33 Love Comes Softly

Moonlight dappled the muddy ground through the clouds, and I could see only a short distance ahead the end of the lightening storm, and the edges of a forest, which was emitting a pretty blue glow. When we reached the forest, it was even more beautiful than I first realized. Crystals where at the base of every tree, coming up from the ground. Some of the trees' leaves, and even their trunks also shined with the same blue light. The forest was still mostly dark, however, the light was soft and pale, not too bright.

Auron stopped next to me, while the group hurried up a hill, following a well traveled path. "You're worried about Yuna." He said, once he was sure they couldn't hear us. "Course I'm worried about her! What is she thinking?" Auron gazed up through the treetops. "The simplest answer would be...she hopes to negotiate with Seymour, in exchange for marrying him." I shook my head at the sickening thoughts. ""Negotiate what?"

Auron kept looking skyward."I wonder." "What? All by herself?" I didn't understand why she wouldn't let us in. He said, "She is strong, but Seymour is the better negotiator." I knew he was right. "Well, why don't we do something about it?" "Yuna wants it this way." He said. "Argh! I just don't get it! Doesn't she trust us?" I was so frustrated at this whole situation, and my real question was 'doesn't she trust me.' She had trusted me so much through that whole journey, up until that point. I wanted her to trust me then more than ever.

"On the contrary." He answered. "She doesn't want us caught up in whatever she's planning." I put my hands in my pockets. "Yeah, that's what I thought. But that makes me worry even more. She could tell us. And she won't." Auron sighed. "That's the way she is. She's naïve, serious to a fault, and doesn't ask for help. Yuna's easy to read." "Yeah. She is." I looked at Yuna, standing atop the hill in the distance, watching us, waiting.

She looked beautiful...like she always did. I hadn't realized that I was falling for her on the journey. I should have known. Thing is, I had never fallen in love before, so I didn't see it coming, I didn't know what it would be like. No matter how hard I tried not to think about it, I knew that I had already fallen in love with this girl, a girl who was about to get married. I just wanted to run up to her and tell her that I loved her, and that she shouldn't marry this guy. I wanted her for myself. She was so perfect, so wonderful. But it was for naught. It was too late to change her mind. I had to keep my feelings for her in my heart, never to be revealed. I realized too, right then and there, if I had a choice to stay here with Yuna, or go back to the world that I didn't even know anymore, Zanarkand, I think I would have stayed with Yuna.

It's funny how calm I was. Maybe it was because I knew that Yuna wasn't going to marry Seymour for love. She was just doing her duty. Something that she felt she had to do before returning to her pilgrimage. And I knew, if I had realized sooner that I loved her, I could have told her. Then maybe she would have waited for me, and I would have saved both of us. But I had lost my chance. I tried not to think about her and Seymour, but it was too horrible for me not to think about.

Auron brushed past me and spoke to Yuna. There is something he should see." He tilted his head towards me. Yuna's brow knitted. "But, Sir Auron..." "It won't take long." He answered her unfinished question. He let us along the path until he found several fallen trees. He viciously attacked them with his long katana. The crystal trunks shattered, clearing a way for us. When we passed through, there was a cave, and within that cave was a vast, glowing lake. "This is what spheres are made of." He told me. "It absorbs and preserves people's memories." He reached behind a rock and picked up an old, musty sphere. Jecht left this here ten years ago. Play it back."

I cringed as he handed me the sphere. I didn't want to see it. And yet, I was still curious. Anyway, I could tell Yuna was eager, so I pressed play, and the sphere projected a life sized image in front of us. I heard Auron's voice.

"What are you taking?" Jecht peered into the sphere, getting a not-so-flattering image of his face, mostly his nose. I could see in the background was a large bustling city. "Well, you said this was gonna be a long trip. We'll be seeing a lot of neat things, right? So I thought I'd record it all in this. To show the wife and kid, you know." "This is no pleasure cruise!" Auron snapped. Jecht ignored him. He called to someone else off-screen. "Hey, Braksa! Ain't this supposed to be a grand occasion? Where are all the cheering fans? The crying women?" A man walked into view.

Yuna gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. I glanced back at her, standing right next to me. She looked so sad. I wasn't used to seeing her that way.

"Too many goodbyes. People think twice about leaving." Yuna's dad said. "Hmm. If you say so. But it better be a lot more colorful when we get back. A parade for Braska, vanquisher of Sin!" Jecht was clueless as to what awaited him.

The sphere turned off, and I thought it was done. I figured that as soon as Jecht got out on the road, he changed his mind about recording it. Except for time spent with Yuna, this whole trip had been a thousand times worse than my worst nightmare. I would only want to forget it. I was about to put it down, but then there was more. I could see that this time the video was taken in the same place we were standing in. Jecht was sitting cross legged in front of us.

"Hey. If you're sitting here, watching this...it means you're stuck in Spira, like me. You might not know when you'll get home, but you better not be crying! Although, I guess, I'd understand...But you know what? There's a time when you have to stop crying and move on. You'll be fine. Remember, you're my son. And well, uh...Never mind. I'm not good at these things. Anyways...I believe in you. Be good."

The sphere turned off. I rolled my eyes bitterly. Yeah, stop crying and move on. He probably hadn't seen half of what I've seen on this trip. If he had gone through what I have, he would have cried too. "He sounded almost serious." I scoffed, not even able to process the information that my old man would actually 'believe' in me. He never, ever believed in me before. "He was serious." Auron said. "Jecht had already accepted his fate." "His fate?" I asked. "Jecht...He was always talking about going home, to Zanarkand. But as he journeyed with us, he came to understand Spira, and Braska's resolve. It happened gradually, but Jecht changed. He decided he would join Braska in his fight against Sin."

I was surprised. I would never have expected that my old man would give up Zanarkand for anything. Then again, I never would have expected to get thrown into a strange land called Spira that was constantly consumed by death and terror, only to realized that I wanted to stay here to be with a girl that I fell in love with, but that I couldn't be with because she was going to marry someone else.

I gritted my teeth. Oh, how I disliked that Seymour fellow. I didn't hate him yet, but I would hate him soon enough. I started to march out of the cave, but Auron stopped me. "Wait." I turned to look at him. "Yeah?" "Jecht loved you." I dropped the sphere and threw my hands in the air. "Oh, come on, please!" I yelled. If he had loved me he would have told me. Then something nagged at me. I loved Yuna, and I would never tell her. But this was different, I told myself. Jecht had every reason to tell me, and he didn't. "He just didn't know how to express it." Auron said, leaving me behind. I followed, my mind spinning. "I just thought you should know." "Okay...thanks." I said under my breath.

Yuna turned around after walking out of the cave, back into the cold night air. It was slightly warmer in the cave. "Actually, lets sleep here tonight." She said. So that's what we did. We were all tired, cold, and still wet. Lulu, Yuna, and Rikku and slept close together for warmth, but us guys were too proud to do the same.

We spent the next three days traveling through that forest. It was like a sanctuary. There were practically no fiends; it was beautiful. Everything was great, except for that as we travelled, it got progressively colder. On the fourth day, we reached the edge of the forest, and found the reason for the cold. We reached a snow covered barren land. "That's Macalania lake." Yuna said. I saw no lake. "It's frozen over, so you can't see it." She answered my question before I even asked it.

There was an inn right at the edge of the forest. When we entered the inn, Tromell, Seymour's crony was waiting for us. I was rudely surprised, and when I saw him, I knew that meeting up with Seymour was imminent. That was enough to make me want to kill something. Normally it would have been a fiend, but that time I wanted to kill Seymour. I think it was at that moment that I really started to hate him.

"Lady Yuna, we've been expecting you. We were surprised that you decided to come so soon. Pleasantly surprised, of course. Lord Seymour sends his apologies for having left without notice." Tromell rose from his seat as he spoke. "It's quite alright." Yuna said peaceably. "I have one question, if I may, sir. I want to keep journeying, even if I marry. Do you think that Maester Seymour would let me?"

Tromell bowed to her in respect. "But of course, my Lady. Lord Seymour wishes nothing else, I'm sure."
With that, he turned to look Auron, clearly the oldest in the group, and he assumed that Auron was leader of the guardians. "I must ask you all to wait her a little longer." I stepped a little closer to Yuna. "Why?" I asked defensively. "It is Guado tradition, sir." I wanted to tell him to take his Guado traditions and march right out of this inn and go back to the hellhole that he came from. But that would do nothing but embarrass Yuna. She had her mind made up.

Yuna turned around to look at us, her eyes meeting those of each of her guardians. When she came to me, her gaze lingered a little longer than the others. I frowned and tilted my head to the side. This whole situation really scared me. It was just so wrong. "Goodbye." She said. "I..." Auron interrupted her, knowing what she was going to say. "We're all with you. Do as you will." Tromell led her out of the inn, saying to us, "I will send someone to escort you when we are ready." With that, they were gone. "Sorry." Auron looked straight at me."

"What?" I was still a little in a daze. "That was your line." I realized what he meant. I realized that he knew that I, more than anyone else in this party, desperately did not want her to marry Seymour. I only hoped he did not know why. My guess was that he did, though. When he said that, I realized that Yuna needed to know that I support her, whatever her decision. I rushed out of the inn after them.

"Yuna!" I called to her over the barren snowy ground. Then I whistled. "Just whistle." I said. She knew what I meant. "Just whistle, I'll come running." That was the promise we had made months before. I knew it still stood. She smiled at me, and let out a couple short bursts of artificial laughter. Tromell looked at her in utter mystification. She turned away and said something quietly to Tromell, and they went on. I took several deep breaths trying to calm my instincts. All of this was oh, so wrong. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I stood out in the frigid air and watched them until suddenly, several large skidoos sped onto the lake, seemingly coming from nowhere. The quickly encircled the two, as I ran into the inn. "Guys! Somebody's attacking Yuna!" They group was startled, and we all hurried out. "Oh, no!" Rikku yelled when she saw them. "Al Bhed!" Wakka shouted in disgust.

We ran as fast as we could as the Al Bhed jumped off their skidoos. I had a deep seated fear. I could handle the feeling of my blade slashing through the bodies of monsters, the fiends, but when it comes to humans, it was horrid. I dreaded killing these Al Bhed. I still felt a deep seated guilt for killing the one on the Mushroom Rock beach. "Get back!" I yelled at them. There were four of them, and eight of us.

They paused, looking to one, who was presumably the leader. He had a blond mohawk. He looked straight at Rikku. "Rikku! Tuh'd ehdanvana! E femm damm vydran!" She used Al Bhed in reply. "E ys dra guardian uv Yuna! Yuna ec cyva! Fa femm kiunt ran! Cra ec cyva!" He threw his hands in the air angrily. "Oui tu drec ymuha, cecdan!" "Mad'c ku!" He and his men got back on their skidoos and sped away, back to where they had come from. I had no idea what had just transpired, but the way I saw it, the Al Bhed were about to try to kidnap Yuna, again, and Rikku stopped them with only a few words.

The rest of the party stared at Rikku. She turned to us and laughed awkwardly. "Told him I was a guardian...I guess I had to, really." "How come you know Al Bhed?" Wakka asked. "Because I'm Al Bhed...and that was my brother." I cringed and looked at Wakka. He looked at me, then at Lulu, reading our expressions. "You knew? Why didn't you tell me?" "We knew you would be upset." Lulu said matter-of-factly. He threw his hands up. "This is great! I can't believe I've been traveling with an Al Bhed! A heathen!" "You're wrong!" Rikku yelled. "We have nothing against Yevon!" Wakka started getting in Rikku's face. "Oh, yeah? You Al Bhed use the forbidden machina! You know what that means? Sin was born because people used machina!" Rikku leaned forward to punctuate her words.

"You got proof? Give me proof!" "It's in the teachings!" Wakka spluttered. "Not that you'd know!" "That's not good enough!" I didn't know Rikku was capable of using that tone of voice. "Yevon says this! Yevon says that! Can't you think for yourself?" She flung her hands from side to side as she spoke. Wakka stepped back and looked up, his mouth open in utter fury. "Well then you tell me! Where did Sin come from?" Rikku looked down at first, but then held her head high. "I don't know." Then she turned stubbornly away from Wakka. He yelled at her back. "You bad mouth Yevon, and that's all you can come up with?" Rikku spun around. "That doesn't mean that you have to do whatever they say without thinking! Nothing will ever change that way!"

"Nothing has to change!" He said. "So you want Sin to keep coming back? There might be a way to stop it!" Wakka flicked his hand in her face. "Sin will be gone once we atone for our past mistakes!" Rikku spread out her arms. "When? How?" "If we keep faith in Yevon's teachings, it will be gone someday. But not if you Al Bhed keep using machina!" Rikku rolled her head back and walked away from him. "Why do I even bother?" She asked no one in particular.

The rest of us had simply watched the fiery argument go on without saying a word. Tromell was shocked, and didn't want to get in the middle of all the drama. "Uh...If I may, Lady Yuna, we must go. "Thank you, Rikku." She said quietly. "Oh!" Rikku ran to her and hugged her, as if she was saying goodbye for the last time. At that time, I thought that Rikku was just being dramatic. I didn't understand that truly, to Rikku, it did feel like one of the last times they would ever say goodbye.

Tromell and Yuna started to leave, but I grabbed Tromell's shoulder to stop him; obviously a disrespectful gesture, but I didn't care at this point. "Hold on! We're not gonna let you just lead Yuna into another trap! Don't you think we should come to protect her?" Yuna took my hand. "It's okay." I have aeons. I'll be fine." I closed my eyes and breathed out. It was so hard to let go of her like this. I hadn't been away from her for months, and now it was killing me to see her walk away from me; into the arms of a man she didn't even know.