At last, it is here. This was my first time drawing multiple characters (Strago, Setzer, Gogo, Cid) and it was quite fun.. I like drawing Gogo. I plan to potentially create a third and final lineup for other forms of the characters, or additional side-characters, in FFVI. (Esper Tina, God Kefka, Rachel, Gestahl...?) But we'll see.
Summary: One year after the world is destroyed, Celes wakes up in a solitary island and finds Cid watching over her.
Read on AO3.
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“Granddad.” The word rolled off Celes’s tongue easily, like a long-forgotten friend, familiar and nostalgic. She met the old scientist’s eyes with a smile. “Is it all right if I call you that?”
The gray in Cid’s eyes widened as he paused. “Granddad, eh?” His voice quivered, like a million of unprocessed emotions suddenly decided to break through and it was all he could do to rein them in. He closed his eyes, hiding the tears welling behind them. His breath shuddered out. “You’re going to make an old man blush. All of a sudden I have a granddaughter.”
When he looked at her next, the creases on his face had eased; a small smile tugged his lips.
***
Granddad was sick—that much she could see. Weariness lined his pallid face; his skin stretched wan and gray. Occasionally, a cough rattled his chest—a deep, throaty thing that racked his body and made him wheeze. He rushed to the only table they had in the cottage, where a pitcher of water and a glass that looked like it had seen better days stood side-by-side, and he’d down the cup quickly while waiting for the fit to pass.
Celes sat on the bed, her lips pursed.
“Granddad…” she began, her voice carefully bright. “You must be hungry.”
Granddad heaved a breath. He sat on the chair, head bowed, a tremor rippled up his spine.
Celes rose, then, patting herself and looking around, but the one-room cottage was bare save for the singular bed, a stove, a cabinet, and the table and chair. She spotted no handkerchief nor any sort of stray clothing. She strode to Granddad’s side and crouched before him, dabbing his sweaty face with her sleeve.
“Would you like to eat?” she asked. “I can make something quick.”
“I’ve actually not eaten for three days,” he admitted with a short, wheezing chuckle.
“Then what would you like?”
“Well, unless I ask for fish, I won’t get anything!” His laugh prompted another coughing fit. Celes patted his back. “That’s all there is here…”
“Then I’ll catch you one. Or some.” She beamed. “We’ll have dinner, and then you can rest.”
Granddad finally met her smile with his own, wavering though it was.
She helped him shed off his lab coat after that, before tucking him into the bed she’d previously occupied. Pulling the covers up to his shoulders, she held her hand to his burning forehead.
“Your sword’s in the cabinet,” Granddad muttered. “There’s a fishing rod, too, and a spear, makeshift from the woods around here."
“All right, Granddad, thank you. Now sleep. I’ll be back soon.”
Celes patted his arm, the way Granddad had often patted hers when she was little and had trouble sleeping. As the gentle touch of slumber soothed his features and his breathing grew steadier, dreadful thoughts which she’d fought to keep at bay pervaded her mind. Where had he slept, she wondered. What had he eaten? He’d mentioned there were other survivors, who’d long since succumbed to despair and leapt off the northern cliffs. How had he managed to hang on? Not knowing when she’d wake up or whether this nightmare would end—
—knowing full well that they were partially responsible for whatever had gone wrong with the world.
Her heart lay heavy. Celes waited until Granddad had truly fallen asleep before she slipped off the bed and crossed the room to the solitary cabinet in the hut. On the first shelf was her sword, the blade gleaming bright as though Granddad had not forgotten its care even once. She set it aside.
On the second shelf were the fishing rod and wooden spear, the sharp tips of which would be enough to skewer a fish, though she doubted they could kill wild beasts. Were there wild beasts? She hoped not. Her muscles had grown lax from sleep. She would not be able to wield her blade as properly as she should.
Celes grabbed the spear along with a bucket lying around.
***
When Granddad said the world had gone to ruin, Celes couldn’t imagine the kind of landscape she would meet outside. Certainly it hadn’t been a sky painted in crimson stretching from east to west; nor had it been of a red-tinted sea, whose waves rolled into shore like a sick imagery of blood.
But one look at her surroundings had led a surge of emotion she could not name swell in her chest. Buildings stood dark and lifeless, with roofs torn apart and walls crumbling away. The trees were bare. Tumbled logs lay scattered amid blackened shrubs. There was no one, no signs of life, not even of animals nor wandering beasts. Surely this couldn’t be the work of a year of neglect? Had the world changed so drastically that one year felt like ten?
The heaviness in her heart grew, threatening to drown her whole. At the ridge leading to the beach, the sight which greeted her stopped her short. Wreckage, garbage, refuse—the entire ocean was littered with them. A strange smell, the kind which permeated the Empire’s waste depots but so much worse, rose from the water. Celes swallowed the bile rising in her throat as she made her way down the sandy slope. She would not think; she refused to acknowledge her new reality. She moved along the length of the shoreline, seeking a cleaner patch where she could hunt for fish.
She found it eventually, along with a school of plump, delectable-looking fish swimming in the water. She adjusted her grip on her spear, took her aim. It wasn’t her first time spearfishing. Memories of some distant military campaign surfaced in her mind.
Her arm moved; her spear struck true. She pulled it out of the water, but no sooner had she retrieved her spear than her lips twitched into a grimace: an odd purplish hue tinged the fish’s swollen stomach. Celes tossed it back into the sea and watched it bob belly-up. Dead. Like everything else in this godforsaken world.
Unbidden, a quiet, strangled cry tore out of her throat. Celes’s ribs cracked with a weight she could not unload. She would not give in, just as she knew that Granddad had denied its claim.
But Granddad hadn’t eaten anything for three days. He was sick. There was nothing but fish on the island, but even the fish was inedible. Some manner of poison had contaminated the water, as though the world itself had gone mad and decided to kill everyone with it.
Locke…
Her heart whimpered a name—one name, belonging to a man who had once promised to protect her even should the world end. But now the world had ended, and he was nowhere to be found.
Celes’s legs dropped from underneath her. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wept.
***
For as long as she remembered, Cid was always by her side.
Celes never knew her parents. Her earliest memories were of pristine tubes; black, obsidian chairs; shots she would take every other week; and Cid, his fatherly face warm every time he looked at her, telling her she’d be fine, that she was strong, that he was there and he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Once you attain magic,” he would say, “you shall be a hero to the Empire.”
Magic.
They said it was for the good of the people.
They told her it was for the betterment of the world.
But time after time, one burning village after another, Celes couldn’t help the feeling of her resolve slipping away, even as her blade cut through flesh and sinew so quickly and cleanly that the blood of her foes had splattered her hands before they knew what had been done to them.
A carnage.
“What are we doing, Cid?” she’d asked him once in a vain attempt to extract any sort of justification for her deplorable actions. “What are we fighting for?”
Cid might have parroted the same reasons until Celes found herself numb to them. The way the other knights had gone numb and would, instead, compare kill counts at the end of each campaign. When they laughed—laughed—at a boy no older than ten being burned alive, Celes had decided then that she’d had enough. That this was wrong. This had to end.
Whatever Cid saw on her face stopped him short from relaying the Empire’s slogans. The only person she would call family looked at her for a while, and Celes saw the way he wilted, the way his shoulders drooped and his age suddenly caught up to him. All of sudden, the person standing before her was not Gestahl’s foremost scientist, but a tired old man.
“The Empire seeks to rebuild the world,” Cid said without conviction. “One day, the people will see it.”
***
The northern cliffs loomed in the horizon as Celes made her way back to the cottage. She would not look at it—would not even spare it a glance. Granddad was still here. They’d promised to live out their lives together in peace.
The door’s noisy creaks broke the otherwise silent air. Granddad was asleep on his bed, but as Celes approached, she realized his face was too pale. A tinge of blue colored his skin, and his chest barely moved. Celes rushed to check his pulse; she sensed a beat. Once. Twice. Too slow. Too shallow.
“Granddad?”
She shook his shoulder. No response.
“Granddad, I’m home. I brought food. I’ll cook dinner. It’ll be ready in a bit and then you can eat your fill.”
Silence.
Her breath hitched.
“Granddad!”
Granddad jolted awake, bleary eyes blinking rapidly as he stammered, “Huh—what—yes. Celes, dear? I’m up, I’m up.” His vision swam. He did not see her.
He was too weak.
But he was alive. And that was all she could ask for.
Celes threw her arms around him and sobbed.
Three days of no food. With the state of the ocean now, Celes could not blame him. It was by a stroke of luck, and hours of search, that she found a few that bore no (or little) blotches of discolor. Though none of them were plump (or bloated, thankfully) nor delectable-looking.
Feebly, Granddad patted Celes’s back in the way he would do when she was a child and crying in his arms. Celes buried her face in his chest.
“I’m fine, my dear,” Granddad managed, his voice thin and hoarse. “Did you say you went fishing? I hope you caught something good.”
She shook her head.
“Ah, well, it is what it is. Go ahead and cook it. I’ll wait.” When Celes didn’t move, he prodded her back. “Celes?”
She shouldn’t have lain asleep for a whole year. She should have been here, helping him, supporting him. How had Granddad lived to be in the state that he was now? He was the closest thing she had to a family, and he was fading away.
Celes clutched his back.
“You’ll stay with me, right?” she whimpered, like a child prodding her parent for an answer she was afraid to hear. Her arms tightened around him. “Granddad?”
A gentle hand stroked her head. “Of course,” he said. “Of course, my dear girl. I’m not going anywhere. Once I’ve a taste of your grilled fish, I’ll recover my strength.”
She heard the smile in his voice, but she couldn’t force herself to meet it—couldn’t find in herself the shred of hope that he would be all right, that this would not be his last meal. Should she go out and fish at another spot? Perhaps the island had another place that was not tainted by poison.
“Celes?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks at his warm, fatherly voice. Familiar and nostalgic. She forced herself to move away and attempted a smile.
“I’ll make you the most delicious fish you’ve ever tasted, Granddad. Just you wait.”
The crinkle in his eyes would be forever burned in her memory.
