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The first time Zenos dies in front of you, you think your world is ending.
It isn’t that you’re attached to the man. He’s pushed you to your limits in the past few months, hurt your friends, weakened your defenses, hammered cracks into the person you’ve built around yourself. You’ve seen so much death because of him, so many precious lives lost, so many bodies under your feet, and you hated him for it, but mostly the one you hate is yourself.
But when he brings the sword to his throat, when Alphinaud and Lyse both rush to deny him control over his own end, you stay frozen, mesmerised, your eyes flitting from his throat to his eyes, throat, eyes, as if you could somehow watch both at once, and his eyes catch yours and he knows.
He knows what you are, who you are, what has made you so good at combat despite your desperate efforts to save as many as possible, why even your healing magic has always been so good at killing. And you love him for it and hate him for it, the mindshattering relief of someone finally knowing you, understanding you, and the seething hate for having found you out.
You understand him, and he understands you, and you stare at each other, from beast to beast, and then he smiles, weak and giddy, and it’s a good thing that your stillness, the heat of your skin, your dilated eyes can be blamed on shock, on the battle, because when the blade slices through his throat and he bleeds and chokes with his eyes on yours, you’ve never felt so alive.
And he knew.
If no one else had been present, you think he might even have let you do it, as a reward for making him feel.
You stare at him as he collapses, stare at him as his body gasps around nothing, stare at him as he goes limp. Despite their urgency earlier, neither Lyse nor Alphinaud seem to care about those last few seconds, to remember or care that they could maybe have kept him alive with some fast thinking and faster action, more focused on denying him the act than the outcome. But you don’t move either. You watch the candle of his life flicker out, the light in his eyes go dim, and you hate yourself for it, but in your heart there’s a sickening, shattering relief, because he let you watch, invited you to watch, invited you, you could almost convince yourself, to embrace the yearning in your gut and enjoy the limpness of his body as he has enjoyed the fire in yours, and for the first time in your life, you stare and almost don’t feel guilt.
You walk away, surrounded by the living, people who see you as a warrior and a healer and a hero rather than a beast, and you love them, and you rejoice in their life and in their freedom, but you still yearn for that space with the two of you only, for a world where you were granted more time, alone with him as he is now, a world where time stretched and that intimacy wasn’t broken.
(How many times have you thought about it since? How many restless nights of trying to push the image out of your mind, how many sleepless, heated hours, in the newfound darkness of the Crystarium, feverishly trying to forget the Light tearing you apart, finally giving in to your fantasies in a desperate attempt to drown it all? Thinking about his unseeing eyes on you, about his body that you didn’t even get to touch, crumpled on the ground after cutting his own strings, the strongest man on the star one second and a piece of meat the next, beautiful, grotesque, existing and nothing more. Wondering, grinding against your own hand, if the chaos of it, the sin of it will keep the Light at bay, or if your appetite for stillness will only make it worse.)
The second time his soul leaves his body, you’re filled with a very different dread.
Tell me, he asks, does the pursuit of prey you have bested before excite you?
You try to keep the bile from leaving your slow, awkward, foreign body, and he sighs.
“Of course not. Absent the challenge, the thrill, your prize is a hollow victory. Butchery.” He takes a sip of his wine. “I must admit, I was surprised to see my body go untouched. Had that hunt truly been that devoid of challenge? Of satisfaction?” Against all sense, even through your burning nerves, you think you hear disappointment in his voice. Frustration. How anyone could see that part of you and think like this— “Or perhaps you were only held back by the presence of others.” A sigh. “It matters not. Perhaps you think my performance in Ala Mhigo to be the extent of my promise. But do not fear. I have been honing my craft as I set the stage for our reunion. Do not let your disdain deprive you—deprive us—of the opportunity to craft an even more majestic moment of euphoria.”
(There is only joy, he had said, transcendent joy that I have never known, and back then underneath it all you had felt a strange warmth in your heart and a fire in your loins; he was defeated, dying, but for the first time, instead of the bitterness at the waste of life, the suffering every battle brings, your violence, your twisted nature had somehow created joy.
Somehow, that had sent your heart aflame, more than anything else before.
Now, though, there is only fear. No pleasure, no fleeting acceptance is worth the loss brought about in your name. The danger to what you hold most dear.
He understands you, and you understand him, and that is why his desires now bring you nothing but fear. Why he has to be stopped. Because you know where that yearning, that pursuit leads, know how empty every victory would be. For you, like for him, there can be no fulfillment.)
“Whence rises one’s true strength?” he asks, giving voice to the question that has plagued you since you were a child, since the first time you found yourself staring, since you first lost the ability to not notice the contents of your plate. “The flesh? The soul? Perhaps you should like to discover the answer for yourself.”
He smiles with your face, his eyes filled with the mad hunger of a hunter, and you wonder, through the fear, if that is what your loved ones would see, if they cared to really look at you and not at who they think you are.
The last time you see him, you stand at the edge of the universe, weapon in hand, and wonder why you’re staying there, with him, instead of walking away, towards hope, towards life, towards the world you saved and the people who gave you the strength to fight.
Maybe it’s because he came to help you at the end of everything, with his body, but also his belief, his absolute faith that even despair itself could not hold a candle to you giving you boundless strength in the Dynamis of space. Maybe it’s because it all hurts too much, the things you had to let go, the memories you had to carry, the pain and loss in your wake, and you’re just tired, tired of yourself, tired of having to embody hope.
Maybe it’s because you just had to bare your heart to the incarnation of the universe’s despair and let her see both your love and your rotten lust and hope she still finds humanity worth saving, because you have nothing left to hide and nothing left to give after carrying the fate of the universe not by what you do but by who you are.
You stand at the edge of the universe, laid bare and heart raw, and not needing to hide is the greatest comfort you have ever known.
“You value life,” he says, and it’s the truth. You know that humans’ true nature is meat, that flesh’s natural state is cold, and that it is only the spark of life, fleeting and fragile, that brings warmth, will, laughter, tears. Life defined by death, death defined by life, the boundary between them so tenuous that one cannot define one save by the other. It is both an aberration and a miracle, and breeds both beauty and horror, but in the end, its very delicateness is what makes it worth protecting.
(We are but things, you told her. Born from love or carnal desires or power play, created out of ambition or curiosity. Just carefully arranged concentrations of aether—or dynamis, for that matter. And then we go back to being nothing else. There’s no meaning in what we are or in some kind of end goal. But the journey… that’s what matters. You make your own meaning. For some people, even a fleeting moment of bliss is worth it.)
You value life, and find arousal in death, because one cannot go without the other, because its fragility is what makes it so beautiful.
Like a candle flickering in the breeze.
“This is the sole pleasure I know, and the sole pleasure I have to share.”
You let him burn through his.
You fight, and it’s the most freedom you’ve ever had.
No more hiding, no more stakes, only battle and sensation and that edge, your flames burning the brighter for how easily one swing, one spell could snuff them out. You burn, bright and unbound, and you give in to the hunger, the drive to push him to his limits, past them, to have his flame in your grip and your own limits be damned.
You don’t stop when he stumbles. You don’t stop when he starts to lose his grip on his self-inflicted possession. He’s come back from the brink of death several times and so have you, but you know there’s no coming back this time; something in him has already broken, and you know taking one more hit could easily be your own end as well.
But he doesn’t get another hit in. You expend the last of your aether to bridge the difference in height and topple him, sending him flying with you on top of him, and from the twisted way he collapses, you know his body is already beyond repair.
You let your momentum roll you off him and try to stand, only to find that you can barely pull yourself to one knee.
His grip on the voidsent dissipates, and through his blood, he laughs.
“That I should lose again…”
“… wouldn’t you feel even emptier if you had won?” you pant, vision swimming.
He smiles. You find that falling down to both knees feels much better, actually. The floor would feel even better.
On Etheirys, you could easily have borrowed from Nature’s aether to replenish your strength, heal the deepest of the damage. But here, surrounded by almost exclusively Dynamis, it would be a matter of will more than anything, and you’re so, so tired.
“… never have I understood those around me,” he says. “Understood their obsessions.”
And what irony, that he understood you, who both hoped and feared that anyone ever would.
You crawl to his side as he talks. It’s only the two of you here, and you could listen forever, the moment stretching as much as the fight itself had. He tries to turn to look at you, but can only twist and slide back against the floor—something with his spine, the healer in you says. Part of his body is already dead weight.
You reach him, and finally meet his eyes, looking down at him, and from his smile, you know he can read the truth on your face.
“Was your life a gift or a burden, my mirror,” he chuckles. “Did you find fulfillment?”
“… did you?”
He coughs. The blood speckles your torn up clothes, drizzles on your face.
“… not quite… the one I was seeking… but somehow…”
“… good. Be at rest.” You lay a hand on his hair. There’s no need to punish him more when he’s already dying. “… if you somehow make your way back again I’m coming to kill you again.”
The slightest smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.
“Do not tempt me… with such sweet promises.”
He falls silent. You wait, lulled by his weakening, erratic pulse, as blood seeps through his clothes and under his skin.
“… take it,” he breathes, so light you could almost pretend to yourself that you didn’t hear it.
“Zenos…”
“Take your fulfillment. It is… the hunter’s prize… my friend.”
And because it’s here, because it’s now, because it’s him, you do.
Had there been anything to slow you down, to bring back a sense of normalcy, you might have reconsidered. But your clothes are already in tatters, and it doesn’t take much to pull the last shreds off your crotch and thighs. Already you can feel yourself hardening—a feat of Dynamis, no doubt, considering your own state—the arousal of the fight and his blood and his head almost limp in your hold filling you with maddened stamina. Just like a rabid beast, you tell yourself, but you’re past caring. You’re not leaving this place any more than he is, and that is freedom. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who or what you are anymore. The people you sought to protect are safe, and after a lifetime of loathing, you’re owed a few moments of being yourself at the very end.
Zenos’s eyes rise, strained, to your face, and then fall down to your cock, almost impassive, already surrendered. You fist your hand in his hair to anchor yourself and pull yourself closer, drag his head onto your lap.
You push yourself into his mouth, and he chokes, and coughs weakly, and doesn’t fight back.
You don’t stop to thank him. He’s made it clear that to him, this is your prize, something to be taken rather than something given to you, and for once, you take it. You don’t stop when he struggles to breathe, and instead focus on your own pleasure, your own fulfillment, your own sensations. He doesn’t reciprocate, but his struggling is enough; his body is too weak to truly fight you back now, even when you force his jaw open to push deeper in, but it still presses against you better than a hand or lover ever has, spasming and tightening and trying so desperately to live. His blood will dry and harden and flake soon enough, you know, but for now, fresh as it is, it slides against you freely and smears his face when you pull out, bubbles on his lips when you push back in with a shudder of relief.
His eyes are dazed, frantic. Just like they were, all those months ago, when he suddenly had to deal with the reality of choking on his own blood. Just like they were, in every feverish dream since.
How long will the time between those seconds be for him, you wonder.
You close your eyes, twist your hand tighter into his hair, and bury yourself deeper, moaning with no fear of being overheard.
You fuck into his mouth, forcing him open, and feel the last of his resistance fade away. Conquering him, like you did in battle, stripping away any strength he might still have held on to. Slowly, his involuntary struggling weakens, slows, surrenders. You keep your grip on him, letting him fight to the very last.
And then, just like that, the muscles of his mouth go from limp to inert, his gaze distant to empty, and you howl, pleasure and shock and the relief of there being no turning back flooding you. It’s almost enough to make you come undone on the spot.
His flame is gone, but his body remains, and you thrust into it again, knowing that it will not move to meet you, not move to resist you. You shift closer, and pull his head back at a sharp, unnatural angle before pushing back in. Your tip, your length brush against his tongue, and no amount of keeping your hand as still as possible could have prepared you for how it gives, how pliant it is, laying limply against the bottom of his mouth until your thrusts pull it out of place.
You can’t get enough of it. He’s so beautiful like this, pulled and folded to fit you, unburdened by the limitations of life. A beautiful thing, kindly left behind for you to pleasure yourself with. His body has always been a piece of art, carefully built, and breaking it has only enhanced its appeal. If you weren’t burning the end of your own wick, you might have taken the time to truly savour, to explore, to fold him a different way and take him from behind, to find out how he feels when he hardens. Instead, you close your eyes, press yourself against the tightness of his throat, and spend yourself in him, your heat blazing against his cooling flesh.
It feels like it lasts forever. You pant, lungs burning, blood aflame, as your body winds down and pain and exhaustion crawl back to claim their toll. You hold on to his head, softening but still seated in flesh and blood and seed, until it becomes too much and even kneeling feels like an impossible feat.
You roll him off you. He flops limply to the side, his open mouth unchangingly open as you slide out of him. Unaware, and uncaring, of the obscene angle of his limbs, of the white and red slowly dripping from his mouth.
In this, at least, he is exactly as every other being on Etheirys. A corpse like any other, just taller than most.
In this, at least, he is no longer alone.
You flop down at his side, your last burst of desperate strength leaving you. In the silence of space, it feels superfluous to say goodbye, when his last seconds were fully yours anyway. But despite it all, even through the pain, the feeling that permeates your battered soul is peace.
Has your journey been good? Venat once asked you. Has it been worthwhile?
You snort, letting the haze and darkness slowly overtake you.
“You tell me.”