I do not own FFX, its characters, or anything affiliated with it. It all belongs to Square Enix.

This is roughly based on the Bourne Identity movie (which is awesome), and is a Yuna/Tidus centered fic, with action! Mystery! Intrigue! Aliens! Well, no, not aliens. But that would be cool. I don't want the pressure of a fixed schedule ruining the fun of writing this, so I'll only be chipping away at it during whatever free time I have that will not be devoured by homework, studying, and a social life. Keep in mind I'll be heading off to university next fall (eek) so that will also affect my writing time. So bear with me! Enjoy!

000

A Stir of Blood

Chapter 1

Father and daughter stood awkwardly before each other near the helicopter pad, neither quite knowing what to say. Braska, no longer a young man, was feeling the heat of Marseille in the middle of the afternoon. He insisted on wearing heavy, expensive suits no matter where he went. His forehead glistened, and small rivulets were running down his neck. Yuna had grown accustomed to the weather since moving from Paris a few years earlier.

The young woman chewed her bottom lip, a habit she inherited from him. "You're sure there's nothing to worry about?" she asked, not for the first time. A flicker of a genuine smile appeared on Braska's lips. Something she hadn't seen in a while.

"Everything is fine, cherie. I told you, I got him. You were there, remember?"

"But they never found the body," she quickly reminded him, shivering at the memory. "How do we know he didn't wake up and swim to shore?"

He actually managed a small laughed at that. "If you keep worrying like this you'll get more grey hairs than me."

"As though that could ever happen," she said with a slight grin. She had missed their friendly banters. He pulled her in for a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. Awkward tension or not, it was suddenly not so difficult to remember the closeness they once shared.

"Well, just be careful. Keep Arnaud with you at all times," she ordered, glancing emphatically at her father's long-time bodyguard, who nodded back in response near the helicopter.

"I will," Braska assured her. "Now let me get out of here and back to sensible Paris climate, will you?"

On impulse, Yuna went up on her toes to plant one final kiss on his cheek. "Be safe."

Then she watched him climb into the chopper and stood there until it was off and disappearing into the horizon. A chauffer offered her a lift home, but she politely declined and decided to walk. She was not famous enough in Marseille to need such luxuries. After all, she had changed her last name so that her co-workers and peers would not realize who her father was. She wanted no special treatment, and kept her visits with Braska as private as possible.

She loved Marseille. It was so easy to feel at ease while walking down the ancient streets, stained gold and brown with time and perpetual sunlight. Paris was lovely, but Marseille had the laid-back, comfortable atmosphere Yuna had been lacking while growing up. When her father told her she could go to med school anywhere in the country, she knew instinctively she would end up in the south of France, where her mother was from. Having lived there for over three years, Paris seemed like another lifetime ago.

A merciful breeze picked up, sweeping in off the harbour to dull the heat of summer. While watching her sandals plod softly on the pavement, her mind wandered back to the incident last night.

She had been warned long ago that politicians were often made targets of assassination attempts, but she had never imagined her father could be one of them. It simply did not occur to her that someone found him a big enough threat to feel the need to kill him. Even though he was running for the Prime Minister of France, he was still just Braska LaRoche in her mind, a man who never learned how to do his own laundry and enjoyed American sitcoms while eating dinner.

The two of them had been out sailing in the boat he had give her as a graduation gift – an activity that usually helped break the thin layer of ice that would return to separate them between visits – when it happened. Night had fallen, and the two of them retreated into the cabin to have a bit of wine and catch up on things. Yuna wasn't sure if it was exhaustion, stress, the Merlot, or a combination of all three, but it was not long before she was fast asleep.

Two gunshots had awoken her with a start. Spilling her wine, she had run up to the deck and saw her father standing alone at the edge, a pistol gripped in his hand. He had made it a habit to carry a personal firearm, but as far as his daughter was concerned, he had never needed to use it before that night. She hadn't caught a glimpse of the assassin, but Braska swore that he had got the man twice in the back and sent him over the rail.

Yuna had been so shaken up, more so than her father, that they headed back to shore immediately and made arrangements for Braska to be airlifted out of the city as soon as possible. Bodyguard or not, she would only rest easy when he called her and told her himself that he landed safely.

It struck her as odd that the closest they had come since her mother died was after he had nearly been killed. She shook her head and began the trek back to her apartment to get changed for work.

Later that evening she made her way to the hospital to do her rounds. She was only an intern, not finished med school yet, but she and a few other students were allowed to see patients under supervision and help out in any way possible as part of the training program. Regardless of her father's wealth and stature, Yuna did not feel that she was above honest, hands-on work. She loved her job, and felt entirely prepared to handle the unpleasant tasks that would inevitably accompany it.

In the staff locker room, she was shrugging into a white coat when her friend Lulu came in. Lulu, an unfairly beautiful woman with long black hair and eyes that were so brown that they nearly looked red, had graduated from med school two years ago, being a bit older than Yuna. She was a good source of information and never failed to help Yuna prepare for an exam.

"Can you head to the ER?" she asked, slightly breathless from a brisk walk down the halls. "A man just came in with some bullet wounds and Isaaru needs a hand, but I'm on my way to deliver a baby."

Yuna nodded eagerly. "Of course, go ahead. Is he a patient of ours?"

"No, someone found him floating in the harbour just now," Lulu explained on her way out the door. "You'd better hurry, he's in rough shape."

Yuna felt a coldness grip her then. She felt the blood drain from her face and had a powerful need to sit down suddenly. Two gunshots had awoken her.

She managed to make her legs carry her to the ER, where Dr Girard was already washing his hands in preparation for surgery. Yuna's eyes landed on the still figure on the operating table, a man in a black diving suit. She saw blond hair and skin that looked like it was supposed to be bronze under the deathly pallor. A few nurses were cutting up and peeling off the suit, gently turning him onto his side. One of them was placing a mask over his mouth and nose.

Slowly Yuna walked the table, ignoring the nurses darting around her. There were two clean holes, one in his lower back and one just beneath his right should blade.

"Do we have a name?" she asked, somehow managing to speak around the lump in her throat.

"No, there was no identification on him. The police are already doing a search," Isaaru answered, pulling on a set of latex gloves. "Hurry up, will you?"

Struggling to calm herself, Yuna went to the washbasin to clean her hands, rubbing methodically all the way up to her elbow. Between the fingers. Top of the hands. Don't forget the wrists. Her mind was racing, but somehow her body managed to follow the routine without guidance. Mostly she was only expected to observe the procedure and take mental notes on it, but it never hurt to be prepared to help out.

"The wounds don't look too deadly," she heard herself say, drying her hands. "Any vitals hit?"

"No, but he's got hypothermia, and I can't say how long those bullets have been in there. He was unconscious when a fisherman grabbed him," Isaaru replied busily, waiting for the anesthesia to knock the man out for sure. Just because he was out cold now didn't mean he wouldn't wake up in the middle of having a sharp instrument stuck in his back.

More than anything, Yuna wanted to call Auron, her father's ex bodyguard who had to quit because of a heart problem a few years back. He remained a close and affectionate friend of the family's, having been there to help keep everything together when Yuna's mother died. He always seemed to have all the answers and was never short on advice.

The assassination attempt was kept private, as only she and Braska were witnesses, and she hadn't even really seen anything. Braska felt that it was not important enough to alert the media, where the story would most certainly become sensationalized and blown out of proportion. There was no one she could talk to about this.

As Isaaru started to remove the first bullet, Yuna's eye caught something strange on the back of the man's neck. At first she thought it was merely a glint off his hair, but when she looked again she realized it was something metallic gleaming at of the base of his skull.

"Wait," she said, leaning forward to brush the hair aside and get a better look. It appeared cylindrical, almost like a tiny bullet, and the skin around it was red and raw with fingernail marks as though the man had been clawing at it. Frowning, Yuna dug in with the tweezers and carefully maneuvered it out of the man's skin. It was indeed small, no bigger than half the size of her pinky. On one side, the word SIN was engraved in capital letters.

"What do you suppose this is?" Yuna asked. The doctor shrugged.

"Who knows? We can give it to the police later. It doesn't look like any bullet I've seen."

Yuna suddenly noticed a flash of red on the floor by her foot, where Isaaru and the nurses couldn't see. The metal object was sending out a laser image that had only appeared when she squeezed it, moving wherever the tip of the object was aimed. She glanced down and saw bright neon letters and numbers burned into the tile.

ACCOUNT NO. 122-389-476

1120 PARADEPLATZ, ZURICH

She stared at the words blankly, wondering what on earth this man was doing with a Swiss bank account number lodged in his head. Discreetly, she looked at the metal object and squeezed it again, making the message disappear. She was about to put it on the trey where the bullets were to be placed, but instinct told her that this was far too big to let go of so easily. For a moment she hesitated, gazing at the unconscious man on the table. She could not make out his features under the mask that obscured half of his face, but there was something inside of her that told her he was the one who tried to kill her father. It seemed to add up so easily in her mind that it left little room for doubt. She was looking at a hired killer.

When she was sure nobody was looking, she pocketed the metal object and went about cleaning up the operating area. It was a quick procedure, relatively easy. In a while the man would be moved to ICU and someone else would take over his recuperation. Maybe if she was persistent she could request to look after him herself. She wasn't sure exactly what she wanted to do – turn him over to the police, confront him, tell her father – but she felt with an unshakable certainty that she was linked to him.

000

Barely an hour later, Yuna found herself in a closed off room in ICU, staring down at the face of the man who should have been dead, according to the other doctors. He was better looking than she had expected. His skin was not so pale now, and she could see that he was used to the sun. She wondered vaguely where he was from. Where do hitmen call home? His colouring suggested that he had dark eyes, though his blond hair hinted otherwise. Someone had dressed him in a blue hospital robe, and through the thin material she could see a toned, muscular form. He was tall, with broad shoulders that promised strong arms to match. His face was youthful, suggesting that he probably wasn't much older than herself, but it was hard with experience, a strong jaw and proud nose showing a stubborn streak hiding away somewhere.

Yuna began moving around the room to look busy, straightening the blankets, closing the blinds, checking the monitors to see if his vitals were in order. Everything seemed fine – all she could really do was wait until he regained consciousness.

The metal object in her pocket seemed unbearably heavy all of a sudden. She realized that she could get in trouble if she was caught with evidence like this, but all she wanted was a bit of leverage to get him talking. If she threatened to turn over the account number to the authorities – surely they would want to know what kind of things a criminal would hide in a bank vault – perhaps she could persuade him to answer her questions. Why did he try to kill her father? Who hired him? Who else was involved? When she was finished with him, then she would turn him in. Simple as that. Just a few questions.

She had no idea what she was doing, really. But if she thought about it any harder, she would chicken out and the whole opportunity would be wasted.

For a while she tried to keep herself occupied, to have an excuse to be in the room alone with him, but when it seemed that he was not going to stir anytime soon Yuna allowed herself to drift off and get some coffee.

She walked into the staffroom and found Lulu already there with a fresh pot.

"How is your patient?" she asked, bright-eyed from another successful birth. Nobody knew how to handle deliveries like Lulu. "Is he going to make it?"

"Oh, probably," Yuna answered quietly, getting a mug for herself. "Nothing terribly serious aside from a bit of hypothermia."

"Any idea who he is?"

"None," Yuna shook her head, feeling her palms sweat slightly. "And nobody's been asking for a diver with bullet holes in his back. No girlfriend, wife, or parents have called in."

Lulu shrugged and poured coffee for the two of them. Yuna cleared her throat and tried to act casual. "So, uh, how did the baby turn out?"

"Perfect, healthy, beautiful," Lulu supplied with a smile. "Going to be a real looker one day."

Yuna attempted a weak smile. "That's nice."

Lulu honed in on her immediately. "What's the matter? You look a little odd."

Yuna downed her coffee, ignoring the scalding heat, and quickly headed for the door. "I'm fine, just have a lot of work to do. I'll see you later."

"Hey, come out for drinks with us tonight," Lulu called after her. Yuna waved back vaguely in acknowledgement before disappearing around the corner.

Her heart was racing as she made her way back to ICU. She should have known better than to try and hide from Lulu, who had razor sharp intuition. Yuna had always known she was a terrible liar, particularly if caught in the act. According to her friends and father, she had a face like an open book.

By the time she made it back to the room, her pulse had slowed and she was able to breathe normally. She opened the door and closed it behind her, not wanting to let people see into the room as they walked by. It was likely she would need a lot of privacy if the man woke up.

Yuna turned to check the man's vitals again and froze, her stomach twisting into a knot.

The bed was empty.

She whirled around to head for the door, but a tall, solid figure was blocking her path, standing remarkably close to her. Dimly she saw blond hair and dark skin. She had been wrong about his eyes.

They were a bright, terrifying shade of blue.