The only thing that might make a lecture slightly more palatable is if you hear it after you've stuffed yourself on fresh melon and blueberry pancakes dredged in syrup after a famine of not so much tough jerky and a little too much soupy warm pudding. That still doesn't make getting lectured by the Grim Creep-er a fun time experience to tell all your friends about, but at least while he drones on and on you can kind of zone out and think about the one true love of blueberries plus pancake batter and maybe lick the last few drops of syrup off your fingers. Where had I gotten this holiest of holy meals? Ashura had summoned it for me. Really. No joke.

A little after I'd stirred groggily from my little nest in one of the chancels of the temple that morning, I'd staggered into the main cathedral to find Auron sitting on a stool that had come from who knows where, sipping at a steaming mug full of what could only be coffee and looking deeply contented as only a man who has just recently been reunited with his caffeine can manage. This was obviously something I had to investigate, especially after I spied the empty miso bowl carefully set aside at his feet.

Then the golden queen had come fluttering in, moonshine and sunshine and frosted glass warm by the fire, and she'd asked me Rikku-child, what would you like most in the world for breakfast?

Naturally, I'd said A stack of blueberry pancakes higher than a blitzball, slathered in butter and warm syrup. Oh, oh, or fresh melon. Because, well, that's just ambrosia there. If any of that farplane junk is real at all? That's what they're eating.

So I had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, and a lecture from Ol' Deep Dread for brunch. Well, you can't win 'em all, even with luck like mine. Maybe especially with luck like mine.

"Rikku," he said shortly, and it was one of those are you listening to me moments that disciplinarian types sometimes ask just to hear themselves talk. They know you're not listening when they ask in the first place, but they go on and ask anyway, and boy do they ever get mad when you answer truthfully.

"Rikku," he said again, looking a little more cross at the corners of his mouth, "Are you listening to me?"

"Completely and totally!" I assured cheerfully, which was a lie, and we both knew it. He struck his sword in the black sand and turned away from me.

"You don't seem to grasp the severity of the situation," he said darkly, and I shrugged.

"Look, I told you that we'll be able to handle it," I answered from the stone where I was putting a new and keener edge on Deus Ex (my very precious who had been only just returned to me), "I know you lost before, with Jecht et cetera, but I think we're in much better shape to win than you guys ever were."

"Is that so?" he asked, and I could just barely tell that around the anger that he was feigning he was also faintly amused. Well he should be. Personally I think I'm a laugh-riot.

"Yeah," I answered, then began to explain my thinking helpfully, "See, that was you ten years ago, so you must've learned something useful since then, so you're already better than you were the first time you came. And me? I am totally better than Jecht. Way and entirely prettier too. Don't think about selling me short! I'm totally as good as the rest of the party put together. I'm versatile. I bet I beat my Uncle Braska out double or nothing. He was a great guy and everything, but he was Yunie's pops, which means I bet he hit about as hard as a four year old trying to knock you over with a sack full of warm porridge, which is mostly gross more than anything, now that I think about it."

"He was a summoner with almost a full compliment of aeons," he interrupted, but I shrugged, palms upward, like I was wishing for more blueberry pancakes to spawn right then and there.

"Really, I'm starting to think summoners are overrated! We've been doing fine!"

He made a sound in the back of his throat, disgruntled and long suffering, and then turned his attention back to me with that one rusty eye.

"He is the Sea Fang," he interrupted, as if I'd somehow managed to forget that singular fact since yesterday, "He is the elemental of water."

"Yeah?" I said. What did he want me to do, give him the cleverness award for thinking that one up? He sure wasn't the elemental of potted meat or anything. I think we'd have known if he was.

"If we are to stand a chance of beating him, we will need black magic," he stated plainly, "You insist that you were versatile. Very well. We lack a black mage. You will therefore take on those responsibilities."

"Wait," I squawked, slip-sliding off my stone so fast I staggered in the sand, "You don't mean -- "

"I do," he answered, like he was taking me to the most awful chapel ever.

"Thunder."

"Thundara," he corrected.

"Thundaga," I whimpered.

And then I think I fainted.

The Shape of His Heart

By Gabihime (gabihime at gmail dot com)

Chapter Seven: Drawing Dead Against the House

I didn't really faint, so you know, but it was what you might call a rude awakening. Saying that you're all that and a bag of gyshal greens is one thing. Living up to it -- living up to it when the package deal includes thunder?

Well, of course the first thing I said was Why don't you be the black mage instead? We'll get you some thigh-highs and a dolly and you'll fit right in! And then he just gave me this look that might've leveled Bevelle by itself. It was a look that said Rikku, our positions in this party are not up for discussion and then sort of silently warned around the edges continue bringing it up and I will turn you over my knee. I didn't dwell too much on that last bit because I wasn't exactly sure if I was reviled or interested. Or you know, reviled that I was interested. Sometimes it's great to keep Auron under the gun just to see what he'll do.

Anyway, he made it abundantly clear that I wasn't off the hook until I'd gotten my girl guide merit badges for zap, crackle, pop, and in the end there's really no arguing with him. He's like a donkey made of concrete and trimmed in lead. You know, that kind of stubborn. So even though I was looking forward to learning the positives and negatives of electron jimmying about the same as I would've been wishing for a years worth of pin-ups of Maester Jyscal, I kinda figured I had two choices: one -- learn the thunder spells; two -- learn the thunder spells fast. Apparently Auron agreed with me, because the first thing he said after his angry eyebrow lecture was We're going hunting.

And hot diggety, did we ever. He might has well have stood there at the lip of the corridor, feet sinking in the shining black sand and shrugged his gi off one shoulder as he said this shall be your education, because that's what it was. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know how to kill fiends. It's not a subject you can fail on your placement tests on when your pops thinks a fun family outing is exploring infested broken down ancient ruins, and you have clearly inherited his sense of adventure (which Captain Bloodspot seems to like to refer to as recklessness) wholecloth. So I know how to feel out fiends and snag the last bits of their memories before someone else gently sends them with a skull crushing blitzball impact or a smoke boiling fira, and I know how to scratch 'em up myself. My pops didn't raise any little girl who couldn't pull her own weight.

But pulling your own weight among six other people who are apparently among the most brilliant fiend hunters on the planet and pulling your weight when it's only you and Judge Red? Those two things are not the same animal. See, when it was all of us together: King Goof Tidus and Yunie and Wakka and Lulu and Kimahri and Old Red and me, it's almost like there aren't enough fiends to go around, and my special services get called in when there are machina to dismantle on the fly or Tidus, Wakka, and I have to take a deep dive because apparently no one else can swim. On a planet that's ninety percent water and where the quickest way to get from point a to point b is sea travel, only the blitzballers and the Al Bhed bother to learn. Go figure. Maybe swimming is up there on the incomprehensible list of things that Yevon finds a great sin, in between using machina and having good fashion sense. I just bet you.

Anyway, so when everyone's together, things are different (hello understatement of the year -- but right now I'm not talking about the cuddling Big Red scenario). I pull my own weight, for sure, but being as there're so many of us yanking on the rope, there's less weight to pull. Now that's a lesson in physics that even Tidus could understand. So a lot of the time I can't even get to fiends, even running so hard that my observably lovely calves are pushed into overdrive, before there's a shower of flare or holy or ultima or a blitzball pounding things to powder before I get close. Sometimes it makes me feel just slightly useless, but then I remember that they really keep me around not for my ability to sink my fingers into fiendflesh and drag out ethers and things, but rather for my award-winning and much-lauded personality. It just must be completely and totally depressing for everyone back with Yunie to start their days out with a heaping spoonful of Rikku goodness. That's what I'm telling myself at least.

But with Dark and Smug? There was no one else to catch the slack of the line when he threw it out over his shoulder, feet light in those cold stone heavy boots and we danced the paso doble of fiendkills, his great sword singing through the air, keen and keen, piercing the shells of adamantoises so I could get to the soft flesh underneath or pinning a mimic to the ground when a chest turned out to be a gobbler. And then there was me, light on my feet and learning when to draw and shoot and when to tear across that space like fire and jump to hit the varunas and float-eyes that were just too silver quick for the singing death of the muramasa, my claw shredding up flesh and nothing until pyreflies exploded, and after a while I even stopped thinking about how the fiendlight reflected in his eyes. We were partners, for better or for worse.

"I don't like prolonging the time we spend away from Yuna," he said, "But right now we are not ready to confront them."

It was only afterwards that I realized I didn't really know if he meant them Leviathan and Ashura, or them Tidus and Yunie and everyone else. Sometimes this world is a crazy place.

So it was up and down that hallway at the foot of those horrible stairs, our shadows long and flickering from the torchlight on the walls, pushing hard against our limits as we threshed through fiendkill after fiendkill, and I was knuckling my fingers under and dragging out spheres, every one I could lay hands on in that cold spaghetti flesh of theirs, each one of them the key to a locked treasure somewhere inside yourself. I guess I'd realized by this point that we'd need all those treasures and then some if we were going to be able to win against the house playing with loaded dice. It was different than the fiendkills we'd made coming down that spiral because then we'd just been trying to survive as long as possible. Now we were hunting. Sweat, and arrogance, and hurt. It's probably no wonder I loved that man.

It was dirty and sticky and filthy, and we lost track of time, counting it only in little marble-sized spheres that I was cramming into my pockets. And we didn't stop for lunch, and we didn't stop for dinner, and I was so hungry that my stomach had started to slowly digest itself, and I was bone weary and aching, damp hair plastered to my forehead, Deus Ex half gunked up with slowly oozing ichor so that I wouldn't have known which end of it was up if it hadn't still been strapped to the end of my arm. But still, even at the end of all of that, I never said Auron, I'm tired. Let's stop, because as hard as it was, being out there with him was somehow right, like two strings plucked that resonate on the same chord, and then deep in the cold twist of my guts I already knew that this time, this summer place full of filth and grit and stink and tearing each other up just to put each other back together again couldn't last, would never last. To all things must come a quiet night and sweet end. I had already learned to be terrified of that quiet night and sweet end, and for us, the hand had already been called and laid. He was already dead. It was only a matter of time before somebody or some thing objected to that.

In the end, I decided that guaranteed we did not have time enough between the two of us for me to brood and sulk over it, because nobody ever does -- have the time, I mean. Life is meant to be lived, even if you don't get to live it for that long. Besides, he already did enough of the brooding and the sulking himself when I wasn't looking. He had dug his feet in a long time ago, but that didn't matter to me, because I was dragging him into happiness, whether he liked it or not. Maybe he still didn't think he deserved it, but I think that's Yevon talking there. Everyone deserves happiness. In my book, there's just no other way you can slice it.

My pockets were bulging and I was slumping under their weight when he finally shouldered his sword and said, "That's enough for now."

I did a sad and dumb looking little dance of sheer relief and then suddenly I was scooped up and thrown up on his shoulder like I was four years old, and I was laughing and kicking my feet, going, "So is this gonna to be a habit with you?"

"No," he said shortly, "Today you did good work, but I pushed you too hard and too long. I don't want to be responsible for you fainting and knocking your brains out on the way back to camp."

"Oh whatever, big man," I said, because I wasn't buying any of that, "Give it up. You just wanted to grope my fabulous thigh."

It had rumbled somewhere, deep in his chest, then he'd corrected me with the crinkle of a deed notarized by the Fayth of Indara, "My fabulous thigh."

And that made me laugh.

-

Back at El Casa du Leviathan, Ashura fed us plates and plates of roast beast until I couldn't manage any more and flopped over on my side on the cool mosaic stones. Even Big Red leaned back against the wall and looked two parts of content.

For me, there was really only one thing missing.

"It would be so totally beyond awesome to have a bath," I said wistfully, sort of wallowing in the grime I was depositing on their tiled temple floor. (Take that Yevon! I rebel at you even with my stink!) No worries, though. I was sure Leviathan would end up finding sweaty dirt at least half as fascinating as a puddle of barf.

"Granted," said the fish snake guado, idly waving me off from where he lay with his head in Ashura's radiantly pale moonglow lap.

I rolled over so I could look at him, "What do you mean, 'granted'?" I was probably a little cross after a day of such hard work, and maybe you could hear it in my voice. I was tired and I didn't want to deal with Leviathan's idea of fun n' games.

"I mean 'Why don't you go look outside,'" he clarified, letting one negligent hand rise to point to the great double doors carved over with figures of the sea snake. Let me tell you, if there's one person I know who's totally humble and modest? It's Leviathan.

Except it's not. Maybe you figured that out already, since he decorates his house with huge stone images of himself. Talk about a queen.

Still, my heart fluttered at the sudden prospect of suds plus hot water, and I tripped over myself scrambling up and getting to those great carved doors. I was throwing my weight against them before I had really given myself time to think, hanging onto the handle and riding one of them full out onto the bridge so I could see the sea, and sure enough, although still tangerine dream orange, it was now filled with soap bubbles as far as I could see. I called Leviathan a bunch of things which were pleasant for a change as opposed to obnoxious, and I think I promised to bear several of his fruity little lacy-finned children, and then I went whooping down the butterfly wing bridge like I was toddleriffic, flinging my clothes off this way and that, dancing to the squelching of leather and vinyl and rubber and the limp flutter of dingy ribbons -- and let me tell you they came off not just a little sticky-gummy owing to all the adventures (and lack of proper hygiene) I'd had since my last good wash. I smelled, and not like roses either. Fighting fiends for days at a time with no breaks will do that to even the best and most pleasant-smelling of us.

I guess I was so glad to get out of those nasty clothes that I really didn't care who saw my skinny little dirt-smudged butt, and I was singing at the top of my lungs about cleanliness and it being next to something good that wasn't Yevonliness. Maybe funliness. Funliness is a great word. It's totally opposed to stinky grossoutliness, anyway, which is the most important part. My song was completely and totally harmonizing with the Hymn of the Fayth too. Except it wasn't. I kept on singing anyway.

When I finally got down to the sand and the shore and the salt of black basalt, I marched fearlessly into that tangerine soup of suds and bubbles, and sure enough it was warm as tea, comfortable and nice like at the best hotel in Luca, and I almost started to wonder if Leviathan was going to provide fluffy, white oversized towels too. Maybe also a fresh terrycloth robe. Maybe a blue one. Blue is a nice color -- but then, I'm not all that particular.

Still wondering what kind of soft fuzzy robe king goldfish snake was going to provide, I stretched my arms up and lolled back in the water against a rock, for the moment perfectly content with the state of the world. It was then that I finally noticed that I had an audience. Hello voyeur, nice to meet you. My name is Rikku, and yes I remember that your name is Auron.

He was still standing on the fairy path a few feet up from where it buried itself in the beach, as if he was worried about sand getting into those great heavy boots of his. His arms were folded inside his gi, his sword propped against his thigh, and he was watching me like he expected me to somehow drown myself in three feet of water. Or, you know, two miles of bubbly water, since my bathtub was now roughly the size of the Kilika Gulf.

"Don't think I don't see you staring at my dainties, Legendary Guardian Pervert!" I yelled, because bathtime seems like a good time to yell things like that.

He raised his eyebrow, that look he gets when he's all oh really, like he wasn't looking at me, even though he totally was, and then he snorted, like he had a particular opinion on just how dainty my dainties were, "I was staring at the fact that you had the aeon of the oceans turn the entire sea soapy and eighty-two degrees. That cannot be good for the native marine life."

That stopped me and I suddenly felt very guilty for slaughtering all the starfish and mollusks and whales and sharks and manta rays all so i could have a little beauty soak, even if I totally deserved it and it was about a million years overdue.

"Leviathan!" I hollered, flailing about in the water a bit as I debated how much more karma this would land me the next time I had to shoot a tonberry between the eyes. He was there suddenly, standing beside Big Red, looking very self-satisfied about the masterpiece of luxurious bathing that he'd wrought. I still wasn't feeling so great about it now that Professor One Eye had decided to rain on my parade.

"Fry," he answered tranquilly, kindly condescending like he always was, "I summoned the sea myself. When you asked for a bath I just summoned all the sea creatures to be compliant with the environmental changes, like high temperature water and a unique chemical balance of cleaning compounds." He smiled, thin-lipped, all teeth, "Don't worry. You haven't sent any sea cucumbers to their early deaths."

I relaxed and flopped back again, but then I started up, "You mean everything is still in here all sudsy and warm with me?"

"To the last fiddler crab, fry," he answered pleasantly.

"Then I'm taking a bath with an ocean full of giant squids and monster sharks?" I was feeling a little giddy, and I don't really think it was the temperature of the water.

"Don't worry about it," he said nonchalantly, moving to sit on the bridge, chin propped on one knee, easy as you please, like he was king of the world (which I guess, upon reflection, he was), "If anything dreadful starts to eat at you I'll give it a stern talking to."

"Well that's reassuring," I answered, rolling my eyes full circle before letting them fall on him again. Then I put my hands on my hips, "And what do you think you're doing, getting comfortable? This is not a free show!"

"My dear child," he said, faintly amused, "Don't you think in so many hundreds of years of extended life I would have seen a few naked ladies?"

"Well, maybe you'd think that, but you seemed pretty sold on a puddle of vomit up until very recently, and I wouldn't call that quality entertainment," I splashed at him ineffectually, like bath water was supposed to upset the Sea Fang, "Besides, I don't care how many naked ladies you've seen, you're not seeing this one, or at least not for free. If you wanna stay and watch me take a bath I'm totally going to assume that you forfeit your side of the match -- "

"He's gone," Auron interrupted.

"I can see that," I rolled my eyes again, a regular martyr on the hill or summoner in the Calm Lands. Then I stopped again and looked up, "I notice you're still here."

"I don't have a match to forfeit."

"You know, when we get back with everyone I'm totally going to tell all of Spira all your scandalous secrets," I warned, kicking my feet up so that my wriggling toes just broke the surface of the water, "Like that for a dead monk you've apparently got one scorcher of a libido."

"Nobody will believe you," he answered, relaxed, arms in his gi, and that just kicked some snow into my fire because I knew it was true. If I said Auron's true dreams include chasing skirt and also little ruffly green shorts (because that's the kind of distinct impression I was getting from his attention at the moment) then people would think I was certifiable, or at least that I'd inhaled the fumes of Ronso Dreamweed or something. Legendary Guardian Esq. comes off as Legendary Guardian Stonecold, most of the time.

"Besides," he objected tranquilly, "I'm just standing guard in case a shark takes interest in you while you're unarmed. You're one half of our current fighting capacity."

"Unarmed," I hooted, "Well, you be sure and tell that one to the judge, boss."

"If he asks, I will," he was totally assured and unworried. That was Auron, for you. "Then I'll show him the deed to a fifth of your person. I'm just protecting my investment."

"Your investment in my superkalifragalisticexpialo-hotness," I clarified, ducking under water so I could get started scrubbing my matty, icky hair.

"It's fortunate that you don't expect me to know what you're talking about half the time," he observed and I heard the rattle of buckles against leather as he settled against the hilt of his nihontou, "Because I don't."

"Good!" I thrashed and kicked until I managed to splash water up on the hem of his coat, "I don't bother listening to you half the time, so I guess we're even!"

I ducked under again so I didn't hear what he said after that, but I bet you can probably supply your own Auron dialogue here without my help!

-

So I had my bath and I even washed my clothes (which mainly entailed beating them against the rocks in the warm water until most of the ick came off). That's what comes of wearing leather and vinyl and rubber: easy cleanup. I felt much better for it, and when I finally shook the last of the water off of me like a shaggy dog, Ashura called me over to her and summoned herself an ivory backed brush and spent the next hour just gently detangling my hair with calm, even strokes. It needed it, being a rats' nest of too much adventuring and too little nourishing shampoo smelling of Bevelle gardens. I just sat good and still and thought about how nice it felt to have someone brushing out my hair while Auron sat on his stool and keened up the edge of the muramasa. I guess I can't ever remember anyone doing that for me. I don't remember mama at all, and whenever Lulu feels like playing beauty parlor dress-up it's Yunie's hair she fusses with. I guess I can't blame her. Yunie's hair is so pretty and soft and fine, the color of milk in coffee. She's pretty and sweet and good. I'm more, well, I'm more me, you see. Not the beauty who launched a thousand airships. More like the beauty who sank some airships. Although probably not a thousand. More like, I dunno, five.

"You remind me of my daughter," Ashura said softly, a break in her smooth, light humming, counter-harmony to the Hymn of the Fayth.

I started and turned around slightly so I could catch her with one of my eyes. There was a softness around the corners of her brilliant golden eyes that was hard to catch. I tried to smile at her.

"You have a daughter?" I asked, "I bet she's super immensely gorgeous if she's anything like you."

Ashura's smile viewed from over my shoulder was a flicker of warmth and kindness, "I had a daughter." She explained, "It was a long time ago and not here. It was in a different place underground, when Leviathan and I ruled over the lands below. It was my other self, you see. Not my self from Zanarkand, not the part that is of the Spiral, but the other part of me. The part of me that was bound here when I became the Fayth. The part of me from the outside."

"I'm not sure I understand," I said, scratching my fingers against my damp scalp. This seemed like pretty heavy stuff, and I've never been all that up on Yevon type teachings. I know you are shocked and astonished.

She caught the wisps of my hair between her fingers and piled it up on my head, messy and wonderful, and then she continued.

"It's a difficult thing to understand, yes. I didn't understand it myself when he and I decided to be bound as the Fayth," I turned to look at her and she was smiling sadly, like she'd remembered a hard memory. "That was really the only way we could be together, then." She paused and then let out a whispery sigh then turned her golden sun eyes on me again, "Summoners, callers, whatever you want to call them, well they've always been a part of the Spiral, a part of Spira. As have those from outside. The summoned."

"Aeons," I breathed and her smile quirked again.

"Something like that. Summoners have ever been a part of Spira. They are not a product of Yevon, simply something he caught up in his hands to use as he saw fit. The Fayth were his way of binding the summoned to his temples, so that he might build the idea of the Pilgrimage, of the penance, of the sacrifice. With no Fayth, you see," she murmured softly, "It is difficult to keep the faithful."

"So you gave up your life?" I asked, leaning forward so that my pinned hair fell over my shoulders, "Your life with puppies and breakfast and traffic and your Guado civil lawyer boyfriend?" It was something I had a harder time wrapping my mind around than the idea that part of her was from beyond, that someone would give up all that for an eternity of being shackled in a temple.

I didn't have to ask her why. It was there in every word out of my mouth.

"It seemed like the best way at the time," she answered weakly, a slight shrug spilling down her shoulders like honey out of a comb, "Yevon's way did. And that way he and I could be together." Her eyes shifted up and over to Leviathan who had gone to sit by Auron to offer his indispensable advice on the care and maintenance of nihontou. King Goldfish Snake didn't look up, but from the curve of her mouth and the slope of her eyes I knew that he had to be the luckiest damn Goldfish Snake in the history of ever because she loved him so completely it was almost like she lost herself in doing it. She folded her hands in her lap as she looked back at me and knew that I knew. "And it wasn't so bad in the first years. But then the years swept on and fewer and fewer people came to us until finally none came at all, and the last priests went away or they died and we were left alone."

"It must have been hard," I said because I couldn't imagine it. All those years and them still singing --

"We had each other," she said, "And we had our memories, both of our time before in Zanarkand and our otherselves of time outside." She cocked her head and all those tiny braids spilled over her shoulder, and I wanted to dig my fingers into them, or stroke them quietly, like petting a cat. I managed to keep my hands to myself. "And you must understand. The other part is me just as much as this part is me. We are two halves of the same thing, and the division is hazy at best. I am Ashura and the All Holy is Ashura. We are Ashura."

"Well," I said after a while of her threading pearls into my hair, "I like you. Ashura, All Holy, or whatever. I bet you were the greatest mom ever."

As she swept her hand across my eyes I got the briefest touch of a girl all in green, grass bright hair a flurry around her face, pearls over her ear and her face lit with fire and light.

Ashura smiled again, gently, wistfully. "I loved her."

I squeezed her hand.

"That's all it takes."

-

This one's for you, kid. Happy eight years.

Heart,

Gabi