Gagazet was so cold.

She closed her eyes, extending her arms and twisting them into a bow she'd done a thousand times before. A grave stood before her, but that was not who she was praying for. Her thoughts, for the first time in months, were not on death… but on life.

She wasn't happy with the change.

"A shame that you'll be stopping your pilgrimage, I was rather looking forwards to what a Seymour-Sin would look like," Kinoc drawled. He shuffled on the Everea-patterned sofa, picking something off his robe. His feigned disinterest wasn't fooling him, Seymour hadn't seen Kinoc this animated in years. Kinoc had a superior light in his eyes, one that spilled out onto the way his jowls twitched with supercilious glee.

"You shouldn't be pleased," he said, folding his legs neatly and staring at the wall. "It means you'll still be opposing me at every possible opportunity. Do you not grow tired of it, Kinoc? Am I really such a threat to you?"

"Oh, I don't think you'll be a threat to anyone, anymore," he grinned. Flicking the dust he'd gathered from his robe, he leered towards the young Maester. "I'd have thought you'd learned from your father."

Seymour gave a low and unthreatening "mph", and turned his head to look away.

She ate the snow. It tasted pure.

"There's no blood on the snow," she almost cried. "There's no blood."

Tromell pulled a little on her dress, tightening it around the back. A couple of nameless Guado assistances (who, even when she asked for them, just shook their heads and said they wouldn't be worth remembering, anyway) tugged and stitched and sewed and adjusted all the little feathers into place.

"You look wonderful, my Lady," the butler warbled, standing before her and looking her up and down like a race-chocobo reading itself for its first big day. And she supposed it really was her big day, even if it didn't feel very big. She barely felt even nervous, like she had so known she would. Yet she wasn't shaking, she wasn't full of fear or trepidation or anticipation. She was going to kiss a man and wear his ring and then everything would be back to normal, it wasn't how a wedding should be, but it was good enough.

It was good enough.

"Never, in all my years, have I seen a Human maiden so beautifully dressed. Even Lord Seymour's mother could not compare to your beauty, ah. But of course, even she, who wanted nothing more than to bring our races together – even she did not have as great a task at hand as you, my Lady. Such responsibility to carry, such a noble task indeed. No, I don't think even the Guado women could hope to steal your beauty, so jealous have they been of you this day." Noticing the summoner's face fall just a tiny bit at this, Tromell immediately changed tact. "Ah, but, don't worry my Lady. They are happy, so very happy, to know that their Lord has found such a perfect bride – one that could only match his brilliance."

"Thank you, Tromell," she said, batting her lids and turning her face away. She was growing… a little used to his tirades of compliments, and, well. They were funny. She could see why Seymour so often cut him off (so rudely!), and even found herself wishing she had the gall to quieten him. Yet… his murmuring was not so bad, like rain that slowly faded into white noise. While the ladies tied wings onto her back, she smiled and realized that she loved the happiness in Tromell's eyes.

It was the happiness of the people.

"Where did these feathers come from?" she said with a soft smile, trying to do her best to show appreciation for the dress she could not care about. "They're lovely."

"Ah, fresh from condors. From Besaid, you know. The Lord wanted you to be covered in things from Besaid – the silk, too, was made there. Good business for the tailor, I bet. Bevelle is never one to shy away quite a pretty penny, you know."

"That's…" she dipped her head, staring down at the beautiful stitchwork. Everything was beautiful. Everything was… so… perfect. From her hometown? Really? Toto had made this? She wondered what the village had thought… they must have been so proud seeing their silks carted away. So proud of the little girl carried weeping on a Ronso's back for growing up and promising her hand to a Maester. "That's wonderful."

Why didn't she feel beautiful, then? Why didn't she feel… perfect?

The void was quickly brushed from her as a woman brought her a bouquet. She immediately recognized them, "These grow around Besaid, too!"

"Yes, Lord Seymour…" began Tromell, puffing out his chest and extending a huge arm. "He is quite fond of the foliage around Besaid. Flowers are his specialty. Ever since he was a child, he possessed an extraordinary talent for floristry. I'm afraid… you will have to ask him what they are. Plants and I were destined to never be good partners."

Over the rumble of his chuckle, Yuna lifted a hand to her neck, and touched silver. "They're hibiscus flowers. I have one on my necklace, do you see?"

Tromell leaned forwards, nodding enthusiastically.

"Yes, my Lady. I do."

Her necklace swung over her breasts. Her breaths gasped in the air and she scrambled for his too-long, too-tender hand and forced it into the silk sheets. Ah! – Silk, did that too, come from Besaid? He should have covered this bed in sand if he wanted her to feel comfortable and at home, but she supposed the vicious blue of his… everything was enough to remind her of the sea. He pressed his head against hers and she felt a claw sink into her back as the two writhed like over enthusiastic teenagers. He hurt her too much and he hurt her not enough and they were careful and not careful enough and soft and gentle and rough and passionate and she realized she didn't even understand what any of those words meant in the context of the bedroom – so she just knew that she felt good and he kissed her lips with burning fire and cupped her breast in a softness his mouth no longer had.

And then he grabbed her necklace with an anger that scared her and she feared he would rip it apart. Yet just as she was imaging all the silver little beads scattered and rolling about on the red, red sheets, he softened his face and between pants he asked, "Was this your mother's?"

And when she nodded he made a noise like a dying animal and held her and kissed her in such a messy, passionate and utterly desperate way before he brought his lips to her nipple and sucked so hungrily that she felt as though that one answer meant more than anything to him.

She wondered why.

When the morning light came, she stood beneath the window. Light flooded in, and he studied her in her full nakedness. Her back was quite lovely, her little shoulders perfectly hunched up and the tension practically leaking off of her. He pondered on the whiteness of her skin, and the way it attracted deep, dark shadows beneath her curves. Yet it was her ankles that captivated him most – those spinning, beautiful ankles he had seen almost break between the dirt and the dead during Operation Mi'ihen.

Was there anything, though, that was not utterly perfect about her? He should have been sick of it. Sick of that not-too-silky, not-too-dry, not-too-soft, not-too-hard hair that he had played and run his claws through over and over after their love making was done and her eyes had turned off to sleep. Ah, even her eyes were unique. Fully living, burning with not just resolve but passion and fear and anxiety and curiosity and, on occasion, happiness too. Her lips, too, subtle and thin and yet so swift to stumble over words and paint the most beautiful of phrases - nothing was wrong with her. Nothing. Even her little heart and lungs and organs must have been perfectly shaped and healthy and pure. Even her bones must have been the whitest of things.

He worshipped her.

"Do you love me?" he asked, half mocking, half serious. He watched her shoulders shift and tense even harder, watched her fingers wrap around her necklace as she stared at the pale blue sky.

He was so strange. He was so exotic, so far off and that was what she found attraction in. She found his uniqueness and utter other-worldlyness something to cling to, and when he spoke of Spira's history or taught her all about pyreflies and the stars and the fiends out in the woods and how the Guado were before Yevon well… she felt taken to another world. She could dream with him… just as much as she'd dreamed with him. Well, maybe not just as much. Maybe just a little less – because this life was real and tangible and she could hold it between her fingers and knew as soon as she spread them it was all going to leak out.

And it would be so easy, to just keep on dreaming.

She whispered it at first, "I can't," before it turned into a kind of mournful wave, a chattering, sing-song that rose up and spread all over the floor "I can't" and all over the walls "I can't" and all over that bed "I can't" that felt "I can't" so "I can't" dirty and "I can't" obscene now. "I can't I can't I can't I can't "

"I'm so sorry. I… I just can't."

He just smiled.

Kinoc was prattling on again.

"Cheer up, Seymour. I'm not sure why you would want to become Sin, anyway," he swung his arm over the back of the sofa, glowering. "All that suffering, all that death – Isn't that exactly the kind of stuff you hate? Well," he laughed, "not the death part. But you understand what I'm getting at – you have a good life here. You have everything anyone could ever want, why would you want to throw all that away?"

"If you had wanted to convince me that what I was doing was foolish, should you not have come to me earlier?" Seymour tilted his head, folding his arms behind his back and turning away from the other man. He could no longer stand his face.

"Hey, you know it wasn't in my interests. Besides, I could hardly stop a friend going out and saving the world, if that's what he really wants, could I?"

Seymour shuffled his shoulders, staring out the window and down on Bevelle. Kinoc was a poor liar, but he didn't have to be good at it. His bluntness and his plainness always did play to his advantage. Ah, if only he was not so obsessed with power. What a terrible burden, he reminded himself, it must be. "I see."

"You've gone all quiet. What's wrong, Seymour? Summoner got your tongue? She definitely has something else."

His laughter roared against his back like the tide.

"We can make a good life, you know," she whispered to the dark. "We can be… happy, I think. All we have to do is smile, you'll see. Just smile, and everything will start to seem a little better."

Silence.

"I'm sorry, I have to do this. I have to do this, I just… I can't." And then came that river again, that river of can'ts and cannots that screamed out of her battered throat so that they sounded like dirty little scars.

Her back tensed.

"I… never wanted this… either, but…" she whispered, "Seymour…" she stared at him at the back of the tent. His huge figure suddenly seems so much larger, and she could feel his judging breaths all over her skin. She sat up on the bed, the tension thick enough to choke the words in her mouth. "Please…"

And then he moved.

At a lightning-pace that makes her think of the veins on his face he was over her and forcing her wrists down onto the bed. Her head twisted back at an awkward angle and thumped against the sheets. The colour drained out of her face. She opened her eyes. She glared, silently calling on all her aeons – but tries to sooth him before that and whispers in a prayer, "Please don't. Please don't kill –"

But then his head was against hers and she could feel his blood pulse beneath those veins and that hard grip turn soft. She was reminded of rocks weathered by the sea. She tangled her fingers in his like seaweed, and felt rain leak from his eyes. Turning her head towards them, she caught the tears as they fell and sighed as his free hand stroked her necklace.

"Gagazet is cold, isn't it?"

She broke the ice with a statement that often caused it, and both of them were laughing as salt poured from their exhausted eyes. She was nothing on this mountain side. Not a Summoner. Not Yuna. Not the wife of a Maester or a girl born in Bevelle and carted all the way to Besaid. Not food for the bandersnatches, not healer of broken bones and twisted spines and broken smiles. Not a girl. Not a woman. Not seventeen when she felt seventy – no, no. She was dead here. She was dead here all save laughter and tears and she kissed him and knew only salt and skin.

He watched her eat snow from the earth.

"There's no blood," she whispered for the third time.

He canted his head and moved towards her, shuddering as winter ate apart his skin. "Lady Yuna, please, tell me the winter chill hasn't gotten to your brain. You are too strong to be driven mad by a little cold. You haven't been confused, have you?"

She realized he talks a lot when he didn't know what to say. He talks a lot when he felt control slipping out between his fingers or when he had just enough control and authority on the subject that he would rant and rave almost as much as Tromell. She stared at the ring on her finger and began to stand, snow dripping from her hands. It tasted pure. It tasted good.

She was anything but, now.

She wanted to run screaming to Kimarhi. To bury herself into his big, furry arms and weep and cry and beg nononono it had only been once or twice or maybe three times or maybe a little more but I'm sorry and I didn't mean it it never felt good it felt hard and bitter and i'm sorry take me home, take me home – and then he'd carry her all the way from Bevelle to Besaid again, and she'd jump off the shoopuf just like before, just like one thousand times before.

Maybe she'd even crawl back to Tidus. Crawl back crying and promising she was still a maiden and that her heart still bled, beat, screamed for him in the darkest nights as she watched her husband breathe. Maybe she could recapture that wonderful, innocent, shuddering feeling instead of this gooey black-void that ate her all up.

Oh, oh Lulu. Wakka. Please, she wanted to whisper, please let them come back and ruffle her hair and tell her what to do next. Please let Lulu wash her feet again and scold her for running through fields of poison oak. Let Wakka teach her all about the fiends, all about how once she got Valefor, garuda's would be a piece of cake, ya? Then they could rest easy when they went adventuring around the island, then they wouldn't have to run any more.

She was running now, and, oh, there was no Sir Auron to catch her or Rikku to beam and joke and laugh when she tumbled over and her hair spilled out in a funny, silly way.

"I'm pregnant."

"What?"

"That's how I know. There's no blood on the snow. There hasn't been for at least eight weeks. There was none on the calm lands, none on our honeymoon. There's… no more blood, and… I'm… I'm pregnant.""

Their worlds broke and fell apart together and all at once.