A/N: This fic is dedicated to Kyasarin X. Thank you a million times over for all your encouragement and support. You're the best!
Disclaimer: I own no part of SquareEnix or FFX.
Like Death Warmed Over
Chapter 1
Sin was gone; Tidus too. Yuna was kicking some serious ass and taking charge, even more so than before Spira's poster girl for hope. Wakka and Lulu were (miraculously) engaged, Kimahri had moved on to bigger and better Ronso business, and Auron was… well, Auron was dead. Turned out he had been all along, actually, and to those of us putting our lives back together after the pilgrimage, he was exhibiting no signs of becoming anything but.
This was important to note because when I saw him in Sanubia, two years after his Sending, it was the resounding solidarity of this fact that informed me something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
It was two years after Yunie's pilgrimage ended, and I was back in Bikanel, surprisingly not making myself useful in putting the finishing touches on the rebuild of Home. Despite the shiny and high-tech nature of it all, it was just too simple for me.
If only I'd stuck to simple.
A lot of stories start out that way, y'know – if only I hadn't done this or had done that, blah, blah, blah. But I've yet to hear another with an ending like mine. Makes sense, I guess. They say the dead don't tell stories and all that.
If only, I might still be living.
I was building a new machina; this one was revolutionary. Had to do with intercontinental communication – pretty essential when you figured there still weren't enough airships to go around and half of Spira's most efficient mode of transport – and thus, message delivery – involved ships and chocobos. We had spherecasts, sure, but we could only reach where technology existed. Places like Besaid were just off the map.
This was going to be big – no, it was going to be fracking enormous, and I was pumped. The day I died, I was so close to finishing the first prototype I could feel the excitement, the adrenaline coursing through my veins as I snapped the cover onto the parts. My fingers dexterously typed "TEST" on the keypad and I held my breath as I set the coordinates for message delivery. It was time. If all had gone well, it would have rocketed from the window I stood at out into the desert. But nothing happened when I pressed the power switch, and I was perplexed. Assuming that my wiring was faulty, I pulled off the cover to have a look, and the thing went haywire, flying crookedly around the room. Cursing under my breath, I ran after it, trying to turn it off, when it flew at full force towards one of the air vents attached to the ceiling, bounced off and came crashing to the ground with a whir. I swore in Al Bhed and flipped the power switch off, just in case, when the wrenching sound of metal breaking away from metal distracted me. I looked up just in time to see an enormous piece of the air duct drop from the ceiling above me, and then there was pain.
In all honesty, I don't remember much about my death. I'm sure the earth-shattering noise of the whole ordeal probably brought half of Home running, but if I'd been able to register that, I probably would have lived. There was pain, a lot of wet and then a peaceful flooded feeling that had to be death. It wasn't all that enjoyable. Not because it was death, and I was too young to die or any of that, but because the next thing I knew I was back in Bevelle in the Chamber of the Fayth and Bahamut was staring me in the face.
The kid version, I mean. I would have been infinitely more affected had it been the unholy monster aeon.
The most annoying thing about Bahamut was the way he refused to answer my questions. Wouldn't even tell me how I got there, or if I was dead, or just in limbo. Bahamut had plans of his own, and he wasn't about to let me in on them, even though I felt quite sure I was a key component of those plans. So, without so much as an explanatory word, I found myself deposited on the sands of Sanubia, the Yevon-forsaken voice of that fayth echoing in my head, "Your story begins here."