Title: After Worlds' End
Fandom: Xenoblade Chronicles
Rating: AA
Length: 802 words
Warnings: End of the world. Implied/offscreen main character death. Angst.
Notes: MAJOR GAME SPOILERS AHOY. Every decent summary and most notes I've written for this includes massive spoilers - yes, even "Character A talks to Character B." Minor AU.
Summary: Fiora contemplates endings in the restful dark.

For a brief moment, Meyneth's power smoldered behind Fiora's sternum, and Meyneth's furious intellect blazed under her tongue. For that short time, Fiora knew what it was to build a world. What it was to watch it slowly fall apart. What it was, finally, to burn it down.

When Zanza's will failed him, she joined her blades to Shulk's and pierced him to the core, and the world stopped. Like flicking a light-switch, like a Mechon abruptly out of power, there was no transition. One minute she fought on a starry space with the world spread out below. The next - how long? - there was utter dark, and total silence, an aloneness so profound that she was surprised to be aware of it.

Monado Wielder. Alvis' voice echoed in her mind, shorn of its usual silver-haired avatar. Godslayer. What will you do now? He sounded reverent. She supposed he ought. What was left, after the world fell down? What was left, after a mismatched group of warriors battled and slew God, but the respect that had borne them so far?

"Shulk would rebuild the world," she said into the void, and Alvis must have heard it, for he responded.

He is doing so now.

She curled in on herself. With no gravity, nowhere to stand, the motion was as simple as falling. "It's not my world any more," she whispered.

It could be. I am instructed to put everything back as it was. You were part of it.  Will you be again?

She choked, gasped on nothing and wished for a brief span of pain that she were still capable of weeping. "Alvis - I died. Twice, now. Once the end of my world and now the end of everyone's. How can you ask me to go back again? Will you have me face it a third time?" 

Instruct me, Monado Wielder. His voice was as calm as it ever was. Shulk's directions are no more absolute than Zanza's, and - you are my friend. I will not go against your wishes, if you tell me the new world shall have no Fiora in it.

The sense of his presence retreated half a measure, and she thought it over. She had no heartbeat, any more, no breathing lungs to count the time; the pumps that circulated coolant and nutrient reported, nonsensically, STATUS GO in the part of her consciousness devoted to them. Unlike a pure Mechon, she could no more count clock cycles than she could time the firing of her own synapses. Time passed, or it did not, and Fiora thought, and Alvis waited.

"I'm still here, aren't I," she said, finally. A conversation with the utter dark.

As long as you desire.

It was shelter, of a sort, and she closed her eyes, as if feigning sleep.

~~~

"Did you ask the rest of them this question?"

They are not bound to the Monado. They were unable to sustain themselves. The dispassionate words came like a blow.

"Will you... will they.."

Everything, Fiora, back as it was.

"Then, I will go too. I'm sure of it."

Your body - Alvis trailed off, uncertain.

"Mechon." Fiora stood, with some difficulty. There was no gravity to balance against, no ground to hold her up. She visualized her thrusters, lost now in the shattered shell of Face Nemesis, and stabilized as if in a free-fall drop. "I died, Alvis. That Fiora is gone, my Homs body is... returned to the Bionis now, and dead again with it. I can't go back to being her, any more. The world will have to deal with one last Mechon. Let it end, and let me begin again."

Permit me, then. Hold the image in your mind - the one that suits you best. The one you most prefer.

She grabbed her self-image in both hands (both silver gripping claws) and held on for all she was worth, and with a jolt, the world reformed itself around her.

Goodbye, she heard, faintly, over the sound of dripping water, the precious voice of a single bird, and she almost cried Alvis' name aloud. She held the sound and let only the call go. 

Wait!

Yes, Monado Wielder?

Don't you tell him, Alvis. Don't you tell Shulk. This body looks like Homs, close enough - but it'll never be, and if he learns it, he needs to learn it from me. Don't you tell him. It'd break his heart.

As you wish, Fiora.

The sense of his presence faded, and she shook her head and sat - pushed properly against the ground, with hands that felt the texture of the grass, and sat, and that was enough to make her smile.

Shulk's hand thrust into her field of vision, and she looked up into his grinning face, and grinned back, and rose to walk into the new world.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Author's notes: 
This scene has been kicking around in the back of my mind for quite a while. If it reads like a chunk of something larger... well, it is, eventually. ^^; This'll be a prologue, but I thought it stood well enough alone to merit posting here.