A Generation of Aeons
Chapter Fifty-Seven

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy X or X-2

Last Time:

Takoire climbed up the sides of what was once a great city at a leisurely pace, not wanting to overt exert himself. He could see the sun was already on its way to hiding behind the ocean, only giving him a small opening in time to do what he had set out to do.

Pulling himself up over the edge, the sight of a familiar chokin brought a small smile to his face as he touched it with his fingertips. He settled himself beneath it, trying to regain his strength.

This was it. Everything had to come to an end, and all his thoughts were centered around one person.

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"Hey!" a voice yelled out. "Get your own sanctuary!"

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She couldn't help but smile when he realized she had been watching him, even though he required a tiny hint. He looked up with a sheepish smile. "Sorry."

Lenne shook her head without thinking. "I was just joking. It's not like I have my name on it."

Takoire's nose crinkled. "Well… in a sense you kind of do. It's not as if your summoner brand was magically engraved into a wall that was prophesized to the Summoner of Yore. Not forgetting either that your summoner brand is a way of identifying yourself, so it's kind of a name. So in a manner of speaking, you do have your name on it. This place was meant for you."

"Fine… it does have my name on it." He smirked as she pointed next to him. "Mind if I sit there?"

He shrugged. "It's your sanctuary."

"Anyway… I thought I'd find you here," Lenne began, sitting next to him.

"How'd you manage that?"

She shook her head. "Even after a thousand years, you're still predictable. You're still a sucker for sunrises and sunsets."

"In every different time I've come to, I've always watched a sunrise or a sunset from this spot. Since tonight's probably the last night I'm here, I figured I might as well come here."

The high summoner sulked at Takoire's choice of words. Probably. That meant he thought he was leaving. But it also meant there was a slight chance of him staying. "Do you remember," she found herself asking, "the first night we were up here together? It was a couple of hours before I took Suzaku's test… and you first told me about the Summoner of Yore?"

"Yeah…" he answered, sounding almost nostalgic. "That was also the first day you met Kiron, Seru, and Zaon."

"Takoire…" Lenne tried to start but finding it hard to speak, "do you mind if I ask what you were thinking about before I started bothering you?"

"You weren't bothering," Takoire responded. "I was actually just thinking about you."

"Me?"

"No…" Takoire remarked sarcastically, "the other Summoner of Yore. You know… how we met, when you became a summoner, when you found out about my family, when we made up…"

Yawning unconsciously, Lenne fell against her guardian, who, without a single word, wrapped an arm around her. Lenne's mind suddenly sent a shock through her system as she slowly came to realize what was happening. She looked up at him, but his eyes still watched the sun fall lower behind the ocean. She didn't understand. Why did he just do that?

Since the first day they had reunited, Takoire had told her not to get attached to him; not to do anything that would make their eventual and unavoidable good-bye difficult. Did he even realize what he was doing? Being with him like this, half of her was at perfect peace, while the other couldn't help but make her feel guilty.

But there was one thing above all that kept nagging in the back of her mind.

"Did you know about the fourth prophecy?" Lenne blurted out unintentionally.

Takoire paused, suddenly becoming uneasy. "All I knew about were legends, and they were already extremely vague. I had no idea there was even a fourth prophecy. I'd never heard of it until you told me. Most of what I thought was pure conjecture. The fourth prophecy only proves it."

"I've spent a lot of time reading that stupid thing lately," she admitted, "and one thing's been really bothering me, ever since you first brought up that legend."

The guardian soothed Lenne's hair affectionately, letting his head rest on hers. "I know."

"How?"

"Because I've been thinking about the same thing everyday since I found out about the legend." In a reluctant move, Takoire took the silver ring from his hand, holding it out for both of them to see. "You don't know how many times I've stared at this ring, trying to figure out whether or not to praise the Cheribum or curse my father for it." He paused, running his thumb over the smooth metal. "When I decided to leave Bevelle, the only thing I took with me was this ring, a family heirloom. Ironic, huh?" Lenne let the question hang in the air. "If it weren't for this ring and the prophecies, Sareth wouldn't be like this, I would have died centuries ago as Arkon's Lord Marshal… and I'd never have met you."

Lenne scoffed almost mockingly. "I know what you mean. If those prophecies were never made, would things have turned out differently? Would Sareth have come to power in Bevelle? And if he didn't, would Sin have existed? Would I have existed?" She let out a dry laugh. "If you knew everything that was going to happen, would you still have run away and taken your ring?"

She hadn't expected him to answer. It was just something to think about. So when he spoke, it caught her completely off guard. "Of course I would. I'd do it again in a heartbeat if it meant I could be your guardian."

Lenne turned away immediately, almost afraid to look at him. "You still have to leave tomorrow?"

"Probably."

"Then how the hell can you be so calm about it!" she burst out, coming to her feet. "How can you just say probably!" She hadn't let herself cry since the day they had been separated, but she felt hot, fresh tears coming to the surface. "How the hell can you just look at me and say probably when the thought of you leaving again makes me feel like curling up and dying all over again!"

"Hey… Hey…" She felt her guardian's calloused thumb brush away her tears as he enclosed her in a tight hug, kissing the top of her head. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. Look… I know what's keeping you on edge. You want to use the third object to stabilize my ring, so I can stay here, with you." She looked up at him. "Believe me, Lenne, there's nothing I want more. I've thought about it everyday for four years. I just didn't want to set you up for disappointment."

The sun had disappeared behind the ocean's endless waves, and the stars had taken its place. They twinkled down on everyone watching as clouds blocked their view for only a moment. Each twinkle looked as if each star had a different secret to tell. And there was no doubt in the summoner or guardian's mind that the night sky had an infinite amount of secrets to tell.

"After I'd been traveling for about a year," Takoire began, "I made a promise to myself. I didn't want to screw up the life you'd made for yourself, so all I was going to do once I found you was make sure you were all right. Then I'd disappear again, and you'd never have been the wiser." He let out a half-hearted chuckle. "Way to follow the plan, huh?"

Lenne smiled weakly. "As if you follow plans…"

Takoire nodded his head, looking into his summoner's eyes intensely. "Good point, but now that I've completely skewed off my original plan, I'm going to try and salvage the situation as much as I can."

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"As much as I want this," the guardian started, taking Lenne's hands in his, "I can't guarantee this is going to work. I can't even say the odds are in our favor, but I can't do this anymore. I can't keep pushing you away like this." As she looked up at him, he held her face in the palm of his hand gently, leaning his face closer and closer to hers, causing Lenne's knees to buckle from beneath her. "And I wanted to ask you whether or not I could kiss you."

A cold, hard lump had somehow formed and lodged itself in Lenne's throat as she attempted to speak, Takoire's breath mixing with her own. "I've been dying to kiss you again since the night of my festival."

No sooner had the words left her lips when he kissed her.

As they touched each other's lips, everything they had previously held back were no longer under any restrictions.

He held her closely, his hand at the base of her neck, cradling her head. Five years of hidden, bottled up emotion was pouring itself into the kiss, almost as if trying to make up for years of separation.

Lenne clung to him, almost hungrily, as she kissed him back, all of her inhibitions disappearing at the same time as her guardian's. She let out a small sigh as he deepened the kiss, holding onto him as tightly as she was holding onto him.

Until he suddenly pulled back.

Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing hard and ragged, and her hair was strewn astray. But he was breathing as hard as she was, and he looked as flushed as she felt.

"We shouldn't have done that," Takoire said. He sounded half-hearted at best.

Lenne stared at him, her expression blank. "No… but we both know you'd kiss me again in a heartbeat if we both didn't know better."

"Yeah…" He breathed out slowly, pushing out his arms, as if attempting to resist. "Let's just talk. Let's just go back to your place, proceed to eat some of your badly cooked food, and talk."

"Badly cooked food…?" the leader of the Council of Summoners muttered, her voice half tainted with anger and half tainted with disbelief. "Don't you ever grow up?"

Takoire smiled sheepishly. "What can I say? You bring out the best in me. Now…" he began, not giving his counterpart a chance to speak, "let's go?"

It was a rhetorical question, made so as Takoire began his descent back down the side of the ancient city. He paused half way down, catching his breath before jumping the rest of the way down. The son of Bevelle's last true lord marshal landed gracefully on both his feet and hands and stood up straight as if his enormous feat had only been a slight inconvenience.

Lenne only shook her head as she followed him down. She had climbed up and down the same rock face since she had first discovered the sanctuary… but today Lenne found herself carelessly losing her supposedly steady footing, falling into her guardian's arms.

He cocked his head. "I'd say be careful, but you'd probably hit me." No sooner had the words left his mouth before an arm cam at him, hitting him lightly. "Hey! Sheesh… I get hit anyway…" Before she had an opportunity to repeat her actions, Takoire took hold of Lenne's hand, planting a kiss on it as he brought it to his lips. He led them back towards the city of Besaid, interlocking his hand with hers.

The leisurely paced walk was both quiet and awkward. Neither Lenne nor Takoire spoke so much as a word to each other.

It was back inside the confines of the city was when things became even more awkward. Although it was late, there were still a few who wandered the streets and found it a strange sight to see High Summoner Lenne walking in hand with her guardian. Both of them never worked well under the public eye.

It didn't seem long before the two stood in Lenne's doorway. She reluctantly let go of his hand, bringing her thumb onto a plate, opening the door.

"Good evening, Lenne," a computer-like voice chimed.

The lights came on as they entered, displaying the chaos of the room they had left behind that morning.

Takoire scratched his head sheepishly. "Why don't I cook tonight? It'll be good. I promise."

He began to move away until Lenne caught his hand, pulling him back. "I can't lose you again…"

The guardian gazed at her with soft and reassuring eyes, kissing her softly. "I love you…" Takoire whispered. "You're everything to me."

"I love you, too," Lenne answered, continuing to hold onto him.

"I don't want you to go tomorrow. I don't want anything to happen to you…"

She pulled away only far enough to look at him, smiling a sad smile. "You said the same thing to me before I took the Cheribum's test… Stay with me tonight?" Lenne looked up at him as she said it, her hands on his uniform. Somehow he had gotten a uniform that fit him perfectly, and her summoner's brand had been embroidered into the fabric. Her fingers found their way to the line of hidden buttons, undoing the topmost.

"Lenne…?" He looked down on her hesitantly, struggling with himself as he became lost in her pleading eyes. "Lenne, I don't think…"

"Please…"

He looked away for a moment, breathing out deeply. "Are you sure…?"

"Stay with me tonight?" she repeated, an earnest look in her eyes.

Takoire finally nodded, leaning back to reclaim Lenne's lips as she undid the rest of his buttons one by one…

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Author's Notes:

Final Revision