2023-04-23: Never Forget
- Cutscene: Never Forget
- Cast: Yuna, Lulu, Paine, Rikku
- Where: Luca
- Date: 04/23/2023
- Summary: After the defeat of Sin, Yuna is asked to address Spira.
Put your fingers in your mouth like this. Uh-uh. Not like that. Like this. Then, you just blow.
An ear-shattering blitzballer whistle rings out over the waves of the Spiran sea. Like the rest of the archipelago, they seem to know that the Calm has come. They swell gently, and each crash against the dock where Yuna stands feels like a kiss.
Under the circumstances this does not make her feel better, unfortunately.
Hey, use that if we get separated. Then I'll come running, okay?
This is the very place it was first demonstrated. Here in Luca. Yuna practiced incessantly during her pilgrimage. The main reason that isn't a well-known fact to her Guardians is that she hardly ever succeeded. Just puffs of air and the occasional raspberry noise.
Now, finally, she can do it at will.
Guess we should just stick together then, till you can do it.
Maybe... maybe she shouldn't have tried.
As the third whistle dies, carried far from shore on the sea breeze, but not far enough -- it will never go far enough -- Yuna closes her eyes and tries to remember what it felt like to be embraced by Tidus. But her memory betrays her -- it betrays her because she DOES remember their last embrace -- and how it felt like nothing at all.
She closed her eyes then, too, on the airship, and she lolled her head back on her neck, ever so slightly. Straining to lean into his touch, into him, without going so far as to shatter the fragile illusion that they could touch at all.
But they were past lies, there at the end. They both knew better.
And her shoulders prickle with that feeling -- that feeling of nothing, that should have been something. She shakes her head to clear it, then again, harder. This isn't, this isn't helping at all.
Her eyes snap open, she brings up her thumb and forefinger again, takes a deep breath, and--
"Yuna, it's time," Lulu announces, having quietly come up behind her.
Yuna turns. There are no lies between the two of them anymore, either. So she doesn't paste on a smile.
But, as she hears the distant sound of a vast and restless crowd, her steady, ground-eating, death-march pace breaks into a quickening trot.
---
Yuna's address is broadcast Spirawide by sphere, plus everywhere else that can pick up the frequency. But it feels like the whole population of two worlds is already packed into the blitzball stadium in any case. Al Bhed and Guado are cheek to jowl. Yevonite warrior-monks and Crusaders share bleachers, knees bumping. Islanders and highlanders are meeting for the first time. There are Ronso, Hypello, Peruperu... if she squints she thinks she can even see a Cactuar.
And there are many here from beyond Spira, too. From beyond Lunar. Some of them were instrumental in recent events. Others were refugees. Otherworlders have made Spira everything from a pit stop to a new home, a new hope. Honestly, that anyone would ever settle here by choice is the great miracle refracted through another lens. So many cultures... so many lessons she's learned from them. Seeing the astonishingly diverse crowd makes her feel warm.
That's good, because her stomach is awfully cold and tight.
She's an experienced celebrity, but she's not a big speechmaker. Okay, sometimes she's made big speeches--
I fight for Spira. The people long for the Calm. I can give it to them. It's all I can give. Defeating Sin, ending pain...this I can do.
--but never PLANNED like this, and never deliberately on air. This event was NOT her idea. Glancing over, it gives her great comfort to see Paine on the other side of the sphere recorder. They lock eyes for a second; then, dutifully, Yuna turns to the crowd and takes a step forward.
"Everyone..."
Her little voice rings out over the stadium, hugely amplified. But there is a clarity in her, a clarity of purpose, that would have made herself heard without any assistance. And the boisterous crowd stills immediately.
Yuna swallows. She knows why she was asked to do this. Not for the first time, or for the first reason, she wishes it had been anyone else.
Not for the first time, she rises to the occasion anyway...
"Everyone has lost something precious," she acknowledges. "Everyone here has lost homes, dreams, and friends. Everybody."
You could hear a pin drop.
"Now, Sin is finally dead--"
The crowd erupts; seagulls explode off the top rim of the empty blitzball sphere bracketing, screeching their dismay at not being the loudest creatures here. The collective outpouring of joy and catharsis surges through Yuna like an uninvited guest. This is what she wanted from the start, of course. To make everyone happy. She should be happy. Her wish came true.
"--now," she picks back up, when it's clear that the shouting and stamping and, yes, wolf-whistling, is not going to end on its own for the foreseeable future, "Spira is ours again."
This statement does not shorten the celebration per se.
Eventually, she goes on: "Spira is ALL of ours -- Otherworlders included." Considering the war this is a highly controversial statement; but the crowd is in a good mood and Yuna wants to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. "Without them... none of this would have been possible. Working together... now we can make new homes for ourselves, and new dreams. And we can travel beyond our borders, too. We can explore. We can learn. And, when the time comes that they need help, we can repay our great debt to our precious new friends."
She doesn't sound bleak. She doesn't feel bleak, as bleak as she did even ten minutes ago. Her first smile of the Eternal Calm is contained only in her voice, and only very slightly, at that. But it is... a real one. Everyone's happiness is her happiness too. She can't keep them out; all she can do is let them in.
"Although I know the journey will be hard, we have lots of time. Together, we will rebuild Spira. The road is ahead of us, so let's start out today!"
The crowd, which had marginally quieted for the remainder of the address, explodes again with thundrous excitement. For a moment Yuna is tempted to just leave it at that. But... it isn't right. More than that, it isn't... SAFE. It's important not to let something important go unsaid just because it is difficult. If she's learned anything, she's learned that. And there is more that they need to hear. More that she needs to say.
"Sin--"
The word still has immense power. Everyone hushes each other right away.
"Sin was... a choice."
The crowd is quiet, but also uneasy.
"A choice made by people. People just like us. People hurting, and angry, and afraid. And now... it's up to us to remember. To remember the sad parts, and the bad parts, of our history. To rediscover all the parts that were lost to time and to tragedy. Because... this new Calm... our Calm... it's not like the ones that came before. Sin is /never coming back/. So... if the Calm ever ends... this time, it will be because of /our/ choices."
She smiles reassurringly at the mixed reaction from the crowd. Are they supposed to cheer or not? She doesn't mean to confuse them. But the complexity of the moment is a good thing. They've shared themselves with her. Now she's finally sharing herself back. She's earned... that much. To be understood.
"Together, let's choose to ensure that this never happens again. Together, let's choose a bright future for everyone!"
This time Yuna has no choice but to stop; even amplified, she cannot hope to penetrate the resulting wall of noise. It goes on, and on, and on, and, on the verge of surrender, she glances back over her shoulder.
Everyone is with her. Wakka, whose spiky hair is electrified with glee, and looks seconds away from flipping the master switch to fill this stadium with water and inaugurate the Eternal Calm with its first blitzball game. Kimahri, who will, for the first time ever, be leaving her soon. They've talked about it. She needs him, but his people need him more. The Otherworlders saved many Ronso, but there's still a lot of rebuilding to do on Mt. Gagazet. Lulu, who she /hasn't/ talked with yet about the future, but in whom she senses a gentle yearning to return to Besaid for a time -- a yearning she feels herself. Rikku, who has more dreams for the future than Yuna has threads in her obi, and she can't wait to see her cousin make them all come true. And Paine, who may be on the far side of the recorder, but assuredly made a lot more history than she documented -- Yuna gets the feeling the best is yet to come.
Everyone is with her, except for the ones who aren't.
Somewhere, the fayth are smiling down on all of them, surely. Maybe... maybe Auron and Belize are too. Maybe...
"Just, one more thing," Yuna decides to say, turning back to the crowd. Her voice is so gentle. She /feels/ so gentle. She loves everyone here so much.
She loves everyone who can't be here... so much.
"The people and friends that we've lost..."
There's no shortage of pyreflies on Spira these days. Released from their era of enslavement inside Sin, they sometimes feel as numerous and regular a sight as the seagulls. And they can be melancholic. But they can be... beautiful, too.
One floats downwards, out of the endless blue sky, to almost caress Yuna's cheek.
She doesn't feel anything. There is nothing to feel. But, even so, she closes her eyes, just for a second. And she remembers...
She remembers the dozen dozen times they /could/ touch, and did. She remembers the very first time -- how he pulled her out of the water when Sin swept her overboard. She remembers their shoulders bumping by accident in the Luca blitz festival crowds. She remembers the first time they held hands, how it was tentative, shy -- and the last time they held hands, how it was comfortable and absolutely certain.
She remembers the first time they kissed.
She remembers the cool, sweet waters of Macalania Woods.
No ending can ever take that beginning away from her.
Not ever.
"--and the dreams that have faded--" she asides, in such a soft and tender undertone that the sphere barely even catches it, dooming historians of the future to endless debates about what she actually said -- but her friends on the platform heard her, and the Drifters understood, and maybe, just maybe, he heard her too, some way, somewhere, somehow...
"--never forget them."
---
Final Fantasy X
2019-2023
Dream Chasers MUSH