Kuja, what you did was wrong. But you gave us all one thing, hope. We were all created for the wrong reason, but you alone defied our fate. We do not want to forget this. We want your memory to live on forever, to remind us that we were not created for the wrong reason, that our life has meaning. - Mikoto

XxXxX

When the dust settled after the convulsive shock of writhing tree roots, it turned out that the Iifa tree was still and silent as any other ordinary tree. Zidane supposed that had been its last gasp. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to evade the final thrust of those plunging roots and tendrils or how he'd managed to pull Kuja's limp and unresisting body after him, but he had.

After that it was just a matter of an endless climb through conveniently thick and matted branches and roots to level ground. Then Zidane wearily lured a chocobo to him with some tasty gysahl greens. He draped Kuja over the chocobo's back and climbed on after him, then turned the bird's head south.

Kuja lay limp as a sack of meal for the duration of their trip to the Black Mage Village. He passed in and out of a fitful sleep. He was hot to the touch of Zidane's hand.

"Where are you taking me?" Kuja asked once.

"To Mikoto," Zidane responded, drizzling some water past Kuja's cracked lips. Of course the name meant nothing to Kuja, but anything Zidane would have said would have been met with the same incomprehension. Kuja swam in and out of consciousness, murmuring deliriously about canaries in gilded cages, about how much he hated Zidane and Garland, about how he wanted to die.

It wrenched Zidane's heart in a way to see his former enemy laid so low, silken finery ripped to shreds, body bruised and torn and slung unceremoniously over the back of an absurd yellow bird instead of riding upright on a glamorous silver dragon. Zidane would have given a lot of the gil he'd left behind with his companions for a tamed dragon to shorten his journey.

When they finally arrived at the forest encircling the Black Mage Village, Zidane couldn't remember the trick to finding his way to the grouping of little huts, shaped quaintly in the image of their inhabitants. He was exhausted. His bruises and scrapes from the struggle to escape the Iifa tree were superficial, but he was starved and thirsty from trying to get what little provisions he had with him down Kuja's throat. He collapsed on the ground somewhere in the wood and knew no more.

Zidane awoke to dismayed cries. He blinked heavy eyelids and propped himself up on his elbows to see a circle of black mages, all holding their white- gloved hands to their faces in horror.

"Relax," Zidane managed to choke out. "He's harmless. He's very sick and he won't be able to hurt you anymore. I promise. Please help me take him to the village so we can fix him.

Zidane felt fortunate that no monsters had come upon them in their unconscious state. He trudged behind the mages who trustingly led the chocobo towards their home, petting its neck and wondering if it would make a good playmate for Bobby Corwen. Zidane hoped that Kuja truly was as harmless as he'd made him out to be. Zidane actually had no idea what his brother was capable of. It was difficult to think of Kuja that way, but easier when he was so pathetic with fever and dehydration. When he was well again, Zidane thought that admitting familial ties with Kuja might be less straightforward.

XxXxX

Zidane was restless after a day spent in bed, his tail switching idly as he was spoon-fed broth by one of the genomes.

"How's Kuja?" he asked, but the boy who looked disconcertingly like Zidane shook his head.

"I don't know. Mikoto told us all to stay out of her way," the boy replied, shyly lifting another spoonful of broth. Zidane shook his head and stretched his arms out with a vast yawn.

"I gotta get out of here," he said, swinging his legs out of bed.

The boy fumbled with the bowl of soup, spilling some on the floor in his agitation before he set it down on the bedside table. "But Mikoto said . . ."

"Aw, I don't care what Mikoto said," Zidane shook his head. "I'll tell her it wasn't your fault," he added, trying to smooth the worry out of the boy's face. Nevertheless, the boy wrung his hands as Zidane strutted out the door. That pace of walking left him a little light-headed so he continued on more slowly and carefully. Zidane guessed he'd been sicker than he thought.

"Hey there," he said to a black mage who trundled past, his heavy boots making hollow thuds on the boardwalk sidewalk. "Do you know where I can find Mikoto?"

The black mage pointed eastwards and Zidane supposed they'd secluded Kuja in the little hut where they'd kept the chocobo egg. When he arrived outside he was a little out of breath. He paused for a moment to regain his composure in case Mikoto would have something disapproving to say about that.

"You shouldn't be up yet," she said, without looking up from her patient as Zidane walked in the door. Small high windows filtered sunlight into the room in which sparkling motes of dust were held suspended like insects caught in sap.

"How is he?" Zidane asked, his tail curling with curiosity.

"He is ill," Mikoto said. "Genomes do not contract illnesses, although you were able to make yourself weak by neglecting to maintain your physical needs. This is a sign that Kuja's body is ceasing to function."

"He's dying?" Zidane asked.

"Yes," she said calmly. "It's as Garland said, Kuja's function has ceased to become necessary with your maturity. His system will shut down." She wiped Kuja's forehead with a cool cloth in a tender gesture at odds with her dispassionate prognosis.

Zidane waved his arms helplessly, "but isn't there anything you can do? How much longer does he have?"

Mikoto pressed her bent forefinger to her lip in a curiously normal attitude of thought. "There is nothing I can do, but I suspect that he will live for several months if treated properly for his fever and wounds. Still, he will not regain full health.

"That's terrible," Zidane said. "And . . ." he hesitated, scrubbing his fingers through his hair nervously. "What about me? When am I going to cease to function?"

Mikoto shook her head, "unknown," she said simply. "Garland did not care to share the information with me as I was too close in my genetic makeup to you. I believe he sought to relieve my anxiety on the matter."

"You really think he cared about that?" Zidane asked incredulously. Mikoto simply nodded. Zidane sighed deeply, his mind still troubled with questions. "Well, I guess it would be unnatural to know when I was going to die. I guess I'm just like everyone else then."

Mikoto nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Garland gave us that one gift," she said.

Zidane walked towards her, drawn by the emotion in her face and squeezed her shoulder lightly. "I didn't know you had feelings for him," he said guiltily. "I'm not sorry that we fought him, you know, but I'm sorry if his death caused you pain."

Mikoto hesitantly rested her hand atop Zidane's. "It didn't," she said. "I did not know how to feel pain at that time and in many ways Garland was a cruel man, by Gaian standards. But he did have some mercy in him too, just as our brother does," she looked at Kuja and wiped his brow again. "I am learning about emotions and about character from the black mages," she admitted with another shy smile. "They are good teachers." She touched Kuja's brow and frowned. "I need to monitor Kuja closely now," she said. "You should go," she added shortly.

Zidane stood up straighter and marched out the door, thinking that the mages still needed to teach Mikoto a few things about tact.

"And get more rest," she added firmly as he walked out the door.

XxXxX

Zidane was restless in the Black Mage Village. He paced the little wooden board walks and killed nearly every monster in the surrounding forest and when he was done with that he wound up the music box in the Inn and taught the genomes and black mages to dance. He'd learned almost every dance there was as an actor.

In a way he wanted to go to Garnet this very instant and smother her with kisses. At the same time though, he was afraid, maybe really afraid for the first time in his life. What if it was like that day she'd been standing up above him glittering beautifully in that brilliant white dress, as pale and untouchable and far away as a star? What if she just wanted him around as a friend, someone to pour all of her secrets and worries into while she found herself a suitable candidate for a prince regent and he was forced to watch?

There were so many ways it could go wrong and so Zidane was holding back. He knew he could have left Kuja in Mikoto's capable hands, but he also felt some responsibility for what happened to him. After all it was Zidane who had saved him. He sort of owed it to Kuja to stick around here until he died. As morbid as it was to wait around for someone to kick the bucket, it felt right. So he could set aside the decision of what he'd do after that until later.

He didn't go often to the small hut on the outskirts of the village, though. Mikoto had shooed him away and Zidane held a superstitious dread for sick beds anyway. As he was never sick himself he had difficulty feeling compassion for sick people. He didn't know how to act around them. So he wasn't really ready for Mikoto to appear in the midst of one of his silly dance lessons, walking arm and arm with a very lucid and much stronger looking Kuja.

XxXxX

Mikoto helped Kuja into a chair and with blue eyes that looked enormous in his thin face he watched the clumsily waltzing black mages and genomes. It was really sort of creepy and some of the black mages scurried out of the room when they saw him, no doubt still remembering the way he'd treated them when they were briefly his servants. Zidane felt Kuja's eyes on him and didn't know how to behave. He tripped over his partner's feet and she started to cry. The black mages might have been teaching their charges too well. They seemed to respond to any emotional stimulus with the intensity of small children.

"I'm sorry," Zidane said, patting the girl's head gently. "Maybe we should all try this again later. I'm a little bit distracted right now." The genomes and black mages nodded and filed out of the room, a few of them staying behind to practice dancing on their own or talk together or listen to music. Mikoto bowed and left the Inn with them, as if to insist that Zidane and Kuja have a pleasant little chat alone. Zidane frowned at her retreating back and cursed her meddling. Now he knew how Steiner felt, maybe, a little.

"How are you?" Zidane asked, kneeling down reluctantly beside Kuja's chair.

Kuja chuckled dryly. "Humbled," he responded simply.

"I meant how are you feeling, physically?" Zidane corrected.

"Miserable," Kuja replied tossing his silver hair back over his shoulder. It seemed duller, as if it was growing tarnished, but at least Mikoto had cleaned it at some point, or maybe helped Kuja to clean it. "If this is what these mortals feel like every time they get a cold, then no wonder they're always fighting each other like animals. I certainly feel like killing someone."

Zidane's eyes widened and Kuja rolled his. "Oh don't be so unreasonable," he snapped. "I'm not going to do anything. I barely have the strength to stand on my own two feet just now and it makes me irritable, that's all. You didn't expect me to suddenly become some sort of saint, did you?"

"I didn't know what to expect," Zidane said, honestly. "I'm glad you're better than you were before anyway."

Kuja sighed, "I'm still dying though."

Zidane started. "Did Mikoto tell you that?"

"No, she didn't tell me." Kuja interrupted. "Give me credit for a modicum of intelligence. I figured it out on my own. Couldn't you have just left me to be crushed by the Iifa tree? There was a certain poetic justice in that at least. This slow decay is demeaning and it lacks dignity."

"Gee, I'm sorry I pulled your butt out of the way of impalement by tree roots," Zidane huffed. "Can you do anything besides complain?"

"I can dance better than you can," Kuja said pettishly, rising from his chair.

"Should you really be doing that?" Zidane asked anxiously, holding his hands up helplessly as if to push Kuja back into the chair.

"Oh, please," Kuja hissed, "Do you really think that my nursemaid would have let me out of bed if I wasn't up for a little physical exertion?" He gripped Zidane's hand determinedly and wrapped an arm around his waist.

"Why do I have to be the girl?" Zidane grumped.

"Because you need guidance," Kuja retorted. Those who were practicing stopped to watch Kuja whirl Zidane gracefully about the room. "You mustn't hop about so like a peasant," Kuja said softly, "you must glide."

And Kuja had always glided, Zidane recalled, he'd waltzed all over Gaia to his own internal music.

"You must remember," Kuja said more loudly, "that the waltz was long condemned by the aristocracy for vulgarity and sinfulness, although what they were truly condemning was the closeness of the hold," Kuja's fingers tightened on Zidane's hand and at his waist, "and the sensuousness inherent in the quick and fluid motions of the dance," he continued in a lecturing tone. Zidane blushed at the thought that someone might consider their dancing to be somehow sexy. He couldn't believe that anyone would think that.

"You're stiffening up," Kuja muttered, annoyed, and Zidane yelped as Kuja smacked his backside. "You need to be loose, loose, like all your bones have dissolved." Zidane couldn't believe that Kuja had smacked him like that. He felt his face heat all over again and rolled his eyes. He was supposed to be the naughty flirty playboy, such things shouldn't shock him. Even coming from a guy, who was essentially almost related to him though?

"Isn't that a pretty picture?" Zidane grimaced. "Really hot. Dissolved bones. Yum."

"The steps can be varied," Kuja added, ignoring him, "with longer, slower, gliding steps." He demonstrated by slowing the speed of their motions. The black mages watched intently and tried to imitate him. "Or with hesitation steps," Zidane nearly stumbled as Kuja demonstrating the halting motion. "So clumsy," Kuja said smugly, but then he faltered himself and put a long white hand to his forehead.

"I think you've overdone it," Zidane observed.

"I'm fine," Kuja insisted, but he let himself be led back to his chair while the genomes and black mages applauded him.

Kuja waved them off. "Oh, it's nothing, really, stop making such a fuss." But Zidane could see him smiling sweetly behind his hands, like a child with a new toy.

XxXxX

Kuja had good days and bad days. On the good ones, with Zidane's help, he taught the students to waltz properly and how to perform other more elaborate dances. On the bad ones, he stayed in bed with Mikoto tending to him and Zidane avoiding them both, feeling strangely fretful and listless. He found he missed arguing with Kuja when he was laid up in bed.

The black mages tried to cheer Zidane up by picking him flowers and catching him frogs and showing him how to paint landscapes like the ones that graced the walls of the Inn.

Mr. 234 patted Zidane's shoulder as he stood before a canvas swiped half-heartedly with blues and greens.

"Don't be sad that Kuja is going to stop," he said softly. "Everyone has to stop some day and he seems quite happy here with you and Mikoto. It will be okay. The hurt never goes away, but it becomes manageable when you remember all of the good times you had together."

Zidane dropped his brush, startled and a little angry, whether at himself or at the well-meaning black mage, he wasn't sure. "Thank you, but Kuja and I aren't friends. Most of my memories are about fighting him."

"You aren't?" Mr. 234 adjusted his hat. "Well, I think that Kuja needs a friend right now, don't you?"

Zidane picked the brush up off of the floor and wiped up the smear of paint he'd left there. He took a deep breath and realized that whatever his reasons he was sorry that Kuja was going to die.

"You know, you're probably right," he said, cleaning off his brush and feeling a little guilty. After all, he wasn't really one to hold a grudge. Even though the things that Kuja had done were terrible, the guy was dying slowly, what more revenge could anyone on Gaia want? "Maybe I should go visit him," Zidane said thoughtfully. He cringed at the thought of the strong smell of potions and illness that always hung around sick-beds, but he squared his shoulders and marched himself off to Kuja's hut.

XxXxX

"It's about time you come to visit," Mikoto said sharply, opening the door. "It's not like he's contagious, you know." She closed the door behind Zidane carefully.

"I'm sorry, I'm not good at stuff like this," Zidane said lamely.

"Well, neither am I," Mikoto tilted her nose up. "You're the one who was raised on Gaia all these years. He calls for you sometimes you know, when he's not fully conscious."

"All right already," Zidane hissed softly. "I get the picture. I'll come and visit more often."

Mikoto handed him a bottle of potion. "When he wakes up, give him this." She flounced out of the room with her tail raised up behind her.

"Man," Zidane said softly, rubbing his head. "Is she ever a firecracker." He whistled.

"Isn't she?" Kuja asked softly, grabbing the bottle of potion from Zidane with shaking hands and drinking it down. He pointed a pale finger at Zidane. "You don't have to be shut up in here with her all of the time. It's nice of you to finally pay me a visit in my weakened state."

"Oh stop being melodramatic," Zidane said. "That act of yours won't work on me. You know I grew up here in a theatre troupe."

"Yes, I've seen you perform actually," Kuja smiled and smoothed his hands across the blankets. They shook a little less after drinking the potion and a little colour had returned to his cheeks.

"What play?" Zidane asked nonchalantly putting his legs up on the bed and tilting his chair back on two legs.

"The Queen and I," Kuja said casually, causing Zidane to tilt off the chair onto his back with a loud thud. "You made a charming governess, I must say. I especially liked that little number where you kicked up your heels and showed your frilly bloomers. You never could dance very well, but that was adorrable anyway."

Zidane was almost at a loss for words, for once. He picked himself up off the floor and returned to his chair. "Listen, I had to do that, because Ruby was needed for the part of the Queen and all of the other guys are way too ugly to dress as a girl."

"You are a pretty one," Kuja admitted.

"Well, hey, you're prettier than me," Zidane said, feeling strangely about the whole conversation.

"Not so much, anymore," Kuja said, lifting a nearly translucent and rather skeletal hand up to the light where it trembled like a leaf in a breeze.

"You're still pretty," Zidane said, taking the shaking hand down to rest on Kuja's chest and squeezing it gently.

"Oh, stop lying," Kuja laughed lightly. I've seen myself. I look like the living dead, which is what I am and I richly deserve it. That's what you're thinking and that's what I think too, but is it so wrong to still want to live? Not at all costs like I meant to before, but just to live. I was right when I said it isn't fair that the world gets to go on without me. It's doubly unfair that I'm just getting to know you and Mikoto and all of these blasted genomes and black mages too. I used to think I was different from all of the genomes because I could feel hate and anger and pain. But I never thought about feeling love. That's how I was really different from all of them. I never learned love till the very end."

He was weeping, not theatrically, but truly, his shoulders heaving with small shuddering sobs. Zidane sighed and sat down on the little bed and gathered Kuja up into his arms and held him till all of the tears were gone.

"Repentance isn't as easy as you thought it would be, is it?" He asked.

"Well," Kuja said angrily. "If you'd just left me. . ."

"To die in the Iifa tree, I know, I know. But that would have been the easy way out, don't you see?" Zidane tugged a mostly clean handkerchief out of his belt pouch and wiped off Kuja's face. "Isn't it better to make some good memories in the time that you have, than to mope about everything that you missed?"

"I suppose you're right," Kuja said, sniffling in a most undignified manner and blowing his nose loudly into Zidane's handkerchief.

"Aw man, that's yours now." Zidane wrinkled his nose. Kuja laughed a little. It wasn't the manic laughter he'd used during Trance, nor even the self-satisfied smug laughter he'd displayed before that, it was a genuine laugh out of pure amusement and it sounded like small silver bells ringing. Zidane smiled too.

XxXxX

As the weeks wore on Kuja couldn't dance along with everyone anymore. But instead he directed them imperiously from a chair on the sidelines. The black mages and genomes had all come to enjoy his company. They shyly asked him for advice on their dancing techniques which he firmly and promptly gave every time.

The whole thing seemed to make Kuja glow with satisfaction. He quietly confided to Zidane that he felt like he was making up for creating the black mages as killing machines by teaching them how to do something pleasant and joyful, something that he had dearly loved to do.

"So, have I improved any?" Zidane asked, whirling away from his dance partner to smile at Kuja, who was tapping his foot gently to the music.

"A little," he said grudgingly. "But you still hop an awful lot." Zidane just grinned.

XxXxX

Then, increasingly, Kuja couldn't even make it out of bed. So Zidane held the dance lessons in his honour and hurried over to the small hut to make reports. Sometimes a few of the students came along with bunches of flowers and other small presents for Kuja and to demonstrate a few steps.

After one of these little visits, Kuja seemed to have something he wanted to say. "Zidane," Kuja fidgeted with his blanket, twisting it between his thin fingers. "Why are you still here? Why aren't you with your friends and your lovely young Queen?"

"What, you'd be happier if I'd just dumped you off here and never gotten to know you?"

Kuja raised an eyebrow. "Stop avoiding the question," he said. "You know I'm very pleased to have you here annoying me constantly, but I didn't ask just to hear the sound of my own voice. I have very little breath to waste," he added grimly, looking Zidane in the eye.

"I'm scared," Zidane admitted. "I'm scared that Garnet won't want a filthy thief and stage performer."

Kuja shook his head and smiled.

"What so damned funny?" Zidane asked.

"Nothing," Kuja replied. "Just you should listen to your own advice. I'll be pleased if you stay here with me until I'm gone, but after that I expect you to hurry on home to your theatre friends, and more importantly, to Alexandria. Didn't you tell me that it's better to be brave in the face of loss, than to cower in fear before it?"

"I guess I did," Zidane said, scratching his head.

"So is that a promise then?" Kuja asked.

"It's a promise." They shook on it solemnly.

XxXxX

The night that Kuja stopped they buried him among the black mages. Then Mr. 234 fetched the gramophone from the Inn and everyone waltzed beneath the moon.

Zidane hummed a special song beneath his breath. He had a promise to keep.