It's not a joke that lands. They're too far from those safety nets, that Tidus meets it with confusion, a vulnerability that doesn't have the mouth to quip back. He's not ready to move from this, will fight it if he has to; for now he doesn't, grounded as Roland's own attempts to move forward become slugged by where they've ended up.

What did he want from his father? His love, his support. To know he was proud of him, that he could amount to something. Anything. That he wasn't wasting his time, learning how to kick a blitzball; that he wasn't just a crybaby, that it wasn't bad, how easily he cried. What did he want? Everything. He wanted everything. He wanted his dad.

"You're a busy guy, aren't you? What else are you gonna have time to give him?" He wants to reach out figuratively: give this kind and this family what he didn't get to, what was taken away- from even Jecht, what he wasn't given the chance to offer. "Give him you. If you can't be there with him, then give you another way, I don't care what it is. You're some bigshot back home, and you know, your kid's gonna be proud of that! But who's his dad to him?" His voice rushes, two lives intermingling; what he wishes he could have told the Jecht back there, made him understand in place of the tears that told his frustrations instead. "You know how much a kid wants their dad to talk to them? I didn't want him to stop being the Great Jecht. I just wanted... I wanted to know I wasn't a disappointment. I wanted him to say it!"

His voice rises with the emotion, the tears that threaten the corner of his eyes, everything he didn't get. Thoughts slurring with what's rational, what's been talked about.

"Every kid's dad is enough. What kind of stupid idea is that?" Bitterness, decades old- "You can't put off being a good dad 'til tomorrow."