Ever since Lady Yuna had slipped her delicate little fingers over his gnarled palm, he had felt the world begin to shift. See, she was the embodiment of something that Spira thought itself abundant in - Hope, a dancing ember glowing white that not anyone, not even he, wished to extinguish. A true hope, an earthly kind of hope whose boots made heavy steps across the ground, whose ankles were constantly caked in blood, whose hair was shining and tangled with sweat. Awkward in speech, stumbling and with a mastery of the forced smile, eyes that promised bitterness and heat and resolve, an ungraceful package, but a graceful experience.
And just as she was hope, he was Spira’s tragedy. Not that he wished to dwell on those kinds of thoughts, but he found it amusing - the way their fingers interlocked, his hands like twisted, thorned stems, and hers so small that they practically disappeared within his cage. Hope suffocated by a tragedy, is that what her Guardians would be thinking of them? A shame, they knew not of the shared callouses that they each shared, scars that shot through them both, a great tangle that breathed and ached beneath their surfaces.
Now, that was enough of thinking. Lady Yuna seemed to think so too, her words lashing him.
“For me?” He asks, sounding hurt. “Lady Yuna… Please, dance as only you would. If it is pleasure you wish to give me, then do only what you desire.” Liar, liar, and yet not entirely untrue. Even though he had forced her here, tugged her hand and made her undo him with those aching little fingers, made her taste his soul as it fragmented and died upon the air - all things were best, always best, when it crackled from her own flame. Little tiny sparks of hope, setting the dead tangle of roots inside of him alight.
“… Are you thinking of our final dance?” He asks, Gagazet looming behind them, a tumor of dark caves pulsing and pushing and breathing before them. Not long, not long until the end.
He tilts his head, and looks at her.
“How many times have you danced for the dead, Yuna? Will it be a relief, to finally dance yourself to death?”
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