A somewhat angsty aurikku fic. I was bored, feeling shitty about myself for not updating PI readers, and I needed to change my username and let my subscribers know that I did. Hopefully you can now pronounce my username, too.
Enjoy and review, if you will.
Have you ever felt the world stop?
It's like a black background surrounds it and you; it, the thing that has just escaped you. The darkness muffles all sound, drowns out all thought, it numbs and aches and envelopes.
Rikku wanted to raise her hands to the sky. And pray, pray that time would reverse, that a miracle would happen right before her eyes. She wanted her head to spin with happiness in this black land.
The world had stopped.
Colors swirled upward, spirits. Her hands stretched after them, each one she tried to grasp without shame. Oh, how she wanted it back! She wanted warmth again, that warmth, not any other. But the spirits were cold in her hands. Cold like ice. They couldn't provide that warmth.
And she felt the water soaking her waist and freezing her all the further. Still she searched, grasped, groped in the black sunset for the right to right all wrongs. She wandered forth and the water wandered upward—to her stomach, her breast, her neck—and soon her feet had left the floor. She floated on her back and gazed mutely toward the dull sky.
They mocked her. The spirits glided above her in a free glory that mocked her efforts, which had now ceased to be. They laughed and hummed merry tunes above her as they went about their meaningless business. And Rikku remembered when—
The world had stopped.
—these same spirits had raced upward, willing, embracing death. Little by little, the person that they'd made real had vanished. He must've exploded, he must've. Because after he'd said what he had to say, there was a flare of colors that vanished. They fled like they didn't belong.
Rikku held her breath and lifted an arm to swing at one of those stupid balls of light. She missed; her head submerged.
She knew that they weren't the same ones. She also knew that, momentarily, she would lift herself from the water to try again. But not all the clear water, not all the pyreflies in the Moonflow would ever offer the right amount of comfort.
It's not just my world, she thought, it's your world, too, you know.
Have you ever felt the world stop?