Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Guardian ❯ Storm, part 1 ( Chapter 14 )

Guardian, Chapter 14
Storm, part 1

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I recognize the way you make me feel
It's hard to think that
You might not be real
I sense it now, the water's getting deep
I try to wash the pain away from me
Away from me

'Cause you're everywhere to me
And when I catch my breath
It's you I breathe
You're everything I know
That makes me believe
I'm not alone...

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I sat alone with my tokkuri on the highest point of the roof, staring up into the surreal foreignness that was Jecht's Zanarkand, having long since stopped seeing it. It was not hard to believe that this gaudy and incessantly loud city was his place of origin. With only a bit of barely passable sake for company, I whole-heartedly cursed my newfound inability to get really and truly drunk.

Did you know, Braska, that in the end your path would be the easiest of us all? Your steadfast acceptance of certain death humbled Jecht and I as we followed you to the end, though it tore at us with an anguish that never diminished. The guilt was unbearable for me, allowing you to die for our sakes, but you were immoveable. I spent the last half of the pilgrimage trying to find a different way, as if by sheer force of will I could somehow change everything and fabricate a solution where none existed. But what utter irony, that in the end you were the most fortunate -- a clean, quick death at the height of your glory. I don't argue that my tormented existence is the result of my own folly; attacking Yunalesca was pointless, reckless. Senseless. Perhaps even sheer cowardice, a last-ditch effort to avoid facing life without the two of you. But Jecht...the horror of his fate is beyond imagining. Can you see him, from the Farplane? Do you weep, as I wish that I still could?

A female voice cut cleanly through the wind. "Auron?"

Closing my eyes, I groaned inwardly, irritated at the unwelcome invasion into my melancholic brooding. What the hell was she doing up at this hour?

"Auron? Are you all right?" She stood outside the house, at a distance far enough away to be visible from where I sat. The wind whipped her hair into a shifting tangle that now and again concealed her face, and the loose lightweight pants she must have been sleeping in fluttered madly around her ankles. They were obviously too long; they must have belonged to Jecht.

No, Serra. I have not been 'all right' for quite some time. Just go the hell away. But I said nothing aloud, hoping that she would take the hint.

She didn't. I heard the light scraping noise of bare feet against the wall. Yevon help me, the little fool was trying to climb up here. I had a sudden mental image of having to peel her flattened carcass off of the ground. "Serra--"

"What?" Two wide, amethyst eyes peered up at me from the ledge as she hauled herself over, her shirt slipping just a bit to flash a hint of rounded flesh that I tried my best to ignore.

It struck me suddenly, that she looked stronger than I'd yet seen her, more alive. At my strange look, she said, "Jecht used to come up here a lot, too. He loved to watch the city." She gazed up silently, her irises reflecting back to me the skyline painted in every possible hue of violet. She smiled softly, as if in remembrance. "I had to learn to make the climb as well, if I ever wanted to see him some nights."

Unbidden, she sat next to me, close but not touching. Her wistful smile faded into concern, and she touched my hand. "Something really is bothering you."

And I'm up here on your roof, in the middle of the night, because I want to talk. I certainly couldn't tell her what had driven me up here --

Last week I talked to your 'dead' husband in a dream, and he told me to take you to bed.

Well, practically. I took a long pull on the jug, even though the unfortunate rice wine sorely wanted a thorough heating. "Being dead will do that," I pointed out sagely.

"You keep saying that, but it seems to me that you are alive enough yet." Her hand had not left mine, and I tried to take it back.

"I. Am. Dead. Nothing but force of habit keeps this heart beating. I don't need to eat or sleep, and I can't even fucking get drunk," I bit out, harshly. Perhaps I was finally a little inebriated.

She was unimpressed. "Well, since you're dead, give me that damned jacket, I'm freezing."

Indeed she was. Gooseflesh covered her bare arms, and subtle evidence of her chill pressed against the light, useless shirt she wore as she trembled with cold. I looked away. "Then you should go inside," I said, crossly. But even as I spoke I was tearing off the belt, pulling my arm out of the sleeve before tossing the heavy red coat ungraciously at her. I suppose that perhaps I really didn't want her to leave...or I figured that whatever I might say she wouldn't leave, so she may as well be warm.

Her grateful smile was all the more beautiful for the innocent love shining through it, and I tasted despair. I saw no way out of this fatally tangled imbroglio. I couldn't leave, I couldn't die.

Am I to wander this plane forever, tormented always by impossible choices? Is there never another way?

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It surprised me, how unusually mordant he was tonight, when he actually spoke. It had been long minutes since either of us last said anything, and he seemed fine with that, engrossed as he was in staring darkly out into nothing.

It fell to me then, to prod him into talking, to try and draw him out. But having lived so long with a man who kept nothing inside, I was unused to the task, and in my inexperience I fear I chose my words poorly. "Yours is a strange kind of death," I said. "You seem a living man to me. Look, even your hair has grown longer since you first came," I mused. Of its own volition, my hand rose to alight upon the braided black tail that fell over his shoulder. "Is your existence here really so horrible?"

The bitterness in his eye flashed to anger before the last word left my lips. He yanked his hair savagely out of my hand, snapping the tie that bound it. "You may be able to easily gloss over my death, but I cannot."

He was furious now, such as I had never seen him, every muscle tightened and hands clenched into fists. This then, was the fearsome Guardian who sent foes unrepentantly to their deaths, should they dare to threaten his Summoner. It took an effort not to flinch away from such heated anger, so foreign on his face that it turned him into someone I did not know at all. The plait had fallen quickly out, and his hair snapped behind him like a black banner in the wind.

He sharpened each word to a cutting edge, that he might better flay at my heart. "Can you even imagine, Serra, the undiluted mix of guilt, grief and frustrated fury that would blind a man to all reason, overtake every waking thought, and incite him into throwing himself at a power many times greater than himself, to his certain doom, with no thought other than to end the madness and silence the pain?"

The steel in his gaze gave me no leave to speak, could I have found words.

"Can you imagine the sobering chill of your own steel reflected back to you in a death-blow, a merciless harbinger of the realization that the only thing worse than your unforgivable failure in life would be to betray them also in death? Could you face the wretched decision to forsake the blessed oblivion so close at hand and return instead to a life far worse than the one you tried so hard to leave, now also wracked by blood and agony and the constant wearying pain of holding your body together against its will?"

I saw it in my mind so clearly, the vivid image of him rushing toward she who offered both revenge and death. If I had pitied him greatly the first time I heard his tale, he a stranger and I mired deeply within my own boundless sorrow, how much more did my heart ache for him now, when I loved him? His pain was no longer his alone, whether he liked it or not.

He finally fell silent, eye narrowed almost expectantly. Did he really think I was going to run away so easily, like a chastened child? Even had I wanted to, how could I leave after glimpsing the lonely, tormented agony he thought so well-hidden behind that towering rage?

"I'm sorry for that, Auron," I said quietly. It was hard to breathe, overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the emotions roiling with me. "I can't know how it was for you. But...I might know at least what it's like to drown in pain, wishing for death."

Something flickered in his gaze, though it remained unreadable to me.

I tried unsuccessfully to swallow around the lump in my throat. "I'm not as strong as you. If not for you I would have found it. If you, who did not know us, could hang onto such a life to care for my son, what does that say about me, his mother?"

Ah, damn it. I had not meant to say that last part. That was something I had yet to come to terms with.

I only noticed the tears on my face when he frowned slightly, redirecting some of the anger at himself. That he made no apology spoke volumes about the depth of his fury.

"I'm sorry," I said simply, making one last attempt to reach him. "You never speak of pain or weariness. I had no idea that it was so hard for you, even now."

"Every day is worse," he said tonelessly.

"Let me help you," I almost pleaded. "Let me ease what little of it I may." We both knew what I offered, though neither of us had yet spoken of what we felt for the other. "Let me in."

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End Chapter 14

Part 2 coming soon. It was just getting a little long.