summoners-path:

[ 大召喚士 ]     He had wanted to object to her ridiculousness right away, but something in him kept him silent. Instead, he simply watched her, his eyes never leaving, and he shook his head slightly at her words until she burst into laughter. He then eyed her then with confusion, but also endearment. It took him a moment, but he eventually joined in only realizing why exactly she had laughed once she mentioned his earlier comment once more.

          “Oh, I know he is.”, Braska commented, still laughing.
               “Trust me. I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

She sighed then and he tilted his head in curiosity, opening his mouth to speak and he moved toward her. But, before he could do so, she turned around to him, wearing her usual smile and looking more ready than ever to throw a pebble at a passerby.

He didn’t really want to dampen the mood. She looked… happy. And he liked that. But he did need to say something. Even if it wasn’t much. And so, moving up beside her, he eyed the small pile of stones and then spoke. His voice was light and he smiled, despite how serious he truly was. He didn’t want her to leave. He honestly couldn’t imagine her overstaying. If he was to become tired of her, he would have done so long before now. He wasn’t always as kind as his reputation gave him credit for; he was selfish at times, selfish indeed.

          “I’d really prefer it if neither of us went anywhere, just so you know…
               But why don’t we let our future selves worry about that, hmm?”

He flashed a wide smile at her then. And without another word, he reached down, grabbed a stone and hurled it off toward a small gathering of people he thought were likely to be just out of reach. It turned out that it wasn’t. He turned to Chuami instantly, his look a mixture of horror and surprise and something akin to satisfaction. Then, without looking back, he reached for her arm and grabbed it. And as gently as he could while still rushing, he moved toward the exit of the roof.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting – awkwardness, at the very least. Her habit of running her mouth before she thought about the consequences was going to get her into trouble one day. She knew it, he likely knew it; Isa had been telling her since she was seven.

But Braska didn’t seem particularly put off. There was something there, all the same; his voice didn’t quite match his eyes, but any concern she might have felt about that vanished as he spoke. 

“I’d really prefer it if neither of us went anywhere–”

Auron told her Braska only said these things because it was his way, but for some reason, that near-imperceptible hesitation before he said it seemed… different, somehow? Most people would agree that he would say almost anything to keep someone happy, and until recently, she’d almost believed it. Now, though, she wondered if maybe he only said things he meant.

“But why don’t we let our future selves worry about that, hmm?”

Simple, almost ridiculously so, but it seemed to her to be an answer to everything.

Okay… so… maybe, just maybe, I might be… Ugh. Well, I can learn to love him the way he loves me.
It’ll hurt, but it’ll be better than being nothing to him, right?

“Okay! Then, I guess, present me will haunt you a bit longer…”

Present Chuami thought this was reasonable, in a desperate kind of way, but she could already feel future Chuami, the one who would have to deal with the fallout of her decision, cursing and furious. The whole point of her move was to break this endless cycle of fascination and resignation, to get her out from under his feet, where he couldn’t pull her back in with a kind word or a gentle smile. She was supposed to be removing herself from him, for both of their sakes, and she was failing at it before she even started.

I guess that’s my future self’s problem.

She’d been so busy puzzling over her thoughts that she only realised what he was doing once it was too late and the stone’s impact echoed back up to them.

“You didn’t warn me you sucked at it!” she laughed. 

He grabbed her arm and she twisted out of his grip, darted across the roof and picked up something they’d quite forgotten.

“What?” she winked, “Running away from stuff is hungry work. Last one home has to come back and apologise to Yevon, go!”