for the Empire, green where the forces protecting the valley to Maranda. And at the center of it all, a chess king at Vector.
“This is your last day here before you leave, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Celes draws her hand over the estuary around Albrook, drawn in meticulous blue ink. “We leave in the morning. Why are you showing me this?”
Kefka pulls up his tall chair and crouches on in opposite her, tapping the top of Tzen’s salt shaker. “You need to see the layout of our defenses before you make rounds and inspect the army. They already respect you as an officer, a fighter and a mage, but they need to acknowledge you as commander. If you know our current troop formations-”
“I’m going to go over them tomorrow, while we’re riding to Albrook. Christophe promised me he would.” She knows what Kefka’s expression will be before it hits his face: curdled at having his thunder stolen again by his former subordinate. Celes hates bringing him up; ever since Leo had been promoted to general, highest ranking officer in the Empire save Kefka himself, the two of them had been fighting more than usual. Kefka didn’t win these as much as he won against Cid-it helped that Leo could stand up to Kefka’s intimidation, and when Kefka got cross enough to raise a hand, Leo was perfectly willing to raise one back. They tended to both end up bruised and slightly burnt when things went that far. At least they’d both taken to wearing anti-poison relics; Kefka's magic tended to run wild when he got mad and Gestahl got annoyed when he found out why he ran out of antidotes.
She hears Kefka mutter something about Christophe’s mother and a chocobo before he actually starts talking again, pasting a smile to his face. “Well, at least you’ll be prepared. You have all the supplies you need?”
“Everything.” Enough food and tents to protect an army, and enough potions to heal it.. And first choice of all the armor and relics in the armory. Although, considering that she was here and she knew Kefka would worry about like he always did, twisting messy braids in his hair and pulling strings off the embroidery of his old uniform, perhaps she should ask for something.
“But there is one more thing I need.”
“What is it?” He perks up like a flower in the sun. “Anything in my power-name it, and it’s yours.”
“One of your earrings.” She flushes; it’s a trivial thing, and she could ask for something rarer, but she wants to have something to remember Kefka by on the trip. And it would make her magic stronger, but that was just a bonus. “It’s a long journey, and if I don’t get one from you I won’t be able to get one until we reach Albrook. I lost my last pair, remember?”
His smile cracks genuine then: “Of course!” And he sets to work undoing the clasp of the jewelry on his ear. They had both thought it was costume jewelry when they had first seen the earrings at the relic store in Albrook, when he was meeting with his informants and taking her along as cover, and it had seemed like the most perfectly civilian thing to do was for him to buy her a present of earrings. It wasn’t until they were out in the city and facing monsters again that they realized the potential of the gaudy earrings, although they argued long into the night about who would find a use in the damn things other than the two of them-who else would need a relic that enhanced magic?
They discussed it over late nights of training and mugs of hot chocolate, and little by little it had settled into their routine. Earrings were earrings and they were theirs, and that was all they needed to know.
He hands her the earring, beaming. “Take care of it, got it? It’s hard enough to find earrings I like without you running off with them. And take care of you while you’re at it.” He picks up the king on Vector, spins it between his fingers. “I need a shameless, competent general to back me up, and I won’t get one unless you survive your tour of the Empire.”
“Understood.” She clips the earring on, the large blue stone on it slightly warm with magic, then salutes. “You take care of yourself too. It would be a pity if my only co-worker was Christophe.” Not quite true, since she likes Leo enough even if she doesn’t know him that well, but she knows it’s what Kefka wants to hear.
“I will.” He salutes back. “I promise.”
---
Celes waits five hours until she accepts Kefka’s offer and comes into his room. Since his breakdown, he’s been-erratic doesn’t even begin to cover it, because erratic people don’t push people into machinery to see what happens. They don’t set them on fire for spilling wine on their new cloak. They don’t poison ambassadors because they’re tired of diplomacy and want to get straight to the burning. She still remembers the look on the mayor of Maranda’s face when he started to choke on his own breath, and how Kefka watched every mangled gasp with a smile until the man collapsed into his food. She usually remembers at night, just before she wakes up.
It was a good thing he missed her promotion dinner. He had collapsed a few days before it during a briefing on the Empire’s economy-no magic, but a nervous breakdown. He had just stopped, stopped and stared and hummed, then tried to claw his eyes out. If Leo had been even a minute slower to immobilize him…it might have been good, actually, since half the problem was how Kefka had abandoned his ministerial duties to primp in the mirror with a jackdaw collection of sleeves and scarves, claiming he’d forgotten his duties. Of course, the other half of the problem was that he made the solution to all his problems killing everyone, and blindness never stopped him from using magic.
And that willingness to kill was part of Celes’s dilemma. They’re both scheduled to go to Figaro Castle to find the missing half-esper girl, but then they would split up; one would head back to the Empire with the girl, while the other would back up Leo at Doma. Celes knows which one Kefka wants; she’s seen him mulling over maps of Doma, tracing lines where the river meets the castle. She doesn’t understand it and she doesn’t trust it. She doesn’t want to see another country go the way of Maranda, civilian and soldier all destroyed from one heavy-handed attack.
He sent her a message at midnight: a request to negotiate who would go where, and as much as she’d like to tell him that she’s already made arrangements for Doma, they’re still of equal authority. She’s obligated to give him a say. And that’s why she’s waiting next to his door at five in the morning, the moon grazing the tops of the mountains near South Figaro, their next destination-and possible conquest-on this trip.
The door squeaks, stuck, and Celes can hear Kefka cursing under his breath as he yanks it open. He’s only put on the bare minimum for this, which is to say a gold scarf tied over his chain mail and a smear of red make-up under his eyes, which only served to him look paler in the fading moonlight. He runs a thin hand through his ponytail when he sees Celes waiting, scowling up at her.
“Early, aren’t we?”
“You said to come as soon as possible, and I needed sleep.” Four hours wasn’t much, but she’d arrived at the base at eleven and then had duties and a little rest was better than none, especially here. “Sleep and time to think.”
“I’m not taking the girl back to the Empire,” he says; “I have to go to Doma. I’ve got better things to do than babysit! End. Of. Discussion.”
“No, it isn’t. Let me in.” She gestures around the inn’s hallway, her hand brushing peeling paint. “The troops don’t need to hear us arguing again anyway, especially not at this hour in the morning.”
“Then you should have come later, shouldn’t you?” But he opens the door further to let her into his room anyway. There’s no indication of life inside except for a range of maps on the floor, a neat pile of clothing set on Doma Castle. He steps around it and so does she, although she does notice that he hasn’t drawn on it at all except for a few lines on the river. “Take a seat.” He crouches on his bed, watching her through lidded eyes.
She pulls up a chair on the other side of the room and stares back. How does she start this in a way that doesn’t end in him pulling a temper tantrum? “The esper girl,” she begins, using the most plausible excuse first, “is more comfortable with you than with me. You know what her powers are and how to stop them. And,” she adds, aiming for his ego, “you’re the most familiar with the Slave Crown! You’re the best person to take her back to the Empire.”
“She’s not in any state to fight back,” Kefka replies, crossing his bare arms over his knee. “And a child could operate the Slave Crown; it shouldn’t give you that much trouble. Don’t give me stupid excuses.”
Celes hates how he can be so reasonable at times. She needs to figure out a way to make him want to go with the girl, or if that fails, find a way to make him go. Or get him court-martialed into it. What could she use? “Why wouldn’t she be in any state to fight?”
“I got a new spell last week. Tested it on her. She isn’t the powerful prototype she used to be. Mind, neither am I,” he adds, smirking, “but once I kill a few people I’ll be better. You’re stronger than me; you should take her back.”
“Doma is a war zone. If you’re weaker than you usually are, you should stick with her. She’s less of a threat than a thousand crossbows, after all.”
Kefka smoothes his hair back, ocean-blue eyes flicking up to the ceiling. She hasn’t been able to read him since his nervous breakdown, but she’s watched him enough to know that when he plays with his hair and looks away like that, he’s usually about to do something he knows is going to hurt a lot. There isn’t a waterfall for him to jump off this time…there isn’t anything physical for him to do this time. What’s he planning?
“Celes,” he says, standing up, “the Omara River near Doma Castle is a tributary from the Madon, which our camp is next to. It’s a small, fast-moving river, unimpeded by dams or any other human thing until it reaches the castle.” He steps onto the map, tracing over the river with a bare foot.
“When I pour poison into the river from here, near the base,” and he taps on the map, “it’ll take about twenty minutes for it to reach Doma Castle. It’s fast-acting; if I pour it while they’re eating, they’ll all have water to drink and die within minutes. The men captured by the Domans will die, of course, but they deserve it for being weak enough to be captured. No siege, no more losses on our side, no fuss. We can move on to Figaro with ease.”
Celes can’t think of a good way to answer that.
“That’s why you should let me go to Doma.” He laughs. “It’ll be so easy! Celes, you should let me do it, it’ll help the Empire so much! It’ll be so much fun!”
“You...” Celes stands slowly, drawing her sword. “You’ve pushed it too far this time, Kefka. I let you get away with this at Maranda, but not this time. You are not poisoning an entire city!”
Kefka stares at her, still shaking with laughter, and steps back, eyes widening. “Are you going to attack me?” His eyes flick to the door, then back to her, what little blood left in his face draining. “Are you going to kill me? The Emperor won’t be pleased.”
“He will be once he hears you’re planning genocide.” Celes steps forward and Kefka steps away again, towards the door.
“Genocide? It’s just one city.” Another step. “I won’t commit genocide until I ascend to godhood.” His smile widens; his hands twitch, weaponless. Celes prefers to fight the armed, but she’ll make an exception for him. “The screams will be marvelous. I wish you’d stop pretending you didn’t enjoy them, Celes, falsehood is unbecoming in a god.”
“You’re insane.”
“Perhaps.” Celes follows Kefka as he heads for the door-she can’t let him go free. “Or maybe I’m just smarter than you are.” He laughs again, soundlessly, then turns and runs for the door. Celes drops decorum and starts running after him.
She catches him just outside the room, grazing the back of his shoulder and arm to the elbow. He spins, chanting “infuse with hatred and hellebore--Poison!” and pushing, and the magical force of the poison spell along with the poison itself disorients her enough to let him run away again. She leans on the wall for balance, grabbing an antidote out of her pack and biting into it, healing the poison in seconds.
He makes it to the end of the hallway this time before she catches him again, tripping him on the staircase and slashing his cheek open. He kicks at her legs and chants again “smash all who hunger for creation--Confuse!” and her vision blurs and she stumbles. When she hits her head and segues out of the confusion, he’s heading up to the rooftop, blood dripping off his face.
Good, she thinks. If he’s out in the open, my spells won’t ruin the hotel completely. She puts her hands together and chants and thrusts the cold magic at him-“Drifting snow, strike with fury--Blizzara!”-and ice erupts from his back, turning his chain mail into a patchwork of blood as he loses balance and stumbles onto the rooftop, gasping for breath.
He manages to scramble to his feet by the time Celes follows him up. It’s only then she notices the two soldiers in armors on the rooftop, both with the black stripes of a lieutenant general, one halfway through a cigarette and both staring at her.
“I told you two,” Kefka says, holding his side, “that she was going to try and kill me. See?” He steps back, leaving a footprint of blood. “Arrest her!”
The armors whirr in unison, lasers aiming at Celes. “Put the sword down, General Chere, and come quietly,” the man on the left says, hands light over his control panel; “Your plan to kill Sir Kefka and throw a coup isn’t going to work.”
“Yeah, don’t try anything or we’ll take you down.” Celes grips her sword tighter. Kefka had led her into a trap! She should have been suspicious at how easily he told his plan. She should have realized he was going to try and get to Doma any way he could, including getting rid of her. His ambition had never stopped him from throwing people into machines, and she was no different.
“Fine.” She puts her sword down, raises her hands, steps toward the armors and Kefka. “I only have one thing to say.” She puts her hands together and chants under her breath; the armors charge their lasers and Kefka starts stumbling for her but-“Drifting snow, strike with fury-Blizzara!”
The two armors freeze before they can fire and their riders struggle to get out, hands frozen to the side. Kefka’s face and neck are blasted down to muscle with ice, but that doesn’t stop his momentum as he grabs Celes’s hands and claps a hand over her mouth. “I think it’s time I showed you my true power--!”
His eyes glow white and so does the world; magic yanks through her. She faints.
When she comes to, her vision is blurry and she can barely move. She’s collapsed on the floor, and she can feel Kefka sprawled on top of her, his breath shaky on her neck. She closes her eyes and concentrates, starts to chant-
then stops.
Her magic is gone.
Not all her spells, but most of them. No Cura, no Blizzara, not even Imp-she’s down to two spells and they’re both useless for this and she can’t find her magic anyway, there’s no fuel for her to use to get Kefka off. She’s tired enough she can barely move-only a phoenix down could get her up now.
“What,” Kekfa says, “do you think?” He pushes himself off her, rolls over to crouch next to her. He wipes cascading hair and blood out of his eyes while magic crackles over the skin of his face and neck and back, muscle to scar tissue to skin in seconds.
Celes says nothing. She can’t like this.
“It’s my new magic,” Kefka says, struggling to his feet. “It steals not only life, but the essence of a creature’s being itself-a superior drain spell. I took fire magic and reserves from the esper girl. I took ice magic and reserves from you. And once I get better control of this power, I’ll take magic and reserves from everywhere.”
“I’ll…” she spits, hands clenching useless at her side, “stop you…”
“The gods cannot be stopped, even when weakened.” Kefka looks over to the armors, their pilots still struggling out, then kneels next to her, pulling out shackles from a pocket in his scarf. Celes recognizes the anti-magic runes carved inside them as he starts to clasp the first one to her wrist. “You’ll see in time, Celes. It’ll take me time to recover,” and he punctuates the last word with the snap of cuff shutting, “but it will take you time too, more than me, and by the time you’re at your former level, I’ll be well on the way to practical godhood.”
He steps over her and starts putting on the other shackle. Celes glares at him in lieu of beating him unconscious and dragging him home for a court martial. He snaps the other one on easily, then pulls off her equipment-her shield and sword, her relics-
“Is that my earring?” He unclips it, holding it up in the moonlight. “I thought I lost this.” He tosses it in his hand, eyes transfixed on the large stone. “How did you get it?”
Celes tries to say, ‘you gave it to me,’ but all that comes out are gasps.
“You want this?” asks Kefka. He grins. “I’ll put it on your gravestone. How does that sound?”
---
Celes waits five days to talk to Kefka after she is captured at the magitek laboratory. It helps that he broke her jaw after she teleported him and his lackeys to the middle of the Emperor’s courtroom. She hadn’t meant to send them there, frankly, but it was the only place she could think of and she didn’t have a lot of time to get Kefka somewhere that Locke wasn’t.
He went berserk when he saw where they were and when she started to chant a spell, eyes fixed on the Emperor. She wasn’t sure how he’d pulled out his flail so quickly, just that before she could cast a spell Kefka swung at her, catching her full in the face with the weight on the end, and that was the end of that.
She wakes in a jail cell with the anti-magic shackles back on and a cure-infused compress on her cheek. Cid comes in to explain that she’ll be able to talk in two days, delivering food and what news of her companions reaches him through Kefka. Leo comes in to ask about the Returners and the Espers when she heals, knowing full well that she’ll tell him nothing. Emperor Gestahl comes in once to ask if she’ll serve him again, and she doesn’t answer him either.
Kefka comes in once: just before, she later learns, the Emperor sends him alone to see Terra open the Sealed Gate. She is almost asleep when she hears him come in, and barely stirs to look at him when he stands at the cell door, staring. He stands for what feels like a long time before kneeling to set something on the ground, then leaves without a word.
When she reaches over and grabs it, it takes her a minute to realize it’s her earring.
She doesn’t see Kefka again until well after the Espers attack. Leo pulls her out of her cell just after the first shockwave hits, breaks off the anti-magic cuffs and begs her to help them because “the courtyard is almost molten, the entire city is on fire and everyone’s dying-we need a healer, Celes, I don’t care what I have to do to make it up to you but we need your help!”
As much as she hates what the Empire has become, she can’t abandon the innocents involved. She can’t say no to Leo in tears for his men, face covered in burns and arm in a hasty sling. Celes starts by healing him even though he tells her no, save it for the others but she tells him to shut up and help her because even if she is a good healer she needs someone to help with the heavy lifting.
Between the two of them and a lot of ethers, they save three hundred thirty eight people in the palace, and with the soldiers’ help they clear out most of Vector before the fire kicks into gear. They retreat into the remains of the palace because the mythril it’s made from won’t melt under the flames and they both need to rest and Leo’s quarters are the closest thing either of them has to home. They collapse on his bed fully-clothed, his arm around her shoulder, and Celes gets the first full night of sleep she’s had in days.
Celes wakes up to the sounds of Kefka’s muffled screams echoing through the palace. Leo is gone by then, tending to his soldiers, so she follows the echoes alone until she finds Kefka lead to the cells in a straitjacket, gag and enough anti-magic-rune-covered shackles to armor a platoon. Gestahl leads her away before she can investigate because he wants to ask about the Returners-how to make peace with them, what would their demands be, how can he make up for everything he’s done. They work for hours to find terms for the negotiations; they finish just as Banon and his men enter the city, and Gestahl leaves her to prepare his men for the coming treaty. She decides that, with the city evacuated, Cid busy with repairs and Leo writing letters to the families of dead soldiers and standing guard, she should check on Kefka. It would be better than nothing, she thought, better than moping and better than him escaping because someone overlooked something.
She finds Kefka curled up in the corner of the cell, humming, his face a swollen mass of bruises under smudged make-up. Judging by the traces of blood on the wall and the jacket, some of them are self-inflicted, although she recognizes the two black eyes and the split, bruised lips from the struggle that morning. The metal gag is spat out and kicked to the opposite side of the room; there are still red marks around the sides of his mouth from it.
“Are you here to laugh at me too, Celes?” His head lolls back on the stone wall, one eye slitting open. “Leo had a great time of it earlier.”
“Leo wouldn’t do that.”
“He was thinking it. I could tell.”
“He’d be more likely to pity you with that face.”
He laughs softly at that, wincing as the movement of his bruised mouth. “He would, the goody-goody. Can’t even hate properly; he should have killed me when he had the chance.”
Celes unlocks the cell door, slams it behind her, stepping over to Kefka. He watches, eyes narrowed, as she pulls her blade out and cuts off his straightjacket, revealing his ruined jester’s outfit and a dozen bruises where the cloth is torn. He rubs his wrists while she gets out a potion and hands it to him. He eyes it with suspicion; Celes is not sure why, considering she has a sword.
“It’s not poisoned. Gestahl wants you alive.”
“I know that, Celes. I was wondering when you got so cheap.” He downs it, and the splotchy bruises on his face turn green, half-healed. “No Cure for me?”
“I’m not healing you with magic because you deserve to feel those bruises.” And because she doesn’t know how her magic will react to his anti-magic cuffs, and she doesn’t want to risk him escaping on the off-chance that it would turn them off. Her being lenient last time led to him poisoning Doma. “It’s your fault the Espers attacked Vector. If you hadn’t-”
“Hadn’t what? You think they attacked because of something I did? They didn’t give me a second glance while flying out of their cave. Give credit where credit is due-the esper girl called them and then they wiped our city. I did nothing but get shoved off a cliff.” He pouts and tugs on the tatters of his red shirt. “My clothes are ruined.”
“Shouldn’t you be more worried about your trial?” Celes stands, and Kefka yanks on her cloak to help himself back on his feet. “Gestahl is thinking about executing you.”
“Hahahahaha!” He has to lean on the side of the wall to keep his balance as he doubles over, wincing at his own laughter. “You think-haha-you think I’m enough of a liability for him to kill me yet? I’m too useful to get rid of yet!”
“So I see.” She steps away, heading towards the door. He didn’t appear to be in danger of killing himself before the trial or trying to escape, so there was no point of listening to him ramble. She didn’t need to pain herself further.
He stumbles after her, gasping for breath, eyes clear as the sky. “No, you don’t get it. It’s like if I had you as an assistant-I know you’d try to kill me if you had half a chance, but by the time you got around to doing it, killing me would mean killing the world! Although I think Gestahl wouldn’t be as happy to see that as I would be-if dying meant taking the world with me, I’d do it. I’d let you do it-you stole from me and got away with it, and you have such strong magic-and seeing your face as you realized what you did would be worth it. Gestahl has no imagination-he thinks having the world would be enough. But it isn’t!”
“So, you’re going to try and kill him?” Her hand flies instinctively to her sheathed sword-Kefka was never strong, but when he got into his moods he made up for it with his insanity.
“Of course I am! Don’t tell him, he already suspects and he’s not going to believe a word from you. And when I do kill him, he won’t be able to do anything to stop me! I have it all planned out-it’s perfect! Not that I’ll tell you how, but,” he says, smiling, “I’ll give you a chance to join me before I do it. You can become a god too-just think of the power! You don’t have to answer me now,” he adds, wagging his finger as Celes steps out of the room, “but think about it.”
--
Celes waits five seconds, then rereads the passage in the old book on the three goddesses. The Goddesses can be controlled if they are covered with the blood of a betrayed man. She should have known Kefka was planning something, and with what she knows of his plans for Gestahl-
She’d already seen burn Thamasa, his own flames adding to those of the magitek armors. She’d seen him toy with Leo, toy and then spring when the general tried to flee and shove a knife into the base of his skull, an injury no phoenix down could heal. And he’d walked among the unconscious bodies of the Returners and knelt by her, taking the earring out of her knapsack and clipping it onto his ear.
“I’ll give it back,” he whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to her temple, “when you join me or I die, whichever comes last. I’ll be waiting, Celes.” At which point he climbed into on the remaining Guardian and flew away, the buzz of the engine waking the rest of the party.
They spend the next few days rebuilding. They’re barely done and onto the airship to stop Gestahl when Terra collapses with pain and magic and there’s a sound like the earth ripping itself apart. They know where to go to find the Emperor after that.
Celes stays on the airship in case the Empire attacks again while the advance party marches through the Floating Continent. She flips through the books Strago brought onboard for research while they wait for word from the rest of the group. And that’s when she finds the important passage.
It’s obvious at once-Kefka was going to kill Gestahl anyway, and Kefka was trying to get ultimate power, and if Kefka had the power of the Goddesses then Gestahl couldn’t look back-he was probably close already.
She had to stop him. She had to stop him now.
She runs for the surface of the airship, brushing past the others (“Where art thou-” “Ouch, Kupo!”) before taking to the rail and hopping over, landing on the surface of the continent with a grunt and a somersault.
She runs past the monsters, throwing smoke bombs at everything in her path. She dodges the occasional falling rock. She climbs over the smoking corpse of the monster with telltale signs of magic seared into its hide. She finds the party facing Gestahl and Kefka, the former triumphant, the latter silent and still. After a quick talk with Terra, she’s let through to face the Emperor.
“Ha-ha... So you all came to die together, then... Well, you're just in time! Behold! The Warring Triad!” She can feel the magic flowing from the statues and she shudders at it-it’s thick and heavy and almost sweet with decay and it’s flowing into Gestahl. His face glows sickly with magic. It’s hard not to shudder at the sight. “Ohhh! What power...! I've got goose bumps!”
“Emperor Gestahl! Please stop this madness!”
The Emperor shakes his head and spreads his hands, magic crackling between them like so much lightning. He throws magic-Celes is blasted out of the way. When she gets back up, the party is paralyzed.
“Celes, my darling girl-” she sees Kefka rolling his eyes as the Emperor purrs the nickname, “you alone are special. You and Kefka were created to rule and repopulate the world for me! Join us!”
Kefka’s marches up to Celes. “Kill them all and we’ll forgive your treachery!” He takes her hands in his, squeezes, laughs.
He then sweeps over and unsheathes Gestahl’s sword, the long blade shining in the sunlight. Celes watches for the flurry of movement from Kefka stabbing Gestahl with it, but instead he marches over to her, pressing the hilt of the blade into her hand. “Take this sword and kill them all!” His eyes flick to the Emperor, then to his own weapon, and he smiles a little wider.
Gestahl yells about ruling the world together as she approaches her trapped companions. She raises the sword, dropping the tip to the side of Terra’s neck. She can barely think with the magic of the Goddesses waving past her and the knowing of what she has to do now.
“Power breeds war.” She breathes in, out, bracing herself. “It would have been better if our power never existed!” She runs forward and runs Kefka through.
He makes a little noise of surprise as the blade rips through his stomach. Celes pulls the sword out and he falls onto his side, blood dripping onto the sand around him. He struggles to his knees, puts his hand over the hole in his side, looks at his hand.
“B-blood?”
Kefka forces himself to his feet unsteadily, staring at his red-stained hand.
“Blood!”
The word is almost a sob.
“Blood!!”
He looks at Celes, his eyes wide with disbelief. With betrayal. Oh no, thinks Celes.
“You...you stupid, vicious…” The wind whips around them, sending Kefka’s cloak flying as he stumbles back. Blood splatters onto the statues as he falls again, his body shaking with half-sobs and shock. “I hate…hate…hate hate hate hate hate you! You vicious brat!” He wipes tears off his face as he struggles to his feet a third time, sweeping around to face the statues. Celes can’t find it in her to move to stop him.
“Goddesses, you were born to fight!” She’s never heard him scream so loud before. “I implore you…give me your power!”
She backs away as Kefka and Gestahl start to fight, putting up magical shields to protect her and her friends from the backlash of Gestahl’s spells. She watches as Kefka plays with the Goddesses’ magic, then kicks the Emperor’s limp body and rolls it off the side. She notices he’s stopped bleeding, and that the color has drained from his face, and that swirls of magic follow each move he makes, and that his eyes are glazed and glowing. Magic jerks through his body as he moves the statues too and fro.
Against such power, she’s helpless. She can barely move. But she can’t just let him move the statues, can’t let him use that magic to blow up the world, can’t let him lose whatever shred of humanity is left for actual godhood, and so she rushes to stop him.
“Kefka, no! Snap out of it!”
He backhands her with raw magic and maddened strength. She almost falls off the cliff but manages to find a handhold in the rock in time. Struggling up, she yells again:
“Don’t be an idiot! If you upset the balance, their power will destroy you too!”
He doesn’t look back to her as he drags a statue away. It’s as if he can’t hear her.
It’s almost a relief when Shadow shows up and starts pushing the statues back. She takes his advice and grabs the party and starts running, casting hasty ice spells at every monster in her way. When one casts Doom on everyone, she runs up and stabs him in the face over and over again until he withers and dies. Locke has to help her back onto the ship because she’s shaking so hard.
Locke asks her what’s wrong. She can barely find the words for it, for how she hoped there was a part of Kefka that was still human, how she’d looked at his eyes and seen shock that she’d actually hurt him, how he’d looked so determined and blank as he moved the statues, blood and tears drying on his face. She wants to punch someone. She wants to cry. She wants to kill Kefka. She can’t save him.
When the airship breaks down and she starts to fall, it’s almost a mercy.
--
Celes waits five minutes before she finds the strength to move and drink a hi-potion. Between the burns and the cuts, it hurts, but once the potions kicks in she can manage to get to her knees.
The rest of the party has already climbed upward, fighting Kefka atop his magic tower-Kefka the god, giant and purple and loud, not the man they saw laughing off their hopes at the base of the tower. She was knocked out on the top layer by the lounging man’s last move-Repose!- and rolled down to the limp, grey arms of the demon at the bottom. The air is thick with magic; she can almost feel it sticking to her arms and legs; almost taste it, sweet as death, when she opens her mouth to breathe. She can hear the sounds of battle over the screech of wind and the inhuman harmony of what she recognizes as Kefka’s humming song.
She is, as far as she can tell, the only one knocked out by the tower. She can see the rest of the party above, waiting around to join the last battle. Kefka’s putting up a hard fight, but between the flash of Ultima and the quickened stabs of swords and spears, she can see his flight becoming more frantic until-
It sounds like thunder when Terra stabs through Kefka’s chest and his shoulders go limp. He pushes himself off, his wings sagging, and he starts to laugh as his feet disintegrate, then his ankles, his legs-He spirals downward, and Celes switches her attention from Terra and the others to the body plummeting towards her.
The purple god-body is almost gone by the time Kefka lands hard on the short arm. The last wisps of it leave his true body as Celes approaches, sword held cautiously in front of her, to runic any last magic away.
He does not look like his god-form. He does not look like the idealized form he showed them as he gloated before the battle. She had suspected he was using an illusion, but hadn’t seen the reason for it: his clothes are ruined, clotted with dirt and year-old blood, and his body is almost skeletal with disuse, his face thin and shadowed.
“Are you here to laugh?” he asks, and then he laughs-laughs or cries, she can’t tell with the music still ringing in her ears. The one eye he has left is milky and lidded, barely moving.
“No.” She kneels next to him. She doesn’t remember him being this small. “It’s hard to hate someone so sad.”
“Figures.” He reaches over blindly; she takes his hand and holds it, his bony knuckles digging into her fingers. “The one person I want to kill me not only skips out, but she can’t properly hate me when I die. I can’t even see your face in agony when the magic ends and the tower collapses on your little friends!”
She takes her sword and sticks it into the dead arm, then wraps his hand in hers. “At least you have me at your mercy now, don’t you?”
“Don’t make me laugh. You know I don’t have any of that stuff.” Kefka giggles anyway, rivulets of blood coursing down his face. “I don’t even have enough power to suck the life from you. I’m finished.”
Celes does not answer. Kefka sneers, his hand spasming. His breath is growing shallow.
“Why are you crying? Not that I don’t like it, but I thought you would be over my death by now.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
“The Kefka you want to speak to ceased existing long ago.” His head rolls to face her; his cracked smile is gone. “I remember…some of him. That time when he sang to you. When you two made a game of stealing pepper shakers from Leo’s table. That thing with the earring…”
“You remember?”
“Enough of it.” He looks, Celes thinks, almost normal now. “Enough that I was disappointed when you didn’t join me, although I must admit I was delighted at the magnitude of your betrayal. It’s so you.”
Celes does not reply. She can’t like this.
“You said you found acceptance.” He chuckles, his head rolling toward her. His words slur, almost drunken. “See how much it helps with living in this world I’ve destroyed, Chere. I’ll give that earring back to you when I see you can still…take…ca…”
His breath rattles to a halt-
Celes puts Kefka’s hand down and closes his remaining eye. She can hear the others coming. She wipes her eyes, takes her sword and sheathes it. Terra and Locke and all the others need her. She can’t take care of the past anymore.
--
Celes waits five years to build Kefka a grave. It’s small and stone and hidden in the ruins of Kefka’s Tower.
Locke asks about it, of course. She tells him that she goes to remember-that it is a blow against Kefka the god, who claimed everything would be forgotten. And that is true.
She does not tell him that she built it when, while scavenging through the ruins of the tower for supplies, she found the earring in the ruins of the Goddess statue. It wasn’t there before, but the ceiling of the tower there was garbage like the rest of it, and perhaps it was in that pile but eventually fell out. It could have been a coincidence. Conceivably. Maybe.
When she goes to the grave, she wears it. She hopes that if Kefka is waiting out there, he knows she is wearing it, and knows what it means.
Medium: Fic
For: Moogle fluff!
Request(s): Kefka/Celes - I just love these two and I'm down with anything involving them! They can be enemies, friends, lovers; it can be pre-game (growing up in the Empire, Magitek infusion), in-game (what happens when Kefka jails Celes? What happens after Celes teleports him out of the Magitek Research Facility?), post-game (AU where Kefka survives?), alternate universe, any rating. Art or fic or anything at all! I'm sorry this is really open but if you want to go crazy and be super creative here, go for it! <3
Fandom(s): Final Fantasy VI
Characters/Pairings: Kefka and Celes, Leo, Gestahl, Locke, Terra and cast of guards and civilians
Rating/Warnings: PG for magical violence and injuries
Feedback: Yes, please!
Spoilers: For the entire game.
Word Count: 7485
Summary: Celes can’t save Kefka from himself, but she can stop him from destroying the world.
Notes: Thank you, starsandtildes andcelesjessa, for betaing and tolerating my ficspam!
Celes waits five minutes before entering Kefka’s office.
She’s done so so since he started having the migraines; they came and went quickly, like ill-tempered ghosts, and left his office a mess afterwards. One time, a few months ago, she had ignored the five-minute rule and seen one for herself: his hair a corona around his head like a dandelion; his green uniform crackled with static electricity; his eyes rolled back in his head as poison leaked from his mouth and offshoots of wild magic unhinged picture frames and shot out cabinet doors. She had slammed the door shut before the magic could leak outside, and sat next to the door, quiet and shaking, until Kefka had staggered out and told her that it was safe to come inside.
And that had been that. She doesn’t ask about the side effects of his magic infusion except for the purely biological. He likes the distraction of talking about magitek and she liked hearing him talk. He has a good voice, Celes thinks, especially when he’s drunk enough to try belting out arias. It was so unlike him, to be caught being loud in a place that wasn’t the war room or the battlefield, that she tagged along at parties in case it happened again. It hadn’t yet-the one time he’d let himself go was at his promotion to prime minister, and the Emperor was offering the drinks and Kefka never refused the Emperor-but Celes had big hopes for her own upcoming promotion feast. She couldn’t drink yet, but she’d bothered Cid into buying Kefka’s favorite sweet wine. Just in case.
Either way, she has plans. Good plans. She thinks about them as she waited in front of his door. Five minutes, four, three; she hoped he would be well enough to come to the feast. Between making plans for the invasion of Doma and his own investigation of ancient magic, Kefka busied himself so much he had little time for what was once their daily game of chess. Cid said the stress was making the side effects worse. Celes wants him to be wrong.
Two, one; Cid and Kefka fought more these days. Cid would yell; Kefka’s voice would get quiet and low and sometimes he would start to flare magic. Kefka usually won. Not that Celes watched them fight that much, but they all lived in the same quarters above the magitek tab and the walls weren’t that loud and there were lots of crawlspaces she could still fit in and spy on the labs through.
Zero. “Celes, you can come in now.” Kefka opens the door slowly so that Celes doesn’t unbalance and fall. His hair is pulled up messy, with ashen strands falling free over his face, and she can’t resist pulling one behind his ear. He waves off her hands but he’s not frowning, which is enough for her to know he’s pleased to see her.
She follows him into his office. He’s set up a series of maps over his desk, the eastern half of the Southern Continent sprawling over the side in all their papery glory. He’s set saltshakers (which she knows he stole from the cafeteria over a period of two wars and ten years) at important cities and bases, a messy stack of books where the Esper Mountains towered on the coast. Little pushpins line where armies rest; red for the Empire, green where the forces protecting the valley to Maranda. And at the center of it all, a chess king at Vector.
“This is your last day here before you leave, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Celes draws her hand over the estuary around Albrook, drawn in meticulous blue ink. “We leave in the morning. Why are you showing me this?”
Kefka pulls up his tall chair and crouches on in opposite her, tapping the top of Tzen’s salt shaker. “You need to see the layout of our defenses before you make rounds and inspect the army. They already respect you as an officer, a fighter and a mage, but they need to acknowledge you as commander. If you know our current troop formations-”
“I’m going to go over them tomorrow, while we’re riding to Albrook. Christophe promised me he would.” She knows what Kefka’s expression will be before it hits his face: curdled at having his thunder stolen again by his former subordinate. Celes hates bringing him up; ever since Leo had been promoted to general, highest ranking officer in the Empire save Kefka himself, the two of them had been fighting more than usual. Kefka didn’t win these as much as he won against Cid-it helped that Leo could stand up to Kefka’s intimidation, and when Kefka got cross enough to raise a hand, Leo was perfectly willing to raise one back. They tended to both end up bruised and slightly burnt when things went that far. At least they’d both taken to wearing anti-poison relics; Kefka's magic tended to run wild when he got mad and Gestahl got annoyed when he found out why he ran out of antidotes.
She hears Kefka mutter something about Christophe’s mother and a chocobo before he actually starts talking again, pasting a smile to his face. “Well, at least you’ll be prepared. You have all the supplies you need?”
“Everything.” Enough food and tents to protect an army, and enough potions to heal it.. And first choice of all the armor and relics in the armory. Although, considering that she was here and she knew Kefka would worry about like he always did, twisting messy braids in his hair and pulling strings off the embroidery of his old uniform, perhaps she should ask for something.
“But there is one more thing I need.”
“What is it?” He perks up like a flower in the sun. “Anything in my power-name it, and it’s yours.”
“One of your earrings.” She flushes; it’s a trivial thing, and she could ask for something rarer, but she wants to have something to remember Kefka by on the trip. And it would make her magic stronger, but that was just a bonus. “It’s a long journey, and if I don’t get one from you I won’t be able to get one until we reach Albrook. I lost my last pair, remember?”
His smile cracks genuine then: “Of course!” And he sets to work undoing the clasp of the jewelry on his ear. They had both thought it was costume jewelry when they had first seen the earrings at the relic store in Albrook, when he was meeting with his informants and taking her along as cover, and it had seemed like the most perfectly civilian thing to do was for him to buy her a present of earrings. It wasn’t until they were out in the city and facing monsters again that they realized the potential of the gaudy earrings, although they argued long into the night about who would find a use in the damn things other than the two of them-who else would need a relic that enhanced magic?
They discussed it over late nights of training and mugs of hot chocolate, and little by little it had settled into their routine. Earrings were earrings and they were theirs, and that was all they needed to know.
He hands her the earring, beaming. “Take care of it, got it? It’s hard enough to find earrings I like without you running off with them. And take care of you while you’re at it.” He picks up the king on Vector, spins it between his fingers. “I need a shameless, competent general to back me up, and I won’t get one unless you survive your tour of the Empire.”
“Understood.” She clips the earring on, the large blue stone on it slightly warm with magic, then salutes. “You take care of yourself too. It would be a pity if my only co-worker was Christophe.” Not quite true, since she likes Leo enough even if she doesn’t know him that well, but she knows it’s what Kefka wants to hear.
“I will.” He salutes back. “I promise.”
---
Celes waits five hours until she accepts Kefka’s offer and comes into his room. Since his breakdown, he’s been-erratic doesn’t even begin to cover it, because erratic people don’t push people into machinery to see what happens. They don’t set them on fire for spilling wine on their new cloak. They don’t poison ambassadors because they’re tired of diplomacy and want to get straight to the burning. She still remembers the look on the mayor of Maranda’s face when he started to choke on his own breath, and how Kefka watched every mangled gasp with a smile until the man collapsed into his food. She usually remembers at night, just before she wakes up.
It was a good thing he missed her promotion dinner. He had collapsed a few days before it during a briefing on the Empire’s economy-no magic, but a nervous breakdown. He had just stopped, stopped and stared and hummed, then tried to claw his eyes out. If Leo had been even a minute slower to immobilize him…it might have been good, actually, since half the problem was how Kefka had abandoned his ministerial duties to primp in the mirror with a jackdaw collection of sleeves and scarves, claiming he’d forgotten his duties. Of course, the other half of the problem was that he made the solution to all his problems killing everyone, and blindness never stopped him from using magic.
And that willingness to kill was part of Celes’s dilemma. They’re both scheduled to go to Figaro Castle to find the missing half-esper girl, but then they would split up; one would head back to the Empire with the girl, while the other would back up Leo at Doma. Celes knows which one Kefka wants; she’s seen him mulling over maps of Doma, tracing lines where the river meets the castle. She doesn’t understand it and she doesn’t trust it. She doesn’t want to see another country go the way of Maranda, civilian and soldier all destroyed from one heavy-handed attack.
He sent her a message at midnight: a request to negotiate who would go where, and as much as she’d like to tell him that she’s already made arrangements for Doma, they’re still of equal authority. She’s obligated to give him a say. And that’s why she’s waiting next to his door at five in the morning, the moon grazing the tops of the mountains near South Figaro, their next destination-and possible conquest-on this trip.
The door squeaks, stuck, and Celes can hear Kefka cursing under his breath as he yanks it open. He’s only put on the bare minimum for this, which is to say a gold scarf tied over his chain mail and a smear of red make-up under his eyes, which only served to him look paler in the fading moonlight. He runs a thin hand through his ponytail when he sees Celes waiting, scowling up at her.
“Early, aren’t we?”
“You said to come as soon as possible, and I needed sleep.” Four hours wasn’t much, but she’d arrived at the base at eleven and then had duties and a little rest was better than none, especially here. “Sleep and time to think.”
“I’m not taking the girl back to the Empire,” he says; “I have to go to Doma. I’ve got better things to do than babysit! End. Of. Discussion.”
“No, it isn’t. Let me in.” She gestures around the inn’s hallway, her hand brushing peeling paint. “The troops don’t need to hear us arguing again anyway, especially not at this hour in the morning.”
“Then you should have come later, shouldn’t you?” But he opens the door further to let her into his room anyway. There’s no indication of life inside except for a range of maps on the floor, a neat pile of clothing set on Doma Castle. He steps around it and so does she, although she does notice that he hasn’t drawn on it at all except for a few lines on the river. “Take a seat.” He crouches on his bed, watching her through lidded eyes.
She pulls up a chair on the other side of the room and stares back. How does she start this in a way that doesn’t end in him pulling a temper tantrum? “The esper girl,” she begins, using the most plausible excuse first, “is more comfortable with you than with me. You know what her powers are and how to stop them. And,” she adds, aiming for his ego, “you’re the most familiar with the Slave Crown! You’re the best person to take her back to the Empire.”
“She’s not in any state to fight back,” Kefka replies, crossing his bare arms over his knee. “And a child could operate the Slave Crown; it shouldn’t give you that much trouble. Don’t give me stupid excuses.”
Celes hates how he can be so reasonable at times. She needs to figure out a way to make him want to go with the girl, or if that fails, find a way to make him go. Or get him court-martialed into it. What could she use? “Why wouldn’t she be in any state to fight?”
“I got a new spell last week. Tested it on her. She isn’t the powerful prototype she used to be. Mind, neither am I,” he adds, smirking, “but once I kill a few people I’ll be better. You’re stronger than me; you should take her back.”
“Doma is a war zone. If you’re weaker than you usually are, you should stick with her. She’s less of a threat than a thousand crossbows, after all.”
Kefka smoothes his hair back, ocean-blue eyes flicking up to the ceiling. She hasn’t been able to read him since his nervous breakdown, but she’s watched him enough to know that when he plays with his hair and looks away like that, he’s usually about to do something he knows is going to hurt a lot. There isn’t a waterfall for him to jump off this time…there isn’t anything physical for him to do this time. What’s he planning?
“Celes,” he says, standing up, “the Omara River near Doma Castle is a tributary from the Madon, which our camp is next to. It’s a small, fast-moving river, unimpeded by dams or any other human thing until it reaches the castle.” He steps onto the map, tracing over the river with a bare foot.
“When I pour poison into the river from here, near the base,” and he taps on the map, “it’ll take about twenty minutes for it to reach Doma Castle. It’s fast-acting; if I pour it while they’re eating, they’ll all have water to drink and die within minutes. The men captured by the Domans will die, of course, but they deserve it for being weak enough to be captured. No siege, no more losses on our side, no fuss. We can move on to Figaro with ease.”
Celes can’t think of a good way to answer that.
“That’s why you should let me go to Doma.” He laughs. “It’ll be so easy! Celes, you should let me do it, it’ll help the Empire so much! It’ll be so much fun!”
“You...” Celes stands slowly, drawing her sword. “You’ve pushed it too far this time, Kefka. I let you get away with this at Maranda, but not this time. You are not poisoning an entire city!”
Kefka stares at her, still shaking with laughter, and steps back, eyes widening. “Are you going to attack me?” His eyes flick to the door, then back to her, what little blood left in his face draining. “Are you going to kill me? The Emperor won’t be pleased.”
“He will be once he hears you’re planning genocide.” Celes steps forward and Kefka steps away again, towards the door.
“Genocide? It’s just one city.” Another step. “I won’t commit genocide until I ascend to godhood.” His smile widens; his hands twitch, weaponless. Celes prefers to fight the armed, but she’ll make an exception for him. “The screams will be marvelous. I wish you’d stop pretending you didn’t enjoy them, Celes, falsehood is unbecoming in a god.”
“You’re insane.”
“Perhaps.” Celes follows Kefka as he heads for the door-she can’t let him go free. “Or maybe I’m just smarter than you are.” He laughs again, soundlessly, then turns and runs for the door. Celes drops decorum and starts running after him.
She catches him just outside the room, grazing the back of his shoulder and arm to the elbow. He spins, chanting “infuse with hatred and hellebore--Poison!” and pushing, and the magical force of the poison spell along with the poison itself disorients her enough to let him run away again. She leans on the wall for balance, grabbing an antidote out of her pack and biting into it, healing the poison in seconds.
He makes it to the end of the hallway this time before she catches him again, tripping him on the staircase and slashing his cheek open. He kicks at her legs and chants again “smash all who hunger for creation--Confuse!” and her vision blurs and she stumbles. When she hits her head and segues out of the confusion, he’s heading up to the rooftop, blood dripping off his face.
Good, she thinks. If he’s out in the open, my spells won’t ruin the hotel completely. She puts her hands together and chants and thrusts the cold magic at him-“Drifting snow, strike with fury--Blizzara!”-and ice erupts from his back, turning his chain mail into a patchwork of blood as he loses balance and stumbles onto the rooftop, gasping for breath.
He manages to scramble to his feet by the time Celes follows him up. It’s only then she notices the two soldiers in armors on the rooftop, both with the black stripes of a lieutenant general, one halfway through a cigarette and both staring at her.
“I told you two,” Kefka says, holding his side, “that she was going to try and kill me. See?” He steps back, leaving a footprint of blood. “Arrest her!”
The armors whirr in unison, lasers aiming at Celes. “Put the sword down, General Chere, and come quietly,” the man on the left says, hands light over his control panel; “Your plan to kill Sir Kefka and throw a coup isn’t going to work.”
“Yeah, don’t try anything or we’ll take you down.” Celes grips her sword tighter. Kefka had led her into a trap! She should have been suspicious at how easily he told his plan. She should have realized he was going to try and get to Doma any way he could, including getting rid of her. His ambition had never stopped him from throwing people into machines, and she was no different.
“Fine.” She puts her sword down, raises her hands, steps toward the armors and Kefka. “I only have one thing to say.” She puts her hands together and chants under her breath; the armors charge their lasers and Kefka starts stumbling for her but-“Drifting snow, strike with fury-Blizzara!”
The two armors freeze before they can fire and their riders struggle to get out, hands frozen to the side. Kefka’s face and neck are blasted down to muscle with ice, but that doesn’t stop his momentum as he grabs Celes’s hands and claps a hand over her mouth. “I think it’s time I showed you my true power--!”
His eyes glow white and so does the world; magic yanks through her. She faints.
When she comes to, her vision is blurry and she can barely move. She’s collapsed on the floor, and she can feel Kefka sprawled on top of her, his breath shaky on her neck. She closes her eyes and concentrates, starts to chant-
then stops.
Her magic is gone.
Not all her spells, but most of them. No Cura, no Blizzara, not even Imp-she’s down to two spells and they’re both useless for this and she can’t find her magic anyway, there’s no fuel for her to use to get Kefka off. She’s tired enough she can barely move-only a phoenix down could get her up now.
“What,” Kekfa says, “do you think?” He pushes himself off her, rolls over to crouch next to her. He wipes cascading hair and blood out of his eyes while magic crackles over the skin of his face and neck and back, muscle to scar tissue to skin in seconds.
Celes says nothing. She can’t like this.
“It’s my new magic,” Kefka says, struggling to his feet. “It steals not only life, but the essence of a creature’s being itself-a superior drain spell. I took fire magic and reserves from the esper girl. I took ice magic and reserves from you. And once I get better control of this power, I’ll take magic and reserves from everywhere.”
“I’ll…” she spits, hands clenching useless at her side, “stop you…”
“The gods cannot be stopped, even when weakened.” Kefka looks over to the armors, their pilots still struggling out, then kneels next to her, pulling out shackles from a pocket in his scarf. Celes recognizes the anti-magic runes carved inside them as he starts to clasp the first one to her wrist. “You’ll see in time, Celes. It’ll take me time to recover,” and he punctuates the last word with the snap of cuff shutting, “but it will take you time too, more than me, and by the time you’re at your former level, I’ll be well on the way to practical godhood.”
He steps over her and starts putting on the other shackle. Celes glares at him in lieu of beating him unconscious and dragging him home for a court martial. He snaps the other one on easily, then pulls off her equipment-her shield and sword, her relics-
“Is that my earring?” He unclips it, holding it up in the moonlight. “I thought I lost this.” He tosses it in his hand, eyes transfixed on the large stone. “How did you get it?”
Celes tries to say, ‘you gave it to me,’ but all that comes out are gasps.
“You want this?” asks Kefka. He grins. “I’ll put it on your gravestone. How does that sound?”
---
Celes waits five days to talk to Kefka after she is captured at the magitek laboratory. It helps that he broke her jaw after she teleported him and his lackeys to the middle of the Emperor’s courtroom. She hadn’t meant to send them there, frankly, but it was the only place she could think of and she didn’t have a lot of time to get Kefka somewhere that Locke wasn’t.
He went berserk when he saw where they were and when she started to chant a spell, eyes fixed on the Emperor. She wasn’t sure how he’d pulled out his flail so quickly, just that before she could cast a spell Kefka swung at her, catching her full in the face with the weight on the end, and that was the end of that.
She wakes in a jail cell with the anti-magic shackles back on and a cure-infused compress on her cheek. Cid comes in to explain that she’ll be able to talk in two days, delivering food and what news of her companions reaches him through Kefka. Leo comes in to ask about the Returners and the Espers when she heals, knowing full well that she’ll tell him nothing. Emperor Gestahl comes in once to ask if she’ll serve him again, and she doesn’t answer him either.
Kefka comes in once: just before, she later learns, the Emperor sends him alone to see Terra open the Sealed Gate. She is almost asleep when she hears him come in, and barely stirs to look at him when he stands at the cell door, staring. He stands for what feels like a long time before kneeling to set something on the ground, then leaves without a word.
When she reaches over and grabs it, it takes her a minute to realize it’s her earring.
She doesn’t see Kefka again until well after the Espers attack. Leo pulls her out of her cell just after the first shockwave hits, breaks off the anti-magic cuffs and begs her to help them because “the courtyard is almost molten, the entire city is on fire and everyone’s dying-we need a healer, Celes, I don’t care what I have to do to make it up to you but we need your help!”
As much as she hates what the Empire has become, she can’t abandon the innocents involved. She can’t say no to Leo in tears for his men, face covered in burns and arm in a hasty sling. Celes starts by healing him even though he tells her no, save it for the others but she tells him to shut up and help her because even if she is a good healer she needs someone to help with the heavy lifting.
Between the two of them and a lot of ethers, they save three hundred thirty eight people in the palace, and with the soldiers’ help they clear out most of Vector before the fire kicks into gear. They retreat into the remains of the palace because the mythril it’s made from won’t melt under the flames and they both need to rest and Leo’s quarters are the closest thing either of them has to home. They collapse on his bed fully-clothed, his arm around her shoulder, and Celes gets the first full night of sleep she’s had in days.
Celes wakes up to the sounds of Kefka’s muffled screams echoing through the palace. Leo is gone by then, tending to his soldiers, so she follows the echoes alone until she finds Kefka lead to the cells in a straitjacket, gag and enough anti-magic-rune-covered shackles to armor a platoon. Gestahl leads her away before she can investigate because he wants to ask about the Returners-how to make peace with them, what would their demands be, how can he make up for everything he’s done. They work for hours to find terms for the negotiations; they finish just as Banon and his men enter the city, and Gestahl leaves her to prepare his men for the coming treaty. She decides that, with the city evacuated, Cid busy with repairs and Leo writing letters to the families of dead soldiers and standing guard, she should check on Kefka. It would be better than nothing, she thought, better than moping and better than him escaping because someone overlooked something.
She finds Kefka curled up in the corner of the cell, humming, his face a swollen mass of bruises under smudged make-up. Judging by the traces of blood on the wall and the jacket, some of them are self-inflicted, although she recognizes the two black eyes and the split, bruised lips from the struggle that morning. The metal gag is spat out and kicked to the opposite side of the room; there are still red marks around the sides of his mouth from it.
“Are you here to laugh at me too, Celes?” His head lolls back on the stone wall, one eye slitting open. “Leo had a great time of it earlier.”
“Leo wouldn’t do that.”
“He was thinking it. I could tell.”
“He’d be more likely to pity you with that face.”
He laughs softly at that, wincing as the movement of his bruised mouth. “He would, the goody-goody. Can’t even hate properly; he should have killed me when he had the chance.”
Celes unlocks the cell door, slams it behind her, stepping over to Kefka. He watches, eyes narrowed, as she pulls her blade out and cuts off his straightjacket, revealing his ruined jester’s outfit and a dozen bruises where the cloth is torn. He rubs his wrists while she gets out a potion and hands it to him. He eyes it with suspicion; Celes is not sure why, considering she has a sword.
“It’s not poisoned. Gestahl wants you alive.”
“I know that, Celes. I was wondering when you got so cheap.” He downs it, and the splotchy bruises on his face turn green, half-healed. “No Cure for me?”
“I’m not healing you with magic because you deserve to feel those bruises.” And because she doesn’t know how her magic will react to his anti-magic cuffs, and she doesn’t want to risk him escaping on the off-chance that it would turn them off. Her being lenient last time led to him poisoning Doma. “It’s your fault the Espers attacked Vector. If you hadn’t-”
“Hadn’t what? You think they attacked because of something I did? They didn’t give me a second glance while flying out of their cave. Give credit where credit is due-the esper girl called them and then they wiped our city. I did nothing but get shoved off a cliff.” He pouts and tugs on the tatters of his red shirt. “My clothes are ruined.”
“Shouldn’t you be more worried about your trial?” Celes stands, and Kefka yanks on her cloak to help himself back on his feet. “Gestahl is thinking about executing you.”
“Hahahahaha!” He has to lean on the side of the wall to keep his balance as he doubles over, wincing at his own laughter. “You think-haha-you think I’m enough of a liability for him to kill me yet? I’m too useful to get rid of yet!”
“So I see.” She steps away, heading towards the door. He didn’t appear to be in danger of killing himself before the trial or trying to escape, so there was no point of listening to him ramble. She didn’t need to pain herself further.
He stumbles after her, gasping for breath, eyes clear as the sky. “No, you don’t get it. It’s like if I had you as an assistant-I know you’d try to kill me if you had half a chance, but by the time you got around to doing it, killing me would mean killing the world! Although I think Gestahl wouldn’t be as happy to see that as I would be-if dying meant taking the world with me, I’d do it. I’d let you do it-you stole from me and got away with it, and you have such strong magic-and seeing your face as you realized what you did would be worth it. Gestahl has no imagination-he thinks having the world would be enough. But it isn’t!”
“So, you’re going to try and kill him?” Her hand flies instinctively to her sheathed sword-Kefka was never strong, but when he got into his moods he made up for it with his insanity.
“Of course I am! Don’t tell him, he already suspects and he’s not going to believe a word from you. And when I do kill him, he won’t be able to do anything to stop me! I have it all planned out-it’s perfect! Not that I’ll tell you how, but,” he says, smiling, “I’ll give you a chance to join me before I do it. You can become a god too-just think of the power! You don’t have to answer me now,” he adds, wagging his finger as Celes steps out of the room, “but think about it.”
--
Celes waits five seconds, then rereads the passage in the old book on the three goddesses. The Goddesses can be controlled if they are covered with the blood of a betrayed man. She should have known Kefka was planning something, and with what she knows of his plans for Gestahl-
She’d already seen burn Thamasa, his own flames adding to those of the magitek armors. She’d seen him toy with Leo, toy and then spring when the general tried to flee and shove a knife into the base of his skull, an injury no phoenix down could heal. And he’d walked among the unconscious bodies of the Returners and knelt by her, taking the earring out of her knapsack and clipping it onto his ear.
“I’ll give it back,” he whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to her temple, “when you join me or I die, whichever comes last. I’ll be waiting, Celes.” At which point he climbed into on the remaining Guardian and flew away, the buzz of the engine waking the rest of the party.
They spend the next few days rebuilding. They’re barely done and onto the airship to stop Gestahl when Terra collapses with pain and magic and there’s a sound like the earth ripping itself apart. They know where to go to find the Emperor after that.
Celes stays on the airship in case the Empire attacks again while the advance party marches through the Floating Continent. She flips through the books Strago brought onboard for research while they wait for word from the rest of the group. And that’s when she finds the important passage.
It’s obvious at once-Kefka was going to kill Gestahl anyway, and Kefka was trying to get ultimate power, and if Kefka had the power of the Goddesses then Gestahl couldn’t look back-he was probably close already.
She had to stop him. She had to stop him now.
She runs for the surface of the airship, brushing past the others (“Where art thou-” “Ouch, Kupo!”) before taking to the rail and hopping over, landing on the surface of the continent with a grunt and a somersault.
She runs past the monsters, throwing smoke bombs at everything in her path. She dodges the occasional falling rock. She climbs over the smoking corpse of the monster with telltale signs of magic seared into its hide. She finds the party facing Gestahl and Kefka, the former triumphant, the latter silent and still. After a quick talk with Terra, she’s let through to face the Emperor.
“Ha-ha... So you all came to die together, then... Well, you're just in time! Behold! The Warring Triad!” She can feel the magic flowing from the statues and she shudders at it-it’s thick and heavy and almost sweet with decay and it’s flowing into Gestahl. His face glows sickly with magic. It’s hard not to shudder at the sight. “Ohhh! What power...! I've got goose bumps!”
“Emperor Gestahl! Please stop this madness!”
The Emperor shakes his head and spreads his hands, magic crackling between them like so much lightning. He throws magic-Celes is blasted out of the way. When she gets back up, the party is paralyzed.
“Celes, my darling girl-” she sees Kefka rolling his eyes as the Emperor purrs the nickname, “you alone are special. You and Kefka were created to rule and repopulate the world for me! Join us!”
Kefka’s marches up to Celes. “Kill them all and we’ll forgive your treachery!” He takes her hands in his, squeezes, laughs.
He then sweeps over and unsheathes Gestahl’s sword, the long blade shining in the sunlight. Celes watches for the flurry of movement from Kefka stabbing Gestahl with it, but instead he marches over to her, pressing the hilt of the blade into her hand. “Take this sword and kill them all!” His eyes flick to the Emperor, then to his own weapon, and he smiles a little wider.
Gestahl yells about ruling the world together as she approaches her trapped companions. She raises the sword, dropping the tip to the side of Terra’s neck. She can barely think with the magic of the Goddesses waving past her and the knowing of what she has to do now.
“Power breeds war.” She breathes in, out, bracing herself. “It would have been better if our power never existed!” She runs forward and runs Kefka through.
He makes a little noise of surprise as the blade rips through his stomach. Celes pulls the sword out and he falls onto his side, blood dripping onto the sand around him. He struggles to his knees, puts his hand over the hole in his side, looks at his hand.
“B-blood?”
Kefka forces himself to his feet unsteadily, staring at his red-stained hand.
“Blood!”
The word is almost a sob.
“Blood!!”
He looks at Celes, his eyes wide with disbelief. With betrayal. Oh no, thinks Celes.
“You...you stupid, vicious…” The wind whips around them, sending Kefka’s cloak flying as he stumbles back. Blood splatters onto the statues as he falls again, his body shaking with half-sobs and shock. “I hate…hate…hate hate hate hate hate you! You vicious brat!” He wipes tears off his face as he struggles to his feet a third time, sweeping around to face the statues. Celes can’t find it in her to move to stop him.
“Goddesses, you were born to fight!” She’s never heard him scream so loud before. “I implore you…give me your power!”
She backs away as Kefka and Gestahl start to fight, putting up magical shields to protect her and her friends from the backlash of Gestahl’s spells. She watches as Kefka plays with the Goddesses’ magic, then kicks the Emperor’s limp body and rolls it off the side. She notices he’s stopped bleeding, and that the color has drained from his face, and that swirls of magic follow each move he makes, and that his eyes are glazed and glowing. Magic jerks through his body as he moves the statues too and fro.
Against such power, she’s helpless. She can barely move. But she can’t just let him move the statues, can’t let him use that magic to blow up the world, can’t let him lose whatever shred of humanity is left for actual godhood, and so she rushes to stop him.
“Kefka, no! Snap out of it!”
He backhands her with raw magic and maddened strength. She almost falls off the cliff but manages to find a handhold in the rock in time. Struggling up, she yells again:
“Don’t be an idiot! If you upset the balance, their power will destroy you too!”
He doesn’t look back to her as he drags a statue away. It’s as if he can’t hear her.
It’s almost a relief when Shadow shows up and starts pushing the statues back. She takes his advice and grabs the party and starts running, casting hasty ice spells at every monster in her way. When one casts Doom on everyone, she runs up and stabs him in the face over and over again until he withers and dies. Locke has to help her back onto the ship because she’s shaking so hard.
Locke asks her what’s wrong. She can barely find the words for it, for how she hoped there was a part of Kefka that was still human, how she’d looked at his eyes and seen shock that she’d actually hurt him, how he’d looked so determined and blank as he moved the statues, blood and tears drying on his face. She wants to punch someone. She wants to cry. She wants to kill Kefka. She can’t save him.
When the airship breaks down and she starts to fall, it’s almost a mercy.
--
Celes waits five minutes before she finds the strength to move and drink a hi-potion. Between the burns and the cuts, it hurts, but once the potions kicks in she can manage to get to her knees.
The rest of the party has already climbed upward, fighting Kefka atop his magic tower-Kefka the god, giant and purple and loud, not the man they saw laughing off their hopes at the base of the tower. She was knocked out on the top layer by the lounging man’s last move-Repose!- and rolled down to the limp, grey arms of the demon at the bottom. The air is thick with magic; she can almost feel it sticking to her arms and legs; almost taste it, sweet as death, when she opens her mouth to breathe. She can hear the sounds of battle over the screech of wind and the inhuman harmony of what she recognizes as Kefka’s humming song.
She is, as far as she can tell, the only one knocked out by the tower. She can see the rest of the party above, waiting around to join the last battle. Kefka’s putting up a hard fight, but between the flash of Ultima and the quickened stabs of swords and spears, she can see his flight becoming more frantic until-
It sounds like thunder when Terra stabs through Kefka’s chest and his shoulders go limp. He pushes himself off, his wings sagging, and he starts to laugh as his feet disintegrate, then his ankles, his legs-He spirals downward, and Celes switches her attention from Terra and the others to the body plummeting towards her.
The purple god-body is almost gone by the time Kefka lands hard on the short arm. The last wisps of it leave his true body as Celes approaches, sword held cautiously in front of her, to runic any last magic away.
He does not look like his god-form. He does not look like the idealized form he showed them as he gloated before the battle. She had suspected he was using an illusion, but hadn’t seen the reason for it: his clothes are ruined, clotted with dirt and year-old blood, and his body is almost skeletal with disuse, his face thin and shadowed.
“Are you here to laugh?” he asks, and then he laughs-laughs or cries, she can’t tell with the music still ringing in her ears. The one eye he has left is milky and lidded, barely moving.
“No.” She kneels next to him. She doesn’t remember him being this small. “It’s hard to hate someone so sad.”
“Figures.” He reaches over blindly; she takes his hand and holds it, his bony knuckles digging into her fingers. “The one person I want to kill me not only skips out, but she can’t properly hate me when I die. I can’t even see your face in agony when the magic ends and the tower collapses on your little friends!”
She takes her sword and sticks it into the dead arm, then wraps his hand in hers. “At least you have me at your mercy now, don’t you?”
“Don’t make me laugh. You know I don’t have any of that stuff.” Kefka giggles anyway, rivulets of blood coursing down his face. “I don’t even have enough power to suck the life from you. I’m finished.”
Celes does not answer. Kefka sneers, his hand spasming. His breath is growing shallow.
“Why are you crying? Not that I don’t like it, but I thought you would be over my death by now.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
“The Kefka you want to speak to ceased existing long ago.” His head rolls to face her; his cracked smile is gone. “I remember…some of him. That time when he sang to you. When you two made a game of stealing pepper shakers from Leo’s table. That thing with the earring…”
“You remember?”
“Enough of it.” He looks, Celes thinks, almost normal now. “Enough that I was disappointed when you didn’t join me, although I must admit I was delighted at the magnitude of your betrayal. It’s so you.”
Celes does not reply. She can’t like this.
“You said you found acceptance.” He chuckles, his head rolling toward her. His words slur, almost drunken. “See how much it helps with living in this world I’ve destroyed, Chere. I’ll give that earring back to you when I see you can still…take…ca…”
His breath rattles to a halt-
Celes puts Kefka’s hand down and closes his remaining eye. She can hear the others coming. She wipes her eyes, takes her sword and sheathes it. Terra and Locke and all the others need her. She can’t take care of the past anymore.
--
Celes waits five years to build Kefka a grave. It’s small and stone and hidden in the ruins of Kefka’s Tower.
Locke asks about it, of course. She tells him that she goes to remember-that it is a blow against Kefka the god, who claimed everything would be forgotten. And that is true.
She does not tell him that she built it when, while scavenging through the ruins of the tower for supplies, she found the earring in the ruins of the Goddess statue. It wasn’t there before, but the ceiling of the tower there was garbage like the rest of it, and perhaps it was in that pile but eventually fell out. It could have been a coincidence. Conceivably. Maybe.
When she goes to the grave, she wears it. She hopes that if Kefka is waiting out there, he knows she is wearing it, and knows what it means.