Pops has always said that he thinks I'm maybe part jack rabbit or desert hare, like Mama got too friendly with a wind spirit or something and then out popped Rikku Cidolphus. Brother? He's more like a sissy kind of drake, all spark and sizzle but no bite behind it. Questions of paternity on the back burner, the bottom line is, when I want to run? I can run. When I get going, I'm harder to catch than a greased iguion -- swivel-fast like a bullet from a gun -- running so hard I might eat up all the earth there is before I even noticed.

I was running against the breeze, into that light breath of wind, grinning so all my teeth showed even though there was no one to see my manic smile -- I'd left Auron behind eating my proverbial and oh-so-tasty dust. Torches and sphere recesses whipped by me like fence posts all run together and I was laughing and hopping, skipping and turning on my heel so that my ribbons trailed behind me and I was a little gymnast dancing the soles out of my new shoes.

Except I wasn't wearing my shoes. Those I'd left behind care of the order of one Legendary Guardian Esq. I knew he was somewhere behind me, slow and steady, my socks and shoes slung over one shoulder as he methodically raked through the fiends that I was just skimming past, light and breeze and high-pitched laughter. Sorry float-eye, buddy ol' pal. Can't kill you today, I'm off to have tea with fresh air.

So it was my bare feet against the tile and mortar, ball and heel taking the impact of my sunlight-easy steps as the hymn rose up inside of me again like it was a flower blooming, and I laughed again because I knew Auron would have no trouble finding me, directness of the path we had taken aside, because I was singing at the top of my lungs, first trying to match the rain-soft alto and failing miserably, forced to climb a full octave higher than the bass as I wound my way through that melody. Briefly, ever so briefly, I closed my eyes and wondered if Auron was singing with me, and I almost turned to look over my shoulder to see him, a regular Orpheus in the cave, but before I could the tile was gritty and then sand under my feet and there was light on my face and I could hear --

I opened my eyes slowly, like savoring the last bite of your very favorite thing, because I knew there was no way what stood in front of me could match the air castles and minarets I'd been spinning up in my head, what I wanted to see after all that darkness. Since I was opening them so slowly, the first thing that came into focus was a sea of tangerine swimming like soup in front of me, and that alone was enough to force my eyes wide like I'd slipped a little too comfortably close to a tower on the Thunder Plains and been zapped for my trouble.

I was standing, toes splayed in the sand, on a little jetty of rock and earth, on the lip of what really was a copper colored sea. This wasn't a lake, because it stretched way beyond even my eagle eye field of vision, and the sound I'd heard? Waves lapping against the shore. I'd been sure, I'd been absolutely positive that the sound I'd heard was the ebb and flow of water over rocks, but I'd never expected to stumble right into the surf of a sea when we hadn't climbed nearly high enough to break the surface yet and we were in the mountains besides -- then I had the presence of mind to look up and I suddenly understood why the water was such an unknowable shade of orange.

We hadn't climbed high enough to break surface because we hadn't broken surface. Doming us overhead was an infinitely high ceiling of polished, refractive crystal, and growing in colonies all over that was some kind of fuzzy, furry, glowy, and very orange goo that was sure to be some weird kind of bioluminescent fungus. I couldn't say for sure exactly what it was -- I gotta confess that fungi taxonomy has never been one of my big hobbies. Anyway, that glow was being picked up by the crystals and refracted against itself, so the whole enormous cavern was lit up like the sea at dawn -- red sky at morning and all that malarkey. There even seemed to be some of the orange glow coming up from under the water, so maybe that fungus was a kind of wet/dry affair.

I'm sure you're thinking: boundless underground cavern lit by glowy orange goop, unknowably large subterranean sea -- Rikku, how could this -not- live up to your expectations? Your imagination isn't -that- good. And I might've had to agree with you, because a limitless underground sea the color of carrot juice was indeed not what I had been expecting, but that wasn't what made my mouth fall slack and my arms drop limp to my sides in sheer mind-derailing astonishment.

Now, I've seen some pretty amazing things in my time -- fairy bridges of light and air in Macalania Woods, lightning keeping gargantuan blocks of stone in the air at Djose, the way the pyreflies dancing over the Moonflow make the whole city look like it's lighted even though it's been dead for a thousand years -- but this? This was something -- it was like wind and water had spun a palace out of crystal that caught the orange glow of the stalactite fuzz and lit it up from the inside out, and there was water, there was water everywhere, coming out of ever cornice and buttress head, like the whole thing was some kind of giant, living fountain, carved all over with fish and sea monsters, things with curving fangs and tusks, all throwing up crystal clear water that rained down into the sea again and churned it up, like there was a great fire set right underneath that otherworld place.

It was set on a promontory that jutted up out of the sea, maybe a thousand feet off-shore, that was just large enough for the glass spun dream with no room to spare, like the whole thing had just risen from the sea one day, like a backwards kind of Atlantis, sheer stone cliffs carved slightly by the falling water into channels that fed it back into the bubbling water. The hymn was there, all around me, and everything seemed to pulse with it: the sound of the waves on the rocks, the flush the waterfalls made as the sea again devoured them, it was like we were inside the belly of the hymn. I just stood there staring at that marine cathedral, like I was a kid seeing my first hover and jimny cricket wasn't it something?

And it was then that I first noticed it -- or maybe it was then that it first came into being for my benefit. I would always wonder later, if it had always been there and I just hadn't seen it, so caught up in the newness of everything, or if it came to be only because I stood there, my arms at my sides, the hymn stilled on my lips, waiting and wanting so hard.

No matter how it had begun, it was there: a bridge maybe five feet wide, built of light and air and golden spiderweb thread that arched from the black basalt sand of the beach to the fairy light of that great fountain. It called to me and said: Rikku, this is the way.

I believed it so I went, bare feet over the spiderweb gloss that I could catch between my toes, looking down at that churning sea, not caring that only light and air kept me from those depths, which I would later learn were miles unto endless deep and only looked so shallow because of the free floating colonies of fuzz jellies that lit them so low and wide. But I went lightly and unafraid, because that place was calling to me, almost like it was calling me home. I am desert raised, but I was born on the ocean, and there's just something about it that will always stay deep in my bones, deeper than blood and deeper than marrow.

It seemed that almost as soon as I stepped on that bridge of air and light that I was stepping off lightly onto the crystal-stone of the promontory, like some kind of magic had shortened the trip of a thousand feet to only a half a dozen steps, and the wind was whipping my hair now, like a tempest maelstroming up my braids and trying to unravel them loose between its fingers. I was here and it was calling, and the huge door built as if it were meant to let in some kind of giant or monster swung curiously easily under my fingers, and I was again between lapis and aqua-marine and great hollow crystal pillars with water bubbling up inside them, presumably to feed those endless fountains.

In the center of that hugenormous room was a thick tapestry rug that looked like it might've taken someone a hundred lifetimes to weave, all figured over with images of the ocean: fish and water snakes, whales, monsters, squids and octopi, mantas and eels. On that rug, sitting square in the middle of a blossom of orange light that rained in from a rose window high overhead, sat the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

She was slim, and white as the moon, porcelain pale, her alabaster blond hair all piled up on top of her head in a sleek bun, tiny accent braids criss crossing her head and hanging in loops pinned with diamonds and moonstones. Her eyes were golden and warm like the inside of an egg yolk, and she was wearing an impossibly long, drapey summoner's style robe, crisscrossed by ribbons and trailers and hanging so it left her round little shoulders bare. The bindi dot on her forehead seemed to be a real diamond, held there by close-knit flesh. Her lashes were long and dark and there almost seemed to be golden glow coming from under that beautiful milk white skin, but maybe that was just a side-effect of the very soft light of the cathedral's interior.

I took a step forward, slowly, reverently. I hate Yevon. This was not Yevon. This could not be Yevon. It was too good. It was too beautiful, and I was again achingly sad, as I had been before, at the top of those horrible stairs.

Life. They want to live. In the land of death and the dead, it was what we all wanted.

As I moved, she turned her face to look at me, and she smiled and I was bathed by a warm light that started in the wiggle of my toes and then waltzed slowly, all the way up my spine until it somehow emptied out the end of my ponytail singing Rikku, I love you, you are the best Rikku ever all the way home.

"Welcome, Rikku, daughter of Cidolphus," she said softly, and it was like the sweet slide of a clarinet, and I suddenly knew the second voice that had been carrying the hymn as if it had been my own. She continued, voice pitched so it danced over the words like music, "Welcome to Indara, Temple of the Summoned Sea."

Her eyes shifted, and she seemed to be looking past me, and I caught the barest flicker of crimson and steel as she spoke again. That old man can move when he wants to.

"And welcome, Auron, son of Faris. It is a pleasure to see you again." Her smile was mysterious, unreadable, like she'd stolen all the cookies from the jar and eaten the canary besides. I suddenly desperately wanted to make that smile my own, to understand the knowing of it. As if she knew even that, her eyes sloped gently, and she spoke again.

"We have been expecting you."

The Shape of His Heart

By Gabi-hime (gabihime at gmail dot com)

Chapter Five: Bluffs Called, Antes Forced

It's not the kind of thing you ever think you're going to hear -- that you're expected at an affair that can only be matched by down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. It's like I was waiting for Brother to leap out from behind a column and shout I have been the one to fool you this time, Rikku, while my Pops slapped his knee and haw-hawed good. It was one of those things I kept expecting to wake up from, like it had been some weird little hallucinogen induced frolic, like I'd had too much pizza before bed and paid for it with nightmares. I almost couldn't believe it was happening, like waking up that first morning groggy and wiping the sleep out of my eyes in the middle of a camp on the banks of the Moonflow with Old Reliable sitting there beside the powder-white ashes of the fire, one scarlet bloodstain of a reminder exactly what I'd gotten myself into -- and I heard Yuna quietly singing to her aeons in the morning stillness. Guardian. There was Lulu mending her cactuar and the woodfire smoke smell of Wakka cooking sausages over raked embers. Guardian. And Tidus teaching Kimahri how to play tic-tac-toe in the dirt with the butt of his spear. Guardian. It was true. We were all going to die.

Rikku Cidolphus: Genius Synthsmith, Mechanic, Sharpshooter, Chemist, Physicist, Elementalist, Thief, Treasure Hunter, Detective, Popstar, Heretic, Rebel, Dead Girl Walking -- Guardian.

It had been hard to wrap my mind around then, so I'd just gone along chirping, sunshine bright, like I didn't know by heart that you could count the guardians who'd walked away from the final summoning on one hand, like sacrifice was a word my Pops hadn't drilled into my head from the time I was five and Braska -- my Uncle Braskie who'd gone to ground without ever having one of Rikku's Super-D-Special-heart-heart hugs -- had gone to the Calm Lands to summon himself dead. That day, my name had been Rikku Cidolphus, and the odds were low that I'd ever live to see the flipside of my sixteenth birthday.

Once, a while ago, Auron told me that Spira doesn't have any children. It just has tiny adults, old in their shoes. No place where death walks so frequently and so closely could ever claim to properly have children. He'd held my chin in his hand and asked me squarely: Are you ready to die? I'd said Sure, boss. Lead the way. Anything for Yunie. I have a deathwish. Or something like that. Ed'c dra meddma drehkc dryd kad oui. The Devil's in the details, Rikku. Thanks, Pops.

Of course, then we'd all gone heretic and killed Yunalesca -- if you can actually kill someone who's already dead and has been dead for a thousand years, give or take. We'd killed the dead hope and now we were trying to stab out our own new pathway in the dark. We were trying to live, trying our best to stay alive just one more day, beating hearts and skin intact. Yevon would say we were living without purpose. For me, living is its own purpose.

So now we were set against the temples, if not the fayth, and the path Auron and I had walked together had brought us here, in front of this ethereal woman who made me feel plain and skinny and snot-nosed, scabbed knees, flailing arms, and very fifteen besides. I loved her desperately. I couldn't help it -- all that shimmer soft blond hair as fair as cornsilk in those tiny little looped braids -- you can put a slug in my head and leave me for the carrion birds if I ever touch half that grace, and I'll die fulfilled.

She cocked her head and she was just like that famous smiling painting -- you know the one -- all mysteriousness and elegance and private jokes. Only she was about fifty-jillion times more gorgeous than any old painting, because she was sitting there right in front of me and enjoying a joke at my expense, and for some reason I found this to be the most awesome thing that could have possibly happened to me. Maybe it was her smile, soft as the arched back of a new kitten, or maybe it was her eyes, a golden glow from birthday candles, or maybe it was all that gossamer light hair, butterfly spun, the color of crystallized honey. Maybe it was everything. She was beautiful.

Her voice was the same as her shape, as her feel, all soft rounded corners, with a quiet sort of strength that seemed to echo off the walls of the room, buoyed up and carried by the hymn, even to the far corners of the cathedral space. I had the ridiculous but pretty hard to ignore urge to fall to my knees in front of her. I didn't look at Auron. I couldn't look at Auron, although she did for some sweet minutes before speaking again.

"I am the lady of this temple, and called by different names on different planes, but always I am the All Holy. I am the frostfire knitting up your bones underskin so it ripples like water. I am not the candleflame that raises from halfdeath. I am the binding thread that knots your skein of fate. Where others unmake, I remake, reforge, reinvent. I am the shattered become whole again. I am the three faces of life, death, and resurrection. You may name me Ashura."

Ashura, queen, chancegiver, soulweaver, lifeeater, All Holy. It was all there, whispered soft in the echo of that name. Ashura.

"You're the fayth," I said stupidly, like I was really gunning to win the Captain Obvious award. Who else would she be? The custodian? I shook my head, trying to get my thoughts in order, "I mean, duh, yeah, you're pretty obviously the fayth, but I didn't think you ever saw anyone but summoners. I thought you all stayed holed up in the chamber of the fayth."

Behind me, half-distracted, as if his mind were somewhere else entirely, I heard the shift of crimson and steel and flipped my braids over my shoulder turning to look at Auron for the first time. Auron Faris. Who knew? As far as I knew, Auron had dropped his last name like a popstar when he'd entered the temple at age negative two or whatever. The-artist-formerly-known-as had unshouldered his nihontou, and now it stood against the lapis tile at his feet, feather soft so it didn't leave a scratch. It occurred to me that Auron is a man of delicate balance. His facial expression gave absolutely nothing away. I tell you, the man's a champion poker player.

"There are exceptions," he said mysteriously, one eyebrow with an ever-so-slight dubious cock. I felt like the guest of honor at a Things-Rikku-Doesn't-Know convention.

She laughed and it was soft and sweet like ginger cookies and I couldn't help but feel my eyes roll inexorably back to train on her.

"There are indeed exceptions, Auron of Faris. We haven't see a soul for ten years, not a single soul -- and before that we hadn't seen anyone for time out of mind. When we saw you at the lip of the stairs, we called to you. Even if there wasn't a summoner with you, you were still other souls that we could meet. After so long, it didn't matter who you were. We wanted to speak with you."

"You are alone here," that was Auron again, and strangely, the dubiousness was gone from his voice. In place of it, there was a curious kind of understanding -- but that was retarded. How could the Legendary Guardian Esq. be alone? He was the boss of one of the biggest summoner's parties ever, and loved and respected by darn near everyone on Spira. He was a household name. You don't get to call yourself Legendary Guardian unless you're legendary, and stuff. It's in the rules.

Suddenly something hit me between the eyes just as sure and sharp as that cock-eyed thundara that Brother had zapped me with, toddler-era.

"You keep saying we. Is that like the royal-boss-important-fayth kind of 'we,' Miss Ashura Queen-ma'am, or is there someone -- "

He cut me off before I could finish what I was saying. It was something I was going to have to get very used to.

"You will find that it is the very practical sort of we."

I was doing a lot of head-whipping and braid flipping today. He was suddenly standing behind Ashura, all tall and too-thin-bony, long-limbed, whiplash lean with corded musculature that stood out along his arms and the inkfire marks of tattoos tracing intricate patterns all over his visible skin. Of his skin, a lot of it was visible, since he was only wearing slacks and an open vest to keep him decent, his feet as bare as I suddenly knew Ashura's were, as bare as mine were. His face was chiseled, slender, almost severe, with a hawksharp nose and thin lips and his hair was thick and short, the very color of the aquamarine of the stones in the floor, swept back from his forehead in a razor fine widow's peak. His eyes were gray-storm-depthless, and he was looking into me.

"I am the sea fang who rules the bounding main. I am ageless and timeless and I stop for no man. I am the Prince of Tides. I am the tsunami. In the beginning, all things crawled from the sea, and in the end, all things to there will return. I am the tidal wave and the master of this temple," he laid one slim finger tipped with an ivory claw to his lips and a smile built in him like a flood ready to be unleashed, roaring and so smug, "I am Leviathan, the king of the summons."

Sea fang. Water's Power. Tsunami. Tidal Wave. Suddenly it was all serpent slick, and I could feel those goldfish lace fins and whiskers and tusks the color of ivory --

"You're a guado."

I was really gunning hard to win the stupidest things ever said to the fayth award.

He raised one eyebrow and responded dry as Bevelle sherry, "Oh, I am? I hadn't noticed."

Behind me, I could just see Auron rubbing his temples. Now I don't have to wonder so hard why he'd rather be down here with Lulu. She has better manners and thigh highs.

"No," I waved my hands, palms forward, "I mean, that's not what I meant, I mean, so the Guado only joined the church of Yevon with ol' potbelly -- I mean, Maester Seymour's -- daddy brought them all into the fold, right?" I was bouncing from foot to foot in the throes of the itchy dance as I tried to explain myself and avoid offending the fayth, "That's gotta be like max twenty-five years ago, but you seem like you've been down here a lot longer than that -- plus I'd think that a guado fayth would've made bigger waves than that, considering what a big to-do there was when daddy-o converted the clan," I panted, letting my breath catch up with me, then leaned forward on my toes, collecting myself for the pounce, "So, considering all that, how is it that there can even be a guado fayth?"

He laid a slender hand against the white of Ashura's neck and stupidly enough I almost felt like rising to challenge. WTF was going on? My mind was such a mess that I was falling back into mechanic's short hand, the kind of thing you scribbled in chalk on the side of an engine when it just wouldn't fit back together properly.

Leviathan seemed amused by my confusion and pointed an ivory claw square at my chest, "You are born under my star. It is refreshing to see that. Very few are, you know. Feel privileged," his eyes shifted over my shoulder to rest on Auron, who was as silent and steady as a wall behind me, "You are Yojimbo's, I would think." He paused and they seemed to size each other up, but then he shrugged and it was grace like water in even that simple gesture, "Yes, I think you are certainly Yojimbo's. Just as cheery besides," he turned his attention back to me, "Now, Rikku Cidolphus, you are correct in your thinking that the Guado came into the fold of Yevon exactly twenty four years ago. Before that, they were all," here he paused and gave me what felt like a private smile, "heretics. But the actions and faith of the group at large do not determine the actions and faith of each individual member of that group. I think you might know that well enough yourself, guardian."

"I don't think it's the same thing," I started doubtfully.

"Then consider perhaps someone close to you who forsook the path of the Al Bhed and instead sought to become -- "

My brows clouded and I held up my palm in very hand-talking-to-you gesture, "Don't even talk to me about him. I'm still so mad at him -- "

"Him," Auron's voice was flat and deeply not curious. It made me wonder why he'd said it in the first place. If he didn't care, if he wasn't interested --

"This boy," I said contrarily, "We both used to work summers under Rin when we were kids. He was a big jerkus and then went off to join the Crusaders without so much as a word to me."

"Oh," was all he said, and I turned briefly to look at him, hands on my hips and still feeling a little sullen. There it was: gold medal in poker face.

"I mean, leaving was one thing, but leaving to join the Crusaders? Insult to injury. They're like Yevon's secret police."

"-I- was a crusader."

I rolled my eyes. What a time for a love-can-build-a-bridge-kum-ba-yah-let's-hold-hands-and-settle-our-cultural-differences moment.

"You're different," I sighed exasperatedly, "You were raised in the lap of all that Yevon junk, right? Bevelle born and temple raised? You couldn't not be brainwashed. You didn't know any better, like you can't really blame a kid for sticking his hand into the fire the first time, no matter how dumb it is, because he doesn't know, you see. Gi -- he didn't have any excuse, big ol' stupidhead dummy."

"If you consider being a Crusader akin to sticking your hand into the fire, then Auron as he first came to us would have then been baptized by flame," Ashura tittered, hand to her mouth. I turned to look at the two of them again and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"And what's all this business about 'when Auron first came to us?' Is this like Rikku-Is-Out-Of-The-Loop Variety Hour?"

"I was about to ask the same thing," he said, soft and rough as gravel.

"Somehow I kinda doubt that -- "

"Rikku."

"Yeah, I'll be quiet, boss."

So far? Me? Yeah. Batting a thousand.

"Auron of Faris first came to us ten years ago," said Ashura simply, tilting her head slightly so the gemstones in her hair chimed against each other musically.

"With Jecht and Uncle Braska?" I asked, greased lightning. I didn't even wait for a response, just slammed my first into my palm and cried, "HA! I knew it was you. It looked too much like you to not be you. I knew it. I was so right," Really, I had known it was not him because he had told me that it was not him and I had believed him in my bones, but such things didn't seem all that important at that particular moment, when he stood with his gloved palm raised to ward me off.

He wasn't looking at me, he was looking past me, at them.

"I can't have been here before," he said, and again his will was so strong I wanted to deny those spheres that I was still carrying around in my pack, to nod sure and sound and say well, Auron says it, so it must be true, "I would remember something -- "

She extended her hand, smooth like music, and shook her head, "I am afraid it is a little more complicated than that. You were here, and in being here, you became not here."

He looked at her dubiously, then his bare arm came slowly unslung out of his gi, like it was a snake in winter, sluggish and careful. He closed his eye as flesh met flesh and something of her grace seemed to briefly light him up inside-out like a Yule tree -- like colored lightswould explain everything, smoke and mirrors and there it is. He drew back as he opened his eye again and then it narrowed.

"I . . . understand."

Well, that was fine and dandy for them, but me? Still mayor of In-the-darksville. I opened my mouth and raised my hand to say something, but Ashura stopped me sure as shooting out my tires by turning her eyes from him to me and then back to him as she slowly shook her head.

"What surprises me," she said softly, the lightest spring in her voice, "Is that you haven't told her."

"Told me what?" I was dancing again like I had ants in my shorts, you know, the stinging, biting kind. The kind that say hey Rikku, trying to look serious and grown up and secret-hearing worthy? Well TOO BAD, HA HA.

Of course, it wasn't like either of them were paying attention to me anyhow.

"It is none of her concern," he said, rough as sandpaper, and there was an edge of something in his voice that I hadn't heard since potbelly had shish-ka-bobbed ol' Kinoc. Anger? Frustration? Rage? Maybe something similar to what I was feeling at being discussed like I wasn't standing right there (dancing right there, at least).

"Oh really?" Ashura asked demurely, "I often find that in such cases it is better that the involved parties -- "

"She is not involved," he was quick, sharp as glass and sounded as dangerous. He was angry, and I wanted to plant both hands on my hips and declare soundly that yes, I was very involved, even though I didn't know what I was involved with, since I had no idea what they were talking about -- but I had been sleeping curled at his back for more than a week now and he hadn't said a word to discourage me, and then he'd shoved pudding down my throat, so as far as I was concerned? We were lifers, richer or poorer 'til death do us part and all that jazz. You had better believe I was involved.

I felt someone's eye on me, so I looked up and found Leviathan watching me intently, pearl claw to his lips and chuckling silently, like he knew what I was thinking. Yunie never said a word about the fayth being able to read minds or anything, but suddenly I couldn't get the picture of Leviathan wearing a pink can-can dress and doing the watusi out of my head and both of his eyebrows raised and I could almost hear him say really, pink is more Bahamut's color. His mouth quirked, then he shifted his attention back to Ashura.

"Mmm," she murmured, sweet and musky as tea, "Then perhaps I read the situation improperly."

Her eyes were on me suddenly, heavy and soft like a thirty pound cat, and I blushed even though I had no reason to blush, like I'd been getting my weekend jollies out behind the bike sheds and I'd been caught by my grandma or something -- except Gramma Kettie wouldn't have given an auroch's patout.

"Then perhaps you did," the way he said it, there was no perhaps about it.

Okay, enough was enough.

"If somebody doesn't start telling me what you're talking about, then I'm going to start reading everyone's situations improperly with my pistol."

I never stopped to think that maybe it wasn't the best idea to go waving my gun around at the fayth.

Ashura raised her pale sculpted eyebrows and glanced over her shoulder to share a look with Leviathan, "Yes, she's definitely one of yours."

Leviathan? Pleased as punch, like a daddy at his first ballet recital when his little girl is the sugar plum fairy or something. One side of his face was quirked up and his smugness quotient? Blew Auron's out of the waterI guess that's what it means to be fayth. You win all your confrontations.

"Rikku Cidolphus is correct. She became involved the moment you accepted responsibility and sole ownership of her right leg."

Oh, not that again. Could no one pick a good time to bring that up?

"That was jest," I could hear the point of his sword digging against the aquamarine of the tile. He was out of balance, "That was a game."

This time the pearl claw was pointed square at Auron, "You accepted responsibility for roughly twenty percent of her person, did you not? She is involved. By the old laws, she has rights to know. There is a legal, binding contract."

My eyes rounded hugely as I followed the ball back and forth, racket to racket. Ashura was watching their exchange with some interest, then she turned to me and confided softly, "In Zanarkand, he was a civil attorney."

"A guado attorney?"

"You know, I'm beginning to think that you might be slightly prejudiced towards the guado."

Indara's Leviathan: my sea serpent lawyer.

There was a rattle of paper and suddenly Professor One-Eye was holding out what I immediately recognized as a smooth cornered piece of paper -- Rin's stationary -- my I.O.U.

"This is not a legal, binding contract," he argued, eyes narrow, "This is a thoughtless child's scribble. I renounce my claim on her leg, she can have it back."

Oh, he was just asking for a knuckle sandwich. 'Thoughtless child' my sandy desert butt. What happened to 'Spira has no children'? Only when it was convenient to him, I guess. I launched forward on my feet and brought my finger to bear right under his nose, "Well, I don't want it back. I unrenounce your claim."

"Sworn and witnessed," said Leviathan calmly, reminding me he was at my back. Auron and I both turned to look at him and I was a little dazed.

"Sworn and witnessed," he repeated, folding his arms comfortably across his chest, "By the fayth. Auron Faris, you have legal custody of twenty percent of Rikku Cidolphus's person. She has rights to know."

"Only twenty percent of rights to know," pointed out Ashura, giggling softly. Oh yeah, this was a laugh-riot. I had just given up permanent custody of my right leg at the drop of a hat, sworn and witnessed by the fayth of a religion that'd probably like to burn me and my entire family (Yunie excepted) at the stake and all for the chance at knowing part of a secret kept by a guy twenty years my senior whose name was not spelled R-I-N. My life-decisions today? Not the best ones, I think.

"Then she shall have twenty percent of the secret," Leviathan decreed indulgently, judge, jury, and executioner as he waved one idle hand in Auron's direction.

I wheeled to face Auron, ready for his rebuke that was sure to feature phrases like 'thoughtless child,' 'irresponsibility,' and possibly other lifetime favorites like 'culpability' and the lack thereof. But he wasn't poised with his defense, like I expected him to be. He was standing and staring, like he was frozen, freeze dried, and his sunglasses had somehow slipped down his nose, exposing his one rust-colored eye that was all snow-blue, too much white showing, his pupil and iris just a pinprick in that sea, like he was having some kind of attack -- heart attack or spleen attack, or something, I'm no medic -- and I was about to shout his name, to cross to his side, something, because all that white was just too chilling --

And that's when I saw the first one.

It was smoke and fairy lights again, this time from behind his elbow, and my mind was swimming and I thought I might be seeing stars, but then there was another, and another, lemon yellow, pistachio green, petal pink, light and color and nothing, soulstuff, fiendstuff, pyreflies, all circling around him like carrion birds, like carrion flies, and he was a corpse, he was a dead man walking, and it couldn't be true, not Auron, not the Rock of Mi'hen, not my horrible poker partner, the man I -- and suddenly I knew why he'd sat with me on the lip of the farplane and listened to my mind wander out loud on the nature of the soul, why he'd seemed so indrawn, he hadn't been mourning someone, he'd been mourning himself. He was Yunalesca, he was Mika, not the rebel, he was dead and rotten just like everything in Spira, expired, past due date, still burning the blue lights of pyreflies, fiendeyes reflecting the light, and cred I'd thought and I'd wanted and no sticky little kids with eyes the color of potatoes all bent back on themselves like a spiral -- and what was left of him was now spinning away in front of me, deathspiral, like confetti, or like the glitter in one of those chintzy little blitzball globes they sell in Luca, and he was frozen in time, so cold, cold as death like he'd always been, and I couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't stand a thing --

"Make it stop," I sobbed, doubling over, my body heaving and bunching, seizing up, muscles jerking like they were pulled by marionette strings, and somewhere in the saltwater blur at the corners of my vision as I hacked and coughed and sobbed, I saw the fairylights spin up into him again, and he was whole, and he slumped against his sword, like his spine was jellynothing -- Legendary Guardian -- and I couldn't stop it, it was all slick slime bile in my throat, burning up my nose and I was heaving, heaving so hard, doubled over, sobbing as I vomited all over that ancient tapestry rug, vomited like one of those buttress fountains endlessly spitting up water, heartsick, soulsick, my eyes gummed up with salt tears, sticking my lashes shut, gluing my whole head wrong. I was breathing half-crazy, my heart hammering in my head and I felt like I might throw that up too -- my heart and my soul, and I stood up shakily, still dripping tears or vomit or bile or snot and I shook my head so hard my ears rang.

"I hate you," I half screamed, mad and delirious on the hurt that was burning me up inside like poison. That man, I would've -- for that man --

And then he turned and walked away.

------

Whew. Despite being trapped far away from home and stuck in a living hell while suffering from the flu, I managed to get this done for you guys. I know this is probably not the cliffhanger you wanted, but the next chapter will be coming, maybe when my fever comes back down.

Love to everyone who reviews. You guys keep me going, a light when all other lights have been extinguished. Also thanks to Azriel's Daughter, who's the reason you guys got this chapter today and not next week some time.

Tilda, underscore, tilda. My head hurts.

:exits:

Love,

Gabs