Yuna felt sick to her stomach. She had two options, both of which made her want to retch. She could let Seymour die slowly; there were more wounds than they had initially thought: broken ribs, another bite wound he had tried to treat by himself, broken toes, and a dislocated shoulder. Or she could help him herself, digging her fingers under a jaw with no head, slowly pulling teeth the size of nails from flesh that had begun to rot, and find a way to repair the shredded remains of his bestial hand. Or, she could do what everyone except Kurgum and Chuami were telling her to do: Find someone else, a professional who would take one look at his injury and slice it right off.
Yuna had met Baralai. And Nooj. While Nooj openly admitted to his injuries, his mechanical limbs seemed natural to him. Neither talked about the injuries apart from Nooj's occasional jokes Nooj would make about himself. How long had it taken for his limbs to be replaced? Was Baralai's life any different, at all? What was it like, huddled wherever they were, torn apart, waiting for death or a miracle to tell you it had never happened? Yuna wanted to think they had just woken up in the hospital and walked away, just glad to be alive and ready to return to life. But now she knew that had never been the case.
Kurgum and Chuami had both protested bringing Seymour on board. They had preferred if he had been left alone, or that the lizards had made a quick end to him. Kurgum was quiet after Yuna said he'd get his first chance to send someone if Seymour's condition got worse, and Tidus ended Chuami's complaints by telling her Auron wouldn't agree with her.
Throwing him back wasn't an option, even if Yuna preferred it. Even if everyone else preferred it. Even if the whole world preferred it. Sin was back. The farplane had collapsed in on itself. Something strange was happening in Macalania forest. Seymour HAD to be involved with one of those. Some way. Some how. Then he was going to answer for his crimes. He wasn't going to get away with things just by dying, no matter how much he deserved to literally rot.
Even if Yuna or her friends bothered to tend to his wounds, cast cure on his broken bones, slam his shoulder back into place, and toss away the pieces of a monster, none of them could do anything about his hand. All they knew was that someone, somewhere, could, and that they would need a lot of incentive to never speak of it again. And that they needed to find them NOW.
Yuna had never felt so useless as she told Paine to find Leblanc, the only person they knew who might know such a person. Two years ago, she had been branded a traitor and she had no idea where to go. Back then, Tidus held her and all her problems seemed to slip away. Now Yuna didn't even have that. Tidus had Marphie now.
She was a traitor for doing this. Bribery, lies, secrets, all for some maniac who destroyed half the world. How much more was this going to cost her?
The worst part was, she had lost Tidus before any of these disasters had ever occurred.
Everything took too damn long. Leblanc took too damn long to believe that the Gullwings would stoop to asking for a doctor to do whatever it was they wouldn't tell her about. It took too damn long to find him. It took too damn long for him to do his job. He stayed too damn long wanting answers. He was supposed to be paid for not to ask anything. Tidus took too damn long on Kilika, saying he was threatening the doctor and asking Donna for help keeping him quiet. Seymour slept too damn long while he recovered.
Upon hearing a shriek, echoing from a spare room in the cargo bay, all she could do was shrug and comment, "Finally."
Seymour was not usually one to panic. He was usually better at handling disasters than this. Baaj was nothing in comparison. Whoever was trying to tease him about his past, he was determined not to let them. The native wildlife didn't give him any time to reflect on anything if he had wanted to. He'd won, in a way. Whoever wanted him to feel punished in the same prison he was sent to as a child had failed to make him feel guilty over whatever he was supposed to guess at feeling sorry about. The creatures had failed to make a meal out of him. It was hardly a fair fight, considering there were so many of them and they were armed with giant fangs and he was both unarmed and unprepared. He'd taken out enough to feel he'd managed a victory. At least infections were just opportunists who waited until someone did something as stupid as he had to move in and claim his life. They didn't punch you in the face or team up against you.
No, no, he was never that lucky. He should never have been so naïve as to think fate would let him die alone with only nature taking him back to the farplane.
He found himself trapped in a small metal box of a room. In the air, given what he could tell from the tiny window. No doubt he was a prisoner of the Al Behd. He'd never been a popular person; they might as well have their chance giving him hell. At least he could just shrug and rub it in their faces that they wasted their time on a guy who had no idea what they were saying.
He wasn't going to let them gloat knowing all this machina put a bad taste in his mouth. The guado were people of nature: Sleep in the trees, live in the dirt, they always told him. Pretentious bunch of bastards, in his mind. They always cared more for a clump of mushrooms than him.
Then he noticed a weight on his arm.
He was playing with someone with a far sicker sense of humor than he had thought possible. Someone was out there with a sense of creativity that just might find a way to break down the walls he'd carefully built out of lies and laughter. And they knew exactly what kind of secrets lay just beyond them.
He lost control of himself for a few seconds before he started wondering how much of his past he could use as his own ammunition before they started using them against him. He screamed.