A/N: Another challenge from rippalshippers at This is an old one, actually, and I just dug it out and found it again. Huh. And I really like it, heehee. The three words I had to incorporate were screwdriver, nail polish, and bridge. I'm pretty sure. Haha.
Disclaimer: Square-enix! God I love these two. Sooo cute!
Sneaking Out
Rikku doesn't remember a lot of things. Her mind is usually stuffed with things of the here-and-now type of events. She tries to keep all thoughts of Home and her mom and other important things in a locked corner of her mind.
She hates to remember. But sometimes she does.
She remembers being little. Four or five. The sun is shining and the sand is hot on her feet. Her toes shiver as she runs and runs and runs, trying her hardest to make it back into Home before it closes for the early dusk. Fiends have been roaming lately and it's safer inside before it gets dark.
Inside there are lots of people. People with blonde hair, people with green eyes, people with goggles and aprons and screwdrivers and hammers, pounding and sawing and nailing, trying to get Home fixed after the last fiend attack. Males and females alike are working hard, sweating together, swearing together, crying together. Trying to get their home back to normal.
And then she sees her friends walking home. They are small, like her, and are being sent to bed to sleep. But Rikku doesn't sleep. She tries to run but is caught, and instead of resisting like normal, she doesn't. It isn't the time and she knows it because there is something good waiting for her at home. She knows that too.
And she runs home and sees her Pop and he's wearing his glasses. He is writing down papers and he looks deep in thought. Rikku avoids him. The sooner to her room the better.
She walks in, locks the door, and sits down on her small bed. Space in Home is small. There is not much.
Rikku gets bored. She blows on her bangs; she digs holes into the dirt floor with her shoes. She falls down to the floor and grabs a bottle of nail polish, a gift from one of her Pop's friends who has visited Luca. He says it will make her feel pretty, make her nails sparkle. But she has never tried it and decides there is nothing better to do while she waits.
And as she sits cross-legged on the floor, humming and trying with difficulty to keep the brush straight, she hears the light tapping on her window. She hurriedly stuffs the nail polish away, leaving one hand unfinished; the other is a mess.
She slides open the tiny glass window. "Gippal!" she squeals with delight. Gippal grins. He is one year older and taller than Rikku, so he can reach her window. He is one year older and smarter than Rikku, so she trusts him when he says she should follow him out one night, to meet him at her window and hurry, be quiet! So she does, and she tumbles out, squealing, and Gippal has to catch her arm before she goes hurtling down to the ground. It is only a few feet down, but Rikku is small and it seems like a mountain.
"Follow me," he whispers, clutching her hand as she manages to plop to the ground. She nods grimly, and tries to keep up to him as they walk through Home at a brisk pace.
Rikku thinks that this is no fun. Why sneak out if it isn't fun? "Hey, Gipp, do ya like my nails?" She wiggles her fingers in his face. The nails are splotched with pink. Some of the color has run onto her fingers and left patches of the nail bare.
"What is that?" he hisses, smirking at her. "You're stupid."
"Am not!" Rikku yells. Gippal's grip tightens on her hand and she whimpers into silence.
It is only then, when Gippal turns around to glare at her occasionally for being too loud, that she sees the bandage on the bridge of Gippal's nose.
"Oh my gosh! Gippal, what happened?" She touches it lightly; he flinches, but they keep walking. They are out of Home now. Rikku wants to ask what they are doing, what about the fiends, isn't it too dark to be out here?
"It's nothing," he replies hurriedly. "Just happened last night."
Rikku is smart for her age. She puts two and two together and stamps on his heel angrily. He stumbles, turns, glares and curses. But Rikku only stands defiantly.
Their tiny hands are still clasped.
"You came out here last night too! Right? And a fiend hurt you!" Her bottom lip starts to tremble. "You could die. Stop coming out here!"
"But I hafta!"
"WHY?" Rikku cries in a high-pitched voice. She and Gippal can rarely have a conversation without an argument being a part of it.
But he doesn't answer, only drags her up a sand dune. She squeals and resists and yells at him, but he ignores her. And when they reach the top he points to the sky and Rikku sees a moon, big and white and round. It smiles down on her and Rikku feels like she is being watched over, being listened to, as she stares at the moon.
"I brought you here to see it." His voice is soft.
"Why?" Rikku asks again, this time clinging onto his arm like any small child would.
"'Cause it reminds me of you." He looks down at her, and the two beam at each other like innocent children do. "It's bright. It's smiling." He tweaks her nose with his free hand, and she giggles.
"And you just can't forget it's there," he adds as an afterthought, looking back up at it. "I thought you would like it."
And Rikku does. She tackles him to the ground in a giant hug, and the two struggle around in the sand for a few moments, laughing and hugging and tickling. And then they lay and watch the moon some more, and Rikku has forgotten all about the fiends and the closed gates and the nail polish on her fingers.
Rikku remembers this, and no matter how hard she tries it won't leave her mind. It won't go in that corner with the rest. It refuses. It's stubborn, just like her. So Rikku gives up and takes a boat to Djose, where she'll make sure that Gippal remembers it too.