Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIII/Lightning Returns do not belong to me. Title and conclusion are a quote from Andrea Gibson. "Young God" lyrics below are by Halsey.
i said to the sun, "tell me about the big bang"
(he says, "Oh, baby girl, you know we're gonna be legends
I'm the king and you're the queen and we will stumble through heaven)
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When the end comes they don't remember who speaks the question first. Only that it hangs in the air between them, heavy and drowning them under its weight.
"We could have done it better," Hope answers the thought that has been burrowing itself into their minds for the eternity of their earthly lives. Claire tracks her fingers up his bare chest, her touch stone-cold and feather-light. He takes her hand and presses a kiss to it with lips that chill like the below zero of the universe.
"We could have created a better world." Claire's murmur is a noose tightening around their necks. Behind her, through the glass planes of their hotel penthouse, glitters the sky line of New York City. The city that never sleeps. Yusnaan - they still stumble over the name sometimes before correcting it. It's Earth now. The memories inside of them churn like slumbering beasts, refusing to leave. Refusing to be forgotten.
Claire's pale skin is a beacon in the dim light of their reflection as she lounges beside him, one arm propped up to support her head. Hope trails a hand down the smooth pane of her back and notes the paleness of Claire Farron, the paleness of his hair. The white of them is like crystal dust in the night.
Claire shifts and his hand drops to the dip of her waist. His grip is possessive.
"We should sleep," she reminds him and caresses the skin at his throat, splaying her fingers to either side of his neck until his heartbeat flutters against the pads of her thumb and forefinger. "Your conference starts early tomorrow."
He inclines his head in a silent answer and Claire's hand shifts. It rises to the underside of his jaw and he smiles at her then, softly. "Alright."
He lies down next to his lover and they dream of the universe at their fingertips. The new world bobs in the ocean of hopes between them, the hull of it creaking with salt water.
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In the beginning there is only Mwynn. Her loneliness sculpts a son made of gold and radiance; she dubs him Bhunivelze, and he is worthy of worship.
(If only there existed those to offer it.)
Cosmogenesis proves to be a realm too small for the existence of both. The son strikes; his gentle mother falters; and He is the only One left.
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It's only natural for them to move in together - they did save the world, after all (and those thirteen days encapsulate an eternity of a thousand years' worth of friendship). She works as a PI and he, a molecular biologist. They live in a city whose veins they trace day by day until it's mapped out in their minds. Their training allows them nothing less. The past is a stretch of road that lingers in the horizon that they try to never look at; friends and family accomplish it faster than them, until it's only the two of them that still shed their civilian personas the moment they step through their front door. The past digs its claws into the structure blocks of their existence and refuses to budge; it bleeds into their dreams, into their days. It is a slow burn that takes them two years and seven months to notice that when Claire Farron sleeps, it is always the memories of Lightning that she relives. When Hope Estheim dreams, he walks a city built on sorrow. They wake and stare at the ceiling and the question lingers on their lips, too fragile and heavy at the same time to be voiced:
Do you think we could have done it better?
She asks him if he ever hated her while she was Etro's eternal guardian and he was the brilliant man leading humanity to its future. He pauses and says yes, and then, no. The Hope Estheims who hated you never made it past their doomed timelines. His hand caresses the curls of her hair. I never took abandonment well, he remarks with a wry smile.
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"Those thirteen days felt like an eternity," she muses out loud to Serah one day, a year and three months into being a twenty one year old girl living in New York City. Her sister laughs over the wedding cake being taste tested between them and dips one finger into the icing.
"You did get a lot done. I can't imagine anyone else managing everything that you did in such a short time." She pops it into her mouth and makes a thoughtful noise. "You were some sort of super human, Claire."
"Well," Claire laughs, "I was a goddess in training, after all."
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He is not lonely but afraid: His mother lingers at the edges of the unseen realm, her sobs a melodious song that echoes through existence. He fears she has cursed Him and His to an eternity of degradation, a yawning oblivion ready to envelop All. So He strikes and tyrannous Pulse springs forth into existence and with him, a world on which Bhunivelze expects a door to rest. The aether of Cosmogenesis solidifies into brown earth and life and a blue sky of Mwynn's hair. Her eyes judge Him from every sprout of green that emerges from the cracks of the world. Bhunivelze trembles in rage.
His Daughter is carved lovingly by His grace and it is only when she gazes at Him with adoration in her eyes that He howls. Mwynn's gentle sadness stares back at Him, a question on her lips.
Curse you! He intones in the abyss and casts the young Goddess aside. His mother had always been too kind. He does not doubt that His Etro will be the same and so does not grant her power, content that she will soon perish from her own follies.
Cunning Lindzei is the last He calls forth, and Lindzei is the one granted the task of protecting Him and His. Satisfied with His work, He retreats into His crystal sleep and begins the search for the gate to the unseen realm. He does not wake when His Daughter takes her own life, or when Pulse sculpts beings from soil and pours his sister's blood into the vessels. He does not wake when Etro washes ashore onto the unseen realm He so desperately seeks and, pitying the fleeting lives of those now sharing her blood, splinters her own soul to grant them rebirth.
(She is the instigator to her own destruction. The god of light is never wrong, after all.)
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Claire whispers to him one dark night, "Sometimes I think Lightning Farron died the moment she touched Valhalla."
Hope shifts on the bed beneath her. His eyes trace her face and the grave, near-frightened expression there. "If she is dead," he whispers back, "then who are you?"
The clock in their bedroom ticks on. Claire closes her eyes and breathes out; the dust swirling in the moonlight shines like crystals. "I don't know."
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Yeul comes to her in a dream that has them standing in the desolate hall of a pristine Valhalla, throne affixed to the floor and temple affixed to the earth. "Rebirth is a part of life," the Seeress tells her, eyes focused on the empty seat beckoning them forth. "No one escapes from it."
"You did," Lightning points out and Yeul looks up at her then, ancient eyes alight with an unearthly chill.
"I have yet to truly die," the child-crone says and at once they stand on the beach of lost souls, the waters brushing at their feet. In the distance on the horizon a body floats on the currents. It moves closer to the shore with each gentle wave.
"Who is that?" Comes the question from Claire's lips. The lone soul is prominently displayed for the dead to see, a lighthouse beckoning all towards it.
"It is Etro." Yeul winds her pale fingers together before her. "Or perhaps it is Mwynn. Their souls have been one for all of your kind's history, Claire Farron. Valhalla is calling them home." Beneath her eyelashes she peers at her companion, a smile pulling at her lips. She is a ghoul trapped in the skin of a young girl, Claire thinks. "Or perhaps it is you, Lightning. Do you hear the shores singing, calling you home?"
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Sometimes she wakes and the bells in the distance lead her homeward bound.
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When they break the end comes upon them and blesses them with divinity, the answer to the music crying in their souls. It is only natural; it is only in their nature. They are both God-touched and God-killers for whom normality was never an option. The false world shatters under their hands and is rebuilt with blood and crystal dust, until there is nothing but perfection before the God and his Goddess.
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Before Pulse retreats to his own slumber, he addresses the sister he knows resides on the other side of existence.
"Gods can do no wrong," he says, repeating the first words God had ever uttered to him. Where once there was the song of Mwynn's anguish, there is only Etro's soft voice grieving.
He reflects on the creatures he has made out of his flesh and Etro's blood, of the ones his divine sister is killing herself for. He tells her:
"It is humans who make the mistakes. It is them who you make such a sacrifice for."
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"It is the humans who make the mistakes," Hope murmurs into the divinity of her skin on the final night before the earth turns to ash. "After all, gods can do no wrong." Their breaths mingle in the pre-dawn light and it looks like creation.
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The sun said, "it hurts to become."
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