(Please note- this fic came from a notion i had a while ago that Yuna could resent her father in the same way that Tidus could- without the resolve in the end. It's based on the idea of the lack of reason behind grudges, how they can come about so gradually and yet so strong that it is often difficult to see how we have gotten to where we are, and only that we are there and it is too late to turn back...This idea is largely unsupported by canon, though I do make reference to it. Additionally, it is unforgiving towards Braska. So. If Braska is your soul-mate and your heart cannot stand to see him deglorified, don't read.)
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Well I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I've built my life around you.
But time makes you bolder, even children get older and I'm getting older too...
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Landslide (Daddy Daddy)
It is only much later, after her journey has ended and they are revisiting Gagazet that Yuna finds a sphere, covered in snow. Auron had never pointed it out- whether he hadn't know about it or just didn't think it would futher his goal for her to see it, she doesn't know. She would never know now.
Calmly and without a word from her or her company (no longer guardians, now friends who can speak their minds to her again, but generally choose not to) she picks it up, and places it in a pocket. It is with strange composure that she manages to hold off watching the sphere until she is back onboard the airship, in a solitary room. And then, with eternal patience, she presses play.
Yuna calmly watches through her father's last words to her, closes the sphere, takes a deep breath and then throws it against the thick iron walls of the airship, smashing it.
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It begins all at once, a sudden abrupt niggling, a shadow of doubt shooting out of nowhere.
Of course, she is talking to Tidus, the harbinger of all niggling doubts, who pokes and prods until there seems to be no sense left in anything she feels or believes in.
-It starts off badly- he trying to connect with her, create a state of empathy on the comparable fame of their fathers- which she can understand- but he is also talking about punching his father, his voice bitter and resentful, which isn't something she- calm and demure Yuna- can relate to.
"But the honour of having a father like him surpasses all that, I think."
He remains cynical, sarcastic in tone. "Well, there wasn't much to honour about my old man, that's for sure."
Shock and indignation on her side. ""You shouldn't say that about your father!"
"I got the right!"
There is a pause where she smiles, only a little and only to herself. Poor little lost boy, she thinks, even as she concedes his point aloud. Everyone could think like that. Even me.
And this last part repeats itself in her head and there is something of bitterness in this thought, this line over replaying over and over.
Even me...
But Tidus hates his father, and Yuna loves Daddy.
She tries to push it away and says no more.
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It comes back when it shouldn't. Surely any moment is inappropriate to think wicked things about ones father, but she is especially horrified when it creeps into her head while she is attempting to defend her decision, he father's decision ("Don't say it isn't worth it!")
Because- is it? Isn't this the stray thought she has been running away from even since she left Bevelle 10 years ago? That Daddy died and Sin came back less than a year later and no-one Yuna knows slept well in their beds in that year, hoping and dreading and knowing above all else in their hearts that it would return and it was only a matter of time.
Was that really worth it?
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"Lady Yunalesca!"
She knows where this conversation is going, as soon as the flash of silver hair comes into focus.
"...And you- have inherited her name." It is a statement, rather than a question. People in Spira have no need to question the origins of her name- it is assumed. It is obvious.
A quieter voice. "It was my father who named me."
A smile and nod which are perhaps a little too pleased. "Lord Braska was entrusting you with a great task. He wanted you to face Sin, as Lady Yunalesca did."
And Lord Seymour continues to talk, a monologue on the power of binding love. But Yuna is only half paying attention. Because- and it is the first time she is really thinking about it- Daddy must have been the one to name her. Her mother surely wouldn't have let him name her daughter after the founder of a practise that her people were so against they had let themselves be persecuted, be driven into the desert rather than accept. Her mother maybe never even knew her by a name.
-Was her father so engrossed by grief at her mother's death that he could do nothing but wrap himself in Yevon- and wrap Yuna up too?
And more thoughts fly through. Maybe this is why Uncle Cid never visited- because Daddy alienated her from her Al Bhed side, left her dependent upon Yevon when he died rather than sending her to family of some degree.
And nothing is wrong with that- except. Except. Was Daddy really charging Baby Yuna with such a task? Was he really letting her know that the life he wanted her to lead was his, was one of prayers and dancing over coffins and eventual sacrifice?
Could he not envisioned a life where she lived?
And then Seymour whispers in her ear that he would very much like to marry her- and all of these thoughts leave her head, not quite pondered enough to have a lasting effect.
(-Except. If Braska had meant for her to challenge Sin, then he probably did mean for her to do as he did and marry someone like Seymour, someone from another race who would harbour peace, who would brighten the days of all Spira's citizens. If he meant for her to marry at all, it would be loveless – because love never brought Daddy any happiness- and meaningful. And she is torn- between repulsion and being a good, dutiful daughter.)
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"The old lady next door told me- when a lovebird dies, the other just give up living so it can join its mate. It was just like that."
Speaking to him on the Farplane, Yuna remembers. A flash of her father with tears in his eyes- no one occasion, but every night.
And maybe her father was better than his mother. Maybe Daddy kept living without her mother, for a little while at least.
But- why wasn't Yuna enough? And she hates herself for those words as soon as she thinks them- that she should be more important than Spira! Only- shouldn't she have been? In her father's eyes, at least? Shouldn't he have stayed with her a few more years? Shouldn't he have not willingly orphaned her at age 7 and left her alone in a friendless place, having alienated her from any family she might have had and leaving her a ward of the church that once shamed him so? She can't think what age might have been the right age to orphan her, only that she was too young and he could have and should have waited, rather than sailing off at the centenary when the right people showed up to prove his radical point?
(When she asked Kimarhi to say, he stayed- without any hesitation...)
And there Tidus is, starting to understand his father, starting to give up childish, petty grudges in light of how complex the world really is. But Yuna once again can't relate because she is only just learning to be selfish and petty, learning that the acts of even those lost can be questioned- remembering Baby Yuna's tears for weeks; her fears and confusions that had to be masked beneath all the joy that everyone thought she should feel; that dwelt within her and carried on the custom of pilgrimage, passed it down from father to daughter and led her to this point.
"I must do what everyone wants, not just what I want."
She didn't get to be selfish 10 years ago, and she doesn't get to be selfish now.
(Only- somehow, in the middle of the Thunder Plains, 17 year old Yuna stops being just Braska's daughter. Because she chooses to do something independent of her father, something he wouldn't approve of.
And no matter how vile Seymour is- she almost believes that Seymour would understand this. Because he hated his father too...)
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"I believe in you. Be good."
His father loved him. But just didn't know how to express it.
That night, Yuna wishes more than anything that her father had left her a sphere to guide her (in that moment, she needs so much guidance), which said he loved her without words. She almost asks Auron where her gift is; whether her goodbye was preserved anywhere; whether her daddy loved her like that too.
She never does, however. After all, she and her father had gotten their moment to say goodbye and he had told her he loved her.
And with that memory, she knows it is stupid to ask for more- because it's too obvious, Braska fought Sin and died for Yuna. There was no question, of course he loved her.
But- there is also a niggling doubt within her that none of this is true...
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"There's got to be another way..?"
And this is a new thought. Not that Daddy loved Spira and was so consumed by grief that he was willing to die, unwilling to live for just Yuna.
But that Daddy was foolish. That his death was pointless, and he was just so careless and selfish in his hunt for his own peace that he didn't realise this somewhere along his journey as she had. Or that he did, and it just didn't matter enough.
That he stopped caring what was real and what was delusion. That he had simply outlived his desire to live and wished to die.
-And that maybe Seymour understands something she doesn't about death and about her father...
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And she hears her father- or some memory of him, some long-dead conversation that she was never meant to hear- quoting repeatedly what Yevon has convinced her of as she trained, the lines spoon-fed to all summoners for the last thousand years.
"This is the only way."
"I must defeat Sin."
And- worst of all- "But... there's always a chance it might not come back this time."
And suddenly Yuna is blinking back tears and holding back reluctance.
Oh Daddy. How could you be so naive?
And as she faces Yunalesca, she realises how stupid she herself has been. The moment she found out Yevon was lying to her, she should have stopped this whole escapade. If she still wanted to fight, she should have thrown up her hands and join the Crusaders. Or- she could have flown to Zanarkand with Tidus.
(Or she could have tried to find another way.)
Anything but this- this pointlessness!
Because, really, it hasn't mattered over the last few days. She's known that Yevon is a lie, that the Final Summoning keeps going and there will never be a Final-Final Summoning and even a little bit of peace isn't worth keeping this retched organisation alive.
The only reason she kept her feet moving forward was this sense of duty- this chaos her treacherous act had caused in such an ordered world and a desire to return to some state she understood, the path she had prepared for herself, the road the father took and she- dutiful daughter- followed.
But- it takes her father's words- a naive idealistic man who didn't even nearly want to live and wanted to die even more than to save Spira- to realise that-
She needs to save Spira. To actually save it from this pattern and not just embrace it because it is better than the unknown.
And she did love her father (but she's not sure when this became a past tense- only that it feels so once-upon-a-time, from a life that seems like a long-forgotten dream now). But- she isn't just a summoner, Lord Braska's daughter, the heir of Yunalesca's dynasty.
And she understands how selfish she's been, but- also that she is allowed to be selfish, to hate her father for leaving her; for loving her mother just a bit too much; for loving his faith and binding his daughter to it rather than leaving her open to choose her path for herself; for loving the people of Spira just a little bit more than her; for not being able to live and for teaching her the same.
She will live her own life- choose a new path. One where she will not be constantly in his shadow.
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There is the tiniest hint of jealousy within her when Tidus finally gets to tell his father he hates him.
(She realised a little too late. And the mocking shadows of near-familiar faces in the Farplane aren't real enough to appease her.)
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It is much later that Yuna finds his sphere- the sphere where he told her he loved her without words and released her from his footsteps and 6 months ago, she would have given anything for this sphere.
"Yuna, I will always be with you."
-But not now.
Her father's last address to her speaks of no regrets. And this in itself doesn't make her angry (she's almost happy that he died still believing what he was doing was right, even if it wasn't, deluded to the end). But- it is his other message to her, to live her life as she wishes that infuriates her.
The idea that she needs the consent of a man who left his 7 year old daughter alone in this world to live, appals her.
(And the in-built inconsistency, that he left this sphere here, in a place she would realistically only have visited if she were on the last stages of her pilgrimage. A little late to be living!)
Yuna calmly watches through her father's last words, her hand clenches in a fist, but patiently waiting until the sphere goes blank. She then closes it up and throws it against the walls of the airship, smashing it and sending fragments of glass in all directions.
And then she screams. There are no words to her scream, bitter resentment finally being unleashed. She screams until she feels light-headed, and then falls onto the floor, still regretful, still mad, still feeling his shadow on her back., but knowing now that she can leave him behind.
She, too, has no regrets.
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Daddy Daddy, you bastard, I'm through
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(.A/N: Review if you like.)