Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Dreams Come True ❯ Possibility ( Chapter 8 )

I dream of lying

Against your chest

My body in your clasp

Disappearing into the evening...

It was difficult to recall a time when I woke up feeling so utterly...*content.*

I was not faced with death, loss, or any impending harm. I did not have to worry about saving the world. Didn't even have to worry about *running* it.

All I had to know right then was Tidus' warm-sweet breath in my hair and his arms, forever warm and strong and protecting; his heartbeat, steady and constant and...

Alive...

And that was enough to keep me happy for a lifetime.

I could tell he was awake - or at least half-awake, anyway. He was drowsily tracing his fingers across my upper back, his touch light and almost tickling.

"Good morning," Just in case he was in fact still asleep, the words were whispers.

He yawned then, arms wrapping tighter around me to pull me up face-to-face with him.

"Indeed it is." he grinned, as I reached up and gave him a kiss. "Yuna, do that every morning and I'll die a happy man."

"Did you sleep alright?"

"Of course I did, once I came in here. You?"

And how could I possibly express what it was? How *good* it felt, how honest-to-god *heavenly* it was to fall asleep, safe and warm in the arms of the one you love?

"Very well," I smiled, though I knew the words didn't sum up half what I wanted to say.

"Good...that's good." Tidus replied, gently peeling my arms from around him and sitting upright. He suddenly looked very sheepish, halfway apologetic. "I'm sorry, Yuna; I didn't mean to bug you in the middle of the night like that. It just seemed the only thing to do; I won't -"

"No, it's...it's okay. I didn't mind at all."

*Do you regret it, then?* I wondered silently. Immediately, the apologetic expression on his face turned to that adorable silly grin of his, giving me my answer.

"And that's not saying it wasn't wonderful...but it must have surprised the hell out of you, me stumbling here at odd hours to babble about strange dreams and then fall back to sleep."

"Nn...not really...but you make me worry. You're telling me you saw...*that*...in a *dream?*"

He shook his head. "Memory. I remember seeing that now."

"Tidus, how could you *possibly*...?"

His smile had faded slightly - now it disappeared, as he shook his head. "You don't want to know. Trust me, you don't wanna know."

"Yes. I do want to know." I tugged at his sleeve, sitting up beside him.

He looked hesitant. "It won't seem half so terrible as it really is."

"Just *tell* me?"

"We never die."

"*What?*"

"Yeah, we lose our body, but as far as the *you*, the *I*, the *me-ness* in somebody, it doesn't just...die. You keep on going, forever."

"I...don't understand."

"I spent time with my best friend from Zanarkand...and my parents; both of them."

I didn't have anything to say. It couldn't have been just a dream - otherwise how would he have known that I'd been so willing to throw myself off that cursed ledge? But what he was saying...didn't make much sense. And yet it did. Tidus seemed to sense that I was unsure, and continued.

"Pyreflies are souls. Pyreflies never die. So...nothing alive ever truly...dies."

"The dead are *pyreflies?*"

He nodded. And then he looked at me for a long time, silently, as if considering my presence - or maybe me. Slowly he raised a hand to my cheek, brushing the sleep-tousled hair back behind my ear.

"Yuna...promise me something."

"Anything,"

His expression hardened a bit; his brows furled together, almost in determination. "Never, ever, *ever* do anything like that again."

I almost found it funny, the way that was the last thing I'd expected him to say. Almost.

"Don't give me reason to, then. Promise me you won't, and I'll never even *think* of trying something like that again."

He looked down.

"I can't."

My response was immediate, and spoken twice as sharply as I'd meant it to be.

"Why not?"

"Because I can't promise I'll stay, no matter how much I *want* to."

"Promise me anyway." I demanded.

"That would be *cruel* --"

"I don't *care,* Tidus!" I could not help how my eyes were daggers on his. Couldn't help how I sounded almost angry, when it was merely a desperate heartfelt pleading. "Because I know if you do go, it's not going to be by your own choice. So *promise* me, and..." I came back to reality in mid-sentence. "...if you really won't...I guess that's okay...too," I finished lamely.

He was looking at me again; looking at me with that undiscernable expression. I let him, not meeting his eyes; he was silent for a long time, each second lingering like a pin through my heart.

*He's not going to promise me.*

*Damn you, Yuna, what were you *thinking?* Demanding that he promise what he can't possibly promise?*

"I'm...sorry..." After what seemed like hours of silence, I finally muttered my defeat.

I hardly had time to react before his hand wrapped behind my head, pulling my lips to his fiercely. The kiss was startlingly passionate, and so intense that I nearly pushed him away in reflex. But the drugging heat of his mouth won out; I melted against him almost instantly.

Tidus stopped after a moment, taking his other hand up to hold me to him. He did not move away at all - his lips brushed mine still as he spoke against my mouth.

"Yuna, don't be. Don't you dare be sorry."

Was that a tremor in his voice?

"I didn't mean to -"

"You meant every word of it, Yuna. Except the part about it being alright if I didn't promise you."

He was completely right.

"I didn't want to impose...I mean...I shouldn't have put you in a position where you might have felt forced -"

"Yuna..." His voice was a plea, riding on the soft, low sound of a whisper. I felt his hands remove themselves from the back of my neck, and slide down my arms to hold my own hands loosely. Tidus suddenly seemed...*fragile,* for lack of a better word; he was all soft voice and warm body and god, I just wanted to curl up in his arms and never move again. "Yuna...can I keep you?"

"Unh..? What a silly question to ask...and you don't even need to; I've *always* been yours."

Something changed in him then - a flat "Oh," of realization escaped him, and it nearly made me laugh.

"What, you still haven't figured that out?"

"No, it's not that...I knew." With a last, light kiss, he pulled back. "It's just...I think you took it the wrong way,"

"Then how was I supposed to take it?"

"Eh, don't worry about it." He slipped out from between the blankets and stood up beside the bed, lazily stretching. He didn't fool me; he was tense, and just trying to hide it. Those words had meant something to him.

Maybe an old ritual, from his Zanarkand?

Seemingly in the same second that thought crossed my mind, I realized exactly what Tidus had meant. It was an unfamiliar way of saying it - I hadn't heard that particular phrase before.

And suddenly I didn't trust myself to stand. I hardly trusted myself to breathe.

*My god, he just...*proposed,* didn't he...*

"...Tidus..." I reached out one hand for him, and he took it to help me stand upright. I met his eyes uncertainly - he held the gaze, his own clear-blue eyes looking so painfully vulnerable it made my heart ache. "I...I think I just took it the right way..."

A half-smile formed on his lips.

"I suppose they don't say it that way anymore."

"N-no...they don't..."

"Yuna, your face is *beet red.*"

I didn't say anything - I was incapable of it. Instead I pressed my palm to his chest, feeling his heart racing beneath the skin.

"Is that your promise, then...?"

His half-smile grew into a quiet grin. "If you want it to be."

"But you just said you wouldn't promise you'd stay --"

"That's right, I can't promise you that."

"Then...why...?"

I couldn't understand. He wouldn't promise me he'd stay here, but he could...

It gave me a strange tingling feeling just to think about it, to form the words in my mind and play around with them like some gleeful child.

He couldn't promise he'd stay - but he could make me another promise instead, and indeed a better one. How strange it was -- that I was getting granted my most frivolous, childish, selfish daydream.

When I'd married Seymour, I'd tried to quiet the disgust I felt a little bit. I did that by imagining how it might have been if it were Tidus and not this...*creature,* if perhaps the hands over my shoulders were gloved, human warmth, if the lips ever-light on mine did not seem like ice.

I remember thinking that Tidus would have been...so warm. Even if the marriage was forced, he would have at least whispered little comforts. 'Smile,' he would have told me with a secret grin.

He was standing right there, not twenty feet away, and yet still, he could not help me. I remember the firm angry lines of his eyes, his jaw squared, teeth gritted as the wedding bells rang - for anger I could assume, but jealousy? I could only wish. And I did wish it, and that's what it had been all along.

He took my other hand, placing that on his chest as well, looking down at my arms.

"In Zanarkand," he began slowly, "to have, to hold, to cherish -- those were for a lifetime. But to keep...that was...forever. Regardless of death, of life or distance...I'm yours, body and soul. Always."

Always.

My eyes burned, and his form, so close, was now a tawny blur of tears. Suddenly the word meant so, so much more.

He'd meant it that way all along, hadn't he?

Forever was so much longer for him...for one who'd lived in both life and death. Forever took its full meaning in him. And for so long forever had been, to me, simply the rest of my life...

But it went beyond that now.

'Regardless of death, of life or distance...I'm yours, body and soul.'

The words gave me chills. This...this made my request for just his presence sound downright trivial. I think I said something along those lines - or at least tried to, for I choked in mid-sentence and felt myself enveloped in his arms again, my face against his shoulder.

For the first time in my life, I cried happy tears.

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