Paine had bandages on her head and complained for people to lower their volume. Seymour looked at her as if she had a pumpkin on her head and asked t lower the number of trees in Guadosalam.
Rikku was unhurt, but quiet. She’d learned that when reviewing the facts, the sum is a lot more depressing than all of its parts.
Seymour never cared for the Al Behd, but then, never cared about her either. He regarded her as something to ignore, and ignored her rather well.
If Tidus weren’t so interested in his wife, Seymour would have ignored him too. It was just as well that he didn’t, or he’d be tripping on most of his guests.
To press the issue that none of what the Gullwings had done had been any improvement on anyone’s life, Seymour’s mother had joined in the conversation as well, her gaze that was comparative to a nice drink of cold water and a patch of shade on a warm summer’s day seemingly reserved only for the citizens of Guadosalam that she hadn’t married.
"If this is all you were going to accomplish, I’m wondering why you three left in the first place," Seymour said, pointing at Tidus. Before Tidus could say anything stupid, he continued his tirade. "In fact, I have no idea why you left Zanarkand in the first place."
"Maybe because we nearly died there," Pained hissed, holding her head. "And if you’re going to be stupid, do it quieter."
Seymour sighed, and it wasn’t a sigh that relieved any tension. It was one of those sighs one makes when things have gotten exponentially worse.
"If I’m here now, who’s going to receive the spirits of the dead?" Seymour’s mother asked, seeing that forming a sentence that these people would understand was giving her son a headache comparable to a severe hangover.
"The other—oh," Rikku said.
"Exactly how many people are going to need this explained to them?" Seymour asked, his fingers on his temples. "If it just left Zanarkand, wouldn’t that make it safe to
Look for a person left behind in all this?"
"Who?" Rikku asked.
Seymour sighed again. This time it was indeed a sigh of relieved tension, however, it was also a sigh of someone who has decided walking off a cliff is more painless than doing their own taxes, and sees the payoff as far more favorable.
"Exactly how doomed are we?" Paine asked. "And tell me quietly."
"Let’s see, we couldn’t be in less danger standing where we are right now if this city had a bulls-eye painted around it," Seymour said. "Sin’s probably mad at us. You apparently have the diplomacy skills of a Wendigo; that certainly doesn’t help matters."
Juuno seemed to be agreeing on that point in particular. Apparently one less middle-aged maid made a world of difference.
"You’ve brought back someone who keeps eyeing my wife instead of Anzi, the only person who can keep my father under control, and to top it all off, you don’t seem to even have a beginning of a plan."
"At least your father has one," Juuno said. "He’s hired someone to evacuate everyone."
As comforting as it was to know that someone had a plan that didn’t appear to be made by a lemming, Seymour seemed to be staring at Tidus as if he was trying to eliminate him from reality with a sheer force of will. Needless to say, wasn’t working.
"Why are you still here?" Seymour asked.
"How should I know?" Tidus retaliated.
"Yes, that does seem to be a defining point," Seymour said.
"Huh?" Tidus asked.
"Exactly," Seymour said.
"Sin did it," Rikku said, piping up.
"Jyrrin did it," Paine corrected.
"So the only thing keeping him alive is Sin," Seymour said flatly.
"Don’t even think about it," Yuna said.
"Why not?" Juuno asked, glaring at both Yuna and Seymour. Juuno had been one of the fayth. Technically Tidus had been her dream. Like all true dreams, Tidus never did what the dreamer wanted him to do. Like all dreams, he rarely made sense. Like all dreamers, Juuno wasn’t happy about it.
"Excuse me?" If Sin had a tone of voice that was it. A great as it was, it still managed to sneak up on you and blow your world away.
Rikku took the biggest step in her life and used it to scoot towards Paine. Paine said nothing. She didn’t move. She just watched. Frankly, Paine thought the opportunity for something like this had long past since they’d gotten laid. She didn’t even shrug. People are people, and what people do best is make things worse.
Each and every one of them had heard stories about Juuno; hints had been dropped about her gaze being a gentle breeze or a warming sun. At the moment, she just stared at he room, her gaze catching everyone but her son, and seemed to be trying to incinerate them all to ash or blast them all to outer space. It was a neat trick, especially for a blind person.
For those of you who need a metaphor, a relationship is both building a giant stained glass window and blindly throwing rocks at it at the same time. Yuna’s rock had hit and there was nothing to do now, but watch the beautiful stream of glittering colors as they fell to the ground, soon to be nothing but a mere nuisance that will lacerate your hand if you try to clean it up. More or less. The important part isn’t the metaphor but to stand back at this point.
"After every brick, every insult, every bullet I’ve stood in front of, you have the gall to call me nothing more than a murderer?"
Everything in the world seemed to be drawing into Seymour, all the noise, all the color, all the life, and all the world. The walls no longer seemed to actually be there anymore. There was a feeling that the whole world was spread out before everyone’s eyes, just to be drawn in and collected by Seymour. He was the focal point of the unnerving illusion as the sheer number of all the subtleties in his movements and expression would equal the amount of stars in the cosmos. Seymour had mastered turning the emptiness of the world around on its metaphorical heel and used it as his aid to face off with his opponent. It wasn’t something one forgets how to do. The trick is to find someone who cares about the universe, which is why it often failed. But not now. Not with Yuna.
The point wasn’t’ to win. It was to drive home the accusation. To make someone care.
Yuna opened her mouth to reply, but he wasn’t finished.
"After two days of trying convince you and you’re friends to leave this place for somewhere mildly safe, you throw it all away to accuse me of something so petty, so childish? After ever promise, every touch, every words we’ve ever exchanged, after a dozen times I’ve given you the opportunity to leave and never think of me again, you think I’d act that way?"
"I didn’t mean—"
"If you can’t take the end of the world seriously, you can handle it on your own. The last thing I need is Déjà vu, Yuna."
"Hey!" Rikku shouted when Seymour's hand landed on the doorknob.
"What?" he said, opening the door. It wasn’t a question at all. It hardly deserved a question mark. It was a threat. It was worse than threatening to kill someone, worse that threatening to torture them. It indicated that whatever hell lay in the depth of the minds of men, it would be a very nice place if Seymour was crossed.
It was indeed Déjà vu. It was as if time had decided, if it could do it all over again, it would, but with more people getting mad at each other.
She ran after him as he slowly ascended the stairs. If there was one thing to say about Yuna, it was that she didn’t learn very fast.
No one ever said the one thing was a good one.
She made the mistake of catching up to him.
Seymour stopped as he spun around and grabbed her by the neck. She was so surprised she nearly fell over. He held her at arm's length and made sure she stayed in her precarious position. Strangely, it had far more intimidation to it than the usual picked-up-by-the-shirt-and-pressed-against-your face. Perhaps that was getting old and cliché. Perhaps it was because Yuna’s shirt was far too skimpy and small without being pulled above her head.
"What is it you want from me?" he yelled. "What the fuck more do you want to do to me?"
As much as he was holding her by the neck, he was in no way strangling her. It was stupid to kill someone in a rage after complaining you’ve been accused of murder. Besides, he really didn’t feel like killing Yuna. There were countless things he wanted, each with there own subsets of ways they would be played out, but murdering Yuna was not one of them.
"I’m sorry."
"What? And that’s supposed to make it all better? That’s not going to work. I’ve been sorry all my life, even for things never actually did and you know what? Nothing got better. No one cared. And I don’t care now that you’re sorry. You can take your lies and your apologies and everything else you want to use to confuse the fuck out of me and make me think my life was hell because it was my fault and see how far you can get with Sin. See if it cares that you’re sorry. See if it believes you. See if it trusts you from now on. Because I won’t. It won’t work this time, Yuna. Because it is starting all over again. You’ve got him back. I’ve got my mother back. The world has Sin again. And you know what else is the same? You know what else you’re not taking away from me? You know what you can never take away from me, no matter how hard you tried?"
Yuna blinked. She assumed Seymour took it as a ‘yes’ but in truth he didn’t care. He was going to finish his speech. Besides, his arm was tired.
"I can treat people like trash too, Yuna." With that. He let her go and she fell back on the stairway. By the time she reached the top, he’d slammed his bedroom door.
By the time she got to it, he’d locked it.
Suddenly, she realized something. Yuna took a while to learn, but at least she did. If she were Tidus, she’d have stood there until the place fell down in an attack or she got distracted by being hungry.
It was all happening again, except one things was in reverse. He’d been pursuing her to make her agree to marry him. Now they were married and all he seemed to want was for her to drop off the face of the planet.
Somewhere, a cosmic deity, far greater and more mysterious than the fayth, was easily amused by all this, no doubt.