Chapter 1

My head was pounding. I didn't know if it was out of exhaustion or worry or maybe even the bottle of whiskey I'd swiped from Buddy's room the night before, but I knew it hurt and it hurt bad. Actually, more than just hurt it felt like somebody had crammed Vegnagun inside my skull and he'd decided my brain was threatening. So…yeah. It hurt.

But I dragged myself out of bed anyway. I couldn't just lay around, not now. It took a moment for my head to clear enough to pull on my boots when I first sat up, but after that I made short work of tugging on the shoes, wrapping my scarf around my neck, and brushing and braiding my hair as I did every morning. I sighed and got a taste of my own morning breath. Definitely the whiskey's fault. I like to tell myself that I'm not an alcoholic. Really, everyone gets worn out every once in a while, and it's not my fault that I'm a lonely Al Bhed thief turned sphere hunter who's still pining for a legendary guardian four years dead.

Shut up.

Since it probably wouldn't have been prudent to try the jump from the platform my bed—and the two that used to belong to Yunie and Paine—rested on I braved the stairs, doing my best not to be annoyed that such a trip took far longer than the simple leap to the floor. I jammed the heel of my hand in one of my eyes, rubbing furiously to try and make myself more aware. It didn't work, which was obvious when I tripped on the next to last stair and performed a spectacular face plant into the hardwood. I groaned and laid the side of my face against the wood, really not wanting to get up.

"Ish Mish Rikkuu okay?" Ah, yes, Barkeep. Always trying to be helpful. Freaking annoying when you're hungover.

"No," I moaned, "Mish Rikku is not okay." I sighed again, knowing my next question would not end in favorable results when news of my condition reached Brother, busybody that he is. "Barkeep, do you have anything I could take to help a hangover?" Instead of an answer I was blessed with the obnoxiously loud sound of softly clinking glasses and then the shuffle of Hypello feet as he came around the bar and brought me a small bottle of heaven. "Have I ever told you you're a life saver, Barkeep?" I sat up just enough to drink the vial down, gasping at the near instant relief.

Finally I was able to happily get to my feet. I returned the empty bottle to Barkeep along with a dazzling smile and a very bouncy 'thanks' then skipped out of the cabin and down to the lift. I was a little late for our meeting on the bridge. When I got there, Yunie and Tidus were already waiting, and Brother, of course, was complaining about me and my nonexistent punctuality to anyone that would listen and everyone that wouldn't. Basically, he was just complaining to hear himself talk.

"Shut up," I griped. "No one's listening to you anyway." He made to protest, but Yunie jumped in first, and, as always, Yunie speaks, Brother listens like a Yevonite to Maester Mika before the Eternal Calm. Ah, I love that simile.

"We thought we'd split up so we can cover three places at once." See, even if she swears she has no leadership capabilities, Yunie knows exactly how to manage this kind of stuff. "We should be able to get through most of Spira pretty quickly that way, even if it will still take us a while." She paused for a moment and my stomach clenched as I watched the signs in her face. "Rikku, are you absolutely sure?" I knew that was coming. Crazy little Rikku must be making up stories off the top of her head.

"Just so you guys will finally really believe me and I know I can trust you to really search, let's go to Guadosalam and the Farplane first." Yunie opened her mouth and I knew what was coming this time too. "I know you don't believe me. It's farfetched. Duh." I hated that they didn't trust me. Wasn't she, oh I don't know, HOLDING HANDS with a guy we had thought dead not two years ago? I mean, it just seems so hypocritical that she won't believe me because Auron actually was real where Tidus was nothing more than a dream. I would think he'd be more likely to return from the dead considering that he'd REALLY EXISTED.

"The Farplane it is." Oh, Buddy, if only you knew how many times you'd jumped in just in time to stop a half-hysterical Rikku Rant from taking place.

My head was pounding. The steady throb was obscuring my eyesight, which I knew was bad anyway. Why was this happening to me? One minute everything had been peace, but now all I could feel was the blinding pain and the burning heat as I stumbled through some sort of grit and drudge that piled up to my knees. I didn't—couldn't—understand. Was this hell? Did it exist? If so, what had I done to be brought here? I had helped end a horrid falsity that preyed on the suffering of an entire world.

Could Yu Yevon have really been an odd sort of god? Was this his punishment and revenge?

I continued forward as well as I could though I had no inclination as to where I was or where I was going. Somewhere some driving need simply told me to go, like it was a matter of life or death. Hmph. Such things weren't really of any consequence to me at all anymore. But then, why could I feel such pain? The light that reached my lone ocular was both bright and dark at the same time for while I knew it was bright, it had become so blinding that I could make out nothing of my surroundings, not even the substance I traveled through. My one bare hand felt scraped raw, the nerves on fire without really feeling anything.

I tripped and fell to my knees, catching myself from falling forward on my bare hand. A tortured cry wrenched forth from my throat as the feeling of a thousand blades shot up that arm on contact. My legs throbbed with sensation, prickling as though I knelt upon a bed of needles, and still the need to move on was there, yanking me back to my aching feet and forcing me forward once more.

Hell.

I sat on the steps just outside the gate, waiting. Tidus and Yunie had been inside for nearly a quarter of an hour now. I could only imagine what methods of drawing him out of the pyreflies they had been attempting there. I swung my feet back and forth, remembering with slightly less clarity than I should the time I had sat on these very steps with the man I sought. It was nothing special. We didn't even talk really, no more than a few words that amounted to me asking why he didn't go in and him harrumphing like I asked a billion questions.

Finally Tidus stomped down the steps toward me, Yunie following with a look of amazed bewilderment on her face. I told them, but would they listen? No. Can't listen to Rikku; she's young and impulsive and doesn't really think things through. Two years younger. Big deal.

Yunie nodded and I realized she was trying to give an apology. Tysh ed. And I was doing so well with my semi-false anger too. Instead of griping as I had truly wanted to do only a moment before I gave my cousin a half smile and a bit of a nod. I know she means well (she always does) and that she was just trying to make sure I wasn't getting my hopes up for nothing.

"So," I chirped, hoping I could at least sort of fool them with false enthusiasm. "I'll take the woods surrounding the Kilika temple. You two can split up between Luca and Besaid." I smiled as bright a smile as I could manage and hopped up from my place on the edge of the steps. "Let's go!"

I scampered off before they got a chance to comment and my emotions could truly grasp hold. I was scared, more scared than should truly have been possible when you've finally grasped some semblance of hope, but I didn't know if I could really hold on to that hope since any hope I had over the past few years had been so easily dashed by nothing but circumstance alone. It seemed almost wrong to hope, like I was oh-so-happily jumping at the chance to keep on beating that same dead chocobo. And I like chocobos, so beating a chocobo—even a dead one—was a little depressing.

Damn it. There goes the morbid-ness again. Off to Kilika!

It was a very long and quiet trip on the Celsius to our various locations. Mostly I sat outside on the deck and stared off across the clouds. I'd done this on Pop's airship years ago, sitting there and getting really freaking cold. Auron had dragged me inside then—and scolded me for "endangering myself" on Yunie's pilgrimage (honestly, can't a man just admit it when he's worried about you?)—but no one was going to do that now. They knew I wanted to be alone.

Yunie was going to hop off at Besaid so I went down to say goodbye when I spotted the island in the distance. I really didn't think I actually needed to express a goodbye since we'd be seeing each other again when Buddy and Brother made rounds to pick us up in two days, but I did it anyway. It was all about appearances and making sure they thought I was just as happy as I had ever been. Two days was the official time we'd decided on: two days in each location, being sure to search every inch of the area.

Much to my surprise, Yunie met me when the elevator opened on the deck to take me down. She grabbed my arm without a word and pulled me inside, a wide smile breaking out across her features. I watched her bounce up and down on the balls of her feet as we took the lift down to the engine room. Why she wanted to go to the engine room was completely beyond me, but I let her tug me along and pull me down the two flights of stairs to the lowest level. This is where the individual bunkrooms were located. There were about eight rooms in total down here, four of which were inhabited by Brother, Buddy, Shinra, and Barkeep. They'd been using the same rooms for so long that they'd all had their names taped to the doors. Yuna tugged me past their rooms, the ones closest to the engine room staircase, and into the next room on the right, whose door had no label.

My stomach lurched. Why did Yunie and Tidus have to choose the room where—well, the one where Gippal had stayed right after Vegnagun? I'm not explaining any more. I did that already so neh. Anyway, just being in the room again was uncomfortable. It really didn't help that I was sure I saw a pair of Tidus' boxer shorts peaking out from underneath the bed. At least I'd kept them from staying up in the cabin with me and no walls to blank out the noise.

Ew.

Yeah, so why did Yunie bring me down here? She was shuffling through the drawers that were built into the steel wall. We'd had to install latches across the top of them shortly after we got the Celsius up in the air. Turns out that drawers don't take too kindly to the way Brother flies in tilting loop-de-loops on occasion. And Yunie's got a sphere. Great.

"Tidus and I found this while we were hunting around Besaid. It's not much, but there are a few scenes of Kilika that may help you out." Her smile was way too bright when she stuffed the sphere in my hands and ran out the door. Why did they keep doing this stuff to poor little me? Annoyed, I flopped down on the bed, hoping beyond hope that there wasn't any grossness on those blankets, and switched on the sphere.

It was Auron. He was on the dock at Kilika and was very obviously unaware of being filmed. The shot was taken from behind him as he faced out across the ocean and into the setting sun on the horizon.

Off button, off button, OFF BUTTON! Why the HELL would I want to see that? Damn it, there were tears coursing across my cheeks. I scrubbed at them violently, making my cheeks raw in the process. This really sucked. It was bad enough trying to hold on to this blatantly nonexistent hope, but to be reminded of exactly what I was hoping for right as Yunie was jumping ship on the first leg of the search.

Damn it.

Okay, so I'll hand it to her that she was trying to give me a little extra hope to tack on there and that her intentions were nothing but good, but you know, the road to hell is paved in good intentions.

If there is a hell.

Is there? If there's a hell, is it separate from the Farplane? I mean, is it some crazy otherworld where pyreflies gather and are filled with the eternal sensation of their tiny light scattering wings being slowly ripped from their not-really-there bodies made entirely of light balls?

Reading way too much into that, Rikku. WAY too much.

I jammed the sphere in one of my belt pouches. There was no need to be worried about it just yet. That is, if I was ever going to worry about it at all. Really wasn't planning on it, to tell the truth. After all, worrying about it would fall into the obviously not good side of the scale. I don't like that side of the scale; spent a lot of time on it that I didn't really need to and didn't want to spend more. I hopped up from the bed and made my way out the door, making for the cabin. I didn't feel so obligated to say bye to Yunie now that she'd made her decision to 'help' me. Actually, I didn't feel obligated to do much of anything. I kinda wanted to go back to sleep, but it was barely three in the afternoon yet, and I knew I just needed a distraction.

Well, we did have a chocobo in the cabin. A chocobo Shinra happened to capture with his CommSphere in the Thunder Plains. I bet I could get it to stampede the bar if I tried hard enough…

Hmm. Mischievous distraction. Heh heh.

My vision was starting to clear. I could make out the swirling, blistering sands on the wind before they were swept beneath my aching eyelids and blinded me once more in a howling pain that rushed through my body like a river in its bed. I didn't think I was in hell any longer, but the alternative was just as terrifying. My brief glimpse of this world was familiar in a way I hadn't thought possible. It reminded me of the heavy sandstorms of BikanelDesert, right down to the flecks of grit that whipped across my body, stinging already spent nerves into releasing evermore pain into my system.

But Bikanel…well, I couldn't be there. It wasn't possible. Bikanel was a place on the otherworld, Spira. A place I had visited before, but that I knew I couldn't see again. I began to stumble as I struggled to gain the top of what I assumed to be the next dune. If I could only find the nearest of those many Al Bhed shelters I remembered I would have not only proof of my location—which would likely stun me more—but a place to take shelter from the horrific sandstorm raging around me. Actually, I couldn't be sure that any of the shelters stood anymore. With the incredible range the missile blast upon the Al Bhed home had unleashed I had no idea if any of the shelters remained as more than the tiniest flecks of metal amidst the oceans of sand.

I must have reached the top of the sand dune because suddenly there was no more up to climb. I tripped over my own feet as I tried to continue my upward momentum with nowhere to go and landed on the sand in my face. Just like when I had landed on my knee before I felt as though my skin had connected with a bed of needles as it was scraped along the sand on my skid to the bottom of the dune. I cried out as the new wave of pain swept through me, tearing at my worn and tired brain. As I lay at the bottom I slowly came to realize that though still painful the wind was far less harsh here. I raised my head slowly, the only way I truly could at the moment, and lifted a hand to shield my eye. Cracking it open, I found that I was lying between two dunes, an almost natural shelter.

Shelter. Temporary safety. I pushed at the sand and my own body, ignoring the pain until I had rolled my body onto its stomach. With a last burst of energy I tugged my heavy coat over my head, covering my exposed skin.

I was safe. No matter how short a time, for now I was safe.