DISCLAIMER: This goes for the whole fic – I own NOTHING except Giia, Square owns everything else.

Chapter One

Rikku wasn't happy. She knew she looked happy, and she knew everyone else thought she was happy, but she wasn't. In all fairness, it taken her a while to notice that there was something missing in her life. But then she figured that at fifteen, everyone got restless about their lives, so she'd just have to wait it out. When she joined her cousin's pilgrimage, the achy feeling eased a bit, but didn't go away completely.

She spent her time being her normal ultra-bouncy Rikku-self, cheering everybody up and being more alive than anyone they'd ever met before. She joined the party at the Moonflow, and by Guadosalam, she'd gotten everybody figured out: her cousin, who'd forgotten to have a childhood and so wasn't sure how to play properly. The boy that she'd met in Baaj who was the opposite, and now learning to grow up. Wakka; a nice guy who'd gotten too caught up in Yevon to question it. Kimahri…well she was sure Kimahri was nice too, in a kind of never-ever-talking way. But he was a giant blue kitty really. Lulu was so sophisticated, all icy and grown-up and dangerous. Rikku knew icy was one thing she'd never be; she was too much like the desert she came from; hot and fiery. If she got angry, you knew about it. As did the rest of Spira when she was yelling.

She might only be fifteen, but she'd learned that the less people thought of her, the more they'd tell her. Things that of course wouldn't interest a thoughtless child like her. Because that's how they all saw her; and she encouraged them to think that way.

Except him. The one person in the party that she couldn't figure out. But she knew that he saw through the twirls and the childishness to the almost-a-woman underneath. That's why she stayed quiet around him, because there was no point in trying to make him think she was a foolish child. But it seemed to her that the more she tried to find out about this very human-sized man with a legend-sized reputation, the less she knew. His one eye that was utterly unreadable and yet could look deep into her soul, because he couldn't figure out who she was either.

He knew who she wasn't, but listing all the things she wasn't didn't help him get closer to what she was. There were pockets of sincerity in her; her fear of lightning, her courage facing fiends, her deep love for her cousin, her caring for all forms of life; those were all real, he was sure. But other parts weren't.

So because neither of them knew what the other was, they both stayed quiet around each other. Two enigmas trying to see through the mystery of the other. And while they were busy trying to know each other without being known themselves, neither Auron nor Rikku noticed what was really happening. The silence, which had once been so irritating to her, became comfortable. The laugh of happiness at something as simple as a flower, which had once seemed so unnecessary to him, produced a small half-smile, hidden behind his cowl. They knew each other now, and they had no idea of it. So she still called him a big meanie, and he still called her a foolish girl, and they were friends who didn't trust each other.

It was Rikku who worked it out first, and by the time she had, it had already changed into something else. It went unnoticed from the Moonflow to Bikanel. Then she went Home. She went Home to find it burning, to find Yevon destroying everything her family and her people had strived so hard to build, to have another beloved cousin die in her arms, to have fiends and Guado raping everything she held sacred because she was the heathen. And that was when she stopped. In a fraction of a second, she changed. The coquettish laughter, the twirling, the child still in her, all got burned away with the fire consuming her Home. She went cold and hard and…dead. Unknowingly, she became a female version of Auron. She beat the crap out of any Guado or fiend unlucky enough to get in her way with sub-zero fury. She told Tidus the truth about what was going to happen to his beloved Yuna with a demonic glee that someone else was feeling just a portion of the anguish she did. It didn't matter to her when he collapsed to his knees, because at least what he loved was still alive, could still be saved. Hers couldn't. What she loved was already being trampled and spat on by people who could not see the fallacy of innocent summoners being sacrificed for them – too stupid to grasp their own reality.

When they were all on her father's airship, and the rockets were let loose to go careering to finally end her Home, it got worse. She went into freefall. She didn't how, when or where she was going to land, but she was certain that it would be a crash. And there was nothing that could stop it. Sooner or later, she'd break, lose her mind and drown in the grief and the rage and the sorrow that was flooding her senses. She almost wanted to laugh when Wakka likened the explosion to 'happy festival fireworks'. To mock him and the fact that his blindness was such that even now he could not see the amount of wrong that had been dealt here. Her crazy anger boiled out instead, and she ran from the bridge before the instinct to kill him took over. She found herself in the engine room, with the fumes that made her dizzy, the constant drip-drip-drip of oil, the hissing clouds of steam that surrounded her. And she broke.

The tears started to come slowly, just rolling down her cheek one at a time. Then they came faster, until she couldn't see through the tears and couldn't breathe through the sobs that were choking her. And the pain didn't go away, it just got worse. She got up, kicking the wall, then punching it until her fists were split and bleeding and the tears were still more of grief and anger than of pain.

Then he came. And her bloodied, mangled hands weren't raining blows on the unfeeling hull of the ship; they were hitting a chest plate. She heard the low rumble of his voice without hearing the words. Then he caught her hands in his, at least twice the size of hers. Somehow it hurt far more hitting flesh than it had hitting the unyielding wall. When the pain came rushing back, so did the world. She understood words again. Her knees gave way, her back against the wall, still numb. He knelt in front of her and took her hands again. "Rikku."

She looked up. "It's gone, Auron," she whispered. "The whole thing."

"I know." His voice was so quiet and so deep she barely heard it above the whine of the engines. He took her hands and pulled out a clean piece of cloth and wiped the blood away with more tenderness than she thought he possessed.

"Just…blew it up…gone…and Yunie wasn't even there…"

He didn't say anything, just pulled out a potion and poured it carefully over the wounds in her hands. She flinched at the stinging pain as the cuts healed. Once they were gone, she woke up slightly. "I think you made a mistake, you know."

He gave her hands back to her, then settled himself next to her. "How so?"

"Letting me be a guardian. I'm crappy."

"No, you're not." He didn't reassure her anymore than that, but he didn't have to, because the sincerity he put into those three words resounded in the air between them.

She looked up and met his gaze. He didn't look away, and in those few seconds she realised she actually had a friend in this man. Without thinking, she put her arms around his chest, pushing her face into his coat. When she spoke, it was with words muffled by emotion and the fabric. "I wish…I was as strong as you are."

His hand was on her back where it had crept unnoticed, but he turned his face away and gave that short, sardonic laugh; because there was nothing strong about him. Inside the cracks were evident. "No, you don't. If you stay strong all the time it's only because you're afraid."

She pulled back slightly and put her head to one side. "What are you afraid of, Auron?"

"The same thing you are. Only I am a poor actor, so must hide behind dark glasses rather than childish mannerisms."

The corner of her mouth tilted upward. "You've just told me the truth. Surely that took courage."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're more than you appear to be, aren't you?"

She smiled then; a true smile. "As are you."

He almost smiled. "Why don't you want people to know who you really are?"

"The less people think of you the more they'll reveal to you. People don't think a fifteen year old will be interested in anything important."

He found that he was amazed by this girl. It didn't seem possible that she was only fifteen. She had an experienced soul in her young body. He wondered how that had happened. "Are you?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes. If it affects the people I care about." When she pulled back, she caught a wave of his scent. Strong, but not at all unpleasant. In fact she could suddenly imagine that it would smell so much better if she were breathing it from his skin rather than just his coat. Smart yes. Also a bouncy bundle of raging hormones. And those hormones, despite what her brain was emphatically denying, were reacting like an internal fireworks display to Auron's closeness. Her breathing increased, she flushed a little, and got a funny feeling somewhere down south. She wasn't sure what to do about it, so got up to go.

As she did so, her lips came to his eyelevel for a second, and he couldn't help noticing the shape of her body through the vest she wore. Then his brain cut in, reminded him sternly that she was underage and that there were twenty years between them. And that he was dead. The flicker of desire vanished, then sprang back to life again when she bent and kissed him on his stubbled cheek quickly with her soft sweet mouth. "Thanks, Auron."

"Anytime."

And as she left, he found he meant it.

A/N: What do you think then? Please let me know – I accept anonymous reviews too, and it takes all of three seconds to write 'It's good'. So PLEASE, I am BEGGING you, review!