Keeping Me Alive (FFVI, Cid)

[wallwalker]

Title: Keeping Me Alive
Fandom: FFVI
Character: Cid
Rating: Probably safe for work, but mentions of death/suicide.
Notes: Symmetrina, 375 words. Written for fic_promptly.

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They kept me alive.

I don’t know why. I’d given them magic, but now... I was just another mouth to feed.

Were they grateful? Why?

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If you all lived for a reason, you can't fathom it.

Everything on dry land is dying. People fall sick from eating meat, and the plants have withered away. A few of the more active survivors have brought back fish, but never enough to smoke and save for later. You all live hand-to-mouth, and even rainwater is sour.

You lost someone today, a young ex-soldier. You don’t know what happened. He just didn't wake up.

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Cid never knew if the first person who fell from the cliffs had meant to die. He’d been weak and shaky for days from lack of food, and he’d talked of climbing them in the hopes of finding food or lighting a signal fire. When he’d washed up on the shore a few days later, he’d been smiling.

They’d stripped the corpse of everything that could be burned, and carried him back to sea. No one could muster the strength to bury him.

Now others were beginning to disappear. Some came back to shore after; some didn’t. Most of them left their belongings behind when they left, their only trace.

If there wasn’t still one injured person left behind, Cid might’ve left to join them.

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You aren’t going to survive much longer. Caring for Celes, catching fish, gathering whatever’s left of the wood on the island, all of it wears you out. You don’t know what’s keeping you going.

If this is going to be worth anything, though, she has to live. So you boil fish in water and give her broth to drink, and you keep scraping for more wood, and you hope that she’s still in there somewhere.

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I’m alone now. Fishing and building occupy my time, but barely.

I could end this. But I can’t. Not yet, anyway.

She’s keeping me alive.