"The Sharpness of Being Rikku"
Demeter
Disclaimer: All rights and privileges of Final Fantasy X/X-2 characters, objects and plots are property and trademarks of Square Enix, Playstation, and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The original story, relationships, and characters found within the fic are property of the author Demeter
Rating: PG
Pairings: Rikku/Auron (sort of), peripherally: Yuna/Tidus, Wakka/Lulu
Notes: Written as a Christmas Gift to the lovely tokoyami. May the holidays bring you cheer and general goodwill. (If not, I'm ready with cookies and fudge. ) Posted in LJ long before now...
Warnings: None, as far as I can see. Spoilers for both games.
- 1 -
They are walking, running, walking, running toward a goal that will end in death and no one seems to want to realize this. Everyone jokes, everyone laughs, everyone dances around an issue that should be shouted from the Blitzball rooftops. But what is a lie if everyone believes it as truth? How can truth be a lie when it is the rock, the foundation of too many lives and hearts?
Rikku knows this is one of the many curses of the Al-Bhed. She sees truths in lies and lies in truth and she must not ever let anything confuse her. If she were ever to become confused and lose sight of her goal…
Yuna is going to die.
And no one is stopping her. Not Tidus
Not Rikku.
- 2 -
Gippal has never tried to hurt her, but the operative word is 'tried'. He is a good-natured boy, slightly prone to arrogance and frippery, but she knows he is good at heart.. But the hurts she sustained after he left and the hurts carved into her after she went on a journey to end the Summoner's Pilgrimage is now all changed. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees the flashes of red and the craggy, lined face of someone who'd fought off death to fulfill one last promise.
He was old enough to be her grandfather and old enough to spank her.
But he wasn't old enough to stop her from changing.
- 3 -
She's been heating and reheating the soup no one's eating, not even Wakka. Everyone's too worried, too distressed, too preoccupied and even Yuna can't smile when Rikku comes bearing more food than necessary. Their lives have become entwined around Sin and while Sin should be crucial, is everyone going to forget who and what and why they're fighting?
No one smiles anymore. It's as if their happiness is sieving away with each step of their journey. "Go away, Rikku," has become something she hears all too often.
She smiles enough for everyone.
- 4 -
Yuna's happiness is one of the most important things for Rikku. She'd be willing to bleed herself dry to see a moment of untainted smiles on a face made pale by too many worries. And when Tidus returns and she sees Yuna's dreams come to life, the bitterness that wells up is easily and neatly tamped down.
Rikku will never never never tell anyone about Auron. She will never speak about the days and nights she dreams about him and the moments where it seemed that Auron was on the brink of saying something too. It will do nothing but hurt Yuna and guilt-trip her into not feeling happiness with Tidus.
There is nothing Rikku would not do for Yuna. Thus, she keeps Auron's memory silent and his sword closer to her at night.
- 5 -
The term Al Bhed is similar to that of a curse. Priests of Yevon warn their disciples that if they lose their faith, they will be no worse than the Al Bhed and who could be worse than those who work with the very machina that supposedly caused the destruction of Zanarkand and caused the rise of Sin? This is why murdering an Al Bhed is not the same as killing a faithful follower of Yevon. Five Al Bhed equal one Yevonite and no one questions this logic though there are not enough Al Bhed left to make this possible.
Rikku walks relatively safe through Spira, because she is a special pet of Rin and Rin is wealthy enough for most to look the other way. Money makes the world go round and round, and not even an Al Bhed is bad enough to make those little shiny coins look any less appealing.
The blood of Rikku's people is stained on those coins and her grief never ebbs.
- 6 -
Rikku runs through the Calm Lands.
There is something about the vastness which makes her sleep in the grassy knolls and makes friends with small monsters she knows she should kill. She looks intently into their eyes and wonder if there is even a tiny spark of Auron in there. Her right hand sings and the blood splatters in a delicate line that emphatically says no.
Her garish clothing – what little there is – gathers a few raised eyebrows, but she's well-known enough by now that no one dares to say a thing to her face. Who wants to risk offending Lady Yuna or Rin of the Traveling Agency?
She sort of wishes someone would. Just once.
- 7 -
No one asks so she never tells. Everyone knows the story about Yuna's father and everyone knows everyone else's story except the one about the perky little Al Bhed girl who doesn't seem old enough to understand sorrow. Sorrow cannot be measured.
No one asks why Rikku never speaks about her mother and why she was raised by her father. Wakka carelessly talks about her prejudice against Yevon and she is careful to never bring up the day when everything burned and she'd watched her mother throw her little girl away from the falling, breaking, devastated rocks of their home. There are no possible words that can be said about the beautiful smile on Shera's face as her body was crushed beneath the weight of Yevon's crusade against blasphemers.
Shera was a gentle and kind woman who had helped Yuna's mother run off with a summoner-in-training of Yevon.
She knows only guilt and denial will come from any imagery and Rikku is someone who believes in peace between all the races of Spira even if it must be carved raw and bleeding from her skin.
- 8 -
As a rule, Rikku does not dream. But after Sin's final defeat, she finds herself choking as she wakes from nightmares. Some would call sixteen too young to deal with 'all that unimaginable horror', but she knows the night terrors don't come from Sin so much as a from the man who'd died and then walked Spira like a ghost until he'd fulfilled a crusty old promise.
Sometimes, she thinks Tidus was Yuna's prize for ridding the world of Sin and helping those who dreamt to finally stop dreaming. Yuna is special, Rikku well knows, so she never asks where was her gift, where was her happiness?
Her hands twitch in memory and the sword she keeps by her side is like a haunted wraith. The metal gleams dully in the light of the stars at night.
- 9 -
Unlike the propaganda, Rikku has a great deal of faith. She believes that Spira is a beautiful place despite the poverty and insistence that the age of Sin will end with mere prayer. She believes there will be a day when Guado and Al Bhed may believe in their own deities and forgo the exchange of religion for protection. She believes in the elegance of pyreflies, even if they deal in lies.
It is her faith that allows Rikku to wake each morning and not wish for a merciful end because she faces another day where she can do nothing but smile at Yuna in hopes the girl will realize that dying is nothing honorable when it's done for others. She loves – oh, she hates - all the guards of their fanciful group, but she wants to tear her hair out. Does no one else realize their walk is that of a funeral procession? Why won't Auron of all people see the wrongness of asking someone to die in their stead?
Death is nothing great. Death is only something that leaves those alive in a state of constant mourning.
- 10 -
It as if everyone has moved on except her. She goes for superficial changes and does things to her hair that makes Cid shake his head and cover his eyes. She wears clothing even skimpier than Yuna's and doesn't hesitate in adding more bells and whistles. Gippal's eyes bulge when he sees her for the first time in years, but it doesn't do a thing except remind her that she'd wished she'd worn the same thing when the cantankerous Auron was alive. How fun it might have been to make his his eyes bulge out.
Rikku coos at Wakka and Lulu's baby and discusses wedding arrangements with Yuna. She does everything as the proverbial go-getter and no one seems to see that she will never be able to move on because the one person she'd ever really wanted was now dead and perhaps complaining about her antics – with a note of affection among the exasperation? – to her mother in whatever afterlife there might be.
But she realizes that happiness precludes vision and misery does the same thing.
Rikku has grieved her whole life so grieving for one more person, for one more lost chance is nothing new.
- fin -