/ Gosh, sometimes I feel I move so slowly. Sorry for taking so much time on this!

Ixis Complicated - You are my muse eternal. Thank you so much for the praise, encouragement and critique. /

With death curling in her mind, she decided to go to Mushroom Rock Road.

Since... since the start of the calm, or perhaps long before it, she has never been sure of herself. She'd felt lost, delicate, unsure and unable to decide what would make her happy or what, after everything, she wanted to do.

It didn't seem fair... that she should turn to apathy after achieving perhaps one of the greatest victories Spira has ever seen (not that she thought of it that way, but she smiled politely whenever they'd tell her, anyway.) It didn't seem right that she would feel so uncomfortable in her little island hut, craving company but at the same time listlessly yearning for solitude. It just didn't fit that she should still be able to smile, or feel sad, or lonely, or desperate, or happy or any of those strange, mismatched, revolving emotions when she had planned on feeling nothing at all past seventeen.

Perhaps she was addicted to feeling. Perhaps she was addicted to danger. Perhaps she just wanted to feel alive again, rather than simply being alive. She... knew it was stupid, knew it was dangerous, and knew it was crazy and pointless and silly - but those same feelings had driven her to dive into the Farplane in the first place, so she had to ride them out.

She had come here because she knew death would follow her.

This place seeped of loneliness. Great gullies were carved out of the aging stone behind her, everything groaning and moving motionless towards the sea. Even the water here, in her mind, had been tainted black and red. The seaweed that breached the surface looked like floating corpses, somehow left forgotten after that terrible incident. Floating there, just to make her feel sad.

Her boots stayed firmly pressed in the sand. After that awful day, she had never wanted to come back here. But the drive was in her, and she had nothing left to do but follow it, anyway. If she closed her eyes for long enough, she could still breath in the blood and the dirt and the pyreflies. She could still remember her ankles twirling and the whole beach dancing round her, a sandstorm of flies glittering and glowing. The blood on her bare feet had been washed out in the body ridden sea. She would never forget, no matter how calm and serene this beach seemed now, she would never forget its turmoil.

Then why had she come here?

Because something in her heart drew her here. Something about this sea where Sin had once swam stole all of her attention. This was where she had learned her sacrifice would be worth it. This is where she now knew that... His sacrifice had been worth it.

Sometimes, she needed to be reminded of that, as selfish as it was.

And then she felt ice on her back.

A jolt suddenly ran through her skin. Her eye moved like a wheel, turning violently towards a flash of blue.

No...

She took a step back in surprise, a hand immediately on her chest and her head shaking in disbelief. No, no, no he couldn't be here. He shouldn't have been here. She had sent him - she had sent him and this was not happening.

Humming birds lashed against her mind, cicadas shaking their wings like rain on tinfoil. A well opened somewhere and her mind was the sea raging inconsistently and she pushed out with the last of her strength, "Seymour..."

He was smiling.

"Lady Yuna."

Had she not predicted, since the moment she saw nothing in the Farplane, that this would happen? Had she not come here because she knew what would be waiting here for her? Then why did she suddenly feel so naked beneath his gaze, why did she suddenly want nothing more but to runrunrun?

"... You should... be resting," she said, cautiously.

"Please, you wound me," came the soft, twittering response. He stepped forwards, full and elegant and the exact opposite of whatever twisted form his father had been when he had struggled out from the Farplane. "I am well rested."

"Why are you here?" Why, why, why was he here when... She found fists balling by her sides, more than ready to summon her staff if the time called for it. She refused to be afraid anymore. This was her stand. "How... How can you be here?"

"It seems," he said, "that I truly am my father's son." Tilting his head, he added, "Would you consider my death to be unclean?"

She struggled within herself for an answer, but she found new words instead, "You were wrong, you know." Courage roared in her, and the waves crashed. "Spira's suffering did not prevail. We broke the spiral of death. We defeated Sin." Narrowing her eyes, she lifted her head, hands freely falling by her sides, "What will you do, in a world without Sin?"

"Ah, the Eternal Calm," he said, her courage washing off him like the rocks in the sea. "A world free of suffering. A world free of death. Is this what you have brought, Lady Yuna?"

"I never... set out, to free the world of suffering."

"Then, in a world without sin, that shall become my task."

She shook her head free of hummingbirds, Gagazet's drums beating loud and clear. "I did not set out to free the world of suffering. I set out to... give relief, from the pointless cruelty of Sin. I set out to give a sense of security, a moment of peace in a world swallowed by chaos. I will never free the world of death, or pain, or sorrow - but I have given the people choice. The choice to shape their own lives, to choose to live honestly. No longer is Spira blinded by false hope, and we have given them, that."

"It seems your resolve was even greater than I had imagined," she was sure he laughed, then, but the wind howled louder and the whipping of her hair and the scream of the ocean drowned everything out. "- A world without false hope?" She lifted her arms, crossing them to cover the goosebumps that rippled across her skin. At least now, she could attribute it to the elements - rather than those deep blue eyes that seemed to rip right through her. "Lady Yuna, you cannot be so naive."

"Do you think, that without Sin, without Yevon - there will be no more lies? Corruption is not born from desperation, Yuna. Long after the cheering and the celebration, long after those heart felt smiles and laughs have all peeled away, sorrow will prevail again. Your hope, your ambition, and your resolve - all of them... are admirable qualities, but ones that I fear will be crushed."

She lowered her head, her fingers lacing across her waist. She wasn't sure, exactly, what emotions boiled and burned and churned in her stomach - but every single one wanted her to vomit. "I still don't understand you," she said, lifting her eyes to meet with his, refusing to back down against his torrent of words. "Life... is punctuated by moments of extreme happiness... and extreme sorrow," her eyes darted to the side, the sun catching lightly in them. "But through both the good, and the bad, we can... work to find peace. Spira is smarter, now. It has learned from the mistakes of the past - and because of that, it can grow. I will not be crushed. I will not let you crush me! I will not let you crush them!"

"Then, what will you do with me?" The smirk on his face grew ever-the-wider, never once changing. "Punish me? Break me? Send me again and again?"

"I will stop you," she said, briskly. "Your father... and your mother, they asked me to stop you. They begged me to put an end to you, and they blamed themselves, for letting you become as twisted as you did."

Suddenly, he didn't seem to be smiling, anymore. Something, just for a second, seemed to come loose and break. His eyes seemed wider, his mouth a lose for words - but she wasn't entirely sure if she was simply hoping for a break, a chip, a crack in a face made of porcelain that seemed like it would never, ever split.

"They need not blame themselves," he spoke, trying to remain the mirror of calmness. "Do you not think it selfish, that they would take the blame for all of my achievements? My Lady, I am no longer a child. I am free to fail, or triumph, on my own. "

And he was right. He was no longer a child, weeping in Zanarkand while the whole world remained ignorant to his wailing. He was no longer that little boy who had begged his mother not to leave him, no. He was lips of ice, and kisses that tasted of burning ash, he was vicious and deluded, deranged and lost. He was no longer a child, but he was a man with a child's heart. She wondered, for just a moment, what it must have been like to wander down Gagazet alone. Did he weep, then? Or had his eyes grown tired and his heart numb, even then?

"I will save you."

"A bold statement."

"If you will not stop. If you will not die, then I will stop you. I will save you," she breathed, long thin and hard. If she had her guardians, she would have fought - if she had her aeons by her side, she would have fought. But she did not have the strength, and all she could do was speak in half-lies.

"And how," he said with a flicker of bemusement crossing his face, stepping across the sands towards her, "do you plan on doing that?"

"... Come with me," she said, aware that she needed to buy time. So long as he followed her and chased her for whatever reason he saw fit, then that meant that he would not be harming anyone else. If she could do this, eventually her guardians would come looking for her. Eventually, they would find her. She could handle herself, until that time. "To Guadosalam."

"Lady Yuna, you are as cunning as you are admirable," he closed his eyes over, apparently mulling over the idea - but when he opened them, and saw her hand extended - extended as he had done for her so many times, he could not bring himself to reject it.

"I do not know what you are planning," he mused; but did not reach for her hand, knowing it would bring her discomfort. Offering a bow of his head instead, he made his way towards her side.

"But I will follow you, wherever you might take me."