How long since I had been to the Moonflow? My travels didn't often bring me here. Memories of that day had not faded like the years in between. When I saw who Tidus was talking to at the south bank that day, I stopped in my tracks. It felt like that sensation of missing a step, watching the ground rushing up. My skin crawled.

"Pleased to meet you!" the yellow-haired young woman chirped. "I'm Rikku!"

I pushed forward through Lady Yuna's guardians, unseeing. She looked up at me with so-familiar green swirling eyes.

"Rikku?" I said. "Is it you?"

She looked surprised. "Do I know you?"

"Don't you remember?" I said.

She shook her head. "I've never met you before in my life."

I reared back as if she'd physically slapped me, some strange noise escaping me. My mind raced as I searched her face. How could this be? She frowned at my scrutiny.

I only barely heard Tidus's assertion that Rikku had helped him some time ago, on first arriving in Spira. The reactions of the others flowed over and around me.

She doesn't look a day older, I noticed as I watched her, Lulu, and Yuna withdraw a short distance away to talk. After that initial shock I felt able to contain my emotions again, to draw into my own thoughts. I was used to doggedly pursuing the truth, watching, waiting, listening, asking subtle questions. Those skills that had found for me the truth of Jecht's and Braska's fates, and that of Spira, would surely be my best bet at unraveling the mystery of Rikku.

Yuna approached me, looking nervous. "Sir Auron," she said. "I would like Rikku to be my guardian."

My smile shocked her. I stepped over to Rikku, who lowered her head as I approached. Trying to hide telltale Al Bhed eyes.

"What an… excellent idea," I understated.

Her head whipped up in shock.

With so many guardians attending Yuna's pilgrimage, I didn't get a chance to speak to her privately until Guadosalam. In the meantime I watched her, noticing her eyes pass me over as an apparent stranger.

"How old are you?" I said to her.

"I'm sixteen!" she said, full of pride and defiance.

"Mm," I said, to mask rather visceral alarm in me. "Have you ever been to the Zanarkand Ruins?"

"Huh? No, never. Nobody goes there anymore," she said.

"I see." She was telling the truth, I could see that. I have moved among deceivers and the self-deceived, and this was pure, bewildering honesty. I knew there had to be more to this story.

"Why are you asking me all this?"

"I was curious." I turned and walked away.

Rikku was not the only puzzle to be solved, and the question of Sin's permanent defeat preoccupied us all after Yuna's pilgrimage ended in Zanarkand, with the revelation of truths long hidden. There was much to discuss. Some part of me felt something missing. When I realized how long Rikku's chirpy, brash voice had been absent I felt a wash of concern.

"Where's Rikku?" I interrupted the discussion in the stateroom. Bewildered stares fixed on me.

"Uh… I dunno," said Tidus. "She hasn't been around for a while. Said something about her celestial weapon last time, didn't she?"

The others shrugged.

"I think she was bored, ya?" said Wakka. "So, we figure out what we're gonna do, and then we go pick her up."

"I'd better make sure she's all right," I said, more to myself, as concern turned to alarm. Something was wrong. I couldn't remember when she'd left. I headed to the bridge to see her father.

"Frana ec ouin tyikrdan?" I said. "E's luhlanhat ypuid ran."

"She… she's out killing things, she said," said Cid. "Or maybe she's still looking for the sigil to unlock that Godhand of hers."

"Godhand?" I said weakly.

The Godhand. The weapon she'd wowed myself, Jecht, and Braska with ten years ago on our pilgrimage, far stronger than any of the weapons Rikku had been using since this second meeting.

"How long has she been gone?" I said, more sharply than I intended.

"Hmm," said Cid, "last time we dropped her off in the Calm Lands was, oh, about two days ago."

"Two days?" I said. "And you haven't heard from her since?"

"Hey, she can take care of herself," said Cid.

Godhand. Calm Lands. The memories of ten years ago slammed into my brain like a Sin-induced tsunami.

"…Ten years from now, on the twenty-third day of the third month, a friend of yours will be missing…"

I whirled and almost knocked into Yuna, right behind me. She backed up.

"What's the date?" I said.

"D-date?" she said.

"Yes! What day is today? Doesn't anyone know?!" I snapped, angry at how slow I'd been to notice everything around me. How could I have forgotten? Why hadn't I written this down years ago, checked a calendar, knowing that ten years had passed? I'd been thinking about it so much, especially since seeing Rikku again.

"It's the twenty-third day," said Brother's voice from the cockpit behind me, "of the third month."

"Shit!" I turned to Cid. "Take me to Yevon Dome, now!"

"Hey, hold your horses! There's nowhere to land there," said Cid.

"Then take me to Zanarkand! Hurry!"

The longest run in my life. Even now it hurts to think about how close I came to not getting there on time. All that helplessness, sluggishness, uselessness I had felt losing my friends ten years ago flooded through me again, as if I was truly back there on that nightmare day of Braska's final battle against Sin. I couldn't hear the voices of my companions, couldn't see them. All I could see were the endless halls and obstacles between me and the empty Chamber of the Fayth in Yevon Dome. Increasingly certain of what I would find there.

Even so it still gave me a nasty turn when my boots pounded up the steps and I saw Rikku lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Right where she had vanished out of my arms, ten years ago.

Except now there was a flask beside her, with a potion. As I'd been thinking of little else but her last words to me all the way here, I knew what to do. I snatched up her and the flask and poured the potion, with adrenalin-shaking hands, bit by bit into her slack mouth. I didn't bother to try to speak, catching my breath as I dribbled it painstakingly between her lips.

I felt the past all around me in that room. The way I was holding her, and kneeling. Ten years had been swept aside. My memories felt as immediate in my body as they had when they'd first happened. It felt as though Yunalesca had only just died and been sent. The only thing missing from the scene was Braska's staff, stowed up on the airship with the rest of my meager possessions.

"Rikku?" I said, shaking her. "Rikku!"

She remained steadfastly limp. I shook her again, not knowing what else to do.

"Rikku? Rikku?"

She twitched. It felt like an electric shock to my bones, a glimmer of hope. "Come on, wake up, Rikku!"

Her swirling green eyes opened, blinked, focused on mine. She convulsed in my arms. I squeezed her.

"Shh, it's all right," I said, more out of hope than certainty.

She shook her head and pushed me off. I watched in concern as she sat up and looked all around.

She laughed hoarsely, ending in a cough. She reached up to her head, then froze, staring at her hand. Her head flipped up. As she scrambled to her feet I reached for her arm, and she flapped a hand at me. I backed off.

"Are you all right?" I said.

"I'm…" She spun and stared frowning intently into my face. Her face split in a grin. "You remembered!"

Guilt wracked me as I realized how I almost hadn't, how she might have lain here dying and forgotten on this floor. "I almost didn't. It's been… ten years."

"But only a few minutes, for me," she chirped, and then flung her arms around me. "Thank you for coming back for me," she hissed in my ear.

I hesitantly returned her embrace, afraid to shatter this dream of reunion, one I'd wrenched awake from so many disappointing nights after losing her, Jecht, and Braska. She pulled back and looked up at me.

"You… remember me now?" I said.

"Yeah, you've finally caught up to me… or I've caught up to you. I'm not sure."

I inhaled, my hands squeezing her involuntarily in relief. This was real, this time. My friend—all of her—was back. Questions spilled out of me. "How did you do it? And why?"

"Do what?" said Tidus. "Can someone please tell me what's going on?"

"I prayed to the fayth," she said to me, making the sign of prayer. "…Hey. Let's go find Sin. I just had this great idea on how to beat him."

Yes, that's Rikku. As if not a day has passed. I embraced her shoulders with a laugh as we strolled across the chamber, out of a victory ten years ago, her bewildering miracle of time travel, and my miracle of having reunited with my friend. Everything in between didn't matter, suddenly.

"So what's your idea?" I murmured.

"Well, first I gotta go to Remiem Temple, 'cause I heard they have this gelg-ycc aeon there…"

"Don't tell me you're going on a pilgrimage now?"

"Hey, there's an idea! But where the heck am I gonna find guardians to go with me?"

"Ahem."

"I mean good guardians."

"Hey!" I swatted her on the rear, just as we'd done to one another childishly ten years ago. She laughed and took to her heels.

I chased her, young again and still old enough to feel profound gratitude at what I'd regained.