Believe
(He loves how she makes it easy to believe. Nooj x Yuna)
A/N: inspired by song The One Thing by Shakira.
Nooj x Yuna plot-bunny. I toyed with the idea of a domestic future for Yuna and thought that Nooj could use some stability in his life. Along the way, the image of him smiling at her while she holds their child just popped into my head and insisted on staying there until I wrote something about it.
Sad Ending (or whatever ending where she is not reunited with Tidus) AU
This is my first ever FFX/X-2 fic, ever, even though those games are basically my life. I suppose it's my deep love and respect for those games that makes it hard for me to write about them, out of fear of not being able to do them justice.
If you had asked him five years ago about starting a family and marriage and the entire prospect of settling down, he would have laughed you off or casually dropped the subject with something wry or sarcastic.
As a matter of fact, that's exactly what he did when Baralai asked him about it. The young Praetor had just married the daughter of a priest. It was an enormous celebration, of course. By the end of it, Gippal was dead-drunk and Nooj himself felt a little more than tipsy. Baralai and his bride were dragged all over the hall to greet guests and well-wishers and to accept congratulations from people they would probably never see again. Still, amidst it all, his friend found time to tease the Meyvn about his own plans for the future. Nooj brushed him off with "Gippal will sooner find a woman he'd like to keep," referring to their third friend's own fear of commitment.
Then, as if Fate designed it to specifically toy with Nooj, Gippal tells them a year later that he was to marry his childhood friend, Rikku.
Nooj decided a long time ago that people like him were made to be alone. He always found a certain kind of comfort in solitude. He welcomed loneliness. It didn't feel like something he wanted to be rid of. And it's not like he had time to be lonely. When he was a Crusader, there was never really time for anything except Sin. After he lost his arm and leg, he occupied himself with the ventures of a Deathseeker. Then came the Crimson Squad and everything that it brought with it. Soon he found himself as the founder of one of the major parties in the post-Sin Spira. And there was always something going on with the League. Of course he knew Spira's youth would be volatile and unpredictable. Putting them together on a rock and telling them to organize themselves isn't really that different from taking care of a room full of children. Except these 'children' are able to wield weapons that they can use to kill each other.
The Youth League kept Nooj occupied. And he'd be lying if he said he didn't see his officers as a sort of family. It provided him with a sense of contentment that he deemed enough.
Some people were made for settling down, and Nooj just wasn't. If he thought he was, he wouldn't exactly make himself the leader of hot-blooded Spiran youth, now would he?
It happened three years after the defeat of Vegnagun.
He didn't want to think their marriage was political. But, of course, it was. She's the High Summoner who saved Spira twice and he's the Meyvn of the Youth League. Everything they do is political. She could just say that she likes moonlilies and people would turn that into a statement of support for the preservation of shoopuf habitat movement.
Still, as he watched her walk down the aisle, he'd like to believe she said 'yes' because she felt affection for him, just as he did for her, and not just because she knew it would make people happy. (He couldn't decide if her sense of obligation to the people around her was her best or worst quality.)
"Believe in Yuna," she had told him.
He remembers how her eyes burned then. She was determined, driven, hopeful. Before that moment, whenever he saw her, he couldn't help but feel a little jealous. She was merrily skipping all over Spira while his everyday was consumed by a soul-devouring despair.
But in that moment, in the tense prelude of the final battle, when she promised him that they can win without sacrificing any more than what they already had, what consumed him was the fire in her eyes.
And, perhaps, he saw himself in the glint of sorrow and regret he found there as well.
When he looks back, he thinks that's the moment he started falling in love with her.
It took him a while to admit to himself that he loved her. He tried to ignore the skip in his heartbeat when he saw her in his visit to the League's Besaid chapter. When he met her again in Kilika, he tried to dismiss the hot flush he felt as caused by the humidity. He didn't want to admit that the sight of her at Baralai's first wedding anniversary made him smile.
At Gippal and Rikku's wedding, when Paine asked him what he was staring at, he refused to grace her with a proper answer. He said he never figured her for a nosy person, and she gave him a knowing look before nodding at Yuna (who, of course, had been the object of his visual contemplation). He elected to ignore both gestures.
When the summoner asked him to be her partner for a slow dance, he had been adamant at his refusal. Unfortunately for him, she's not one to give up on a conquest. She said she simply could not allow the best friend of her cousin's groom to look so grim. She also happened to mention (with a blush that he wanted to tell himself wasn't caused by or meant for him) that Paine personally asked her to rescue him from the corner he was sulking in.
He was torn between thanking and resenting his friend.
Four months later, the normally eloquent Meyvn Nooj of the Youth League found himself in a prayer room in Besaid Temple, struggling to find words as he expressed his desire to marry the High Summoner Yuna.
It took him two years of marriage to understand what she meant when she smiled and said "Of course I will."
He loves everything about her.
He loves how she feels curled up next to him in bed.
He loves how she hums to herself when she thinks no one can hear.
He loves how she giggles when he nuzzles her neck.
He loves how she smiles when he holds and kisses her hand.
He loves how she frowns at him when he annoys her.
He loves how she knows what he's thinking with just a look.
He loves how she holds him when she knows he's upset or tired.
He loves how she kisses him and how it somehow makes everything better.
He loves how she tells him that they'll figure it out together, that it will all work out, and how she makes it easy to believe.
He loves how she makes it easy to believe.
Three months into their marriage, she gets pregnant.
Two months later, she loses it.
For the first time since he's known her, he thought he saw the light go out in her eyes. It was all he could do to hold her.
She apologized to him and he begged her not to.
As he held her sobbing her broken heart out, he told her something he wanted to say since Gippal's wedding: "I love you."
"I'm here," he said, "We'll figure this out together."
He always thought that she was his light. Now he was determined to be her anchor.
His first wedding anniversary gift to her was a silver ring with the word Believe engraved on it. She cried as he put it on his finger, right next to her wedding band.
She announced her gift to him by placing his hand over her stomach. It was his turn to cry.
If you had asked him five years ago about starting a family and marriage and the entire prospect of settling down, he would have laughed you off or casually dropped the subject with something wry or sarcastic.
But that's because he never would've imagined himself being woken in the pre-dawn of his second wedding anniversary by the wailing of his toddler daughter.
He never would have imagined himself getting up to address said wailing even though he's only had a total of three hours' sleep (caused by similar wailing the night before).
His wife beats him to it, as she always does (even though she probably has less sleep than him).
Five years ago, he never would have imagined smiling as he watches the High Summoner Yuna, the love of his life, cradling a cooing baby that was half his. Nor would he have imagined ever feeling this content and happy.
He walks over to where his family is and puts his arms around them.
Funny how things work out, he thinks. And she's the one who says it.