WARS

Written on October 20, 2024 (♏︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 20: Emotional Angst (Giving Permission to Die).

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All years of his life save six had been spent in warfare, and Cid–not knowing much of what the alternative was like–was in no position to feel all that greatly cheated. It had been no surprise when the war of his youth became the war of his adulthood–nor was there shock when there came another war to accompany him into old age. By the time the fighting expanded beyond men and into the realm of divinities, it seemed only a natural progression. All nature was forever at war: trees for sunlight, beasts for food. Why should it be different with the Gods?

With all that, were it just a matter of dying, then, of succumbing to one final battle–Cid would have done so. He’d lived enough, and it should be easy enough to recede into the thronging death always following him. Were it not for one memory–a stark recollection of two boys bloody and panting on the plain beneath Viura–he would have thought himself well positioned to end his life’s vigil at the ruin beneath Orbonne.

"You can’t quit, you know." Balbanes' voice was somehow both manic and matter-of-fact. "One of us must live and see a world at peace."

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