Wow, okay last update was 2007. Yet people still want me to continue. I've had more requests to start writing this again than I've had other reviews for everything else I think. Probably about time I did then.

Sorry it's been so very very very very very long since I did this, but I've figured out what I was doing wrong, and I wrote two new chapters worth over the past week, so as soon as I've finished typing it up, you can have chapter 10. Yay. Maybe 11 will be soon as well, depends if I write this or switch to something else for a bit. Either way, I doubt it'll be another 2 years. Fortunately, I'm damn happy with how these truned out, let me know if it's as good as you hoped.


A familiar sound filled Yuna's ears as she awoke. It took some time before she realised that for the second time today, someone was knocking energetically on her bedroom door. She shuffled out of her bed, disentangling herself from the covers; wondering why they felt so heavy. Whoever was outside was still banging away, clearly not caring that they had just disturbed her from an amazing dream.

"I'm coming. Hang on."

Finally the noise stopped as she drifted over to the door switch. Though the mist of sleep still hung heavily over her, she managed to keep her eyes open as the door slid into the wall.

"Hey Rikku, what's up?" She smiled at her cousin, realising that, however good the dream had been, if Rikku was up, it was probably mid-afternoon already.

"Not Paine," Rikku responded after, for some reason, closing her eyes. "And now I remember why."

"Huh? Paine's not up yet? How come?"

Rikku didn't respond, other than to point down. Yuna glanced at the floor, then looked back up at Rikku, who had now placed a hand across her eyes.

Slowly, Yuna's face began to glow crimson as last night's activities came back to her. All her drowsiness was washed away in a flood of embarrassment and she tried to cover herself up with her arms.

"Rikku, Why didn't you warn me?" Her voice was higher than usual, and her words came tumbling out in an almost indiscernible rush.

"It's just me Yunie, I wouldn't have let the boys come with me to wake you up."

Yuna hurriedly grabbed a dressing gown, and threw it on. Swiftly tying the belt around her waist. Normally she would have enjoyed the feel of the silk, but she was still too embarrassed about Rikku's presence to pay much attention to anything else.

Once she was finally decent, Yuna calmed down remarkably quickly, and her mind started to address the other aspects of her situation. One of the most prominent of these was undoubtedly Paine. Even as Yuna thought about her, she tried to forget it. 'Keep Rikku's attention away from the bed.' she told herself. But still she couldn't stop her eyes from flicking across the room. To her relief, she saw that Paine was still mostly covered up, despite her earlier sleepy struggle against the sheets. Rikku's eyes followed Yuna's, but even she managed not to stare. She just smiled. It was an odd expression, especially for Rikku. It was quietly triumphant, but at the same time, appreciative. Normally Rikku could only manage two kinds of Triumphant. Smug and… No, just smug.

Rikku's jubilations aside, Yuna knew she had to forestall Rikku's inevitable tirade of questions. At least create a delay until she was capable of dealing with them.

"So what's up Rikku?" Yuna desperately hoped that repeating the initial question would somehow reset the conversation.

Fortunately, it did. Rikku's attention snapped back to focus on the message she'd brought. "Oh yeah! Buddy got a message from Besaid. Lulu wants us all to go visit."

"Lulu doesn't normally ask for visits. Why d'you think she wants to see us all so suddenly?" They both thought for a moment, Rikku rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet as she tried to figure it out. Her eyes wandered around the room, coming to rest momentarily on Paine, who was still sleeping (or at least, pretending to). She couldn't keep a mischievous grin from her face as she thought about all the stuff her friends had been doing this morning…

"The Baby!" Rikku almost shouted out as it hit her. "Lulu must've had the baby!"

*

It was amazing, the way people changed in the presence of a baby. Fair enough, Paine thought, Rikku was the same as always, but Yuna's normally sensible demeanour had been cast aside in favour of Rikku-level excitement as soon as they'd entered Lulu and Wakka's home and seen her former guardian sitting with the child in her arms.

Buddy and Shinra had almost physically restrained Brother until he agreed to 'help' them with the blatantly fictitious technical reasons they had come up with to wait behind on the Celsius for a while in order to give Yuna and Rikku a chance to catch up with the new parents. Paine almost wished she could have stayed behind as well and avoided the initial gushing baby-based compliments, but she hadn't been able to focus enough to come up with a plausible reason. Instead she took the opportunity to observe a side of her friends she hadn't seen before. Other than that, with both of them focusing all their attention onto Vidina, she could take some time to think about the past twenty four hours.

A weight settled next to where she sat with her head resting on her interlaced fingers. Her gaze didn't leave the floor, the intruder was too carefully to be Rikku, Wakka was still down at the beach, and she could still her Yuna spouting baby-talk gibberish on the other side of the room. Lulu's voice confirmed her deduction.

"Pardon the interruption, but my duties as hostess oblige me to make certain you're alright."

"I'm fine, just thinking."

"Would I be presume too much to ask what about?" Paine had thought that her first response had been enough to dissuade any further enquiries; apparently not.

"Something private." She said, probably coming off a little more forcefully than she'd intended to. It wouldn't have been the first time.

"Very well, I shall leave you with your thoughts, but should you wish to share them, my mind is more open than my heart." This made Paine finally look at the mage's face, as immaculately made-up as it had been on the Gullwing's last visit, and apparently, Yuna's entire Pilgrimage. Paine appreciated the discipline that must have required, but if she always spoke in such an unusual manner, spending too long around her would have been frustrating, however beautiful she might make herself look. She raised an eyebrow to silently ask for an explanation.

Lulu chuckled "I don't open up much, but when people open up to me, I don't pass rash judgements."

Paine nodded and turned away, her gaze falling on Yuna once more. "Thanks, but I doubt telling you about it would help."

"It might help more than you think. You won't know unless you try." Paine revised her earlier opinion, every conversation with Lulu was like a verbal sparring match and it was almost as much fun as a physical one, though she didn't expect Lulu would find them quite so exhilarating.

"True, but it might also make it worse. I don't know that either. Telling you could shift it either way."

Lulu smiled like a debater graciously conceding to a skilled opponent and Paine couldn't help but grin a little herself as she caught the expression out of the corner of her eye. "I can see I'm not going to convince you to talk to me, so I hope you'll at least talk to Yuna."

Paine's head jerked around, guilt and surprise written across her features before she got her expression under control. She cursed herself as Lulu laughed.

"You've been looking over at her about once a minute since you sat down."

Paine surrendered. "Fine, if it'll stop you from trying to read my mind. I'll talk to Yuna." She didn't get up immediately, Lulu was looking self-satisfied enough, but eventually she stood and walked over to Yuna.

"Yuna, I need to talk to you, it's kind of important." She whispered, noticing that in spite of all the attention, Vidina had fallen asleep in Yuna's arms.

Yuna turned and nodded. She carefully passed Vidina back to his mother, and excused herself. Paine and Yuna's departure left Rikku alone with Lulu and the baby. Lulu set Vidina down in his cot and beckoned Rikku through to the next room, where she sat on the bed which dominated the centre of the room. Rikku lingered for a moment at Lulu's elegantly designed side table, marvelling at the delicate brushes and paints laid out on its surface before joining Lulu on the soft bed. "Either Paine has done a better job of curbing your curiosity than I ever did, or you already know what she and Yuna are discussing." Rikku fidgeted for a moment, but didn't say a word.

"I thought so," Lulu continued, barely skipping a beat. "How angry would she be if you told me?"

"Lulu!" Rikku stared at her in, almost, mock surprise. "After all the times you yelled at me for snooping..."

"Thank angry? Interesting." Lulu smirked as she interrupted.

Rikku shut her mouth firmly, and fixed Lulu with what she hoped was a look of righteous indignation. "I don't know what you mean."

Lulu just smiled at her. "Rikku, you're worse at keeping secrets than Wakka, but unlike him you know it. If you're trying this hard not to tell me, you must have a very good reason."

"Lulu..." Rikku moaned. "Don't do that; it's creepy the way you always know so much. It's like you're spying on us... And stop smirking like that!"

*

"So, what did you want to talk to me about, or is that a silly question?" Yuna looked into her friend's troubled face and decided that trying to lighten the mood wasn't going to work.

"Silly question. Is there anywhere more private we can go? I feel exposed here." Paine looked around at the small village square in front of the old temple, there weren't that many people around, but that also meant that any one of them would be more likely to hear more than Paine wanted them to know.

"Sure, follow me." Yuna led Paine out through the Village's main gate and down a small path in the woods around it. They reached an area of open space a little larger than most and Yuna paused thoughtfully. In spite of the denseness of the trees, Paine could barely hear any animal life around them, even though there was no wind stirring the branches above them. The purity of the silence combined with the subtle patterns of light filtering through the treetops made Yuna's still form look like a beautiful three dimensional painting. The effect was broken when she looked up into the canopy and smiled. She turned to Paine and said, "I wasn't sure if it'd still be here, but I think the branch will still support me if I can get up there."

Paine followed the accompanying gesture and saw a bundle of material hanging from the tree about half-way up.

"How did you get it up there to begin with?" The tree had no climbable routes that she could see, its trunk was covered in moss, and the sack was tied onto one of the lowest branches, so there were none to climb on to reach it.

"I used to have a ladder Wakka made for me." Yuna pointed out a pile of short, regularly cut log sections at the base of the tree. Now that she'd explained what it was, the rope which had bound them together was still visible, though it was clearly in no condition to actually be used.

"Is it really that important if we get it down?" Paine couldn't help thinking that if the rope ladder had had time to rot away, whatever was in the bag probably hadn't fared much better.

"Not if you don't mind sitting in the dirt." Paine bit back a retort. Although the canopy above them was a vibrant green, the forest floor still showed evidence of the slowly decaying leaves of winter, which the humidity had made soft and damp.

"Alright, what's your plan?"

"Um..." Yuna started swaying softly from side to side with her finger on her lips, as she tended to when she was thinking. It was only just before Paine's patience evaporated completely that she clapped her hands together and almost shouted "Got it!"

"Yuna, What are you planning?" Paine's voice held a note of caution. Yuna was acting more like Rikku than usual recently, something had made her more impulsive and excitable. That didn't bode particularly well for her planning skills, and if Rikku's plans were anything to gauge by, Whatever Yuna had come up with, could quite easily get one or both of them hurt. Yuna was either not listening, or was trying to impress or surprise Paine, and had already triggered her Thief sphere. As her outfit shimmered and changed into the loose billowy and unnecessarily revealing Thief costume, she winked at Paine and started running towards the tree.

Her confidence was almost as annoying as her enthusiasm, and before Paine could do anything to stop her, Yuna had planted her foot at the base of the tree. In her mind, Yuna envisioned the enhanced agility the sphere gave her carrying her up the tree and into a graceful back-flip, following by a mid-air grab of the branch and a swing up and on, finishing crouched securely on the thick beam.

Her first step against the tree found purchase, and she pushed upwards. As her back foot left the ground, her front foot started slipping, and within the time it took for her to realise she wasn't going to make it, she hit the floor and had the air knocked from her lungs.

A moment later, Paine's face filled her vision, her concern almost masked by a look that told Yuna how much of a fool she looked. Paine helped her up and she noticed a glow fading from Paine's glove, leaving it a creamy brown as opposed to it's customary black. The long brown gloves matched the hard leather bodice of the dress that was Paine's Beastmaster attire. A moment later, as she held out the arm that wasn't supporting Yuna, A crimson and azure glow formed around the sphere at Paine's belt, and swirled up to her arm to form the hawk who acted as her companion.

Flurry stretched his muscles out as Paine admired, as she always did, the deadly beauty he possessed. His eyes focused on hers as he felt their minds connect, and he understood what she wanted him to do. He opened his wings and she launched him into the air. He flew straight up to where the sack hung and settled next to the knotted leather strip supporting it. With an intelligence that a natural hawk would never have shown, he quickly untied it and glided back to Paine's outstretched arm with the bundle clutched in his talons.

Paine passed the bag to Yuna, who was watching with a mixture of appreciation and embarrassment. "Your plan was better."

Paine decided not to comment. She thanked Flurry for his help, and returned him to the sphere along with the garments it created. "We've got the bag now, let's get the stuff inside sorted so we can sit down. We still need to talk."