[FFX] Waiting (SFW, Lulu/Auron)

[wallwalker]

Hey look, something new

Fandom: FFX
Characters: Lulu/Auron
Rating: SFW
Word Count: 500 or so
Summary: Lulu hates waiting.

Written for fic_promptly's Challenge Week.

Lulu rested one arm on the railing beside the entrance to the Command Center, trying to rest as best she could. More waiting, she thought sourly, shaking her head. She would almost have preferred to join the Crusaders on the beach, even though she feared that they marched to their deaths.

The most difficult part of being a Guardian was the waiting, by far. It killed her, knowing that someone she had sworn to protect was facing a trial that she could not take part in... and Lulu had never sworn to protect anyone that she did not care about, if not love. This Pilgrimage was proving to be the most painful of all by far. She had loved Lady Ginnem from afar, never quite knowing how to speak her feelings aloud, and she had cared for Lord Zuke as she would have a wise old uncle. But Yuna was the sun in her sky; that was why she could not have stayed behind and let her walk that path alone.

She did not mind walking with Yuna. But she was sick to her soul of standing around, waiting for something to happen.

The sound of the tent flap being pulled harshly aside startled her, and she turned to see Auron step out, stone-faced as ever. But he would not have made such an abrupt exit had he not been unhappy. He turned his head, looked at his briefly with her good eye. “Forgive me,” he said tersely.

“It’s all right,” Lulu answered. The thought briefly flickered through her mind that she should leave it at that, but she discarded it, for reasons she was not sure she understood. Perhaps her own irritation with this inaction was clouding her judgment. Perhaps she hoped to commiserate. “Maester Kinoc and Maester Seymour must be confident indeed, to risk their reputation in this manner,” she continued, her tone dry and bitter.

Auron snorted. She could see the gleam in his eye; her tone had not been lost on him. “Kinoc is confident in nothing but his own greed,” he said, shaking his head. “As for Maester Seymour... I cannot say.”

Would not say, she thought instead; he might be difficult to read, but not impossible. And she suspected that he had been keeping something from them the entire time she had known him; whether it was to spare them pain or to keep from frightening Yuna, she wasn't sure. But he had fought too hard to protect them all to be truly malicious, and so she decided not to press the matter. She would allow him his secrets. “And so we wait,” she said instead, “as Guardians so often must.”

“Indeed.” He moved out of the way as a fresh-faced Crusader recruit dashed toward the tent, moving to stand beside her. “It was simpler, before.”

“When you served Lord Braska?”

“Yes. I trusted in him, at least. Jecht was less confident at first.” He stared into the distance, quiet for a moment. “By the end... there is still no one better at waiting than he.”

She saw him withdraw into himself, into the past. What must it have been like, saying good-bye to Yuna’s father? Had he been as kind as his daughter?

He did not flinch away as she laid her hand on his back, feeling the rough, worn weave of his coat. Some of the tension went out of his face, and he stayed with her.

At least waiting together was easier than waiting alone, she supposed.