Chapter Four

It took me a few solid days of generally making a nuisance of myself before father finally agreed to teach me how to use a gun. Rather than start me off on the shotgun, he thought it best to teach me how to handle something smaller first. What he had in mind was the pistol he'd also brought along, a single-action Shinra. He decided too, that he'd teach me during the day whenever we had the chance to stop for a while. It would be hard enough, he figured, to teach me how to use a gun without worrying about me accidentally shooting someone or something in the dark.

When it came to the hill cats, we'd been lucky. Since we'd fought them, we hadn't seen hide or hair of them. We'd killed quite a number of them and Lightning said that they were scared of us now and wouldn't be back for quite a spell, if ever. More than that though, she also said that a group that large must've had a real big slice of territory for their own and that since groups of hill cats didn't take to sharing their territory too well with other groups, we probably wouldn't have to worry about any more attacks for a while.

When it came to how to use a gun, the very first thing that father had me do was just hold it and get used to the feel of it. I'd never held a gun before and I always figured they couldn't be too heavy, seeing as how the few people I've seen who were experienced in their use always seemed to move them so quick and easy. I was especially thinking of Lightning, of how quick she'd been before when fighting the hill cats, the woman and the gun moving together again and again in swift, blurring instants of impossible speed. Holding the gun in my hands and feeling the weight of it, I felt that I was understanding, perhaps for the first time, how tough Lightning had to be.

After I'd gotten used to holding the gun, father taught me how to sight it. I saw Lightning watching us keenly as he showed me how to raise the gun a little bit higher than I thought the target would be before bringing it down so that the sight at the end of the barrel was level with the target. It was slower than I'd thought, more clumsy too. It occurred to me then that Lightning didn't have a sight on her gun. The barrel, from what I could remember, was smooth and straight. She must have filed it off, or else, never had one to begin with and I wondered how she could aim so well.

It was a few more days before father finally gave me some bullets and taught me how to load and unload the gun. The next time we stopped in a clearing at the middle of day was when he finally gave me the chance to try and hit a target for real.

"I want you to try and hit the middle of that tree there," father said. "Aim for that scratch in the bark."

I nodded. Suddenly, my heart was pounding. Realistically, the tree couldn't have been more than maybe twenty two feet away, but I felt like it might as well have been a mile off. I squeezed the trigger slowly, my legs spread slightly to brace against the force of the shot. As the hammer eased back, the pounding in my ears became storm of thunder. I almost closed my eyes.

BANG!

The gun leapt in my hands and I had to force my eyes to stay open against the tremendous burst of noise and the sudden curl of smoke. The shockwave of the shot rolled up my hands and jarred my wrists and elbows before it reached my shoulders and buffeted my whole body so that I almost stumbled to the ground. Dimly, I heard my father say something, but my eyes were only on the target. Not only had I missed the scratch on the bark, I'd missed the tree entirely.

"Not too bad, Hope, for a first try," father said.

As I regathered myself for another shot, I chanced a look at Lightning. I knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't laugh, no matter how bad I was, but I'd half-expected at least a wry grin or upturned lip. Instead, the only thing she looked was sad. It would be years before I understood why she looked so sad watching me handle a gun, but by then Lightning would be gone.

Things went on like that for almost a week. We'd set out each morning at first light and do as best we could until noon when the heat made things rough enough that we just had to rest. Father would try teaching me shooting then and once it was cool enough to go, we keep on until nightfall. The nights were easier too, now that we didn't have to worry so much about hill cats, but Lightning told us not to get too used to it. She felt that we were probably going to be out of their territory soon and a new group would have no reason to fear us. She also mentioned that we probably had another week, week and half in the hills too.

That wasn't to say that going was easy. The hills were rough, even if we were getting used to them, and the heat was building to its summer peak. Father had taken to rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and I didn't think it would be long before he was down to just his singlet. Mother suffered a little too, even after she'd changed into lighter, thinner dresses. As for me, I settled for rolling up my sleaves and unbuttoning a few more buttons more than was proper, but I had a singlet on underneath, although I would have ditched that too if mother hadn't said it would be improper. Only Lightning seemed to shrug off the heat. It was like she was fighting it off through sheer force of will, the inner cold that gripped her and stole every now and then into her gaze more than a match for any outward heat.

The chocobos needed looking after too. It wasn't the heat – they were hardy enough against that – but one of them had tripped and sprained a leg. It wasn't too bad, nothing really, that a few days of taking it easy couldn't fix. But unhitching a chocobo to walk alongside a wagon rather than pull it put more pressure on the others and slowed our pace. We busted a wagon wheel too, but father was good with things like that and so was Lightning and we were back on our way quick enough.

On the food front, things were actually pretty good. Our supplies were in good shape and we passed no small number of streams and rivers. Sure, we had to be careful when getting our water from them, but that wasn't so bad. Every now and then, Lightning would go hunting, as well. She'd disappear for a few moments and then I'd hear a single shot before she came back with some bird or other animal for us to eat. Credit to mother, she was quite a cook and despite never having seen some of the things that Lightning brought back before, she dealt with them well enough. It was through her hunting that I first learned that Lightning was no slouch when it came to cooking either.

Lightning had just come back with a big bird, a kind I'd never seen before. She laid it on the ground in front of mother.

"You've quite a talent with a gun," mother commented quietly. "You've shot that bird clean through the head and not a mark on the rest of it."

Lightning looked at mother over the body of the bird. "You're a fine cook, Nora, especially considering where we are. I'll not make things harder for you by putting a bullet hole through the best of the bird."

Mother laughed lightly. Since the hill cat attack, she'd warmed up to Lightning a little. They weren't best friends or anything, but she trusted Lightning now and knew the pink haired woman wouldn't let harm come to us. Maybe too, she wanted female company, someone to talk to about things she couldn't speak of with father or me. I wasn't sure how much luck she'd have with Lightning, but it couldn't hurt for her to try.

"Still, I can't say I've cooked one of these before." Mother lifted the bird up. "How do you normally prepare it?"

I'd expected Lightning to give some curt response, but she kind of looked at mother funnily and then the carefully managed shutters over her heart opened just a fraction, because she smiled, a little smile, but a genuine one. "It's best to cut the meat real thin and then smoke it for maybe half an hour. Add some mint first too, if you can, or maybe garlic instead if you have it." She paused. "The wood you smoke it with makes quite a difference too. I like apple wood, but cedar works just fine too."

Mother's eyes widened almost comically. "Why, Lightning!" she exclaimed. "I never pegged you for a cook."

Lightning looked away, and I thought I might have seen a flush across her cheeks, although that could have been the heat. "I don't get much chance to cook these days, but when I was young…" Her voice grew so gentle that it almost hurt. "I looked after my sister some." She would have said more, I reckon, but her mind had caught up to her mouth and she clammed up right quick and her eyes weren't warm anymore, but cold and so I knew she'd not speak anymore of her family. A sigh escaped her as she stood and turned away. "I'll go see if I can find some good wood to smoke that bird on."

As Lightning strolled off into the darkness to look for wood, I went over to mother.

"Lightning said she had a sister. Where do you think her sister is now?" I asked.

Mother shushed me. "Hush now, Hope. I'm starting to see what Tifa meant. I saw it there, if only for a moment. It takes a lot of skill and patience to learn to cook well and just from what she said, I can tell she can cook just fine. Something must have happened to her, something bad, to make her the way she is now and I don't think it's our place to ask exactly what." Then a gleam came to mother's eye, one that I knew meant trouble for Lightning. "Still, can you believe it? A fellow cook out here! I'll not let your father talk her ear off with all his chat about the government and farming and building. Those things are all fine and good, and I've plenty to say about them myself, but it'll be nice to have another woman to talk to. Why, I'll have to sit her down and pry some recipes out of her for all the animals out this way!"

And from day onward, whenever she could, mother would do her best to get Lightning to talk about cooking. Lightning was awkward at first, but once she realised that mother had no intention of asking about her past or her sister, she relaxed plenty, or at least what passed for plenty when it came to Lightning. It wasn't long either before mother managed to move their talks about cooking to sewing, gardening, housekeeping and other such things. Much to my surprise, Lightning seemed to know about all these things, things that were, for want of a better word, related to being mothering. To me that was very odd. Lightning had at least a few years left before thirty and so I doubted she'd been a mother herself, but she had mentioned a sister and it wasn't too unlikely that the sister was young enough that maybe Lightning had taken to mothering her. Only that left two questions. First, what had happened to make Lightning look after her sister like a mother would, and second, where was that sister now? I figured that if she had loved her sister enough to mother her, then she'd hardly just leave her. Maybe Lightning's sister was dead. That would certainly explain why Lightning always seemed so sad.

Things changed almost a week and a half after father started teaching me how to use a gun. Lightning was watching me handle the pistol while father went off to get some water. Normally, she'd have gone with him, but the stream was real close, easily within earshot, actually, and she'd already had a quick look around to look for anything dangerous.

Usually, she'd just watch me try and practice, but this time, she pushed herself off from the fallen rock that she was sitting on and walked over to me. I stopped what I was doing and waited for her to come over. I was actually feeling a little good about things for once, because while I hadn't managed to hit my target, a knot in the bark of a tree, I had managed to hit the tree. Mother had clapped in appreciation, making me both pretty happy and pretty embarrassed. As Lightning walked over, I saw her turn and something passed over my mother's face, the briefest flash of something serious, before she nodded at Lightning.

"Give me the gun, Hope," Lightning said gently.

I gave her the gun and watched as the cold metal seemed almost to come alive in her hands. She turned it over and over, the movements natural and precise and agile. She tested the weight of the gun and then emptied the chambers. With a flick of her wrist, she locked the empty chambers back into place and slipped one finger into the trigger guard. Then the gun was spinning around her finger before she tossed it into the air and caught it with an ease that made me think that she was born to it.

"This is a good gun," she said softly. "Not the best I've ever used, but a good gun all the same."

I looked back at my target. "I still can't seem to hit my target though."

Lightning's lip quirked up a tad. "With a gun like this it's probably not the gun's fault so much as the gunner's." The words made me flush, but there was no malice in them, only a statement of fact mixed with the faintest hint of wry amusement. "I know you're father's been teaching you how to shoot and your father is a good a man." She raised the gun. "What I'd like to do now is teach you how I shoot."

I furrowed my brow. "Is my father doing things wrong?"

Lightning didn't seem unsure so much as she seemed to be searching carefully for how best to put things. "Not exactly, Hope. But your father was taught to use a gun to defend himself and that's how he's teaching you. Me, I use a gun to attack and attacking and defending are two pretty different things." She paused. "It's not that one is necessarily better than the other. It's just that in some situations it make more sense to attack than defend." She glanced quickly at the hill country around us, wild and beautiful. "Out here, and when you get out West, you'll find that it's better most of the time to get the first shot in than wait and then shoot back."

Lightning moved a few steps back. "Watch." She raised the gun. "You've got two problems. The first is that you take too long to aim and the way you do it isn't natural. I can see you thinking while you're aiming, thinking about if you're doing things right or not. What you want to do is make the act of aiming as natural as you can so you don't have to think." She uncurled her index finger from the trigger and let it rest flat along the barrel of the gun. "See how I'm holding the gun? The way I'm holding it means that if I were to point with my index finger, then that's where the gun would be aiming. This way, I don't have to worry about taking a sight. I just point, nice and easy, like I was pointing a finger."

And as she spoke, she did it. The gun moved swiftly, and I could all but see where she was aiming because really it was just like she was pointing with her finger. I was transfixed. It was beautiful.

"The second problem you have, Hope, is that you're scared."

I shook my head. "I'm not scared of anything."

"Really?" And then she turned, fast and deadly and the gun leapt in her hands to point level at my head. Even though I knew, absolutely knew, that the gun was empty, I still cried out when she pulled the trigger.

I felt foolish, actually, beyond foolish. She looked at me, at my face still burning with shame, and I felt myself quake beneath the keenness of her gaze. After a few moments, she must have seen something she liked, for her gaze grew softer. "There isn't anything wrong with fear, Hope. But when it comes to guns, if you're going to be afraid of something, don't be afraid of the gun. Be afraid of what it turns people into."

In my curiosity, my embarrassment began to fade. "What do you mean?"

"A gun is just a tool, Hope. Sure, it can kill people, but a shovel can do that too, if you know what you're doing." She paused. "What's different about a gun is what it does to people. Some decent folk turn into monsters when you give them a gun, but others, even if they seem mediocre, can turn into heroes. Problem is, Hope, you can't usually tell which way people will go before they get a gun."

I wondered then which category Lightning fell into. Was she a hero, or a monster? I must have whispered the question under my breath, because Lightning's gaze whipped back to me, fierce and almost angry, and then she turned away.

"Here," Lightning said, tossing me the gun and then the bullets. "Try again."

My hands were shaking as I tried to load the gun.

"BANG!"

I almost jumped out of my skin at the suddenness of Lightning's shout. My hands went crazy and the bullets and gun fell to the ground.

"You're still scared, Hope." Lightning's voice was soft, but her words were like thunder in my ears. "You won't be able to aim that gun until you can put up with the sound it makes."

I reached for the gun and bullets.

"BANG!"

"BANG!"

"BANG!"

I don't know how long this went on, but finally, I noticed my hands weren't shaking anymore. As I lifted the gun, I tried to remember what Lightning had said. The bullets slid into the chambers and I snapped them back into place. Make it like pointing a gun, I thought. Make it natural. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I turned to the target and tried to hold the gun so that it would be just like a finger pointing. I fired.

BANG.

I missed the target, but I was closer, much closer than I'd been before that.

"Did you see that?" I yelled. "I almost hit it!"

Lightning nodded. "Not bad." She glanced at the tree. "Try again."

I managed to get off one more shot before my father came back. When he saw the way that I was shooting, he took several angry steps forward. Lightning saw him coming and met his furious look coolly. But then mother caught him by the arm and they were whispering to each, soft, but angry. Finally father sighed and nodded.

"I figure I should be mad about you teaching my boy how to shoot," father said. "But seeing as how you can shoot better than me, I guess I could let it slide."

Lightning tilted her head a fraction. "It's much appreciated, Bart." I was young, but even I could tell that she was thanking him for more than just the chance to teach me how to shoot.

X X X

Author's Notes

First of all, I neither own Final Fantasy nor am I making any money off of this.

This chapter marks the first mention of Lightning's family, which gives the Estheim family the first real clue as to why she turned out the way she is. Hope is also learning how to shoot. This isn't just a way of making him more useful. It's also a way for him to try and understand Lightning better, something that he is trying very hard to do. The part with Lightning and Nora was something that I didn't really think about – it just sort of happened. Afterwards, I felt that it fit quite well. It also helped dissipate some of the tension between Lightning and Nora, which was another positive. The style of shooting that Lightning is teaching Hope is modelled off the style employed by the titular character in the Western novel Shane.

As always, I appreciate your feedback. Reviews and comments are welcome.