Moth's Spiral [Kuja, Open]

[Zidane]

Back again.

Ball and chain, Blank called her once--before Zidane gave him a busted lip and got a black eye in exchange. Because she wasn't that. She was...something, and the more he tried to explain the more words slipped away, but not that.

So the afternoon found him up on the castle roof, steep as it was, having sought out a flatter spot to memorize his lines. It was supposed to be morning--he meant to surprise her--but the yellow roses he'd carried up in his tail told just how distracted he'd gotten. It seemed like Dagger's color, anyway, and roses were...well, roses. He bought them legitimately, even if he got the flower girl to give him a discount, and she looked really sad when he bought them for some reason. What did that mean?

Oh well. It was starting to look like they'd wilt anyway, since he started brooding and picked at the petals on the most ragged-looking of the bunch like a more complicated game of Loves Me, Loves Me Not. "Dagger," he said to one petal, blue eyes tight with determination. "...No." And it went tumbling away into the wind.

The next one was a blank slate. "Dagger, I think we sh..." He shifted his jaw, thought that one over. "Y'know, I don't see you enough! Maybe I should stay here at the c..."

No.


"Hey, why don't we run off together and--aughffff." Two more petals left his hand in scooping drifts, and Zidane perched his cheek on his fist with a frown. He couldn't take this so seriously! But--if he wasn't serious then maybe she'd think he was playing. But then, he so rarely played--around her anyway. How would he put it, back then...?

He chuckled fondly. "Hey Dagger! We're married already anyway, so why don't we j--aw no no no dammit!" The whole rest of the flower dropped off the roof in a toss and Zidane's face met palm for a minute, but then he ran his hand back to scratch his head with a growl. He couldn't rehearse this. As many plays as they'd been in already, this wasn't one, so it couldn't be perfect--even though he wanted it to be, because--but sometimes he wasn't sure what he wanted anymore.

One thing was certain, though. Since he couldn't just practice it, it had to be spontaneous! He could do spontaneous. Yeah, this worked.

So, bouquet in hand, he scampered back over the roof and swung straight int--lost his grip, thanks gloves, wow he nearly died just now but for an outcrop not far below her window. Lucky break! It meant dropping the bouquet, but he caught it with his tail again and clambered his way back up, landing through the window and into a successful recovery with a flip.

"Dagger!" he called, reaching back for the flowers again an....

Wait a minute, he bought more than one of these things. The rest of them must've dropped through that stupid kink he was never gonna get used to.

Aw nuts.

"I, uh!" Instinct took over in a flash and he stuffed the lonely yellow into some royal bouquet or other that she proooobably hadn't noticed yet and seized that up instead.

"I love you!"

Oh wow that was spontaneous alright. If he'd had a minute to think that one out it wouldn't be so desperate and unpolished or...or raw, like that.

The full weight of the words hit him mid-swallow and he felt too fragile to move.

Spontaneity aside, it would definitely be a better idea to make sure she was actually in the room before blurting something like that out.

[Kuja]

Somewhere between the dawn of time itself and the end of a trillion-year eon, Kuja finally got his bath.

It was weird to find the water as wet as it was. It splished and splashed and trickled around his form, as boisterous as glass, retreating from and tugging at his flesh with every subtle movement he made. The warmth was comforting, when it didn't feel hotter than desert or colder than dessert, but it bit and wrinkled and smelled like lavender, and he didn't like it. He wanted to relax, to forget that it was there and just focus on the conversation he was trying to have with the servant attending him, but he had already drifted in and out of conversation so many times he had forgotten what was said and what shouldn't be.

It was something about politics. They babbled on and on, divulging all the latest gossip that Kuja might have been interested in before the wars, but it was lost on him now. The names he heard were all foreign to him; he didn't know any of the people in office anymore, couldn't concentrate enough to find out if his former allies simply retired, were run out of office, or worse. It seemed like his empire had crumbled, in any case; if he wanted to be nearly as powerful as he was before, he would have to practically start from scratch.

That simply wasn't an option, in his current state. At least he still had Treno to fall back on, but...

"...to say nothing of the romantic whims of the yet unwed Queen Garnet..."

About half the bathwater came splashing out of the tub in the next moment. Kuja reacted to that name like a cattleprod, flailing in a sudden panic and finding no purchase on the tub's slippery floor; eventually he turned onto his stomach and lifted his head to leer at the servant, trying to rationalize what he'd just heard with his own fleeting memories. The silence that the stunned servant offered him when struck with that stare made it easier to dive in and remember, but it didn't make it hurt any less.

Garnet.

Garnet Garnet Garnet Garnet Garnet Garnet Garnet Garnet Garnet

He heard canaries singing, and he was drawn to the sound.

"Sir?"

For all the trauma he'd been through, Kuja evidently hadn't lost his inclination to strut completely naked through his quarters. The stymied servant, still holding out the offered towel and now rather hurriedly following Kuja with timid requests that he please put something on, had no idea what sort of chaos he'd just caused; the simple catalyst of a name, long-forgotten in memory but remembered in pain, set the once-great god's mind afire with notions of a plot, of a key, of salvation. In his moment of eureka, Kuja whirled to face the servant, Genome-blank expression yielding none of his chaotic thoughts.

"I'll need a hook," he said simply, not even looking at the man that was trying to fix a towel around his waist.

"A hook, sir?"

"No, not a hook--what is this? I don't need this." The towel promptly burst into flames despite being wet, and Kuja turned on his heel to find his clothes and dress himself properly. He was not going to go to Alexandria in a towel, no matter what that servant said.

"Sir? Sir..."

Sir?

It was odd. Kuja should have remembered leaving Treno. Looking at his nails, now restored to their former polish, he should have remembered getting them trimmed and painted, and should have remembered asking for red. He usually preferred some hue of violet. Violet like the way the streets were violet now, queer cobblestone beneath him, warping and splashing like the bath he'd taken just...

He didn't remember a bath.

But he remembered the castle.

And he seemed to remember that he could just waltz right in unannounced, which he did at first, since the folks guarding the gates were too busy gaping at what must have been an apparition to actually stop him--and by the time they did decide to act, the stone had already melted behind Kuja in silent denial. Alarm was raised inside and out, but Kuja knew these halls, knew every fiber of the carpets and the cold marble floors and pillars, knew each and every step in every flight of stairs, and he couldn't possibly be alienated here--he was too familiar, he was...

Home.

Forget the guards. Forget the clefts in the walls that reminded all the vassals just what had happened ten years ago. Forget the way the doors split in two if they didn't yield to him and combusted behind him if they did. This was home, and all that was in it belonged to him; the Garnet he had heard of before didn't exist any longer, he was sure, but if he found a part of her here he could surely find Zidane. He searched the treasure rooms--found all sorts of opulence to decorate himself with, including an all-too-familiar crown that fit so perfectly on his head, and once he thought himself well-dressed enough to have an audience with himself he progressed to the upper levels without hesitation.

An empty room. An open window. Something changed the moment he entered; it felt strange, as if someone were expecting him here--even though it was he who was expecting someone. Garnet. Like he should find a portrait of her here--as if the whole castle were a museum dedicated to her, and it held everything in the world that had to do with her except Garnet herself. He walked more cautiously through this room, listening for footsteps or voices beyond the rustling of the gold that adorned every inch of him; it seemed as if he should merely round a corner and find his canary still in her cage, still waiting and mourning and dying to be mani--

"I love you!"

If the sudden barrage of flowers thrusted into his face didn't stop him dead, that voice certainly would have. Violet eyes went wide with--something--elation distress and hope and hate and everything and anything that was a part of Kuja just then went numb; his gaze was on the flowers for a long moment, wondering how on earth his brother's voice could have come from them, and when he ultimately decided they were most definitely not Zidane, he took their lives without a second thought.

Imposters.

One by one, the flowers wilted, in a spiral from out to in; it was only once the little yellow rose was left that his field of vision widened, and he spared the rose to look just a little bit up to the bright blue he'd been looking for all along.

Kuja stared, afraid to blink. If this were an illusion projected by his damaged mind, he didn't want it to go away. But before he could mouth the name he'd been calling for so long, give up the gold to beg for help instead, he realized the way the spector's jaw was set--how his hair was longer, how lines occupied parts of his face where they hadn't before, and how everything about it was just a little off. Something different. Not the same.

The little yellow rose turned red, red, red.

Imposter.

And so did Kuja's eyes.

"What are you?"