She's not dead. So don't worry yet. Yet.

_____________________________________________________________________

Darkness Falls

Chapter 16: Saving Private Rikku

Auron stood back as Tidus and Khimari levered open the door to the Fayth. The Cloister here had been pure hell to get through the last time as well. Being thrown about barely visible pathways on a disk the radius of his sword hadn't been any more comforting the second time. He stared at the pair as they worked, not really seeing, instead wondering to himself what had gone wrong.

If I had looked back. If we hadn't threatened Seymour. If Yuna hadn't jumped off the roof. If…

But there were too many 'ifs' that were unchangeable, and thinking about them would only drive him crazy. That didn't stop him though. Somewhere deep down in his heart he couldn't stop thinking that Rikku's death was his fault. The only consolation he could think of was that at least she wasn't suffering anymore.

Some consolation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rikku woke up, and hurt everywhere.

At least, it felt like everywhere. For second she imagined she was back underwater, dieing in her metal tomb. She curled up tighter and willed the feeling to go away. She knew it was a feeling, this time. She was alive (sort of) and she was here. And that was what mattered. She took a deep breath, gathered what little strength she felt she had, and opened her eyes.

She nearly shut them again, the exertion of that one simple act nearly exhausting her, and she view not helping. She stared around as much as she could, but everything was blurred and it only gave her a headache. She sighed and lay back, trying to get some more sleep. She opened her eyes wide in surprise when her head immediately fell forward again.

She shook her head slightly, giving herself what felt like a minor lobotomy, but clearing her view somewhat. The view made her wish she hadn't. She found herself staring at some kind of machina. Then she heard a click, and a voice speak up from the side.

"Subject is semi-conscious. Correcting."

Rikku saw something flash past her vision, but it moved too quickly and was gone before she could find out what it is. Suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her arm and a weird feeling as something was injected into her upper-arm. She sighed as a warm fuzzy feeling descended on her, and the pain vanished. She closed her eyes and lay back, savouring the warm feeling. Then she felt another jab in her other arm, and the feeling vanished, to be replaced by the cold hard surfaces and colours of reality.

"Painkillers and Stimulants administered, subject is conscious and responding to normal stimuli."

Rikku looked around to see who was talking, and was confronted by a small an in a white coat wearing thick glasses. She saw he was looking at her intently, and tried to wave to him. She couldn't move her arm, and turned her head to try to look. Her entire arm was encased in various straps and buckles. She began to panic, and looked at her other one. The same. She looked down and saw that both f her legs had been strapped together. She was held upright on a metal bed, in some kind of cross-shape. The small man noticed her panic, and approached her. He wasn't much bigger than her either.

"Are you awake?" he asked. She didn't reply. The man sighed in exasperation, and then slapped her across the cheek. She looked surprised for a second, and then he raised his hand.

"Yes," she said quickly.

The doctor smiled. "Excellent." He picked up what Rikku recognised was a small recording device and spoke into it in precise tones. "Subject zero-seven, Al Bhed. Beginning tests." He walked over to her left, and Rikku watched him move over to a small table. She tried to look past him, but he was obscuring the view. Then he turned back, and Rikku saw he was holding something. Something small and sharp. The man started to walk back towards her, instrument in hand.

"Wait!" Rikku shouted desperately.

The man paused. "What?" he asked testily, continuing his approach.

"What are you doing?" she shouted to him as he came closer.

The man looked at her as if she was mentally-deficient. "I am a scientist, and I have been given permission by the Maesters… well, three of them… to investigate the physical processes and changes within the Unsent. This I will do," he said simply, as if giving a presentation. He raised his arm and spoke into the recorder again. "Beginning preliminary exam, subject is alive and conscious. I shall begin with an examination of any differences in internal structure of the Unsent that may result from the dying process." He switched the recorder off and put it on the table beside him. Rikku's attention as forcibly drawn to the fact that the entire work surface was an incredibly dark red in colour. And she didn't think it was paint.

The doctor raised the small scalpel and looked at her. Rikku breathed a small sigh of relief. Then he reached behind him and brought a small mask from his pocket. He looked back up at her after putting this on.

"We used to do this with anaesthetic, but we discovered it gave inaccurate results. Now close your eyes." He said.

"Why…?" Rikku said weakly, looking at the thing in his hand.

The doctor reached down and raised Rikku's t-shirt, putting the small scalpel to her ribcage. "Because this is going to hurt."

"A lot."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Auron stared at the guards impassively as they pointed their guns at them. Somehow he didn't think they were going to get out of this one quite as easily. Tidus stood behind the others, holding Yuna in his arms, and looked defeated. Wakka and Lulu were staring past the guards at Kinoc, who stood there with a look of smugness on his face so solid it could have been punched. They dropped their weapons at the barked command and just stood their, glaring at the temple guards.

Auron walked past the guards, who tried to stop him, but Kinoc waved and the guard stopped. Auron walked right up to the Maester's face and stared at him balefully.

"What is it, old friend?" Kinoc said mockingly. He knew he had won.

"Since when were you a pawn of Seymour?" Auron asked simply.

Kinoc's eyes flashed, and he nodded to the guards. They moved forward, guns armed, motioning to the prisoners to move off. Tidus looked for a second that he might resist, but he was carrying Yuna, and Auron shook his head at the boy. Tidus glared at Auron for a few seconds, then realised that he couldn't resist even if he wanted to, and followed the rest towards the door.

As he walked along the corridors of Bevelle he felt Kinoc fall into step with him. Auron did not turn to loom at him.

"What do you think you are going to change?" Kinoc asked him, and then answered his own question. "Nothing, that's what, the cycle will continue regardless of any petty measures that you try."

"Yuna will stop it," Auron replied, so quietly the others did not hear.

Kinoc shook his head in amusement. "One person cannot change the natural order of things," he said, and speeded up to go to the head of the miniature convoy.

Auron watched him leave and wondered about the man's last comment. Was it true that one person couldn't change anything? Was everything they were doing for nothing?

He stopped there, before he let his thought processes get away from him. If nothing could be changed, then why had he followed Braska? Why did he follow Yuna, and why had Rikku died to protect the young summoner? If nothing was worth anything, then he had wasted half his life in pursuit of an unreachable goal. He didn't believe that.

Kinoc stayed at the head of the line as they trooped down towards the holding cells. He passed the only door in this particular corridor, marked 'Room 101'. He was puzzled by the lack of guards here, but then remembered that no-one liked to guard this particular chamber of horrors.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The doctor washed the blood off his hands in the sink in the corner of the room. Remarkable. The Unsent were, to all intents and purposes, alive. What made them unsent had to be some kind of mental rather than physical alternation, and he needed a Monk for that. Metaphysics were not his job. He turned back to look at the small Al-Bhed girl. Pretty little thing if you ignored the scarring. He had been told her history, and knew them to be from her violent underwater encounter that had killed her. Well, at least he could heal the incisions he mad made. He stroked her gently on the cheek, but she was too far gone to respond even to that. He wiped the blood trickling down from her mouth and dribbled some water into her throat. She coughed and stared at him. He clicked his fingers in front of him and she barely responded. Perfect.

The doctor went across to the wall and lifted up the small communication device attached to the wall. The doctor had no particular love for the Al Bhed, but he was a scientist, and forbidden technology did not even faze him. He dialled the number for the person he had been told to contact after the 'examination' had been concluded.

"Get me Maester Seymour. No, I don't care If he's busy, he'll see me! Fine! But tell him this, exactly this; the girl is ready. Thank you. You have a nice day now."

He put down the phone. Damn bureaucracy. So many cutouts and underlings it had almost impossible to get what you want.

He sat down on the chair and waited, observing the girl. She just stared straight ahead, occasionally coughing. He couldn't blame her. The examination had been… thorough. As an afterthought he called for an orderly to clean up the mess around her. Sanctioned or not, it would not do for the Maester to come in here and think him a torturer.

Oh no, not him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Auron sat in the cage next to Tidus, watching as Kinoc approached from the walkway. He stared impassively as the Maester walked up to him.

"So, when's the execution?" he asked Kinoc casually.

Kinoc looked hurt. "Auron, what kind of person would execute a dear friend?" he said mock-wounded.

"You would," Auron replied, voice like acid.

Kinoc merely laughed and walked off, leaving Auron to his thoughts.

Damn that man! They both thought of the other, but for entirely different reasons.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seymour watched impassively as the trial continued without his contribution. He had replied to the Ronso Maester's shocked query, but his mind was on other things. He had received the message from the doctor, and was now thinking how he could extricate himself from the boring spectacle without arousing suspicion. Technically torture was banned under Yevon, but medical experimentation was not.

Thank Yevon for semantics.

Seymour simply walked away after the short trial was over, the prisoners and Lady Yuna taken to the waterway where they were to be left to die. As he walked through the corridors to the doctor's lab he thought to himself. It was a shame that Yuna had to die, but he would find some way to fool the others and save her. He had long ago stopped belief in Yevon and gave scant lip service to its practises, preferring either technology or people to fulfil his dreams rather than some mythical deity who in reality had himself created Sin. What irony.

He reached the doctor's 'operating room' and opened the door. He saw the doctor sitting down on his chair, and the man waved at him slightly, not taking his eyes off the figure strapped to the upright operating table. Surely it must have been easier to do it with the subject horizontal, but the doctor said he preferred his patients to be upright. Seymour had not bothered to try and change his mind.

He stared at Rikku, seeing past he blood and healing incisions on her chest and abdomen. He brushed a few strands of hair from her eyes and looked at her. Suddenly her eyes opened and she looked directly into her eyes. Seymour took this one chance to stare directly into them looking for signs that… yes, there they were. Normal doctors would not have caught them, but he and she were the same, and Seymour could see the small yet significant things that told him what was happening to her.

Eventually something happens to all the dead. They started off relieved at their release form life, eager to be sent. But after several weeks, something changes, they become restless and ratty. Eventually they exist in a perpetual state of anger, snapping at everyone they know, even their friends.

The final stage in an Unsent's existence begins to emerge. They slowly, fast enough so that it can go unnoticed if no-one is around, yet so agonisingly slow that the victim knows exactly what is happening to them, they become fiends.

Seymour looked deep into Rikku's spiralled eyes. They different from normal human eyes, he could still detect the minute traces and signs that showed that the process had begun it's slow and inevitable transformation of Rikku's body.

"Wha…?"

Seymour frowned at the girl. She couldn't still be lucid, could she? Seymour was well acquainted with the doctor's practises, and they weren't conductive to keeping his patients conscious. Or alive.

"Rikku?" Seymour said softly.

Rikku's head swung up. "Who…?"

"Shhh, stay quiet Rikku. You've been through a lot. I'm here to make the pain stop," he said, beginning to run through his technique. He gestured to the doctor and the man gave him a syringe. He carefully injected the painkillers into her arm.

It was a simple technique. Deliver her from pain, then make someone else hurt her, setting up an angel-and-devil link in her mind, with Seymour as her bright and shining savour from the evil doctor. Soon she would be his.

A chime sounded, and the doctor picked up the phone.

"Yes? …yes, he's here. Of course." He handed Seymour the phone. "It's for you," he said.

Seymour took it. "Yes?" he said, voice not betraying his anger at the interruption.

"They're approaching the gate now my Lord. Do you wish us to kill them?" an anonymous guard asked.

Seymour thought. "No. Let them through. I will be there shortly." He handed the phone back to the doctor, who hung up. "Keep her here. I will return shortly. Administer the toxins," he said, and simply walked out.

The doctor watched as the door closed, then picked up a syringe and turned to Rikku, who was watching him with concern in her eyes. The doctor smiled. "We're going to have some fun," he told her softly. Then he frowned and corrected himself.

"Well, I'll have fun. You'll mostly be screaming."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Auron followed Yuna from behind. Soon after being thrown into the viaduct he had found her wandering the corridor, the Aeon's Shiva and Bahamut watching her in turn. They apparently made great guards, because the only fiends he came across had been alternately frozen or blasted apart. He chuckled silently to himself when he recalled Issaru's Aeons being crushed under Yuna's. It hadn't been particularly difficult, just tedious. He had watched from the sidelines as she sent her Aeons out one after another.

A jolt jerked him awake from his reverie, and he looked to see that Yuna had hit him gently on the chest. He looked up to see a small dot of light ahead of them. The exit.

Tidus, Wakka and Lulu waved to them as they approached. "Hey! You made it ya!" the orange-haired blitzer exclaimed. Yuna hugged them both, then turned to Lulu.

"Where were you?" she asked.

Lulu shrugged. "I thought this was where you'd be," she said simply, and left it at that.

Together the group pulled open the doors leading to the Highbridge, and prepared to make their escape to Macalania.

Auron squinted with his one good eye, and noticed several figures moving toward them.

"Seymour," he said, knowing whom the interloper would be.

Sure enough Seymour walked towards them, Kinoc and several guards in pursuit. He smiled at them all, and then clicked his fingers. The man immediately behind Kinoc let go of something, and the man fell to the floor, an arrow stuck in his back. Auron did not react. Kinoc had been his friend, but he was damned if he was going to show emotion in front of this man.

A brief conversation was held between Yuna and Seymour that Auron did not really pa attention to. Then he heard a roar, and looked up as Khimari ran forwards and jammed his pear in the Maester's heart. Seymour did not seem to react. He just stared at the Ronso, and then he changed.

Suddenly the guards on either side of the Maester started screaming and clawing at their chests. Yuna watched in horror as they literally exploded, the pyreflies flowing around Seymour, who was looking to the heavens. Suddenly a figure began to materialise behind the Maester, and Seymour faded form view, to be replaced by some kind of steel demon with the man's face.

Auron sighed and unsheathed his blade, preparing to destroy the crazed Maester once and for all.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The doctor looked up from his tending of the girl's wounds. He didn't want to kill her, only cause her agonising pain. He heard some guards' race past his room and mentally shrugged. If someone were attacking, they would hold him or her off. He wasn't worried.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Auron swung his blade at the Seymour-creature, ignoring the snake-like thing that surrounded it and piercing its armour straight to the heart. The thing gave one last scream and collapsed to the floor, whatever had been levitating it gone. Auron snarled and ripped the sword from its body, swinging git to rest over his shoulder and turning away. Seymour began to dissolve to pyreflies, panting and arching it's back as it vanished into brightly coloured baubles. Just before his head vanished though, he said one last thing that even through all the noise Auron heard clearly.

"YouR WomAn LiVes."

Auron spun around instantly, but the Maester had already evaporated. He stood staring at the spot for a few seconds, not daring to believe what he had heard. Suddenly he turned back to Wakka.

"Wakka, did you actually see Rikku's body?" he asked.

Wakka suddenly looked relieved, gladdened and furious at himself as he answered. "No."

That was all Auron needed. He turned and began to head back into the temple. Tidus went to follow, but Lulu grabbed his shoulder as he passed. "This is for him to do," she whispered. Tidus looked confused for a few seconds, but then relented and sat down on the floor. The panic resulting from their escape would prevent any guards from making their presence felt for some time, so they were momentarily safe. He hoped the same would be safe back inside the temple.

Auron ran through the temple, dodging running guards and fires, running to the one place he knew Rikku would be kept if she were alive, the one place that Seymour would have taken her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The doctor wiped his the girl down, It had occurred to him that he had not bothered to discover the name of the person he was torturing/brainwashing, but that wasn't really important no, was it?

The doctor heard something creak, and turned around to see something silver fly through the air toward him. In an automatic reaction he raised his hand to ward it off, but the blade sliced clean through it and carved through his skull.

Auron let the blade fall to the group with the corpse of the doctor. Instantly he turned to look at the figure on the 'operating' table.

It was Rikku.

In that second Auron felt an almost overpowering sense of relief, and would have fallen to his knees if he hadn't been in Bevelle. Without thinking he unlatched the restraints holding her to the table and she fell forward into his arms. She flinched and frowned but Auron could tell she was unconscious. He lowered her to the ground and went over to the door to see if the way was clear. Before he got even two steps he felt something grab hold of his arm. He turned back to see Rikku's hand gripping his lower arm in a death grip. He looked at her eyes and the sight almost made him wan to cry in both rage at Yevon for doing this to her and relief that she was all right.

"Don't leave me here," she whispered to him, eyes wide and pleading for him to stay.

Bending down, Auron gathered Rikku up in his arms and shouldered the door open, running back through the enclosed citadel of Yevon back to the others.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yuna looked around when she heard footsteps to see…

"Rikku!" Tidus shouted in relief.

Yuna turned to see Auron running towards them, Rikku cradled in his arms. She ran towards him and looked at her, moving her hair away from her face. She drew back then she touched her and Auron had to whisper to her softly to let Yuna touch her. Yuna closed her eyes and chanted silently to herself. Instantly a soft blue glow enveloped the girl as Yuna used her strongest healing magic. The blood stopped flowing and some of the more minor cuts sealed themselves. More serious injuries would have to be taken care of later. She looked at Auron and he nodded.

He looked around and gestured at the others, face now composed again. Together, they ran out of the Holy Capital, towards the Crystal Forest, and safety.

_____________________________________________________________________

Ahhh. And all is good again. Well, sorta. Let the Aurikku begin in earnest!