Title: choose anew
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 850ish words
Content notes: none
Author notes: right at/after the end of the second half of the manga
Summary: But what should Clef do now?

oOo
A handful of people witnessed the moment when Mokona reached out with a thought and dissolved Clef’s circlet, the metal running down his face as the gems fell away to clatter on the floor. Not all of them probably knew what that might mean - not then, in the chaos and the rush of the end becoming a new beginning for them all. Nor later; to those who didn’t understand the symbol that circlet was; the staff he carried was his own, the one he carried as an Iru. It predated his accession to Guru by at least a century, though it wasn’t the first staff he’d carried. But the circlet was the symbol of his post as guru; his right to that connection with the land.

With it gone, he felt strangely lighter, and relieved, and bereft all at once. Then the three girls made their wish for a new Cephiro - shining and flawed and loved and no longer hiding a poisonous truth at her heart. Then there was only room for relief, and the truest joy he’d known in years.

The feeling of loss crept back slowly later in the day. Not that his connection to Cephiro seemed any less direct than it had that morning when he shoved his circlet in place and forced himself out of bed, but he didn’t feel so certain he deserved it. Especially once people started drifting away to sleep the first deep sleep they’d had in months, and he was left almost alone, too tired and too awake at the same time to take himself to bed.

If he slept - if he slept, then he would wake up, and it would be a new day, and what would he do then? If he wasn’t Guru anymore - and he was fairly certain the Creator taking his badge of rank from him meant that - what would he do?

So he stayed up, until there were only three of them left in the main hall of the Castle; Presea and Ferio, both witness to his demotion, remained pouring over the map of this new-Cephiro as she kept growing, making their first plans for how they would need to start exploring and repopulating it. LaFarga lasted a fair while, but eventually Caldina came and dragged him away, and he was so tired he didn’t even blush as he went.

Ferio and Presea. Both knew a lot about the structures and rankings of the Pillar’s ‘court’, though for different reasons. Both also kept looking at his bare forehead, and then away again, but neither broached the subject. Ferio’s own position had always been precarious, anyway, and now he wasn’t even the brother of the Pillar anymore…

When a bright ball of light bounced into being above the map, all three stared. When it coalesced into the harmless-appearing form of the Creator, all three of them flinched. But the great voice, when Mokona spoke again, was softer and kinder than it had been that afternoon.

/Well met, Faaru Presea, Ferio of Cephiro,/ it said. /And well met, Clef, one who was Guru./

That was official, then. Clef took a deep breath, bowing his head, and he couldn’t tell if his chest felt light or hollow. “Greetings, Creator,” he replied, because what else was there to say?

But Mokona smiled, and the air between them glimmered - not as bright as when Mokona had appeared, but nearly. And this new light grew, into a circle - into a circlet, made of sheer blue-white power, thrumming with it. /I took from you the role you held under the laws of the former Cephiro, for you have done your duty, and you have paid for it, and you deserved a choice - just as this Cephiro deserved a choice she now has. I ask this of you, Clef of Cephiro, in front of these witnesses; would you stand as Guru for this new-born land? Will you serve her with all your heart and all your will? If you wish not to, then you need do nothing. But if you chose to stand forward again, then I ask you to do so, now./

Clef stared, and he tried to breathe, tried to think - tried to look at the Creator, or Ferio and Presea, or anything other than the circlet spinning in front of him. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

“I have loved this land for so long, and she has hurt so many people I loved as hard as I loved her,” he said, slowly. “…I cannot turn down the chance to love her now, when she may save people instead. The best way I know to do that - the only way - is to serve her as best as I can.”

/Then take this, and become Guru Clef again, and anew,/ Mokona said, and Clef reached for the circlet with shaking hands.

The moment he touched it, light exploded through the room, momentarily blinding him. When he blinked his eyes open again, everything was just as it had been before - he might have imagined the whole thing, except Ferio and Presea were staring at him wide-eyed, and there was a circlet in his hands both like and unlike that he had worn before.

“…That was the shortest holiday anyone has ever taken,” Ferio managed, reaching out to grasp Clef’s shoulder and grinning at him. “Congratulations, Guru - and we’d best get to bed. You’re starting a new job in the morning.”

Clef laughed, and laughed, and his heart was ringing with the joy that echoed through all Cephiro.