"Dumbass, you weren’t supposed to hurt him! Don’t you understand the situation here?" the captain yelled at the lieutenant.

"I thought we were being attacked."

"ANYTHING could happen. Unless you are actually attacked you are not to harm the hostages, do you understand?"

"I lost one of my men out there!" the lieutenant yelled back. "How do you know one of them wasn’t afraid of dying? Or afraid of being attacked? Maybe the guy was afraid the gun would go off?"

"Hey!" said ‘guy’ yelled from his cell. "What the heck’s goin’ on? You at war or something?"

"Apologies," the captain said to the prisoner.

"How ‘bout some aspirin instead?"

"Cute. As is that kid. Yours?"

"Not really."

The captain made a face, confused at the answer. "Then—"

"Long story. So wha’s going on?"

"No one is at war. Not yet. You know the former summoner Yuna, correct?"

"Yuna? What’d she do? Where is she? Can I see her?" the prisoner asked eagerly.

"She is in Guadosalam. We are going to Djose. To prevent our nations from going to war, we need you to play along as hostages."

"Play? Those guns weren’t play."

"Nor was the firaga spell fired at us. We apologize if that was a fluke caused by… the metaphysical randomness, shall we say. We shall see you get the best treatment for your injury when we arrive." The captain turned to leave.

"Hey! Hey get back here! I don’ wanna play hostage. Take me home, eh? Hey! I’m yellin’ at you!"

The only reaction he got was from Vidina, who woke up screaming.

………………………………………………………………………………….

Rikku had finally dropped off some of Yuna’s stuff. The guards were rather expedient, though inconsiderate and thought themselves inconvenienced from their cards to deliver it. Why Rikku had packed Yuna’s swimsuit was beyond her. Just like Rikku, to expect the Guado to have a swimming pool.

Yuna took the opportunity to waste the day on something other than the only book written in a language she could read — a very long and boring history of Guado politics. She had no idea the Guado had their own written language. Thankfully, no one had decided she needed to learn it.

While unpacking, Yuna learned something about Guado culture that was not accepted: to speak about Seymour — at least nothing that had happened before he became Maester — even then all she got was "he did all these human things." Even worse was talking about his parents.

"Yuna, we don’t talk about things like that," Anzi scolded. "It was a tragic time."

"All I asked was about Seymour as a child. Was he that horrible?"

"Yuna … you don’t understand … Juuno died … He’s been scared of Baaj ever since … Look, I’ll be happy to answer all these questions later, once you two are married. Now’s not the time to be digging skeletons out of the closet."

"Out of the closet?"

"Skeletons out of the closet, not him," Anzi said angrily. "Surely you have something else to talk about."

"That’s all I really know to talk about, unless you like spheres."

"I hate spheres," Anzi said in the same tone Seymour said things were ‘personal.’

"Um … Is Seymour afraid of —"

"Yuna, I told you to leave that subject alone."

"Yes or no. I’ll leave it alone if I’m wrong, but if I’m right I thought I could keep him away."

"There’s nothing you can do, Yuna, but if you insist, go on and ask."

"Is he afraid of Tidus?"

"Who in the world is that?" Anzi asked, dropping a pair of Yuna’s underwear in her confusion. Embarrassed, she picked it up and refolded it. "Can’t say that he is," she said, relieved.

"He’s … was … my … um, boyfriend. Sort of."

"Where is he now? And why didn’t you tell me?"

"Seymour knew," Yuna said defensively. "Besides, he’s kind of … well I don’t know what exactly happened to him. I was wondering if he’d come back from the Farplane … maybe … sort of."

"Yuna, you agreeing to marry Seymour was the best and stupidest thing you could have ever done," Anzi scolded. Oh goody, a reprimand from Auntie Anzi and she wasn’t even married into the family yet. "I will not have you throwing your life away and I certainly will not have you throwing away Seymour’s."

"What’d I do? I thought you wanted —"

"Yuna, a wedding isn’t for putting two people together and hoping they won’t get lost or kill each other going down the aisle. You’d better have some plans for getting along in the future."

"But you wanted a union, a wedding. What’s wrong with volunteering if everyone else is going to kill you for bringing it up in the first place?"

"We wanted two people to settle down happily, and to fight intolerance with a marriage of different races. We weren’t waiting for someone to get fed up and volunteer as if for chores."

"I tried," Yuna pouted. "If someone would tell me what I’m doing wrong —"

"You have to learn to respect us, first," Anzi said.

"I do respect people!" Yuna stomped. She paused, staring at the floor and scratching her head in shame when she realized how childish she had acted.

"It’s a bad time for us all. I expect you two to work at getting along, though," Anzi said, as if she’d withhold desert if Yuna didn’t do it.

"He’ll be back tonight or tomorrow. Do try to get along."

"Get along?" Yuna asked. "He tried to kill me."

"Yes, well, you killed him first. What do you want, time-outs?" Anzi asked as she finished unpacking Yuna’s things and left.

……………………………………………………………………………….

Yuna ran out of the room, dressed in her gunner uniform and ready to fire at whatever was making a loud and annoying banging noise downstairs.

Yuna skidded to a bewildered and rather fed up stop as she saw it was Seymour banging his head against the wall.

He raised his hand, which shook angrily, and pointed it at her when he got it under control. It wasn’t much control, however, considering he wasn’t looking at her and all he actually got out was "Nnnnnggggrrrrr!"

He put his arm down and bonked his head against the wall again. There was a pause as he collected himself … somewhat.

"Do you have any, any at all, idea what it’s like to try to give a motivational speech to people afraid of spontaneous combustion?"

"Let’s get you away from the walls," Yuna said, and came down the stairs.

He got himself away from the wall and walked to the couch, feeling like he was floating and sinking at the same time. He sat on the couch and rested his shoulders on the top of the back of the couch, spreading his arms out along the length of it.

"So what did you do?" Yuna asked, deciding that since he seemed too tired to be angry it was a good time to attempt a conversation, to take up Anzi’s suggestion of ‘getting along.’

"I got out of the way of the stampede as the stadium began to collapse, if you’re asking how I survived."

"I meant, how did the negotiations go?"

"Go? They had to get up to go somewhere, Yuna. They died along with the relations between Kilika and Luca."

"You mean you left in the middle?"

"I wouldn’t have survived in the middle, Yuna. I left in the beginning. Once the riot started."

"You left them in the middle of a riot?"

"Yuna, one can’t be the leader of a nation and a superhero at the same time. I know short-term you’d appreciate it if I died there, but long-term it wouldn’t be the best of choices."

"You’re trying to cause a war!" Yuna yelled. "You can’t just give up in the middle of diplomacy!"

"It wasn’t diplomacy, it was blitzball with rocks. I’m not trying to cause anything short of getting myself enough hours of sleep to see straight."

"You’re not making peace. You’re not stopping anyone from dying. You’re not fixing the Farplane or healing —"

"Yuna, I am too damn tired to be plotting anything. I have done nothing covert, I am not up to anything short of standing up without wobbling, and I don’t even have my own secret headquarters. I’m not even sure I could spell HQ. Now, there’s some salt in the kitchen, why don’t you try rubbing it in on all the other wounds I received from you and everyone else because frankly I don’t care. I have no more nerves left to get on." Seymour closed his eyes. Yuna leaned over to see if he was asleep, but he wasn’t. He was just too exhausted to keep them open. He was probably too exhausted to sleep for that matter.

"You …" Yuna started to threaten him, but that was all she could manage.

"Yuna, would you like my job and I’ll be the one to throw my chest in people’s faces when I’m mad?" he asked without opening his eyes.

"You … bastard," she said.

Seymour opened his eyes and narrowed them right at her.

She swallowed, too loudly than she’d have liked. She waited for him to say something. Seeing his nails dig into the cushion of the couch, she backed away.

He stood up.

She backed away again and he followed her, keeping only a few inches between them.

Yuna stopped, trapped by an ornate but useless table, and suddenly realized how much taller he was. "I’m not afraid of you!" she declared.

"I noticed," he said flatly. "Fear is not what I’m looking for." He lowered his head and sighed, his breath ruffling her hair slightly. "Yet I do not find what I am looking for. Not from you nor any human. Not what I am asking for from every diplomatic suicide mission I am sent on."

"You accepted me as your bride!" Yuna exclaimed.

"Not my decision," he said. "It was my people’s decision. Even accepted as one of them to truly rule …" he said, holding his hand still as he wished to brush her hair, touch it just lightly enough to feel it, know that he had not been mistaken about everything he thought Yuna had been. He mentally slapped himself awake and moved his hand away. "They fear that my … reputation from when I was a fiend will either leave an empty throne, or … or a repeat of the past."

"Repeat?" Yuna whispered to herself.

He started to turn away, but she grabbed his wrist, earning a glare. But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t that glare that had scared her away from arguing with an exhausted man on the couch. It wasn’t the glare he’d ever shown her before, in all their battles. It reminded her of the first time he died, truly died. He had asked her with his dying breaths if she had pitied him. She thought he was asking for her to have enough of a heart to do so. Now, looking at his eyes as he waited for her to say something, she realized that if she had answered "yes" he would have hated her. He didn’t want pity. He despised pity. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t enough.

"You were born out of wedlock …" she said, waiting for him to verify her statement as true.

To her surprise, he twisted his hand and grabbed her wrist, holding her there in case she was bored or became too proud to talk to him about a past she considered pathetic. "The Guado race takes the sacrament of marriage very seriously," he said. "My father ignored those rites because he was with a human. What he did not count on was being discovered. He underestimated the chances, even when she was pregnant. Because she married him, she was officially accepted by the people. I was the one out of wedlock, not him. I am the one who suffers for it."

Yuna said nothing. She heard his words and watched his eyes. He was thinking behind every word he said. He was wondering about her, if she understood, if she cared about the people, about him, if peace was worth the risk to do something that had actually been important and meaningful, not petty as she had no doubt thought. He wondered something else, she knew. What it was and what was making him so afraid as he spoke she did not know.

"This is redemption for both of us, Yuna," he said. She saw the same desire to touch her hair in him, but instead he returned to his couch upstairs.

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