God’s Wheel

-

The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

-

She is sixteen and alive, happy for the most part, laughing and singing and so incredibly amazed at life that it’s easy to breathe – her optimism doesn’t let her stay down for long, and what do those rainy days matter, anyway?

If Rikku is honest with herself, it’s a little more than true that they do matter, in their own little ways and it’s always the little things – but that’s alright, in the end. Sometimes things have a funny way of turning out alright, and even if there’s rain, the sun always comes out eventually and even if it doesn’t (like in the Thunder Plains, the crying crying crying of the Thunder Plains), she knows how to go find it, snatch it up like a delighted little child and keep hold of it until it’s time to let it go and wait for it to come back or go find it again.

And maybe rainy days do matter a little or a lot, but they’re sort of pretty in their own way, too, because Rikku likes rain just as much as sunshine and as long as she’s happy, the weather is too. Simplistic, but relatively easy to understand and it makes her feel better. So what do those rainy days matter, anyway?

When she is shopping in the gigantic mass of bodies and language and culture and merchandise in the heart of Luca, with sticky fingers and big pockets made to hold lots of stolen goods, maybe it’s a question Rikku asks herself more than usual when her spiral green eyes catch a shade of vivid blue from the edge of her vision – she turns her head so quickly whiplash rockets up her neck like thunder, but nothing is there except for more shops.

She decides she doesn’t need Holy Water for mixing that badly, anyway, and finishes her shopping to go back to her room at the inn. Later, when she is comfortable, warm, happy, she sleeps and dreams of oceans and dark earth.

-

She’s having her own adventures right now, and for good reason; she needs some time for herself, because sometimes creeping into Yunie’s room at midnight to hold her hand to stop the half-Al Bhed from crying in her sleep gets a little tiring, even though Rikku would do it a million nights in a row to make her cousin feel better – but a familiar voice of a man creeps into her head when she thinks of going back, and reminds her that maybe this is a personal demon that needs to be dealt with alone. Rikku mentally pats Auron on the back for once having such a commanding voice.

She sort of misses him, and she sort of misses Tidus too, and she misses them both in a way that feels like sort-of-missing-them-but-kind-of-really-missing-them-because-friends-never-last-long-but-it-still-hurts-anyway, but she tries to shake it off and she’s traveling to get out this sort of restlessness in her so that she can go back to help her people rebuild their lives.

She gets into contact with her friends regularly to make sure they know she’s fine and dandy – sometimes they all get worried if she’s alone too much, but she laughs it off and rapidly changes the subject.

Truth is, she’s alone but she isn’t lonely right now, because it sort of feels like this odd need for movement is all the company in the world, be it in the masses of people she doesn’t know in the blitzball arena or on the quiet, good-natured dirt path and greenery of the empty Mi’ihen Highroad. She suspects she’ll grow out of it eventually, but Rikku knows what to do when something like an honest thirst for adventure comes around and that’s to ride it high and higher still until it falls, ram it straight down to the ground and jump off before impact, just like any good thing that comes along her way.

So Rikku is just being Rikku and treasure hunting for fun while she can, sleeping where and when she wants to and having to answer to nobody, going around the world just to be able to make new memories to sort of shadow the old ones so that not everything in her life is focused around Sin anymore; it’s nice, to be able to do this.

The only place Rikku hesitates about barreling into is one Guadosalam, all wood and damp earth and moist hush, and when she does take the time to bother dwelling on it she finds it a little odd that it isn’t because of any memories, in the city or in the Farplane or lack thereof. She shrugs it off with the cool air of late-afternoon Moonflow, where she’s spending the night and sets up a simple camp as twilight approaches and the sky turns pink.

As she looks across the water, the pyreflies floating from the Moonlilies drift together in a synchronized harmony that is relaxing and soothing in a way that makes her think of the Hymn of the Fayth – as she looks across the water, the pyreflies floating from the water blooms form a sort of formation that she can only see from the corner of her eye, only for a moment. It makes Rikku turn fully to the water, though nothing out of the ordinary is there; it sets her at peace, but sends goosebumps up the backs of her arms as well. When she turns away, the peace floods from her quickly and leaves a sort of calm discomfort.

When night hits and the moon is hanging in the sky like a sleeping portrait, Rikku turns her back to the river but still feels pyrefly eyes pinning into her back like gentle finger-claws, vying for her attention.

She does her best to ignore it, and after a tense night rises with the dawn to pick up her few belongings with a sort of deft speed she usually doesn’t have. She turns to leave with only one look to the river, and finds that a hazy, half-formed and utterly relaxed vision of Seymour Guado is watching her from above the water with his head tilted to the side, blue blue eyes right on her. Rikku blinks and finds only scattered pyreflies to meet her gaze in the early morning sun and starlight.

She leaves quickly.

-

Despite her love for desert and sun and warmth, Macalania and its frozen forests, and the crystals and pools and complete tranquility, draw Rikku in a way that draws a little moth to flames. She arrives to breathe deeply and begins to walk.

When she eventually passes a butterfly, she can’t help but want to follow it and switches directions without so much as a thought, the blue wings fluttering like hazy memories and clean, fresh water. As she walks along the path of trees, she comes to an almost ethereal figure and slowly stops, butterfly forgotten, with a heart beating in a double-timed rhythm like a little steel drum.

He is leaning against an upstanding trunk, this time with visible feet and one on the ground, the other stationed against the tree with a drawn knee, skin tinged a mild light blue like the refraction of light from crystals, head upwards resting back against the dark wood and eyes closed, hands dangling loosely at his sides like he’s made of water.

She watches him and doesn’t know what to think – when Seymour opens one eye like blanketing night that climbs down from a skyward view to see her, Rikku returns the gaze for a long time, and then slowly backs away before turning and walking off with a mind trying to run but legs that feel oddly slack.

Later, in the safety of her all-too-flimsy tent, Rikku is nursing a hot thermos of cocoa when the wide open flap that lets in blue-tinted light shows her something else.

He is quiet, unreal and looking exactly the same but completely different than her memories recall; he crouches gracefully at the base of the tent, never entering, and watches her with something in his eyes that isn’t anger or full of so much hatred – they are soft in comparison, but only in comparison and he looks a little tired or just a little unhappy which is silly because he can’t be here, but he slowly holds up his hand and unfurls it like a flower, showing an open palm, gigantic in comparison to her own, that has only honest lines and clawed fingertips.

When Rikku hesitantly raises her own hand and reaches forward, when her fingers almost (almost just barely but not) brush his palm, he is gone again.

She finishes her drink and zips the tent closed before wrapping herself in a cocoon of blankets with her back to the sky.

-

Mushroom Rock Road is calmer during the summer, as compared to the fall; she prefers it, and falls asleep in the warmth of an open sky under the stars in a place where any monsters leave her well enough alone.

When the sky is still dark, the rich blue expanse of open air littered with glowing specks of stars, the edges of the horizon tinting to pinks and yellows but only barely, Rikku stirs a little and looks out through half-lidded eyes at a silhouette that sits near her calmly, one leg drawn up and his face looking up.

Her throat feels like cotton, like dryness and sand and rusted metal, and her attempts to speak are fumbled and bleary but she tries anyway because she’s suddenly not so afraid of this person anymore.

“What?”

It is whispered and short, but Rikku likes to think that it gets the point across and has nothing to do with being half-asleep. He does not move for some time, but when quiet light is coming close to him and growing closer, Seymour looks down with maybe a sort of pain on his face or maybe amusement lightly dancing across it, or maybe both; either way, the thin, strong sun-rays come closer and closer and he is suddenly gone just as the light would have illuminated him fully, and he didn’t answer.

Rikku swallows the lump in her throat back down and rolls over to fall asleep again.

-

She finally succumbs to the desire for a warm bed and, after robbing a whole group of fiends blinder than a blindfolded baby with a lollipop, she even spends a little extra for a hot meal, too, because even if she loves the outdoors Rikku is first and foremost a real technologic-indoor type of girl.

Rikku’s usually monstrous appetite hasn’t been so big as of late, which shouldn’t worry her but does a bit when she finds herself not eating lunch or dinner, and thinking of blue a little too much instead; she goes to bed after a short supper in the corner of the dining room.

She’s always been a bit of an insomniac, too, and she remembers staying up past her own guard duty hours during the pilgrimage to overlap her friends’ because she could never sleep. Yet this is a little worse than usual, and she lays on top of her covers, staring blankly at her claw – Deus Ex Machina, one of her best – resting on the bedside table.

And the presence sitting in the chair behind it makes the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and her arms tingle but her heart stills despite this.

After a few moments, Rikku’s swirled green eyes focus on him.

“What do you want?” she asks, lips barely moving.

He is sitting in her chair like a preoccupied man would, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped in front of his chin, and he looks much less real than usual, much more transparent – and yet the soft yellow glow from artificial outdoor lights filtering through the window makes him seem almost vibrant, like a woodland elf from fairytales.

He slowly unlatches his hands and holds one up again with nothing but an open palm and quiet eyes. No danger, because he isn’t real, because his hand is only lines and pale skin.

Rikku pulls herself up slowly, eyes never leaving his, but as her bare feet meet the carpeted floor, she approaches slowly and lifts her hand with hesitation. He tilts his head to the side dispassionately, but the way his eyebrows draw up a little, only a little or maybe such a little even if that makes no sense, is so full of something, like he’s screaming it out with everything except his voice, and something that she can’t quite place is there; it makes her swallow thickly and her hand feel very weak as she lifts it.

She reaches out but he is gone, so she curls up in the chair that is much colder than the rest of the room and sleep evades her for a long while.

-

It is a week later, and when she falls asleep in her little bedroll in the fields outside of Bevelle, she dreams.

There is wood and damp earth and hazy white lights in lanterns with pyreflies circling around them and straying everywhere else, and Guadosalam is as she remembers it and the steps to the Farplane are the same, too. She walks up them, past the posts and past the point she remembers sitting at across from a man with an apple in her hand and juice on her lips. She realizes in muted horror how close the Farplane is and getting closer, how big it is and she ascends the steps slowly like a dirge, something pulling her by thick imaginary ropes.

She doesn’t stop as it comes in front of her.

As she is about to step in, her vision goes black and the sunshine in her eyes is real, warm, safe.

Rikku stays in the sunlight for a time and finds that her skin is warm, but her insides still curl as a wicked chill eats into her when her eyes close for too long.

-

Visiting the island of Besaid is a great change of pace because that’s where her friends are – summer brings a bit of a monsoon season but Besaid has always been calm, because it’s close to Kilika and only complete morons would build a town on water if a monsoon could wipe it clean in a second, in Rikku’s humble (but very important) opinion.

It’s a sunny morning when Rikku jumps off of the ship she hitched a ride on (which means she actually snuck on board because she’s a real cheapskate when it comes down to her own money) to land on the warm beach and goes off to find her friends; truth be told, it’s one of the smallest places she’s been to, and finding Yuna doesn’t take very long at all.

It’s a day of catching up and hugging and laughing, reunited with Yuna and Lulu and Wakka and Kimahri.

“Yo, how you been?” Wakka in all of his orange-haired glory pulls her into a friendly headlock and she butts her head against his fist to free herself, grinning and feeling much better than usual as Yuna embraces her and Lulu smiles affectionately with pretty violet lips in only the way a sort of sister could.

Rikku hasn’t been lonely, but she is pleasantly surprised to find that the company has been sorely missed and stays for a week. Not much is happening and she could get bored, something she won’t bother trying to deny, but the whole place has this sort of glowing happiness that just warms its way through her skin to rest next to the pieces of her friends she keeps close to herself.

When she is sitting at the beach with herself sprawled messily across the ground, soft sand sifting in between her toes in a grimy-good sort of way, Yuna next to her, Rikku hesitatingly asks about people leaving the Farplane.

Yuna seems genuinely surprised by the question – Rikku knows that it’s too soon, too soon, because her cousin’s boy is either dead or not existing at all and they’re both equally terrifying ideas, and maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet, but the Al Bhed is proud when Yuna masters herself and handles it well.

The summoner replies after a time that it would be very, very hard for anyone to leave the Farplane.

“Those with unfinished business, with business that… isn’t very pleasant,” Yuna says softly, “Such as Maester Jyscal, who wanted revenge on his son, those sorts of people can’t make it very far away at all after entering the Farplane. Do you remember how much he staggered, how hard it was for just a few steps?”

Rikku nods and waits, uncharacteristically patient.

“But… for other reasons, pleasant reasons… I don’t know,” Yuna admits, bi-colored eyes focused on Rikku and the ocean behind her, somehow at the same time, “If it were anything like that, they probably wouldn’t leave the Farplane in the first place. Unless… they were very good at manipulating things like pyreflies,” she pauses. “I doubt many could. If it were important enough, perhaps they could find a way out that wouldn’t require an actual body, unlike Sir Auron.”

Yuna asks later why Rikku would want to know; Rikku opens her mouth because if anyone would understand, it’s Yuna – but a chilled ocean breeze swipes past her arms and sends goosebumps crawling up. She shrugs instead, and murmurs something along the lines of curiosity, but she isn’t quite paying attention and is instead mulling over things in her head absently, eyes focused on the horizon and the waves and the orange glow in the sky.

She spends time with her friends while she can. Rikku finds Kimahri is planning to leave for Mount Gagazet again soon to help rebuild, but is taking a short break now. Rikku has always been sort of charmed, if that’s the right word, by the way a Ronso can be so loyal in the way Kimahri was to someone he really hadn’t known at all, but kept a dead man’s promise anyway.

Ronso are loyal as Al Bhed are radical or Guado are mysterious and natural, like a people of wood and hidden, smiling secrets and this brings her back full circle; Rikku is sitting upon a little cot she set up at the insistence of Lulu and Yuna, who wouldn’t let her sleep outside even if she feels like she is cramping them. The two women in question are off somewhere, Rikku only finding respite in being alone by claiming she needs to catch some much-needed Zs.

She messed around with her claw, tools spread around her. Blue flashes through her mind briefly and then across her vision and she lets out a startled yelp – Kimahri says nothing as Rikku apologizes, she didn’t see him. He waits patiently.

“Rikku seem distracted,” he finally offers once she closes her mouth.

And she isn’t quite sure how, but at the same time she sort of knows what he means.

“Yeah,” she says, and then, “hey, have you… you remember Seymour?”

He nods after a moment, silently asking for an elaboration.

She opens her mouth but sees wild blue hair and tattooed flesh from the corner of her eye and falters, never daring to move her gaze to find what she suspects is waiting behind her friend.

“Just wondering,” and he seems neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, but nods and reminds her that Rikku is Rikku in a very much appreciated Kimahri-esque way before leaving.

He brushes past an empty space of nothing on his way out.

-

Leaving Besaid is both easier and harder than Rikku thought it would be; she can’t help but yearn to leave, though after boarding her ship the honest way feels like she’s leaving something behind, but that’s ridiculous because she double-checked her pack and she still feels blue blue blue everywhere (and maybe that’s it, because she doesn’t feel normal at all).

She recognizes Luzzu on the ship, red-haired Luzzu who once had his eager friend, his naïve young friend following him back way back then, but Gatta didn’t make it and Luzzu is alone against the lonely horizon of blue blue blue. They nod at each other, but there really isn’t anything to say and so they part ways that never really met in the first place.

She sits on the cabin bed with legs criss-cross applesauce like days of childhood long since passed and tinkers with an old bracer she found in her pack a time ago. Rikku enjoys playing around with an armor that will never be used again, which is sort of a depressing thought because armor is meant to be used, not forgotten, sort of like memories are meant to be kept close in the same way.

It’s getting later and later, the ship’s movements barely discernible anymore and the late afternoon sunlight replaced by twilight replaced by starlight and moon shining through the window, providing the only light and it’s peaceful; there is nothing else in the world except for Rikku, her tools, the bracer, and the presence in front of her. She senses him, and after a moment she slides the tools and bracer from her lap quietly to look up.

She finds bright blue right in front of her watching her intently, and her heart jolts though her body freezes – Rikku relaxes again, but her heart is beating very quickly and his covered knees are close, barely-almost touching hers, as he sits in the same position across from her, barely-almost touching and so close. Like this, his back is straight, hands resting loosely on his kneecaps, with a high head and long lashes; like this, he looks poised, graceful, elegant, like porcelain on the top shelf that will never, ever crack or maybe is already broken to little bits here and there—

Calmly, neutrally, stilling her mildly trembling hand, Rikku takes a small sip of breath and meets his gaze with her own head high.

He holds up his hand slowly, once again only an honest palm and long, slim fingers ending in claws, and this time she doesn’t hesitate to reach out. Her fingertips brush his palm and it is there, tangible and soft and this is both expected and not at all.

She has learned not to ask, and instead only offers a simple, “hello, Seymour.”

His large hand closes around hers softly like wool, not warm, but cool to the point of icy – his startlingly blue eyes watch her hand, his hand, their hands, transfixed, and it’s almost as if he’s never seen anything like it or maybe that he’s never felt it, or it’s the sensation of feeling again. She can’t tell, and doesn’t think on it too hard because her mind is calm in this reflecting blue light.

“You should be resting,” she finally tells him. Both hands are on hers, and she knows that he’s simply enjoying the feel of skin on skin, which sends this sort of quiet burn across her chest to her stomach that has nothing to do with touch, makes her feel sorry even if there shouldn’t be a reason to be but there is and maybe that’s what’s worst of any of it.

His head is high though he watches the touching skin through lowered lashes, and then his eyes slowly look up to her, a very glassy sort of strong water blue, face quiet and hair wild and hands icy.

In response, he leans forward and presses his cold lips to hers.

And then she wakes up, to a cold room on frozen blankets, with icy fingers and icier lips that she’s sure are turning blue, and an empty indentation across from her on the bed.

-

Of the few things that Rikku will ever miss from what seems like a different lifetime, she knows that the hymn is one of them.

She remembers the first time she heard it.

She was young, real young but not too young – maybe ten or so – and she remembers. She remembers hearing it flow through her and course through her and make her feel like – like something other than her, something infinitely better like all the goodness and joy and ice cream and butterflies in the world.

And maybe people still sing it. She’s heard children singing it, she’s heard men humming it or women crooning it to their toddlers, and Rikku finds it in her throat more times than she can count. But the Fayth singing it is different – it’s what makes the hymn different, to Rikku and a lot of others probably, and the fact that the Fayth are free to sleep dreamlessly is bittersweet.

Rikku can remember Bahamut’s clear song, Ifrit’s low tones, Shiva’s heavenly melody and Ixion’s peaceful voice, Valefor’s sweet one. And it’s bittersweet, it really is.

So when she’s back at Guadosalam, the Farplane stretching out before her eyes and an invisible string pulling her towards it, she is almost elated to hear – rather than the hollow beat following her bare feet as they step, one in front of the other, the cold stone seeping into her legs and numbing her body – the voice of a Fayth, singing the hymn.

Yet it does not warm her.

But it numbs her in a sort of way that sets her at peace as the Farplane draws nearer, and as she draws closer to the entrance Rikku knows what to expect and is not disappointed as the world falls apart around her and she wakes.

Her eyes open to find herself reflected in blue pools, and Seymour is above her, Seymour is kneeling beside her with his hands pressed to the earth on either side of her as the dawn rises, the little bits of sunlight warming her but the presence above her freezing it quickly because he is cold cold cold and her hands and lips are always cold now.

“What do you want?” Because she understands what he wanted to tell her with an open, honest hand, she understands he is different than he was, but she does not understand what he wants, and Rikku isn’t one to sit in the dark without kicking at walls and screaming.

His hands tighten beside her, curling into gentle fists.

And then his hand shoots up to wrench the beads of his necklace out from where they are tucked into his barely-there shirt to dangle above her, fall on her belly; he straightens and Rikku’s eyes are drawn to the bottom of the long string of cylinder beads, where a round, golden little orb rests – he twists it off with a sort of snarl on his face that makes her heart start pounding in doubletime thump thump thump because this is how her memories serve to her of him and it’s frightening to see it again.

And suddenly his entire being and aura and feel soften, just a little, an unhappy sort of neutral expression settling on his face, and long, pale fingers dance to her wrist and hand to open it up, dropping that bead down, closing her fingers and holding them for a long, long time before she moves and he is gone.

The sun is high in the sky as she packs up her little bedroll, and it is a time before she realizes that the hymn has been running through her head and to her throat since she woke.

So Rikku stands and switches directions, the melody pulling her by the strings like a puppet.

-

She has been having these dreams for weeks, though it seems much longer, and towards the end it’s every night, every night; she falls asleep with a sort of anticipation. This is why she finally tires of fighting and buckles up and walks into Guadosalam one day, shoulders firmly set and a now-familiar weight of a golden light drop in her pocket.

And she can hear it in her head and pulsing through her body like numbness and chill and fire, all at the same time, as the woman’s voice pulls her along.

It is a strange voice, singing the hymn. It is almost tribal; low, for a woman’s voice, strong. It is almost a guttural sound that is jarring yet altogether beautiful and sorrowful and a little terrifying in a way that isn’t frightening, just a sort of jolt to her system – it is unsettling and shakes her to the core.

And this time, as she ascends the steps to the Farplane, the world doesn’t fade away but becomes almost painfully more clear and the singing doesn’t stop, and she’s sure that it’s just in her head even if it seems to reverberate around everything and anything, and it’s coming closer and closer and the weight in her pocket is getting lighter or heavier, she can’t tell—

And there she is.

The Farplane, she breathes but nothing comes out with the song pulsing through her beating and there.

There are waterfalls and orange-tinted cotton clouds, pyreflies drifting everywhere like dandelion fluff with golden skies and there – there in the distance, hanging silently like a sentinel in the blackened upwards smoke, there is the moon.

Her feet step forward and she walks towards the edge of the platform made of brown earth, sturdy rock; she reaches out something from her chest that crawls up her throat, and she raises her hand to show an open palm.

And there is only the breeze, the whistle of the calm air and the rush of the waters below and the drift of the clouds and her, her with her open palm and her other hand fingering a little golden bead.

Rikku is new to this – she’s never been in the Farplane before, but is sure that when you think of somebody, they appear. This is what she has heard, and there has been no reason to doubt before now; she won’t let herself think of anybody from before before before (fiends – Sin – sickness – machina malfunctions, too many to count – operation Mi’ihen, oh, sweet machina, operation Mi’ihen) because that is almost like disgracing them, spitting on memories and dropping them in the sand, but she doesn’t have to try because all she can think of is blue.

And the hymn is on her tongue up her throat out her lips and she sees a woman—

Half-flickering and not all there with earth colored hair raked back from her forehead, pale lovely forehead, and dark brown eyes with a pretty purple dress; her feet aren’t visible because her torso fades down to nothing past her thighs, half-flickering and not all there with a necklace of golden drops and beautiful.

And Rikku fingers that golden drop in her sweaty palm—

The woman is singing.

And Rikku is trembling, Rikku is shaking, Rikku is shivering so hard that she isn’t shivering at all like a tree standing straight and she steps forward once, twice, hand open with the golden drop in her other one and then the woman flickers one last time and vanishes and he is there instead, he is there, with blue blue eyes and veins on his forehead and vivid hair and half-flickering, too, almost violently and even worse than the woman as if he is barely there at all, and he is knitted up with pyreflies and she steps off the edge as he leans forward—

And air is everywhere air is nowhere air is around her and pyreflies, lots of them and a broad veined forehead resting against hers and water pools staring into her green swirls and cold is everywhere on her because he needs to feel because he’s flickering and isn’t dead yet and her lips are cold again as he passes through her

and when Rikku opens her eyes she is standing outside of Guadosalam

and what’s funny is that she doesn’t even think she closed them in the first place.

Her body is cold as she fingers gold in her pocket; she presses her icy hand against her cheek and walks.

-

He isn’t gentle.

And she supposes that’s alright.

He’s made of ice and metal and nails overlapping each other and criss-crossing like a jumbled mess of hurt, and he’s tougher than steel but real fragile, too, and she has no idea what she’s supposed to do now, because days have bled into weeks have bled into months, less than two, but he’s tough and fragile and not gentle at all.

And she neatly folds up the memories of what Rikku deems Another Lifetime, because everything seems like Another Lifetime now, and she neatly folds up the old memories of him to put away and he’s tough and fragile and not gentle at all.

And she can only weep without tears or gasps or sobs but glassy green eyes and sit with him.

It’s the contact – it’s the skin against skin that he craves, the feeling that somebody is there, she knows.

Sometimes, she lies down to sleep in her bedroll under the stars, not bothering to crawl underneath any blankets and he comes to her, and his hands hold hers and he touches her to feel skin – his is cold, but she’s used to it.

She lies down to sleep in her bedroll again, and something ghosts along her hand that leaves ice and she opens her eyes to see him, watching her with tide pool eyes, and his lashes are long and dark like porcelain and clawed fingers slowly string through her fingers and up and down her arms to feel flesh, warm and turning cold. It is like cold water flooding her veins when he lies down next to her on the ground and delicately places his head over her heart to listen to the pulse.

The cold water settles into her blood and his not-all-there form is against her all-too tangible one like a child, like a man, each cool breath dancing like breezy mist onto her skin and retreating, his long pale fingers running against her cheeks and stringing through her hair as if he’s never felt anything before.

She quietly rests her own hands on his head and falls asleep with her blood mixed with water like ocean tides rising.

Sometimes he watches her and doesn’t touch. Rikku can’t count how often she turns around to see him following her like a lost little boy or she wakes to see him close but never touching, never touching – and then she blinks and he is gone.

It’s disconcerting and unsettling, and she thinks she’s a little paler and maybe a little skinnier too, but she also feels a little at ease and she can’t help it.

-

The first time he speaks to her, it is raining.

It is in Luca; Rikku has rented a room out to rest for a while and the window is as tall as the rest of the wall. She sits all curled up like a cat in a chair beside it, in the colorless-silver tinted room with hints and splotches of teal reflecting, too, her forehead leaning against the cool glass and she closes her eyes.

When she opens them he is sitting on her bed, looking past her at the rain silently.

She slowly nods at him. His gaze does not move from the window, but after a time he closes his eyes and when he opens them he watches her.

“I wonder what you want from me,” she whispers, and doesn’t dare to look away from the window. There is the telltale rustle of not all there cloth and she still doesn’t move her eyes. Rikku feels a light, airy sort of half-there weight against her knobby unbeautiful knees where his head now rests, and his eyes are closed as one claw lightly traces a childish circle on her calve.

The rain patters tip tap tip tap against the window and he says nothing.

She shifts and quietly pulls out the golden drop that is bright that is dark that she wants to swallow up like ice like a pyrefly like a butterfly with red wings that she wants to throw into the ocean off a cliff into the sky and run away and never turn back.

“Seymour,” Rikku calls softly, and he jerks a little as she holds it in her open palm and he settles once more, lightly touching her hand to close it back up, resting his head back on her skinny knees.

And then he says “I’m sorry,” and it is so strange to hear that voice again and to hear all of the anger and strength and malice sapped out like the maple from a tree to pour on blueberry pancakes her mother used to make, and he breathes heavily like each is his last and his hand tightens on hers and he presses his veined forehead to her legs and she can only awkwardly rest her hands on his head like a blind healer in the sea that he’s reaching up from.

And he says it again and again and sometimes it’s very long sometimes it’s very short sometimes sometimes sometimes—

And he says it again and again and again, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry like a chant that means more than or is more important than breathing, again and again and again soft and loud and angry and unhappy and quiet and gasping and shuddering and heaving and she doesn’t know what to think and only waits.

But when they dwindle, he only breathes and says nothing after, with his head pressed to her and one hand lying limply beside him with the other loosely holding hers, and he can only breathe quietly after that and she can only try to understand.

And then he is gone.

And then she curls in on herself with dry eyes, with gold in her icy hand and lips that are icier.

-

It makes her lonely.

Rikku isn’t a lonely person by nature – she loves people, she loves talking to them and watching them and interacting with them but she can handle her own by herself, she’s fine on her own, but days fade into dreams fade into mornings fade into visions turn to nothing and it’s lonely, and Rikku feels colder lately.

It makes her feel terribly lonely, so lonely that when she eventually stops by a travel agency and sees Rin, she rushes over and hugs him fiercely, just for the comfort and contact of somebody she knows.

He is bewildered, but returns it nonetheless. He asks if she wants a lift to where Cid is, or perhaps Besaid and he doesn’t say that something is going differently with her but it’s in his own spiral green eyes that look like hers.

She shakes her head, rents a room and leaves him in the foyer to shake his head himself before slowly returning to the counter.

A week later and she still doesn’t know anything, and she’s still in the dark and kicking at those walls and screaming and knows exactly why Seymour should be sorry but doesn’t know why he is, and to shake it off she runs and runs and runs with her pack jangling on her back and her legs incredibly sore – she runs and runs and runs until she rockets into the Calm Lands into the afternoon with the sun shooting through her skin to warm her bones like curling up onto the hearth, until she rockets onto the grassy plains forever green, straight up to yet another travel agency to swing her leg over a side of a vacant skimmer, breathing hard and fast and jamming a bright turquoise hairpin into the ignition to go.

The air whips her face and the freshness of the grass, the neverending sky, everything – it makes her feel again, it makes her feel good and she breathes in deep, deep as her lungs will hold until it’s painful, but it feels good, and she is alive.

And she always has been, and after riding that machine at a breakneck speed for what feels like hours but was really only a little bit of time, this is the thought that breaks her euphoria as light, reflective contemplation slows the machine down to a stop and she breathes in deep, breathes out deep and pulls the air back in, leaning down to rest her head lightly against her hands loosely gripping the handlebars.

And she feels another set of hands loosely gripping her around the waist that have just appeared there, that have been there for a time; Rikku relaxes as her skin cools, as her breathing evens out, as she feels his head from behind nestle between her head and neck to breathe in deeply.

And he says it again, and his cool breath flushes past her skin like spearmint, and this time it’s much less like his dying breath and much more like his first, and his hands with finger-claws that only hurt a little hold her tighter.

One of her hands finds itself clutching to his around her stomach, so tiny in comparison like baby’s breath against a sunflower, like the first snow on the grassland, like the first star in twilight and Seymour’s other hand quietly clasps around hers, so large and all is still for a moment.

All is still as they breathe as the wind is soft as the grass barely moves as the cicadas hum one steady lull in the distance as something pours out of both of them like sickly sweet honey and blood, and the dying afternoon sun does not touch them. All is still as they breathe together and nothing moves, nothing sounds, and there is no nothing at the moment and she finds that indescribably beautiful.

…And then life starts again, slow and easy as if it never stopped, and she slowly straightens as he does, as well. Seymour’s breath tickles the back of her neck and he guides her hand to her pocket; Rikku slips the little golden bead out and he opens her hand and tells her, “I think I’m ready now,” and he clutches her a little tighter as if he’s trying to melt into her or her into him because she knows he’s incredibly lonely and always has been, and she can only hold his hands with her own – still small, still a little like a child’s – and try to understand.

And maybe she understands a little better than she thinks she would, because she knows a little something about losing mothers but at least she had her pieces of broken family to pick her up again, and she wonders if he ever really got up.

One of his hands unwraps from her waist reluctantly as warmth begins to coil back into the spot where it just was, and that large pale hand of honest lines and finger-claws passes over her eyes and she sees something both familiar and absolutely foreign, and she sees sun-dried red illuminated by sunlight on the water of the ocean with something reaching out from her chest and she can feel it, and then his hand returns to her waist and the ocean is gone.

And he cradles her hand with both of his, and she watches the little light in her hand until twilight is replaced by a cool blanket that fits the sky snugly like a giant quilt of stars and brightness and darkness.

She feels better.

“I think I’m ready now,” he repeats, and she hears him breathe in deeply and the arms around her waist aren’t quite as cold as they once were.

She slips the bead into her pocket. “Yeah.”

The skimmer springs to life as she revs the engine and whips around, setting another fast-paced speed that gives a sort of rush that makes her grin wide and loud, letting loose a delighted shout that echoes to the sky, and she hears real, honest laughter erupt behind her and soon there is only the sky and her and him, and then only her, and she pulls into the agency to kill the motor and flop onto the ground, exhausted. She does not wake up for a long time.

-

Rikku sits on the moon and splashes the stars as she stands still in the shallow water of the ocean, that incredibly still ocean with the stolen water skimmer beached against a broken pillar and her pops will no doubt kill her later, but she isn’t thinking of that right now, and there is one lone ripple to meet hers that disrupts the sky in water and she knows what he wants now and braces herself.

“You owe me,” she says suddenly, and cold hands hold her face hold her cheeks cold hands that are so large against her face against her cheeks, with claws that could rake her skin red in a second, but there is no desire to do so and she can see that in vibrant blue blue eyes the color of sky and water, eyes that have lashes long enough to almost touch hers, as a blue veined forehead that is pale and icy brushes against hers and she feels his smile.

And she thinks of the woman, of the woman with the pale lovely forehead with a violet dress and a necklace of golden drops just like the one in her pocket, and he needs rest and the woman needs rest and Rikku understands.

Not fully, and she supposes that’s okay. And she knows that she probably never will, and that’s okay, too, because she is standing in the ocean in front of the ruined Baaj temple as dawn approaches and gold lights meet the water and sun-baked red is illuminated everywhere as the water quietly moves like a lullaby for little girls and little boys, like a lullaby for big girls and big boys who really aren’t so big on the inside.

Seymour holds Rikku tightly for a moment, and he’s trying to feel with every single pyrefly knitting him up, she knows, he’s trying so hard to feel and then he relaxes. He is feeling her, his thumb is carefully brushing her cheek carefully, so carefully, because he is healing, she thinks she knows she understands a little.

“You ready?” she finally asks, and she isn’t completely sure if she’s asking him or her, or maybe both, and she doesn’t really know what exactly she feels on these whole few months (and she guesses that that’s okay, too).

His hands fall until he is only grasping one of her hands. She slips the other into her pocket to pluck out that little drop of gold as the world around them is still and golden and red mixed into watercolor blues on one gigantic, open canvas of pastel sky, and they walk forward together.

The building has fallen apart, even worse than the last time she hazily remembers visiting. But it’s also nicer in a way, because there is no roof and the sun is on her on him on everything and everywhere, sun-dried clay seeping through her feet to warm her legs and then in the middle of the room, she sees pyreflies and suddenly realizes that the woman, the fayth, Anima has been singing in her head all along and sings now, too, with the gentlest, softest smile Rikku has ever seen that strikes her with the most intense longing for her own mother that dries her mouth and prickles her eyes. And yet the woman just keeps smiling softly in that omniscient, gentle way.

The woman is very transparent, with the violet dress mixing with the dried clay red behind it mixing with the brightness of the yellows and pinks and oranges and blues of the bright dawn sky.

Seymour walks to his mother and they stand, parallel to each other, for one long, timeless moment.

(And she still smiles.)

And then he does, too, a very small one but it is the most beautiful and genuine thing Rikku thinks she’s ever seen – the fayth seems so content as her lips curve up even more and she exhales deeply as if she had been holding all the breath in the world, and then something clinks onto the hard ground and there are pyreflies, only pyreflies and Seymour as his head raises and he breathes that big breath in, turning to Rikku after another long moment as the pyreflies swirl around their heads.

His is watching something on the ground with a tilted head and dark, lowered lashes as Rikku quietly approaches, and she turns to look and sees one lone golden little bead sitting on the sun-baked stone in front of them. Seymour looks at her and Rikku understands what to do, even if she doesn’t understand why at all and that’s fine so she scoops it up and holds both in her palm of honest lines just like him.

Seymour takes her empty hand and leads her to the sea as the pyreflies float above them like a dream, everywhere and anywhere and soft like snowfall as the sunlight illuminating the sea and the broken buildings reflect off of them, too.

Rikku crouches in front of the water with Seymour behind her and sets both little lights to drift. They swirl around each other, feeling like something so infinitely good in the sun and the warmth and the sea, and they never sink and never fall off course but they just continue, farther and farther until Rikku cannot see them anymore in the glint of the sunlight on the water.

And then something picks her up and twirls her around, and Seymour pulls her close one last time to feel, because he seems so taken with the sensation and her arms wrap around him and their foreheads and noses brush and his eyelashes catch hers and she sees the most vivid, vibrant and most amazing blue Rikku thinks she ever has and ever will see until he begins to fade, and he does fade this time, never gone in only a moment but quietly fading with such a peaceful sort of genuine smile, fading into hundreds of pyreflies to swirl up to the ones overhead and they all disappear together to go home.

And then Rikku wakes up lying neatly on the beach in the shade of a building, and it is midday and she has the most contented feeling that has settled in her stomach and chest. She hears something, in the distance, and eases herself up to lower her eyes from the most beautiful sky she’s ever seen to find her father and brother coming to her, her brother laughing as her father shouts something that she can’t quite hear. She idly thinks that it probably has something to do with the stolen skimmer, but she still smiles as the sun beats down on the earth and reminds her that she is alive.

She knows that he’ll be fine. He is fine.

Rikku stands and walks into the sunlight.

A/N: I... don't even know how to write the author's note, how silly. I'm a bit nervous, honestly. I wanted to write something different, something completely off-course of where everything - everything in general - is. I decided that, as there were no pairings of Seymour and Rikku, I would try. It turned into something completely different, that maybe isn't a pairing as much as a need for understanding. Or not - in the end, it's up to you. This is... truly, the first story I am proud of to call my own.

Obvious disclaimer applies. And I wish a million wonderful things on two people: first and foremost, tcosta - Tasha is just an amazing person and beta and friend, and I honestly don't think I could've done this without knowing I have someone who has my back to tell me if a story is crap or not. She is a fantastic writer with stories that inspire me. Tasha, thank you thank you thank you forever and ever amen; as well as Micayasha, who I sent this to in it's WIP stages and was nice enough to really comb through it, look around and tell me what she thought of it.

When looking for inspiration, I found two particular poems and a song that struck me like a snowball to the brain. I write to music, but it isn't often that I solely depend on a song to complete something. I feel completely justified in saying that the ending of this could not have been written without Yoko Kanno's Sora. God's Wheel, by Shel Silverstein, is my favorite poem since I found it on the net while trying - unsuccessfully - to find poems that could really start me up writing, and I honestly think it always will be, which is why I named this story after it. It - just, it really struck me, and that's stuck with me since. Otherwise, the poetry passage at the beginning under the title is from a poem by Sylvia Plath entitled Morning Song. All of these hold something inside of me that I don't think I could ever write down in words.

-Manda