A/N: Seven and a Half Circles came from a little speach my teacher gave in art class once, surmounting to something like "The human normal human figure measures to exactly seven and a half circles, with the first circle being the head. Of course their are freaks out their who are a little off of the 7 and a half mark." For some reason this really stuck. So later when I actually had already started this fanfic I changed the title to SAAHC to better fit a story about my lovely lovely characters and all of their imperfections. That being said, this fic is a bit melodramatic and OOC perhaps.

Rikku's is the narrator and she is very unreliable one. She will try and slant the story to make some people look bad or too good. What I mean by this is she isn't omniscient in the context of the story. What she narrates isn't law in the emotional sense, physically however...

Blah blah blah... I won't go on, as no one actually reads these things any way.

Any way this is a recent edit. Chapter 8 has been deleted. :) I just thought I could do better.

Disclaimer: I don't own FFX-2 or any of the chars or locations...

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Seven and a Half Circles

Prologue

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I'm drowning.

My lungs filling as an uncomfortable stretch makes me just want to give in and let the water take me. I squirm under an invisible presence above me and kick and flail about, fighting with all I have just to survive another second. I try to scream but the water muffles my cry and I loose some of the very little precious air I have, instead I see bubbly spit rise above my head and mingle with the hair that floats there. My hair is tangled and stained with this terrible liquid and the more I move the more it becomes an ugly mess in the air I so desperately strive for. By now I've lost all hope for surviving or leaving a pretty corpse.

Desperately I sent a silent plea to all the people who have ever been there for me and wish that I could see them for one last goodbye.

Yuna I love you even though you annoy the hell out of me. I hope you remain perfectly perfect and live the happy fairy tale life you deserve.

Wakka and Lulu I hope you are happy together, don't mourn me for too long.

Kimahri you will make a good leader for your people, just don't let them convince you otherwise.

Paine I wish you were here.

Tidus… you be happy with that woman.

Suddenly a face appears over mine. He has cold eyes and harsh eyebrows. I scream at him when he reaches for me and pulls me out of the water to my feet. I narrow my eyes at him and throw a hip out for my pruney fingers to rest on.

"Miss, if you want to kill yourself I suggest you do it in a less public place and in a more efficient way. You could be a blitz ball with as long as you were holding your breath." He says harshly and walks away leaving me in the soft candle light bathing this place.

I giggled loudly. I wasn't trying to kill myself; I was feeling the exhilaration of drowning. I knew that I could never really drown. I could stay under water for a very long time, so long that I would loose patience trying to feel some sort of discomfort and leave to do something else. Tidus told me he was the same way, all blitz ball players were, and suggested we might be hybrids of ancient water humanoids.

It's not that I want to drown any way. I just want to know the feeling. I wanted to know what real distress was like.

It was arid in the air away from the wonderfully crafted Bevellian fountain so I reached to the water for the rose I tragically lost during the struggle. It was water-logged and the petals hung heavily, but that small imperfection made it even more beautiful. I fell back into the water and let the delicate thing breathe in my steed. My feet stayed out in the air, the one that had a strappy elegant heeled shoe on it was pointed at the ground and my sore shoeless foot swung around aimlessly in the warm night.

Bevelle was such a wonderful city. It had all the things that could make a city great. It had delicious food that I never tried but already thought was great, red buildings that reflected the misery of the lives of all the people that looked at them blankly hoping for a miracle, and gentle black waters surrounding the city. They mocked the mocked lives of the citizens who lit their paper lanterns every afternoon looking at the hot flame but never feeling its sting.

I loved immersing myself in the rules so I knew all the ones I could break, and how it was dangerous to walk into a public place in broad daylight looking like I had been chewed on by rogue moogles all night. I loved not belonging and having to meet new friends and enemies every day, while I dressed in robes and piled my hair on top of my head in a way that was to beautiful and intricate to even bother fighting in. So naturally I also enjoyed the fights.

I had been called here, and obligated to come but I will chose to stay even after I am no longer need to be the pretty face of the Al Bhed. Maybe If I stay long enough people will begin to believe I have a secret lover in the city, or I was sent on a suicide mission to bring Bevelle to its gold encrusted knees. Maybe I could develop a suicide mission with my secret lover to bring down Bevelle. We would escape to some secluded place under the waters of the Moonflow and grow whole fields of water-logged roses.

Forgotten, dead, and alone roses, colored like muddy blood.

Home would always be my city and my home, as Besaid is for Wakka, and Zanarkand is for Tidus. Yuna's home is in Besaid too, she is lucky and gets to live there with her friends and her boyfriend. They have themselves their own little tent, Tidus and her, and they sleep in it together. She is satisfied making him food and playing with the neighbors' baby while she throws back her tamed hair into a simple elegant pony tail. I went there once and laid innocently down on the only bed in the place and messed up the sheets while she watched me questioningly and made them again when I got up.

Every time there was always a fresh vase of clichéd roses, still boldly red and pointing towards the sky. They always counted to twelve. I could feel her gaze avoid them as mine did as well. I guessed she was embarrassed at the effort he puts into them while she stays home all day and cleans.

I would like more than anything to stay home and clean while I have a bouquet of roses to feel guilty about. As always Yuna is beautiful fairytale princess Yuna, living in her island paradise, completely happy with her delicate pillow fluffing duties. While I am a drowning little puppy-eyed girl who wants nothing more than a bouquet to call her own.

People like me don't have fairytale endings. We watch people we love die and struggle with expressing our emotions to the extent we drive people far away to distant lands were everyone walks in step.

No matter how I complained or writhed in the cold Yevonite water I could still feel an air of significance around me. I felt like the sole star shining in the night sky that was blocked by the lanterns of a red city that was already dead.

Some stories start with a torrid affair, kisses under the moon-light, or you know something significant in some way shape or form. My story starts with me basking in the stares of on lookers as I lay on the bottom of a fountain, twirling a rose in my fingers, and watching the water scatter its image. Is it too much to ask for someone to suddenly take a sky dive off of an airship, bring out the machine guns, and get the party started around here? I want to worry or be happy or be angry or something but I am just here. I am just humming a little song that my mother never sang on her death bed, and playing with a rose a forbidden lover never gave me, and missing a shoe that I didn't even like.

I am living within the contradictory world that hates me and mocks me. And loving every little bead of sweats salty taste as it falls into my gaping mouth.

I am forlorn.

I am happy.

I am dying.

I am spinning.

I am lusting.

I am crying.

I am burning.

I am ending.

I'm drowning and loving the insanity of it all.