When I woke up I felt kind of like a pudding -- all tepid warm, like all the joints of my body had dissolved into jelly and if I really wanted to make the effort to actually go somewhere I was going to have to ooze there. This may not be an entirely accurate analogy, being as I have never actually been a pudding, only been forced to swallow one basically whole, but I think you get the general idea. I've felt that way before -- usually when I've had some kind of mysterious plague flu. I had those all the time as a kid, courtesy of my retarded brother who was some kind of malignant germ magnet when I was not yet tall enough to ride this ride. He was always giving me something that I didn't want, and I'm not talking about lousy birthday presents here. Nothing says I care more than giving your one and only sister the Chocobo Pox. Repeatedly.
But this really wasn't like that, since I wasn't feverish hot. Under the blanket I was a nice kind of warm, like bathwater warm, and there was a really fabulous breeze coming through the open window. I was lying on my belly, the way I usually sleep, face half buried in a fat pillow and staring at a carved headboard that looked kind of strangely familiar. It was really nice artisan work, maybe Ronso carved, and I knew, I just knew that I knew where it was from, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. This is probably mostly because I was still maybe nine and three quarters asleep.
The design itself was an interworked promise ring design, knots and rings intertwined in one impossible thread that went from one side to the other, unbroken. I remember I used to tell Gippal that the Ronso carved it that way as a map showing the location of a fabulous secret treasure buried on Gagazet. He used to tell me that if that were the case then the Ronso really suck at map-making. Some people just lack creative vision.
Wait. Wait. Wait wait wait.
If that was the map bed then this was --
"Rin's Calm Lands!" I blurted into the pillow, and struggled to prop myself up on my pudding arms to look around the room. I dunno what I expected to see, but whatever it was, it wasn't what I did see.
Because the room was sunshine warm, all pale golden wood, a cheery quilted spread and an open window looking out on the endless open space of the Calm Lands and the slowly nodding grasses. This was the master suite of Rin's Calm Lands. It was, could be no other, and Maester Mika on a tricycle if I shouldn't know. Sometimes I think I spent at least fifteen percent of my life dusting crap in this room.
Cbudmacc, Rikku. Fa sicd taveha aqlammahla ev fa yna kuehk du lrynka vun ed. Yes, Rin-pucc. Although now that I think about it it wasn't exactly like there was some kind of other Pan-Spiran hotel chain we were competing with. It was pretty much Rin's or sleep outside in the rain. In that way I guess we were pretty much the best game in town.
"It looks that way."
I turned my head toward the sound of his voice but all this abrupt movement was too much for my jelly-joints and I fell back against the pillow. I could see him though, so I guess I accomplished what I had set out to accomplish. It was at this point that I realized some other things about my situation that were at least half as unexpected as waking up in the master suite at Rin's Calm Lands.
They were, in order of importance:
Exhibit A: I was not wearing anything but my shorts and skivvies, and let me be frank with you here and share one of my most secret of Rikku secrets. My skivves are only say about 50 as indecent-exposure-averting as say, Yunie's are. Look, I wear a heavy-duty molded rubber top and it's not like I've been gargantuanly blessed by the breast fairy like someone else I know has (I think I have mentioned her chest-mounted mind control beams before). I don't strictly speaking really need to wear the other half of the combo, considering my ensemble of choice has built in support. So let me spell it out for you if you're having trouble following along with me in your book. I was wearing underpants and those ruffly green shorts I have already told you I know he digs, and that's pretty much it. I know you're taking careful notes at this point. I was. But wait for it. It gets better.
Exhibit 2: Auron was not standing against the wall with his arms crossed and looking at me with his one eye. He was not sitting in the chair by the bed, anxiously holding my hand in hopes I would recover from scarlet fever. He was in the bed with me, blankets down to his waist because he was too hot for the Calm Lands or maybe just because he was waiting for me to wake up and stare at his chest like a muscle eating zombie or something: I am voting number two here because in my experience that is really how he operates, no matter what everyone else thinks. Also, we were the shirtless twins and by straining I could see the rest of his things and my things thrown over the bedside chair, but organized, you know, carefully, his boots lined up with my shoes, my shirt folded, my socks folded. Ev ed'c fundr tueh', ed'c cyjuneh'. Sometimes I really think he must be from a lost Al Bhed tribe. He really thinks like an Al Bhed sometimes. A lot of the time, being an Al Bhed means doing what you think is best, what you think is needed, and not giving a flying iron giant what anybody else thinks about it. This was an Al Bhed moment.
Exhibit C: His hand was on my butt. That's pretty much all there is to that one, and no matter what he might say about "making sure I was comfortable" by methodically rendering me topless while limpid, I wasn't about to believe his hand was on my fanny to keep abreast of my vitals, especially since since this was, at the moment, one of the few areas actually covered by my clothing. His hand was on my butt. For everyone who has been waiting since they were born for me to say "Then I realized Auron's hand was on my butt," (like me) here it is for you again, so you can keep it for posterity: Auron's hand was on my butt. There. Do you think I should underline it a few more times for emphasis? This was an underlining moment.
If I could've taken a picture of this moment and sent it to everyone who had ever existed anywhere I would've right then, just to prove all of what I've been saying all this time is like, a hundred and fifty percent true. Even if I had I known that everyone ever would have just congratulated me on such a great hoax, except for one important element: it was just too totally ridiculous to ever believe. It's all right. I can wait until I have fifty kids with dark hair, brown eyes, and horrifically tense demeanors, scarring each other up when they're toddlers. Nobody's gonna be able to say to me then wow those are some good made up kids, Rikku.
I bet he really couldn't have predicted that that was what I was thinking about at that particular moment, but then maybe he could've. Sometimes I suspect he reads me better than I think he reads me. I gotta feeling.
But yeah, so this is me, Rikku J. Cidolphus. When I wake up in a bed with a man I've been waiting maybe forever to wake up in a bed with, I'm more stuck on the in a bed part than the man part. I'm going to have to name at least three of my fifty kids Junque just as punishment for my deep and perverse (probably parentally inflicted) brain damage. Yes, that's what the J stands for, hardy-harr. I bet you can't guess which of my parents came up with that one. (A hint, his name begins with C and ends with D and I am in the middle).
"I am way half naked," I said finally, not so much an accusation, but more conversationally. Hey, did you notice? I am totally half naked. Did you have anything to do with that? Maybe? Maybe? Huh? Huh?
"That's one way of looking at it," he answered, equally conversationally. Well, as conversationally as he gets, which seems really to be more and more around me, not that I'd say he's chatty, really, more you know that he's willing to make words specifically addressed at me period, words that aren't just duck and get down and don't touch that. He's so romantic. It is probably really sad that I think this is actually true. At this point I think he's really lucky that the beautiful and fantastic girl he ended up falling desperately and sickly in love with fell on her head so many times when she was a kid that she thinks every stupid or potentially socially invasive thing he does is nine kinds of wonderful.
Right now I felt it was necessary to inform him of such, so I did.
"I'm starting to think," he said, after I had made my declaration of many true facts, "That that part just takes care of itself."
The Shape of His Heart
By Gabihime ( gabihime at gmail dot com )
Chapter Nine: Two of a Kind and Working
"So when did we get to the Calm Lands?" was what I asked next, or really first since the last time I checked I am half naked is not phrased in the form of a question.
"We didn't." He said, and at that I was sorely perplexed because if this wasn't Rin's Calm Lands then it was a really convincing facsimile. I mean, even the print on the curtains was right -- little yellow chocobos and small diamonds like stars. I loved those curtains. I wish I could say that Rin let me decorate this room when I was five and already unmatched at interior design, but he really didn't. He used to tell me though that my mama had given him the chocobo curtains a long time ago. So the room was really just how I remembered it when I was going to work for Rin the first time more than ten years ago.
And that was maybe it. It didn't look like Rin's Calm Lands does today, it couldn't because Rin gave me those curtains for my own room the last summer I worked for him. I didn't have any windows back at home so I painted myself my own view -- whatever it was I wanted to see all crammed into one frame, and then I hung the curtains around that. That's all gone now, burnt to cinders and lost in the sand when we blew Home. Maybe I'll paint another view some day, and find some more Chocobo print curtains to hang around it when I make myself another Home.
I don't even think Rin's Calm Lands still has the map bed. I can't remember it being there last time we went. Maybe he moved it to Bevelle or something. It always was the best bed.
"Where are we?" I asked, although I was already beginning to know the answer to that.
"Indara," he said. "You needed a place to rest, so I made a request of Ashura. She sent me to this room. When I brought you here, this was how it looked."
"She summoned it." I surmised, letting my head loll to the side. "I always loved this room."
"This place," he sat up, and then turned deliberately away, "Not this room, but this place in general, is the last place I can remember feeling alive."
"Until now," I said, and I meant it, even if he wasn't willing to, but then he turned back to look at me for a moment, a second like a hot knife down my back, and he said,
"Until now."
-
Maybe you're waiting to figure out the gimmick I've got going. I mean, I've been telling this story after the fact from the beginning (which is really the only way to tell any kind of story unless you got a crystal ball or are just really good at making stuff up) and every once in a while I do say crap like "little did we know then that we would never see young Wakka alive again" but I try not to, because that doesn't really make any sense anyway. I don't gotta wonder what's going to happen here, since I already lived through it, but in case you're sitting on pins and needles trying to figure out just what the terrible truth really is, let me set some things straight for you.
I am not going to die tragically (again). I am not going to live through this and forget all of Auron's dark secrets and then die tragically later (not even eventually. As of this moment I am not yet dead and I do not plan to become so ever in the foreseeable future). Auron is not going to die tragically (he already did). Leviathan is not going to open up a we-fix-it garage in Luca. I only get naked four more times in this story. I probably could've gotten naked more and I don't think anyone would have really objected, but I didn't want Leviathan staring at my good stuff without even a match to throw on account of it. Now that I think about it I probably should have gotten naked more. It's not like I get a lot of opportunities for it above ground. Wakka would take two poops, turn purple, and then die, I know it. Yevonites are usually pretty scared of the lovely and unmarked body of a radiant and nubile girl, although I bet I wouldn't hear him complaining much if Lulu decided her skirt made of belts was as uncomfortable as it looks and threw it in a fire.
Just so you know? I don't have a gimmick, just a story, our story, what there's left of it to tell.
This is our story.
-
I'm not going to try and pretend that I didn't stay in the map bed in Rin's Calm Lands for a good long time. It was comfortable and Auron was comfortable and I was still so tired, even after that holy cure from Ashura. I felt a little like Brother had beaten me black and blue with a crowbar for telling Yunie about his secret retarded crush, not that I have ever done this and this has ever happened to me as a consequence. I am just using my imagination.
It was nice just to be still next to him, still in a comfortable bed, listening to him breathing. I couldn't count for sure when I'd get the chance to do this again, except maybe I'd get to that night, since I figured our day of rest was a whole twenty four hours and not some literal interpretation garbage and we were expected to burn the midnight oil fighting the All Holy. Levi might be a lawyer and he might also sometimes be a jackass, but fortunately I don't think he's ever both at the same time. If he was, I don't think even Ashura could love him.
But eventually I knew I had to get out of bed, not because I was tired of it or anything, or because I felt one thousand percent better (although I did feel one thousand percent better than when I had been bleeding all my everything out onto the floor). I got out of bed because there are a million more things to do in the world other than the ones you can only do in bed. Also I have heard that you do not, strictly speaking, even have to be in bed anyway. Of course this might just be a malicious rumor started by anti-bedites. I am talking about sleeping. What did you think I was talking about? I bet I can guess.
Really though it hadn't progressed more than his hand on my butt and me snuggling against him, which was pretty much great by itself. We were both a little awkward and for all his clear intention we were both a little shy. So we fumbled around a little, slow and comfortable, just learning the shape of one another. I guess I never really thought about it before but he was a monk forever, and then he was a dead monk. I know there was that business with the Maester's daughter -- I mean, everybody knows that, but I don't think he's ever really been physically close with a lady before. I mean, maybe I'm just fooling myself, but it pretty much seems like his M.O.: being lusty and then exhibiting inhuman and righteous self-denial. Maybe in the beginning it was righteous, I mean he had such a stick up his butt when he was younger. It's so obvious. And then maybe after Braska and Sin it turned into being punishment, and by that point he couldn't even imagine it ever being anything different.
So he became vaguely reassured that I was girl-shaped, but I wasn't brave enough yet to verify that he was boy-shaped -- but still that pretty much satisfied the both of us for the time being, and I wasn't feeling so very much like a pudding any more, so I made myself into an inchworm and rolled out of the bed. Again, like I said, I probably could have run around half naked and not had anyone complain, but I took the time and trouble to put my clothes on, shirt and socks and shoes and all the other little accouterments of a fine lady such as myself, and then I left him lying in the bed while I went to find Ashura because I had already decided how we should spend the rest of the hours that were so fast slipping away. She smiled when I asked her what I asked her, and it was like drops of moolight like warm milk running in my blood.
She said, "You should check the bottom drawer."
I wasn't exactly sure what she meant, so I went back to the room in Rin's Calm Lands, which had the only drawers I could remember seeing in this place. Auron had stepped out for a moment, I guess to powder his nose, so I hunched down on my knees and checked the bottom drawer of the chest that matched the map bed.
Ashura. I loved her then more than I had before, and that's like adding to a number already too big to write in scientific notation. As if anyone ever doubted she was the best and most amazing mom ever. In the drawer were a dozen carefully folded sun dresses trimmed with lace and ribbons and frills -- light and easy and comfortable, like wearing a shift -- in sky blue and powder blue and sunshine yellow and golden yellow and bright orange and royal blue and all of the other favorite colors I have ever had. I am sorry that here I must confess that although I am a cool and awesome mechanic, synthsmith genius, and gunslinger, I am also maybe the girliest girl that ever was a girl. Maybe you could have guessed this from the fact that I wear the best socks ever and giant trailing ribbons on the back of my otherwise pretty functional shirt. I gotta be careful when I wear those things around engines. Also, my shorts are trimmed with ruffles. Let's be honest. I am no kinds of butch.
So I wriggled out of my clothes without thinking too much about it and then spent the next ten minutes wriggling into one dress and then another, trying to decide which to wear. I settled on the powder blue one because I was feeling that color -- the color of the sky when a kite is soaring high through the clouds.
When I found Auron again he had already finished putting on his face, so I grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the main hall where the ground still had little puddles of tidepool life in the places where the tile made low spots. If he liked my new look he didn't say anything about it, but I get a feeling that he did like it, because I'm pretty sure he would have definitely said something if he didn't. Something like Rikku, that is not appropriate to wear out to an area where we might be attacked by fiends. I told you he's not a total killjoy.
Ashura had left the picnic basket on the rug that was all covered over with sea animals, both those that had been woven in and those that had been left behind when the water receded. I guessed that Leviathan would unsummon them after he got tired of smelling them, but considering his warm affection for my vomit I wasn't entirely optimistic that this would be any time soon. Maybe he was leaving them for us: spoils from our victory. If that was the case I didn't really have any idea how I was going to politely tell him that I wasn't planning on keeping all the krill and brine shrimp and starfish and mollusks. You may be thinking Why Rikku, I have never known you to stand on ceremony with princess goldfish snake and this is true enough, but I had been cut a break, so I felt it was only reasonable to return the favor. I was kind of in love with everything at the time. You know what it's like when you feel that way. Yesterday I had died and been born again. Only like, really.
Rotting fish and my effervescent joy aside, I picked up the blanket and I made him carry the basket and we set out for the beach.
We walked for a long time around the rim of the bay, climbing up and down rocks, stopping to look at things I thought were interesting, and sometimes I would sing the choruses of those sea shanties I love, only not so loud and desperate this time around. We hiked along the beach for maybe two hours and still Indara never slipped out of sight, or never even seemed to move, really, and I got the feeling if we turned around and walked back the other direction we'd come upon the gossamer and spiderweb bridge after only a few minutes. Summoned places seem to be like that, really. It may seem endlessly giantastic, but that's just because you keep lapping yourself.
Finally I decided I didn't really care that much about our privacy and I found a nice spot and laid out the blanket near some standing rocks it would maybe be nice to lean against or climb on, depending on how we were feeling. He put down the basket and I threw myself down and then he came to sit beside me.
And then we talked, or I talked at least. I told him everything I could think of, about being a little girl and a heretic because of my eyes or because of who my parents were, and I told him about chasing butterflies and about the first time my pops took me into a ruin. I told him about Home and my room with the painted picture window and the yellow chocobo curtains, and I told him about working during the summers for Rin and how he'd promised to marry me when I was all grown up, and then I told him how I'd found someone even better than Rin and he asked who that was and I just laughed and laughed and leaned against him because he was huge and warm and steady.
I told him about when my Uncle Braskie had died and then he talked a little, and then we did a little remembering together and I think he might have been a little embarrassed. But then I told him that I couldn't remember when I had started loving him, and thinking back couldn't really think of a time when I hadn't, although maybe I hadn't understood it all at the time, and then I confessed that there are maybe a lot of things I don't really understand at the time, like when I wanted to carry Yunie away in the beginning or when I had run off angry and crying when we'd first started all of this, and then he told me that that was all right, and it was different than when he said "It's all right" to anyone else, because it didn't feel like whistling in the dark any more, not even whistling from a Legendary Guardian. It felt like it meant, like he wanted the parts of me that made me me that maybe he hadn't before, or maybe he hadn't understood it then, or maybe I hadn't. When he said it this time it felt like Don't apologize for being yourself.
And I told him about all the things I wanted for the future, all the things I wanted for everyone: peace and safety from terror and death, a time to laugh that wasn't punctuated by constant and agonized mourning. I told him I wanted a day when the sun would rise and there would be no more Sin, no more misery, no more people dead for no reason, so people could start living again outside that shadow and live the way people ought to live. I told him that I wanted a day when everybody was as free as an Al Bhed to do what they thought was right and not be punished for it, and I told him I wanted to have a new Home, where all the people of the Al Bhed could come and go freely.
I told him how I wanted Yunie and Tidus to be happy together, to live in a little house in Besaid and have a crowd of impossibly adorable and impossibly silly little kids, for Tidus to teach them all to play blitzball and for Besaid to field the first professional team composed solely of members of his family. I told him how I wanted to teach Yunie how to swim and maybe how to shoot and how I wanted her to teach me how to sing, really sing. I told him how I wanted Lulu and Wakka to live next door, and maybe all their kids would be born with breasts and rooster tails for hair and then he laughed when I did my best mime of what such a child would look like. I told him how I wanted Kimarhi to go back among the Ronso and for them to crown him king, or chief, or whatever, and for him to meet a nice Ronso lady and have a bunch of little blue kittens that I could cuddle and cuddle at least until they were five or six, when they might be big enough to cuddle me without my consent.
And then I got a little shy because I had said a lot and he hadn't said very much, so I apologized for hitting him in the head with my gun the first time, and I apologized again for being so filled with hate and fear when I had first found out what he had been trying to keep from me. He didn't say anything much then either, just put his arm around me and pulled me so we were shoulder to shoulder and gave me a long squeeze.
"I want to thank you," he said at last.
"For what?" I asked.
"For loving me despite," he said. "I didn't know I needed it until I did."
I shook my head, "Then you shouldn't because I don't. I love you because. Because, because, oh I can't even think. For so many reasons. I can't ask you to be less than you are, even if it would be easier. I would never wish you that way, even if it meant you'd be alive now instead of not. I don't want you to give up because now I understand that that's not like you. I don't want you to ever give up. Don't be afraid," I said, and maybe that sounded really silly, me telling him that, but maybe it wasn't so very, "Nobody can ever take away the you that's in my heart, no matter what happens. And no one can take away the me that's in your heart. I never thought that it would be this way, I'll be square with you. But I can't spend all my time wishing it were different, because maybe then it wouldn't have happened this way and we wouldn't have anything at all. And if I spent my time regretting all of that I wouldn't have any time left to love you now when I can, to see how it is when you really smile, to feel the knuckles on your hand under my fingers, to do a million pointless wonderful things, things that I can only do when you're here and I'm here. I know you can't promise me how long we'll have, but no one can. That's all right. I think that's always been all right."
I had said a lot again and he hadn't said anything, so I looked down, but then he said, "I admire your strength. And resourcefulness, but perhaps most, your faith. That is something I lost long ago."
"My pops says Uhmo po vymmehk tu fa maynh du kad ib." I explained, "Everyone has it broken, has their faith maybe maimed and crippled, and it hurts so you never want to believe in anything again. He says you can't really start to love, you won't ever really truly believe until it's been broken. When it's broken, when you have nothing, that's when you begin again, and it's always stronger, your heart, your faith. It's always stronger. I think you have faith too, you just need to find it again. Even if it's just a little candle in your heart, if you care for it it'll grow and grow until it can light up all the people around you when theirs have gone out." I stopped and smiled a little, "I think Yunie's like that. She's a good person. Everybody loves her. I wish I could be like that."
"You are like that," he said, and he said it so gravely, like he does, that I didn't know what to say. Then he went on, "But also different, since you are not Yuna. But in this way, I think you're not so different."
"Then," I said, "Let me tell you what I want. I want to have a new Home but maybe live on an airship half the time, like I always have. I love the sky and the water. And I want to have a million more adventures, only all fun this time, and I want to go visit everyone all the time, and maybe carry Yunie away once in a while. And I want to have a lot of kids. I always have."
"Rikku," he said, but I wasn't listening yet. On purpose.
"And I want to take them around on adventures with us. When they're little I'll tie them up in little papoose bags and hang them off of you like ornaments on a tree -- "
"Rikku."
"I kind of wonder who has the dominant genes -- I mean, if we'll get more tanks or rollerskates, or if we'll get sort of rollerskate-tanks -- "
"Rikku."
I finally stopped because I could tell I was making him upset.
He didn't say anything at first, then quietly started, "If you want to have children, then I want you to have children, but I don't want you to pin your hopes on something that cannot happen because it isn't possible. I am dead. Regardless of when I'm sent I cannot father any children -- "
"If you start out your dreams by writing out at length what can't happen because it isn't possible, then I'm not sure how much dream you -- or anyone else -- will have left. So don't say 'can't' and don't say 'won't'. If I can't dream for it then I know it'll never happen, but if I can then somehow it might. Ashura told me that princesses make fairy tales, and not the other way around. So maybe I'll make one. The world is a pretty big place. Maybe you've noticed that."
He closed his eye and seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "If it doesn't happen, I'm afraid you will be more hurt if you have pinned all your dreams on it."
"Then it'll hurt," I said, "And I'll know how much I wanted it because that's just how much it will hurt, so I'll never have to forget that dream. But any person can have as many dreams as they can think of. We're not limited to just one. I dunno if you know that or not. And I know that some of them will come true. Some of them always do. You've helped some of them come true yourself. To protect Yuna. To fall in love, really in love. To be loved. All of those are my important dreams too."
He looked as serious as a priest who does not get enough fiber in his diet, so I helpfully appended, "To ride the Shoopuf ten times in a row -- although you really hindered more than helped me with that one."
"You kept giving away our gear," he replied dryly, and I knew I had him away from the yawning chasm of moody emotive despair.
"Well, what do we need all that stuff for anyway?"
"To kill fiends?" He suggested, and it wasn't really so much a suggestion as it was you know I am correct. This is what they pay me for: to be correct. I am Legendary Guardian Always Right.
"Maybe we should just start trying to solve our problems with peaceful negotiation," I suggested helpfully, "And then throw our Al Bhed dictionaries at them if that doesn't work. I bet Yuna would totally agree to this plan."
"That is the reason," he said, and moved suddenly to pin me to the blanket, "That you and Yuna are not allowed to make the plans. Now," and he had that look, you know that look he gets, that look, "Let's begin working on another of your dreams."
-
It was late when we got back. Or maybe it wasn't. I dunno really how time passed down there, other than through beats of the hymn. I assume it was late because it was dim and quiet, and neither unfrozen guado lawyer or the Lady came out to welcome us back. Maybe that's what Leviathan had really meant: a day of rest from him. We left the picnic things where we had originally found them and went back to the room in the Calm Lands, where I could look out the window and see real fireflies dancing in the dusk. The breeze through the window was cool, and instead of spherelight the whole place was lighted by fat wax candles in all sorts of mismatched plates and dishes, all from the different sets we used to use to feed everybody at Home. It was a nice touch for this last night, this ending to the day of rest.
Still, I couldn't really spend the rest of the night lounging around in my underwear and doin' a whole lotta nothing, no matter how provocative a prospect that was. If we were going to get through tomorrow, then I was going to have to do some more synthing. I went to where he had stowed my pack and started digging through my bags and pouches and satchels. While I was so occupied, he went to his own pack and took out a worn leather case.
He brought the case back to me and unfolded it carefully and then gave me what was that he kept inside it.
"I want you to have this," he said, to make his intentions clear.
It was smooth metal, beautiful, unmarked, and tensile tight but flexible, I could feel that just by holding it, and it was light. It was so light weight it could have been made of air or fairy wings. It was maybe the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, the way it glistened like burnished gold when the candlelight flickered over it.
"It's a targe," I said stupidly, because I couldn't think of anything else to say.
"It's a targe," he confirmed, and we just stood there staring at one another.
"You know this is tetra class metal, don't you? Do you know how much this thing is worth?" I was suddenly laughing, like I'd just gotten ten buckets of ice cream, and I had. There are few things I covet more than naked potential just lying there and waiting for me to make something out of it. "How long have you had this?"
"Since the adamantoise. It was with the spheres he left behind."
"Well I guess I'll have to thank that ol' horn turtle for that find. But if you've had it since then, then why did you give it to me earlier? It better not be out of spite. You know I've been synthing this whole time."
"I thought it was wisest to save it until the last."
"The last," I repeated absently, but then I shook my head to clear it out, rubbing my knuckles in my hair. "Well, that did stop me from synthing it up before, maybe without a lot of advance planning. In a lot of ways fighting Ashura is going to be a lot harder than fighting Leviathan. I mean, Leviathan was scary and all and it sure didn't help that you can't swim, but at least he's all wallowing in water all the time. I know thunder," (here I shuddered appropriately) "is gonna fry him if I hit him with it enough times, and I know if I synth right I can eat everything he throws at me that's not his snapping teeth or his flailing tail. But Ashura, it's not going to be that simple with her. I really don't know what to expect. I guess that means I have to be fifty times more prepared." I grabbed onto my ponytail and shook my head again forcibly by the roots and then looked at the targe. "But don't worry. I got kind of a plan."
He raised one eyebrow and didn't say anything at first but I must have looked so put out at that point that he felt he had to at least pretend.
"I am reassured," he said. He didn't really sound very reassured. I guess I was going to have to make do with that.
I flopped down on the floor of the master suite of Rin's Calm Lands, and sitting in the circle of that candleglow like I was some kind of ancient warlock weaving my spells, I unpacked my bags again and started sorting everything in piles.
"I am going to make this my engagement ring," I announced conversationally, then thought about it again and admitted, "Um. Targe."
"Do that," he said, so I decided to press my luck. You may have noticed I pretty much always do that.
"What if I said I wanted to make it my wedding targe?"
"What is an Al Bhed wedding like?" he asked absently, "I have no idea." Auron? Totally culturally sensitive. Except not.
"Well, first off we lock the bride up in a chest of drawers. Then everybody strips naked and then paints themselves blue. Then everybody lines up in two lines with clubs and sticks and pitchforks and then the bride and groom have to run between us while we beat them -- "
He was still listening silently so I rolled my eyes.
"No really, Al Bhed weddings are pretty much like weddings anywhere else, duh. Everybody gets together and two people stand up in front and the first one promises to protect and cherish and love the other one forever and ever, or something, and then the other person says the same thing, then they make out. And then we have a big party. That's pretty much it."
"That's all you have to do to get married?" he asked, and he still sounded pretty dubious so I put my hands on my hips.
"No, we also gotta exchange little vials of bile or otherwise it's not official. Yes, that's all you have to do. They don't make it hard or complicated. It's not like we want to discourage people from getting together and being happy and maybe making little Al Bhed babies, not with Sin around all the time." I was about to ask him what marriages in Yevon were like, not like I really figured he knew, since I was pretty sure he didn't have that kind of experience with the church, but he spoke before I could.
"If that's all it takes," and here he was measured and slow, as if saying it were difficult, as if everything were difficult, "Then we'll do that. After we've defeated Sin."
"We will," I agreed, and I smiled and it was hurt and crying and love all at once, and I blinked back the tears hard and laughed, "I bet everybody's gonna be really surprised when we're the first ones to get married. And we have to be the first otherwise it won't be so much like winning. Promise."
"I promise," he said, and that was good enough for me. Man. My pops is gonna blow ten kinds of fuses when I tell him who I'm planning on marrying, and that he's already pretty much completely dead. Maybe I'll pretend it's a hypello first and then I'll reveal it's Auron and he'll be totally relieved, only with my luck this will totally backfire. I bet I can get Rin on my side. He's always respected Auron. Plus I have, over the years, cleaned so much chocobo poop out of his travel agencies that he owes me like ten billion favors anyway. There are some things gil can't buy, and a chocobo poop scooper that's always cheerful and happy and never forgets to smile at customers is one of them.
You may think I'm counting chocobos before they're hatched now, but that's okay, because I had decided to wish my hardest for it, for this, for all of it, and beyond wishing I had decided to do anything and everything I could to make it come true. I was so in love with him then, grave and serious and smug and horrible and trying to be kind to me, the way he knew how. I still am. I don't think I'll ever stop loving him. I don't think that's even possible. He's just like that. I'm just like that, maybe. I don't want to say that we happened to come together because of destiny or the stars or the wheel of fate or anything like that, since I think it happened because we made it happen. It wasn't just handed to either of us more than anything else has ever been. But there's just certain parts of me and certain parts of him that go together like a dovetail joint, I know that now. I've seen it in action. I've felt it. Maybe even more than I needed or wanted him, or even more than he needed or wanted me, there was this kind of hastened reaction when we came together so everything seemed to increase, exponentially even, so I'm pretty sure that how much we needed and wanted each other was so high that if you tried to take a reading of it with a super high capacity scanner? It would make that thing explode in your face. I just think some people are like that together. Not so much meant to be together as meaning to be together come Sin or high water. Trust me. I understand about these things.
Of course, while I took the time to tell you about all this my hands haven't exactly been idle -- are you thinking something inappropriate again? Sheesh, I mean synthing. By this point I had everything I had and even everything Auron had sorted out into these little shining, glistening piles: feathers and grit and silk and sand and little bits of paper and someone's old wallet and all these old rusted things that look like they come from your grandma's side-of-the-highroad sale. Only I know for sure that Grandma Kettie has like, a billion times more of this stuff than I could ever carry around just on my back. More than Auron could carry around on his back. By the time you become an Al Bhed grandma you have generally solved problems like how to cart around your delirious amount of junk. Here is a hint as to how my grandma solved it: airship.
I steadied the targe between my knees and was about to start the magic when I thought about it again, put my new targe gently down on the ground like it was a newborn baby, and then wriggled out of my ruffly sun dress. Synthing is both delicate and sometimes horribly messy work. I didn't want to get my new favorite dress all mucky from it. I thought he wasn't going to say anything as I tossed him the dress and settled back on the floor among my other treasures, but he turned his head a little to the side and didn't so much ask as tell.
"Isn't that dress summoned."
I shrugged. "That doesn't mean that I should just treat it like it has no value, right? This whole place is summoned. I ate a lot of summoned blueberry pancakes. Ultimately Leviathan and Ashura are summoned. I think maybe something that's summoned is made out of the love and care of the person who summons it. That means we should treasure it, not use it just however."
He was quiet for a while, thinking I guess, and I started to work in the meantime. Finally he shrugged. "I suppose."
Of course he did. I told you. I understand about these things.
I worked for a long time, so that the candles sweat themselves down into stubs and my eyes hurt from straining, even with my goggles on. The muscles in my neck got tense and ached, but then they didn't ache so much any more because he moved until he was behind me and then started to work his thumbs into the knots. I made a tired sound and leaned back into his hands as he did.
"You know," I said, "I think you should maybe think about doing that professionally." I thought about it. "So did you ever give Braska back rubs? Is that part of the guardian thing? Did you ever give Jecht back rubs when he was all cranky? Huh? Didja?"
"No," he said shortly, "I did not." And that was the end of that.
Leaning back into his hands I thought about the work I'd done, about the day we'd spent, all the things I'd said, all the things he'd said, how far we'd gone, and how far we'd come.
"I'm glad I bet my leg." I said at last. "I'm glad I'm pretty lousy at poker."
"I'm ready to renounce my claim on it," he said very seriously into the back of my neck.
I closed my eyes. "Really? Why? It's a good leg."
"I'm trading it in," he said, and I realized my synthing for the night was pretty much over. "I'd rather have the title for something else."
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