Title: I'll Watch Out For You, Too
Rating: T
Genre: Friendship/Adventure
Warning: Some violence and rather gruesome descriptions of monster disembowelment.
Plot Summary: When Lightning unexpectedly comes down with an illness, Hope realizes that it's his turn to uphold his end of their promise – to look after her. In-game AU. Hope/Light pre-romance. Three-shot.
A/N: I figured it was time to join the FFXIII fanfiction community.
A supremely unoriginal prompt, I know. Trap two characters together under extenuating circumstances, proceed to have them learn interesting details about themselves and each other. It's been done countless times. What can I say – I was lazy.
Believe it or not, I've never actually played the game (unless you count my running around in the beginning for an hour or so). My knowledge of FFXIII is limited to cutscenes, Wiki articles, snippets of walkthroughs and a brief consultation of the bestiary.
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Part I – Guardian and Charge
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"You'll be okay. I'll keep you safe."
Were he not so familiar with Lightning's combat capabilities, Hope wouldn't have noticed.
They were facing off with a Vampire on the snowy, crystal-dusted route between Oerba and Taejin's Tower. As usual, Lightning was in the front line (and he in the back), agilely sidestepping their enemy's blows and retaliating with powerful ones of her own. It occurred to him, as gunblade met scale-hardened claws in a series of metallic clashes, that there was something odd about the way she moved – a sluggishness to her attacks perhaps, not unlike pauses in an otherwise seamless choreography.
Suspecting injury, he sent a few Cure spells her way, but they didn't have any observable effect. Neither did Esuna.
The battle ended shortly afterward. With a grunt of exertion – she was too self-possessed to emit a battle cry or something of the kind – Lightning plunged her gunblade into the Vampire's torso. The smell of ozone, sweet and acrid, filled the air as she channelled Thunder magic through her weapon, engulfing the Cie'th in a burst of crackling static. She then withdrew her blade and leapt back, allowing Hope to rush in and set their enemy alight with a Firaga spell.
The resulting explosion sent bits of charred flesh and crystal flying in every direction. A particularly bloody piece splattered onto his cheek; Hope swept it aside with a faint groan of revulsion.
Taking care not to step on the still-smoking remains of the Vampire, he turned around and closed the short distance between Lightning and himself. It always bothered him whenever they killed Cie'th – grotesque and bloodthirsty as those creatures were, they were also human once – but right now, his main concern was his partner. Her face was an expressionless mask, but her back had ever so slight a stoop to it. Combined with the fact that he could hear her breaths – shallow and teetering on this side of laboured – Hope recognised straightaway that something was amiss.
Lightning, he knew, did not tire so easily.
"Light, are you alright?"
The ex-soldier righted herself in an instant, all signs of weakness gone. "It's nothing. Just a little tired," she conceded when Hope gave her an unconvinced frown.
"You sure?" he persisted. "Maybe we should return to the village."
She shook her head. "Not until we haul back some proper grub. There's gotta be something around here that we can kill and eat. Come on."
Hope sighed. There was little he could do to sway Lightning when her determination set in like that.
"Let me reapply the Deceptisol at least."
Retrieving the can of monster repellent from his hip pouch, Hope proceeded to spray it over Lightning and himself. Satisfied with the silvery shroud it produced, he tucked the can away and trotted after Lightning, who had already resumed her trek forward.
As it transpired, the duo was out hunting, a task that became imperative upon their arrival on Gran Pulse. Going hungry wasn't an issue back on Cocoon. Food was everywhere, and even if their gil cards hadn't been invalidated thanks to their fugitive status, vendors were notoriously easy to break into. Obviously, shopping – or shoplifting, if Hope wanted to be accurate – was no longer an option, meaning that the group of l'Cie had to find other means of procuring food.
Unfortunately for them, food on Gran Pulse did not come easy.
According to one Oerba Yun Fang, the key to survival in the Pulsian wilderness was to either eat or be eaten. It took no more than setting foot upon the Archylte Steppe to confirm the truth of that statement. Within the first hour, the group had been ambushed by a pack of drooling Gorgonopsids; how everyone managed to survive the attack with all body parts intact was a miracle in and of itself. However, the rucksack containing their rations had disappeared during the encounter, leaving them to bemoan the sorry state of their stomachs – until Fang dragged back the speared corpse of some shaggy-looking beast and declared it 'dinner'.
That had been their modus operandi ever since.
It was unanimously decided that Fang be the team's main huntress; her familiarity with the territory and demonstrated competence were reason enough. In the event that Fang was otherwise occupied, Lightning would take up the slack – the survival skills she picked up during military training served her well in this regard. It would appear that the onus had shifted onto Lightning's shoulders for now; the group had just arrived at Oerba, and one would have to have the sensitivity of a rock not to sense Fang's preoccupation with her hometown.
Not that Hope blamed the tribeswoman. Vanille had regaled everyone with tales of a lush, sun-drenched paradise; the crystalline, Cie'th-infested reality was not something he had been prepared for – and her and Fang only less so, he imagined. It wrenched his heart to see sorrow fill Vanille's normally bright eyes, stripping away the sparkle and leaving broken mirrors behind. Fang was more restrained of demeanour, but Hope didn't need to see the crease between her brows or the stiffness to her stance to know that she felt as Vanille did.
But he hadn't been able to do anything for them. What words, what gestures could he possibly have offered in comfort? He was only a kid – one, furthermore, who was sheltered and inexperienced in the ways of the world.
When Lightning, ever the pragmatist, had announced that she was leaving to gather supplies, Hope had volunteered to accompany her. It was a cowardly move on his part, he knew, choosing to escape rather than endure the discomfort that his friends' grief brought. But he also knew that while empty platitudes were just that – empty – distance and a moment's privacy could grant them a measure of the solace they so desperately needed. The rest would come with time.
And that was how he and Lightning came to be in their present circumstances.
A breath of icy wind stole across Hope's face, eliciting a wince and an involuntary shiver. Pulling the fur pelt (stripped and sewn from the remains of a Gorgonopsid back at the Archylte Steppe) tighter around himself, he felt a spark of envy and admiration for his partner. Despite sporting nothing more than her Guardian Corp uniform, Lightning showed no indication of cold. The increased resilience that came with being l'Cie only accounted for so much – this was more likely to be a by-product of her military training. There were perks to being an ex-soldier, he supposed.
They had been at this for a while now. The sun, still low in the heavily clouded sky when they first set off, had nearly climbed to its zenith. Edible prey was proving elusive, though – the only creatures they had encountered thus far were Cie'th, and those rated as poorly as toxic sludge on the palatability scale.
Lost in his musings, Hope didn't notice that Lightning had stopped walking until he nearly ran into her.
"Hope, look."
"Wha—?" Shaking his head to clear his disorientation, Hope stepped around his partner to see what had caught her eye. "Is that—?"
She nudged at the snow, where a set of rounded indentations was clearly visible. "Paw prints, wolf-kind. We saw Mánagarmr back at Taejin's Tower."
"Maybe one of them accidentally wandered out here?"
Lightning nodded. "The tracks look fresh. If we hurry, we should be able to track it down."
"Right."
The prints led to a small alcove within a cliff. Recalling the Mánagarmr's water-elemental weakness, Hope readied a Watera spell, drawing moisture from the surrounding air into a bubble in his palm. Lightning, in the meantime, had unsheathed her gunblade and crouched in wait at the entrance. At a nod from her, Hope flung the bubble into the alcove, causing a splattering sound as it burst against rock. A wet snarl followed.
The beast was indeed inside.
Enraged, the Mánagarmr leapt out of its hiding place – only to run headlong into Lightning's outstretched blade. The resulting crunch sent shudders up Hope's spine; the beast had managed to impale jaw, eye and brain across the two-foot length of steel. Blood and fluids Hope preferred not to identify spurted everywhere, catching on Lightning's clothes and staining those and the snow crimson. A horrible, gurgling noise issued from the Mánagarmr's throat, then it collapsed onto the ground, dead.
Or not so Lightning thought. Using her embedded blade as a conduit, she discharged a burst of Thunder magic into the corpse, making it convulse as it short-circuited itself. Only when the twitching stopped did she tug her weapon free, intent on getting into the serious business of butchering.
Hope was seized with the overwhelming urge to retch. What Lightning had just done – that was needless, gratuitous overkill. Yes, he understood that she wanted to make certain that the Mánagarmr was dead – better sure than sorry, she would say – but was it necessary to go that far? To make matters worse, she looked positively gruesome, her face and gunblade drenched in gore – like an all-too-real representation of the homicidal maniacs he'd seen in horror films.
His stomach lost the battle for control then, and he doubled over, spitting bile into the snow.
It was just as well that he'd skipped breakfast. One moment of offended sensibilities, and he'd have undone the group's efforts to put food down his belly – the reason why he and Lightning were out hunting in the first place – by bringing it back up. Pathetic.
To his relief, the wave of nausea subsided after a minute or so. Wiping his mouth on the back of a gloved hand – there wasn't much he could do about the rancid aftertaste – Hope turned back to his partner. She was diligently hacking the Mánagarmr carcass into smaller, portable chunks, gunblade serving as improvised cleaver. As she raised her blade and brought it back down again, Hope realized something: there were no half-measures with this woman. Everything she did, she did with the utmost focus and, if not care, attention. Even slaughtering an animal. It was just part of who she was.
Maybe he could forgive her earlier stint with the Thunder spell. Maybe.
A sharp voice roused him from his mental wanderings. "Hope, are you just going to stand there and stare?"
"Oh—sorry." He gave her a sheepish grin. "What do you need help with?"
There was the sound of bone snapping, and an amputated hindleg skidded across the ground towards him. "Cauterize the bleeding ends with Fire. Don't want it dripping all over the place."
At the sight of the limb, mangled and still oozing blood, Hope's stomach threatened rebellion again. Really, could anyone blame him for not wanting to be up close and personal with someone's detached leg? Gulping, he forced down his queasiness and did what Lightning asked ofr, summoning the flames that would char the flesh brown.
They continued in this vein for another ten minutes, Lightning passing on chunks of dismembered Mánagarmr to Hope for cauterization. Once, while waiting for the next chunk, he made the mistake of examining Lightning's worksite too closely. The pile of discarded intestines was not a sight he cared to revisit in the future, nor were the pungent, organic odours wafting from them. A second round of dry retching prompted Lightning to incinerate the pile, breath escaping her in the universal gesture of exasperation.
"You'd think you'd be used to this situation by now."
"Yeah, but it doesn't get any easi—Eurp!"
Five minutes later, they were navigating their way back to Oerba, butchered parts slung over their shoulders and Deceptisol liberally applied. The wind that had been no more than a sigh earlier now howled with fury, whipping eddies of snow and crystal dust around and past them. Dark clouds had completely eclipsed the sky, blocking out all of the sun's remaining warmth and casting everything in an ominous shade of grey. Teeth chattering, Hope pushed his way to Lightning's blurry silhouette, which had stopped mid-step without apparent cause.
"L-Light? Is s-something the m-matter?"
She abruptly collapsed onto her knees.
"Light!" A Cure spell sprang onto his fingertips in an instant. "Where are you in-injured? I can heal—"
"It's… it's not that." Her voice, already husky to begin with, now had the consistency of sandpaper. "I—" She dug her gunblade into the snow, and it dawned on Hope that the weapon was the only thing keeping her upright. "Sick," she finally managed.
Hearing that one word shattered all vestiges of calm within him, flooding his mind with the red haze of panic. He'd noticed the signs of Lightning's weakness before; why oh why hadn't he insisted that they returned to Oerba? Now they were in the middle of a blizzard that he'd only read about in storybooks and Lightning was too weak to walk, which meant they were going to freeze to death where they stood. They were going to die and he was only fourteen and not even grown up yet and he would never see his father and Snow and the others again and sweet Eden, they were going to die—
"Hope!"
The cry of his name, ragged and barely audible over the roaring wind, jolted him back to reality. No, he couldn't afford to panic now. He was the only full-bodied one between them; Lightning needed him.
Shouting his name must have sapped what little remained of her strength, for he had to press his face to hers in order to hear her next words. "Find… shelter. Cave… hundred metres back…"
The trek backwards was, without a doubt, the most difficult task Hope had undertaken in the entirety of his young life. They had to abandon a good majority of the Mánagarmr carcass – he was already struggling to shoulder Lightning's greater weight, never mind that of her cargo. Each step felt like he was sinking into mud, and his calves screamed white-hot protest at the abuse to which he subjected them. As if that wasn't bad enough, the wind decided to join the conspiracy against him, blowing mercilessly in his direction until he could have sworn that his lips and ears (and fingers and toes) had turned into ice and crumbled away.
When the entrance of the cave – a cave that he'd prayed to the Maker existed and wasn't a figment of Lightning's imagination – at last came into view, Hope nearly sobbed in relief. A quick blast of Aeroga evicted any previous occupants, and he shuffled inside, laying Lightning on the ground as gently as his exhaustion would allow. Tossing the remainder of the Mánagarmr chunks into a corner, Hope removed the fur pelt from his shoulders and covered his partner with it. The grey dots that had slowly encroached into his vision were now overwhelming, and he slumped beside his partner, hand finding hers and squeezing—
Then his eyelids fluttered shut and the world lapsed into darkness.