FicWad

Lulu had honestly meant to return to Cid like she'd promised as soon as she was back from meeting Yuna in Bevelle, though she'd had no idea what she would say, but Tidus had disrupted those plans. Something about him had changed while he and Yuna spoke with Bahamut's fayth. He returned to the airship obsessed with seeing every part of Spira he hadn't been to yet, putting off the final battle with Sin in favor of sending them creeping through the fissures carved deep into Mushroom Rock Road and over ruins in the sea so rusted that any misstep could have made the ancient metal crumble beneath them. Through it all she had watched Cid watching her, neither of them able to leave the bridge so long as Tidus kept dragging them from one end of Spira to the other and back again.

But continuing on like that would have been preferable to how she finally did get away from the group, stumbling along blind and shaking with only Rikku's shoulder under her arm keeping her from falling to the ground at the mercy of the poison she could feel working its way through her, draining her body of all its strength.

Still, even that state was better than the one she'd been in when she first fully awakened. Her mind had been dazed and confused from something in the gases she'd breathed in, unable to tell whether the person dragging her along was friend or foe. She'd struggled then, though she could scarcely work up the energy needed to make her doll kick itself free of the hand the person was carrying it in and try to trip them up. Even before she'd come to her senses enough to work out that an enemy wouldn't be speaking her in the same concerned tone the person was using, and from there recognized Rikku's voice, she'd been able to figure out that the scramble to get away had been a mistake. In the circumstances, staying in the hands of an enemy that wanted her alive would have been safer than having her heartbeat rise and flood her body with poison even faster from the exertion.

It was lucky that they were already close to the airship by then, because she wasn't sure she could have made it if it had been much further. By the time they reached the ramp leading up into the ship Rikku was almost carrying her because Lulu seemed to be tripping over every little pebble that her feet landed on and couldn't find the strength to catch her balance on her own.

When she heard heavy footsteps quickly approaching them from inside, then Cid's voice, worried and breathless, saying "Fryd dra ramm rybbahat?" she found herself leaning toward the sound of him, pushing herself away from Rikku and taking a few faltering steps towards where she was sure he was. She was surprised at herself even as she did it, at how glad she was for his presence and how much she wanted to get closer to it even in her weakened state. In the past she'd always hated for anyone to see her at less than full strength, but somehow with him it didn't seem to matter at all.

And when he lifted her easily into his arms, still talking to Rikku in Al Bhed so Lulu couldn't understand more than one word in ten of what they were saying, she felt the more like herself than she had since waking. Though perhaps that was more due to finally being off her feet than anything else.

It was a few more minutes before Cid and Rikku's conversation came to an end. Rikku softly patted her on the shoulder and said, "I've gotta get back to the others and let them know you're okay now. If this old idiot doesn't treat you right, give him a kick in the shin from me!"

"What's that?" Cid growled, though Lulu knew him well enough by now to know that his tone lacked any real threat, "Ya say you wanna be on swamp duty for a month the next time I assign ya to an excavation team?"

"Eep!" Rikku squeaked, and Lulu could hear her bouncing backwards towards the exit. "Well, I'll just be going now before anyone wonders where I am, you two have fun, don't do anything I wouldn't do, feel better soon Lulu!" she babbled out all in one breath, and then was gone back into Omega's dungeon.

Cid was quiet for several long minutes as he began carrying her through the ship. "You've just gotta hang on a couple've minutes more," he said finally, his voice low and anxious, and she was suddenly aware of just how tense his body was, and of how he was holding her a little too tightly to be entirely comfortable. He was /afraid/, she realized with wonder. Perhaps even terrified, if the fear was still holding him so long after its initial burst. She'd been aware, of course, that he'd come to care for her some during the time they'd known each other, but not that she could have such an effect on him.

She wondered how she'd feel if their positions were reversed.

She opened her mouth the try and reassure him, then, remembering that her voice was gone, reached up. Her hand brushed against his chest, his shoulder, his neck, guiding it finally to his cheek which she patted as if comforting a child. He came to a sudden halt, and she wondered if she'd somehow managed to insult him. She'd thought they'd gotten past the point where it was a tightrope act every time they were in each other's company, that they'd found a balance between Yevon and Al Bhed where they could be comfortable with one and other, but if she could still throw it off so easily without even realizing she was doing so...

Then she felt him bow his head under her fingers until his breath was stirring her hair. "I'm gonna have to have a word with that girl when she gets back," he said, his voice a quiet rasp. "If she hadn't left her damned medkit back with the rest of your group, I could've taken care of you already." Then he seemed to pull himself together, muttering to himself "Druikr E kiacc E uikrdy ryja ryt dra vencd-yet gedc paddan cdulgat duu" as he started walking again.

She thought that they surely must be close to his room by then, but her blindness proved to have muddled her senses and it was several more minutes, or felt like it at any rate, before he stopped and started attempting to fumble through his pockets without dropping her. Realizing what he must be looking for, she felt inside her sleeve for her keycard and pulled it out for him.

"Thanks," he said, taking it from her then shifting her so her back was supported by the wall and he could release her shoulders just long enough to unlock the door. As his arm wrapped around her again he suddenly snapped, "Cdub cdyneh' Sina!" Lulu started even as he grumbled to her, "Damned woman thinks life is like one of those trashy novels she loves readin'. I swear, if she weren't one hell've a mechanic..." He trailed off ominously, and stayed silent the rest of his way to his room, until after she'd felt herself lowered onto his couch.

"Let's get that poison outta you," he said, and she heard his footsteps heading away from her. There was the sound of bottles clinking together across the room, and then he returned and settled down on the edge of the couch next to her. She wanted to tell him that she was still perfectly capable of sitting up on her own when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders once more, but the extra moment of thought the words getting trapped by her silence gave her made her change her mind about pulling herself away. He was worried, and she knew the comfort that doing even the smallest things to help could bring. "Right, just whack my arm if if comes out too fast for you to drink an' I'll slow it down, okay?"

She nodded, then obligingly tilted her head back as he pushed the mouth of a bottle to her lips. She recognized the flavor of one of the strange potions the Al Bhed made immediately; it brought back memories of crossing the desert just before she'd first met Cid. The ramshackle lean-tos and caches of medicine the Al Bhed had left scattered through the sands had felt like a blessing straight from the hands of Yevon. She'd wondered back then what sort of machina must have been used to make the potions, since she couldn't believe that even the wisest apothecary in Spira would be able to come up with a way to cure every poison they encountered with a single drink instead of having to carefully choose the right antidote every time like those that followed Yevon did. She'd even considered petitioning the Maesters once the pilgrimage was over to see if the potion-maker could be put on the list of permitted machina, if she could get the Al Bhed to agree. How foolish she had been.

She felt her vocal cords unclench even as her strength began to return. "Thank you, Cid," she said hoarsely.

With her side pressed against him, she couldn't help but feel it as the tension left his body. "No problem. Now you wait just a minute, and I'll get the drops for your eyes."

"Cid," she said as he walked away from her again, her voice gradually beginning to lose its roughness as she spoke, "you said Rikku left her medical supplies with the others. Were they harmed too?"

"Nah. She said Wakka just caught the edge of whatever the hell it was the fiend hit you with, and the rest were out've the way. The girl had to dig out somethin' to fix his voice, and forgot to pick up her damned bag again when she started to drag you off. Now what I don't get is, if Rikku's as good at healin' as you say she is, why couldn't she use magic to patch you up?"

"I'm afraid she doesn't know the weaker spells that would have helped there. Yuna taught her more advanced magic from the start, because she believed that would be more useful than spending time on beginner's spells that would be too weak to be much help. Esuna was counted amoung those, since we always carry plenty of medicine and if needed we could go to Yuna."

"Guess I can understand that reasonin'," he said grudgingly, approaching once more. "Tilt your head back, now." She did as he asked, not surprised when she felt his finger pull her bottom eyelid down. "I tell ya," he said quietly as the first drop hit her eye, "I ain't had a start like today since my wife... hmm."

She knew it might be pushing him too far, but at that opening she couldn't help but ask, "What happened to her?"

The first thing she saw as the vision slowly returned to her eye was him frowning thoughtfully down at her. Finally he moved to tend to the other eye, saying, "I'll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours."

"I already told you--"

"/Details/, woman. Sayin' he's a Crusader who got killed by Sin ain't really sayin' much of anything at all. I ain't gonna spill my past if I don't get the favor returned."

Lulu bowed her head, blinking the drops into her eye. "That's only fair," she admitted.

"Then you've got yourself a deal." He then hopped to his feet, and held a hand out to her. "C'mon, let's get you into bed first. You've still gotta rest if you're gonna get back in top shape."

At that moment, a bed sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world. It wasn't often that they'd had the luxury of one during Yuna's pilgrimage; even on the airship they'd all been sleeping on the floor of the bridge rather than risk being a bother. It was more comfortable than sleeping outdoors, but that wasn't saying much.

Cid guided her through a door to a room she'd never entered before, his bedroom. "Well... make yourself comfortable. Want anything before you settle in?"

"No," she said as she slipped off her shoes and slid into the bed. The softness at her back after so long was almost enough to make her sigh loud enough for him to hear. "This is enough to me."

But he was frowning at her, clearly disbelieving what she'd said. "That ain't comfortable. In my experience, comfortable don't include havin' things sticking into the back of your head." He walked to a set of shelves set into the wall and picked a brush up from one of them, than set down at the head of the bed. "Prop yourself up some," he said, already plucking one of the hair pins from her bun.

She raised an eyebrow at him as she pushed herself up, too amused by this new side she was seeing of his personality to argue. She remembered how back in Bevelle Rikku had told her that Cid would fuss at her every time she got injured, and wondered if this was the sort of thing she had meant. "What are you even doing with a brush, Cid?" she asked, a smile quirking at her lips.

"Very funny," he said, slowly unworking the bun into its four separate braids. "It's Rikku's. She's always stealin' my shower in the mornings because she says--" He cut himself off with a sudden laugh, shaking his head as he picked up the end of her first braid and set at trying to unravel it. "I reckon I'm at least a good enough pop not to spill what she said."

"You know that it's a cruel tease to say something like that. I wouldn't tell her that you told me what she said."

"Well, if you won't tell that's a whole other story then, ain't it?" he asked, rolling his eyes. For a moment his expression was so incredibly Rikku that anybody with eyes would be able to see the resemblance between the two of them, then he was leaning in until his lips were hovering just above Lulu's ear and his whispered, "But I guess it wouldn't hurt none to tell you she said 'E tuh'd fyhd du cdehg yc silr yc dra nacd uv dras.'"

She found herself swallowing at he pulled back. "That isn't an answer," she said quietly.

"It is if you can remember it long enough to figure out how to translate it." He turned his attention back to her hair, frowning as he picked at it. "When the hell's the last time you let your hair down? These things are halfway towards bein' more mat than braid, woman!"

She embarrassed herself by flushing, too weary to have the self control needed to hold back the reaction. "Most of the time during the pilgrimage we scarcely had time for Yuna to take care of her hair. Mine would have taken far too long unless I'd taken the time out from when I would have been sleeping, and hair is less important than being rested enough to fight off fiends when they attack." She turned her head away from him. "You don't need to bother with it, I already said I'm comfortable enough."

"You don't know me as good as you think you do if you think let a couple've knots get the better of me. I've dealt with worse; next time you see Rikku, you ask'er about the time she came home from playin' in the desert with her hair all caked in Sandworm spit that'd dried rock hard. Still don't know how she got into that mess, but if I could fix that without shavin' her bald as I am, I can take care of you." He held the end of her braid up in front of his eyes, examining it as if it were a problem that needed to be solved, than shrugged. "You might as well lie back down. When I told you to sit up I figured I'd be done in a jiffy, but this is gonna take some time."

She did so, the feeling just as wonderful as it had been earlier. She turned her head to watch Cid as he slowly picked away at her hair with the brush and said, "So, you have experience at this sort of thing with Rikku? I have a hard time picturing that."

"Someone had to take care of those sorta things after her mama died, and I wasn't gonna shirk them off on someone else. I might not be the best parent in Spira, but I've done my best to do well by those kids once Remty was gone." He was silent for a moment. "Speakin' of which, I guess I've put off tellin' you about what happened to her long enough."

"If you'd rather not, I understand. If it's painful--"

"It's all right. I reckon you've got the right to know." His eyes went distant, though he couldn't be as lost in his memories as he looked since he went on unknotting her hair with as steady a hand as ever. "Not much to the story, really. Remty, she was as much've a machina-hog as me or the kids. Drove her parents batty; they were both alchemists and wanted their little girl to take after them, but Rikku's the only one in the family who ever even made a hobby of it."

"It's a good thing she did," Lulu said. "Her mixing skills have come in handy more than once on our journey."

"Never said it wasn't useful. You've just gotta have the right mindset to look at a pile of fiend-leavings and see the way to make them fit together, and Remty never had it. But put her in front of a rusted pile of gears, and then you'd see miracles happen. Bad ones, sometimes. A deadly one, that the last time." His voice stayed steady as he spoke, as if he were talking about an event he'd only heard of in passing instead of the death of his wife, but the more he spoke the more roughly he pulled the comb through her hair, until he was tearing at the end of her braid as if it had been the killer. Lulu decided to say nothing about this; her hair was at a point where more damage would hardly matter, and if he needed the emotional outlet for this talk she didn't mind the sacrifice. "It was one hell've a machina. A giant metal man, like one've those fiends you get on the Thunder Plains but mechanical straight through, and more detailed than most anything else we've ever dug up. We found it in that city under the Moonflow, figured it must've been used to set up the foundations for buildin' on the water so they wouldn't have to risk real people."

"But it wasn't?"

"Never said that/. When machina get real old, sometimes they stop functioning the way they're supposed to. Especially when they were made to do something real complicated. In the end, we never found out /what it was really supposed to be for. Anyway, after we found it I was plannin' on givin' it over to the kids who were just getting taught how to work machina, figurin' we'd never find a better piece for them to learn off of, but Remty came to me and said, 'Cid, E'ja paah rubehk--'" He caught himself in mid-sentence and paused, lips moving silently for just a moment. Lulu was happy to find out that even people as fluent in both languages as he was sometimes needed to stop and think when they needed to translate something. "She said, 'Cid, I've been hoping all my life that one day I'd be able to work on something as complicated as this. Let me fix it up.' And I never was good at saying no to her when she got her heart set on something."

"I think anyone who's ever cared about somebody can understand that."

"Nice way of lookin' at it. So, for months pretty much all she did was work on that machina and sleep. Whenever she remembered to come home all she'd talk about was what she'd found out about it since the last time she'd been around. The kids were missin' her by the end, but I knew what it was like to have a project catch you right down to your bones and not let go, and was just glad to see her so happy. By the last time I saw her it was like she'd found a way to smile with her whole body, and I knew it had to be close to done, but I never thought..." The comb had dropped to his lap, forgotten, by now. Instead his hands were clenched around her braids so tightly his knuckles were whitening and his entire body was so tensed that Lulu wouldn't have been surprised if he lunged out to attack the machina he was seeing in his mind, but it was only now that the unexpected calmness in his voice finally snapped, leaving him sounding harsher than she'd ever heard him. "Every Al Bhed kid in their nappies gets it drilled into their brains that you never switch on a strange machina for the first time without a full team there, to take care've it if it goes wild. Everybody knows it's the dumbest damned thing you can do, because no matter how good you think you are the folks who made them were better/, and not one've us has figured out how to check whether their programming's gone wrong other than by turnin' the machina on and seeing if it goes nuts. Y'just /can't do it alone, it's too dangerous, and..."

"...And she did it anyway," Lulu finished for him gently, when he seemed unable to do it himself.

His next breath seemed to shudder right through him, then the tension left his body all at once and he slumped back against the wall, muttering an apology as he untangled his hands and took up the comb once more. "Always thought she was the smart one in the family, but I guess that time she was just too proud for her own good. She never did like sharin' her victories, and when she thought she was about to have the biggest one in her life it must've just run right over her smarts. Worst thing is, anything that wasn't that good she probably would've gotten away from with her life. Most machina that attack, all they can do it shoot you or hit you, and every work room we've got has a little closet of a bunker in it that'll keep 'em from gettin' through until someone checks in on you. But that thing was so detailed... It had hands just like us. Hands it could open up the door with when she tried to hide, hands it could use to grab, and tear, and crush/." He turned his face from her, swiping at his eyes with a hand, and she wondered if he was ashamed to let her see the tears in his eyes. "She would've been glad to know that because she took it over all the kids that would've been there if I had my way were safe. That's what everybody always says, like it even would've /mattered when they would've had a full fightin' squad in with them, and that thing was so damned easy to take down once we got a bunch've guns and a handful of mages pointed at it and could stay out've its grip."

"I'm sorry, Cid," Lulu said. She couldn't imagine how it must have felt, losing a loved one in a way that should have been avoidable. In Besaid it was almost unheard of for anyone to die in a way other than an attack by Sin, or by fiends, or, very rarely, from less violent natural causes or accidents like illnesses or slipping off the cliffside path where the waterfalls made the rocks slick. Murder was unheard of, but even it was more likely than a death even a small amount of foresight could have prevented.

"Y'know, I married her real young. Younger than Rikku is now, though Remty was a good sight older. My old man tried talkin' me out've it; told me if took a wife that much older than me she'd be henpeckin' me right from the start."

"And did she?" asked Lulu, unable to picture Cid in the role of a browbeaten husband.

"Nah. She could be hell to a fiend, but she was the sweetest woman you could even hope to meet at home. And I knew she was the one I wanted to marry from the minute I saw her put a bullet through the eye of a wasp at eight-hundred feet; there wasn't anybody gonna change my mind on that. Then Brother came a year later, and Rikku a couple more after that, and by then everybody'd stopped their talkin'." He finally smiled faintly, his eyes seeming to focus on Lulu for the first time since he'd begun his story. "That's what I hold onto, every day that goes by. I didn't let anybody talk me out've bein' with her, and because of that I got to have her for good long time. I might've been an idiot kid, but I know that when you're that sure about something you've gotta stick with it."

Lulu supposed that that was as good a place as any to begin upholding her end of the bargain. "I understand," she said. "With Chappu, I knew when I returned home from my first pilgrimage."

"Almost forgotten you'd been on others," he said, recognizing that the subject had changed.

"Yes, twice. The first time, I was far too young to be a guardian, but there was no one else close enough to Ginnem who could fight. It had to be me. When I came home again, I made sure to take a boat from Kilika that would arrive in Besaid early in the morning, so I could sneak home without anyone seeing. I was so afraid to go back when Ginnem was dead and I was still alive, but I was a child and I had no family elsewhere so where could I have gone?"

"Well, if you'd managed to make your way to Home we wouldn't have judged you none of failing Yevon."

"And I'm sure you'd all have been just as unjudgemental about my being a guardian to begin with."

"Hey now, if you were really that little you'd have been fine with us. Might not've gotten this cozy with you back then, but we ain't gonna take things out on a kid with no place to go."

"My child-self thanks you, but it's a little late to learn that now. Not knowing of the generous hospitality of the Al Bhed then, I returned to Besaid. And when the boat docked, there was Chappu up before dawn to practice blitzing. I'd been careful to avoid anyone Ginnem and I had met the entire trip back, so he was the first person I'd been near since she died who knew I was a guardian, and one of the last people I'd wanted to see then, because I was certain everyone would hate me and it would hurt so much more from a friend."

"But he didn't."

"But he didn't. He must have known what had happened as soon as he saw me; there's only one reason a guardian would return without their summoner. But he just sat beside me on the dock, silently. He didn't even ask how it had happened, though the curiosity must have been driving him mad. Somehow he knew that that was what I needed most, although I hadn't realized it myself until then." She raised a hand to rest it lightly on her chest, remembering the feeling of that morning. "In the end, he was the only one in the village who didn't corner me the moment they could in the following days and press me for every detail I could give them about the pilgrimage. Even if I hadn't realized it that morning I would have known it by the end of the week: I wanted to be with Chappu for the rest of my life."

"Looks like we were both idiot kids then."

"I think we were far more foolish than you, Cid. You were wise enough to hold onto Remty right from the start, while we were always finding ways to avoid finally committing to one and other, even though it was what we both wanted. I needed to study magic harder, he needed to win a blitzball tournament. I went on another pilgrimage, he joined the Crusaders hoping to come home a hero. He was always trying to create some grand moment to propose during, and I was always trying to complete the duty I'd failed at with Ginnem to be ready to accept it." Then she folded her hands in her lap and glanced at him, internally steeling herself. "But all this isn't what you wanted to know."

"Interestin' enough for me, if it's what you wanna talk about. You were willin' to let me out've it, it's only fair to let you have the same chance."

"I wouldn't let you tell me all that and then not keep my end of the bargain, Cid." She rolled onto her side, facing him, careful to shift her hair with her hand as she did so to keep from interrupting his work. "There really isn't much to tell other than what I've already said. When he completed his training he was set to guard the Mi'ihen Highroad, but he never made it further than Mushroom Rock. When we received word of what had happened, Wakka and I travelled there together. No one had seen him die, so we prayed that he had just been affected by the toxins and would find his way back to where he'd been when his memory began to return, but a week later his body washed up on the beach near Djose." She closed her eyes, the death of hope still fresh in her mind even after so much time. "...He should never have been a Crusader to begin with."

"'Cause then he still would've been safe at home with you?"

"No, I'm not the sort of woman who would try to keep him safe at home when I'm putting myself in danger guarding my summoners. But Chappu, he was always far too gentle to be a fighter. I remember once, when we were children, he smuggled a wounded dingo into his room at the temple because he couldn't stand to see it hurt. I tried telling him that it would only turn on him when it got well, but he refused to listen and continued nursing it. That is the sort of man he was, not one who should have taken up a weapon to fight Sin."

"And let me guess, when that monster healed up it was so grateful that it followed him around like a puppy all the rest of its days."

Lulu gave Cid the look she usually reserved for Tidus when he was at his most foolish. "It was a /fiend/, Cid. They have no gratitude. But Wakka and I were both keeping an eye on the situation, and destroyed it before it could do more than bite his leg. He cried for hours after that about his 'pet' being killed. I think he truly believed, as you were apparently willing to, that if he only cared for it enough it would return his affection. Do you see why I say he's no fighter?"

"You're paintin' a pretty clear picture of it."

"However, Wakka didn't agree. He was overjoyed when Chappu asked if he would begin teaching him how to defend himself. He didn't tell us then that he was preparing himself to join the Crusaders, and I think Wakka formed the idea that Chappu was working to be able to come with us when Yuna left on her pilgrimage. He even saved up his money for months to buy him a sword. He could have gotten it at almost no cost in honor of being a guardian, but he refused the discount because, he said, the gift wouldn't mean anything if he didn't have to work for it." She covered her eyes with her hand, shaking her head slightly. "Chappu didn't even take it with him when he left. He chose to fight with one of your people's guns instead. That was the root of Wakka truly beginning to hate the Al Bhed."

"Well that's damned stupid of him. He think his brother would've been any better off if he'd had a sword in his hand? Least our bullets can hit Sin. You're never even gonna get close with a blade."

Lulu lowered her hand to glare at him, though the look lacked any real malice. "It wasn't the sword itself so much as the symbolism it had to him. The sword's name is Brotherhood, and to Wakka that meant that as long as Chappu carried it a part of him would always be there protecting his brother. ...Perhaps that was the real reason Chappu left it behind. I would never say this to Wakka now, but I know that his overprotectiveness rankled Chappu at times." She let herself relax once more, holding back a yawn as she did so. "At any rate, it was somewhere Wakka could place his blame. And we did at the time believe that the teachings were speaking the truth when they said using forbidden machina was as good as calling out to Sin to attack you."

Cid snorted. "That one. Dumbest damned belief your people have, but not a one of you ever gave the two seconds thought it'd take to realize it's full of bull."

"Please, enlighten me on how we were supposed to do that," Lulu said drily.

"Easy; all you had'ta do is look at us." He gestured around his room, at the mechanical gadgets that surrounded them in a place that was itself one giant machina. "Every one of us grows up with machina surroundin' us, making our lives easier, but as far back as our history goes Sin's only attacked our city once/. It was bad enough to destroy the island we lived on by then, but still just one time. Sure, our boats get attacked when we're unlucky, but that's the risk anyone takes when they go out on open water. Now tell me, how many times has /Besaid been attacked by your records?"

Lulu's eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. "Every year or two," she replied quietly. It was so obvious if anyone had ever thought to question the teachings for a moment. If every Yevonite's mind wasn't trained from birth to recoil from even the thought of doing so unless, as in the case of Lulu herself, so much evidence toward the truth about Yevon was forced upon them that there was no possible way to hold onto their blindness. She couldn't imagine how different their lives would have been if someone who wasn't an Al Bhed had ever put together what Cid was saying and managed to get others to believe them. All of the teachings fell apart without the condemnations against machina, as they were all built around the "truth" that Sin was called down upon Spira due to their over reliance on it. And if the teachings had been discarded, perhaps they would have found a way to defeat Sin long before instead of putting all their faith in the high sending. "Why didn't any of you ever try telling us that?" she asked.

"Tysh/, ya think we never tried? Think your people /listened? Hell, I ain't gonna say for a second that you aren't a smart woman or more open-minded than most of Yevonite's I've met, but do you think you would've listened if I tried tellin' you that before all y'all's fall out with the temple started?" He rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it lightly. "I know it ain't pleasant thinkin' that things could've gone differently, but we learned a long time ago that that info couldn't come from us. Whenever we tried, things just got worse for us for a few years. Some places'd even take it as a cue to start purgin' any of the 'evil' Al Bhed who were tryin' to turn them from 'Yevon's grace' that were living nearby. If they could catch us, anyway."

She had to admit, now that her eyes were more opened to the flaws of her people, that what he was saying was most likely true. Except... "I would have listened," she said. "Perhaps not believed/, but you're Yuna's uncle. For her sake, if /you had tried to tell me, I would have listened. And from there, I would like to think that I have never been so closed-minded as to refuse to recognize the truth when I hear it."

Cid didn't seem to know quite how to respond with that. "Well," he finally said, the word almost lost in a cough, then parroted her earlier statement back at her, "My past-self thanks you, but it's a little late to learn that now." He coughed again, then clapped his hands together suddenly. "Well! Enough of that kind've talk. We're supposed to be gettin' you rested, not yakking on about depressing stuff. You wanna keep talkin', let's stick with something lighter."

"As you wish," she said. Honestly, she wouldn't have expected herself to stay awake this long when she first entered his room, but now she found herself unwilling to end their conversation just yet, even for sleep. Stretching for a subject that would be considered 'light' -- not Yuna, because Cid always got worked up about her, not Yevon of course, and she couldn't imagine he'd be interested in discussing her day to day life in Besaid -- finally she settled on one thing she'd never known a man to be shy to talk about. "Your tattoo, does it have any special meaning?"

"Meaning?" He reached up to touch his head, then barked out a laugh. "Means I was an idiot as a kid, that's what it means! Here, give it a feel."

Lulu raised her eyebrows at that, then gave a small shrug and reached out to run her fingers over tattoo on his head. "It's rough," she said, surprised, any embarrassment fading before curiosity as she continued to trace the design, feeling out where the texture of his skin changed.

"Another machina accident there," he said with a lopsided grin. "Lemme tell ya, when you're workin' on a really fiddly job you've never done before, don't try tellin' yourself you know more than the old folks who've been doing that sort've work since before your daddy dreamed of having you and ignore their advice. It'll just blow up in your face." He laughed again, "Literally, that time."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Well..." she said slowly, then took her cue for how to respond from how he was acting about it. "I can see what you mean about having been a fool."

"Thanks for the sympathy," he said, his grin not fading. "It was my first big job, and I was proud as a Ronso with a three-foot horn right up 'til something in the engine went wrong and blew a fire ball right up at my head. Lucky I was lookin' the other way, so it didn't catch me in the face, but it still did its damage. It's why I've gotta keep my head shaved down; never could get hair to grow on the scar, and I'd look damned stupid with a giant bald spot all over the side of my head.

Now that he'd mentioned it she could feel it was true. There were no tiny stubbles of hair growing up through the tattoo like there was in the skin around it. Then she realized that she was still stroking his head and hastily lowered her hand, saying as she did, "I can't imagine you looking another way." It was true. Though she tried imagining him with hair, first black or brown or red from familiarity then, catching herself, in Rikku's bright gold or Brother's dull straw color, but nothing her imagination came up with seemed to suit him.

"Well thanks. But, it's safe to say the folks who were around back then wouldn't have agreed with ya. It was months before they'd stop laughin' every time they saw me. It was a good lesson against bein' too proud, though." He touched the tattoo once more. "Got the flames inked on as soon as I'd scarred up to make sure I wouldn't forget it. Back then I already had my big dreams about makin' somewhere we could all call Home, not that anyone believed I could do it, an' I couldn't risk dyin' in a stupid accident without that bein' done." Then he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Plus, I just wanted to get that ugly scar covered up. Even a man's gotta have a little vanity."

"Will you tell me about that?" she asked as soon as he was done speaking.

It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. "You wanna hear about by vanity?"

"No, /Home/. It was a great thing that you did, Cid. I'd like to hear how it happened."

"Oh, /that/. Sure, I'd be glad to tell you. And I won't hold it against you if you doze off during it, so go ahead and get yourself comfortable. It's a long story." He waited until she'd rolled onto her back and pulled the covers up around herself, gathering her hair into his lap so he could continue untangling it, before he started telling it. "I don't even remember when I first got the idea to build a city for us. Our old island was destroyed when my great-grandaddy was a boy, and we all scattered to the wind after that. By the time I was born there wasn't a one of us who thought that we'd ever find a place just for the Al Bhed again, but doin' it became the dream I kept in my mind all my life. Just about everyone said I was one hell've a fool to even think about it, but..."

As he continued speaking, telling her all about the path that eventually lead to Home being built, her eyes began growing heavier and it became harder and harder to keep her attention on him. Though she tried pushing her exhaustion back down, once it had its hooks in her it was a downhill battle until she finally fell asleep to his voice.

- - -

Ironically, it was his attempting not to disturb her sleep that woke her hours later. Talking normally wouldn't wake her once she was asleep, nor would sitting silently, but, after long years of training to be a guardian, the sound of someone attempting to be quiet was a warning that assassins might be near.

So when she heard someone begin to whisper to himself she quietly woke in an instant, just enough to identify whether the person speaking was friend or foe. She drifted off again as soon as she recognized him, but not before feeling his hand tangled in her hair, now loose all the way to her neck, and hearing him quietly whisper to himself "Ed't syga sa y tyshat pycdynt uv y robulneda du tu yhodrehk yvdan drnufehk Kalna uid frah cra vamm vun Braska. Pid, 'frah oui'na dryd cina ypuid cusadrehk...'"

But she had forgotten that before she awoke again, and never did learn the meaning of what he'd said.