Chapter VII
Let's face it. I god damn it don't wanna talk about it! I thought. I guess my face told those words so that I did not need to say them aloud to Auron. I was back in my cell again, more silent than ever, and I guess Auron wanted to play a good daddy with me. 'Tell me what's wrong, it'll be okay' -sort of thing. But what I had seen I never wished to discuss.
"Well, Tidus. If you ever feel like you want to talk about it, I'll be there," Auron said.
Fuck off, I thought, but I was too beat to actually speak. I didn't want his compassion. I didn't want anything just then, anything else than to forget and become numb. Discussing it all over again would not help me to forget.
Yes, Seymour had raped Lulu. And I had been sitting there to watch it, every second of it. Now, if I closed my eyes that's what I saw. If I tried to think that's what I saw. I wanted nothing more than to get rid of that image, like a movie that was played again and again, and it was the only think I could not get out of my head.
I had been sitting on the floor, but now all of a sudden I got up and started kicking the iron bars fiercely. That was trying to physically focus on something else. To my surprise, Auron said nothing at first. But by the time I fell down on my knees and started hitting my head against the bars, he was by my side in a second, lifting me up from the floor.
"Tidus!" he yelled at me. "Come on boy, stop that!"
I was all cracked. I had no idea of my surroundings. Auron's voice seemed to reach me from a distance. I kept hitting him, trying to get free from his grip.
"Tidus, calm down son," Auron said, a bit more softly.
Eventually, my fierce battling against him faded to a tight hug and cry. I hadn't realised I was crying. I buried my face in his red coat, trying not to think it was colored like blood.
"It's okay, son, it's okay..." he said, evidently unsure of what to do or say.
I scarcely paid attention to his words, rather to his tone. I completely missed the fact he called me 'son' again so I didn't feel weird about it. Usually he was keeping distance rather than getting close over any formal limits.
"Listen, Tidus, whatever he did to you it will be all right. You will be all right."
I totally disagreed, but had no strength to say it aloud. I just cried. Auron went on speaking.
"I know what kind of an asshole he is, I don't know if even the most wicked maesters are aware of all his deeds. Not even the maesters of Yevon look favourably at all he does."
"It is so unfair," I said suddenly. I realised I had spoken out aloud, and felt a need to explain myself. Through the tears I went on, "He is a man of great power, whatever way you look at it. And he's maybe the shrewdest man I ever met, and most twisted. Why does he have such power, when thousands of good men can do nothing about their fucked up lives, and the lives of their miserable companions?"
Auron said nothing to that. He had no answer, and I was angry because of that.
I heard the footsteps before I could hear the man speaking.
"Come out. Your sentence has been decided," maester Kinoc told us.
Auron gave him a sarcastic look.
"Sentence? Don't you mean execution?" he asked.
Maester Kinoc faked astonishment rather well.
"Really, now, what person would execute a dear friend?" he asked, sounding almost insulted.
"You would," was Auron's dry reply.
To that, maester Kinoc gave no answer. Instead he had some guards remove us from our cell. On our way through the dark corridors of stonewalls I tried to look around me to catch a glimpse of the others, but even Auron got separated from me, and I saw no one from our bunch. I was taken to a room with a small pool of water. I glanced down, and could see no bottom. The small pool was surely deep.
"Looks like you're next!" said one of the guards that had walked me here.
"Next for what?" I asked angrily.
"Get going!" was his reply.
He punched me on my back so hard that I fell down into the pool. When I came back to the surface, the guards pointed at me with their rifles. I spitted out the water from my mouth and asked,
"Where's everybody else?"
"Floating down there somewhere, maybe," was their reply.
I had no choice, so I dived. At first, it was like swimming down a pipe, until I came to a wider pool with a roof and walls. The first thing I saw was Wakka.
"Oooh! You made it!" he said, and we high-fived each other.
I glanced around and saw Rikku swimming towards us. When she reached us I asked them both what was our sentence.
"Think they expect us to give up and die down here," said Wakka.
"Well, that's a lame way to kill someone," I pointed out my opinion.
Rikku had other concerns than the maesters of Yevon's way to kill people.
"Where's Yunie?" she asked, as if we'd know. I told her I didn't.
Had I dared I would have asked if they knew something about Lulu and where she was.
"Wonder if we should wait for her..." Rikku said, and it took me a while to realise she was talking about Yuna though I was thinking about Lulu.
"Let's wait at the exit," I suggested.
"If there is an exit," said Rikku. Always her sweet self? Hardly this time.
This seemed like a maze full of water. Wakka told me we were in Via Purifico, a place to throw the traitors in. He told me there was another part of this maze, one that was without the water. He said the rest of our group had surely been thrown there, to fight the fiends the maesters had captured there.
"Wakka, are these maesters completely sane?" I asked.
He seemed surprised.
"Why?" he asked.
"If you have a maze with two parts, one filled with water and another one without it, and you want to kill a bunch of people with this maze of yours, why throw the only ones that can swim into the water, and the rest on dry land?"
Rikku gave a laugh.
"Maybe they thought our skills the other way around?" she suggested.
"With Wakka and I being blitzers? Scarcely," I said.
"Well you never know with those Yevonites," Rikku said with a laugh.
Our conversation was interrupted by a couple of big fishes that we had to fight. As my sword cut them to death I realised I was hungry. Some fried fish would have been a heaven to me. Come to think of it, I hadn't been eating for two days. I kind of hadn't had the time.
Swimming through the maze, we eventually met a pack of pyreflies. They re-formed a huge wormlike thing that was deep blue, and there seemed to be something seriously wrong with it. It looked familiar in a strange way.
"Holy shit," breathed Wakka, "that's the wyrm we killed when arriving."
Rikku winched.
"What's happened to it?" she asked quietly.
"Rikku, think later!" I exclaimed, for the wyrm started to chase us. It didn't seem to have too friendly intentions towards us whatsoever.
But we couldn't run forever. There was a wall in this maze, a wall that blocked our escape and sealed us in the same area with the wyrm.
"Now what?" I asked.
"I think you can open those locks," Rikku offered.
I glanced at the wall behind my back and realised she was right. The wall was actually a door. Wakka took in the information and swam towards one of the locks, perhaps intending to break it with an attack.
"Wait!" I shouted to him. An idea had come into my mind. "If we killed that thing earlier, then it's dead now, right?"
"Well yeah, usually, that's the way it goes, ya?" Wakka mocked me.
"So it's an unsent, right?" I went on.
"Yeah. You missing Yuna here, huh?" Wakka said.
"Come back here, Wakka," I told him. "I have an idea."
"What?" he asked, swimming back to us.
I groped my bag for a Phoenix Down, a potion to revive an unconscious person, and threw it towards the wyrm.
"What the hell are you doing man, you're wasting our Phoenix Downs!" Wakka freaked out.
"Look," I replied.
The wyrm shook its head and roared in pain. Rikku noticed that too, and followed my example and wasted another one of our Phoenix Downs. The wyrm exploded into a ton of pyreflies.
"Whoa," said Wakka. "Hey guys, you left me out of the battle, ya?"
"Sorry," I said with a smile, not sounding too honest.
So we went on swimming, and for some reason we encountered no more fish on our way through this maze. Maybe the presence of the wyrm had kept them all away from this part of it. Or maybe there was no need for them, for according to all expectations the wyrm should have finished us off. But we were alive and kicking – my only concern was what had happened to Lulu, and if she was all right aswell.