2019-09-29: Here Comes The Bride?

From Dream Chasers
Jump to navigation Jump to search
  • Log: Here Comes The Bride?
  • Cast: Yuna, Seymour Guado, Belize
  • Where: Macalania Temple
  • Date: September 29, 2019
  • Summary: Yuna surrenders herself to Seymour's custody at Macalania Temple, in accordance with Guado tradition. They walk and talk on their way to the Chamber of the Fayth. It is an unexpectedly serious discussion...

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

OUTSIDE

Gigantic melted footprints in the snow are all that's left of Ifrit, but there are other, lingering pieces of evidence of Yuna's recent passage -- mostly all the people barred from entering Macalania by a double column of Guado guards, who look on as she disappears within.

INSIDE

Trommel enters first, beaming. He clears his throat with a magnificent cascade of coughs, a run-on sentence's worth of them, in order to quiet the room. Then he pauses, just for affect, to let the silence linger.

"May I present," he quavers, looking across the room at his master and his ward, the Maester he loves like a son, "Maester Seymour Guado's bride-to-be!"

Stepping out of the way with spread hands, he reveals Yuna, who was following him in. She looks -- well, mostly she looks like someone who was just in a pitched battle between at least four different factions; she's dry thanks to that ride she took on Ifrit, but has more than her share of minor rips and tears in her attire, as well as a couple of stark-but-not-dire-looking-scratches. One, notably, crosses her cheekbone, just beneath her blue eye, but its red weeping has already ceased.

But OTHER than that crucial piece of context, she looks... okay. There's no hint of weariness in her carriage, which, beneath the spotlight of everyone's attention, is that of a summoner's, through-and-through. Yuna walks tall into the room, chin high, gaze level. Besides her traditional raiment, she is also wearing a smile.

In the moment in the introduction that she has apparently lost her name, replaced by a new title, a tiny bit of uneasiness flickers in her eyes, a line pulses on her throat where she swallows; but, beyond that, she bears it gracefully, and simply does that which she surely must, at now of all times:

She bows.

The bow is an intricate one, fully ceremonial, and wide enough to encompass the whole room of priests, fans, friends, and, of course, Seymour himself.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour Guado is, of course, aware that a terrible disturbance occurred on the approach to Macalania Temple. This was why he dispatched Biggs and Wedge. He would have gone himself...

But he can see how threadbare his plans grow, and he has to act before they fray apart completely.

He looks at Trommel -- and Yuna, when she is revealed -- and his smile only shows a hint of the concern he feels. One might mistake this for nervousness at meeting a fiancee in a more formal circumstance, the way his eyes are a little tight and his smile hesitant.

And then the mask, of a perfect Maester and a servant of Yevon, is back. His smile is wider, and he returns the bow. A few people applaud; the room seems, altogether, quite happy. "Thank you, Trommel."

Then, he looks at Yuna, and does a short bow at his waist. "Lady Yuna," he says. "How glad I am that you've come... and accepted my offer."

But did she, really? He doesn't inquire.

"And I apologize, sincerely, for the trouble you encountered on your way end. I hope it won't mar what should be a happy day, for the both of us," Seymour concludes.

<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.

    Belize is present also, and they smile as Seymour does at the sight of Yuna, battered and injured but otherwise safe--nothing a change of clothes and a Cure spell won't fix. But to say they smile as Seymour does means they smile with... perhaps a surfeit of joy. They're uneasy about this, and not doing the best job of hiding it. They glance over at Seymour and see--or more accurately, project--the same. Perhaps he's also realized Yuna's true feelings...?
    
    But it's not their place to say anything. They bow back to Yuna, if not quite so ceremoniously, and then stand with hands clasped before them, allowing their Maester to speak.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

The space at Yuna's back feels like a vast, empty chasm to her. Most of all it is unfamiliar; even before they left Besaid, she was always in Kimahri's company, and almost always in Wakka and Lulu's. Rikku, Tidus and Auron's absence is less jarring in the historical context, but perhaps not in the emotional.

At moments like these, you discover just how much you care about your loved ones -- and how much you need them.

At least she still has her earring, the one from Besaid, the village's last gift to her before she departed. It curls around her neck when she shakes her head, tangling and untangling like a short tetherball cord.

"Please, there's no need for apologies," she replies, her soft voice unlikely to carry well through the space except that it's quiet enough to hear a pin drop. "It isn't as though you sent them after me. Quite the opposite..." Her smile warms with real gratitude as she regards Biggs and Wedge, and, for that matter, Trommel.

"Thank you for your escort," she tells them, before crossing the remaining space to Seymour's side. On the way over she spots Belize, one of the only friendly faces she actually knows here, and gives them a pleasant nod as well.

The Maester is so tall, an effect that time has not eased for her. Her brain briefly attempts to give her vertigo; another part of her mind furiously rejects this and tamps down the instinct, as she cranes her neck back to meet his eyes.

"Maybe," she suggests to him, both cautiously and gently, her fingers itching to twist and entangle into each other, but she forces them to gently smooth her skirt instead, "We could... speak in... private?"

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Biggs and Wedge stand to the side. When Yuna looks at them, the two taciturn Guado guardians nod back at her. They stay put, though, and don't move to follow as she walks away.

Seymour glances briefly at Belize; when he realizes they looked at him, he smiles back at them, as if to be reassuring. His eyes turn back to Yuna, then. The lack of Guardians is almost unremarked upon. Instead, he nods. "We wouldn't leave you -- or any true Summoner of Yevon -- in such a situation. Troubling, though, that so many felt the need to go so far..."

He trails off with that thought, though, because she has a request. Seymour seems at ease with looking down at her -- with looking down at anyone, really. The half-Guado towers over a lot of people.

"Certainly," he says. "Would you care to speak inside the Cloister? There is no place that offers more privacy -- and it may be wise to see the Fayth quickly."

Should their unexpected guests return.

<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.

    When Yuna nods Belize's way, they smile at her--a little more sincere, but still worried--and give her a nod in return. It's reassuring when Seymour smiles at them as well, but... Oh, dear. Yuna's asking to speak with Seymour in private. Is she going to tell him the truth? Is she going to turn him down after all? They press a palm to their face. It's all so uncertain... They want to believe that everything will turn out well, but...
    
    Either way, they do need to speak privately. "Be well, you two," they murmur, meant to be a quiet sort of prayer, but loud enough to be heard regardless. From here, it's in their court. Or Cloister. Either way.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Seymour speaks of the Fayth.

A weight seems lifted from Yuna's slender shoulders. And now Seymour himself is favored with the same, truer smile she gave his retainers.

"That is my first and most pressing concern answered," she explains, with quiet relief. "I did ask Mister Trommel, but... I had to hear it from you directly. You see, I must continue my pilgrimage, even after I marry..."

Anyone who overhears this can safely assume the outcome of her decision, not that 'bride-to-be' hadn't already rung out, loud and clear, across the Great Hall.

"Thank you," she tells Belize. "I wish for your happiness, too. For everyone's..."

There's something there, there, something complex and difficult, but sometimes those things wind up being the most beautiful.

Yuna takes one last deep breath, steeling herself -- for the Cloister, perhaps. Another moment of absence. It is beyond strange to go in without her Guardians present.

"Yes, please, lead the way," she agrees, giving Seymour another little bow.

They're going to have the politest marriage ever, at this rate.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

"I understand," Seymour says, and there is a nod. There is even a briefly saddened expression; the one that Seymour imagines every would-be spouse of a Summoner has put on, when they acknowledge the truth. The marriage of a Summoner must be a short one.

He looks at Belize, then -- smiling at them again, before he bows his head once. "I shall speak with you again soon, Belize."

He then leads the way, as Yuna requested. Seymour steps to the doors to the Cloister. As he ascends the steps, eyes on his and Yuna's backs, the two attendants open the doors. There is a gust of cold air. Bitingly cold, in fact; it would seem that the chill of Shiva's Fayth is colder inside than it is outside.

Seymour steps into the room, a few sheets of frost cracking slightly under his feet. He turns to face Yuna, as the doors close, and his breath is mist.

"The Chamber of the Fayth should not be much further," he says. "We can talk on the way. What would you speak to me about, Lady Yuna?"

<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.

    Belize's smile warms momentarily as Yuna addresses them. "Likewise. I pray that everything works out for the best," they reply. To Seymour, they bow with respect and courtesy in return, albeit from the waist rather than the neck--as befits a member of the Maester's retinue. "I look forward to it, Lord Seymour. I shall be at the party with Trommel until then."
    
    Once the newlyweds-to-be have left, they'll do as they say and leave with Trommel to look after the party, presumably just getting started if not already underway.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

The cold is even less familiar than everything else. Crossing the threshhold is like entering another world, for more reason than one.

Yuna shivers.

Her hands drift up to her shoulders, to warm them a little; less dignified, but they're alone, now, with no one else to see.

She takes a couple of steps, further on and deeper into the Cloister, during which she gets her thoughts in order.

She shivers again, once or twice, but keeps her head held high.

Into the breach she goes.

"I guess... I wanted to ask about your father," she tries, finally, her timbre raising at the end to turn it into a question. Yuna's easy to read, and her expression, as she looks at Seymour, is... piercing. Not the sharpness of a sword of judgement but the sharpness of a surgical scalpel; the blade that is wielded to heal.

She knows something.

She knows something, and she's worried.

She knows something, and she's worried FOR SEYMOUR.

It's not just that she cares about Jyscal's fate, or Spira's future. She cares about Seymour the man, and the burden he bears, all alone.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour's reactions are practiced, when it comes to his father. His hatred is one that runs so deep that he cannot completely hide it. And, yet, his hatred is one so unacceptable that he dare not express it. Those practiced reactions are for the spaces that one might publicly bring up the late Jyscal Guado.

They aren't for private spaces. They aren't for looks like the one that Yuna gives him -- and Seymour seems unequipped. There is a slight widening of his eyes; then he narrows them, a little.

His footsteps slow inside of the Cloister, but don't come to a stop.

"My father," he says, with a voice not as measured as he hopes it is, and after a pause longer than he meant it to be. "He was... a great man, for the Guado."

He glances at her, and his expression lacks a smile -- and he can't quite warm it. "What would you like to know? I didn't know him as long as I would have liked, I'm afraid..."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna's compassion is a knife but it's not one she thinks about. There's no pride-of-place in her internal landscape for her to introspect and consider or celebrate the fact that she thinks of Seymour's feelings, of his surely-wounded heart, at a time like this. It's simply who she is. She doesn't know how to be anyone else.

And his feelings are loud, indeed, within all the gaps where other expressions and gestures should be.

She stops shivering.

Matching him stride for stride -- including the slowdown, which is a slight relief for her, as it takes about two of her steps to cover any single one of his -- she bows her head as they step onto a certain sort of common ground.

"It's the same for me," she acknowledges, gently. "It was a long time ago, now, but it never really goes away... not entirely. He was a great man, and now he's gone."

It gets very quiet. Their breath mingles, steamy contrails combining. The shushing of Yuna's ever-rippling skirt, her flowing sleeves, is suddenly loud.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

"I can imagine so... being the child of a great man means, sometimes, people look at the child and see the father," Seymour says, and his voice is quiet. He frowns, as he speaks the words. He considers the way that they have felt in the past; the lies he has pretended to live, while remembering the suffering that he and his mother experienced.

"You have felt... constrained, then, Lady Yuna?" he asks -- trying to turn it aroundon her, and yet it fails.

Because he is forced to wonder -- because he can't dismiss that a secret that should be utterly hidden is not -- how much Yuna knows. He looks at her, and reveals much by how he quickly asks a second question:

"What have you heard of my father?" he asks.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna isn't really looking where she's going; she's searching Seymour's face as he speaks, unwilling to turn away from him now. So when he asks the second question, and she almost slips and falls on a patch of ice, it really was coincidence -- but it may not have felt like it.

Her arms flail -- sakura-dipped cream creates a beautiful dance, both like and unlike the one they're having conversationally, in the sense that it is simultaneously almost beautiful in its intricacy, and more than over the edge of spiraling completely out of control -- and she grabs onto Seymour's arm.

She lets him be her support, just the way that he asked, back on the bloodied beaches of Operation Mi'ihen.

In that moment that they're pressed together, he can feel her heart pounding, hard and fierce and fearful. But is she fearful of the ice she almost pratfalled on, or is she afraid of him?

Her cheeks are red, in full defiance of Macalania and Shiva's chill. It's even gotten to her nose a bit. She'll probably catch a cold before everything is over, but right now she feels incredibly warm.

In more ways than one, as she answers his question with another question.

"Did you know that my father married an Al Bhed?"

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour blinks in surprise when she grabs his arm -- but he doesn't flinch or pull away. He keeps his footing, though it has less to do with an excellent physique (his is merely slightly above average) and more to do with a childhood spent negotiating dark tunnels in Guadosalam... and then the place of his exile.

His glance is considerate -- and confident, like he expected her to be close to him. Then, he smiles ever so slightly, and he tilts his head to the side.

Her question makes him blink, and that blink -- and the resulting expression -- answer her question. He did not know that.

"No... ah, but I see," he says, softly. "Something your father did... that others might call folly -- or worse." Others, but not him; the truth of Seymour's views on the Al Bhed are a secret, perhaps.

A secret like his feelings about many things.

"Something that others ignore, once he has risen to prominence. Something that... can gnaw at you, the incongruence," he says. He looks ahead -- away from her -- and there is something angry and cold in his pale eyes.

"I know about that feeling."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna tucks Seymour's momentary smile into the tiny pouch she carries in her heart, to live there with other precious and important memories. It clinks gently against the shine in Lulu's eyes as she summons fireworks to the skies above Besaid, and settles near the sound her cat made when she came back to life -- um, woke back up.

She lets him steady her, while watching his reaction to the revelation carefully. She really didn't know which way it would go (it isn't a SECRET exactly, just a sort of collective amnesia/historical revisionism), and within her eyes, in that moment, he gets to see HER uncertainty, her vulnerability. The open question of whether or not he was about to recoil, whether or not he'd cancel the engagement on the spot.

He could have hurt her, in that moment, and it would have been a familiar kind of pain. A piece of the story of Yuna that isn't brought up often. That most people would rather forget.

But he didn't.

And so she tells him more.

"He was called the 'heretic priest'," she confirms, while extricating herself from Seymour's arm to a more balanced stance. "He wasn't quite excommunicated, but his career within Yevon was over, and when I was born, I... I wasn't, um, well-liked, by Bevelle. Then, my mother... well, it was Sin. And so he became a summoner. And then he became HIGH summoner, and all was... forgotten, if not actually forgiven."

Seymour looks away, but Yuna doesn't. She doesn't flinch from his anger or his cold, though within her eyes -- the blue very much like his, and the green, now that he knows, instantly recognizable as a mark of the Al Bhed -- dwells something else. Something kind.

"But I didn't forget," she says, not abstract and distant but earnest and present. "About my mother. And... I wanted you to know."

She's standing on her own two feet, now, and they're connected only by her hand on his.

"I don't... want there to be any secrets between us," Yuna tells her betrothed.

She squeezes, gently.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour is always, in some way, guarded. He does not become utterly unguarded -- but that nature isn't a binary. It is a sliding scale, and he loses some of that innate defensiveness as she explains about Lord Braska. He glances downward for a moment; then he nods once. Forgotten, but not forgiven.

His father was similar.

"I understand. And I, Lady Yuna, am... the last person to think less of someone for who their mother was." He feels her fingers around his, and then he squeezes her hand back; those too-long, clawed fingers can be gentle, when he tries.

"My father... he was looked down upon, by the other Guado," he says. "He loved my mother. But love wasn't enough for political expediency. My mother and I were seen as a step too far -- an infiltration of human culture into the Guado. In the end, he bowed to pressure... and sent us away, to Baaj."

His eyes narrow. This, he thinks, is something he should not share. But, a part of him whispers in reply, hadn't he always wanted someone to understand? When he crushed the last life in this miserable world and freed them, didn't he want someone to know why?

Didn't he always want that?

"She passed, while I was there," he says. "And when I was older... and freed of a human mother reminding everyone... I was no longer seen as a step too far. Everyone was eager to forget that we had been outcast... and there was not--"

His voice hardens. "--forgiveness. My father..."

And he seems about to say it. His eyes close. Seymour takes a breath -- and then lets it out in a slow, controlled exhale.

"...I did not truly mourn him, when he passed."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

"Baaj," Yuna repeats in a mouthed whisper, but doesn't interrupt. Later, she'll wonder: how much of their differences are because she was sent to an island filled with kind (flawed, certainly, as all people are, but fundamentally generous) villagers and beautiful flowers, and he was sent to an island barren and stark and empty?

But Seymour isn't empty, not at all, and wide open, receptive, Yuna lets herself fill with what he offers her -- his hesitancy to share, his resentment, his hardness.

It doesn't sit easily within her. And he can see that, easily enough. But despite her discomfort, she doesn't draw back, doesn't pull away. She listens, and when he's finished, she bows her head, acknowledging what he's shared.

"I'm sorry," she says, and means it. It isn't adequate, but then, nothing ever will be. There are no words that can fill some holes in the heart.

Something finally draws her attention away from him -- the door to the Chamber of the Fayth. They must have reached it some time ago, though she doesn't remember their arrival. But they're here now, and so is a third party, one whose presence she senses -- one, she knows, who senses hers in turn.

The terrible urgency of existence presses down on her like the entire ocean.

Her shoulders square rather than slump.

The time is now.

"Seymour," she says, quietly but intensely, "I would go with you, to Bevelle."

She knows.

"I would stand by you, as your wife."

She knows, and she's worried.

"You don't... have to bear this burden, all by yourself."

She knows, and she's worried FOR SEYMOUR.

"Please... consider my offer, while I'm gone," Yuna suggests, drawing away, towards the Chamber door, which is rumbling open, eager for her entry.

Drawing away, but not TURNING away, not yet.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Baaj offered Seymour nothing but loneliness. A loneliness that compounded when he lost his mother -- and a loneliness that was unanswered by the ruins he explored.

There isn't a flinch when he sees that he bothers her, but there is a flicker of regret across his face. Seymour Guado is no sociopath; the same boy that wishes he could be understood became a man who wishes that his true nature did not concern others. But...

He nods, loosely, at the apology.

He slows as he reaches the Chamber of the Fayth. His feet come to a stop, robes brushing against frost, and his breath hangs as mist before his face. The urgency of the pilgrimage is a constant -- and it reminds him:

He has a goal, and he must keep his eyes on it.

He looks sideways at her -- and he misunderstands. In a moment when he could have realized that Yuna meant she would support him despite what he did, he hears a simpler acceptance. He sees, instead, what he hoped to: that his lie is still unknown.

"...I shall, Lady Yuna," he says, after a moment. He watches her, for a moment. He doesn't step closer. He doesn't interrupt her. She has to do this.

He needs her to do this, to become what he must.

"I will consider it carefully," he promises.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna bows to Seymour for what will be the final time, though neither of them know that in the moment.

The gesture of Yevon: cyclical, circular. And, as always, she makes it her own, too: graceful, even beautiful. The motions of a dancer, of a priestess. Of a believer.

But she looks at him while she does it, really looks. She sees him. So much of him. More than he's willing to show almost anyone -- and just as she made herself vulnerable to him, he returned that, and... that means something. That's important. A real beginning, for the two of them.

But she doesn't see that he misunderstands. What she just undertook is the boldest and most forthright thing she's ever done. The idea that he doesn't quite get it is unimaginable to her.

And so, comforted by the knowledge that her message has been communicated --

-- and that, perhaps, in a few minutes they can continue their negotiations --

-- the summoner goes to do her duty, and surrenders herself to Shiva's embrace.

The door grinds shut behind her.