He would come home, sometimes immediately, and sometimes much later after spending the night out with the team. At the time, it was sheer glory, and he enjoyed it most to live it up – hitting bars and other such seedy establishments, dragging himself through the door at the crack of dawn, never remembering the details whenever he finally managed to wake up the next night.

It never bothered him, then, that the city went on forever... that there was never a crack of dawn, or even a glimmer of hope brighter than a mage-lit torch.

And doing it over again. Still – on retrospect that was – his heart was fonder of when he came home right after the match. When his son was still awake... even if he never really understand Blitzball. Tidus tended to make stupid observations that had his father cringing; Jecht instinctively knew that the kid didn’t have any future in the game.

And still, he followed along and played for the Zanarkand Abes. The best team in the world, even though there was no where else – every team was from Zanarkand. That Tidus was the best... didn’t surprise him as much as it should have; it made him bitterly proud.

And she... She was his heart. It he could have found a way back, abandoned the path he’d been dragged down, and the truth he’d been outright forced to see...

Knowing of her death had wounded him deeply. And yet... she wasn’t dead. It was far worse to know – to have never lived.

"How didn’t you know," Auron asked him once, when he was picking out the discrepancies, "That it was an illusion?"

Perhaps the somber, annoyingly sober, temple-man had a point. But from where Jecht stood, it hadn’t been an illusion; it had been his life. It was more real than anything Spira had to offer; and as for all her half-dead, technology-fearing people... they were worse than illusions.

It seemed as if he were lying to himself again. But when all of the dishonesty and half-truth faded away, he had his answer, in a single, hurtful certainty.

"I was happy."