Clover

Clover is quiet, after all of it. He sees the looks everyone is giving him, the pity and concern in his friends’ eyes as they watch him carefully for signs of distress. The way the former scions whisper and fret isn’t as subtle as they think, especially not to the man who has seen each of them at their best and their worst, who knows them as intimately as they do themselves.

He tries to brighten his smile, to ease the tension from his jaw and laugh at the right times. He’s never been particularly chatty, but he does his best to make lighthearted conversation with Tataru and the others to soothe their fears. He knows it isn’t working.

When Tataru sends him to the Island Sanctuary he’s well aware that she’s doing it for his own good, that he’s being sent on a mandatory vacation where he can distract himself with the physical labor needed to build a home in a new wilderness. That for all her words of showing others what is possible, of testing this new venture, in truth it is simply the best solution they’ve found to their latest problem. Him.

All he can feel is relief that he won’t have to pretend for them anymore.

Kelta comes with him, because of course he does. Kelta, faithful as ever as Clover drags him to the edge of the universe and back, standing at his side no matter what fate throws at them. He’s desperately grateful for the steady presence and he wonders sometimes how he ever got by without his constant companion.

He tries not to think of Clay. Of Lineah. Of his patrol. He especially tries not to think of his children, wondering how they fared through the near end of the world. What horrors they’d seen, or if the jungles of Rava had been safely tucked away, hidden from the blasphemies sprouting over the rest of the world. It seems a lifetime ago that he’d left them, even if he knows it has only been a few very long years. The triplets would be eight now. He throws himself into his work to forget that he no longer knows their faces, that they have never known his.

Kelta is by his side as he chops wood, gathers ore, swims beneath the surface for laver and shells as he fills the requests made of him by the mammets. They slowly grow the island, managing their resources and Clover, in turn, tries to find the shattered pieces of himself and put them back in place.

It is only when he is beneath the waves far outside the watchful eyes of even Kelta that he allows himself to truly grieve. He knows the other would hold him, would comfort him, wouldn’t ask the questions Clover can’t answer and yet still he finds himself unable to seek the solace of Kelta’s arms. The aching void of loss within him is filled with a guilt so profound it makes him sick, makes him long to rip out his foolish heart, so prone to empathy and understanding.

He wishes desperately he had never gone to Elpis.

Things had been difficult before that. The First had been grueling, emotionally and physically, but Clover had persevered. He’d made it through with his friends at his side, with Ardbert, and had come out the other end. He’d rescued G’raha. He’d gotten everyone home safe and sound and left the First intact and on the road to something resembling recovery.

The beginning of the end had been no cakewalk with more questions than could possibly be answered and the threat of Fandaniel and Zenos a constant looming presence in the backdrop of events, stirring up ever increasing waves of trouble. But still, Clover had persevered with the scions and Kelta at his side. They had fought, had progressed, and he had truly, genuinely thought he might have been able to fix things.

He’d been wrong. Or at least, more wrong than right.

He had not been eager to seek help in the Crystal Tower on the First, but desperation is a dangerous thing and he’d been beyond desperate to save his world, his friends, his everything. He had not been willing to let his home go, nor to force Kelta to yet another new world, if such an option were even viable. So he had gone to learn what he could from the past.

Nothing could have prepared him for the answers he received.

The first time he saw Hermes, tears had gathered in his eyes. He couldn’t explain it at the time, but in that initial moment he had felt a weight on his shoulders heavier than even the burden of being Warrior of Light and Darkness to two worlds. He’d also felt an immediate kinship, an affection so profound he knew it was not his alone. He expected a monster, the cartoonish villain of his own world, and instead found a man he loved so immediately, so intensely that it stole the breath from his lungs.

He’d spent his night in Elpis sobbing until he made himself sick, choking on tears and bile as he struggled to contend with the knowledge bestowed upon him. A strange world, with strangers who were so intimately familiar as to feel like his dearest friends. Echoes of a life lived by someone else, another him lost to the shadows of the past. Hades, Emet-Selch before his downward spiral into madness. Hythlodaeus before he’d sacrificed himself in the name of Zodiark and the end of the Final Days. Venat, his predecessor and mentor, if the rest were to be believed and oh, he believed them. And Hermes. The future Fandaniel. Amon. The man who would nearly destroy Clover’s world in a fit of despair. The man who would shatter his heart without ever realizing what he had done.

The return to his own world was a brutal one, but he’d been able to drown himself in necessary tasks, in preparation and warfare. In the plight of each and every nation, in helping the Forum and the Lopporrits. He’d been nearly out of his senses seeking something to carry him through the darkness, to keep his mind intact and stable as dynamis reigned over Etheirys, and his search for hope had landed on an unlikely source.

Zenos.

It had been a doomed quest from the start. Clover knew that in hindsight. Knew that he never would have been able to bring the former crown prince of Garlemald, terror of half of Etheirys into something resembling an alliance. But he’d hoped. He’d tried. He’d been so utterly desperate for something to keep him going that he’d allowed himself the delusion that this was possible, that it was probable even. That he would be able to redirect the aching loneliness and apathy of his Garlean nemesis, his friend, into something productive. Destructive, perhaps, but in a way that might help the world rather than destroy it.

For a brief moment, it had worked. Zenos had been essential in Clover’s fight with the Endsinger at the edge of the universe, and he had been overjoyed by the personal triumph. He had truly, genuinely believed that this was a turning point for the man, that Clover would be able to reach him here, in this place devoid of responsibility and status. Where it was just the two of them alone with no need for pretense or titles.

He’d fought with magic, with tooth and claw and fist and foot and every weapon in his arsenal until the two of them had been exhausted, bloodied and grinning with a frenzy he rarely allowed himself to indulge in, no matter how his body sang for it. And then they’d kept going. Clover knew it was too far, knew what was happening, but he hadn’t been able to stop it, had perhaps even believed it impossible for fate to twist such a cruel knife in his gut.

In the end they’d been laying side by side though the distance between them was beyond Clover’s ability to overcome. Zenos had, once again, given a monologue but this time Clover knew it was final. He’d cried out, had tried to fight his body’s extensive injuries and exhaustion to reach the other man but it had been to no avail as the transponder appeared beside him, whisking him back to the safety of the Ragnarok.

The scions had been relieved to hear Zenos was gone at last. Everyone had been relieved. They’d celebrated as Clover felt the last shards of his broken heart fall like panes of glass leaving nothing but grief in their wake. How was he to express to them that through all of this, the madness and chaos and despair, it had been the two men behind it all that had kept him going? How could he look at them and tell them how his heart skipped a beat when Hermes first met his eye? How he’d reached for Zenos with a hand of friendship, that this desire had been the one thing strong enough to keep their hero from turning into a blasphemy himself? That the knowledge that he was the only person who stood a chance at curbing Zenos’ destruction with a peaceful end had been enough to pull him back from the brink of despair when even the thoughts of his friends and loved ones had not been enough?

He couldn’t tell them that all of it was for nothing. That he’d lost Zenos just like he’d lost Hermes and Minfilia and Ysayle and Haurchefant and Papalymo and countless others and that perhaps, even, their deaths had more impact on him. That striking down Amon to watch Asahi drag him away had sent Clover home to wretch and gag with an agonizing grief that had black mist rising from his body as he trembled out of control.

He has no words for them. No explanations. He has nothing left in him to expend in justifying his sense of loss, his rage and despair in all he has seen. Not when so many mourn because of the very men Clover weeps for. There is no excuse in being the one to love the villain, no matter how big your heart. So Clover grieves alone in the cool embrace of the sea where his tears mix with the ocean’s water and his choked cries are too muffled to make out, even to his own sensitive ears.

He knows that Kelta is aware of what he’s doing, and he’s deeply thankful that his partner does not comment on it. Instead, he simply takes what few raw materials Clover returns with from his weary hands, carrying them back to the sanctuary to be turned in. He holds Clover at night, soothing and warm in the island breeze, his presence helping to ease troubled thoughts and Clover lets the grief fall away as he wraps himself into the life that remains.