Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men

- The Hollow Men, T.S. Elliot

His end was the sort of end one can expect, if one is a hero. Larger than life and greater than epitaphs and destined to be ignored. No one wants their heroes to die. Not really. Martyrs, yes, but Spira had seen plenty of those in the last thousand years and as such preferred their saviors alive in that grim corner of the human soul that refuses to give up in the face of overwhelming odds (or, more often, crumples and plays dead until the storm has passed).

His death passed without grief, or heartache, or suffering. None but his own. The Ronso did not sing his passing and the Guado did not call him back from the great beyond for their exotic councils. The maesters did not hear screams which never issued from grim blue lips.

In short, he was not missed. If he was dead, nobody wanted to know. There was no need to think that. Better he was out there, somewhere, doing good deeds so noble that none would ever hear of them. The once and future Guardian.

It was easy to miss a thing like a death out here anyways.

On Mount Gagazet it was quiet. The winds took his breath, his warmth, and his consciousness and spirited it away to the ghosts of heroes so far gone and so long passed that had died in this way Just like him. The frost bit into his lungs, inch by inch, as it numbed the burns invisible under his clothing and the vague supernatural scars that cast a mesh around his torso.

The journey down had cost him dearly. A descent from the ruined garden, his ruined life... was that all it was? Disillusionment and loss of innocence; that too was nothing new for a
hero. Eventually it hit them all (oh the tragedy) before they decided to go on anyways for the good of all (oh, the nobility). The martyrs had it easy. They were already dead.

He should, he reflected, have been the one to take Yunalesca's offer the first time. He missed them already. Maybe that's why he had done it after all. Hero his ass.

Where there is a will there is a way. The elements stole his warmth, but there were other
things in this life to consider. He could not feel his legs anymore yet they were nevertheless walking - down and out and looking for someone, anyone, to take the burden from his back. Was he rash? There was nothing left here to believe in. Was he a heretic? That he had been for years.

Yevon bless the heretics. Heretics had brought the Calm! He knew then that they would cease to be heretics in all the books and records and voices that mattered, except for his, which took a curious pride in it and the strange hope they'd had of proving that even heretics could save the world (if for a limited time only).

He had been trained as a monk. That should have taught the man that rules and discipline so engraved are not so easy to dismiss or subvert or destroy. Braska had probably already realized it. The Summoner, his… friend… had always had a gift for motivation speeches.

And still he was the only one to really know - to figure it out. Auron held the understanding that deaths worthy of a hero are a convenient way to forget that they have died at all, and deaths worthy of a martyr accomplish little but the advancement of ... hope? Was that what she called it? Didn't she know that hope, like Braska, was already dead? That the Final Aeon was nothing but the ultimate admission of defeat? That there was no way, there was never a way, there never would be a way... why think of a new one?

Maybe she did. He'd been a heretic for too long, thinking thoughts like this, but it was true enough a possibility.

A snowflake tickled his nose, deciding that it would be better for its heath to melt in spite of the man's growing pallor.

Anger had sustained him up the narrow mountain path - past the heights that Jecht had
mocked and Braska looked upon calmly (too calmly) while savoring the end of his own grief. Death, he knew, was a relief for the both of them. Braska would never have to find a way to live without his heretic wife and keep up all the pretenses of a priest of Yevon. And Jecht, well... Jecht would never have to worry about taking another drink, would he? Jecht would never have to find a way back to Zanarkand, or his son, and deal with the grief of losing them without ever having seen them die. It was all too pitiful, too stupid for words. Yunalesca handing out excuses and her favor like candy, giving the world that one little spark to be tamped down - crushed under the weight of this pathetic reality.

One more step. Then two - half stumbled. The way down was not as easy as the way up. It was getting harder to breathe through the ice-tinged burning of the air. He couldn't really tell what she'd done to him, knocking him back like that. It hadn't been an ordinary strike, or even ordinary magic Just a touch - a call, if you will - that had poisoned him in a way that impact could not. In her own way she had summoned him.

But someone else was calling.

The rage was gone. That was the first thing he had noticed when his feet began to follow one another in a ragged stumbled dance down the slope. He could not feel angry towards her anymore. The heat of his blood was slowing, stalled, and thinning did not attract all the fiends that it might have by scent alone in more robust days. A few weak, birdlike creatures wandered near here and then and back again but he was able to run them off with a sword wielded by his surprisingly steady hand. Yes. Her blow had sucked the rage out of him and with it the will to live with the futility of all of this, of everything, until he was not dead but so near to it that he did not notice if and when he began to cough blood.

All he was doing was walking down a mountain that had, since the beginning of their time,
been covered in snow and ashes.

There were miles to go and his pace was slowing. The atmosphere had leaked into his flesh. Why did it have to be so quiet? It left him too much to his thoughts. Like a mausoleum not just for the ones who perished here but others more pitiful and brave who had made this their final scent into fame and destiny and the feeling of self-satisfaction come with saving the world.

His breath was no longer misted, he noted when he fell. It all seemed right somehow. Was this her gift to him? That his defeat was just reward for a heretic and he need not worry, because all was right in that the world was wrong? No - he didn't trust her or the temple or anyone, for that matter, since Braska and Jecht had perished. There we no one left to live for and there was nowhere left to go and there was only one death left to die.

Still, he dragged himself forward - the snow numbing his face and seeping down into his
garments. Did his life flash before his eyes? Was he consumed, then, so consumed with
purpose that even she could not banish it away? Might he continue on to tell someone,
anyone, even a broken teenager with the wounded swagger of a murdered pride? Could he remember the good times and the bad and forgive those who had transgressed against him, knowing that his work was done with those final whispered words?

"Yuna... High Summoner Braska's daughter... she needs to be safe... take her to Besaid...."

Did he die the death of legends? Of heroes cast in stained glass who ddi not live happily ever after but whose passing was made so much sweeter by the noble purity of their plight?

No. He did not die that sort of death, bleeding out and lightheaded with a panoramic vista below that barely touched a heart so numbed to pageant and production and this stupid world that killed everything it touched with its ritual and science and false hopes. The spiral down had been long and winding. He was tired and bitter and torn like he'd always been and they'd never known. What else did they think it meant, to be a heretic? That anger at his situation had fled with the force of his life and given way to the lightheaded clarity of...

You'll find a way. If anyone can, you will.

Something that had to be done. The vigor stole from his veins regardless.

He'd saved the world… and yet he hadn't. Wasn't that the story of his life? Red on black on white - lying there he cast a pretty picture with all the substance ritual could given. Defined by the rigid laws that govern any painting of ebon calligraphy and crimson seal on parchment.

To Zanarkand. You have to find that damn crybaby... you understand? I wasn't joking when I asked you before, Auron. And we don't got much time left.

Was there a point if he'd never done anything and this was all so futile?

Auron refused to believe that. There had to be a point. If he'd come all the way to die by her beautifully treacherous hand there had to be a point. Even if he'd known it was his own suicide to face her... so what? Why suffer if there was no way out? Everyone in their little world caught up like rats in cages. Maybe he should have married that girl - would that have made a difference? He saw, now, that nothing did. Nothing mattered. Nothing ever did.

Could he bear, then, not to matter?

The warriors breath was growing labored but it was not his time quite yet. Just close his eyes, and after that....

Promise me you'll do it, Auron. You're the only one who can.

Darkness. Was that to be his story? A harsh breath - not his own. A cold nose poking into his gut. Their teeth were bared and their flesh was hot. It wouldn't be so long now. He had lost grip on his sword.

Nothing was supposed to matter to a heretic like him. He wasn't even an Al Behd... to see god in the machines. A life of futility waiting for death and the eventual reformation as some slavering creature of the night waiting for the crusaders swords or, more likely,
lurking in the hideousness of Omega to take vengeance on the good people of Yevon.

That was the sort of death he would die, wasn't it? They'd tried to break the rules before, but then were young and stupid then, and his will was broken. Gone. Braska'd wanted to prove that they were different if anyone could do it but in the end they were all that same, exiled to the Calm Lands for their troubles with a statue made of gilt to mark their memories. Past sins forgotten instead of noted. If he'd returned, they might have forgotten his own. Where was the point in that?

He noted, with a certain calm detachment that would mark the final moments of his life and that beyond, that he had lost his sight now. The cold-nosed Something had left. Maybe it
was a job for the carrion-eaters. Could they live in the snows here? He hadn't noticed.
Braska liked to observe and memorize things while Auron thought on how he could be saved from his own whims.

The summoner had in the end been the more pragmatic.

Who's gonna take care of him if you don't? My wife - I know her. She'll cry too. Hell...

He had been, in the end, a man who had lived and died not for his word (as a hero did) but for his friends, which were also all he had the the manifestation off all the accursed optimism that even now, even here, at the summit of his failure, his inadequacies exposed to all the world like the bleached white bones of his left arm - smarting from a break. He couldn't save them. Nothing could. Everything died here. And then...

There was no pain.

He's a scrawny little kid. You can't miss him. With that damn blonde hair he dies
because his mommy likes it... kid looks nothing like his old man.

But he'd made a promise. Oh, to them certainly... but himself as well. He said that he'd be the one. The special one to figure it out and save them all from...

He would be the one, like they were for him, to pull them out of that place where they had
nothing but to die for Spira... but he'd been too weak to convince them life was worth it.

All his life. A heretic. And he'd done nothing, praise Yevon. They'd celebrate him for it.
There'd be a Blitz tournament in their honor during the Calm. Jecht would have liked that.
That inebriate had a weakness for games.

My son wants to play blitzball. Pity you never learned the Jecht shot. You woulda sucked ass but the motions mighta inspired the kid, y'know? I was always the best.

He'd said that he would change the world. Even if it was one summoner, his best and only companion, the one who'd saved him... for Braska, he would have changed the world.

But they were already gone. And he would follow into the despair they'd dove into - deluded themselves out of. It was black now. He could not feel the wind or his breath of the....

He'd made a promise. He'd said he'd change the world. For them.

Yer a good man, Auron. I trust you, okay? He'll never made a damn blitzer with you around... but he'll turn out alright. You still plan on followin' through, right? You'd damn well better. Or I'll haunt your ass and the stick up it from beyond the grave...

We couldn't have that, could we?

Resolve made him numb in new and different ways that included things beyond the body like his ineffectual protests and shamefully rash mistakes, and he liked that.

That was why, in the end, he kept walking while his story ended. The path was easier. He did not look for explanations, only miracles. His renewed sense of purpose did not notice the broken, tattered body which he left behind. And perhaps that was for the best, for now, that he had taken a nap in the darkness and risen once more as that heretic part of Spira even she couldn't kill. The part that refused with a stubborn indignance even to hope as she'd engineered it.

Yeah. Maybe he'd find the kid. Just maybe he would. And then, for once, he'd change the world. In a stupid, silly way... but somehow he'd do it. Maybe he'd find Jecht, or Sin. Maybe he'd defeat it all himself. Maybe he could go back after Yunalesca, and show this
world how empty and fragile and pointless it was. He could travel the earth in their memory and change something, anything, to show that they'd been there.

For them.

Sir Auron, the Guardian's Guardian, died a heretic's death and a hero's death and neither.
He died with a purpose and he died without victory - a man who had been too
weak, and yet so strong to just keep walking on despite the shock of a body half-buried in snow and the dimming of a light that should have scared him but for his resignation to
transformation into some order of other of flesh-eating beast (the form after death, they said, fit the man). He was still there, would always be there, housed somehow in that place where his rage had fled and left him with the fever of his disillusionment.

He had felt older lying there. And so he was - forelocked frosted grey.

He had felt colder lying there. And so he was - submerged in the icy recess of purpose and purpose alone.

He had felt ineffectual lying there. And so he was - the man who'd show but never tell.

Dead dogs cannot learn new tricks.

Nothing but walking down a path that was filled with snow, and breathing in the cold without feeling it. Nothing but the memories he'd never have, the age that he would never reach, the phantom love he would not feel for a family he did not know. No pain, no care, no heartache, nothing but this heart-rending cold. Yunalesca had healed him. There was nothing like the summoners' cure for life.

Nothing left but promises to keep.