Toss of Fate

 
     A breath of wind rippled along the walls, stirring the ornate tapestries which hung there. Once, Sabin thought with some regret, they'd been bright with color and life, He'd played under them as a boy, pretending to be the brave knight in the weaving, battling Figaro's enemies and winning the fair damsel's hand.
     The memory brought a small smile to his face. He and Edgar...
     He felt the smile disappear slowly. Now...now the tapestries were worn with age and neglect, some tattered and all faded. Faded, like the years, like his brother's memory. Sabin reached out a hand, hesitantly, to touch the weaving nearest him: a hunting scene showing young knights pursuing their fleeing quarry. They'd seemed so alive to him once. Now, they were just scraps of cloth.
     "Everything's different," he said softly to himself, to the darkened cavern of a throne room. "Mom and Dad gone...everyone's gone...since that day..."
     The words caught in his throat and he pulled his hand away quickly. The full moon shone in through the open window, silver and brilliant, just like that moon back so many years before.
     Sabin leaned against the wall, once again hearing the pounding footsteps, the muffled sobs. The sharp feeling that something was not right.

 
     "Sabin! Sabin!"
     "No!" Sobs racking his thin body, clinging wildly to the doorframe for support. "No! He can't be dead! He can't!"
     Swinging his fist into the stone wall again and again, only barely conscious of his bleeding knuckles and the thin trails of blood running over his hand.
     "Sabin!" Someone frantically calling his name. He turned, plunged blindly into the hall, running somewhere, he didn't know where, somewhere to get away. To get away from it all, to a world where he would be safe and his father alive and well, holding out his strong arms to him to tell him that everything would be all right.
     He stumbled, tripped over something. The stone steps to the tower courtyard. He lay where he had fallen, letting the tears run down his face to fall on the flagstones. Someone was still shouting his name in the distance, voice coming closer. Edgar, no doubt, who'd chase him and catch him crying and quietly chastise him for such un-princely behavior. Edgar always did.
     How could his brother be so oblivious? His father was dead, and all he cared about was appearance...his father...
     Sabin pushed himself upright and managed to make it to the stone steps before the tears came again. Let Edgar find him crying. He didn't care, not about Edgar, not about anyone.
     "Sabin!" Voice out of the air above his head.
     "I...I can't believe he's..." Sabin said, but something hurtled past him and he heard boots clang on the courtyard floor, saw the handsome profile of his brother as he stood uncertainly in the center of the courtyard. "Sabin?" Turning his head. "Oh. There you are."
     "B-brother..." Sabin tried to say something, couldn't for the tears that choked his throat.
     Edgar crossed his arms over his chest. He looked speculative. "So. They went and told you." No emotion whatsoever.
     Sabin's mouth dropped open in astonished fury, but before he could say anything, footsteps sounded behind him again.
     "Edgar!" The reedy voice of an old woman came from the hallway. Edgar turned sharply. Sabin stared at his brother in disbelief before looking behind him to the source of the voice.
     "Edgar! Here you are!" The old woman stood in the doorway, candlelight framing her frizzled white hair around her head like a halo. He recognized her. Their nurse since birth, hired by their mother to take care of them over the years. Even now. "Your father just uttered his last wish that Figaro be divided between you-"
     "What?" The words burst from Sabin before Edgar could reply. He jumped to his feet, shoulders shaking. "This is nonsense! Everyone's saying that the Empire poisoned Dad. And the only thing on your minds is 'Who's going to be the next king?'"
     He felt Edgar's warning hand firm on his arm, knocked it aside. "You all are pathetic!" he spat. "No one cared when Mom passed away either..."
     The old lady stiffened. "Now Sabin! That's not-"
     He rounded on her. "You were as bad as any of them! Mom trusted you! And you didn't shed a tear!"
     "Sabin!" Edgar said sharply. Sabin glared at him, then droped his gaze, feeling suddenly empty. His hands bunched into fists as he slid down slowly against the wall, numb of any emotion, grief anger...nothing. The stars blurred in his gaze.
     "Empire of murderers," he whispered despairingly without any real heat. He couldn't summon up the anger. He didn't know where it had gone. "They won't get away with this."
     "Matron." His brother's voice came from far away. "Please. Leave us."
     He heard the hesitating, tottering footsteps of their old nurse retreat back into the castle, and then felt a hand on his shoulder.
     "Sabin, please."
     He turned away, scrunched further into the wall.
     "Look, Sabin, can't we just talk about this? For a minute? Just a minute."
     He shook his head. He was acting like a child, he knew, but he didn't care. What was there to care about anymore? His world, his life, stripped away in one night.
     No, that was not true. Edgar. He still had his brother. For all their differences they were still brothers.
     Edgar was hurting, Sabin reluctantly admitted to himself. And unlike Sabin, he would never show it. Couldn't show it. He was ever strong, Edgar...
     He sighed. "All right. A minute."
     His brother pulled at his arm. "Let's go up-to the Lookout Tower. We could always talk there."
     Sabin said nothing as he followed his brother up a flight of stone steps to the small tower where they used to play as children. A long, long time ago.
     He stopped in the center of the court but Edgar kept walking slowly to the far wall, leaning aginst it. The full moon, hauntingly bright and glittering like silver, framed his tall form. Long blond hair and deep blue cloak stirred in the faint breeze. Edgar looked, Sabin realized with a start, like their father. Like a king.
     "Sabin..." The words were faint, a breath of air on the passing breeze. "What's going to happen to me now? To us?"
     "I'm outta here!" Sabin said sharply. His words, loud in the silence, startled him but he pressed on. Sure, Edgar might be acting all noble, but that didn't mean he had to follow. "I'm forsaking this war-sick realm for my dignity and freedom!" Looking accusingly at his brother's back. "You said you were sick of it too, right?" The last words came out as more of a plea.
     "Freedom..." Edgar whispered. When he turned, Sabin was surprised to see streaks of tears on his cheeks, glistening in the moonlight.
     "What'll happen to this realm if we both leave? And...what would Dad say?"
     "He always wanted the best," Sabin said softly, despite himself. "For both of us."
     "I can't leave," Edgar said. "You know that."
     Sabin crossed his arms awkwardly, looking defiantly at his brother. "You can't make me stay. You know that."
     Edgar moved suddenly, like a man with a great weight on his shoulders, fumbling with the drawstring of his belt pouch. "Sabin, let's settle this." He held up a golden coin, in Sabin's tear-blurred vision surrounded with a soft rainbow of light. "If it's heads, you win. We'll choose whichever path we want, without any regrets, okay? This is for Dad!"
     "Edgar-" Sabin said, suddenly afraid.
     But his brother had already bent his arm and tossed the gold piece into the air. Sabin tilted his head back and watched it, flying, it seemd, a golden speck against the giant silver moon, an errant start journeyed too far into the presence of its master. For a moment it hung there unmoving. His dreams, his future, his hopes, his destiny, flung high into the night sky. A golden coin.
     And then it flipped, spun, tinkled on the cobblestones between them. Sabin bent slowly, touched the coin with trembling fingers. He could feel his brother's eyes on him.
     "Heads," he said.

 
     "And then, you opted for your freedom."
     Sabin whirled at the voice. His brother stood in the doorway of the throne room, barefoot, barechested, right arm still bandaged from the wound he had received at the hand of Kefka's forces the day before.
     "It's been ten years," Edgar said, smiling. "The little shrimp's grown into a whopping lobster!"
     Sabin laughed and leaned against the wall. "And you-you're a king crab!"
     The smile on Edgar's face grew broader for a brief moment, then faded. He turned his head to the great thron which stood on the darkened dais, empty and brooding.
     "Sabin...I often wonder if he'd be proud of me..."
     Sabin shook his head, the memory of his father and his own grief and Edgar's strength still tangible before him. "Don't you ever doubt that!"
     "Ten years," Edgar said softly.
     Sabin went to him, put one strong arm around the slumped shoulders and felt the tension there.
     "Where has the time gone?"
     Under his arm he could feel Edgar straighten. The blue eyes looked straight at him, and in them, Sabin could read regret and sorrow, but at the same time pride and joy and love. And hope. The boy...the boy had truly become a king.
     "Here's to a couple of confused grownups!" Edgar said, smiling again. "Here's to Dad..."
     "And to Mom," Sabin finished for him, remembering that fateful night on the tower under the silver moon. "And to Figaro..."
     And to you, my brother.
     To all of us.