Setting:
Director Hope Estheim's office at the Academy, the most prestigious research center and school in all of Gran Pulse. Here Hope and Serah try to teach Hope's girlfriend and Professor of Physics, Claire Farron aka Lightning, how to smile. A daunting task for a woman who's most infamous feature is her trademark scowl. With today being a holiday and the students (save for the ones that live within the Academy's dormitories) all out in Academia doing whatever they please, Hope and Serah Farron, Lightning's sister, try to teach her the art of smiling.
The ever present scowl.
How many had run in fear from the look of that scowl? How many had quivered and quaked and heebie-jeebied over seeing the frightening facial feature? How many enemies had wet themselves at the sight of that dark and evil looking act of contrition? It was too many, far too many, for the heroic Valkyrie of Valhalla to count. But today, it was a different story. No, today she sat in the office of her longtime lover, best friend and occasional sparring partner, Hope Estheim, and her little sister Serah. Betwixt the two was a diagram of different faces in different forms of the act of smiling. All Lightning could do was scowl.
"Come on, Light," whined Serah, tapping the pointer against one of the pictures.
"Try to smile at least. You haven't smiled in Etro knows how long. Come on, Light! I know you can do it!"
Light glared at her little sister, the scowl still present on her face.
"I. Don't. Smile," Light bit out, her scowl deepening.
"Come on, Light," sighed Hope, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Let's go over this again. Eventually, you'll have to soak in enough knowledge to know what a smile means. So let's look at the Smile Board again. Pay close attention this time. Please. For your sake as well as everyone else's, pay attention and smile."
Light only scowled at her boyfriend as she watched him walk over to the "Smile Board" and point to various faces with his pointer.
"This," he said, tapping a picture of Kefka, "Is an insane smile. This isn't something anyone wants to see."
"Unless you're Vanille," retorted Serah, snickering.
"Ahem! Jokes aside," growled Hope," This isn't the smile we are looking for. We are looking for a smile more like these."
Clicking the button on the projector, a collage of faces, moreso the friends of the three, appeared, all smiling.
"Each individual smiles differently and for different reasons. They have their 'Happy Place'. A 'Happy Place' is a place where they go to achieve such a wonderful feature as a smile. Light, you don't smile because you lack a 'Happy Place'. We need to find your 'Happy Place', and get you to achieve the goal of a smile."
Light sat there, scowling.
Happy Places? I'll show him a happy place she thought to herself as she got to her feet.
"I don't have a 'Happy Place', Hope? Oh, I have a happy place, and in it, you're tied down, gagged, and being eaten by Cie'ths."
She felt her scowl deepen at the look of shock on her friends faces. She, in a way, didn't mean to be rude, but it just came out that way because Light never held back, on anything. She sighed heavily as she sat back down, crossing one leg over the other, smirking slightly at the light gulp she heard from Hope as he ushered the now confused Serah out of the room, much to the younger Farron's protests and flailings, huffing indignantly as she was unceremoniously dumped outside the door.
"Go get Vanille and Sazh out on the Chocobo unit and go get some Ultima Ice Cream. Don't come back to my office for an hour…..two at the most."
A bewildered Serah just shook her head and headed off to round up her friends, wondering what had suddenly gotten into Hope, and why he reacted like that when Light crossed her legs. Naiveté was a gift Serah often was cursed with. Sighing audibly, she gathered up the aforementioned people and was off on the task of fetching ice cream.
Meanwhile, back in Hope's office, Light was now sitting on Hope's desk, looking at him in confusion. She'd seen that look in his eyes before, and knew what it meant, but why now of all times? And why the harsh smiling lessons? She knew how to smile, she just never did. To her, she never felt right when she smiled, so she never did, which is why she couldn't understand everyone's constant need to force her into the contrite act. But, she also didn't feel like explaining why she didn't smile either, because she figured no one will understand.
Her thoughts, though, were instantly derailed when Hope's lips instantly crashed down on hers, his hands on her hips, holding her to that spot on the desk. When he finally tore his lips from hers, their eyes locked. Oh yeah….that look was definitely there. She could feel it radiating off of him in waves, and it made her chuckle. Hope was one of very few that had ever seen the softer side to the warrior Valkyrie, mostly because Hope brought out that soft side she hid behind her warrior spirit. Hope knew how to draw even the most tender moments from the usually battle ready woman, a feat that amazed her to no end.
This moment surely was no different.
Pecking at her lips with light kisses, Hope released one hand from her hips and swept everything off his desk, smirking at the pinkette as he watched her eyes widen. They both knew where this was going to lead and wanted no interruptions. Though, as Light soon discovered, even the best laid plans have loopholes that bring about surprising results.
Hope was about to lean in for another kiss when Light stopped him, her hand pressed firmly on his chest.
"Hope, you know we can't do this right now," she said, lowering her eyes to the floor.
"Who says we can't?"
"I said. Hope… there's a reason why I don't smile."
This sent Hope reeling from his pleasure induced state. Light had never fully opened to him about much of anything before. But the look of….sadness?...told him she'd figured it was time.
"Hope, how do you smile when everything around you falls apart faster than you can repair it? How do you mend something that always breaks again and again and again? How can you justify a smile when your heart simply doesn't feel it? You can't and you don't, Hope. I look around and see these people and their fake smiles and it pisses me off that people will smile even when it isn't real. What right do they have to fake such a thing?! Burn it off their faces! They don't know what it's like to lose something so mundane as a smile by tragic means! I hate them! I hate you, Hope! You're the worst of them all!"
Hope was stunned into silence.
"So that's how you justify not smiling? That is the reasoning you have for not smiling? Claire, I have heard some ridiculously stupid shit from you before, but this just steals it all away. You're really an idiot, you know that? We have ALL been through things that would glue a permanent scowl to our faces. You know why we don't? We. Get. Over. Them. We deal with them. We don't let them consume us and haunt us and turn us scowling savages hell bent on making everyone else miserable. Grow up, Claire. Face what happened and come to terms with it! Stop being a coward and running from it!"
"I don't run from anything!"
Meanwhile, after exactly two hours, Serah and the others retuned from a day of ice cream and walking around Gran Pulse. Coming up to Hope's door, Serah jiggled the knob, freezing when she heard noises coming from the other side. Looking back to Vanille and Sazh, she saw the knowing grins on their faces, making her more confused than she was before, but before she could even ask, the lock clicked and the door began to open.
The trio took a step back as a disheveled Hope emerged from the room, clothes torn and his skin covered in blood, burns and bruises. The reaction from the trio, Hope and Light would later recall, were priceless. Serah looked like a deer in the headlights, Vanille was snickering and Sazh had the wise old man 'knowing smile' on his face, which only made Hope chuckle as Light emerged, her head down. Serah ran over to her sister, stopping mid-tracks as she heard something coming from Light that she hadn't heard in a while, laughter.
"Sister?" asked Serah.
Light's head suddenly lifted, on her usually scowling face….was a smile.
"I know that look," Sazh chuckled, ruffling Hope's hair.
"Well done, Hope," giggled Vanille as she waved her hand in front of the over-shocked Serah, trying to get the younger Farron's attention.
"Hope, my man," chuckled Sazh, "I think you helped Light discover her Happy Place."