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The Son and the Daughter	By : Ceefax Category: Final Fantasy X > General Views: 954 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy X, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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The Son and the Daughter

by Ceefax.

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or settings, and I'm not making any money off of this.

***

Chapter Two

Braska's Final Battle

***

The fayth cluster stirred as the three men approached. They recognised one as their own, and a soft wave of hope washed over them. The men passed, and the fayth sank back into their dream.

***

"What are they?" Auron asked, peering at the mass of enmeshed bodies. Behind him, water twisted and writhed in unnatural patterns.

"Fayth," Braska replied. "But not, I think, fayth of Yevon."

The summoner strode on. Auron paused by the pyrefly-lit rock and stretched out his hand to touch it, but paused as he caught sight of his fellow guardian. Jecht looked scared. Auron had seen him leap off cliffs without hesitation and gleefully charge into any battle, but now he stared around this strange but peaceful grotto with a look of fear.

"Jecht? What's wrong?"

Braska turned back at the sound of his voice.

"I've... I've been here before, I think."

The words shocked Auron. The very first piece of evidence to support the theory he'd been championing ever since Braska had fished Jecht out of a jail cell, and it seemed... wrong.

Braska made his way back to where his guardians stood. "Do you remember when you were here? Was anybody else with you?"

"No, I... I know this place. That's all."

Braska and Auron exchanged a glance.

Stepping back into a long abandoned role, Auron said "if he was a guardian before, he would have come this way, and then probably come into contact with Sin. So the toxin..."

"Thought we were past this," Jecht snapped. He clenched his teeth and stomped on up the trail.

Braska hurried after him. "Jecht, wait, if you have been here before..."

"I haven't. I was thinking of something else. Forget about it."

With a frown, Auron turned his back on the silent stone fayth and followed his companions.

***

When they returned, they were two. Auron walked with his eyes to the ground, trying not to think beyond the next step. As a consequence he walked right past Braska, who stood beside the wall of fayth and looked upward, past the cloud-covered peak of the mountain.

"Auron..."

He stopped and looked back at his lord. Braska's voice and eyes showed the strange fierceness, so alien to his nature, that had been evident since he received the aeon of Jecht. The final aeon.

"She's laughing, I think... Auron, tell me I did the right thing?"

"Lord Braska..." No, of course you didn't. You condemned yourself to death and Jecht to worse, for... for what? The chance that it might not come back this time? "...you did the only thing you possibly could."

The faint note of the fayth pulsed louder, and pyreflies swirled around them.

"I must defeat Sin," Braska said, his voice cold and hard, Jecht's borrowed fierceness in his eyes. "I have to, Auron, otherwise it was for nothing. You understand, don't you?"

"Yes, Braska. We must bring the Calm."

His smile was grim. "Then we go on."

Exhausted and despairing, Auron followed his lord down the mountain path, his mind straying to the roughly marked graves littering the way. How many, he wondered, had died on the way back? How many had known?

***

Auron slowly returned to pain-filled consciousness. His fingers skittered automatically up to his face to assuage the itching of the healing flesh, but encountered only bandage. His brain belatedly cut in, and he forced his hand back down.

With his remaining eye, he gazed blankly at the ceiling, and tried to sort his confused and painful memories into some sort of order.

He remembered the Calm Lands, spread wide across the horizon, green and peaceful just as they had been before. Before Jecht and Yunalesca... He remembered Braska's haunted determination as they crossed.

Braska had seemed very strange in the later portions of the journey - he was quiet and withdrawn, and his magic seemed to grow suddenly much stronger. Auron had a very vivid memory of a patch of dry grass bursting into flame as they walked by. Braska had hastily cast a water spell, and the resulting wave had knocked them both off their feet. Obviously shaken, he had apologised profusely, and Auron had caught one of his last glimpses of the old Braska.

They had not traversed a quarter of the Calm Lands before they caught sight of their quarry, as Braska had been strangely sure they would.

Sin hovered above the canyon, surrounded by a sphere of water. Braska gasped, stepped clear of his sole remaining guardian, and summoned.

***

The journey across the plains toward Sin was contracted to a simple memory of wind and discomfort. Braska seemed to have the knack of moving with the motion of the aeon, but Auron had simply hung on tight and tried to avoid being jerked loose.

He remembered circling above Sin, the shape of it's body distorted by the water it held to itself. He remembered the sparkle of the sunlight.

The two of them were going to fight Sin.

For all that it seemed madness, he felt the excitement he felt before every battle. The knowledge that he was strong, and the anticipation of proving it. And if he should die by Braska's side, then... he would protect his summoner at the cost of his own life.

From directly above the sphere, Valefor arched back the tips of his wings and screamed defiance as he plunged towards Sin.

***

The second before they struck, he thought he saw black concentric rings moving over the surface of the water, shrinking to a dot at the point they would hit... He had drawn breath to warn Braska, but by then it was already too late.

This was the point at which his memories seemed to lose their order - he remembered a pathway of pyrefly-lit mist stretching out across void surrounded by spirals made up of letters - he knew enough of magework to recognise fragments of spells to protect and preserve. He remembered a great, dark river sweeping away the pyreflies that clung to it's surface, running through a place that looked like a city built by someone with no idea what a city was for. He remembered a strange forest-plain, seemingly made of glass, where stars whirled past overhead fast enough to make you dizzy...

And everywhere there were large and powerful fiends, proof that many had got this far and failed...

Braska had seemed unperturbed by their surroundings, and led the way with calm confidence and uncanny accuracy, until finally they found themselves on a platform, suspended over darkness.

He had been reminded of the view into the Farplane at Guadosalam, but instead of being suspended over pyrefly-ridden flowers and waterfalls, they were suspended over pyrefly-ridden sucking darkness. He had never had a problem with heights, but that dead black void...

Braska had grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back from the edge, even as he had strode forward across the vast platform (which Auron remembered as being unsupported, a lone island in the sea of darkness, and he didn't remember how they had come to be there...) towards...

It was an indistinct mass of pyreflies the coalesced into a young woman in the uniform of a crusader. She sat on the floor, her legs folded under her and her eyes cast down.

Braska had spoken with her, but he didn't remember the conversation, nor did he remember exactly how the battle started, but he did remember her changing, in the manner of a lost unsent, into an inhuman monster...

But her eyes... Her eyes held the same fierce look that had lately taken Braska...

And he remembered with vivid accuracy the sight of her blade, shining edge-on, arcing towards him... He had screamed as she sliced open his face, but it was just a reflex. Shock kept the pain away for the moment.

Blood, aqueous humour and vitreous humour sprayed forward and he fell back. There was a terrible feeling of wrongness in his right eye. He tried to scrunch it closed, and then the pain hit. His left eye stung with blood, and little black spots were dancing before what was left of his vision, and through them he saw Braska turning to him, his face wide-eyed and dead white (Behind him and before the monster, Ixion fought on). He raised a hand...

The pain tripled, and he felt a flash of heat. Even as he writhed and howled, a rational part of his mind realised what had happened - Braska had cauterised the would and stopped the bleeding.

He had lain, insensible, and finally forced his one good eye open to see Braska silhouetted against the dissipating pyreflies of a defeated aeon. He had reached for his sword and tried to lever himself upright, but his legs simply wouldn't hold him. His vision had begun to grey out again, and his shaking hands lost their grip on his sword.

As though from a great distance, he had watched Braska summon his final aeon. He had seen the fearsome monster that was all that remained of his friend, and he had watched as it defeated their adversary.

She had changed back to the form of the crusader, and Braska had sent her. With delirious concentration he had watched the pyreflies flee, leaving... a white sphere. Braska had turned away as soon as the sending was complete, and was running back towards him. The aeon that once was Jecht reached out and touched the white sphere...

And Braska stopped dead, clutching at his chest, a look of pain and horror on his face. Little red spots had joined the grey and black ones already swimming before him, but Auron had seen Braska fall, and he had seen the sphere rush at the final aeon, who threw his horns back and screamed...

***

He had awoken on damp grass with something sharp digging into his ribs, and fresh spears of pain stabbing into his face with every heartbeat.

The sun was rising. It had been afternoon when he and Braska had shot across the plains after Sin.

His fingers shakily investigated. A small stone. Digging into his ribs. It seemed rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

His sword was lying on the ground, just out of reach. It didn't seem very important either.

Braska... He tried to call his name. His voice was hoarse and faint, even to his own ears. The brisk morning breeze snatched it away.

He rolled slowly and painfully onto his side, and managed to lever himself into a sitting position. His mind abruptly replayed the moment - Braska's fall, the aeon's cry...

Without quite meaning to, he screamed Braska's name. The black spots returned, and he let himself fall backwards.

His senses went far away again. He lay still, and concentrated on breathing. He had a horrible suspicion that he had lost his summoner.

He gradually became aware of a strange modulation in the noise of the wind, and forced his good eye open. There was a large piece of Al Bhed travelling machina - the type with the rotating blades at the back - coming across the plain towards him.

He stared carefully at it and wondered if it was real. He was still deliberating when his vision narrowed to a grey-lined tunnel and his hearing faded away...

A few seconds later he had come to in a tight cocoon of pain as he was lifted into the Al Bhed craft. A man with shoulder-length blond hair and startling green spiral eyes leaned over him, and spoke in a clear, cultured voice with only the faintest hint of an Al Bhed accent: "My name is Rin. You are safe now."

***

He was brought back to the present as, after a soft knock, the door swung open and three people entered; Rin, Resa (the healer, who spoke only Al Bhed), and behind them, an unfamiliar ronso.

Resa leaned over him, checked the bandages, peered into his eye, and gave him an encouraging smile. He said a few words to Rin, then left, closing the door behind him.

Rin addressed the ronso. "He asks that you please keep this brief." The ronso nodded, impassively.

"Who are you?" Auron asked.

"Kimahri," the ronso replied. "Kimahri guards the sacred mountain."

A memory clicked into place. Rin had told him they were sending word to the ronso village at the foot of Mt Gagazet - the closest outpost of Yevon.

Rin touched his arm gently. "If you would rather I left also..."

"No. That's all right. Kimahri... Lord Braska has defeated Sin. And this is his will - his daughter Yuna is in the care of the temple at Bevelle. Take her to the island of Besaid. Take her far away from Bevelle."

The ronso nodded. "Kimahri will do High Summoner Braska's will."

***
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The Son and the Daughter