Everything Looks Better Ch. 11

"What?" Auron barked. "Why?"

"It's the only place I can be sure she'll be safe."

"That place is a prison," Auron spat.

"You can't possibly think she likes it in Spira," Tidus said.

Auron flinched. Tidus was right. Raine hated Spira. The smell of the air, the taste of the food...she preferred the dream. "She won't want to be there now. Not when she knows it's not real."

Tidus raised his eyebrows. "Not real? Your feelings for Raine are not real?"

"Of course they are. But she won't be happy there knowing it's a dream."

"You were happy there, knowing it was a dream. In fact, I remember you would do anything to get back there to her."

Auron glared. "It's different knowing I could come back to Spira."

Tidus carelessly shrugged. "The last time I checked, this is still my story. And this is how I want it to end."

Auron grit his teeth together, regretting he had ever told Tidus that. What about Raine's story? Could someone touched by Sin even go back to the dream? Jecht and Tidus had always been striving to get back there but had never found a way and maybe that was for the best. Could Raine live in Dream Zanarkand knowing it was a lie, or would it drive her mad?

"What about the Pilgrimage?"

"I never wanted her in a Pilgrimage. I'm not going to let her die for me."

"Shewantsto. She wants to do what's right."

As the houseboat rocked violently, Auron and Tidus fought to stabilize themselves, but there was nothing left in the room to lean against. They staggered like drunks in a fun house and it reminded Auron of what it was first like living on the houseboat, before he achieved his sea-legs.

Outside, the long baritone whine of Sin's song filled their heads and Tidus waited to see if it would let up. When it didn't, he had to shout to be heard. "I want to do what's right, too! Raine never wanted this, so I've sent her back!"

"It will be different this time!"

"It was supposed to be different last time, Auron."

"Raine is stronger than you. She'll succeed."

When the house didn't settle Tidus tisked and grabbed the broom again, creating dents in the ceiling as he pounded, but it didn't help. It didn't even slow down the shaking. Tidus gave up and threw the sweeper down. A moment later, it was gone. "We don't have much time. You need to get out of here!"

Auron nodded firmly, definitively. "Bring me to Zanarkand."

Tidus broke into a smile. "Absolutely."

"When I find Raine, you can bring us back to Spira."

The boy's face had fallen and he was already shaking his head. "Auron, I can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't have much time, either. If I take you to Zanarkand, I won't be able to bring you back to Spira."

"But we have to finish the Pilgrimage."

"Don't do it for me," Tidus said. "Please. Call it self-preservation if you want, but I made this decision because I couldn't live without Yuna. I've no intension to drag anyone else down with me, especially Raine. Especially you."

Auron could feel the gravity changing in the boat, the rear tugging his weight, and the windows were partially obstructed by the dangerous angle of dark water. The houseboat was sinking.

"Come on." Tidus ran up the living room steps, whipping around the banister, and Auron followed. On the deck, the marina was gone, Zanarkand was gone. They were surrounded by a black void of open water with no visible horizon, but the way the water echoed and dripped, they could have been in a cave.

Auron struggled to the end of the boat and looked over the side. The water was high. By now the back deck where Raine used to sleep when it got too humid was completely submerged.

Tidus feverishly scraped the back of his head. Leaning impatiently on one foot, Tidus folded his arms and Auron observed black bruises on Tidus' forearms as the lesions began to spread. They were on his neck, too, like dark love-bites. "There's only enough time to send you to one place. Where to, old man?"

"Spira," Auron said.

"Spira?" Tidus spat. "What about Raine?"

"Raine can take care of herself." She got over him once. She could do it again. Right now, Tidus needed him. How could Auron turn his back when Tidus was standing in front of him, scratching the back of his head like a flea-ridden spaniel? If Raine couldn't be there to help her brother, then Auron had to.

Tidus gave Auron an icy look, taking his decision as a personal insult. "I would have chosen Yuna."

"Even if it was her brother who was in trouble?"

Tidus' look of petulant scorn intensified when he realized Auron was right. "Just go."

Auron sat on the ledge of the boat. "See you soon," he said to Tidus and then swung his legs over and dropped into the black bay.

*

This time when Auron woke up, he was lying prone and as he lifted his face off the ground, a mask of white sand adhered to the side of his face. Immediately he was aware of the crashing surf, screeching gulls, the hollers of fishermen as they maneuvered their boats out of the marina slip and a fog horn blatting a reply.

"Damn you Tidus," Auron muttered. Why did he bother asking Auron to choose if he was just going to send him back to Dream Zanarkand?

His sunglasses were half buried in the sand next to him, somehow materialized from the nightstand in the Macalania Travel Agency where he'd left them and not far from those, his katana. How thoughtful of Tidus to bring those back, too. Auron was still missing his red great coat, though, but as he swiveled his head in the direction of the ocean, he saw it wading out into deeper waters.

"Raine," he whispered and scurried to his feet. He halted at the approaching tide and funneled both hands over his mouth. "Raine!"

She looked back once over her shoulder, but the distance between them was too great to see what expression she might be wearing to explain why she ignored him and persisted towards the sea. She wrangled off the cloak and fed it to a passing wave and then continued to disrobe. She steeled herself from an oncoming wave and kept going. Before he could question her motives, Auron lifted his eye to the sky and already knew.

He bolted into the water. "Raine, come back!"

The stratosphere rapidly swallowed a round patch of Sin's underbelly, shrinking as he departed the dream world.

Splashing into the receding tide, Auron collided with the next moderate wave. Raine was so far out already and Auron was certain he couldn't catch up to her in time. Her swimming skills far surpassed his, enough to out-swim him, but not enough to survive open water. Even more, he feared when she didn't catch up to Sin, she wouldn't use her water abilities at all and let the current sweep her under.

"Raine!" he shouted again, his run reduced to barely a walk as the water approached his thighs. She glanced back, saw him coming and fell forward, disappearing in the ocean. It was all over now. Her finlike limbs would take her out to sea in no time and he would still be floundering about in the reef. And yet, he was compelled to push forward, knowing it wouldn't do any good, knowing he would never catch up. What was he supposed to do? Return to shore to watch her drown? Did Tidus know this would happen? Is that why he sent him back? Damn that boy. TidusknewRaine could outswim Auron.

When Raine finally surfaced, she was just a pasty speck rolling with the surf, the white blades of her arms like efficient propellers, slicing through foamy breakers. Auron stumbled over the drop off with an inept thrash and the world turned to muffled glugs. His arms flailed to surface and he managed to take a sip of air before sinking like a stone, his boots filled with concrete, his arms and legs hopeless underwater.

For an instant before he felt the yanking choke of his collar, he heard the whisper of true death, enticing him to concede to it, promising a painless afterlife where his lungs didn't burn and his heart didn't ache. In that moment, his limbs stopped fighting and became limp as seaweed, his arms not exactly floating, but rising from the drag of his steady descent. In that split second before he realized Raine had come back for him, it felt good to give up, the same utter peace Raine had surely felt when she drifted off from the exsanguination of her attempted suicide.

Jutting his chin above the salty waves, Auron's fingers curled around the elbow Raine had hooked around his throat. He eased his cumbrousness by kicking his boots, but Auron had otherwise put aside his ego and yielded to her rescue. This was why Tidus sent him back. A drowning Auron was the only thing Raine would come back to shore for.

When Raine found her footing, he twisted and staggered towards the shore on shaky land-legs, combating the waves as they shoved him about. Raine fell to her hands and knees, sputtering and coughing, her bare breasts swaying weightily under her, her nipples pink as seashells and dripping salt water. Her white, waterlogged underwear was now transparently sagging off her hips like an old diaper.

Auron dropped next to her and laid a hand on her back, exhausted, but not enough to keep the grin off his face. "I can think of worse ways to be saved," he panted, but he didn't think she heard him.

"How do we get back?" Raine rasped bluntly.

Startled, he said, "We don't."

Her eyes flicked up to him. "There has to be a way."

Auron shook his head. The Pyreflies in him had gone dormant, the link between him and Sin ruthlessly split when the last of Tidus' humanity was absorbed.

"He sent me back?" she choked, staring at the sand, still on her hands and knees. A wave slid into shore, crashing against the back of her milky thighs.

Auron squeezed her shoulders. He could feel her shaking as she began to weep and he mistook her collision with him as a clumsy embrace. Falling sideways, Auron caught himself, one hand sinking into wet silt, and he realized his other arm had come up to defend himself from an attack of livid slaps and scratches.

"What do you think you're trying to do, kill yourself?" she screamed at him, face streaking with tears. "Why didn't you try harder? You should have tried harder!"

"To kill myself?"

"To make me believe!" she sobbed, her hands forming to fists during her assault. This wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he thought of wrestling with a nude Raine. "You should have prepared me! You should have taken me to Spira right away! Why did we waste so much time?"

Auron winced at the remark, but it was disguised as the side of her fist pounded the temple of his blind side. Should everything not directly related to a pilgrimage be a waste of time for Auron? Warm nights watching the boats come in on the back deck? Sharing a beer while she made herself dinner? Content silences, quiet chuckles, lengthy conversations about nothing...what a fucking waste of time.

Clamping his hand around one of her biceps, Auron scrambled to his knees. He wasn't sure at what point his battle to overpower her became a battle to comfort her, but she quickly tired and went slack. Auron was a fool if he thought he had ever seen her cry before. Those sniffles and glossy eyes he had witnessed on previous occasion were nothing compared to now, as she bawled inconsolable, heartbreaking howls that eventually ran out of air and became long gaps of silent wails, before a rough inhale started it all over again. By rejecting her and bringing her back, Tidus had destroyed her and it terrified Auron the way her emotions were as exposed and naked as she was lying in his arms.

Auron pulled her into his lap and rocked her and in his struggle to be strong for her, Auron had two dead eyes instead of one as he disengaged, emptying his head, going somewhere far away to a numb place where emotion was disconnected. His only consolation was that Raine never saw those hideous black wounds spreading over Tidus' skin, consuming him, but the vision would be ever present in Auron's mind, a constant reminder he couldn't stop the painful transformation that inevitably ensued inside Sin. He would never even be granted the satisfaction or closure of avenging Tidus, a festering, open gash that would never properly heal. He hated Tidus for this.

When Raine cried everything she had, they were both empty vessels, staring unblinkingly at nothing, traumatized and shivering, and it was the sea, so quick to take both their lives earlier, which swayed and cradled what was left of them in the unrelenting tide.

*

Later, Auron found his cloak down the beach a short ways and shook the sand out of it before he brought it to Raine. He had to force her arms through the sleeves and clasp the belt for her and when he tried to get her to stand, her knees only buckled. He picked her up to carry her back to the board walk and she rested her cheek against his shoulder. Auron was grateful most of the boats were out at sea and the Sin anomaly had caught the attention of everyone else, to avoid inquiries of concern from the other marina residents as they passed by.

The houseboat was locked and Auron couldn't see a way to open it with Raine in his arms. "Raine," he said. "I have to put you down. Can you stand?"

She didn't respond, but Auron lowered her anyway and she was able to hold herself up while he reached into the back of the porch light for the spare key. Clutching the robe around her, salt water dripping off the ends of her slicked blonde hair, she stared pale and gaunt into the ocean. He unlocked the door and let it swing open. Everything was as it was the night before he married Raine, which was only a day and a half ago, but it felt much longer. He began to coax Raine inside with a brush of her arm, but then another popular marriage custom in Zanarkand sparked in his mind and he swept her into his arms and crossed the threshold, kicking the door closed. The significance was lost on her as she merely leaned her head hazily on his chest.

He brought her into the bedroom and set her on her feet by the bed. The place had been home to him when he knew it was a dream and his feelings of nostalgia for the houseboat hadn't gone away, but Raine looked around as though she'd never been there before, seeing it all now through the dream cloud. Auron hoped it would not always be like this for her. She tested the bed's solidity with her hand first, as though doubting it was really there, that she might fall through it, but when the springs held firm, she unclasped the sash in the front and removed his coat before sitting.

Sliding open her top dresser drawer, Auron searched for something she would be comfortable sleeping in. He selected an oversized Abes T-shirt and swiped a pair of dry underwear at the last second. He had never dressed Raine as a child, but he decided this was what it would have been like, kneeled in front of her, tugging down wet panties while she stood, gripping his shoulders. Unfolding the dry undergarment, he held them close to the floor and let her step into them one foot at a time and hiked them into place. He helped her into the shirt, slipping it over her head and guiding her hands through the armholes. Familiar with her naked body now, Auron not only looked without shame, but with objectivity and disinterest, his eye blank if it happened to slide over her genitals. Sneaking a fondle or giving her rump a smack seemed like an event in someone else's life.

"Stay here," he said when she had sat back on the bed. He headed for the linen closet in the bathroom and picked the first towel off the pile and unfolded it as he went back to the bedroom. She sat patiently and allowed him to massage-dry her hair and when he was finished, he tossed aside a few of the decorative pillows and pulled back the covers for Raine to curl up underneath. She wilted as she assumed the fetal position. He thought about crawling in bed with her, but decided against it. If she wanted him there, she would have said so.

He still had to retrieve his katana and sunglasses from the beach and he wanted to get out of his wet clothes at some point, but he didn't want to go anywhere until he was sure Raine had fallen asleep. He parked himself in the armchair at the end of the bed and frowned down at his folded hands while he waited for her light breathing. It didn't take long, but even then he didn't feel right about leaving her alone without at least a note to pacify her if she woke up before he returned. He found a pad and pen in the bedside table and considered a few different versions before settling on something simple:I'm outside—A.

Marina life had mostly returned to normal his second pass through the docks, except for a few beer drinkers on their front decks, binoculars attached to their faces to see if Sin would return. Some raised their cups in polite salutation as Auron went by. Auron was already well known in Spira but he had grown to like the anonymity in the Zanarkand dream. However, since the Sinspawn at Raine's first wedding, he had already noticed an increase in fame. Marrying a network personality probably didn't support his obscurity. Divorcing one wouldn't help, either, the way things were looking.

Following his own tracks back to the spot where Sin had left him, he dug his sunglasses out of the sand and slipped them on over his ears. The tint seemed darker than usual and he removed them with both hands, squinting through the lenses at a distance. He determined they needed to be cleaned and deposited them into his trouser pocket.

Lifting his sword out of the dirt, Auron ran the scabbard across the leg of his pants to rub off the sand and out of habit, slid it out partially to check it. It was still dull in texture from when he'd wiped off the oil and the nick was still there from when he tried to teach Raine. Reminding himself he would have to finish the job, he balanced the sword over his shoulder and made his way back to the houseboat. On the way, he nearly walked right by the pajamas he'd acquired from the bazaar in Kilika, the bottoms, at least, mistaking it for a gob of seaweed that had washed ashore. He held up the limp garment, rotating them in examination. They seemed undamaged. Absently, he remembered how he had irrationally purchased them as an armor to defend her against him. They still had weak defense. Or maybe his attack was too high, he thought and weakly smiled.

When Auron returned, he propped his sword by the door and went to check on Raine right away. Still asleep.

He filled his arms with all the soiled items he could find: the pajama bottoms, her underwear, the towel he used to dry her hair, his cloak and carried them to the utility room across the hall. Accustomed to doing his own laundry when Raine was at work, Auron knew from experience how much soap to add and which cycle to set. He took special care to search every pocket in his cloak, to remove every spare ampoule he'd tucked away and as he came across them he stacked them upright on the upper shelf with the soap. When he found the wedding rings, he stared at them in his hand for a long time, expecting them to slowly vanish before his eye, but when they didn't, he set them carefully by the potions. The rings had been acquired in the Zanarkand Dream, but like Raine, they became something more when they crossed the portal to Spira. Real enough to throw into the ravine in Macalania at least. By all accounts, the rings should still be there, but as an unsent, Auron understood more than anyone some things were never where they should be.

As the drum filled, he nimbly unlaced his boots and kicked them off by the heat register to dry, then loosened the snaps on his collar to lift his leather plate over his head and positioned it next to his boots. He emptied his trouser pockets, put his sunglasses on the shelf where everything else was, then shoved them into the washer. Auron waited for the wash to finish filling before he went to start a hot shower. He had walked stark naked through the houseboat before, but never while Raine was home, even if she was sleeping. Afraid what an unintentional—or intentional—walk-in would do to their dynamic, Auron had become little more than a prude. How silly he had been, considering he had already been thinking of her naked and Raine's obvious proposition in her early twenties had suggested the same. Auron feared he was betraying Tidus' trust, but it had been the whole reason Tidus wanted him there. To be honest, if Tidus had told Auron the real reason he wanted him in Zanarkand was to settle down with Raine and make babies, Auron wouldn't have come. Too many debts to collect with Sin.