A note from the Hime no Argh herself–


Another day, another chapter. I'm so relieved right now because all my school problems have been resolved, plus I have everything in as far as college applications go. All I need to worry about now is the financial aid, but I'll be finished with that soon as well. This month I should be getting replies from the colleges–wish me luck!


Here's the latest chapter for your enjoyment. I want to thank everyone for all the kind reviews I received last chapter. They're always greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading, and please enjoy!


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Chapter 13

Memories of Sin


To the shock of Tidus, Auron, Jecht, and Kimahri, Miralesca did exactly as she had promised–apologized and let them go, no questions asked. Tidus was still musing this over as the four headed along the road back toward Macalania, intent on putting as much distance between them and Bevelle as possible.


"Have they...changed dramatically, or something?" he asked Kimahri doubtfully.


Kimahri took his time in thinking that over. "Change a little," he said at last. "Not try to kill people who disagree with religion."


Auron snorted.


"Stay in Bevelle, mostly," Kimahri added. "Kimahri still not trust them."


"Me neither," Tidus declared vehemently. He paused for a moment, then added, "Although that Miralesca wasn't so bad."


Auron made another contemptuous noise, and the three looked at him. "What's yer problem?" Jecht demanded.


Auron rolled his eyes at him. "Her ancestor did kill me, you know."


"It wasn't her fault, Auron," Tidus said bracingly.


"Maybe not. In any case wouldn't trust her any farther than I could throw her." Auron fixed Tidus with his penetrating gaze for a moment. "Remember, she's still a priestess."


"I suppose," Tidus admitted grudgingly. He fell silent for a moment, biting his lip. "You think she might have been telling the truth?" he asked at last. "About meeting Yuna, I mean?"


Auron shrugged. "I don't see why not."


"Then if she was last seen in Guadosalam..." Tidus's eyes widened. "That's barely a day or two away from here!"


"So it is," Auron remarked coolly.


Tidus glared at them, already hurrying on ahead. "C'mon, pick up the pace, you guys!"


"You do realize that she's probably gone by now?" Auron inquired. "I don't see why she would stay in Guadosalam."


Kimahri nodded. "Auron right. Yuna not stay in Guado city. She not trusted."


"Ain't it our only lead, though?" Jecht broke in suddenly. When the other three stared at him he shrugged. "I say we go. Better n' jest hangin' around outside Bevelle. Unless y'all wanna be arrested again," he added frankly.


"I suppose ending up in Guadosalam is the preferred fate," Auron agreed slowly. "Though I wouldn't say it's much better." He nodded at Tidus, heading on ahead.


"It could be worse," Tidus called after him. "You could be back in Bevelle having tea with Miralesca."


Auron made a sound more like a growl this time, but didn't look back. Tidus exchanged grins with Kimahri, then gave his father an edgy look, which he returned.


Jecht crossed his arms. "No need t'thank me, y'know."


"I wasn't planning to," Tidus said dryly.

Jecht glared at him. "When did you get t'be such a smart-aleck anyway?"


"Probably after you left," Tidus jabbed, following Auron and Kimahri down the road. His father kept after him, much to his surprise.


"It's not like I had a choice, y'know. You should know, you got dragged to Spira, you tell me how easy it is to stay where you wanna stay."


"I never said it was easy," Tidus said impatiently. "Anyway, what do you mean, where you want to stay? You only liked Zanarkand 'cause you were all cozy there."


"You too," Jecht insisted. "You had it just as easy as me. You had everything you wanted."


Tidus gave him a sidelong look. "Not everything."


"Look, I'm sorry, alright? How goddamn sorry d'you want me t'be? I know, I was a shitty father, I never did anythin' right–"


"You can't just say that, okay?!" Tidus exploded. "Now you're sorry–so what? You think that makes anything better? Well it doesn't!" He walked along moodily for a bit, staring at the ground. "How do you expect me to feel? You left me, you never came back, you went and made yourself Sin instead–"


He stopped short at the look on Jecht's face. That was bordering on shaky ground–very shaky ground.


"Sorry," Tidus said quietly. "I went too far, didn't I?"


"Nah," Jecht muttered, jamming his hands into the pockets of his slacks and he walked along, shoulders slouched. "Yer right. I shoulda found some way to return. Believe me, I wish I had," he added darkly.


"You couldn't help it," Tidus said, abruptly feeling sorry for him. "I mean, it's not like you could just wish yourself back to Zanarkand. I should know."


"Wish I had," Jecht repeated peevishly, though Tidus didn't think it was him Jecht was mad at. Finally he found himself able to voice the question that had been bothering him since their reunion.


"What was it like?"


He could tell, from the flat expression in Jecht's eyes, that his father knew exactly what he was talking about. There was a very long silence, through which Tidus waited as patiently as he knew how, waiting to see whether or not Jecht would say anything. Finally, in a low, flat tone that revealed none of what he was feeling, Jecht gave his answer.


"It was...confusin'. Half the time I didn't know where I was or what I was doin'. Half the time I didn't even know who I was, if you wanna know the truth. There were times when I'd forget my own name, and it wouldn't come to me for hours afterward–or maybe it was days, or weeks, or somethin'. I didn't know how the days passed. When I was myself again, I-I never knew how long I had been this way or what I'd done." He paused briefly. "There was a Zanarkand inside Sin, too, and sometimes I just wanted t'stay there and forget about everything. On'y there was this thing in there–"


At this Jecht halted, shuddering. It was then that Tidus realized Auron and Kimahri had stopped and were now facing them, listening in silence.


"Go on, Jecht," Auron said in a quiet, compassionate tone. "You'll feel better when you're done."


Jecht nodded, taking a long, shuddering breath, and continued. "There was this thing in my Zanarkand–this monster, I didn't know what it was. Some kinda shadow, I think. Thinkin' back, I guess that musta been Yu Yevon." He paused again. "It was tryin' t'lure me into Zanarkand, see. When I went to Zanarkand I felt like I was goin' to sleep, and when I woke up, I...I had done things." He looked at them pleadingly. "Awful things, y'know? It made me do 'em. It made me kill people,

an-and destroy villages...I didn't wanna do it but it wouldn't let me stop." He was visibly trembling now. "That thing–that Yu Yevon–I been thinkin' 'bout it since we came back t'Spira. I'm afraid it'll come back–I'm afraid it'll use me again."


A long, tense silence followed. At last Tidus said, very quietly, "It won't."


Auron nodded. "We killed it."


"Dead," Kimahri added. "Never come back."


"Yeah...but...how d'you know?" Jecht looked at them all pleadingly. "Sin always came back, an' yer tellin' me there's not even a chance that Yu Yevon could?"


Tidus and Kimahri exchanged uncertain glances. The truth was that neither of them knew quite how to answer that question. Finally Auron said quietly, "There's a chance, yes. There's always a chance. It's easy to imagine that the worst might happen–that we may never be free of our nightmares, or will always be alone, or will be unable to protect the ones we love."


Tidus flinched, catching the implication in his tone.


"The difficult part," Auron continued, "is believing that what we want will come to be. If Yu Yevon comes back, then we will deal with it. If something happens to Yuna that we cannot prevent, we will deal with that. The point is that these are a few out of millions of possibilities. A strong will makes things happen. Yuna taught us that."


The four of them stared at each other, silent, for several long moments.


"Auron right," Kimahri rumbled at last. "No good to dwell in past."


Tidus nodded. "We can only go forward."


Jecht still looked unconvinced, but Auron slung a friendly arm around his shoulders and said, "Come on, Jecht, don't be so glum. We're alive again, aren't we? What more could you ask for?"


"Nothin', I guess. Though I wouldn't say no t'some sake right about now." Jecht looked at Auron hopefully.


Auron sighed and thrust the jug into his hands. "If you get drunk you'll be very sorry, my friend."


"Good deal," Jecht said happily, taking a swig. "Ah, man, that's the spot!"


"If everyone's happy now, could we please get going?" Tidus said impatiently. "Yuna's waiting for me."


"So we've heard," Auron said dryly, exchanging a grin with Jecht as the four set off down the road once more.

* * *


Rikku, being the smallest of the mechanics set to work on the airship, naturally received the fun job of crawling into the engine compartment to see what the problem was.


"What do you see?" Brother called in Al Bhed after she'd spent about five minutes crawling blindly through the compartment, scraping knees and bumping her head on various engine parts, trying to breathe through the overpowering smell of fuel.


"Let me look around first, will you?!" she snapped back, harder than she'd intended to. Muffled laughs from outside reached her ears, but Rikku grimly ignored them, fumbling to turn on her flashlight.


Finally her fingers found the button and a pale beam shot through the darkness. Rikku stuck the flashlight in her mouth and crawled deeper into the compartment, twisting her head left and right to let the light wash over the enormous engine. Chrome metal flashed and winked at her, but almost immediately Rikku noticed a strange, twisted piece of metal that distorted her light.


She crawled toward it on all fours, then raised herself up to her knees to run her hands over the metal. It was a thick pipe that looked half-melted, the metal twisted and jagged beneath her sensitive fingers. There was another metal pipe beside it, this one smooth and undamaged. Rikku took the flashlight from her mouth.


"Hey, Brother!" she yelled. "The twin pipes in the stern–where do they go?"


"Back to the thrusters," he yelled back. "They're fuel lines."


"Ahah!" Rikku let her palm drift over the twisted pipe, following it back toward the stern, but before long her hand met the wall of the compartment. "It looks like the right fuel line is damaged," she reported. "It got melted or something, and I think the damage may go beyond the engine compartment."


"Wonderful," she heard Brother say grumpily. "We'll have to take the whole ship apart." He sighed. "You may as well come out now, Rikku."


Gratefully Rikku stuck the flashlight between her teeth again and crawled backwards out of the compartment. "No point in doing anything more today," Brother said gloomily when she stood on the floor of the hangar, dirty and covered with black grease. "I'll go tell Cid what you found."


"Have fun. I'm going to take a bath." Rikku grimaced as she felt grease in her hair.


She headed down the many twisting stairs to the lowest level, where hot springs bubbled up from the sandy earth. Here the metal floors and walls gave way to twisting corridors carved from rock. Rikku was skipping along, dreaming of a hot bath and barely noticing where she was going, when Wakka stepped out of a side corridor.


Naturally, she ran right into him. "Wakka!" Rikku cried, jumping back in surprise.


He didn't seem at all fazed. "Hey dere, Rikku. You seen Yuna around?"


"No," Rikku mumbled, staring at her toes. "Why would you come down here to look for her?"


"'Cause dis is where Lulu said she was headed."


"Well, then, you'd better be ready to see her naked, 'cause the spring is down here," Rikku said frankly.


Wakka blushed under his tan. "But dey wouldn't let me in a girl's bath."


"Oh, yes they would," Rikku retorted, edging around him in the narrow corridor. "There is no girl's bath. We all bathe together here."


For a moment Wakka gaped at her. "Weird!"


"Not if you're Al Bhed."


Wakka shook his head vigorously. "I'll just wait, den."


"Okay," Rikku said brightly. She couldn't resist giving him a little wink before flouncing off down the hall again.


Before long the rock passages opened into an enormous cavern filled with steam from the hot spring bubbling from the sandy cave floor. Twisted rock formations rose from the ground and streamed from the ceiling. Rikku kicked off her shoes, feeling the sand hot beneath her bare soles. She stripped off her clothes and removed the tie holding back her hair, then stepped slowly into the steaming water, giving her body time to adjust to the heat. Yuna was already immersed in the spring up to her neck, eyes closed, a towel wrapped around her hair. There were no other bathers–most Al Bhed tended to cleanse themselves later in the day.


Rikku sighed as the mineral rich water permeated the layer of dirt and grease on her skin, washing it away. Yuna's eyes opened and looked to her.


"Hello," the former summoner said dreamily.


"Hello," Rikku replied before dunking her head beneath the water. She came up shaking droplets out of her hair like a dog.


"Wakka was looking for you," she reported, settling herself beside Yuna to soak. "I bet he wants to ask what happened with that priest."


"Mm," was Yuna's reply. After the priest had appeared, claiming he knew where Tidus was, Yuna had gone into conference with him alone. He hadn't stuck around too long after their meeting was done, obviously sensing that he was less than welcome at Home.


"I still can't believe he had the nerve to show up here," Rikku said with mild indignation.


"I'm glad he did," Yuna said quietly. "At least now we have an idea of where Tidus could be."


Rikku glanced at her. "You really believe he was telling the truth?"


Yuna sighed. "I don't know. All I know is that this is our only lead."


"Of all the times for the airship to be out of commission," Rikku growled. Yuna glanced at her.


"How's that going, anyway?"


"Not good," Rikku replied glumly. "We think a damaged fuel line is the problem. It's going to take a month to fix it, maybe more."


Yuna sighed again. "I guess there's nothing to be done." She stood and stepped out of the spring, wrapping a towel around her. "I'll just have to search without it, that's all."


"Then you're determined to follow the priest's lead?"


Yuna nodded. "The priest's message was from this priestess named Mirana that I met in Guadosalam. She seemed honest to me."


Rikku frowned. "I think I might have seen that priestess. What did she look like?"


"You must have seen her, she was right in the main hall. She had long white hair and pale skin."


"Now I remember." Rikku looked at Yuna for a moment. "She looked awfully familiar, didn't she?"


"Maybe a bit," Yuna said, frowning. "I didn't really take notice. I was a bit preoccupied."


Rikku nodded. "Well, anyway, maybe you should go tell Cid your plan. He can at least provide us with a land vehicle. It'll be slow, but better than nothing."


"Mmhm," Yuna said vaguely. She smiled. "Enjoy your bath, Rikku."

"Thanks." Both women remained silent as Yuna dressed and left the cavern. Rikku floated on her back in the water, gazing up at the stone ceiling and thinking of how nice it would be when this journey was over and they didn't need to rely on the honesty of priests.

* * *


To be continued.