She first tastes sun, real sun, on Pulse. Back in Cocoon, Phoenix's rays had been tempered, fal'Cie-light carefully ladled out across 24-hour schedules. Perfect artificial days and nights, flickering only every handful of centuries during the Rebirth. Otherwise, the fal'Cie had been unrelentingly steady. Never once had Phoenix faltered in maintaining eternal seasons for Cocoon's population; its temperatures had never been cruel. Phoenix's duty had defined itself in stability. Stability, in turn, had been equated to benevolence.
Rebirth is an appropriate comparison here. The fal'Cie sun has lost all authority for Lightning. Cocoon has cast her out into a light that is wild and uncontrolled, and more than willing to kill her.
The Archylte Steppe is Lightning's first experience of a sky that isn't controlled by another's hand, and it comes with all the chaos of a battle formation broken, hostile forces streaming through the defenses. Pulse's sun dispenses itself with far less mercy, far more brutality, eagerly searing whatever it can touch. It hides, fickle, behind cloud cover in the mornings; it does not cloak its face at noon. Lightning's skin burns for the first time on the Archylte Steppe. The tightness and pink flushing of her arms makes her think uncharitably of summertime cookouts, sausages roasting over firepits.
Fang laughs and leaves a stinging slap across her shoulders, crowing about a tan.
Since leaving Cocoon, Lightning and the other l'Cie have experienced natural daytime cycles, but it's only when the group reaches the plains with their lack of trees and cover that it truly feels as if they are at nature's whim. The glare is painful. The wind stays chill long past dawn. The Pulse sun is as cruel as a fal'Cie with a Focus ready for branding: punishing everything that it can reach, with complete indifference for whatever dies under its watch.
Lightning tips her head back and drinks it in, like warm acid over her face. When she opens her mouth to taste it, she savors the wind.
Apart from the sunlight, everything else had been natural on Cocoon: soil, water, air. Natural, but controlled. Processed, in order to be healthy. Measured, in order to fit perfectly into the environmental niches that Cocoon had planned for.
Just like the people.
Gran Pulse is a world whose only guiding structure is survival. In all of her short time on its surface, Lightning has seen how everything here grows wild, following no form of balance other than self-rule. Gran Pulse does not care about either the weak or the strong, because even apex predators will fall someday. It ignores restrictions; it devours itself.
It is beautiful. It will continue being beautiful, even as it tries to slaughter Lightning in every way imaginable.
It's the first time she's ever revelled in a threat. Even she doesn't understand why. Part of her is unexpectedly giddy to be pitted against a world that should be murdering her - and would, if not for her l'Cie strength. If Lightning were entirely human still, she would be dead a dozen times over.
But now, she is a fellow predator, and she makes her own rules.
No Guardian Corps is here to measure her performance. No government exists at all. Unabated freedom is a challenge; she should be afraid of it. Lightning is a bird outside of its cage for the first time in its life. She should be terrified.
Instead, she thrills. It's taken her no time at all to shed her old identity as a loyal soldier of the Guardian Corps. The drilled-in discipline that should have kept her from raising a blade against her fellow troops had turned out to be as fragile as gauze held against a flame. Despair had been the flashpoint, but it had still been Lightning's decision to commit to a course of genocide within seconds, civilians and soldiers alike. Without the other l'Cie to drag her back from that edge, she would have tossed aside all mercy as readily as a spent shell case.
It's as if she's been waiting for a chance all her life to declare war on her own homeland: to abandon every order and loyalty that a good soldier should have embedded into their own subconscious, so deeply ingrained that obedience had had them firing guns against unarmed families without a second thought.
In her, those rules never took root. She's suspected all along that they hadn't. She's just not sure what took their place.
Lightning is free to break every expectation that people have of her now. She is free to throw herself against the world, and see what shatters first.
Every time Lightning comes up against another obstacle in Pulse's landscape and looks down over the next deadly stretch of terrain, she can feel the same twist in her stomach as when she'd first been handed a grav-con unit as a trainee, and had been told to jump, jump into thin air, trust us, it'll catch you.
Back then, the recruits had fussed and fidgeted at the edge of the platform. Most of them had ducked hasty glances at the target area waiting far below, trying to mask their fear behind laughter. Some of them had flung themselves eagerly over, unwilling to be caught out as a coward; one had fragmented his knee thanks to mistiming the device.
For her own part, Lightning had been in the middle of the pack, not pinned by fear or by recklessness, but by tactical pride. She had assessed every factor in her mind, running the figures over and over in her thoughts to make sure she would do it right before she jumped. When she had finally gone over, it wasn't out of trust in the grav-con unit, but from her determination to endure the landing no matter how things turned out.
Weighing outcomes has always been her strategy in life. Raising Serah on her own, going into the Guardian Corps. No matter how terrifying the risks appear, if you can defuse them through calculations, then every danger becomes a simple matter of response parameters and risk negotiations.
Even if you must fling yourself headfirst into blind chaos, as long as you at least know yourself, you'll also know what you'll be capable of surviving.
But calculations require information. As a human, Lightning has a list of documented limits of fragility. She has breaking points of bones. Healing time expectations, permanent damage charts. She can dive into barricades that would cause others to flinch as soon as look at them, all because she knows the costs of impact.
On Pulse, she has no technology to save her. What Lightning has instead now are the twisted gifts of a fal'Cie, making her resilient enough to absorb landings that should shatter her bones, the agility and nimbleness of a cat. It makes her restless, wanting to measure the limits of how far she can go: seeing how far she can keep pushing what the fal'Cie gave her, and find the frailty in it, the weakness that must exist somewhere. All of them have already fought so much by now that she should have memorized every change of her body - but every time that Lightning thinks she's pinpointed the extent of what she's become, the next battle finds her reaching even further into resources that no human should possess. If any of them mean to overcome their Focus and defy Cocoon's plans, knowing what they're each equipped with is a necessity first
Rather than allow herself to fall in love blindly with her altered strength, Lightning chooses to test it instead.
Scouting duty is the perfect opportunity. It's a search for threats and food all at once, particularly when the former can be neutralized into the latter. The Steppe is a domain that favors no creature as its own; the cliffs are covered with stubbled trees and jagged stone, giving inadequate shade and precious little cover.
The smallest ridge on a clump of mountainous crags offers Lightning her first vantage point for the day. From there, she surveys the plains with a frown, hoping to spot a foraging beast of some kind: small enough that she can take it on her own, yet large enough to deter other predators. Disappointment is her only reward. The shadow of wings overhead makes her flinch, ducking into the curve of a boulder as she squints up to see if there's an incoming attack. Whatever creature flew past is already gone before she can spot it against the clouds.
There won't be any food to be found here; she'll have to move along the cliff line. That much is painfully obvious. Decision made, she gauges a path to the next plateau, choking her own hesitation back, and aims for the nearest clear ledge she can spot.
The landing is good, but rough. Lightning soaks the force of it and lets the remainder carry her through into the next descent, only to catch her boot on a rock that had disguised itself as flatter ground. It flips her over; she twists as she tumbles, slapping her hand out to catch herself rather than crash headfirst into the next outcropping.
Unaided, the impact would have meant a shattered wrist. Now, there's only a slight twinge deep in her bones, a warning of a strained tendon. She's falling, falling like a dying Skytank, struts and turrets splintered - but instead of disaster waiting for her at the end, Lightning's still intact. She'll survive.
As she continues to crash down the side of the cliff, she grabs for the nearest tree, feeling a branch smash against her ribs - painlessly, the impact like a muffled, pillow-soft whump - and uses it to launch her weight in reverse, bunching her legs into a push that finally sends her soaring up towards the sky instead.
In Cocoon, if you rise high enough, you eventually hit the earth - someone's roof, if you're unlucky, but there are proper force nets in place to prevent such a thing, catching you like an insect in a lightning lamp. High enough, and you become caught in another frame of gravity, flipped around so that you're no longer flying, but falling. On Cocoon, there is no exit: any illusions of freedom only lead you back into the net.
On Pulse, there is no limit to the sky. Lightning makes one jump and then a second, long arcs of ascension that blur together in her fervor. Even after she finally reaches the top of the next cliff, she refuses to acknowledge the lack of higher ground: she aims higher and higher with each running leap, sending herself soaring again and again with her fingers stretched wide, wondering if she can break through the clouds and find a different country waiting there.
Her energy is what gives out first, training routines finally kicking in and forcing Lightning to stop before pushing herself too far past her limits. It isn't safe to keep flinging herself up at thin air, no matter how useful the exercise might be for her leg muscles. At the very least, she'd find herself attracting winged predators, and the plateau lacks enough cover nearby to fight them effectively. Common sense wins.
Her breath is hard in her chest. Good, she thinks towards the pain. She is not completely a monster yet, to ignore physical weakness.
She allows herself the respite, though she stretches each limb gingerly while cooling down. Her lungs are already recovering, fast enough that she gives her cardiovascular system a satisfactory mark. It's an adequate test of her limits in private, enough to help her in future battles. The sky still gives her vertigo whenever she looks at it for too long, and remembers that there's nothing on the other side: emptiness, instead of buildings. Fall there, and you fall forever.
She takes another long, steady breath, and finds herself wondering if Fang's ever felt the same way.
She kicks herself mentally as she does, though there's cause: Fang's the other person out scouting today with her, cutting through the plains north of Lightning's position, evaluating the hunting opportunities there before they're meant to meet up in the afternoon. Forgivable, to have the woman on her mind.
Forgivable right now, maybe.
Less so for every other time.
Lightning's caught herself watching the other woman far more than she should, far more than a clinical interest should attract, even after seeing Fang go through her own cycle of despair and determination. Out of all their companions, Fang has always been the one who's loudest on Lightning's threat radar, like an eternal tone politely chiming an alert. It's not simply because Fang's demonstrated her willingness to fight whoever and whatever it takes to keep not only Vanille, but also the rest of them from turning Cie'th - whether it's the rest of the l'Cie refugees, all of Cocoon, or Lightning herself. Fang moves with the confidence of a hunter who already knows how to best conserve their strength in the terrain, even while running through unfamiliar streets. She's fluid and relentless when she scouts, taking risks as needed, but not dallying either. The woman is a match for Snow's brashness: an animal that is willing to display its strength, to fight without fear.
Instinct has kept Lightning on the alert ever since Fang was first thrown into their crowd. She's watched the other l'Cie in moments of strength as well as frailty; she's seen the shape of Fang's Eidolon, and the hopelessness that had called it to manifest. They've traveled through anger together, through blame and revelation, and the Pulse woman hasn't slowed down one bit. Fang - like Lightning - has her own person to save, and Lightning knows how fiercely that kind of passion can burn.
At the same time, there's a reassurance in Fang's power that's like a second Phoenix, one that's equally warming and prone to ignition. It draws Lightning's eyes back to her, again and again.
After all, if Fang has survived this long while smashing through every convention imaginable, then Lightning can surely do the same.
One way or another, the Pulse woman's far in the lead. Fang's already plowed through the same path Lightning is just now starting to explore. She shattered her own rules centuries ago, caring only about the one person she would break earth and sky to protect. Like a Guardian Corps officer back in training, Fang's already plunged headlong over the side, and is now waiting at the bottom, shouting up at them all: trust us, it'll catch you.
Trust me. I'll catch you.
It's not a good feeling, this fixation. Like an equipment failure, the woman's presence glitters across Lightning's awareness, as impossible to dismiss as livid red warnings on a readout panel. She can identify her own responses in the same way that she would read off specifications in a manual: distraction, nervousness, the way she breathes more deeply whenever Fang is nearby, inhaling the scent of the other woman's skin. Lightning's body has a list of reactions ready to be indexed.
It's an infatuation, little more. No - a fascination. No. An attraction based on comparisons, on parallels, on an unconscious sympathy of their mutual situations. It's a chemical response stemming from logical factors of competition and challenge. An urge to test Lightning's strength against someone similar. It's nothing to worry about.
She worries anyway.
The whole feeling is ridiculously complicated, and Lightning doesn't have the time to waste in figuring all of it out. And besides - even if Lightning is interested, she can't act. There's Serah to think about. There's Vanille. There's Lightning herself. There are too many reasons for her to drown this feeling in its infancy, holding it down until the ripples of its resistance stammer out and stop permanently.
Lightning's never minded the flutter in her stomach when she's stood on the edge of impending death before. It's frightening, of course - adrenaline ratcheting through her body, screaming of morality - but Lightning's always been able to steer her emotions through the rigid grip of logic, weighing costs and penalties for each action. That's how she's always kept herself moving ahead: by knowing, both herself and her tools available.
All these things are shifting now, rearranging their own numbers. Who Lightning is. What Lightning is.
What Fang might mean to her, or what she might yet become.
Lightning climbs to her feet, brushing off dirt and doubt both with crisp flicks of her hands. Her scouting shift isn't over yet. There's still work to be done.
She works down the second cliff more strategically this time, and moves on, jump by careful jump. Perspective plays tricks on her with some of the tree growth; more than once, she assumes a rock is further away than she expects, and she pays for the difference with bruises that should have been broken bones, scrapes that should have mangled an ordinary limb.
Again and again, she travels between sky and soil, refusing to pick a side.
She knows immediately when Fang finally catches up to her on the latter half of the patrol: the flurry of the other woman's sari dances like a tail through the greenery, flicking and swishing in a colorful banner. Anywhere else, and that bright color might have been a banner to attract predators - but on the Steppe, Fang is one of the more deadly creatures around.
Lightning does not bother to leave her perch. All her exploration finally uncovered a ledge that provides both good cover and a decent view of the plain, and it's been a matter of waiting ever since. There's a pack of triffids that keeps slithering back into view near the far curve of the valley, small enough to be worth evaluating. One might be worth dragging back to camp for a meal. There's an equally high chance that it might be poisonous; Lightning doesn't know enough to tell. It'd be better not to leave the carcass behind, in case she'd need the body to help identify the meat.
Evaluating the hazards gives her something to do while Fang catches up, and to help control the queasy excitement bubbling deep in her stomach. The other woman has the good grace to shimmy up the cliff face rather than descend from above, and for some reason, Lightning is pleased; it means that Fang knows better than to stalk Lightning, and risk a flurry of misunderstandings when a blade would be her hello.
By the time Fang hefts herself up to the ledge, Lightning has almost half a plan to help her react calmly to the other woman's presence.
It scatters to dust when Fang breaks into a cocky grin, one calloused hand braced on her hip as she considers the way Lightning's still resting on the ground. "Done sightseeing already?"
"I was looking at all the crystals here on the Steppes. There are so many l'Cie, I can't imagine how common it must have been." It's the exhaustion talking, that must be it, because Lightning keeps on going recklessly, speaking her mind without forethought. "Having the strength of a l'Cie is invaluable out here. In a world like this, I can see how someone might want that power."
She regrets her words immediately, driven by adrenaline into foolishness. No one would make that bargain simply to be able to bring home the day's meal. Not unless they were starving - and maybe, maybe they were.
Fang is gracious enough not to reprimand her outright, making a clipped laugh as she flops down beside Lightning. "Want? Most of them were volunteered the same way you were," the other woman snorts. "These people were good hunters for their villages, good protectors for their kin. Can't be decent at either when you end up as a piece of rock." She stretches her legs out to rub at her knees, waggling her feet back and forth. "That's something else you Cocoon folk got wrong. You all thought Pulse l'Cie got made just to fight against the Cocoon demons that we thought you were, but if you come down here and have a look at these poor Cie'th? You find out that the fal'Cie really didn't care most of the time. These lost souls weren't made into l'Cie to try and destroy you. We were supposed to be protecting our homes. We were too busy just trying to live - we didn't have time to give a damn about anything else. That's just what it comes down to, in the end."
The words are scathingly pragmatic. There's no obvious resentment in Fang's rich voice - but Lightning knows the cost of keeping one's temper restrained. Correcting the misunderstanding shouldn't matter; she shouldn't care about Fang's opinion.
She shouldn't.
"That's not what I meant," she says anyway, her tongue still out-of-control, galloping along in a blunt-force effort to mend bridges. "I mean, look at this view. We'd never be able to see it if we weren't able to climb the way we can now. We'd never enjoy it without being afraid of breaking our necks. It's just like everything that's happened to us. All this misery, all this tragedy, but still - " Logic fails; there is no eloquent way to cover her mistake. "Look," she blurts at last, abruptly. The words feel crude. There's no reasonable defense, no matter how she searches. "I'm... sorry. I should have thought twice - "
Her words break as soon as she glances over and sees Fang's grin, a lopsided laugh only barely held back behind teeth.
The implied mockery is enough to flush Lightning's cheeks in shame. "Forget it."
Fang's hand stings when she slaps it against Lightning's arm. "Look at you, all formal and apologetic! You really need to loosen up a bit." She stretches her leg out again, and maneuvers a chunk of rock closer with her foot, letting it roll and bump against her toes. "Yeah, it's good, some of these abilities. You only get 'em for a short while, and then you have the biggest price in the world to pay, but - for a little bit of time, they're all right. They help you get done what you need to, the real reason you might have wanted that bargain with those blasted fal'Cie. Not like you get anything for free."
"No." The rock finally relents to a flick of Fang's ankle; the women promptly punts it off the edge. Lighting draws her own legs up, lacing her fingers tightly over her knees. There are only so many stupid mistakes she's willing to make in a day. "Of course not."
If Fang's developed either a grudge or a sudden contempt, her expression doesn't reveal it; her amusement is fierce enough to be a third sun. "I didn't like you folks very much at first, you know. 'Course, that's because I knew you'd be angry with me and Vanille for being Pulse l'Cie, but I didn't care." Frank as ever, the woman shrugs indifferently. "To me, you all were just a bunch of coddled strangers who'd want me and Vanille dead. We were monsters to you, but you were monsters to us. But, you know - at least you turned out all right, Lightning."
There isn't much that comes to mind in a reply; Lightning's mouth makes her answer for her, quirking once in a dry prelude to a smirk. "Thanks."
Fang passes her the water flask, and Lightning uncaps it, wincing at the the soreness of her hands. She's thirstier than she expected; her body is even less indestructible than she thought, unable to run on thin air instead of raw calories and hydration. She bolts down a second swallow, and then wipes the drops from her mouth with a thumb. "Is the territory here familiar for you?"
The wind picks up, tossing leaves and hair alike; Fang shoves her bangs back away from her eyes, futile motions that leave the strands sticking in random directions, casualties of the breeze. "Never spent much time on the Steppe myself - a little too far from Oerba, if you know what I mean. And not like any of the same villages might even be around now, right? Everyone that Vanille and I knew, everyone who knew us - all gone. But they would have been anyway, when you think about it." Fang flips another piece of stone free, this time far enough that it arcs into the air, plunging down silently into a distant rattle. "Second I got my Focus, I knew it was just a countdown 'til I'd be separated from them. Either I'd end up as a crystal, or as a monster. You don't get to stay what you used to be once you're a l'Cie. Best bet is to make sure each day counts. And you've been fighting that the whole way, haven't you?"
The observation is disturbingly acute. Lightning finds herself resisting the assessment on sheer principle; denial, however, would only prove Fang's point. She firms her mouth in a line instead, trapping words within, and stares out over the Steppe.
Refusing to accept that silence, Fang reaches out and dances the tips of her fingers across Lightning's arm, a rhythm like raindrops descending. Her hand ends in one long swipe across Lightning's wrist. It's a comfortable motion, but more intimate than Lightning expected; the gesture startles her enough to look over, her defenses caught momentarily off-guard.
Fang notices the opening; her expression dims suddenly into seriousness, even as she prods Lightning more roughly this time. "Listen, you. None of us have that much time left to savor what's good in the world, not with your clocks running out this fast. Better get started now, so those choices give us strength instead of more regrets." A third poke, even more fierce, and then Fang defuses the aggression by flattening her hand in an apologetic pat. "Any tiny bit of despair's just going to speed you up, and we all know it. If you can find a way to enjoy the things you get out of being a l'Cie, there's no point in making yourself feel bad about it."
"Enjoy it." The words taste like cremation ash in Lightning's mouth; they come out the same way, gritty and full of crumbled bone. At the same time, she can't deny their temptation either. It's not that she's planning on forgetting the weight of everything that's led them all there - the Purge, the fal'Cie, Barthandelus. Serah. But the strange, new strength inside her is still blooming, eager and hungry for fresh air, and she can't ignore how quickly it's taken over her bones, calling to life a creature that might have been lurking inside all along.
It's frustrating to be so easily read. Struggling to turn the conversation around, Lightning resorts to the first counterattack she could think of, clumsy as it is. "If that's the case, you should be back at camp with Vanille." Her mouth continues on without her ability to rein it in, before she realizes she's backed herself into a corner with each word. "If I had someone like that, I wouldn't be wasting my time out here in the wilderness with me. I wouldn't - "
"Kiss me," Fang says.
It takes a moment for the demand to register, and when it does, it feels like it hits harder than any other impact Lightning's felt in her life: an entire competition of tree trunks and buildings and trains. "Are you out of your mind?" she scoffs, trying to make it sound half as mocking as she means to - but she fails, and the question comes out thin and weak and entrenched in so much denial that it feels like it's dripping with it. "You and Vanille, you're - "
The pause becomes a full stop, too awkward to continue and too cowardly to last. She wants to hear Fang confirm the truth - and doesn't at the same time, as if voluntary ignorance is the only safe route forward. Uncertainty squirms inside her throat, all the more disconcerting for how she can't banish it.
But Fang doesn't let her off the hook. "We're what, Lightning?"
Caught in a trap of her own making, Lightning stifles any outward sigh. "Too important to each other to go off and ruin it all with a stranger."
Fang barks a laugh that pulls at something in Lightning's chest. "You think I'd make the offer if it'd hurt Vanille? Or that she wouldn't ask me before running off to spend a night with a pretty little thing herself? Thought you had some brains in you, even for a Cocoon stodge." She shrugs; Lightning half-expects the matter to end there, but the woman continues after a moment, unabashedly practical. "Is that how they raised you up there in Cocoon, thinking you had to pick and choose like a miser, making just one person have to bear the load of all your needs? Doling out your heart like you've got to ration it is a surefire way to end up with a lot of unused extra by the end." With that, Fang jabs a finger out at the Steppe, and then sweeps it out in one long, accusing arc, as if she's managed to impale the horizon and is merrily gutting it with a gesture. "There's a saying we had, in Oerba. 'The sweeter the nectar, the shorter the bloom.' If you wait for the thing that'll last forever, you might just miss out on the one that's as long as your actual life. No one's got eternity, no matter who you are, and especially not l'Cie. And especially not you, Lightning - not you, not me, not anyone coming along on this messed-up journey. You let yourself be miserable for no good reason, you just make it easier on the fal'Cie to speed up that brand until you've got no choice but to obey. If nothing else, enjoy what you want just to spite 'em."
Despite herself, Lightning's mouth quirks at the speech. "I'm going to save Serah. What else is there to possibly want?"
The question comes out unexpectedly; it narrows the world down to Fang's eyes, the way they search Lightning's face in an assault that Lightning has no idea how to defend against, as if Fang is effortlessly picking out the weakest parts of Lightning's expression to target. Trepidation picks up in a staccato against Lightning's ribs, striking fresh with each beat of her breath.
What else is there to want?
Nothing, of course.
But Fang's easy confidence beside her is like a whisper that Lightning can't ignore, broadcasting the possibility of being comfortable inside her own skin, and the feeling like maybe they'll find a way through all this: all the newness, all the chaos, all the odds that have racked up higher than any sky could be built. This, she does want, and Lightning's not sure what to even call it, when it doesn't match up against any risk matrix she's ever devised.
Even so, she finds herself holding her breath, wondering what the response might be. She's hyper-aware of the woman beside her without understanding why, as if it's l'Cie instinct to kill what might be its greatest rival and closest kin.
Fang is studying her with equal care, sidelong, one hunter gauging the other. "So what would you do if you had someone here, like you said?" she asks, cannily.
"This isn't about fun."
"No," Fang acknowledges with a toss of her chin. "It's about being alive, even when no one else in the world wants us to be. It's about not being dead, either outside or the inside. Everyone else wants us gone? Turned to stone? In graves? Or looking like monsters, just like they think we are on the inside? Pfwah!" Air puffs through her cheeks as she blows impudently at the sky above, as if to brush away the clouds as easily as a leaf. "Every minute we're still here enjoying the sun is a minute they can't take away from us. And what we do with that time is our own business. Kiss me," she repeats, tacking on the suggestion more emphatically this time, kicking Lightning lightly with a nudge of her toes.
Lightning reacts automatically, drawing her leg back; her mind swarms with scenarios, adding and subtracting them as if the entire setup were simply a battle simulation that she can solve if only she has enough data. Her own relationships have never provided her answers for situations like this. She'd never listened to the Guardian Corps gossip, never wondered what other people were doing to warm their beds. Her own affairs had been brief and uninteresting, and she had been fine with that, because everyone she'd tried anything with had acted as if Lightning now should start sharing her life with them instead, setting Serah aside like a worn-out pair of boots to forget in a closet, and eventually discard.
"I... don't know if I should," she continues to insist, aware of Fang pulling back her foot in preparation for another kick. All the metrics from Cocoon life insist on no: no complications, no additions, no involvements. All the freedom of being a l'Cie shouts for something else altogether. Lightning can't even begin to guess at the trajectory of it all. The damage. The inevitable impact at the end. "I don't know how it would affect me yet," she adds, swallowing down each word as she says it, low and soft like an assassin's footfall.
With that, Fang holds up her hands in an easy surrender. "All right," the woman relents, and Lightning fights down a surge of disappointment, the chance flickering away like a lost mark. Without further argument, Fang springs to her feet, pushing off the ground. "Better idea, then. Since we're here, let's give you a different test of courage. Let's see if you can keep up with a real Pulse fighter, and then you can tell me all about how good it is to still be alive."
Before Lightning can protest further, Fang scoops up her lance and swirls it around to brace the weapon in her off-hand. With a few quick steps, she's at the edge of the cliff and then she goes straight over, diving with an exuberant rallying cry. Her sari flutters in farewell, a banner of challenge that vanishes in mere seconds.
Lightning doesn't waste any time. She leaps, and rolls off the edge as well, plummeting down the cliff without hesitation as she chases that flicker of color, unwilling for Fang to leave her behind.
Fang hits the bottom first, able to clear her descent with the use of her lance to keep from colliding with the worst of the trees. Lightning's less fortunate; she had pushed off from the cliff with the intention of letting the arc of her fall eat up the distance, but she'd been forced to navigate through the tangle of trees and boulders that clung doggedly to the edge of the cliff, jumping from foothold to foothold while attempting not to impale herself.
After finally reaching ground, she runs, following the ripple of Fang's clothes as the woman bolts directly for the center of the plains. Under their feet, the ground shudders like waves of low-grade explosions as they race further along the Steppe, ducking around packs of prowling gorgonopsids, nests of cackling goblins. She catches up at last only when the woman slows to a halt on the swelling of a low hill, crouching low to conceal her silhouette.
There - all too close, considering the size - lurks one of the massive packs of four-legged beasts that Lightning had seen rolling slowly across the Steppe earlier. The other wildlife in the area have scattered already, taking heed of the rumbling that echoes in long rolls across the Steppes, drumbeats of warning to make way or pay the consequence. Each creature is larger than a house: living war machines parading across the Archylte Steppe on massive hooves, taking each step with slow precision, as if they know how other creatures watch and hold their breath at the herd's passing.
"There we go." Fang jerks her chin towards the pack, as if the beasts could somehow be missed. "Titan's pets. Who else d'you think makes those chains they wear?" she continues, catching Lightning's skeptical frown. "His little fal'Cie workers keep things ticking, all for his master plan. Those adamantoises carry seeds and soil from place to place," she explains, pointing out the the satchels and saddle on the nearest creature's back, "and there they get planted or dug up. Even plants have to compete each day to be the fittest out here. Titan's not at it just to make pretty gardens."
Mention of the massive fal'Cie causes Lightning to glance instantly towards the horizon. "Will it get angry if we interfere with its creations?"
Fang's hair dances as she shakes her head with a laugh. "Kills them himself, half the time. So!" Clapping Lightning on the back, Fang gives her a shove forward that nearly unbalances her. "I've pointed out your mark. Are you ready?"
"Are you crazy?" Lightning bites back. "What do you think we could possibly do to it by ourselves?"
Whatever madness has gripped the other woman shows no sign of abating. "What?" Fang shouts, laughing, her glee a slash of white teeth across her face. "Afraid of a little turtle like that?"
The reasonable answer would be yes; no shame in that, even for a l'Cie. "There's no way we can fight that thing with just the two of us!" she calls back, watching in disbelief as Fang ignores the warning, and begins to jog directly for the nearest beast.
"Who said anything about fighting? Winner is first to the top!"
Unwilling to be left behind again, Lightning launches into a sprint this time. The air frays her lungs as she feels her muscles start to protest more actively now, screaming as if they believe Lightning has gone deaf to their plight. Still worn out from her earlier efforts, she's slower to catch up; Fang once more claims the lead.
The adamantoise's tusks swing towards her, its stubby tail waving back and forth with the force of a battering ram. She somersaults over the first, misjudging the distance and coming down short on the second one. Her boots hit the tusk and start to skid. She turns the fall into a second leap that brings her up to the harness chain. The metal chains boom like docking aircraft as they slam together, rattling in baritone warnings. A single link is bigger than Lightning's entire body; they will crush her if she gets pinched between them, pulverizing her bones beyond recovery. Not even l'Cie resilience will save her from that.
Rather than risk being caught between two links, Lightning grabs for one with both hands - the metal is as wide as a girder, gritty with dirt and abrasions from years of service - and slides herself through the middle like thread through a needle. Again and again, she weaves her way upwards, trusting in the adamantoise not to suddenly thrash in protest, focusing only on the next chain to climb until she's suddenly cresting the creature's saddle, staggering at the open air.
Fang is already at the top, spinning her lance idly in a crimson circle. With one final flourish of the weapon, she swings it around to tap the shaft against Lightning's calf approvingly. "Nice and quick for a first-timer! See, wasn't that worth a bit of impulse?"
One glance towards the ground freezes the breath in Lightning's lungs. But it loosens again, just as swiftly, like a vestigial reflex for a creature that's already evolved far past the consequences of its ancestors. A l'Cie could survive that. A l'Cie would have no reason to be afraid.
And here she is, a l'Cie herself, staring down a chasm of choices and inescapable gravity that will claim her at the bottom, no matter what - all she can do is adjust her trajectory during the fall. She had clung to revenge for a time; now she's unmoored while still moving forward, charging ahead. The faster she flies into this new world, the more the layers peel back away from her life, like paint crisping under heat, the friction of her course crisping away her outer layers and leaving only red hot metal underneath.
She's burned away her own history: her Cocoon citizenship, her Guardian Corps rank. Her loyalties. Her self. What's left behind is a creature of speed and ferocity, a lash of pure lightning that arcs towards its destination, even when that destination is unknown.
It would be human to be frightened of plummeting through thin air, even with a grav-con unit in hand. It would be human to be scared of the unknown.
Ironic, then, that Lightning's only become nervous now that she's a l'Cie, and has been faced with a different kind of gravity altogether.
Lightning makes her decision without allowing herself any more room for doubt. She grabs at Fang's sari, catching sight of the quizzical expression on the other woman's face - and leans in anyway, aiming haphazardly for Fang's mouth. At first she's afraid she'll simply smash both their jaws together; then Fang catches an arm automatically around Lightning's back, and Lightning manages to lean close enough to press her lips to Fang's own.
It's barely enough to be called a kiss. The contact lasts for no longer than a heartbeat before the rocking of the adamantoise knocks them both off-kilter, bumping their skulls like game dice, and Lightning's left with the consequences lingering in the way Fang's gaze rests consideringly upon her.
"Sorry," Lightning says bluntly, blindly, wondering suddenly if the offer's been revoked, if she waited too long, if she's proven herself to be a coward. She starts to straighten up, trying - too late, far too late - to pretend that the past few moments have been little more than a shared hallucination, easy enough to dismiss and forget.
But Fang braces her lance against the adamantoise's saddle, and then braces her arm around Lightning, pinning them together, hip to hip - and leans back in for another try.
It's easier the second time, when they both know what to expect from each other. Fang's already caught the sea-swaying rhythm of the adamantoise beneath them, and she helps keep their shared weight steady, adjusting for them both. Lightning fumbles through the maneuvers; she tastes Fang gingerly, lips unexpectedly soft, different from the awkward, thin-mouthed kisses she'd had before with men, the hardness of their lips and blocky jaws. Fang is still firm, still tough - but in a different way, the strength of her mouth meeting Lightning as an equal. The kiss feels like a whirlwind of sparring and running and fighting back-to-back together, filled with the same pure joy of facing even the worst odds with a shout of defiance: the reckless delight of living, with Fang both challenging and encouraging Lightning on, strong at her side with no signs of wavering.
Lightning shakes her head when they break apart, less to refuse than to simply delay before a third attempt. "Are you sure?" she warns again: no longer a hesitation, but a sparse identification of risks in the field that have yet to uncovered before the infantry advances. "This is new territory for me. There are a lot of mistakes I could still make."
She expects Fang's exasperated roll of her eyes. What she doesn't expect is Fang leaning in to shove a shoulder hard against Lightning's body - so hard that Lightning nearly loses her balance, and is forced to stagger on the whorls of the adamantoise's saddle to regain it. "Look at you, expecting yourself to be perfect right off the bat, before you've even really started! Must be an interesting time in your bedroll, that's for sure."
"Keep talking like that, and you'll never find out," Lightning retorts tartly out of automatic habit; there's no venom in the recrimination. There's only an eagerness that's on the verge of overbrimming, shifting from waiting to running, all her tension finally tipped over into the urge to act, and blaze through every consequence along the way.
She glances over the edge of the adamantoise's back. Far beneath, the ground sways like the ocean, so distant that Lightning's stomach twists in an instinctive flinch. But part of her is already calculating out the best way to land, to twist, to grab for the chains or the adamantoise's rough hide. To survive, as she never could have before, in ways she'd never thought of herself in the past.
A human might be terrified; the old Lightning might have hesitated, cautious in a cage of uniforms and performance expectations. Even the version of her from yesterday might balk at Fang's suggestion, resolute at not needing the distraction, the vulnerability of something new in her life.
The new Lightning seizes the opportunity opened by fearlessness, by what she has become: she reaches for Fang once more, pulling the other woman hard towards her so that one of Fang's knees accidentally smacks into her, hard and bony. She ignores it, taking her time to explore the puzzle of Fang's mouth, testing the ways it fits against her own, and the pure enjoyment of doing so.
When they're split away again by a particularly violent surge of the adamantoise's back, Lightning pulls in a sharp breath. The heat left behind is like the taste of the noontime sky on her mouth, as if she's been devouring the radiation and gathering it inside her, burning with an equal brilliance of her own.
"Careful," Fang laughs, but her grip is firm in Lightning's vest. Her other hand has her lance planted neatly through a loop of the saddle's stitchings, mooring them both. Despite her warning, she's as rock-steady as ever. "Don't want to fall off and ruin the moment by turning into a million tiny crystal chunks on the ground, yeah?"
The adamantoise shifts, turning slowly in its course. Lightning doesn't bother looking down this time: she turns her head towards the untamed heavens, and the infinitely empty sky. The adamantoise rocks beneath them, bucking and swaying in a rhythm that might either be as reassuring as the ocean, or as wild as an earthquake's chaos. Fang's fingers are tucked against her stomach. Either of them could slip and plummet to what should be their deaths at any moment. Either one of them should be afraid.
"Who cares about falling?" she challenges back. "As for me, I'm more than ready to fly."