Final Fantasy XVI: Lion King Edition

Clive Runs Away

When the dust settled, Clive looked for his brother. He had been out for some hours, because now it was morning and the sound of thunder told him that it was going to rain.

"Joshua?"

His teachings in the legend of the Phoenix taught him that when it was time for them to die, they would burn up and be reborn from the ashes....

But when his gaze fell upon his brother lying there, broken and bleeding, he was so terrified that he rushed up to him and gave him a big hug, nuzzling his nose against his hair. Panic began to build.

"Joshua?"

But he just stayed there, motionless.

"Joshua, come on..."

He tired a healing spell, but the injuries stayed as they were, his brother's blood staining his red vest. He held Joshua's hands, they were cold. Panicked, he screamed.

"PLEASE! ANYONE! HE NEEDS HELP!"

He looked back to Joshua. More panic was coming.

"Joshua, you have to get up...stop playing. We gotta go home. Please."

But his brother would never answer again. He started to sob and he hugged Joshua a lot tighter than the younger would have allowed him to. He wanted to hold onto him, forever and ever, at least until he got tired. In fact, he was feeling tired. The tears were giving him a huge case of the doldrums. The tired sort. At last, he rested Joshua onto the floor and poured his tears all over his brother's bleeding body until nothing was left in tear ducts.

His head was still lying on Joshua's chest when he heard the last voice he wanted to hear.

"Clive."

He looked up, it was Anabella, draped in a purple cloak.

"Mother."

He looked back at Joshua's corpse and fumbled at his words.

"I...he's..."

But he didn't have to say the D-word to let his other know that her favorite child was dead. Her eyes turned to blood and it boiled on the inside. She raised her right hand....

"What have you DONE??!"

And slapped him hard. Clive was thrown to the ground. He felt his nose bleeding.

"The imperials came and--He turned into t-the Phoenix-x-x...he b-blew himself up-p. I had nothing to do with this."

Anabella shook her head in dismay.

"No one ever means for things like this to happen, but one of the soldiers told me that you two were 'playing with fire' as he called it. If it weren't for you, the imperials would not have come and Joshua would still be alive."

Clive remembered.

"We were playing, but the sword just...flamed up," he had struggled to find the right word.

But it was clear that at this point Anabella could not care any less.

"If I had known that you weren't going to be blessed by the Phoenix along with this and other countless disappointments, I would have killed you in my womb!"

The words hit Clive the same way a huge moving van would hit a human being. He had never heard his mother say such things before, but then again, he knew she was right.

"Are you going to kill me because of my failure to protect him?"

"I would be honored to," said Anabella with nary a trace of second thoughts in her voice.

But she didn't have anything lethal on her person, and no matter how much she hated Clive, she knew that she didn't want his blood her hands. She may have been merciless, but not at that level.