Yaaay, another update after almost a year! Woohoo, yay! Last chapter I guess… my goodness… Thank you so much for reading! Review? :)
Day 7
Rikku slowly opened her eyes and stretched out luxuriously in her sleeping bag, greeting the brand new day. At exactly 3 o'clock this afternoon, she would be leaving this horrible, super-awful, terrible place. Which wasn't so super-awful and terrible anymore. Just… still kind of horrible. She shut her eyes quickly as thunder crashed outside, causing the tent walls to light up momentarily, but her body didn't stiffen. She didn't get the urge to scream. Or anything. She just closed her eyes.
She had stayed up most of the night, entertaining herself with the feeling of listening to the boom of the thunder without having to be afraid. Now that she thought of it, thunder was something kind of amazing. The same thing that she harnessed into a machine came from the sky. It was a crazy idea to wrap around in her head, and she sat there thinking about watching the sparks fly from machina when they were being worked on.
"Morning," Gippal said. Rikku turned her head just in time to see him slip the eye patch over his right eyes. She rolled over and smiled at him for a second, then said,
"Can I ask you a… personal question?" He shrugged as he pulled the thermal shirt over his head. She wondered if after a week, it was getting grimy, with probably no washes. But then she remembered how worn out her t-shirt and shorts must be from no washing, and how gross her hair was from absolutely no shower, and she let it go.
"Shoot," he said.
"Do you… have no eye under your eye patch, or is it just hurt really bad?" she asked in a quiet voice. The last thing she wanted to do on such a glorious day was make him mad, or bring back some painful memories. He started rolling up his sleeping bag.
"I still have my eye… it just kind of makes people uncomfortable when they see it," he said, keeping his concentration on the sleeping bag.
"Couldn't you just keep your eye closed?" she asked. He stopped then and looked at her.
"Would you like to keep one eye closed and one eye open all the time?" he asked her with a grin. She experimented, closing her right eye and trying not to squeeze it to keep it shut.
"No," she said in bewilderment. "The other eye wants to go with it."
"Exactly," he said. She pressed her lips together. He finished rolling up the still damp sleeping bag and buckled it closed, setting it down with a proud look on his face. She thought for a second, trying to decide if her next question would sound terrible. She finally decided that if he said no, it would be no big deal.
"Can I see it?" she asked quietly again. She was still afraid to upset him. He glanced at her, his face bland.
"You don't want to see something like that, Cid's Girl," he said. She sat up on her knees and put her palms on her knees.
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"Because chicks get freaked out by it," he answered uncomfortably, fiddling with the straps on his sleeping bag.
"Gippal," she started. He looked over at her again. "I would… never make fun of you, or be grossed out by it." She shrugged. "I couldn't treat you that way." He pursed his lips and stared at the ground.
His eye flicked over to her again when she put her hands on the ground and crawled over to him. He didn't try to stop her when she hooked her thumb under the leather black cord that held the patch to his face. But he squeezed his eyes shut as soon as she slipped it from off. The first thing she noticed was an almost luminescent white line going from near the bridge of his nose to the corner of his eye, near his temple. A scar. She put her finger on the line closer to his nose and felt how it rose up against his skin. "Look at me," she said. He only opened his left eye and looked at her, as if that's what she meant. She traced the white line on the other side of his eye. Whatever it had been, it had made a clean scratch. Maybe a piece of glass, or metal. "Both eyes," she clarified. She felt him heave a sigh. But he still didn't say anything in protest. He just slowly opened his right eye. It was a light blue, which was odd in contrast to his other eye, but it still had the Al Bhed swirl in it. The swirl was interrupted by a thin clear line, going right through his eye. The eye was glazed over with a cloudy look. His right eye didn't focus on her, but the left one was watching her intently. Obviously afraid she might coil away and toss the eye patch back at him. But she wasn't going to do anything like that. She just tilted her head and watched as his left eye moved, but the other one stayed where it was. She ran her hand down his temple to his jaw in a reassuring way. They both sat there, watching each other for about a minute or so. Then, Rikku settled back down onto her heels and handed him back his eye patch without a word, still looking at him. She knew at this point that if she made a wrong move, something would shatter between them. Even if she looked away, he would think she was uncomfortable, and she would hardly be able to convince him otherwise. He nervously took it back, and slid it quickly onto his head. He took a deep breath when it was where it should be again.
"Sorry… I should've done more to stop you," he said, adjusting the strap a bit. She shook her head.
"I told you I wouldn't be grossed out," she said. "And I wasn't." She just shrugged her shoulders. Gippal stared at her for a second, looking like he wanted to say something, but he just chuckled a bit and looked away from her.
"So, what are we going to do today?" he asked, both of them shaking off the intensity of the last few minutes.
"We can go for a walk," she suggested. Not that there was much else to do out in the Thunder Plains. "I'll have to take down the tent at some point today…" she grumbled to herself. She was amazed that Nere's tent placement had survived all week.
"I can help you with that," he replied.
"Oh, good, I've got a big strong guy to help me put away my tent," she said with a grin.
"Well, there's no way you could have put this tent up all by yourself. Who helped you?" Gippal asked, flicking the ceiling of the tent and watching it bounce back and forth a few times. Rikku blushed, thinking of the kiss that followed the construction.
"Nere…" she said. There was a moment of silence between them, and they both found something in the tent to occupy themselves.
"Did you really mean that yesterday?" Gippal asked. She was tracing curlicues into the ground, lost in her thoughts.
"Did I mean what?" she asked. He twisted his mouth up for a second.
"Uh, never mind. Hey, why don't you pack up your things, then we'll go for a walk, and then we can pull down the tent when we get back," Gippal said. Rikku pulled out a box of cereal. The last one of the week. She poured some Fruity Pebbles into her hand and offered some to Gippal. He held out his hand and she tipped some into it.
"We should walk all the way to the edge of Macalania!" she suggested with her mouth full of the colorful cereal.
"You sure you wanna go out that long?" Gippal asked, eating his own pebbles one by one. And by color.
"I toldyou. I'm not scared anymore!" she said excitedly. Gippal gave her a look. "You don't believe me, do you?" She crossed her arms over her chest.
"I can't believe that something as little as saying you 'forgive me' can make a lifetime of fear go away," Gippal said.
"Logic, logic, logic," Rikku said, shaking her head. She had to admit, it was a little far-fetched to her. She was convinced that this was something she was going to have to deal with for the rest of her life, never being able to comfort her children in a storm, or have a kiss in the rain, or anything like that. But she just was… free. It may have seemed like something stupid to maybe any old person. But she felt like there was a sky-full of new opportunities out there for her, just because she had overcome one fear.
"You better believe it," Gippal answered. "There must be something else."
"Well, there isn't." She had somehow felt the closure when she said that she had forgiven him. The truth was that she had been holding it against Brother and Gippal for a long time. She knew she had already forgiven Brother, because, well, he was family. She couldn't stay mad at him forever. But when Gippal left soon after, she never got the chance to forgive him. Or bother to. She just knew that when he left, she was still as mad as ever at him, and she'd hoped he wouldn't come back to torment her.
"Then you're faking it."
"I am not faking it. If I could fake it, I would have been faking it a few weeks ago when I was stuck in that storm on the Highroad."
"You know, now that I think about it, I do remember that storm when it rolled into Djose."
"Yeah! It was scary, wasn't it?" Rikku started to tie her hair up. It was absolutely disgusting, but every time she went outside, it got kind of wet, and you couldn't tell how greasy it was for another day.
"Well, seeing as I was snuggled up in my bed… not really." Rikku glowered at him.
"Well, that's because you were in a bed. Meanie."
"How did you get out of that jam?" Gippal asked, tugging his boots onto his feet. Rikku did the same with her boots.
"Um… Nere came and got me by the ruins," Rikku said sheepishly. She felt awkward talking about Nere to Gippal when she had just told Gippal yesterday that he was only a replacement for him.
"Spira! What elsecan that guy do?" Gippal asked. Rikku smiled as she started to tie a bow in her laces.
"I think the question is what can he not do?" she corrected him.
"Hmm," Gippal grunted, unzipping the tent.
The cold air rushed into the tent and they both crawled out. Rikku zippered up the tent behind them and then they started to walk. "What time is it?" Gippal asked, stretching his arms above his head.
"It's, like… 8 AM," she said. Out here, you always had to clarify whether it was AM or PM, because it was always so dark. "You know, I wonder what this place would look like if the sky would just clear up." The lightening towers always looked kind of eerie in the darkness, but what if it was bright and sunny? Would they just look like a couple old towers? And the hills might actually grow some plants on them with some sun.
"That'll neverhappen," Gippal answered.
"How are you so sure?"
"Because… Spira would be going topsy-turvy if it did," Gippal said. "Something would have to be seriously wrong."
"Or maybe seriously good. Because the sun would be shining!" Rikku did a little dance, thinking about what it would be like to be standing there when all of a sudden, the sun started to stream out of the sky over the Thunder Plains. Gippal smiled.
"You know, Cid's Girl, if that ever happens, I hope I'm standing right next to you," he said. Rikku bit her bottom lip and smiled at him.
"Me too," she agreed quietly. "Wouldn't you love to be on Bikanel Desert right now, though?" she asked, knowing that her skin must be icy to the touch. But she had grown accustomed to it in the past week.
"Hell no," Gippal said. Rikku glanced up at him. Every Al Bhed loves Bikanel Desert. Spira is so cold compared to it.
"Why not?"
"Because that place was like a cage."
"It was not a cage. It was Home," Rikku protested.
"I know it was Home. I mean, I was grateful to have somewhere that I could be equal. But then again, we were all just stuck there. And it's not like we were even trying to leave. I remembered my parents used to sit at home and just say, 'Well, there's nothing that wecan do about it'," Gippal said. He looked down at the ground. "I felt helpless there." He straightened up again. "That's why I went to join the Crimson Squad." He turned to her. "How did you get off Bikanel Island?" Rikku scuffed her foot in the mud.
"It wasn't very interesting. Pops got us a license to go into these underwater ruins and see if we could get any power from it, so I left. And then they sent me off to go catch Yunie, and…" She grinned up at him. "Nothing interesting like you, I bet."
"You have no idea," Gippal grumbled. "Well… I think kicking Sin's ass is pretty interesting."
"Yeah, but that's not how I got off Bikanel."
"It sure made it so you wouldn't have to ever go back." Rikku thought. Gippal had still been in the Crimson Squad when home was attacked. If it wasn't, he probably would have made the Machine Faction right after he was out of the Crimson Squad, just so he wouldn't have to go to Home.
"There's nothing wrong with going home," Rikku said, smiling through the rain. Gippal just shrugged. The only problem was that there was no home to go back to now. The only thing that held all the Al Bhed together was gone, and everyone was so spread out, it was hard to call them anything together anymore except a race.
They came to the shelter halfway through after about an hour and sat down on the dry ground.
"So, Yuna… What's she been up to?" Gippal asked.
"Well…" Rikku drew a sad face in the ground. "That's what bugs me, y'know?"
"No, I don't know, that's why I asked," Gippal said. Rikku sneered at him.
"It's like… everyone's getting what they want lately, right? … Because Sin's gone?" Rikku said, looking up at the sky.
"Right," Gippal said happily.
"Yeah, well… Yuna's the one who gave everyone that opportunity, but she's doesn't get to do anything that she wants to do," Rikku continued. Gippal tilted his head as he waited for her to continue. "I mean… every time I visit Besaid, she can only talk to me for about ten minutes at a time, because Wakka comes and chases her off to some stupid meeting with someone who doesn't like what's happening to Spira. As if it's her problem!"
"Well… everyone seems to think she's also responsible for what is going to happen to Spira, because she brought on this… this eternal calm," Gippal said. "If I didn't know any better, I probably would go cryin' to her too," he added, settling down more comfortably against the shelter's wall. Rikku went on without an answer.
"And every day, some new kid who's either in the Youth League or New Yevon comes and asks her to join their group, or some hot-shot asks her to marry their son. And every time, she says no, because she just loves Tidus so much that she can't marry someone else, or think about anyone else, and she's too important to everyone to take sides, but they still don't get the picture. And it just makes me so mad that someday, I'm just going to kidnap her and we'll go somewhere else! We'll go somewhere where they can't find her anymore, and for the first time since she brought the Calm, she can do something shewants to do!" Rikku yelled. She was breathing heavily once she finished. She dropped her hands, which she had been using to emphasize her points. "Why can't everyone just get along, anyway?"
"It's not the way Spira works, kid," Gippal replied quietly. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her over to him. She put her head on his chest and closed her eyes. "Think of it this way… these things have a way of sorting themselves out. But you can't change the fact that people are always gonna to disagree. If they didn't disagree, we just wouldn't progress, now would we?"
"No, we wouldn't," Rikku agreed slowly and childishly.
"Right, so don't you cry," he said.
"I wasn't crying," Rikku said, pulling herself off of him.
"I know," he said with such tenderness in his voice that Rikku had to look out into the Thunder Plains. They were quiet for a few seconds.
"Hey… is that a ray of sunshine there?" she asked.
"Where?" Gippal asked.
"There!" she said, pointing. He looked closer, and she jumped up and ran the other way.
"Hey!" he yelled and started to chase after her. She screamed and laughed and tried to outrun him. She looked over her shoulder and saw that he was closing in on her. She tried to run faster, but they both knew that she would be caught. Even so, she put up her best fight. Her little legs ran as fast as they could. But still, Gippal was taller, and therefore, he caught up with her with no problem at all. Gippal tackled her to the ground, the both of them landing in a particularly soggy patch of mud.
"Oh, gross!" Rikku yelled while laughing. They were both completely covered in it. Gippal lifted his body out of the mud on his hands and looked down at her.
"You look comfortable down there," he said.
"Yes, I am actually, I should have slept in mud the whole time I was here," she said, stretching her legs out in the mud. He just smiled down at her. She wasn't sure what to do. Here they were, lying in the mud, with Gippal looming over her, and Rikku felt her resolve to never kiss him again slipping away. Her heart pounded faster as lightning illuminated his face. They were both steadily breathing, or their breaths were coming faster at the same pace. She reached up and ran her fingers over his cheek, making new lines of mud there. Despite how many times they had laughed during the walk, the intensity of that morning when she had taken off his eye patch was still hanging around the pair. No matter how much she tried to tell herself they were just friends, the electricity was undeniable by now. She still couldn't fathom how she had gone from hating him so much to being so attracted to him in one week, but, here they were. Lying in the mud.
And just like that, the heat was gone. But then Rikku realized it was only because he had hoisted himself off the ground and was holding his hand out to help her up. Her face felt warm, and her stomach was turning over and over in protest and nerves and… She pressed her lips together and helped herself up. He waved his hand at her, and they walked in silence for a few minutes. It was awkward. They knew it was. Gippal was probably trying to think of something to say. But Rikku couldn't even think. There was just a storm of clouds swirling through her head.
"What was that?" she finally blurted out. Nothing she could do about it at this point.
"Thunder?" he suggested.
"No… in the mud…"
"Oh. I dunno," Gippal said with a careless shrug.
"You 'dunno'," Rikku repeated.
"Yeah." Okay, he was just asking for her to punch him now.
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Hey, I'm not going to get tangled up with you when all you want is to get back to Nere."
"That's not-."
"It istrue. You said so yourself yesterday. You're just trying to screw with me," Gippal said, turning away from her.
"I'm not!" she nearly screamed. Thunder crashed nearby, but she was too distracted to jump, or shriek.
"You are! Yesterday you told me you just want to be friends, and today you're trying to drag me into the mud with you!" Gippal said, turning back and looking her straight in the eye.
"I… you made me fall in the mud! You dragged me down in it!"
"Rikku, let me tell you something about how things work. If you want to be with someone, then you tell them. If you just want to be friends, you tell them," Gippal said, advancing on her.
"I dowant to be friends with you, you just make it really hard!" Rikku screeched.
"Youmake it hard!" Gippal yelled back.
"I don't do anythingto you!" Rikku said, crossing her arms.
"Are you kiddingme?" Gippal replied.
"No, I'm not!" Rikku said. "It's you, you're always just flirting away like it's no big deal, well, it is!"
"Well, maybe you shouldn't take me so seriously."
"Then you shouldn't take me so seriously."
"After all, you have Nere," Gippal said with a sarcastic smile.
"Right. And – who do you have, Gippal?" Rikku asked. He pursed his lips and stared her down.
"I don't need anybody."
"Whatever, I'm sure you don't, that's why you just had to stay and look after me after your entire teamleft," Rikku said, waving her hand. "Thanks for helping me out this week; I can pull down the tent by myself."
"But… Rikku-."
"You can just grab your sleeping bag and leave," Rikku said.
"No, let me help you," Gippal said pathetically behind her as she kept walking.
"You've helped enough."
"What in Spira did you expect me to do back there?" he said, his anger flaring again. "Did you expect me to kiss you?"
"Actually, I did," Rikku said, turning to face him. No point in trying to hide it.
"But why?"
"I… I don't know. I was just expecting it."
"Rikku, when you tell me you don't plan on kissing me again, I'm not going to go for it," Gippal stated. "You gotta stop looking at the world like it's a fantasy." Rikku looked down at her boots. Tears pricked her eyes. She couldn't take back what she said to him yesterday. She should have known that it would come back to her. The thunder clapped around her, but it didn't seem to come near her anymore. Thunder must be able to smell fear.
"What would we do without fantasies?" she asked. After a few moments, Gippal walked over so he was right in front of her.
"If you really want, I could kiss you now," Gippal said. Rikku couldn't help but laugh a bit.
"Nah, the moment's gone," she said. He smiled at her. She looked up at him. "I'm sorry about saying you were replacement. The truth is that… I really did want to kiss you," she said nervously.
"Me too," Gippal said. They subconsciously started walking back to the tent, since it was already two o'clock. Gippal's hand touched hers, and she realized after a second that it was intentional, because it stayed there for a few moments until Rikku pushed against it with her own, and he took her hand in his. They walked back to the tent in comfortable silence.
Gippal helped her take down the tent as promised, and it was already 3:30 by the time they were done. Rikku was reminded how hard it was to put up the tent the first time, because the thing was flying around with the wind. It was a particularly bad day in the Thunder Plains that first day with the wind and rain, and all she could think while she was burying the stakes into the ground was that she just wanted to turn around and say she couldn't do it. But the weird thing was that Rikku didn't want to leave yet. This had just… been home for a week, oddly enough. She wasn't about to make a yearly trip to the Thunder Plains, but she knew she would come back there sometime. She glanced over at Gippal, who was shoving the last mud covered stake into the bag. It seemed like he was talking to it, commanding it to get in the bag… or else. She smiled and wondered if she would have gone the rest of her life not being friends with him if she had never come out here. Probably. Nothing else would have thrown them together. Then again, she didn't have to talk to him that week. She could have just avoided him, and he probably would have avoided her too. Maybe after that first meeting, she just… wanted to see him? Her face contorted as she once again tried to figure out the inspiration she had to even continue to meet him, and walk with him.
She turned to him and smiled brightly, and they walked into Guadosalam. People gave them strange looks. Which, they must have looked strange. On top of not having really bathed for a week, they also were covered in mud that even the rain couldn't push off their skin and clothes. Rikku giggled to Gippal at their audience's looks as they left the small town and walked out to the Moonflow banks. She could see the airship in the distance, and Brother looking around for her anxiously. Well, at least she had been missed. She turned to Gippal.
"Well… what are you gonna do now?" she asked.
"It's back to Djose for me," he answered glumly. She frowned. He didn't sound the least bit happy to be out of the barren Thunder Plains. "You?"
"I'm going to go rub in my pop's face that I get to join the team again," she said triumphantly. Gippal laughed.
"I would love to see that," Gippal said. "Come visit me in Djose sometime?" he asked.
"Sure," she said, smiling at him. They were silent, but neither was willing to take the first step away. They both inched toward each other on their toes a few times, but eventually, both settled down on their heels. "Well… bye," she said, raising her gloved hand in a wave. Gippal waved back with his other hand in his pocket, and she turned away. She quickly walked over to the airship, keeping her head down and weaving through people. Brother saw her and burst out laughing at the pathetic state she was in.
"Mission failed?" he asked.
"Actually, you'll be happy to know that the mental scar you inflicted on me has been healed, thank you very much, and you'll be seeing me in many more fiascos with the team," Rikku said, kicking up the sand of the Moonflow banks up at him. The Moonflow seemed to be rejuvenating her to her usual sassy self as each second went by. He spluttered after her as she climbed onto the ship. She ran through the first hall and banged up the metal steps up to the bridge. Cid saw her emerge through the hole and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Rikku," he said happily, encasing her in a hug. He breathed in. "You smell terrible," he said quietly to her.
"I know."
"You do?"
"Yeah, Pops. I know I stink."
"Oh, well, as long as you know." Cid pulled away to take a good look at her. "Why don't you go get cleaned up? We're leaving right away, and you can spend a night in your own bed tonight," he said. Rikku smiled up at him. Even though her dad was stuck in medieval times, Rikku sometimes knew she wouldn't trade him.
"Thanks, Dad. That sounds great," she said, hugging herself to him again. She let go of him and started of towards the hallway that led to the quarters.
"Rik!" Cid called after her.
"Yeah?" Rikku called over her shoulder, stopping her steps.
"You didn't give that other team any trouble, did you?" Cid asked, loud enough so the entire bridge could hear. Rikku rolled her eyes and turned all the way around.
"Well, Pops, I did manage to short circuit that one tower around the middle, you know, the part where it's like, a reallylong way until the next tower, but don't worry, I think I fixed it. Not sure though," Rikku said. She quickly turned away and scurried off down the hall, snickering to herself about what might be going through Cid's head right now. She stood on her toes and retrieved the key to her small room on the airship on the doorframe and tried to aim it the correct way.
"Rikku!" Rikku's heart leapt. She turned and smiled, dropping the arm with the key held in it.
"Nere," she said happily. He rushed over to her and held his arms out. "Whoa," she said, backing up a step with her hands out. "You do not want to hug me right now," she said.
"Why not?" Nere asked.
"Because apparently, I smell like a dead Lupus. A long deadLupus," Rikku said, dropping her arms. Nere grinned and then, surprisingly, leaned down and kissed her mud-smeared cheek.
"After this week, you could smell like ten dead Lupus and I wouldn't care," he said. She grinned and bit her bottom lip. Ah, Nere. Perfect Nere.
"Whatever, I'm still going to take a shower –a longshower- and we can finish this conversation when I get back, kay?" she said, poking his chest with her finger.
"Got it," Nere said. He smiled one last time at her and then walked away. She sighed heavily and watched him go, then turned away. She opened the door and threw all her stuff on the floor, then sat down on the bed.
She let her eyes wander around the makeshift bedroom and wondered if Gippal was on a Shoopuf on his way back to Djose by now. She pulled off her muddy boots and dragged herself off the bed, then started the water in the bathroom. She couldn't imagine Gippal riding on a Shoopuf. At the last second, she decided she'd much rather take a relaxing bath. She turned the water up as hot as her chilled skin could take, and then pushed the plug down so it could fill up. She left the bathroom and sat on the bed again, looking in the mirror. Her clothes were definitely ruined. She would have to get new ones. Or maybe Yuna knew some spell that could power wash it. She flopped back on her bed and waited for the tub to fill. The ship rumbled as it flew through the sky. It almost sounded like… thunder.
…Fin…