Categories > Games > Final Fantasy X-2 > Necrosis Infinitum
Later that evening Brother dragged her out to a roaring party to celebrate the trip she'd start tomorrow. Her head protested mildly, and her stomach felt rather vile, but some more alcohol made that go away. /Hair of the dog/, she thought. The hours passed by and she'd ended up grinding on the dance floor with Csynd, body shaking with exhaustion, alcohol and hormones. The sweat on her skin glistened under the flickering lights, and the room swam before her eyes, so she closed them tightly to stop the spinning.
His hands crept up the back of her thighs, but she was too tired to protest at this point, from just everything about the long day, the week itself, and the sledgehammers she'd been downing all night. For some reason everyone was so insistent on giving them to her, firey drink after scalding firey drink filling her with shaking desire. Drinking always set her a little on the edge of reality, making it easy to slip into the warm bed of an anonymous someone, making her want a little more than messy kisses in a booth at the back of the bar. Wild, one man had said, the drink made her wild.
He felt good, it felt good, anyway, the warm hot touch on her bare skin, his fingers clenching hard into the strong muscles that corded up the back of her legs. His fingers grazed along the line of her thong, and her knee gave out. She stumbled weakly and a hand caught her, a hand attached to a rather angry-looking Gippal, oddly annoyed at finding her drunk out of her mind and trading dance-floor intimacies.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Rikku?" He pulled her away from Csynd ,who had moved on to the next woman. Her legs barely supporting her, she leaned against him heavily as he walked her to a bench against the far wall.
"Um... I..." her words were cut at the source as she shuddered, and heaved. Gippal held onto her shoulders, pulling her hair out of the way as her body protested violently the night of indulgence. "So much for crazy wild times my last night here..." she gasped as she came up and he offered her a cold glass of water. She swallowed it down slowly, hoping her stomach wouldn't reject this holy offering.
"Nope. Those idle hopes ended in a puddle of puke," he said, sounding almost cheerful for a short moment, then he glared at her again. "I'll take you back to your room," he growled softly, walking her away from the loud music. She wasn't sure how they'd made it so far, but suddenly her door loomed up in front of her and he was opening it, helping her inside.
Some strange emotion gripped her body when she looked up at him to thank him for looking out for her again like when they were little, and she suddenly found herself kissing him hard, fingers tangling in his spiky hair. She was kissing him, and surprisingly, despite what must have been an awful taste of vomit, was being kissed back. Fingers fumbled at buckles, and there was clothing on the floor and he was so close and so warm, making her gut squeeze tight and shivery... a feeling that hadn't been inside her for /way too damn long/, she thought.
The feeling had last twisted inside her when she'd cornered the red-headed Blitzer in the airship a few years ago. There were abstract remembrances of other partners that crossed her mind but there hadn't been anyone special since the heated moments of making the well-muscled Yevonite man curse his own god. This was special, even though it was all nails and angry hot words hissed quietly in her native language. It was /him/, her partner in crime from her youth, moving over her, hands crawling along her shoulders, grazing her neck, his mouth fastened along her jaw.
"Rikku," the single word had come out, hard-edged and desperate. She pulled off his eye-patch, looking at the broken glory that was his damaged eye and cried out, fingers digging into his shoulder as he pushed her away from the memories of yesterday and fully into here and /now/.
"Bastard," she spat, as her breath ripped from her, his teeth biting into her neck deeply. Her ribs jutted out over her flat stomach, meeting his scarred chest evenly as she arched into him, the solid mattress, chilly, beneath her body. He chuckled deep in his chest, and slid between her bare thighs, skin scraping softly over skin with a low rasping noise.
"You love it."
Captain's Log - 3rd Day on the journey to Rikku Island.
The waters are a strange shade of gray here. It's so weird to look over the side of the ship and see that they went from being clear aqua blue to a muddy gray-green. Kau says that it's something to do with sediment deposits coming out of what will be the rivers on the lands we're about to stumble on, or whatever. He said something super technical involving equations on tracking how far away we were based on the sand and stone content of the water, and I think my brain exploded. Tidus had the same expression on his face, too. I know I should be paying attention to the things my team tells me, but some of it is seriously dull.
Rikku frowned and bit her lip, watching the log-sphere turn slowly on the desk in her cabin. Her father was going to be listening to it when she got back, maybe she should record over that last sentence. No, better he know how she felt... he'd get an idea of what suited her best for the next job after this one was over. Hopefully pure salvage-y goodness and no scientific measurements involved.
But, if he had his way, motherhood was on the schedule. She grimaced at the thought. He'd cornered her after Tidus had left to pack, before she'd gone off to get drunk and sleep with- eep, let's forget that part, 'kay? He'd spoken about owing the Al Bhed a true heir, and that it was her job and duty to provide a strong leader for the people that depended on her. Implying she wasn't strong enough, she thought.
"I know it can be a hard thing t' ask, Rikku, but your mother did it, and you need t' do it too." Cid had said, leaning against the wall of her room as she stared at him blankly, floored for the second time that day by his revelations.
"I have to what, get... knocked up?" Her voice cracked on the last word. Cid shifted his weight. Clearly he wasn't all too comfortable with this conversation. Well good, she was going to make it damn-well uncomfortable for him. Springing this on her after giving her a treat like newly-minted Rikku-land, it was foul really.
"Doesn't have t' be today..."
"Damn right it doesn't! What about Brother? Why can't he be the one, y'know, having kids? At least he doesn't have to give birth to an eight-pound bundle of screams and vomit!" She glared at her father, crossing her arms over her chest defensively, and Cid looked a little deflated.
"He can't, not like you." He cleared his throat hesitantly and then tried to smile brightly, and ease her into a less ball-busting mood. "Well, why don't you just... go and explore an' then we can think about it when ya get back?" She grumbled, feeling a little bit of her anger dissipate. Curse her father and his good-natured smiles.
"You're being all mysterious-like again Pops," she said, her tone bordering on better humour again. He sighed and shrugged one shoulder.
"Just lookin' out fer the Al Bhed, Rikku, and-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. When I get back though? We're gonna talk about this." She picked up her duffle bag and walked out, not looking back. The thought of having children made her want to go for a nice long relaxing vacation on the Thunder Plains. Just 'cause she'd camped out there for awhile, and she wasn't so shakingly scared of the crash and blinding light, well, it didn't mean she liked thunderstorms now, right? Tolerant of them, but liking? And children seemed like a long 18 years of thunderstorms. Look at all the problems she'd given her Pops! She stopped still in the middle of the hall, imagining a little version of herself and winced. Not so good. Mayem was wonderful, as long as it was your mayhem. She didn't much care for the mayhem of anyone else.
"Hey! Cap'n Rikku!" The call made her look up from the muddying waters at the side of ship, pulling her away from the conversation with her father. Dnuuban was waving from the viewing station up near the top of the ship. "Land!" he yelled. A grin spread out on her face and she raced like a desert hare up to the prow where Tidus was already waiting, holding binoculars to his eyes.
"Gimme! Ty!" She tried to grab them from him, but he used his superior (well, not that superior) height to prevent her from snatching them. She pouted slightly and poked him. He laughed and then shook his head, handing her the binoculars.
"Go ahead and look, it's different," he said with an easy grin. She leaned over the edge of the boat and looked through the binoculars. He grabbed the back of her shorts to keep her from slipping. Great tall trees rose from rusty red cliffs. Big trees, but not like the ones she'd seen in other parts of Spira... these had long feathery branches, what almost looked like spines decorating each limb. Not jungle-like, but big even still. She pulled the binoculars away from her face and stepped back so Tidus could stop holding her. /Rikku-land/, she thought.
---
They entered the cove slowly; the waters were littered with high dangerous reefs cresting close to the surface. She sat with Tidus, watching as those great cliffs soared above them, cut sharp from the waves. He was turning the binoculars over and over in his hands, nervously. She put her fingers on his arm.
"Ty, y' wanna talk about it?" He took a deep breath in and gave her a half-smile.
"Just thinking..."
"About what?"
"Kids." /Vilg/. What was it with people and rugrats this past week? She'd heard of the ol' "biological clock" jokes, but this was bordering on mass insanity.
"Oh, um, that's..."
"Yuna wants them. Says it's... safe now. Vegnagun, Sin, they're gone, and I'm back. But safe? I mean, I know she'd be a great mom and all... but, me? A dad? I can't really... see that. Not after the way my old-" he stopped short, mouth clamped shut, his shoulders all hunched up.
"Your old man?" She asked, swinging her legs out and back, looking away from him. He let out the breath he'd been holding.
"He was such an asshole! What if I'm like that too?" Rikku knew what he was talking about. Not all Al Bhed kids had been lucky like her. Someone in the sand pit always had bruises that had to be explained away with I fell down or The machina I was working on exploded in my face/. You didn't ask questions, even though you were real curious, 'cause your Brother would cuff you up the side of the head and give you that /Shut it or I'll lock you in the closet again look. And once, she'd overheard her father talking... saying those that got beat on when they were little an' weak ended up being the ones beating, later in life.
"I think you're gonna make a great dad, Tidus," she leaned over and ruffled his hair as she spoke and he glared at her, shaking his head to settle the blonde fluff. "Y'know why?"
"No," he snorted angrily, "if I knew that, I wouldn't be running away." She punched him in the shoulder gently for his tone and he gave her a shy smile. "Sorry."
"You should be," she said, then added a half-hearted, "meanie." The word sounded a little out of place in her vocabulary now that she was older, but a part of her was determined not to grow up one inch. You couldn't have children if you were half-child yourself, right?
"So why am I gonna be such a good father anyway?" Tidus pulled her back from her random musings. She blinked twice out at the sea to collect her thoughts,and then grinned at him.
"Cause-"
Crunch.
The boat slammed to a stop and Rikku and Tidus were thrown forward, face-first onto the deck. The binoculars skidded overboard and into the water with a small splash.
"Oh Spira..." Rikku groaned into the metal grate beneath her. Her face would probably carry the imprint of 1 inch by 1 inch squares for the rest of her sad exsistence. /Woe/. She rolled over and got to her feet. "What was that?" She called up to the pilot. He was righting himself slowly, rubbing the side of his head.
"I think we hit something, y'know?" he yelled back. She glared.
"No, really! I couldn't tell, I-"
"Rikku," Tidus cut her off, his voice tense. He was peering over the edge of the water, fingers cupped around his hands so he could see past the sun glare on the surface. She walked over to him.
"What?" She poked her nose over his shoulder to catch a glimpse at what had attracted his attention, and inhaled sharply in surprise. Her lips parted slightly as she breathed out slowly, whispering the words,
"Holy lying Yevon."
His hands crept up the back of her thighs, but she was too tired to protest at this point, from just everything about the long day, the week itself, and the sledgehammers she'd been downing all night. For some reason everyone was so insistent on giving them to her, firey drink after scalding firey drink filling her with shaking desire. Drinking always set her a little on the edge of reality, making it easy to slip into the warm bed of an anonymous someone, making her want a little more than messy kisses in a booth at the back of the bar. Wild, one man had said, the drink made her wild.
He felt good, it felt good, anyway, the warm hot touch on her bare skin, his fingers clenching hard into the strong muscles that corded up the back of her legs. His fingers grazed along the line of her thong, and her knee gave out. She stumbled weakly and a hand caught her, a hand attached to a rather angry-looking Gippal, oddly annoyed at finding her drunk out of her mind and trading dance-floor intimacies.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Rikku?" He pulled her away from Csynd ,who had moved on to the next woman. Her legs barely supporting her, she leaned against him heavily as he walked her to a bench against the far wall.
"Um... I..." her words were cut at the source as she shuddered, and heaved. Gippal held onto her shoulders, pulling her hair out of the way as her body protested violently the night of indulgence. "So much for crazy wild times my last night here..." she gasped as she came up and he offered her a cold glass of water. She swallowed it down slowly, hoping her stomach wouldn't reject this holy offering.
"Nope. Those idle hopes ended in a puddle of puke," he said, sounding almost cheerful for a short moment, then he glared at her again. "I'll take you back to your room," he growled softly, walking her away from the loud music. She wasn't sure how they'd made it so far, but suddenly her door loomed up in front of her and he was opening it, helping her inside.
Some strange emotion gripped her body when she looked up at him to thank him for looking out for her again like when they were little, and she suddenly found herself kissing him hard, fingers tangling in his spiky hair. She was kissing him, and surprisingly, despite what must have been an awful taste of vomit, was being kissed back. Fingers fumbled at buckles, and there was clothing on the floor and he was so close and so warm, making her gut squeeze tight and shivery... a feeling that hadn't been inside her for /way too damn long/, she thought.
The feeling had last twisted inside her when she'd cornered the red-headed Blitzer in the airship a few years ago. There were abstract remembrances of other partners that crossed her mind but there hadn't been anyone special since the heated moments of making the well-muscled Yevonite man curse his own god. This was special, even though it was all nails and angry hot words hissed quietly in her native language. It was /him/, her partner in crime from her youth, moving over her, hands crawling along her shoulders, grazing her neck, his mouth fastened along her jaw.
"Rikku," the single word had come out, hard-edged and desperate. She pulled off his eye-patch, looking at the broken glory that was his damaged eye and cried out, fingers digging into his shoulder as he pushed her away from the memories of yesterday and fully into here and /now/.
"Bastard," she spat, as her breath ripped from her, his teeth biting into her neck deeply. Her ribs jutted out over her flat stomach, meeting his scarred chest evenly as she arched into him, the solid mattress, chilly, beneath her body. He chuckled deep in his chest, and slid between her bare thighs, skin scraping softly over skin with a low rasping noise.
"You love it."
Captain's Log - 3rd Day on the journey to Rikku Island.
The waters are a strange shade of gray here. It's so weird to look over the side of the ship and see that they went from being clear aqua blue to a muddy gray-green. Kau says that it's something to do with sediment deposits coming out of what will be the rivers on the lands we're about to stumble on, or whatever. He said something super technical involving equations on tracking how far away we were based on the sand and stone content of the water, and I think my brain exploded. Tidus had the same expression on his face, too. I know I should be paying attention to the things my team tells me, but some of it is seriously dull.
Rikku frowned and bit her lip, watching the log-sphere turn slowly on the desk in her cabin. Her father was going to be listening to it when she got back, maybe she should record over that last sentence. No, better he know how she felt... he'd get an idea of what suited her best for the next job after this one was over. Hopefully pure salvage-y goodness and no scientific measurements involved.
But, if he had his way, motherhood was on the schedule. She grimaced at the thought. He'd cornered her after Tidus had left to pack, before she'd gone off to get drunk and sleep with- eep, let's forget that part, 'kay? He'd spoken about owing the Al Bhed a true heir, and that it was her job and duty to provide a strong leader for the people that depended on her. Implying she wasn't strong enough, she thought.
"I know it can be a hard thing t' ask, Rikku, but your mother did it, and you need t' do it too." Cid had said, leaning against the wall of her room as she stared at him blankly, floored for the second time that day by his revelations.
"I have to what, get... knocked up?" Her voice cracked on the last word. Cid shifted his weight. Clearly he wasn't all too comfortable with this conversation. Well good, she was going to make it damn-well uncomfortable for him. Springing this on her after giving her a treat like newly-minted Rikku-land, it was foul really.
"Doesn't have t' be today..."
"Damn right it doesn't! What about Brother? Why can't he be the one, y'know, having kids? At least he doesn't have to give birth to an eight-pound bundle of screams and vomit!" She glared at her father, crossing her arms over her chest defensively, and Cid looked a little deflated.
"He can't, not like you." He cleared his throat hesitantly and then tried to smile brightly, and ease her into a less ball-busting mood. "Well, why don't you just... go and explore an' then we can think about it when ya get back?" She grumbled, feeling a little bit of her anger dissipate. Curse her father and his good-natured smiles.
"You're being all mysterious-like again Pops," she said, her tone bordering on better humour again. He sighed and shrugged one shoulder.
"Just lookin' out fer the Al Bhed, Rikku, and-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. When I get back though? We're gonna talk about this." She picked up her duffle bag and walked out, not looking back. The thought of having children made her want to go for a nice long relaxing vacation on the Thunder Plains. Just 'cause she'd camped out there for awhile, and she wasn't so shakingly scared of the crash and blinding light, well, it didn't mean she liked thunderstorms now, right? Tolerant of them, but liking? And children seemed like a long 18 years of thunderstorms. Look at all the problems she'd given her Pops! She stopped still in the middle of the hall, imagining a little version of herself and winced. Not so good. Mayem was wonderful, as long as it was your mayhem. She didn't much care for the mayhem of anyone else.
"Hey! Cap'n Rikku!" The call made her look up from the muddying waters at the side of ship, pulling her away from the conversation with her father. Dnuuban was waving from the viewing station up near the top of the ship. "Land!" he yelled. A grin spread out on her face and she raced like a desert hare up to the prow where Tidus was already waiting, holding binoculars to his eyes.
"Gimme! Ty!" She tried to grab them from him, but he used his superior (well, not that superior) height to prevent her from snatching them. She pouted slightly and poked him. He laughed and then shook his head, handing her the binoculars.
"Go ahead and look, it's different," he said with an easy grin. She leaned over the edge of the boat and looked through the binoculars. He grabbed the back of her shorts to keep her from slipping. Great tall trees rose from rusty red cliffs. Big trees, but not like the ones she'd seen in other parts of Spira... these had long feathery branches, what almost looked like spines decorating each limb. Not jungle-like, but big even still. She pulled the binoculars away from her face and stepped back so Tidus could stop holding her. /Rikku-land/, she thought.
---
They entered the cove slowly; the waters were littered with high dangerous reefs cresting close to the surface. She sat with Tidus, watching as those great cliffs soared above them, cut sharp from the waves. He was turning the binoculars over and over in his hands, nervously. She put her fingers on his arm.
"Ty, y' wanna talk about it?" He took a deep breath in and gave her a half-smile.
"Just thinking..."
"About what?"
"Kids." /Vilg/. What was it with people and rugrats this past week? She'd heard of the ol' "biological clock" jokes, but this was bordering on mass insanity.
"Oh, um, that's..."
"Yuna wants them. Says it's... safe now. Vegnagun, Sin, they're gone, and I'm back. But safe? I mean, I know she'd be a great mom and all... but, me? A dad? I can't really... see that. Not after the way my old-" he stopped short, mouth clamped shut, his shoulders all hunched up.
"Your old man?" She asked, swinging her legs out and back, looking away from him. He let out the breath he'd been holding.
"He was such an asshole! What if I'm like that too?" Rikku knew what he was talking about. Not all Al Bhed kids had been lucky like her. Someone in the sand pit always had bruises that had to be explained away with I fell down or The machina I was working on exploded in my face/. You didn't ask questions, even though you were real curious, 'cause your Brother would cuff you up the side of the head and give you that /Shut it or I'll lock you in the closet again look. And once, she'd overheard her father talking... saying those that got beat on when they were little an' weak ended up being the ones beating, later in life.
"I think you're gonna make a great dad, Tidus," she leaned over and ruffled his hair as she spoke and he glared at her, shaking his head to settle the blonde fluff. "Y'know why?"
"No," he snorted angrily, "if I knew that, I wouldn't be running away." She punched him in the shoulder gently for his tone and he gave her a shy smile. "Sorry."
"You should be," she said, then added a half-hearted, "meanie." The word sounded a little out of place in her vocabulary now that she was older, but a part of her was determined not to grow up one inch. You couldn't have children if you were half-child yourself, right?
"So why am I gonna be such a good father anyway?" Tidus pulled her back from her random musings. She blinked twice out at the sea to collect her thoughts,and then grinned at him.
"Cause-"
Crunch.
The boat slammed to a stop and Rikku and Tidus were thrown forward, face-first onto the deck. The binoculars skidded overboard and into the water with a small splash.
"Oh Spira..." Rikku groaned into the metal grate beneath her. Her face would probably carry the imprint of 1 inch by 1 inch squares for the rest of her sad exsistence. /Woe/. She rolled over and got to her feet. "What was that?" She called up to the pilot. He was righting himself slowly, rubbing the side of his head.
"I think we hit something, y'know?" he yelled back. She glared.
"No, really! I couldn't tell, I-"
"Rikku," Tidus cut her off, his voice tense. He was peering over the edge of the water, fingers cupped around his hands so he could see past the sun glare on the surface. She walked over to him.
"What?" She poked her nose over his shoulder to catch a glimpse at what had attracted his attention, and inhaled sharply in surprise. Her lips parted slightly as she breathed out slowly, whispering the words,
"Holy lying Yevon."
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