White.
It had been four days now. Four days, three nights. He sat within a hollow crack in the mountainside at the fleeting safety of his campfire, now threatened by an encroaching blizzard which licked and swiped at the cave mouth, howling like a beast.
Shaking madly, Auron resisted the urge to lie down directly in the flames to feel just a little comfort, tempted by the prospect that death was perhaps a bit warmer than Mount Gagazet. I'm cold. His teeth chattered and rattled his skull as his stomach complained loudly. The tips of his fingers felt numb as he picked at the frozen pinkish crust which had spread down the side of his face. Suddenly, he brushed against the burgeoning mass just below his eye socket, and a knot of dread in his stomach pulled his fingers away. Was that there yesterday …? Silently Auron wondered if this is what it felt like to completely fall apart. I'm hungry. What can I do? Hunt? How? Ask for help? The Ronso don't cross to this side of Gagazet. I can't see. I'm so cold. I'm going to starve. I'm going to starve. No, I'm going to …
Thoughts of food flooded his mind. Auron reached an icy hand into his robe and underneath his shirt, feeling along the grooves of his ribs which were growing more and more pronounced. The flesh of the dead deer he had found buried in the snow would not sustain him for long, and it was already midday. He concluded that it would be safer to spend the night in Ronso territory, and had estimated that only five or six more hours of hiking at his current pace would put him over the summit and onto steadier terrain. Auron's brain urged his body to move, but his legs refused to budge. His arms hung like sandbags at his sides. Dry lips parted, his good eye half-lidded, he watched the fire choke itself out on the last charred twig in a pile of ash. Perhaps, he thought, I'll freeze. I'll become a part of Gagazet, and I'll stay here forever.
"That's quitter talk," came a voice at the mouth of the cave. Auron didn't respond, only staring despondently into his lap until the voice spoke again.
"You listening? Get up, Auron! You've got a job to do, hear me?"
The monk looked up, brows knitting as the tears welling in his eye began to freeze over. Jecht… Is that you...?
Sure as anything, there stood the Zanarkander, leaning into the cave, his tanned skin like a shock of dark chocolate against the snowy backdrop. Bare feet tucked into the ice, his tousled hair catching snowflakes like a black sky gathering stars, he curled his lip and laughed like a devil.
"You look about as pathetic as my kid right now! I can't believe that, the great guardian Auron - crying like a baby! Man, that's disappointing." Jecht cupped his face in his hands and pantomimed tears by tracing his finger down his cheek before stepping into the white of the flurry and disappearing from view.
"Jecht … Jecht!" Auron cried out breathlessly, clambering to his feet, stumbling over the remains of the fire as he chased the apparition out of the cave mouth. His sudden liveliness churned Auron's stomach, and he hadn't covered two yards before the contents of his belly spilled out from his mouth onto the ground. Heaving, desperately gasping for air, he hoarsely called out for his companion as he trailed into the open air of the cliffside, clutching his stomach and stumbling about like a drunkard. Everything blurred together. The white of the mountainside was the white of the clouds was the white of the snow, and he searched desperately for that strip of dark skin in the whipping wind. He must have gone ahead. He must be waiting. His legs moved autonomously, carrying him up the slope until his mind had lost track of just how long he had been traveling.
It was an hour, or three, before Auron finally caught up with Jecht, spying him in the distance seated comfortably in a snowbank warming his toes at a roaring bonfire. A dumb grin spread over his face, or, at least the side that was not frozen stiff, and he stumbled like a penguin chick to the precipice of the snowdrift, where he fell on his belly and crawled to the fireside.
"You made it! We were beginning to think you'd turned into a popsicle," Jecht cackled, turning a skewer, with a glistening morsel of crispening meat impaled at one end, over and over above the flames. "Did you know Braska knows how to gut a rabbit?"
"Lord Braska - !" exclaimed Auron, who was too transfixed on Jecht's face to notice the roasted kebab of meat and vegetables Jecht was handing him.
"He'll be back up in a minute, had to pray, or take a leak or something. Eat up, chickenbones, it's gettin' cold!" he exclaimed, resting a hand on Auron's icy forehead, which the monk subconsciously leaned into like a cat being scratched behind the ears. He had just nearly climbed into Jecht's lap when he heard his name from over the hill, and whipped around violently, kicking the blitzer's meal into the fire.
"Auron! I'm so happy to see you. No, wait - don't get up!"
Braska's protesting was to no avail, as Auron's arms had surrounded him in a flash, knocking the two of them over into the snow. Buried to his eyebrows in his plentiful robes, the summoner struggled to free himself from the grip of his guardian, and laughed, and laughed until it hurt to laugh. Auron too, though his was more a mixture of snorting and blubbering, crying unrestrained into his master's headdress.
"What a couppla babies!" Jecht barked as he abandoned his meal and tossed himself onto the dogpile, taking both men into his arms, headbutting Auron in the nose and rubbing his knuckles furiously into Braska's scalp. They howled and rolled around like a litter of puppies until it hurt to breathe, and until Braska could not pry Auron's face from his chest. They ate, and drank, laughing until the sky began to darken and the wind picked up speed along the path.
"We ought to move along," someone suggested in the fervor, and the trio picked up their things and began the ascent to the tip of the slope, laughing and shouting as they walked together. An hour passed and saw Auron drag his feet, slumped, but the guardian and summoner that flanked him on either side supported his weight on their steady arms. The sky was a perfect royal blue and the mountain a block of white, and the sun from the west cast their shadows on the path in absolute black. Auron looked up from his place near the ground at the illuminated faces of his friends; the obstinate Jecht, boorish, reckless, fun; the kind and indomitable Braska, honest, good. We're Team Delightful Irony, isn't that right? If the wind hadn't completely shut his throat, and if the last shred of pride in his heart hadn't stilled his tongue, he would have told them everything. His fears, his suffering - and how his heart ached to tell them how much he loved them.
Ready to walk on his own, Auron steadied himself against his companions and dug his boots hard into the snow, wavering in the wild gusts but otherwise primed to continue unassisted. Braska's hand left his, then Jecht's, and soon the two were ahead of him by two meters.
"Wait," he called, "wait!" His voice was only a squeak, and it was inaudible in the howling wind. Jecht and Braska stopped for a moment, and turned to look at him almost incredulously. Their faces were obscured by the flurries of snow which seemed to whirl straight through them.
"We're almost there," Braska's soft assurance cut the shrill rush of the air.
"C'mon! He's bein' a slug." Jecht grumbled. Auron waved his arms in the wind, trying to shout.
"I'm trying! Please!"
Nothing slowed their progress, and their shoulders heaved as they gave up trying to communicate. Three meters. Five meters. Ten. Consumed in whiteness. Blanketed. Auron tried to shield his face from the increasing violence of the wind, his eye stinging, snowblind, the tatters of his sleeves swatting his face. Braska's deep red disappeared into the distance. Jecht's dark hair curled in knots and tangles and soon too was swallowed. Auron pumped his legs harder than he ever had, his heart beating wildly, as scabbed wounds began to open up and fresh, hot blood oozed, and froze, and shattered into pieces as his body worked to climb faster, faster, higher, until the pair was in sight again, waiting at a plateau in the distance. When his legs failed, he fell to his knees and shoveled through the snow with his elbows, pain and relief exiting him with every breath as he drew nearer. The wind pulled off what was left of the golden ribbon withholding his hair and in a burst the shreds of his raven hair pelted his shoulders like a stinging whip.
Panting, exhausted, he drew himself to his feet, beside the summoner and the blitzer who stood motionless before what seemed like a wall of ice. Auron gathered his wild hair into his fist and tucked it back, as the wind was stopped by the mass of rock and shining ice that stood before him. He reached for Braska's shoulder but couldn't seem to find him. Jecht's hand beside him was empty air.
His blindness gradually lifted as he looked towards the wall, and saw that the monolith of ice was a perfect mirror in the setting sunlight.
No Braska.
No Jecht.
Only Auron, alone, stood at the top of the mountain.
He approached his reflection, reaching out a hand to see if this too was an illusion, but the cold of the wall told him otherwise. Coming closer, his heart dropped low, and he was met by the sight of his uneven eyes. One, the left, red and swollen, eyelashes crusted over with ice. He touched it, and it stung. And the other, the right, dangling from its socket but frozen to his cheek, frozen black, staring, staring, staring.
(Descent on scraped palms
Alone in the empty white
Yours is twofold pain.)