It's ten-fifteen on a sunny Friday morning, and Fang nearly has a heart attack.
Considering the aura of cool confidence she usually keeps, it's quite unpleasant. Fang prides herself on her self-control and ability to maintain a cocky face even in the worst of situations – and all that goes out the window when she sees the platinum-haired teen sitting in the shade of the maple tree on the University of New Eden's ritzy campus.
She's only known one bratty kid with that head of hair.
Her brain screams that's impossible, get a grip you're obviously delusional from post-crystallization trauma and instinct shrieks back he can't be anyone else, who else could he possibly be? Never mind that her brain makes the better case. Hope Estheim cannot possibly be alive after this span of time. Not after nigh on nine centuries.
Not to mention that's a rather long time for L'Cie to be frozen as well.
Not that Fang has a basis of comparison for that, aside from their first stint as crystal statues.
She chances another glance at the teenager studying on the university lawn, and decides not to approach him.
Instead, from her position on the other side of the street, she stares. She burns a hole in the crown of his head from where he sits bent over the impressively complicated-looking textbook and heavily marked notes. Until he actually does look up, pale green eyes mildly puzzled, right at her.
Fang, to her credit, doesn't even blink.
Vanille taps another key on the… com-pew-torr, as they call it. She knows that she probably looks as odd as they come, pressing hesitantly on the colored keys and double checking the marks on buttons before she taps them. Still, she and Fang need to learn as much about this strange era as they can – the library is the best place to start, even if this technology is even more bewildering than the kind they had the second time she woke up.
She ignores the pang of sadness that comes with the realization that everything and everyone she knew is gone - again.
There's no sense in thinking about chocobo chicks nurtured in wild nests of hair and polished guns tucked into an olive-green jacket. About pale trench coats and laughs that boomed belly-deep. About pink hair swept always over the shoulder and green eyes that burned quiet optimism.
Do something for me, will you? Keep smiling.
I-it makes me happy when you smile.
Vanille shuts her eyes and blinks back tears, blocks out the surge of unwanted memories her mind supplies. It doesn't matter. They're all gone.
Fang is her only constant now.
She initiates the search, and results flash down the screen. She clicks on the first link, and reads the paragraphs that scroll past on the holographic monitor.
2 A.F. (After Fall)
In the wake of Cocoon's fall to Pulse, the majority of the population chose to descend and build lives on the continent. Their survival in such trying circumstances can primarily be attributed to the aid of the former Pulse L'Cie that brought about the downfall of the fal'Cie controlling Cocoon. These individuals included Sazh Katroy, Hope Estheim, Claire "Lightning" Farron, and Snow Villiers. Despite protest from anti-L'Cie factions, they took command of the Cocoonfolk – greenhorn settlers who proved little ability to take care of themselves in the harsh conditions – and built a new society under a government called the Academy. Four years later in 10 A.F., Hope Estheim, hailed for years as a child prodigy, would become the Research Director of the new regime at the age of nineteen years old.
Historical accounts of the Cocoon citizens' reactions to the returning L'Cie contain numerous contradictions and have generated much debate among specialists; however, the accepted consensus among historical analysts is that…
Vanille stops. She doesn't want to read any more.
I wonder – what's the point of all our efforts, if this is what we're served?
They aren't L'Cie anymore. The brands were erased when they were freed from the crystal, and now she and Fang can live out their lives without fear of an unavoidable destiny. But without their friends, the people that made it all worth it, what can they do?
Vanille glances absentmindedly at the bookshelves, and then sees the boy poring over the picture books there. He looks familiar, but that can't be. She and Fang have barely spent two days in this world. Certainly not enough time to get to know anyone, much less a child.
The boy turns briefly, and Vanille gasps as, against all odds, she recognizes his face.
"Dajh?" she whispers.
A flash of green on the edge of her vision catches her eye, and she sees the man who must be his father, poring over a shelf of thinner books nearby. He doesn't wear the long coat she remembers, but the olive green vest and khaki trousers are close enough.
Not to mention the afros.
Her legs shake, and before she knows it, she's deserted her station and run. Not in the direction of the boy laughing at his colorful picture books, not towards the man perusing the shelves, but away, barely stopping to squeak apologies when she crashes into someone – she spots a rose-colored side tail and pleated red skirt before she's sped past - and sends a stack of books flying. In what seems like no time at all, Vanille is outside, where she leans against the wall and tries to slow her racing heartbeat.
She can't be haunted by the ghosts of the past, not now. She can't be. They're not real.
That tiny, traitorous voice in the back of her head thinks differently.
Running away again, aren't you?
Vanille puts her face in her hands and cries.
Claire Farron dives to the side and rolls into position, gunblade already raised to fire. A half second to aim, and five rounds hammer into the target in quick succession. All but one thud into its center, and Claire scoffs, returning to her initial position to reload her weapon.
"Oi, Sis!" a cheerful voice blares, and a heavy arm falls over her shoulders. She shoves it off and glowers at the grinning offender.
"I am not your sister, Snow," she growls, and storms off. The muscled idiot follows. Her scowl sharpens into a glare. "In other words, you're not wanted here, so go away."
"Looks like the great and magnificent Lightning got off on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Snow chortles, not looking the slightest bit offended.
Lightning holsters her gunblade and stalks out of the practice room, mood abruptly dropping another six feet when Snow follows. She will never understand why the man continues to trail her like a lost puppy – if puppies stood six and a half feet tall and were capable of punching through walls. For an overgrown giant of a martial artist, Snow Valor behaves just like an obnoxious brat.
Another reason why he should not be dating, much less engaged to her sister. Serah could do far better than a delinquent high school dropout.
What does she see in that moron?
Snow says something behind her. Claire ignores him: another skill she's near perfected by now. It's not until his hand lands on her upper arm that she spins around, ready to bash him across the head with her gunblade until he either gets a concussion or learns to leave her alone.
What promises to be a solid thwack stops in mid-motion as something catches her eye – a tattoo on his forearm that wasn't there ten seconds ago, dark and sharp-edged with a blood-red shape in its center–
"Hey, Claire? Light? Something wrong?"
She blinks, and the mark is gone. Its shape is still imprinted behind her eyelids, and she shakes her head to get rid of it.
"Nothing," she says curtly. A hallucination in the middle of the day isn't a good sign. Maybe she should use her period of leave sometime soon, if work is the culprit.
Snow's voice buzzes in her ears again, and Claire absently nods, thoughts on other matters.
She needs to go home, anyways. The Falling Festival may not be for another two weeks – and everyone has the three days preceding it off, it's actually a law – but she knows Serah will be ecstatic to have her back for longer. Still, even as Claire mentally makes the arrangements, the feeling that she's missing something important stays with her for the rest of the day.
Sazh is worried.
"Dajh!" he calls as loudly as he dares. It's a library, after all, and he's already getting irritated looks as it is.
He's furious with himself for turning his back, even for a second. The new aviation magazines might have been interesting, but they're the last things on his mind now that his son is gone –
He hears the library's glass doors swish open, and spins around just in time to see a decidedly familiar afro bob out the front entrance.
"And just where are you going?" he mutters, then raises his voice – to hell with humoring fellow library patrons – "Dajh! Come back!"
No answer. Sazh drops his painstakingly collected stack of books onto the nearest table and dashes out the doors after him.
He feels a surge of relief when he sees Dajh kneeling next to the wall a few feet away – at least he knew not to go too far – but it quickly turns to confusion when he notices the red-haired girl sitting next to him, sobbing her eyes out.
"Daddy!" Dajh waves at him, but looks a little subdued. He awkwardly pats the girl's arm, but that only makes her cry harder.
Sazh doesn't know this girl, but he's never liked seeing anyone upset. He crouches beside Dajh and quietly asks, "What's going on, son?"
Dajh meets his eyes pleadingly. "I was sittin' looking at books, and I think I saw this girl looking at me really weirdly. And then she ran away. She looked really sad, so I followed her, but she was like this when I came out. Daddy, can you help her?"
The girl doesn't look like she's registered any of their conversation despite the proximity, sniffling loudly into her hands as she is. It doesn't look very sanitary, so Sazh fishes in his pockets for tissues. The package he digs out is more rumpled than he would have preferred, but at least it's unopened.
The girl sneezes loudly into the proffered napkin, mumbling indistinct thanks. Then she looks up, and Sazh finds himself staring into a pair of very surprised, familiar blue eyes.
The first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Huh. Have we met before, miss?"
The girl promptly bursts back into tears.
A thoroughly flabbergasted Sazh takes that as a probably, and hands her another tissue.
She slides into his booth at a nearby café two hours later and props her head carelessly on her elbow.
"So," Fang smirks. "Never caught your name."
"I never gave it," the boy that looks like Hope Estheim counters, disappointingly unaffected by her sudden entrance. The only sign he gives is a shifting in his cushioned seat and a pronounced discomfort in the slight hunch of his shoulders. He looks more awkward than anything, she notices. Fang doesn't know whether to be upset or relieved that he doesn't recognize her.
She doesn't even know whether they're the same person, after all.
The boy – honestly, he can't be more than two or three years older than when she knew him – promptly ducks his head, back to his work. It looks like an essay long enough to be a criminal offense, Fang offhandedly notices. She props her chin carelessly on one elbow.
"Not too late to start now, ain't it?" she replies.
The teen shoots her a disbelieving look. "Sorry. I don't make a habit of giving out my personal information to random strangers."
Fang shrugs. "Fine by me, kid. So, what are you training to be?"
He looks more than a little miffed being called a kid – a familiar enough reaction – but shoots a curious look at her. "Why don't you guess?"
Fang recalls Hope's skill with magic and proficiency in healing even the worst wounds within seconds. "Hm, tough choice there. Medic?"
"Like you stopped to think. I'm studying to be a doctor, but close enough." He grins at her tentatively, but then stands to leave. "I should go. It's almost time for my next class."
Fang takes the implicit please don't follow me like an actual creeper without the pinch of salt. She leans casually back on her side of the booth, waving him off with a shrug and smirk. She has all the time in the world to badger him for his identity, anyways. But as he turns to leave, satchel of books under his arm, he pauses and looks back.
"Um," he adds a little awkwardly, "It's Hope. Hope Priorem – my name, that is."
She can't bring herself to be surprised anymore – only maybe a little appreciative that he would give his full name to a near-complete stranger.
(She's accepted that whether or not he is the Hope Estheim she knew, the memories definitely aren't there anymore.)
"Fang," she offers simply, and if Hope finds the name odd, he doesn't show it. If anything, he relaxes more and breaks into a real smile, eyes crinkling a little at the corners. "All right. Nice to meet you, stalker lady."
She only nods, a grin curling the corner of her mouth.
"Same to you, girly boy."
His flush and wordless splutter put the first crack in her composure, and when she's sure he's gone, Fang starts laughing harder than she has in centuries. Crystal sleep counted.
"I'm sorry," the self-declared Vanille hiccups, managing a smile largely eclipsed by her still watery eyes.
"Don't worry about it," Sazh sighs. His jacket is soaked from when the tissues ran out and she ended up whimpering into his sleeve instead, but he'll survive. He sips absently at his coffee – he'd maneuvered the trio over to a mostly deserted corner café to save her the embarrassment of the public eye when her tears finally stopped. Dajh slurps an apple juice, feet swinging in the not-quite-short-enough-but-also-too-tall chair. Vanille's water sits untouched in front of her. She's stopped crying, but the tear tracks haven't quite dried and this whole deal is just uncomfortable.
Never let it be said that Sazh isn't one for challenges, though.
"So," he tries. "Something wrong?" At least it's a place to start.
If she weren't so stubborn about it, that is. "N-Nothing. Nothing's wrong." Vanille doesn't meet his eyes, and Sazh can't resist the eye roll.
Kids. They never changed.
"Now don't give me that, girl. So that back there at the library – that was nothin', was it?"
A hesitant pause. "You… you reminded me of someone," she mumbles.
Sazh's eyebrow rises, and she hastens to explain further. "Just a little. Something about your face. And your hair."
Well, he does suppose that the afro is quite distinctive. Still, Sazh can't help but wonder whether it has to do with the haunting sense of familiarity he feels whenever he looks at her face, or hears her voice.
If that isn't fantastic. He's turning into a veritable creeper. On a kid. Sazh shakes the unwanted thought out of his brain.
Tch. It's none of his business, anyways.
He opens his mouth to say something to that effect, except Vanille seems to have finally rubbed the last of the redness from her eyes and springs up, an alarmingly forced smile on her face. "Well… thank you for your help, S-Sazh, Dajh! I-I'll just be going now. Ciao!"
She's gone before he can react, skipping out of the café and around the corner. Dajh waves cheerfully back at her. Mouth still open, thoroughly dumbfounded, Sazh can only blink. And blink again.
It's three hours later when he realizes that he never told her his name.
A violent shiver shoots down her arm, and Serah nearly drops the mug of tea. She steadies the cup with her free hand and glances behind her to check that Lightning hasn't caught her mistake.
The pink-haired soldier in question sits at the round dinner table, sipping a cup of tea and thoroughly engrossed in her own thoughts. It doesn't look like she's noticed, and Serah breathes a quiet sigh of relief. The last thing she needs is her sister raising questions she can't answer. Steaming cup clutched to her chest, she closes her eyes and tries her best to shut out the visions of liquid silver, stiffening limbs and a moon falling from the sky.
Brief as the moment is, it's long enough to calm down, a little. She needs to be calm, if only so she doesn't worry her sister.
Claire's done so much for me. The least I can do is hold off on more baggage.
She doesn't hear Claire's voice until her sister repeats the words.
"W-What?" Serah squeaks, spinning back around. Claire looks back at her with blank eyes that betray a trace of concern.
"I said," her sister enunciates, "How was your day job?"
"Oh, um, it was really nice!" Serah seizes on the innocent topic, covering her momentary confusion with a bright smile. "The library was quieter than usual. It was an easy day."
Aside from the girl who crashed into her and knocked the book cart over along with half an hour of hard work, but it hadn't been that big of a deal. Really.
Lightning looks at her oddly. "Is something wrong, Serah? You've seemed a little off all day."
Serah leaves off on the tea and looks in confusion at her sister. "Oh, um… have I?"
A deadpan stare. "You hardly touched your food at breakfast, lunch and dinner, you've been zoning out and mumbling to yourself all day, and you nearly dropped your cup just now. I have eyes, Serah."
Alright, she's more observant than I thought. But… I can't talk to her about this. I just can't.
Serah turns determinedly back to the counter, afraid of what her sister might catch in her eyes. "I didn't get much sleep last night, Claire. It's nothing."
Change the subject, change the subject…
She seizes on the first thing that comes to mind.
"Oh, yeah!" Serah exclaims. "Snow's going to be here in an hour, so can you help me clean up the dishes before he comes?"
Lightning chokes on her evening coffee. "What?"
"He's staying until the Falling Festival, his aunt's moving out of town and can't accommodate him – wait, didn't you know? He talked to you during drills today and said that you were fine with it…" Serah peers at the thunderclouds rapidly engulfing her sister's stone-cold face and manages a rather strained smile. "Oh. Ugh, I told him he was jumping to conclusions!"
Maybe bringing up my fiancé wasn't the best idea.
Claire picks up her phone and rapidly dials a number.
"Lieutenant Amodar, sir? I'd like to cancel my leave."