Disclaimer. Need I say more?
I let KorelC beta this. He may have changed more than I should have let him!
He knew he was the toughest and the best. The toughest and the best of what, though? He could barely control his innermost urges. His urges to just pass on, to just forget, to let Sin rampage through the small villages and stay away from Bevelle, from the temples, from Zanarkand. He could just properly die and let things go on as they should.
He could never fight Yu Yevon. Not when they prayed at the temples and he, headstrong though he was, tried to persuade Braska to give up. Not when Braska, he, and his fellow guardian made it to the ruined remnants of Zanarkand, and not when Yunalesca finally revealed the secret. Not when Braska accepted and Auron didn't. Not when, after he left to become the Final Aeon, Yu Yevon's little girl killed Auron.
Not when Braska Summoned him. Definitely not when the backlash killed the summoner he'd protected and grown to love - in a brotherly way - and not when it succeeded and killed Sin, only for Yu Yevon to be rejuvenated and to come out again, fighting him at every turn.
Sin never looked the same, all those times. He looked down at his fins, judging them. The Final Aeon was an Aeon that brought out the true form of what the Fayth thought of themselves, though twisted by Yu Yevon - and it was almost frightening to know that his self-esteem of himself was so ungraceful. A whale-lizard-thing? Truly? The only upside was that it could move as freely in water as it could on land - a remnant of his blitzball days, a remnant of his pride. But he wondered, wondered indeed, what the other Sins looked like. Probably ugly. After all, Yu Yevon was now a beetle, for goodness's sake.
Watching over his son was his prerogative, yet he was kept busy - and had been kept busy for the ten years since Braska died - by Yu Yevon sending stinging attacks through Sin. He hadn't let Yu Yevon win, knowing Yu Yevon's home battlefield (Zanarkand) inside out. Where once others - Ohalland's Aeon - had had to create places where they were from, a separate identity (he still couldn't believe his eyes when he saw palm trees in Central Park), he could claim parts of Yu Yevon's home ground as his.
'Blitzball stadium, hands off!'
Those parts were where he could rest from the daily fight, rest from cleaving the Sinspawn clogging his body with corruption and gravitation, rest from hacking the nagging tentacles of Yevon into little bits with the sword Braska and Auron had made for him. He could still remember when he used that dratted red hooked blade while Auron watched over the blacksmith making his sword, holding the tongs, pumping the bellows. He could still remember Braska passing his hands over the sword, leaving glyphs of glowing magic and summoner's spells fading into the black and red body of the sword, it becoming suddenly light and easy to swing.
He treaded water once more, creating his constructs to recreate a blitzball game, the Zanarkand Abes against the Bevelle Mages, knowing that his only spectator would be Yu Yevon, clapping his hands outside of the beetle guise, sitting, always sitting, at East Block in the front row, fifth from the right.
Watching over his son? Auron could take care of that. Such, a stiff, but yet so loyal - he'd never break his promise, so he'd be there for Tidus. Catching the ball, Jecht swam off towards the goal.
He'd be watching for Tidus, though. Always. And today was no exception.
Seryn