"Life is but a passing dream…"
"I am."
Pyreflies poured in a circlet around Sin. They flowed in a pulse of burning white and green and pink and yellow, drawn hungrily around the beast like a sickly child to its mother's hands. They turn, forever turning, forever in motion but never quite stitching themselves together - always, eternally, flowing.
Yuna opened her eyes.
They are the greenest blue he has ever seen. The Calm lands turn beneath them, blue sky leaking into green earth that isn't green any more because he ripped the grass from its roots. Then again, if he remembered (re-re-re) hard enough then he'd see all the green ripped right out of her left eye anyway. But he didn't want to remember that. He wanted to remember the bluest green he had ever seen.
"I am," she repeated.
Sin turns. Drifts towards the ocean. But something makes it twitch. Makes it stop. The pyreflies never stop. But Sin does, over Macalania woods.
She was floating. Not far away from him. Close enough for him to smell her. Breathe her.
"What are you?" he whispered though words are difficult when your tongue is made of decaying death. Soon, he knows, not even his tongue will be anything. And he, too, will be swept away into Sin, into the oneness of oblivion.
"I am you," she laughed and then she drifted over his shoulders like a ribbon. He watched the last inch of her boot fall away from his vision, and when he turned around he saw endless miles of white silk and feathers falling down deep into the blue woods.
He watched her fall amongst the thickets and the water. Watched the pool of stars open up and welcome her, the deep blue trees winding round as though to cradle her. And then there is a boy with blue eyes and sandy hair. He watched her cut the ribbon free, the line of white silk furiously passing over his shoulder and he is helpless but to watch all the dainty little feathers be swallowed whole by the pool of stars.
He watched the boy with blue eyes (he is the Son) kiss her softly, kiss her wholly, kiss her rawly, passionately, in an ugly, lopsided, broken kind of way that was more beautiful than the stars, the lace, the world. And he ate her whole. He devoured her.
And they were laughing. He heard them at his back. Sin turned. It drifted out towards the sea. It rolled amongst the waves. He heard the laughter grow still, but as he turned and looked at them, he saw it still blazoned on their reddened cheeks.
"Love," he said. (I am.)
"Faith," she said. (I am.)
Seymour stared, and said.
"Hope." (I am.)
And then Yuna laughed again. She extended her beautiful arms, extended those tiny little hands and laced them around one of his and one of the others. And she went running, leaping, whooping - and leapt into oblivion and shattered into pyreflies.
The Son (of Jecht, he remembered now) vanished with her.
Sin went deep beneath the rolling waves. Nothing moved. Beneath extended an eternal abyss, and above reached the same into the eternal blue sky.
A green eye opens like a slat. He remembered, now. He pierced it straight through with his lance and burst it open like a fruit. She died on the Calm lands, crumpled where her father once stood because he willed himself to. And he had freed her. But now her green eye had opened like a slat, and she peered at him through it.
"I love him."
She seemed to smile most sweetly when she tried to crush his heart, Seymour noticed. It was her defiance, her spirit, her fire that led him to her, after all. But sometimes the needles did hurt. Sometimes they hurt even now. Hurt because. "I love him."
"You shouldn't say that," he said.
She drifted over him again, her laughter blushed in his ear. "But, why not?"
"Don't you see? There is no I, anymore. There is no him. I destroyed you, and I have freed you."
"Then, if there is no I," her fingers drifted over his eyes. The world goes blind. "And there is no him. Then there remains only love."
Sin drifted deeper into the ocean.
"Lady Yuna, there is no Is, no hims, no yous or shes," he whispered.
Her fingers wriggled a little bit. He smiled. "Then there is only love, left."
"And hate?" he mused.
"And faith," she said.
"And sorrow?"
"And hope."
She removed her hands.
He stood as a child.
"If there is nothing, no living being, but you - but the dead," a woman spoke. "Then all things are one."
Blue eyes opened.
"If all things are one, then love is one with hate. Faith is one with sorrow. All is one with hope," he saw black hair. He saw Yuna's smile. "Don't you see?" She drifted down onto her knee, and reached up to her son's face. His mother brought him in close, and he smelled Yuna in her hair. "There is no reason to say I love you, without I or you. There is only reason to say I am love."
"Don't you get it?" The Son of Jecht blurred into existence. "There isn't love anymore, either. All things have just been… put back together in one big mess, you know?"
The pyreflies spun endlessly.
Seymour pulled away from Anima's embrace. Pulled away from Yuna's. He stared at Tidus who became Chappu who became nothing, and said, "I am you."
And there's laughter in his ear. "Don't be silly. Isn't it better to just say… I am?"
"I am."
"I am."
"I am."
And he's laughing too.
Sin plummeted into the abyss.
