he left at dawn

hold for the last time then slip away quietly





Had she not been sleeping, she might have known.

Had she not been sleeping, she might have seen him.

He sat by her side for what might have been an hour, just watching her from the side of the bed. So many years had passed since he'd seen her and she wore her years with grace...even in sleep.

Had it really been so long? She was so, so small...but...still the same.

He brushed a hand over her cheek, a ghost touch that she barely turned her face to -- he smiled, and held back his tears as he kissed her forehead.

I love you, Yuna. You'll be fine.

His daughter slept on.



The room was dark save for the pale glow of the moon and he was standing by the window, watching the snow as it fell like tiny stars, quickly swallowed up by the white universe of ground beneath. An army of the fallen, tiny and pure. A music-box played the same aching, haunted tune over, over again and his shoulders were slumped with all the weight of his burdens.

It called to him, the night of the dead. The spirits were gathering and whispering to him, speaking his voice in low, soft tones, nothing more than the ebb of the tide.

He didn't blink.

The door made a whispering noise as it opened and he didn't turn, only sighed softly. "I didn't invite anyone. Leave me."

"...Do you mean that?"

He couldn't breathe. Every muscle in his body turned to stone and suddenly he wasn't himself, no, not a legendary guardian or a fallen warrior monk; he was nothing but a little boy holding his heart and his voice in his hands like two wounded birds, wondering why they wouldn't fly.

The snow wasn't white anymore. It was blue. Pale, silvery blue and not snow, not at all but...

"Braska..?" The words were choked, barely words at all. It didn't matter.

"I've missed you."

Snow touched the glass and melted instantly, leaving tiny rivers that slid down the cold surface like tears. They pooled on the pane and froze there.

He turned, one hand against his throat as if it hadn't the energy to reach his mouth. "Braska-sama..."

There was pain in those words, so much that the dead summoner wondered if he'd made a mistake in coming here. Perhaps it had been selfish of him to do this.

"Auron." Braska padded forward, the steps of a feline, graceful and steady; his shadow rolled across the floor, the Agency's carpeting whispered and scratched beneath his bare feet and Auron realized that he was neither dream nor ghost. He shuddered violently and closed his eye and wasn't quite able to swallow the thick lump that had somehow found itself wedged in his throat. He was choking, it would kill him again but it was too soon, too soon yet.

Slow-motion, Auron turned and finally faced him, opening his eye to see what he could.

Braska stood with one hand extended, reaching out for him and the music-box began it's slow, sad cycle again. His eye dulled, lost focus and drifted awhile in stubborn false-blindness as he remembered so much -- and when it came back, the summoner was still there in a simple white robe, pale hair pulled forward over his shoulders to lie gleaming, cascades of quicksilver in the fragile, stolen light of the moon.

The metal-wrought notes of that tiny music box became impossibly louder, raised its tinny voice to chase away the silence in a game of fox and hare than neither man paid heed to. Auron took a step forward and his heart kept time, his soul sang the dirge and firm, warm fingers touched his own.

He sighed and trembled, tree and wind and don't turn away, don't you dare, it's real, it's real...

The snow was screaming, crying out as it fell, the summoner took the man's hands between his own and brought them to his chest; willing captives, both of them. But the trembling didn't stop. He lifted his eyes and something deep and hidden and unfathomable began to shatter; it pulsed once and gave way to a whole webwork of cracks, a distant cry, an echo.

It exploded.

"You've killed me again."

The summoner closed his eyes and drew him into the loose circle of his arms, he stood limply, a broken doll, death to death but there was the pulse of heartbeat and warmth and the faint smell of winter and sarcocatta, he could touch them all beneath his heavy hands. One slender finger reached up to trace the obscenity of a long-worn scar, remembering the brilliant rust color of the eye that once lived beneath it.

He leaned up and kissed the scar; the other bowed his head. Granting, but asking forgiveness in his own way. A slow tear made its way down a rugged, weather-worn cheek, a response not provoked in the guardian for over a decade.

It made sense sense, more than it should; the last time he'd shed tears he'd lost his summoner. Was it not appropriate for him to shed them over a return? He was undone. Always, by one...

"Don't." It's too late for that now, dear, summer is gone, don't you remember the leaves and sunbeams, they were falling falling falling....

A hand was stroking the salty wetness away. The dead cried for the dead and nothing changed. Another revolution. The melody began again, if it had indeed ended it all, and his mind twisted around itself to comprehend. He was dead, dead...

Auron relented, and turned his face to the curve between the summoner's chin and shoulder, the scent was greater there, sweet and comforting. His head spun dizzily, his mind reeled and twisted in on itself trying to comprehend how this could be. He took a deep breath, and realized he was drowning.

The summoner knelt as Auron's knees buckled, and gently lowered him to the floor, cradling the guardian against himself like a lost child. He was big but not heavy, not in the least.

"It's the night of the dead. I can't be but a while." Braska whispered and his voice dripped comfort and inevitability -- it pooled around Auron in honey waves and it was Cold. He raised his head to watch the snowflakes as they plummeted past the window, dying beyond his line of sight.

"You'll leave me again," came the soft reply, acceptance swirled with wasted hope like spilled paint pushed out between them in the span of a breath because both knew it was hopeless. Both knew he couldn't stay.

"I'm sorry." The summoner said, bowing his head until it rested against his companion's, neither quite knowing what to say. Ten years had come and gone.

Auron swallowed hard and turned his head to look at the summoner, his eye a deep dark pool, a depthless sable sea of rust and dried blood. Braska stared into his face.

"You've seen too much," he murmured, raising his hand to stroke the side of Auron's face, his pale hand a contrast against the shadowed, darker skin of his guardian, five fingers of pure moonlight that drifted slowly across cool flesh. "I miss you, Auron."

The other man nodded. "The journey is almost over, my lord. It...won't be long, now."

"You sound so sure."

Auron sighed quietly and it was the sound of snow dying, the eye of a tired, tired man that looked at Braska. "It's getting harder and harder to stay here, my lord. No matter what happens to Yuna, I haven't much time left." His voice was full of aching apology, an unspoken thing that played against the cords of Braska's heart in broken counterpoint to the tune of the music box.

"You've done well," Braska said, quietly, "and he'd say the same." He dared not speak the name; a whole untapped well of emotions lay hidden, barred by nothing more than the few syllables that meant the world to them both. Their third was locked away in yet another world, a place neither could touch no matter how they tried. The one that was still alive (if one could call it as much), trapped in stone, trapped in Sin.

Auron closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he found the moonlight had left them. Something harsher was replacing it, and he recognized the beginning of light. Dawn was coming and much too soon; it would steal away his Summoner, it would kill him yet... He closed his eye again; if he didn't see it, it wouldn't come...

The summoner felt it too, it pulled at his spirit and threatened to rip him away. No, no, just a moment more...just a little longer... His head bowed and his lips brushed against Auron's; he folded around the man like origami and breathed him in. A forlorn sigh was caught in shared breath and he felt the petal-pressure of lips pressing back against his. There was desperation in the strength that held him so tightly and he realized he was going cold all over, a spreading ice that swept his limbs, a frozen flood and a kiss for good-bye...

"I won't let you go." Breath against his cheek and it burned but he was still there, still there...

Soon.

"I'll always be here. I won't leave you. I never have..." Startled blood-hue awoke and touched brilliant blue, a secret place; a hand pressed against his chest, over a heart that stopped a decade ago, a heart that beat still.

I promise.



His hands were folded in his lap. A pyrefly was swimming the air in lazy, tombola arcs, and the music box was still singing as the sun rose.

It had stopped snowing and he was still alive.

- fin
2.18.02