This is for an AU that's gonna be running on the forum I RP Yuna on called Umieclue. Through some crack, Yuna and Seymour had Saix and Aqua as children (accidents.)
The following is my intro for the thread, it basically documents Yuna's life in the AU. Also she's smoking. Like I always wanted. Awwww yis.
As a little background: Yuna married Seymour when she was 17, after falling pregnant with him. She had been hoping to become a doctor, took a placement at a local hospital, and... well, things happened with the doctor she was supposed to be shadowing. This is set at least 35 years later, so she's at least in her 50s.
OK here goES.
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The garden was nice. She could see the sea from here.
Her cigarette burned a bright orange spark into the night. She breathed out smoke, imagining for a moment she was a dragon and smiled at the childish thought. Fire in her thoughts, fire in her belly, fire in her mind. Mm. Maybe she really was a dragon. It would explain a lot of things.
A hand reached into her pocket, and she instinctively squeezed her fingers around her wedding ring. She couldn't bear to wear it any more. But she could bear to hold it. Run her fingers along the smooth edges, feel the diamonds poke into her skin. He'd lavished her. It had been too much, at the time. She'd said that. He just smiled and pretended he didn't care.
She'd wept into his shoulder. It was the first time she'd cried, since everything had happened. She wouldn't cry again until it was all over.
She couldn't let it go, not just yet. So she rolled it against her palm, let the diamonds drive in hard. Dragged on her cigarette. Felt her throat burn.
She could remember that morning so well. It was a Sunday, yes, it had to have been a Sunday. He was sitting on the balcony, his legs swinging. His hair was soft-lit by the gentle sky, it had been spring, but only just. The flowers were blooming. Lambs were being born, she loved the country. Loved everything in her house. Loved everything but him (well, that was complicated, but it was easier to say that in that moment, she truly did love everything but him.)
"We'll be going to church, soon."
That's all he said.
That was it, the sentence that murdered him. He said it every week. Every single Sunday. We'll be going to church soon, as though she didn't have a choice, as though she didn't already know that. Besides, he didn't believe in god.
She remembered that day, too.
Coffee wafted into her nostrils, she closed her eyes and imagined it. He was sitting at the table, hunched over a newspaper, smirking about some disaster (he always read the figures out to her "twenty wounded, six killed, a massacre." And she'd always said "that's terrible," and make a fuss, remember that she was a nurse, imagine what she could have done if she had been there. But, you know, he always just said "at least they're free from it all." And because it was so often some terrible war or conflict or battle out in the deserts where she imagined people drowned in sand and bullets every day, she'd nod and agree. It was true. Death was a release, in a way.) But she couldn't remember if he read her the figures that day or not, regardless, he had his cup of coffee and his newspaper.
He'd cooked her breakfast. Something meat-free. Control through kindness (no, that was unfair… he was just trying to be sweet, he always _tried_ to be sweet.) So she sat down, went to eat. She stared at the front of the newspaper. Twenty had died in a bombing.
And then it bubbled up, a question she thought she'd never ask, a question that had always gone answered. But in that moment it was unanswered, and it was raw and liquid in her throat and she asked, "Do you believe in god?"
He looked at her straight in the eye. She remembered how blue they seemed, how the early morning light in them, how they sucked in all the light. She was memorised by them. They blinked.
She looked at the crucifix around his neck. Remembered all the times they had whispered psalms to each other when they made love, hissing bible verses between kisses, Jesus slipping out over his tongue and brushing over hers.
"No."
And then a small, wicked smile came over her. As though she'd won some victory. As though that "no" took back all the times they had made love, all the times he had scrabbled over her and whispered sweet nothings in her ear on a hospital bed (they did it in a coma ward, she decided to feel no regrets.) As though this "no" undid the crucifix and erased all the bitter little lies and exposed a weakness in his character, a falseness she was certain was always there but could never prove. She suddenly wanted to jump up on the table, kick the breakfast off, wave it in his face.
But he just smiled and arched his brow, in a manner she knew was his way of asking "well, what about you?"
Her excitement burst. She shrunk into her seat.
"Neither do I."
But they still went to church every Sunday. They still made their shows, paid their dues. Bowed their heads and prayed, while he put his hands on her leg and squeezed because (she assumed) the truth was that he was busy worshipping her. And though she swatted him away and glowered, she knew she felt a little flattered. And then she came the disgust, and the anger, and the guilt.
"We'll be going to church, soon."
She stepped forwards, yes. That was it. Her arms had been spread. He had thought, for once, she was going to be the one to love him. That she was going to embrace him. His eyes betrayed a kind of hope. It was that hope, that slight softening of his face, the way his cheeks fell flat a little, his eyes sparkled – it was that hope in his face that had kept her heart drumming bruised love. He kept coming back. He kept hoping, enduring. It was endearing, in a way. Like the way a puppy forgives you even if you kick it. He was always waiting, waiting for this moment, for her to embrace him.
He never got it.
She'd pushed him.
When he fell, she thought she heard him scream, for the first time in her life. She realized in retrospect that it was her own voice shrieking. When he fell, she begged he would grab onto a lower bannister, onto anything, somehow cling on and she'd pull him up and say she tripped and slipped and fell or anything – but it didn't happen. And, in retrospect, she'd never thought that at all. She hadn't thought of anything. She just screamed till her throat gave out while a single, burning thought whispered in her mind. In retrospect, she'd thought that thought had been, _we're not going to church now, you fucking bastard_ . But it wasn't that at all, she'd just pretended to have that spite, later on.
Later, when she went back into the house, rifled through his things and burned most of them (as though that would burn up her guilt, burn up her hatred, burn up all her 'I'm sorry's". They didn't) and found out more things from his death than in his life. He'd hidden so much. Boxes and boxes of pills, anti-depressants (he'd self medicated, apparently.) Diaries that she couldn't bear to read (but kept, in case – she had let her children read it, though, if they wanted. But she wouldn't, couldn't, not yet.) And a single photograph. She'd thought it was a mistress, at first. The photo was black and white, giving the woman the impression of huge, charcoal eyes. Not innocent, but beautiful, with lips like rose buds and a watery smile, and hair black hair slicked back over her shoulders that, in the polaroid, made it look like she was wearing a huge veil.
She had the saddest eyes she'd ever seen.
She realized, then, that she recognised those eyes.
Those were her husband's eyes.
And she hadn't cried when she pushed him, when she heard his bones snap and break. Hadn't cried when the police came, interrogated her, ripped up the house. Didn't cry when she phoned the children, explained to them that their father was dead and secretly wondered if they were happy about it. But she cried then. She cried for those sad, bleak, charcoal eyes.
That photograph still sat in her bedroom. Beside the picture of her father.
She rubbed the wedding ring again, dragged on her cigarette. What was it, anyway, she had thought when she pushed him? It was something funny… something out place, that had burst into her memory out of nowhere. Oh, yes. She smirked, fought down dreary laughter.
He couldn't fly .
