Author's Note: I have never written anything significant for Final Fantasy X before and I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I am terrified.

Adelphotes

By LeFox

Part I: Family

Chapter One: Survivors

Cold, the water was so cold. And at night the ocean was as black as the sky; it was impossible to tell which way he needed to swim to reach the surface. Air! His eyes, his chest, his mind burned with the desperate need for breath, and any moment now he was going to open his mouth against his will and breathe in the salty ocean water – and drown in it, and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Die. Become a fiend.

No, Isaaru thought, kicking fiercely in the direction he hoped would bring him to the surface. No, I can't die here.

Death was for later; death was for the Final Summoning, and for the Calm that followed it. Not here, not now, not here, not now, not here, not-

He broke the surface and drank in the freezing night air. Breathing burned, too; almost as badly as the need for air had burned, but there was a deep satisfaction in this pain, and he gulped down as much air as possible, treading water. I survived. For a moment, the elation of this simple fact was almost enough to overpower the much more important and pressing fact that he still needed to survive long enough to make it back to shore. For now, it was enough to breathe and breathe and breathe, and pretend for a moment, only a moment, that Sin wasn't still nearby.

. . .

Sin attacked at night, turning an already-terrifying event into something out of a nightmare. It was a small village on the coast; no one now even remembers its name – it was just another small settlement carved out of the map when Sin found it. Its extinction was hardly even noteworthy; many such towns met the same fate in the days when no summoner had yet brought the Calm to Spira.

One day there was a village.

And then there was Sin.

And that is all.

. . .

He'd meant to swim for the docks, but the docks were gone; jagged poles broke the surface of the dark water. Isaaru clung to them, wearily drifting from one to the next, gradually moving toward the shore. The sun was rising, casting a pale, sickly yellow light over what remained of what had been, until only a few hours ago, home.

Ruins. Shattered houses loomed out of the fading darkness like the skeletal remains of giants: here was a cracked timber resembling a ribcage, there was a blown-apart roof like the top of a skull. Isaaru climbed onto the rocky shore and simply lay there for a time, too tired, too heartsick to move. Surely sooner or later a survivor would climb out of those ruins and find him lying there, surely. His mother, maybe? His father had been killed by Sin just last year; she would have been devastated to lose her son in the same way; surely she would be looking for him. Isaaru felt exhaustion creeping over him like a shadow, and finally, unable to resist any longer, he succumbed to sleep.

When he woke, it was fully daylight: the sky was overcast, and the sun peered out from behind the clouds as if it, too, wanted to avoid looking at the wreckage. Isaaru closed his eyes again, squeezing them shut. Hours he'd been asleep, at least, and no one had come to find him. His ears were ringing; his head was throbbing; his eyes burned. Too much seawater, not enough air, he told himself: too much seawater in his eyes, yes, that was it, he wasn't crying, not at all.

A summoner must be Spira's light. Even in times of pain and suffering, a summoner must stand tall and smile. Weakness in a summoner is unthinkable. Weakness in a summoner is a blow to Spira's hope, and Spira has so little hope as it is. A summoner must be Spira's light. Never forget that.

A few ragged breaths later, he'd successfully fought down the tears. Isaaru pushed himself up, sitting upright and shaking his head, trying to clear away the ringing in his ears; it seemed to only grow worse, rising from a ring to a wail…

It was several seconds before the boy realized the wailing wasn't in his head at all.

He was on his feet immediately, running toward the source of the noise. The world swam disconcertingly, but for the most part, he kept his balance – and kept his gaze from resting on the familiar sights of home, cast now in an alien shape and form. No, focusing too long on that would break him, and there was a voice, a cry, a sound that required his complete attention. Nor could he afford to focus on the fact that he hadn't seen any survivors, nor could he afford to focus on the silence, the absolute silence, outside of that one lone cry.

A baby. An entire village, and this was all that remained: a sixteen-year-old boy and a squalling infant. Praise be to Yevon, Isaaru thought, carefully digging through the rubble of a house that had only recently been built: a young family, he remembered. They'd just welcomed their first child only a few months ago. There was a pale arm barely visible beneath a collapsed outer wall; Isaaru looked away sharply. Don't focus on the dead when the living still need your attention. Somewhere beneath the rubble was a crying baby, still alive despite all of the death around him, and what could that be if not a miracle?

Careful, so careful. Isaaru found his way to the bottom of the wreckage, moving each stone carefully. And there, at the bottom, a grisly scene: the baby, yes, alive and screaming, still wrapped protectively against his mother's chest. The woman had taken a fatal blow to the head; the back of her skull was completely shattered, yet she'd managed to shield her child from harm.

The name, the baby had a name. What was it…? "Pacce. Your name was Pacce, wasn't it?" Isaaru gently pried the infant loose from his mother's final embrace. Pacce continued to scream, red-faced and furious, struggling against the blanket he was wrapped in. "Strong lungs," Isaaru observed, cradling the baby against him, relieved by the knowledge that he wasn't alone in the universe; that Sin hadn't destroyed all life in this and all possible worlds.

Now what?

We can't stay here. Isaaru looked around, taking in what remained of the village. Here and there a body remained, and he found himself wishing he was already a summoner – at the very least, already an apprentice. With no surviving summoners here, no sending could be performed, and before long, these ruins would be crawling with fiends.

If his parents had only allowed him to begin his apprenticeship…

But it was too late for that now. Isaaru sighed, looking down at the baby in his arms. Pacce had quieted now, and was evidently drifting towards sleep. You complicate things, Isaaru thought, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the infant behind – they had both been spared from Sin's devastation, after all; surely they both had some purpose left to serve in Spira. Isaaru knew his own: to become a summoner, to defeat Sin. It would be interesting to see what might become of Pacce, if the child only survived long enough to get there.

But they couldn't stay here. Where, then?

Aimlessly, he drifted toward the way out of town – or, more accurately, where they way out had once been. A plan, he needed a plan, but right now he could barely string two thoughts together. Perhaps if he had some idea of where to go from here, this wouldn't seem so enormous, so daunting –

Isaaru yelped; a small rock had struck his ankle, bouncing harmlessly and skittering to the ground. He looked around, bewildered.

"Down here!" The weak voice finally caught his attention, rising from what remained of a cellar: a shallow, neatly-dug hole in the earth, nearly hidden in the shadows of the wreckage. Isaaru crept carefully to the edge, peering down… and nearly startled himself again in the process: a pair of wide, frightened eyes looked back up at him.

A child, Isaaru realized: a boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, perched halfway up the cellar's ladder, a cluster of stones in one hand.

Another survivor.

They stared at each other for a long moment, unmoving, unblinking.

The child spoke first, quietly hopeful. "Is Sin gone?" At Isaaru's nod, he fell silent a moment. Then: "I see the sky."

Isaaru glanced over his shoulder. "Yes."

"The roof is gone." The boy swallowed hard. "The house is gone. My parents…"

No bodies in the wreckage here, no limbs betraying someone's fate. "We can look for them, if you like. Why don't you come up?"

The boy looked down. "I slid on the ladder coming down here." He hesitated. "My ankle, I think it's…"

He didn't wait to hear the explanation. Carefully holding Pacce with one hand, Isaaru reached down with the other. "Take my hand," he urged. "You made it halfway up the ladder, after all, didn't you? What's another few rungs? I'll help you."

It was a slow process, made slower when Pacce woke and began wailing again. The child's ankle was clearly injured: he winced every time he had to put weight on it, and twice he nearly slipped and fell back into the cellar, but his grip on Isaaru's hand kept him from tumbling. Eventually, though, he pulled himself up to the ground, and they sat together at the top of the cellar, panting. Pacce cried and screamed.

"He might be hungry," the boy suggested, gesturing toward Pacce.

Isaaru looked down at his furious companion. "His mother was killed."

The boy was quiet, looking around at the destroyed village. "Sin destroyed my old town, too," he said. "We came here after that."

"That's what Sin does." Isaaru gave Pacce a finger to suck on, temporarily silencing him. "This is why I want to become a summoner. To put an end to this."

The boy stared at him in awe. "You're a summoner?"

"Not yet." Or perhaps I could have prevented this. "I hope to become one, though."

"You should go to Bevelle."

Isaaru blinked. "What?"

"Bevelle!" The boy leaned toward him, suddenly excited. "It's the heart of Yevon. They'll teach you to be a summoner! And it's not far from here, you can walk."

"Can you?" Isaaru frowned, glancing at the boy's ankle. It was badly bruised and swollen; it didn't appear to be broken, no, but injured: yes, badly.

The question was met with a startled stare. "You want me to come, too?"

"I can't leave you here."

"But…" A deep frown, an expression entirely too serious for a child. "I'll slow you down."

"Are we in a hurry?"

"You have a baby. Yes. You're in a hurry."

"Don't scold me." Isaaru found himself grinning. "You're coming along, and that's final. Can you stand?"

Stubbornly, the boy rose, balancing awkwardly on one foot. "I'm Maroda."

"Isaaru." Isaaru nodded in acknowledgement, then looked down at the baby in his arms. "And this is Pacce."

And we have a long road to walk to Bevelle, the three of us.

Author's Note: Help what am I doing