She was a woman. He was a man.
He was dying. Breathless and greedy for life, he was dying. His skin was bleeding into stars and death-dust, his eyes were failing, the world was turning into a blur of cold and hot and unreal and real.
He once stood as a man.
Yu-yu-yu-yunnna, she will be the one to send him. To end him. Yu-yu-yu-yuna, the one who could have brought an end to them all. Yu-Yevon, the one to soon be destroyed, Yunalesca, the one who had already been destroyed – and here was Yuna, the savior, the destroyer. She stood with beads and one eye blue and one eye green and a mouth that said nothing to him as she raised her staff and turned his skin to stars.
"Even after I am gone." Gone, dust to the wind, ashes in fire, in a moment he would be gone.
"Spira's sorrow will prevail."
Spira's sorrow?
Or?
His own?
What a tragedy.
He wished she had danced. He wished she had shown him the slit in her skirt. He wished she had spat in his face. She was stone faced. She was looking ahead. She looked right through him, with eyes unseeing.
This was the Yuna he liked.
He gave in to death.
She was a woman. He was a boy.
He was waiting in a room.
Everything was cold and he didn't like it very much.
Anima was waiting, black hair a frame. Her lips sat like a boat on the milk of her face. He wondered when they would go sailing. He wondered when they'd slip right off of her face, when her eyes would peel open like dry oranges, when all the love would leak out of her bones. He wondered this, because she was a monster, not a mother.
"I wanted… to protect you."
"You taught me… that only death can save."
"You corrupted my lessons."
"You are a liar." He thought of lyre-birds and his father turning towards a window, he remembered him saying 'You will be a fine leader.' He remembered him talking about clocks and his glass shoopuf collection. He remembered time ticking down, the problems of the Guado, the work still to do at the temple. 'Because you are my son.'
Liarliarliarliar. Pants on fire.
"Don't talk like this, not now."
There is no time now. There is no better time than now. He is dead and waiting in a room, he is dead and sees a blur of pyreflies and for a moment his mother is Yu-yu-yu-yu and then is chained and struggling. She is a mess of flesh. She is rattling, squirming in one spot. Like a dark flower clasped shut, withering in the breeze.
"I wanted you to pity me."
"If I did, would that have saved you?"
He thought about this. He remembered dying, when he died for the first time, he remembered Yuna and her facefull of despair or mourning or regret. He was wrong. He had always been wrong. This was the only thing that felt right.
"No."
"Then, I was right." Anima blooms, petals blush around her ankles. She stands as a woman. She is strong. "You should have died, then. Things would have been… easier, then."
He remembered Baaj. He remembered his hands wet with seagull blood. He remembered walls covered in words, he remembered burning funeral flowers, he remembered painting his skin "Sinsinsinsinsinsinsin" and he remembered Tromell's face when unearthed the boy he used to know from the rubble, now eighteen and not at all a boy.
"If I had died… then Yuna's father would not have taken my place," he reasoned. "She would not be standing now." He said, "She would not… defeat Sin, forever."
"Then this is a happy ending."
"It is no ending. Things do not end. They will go on, eternal. And sorrow will drown all those that remain."
"I only wanted to protect you."
"I only wanted to save you."
He sits on the floor, he crosses his legs.
He sits as a boy.
She was a girl. He was a man.
She was seventeen and waiting for him now. The room had shaped itself into a pier. He was sitting in Luca, feet in the water. He did not like it here. It was too hot.
She stood behind him, seventeen and waiting. She put two fingers to her mouth. She whistled, her body quivering like a bird in a hand. He could feel her ribs shake. He could feel her body give in, exhausted, tired from calling.
She looked right through him.
"Sorrow has won," he whispered, yelled. He leaned back, looking her in the eyes, smiling.
She drew her fingers up. She whistled.
She was a woman-girl, growing up backwards.
She is a girl. He is a boy.
He is twenty-eight and sad.
The girl has gone away. She is sad, too. He does not know why. It was like she was sick with hope. It was like she had broken herself to unbreak them all. But it was not a good medicine. Something un-broken always bends back to the way it was, the glue slackens, the nail loosens, the white magic fades.
The girl has gone away and he does not know why.
He is twenty-eight and dead. He should go to the farplane, he should give up the last of his quivering pyreflies. He should be at rest.
But he is restless and he is sad and he is waiting.
There is still much that is to be done.
He is a boy who does not cry but weeps with a smile. He is a boy who has never grown up. He is a boy whose tantrum has not yet ended.
She is a girl who does not cry but weeps with a smile. She is a girl who has never not been grown. She is a girl whose patience has not yet broken.
He is dead.