sorry about all the sorrow

[selenias]

Title: sorry about all the sorrow
Fandom: FFXVI
Characters/pairing: Jill + Joshua, background squad with Clive and Torgal
Rating: T, for violence
Word Count: 3876
Notes: I've been working on this longer than I like but I feel there's not much more I want to do to it. I so wish Joshua and Jill had had more meaningful conversations in-game than what we were given. Addresses some of the game content that occurs after Joshua makes it to the Hideaway and just after the events of Kanver with Odin. Might change the title later? Pulled from Peach, Plum, Pear by Joanna Newsom.

Final edit 8/3/2023. Renamed, tidied a bit more.

-

The blood pooled and congealed on the brick laid steps and thickened in the grout. Everywhere Jill turned her head the unlucky stared back with slashed limbs and gouged torsos. The air stunk of iron and the indiscriminate sullied of the cooling dead. It wasn’t unfamiliar. It was still deeply unwelcome.

Joshua was stony silent beside her and held open the metal gate leading down the dark steps to the servants quarters. A crystal burned unsteadily in the lantern at the door, threatening to go out. Joshua looked at her grimly, wet his mouth and pried open the heavy set bolt. The groan and squeal of swollen wood made them wince, but no answering sound greeted them. The sea wind blew hard in the ruinous city, stirring Joshua’s hair into ringlets. Fires dotted Kanver elsewhere, smoke rising high into low setting sea clouds. Jill slipped through the opening.

They descended into the dark.

 

 

 

“I don’t think we’re going to find anyone,” Jill confessed. Joshua wiped his nose on the back of his hand and strode to the underground window, watching the grass high above sway and stir in the port breeze. The room smelled of stale incense and old food. Whatever hideout this had been had served its purpose until the bearers fled into the streets above to make do with what weapons their bodies could command.

“I am afraid you’re right.” She strode to the hall and pressed the door open with her whole body. The stinking corpse on the other side rolled stiffly into the wall. An axe was lodged in its neck.

“Come on then Joshua. Clive gave us the easy route.”

Joshua turned around with a grimace of a smile and it disarmed her. “You noticed? He likes to keep you out of harm’s way, doesn’t he.”

“And you,” Jill said pointedly, but she knew the question. She flexed her hands, stiff with dried blood, and bent down to wipe them on the ends of her heavy skirt. “We look out for each other how we can,” she said, and Joshua winced.

“My apologies,” he said. “That was inappropriate of me.”

Jill held the door and Joshua slipped like a waif through the crack. Fire light from his hands lit the cold passage, and Jill winced at the sudden brightness. The black before them swallowed the light like a deep well or jar of ink. The corridor stretched in a yawn with walls narrowing and condensing and curving toward a deeper set of stairs. Somewhere, water or blood dripped from a broken and sloping ceiling. They passed under it and Jill touched Joshua’s arm, and he softened and halted.

“You understand it though, don’t you.”

“What?”

“That we can’t afford what he can.”

Joshua exhaled hard through his nose and gripped her tight around the shoulders in a half-hug. “That doesn’t mean I want that choice made for me. He knows it’s unrealistic to ask of me, but not you.”

“Than your health is better than mine,” she said. She allowed him the tight grip before carefully shrugging him off. Joshua’s eyes were damp. He cast the flame further into the dark and they rounded the staircase, the temperature dropping until their breath fogged.

Another corpse lay in the dark, grayed and stiff with arrows. Jill pressed against the wall to move around it. It was slick with water and mildew.

The door at the bottom was rusted along the hinges and locked from the other side.

“I have this,” Joshua said.

Jill moved beside him.

His fist caught flame and punched through the deadbolt. Jill covered her mouth at the acrid smell of forged metal.

“Onward,” Joshua said.

 

 

—

 

 

“Let’s stop for a few. We could all use it.”

The deserts were covered in grit and fine ash that bit into Jill’s cheeks and her clothes when the wind whistled by. Bloodfangs howled on the ridges and could be heard pacing in the canyons. The fallen ruins all around them cast blinding light when the sun was free of the purple clouds and their wayward guardians stalked sullenly around what remained. They hadn’t rested often. Clive had halted them the first time, wiping blood and sweat off his face with a soiled towel. Mirroring him, Jill craned her head in the direction of a large overhang of red rock; the chocobos stood like statues in the shade, bowed heads tucked under their wings and kwehing softly.

“Joshua, catch.”

Clive tossed Joshua the water skin and he caught it with both hands, relief clear in his face. “Thank you.”

Jill refilled their supply after taking her own share, Shiva’s magic chilling the ends of her fingers. When she finished she passed it to Clive and cupped her hands and bent low so Torgal could drink from her palms. Half the water fell out of his mouth into the sand but Jill didn’t complain. Her loyal guardian asked for nothing ever.

“I hadn’t thought about what Torgal might need,” Joshua confessed. “That’s clever.”

Clive shook his head. “Jill spoils him.”

“It’s hot,” she defended without looking up. Clive leaned against the rock and pressed his leg against hers.

“He’s a lot more fur than you,” Joshua teased. Clive’s smile was small.

When Torgal finished, she shook her hands and wiped them dry. There they sat, a group of four. It startled Jill to see Joshua’s crown of hair still. Even beside him, his awkward smile the same when he was eight summers gave her pause; she’d once returned them, she knew. When she was homesick and desperate for a piece of someone to call her own, there were two boys she sat beside through every meal and lecture, holding their hands and taking their warmth for herself. Then they were gone and so too was she. It made her wonder why now that the chance had come they didn’t flee this business of crystals and monsters and find a hole to bunker down into until everything blew up in their faces and it stopped mattering anyway. A few more good moments could be their’s perhaps — in a different time, a different place, with completely different people.

“How are you feeling?”

“Well enough. The water was nice.”

“Say something if you need more,” Clive warned. “Or anything else.”

“I will. Thank you.”

Jill leaned forward on her knees and breathed through her nose. Even behind her closed eyelids spots of light seemed to blind her. Visions of fire in Rosaria and the infernal heat of Ironholm ran quieter than in her youth; but Joshua brought it all back. He’d been remade just like the rest of them. Stronger for it.

He caught her looking, and smiled wide and boyish. Her ghost tiredly returned it. She willed the blood in her face to move.

There was always the chance that she would lose them both again. She shifted and stood, sword nicking the rock, and stretched her arms high until her back cracked.

Clive had accepted that a lot faster than her. She wasn’t ready to forgive either of them for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jill lost feeling in both her hands but Shiva’s magic stiffened the garden and lent them the upper hand they needed. Joshua drew up on her right with his sword level with his shoulder. He drew his free hand across the blade until it burned red and coppery and with quicksilver speed severed the head of the akashic orc from its shoulders with a snapping sizzle of burned flesh. The torso fell to the ground on its own blade in a sluggish heap and the monster behind it screamed and spat. Joshua turned and decimated the next, fire erupting from his fingers until the ice groaned and shattered. Jill took a deep breath and crushed her own hands together.

An explosion of ice wrecked the remaining frozen orcs into crystal pieces. She shook her tingling arms out and grimaced. She wanted to run her fingers through the mane of Torgal’s coat until the pain ran its course.

“Is that all of them?” Joshua panted and wiped sweat from his brow.

“Not quite. Listen.”

All was silent save the small cries behind a broken shed of tools and shears.

Jill followed the sound through the collapsed bodies to a woman hiding behind an upright barrel. Spittle tinged red lingered at her lips and her breath was wheezy and short. A large cut bisected her chest. Joshua shoved past Jill and caught the stranger’s hand in his own, smiling, magic whispering through his palms. Her body seized twice and stilled, rejecting him. Her eyes rolled. Phoenix’s feathers touched the ground and curled up into ash.

Jill looked away. Joshua laid the servant’s arm down and stood and adjusted his belt and scabbard. He looked too much like Clive in that moment, ready for the next unhappy delivery.

“The orcs are worse than hunting dogs,” Jill murmured. “Too keen.”

Joshua grimaced. “They’re not man or animal at all. It’s all senseless violence that drives them. Life itself is their enemy. Like they’re trying to get back.”

“To what?”

He gestured helplessly. “…This.”

Jill looked at the dead woman. Her wanton gaze was fixed forever on the purple tatters in her dress. Jewelry hung from her thin wrists like ornaments and were made dull with iron stains. In the distance, steel on steel could be heard. Either beastmen beating their clubs against their shields, or Clive braining them with his own.

She wrapped her arms around herself and coughed, once. Her breath rattled.

“This is an organized slaughter.”

“Designed to break who remains,” Joshua finished, soft.

“It won’t be us.”

“No, it will not. But I know who will.”

“Not him, either,” Jill replied.

Joshua looked at her. “You perhaps know him better than me now.”

The implication stung. “It’s not that.” Her throat felt tight. Her stomach rolled.

“Jill?”

“He won’t break, he’ll just die. We’re past that point.”

Joshua gripped the pommel of his sword, palm twisting and fingers clenching. His eyes shuttered. His head bowed. Suddenly he was eight, and she was ten, and their futures were set in stone. “Then I am a fool.”

“No,” she said. She touched his hand. “We are.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The aether flood commanded their attention and Jill watched the brilliant density of magic build and cascade across the sand, as murky as a stagnant pond. She used to think them beautiful until that tale unraveled itself. Power unfit for one burdened with the fate of the dominant — all that monopoly for a strength she never wanted let her stand still in the flood. She could have been a corpse on a table in Imreann’s comraich years ago. A simpler end. Now it’s more likely she’ll drop dead in a field when Shiva tears out the last of her noble heart and she’s a stone statue brooding commoners pray to in a field for their crop.

“That man was furious Clive.”

“He was. He’s allowed to be.”

Joshua considered his brother gravely. Jill tucked down to wipe around Torgal’s eyes and his great head shoved into her palm. Clive laid a hand on Joshua’s shoulder when he continued his silence, shaking him gently until Joshua stood tall and commanding. “There’s a lot like him. With time, they’ll figure out what they really need.”

“You are very merciful,” Joshua confessed. “A lot like father. It worries me.”

“I can’t help it. It’s what was shown to me when I had nothing. Don’t think about it.”

“Easy,” Joshua said and ribbed him hard with an elbow. “As if staying alive isn’t hard enough.” Clive deflected him, and the quiet scuffling of feet in the sand drew Torgal away, barking at their play.

Jill drew a finger through the dirt to clean it and stood, knees popping. The aether sparkled and strained the passing light to cast soft shadows. She made to step on hers, never catching it. In the distance, the chocobos warbled softly, impatient for their return. Ambrosia’s silver crown was a halo of white.

“Tabor’s not far,” Jill offered. “Whether he pursues us or not he’ll never find us.”

“And you would cut him down if he did,” Joshua surmised, soft.

“Yes,” she said. “I would.”

She wondered later what Joshua had wanted to say. In the sandy yards of Tabor with quiet guards and sleeping refugees he strode confident from one end to the other, calling soft hellos and good days to strangers she couldn’t place. The Undying looked at their charge with a devotion that made her feel obsolete and obscene. When he thought neither Clive or her were looking, he’d spit blood into a napkin and roll it tight in his fist. Later, Torgal would find the smell of iron in his saddlebag and reveal his weaknesses for all.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Joshua said. “I’m here now. I’m going with you. My choice,” he bit out.

Clive breathed deep through his nose, body tight with pain. He pictured his broken body still. His little brother’s chest blown wide. Phoenix’s cries that had rended Twinside guttural and mournful, his wing beats ebbing through space subject to the push and the pull like a seabird in the tide. His waxen face in a broken kingdom had happened twice. It could not happen again.

“You know your limits,” Clive said.

“I do.”

“Then I will say nothing more for now as long as you heed them. Please.”

Joshua wiped the corner of his mouth clean and stood tall. “Already had to make good on your old title, didn’t you.”

“I’m not laughing,” Clive said.

“Neither am I,” Joshua retorted.

Jill whistled, and the birds met them at the split.

The road to Kanver was quiet save for the urgency of their mounts and their long clawed feet beating at the powdery ground. Jill took the rear. The sand flew around her and turned to hard stone as the canyon gave way to Kanver’s crest of red cliffs, and the wheels of wagons and carts and the feet of people and animals both crisscrossed the road before them with fearful energy. Some lay dead at the far edges, their still dark forms nearly mistakable for another boulder in the landscape until their hair would catch in the wind and the shine would catch her eye and Jill would know that soft shape anywhere.

Joshua looked back at her, once. He drew back on the reins to ride beside her. Their birds warbled, great feet cresting the ridge and descending with the wind at their backs.

They didn’t say anything at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ocean water lapped at the docks and disappeared violently under the shoreline, its rumbling felt through the bottom of her feet. Joshua jogged down the long stretch and Jill followed, watching the smoke trails weave across the port and over the dark water. Bodies bobbed and slapped against the docks. Waloed soldiers spilled Dhalmekian blood in the streets but their numbers were too diluted by the orcs to be a real invasion or takeover. Jill looked ahead; there, fire rained down like a blow from heaven and smoke rose and flushed a distant block gray and black with cinders.

“There’s really no one left,” Joshua said. He clambered over a smashed mercantile cart and Jill took his hand when he pulled her over and after. “Kanver is lost. What does Barnabas hope to gain —”

“Clive,” Jill answered. “It’s always him.”

Joshua looked at her sharply, arm falling limp. “We shouldn’t have separated.”

“We’ll catch him,” Jill said confidently. “This will exit near the ship bay. Torgal will hear if I whistle.”

“Sound it loud,” he said simply. They ran forth among the wreckage.

(Years and years ago, Torgal fled through the streets with a sausage casing in his mouth, and the trail of three became a trail of two when Joshua halted, panting wetly, and stationed himself primly in the dark shade of a tall apple tree where he heaved for breath. His curls were wet against his head but when he saw her approach, his smile was swift and true. “I’m alright,” he started. “Torgal’s fast—”

“I don’t think I’ll have luck with him either,” Jill panted. She tucked her hair back behind her ears and both children shared a laugh at their misfortune.

“Do you think Clive will catch him?”

“He has to, now,” Jill said. Joshua drew a sleeve up to wipe his face.

“I don’t think he’ll have much luck when he’s bigger.” Joshua looked at her, smile small. “Do you… remember the wolves in the North?”

Jill closed her eyes. What she remembered came with great pain. “A little. The blight drove them south, and Father said into Rosaria’s waiting lances.”

“I’m sorry,” Joshua said. “I didn’t know. Torgal is really special then.”

“Yes,” Jill said. And in the shade of that great tree, she wiped her face with him.

“Are you unhappy?” Joshua asked, later still. “I want to help.”

“Sometimes. But I like it here,” Jill confessed. “I have no ill things to say. Lord Elwin has tried hard to accommodate me.” Joshua held out his smaller hand and she clasped it between both of hers. He looked like he didn’t believe her.

“You don’t have to lie,” he said, shy.

“I’m not,” she said, surprised. They spent the next half hour trying to ferry fruit from the lowest hanging branches of the tree.

Later, Clive would return with a wet dog in his arms and the three of them would look aghast at the sight they made. Adults would pick past and around them and grin at their misfortune and untidiness.

Torgal groaned and squirmed and Jill soothed him with careful strokes behind his ears. He would sleep in Clive’s bed that night and eagerly find her in the morning while the maids whooped and hollered as his fast feet tracked down the great halls of the castle and sent rugs askew.

“It’s warm today,” Clive said. His eyes were bright. He smelled of leather and the stickiness of the market. Handsome and assured. Young and idyllic. He looked at them. “Should we go back? I could sit for a bit.”

“Something cold to drink would be nice,” Jill confessed.

Joshua’s smile was easy. “I want to visit the kitchens.” Clive’s hands were full so Joshua grabbed hold the back of his tunic and they began to walk.

The two of them followed along at Clive’s side like they were connected by thinly concealed string. If Jill reached out, she could —

No. She slotted her fingers together and strode along silently beside them. Torgal’s head lolled over Clive’s shoulder and his tail wagged mournfully when she denied his need for attention.

The truth was inconvenient, and the truth was that she wanted. The nature of that want wouldn’t reveal itself until it was too late for it to matter anyway.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua hauled Clive onto unsteady legs. The ground was slick beneath them and Joshua’s shoes left pink trails across the white steps. His eyes were so wide, and he looked from Clive to her with disbelief. Clive’s blood ran in rivulets down his body and the eyelets in his shirt hung useless and split. Jill remembered tying them that morning when his hands fumbled, briefly, as the grief of Joshua’s survival washed over him and he bowed his head low in her shoulder and wept with no sound. It’s alright, she’d whispered meaninglessly. He’s here now and here he’ll stay. His dead weight had swayed like the trunk of a tree in her locked arms.

“Go. Don’t wait for me and don’t watch,” she murmured.

Jill braced herself. She knew the agony of separation and what it had done to them. Anabella shoved them apart with disappointment in her heart and Ifrit rose in that rift to fracture it even further with fire and brimstone and Shiva froze her own heart until it stopped working all together and collectively they were all beyond recognition and completely unforgettable. What pain happened to her was subjective; the agony of a sword or a whip or a hand was more permissible than the flagrant beating of a grief that never quite faded, thundering always in her ears. She held no disbelief that Clive would die if he did not leave with one of them, for it could not be both, and it would not be the one who gave her permission to feel all those long, long years ago. Phoenix had imparted his blessing onto two careful hearts.

“Jill, no—”

“Get back, Joshua. Go to Gav!”

“No, Jill, you have to come —”

Jill steadied. She rose. She remembered what it felt like to be bigger than her skin, monstrous and full of power condensing and turning her inside out. Joshua yelled up at her, but his words were lost. He made for the gate, Clive’s legs dragging as he forced himself to walk. His battered body moved fast under duress. Torgal howled at his heels. Gav hollered at a safe distance. All was as it should be.

She sealed their escape, if only for a little longer. She had never been under the illusion that her shadow would eventually catch her for real, furious and manic in the face of what small happiness she’d managed to secure.

“Be safe,” she whispered.

Ice crawled down the courtyard and rose up as weary sentinels. Their barbed edges spoke of a land that existed only in her heart and memory. It felt good to wield a blade at someone who deserved it. Barnabas watched her ascension and she watched him. He flicked his wrist, sword alighting in his hand as dark and yawning as a star winking out. That void split the sky.

There were no wasted moments save the one where she did nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Later, when they’re all displaced in the infirmary, Joshua does what he always does and disobeys when no one is there to stop him, taking Tarja’s chair and dropping it close to Jill’s bed and wheezing from the effort.

He sank down in it heavily and then reached for her hand under the thin cover. Phoenix’s glow sought out something else and his face twisted with confirmation that she didn’t try to deny. Her weakness was indisputable. Her last bit of the North rung itself out on the seafloor before banking its crown around Clive’s temple and there it stayed. Her final offering, her worst adversary, gone. But Joshua’s mouth twists, from fear to anger and grim acceptance; she holds his warm palm tight and doesn’t feel the grief of their incoming separation that nearly makes him cold to her.

“Why,” he says mournfully. “Why can’t you say no to him?”

She has no energy to smile. “It was for all of us,” she says hoarsely. “Do you understand? I believe in him.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then at least I’ve tried to do right.”

Joshua wipes his face. He looks beyond his years. He nods, blind to her. They stay still for a long, long time, his hand in hers.

And longer still, until Metia winks out in the easy glow of daybreak and he rises solemnly with it.)