Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Dreams Come True ❯ Wishes ( Chapter 20 )

Troubled over what she had seen, and not quite willing to face anyone else at the moment, Amia found herself leaving the airship behind her and retreating into the most effective hideaway available: the library. She needed something to distract her, or, she felt, perhaps just to make her forget altogether. Trying to envision Zanarkand as some dead, lifeless ruin left an unhappy knot in her stomach, and she wasn't sure if she could quite explain that to any one of her companions. Any one of them aside from her husband, who understood well enough himself how it was.

She spent a long time strolling slowly down the aisles of the library and looking at the books on the shelves, almost afraid to touch them - they looked as dead as the pieces of Zanarkand that Rikku had shown her. It did nothing to help her mood. When she did touch them, finally, the ones she reached her hands out to were the ones that she had sworn not to look at.

Despite her best resolves to forget about the happenings earlier in the day, she eventually found herself retreating to a sofa with an armful of books: all the ones she guiltily admitted would only make her thoughts revolve around the situation. All sorts of books: copies of ancient memoirs, history books, books in Al Bhed. All about Zanarkand.

It has to be some sort of sin to do this, thought she. This isn't research. This feels like...like...

Like digging up graves.

But I need the truth...don't I? I need to know what really happened, I need to know that it's real...that my grief isn't for nothing. Though...

Amia, uneasily, had admitted to herself that in fact Zanarkand was gone. This simple fact she could accept. But it hadn't sunk in, and she was waiting for that bittersweet grief to come - the grief that comes when mourning loved ones, the grief that she knew so well. The reality of it had not quite touched Amia, and this left her feeling as if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, waiting achingly to feel the rush of gravity against her heart as she plummeted...but she still had yet to fall. She waited for it, but it didn't come, and this was unbearable to her.

"Eh dra vuin rihtnat yht ceqdo-drent oayn uv edc aqecdahla, dra knayd sadnubumec uv Zanarkand fyc cipzaldat du yh yspicr po dra cibaneun sylrehy faybuhno uv Bevelle," said one of the books.

One told the story through the words of an old scholar: "Just before the horrible Sin appeared, a terrible war raged between Bevelle and Zanarkand. When the armies of Bevelle attacked Mount Gagazet, they heard a song echoing across the snowy slopes. ``Tis a song from an otherworld,' they said. The soldiers panicked and ran. And then, as if to pursue the retreating armies, Sin appeared!"

Amia paused there, gently touching her fingers to the faded text on the book's aging pages. I was already long dead when this happened.

"Some time later, scouts from Bevelle braved the mountain. On the other side, they witnessed the ruins that had been Zanarkand. The city destroyed. Not a single soul left standing. Gone! In its place, a multitude of the fayth had gathered on Gagazet. They were singing a song. It's the song we now call the `Hymn of the Fayth.' And that, as they say, is that."

She closed her eyes at that, able to crisply imagine the expressions of surprise, confusion and fear on the faces of weary, unshaven soldiers. They would have fled from the fayth. Of course they fled from the fayth. After Sin, they would not have known what to expect from anything.

They must have been so afraid...not knowing, so soon after Sin's birth, when it would strike. It destroyed their enemy, Zanarkand, but it was not their weapon - they surely suspected that it would turn against them as well, but they must have had no idea...no idea at all that it would be a plague that would haunt or destroy them more than twenty generations later.

Amia closed that book.

Why is it, she wondered, that every time I go to escape something I wind up in even more trouble than when I started?

Then again, that's life, isn't it?

It was in that moment of undistracted silence that she heard, just barely, the sounds of a sphere being played in some distant chamber of the library. Of course the library had history spheres; god only knew where they got them, but they had them, and Amia had already discovered that they were off-limits to the normal public. But of course, that generalization did not include her, so curiosity roused her from her reading and she walked toward the source of the sound.

Until then, Amia had not stopped to think about the spheres beyond the fact that they had them. Now, recognizing this, she wondered where they had the room to play the things. There were spheres that projected small images, for example a man giving a speech, but the spheres that would be held in high importance in such a place as this would be the ones whose projections filled the room. There had to be some sort of chamber for them, thought Amia, so that was what she looked for.

She found it quickly, annexed in an obscure little corner of the library. Only a feeble-looking door sealed it off from the main chamber, and Amia was almost amused to see "No Public Admittance" written on its surface - in four tongues. The warning was written in every language of Spira: Al Bhed, Spiran, and the scrawling script of what she assumed to be the Ronso and Hypello languages. Amia wondered if Yuna had ever seen it, and whether Yuna would have grasped the irony in it if she had. She didn't much doubt it.

Without thinking, Amia turned the knob on the door and pushed it open quietly, finding herself mutely surprised at how cold the metal was. Only after she had stepped inside and closed the door did she consider that she might have been better off knocking.

The room resembled a great dome; truthfully, that's all it was: a dome with a very small platform in the center for placing and playing spheres on. There were no lights on the walls - the sphere provided all illumination, and that was plenty. The sphere in question glowed brightly blue in the center of the room, its horrific image frozen on the walls like a mural from hell: Zanarkand, brightly lit, tainted with reds, oranges, browns; explosions, crumbling buildings in the distance; Sin. Even she, who had never seen the great beast before, found it unmistakable.

The boy, Bahamut, stood facing the sphere. He didn't seem to notice her, and the image frozen over his profile as well as the great shadow he cast on the wall behind him left Amia feeling strangely frightened. Nevertheless, she stepped forward and slowly took in the full projection the sphere provided.

The city was eerily alive, and not the normal hustle-and-bustle; even at the frame the sphere had stopped on, the entire image looked as if someone had taken a full-range photograph of purgatory. Masses of people, panic and fear clear on their faces, scrambled over each other to reach towards some unknown sanctuary.

They didn't know, or maybe were too afraid to admit, that there wasn't one...

Many were empty-handed, but others carried things in their arms: belongings, weapons, crying children. She wondered quite what they meant to accomplish, taking with them anything more than their loved ones. Did they, mere ants, mean to fight the awesome beast if worse came to worst?

But then again, had they not been surviving that way for a thousand years? Wasn't it only a scant few months ago that Spira finally laid its weapons to rest?

"I didn't mean to interrupt you." Amia offered to Bahamut quietly. "I'll leave if you want me to. I was...simply curious. I heard..."

"You're welcome to watch, if you can stomach it." The boy, for all the strength he usually showed, now looked defeated. His voice was monotone, subdued, and his eyes never left the sphere. Amia approached him, standing with hands clasped together in front of her - she wanted to at least reassure him, but she knew very well that it would simply drive him away.

"If you can stomach it," he had said. If. And that was a powerful `if.' Amia already knew that this frozen, horrible second would be something she would remember for the rest of her life, and she paused for a moment before replying, wondering if it would be wise to agree. But then again, it was like a gruesome car wreck: sickening to look at, but you couldn't bring yourself to look away.

"How did they make this? A sphere like this?" asked Amia, as an answer.

"It's a compilation of the memories of pyreflies. A composite sphere."

She blinked. "We never saw pyreflies in Zanarkand...so this couldn't have been the beginning of it, right? Sin had to be there for some time. How long?"

"Oh, it was. The dream world of our Zanarkand was created from the memories of pyreflies. You never saw pyreflies in Zanarkand because the shimmery substance they're made of was used to create Zanarkand's miracles: the lights that never expire. Everything from the lights in the blitz sphere to the cross-city transportation. It caused something of a disruption in the Farplane, but the pyreflies weren't destroyed - they still lived, but essentially trapped where they were built. Sort of like spheres. This," Bahamut continued, using a sweep of the hand to gesture to the image around them, "is Sin's first moments."

Amia paused in shock, absorbing that. Modern armies took hours, if not days, to bring a city to its knees. With soldiers alone, it could take weeks.

And in what had to be only its first few minutes of life, Sin had already doomed the great city.

"How long?" Amia whispered.

"This is less than ten minutes after Sin's appearance."

"And didn't they do anything to stop it?"

Bahamut seemed to sigh lightly. "They tried, but Zanarkand was unready. Who could have expected it? Even with a war between Zanarkand and Bevelle. Only a small percentage of Zanarkand's weapons were even remotely equipped to stand up against something equivalent to a fraction of Sin. Zanarkand...may have been advanced, but they weren't warmongers. Bevelle was the one with the big guns, and Zanarkand realized that too late. At first, they all thought that Sin was Bevelle's creation, but quickly they realized that it couldn't have been. Sin was too strong even for Bevelle. For both of them combined."

"So Zanarkand was doomed anyway."

"That's not for anyone to say. They weren't helpless. Outmatched, yes - a longshot, yes, but they might have survived and defeated Bevelle's great armies. It was Sin that doomed them. From then on, it wasn't much more than a cleanup act for Bevelle's troops."

Amia and Bahamut stood there silently for a moment together. His eyes were fixed on the sphere - hers on the walls.

Finally Bahamut said simply, "Would you like to see your son?"

Amia blinked as her light trance was broken, turning to the child with a look of surprised confusion. "Tidus? He...?"

In response, Bahamut set his hand to the side of the sphere and as his fingers moved against it, Amia watched the scene before her change in fast-forward, too swiftly to make any sense. It stopped again after a moment, focusing on the main ground-road through the city. She caught Tidus instantly: he was hard to miss, flaxen hair standing out like a sore thumb from the darkness around him. Auron was beside him - Auron, babysitter and guardian extraordinaire. Even then, she thought, relief mixing into the myriad of emotions she was feeling. Looking closer, they both held swords: looking closer, it was for a reason. A horde of small, oddly bug-like beasts was closing in on the pair, and they faced the danger head-on: Auron confidently, Tidus hesitantly. With Tidus' first swing she saw that he was new to it and that the sword he brandished was one of Jecht's - one, in fact, that Jecht had kept for as long as she could remember. She watched them escape the horde; she watched them escape the crumbling city, Tidus scrambling to safety just in time; she watched his disbelief as he clung there to that scrap of what was once a road, Auron holding him up by the shirt as if he was going to beat the boy senseless. Tidus was so different then from the young man she saw now...now, she predicted with a small inner smile, Auron would not have needed to hold him and force him forward.

"This is your story," Auron growled, and Tidus squirmed helplessly, fright in his eyes. "It all begins here."

Amia had the strange feeling that she was watching her son being born, in some strange way. Jecht, her own death, and all the pain he endured in Zanarkand were nothing now. This was his birth. His life would begin here; his end would be determined by this one single moment he had no control over. Tidus had no choice.

"He's shaped up a bit since then, I see," commented Amia.

Bahamut made an `mm'-ish noise in his throat, an unaffected note of agreement. "Everyone does in the end. It's simply a difference of when. And whether they get the chance to live out their lives, having reached such maturity."

In the long silence that followed, Amia was the only one to interpret it as awkward. She pondered his words, finally asking out of pure curiosity, "What about your family? What happened to them that night?"

"That isn't important."

And Amia saw by how he looked away that it was, indeed, important. Thoughtfully, she sat and leaned her back against the cool cement wall, palms pressing into the ground beneath her. She wasn't sure which earth she meant to grip: Guadosalam's or Zanarkand's.

"You're a poor liar. Did all of them die?" asked Amia softly.

"They had all been dead for some time. Save my mother. Sin finished her."

Amia winced. "I'm sorry...and what about you? What happened to you?"

"I was able to escape my mother's fate, and after Sin left, the survivors regrouped. I was among them; being a lost and frightened child, of course I had no say in what they decided. And so I became a fayth, as all the others did."

"Did you understand what was happening to you?"

"They explained it to me before it happened. I was but a boy, though, and didn't really grasp the entire situation."

"If you had?"

"I'd have run to Bevelle screaming at the top of my lungs." Bahamut answered dryly, and Amia gave him a crooked smile. "But I suppose that wouldn't have been any help."

"We're grateful to you..."

"Please don't thank me. It wasn't my decision." As quickly as Amia had thought that she had gained some positive ground with Bahamut, he retreated, and seemed to adopt his original demeanor - faint scowl included.

"But you're here anyway...you're trying to help us. That deserves gratitude."

"And I want to help you, very much. But...here. Just look at this."

Bahamut touched the sphere again, and the image on the walls changed, moved. Still the middle of the night, still the death of Zanarkand. Sin, lumbering forth, passed over house and street indiscriminately. A residential complex was dwarfed in Sin's shadow and its buildings shattered like eggshells underneath. The grand illuminated walkways, as much the mysterious pride of Zanarkand as blitzball was, flickered and died at its touch, shimmering and dispersing into a sea of pyreflies - something new to Zanarkand, for faintly, she could hear shrieks of confusion and fear, and it sent a shiver down her spine.

Above the noise, Bahamut spoke to her fiercely, eyes locking with her own. His change of mood surprised her - she could see his chest move as he breathed, entire body so quickly infused with passion for what filled his heart. "Not because of this! Because of anything but this. I don't want to help you because of the past. I don't want to be constantly remembering and grieving. That's not the purpose of my life. The past makes me sick. It can't be changed. I want to put it away!"

Amia, understanding, gave a small nod. "I...I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for. None of you do. Me...? A thousand years...an eternity wasted on the past. The past doesn't matter now - not I nor you or Tidus or Yuna or Jecht or anyone should let it matter. I'm here to help you because of the future. Spira's past haunts it! My dream for Spira is to start fresh...start clean, without corruption, without false hope, without Sin."

"Why did you come here, then? Why this sphere?"

As if reminded that it even existed, Bahamut turned his attention to the sphere in question, glaring at it. He picked it up, and Amia could see the whites of his knuckles as he gripped the sides, not at all gently.

"To say goodbye!" he cried, clenching the sphere in one shaking hand. "Goodbye and good riddance!"

With one smooth movement of the arm, possessing a grace undue to children, he hurtled the sphere against the wall. Silently they both watched as it shattered and fell to the ground, releasing a clutch of pyreflies that rose from their former prison and shimmered in slow circles about the room. Bahamut stood motionless after that; Amia, refusing to break the silence, simply sat, listening to him breathe, and wishing she might be able to melt into the wall. This, she knew, was his battle, and this was not her business.

He finally turned to her after a long moment, and to her utter surprise, there were tears in his eyes.

"Do you know," Bahamut said softly, "that Tidus changed the world when he kissed Yuna just that once?"

It took a second for Amia to respond - she was thrown off guard by the change of subject, and frowned in confusion. "At Macalania?"

"It was a small act. Such a private act. But it kept her going and now we have this."

"The future, huh?"

Bahamut bowed his head. "It takes so little to change everything. And maybe...maybe..." He paused, and when his words wouldn't come, he growled in frustration. "I...if he can do something so small, unwittingly, if it's that easy...what I mean is...I'm here to help, to change things, so if I can just help to make everyone forget this wretched past and move on-"

Amia stood up and approached him; he stopped mid-sentence, puzzled. Gently, she rested her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him.

"If you're looking to change the world, Bahamut," she said softly, "you already have."

Slowly, almost embarrassedly, Bahamut reached up and grasped at the hem of her long sleeve, head bowed to avoid meeting her eyes. Amia, understanding this, drew him against her side, letting his forehead press against her stomach - watching over him silently, in respect for that side of him that treasured silence above all and was still quite off-limits, guarding even, as he clenched her shirt in a deathgrip and his shoulders shook lightly as he mutely wept.

And she thought, He hates his body; he hates looking like such a child and being so helpless as he is; but none of us ever lose the childlike part of us that still needs other people, do we? I understand his reasons for his distance, but that we might hold back that part of ourselves...seems something like a crime, so suddenly.

I want to understand him. But understanding Bahamut is like understanding Jecht - there's something, some rift of some sort, some grand difference that makes it nearly impossible. I don't know what Bahamut experienced in his ages as a fayth...I can only guess that it's probably those experiences which make his emotions so volatile now. Has he always been this way?

Or is he remembering what it's like to be truly alive? Now- now, it's as if he frightens himself. It's clear that he's frustrated with himself. It's clear that his own memory saddens him. I want to help him - but I don't know how...

...and maybe that's the way he feels about us...and Spira.

______________________

Woohoooo. Almost a year between updates this time.

Sorry about that, folks. You'll likely see more frequent updates after this. This chapter gave me trouble because I kept trying to make it longer than it was - none of the filler pieces worked out at ALL. Wasted time, blech. Those of you who enjoyed the longer chapters MAY be out of luck for awhile, I don't know. Filler is bad. Filler is what accounted for about a fourth, maybe a third, of this wait. I'm not going to stress if the chapters are very short. I want to finish this story - I can rewrite it later.

And hey - if I don't update often enough, just prod me along with a comment on my Livejournal. You don't have to be a member to comment or anything, and every little bit of encouragement helps. On that note, thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far - some of those reviews were really touching and really got the ball rolling on finishing my reposting. ^^ Thank you guys so much! I was very touched and it totally made my day(s). :D

Whee, birthdays have passed since I last posted! A happeh happeh birfday to Adam/No One, Noelle/Mistiza, Timmeh/Fire Rules, Aly/Evil Neko/TEH ALYCAT :O, and Merryface! My dear and notably insane friends, how I love you. <3

What I've been up to since you last saw me: hehe, swim finals were a blast last year, JV champ for 50 fly/50 back/200 medley relay and second place for the 200 free relay...woohoo. Also more swimming, more competing, some swimming, FFX-2, and for a change of pace...swimming :D And of course, glomp-bothering Adam the whole way. *heart!* ^^

Thanks, too, to everyone who has beta read and/or helped me out with this chapter in any way. That counts as pretty much everyone I mentioned on the "birthday list" as well as rock-star-vt a.k.a. His Arkiness...yeah :D THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH. I totally appreciate everything you have done for me.

As for the almost-chapterly recommendations: Video Girl Ai, Shad's favorite anime in the whole wide world (thanks to Adam, no surprise :P) and anything and everything by Yoko Kanno or Joe Hisaishi...mwaha.

Until next time, thanks for reading and have a happy holiday season~!