This is the final chapter of this story. Barring unforeseen events, there will be no more updates. I've said what I have to say. And I thank those of you who listened.

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After

Chapter XI

Oddly enough, it was Nooj who woke first. Paine was moving restlessly in her sleep and had disturbed him. He propped himself up on his right arm and looked at her with concern. She seemed to be having some sort of nightmare and tears had clotted on her cheeks.

"Wake up." He gently shook her shoulder. "Wake up, Paine. It's all right."

She opened her eyes, at first seeming not to recognize him, then she threw herself against his body like one who fears falling from a great height.

"Nooj!" She buried her face against his chest and wept with bitter abandon.

He held her tightly to him, his right hand cupping her head. "What's the matter?"

She couldn't speak, able only to cry. Nooj was troubled. Crying was as alien to Paine as laughter to him. Had they both been changed in some profoundly essential way by the passage from life to death? Had the feeling that the transition was easy and seamless been a fraud and were they, at their depths, no longer the persons they had been before their translation? He held her, rocking her gently back and forth, and wondered what to say or do to ease her pain.

After a while, her sobs stopped and she lay limp in his arms, hiccoughing softly. She would not lift her head or meet his eyes. He understood her shame and was careful not to force her.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to go on like that." She spoke brusquely against his chest. "It must have been the drinks."

"Yes, liquor can hit hard when you're not accustomed to it. It's all right now." He petted her tenderly as one might comfort a bereft kitten.

Paine gave a great sniff and knuckled the tears from the corners of her eyes. "Do you think he could maybe be my father?"

"He didn't deny it."

"Did he say anything about me while I was asleep?"

"He told me to take care of you, said you were worth treasuring. And he looked at you with ... affection." Nooj produced the word with an air of triumph.

"Really? He thinks I'm worth something?" She looked up with a watery smile.

Nooj knew when to be silent and continued to hold her while she reassembled her composure.

"I became a Warrior because I a wanted to be like him – if he really was my father," she said truculently, pulling away from his arms and smoothing her hair with her palms.

"Yes."

"I'm all right now. It was the drinks; I'm not used to stuff that strong."

"Ready to go hunt for the forest?" He prepared to rise.

"Let's go." Paine leapt up and shook herself. "You can tell me what else you talked about while we walk."

Nooj gave her a mocking glance. "Sure you're quite refreshed and don't need a little distraction?"

She looked at him with surprise and, suddenly catching his joke, permitted herself a feeble laugh and linked her hand in his. They set out at as brisk a pace as was possible, Paine still half-enmeshed in the web of her dreams.

Nooj, who had been sweeping the horizon as they strolled, caught her arm and pointed. "To your left. Isn't that the staircase to Vegnagun? We're making progress."

"I think you're right. Did Auron tell you just where this Department of Resolution is? We didn't see any sign on our first trip through here."

"Damn!" He struck his forehead with his right hand. "I forgot to ask him. I wonder how many more things I didn't ask?"

"I should have stayed awake and helped. Sorry. So you didn't ask. So we'll just keep looking. We're better off than we were. We have comfortable clothes, shoes, some answers and we're rid of the Lovers." Paine kicked idly at one of the omnipresent and exceedingly tedious flowers. "I wish these things were a brighter color."

"Getting bored already? Do you want to go on to the next level?"

"Can we go together?"

"No guarantees and I'm not sure I've done everything I'm supposed to do here yet. It would be nice if we had a check-off list and could tell how far along we are. ... I'm saying 'we' for convenience. I don't think you have any debts to pay. Do you?"

She thought for a moment. "Don't know. Maybe I have to placate Baralai in some way before I'm free. And I think you have to stay here at least until the twins are born – although I have no idea how we'll be able to tell when the births occur. What with the time screw-up and all."

They had passed the staircase with no problems. It would appear that distance was an excellent deterrent to the enthusiasms of the Elite Guard, since none of the obsessed women had so much as stuck out her head.

"I have an idea about how time relates to us and to the living," Nooj mentioned with exaggerated casualness. "Want to hear it?"

"Carry on; I'm all ears."

"From what Auron said and implied, the time disparity is only here. We are the ones affected – not those on the other side. When we visit with a living being and they tell us something, they are stating what has happened and is happening in their world – the one we knew, the one where time proceeds in order. They are not imagining or making up tales to confuse matters."

"So when LeBlanc told you she had given birth to the boys and was no longer going to devote herself to your memory, that was the truth?" Paine was grateful for the diversion from her bitter-sweet thoughts of Auron.

"Precisely. And the visits from Baralai's agents are spaced more widely than we've perceived them. He's not aggressively stalking you; he's trying to win you back in his own way. It's not altogether his fault that he's so inept socially. The time compression and inconsistency simply makes it more obvious."

She stopped to consider what he was saying. "If I'm following your reasoning, you're saying what happens on Spira doesn't affect us here in any meaningful way. That we are foolish to permit ourselves to be confused and disturbed by what the Callers tell us."

He gripped her chin and tipped her face so that he could look straight into her eyes. "I was right! You are the only intelligent woman that religion obsessed world ever produced!"

"So what's the practical result of your idea?"

"We should ignore what's happening there. I'm free of LeBlanc and you're free of Baralai. We can leave them to their bickering and need only be spectators to their lives. They are our past, not our present." He continued to look intensely at her as though to press his opinions directly into her mind.

"I can't see any obvious error in that." She confessed. "The only part that bothers me is it's too comfortable, lets us off too easily."

"Forget our obligations, if there are any; why not try operating with this as a guiding principle for a while and see what comes of it?"

She nodded solemnly, "I have no objection. ... Did you ask Auron why we've suddenly become able to sleep?"

"No. That's another thing I forgot. Maybe you should have stayed awake." He drew her closer to his side with an affectionate arm around her shoulder. "The element in this world that's most disorienting to me right now is the lack of definition of night and day. I don't have any way to mark off intervals."

"It all comes back to time for you, doesn't it? You're a man of order and discipline and, without compartments, you're finding it hard to function." She stated this as a fact not a question.

He nodded, "You always were the only one who understood even a part of me. It was a major error on my part to let you go. One I won't make again. I never thought I would be learning new things about myself once I had died; I had the strong conviction that death would be the end of all the endless self-examinations and arguments within."

The shadow of the long-sought forest had drawn a dark line at the horizon when they became aware of another object nearer to hand. They could see, moving against the brightness of the sky, what appeared to be two figures aimlessly drifting along.

"Is that Shuyin and Lenne?" Paine wondered aloud. "It looks like them."

"Could be. Do you want to run ahead and check how they're doing? I would rather not talk to them again. I've only just recovered from the effects of their peculiar mannerisms. It's all right; go ahead. You took them as your project." He gave her a little push.

"I'll be back as soon as I can. Why don't you wait for me here? In the grass."

Nooj watched as Paine ran like a black-draped Atalanta across the meadow leaving the fragrance of crushed flowers to mark her passage. He heard her hail the couple in the distance, waving her arms in an additional effort to catch their attention. When the three met and seemed to engage in conversation, the maimed man sighed and lowered himself to the ground, stretching out full length and hunting a comfortable position.

He had closed his eyes and was lightly drowsing when she returned, breathless and grinning. She dropped down at his side and tickled his nose with a freshly plucked blade of grass.

"How are they doing? More problems?" He asked lazily, batting away the irritant.

"Let me just say that Shuyin is no longer wretched." She lay down beside him, pillowing her head on her clasped hands. "And Lenne is much quieter and looks very smug – like a cat with cream on its whiskers." She rolled over on her side and trailed a finger from his lower lip to his chest.

"Are you trying to start something?" He caught her hand and nibbled gently at her fingertips.

"Why not? We've worn these clothes forever." She preened flirtatiously.

Nooj laughed, "I've told you before you're a most unconvincing flirt; you haven't improved any. Turn around and I'll unhook you, or better still ..." He gripped the material with his left hand, the machina one, and tore it away with a single pull. "Now you'll be sure to get a new dress."

"Unfair. I'm the only one with no reserves."

"Alas. That's the fate of a failed seductress."

"Still not fair." She pouted, fiddling with the lacings across his chest.

"Oh, all right." He twisted the fabric of his cassock in the powerful machina fingers and ripped it cleanly to the hem, tossing it to the side. "Happy now?"

"Ummm," she snuggled up to him, feasting on his warmth, inhaling his familiar clean amber scent. "Are you going to give me a baby this time?"

Startled, Nooj drew back and stared at her. "What! Do you want one?"

"I'm not sure; I think so."

"Then the answer is 'No'. I won't be a part of this until you're absolutely certain. Since pregnancy is never an accident among my kind and we are not rapists, an embryo – once conceived – must not be deliberately discarded." He was more serious than she had seen him since their reunion.

"No abortions?"

"No abortions. You can't change your mind. I'm not even sure it's possible to create life here in this world of the dead but I won't take the chance so long as you're uncertain."

She closed her eyes, the better to concentrate. "Then we'll wait." She closed the gap between them and wound her arms around his neck, reaching up to loosen his long coarse hair so that it fell around his shoulders like a mane.

Afterwards, when they lay happily surfeit, their bodies still entwined, he mused, "There are worse ways to spend eternity."

She raised her head from his chest and purred, "I can't think of many better. Even if it proves impossible to make life here, it'll be fun experimenting. .... Now why don't you look for our clothes for a change?"

"Because it's woman's work," he dodged the blow she aimed at him. "And it's easier for you to jump up and down."

She proved the validity of the latter point by springing to her feet and kicking him lightly in the ribs. In a moment, she was back with the usual armload of garments.

"Looks like the same stuff. Do you suppose this has become our uniform? Hook me up. Why didn't you ask Auron about making babies?"

"I forgot" He busied himself with his lacings. "No. To be truthful, I decided not to."

"Why?"

"I have my reasons." The tightness of his mouth indicated he would not explain. He concentrated on winding his hair up again and pinning it in place with a smooth twig.

Paine looked at him with a calculating air and wisely held her tongue.

Soon they were back on the path they hoped would lead to the forest, if a meandering trek across a trackless meadow can be called following a path. They had just come to the place where they could distinguish the pale trunks of the slender trees in the forest when Paine wailed, I've got a Call! Damn it! I don't want to talk to anybody right now. I wish they would all go away and leave us alone."

"Think of it as staving off boredom for a while yet. I'll tell you what - I'll go with you." Nooj surprisingly asserted.

"Can you do that?"

"Auron said he did what he pleased. If he can do it, so can I."

The curtain had obligingly manifested itself within a few steps. When the Gatekeeper saw that there were two holding out their wrists for his guidance, he demonstrated a certain impatience. "Only the woman was Called. You, sir, must wait."

"She's not going without me. I will not permit it." Nooj proclaimed, looking at the area where he surmised the face of the guide must be.

"No. I won't go unless he can come with me," Paine chimed in quickly.

The Gatekeeper paused, apparently in thought. "Oh, all right. I'll get blamed but they'll blame me if I delay things anyway. Go on through; you know the way."

When they had passed into the private room, it was to encounter Baralai. At the sight of Nooj, his eyes widened grotesquely and the color drained from his face, leaving him, the only living being in the room, looking like a corpse.

"What are you doing here?" He nearly stuttered in his fury. "You've got no right to be here. I called Paine." His voice was rising in both volume and pitch.

"I'm just protecting Paine from your importunities. Look, Baralai, let's drop this nonsense. We were all friends once and you know Paine and I became lovers not long after we met in the Crimson Squad debacle." Nooj maintained his controlled, slightly amused air. "Why are you so intent on pursuing her now?"

"She doesn't need protecting. I love her and will join her soon. We were meant to be together like we were when she was alive." Baralai was not listening or not understanding what he heard.

"It doesn't look like it, does it?" Nooj continued to interpose his body between the Praetor and the woman. "She has no interest in being with you and I have no intention of stepping aside to give you a clear field."

"Then why won't you let her speak for herself? Have you bullied her to the point she no longer has a voice of her own?"

Paine rushed at the table, pushing Nooj aside in her anger. "You insufferable idiot – you're a fine one to talk about bullies. I speak for myself and always have. You're remembering something that never was. We slept together a few times. It was not a grand passion; it was not a consuming affair. We were friends and we shared some moments, intimate? - yes, special?- no. I was never your lover the way you're pretending I was. Now, go find some living woman or man to make you complete. I'm here on the FarPlane with my only real love and would like to enjoy my afterlife without you trying to erect your guilt edifice on me. Go away and let me remember you with some degree of kindness."

Baralai stared at her in complete disbelief, "You'd rather be with this cripple than with me? Don't you understand I'm a priest and when I join you I'll be able to make things easy and smooth? You'll have no worries, no problems, just bliss. I'll seat you on the Throne of Heaven and bow down before you. He drags you along like a gypsy at his limping heel, making you subject to his faults and whimsies. Why would you choose someone who's only half a man when I am offering my complete and intact self to you?"

Paine leaned over the table, her face only inches from the now-reddened face of the Praetor, "You will never understand what a complete man is. And you have never understood me; I don't like things too easy. I like pushing and trying and working things out for myself. So now, I'm telling you – leave me alone. I had hoped to stay your friend but I will never be your lover; I wasn't your lover when I was alive and I'm certainly not going to be waiting for you now I'm dead. It's over, finished, done. Go away, Baralai, you're becoming a bore." She turned her back decisively, her arms folded in a way both men recognized.

"It would appear that the lady prefers reality even in the midst of a universe filled with superstitious balderdash. Strange she should choose to go roving with a cripple over perching on the theoretical Throne of Whatever with a priest. Goodbye, Baralai. We both wish you well and hope you have a long and fruitful life. Oh, and don't send any more surrogates. They do your cause no good." Nooj took Paine by the hand and led her from the suddenly too small room.

Once back in the meadow, she leaned against him and breathed hard as though she had been running. "Thank you for being there. I know it's foolish, but he troubles me. He's not like I remember him being when I was alive."

"No, he's changed, started to believe his own publicity. It happens to men who become trapped in their private bubbles, who are constantly praised and never hear criticism. Little men who wrap themselves in the robes of righteousness tend to look bigger than they are, especially in their own mirrors, and they end up taking themselves far too seriously. The mantle of a god is a powerful drug and totally addictive. It creates its own reality. Baralai was a good person back in the early Crimson Squad days but he's not the same man now. Forget him." Nooj spoke with a profundity he rarely used anymore. Being around Baralai had a regressive effect on him.

"I still can't understand why he settled on me." She lamented, drooping her head on his shoulder.

"Probably because you're out of reach and he's driven to prove nothing is beyond him. He wants you because he can't have you. Forget him; he's no longer of any importance."

She nodded ruefully. "You warned me. Our lives just don't connect to the living anymore. I think you're winning the argument."

"It's not an argument, really. It's a discussion between companions and friends."

"And lovers?"

"That, too." A considerable interval was required to reassure her. "Now, on to the forest."

The details of the trees that marked the edge of the forest had become perceptibly clearer as they talked. Only a few yards separated them from the edge of the grove when Paine pointed with excitement to the side.

"Look! It's Auron!"

The figure in red was striding across the meadow on a path leading diagonally away from them.

"We can ask him all those questions you forgot!" Paine was dancing in excitement. "Look. He's sitting down. Maybe he saw us and is waiting." She tugged at his arm impatiently.

Nooj restrained her, "Wait. Let's think about this. Are you sure you want to ask all the questions? Remember what you said to Baralai ... you don't want things to be too easy."

"Yes, but ..."

"Paine, have you ever truly thought about what eternity means? It's not going to stop. This is what we're stuck with. There's no end, no chance for ending."

Paine abruptly sat down on the mossy hummock at the edge of the forest.

"I hadn't thought. I didn't think," she stammered.

"Not many people do. It's a hard concept to wrap the mind around." He lowered himself awkwardly to the ground beside her. "During our temporal existence, we could anticipate a destination – we had a limit on our actions and had to fit them into the available time. That's not true here. We have nothing but time and too little to fill it."

"So boredom is our chief foe?" she asked.

"I can't think of any other. We can't be hurt or killed. Boredom is always a problem for perfection. Think. It was the flaws in our world that kept us interested and challenged. One of the subjects I'm eager to bring up with Auron is how he keeps his sanity here. There may be some way around this endless tedium. Otherwise this FarPlane is more of a hell than a heaven. ... I still don't understand why I ended up here when I don't believe in this place and was aimed for the Nothingness my father finally found."

"But he was here and waited all those years for you."

"I wonder how long it seemed to him. I got the impression he was alone during his wait."

Paine looked down, apparently studying the moss which carpeted the forest. "Do you hunger for Nothingness as you once did for Death?"

"Not so single-mindedly." His crooked smile softened the angles of his face. "I can now afford the time for other things, other hungers." He swept her into his arms.

When she had caught her breath, she pressed her demands. "What do you want in the end?"

"Certainly not an endless existence here, punctuated by the occasional memory erasure. Although, I suppose we wouldn't notice it if it happened. Maybe we've done that already and are repeating all this for some innumerable time.... No! I won't entertain that thought! It's too close to madness. I must assume some things are as they seem or there's no point in thinking any longer. As I have said, I want Nothingness."

She was silent, trying to put into words or images what she envisioned as her own ultimate destination. There was nothing other than the man beside her which drew her with any potency. She would, she decided, walk with him into the Nothingness of his heart's desire. It would be far better than any sort of existence without him. But that was a thing not to be spoken aloud.

She was too proud to demand that he declare his intentions toward her. He had expressed his desire to flee this plane when he became bored. Did he want her to accompany him or was he paying her what he probably considered the ultimate compliment by leaving her free to set her own course? Although she seethed inwardly, she steeled herself to reveal nothing of her turmoil.

"When do you think you'll have sucked this level dry of amusement?" Her voice was as cool as it had always been when she was alive.

Something in her tone caught his ear and he examined her intently. An almost visible light crossed his face and he raised one eyebrow. "Not for quite some time – if we can use that meaningless word here. I have no wish to be parted from you. But you know that. I expect we'll reach our tolerance for boredom at about the same time. There's just one question we'll need to have answered by then: is it possible to go onward together?"

She almost collapsed in the sudden relief that suffused her body like a drug flowing through her veins. "Yes. I suppose so. It won't do to break up the team again. After all, there aren't any weapons here so you can't shoot me."

"No. And I'm still my own man so far." He permitted her the privacy of her thoughts and looked away into the forest but could not forego a gentle tease. "Are you sure you don't want to go ask Auron if we can make life as well as love in this place?"

She gave her sudden grin, the one that lighted up her entire somber face. "Why don't we just experiment? And in the meantime, let's find that brook."

"And go upstream this time."

They smiled at one another in perfect understanding. And walked hand in hand into the jeweled forest.

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