2021-07-20: Listen To My Story
- Log: Listen To My Story
- Cast: Tidus, Yuna, Lulu, Rikku
- Where: Zanarkand Ruins
- Date: July 20, 2021
- Summary: On their way to Zanarkand, the pilgrimage party encounters a mystery. Tidus encounters a surprise. And a story is recounted...
=============================<* Zanarkand Ruins *>============================== Zanarkand was once a thriving metropolis on the northernmost point of Spira - now it is a testament to the folly of a people long since dead. It is also the source of Spira's only hope. The ruins of Zanarkand are thousands of years old, yet much of the crumbling infrastructure still stands, laid out in an unusual, enduring stone. Pyreflies flock to the location, lighting up the area and dancing among the shallow waves. The greatest concentration can be found in the heart of the ruins, in a giant dome - the pyreflies are so strong there that the entire area is almost like a sphere. Memories thought buried can resurface, given voice and physical form, only to vanish a few moments later. At the centre of the dome is said to lie the end of a Summoner's Pilgrimage - the means to obtain Final Aeon and slay Sin. BGM: Final Fantasy X - To Zanarkand
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
There are some things one can never get used to, no matter how many times one sees them. Or maybe it's more that even things one's gotten used to can still surprise oneself if the circumstances are different enough.
For Tidus, who's been thrust into the new and fantastic so many times since his expulsion from his home city that he's almost starting to get used to it, he can't help but gawk at the mountainside leading down towards Zanarkand. He's seen fayth before--something he sometimes forgets he's not supposed to, as someone who isn't a Summoner--but those fayth were always a single soul in a single statue. This is...
"What *is* this?" he utters, staring at the literal dozens, maybe *hundreds* of fayths embedded in the stone. All of them are alight, maybe even *alive* with a soft, shimmering energy. It doesn't abate; it doesn't fade; it merely surges on and on, gentle but unyielding.
It's a little like Yuna, he thinks, and he doesn't know why.
Reflexively, Tidus turns to the others. Usually it's on one of them to explain that, actually, this is totally normal. But looking at their faces, he sees...
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna's implacable, inexorable, robotic-not-just-in-pace-but-apparently-in-toughness strides over the last mountain between her and her fate... stutter, stumble, stop.
She gazes in wide-eyed wonder at the place they have found. But she isn't breathless in her amazement; rather she breathes deeply, drinks in the air of this sacred place, the magic of their surroundings, and the mystery of it all.
"Those are fayth," she confirms, not that Tidus doesn't know -- but a handful of her Guardians still haven't crossed THAT particular sacred line. She splays her hand out wide -- not to touch them, but somehow to COUNT them, to mark each of them, all of them, five and five and five again, but there are too many fives to ever hope to number them all that way. One might as well hope to number the stars.
In the end her palm faces the bizarre column of water rising up, apparently infinitely, out of the icewall of fayth -- of PEOPLE, men and women and children -- above it, then, and into the sky. The power of the fayth is active, electric along the rims of teeth, prickling on the skin, and it is concentrated most obviously there.
"A summoning!" she whispers, and now perhaps she must gasp for air in earnest. "Someone is using these fayth! Someone is drawing energy from all of them!"
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Usually, Lulu would have an explanation, but looking at her she looks quite surprised. Even though she is less openly expressive than certain other members of their group, she still stares around in her way, eyes widened as she looks around and her mind works at what she sees. She can tell what they are--but they are so many, and all active...
Yuna says what she is thinking and Lulu says what else she is thinking, "But..."
"Who wields power on this scale?" she wonders, astounded by the sheer magnitude of it.
"...What could they be calling?"
Lulu steps forward, looking around at each, thinking to see answers in detail but there are still so many.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Tidus sees awe, reverence, curiosity on Rikku's face that cuts through any latent worry. It might remind him of that time on the Fahrenheit, flying away as they destroyed Home.
The Al Bhed sang.
It'd perhaps be a hard thing to imagine given how Yevon depicts the Al Bhed, and how Rikku clashed against Wakka those times back then.
But that's what it is, her face aglow in the reflection of the waterfall like shimmer of energy, her strange green irises with pupil swirls looking upon the living walls. For but a few moments, Rikku who's always so animated is... still.
It might be that she doubts her eyes, her perceptions, until Tidus asks, and Yuna answers.
"This many!?" She blurts out suddenly, shocked... and Lulu asks her questions. Questions which her mind repeats to themselves... which cause her to turn around suddenly, eyes squaring upon...
... the one person who has been here before. As she then runs up to him, and points, "Hey! You know something right? Spill the beans!"
As she searches for even a speck, an inkling, a scrap of knowledge that might... feed into a hope that's been slowly dying on this journey here, whether she'll ever admit it to herself or not.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Yuna confirms what Tidus had already figured--but then adds a little more context to it. They're being used--they're mid-summoning. Tidus gawks, while Lulu asks what he's thinking, and Rikku expresses all the awe and reverence of the most devout Yevonite. It's kind of funny to see, considering... well, everything.
But then Rikku does the sensible thing, i.e. turn to the one person who's seen this before, and interrogates him. Unfortunately, who she's interrogating is Auron, who's even more stolid and stoic than Lulu.
"Hmph. Look not to others for answers," he replies, voice even more grave than usual. "You need to seek them for yourself."
Tidus frowns. Although he doesn't care for the tone Auron takes... "He's right," he says, walking up to the shimmering fayths. Hundreds? Maybe more thousands. Maybe more *ten* thousands. It doesn't really matter. "This is our--this is *my* story," he corrects himself--a bit of ego he doesn't usually wallow in, but something about it, here and now, feels... correct. "I'll see this through myself."
And because while Tidus might see things through, it doesn't mean he *thinks* things through, he reaches out and touches one of the active fayths.
About five seconds later, he's flat on his back and out like the last few lights before dawn.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna doesn't try Auron for answers like Rikku did. She took her turn at that a few hours ago, on the icy slope overlooking the carnage of the Ronso -- though mostly all they could see was blinding white. Since then the two of them have existed in a certain silence. Not quite sullen, but definitely... deliberate. It's hard to know what even Yuna thinks of him right now. It's fair to say that she's put a lot more of her attention into the others.
Especially Tidus, who revealed such a shocking fact back then; and who, now, rises to Auron's challenge, and accepts it in a way that stirs something deep within Yuna.
When he FALLS OVER though, that stirs something a lot simpler.
"!"
She rushes to his side, cradling his head between her knees, her skirts his pillow.
---
Tidus awakens back home.
Not Besaid; certainly not anywhere else since he began his journey. He may have found friends, even found family, but home is still a place.
Zanarkand...
Not the open question on the other side of this mountain, which takes up so much space with sheer uncertainty. Totally like the Ronso village, and totally unlike.
Not that Zanarkand at all.
HIS Zanarkand...
His houseboat... his own room. Just as he left them, up to and including the silence and darkness that one grows accustomed to, when one lives alone.
But he isn't alone now...
"Welcome home."
A soft voice. So youthful as to be almost totally androgynous, but if one had to assign gender, it would be boyish.
His face is heavily shadowed beneath his hood, but the wry little crack of a smile is audible.
"Remember me? We met in Bevelle."
His hood, which, on the back, is emblazoned with the same crown-wheel of the aeon Bahamut. And his smile, which, along with his voice, ages somehow -- it isn't a child speaking to him. No child can be so wistful, not even on Christmas Eve.
"But that wasn't the first time we met. I've known about you for a long time. A long, long time..."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu looks to Auron as he gives his answer, and lifts an eyebrow. This is something that they need to answer themselves? She doesn't challenge him, though. She doesn't... in part because Tidus accepts it so quickly. This surprises her, too. "...Hmm," she vocalizes, glancing to Rikku and then to the others, before she starts forward to get a better view--
"--!"
Tidus falls, and Yuna rushes to him. Lulu looks to them, and then steps immediately up to the Fayth where he touched, not immediately touching it herself but looking for any sign of what might have caused his fall.
When she finds none, she frowns, looking back to him again. "What...?"
Her only guess is unhelpful. And yet it does exist.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
"But! Yunie might die you know?"
As if Auron didn't know. As if Auron didn't guard another Summoner before them. Rikku says it as if he doesn't know it better than anyone else in the room what happens at the end of the journey.
Yet when Tidus says he's right, Rikku looks over her shoulder at him, puzzled. The confidence in his voice unmistakable - enough that for a moment she trusts that he has the situation well in hand.
As he steps forward and...
... falls over.
Rikku runs up to him.
"What j- what just happened!?"
Yuna has gathered him in her lap, so Rikku only takes a moment to glance at his chest rise and fall. If something bad had happened Yuna is the best person out of all of them to deal with the situation...
Rikku looks like she's about to freak out herself, before looking to Lulu's frown. Then back at Auron...
A few moments ago she looked like she was going to yell at him in a futile attempt for answers, until Tidus interrupted her... now, there's something like a plea, that's behind a barely restrained freakout.
"At least tell Yunie if he's going to be okay - please. Just that much."
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
If he were conscious, Tidus would appreciate the lap-pillow Yuna's made for him. As it stands, well, he's... not. At least he can be unconscious in comfort. Actually, to look at his face, it would seem like his dreaming...
And if anyone eyeballs Auron at this point, he looks thoroughly unsurprised. It could be his usual stoicism at work, or... well, it's Auron. It's a given that he knows lots of things the rest of them don't. Kimahri can only stand guard over Yuna--and, in turn, Tidus, while he's passed out and thus vulnerable--while Wakka hurries over to cover over Tidus. "What's gotten into you? Hey!" he calls.
Lulu inspects the fayth, this time sensibly not touching them. She's no Summoner, but with her magical prowess, she can feel the immense power rolling off them. No doubt Yuna can, too. It's not hostile. If anything, it's... wistful. That might not tell her much, but it might serve as some reassurance that nothing bad will happen to Tidus. ...beyond passing out, that is.
Rikku meanwhile tries to plea with Auron. "That's up to him," he replies. A pause. "But I have... confidence, that he will be."
There's a certain gruff, awkward something in his tone that implies, 'Don't you dare tell him I said that,' but Auron's too dignified to say that aloud. Possibly to his detriment, when Tidus wakes up.
For now, though...
---
Tidus blinks several times, groggily, and looks around, seeing but not comprehending. "Where am I?" he wonders--before a voice catches his attention. He looks over at sees a familiar face... a familiar boy, though really *boy* is a guess. Tidus blinks owlishly at the child. He *does* recognize them... not just from the Chamber of the Fayth in Bevelle, but in his dreams, and in...
"Zanarkand?" he wonders, looking around again. This time, he sees it: his room, in his houseboat, back... "Home," he utters, nigh trembling with emotion, as he rises to his feet. He could almost cry... but he manages to hold back. This time. Instead, he looks at the child in confusion--but not one borne of lack of recognition. "I... I feel like I know you, too," he replies. Beyond their fleeting encounters in the dreaming world, he means. "Why do you keep appearing in front of me? What do you want?"
But then--
'What's gotten into you? Hey!' Wakka's voice calls from somewhere.
'What j- what just happened!?' calls Rikku's.
Intuition strikes. Tidus's gut feelings are usually right on the money, and this one tells him-- "Wait," he utters. "This is a dream." As this reality dawns on him, he shakes his head. "Are you crazy? I don't have time to be dreaming right now!"
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
The tiniest shadow of a smile -- the memory of a memory of a smile -- imbues Yuna's lips with a little extra fullness, a little more depth, when Auron exhibits that peculiar fatherliness that he only ever shows for Tidus (and, to some extent, for Yuna herself; but as with Tidus, he mostly does it when his charges can't see, so she has more appreciation -- in some ways, more AWARENESS -- of that relationship, than her own...)
However, it is only a memory. Because Tidus is wholly resistant to her efforts to revive him, magical and otherwise. It's as though he's suddenly lost to her, despite being close enough to touch -- despite them actually touching.
"Please," she implores him, her voice a little raw with sudden terror, "Please wake up."
---
"Wrong," Bahamut's fayth informs Tidus, with the overcasual, willfully offhanded solemnity of an extraordinary revelation. "It's not that you're dreaming... you ARE a dream."
He runs outside, and since he's even more ghostly and ephemeral than the rest of this place, his path doesn't exactly go through a door. He's easy to find, though, on the upper deck, gazing out at the twinkling lights of Zanarkand, the city that never sleeps.
And once Tidus catches up with him, he doesn't leave the boy -- of the two of them, the towheaded blitzballer is definitely the BOY -- in suspense.
"Long ago... there was a war. A war between Zanarkand and Bevelle. Bevelle's machina assured their victory from the start. Spira had never seen such power. The summoners of Zanarkand... didn't stand a chance. Zanarkand was doomed to oblivion. That's why we tried to save it...if only in a memory."
To think that in the modern day this very fayth sleeps beneath Bevelle, even as he recounts the tale from the opposite side. That temple isn't built around a devout Yevonite who sacrificed himself to give the faithful the ultimate weapon, is it? It's built around a prisoner of war.
The prisoner of war accepts the occasional question and prompt, allows himself to be guided by Tidus' curiosity. The one thing he doesn't do is stop. His little voice is steady, implacable.
"The remaining summoners and the townspeople that survived the war... they all became fayth-- fayth for the summoning. For summoning this place. A Zanarkand that never sleeps. The dreams of the fayth summoned the memories of the city. They summoned all the buildings, all the people who lived there."
He's mostly been looking off the side of the boat, but now, despite his gaze being hidden by the cowl, when he stares straight at Tidus the boy can feel its weight wholly. It is a heavy burden to bear, the full attention of a being of this... magnitude.
"Yes," he confirms. "You're a dream of the fayth. You, your father, your mothehr, everyone. All dreams. And if the fayth stop dreaming..."
Across the water, Zanarkand vanishes as if it never was, swallowed up by a void not at ALL like the darkness of the solitary houseboat, which itself is suddenly just fragments. A bit of dock here. The wheel, there. Tidus and Bahamut's fayth are standing in front of the door back into the cabin, a door that now leads nowhere.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu is thinking the same thing Wakka says, in different words. But as always, she has to attend to causes--to look for the answer. And so she does. She feels out the power radiating from them--she is better at sensing the elements than sensing 'feelings' like this, but even so she does not feel hostility from them. Reassuring or not... She wonders.
"I don't feel any danger in them," Lulu says, partly to reassure Rikku in particular, and partly because--well. She's not the only one who needs reassuring. Yuna is afraid, and why shouldn't she be? This is confusing. Lulu cannot protect her from the fear of something happening to Tidus. But...
"...I wonder," she says. "Could he be...?"
Wakka looks to Lulu, "Eh? Do you know what's goin' on?"
"...No," Lulu admits. "But he touched the Fayth and fell. I don't think it's coincidence. It's possible that he's communing with the Fayth... but Yuna would have a better guess about that than I would."
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku might be dreaming right now too, to have heard that kind of response from Auron with her own ears.
Stunned by him seeming to show confidence in him? Caring? Fatherly pride? "So it's... like a win - lose kind of thing?" She says, voice sounding strained but at least... grateful for it being put in terms that aren't so cryptic.
Lulu follows up by saying she doesn't feel any danger, and Rikku turns around. "You don't?"
As she follows up with communing, Rikku gives her a strange look, "Really? But Yunie seemed... when we saw her..."
Rikku calls up that image of Yuna after communing with the Fayth and it's not too off... she just seemed more, awake! Kind of!
After a moment Rikku squats down behind Yuna, putting a hand around her side as if to offer some support with a touch, but not a touch that demands her attention. Instead she puts her attention on being another voice calling out to him.
"Hey! Finish up in there - and wake up!"
She at least sounds somewhat less... freaked out, talking as if Tidus is simply in the middle of some high stakes Blitzball competition or something, which she's confident he'll win just... just...
"... come on Tidus... we need you..."
... she implores, perhaps a bit less forcefully than her initial effort.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Auron gazes on Yuna. If he sees that memory of a memory of a smile, he doesn't remark on it--though, then again, he wouldn't. He merely watches over her--watches over both his Summoner and his fellow Guardians--as they beg Tidus to return to wakefulness. He neither confirms nor denies Lulu's supposition, though he's more than willing to let her take Rikku's attention. Naturally, he doesn't answer her question about the win-lose thing, either. Auron never was good at explaining things in words.
---
Bahamut's fayth tells Tidus matter-of-fact that he is the dream.
Briefly, Tidus remembers Seymour declaring him the same. But that at least was a context that made sense. He stares at the child. "Huh? Wait a sec."
But naturally, the fayth doesn't wait. He follows the strange child onto the upper deck and looks out at the twinkling lights of the city. A rush of nostalgia and homesickness washes over him like a powerful wave, so strong it nearly knocks him off his feet. For an instant, he remembers that vision he had when he and Yuna went to help break Althena's Guard's sealing rod, of the little girl with the long purple-black hair, black dress, chestnut eyes, and pale skin, far too pale for all the sun Zanarkand sees in the daytime.
And then the fayth speaks, and Tidus fixes his attention on him. A war... "Yeah, with machina, right?" he says, thinking of all the history lessons (more like history tidbits, but who's counting?) he's heard from Wakka and Lulu. It's definitely a different perspective than the one Tidus has been fed so far, but he already knows the history of Yevon is riddled with lies. It figures that this kid is a victim of theirs too.
His eyebrows furrow as the fayth continues, though. When he mentions that the residents of Zanarkand became fayth for the summoning. "You mean for Sin?" he asks--but no. For Zanarkand itself. The Zanarkand that never sleeps. Understanding finally dawns, like the sun that has yet to come. "The people--what, they're all dreams? Me, too?"
Him, too, indeed. And if the fayth stop dreaming--all of Zanarkand vanishes. Everything he grew up with, everything he's been trying to return home to--all gone. And naturally, if *they* all vanish--so would he. "No!" he gasps, blood draining from his tan face. He mentally rallies as best he can, then protests, "So what if I'm a dream? I... I like being here."
It's a lot to process. But whatever else, he still wants to live.
And maybe he can--maybe he can't. Bahamut's fayth has more to explain. "What are you saying?" he prompts, not sure he understands.
'Please...' Yuna's voice, an image of her face, pleads. 'Please, wake up.'
And once the fayth has had his final word, has explained, however cryptically, what he wants of both him and his father...
---
Tidus's eyelashes flutter, then crack open.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Those final words still ring in Tidus' ears.
"We've been dreaming so long... we're tired. Would you and your father... would you let us rest?"
It seems a genuine request. A little plaintative. The root of that earlier wistfulness metastasizes into an ancient and profound... pain.
But the fayth isn't so self-obsessed that he can't explain why he brought up Tidus' dad.
"Both you and your father have been touched by Sin. Sin, the one around whom all Spira -- the spiral -- revolves. You two are more than just dreams now."
And he isn't so hopeless that he can't imagine a way out.
"Just a little more, and maybe... maybe you are the dream that will end our dreaming at last."
---
"Oh, thank goodness," Yuna exhales. She neither confirmed nor denied the theory that Tidus had been communing with, or otherwise taken by, the fayth. Say what you like about her fear versus Rikku's confidence; does she believe in Tidus less... or does she need him more? Regardless, it is banished by the opening of his eyes, as surely as the sunrise banishes the shadow.
Not that she takes his wellness for granted. She never would.
"Are you all right? What happened?"
Since he's a little bit on top of her, she can't actually help him up, and makes no move to cease being his pillow. He can rise in his own time.
But his clothes are a little creased from where her fingertips wore worried circles in them while he was away.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu just waits. Rikku's strange look gets a shake of Lulu's head; she is, after all, only guessing. But Auron has no particular explanation, and Tidus awakens before Lulu can theorize any further. She has no reason to prompt him for what happened when he can tell them himself.
She turns towards him, watching, eyeing his expression and waiting for him to have anything to say. She won't push him to do anything from here; he can see for himself that they were all waiting for him.
"'Ey, there he is," Wakka says in some relief. "...Welcome back," Lulu says instead of repeating the question, and it's possible to detect the concern in her voice even so.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
While Rikku is intensely relieved to see Tidus open his eyes, it cannot compare to Yuna's relief in the matter.
"Hey! We were worried sick about you!"
Rikku says as she stands back up, giving him some room for air... and to give Yuna and him a bit of space.
Yuna asks what happens though, so she doesn't.
Instead she glances from him, to Auron... as if she might...
... glean some further insight from a stone statue.
But maybe for once, such is her gratitude for giving some answer that she doesn't...
'Spill the beans' when it comes to what he said.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
More than just dreams. ...So if the fayth awaken, does that mean he and his old man will get to live?
Somehow, Tidus has a feeling that isn't so. And his feelings are usually spot-on. Even so...
'Maybe you are the dream that will end our dreaming at last.'
"..."
...he's not so cruel that he can ignore such a deep and obvious pain. He's just not the type to let someone else suffer so he can be happy. Maybe that's one of the reasons Tidus and Yuna fell for one another; they've got that in common.
And so, he opens his eyes. He sees Yuna kneeling above him, hears her words of relief, feels her lap under his head. He's loathe to leave the comfort it offers, but he gets to his feet anyway. For a moment, he stares at the massive wall of fayths. He stares at Auron, who simply stares back. And he stares at his friends and his beloved. At Wakka's tentative but sincere warmth; at Lulu's 'welcome home'; at Rikku's roundabout scolding; at Yuna's plain, heartfelt relief and concern.
What happened?
Tidus shakes his head a little to snap himself back to the present moment. "Oh, uhh," he utters.
...how can he explain something like this to them? To anyone? He can barely grasp it himself--along with the request the fayth made of him.
His insides feel very, very tight. Suddenly he understands all too well how everyone could have kept the truth about Summoners from him.
"Nothing... I passed out. I was dreaming, and I heard you calling, so... I woke up," he ultimately says, an entirely truthful summary that nonetheless explains nothing. Tidus full-body stretches and gives an exaggerated yawn. "Whew! Nothing like a good nap! Well, I'm ready. Let's go!"
And then he'll march onward without waiting for anyone's reaction, by necessity pulling them along. Auron silently underscores this by striding after him without hesitation.
There's still much of the journey left through Mt. Gagazet, after all. Waterlogged caverns through the mountainside; fiends, sent by Yunalesca to test the Summoner; the most ferocious of them, lying in wait at the exit, to give them all a fierce battle. Soon, they'll reach the summit. Soon means that... there's not much time left.
It's another truth that weighs heavy on Tidus. He doesn't have any ideas on how to save Yuna yet still. He can't help but drag his feet, no matter how victorious they were.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
No one who watches Yuna watch Tidus could possibly believe that she believes him.
But no one who knows Yuna could fail to understand her, when she lets him deceive her without calling him out.
That's all any of them have been doing, for most of the pilgrimage; Tidus the only one of them truly genuine for most of it, involuntarily without subtext, because of his own ignorance. If he wants to swathe his feelings in it now... how could she, of all people, possibly complain?
The journey continues. Yuna and Auron share a special moment that settles the silence between them into something still quiet, but suddenly closer than ever. She is his daughter, and she is his summoner, and neither of those things are his story. They aren't hers, either. Some truths don't have to be told in the throughline of the narrative. Sometimes they are simply allowed to exist, hanging quietly, shimmering softly on the sidelines of the heart.
Some things ARE said aloud. Auron recounts the tale of his shaken resolve just as they crest the summit, when he was forced to reckon with the imminence of Braska's demise. "Legendary guardian? I was just a boy. A boy about your age, actually. I wanted to change the world, too. But I changed nothing. That is my story."
Yuna says nothing to this. She says nothing at all.
Her eyes are on the horizon... and everything that lies in between.
The far side of the mountain is lit by sunset, and it casts the view in a brazen gold light that reddens with every passing moment, like a still-wet watercolor held beneath a dripping wound.
The city is vast. Tidus' own stories failed to really do it justice, not to Yuna, who has never seen a larger city than the (much-depopulated-from-their-historical-heights) coastal town of Luca, the religious capital of Bevelle. Neither could be called a METROPOLIS. Not since Sin arrived. And this couldn't either. Not anymore.
Because the city is dead.
Yuna stares out and down at the ruins, and when Tidus sees her expression he knows in his heart that some tiny part of her really, truly believed him, believed him until the very last moment, until the absolute awful reality of the loss of his home was spread out before them like a tapestry of death.
Zanarkand is desolate, even in sunlight. No buildings stand tall save for one, at the very center; the towers and spires that still contain multiple floors somehow seem smaller for it, shrunken in the shadows of the skyscrapers they must have once been. All is cast down, all is broken, all is lost. Lost to time and to wear and, most of all, to grief -- the endless, spiraling grief at Spira's core.
There is something of an inland sea to Zanarkand... a STAGGERING number of pyreflies, beautiful in their rippling, their undulations, the surfaces they compose by sheer density rather than any intention. Yuna could Send until she was so old and gray that she collapsed to join them, and there would still be more. How she feels, near them, is harder to say, but again not that hard for those who know her well. She feels THEM, of course. It's what she does. It's who she is, and always has been.
Yuna gazes at the remnant dead of a thousand-year-old war...
...and they gaze back.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu does not voice again her theory. Tidus says it's nothing; he was dreaming, and he woke up. Yuna does not question it, and Lulu likewise fails to call him out. She has no need or plan to force the issue. Wakka looks to Lulu for a moment as if she might have an answer, and she just shakes her head. "All right, then."
They continue. They continue, and Auron recounts his tale. Just a boy, he says. And Lulu remembers...
She remembers him, back then. Lulu knows at least one thing that Auron changed, though he could not change back then all that she wanted either. There was no more help that could be given. How could she have anticipated that one day she would be journeying with him, too? ...And with...
Lulu is quiet too as they look to the horizon, as the sunset shows them a vision that Lulu has been chasing for over a decade, now. Her first Pilgrimage came so close, and yet remained so far. Her second never really even had a chance. And this, her third...
It has seen her here, to in sight of the holy city, and yet the cost... Oh, the cost.
The spiraling grief at Spira's core feels, to Lulu, for a moment as if it cannot compete with that spiral at her own. The sheer number of pyreflies is a reminder of the death that awaits. ...Of one, in particular....
Lulu too stares out into the city. And she says nothing.
She says nothing, for one of the last times.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
A city dead for a thousand years. A city I had to see with my own eyes. The end of Yuna's journey. The last chapter in my story.
'That is my story,' Auron says, and Tidus says nothing to this either. He can't. He knows these words are for him ("a boy your age," he says while looking at him), and he knows the warning Auron is giving him. He just... doesn't know what to do about it.
Similarly, he doesn't know what to do about the view of Zanarkand from the summit of Mt. Gagazet. He can see in Yuna's expression the heartwrenching loss, to see this, not the Zanarkand that never sleeps, but a Zanarkand broken and shattered. He knows how she feels, because he feels the same way. A little part of him had been holding out hope, too. But even if he hadn't spoken with Bahamut's fayth, even if little doubts hadn't been nagging him for months... he nows know, without a doubt, that his home is gone. That he'll never be able to return to it.
My thoughts, they kept floating up, and then slipping through my fingers. Slipping away before I could pin them down with words.
He has some insight too as to what Lulu might be thinking--a rare thing in general, but for him and her in particular. But, before they even made their way through the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth, Lulu had confided in him a little about her previous pilgrimages--of what became of Gimmel, in particular. She'd never made it past the Calm Lands, previously. Now... now she'll finally make it to Zanarkand.
Yet this journey, too, is primed to end in death. The time they all sought--the hopes they all had--are slipping like sand through their fingers. Tidus doesn't even need to look at Rikku to know she feels the same way he does: that terror that they won't be smart enough, informed enough, clever enough to figure out a way to save Yuna from the fate to which she's resigned herself. Rikku can beg her to stop and think a little longer, but they'll still need to move onward. Onward into the city, where countless cores of pyreflies dance. Where a dropped sphere may play back a final message. Where they'll all sit 'round the campfire, until Tidus climbs a pile of rubble and gazes out on the dying embers of the setting sun over the city he dreamed of as home.
"Listen to my story.
"This may be our last chance..."