Fading Love Song
The moon sang of a love song, a love song that would fade away as soon as it begun. A love song just for me.
The sky was blanketed with black, diamonds spread across it, glimmering and shimmering in and out of sight. The moon was full, casting dancing shadows across the sand dunes that skipped and danced and sang along to a song full of sadness and remorse. Those shadows, those pretty little shadows, didn't even noticed the young girl laying in the sand, her breathing rigid, her heart beating slower and slower.
A tear slipped down from her eye and traveled down her cheek, dying at her dry, cracked lips. Another perfect tear fell, this time disappearing into her thick, blonde hair that spread under her. She felt unusually warm in the cool desert air. It must have been the little light the moon cast upon her, making her pale skin glow with an eerie radiance. Even she could tell she was letting her life slip away through her fingertips, like a handful of sand just going through her very fingers. And even though she knew, even as she lay there, blinking away tears and trying to focus on the blurry moon above her, she could do nothing to stop it. She could do nothing nor say nothing but let her life take its course, even if she did end up in Farplane.
"This sucks," she whispered, though her voice was low and sounded like dead leaves scratching against cement. She felt her throat burn as she said those two words. It was as if someone had poured Luca's Special Hot Sauce down her throat and was refusing to give her any water to tame the flames.
She tried to roll over, but to no avail. She only groaned in pain as her arm twitched and ached under her weight. This whole dying business was rather painful, even if she was very close to the end.
Poor dead people. No wonder they refused to go to the Farplane and remained behind as fiends. They wanted others to feel the pain of dying.
Nasty business. Really.
The dancing shadows around her picked up the speed, their black bodies moving faster and faster to the tempo of the song the moon sang. This time, they seemed to notice the young girl in the sand, who was moaning and groaning in pain like a poor ghost, and they began to dance for her. Maybe they could help her see that there were more enjoyable things to life than death, like dancing.
The girl sighed and closed her eyes, trying to block out the moon and her sad song. For some strange reason, she felt as if the moon were singing just for her, telling her of a love that seemed to resemble her own. Though the idea was preposterous. Moons couldn't even sing.
"Lovely," he told her.
"Love," he said.
"I'll come back to you,
I promise,"
And he let go of her hand.
"Darling," he called to her.
"Honey," he cried.
But she could no longer hear him
As she sat there
And died.
The way the words affected her surprised her. It was as if someone had removed her brain, ripped it apart looking for old memories to plague her with, and came up with this bitter song of her untold love and then spat it out to her as she lay on the sand dying. What a great way to die, she thought angrily, before cursing the beautiful moon into oblivion for making her face the truth.
How could he leave her that way? How could he simply pack his bags and leave with just a goodbye, a wave and his usual, odious smirk? Did he expect her to wait around forever? Did he expect her to be jolly as he went and tried to kill himself with rather large machina parts? Or did he want her to wallow in misery because he wasn't there and had a very large probability of never coming back?
Was that what he wanted?
Because that's what he was getting.
She had tried to go on without him. Truly, she had woke up the very next morning after his departure with her usual grin and went around her Home looking like her usual, bouncy self without an ounce of worry. She even ran away from Home to go defend her cousin who happened to be making the largest, stupidest mistake by becoming a summoner. Hell, she had even helped get rid of the pathetic thing that boy had gone out to defeat. And to top it all off, she was very happy without him, until he never even showed up again. Until he decided that she wasn't in any need to hear that he was quite alright. Even when he was perfectly fine, starting his ownorganization in an abandoned temple, he hadn't even managed to send her a simple note saying that he was fine. That he would keep his promise and come back.
Jerk.
She could feel the tears threatening to spill out her eyes. They were burning her lashes as she tried to bat them away. Unfortunately, the bats and the swipes didn't manage to make the tears disappear as her eyes spilled them out and she cried silently as the moon continued her song.
Two years after he had left, she had started yet another adventure, in dire need to get away from everything that reminded her of him. Which happened to be everything. She had found something of valuable importance that might have helped her cousin with her own little problem. And thus their journey began. A journey that happened to bring him straight back into her life. When she could have certainly done without him.
And when they had reencountered?
He acted as if nothing were wrong, as if he hadn't abandoned her with an unfulfilled promise. As if he hadn't broken her heart into a trillion little pieces and was stepping all over them, crushing them beyond repair. No, he was acting like his sixteen year old self.
How she hated him for that.
Now she was back at Home, rotting in the sand, waiting for Death to make its untimely appearance and rid her of her pain.
Physical and emotional.
She sat there, and wondered
What had gone wrong
To take her precious love
Away from her
And leave her with a sad love song.
Oh shut up," she mumbled darkly, but the song only grew higher until it was all she could hear. She could feel the tears burning once more, and she didn't even bother to stop them as they made their course down her face and buried themselves into her hair.
"This sucks," she said once more, though she didn't expect an answer from anything or anyone, not even the damn shadows dancing around her as if she were some sort of sacrifice.
She laughed hollowly. In a way, she was a sacrifice. A sacrifice to love.
How ironic.
To try to get away from it only to find herself back where she started, in the place she had vowed to keep away from.
Life, and love, managed to work in very mysterious ways.
Why couldn't she just die now? Was Life going to give her lemons anytime soon so she would have to make lemonade? No, she said firmly in her mind. I'm not going to make lemonade. I'm going to throw them back at stupid Life's head and say "I DON'T NEED YOUR DAMN LEMONS!" Yes, that's what I'll do. Or play golf with them. Which ever I'm in the mood for at the time.
But another thought rose in her mind. Would there be another time? Would she actually be alive to have Life throw lemons at her? She didn't think so. The pain in her heart was so immense that she was sure that if she didn't die in the sand, she would die walking back home. And if that didn't work, she'd have to shoot herself in the brains because really, if Death couldn't do the job, she'd have to do it for it.
The moon still sang as the girl in the sand closed her eyes once more. When was she going to die already? She was rather cold there now, sitting in the desert late at night, with crazy shadows dancing around her. She was rather afraid a snake would come slithering out of no where and make a snack out of her leg, resulting in poisoning her and making her die.
Actually, she liked the desert now.
She could hear something in the distance, like someone running, but she paid no attention to it. It was probably the moon's singing turning way off tune, since she had been singing since the girl had arrived at five in the afternoon. It had to be around one or two in the morning now.
It wasn't until a large shadow was cast over her that she realized someone was standing right before her, blocking out the warmth of the moon and its pale lights.
She opened her eyes. Blinked a couple of times. Her green, swirled eyes were hazy at first, and she thought she was hallucinating when she saw a tall young man with blonde, spiky hair standing over her, a black eye patch over his right eye. He had a small smile playing on his lips as she surveyed him and he looked right back at her. She knew that smile.
"Damn, now I'm hallucinating," she said out loud. "Dying couldn't get any worse, could it?" she asked herself, silently hoping that the illusion before her would not answer her.
"Oh, you're dying?" asked the illusion. He had the same nice, husky voice that she remembered from all those years ago. It still managed to warm her insides and set a tingling through her body."Sounds like fun."
She winced. He was proving to be less and less like an illusion and more like a real, live, breathing person right before her. A person that had stomped all over her heart and was making her die right then and there.
"Go away," she said softly.
"Cid's girl—" he began, but he was interrupted by her frantic voice.
"I said go away!" she replied louder, closing her eyes tightly, wishing him away and wanting Death to come to her now. It didn't matter the pain of dying now. Even a snake would be welcome now, even though she hated the vile creatures.
She happened to hatehim even more.
Gippal stared down at the girl with the blonde hair that made him crazy. Made him want to be more of a show off than he normally was. She was the girl that made him want to leave Home in the first place. The constant threat of Sin, the evil monster that had purged Spira a couple of years before, had made him want to get rid of it just to ensure that she would be okay. And now she was dying. Wonderful. When he had paid for his airship to get fixed in top speed so he could come and see her, he didn't know she was going off into the desert to die.
He was terrible with timing.
"Rikku," he said softly, going on his knees to take her hand. She still had her eyes closed tightly as his hand reached for hers. She was so warm, despite the cold around them.
"What now?" she asked, her voice bitter. She tried pulling her hand away but he held fast, making her whimper in a slow complaint of pain.
"What're you doing here?" His voice was serious, quite unlike the one she remembered. It sounded as if he had taken a couple of months to grow up. Secretly, she hoped he hadn't. She wished more for his cocky boy self than a mature faction leader.
"I'm dying," she responded, her voice very serious. "Or at least, I'm trying to die. But it's a nasty business."
"Why are you dying?" he asked. He hoped she would leap up and dance around, pointing at him while laughing, screaming, 'Ha, you believed me!' But for some reason, he knew that she wouldn't be doing that. That she was truly trying to die.
"Because I've been bored lately. I've done so many things in my life but I've never died. I thought it'd be cool to try it." A smirk graced her dry lips for a moment before it slipped away.
Along moment of silence spreadbetween both of them. Gippal took the time to look at Rikku closely and note how pale she look, how skinny she seemed, how ill she was. He could see the pain written clearly across her face. Though she was only eighteen, he could see the pain of a widowed eighty year old woman etched into her eyes. He was starting to believe, in slow realization, that maybe he was the cause of that pain. He needed to say something, anything at all, to try to get her to stop this whole fake dying thing she happened to have.
"That's rather unfair, since I came all the way from Djose just to see you," he said, a smug smile spreading across his face. He thought that would do the trick. Joking would surely get her right back to her cheerful self.
Nope. He was wrong.
It only made her cry.
The sudden bursts of tears coming from a girl who had never let him see her cry surprised him so much that he stumbled backwards and disrupted the shadow's dance, though they didn't hold him to blame. It made his heart quicken its beating in worry as she cried and cried, salty tears slipping into the sand. He thought he heard the moon begin to cry as well through her mournful song of lost love. In fact, he thought that this time, Rikku was really dying, since it seemed like she was crying her heart out. He didn't even have the slightest clue how to stop her.
"Oh, don't cry, don't cry," he said to her, crawling through the sand to reach her. He nervously pushed away some of the wet strands of blonde hair that were stuck to her forehead. He could see his long fingers tremble slightly at the contact."I'm not any good with crying women. Please stop crying, Rikku. What would your dad say?"
That seemed like another thing not to say. The crying wails only increased in tempo as she swiped away his hand, her nails scratching at his skin. He winced inwardly as he tried to take hold of her hands again, so she wouldn'thurt herself or him, but only resulted in getting another fingernail digging into his skin. A tiny red dot of blood was surfacing through the wound she had caused, but that didn't matter right now. Only she did.
"Stop, please," he begged, trying to shake her from her sobbing. But she seemed intent to keep on withher cries and tears, because once he said that, he could swear he saw her produce twice as many tears that before.
"Please?" he asked her. "Please?" This time he was asking someone else, anyone else, who would stop her crying. Be it Shiva, or the moon, or even Yu Yevon, as long as they made her stop her crying, before he began to cry as well.
"Why are you crying? Why?" He tried to make her answer by squeezing her hand, but he got nothing, just more tears, more sobs, more cries of despair and remorse.
To her, this time she was dying. She could feel her cries racking her bones, could feel her already broken heart break into a billion more pieces, making it now beyond impossible to mend. How could he be doing this to her? How could he turn up out of no where and expect everything to go back tohow it was? She shouldn't have expected him to be begging forgiveness or saying how he had missed her and had returned to keep his promise, but the thought that he could do that was probably the only thing that had kept her in this world. Now he was back, trying to behave as if there were no cares in this world.
And now that hope was gone, dashed by that damn Gippal himself.
If Death could arrive any moment now…
She was waiting.
Really, any moment now.
No hurry.
LOTS OF HURRY!
She felt his hand on hers again, and this time as she tried shaking it away, she didn't succeed. She couldn't even move, just sob and sob her eyes out like a… a… a little girl. The little girl that still remained inside her. The little girl that missed him so much all she could do was cry.
"Please tell my why you're crying," he asked, his voice holding sincerity.
She would tell him. Before she died. It was the least she could do. Maybe it would haunt him with guilt for the rest of his life.
Payback was a bitch.
She stopped her crying for a moment, gulping back tears and whimpers, trying to make them go to the pit of her stomach and stay there, for the moment. She breathed in deeply, ready to make him feel guilty.
But she couldn't. She couldn't make him feel anything. She could try, but she was sure he wouldn't feel guilt or sadness. He wouldn't feel anything at all, because if he did have a heart and felt anything, he would've come back for her.
"Rikku?"
"You promised you would come back!" she burst, her voice full of emotion. "But you never did. You just went ahead and started your stupid machine faction and forgot all about me! I was supposed to beyour best friend!" She had wanted to say something else, replace "best friend" with "girlfriend" but she couldn't dare herself. He had probably forgotten they had been more than good friends.
"You said that you would come back. Instead, you just kept on your own." She paused to regain some of her composure, to let out a rattle of a breath. "Didn't you think I would worry? Didn't you think I would care? Did the thought of memissing you evenoccur?No, you just forgot all abut me."
He remained silent. He wouldn't even look at her. She was now even more convinced that the man held no ounce of emotion in his cold heart but vanity and selfishness. That was the only explanation for his silence after she spilled her heart out to him.
"I thought you forgot about me," he replied after such a long moment of silence that she thoughthewas the one whohad died.
"What?"
"I thought you were the one who forgot about me," he repeated.
"Idiot," she mumbled, before closing her eyes again. She couldn't even stand the sight of him. Using her words against herself. What a jerk.
"I didn't want to come back because I was afraid you… you had just gone on without me. That you didn't even care that I survived or not. Besides, Home was destroyed." He paused. She dared open one eye to find him looking down at his own hands and saw his face take on a look of sadness and regret. "I was afraid to find out you had been one of those who hadn't survived." The unspoken words of death hung in the air, heavy, nearly suffocating the two.
She was about to say something, retaliate, scream, call him a meanie, but he wasn't done. "Then I saw you all over Spira, your face along with Yuna's, and that red headed guy and that black mage. Even that blue dude. You were famous. I though I knew then that you really had forgotten about me. I mean, you had helped save the world. I was just a faction leader bent on recovering Spiras's past. You were a savior of Spira. I was nothing to compare. I was bound to be a tucked away memory in your brain."
"But you weren't," she replied. Screaming wouldn't work now. "You were always on my mind. When Yuna lost Tidus that day on the airship, I felt like I had lost you all over again. I saw her pain and knew that I had felt the same way only months before. Every day I wondered what you were doing that was so life-absorbing that you had forgotten about me." She raised a hand and punched him lightly on the arm. "Meanie."
"Poopie-head," he said, giving her a lopsided smile.
She sighed and her hand fell back to her side. "This sucks. I can't even die properly because you're all I ever think about." She opened her eyes and stared past him to the moon above. "Even that stupid orb up there knows I've missed you. It even felt like singing a song to make me feel even worse." She looked into his eye, feeling her entire life summed up right before her. She could lose herself inside those eyes and not ever notice, nor care.
"How nice of it," he commented, looking up at the moon and silently thanking it for keeping Rikku off her dying moment.
"I hate you," she told him, finally sitting up and shaking the sand off her back.
"Likewise," he responded, smiling wider.
There was still a rather large gap between them, one that they would have to learn to cross in time. At the moment, nothing mattered except that they were both there, that she had finally stopped her crying and dying and he was finally there to hold her again. It didn't matter that they had spent three years apart, or that there were questions left unanswered, hopes that had been dashed, dreams that were left behind. All that mattered was that the moon was still singing and shining, the shadows were still laughing and dancing, and that both of them were right there. And nothing could change that.
He leaned closer to her, their faces only inches apart. He could feel her breath on his face, and as he looked at her, he saw her turn back to that cheery girl she had always been.
She saw him leaning and she couldn't help but smile and aid him by leaning in as well. There stood her sixteen year old boy, the one she had fallen so hopelessly in love with. Now he was nineteen, older, more good looking, but still the same boy she had given her heart to. And she had no intention of getting it back.
Their lips touched and the moon slipped behind the clouds, just to make sure she didn't distract them. The shadows ceased their dancing and faded away. The only thing that went on right with the kiss was the love song, and even that was fading away. After all, the song held no meaning now that they were together again.