Everything Looks Better Ch. 10

Soon, a murky image formed below her. Lights. City lights. Zanarkand. She was swimming above the marina.

She aimed for her houseboat, a slow nosedive with no resistance. Someone was standing under the light on her front deck. She saw the golden haze of blonde hair and thought of Tidus. Tidus was down there and she needed to get to him. Propelling faster, she reached the houseboat in no time, drifting down the last several feet. When she was close enough, she realized it wasn't Tidus.

Flipping right side up, Raine discovered the air's buoyancy wouldn't let her touch the deck boards below her. There was a gradual underwater current that pushed her back gently but it was offset easily by a quick kick or insweep, both done naturally, almost absently without thought, like blinking or scratching an itch. Her attention was preoccupied with the blonde standing in front of her, back turned, apparently unaffected by the subsurface rules, since his or her running shoes rested on the top deck securely, like they were glued or nailed down.

Shoes....

Raine remembered having a pair of shoes like that when she was young....

It seemed the very moment Raine realized it was her own self standing in front of her, the blonde cheerleader turned around. She was playing with her long hair, checking for split ends, and chomping on gum. She was the age she was when Tidus disappeared. Although Young Raine didn't seem to see Old Raine floating in front of her, Young Raine gave a distained eye-roll at something, maybe a general dissatisfaction of how unfair life was at the time. It reminded Raine of Dona.

What a brat! Is that how people saw me?

No, this is how Tidus remembered me.

Something was changing. The light above her houseboat door was dimming. Behind her, the lights of Zanarkand were winking out. It was quiet. Peaceful. Her head was filling with helium, but her heavy eyelids dropped in exaggerated, lethargic blinks. Eventually she became too drowsy to correct herself in the air's fluctuation and when she stopped, she merely bobbed weightlessly in mid-air, body curling into a fetal position as she allowed sleep to take her...

The ledge was narrow, slanted and slippery and through the combined thickness of her pajamas and Auron's cloak, Raine's ass cheeks were frozen solid and numb. When the quakes began again, she dug her heels into the ice and pressed her back against the frozen gorge wall and squeezed her eyes shut while she pleaded for the shaking to stop.

It was the snow that broke her fall, but not without jolting the wind out of her lungs. She had to fight to find her voice, during which she had a brief, irrational fit of panic when she thought Auron would jump to his death from his own bereavement. But he did not. No, of course he wouldn't. To him, sacrifice was the only noble death. Romantic, but predictable.

If she died, how long before one of the other Summoners at the Travel Agency scooped him up? Certainly Auron didn't consider her that disposable.

Sacrifice or suicide? The question was simple. Could Auron live without her, or not? Tidus couldn't live without Yuna. Auron didn't understand the concept, not then and certainly not now. Part of her wanted him to lose control when she died, the way she did when she thought Auron was dead, but that wasn't his way. She would simply have to accept she would always love Auron more than he loved her, the way her mother always loved Jecht more. She couldn't demand love from Auron or even expect him to love at the same easy rate.

Auron was a save-the-world sort of man and Raine preferred to live quietly. A 9-5 job, a beer after dinner, early bedtime and an occasional playdate with the other local mothers seemed like a great life to her. She could pursue it, but she'd have to do it without Auron. The tedium alone would drive him into another Summoner's pilgrimage and even if he did stay, there would be the constant nagging in her, not if he would leave, but when. She had already lived that life in Zanarkand, always wondering when Auron would leave her to fight Sin, and she couldn't do that again. The pilgrimage was the last scrap of binding agent for their marriage and the only life she could foresee with Auron was a tragically short one that ended in Zanarkand Ruins. Without the pilgrimage, they were completely and utterly incompatible.

When the vibrations ceased, Auron's voice found its way down to her. "I'm going to lower a rope down. When you get it, I want you to cinch it around your body, under your arms."

"Hurry!" she cried. The scuttling sounds of animals in the walls scared her stiff. But there were more than just rodents. Something enormous loomed below, groaning, the horrible wails of a thousand fiends all screaming at once, and she knew it was Sin. The occasional boom of crackling ice when Sin stirred made Raine's heart knock on the backside of her ribs.

Tapping her cranium against the slick, gelid wall, she stared straight up, a rope dangling over the side, steadily lowering to her. The way it was tied, it reminded her of a noose.

The ledge rocked again, the most violent tremor yet, her ass bouncing on the hard ice, jostling her wildly. She had nothing to hold onto and her muscles burned from clenching her own tension. One of her boot heels slipped forward over the side and as she yanked it back onto the ice shelf, her other leg came loose. The snow was melting from her body heat, making the ledge too slippery. All she had to do was wait out the quake, but it wasn't stopping. One hand slid out from under her, her foot next, and then she swooped forward, falling into the icy ravine.

She couldn't be sure how far she dropped. Ten feet, maybe twenty. She landed on something warm, tough, and deeply wrinkled, pounding the breath out of her already sore lungs. Rolling on her back, gasping, Raine's hand came down on what felt like a tuft of spiny thistles. Above her, she was aware the mouth of the gorge above her was growing wider and speeding closer, the pleasing elation of being raised was like the machina lifts in Zanarkand's skyscrapers.

I'm riding Sin, she thought.

As if in answer, a long, unhappy whine echoed on the chasm walls, and Raine felt the vibration of it on her back, legs and arms, one arm hugging frantically to that spiny tussock that felt more like coarse hair. The sound was desolate and lonely and a bitter rage flared through Raine, hardly able stand the idea her brother might be inside, screaming to get free.

Brainy Rainy.

"Crybaby," Raine choked.

"Get back!" Auron shouted, leaping to his feet.

The ice on Macalania Lake was breaking, and clumps of frozen earth broke off the gorge's gaping mouth and disappeared. Auron used the hand light, but the light was too narrow to see the entire scope of Sin as he drifted out of the gorge. A cluster of hair, a leathery waddle, a massive, waving fin, the simmer of moving fiends like fire ants on a mound...

...and, thank the Fayth, there was Raine hanging on for dear life. Sin's long, melancholy moan was like a seaside foghorn and with groans of dismay, the crowd covered their ears.

"Sin!" someone shouted and everyone scattered, even the Summoners, who had not yet completed their pilgrimages or been granted a final Aeon.

Tossing the machina light in Rin's direction, Auron ran halfway back to the Travel Agency's door, skid to a stop in the snow and sprinted back to the gorge for a running start. At the edge, he soared, crashing down against Sin with a roll, immediately grabbing onto some craggy imperfection in the creature's hide.

"Auron!" Raine cried from somewhere on the surface. At least she sounded close, but so was the scuttle and squawk of unseen Sinspawn, thriving on Sin's exterior like it was their own planet.

"Hold on," he said into the darkness. "And don't look down."

"I was right!" she cried.

"About what?"

"Tidus. He—"

Auron lifted his head. "He what? Raine?"

But she had already fainted from the toxin.

A moment later, so did Auron.

Raine gasped from the cold and her lungs burned and stretched, expanding to full capacity, as she continued to breathe shallow and irregular breaths, like a newborn taking her first inhales. Her wet wedding dress clung to her, the cold was a shock to her system and she believed truly she had never felt cold like this in her life. Her hair was frozen and crunched when she moved. It hurt to open her eyes, blinded by the overcast like she was staring straight at the sun. Her jaw tensed uncontrollably as her teeth chattered. Shaking ice off her numb fingers, she managed to open her eyes in slits as a shadow fell on her.

Auron, her husband, was giving her his red cloak and she threw it on as he began to release the laces of his boots. His collar was back up from their wedding "kiss," but she wasn't surprised. "At least we weren't separated," she said.

"We have a lot of work to do," he said.

She was barely listening as something tickled her ear. Reaching up, she pulled the lavender moon-lily from her hair and was startled it had made the portal trip. Darlene must have been an expert with a pin. Maybe if she was still in Zanarkand, she'd find a very heavy book and press the flower in the pages to keep forever, but now wasn't the time for sentiments like that. Her senses were on overload in this new world. She glanced at the flower vacantly before tossing it into the snow.

"Where do we start?" she asked.

"I need to prepare the Summoner."

Auron hopped out of his boots with only his old socks to protect his feet from the elements and grabbed Raine's outstretched hand to help her to her feet. She braced herself against his shoulder as he assisted her bare feet into his large boots, and she cinched the laces so they wouldn't slip off.

"Who's the Summoner?" she asked. Don't say Lulu, don't say Lulu, don't say Lulu...

Auron straightened, adjusted the weight of his katana on his shoulder. "You are."