Author's Note: Hello friends! I know it's been forever since I've updated this and no one is probably still reading it, but as per usual, I haven't given up. I did get a good laugh when the reviews reached 13 though. So that was fun! Let me know what you think! Enjoy!
Discliamer: I own nothing.
Warnings: OOCness, un-beta'd.
Word Count: 4,413
"Sephiroth?" Serah asks, blue eyes wide. She looks over at Lightning, a small frown on her lips. "Are you sure? How do you know?"
Lightning shakes her head slowly, blue eyes narrowed a bit so that a crease forms there. "I..." she hesitates, trying to organize her thoughts. "I don't really know. I just... do." She reaches up and pushes a loose strand of pink hair behind her ear, slowly. How did she know? She wasn't sure. It was like a pit in her stomach or nagging at the back of her head that she couldn't ignore. A warning, maybe? Or perhaps it was something calling out to her, somehow. She wasn't really sure, one way or the other.
And she didn't like it. Lightning has built a career and lifestyle off of trusting her gut instincts and the fact that she's got alarms going off in her head that is either happy or terrified, she simply can't tell which, is frustrating to her. She doesn't know if there is anyone other than her friends and family that she can trust. All of these people might know her and ultimately want what was best for her and her family, but she doesn't know them. She doesn't trust them. Well, not a lot.
Sephiroth. This enigmatic being. A SOLDIER operative that feels like fal'Cie heading right for them, leaves a tremble in her hands that she can only cover by clenching her hands tightly onto her lap.
Lightning hasn't exactly had a good relationship with fal'Cie.
"He feels like a fal'Cie to me," Lightning says, rubbing at her forehead before lowering her hand back to her lap. "And we all have a great relationship with them."
Sazh, who was rubbing down Dajh's hair as he falls asleep on his dad's knee, looks up sharply at her words, mind working. While Lightning doubts anyone else is going to sleep much in the next couple of nights, it'll be nice to know that someone is going to be well rested when the morning comes. The only thing that they really have going for them is that for the first time in forever, they are together.
Honestly, most of them were together in the first thirteen days, excluding Serah, Dajh, Yeul, and Noel, but since they accomplished that task, they haven't all been together. They were all fractured somehow, one way or another. In fact, this may be the first time that they are all together. At least, in known memory. But Lightning is suspecting that they really didn't know each other outside of their natural bonds. But Lightning can't look at these people like strangers or unfortunate companions that shared the same traumatic, horrible situation as she did.
They were her family, and she loved them. All of them were just as important to her as Serah was. Serah would always be number one in her heart, but she would do anything to protect all of them. All they have now is each other.
"Maybe that's the point, Light," Sazh says, drawing her back to her friends and out of her mind.
"What'cha mean?" Fang asks, leaning back on her hands on the bed across from the father and son duo.
"Think about it," Sazh says, keeping his voice low to prevent waking the little boy. "If this guy feels like a fal'Cie, which we hate, and this guy is a stronger version of those other soldier guys... you get where I'm goin' with this?'
"Yes..." Lightning says slowly, frowning more.
"I do too!" Vanille says, green eyes wide. "They are like Cie'th or l'Cie, right? And the Infantry is like Psicom. Parallels to help associate the dream with reality."
Serah looks over at Snow, next to her, reaching out and taking his hand in both of her's, resting it on her lap. She offers a thin smile when he squeezes her hand, but it falls a moment later and she looks to Lightning right next to her, on the other side of Noel. "So it's true then. This was our real life, and those people manipulated our minds to believe that what happened in there was reality. They tricked us, changed us and brainwashed us, all so that they could oppose this conglomerate? Why?"
"That's going to be something we are going to have to figure out," Noel says, rubbing his chin.
"I don't know the answer, Serah," Lightning says, frowning deeply, "but everything in the dream, or, excuse me, simulation, was meticulously designed to create a conditioned response. Fal'Cie and Gods are one and the same in our world and we have such a terrible reaction to them, because of it. A knee jerk reaction, I suppose." Lightning rubs at her forehead, sighing. "That's brilliant. I'm sure that the conditioning would reach the point where we wouldn't be able to differentiate between the two."
That drops them all into a tense silence. They all look around the room at one another trying to decide on how to move forward, but they have reached the end of the conversation - at least as far as that portion is concerned. While it still might be too early, Serah still has to address to the room, "What are we going to do?" There is no way back to the life they know, as it doesn't exist, but it may also be impossible to go back to the unknown people that they were before all of this. They can't mimic who they were before the simulation because they aren't those people anymore...
So where does that leave them?
Hope rubs at the back of his head, letting out a long-winded sigh, looking around the room at his friends with bright green eyes.
"What choices do we have?" Vanille asks, running her hands up and down her clothed thighs, the large, loose fabric shifting with the motions. She's forced to straighten it out again.
"We can try and go back to our lives?" Snow offers slowly but doesn't sound too enthusiastic about the idea of trying to step into shoes filled with expectations specific to him that he may not be able to meet anymore.
"We aren't those people," Yeul says, her soft, raspy voice filling the quiet air in the room. "It's like the lifetimes I lived. We aren't them. We are us now."
Snow opens his mouth, about to argue, before realizing that the principal of what she's saying wasn't actually worth arguing. She was right. As far as they know, the people that they used to be had died the day they were taken and thrown into the simulation. And while it doesn't affect them too much in that regard, as they don't know who they used to be, it's going to just be everyone else learning them again, whereas their connections and their lives outside of the group will suffer. Like Lightning and Serah have an uncle, and their mother is alive. No word on their father, but Lightning thought her parents died when she was little - she raised Serah on her own, it seemed.
But that wasn't true.
Lightning isn't sure what is anymore. What she thinks she knows is true, and what really is true.
"Listen," Serah says, pausing a moment to yawn before continuing, laying her head on Snow's shoulder, "as much as we surely will love talking in circles for hours, we are all exhausted and need to get some sleep."
"I'm not sure I can sleep," Vanille admits, twisting one of her pretty pinkish orange curls around her fingers. She lets out a sigh. "I'm going to have nightmares for sure tonight. And probably every night for the rest of my life." She looks down at the sleeping Dajh with mock jealousy. "I envy you."
Sazh lets out a little chuckle, petting down his son's hair still. "I do too," Sazh admits, smiling at his son before looking back at Vanille. "It does comfort me to know that he will probably be quick to bounce back from all of this. He'll have questions, sure, but he's just young enough to where this might all just become a hazy dream to him - or he'll forget it altogether."
"I was more jealous of his ability to sleep at a time like this," Vanille says softly, "but now I'm jealous of his inevitability to forget all of this." She waves her arms around vaguely before dropping them onto her thighs again.
"I think we all are a bit jealous at the prospect," Noel sighs.
"Sometimes," Yeul says softly, looking out the window on the other side of the room with emerald green eyes, "it is important to always remember. Even when we don't want to."
Settling down to sleep wasn't as easy as any of them hoped, Lightning is sure.
The old, thin cot held a spark of familiarity for Lightning that left a bitter taste in her mouth, especially when realizing the agonizing weeks in Guardian Corps boot camp was all constructed from someone's mind and not any actual work put into it on her part. Lightning is a proud person on a good day, but everything that she's been through, all of her success and her failures, belonged to her. She was proud of all of them in the way that mattered. She owned them and the fact that she can't own any of them anymore makes her all twitchy.
And mad. Amongst other things.
But everyone went to their own cots; Sazh managed to squeeze himself into the same cot with Dajh - good luck with that one - but everyone else separated. Lightning took the top bunk to Serah's, and Snow took the bottom of the one next to them with Hope on the top. On Lightning's other side was Fang on the top and Vanille on the bottom. Sazh and Dajh shared the one furthest into the room, away from the door, while across from them is Yeul on the bottom bunk and Noel on the top.
Lightning listened to Serah and Snow softly whisper to one another for almost an hour after they turned the lights out and the room became mostly quiet before they finally trailed off into silence as they both fell asleep. While Lightning wasn't sure about the others in the room, she lay awake for what feels like hours after Serah and Snow fell quiet just lost in thought. Her mind was racing so bad it was impossible to close her eyes.
Her instincts are on fire. All she can think about is a mouse trapped in a maze, yet the walls are closing in on her and the pathway to escape is constantly shifting. It takes focusing on her slow, even breaths to keep from going into a panic attack. She is the Goddess of Death yet she feels like an ant. Well, honestly, she's not sure what she is anymore. Or who.
She's been going through this existential crisis for a few hours now and she's already over it.
Lightning twists onto her side to face the door and try to close her eyes again. She tries to clear her mind and focus on her breathing. In...out. In...out. In...out. And then something weird happened. A feeling poking at the corner of her mind. She had been aware of the approaching SOLDIER General in that corner of her mind, but as a weak headache, was able to ignore it for her racing thoughts. Now that she's cleared her mind and feels the gentle tendrils of sleep clutching at her, she feels something strange.
It's difficult to explain. It's like her breathing was slightly off in her brain, and when she went to correct it, she couldn't, and then she realized it wasn't her own breathing that she was hearing, but someone else's. It was so faint and far away, she couldn't really support the immediate assumption that it was one of the other occupants in the room and their breathing.
She felt the other breathing slow down and match her own, and this connection... she can't explain it. But there is a brush of his mind on her own. First, it was hostile, like an invader probing on his mind, but then it was like he... recognized her and became... gentle? But before she could analyze the feeling more, she was embraced in the thralls of sleep.
Lightning's dead sleep was disturbed by the soft sound of a child giggling. She opens her eyes to the sound of Sazh whispering with Dajh and laughing softly at one another. They are trying to be quiet, which Lightning can appreciate, but it's the crack of dawn and while she wasn't ever a Guardian Corps Sergent, her body is accustom to waking up early to get ready for the day.
She turns onto her side and listens silently to the soft whispers of son and father. When Dajh gets too loud, Sazh would shush him and they would continue to talk quietly. Until Dajh got too loud again. Rinse, lather, and repeat. Lightning isn't sure how long she's been laying there listening to the two soft voices, before she sits up, unable to fall asleep again. Her body is just wired to get up early. It may not have always been like that - she's not really sure - but she was now. Or, she's just so anxious from yesterdays events, she doesn't know.
Lightning sits up, leaning over the side of her bunk enough to see Snow laying on the bottom bunk, barely fitting, as she expected he would, with his hands folded behind his head. His eyes are closed, but he's smiling, belying the fact that he is awake. And leaning over a bit more, Serah is sitting up too, with her arms above her head, stretching.
Serah spots Lightning looking down at her. She smiles when her eyes meet her older sisters. "Good morning," she says sweetly.
Lightning wiggles her fingers back at her sister before laying back into her uncomfortable cot. She stretches out as far as all of her limbs will allow, a series of satisfying cracks along her joints. She holds the position for as long as possible, relishing in the pleasurable burn along her limbs. As soon as she relaxes, she closes her eyes, half hoping that if she managed to fall back to sleep that she would somehow fall back into her own reality. She would wake up in a place that she recognized with a life that made complete sense to her.
She knows that won't happen, but the moment of hope gave her a touch of reprieve from her worry.
But when her now active mind refused to rest, she knew she was up for the rest of the day. She opens her eyes, sitting up in her cot while running her hand through her curly pink hair. She yawns deceptively, knowing that she won't be able to sleep again until later. Looking around the room, she can see that everyone else is starting to wake up, adding more noise as they all start talking with one another.
Some order is brought to the din when Fang asks, rather loudly, "Who else is hungry?"
They could all agree on that, and so could their growling stomachs. Luckily two years without moving - probably - hasn't atrophied their muscles, somehow. But it does make the prospect of eating solid food more appetizing. Especially since the last time Lightning can remember having a good meal was in Luxerion, Seedy's Deep-Fried Niblet Hairball. She wasn't certain she was going to like it, but it was the best meal she's ever had. Just thinking about it makes her mouth water. She wished that she would be able to have some more.
Crazy how that's one of the things she's really going to miss; the amazing food in the Glutton's Quarter in Luxerion. And none of that exists.
Or does it?
"Hey Snow," Lightning says, looking over at her future brother-in-law as he stands up and stretches.
"What's up, Light?" He groans before dropping his hands down to his sides and turning toward Lightning.
"The Glutton's Quarter in Luxerion..." Lightning says slowly, wondering how she was going to go about asking this question.
Snow looks interested. This was definitely not how he imagined this conversation was going to go. He crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his head curiously. "I recall. What about it?"
"Did you ever eat at a shop called Seedy's?"
He nods. "Sure, I used to eat there among the other shops. But I remember it. Great Niblet Hairball. Deep-fried, if I recall. That was so good." He rubs at his stomach, letting out a little laugh. "You tried it? How did you like it?"
Lightning smiles faintly. "I liked it a lot."
Snow laughs again, blue eyes sparkling. "Maybe between us we can recreate the recipe!"
Lightning grins back at him playfully. "Luckily for us, I know the recipe. I just can't cook."
Snow's grin widens as he points at her with both hands. "Yes! But we both happen to know someone who is an amazing cook!" He wiggles his eyebrows and looks to the shorter pink-haired girl standing up next to him. She twists her head to the side in confusion.
"You want me to cook something?" Serah guesses innocently, looking between the two of them.
"Yes," Lightning says, pushing herself off the top bunk and onto the ground next to her sister. "But later. We need to see if the ingredients even exist in real life. Just keep the thought in mind."
Serah laughs, eyes crinkling with her smile. "Okay. Whatever you say, sis."
"I don't know what you guys are talking about over here," Fang says, walking over to them with her arms stretched up above her head, "but I am starved. I hope this isn't like the Dunes, and I'm gonna have to hunt for my meals. What's a girl gotta do to get some grub?"
"Why don't we go out there and see if we can get something?" Sazh says, walking with Dajh to the door while holding the little boy's hand. The herd follows the father-son duo out the door, but once it becomes clear that he's not sure where to go beyond that, the natural tracker in Fang leads them back to the cafeteria that they were in the day before.
They are up early, and yet the cafeteria - and the halls leading to it - were all full of people. Most of them a male mixture of SOLDIERs and Infantry getting prepared for their day, but there is also staff for the building. While it is a military base it doubles as a lab and triples as an energy foundry. Apparently, the super conglomerate Shinra's main product is energy.
There is still so much that they don't know. About this world, this company that they are connected to, and about themselves. It's only been a day, yet it feels like they know less than they did before. It'll take a while to adjust, and that's the part that really sucks about this. The room seems to sense them walking in, for the whole room - predominantly men - stop to stare at them. While women are scarce in this room, women wearing Infantry uniforms are very unusual. And children? Here? In uniforms that they are practically swimming in? Very, very strange.
Thankfully Genesis seems to notice them almost immediately and walks across the room toward them. He barks a stern, "As you were" on his way and the room turns back around. But they do throw looks over their shoulders at them with curious, confused looks. They must seem like unicorns in this place. Women and children alike, it seems.
"You are all up early," Genesis says when he reaches them. He spreads his legs apart and crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn't seem angry at all, despite his sharp words a moment earlier.
"Same to you," Fang says.
Genesis motions toward one of the empty rectangular tables near the door for them all to sit at comfortably. They do. "Well," Genesis says easily, "it's from years of conditioning, I'm afraid. Did you all manage to get any sleep last night."
"We had a lot to talk about," Sazh admits, helping Dajh to sit next to him. "And a lot of thinking to do, but I think we all fell asleep eventually." Maybe Lightning wasn't the only one who was having some trouble sleeping last night. He sure knew how to fake it well.
"Understandable," Genesis murmurs, nodding. "You all have been through a lot." His eyes circle through the group, resting the longest on Fang before moving on. "I'm sure that you have a lot of questions and I would like to answer whatever I can."
"Do those two, uh, Reno and Rude, have to be there for it?" Noel asks, putting a hand on top of Yeul's head as she struggles with rolling up her stubborn, unraveling sleeves.
"Technically no," Genesis says. "Although honestly there is no protocol with something like this. So, the Turks are going to be swarming the situation and monitoring it step by step, no doubt. So long as it isn't imperative to the Shinra's survival, or isn't something that can't be looked up, I don't think there is any problem with answering some basic questions." He shrugs his shoulders, not seeming all that concerned one way or the other.
Lightning doesn't remember anything about this place, or the people, but she got the sneaking suspicion that these Turks were bad news. They reek of PSICOM, but in a more elite fashion. Kind of like the Calvary, but of information. And once more the similarities are becoming clearer and clearer. But this is probably what AVALANCHE wanted all along. They were going to do it one step at a time. Thankfully Genesis's timing is impeccable.
Admittedly, Lightning kinda wishes that he had come sooner. Before their memories were all lost. She's probably not the only one wishing for that.
"You don' mind us gettin' some grub, do ya?" Fang asks.
Genesis shakes his head. "Feel free. It's an open cafeteria for all Shinra personnel." A pause, then, "And, well, you are all a special case. Regardless, I will speak to the cooks. Eat to your heart's content." With that, he turns to do as he promised to speak with the cooks. They go up in waves to get food and met no resistance when doing so. They try not to bunch up and they keep their eyes forward, trying to ignore the curious eyes of the personnel.
They were more than happy to stuff their faces, feeling equal levels of ravenousness. It's been too long since any of them ate solid food. Thankfully the food wasn't anything that they didn't recognize. Which was good. At least food was still food. At this point, any similarity is welcome. When it has nothing to do with this corporation.
Eating was a relief. It's something menial that could get Lightning's mind off of all the shit going on, even if only for a second. Lightning still can't believe that everything that she has ever known was a lie. It was all something conjured up in someone else's head.
Lightning was staring down at her eggs, lost in thought when this sensation washes over her. It makes her skin tingle like electricity in the air as her hair stands on end.
Lightning is already standing up when Yeul says, "Savior."
The din of the room quiets as someone passes the threshold into the cafeteria. Lightning feels the entire room shift as all uniformed personnel, both Infantry and SOLDIER jump to their feet and salute as the fal'Cie enters the room.
Lightning turns around, being at the table closest to the doorway, she gets a front row seat to him. She's not sure what she expected Sephiroth to be - perhaps more like a fal'Cie in appearance like he feels like, and less like l'Cie - but he looks very much human. In a manner of speaking, she means.
His hair, the color of starlight, falling down to nearly the back of his knees with shorter hair making up his fringe to his collar bone, framing his face. He's tall, over six foot. His skin is pale and even from the few feet that separate them, Lightning can actually see his eyelashes. They are like black butterfly wings attached to his eyelids. And his eyes. She has seen glowing blue eyes like that in Genesis, but his pupils were oblong, slitted like a cat's eyes.
His eyes lock onto her's, and the memories of the night before come back to her. That feeling of when her mind... touched another. It was his mind. He feels like a fal'Cie, but he looks human. Like Galenth Dysley did.
And there is that feeling again. The connection her mind makes. Because of them. Because of AVALANCHE.
"Sephiroth..." Lightning whispers, not needing an introduction.
This guarded look on his face, a shield that he uses to protect himself. From what? Lightning isn't sure, but even at that moment, she felt it. Even though his mind is open to her, it's only open to her. He's blocked out everything else. Her being there feels unintentional. Like his mind wasn't meant for her too, but somehow... well, there she is.
Sephiroth's lips part, his pupils expanding until they are almost completely round. "Hello, Claire."