Tidus reminiscing. There is waff and there is angst.
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Oh, it's easy to say that he loved, has loved, and loves her still, because he does, and there's no doubt about it. But when the sun sets, when he's left alone at the blitzball stadium, when Arik and Reese and Tint have gone their way home, to their various girlfriends and families—that's when he's all alone, with the water sifting through his fingers, through his toes, carrying his body like a cold dream. He tells himself he loves her, but at the same time he never wants to remember her again, because it hurts, he thinks about her so much. Sometimes he feels like he wants to go bang his head against a wall or something equally stupid like that, just to try and get her out of his thoughts.
He doesn't want to remember the first time he first saw her, come out of prayer with white skin and trembling, to make her way down the steps. She was to his eyes unforgettable, even in her exhaustion, lowered gaze and barely-there shadows under her eyes and her trembling grip on her staff, shaky so much that it seemed she might let it slip and fall to clatter down the stairs. She fell, but Wakka—or was it Kimarhi? He can't remember for the life of him—caught her, and she pushed herself from his grip because she wanted to stand on her own.
He doesn't want to remember the second time she prayed to the faith, the time before. They almost lost themselves in the chamber with its myriad of passages and the holy glow of glyphs. Even Auron didn't understand. The lot of them were dispirited, him sitting there in contemplation of the wall opposite of him, watching the fire burn low. They got out of there eventually, yes they did, and Yuna went to pray for Ifrit. When she came out she nearly stumbled again, this time against him. She smelled of the church, musty and mysterious.
He doesn't want to remember the thunder plains. There was the thunder, and Rikku, so scared of harmless lightning (only it wasn't as harmless after the electricity had left him shivering and his nerves fried on the ground). She had not flinched even a bit when the lightning had struck her, even though he knew it'd hurt like hell, and even though her staff trembled in her grip all over again. They rested under the odd-shaped lightning catchers, the group of them huddled together, and it was just as oddly comforting because she was right next to him again, though her head was lowered and her hand was clenched until the skin showed tendons and her nails left little moon-crescents on her palm. She had been nowhere as frightened as Rikku, and nowhere near as vocal. He remembered thinking admiring thoughts about her, for it; he remembered that he had even tried to tell her. It hadn't come out right; none of his words seemed to come out right around Yuna. Still she had smiled her little smile, and everything had been fine, even though the night sparked danger around them and the lightning after had hurt like a sonofabitch.
He doesn't want to remember the moonflow, the swirling lights of pyreflies fractured into a million luminescent colors by nature. He had thought it would rain that night, even though it didn't. The water was cold against skin, near numbing, her standing there up to her waist as light danced and flickered and played endlessly, the faith and their colorful dreams. He wanted to tell her that she should go back with him, that she would catch cold, that Auron and Lulu and the rest of them were worried. But instead he waded in after her himself, drawn irrevocably by the way she stood there, though he could not see her face; by the trail of her wet hair, her bow tailing in the water, the hem of her skirt, her skin made crimson and white and violet and blue all at once by pyreflies. They talked, just the two of them. Afterwards he kissed her, and she tasted like the faith, bitter and sweet with just a curve of rightness, the way her mouth fit against hers. It didn't matter that they were both so cold, or that she was crying, or that he wanted to cry too, but couldn't. It was the two of them, and the light of flitting pyreflies.
He doesn't want to remember Mt. Gagazet, with its dead Ronsos and dead summoners of just yesterday and its dead memories of a time long gone. She had nearly fallen in the snow; she had nearly cried. He hadn't, because to cry for something already pass was stupidity in its own right. The snowstorm took them off guard, one of those days, a flurry so violent it covered the traces of their footsteps in mere seconds, and nothing had been left but powdery white. Auron found them a cave, and he pushed Yuna in before inching in himself. The whole group slept in close quarters that night, her next to him. He was not surprised that she avoided him though they were so close together. Even then she wanted her space, and he didn't blame her for it. In the morning he had woken up, and there was her blanket tucked in around him, smelling of Yuna, of her aeons, old magic and dusty tomes, but no longer of the church.
He never wants to remember her, again. He never wants to remember the way she cooked, one of those mornings traveling along the edge of this road or that—was it Mushroom? He can't remember, because the exact names escape him—and he had woken up to the smell of meat frying and some soup burning up in its cauldron. When he tried it he couldn't help but laugh out loud, it was so bad. He laughed, and she laughed along with him, because she knew it was terrible too. They laughed and laughed, laughed until she started crying. She said they were tears of happiness. He believed her for a moment and a little afterwards. Still, he'd always made fun of her cooking, ever since and until the end.
He doesn't want to remember a lot of things. He doesn't want to remember her smile, her eyes—one green of sea-glass and the other blue like dawn just before the sun comes out—he doesn't want to remember her laughter, the way she had been so quiet in the beginning, so willing to please. He doesn't want to remember how she had grown so much stronger, and he had been only just a guardian who couldn't do anything but protect her physical form. He doesn't want to remember her sphere, that message she had intended to be her legacy to all of them; her words to Lulu, Kimarhi, Wakka, Auron; her words, to him.
He doesn't want to remember her, when she ran towards him, and she fell. When she cried.
He doesn't want her, because thinking of her makes his head hurt and his hands clench and his chest tighten until he's forced to dive deeper into the water than he's already gone, to force away the thought of her. If he cries no one will know. Only, he's never cried for her, not yet and not ever.
He doesn't want to remember her love.
But he wants to remember his part in their story, forever.
--fin.
AN: It's so weird it doesn't even make sense, jeez. I'm pretty sure I had a point when I started this, but then it just got lost in ALL THE TERRIBLY HORRIBLY HEARTWARMING FLUFF, MY GOD. (Har. Har.) O__o;;;