A hand slapped his cheek, jarring him into alertness. He tried to inhale, but choked on the water that clogged his lungs. It gushed out with a wet, retching sound. A few desperate, ragged breaths later and he figured was ready to open his eyes.

Or…eye. Something covered the right one. He lifted his fingers, tracing the outline of the eye patch with a sort of detached curiosity.

"Gippal! Gippal?" Two hands gripped his shoulders, shaking him. The hysterical female voice had him opening his eye. For a moment all he could see was blue, the vast brilliant sheen of the sky and the brightness of the sun beating down. Then his eye adjusted, and a shadowy figure came into view, staring down at him worriedly, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

An angel? No, she was too rumpled-looking. And besides, he didn't think angels would likely have dirt smudged on their cheeks. Several people stood around, murmuring to each other, watching the woman try to revive him.

"Say something," she urged, shaking him. "Are you okay?"

"Uh…" he shook his head to clear it. "I think so. Who are you, exactly?"

The murmuring stopped. Had he said something wrong? He glanced around, wondering why everyone was staring at him.

The blonde young woman frowned. "What's your name?" She asked, suspiciously.

"Uh…" he hesitated, thinking. What had she called him before? "Gip…pal?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Do you actually remember that?"

He flushed guiltily. "I heard you say it earlier."

"What do you remember?" She asked.

He thought – or tried to. As he concentrated on remembering, his mind got fuzzier, more confused. His head ached. His stomach clenched uncomfortably until he wondered if he was going to retch again.

Her small, warm fingers groped through the hair at the back of his head until he hissed with pain. She dragged them away, noting the blood that coated her fingers.

"A head wound," she concluded. "You took a pretty bad hit to the back of the head," she told him. "In all fairness, it was your own damn fault. You know better than to be wearing boots like that on deck." She motioned to the huge, black ship that was docked near them. "You slipped, hit your head, and rolled right off the deck. You're just lucky we were so close to shore and that I'm a decent swimmer." She climbed to her feet, wiping her bloody fingers on her shorts, and offering him her hand. "Come on," she said, expression inscrutable. "I'll take you to Doc. He'll be able to figure out what's wrong with you and how to fix it."

Gippal looked her over appraisingly. She talked like they'd known each other a while, but her face was totally unfamiliar. She was pretty, though. He wondered if they'd ever been involved. Just as quickly, he dismissed the idea. Surely she could do better than a guy with an eye patch. He took the hand she offered, letting her assist him to his feet. Though his head spun dizzily, he managed to keep his feet, somewhat surprised to find himself a whole head taller than she. He hadn't quite expected it; she had such a commanding presence he'd somehow expected to find himself dwarfed by her.

"Let's go." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Home's this way."

"Home?"

"New Home," she corrected. "It's where we live."

"We live together?" He couldn't keep his surprise off his face.

She glanced at him curiously, then laughed at his expression. "Not you and me," she said. "I meant the Al Bhed. We all live there. It's our Home."

"Oh." His brow furrowed in confusion. "What's an Al Bhed?"

She sighed.

---

"You sure did a number on yourself, son." Doc swabbed the wound with antiseptic of some sort, which stung painfully but stemmed the bleeding. "You're lucky Rikku was there to pull your ass out, or you'd be fish food right about now."

"So, what's the verdict?" The girl called Rikku paced impatiently. "Is it permanent?"

Doc shook his head and shrugged. "You never can tell with this kind of thing," he said. "Sometimes they remember right quick. But I heard tell of a few that never remembered." He sighed. "Best I can tell you is to keep watch of him. Don't try and force him to remember anything. Give it a little bit of time."

She snorted. "Time. Right. Like Djose'll just wait for him to come to his senses."

"Tell 'em the situation," Doc said. "They're good men out there. They'll have their orders. Nhadala'll take over for a while."

"What's Djose?" Gippal interrupted, a little perturbed by the conversation that was clearly over his head. He figured he'd be the sort of guy to take charge of his own destiny, and he didn't really appreciate them talking about him like he wasn't there.

"Djose's a temple," Rikku said dismissively, turning back to Doc. "So, what do we do with him?"

Doc chuckled. "Whatever you wanna do, kiddo. I got my work cut out for me here. Besides," he noted, "he's your boyfriend."

"Ex." Rikku clarified tightly. "Ex-boyfriend."

---

"So…" Gippal shoved his hands in his pockets, trailing along after Rikku as she forged a path through the village. "Where are we headed?"

"Since I've got babysitting duty, I'm taking you back to my place," she answered. Clearly she was not pleased with being assigned his keeper.

"I don't have a place?"

"No," she replied. "You live in Djose."

"In a temple? Am I a priest or something?" Had that been the cause of their split? Gods help him, he couldn't imagine being a priest. With the current bent of his thoughts where she was concerned, he didn't think he had it in him to be celibate.

She laughed. "No, you're not a priest."

"What am I, then?" He jogged a little, tired of lagging behind her. He wondered how she managed to get so far ahead of him so quickly, especially when he clearly had longer legs. Was she intentionally trying to lose him, or something?

She slanted him a sideways glance. "I don't think I ought to be telling you all this stuff. Shouldn't you be trying to remember on your own?"

"I don't know. Never had a head injury before." He paused, with a self-deprecating laugh. "That I remember, anyway," he amended, touching his eye patch. "We were really involved?"

"For a while," she said.

"What happened?"

"We outgrew each other." She crossed her arms, closing herself off. "I don't really want to talk about it, if you don't mind."

"So, if I'm so distasteful to you, why are you taking me to your place?" He asked.

She stopped dead for a moment, looking him over carefully. "For all intents and purposes, right now you're not Gippal. You're just a stranger with his face. You don't have anywhere else to go, and we're all family, we Al Bhed." She started walking again, a brisk pace he had trouble matching. "Maybe I feel a sort of responsibility for you. We grew up together. We were friends for a long time."

"So…we're not friends anymore?" Somehow that thought made him almost sad – like he somehow subconsciously understood that she had been the only person to ever really understand him, and the loss of her friendship wounded him even though he couldn't currently remember it.

"Not really. We're more like acquaintances." She didn't elaborate. Veering off the main road, she approached a small house, not unlike the others on the little off-shoot lane. It seemed to be unfitted with a lock of any sort, because she simply turned the knob and pushed the door open.

"No locks? Isn't that a little…unsafe?"

She gave him a censorious look. "We're family, here. We don't steal from each other. Just Yevonites who deserve a little divine retribution." She motioned him inside. "Besides, no one would steal from me anyway. I'm Cid's daughter."

"Who's Cid?"

"The leader of the Al Bhed." She blew back a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes, crossing into the small kitchen to retrieve a couple of glasses from a cupboard, then poured some water into them, handing one over to him.

"So that makes you what? A princess?" He eyed her skeptically. She didn't exactly fit his idea of any princess; not with that revealing outfit.

She shrugged, beads clacking together as a cluster of her golden braids rolled off her shoulders. "More or less. Probably less, considering the current state of my empire. My idiot brother'll take over one day, though, unless Pops gets his shit together and realizes that Brother is totally unfit to leadership."

"You have a brother…named Brother?" He cocked an eyebrow, half-hoping he'd misunderstood.

"Yeah. Pops wanted a bunch of kids. It was his not-so-subtle way of letting Mama know she'd better get ready for more." She gulped a fair amount of her water. "She died when I was three. Rogue machina."

He winced. "Ouch. I'm sorry."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You remember machina?" She asked, surprised.

"I guess so," he said, a little surprised himself. "Is that good?" It didn't seem like something he'd just forget, like walking or breathing or speaking.

"You didn't remember Djose and you live there, so I'd say so." She sat back heavily in a chair, no longer so worried about the possibility of babysitting him indefinitely. He'd remember. Sooner or later, he'd remember and get out of her hair.

"So, let's get a few ground rules out of the way, shall we?" She rested her elbows on her knees, cradling her face in her hands. "No snooping in my room. No inviting girls over for some hanky-panky. No singing in the shower at ungodly hours of the morning."

"I sing in the shower?" He asked, taken aback.

"Badly," she responded, nodding. "At ungodly hours of the morning, as mentioned. Please spare my neighbors. And me."

"Uh, okay. I don't think any of that should be a problem."

"Great! Now why don't you get out of here for a little while and explore while I set up the guest bedroom." She urged him towards the door.

"Guest bedroom?" He said skeptically. The tiny house didn't look like it was big enough to contain even one bedroom, much less a guest bedroom.

"Yep. Or, as I fondly call it, the couch. Now, get. I'll come find you in an hour or so."

He dug in his heels, reluctant to be tossed out into an unfamiliar world. "Wait! What if I get lost?"

She snorted indelicately. "You won't get lost; everyone here knows you. If I can't find you immediately, I'll just ask people where they last saw you. Or, inversely, you could ask people where to find me. Go rediscover your roots. Who knows? Maybe you'll remember something!"

And with that, the door snapped shut in his face. He briefly considered pounding on the door until she relented and let him in, but figured Rikku probably wasn't the kind to be easily intimidated.

So he affected his most confident air (or what he assumed was his most confident air – since he knew relatively little about himself, he couldn't exactly be sure), and headed off resolutely towards the east. He passed a cluster of women who eyed him somewhat hungrily, leading him to believe that, regardless of the eye patch, he was probably somewhat good-looking. Another small group of men approached, greeting him by name.

"Gippal! Finally, someone who'llknow what to do with that box of parts! I sent 'em down to Ynel in the workshop. You might want to head down there before they close up for the night, see what's in 'em."

"Oh. Uh…thanks. I'll get right on that." He paused briefly. "Which way's the workshop, again?"

That earned him a curious stare from all three men. "You're here twice a week. You hit your head or something?"

He smiled wryly, touching the raw, aching spot at the back of his head. "Something like that, actually. Don't remember much of anything right now."

"Sorry," one of the men said, looking abashed.

"Workshop's that way," another said, pointing down the dusty road. "About half a mile, on your left. Can't miss it."

"Good luck," said the third.

Gippal thanked them somewhat awkwardly – obviously they knew him, but he didn't recognize their faces, much less actually know their names – and headed in the direction they'd indicated.

It was a busy sort of village. Though he didn't see a market of any sort that would normally gather crowds the likes of which he saw on the streets, it seemed that everyone had somewhere to go, since they rushed around frantically.

A large, stone building loomed ahead – there was something oddly reminiscent of the structure that Gippal couldn't place. But he approached at a leisurely pace, half-hoping Rikku would come fetch him before he could get to it and give him a legitimate excuse not to go. But she didn't, and the entryway was just there, and so he went in before he could talk himself out of it.

There were only two people in the large room, and both of them were packing it up for the day.

"Ah, Gippal. We're done here, but there's a couple of boxes for you over there," a woman said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. "Have at it; consider the workshop yours for the night."

They were off before Gippal could manage anything other than a cursory greeting, but he wasn't too upset – it was damned awkward socializing with people you couldn't remember.

The light was fading, but a couple of switches near the entrance filled the room with light. And he couldn't help being a little curious about what was in those boxes, since by all accounts he was the only one who would be able to do anything with them. He stripped away the tape binding the boxes, and lifted the lid. At first he didn't know what he was looking at, so he dumped the box out onto the table, sorting the parts by size and apparent function. At a loss as to what to do with such an assortment of things, he resolved to pack it all up and see if he couldn't find himself something to eat. He reached for the tools laid out of the table first. His fingers closed over the socket wrench and he stilled for a moment. Surprised, he lifted the object off the table, relishing the familiar weight of the object in his hand.

It felt comfortable and stable – the only stable thing in an unstable, unfamiliar world. It felt like it was a part of him, like a long-lost friend.

He didn't stop to think about what it meant. He just grabbed the remaining boxes, dumped the parts on the table, and started looting through the jumbled mess, looking for things to use.

---

A little over an hour later, that was where Rikku found him, an assortment of tools scattered all around, parts littering the floor, hunched over the table, shirtless. Even in the early evening, the heat was still stifling, which was likely why he'd removed it. Sweat shimmered on his skin, and she watched the muscles in his back work as he tightened bolts.

Anyone else might've scolded him for his untidy workspace, for his complete disorganization and his blatant flouting of the workplace safety all the rest of the Al Bhed so carefully employed, but Rikku know that was how Gippal worked best. He forgot everything but the task at hand, so completely absorbed in his work that he didn't notice her despite the noise she'd made entering the closed workshop until she was right beside him.

"Oh." He swiped his palm across his forehead, wiping away sweat. "Hey."

"Hey," she returned. "You're building."

"Yeah." He looked down at the machine he'd been assembling. "This is what I do, isn't it? It feels…right."

"Mmhmm." She ran her fingers through her hair, examining what he'd been building. "You're a mechanic. You work in Djose. So, what's it do?"

"I have no idea." He looked a little confused. "My hands tell me this goes here and that goes there, but I don't really know what it is I'm building."

"You'll figure it out eventually," she said, oddly sympathetic to the note of worry in his voice. "Come on. It's about time for dinner."

---

"Sorry I wasn't more help," he said sheepishly, as she set a plate before him. "I, um, don't remember how to cook."

She snorted, giving him a vaguely amused look as she took a seat at the small kitchen table. "You never knew how to cook in the first place," she said. "Your talents lie in machinery…and far, far away from all things culinary. You're not too handy with the housework, either. You employ a fulltime cook and maid."

"Really? Huh," he said, thoughtfully. "I must be loaded."

"Pretty much."

She said it nonchalantly, but he arched an eyebrow. "Jealous?"

She shook her head, lips twisting in a wry smile. "I'm even more loaded than you are."

"And you…live in a tiny, one-bedroom house in the middle of the desert," he said, disbelievingly.

"Don't knock it when you're taking advantage of it," she chastised. "Besides, I've got better things to spend my money on. I don't need a ton of space."

"Like what?" He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head.

"I have an airship. It's small, but it's just for me. And I'm helping fix up Bikanel. After it was destroyed the last time, a lot of Al Bhed…lost hope. Now that Sin's gone, and Yevon's been totally re-worked, it's getting easier for them to dream again, but I think they're still a little afraid to. That's why my idiot brother shouldn't be in charge. He'll go along for the ride, but he's not interested in changing anything himself." She took a deep breath. "I've gone up against the world before. I can do it again. I will do it again, if I need to. I've helped rebuild this place with my own hands and my own funds. It's not going to be destroyed again."

The fierce intensity in her voice was inspiring. Somehow he'd allowed himself to think that she was as fragile as she looked. But if half of what she'd said was true, he had no doubt that she had the guts to do anything she set her mind to.

"I hate to ruin a perfectly good speech," he said, "but…what's Sin?"

For a moment she stared at him blankly. Then she stood, patted the top of his head, and started removing dishes to the sink in the kitchen. "Never mind," she said, "it's not all that important anymore."

"I really want to know," he said as she loaded dishes into the dishwasher.

She turned around, smiling sweetly. "Then work on remembering on your own," she said.

"Gee, thanks," he grumbled. "No pressure or anything."

She disappeared down the tiny hallway that he figured lead to her bedroom, and returned with a bundle of blankets. "Here," she said, shoving them into his arms. "I don't know about you, but I've had a very long day. Go ahead and set up whenever you feel like going to sleep. See you in the morning."

She left him there, with the bundle of bedclothes in his arms, staring at the much-too-small couch in consternation. A few seconds later, he heard her bedroom door open and close.

He couldn't help his irritation – she'd kicked him out of her house for over an hour on the pretext of setting up a place for him to sleep. If she hadn't been doing that, what had she been doing? He quashed the feeling nearly as quickly as it had risen. She was being kind enough to let him stay, regardless of their past and her obvious distaste for his company, so what right did he have to question her? None at all.

He sighed, laying the sheet haphazardly over the couch, tossing down the worn pillow she'd provided. He kicked off his shoes and splayed out on the couch fully-clothed. She either hadn't thought to obtain some pajamas for him, or there were none available for him. It didn't matter. He yanked the heavy blanket up to his chin and closed his eye.

Somehow he'd thought that, with all he'd gone through that day, he'd have been sound asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Instead, he tossed and turned restlessly…and dreamed.