This story was written for the Livejournal community 1sentence. It's a pretty simple concept. You're given 50 prompts, and must write a single sentence for each prompt, each sentence having to do with whichever couple you've claimed. I claimed the Baralai/Yuna pairing, as I love it so, and wrote these sentences over the next few days. No warnings (please, this is Baralai and Yuna!), and mentions of Tidus/Yuna abound.

They are in no order, there is no greater theme. Just fifty pretty little B/Y sentences before I leave. :P

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Baralai fidgets without meaning to when he worries, holding the cuff of his sleeve pinched between two fingers and letting the cloth run between, he crosses and uncrosses his arms as his eyes dart everywhere—Yuna had thought that he was a still, calm person when they first met, but time has taught her better.

#02 - Cool

Having grown up in Besaid, Yuna isn't terribly fond of Bevelle's icy winters, burrowing into the bed and transforming into the biggest blanket-thief this side of the Moonflow—Baralai wakes up more than once, shivering in the early morning cool, but she looks so smugly peaceful burrowed into the comforters that he rarely steals them back.

#03 - Young

Somehow, Yuna was surprised by Baralai's twenty-first birthday; she hadn't realized that he was still that young.

#04 - Last

Her first relationship ended in a forced marriage, her second picking up where it left off in the Macalania waters, ending in the glow of pyreflies and Sin—Yuna hoped now, desperately, that third time would be the charm, that Baralai would last.

#05 - Wrong

There was something in Baralai that still felt it wrong, in a way, that the High Summoner could be a person, too, a living woman and not a statue in the temple, cool marble and blank eyes of stone—something wrong in her living and not being a demigod, something wrong with his feeling of guilt and sin every time he dared to touch or kiss.

#06 - Gentle

Yuna is gentle and sweet until she gets annoyed, clenched jaw and steely eyes: it is only a minor argument, a couple's spat, but Baralai decides to never make her angry all the same.

#07 - One

"There's just one thing," Yuna says nervously, blushing slightly and annoyed with herself, "It's just—you have to—" Baralai waits for her to finish, curious and oddly happy—she takes a breath and looks him in the eye, "Promise me you won't disappear?"

#08 - Thousand

"It was really a sort of dumb song, wasn't it," Yuna remarks, smiling and wrinkling her nose, after Baralai catches her humming it for the tenth time.

#09 - King

"They'd make you ruler of Bevelle in three seconds," Baralai points out one day, tired from a hard day of diplomacy and the New Yevon party as a whole, "Maester, Praetor, whatever you liked," there is bitterness in his voice, because he still can't find it fair that she could so effortlessly lead what he tries to hard to make follow.

#10 - Learn

Magic is not something Baralai has a talent for, but Yuna smiles and takes his hands in hers when he gets frustrated, the cure spell having just fizzled out and died again—"We'll just try again," she says with endless patience, and that's something else he wants to learn.

#11 - Blur

Yuna doesn't really remember the first time she met Baralai, most of the event having blurred between the other things happening in those months, but she still distinctly remembers his promise that he had no interest in marrying the High Summoner; can Yuna really be blamed for teasing him about that now?

#12 - Wait

"So tell me this, Yunie," Rikku says brightly, keen on gossiping and already giggling at her punch line, "Do you and Baralai believe in abstinence until marriage, or did you decide to just screw waiting?"

#13 - Change

"I'm pretty sure that if you let your hair down it would be longer than mine," Yuna says thoughtfully—amused, Baralai gets a haircut the very next day.

#14 - Command

No one in New Yevon gives Baralai orders except the chairman, and Baralai rarely listens to the man's advice—he politely steps around the orders of other leaders and tends to outright attack Nooj's commands, arguing and contradicting each word: but he listens to Yuna almost always, without any argument at all, it's sort of endearing but Nooj has to roll his eyes at it all the same.

#15 - Hold

"Letting go of the past is hard, isn't it," he asks her one day, tired after meeting with the Youth League; she smiles sheepishly and opens her hands.

#16 - Need

Yuna made the first move after weeks of skirting around it, weeks of being polite and shy and quiet, but she was tired of being treated like a glass crystal, needed more—to judge by Baralai's response to her kiss, she wasn't the only one that wanted it.

#17 - Vision

"But Shuyin's eyes were blue," she tells him, looking at his eyes, and he laughs softly, amused, before replying: "Lenne's were brown."

#18 - Attention

He's supposed to be listening to the Al Bhed diplomat as she details for him the resources they wish to trade and sell, but Baralai's attention keeps wandering to Yuna; she's laughing at something her uncle told her, and he wants to hear the joke.

#19 - Soul

He likes technology and the Al Bhed, peace and unity and equality, but he still prays often in the temples, to the fayth if not to God, he still wears formal robes and believes in New Yevon with all his soul—it's a contradiction, he knows, but it keeps him at peace and that's more important.

#20 - Picture

Yuna's talents do not include drawing: Baralai frowns confused at her doodle for several minutes before she snatches it back, blushing, it was supposed to be him but the figure looks more like a lopsided albino chocobo.

#21 - Fool

He has a talent for making her feel stupid with just a word or a glance, he doesn't do it on purpose but he does it all the same, making her blush and quiet and shy until he realizes and apologizes, but she wonders sometimes if he isn't rolling his eyes at her foolishness as he says sorry, too.

#22 - Mad

When Baralai gets angry it lasts forever, boiling and churning rage turning to unending grudges; Yuna can't snap him out of it and he won't accept comfort, he insists on being alone and it drives Yuna mad.

#23 - Child

It annoys Baralai sometimes, the way Yuna acts, smiling and oblivious to everything bad in the world, it is only endearing in small doses and sometimes he has to fight the urge to cruelly point out how wrong she is.

#24 - Now

He'd get annoyed when she talked too much about Tidus, her past, and Yuna never quite understood why; she had loved Tidus then, but she loves Baralai now.

#25 - Shadow

Yuna will look at Baralai sometimes and see a flicker of Shuyin in his face, a shadow of a memory that had once controlled him; she feels guilty for remembering him like that at the same time she wonders if he's ever seen her as Lenne.

#26 - Goodbye

Tidus' shadow seemed to smile at her in the Farplane; Yuna couldn't find the words, didn't need the words, and so simply smiled back as he faded away.

#27 - Hide

"Once I ripped a page out of the scriptures of the high priest, on accident," Baralai admits, "So I took the whole book and hid it in the temple—everyone was talking about it for weeks, and they decided it was the work of a master thief—" he can't finish his sentence because Yuna is laughing too hard, and he watches with some amusement as she clutches her stomach and giggles at the image.

#28 - Fortune

Maybe it's because Baralai comes from a rich family, old money, but he can't accept a gift without trying to repay the giver—Yuna insists again and again that sometimes he just needs to accept kindness, and it hurts a little that he insists on treating it like debt.

#29 - Safe

He feels safe around her, and is ashamed to admit it, nervous by the depth of the feelings of need and wanting and the desire sometimes to rest his head in her lap like a child and let her save him again.

#30 - Ghost

She isn't afraid of ghosts, of course not, but she thinks of them a lot, those who have died before her — fond memories, mostly, but there is sometimes guilt, too, thinking of Tidus and wondering what he would think if he saw her now.

#31 - Book

Baralai is too vain for reading glasses, even though looking at books without them drives him to headaches, it drives Yuna crazy, his stubbornness, and she starts plotting ways to force him into them in her spare time.

#32 - Eye

People often commented on Yuna's eyes, the fact they were two colors, but it is Baralai's eyes Yuna finds more interesting; such a lovely shade of dark.

#33 - Never

"If the fayth offered to bring him back now," Baralai asks one day, cautiously, "would you agree?"

#34 - Sing

Yuna can't bear to sing anymore, afraid that without Lenne's ghost the words will crumble in her mouth, she knows she got off easy when it came to possession, though — and sometimes she wants to ask Baralai if there's anything he lost to Shuyin.

#35 - Sudden

Yuna had always promised herself never to fall in love with anyone but Tidus, never to think about or be with anyone but him, she didn't need anyone and could happily wait and hope forever—when she realized this was false, when she realized she was falling in love with Baralai, Yuna felt sick and almost cried from shame.

#36 - Stop

He gets so tired of hearing her compare things to Tidus; Yuna doesn't think about it but she does so anyway, peppering her memories with 'when he was here' and 'it was like,' one day he cuts her off at the start of a sentence, suddenly angry, and tells her fiercely to stop.

#37 - Time

But before they could live happily ever after, some more time had to pass.

#38 - Wash

Baralai used too much shampoo when he washed, and Yuna felt sometimes like pointing it out to him—but mostly she thought it was funny, even if they had to buy more far too often.

#39 - Torn

Sometimes Yuna did still feel torn between her past hopes and her present life, but every day that feeling was a bit less—and less—and less.

#40 - History

"I know you two have history," Yuna said impatiently, "but could you please stop glaring like a wronged lover every time Nooj enters the room?"

#41 - Power

It was easy to underestimate Baralai, so polite and quiet, but he never lost an argument unless it was with Nooj; even then it was about fifty-fifty.

#42 - Bother

"Oh bother," Baralai mutters one day, glancing at the mess all around him, the burning smell radiating from the oven—he looks like he's going to get angry at Yuna, but she leans in before he can and kisses him instead.

#43 - God

Their wedding is large and traditional, ribbons and banners and ridiculous formal clothing, bells and sugar candies and long, formal vows—they change the wording of the ceremony, removing the name Yevon from the speech, but somehow the absence is more jarring to Yuna then if it had remained.

#44 - Wall

Gippal is always late, and so is Rikku, so together they were of course twice as late as they would have been alone—Yuna and Baralai leant against the sun-warmed wall as they wait, hand in hand and, like children, sneaking kisses when they thought no one was watching.

#45 - Naked

It's sort of silly, but they're both embarrassed to be seen naked, and even after all this time they change with their backs to eachother.

#46 - Drive

"If one day I take that ugly green coat of yours and throw it over the edge of the tallest tower in Bevelle, it's only because you drove me to it by wearing it so much," Yuna announces, and she's only half joking when she does.

#47 - Harm

Yuna had beaten him twice now in battle, and neither of them had held their blows either time—but sometimes she still wants to apologize for it; she'd never meant to hurt him and would be very sorry to hear if she had.

#48 - Precious

Lenne is most precious to me, Shuyin had hissed time and time again: Baralai had been disgusted by the obsessiveness of the ghost's love then, that Shuyin was so willing to go to any length for his lover's sake—but lately he's started to wonder what he'd do if Yuna was the one lost, and the answers scare him a little.

#49 - Hunger

The first real couples spat they had was over oranges: Baralai hated citrus fruit with a passion, something grown-up-on-Besaid-Yuna just couldn't comprehend.

#50 - Believe

There's no longer a God to have faith in—no ghost to hope for, no revenge to wish upon, and no past to look upon—but there's him, and there's her, and they can believe in each other.

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