[Chapter 3 has arrived, after getting a little lost for *checks calendar* 5 months? Whoops. I apologize to the countless (nine) human beings who have added this story to their alert list and probably labeled it dead by this point. I've been really busy with school, sports, blah blah blah. You all should be thankful that I managed to write this installment instead of answering questions about Jay Gatsby or summarizing the Civil War or solving problems about whatever we're going right now in AP chem. I hope you all enjoy, and feel free to comment about how it was totally worth the wait (LOL). I await your hate mail shortly. With love, LC. PS: to those aforementioned nine souls, I'm sending you all cookies via ESP. If you don't get yours, it's probably because you're a nonbeliever. Cheers!]

Though Snow's journey took him to a diverse palette of places and situations, his mind was stuck on what had happened in Palumpolum. Guilt fatigued his muscles and made his stomach do back flips when he recalled how he had reacted toward lightning. Thinking about Serah as well only stung an already salted wound.

One day, while belaboring his regret yet again, something caught his eye on the stone floor of the ark. Tentatively, he picked up the pendant that used to be his engagement necklace. The once lustrous talisman was dull in his hand. It was heavy, much too heavy. Its descent had escaped his notice, only coincidence allowed him to find it on the floor. He turned it, noticing how it didn't reflect the light so much as it absorbed it. Its insignificant size and cold exterior contrasted with the livelihood of his warm hand.

Confused, he cleared his mind until it was empty and black. A single thought, like a beam of light, punctured the darkness and opened his eyes to a new reality.

The pendant was too heavy.

It was broken.

The pendant, whose twin was entwined in the ice encompassing his frozen bride, the one he had purchased to commemorate their marriage.

The engagement was broken.

The revelation haunted him. He knew it was true. Unable to part with the talisman, he tucked the necklace in his coat pocket. The weight was insignificant.

He knew that if his engagement was broken, he was too. He struggled to cope with the nameless emotions clouding him: grief, remorse, regret, guilt, sadness. He couldn't find any relent until he happened to glance at Lightning, and the clouds dissipated and he could breathe again, and he knew. He knew that she gave him hope again, and that she could save him from weight of his past and the trials of the present, for she must be his future.

Lightning could lift the guilt off his shoulders and give him the courage to dare that one day it would no longer exist. Thinking about Serah in her frozen purgatory had been poison to his soul; thinking about Lightning, whose well-being he could testify to every second, was less trying. In fact, thinking about lightning was intensely appealing to him.

Soon these thoughts, once considered blasphemous in his faithful delusion, controlled his mind like a parasite or, more aptly, an omnipotent ruler, consuming his imagination and his conscience and molding his actions, just as the Fal'cie had and continued to do. In fact, by the time their entourage had landed in Gran Pulse, it was not clear which was a more inexorable force on his person: Anima, or the affection that was brewing deep in his chest.

If changes happen slowly, we may not notice them at all. It was for this reason that Snow did not notice when his admiration for Lightning grew into infatuation. He had accidentally developed a crush on his fiancé's sister, and he was powerless to snuff it out.

As emotions arrested his being to greater and greater degrees, his demeanor changed, but only slightly. He rarely let Lightning out of his sight, and when he did, he was consumed by worry. When she wasn't looking, he would steal glances in her direction, mesmerized. No matter how often he conjured her image in his head, the likeness was never comparable to her true figure, though that did not stop him from thinking about her.

When he spoke, it was to extract a reaction from her. When he fought, it was for her. But everyone, even Lightning, was oblivious to these changes.

One day, as their party continued their journey, and his thoughts drifted to her yet again, a pressure pressed on his chest around where his heart was. It felt like there was something weighing down his coat pocket. Curiously, he opened his coat and discovered the source of the heaviness was Serah's crystallized tear. With a sinking heart, he realized he hadn't looked at it in several days. He turned it in his hand, staring through it.

I don't remember it being this heavy…

Suddenly, like a shadow, he was enveloped in shame. He chastised himself for his weakness. Surely he had been mistaken about his engagement; it wasn't broken, unless he had broken it himself due to the neglect of the past few days. Even if Serah was thousands of miles away in a crystal prison, she was there with him, depending on his strength, and more importantly, his loyalty. If he really was a decent –

"Snow?" He glanced up, icy eyes on him, his thoughts, and his doubt, interrupted. She smirked at him. "Having trouble keeping up with the group? You can talk her later; Serah can wait."

Serah can wait. Without hesitation, he carelessly threw the tear back into his pocket and followed Lightning, the only one whom his heart warmed to anymore. He had once loved Serah, but his heart had grown cold with apathy.

After his guilt was defeated once and for all by adulation, his thoughts about Lightning increased in occurrence and grew in carnality. He fantasized about kissing her and feeling her tongue in his mouth, pictured her naked, and wondered what it would feel like inside her.

His perception was skewered beyond reparation. Serah was just a faraway dream, but Lightning was omnipresent in reality and his imagination.


Eventually he came to see how powerful his attraction really was and how completely it controlled him.

It happened one day on Gran Pulse. As their troupe wandered across the vast green plateau, Lightning accidentally triggered a battle with a Behemoth King. The beast snarled, its cape-like body billowing behind it.

"We can handle this!" she cried, before charging ahead. Snow and Sazh ran after her, completing the battle team. The fight went well for a couple minutes. The trio slowly but steadily whittled away the beast's health while enduring and evading its long teeth and claws.

Snow had stopped for a moment to regain his breath and his eyes gravitated towards Lightning, as they often did in battles. He never grew weary of watching her fight. He could not comprehend how she could exhibit tremendous strength and grace at once. He found the enigma both intriguing and attractive. Presently, her head was down, searching her pocket for a potion or another item. She didn't notice the behemoth quickly lumbering towards her.

"Lightning!" he screamed. She turned to him, a look of annoyance and confusion on her face. Shortly after, she was hurled into the air, the blade on the beast's skull impacting her chest. He could feel the pain erupting through his own skin.

"Dammit!" He ran to her crumpled body, terrified thoughts racing through his anxious head. The nightmare he had just witnessed replayed in his head.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sazh called angrily, firing his pistols at the behemoth, which was now targeting him. It slowly sauntered to him, swinging its claws wildly.

Snow didn't listen. "Light…Light, Light, are you okay?" he cried frantically, extending his arm to help her up. She swatted it away.

"I'm fine," she growled, but clutched her side with one hand. He gave her only a cursory glance, afraid he would see blood seep from her new wound.

"Heal yourself!" he urged. She was the only medic in the party, and he knew she must be badly injured, based solely on how long it took her to get up.

"No, we're not switching strategies now," she growled. She thrust her gunblade at him so it stopped uncomfortably close to his neck. He leaned away instinctively from the blade's sharp tip.

"Now leave me alone, before you kill me," she hissed.

"Got him!" Sazh cried, and they both turned toward the behemoth. Only he was far from dead.

"What the hell?" Lightning muttered. The beast stood up on two legs, pulsing with electricity.

"Goddammit, he healed himself!" Sazh cried, backing away cautiously as he reloaded his pistols.

It walked toward them, clutching a weapon in its paw that was somewhere between a scalpel and a chainsaw.

"Lightning..." Snow pleaded, not looking away from the giant beast.

"Same plan!" she cried, running fearlessly toward the scowling beast, gunblade held behind her.

It seemed to grin as she approached, raising its weapon high above its head. The sight sickened Snow; he knew with certainty that she couldn't take another hit.

Next thing he knew, he was sprinting to Lightning, stopping right in front of her just as the behemoth prepared to strike.

"Snow!" she cried furiously, still running towards him. He paid her no attention.

"Steelguard!" he grimaced, bracing himself. The huge metal weapon hit the ground with a crack, sending a fissure of earth directed toward them.
He absorbed the majority of the massive attack. Immediately, he lost all strength in his legs and was on the verge of collapse when he heard an urgent cry behind him.

"Snow!" Unable to overcome her momentum, she collided with Snow just as he turned around. Faced with her added weight, he dropped to the ground, his back impacting the hard earth. A moment later, she fell on top of him like an afterthought, her gunblade clattering to the ground beside him.

In that moment, the combination of fatigue and infatuation reacted in such a way that all other elements crowding his senses dimmed in her presence. Gran Pulse, its bright colors and wild scents and formidable beasts faded away until all he felt was the warmth of her body on his and the fragile brush of her hair on his bare chest; all he heard was the whisper of her cape fluttering in the breeze; all he smelled was the perspiration that dampened her forehead; all he tasted was the tongue in his mouth that was making swallowing a chore; and all he saw was Lightning, her rose colored hair shining radiantly white where it reflected the sun. Then the brightness grew until the entirety of the sun's brilliance was directed into his gaze and all traces of color were erased from his sight.

He was forced to blink, only for an instant, but when his eyes opened again he was no longer on Gran Pulse. He was in Palumpolum, on Hope's father's bed, captivated by Lightning's electrifying eyes. It was the same scenario as before – his heart pounded at the same rapid pace; her hands were spread on the same locations on his trembling chest; his thoughts were as cluttered and pathetically unhelpful. But Hope did not bring their odd moment of uneasy concord to an abrupt end; instead, the situation arrived at what he had believed was the appropriate conclusion.

He kissed her, and she kissed him back, and it tasted like sunshine and happiness, and weightlessness grew in his stomach and he was floating peacefully because he knew that his feelings were reciprocated. But then the world was spinning and he felt a moderate dizziness that he wrongly attributed to desire. An instant later, he passed out.

"Snow! Lightning!" Sazh cried in terror. The beast sauntered in his direction.

Lightning's whole body was sore from colliding so heavily with Snow who was, as far as her bones were concerned, no different from a stone wall. When, after a couple seconds, she decided the risk of death surpassed the pain she currently coped with, she attempted to sit up and found his giant hand resting on her head. She brushed it off gently, as one would a stray leaf, and it fell lifelessly to the ground.

She regarded his motionless body in amazement. She knew that he had probably performed the same sacrificial act for Hope back in Palumpolum, with the same effect. She sighed.

"Sazh, keep attacking; I need to heal myself and..." She lost her train of thought somewhere on his face, which wasn't contorted in fear sr anguish but, strangely, peace.

She rolled her eyes. Idiot.

When Snow awoke several minutes later the battle was over, to everyone's relief. If it weren't for Vanille's last second intervention, the monster may have won the fight.

Realizing his hallucination had been merely a figment of his eager, hopeful mind, he was discouraged, but only for a moment. He looked at his hand, swearing he could still feel her soft hair.

Confident again, he searched the landscape for Lightning. She was already far ahead of the group. He followed, nonchalantly trying to catch up.


The rest of the group trailed behind, watching Snow with curiosity. They had all seen the battle in its entirety, and Snow's actions in particular caught them off guard.

"That was odd," Vanille mused.

"Yeah, I've never seen a behemoth stand up on its hind legs before," Hope replied, watching the clouds.

"No!" she squealed, stomping her feet. She adjusted her pace to block his path, turned to face him, then pointed behind her dramatically so that Snow partially covered by her finger. "Him."

He appeared normal at first glance, but the longer they watched, the more discrepancies they noticed. His walk seemed to deviate from snows casual, effortless pace, and there was quickness, unconfidence in his step that they could not place.

"Wonder what's gotten into him," Fang joined them, her eyes also trained on Snow. "Something, or someone's got hold of his thoughts."

Sazh appeared by her side. "Poor kid. It's almost impossible to stay strong on faith alone." He stared at the horizon for a moment.

Fang crossed her arms and looked at him pointedly. "Maybe you outta ask him about it."

"All right, all right, I'll talk to him tonight. All he needs is some reassurance from the old man," Sazh said lightheartedly.

She smirked. "Well, we all know that you got it at least partly right." Hope and Vanille giggled.

"Hey, watch it, lady!" Sazh retorted as his comeback, and the others' peals of laughter, receded into the distance.

None of them noticed the lackluster engagement necklace abandoned
back at the site of the battle, dropped there by a man who had found a new source of ambition.