The park, Sunday evening

[dude_its_jude]

The curb jam was next week. Jude should be in training. He had meant to, he had really meant to, but he had gotten to the park and found himself thinking a little bit too much about Setsuna telling him it was worthless.

Now he was sitting under a tree, fiddling with one wheel kind of vaguely.

[[Open!]]

Comments

[the_merriest]

It was a park, and parks were awesome. And it had a boyfriend! Boyfriends were way awesome.

So Rikku bounced her way over to her way-awesome boyfriend in the way-awesome park, treating him to a couple lines of Cuban Pete.

And I'll teach you to chick-chicky-boom, chick-chicky-boom, chick--

She stopped, abruptly. "Whoa. Dude. Hey. What's wrong?"

[dude_its_jude]

Jude looked up. "Oh, hey, bra," he said with a small smile.

[the_merriest]

"Hiya," she said softly, dropping down into the grass next to him. "What happened?"

[dude_its_jude]

"Nothin'," he replied automatically, shrugging as he set his board aside and reached out for her.

[the_merriest]

Rikku snuggled in, kissing him lightly before burrowing in against his neck. "Doesn't sound like nothing," she said lightly. "You don't gotta tell me. Just, uh, you know you can. If you want."

[dude_its_jude]

"'m worried about Setsuna," he said quietly, running his hand over her arm, his cheek resting against the top of her head.

[the_merriest]

"Setsuna?" Rikku squeezed lightly, looping her arm around his back. "What happened? Was there another attack-thing while we were gone?"

[dude_its_jude]

"Nah . . . well, I don't think so. We were just talking on the roof and she was all . . . weird and moody."

[the_merriest]

"That doesn't sound good," Rikku said, shivering. "Is she having a bad day? Maybe some really awful stuff's been going on. Fighting with her friends or bad news from home or whatever."

[dude_its_jude]

"Yeah, that's why I'm worried," he said with a frown. "She got kinda upset and torched her notebook."

[the_merriest]

Rikku made a face. "Whoa. Yeah. That doesn't sound good. Did she say anything? About what was wrong?"

[dude_its_jude]

"Some stuff about how people were holding her back and she's going to pay them back for it and other scary stuff. She was really, really upset."

[the_merriest]

"Did ... did someone threaten her?" Rikku shivered. "Or it sounds like ... maybe someone was lying to her and ... I'd be pretty pissed, too. That's awful."

[dude_its_jude]

"Yeah." Jude went quiet. Setsuna was hurting and he didn't know how to fix it.

[the_merriest]

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "Maybe she just needs a Jude-shake and to vent a lot?"

[dude_its_jude]

"I don't think she wants to hang out with me right."