It Didn't Use to Be this Way
Chapter One: Denial
A/N: Another Mary-Sue Disclaimer. Avoid this fic if you dislike OC based stories, fan pairings, or magical powers given to original characters. Flames will be used to burn my homework with. Oh, entering scene is meant to be read darkly. Story is not chronological--it jumps around a lot.
It was foggy. At the same time, it was muggy and the air was thick and stagnant. There was so little wind that the heavy mist only crawled away, what left being replaced with more layers of fog, like a busy fork in the road trafficked by chocobo carriages. But there were no chocobo carriages, or roads with forks, or much of anything here. There were flowers, oh yes, in vases, and marble floors, and beautifully crafted gargoyles. High ceilings, double-doors, rugs worth a million gil in a thousand different colors. It was a mansion on the sea, neither drifting nor part of any island. The house, itself, was all there was, alone in the middle of the ocean, huge and hollow, and lonely, however intricate. No way in for 10 months of the year, when storms frequented the surrounding waters, and no way out unless you were rescued. In the case of Anima and Seymour Guado, there would be no rescuers, not in time, at least.
Seymour couldn't remember the outside world. He was born along the trip to Baaj, and never got to meet his to-be-established father, Jyscal. His mother always said nice things about Jyscal, but Seymour had a hard time believing them. Some days, he would be more questioning than usual, and Anima would be exhausted from trying to take the situation at hand and create for her son a child-friendly fantasy of it. It killed her to lie to him, but she was afraid he might not understand, that he might grow to hate the world if he knew the truth.
Some days, however, he wasn't questioning at all. In fact, sometimes Seymour liked to pretend that this little island was all there was to the world, and he and his mother were the only people in the whole, wide world. Truly it came that he relished this idea, and thought it acceptable to try to believe it. He stopped asking his mother questions-- questions about the Guado, and of his father, questions of the outside world. He still asked questions about Yevon before he went to sleep at night; he liked to learn about how his mother so put her faith into such things, but he thought that it was all some sort of game she'd made to play with him. As long as he had his mother, nothing else needed to matter.
Seymour loved his mommy very, very much.
"Mother, come and find me!"
"Goodness, Seymour, where can you be? Right in front of my face and I wouldn't know the difference; it's so foggy out here!" There was mild concern in her voice as she still tried to remain playful. "Do be careful, Seymour, I don't want you falling and getting hurt…"
"I won't get hurt, mother, now come, play with me!" Anima did as she was told, humoring the child, though as mothers do, she was confident in her ability to catch him by the sole sound of his voice.
This was all they did, or all they ever had to do. Living in exile with no connections to any other soul, you can live however you want, forever fighting away the loneliness and heartbreak-- if you can.
It was silent for a moment, save for the lapping of the ocean waves against the stone walkway. "Seymour?" No reply. "Seymour!?" Silence. She began to panic, but clung to the knowledge that had he fallen into the water, there would have been a splash, and hoped he was standing behind her, working her up so he could attack her with a bear hug from behind and scare her witless. But nothing ever happened as so. She began to look around feverishly until through the mist she could faintly see some sort of color. She approached it cautiously, the fog thinning only slightly as she tried to see what it was. When she was about 6 feet away, she could make out the figure of her son, standing near the edge, peering into the shallows. She sighed in relief. "Seymour, always answer me, my chi-" She froze momentarily. A second tiny form floated in the water, that was all she could see. A gasp and she sprinted to the edge, throwing her arms around the body and plucking them out of the sea. They were in a well built but now faded and worn raft. There was a portion of rotting food left in it, as well as a soaked cloth or two. The child she held was covered head to toe in thick, synthetic material in bright colors that can't be achieved by natural dyes. She wore goggles over her eyes, and had blonde hair.
"Oh, dear…" Anima felt the need to take her in from the elements immediately, seeing that she was breathing. After trying to wake her, her only response was a cough and a wheeze, both strong, a good sign in one way, but both signs of ill health all the same. "Seymour, let's go inside." Her voice was serious, her manner urgent. Seymour stared at the little Al Bhed girl with dark eyes, immediately angry at her for her crime of disrupting the reality he had created for himself.
Seymour didn't want to accept that there were other people in the world.
--
She stood on the bridge, hugging her cloak around her. Indecisive. It must be hard for everyone to take that first step into the farplane after…
Well, she had been lucky enough to walk into Guadosalam without being stopped and interrogated, but then again, tourists always visited the home of the Guado to see the farplane. And many had probably stood here exactly where she was, torn by the untamable desire to enter and the overpowering urge to leave. You just had to see it for yourself--but then again, if you never saw the proof, you could go on believing it wasn't really true.
--
"Wakka," a tenor, passive female voice. It was hesitant and thoughtful, and obviously troubled.
"Yeah, Lu?" The redhead sat down next to his wife on the bed, speaking quietly, and put an arm on her shoulder as she rocked their baby to sleep. He looked at her face with full attention, but she stared at the floor for a moment before lifting her head to meet his gaze.
"I'm worried about Yuna. She's been hiding something since we scheduled the wedding. I talked to Tidus this morning, and he said he'd thought the same thing. I'm sure you've noticed it, too?" Her words were spoken slowly, in no hurry, as if every syllable deserved to be spoken with full detail and attention. In opposition to sounding uneducated, as most slow speakers do, the black haired woman sounded all the more wise, as if she had to take the time to put her complicated thoughts into lame man's terms. Wakka kept a serious expression and his eyes fell to the floor for a moment as well.
"Yeah, she has been acting pretty funny lately. You talked to Rikku about it?"
"She was as puzzled as I was. I've even asked Yuna myself--so has Tidus. She tells us she's just nervous about the wedding. I suppose it could be one reason for her behavior, but she's never been a good liar. Something's wrong." The child in her arms groaned and whined, and Lulu held the baby all the more closer to her chest.
"Try not to worry too much, Lu. Yuna will tell us when she's ready. She always does."
