/ Sorry this one took so long! This is perhaps a real test of my dialogue, since they actually finally have a proper conversation together - and is by extent a test of how well I know the characters. Please, if anything seems off, do critique me! All reviews, praise or critique, are very much appreciated. Cheers! /

It was strange.

They had been walking side by side, each keeping their distance from one another, and yet neither let their eyes wander terribly far. He was reminded of the invisible bubbles children so often made, the pressure between their hands both binding them together, and pushing them apart.

He found her silence intriguing. Frustrating, but intriguing. Would their conversation forever be drowned in vicious half-arguments? Would they communicate through glances of the eye, partings of the lip, never quite sure what they read in one another's faces? Would they really let whatever they had crumble away to this, and this alone? That would be such a piteous waste.

Still, he found it wrong that he would be the one to make conversation. What had he to say? Sin was gone. Life had found a new futile vein of hope, and it would not be long until the blood from that was sucked dry. What then, would Lady Yuna do?
He caught the blue and green flicker to the ground. Tall, thin shapes formed - stretched by the puppet strings of the dying sun. Walking like mimes on stilts, hand in hand.

Hand in hand.

What a lovely thought.

"Why," he finally cracked the silence, "Would you take me like a child back to his home? Lady Yuna, surely you don't think I would get lost...?"

There was a flicker on her face, like a sudden need to explain herself bubbling up to her lips. But she shook her head, and tried to hold the silence with the pick of her tongue, "There is something you need to see."

And that was all they said, until the road to Djose opened up a fork before them. Soon, the sound of the crashing waves would be nothing but a distant memory - but he had a feeling they would ghost a while longer in her mind. At the very least, they seemed to stay behind her wheel-like eyes.

"Do you need rest, Lady Yuna? By the time we reach the moonflow, it may be too late to cross by Shoopuf."

"No." Curt of her. He smirked. "If it is too late, then we will find another way. I know... it is long, but we will walk. I will be fine."

"If it is what you want, then so be it."

The ghosts filled their lips again, and so he breathed the chill in, and walked while she shivered. Perhaps it was for the best. It was entirely possible that she would run out during the night and leave a half-ghost for the priests to deal with. Ah, but of course, she would be the one in fear of his departure. He had to remind himself, that she was the one who held the strings, this time.

Again, what a lovely thought.

"This road has existed for well over a thousand years. Djose temple is one of the oldest temples in all of Spira."

There was something that tightened in her lip. She lifted her head, blowing dust out of her throat. "... I... would have thought it would have been Zanarkand."

"There was faith before Yevon, just as there will be faith long after it has faded," he nodded his head, and turned and cast his eyes out for the skies. "Does this worry you?"

"Not at all," she said, as calmly as her teeth would allow. He avoided her face, letting her thoughts wind and grow and pulse in the jungle. "Faith can bring someone... strength, when they have nothing else. It is something that can endure all things, something that is so strong on its own. Faith, true faith, can be a wonderful thing. And, I know it can be corrupted, but that doesn't make it worthless."

The sky was leaking the last of its heat into the earth. He pondered on the blackness that sheathed the horizon. "If it is all enduring... has your faith decayed?"

"It has been destroyed, but," closing her eyes over, she drifted. "I had... placed my faith blindly. I did not choose my faith, it was given to me. And... though I found... so much comfort in it, it was, in the end, not enough. But it had been misplaced."

"Misplaced?"

"Yes," she looked up to him, and the sun died as he gazed at green and blue. "My faith belonged not with Yevon, not with my father, but with the people."

Something stirred.

"The people?"

There was a movement of her hands, his eyes crossed over her chest. "Yes. My friends, my guardians - I lived, and would have died for them. The people... they are the ones who can carry our hope. They have the potential to change, and choose to live a better life. The dead and the church couldn't do that."

"So you think the dead incapable of change?"

A nerve had been struck. A silence burst over them. He thought vaguely of running his hands against the rock and grassy walls, nails to grind to chalk as the wind whispered by the passing grasses. Did the ocean fill her mind again? He would ensure it would roar ever louder.

"... It is alright. It is the living, too, that are incapable of changing. You are strong, Lady Yuna, and great change you did bring - but it will be wasted in the face of your faith. Yevon will rise by a new name, corruption will sow the same seeds and hatred will be ever present. Even without Sin, there will be no hope for them. Soon, despair will eat them whole again, and they will wonder why Sin's disappearance did not rid them of all their problems."

"Seymour..." She swallowed, "Do you have no hope for them, at all?"

"If I am honest, Yuna, I have never understood false hope," was this a weakness too great to give? An admission of ignorance, a damaged part of him that could never function? He had spent too many years clinging to stone and weeping for the past to believe wishing with every grinding muscle would ever work.

Woods tangled up the shadows that held hands.

She rolled her shoulders, and with it, rolled out a sigh. "Not all hope is false. Not all smiles are fake. Now, no one needs to pretend to smile. Now, people can finally be... sad, over the little things. They can cry, instead of laughing, if they need to. And it's okay, to be sad. It's okay to be happy, too. They can live, that is all that matters. They can live. And they can change, and learn, and grow. Things will get better. We have to believe that things will get better, and now, without Sin, without Yevon, things really can get better."

He wondered if this was her attempt to understand. His soul was most definitely unsoftened. "Your devotion is as enduring as my doubts."

The stillness in their conversation that followed was only punctuated by the clangor of a Hypello's tongue as he somehow failed to recognize perhaps one of the most hated men in all of Spira. Something, he supposed, he should have been grateful for. After a few slurred s's and the usual exchange of gil, the very last Shoopuf of the night began it's faithful journey across the darkened moonflow.

She looked towards the stars, and he was comfortable with the blue-green agates that softened before him.

No matter how deeply he seemed to sink his fangs into her heart, the venom never seemed to have any true effect. If anything, she grew stronger, not weaker, because of it. He reasoned that he made her tough. Would she ever learn, however? Would she ever learn that not everyone could be saved?

The water slooshed as the Shoopuf began to make its move. Pyreflies choked the air and stained his nostrils as the sunset sky faded out into dull blues and blacks. Her beads clacked every now and then as her fingers stroked and adjusted and played with her her hair, and he sometimes noticed the hollow thuds of his boots on the wooded floor.

"You could sleep," he suggested, trying to fill a role he could never have again.

She did not respond.

"Guadosalam is all but an hour away. Should I be excited?"

Silence.

"Do you think our marriage has been annulled?"

This time, she choked.

"I... I wouldn't know."

"Ours is a unique circumstance. It is rare for an unsent to be married, rarer still to have that marriage found invalid. Both of us were... willing partners, even if we had no true meeting of minds," he narrowed his eyes, forging a smirk as her fingers squirmed in her lap. "Yet, I wouldn't know. I imagine Yevon struggles to exist, now."

"Yes," she nodded. "Yevon is no more... There is talk of a New Yevon, however. I am sure... someone in Bevelle would be able to answer your question."

"If it is anything like the courts of Yevon, then I am sure the law would fall silent to whatever the High Summoner would want. Would you consider that... unjust?"

Complex questions, battles with her will and with her mind, always seemed to cause her to just freeze up and fight. With anyone else, perhaps she would have spoken with morals and rational, perhaps she would have pretended that it was, indeed, unjust and she should just shy away and request a divorce - but her face sharpened, her eyes flared, and with fists curled by her sides, she spoke her heart. "Our marriage was unjust, and the courts that sanctioned it were corrupt... I would fight to have our bond annulled... I will not stand by and let it hang over me. I will fight injustice, even if an exception is taken for me, and I will fight for anyone else who was wed against their will, if that is what must be done."

"You did come willing," he spoke softly.

She whirred. "I would have... wanted, to have married for love. Or for Spira. Or for peace. I offered myself up to stop the slaughter in Home. I offered myself up to stop you. It was not my will to marry you, it was my will to put an end to us."

"All the same, the act was done. You consented."

"On the basis that my guardians would be kept safe. You lied to me, Seymour," she shook her head.

"As you had lied to me. Please, do not mistake that as a fault. I was impressed."

How was she to ever argue against that? She shrunk, lips pursing tight and hard together. He decided to try and make her smile.

"If the courts would not annul it, even for you, then I would ask for a divorce."

It was not quite a smile, but unravelled and shocked curves of her lips were just as rewarding. "But, why?"

He allowed a tilt of his head, a slow, wan smile forming. "Is it not what you want?"

He wondered if she was thinking of Valefor now, and the hard leather wings that had stretched a canvas around her. "Of course... of course it is." She struggled, and finally gave, "Thank you."

There was a raise of his brows and a nod. His word was sealed.

It was only when they reached Guadosalam that she spoke again.

The woods rose up behind her, and there was a tightening in her chest as she lowered her head.

Lifting it again, she said as firmly as she possibly could, "Guadosalam has been abandoned. Your people have run away and want to die. It's because of you."