Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy X

Well, I'm afraid we've come to an end here. I'm sorry, I have exams! *Sobs painfully* I'd just like to say thank you very much for joining me for this set and reading along with me even as I sound like a crazy.

For the last time: Enjoy!

015. Forget-me-Not

"Auntie Rikku?"

"Yes, Eve?"

"Why do you always pick the petals off those flowers?"

Rikku pauses, with a blue petal in one hand and the body she'd pulled it from in another.

"They're called 'forget-me-not', and I just think they're sad."

The five-year-old brunette little girl who looked far more like her serene mother than puppy-ish father frowned, then puffed up her cheeks in an odd attempt at a pout. Perhaps she took more after her father than Rikku had thought.

"That's not a good reason. I'm telling mum."

Rikku sighed and handed the flower over to the girl.

"If you stay here with me, I'll tell you a better reason and make a crown out of them."

Eve bit her lip, but couldn't help but smile. She nodded, letting the grin spill over. "Okay."

"Once upon a time, there was a group of seven. They were friends - some of them since a very long time ago. Six of them were protecting the lady at the centre of them all, the one who had been trained to defeat the evil beast."

"Did they?"

"Shh— not yet. The lady at the centre of them all quickly fell in love with her new friend, the man who'd called into their world from the next one over. Another of the seven were two childhood friends, who realised along their dangerous journey that they couldn't live without another, and they too fell in love."

"What about the other... three?"

"Well, one was a giant from another clan, and they didn't really have such a nature. They loved the clanspeople the had - not the people that they wanted to fall in love with."

"Oh. Okay."

"Quite a lot of people don't love in the way that the first four do, Eve."

"Like you, Auntie Rikku?"

Rikku pulled a wry smile, then carried on with the story. "The group journey throughout the land, fighting the monsters they came across, and unravelling the evil. More than once it looked as though their lives were on the line, but they always managed to get away just in time. It took them a very long while, but eventually, they made it to the point where they had no choice but to face their foe. And after a tough, draining battle, they won."

"But what about the flowers?!" Eve huffed, cheeks flushing pink. Rikku just chucked and carried on with her flower crown.

"Well, Eve dear. The two remaining of the seven were one girl, one man. The girl was young, but she loved the man with all her heart. And the man was older and colder, but she believed he loved her too."

Rikku connected up the ends of the crown and placed it upon the curls on Eve's head. "But in their final battle, the man was lost. And so the Forget-me-Not flowers are a curse to some, and a reminder of those whom they've lost in the past."

Eve sighed despondently, taking the crown off her head.

"How can such pretty flowers be so sad?" She whimpered, And Rikku stroked a hand down her soft face.

"I don't know Eve, I don't know. And I don't think that I'll ever know."

Rikku smiled at the girl softly, before standing up from their spot under the shade of the willow tree. "Come on, your mum will be wondering where you've got to."

Eve nodded, still clutching the crown in one hand, and taking Rikku's with the other. "Okay."

She skipped alongside Rikku's wider strides as they walked back down the grassy lawn to the house together.

"Look mummy look! Look what Auntie Rikku made for me!"

Yuna took the crown from her daughter's hands and examined it, meeting Rikku's eye in a knowing way.

"A crown of Forget-me-Nots?"

Rikku nodded.

"Yeah! And she told me a story, too!"

"Oh? Was it a nice one?"

Eve's beaming face frozen as she thought, and then the smile slid down her face like drops of ice cream melted down a careless child's arm on a hot summer's day. "Well- I don't think so." She seemed to be off in her own world, and she gently mumbled, "maybe I didn't like it..."

"Somethings really are just best left forgotten."

The women shared a sad smiled, as they looked over the sitting room of Yuna's house. It wasn't perfect, but they'd each built a new life. It wasn't what they'd all wanted, but there were just somethings, and some people, that you had to forget to move on.

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