Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy X or XIII or any flavor thereof
He dreams every day, now.
Sometimes they're lucid and he's aware of every touch and emotion that could and doesn't happen. Sometimes the colors are saturated blues and golds, showing him a world of glitter and glamor, and sometimes they're muted with the sensation of entering a dead world. Sometimes the words he hears and the people he sees come as surprises, and sometimes he feels like he's experienced them a thousand times before. Sometimes he can make sense of the dreams, and sometimes he can't.
Though, the dreams tend toward the weird side, with bizarre elements like technicolor hair and floating planets above the ground proving plentiful in their recurrence. But they also tend to resonate with him in a way that he can't put his finger on. The planets and people feel familiar to him, but the stringed lights crossing dark streets are anything but.
He suspects that deep down he knows the connection, though the reason why continues to elude him.
Sometimes he dreams of large and open fields full of wandering chocobos. He sees a vast, open sky that glitters like diamond dust in the winter and turns into various hues of orange and pink when the sun sets. He sees trees that stand tall and strong and yet sport tuft-life balls of fluff on top.
He wonders why that feels more like home than the tent in which he sleeps.
Sometimes he dreams of gunfire and depths of blackness, ready to swallow him if he makes the wrong move. During those moments, he finds himself surrounded by kids of varying ages, a lot of them so young they haven't finished growing and their heads barely reach his chest. The faces change sometimes, but it's always the same people in different combinations. A couple of girls the same age as him. A child wearing clothes so big he seemed to drown in them. A teen boy with an eating disorder. A silver-haired brat hiding a well of wisdom and experience. A bubbly optimist with a penchant for running off. A couple of dark-haired women with attitudes.
He misses them more than his dead birth parents.
Many nights, his dreams are occupied by a skinny girl with wintery, sad eyes and a glimmering pendant at her chest. She usually keeps her distance from him, but sometimes she lets him get close enough to touch her. On those nights, he feels a sharp ache in his chest and wakes with wet eyes and a hollow emptiness in his stomach that won't fade no matter how much he eats or drinks.
Sometimes, he could swear he's tumbling through space and time itself with nowhere to hold on to or stop himself. The scene fades before he reaches the end most times, though he's occasionally found himself on towering cliff faces and under miles of vines.
It feels more comfortable to him than the games he plays with his friends.
Most dreams, he can only catch glimpses and flashes of the people and places he's never seen. He's left with small puzzle pieces that don't fit no matter how hard he tries to put them together. When he sees more than that, he feels an equal mix of longing and fear for the images that he doesn't understand.
He dreams every day now, but every day he rises from his bed with a lingering sense of regret.
But like the morning mist, the memory of those dreams fades. Every day, he forgets.
A/N: The content for this story is about 80% done. It's onto its final draft with some minor fixups near the beginning. If this fic - or, this part of it - dies, assume I'm dead with it. Updates every week. Since I played Lightning Returns, I've desired to make a more satisfactory ending. The result was... not simple. This is the first part in a series, with characters spread to each world for plot reasons that will be heretofore explained. As the Japanese say, yoroshiku onegaishimasu - 宜しくお願いします