FicWad

So, falling off the edge of Guadosalam and right into the Farplane hadn't really been my plan when Tidus suggested we go. It had been a lazy day, laying out on the beach, when he said;

"Hey, let's visit the old man."

I'm not really sure why I'd agreed in the first place. Maybe it was the same insanity that had caught my father in its clutches back when he'd chased my mother around until she caught him. I think Tidus had been a little nervous with all the wedding plans that Lulu and Yuna were making, as well as all the threats that Pops had been levelling at his person, and he'd figured that he and I would go on a little adventure and pay our respects to ol' Tall and Silent. Not that even a little bit of me believed that it was actually him, and even if it was... well I wasn't sure how grateful he'd be to us for pulling him away from the Eternal Bingo Hall just so we could scrape our feet against the stone that held us aloft, apart from the dead, and stare mournfully at his bright red coat.

So somehow he'd convinced me this was a Great Idea and that we'd have tons of fun and maybe score some of those Guado potions that make you all dizzy and cause everything to seem so funny, but without the horrible hangover that cactus wine gives you the next day. I hadn't counted on getting into a shoving match with Goldilocks and tripping over his damned big feet and falling right over the edge and down, down, down, down through the clouds as the rainbows rushed past me and I think I might have screamed something like;

"Ahhhh!"

But then it might have been something else entirely altogether, although I know for certain I made a very loud whump when I hit the ground along with some sickening cr-cr-crack noises. I know that because Auron told me so, after I landed at his feet in the Farplane and died. But there were no pretty pyreflies for me, no, it was just a few minutes of complete silence in my own head, no sound or light, and me wondering if I'd gone mad or if I'd been kidnapped by some rogue Guado group who idolized Seymour and his large forelock. And after those minutes... maybe hours, maybe seconds, passed by I woke up, gasping for breath needlessly as I was, of course, dead, and didn't need to breathe, but the air smelled sweet as new grass anyway, a smell I could never get over since we didn't have much of that in the desert when I was growing up. I'd looked up, way, way up and there he stood, both (!!!) eyes alive with amusement as he opened his mouth and said;

"I don't think anyone's actually fallen into the Farplane by accident before."

Hi, how are you Rikku? My, your spine looks broken. How's the blitzball season going? I would have liked to yell obscenities at him involving his mother and an amorous Marlboro. Instead I coughed feebly.

"Tidus tripped me," I said, wheezing, my lungs deflated from my rude introduction to the earth. I struggled to my knees, feeling the bones all sore from having clearly been broken and then healed again, except, not-healed because I was dead, and I'd actually died falling off the edge of the viewing platform, and just what did that say about all the Al Bhed theories of how the spirits weren't really spirits? Not that we can't admit when we're wrong, but we were Pretty Darn Sure about that one, I'll tell you that right now. As I was pondering this new and rather dismaying thought, his calloused hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled me up to my feet, setting me down easily.

"It's a long climb back up," he said, shifting his weight and looking at me seriously and I was suddenly back to three years ago, 15, and skinnier, and less scantily clad, and a heck of a lot less dead. I think my mind kept on turning back on that thought, echoing from one ear to the other, because just a few seconds ago I'd been all teary-eyed about an old man who'd finally followed his left foot with his right from this world into the next. And then Tidus shoves me a little too hard and I'm windmilling through the air only to land in front of the old guy I'd been previously crying about. It's one of those things that can make your head go all tight and hurting-like. The insanity of the situation gripped my tongue.

"I can do it," I said, a little less breathlessly. He hitched his shoulder.

"No one has ever done it before," he replied, his tone even and measured, still the metronome that counted time for us all. I dusted myself off.

"Well you just said no one's ever fallen here before, so there's a first for everything." I was trying to look at the bright side of this situation, not that it wasn't bright and cheerful here in the Farplanes; crickets were singing happily, and half the sky was in darkness and half in light, so that no matter what time it really was, you could still see the sun set and sun rise all at once and feel that burning painful joy. But it wasn't /Spira/, and it certainly wasn't New Home, or even Bikanel. It couldn't even pretend.

"Foolishness may have helped you get here, but it's not going to help you leave," he said, and I think my vision went red because I was dead and he still wasn't gonna cut me a break. I'd have thought that all the wild Farplane parties would have gotten the stick out of his tight sphincter. I probably made a very rude gesture at him at this point, before setting off in a random direction, my feet raising puffs of dust from the dry ground. I'd get back to the real world, I was sure, because it'd been an accident, and not the kind of machina accident that's all pop, goes the weasel and an entire sector of New Home is destroyed in a blink. Someone, here, in the Farplane, would understand, and be sympathetic. I'd find that person, beg them, threaten them, and maybe I'd have to sleep with them, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nerves of steel, that's me. I think it's when the last thought crossed my mind that my knees gave out and I fainted.