Resolution
"He's dead," I say, harshly. Too much so. "He's dead, and there's nothing you can do." Nothing we can do, I mean to add.
I don't get the chance. "Yes there is something I can do! I mean, something I could have done. I could have stopped him. I could have stopped him." He speaks with such passion, hardly knowing the words that are coming from his own mouth. It's painfully clear that he blames himself for his brother's death.
"No…" I start, thinking to tell him otherwise, that it isn't his fault at all. But he has turned from me, angrily pounding his fists into the solid trunk of the tree we stand under. There is nothing I can say that will change him.
One last heavy blow to the unfeeling tree and the blood seeps out over his knuckles. He curses, and I step toward him. But he sees me and backs away, eyes on fire.
"This is what I deserve," he states quietly.
I stand at his side, confused. "What?"
"It's my punishment. For letting him go." His voice is flat, colorless, as he looks out over the ocean. My gaze follows his out over the eternal waves, their sound the invisibly present backdrop to our lives.
"It isn't your fault," I finally say. "There's nothing we can do now, and we both know that it would have been impossible to change his mind." You don't deserve to be punished, I can't quite get out.
"I…I did try." He ventures. Perhaps he hasn't given up on himself, either.
I place my palm on his heavy shoulder, the first time I've touched him since we held each other crying after he broke the news to me. He looks around at me, the light in his eyes only from the sunset reflected in his unshed tears, his mouth a thin firm line. "He was strong-willed. It was never your fault that he was. He made his own decisions, even if they…turned out wrong."
He just looks back at the glinting waves, clenching and unclenching his battered fists. "How do you do it, Lu?" Wakka asks me. "How can you be so calm after all that's been taken from you?"
I take my hand away, and turn back towards the center of the island. "He was taken from me…as were others…that's why I fight." I pause, staring at my lengthened shadow across the ground. "And I will keep on fighting, so that no one has to be taken from me again."
I leave him there alone and I do not look back.