68: A Place of Memories
The rocky path leading towards Zanarkand was harrowing. It narrowed at the peak of the mountain, providing a breathtaking view of the ruined city. It also, however, provided winds that blew strongly enough to threaten to knock any sightseer right off of the narrow trail and into the steep drop to the city below.
They wormed their way gingerly down the mountainside in a single file, gusting winds fighting them every step of the way. On the bright side, the difficult terrain and height made fiends scarce, providing a much-needed reprieve in their journey.
Considering all of the effort it had taken to battle their way through Gagazet this far, it was all the more surprise when they ran into a familiar figure on the path nearing towards exit to the city streets.
"Gramps?" Rikku yelled at Maechen. He was hunched in a corner against the rocks, one hand holding his tall hat down and the other trying to keep his glasses affixed to his nose.
"Sir Maechen," Braska said. "What an unexpected surprise!"
"If it isn't Lord Braska!" Graciously, Maechen performed a deep bow, losing his hat in the process.
With a quick snatch, Auron caught it as it blew past them. He stepped forward, handing the hat back to the old man. "Here." He eyed Maechen suspiciously. "And just how did you survive? We saw you fall off of the Pualu when Sin attacked." Fully trained Crusaders had died in that attack, and yet here Maechen was, frail and doddering as ever, and seemingly none worse for the wear.
"Oh," Maechen mumbled, carefully adjusting the hat back onto his balding head. "I'm sorry, but I really don't remember. Perhaps Sin's toxin?" He chuckled. "Or more likely my memory failing once again." Rather than attempting to explain himself further, he leaned forward and wrapped his hands around Braska's. "But you, my Lord… A Summoner, here in Zanarkand! You are here to see the Lady Yunalesca, are you not?"
"Why, yes," Braska answered, clearly uncomfortable as the old man's grip tightened. "We only recently discovered that she still resides in Zanarkand."
"But of course! For this is her home," Maechen said, his eyes clouding with memory. "On the eve of Zanarkand's destruction, Lady Yunalesca fled to safety with her husband, Zaon. Later, the two used the Final Summoning to defeat Sin. It was a fair trade," he mused. "To defeat Sin in order to preserve her lord father's honor."
"Her… father's honor?" Braska asked, confused. "I'm afraid you lost me…?"
Maechen practically glowed with excitement, perfectly in his element and eager to provide an explanation. "A thousand years ago, there was a war," he began, his voice pitching into his typical sing-songing cadence of storytelling. "A war between Zanarkand and Bevelle. The seat of all machina was in Bevelle, of course. Surely you must have seen it, below their Temple. A marvel of technology, that. Zanarkand, the city of Summoners, could hardly stand in their way. Yet stand they did."
This wasn't news to Rikku; she sank to a squat, resting her chin in her hand and preparing for another long-winded story. The others, however, had fallen silent. The Church generally didn't allow anything other than the glorious love story of Yunalesca and Zaon, saving the world from Sin, to be told from those times. Only relics as old as Maechen still knew just why it was Yunalesca who'd needed to do the saving, or who Yevon really was.
Maechen shook his head. "Zanarkand wished to stop Bevelle with a Grand Summon. A thing no Summoner had ever attempted before, or has since. For their leader, the peerless Summoner Yevon, called upon the entire populace of Zanarkand to power his dream."
Everyone started at Maechen's casual explanation of Spira's thousand-year history of sorrow.
"He was the absolute ruler of Zanarkand, you see," the old man continued blithely, still refusing to release Braska. "So none could refuse his request. But during the Rapture, he lost control. Using the power of the entire populace he created Sin, the ultimate armor. The poor fool lost himself in the process, unable to tell friend from foe, madly seeking mindless destruction. After he destroyed his own city, the rest, as we say, was history." Finally, he released Braska's hands, looking at the other man with a glint in his eye.
"And so his daughter, in order to restore the honor of her family, created the first Final Aeon. It was a fair trade. Lady Yunalesca granting us the power to defeat Sin, in exchange for her lord father's hallowed name. Who would have ever guessed that Yevon was the enemy of Bevelle? The evidence," and he gestured at the ruins, "has been lost to time."
"Not if you're telling it to us," Auron said guardedly. "Just who are you?"
"I am but a mere historian, and one with a terrible memory at that," Maechen said, folding his hands behind his back. "I only mean to wish your Summoner good luck." His rheumatic eyes fixed onto Braska. "The Lady Yunalesca was a summoner like no other before her. You will need it."
"Thank you," Braska replied, clearly unsettled by the story. "But where will you go from here? The journey back will be difficult for one of your age—"
Maechen was ignoring him, however, already shuffling his way along the path they'd come from. "Don't trouble yourself over an old man," he wheezed. "I shall manage to make my way through. It's much too exciting to stop now. History is in the making!" His steps slowed at Rikku's side, and confusion marred his face.
"Have we met, young lady? I do apologize, but my memory isn't what it used to be." He leaned in, squinting at her.
Rikku sprung to her feet, windmilling her arms. "Heeey! I was on the ship with you!"
Maechen continued to peer at her restlessly. "Yet you seem more familiar than that…" He shook his head, his eyes unfocused. "Forgive this old man. I get confused so easily."
She smiled hollowly and wondered how everyone had missed it before. Here, in Zanarkand, she could almost see the pyreflies twisting through his Unsent body, held together only by his devotion to history and his amnesia. The edge of his frayed smock was turning translucent in Zanarkand's odd light.
"I'm sure we'll meet again, Gramps… and you can remember me then," she said with a pained smile.
"Oh… yes, yes of course," Maechen replied, nodding absently as he turned back towards the path. "Until then, my dear child."
"Creepy old man," Jecht said, watching him go. "Still, I'll feel bad if he bites it on the way back to Gagazet. You sure we don't gotta look after him?"
Auron continued to bore holes into Maechen's retreating back, his eyes knowing. Maybe he was seeing the same thing she did, now. "He survived an attack from Sin. I have a feeling he'll manage that journey back with no problems, either."
"There's something unnatural about him," Braska agreed, looking discomfited. He folded his hands back into his robes, unwilling to vocalize the unsaid thought floating between them all: that they'd met yet another one of the dead. "We cannot let anything distract us from our purpose anymore. Let us move on."
Auron's jaw twitched, but he said nothing, waiting for Rikku to pass so he could bring up the rear.
They resumed the trek down the precarious path. Eventually, the rocky footholds widened enough to level out to the rough ground of the city floor, and Rikku breathed out a sigh of relief.
It was short lived, though; too soon, they were approaching the bridge that would take them towards the center of the city.
"Huh," Jecht observed as they walked. "So the old Blitz stadium is what became you guys' Temple. Man, is Yevon's church weird. Machina… Blitzball… everything's been twisted backwards. How d'ya think they manage to keep squarin' it up so the people don't notice?"
"They do, eventually," Auron answered him. "That's why people like Kinoc and the Crusaders exist."
Rikku's steps slowed when Braska motioned for the rest of them to stop. He was taken by the sight of Zanarkand's ruins across the water. Pyreflies gathered in such density that they lit up the city from within. It was hard to imagine that something so beautiful could create such deadly fiends; the motes of light drifted together, singing, to create a stream of pure light. It twisted through the city like a river of stars fallen directly from the sky, following an unknown current. The pyreflies sent strange, flickering shadows over the broken shell of the streets and buildings. Combined with the shadows cast by the fiends prowling the streets below, it almost gave the illusion of life.
"This would be a good place to camp," Braska said, turning to face them. He moved back from the water, finding a spot that was sheltered from the wind to settle against, while Jecht began collecting what scraps he could to start a fire.
Auron didn't help. His face was closed in frustration and anger, and he stalked around the perimeter of the camp, looking hungrily for a fiend to vent his aggression on. But he stopped when she did, clearly confused as to why she found the small lump of broken ground some ways from their campfire as interesting as she did.
He waited, but when it became clear she wasn't going to tell him, he let out a loud sigh of exasperation, and stomped back towards the campfire to join the others.
Wincing, she crept up to the mound. "I'm back here again, Yunie," she whispered. "I know you loved this place, but I never did." She crouched and touched the ground. "There were seven of us, but the three of you knew you weren't coming back… and you were the only one who ever told the rest of us about it."
She squeezed her eyes shut; Tidus and Auron had guarded their secrets much more closely than she ever had. But they both must have known, at that point. Known that there was no turning back for either of them; that even if Yuna was saved, they couldn't be. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder at Jecht; she didn't have to. She knew he felt it too; he'd realized the same thing about himself the moment he'd seen the Scar.
Unwilling to face what was coming, she stood brushed herself off, shaking off the memories. When she looked up again, she let out a small shriek.
The formerly-empty mound was abruptly studded with a mix of familiar weapons. Tidus's sword, Wakka's blitzball, Kimahri's lance, and Yuna's staff.
"How?!" She reached out to grab the staff, but her hand passed cleanly through it. The sharpness of the image wavered, then disappeared in a burst of light and a few pyreflies dispersed, keening sorrowfully. The pang of pain and regret that followed them didn't vanish quite as rapidly, though, and her hand opened and closed over the dark, empty space.
Rikku felt as lost as she had back then, not knowing what was right. How could she save anyone? It was just like last time; they were already here, and she was still clueless. She kept her back to the warmth of the fire, feeling like she didn't belong with the others; she was a stranger once again in this time. The song of the pyreflies grew unbearably loud around her, as if answering her confusion and helplessness.
"Rikku?"
Auron's voice reached her. But she knew he wasn't looking at her. In fact, she knew exactly what he was looking at, because she was watching it too.
Paine had materialized by her side.
Her first thought was that she was having a private waking dream, just as she had so many times before while sleeping.
"Who the hell is that?!"
Jecht's loud question dispelled the notion, though. Everyone could see Paine. Her mind flashed to the weapons that had appeared before her. Which meant…
The other girl's image was slightly translucent and studded with twisting pyreflies. Paine's red eyes were open wide with shock, as if she was looking at them, too. But her image was only a memory.
My memory.
Rikku looked down, knowing what she'd see: blue ankle boots, gangly knees, and the yellow pouch and khaki skirt of her sphere hunting outfit. She stepped away and turned, feeling like a spirit separating from her body. And then she was watching herself from three years ago.
"Whoa," Jecht said, staring up from the fire at both versions of her. "Now that's trippy…"
Rikku took a good look. Her seventeen-year-old version was still hyper-energetic, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet as she stared off at the spot where Maechen had stood, so long ago. It was her fascination with the unsent historian that had made her miss what had really happened here… memory-Yuna, facing the fire, staring with wide eyes directly at her father.
"Father?!" she said, and Braska whirled towards her, mouth opening in a gasp of surprise.
"Yuna?!"
For a moment everything stopped. They were together there, looking at one another. A father and daughter, bound across time.
Then, Yuna's mismatched eyes crinkled. She smiled at Braska, one half of heartbreak, and one half of hope. "So people really are connected," she said softly to him, her voice echoing.
Braska lunged towards her, arms outstretched. "Yuna!" he cried, but his arms closed around emptiness, and the image faded. He stood there for a moment, his eyes wide. Then he lowered his arms slowly and looked at Rikku, lost.
"Pyreflies hold memories," she tried to explain. "They hold them forever. There are so many here, and sometimes… sometimes they just play back, like… like this whole place is a big sphere full of memory water!" She ducked her chin. "I didn't know they'd hold mine, though."
Braska blinked, and she could see his eyes shining in the dim light. "I… I didn't think I'd ever get to—"
He stopped, and brought his hand over his eyes, shuddering. Then, heedless of Auron's gaze, he stepped up to her and drew her to his chest, hugging her tightly. She could feel the wetness of his tears as he pressed his cheek against hers, his body shaking.
"Dryhg oui," he whispered. "Dryhg oui."
She squeezed her eyes shut. "No," she said. "No, please, don't—"
But it was too late. Even as she pushed Braska away, the guilt overwhelmed her. She heard the thump of Auron jumping from the ledge, and she stepped back, suddenly aware of the danger.
No… my secrets… my future…
The Al Bhed had always warned against this. This is why we stay out of the Farplane. Memories were private… they were supposed to be hers alone. And like the Farplane, Zanarkand was a place where pyreflies gathered. Memories grew thick and close to the surface here.
Jecht was on his feet now, too, closing in on her. "Blondie, what'sa matter? We all kinda figured Yuna was on the Pilgrimage with you too, y'know. Why are you so scared o' us seein' it? She grew up to be an awesome Guardian!"
It was easy to see how he might have thought that; in her Gunner outfit, Yuna looked every bit the warrior she had turned into. But they all still didn't know her most precious, tightly-locked secret. Because that wasn't our Pilgrimage.
"Don't," Rikku moaned, taking another step back, but Jecht wasn't listening. He grabbed onto her elbow. Maybe he was listening, and listening too well. She knew he wanted just a little of what she'd unwittingly given to Braska for himself. He didn't realize the enormity of what he was pressing her to reveal.
"I bet my boy is too!" His eyes shone with a crazed, determined light, and he kept talking, more quickly now. "My Tidus, he's gonna grow up to be a chip off the ol' block…"
"Jecht! Stop it!" Auron warned, reaching out to pull the other man off of her, but he froze, his words dying on his lips.
Like the enormous sphere playback dome that it was, the pyreflies reacted to her strongest memories, her choking emotions, and crystalized into images in the air. This time, she couldn't forget the memory of a campfire; a last, desperate and collective attempt to deny and delay fate. That campfire had revealed too much back then, too.
They were only memories, but they cut to the bone. She saw herself cowered by the phantom fire, just fifteen and breaking under the weight of carrying an adult's burden.
Lulu and Wakka sat next to her, one staring into the fire as if it could give answers, and the other up into the sky. Kimahri flanked her other side, his uncomfortable shifting speaking louder than any words he'd ever formed.
Auron – the real one – stopped at her younger self's back, staring at what she'd tried so hard to hide from him. Her memories could tell him what her lips never could, though.
I always loved you. Because I always knew you.
His older self didn't look up, head bowed, even as Auron passed through her image, through the fire, to stop before himself. He stared, hypnotized, at the man he would become.
Jecht and Braska were no better; their shock at seeing Auron was only eclipsed by the sight of their own children.
"Your Pilgrimage," Braska breathed. "This was your Pilgrimage."
"No," Rikku bit out. "Not mine."
And then Tidus stood up to turn away from the fire. Yuna tracked him with her wide eyes. When Tidus stopped to rest a hand on her shoulder, her head dipped towards him and her eyes slid shut. The tenderness between them was almost palpable; not even time and memory could distort the meaning of their gestures.
After the image faded, Braska was the first to speak.
"No," he said, understanding finally dawning. "Not this," he repeated, his voice becoming stronger, and tinged with a hint of panic. "I never meant for this!"
"Face it, B. Your girl's just like her old man," Jecht said, folding his arms across his chest. He breathed out loudly, then turned and trained his eyes on the ruins of Zanarkand across the water. "Looks like everybody loved her. An' everybody followed her."
Braska fell to his knees. "Your Summoner… your Summoner was Yuna." His head bowed, and he let out a soft, sorrowful laugh. "At least—" he whispered, his voice catching. He began again. "At least what I do will mean something to her."
Even in that desperate utterance, she could hear the lie he was telling himself. It was thin at best. Because now Braska knew. Even if Yuna had succeeded and brought the Eternal Calm, even if they'd saved her in the end somehow: it didn't negate the journey she'd undertaken to get there. He'd robbed Yuna of so much that she had also chosen death once, just as he had; she'd nearly walked the same path of destruction that every Summoner before her followed.
"Like father, like daughter," Braska murmured. Then he bowed over, low enough that his head touched the ground, and his laughs turned into soft, wracking sobs.
For once, Jecht left Braska alone, facing the same truth. His child would follow in his footsteps, too, seeing the real world and feeling its pain. Sniffling, he swiped at his own suspiciously moist eyes. "My boy. He made it. He really made it."
Then he spared a look at Rikku. "Y'know, you're still her Guardian. Looks like you been doing this way longer than any o' us, Blondie. Plus you had all them friends with ya the first time. Here, you didn't have nobody. It musta been hard, tryin' to protect B's little girl alone all this time."
Somehow, the wild beating of her fearful heart slowed at Jecht's words. Guardian, he'd called her. Not a Dream Eater, but a Guardian. Maybe not Braska's Guardian, but a protector of dreams all the same.
She hadn't known how badly she'd needed to hear that.
Something in her crumpling face made Jecht panic. "Oh. Oh, shit. No, no, c'mon, Blondie, c'mere." He moved to fold her into a bear hug, and she bit her lip to keep the pathetic wail from rising in the back of her throat, even though it burned to be released.
Expelling his breath in a loud whoosh, Jecht patted her back repeatedly, trying to calm her down, his own version of an awkward apology for the chaos he'd wrought in his simple desire to see a memory of his own son. "Just a kid," he swore softly. "Y'all were just kids. What kind o' bullshit world does this to kids?"
Finally, he pushed her back and knocked her chin up with a knuckle. "No wonder you can't settle this thing between Auron an' Braska. Your heart's out there, in the future," he said, gesturing expansively at the pyreflies in the distance. "I get it, though. That future don't look half bad, not with my boy in it." A wry smile twisted over his face. "An' even the Stiff made it out, huh?"
He wouldn't say it, not when he was trying to keep her from falling apart, but she knew he was too quick to not spot the incongruity. To see that of them all, only she and Auron had been there for Yuna in the future.
Rikku shook her head. "I'm sor—"
"Can it," Jecht said, waving her off. "I ain't looking for an apology from you of all people. 'Sides, you got a more important talk to have. An' I wanna be with my boy right now," he said, pushing her away.
She turned around and saw that Auron hadn't moved. He was still staring directly at the spot where his older self had appeared. She approached him cautiously.
"Umm… Auron?"
"You already knew me. I was never a replacement, was I." Then he looked up at her, and beyond her to Braska, still huddled on the ground. "There never was a future for us. Any of us."
He already knew that his older incarnation wouldn't have done anything to her fifteen-year-old self, not after his own scarred childhood. His gaze returned to her, steady. "The Teachings missed the mark by so much. There was always only the now." Pain still colored his voice; it reverberated with the evaporation of his dreams: starting a family in Besaid and living a life with her where he would no longer need to fight.
But now he, too, knew what was at stake. It was easy to give up the abstract idea of an Eternal Calm in a distant future for a concrete chance at happiness with her in the present. Harder, though, when the face of that Eternal Calm was the closest thing he'd ever had to a daughter.
And, Rikku realized as she reached for Auron and buried her face into his chest, he'd always been a better father than Braska.
"I was selfish," she murmured. "I wanted too much."
Auron's hand stroked the back of her head, and she nearly cried in relief as she leaned into him; the tension fled her so abruptly that he had to catch her when her knees buckled.
His touch had always told her more than his words. Despite his rigid posture, he couldn't stop his fingers from threading through her hair, gentle and forgiving. The wall that had been building between them melted away under that soft, insistent touch; it wasn't love or passion that had finally broken the barrier. It was the truth, even if that truth hurt. He drew her closer, as if their own wounds could heal one another.
"We're all selfish," he chided. "Even I. I didn't understand you, Rikku." His grip tightened.
"Yeah, well, I didn't want you to know," she choked out with a laugh.
Auron traced down her arm until he found her hand. He laced his fingers through hers. "If we break under this, then we'll break together." He dropped his chin on the crown of her head. "I don't know how I become that man, but I'm sorry."
"What? Why are you the one apologizing?" she asked, drawing back to look at him.
He cupped her face with his other palm, staring at her intently. "Because I stole your future. You should have never come here. You should have never made me love you. You should have stayed where you were and found someone else to build a life with. There's nothing for you here, is there?"
"You're here," she said, shaking her head. "You're not nothing."
His grip tightened slightly, and a hint of the desperation and denial of the inevitable conclusion to Braska's Pilgrimage shone through. "I'm not so sure anymore. But I'm selfish, too." He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against hers. "Since you're here anyway, stay with me until the end. Don't leave me by myself."
"I don't know if that's up to me," she admitted, even as his fingers tightened around hers. "The other aeons… they call me the King's pawn. Bahamut brought me here. I guess he's the one that can send me back. I know I can't leave without his permission… but I don't know if I can stay without it, either." She pulled back and smiled miserably. "I don't know if I get a say in any of this, really."
"Things are changing… ending," Auron said lowly. "I don't want us to be one of them."
"No matter what happens, no regrets," she agreed, letting him hold her for a moment longer. "I'm not sorry about any of it."
"Hnn," he murmured in agreement, and for a moment – just a moment – they basked in the memory of their time together, treasuring it for what it was: more than what most other people ever got.
How did Yuna do this? She wondered fleetingly. Not the Pilgrimage; she'd been there for that part. But how she went on afterwards, holding her breath and learning to swim and sphere hunting, with the gaping hole that was her connection to Tidus missing all the while. Maybe it had helped that Tidus hadn't told her he was leaving, not until right before he'd jumped clean off the side of the Celsius. More likely, though, was Yuna's steadfast belief in her ability to bring him back and make him real.
She held on to Auron like a lifeline and he hugged her back. Above them, the pyreflies sang their wistful dirge, beckoning them onwards to the city of memories. But for the moment, Braska's Pilgrimage didn't matter. Auron knew her now, knew almost everything about her story, and wasn't running away.
It was only a small comfort in the midst of the final chapter of their story, but – it was enough. "Dryhg oui," she repeated into his shoulder, feeling freer than she'd ever been. "Dryhg oui vun ymfyoc paehk oui."
A/N: "Dryhg oui" = "Thank you"
"Dryhg oui vun ymfyoc paehk oui." = "Thank you for always being you."