Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, 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.

Hey, a question: I was using the brilliant Al Bhed translating program Bikanel for Al Bhed dialogue, and it was deleted from my old computer. The website no longer seems to work. Does anyone know where I can get a copy these days?

Oh, yeah. And please don't sue me.

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 Plays Dress-Up

by flame mage

spherechange 17: Immortal Soul

I took the hover out alone that night. It was a stupid thing to do--after what had happened just that morning, I should have known better than to be in the desert alone. But I had to be by myself for a while; I had to get away from all the people and the noise and the activity in that camp.

Maybe I just went kinda crazy. I got along okay with the diggers and the camp officers, but I was worried that if I hung around any of them too long, I'd blow my cover--especially Reppi, as much as I woulda killed to talk to her. The only one who didn't know anything about blitz was Benzo, and I'd been spending every waking hour with him and I needed to talk to someone, anyone else. And so I left a sphere for him telling him where I'd gone next to his bed and took off. As far as I could tell, no one even noticed that I was leaving.

If you'd asked me, I couldn't have told you where I was going, but subconsciously I must have known I'd go back to that cave. I must have known that something would push me inside and make me wander like a madwoman for hours among the things my father had built with his own hands.

I realized that my father's hands were one of the only things I could remember about him. Most Al Bhed wear gloves, but I'd never seen him with any. His hands were always calloused all over, palms, fingertips and everything, like someone who worked with them a lot. Now that I looked at the machina, I could see those hands more clearly in my mind and imagine how he must have built the things in front of me and how they had changed him.

There was--there were just too many things I were remembering now. Back home, I could have gotten up and talked to any of my friends--Miyu, Rin, any of the guys on the team. At Home a couple years ago, or even back in our hut in Besaid, Naaga and I could have curled up in our zysseac with some of her health food or even--sacrelige!--a box of pizza and chatted all night. In Luca, Bick would've gotten up and made some tea, and he would have read something funny in the tea leaves to make me laugh, and then he'd just let me vent, or we'd argue about something stupid, or--

--I wanted to go home.

And there was only one person on this entire damn sandblasted island who I could trust not to tell anyone anything Isaid, and that was only because no one would understand her even if she did because she was a damn PLANT.

I fired up the hover and headed to the Cactuar Nation.

I got out of the hover and couldn't hear a sound. Even the breeze was still. Nothing was moving except a thin cloud of green mist swirling around one of the cacti on the far side of the Nation. Marnela.

"Don't you ever sleep?" I asked quietly as I came around from behind her. She chittered a long response. I was lost.

"I don't get a word of what you're saying," I told her. "Without Benzo here to translate, I'm pretty useless. But..." For just a sec, I felt stupid asking this question to a cactus--back when I was growing my own hydroponic plants, I'd talked at them sometimes, but I'd never really had a conversation with them. But I needed to talk to someone, and it wasn't like Marnela was gonna tell anyone the dirty secrets about my checkered past. "...is it okay if I talk for a while?"

She chittered something that sounded like a yes (although for all I knew, it could have been a "You stupid Al Bhed poser, why would I want to listen to any crap you have to say?"), and so I sat down in the cool sand next to her and started to talk. In my own language.

"I found something in the desert today, where that Cactuar told us to look," I began. "It was a stockpile of machina. Not ones we salvaged, ones we built. Even today it's hard for us to do that--I don't think anyone knew that there were researchers trying years ago. And my dad, Merko...he was one of them."

I looked at Marnela. She was a huge cactus, towering over me by several feet, and she looked strong and deep green. "You're hundreds of years old, though, aren't you?" I asked. She replied with something that sounded kinda like a yes. "So you've been here a lot longer than the Al Bhed have. Had. We only came to Bikanel after Sin destroyed our old Home. For you it was probably like yesterday--not even fifty years. Even my parents weren't born here. The Al Bhed were all over Spira before Cid brought them back together here. It was like it is today. Everyone separated, with no real group identity, no place to belong. Just kinda drifting.

"You remember when Home was destroyed?" Chitter. "Yeah, I guess you would. They say you could see the smoke all the way across the ocean. And the explosion--I saw the hole.

"It just pisses me off." I was cracking my knuckles now. Oh, well. Treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome was probably cheaper than therapy. "All the people who died--for what? Why did the Guado kill them? Just for the stupid summoners? The one who brought the Calm wasn't even there. Why should they care if we were trying to protect the others? Letting them go woudn't have solved anything anyway! We learned that straight from Mika! The people that were killed were the little kids, the old people, the scientists who were working there--people who didn't deserve to die! And the Guado killed them all for nothing! And now I'm stuck here digging up the work my people did so I can sell it to the damn Yevonites so they can kill even more of us! With our own weapons! It makes me so sick!" A pocket of mist shot up around a cactus a few feet away. I'd been yelling loud enough to wake it up.

I was breathing hard and my knuckles hurt. I sighed and did Rin's trick--count to ten, two deep breaths--and tried to calm down enough to keep going.

"And all those machina parts all over the desert--those make me mad too. It was just such a waste, Marnela. All the stuff out there we could have repaired, all the new stuff we could have built, all the ways we could have improved Spira. They took it all away from us."

Marnela said something that sounded like a question. What question? Who knew?

"And that stuff out there, with my dad's name on it--there was this hydroponics system, but there were a bunch of other things, too. Lighting. Engines. He made all these things that I grew up with, and no one ever told me."

I flopped back in the sand and stared up at the sky. "I don't remember him all that well. I mean, I was ten when Sin killed him, so I should remember him, but I don't. My mom is the one I always think of, and he was just always in the background. She was loud, she was alive, she was this huge presence--not that she was around so much, but she was the one who got drunk and screamed for hours about how I was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She was the one that was always trying to make me be what she wanted me to be. And my dad...I don't think I ever really knew him. I can't even remember his face. I've got this one sphere Rin gave me, and as soon as I stop looking at it, I forget what he looked like again.

"I just remember--he never seemed to get angry with Mom. I hated her, growing up, but Dad...Rin, too. Maybe there was no way to win with her. But it wasn't like she was winning either. She was just making everyone lose."

I sighed. "Why can't I remember more?"

"Maybe you need something to remind you," Benzo said.

I jumped. He was standing next to Marnela, watching me. "How long have you been there?!" I demanded.

"I just got here. I got your sphere and thought you might come to the Nation," he replied. "Nhadala, if you don't mind my asking...you haven't seen the place where Home was yet, have you?" I shook my head. "Do you want to?"

"You know where it is?" I asked.

"Yes. Well, we had people guarding the crater for a long time--they didn't leave until after Sin was gone. They marked the spot in case the sand eroded, but they didn't really need to. I don't think that hole will ever go away."

Marnela said something and Benzo picked up the translation. "'Perhaps you should go see it, Nhadala,' she says. 'It may help you recover some old memories.'"

I looked at Benzo. "Can you take me there?"

He started for the hover. "Let's go."

"Calm down," he told me for the tenth time a few minutes later. I was in the passenger's seat, cracking my knuckles and staring down at the sandy wasteland like my life depended on finding a needle in that haystack. I couldn't sit still.

"I can't, Benzo, okay?! I can't!"

He looked over at me appraisingly as he brought us down a little. "I forgot. Everyone who was at the camp before you got there has already been here so many times. You haven't seen it since..."

"Since it was destroyed," I replied flatly.

"You--you were there?"

"I showed up just after it was hit. I was on the airship, though."
He shook his head and looked away at the sand on the other side. "I was in Guadosalam, working as a translator for one of Seymour's aides, Tromell. It was the only time I'd ever left the desert. When I heard, I didn't have anywhere to go, so I just stayed. I was there until Sin was destroyed. I...I can't even imagine--"

"You kept working for the Guado?!" I snapped.

"Yes," he replied in surprise. "I just told you that. Why?"

"But the Guado are our enemies!"

"Nhadala," he said gently. "...look...it was two years ago. The people who ordered the attack are out of power now. Sooner or later you have to forgive and forget."

"How can you say that?! They destroyed Home, Benzo! Or did you just forget about all those people they killed?"

"I'm just saying that the Guado as a race aren't inherently evil, any more than the Al Bhed or the Ronso or the Yevonite humans are. You can't blame the actions of a few people--who, admittedly, did terrible things--on an entire race."

"If it was just a couple people, then who the hell were all the guardians running around controlling fiends and killing people inside?!"

Benzo shrugged helplessly. "Sometimes people who really aren't bad will do bad things if they think it's for a good cause. The Guado were convinced that they were just doing what was right for Spira in trying to free the summoners so they could fight Sin."

I stared at him. "I can't believe you!"

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Nhadala. As an interpreter, I work with all kinds of people, so it's hard to hate anyone for long." I didn't say anything. We sat in hostile silence for the next twenty minutes.
"There it is," he said finally, slowing and taking the altitude down suddenly. "Home." I would have seen it right away anyway; a hole in the ground five times the size of the Luca blitz sphere is pretty hard to miss.

Benzo took us down a little jerkily. I was out of the hover and running even before we hit the ground. Of course. I remembered this place. Once upon a time, it had been a small valley. I laughed, that bitter barking sound again. It was a pretty big valley now.

The crater was deserted. Not a single fiend in sight. All around, there were still chunks of charred metal, but there was nothing but sand in the pit.

Even after all this time, it still smelled like smoke.

For some reason, I felt hesitant. I sat down on the edge of the crater like it was just another sphere pool and pushed off until I slid down the slope all the way to the bottom, in the very center of the crater.
The heart of the central tower of Home. I was standing in what used to be the Summoner's Sanctum.

And then there was everything above it. The nerve center of the Home complex--what would have been the square in Luca. The school. The Travel Agency's main office. Our blitz sphere. The main power generators. Shops. Restaurants. Everything we needed to keep our city in the desert running.

Most of the big rocks in the immediate area had been blown up, too, but from the one left in the distance I got my bearings and started making my way up the slope. It was so steep that I about halfway up I had to go down on my hands and knees and sink my limbs into the sand to keep going. But the rock told me that I was crawling up the street I ratted on for years while I was learning to blitz. To my left and right were all the back alleys my friends and I had practiced in when we were kids.

I closed my eyes, and for a second I could forget that I was knee-deep in sand and see myself back there again. The guys were yelling as I snagged the pass out of thin air as it shot toward the goal (the base of the tower I lived in). I could almost feel Wamkytec bowling me over with a mean tackle (ever wonder why so many street rats go pro? Because after you've been slammed with 200 pounds of muscle on dry land, doing it underwater is a cinch), but I just managed to hang onto the ball and focused hard on the Nap Shot 3 I was about to send rattling against the tower. I reared back and kicked it with all my strength. Keyakku lunged and scraped pavement, and the ball hurtled on straight for Iren, the goalie. There was no way she'd stop it. Fifteen feet--ten--five--

--and then I remembered. The fires in this street. Wamkytec lying in a pile of bodies in the Summoner's Sanctum. Keyakku dead in the burning metallic central square. Iren--she had probably died too. Were Keyakku and Iren fiends here now? Even our goals, which we'd thought would be there forever, had been gone for two years. And I was sprawled facedown with my hands and knees plunged into the sand.

I kept going.

Up the slope led down the street, and maybe two-thirds of the way out of the crater--I wasn't sure, but it looked right. I was kneeling in the lobby of my tower, where our apartment had been. Sixteen stories up. I'd lived in that apartment for twenty years.

Marnela had been right. Memories were flooding me again. Pushing Naaga under my bed, the two of us lying there in the dark, afraid to even breathe in case the bill collectors heard us and knew we were home. Her sitting on her bed, wrapped around a pillow, stuffing her face with low-fat chocolates and bawling over a romance movie on the sphere. Me checking up on my beloved tomatoes and then, after Naaga insisted I grow some, the flowers. The day the two of us redid the place, changing up all our sheets and trying to install colored lighting so we felt like we were in the middle of the ocean. Rin when he had a makeshift cot by the door, telling us stories late at night when we couldn't sleep and then tucking us into bed. The three of us eating dinner one night when I tried so hard to cook it and burned it, and him eating it anyway. Watching the Psyches matches onsphere. The day we were watching a game and the announcer interrupted it to tell us a new Calm had begun. Naaga and I holding each other two weeks before that when they told us that Mom and Dad were dead, and her sobbing and me just standing there, not feeling anything at all.
And then before that. The day the two of them left, with Dad carrying all the suitcases and Mom almost forgetting to kiss us goodbye. Mom stumbling home drunk--a lot of those memories. Rin helping her through the door, thinking we were asleep. Her screaming at the sphere when the Psyches were losing. Me scrambling up onto her lap--rarely--when she told me I'd better be a blitz ace. Dad cooking dinner. Dad futzing with a new little circuit box and spreading the parts out in a mess all over the kitchen table so we couldn't eat there for three weeks until he finished it. His face as he brushed my hair for school.

That was right. He'd always been the one who got us ready. Mom was usually either AWOL or drunk or just too uninterested to do it. He'd bought our clothes, too--usually just a little off from what the other kids were wearing, but the right sizes. Naaga always knew which presents were from Mom on her birthday when they were burgundy-colored and flashy, and two sizes off. Mom never bothered to get me clothes; she always bought me a blitzball. Every year.

I remembered.

Slowly, I crawled the rest of the way up the slope until I could stand and brush myself off. Benzo, who had been a ways off looking at some burnt piece of metal or other, turned around. "Hey, Nhadala, I found something," he called.

"What?" I called back.

"Another sphere." He tossed it to me; I caught it automatically.

"Anything else here?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Pretty much everything was obliterated. A few hunks of junk like this, but they're such a wreck that they won't be good for much. And if you saw it, you know...well, there aren't any bodies, any personal things, anything like that left. Just big chunks of buildings."

"You ready to go then?"

"Are you?" he asked.

I took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. I--it brought back a lot of memories. I don't know what else there is to do here."

"All right, then." He turned and started walking toward the hover. "Let's get back and get some rest then, okay? No more night wanderings for a while. We've got digging to do."

I started to say something about what the digging was doing to put weapons in the hands of filth like the Guado, but then I looked back at the crater and I just couldn't. I was angry about what the Guado had done here, but Home--it wasn't a battlefield anymore. It was a graveyard.

I took one last look and started walking.