A/N: Can't wait until Lightning Returns comes out. Although this is technically Caius/Yeul/Noel, it's actually mostly Noel/Yeul.
Knight and King
I.
His heart was torn, ripped through (still throbbing) and seared.
She didn't know who he was.
She glanced back with empty eyes, curious but indifferent.
She didn't know.
She walked toward Caius—away from him.
She didn't know.
And this, Noel thought, must be what betrayal was. This ugly, effusive, irrepressible hurt of a thousand stings and a hundred bites.
Wait. He wanted to say. Wait. Tell me, answer me.
She did not look back again as she disappeared, dissipated into light on top of that roof. With Caius following, Caius forever faithful.
"I'm sorry," Serah whispered. Her face was heartfelt and apologetic. Gently, she grasped his shoulder.
Noel shrugged her off. "It's okay. Doesn't matter. I didn't expect her to remember—to know me. How can she? I'm not even born yet."
...
On the day of Yeul's tenth birthday, he asked Caius: which Yeul had been the happiest. Unfazed, Caius stared at him. His eyes were steely, cold, and wrapped in millennia's worth of aching emotions.
And although he did not say (not quite) Noel understood. That this Yeul, the last Yeul, was the first one who knew happiness. For this had been the wish of the countless seeresses preceding her.
...
The disease had begun slowly, but inexorable and insidious, it seeped into the waters and leeched the air of health. And soon, the plants and animals started dying and before long, so did the villagers.
By the time he was five and Yeul was two, the strong beasts had extinguished the weaker ones. Game was sparse and what little they caught was always tainted with the same grimy film. Their hides were gray and flesh blistering, awful and hideous and red.
Noel took a bite. It was horrible, putrescent.
Weathering his grandmother's admonishing frown, he summoned the courage to take another taste. This was all the food they had left. But tomorrow (he swore) he'll go beyond the barriers to hunt. He thought of how Yeul will clap and laugh when he brings her the carcass.
Triumphant, he will be, was certain.
...
Although Serah was not Yeul, he was grateful to have her there. She was comforting and warm and perhaps the greatest (only) friend he had. She could make him laugh, even if it emerged strangled and strangely pitched.
Hearing her talk about Lightning, Sazh, and Hope—and Vanille and Fang (even Snow)—temporarily allayed the gloom and fears and doomed dread of guilt. Droning and drifting as she lulled him asleep. He especially loved when she smiled.
Serah's smile was bright and true, shorn of artifice good and bad. She did not smile to please; it came only when she pleased. There was no grief, no remorse, no beginnings and endings in her smile. Hers was free from guilt.
It was so different from Yeul's, whose smiles metamorphosed by the hour and mirrored all the shades of night. She smiled to prove how brave she was (one of the boys). Because it soothed him, because he wanted her to.
When Yeul smiled, it felt like a tragedy being born. And another part of him was killed, wrenched and dispersed in the barren wind.
...
Yeul was intrigued by flowers. She pronounced the word carefully, rolling it over and over again in her mouth. Her tongue struggled to form the correct syllables.
And so, he tried to whittle one for her. Out of ash-bark and dead-wood, he desperately wanted to resurrect them.
(There were no more flowers in their lifetime.)
...
He felt the thunder roaring through his bones and lightning smoldering his blood. He was bruised and broken and alive. Heavy, the ground dragged him down, down into the turgid, rancid dirt. But he had survived. Above him, Caius sheathed his sword. Their lesson concluded here.
"Get up," Caius ordered calmly.
Sucking in breath, Noel rose. Head pounding, he braced for the onslaught of nausea and vertigo. He had failed to block yet again, failed to master this simple, impossibly basic technique.
"We shall try again tomorrow," Caius continued. "It is important that you learn how to properly counter. It is your duty as a guardian."
"No. You are her Guardian. And I—I'm nobody. I'm not fit to be a guardian. I'm too weak, pathetic."
Too human.
Caius did not respond. Instead, he unleashed assault after assault, brutally drilling each dire, invaluable lesson into Noel's flesh. He will be branded with incantations and maneuvers until the skin peeled back raw and crimson, revealing all his mortal shortcomings.
Beyond, waving from atop the boulder, Yeul smiled and cheered them on. She looked so beautiful against the lurid, decaying rust-sky. And if only it could be just the two of them, just for a moment. Without Caius, without the world. Only a boy and a girl and a lifetime ahead.
Dodging an attack, Noel suddenly hated his mentor.
Wanted him dead.
...
Yeul had an insatiable curiosity and constantly hounded Caius for her past lives. And every time, Caius patiently, kindly explained that disclosing any information about her previous cycles was forbidden.
"Caius," she whispered, eyes downcast and demure. "You and I both know that I will be the last Yeul. There can be no harm."
"Nonetheless, it is not something I can do. Please do not ask of me."
"I don't have much time left. Will you be there…in the end? I saw Noel but not you."
He swallowed hard and turned away. He couldn't face her like this: all his cowardice and madness engraved harshly, unrepentantly on his face. He must feign strength for her sake and the boundless sacrifices she had made.
"Answer me, Caius, please. Will you be there in the end?"
As I die?
"I will try."
...
Heart trembling in wild staccato beats, Noel raced inside the temple. He careened around the corner, almost scraping against the ruined frieze, and rushed to her.
Yeul.
Yeul.
"Yeul!" he called. "Hey, are you all right?"
She was breathing heavily, kneeling on the damp, frigid stone. A layer of sweat had exploded, coating her skin in a cloying perfume of rot and honey. He gripped her hand with his own, mesmerized by how small and pale and frozen it felt.
Don't die. Please don't die.
—This he cried, knowing otherwise.
"I'm glad to see you, Noel, just one last time."
—Glad it's you, that it's always been you.
(Fortified by the somnolent vacuity of Valhalla, Caius watched her die, cradled and loved in Noel's arms. The boy released a strangled howl as her body dissolved, absolved of burdens and pain. Silently, Caius commiserated with him.)