Fandom: Final Fantasy X
Character/s: Rikku, Rin
Words: 453
Notes: For 15 minute ficlets, word 49. This word has been pissing me off for ages, so I decided to flip its meaning a little. I think I ended up just doubling it.
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"Can ya fix it, Rin-boss?"
He sighs at her, and squints into the darkened bowels of the machina that lies prostrate before them. "Let us hope so, little one, or we will be very cold tonight."
The haystack scraped into place on her crown - no braids yet; she's not old enough - shivers and flops as she looks up at him with emerald eyes, the lower lip stuck out. "I hope ya can. I hate bein' cold. 's icky."
There are gaps on either side of her front teeth, and they fit neatly over the fullness of her lip. He smiles at her, because it's impossible not to, and picks up a spiky, many-limbed tool whose name she always mispronounces. They have decided to call it the elacbega-lnyplmyf, which she seems to prefer. He supposes that it does not matter what they call it, so long as it serves its purpose, which, presently, is to keep them all from freezing to death in Myga Macalania.
That had been the purpose of the machina at their feet, too, before a certain blond child had innocently posed the question, "What's this?"
He supposes he should have known better than to agree, when Cid told him to take the young daughter along, while he scoped out the area for a place that they might safely break through the ice, to the ruins that were rumoured to lie beneath. But she had seemed so sweet, when she grinned up at him, gap-toothed and full of excitement, that he found he could not refuse her.
And now here they are in the freezing wind with a broken machina, and an apparently superfluous spring.
His arms vanish up to the shoulder into the machina, though he is quite aware that these are unpredictable, and it could easily revive itself and cut his arms off, and leave him bleeding to death on the ice while the girl--
He cannot let it happen. He will not let it happen.
"I will, Rikkubad. Hush now, and find me a lightning orb in that pack of yours."
She handles the captured lightning with winces and resentment, as though she fears it will bite her. This is silly, he thinks. She already knows how it works, how the right carved marks, and the right metals, are necessary to activate the power trapped within. She is still afraid; she is still a child.
One day, she will not be this child. She will not be afraid, or at least she will not show her fear so plainly on her tiny, round-cheeked face. She will grow up.
She will grow up.
And he weeps, that it's all he can hope for her.
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