(A/N: Hello everyone, this is just a little idea that popped into my head one day and I just had to write it down. The setting is the night before Rikku's marriage to …someone (let your mind fill in the gaps) and where her thoughts wander to. Yes it is angsty, and yes it's a song fic, but please, take the time to read and review on it. Thank you.)
(Disclaimer: it pains me to say this but I don't own anything but the plotline.)
Rikku sat at her window looking out over the desert horizon from her room in New Home. Her sphere clock read 1:30am yet she couldn't sleep; or rather she feared it. Because she knew that her dreams would be just like her thoughts, filled with images and memories of a man who was not her fiancé, a man she both wanted to and feared forgetting.
Came in from the rainy Thursday
On the avenue
Thought I hear you talking softly
I turned on the lights, the TV, and the radio
Still I can't escape the ghost of you
Having spent quite a lot of time in the Songstress dress sphere, Rikku had found that singing was an effective way to release tension and to get out hard to verbalize emotions. Well, thinking about him was certainly causing both, so singing might just be the answer.
What has happened to it all?
Crazy some say
Where is the life that I recognize?
Gone away
"But is it even a problem," she thought, then shook her head, "Of course it is, I'm getting married tomorrow, I can't be thinking about another man, even if he is dead." That was the logic she told herself again and again, but no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't convince herself that it was wrong.
But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive
As she sung memories of him came flooding beck to her; the way his coat fluttered when he swung his massive blade, the little heard sound of his gruff chuckle, his scent embedded in his coat when he lent it to her during the climb up Mt. Gagazet, the taste of the sip of sake she had stolen one night from his sake bottle, the feel of his gloved hand on her shoulder when he gave her one of his rare praises, and the way she always felt when he did.
Passion or coincidence
Once prompted you to say
Fate will tear us both apart
Well now Fate's gone out the window
Cross the rooftops runaway
Left me in the vacuum of my heart
When he had found out about how she felt about him; as good as she was at keeping her feelings hidden behind her smile, he had eventually seen though it; he hadn't rebuffed her. He hadn't kept away nor had he gotten any closer, the only difference she could detect was an ever so slight smile in his well-hidden eye whenever their gazes met. "That," she told herself, "was the best and now the worst part of it all."
What is happening to me?
Crazy some say
Where are you my friend when I need you most?
Gone away
He hadn't been the only one to disappear on that fateful day, her dear cousin Yuna had lost, not only the Aeons that had stood beside her, but the young man that she had given her heart to. So for two years Rikku had been able to cover up her grief by helping her cousin look for and eventually find what had been lost to her.
But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive
Grief had also been pushed aside at the rekindling of her first crush. Having saved the world along side him had given her a chance to see him as the man he had become over their years apart. Eventually he had proposed to her and in the spur of the moment she had agreed. But now, while her fiancé was sweet to her, he no longer made her heart thump in the way thinking of him always did.
Papers in the roadside
Tell of suffering and greed
Here today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh, here beside the news
Of holy war and holy need
Ours was just a little sorrowed talk
But what was she to do, break off what was almost certainly a forever marriage over what was now only a memory? Aside from the slight smiles she had no way of knowing if he had even felt anything back, for all she knew those beloved little smiles might have been amusement over what he saw as only a crush.
And I don't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive
Rikku stopped singing, that thought had sealed it. That probably was what he was thinking, finding it funny that the young child that she was at the time, had fallen in love with someone she shouldn't have. She wiped the beginnings of tears from her eyes, vowing that, just like her song, she wouldn't cry for what was lost. A knock at her door broke her thoughts, and when she opened her door, her resolve broke as well.
(A/N: there it is my moment of angst but depending on what you people think I might make this a non-angst two-shot. So here is the deal, you review and tell me who knocked on the door and what you think happens next, and I will take the most popular answer and write it as the conclusion to this fic.)