STILL MORE DISCLAIMER: I don't own FFX or FFX-2. I'm not profiting from this

story and not looking to. I'm just having fun with square-enix's characters and

world.

A/N: well, here's chapter 3, its a little shorter than i meant, but puting it

together with chaper 4 made it too long. but i'm posting both today!

Yunalesca's magic has destroyed my right eye, and I can't truly see.

Somehow, despite that and my wounded shoulder, I've picked my way through the

ruins and over the mountain through instinct alone. Somehow, I've avoided the

fiends—although surely not through the grace of a god I no longer believe in.

The ground below my feet begins to level off and I know that I've

reached the base of the mountain. My legs give out beneath me and I fall face

first in to the snow. Distantly, I register the spreading red splotch in the

snow and think that I won't even be able to keep my promise to Braska. That

thought forces me back to my feet and I stagger onward.

I am in the Macelania Woods, just outside Bevelle when I collapse again.

I know that I won't be getting up this time. I think I wept.

How long I lay on the trail bleeding my life out is a mystery. Just

another one of Spira's secrets. But most of my wits return to me at the touch of

a hand to my back. I make a feeble attempt to grab my sword from the where it

lays on the road, but it is on my blind side and I cannot find it.

The hand turns me over, none too gently, and I scream as my already

injured shoulder is damaged further. Dimly, I think that Jecht would scorn my

lack of control.

"Not dead. Good." The voice is rough, gravelly. A Ronso, I think.

When I open my eye, I realize that he's close enough for me to make out

with no trouble. He is small for a Ronso, and his horn has been broken off, but

he looks strong and fit. I can't help but think that some higher power is doing

me a favor.

It takes time and energy—more than I have left really—to convince him to

take Braska's daughter to Besaid. But somehow I do.

And then blackness claims me, promising me some kind of relief.
When I woke later, I saw when nearly the last thing I would have

expected.

An Al-Bhed man is leaning over me, placing a bandage over my ruined eye.

He is young—not more than twenty-five—with the tanned skin and blond hair common

to his people. Thanks to the nature of his task, he notices immediately when I

open my eye.

"Ah, you are awake, I see." His voice has the cultured tone of someone

who is using a second language and refuses to be taken for an idiot by its

native speakers. I like him almost at once. "I was afraid you would not with

wounds like these." He finishes applying my bandage with an adhesive tape that

only the Al-Bhed seem to use.

I open my mouth to speak, but all I can manage is a dry rasp. He picks

up a cup of water, as if he was prepared for exactly this. (Maybe he was.

Braska's wife had always had what we needed on hand whenever we had needed it.)

Gently, he coaxed water into me, not needing to tell me to take small sips, lest

I make myself ill. I didn't have the energy for anything else.

After a few sips, he set the cup back down. "You should sleep more. You

were more injured than the Ronso believed."

Yes. I should have died when Yunalesca blasted me. That was what I

wanted to say. And then the mountain should have killed me.

Instead, I said, hoarsely, "What is your name?"

"Rin. And you are at my Travel Agency in the Calm Lands. The Ronso,

Kimahri brought you here."

"Auron." It was really all I could manage to get out. But now Yuna's

savior had a name, and I was grateful. Even if I hadn't the energy to say it.

"Rest well, Auron," Rin told me. "You are safe here with us."

And safe I was, except from my body's own frailties.