Chapter 27: New Horizons

That evening after the bonfire was lit on the beach, Tidus's friends blindfolded him for his surprise, and Wakka led him to the village. "Don't you think this is a little unnecessary?" Tidus kept his hands before him as he walked, but he bumped into a fence post and stubbed a toe anyway. "Atch-ch! Stop steering me into stuff, man. That's the third time, so I know you're doing it on purpose."

Wakka chuckled deviously. "You did that one on your own. And pushing you under the waterfall doesn't count like walking you into that tree." Grabbing Tidus's shoulders, he brought him to a halt and turned him toward his left. "Okay, let's see this grand opening, ya?"

As Tidus lifted the blindfold, the whole village that had gathered to celebrate with him cheered.

"Welcome back ... again." Lulu gave his cheek a kiss. "I hear you might be able to stick around this time, hm?" Setting Vidina on the ground in a standing position, she held onto his chubby fists. The baby squealed with delight because that's what everyone else seemed to be doing.

"I think I've kicked the pyrefly habit for good. I don't feel any different than before, but … Shuyin's gone, and I'm still here—really here." Tidus grinned and crouched in front of Vidina. "I gotta stick around long enough to get you into the leagues this time, right, little man? Your dad will end up walking you into trees if your training is left up to him. Gimme five."

Vidina squealed and reached for him but fell forward to his hands and knees instead.

"Close enough. We'll work on that coordination thing." Tidus helped him stand and walk a few steps.

"'Tisu wants to show you something before we show you the hut." Yuna gestured to the aeon at her side.

"As long as she's not asking any more questions about what happened in the tower." Tidus gave Yuna a playful wink, then cautiously released Vidina's hands to let him stand and take short, wobbly steps back to his mother on his own. Then, facing the remaining dragon aeon, he folded his arms. "Okay, let's see what you got."

Arantisu concentrated really hard and did her own special brand of magic to become kitten-sized—all at once this time, instead of limb-by-limb.

Tidus laughed and applauded. "Alright! You did it!" Scooping her into his hand, he gave her a congratulatory kiss on the snout. Arantisu's eyes bugged out, her claws clamped down over the spot that he kissed, and she fell backward so that he had to catch her to keep her from falling. "Oh my gosh! Is she okay?"

Yuna laughed, along with everyone else, and slipped her hands under the tiny dragon to gently waken her. "She'll be okay. I think I felt like that the first time you kissed me, too," she admitted with mild embarrassment. Setting the dreamy-eyed little dragon on her own shoulder, she laced her fingers between his and walked him to the door of the finished hut.

He giggled as Yuna pushed aside the heavy curtain. "Oh. Thought for sure I'd killed her," said, following her inside.

Pale blue ocean-colored drapes hung from the bamboo ceiling and walls. Straw mats and colorful Besaid rugs covered the floor, giving the interior a sweet, rustic scent. The hut had been furnished with a table, some cushions, and stacked bedding that Yuna picked out, but there was room for more despite its small size.

Tidus saw that she was wincing in anticipation of his judgment. "I like it," he grinned.

"Are you sure it's not too girly for you?"

"Well, that depends on whether a girl comes with the package or not." He gave her a mischievous smirk.

Yuna laughed with a hint of embarrassment. "Well, that depends on what kind of girl you have in mind."

"One in a short little maid costume would be nice."

Yuna folded her arms and quirked an accusing brow at his teasing.

"Okay, how about you in one of those short little maid costumes."

Yuna placed her hands on her hips, waiting for him to try again.

Tidus snickered at her offended expression. "Okay, how about just you."

"Just me?" She gave him another look of warning.

"Only you?"

"Good answer," she finally approved with a smile.

Giving her a light hug, he looked around again at the interior's traditional style. "Seriously, I really like this," he assured her. "But ... I don't see anything that looks like Shinra tinkered with it."

Shinra stepped forward from the doorway, where the crowd chuckled and chatted. "It's not the hut that I wired. You need to go behind it." He handed Tidus a pair of keys.

"Behind the hut ..." Tidus smirked at this new mystery and made his way back outside, through the crowd, to walk around his hut and into the jungle behind it. He saw nothing, but everyone else giggled quietly at his inability to figure out something. So he looked again at his only clue: keys. There was a button on the holder. And when he pressed it, small pyrefly-like lights embedded in the ground illuminated a path of illusionary stones with a soft glow. With a grin, he glanced over his shoulder, then followed the trail through the trees down the hill to a small inlet. On the water was a houseboat—his houseboat—the one he once lived in from Zanarkand. Genuinely surprised, he turned back around and faced Shinra, speechless. "How ..."

"I wanted to wire your hut with a lot of really cool Zanarkand-type things like com spheres and stereos, so you could watch Luca broadcasts, movies, and live stadium games. But when I talked to Yuna about it, she said not to ruin the hut with electronics."

"She said what?" He looked to Yuna like a child who had his birthday presents revoked. Everyone laughed. "You turned down a live Luca stadium connection!" he complained.

Yuna laughed. "You said you liked how simple life is here compared to Zanarkand."

"Yeah, but … that was before anyone said anything about a live broadcast from Luca stadium."

Shinra chuckled along with everyone else at his attempt to walk back that sentiment. "Well, after talking about it some more, she also said you would probably appreciate a place that could make you feel totally at home with where you came from. So, we air-lifted the boat's shell out of the Zanarkand bay and took it to the Djose temple, where the Machine Faction refurbished it. We used the big Zanarkand sphere at the library in the Dream Room to see how to remake the exterior. And Yuna pulled enough memories out of Bahamut, Lenne, and Shuyin to figure out how to redo the interior. My little imaging window into the past helped, but it was a lot to do in a short time. So, everyone pitched in to finish the job. It's not exactly the way you'll remember it, but then again, you've changed a little too," Shinra added with a short smile.

Tidus couldn't believe they had gone to such lengths to do this incredible thing. Slowly, he approached the short dock and crossed the deck of his childhood home.

Yuna followed, checking his expression, afraid that their surprise had backfired. "Did we go too far?" she quietly asked. "Should we have left it in the past? I-I just thought ..."

Opening the door, he entered the high-tech environment he lived in as a child, or at least as close as the Al-Bhed technicians could come to it. The interior colors and styles were similar to those in his hut, but the basic design of the room definitely had a nostalgic "Zanarkand" feel to it. Weights and mats were placed in the same corner where he, Shuyin, and his dad did morning workouts. Trophy shelves lined the low wall near the entrance ramp into the sunken living room, and some of Jecht's and Shuyin's awards had been recovered and placed there. Stacked crates and chests decorated the stair-step baseboard near the front door to make up for insufficient storage space, just as before. And a two-part, semi-circular sofa took up most of the living room while a double-sided flat-screen monitor hung from the ceiling above it.

Tidus passed through to the kitchen, where party foods and drinks had been set on the counter along with fresh-cut flowers. Then, walking into his old bedroom, he saw the keyboard Yuna gave him a year ago. Above it, a restored holographic image of the Zanarkand Abes hung on the wall. Shuyin was among them. Below that was a restored image of a younger team—a high school team with Shuyin and Koji arm-in-arm in the front center. Tidus touched their smiling faces, then turned and went down the stairs to peek at his parents' room and the bathroom. There, he found a restored holographic image of Jecht and Dannae, which he lifted for a closer look.

"It's more like a guest room now," Yuna explained behind him. "But that was in here when the boat was air-lifted for repairs, so … I thought it should stay here to honor them. We used the past as a blueprint, but it doesn't have to stay this way if it bothers you. You could easily move your things into the master bedroom and turn your old room into the guest room instead if you prefer. Or, we could change everything to look like something else if this is too—"

"It's perfect." Tidus set the holograph down and faced her. "My whole childhood was nothing but a blur of select memories from Shuyin's life and gaps that felt beyond my grasp. Even my home was nothing but an illusion, but this … This is real." After a moment of feeling at a loss for further words, he grabbed her hand and jogged back up the stairs to rejoin their friends who had squeezed into the houseboat's living room. The way they filled the small space made him feel like the richest man in the world. "I don't know what to say … except … thank you. All of you, thank you."

Yuna moved to stand before him. "But … do you like it?" she asked, still doubtful.

"I love it." Slipping his fingers beneath her hair, he drew her close to thank her with a kiss.

Gippal nudged Paine. "Hey, that looks like fun. We should try it sometime."

Paine leaned on his shoulder and set her chin in her hand. "Do I have to get knocked out this time?"

"Nah, I think I prefer a little interaction. That first kiss didn't hold a candle to the second one."

Beside them, Rikku gawked and stepped back in shock. "What? You kissed her? Or did you kiss him? Are we talking about a friendly kiss or tongue? When did this happen? Was this before or after the world fell apart? Why didn't you tell me? Details, people! I want details!"

Wakka left Lulu's side to approach Tidus. "You can come up for air now, ya?" When Tidus ignored him, Wakka leaned close to Yuna's ear instead. "You know, if you need to take him downstairs or something, you can just point us to the food and turn on the Luca broadcast. We'll pretend we don't hear a thing."

Yuna finally became unable to keep a straight face and turned away to laugh.

Tidus laughed, too, but gave his best friend's shoulder a firm shove. "What are you doing, man? Get out of my face. Worse than Auron ..."

Laughing with satisfaction at having successfully annoyed him, Wakka headed into the kitchen but called back, "Auron chaperoned your dates? Now that would have been funny."

Rikku followed him into the kitchen to get a plate. "You're lucky Yunie's a nice person, you know. If someone was kissing me like that, and you got in my face to interrupt—"

"Nobody's going to kiss you like that," Brother inserted as he stepped around them to grab a drink. "You're noisy and intimidating."

Rikku's lower lip protruded as she held her plate to her chest instead of putting food on it. "No, I'm not." She turned to her friends. "Am I?"

Tidus laughed and grabbed a drink from the ice chest as Arantisu's kitten-sized aeon fluttered to his shoulder to look at the table with big, round eyes. "Let's see ... You dressed me in your nightshirt and bunny slippers, set your psychotic demon monkey on me, and you're always looking at my butt."

Rikku's jaw dropped. "I am not always looking at your butt. You're the one that dropped the blanket."

Yuna quirked a brow at him, wondering what happened and why she missed it.

"She pulled it off of me," Tidus defended himself.

"Did not!" Rikku stamped a foot. "I pulled it down to here," she pointed to her back. "But then you moved, and it fell down to here," she bent over and pointed to her backside.

Baralai had been quietly loading his plate with food until Rikku bent over and bumped into him, resulting in the food slipping from the spoon and plate onto the floor.

"That's good. Trying to attract roaches?" Nooj complained behind him.

Baralai cleared his throat and calmly looked for something to clean it up with. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I'll get it." Yuna moved to get a cloth. As soon as she said it, though, Arantisu buzzed off of Tidus's shoulders to lick up the spill. "Or not?" Yuna set the cloth back down. "I guess the good thing about being small is that your food portions are larger, right, 'Tisu?"

Gippal gave Nooj's arm a nudge and snickered. "Did you see that?"

"Yes, I did," Nooj agreed. "He's guilty."

Beside Nooj, Leblanc fanned herself and rolled her eyes. "Rikku, love, the poor praetor can't even spoon food onto his plate if you're bending over in front of him in shorts like that."

Baralai's face flushed. "I'm sorry, what exactly are you accusing me of?"

"Ehhh?" Rikku made a face at Leblanc and her open-to-the-navel dress. "That's really funny coming from someone who uses glue to get dressed."

"I think that insult deserves the Moogle mascot treatment," Tidus suggested to Rikku. "With a dash of psychotic monkey," he added, happy to fan the flames.

"Oohoohooh!" Rikku giggled like an evil chipmunk and nodded eagerly before scampering back to Paine and Lulu to begin plotting against Leblanc.

"Hey, when are you going to take this thing for a ride?" Wakka asked Tidus, munching his food.

"Well, I could do it now. It's part of the party, right?" Tidus held up the keys, giving them a jingle. "Let's go see what it can do."

After running back onto the deck, Tidus removed the ropes from the dock and checked the anchor. Then, he waved to the people standing on the shore to let them know he was taking it for a test drive. Upon heading back inside, he went down the stairs to the guest room.

Wakka and Yuna followed him from there into the captain's cabin. "You sure you know how to drive this thing?" Wakka asked as Tidus inserted the key in the ignition and cranked the engine.

"Of course. It's just like the one I grew up on, right?" Grinning eagerly because of his new toy, Tidus sipped his drink and steered the boat away from the alcove. But as he kicked up the speed a notch and headed toward the open ocean, he felt Yuna hook a finger in the back of his shirt and pull it open to peer down between his shoulder blades.

"What's this? When did you get an Abes tattoo?" she asked, noticing the edge of the ink for the first time.

"Huh? Oh, that. I don't know." He became a little self-conscious but tilted his head forward and down as Wakka also peered down the shirt's neck to see the Zanarkand insignia branded onto Tidus's back. "Paine spotted it earlier, or I wouldn't have known it was there. Everyone thinks it might have been a tattoo Shuyin had that transferred to me after we were turned into that aeon. But based on Shuyin's memories, I don't think he ever got a tattoo. It did come up in conversation after Mom blew a gasket about him getting his ear pierced, but that was because he was underage and didn't have parental consent. I don't have any memories of getting my own ear pierced, though. It was just there one day, kinda like this tattoo."

"Maybe Rikku spiked your fruit punch a little, and you wandered into Brother's engine room in a weird mood, ya?" Wakka suggested.

"Or maybe it's just the mark of your Final Aeon," Yuna added.

Tidus glanced over his shoulder at her, slightly troubled, then faced forward again as he continued driving the boat toward the open horizon. "I was meant to be the final Final Aeon, wasn't I?" There was no denying that. "I mean, the only reason they made me was to be the silver bullet to end Sin. So, I guess it would make sense that my aeon would bear his mark. And since I wasn't supposed to find a way around that transformation, maybe it's been locked inside me all this time, only showing up now because it finally happened," he guessed. "I used to dream about it without knowing what it meant, you know? Turning into some kind of sea serpent to hunt down my old man ..."

Yuna drew closer. "Before we lost the Farplane, when I was talking to the spirits who knew the interior of this boat, Bahamut introduced me to your other creator—Koji's sister, Kaila. She said your ability to dream was their first clue that you had become something more than a memory wrapped in an illusion."

"Kaila ..." Tidus was stunned. "Kaila created me? I thought it was Bahamut."

"Bahamut told me how he took a small piece of Shuyin's soul from the cavern of despair where he was entombed, but Kaila is the one who donated her first memories of Shuyin to give that old soul a new form," she explained. "Bahamut also said he's the one who gave you Yevon's magic, but Kaila is the one who protected your heart. They worked together to guide you past Shuyin's most damaging heartaches, so you could develop your own better experiences while retaining his courage and determination … and his relationship with Sir Jecht. They're the ones who sent you to me," she told him with a smile of gratitude. "And, yes, it was to help me destroy Sin, but they also gave you the freedom to walk away. You chose to stay. And you challenged me to find another way to solve the problem. If you hadn't done that, we might have continued to feed Sin's cycle rather than destroying it. Kaila said she knew you were your own person because of how different your choices were from Shuyin's. She seemed very proud of how you turned out."

Tidus smiled as he remembered his borrowed and unique memories of Kaila. "Koji didn't exist in my past the way he did for Shuyin, so I didn't know I had any previous connections to Kaila when I met her. She ran into me after school one day—literally. But after she offered to tutor me in one of the subjects I was failing, I asked her to the dance. We went on one date, which she said was perfect. But then she dumped me before the night was over." He snorted in amusement at that memory now. "She said someone else needed me more." He shook his head at the overwhelming clarity and sighed. "I guess it all makes sense now, kinda. She was making sure I was ready for all this—making sure I wouldn't make his mistakes. Even he said something about me being the second chance he never had." Pausing in uncertainty, Tidus looked over his shoulder to Yuna. "Do I still look like me? I mean, I haven't turned into him … have I?"

Yuna smiled and kissed his cheek. "You're you. I can tell."

Tidus felt more at ease hearing that from her. Only then did he relax and allow himself to find the humor in it. "Are you sure? Maybe you should check other places, too." He wriggled his brows.

Yuna smiled at his flirtation. "Maybe I should." She slipped a hand underneath the shirt and drew her fingertips down his back.

"Woah!" Tidus tried to shake off the sensation while one hand held the wheel and the other balanced his drink.

She grinned. "Tickle?"

"Not exactly."

Wakka leaned close to Yuna but didn't bother to whisper. "Luca. Broadcast."

Tidus chuckled and stepped back. "Hey, take the wheel for a minute. I want to show Yuna the view from the top deck."

Wakka eagerly set aside his plate of munchies and grasped the wheel. "Now that's what I'm talking about, ya? Hey, you like speed?"

"You have to ask?" Tidus folded his hand over Yuna's, locking his fingers between hers as he led her out of the cabin.

Winding their way back through the crowded interior of the houseboat to the deck, Tidus led Yuna further up the steps to the transparent, partially-covered upper deck. "You gotta see this. My old man used to come up here in the evenings to talk to my mom." Pushing the large window aside, he leaned his forearms on the sill with his face into the wind. "You can see clear across the ocean from up here, but I used to get so mad at them—at how much she seemed to care for him in spite of everything. Now, I can see why it's a pretty cool place to be." He looked out over the rise and fall of the cresting waves as the boat cut smoothly through them toward an unknown destination. Then, he turned his cheek against the wind and squinted through the strands of golden hair that stung his eyes. "I know it hasn't been easy, but ... thank you for believing in me... in spite of everything."

Yuna tried to sweep her own hair from her face, but the effort was futile in that kind of wind. Then, she lowered her eyes to the shell ring that she still wore on her finger—the sweet-cracker bag's prize he searched for a year ago just because she said she wanted one of the silly, insignificant things. Giving it a slight twist, she smiled. "Dreams can't come true unless we believe in them."

Tidus leaned his head against hers, forehead to forehead. The wind continued to whip their hair about their faces in wild disarray, but their faces were warm and shielded for the moment. "I love you."

"I love you, too. ... Always."

He smiled at hearing his familiar promise come back to him and noticed her attention on the ring. "You know, I'm willing to replace that with the real thing."

"Don't you dare." She protectively covered the ring with her other hand. "This is the real thing."

Tidus laughed at her continued stubbornness over the item. Maybe she'd change her mind if he offered to replace the thing in a public ceremony. Maybe not. With Yuna, there was no limit to her sentiment. But it was her depth of sentiment that had made him feel so real, even when he was not.

Tidus turned his face back into the wind and stared out where the sea met the sky. He could consider his future now—a real future. "Someday, we should take this boat beyond Spira to the other ocean. We should look for spheres out there in that other place that looks like Zanarkand. After blitzball season, of course," he added with a wry smirk and slipped an arm around her waist as he sipped his drink again.

"Of course." Yuna leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. Folding her hands over his arm, she squinted into the strong wind. "I'm just as curious as you are to see what's beyond Spira, but I'm perfectly content to stay here, as well." Only time would tell what lay in store for them beyond that new horizon.

The End

))((

Author's Note:

And there it is! That is the last work in this series.

Thanks so much to all who read and took the time to leave reviews and share feedback. (For some of you, this is the third set of revisions! OMG! Thanks so much for returning after all these years!) 😉

In my original farewell, I stated that I couldn't write any more for the series because the further the characters progress from here, the harder it would be to stay true to the original game's spirit. Now, there is the added obstacle of the official expansions, which I am not so familiar with, and therefore they have not been taken into account with these revised versions of my stories. So, this collection is complete.

For this particular story, I was inspired to draw several references from other Final Fantasy works, mainly FFVII, Spirits Within, and Advent Children. So, if you haven't experienced that game or those movies, they are fun core additions to the FF multiverse.

Anyway, thanks for allowing me to entertain you! I hope you enjoyed it. ^_^

M'jai