Chapter Twenty

"It all depends on you"


Tida did not hear the footfalls, though they were not few, as others entered the quiet manor. She only raised her eyes when she heard a familiar, gentle, and forceful voice speak.

"Father, can you save him?" questioned Lady Yuna, too exhausted, too spent from the battle to cast even one more spell of healing.

Yuna and her father, whose memories had returned to him, stood before Tida. The lady summoner's eyes were full of concern, but Braska's were full of a strange mix of wonder and tears as he looked upon the fading form of his oldest and truest friend and comrade. He was ever astonished, even after the years spent together on the Farplane, by how old his former guardian seemed. And yet, the look upon Auron's age-worn face seemed to be a peaceful one. The expression stripped away many years and much hardship, which might had otherwise rendered Auron difficult to recognize, even in the eyes of his friend.

To their immediate right stood Rikku with her husband's arms around her shoulders. The face of the Al-Bhed woman was filled with anguish and grief, though she seemed weary still from the fighting outside. Had she not seen brave Sir Auron go to pyreflies once before? Surely that had been a great sadness, one that should not be endured twice in the same lifetime. But she did not even glance away. Behind her, Wakka looked grim and pale, and his hair seemed more heavily streaked with gray than when the battle began. The strain of it all was beginning to tell on him. He just wasn't young anymore, no matter how it felt when he rushed into battle again.

Close at hand were the young lovers, also arm in arm, close and inseparable. Tears ran down Pacce's face as he clutched Aurie even more tightly. The victory that he, that they all, had earned just outside was turning to ashes. It was nothing if their champion lost his life to help give it to them. Aurie buried her face in Pacce's shoulder and squeezed her eyes closed, not wanting to witness the last moments of gruff, but kindly Auron who had secretly wept in the temple in Besaid. And yet she wished that she could comfort her weeping cousin, fated to know him perhaps best of the three youths and to be with him in the end.

On the other side of the rough semi-circle stood Tiron and his mother, a black mage slowly diminishing to gray, though still formidable in every sense of the word. Their eyes of glowing red gleamed with tears, and not even Lulu bothered to hide them. It was Spiran justice, warped and unhappy, that had brought them there to see Auron die a second death, though perhaps no second sending would be called upon. Perhaps he would go peacefully this time. Lulu of all those present knew that Yuna would not be able to bear it easily after such an exhausting battle. Young Tiron, as stoic as his mother and as strong as his father, merely stood there, a bit dizzy perhaps, as he stared in mute horror at Tida and Auron. It was a scene he never expected to see. His mother had told him the story of Auron's demise, but Tiron had never imagined that he would witness it for himself as the event played out for a second time under different circumstances.

But still two others filled the manor of Guadosalam with their presence. Father and son stood side by side. Jecht kept a gentle, restraining hand upon the boy's shoulder. He thought he could see what Auron meant to Tida, who had been robbed of her birth father, half orphaned, and then befriended by someone equal to the task of filling the void, only to lose him after few days. It was cruel. Fate was cruel. But Jecht would not let anyone steal those precious last moments from her, not even her real father.

Tidus on the other hand yearned to go to her, to comfort the girl that he had come to considered his daughter and loved as such in as much as he knew how. And yet, his stomach lurched too as his eyes rested on the form of his dying comrade in arms, his adopted father whom he had loved as a child far more than the man who had taunted and later abandoned him. He had never admitted it to Jecht or to Auron, but he had once wished as a teenager that Auron had been his real father, even if it would have meant that he could never have been a star blitzball player, that he wouldn't have inherited the talent.

Stillness and silence filled the hall before Yuna asked again, "Father, can anything be done? Can you save Sir Auron?"

"I ... I can try." he answered solemnly, squeezing her shoulder and stepping forward.

Tida could not master the sobs that wracked her body as she continued to hold the only half visible body of Auron close. Her eyes, shining like stars through panes of blue glass, were fearful as she looked up at Lord Braska, who clutched his daughter's summoning rod in his hands.

He looked down at the girl and tried to smile for her sake as he spun the instrument in his hands, casting the first spell that came to mind: Full-life. She looked much like his daughter, and perhaps a little bit like her grandmother as well, though her face was so marred by her tears that it was difficult to say for certain.

Tida closed her eyes as she felt the warmth of the strongest healing spell wash over them both. It was even more potent in the hands of someone such as High Summoner Braska. She felt Auron grow heavier in her arms and draw a slow, deep breath. He opened his one good eye and smiled his slight and enigmatic smile again as he sat up and looked around.

"My lord?" he questioned as he saw Braska, leaning upon the staff and scrutinizing him carefully.

"It was a near thing, but ... I think you will be fine." said Braska. There was relieved laughter in his normally solemn and brooding eyes.

"It was strange, my lord, being for a moment equally here and equally upon the Farplane." he said, rising slowly and giving Tida a hand up as well. A keen observer could have caught something uncomfortable in his eyes as he did so, his gaze lingering upon her for a long moment. But the discomfort passed as he laid his gloved hand upon her trembling shoulder. She seemed dazed, though perhaps no worse for wear.

"Strange, Auron?" prompted Braska.

"A Fayth ... he was a Fayth. The one that ... appeared to Tidus, I believe. And Tida as well ... He said to give her a message." said Auron, thinking very hard as the images of the Farplane became illusive.

"Me?" questioned Tida uncertainly.

Auron chuckled and leaned close to her before saying softly in her ear, "You did well. He - the Fayth - said that he knew that he could depend on you."

Tida looked at him in surprise, never once imagining that those words, "It all depends on you.", were meant not for Tidus, but for her.

"Then this ... you and me ... and Lord Nav? He knew?"

Auron leaned away from her and nodded slowly.

"This was the best that any of us could have hoped for. That someone had to lead the charge ... And that someone was you. Without you ... who knows what tragedies might have occurred here today."

"Wow." said Tida, shaking her head to clear it of all the mind boggling ideas about fate, chance, and destiny that had suddenly entered.

The Fayth had known that she would rush Nav ... and that Auron, the only one strong enough, the only other with so much courage and so much more tactical knowledge, would run instantly and selflessly to her defense, thereby thwarting even the strongest of the Guado lord's techniques, though without Braska there to heal him, it would have cost Auron his life. So much could have gone wrong, but it didn't.

"Wow." she repeated.

"Indeed." Auron agreed with a low chuckle. He looked around at the others for a moment before stooping and picking up his discarded collar. "Let's go. Trouble may be waiting for us in Bevelle." he said, becoming suddenly more gruff and Auron-like as he realized that everyone was staring at him.

"When isn't it?" laughed Tidus.

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A/N: Thanks for reviewing, Lizzy, sulou, Bunny, and Lynx! Did anyone seriously think I was going to kill off Auron? Really! The thing that got me started writing this story was the fact that I didn't really like Auron dying/ being sent (or Tidus evaporating) at the end of the game.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, namely the technical problems with logging on that I have been experiencing for almost two days now, this update is a bit late. But on the positive side, it did give me time to edit a little more thoroughly and work on the exposition/ non-dialog portions of this chapter.