Andante
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Lulu watches from the far end of one of the many salty Luca docks, rustic eyes trained on that figure at the end - and really, she's so small, so petite and fragile - and a sad, wobbly smile pulls on her purple-painted lips. Yuna's been at the job for about an hour, cracking her lips on constant whistling, trying, hoping, praying harder than she's ever sent her prayers to any Fayth.
The whistle was their form of secret handshake, it was their special code, as widely known amongst her guardians as it was. None of them questioned it. None of them destroyed the sanctity of it. If she whistled, only he would go running, only bringing others if he thought it was something he couldn't pull her out of. It was an unsaid rule since their pilgrimage's first steps.
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And yet, as Yuna exhausts her lungs, there is no returning whistle, no blond knight in shining Blitz gear rushing to her side. Lulu knows there won't be, but Yuna's heart has been newly broken, so she stays silent on the matter. The teachings had fallen around her, the laws of her world shredded into lies, and really, the boy had chosen the perfect time to leave her to flounder on her own, hadn't he? Yuna's entire world is gone. Did he feel bad, knowing that she would be so wrecked, when he said his good-byes? He was a receptive boy, thick as he was, surely he would have known? Especially the pain of being lost in a world you suddenly didn't know, that kind of empathy couldn't have been so easily ignored.
Lulu is almost angry. Chappu had left her feeling much the same, left her in such a cold, heartless place, and time had not completely healed the bleeding in her heart. Time had turned it into a pinprick puncture in her heart, soothed the agony to an ache, but it still hurt, and when had Wakka begun to act so like him?
Yuna would suffer through the agonies of love lost until it almost seemed like falling in love had been the worst idea she had ever had, suffer through the heartache and the tears and then she would become stronger. The girl's frame was slight, any observer could tell, such as Lulu had done, but her will was strong enough to bend Al Bhed machina steel hides. The loss would be like breaking a bone or tearing a muscle - Yuna's will was wavering now, but it would heal until it was twice as strong as ever before.
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Lulu always knew. Yuna was a force to be reckoned with when she set her sights on something. Hadn't that been why she and Wakka had lost the fight with her on the subject of becoming a summoner? No amount of threats or pleas deterred her, the girl steadfast and eager to follow in her father's footsteps, hope for finally, maybe, putting an end to Sin for once and for all, and not a decade. Looking back, she really was so like Braska.
But Braska's Final Summoning didn't work, and he and his guardians paid the price: Braska lost his life in bringing his Calm; Sir Jecht lost his humanity and free will, mind stolen by Yu Yevon's clutching claws; and Sir Auron was left behind, left to rage and hurt until he had nothing left to confront Yunalesca and died somewhere along the way, lingering in the limbo of the Unsent.
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Yuna had succeeded where her father had tragically failed, the poor man swept into the spiral of death that was Spira. Yuna and that boy had done what was impossible and no doubt painful. Lulu watched the whole thing, from their taboo meeting in Besaid to the tears Yuna shed as the dream ended. The boy smiled all the way, goofing around, trying to make his words to a dying girl smile, even if he hadn't known the result of a Calm. He stirred the flames of rebellion into a formidable inferno and they were all enveloped in its cleansing flames, burned as traitors who fought for the greater good, to rid Spira of Sin forever more. With Yunalesca destroyed, they had no other choice.
And his half-cocked plan had worked, his brilliant plan had worked and the Calm spread through the visceral lifeline of Spira, shedding it of Sin's overwhelming, threatening shadow.
But it had cost him his life. He had known that while Yuna would live, he would fade from them all forever. He knew Yuna would cry and really, what was he thinking? Wasn't the goal to keep everyone alive, to take her to see his fairytale, wonderful Zanarkand? Certainly it wasn't to leave his fellows upon the deck of Cid's airship, dooming Yuna to this agonizing loneliness?
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Nevertheless, Lulu knew the cycle of recovery. Yuna was hurting now, lost and confused, but Lulu knew she had only mere minutes until she had to pretend she wasn't. Yuna would put on a smile, deliver the best of good news to the eager citizens of Luca and from wherever else, and eventually, that smile would stay. It would be a lie of a smile, but that lie would ease the pressure of a frown on her soul. She, Wakka, Kimahri and the others would be there to catch her when she fell, reinforcing the knowledge that she wasn't alone, that she was still here, that there was hope, and that smile would become less of a lie.
And she would, like a broken bone, grow stronger.
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Lulu walks down the ornate dock, stopping behind her charge, her High Summoner, her not-daughter, her little Yuna, and says with the practiced-in-the-mirror tone of a gentle, patient mother, "Yuna, it's time."
She walks away now, heading towards the stadium. She knows Yuna will follow, knows this is nothing but a formality, but she can't help feeling that she's walking away from Yuna's pain like a dog with its tail between its legs.
A/N: Best game I've ever played, hands down. Been playing X-2 recently and it's just as shitty and sanctity-destroying as I remember. Oh well, gonna beat it anyways. And Birth By Sleep. Yeeeeah let's do this!
...And the ending of FFX makes me cry, so whatever.