I don't know what I was thinking – I couldn't have told you then, and I certainly couldn't tell you now. I'm not spontaneous or impulsive, and we had work to do. I knew that. There was the distress call from the Celsius, and we were running low on potions and phoenix downs, and yet…

And yet. "Hey."

They stopped and turned to look at me, walking a few paces behind them. They had learned quickly that while I didn't say much, I wasn't to be ignored when I did.

"Go on ahead to the ship. Maybe get some supplies from O'aka. I'll catch up later."

Rikku opened her mouth and then closed it. She exchanged a quick glance with Yuna.

"Uh, don't you want to know what the distress call was for?" Yuna said. Rikku nodded furiously.

"Brother sounded pretty frantic," she piped up. She was practically vibrating – bouncing on the balls of her feet and swinging her arms and looking this way and that. The curiosity – and possibly a bit of concern – was clearly killing her.

"He's pretty excitable," I retorted. "I'll catch up, okay? If the call is really urgent, then take care of it without me."

Rikku lips quirked upwards and Yuna raised an eyebrow. We all knew I was the natural fighter in the group, even if Yuna did have a certain skill with her Gunner dressphere. If they were going to fight, they would need me there.

"Okay, fine. If it's really important, then call me, okay? Now scram." Without waiting for an answer, I turned and went back the way we'd come, heading for the enormous tent in the distance.

"Lord meyvn, my sincerest apologies for disturbing you, but one of Lady Yuna's party is back and I did not think it would be wise to ignore her."

Nooj glanced up. The pretty young woman in the doorway had been an acolyte before the Eternal Calm, and it showed in her demure, subservient manners – not to mention her absurdly formal language. "Is that how they made you talk in those ridiculous temples?" he asked absently. "From the way you behave, it's like you think I'm going to smack you if you don't treat me like a god."

"Sorry, sir," she squeaked.

Nooj sighed. "Let her in."

"Yes, sir." She scurried out like a frightened mouse and he wondered if he really looked that scary.

He hadn't realized he'd said it aloud until an all-too-familiar voice in the doorway made him jump. "To people who don't know you?" He looked up, almost afraid of what he'd find. "Sure." When she was standing behind Yuna and her cousin, it was safe. He hadn't had to acknowledge her. But now…

She shot him a wry smile when their eyes met. "Am I so ugly, now? You look like you've eaten a lemon."

Nooj dropped his eyes to his paperwork because by the gods, no, she was more beautiful than ever. No longer a teenaged recorder with a surprising ability to swing a sword, she was a woman, every inch of her made of muscle, and wielding a sword so large he couldn't believe she could do more than lift it. "According to most people, I always look like that. Was there something you wanted?"

A cursory glance at her face told him she was not impressed with him. "Yes, actually. I wanted to know why you're being such a jackass."

Nooj paused, studying a small scratch in the surface of his desk. "Gippal said a wise man once told him that only a jackass can change the world."

Paine dropped into the chair on the other side of his desk, legs and arms akimbo, and somehow all he could think was that she was sitting like a man. Not that he'd expect any different of her.

"So," she said. "Was that the truth?"

"What?"

"What you said earier about that sphere we stole from New Yevon. Of that giant machina, and the mystery man. Is that all true? Do you really not know who he was?"

Nooj shook his head. "I've never seen him before. But we have researchers on it."

"Hmph." Paine frowned. "You better as hell tell me if you find anything."

Nooj nodded and couldn't help noticing the shadows of her body revealed by the scraps of her leather outfit – the hollows of her collarbone, the line of her cleavage, the junction between hip and thigh. He swallowed hard and focused his eyes on her face.

She raised an eyebrow and it was only through sheer willpower that he managed not to blush. "Not so ugly after all."

"I've never said you were ugly," he answered, and was mortified to hear his voice come out rough and unsteady.

Paine laughed and stood, starting to walk around the circular office, gazing at the pictures on the walls and the spheres in the open filing cabinet. "So," she said again. "Nice place you've got here. Seems I'm the only one of us not leading a faction, huh? Gippal's got his Machine Faction, you've got the Youth League, Baralai's got New Yevon – and I'm a spherehunter. And unofficially, a part-time babysitter, with the way those two act."

Nooj frowned. "You're part of one of the most respected groups around."

Paine glanced sidelong at him with a wry smile. "We're only respected because of Yuna. We're a rather motley crew, actually – not unlike your own."

She had come around full circle, Nooj realized. She was sitting on the edge of his desk, close enough for him to smell her, leather and sword polish, far too close for him to keep his breathing even, and she was laughing again.

"You haven't changed a bit, old man," she said, and then she kissed him, and he forgot to be offended.

It was like knocking down a dam – no sooner had her lips touched his than he was standing, clumsy without his cane but determined, and backing her up against the wall. Dimly he heard a crash and realized that in his haste to stand up he had knocked over his chair. She laughed against his mouth and then wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing into his body and forcing a broken moan from his lips which, she knew, he would later deny. Because this was Nooj, and she knew him better than anyone – he couldn't allow himself to feel. Not the Deathseeker. Feeling was weakness, she was a weakness.

But she was warm and firm and she understood him. It was getting harder to reason that away.

She was tearing off his shoulderpads (which was actually a rather complicated affair, what with the various buckles across his torso), and had unzipped his suit halfway down his torso. He wanted to ask what she was doing, what she was thinking. He had to tell her that they couldn't do this here, where anyone could walk in and see. That he had a reputation to uphold, and so did she, and those reputations did not involve wild, passionate sex against the wall of his office. But then she drew her tongue along the scarred, jagged line of his shoulder where flesh met metal, and he threw his head back and moaned.

It should have been perfect – or as close to perfect as they could get in this chaos, and carrying so much baggage. It should have been like coming home.

His good hand slid under her shirt and she arched into his touch, the smell of him - machina oil, steel, soap - filling her nostrils. It should have been perfect, but his fingertips, skating over her stomach, found a little patch of odd skin, flesh that felt out of place. A raised bump, and he knew in an instant that it was a badly-healed scar – the kind that resulted from stitching oneself up and not enough potions at hand.

Nooj didn't mind scars. He had so many he had lost count. Hell, he was missing an arm and a leg. Scars and calluses and chapped lips didn't bother him – he wasn't looking for a soft, silky woman who smelt of flowers and spices, not like most men he knew. But that one he knew, from its size and shape and location – and because it hadn't been there the last time he'd mapped out of the scars on her body.

Memories came to her, unbidden – icy desert nights in conjoined sleeping bags, sand between their toes and in their hair, hands rough and lips chapped, teeth clenched, struggling to keep quiet so as not to wake Gippal and Baralai – and then the memory of fire blooming in her belly, a sharp and blinding pain, and the wet warmth of blood seeping through her fingers as she clenched the wound. I said your work is done. And his eyes, empty and cold, staring down at her as she fell to the ground with something like disdain.

Paine realized with a start that he was backing away, stumbling a little, his cheeks flushed and his eyes glazed but the look on his face entirely different from what it had been moments before. He backed away so far that he hit the wall, leaning heavily upon it, his eyes looking lost. She wanted to fetch him his cane, but she was frozen in place - and he had never liked people reminding him of his disabilities.

It wasn't you, she wanted to say. Or perhaps, it's not your fault.

It was a long time ago.

Forget about it.

It's okay.

But the words kept sticking in her throat – probably because it wasn't okay. Probably because she didn't want him to forget about it, because she knew she never would. Probably because the fact that it wasn't his fault, or that it was never actually him that pulled the trigger, or that it was a long time ago – probably because none of those outweighed the bullet in her gut or the look in his eyes as she collapsed to the dusty road and was left to die.

I love you, she wanted to say, and she did, and yet…

And yet.

"You should go," he said, his voice cracking. He was staring at his hands and she knew him too well. He was a Deathseeker, and she no longer trusted him with his own life. He would never take the coward's way out, nor would he seek his own death while there was still work to be done, but he could still hurt himself. And once all this was over, she wasn't sure if he would be able to think of a reason not to lay himself to rest.

She wanted to give him one.

There were a thousand things she wanted to say. Finish what you started.

I love you.

I'm not leaving.

I don't blame you.

I lived.

It's only a scar.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself – it wasn't you that got shot.

They call you Nooj the Undying. Do you have to prove them wrong?

You're acting like a child.

Don't be stupid.

I love you.

I want you.

"I –"

But her throat was like flypaper, and so she gave up.

It wouldn't be the last she would see of him, she knew. But there were people to save, gil to be made, potions to buy, spheres to hunt, and there was a distress call from the Celsius that she needed to answer.

So she left, slamming the door as hard as she could, and even without turning around she knew with a certain amount of satisfaction that Nooj, wallowing in his self-pity, had flinched.

I'll find you a reason to live. I goddamn will, you see if I don't. You won't die on me, Nooj.

You damn well won't.