raspberryturk | Room 429, Monday Evening

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Room 429, Monday Evening

Reno was going to sit on his bed and eye his cellphone. Dojima was right, really. If he couldn't understand the concept of giving people time, he should at least call Rude and tell him that he wasn't five anymore, and all reports for the time being would be typed up in a semi-sane manner.

And that would be why he was eying his phone.

He wasn't, however, reaching for it.

It was just fine where it was sitting. He could call Rude up any time, take the heat for getting him in crap with Tseng or whatever, and maybe he'd have things sorted out a little better by then. There were, after all, a lot of things to sort through.

Yeah. Yeah, he didn't have to pick up the phone after all. Save Rude the trouble. The big guy would appreciate it later.

[ooc: The door is open a crack, and the post is totally open for invasion from random persons. Oooooo.]

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He shrugged faintly, running a hand through his hair and keeping his eyes on her face.

"Anything, zoto. What Home was like, or what this Mi'ihen thing was, or just talk to me about being a guardian or machina or the airship or... anything."

She opened her eyes, and finally returned his gaze.

"Home," she said, with a sad sort of smile. "Home. Mi'ihen. That's sort of ... I almost have to start back at the beginning. What it all means. But that's the one that starts with 'A thousand years ago ...'" She raised an eyebrow.

Reno nodded.

"A thousand years ago is as good a place to start as any, zoto." The smile on his own lips was tentative, at best. But 'a thousand years ago' was better than 'no.'

"A thousand years ago ..." Rikku bit her lip. "Give or take. Probably not exactly a thousand. Uh. But there was a huge war between a couple of cities and before it got solved, this huge monster appeared. Not 'huge' like Behemoths, twenty feet tall and roaring. Huge like an island. Crazy-powerful. And it took out one of the cities and ended the war and people got scared. That's when everything changed."

She looked over at him. "I, uh, this might be long? I'll try to keep it short, honest, but ... we should ... probably sit down. Yeah?"

Huge like a giant rock from the sky. Reno had to take a moment, put it into perspective. Yeah, people would go a little nuts if there was a thousand years of Meteor taking out cities. Or, something huge and dangerous and unstoppable.

He nodded, and then looked back at her for a few seconds, thinking.

"Long's okay." And then he took a few steps, grabbed the blankets and pillows from the other bed, and arranged them at the headboard of his own.

He looked at her again, chewing the inside of his lip.

Maybe? Maybe not?

The pile of blankets and pillows. Perfect for snuggling into and telling a long painful story and ...

Rikku hesitated, a little sheepish. "I, uh. You ... told your stuff and I just glared at you."

Reno shrugged faintly and offered her a bit of a smile.

"I'm not in the mood to glare, zoto." He sat down on the bed, scootched backward a little, into the heap. "C'mon?"

"I mean ..." She bit her lip. "You were vulnerable and I yelled and ... I mean, I came here to yell, I shouldn't just ..."

"You're talkin' now. Thousand years of a huge monster, an' all that, zoto." He made a little 'v' with his legs and gave his lap a pat.

He could be patient, here.

This was what always happened. She had a plan, and then he waited her out. Like during Host Club, when he was politely explaining that she should hang out while he watched porn.

Rikku sighed. The hell of it was, he looked cozy.

She walked over, hesitantly. "I'm still ... I mean. This isn't, hey, great, let's ..."

Edited 2008-04-08 18:11 (UTC)

"I know," he agreed, and gave a little nod. "But it's good for talking, yeah?"

And it was better than standing and better than yelling and better than staring numbly at a spot on the floor.

... And he wanted to be close to her. But the rest, that was the important part, really.

"It is," she said. There were some really good and compelling reasons that she shouldn't sit down in the V of his legs and lean back. They seemed unimportant, at the moment.

"Are you ... okay?" she asked, settling in a little. "I ... was kinda mean."

Dammit. He wasn't supposed to smell good.

He snaked an arm around her waist when she sat down, because that was simply the proper position to assume while doing the totally-not-cuddling-in-a-heap-of-pillows-while-talking thing.

"I'm fine," he said easily. "Don't worry about it. Your turn now, to talk, right?"

Her arm should go over his. Okay, then.

"You're not fine," she said. "But we'll get back to that, zoto."

Deep breath.

"A thousand years ago. And it went crazy, out in the ocean, tearing things up, until Yunalesca --" She couldn't help frowning at the name. "-- stopped it. With something she called the Final Summoning. It killed her, and it killed her husband, and Sin came back, ten years later. But sending it away for ten years, people thought that was better than nothing. And that's kinda how it all started."

"Few years of quiet beats a constant fear," Reno agreed, nodding slightly and closing his eyes. Listening was better if his eyes were closed, and it was just the two of them and their words, and the rest of the world could go away. "So... people kept doin' that?"

"A religion started," Rikku said carefully. "It called itself Yevon. Yevon taught Summoners how to perform the Final Summoning. Yevon also had a list of things that people were doing that caused the monster to happen. Using technology. Being at war with each other. Not being self-sacrificing in the name of Yevon. People destroyed their machi-- machines and burned all the books on information. Anything to appease the monster, no matter how irrational it was. They lived in the ruins of advanced cities. And whenever it came back, Summoners would make the long pilgrimage to Zanarkand. Nearly all of them died before they ever got there, no matter how many Guardians they had. If you were a Summoner, it was your sacred duty to get to Zanarkand and die for the rest of Spira, or to go as far as you could and die trying. Yevon called the monster 'Sin.' Subtle, huh?"

"Real subtle," Reno sighed, and gave her a little squeeze. "Take your whole way of life and blow it to shit because of a monster you can't take on. And... Shit, I dunno. Somethin' about makin' the summoners do that just don't sit right with me."

Kind of like taking "sacrificing yourself for the job" to the extreme.

... It actually frightened Reno a little, as he tried to piece together what that world must have been like for anyone who didn't adhere to those rules. Grease-monkeys. Bullshit. But not like anyone would care.

Save the world. But never quite the right way.

"Never sat right with me either," Rikku said, biting her lip. "We ... there were those of us who thought ... where's the proof for all of this? Why can't we build big machines and blow Sin up? The Yevonites said that once humanity achieved atonement for everything it did that was bad, then Sin would go away. And questioning all those stupid rules, that was wrong, so you were just pushing the date back further and further. So ... most of Spira went along with it. Temples and fayth and Summoners. We didn't. We said there wasn't proof to believe and we weren't getting rid of our machina. That's ... what it means, when I say I'm an Al Bhed. We left everyone else and went out into the desert. And they blamed us. They were all atoning. Maybe Sin would be gone by now, if not for those sinners and nonbelievers."

She shook her head. "So they hated us. They tried to destroy our machina. And us. Because without us, maybe Sin would be gone. And we ... couldn't understand why none of them bothered to think. Maybe Sin would be gone if we had all worked together on a way to defeat it, for good, instead of sending Summoners off to be killed. One after another after another."

"Desperate people will do a lot of things. Doesn't mean they're the right ones," he muttered, nodding again. "Easier to do as you're told than think, and blame everyone else because at least then it ain't on your own head."

A thousand years was a very long time to hate and be hated.

"On and on. Sin destroys towns that get big, so we all spread out. Sin says all machina is bad, except the stuff you need to play blitzball. That's been specially okayed. You'd think ..." She pulled his arms a little tighter around her. "You'd think that after a while you'd go, this isn't working. There's just death and stagnation. None of this makes any sense. Instead they were just more and more willing to throw bodies on the pile."

Rikku took another deep breath. "We Al Bhed, we wanted to stop Sin, too. Just because we didn't follow Yevon, that didn't mean we were on Sin's side. It was hurting us, too. We wanted to use machina to destroy it. We wanted to work with the Crusaders, and some of them wanted to beat Sin so badly, they wanted to work with us, too. And we started ... w-we started kidnapping Summoners. Not to hurt them. We kept them in the Summoners' Sanctum. We gave them food and took care of them. We just ... didn't want them to go on the pilgrimages any more."

There was a slight pause. "I know it was stupid. But Pops ... he found out Yunie was going. And that was ... he snapped, you know?"

Reno listened quietly while she spoke, nodding a little every now and then.

"Yuna's your family, right? I mean, you don't just let family... run off to get killed. Not if there could be another way, zoto."

"She is," Rikku said. "There was a Summoner named Braska, and he thought ... he thought maybe the Yevonites and the Al Bhed should talk to each other, and not hate each other all the time. So he came to our Home and learned Al Bhed and he fell in love with this girl. They ran away together, I mean, nobody was really going to be okay with it, you know? Pops was furious; she was his baby sister."

Like most such stories from Spira, it was short and ended painfully. "They sent a message when Yuna was born. He said he forgave everything, he wanted to meet his niece. They went by boat. Sin attacked. Yunie and her dad survived. Her mom didn't." She was playing with his fingers now, idly. "So Braska decided to become a Summoner, and when Yuna was seven, he went off on his pilgrimage. Beat Sin. Died. Left her an orphan. She moved to Besaid and never let on that she was half-Al Bhed. Ten years later she became a Summoner. Pops ... I know it was against the teachings, I know it wasn't fair to the Summoners, they should get to choose. But some of them didn't even want to go, any more. Dona kept saying that, later, on the airship. That she wanted to quit and go live somewhere with Barthello, but if she did, no one would ever forgive her. For quitting. For being selfish. Letting everyone down. It was wrong. I'm not saying we were right, but ..."

"There's such a thing as more right." He shrugged a shoulder slightly and gave her another squeeze. "People should get to choose this kinda thing, yo. Not be expected to just march off and get themselves killed for somethin' that doesn't really work anyhow. Just one big freakin' circle, and damn if I don't wanna smack whoever decided that's how it's gotta be, zoto."

"But some of them did choose it," Rikku said, settling in and frowning. "And we were keeping them from it. I don't care, though. We were keeping them alive. I mean. It was better than ... maybe it wasn't. I don't know any more. It felt like something. Pops wasn't thinking at all. And I ... I was supposed to get Yunie? But her Guardians kinda beat me up."

She frowned. "She pulled me aside. And she said ... don't fight me. Help me. And I had a hundred reasons not to. I don't believe in any of this religious crap. I think you're killing yourself for nothing. I love you and I don't want you to die." Deep breath. "I mean, not to mention, you know. Nobody's gonna let me be a Guardian. I'm an Al Bhed. She kinda didn't care. 'I need you.' And that's all it took."

Reno was quiet for a long while, a frown on his lips.

"Family's family," he said at last, then bit his lip. "I mean, if it means somethin', then you can't just..."

He took another breath and shrugged faintly.

"Okay. So you joined her on her pilgrimage, zoto."

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