He'll accept that, even if he knows better. The one thing he can't let go, that he's a good dad. No. Roland has to earn that. He's not a good dad until the story is complete, and everything is reversed. Until he returns and faces his fate, in the hopes that what he does, what Tidus believes he is capable of doing, is enough.
It's so bitter in his stomach, bile rising high until he can taste it. A good dad, what a joke. A good dad as he lets his son be turned to ash, alone, always alone, no time at all...'I'll be waiting!'
Roland was cut off, but he takes his share before he reels himself back in. He won't know when else he can say it but in the moment presented to him, here and now.
"You're better than what he thinks you are." He says it like a fact, subdued but no less strong than what warrants it. "If...If it felt like I was assuming, that I thought I knew..." - Jecht, a man who could have been Roland at one point in this vast universe, leaving a son and hoping he would find his way...Thinking that he could speak for him, just because what? Of lofty ideals, of fatherhood? The way Tidus talks about him is not the same. It's not the same and Roland shakes his head. The paternal instinct in him drives him to do it. To make amends.
"I'm sorry." For speaking on his behalf, or excusing a man he barely knows, only by name, only by title. "I just know that you deserve that too." The unspoken. The perfect life. "Because you're a good son."
He lets that be it, his last take on it, a period to the sentence where his hand falls on the juncture between Tidus's shoulder and his neck. A smile, because Roland means it, has seen it, and will continue to believe that all should be well for men like Tidus who have so much more left to give. Even as a dream. Even as he wishes he could have done his people a better justice than to give in to letting them free.
The act is tender but quick. He walks about and summons his sword again, ready to move out.
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He'll accept that, even if he knows better. The one thing he can't let go, that he's a good dad. No. Roland has to earn that. He's not a good dad until the story is complete, and everything is reversed. Until he returns and faces his fate, in the hopes that what he does, what Tidus believes he is capable of doing, is enough.
It's so bitter in his stomach, bile rising high until he can taste it. A good dad, what a joke. A good dad as he lets his son be turned to ash, alone, always alone, no time at all...'I'll be waiting!'
Roland was cut off, but he takes his share before he reels himself back in. He won't know when else he can say it but in the moment presented to him, here and now.
"You're better than what he thinks you are." He says it like a fact, subdued but no less strong than what warrants it. "If...If it felt like I was assuming, that I thought I knew..." - Jecht, a man who could have been Roland at one point in this vast universe, leaving a son and hoping he would find his way...Thinking that he could speak for him, just because what? Of lofty ideals, of fatherhood? The way Tidus talks about him is not the same. It's not the same and Roland shakes his head. The paternal instinct in him drives him to do it. To make amends.
"I'm sorry." For speaking on his behalf, or excusing a man he barely knows, only by name, only by title. "I just know that you deserve that too." The unspoken. The perfect life. "Because you're a good son."
He lets that be it, his last take on it, a period to the sentence where his hand falls on the juncture between Tidus's shoulder and his neck. A smile, because Roland means it, has seen it, and will continue to believe that all should be well for men like Tidus who have so much more left to give. Even as a dream. Even as he wishes he could have done his people a better justice than to give in to letting them free.
The act is tender but quick. He walks about and summons his sword again, ready to move out.