Beyond these Blue Waters
Yuna remembers how it was, the days of Lulu's pilgrimage.
Well, Ginnem's pilgrimage really, but had always been Lulu's pilgrimage, Lulu's calm, to the young summoner.
She had spent her nights sick with worry since Lulu had departed. For every summoner that had defeated Sin, a hundred more failed on their journey, either slain by fiends or broken by Sin. And for every hundred summoners, a hundred hundred guardians followed. Every night, Yuna's head had flooded with images of Lulu's body, drowned within the Moonflow, strewn across the Calm Lands, wiped away in an instant by Sin. She'd wanted nothing more than to be comforted by the older girl, who she'd come to love as a dear sister. To see that subtle smile and feel those lithe fingers threading through her hair, telling her not to worry because she would always be here for her. But instead she had gone, sailed away to Zanarkand and unsettled the waters in her wake.
She had begged the other girl not to go, but knew it was hopeless. She begged as Lulu herself had begged when Yuna first announced her intentions to become a Summoner.
Her training had continued, even as Ginnem and Lulu had departed from Besaid. There were never any guarantees when it came to Sin, any Calm could be the last. Her teachers had scolded her wavering focus, none of them truly able to understand how the absence of the stern black mage from the island had shaken Yuna so much.
Wakka had been just as bad, he'd fretted and worried every day. Though she knew he had hidden the worst of his own fear for her sake. He and Chappu would often whisk her away from the eyes of the temple monks and down to the beach to take all their minds off the looming possibility, day after day, that they would never see Lulu again. Even when sat on Besaid's hot sands, watching the Aurochs practice, Yuna found that it had helped, just a little. Khimari was never far away either, and his sturdy presence did much for her over the weeks that followed. The mighty Ronso was safety in his own, powerful way.
Then one day, it had seemed that all Spira shook. Those too young to really remember Braska's pilgrimage were curious at the energy in the air. But for those that did, they had spoken in hurried, hushed whispers on that day. The nuns were distracted from their lessons; the monks carried with them a barely restrained excitement. Every doorway of every hut in the village had been alight with a whisper. A whisper and an unspoken hope. It was both unexplainable, yet so very clear, all at once. Like the moments before a thunderclap.
Soon, even the children had realized that something around them was changing, that the tension rolled thick in the air. They clung to their mothers, unsure what to do, hearts beating wildly for no reason they understood. That day was the longest many knew in years, and none could say when that energy left again on the waves of the sea. But what they all could remember was the boat that came in from Kilika. Hours, or even days later, bearing messages from Luca and Bevelle.
Sin had fallen.
There had been laughter for the future and tears for those who had not lived to see it. Singing and dancing intermingled with sorrow amongst the people of Besaid. Chappu had picked her up and spun her around, face wild with joy, as Wakka punched the air behind him. The Aurochs raced a lap of honour around the village and Yuna wept harder than she had in years, face aching from the smile she wore. Lulu had done it.
The days after that were a heady blur, the merriment hardly stopped. More boats came from Bevelle, one carrying a great statue of High Summoner Ginnem, and Yuna almost wished to ask for another, one of Lulu. As far as she knew, Lulu had been Ginnem's only guardian, surely protecting her summoner single-handedly was worthy of such an honour?
She'd brought it up with Wakka, who had agreed, and Chappu, who himself wondered if they'd have to call Lulu 'Lady' when she returned. She'd be a Legendary Guardian too, after all, like Sir Auron had been for Braska.
Upon every new arrival from the seas, Yuna, Wakka and Chappu would be there at the docks, excitedly scanning the disembarkment, searching for the flashes of pale skin and dark furs that would herald Lulu's return.
But the days had come and gone; the boats left with the tides and Lulu never did walk the gangplank down to the small beach of the dock. Weeks passed, months. The island calmed. The monks scorned yet another distraction from her training. Sin or no, she was still an apprentice to the calling of a summoner, but if they had found Yuna unable to focus before, sick with worry and waiting as she was, it was nothing to how she was now.
Lulu had promised, before she left, that she would return to Besaid, to Yuna.
"Where is she Khimari?" she'd sobbed into the Ronso's chest one night, when panic and despair finally took her, "why hasn't she come home?"
"I'm sorry."
Not once, in so many years, since those awful nights on Besaid, has Yuna wanted to cry so badly. She meant what she had said to Tidus, about keeping up her smile, even in the face of her woe…but this was beyond so much that she could have expected.
Meeting Yunalesca…the thought had dawned upon her then, about why Lulu had never returned, but to see her now, in this final hour, was something else.
She was barely changed from the girl Yuna remembered, yet she was scarcely the same. Her face, her body, even the clothes she had worn on that day, setting off for Kilika, were identical. Yet Yuna could see that beyond the girl in front of her, the intensity of Sin churned behind her eyes. Beneath them, the waters of Besaid flowed, pulled towards Lulu and under the hem of her dress, as though she were a goddess of marble in some great fountain.
The beach was bright, as it had been that day so long ago when Yuna had lost her forever, yet the colours subtly invert, playing tricks on her eyes, the sky bleeding orange into the horizon as the sun bursts black over the sea foam. The violet waters roar white noise, like the conch she'd held curiously to her ear when she was younger.
She attempts to hold herself calm, steady, as she had taught herself. For hours and days and months and years without Lulu beside her…
And she remembers never feeling whole.
"Yuna? Don't cry, please."
She flinches away from her thoughts and where they take her. Ahead, Lulu regards her with both sorrow and pride and Yuna almost takes a step towards her, the water and sand warm over her feet and between her toes, though she does not remember removing her boots.
"You promised….that you'd come home," she ducks her head, watching her tears slide into the waters, wishing she could dissolve into the ocean's embrace that easily too.
"I'm sorry."
The simplicity of the answer hits her like a blow to the head, "Is that all you can say?!" she shouts, stomps her foot like the child she never had the chance to not be for Lulu. Who stands maddeningly still as her temper makes the waters surge.
"I missed you! I missed you so much! You went away and left me after all those years you spent telling me not to do the same!" She's aware of the shocked gazes of the others on her back, but she doesn't care, lost in the fathoms of Lulu's eyes after so long, she finds herself running towards her, the memory of the older girl's arms around her a phantom touch she yearns to re-discover.
The waves drag against her feet, she tumbles, her eyes blurred from tears and the sea tips itself, Sargasso clear, the brief eternity before impact shows her the leagues beyond the fountain. Deep spiralling flows gouged across scales, the tide's ebb pulled across immense fins, an eye, turning-
Arms rush to meet her, drawing her close
"Not yet," Lulu says,
-and Yuna complies, all to happy to forget the looming terror beneath her and find refuge in the girl before her. She nestles her face deeply into Lulu's neck and breathes raggedly, the scents of sandalwood and citrus still enveloping her just like she remembers, even through her tears. She clutches to the straps of Lulu's dress, not caring about Sin or Spira, or even the monster she knows devours Lulu's mind at this very second. She has the rest of her life to consider those things, the world outside of this one moment she'd craved for as long as she'd been left on that lonely beach in Besaid.
The world grows quiet. And both know a peace they have not felt in so long.
They stand there for years, minutes, a whole cycle of the moon, before Lulu utters those final, tragic words.
"Yuna, it's time."
She makes no protest, knowing how final this must be. It was time to be strong again, strong for everyone. Strong for Lulu. She nods, and Lulu smiles proudly at the resolve in her eyes.
"Once it starts," she murmurs, hand cupping Yuna's face one last time as their bodies begin to pull apart, "I won't be able to hold back. Do you understand?"
"I do."
They break, the rush of the tide dragging Yuna back towards where Tidus and the others wait as Lulu sinks beneath the broiling waters, gaze never breaking from hers.
Wakka cries out behind her as Lulu is swallowed whole, but she holds herself firm, waiting, her heart at peace beneath the beats of adrenaline coursing through her as an elegant, lapis hand begins to break through the waves.
Lulu was coming home.
A.N. You know, when I first played FFX and we learn all about Ginnem and Lulu being her first guardian, I imagined her to be much much younger. According to the timeline of FFX though, it's only about 2 years before the events of the game itself that it happened. I still can't help but think of everyone as being much younger though. I don't know how much the events of the game would actually change, with Lulu as Sin, rather than Jecht...would Tidus and Auron even be there? I said yes just for the purposes of this, but it makes you wonder. I still think the end result of he party entering Sin to fight Yu Yevon would remain the same. Yuna is still Yuna after all, that seems like it's meant to happen. Enough of that though, thanks for reading
Hope you liked it~