that six, this six
She does not remember being six – or seven or eight or nine or even ten – but Kairi says that when she came to Destiny Islands, Selphie was there in her yellow dress and they played on the beach all day long with their boys like always – though only two of them are her boys (but not really) because there is something about them that she understands deepdeepdown in the depths of her soul where she is taller and happier – and they were six, but Selphie does not remember.
(She does not think she ever remembered being six, if she reallyreallyreally thinks about it.)
But that six is different from this six because that six is an orphanage with a quiet brown-haired boy and a bossy blonde girl and a funny boy with a tattoo, and a boy who she thinks she might have loved, and it is blurry and disjointed and it does not make sense, but it is there.
This six is not there at all.
And sometimes, Selphie thinks she is (not too much) older than she is, because her dress is too small (though it's not) and she is too old to be fighting arrogant little boys with a skipping rope because she should be fighting monsters and sorcerers with nun-chucks instead. She thinks she is too old for this stupid school stuff, because hadn't she already graduated? And sometimes she loves trains, without knowing what those are.
Once she asked her boys (who were not her boys because they did not wear cowboy hats and did not eat hot dogs and did not have have grumpy dispositions) if they knew what trains were. Wakka did not know, but Tidus said he did. Selphie does not ask what they are, she asks him how he knows what they are. His eyes glaze over and he does not speak for a long time until he says that Kairi must know what trains are, she must have told him.
Selphie does not want to ask Kairi what trains are, because Kairi will not give her the answer she wants.
She thinks that Tidus knows what trains are because he has seen trains and smelt trains and been inside trains and sung songs about trains because he is older than he is, but not by much. She knows this because sometimes he hates his father and sometimes he misses his mother and sometimes he whistles with an ancient sort of hope in his eyes, and sometimes he glows like he's made up of tiny balls of light.
And it is rare that Tidus wins a fight, even though he practices with his stick all day, pretending it is a sword (thought not the way Sora and Riku pretend) – and it must be because his stick is not the sword he thinks it is.
(Wakka had found that stick and presented it to Tidus and called it brotherhood, and the two boys cried for days and days and days.)
And sometimes Wakka isn't talking about blitzball, he's talking about blitzball, in a big underwater dome in a sprawling city filled with people who are scared, and it is the most important sport in the whole world – and Tidus understands. Sometimes he has a dead brother and a wife and a baby named fortune, and they live in a cozy, wonderful hut on an island that does not bear the name Destiny, and he hashashad faith in something, and he is (was) a hero.
Selphie thinks that Wakka must be older than he really is, too.
Two years later, Kairi says she knows a boy who was funny and brave and kind and was named Sor-a, but no one else seems to remember him, and Selphie talks to her for hours about boys who are fuzzy around the edges and inexplicable heartache. But Kairi's boy comes back with a key and tales of a thousand different worlds and Riku, and soon she forgets all about people who don't exist.
Sora comes back full of stories, and Selphie listens because they are marvellous and magical, and because one of the characters reminds her of someone she thinks she knew– a brave, melancholy young man who carries a a sword that shoots fire (gunbladegunbladegunblade) but his name is Leon, and Selphie does not know a Leon.
But she knows a boy like that, she is sure, and he has the heart of a lion.
And she also knows a boy in a cowboy hat who carries a gun and wears a longlonglong coat, but she doesn't, and she cannot understand why. She had forgotten him once before, had she forgotten him again?
Sometimes, when he's playing with Tidus, Wakka is on a different beach. Sometimes Wakka thinks he is on a cold, dry beach covered in the dying and the dead and other times he thinks he is on the warm, wet beach that feels like home.
And Wakka met Tidus on that beach – or, Wakka met Tidus on this beach, when they were six. That's what Riku says; they became fast friends with they were six and snuck out of school to fight with wooden swords and swim in the ocean and explore the secret cave where the monsters lived. But Wakka remembers a different beach and a Tidus that is a little bit taller and a little bit blonder, and neither of them is six.
Wakka knows this because Tidus was much older when they fought side by side to protect – to protect who?
He can't remember most days, but sometimes – sometimes he whips his blitzball at the other's heads like it's a weapon, not a toy, and sometimes Tidus hits it so hard with his stick that Wakka thinks it might break into tiny little pieces and they'll have to stop at a travel agency to buy a new one otherwise the fiends – otherwise his mother will freak.
(She is always there when he comes home and he is always surprised.)
Selphie's a bit too violent with her skipping rope, too – snaps it with a bit too much ferocity and a bit too much intention, like she's fighting a war that no one else knows about. But kids will be kids, he guesses – he's a kid, too; sometimes he has to remind himself.
And Riku calls Kairi and Selphie their girls – their girls who they have to defend and protect from monsters and the warlocks and the darkness (those aren't real monsters because real monsters don't bother to kidnap the princess, they just raze her city).
Wakka thinks, though – Wakka thinks that Riku doesn't know what it is to defend someone, fighting tooth and nail to keep the people you love alive in a hopeless place where fighting is fruitless because you cannot defeat your own corruption. Riku does not know what it is like to walk beside someone and fight with them on a pilgrimmage that you know ends in her death.
Neither Kairi nor Selphie is his girl, even though sometimes – just sometimes, Selphie looks at him and he can tell that she sees him – sees his frustration and his fear and his dead brother (you don't have a brother) and asks him if he knows what a train is, and Wakka knows – Wakka knows that she is the same as he is, the same as Tidus is.
She reminds him of someone, Selphie – he's not sure who but she's blonde and green-eyed and fifteen years old too but wise for her age; she's hardened by adversity and she taught him tolerance.
It's that shadow who he thinks of as his girl, along with the seventeen year old who saved the world with pure conviction and the black mage who he married because she loved his brother as much as he did, even though you don't have a brother.
(He's dead).
Wakka has to remind himself with a forced laugh and a twisted feeling in his gut that he can't have a wife; he's barely sixteen years old after all.
He feels lost sometimes; not lost like he's not sure where on the island he is, but lost like he's trapped and floating in an unending sea, waiting for a girl to call him out of the darkness.
Tidus heard it once, her call – but it was Riku trying to get the attention of Sora and Kairi. An impossible longing filled up inside him when he heard it; a piercing whistle that cut through the air and drowned out the sound of the wind and the waves and the wails of his friends. Tidus had known the instant he heard it that it was not right; it was too short and too sharp and too meaningless. It still made him shiver.
But when he thinks about that moment he isn't sure who the her he was listening for is – it's not Kairi and it's not Selphie and it's not anyone he knows but he misses her more than anything and he doesn't understand why.
He thinks that maybe Wakka knows who she is – Tidus never asks if he does because it's not the kind of question that would fit very well into words. He thinks this because Wakka plays blitzball like Tidus plays blitzball – like he's underwater, like he's a professional, like every second on the clock matters, like it's the most important sport in the world.
Riku and Sora aren't bad at blitzball, it's just that they don't understand blitzball – they'd rather play with their wooden swords which is unfathomable to Tidus because why would they want to fight fiends?
Wakka understand that too – understands that fiends are dangerous because they are born out of hate and anger and fear. You can't kill those kind of monsters with toy swords – not even the stick Wakka gave him could do an inch of damage, not even when Wakka christened it brotherhood (it's not the real one, because the real brotherhood doesn't give you splinters) and burst into tears.
Riku made fun of them both for crying, and pure hatred pulsed through Tidus (I'm not a crybaby) because didn't Riku realize that it belonged to Wakka's brother?
Wakka doesn't have a brother, Tidus reminds himself (because he's dead or because he was never alive?).
Tidus doesn't really trust Riku that much anyway, because Riku talks about being six with them but Tidus remembers a different six – one with skyscrapers and stadiums and terrible fathers. When he thinks about that six, he can't see his hands properly – tiny balls of light float where his fingers once were.
There are lots of things jumbled up in his head that dissolve into light when he tries to remember them – lots of people he's never met and places he's never been and things he's never done. And while he knows that Wakka's full of these things too, it's Selphie who he talks to when they are sixteen after Kairi disappears.
He'd overheard them talking about the boys they liked and how they didn't exist and Tidus knew that Selphie missed someone like he missed the summoner he's sure he kissed in a bottomless lake. They talk about blurry people and memories that aren't all there for ages and ages, until Kairi comes back followed by Riku and a king and a duck and a dog and Sora – that's the day Tidus finds Selphie crying in the tree house because Kairi's boy burst back into life, so why hasn't hers? And he understands, because there's a deep dark longing for someone he doesn't know at all within him too.
They both listen to all stories that were brought back by all three of his friends, and Tidus finds he can barely listen when Sora starts talking about a place called Radiant Garden and three little thieves with little wings because he's sure he knows them. Everyone laughs because there's a girl who has the same name as Riku, but Rikku gives Tidus almost as many goosebumps as Yuna.
Yuna. Yuna. Yuna.
It's always on his breath now, Yuna, because he knows her, he knows her, he knows her.
And so Tidus whistles for the girl he's in love with, for the people he can't remember, for the things that only exist somewhere deep inside of him.