FFX!AU
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He remembers seeing Lady Margaret, called Peggy after they had collected the second aeon, walk towards Lady Yunalesca, her hands limp at her sides as she listens to the woman who was supposed to be dead explain the Final Aeon.
He remembers her summoning staff slipping from limp fingers to clatter on the ground when they realize what must be done, her wide eyes turning to stare at her guardians who have come with her this whole way only for one to be sacrificed and turned into an aeon.
He remembers Bucky yelling nearby, disarmed, his sword thrown across the platform by an unseen force, screaming about the injustice and journeys and how this doesn’t solve anything.
He remembers Howard walking forward, his forbidden machina humming loudly, to offer himself because, “My wife hates me and my son...I might not believe in Yevon, but I believe in a Spira without Sin.”
He remembers Howard collapsing limp to the ground in a shower of pyreflies, Bucky charging at the smiling unsent woman, and Peggy crying as she summons the Final Aeon from her fallen guardian.
He remembers the ground rumbling as Sin appeared to do battle with man-turned-fayth-turned-aeon.
He remembers Peggy failing, Howard’s aeon dissipating in a shower of pyreflies, leaving him and Bucky to face the monster known as Sin by themselves.
He remembers...he remembers everything...and then...Steve forgets.
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Steve knows he shouldn’t stare, can feel Clint digging his bow into his side at his blatant disrespect, but he can’t pull his eyes from Tony when the last of their party exits the changing room in flowing summoning robes.
Sir Anthony, the summoner who took pity on Steve when he was simply the man with no memory, was a more practical summoner than those who usually started the journey to defeat Sin. He often wore no nonsense, thickly warded tunics paired with long pants, pockets filled with forbidden machina to the horror of Bruce, and a pair of heavy gauntlets strapped up to his elbows that allowed him to channel his magic outside and during battles. A plated armguard made sure to provide protection to his weaker left side, while a heavy cape draped over the upper half of his body allowed for that extra flair whenever the man suddenly deemed it necessary to summon an aeon when the fiends became too difficult to defeat.
But this...Steve swallowed against the dry lump in his throat, this was not the response he expected when they had been refused entry at the latest temple due to Tony’s “not appropriate for a summoner”-clothing.
“This is stupid,” Tony whined, tugging at his new clothing to try and settle it correctly to cover his upper half, his normal clothing bundled up in a ball under his arm as he left the inn they had stayed at the night before, “I don’t know why I have the wear these. I haven’t worn them the entire trip, but to enter this temple I suddenly have to look respectable and-”
“You finally look like the summoner you’re supposed to be,” Natasha interrupted semi-fondly, the Al-Bhed uncrossing her arms with a small smile as she walked forward to adjust the short vest that barely covered Tony’s upper chest, which stopped sharply right below his pectorals in the front only to curve sensuously around his ribs to gather into a flounce at the back, “Of course, you could have chosen something a bit more...appropriate,” she mused as she took in the skin that was blatantly bared due to the vest being paired with a pair of very low hanging pants that seemed to be created of a thin, gauzy material.
If you looked hard enough, you could see that underneath Sir Anthony had only the barest scraps of fabric covering-
Not that Steve was paying close enough attention to see the material do this.
“This is ridiculous,” Tony grumbled, throwing his clothes at the tight-lipped Ronso who had been asked to be called ‘Bruce’ when they had found him wandering in the Calm Lands by himself, “A temple should not bar a summoner from entering because they aren’t wearing stuffy summoning clothes,” he said, stomping back towards the temple that was the largest building in the entire city.
“Come, young Sir Anthony, you need this aeon to continue your journey,” Thor boomed, emerging from the inn, having obviously been the person to help Tony pick out his new ‘outfit’; out of humor or seriousness they could never tell with the black mage, “This summoner’s guise will sooth the wraths of the priests’ you offended with your coarse garb and will grant you entry to the hallowed halls to pray for the fayth to bless our journey.”
Tony flailed his arms at his guardians to follow as he mounted the heavily polished steps, scowling when it caused his pants to slip an inch or two and his vest to move northern and to show the lower half of pectorals and was that a hint of nipple, surely it wasn’t a hint of-
“We are going to be run out of this town,” said Bruce morosely as they entered the temple, nudging Steve with his bulky shoulder so the man would pull his eyes from their summoner’s scantily clad body. Steve flushed and gave a guilty nod, dreading the reaction of the people inside the temple, and quickened his steps so he could find Tony angrily climbing the steps into the inner regions of the temple.
But, except from a few raised eyebrows, and one young allocate who seemed to appreciate Sir Anthony’s ass a tad too much to the horror of Clint, the group easily made their way through the Cloister of Trials towards the inner sanctum.
As Tony entered the Chamber of the Fayth, the other guardians taking their usually positions around the room directly outside, Steve felt himself tense, preparing himself for his own personal trial: the memories.
Usually the flashbacks were small, fading to the back of his mind while they traveled to another town or explored a city for different weapons or safe passage to a different part of the continent. There were never anything important, a glimpse of Peggy’s side profile as she laughed, Bucky grinning as he bargained down a vendor on a sword price. Every once in a while Tony would do something, say something, and Steve would be caught choking on the words, ‘you’re just like your father’, because he knows that is the last thing Tony wants to hear as he completes his own journey to defeat Sin.
A journey that Steve and his friends failed, but no one knows.
The memories, though, become stronger while closer to the fayth; perhaps drawing on a similar connection with Sin. Here, inside the hallowed halls, Steve remembers everything so clearly. He remembers the journey with Peggy and her other guardians, how each summoned aeon was one step closer to the final battle. How quickly they moved throughout Spira and believed they would be the ones to finally defeat Sin before the end of the year. Remembers how Bucky would wax poetically about them all traveling back to settle at Besaid afterward, allowing Howard to finally become a good dad and Steve and Bucky to battle it out to see who would marry the returning Grand Summoner Margaret.
Steve knows the truth about what happens to a summoner when they reach Zanarkand, the city that had been dead for hundreds of years. It isn’t just a fight to the death for the summoner, giving up their life to destroy Sin. It’s the bigger sacrifice of having a loved one take your place, dying for you, while you can do nothing but watch and accept.
He shakes off the memories as Tony stumbles through the door into Bruce’s arms, the smaller man panting, his thin summoning robes transparent with sweat even though he couldn’t have spent more than a few minutes in the room.
“That was much quicker than usual,” Natasha observed as she offered her own jacket to cover the chills that suddenly raced through Tony as they made their way back to the surface. The redhead nodded at Clint and he raced off to gather their gear at the inn and meet them at the dock. It seemed they weren’t staying in the city one more nighttime recover, most likely due to Tony suddenly refusing to look at the temple walls as they left.
“Well, Rhodey was always to the point,” Tony said, shrugging to try and show nonchalance, a thin veneer that collapsed as soon as they left the Cloister, his eyes brimming with tears that shouldn’t fall, ”I never had to argue with him as much as Pepper,” he continued as they walked back into the sun of the bustling city, rapidly blinking his eyes as if the light was the cause of the tears that slid down his cheeks.
And though that point is far off in the future, and Steve hopes this group will never reach it, he knows what he will do when he finds Lady Yunalesca again. When the time comes, he will be the one to become a fayth. He will become the Final Aeon, to protect Tony and the friends he has made on his second journey to protect Spira and defeat Sin.
“You coming, Steve?” Tony asked, a small grin already returning to his features as he stripped off the top half of the ridiculous outfit, baring a scarred chest with a pyrefly caught in a glass cage.
Steve finds his eyes tracing the small wisp of light, wondering if someone who was unsent could possibly defeat Sin since they would already be deceased. The thought of Tony still alive after the Final Summoning fills Steve with a type of lightness he hasn’t felt since before, when Peggy still laughed and Bucky still breathed and Howard still tinkered.
“Sure, Tony, I’ll be right behind you.”
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