Lightning was leaning up against one of the cave walls. She seemed completely lost in her own thoughts. Vincent fished a couple of protein bars out of the rucksack and held them out to her. She started when he approached and then a perplexed expression colored her familiar features as she regarded the bars.
"Sorry I don't have real food up here," he told her as she took them at last. "But these will help you keep your strength up for now."
"Thank you," she nodded and she began to peel the wrapper from the first bar. She took a tentative bite and slowly began chewing. She continued chewing as she watched Vincent return to the other side of the cave and sit down with his back against a boulder. "Why were you up here anyway?" she asked after her first swallow.
"I told you; to get away."
Lightning didn't say anything, but she stared pointedly. Vincent looked away and silently refused to offer any more information. She took another bite of the protein bar before venturing to speak again.
"What were you running from?" she finally asked.
Without meeting her gaze, "You're not the only one who's lost someone they couldn't protect." Lightning's eyes grew wide.
"I'm sorry, I—"
"Don't worry about it," he said stiffly. Silence stretched between them. After several minutes, during which the only sound was the wind outside the cave and Lightning's quiet chewing, Vincent spoke. "We should get some sleep soon. Tomorrow will be difficult."
"How can you possibly sleep here? It's freezing," Lightning asked. A shiver moved visibly up her spine despite the greatcoat still wrapped around her shoulders.
"Hmm. It was warmer in here." Vincent explained to her that her crystal had been emitting enough warmth to keep him alive.
"But that's not an option anymore," she reasoned. "I suppose in the interest of not dying, it seems the only sensible thing left is to share body heat."
Vincent narrowed his eyes at her. "You're a bit…pointy," he said at last. Lightning made a face.
"I'm not a turtle; the armor comes off."
"Then your idea is a good and logical one," he answered.
Soon afterward, Lightning had piled all of her armor neatly beside Vincent's rucksack and his own armored boots and gauntlet. His bedroll had been built for one, but as both of them were slight, there was just room enough for both. Vincent pulled his cloak and the greatcoat over them as an additional layer of insulation. Then they bade each other good night and lay, huddled in the silent darkness, attempting to sleep, too tense to actually fall asleep, and each willing the other to nod off first.
Vincent would never have liked to admit it, but there was a mysterious comfort in Lightning's presence at his side. Right at that moment, he could forget how little he knew about her, how little he could reasonably trust her. Instead he could shut out all the trivia of his abnormal existence and focus on the simple pleasure of being warm for the first time in far too long. It took all his willpower not to wrap both arms around her and curve his body into hers. He almost gave in and did it anyway, but stopped himself; what right did he have to make her uncomfortable by grabbing at her in the dark? None whatsoever, and so he silently held himself in check, no matter how desperate his temptation.
Lightning had no awareness of her bunkmate's turmoil, but that did nothing to dispel the tension in her body and mind. Generally speaking, she was not one to brood too much over things beyond her control. But alone, in the dark, with nothing before her but more of the same sleep she had endured for who-knew-how-many eons, she couldn't help but wonder if it was worth it to keep living. Lightning shivered; she had lived her life for her sister, had pulled countless souls into her quest to keep Serah safe. And she had ultimately failed in that most basic and critical of quests. And so she had fallen asleep in a crystal time capsule, to slumber on as a silent testament to her purpose and her failure, as a monument to her beloved sister's memory.
Instead of remaining encased for an eternity, she had woken up to Vincent. Why? He couldn't possibly have any connection to her or her sister, could he? Why he would help her without question was beyond Lightning's comprehension; there had to be something he wanted, some ulterior motive, or some information he was withholding.
There was nothing to do for it now. She would have to discover what she could before they reached civilization, and from there she would work out another plan. Vincent's breathing slowed and evened; he was asleep. Lightning tentatively began relaxing her muscles, though she still felt uneasy. She tensed up again every time he twitched a muscle, even held her breath when he shifted his weight.
It was going to be impossible to sleep, she thought. She lay still, on her side facing away from the sleeping man beside her, trying not to move too much so as not to disturb him. She was also trying to avoid chafing her skin on the leather underpadding she had worn beneath her plate mail. That leather was serving as the closest thing she had to pajamas, but it could get monstrously uncomfortable if she allowed herself to move too much in the tight space.
Vincent made a sound in his sleep, like one of those involuntary moans that sometimes happens while stretching. Lightning's breath stopped and there was a second of perfect silence in the cave. Then, "Lu-Lucre-cia," he mumbled. "'s not- your—" He made another sound that might have been the final word of his sleep-sentence, but it was muffled and slurred and Lightning could make no sense of it.
Lucrecia; that's what he said first. It sounded like a woman's name. Who was she? She had to be important, if he was talking to her – apologizing to her? – in his sleep. That name continued to float through Lightning's thoughts even as the moon waned, the night grew old, and she finally started to drift off herself.
She dreamed she was standing in a summer forest that strongly resembled the jungles of Sunleth. The ground below her was mossy and springy, the air warm and humid, there were tiny red flans flowing and bobbing up and down the boughs of every tree like fat red banana slugs, and Serah was sitting on a rock, humming a song as though she had not a care in the world. Lost in her own wandering thoughts, her finger twirled round the chain of a silver pendant hanging from her neck; 'twas the very pendant Lightning had first come to despise, then lovingly accept, as the symbol of Serah's engagement to Snow. That young woman had grown up so well and so beautifully, Lightning thought with a wistful smile, but she only looked small and innocent as she sat on that rock, as she had in the days before their lives were turned inside out and upside down. As it was a dream, it did not even occur to Lightning to question the incongruent appearance of her younger sister as innocent as a barely-teenaged girl, yet still carrying the pendant that marked the start of her life as an adult.
"Hey, Sis," Serah called when she turned her head and saw Lightning standing there.
Without a word, Lightning ran to her sister and pulled her into a tight hug. Tears of joy at their reunion welled in her eyes, and she did not try, even for a moment, to hold them in check.
"What's gotten into you?" the younger woman asked as she tentatively returned the embrace. The older sister let go of the hug and held the younger out at arm's length, as though scrutinizing her.
There was a rustle behind Lightning's head. She turned and saw Caius standing there with crossed arms and a stern set to his brow and mouth. His head was tilted so that he was looking at her almost entirely through a screen of purple hair. Suddenly his mouth quirked up into a crooked smile.
"Good to see you," he greeted.
"Go to hell," was Lightning's immediate and only response. Caius chuckled.
"I'm already there," he answered, tilting his head to face her directly. "And it looks like you are, too. Must be agonizing, knowing your sister is trapped in this place and there was nothing you could do to stop it."
"Shut up," Lighting warned. Her grip on Serah's shoulders tightened.
Then Caius's face stretched out of shape into a nightmarish caricature of itself. Black shot through his purple hair and all his beads and feathers fell to the ground. His left hand suddenly became a gold, clawed gauntlet and before Lightning was even fully aware of what she was seeing, Caius had morphed entirely into Vincent.
The new Vincent's eyes were darkened with indescribable despair as he gazed at the two sisters. Those eyes fixed on Lightning's own.
"Lucrecia…" he whispered hoarsely, and he reached out to her with his clawed hand.
What?
Lightning awoke with a violent start. The cave was dark yet, but outside the morning sunlight on the snow was blinding. Somehow she had gotten herself turned around in her sleep; she was facing Vincent now, though she was certain she had fallen asleep with her back to him. Her arm was draped over and around his torso in what amounted to the laziest one-armed hug.
She pulled her arm off and away from him and curled it back into her chest. Heat rose in her cheeks and she was glad the cave was so dark; even if Vincent had been awake, he wouldn't have been able to see her blush. He wasn't awake to see her, but she bent her neck in anyway, keeping her face averted from his own. The mild, bittersweet scent of sweat and leather and warmth clung to the edge of the blanket. Lightning was content to lay there and breathe it in while she waited for Vincent to wake up and provide her with an excuse to leave the comfort of the bedroll. In the mean time, she contemplated last night's dream.
Caius Ballad had turned into Vincent. What was the meaning of that? Perhaps there was no connection, only that Caius was one of the last men she saw before she took to her crystal, and Vincent was the first since her awakening.
But what if there was a connection? The thought gnawed on the edges of her mind like a dog worrying at a bone. Vincent's touch shattered her crystal and woke her from a sleep that was supposed to have been eternal. And what's more, she could sense a deep wellspring of dark power in him. He had kept it well masked before, but in the quiet between waking hours, that power was like a wild animal awakening from hibernation; it stretched and yawned and lifted its head warily to sniff the air, and it was then that Lightning could feel its presence. She had no idea what it was, only that it had a dark origin, and that it was so ingrained into Vincent's being that the two could never be separated. But was that power in any way related to Caius, or to those long-buried events? Lightning couldn't tell.
She knew she had little time to figure it out; Vincent estimated three days to the nearest town, and while she could reasonably expect him to remain at her side for those three days, she had no guarantee that he would stick around after that. If there was something special about him, if that dark power she sensed in him was in any way related to Caius or to anyone else from her time, she had to find out quickly. Her eyes drifted up, to his sleeping face. Even through the unruly black locks that partially screened his face from view, he looked peaceful. He looked as if there was no such dark power in him at all, no tragic past about 'someone he couldn't protect', nothing that suggested at the guilt and despair that had forced him up into the mountains in the first place.
Lightning held herself still and let him sleep on; she was in no particular mood to rush back to town.
