Standard disclaimers apply.

The Wailing Outside
Katharine Frost

…..

Macalania Temple had always been his favourite. As a young monk he had always loved the short journey from Bevelle, thankful that his favourite temple wasn't Kilika or Besaid – not that he had ever seen those, not back then, but he knew he would not love them as well as he did Macalania. It was the snow he liked, the sheer volume of it, the unearthliness of it, the brilliance, and the way it seeped through his boots.

(So he could still be cold. That was something.)

Now, Auron, with new-dead eyes, saw the snow as something holy. It was appropriate. Holiness was always cold, from the antiseptic temples of Yevon to the little stone-and-weaponry shrines in the cracks of Gagazet. And him, crawling down Gagazet – pathetic – and bleeding red blasphemy.

That had been a month ago. The wounds had crusted over, coagulated, just like his life, his skin turned to pyreflies like wood to ash, and now came the inexorable waiting. He hated waiting, but knew that Sin would come for him and swallow him up in time. It was really only a matter of keeping himself occupied until then. Boredom, more than anything, had brought him back to Macalania—

Oh, really? The horrible voice in the back of his head was there; he wished he knew how to make it quiet. Only boredom? Not because this was somewhere you were once happy, once firmly devoted to Yevon, where you once knelt and prayed—

(And later it had been made a doubly happy shrine-of-sorts, he and Jecht and Braska laughing even as they stood over that entrenched fayth and aeon, Braska taking one more step towards death.)

Auron shook his head, as though to shake away thought itself; so far he had discovered no advantages to being dead. He did not want to go into the temple itself. He sat outside on the steps, all swathed in red, hooded, his face concealed so that no one would recognize him. No one would pay him any mind like that; the temples were flooded with worshippers of Yevon, all happy for the Calm. Anyone passing would think him bent with the enormity of joy. Newly-minted Yevonites walked all around him, eager to pray at the new statue of his dead friend Braska.

Is he still a dead friend if you are dead as well?

He had to suppress the insane urge to rise up and shout at all of them.

It really was cold. He snorted. It's not as though you'll freeze and die.

It was true, then – he no longer loved this temple. Auron would have liked nothing better than to see it exposed, stripped of all the finery and statues and imperious snow—

"Well, I have never seen such blatant disregard for – for – for the importance of academic research!" Auron turned his head slightly to see the source of this rather loud outburst.

An elderly man was being pushed out of the temple doors by one of the monks; his pointed hat was falling into his face, and he appeared quite infuriated. "You know the rules of the Cloister," the monk said impassively – Auron's voice had been that way, once, cool and indifferent; "only summoners and guardians."

"I should think it would change during the Calm!" the little man exclaimed. "Surely there is no need for such secrecy!"

But the monk had already gone back inside.

"There is not much to see," Auron said without thinking. The man's bespectacled eyes fell on him. "In the Cloister and Chamber of the Fayth, I mean."

"You've seen it?" The man – presumably an academic, judging from his heavy robes and the large pack slung around his narrow back – sat next to Auron, looking as though he were ready for a consolation.

"I've heard tales," Auron said smoothly. He didn't like to give away his identity; he liked leaving Sir Auron the guardian dead, vanished, the subject of much Spiran speculation. "I had a guardian for a brother, you see. He told me the chambers were simple, with the fayth and aeon trapped below, and the fayth would appear as pale spectres to the summoners. You do not appear to be a summoner, so I doubt you would have seen anything."

It was the most he'd said to anyone since telling that damned Ronso to find Braska's daughter.

"I should have liked to see it, still," the man said. "Oh, and my manners have left me. My name is Maechen. I am a scholar, and I am travelling around Spira. I thought that perhaps I would be able to enter a temple, once the Calm came, but alas—"

Auron made no move to offer his own name; Maechen didn't ask. Instead, he said, "Are you barred from the temple? Al Bhed, perhaps – since you cover your face? I only ask because I saw you here when I came in, and you have yet to move."

"I came here, but found that I had no desire to go inside."

"The fayth and aeon trapped below. How interesting." Maechen spoke as though Auron wasn't there; Auron supposed that most scholars were like this. He had met some in passing during his days in Bevelle and most were addle-brained, wrapped up in histories and mythologies instead of what was happening in front of them. "Oh, I wish I could go in! Even to stare at blank walls." Maechen sighed. "I have never seen a fayth, and that is especially difficult considering that my business is to find out what they are. I have a bit of a theory on it – would you like to hear it?"

Auron said nothing.

Maechen took it as a yes. "Have you ever come across some of the older teachings of Yevon? Not the newer laws, but the half-translated documents, of the ancient Spira and the creation of the Farplane and the fates of the creatures that lived between them?"

Auron had, of course; one didn't get to be a monk in Bevelle without knowing everything that betrayer-Yevon had passed down. "No," he said aloud. "I only know of the laws. I am – I am not particularly devout."

"Not until now, you mean. After the Calm."

"Yes," Auron said roughly, closing his eyes.

(If only you knew, old man. He supposed it would be a noble thing to do, tell truth to a scholar, but he had always been secretive.)

"Well, there is a part of one of the oldest teachings that tells of fiends." Maechen's expression grew dreamy as he grew lost in his own knowledge of history. "You know, of course, that fiends are the result of long-dead souls who cannot reach the Farplane. This happens because they are unsent, because they grow jealous and vengeful. In this tale of Yevon, however, there is a young man who dies unsent, and he hovers around the edge of the Farplane, wailing outside, but never allowed entrance. He sees the inside of the Farplane, where sent souls exist peacefully, and he sees the living, who are able to continue, and he wails, stuck between the two and never to meet reprieve, until his wailing turns to more beastly music, and he becomes a fiend."

Auron shifted, trying not to imagine himself becoming a monster. "How is that different?"

"The young man does not become a fiend because of anger, but because of sorrow, and he is then condemned to grieve selfishly forever." Maechen removed his spectacles and began to polish them, still shooting reproachful glances at the closed temple doors. "I think that story was not about fiends, but about fayth. They are the ones who are condemned through sorrow; they are the ones who exist between two worlds but can never gain entry to either. Even fiends, you see, can reach the Farplane, if they are killed and allowed release. The fayth are – well, trapped below, as you said, and weary of wailing. They are people who can be neither dead nor alive."

"But how can you say that if you've never seen one?"

Maechen smiled wanly; the lines around his mouth cracked. "Scholarly estimate, years of reading chronologies – but it is why I would like to see for myself. It sounds like a horrendous fate, doesn't it? Living caught between two existences?"

Auron looked down at the ground, again at the holy snow. "Indeed."

He hoped Sin would show up soon.

…..

END

…..

Note: The story Maechen tells is a highly butchered version of a bit of Persian mythology. I hope you all liked my first (and probably only, as the fandom scares me a little) attempt at an FFX story.