The air was cold that day and the rain felt like ice melting down Lightning's neck and arms, locking her in place. It was a familiar sensation, and not at all welcome. I've stayed frozen and still for too long. She had spent centuries asleep but never really achieved a satisfying rest. Her heart had still beat frantically within the crystal case of her bones and skin, every inch of her like glass as she reigned silent and mourning on a losing throne. She had slept, she had risen, she had won — only to find herself sitting rigid and cold all over again, waiting on Hope to come.
Lightning refused to allow room in her heart for regret. I've come too far to have it all end like this. The thought moved through her brain, accusatory and sharp, a little knife digging deep at the sorest point she tried in vain to bury away. Lightning had grown far, far too skilled at hiding what hurt the most even from her own self, and it was a habit she would cater to no more. Not now, not here. I've come too far to end up like that again. It wasn't a choice made for herself anymore, but a choice whose benefit could be reaped by those who meant the most. Lightning didn't want to let Hope down when she saw him again, for it was definitely a matter of when and not the dreadful, prickling ifs that taunted her, setting their teeth along her patience and her faith as she returned home at dawn. Perfectly timed at every sunrise, 6 AM sharp, Lightning would seethe at her failure, confident that tomorrow she would succeed. As long as she had just one more day to fight for, Lightning stood one more chance of finding Hope.
Funny that it all came down to her determination not to move from a park bench — not just any bench, though. She had chosen this spot in this park in this city for the name, a strange little twist of circumstance Lightning was reluctant to call luck.Claire's Pond, the park was called. It seemed the perfect place to wait for him and hope.
An hour passed and noon faded. Still she didn't move. She wouldn't. Not a muscle would shift nor would a fraction of herself inch from this spot until night had passed and dawn had come, the sun rising to blind her faith as it fought to dip just a little more with every ascending arc of light. He'll be here soon. I know him, I know he will. He has to be.
Lightning forced herself to think of other things, things that would hurt less than all this silence. Her mind landed on the letter her sister, Serah, had sent, the third in as many weeks with twice as many pages to it, warning Lightning not to give up.
"Hold on just a little longer, okay? For no one else but yourself, and because you owe it to him, too, for everything you've been through… Snow says it took me a while to turn up too, and that you'd remember what it was like in those first few days. Neither of you gave up looking for me no matter how hard it got (or how many laws you broke, which I don't think I'll ever forgive you for but that's okay, I love you all anyway). You're stubborn to a fault – both of you. So take a cue from your brother-in-law for a change, okay? Be stubborn. Stay strong. Think of a different way to fight now."
Lightning had crumbled that letter in a tight ball and thrown it to the floor of her loft, kicking it under the sofa for good measure, glad to relieve the bolt of anger that was winding its way up and down her spine. She had only ever known the one way to fight, fists and knuckles and teeth and blades, and it served her good so far. But not here, not now. Not in this world. They had fought to make this place real, but the need for fighting had ended at its birth. Think of a different way to fight now.
The anger did not last; it couldn't survive in the wake of Serah's kindness and the heart she had bled and dripped into every penned word. Lightning smoothed out the worst of the damage her fist had wrought on the pale perfumed paper, and guiltily spent the next hour taping together the edges that were frayed and broken. She loves me, she's helping me – she wantsto help, she's still willing to try. That was all that mattered. That was all that had to matter.
Lightning knew in her heart that Serah was right. I'll find him. I will find him. I have to believe, I can't lose –
Lightning shook her head. She wouldn't let herself say the word, not for pain or discomfort's sake, she told herself, sitting on the bench with rain dripping like tears on her gloved hands, but for pride.
"I won't be a cliché," she promised.
Lightning closed one of her gloved hands until it made a fist, the rain rolling off the back of her knuckles and into a puddle on her lap. She knew that people were staring at her, that if she were like them she'd probably stop and stare too at the woman alone and soaking in the rain, talking to herself with no care for who might overhear.I look crazy. I am crazy, waiting here day after day just for the off chance that he might pass by. It was the waiting itself that was absurd, and not the motivation. But what else could Lightning do? She had searched as far and wide in the city as much her body would allow, exerting herself well past reason and entering into undiluted masochism, a habit she only broke by swearing a promise to Serah and Snow once they found out. I had to think about them, too. They're my family now. And just like the old world, family meant having rules. She was to come back home at six AM every morning and phone either one to let them know she was safe.
Lightning had thought wickedly of lying to get around this restriction. Not every time, just on the days bleeding into nights leading back into a day where she thought she had caught a possible trail leading back to Hope, until Snow displayed a surprising insight of cleverness. "Make sure she takes a picture of something in the house, so we know she's really there." So she had cursed and she had snarled and she had agreed, despite this outward show of resistance, because Lightning knew they cared. She knew they loved her, and love was a gift you fought to have and fought to find and fought to keep. And no one understood how to win a fight quite like a Farron.
This pattern continued for days. The days became weeks. The weeks soon passed into a month, then two… Serah began to write letters, and even Snow was starting to respond to Lightning's daily photographs – self-portraits in which she stared out of cold eyes into the camera – with actual words of sympathy. What did it matter if he was looking up inspirational quotes in Serah's notebooks and literature compilations, instead of coming up with them on his own? He cares about me, he wants to help – he's willing to try. That's what matters.
At the start of the third month, Snow had offered to help in the search himself, but Lightning wouldn't allow it. She hadn't wanted to say it in so many words, but she hoped that both Serah and Snow learned to understand that when she flat out said no and refused their company with as gracious a smile as her ailing heart could manage, she meant it kindly. She meant it in the very spirit of kindness, and nothing less. I won't try to break them apart this time. I know better now. They deserved to be with each other now, sharing each other's undivided company for the first time since they had made their relationship known. No obstructions, no restrictions – just the bliss they had found in each other.
Serah had thanked her for this clemency in their letters. Snow had gone one step further. "Don't worry so much, Sis. If I know Hope he's probably out looking for you right now, too. If he's taking this long it just means he's got a far way to travel."
It was one step too far. "Why?" Lightning asked.
"You really gotta ask? After all this time?"
But Snow had misunderstood, as she had expected him to. "Hope should already know that it's my job to keep an eye out, that I'm the one to always take point." Lightning remembered their promise given centuries and lifetimes and worlds ago on Cocoon. How keenly she still felt the weight of her vow as it sat in her heart like a conquering knife. I won't abandon you. I'll protect you. Lightning still cherished that promise to this day, would still strive to prove it true… whenever Hope arrived to let it happen.
How Snow had laughed at this, effortlessly and without malice. "It's not a war, Light. It's a reunion. Try to relax a little, will ya?" But he was wrong; he didn't understand at all. This small scrap of hope was the only thing Lightning had left to fight for.
And all she could do was wait. But waiting was a war of a different kind.
Lightning wanted to relax, but all she could think of was a pair of bright green eyes each time she closed her own, eyes full of pain that she had seen span the days up close and then the years from a distance. She had seen the pain dissolve, then thaw, only to be born again as resolve. The boy Lightning had fought to protect, then had the honor of fighting alongside, had meticulously shaped a new self out of what could have been – what should have been, if she were being honest with her praise – a merciless succession of trauma. A dead mother, a cursed life, damaged and dangerous strangers, all on top of a list of deities to kill and a future to save. Not exactly an easy path in life, and that's only if you're dealing with one of those burdens. But every scar and each still dripping wound deepened by grief became inspirations, not impediments. She would be a fool and cruel besides not to take strength from that kind of courage. Lightning had fought and toiled and killed and cheated Death by sheer luck of location, surviving in a realm Death's touch could not reach, forcing herself through every fatal moment to endure, to fight on, all the while Hope had fought a battle of his own.
And he'd done it all by waiting. He learned quite a bit and he created even more along the way, yes, but Hope was waiting through it all, which was a war of a different kind. Wars of the mind exacted greater tolls than that of flesh, blood, or bone. Lightning knew what the one was like, had known it for more than a dozen times beyond her natural life. It seemed the time had come in the new world, a world born of battle, to choose a different strategy now. Yes, waiting was a war of the mind.
Lightning sat very still and fought with every second that passed, waited with a patience that no assault could break, not even a knife striking true at the parts that hurt the most. The rain stopped and soon her clothing came as close to being dry as it would without her help, her pale rose hair sticking to her face and frozen to the back of her neck. The moon rose and the stars burned all above her, twinkling and hopeful, promising and delivering nothing. She waited and watched as the night sky soon bled a light red, the sun ascending and making the paler stars fade. She waited until she knew she was pushing the limits of her promise to her family, before standing up and leaving behind, like always, a part of herself on the bench, as if hearts could leave impressions on the surfaces they passed.
I'm here, Hope. I'm waiting for you, but it's getting harder every day to believe that you'll actually turn up. A tear moved across the back of her hand as Lightning rubbed her eyes and returned home.
Lightning arrived back home at thirteen minutes past six. She twisted every lock shut behind her as she took a hasty picture with her phone, adding into the subject line: It was hard to put up a fight today.
She had dropped her phone on the nightstand and retreated into the bathroom for the usual routine – shower, face washing, teeth brushing – only to stumble out ten minutes later to find that she had several messages waiting for her. Lightning frowned, her phone already buzzing in her hand.
"What do you want, Snow?" she said, answering the call.
There was silence on the other line. It lasted a beat too long for her patience to tolerate.
"Snow? You there?"
"I'll be there soon," the voice said. It wasn't quite the voice she had expected – but, then again, it was.
Lightning counted the seconds as she grabbed whatever clothes her hands could touch, pulled them on, and raced to the front door. She knew that voice. She had heard that voice in dreams both in the old world and the new. Not even the pain of death could make her forget what it was like to hear Hope speak.
Thirteen hundred seconds passed before there was a knock at the door. Lightning's fingers were rigid and calm but they burned like the meanest of fires as she twisted open every lock and threw back the door to greet him. She had to look up to meet Hope's eyes now. He was smiling, as she had dreamed he would. And he was breathless, his face flushed and his mouth open in the smallest of tears but releasing no words, none that Lightning could understand.
With a steady hand that blazed along every nerve and fiber tethering her to life, Lightning grabbed Hope by the collar of his shirt and tugged him into her home. "I waited for you," she said, but the heat that raged inside her skin failed to reach her voice. She was cold again, frozen and preserved, every word like an iron ore waiting to burn. To admit this was an agony she had never quite experienced before.
"I looked for you," Hope said, all heat and life and light, and his eyes swam with tears as if this could quench the blaze, soothe their aches into ash. "I'm sorry it took so long."
His eyes took in every inch of her pain and shared all the throes of their aches, but she refused to see him suffer. Not now, not like this. Not after so long. He loves me, she thought with a twist of a new knife, one that seemed forged from every angle of his face and edge of his teeth and bend of limbs and fingers and lips. He loves me, he wants to help me – he's always wanted to help, and he's always willing to try. That was all that mattered. That was all that had to matter.
Lightning didn't quite know how to put this into words, but she let her mouth give shape to the thoughts all the same. Hope understood, as she knew he would, and responded to her in kind, breathless, warm, and mostly silent.