He finally found her. She was asleep against a log, still managing to hold the baby so protectively in her arms after being so exhausted.
He had meant to come back to her. He had meant to protect her all his life, this one and the last. But was he really protecting her by doing this? Even if it meant seeing her at least one more time, would he have taken the chance of not being sent?
He couldn’t answer himself. She wouldn’t answer for him if she were awake. The only things he could look for answers from were the wind in the trees and the baby’s complacent face.
As sweet and innocent and beautiful as it looked—it was gone. It was an empty shell. It had come back, but it wasn’t the same child. It never would be. She clung to it and she always would. Not because it looked so sweet, but because it still looked like her precious baby.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t like Lulu. She always knew what was right. She knew destroying Sin meant saving others and she was willing, many times, to risk her life for a chance at it. Because it was right.
It didn’t matter that the child was not his. It didn’t matter that the child was hers. It mattered that he protected Lulu, even if it meant she’d hate him afterwards, maybe for years. Maybe forever.
He’d protect her. He couldn’t let her be blinded from being the one person who always knew what was right, who always knew what costs were worth paying. She knew this was right, deep in her heart.
He knew the heartache she did. He missed her. He came back only to see her. She had been taken away from him, someone else had had a child with her, and knowing her, no doubt married her.
That wouldn’t stop him from loving her. It wouldn’t stop him from wanting to protect her, from trying his hardest to do that even if it meant his death. It was for her.
Carefully he slipped the baby out of her arms, not waking either of them. He kissed her goodbye on the cheek. How much of a farewell it would be he did not know, but it was a parting.
"I wish I had gotten to know you little guy," he told the baby when he thought he was out of earshot. "Not that you can understand me, eh? Didn’t think so."
"Freeze!" Someone yelled, standing up out of the foliage, aiming a strange looking machina weapon at him. "Don’t move!" yelled another.
"Who the hell are you people?" Chappu asked, backing up a step and hearing someone ready their weapon behind him.
"Any sudden movements or loud noises and we shoot both of you," the first one, the leader of them, said. "Come with us quietly and no one gets hurt, you or anyone else on this island."
"Okay, okay," Chappu said. "I got a rock in my shoe, so let’s go slow, ya?"
"Just get moving, and no tricks," the leader said.
"Uh, you’re all pointing at my head. Which way do you want me to go?"
The leader said nothing, but pointed towards the coastline with his free arm. Chappu had no real choice but to obey.
There was one more hidden in the bushes, though. No soldier, merely the woman who had promised to be his wife, and given the privilege to another. More helpless than before, she saw nearly every promise she had ever made walk away from her.
………………………………………………………………………….
They had given up. Lulu obviously didn’t want to be found and she packed a nasty bunch of spells. The baby was already dead. Chasing Lulu and Chappu deeper and deeper into the jungle would just risk at least one person getting themself killed.
Paine was cleaning and sharpening her blade--to excess, Wakka thought.
Rikku berated herself for forgetting and was packing things for Yuna.
Kimahri had been out hunting and had just returned. Other than dinner, he couldn’t contribute much more than wishing Seymour would fall of a cliff and land on a monster.
Wakka tried to think of something. Chappu knew his way around the jungle better than he knew how to get Lulu’s corset undone. With her spells and fruiting trees, they could last a long time out there. Or, with the unexpected disasters popping up everywhere, not long at all.
Then he wondered if maybe he could figure something out that everyone had overlooked. He had been there when Seymour had gone… nuts, he guessed and tensions against the guado had heightened exponentially. But there was no one he could think of who hated the guado that much that was fully human. He hated Seymour, and guado pissed him off, but he himself wouldn’t go messing around with someone else’s holy place.
Besides, it had to be someone who already knew how to cause this mess in the first place.
All he managed was a headache. He decided lying on a cot wasn’t going to help. If he couldn’t think of anything, he’d go see if he could do something.
"Wha’s that sound?" he asked himself once he was out of the hut. "Paine, Rikku!"
Something was trampling and crashing through the bushes, it seemed off balance, and sounded like it was injured.
Wakka backed away from the jungle at the edge of the town, expecting a confused wild animal to stumble out. He was almost right.
"Kimahri find Lulu," the ronso said, crashing out of the high vegetation, holding a crying Lulu. The last time Lulu had ever really cried was when she had heard Chappu died. Then she’d been cold and almost emotionless, except around Yuna, and her own child.
"Don’t DO THAT!" Wakka yelled. "I was about to attack! What the heck happened?"
"They took my baby," Lulu said, wiping her tears away. "They took Vidina and Chappu."
"Who did?"
"I don’t know. I saw armed men lead Chappu away. He had Vidina…I tried to… I just wanted them back… they fired… I saw them drag Chappu away. He… he was bleeding… he wasn’t moving…"
Kimahri set Lulu down on her feet. "Kimahri find Lulu running. Kimahri stop Lulu and person she run from. Dead now."
"Either of you know what’s going on? Maybe where these people came from?"
"They had machina," Lulu said, staring at the ground as if it were going to punch her in the face. From her balance, something like that might actually happen. "They have Machina everywhere these days. They didn’t look like Al Behd, though."
"Human," Kimahri said.
"What’s going on?" Rikku asked as she and Paine came running.
"Took you long enough!" Wakka said. "And don’t anyone dare say that things can’t possibly get worse!"
……………………………………………………………………………..
Yuna decided if people were going to ignore her, she’d poke around and find out all she could.
Not that there was that much to find out.
The guards shrugged when she asked questions—a waste of time and effort trying to get their attention in the first place.
Seymour had left hours ago. He hadn’t left any notes or anything. Anzi said he’d left to send the guards and a few others. Yuna grimly wondered how few.
She went through the notes he’d left. Most were taxes or things just as complicated and boring. There was a long document on the Kilika-Luca relations. After Yuna had gotten halfway through the pile, Anzi found her a shooed her away, taking the papers away.
Yuna checked the couch. It had yet to be repaired. There was a large gash in it; Seymour had sliced halfway through the cushion on the back at a weird angle, as if he’d been trying to defend himself.
Unless Seymour had a fear of couches, there was more to this. The problem was there were only two people who had the answers and for them it was ‘personal.’ She was bored enough to try asking Anzi, but ended up getting no real results.
"Now I know you’re worried about the poor boy," Anzi said. "He did nothing but talk about you, at least for a while, after he met you, but you should learn to keep out of things. Poor boy’s had enough, and he’s so busy he can’t help himself. I keep telling him to stop worrying about it and it’ll go away. Now you should too. And stop worrying about him, you’re going to make things worse. You wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway."
Yuna hated word games. She gave up and asked for dinner.
As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Seymour and Anzi were right. Stop worrying about. It was a hard thing to do, apparently even for Seymour who she had always known as sort of smug to say the least. But he was right. Fear was killing people. If she was afraid of losing her friends without being able to stop it, she would.
Thinking about what he’d said made her think about his question. What did it mean? Was it a clue? Was it a game? Was it just something to distract her? Was it relevant to anything?
What did he mean anyway? What is right over what is best? For her they were the same. What was right was the best. It was best that she saved people, that she worked to keep angry factions from each others’ throats… was he talking about Tidus? Was that what he meant? Did he mean even though she and Tidus were separated that it was better? What the hell did that have to do with anything? Why was there a deadline? Was Seymour afraid of Tidus?
Tidus was the one she’d fallen in love with instead, ruined the wedding, helped kill him several times… did Seymour think Tidus was the ringleader and bent on his death?
What if Tidus did come back? Now, while she was set to marry Seymour? Would he understand?
If he came back she’d have to tell him not to crash the wedding. But she didn’t love Seymour. What if Tidus did come back, how could she manage to be with him? Or anyone else she liked?
When did things get so complicated? Why did they always have to?