You’ll feel nothing. You’ll remember nothing. It will be painless, this I assure you.
But that was a lie, wasn’t it? Garland closes his eyes, standing perfectly still, listening to the silence. To the voices in that silence, whispers that grow louder day by day. Faces glimpsed in shadows, names half-remembered. Images, events. Impossibilities. Cities he has seen only in ruins, captured whole and glittering in his mind’s eye.
A malfunction? Without Terra, is he facing some manner of decay, some slow mental rust? These are not his memories. They can’t be. He never witnessed a living Terra, had not been created at the time the decline began - these are not his memories, yet they flicker through his mind as clearly as his memories of creating the Genomes, of destroying the summoner village, of falling from Pandemonium.
It will feel like death, like sleep. You will be here for a moment, and then gone - simple as that, no pain, no suffering. You’ll remember nothing.
It could be a malfunction. Five thousand years is much to ask of a machine: to remain in perfect form, to remain untouched by time. But what sort of malfunction would place such clear memories in his mind? Surely any malfunction he endured would remove memories, not fabricate them.
And some of the memories...
Like sunlight shining through a pane of thin ice: too much power contained in too small a vessel. Bright blue eyes, silver hair, skin like ivory, a laugh like sunshine. Hands that could burn the world, hands that brushed the hair out of his eyes and made him feel small and safe. A broken mage in a small cell, wreathed in magic-sealing runes, a ragged voice in a tortured throat, an accusation -
Your greatest crime is that you will never know what had to be destroyed before you could be created.
Why does he remember who that man was before, now? Only in flashes, only in glimpses, like a reflection on the water, disturbed by careless ripples that blur and shift the image. But it is enough. Garland knows him, knew him. Knew him before. Before the cell, before the runes, before...
...Before Garland?
What was before Garland?
You’ll remember nothing.
Something buried deep, something caged that has long since stopped rattling the bars. Something sleeping, something stirring. Garland keeps his eyes closed, plunges as deeply into his own mind as he dares, seeking whatever is hidden there, seeking what lies buried. He has felt it there before: moments of unreality, moments of instability, moments when it seems this world blurs with another and slides briefly out of balance... but always, he has shied away from seeking answers; always, his mission came first.
But Terra lies burned, and so he searches. What was before Garland? He hears the whisper: You’ll remember nothing. That suggests, does it not, that there is something to be remembered? If he remembers the whisper, he must remember to what it referred. You’ll remember nothing. What was he meant to forget?
You will never know what had to be destroyed before you could be created.
A mirror. A face, out of focus. Garland’s memories are hazy here - I never much cared for my own face - whose face? - but he strains, seeking clarity. A wound, there is a cut on the face, on the forehead, how bad is it? The eyes squint in focus: they are green, a vivid green. The wound isn’t so bad, he can hide it with his hopelessly tousled white hair, dusty from the road. He fusses a moment with it: combing his hair down, examining how it falls, ensuring the cut is hidden. A young face. A very young face, younger than he realizes, he feels like such an old man, he feels like he’s lived too long already.
What was before Garland?
You will never know what had to be destroyed before you could be created.
It’s a mirror, Garland remembers. A mirror. That face is his, was his, those green eyes, that messy hair, the cut on the forehead, the scars on the hands, the clothes that didn’t fit right, the forced smiles that never looked forced -
You will never know what had to be destroyed -
But he does, he does.
Garland opens his eyes - no, but is he Garland? Five thousand years of Garland come into sharp conflict with sixteen years spent bearing another name, another face, another life. Garland. He remembers. He remembers the surrender, he remembers I will take his place, he remembers You will remember nothing. He remembers. There are prosthetic hands where his scars used to be, optic devices where his eyes were; how much of him is still him? Is he even still him? He is Garland. He was Garland.
You will never know what had to be destroyed before you could be created.
Neirin, Neirin, he remembers Neirin, full of life and beauty and power, and he remembers the nameless prisoner in his dark cell, and it hurts, it hurts to know they were the same, to know Neirin looked at him and saw... and saw...
Why do you hate me?
And that tortured face! The look in Neirin’s eyes when he replied, I don’t.
Oh, Neirin, Neirin -
And the other one, the creature Garland shaped in Neirin’s image all unknowing! The one Garland tortured, the one Garland shattered upon the altar of his mission. So much pride, so much loathing, so much disappointment, and so much pride - he feels it now, and he knows what Garland never did: that he loved the Genome, the one he called-
Kuja. Yes, that was it, that was the name, that was the name of that green-eyed boy in the mirror, the one he is and is not now. Kuja. The name of the Genome Garland shattered and threw aside. Kuja. They have the same name. What does that mean? He cannot decide now, cannot focus long enough to think on it.
He will. He must. There is something there he must do, some wrong he must right, but he can’t now, not when there are memories blurring together, memories taking shape -
Faces, images, memories. So much. Too much.
He sinks to his knees, sinks into himself, and drowns.
Who am I?
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