He was leaving. Leaving like he'd left for the Crimson Squad, taking care of all loose ends. Only this time, he wasn't coming back. Before, he'd wrapped their relationship up in a pretty little bow to be unwrapped and reopened at a later date. This time he'd crumpled it up into a tiny, tangled little ball and tossed in the wastebasket. This time they'd drifted apart, and he'd decided to cut his loses. He was leaving for good, leaving her behind just like he'd always been leaving her behind. And there was nothing she could do.
Not that she didn't want to scream and shout and beg, to abandon all dignity and plead with him to stay, to try to recover what they'd lost, what she'd foolishly let slip through her fingers like so many grains of sand. And, as he walked out the door with his worn satchel slung carelessly over one shoulder, she realized that it was just like always, that once again she was left all alone on her own small island, an island made of the grains of their failed relationship, smiling pleasantly as he sailed away on the only boat, laughing as he left to keep from crying.
--
It was inevitable that people would want her to talk about what happened, and mostly she succeeded in being politely vague, feigning indifference. But she'd never been able to lie to Yuna. Yuna always listened quietly and then cut her way past the bullshit and the half-truths, slicing her way right to the heart of the matter with a ruthless efficiency tempered with tactful delicacy. She was the perfect diplomat, the perfect confidante, the perfect cousin.
So when Yuna calmly asked why she hadn't stopped Gippal from leaving, Rikku wasn't at all surprised to find herself sobbing on Yuna's shoulder in very short order.
"But you could have stopped him," Yuna said. "He wouldn't have left if you hadn't let him. Nooj said he was waiting for you to stop him."
"You don't understand," Rikku said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief that Yuna had thoughtfully provided. "He wanted to leave. If I had asked him to stay, I would have been making us both miserable. He would've resented me for begging him to stay, and I would've always known he wanted to go. How would we live with that? How could I ask him to stay, when he wasn't happy?"
"You love him," Yuna said. "That's enough. Sometimes people just want to feel needed. Maybe he felt like you wouldn't care if he left. Maybe he really does love you still."
"It's not enough." Rikku sighed. "Sometimes love just isn't enough. You have to want to be with someone. He didn't want to be with me anymore, so I just…let him go."
--
She didn't want to go to dinner with Yuna and Tidus in Luca. She didn't really feel comfortable in public yet, without him. She wanted to retreat, to seclude herself away for a while to recover, to heal. To relearn who she was, Rikku sans Gippal. So naturally it was a shock, and not a particularly pleasant one to find herself seated next to Gippal at a large table that seemed to her to seat half of Spira.
Everyone else was laughing, talking, catching up with one another. Only Yuna noticed the awkwardness, shooting Rikku an apologetic glance from across the table.
Rikku sat very still, doing her best not to attract attention, mechanically working through the food on her plate, forcing each cardboard bite down a throat that seemed incapable of swallowing. She didn't look at him. She didn't speak to him. She sat quietly, waiting for the moment when she could excuse herself.
"How've you been?" The question was soft, low, asked with forced politeness, awkward courtesy. Her eyes burned. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and drained the last of her glass of wine.
"Fine. Just fine." She folded her napkin on her lap. "And you?"
"Fine." He sounded about as convincing as she did, and about as comfortable. "I've been staying in Kilika. Got an apartment. Got a girl."
Her fingernails bit into the varnished wood of the table. "Do you? That's…that's nice. I'm happy for you." She twirled the wine glass slowly, watching light refract from the delicate cuts in the crystal. "You should have brought her."
For a moment he hesitated. "No, I don't think she really knows anyone here. She wouldn't have been comfortable. Besides, she probably would've been a little jealous over the seating arrangements, right? What with us seated together and all, I mean. It wouldn't look right, old lovers together again after the split. I don't think Sana would've liked it much." He took a drink, pausing briefly. "That's her name, Sana. She's pretty possessive. There's no way she'd let someone leave her without a fight."
Rikku squeezed her eyes shut. "I…I have to go." She laid her napkin down on the table, pushing back her chair.
Gippal sighed. "Rikku."
"Sorry, everyone," Rikku said loud enough for the surrounding people to hear. "I'm not feeling too great. I've got to get home."
"Hold on a minute," Gippal stood as well. "I'll take you home."
"No!" Rikku forced a smile, rounding the table to kiss Yuna on her way out. "Thanks, but I'll be fine, really. Besides, how would it look to Sana?"
"She'll understand." He moved towards her, but Wakka stood up, blocking his path.
"Really, it's okay." Rikku made for the door. "Good night, everyone!"
"Rikku, wait!" Gippal tried to push past Wakka, but Wakka would have none of it.
"Just let her go, ya?" He urged Gippal back towards his seat.
Reluctantly, Gippal took it, staring moodily down into his mashed potatoes. He was annoyed. Annoyed that Rikku hadn't been jealous, annoyed that she hadn't let him take her home, annoyed that she had people to come to her rescue, people that weren't him.Baralai, seated on his opposite side, turned towards him.
"So," he asked conversationally, "who's Sana?"
"She's no one," Gippal replied, spearing a piece of steak.
Nooj snorted, adding his input from across the table. "Come on. I think you owe us a bit more than that. If you're dating so soon after you and Rikku split up, I'm sure everyone wants to meet this mystery girl who's managed to hook you."
"No, I mean she's literally no one," Gippal explained. "I made her up. She doesn't exist." He set his utensils on his plate and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. "I was trying to make Rikku jealous."
There was a moment's tense silence.
"Why?" Yuna asked softly.
"I don't know. I don't know." He pressed his fingers to his temples, rubbing little circles hoping to relieve some of his tension. "I guess I just…wanted to find out if she'd care. If she still cared. If she ever cared at all."
"Of course she cared." Yuna's eyebrows roses. "How can you even ask that? She still cares."
"Funny way she's got of showing it," he scoffed. "She let me go. She stood there and smiled and let me go like it was the easiest thing in the world."
"You're a moron," Tidus said in disgust. "I mean, I knew you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that really takes the cake. Hell, that takes the whole damn bakery." He stood up, pulling Yuna with him.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you're a hypocrite," Yuna replied. "You accuse Rikku of not caring, but really, Gippal, you're worse than that. You say she doesn't love you because she didn't stop you from going, but really you didn't love her enough. After all, you were the one who left her in the first place."
--
It took Gippal a while to work up the nerve to think that one through. He'd figured that Rikku hadn't been committed to their relationship because she'd let him leave without protest when in fact he'd been in the wrong for trying to force her to ask him to stay.
Of course she wouldn't have asked him. Rikku thought he was unhappy, she thought she was making him miserable. She couldn't ask him to stay when he'd been unhappy, couldn't be selfish like that, couldn't put her happiness above his.
Probably she figured he'd made up his mind to leave, and it'd probably be easiest for him to leave her if she smiled and pretended it was all right and let him go. She wasn't fighting to keep him because she thought he hadn't wanted her to. And now that she knew he had wanted her to, she thought he was involved with someone else.
It was all a big, awful mess. He'd tried to force her to fight for their relationship, and it had backfired in the worst of ways. And now they were both miserable. It was a problem of his own making, only this time he didn't have a solution.
--
He'd been pounding on her door for fifteen minutes. "Rikku, I know you're in there. Open up!"
He heard her moving around within. Probably she was hoping that he'd get frustrated and give up. Probably she was counting on staying far, far away from him for the rest of her life. Probably she'd stay far away from anyone who even knew him in the hopes of avoiding him even in conversation. She'd always done that, hid from things she didn't want to face, isolating herself from uncomfortable issues, from uncomfortable situations.
"Rikku, please. I just want to talk for a minute." He laid his head against the door, closing his eyes. If she wouldn't speak to him, it really was hopeless. Maybe she'd really decided she was over him, that she didn't want to see him at all anymore.
"Gippal, go away. Please, just go away." Her voice carried through the door.
"Talk to me, and I will, okay?" He laid his palm flat on the door, waiting.
There was a heavy sigh, and then the snick of a lock turning. The door opened slowly. She didn't look at him. At least, not at his face. She kept her gaze focused somewhere over his shoulder. She stepped back far enough to allow him inside.
"Please make it quick," she said, retreating to the kitchen. "I have somewhere I need to be." She sat down at the small table, lifting a cup of tea to her lips. She looked strange, different somehow. Defeated, almost. She wasn't living life to the fullest, she was just going through the motions, pretending a happiness she didn't feel. He stuck his hands in his pockets, trying to remember exactly what it is he'd wanted to tell her.
"Well?" She looked like a prisoner being led to execution, sitting tensely, as though she expected every word he said to cut her like a knife.
"I want to know why you didn't stop me from leaving."
She shrugged, a graceful rise and fall of the shoulders. "It doesn't really matter now, does it?"
"It matters," he snapped, angry again all of a sudden. She was avoiding the issue again, neatly countering his overtures. "You're always doing this! You'll fight for Yuna's cause, for Tidus' cause, for Spira's cause, but you won't fight for the things that are important to you! If you love something, you hold onto it, Rikku. You hold onto it tightly and you fight to protect it and you never, ever, ever let it go."
She closed her eyes briefly, stirring her spoon in her tea. "You wanted to go," she said. "And if you wanted to go, who was I to stop you? I wanted…" she paused to swipe a few tears from her cheeks. "Maybe I wanted to…to tell you not to. Maybe I wanted you to stay. But you wanted to go." She splayed her hands out, offering up her simple explanation. "More than I wanted you to stay, I wanted you to be happy. I still want that. That's why I didn't ask." Her eyes opened again, bright with tears. "Anyway, it's all behind us now. You've got Sana. I'm sure you'll be very happy."
Somewhere along the way he'd lost the ability to hear the things she hadn't said, but suddenly he heard her again, heard the pain and the hurt. He heard her heart, even though she was trying not to let him.
'Be happy', she was saying, 'because I gave up my happiness for yours.'
--
He didn't know why he hadn't left, why he was sitting on her couch, listening to her clean up the remnants of her breakfast in the kitchen. He didn't even know if she knew he was still there. He didn't even know why he hadn't left, other than that he didn't want to leave her again.
If he left this time it would be over for real, over forever. And he didn't want that, not really. He'd never wanted it. Not ever, not even once. He'd wanted her to fight for him, but he'd never really given her anything to fight for.
But this time he would. This time would be different, this time would be better. This time he wouldn't leave her behind, this time they would fight together as equals, as partners. This time he would teach her how to fight, but never force her to do so.
This time he wasn't going to leave her, ever again.
This time he wasn't going to ask her what she wanted, because he already knew. All Rikku had ever wanted was him.
So he'd have to fix it. He'd have to get rid of his apartment, gather up all his belongings, and move back in. Maybe she'd forgive him eventually, if he worked hard enough for her, to keep her, to keep them.
Resolutely, he headed for the door. He'd clear everything up and then come back and never let her go.
"Don't go."Her voice surprised him. He let go of the doorknob and turned around. She was staring at him, looking him right in the eye for once, hands fisted at her sides, cheeks bright red. But he couldn't tell if it was with embarrassment or anger.
"Don't go. Even if you have a new girlfriend, even if you don't love me anymore, I don't care. Don't go." She lifted her chin determinedly. And if it trembled a little, well, he would pretend not to notice. She took a couple of steps towards him.
"I don't want you to go." She visibly composed herself, growing stronger as she approached. "No, I won't let you go!" Finally, she flung her arms around his neck, clinging like a vine. She'd never done it before, never seemed needy or dependent. It was new. It was different. It was wonderful. This was what he'd been missing, what he'd wanted all along. He'd wanted her to need him, to want him around, to be upset if he left. To cry, to scream, to shout, to care.
"Please," she whispered against his shoulder. "Please don't go, Gippal. I love you!"
He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head.
"I wasn't going to go," he told her. "I'm not going anywhere, honey. I promise."
--
Alone on her island, she looked out over the sea, watching the waves rush the shore, waiting for something, anything. Since he'd left, her island had grown steadily smaller, sinking and washing away in the rushing waves, leaving her with wet feet and a broken heart, waiting for the sea to take her away like it had take him.
And then suddenly he was back, not in a boat, but in an airship suspended in the bright blue sky that faded into the endless sea, reaching down for her, stretching his fingers as far as they would reach, grabbing her wrist securely and lifting her off of the small mound of sand, pulling her with him up, up, up into the sun.