Auron noticed none of them wore smiles in Bevelle. He knew some of the memories he and Yuna and Rikku were walking into, and as ever had no clue what was in Paine's discomfort, despite all the time he'd been spending with her. He felt so odd in himself and it took him a quiet while before he realized he hadn't been in Bevelle without wearing the robes of a Yevon monk since the first day he became an acolyte.
As soon as he thought it, he realized aloud, "There's… somewhere I need to go. Alone."
The three young women looked at him in surprise, but Yuna nodded.
"Leave without me if need be," said Auron.
"You sure?" said Rikku. "I don't mind waiting."
Auron paused, looking at her. She gave him a genuine smile, with fondness in her eyes.
He smiled back. "I won't be long."
He headed swiftly for the monks' abbey, a path he could have walked in his sleep. As he walked it the years seemed to melt away from him. Down from the towers, across a plaza, to the squat brown boxy complex, so spare against the curved reds and golds and whites of the rest of the biggest city on Spira.
Huge earthenware blocks piled into what seemed more like a tomb than a place of worship, with high barred windows to blot out all but the most regimented of light. He found the door standing open. A group of young men and women looked up from where they knelt on the floor, on top of a huge sheet of paper weighted down at the edges with lanterns. Monkeys kept crawling on it.
"Can we help you?" said a short woman with chopped hair.
"I… used to live here," said Auron. "Tell me—what became of the order of Yevon monks?"
"Left," said a young man. "Except for Cronos. He says he doesn't care what we do with the building as long as we leave the Star Dojo. He sleeps there most nights, I hear."
"Cronos," said Auron. "Still here?" He shook his head and left the group, picking around the monkeys and their droppings to head for the Star Dojo.
Blocky walls gave way to glass covered with squares of telescoping metal, that could be opened or closed to any aperture. Light coming through them, and the similar ceiling, made multi-pointed star patterns everywhere. Only the highest-ranking monks were allowed in, once. Auron, of course, had snuck in the first chance he got, and had only gotten caught and reprimanded twice.
His partner in crime had been an older novice, the most reprimanded student to have not been expelled—Cronos.
Auron had snuck in, sidled in, crawled in through hatches and servants' entrances and disguised as a sweeper, but he'd never bold-as-brass strode in through the main doors, wearing heathen clothing, no less. His boots and buckles echoed in the cavernous room.
"The answer is still no," said Cronos, not looking up from a stack of books on his desk. His pen scratched on the paper. He'd been balding, according to him, practically since he was old enough for all his hair to come in; in his teens it was clear he would be hairless by mid-forties, as he now was. His red robe remained immaculate, even if there was dust everywhere else in the room, including on the musty sleeproll on the floor. "I already arranged it with the praetor. Don't worry, I should be dead in about fifty years, and then you can smash this room up and make something ridiculous in its place for whatever you're calling New Yevon at that point. Maybe New New New New New New New New Yevon."
"Maybe they will call it 'Cronos,'" said Auron, and Cronos's shiny head snapped up in the star-patterned light, "since they tend to name it after someone who won't give up the ghost."
"Auron, you old son of a shoopuf! I hardly recognized you!" Cronos shoved his ornate tattered velvet chair back with a scrape across the wooden floor and sauntered over in his lackadaisical way. He clapped Auron on the back. "What in Spira's name are you doing here, man?"
"I could ask you the same thing," said Auron. "Of all the people to be left hanging on to this order, you are the last one I expected to see."
Cronos tapped the side of his nose, grinning slyly. "I'm here so they don't do it again, see? I'm here to remind New Yevon not to become old Yevon, to be the one annoying tenured man they don't have the heart to turn out, who won't let them stray back to the narrow and righteous path of too much power. I'm here to ask the uncomfortable questions and start the unwanted arguments."
"Devil's advocate, then. Same as always," said Auron.
Cronos nodded. "And I'm too smart for them to get rid of me. It's not just that I know where the bodies are buried—I know how everything works, and that's more than I can say for anyone who got left alive in Yevon's leadership. If not for me there'd be no New Yevon, only a bunch of infighting sects and a city in chaos. I'm the only one who thought of all the civic shit that needs doing, the food, the utilities, emergency services, support staff, wages, all paid out of Yevon's coffers. Kill Yevon and Bevelle would fall, and all its people lose everything and wander the world starving and homeless. And ruin the economy besides."
"So then what does the Praetor do?"
"Public relations. Acts like he knows what he's doing, which you know I was never good at. I see two sides to everything. The Praetor shows the public only one, and it's the one I vehemently advise him to."
"You're running New Yevon."
"Not really. I'm making sure no one forgets all the people who depend on Yevon's infrastructure for their lives. If that's what you call running things, okay, but from the inside, nothing's what I'd call 'running'—mostly just failing to go spectacularly wrong all at once on an ongoing basis. But I digress. What the hell are you doing here? Come to kill me?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Why not? You have even more reason to hate the old order than I do."
"I always thought you loved to hate it and hated to love it."
"True, true."
"Anyway it sounds like there is no order, not even you."
Cronos cackled. "Only way I could get my way is for everyone else to be gone, and that's never what I wanted anyway."
"No. You wouldn't be satisfied if you weren't fighting someone. I think that is why I liked you so much."
"You liked me because I was the only other one here with brains, who wasn't acting like a machine being programmed. And… you still haven't answered my question, and I've got more weapons on me than you might think."
"I wanted to remember. I've been… avoiding this place. Avoiding these memories. After Braska defeated Sin a lot of my beliefs were shattered, and I didn't really belong here anymore."
Cronos grunted. "Hear you were still wearing the uniform, though. Ten years, was it?"
"Twelve. Habit, I suppose."
"Was it?"
Auron was silent.
"Do you know why Master Teaken kept me on in the order even though all the other monks pleaded, begged, cajoled, demanded I be expelled?"
"Teaken was like that."
"Oh, old Teaken was pretty traditional in a lot of surprising ways, and obeying the precepts I broke as a matter of habit before breakfast was one of them. He kept me because he knew that in order for the order to survive as something more than just a mindless division of Yevon's security forces, it had to have someone in it to jam up the works again and again, to break things so they could be put back together better, differently at least, and stronger, so they'd be less liable to break again. Someone to test all the limits and find out where they really lie. He had high hopes for you, Auron, but you could never see past your anger when it had hold of you. You were stubborn in ways that weren't the best. So he settled for me, with all my disrespect for the rules. Otherwise he would have put you on the fast track to Master of the Order, and you would never have been allowed to go out on a pilgrimage."
"He tried to forbid me. Said I wasn't qualified."
"And what was your response?"
"Stormed out and went anyway."
Cronos laughed. "And you think he didn't know you would? I believe, from the conversations we had, he hoped the pilgrimage would knock off your sharp edges. Instead I think it… sharpened them. Good thing, though, because you had a much bigger battle to fight, and not one I could have done."
"He… intended for me to go? To fight Sin?"
"Yes."
"Did he know what I would find? Did you?"
"Not I. Can you imagine what I would have done with the information? I would have turned the Crusaders and the Al Bhed against Yevon. And I would have been young enough to think I could do it, and probably would have succeeded. And then Sin would still be here."
"You really think so?"
"It's my considered opinion."
Auron glanced at all the shelves and shelves of books lining the walls of the dojo. It looked like the whole of Bevelle's paper Yevon library had been moved into this room. Cronos had read most if not all of them, Auron knew. It's what he'd done instead of his monk training, instead of bushido and prayer and meditation and hypnotic gong-ringing.
Cronos's considered opinion was well-considered, in Auron's considered opinion.
"Sometimes you just don't know when to let go," said Cronos. "And sometimes that's your strength. And sometimes it's the thorn in your side."
"You think I couldn't let this place go?" said Auron.
"I think there was something you couldn't let go. You didn't want all this to be for nothing. And it isn't. You don't need clothes to tell you that."
"Thanks," Auron said sarcastically. "Any more unasked-for cultured pearls of wisdom you care to regurgitate in my direction?"
"Just a question."
"All right, let's have it."
"You found something else to hold on to. What is it? I'm insanely jealous."
Auron frowned, and let his eyes rove over the dojo. The way the light fell, the apertures, were so close to what they'd been the second day he was caught. It seemed like Master Teaken had been waiting for him, sitting on a mat with the light shining on his white thick beard that stood out like a ruff.
"You must control your temper," Teaken had chided the hot-headed young Auron. "Don't let it control you or it will become your doom. You have to recognize when you're becoming angry, stop, and start over. However much you learn or accomplish in your life, Auron, it dissolves when anger overcomes your training. You must never become so self-assured that you cannot return to your starting point when you fail."
"Teaken told me to return to my starting point when I fail," said Auron. "And so I have, over and over again, but I've never actually physically come back here."
"How have you failed?" said Cronos. "You defeated Sin, twice—including the final time."
"Yes. But I failed in many other ways, before, during, after. In my mind I came back here, but I never quite wanted to come here, before now."
"Mm? What changed?"
"I did." Auron folded his arms. "I'm not the same man anymore. Spira is a completely different world to me now. I am in it, but not of it, and I look back on the man I was and I would not have two words to say to him now. But there was hope for him. And Teaken wasn't the only one who saw it."
"No, indeed. Braska wanted you for his guardian, and he was just as stubborn as you when he needed to be."
Auron nodded. "Do you know he had three guardians, in the end?"
"Yes."
Auron turned his steely gaze on Cronos. "Do you know what became of the third?"
Cronos's eyes danced, as if laughing. "Would it matter if I did?"
"I would wonder what you might do with that knowledge. Particularly to her."
Cronos shrugged. "Would I strip you of your new outfit for spite? Just because it's more stylish and young and invigorating than mine? Would I judge you for something that clearly fits you so well, or that you've grown into? But I wonder, at the end of the day, when you take off this new outfit, who are you on the inside, really? What is the part of you that you never take off, even when you lay down Legendary Guardian and Yevon monk and drunkard and friend and secret-keeper and fighter and man and anger? When you come to the heart of the night, what's left over?"
"What are you getting at?"
"You've been traveling for a very long time in search of something, and a great many things have found you and stuck to you—but who are you, Auron? Who are you where your name stops and your thoughts stop and in the space between each moment of awareness and the next?"
"You read too much."
Cronos laughed. "And that's the best answer I'm going to get. Is it the right one? Who cares? It made me laugh, and it's true. Shall I walk you back? Get out in the sun that has no lens on it?"
"Might help." Auron felt unnerved, almost throttled by the smell of must and dust that had been rising in his nostrils as Cronos talked. The man has run mad, he thought, but perhaps mad is what you need to be in order to run a city when the beliefs it was built on have crumbled, and there's nothing to support it but hope and memory.
The young people in the main room scrambled to their feet and stood stock-still as Cronos passed. Cronos gave them the barest flick of his head.
"What did you do to them?" Auron murmured as they passed out into the sunlight.
"Put the fear of Cronos in 'em. Only thing that works, these days. I know more about them than even their confessors ever did," said Cronos.
"All those questions you asked me—they were really about you, were they not?" said Auron. "I told you that you should have put down the books and learned bushido. When I am practicing bushido, there is no part of me that is not doing bushido. I'm not thinking 'this is me, doing bushido,' or even 'this is bushido.' There is no thought at all."
"Sounds peaceful. And far too young an ambition for me. Someone must be thinking—always," said Cronos.
"What will you do when you run out of years? Or when someone really does come to kill you?"
"I need a replacement. Don't suppose I could interest you…?"
"No."
"You could make it your own."
"NO."
"Heard you've been thinking of settling down, a bit."
Auron whirled on Cronos, lifting the man up by the collar, and was about to give him a shake when he felt a knifepoint nudge his ribs. Cronos grinned down at him. Auron lowered Cronos before letting loose a chuckle.
They strolled on. Cronos nodded to some scurrying people who appeared to panic and scurry faster, from time to time.
Rikku sat alone on the rail of the highbridge, legs swinging over empty space far above the depths of the city. She slouched a little in her thoughts, but at Auron's approach she turned, sliding a leg back over the rail. Her eyes arrowed right to Cronos. She climbed off the rail, sinking down on her feet.
"Rikku, this is… an old friend of mine, Cronos," said Auron. "Cronos, my very good friend Rikku."
"Please to meetcha!" Rikku held out her hand, and Cronos took it.
"Young lady, I've heard good things about you," said Cronos.
"All lies," Rikku said cheerfully, elbowing Auron in the ribs. "I've been teaching him to lie and he's outstripped all my wildest expectations."
"High time someone taught him," said Cronos. "I'd like a private word with you, if you've a moment? Humor a mad old man."
Auron stiffened.
Rikku shrugged. "Sure. Any friend of Auron's is a friend of mine."
"Rikku," said Auron.
"She'll be fine," said Cronos. "She can take care of herself. Does he always dote on you like a mother hen?" He led her away as he said this.
"He doesn't trust you," said Rikku. "Why is that?"
"Because he's a smart man…" Cronos's voice faded away as they got a long distance down the highbridge. Only once did Rikku's peals of laughter get loud enough that Auron heard anything from either of them. He glared at the pair until they returned, Cronos beaming, Rikku looking thoughtful.
"Nice to see you again, old friend," said Cronos, clapping Auron on the back. "Don't be a stranger. You either, Rikku." Cronos waved to her before trotting back off.
Auron rounded on her. "What did he say to you?"
She rolled her eyes. "Like it's any of your business! Come on, Yuna and Paine left ages ago." She dragged him by the arm toward the swirling sphere that was their departure point.
"You didn't have to wait," he said.
"I said I would."
"I told you that you didn't have to."
"Why wouldn't I? You waited for me."
He stopped her. "Rikku… it's not because I feel some obligation to you for saving my life. I'm friends with you because I want to be."
"And that's why I waited. Not because we're friends, or because I feel like I have to look after you and make sure your life stays saved, but because I want to wait for you. Anyway it wasn't all that long. You get bored and impatient almost as easy as I do."
He laughed. He laughed and laughed, so long she gave him a quizzical look and laughed in a confused, halting giggle. This dissolved to what sounded like genuine laughter at her own laughter, and what he thought of as Rikku's patented 'just for the sheer ramm of it' laughter.
"Let's go have some fun, huh?" said Rikku.
"Yes!" said Auron. "I have had enough of Bevelle!"
"Calm Lands it is!" said Rikku.
"…What?"