FicWad

((I don't know what Paine's parents were called, haha, so I just made up some names. I allowed myself a bit of creativity in making a past for her, I'm sorry if one already exists and I didn't look hard enough for it.))




Amaranta sat by the small bed, watching her young daughter sleep. She had never liked the name 'Paine'; she thought that a child born with such a name would be condemned to a life of tragedy, of pain. But the name was a tradition for the firstborn daughters of her husband's family, and she had nowhere near the strength to defy his will. At least, she had not had the will in the past, when Paine had been born.

The little girl Amaranta had nurtured was now not so little, standing at a full four and a half feet tall, having lived through twelve years in Spira. Regardless, Amaranta still saw Paine as her baby, as her little girl. She felt stabs of pain in her heart as she watched the sleeping girl; her premonitions about her name had been true so far.

The two were in a small inn on the side of the Moonflow that was furthest from Luca. Amaranta thought back to the night they had fled the hand of Takk, the Al Bhed man she had once loved, once called her husband. She remembered the first time she ever layed eyes on him, at a blitz ball tournament in Luca; he was the son of one of the Al Bhed blitzers, a teenager ecstatic to be seeing more of the world than Bikanel Island. At that time, Amaranta was working at the box office of the Blitz Stadium; when he first came to sign in, he was astounded by her exceptional beauty, and could not get the image of her out of his mind for the rest of that day. He drank in every detail of her body; her young breasts and flat stomach, her growing hips and the way her skirt would sway tantalisingly as she walked across the lobby to get her lunch; he basked in the glow of her crimson eyes, staring into them like they were the only things in the universe, drowning in the peach colour of her soft skin and the enchanting beauty of her full and pink lips, all framed perfectly by dark and curling hair. He started coming to more matches just to see her behind the box office counter, and was further entranced by the wit she showed when he would ask her questions about herself. She felt as attracted as he; she would go to work every day hoping that the young Al Bhed boy, the same age as her, would come to buy a ticket and ask her comic questions, and shower her with compliments she was unused to. He flattered her like nobody ever had before.

As the tournament drew to a close and the Al Bhed prepared to return to Bikanel Island, Takk felt compelled to speak to Amaranta; Amaranta, who had not noticed that Takk would be leaving, and expected that, should he approach her, they would spend time together in Luca. Three days before he was scheduled to catch a boat to Luca, he decided that it was time to find out the name of the ticket girl. He stood around in the lobby for an age, running over and over what he would say to her, feeling her eyes watching him as he tried to hide behind pot plants; in the end, he rushed over to Amaranta's booth and said, almost angrily, 'What's your name?'

Amaranta smiled, and told him her name. The two went for lunch that day, and Takk waited all afternoon for Amaranta to finish work after lunch. The two felt something they never had before, two teenagers who had never fallen in love before, both excited and curious about these new feelings. They agreed that Amaranta should take the next two days off so that they could spend them together. Both were amazed at how they felt they knew each other so well after such a short time. On the night of the second day, they went to the beach, and Takk whispered softly into her ear: 'Amaranta, I love you.' They spent that night together, wrapped in one another, experiencing everything for the first time, both drunk with infatuation. They awoke in each other's arms the next morning, comfortable and happy beneath a pristine blue sky, smiling broadly, their minds and bodies enchanted with the beauty of first love.

Takk left on a boat that afternoon, kissing Amaranta goodbye on the dock. She stood, watching his image growing smaller and smaller until she could only make out the boat, and she stood still long after that image was gone. He had promised to return with the next tournament.

While they were separated, they felt a longing like none they had ever thought could be possible. Amaranta began to doubt that Takk had ever existed; Takk though only of Amaranta while he was rigging up the water collectors in the desert and digging up old artefacts. He dreamed of her body, of the figure he had fallen in love with; the girl he considered the most beautiful in all of Spira waltzed lightly though his hazy daydreams. He promised himself that he would stay with her the next time he went to Luca.

He returned to Luca almost two years later, and his longing for the now 18 year old Amaranta had not waned. As soon as his boat touched dock, he ran to the box office and saw her there, looking more beautiful than she had before, now a woman; they ran towards each other and kissed wildly in front of the whole lobby, who felt a strange impulse to applaud the two young lovers. Takk was mesmerised by how she had grown; her breasts had swollen to their adult size, and her waist led down to the most exquisite hips the young man had ever seen; her soft skin and crimson eyes seemed more enchanting than before, and the way her dark hair curled and framed her beautiful face mesmerised him. The young Takk suddenly knelt, and asked Amaranta is she would marry him on Bikanel Island; she said yes with tears of happiness in her eyes, but felt at once a fleeting doubt, but she was too wrapped up in Takk to take the cautious advice of her heart.

Amaranta thought about the day she had told her parents that she was leaving for a new life on Bikanel Island. They rejected her then; devout followers of the Teachings, they said that they would never recognise her love for an Al Bhed. They scolded her for being so hasty with this new boy. She chose to marry him and leave, despite their promise that when the Al Bhed hurt her, she would not find refuge in Luca with them. She remembered the happiness of the voyage to Bikanel, and especially the nights of teenage passion in Takk's cabin. By the time they reached Bikanel, Amaranta knew that she was pregnant. Even on the day when she sat beside a sleeping Paine on the Moonflow, she could still see the momentary flicker of anger when she had told Takk of her pregnancy. Of course, a split second after his face had dropped, he took her in his arms and shouted jubilantly of how happy he was to have a wife and now a baby too. Amaranta cursed her past self; she should have seen it then, the spilt-second doubt in the swirling eyes of her Al Bhed lover.

On reflection, Amaranta considered the journey to the island to have been the single happiest time of her entire life. She and Takk were falling over one another with new love, spending days sitting on the deck, nights together in the cabin, and every minute in between conspiring and making plans for their new life on Bikanel Island. As they neared Bikanel Island, however, Amaranta begin to feel the first pangs of homesickness for the bright lights of her native Luca; for that time she brushed them away, deep under a proverbial carpet in her mind, and focused instead on her new husband, and more importantly on her unborn child, for whom she already felt a love more powerful than anything she ever imagined possible.

Amaranta thought back to the day they landed; all of the miniscule doubts she had felt on the boat suddenly culminated in a crushing wave of nausea as she realised that she would not return to her former life for a very long time, if ever at all, and was now stranded on an island with a husband she barely knew, and a baby she was too young to care for. When they docked and Takk carried her romantically onto the shore, Amaranta couldn't stand, her fear and doubts overwhelming her body and mind. She told Takk that she just needed to rest, hiding behind her pregnancy. She sat on a box, head in hands, while the Al Bhed unloaded their belongings. Her head was spinning, waves of fear and doubt hitting violently the shore of her weakened mind, reducing her to a silent wreck of a woman. She fainted from the sheer weight of the worry and realisation resting on her shoulders; she awoke in Home, alone, presumed to have succumbed to heat stroke.

As she predicted, Amaranta hated life on Bikanel Island. As she grew fatter, Takk began to lose all interest in the nuptial bed, finding excuses not to touch Amaranta's body. She herself couldn't speak Al Bhed and was finding it very difficult to learn, and when Paine was born and Amaranta had the name of her daughter forced upon her she felt an anger stronger than she ever had, but also a weakness; she couldn't say no to Takk, not with his whole family there. She felt more alone than she ever had in her nineteen years, and consoled herself by spending every minute of every day with Paine, teaching her English while the rest of the island saturated her mind with Al Bhed. She still loved Takk, and he her, though he spent his days in the desert, while Amaranta filled the growing gap in her life with the care of Paine, thinking always of the shining lights of Luca.

After almost five years on Bikanel Island, Amaranta had still not mastered Al Bhed and her depression was reaching new heights. She had managed for years to calm her longing for her own home and family by basking in her love for her young daughter, but as time drove on, she began to find herself thinking of Luca more and more. She begged Takk to return to Luca for a while. He refused, angry at her; she was as angry as he for keeping her in Home. She blamed him for her years of desolation, and cursed her younger self for agreeing to marry a boy she barely knew. He screamed insults she couldn't understand in Al Bhed whenever she spoke of the mainland, but she continued to implore him. She asked and asked for almost two years up to the point where Paine, growing quickly and already harbouring an unusually quick wit, started asking her father in Al Bhed if they could go to Luca, because she would like to see it, and meet her grandparents. She noticed that her father did not speak to her with the same anger that he threw at her mother. Takk told himself that he loved Paine, and convinced himself that, although he had missed almost all of her infancy through his work, he still knew her better than anyone else, because he was her father.

Paine was ten years old before her father consented to a move to Luca, purely because he was fed up with the constant requests of his wife. He had grown bored with Amaranta long ago, and had had many partners in the Al Bhed Home; he was known as a womaniser to everyone but the unpopular Amaranta. She had grown old very quickly; her breasts had lost the full and young buoyancy that had caused Takk to fall for her, and her skin was becoming course, her mainland body not designed to live in a desert. The two often fought; any sign of tenderness expressed by one was greeted with suspicion by the other. They only stayed together for Paine, or at least that was what they told themselves; in reality, the resentment harboured by each kept them together through spite.

Paine loved Luca, and Amaranta was happier than she had been in almost a decade when she set foot on the dock. They moved into a small house in the centre of Luca, and Takk, not having to collect water, quickly found himself unemployed. Paine got on well at school, and developed an interest in sphere-recorders; she would sit for hours on end, losing herself in her recordings as her parents screamed at one another about money and disloyalty. She heard Takk hit Amaranta more than once, and cried silent tears into her pillow, clutching her spheres and talking to herself in a curious mixture of English and Al Bhed. She wished then, more than ever, that she had a sister or a brother, or just anyone to talk to; she wished that someone would care, that her parents would stop fighting and hug her instead; she wished vehemently for a happy life, like everyone else had. She began to cut herself off from the world, in an attempt to distance herself from the pain of her home.

Takk made some Al Bhed friends in Luca. He would go out drinking every night with them, spending almost all of Amaranta's meagre wage from the café she worked in. He would visit brothels and board ships to Kilika and Besaid, ride chocobos to Djose on a whim; he would disappear for days on end and return drunk and resentful, to the eternal rage and indignation of the prudent Amaranta.

After two years in the hell that was the house in Luca, that fighting became too much for Paine. One night, when Takk was chasing Amaranta around the house screaming about how it was her selfishness that had landed them in Luca, Paine ran to where they were and stood between her father and her mother. 'STOP!' she screamed, crying. Amaranta had a burst lip and purple eyes. Takk looked at the daughter he had named, and said in a quiet rage, 'This is between your mother and I. Move, Paine.'

Paine didn't move. Takk struck her across the face, feeling no regret, only alcohol and anger coursing through his veins. Paine ran crying into the open arms of her mother, who shielded her and told her that it was okay, everything was alright, nothing to worry about. She tucked Paine into bed and went back to where Takk stood, silent and angry, watching the street from his window. 'You BITCH-' he screamed, turning to her; Amaranta cut him off by hitting him square in the face with a vase. 'You do not harm my daughter.' she said. Amaranta felt more powerful than she had for more than a decade; the powerful and demonstrative love she felt for her only child wrought in her a strength that Takk had not foreseen. Amaranta felt like a god; pure hatred and contempt for the man who had dared to strike the most important person in her world flowed like the purest elixir through her body, pumping and supplying the woman who had led her life under Takk's will for so long with a power beyond anything in all of Spira. Amaranta knew then what she had to do.

That night, she roused Paine from her grateful sleep, and they began their journey away from Luca. On the night that they found themselves in the inn by the Moonflow, Amaranta knew it would not be long before Takk returned to claim his child. She said nothing of her knowledge to Paine, who fell asleep in her bed, clutching her sphere-recorder. She knew that Takk wanted to hurt her more than he wanted Paine; she left her daughter asleep in her bed, and spoke softly to the Crusader waiting outside of the door: 'Take good care of her. If a man named Takk comes anywhere near her, kill him.' Amaranta made that one last sacrifice for the love of her daughter; she felt more pain than had had ever assumed possible in leaving her child, but she knew that she had to; if Takk ever found the child, he would take her to Home, and that was a thought that sickened Amaranta to such a degree that she took the only course of action sure to prevent it.


That night in the inn was the last time Paine ever saw her mother. She cursed her for her abandonment; that was the event that turned Paine into the quiet and melancholy person she died as. She tried to track down her parents again a few years after that night, and failed; the most recent news she could gather was that of a woman who murdered an Al Bhed man near the Thunder Plains, but was never caught, only seen from a distance; the description sounded like the woman Paine remembered as her mother, the same clothes and hair.

After that, Paine took up sphere-recording as a profession, working with the Crimson Squad, and then the Gullwings. Whenever she was quiet, she would think of the name Amaranta, and of her mother's kind face, and feel a pain whenever she remembered her father hitting her face.

Paine resolved never to look for Amaranta. She remembered that her mother would always curse the name 'Paine', and say that it would bring tragedy; Paine smiled a rare and ironic smile at the thought of how right her mother had been, and fell asleep in her bed on the Farenheit, dreaming that Amaranta was sitting by the bed.