Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Guardian ❯ Dreams ( Chapter 8 )

Guardian, Chapter 8
Dreams

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Days passed, falling seamlessly into one another, a contented blur of time spent learning to find joy in life again. I immersed myself in motherhood, trying to make up for the unfortunate lack of parenting my child had suffered through while his father was absent and his mother lost in selfish grief. Much time was spent on small pleasures to please him: trips to museums and blitzball matches, a party for his birthday, and just snatches of time where I made sure that he had my full attention, to excitedly tell me about those things so important to the mind of a child that often go unnoticed by adults. Auron was always conspicuously absent when people visited the house, and politely refused invitations to join in on our outings. I didn't think much of it; he was pleasant enough in our daily interaction, if miserly with words. He just didn't seem like the tourist type. I got the feeling that he didn't much want to stay here, but was tied to us by promises made and the simple fact that he didn't have anywhere else to go.

The anniversary of his arrival passed with little fanfare; his unchanged demeanor left me to wonder if he were even aware of the day's significance, and if I were again a bit melancholy, well, no one seemed to notice. I don't think you ever forget, really, not when you lose those who have wrapped themselves so thoroughly in the strings of your heart. But time slowly made the remembrance less painful. I was able to smile again, and to paint and draw, tapping into a soul that had once seemed so empty. I turned the study again into my atelier, filling it with watercolors and oils, letting myself revel in the simple pleasure of stroking bright paint over blank canvas, leaving color where only barren whiteness had been before.

The one tiny seed of worry in my mind long eluded me with its origins. But one day I finally realized what had been bothering me for months: Auron. Day by day my sorrow had lifted -- never gone, but lightened enough that eventually even I could see the radical difference between my life now and the wreck I had been. But though I finally felt normal again on most days, he seemed as troubled as the day he'd first entered this house, filled with an unrelenting grief and an endless, permanent sorrow. During the day he masked it well behind a cool demeanor of polite formality. But sometimes in the darkest hours of the night I would wake to hear him thrashing in the grip of some painful dream, alternately calling for Jecht or Braska in broken tones. I wanted to comfort him, as anyone with a human heart would have, upon seeing such unfettered anguish. But always the fear of his angry reaction would curb the impulse, and I'd retreat to my room in worried confusion, feeling slightly guilty for being witness to the naked grief he obviously wished to hide.

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I found myself with little to do other than pace the halls with the boy at my heels, or sit with Serra as she painted for hours on end. For a man like me, who had spent most of his life driven by an impossible mission, constantly traveling and battling and courting danger, the forced inactivity was nearly unbearable. And at the same time...it was a welcome change to escape the shadow cast by Sin upon everything in my homeland. I might even have been happy, if I could have managed even for a second to forget what had become of us, we three who had set out to change the world.

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That night, like many before it, found me creeping down the hallway, awakened by a stray sound. Expecting to find Auron again in the throes of whatever disturbing dreams troubled him, my heart leapt into my throat, swelling with pity when I realized that the stoic Guardian was sobbing in his sleep, quietly but with unmistakable anguish.

"--should have been me, Jecht..." he moaned, sleep slurring the words slightly. "Oh Yevon, why?" The last tortured syllable broke the spell of guilty indecision that held me helplessly at the threshold. Propriety and furious Guardians be damned.

I crept slowly to his side and sat there gingerly, though without hesitation. That he had not roused instantly spoke loudly of the dream's merciless hold on him. Before I had time to think better of it, I lifted his head onto my lap and stroked his hair, marveling at the softness of the coal-black strands tangled and torn loose from his warrior's braid. The worst lines of pain eased from his face, causing me to revise my estimation of his age down nearly a decade, guessing it to be nearly the same as mine. His arms came suddenly around me with bruising force, holding me tightly for a long moment. I barely breathed; it had been long since I had been able to offer comfort to another being -- for something more serious than a scraped knee, anyway. My soul reveled in the unexpected joy, glad of the chance to lend what I had only been able to take from others for so long. My lips brushed the top of his head without conscious thought.

I felt the exact moment that awareness returned to him; he went rigid as a board and captured my offending hands in a grip of iron, thrusting me away with a growling "Serra, what are you doing in here--"

He broke off abruptly, an expression of regret or uncertainty layered over the anger, and it was then that I realized I was crying. He pulled a handkerchief from the night table silently, all at once the implacable Guardian, as vulnerable as a mountain. He misinterpreted my tears, saying only, "Don't cry, I shouldn't have yelled at you--"

I dashed his hand and the proffered square of cloth away forcefully. "Don't be stupid! That isn't why--" My voice failed me; I couldn't just go and say that I had been crying for him.

But my refusal to meet his gaze was enough for him to draw the obvious conclusion. He drew up his arms in anger, crossing them in a furious gesture that somehow looked slightly as though he were holding himself together. In a voice that the chill of steel could not touch, he spat, "I don't need your pity."

Suddenly angry, I nearly hit him. Instead I retaliated by continuing to invade his personal space, my face scant inches from his, though I had to look up quite a bit more than I would have liked. Jecht had not been quite so...tall. "It isn't pity! Don't you think I know sorrow?? Can you not see that the torment you inflict upon yourself hurts me the way it would have hurt him?? He never wanted that for you!" My hands balled into fists. "Jecht never did anything he didn't want to! If he sacrificed himself it was willingly, because he wanted to spare you! He loved you!"

I shocked him a bit, I think. The slight widening of eyes looked wildly out of place on his expressionless face. I had never spoken so heatedly about anything to him before. He looked as though he would speak, but my voice broke the silence between us first, a cracked whisper, "Don't you think I ever wondered, Auron? Why he was so sure that you could find your way to us, but so quick to claim that his life meant little because he was stuck in Spira forever?" I closed my eyes at the dawning look of comprehension in his gaze. "I wondered, then, if it was because he loved you more."

This had obviously never occurred to him. "Serra," he began, but I kept on speaking.

"But...I know my husband's heart. He loved me and our son with every ounce of his being. I can't know, exactly, how it was for you three on the pilgrimage, but one thing I know without question is that he loved you and Braska nearly as well. He couldn't save Braska, and he couldn't bear losing you as well. He died to keep you safe, and no amount of persuasion could have swayed him, even if you'd had a million years. But you didn't have years, did you?" I continued softly. "There was no time, was there?"

"No time," he echoed, bowing his head, so faintly I first thought I'd imagined it.

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She looked down, twisting her hands into the fabric of his discarded coat as he spoke. Oh, Auron.

Bright crimson blossomed on the back of one slim hand, stark against the skin blanched white from the force of her grip, and just as the first hot droplet of red registered in her mind, another joined it, trailing between her fingers over into the palm. Opening the hand in disconcerted wonder, she glanced up and gasped.

At her stricken expression of mingled horror and compassion, he realized that his control over this corporeal form had slipped, the gaping wound across his face again fresh and bleeding in echoing response to the twin rend he had again torn open in his soul. In less than a breath, he had gathered his emotions to him once more, concealing them in his deepest mental recesses, the long scar again the smooth raised flesh of a wound long healed.

She blinked, uncertain, unnerved by the sight of such a violent wound, it's subsequent disappearance, and the sudden glacial coldness of the face across from hers, its mahogany eye shadowed and hostile as it gazed out the moonlit window. But the vermillion of his blood still dried slowly in her cupped hand.

Did the dead bleed, then?

She wanted to reach out for him, and he must have sensed that, because without turning his head, he said, "Just leave, Serra. There is nothing you can do here."

Resigned, she silently retreated to the door. Pushing him further tonight seemed cruel and would accomplish nothing. But, she could almost tangibly feel Jecht's presence wanting her to do something for his friend...she couldn't give up...

"Do you want some tea?" The innocuous question rang non sequitur into the silence, surprising them both. Serra cursed herself for a fool. Tea?

Taken off guard, he automatically began a cold refusal. "No, thank you--" and then paused as if considering. He was in no hurry to sleep again, and there was something about a simple, mundane cup of tea that was infinitely appealing. He sighed as if in weary capitulation. "Yes, actually. Tea would be fine."

He stalked down the hallway behind her, his unnaturally silent gait unnerving her in the darkness. She boiled water and steeped tea in a kitchen silent as a tomb, lit only by the moon and a very small lamp. He sat with his back to her, accepting the cup at the last with an absent thanks.

He stared morosely into his tea, obviously unwilling to talk further. She realized suddenly that for a rare moment he wore neither glasses nor collar, and it was a testament to his troubled state of mind that he seemed not to have noticed the lack. His scar was nearly painful to look at, though it could not hide the chiseled beauty of his face, patrician mouth slightly full of bottom lip, arched eyebrows and long black lashes shadowing his remaining eye. His hair was a soft fall of liquid night running in a long tail down his back, absorbing all of the light that touched it, throwing none back.

He jerked as though touched with a live wire when her small hand traced the scar.

She withdrew immediately in alarm. "I'm sorry, did I hurt you?"

"No." He paused. "Please don't do that again," he continued in a low voice, unconsciously turning his head in profile, concealing the scar in shadow. Very obviously having realized that most of his usual concealing attire lay in the other room.

"No, don't..." She caught his hand swiftly, spilling hot tea over the brim, over his fingers and onto the table.

He hissed slightly in pain, and she cursed. She dabbed at his hand with a napkin, saying hurriedly, "I'm so sorry...would you like some ice or something?"

He did not seem to hear her, so still and unresponsive was he. He didn't seem even to breathe. The skin didn't appear to be scalded, so she let it drop. Instead, she pressed his large hand between her own, exploring the palm unfamiliarly callused from years of swordsmanship. Taking a deep breath, she said, "You're beautiful, Auron. Even such a scar cannot hide it."

He snorted, very softly, finally extricating his hand from her grasp.

She continued on anyway, before he could leave. "I wish that you did not feel the need to wear all of that around us, indoors. It can't be comfortable. Tidus thinks that the sun rises and sets with you...and can you not tell that I like your face well enough? It is the face of a man who died trying to avenge his friends, who traveled vast distances to fulfill a promise. The face of the man who gave my life back to me."

He was visibly unconvinced.

She swallowed and finished softly, "But were it none of those things, I still would not find it unpleasant to look upon."

Her frank honesty left no room for him to doubt her words. They rang true as no well-meaning lie could, and he soundly cursed the unfaithful part of himself that was suddenly absurdly glad.

Serra only hoped that the low light hid the color that crept into her cheeks. What was wrong with her? Surely telling her husband's friend that she found him pleasing to look at was no reason to blush like a schoolgirl...

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End Chapter 8