The Side Effects of Unoriginality

Author's Note: I do not own FFX-2. I simply own the plot and grammatical errors.

No one reviewed for my chapter 3. My momentum is slowed only by a little, however. The show must go on.

Chapter 4: False Pretense

The next morning, I struggled to keep my head from spinning off. It was something like having an out of body experience, except I was completely conscious of the feeling. It was weird and I suddenly understood why everyone enjoyed the feeling so much. I was floating in the air, seeing myself with my own eyes. Of course, I could only see what I remembered, which at this point, must have been very limited. I remembered the scar I got from the worm the other day, but it was healing. I don't remember hurting myself at any other time—so why was my head hurting so badly?

I returned from the metaphysical world and slammed back down into my body. I wasn't ready to open my eyes just yet, even though my curiosity was getting the better of me. I fought to remain unconscious; I wasn't ready to handle the real world just yet, especially with the pool of undetermined thoughts and theories that were spiraling out of control in my head. My head was heavy with those things, things I couldn't tell were real or not. Last night couldn't have been real, right? If I was awake, then it didn't make sense. Any reality with Paine and Yuna on the Celsius wasn't fathomable. So it had to be a nightmare. More than that, Cid was upset because of something reckless I did. That wasn't any sort of reality I wanted to have, so I had to be dreaming up something awful in my mind. Nothing else seemed to fit.

Of course…it could have been real, in the altered sense of reality sort of way, that is.

Now there's a thought. It wasn't a very good one, so to speak, but it was a thought all the same. In the proper light, one might have thought it possible. I could have done something beyond senseless—I had the inordinate tendency to do so without the proper consent on a more than daily basis. Being the source of Cid's shiny baldhead was my only goal in life, so it was plausible for me to have gone out, unwittingly, and done something stupid. My childish ideas of fun usually landed me in the middle of some off-the-wall danger that took every bit of strength I possessed to release me from its chokehold.

All of my unanswered questions demanded fulfillment, all at the same time. My head throbbed painfully and my eyes bolted open. I had returned to the physical world against my will—which was set on remaining asleep for as long as I could without being prodded out of bed like a cattle to the slaughterhouse, which wasn't too far off in my case, I suspected. There was no light, but I felt oddly comfortable, even though I wasn't entire sure where I was, at first. Still, it felt familiar and I relaxed into the feeling; it might have been the only comfort I would be given all day. So I took advantage of that feeling, closing my eyes again, reveling in the feel of security. Then I opened my eyes again and slowly let reality drain into perspective.

The room was dark but I was completely certain that it as my room. If it hadn't been for that glow-in-the-dark lamp on the side of my dresser, I'd have been clueless. I stumbled out of bed—and it wasn't because I was still tired. My head felt like it wanted to dislocate itself from the rest of me, leaving me at ends with gravity. So I staggered out of the room. I didn't make it far, though, since my legs were too wobbly to maintain mobility. I fell forward, but not to the ground; I felt into someone's arms.

"I told Cid that nothing could keep you in bed, head trauma or plague."

I peered up into Rosemary's deep, swirling eyes bashfully. She'd been in my dream—a dream I now was slowly beginning to think wasn't a dream. She did say head trauma, didn't she? At least, I was pretty sure that the plague part didn't apply to me in this case. So I stared up into her bright eyes and moved my hand to where she was staring. I touched my forehead slowly and pulled my hand back quickly. It throbbed painfully under my delicate fingertips. It felt as though my skull had been cracked open with a sledgehammer and put back together with string and putty. It's a terrible analogy, I know, but you try thinking up something witty and creative with a busted frontal lobe.

The head trauma she'd mentioned before was my own. I somehow managed to crack my head wide open enough to do myself some serious damage. That explains why my head was hurting so badly, and why I felt so out of touch with the rest of myself. head trauma could do that do you, so I was told. It was an uneasy feeling, which caused dizziness and nausea and, one some rare occasions, a concussion. Last night she'd been here; she'd brought me in. that part I knew had to be true. But what about the rest of the night? Was that apart of reality, too, or had it also been just a dream?

"I see you're feeling a little less drowsy," she said slowly, releasing me from her grasp. "From the looks of things, you're feeling more like yourself. Or at least, some of your memories are flooding back to you. But you don't remember how you got that bump on your head, do you?"

"No, I don't," I said, opting for a verbal response. Shaking my head would have been suicide.

"Let's go inside, shall we? I need to redress both of your wounds, anyway," she said, gently pushing me back into the darkness of my room.

Rosemary sat me down on my bed, but she didn't turn on a light. I guess she didn't want to cause me any more pain, but that didn't explain anything. Wasn't she going to redress my wounds? I could have sworn you needed light in most if not all medical procedures, which this certainly was. still, I followed her gentle hand motions and plopped down on the edge of my bed, my hands fidgeting slightly as they curled up together on my lap. Despite wearing hardly anything ever at all, I felt uncomfortable with Rosemary being so close to me. For some reason or another, I felt exposed and ashamed of myself for being so scantily dressed in her eloquent presence.

She must have noticed my tension, or felt it through the pale darkness of my room. She put a warm, reassuring hand on my shoulder and immediately, I stilled. I didn't feel the need to be uncomfortable. I didn't fidget anymore, though I was downright nervous and out of my mind with trying to soothe the growling, stinging pain of both my head and the rather lengthy cut I'd received the other day that extended from my lower abdomen upward, on an angel, to just below my ribcage.

I hadn't noticed it at first, but when I bumped into Rosemary, she had a medical case in her other hand. I wondered how she managed to catch me, but it must have been the slight of wrist trick I'd heard so much about. It was always something that I tried to figure out but I never had the audacity to ask anyone to show me. A magician never reveals his secrets, isn't that how it goes? Besides, trying to figure it out now would only serve as a hindrance to my recuperation. I'm sure she'd show me later when I was feeling better, or at least when I was able to think fluid, coherent thoughts properly without causing my face to scrunch up in pain.

"So, what happened?" I asked slowly, watching her work at my desk.

Rosemary stopped for a moment, a flask of something in one hand and a cotton swab in the other. She peered over at me and I could see her shimmering eyes through the darkness. It was lessening and I could assume that was because of the sunlight pouring in through my semi-closed window. She seemed to be smiling at me, or at whatever thought had recently passed through her head. So I waited for her to come closer and sit beside me on the bed, several medical supplies held in her arms. She splayed the out on the bed for me to see, though it had to squint just to get a coherent understanding of what it was and the purpose it was supposed to serve.

"I could tell you the lengthy version of what happened," she said, examining the wound on my forehead. I assumed that she'd stitched it up last night in haste, but now that the intensity of the situation had died down some, she could better stitch me up. "Of course, that would take far too much time. Well, I'd be done cleaning you up before I was even halfway done. I want you to finish resting at least."

"I don't want to sleep anymore," I said quickly, wincing as she removed one of my stitches. "I think I want to know what happened—though, slightly less descriptive than you would be," I said, wincing again as she removed two more.

"Well, I suppose that's understandable," she cooed, gingerly removing the last seven or eight stitches in record, painless time. She began stitching me up again, after numbing the tiny area at the left side of my forehead. "You remember coming to me yesterday, don't you?"

"I remember. We talked for a long while about Yuna and Paine. You told me that I had to suck it up and move on," I said, wincing again, slightly. Stitches were painful when you were fully conscious. "I made a promise that I'd do just that. You gave me a package and a letter before you sent me off."

"Do you remember anything else after that?" she asked, tying my last stitch in. this time, it was only seven, neat lines, now parallel to my brows.

"Yeah…I told Dezba that we should get something to eat. But, as we were walking, I saw Yuna and Paine walking. I chased after them. I bumped into a few people but I—,"

"Stop right there," she said, if only to marvel at her neat, handiwork. "That's not exactly what happened. See…you were…delusional when I found you. It's true, or part of it is. In fact, you might have raced through the crowded streets of Luca but…"

she stopped and I had to think about what she'd just said.

"Found me? What do you mean you found me?" I demanded.

"When you left my house, you were just fine. However, from what I can gather, as you went off with Dezba, the tea had a very rare chemical reaction. It somewhat intensified your guilt, or rather, it made your problems manifest themselves. During your mad dash to find these imaginary friends of yours, you gave yourself a bit of a fall and a bit of a scare for the rest of us. During your delusion, Dezba was there?"

"No…it was just me," I said.

"Well, then you were partially aware of reality. Dezba left when you fell. He ran back to get me. He was worried about you and I could understand why. Not only were you delusional and talking to things that weren't there, but your head was bleeding rather profusely. It's a wonder you're sitting here having this conversation with me now," she said.

"You mean…Yuna and Paine weren't actually there?" I asked, my jaw now slack.

"No, you made them up. Your fears manifested themselves and as you lost consciousness, the images became more violent to you. You were slipping into your deepest, darkest mind. It's my belief that you touched about the fears buried in your subconscious. Those are thoughts that you want to repress—things you don't want to think about. It wasn't until I heard what you were saying that I realized how much pain you were in, Rikku. Some of those things you were saying…they were…heart-wrenching."

I sat in stunned silence on the edge of my bed as she redressed my other bandage. I didn't know what else to say. What else was there to say?

"So…last night…?" I asked, daring to press my luck.

"All of it was real. The Paine and Yuna who are here now, they aren't hallucinations," she said, wrapping gauze around my body. "They came here to see you, not because you were hurt or anything like that. From the looks of them, I'd say they have something on their chests, too. It's about time the three of you sat down and had a heart to heart."

"I don't want to see them," I said dismissively. "I want nothing to do with them."

"You've never been a good liar, Rikku," Rosemary said without looking at me. She kept her hands busy with wrapping me up in thick, soft white gauze. "All of this time, and you've still learned nothing about yourself? Lying is what's causing you to be so miserable. Stop it, ok? It's not good for you and in the end, you won't be the only one hurt."

"I shouldn't have to be," I whispered snidely. "After everything they've done to me, I should not be the only one made to suffer. They deserve to feel pain, too. I don't want them to be all right after this. I want them to know what it's like to be in pain—

I guess Rosemary had had enough. Either that, or I'd struck a nerve. Whatever it was, I'd said or done something so out of line that it caused her mellow, laid back demeanor to snap into something much more fierce. She brought her hand roughly across my face and glared up at me from her place on the floor.

"Oui cruimt pa ycrysat uv ouincamv, Rikku," she said angrily, before she pulled herself from the ground and walked out without another word or backwards glance in my direction

She must have been livid; she'd left her things here, left me here, alone again. But maybe she was right. Maybe I should have been ashamed of myself.

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I didn't leave my room for another hour. I just lay there, in the dead silence, despite the sun that shone brightly on my face. Its brightness didn't give me any more courage than what I had already. It wasn't enough to make me get up and enter the reality of what I'd done yet. I wasn't ready to face what I knew had to be coming. Rosemary said Paine and Yuna had come to see me, that they were aboard the Celsius and had been since last night. That already had spelled out "trouble" in more ways than one. Running away was no longer an option, though, according to some of my friends, it had never actually been an option to begin with. Now, it was even less of an option than I first thought.

"Drec cilgc," I groaned inwardly, curling onto my side. my head was still hurting, but I'm sure it had little to do with the stitched up gash that was there. I was thinking too hard again. But could you blame me? "What am I supposed to do now?" I sighed, staring at the floor.

In all respects, I should have been happy. I had already been warned that I needed to handle my situation before it spiraled out of control. Doing something this major via a letter had just seemed tacky. Of course, tracking them down and having to be exposed to their happy lives—their Rikku-less lives—wasn't something I was willing to face, either, separately or otherwise. But they were here now, in my home turf. Handling them should have been a piece of cake, if I'd ever had the intention of handling them in the first place, which I hadn't. I had hoped that she wasn't right—I wanted to believe that Rosemary had made a mistake, although it wasn't something that seemed remotely possible. And here I was, faced with the opposite of hope. This was reality.

Not only was I without my defenses, but I was without myself and my mind. Proper trains of thought had ceased activity, leaving me stranded in this world without any reasonable excuse or explanation for my previous actions, or lack thereof. I had nothing to lean on, not even a broken piece of ideology. There was absolutely nothing. Not even myself, since I'd given that up so long ago to swim in the depths of my despair and find some deeper meaning to my being rejected. That was something I hadn't found either—a reason for the madness. So I'd given it all up for something that didn't even exist. I wondered how much of a fool I really was.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to go," I said, without actually having an alternative in mind at that moment. I wasn't really sure how things were supposed to go, since I hadn't thought it out that much. "Even still…I know I would never have wanted things to go like this."

Things would have been much simpler if I'd had it my way. Things would have been on my own terms, of course, nothing like this awful mess I'd somehow gotten myself it. I'm sure it would have been acceptable; life would have opened itself up to me and grant me the perfect solution to my problems. I wasn't exactly expecting someone to tell me how to do things, but I knew that if I had my way, it would be easier. It wouldn't be causing so much pain to swell up in the middle of my chest. The painful knot wouldn't be suffocating the life out of me like it was now. I could have solved my own problems if I tried hard enough.

That didn't make me feel any better, though. If anything, it made me feel worse about myself. I hated my inability to see things through, things which needed an ending, things which had to come to and end. But it was more than that; not being able to finish something stemmed from another problem entirely. It wasn't that I didn't want to finish things that caused me pain or to stop them from continuing on, more or less, it was something like fear. I was scared of the inevitable outcome of my bad choices. Altogether, I greatly despised my mounting inhibitions. That was what stopped me from doing anything by myself, from being able to be comfortable in my own skin.

Let's face it, shall we? My life sucks. While I'm sure there are other people in the world who had more on their plates than I did, to each his own validity. This validated itself as major suckage and I would be the first to testify its potency. I couldn't pretend it wasn't getting to me anymore than I could pretend that I was all right. I'm not ok, I told myself finally, able to admit this absurdity to the rest of the already-informed world. Cracking under the pressure of having to face my deepest, most sensitive trouble.

Paine and Yuna.

Saying their names was too much for my tiny heart to take. I crippled against the bed, my face pressed into the pillow, curled up like a turtle's shell, wrapping my arms tightly, so tightly around my body, trying to keep my broken pieces from shattering and decorating the floor. I had to keep myself together, if at all possible. I willed myself to keep everything inside—all of the pain, all of the torment—I had to keep all of that on the inside. It had no business in the real world, in this world that had forsaken me in my desperate hour. I had to keep myself in tact, though I was beyond reassurance. I knew there was nothing strong enough to keep me in one piece—not even duct tape.

The battle was over, though I wasn't even sure how well I'd been fighting it, if ever at all. My hope was gone, shredded in the ferocity of their presence. As the color drained away from my fingertips, my face, and buried itself in the pit of my stomach, I realized inevitability. That was the absolute motive behind these recent events—my recent surge of lightheartedness, the pain and the hallucinations. All of it was connected by one common element, whether I'd been aware of before or not.

There was nowhere left for me to run to. There was no place left for me in the world to escape the nagging pain that flexed itself dominantly in the pit of my chest, tightening its grip as I made myself completely aware of its presence. I acknowledged it as the source of my torture, my infinitesimal self-wallowing, my self-loathing. It was the icon that represented them, the two people who haunted my dreams—more like nightmares. I had run as fast and as far as my tired legs would let me. Shinra had been right after all. There was no escaping what had to be. There was no refuge for someone foolish enough to try escaping.

I tried to keep from falling apart, though I knew that I'd been defeated in that battle a long time ago. There was no point in trying to keep myself together, but I did. In spite of myself, I wanted to believe, though I knew I had lost hope, knowing that I was slipping through my fingers. I had lost the battle, not to mention the war, and I had lost myself in the process. I tortured myself with this madness, let this awful, painful feeling tear myself to bits. Now all I had left to remind me of the Rikku I'd once been was them and I hated knowing that they had a piece of me—the only two pieces left.

So I felt justified for hating them now, at this one fleeting moment. I could blame them for the monster I had become. I blamed them, of course I did. Who else was there to blame for my broken heart? I was all alone and it was their fault! There was no one left to blame but them.

Rosemary knocked at my door; I knew it was her because of how hesitantly she knocked. She was still feeling upset for her earlier transgression. I don't know why she felt bad. I was the one who ought to be sorry. I pulled myself up, staggered to the door and peered out at the person on the other side with morbid, reluctant eyes. It was the look of bitter acceptance.

"Rikku…?" she said hesitantly, her hand reaching out to touch my face. She stopped midair, as if she thought better of it and pulled her back to her side. "Rikku," she said again, "it's time."

I didn't say anything. I'm not even sure I was able to. My mouth felt dry and I had to swallow hard to generate the moisture. I felt like an embalmed body, all of my vital organs still in tact, since I wasn't the type to give them up for scientific experimentation, not that I was selfish. I was just into self-preservation and all that, despite the current circumstances. So I walked in her shadow, my footsteps echoing hollowly as we walked towards the elevator, only to have our bodies elevated high enough to witness my swift, subtle execution.

"There's something I need to say."

I turned to Rosemary with my sullen eyes and realized that she'd meant to say something sooner, but didn't know how to phrase it. I assumed that time had given her the proper way to go about it. Lucky for her, since Time wasn't nearly as benign towards me, not with him turning his back on me and all that. When she was sure that I was listening, or that she had my full attention at best, she sighed deeply.

"I shouldn't' have…hit you…the way I did," she stammered, her face an immediate shade of bright red.

Rosemary shifted uncomfortably from one stance to the next, lowering her eyes to examine the floor, but I could see through it. She didn't want to meet my gaze for fear of what she mind find there. Remnants of what had been there when she'd been so…motherly.

"There's nothing to apologize for," I croaked hollowly, feeling less and less like myself. what happened to my firm resolve earlier the other day? "I shouldn't have put you in a position to have to hit me…"

slowly, the elevator doors pulled themselves apart. I turned from Rosemary to stare into the ominous bridge, where I knew everyone was waiting for me. It was where they were waiting for me. I wasn't sure if I could handle it, but I knew that I absolutely had to. With Rosemary, Cid and Dezba there, it shouldn't be hard right? I could do anything I wanted to. I'd saved the world twice, hadn't I? But I wasn't in that Spira anymore. I was in a new world entirely; a world where words stung and people weren't wholly truthful in their promises. That was the place I lived in, the world I had to stay in. but that world suddenly seemed far away as I faced a much smaller, more painful thing.

Now we were here in the place of my nightmares, back to the room where it all began…and ended.

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Author's Note: I'm thinking maybe it was too short, but to add what's to come later might have made this chapter a bit…too lengthy. I do hope that I'm keeping your attention. In the next chapter, I promise there will be lost of dialogue—as opposed the Rikku-monologue I've probably suffocated you all with. Please be patient with me. It can only get better, right?

It would mean the world to me if you would review and give me your honest opinion. Thank you.

Translations

Oui cruimt pa ycrysat uv ouincamv. – You should be ashamed of yourself.

Drec cilgc. – This sucks.