Chapter Text
[Celes Theme - Final Fantasy VI plays]
The rift spat him out without ceremony. Sir Lancelot landed in a crouch upon a rolling green plain, the shimmer of collapsing space snapping shut behind him like the clasp of a coffin lid. Straightening, the black-armoured knight let the hiss of his Air Shoes fade into the whisper of the wind.
Lancelot had wandered through fractured moments between time and space for what felt like an age, ever apart from Percival, Honey, and Gamma. White Space was fickle in its ways, casting him from realm to realm like a knight upon a board he did not command. And now, it seemed, fate had dealt him another unusual hand.
"Where now?" he wondered aloud, scanning the terrain around him. Jagged cliffs framed the horizon, the restless sea thrashing against rock below. It was no kingdom or battlefield, but an island — lonely, barren, its silence carrying the weight of abandonment. Perhaps one could call it… Solitary Island.
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The air here was… wrong. Lancelot felt it before he could name it. A tang of salt stung his nose, carried by a breeze that should have felt alive but instead seemed hollow. Overhead, the sky churned between storm-grey and an angry, bleeding red, its light casting a sickly pall across the land and ocean alike. The world seemed pressed down by an unseen hand, heavy and mournful. Even the green beneath his sabatons felt like a lie — life painted over a wound too deep to heal.
“This island… no, this world is ill,” he murmured, voice low, a growl edged with disdain. “Isolation and sorrow rule this place. It is unlike any I have traversed on my journey so far.”
He looked down at his gauntleted hands, flexing his fingers slowly. The familiar thrum of Chaos energy was there — but faint. It left a hollowness in his chest, a weight that was not fatigue but absence.
“This realm lacks it… Chaos itself,” he thought, crimson eyes narrowing. “What little I carry within will fade if I am reckless.” His jaw tightened, a knight’s discipline tempering the warrior’s instinct. “I must not squander it. Not unless true danger leaves me no choice.”
Lifting his head up and dropping his hands, Lancelot scanned the land with the wary discipline of a knight long used to walking into traps: the grassy slope rising ahead, the sheer cliffs beyond, the waves below thrashing themselves to foam against rock. And there — at the summit's crest — a lone figure stood, back turned, hair of pale gold moving in the wind, a white cape draped over armoured shoulders.
From here she could have been carved from the same stone as the cliffs, her posture rigid, unmoving.
"A stranger in this realm," Lancelot thought, crimson gaze narrowing as he weighed friend or foe. Yet the set of her frame told him much. A warrior unarmed not by peace, but by defeat. "Alone…" he said at last, the faintest crease at his brow. "And I deem… not by her own choosing."
With deliberate pace, he began his climb. The wind was stronger as he moved, bringing with it the deep thunder of the ocean's rage. The drop beside him was a clean death for any fool who slipped — a fact the knight marked without fear but with the certainty that the woman above was far too near to its edge.
The closer he drew, the heavier the air seemed. Not merely the pressure of storm or sea, but a quiet, insidious despair that gnawed at the edges of the mind. He could feel it coil low in his gut, an ache that was not his own.
He reached the crest at last.
From this distance, her aura was undeniable — heavy with defeat, like a banner torn and left to the wind. She had not moved, had not acknowledged him. Her eyes, though unseen, fixed on the blood-coloured horizon.
He planted his boots with purpose. When he spoke, his voice was calm but bore the tempered authority of one used to being obeyed.
"Something troubles thee, stranger," he said, each syllable clear and deliberate.
She jolted faintly at the sound — not with alarm, but as if the world had whispered when she had expected silence. Still, she did not turn. Her answer came as a long, hollow sigh, the kind given by those who have already spent every tear.
"You're… not from here, are you?"
"You could say that…" Lancelot replied evenly. "How could you tell?"
A humourless sound escaped her — not a laugh, more the shadow of one. "Because I've never heard your voice before on this island. There was only me and…" Her voice faltered. "Cid."
The name was spoken like something precious, now lost. Lancelot let it linger in the air, the silence between them heavy. Whoever this 'Cid' was, the bond had clearly been deep — and still raw. Yet he chose not to press; there was no wisdom in reopening a wound when the greater blight lay all around them.
Instead, his gaze swept the sky, the jagged horizon, the restless sea below.
"Why does this land reek of despair?" he asked, his voice low but edged with command.
There was a small pause — the wind filling the space between them — before the woman answered. Her tone was low, worn thin by exhaustion, but edged with a faint, sardonic dryness.
"You've either been asleep under a rock for the past year… or you've come from much farther away than you care to admit. Especially with that voice of yours — the way you speak. So, tell me… how did you end up here?"
"It's complicated…" Lancelot replied, inclining his head slightly, acknowledging the truth in her words. "But I've travelled further than you could imagine."
"Where are you from, then?" she asked. There was no warmth in the question — only the faint challenge of one who had stopped believing in miracles.
"Camelot," he replied without hesitation.
A short, humourless breath escaped her. "Camelot… like the stories?"
"Aye," Lancelot said simply. There was no boast in his tone, only the matter-of-fact weight of someone speaking of a home that no longer stood.
The woman gave no reply — only turning her focus back to the horizon, as if the name itself were just another piece of myth, blown in on the tide.
"Tell me then," he said again, steady but insistent, "what happened to this world, fair maiden?"
"Everyone's gone," she said at last, her voice low and worn thin, each syllable heavy with the weight of too many losses to count.
"Gone?"
Finally, she turned enough for him to glimpse her profile. The wind tugged at her cape, drawing it aside to reveal the glint of steel at her shoulders, the green of a fitted leotard, and the blue of worn boots. A simple circlet of cloth — a blue hair band — held back strands of gold that the breeze still managed to tease loose, framing her face. Bangles caught the dim light as her arm shifted. Her eyes — deep ocean blue — held no alertness, no spark, only the vacant calm of one who had laid down her will to fight. It was the look of someone who had already yielded in her heart and was simply waiting for the world to finish what it had begun.
"Kefka took everything from us," she said at length, her voice quiet but raw.
The name fell into Lancelot's mind like a shadow across steel. "Kefka…" he echoed, tasting the unfamiliar name, finding it bitter like poison.
"We tried to stop him, but…" She shook her head — the smallest motion, yet heavy with failure. "The Blackjack was torn apart. My friends — scattered, lost… dead."
That final word caught in her throat, her eyes clouding as if even speaking it was too much to bear.
Lancelot made a low, thoughtful sound in his throat — not interrupting, simply letting her know he listened.
"I woke in a cabin on this island, cared for by Cid. He told me it had been a year since the cataclysm." Her gaze drifted to the grey and blood-hued horizon. "…This… was all that was left for me. A small island… solitary, like its name."
Lancelot listened; arms folding across his chest, not interrupting, letting her voice and tell him the fuller story.
"Others once lived here," she continued, "but one by one they walked to these cliffs. North… always north. And they did not return."
The knight's frown deepened, seeing already the road she had walked to reach this place.
"In the end, it was just Cid and me. I… called him 'grandfather.' He laughed at that." The faintest ghost of a smile tugged her lips before dying. "Then he started coughing. Said it had been going on for days. I brought him to bed… swore I would take care of him."
Lancelot's gaze dipped. His voice, when it came, was slow but steady. "He did not survive… did he?"
She did not flinch. Her eyes returned to the sea, and Lancelot knew his guess was true.
"Everyone's gone," she murmured again. "Even Locke."
"These allies — Cid, this Locke," Lancelot said, "they meant much to you."
No answer came to that. Only the flat, final words: "There is nothing left for me in this world."
Something in Lancelot tightened — alarm, not for her danger to him, but for her danger to herself.
"Surely that cannot be true," he said, taking a step nearer, extending one gauntleted hand in a gesture meant to bridge the space between them. "You are not as alone as you believe—"
"Why do you even care?!"
The cry cut sharp, breaking the quiet like steel on stone. She turned towards him sharply, her eyes flashing, voice cracking with the strain of keeping too much locked away.
Lancelot's hand dropped back to his side, but his stance remained unshaken. "Because I know despair. I know grief." His gaze lifted briefly to the red-tinged sky. "In my realm, I served King Arthur — only to learn he was a lie, conjured by the court wizard Merlina to bind us to a doomed tale. She would have trapped us all in an eternal twilight rather than face the end of an age. Everything I swore to… was pure fabrication." He stepped forward again, his voice gaining steely resolve. "Yet the world did not end. Because there were those who stood their ground. Those who chose to move forward, even when all truth felt hollow."
"You don't even know me," she bit out, but there was less fire in it now.
"No," he admitted, "but I can sense what you are. A warrior."
"I was one…"
"You are still one," he countered. "That will not leave you — only the path you choose." He gestured to the heavy sky. "This world may be in turmoil. But it is not the end. Not while warriors like you still stand. That must count for something… must it not?"
For a heartbeat, the woman's chin lifted. But then the horizon drew her gaze back like a chain.
"That's… a fine thing to say, knight," she said, her voice low, almost tired. "But words do not change what's left of my world. There is nothing here for me… not anymore."
Lancelot's jaw tightened. "So… you would fall upon your sword? Yield without facing this Kefka?" He exhaled sharply, turning away as though done with her. "I would sooner die on my feet, blade in hand, than leap like a craven into the abyss."
"I am no coward!"
The knight pivoted back, red eyes narrowing. "Then why end it? This world still has need of you. A Knight of the Round Table would never turn from a threat, great or small."
"Are you deaf, knight — or just stubbornly stupid?" she snapped, the rawness in her voice finally breaking through. "I am alone! I am no storybook knight from some fabled fairy tale!"
Lancelot said nothing. He held his ground, crimson eyes fixed on her, letting the weight of her words hang between them.
The woman's gaze wavered, then sharpened again, as though daring him to challenge her. Tears shimmered in her eyes but refused to fall, her shoulders trembling from the sheer effort of holding herself upright under the crushing weight of the past year.
"You speak of honour and duty as if they're gospel," she said, each word honed to a blade's edge. "But my truth?" Her voice cracked, though she forced it steady. "There is no one left to fight for. My friends are scattered to the dying winds… or gone. My home is gone. Cid is gone. Everything is gone."
Lancelot's voice softened by a fraction. "No… you know not that for certain. You speak as though you have searched every horizon. There will be others — and they will need you. You still have strength, though you would cast it aside."
Her fists curled tight. "What do you want from me, knight?!"
"Only this—" he stepped closer, extending a gauntleted hand, "—I know you are done with this world. But I will not stand by and watch you fall. Come away from the cliff's edge. Find your answers on solid ground… not at the bottom of the sea."
Her head shook sharply. "No… I cannot. I will not."
"You think your worth is gone because no one stands beside you," he said, voice cooling to steel. "You are wrong, stranger. I have seen my monarch revealed as naught but illusion. I have watched my kingdom near fall into shadow. I have fought while the very fabric of reality tore itself apart. And more recently… I have seen comrades scattered into the void, swallowed by rifts between trapped worlds. Yet still I drew Arondight. I joined with unfamiliar faces — Honey, Gamma, and others who now depend on my strength. The world does not halt for our grief… unless we allow it."
For a moment, her eyes searched his. But then her boots shifted, carrying her closer to the edge.
"You've fought your battles," she said quietly. "But you're not from here — you do not understand."
"I understand enough," he said, stepping forward slowly. "The moment you leap, you choose for all who might yet need you that you are worth nothing to them. That is not a warrior's choice."
"I'm not a warrior anymore."
"You are," he said, voice low. "Until your last breath. The only question is whether you use it to fight… or to surrender and flea."
Her gaze locked with his. For a heartbeat, he thought she might step towards him.
Instead, she turned to the sea. The wind whipped her hair and cape.
"Don't…" he murmured, the single word carrying more command than plea.
Her eyes flicked toward him, sorrow heavy in their depths. "I'm sorry," she said — and it sounded final.
"Don't—"
Her heel shifted. Grass crumbled beneath her boot. And then, with a motion as quiet as it was devastating, she stepped into the abyss.
For the space of a heartbeat, the world held its breath. The salty wind rushed into the absence where she had stood.
Then the stillness shattered. Lancelot's stance dropped low, his Air Shoes igniting in a blinding flare.
"NO!"
The knight launched forward in a burst of steel and sparks, armour cutting through the air as he hurled himself over the edge after her.
