Walking Through Woods on a Snowy Evening
Title: Walking Through Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Author: cygna_hime.
Fandom: Final Fantasy X.
Rating: PG.
Prompt: #17: The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Summary: On the way to Macalania Temple, Yuna finds that she is lost.
Notes: Prompt used more for character selection than anything else. Some game spoilers. Semi-implicit romance of a canonical nature.
She is lost.
Not in body; she walks the frozen path as if she were born to it, as perhaps she was. The trees sparkle crystalline before her and beside, but she does not lose the path. The shimmer pours into her mind, a memory: this is Spira, and you will never see it again, she tells herself, and smiles wider to push back the tears. She could follow this path with her eyes shut, and she knows she would not miss a step.
All the same, she is lost. Her feet know one path, but in her mind another one stretches itself into a suddenly-truncated future. Turning around, she can see where she has come from: Bevelle, place of her birth, crimson towers shining in the sunlight and bright flags flying; Besaid, home of her heart, a thousand meetings and far too many partings in ten thousand colors of cloth; Kilika, start of her journey, brightness of water and sky that could not cover her grief; Djose, site of her failure, a sunset ocean the red of dying suns and dying soldiers; Guadosalam, city of illusions, secrets revealed through a blue curtain. Every inch of her journey she can trace back through rainbows, as clear as the present.
Ahead of her, the path is split by a gaping crevasse that she does not know how to cross.
She walks automatically, without thinking about it. Her friends--her guardians--surround her, protecting her. For all she notices of them, they might be only dreams of her frightened mind, summoned to give her a sense of security that she revels in even as she knows it is false.
She is not safe.
Of course, she has never been safe: there is no such thing in Spira as safety, only an illusion of time or a delusion of invincibility, like the one she has seen shattered on the Djose coast. She has never bought into the illusion, never succumbed to the delusion. She is not safe, any more than her father was safe, any more than Chappu was safe, any more than Luzzu was safe.
She has never been safe, but she has also never been in so much danger. For the dangers of life in Spira she was born prepared, taught by the blood of those who survived just long enough. For the dangers of her pilgrimage she has studied for years, and she will never be more ready than she is now, with her friends around her. These are not the dangers that loom before her, impenetrable darkness.
What she fears and what she worries about are words, and the ways they conflict: Be my Yunalesca, Lady Yuna, and I will be your Zaon.…Stop my son.…Stop her!…It's fine. There are too many people she wants to please, and too few ways she can please them all. She cannot marry him, and stop him, and refuse him, and continue her pilgrimage.
She feels bound to marry Lord Seymour and make the people of Spira happy by the union of two heroes and three of the world's four races. But would that truly make them happy? She knows in her heart that, if she were not a summoner and doomed to die, Lord Seymour could not have proposed. But she is, and he has, and now she must choose whether she can force herself to accept him at the last.
Can she bring herself to marry this man, this monster who could kill his father? Even if she can persuade him to confess, even if he accepts the only punishment fitting for such a crime, can she bear to be married to him, however briefly? She doesn't know, but she knows that is her weakness if she hopes to negotiate with him: she does not know what she is and is not willing to concede.
Her guardians look at her, and she smiles for them. They do not know what she fears. Even she is not sure, except that part of what she fears, but only part, is what Lord Seymour may demand in exchange for his confession. The rest is shadowy, uncertain, and the more terrifying for that. She has always known what she has to fear, and now she does not, and it paralyzes her.
She smiles so that her friends will not worry. She will not involve them; whatever bargain she strikes, her only stake will be herself. Her friends she is not willing to wager for any prize. Of that much, at least, she is sure.
He meets her smile with one of his own, and she should not feel so irrationally happy that he does. He has a smile for everyone, after all, even Sir Auron, before whom her own feeble efforts falter and fail. She should not feel stronger because he is smiling at her as though he trusts her, as though he believes she can do anything and everything asked of her.
But for a moment, while he does, she is sure her friends are real and no dream, and she believes that there is a bridge across the chasm. For a moment, she is no longer lost.
Author: cygna_hime.
Fandom: Final Fantasy X.
Rating: PG.
Prompt: #17: The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Summary: On the way to Macalania Temple, Yuna finds that she is lost.
Notes: Prompt used more for character selection than anything else. Some game spoilers. Semi-implicit romance of a canonical nature.
She is lost.
Not in body; she walks the frozen path as if she were born to it, as perhaps she was. The trees sparkle crystalline before her and beside, but she does not lose the path. The shimmer pours into her mind, a memory: this is Spira, and you will never see it again, she tells herself, and smiles wider to push back the tears. She could follow this path with her eyes shut, and she knows she would not miss a step.
All the same, she is lost. Her feet know one path, but in her mind another one stretches itself into a suddenly-truncated future. Turning around, she can see where she has come from: Bevelle, place of her birth, crimson towers shining in the sunlight and bright flags flying; Besaid, home of her heart, a thousand meetings and far too many partings in ten thousand colors of cloth; Kilika, start of her journey, brightness of water and sky that could not cover her grief; Djose, site of her failure, a sunset ocean the red of dying suns and dying soldiers; Guadosalam, city of illusions, secrets revealed through a blue curtain. Every inch of her journey she can trace back through rainbows, as clear as the present.
Ahead of her, the path is split by a gaping crevasse that she does not know how to cross.
She walks automatically, without thinking about it. Her friends--her guardians--surround her, protecting her. For all she notices of them, they might be only dreams of her frightened mind, summoned to give her a sense of security that she revels in even as she knows it is false.
She is not safe.
Of course, she has never been safe: there is no such thing in Spira as safety, only an illusion of time or a delusion of invincibility, like the one she has seen shattered on the Djose coast. She has never bought into the illusion, never succumbed to the delusion. She is not safe, any more than her father was safe, any more than Chappu was safe, any more than Luzzu was safe.
She has never been safe, but she has also never been in so much danger. For the dangers of life in Spira she was born prepared, taught by the blood of those who survived just long enough. For the dangers of her pilgrimage she has studied for years, and she will never be more ready than she is now, with her friends around her. These are not the dangers that loom before her, impenetrable darkness.
What she fears and what she worries about are words, and the ways they conflict: Be my Yunalesca, Lady Yuna, and I will be your Zaon.…Stop my son.…Stop her!…It's fine. There are too many people she wants to please, and too few ways she can please them all. She cannot marry him, and stop him, and refuse him, and continue her pilgrimage.
She feels bound to marry Lord Seymour and make the people of Spira happy by the union of two heroes and three of the world's four races. But would that truly make them happy? She knows in her heart that, if she were not a summoner and doomed to die, Lord Seymour could not have proposed. But she is, and he has, and now she must choose whether she can force herself to accept him at the last.
Can she bring herself to marry this man, this monster who could kill his father? Even if she can persuade him to confess, even if he accepts the only punishment fitting for such a crime, can she bear to be married to him, however briefly? She doesn't know, but she knows that is her weakness if she hopes to negotiate with him: she does not know what she is and is not willing to concede.
Her guardians look at her, and she smiles for them. They do not know what she fears. Even she is not sure, except that part of what she fears, but only part, is what Lord Seymour may demand in exchange for his confession. The rest is shadowy, uncertain, and the more terrifying for that. She has always known what she has to fear, and now she does not, and it paralyzes her.
She smiles so that her friends will not worry. She will not involve them; whatever bargain she strikes, her only stake will be herself. Her friends she is not willing to wager for any prize. Of that much, at least, she is sure.
He meets her smile with one of his own, and she should not feel so irrationally happy that he does. He has a smile for everyone, after all, even Sir Auron, before whom her own feeble efforts falter and fail. She should not feel stronger because he is smiling at her as though he trusts her, as though he believes she can do anything and everything asked of her.
But for a moment, while he does, she is sure her friends are real and no dream, and she believes that there is a bridge across the chasm. For a moment, she is no longer lost.