And though this journey is over, I'll go back if you ask me to; I'm not dead, just floating...
I had a talk with a friend a couple of days ago regarding his distaste towards X-2--not an uncommon attitude and one I used to adhere to myself. One of his biggest complaints was the perception that the second game had cheapened Yuna's character. Having played both games, I strongly disagree with the assessment that she has "sold out." I brought forth a few examples in that conversation, but ultimately I think this story is the most eloquent counter-argument I will ever produce ^_^.
This is the second in what is quickly becoming a series in my mind. I'm sure you'll see more of these Lost Years fics in the weeks to come! Paine should be next.
Title: From the Ashes (The Lost Years: Part 2)
Fandom: Final Fantasy X/X-2
Rating: PG
Genre: Character study
Characters/Pairings: Yuna introspective, some Yuna/Tidus
Wordcount: 2,750
Description: Faced with the reality of being alive and without a purpose, Yuna makes some choices about her life. A look at how she got from X to X-2.
Disclaimer: Um. I own (used) copies of both the games, but that's as far as my ownership extends.
EDIT: Having not been aware of the content of the Eternal Calm movie, you will find that this will not match 100%. However, it's extremely similar (apparently, my imagination is quite in line with canon) and when you play a FF game, there are usually about five ways a certain thing can happen, depending on your actions... think of this as one of those variations ^_^.
***
All her life, she has been living only to die. This upcoming moment of her death is the most thoroughly thought out, planned, prayed about, glorious, wonderful, terrible thing she has ever known. It is not that she is morbid, only that she is practical; she knows exactly where she must go, what she must do, and what lies at the end of the road she walks.
She can barely recall a time when it wasn’t like this, a time when she was scared and petulant and very, very young. She remembers crying and huddling into a corner, small hands wrapped around small knees, knuckles white. She remembers an elderly priest with a kind face taking her in his lap and telling her, “You must not cry. A Summoner’s heart must be big enough to encompass the suffering of all Spira. She must shine like a light in the darkness for the people, she must give them hope, and when she touches their lives, she must bring them joy, not tears. Their joy will be your joy, Yuna. Death, like life, will come to us all, but a Summoner may choose a death that brings joy, not sorrow.”
She doesn’t cry for a long time after that, not even when the kindly old man who soothed her fears passes and she dances her very first Sending. His words settle in the center of her heart and radiate a soft calm that she carries with her as she takes her first steps on a journey that will lead to a joyful death. Nothing can deter her now, not the concern of her friends or the disapproval of her family or the crumbling of the Church of Yevon; the only thing that ever stays her steps for a few breathless moments is the unexpected realization that a heart she has long given away to her people can still learn to love. She lives a lifetime in those few moments, imagining a world in which she can live, have children, spend years growing old beside someone precious. But the edges of this world are hazy and she realizes it cannot be because she must do what she has set out to do.
She cries then as she hasn’t done in years, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She doesn’t attempt to stop them; she thinks even she can be allowed this single moment of sorrow to mourn the life she will never have.
***
Her resolve is only stronger after that. All the suffering that she sees, all the pain and fear of all humanity are hers to soothe away. She will die for her people with a smile on her face; it is her honor and her sentence. She doesn’t allow herself the closeness she craves to the unexpected person who has taken up residence inside her heart. She reins in her disobedient imagination when he makes extravagant promises of saving her from her fate; her fate has been set since the day Sin first appeared to plague Spira. Whatever she says, the thought remains lodged in the back of her mind that she cannot be saved. Looking back on it, after, she will realize that perhaps in a way she does not want to be saved. She has been born into faith and tradition, and change does not come easily to her-the idea of death and the Final Summoning is less terrifying to her than the idea of life after.
It is this after she struggles with, when the moment she has been preparing for has come and gone and she is still breathing. The first few days are a haze; she goes where she is led, stands before the jubilant crowds, says the right words, holds her head high, but she is not really there. Then all of a sudden, like a wave crashing over her, the world is in motion around her. The colors are painfully bright, the scent of the sea makes her head spin, and there is sunlight on her face when she realizes slowly, hesitantly, that she is alive and does not know what happens next.
She is only seventeen but in those seventeen years she has lived her lifetime. The only person who could have anchored her to this new reality is gone, and she is an Unsent walking among her rejoicing people, her heart numb despite their exultation. She whistles into the wind with a fervent, selfish prayer: Please do not leave me alone here. It is the first truly selfish thought she remembers having since that day in the temple when she was terrified of dying; now, she is more terrified of living.
***
She spends months alone in her mind after that, thinking, trying to come to terms with what has happened. Lulu tells Wakka to leave her to her solitude and give her time, and she is grateful in a way, but she does wish sometimes that she had someone to share the heavy burden of her thoughts with. She begins talking to him then, a small defiance against what she knows to be the truth. She is not ready to let go of the idea of the person who made her feel like she could live, even if it was only for a few brief head-spinning instants.
You are a hero now, did you know? she thinks, sitting on the pier, arms wrapped around her knees, a warm wind ruffling her hair. We are all heroes. But I suppose you’re used to that, aren’t you? You were famous in Zanarkand too, after all. I would have loved to see you play. It doesn’t matter to her that that Zanarkand, just like the person she is talking to, is a figment of someone’s imagination. She needs to hold on to it, just for a little while, just until she finds her bearings. The reason she has existed all this time has been torn from her; surely it isn’t wrong to keep a hold on something else if it keeps her sane.
***
She is surrounded by people she has known all her life, but now they bow and honor her as High Summoner, looking at her as though she is someone different than when she left Besaid. She wants to tell them that she isn’t different at all; she thinks she has never changed, not once in all her life. She still wears a small, quiet smile so that no one knows she is suffering, and she still bows her head reverently in prayer, though sometimes she wonders who she is praying to. She has destroyed the only god she has ever known with her own hands. The one she has looked up to for guidance was nothing but a parasite leeching the life out of Spira. Even the fayth are gone. She is all that remains of a dying age.
Is anyone listening? Does anyone hear me?
Now that she is wiser, she realizes things she has never let herself see. Her father’s pilgrimage was not begun on selfless principle but on grief and anger, emotions she was taught a Summoner must never harbor. If her mother hadn’t been killed, would he have gone to face Sin as he did? She realizes as she thinks about it that she doesn’t believe he would have. His love for his family, a human, selfish emotion, would have overwhelmed any love he had for his people, his country, his world. Her father was only human. How many other Summoners were just like him, driven by grief and revenge? Perhaps she is the only one who has ever blindly believed what she was told. Perhaps that is why she succeeded where all the others failed-though she wonders sometimes if this is what success is meant to feel like. She was content enough in her delusion when she knew that she would have to die; now that she knows she will have to live, her heart feels like it is breaking and all her inner calm is vanished.
News comes to Besaid from outside and she realizes the rest of the world is changing at a dizzying pace. People are clamoring for her attention and favor-the new Church of Yevon even wants her to marry into the clergy. She is terribly afraid this will only put her on a higher pedestal. She’s weary and a little wiser than she was before, just enough to realize that this person they would have her marry would only love her name. With her efforts, she has made a new Spira. Perhaps she is the closest thing to a god that is left, now.
That is not what she wants to be.
She opens up to Lulu one night when the older woman finds her wandering up from the beach. She lets her fears and worries spill out of her for the first time, and the flow of words is much longer than she thinks it will be when she begins. She finishes, quietly, with, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore. Everything is so different now.”
Lulu looks at her with kindness and compassion, draws her into her arms for a hug, and tells her, “I can’t tell you what to do. That is something you have to decide for yourself.”
That is the first time she has the startling revelation that she can choose without weighing the fate of the world in her decision. There is no one depending on her to save them anymore. Change doesn’t come easily to her, but she is coming to realize that though she has been breathing, she has not been living since the day of her death-because in a way, she has fulfilled her destiny after all; the Yuna she was before the Eternal Calm has died with the age. It is her choice now whether she wants to fade away into history with her or become someone new.
***
It is while she is exploring this curious new train of thought that Rikku comes to visit. It is startling to see the changes in her each time she drops in-Rikku has always embraced change and innovation, and in a way Yuna envies her this recklessness. Her little cousin is looking more like a woman than the child she was, and there is joyful light in her eyes. She latches on to Yuna and holds tight, and when she pulls away it is clear she is fighting back tears at the sight of her face. “Yunie, are you…?”
“I’m fine,” she says, because that is what she has always said. Realizing this, she amends, “I think.”
Rikku studies her silently for a moment, her face more serious than Yuna is accustomed to seeing, then says, “I’ve brought something I want to show you. Let’s find someplace quiet.”
She still whistles into the wind, but she has less and less faith that someone will answer; when she sees the blurry image of a beloved face and hears a familiar voice, she can’t contain a small, pained gasp of shock. She reaches out to touch something that is not there-how many times has she touched something that was not there?-and though her hands only grasp air, this is the closest she has been to herself for a long time. The sphere clicks off and the silence is deafening. “Is that…”
“I don’t know,” Rikku tells her. “Kimahri found it and asked me to bring it to you. He doesn’t know where it comes from or when it was recorded, but…”
“Yes,” Yuna says, looking at the small, glowing orb cradled in her hands. “Thank you.” There is a tightness around her heart. Time enough has passed and she has believed up to this moment that she would learn to release him, eventually, but now she grips onto this faint thread of hope with all the strength remaining to her. “Do you think…” She doesn’t know how to finish this plea. “If you happen to find another one…”
Rikku wraps her small, tanned hands around Yuna’s and says, “If you’re looking for something, it’s usually easier just to find it yourself.”
***
She has never shot a gun, never so much as touched a machina weapon, which is precisely why she asks Rikku to make her one. She doesn’t want to be High Summoner Yuna, savior of Spira. She doesn’t want to be an all-powerful mage. She doesn’t want to be who she was, before. She wants to learn who she is without the past getting in the way. She wants to be an eighteen year-old girl, to make mistakes and learn from them, to learn and grow at her own pace. The fate of the world is not at stake anymore, and the overwhelming power that defeated Sin is not necessary to protect the new life of one small person. Surely a single gun should be enough.
Rikku seems to consider this a slight underestimation and makes two.
At first, she cannot aim to save her life. Her Al Bhed relatives have a new airship and they use it to fly her out to a deserted island near Besaid for practice. She hits trees and sand and the shiny, newly-painted side of the Celsius-Brother does his best to pretend he is not furious-but never the target Rikku sets up for her. She manages to shoot a fiend once on complete accident-she’s still aiming for the target at that point-and Rikku laughs until tears stream down her face. Then she suggests the shooting might go a little better if she keeps her eyes open to aim.
The first time one of her bullets hits the bulls-eye, Rikku lets out a whoop and spins her around in the surf. They are both laughing and cheering and exultant over this silly, insignificant accomplishment of hers-but it is the first thing she has accomplished on her own in her new life, and that makes it precious.
***
It takes awhile to become comfortable in her new skin, but she remembers something Wakka told her when she was a child and he was teaching her how to swim. “Sometimes, you just have to dive in, ya? Then you have to sink or swim, so you swim.” She asks Lulu to cut her hair and after the weight of it has fallen away, she holds her head high and boards the Celsius as a sphere hunter, because it is time to see if she can tread water.
***
“It’s okay to be selfish sometimes,” Rikku has to remind her. Subconsciously, she’s still High Summoner Yuna and she will give freely of herself until there is nothing left to give. She needs the reminder every so often that that isn’t who she has chosen to be. “You deserve to be happy, too, Yunie.”
“Don’t be such a bleeding heart,” Paine tells her, and in her own way that means the same thing. She is grateful for the reminder, because without an occasional terse word she might undo all her hard work. “No one is going to die if you say no once in awhile.”
Brother, with his clumsy attempts at gallantry, tells her she is perfect and amazing and beautiful and several words in Al Bhed which she doesn’t understand yet, though she is learning. She laughs and thanks him and under his tutelage she also learns the secondary controls of the airship, though her heart is still in her stomach every time she lifts the giant machina into the sky.
“You’re shaky, but you’ll do,” Buddy tells her, taking the controls after she nearly crashes the ship into the ocean. She has learned not to apologize incessantly for her mistakes, so she smiles sheepishly and promises to try harder. “Hey, don’t worry about it, I blame your teacher,” Buddy says easily, and while he and Brother bicker she escapes up to the deck to watch the scenery go by.
He doesn’t tell her anything, of course, because he can’t talk back. She still talks to him; it’s a habit she doesn’t want to break. Maybe it’s peculiar and fanciful, but she has hope now, just a little bit. I wonder what you would think of the new Yuna? she muses, expertly reloading her ammunition and holstering her weapons. The world passes by below. When I find you again, you will have to tell me.
This is the second in what is quickly becoming a series in my mind. I'm sure you'll see more of these Lost Years fics in the weeks to come! Paine should be next.
Title: From the Ashes (The Lost Years: Part 2)
Fandom: Final Fantasy X/X-2
Rating: PG
Genre: Character study
Characters/Pairings: Yuna introspective, some Yuna/Tidus
Wordcount: 2,750
Description: Faced with the reality of being alive and without a purpose, Yuna makes some choices about her life. A look at how she got from X to X-2.
Disclaimer: Um. I own (used) copies of both the games, but that's as far as my ownership extends.
EDIT: Having not been aware of the content of the Eternal Calm movie, you will find that this will not match 100%. However, it's extremely similar (apparently, my imagination is quite in line with canon) and when you play a FF game, there are usually about five ways a certain thing can happen, depending on your actions... think of this as one of those variations ^_^.
***
All her life, she has been living only to die. This upcoming moment of her death is the most thoroughly thought out, planned, prayed about, glorious, wonderful, terrible thing she has ever known. It is not that she is morbid, only that she is practical; she knows exactly where she must go, what she must do, and what lies at the end of the road she walks.
She can barely recall a time when it wasn’t like this, a time when she was scared and petulant and very, very young. She remembers crying and huddling into a corner, small hands wrapped around small knees, knuckles white. She remembers an elderly priest with a kind face taking her in his lap and telling her, “You must not cry. A Summoner’s heart must be big enough to encompass the suffering of all Spira. She must shine like a light in the darkness for the people, she must give them hope, and when she touches their lives, she must bring them joy, not tears. Their joy will be your joy, Yuna. Death, like life, will come to us all, but a Summoner may choose a death that brings joy, not sorrow.”
She doesn’t cry for a long time after that, not even when the kindly old man who soothed her fears passes and she dances her very first Sending. His words settle in the center of her heart and radiate a soft calm that she carries with her as she takes her first steps on a journey that will lead to a joyful death. Nothing can deter her now, not the concern of her friends or the disapproval of her family or the crumbling of the Church of Yevon; the only thing that ever stays her steps for a few breathless moments is the unexpected realization that a heart she has long given away to her people can still learn to love. She lives a lifetime in those few moments, imagining a world in which she can live, have children, spend years growing old beside someone precious. But the edges of this world are hazy and she realizes it cannot be because she must do what she has set out to do.
She cries then as she hasn’t done in years, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She doesn’t attempt to stop them; she thinks even she can be allowed this single moment of sorrow to mourn the life she will never have.
***
Her resolve is only stronger after that. All the suffering that she sees, all the pain and fear of all humanity are hers to soothe away. She will die for her people with a smile on her face; it is her honor and her sentence. She doesn’t allow herself the closeness she craves to the unexpected person who has taken up residence inside her heart. She reins in her disobedient imagination when he makes extravagant promises of saving her from her fate; her fate has been set since the day Sin first appeared to plague Spira. Whatever she says, the thought remains lodged in the back of her mind that she cannot be saved. Looking back on it, after, she will realize that perhaps in a way she does not want to be saved. She has been born into faith and tradition, and change does not come easily to her-the idea of death and the Final Summoning is less terrifying to her than the idea of life after.
It is this after she struggles with, when the moment she has been preparing for has come and gone and she is still breathing. The first few days are a haze; she goes where she is led, stands before the jubilant crowds, says the right words, holds her head high, but she is not really there. Then all of a sudden, like a wave crashing over her, the world is in motion around her. The colors are painfully bright, the scent of the sea makes her head spin, and there is sunlight on her face when she realizes slowly, hesitantly, that she is alive and does not know what happens next.
She is only seventeen but in those seventeen years she has lived her lifetime. The only person who could have anchored her to this new reality is gone, and she is an Unsent walking among her rejoicing people, her heart numb despite their exultation. She whistles into the wind with a fervent, selfish prayer: Please do not leave me alone here. It is the first truly selfish thought she remembers having since that day in the temple when she was terrified of dying; now, she is more terrified of living.
***
She spends months alone in her mind after that, thinking, trying to come to terms with what has happened. Lulu tells Wakka to leave her to her solitude and give her time, and she is grateful in a way, but she does wish sometimes that she had someone to share the heavy burden of her thoughts with. She begins talking to him then, a small defiance against what she knows to be the truth. She is not ready to let go of the idea of the person who made her feel like she could live, even if it was only for a few brief head-spinning instants.
You are a hero now, did you know? she thinks, sitting on the pier, arms wrapped around her knees, a warm wind ruffling her hair. We are all heroes. But I suppose you’re used to that, aren’t you? You were famous in Zanarkand too, after all. I would have loved to see you play. It doesn’t matter to her that that Zanarkand, just like the person she is talking to, is a figment of someone’s imagination. She needs to hold on to it, just for a little while, just until she finds her bearings. The reason she has existed all this time has been torn from her; surely it isn’t wrong to keep a hold on something else if it keeps her sane.
***
She is surrounded by people she has known all her life, but now they bow and honor her as High Summoner, looking at her as though she is someone different than when she left Besaid. She wants to tell them that she isn’t different at all; she thinks she has never changed, not once in all her life. She still wears a small, quiet smile so that no one knows she is suffering, and she still bows her head reverently in prayer, though sometimes she wonders who she is praying to. She has destroyed the only god she has ever known with her own hands. The one she has looked up to for guidance was nothing but a parasite leeching the life out of Spira. Even the fayth are gone. She is all that remains of a dying age.
Is anyone listening? Does anyone hear me?
Now that she is wiser, she realizes things she has never let herself see. Her father’s pilgrimage was not begun on selfless principle but on grief and anger, emotions she was taught a Summoner must never harbor. If her mother hadn’t been killed, would he have gone to face Sin as he did? She realizes as she thinks about it that she doesn’t believe he would have. His love for his family, a human, selfish emotion, would have overwhelmed any love he had for his people, his country, his world. Her father was only human. How many other Summoners were just like him, driven by grief and revenge? Perhaps she is the only one who has ever blindly believed what she was told. Perhaps that is why she succeeded where all the others failed-though she wonders sometimes if this is what success is meant to feel like. She was content enough in her delusion when she knew that she would have to die; now that she knows she will have to live, her heart feels like it is breaking and all her inner calm is vanished.
News comes to Besaid from outside and she realizes the rest of the world is changing at a dizzying pace. People are clamoring for her attention and favor-the new Church of Yevon even wants her to marry into the clergy. She is terribly afraid this will only put her on a higher pedestal. She’s weary and a little wiser than she was before, just enough to realize that this person they would have her marry would only love her name. With her efforts, she has made a new Spira. Perhaps she is the closest thing to a god that is left, now.
That is not what she wants to be.
She opens up to Lulu one night when the older woman finds her wandering up from the beach. She lets her fears and worries spill out of her for the first time, and the flow of words is much longer than she thinks it will be when she begins. She finishes, quietly, with, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore. Everything is so different now.”
Lulu looks at her with kindness and compassion, draws her into her arms for a hug, and tells her, “I can’t tell you what to do. That is something you have to decide for yourself.”
That is the first time she has the startling revelation that she can choose without weighing the fate of the world in her decision. There is no one depending on her to save them anymore. Change doesn’t come easily to her, but she is coming to realize that though she has been breathing, she has not been living since the day of her death-because in a way, she has fulfilled her destiny after all; the Yuna she was before the Eternal Calm has died with the age. It is her choice now whether she wants to fade away into history with her or become someone new.
***
It is while she is exploring this curious new train of thought that Rikku comes to visit. It is startling to see the changes in her each time she drops in-Rikku has always embraced change and innovation, and in a way Yuna envies her this recklessness. Her little cousin is looking more like a woman than the child she was, and there is joyful light in her eyes. She latches on to Yuna and holds tight, and when she pulls away it is clear she is fighting back tears at the sight of her face. “Yunie, are you…?”
“I’m fine,” she says, because that is what she has always said. Realizing this, she amends, “I think.”
Rikku studies her silently for a moment, her face more serious than Yuna is accustomed to seeing, then says, “I’ve brought something I want to show you. Let’s find someplace quiet.”
She still whistles into the wind, but she has less and less faith that someone will answer; when she sees the blurry image of a beloved face and hears a familiar voice, she can’t contain a small, pained gasp of shock. She reaches out to touch something that is not there-how many times has she touched something that was not there?-and though her hands only grasp air, this is the closest she has been to herself for a long time. The sphere clicks off and the silence is deafening. “Is that…”
“I don’t know,” Rikku tells her. “Kimahri found it and asked me to bring it to you. He doesn’t know where it comes from or when it was recorded, but…”
“Yes,” Yuna says, looking at the small, glowing orb cradled in her hands. “Thank you.” There is a tightness around her heart. Time enough has passed and she has believed up to this moment that she would learn to release him, eventually, but now she grips onto this faint thread of hope with all the strength remaining to her. “Do you think…” She doesn’t know how to finish this plea. “If you happen to find another one…”
Rikku wraps her small, tanned hands around Yuna’s and says, “If you’re looking for something, it’s usually easier just to find it yourself.”
***
She has never shot a gun, never so much as touched a machina weapon, which is precisely why she asks Rikku to make her one. She doesn’t want to be High Summoner Yuna, savior of Spira. She doesn’t want to be an all-powerful mage. She doesn’t want to be who she was, before. She wants to learn who she is without the past getting in the way. She wants to be an eighteen year-old girl, to make mistakes and learn from them, to learn and grow at her own pace. The fate of the world is not at stake anymore, and the overwhelming power that defeated Sin is not necessary to protect the new life of one small person. Surely a single gun should be enough.
Rikku seems to consider this a slight underestimation and makes two.
At first, she cannot aim to save her life. Her Al Bhed relatives have a new airship and they use it to fly her out to a deserted island near Besaid for practice. She hits trees and sand and the shiny, newly-painted side of the Celsius-Brother does his best to pretend he is not furious-but never the target Rikku sets up for her. She manages to shoot a fiend once on complete accident-she’s still aiming for the target at that point-and Rikku laughs until tears stream down her face. Then she suggests the shooting might go a little better if she keeps her eyes open to aim.
The first time one of her bullets hits the bulls-eye, Rikku lets out a whoop and spins her around in the surf. They are both laughing and cheering and exultant over this silly, insignificant accomplishment of hers-but it is the first thing she has accomplished on her own in her new life, and that makes it precious.
***
It takes awhile to become comfortable in her new skin, but she remembers something Wakka told her when she was a child and he was teaching her how to swim. “Sometimes, you just have to dive in, ya? Then you have to sink or swim, so you swim.” She asks Lulu to cut her hair and after the weight of it has fallen away, she holds her head high and boards the Celsius as a sphere hunter, because it is time to see if she can tread water.
***
“It’s okay to be selfish sometimes,” Rikku has to remind her. Subconsciously, she’s still High Summoner Yuna and she will give freely of herself until there is nothing left to give. She needs the reminder every so often that that isn’t who she has chosen to be. “You deserve to be happy, too, Yunie.”
“Don’t be such a bleeding heart,” Paine tells her, and in her own way that means the same thing. She is grateful for the reminder, because without an occasional terse word she might undo all her hard work. “No one is going to die if you say no once in awhile.”
Brother, with his clumsy attempts at gallantry, tells her she is perfect and amazing and beautiful and several words in Al Bhed which she doesn’t understand yet, though she is learning. She laughs and thanks him and under his tutelage she also learns the secondary controls of the airship, though her heart is still in her stomach every time she lifts the giant machina into the sky.
“You’re shaky, but you’ll do,” Buddy tells her, taking the controls after she nearly crashes the ship into the ocean. She has learned not to apologize incessantly for her mistakes, so she smiles sheepishly and promises to try harder. “Hey, don’t worry about it, I blame your teacher,” Buddy says easily, and while he and Brother bicker she escapes up to the deck to watch the scenery go by.
He doesn’t tell her anything, of course, because he can’t talk back. She still talks to him; it’s a habit she doesn’t want to break. Maybe it’s peculiar and fanciful, but she has hope now, just a little bit. I wonder what you would think of the new Yuna? she muses, expertly reloading her ammunition and holstering her weapons. The world passes by below. When I find you again, you will have to tell me.