Brother had never known how much the world could change in just a year and a half. His entire life up until then had been one long unending routine; his father would find a new set of ruins that needed to be searched, Brother would go off with a team to help excavate any ancient machina that hadn't completely turned into a pile of rust, they'd drag it all back to Home to be fixed or studied depending on how well it had held up over the years, and then the process would repeat. The setting would change depending on what damp pit of an abandoned temple or sunken city Cid had hunted down most recently, and they'd occasionally be shaken up Sin attacking their ships, although for everyone in Spira that itself was part of a routine life, but apart from that it had been a cycle he'd always assumed he'd be caught in for his entire life. And would have been perfectly happy with that; he knew that there weren't many things that he could be called skilled at, but pulling machina safely from the sea was the one he was best at.

That had changed with the destruction of Home. No, even before that; life as he'd known it had ended the day that Cid had gotten word that Yuna was training with the temple and become obsessed with kidnapped Summoners and developing a machina that could defeat Sin without a sacrifice, although that old life had limped along on its last legs for a little while longer before it had collapsed completely. Once the collapse began it seemed to tumbled down faster by the day, some of the changes good, some bad, all definitely different from how he'd always expected life to be. His home gone, his work changed from overseeing excavations to playing pilot, his world freed from Sin, his heart stolen by a beautiful girl who was much too deeply in mourning for him to even try turning her eyes his way, his people suddenly starting to find acceptance from the people who had always oppressed them.

Brother had managed to keep his footing in the renewed Spira for awhile. He'd thought that as soon as things settled down a little they'd go back to ruins crawling they way they'd always done, more freely than ever now that they didn't need to worry about keeping out of waters Sin had recently been spotted in or Yevonites becoming overly paranoid if they spotted Al Bhed ships off their shores too often. It never even crossed his mind that they might not; it was the only thing they had left of they way life had always been, so of course they'd be going back to it eventually.

Then Cid started talking about starting up airship tours for the Yevonites instead, and that last little bit of what had always been fell apart in a shouting match that had ended with Brother storming off, only Buddy and Rikku choosing to follow him instead of staying with his father. That wasn't a surprise; Brother had never been any good with words, or shaping an argument so he'd be the one people sided with.

It didn't matter much. His sister had been the one person he'd always made sure to bring on his crews, the two of them together the best pair of workers their father had, and even if they couldn't get a ship while in their father's bad books there were plenty of places on the mainland that they'd never been able to explore before. In between finding and fixing new machina, teaching Yevonites how to use them at Rikku's insistence, and evenings spent learning the common language with Rikku and Buddy's help (and he was more grateful than ever for Buddy then, when his friend caught his sister trying to teach him wrong phrases more than once as a joke) their days passed quickly and, for the most part, happily. They'd even picked up a couple more members to their group on the way, in a boy they'd found already digging up an engine they'd been searching for and a Hypello who practically seemed to be capable of producing supplies out of thin air.

Then there'd been Gagazet, and the sphere.

Rikku had apologized multiple times for needing to leave them so she could rush it to Yuna as soon as possible, although she'd grinned brightly the entire time at the excuse to see their cousin again after so long. Brother hadn't blamed her for that; he wanted to see Yuna again too, enough that he'd been very tempted to tell her that they'd go as a group instead of making her take off alone. The only reason he'd held back was that he'd known what was on the sphere. Brother did not want to be there to watch Yuna finding out that her boyfriend might be alive after all, wiping away any chance he might have had of winning her heart once he could speak her language.

He and Buddy had ended up leaving Shinra and Barkeep in Kimahri's care for awhile going the opposite way, north past even Zanarkand, chasing rumors they'd come across here and there about another airship hidden in ice but never before bothered with because none of them really liked the cold. Going at all was just another sign of how much the world had changed since The Eternal Calm began; if Cid had ever asked Brother to go after anything at all that far north when they were still speaking, Brother would have flat-out refused even with the fight he knew it would lead it. The coldest place he'd ever been willing to go to back then was Macalania, and he'd only been willing to take his one trip there because he'd been worried about Rikku going insane and becoming a guardian and had needed to find out why. But in the world that he'd found himself living in an airship would be the one thing worth freezing to find; the one discovery great enough to prove to his father that even if he'd given up on their old work Brother was perfectly capable of keeping it up on his own, the one machina that might be useful to Yuna once Rikku dragged her away from her home and give him a chance to stay near her, the one chance he had of finally getting transportation great enough to use to hunt down machina all around the world that he wouldn't need Cid's permission to use.

Which brought him to the now, where he was freezing and starving and thousands of miles away from the life he'd always imagined leading back when Home still stood. But for the first time in weeks he could see a bird in the sky above him, and in the lifeless land of ice it looked like hope.