- Xenogears belongs to Squaresoft (or whatever). This is definitely only for our own entertainment. -


Bells rang, their sound shivering through the hazy gray morning as the Nisan Cathedral called its faithful in for morning prayers. This far north, so far away from the sea, days were colder than Billy was accustomed to, and the nights longer, or so they seemed to him. The air was laden with the scent of pine and wildflowers rather than salt, and the surface that greeted him when he looked out over the lake was calm and still, like a mirror to the heavens. He found himself missing the choppy gray waves of the sea. It would still be there when he returned to Aquavy - if he returned - but the child in him demanded it now, and for once he was inclined to agree with that little voice.

Though it was almost instinct for him to obey the call of church bells, his steps took him away from the cathedral instead, on a path that led around the public garden to the western shore of the lake. There were docks there, and boats for the sisters to use if they so desired. Most importantly, there wasn't much of anything else; no houses, no people. No hymns to drift on the air to his ears.

There was no god. What would he pray to?

"'God rises up within us...'" he mused to himself, hands pushed into the pockets of his coat. The air wasn't cold enough that his breath misted, but he still felt like an ice cube. How Bart stood it after the desert was beyond him. He would almost prefer to return to Aveh, but that place presented another problem. Cold, he had decided upon their return, was preferable to sand.

Sophia's words carried an unearthly wisdom, he would admit to that. They were words inspired by a higher source, thousands of years ago, beyond creation. That god hadn't answered their prayers either, so perhaps they weren't any worse off now than they had been before. But illusion was worth something, wasn't it, and that was what they had lost.

He wasn't the only person in the world having trouble reconciling himself to that, but he still felt very alone. The others had not grown up clinging to their faith - they didn't understand. It wasn't so easy to cast off years of indoctrination. The Nisan creed offered him something, but it wasn't what he wanted.

He didn't know what he wanted.

The path wound to the left and spilled out into a broad swath of grass laden with dew, and beyond it was the shore of the lake, still obscured by lingering tendrils of fog. He left the path to cut across the path to his destination: a little, dilapitated pier with only one boat tied to its posts, obscured from casual observers by a stand of trees partly submerged in the water. They were a result of the last year's flood, he had been told, and the water lapped high, turning the pier into something more resembling a raft. He didn't mind terribly, as long as no one would spot him and disturb his solitude.

When he arrived, however, it was too late for that. The stretch of boards, still dark with moisture, was occupied by another figure, one he recognized.

"Emeralda?" He said it as much to announce his presence as to voice his concern, and he followed it with, "What are you doing out here?" which made him want to cringe as soon as he said it - he'd heard questions like it often enough himself at home, when he was still under Stone's care.

The girl raised her head and twisted to look back at him. Strands of vivid green hair slithered over her shoulder. "Billy." She nodded in greeting, turning back to the water and leaning over to stare at her reflection. Her boots were crumbled on the deck next to her, and her legs were submerged to the knee. It made him cold to watch. "I did not want to sleep last night, so I came out here to wait for everyone to wake up."

Her speech was slow and still tentative, as if she had to think about some of it before saying it out loud. It was still quite an improvement over her proficiency before Deus fell. "Aren't you cold?" Reluctantly, resigning himself to someone's companionship at least for the moment, Billy walked to the end of the pier and settled down beside her, legs crossed and boots firmly in place. He wasn't crazy.

"I can sense cold." She kicked her legs in the water, breaking the glassy surface with waves. "I am not sure if I feel it as you do. I do not get sick..."

"A blessing," he murmured, resting his chin in his hands to stare out over the water. "Being ill is a miserable feeling." More so when one has to fight through it alone. He refrained from tacking that on. There was no need to push his bitterness onto her shoulders.

Emeralda sighed and pushed her hair back, straightening. "I wish I could feel it sometimes." He raised an eyebrow, but she continued without looking at him. "Everyone knows what it feels like... just not me. Everything is always the same. It is... boring."

She was bored. And here he had been thinking they had all the change anyone could want. He gave up on his contemplation of her profile to lean back a little, and gaze into the overcast sky. That, at least, looked like it did down at the islands. But there was no sun still trying to burn his skin pink through the gray blanket, this time. "Many people would love to exchange their ailments for a gift like that. It looked like Kim wanted you to be like this because of it."

He felt more than saw her nod. "Maybe."

"Didn't you get to talk to him?"

"No..." Her voice wavered and he looked down quickly, but her expression was set in the same neutrality it always was, slightly sad, yet no different than usual. She had Elly's eyes, Elly's face, sculpted so carefully one would think Kim had simply taken her and painted her skin a bit darker. It was one man's vision of a perfect human being. "He talked to me all the time. Never got to answer... or ask... I called him a long time in the dark, but he never came."

Billy ran a hand through his hair, an apology on the tip of his tongue. He couldn't give it voice. Eventually he turned his attention back to the lake and let the silence speak for him.

How many times did I call for you? And you never came! Somebody else did! It was an old fight, those words had lept from his throat long ago, but they still haunted him. His father's expression - broken, just for a split second - had never left him after that.

"I didn't know my father when he returned." He watched her reflection in the water, not quite sure about what he was saying, but positive he wanted to say it. Something had to be said. "He looked so different... even acted differently than what I remembered. He knew who I was, but he didn't know me, and I didn't know him. So he kept trying, and failing to be what I remembered. I refused to forgive him. I had God if I wanted a father. But..." But God never answered, either.

"Fei isn't..." Emeralda's brows knit, but it seemed she could not find the words she was looking for. "Kim didn't come back. But I... I don't blame him. He..." Her expression didn't smooth as he expected it to, and he abandoned reflections to look over at her again, to see her eyes close. "I miss him."

"I know you do." He waited to see tears, but of course nothing came. It was still unclear if she couldn't cry, or simply didn't know how. Sometimes it seemed she didn't know how to smile either, though they'd all seen it once.

Nothing else seemed forthcoming. Her expression was still tense, though it was hidden from him a moment later when she bowed her head and let her hair fall over her shoulders again. Billy felt bad about bringing Kim up at all, but it couldn't be taken back now.

He reached over to rest his hand on his shoulder, a poor substitute for real comfort. "I'm sorry."

Emeralda looked up, still half-hidden by her hair. She looked as Elly had when they were both very young, and he had not yet been taken out of school. Her body may have grown up, but it was the look of a child still, and it seemed her eyes held the silence of her captivity in that tube as much as her voice contained it, so rarely heard. He shifted, offered her his hand, and she threw her arms around his waist and hid her face in the folds of his coat, still dangling her legs in the water.

She was a little bigger than the children at the orphanage, but Billy put his arms around her and gathered her up as best he could to allow her to cry. He had no idea if there would be any tears when she finally lifted her face, and he hoped there would be. There was something about crying that made it as much a release of physical tension as emotional, and she clearly felt that much. Surely Kim didn't neglect that aspect of his masterpiece.

"Did you forgive him?" Her voice was small and muffled, and it didn't sound like she was crying, but her grip had not yet relented. "You should. I wouldn't want to hate Kim..."

He wouldn't either. "I know..." The priest sighed, turning his face up to catch a light sprinkle of rain. His father was forgiven, more or less, though he still balked at telling him that. It was so easy to cling to his resentment. But he had a new target now, and it was God he wasn't sure he could forgive. He rubbed her back, hoped she was finding comfort from this, somehow. "I know."


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For Nyuna. It has been quite a while since I last tried to write for Xenogears, and even then, never for Billy. So, uh... sorry if I'm a little rusty.