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Yuna writes letters to herself. She knows that it is not healthy and it is certainly not too mature, but she can't help picking up some paper and splashing some ink all over it in controlled little scratch-stripes of tears that spatter all over her face like the flame on a candle, burning burning bright.

She can't help it. Sometimes they are from her father. Other times they are from her mother. Still others are what she wish Lulu would be like, that caring side she rarely sees, if ever--hidden in thick fur and belts, unapproachable like Kimahri never was. She can't help writing these things because they are like memories, and all alone after Tidus fades away she finds the urge to start anew cracking within her like an eggshell, and a newborn bird dying wet in its skin before it dries. She can't help writing these letters.

Mostly, though. Mostly they are from her father.

Yuna--

You are a pure and compassionate soul. You only do these things because you care about people, and you get hurt because you care about people and they don't understand. It is perfectly all right to feel these things, I promise. So when your feelings level out over the next fifteen years, you will look back on this and smile because you grew or something. Grew! Imagine that! You will be a mature and well-adjusted adult who doesn't cry because things are looking down a little. You are fine. You are fine. You are fine.

You are only a little out of place here and I am sure you will be okay.

Be all right!

She can't help it because she knows what her father was like; she just can't put it in words. So he says these things in her head and she cries over it. Those letters. Those unhealthy, sickly green chocobos hatching like onions out of the dirt, fingernails out of her skin, bursting--she can't help it. No matter how much she trims, or swims, or rides the nearest shoopuf to the shore, it is always following her like a thin cloud of pyreflies. Memories.

Nobody finds these letters. She hides them. She buries them. She burns them, but that always leaves a feeling of grief behind so she doesn't burn them much. She says nothing about them to anyone, Yuna of the pristine white soul and sleeves. She doesn't cry over her own impending death like a child anymore: She is a summoner, raised to save Spira. To think of other people rather than herself.

One for many. She grits when she is alone at night, sacrificing herself.

One for me she thinks mournfully when she is alone at night, trying not to think of Tidus anymore.

One for the team! she tries, when the Gullwings are instated and she is not alone anymore. Sphere-hunting and carefree as birds--no more death over Zanarkand's skyline!

Buried in her head is that voice that tells her "It will be all right," no matter what "it" is. Sometimes she listens to it.

And sometimes, she burns it and scatters its ashes into the wind.