E ke onaona noho i ka lipo

One found embrace, a ho 'i a'e

Until we meet again"

It was well into the night when they all made their way back to their hotel on the outskirts of Luca. The Aurochs had won against the Guado Glories, Kilika Beasts then finally, and surprisingly, the Luca Goers. This was the first time the Aurochs had ever beater the Goers, much less won the tournament. For Tidus, they had said. Yuna, Rikku, Kimahri, and Wakka talked excitedly as they walked, but Auron was silent.

"Hey look! It's the guy from earlier!" Rikku's ever cheerful voice broke him from his deep reverie. The young man was just about to enter the hotel close to theirs. He turned and the bright moonlight caught his silver necklace and flashed off of it. Auron strained to see it and when he did, he gasped audibly. A roaring lion's head.

"Auron?" Yuna asked, slightly worried. She put a light hand on his arm. When the boy looked back and met Auron's gaze again, Auron stopped walking. Thoughts flew through his head as fast as his heart was beating. He had seen that lion's head only one other place. And those eyes...

"Dear Yevon..." Auron whispered the dead deity's name out of force of habit. He shook his head and turned away, not beleiving what his heart was telling him. This boy might know something about her...

"Oh. You're back already."

The still familiar, euphonious voice caused him to come to a dead halt. He spun on his heel, searching for the owner of the voice. She stood beside the boy, smiling. She was just as beautiful as ever. Auron's friends stood apart from him, bewildered. As if she sensed his scrutiny, she glanced up and her eyes met his. Her smile fell.

Hesitantly, Auron took a step closer. "Raylinth?"

The woman's eyes went wide. "Can it be?" she breathed. Auron didn't reply, only stared at her. Seventeen long years had changed him infinitly, but time had not touched her draconic beauty. The woman's full, pouting lips began to quiver and tears filled her eyes, and she was as unbeliving as Auron. She placed a hand on her son to steady herself, and he put his arm around her.

"Mother, do you know this man?"

Lady Raylinth looked up at Squall quickly, but Auron's lone mahogany colored eye darted between the two. Had she gotten married? Had she given her heart to someone else? But this boy looked no more than seventeen...His voice wouldn't allow him to speak.

She reached up and gently touched the boy's cheek. "Squall," she said softly, "this is Auron...your father."

The two men's gazes locked. His son...their son...What had he missed out on? Auron was overwhelmed with feelings of pride and regret. Squall's eyes turned dark with anger. "I never knew," Auron whispered.

"Does it matter?" Squall demanded. "You left us!"

"Squall, please-"

"No, Mother. He abandoned us. He abandoned you. This man is nothing to me." He shook off his mother and dissapeared into the hotel.

"Raylinth..."

She tuned to look at him. "He's right you know. I told myself you would come back to me, just like you promised. That you would come back to us. I couldn't wait to tell you about him - our baby. I hoped you might even make it back before he was born. But you never came back. Still I tried to tell myself you would, and that you loved me. Then I slowly realised the truth."

"No, that isn't the truth. There was never a time I didn't love you or a day I haven't thought about you. If I could have came back, I would have. But after we defeated Sin, I made a promise to Jecht-"

"What about the promise you made me?" she cried out raggidly. "You missed out on your son's life!"

"I didn't know-"

"Would it have changed anything?"

They both were silent. Then Auron slowly pulled his glove off and removed the only ring he wore. He reached out and put the sparkling ring into the palm of her hand, gently closing her elegant fingers around it. "Give it to him for me." His eyes searched hers and his hand lingered before he turned away, walking off. The others, stunned, followed silently. Behind them, the sounds of soft but unabashed weeping could be heard.

****

Raylinth cried as she watched him go, just as she had done that day seventeen long years ago. A strong, salty wind blew through her long blue and silver hair and ruffled her skirt, making her shiver. Auron had returned; her love, her mate. She shut her eyes tight to stop the burning tears and clenched the thick silver band tight in her fist. She opened the mental link between her and her son, and she felt the boy's profound distress. This increased her own sorrow and she couldn't stop her own tears. When she could no longer see Auron, she rushed inside the hotel to find her son lying face down on the bed. She sat down beside him, lightly touching him. "Baby..."

"Why, Mama, why?" He sat up and looked at her.

She gathered her son into her arms and held him tight to her, trying to shut out the rest of the world and protect him. "He's back, baby. He made a promise to someone else, and that's why he never came back, but I'm sure f he'd have known about you, he would have come home. For you."

"What about you? Would he have come back for you?" he asked.

Her tears fell onto his hair, but she quickly rubbed them away. "He had to go. We loved each other very much."

Squall curled against her. She had avoided giving him a straight answer, but he didn't care.

"You should forgive him, Squall," she said quietly. "You have your whole life to spend with him. He would have done anything for you." She slipped her hand under his jacket so she could rub his back. He closed his eyes and let him mother comfort him.

When he was younger, he had heard her cry out to his father in her sleep countless times. Her love for him had never faltered, never lessened. His memory sometimes brought her to tears, and for the most part she hid her loss. She was not a weak woman, but he had been everything to her. He had hated the man who put his mother through so much pain. "Do you still love him, Mama?"

Her hand went still suddenly and her breath caught in her throat. "I never stopped loving him, baby." After a moment, she reached to the small bedside table where she had put the ring. "Here. He wanted you to have this." She gently took his hand and slid the ring onto his finger - the same finger Auron had worn the ring on. The young man stared at it. She kissed his forehead, then slipped her arms from around him and rose. "Forgive him and let him be your father."

"Will you forgive him?" Squall whispered, not taking his eyes from the ring.

She never answered him, but simply slipped out.

 

****

 

When they all got back to their hotel, Auron didn't go in with the rest. Alone, he walked out to the cliff's edge and stared sullenly out over the dark and restless sea. His mind was still reeling with the day's events, possibilities and memories racing. He remembered, then, the first time they kissed: on a cliff like this one, by a sea like this one. He had grown attached to the lovely young Raylinth Loire he had assigned to protect, but then denied his new love because he thought it was unprofessional. His job allowed for no foolishness. But, oh, how he had wanted to kiss her. So it was her who kissed him and she had been forced to stand on her very tip-toes and still stretch so that she may lightly brush her lips against his. She had caught him by surprise, and he had simply looked down at her before his mind came back. Them he had leaned down and kissed her deeply. Auron winced, for the memory was still so vivid, it hurt.

 

The warrior monk jumped slightly when he felt a strong hand on his shoulder. "You alright, brudda?" It was Wakka, with concern leading his thickly accented voice.

 

He sighed. "I loved her so much," he whispered. "I didn't want to leave her. I had always planned on asking her to marry me. And if I had known she was pregnant..." His voice broke off. His was hardly ever this open to anyone, but he needed someone to talk to.

 

"Mebbe you should tell her that, you know?" the younger man told Auron. He was thinking that he should heed his own advice and tell the girl he liked how he felt.

 

"I'm afraid that it might not be so simple, Wakka," he replied.

 

"You sill love her, don't you, Sir Auron?' he asked his friend.

 

He closed his eyes, inhaling the salty air. He could  hear the waves crashing on the jagged rocks below. He could hear them that day, too. The day he left. He could also hear her crying as he walked away. She had been so brave, trying to hide her tears from him the entire morning. "Yes."

 

"Well, there you have it, you know? You just go tell her that." Wakka said, scratching the back of his head. The young man lightly hit Auron's muscular upper arm before turning to head inside. "Don't stay out too late!"

 

He stayed there for a bit longer, letting Wakka's advice and his own thoughts sink in. Sin was destroyed, so he could be with her again and there would be no reason to have to leave her alone again. If she would take him back. Then there was his son to consider. How would the boy react? He sighed again and went inside to sleep.

 

****

 

A gentle knocking awoke Auron from his troubled sleep. He roughly threw off the twisted sheets and rose from the bed. The room was already hot with morning humidity, sweat beading on his bare, tanned chest. He took a brief moment to soak a washcloth with cold water and quickly wash his face, arms, and chest, and redid his warrior's braid, leaving the shorter strands on the front sticking out as he always did. Then, he yanked the door open to find Yuna standing just outside his room, waiting patiently. He raised his dark eyebrow.

 

"You're needed outside, Sir Auron," the girl told him softly. She seemed to be nervous, picking at her long skirt. There was no smile upon her pretty face, as was usual.

 

He looked at her for a moment before nodding and stepping back inside the room to put on his black leather breastplate, red jacket, and belt. He followed Yuna silently until she stepped aside near the double doors that led outside. Without stopping to talk to her, he continued out, brushing through the heavy doors with ease.

 

Squall Leonhart stood there, leaning against a tall palm tree with his arm crossed and his eyes focused on the grassy ground beneath him. He didn't acknowledge Auron as he approached.

 

Auron stared at his son. The boy looked very much like his mother and his grandfather. His was filled with regret, and he didn't know what to say to him. "Squall, I'm sor-"

"I don't want your apologies," the young man's words were forceful as his eyes lifted to glare angrily at his father. "They change nothing."

 

An awkward silence followed the exchange. The morning air was hot, still sticky with dew. Auron swung his huge bladed sword down from his back and lodged its tip into the ground. He saw Squall's eyes go to it, briefly admiring the magnificent weapon. "No, I don't think I"m sorry for what I had to do. I may regret it, but I'm not sorry. I did what I had to do. It's not what I had planned on or hoped for, but that's the way it turned out. You can accept that, or you leave it."

Squall ran his hand through his dark brown hair. "That's why I came here. Mother told me that I should forgive you and take advantage of the fact that you are here now."

 

Auron pushed his sunglasses up on his nose a little further with his thumb, then rearranged the grey leather collar around his neck. "And what do you plan to do?"

 

"Just what she said to do. I want to let you be my father, if you think you want to." His voice was very quiet and almost unsure of itself.

 

Auron lifted his gaze to the sky, not quite beleiving what he had just heard. He was being given a second chance. "Of course." His thoughts then went to his beloved Raylinth. Was she giving him another chance to?

 

"I used to hate you. Mother would cry for you. She didn't know I could hear her."

 

"I know. I don't blame you for that, Squall," he replied, his deep voice twinged with sorrow. "I did the same for her." He had never told anyone that. In fact, he had never told anyone, save for Yuna's father, Braska. He had been expelled from the monk's order a couple of years after he returned because he wouldn't marry the high priest's daughter, but he never told them about Raylinth either.

 

"She still loves you."

 

His son's words made him look at the boy quickly, and he was suddenly nervous. He could feel the eyes of his friends watching him through the hotel windows. "Are you sure?"

 

Squall nodded in reply. "She says she never stopped."

 

So, Auron thought with a small smile, Wakka had given him good advice, and he planned on using it well now. His loss had been a heavy burden and had turned an already quiet young man into a somber older man.

 

"I'm sure she'd like to see you." His son's quite voice broke into his thoughts. He nodded in response, his large hand pulling his blade from the grond and resting it across his broad shoulders. "What about your friends?" Auron looked at Squall before looking back towards the hotel. He waved briefly at them and Yuna nodded, shooing Wakka and Rikku away from the windows and shaking her head. Wakka gave him a thumbs-up and Auron smirked.

 

During the short walk to Squall's hotel, Auron tried to talk to his son. They both had a difficult time with conversation, since neither were very talkative. "Tell me about yourself." Auron flinched slightly as she used the cliche. He couldn't think  of anything different to say.

 

Squall shrugged. "I'm a SeeD," he told him, as if that explained everything just like that. He smoothed his black jacket, his three belts clinking together as he walked.

 

Auron didn't know what a SeeD was, but he didn't bother with asking him to elaborate on the subject either. "How did you get that scar?"

 

"Training," he said simply.

 

Auron nodded. When the boy was ready to talk more, he would. He saw Raylinth, then, sitting at one of the hotel's outside tables. The morning sun made her cerulean hair sparkle and her slightly metallic pale cyan skin shimmer beautifully. She had apparently just finished a light breakfast.

 

"I'm back, Mama," Squall announced their arrival and she glanced up at them. Slowly, she gave Auron a small, sad smile. They looked perfect standing there together, father and son. She wished again that Auron had been around and wondered how Squall would be if Auron had helped to raise him. But then again, he acted just like his father did anyway. She pushed her cup and saucer away and dusted off her skirt nervously. "Hello, Auron." The first time they met, she had been fifteen and he had been seventeen, and she was instantly taken with him - a mysterious and handsome warrior monk.

 

"Hello, Raylinth," his deep voice replied. The words were so simple, yet so powerful. Their gazes locked and held for a moment, then the lady rose fluidly from her chair and went into her lover's arms and they held each other.

 

Tears filled her eyes. A day didn't go by when she didn't pray she would be in his arms again. Auron kissed the top of her hair lightly then pressed his cheek against it, sighing.

 

Squall watched them silently. His uncle and grandfather had always told him how much they had loved each other and how rare it was for that level of love and commitment. He saw it now that they were back together.