A/N: Another installment of this little project I'm working on. Please enjoy, and don't assume. I promise there's a twist...

Lyon

After a painstaking job of hacking through the thick hedges, Gippal, Paine, Yuna, Rikku, Baralai and Shinra found themselves at the mouth of what appeared to be a giant pile of rubble. Broken pillars and dilapidated walls surrounded the entrance. Pyreflies swarmed and danced in the air, gliding playfully in gentle loops.

Once inside, the six found that the ruins were larger and had more catacombs than they had anticipated. Six paths lay before them, each one as deeply unnerving as the next.

"All right," Yuna took the reins; "You've all got your light-nets, right?" The group nodded and each individual held up an illuminated handheld staff in turn. "Good. Everyone, choose a direction. We'll stay connected with the comsets. Shinra, you come with me."

Inside the depths of his heavily layered apparel, Shinra blushed. He had a crush on Yuna, but then again so did Brother. Both of them were shadowed, however, by Tidus. Had it not been Blitzball Season, Tidus would have been with them now. Shinra took Yuna's hand and the two of them headed down a northeastern hallway.

A spherical grid of light appeared at the tip of the previously mentioned handheld staff and Yuna raised the illuminated ball of light aloft.

After watching the glow of Yuna's light-net fade into the tenebrous corridor, the group eyed one another dumbly and dispatched one by one into the catacombs. Paine headed down a hallway facing east, and noticed in her peripheral vision that Gippal started down the second eastern hallway.

Baralai was the last to leave. He wanted to take an eastern route, so as to stay close to Paine, but the only one uninhabited by his comrades was headed west. With a resentful glance down Gippal's passageway, he marched down the empty hall.

Paine found herself buried deep beneath the surface, trailing through the winding catacombs. Her footsteps were muffled by ages of dust and grime and did not echo as expected, but were instead absorbed by the crusted cinder block walls. The hallway was damp and humid with the putrid scent of decay lingering on the air.

At last reaching one of the long corridors' ends, Paine struggled to dislodge a large creaking wooden door that had jammed itself shut; its hinges were overflowing with rust. The door came down and stirred the dust into an uproar as it fell to the floor with a well-placed kick from Paine. Sword drawn, she stepped cautiously into the dimly lit room. The ceiling was speckled with variously sized holes that shed a little light on the situation and proved to Paine that she had emerged onto a surface-level room.

… She had lowered herself onto the ground carefully, trying to keep her eyelids from betraying her to the loss of blood. They wanted so desperately to slide shut, and her whole body was screaming in revolt against her physical movements. She was losing too much blood…

Paine shook off a tarnished memory that resurfaced momentarily. No matter how hard she tried, however, the date seemed to puncture her thought process and display itself boldly like a neon sign. She could not forget.

After coming to the conclusion that she was indeed alone, Paine began to inspect the large and extravagantly furnished old room. It was, without a doubt, a library. Paine slunk over to one of the many lacquered wooden shelves and inspected it. She read the bookbinding's by the glow of a thin beam of light from a hole in the ceiling, which was freckled by flecks of dust that sparkled in the midday sun. Her index finger grazed the spines of books lined along the shelf and she murmured each title in an undertone. Each name was foreign and spoke of an ancient civilization long forgotten to Spira.

A whisper of movement swept through the darkness; Paine caught it only out of the corner of her eye. Her muscles tensed and she swung her sword in the direction from which the movement had come. A bookshelf splintered and ancient books flew into the air in a whir of dust and paper. Pages drifted to the ground, the dust settling on top of them. She stood her ground, waiting for something to rear its head. Nothing came.

… Perhaps she was being paranoid? But then again you could never tell in a place this old. Anything could be lurking around here.

Paine climbed the mountain of rubble she had created, carefully avoiding the large shards of wood standing vertically. Something amidst the pile stirred and Paine brought her sword down in its general direction without a second thought. In doing so, however, she tripped into a small hole created by the uneven books and lost her balance. She stumbled forward to the flat ground clumsily, hardly noticing her thick leather shorts and belt snagging on a metal beam that had been holding the corners of the bookshelf to the floor. It protruded sharply from the ground and threatened to impale an unwary passerby.

Steadying herself, Paine's hand found it's way down towards the severed leather belt and the rip in her uniform. She groped at the strap in an attempt to keep it from falling down, but to no avail. It slid down her hips and pulled at the tear in her leather shorts, causing the rip to spread. It revealed her structured hipbone and a thumbprint sized scar residing almost on the center of her abdomen.

Upon seeing it, Paine froze. Her fingers lightly grazed the fleshy mound of scar tissue. A knot tied itself in her throat and suffocated the butterflies of uncertainty in her stomach. Her legs gave way to the sudden increase of gravity on her shoulders, and her eyes damned up the deluge of tears that wanted to break free. On her hands and knees, she shook uncontrollably.

…It shouldn't have happened like this…

"Paine…?"

Paine's head jerked upwards and she scrambled to get to her feet. Gippal, standing in one of the many doorways, stared at the prone woman before him, his eye wide with concern. He stepped closer and tried to aid her in getting to her feet, but she openly refused his help by shoving him away. She tossed back her now frazzled hair, glaring at him.

"Stay away," she hissed and cringed as his expression of empathy deepened. Paine propped herself up on her sword, only to fall to her knees again. Years of repressed anger and pain swelled up and threatened to burst inside her. She hadn't cried over it, not even the night it happened…

Refusing to submit to her hostility, Gippal pushed forward and caught her by the shoulders. He wrapped his arm around her back and with the other held her shoulder, supporting her on her feet.

"You couldn't have done anything…" he whispered. Paine glanced up at him for a moment before burying her face in his chest. Her hand shot instinctively to her mouth and tried to prevent her sobs from escaping, but it was too late. Paine's sorrow escaped in primal tears that echoed from some ache left untouched for years. The two fell to the floor, Gippal holding her close.

He was worried about her. He always was around this time of year. But he had never seen her this distraught. Come to think of it, he had never seen her cry, either.