Part Two

Chapter Eight/Epilogue

“I’m not certain when he’ll wake up.”

“Don’t you mean if?”

“No – when. He has to wake up. I’ll bet he can hear us right now.”

“You’ve always been the optimist. Fine. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

Footsteps.

“Gippal, I know you can hear me. Gippal, I’m right here, and I won’t leave. Something has happened to you, you’ve lost your arm. But don’t worry – I remember you muttering at night, talking to Nooj, or me, or anyone who would listen. You have your wish, but it might not be as nice as you thought.”

Silence.

“Listen, Yuna is here too. She’s been vigilant. And Paine just stopped by. We’re all here for you when you wake up, whenever it is. We’re not giving up.”

Something was coming into focus. Gippal was trying to open his eye. He felt like someone was speaking to him in a foreign language, and he was slow to process it all.

He had one eye. He could feel the other stubbornly refusing to open, just like it always had. Had he lost his eye again?

Had he woken up in yet another weird parallel dimension?

“Doctor – Doctor! He’s moving. I think he’s awake.”

“Hold him down so he doesn’t thrash.”

Gippal felt arms on him – on one side. No, he wasn’t going to thrash. He promised. He could hear Baralai out there. He wouldn’t thrash, because the Praetor might be upset.

Praetor? Is that what he was? Gippal’s mind was a blur of images and feelings and memories. He thought he felt feathers tickling his heels.

“Gippal,” said a voice that wasn’t Baralai’s. “Open your eyes – eye. We’re right here.”

Gippal was reluctant, but his eyelid seemed to blink open on its own, without him telling it to do so. Yes, there was Baralai, and an unfamiliar man that Gippal could only guess was the doctor. His eyes came more into focus, and he saw Yuna’s familiar face – back to being feminine, he realized – behind the doctor. Another face he recognized -- Tidus -- was there next to Yuna.

“You’re awake,” said Baralai, his eyes unmoving, seemingly fixed on Gippal’s face.

Gippal tried to say something, but it came out gibberish. He could hear his own voice doing things that he wasn’t telling it to do.

“Side effect of the surgery,” the doctor said in response to a worried look from Baralai. “We had to do some implants in his brain for control of the arm. He’ll regain function after a little bit of practice.”

Gippal tried to ask why he had implants in his brain, but Baralai seemed to sense the question before he could even try to voice it. “Gippal,” he said, his tone as gentle as it had ever been. “This may frighten you. But don’t worry – it’s wholly manageable. We’ve come such a long way, and if anyone can handle it, it’s you.”

Gippal already had an idea of what the mysterious frightening thing was. Even before Baralai gently took down the blanket and revealed a silver metallic appendage in place of his right arm, Gippal knew what it was that he was going to see.

Upon seeing the hand – metallic, five fingers, curved in just the way Nooj’s always used to when at rest – Gippal had to grin. If he could have spoken properly, he would have cursed the old, dead bastard.

Instead, he just laughed.

“Well, that was a pleasant reaction,” the doctor said, picking up on Gippal’s laughter with his own.

“I think that he’s been wanting this his whole life,” Baralai said, and then put his hand in Gippal’s new machina one. “It’s a wonder he didn’t chop off his own arm before and do it. He was always jealous of Nooj.”

“If only Nooj could have known that someone was jealous of him,” Yuna said sadly. “I think he would have liked it.”

Baralai looked back at Gippal and smiled. “I think he always did know.”

Gippal said something – he wasn’t even certain what it was that he was trying to say. Gippal knew that he always ran his mouth just to hear his own voice, but now that was even more apparent than usual.

Again, Baralai seemed to sense the question. “She disappeared,” he replied. “Leia. We all disappeared. We’re back in Spira, as far as I can tell, but it may be the world playing yet another trick on us, because somehow, everyone here remembers the battle.” He looked down and away. “But Leia didn’t come with us. We couldn’t find her body even among the wreckage – no sign of it.”

Gippal nodded. He couldn’t think of anything he would even want to say to that. He could cry, but he always knew that Leia would probably not come back from this expedition. She had told him herself – she had not been meant to be born. He vaguely wondered if that was why she was always so distant, always detaching herself from everyone; perhaps she knew, too, that she was just a tool.

This knowledge saddened Gippal deeply, so much that he barely heard Baralai saying, “The remains of Vegnagun collapsed and fell down through a tunnel, deep into the planet. Since then, a strange gray substance sometimes bubbles up through cracks in the ground.”

Gippal could tell that Baralai was just going through motions at this point. Perhaps only to get him to stop talking and be quiet, Gippal smiled up at Baralai – the one he remembered, without wings, just simple, complicated Baralai – and then Baralai gasped.

Gippal looked down. His hand had tightened around Baralai’s.

“You just don’t give up, do you?” Baralai said after a moment of simply staring. “Maybe now they’ll call you ‘Gippal, the Undying’. It has sort of a ring to it.”

Gippal rolled his eye and looked over at the transparent ghost of Nooj, who was silently watching him from the corner. Barely materializing next to him was a little girl with silvery-white hair, who glared at Gippal disapprovingly.

He had to laugh. It must have been hard for the poor girl, to see her mother change so drastically before her very eyes. Well, Gippal thought, now it was all over. Even though he wasn’t entirely certain what his own identity was anymore – was he male or female, Spiran or Al Bhed, two-eyed or one, winged or not? – he knew that finally, he was back home.

It had been one hell of a ride.