He gazed into her cracked, broken reflection.
She still had a humming heart, something he knew only because he had to wash her and push his hands between her breasts and could feel it gnawing at her flesh. Sometimes, he would let his hands rest there as her arms lay lifeless beside her. He swore that heart was trying to burst out, trying to escape that dead prison it had found itself in. If anything was alive in her, that was it.
He scrubbed her back, now. The blitzball she'd found by the sea still cupped in her hands. He remembered how she'd laid like kelp in the sand, like a long, drab seashell. She'd stunk of the ocean, her teeth half resting in sand half resting in the sea. She had been dead, then, he was sure of it – but… no, when his shadow passed over her, her eyes began to track him. She just didn't care about the salt, just didn't care about the snot piling on top of her lip, just didn't care that her legs were twisted and mangled and the waves were trying to swallow her whole.
When he helped her up, she handed him the blitzball almost instantly. He let her keep it.
He rubbed her waist, making sure to catch the speckling of sand that covered her side. Little black and yellow and white dots, all washed away. He placed the rag down by the side of the bath, pressing his hand to her head and petting it lightly, only mildly aware that she didn't respond.
Lifting another rag, a cleaner one, he pressed it to her face – gently scooping away the sand that got around her mouth. "That doesn't hurt, does it?" She groaned something, and he quickly wiped away at the inside of her lip. Travelling up to her cheek, he padded away beneath her eye. "There, now you're much cleaner."
Leaning back to inspect his work, he felt his eyes burn.
"You know, I didn't think this is how I'd… see you naked." He laughed, scratching the back of his head with the rag, jumping as cold water splashed the back of his neck. Chucking it down on the floor, he wished she had laughed at him, called him silly, handed him a towel – anything. He kept imaging responses, imagining things. He looked back to her, "I… I mean, I thought… it would be more… romantic, you know?"
"Not that this isn't romantic! Just that…"
She was looking down at the blitzball in her hands.
He leaned forwards, grabbing her face and twisting it towards him.
"Yuna… Yuna I know you're in there." He reached down and placed a hand on the blitzball, causing it to make a ripple lap against her naval. "You went and got this… for me, didn't you?" He looked down, shaking his head, "Didn't you!?"
Bubbles started to form in her mouth.
He slapped his hands down in frustration, falling on his backside and screaming into his arms. "You didn't... You didn't have to do this." He looked up at her, choking up because it was unfair, it was unfair of him to say her sacrifice wasn't worth it. "Don't say it isn't worth it, that's what you said to me, but Yuna…" Regret gurgled in his throat, "It's… It's just a blitzball." He frowned. "We have tonnes of them, everywhere! Just, everywhere." He slowly padded over to the bath, leaning in to look at her.
"Please… don't scare me like that again. If I lost you…" He remembered what he thought as he was running towards her figure on the beach. He remembered his heart pounding in his head, his entire mind screaming no, no this can't be how it ends, no. And the sick… sick feeling of relief. "I just… couldn't handle it, if I did."
He reached out and gently touched her face again. He'd been too tough to her earlier. He must have frightened her.
"But… thanks, anyway." He grinned. "I'll beat up that ball for giving us so much trouble, right?" He picked it out of her hands, bouncing it on the ground. "Maybe you could coach me. Make sure I don't start losing all our balls left and right."
She collapsed backwards, little feet rising up into the air as her body slipped beneath the little bit of bathwater. He quickly went to prop her back up, moving her wet hair behind her ear and sighing. "Come on then, let's get you dry."