"Tidus," Yuna whispered. She gripped his tan, muscular arms with her delicate, soft hands. She pushed her pale bosom against his strong, muscled chest. Her body tingled all over and she desperately wanted to explore the feeling until there was no mystery left.
It had been two years since she'd seen him, touched him, heard his voice. Two years had been two eternities for her. She'd nearly given her own life several times trying to bring him back. Some people did give their lives. Some just needed them taken away. Nothing would keep them apart.
Nothing.
Her heart fluttered like a bird twirling in a sunlit sky as her hands moved over his body.
"I want you to—" she started.
Tidus smiled. His thick lips curved upward, only to keep moving on his left side. The lip kept curving upward, the curve pulling away from his mouth and slowly reaching the zenith of the arc. Then, faster, the flesh fell away, skin peeling off bone, going faster and faster until a large chunk was torn off his jaw from the weight alone.
Yuna's eyes went wide as the skin around Tidus's own eyes began to shrink away, revealing the two round organs bare in the sockets.
Yuna couldn't scream. She couldn't move. She couldn't think.
She was too stunned to move and helplessly watched as the Tidus's eyes melted from the stone sockets.
The remaining bone blackened, then was suddnely replaced by metal. A large metalic skeleton connected his bleeding shoulder to a severed flesh hand, a large round flat disc at the joint.
Images began to flicker before her. Yuna barely caught any of it, but the worst damage seemed to be over. Tidus's hair changed length, then color, clothes were torn away, thick armor appeared, a large charred hole appeared in that.
Just as the life returned to Yuna—her blood began to move so fast it burned the cold that she had felt from fear, her heartbeat began to pound in her head in a dangerous, deafening tympany, her breath rushed up to her throat—he vanished. Tidus blew away like sand on a hot wind with an edge like a sharpened knife.
Yuna screamed.
She kept screaming as the scenery changed. Around her the environment refused to remain still, images flickered, each image lasting less than a second. Once trees then crushed rubble and damaged buildings. Once fire, then blasts of the thunderplains, then thick jungle, then the interior of a tiny hut.
She closed her eyes as hard as she could and tried to drive the images from her mind. She kept screaming until she ran out of breath.
As she began to collapse from the lack of air, she heard a voice calling her name.
She opened her eyes, desperately seeking safe familiarity. Lulu was there, helping Yuna to her feet. Yuna held her head as it still pounded and struggled to find her feet as they refused to meet the ground properly. This was all a dream, it had to be.
The ground proved harder to grip as it began to shake, loud rumbles and sounds of blasts accompanying the movement. The light from the open door cast violent flashes of red and orange on Lulu's stern face. Odd whistles Yuna had never heard before shrieked, the sound boring straight to her brain.
"Yuna! This isn't the time! We're under attack!" Lulu yelled, shaking her. "Stand up! We need you!"
"Did…Did your change your hair?" Yuna asked. Familiarity was fading away by the second. She vaguely felt she was in the lodge that housed the Blitzball team, but the beds were gone, replaced with weapons and people dying from wounds she'd never seen before, nor had she eve seen someone survive with only so little of themselves remaining.
Lulu, the one thing Yuna had counted on to be her anchor to the reality she remembered, was almost beyond recognizable. Her skirts were gone, one leg replaced by metal, similar to Nooj's. Lulu was clad in heavy metal armor, making it difficult for Yuna to know what of her friend was real anymore—even thought nothing seemed real anymore. Her once long hair held in braids was nothing more than a short, close bob, all her adornments thrown away.
"What's happening? Where's Wakka?"
"What?" Lulu asked, setting Yuna on her feet. "Yuna, what's happened to you? Wakka died years ago. Don't you remember?"
"No!" Yuna shouted. She tore away from Lulu's grasp and charged outside.
All hope of familiarity vanished. This was not her home. This was not Beseid. This was a nightmare.
Blackened remains of bodies littered the ground; the occasional stubborn piece of unidentifiable soft matter had solidified into goo surrounded by char. The earth was scroched. A few huts were on fire, most were gone, their burnt remains mingling with the bodies. The ground was black and hard, deep cracks ran everywhere, like an infinite web of wounds.
Huge fires were exploding in the sky, which kept changing from an ugly gray to burning red and orange. Only yards away, people, living people, barely living people, had strange machina cannons, larger than cities. The shock of the blasts threw her to the ground again as one went off. Nearby the whistling sounded again, this time louder.
Yuna bent over and cringed. She put her hands to her ears, but the mind-tearing pain would not go away.
The whistling stopped. Yuna looked up. A blast went off, miles away across the water. A cloud like nothing she'd seen before rose up in a pillar that bloomed, creating a cap like a mushroom as a taller pillar kept going, a second cap bloomed, and a third pillar took off, with a third and final bloom.
"What's happening?" Yuna screamed.
"Yuna!"
Yuna turned, desperate to fight back against another monstrosity that dared take the form of one of her friends.
Her hands were caught as she tried to tear the illusion away. The person held on so hard Yuna's wrists nearly snapped into shards.
"Yuna, listen to me!" Paine yelled.
"No!"
"Yuna, we need you!"
"No, it's not real!" Yuna screamed, froth flying from her open mouth, her head shaking violently.
"Yuna, don't you remember?" Paine yelled.
"I don't remember anything!" Yuna yelled, struck by another flicker. No more huts remained. The bodies of the living were strewn about with the bodies of the dead. No one bothered to move them this time. So much was on fire and no one worked to put it out. Everyone seemed to know death had come, they only wanted to fire the great cannons that went off and take everyone else to hell with them.
Yuna screamed as she realized the face she stared into had changed. Paine was missing an ear on one side, replaced by a slim silver box. An eye patch covered her right eye—or where it was missing. Singed flesh around the area refused to be fully covered by the offending black cloth.
"Yuna, don't you remember? Don't you remember anything?"
"No!"
"The day Seymour proposed! That was the day—"
Yuna never heard the end.
All she could hear was a loud ringing in her ears and all other noise replaces by the soft waves made by the wind in a psychedelic meadow.
There was more to what was happening that day than cannons and bombs. That day, the attack on Beseid was successful, the humans had been driven away and the world, the bright burning world, had been conquered. From behind, Yuna had been struck in the back. She had been spared seeing Paine's flesh burst into flames as she was still alive. She had missed seeing those by the canon mowed down by fire and a wind that roe away flesh. She never saw the living, burnt and shredded like faulty lanterns, die in abandonment.
Yuna saw something else. He eyes were forced open and the tranquil fields of the farplane spread out before here. Yuna saw, yet again, the fayth.
……………..
Yuna stood up as the fayth of Bahamut approached her. Certianly, they would have answers.
"What happened?" Yuna asked.
Everything would make sense now.
"You died," the fayth answered.
"But what happened? Everything suddenly changed."
"How would the fayth know?" he answered, and Yuna had to concede that he had a point. "We can only see through those we allow to carry us, and that is when we are asleep. The images tell us nothing.
"However, like the fish in the ocean, we feel a ripple spreading through Spira… a ripple in time. The ripple is spreading, ever changing, ever-growing. The ripple refuses to stop, and new waves from all the time.
"I came to ask you, you who have saved us twice, to stop the ripple."
"I have to speak with Seymour first. He would know what's ch—"
"That is not a good idea."
"Why?" Yuna asked, about to pout.
"The farplane heals only your last wound. You carry your injuries here. He suffered many injuries before he came here, including losing his tongue."
Yuna didn't move. She'd never thought she'd feel pity for Seymour. Yes, she knew of his past, but… but she never understood it. How had it created the man who'd committed genocide? How could it make such a monster? But now… had he even become that monster? Did he become that monster if things changed? If he was injured so, did this mean someone else was behind something worse than he ever was?
Then a new thought hit her, something worse. Perhaps it wasn't him. Perhaps it was someone else and he knew about them. He was both a Lord and a Maester, and a cunning secretive bastard after all. Someone wanted him dead and quiet, knowing Yuna could stop it. This Yuna, not a Yuna who'd known the past that had really happened… instead.
Baralai perhaps? Was he capable of mutilation? Who could go to such lengths?
"What do I do?" Yuna asked.
"All you can do is guess. From there we send you where and when you think you need. If you fail, we await you here and now, in whatever form or circumstance that may take."
"What if… what if it's the same time as I was already there? Won't there be two of me?
"You will take on your own body. Be careful, though. Changing yourself could change time. In your attempt to erase, you may make new marks."
"Then… then take me to me just after Seymour proposed. Immediately after."
……….
And then she was suddenly staring at Seymour's eyes. She found it so much easier—just then--to revert back to who she used to be: a scared little girl who thought that just making others happy was all that mattered. She didn't necessarily have to save him, but… but staring at him, it made her unable to tear away from the desire to at least remember the injuries she knew he'd suffer and at try to let him die with dignity.
His gaze bore down on her. It seemed so happy, so hopeful… How much had been a lie? How much was just a desire to take over sin? How much was a rotten and perverted child's fantasy to please his mother? How much was a sick and twisted game that convinced him he'd see her again? That this would all make her happy?
She wanted so much to be her old self back then. Things were so much simpler with trust. For some reason a tiny piece of her heart begged to be able to trust him. But she had to play at that anyway.
"I… I don't know. Why… Why did you choose me? Of all people?" she asked. That seemed innocent enough, right?
Seymour dropped her hands, which she hadn't noticed he'd held in his own. Now that they were suddenly absent from gentlemanly courtesy, they felt cold.
His eyes seemed real. The depth to those lilac irises was amazing. He was warm, his flesh was real, soft, comforting. It felt protective. Why did he… how could he… what went wrong? Could she stop him from his madness?
"You know yourself far less than you should," he replied.
Which one did she not know? Herself now or what should be later? Or just something he'd painted over her?
"When I saw you as I first stepped off the boat, I saw what I longed for—what I longed to be—the most, and I felt my heart ache. I had to know the grace of feeling your gentle touch, the peace of hearing your calming, welcoming words. I caught your eyes immediately form a distance. You were like me, a half-breed. But unlike me, you weren't thrown away by the world. I saw you smiling. I saw friendship all around you, warmth, gaiety and comfort. You knew what I could only dream of understanding in my dreams. Look around you, the ones you hold closest to you. They are the abandoned, the outcast, the ones that so many don't want. I thought—I hoped—that maybe, just maybe, I could have a few moments of such kindness."
Yuna thought she was going to cry. Why, just why?
She was why it had happened. Because she'd thrown him away, because she'd probablybeen the worst out of everyone he knew. Because she thought she'd finally seen the light when to him, she was the light and all he wanted was to come closer and feel welcome.
She felt something touch her cheek and suddenly she was staring at reality again.
Seymour's middle finger was gently tracing her cheek. It seemed a terror was spreading across his face, as if he were just realizing he'd come upon a person not asleep, but dead.
He opened his mouth to speak, seemingly to accept his fate, when suddenly his eyes darted away form her and his eyes went wide with shock.
He threw her to the side and she collided with Lulu, hard enough to knock them both over. Seymour then went after Tidus, tackling him to the floor in the same movement as he had knocked her away.
Two spinning blades shot past as he did, grazing his hair as the two men crashed to the floor.
Yuna suddenly understood more. Maybe it was as simple as she wanted it to be.
Standing in the doorway was a woman, dressed in a light battle uniform and bearing faint guado markings; a determined and unfriendly looked on her face as she ran at them.