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Part 1:
After Phoenix Gate, Joshua the human boy was lost. But the Phoenix always rose from the flames, especially when it had much left to do, and here it took what little remained of Joshua, some strands of red gold hair, fingernails, charred rib bones, and reconstructed him. He came back perfect on the outside, with all the trappings of a human being; his body grew and he exuded warmth. But there was no beating heart beneath, there was only pulsing Phoenix fire.
The Undying suspected, but they served the Phoenix, and the Phoenix he still was. Jote knew because she knew him best of all, and she never flinched or wavered. She might have even loved him all that time, even though monsters didn’t deserve to be loved.
Joshua confronted Ultima at Drake’s Head, and thought “This mortal flesh of mine is not true after all. Surely it will do to imprison an intangible concept. One impossibility caging another.” But the Phoenix struggled to animate while containing Ultima, and his eldritch body started to break down, bits of it coming out of him with every bloody cough.
At Origin, after Ultima burst from him and he gave his wings to Clive, the Phoenix was too weak to sustain his body any longer. But even as he lost consciousness, it kept the smallest flame alight.
Then, Clive healed Joshua’s terrible wound. He did not come back to life because he had not truly lived since Phoenix Gate. But he was not gone, either. He remained in a suspended state, perfectly preserved, a tiny flame holding him together. He did not breathe, but his body did not grow cold. The Phoenix was still waiting for something.
What was it? Joshua’s mind was still aware, and he reached out in aetheric form. He found Dion’s body, for Origin had claimed Dion’s life. The flame flickered and he felt a flash of anguish. “Dion!,” he cried voicelessly, while “Bahamut!” echoed from the Phoenix.
He understood then that all along it was Bahamut that the Phoenix sought. Bahamut and Phoenix were soulmates, companions since the beginning, and the Phoenix was not done until it found Bahamut again. But Dion was gone, and Clive had removed magic from the world. The Phoenix was alone, broken, incomplete, but it would endure. And Joshua would endure with it, a silent Sleeping Beauty.
As for Clive, after he awoke on the beach, he grieved to find Joshua unbreathing, but he grieved even more to find him remaining warm and whole, fearing that he had somehow entrapped Joshua’s soul forever in this form. Magic was supposed to be gone now; what magic then kept Joshua this way? After everything was tried to awaken Joshua, he spirited Joshua’s body away to the deepest, most hidden forest he could find to keep him safe. He wrote clues in the book Final Fantasy of Joshua's existence, that even with the end of magic “the Phoenix remained to bring new life into the world, until the day the world can sustain itself on its own.”
Clive and Jill visited Joshua as much as they could. He remained still but perfect, with only his hair growing ever longer. At their last visit, in the twilight of their time on Valisthea, Jill gently combed Joshua’s hair and braided a few strands of it. As he left the grove where Joshua lay, Clive turned one last time to look at him, and said, softly, “Please. Let somebody wake him up with love.”
Part 2:
Joshua of course, refuses to be a passive sleeping beauty. He can walk into dreams, and he claims all the agency he can, learning much of the world and even influencing events here and there by placing the right suggestions into the minds of the right people.
He also finds the souls of those he once loved now living in new bodies, reborn. Mid’s soul, in particular, is never away for long, driving human ingenuity through many guises. So he waits, and hopes, but he does not sense Dion for years. For centuries.
And then after a thousand years, a pulse of light, a baby opens amber brown eyes, and the Phoenix’s flame flares. Dion!
Joshua speaks to Dion in his dreams, feeding him with story, bit by bit, careful of what Dion can contemplate as he grows. Dion starts to hold an understanding of the past in his unconscious, and Joshua eventually reveals his form and person.
When Dion starts to become a man, the dreams start to be driven as much by Dion as by Joshua, with Dion questioning, and with Dion starting to desire, as well. And some of the dreams start to become…more.
Art by Roxetta
Dion wakes from these dreams in a state, with Joshua’s parting words to him always being “come and find me!”
Finally, Dion is old enough to set out, and his journey is long and far, for he has to also seek the magic that has bubbled back up in Valisthea over time. He has to find Bahamut. And after that, he has to find the deepest, darkest wood, still untouched after a thousand years, where Joshua lays waiting.
Art by Hano
Art by Hano
And when he does, with a kiss, Dion wakes his Sleeping Beauty. Bahamut joins with the Phoenix to complete their journey, breathing real life into Joshua for the first time in over a thousand years. Finally, Joshua feels his heart start to beat.
Art by Hano