Stars shone above the ruins of Zanarkand. The road wound between shattered towers, stretching to the horizon in broken gasps of concrete and metal.
Two days' walk from Mount Gagazet, a slab that had crumpled upward now sheltered a small fire and four guardians. While Wakka held the sticks with their dinner over the fire, turning them now and then, the others stared into space or closed their eyes for half a nap. Yuna had slipped away for a walk, followed closely by Kimahri, not long after Auron had spotted this cave of sorts and halted them to make camp. Promise you'll be careful, Rikku had whispered fiercely at her as she passed, if some fiend gets you now, I swear I'll— she'd choked on this, exhaustion taking over. I'll steal the pyreflies that were you right out of the sky and make you stay. Yuna had just gotten that same look as always, determined and helpless at once, and said, Rikku. Just said her name, and after a moment's hesitation, turned and walked into the darkness.
Rikku wasn't sure how much further they had to walk to reach the end, but she knew this: Every step forward, through the idly dancing pyreflies, the mist that flashed in pale colors as the dead swirled, was counting down toward Yuna's death. If she could know how many steps were left, she could plan what to do if they still didn't have a plan at ten thousand steps, one thousand, two... she could string out when to argue against going on (no heat behind it, not when counting down to Yuna's last step, laugh, breath, it was just— she couldn't stop), when to sit quiet and hope Tidus could win, when to goof around and make them all laugh, when to sit Yuna down somewhere and confess to every little mistake and white lie and wrong that she had never wanted to confess until they were maybe in their nineties and Yuna would laugh and laugh instead of doing what Rikku was pretty sure they'd both do now, which was cry.
She didn't want to see Yuna cry almost as much as she didn't want to see Yuna fall at the side of her final aeon. Victory and death hand in hand, what a great joke.
The sky was beginning to lighten now in the distance, more than the thousands of pyreflies could account for; dawn. Her eyes were beginning to blur and the damn Ahriman in the last battle had gotten in too many hits while she was dashing forward over and over, stealing musk after musk. They needed at least Auron's armor to be confuseproof more than they needed to conserve phoenix downs at this point, she knew. That didn't make her body hurt any less from being knocked out and revived four times this night.
But she'd been brought up as a survivor—no matter how much she was tempted to break out one of those vials in her pocket, the standards ingrained since early childhood just wouldn't let her do it. Her mental tally of physical condition against stock of potions had always spoken in her father's gruff voice, legacy of drills that started in childhood. Sprint, spin, leap away. Avoid every hit you could, and learn from those you couldn't. Know just how many hits you could take from each enemy you encountered, and treasure every potion and phoenix down like it was your last.
Over these last weeks, that voice in her mind had switched to the smooth, deep growl that had sent her spinning and lunging across impromptu battlefields all across Spira, from the north bank of the Moonflow to Gagazet Pass, pushing her through the nightmare of the Thunder Plains and now Zanarkand-that-was.
If she lived, she thought it might be nice to hear him say her name for something besides an order. They could—they could all go to Besaid, she had never been, she didn't think Auron had either, and eat and talk and sleep and laugh, and maybe, just maybe, this time suspended in time would eventually mellow and fade behind them. If she lived; and if they all lived; and if the dream could be sustained for only a little longer. Only a little.
"Rikku," Wakka called, and she looked up, automatic smile perking at her lips. "Come take this. It's for Sir Auron." She nodded, hopped up and brushed off the dust of a thousand years' dreams, darted across to collect the three skewers of odd meat from Wakka's hands and go in search of their intended owner.
Maybe, if she lived, she could even see him smile.