Chapter Text
Auron had, of course, quickly gone to Besaid. Courtesy dictated that he go to the children he had left behind in their shining new world and tell them of his arrival and what it must portent. It was embittering to always be the cloud to blacken their sunshine, but endure it he must. Auron had no sooner stepped off Rin's airship than Tidus had come barreling down the beach with absolutely no more grace and absolutely no more dignity than he had had when Auron had fought beside him (years ago?)
"Auron! Auron!" he called, waving wildly as though Auron might have missed him without the ecstatic arm flail. "You're here! How?! I mean, I don't care how but you're here and you're not dead! You're not dead and you're here!"
The boy, all sunbleached blonde and giant tears and runny nose like he was six years old with a skinned knee, peered up at him, grinning so hard his face might crack, teeth white enough to blind, and Auron did not have the heart to tell him that he truly, truly wished he was still dead.
"I see you too have returned," he murmured. "How long?"
"Four years now," Tidus crowed, laughing as he dragged the slower paced guardian up the hot, sandy beach. “The Fayth wanted to thank us for what we did. What Yuna did the second time. And here I am!”
Auron doubted very much that he was someones thank you gift.
Tidus circled his mentor wildly, unable to stand still, prodding and touching and peering him over.
"We didn't believe it! We thought someone was impersonating you or lying or spreading rumors, but than Rin called and told us that he was bringing you to us and it was really you!"
Further up the beach Wakka was standing as he always stood, as if he was the greatest cat that had ever got the greatest cream, with a small orange haired boy clinging loosely to his pant leg and peering at the red cloaked man. Lulu, as secretive as ever, took two steps forward than a third, her purple lips curling into a sly smile when she touched his arm and her fingers did not slide through him. Not that they would have before, but he appreciated her dour theatrics.
"No ghost this time, I think," she said softly.
"We couldn't see through him before neither, ya?" Wakka said loudly, crossing his arms. "But it sure does look like you, Sir Auron."
He had no reply, and so he merely shared a look with them both, and nodded approvingly at their child. Four years had passed since Tidus's return, but how long since he had been sent? Apparently long enough for these young things to propagate.
Tidus had continued pulling him, prodding him, while he walked at his own measured pace until they reached the town. Guilt hung over him like a shroud as Yuna emerged from the small Besaid temple in her simple robes, and ran to him, and threw her arms around him with unbridled joy. He felt a wash of warmth rush over him at the touch, the first true hug he had had since before he was Unsent, and named it happiness.
"How are you alive?" she gasped, her voice as feather soft and sunshine light as he remembered it. His sincere warmth slipped away as he recalled the bad tidings he had to bring them.
"I fear I have been brought back because of the trouble Spira faces." he said somberly.
Yuna's face fell, pink lips crumpling. She glanced at Tidus, who shrugged, scratching the back of his head.
"What troubles?" she asked. “We've heard nothing.”
"That," here he cleared his throat, "is still unclear."
Tidus laughed nervously as the silence lengthened, giddily grabbing hold of Auron’s sleeve once more.
“Enough with the dark and gloomy! Come on Auron! I’ll show you around!”
--
That night the two of them sat around a crackling fire long after Yuna and the others had gone to bed. Tidus apparently wanted to rehash every moment of their first journey together, with the years in between thrown in for good measure. He flowed rapidly over the memories of Zanarkand before Jecht to the Thunder Plains, to Luca, to Zanarkand and beyond with little to no cohesion. It was a good thing Auron had been there as well and retained the memories otherwise he never would have been able to follow the timeline.
The blonde threw another log on the fire and leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees as he grinned.
“I can't believe you're back Auron. You don't know how much I... how much we all missed you.”
“Your focus should have been on the future, not the past,” Auron murmured. “I wanted a world where you only had to look forward, where the cycle of death was broken. I was never meant to be a part of such a world.”
Tidus shook his head, rueful. “You know, for a guy who spent his life trying to save several entire races you are really bad with people, Auron.”
“I do not argue that,” he replied lowly, staring into the fire.
“Things are good Auron! We beat the bad guys! I mean, yeah, sometimes there are things that pop up and put a cloud on things... We had a guy drown last year after he fell off his fishing boat. Kimahri letting the Ronso head out into the world to figure themselves out was pretty awesome but they are still having a bit of difficulty getting used to it. Sometimes we hear about bar fights or there was a protest in Luca one time about larger housing being built... and I mean actual larger housing! Those guys are huge! This Gippal guy is pretty much running the Al Bhed now and he is really, uh, proactive!”
“Yuna?” Auron smirked. Tidus looked abashed, rubbing the back of his head.
“Cid? The girl?” he asked curiously. Cid was a fierce leader, and his children had been next in succession. Where were they now?
“I don't really know any of that stuff, leading is more Yuna's wheelhouse. Cid is still the leader of the Al Bhed, definitely! But Gippal is kinda in charge of like, their regrowth and fitting the Al Bhed into the rest of the world now. Brother doesn't want to lead and said as much. Probably a good thing. He is completely absorbed in that air ship! He seems to run parts now more than anything, getting the stuff Gippal needs here and there. Last I heard, Rikku was diving off the coast of Djose! She is the head of their Artifact Recovery Unit or something! Very cool stuff! She stops by sometimes to show us some of the really cool finds!”
Auron made a small noise of agreement, turning over the tangled puzzle of Al Bhed government in his mind before placing it aside.
“What of Bevelle? What happens in the capital?”
“The Spiran Council keeps an eye on all the boring politics. This guy named Baralai heads it. He does a good job!”
“I see,” Auron said. As far as explanations on global politics went, Tidus' answer was minimal at best.
He found it difficult to believe that there were no murmurs of political dissent, no war mongering among the territories, no cesspool of corruption in internal government. At the very least complete peace between all the races of Spira sounded far fetched. He imagined that Tidus was rather sheltered on the quiet shores of Besaid. Perhaps this was not the best place to garner the information he needed. He would need to move on.
For a moment the silence weighed down and Auron realized with distant clarity that he was warm, relaxed, and fatigued. Such a strange host of sensations, the heat of the fire making his eyelid want to slide shut.
“You uh, see my old man there?” Tidus asked hesitantly in the quiet.
Auron cracked his good eye open and settled it on the boy. “The Farplane is not a social club, with all the Sent milling around swapping stories and jesting about the good old days. It is an edge of existence if you can even call it that. It is a non-awareness, a peace. There was no Legendary Guardian Auron there. There was no Jecht or Braska or any other. There was nothing.”
“And that was good?” Tidus chuckled uncertainly.
“It is what I hoped for,” Auron said, looking deep into the fire.
“And now?”
“And now I am here,” Auron said. “And there is no sense becoming maudlin over what cannot change. Are you... happy?”
“Of course!” Tidus said, shooting upright in surprise at this turn in conversation.
“Then we will protect that happiness,” Auron said firmly, and settled back into his seat, arms tucked firmly into his gi.
“From what, Auron?” Tidus frowned, blinking at the other man.
Auron had no answer, and instead watched the fire burn merrily away, the sparks of hot orange ash floating rapidly into the cobalt blue sky before burning out.
--
And six months later Auron still had no answer to their question about the danger they would face. He had left the sunny island of Besaid, a dark cloud over their familial paradise, sure that he would root out a great crisis and call for their aid once more, anxious of breaking their peace and possibly orphaning the child of Wakka and Lulu. World weary, solitary, he feared he could not remain beside those children grown to adults and not resent them for having gotten all they wanted when he had just lost his own wish for death. Instead, he told himself he left in order to protect their happiness. They deserved their sunshine lit days, their happy endings. He was so grateful they had found one another once again.
Besides, the island of Besaid was abysmally hot and muggy.
He was learning about himself. He had not felt the heat, the cold, the wind as they had during their pilgrimage. It was as though being Unsent had left him experiencing life through a shroud of mist he had not known about. Sensations did not penetrate so much, and he had not noticed such things as temperature, hunger or fatigue as acutely as he did now, truly returned, he supposed. What a tyrant he must have seemed, he thought in reflection, driving them through snow and storm, through sand and sea at a dogged pace to what they thought for so long was their death.
With a shiver he threw another piece of wood on the fire before him, digging deeper down into the warmth of his heavy coat. He paid heavily for it now, and justly perhaps.
He had wandered through several of the larger towns trying to ferret out problems, trying to find the danger he was certain was lurking behind every shut door, every closed temple and cloister. Madmen were born every day coveting power and spewing grandiose ideals about world conquest or obliteration. Where were they now? Why was Auron brought back to life as a man once more and not just a stubbornly clinging ghost? What had changed?
Everywhere he traveled he was unsettled by the people of Spira. They stopped, hushed, in awe of him when he passed. The more he showed himself to them the more worshipful they became. They began to leave offerings of fruit and cloth, incense and sake for him at the inns he stayed at, began to crowd the ale houses and eateries he stopped at to pray for him, at him... to him. They called him Immortal. They begged him to speak to their dead loved ones for them as though he was a messenger from the Farplane. They began to ask him to bring their loved ones back. He was dismayed by their fervor, and unsettled to think what they would believe him to be when he did not answer their prayers. He wondered if he would become a symbol of withholding, a blasphemous relic of their dead religion.
In a world so long ruled by faith suddenly left with a gaping void he must have seemed miraculous for good or bad. And so he withdrew further to the smaller towns and finally to the outskirts and the farthest reaches where their whispered fervency could not reach him. In doing so he found himself now on Mount Gagazet, where Kimahri, Elder of the Ronso people, Uniter of Ronso and Guado, who had let his tribe spread their wings and decide their own fates, had found him and offered him shelter while asking no questions. It had been two weeks, than three, and Auron had still found no answers, heard no whispers of ill tidings, had no great revelations from the Fayth who had deserted him here.
He was sitting again beside a crackling fire tucked into one of the high caves pocketing the mountainside when Kimahri stepped solidly in and handed him a dull cerulean sphere. Glancing narrowly at the huge blue creature who shrugged passively, Auron turned it over in his hands and fumbled about until he managed to activate it. It flared to life, and Rin's blonde, green eyed face appeared within it.
"Greeting Sir Auron. I hope this sphere has made its way to you. I am in need of your unique services and would like to extend an offer of short term employment to you should you desire it. I am sure you are aware of the recent peace we Al Bhed have been enjoying, and Gippal, the head of the Machine Faction has a recovery operation that we feel could benefit greatly from your aid. If interested, please come to Bikinal Island as soon as possible. You may send word from any of my agencies and I will have transportation ready."
The sphere shut off, and Auron carefully placed it beside him on the cold stone. Kimahri said nothing, and for a moment Auron contemplated Rin's presumption and guts. At least the merchant mogul was not trying to deify him, just hire him.
"What say you, old friend?" he asked softly. Kimahri leveled him with his yellow eyes, crossing his massive arms across his chest.
"Kimahri thinks Auron must find Auron's new path," he said, "and it cannot be found within this cave."