I was just guessing at numbers and figures,

pulling the puzzles apart.

Questions of science, science and progress

do not speak as loud as my heart.

Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me,

oh and I rush to the start.

Running in circles, chasing our tails,

coming back as we are.

Coldplay - The Scientist

Prologue

She jumped out of the lift and dashed toward the edge of the deck. She collapsed on all fours, her fingers splayed across the decorated floor, breathless. She began panting uncontrollably as she stared at the colors in the ground. The purples and pinks and blues swirled at an alarming speed as her eyes attempted to catch one color to hold on to. Her mind was intoxicated with images she never wanted to see a second time.

After a few minutes of physical strain, she looked up at the shrouded horizon and felt tears trail down her face, blurring her view into a misty haze. As the cold breeze touched her and blew short strands of hair out of the way, the fall of tears continued their endless streak, refusing to let the wind dry whatever wetness tinged her skin. Once she exhausted the last of her energy, she inhaled another breath and lifted herself onto her knees. She continued to stare blankly into the clouds that surrounded the airship's deck.

In this brief moment of realization, Yuna knew that she was reaching the end.

He was never coming back.

Chapter 1

Sky Dreams

"I love you, you know that?" He said as he watched her shuffle under the multiple layers of clothing he draped over her in the middle of the night. Once she managed to untangle herself from the knot of layers, she yawned and looked up at him with a smile.

"I know," she said. "I love-"

Her voice trailed off as it was suddenly absorbed into the Macalanian surrounding. A muted silence permeated the atmosphere and even though she felt the cool night breeze and could see the faint movement of his golden hair blow in wayward directions, she could hear nothing. She looked at him in shock and panic when she saw the corners of his mouth pull down in a frown. He looked at her longingly, reaching out to her, and she leaned toward him with an outstretched limb as she tried to catch his hand. As she curled her fingers around his hand, she felt an odd sensation of the emptiness in her grip but immediately dismissed it because she knew she had caught his hand and that was all that mattered.

But she was a millisecond too late.

Within the blink of an eye, her hand had fallen onto the soft layer of metallic leaves that covered the forest ground. She watched the scene unfold before her eyes, frozen in shock. He was fading into the shimmer of pyreflies that formed near the center of the spring. She screamed in horror, only to discover that she couldn't hear her own voice because of the deafening silence. He drifted further away from her now, his expression still one of sadness and longing, his hand still extended out to her. As his outline continued to fade into the cloud of light, she ran toward him in the center of the spring, her hand outstretched, determined to close the growing distance between them.

"TIDUS!" She screamed as his figure grew dimmer by the second. "TIDUS!"

She continued to scream, desperation seizing her emotions as the silence continued to tug at her lungs and drown out each of her senses. She mouthed his name in utter silence, the horror of her inability to communicate pulling her further back into darkness. She held out her hand in hopes of reaching him one last time but the edges of everything in her view began to ebb away, the picture blurring into a haze of colors, as if it were all a dream. Before she knew it, she was looking through the eyes of blackness.

She waited as the darkness thickened around her. Moments passed before she felt the intended effects of the sudden nothingness. She felt dizzy, as if she were being thrown around. It then felt like she was falling at an increasing speed, losing control altogether...

Just as her panic levels reached their peak, she woke in cold sweat and felt her senses shoved back into her, much like the contents of an overflowing closet that no longer had enough room to hold so many items. Yuna buried her head in her hands for a moment and then dropped her arms and looked around. She was breathing heavily, making sure that she still had a pulse somewhere in her body. The nerves in her head were throbbing but she managed to gain enough consciousness to realize where she was. There were extra beds beside the one she slept in and as she looked up, she could see the sky flutter aimlessly through the glass ceiling.

In another instant, comprehension flooded through her as she realized that what she had just seen was nothing but a nightmare. Still, the warmth of his touch and the sound of his voice rang loud all around her. It seemed too real and yet, it was only a dream. At this moment in time, she was on the Celsius and Buddy had probably found a new hotspot for another mission.

It was... nothing but a dream, she thought. The image of his face came to mind again, his touch still lingering on her skin.

Damnit. She dropped her arms onto the soft cushion of the bed, exhausted with frustration. The cabin was quiet and the only thing she heard was the ventilation system humming softly downstairs. She figured that everyone else was probably on the bridge.

"Where are you?" She whispered to herself a moment later. She looked around the cabin again, noting the sudden wave of emotions that began to smother her. She could feel that daunting sense of loneliness creeping back up on her. "I need you right now," she said lifelessly, alone in the cabin.

Author's Note:

I love love love FFX-2. There was a powerful play of themes behind this sequel and I wanted to highlight a lot of that. The idea that people from the past are always somehow connected to those in the future can mean so many things. I'm hoping this will turn out the way I originally envisioned it to be.

I've decided to use Coldplay as a musical/symbolic backdrop for most of the emotional stuff. Whenever you see a set of lyrics at the top of a chapter, there is a section within that chapter that ties in with the lyrics somehow. I would've put in lyrics from other places but a Coldplay theme sounded nice at the time.

This story has gone through several revisions and this will be the final one. I originally started off posting chunks of this story at a time but now I will periodically update with a couple of chapters here and there. And I've decided to change the title for old time's sake.

Reviews are most welcomed.