Sometimes fate lines you up, knocks your legs apart, bends you over, and kicks you square in the business. I don't think I really need to underline for you that this was really one of those times for Rikku J. Cidolphus. Don't ask me what the J stands for, because I'm not going to tell you. I'm sure as heck not going to tell you now, because I'm kind of too busy sitting on the floor by a puddle of my own vomit and crying my eyes out about my -- my -- my Auron who I just found out is deader than Maester Mika's sexlife. I kind of wanted to break something. I kind of wanted to break something over someone's head -- maybe Auron's. It's maybe one of those times when domestic violence is okay -- when you've just found out your boyfriend is dead.

At that point, I kind of hated everything, you know, the way you do when you're fourteen and your dad's just taken your speeder skiff away from you because you totally crashed it into some nuns accidentally when you were accidentally flying low through Bevelle and had just gotten lost or something and weren't trying to make some big rebellious statement about youth and freedom and will and stick that in your peace pipe and smoke it, tubbo-Kinoc -- not that I have any kind of personal experience with that sort of thing or anything. But it was that kind of hating: blind and pulpy and poison and tight like I was crushing a can under my foot and it had sawn off edges that were eating through the sole of my boot, except I was too stubborn and too mad to do anything but keep grinding my foot down into the razor-hurt. It was also really self-centered, but I was going to need someone else to point that out to me.

Back before, you know, before everything, I had never thought that anything could break me. I was king of the world, or princess at least, and even when dread crawled into my belly and the dark burned my eyes sightless like white fire it didn't break me, it just sort of wore me down slowly, like sanding off the burrs on a crank shaft so everything'll turn smoothly. If you had asked me, I'd have said No way bosco. Nothing on this earth can break Rikku Cidolphus. Us Al Bhed are made of stronger stuff than that! And maybe that was just me whistling in the dark, and maybe I some kind of understand that now, understand what it was that made Pops get all hollow-eyed on some nights when he'd look over the desert or up at the cloudy sky, when it sounded like gravel rolling around in the back of his throat, but I knew. I guess I always knew. You'd think the world would have had enough of silly love songs -- or you think by now maybe people'd have gotten tired of all the hurt and the pain and the mess that two people make when they try to understand one another, like we're all made of broken glass, just scraping and scratching furrows into one another when we try to get close.

It hurt, and it hurt bad, mama, and all I could do was sit there because I was broken. Rikku J. having taken a sledgehammer to the brain, can only moan and twitch. I thought I was better than that. Maybe nobody is. Maybe that's good, too.

After a while I guess I'd sobbed all my sobs out because I couldn't cry any more, and I just wrapped myself up in my arms, elbows and knees and bony joints, toes curled under and bent against the stone as if that hurt, as if that pain could numb my mind and maybe make me forget the other pain. I cried until I was raw and sore and I'd bruised my knuckles against the stone trying to beat the hurt out of myself. I hated him and I hated me for hating him. After what we'd been through, the dark and the pudding and the sleeping and the way he smelled and the way he smiled and I hated him because I loved him and he was dead.

"I never expected you to be a coward."

It was Leviathan, and he was standing on the rug beside my puddle of vomit, examining it as if he found it very interesting. I dunno if you can kill the fayth -- I mean really permanently K.O. the jerks -- but if you can, I don't think anyone ever wanted to more in the entire world than I did at that moment. Zero to sixty in five point two, and I must be part desert hare, because I went from curled up in a hurt little ball to tackling that SOB before he could react, and us being of about the same body mass, I took him down in one go, me on top of him, palms flat across his chest and pushing in like I thought I could collapse his ribcage from pure spite.

"I am not a coward," I was yelling, rage and spittle, like it was all his fault, and maybe some part of me thought it was, then. It was the blame game. Your fault, his fault, their fault, not my fault.

Leviathan didn't seem to be all that worried about me sitting on his chest and beating him ineffectually with my bruised and bloody little fists, and I was almost wishing I had thought to beg back Deus Ex before coming into this place, but then he was talking again, like he really enjoyed the sound of his voice and I was forced to listen, because the fayth? They do that to you.

"If you're not a coward, then why don't you prove it and face your dragon."

"My dragon is a horrible old man in a dusty old overcoat and he's dead," I shouted, and I pushed him back against the stone for emphasis. I don't know who I thought I was helping, wailing on the fayth, and I can't even say that it was making me feel better, because it wasn't. Sometimes you do things just to do them, so you won't have to think.

He grinned and it was like an eel opening its mouth, too many teeth to fit in there properly, fangs all ivory and ancient yellow. It was a handful of knives and razorblades all for me, courtesy of him.

"As are we all," he said cryptically, and then he smiled, smug and self-assured like he knew so much that I didn't, ancient mysteries lost to the world, and I punched the floor again and threw myself off of him, turning away so I wouldn't have to see him, all that aquamarine and blue that seemed to be needling deep inside me. Get out. You don't know me. That's not who I am. Who gave you the right --

"What has changed, Rikku Cidolphus?"

That was her, Ashura, the queen, and I had to turn and look at her when she spoke, raindrops in the ocean or a spoon in hot chocolate, stirring me up, turning me around, calming my hurt like there was the light trip magic of an esuna knitting my soul and spine together again. She was still so beautiful. Leviathan had gotten up off of the floor and out of my vomit. Boy, I really know how to treat the fayth right. No wonder they only come out to see summoners. I closed my eyes as hard as I could, the salt gritty on my face, and I tried not to think.

"What is it that has changed?" She asked again, quite, slow, and curious, and after a while I opened my eyes and looked at the stone, deep blue reflecting orange glow, and I looked at my dirty scraped little feet.

"Everything," I said, shaking my head so that the beads rattled against one another and I kicked the ball of my foot against the floor, "Everything has changed."

"You don't really think that," she said, after a slow moment fell between us, "You think that you're supposed to think that, but you don't really want to think that, do you?"

I didn't say anything, but then her voice was light and soft, curling into me and around me, the warm breeze of holy cure.

"Do you know how people get fairy tales and happily-ever-afters, Princess Aurora Rikku Cidolphus?" She was serious and laughing all at once, like golden flowers in a field, and Leviathan had gone to stand behind her, slender fingers in the hollow of her collar bone.

"They make them."

Maybe I was choking and maybe I was drowning and maybe I'd finally found the shore.

"You should go to him," she said.

And I did.

The Shape of His Heart

By Gabihime (gabihime at gmail dot com)

Chapter Six: The Burn Card in my Pocket

In the end, I guess it's one thing to sit all sobby and teary-eyed and have the fayth point one slender finger out towards the red sky sunset-dawn and say Go to him, kind of like a rumbling-thunder-voice-from-the-clouds sort of thing that you can't ignore, and then it's a whole different thing once you've made it from the going to the gone and are standing there feeling old and hollow and staring at his ancient red back.

It's a hard thing to explain to someone else, and maybe that's why some people never bother trying. After all, I couldn't exactly say Aww shucks Auron, I didn't really mean it when I screamed that I hated you, because I had. I'd meant it desperately with every little cord and bump of my being -- and he'd know that I had meant it, knew it right now, knew that before he'd turned his back on me, I'd turned my back on him. Some great show of solidarity there, Rikku. They should give you the blue ribbon for loyalty in the face of extreme hardship. You just don't do that to . . . people . . . that you care about. Auron, that I --

I couldn't say "I didn't mean it when I said that I hated you!" and hand over a dozen roses and a case of beer and hoped that smoothed the sand because I had meant it, and I hadn't thought of anything other than the hate, because I'd been hurt so hard and not expecting it. Half of it was pain and maybe two thirds of it was shock, and I hadn't given myself any time to think or even really feel. I had just reeled, like a chocobo cart going around a corner on two wheels. I had hated him then, but what I'd realized when Ashura had served it up to me blue plate special style is that I loved him more than I hated him.

I told you it was a hard thing to explain to another person. Maybe what I'd realized was that all that storming I'd done before was just crying over spilt milk. Sure it was not the greatest situation I could think of, finding out that he was a dead man walking, but like my Pops always says: Oui meja dra pacd oui lyh. You play the hand you're dealt. It's your responsibility to the world and a payback for having been given the chance to live in it. Sure, everybody gets bad cards, and sometimes the cards you get make you scream and cry and throw things and beat your fists bloody against the wall, but you can't give up playing just because you don't like the hand you've got. Maybe nobody likes the hand they've got, not really, and we're all just pretending sunshine and daffodils to ward off the dark. Maybe that's okay too.

The fact that he was now grade A dead-as-a-doorknob didn't change who Auron was -- just like if he really died tomorrow forever-and-ever I wouldn't stop loving that great big idiot just because we put him in the ground and said the last words over him. It wasn't something that my Pops was going to be real excited about, although not for the reasons you might think. He always said that the purest flame always burns the hottest and by association can always burn you the worst, but there was no use in saying Rikku, don't you get involved. You're going to get hurt, because if that wasn't shutting the doors to the stable after the Chocobo had already gone then I don't know what is. Maybe it would have been easier on me if I hadn't loved him so horribly-terribly that it made my insides feel sick and slick like Mandragora mash, but then maybe it wouldn't have been. Pops lost Mama a long time ago, but I don't think he's ever wished he hadn't seen her standing there. Wishing away something like that? When you start doing that I think you're really broken. Maybe not even a sledgehammer blow between the ears can knock the stars out of my eyes. Maybe that's why he loved me.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Sure, I knew that he loved me right then -- even if he didn't know it yet, but I guess a girl kind of knows things like that. It's not something you really need anybody to tell you, like you don't need to have going to the bathroom explained to you. But we're still a long way from kiss and make up, right? I'd just kicked him in the head when he was down, and now I was standing behind him shy and strange, shifting from one foot to the other and wondering what it was you said to a dead man.

Deepest sympathies for your loss and many happy returns. Sorry you kicked the bucket, I still like you, love Rikku. Being stiff is terrif! Don't let the rigor mortis get you down!

They should make greeting cards for this sort of thing. It would make it a lot less messy.

He was sitting on the lip of the promontory, between a dragon-eel and some sort of ancient whale with a single curving tusk where he'd hung his nog bottle. His legs dropped off the side, and his nihontou was wedged behind him somehow, giving him some sort of handhold in case he slipped. Above us and all around us the water was coming down, although we sat back a little, protected from everything but the fine rainbow spray of mist that it kicked up as it torrented by. The light from the sky and the sea colored us both a melon orange, and I could see the little droplets of water starting to collect in his hair: soot and ash dark with silver at the temples. He still had my shoes and socks slung over one shoulder.

I had to scrabble to get where he was, and I ended up half draped over the dragon eel he was leaning against, my chin tucked over the line of spines that raced down his back, a fist full of fang to keep me balanced. He didn't look up. I guess I deserved that, or maybe he thought that he didn't deserve it. People are funny people. My Pops always used to say that.

"Now you know," was what he said, and I could see that he'd taken those ever-present sunglasses off and shoved into some interior pocket or maybe pitched them into the sea. His collar was hanging loose where he'd undone the buckles. He looked -- not exactly ragged, my Auron never looks ragged. There's too much piss and spite in him, too much pride. He did look a little tired though, tired and set, like he already knew everything that I was going to say, had played everything out in his mind already, had prepared himself for what was coming. I'd already screamed that I hated him. I guess it doesn't get a lot worse than that.

"That your name's Auron Faris? Yeah, it was quite a shocker."

"Rikku." It was sharp, burnt, and cut off, and I would have put my hands on my hips if I hadn't been so busy holding on for dear life.

"I know what you're thinking," I said, because I thought I did even if I didn't, "But if now's not the time for a good laugh, I dunno when is." I let out a tired little sound and dug in harder, "So you're dead? Wakka is a Yevonite in parachute pants, and I somehow managed to get over that. I'll forgive you for being dead so long as you forgive me for being such a dope."

"You over simplify things," he said, and rubbed his forehead with his gloved hand, all worn black leather smelling of the world gone past us both.

"You over complicate them," I railed back so hard that I lost my handhold and was about to go spilling into the tangerine briney deep when he seized me by my ribbons and shirt collar and dragged me back onto even ground and mostly into his lap. It was a little cramped, there between the eel and the whale, but after a little wiggling I managed to settle in, hands folded across my lap, and look out over the sea like he was doing.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked, like a third-grader trying her hand at psychoanalysis.

"No," was all he said, short and flat, and I was still trying to think of something to say to that when he went on, "But I will. You've earned that."

I curled my toes and waited, and after a long while of just listening to the steam and pitch of the water, he started.

"We've been to Zanarkand," he stopped a moment before starting again, "Together. You saw Yunalesca. You heard the travesty of summoners and Sin."

"Pretty much fit in with my idea of Yevon, yeah."

"I survived Braska's final summoning. I survived Jecht becoming Sin," his voice was tight and old, gravelly, deep like a mine shaft and chained down by hurt and guilt that he was still fighting so hard to control that I might've not seen it if I hadn't developed a practiced eye for catching his flicker-cast moods. "When Sin killed Braska, he left me alive. Can you imagine that? Sin killing everyone, killing Yuna who you swore to protect, and then leaving you alive, burnt up with death, but still alive, and to no purpose -- "

"It wasn't right," I balled up my bloody fists, "Nothing was right. You couldn't let it be that way, could you? You had to try and change it. You had to try and shove a stick through the spokes. Just one man trying to change a thousand years of the way the world has decided to be." I stopped and got very quiet as I suddenly realized, "You went back to fight Yunalesca. Alone." I couldn't help myself, and I reached up to touch that ugly scar that seams his face like a fault through granite, like a morbid little kid that's just got to poke a dead cat to make sure that it's dead, "And she gave you that, but that wasn't all, was it? She killed you."

"I made it all the way back to Gagazet," he said, and I wondered if I'd hurt his pride.

"You went to fight crazy, freaky, snake lady Yunalesca alone in Zanarkand," I repeated, because it wasn't quite parsing right. And then I laughed and I laughed and I laughed, like I was a reject from the Bikanel Home for Disturbed Youth, "Are you sure you're not Al Bhed? Even if you're not, I'm making you an honorary Al Bhed right now," I laid my head against his shoulder and continued to cackle like I was one of the mentally unstable, "Bringing down religion all by yourself. It definitely sounds like you. I gotta respect your heresy, Legendary Guardian Dummy."

But then he'd grabbed me hard by one shoulder and turned me around to look at him, that one eye dark as basalt.

"How was the world changed? It hasn't. I failed. Nothing has changed. Nothing. I exist only so that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated.He was angry.

Now I was getting mad.

"Don't be a coward," I shouted back at him, hearing Leviathan in myself before I could stop it, "You live in this world, so accept it. Don't give me that crap about your story being over. It's only over because you're running from it. You said that all the fayth wanted was to live, but I don't think you want to live because you're afraid of it. You got hurt too much before, so you think it's better to hide in your excuses. This is your story too, you great big moron. You're in it so that makes it your story. Stop wallowing. Braska died and you tried to stop it but you couldn't do anything about it. Just because you messed up once doesn't mean you'll mess up everything, and it doesn't mean that you have the right to hide in a corner afraid of failure. Life is crappy and lame sometimes, but giving up isn't a solution to anything." I was frowning. Frowns don't really look that good on me.

"Not too long ago, someone important to me said that we had two choices: to be happy in death, or to live and keep fighting every day of our lives. Why don't you try fighting? Fighting is more than just slicing fiends into lunchmeat, you know. It's being happy. It's being happy that you're alive. It's living and not just being."

"I'mnot alive." Sometimes I think he tries his hardest to miss the point on purpose.

"You're here sitting with me right now, aren't you? We're looking at the sky and looking at the ocean, and after a while we'll get up and have to eat and have to sleep, and you hurt, and you love, and you bleed, and that's enough for me. You've got to believe as hard as you can. Believe in hope. Believe in possibilities."

He made a dark noise that might have been a snort, "A sermon from Maester Rikku?"

"Hey, just because I don't have faith in Yevon doesn't mean I don't have faith," I retortedWhat is it that makes us different?" I asked, fist full of his open collar and shaking it so that the buckles rattled against one another and he sounded like a sock full of gil. He seemed to think about what I'd said for some minutes, but then he finally spoke.

"I can think of one difference."

"Yeah?" I asked, challenging.

"You're absolutely certifiably insane."

First I cold clocked him with the butt of my pistol.

Then I kissed him.

This is the moment you've all been waiting for right? It was the moment I was waiting for, I guess, and then it was there and it was all tongue and teeth and dragging on that collar, and his hand at the back of my neck, and the other one holding onto a buttress so we didn't both go spilling off into the boiling ocean. He tasted something like whiskey because maybe he'd been drinking, and I probably tasted like vomit, because that's what I'd been doing, and I don't think a lot of thought really went into it happening. It was mostly just: well, there it is.

"You'd better believe it," I whooped, and I was still high as a kite. In this world you have to take your ups when you get them and ride them all the way down into the dirt.

"You shouldn't," was what he said, some kind of warning against getting involved with him, like now was the time for that -- but I was already scrambling up, scrambling over the eel, bare feet against crystal teeth and tusks, and my tongue was out.

"I already did."

And I guess he couldn't argue with that.

Back in the temple we found Leviathan lounging on the rug near the puddle of vomit, which I found to my deep embarrassment was still right where I'd barfed it. Really, I dunno what I was expecting. The fayth here didn't have any priests to attend to them, and I don't really think cleaning up mortal filth is something that's penciled in as part of the fayths' job description. Leviathan seemed really impressed with it, for lack of a better word, like it was a prized new object d'Art and part of the permanent decor.

"I haven't seen vomit in such a long time," he explained wistfully as he stretched, all the bones in his sternum in crisp relief, fine, like chiseled stone, and then stood. I guess they were pretty strapped for entertainment if a puddle of upchuck could hold their attention. If I hadn't believed them before about being lonely, I sure as heck did now.

"I see you've reconciled," he offered us a brisk wave off with his pearl-clawed hand, "As I expected."

Old Red snorted again and I don't think I really have to tell you that it was the second time that day that I wanted to break sissy goldfish snake's glass jaw. Before I could say anything Ashura had come up behind him and laid her cheek against his shoulder, smiling faintly. She didn't have to say it for me to hear her.

You must forgive him, but he can't help being the way he is.

Coming from her I sort of had to forgive him, so I did, but I was keeping a tally in my head should Ashura one day come up to me light as a fairy and say Please school Leviathan for me? Thank you everso. I wasn't afraid of him. He had lacy fins. That is totally twelve parts girly and one big ol' extra helping of I am a princess.

Ashura was giggling again, light as sleigh bells coming down Gagazet, but Leviathan had fixed his sea-dark eyes on me again.

"Now we will get to business, Rikku Cidolphus, Auron Faris," he said, folding his long, lean arms over his chest, "You came to Indara for the Fayth. To receive the fayth, you must first meet our challenge."

"Consider it done!" I said, beating my fist into my open palm. I told you, high as a kite.

"Rikku."

"Sworn and witnessed," It was gentle and light, this time Ashura had caught me in a net, and I looked more than a little sheepish as I turned around to face Auron, who was again dark and collected in that big bloodstain of a coat of his. I shrugged and tried to look on the brighter side of life.

"Come on, chief. How hard can their challenge be? I mean, okay, another little delay and then we'll bring Yuna her new aeons in style!"

Auron didn't really look convinced, but he shouldered his blade silently and then tapped it over his shoulder once or twice. He was thinking.

"Name your terms, Fayth of Indara."

You'd better believe Auron's got style. Maybe more style than Rin, and that's saying something.

"To receive the Fayth of Indara you must best us both in open combat. Should you fail, you will not lose your lives, but your time in the caverns of Indara will be wiped and neither of you will remember what has passed here, because it will cease to be," stated Leviathan crisply, the sea-dark storm on the horizon.

"Such is our mercy to you, and also your curse," and that was Ashura, a spill of moonglow gold and the faint music of diamonds in her hair.

"Such was their mercy to Jecht and Braska," Auron snapped, and then turned away from the sea snake and his lady.

I gritted my eyes shut as I finally realized.

"Such was their mercy to you."

----

After basically an ENTIRE YEAR I brought you a new chapter. I hope it's worth it kids, and lets hope the next one will come out a little sooner.

Thanks terribly for all your support. I haven't stopped writing, but in the last year I've been focusing on my original fiction. You know. Things I Can Get Paid for. I'm sorry I left you out in the cold so long, but a girl's gotta eat.

Love lots,

Gabi