Journeying

We made good time. Whatever else Jecht might be, he was certainly strong and willing to fight. He was a bit clumsy with his sword the first few times we came across fiends, but he quickly got the hang of using it. He still irritated me, though, with his crude language, continual joking, and insistence on behaving like a tourist, and I had to restrain myself from hitting him over the head with the flat of my sword more than once.

It all came to a head rather quickly, when we reached the travelers' hut at Macalania late that first afternoon. The original hut had been destroyed in the Sinspawn attacks earlier that year. An Al Bhed businessman had taken over the land and rebuilt the hut several feet further from the lake, transforming the establishment into a shop and inn, but we were only a few hours from the temple and I was eager to press forward. But Jecht insisted on taking a break to record the scene. "Can you shoot this one, Braska?" he asked as he pulled out his contraption. "I want my kid to see that I was here for real."

"Certainly," my lord said, taking the recorder from Jecht and poking at its controls. I held my tongue and stood beneath the sign that proclaimed our arrival at Lake Macalania, facing out over its frozen waters. The last time I'd been here, I'd commanded several squadrons of warrior monks as we desperately held the temple against wave after wave of Sinspawn. I could still see the damage from that incursion: the ruins of the old hut, wiped out remnants of trails, cracks in the lake ice. I found myself thinking about the men I had lost here. It was all more affecting that I'd expected it to be, and I started to dread the time a week or so hence when we would reach the Djose Shore.

"Auron?" Braska called to me. "Could you stand closer to him?"

I sighed and glanced to my left, where Jecht was standing. Slowly, reluctantly, I took a few steps toward my fellow guardian and turned to face the recorder.

"Good." Braska panned a bit with the camera. "There, that should do it."

Jecht turned to me, a smirk on his face. "What's the matter?" he asked. "'Fraid I might bite?"

I glanced at him, my annoyance rising even further. "Jecht..."

"Braska!" he interrupted. "You should take one, too. It'd make a great gift for little Yuna."

My summoner looked doubtful. "I suppose," he said.

Finally, I had had enough. "Lord Braska, we shouldn't be wasting our time on this," I said firmly.

Jecht raised his eyebrows. "What's the hurry, man?"

I strode over to the recorder, ready to put an end to this mockery. "Let me tell you what the hurry is!" I heard Braska protest feebly, but my ire was roused now, and nothing was going to stop me. I switched off the infernal device, then returned to Jecht, grabbed him by an arm, and dragged him over to the remains of the old hut. "Do you see this? Six months ago, this was a travelers' hut, where pilgrims on their way to the temple could rest. Then Sin attacked and left it in ruins. Five people were inside that night. Four of them died."

His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to comment, but I was nowhere near finished. I pointed out to the lake. "See that rift in the ice over there? That happened as a troupe of warrior monks battled a Sinspawn swarm. The ice snapped, and they all fell into a freezing cold lake. None survived. Maybe all you can see is some cracked ice; I see the marker of a watery grave. I knew those men. They were my men. Some I even considered friends. One month I spent here at Macalania, fighting Sin, sending my brothers to their deaths. We beat it back in the end, but it's still out there, ready to attack again, to kill. That is the hurry. Every day we dally is another day that people die!" I was shouting now. "Do you have any idea how much we have lost to Sin? Lord Braska's parents. My mother. Dozens of men under my command. Lord Braska's wife, one of the sweetest, kindest, most beautiful women I ever knew, drowned like a rat when Sin sank her ship. And that's just the two of us! Every person in Spira could tell you a story of families lost, of homes and lives destroyed. And you have the gall to ask what the hurry is?" I let go of his arm, which I had kept in a death grip throughout my outburst, and whirled away from him, breathing hard, trembling with anger, or perhaps it was grief. I closed my eyes and dropped my head as I attempted to calm myself.

"Auron?" Jecht's voice had dropped half an octave, losing the harsh edge it normally carried.

I opened my eyes and turned back around.

He spread out his arms in a gesture of contrition. "I'm sorry. Braska told me about Sin, but I didn't understand. Not really. Maybe now I do. You're right, I wasn't takin' this seriously enough. I'll try harder."

Momentarily stunned, all I could do was nod. Then I glanced at Braska, who stood rigid, some distance away. "I'm sorry, my lord," I said to him. "I didn't mean to fly into a temper like that."

"It's all right," he said softly. "But I think perhaps we should move on."

Paine arrived home, Yuna and Tidus on her heels, to find Baralai tidying the kitchen. "We missed you at the stadium," she said, perching on a nearby stool.

He looked up from the dish he was washing and blew a drooping lock of hair out of his eyes. "Yeah, well, I have a three-course dinner to cook and a house to clean, so you can either help out or go away."

She jumped down and held up her hands in supplication. It was rare for the normally calm Baralai to get frazzled, but when he did, steering clear was definitely the best option. "Sorry. Whichever you prefer. Why don't Tidus and I clean, and Yuna can help you cook?"

"Of course," said Yuna. "What can I do?" She walked into the kitchen and sat on the stool Paine had vacated.

"Do I ever have plans for you." Baralai straightened with a sigh, then pulled out his recipes for a quick debriefing.

Paine turned to Tidus. "Let's get out of their way."

"Whatever," he muttered. "I still can't believe we got bounced in the first round. The Al Bhed aren't even that good!"

"At least they went all the way," Paine pointed out, ever practical. "Now you can say that only the champions were good enough to beat you."

He sighed and scratched his head. "I guess."

"Come on." Paine pointed him toward the back door. "You can blow off some steam by helping me move furniture." They exited the house and started gathering up the dishes and trash that littered the yard, then dragged the furniture into a dinner party configuration.

"Say Tidus," said Paine after they had worked awhile. "You know that cadet Sam?"

"'Course," he replied. "He's pretty decent with a sword, although they say he's really more of a mage type. Isn't he friends with Liss?"

"Yes. Did you know that he's Commander Kal's nephew?"

He set the chair he'd been carrying down into position. "Really?"

She nodded. "I saw them together at the blitzball stadium after the finals. The head coach of the Beasts is Sam's dad, and he's also Kal's brother."

"Jan and the commander are brothers? I didn't know that, either." Suddenly Tidus laughed. "So that's two out of twelve. How many other cadets from that class are going to turn up with famous relatives? Is Kenna actually Rikku's long-lost cousin? Or maybe someone is Seymour's secret love child?"

Paine snickered. "I suppose it seems rather unlikely when you put it that way." She turned thoughtful. "Maybe not really, though; talents do run in families, after all. It's no stranger than a handful of families dominating the blitz arena, or the temples in the old days."

"Yeah, maybe." He picked up a tray of glasses from the table and headed for the house. "But it seems like we've never had more than one in a year before. Last year it was just Pacce, and that's not really the same. Since he's sort of famous in his own right."

She hefted a garbage sack and followed him. "True. Then again, we've only been doing this for what, four years? Hard to say what's typical yet."

Baralai and Yuna looked up from the cookbook as their respective spouses walked into the cottage. "Paine, how many people do we have coming again?"

Paine dumped her sack and thought. "General Lucil, the three commanders -- Kal, Elma, Beclam. High Councilor Winn and her husband. Yuna, Tidus, do you want to stay?"

They looked at each other, carrying on a silent conversation with their eyes. Eventually, Yuna shook her head. "We'd better get home once we're finished helping you; Wakka and the Aurochs are expecting us to eat with them, I think. And I should at least put in an appearance at Cid's victory bash."

"Okay. Six guests then. Eight with you and me."

"Hmm." Baralai flipped through the cookbook, deep in concentration. Then he looked up, a smile of inspiration on his face, an expression that Paine had learned to dread at times like this -- she just knew he was rewriting the carefully-planned menu in his head.

She turned to Tidus. "How do you feel about going into the city for some food shopping?" she asked.

He tilted his head. "Today, with half of Spira in town? I'll pass."

"Then run!" She grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the yard.

"Hey!" Baralai protested, his tone somewhere between exasperation and amusement, Yuna's laughter ringing out as Paine slammed the back door shut.

About three weeks after leaving Bevelle, tired and dusty, nursing minor wounds and running low on gil and supplies -- the former lost largely due to an unfortunate encounter between Jecht and a shoopuf; Lord Braska had needed to give up all his money in restitution for the damage his drunken guardian had caused -- but still high on our hard-won triumph over a chocobo-eating fiend on the Mi'ihen Highroad two days before and in possession of two more aeons, we found ourselves in Luca just as the sun was setting. We stood on top step of the stairway that lead down to the city and observed the scene.

"Man, a real city," said Jecht with a small sigh. Then he perked up visibly. "Hey! Is that a blitzball stadium?"

"Indeed." Lord Braska folded his arms into his robe. "Perhaps we could watch a game tomorrow."

"Watch?" Jecht tossed his head scornfully. "I'm talkin' about playing. I hate to watch other people play; just reminds me that I could be out in the water myself."

The summoner smiled slightly as I resisted rolling my eyes. Jecht had gradually become more tolerable over the weeks of our journey, starting after my tirade in Macalania but especially since he gave up drinking -- the one good thing to come out of the shoopuf incident -- but there were still moments when his brashness and arrogance simply irritated the hell out of me. Yet Braska always indulged him. "Perhaps something can be arranged," he said.

"Will there be time, my lord?" I asked. "The ferry to Kilika does leave first thing in the morning."

"True, but I think we could use a break. It would be nice to stay in a real inn for a couple of nights, rather than sleeping on the ground or in travelers' rest huts. Plus, we need to resupply, and where better to do that than Luca?"

"As you wish." I brushed some dried mud off my coat. "I suppose we could use a laundry and a bath."

Braska laughed. "That's the fastidious young man I know!"

"Hey," I objected, but without real heat. It was only the truth, after all -- for someone who had spent perhaps a quarter of his adult life sleeping outdoors, I was awfully fond of being clean. Each man took the prospect that gave him new energy, and we bounded down the stairs.

I had to admit it: Lord Braska was right. If we had hurried off that morning, the night before would have been spent rushing around, gathering supplies and booking passage on the S.S. Winno. A leisurely evening meal followed by that bath, then a full night's sleep in a real bed with no interruption to stand watch had done me a world of good. Now it was the next morning, and I had risen early to drop off our dirty clothes and have some tea. Everyone drank coffee in the field because it was stronger and easier to make in quantity over a fire, but I much preferred tea and relished the chance to start my morning with a well-made cup or two. Braska safe with Jecht for the moment, I relaxed and sat in an outdoor cafe that been one of my favorite haunts during the year and change I'd been stationed here in Luca. It sat on a main pathway, but as the patio was partially shielded by bushes, it was perfect for a combination of solitude and people-watching. I poured myself a second cup, blew on the drink to cool it, and then took a sip. As I did so, I thought I heard an unexpected voice calling my name.

"Xan?" I breathed, as I stood up and turned around.

"It is you!" My brother-in-law weaved through the tables and caught me up in an embrace.

"What are you doing in Luca?" I asked, a smile on my face so large that I felt it might crack my cheeks.

"My cousins got me a job on the new sphere theater." He pointed out the skeleton of a building that stood on an isolated section of the waterfront. "Sin took out the old one about twenty years ago. They're finally rebuilding it, bigger and better, and they needed lots of help. It's a good job, and Kera was feeling like a fresh start after... well, you know. Plus, with all the Crusaders and warrior monks around, it's probably safer here than it was in Tzeki. We moved about two weeks after the last time I saw you. But what brings you here?"

"I'm a guardian on pilgrimage," I said. "After my falling out with the warrior monks, I went to Father Braska -- Lord Braska now, remember him from your wedding?" Xan nodded. "He had recently decided to train as a summoner and asked me to journey with him. We're heading for Kilika first thing tomorrow." I knew what question had to come next, but I still dreaded asking it. "How is Kera? Is she still unwilling to see me?"

The left side of Xan's mouth twitched upwards, and the excited sparkle our reunion had given his eyes faded. "I have to be honest with you; she's still pretty angry. Maybe if I had a few days to work on her, but if you're leaving tomorrow? Probably not. I'm sorry. She's well otherwise, though, and Paine really likes it here."

It was the answer I had been expecting, but it was still a crushing disappointment. I wanted to ask about Arelle, but I wasn't sure whether I could bear bad news on that front, too. I was still considering whether to bring her up when he beat me to it. "Have you heard from Relle?" he asked.

"Not since..." and my voice trailed off. "You mean you haven't?"

Xan shook his head. "She and Kera fought the day after you left. I wasn't there for the argument, and Ker was pretty incoherent when I got home that night. Then she refused to talk about it the next day, and Relle shut me out when I tried to get the story from her. As far as I know, they haven't spoken since."

"And you still don't know why?"

"Not exactly." He would not meet my eyes. "But I can make a pretty good guess."

So could I -- it had to have something to do with me. "Best friends for all their lives, not even speaking," I said quietly, "and it's all my fault."

"Hey." Xan took my shoulders and shook me a little. "Don't you take all the blame on yourself. Dix--"

"I know," I interrupted. "But Kera blames me, and she's not entirely wrong to do so. And it weighs on me, heart and soul, every day." I met his eyes. "Tell her that I'm sorry, and that I miss her?"

Xan nodded. "She won't admit it, but she misses you, too. So do I."

I put my hands on his arms. "You've been a good friend, Xan, all my life. Thank you for taking care of Kera. Once this is over, I will do whatever I need to do in order to make things right with her again."

His expression was solemn. "And if you don't make it?"

"I'll make it," I said with a small smile. "I have too many promises to keep to let myself die out there."

That coaxed a small laugh out of him. "Well, just do your best." We dropped arms and stepped away. "I have to get to work, and I'm sure you have your own errands. Yevon be with you."

"And with you, brother." I finished my tea as he walked away, then left to join Braska and Jecht at the blitzball stadium as we had planned.