Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Whoa. So it's finally over. Way longer than I expected. ^__^ Yep, this is it. Epilogue and author's (or characters') notes will be up soon. Thanks for the ride, everyone!
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes in Overdrive
by flame mage
round 16: Victor
**********
"Hail, hail, the gang's all here," commented Reppi as Jassu took down the gate and the two of us came back into camp. "What about it, Bick? Anythin' we can do ta' get the gang all someplace else?"
"Nice to see you too," the Goer grumbled. "Not like it's been a couple years or anything. Anyway, yeah, I found your exit. What say we get out of this hellhole already?"
Naida laughed. "I'll drink to that."
"I'll bet you will," Jassu muttered under his breath, but not so quietly I couldn't hear him.
"So, who's got stuff to pack?" Letty asked loudly. Always the peacemaker--even Naaga had to roll her eyes at that one, but it worked.
"Not a thing!" Miyu sang, swinging her arms. Bickson shot me a glance: 'Whoa. She's changed.' He was right. Something about her seemed a little lighter, or maybe 'freer' was the word. In Al Bhed they say 'dra tayt faekrd ryc paah cdnebbat vnus dra machina,' 'the dead weight has been stripped from the machina.' Mostly you use the expression when you've been having a bad week and Friday suddenly turns out to be the best day of your life, but seeing the weight off her shoulders was what made me think of it. 'You never really know someone until you see them stand on their own two feet'--the Al Bhed say that too.
At the time, though, what the Al Bhed actually said was more like, "Let's get OUT of this place; my skin is all pruney!" This would be the Al Bhed in the form of my kid sister, who was as impatient as always. And as always, she got her way--right away. In two minutes flat the gate was open for the last time and we were on our way to freedom.
Getting out seemed like it was gonna be almost too easy, which of course was where the problem was. Murphy's Law, in which I'm way more inclined to believe than any of the Al Bhed proverbs Rin's always spitting at me (roughly 50% of which I'm pretty sure he makes up on the spot as it suits whatever he's trying to get me to do), clearly states that there was no way in hell we were making it out of the Via Purifico without some extreme hassle. This cosmic pain in the ass turned up, predictably, in the last cave Bickson had gone into--the one that contained the exit. It turned up, also predictably, in the form of maybe three dozen fiends--full house in this cave like you wouldn't believe--suddenly launching themselves at us.
Reppi, being at the front of the group, was the first one to react. "The fiends are swarming! *Get back!*" she shouted. She practically threw her bag at Naaga and stretched her hands out in front of her. I could see the electricity crackling against her fingertips.
"Zalitz, I don't think you should be doin' that, ya?" Letty asked. I glanced over to see the sailor strapping on his brass knuckles and flexing his fingers.
"Let him go. We don't have a choice," I yelled back, throwing my bag off my shoulder. Naaga caught that one too; she was starting to look like the hapless fanboy she always takes on shopping trips to carry the stacks of bags. "We're gonna cut our way through."
"Linna!" Miyu called, shooting her way up toward me. "Give me one of the spikes! I'm going to hack those sorry little fish to boneless dinner fillets!" You don't mess with a goalie when she's in that kinda mood; I handed her the blitzball. Totally fearlessly, she wrapped her hand around one of the spikes and jerked it out of the ball. A thin stream of blood burst into the water and faded, but she didn't even flinch. Wow.
"Wait!" cried Naaga. She was staring at the fiends. "Something's wrong! They're all twitching!" I spun around to look--she was right. Every one of them was thrashing around like they were all being jabbed with cattle prods.
I couldn't see Miyu's eyes behind her mask, but her facial muscles tensed like those eyes were widening. "Sinspawn," she hissed. "They're not fiends. I fought Sin at Mi'ihen; I know what this is. And they're acting strange."
"Who cares?" Zalitz demanded, already in the thick of things. "We don't have time for this, dudes!"
Miyu dove forward and ripped into the underside of one of the fiends with the dagger. I spun to the other side of the tunnel and pitched the spike ball into one of the sucking ray things.
"We'll force 'em back, you guys just get through!" Reppi ordered. I caught the ball on the rebound and twisted to see who she was talking to. It was the three guys--Bickson, Jassu, and Letty. "Take care'a the kid!" she added, just in case they missed the point.
"You guys have gear with you?" Bickson asked the two Aurochs.
"Huh!" they both intoned back. "Yes," I mouthed quickly to the Goer, who wasn't familiar with Wakka's traditional response training.
He gestured to Naaga. "Make a ring around her. If anything charges you, slam it. Naida, get up ahead." For once, the twit actually listened.
I spiraled through the cave, shooting until the water around me was stained red. No Pyreflies. These things were crawling flesh. Miyu, Zalitz, and Reppi were around me, taking out Sinspawn left and right to clear a path as we worked our way down to the exit.
"Almost there, everyone!" Miyu called.
And then one of the Sinpawn leapt out of the water and over Jassu's head, straight for Naaga. I sprang toward her instinctively, but I knew there wasn't a chance of getting there. She was done for.
The fish went flying and Naaga surfaced, her fist still raised. "Been workin' out," she grinned at me as she dove down to pick up the bags she'd dropped.
Naida was the first one to reach the stairs. She snatched the bags from Naaga and thrust them up ahead of her, then grabbed the girl's hands and pulled her out of the water. The guys made it out of the water next, then Reppi, me, and finally Miyu, still slicing menacingly.
For a second, we just breathed.
*****
And then Naaga screamed. "Something's happening to them!" she repeated. I kept going up the stairs until Reppi finally stopped and turned around so sharply that I crashed into her.
"Whaaat?!" I groaned.
But Naaga was right. The Sinspawn were writhing in the water even more torturedly now, like they were in agony. Suddenly a spray of sparks shot out of the cave depths. I grabbed Naaga and whirled around, covering her; at the same moment Bickson had leapt to protect me. Through my eyelids, though, I could still sense the blinding flash of light and the explosions that rocked the cave.
When we turned back, all the Sinspawn were gone.
Dead silence. Eighteen eyes blinked almost in unison.
"Let's get out of here," Bickson said.
*****
The stairs we were standing on reminded me of a macabre remix of the ones that led to the roof of the Luca blitz stadium--high, narrow, and wrapped in a tight, dark corridor that made you feel like you were falling with every step. The gear bags got too heavy for Naaga to grapple with pretty quickly, but even after we took them back she was stumbling with fatigue. Finally Reppi scooped her up in a pair of strong arms and hauled her up the steps. I was exasperated, but on the other hand I could see her point--I was tired as hell too, and if I'd been young enough to get away with being carried I probably would've made someone do it too.
About the time my thighs and calves were making serious threats to come apart at the seams and fall all the way back down into the water, we finally reached the end of the staircase. About seven feet up from the last step was a round gap in the ceiling, about the size of a manhole. When I looked up, I could see stars.
"Throw the bags up first," Reppi told us wearily, setting Naaga down on the landing. My punk sister stood up and jumped, but she couldn't reach the rim of the hole. Finally, Zalitz made a stirrup out of his hands so she could climb up on his shoulders and out. She spent several seconds longer than strictly necessary running her hands along those broad shoulders, so I knew she was okay by the time Jassu handed our stuff up.
Whumph! Whumph! The gear bags hit the ground above me and Naaga struggled up into the moonlight. Zalitz reached up and grabbed the edge easily, pulling his body up like he was doing a chin-up, no sweat.
Reppi hadn't broken a sweat either when she was carrying Naaga up, but all of a sudden she seemed ready to collapse. Jassu and Letty swung their way out of the hole and helped her up. I heard a thudding noise from above me, and when I angled my head to look through the gap I saw that she had fallen heavily to her knees on the ground and was staring dazedly around her.
I grappled my way up and over the edge and back out into the world. I was free. Breathing the night air for the first time in two days, I looked up over the soft pink light of Bevelle at the sky.
And at that exact moment, the Eternal Calm hit.
Deux ex machina. God from the machine. But there was no god involved, and no machina except the airship. All there was, was a lot of guts. A lot of strength. A lot of sacrifice. And how many times over had we paid in blood for that day?
"Rao, Sus, Tyt," I whispered. "Drao kud res."
Reppi was still gaping around her at all the lights. Bevelle--more than a thousand years of those lights. And above it all, the airship--and Sin.
I reached up and adjusted the lenses on my half-ruined goggles, turning up the light and magnification factors as far as they would go. On full power, I could just see tiny figures on the airship deck. Pyreflies were rising. The huge gray whale-shape of Sin was fading.
And dawn was breaking.
*****
At that point, I realized what was happening and gasped. When Sin was finally gone, all nine of us were already jumping up and down like spastic little kids, so I wasn't paying attention to what happened next. I wish I had been. I wish the sight of the little speck falling from the airship into the pale yellow dawn had been more than something I spotted out of the corner of my eye and ignored. I wish I'd been watching, because it would be a long time before I saw that figure again.
But the sky was turning gold and orange and pink now and there were tears in Reppi's eyes. Miyu was kneeling beside her, and as I watched she stood up, ripped off the harsh mask, and flung it as hard as she could back down that tunnel.
"Linnie," Naaga said after a while, the first to break the spell, "will the airship pick us up? They're really close and all."
"Of course Aniki will come to get us!" Naida told her, unconsciously adjusting her bikini strap as she craned her neck to look upward. Jassu and Letty snapped to attention.
"Isn't this a commsphere?" Bickson asked. He was standing behind me, and when I turned, I saw that we'd surfaced only a few feet from the temple walls. On one of the walls was a small glowing panel with a Yevon glyph. I shrugged and touched it.
It flashed and the familiar menu kicked in. The temple was hooked up to the Al Bhed sphere network; whoever had programmed it hadn't even bothered to translate it into English. I had to pound it a couple times to get it working, but eventually it figured out that I wasn't kidding and connected me to Rin's commsphere.
I'm not sure whether I'd expected him to age ten years from all the stress or lose ten years because Sin was finally gone, but he looked the same as he always had, so I didn't say anything. He was as polite as always, but as always he didn't waste time. "Secc Linna," he greeted me. "In the future, may I respectfully request that you not disappear with no warning for extended periods of time. Your teammates are rather distressed."
"It ain't a pleasure cruise, Coach," I snapped. "Run out to the observation deck and look carefully at the temple, why don't you?"
"As you wish, Secc Linna, but I fail to see--"
"Just humor me already; it's been a long week."
He got the message and held the sphere carefully out in front of him as he walked to the glass-encased observation deck. I was looking at a bird's-eye view of Bevelle, and as he focused in on the temple the little dots that were us got more and more distinct until I could make myself out pretty clearly. I waved, just so he got the message.
Rin turned the sphere back inward and opened his mouth to speak. And that was the point when the doors on the observation deck slammed open and Yuna staggered through and fell to her knees.
She was shaking with silent sobs, bent forward with her hands on the floor. The end of her long sleeve caught on the edge of a panel and she jerked it free so violently that it ripped and fell to the deck like a dying bird.
Behind her were Rikku and Madame Goth and Fuzzbrain Ronso and Wakka. The creepy guy in the red coat wasn't there. Tidus wasn't there. No one said anything. We all just stood and watched Spira's salvation cry.
"Tidus?" I begged Rin in a whisper. He looked around, slowly and deliberately, and shook his head.
I turned away from the panel and stretched my hands out to the two Aurochs. We stood there silently for just a sec, holding onto each other, and then I faced Rin again.
"Rin," I said quietly, "we need a ride."
"Bevelle. The temple," he breathed. "The Via?"
"The Via."
His gasp was sharp, and his eyes softened. "We'll be there, Secc Linna."
He was about to click off when Yuna stood up. Her eyes were red but clear, and she was looking straight at me through the commsphere.
I'm sure it was an accident. But you know how someone's eyes brush across yours for a second and hit, and you feel a jolt?
Slowly, I bent forward and blitz-bowed to the first and last living High Summoner.
When I came up, she forced herself to smile and bow back. I think that was the moment it really hit me. She was alive. A summoner was alive. Sin was gone for good this time.
And so, I realized, was Tidus.
In that moment, she looked so strong, and suddenly his face flashed before my eyes. Those lonely nights I'd spent sobbing like that on the airship. I remembered asking him, "She's so important to you that you'd let Sin go on killing, let me and Wakka and everyone else in this world die, if it would keep her alive? You'd sacrifice a whole chessboard for a pawn?" I remembered the pain in his blue eyes as he answered, "Yes." He'd done it. He'd saved her after all. When I'd think about him in the years to come, I'd remember that, and I'd think that his life must have ended happily.
"Uin Calm, Linna. Ed'c ymm ujan huf," Bickson said.
I turned around to him and smiled. "Yeah, Bick. It's finally over."
Or maybe it was just beginning.
The airship was descending through the first dawn of the Eternal Calm. I looked around at my friends' faces. Naaga. Bickson. Miyu. The Aurochs. Reppi. Zalitz. Even Naida. We'd been through a lot. It was time to rebuild.
Bick was right. It was our Calm. Spira was finally ours again, after a thousand years. And we had our whole lives ahead of us to enjoy it.
I walked out of the shadow of the temple into the sunlight and drank in the first dawn of eternity.
**********
Translations:
dra tayt faekrd ryc paah cdnebbat vnus dra machina - the dead weight has been stripped from the machina
"Rao, Sus, Tyt. Drao kud res." - "Hey, Mom, Dad. They got him."
"Uin Calm, Linna. Ed'c ymm ujan huf." - "Our Calm, Linna. It's all over now."
Whoa. So it's finally over. Way longer than I expected. ^__^ Yep, this is it. Epilogue and author's (or characters') notes will be up soon. Thanks for the ride, everyone!
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes in Overdrive
by flame mage
round 16: Victor
**********
"Hail, hail, the gang's all here," commented Reppi as Jassu took down the gate and the two of us came back into camp. "What about it, Bick? Anythin' we can do ta' get the gang all someplace else?"
"Nice to see you too," the Goer grumbled. "Not like it's been a couple years or anything. Anyway, yeah, I found your exit. What say we get out of this hellhole already?"
Naida laughed. "I'll drink to that."
"I'll bet you will," Jassu muttered under his breath, but not so quietly I couldn't hear him.
"So, who's got stuff to pack?" Letty asked loudly. Always the peacemaker--even Naaga had to roll her eyes at that one, but it worked.
"Not a thing!" Miyu sang, swinging her arms. Bickson shot me a glance: 'Whoa. She's changed.' He was right. Something about her seemed a little lighter, or maybe 'freer' was the word. In Al Bhed they say 'dra tayt faekrd ryc paah cdnebbat vnus dra machina,' 'the dead weight has been stripped from the machina.' Mostly you use the expression when you've been having a bad week and Friday suddenly turns out to be the best day of your life, but seeing the weight off her shoulders was what made me think of it. 'You never really know someone until you see them stand on their own two feet'--the Al Bhed say that too.
At the time, though, what the Al Bhed actually said was more like, "Let's get OUT of this place; my skin is all pruney!" This would be the Al Bhed in the form of my kid sister, who was as impatient as always. And as always, she got her way--right away. In two minutes flat the gate was open for the last time and we were on our way to freedom.
Getting out seemed like it was gonna be almost too easy, which of course was where the problem was. Murphy's Law, in which I'm way more inclined to believe than any of the Al Bhed proverbs Rin's always spitting at me (roughly 50% of which I'm pretty sure he makes up on the spot as it suits whatever he's trying to get me to do), clearly states that there was no way in hell we were making it out of the Via Purifico without some extreme hassle. This cosmic pain in the ass turned up, predictably, in the last cave Bickson had gone into--the one that contained the exit. It turned up, also predictably, in the form of maybe three dozen fiends--full house in this cave like you wouldn't believe--suddenly launching themselves at us.
Reppi, being at the front of the group, was the first one to react. "The fiends are swarming! *Get back!*" she shouted. She practically threw her bag at Naaga and stretched her hands out in front of her. I could see the electricity crackling against her fingertips.
"Zalitz, I don't think you should be doin' that, ya?" Letty asked. I glanced over to see the sailor strapping on his brass knuckles and flexing his fingers.
"Let him go. We don't have a choice," I yelled back, throwing my bag off my shoulder. Naaga caught that one too; she was starting to look like the hapless fanboy she always takes on shopping trips to carry the stacks of bags. "We're gonna cut our way through."
"Linna!" Miyu called, shooting her way up toward me. "Give me one of the spikes! I'm going to hack those sorry little fish to boneless dinner fillets!" You don't mess with a goalie when she's in that kinda mood; I handed her the blitzball. Totally fearlessly, she wrapped her hand around one of the spikes and jerked it out of the ball. A thin stream of blood burst into the water and faded, but she didn't even flinch. Wow.
"Wait!" cried Naaga. She was staring at the fiends. "Something's wrong! They're all twitching!" I spun around to look--she was right. Every one of them was thrashing around like they were all being jabbed with cattle prods.
I couldn't see Miyu's eyes behind her mask, but her facial muscles tensed like those eyes were widening. "Sinspawn," she hissed. "They're not fiends. I fought Sin at Mi'ihen; I know what this is. And they're acting strange."
"Who cares?" Zalitz demanded, already in the thick of things. "We don't have time for this, dudes!"
Miyu dove forward and ripped into the underside of one of the fiends with the dagger. I spun to the other side of the tunnel and pitched the spike ball into one of the sucking ray things.
"We'll force 'em back, you guys just get through!" Reppi ordered. I caught the ball on the rebound and twisted to see who she was talking to. It was the three guys--Bickson, Jassu, and Letty. "Take care'a the kid!" she added, just in case they missed the point.
"You guys have gear with you?" Bickson asked the two Aurochs.
"Huh!" they both intoned back. "Yes," I mouthed quickly to the Goer, who wasn't familiar with Wakka's traditional response training.
He gestured to Naaga. "Make a ring around her. If anything charges you, slam it. Naida, get up ahead." For once, the twit actually listened.
I spiraled through the cave, shooting until the water around me was stained red. No Pyreflies. These things were crawling flesh. Miyu, Zalitz, and Reppi were around me, taking out Sinspawn left and right to clear a path as we worked our way down to the exit.
"Almost there, everyone!" Miyu called.
And then one of the Sinpawn leapt out of the water and over Jassu's head, straight for Naaga. I sprang toward her instinctively, but I knew there wasn't a chance of getting there. She was done for.
The fish went flying and Naaga surfaced, her fist still raised. "Been workin' out," she grinned at me as she dove down to pick up the bags she'd dropped.
Naida was the first one to reach the stairs. She snatched the bags from Naaga and thrust them up ahead of her, then grabbed the girl's hands and pulled her out of the water. The guys made it out of the water next, then Reppi, me, and finally Miyu, still slicing menacingly.
For a second, we just breathed.
*****
And then Naaga screamed. "Something's happening to them!" she repeated. I kept going up the stairs until Reppi finally stopped and turned around so sharply that I crashed into her.
"Whaaat?!" I groaned.
But Naaga was right. The Sinspawn were writhing in the water even more torturedly now, like they were in agony. Suddenly a spray of sparks shot out of the cave depths. I grabbed Naaga and whirled around, covering her; at the same moment Bickson had leapt to protect me. Through my eyelids, though, I could still sense the blinding flash of light and the explosions that rocked the cave.
When we turned back, all the Sinspawn were gone.
Dead silence. Eighteen eyes blinked almost in unison.
"Let's get out of here," Bickson said.
*****
The stairs we were standing on reminded me of a macabre remix of the ones that led to the roof of the Luca blitz stadium--high, narrow, and wrapped in a tight, dark corridor that made you feel like you were falling with every step. The gear bags got too heavy for Naaga to grapple with pretty quickly, but even after we took them back she was stumbling with fatigue. Finally Reppi scooped her up in a pair of strong arms and hauled her up the steps. I was exasperated, but on the other hand I could see her point--I was tired as hell too, and if I'd been young enough to get away with being carried I probably would've made someone do it too.
About the time my thighs and calves were making serious threats to come apart at the seams and fall all the way back down into the water, we finally reached the end of the staircase. About seven feet up from the last step was a round gap in the ceiling, about the size of a manhole. When I looked up, I could see stars.
"Throw the bags up first," Reppi told us wearily, setting Naaga down on the landing. My punk sister stood up and jumped, but she couldn't reach the rim of the hole. Finally, Zalitz made a stirrup out of his hands so she could climb up on his shoulders and out. She spent several seconds longer than strictly necessary running her hands along those broad shoulders, so I knew she was okay by the time Jassu handed our stuff up.
Whumph! Whumph! The gear bags hit the ground above me and Naaga struggled up into the moonlight. Zalitz reached up and grabbed the edge easily, pulling his body up like he was doing a chin-up, no sweat.
Reppi hadn't broken a sweat either when she was carrying Naaga up, but all of a sudden she seemed ready to collapse. Jassu and Letty swung their way out of the hole and helped her up. I heard a thudding noise from above me, and when I angled my head to look through the gap I saw that she had fallen heavily to her knees on the ground and was staring dazedly around her.
I grappled my way up and over the edge and back out into the world. I was free. Breathing the night air for the first time in two days, I looked up over the soft pink light of Bevelle at the sky.
And at that exact moment, the Eternal Calm hit.
Deux ex machina. God from the machine. But there was no god involved, and no machina except the airship. All there was, was a lot of guts. A lot of strength. A lot of sacrifice. And how many times over had we paid in blood for that day?
"Rao, Sus, Tyt," I whispered. "Drao kud res."
Reppi was still gaping around her at all the lights. Bevelle--more than a thousand years of those lights. And above it all, the airship--and Sin.
I reached up and adjusted the lenses on my half-ruined goggles, turning up the light and magnification factors as far as they would go. On full power, I could just see tiny figures on the airship deck. Pyreflies were rising. The huge gray whale-shape of Sin was fading.
And dawn was breaking.
*****
At that point, I realized what was happening and gasped. When Sin was finally gone, all nine of us were already jumping up and down like spastic little kids, so I wasn't paying attention to what happened next. I wish I had been. I wish the sight of the little speck falling from the airship into the pale yellow dawn had been more than something I spotted out of the corner of my eye and ignored. I wish I'd been watching, because it would be a long time before I saw that figure again.
But the sky was turning gold and orange and pink now and there were tears in Reppi's eyes. Miyu was kneeling beside her, and as I watched she stood up, ripped off the harsh mask, and flung it as hard as she could back down that tunnel.
"Linnie," Naaga said after a while, the first to break the spell, "will the airship pick us up? They're really close and all."
"Of course Aniki will come to get us!" Naida told her, unconsciously adjusting her bikini strap as she craned her neck to look upward. Jassu and Letty snapped to attention.
"Isn't this a commsphere?" Bickson asked. He was standing behind me, and when I turned, I saw that we'd surfaced only a few feet from the temple walls. On one of the walls was a small glowing panel with a Yevon glyph. I shrugged and touched it.
It flashed and the familiar menu kicked in. The temple was hooked up to the Al Bhed sphere network; whoever had programmed it hadn't even bothered to translate it into English. I had to pound it a couple times to get it working, but eventually it figured out that I wasn't kidding and connected me to Rin's commsphere.
I'm not sure whether I'd expected him to age ten years from all the stress or lose ten years because Sin was finally gone, but he looked the same as he always had, so I didn't say anything. He was as polite as always, but as always he didn't waste time. "Secc Linna," he greeted me. "In the future, may I respectfully request that you not disappear with no warning for extended periods of time. Your teammates are rather distressed."
"It ain't a pleasure cruise, Coach," I snapped. "Run out to the observation deck and look carefully at the temple, why don't you?"
"As you wish, Secc Linna, but I fail to see--"
"Just humor me already; it's been a long week."
He got the message and held the sphere carefully out in front of him as he walked to the glass-encased observation deck. I was looking at a bird's-eye view of Bevelle, and as he focused in on the temple the little dots that were us got more and more distinct until I could make myself out pretty clearly. I waved, just so he got the message.
Rin turned the sphere back inward and opened his mouth to speak. And that was the point when the doors on the observation deck slammed open and Yuna staggered through and fell to her knees.
She was shaking with silent sobs, bent forward with her hands on the floor. The end of her long sleeve caught on the edge of a panel and she jerked it free so violently that it ripped and fell to the deck like a dying bird.
Behind her were Rikku and Madame Goth and Fuzzbrain Ronso and Wakka. The creepy guy in the red coat wasn't there. Tidus wasn't there. No one said anything. We all just stood and watched Spira's salvation cry.
"Tidus?" I begged Rin in a whisper. He looked around, slowly and deliberately, and shook his head.
I turned away from the panel and stretched my hands out to the two Aurochs. We stood there silently for just a sec, holding onto each other, and then I faced Rin again.
"Rin," I said quietly, "we need a ride."
"Bevelle. The temple," he breathed. "The Via?"
"The Via."
His gasp was sharp, and his eyes softened. "We'll be there, Secc Linna."
He was about to click off when Yuna stood up. Her eyes were red but clear, and she was looking straight at me through the commsphere.
I'm sure it was an accident. But you know how someone's eyes brush across yours for a second and hit, and you feel a jolt?
Slowly, I bent forward and blitz-bowed to the first and last living High Summoner.
When I came up, she forced herself to smile and bow back. I think that was the moment it really hit me. She was alive. A summoner was alive. Sin was gone for good this time.
And so, I realized, was Tidus.
In that moment, she looked so strong, and suddenly his face flashed before my eyes. Those lonely nights I'd spent sobbing like that on the airship. I remembered asking him, "She's so important to you that you'd let Sin go on killing, let me and Wakka and everyone else in this world die, if it would keep her alive? You'd sacrifice a whole chessboard for a pawn?" I remembered the pain in his blue eyes as he answered, "Yes." He'd done it. He'd saved her after all. When I'd think about him in the years to come, I'd remember that, and I'd think that his life must have ended happily.
"Uin Calm, Linna. Ed'c ymm ujan huf," Bickson said.
I turned around to him and smiled. "Yeah, Bick. It's finally over."
Or maybe it was just beginning.
The airship was descending through the first dawn of the Eternal Calm. I looked around at my friends' faces. Naaga. Bickson. Miyu. The Aurochs. Reppi. Zalitz. Even Naida. We'd been through a lot. It was time to rebuild.
Bick was right. It was our Calm. Spira was finally ours again, after a thousand years. And we had our whole lives ahead of us to enjoy it.
I walked out of the shadow of the temple into the sunlight and drank in the first dawn of eternity.
**********
Translations:
dra tayt faekrd ryc paah cdnebbat vnus dra machina - the dead weight has been stripped from the machina
"Rao, Sus, Tyt. Drao kud res." - "Hey, Mom, Dad. They got him."
"Uin Calm, Linna. Ed'c ymm ujan huf." - "Our Calm, Linna. It's all over now."