(no subject)
Auron: "Show me your face. Look at me."
--FFX
The lie was evident not in her eyes, but in her hands.
Rikku knew how to hide things in her eyes; it was the first place people always looked, especially when you’re an Al Bhed, and the people doing the looking are Yevonites. They have an obsession with eyeballs, the Yevonites; they love them so much they even gave their big scary monster a hundred gazillion of them, or at least that was the amount Rikku estimated last time she saw Sin surface and crack all those peepers. And that was just on one side.
It’s why they hate the Al Bhed so much too; instead of staying in one place, Al Bhed pupils went all smeary-swirl once a long time ago and at that moment the Al Bhed went too, freed of the stasis that gripped Spira and allowed to slide away, to the seas and the sand. There was an Al Bhed saying that the Yevonites were jealous of their people the way that fiends were jealous of the living, and for the same reasons.
It wasn’t much of a saying, in Rikku’s opinion, but the idea behind it…that was a philosophical gem that she clung to every time she got spit on, or glared at, or asked to leave a shop. Jealous.
No, these men weren’t going to find anything in the usual place, not even if they knew how to look properly, which they didn’t. These men weren’t even Bevelle soldiers, they were just zealots toting secondhand firearms they’d bought for a few gil somewhere and hadn’t even bothered to oil properly. Rikku could see rust flakes.
No, with these idiots, all they would see was what she wanted them to see.
But her hands were another question. The whole time she had been in the shop and they had been staking her out, her hands had been moving; swimming through her hair, dancing across blades and burrowing into bins of spheres, fingers snapping an aimless staccato as she wandered from display to display. It wasn’t often the pilgrimage happened into a city like Luca these days; more of their time was spent among the crags of Gagazet or running aimless laps around the Calm Lands, collecting fiends for the crazy man and getting stronger before catapulting into the confrontation to which they , equally crazy, had committed themselves. The call of the shops was powerful after that much time in the wilderness, and Rikku had set off immediately after a much needed shower in the hotel, her pockets and pack bulging with the treasures she had pulled from the chests and between the claws of fiends, her fingers pushing through flesh and flan insistently and without hesitation.
Those hands, that hadn’t stopped moving since she woke up this morning, were still now, implying that she was calm, sticking to the smooth skin of her bare thighs with sweat; she was forcing them into quiet, demanding that they not draw undue attention to her nervousness, as she stood quietly and watched Auron stare down the Yevonites. Or rather, stare down their gun barrels. And one didn’t really know if he was staring, because of the sunglasses.
But she thought he was staring. Even if he wasn’t a meanie all the time like most of them, he was Yevon, or at least he had been. And Yevon stared.
“She is under my protection.” Auron said finally, shaping the lie into words that weren’t exactly a lie, his voice smooth and husky as always even though Rikku didn’t think he’d spoken for a long time, at least three days, in her hearing. He’d been speaking less since the revelation of his secret, slowly but steadily removing his council from their daily diet of dialogue, so that when he was finally gone, the loss would be painless.
She wondered if he knew how stupid that was, how belated his attempts to disengage were, but figured now wasn’t a good time to ask. There was never a good time, of course, not with Auron, who didn’t exactly like questions. The man would certainly benefit from bolting a comment box to that sake jug and checking it every so often. Or rather, Rikku would benefit. But who was keeping track, and anyway it wasn’t like he’d ever actually do it, no matter how much he should.
“I thought the Lady Yuna was your charge, Sir Auron.” said one of the militia men, his tone amused. He hefted his gun a little higher, burying the stock into his shoulder a little deeper, and Rikku raised her chin a little higher, fighting the urge to run and give them an excuse to plant a bullet in her back. “This girl is a thief, and a heretic.”
She heard Auron give the soft, dangerous little chuckle he always gave after dispatching a fiend particularly well. His gloved hand drifted to his sword handle, curling around it as gently as a man might caress a lover.
His other hand snaked around Rikku equally tenderly. This was the bare one, and as his thumb skimmed the bare strip of flesh between her top and the waist of her shorts, she felt the chill of his bloodless skin like the bite of the snowballs Tidus and Wakka pelted her with on trips to Gagazet. She told herself that it was the chill that sent goosebumps up her arms and down her legs, that hardened her nipples under her top (and wasn’t that just about the most embarrassing thing ever; that’s what she got for wearing thin vinyl) and froze the sweat from her palms into tiny crystals.
She told herself that it was shock at his dishonesty that stilled the warm and living beating of her heart for a split second as his hand nestled into the curve of her hip and tugged her flush against his side, her arm all but disappearing into the folds of his robe.
“She is under my protection.” Auron repeated, his tone more dangerous this time.
The Yevonites lowered their guns, the disgust in their eyes evident. One of them sneered, and the other laughed, and even through their false bravado Rikku could see their eyes repeatedly fixing on Auron’s hand, wrapped around his sword.
“Just like Braska, dallying with trash. You’ll end up dead like him too.” One of them said, a man whistling past the graveyard. Then they were gone, off to harass someone else.
Rikku’s hands sprang into motion again as soon as they were gone, tugging at each other fiercely against the backdrop of her smooth and flat belly as she turned to look at Auron. His hand slid slowly from her hip, his arm returning to its usual perch inside his sleeve.
“Yuna wishes to speak with you concerning the airship. It seems she has stumbled upon some previously unfound sites and would like to know how to input the coordinates into the navigation system.”
With that, he turned and walked away. Rikku followed after him, two steps for every one of his, grateful for the moment he was giving her to compose herself.
“What! You think you can just cop a feel and run off! I’m Rikku Cidolphus! My pops has guns! BIG guns!”
He turned to look at her witheringly, and she felt a smile dance across her face. They locked eyes again for a moment, and Rikku’s mind drifted back to her earlier thoughts on Yevon and eyeballs and how well monks could read thoughts, and how much longer the lie she wrote in her eyes every time she looked at him would hold out, now that her hands did crazy loops and swirls every time he looked at her.
Rikku, you foolish, foolish girl, you fell in love with a zombie Yevonite. Better hope Pops lost those guns you were just talking about, or he'll shoot you like an injured chocobo in the Central Expanse.
“Thanks for helping me.” She said falteringly, her hands fidgeting again, trying to will away the memory of his hand on her flesh. Despite her age, she was a woman of the world already, and she knew that the touch of a dead man was enough for nightmares.
Enough for heartbreak as well.
Somehow, she thought she’d be well supplied with both before this story of theirs ended.
He waved off her thanks, and she decided that on the way back, she might bring up the comment box idea.
After all, it couldn't hurt, right?
And it'd certainly make this whole unrequited longing thing a lot easier.