2023-01-18: Mother-In-Baaj
- Log: Mother-In-Baaj
- Cast: Seymour Guado, Yuna, Lulu, Paine, Tidus, Rikku
- Where: Baaj Temple
- Date: January 18, 2023
- Summary: Yuna and her Guardians make a pilgrimage to the Temple Of The Mother-In-Law. Truly, an aeon of darkness.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Yuna and her Guardians have made their way into Baaj Temple.
They had a seal to undo first -- but once that was done, there was a stone walkway inside. They found something in that hallway; a space where the masonry had been opened, cut apart to reveal stairs that led down into a room with Elw crystals. There was little else in there, save for an answer.
They now know how Seymour ventured to Filgaia. He found the ruins under Baaj.
But then, they found their way to the inner chamber. It is not like most Fayth chambers -- oh, there is a colorful thing of blues, yellows, and whites; like abstract art, both of a woman and a flower, chained, and with horns and fish-like appendages in places. It rests in the center.
But this is also a living space.
There are two couches, in the corner; dry and dusty now, as if they haven't been lived in for ages. There is a door to the side, open to a bedroom. There are bookshelves upon bookshelves here -- stacked with countless tomes. Many on magic; many on history; some for children. One shelf, still dusty, has both human and Guado children's toys.
This chamber isn't only where Anima's Fayth rests. This chamber is where Seymour Guado came of age.
It is all the more eerie, now, knowing what it is.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna was not extremely useful against the hungry bonefish guarding Baaj -- underwater fighting is the province of Tidus, Rikku, Wakka and perhaps Paine. Her primary role was as bait. Accidental bait. Nobody WANTED her to draw the attention of the powerful fiend such that it would leap gracelessly out of the water like an osseous whale, suck her into its cage-like gullet, and splash back down into the water, but after two or three other times this has happened, no one was really that surprised.
There's just something about Yuna and the water. A destiny of Shoopuf. Even if this time was exceptionally dangerous.
So, now that they're entering the temple proper, she is dripping wet. Looking back, after her first couple footsteps, she seems extra embarrassed by the tracks that they're leaving. She abandons her sodden boots at the threshhold and fishes around in her pack. "Towel, towel," she mutters.
This is a hell of a time to be concerned about such niceties. Maybe she wants to make a good impression on her ex-fiance's mother (or, depending on how significant you think Mika's hastily conducted "MAN AND WIFE"-esque ceremony was, her ex-mother-in-law)? Or maybe she's trying to avoid thinking about how she's about to meet her ex's mother at all?
But then, she's the one who wanted to come here. Yuna never brings Seymour up as a topic, not ever, which is a clear sign that one, the history there upsets her a lot, and two, she still shoulders a lot of the blame for some of the twists and turns. But she's on a quest to find and unite even the most lost and obscure of Spira's aeons -- having rejected the Final Aeon and reluctantly destroyed its source, they are a rare alternate path to the answers her namesake denied her in Zanarkand. For who could possibly know more about Sin than they?
On the flip side, Anima is perhaps the youngest aeon Yuna can imagine. Having witnessed Seymour and his mother, as reproduced by pyreflies in the Zanarkand Great Sphere, she knows that any secrets uncovered in Baaj are less likely to be about the distant past, and more likely to be about the immediate past.
But it all feels... connected to her, somehow, and not just because Seymour wanted to be Sin when he grew up, so very, very badly. Everything old is new again, in Spira. Within a spiral of death, revelations may not have to come from so far back in history's march as one might otherwise expect.
She has to find hope in such places, now that Yunalesca's false hope is gone for good.
It's taking her way too long to find her towel. The purse-rummaging is dragging out, becoming kind of agonizing to watch, as she drips onto the nice floors of Seymour's childhood home all the while. And, in any case, her pack is as soaked as she is.
She must be really nervous about Baaj.
She could use a little help.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu stayed up on the wall, mostly. She wasn't going to go fighting underwater. Sure, she can. She has! She has Ghaleon's water-breathing spell, and can direct herself through the massive, massive amounts of water that would be soaking her clothes.
...But then Yuna got dragged in and that's when Lulu had to deal. It was unfortunate. She did not forgive the monster. She did casually do away with the water as soon as they came aground. For herself, naturally.
But something about Yuna here... Yes. yes, Lulu can see her anxiety, even before the business with the towel, and frankly she expects it. There's a lot of reason for her to have it. Even, perhaps especially, since Anima is a young Aeon...
Lulu looks around the chamber, first. She regarded the Elw crystals, and made a note of them; they should use remember the teleporter here, in case. "Seymour used this place. ...Troublesome. How many more such portals are there, waiting to be found?"
The inner chamber... Lulu looks upon the living space, and thinks of the scene from the pyreflies back then.
Then she looks at Yuna, and proffers a towel for her. "Yuna," she says, with that particular big sisterly note in her voice, but as she hands over the towel for Yuna's face, she focuses, and begins to separate the water from Yuna. It takes more focus and work than doing it for herself, but it is clearly necessary.
"...It's all right." More gently.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine looks so different when she's drenched. She scooped her hair back with her hands when she got out, and lets it drip down onto her dry cloak, which she shed before diving. Dark dots are spread across her back from this dripping, getting smaller towards the edges. With her hair so flat and low, it feels longer than usual, a drippy steel-grey mullet, with a tendril or two of bangs constantly escaping to hang clammily against a cheek. She pauses as Yuna begins to fret over a towel, and when Lulu supplies it and the more-important comfort to go along with it, Paine continues past them, moving from the rear to the front of the group to case out the room a little. It is Yuna's task to put her best foot forward here. It is Paine's to make sure it does not get bitten off.
The whole thing where her Summoner got eaten whole recently has not inclined her to relax her usual uptightness about it, either.
"Hm," she comments on the art piece. "Reminds me of Tidus."
The color scheme? A joke to put Yuna at ease? Some aesthetic insight of her own, or just very poor appreciation for art? Hard to say.
Her carbine is slung, seemingly casually, in the crook of one arm. She nudges one of the couch cushions with it a little, more thoughtfully than cautiously.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
When Tidus first arrived in Spira, it was here, at Baaj Temple. He hadn't known anything about the world or the temples or fiends or anything at all, and narrowly escaped getting eaten by a giant fiend. Now that they're back again?
Payback time. ESPECIALLY when it freaking leaps out of the water to swallow Yuna up.
So if he's humming a victory ditty a bit as he and Yuna and everyone walk into Baaj Temple, you'll have to forgive him. He at least doesn't keep it up as Yuna frets over getting herself a towel; he pats her back and reassures her with, "Hey, you'll dry off in no time!"
Lulu has the actual towel on hand, which is good, because Tidus's expression clouds when she actually names the elephant in the room. But rather than squalling about it, he snorts and waves a hand. "Hey, we'll figure it out! It's not like we don't already know what went down here!"
Despite his dismissive tone, he shoots Yuna a concerned look. ...Talking about Seymour really does suck, and it's going to be pretty much unavoidable here.
Especially when they actually reach the Chamber of the Fayth, and it's more like a child's room than a holy chamber. Tidus takes it all in with utterly dismayed silence. Thankfully, Paine gives him a hearty distraction, and he demands with overblown-for-humor indignation, "What?! How?! How do I look like a fish, Paine!!"
Boy, he hopes Rikku catches up soon.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
!!OMAKE!!
Geosgaeno is finished off unexpectedly, inhaled in one massive gulp by... Leviathan.
Auron, deadpan: "There's always a bigger fish."
---
BACK TO REALITY
With almost as much dignity as a small child pushed into a tissue and told to blow, Yuna quietly and gratefully accepts Lulu's care. Between the tone of Lulu's voice and Yuna's own behavior, it's momentarily easier to imagine the two of THEM as children. A chubbier, tinier Yuna grasping a slender, more youthful gothy Lulu's hand...
"Thank you, Lulu," she murmurs, more formally than usual -- DEFINITELY the eyes of Anima's fayth are looming large over her shoulder, at least in her own mind. She inhales sharply, steeling herself; lets Paine and Tidus' double act relax her a little more; and walks quietly -- and without any more footprints -- into the chamber proper.
Any lingering hesitation is in her voice only, which is not an atypical place for it to live in Yuna. "Um," is her only comment, as her eyes range over the bedroom, the library, the toy shelf of the man who would have had her die for his ascension to immortal godhood.
She seems... sad, now, more than nervous. This is no place for a child. It is so far removed from the sunny beaches of Besaid as to be unimaginable. Even Bevelle was better.
Crossing the room with a quiet dignity, she stops in front of the fayth's statue, and gives the final resting place of Seymour's mother her full attention and all formal respects. Blitzball cheer, Yevonite prayer... in Yuna's gentle, heretical hands, the invisible sphere feels warm, even alive, like an egg.
Maybe it's for the Sin-less future, the future yet unborn. The only thing she ever hopes to mother.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
When pyreflies emerge from the Fayth, it really shouldn't come as a surprise. They lift, slowly and leisurely at first, until more and more form.
They take the form of a human woman.
Seymour Guado resembled his father more than his mother, at a glance; she is a woman with dark hair, wearing a blue and white dress. Black sleeves, with gold lining, are worn too. She is in her early middle ages -- and somehow still very young.
But her spectral form looks as it did in life -- at the end of her life, many years ago.
She looks down at them, and despite being a ghost, she is quiet. She seems taken aback, for a moment; an expression of surprise on her face. "Sir Auron," she says. "And... Braska's daughter. I never had the chance to meet you myself. Of all those who might have found this place..."
She tilts her head. "...I didn't think it would be you." Her eyes turn towards Paine, Tidus, and Lulu. She doesn't know them, after all. But still, she smiles. "Guardians, too... I know how hard that can be."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu is primarily focused on Yuna, of course. ...But she handed Paine a potion, during the battle. She has been keeping an eye on her, as well. And now, she did take a moment to regard her in all her soakedness. ...She doesn't give Paine a towel, though. She only had the one.
But it's nice to see Tidus happy about it. Not that she says as much. Instead...
"We will," Lulu agrees with Tidus, that they will figure it out. ...The jokes she can leave. However...
It is, indeed. No place for a child. Lulu watches Yuna as she goes. She watches the prayer.
And then...
Lulu is dry, unlike the other Guardians, and stoic, not unlike Auron or Paine. Somehow, her hair is still artfully arranged. She is perfectly in place, and holds herself with dignity and quiet.
She was not going to say anything at all, but...
Anima's Fayth greets them, and Lulu bows her shoulders and head in respect. She leaves the heretical prayers to Yuna.
"...I understand that you do," she says solemnly, respectfully. It is more than she would have said, once.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
So how about them Elw ruins?
Rikku found all sorts of neat stuff! Until that moment where she picked up the wrong neat thing.
This led to a few not so neat experiences, notably, falling through space for about ten minutes before...
SPLOOSH!
She was ejected right into where Geosgaeno used to lair.
Now?
DRA ELW YNA DUDYM ZANGC
Dusting off her hands status post defacing ancient ruins with graffiti, she finally races, still dripping wet, as she catches up with a little hop Paine's way and a squeeze of her shoulder, before she falls in behind the other Guardians.
A little quiet, and - she makes a gesture Tidus' way towards the Fayth with a little cant of her head as if to ask the question without interrupting-
'Hey didn't we see her before back in Zanarkand with fake vision child Seymour aka the Best Seymour?'
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
"Your favorite place is a bowl," Paine points out to Tidus. She's not paying a lot of attention to him, though, because she finally caught Lulu looking at her. She gives her what might seem from the outside to be a hostile look. You got a problem?, it asks, as her slicked-back hair drips, her sidelocks all the more like sideburns when they hang straight down and plaster to her cheeks. She presses down the inside of her lower lip with her teeth, asymmetrically, so that she can give a quick blast of a breath upward out the corner, knocking a dangling blade of silvery hair out of the way of the cross-room contact between red eyes.
Paine tends to follow along reflexively with Yuna's salutes. Given what little is evident about her past, she might be expected to have complex feelings about that, but if she does, it is not obvious; her Yevonite observances seem neither overtly sincere or reluctant. But the Fayth are Yuna's to appease. She is the pilgrim. Paine is her porter, that's all.
Well, perhaps there is a little more. The ghostly woman's appearance causes a soft clatter as Paine lifts her carbine with that one forearm, then a soft rustle as she lets it down again. The hardness in her eyes does not abate at her offer of sympathy; if the cold Paine wishes to be comforted, it is not by the dead.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
"That doesn't make me some kinda freaky *fish man*! Come on!" Tidus protests at Paine, putting an extra whine in his voice for comedic effect. When Paine's attention goes over to Lulu, though, he drops it. Yuna seems to be a little more relaxed, anyway.
Indeed, as Yuna finally enters the Chamber and gathers herself up to bow to the Fayth, Tidus watches her. He watches her a lot, of course. She's beautiful, and kind, and fun, and in quiet moments like these he's reminded all over again about why he fell in love with her. But it's also sad. There's a lot of baggage here in this place they've never been to before, and he isn't the ignorant young Guardian who's clueless about it all.
So when the pyreflies gather into the form of a woman he's seen once before in the ruins of his hometown, he keeps respectfully silent for a moment. It isn't her fault that Seymour turned out the way he did. (Even though it really kind of is. Tidus never blamed his own mother for her part in his childhood abuse, either.) He offers her an awkward smile back when she looks over at him and Lulu and Paine. "Yeah..."
No, this vibe is all wrong. When Lulu agrees, he rallies himself mentally, broadens his lips into a grin and pumps a fist. "We're figuring a better way, though! That's why we're here to see you!" And because it's still weird and awkward: "Uh, m-ma'am?"
Rikku doesn't make this *better* when she catches up, dripping wet, with the group; he glances her way, and that moment their eyes meet, she jerks her head the Fayth's way in silent inquiry.
Tidus's silent response?
'*grimace emoji*'
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
When the fayth speaks of the trials of Guardians, and Lulu politely affirms this understanding, something occurs to Yuna that never has before.
For better or for worse, though, the revelation that dawns in her eyes does not instantly pop out of her mouth. She is much too reluctant a speaker for that. It worms around inside of her, as she nods a silent welcome to Rikku's rejoining the group, and as Paine salutes and Tidus states their business.
"Yes," she agrees with him, as to their raison d'etre. But she is agreeing with the fayth as well, on another point, simultaneously.
"I think... it had to be me," she says, as to the latter. And then her consideration comes out anyway, with perhaps better phrasing than it would have at greater speed. "Children... often wish to follow in the footsteps of their parents."
It's not the only difference between the paths of Seymour and Yuna. But it certainly is a difference: Braska died a summoner. His mother died a Final Aeon.
"We saw you together," she explains quietly, gravity drawing her voice low. "In Zanarkand." No further clarification is necessary. Surely mother and child saw visions of their own at the time.
"He loved you... very much," she murmurs.
Perhaps it isn't so strange that he was drawn to emulate the one person he cared for more than any other.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"Ah... then you've come about my son," she says.
The specter is silent for a moment. Her eyes sweep over them -- there isn't any flinching at Paine's cold response, but in truth, that is evidence of her altered humanity. Perishing but continuing on can alter a person; make their thoughts less human, their emotions more singular. People do take after their parents.
"He did," she says. "And I... failed him. I will not make excuses for my decisions. They were made by a desperate woman, facing her own death, and they were still my decisions."
She closes her eyes. But she speaks to what Lulu said. "I may have guarded him, but I was no Guardian of his."
She hesitates for a moment. "I understand, too, what he has become. I... saw some of what he tried to do -- and some of the pain inflicted upon you, Lady Yuna," she says. "I know the part that I played in that, and I am sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu doesn't comment on Rikku's furtive gesture. She notices it, of course. She does. But it's fine to leave such things to Rikku and Tidus. ...as for Paine, she doesn't glare back at Paine. She just gives her a 'look' for a moment back. What kind of look it is would be hard for most to say.
She does, however, notice Paine's gesture, and prepare to lift a hand--but before she does so, she notices that the woman does not flinch, and Paine does not keep it up. She stills her hand.
Figuring out a better way, Tidus says. and Yuna...
Yes. Yes, it had to be Yuna. And Yuna explains, that they saw. She does not further clarify, either.
...As for her apologies... Lulu looks to her impassively, and shakes her head. That is all. It is not her place to forgive or to forget those transgressions; it is not her place to absolve.
She was no Guardian... Lulu nods. She will not argue; she accepts this self-determination, of a woman who had made of herself a Final Aeon. Nevertheless, while she would not and does not say it... she knows, some of what that is.
She would have, for Yuna.
But for now Lulu only stands in silence.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
The grimace emoji says it all. Rikku's thoughts on the whole situation are mixed.
She has sympathy for the victimhood of it all, the two being caught within the craziness of Spira's spiral of death.
However, there are some things she can't forgive, or forget. What Seymour did to Home is one of those things.
She listens to her apology, and- "Mmmm..." Putting both her hands behind her head she thinks about it.
It's an apology to Yuna in the end, so it doesn't feel right to accept it - as an apology to the Al Bhed, or to herself for those she lost.
She doesn't blame her for the decisions Seymour did that caused so much pain and destruction to what her people built. He could have responded to what she did to him in so many different ways and he always chose the worst way.
In the end she just stands there listening, watching, and waiting.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine may or may not understand Lulu's 'look,' but she seems satisfied with whatever transpired, just for a moment.
The discussion Yuna is having holds her gaze firmly, but she does glance away, twice. Once is at the thinking-sound Rikku makes. Her eyes return slowly after that, as if she has ceded that perserveration to Rikku. She never seemed much inclined to do it herself.
The second time is when the apparition apologizes for Yuna's pain. This glance away is quicker, accompanied by a slight twitch of her lips. The offense she took at Seymour's attempt(?) to marry Yuna has not faded. Nor does she seem to much-value an apology from the woman who created Seymour, physically but also in a subtler and more important sense. But she does not bark. That is not the sort of guard she is.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
'Children... often wish to follow in the footsteps of their parents.'
That one makes Tidus flinch. He'd already noticed the parallels with Yuna and her father, and him and *his* father, but he'd never really thought about it in regards to Seymour. Never wanted to think about it, maybe. But Seymour's very much a product of both his parents, isn't he? Both in his mother who became a Final Aeon, and his father who became a Maester.
He doesn't like it. He doesn't like thinking of Seymour as a person who was done dirty as a child and grew up into that dirtiness.
So when the Fayth apologizes for her part in the pain Seymour's visited on Yuna, he squirms uncomfortably but says nothing. In the end, it doesn't change what they're here to do, right? And it's not like he's praying to the Fayth. If he knew Rikku's thoughts about Seymour always choosing the worst way to respond to what was done to him, maybe he'd feel better about it. But he doesn't, so he'll just keep his mouth shut for now, even as he glances at Lulu next to him, similarly silent. From there he sees Paine hold back what he interprets to be a scowl. That *does* make him feel a little better, actually. Knowing that this is actually kind of terrible for everyone... makes him feel less alone.
He looks forward again towards Yuna. She might not be looking back at him so she may not realize it, but he projects as much support as he can through stare alone. (It's the thought that counts.)
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Once upon a time, Yuna's only interest was in easing others' pain. The swiftest path to this was the path she always chose, even -- especially -- at her own expense.
It would be easy to simply accept the apology of the fayth. And certainly her pain is palpable; the summoner's soul, united with so many others already, is perhaps the instrument most keenly attuned in Spira to resonate with the grief of the dead in general and the ghosts behind aeons in particular. Any warping is close to her heart also; the inhumanity of those she Sends, whether before or after they've become fiends, is sometimes more familiar than the vagaries of those who still draw breath. Certainly, by now, after the battlefields she's traveled, she has come to know more of the dead than the living. FAR more.
But her Guardians have their own feelings, and some of that, too, is pain.
And her own heart... also matters. The lesson it has taken the longest for her to learn. Tidus' support reminds her of it, now.
"I thank you," she says at last, and for a second it seems like maybe she is still the old Yuna after all, the one who sometimes mistook weakness for strength when taking the path of least resistance. The one who let destiny simply carry her away.
"But..."
Yuna, for once, does not hesitate. Her Al Bhed green and Bevellian blue eyes gaze directly at the fayth's, at and through her also, seeing both the woman and the statue behind her; both ARE her, in a very real sense, at this stage of her unlife.
"...forgive my contradiction, but he is STILL trying. Death has not stopped him. So... I must. He seeks to become Sin. And I... I seek to end Sin forever."
For Spira's sake, but for his, also. FINALLY FOR REAL FOR GOOD AND FOR ALWAYS Sending Seymour is a sacred duty to Yuna. More sacred, in a way, than anything she might do with Sin, having driven that ritual of life and death firmly off a cliff. With the Final Aeon gone, the first and last duty of a summoner is to help fiends find a peaceful rest. With, well, violence.
Seymour is obviously going to come back as long as Sin exists.
"Please," Yuna says, bowing and shaping the prayer again, much more supplicant priestess than mournful daughter-in-law, but undeniably representing both. There's no point in pretending this isn't abysmally personal to them both. Indeed... the power of an aeon is born from that very same connection. The light that conquers Sin. They never met in life, but...
"Please. Please help me."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
It isn't lost on Seymour's mother: the Guardians are quiet, so that Yuna can speak. In a way, it is appropriate; after all, Yuna is the one who makes an agreement with her. Her eyes are on her, as her body shimmers at times -- translucent, pyreflies occasionally rising to the surface of her, and out.
"...So he is," she says, her voice soft. "Our bond was severed after his death -- but death was not the reason."
For Unsent have been Summoners.
"He wanted to be free of the past. And I am the past -- and this is where he is mistaken. For an Unsent is always the past." She gives, at this moment, a pointed look in Auron's direction.
"And he may speak of the future, but he isn't trying to make a future," she says. "You, Lady Yuna, are I believe."
She hesitates for a moment.
"And perhaps, because the dead are always in the past, we have a duty to put it to rest. I cannot allow my son to destroy Spira -- or to destroy any vestiges of the best parts of himself. If there is to be something left of the boy who loved to learn, who laughed easily, who could look at the world's foibles with a sigh and smile... then he must be stopped."
She bows her head, her eyes closed, to Yuna's prayers. "And I shall lend you my aid. To stop him. And to end Sin."
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu does not think Yuna is the same Yuna she once was. She does not think it when Yuna thanks the Fayth; she does not believe it when she answers. No, the things that Yuna has said are true, and Lulu waits to see how Seymour's mother answers to it. He is still trying...
"...To pretend the past can be 'cut off'," Lulu says--Lulu, of all people, perhaps--"Is folly. We move from it. We live forward. But it represents an ongoing chain, a part of us that will remain..."
"And, even if it does so through our efforts to ensure those past mistakes are not repeated--it will influence that future. If we do not acknowledge this, then we won't be the ones who decide how that past shapes our future. It will do it for us. As it has, for a thousand years."
"...I never knew the Seymour you mention," Lulu admits. "But you never knew the little girl I was, before Sin came. We don't have to know each other, to agree on this."
"I will be there, for Yuna. Until the end. ...And beyond."
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine notes the glance at Auron, without understanding it. Perhaps it is just that he is older, more experienced. A Spiran at his age has already lost so many of his friends from youth. Not that youth, as many here know, is any defense either.
It is not entirely a comprehending gaze which greets Lulu's thoughts. A sword is a weapon of severing, and hers is a heavy one. But it is a listening one. And if she has any hesitation about the commitment Lulu has made to their Guardian, it finds no reflection in her posture, ever the calm bristle, ever the mute watchdog.
"With care," she advises Yuna, without rancor for the memory-of-a-woman she regards with less sympathy than her Summoner. "Kindness is wasted on those who cannot change, but caution is not."
She does not bother to lower her voice, or soften the habitual indifference in her tone. But some of those present have seen her ignore what now she advises, once or twice.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Free of the past, huh... Tidus glances over at Auron when Anima's Fayth gives him a pointed look. Is it really the past that Seymour wants to be free of, though? Then again, it's not as though what Seymour wants to be free of doesn't include the past, so maybe that's just splitting hairs.
He blinks, though, when she speaks of the best parts of Seymour. He might have joked, even if only in his own head, that it figures that Seymour has a personality only a mother could love, but she actually names things she loves about him--the things she loved when they were both alive and together--and for some reason...
For some reason, Tidus gets choked up. Emotional and guileless as he is, that means he starts crying.
He doesn't even really know why. (He does know why. He just doesn't want to acknowledge it.) But the sudden understanding that Seymour's mother loved him has somehow hit him where he lives.
He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. What Paine says is sensible and he knows it--and never mind that she doesn't necessarily practice what she preaches--but he doesn't chime in on that. Instead, after Lulu's speech, he chokes out, "Y-yeah. What she said."
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
It's hard to imagine being truly free of the past. Rikku doesn't really talk about hers, she keeps those memories on the inside.
And even then she still understands the Al Bhed aren't free of their past, not with how they're treated in Spira, not with how the ancient past defines where they are - where Spira is today.
Still, she furrows her brow and tries to imagine for a second being in his shoes, wanting to be free of it.
She just can't, in the end she can only focus on a mother's love for a child. Something she can barely remember.
She listens to Lulu's wisdom, then Paine's and when Tidus starts getting choked up. Rikku just quietly moves to his side "Hey-" and offers him something glittering and tissue like to wipe his eyes. "-here."
She gives him a pat on the shoulder and a smile as she murmurs, "Sometimes those memories start leaking out, don't they? Happens to everyone."
She says in acceptance of those tears.
Before she then says towards Seymour's mother, "We'll stop him. Don't you worry. And then both of you can rest."
As soon as she says it she kind of wonders if that's true? Do Fayth rest? Can they? Such mysteries are things she holds her tongue upon.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
It is remarkable to Yuna how different Seymour is from his mother. She's an extraordinarily self-aware fayth, in terms of her relationship with death, with the Unsent. Maybe it's because of her relative youth. Most of the fayth who dwell within Yuna's soul are hundreds of years old, and some even older. They never entirely forget what it is to be human, but as sand flows through the hourglass and the only way they interact with the current and corporeal world, the only way they leave their chamber at all, is in the heart of a summoner, and their unison, the aeon -- they definitely grow more distant from it.
Seymour's mother -- whose name she does not ask for, has learned not to ask for; fayth no longer carry their living names -- understands not only death but life, and the crucial line between the two. And Yuna is humbled by this. Fayth are all people, she knows and embraces this more than most. But such a young fayth...
...is still capable of loving her son.
Before responding, Yuna listens to the wisdom of her Guardians. Lulu's own ruminations on time, death, and life -- and the need to break out of the spiral of history -- brings the immediacy of their mission, rather than the hypotheticals of philosophy or the tragedy of a ghost's love for another ghost, back to the fore. Tidus' emotional reaction to them both brings empathetic tears to the corners of Yuna's eyes, though she does not shed them when she twists her gaze over her shoulder to share a long and sweet look with him. Then with Rikku, who both comforts him and makes an oath -- THE oath, at least as regards Seymour. She gives her cousin a tiny smile and nod of agreement.
And Paine...
"Always with care," she promises, and means it; she always means it, which is what makes watching her give herself away so painful at times. Indeed, her instinct after is in that vein -- she tries to reassure. "But, Paine... there is no deception, between fayth and summoner." Oh, how very, very wrong she is. You can be coming up on eight aeons and still have much you do not, cannot know. But she believes, with a poignant earnestness, that it is so. "To accept an aeon... is to know a fayth. For the paths of their heart to resonate inside your own."
That part is true. And it is rare for the Guardians to get to see it as it happens. Bevelle was the first time for most to commit that particular blasphemy.
"Thank you," she says with care and with kindness both, to Seymour's mother, and to everyone, with her, forever, beyond the end. "I promise to never stop trying to make that future. A future where no more children will suffer as he did. And no more mothers will have to feel such pain. And no more Guardians, either." Those Guardians who do not become fayth experience one of the most profound agonies of all. The only worse fate might be that of the fayth themselves...
She has been standing all this time, but now she prostrates, sinking into seiza with a dancer's grace and a priestess' ease. There is a final invocation of the sacred gesture.
"I am ready," she tells Seymour's mother, finality in her voice. Duty, also. She never emerges from such a union unchanged. And, though she has not complained, allowing herself to be altered, soul-deep, by the mother of her enemy, is a certain kind of sacrifice, too.
But Yuna has always welcomed such sacrifices, unflinching, untrembling. It is an honor and a privilege to be a summoner; to carry a fayth in her heart. Even this fayth. Especially this fayth, who, too, will surely lose something, even as she gains something, by her second summoner being the one who killed her first.
Yuna's eyes unfocus, and her trance begins. Once, this took her two days to accomplish. But there are SOME benefits to experience, even if experience still hasn't hurt her enough to warp her innocent heart.
Good thing she has Paine.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"It is so," Seymour's mother says to Lulu. "The past cannot be undone. But we must continue on. That is one of many mistakes that I made, in the past."
She nods her head at Lulu, before she looks them all over in turn. Her eyes linger briefly on Paine -- but her guardedness doesn't seem to bother her. Perhaps that speaks to the way that death alters a person; the way that they are changed, after their passing.
She looks to Tidus, too. There is a faint look of surprise -- unsure, perhaps, why he is crying -- but she smiles once. Then, she looks to Rikku.
"Then... you have my thanks," she says. "And more than that."
She looks back at Yuna, then, and she considers. She says she is ready. There is not more to be said, now -- not when Yuna will feel her heart, just as she said. She closes her eyes again.
There is a flash, then a pulse of light.
Her ghostly form is gone in a moment. It becomes nothing but pure light -- and what once took days is moments. The light expands outward, then flows into Yuna. A brilliant nimbus of light around her, glowing intensely, but dimming -- as it sinks into her.
Yuna feels another presence, now. A presence, and a resolve.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
"...I understand."
Lulu, perhaps, is more attuned than most to death, as a living human, even among Spirans. ...There are many who would say as much, assuming it from her garb and her choice of vocation. But it is different from the way the dead distance themselves from life. Lulu makes no mistake about the fact that she is among the living... and now, has many reasons to remain that way.
Lulu does not chide Tidus for his tears. Perhaps that is the most notable fact of the moment as regards her behavior. But she watches Yuna... and then she watches the Fayth. 'Both of you can rest', Rikku says. Something...
Perhaps they can.
She is silent, as they watch the sacred rite. There are no words she would use to touch this moment.
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.
Considering how much his old man used to mock him for getting emotional and crying, it really is nice to have supportive friends who take his tears in stride. Even Lulu, who's usually quick to chastise others, doesn't give him any grief. It touches him, this reminder that he's not alone. They're all part of a team now.
Tidus gives Rikku a wobbly but truly grateful smile as he accepts that like-a-tissue. "Thanks, Rikku."
Memories leaking out, huh... Yeah. That is kind of what it is. And before he cleans up, Yuna catches his eye, tears glittering in her own heterochromatic eyes. Tidus's heart and smile both warm as they share a silent communication; then he cleans up his face.
For some reason, he doesn't feel like crying anymore.
And anyway, it's his story, but it's also Yuna's. As she kneels and begins her silent supplication to the Fayth, he stands a little straighter to watch over them both. Seymour's mother gets a smile back, and he lets that speak for itself. But then there is a flash and a pulse, and that light flows into Yuna, beautifully.
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.
Paine inclines her head slightly when Yuna agrees. But she did not seem to expect to be spoken to further; her eyes when they arrive again seem unprepared for the return journey, and confused to be visiting Yuna's guileless face again so soon. She makes a soft sound of acknowledgement, after a moment. But if she, living as she is, changes how she thinks then and there, and views the fayth in a new light, it does not soften her gaze when it returns to Seymour's mother. Kindness has a value as well as a price.
The tears of her comrade invoke a respectful response in Paine, who looks away, not even having glanced directly at him. If Tidus wishes to say, later, that Paine did not see this, Paine will be able to agree in honesty. Paine, who would normally be the first to spar at Tidus with her sharp tongue and brief observations, chooses now to not observe him at all.
But Rikku does otherwise, and Paine winces. Who would want attention drawn to their tears? It's to be expected from Rikku, the way one expects a child to beg a parent not to leave home, and Paine cannot feel angry at her. But she knows it will only make it harder on Tidus.
Or, she thought she knew. When Paine at last does look, briefly, at the young man, it is when Rikku is consoling him. He does not seem ashamed. Whatever sadness is in him does not seem to grow more bitter. Actually, Tidus seems... grateful.
Paine returns to handling this in the way she regarded as best, and does not look again at Tidus, not until a seemly time has past since the last quaver in his voice. She joins Lulu, instead, standing next to the black mage to watch Yuna's latest miracle. If the novelty and awe of witnessing Yuna perform a miracle has diminished slightly, it is more than amply recompensed by the warmth of familiarity, and the peace that comes with fulfilled anticipation.
Lulu, too, granted Tidus the gentleness of her silence.
"You and I," she says, "forgot how to do that."
But whether the ability she thinks they have lost is the one Tidus or Rikku just demonstrated, she does not specify.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku smiles back at Yunie, seeing the glimmer of tears there, then... tells Tidus softly, "Hey no problem. What are friends for?" If Tidus actually looks closely he might realize she actually gave him a Star Curtain.
That's pretty valuable! And thankfully it will not reflect his tears back at his face.
Paine sees this or rather DOESN'T see it, but in not seeing it thinks Rikku is making the wrong call. Rikku - seems oblivious to this judgment.
Not because she doesn't think Paine doesn't notice these things, just that she doesn't have that kind of insight into her as of yet to understand she'd think that.
Eventually she turns to Seymour's mother and nods, before cheerfully saying, "You're welcome!"
In the aftermath, she watches Yuna declare her resolve towards creating that future. A future without suffering, without Guardians. The pain one suffers from being left behind...
Yuna prostrates herself, and for a time she watches, trying to look dignified, but eventually she steals a glance towards Lulu and Paine, maybe catching the comment, maybe not.
It's hard to say, she keeps a lot of things on the inside.
"They really do make a cute couple don't they?" She whispers to Tidus.
and some things she definitely does not but maybe should
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed. <SoundTracker> Apres Moi - Regina Spektor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MlSNck2oP8
Yuna never loved Seymour.
She CARED ABOUT Seymour, both in the general way she cared about everyone, and in the specifics; she cared about a Maester; she cared about a summoner; she cared about a hafu like herself. And after he died, she cared about her victim.
But Yuna carried Jyscal's Sphere weeks before anyone else saw it. From the moment she resolved to meet Seymour at Macalania -- to accept his engagement, in order to get close enough to him to 'Stop My Son' -- she knew what it was that she was marrying, and how it was not just for the sake of Spira's happiness but its future existence. And she did not love him, not in the way that one should love their fiance.
And as death made him crueler and stranger and more extreme -- made him himself, to be sure, but magnified to caricature -- it was easier, in a way, because of that distance. To face him not as a wounded or betrayed lover, but as a survivor. A survivor of his schemes, his rage, and his violence.
That is what Yuna loses forever, when she gains Anima.
Because now, a very real piece of her heart does love Seymour, and in a way often more intimate than that of a spouse. There are few loves as profound as a parent's for their child, and for all her regrets there is no doubt that this mother loved her son to an extraordinary degree.
Yuna can't not love him.
It is a part of her now.
Inextricably. Profoundly.
'Til death do they part.
Yuna does not collapse from the sensory, supernatural and emotional overload of the fayth joining with her, as her Guardians -- who she is blind, deaf and dumb to in these moments -- saw her do in Bevelle Temple. She is stronger now. And more than that...
...she does not let herself collapse.
She does not want to fall, not even from this low place on the ground -- which is WHY she took position on the ground.
She will not fall for Seymour.
She will not.
She does sway, as light courses through her, becomes her, and she becomes it. But then, she rises. Kimahri offers her a hand up, and she takes it, her pale and slender fingers vanishing utterly into his big blue furry palm the way they have since she was a child.
She became an adult on the shores of Mi'ihen. But now she feels... older still. Not older and wiser. Just older and... worse.
"I want... to leave this place," she says, and a weaver's daughter, a Crusader, a fisherman, a nun, a sunlit child, a sailor, a mercenary, and a monster's mother say with her, through her, and none of them with the slightest quaver in their collective, gentle, soft-spoken voice. For Yuna to express what she wants, what she wants personally, for herself, with such directness, is in itself a sign of growth.
This latest alchemy of souls will take a while to fully settle. Most of these fayth have cohabitated before at least once. But Anima's, of course, never has. A very significant introduction is taking place now, behind her eyes; in sharing this union, the other fayth, too, are newly altered, newly expanded. They are all more than they were before. And so is she.
But... more of what?
"Let's go."