Notes: General warnings for angst. Written in a spurt subsisting entirely of feels well past midnight. (Also, I realized while I was writing that I blatantly inserted lines from Swan Princess? Shoutout to all the Swan Princess people.) I wrote these snippets in the order that they're presented in, just playing around with formatting for maximum heart wrenching.
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+ come with me to a different historia +
2. tsubasa reservoir chronicle/lightning returns crossover AU (or; muscle memory)
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5.
"Shadow Hunter," her voice cuts through the still air of the cathedral, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"
His gaze stays firmly locked on her-not on the fearsome weapon by her side, not on the woman standing behind, protected-on her. On the former seeress. Guarding the harbinger of certain doom. Hundreds of years she's been standing guard, and it hurts not one bit less to see than the first day.
He feels her knowing gaze taking him apart, piece by piece. His jaw set in solid determination, the new catch in his stride thanks to a particularly hardy Dreadnought, his hair grown ever darker in this sunless place. But she doesn't see his heart.
Never his heart.
"Just hoping you've reconsidered," he responds, keeping his arms against his sides. Still, he is ever-conscious of the weight of his swords on his back.
She takes one small step out of the orbit of her would-be protectorate. She looks off to the side in exasperation, the tendons in her neck standing out in the pale light. "Every day you come, and every day you ask the same question."
He smirks. It costs him more than he can feel right now, but appearances matter here. He will feel it later on tonight, lying alone and cold in his bed, right before sleep hits. His dreams will be of this, he already knows.
"I know," he says.
She bites at the end of his sentence, "And every day I give you the same answer."
He looks at her, unblinking. Searching. Her eyes betray not the slightest hint of doubt. She is a pure pillar of belief.
"I'll die first," she hisses.
He deliberately deepens his smirk-all the better to hide his not-unexpected disappointment-and nods. "I've got no more business here then. Serah, Saint," he says by way of farewell. He turns fluidly on his heel to stride out back the way he came.
"Don't come back," she calls to him.
They both know it's futile. He comes every day and nothing will change that. The day he stops is the day they both know the Shadow Hunter's dead.
(As far as he's concerned, Noel Kreiss died 500 years ago.)
4.
Her patience has been wearing down, closer and closer to snapping. He sees it happening but he's been brought to a stalemate over the years-there's no winning this battle.
So when she leaves the warren, packing her few belongings with her, he knows to anticipate it.
"Serah," he says, right at the boundary line, facing her back. He knew this would happen. He didn't want to believe but the evidence was staring him right in the face-her shorter temper, her dwindling smiles, all in the face of his own muteness. He gulps. For all the time spent wondering the ways this would happen, the when of its happening and the how, he's not prepared. She will always win over him.
He can't help but let her.
She pauses. "I'm leaving," she says, steel in her tone.
He takes a step forward. "Serah, please."
She half-turns and levels a look at him that embodies her entirely: scalding iron will tempered with vulnerability. She tilts her chin up at him in a dare. He can hear an edge of hope in her voice. "Then give me a reason not to."
He shakes his head. The heartache that laces his words makes them ring loud and true. He speaks, feeling that his hands are bound. "You know that I can't do that."
She inclines her head. Her grip on her bow tightens. It's black and silver and it suits her not at all. But it's dangerous.
"I'm joining the Order."
His breath catches in his throat. "Serah, please, no."
She turns in place, ignoring his plea. "I'll find Lightning that way, I know it."
"There are other ways!" he cries.
"Like that stupid Oracle Drive?" she bites back, going for the low blow, "You trust that piece of machinery more than you trust me."
He thinks on the countless nights he's spent combing through the visions, hoping to find one that will answer his problems. He wonders over Yeul's power: could she have seen what would happen after Serah's fall? Wouldn't she know he'd be looking for answers? He is hemmed in on all sides by the both of them- by the reality of one's death, and the death of one's reality.
"Serah, it's not about trust."
Her eyes soften. It is the last time he'll see them so vulnerable, but he doesn't know it now. "It sure feels like it, Noel," she says sadly.
This is a deep ravine, one he cannot cross. It is grown over with magic and secrets and neither of them have the power to overcome it.
She turns away from him and he swears he feels something tear within his chest.
"You know where to find me."
3.
They're on their way to a new settlement, a place that has gone up in the blink of an eye, a place called Luxerion. Here, the reports cite her appearance-those of a pink-haired Saviour. There can be only one.
Serah's determination to see Lightning again has won out over everything else, so much that she'd blindly throw herself into the proverbial haystack after the needle. She's consistent at the very least. It makes him ache.
They are stopped in a rundown shack when she corners him.
"Who are you to me?" she demands.
He can only shake his head and try to empty his eyes of all emotion.
"Please," she begs, voice cracking, and he hates doing this to her but there's just no other way-"Noel, I know you that you know."
She puts her hands to her face-lovely in every way, even in despair. She presses her lidded eyes, hard, with the pads of her fingers. "Every time I think about the possibilities, my eyes burn," she confesses, voice raw with simmering anger and swimming in tears. "They burn and itch and I want them to just fall out of my head. I see afterimages, just flashing across the backs of my eyelids."
He turns away, clenches his jaw.
"I see you. But you're different. And I see me. And I know I'm different."
That almost cracks his resolve.
I was your Guardian and you were my Seeress, he can picture himself saying, the words tumbling down his tongue uninhibited. We traveled together, the whole timeline, before time ceased to flow and before Valhalla cloaked the whole world over with darkness.
She takes her hands from her eyes and casts him a look of betrayal, confusion flickering in and out.
We were the best team.
Not too long ago, those eyes were full of warmth and serenity. He holds onto that.
"My muscle memory is intact, you know," she says. It comes out like an accusation. She stands defiantly, squares her shoulders as she walks to him. He stands against the window, not realizing his closed off posture until she gets very close. And she's suddenly very close.
Athough the sinew wrapping his bones feels taut, she takes his hand easily with a controlled, purposeful hold. She presses their palms together. Slowly, one by one, she links their fingers.
He cannot move.
"This feels natural to me," she whispers, looking down at their joined hands. "Right down to the spacing between your fingers."
His throat constricts, stops the words from escaping: because it was.
"Noel," she says, and he has never heard his name spoken like this, not with so much pain and desperation and want. It's exhilarating and terrifying and he hates it to his very core.
"Noel, did I love you?"
His eyes are deep, deep blue-near black-and something in them shatters as she speaks the words. He lets himself shed two silent tears before Serah collapses into his waiting arms.
As he waits for her to regain consciousness, the witch's words play over in his mind, a blessing and a curse:
She lives. But she will never remember you. You can count on that.
2.
A miracle.
She is the same. She's lovely, possessing the kind of beauty that lingers in his memory for days. Her eyes are the fairest blue and her skin perfect porcelain. Her memories are all in tact-except, of course, for one.
But the important thing is that she's here. She's alive. She's warm in his arms. The very core of her is the same. And if that's so, who's to say that they can't rebuild?
"What's your name?" she asks, blinking up at him.
He helps her up. He recalls how he introduced himself so long ago to her, on a beach in New Bodhum with the full moon looming. He can either follow that script or break from it. Whatever he does, it has to be honest. He's lived authentically his whole life and he won't stop just because of this new world order. He's only bound by this one law, after all-that her memory of him will never return. They can make new memories. They will. Serah and Noel, Noel and Serah-nothing could fit more right.
Daring to hope, he grins at her. "I'm Noel Kreiss."
1.
Serah is dead.
He watched her die. Her last words were for him.
It's wrong. It's all wrong, and she cannot be lying in his arms and she cannot not be drawing breath. At the start of this journey he wanted to save the future from a desolate fate. Now he knows he would selfishly give it all up for a girl.
The journey changed him. Changed them both. They grew because of each other and they grew into each other. He thinks back on the nights they spent lying together in the grass under the sky, how sweet the air was and how he wanted to stretch those moments into eternity.
He stares at his hands.
Mog floats desolately over his shoulder. "Kupo," he cries, gem drooping at the sight of Serah.
He whirls on their companion. "Mog, you have magic. You have to know something."
Mog's wings barely flap. "Magic can't fix everything," he squeaks.
"Think, Mog! Think! Can't we go back? Can't we find another Historia Crux? Go back in time? Change one less future? Anything? Anything so that her visions won't have-so that Serah won't be-she won't be... dead?"
Noel's gaze holds, penetrating. His grip on her grows tighter.
Mog shakes his head.
He takes a deep breath in. He'll find a way. He'll find a way to bring her back if it's the last thing he does.
"Wait!"
He snaps his head up to see Mog bobbing in the air, waving his staff.
"I remember a place! A place you can go to try to save Serah!" he twirls triumphantly in the air.
"Where is it?" he asks, not missing a beat.
"A place where any wish can be granted if an appropriate price is paid."
Noel nods and Mog begins conjuring the magic that slolwly engulfs them all. Noel takes Serah's lifeless body into his arms and hugs her tight.
As the magic begins to take hold and plunges them through the realms, he closes his eyes and whispers a promise into the void.
"For Serah, I'll pay anything."
