ffxiv simon

He paced his room and wracked his memories for the sequence of events that got him into this damn situation. When he turned it over in his head again and again, the only thing that came to mind was a series of scenes, thrown into the lifestream without rhyme or reason: Something clenched around his chest, making it hard to breathe; his father, *defeated,* and the crumbling of some ruined world; the weight of a weapon that he didn’t recognize, but felt entirely natural to use. They weren’t connected, and were only barely enough to piece together a sequence of events.

If dead men weren’t supposed to tell any stories, then somebody must have resurrected Simon to do just that. He thought that he remembered dying, the encroaching nothingness and the slick grip that had wormed its way into his chest. He might have even remembered vague moments as something hovering in between worlds- people that walked around but couldn’t see him, and his father telling him that everything would be okay, that they would go for a walk and everything would be saved.

And then he remembered somebody calling him. A pulling towards something that he couldn’t reach out, some purpose in his bones. The nothing became a something, a scythe in his hand and a fight before him and the need to protect (and the need to escort something into the beyond).

Then there was a little more nothing, and then there was another something in this room.

Well, his room was the other something. He woke up in an unfamiliar place for real, feeling much older and much more sore than he remembered, in all of his time adventuring. He was alone, but he could hear the bustle of people outside, voices that he didn’t recognize talking about places that he didn’t remember.

The scythe was perched in the corner, leaning against the wall. Simon tried to ignore it.

He was a healer, before. A symbol of life, rebirth. He had a staff that he could earnestly harness *elements* through, could stitch together wounds without thread. Scythes didn’t mend, they tore- they were omens of death. He imagined that this was his father’s doing- there was no getting anywhere with that man without ascribing to his tainted legacy. If his father failed as a symbol, if his father couldn’t bear the hopes of the dead, then of course it would fall to Simon. It was a calling that made his blood nearly boil over- some need to become the savior of the damned, to shepherd them into the veil.

It was taunting him as he stood and started to pace his room. The head, the *pointy end,* was wrapped in a leather case, meant to protect passerby from getting their necks sliced if it fell over. The handle, the staff, was made of iron twisted together. It looked like it was fitted for him- a helpful voice in the back of his head said that it must have belonged to his father when he was Simon’s age. He had used it, too, only recently- and it fit him perfectly, it was an extension of himself, it almost fit him better than his staff did.

Simon ignored the hunk of metal as best as he could, instead staring at himself in the mirror and counting the parts that he couldn’t remember. It was only yesterday (or, had it been longer?) that he *last* looked in the mirror, and he could have sworn he’d aged a century in that time. His wild, dark curls had white streaks in them now, reminding him of his father. There were scars across his face, too, burn marks from flaming darkness. He traced them with his eyes, scanning across the bloom on his cheekbone to the other side of his face, watching how it cut into his eyebrow. If he reached out, he could almost remember its origins- light coursing through his veins, a battle high unlike anything he’d seen before, a smile (a hero) that he needed to protect, somebody that he needed to see across the veil, a scythe in his hands--

“Cut it out,” he told himself, shaking his head to snap out of whatever trance he had found himself in. It was only marginally effective- made him a little dizzy from the force of the motion, and made the weapon near the doorway that much more visible in his periphery.

It was easy to say that he didn’t want it. It implied choice in the matter, a hard stance that he could take. There wouldn’t be any repercussions to that, not really. The only person in the world that would care was long dead, his father’s only legacy sitting in the room with him. He wasn’t supposed to be the omen of death that his father was. That “legacy” should have died with him.

All of that was a nice way of forgetting that he didn’t know who else would take it, if he didn’t. Who else would spare the dying of a journey travelled alone.

Simon let his forehead clunk against the mirror. Damn him, for trying to talk himself into a realization that kindness to the dead was just as healing as anything he could do for the living.