Summary: They were almost like Zaon and Yunalesca. But not quite. [Seymour x Yuna]

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Ratings: T

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and events that belong to Square-Enix and their affiliates. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

Feedback: Rip it to shreds, plz. It's boring? It's OOC? Nonlinear narrative sucks? Tuna forever? Anything!

Author's Note: This story posits a world where the party loses to Seymour Natus...and many other things. Not that you can tell by this chapter. The time line is (frequently) out of sequence. That, you can tell by this chapter. Otherwise, I dedicate this to PrayerMachine, a great writer who exceeds me at every turn.

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Five Solemn Promises
By Ixis Complicated

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Chapter One

They said when Sin came to Baaj, the children died at sea. Seymour's gaze remained steadfast on the water below, intrigued by its quiet violence. Beneath the surface, fiends returned his stare. He smiled. Morbidly, he wondered what would happen if he joined them in their vast, inscrutable grave. Instead, he held his summoner's staff above the ledge, out toward the horizon. Did they fear his power? Did they fear at all? From the edge of the balcony, he felt the breeze as it swept in from the south, carrying with it the scent of brine and kelp and something like the tropical weather of Besaid. Perhaps it too, like everyone else in Spira, wished to make for Bevelle. His eyes glazed over. He had no inclination to go. He had no inclination toward anything.

Voices inside the temple broke the evening tranquility.

His attendant (his father's closest friend) had just returned from the capital. He was recounting the festivities to the old couple that brought supplies over from Luca in an over-involved fashion that could only serve to grate on the listener's nerves. Seymour stepped into the atrium and listened in with idle interest. News of the Calm seemed to put everyone in high spirits. He pitied them. Why, he didn't know. After all, they belonged among the streamers and the laughter of Bevelle. But happiness in any of its forms could only stave off reality for so long; in truth the people of Spira were asleep. Even slumber, like some imagined thing, would inevitably ebb away. The Calm was Spira's favorite season. It brought no real answers. And so the people slept, and they forgot that even the warmest summer eventually turned to frost.

"Grand Maester Mika barely stepped out of St. Bevelle Palace." The monk's voice fell into a conspiratorial whisper. "He only kept the company of Lord Jyscal."

"Summoner Braska married that opposer of Yevon," the servant-woman said primly, "I'm surprised he deigned to show at all."

"It's High Summoner Braska, now," her husband scoffed as he tried to haul a box over his shoulder. Seymour winced internally as he heard it hit the ground shortly afterwards.

Seymour disliked them. The man and his wife lost their son when Sin destroyed their town. His father offered them generous pay for their work and, surely, their silence. Why else would they come here? At first, deep in their self-mortification, they came regularly, brought with them extravagant niceties sent by Jyscal. And every week their presence reminded Seymour that, in another life, he was born to aristocracy. But when time took with it their ability to sustain their son's memory, it grew obvious to him that they'd rather be elsewhere. He took no real pleasure from their regret or their disparaging mutterings. He preferred the silence.

"The grand maester is just an eccentric man." The elderly man went on to say something about a statue and the woman theorized it would never be made.

"Now you're exaggerating. I met Lord Braska when he passed through Macalania. His guardians too. They were nothing like what you'd expect from reputation."

"What about their reputation?" Seymour interjected, sedate and cold. No one had noticed him beneath the colonnade above until now.

"Peculiar folk." His attendant still wore Macalania's traditional colors and attire. He'd been to see his father, obviously. "Not like a summoner at all. His guardians... even worse."

"Sir Auron and sir Jetch, is it." He circled the ramp, and downward toward them. "Which one of them returned?"

The old servant-woman who spoke before shook her head, giving a side-long glance to the monk. "Without Lord Braska, sir Jecht will turn up in jail again. Mark my words."

He looked over to Seymour. "No one's seen either of 'em."

"Oh? But two guardians... it's a first." He had no genuine interest in the history of Yevon or its summoners, but aside from studying the scriptures—and watching over the sea-fiends—there wasn't much else to do in Baaj. That he recalled precise and obscure details from memory was involuntary, even if his servant thought favorably of his seeming piousness. "Is no one in Spira curious of their journey? Is the Calm all that matters now?"

"We heard nothing of it in Macalania," was the reply. "Besides," he added with a dour note. "That new one, what's his name? Wen something. He guarded the grand maester so closely there was no approaching him—"

"A military type, finally," the woman interrupted. "He'll make maester, mark my words."

"So the church officials won't say," Seymour concluded, ignoring her. "My father is silent on it as well?" They fell into a hush as if he had broken an unspoken but inviolable law. Satisfied with his uncanny ability to create that sort of tension, he smiled wryly. Whenever he brought up certain subjects (his father, his exile, or that Sin always comes back), anyone in the vicinity either stopped conversing or eyed the door until the first opportunity presented itself for them to leave. Seymour embraced both alternatives equally.

"He's been rather... busy."

"More than usual?"

Before his attendant could reply, a tremor ran across the stone walls, violent enough for everyone to feel the vibration. Seymour tilted his head in curiosity. Every so often a fiend managed to sidle out of the ocean. The servants exchanged a look of dread. Whether they dreaded the fiend or the prospect of spending the night was uncertain. They only had themselves to blame; they sidetracked him with their stories. This invariably happened when he didn't stand watch and exert his summoner's influence over the fiends.

"Oh, must be that fiend again," he said, conversational. "Unsettling, isn't it? It seems to grow stronger every day."

In his stupor, the older gentleman dropped something from his pocket. It rolled across the marble floor. A type of watch? When it stopped at his feet, Seymour picked it up. It seemed something far too extravagant for a servant to be carrying around. Apparently people starved in parts of Spira. Of course Seymour never noticed such a thing in Baaj. He didn't care much, either. He never lacked for anything.

Meanwhile, his personal attendant, unconcerned, returned to his much-loved topic of conversation: "Aye, Braska's little daughter was there, too," a rush of excitement suddenly blossomed on his cheeks. "Cheery young thing. What was 'er name? I can't remember."

"Yuna," the woman said distantly. She hadn't taken her eyes off Seymour, now overly preoccupied with her husband's watch. "Her name is Yuna."

Seymour wondered darkly if Lord Braska regretted his choice of name in the thorns of Yunalesca's ordeal.

As his father's friend descanted on her beauty, Seymour drifted toward ideas that had nothing to do with this girl's supposed charm and grace. A strange quality attached itself to her in his eyes. The death-swept shores of her existence would offer her no solace and because of it she was something like himself. In the wake of her father's legendary victory, it eluded her still.

Beset by a sudden anger for reasons unfathomable, he made back toward the balcony. "My apologies, but I have more important matters to attend to."

"You're back already?"

Yuna wondered if the woman could see into her soul when she stared down at her with a disturbing equanimity Yuna found all-too familiar. But there was softness in her gaze that she'd never seen in Seymour's. She felt a strange lightness in her chest that would fade if she'd only be able to take another breath; she wanted to hide her thoughts from this woman. Of course, the more she tried to put Seymour out of her mind, the clearer the images got. She raised her eyes, resigned to the terrible judgment she was sure to meet for her hypocrisy.

The woman considered her at length. No meanness, but no kindness either. "The end result is unchanged still," she said. "But I've considered something new. Are you ready?"

"Actually, I...I had a change of heart," Yuna's voice barely rose to a whisper. "It has gone too far already."

"I see."

"Yuna, don't listen to a word she says," Lulu's voice resonated across the walls of her mind.

"I'm sorry. I've tried so hard to do all these things you ask. But I—I can't." Yuna's fingers curled tightly across her summoner's staff, her eyes downcast. The stone floor was caked in dust. In its present state of decay, it was hard to imagine that Baaj temple was once a seat of splendor for the forsaken family it housed. And she knew deep in her heart the world would have been better off if Seymour and his mother had stayed here forever.

"You think you can subdue my son's ambitions before you defeat Sin," was the cold reply. "But for all your promises, you've failed at every turn."

"I didn't fail!" She covered her mouth, shocked by her own outburst. "I just—it's not like that. You can't make this right by piling on lies on top of more lies."

No one said you failed anything, Yuna. Perhaps you could use some rest...

The overwhelming gaze of Anima's fayth turned soft. "I understand, Yuna. Yevon made you grow wise." She started across the chamber, considering the ruins surrounding them as though she were setting eyes upon them for the first time. Yuna couldn't decide whether Seymour's mother was being pensive or condescending. "Choices are so simple when the alternatives are considered in harsh contrast, aren't they? Black and white, good and bad."

Yuna ignored the woman circling around her. She held fast. Her voice was flat. "I'm not the one. You could do this. He would listen to you!"

All of a sudden, the woman stopped pacing. She noticed a glimmer—something—on Yuna's person. To Yuna's surprise, the woman reached to the side of her sash. "Ah, yes. I remember this," she said as she pulled a golden chain, a circular object attached to it. "This watch belonged to my husband. And now," her far-away eyes reflected a faint measure of delight, "it would appear it belongs to you."

With her fate tied to this tropical wasteland, Yuna didn't see what this woman had to be so happy about. It was her own son, after all, they were beguiling.

After an uncomfortable pause, she spoke, "There is a secret essence in my son that I even can't touch."

Yuna's cheeks flushed. Something inside her stilled. "W-what do you mean?"

"Not long ago, I felt my inner world change," she said, her smile filled with an implication she had no intention to share. She brushed an ethereal hand to Yuna's cheek. With the indifference of someone who had already lost everything that matters, she threw the last card on the table. "And since then, all I could do was wait... wait for the day when I'd finally get to meet you."

"Must've wandered off again."

"Lord Jyscal is such a good man," the man said. "I can't believe they say it's his son."

"He's a fine lad," his attendant dismissed the remark.

"It ain't right. A boy his age should go out and have friends."

The metronomic click brought him back to reality, to the sight of the two men approaching. The sound dulled the silence that had otherwise fallen during his lapse. "Ah, here," he handed the watch back to the older gentleman with ginger care, assuming this was the reason for their presence.

The man didn't move to take it at first. "Thank you, Lord Seymour," he said reticently. It was the first time he ever spoke to him directly. He took his watch, a barely perceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth when the chain slid from Seymour's gaunt fingers. The man never spoke, least of all to him. He only brought food and supplies and then left.

"We'll be shoving off soon," his attendant said. He paused. "Look, why don't ye come to Bevelle? Jyscal wouldn't mind. Grand Maester Mika's got this new policy—"

"No," he replied in a neutral voice. This wasn't the first time his attendant suggested he leave Baaj. Earlier that month, he had insisted that he take up monastic studies. According to him, Seymour already mastered the art of summoning ridiculously fast. Yevonite monks selected their sort with the finest of discrimination. A monk's training required patience and effort, but a model student like him would suffer the misery with more grace than common men. A fitting endeavor, in a way, for a young man bound to a temple. Convenient, too, because young men typically weren't bound to temples. It amused him how opportunistic the clergy could be.

It had already been decided. His last living sight would be this temple.

"I didn't like your father when he first stepped foot in Bevelle," his attendant began, unbidden by any clear thread of conversation. "The Guado themselves hated us, why should we welcome them?"

"Is that so?" Seymour let show the ghost of a smile. "In the same manner Auron and Jetch found no welcome as guardians?"

The monk smiled. "In the very same." He walked up to the edge and stood next to Seymour, neither one looking at the other. Both watched from above as the old man pulled his rickety barge from the shore. "Bevelle is a harsh place for those who are... different. But her words lifted his spirits and—"

A shriek echoed in the courtyard.

When they got there, the older gentleman was clawing through the black waters, pushing himself against waves that broke above his head. Seymour didn't realize what had transpired until he saw a single blot of ash-colored hair drifting away from the shore. Under the wan moon before sunrise, it was difficult to see anything. Seymour stood there, amazed. His attendant pushed past him to grab hold of the man before he met the same fate, the fiends waiting from depths for him to follow. Their mortal selves had died at sea; it seemed natural they should remain there. The man stilled, perhaps noticing something gazing up at him. A chance for the monk to grab a hold of him.

Not once did Seymour think to intervene.

With the foam and debris, the woman's body drifted back to shore the next morning. He wondered then about death, and why humans fought it so. She had thrashed and wailed almost in ecstasy and now her face was blank, calm. He watched her carefully. The way her lips parted gently and her fingers dug into the sand, it looked to Seymour like death felt of bliss beyond the telling of it.