EPITAPHS: CHAPTER 2

LAST GIFT OF THE PHOENIX

Joshua’s tenuous grip on consciousness had gotten stronger since their return to the Hideaway. Not being tied to a chocobo saddle helped immensely, but honestly he couldn’t complain. He was alive.

Alive, when he was absolutely, 100% certain he had died.  He was not sure what Clive had done, only that he was sure Clive had done something and that something had ignited the tiny spark of the Phoenix that had stayed behind rather than be given to his brother. There was no other explanation of how the hole in his chest was gone, or how the blood in his lungs was blissfully absent. No other way to explain how he awoke to see his brother collapsing in front of the exploding crystal.

He felt that tiny ember flicker, and then everything was nothing but a flash of panic, bright light, and fiery shrieks.

The only clue he had as to how they had ended up crashed on that beach, him buried in the soft sands and reedy dunes and his brother in the shallows of the shore, was the faint warmth and soft chirp that quickly dissipated as he lost consciousness.

Until we meet again.

Joshua didn’t recall much after that. Not until he heard the voice of his childhood friend, his sister in all but blood, screaming his name and grabbing his shoulders.

“Jill…” he’d rasped. There was a foul smell, an assault of slobber, and a loud bark that told him how she’d found him. “Torgal.”

“You…are NEVER allowed to do that to me again,” she wept, grabbing his shoulders and embracing him tightly, regardless of the hissing of pain as Joshua felt her squeeze the precious little breath he had out of him.

“Jill…can’t…breathe” he started to say, but started coughing before he could help it. She instantly released him, but he could feel her shaking hands staying on his arm, as if to make sure he wouldn’t disappear. When the spell had passed, Joshua gathered his wits and what small voice he still had. “Clive…where is he?”

The tears that were streaming down Jill’s face were highlighted by the full moon in the newly unobstructed sky, but by some miracle, she still had a smile on her face as she turned to look over her shoulder. Joshua saw the figure of his brother lying up on what was likely Jill's bedroll near where Ambrosia sat curled up nearby, and were it not for Jill’s expression he’d have feared the worst.

“He’s still here. I don’t…he won’t wake but…he’s still here,” she said quietly, as if to say it out loud would unmake it.

Joshua had made to say something, but instead of words, a mouthful of blood came out.

"Joshua!" was the last thing he heard before the world swam around him.  

His next real memory that wasn’t the smell of chocobo or the sting of his lungs was waking up in the Hideaway, in the now very familiar infirmary, to the very harsh chastising, coupled with tears of joy.  From Jote and Jill and pretty much everyone else at the Hideaway. Everyone, that is, except Clive, who was in the next cot over, still unconscious.

It was days before Joshua had the wits to take full stock of what had happened to them, and to the world while they were unconscious. Whatever had healed him had left work unfinished internally, and he had undone much of it in whatever last gasps of Phoenix’s strength he’d used to get them all out the falling fortress. He had coughed up enough blood on his way back that Tarja declared it a miracle he hadn’t bled out. Her tinctures offered healing but it was a fraction of the healing the Phoenix had been using to keep him together through the years. It was likely Joshua would be dependent on concoctions like this for the rest of his life, and even with them, his breathing was more difficult, more labored, than it had been since the Night of Flames. The bruises and busted bones from the crash could be healed without magic. His lungs couldn't.

That was both the biggest shock, but after a moment, one he realized he already knew; that magic was gone from the world.  On some level he realized it when the Phoenix's voice faded away with those last words of farewell, when she never returned to her normal roost in his chest as that ever present hum of warmth and comfort, but he'd hadn't had the presence of mind to really process that absence.  Once he did, it was so obvious.  Everything felt different, how the air moved, the way the temperature felt, even his perception of the world was different in those tiny little ways you never notice until they're gone and something just seems perpetually off.  It also went some way to explaining why he was healing so slowly.  Potions and elixirs no longer worked, and if it hadn't been Jill and Torgal who had found them, if it hadn't been the Hideaway in the middle of the Deadlands that they had been brought to, they would not have made it past that first day. 

Which brought him back around to Clive.  His brother's dilemma was a mixture of obvious and mysterious. The most glaring injury was his stone arm. The curse had finally decided to exact a toll for whatever Clive had done to destroy Ultima’s final Mothercrystal, and it took most of his left arm in its entirety. Multiple bones had broken upon their landing on the beach, along with a myriad of internal bleeding and bruising.  All of which, after over a month under Tarja's care, had started to heal.  But still he wouldn’t wake up.  The physicker offered a few theories; aether poisoning, head trauma among them.  Joshua, during one of his more lucid conversations with her, had asked what the sheer amount of magic he’d channeled coupled with the almost immediate loss of Ifrit might've done to him.  If perhaps there was some other injury they couldn't see that was keeping him from waking up.

She had shrugged.  "Your guess is as good as mine," she had said, then added with a snort of dark humor, "Though if I had to put money on it, I'd go with head trauma given how many times he's gotten his thick skull knocked around."

Joshua had smirked weakly at the attempted rib.  Regardless, Clive stayed there, lost to the world but still stubborn enough to keep breathing. Some part of him was still fighting.  And for that Joshua was grateful.

He was also grateful for Jill's frequent visits.  Everyone would come to visit him, assuming Tarja permitted it, every now and then, keeping him up to date, checking on Clive.  But there was a world in chaos.  The Bearers of the Hideaway had come to accept the loss of their magic, after the initial panic, with little difficulty.  It made sense;  they had been living in the Deadlands, cut off from their magic for years.  There was little to adjust to.  The rest of the world, however, did not accept this new change with grace.  The loss of the crystal's blessings may have saved the world, but it shattered known society to pieces.  The Cursebreakers were busier than ever.  Gav and Otto were almost constantly seen with someone in tow, or a stack of missives in hand.  Mid and her assistants were rarely seen out of her workshop, producing copies of her devices that allowed the Hideaway to function without magic to distribute to their allies in the world.  Even Jote, who in the beginning was adamant about staying by her Archduke's side eventually had to leave to inform her comrades in the Undying of all that had transpired, and deal with the fallout that the Phoenix's passing would bring.  It was a bittersweet goodbye, that one, but she had promised to return.  Joshua had smiled and said he'd like nothing more, and would await her return.

Only Jill was really able to stay for long periods at a time.  Time which officially was used to help Tarja as an extra set of hands, Gav with logistics, and Otto with communications, even if she did it from their bedsides.  Joshua had made mention that she did not need to stay if she was needed elsewhere, but she had glanced over at Clive, still in the same state as when he'd been brought home, and simply said that she didn't mind.  Joshua didn't bring it up again.  He understood, and welcomed the company.  It became a comforting, familiar, new normal.  Tarja would check in on them, assess the status of Joshua's and Clive's wounds, give him his medicine, and Jill would arrive with food for the both of them and sit down at the small table off to the side and begin sifting through missives.  She'd work, he'd read or attempt some feeble exercises to keep his muscles from weakening further, and all the while, Clive slept.

Until one day when Jill was not there and Torgal snuck into the infirmary and hid under Clive’s cot. This was a common occurrence when things were slow and Jill was busy elsewhere.  Joshua would notice, of course, there was little else for him to do while he was on ordered bed rest, but he would never reveal the hound’s sneaky escapades to Tarja unless there were other patients in the infirmary. This day, however, Joshua actually had another visitor, and was talking something over with Gav, so he didn’t notice when Torgal sat up suddenly, and stuck his face directly into Clive’s and started nosing and licking with rapidly increasing fervor.

No one expected the garbled groan that came from his brother’s cot, nor the jumble of words he uttered.

"Bythefffffmes...Torgrrll," was the unintelligible mumble that finally called their attention to the normally silent corner.  Joshua's heart stopped when he saw the uncoordinated hand that swatted weakly from under the giant wolfhound that was suddenly wagging his entire body and desperately trying to climb up on the bed and smother Clive with affection.

“Fucking hell, he’s awake!” Gav had shouted, and then everything after that was a haze.  Joshua bolted to his wobbly feet the same moment Gav all but threw the missives he'd been holding aside.  They might’ve knocked over a table or two rushing over to pry Torgal off Clive's cot, but Joshua did not care. Tarja could yell at him later. Nothing else mattered.  Not the scolding he'd receive for putting unnecessary strain on his still healing body.  Not the broken chair Torgal had crushed when they finally managed to remove the massive wriggling canine.  Not even the toe he was pretty sure he probably broken tripping over one of the cots in his scramble to confirm Gav's claim.  None of it. 

All that mattered was that Clive's eyes were open and he was moving on his own.  Albeit, fumbling and wincing and hissing in pain, but his brother was awake.  After everything they had been through, all the loss, the sacrifice, the pain and suffering, they had both made it back.  They were alive.

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