Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Guardian ❯ Storm, part 2 ( Chapter 15 )

Guardian, Chapter 15
Storm, part 2

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And if there's no tomorrow
And all we have is here and now
I'm happy just to have you
You're all the love I need somehow
It's like a dream
Although I'm not asleep
And I never want to wake up
Don't lose it, don't leave it...

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The world spun slowly on its axis while tensile strands of fierce emotion twined 'round and caught us in an unseen web, held fast as neatly as any spider's prey. Like statues cast to living stone by the petrifying gaze of the other, we sat motionless except for the faint struggle to inhale air suddenly heavy with the weight of fate, choice, and circumstance. Nearly swallowed by an ocean of red wool, damp tendrils of hair clinging stubbornly to the remnant of tears on her face, she looked suddenly childlike and vulnerable, her exposed heart lying earnestly between us, trustingly laid open and awaiting my response.

The last mulish flames of my smoldering rage flickered and died, mollified by her apology, defeated by her tears. As the red haze lifted, I grew instead vaguely angry at myself; why had I expected her to fully understand the idea of being unsent? Here there were no sendings, no fiends or pyreflies. People just died and that was the end of it. She could not have known about the endless testing of my will, the strain of resisting the pull that beckoned and seduced with an intensity not even these hundreds of days could lessen. She could not have known, because I had not told her.

In the city below, the teeming masses still swarmed like maddened ants through the tangled maze of streets, nearly trampling each other in dogged pursuit of bacchanalian diversion, relentlessly hunting down the next faceless conquest to fill the void and kill the ennui. Swirling grey clouds raced frantically through the unnaturally bright, neon-kissed sky, driven hard by the whipping wind and the low crescendo of approaching thunder. All was as before, except on this roof, where time itself seemed to pause and draw near in breathless anticipation, bending low to hear the simple words with the power to change everything.

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I had not noticed the coat slipping from my shoulders until I felt the melting warmth of his hands settle gently upon them. The calloused palms infused blissful heat into my chilled skin, thumbs lightly grazing throat and collarbone with a small electric jolt that made me shiver. It was a near-embrace I might have relished, had not the underlying tension in muscle and sinew blatantly exposed his intent to keep me at a distance.

"Serra." The wine-colored gaze tilted gravely down at me was patient, shielded but for a touch of bitter rue. "It can't work."

He said nothing else, his fingers brushing the skin of my arms with an intolerable lightness as they slid down to grasp the coat by its lapels. With care not to touch me again, he raised its warmth back around me as he stood and stiffly withdrew, suddenly all polite, indifferent formality. A lock of dark hair caught briefly in the corner of his mouth and danced away again, away from me, as beautiful and untouchable as the rest of him.

Hurt and anger warred for dominance in my mind. Anger won easily, and I stood to face him, silently cursing the diminutive height that forced me to look so far up. "Well, why not?" I held his bland, neutral gaze fiercely, as if that could somehow make him stay. "Is that all you're going to say? Haven't I made my feelings plain enough? I know you feel the same!"

His eye gave back nothing. "It isn't possible. I'm sorry."

His infuriatingly tolerant mask of stoicism did not waver, and the total lack of emotion only served to heighten my own, catalyzing a violent explosion. "Tell me you don't want me!" I demanded uncertainly, my voice rising unsteadily, still refusing to let him look away. "Look me in the eye, and tell me you don't care!" If I could only hold on to the anger, I might yet fend off the tears. I would at least spare myself that humiliation...

He sighed, an exhalation of breath so slight I almost missed it. "I can't," he said softly, an unreadable expression at last flickering in the russet of his eye. "You know that I can't, Serra." My name was almost a caress. "It's because I care for you that I'm telling you this cannot be."

The calm, simple admission stole the wind from my sails, and I sat heavily down again, knees drawn up against my chest, staring into the night sky as it began to blur. The moon drew aside her clouded veil to gaze down at me, and her pale face was sad. I had to ask. In a voice involuntarily muted by the tightening in my throat, I asked, "Because of Jecht?"

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If only it were that simple. Even at my blackest moments, I had not imagined that this would be so unbelievably hard. In the end it was only made possible by retreating into opiate detachment, embracing the dead space in my heart created when they died, shoving the pain deep into its great gaping maw where it could not touch me. How could I now put into words what I needed to say? I could not say "yes"; that would be as good as an accusation of disloyalty against her own feelings. Hurting her was inevitable, but I wanted to spare her that. No longer looking at me, her anguished gaze had turned inward, the irises darkened into a bruised lavender-grey.

Well, there were plenty of other impassable barriers standing in opposition to what she sought. Or at least one very good one. "No, Serra, it isn't Jecht." I said firmly. "It's me. What kind of man would I be, to let you throw your heart away on a dead man?"

A mulish spark flared in her eyes, as if to say this again? but I placed a finger on her lips to forestall her retort.

"Listen to me. You're young, beautiful. You deserve a man who will give you many years yet, and children. I am only a corpse living on borrowed time; I can offer neither."

She took my hand in both of hers, and I let her draw it down to rest in her lap. "You aren't a corpse," she said matter-of-factly. "You're you, the only Auron I've ever known, and I love you, whatever you may be."

I reeled slightly at the words, and the unbidden warmth that rose in my chest. Love? Were her feelings already so strong?

Her thumbs moved in unconscious circles over my palm, undermining my resolve. "There are no guarantees that any man I loved could give me many years, or even children." Her lips twisted into a slight smile. "Though I'm not sure I could handle any more like Tidus."

There was something I hadn't thought about -- Yevon forbid.

Her gaze intensified, and the hands holding mine stilled and tightened their grip. "If there is one thing I learned from losing Jecht, it is that you must make the most of whatever time you are given." She looked away and said softly, "We thought we'd have a lifetime together, but in the end we had only a short span of years that we squandered, spending so much time apart."

"Serra," I began, but she wasn't listening.

"I won't make the same mistake again, Auron." Her eyes were a stubborn steel grey. "You may have two years, or twenty, but I won't willingly surrender any of them."

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Auron was suddenly, irrationally, incensed. "You speak so blithely about death and sorrow! Let us not forget you nearly died of it! If I love you, and know my time is short, how can I bear knowing that my inevitable departure would kill you as Jecht's almost did?" he shouted, at last utterly forsaking the mask of artificial impassivity.

Serra felt a dart of fierce exultation at having finally broken through his exterior. Ah, the heart of the matter. But can't he see?

"It's too late for that!" she shouted back at him, and they fell into angry silence.

Rain began to descend from the vast darkness over their heads, scant at first but increasingly more dense, melding into a constant soaking downpour that obscured everything in sight. The din of a million tiny watery impacts built to a crescendo that smothered out every other sound from the surrounding metropolis, immersing the two of them in a strange and peacefully surreal silence that settled around them like a blanket. Ceaseless droplets rippled silvery puddles into a rainbow of ephemeral, sequined patterns where the vivid glow of neon met the darkly mirrored water. Serra lifted her face into the rain, closing her eyes. Auron turned to look at the clean lines of her delicate profile, crystalline droplets gliding down her upturned face like liquid diamonds, trailing into the corner of her mouth.

She broke the silence first, her eyes still shut as if in pain. "If that were going to happen, it would already be too late," she said carefully, barely speaking over the rain. "But you see, Auron, I have learned a hard lesson. I can never forget what I did to Tidus, to my baby. He lost one parent, and instead of trying to make his broken world secure, I nearly robbed him of the other. No mother could forgive herself for that, for neglecting her heartbroken child in favor of herself and her own pain. It will not happen twice."

He remained silent, and she could read nothing one way or the other in his expression. She asked finally, "Can you really throw away this kind of love, something so rarely found?"

The fight drained out of him, and he despaired, having no good choice left to make. Jecht's words rang in his head, asking his friend to ensure her happiness. But... "Why are you so set on this?" he countered.

"I like stubborn men," she said, deadpan. A surprised bark of laughter escaped before he could stop himself. A joke, yes, but that was also about the only personality trait he and Jecht had in common.

His protests grew half-hearted, if a bit petulant. "I'm not fit to be any woman's lover," he said bitterly. "For all I know, I may not even be capable."

She quirked an eyebrow. "I highly doubt that," she said wryly, and then her expression sobered. "But will you believe me when I say that I would not care, even if that were so?"

"You have a host of poorly written novels that might say otherwise," he pointed out evenly.

She colored at that, but said without hesitation, "If that were all I wanted, I wouldn't need a man." The look he gave her was quizzical, but she was not going to elaborate. Greatly daring, she lightly traced the contours of his face, running her hand along the line of his jaw.

He closed his eyes when her fingers grazed the scarred cheek and lingered there. "Don't," he said involuntarily. "Your touch tears me apart."

She took her hand back. "What do you mean?"

He took a long time in answering. "For so long, all I wanted was the peace of death. I had lived my life, and was ready for it to be over. But you..." He paused. "You make me want to be alive again. You make me want to be a living man, a lover, husband, father. And I can be none of those things, ever. My humanity is only pretense."

She listened somberly at first, but by the time he finished her lips had curved slightly upward into an amused smile. He glared at her, angered again at her refusal to take him seriously. "Are you listening to me?"

She sighed, but the smile did not leave altogether. "Auron, do you realize that you're shivering?"

As soon as she mentioned it, he finally noticed the slight tremors that ran through him and swore emphatically. He knew that he wasn't cold, but his body seemed to think that it should be, sitting soaked to the bone in only a light shirt in the middle of a midnight storm, and proceeded to shiver anyway.

"See? You are cold."

No. Yes--

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The look on his face of furious confusion, overlying a deeper pain, tore at my heart. Before he could flinch away I opened my arms, crawling onto his lap, and enfolded him in my red-cloaked embrace, sharing the warmth contained by the weather-proof wool. The voluminous coat was dry on the inside and almost covered us both, but not quite.

He tensed for an instant, but the roof was too precarious a place for sudden movement, and the last bit of resistance seemed to leave him all at once. After a time, his arms slipped under mine to wrap around me, his chin slowly descending to rest on my hair. "You're going to be soaking wet," he mumbled, but I paid no mind. All I could feel was the solidity of him finally wrapped in my arms.

"Auron," I said, trying to reach him. "Whatever your body is now, your mind is still human and alive. And it's the mind that controls the body, each neural impulse, every beat of the heart."

He said nothing, so I continued. "That's why you feel cold, why your heart," I drew a hand down to alight against his chest, "still beats. It's the mind that thinks and feels and loves, so tell me again why what I feel is wrong?"

I drew back to gauge his reaction. He still looked anguished, but did not have a ready response. I was amazed to find him for once at a loss for words. He tried anyway. "Serra..."

Tired of trying to convince him with mere words, I took advantage of the parted lips and kissed him.

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End Chapter 3

I have no idea why this was so hard to write. The content has been there for ages, I just couldn't arrange it the way that I wanted. I kept revising and rewriting and not making any progress. Anyway, I apologize for the delay...I'm sure it wasn't quite worth that long of a wait! ;) A good bit of the next chapter has already been written as well, but with my current track record...who knows?

Song quote from "Breathless", by the Corrs.