Two hours had passed since they were kindly asked to remove themselves from the designer clothing store. Now, well-dressed and slightly uncomfortable with it, they were walking up to a brightly-lit casino, bypassing the long line for entrance and instead seeking the VIP-only entrance. Snow, ignoring the curious stare from Nora, produced two special tickets from the breast of his black suit, tickets that Hope had acquired for him, and presented them to the guard. The guard barely glanced at them before nodding and moving aside, granting the two of them entrance.

They walked into the main hall of the casino and, right away, he could see Nora's eyes bulge at the sights around her. The sounds in here were totally different from anywhere else, from the metallic clang of money being dispensed to the drunken laughs and the delicate tinkling of expensive jewelry…every sound was new, and it looked like Nora was overwhelmed by it all.

His hand dropped onto Nora's shoulder and guided her to the side, away from the main hubbub and towards an upscale restaurant that shimmered even from here. As they approached, the host bowed his head. "Do you have reservations, sir?"

"Yeah," Snow said, offering Nora a smile. "Two, under Villiers."

The man checked his list and then nodded. "Of course, sir. Right this way."

He felt Nora stiffen as they were led through a dimly-lit restaurant that was carpeted with rich, plush red carpets and lined with heavy drapery. Candles flickered from every table and the light reflected off of the many jewels and trinkets that everyone seemed to wear. Dresses glittered in the candlelight while delicious smells lingered in the air; the scent of food mixed with the subtle grace of cologne.

There was a small table near the back of the restaurant, near a darkened window that showed the bustle of the outside street. The host began to pull out a seat for Nora, but Snow shooed him away and took the process over. Nora, entirely unsure about everything that was going on, hesitantly sat down and Snow pushed the seat in for her. He was glad he remembered this much from his earlier days of courting, before Lightning came along. Somewhere along the lines of constantly fighting for their lives and being punched in the face, Snow had forgotten how to be a proper gentleman to his wife - a fact he would try to amend when he returned home.

Now starving, Snow eagerly took his own seat and immediately looked at the menu.

Nora watched him for a second before following suit. Her eyes flickered over the pages momentarily, then lifted back up to him. "…what am I doing, dad?"

He looked up at her, his eyes questioning, then he realized what she meant. She'd never been to a restaurant – she'd never even been outside of their small village before. Every meal had been a home-cooked one, either in their own abode or at one of her aunts' houses. This whole idea of going somewhere and picking food from a piece of paper for strangers to prepare for you probably made no sense to her.

Sometimes he forgot about the things they lost after the Fall.

He straightened himself, cleared his throat. "Alright, so, this is a menu. It tells you all the food that they make. You look at it, read what they have, and then pick the stuff that sounds the best to eat."

"Really?" She opened the book and peered at it, her eyes shining bright in the candlelight. "They just make whatever you want?"

"Yeah. A little different than home, huh?" Their eyes caught each others and both laughed. Everyone learned the hard way not to request anything other than what Lightning made.

They spent some time going over the menu and decoding all the foreign words there, trying to make sense of everything being offered. After nearly fifteen minutes they were finally ready to order, and Nora alone ordered enough for two. Snow inwardly cringed: since the restaurant had neglected to list prices, Nora didn't realize that all these things would cost something. He guessed that would have to be a lesson for a different day: he didn't want to make her feel bad now.

The waiter left, leaving a pleased Nora behind. She wasn't one to smile as widely as she was doing now, so he couldn't help grinning either. "What's with that look?"

"This is nice," she shrugged, trying to smother her feelings and failing. Seemingly embarrassed, she looked down and plucked at the dress she was wearing. "Mom bought this for me?"

"Yeah." He looked at the dress, simple and elegant, understated while on the hanger but, on Nora, it looked lovely. It also helped that it was modest – Lightning would have died before picking out something for Nora that showed too much skin. "Your mom snuck away a couple months ago and bought it for you. She packed that second bag, you know."

They had returned to their hotel about an hour before coming here, where Snow handed Nora the pack Lightning had prepared and told her to change into it. Nora had pulled out the black and red dress, the low-heeled pumps, and the bracelet with some confusion and a bit of delight. She came out of the bathroom looking ten years older and it made Snow strangely emotional.

She was his first child, his little girl, and now she was growing up. Soon she'd find herself a boyfriend, get married…

Don't get ahead of yourself, old man.

"How long have you guys been planning this?"

"A while," he responded, grabbing the bread in the center of the table. "We wanted to do something special for your sixteenth birthday, but we didn't know what to do. We've been brainstorming since last year, really. We, uh," he coughed. "We didn't have much experience with this kind of thing when we were your age, so this was all new to us."

Nora followed Snow's actions and grabbed some bread too. She slathered butter all over it, then ripped a huge piece off to eat. She might look the part of a lady, but she still had a ways to go. "What do you mean, you don't have much experience?"

Snow's fingers tapped his chin in thought. He and Lightning never talked much about their past, especially not with the kids. Lightning did everything she could do to avoid the topic and Snow never thought to bring it up. "Well…" He saw the curiosity in her eyes and sighed. "Your mom's parents died when she was pretty young. She joined the Guardian Corps – the police force back then – and raised your Aunt Serah on her own. I grew up in an orphanage with your Aunt Lebreau and Uncle Gadot. So, uh…" he saw the look of surprise that took over Nora's features and realized why Lightning must hate bringing the topic up. "Yeah."

"I didn't know that."

"It's not something we go around telling everyone."

"Why not? It's not like it's anything bad. A lot of kids in town were orphans—"

"It was different then, Nora. Me, Gadot, Lebreau, your uncle Yuj and Maqui, we grew up together in a building full of kids that had no parents. The only people we had were each other; there wasn't a village to look out for us. And your mom…" He looked to the side, fiddled with a fork. "Your mom gave up everything she had so she could keep Serah out of the orphanage. By the time she was your age, she was GC, dropped out of school, and went to the funerals for both of her parents. For her, her memories of Cocoon aren't good. She doesn't like thinking about them. And me, well, everything in my life is here, so there was never much point thinking about what was left behind."

A nod started, but Nora paused midway. "Wait. All of you guys were orphans?"

At Snow's confirmation, Nora's mouth fell open. "It's probably why everyone loves Grandpa Sazh so much. He came into the picture and took us all under his wing and beat some sense into everyone."

"Did you know him before everything happened?"

"No. Your mom met him when Serah disappeared, and he followed along after that."

A long finger traced the edge of her glass while she thought. "What about Hope?"

Snow chuckled awkwardly, shifted in his seat. "We found him at about the same time as Grandpa Sazh."

Sharp eyes lasered in on Snow's obvious discomfort. "Do you not like Uncle Hope? Sometimes you guys act a little weird around each other."

"We get along just fine, Nora." She sees way too much. "Sometimes we just have disagreements."

"Do you guys have a lot of disagreements, then?"

"Nora," he warned. "We get along fine. Don't worry about it."

At that, Nora's questions ceased.

A strange silence settled on the table, one caused entirely by Snow. He couldn't think of a conversation topic to hold that wouldn't seem like an obvious transition, so he reached into his pocket and drew out the package within. If it was going to be an obvious transition, might as well make it a glamorous one. "So, this is all your birthday gift, but this is the main present from your mom and me."

He held out the package to her, which she snatched up to open, already leaving the soured conversation far behind her. When the lid popped up, she grinned and grabbed the necklace in it. "Dad." She held up the hand-fashioned piece of titanium and silver and let it glimmer in the light. Hanging from its center was a silhouette of Ragnarok, a shape the jeweler probably didn't understand, but had crafted perfectly. "Dad, this is amazing."

Snow nodded a little to himself, wishing the image didn't still fill him with sadness. "I'm glad you like it," he said, smiling softly. Nora was smitten with the tale of how the l'Cie came to save Cocoon, of the Fall, of everything surrounding the story of why their village was what it had to be. Making this necklace for her only seemed appropriate. "We don't know what the future has in store for you but, wherever you go, don't forget where you came from."

She was already putting the necklace on herself. "Never." Once on, her fingers traced the edge of the charm. "Ragnarok," she breathed slowly. "They were supposed to destroy Cocoon, right?"

Snow glanced around nervously before nodding. "Yeah. And they did."

"But they saved it too."

"Right."

A thoughtful silence. "They came from Pulse?"

"From Oerba, yeah."

"Where did you and mom come from?"

Snow looked at his daughter, watched her eyes move from the pendant to him. "We were from a beach town called Bodhum."

"Did you know mom before, then? Before…everything?"

Snow scratched his chin. "You could say that."

"Meaning?"

"We didn't get along very well. For a long time."

"Why not?"

She's like a bull when she wants answers. "She was a difficult person to get along with. And I was an idiot."

"Why?"

"For a lot of reasons, Nora. One of them being that promise I made, the one that hurt a lot of people."

She nodded slowly. "Okay."

He watched as she fell back into silence, still fiddling with her gift. He could tell she was deep in thought, and sometimes she could get lost in that mind of hers. A minute or two was granted for her to make a path through the maze that was her brain, and then Snow slowly, quietly, spoke.

"Like I said earlier, I don't have a lot to base all of this off of." He spied the waiter at the far corner of the restaurant coming with their food. "So, I hope I'm doing okay. Raising you has been…good. It's been great. Being with your mom and having you guys has been everything I ever wanted, but I don't know how I'm doing, so if you have—"

He stopped abruptly when the waiter came to their table with a mountain of expensive food piled onto a tray. Nora's eyes were glowing with excitement, and it took her only two seconds to dig into the first pasta dish laid before her. Snow, already forgetting what he had mentioned, smirked to himself and thanked the waiter.

Two shadows inched through the woods outside of town, expertly stepping over every obstacle in their path. Both sets of eyes were focused forward, on a pack of wild, scavenging dogs that had been coming too close to town recently. They were still a ways away, but the animals wouldn't know what was coming until it was too late.

Two gunblades were stretched completely open, held firmly within two different grips. Fang's hand was a little too tense, and that would affect the fluidity of his motions later – Lightning made a mental note to correct him when he got home. But, for now, they were going to be fine. She didn't want to break his concentration.

She watched his bright eyes flash as they peered down a straight nose at their prey; as they sought the best path to victory through the curtain of fine, golden strands that skittered across his forehead. The rest of his hair had been trained backwards by a nervous gesture, the equivalent of Snow rubbing his neck all the time, but the results made Fang's hair even more similar to that of his father's old self. Broad shoulders and were curled in, making him as small as possible, but never quite small enough - a muscled arm or stout leg would often get grabbed by a vine or twig, a constant reminder that he'd never be the stealthy rogue he wished he could be.

The sight made Lightning bite back a smile before she returned her attention forward.

Whatever had held the animals' attention was gone and the dogs looked like they were about to move. Lightning, seeing the obvious change in demeanor, held up her hand to make Fang wait. While they were watching, seeing which way the feral animals would go, Fang leaned over and tapped her shoulder. "Thirty gil says I get the first kill," he whispered, his voice a low rumble to her side. The grin in his voice was entirely audible, and that simply wouldn't do.

Lightning looked at him and nodded, stone-faced, agreeing to his terms even while she flicked her wrist and changed her sword into its gun form. Within a second she had pulled the trigger and shot the biggest dog in the pack directly between the eyes. It fell over, dead, before the others could even register what had happened.

"You're just like your father," Lightning cooed, patting her son's cheek affectionately before darting forward to scare the other dogs away.

Fang scowled and followed behind.