I noted the other day that a flashback scene shows that Auron already looked old when Tidus was young. This suggests he aged all at once, presumably at the point of his resurrection. There seems to be a slight delay between dying and becoming unsent: cf. Seymour, who definitely appears dead for a while, but is then basically back to normal apart from his new ability to transform into increasingly monstrous creatures. Presumably, then, Auron died looking young (and wounded), and then came back looking old (and no longer wounded?) fairly soon afterwards.

Ten years later, Rin says to him, “I was surprised when I saw you gone the next morning, with that wound. An ordinary man would not have been able to walk.” The implication is that Auron was able to leave because he was unsent – so he had already died by the time he left Rin’s company (presumably at one of his travel agencies, but more on this later). But if he was seriously wounded the precious evening, as Rin suggests, this would seem to mean he wasn’t yet dead at this point, and died during the intervening night; I think this is a fairly common interpretation. If he was already unsent when he met Rin, he would probably have already looked older – so Rin would have been less doubtful about his identity ten years later – and surely wouldn’t have appeared seriously wounded.

Auron himself says Kimahri found him “just before [he] died,” which throws a spanner in the works. He doesn’t mention Rin, so it seems like Kimahri found him alone and he was still alive (and conscious, having “crawled” there) at this point, which means that according to my explanation, this must have happened before the night Auron spent with Rin. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that Kimahri took Auron to this establishment (Auron presumably can’t have walked there himself with “that wound”), and also that there was a travel agency operated by Rin somewhere in the region of the north side of Bevelle/south edge of the Calm Lands at the time. If this establishment still exists in Yuna’s time, we don’t see it; she doesn’t go straight from Bevelle to the Calm Lands, which could explain why. Or maybe Rin has closed the branch down in the intervening time. The clerk at the Macalania agency tells Tidus the business is “now Spira-wide”, so that makes it sound as if Rin hasn’t been operating in that area for some time. To me this sounds as if Rin originally operated an establishment in the Bevelle region – the one where Kimahri took Auron – before closing it and concentrating on the Mi’ihen Highroad branch for some years, and then expanding north again during Yuna’s pilgrimage.

So the timeline seems to be as follows: Auron made it to the south edge of the Calm Lands, presumably with the help of a lot of very effective medicinal items that kept him alive for a while despite substantial blood loss. He died there, was taken to Rin’s nearby travel agency and (fruitlessly?) seen to in the evening, before becoming unsent overnight, recovering from his wound as a result, and leaving in the morning. There’s one thing that doesn’t line up with this, though, which is that Rin asks Auron if he remembers their meeting. This implies that at at least one point during Auron’s stay with Rin, he was not only alive, but conscious.

Here’s my attempt at working this out: Auron lost consciousness when he met Kimahri, and considers this to be the point at which he died. He would have been pretty out of it through the whole thing, having spent the previous few days gradually losing his blood supply, so it’s possible that his memories are confused and he’s not totally clear about the distinction between losing consciousness and dying. Kimahri took the exanimate Auron to Rin, who was briefly able to resuscitate him (perhaps using machina), long enough for Auron to regain consciousness just long enough to acknowledge him. Then Auron went under again and died for real; having done what he could, Rin left him alone for the night and went back in the morning to find that Auron had become unsent and taken his leave. The only thing that isn’t quite accounted for by this explanation is the “I died,” but as I’ve suggested, I think it’s reasonable to assume Auron’s memories of this period aren’t infallible.

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