A/N: First off, the obvious disclaimer: I don't own FFX. Well, not the rights. I do own a copy. And a version of X-2 I bought in Kuala Lumpur when I was eleven and then never played. Anyway. First actual story fanfic. Bit worried. I've discovered now that I'm a pretty slow updater: I'm still writing this, but I'm pretty busy and also a terrible procrastinator. Apologies in advance.

So in this version Auron is head over heels in love with Jecht and completely in denial about it, because someone put the idea in my head and I found it kind of funny and then a strangely appealing concept. I've given the admittedly very sketchy canon basis for it when I find it. (I'd rather have said this later, but then people might read it and get up to that bit and then hate it. So.) It doesn't take up the whole story. Auron has plenty of other problems to be getting on with.

He did not see it.

They introduced her to him almost as an afterthought, or so he thought at the time. Kinoc, looking at him sideways with that peculiar half-smile he stiffened and froze after he came into real power; here, this is Mirada, my cousin, the high priest's daughter. It has been a long time and most of his early life is long hidden in the holes and patches of a mind worn and retained too long, and he no longer remembers her name well; he remembers it on paper, but not the sound, or any of the echoes it carried. She hated it for reasons she never told him, and neither he nor anyone else used it much unless her father was listening. She gave a different nickname every time she was asked for one.

"Not Mirada, you're mistaken today, Kinoc."

It had been in the courtyard in the Third Cloister, with the sundial and waterfall playing round the stones in the centre, and it was summer and noon and he had to blink to see properly.

"Really."

"I'm Shada."

"And who would that be?" Kinoc said, in the new drawl, the one he made now to mask confusion, or curiousity.

"That's a priestess," he said. The past high priests and priestesses of the temple at Bevelle were carved into the Order of Service to Yevon, in the pathway between the Second Cloister and the armoury. "Two or three hundred years ago, I believe?"

"He's brighter than you, Kinoc, isn't he? You've forgotten to tell me his name."

"He's about to be promoted," Kinoc said, and picked at a loose thread in his collar, the better to hide his eyes. "It's to be expected. He's Auron."

"I see."

She tapped his shoulder familiarly. She was tiny, and her hand came level with her eyes.

"Someone was talking to Father about you, you'll be pleased to hear."

"I am honoured," he said, and moved slightly away, he thought not enough to be noticed. "I am not about to be promoted again, Kinoc. That's only a rumour."

"It's fact," muttered Kinoc. "Everyone knows."

"Right," said the girl, and clapped her hands together, like a child.

She was clever, with a wit that was too blunt and that bruised the less fortunate, but he was skilled enough at ignoring it. She talked a lot when they met, which was often- they happened to be in the same place at the same time strangely frequently, and he never understood it then- and she laughed at him as well, for his awkwardness, and his occasional silences. He was not an awkward man, and not a quiet one, not then, the quiet came later. But he was grave, and ran only seldom to laughing, even though in age and experience he was little more than a boy. He did have optimism, and faith in the comfortable inner workings of the world- he remembers that, though he has long lost it- but it was not enough to dull a certain air about him, a look of someone who has seen too much and wishes to withdraw from the light amusements of other men. And she noticed this; and she laughed at him, and told him he should smile. The laugh has mostly stayed with him, a deep rich peal very different from the sharp inflections of her normal voice.

It had not occurred to Auron to pay attention to how she looked, and now he remembers little. She had a mop of bright red hair and a very pale face. She liked green, not the acolytes' or the monks' green but that of grass and leaves, and she liked to walk outside and surround herself with it, but with that hair and that face being in the gardens made her look like someone dying. He was fond of her, perhaps, to remember these things, but not in the way they had wanted. He does not remember her body. He never thought to watch it.

He remembers only two of their conversations well, the last two; in the last she screamed things at him that later turned out to be right, but he prefers to leave those memories alone and hope for the gradual weakening in his will to sweep them away to the Farplane with the other parts of himself he has lost. The second to last had been the day before her father called him in, to the proposal, to the refusal, and away to Braska and Jecht and all the hope and sorrow that lay ahead; he had not known any of this and he had smiled, very slightly, to see her coming up to his table, a purple flower tucked behind one ear.

"Auron." She raised a hand, in mock solemnity.

"Minna."

She had been Amina the day before, and Anima the day before that. Anima had been the high priest's daughter in the years before Mirada's father was the high priest, and had married an acolyte at Kilika. She in her turn had been named after an aunt, the woman who had infamously married a Guado.

"And where would Kinoc be today?"

"Inspection's this afternoon, he'll be in his chamber."

"Oh. I found out something about him today?"

"Yes?"

"He has a, I don't know what you're supposed to call it, he's affectionate to a certain woman?" She could pick up wit and learning, but she knew very little of idioms, or slang, or swear words; she was still the high priest's daughter, and nobody would say them to her.

"A fancy, you say. He has a fancy." He looked down at his hands. "He's told me about that, as well. Quite a young one."

"How old?" she asked.

"Seventeen, eighteen? Too young, but I don't know exactly."

"Eighteen wouldn't be too young."

"Ah, but you say that because eighteen's too close to you." He smiled at her. If she had been a sister or a cousin, he realised, he would have tweaked the end of her nose.

She returned the smile, but something in the quality of it made him anxious, made him shift his feet; it was open, it was sincere, but something deep and dark flickered awake behind her eyes, as if some new awareness of herself gazed through. He looked away.

"You don't like looking people in the eye, do you?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "I've never noticed."

"I think you're quite secretive, really," she said. "You don't like talking about yourself much, either. You won't say what you think. You should work on that."

"If it pleases you."

Much later, after Yuna and Yunalesca, he admired her for her spirit. He wonders now what her fate was, and how closely she followed it apart from the facts of her future he knows, and if in the years of watching everyone else she had ever thought to turn her careful observation back onto herself.

When they called him in he expected it to be about the promotion to second-in-command, commander of the second cohort; though not that he had received it. Perhaps they had given it to someone else, someone new and more talented, or they would have given it to him but he was so young and it would be a few more years before he was ready.

He did not know if he wanted it. It was progress, it was affirmation, it was a new role he could take up, it was the next step in the only path he knew. It was a respectable life, and he would know no material lack or great suffering. He would be admired. He would be serving Yevon in the best way he could, and Yevon were the only way forward in the expiation required if Spira were ever to be rid of Sin. He would certainly take the promotion, if only he were older. But he was twenty-five, a grand enough number but not much more than a boy in reality, and he had seen very little besides Bevelle and the grey stone of the cloister walls, and the last steps to command seemed very heavy to climb until he knew more of the world he was supposed to be protecting.

He came early, as would be expected of him, and knocked, once.

"Come in, Auron."

He opened the door. "Your eminence."

"Do sit down."

"Thank you." The high priest's chamber was a circular room in colours that might have been cosy, were it not for the high domed ceiling, and the six long drapes with the sacred glyphs that shone bright and coldly even in the harsh machine-powered light that glittered so far above them. Auron took the only other seat in the room, about three feet from the high priest's, and low enough that his eye level was the lower of the two of them.

"I have been regaled with more tales of your faithful service, you will be pleased to know," he said, with a kindly smile he was free with, his eyes so dark above them.

"I am honoured."

"You played a prominent role in the Behemoth fiasco."

"It was only my duty, your eminence. We were most fortunate to have warning from the guard towers. The massed firepower of the second cohort was instrumental in bringing down the beasts, also."

"Yes, yes. Still. You are modest, Auron, which is all to the good, but you underestimate yourself." The high priest's smile faded. He tapped a long thin finger on the armrest of his chair; he was pale as his daughter was, and fragile-seeming, as if a light wind would blow him away to the Farplane. "I have summoned you to discuss a matter of some delicacy."

He tried not to frown. "I see."

"My daughter mentions you to me often, also," said the high priest carefully. "I think she is fond of you, and the two of you seem to relate to each other well. She is my only child, as you know, and I am most concerned for her well-being. I must confess, Auron, as the years have passed, and she has shown no aptitude for summoning, I have been - glad, almost. It would have been a wonderful thing had she had the gift, and the means to realise it, but she is so small, I do not know how far she would be able to travel, and with her mother gone, she is what I have."

"I understand, your eminence. It is only natural, surely."

The summoner's being was but one, and a Calm would be a most precious gift to bring to Spira, even at the cost of one's life: but it must be different if you knew the summoner, he supposes.

"Perhaps it is," the high priest murmured. "Perhaps it is. But I must see that she follows a righteous path, as is my care, as her father. She is of an age now where I must bestow her hand on a worthy man to receive it. She is my daughter, and who she marries is of concern to Yevon and to Spira, and not merely to she and I. And I have wondered, Auron, if you had considered your intentions in that direction. You have risen so high, so young, and I am certain you will rise further still."

For a second he is frozen in his seat, though he does not know precisely why the thought is so terrible to him. He had not considered it. He should have considered it, but it had never occurred to him. He had thought she was a friend, only a friend, in the way Kinoc was, and the others; he had not remembered that she was a young woman, and young women could not be their friends in the same way, and that she was the priest's daughter and he kept her out of the way where he could, away from men who could break her, trap her; and he was twenty-five, only twenty-five, and he had never connected the idea of marriage to himself, he had never thought of it.

"The greatest monks must know love, and partnership, to truly understand what it is they must protect," the high priest continued.

"I- I am most honoured that you have thought of me in such a way, your eminence, but I- I confess, truly, I had not considered it."

The high priest's brows drew together.

"That is all to the good," he said. "I am honoured myself that you are a man of such virtue and honour, to keep company of such a lady without thought of such things. But consider it now, Auron. It would unite the monks and the priesthood. It would be a most auspicious event in the eyes of Yevon."

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the teachings, he remembers thinking then, don't cloak it in that- it is the only thought of his then that is clear, and the one he carried away to later times, when he was trying to explain why, to tell people how he had gone wrong. There seemed a false note in the last sentence. It seemed too glib, too easy as a reason. One could say many things were auspicious in the eyes of Yevon, but it did not, it did not- Yevon had the teachings and the prayers and the atonement, but it could not control him like that, they could not tell him he must marry -

"I- might I have some time to consider it?

"What is there to consider?" the high priest asked gently. "I know you are fond of her. She is young, and not uncomely, and even as a strategic match it lacks nothing. I must have your answer now, Auron."

"Then I- "

It took him a while to say it. The words would form easily enough in his brain, he could imagine themselves saying them, but he could not crush together the world in which the words lay and the one in which he sat. He felt cold, heavy, dragged too deeply into his chair. He could not force anything from his mouth; he could swallow and swallow and open his mouth, but he could not speak, filled with a sudden fear he could not explain, but he had to, he had to-

"I must refuse."

The high priest's smile is gone, and his dark eyes are the only things in his face that seem real.

"Very well," he said. His voice is not cold, but the gentleness is gone from it. "You may go."

"I hope I have not displeased your eminence," he manages.

The high priest nods, once. "Thank you. You may go, Auron."

At first he does not notice. There is no overt change in the pattern of his days, and he thinks there might be another way. He does not see Mirada, but perhaps she is busy, she has her own duties. He continues as he has, with his friends and his fellows, and the stone of the cloisters that sometimes seems more real to him than his heart, and the books of war and learning in the libraries, and the new plans for the walls, for the order. He has an easy untroubled existence when he is not fighting, and the warrior monks are far greater in power than anything that assails Bevelle; anything that reaches them must go through Evrae first, and almost nothing does.

But there is a shifting, as if from age to age; people will not look at him so often as he passes, and sometimes they fall silent when he approaches. He has never paid much mind to what the others think of him and it takes him a long time to notice, and then to see what has happened. He is still respected, he is still admired, he is the youngest deputy of the cohort in the warrior monks for decades, but he is not as interesting as he was, because he is no longer a rising star. He has been fixed; trapped in the point and at the height at which he must exist forever, like a fly in amber. The greatest monks must know love, and partnership, to truly understand what it is they must protect. And he does not. He does not need Kinoc to explain, when his friend takes pity.

"You refused her, Auron. I am sorry to be the one to say it, but they will not forgive you that. They will not banish you, of course, you are too competent, still. But you won't be promoted again."

He does not drink often, and he did not then; but he does that night, just the once. The whiskey burns at his throat, like the tears might have, if he had cried.

He has no clarity on what has happened, or why it so wrong, but he knows that he has failed, and that he had counted at least on being commander at some point and in some fashion. He had hoped his life would sort itself, that his feelings would become known to him, that he would become clear and upright like the maesters, like the high summoners of old, but he has doomed himself, and what he is now is nothing like what he hoped he would have been. He is twenty-five, and twenty-five is old enough to know what one should do in life, and how to go about it. He will have to tell people he will never command the monks. He will have disappointed all those who hoped for him, and believed in him, and the family who loved him and watched him as he rose so far, so fast. He walks round the courtyards, with a dreamy drunken gaze but with a firm enough step to be convincing, hoping to see the moon, to gain some comfort at least in permanence, but the night is cloudy and even the stars have failed him, and he has no guidance.

It was a few days after that that she broke open his lock and squeezed herself into his room, and looked around at the stripped bed, the half-packed bag, the empty shelves and clothes strewn over the floor, and her small face seemed to close up on itself; and that was the last time they spoke. She hurled insults at him, and somewhere mixed up in that was more truth than he is comfortable thinking of now.

He did not see. He was too young. He was too afraid of looking.

A/N: Actually tacking this on after the first half of chapter 3's gone up, but hey. I hope you like it so far! Reviews would be awesome, especially if you've got anything I can work on :)

(The tenses I know about, I just reread this chapter and my god, it's past and then it's present and waaaaah. Chapter 2 is more or less firmly in present, so I'll come back and de-past here soonish.)