Notes: Set during events of FFX, but about things that happened before FFX, mostly about a character from FFX-2. I'm not sure of it makes sense, but it's quite accurate.

A small sacred thing

by regann

Traveling with Yuna and the rest of her guards, Rikku didn't have a lot of time to think about Gippal; there was just too much going on.

Not that she didn't sometimes think about him -- she did. But she was already on borrowed time to help Tidus find a way to keep Yuna from sacrificing herself to stop Sin and there wasn't a place in her head for any more sad thoughts. Rikku couldn't afford to waste time wondering where in Spira he might have been or wonder -- only for a minute -- if his body was among the carnage left by Sin on the banks of Mushroom Rock Road after Operation Mi'ihen. Even as Tidus told her of the way that the Crusaders and Al Bhed alike had been destroyed, she wouldn't allow herself to think of him as dead. She had to have to hope that he was alive, just like she had to have hope that she and her new friend could find a way to save her cousin from a brave but senseless death.

Sometimes, she thought about Gippal -- only for a moment, though, just a second -- when she looked over at Yuna's sad but determined face and thought of all the things her cousin would miss if she finished her pilgrimage and died summoning the Final Aeon. Yuna hadn't had a chance to live, in Rikku's opinion; it wasn't fair that she'd die before she'd ever really lived. She wouldn't get married or have kids, or anything of the things that she might have dreamed of doing; they were things that Rikku dreamed of, and she figured most girls had the same kinds of dreams. Yuna wouldn't have even have had the chance to do the things that Rikku had already done in her life and that seemed even more unfair. From what she could figure out about her cousin's life, she hadn't had any of the fun that Rikku had had -- she hadn't played hide and seek in the ruins of old machina in the Sanubia sands, or lived with her family close to her like she had with her dad and her brother; Yuna hadn't been underwater in a submarine and she'd hadn't explored the depths of a mysterious temple like Baaj; she hadn't ever learned to hold her breath long enough to play blitzball or see a brightly-colored cove of coral; and she'd probably never slipped off to skinny dip with a boy her father heartily disapproved of or lay on her back and watch the shapes of the Aeons spin across the sky with him on a slow, warm night when everything seemed wonderful, so wonderful that even Sin could be a dim memory for a moment.

She doubted Yuna had ever felt that kind of peace in her young life and Rikku was certain that nothing was sadder than that.

Sometimes that was the reason Rikku thought about Gippal -- because it was nice to think of times that were a little less complicated, a little less frightening and just a bit more pleasant than the ones she was living through. As they walked through the Thunder Plains, she tried to replace the memory of Brother accidentally zapping her with the Thunder spell while she was in the water with one of the days that she and Gippal had snuck off to the Oasis for a swim after a long day of helping with some repair work that the latest deep-sea salvage mission had brought back to Home. They'd both been covered in dust and sweat and oil, Rikku's hair tinged green from some kind of fluid the machina had leaked on her and Gippal's face covered in greasy smudges where he'd wiped at the awkward way his sweat beaded around his eye patch. The water had been cool and refreshing and the sun had been warm and reassuring and they'd been content until Brother had stumbled upon them and dragged Rikku home before Cid could catch her and Rikku had left a wet, bedraggled mess with Gippal's laugh ringing in her ears.

It was such a small, silly moment but she loved it; she kept it close to the surface for the times like that when she needed it.

As she watched her own people destroy Home, she'd thought of Gippal for a moment then, too. She remembered all the fun she'd had there in the last few months when her family had been there, right before that fateful salvage expedition to Baaj where she'd first met Tidus.

She'd always liked winters at Home; so many of the families came to stay there and it was alive and bright and loud with life. It was a time when Rikku got to see friends she hadn't seen in a very long time and help her father with his big projects and generally pretend that life in Spira wasn't harsh and brief and even worse than that for an Al Bhed. She'd always looked forward to it.

That last winter had been a little different though because her old friend Gippal had come back looking a little different. She couldn't have helped but be surprised by how much taller and broader he'd gotten or be intrigued by the mysterious eye patch he'd gained since they'd last seen each other at Home. Rikku had also noticed that she wasn't the only one noticing things: Gippal seemed appreciative of the fact that she was a little less knees and elbows and a little more leg and breast, eyeing her with all the suave coolness of any sixteen-year-old guy and her father had watched them both with a very prominent frown that Rikku would see again over the next months every time he told her to promise not to sneak off the Gippal by herself. Of course, he'd been telling her that since she was eight years old and she hadn't listened before and she'd had no intention of listening then, especially not with the curiosity of hormones and sex and silly romantic games brewing between them.

It had only taken them two weeks of innocently fluttering lashes and accidentally wandering hands before they were sneaking into supply closets to make out where Brother or Cid wouldn't find them, or slipping out of Home at night to lay on their backs and stare at the stars and talk about silly things and serious things, to discuss blitzball and the future and the next day with their faces turned toward the heavens and their voices and fingers mingling in the chilly air of the night.

Those times were another series of short, silly moments that lived in Rikku's head and, strangely, they gave her comfort in those last moments before Home exploded before her eyes. When she turned away from it and focused on finding Yuna, she once again slid them to their proper place in the back of her mind, vowing to leave them there until Sin was defeated and Yuna was saved and Rikku could find out whether Gippal had lived or died in his quest to be a Crusader.

But then Rikku had been tossed in prison and, for the first time in her life, she'd actually thought that she was going to die. When she'd been dumped into the watery maze of the Via Purifico, it was the first time she'd actually thought that -- really thought that she'd met her match and she'd die in some cold, watery grave.

It was funny, she'd think later, how much those sweet, silly moments with Gippal had mattered then. How she was glad that if she was going to die in a watery Yevon prison that at least she'd experienced some of the things she'd always wanted. Sure, she hadn't gotten married or had a lot of kids, but at least she'd felt the first stirrings of what real love might have been like sometime down in the future. She'd been kissed, more than once, and, unlike poor Yuna, it hadn't been by a slimy, unsent Guado but by a reckless, laughing-eyed boy who'd she'd secretly loved since she was seven years old and he'd stolen her favorite hair tie to use in one of his first mechanical inventions.

Rikku had also had her first heartache when he'd decided to go away and join the Crusaders and she'd cried for two weeks' straight until she had been distracted from her broken heart by more important things like salvage and machina and the blue-eyed boy who'd been touched by Sin's toxin and who spoke nonsense about blitzball and Zanarkand. It was strange how her almost-death made her appreciate her days of heartache but they had because sometimes it did feel better to have done it once than never at all.

At least in Rikku's opinion, anyway.

Luckily -- and so much of her life had become luckily -- Rikku hadn't died there. And that night as they'd rested in the crystalline forest of Macalania, Rikku sat on one of the branches of the iridescent trees and let herself really think -- about Yuna, about Tidus, about Sin.

About Gippal.

What they had had might have been something silly and sweet but it was hers; it was a small, sacred thing that had helped her get through it all; it was just one of many things that made Rikku want to fight on, to keep trying, to help her friends bring an Eternal Calm to Spira.

Rikku promised herself that one day she'd introduce Yuna to Gippal.

That was the kind of hope she still had for the future.

The End.