X ~ Stay

Things hadn't been the same between Noctis and his father since Tenebrae had invaded. The privileged life they'd shared had crumbled with the city's defenses, as had their understanding of each other. War broke the locks on the cages where people kept their monsters imprisoned. The soft laughter that had defined their relationship since childhood had risen to the taciturn shouts that echoed around the chambers of the war council. Noctis had been content enough to follow Regis's example when it came to royal principles. On the matter of taking back Arcadia from the enemy though, their opinions were a battleground in of themselves. It took all of their fellow councilmen to restrain them when their conflicting views broke into arguments.

The tension rarely stayed behind in those meetings, evidenced in the present moment. Noctis waited until he heard the distant clap of the kitchen doors closing before he addressed his father again. Sidling around him with eyes set elsewhere, Noctis let himself into the study.

"What do you want?" he asked, although it was hardly a question; it was more like a dismissal before the man had even spoken.

Noctis crouched down and fed the dwindling fire in the hearth while Regis lingered in the doorway, a pausing maneuver he often used to close his composure in the event that it threatened to crack apart. Noctis kept his back to him, tired eyes on the tiny orange flames. It had been a long day – one of the longest in all his life – and he didn't have the patience for traversing the delicate spider's thread of temporary peace between them. Whatever he wanted, the sooner he stated his business, the sooner he could leave, and Noctis could deal with his more troubling issues.

His anxiety towards wanting to tend to Lightning, manifested in the form of impatience towards the effort it was taking to stoke the fire. With an annoyed snap of his fingers, the flames roared to life under some magical assistance. Much to his dismay, the action gave Regis a talking point to lead with.

"How are your abilities fairing?"

"Fine. What do you want?"

Noctis straightened to his feet, biting out the repeated words to speed the process along. Regis, being his father and therefore the original bearer of the Caelums' stubborn gene, wasn't about to concede.

"Can't a father just express a little concern towards the well-being of his son? Given your circumstances, I don't think it's too unbelievable for my intentions to be just as I've stated."

Noctis's hands flexed at his sides, the abilities in question sparkling unhappily in the wake of his restrained anger. Whether or not Regis's concern was genuine – it was hard to tell these days – Noctis didn't appreciate being coddled. He was more than capable of taking care of himself when it came to his powers. He wouldn't have been chosen for them otherwise. He shot a glare towards his father, eyes starting to turn red with spite.

"Do you want a demonstration to satisfy your curiosity?" he growled.

A flare of controlled outrage fired through the old, war-worn eyes that looked out, unseeingly, upon the world. Striding purposefully across the floor, Regis met Noctis at the fireplace, towering over him with all his kingly presence.

"Don't threaten to raise your swords on me, son. Your guardianship may have granted you the right to unchallengeable strength but, it didn't grant you a right to arrogance."

They held each other in an identically level glare – an inherited expression that each of the Caelums bore in times of callousness. However, Noctis was the most out of practice in that regard. His exile from the main house, and subsequent solitude, had sobered the indolent temper of his youth. Once in a while it would spark back to life, tempted out of his heart's depths beneath the pressure which the invasion weighed upon them all but, even then it barely lasted. He was too tired of fighting to keep it up.

Blinking the crimson avarice from his gaze, Noctis returned his sights to the fire, leaning a hand against the mantel. As the threat of his magic receded, it left a dull ache against the back of his eyes, one that he tried to massage away by rubbing circles against his temple.

"What's wrong?" Regis asked, voice softening when he noticed the discomforted gesture.

"Nothing," Noctis lied in a murmur.

He had yet to tell a soul but, ever since the first night he'd met Lightning, and she had touched the door in the basement, he had been out of balance with his powers. It had taken years for him to fully synchronize with them, and since then, he had become acutely aware of any intruding discord within them. While they were always in constant turmoil, he'd learned to equalize it enough to be able to use them for battle without collapsing to his knees from the strain. He wasn't certain that would be the case if he went into a fight in his present condition.

Regis studied his son with a mixture of discontent and practiced intuitiveness, scanning through the various physical tells that Noctis couldn't fully suppress. Regis read people like he read business proposals, picking out every finite detail that might grant him a view of the whole picture. Noctis had never been groomed to such silken royal perfection to the extent that his father had been, and for that he was grateful. Although he knew his father had a capacity for exhibiting warmth and compassion, there were times where, beneath the scrutiny of his dignified peers, he appeared more like an automaton than a human being. The fact that he could nearly read a person's mind just by catching their profile in a single glance, didn't lend well to proving that he wasn't a machine instead of a man.

"Does it have to do with that woman you came home with?"

Noctis remained silent in response, which was just as much of an admission as if he'd said "yes." When he kept his eyes fixed to the flames in blatant refusal to meet Regis's, his father broke away to begin pacing the room.

"It's the same woman from a few nights ago, isn't it? The one you were chasing down to the basement?"

"Does nothing I do go unmonitored?"

It wasn't an accusation. Noctis didn't find it surprising in the least bit that Regis might have seen for himself what had transpired. The glass-covered avenue along the side of the house faced the back rooms of the manor from across the yard. Although the hill obscured the avenue from the view of the lower levels, if one was on the higher floors, he could easily see through the outdoor hall. Regis was known to frequent the top-most areas of the manor, pacing about like a leashed wolf at the summit of the world. What shocked Noctis the most was that he hadn't stormed over that very night to demand an explanation as to why a strange woman, dressed like a soldier, was breaking into the most secret and sacred areas of the building. If Noctis could commend him for nothing else, it was his considerate restraint.

"I'm surprised you still have her around," Regis continued, electing to ignore Noctis's remark. "But, I suppose that means she's not from a party of interest in regard to the war; instead she's a… personal acquaintance of yours?"

Noctis rolled his eyes while his back was to him. Everything had to be such a scandal. Pulling a hand across his exhausted eyes, Noctis pushed himself off the mantel to deposit himself into the nearest chair.

"I'm allowed to have friend outside of the fold, aren't I?" he sighed, arms lolling off the sides of the chair.

"Of course you are. It's just that I've only ever known you to be cautious when conversing with outsiders. I'm thrilled yet, confused as to how you've suddenly become so comfortable with a stranger."

"You sound just like Ignis."

Although Noctis's gaze continued to remain fixed upon the hypnotic crackling of the fire, he could feel the look of amusement on his father's face.

"Yes, he did express a copious amount of concerns when he stopped by yesterday. I don't know what you've done to the poor man but, you've ruffled those perfectly preened feathers of his quite terribly."

"Neither of you have to keep worrying about me," Noctis mumbled, a pang of guilt pinching his chest at the memory of how things had ended between him and his friend.

"When you have a child of your own someday, you'll see why that's impossible."

Wherever Regis had gone in the room, he had ended up back next to Noctis's chair, landing a wrinkled hand onto his shoulder. He spared the amiable touch a half glance, wishing more than anything that this truce between them would last more than five minutes. There was nothing that he wanted more than to have their family go back to the way they were before the occupation. Yet, as the subtle tensing of Regis's knuckles now indicated, things were nowhere close to being the same again.

"I trust that your new friend isn't distracting you from negotiating with Princess Fleuret?"

"Negotiating," Noctis laughed, bitterly. "Does calling it that really help you sleep at night?"

"I know that she was your friend…"

"She still is my friend!"

Noctis abruptly rose from his seat, simultaneously batting away the hand of false fellowship from his shoulder. He rounded on his father, eyes narrow and chest tight.

"And you insist on using that friendship as a means of deception in order to further your own ends."

"It's not just my own ends," Regis retorted. "It's all of our own ends: an end to this treachery between the families; an end to the fear of our country's people; and an end to this ceaseless war. If you didn't think that what you're doing might aid us in finishing this struggle, you wouldn't keep inviting her into your home."

"It's vile trickery. It's just the kind of under-handed tactic that gives people a reason to brand us as criminals!"

"The princess is not ignorant! Do you honestly think so little of her, that you believe she doesn't have the faintest idea as to what your meetings truly entail? She's the only member of the Fleuret family that wants this fighting to stop as much as we do. She keeps responding to your calls because she wants to provide you with enemy weaknesses. Don't think for a second that she doesn't know exactly what she's saying when you talk to her."

Noctis could feel the anger bubbling to a boil again, in part because he hated that it was his father whom had been the initiator of the plan, and in part because he knew, despite not wanting to, that everything Regis had said had been true. The nobility wielded their tongues like swords, making every syllable strike like the stabs of a rapier. Words were as much ammunition in this war as gunpowder, and every shot that was landed on the enemy provided a precious advantage towards obtaining victory. Noctis and Stella were the most skilled in that field from their respective families, having to learn at a younger age than most of their predecessors how to survive on quick-worded logic alone.

Under the guise of trying to maintain their long-standing friendship, despite being on opposing sides, Regis had coerced Noctis into using his verbal prowess to coax unbidden information about the Fleuret's strategies from their princess. Much as he had fought and yelled and cursed against the loathsome idea, what Noctis hated the most was that he'd eventually gone along with it. It was deception which had started the war, and deception would thereby end it. And though he'd denied it, pushing it so far down into himself that it had been ground to a toxic powder, he knew that Stella was as much his partner in this endeavor as she was his victim. He wanted more than anything for the serpentine questions to have yielded unsuspecting answers but, Stella was as much a traitor to her clan as he thought he'd been to her. There was nothing he'd gleaned from her that hadn't been supplied voluntarily. The war had changed them both from the dove-soft children, giggling in the fields, to the slit-eyed vipers that spoke poison into every word. Even if those words were in aid of Noctis's side, the danger of Stella's betrayal to the Fleurets was enough to make him hate her compliance.

"I have no new information to share with you," Noctis said, voice as dark as the char on the firewood. "If that's what you came for, you can leave empty-handed."

Regis fixed him in a weighted stare, laden with restricted questions and the divide of broken trust that had torn between them. He could ask Noctis nothing without receiving a hostile answer, and Noctis could provide him with no honesty without feeling it was in danger of being used for dishonest purposes. They'd come to their next stalemate, then.

Regis withdrew, recognizing that his well-intentioned visit was as much an intrusion as the Tenebraens were in Arcadia. With a dignified bow of his silver-streaked head, he receded towards the doorway. Teeth kneading the inside of his lip, Noctis turned back to the fire, leaning both palms against the chiseled mantel overhead. At his back, Regis stole the final word, making his nails dig painfully into the marble.

"I hope you remember whose side you're on, son."

It took all of Noctis's strength not to whirl around and scream at him to "get out." He waited for the low booming of the front doors closing before he let out his held breath. It came in ragged shreds, hot against the hotter smoke billowing from the fire beneath his face. He squeezed his eyes shut against the throbbing in his skull and the returning words that Ignis had said to him.

"Do you no longer trust me?"

Could he trust anyone who was associated with the Caelums, whether in name or allegiance? Was he selfish to wish that they all didn't want him to play the part of the dutiful prince, and spout rehearsed speeches through the prison bars of the throne? Was it truly he who was in the wrong? Everyone seemed so in agreement with each other; everyone except for him. He seemed to be the only one that thought tricking Stella was a crime against her trust, yet even she acted like her pretend innocence in the betrayal of her clan was perfectly acceptable. He seemed to be the only one that thought true negotiation was the answer to a peaceful end to the war, while the rest of his family wanted the roads to run red with Tenebraen blood.

He seemed to be the only one that thought Lightning – the time-traveler; the former l'Cie; and the strongest woman he'd ever met – was not a danger but, a godsend. Everything that he thought was right, the world told him he was wrong, and he didn't know how much longer he could delude himself into ignoring that he was the one turning against the world, not the other way around.

His eyes were burning, and he convinced himself it was because of how deeply he was staring into the flames lashing beneath him. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he let go of the mantel and just fell into the fire. Would the parasitic magic leap to his rescue, even if he commanded it not to? His arms started to shake with the effort it took to keep from dropping himself in and finding out. Biting the harshness of his breaths back into himself, Noctis pushed himself away, and fled to his only remaining sanctuary.

It took all of the time between the doors closing behind her and then them closing behind Regis, for Lightning to drag herself back into the present. While the realization that the man in the library doors had been Noctis's father had persistently tried to occupy her thoughts completely, it wasn't until the doors drummed a farewell to the man that she finally clicked back into place. In that time, Katrina had chattered incessantly as she situated Lightning in the kitchen, her constant pacing from one cupboard to the next, pulling out ingredient after ingredient, exposing her nervousness about what was going on in the library.

However, Lightning couldn't bring herself to acknowledge nor comfort the girl's nerves. The shock of meeting Odin – in the ruins of New Bodhum, of all places – had left her dazed, like someone had hit her across the back of the head, leaving her to nurse an impending concussion. The maid's words came as indistinct garbles, as if straining through a thick net wrapped around Lightning's ears. Even the eventual soup that resulted in the girl's rampant quest through the cabinets, didn't appeal to Lightning's admiration towards Katrina's cooking.

All she could think about was the unexpected reunion with her old Eidolon, and even then, she was hardly thinking, merely repeating the events in her mind like a half-remembered dream. If her fingers didn't frequently brush over her breast-pocket, and feel for themselves the delicate outline of the rose through the material, she might have believed it was in fact a dream. She couldn't connect the significance of their meeting again to the reality of her purpose – of which she still knew little to nothing about. She could just barely comprehend that it made things more complicated but, she didn't know how.

Odin, with the infinite and stoic wisdom of the Eidolons, knew about her quest, and he'd tried to tell her that the Eidolon Wars were in some way connected. He was too weak in his atrophied state to tell her any more. Her thoughts should have been grinding against each other to make sense of it all, but all she could think of was the immense relief that had surged through her upon reforging their connection. While the whole world had been a reminiscent battleground, it wasn't familiar to her in the way that Odin was. Her Eidolon was the one thing that belonged solely to her. It was the one thing that only she knew the secrets of. Every minute detail of the armor and every idiosyncrasy of the movements were tailored specifically to her expertise. No one else could wield the power of Odin but her, and that gave her a boundless sense of security.

The silence which followed the sound of the closing doors was eerily heavy, contributed to by the halting of Katrina's babbling. Lightning glanced at her, focusing on the pinched areas along the corners of her mouth to use as grapples for drawing herself back to the present. The maid's eyes were set skyward and her head slightly turned to the side, as if listening for something. Lightning could hear nothing but the muted creaks of the old house in the winter breeze. After a long, hesitant moment where Lightning observed the worrisome nibbling Katrina was giving her lower lip, she got up from her seat at the kitchen island and headed towards the doors.

"W-Wait! Where are you going?" Katrina yelped, stumbling after her with a reaching arm, as if to try and catch her.

"If you won't check on him, I will."

"No! You shouldn't…"

"Shouldn't?"

Lightning stopped with her hand on the kitchen doors, sending her a piercingly analytical stare. The hand Katrina had thrown out to try and contain her was about half an inch too close to Lightning's arm for her to tolerate. Under the intensity of her stare, Katrina quickly drew it back to her side, fearful of dismemberment. Lightning's eyes narrowed to sharp points as she surveyed her, noting the conflicted look in her moss-green eyes.

"'Should not' isn't 'do not,'" she explained to the girl, contemplating her choice of words.

Fidgeting uncomfortably beneath the imperturbable stare, Katrina told her, "Noctis usually wants to be alone after visits with his father."

"But, you don't think he should be."

She said nothing in response but, her down-turned expression said it for her. Taking that as her incentive, Lightning turned back to the doors, only pausing one more time when Katrina provided her with a helpful tip.

"If he's not in the library, he'll be on the roof, and you'll have to go through his room to get there. There's a fire escape out the window."

Lightning nodded her acknowledgement and crooked a smile at her, half of reassurance and half of thanks, before marching out into the dining room. Yet again, Lightning found herself confused as to why she felt compelled to express such concern for the mysterious prince. His family issues were the absolute last thing she had any right to get involved in. Despite being conscious of that fact, it didn't stop her from stepping out of the dining room and peering into the study. It also didn't stop her from going directly up the stairs, as Katrina had instructed, when she found that the study was vacant.

For a flicker of a moment, Lightning saw herself walking in the footsteps of her own sister. Whenever Lightning had insisted that she "needed to be alone," her persistent sister never allowed her to be. Serah had always been so much wiser than her. She saw right through Lightning's tough façade in those moments. While she had always claimed that all she needed was herself, her ordeal as a l'Cie, in addition to her confusion through the future, had proven her wrong. It made those times where Serah had been there for her, when no one else would, finally make sense to her. And if Noctis was anything like her – and she was finding that they had more in common than she'd realized – then, the request to "be alone" was merely a front, when being alone was the last thing he wanted, or needed.

She found the old door that she'd seen Noctis come and go out of the most, and tested the knob. As expected, it didn't give way automatically. Bracing her shoulder against the aged wood, Lightning pressed her full weight into it. With a groan and a pop, the door swung in, nearly dropping Lightning on her face if she hadn't been holding fast. Gathering herself and straightening up, Lightning scanned her new surroundings, trying not to feel like an intruder. It wasn't much different than her own guest room – which shocked her, having assumed that a prince might allow himself a few more luxuries. It was sparse, neat, and almost looked like it had never been lived in. She tried not to focus too keenly on the details, knowing she'd hate it if someone snooped around in her bedroom.

There was a French window which sat ajar across from the door, letting in the cool night air. Shivering in displeasure at the invasive cold, Lightning approached the window. Beyond it was a thin balcony, whose sole purpose seemed to be paving the way to the fire-escape while making it look less like an eye-sore. Pulling her newly acquired jacket around herself and making sure Odin was secure in her pocket, Lightning moved along the balcony and gripped the rails of the fire-escape, her boots making metallic taps against the iron.

When she found him, he was the most decomposed in manner as she'd ever seen him. It didn't take much to dispel the illusion he'd crafted of the untouchable mob king's prince. Slim hands knotted roughly through black lacquer hair, and his shoulders were screwed up so tight that they gave him the hunched silhouette of a gargoyle. Amidst the dark spires and slopes of the sprawling rooftop, she almost would have mistaken him as one. With his back to her, he growled out a warning.

"How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone?"

"If that's the way you talk to your servant girl, I'm amazed she hasn't quit yet."

Noctis stiffened and cast an incredulous glance backwards, she being the apparent last person he'd expected to find him. Lightning took some grim satisfaction from the knowledge that she could catch him off guard, just as much as he could her. Spurred on by this confidence, Lightning carefully slid her way down the slant of the roof until she reached him, perched perilously against the edge where a metal-covered pipe – which she could only assume served as a gutter – striped along the edge.

"Unfortunately for you," she said, hooking the heels of her boots against the pipe as she sat. "I don't take orders, even if you paid me to."

Twilight had descended in deep purple veils, tinting the snow-drifts lilac in the gloom. The first bulbs of starlight were winking awake overhead, all the more vivid without the synthetic city beams to dim them. If she focused on it, Lightning wondered if the sky would be the same as the one she looked up at from around the l'Cie's campfire, so many centuries ago. Her own memories weren't her focus, though. Pulling her gaze away from the darkening sky, she found Noctis's face had fallen into shadow, pointedly turned away from meeting her eyes. She briefly considered that she may have misjudged their similarities, and her presence was more unwelcome than how she used to feel when Serah found her. After all, she was a far cry from the warm whispers of comfort her sister always had ready.

"What are you doing up here?" Noctis asked, his tone kept forcibly flat to conceal the emotion she'd already seen in his posture.

"Usually, when I wanted to be alone, I was lying," she explained.

She recalled the other night, when she first learned of his identity, and how she'd bolted out into the snow. Sitting by herself on the bench, left to the dangers of her own thoughts, had nearly broken her. "Let doubt take over, and despair will cripple you," had been what she had once said to her youngest companion, yet still, she'd nearly let it happen to her. Having Noctis appear to sit a silent vigil beside her had helped to keep her together, for which she would owe him, eternally. Judging by his silence, and thereby his lack of refusal in accepting her company, suggested to Lightning that he understood her reason for being there – and that even he might be grateful for it.

"To her credit," Lightning said, drawing from memory the technique Serah had used to first lighten the mood, "Kat did try to stop me."

"I hope you refrained from damaging her primary bodily functions."

"She'll pull through."

She earned a small laugh out of Noctis, although it sounded slightly uncertain – as if he wasn't sure whether she was joking or not, and his employee was indeed bleeding out somewhere, begging for help. When the laugh stopped, the quiet that followed was strained with unasked questions on both sides, and they were competing with themselves over who should break in first. Lightning made a calculated decision that if she'd taken the initiative to go and find him, she should be the one to ask first. Also, she ran the risk of him getting a head-start with his deflection tactics if she didn't act quickly...

"Did you eat something?"

As if he'd been reading her freaking mind, he punctured her pent-up ball of prepared consolations with a diversion, just as she'd anticipated. How in the hell wasn't she fast enough to trump him? Biting her back teeth together to keep from barking out an expletive of frustration, Lightning turned back ahead, grumbling, "I wasn't hungry."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his head bob in a vague nod but, she wasn't sure what it was meant to be in response to. It troubled her. In the limited time she'd known him, she'd come to expect each and every one of his gestures to be executed with the clearest of intent. Nothing he said or did came without purpose, so, the emptiness of that nod filled her with an unexpected dread. She stole the opportunity to get the words out that he'd beaten her to.

"Was that your father?"

Although she already knew the answer, she figured it was a better opener than the thoughtless sterility of "Are you okay?" She hated that question. Resting her arms on her knees, Lightning tried not to stare too fixedly at Noctis while awaiting his reply. While she wasn't the most patient of people, she figured now was a good time to learn how to be. She owed it to him, in return for his own poised stoicism against her baseless temper, to not pressure him into answering her own questions. A considering pause mounted between them as he grappled with his reservations over the subject but, he eventually came to the conclusion that she wasn't going to leave him alone until he talked. He supposed he deserved that as payback for all the fussing he'd done over her the past few days.

"Is the resemblance that uncanny?" he said, dryly, tugging a hand through his hair again, as if searching for the silver streaks that distinguished Regis from him.

"Sort of. What did he come to talk about?"

An added rigidity came into the tension of his shoulders as he was forced to recall the circumstances of the visit. A flicker of doubt pinched at Lightning's heart, again wondering if she was over-stepping her boundaries.

"It's complicated," he said, quietly, uncertainty in his voice, as if he didn't know if that was the right word.

"More complicated than a former, mythological l'Cie, traveling through time and awakening extinct Eidolons, with no idea how or why?"

"It sounds pretty straight-forward when you say it," he chuckled but, it was a weak noise.

Lightning caught him in a hard glance, then. This was tougher than she thought – "this" being the whole "comforting thing." Maybe her problem was that she didn't know him well enough to offer the appropriate assurances. Perhaps the reason Serah's accompaniments into her solitude worked so well was because she knew Lightning, inside and out. She knew how everything she said would affect Lightning. Noctis was still uncharted territory; there was still much she had yet to learn about him, and those unknown truths were keeping her tongue tied behind her teeth. How did she know that anything she ventured to say wouldn't just make him feel worse?

Why should she care? The thought slammed some clarity into her conflicted head. Of course, she cared about treating him fairly, enough to try not being insensitive but, she was caring in the wrong way. She was trying to immolate Serah but, Serah wasn't what Noctis needed. Different people needed different things to keep them equalized. Sometimes, Lightning needed the steady, candle-flame of Serah's warmth to take the bite out of her frostbitten shield. Unlike her, Noctis was coming to a simmer, his glacial cool-headedness melting into a puddle of a mess. Adding more heat to the already dripping iceberg would only make it collapse faster. So, he needed an arctic gust to pull him back together.

"Listen," she started, running on this new instinct. "I get that there are things you don't want to tell me, and that's fine. I don't want to tell you some things, either. I didn't come up here, expecting you to bleed your heart out to me but, instead of keeping it boarded up inside until it gets strong enough to claw its way out, you can share some of that chaos with me. I know I haven't done much to prove it but, I want to help you as much as you've helped me. So, just tell me what's bothering you."

It wasn't so cold as to sound selfish – at least, she hoped it hadn't – and it wasn't so compassionate as to sound smothering. She hadn't the faintest idea if that was the right way of going about saying it but, it was the best she could do. She pondered whether or not it would have been wiser to steal a page out of his book and simply appear, only to remain silent but, she figured he'd still outmatch her in that department. So, she forced herself to sit and wait out the result… which was silence.

Noctis said nothing in reply, sitting as still as death, with the messy fringe of his bangs shading his eyes. Something inside Lightning tightened, and as much as she tried to deny it, she recognized it as the feeling of rejection. She'd felt it the first time that Serah had introduced her to Snow, and she'd realized that there wasn't room for her by her sister's side with that blonde's broad shoulders taking up so much space. She'd felt it when she woke up on the blue ice of Lake Bresha, and realized that Cocoon had forsaken her to the grim purpose of her Focus.

He didn't want her there. She'd been wrong to march into his self-imposed exile like she was the answer to all his problems. What the hell were you thinking? She didn't understand the coils of tumult that began to curl in the pit of her stomach as a result of that question. It didn't matter what she'd been thinking. Absolutely nothing she'd been thinking since being sent there had made any sense. Why would she expect her thoughts in these circumstances to make any sense either? Strangling the pinched feeling into submission, Lightning firmed her jaw and straightened her spine like she'd been taught as a soldier, and pushed herself back onto her feet. When presented with failure, you had two options: try again or bow out gracefully. It was your call, and you had to live with the consequences of your choice. She chose the latter, assuming that if she kept pushing, she'd only break the tremulous trust between them.

Resigned to her failure, Lightning turned to make the climb back up the roof, closing herself off from the unfamiliar feelings tumbling around inside her. Before she'd taken half a step up, she was anchored back down. Her halted ascent wasn't abrupt in the physical sense but, her mental unpreparedness made it feel all the more sudden. She'd only felt his hand around hers once before and the feeling was still alien to her, so much so that for a brief moment, she didn't know how she had come to a standstill. She glanced down, brow furrowing as she took in the lithe and pale fingers, hooked around her own slender ones. It was a different sensation than the first time. Without the sword-marked leather of battle-worn gloves between them, the feeling of his skin against hers was raw in comparison.

The gloves had been as much a guard against the fierceness of battle as they were against the sensitivity of another's touch. Currents of desperation that never showed on his face, coursed from his fingertips and into hers. The heated emotion she'd seen in the way that they had run through his hair, poured out to warm her own chilled digits. All this she could feel through the tiniest touch, while his face was still turned away from her. She stayed where she was, letting him hold onto her without barking out an order for him to do the opposite. While she could feel his need for companionship in the way his fingers squeezed hers, she could also feel his anxiety, as if he thought that through this gesture, he was not only holding onto her but, also holding her back. By staying still, she gave him the time and the evidence to figure out for himself that she was there by her own volition, and there was nothing but her own desire to help him keeping her there. If she didn't want to stay, she would have slapped his hand away before she let it rein her backwards.

"You have an unusual way of getting to people, Lightning," he finally said into the darkening gloom.

She smiled in spite of herself, offering a nearly imperceptible squeeze of her own fingers around his as she lowered herself back down next to him. Trained as he was in helping ladies down stairs or out of cars, he didn't even need to look up to help her back to her seat. When she was seated, she expected he would let his hand fall away, back to his side but, it lingered around hers for a moment more than was anticipated. Lightning forced herself not to stare outright at the intertwined appendages between them, even though the prolonged connection was making the tumbling in her stomach intensify. After the moment passed, and he let his fingers slip from hers like rain through tree leaves, she found herself biting the inside of her mouth to keep herself from reaching back out for them. Instead, she let her now empty fingers curl into her palm and focused on not letting her befuddled thoughts distract her from what Noctis went on to say.

"Can you just answer me one question? That would help the most."

"Shoot," she said, eyes on the violet-hued horizon as she tried to calm her fluttering stomach.

He took a pause to organize his words, which wasn't something she thought he had to do often. Although quiet by nature, words seemed to come naturally when they were required of him. Even if they were received in the way he had not intended, he rarely had to think before speaking; he trusted in his years of practice to always say the correct thing. Presently though, it seemed like he had lost faith in that trust, which only made Lightning all the more fretful as to the content of his father's conversation with him. Finally deciding on the most ideal way of articulating his question, Noctis spoke, voice as soft and as dark as the twilight.

"Have you ever felt as if you were too small to survive the rest of the world?"

The silence which enclosed them was laden with suspense on Noctis's side, and deep reflection on Lightning's. The accuracy of the question in relation to her own circumstances, both past and present, haunted her as it floated, unanswered, around them. Of course she knew that feeling. Of course she knew what it felt like to stand as an army of one in opposition of a world which didn't want her. Whether in past Cocoon or present Pulse, she'd always been fighting against entire planets by herself. In a brief moment of suicidal insanity, she had wanted to lead an attack on the heart of Cocoon, and the stunned silence she'd gotten in response had made her feel as though all of reality had compressed around her, shrinking her down to size.

"Yeah," she said out loud, feeling a comforting pulse from Odin as she did. "I know that feeling well."

"How do you keep yourself from being crushed by it?"

A change in his voice made her turn her head to look at him, and her throat tightened at the look in his eyes as they finally fixed on her from the shadows. There was emptiness in the pale blue hues, like dead grass exposed from beneath melted snow. It terrified her. All this time, he'd been a constant for her in an unpredictable situation. He'd stayed the same through all of her outbursts and indecision. When she was the one who made the situation unpredictable, he'd remained a steady reminder of what patience could accomplish. He kept a cool head while she could not but, now it seemed their roles were reversed.

She didn't know what the troubled man in the pin-stripe suit had said to Noctis but, she wasn't going to ask. She didn't know why there was a wrestling tournament going on inside of her but, she didn't care. She didn't know a whole lot of things but, she knew that, for the first time, he needed her, not the other way around. Despite whatever had happened to bring that lost look to his eyes, it was her job now to fill it back up. Damn her if she wasn't going to step up to the plate.

"You just have to make yourself bigger," she said, slowly; thoughtfully. "The world's going to try beating you down anyway but, you can make it so that it doesn't affect you as much. Giants step over mountains but, mountains don't break. You don't have to make yourself bigger than the world but, just big enough to withstand the weight of it. And you can't do it on your own all the time. You're going to need help, and you'll find it in the people you love. It was almost too late for me when I realized that, but your friends can keep the ground from coming apart beneath you if you need them to. You have to trust that there are just some things you can't do on your own, and when those things come along, have someone who will give you their hand to pull you up. That's the best you can do."

His dark brows sloped gently together as he thought. His gaze was still dulled but, she could see the returning shimmer lurking just beneath the surface.

"That's what you did before?" he asked, still contemplating her words.

"Yeah…"

"What do you do now, here, where you don't have those friends?"

"I find myself another hand."

She tapped the top of his hand, resting on the roof shingles, and smiled her most reassuring smile. It must have been enough because he finally smiled back. The fluttering in her stomach matched the swelling beats of her heart as she spotted the hint of his suppressed child's smile climbing back to the surface.

"Have you ever had to deal with your family like this?"

"Not exactly," she said, looking off into the distance again as if she could see home through the stars. "Serah made it easy, honestly. I was the relative that everybody wanted to avoid."

"That's your sister, right? Serah? You mention her like she's the only family you have."

Lightning quieted again, the memories she was playing against the dark canvas of night, turning towards ones she'd much rather forget. She should have figured this might come up, what with talk of families and such. Still, she'd never fully mastered the unaffected face she put on when the subject arose, even if she was prepared for it.

"Yeah, it's just the two of us," she replied, the words grinding out like crumpled paper caught between two rusted gears.

"What happened to your parents? Or would you rather I not ask?"

He was starting to regain solemnity over his voice, speaking with acute consideration towards a possibly sensitive issue. He provided her with an escape route, should she desire it but, since she hadn't offered him as much, she figured he deserved no cowardice from her.

"You can ask but, there's not much to tell," she said in a gusty sigh. "They died and Serah and I were on our own. We did the best we could under impossible circumstances. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. That's all."

It was enough for him, and she was grateful. It didn't take a whole lot to satisfy him – not that this particular insight was in any way satisfying. He understood when to stop pushing, which told Lightning he was piecing himself back into his cool impenetrability. She should do the same, she thought to herself, unclenching her fingers from where they'd been unconsciously digging into her knees. After a long interlude where the only sound was the easy breathing of the winter wind, they each put themselves back together from their respective torments, and it was Noctis who was the first to break in again.

"That was a great speech, by the way – about mountains and what have you," he said, voice lightening with an airy laugh.

"Don't get used to it," she snorted. "You caught me on a weird day."

"I'll say. You have your own Eidolon!"

She chuckled at his smiling disbelief, shaking her head in her own as she withdrew the crystal from her pocket. She adjusted herself so she was facing Noctis to better show him the eidolith, knowing he was fascinated by it and more than happy to change the subject. Odin's rose was still frayed around the edges, and the crimson glow was still faint but, it seemed that the longer he stayed close to his master, the stronger the glow was getting.

"You seemed to be familiar with it," Noctis said, watching the light pulsate against her palms.

"Him," she corrected. "Odin is his name. And yeah, we were partners before I got sent here. All of us l'Cie had Eidolons by the end of our battle."

"How do they work? I mean, are they like people in the sense that they have emotions, or are they more like machines?"

"It's hard to say for sure but, I'd lean towards the former. I know that I can feel what he's feeling. I felt him when we connected back at the dig site."

"Connected?"

Lightning glanced up to find a confused and slightly troubled look on his face. She internally bristled, thinking she'd unconsciously said something to set him back but, the interest which he viewed the eidolith with assured her that it wasn't the case. It didn't assure her not to be worried for other reasons though.

"So, you feel what each other feel?" Noctis pursued, eyes on the weary pulse of the crystal.

"Basically," she answered, brow furrowing in suspicion. "The Eidolons choose their l'Cie when they reach the deepest pit of despair. The goddess sends them to help put us back on the path to our Focus, or to execute us before we turn into Cie'th. If we succeed at overcoming our despair, the Eidolons become a part of us and come to our aid in battle."

Her explanation only appeared to unsettle him further, and she couldn't tell if it was resultant of the foreign terminology or a previously un-discussed familiarity.

"It's amazing," he said, caught up in his own thoughts, "just how little we know about you."

Lightning had been thinking the same whenever some of his history books stopped before the Fall of Cocoon. She'd never appreciated the value of cataloging their heritage until realizing her own wasn't. How could one learn from their mistakes if they pretended that they didn't exist? If the present Pulsians had been educated about the genocide caused by the fal'Cie's greed, would they still be at war over this illusive crystal? Could they have learned better what the price of ultimate power was?

"I'm sorry about trying to attack him earlier," Noctis said, although his eyes were on the eidolith, as if he were trying to apologize to Odin directly.

"I'm sure he forgives you, and that he says he's sorry, too," Lightning said, a smirk crossing her lips as the rose's glow sputtered, disagreeably.

"You're not hurt then?" Noctis asked, his gaze pulling up to look her over. "You seem… better than you were on the ride home."

"Meeting Odin again was a shock but, not as shocking as your lunch proposal."

She didn't need to be looking at him to see the rush of pink rise up into his cheeks as she tucked Odin back into her pocket. Face turned away, she fought the corners of an amused grin back down into an indifferent line.

"Forgive me if that was too forward," he hastily apologized, his brain no doubt tearing through his "Prince's Handbook" in search of a proper remedy to his alleged boldness. "I didn't think…"

"…that a massive, half-metal monster would awaken from its ancient slumber and throw the entire excavation sight into disarray? Who could have predicted that?"

He stared at her for a moment, unable to comprehend that she was joking by the impassiveness of her face. She let his mind churn for a moment before breaking the façade with a half-smile, and putting him at ease. He chuckled at his own expense but, his face was still tinged with a soft blush.

"I'm sorry that the day didn't quite go as planned."

"Nothing ever does if I'm involved. Don't blame yourself; I'm the one who's a bad luck charm."

His laugh was breathy with exhaustion and relief. The unnerving tension which had been plaguing him seemed to have dissipated for the moment. She had a sinking suspicion that he'd been carrying it around for much longer: since whatever happened with him and Ignis at the Marketways; since her run-out during his meeting with Stella; maybe even since that "dispatch" on the first night she'd met him. She couldn't be sure but, she liked the change.

She liked it when he smiled.

"I'm sorry we couldn't do it today," she said, the somersaulting in her stomach finally beginning to calm. "Lunch, I mean… Maybe some other time?"

The inquiry slipped off her tongue without her consent. It came as an afterthought, and one she hadn't fully considered the implications of before it escaped. Even as it threaded its way between them out loud, she didn't recognize what it meant. Noctis was taken unawares by it for only a second, his own reply coming just as out of his control as hers had.

"Any time."

The two statements interlocked in agreement, and even then, Lightning didn't feel hurdled into disassembly by them. In fact, it felt like the most natural thing to have said. It wasn't often she felt that way, and it was even less often that she felt the need to question that naturalness. She'd adopted the mentality that "normal" translated to "suspicious." When the battlefield went silent, it meant the enemy was gearing up for a massive attack. She'd taught herself to take that warning into everything she did. It didn't come to apply itself to this though.

"Getting cold?" Noctis said into the content quiet.

"Freezing."

With that, they got to their feet to head back inside. However, it was back to helping themselves up rather than helping each other, even in light of their mutual camaraderie towards one another. Lightning could still feel a lingering rush of longing, trembling on the tips of her fingers, and she wouldn't chance breaking the light-heartedness between them by touching him again. It was a feeling she could not explain and had no desire to try, at least not right then.

Once on their feet, Noctis stalled for a moment longer, facing her. His jaw was working as if there was something stuck in it, and she knew what it was. He wanted to say "thank you" but, the look she fixed him in said that it wasn't necessary. As he met it, an unspoken agreement sailed between them that if he could see her at her worst – shivering alone on a bench in the night – then, she could see him at his – ripping through his hair on the icy rooftop.

It was a fair trade. They acknowledged this without any need for words, two weary warriors reading each other's thoughts. Noctis's head moved slightly, a small gesture akin to a nod but, not quite. Whatever it was, this one had meaning, unlike the last, and that was the last sign Lightning needed to know he was fine. Whether or not her brusque method of consoling had been the cause, she couldn't be sure, and she didn't quite care. So long as he was smiling that young boy's smile, it was good enough for her.

A/N: What's this? An update? And it hasn't been five months? Is this the real life?!

Hell yeah, bet you didn't think this was going to happen any time soon! I was actually planning on having it done earlier but, for some reason, no matter how many times I live through it, I keep forgetting that February is the shortest month of the year and thereby cuts me some days to work on my chapters. Plus, the crapload of snow I had to shovel during that month put me back a couple weeks too. But, now it's March! And I can actually see the ground in front of my house again! I figured, if that miracle could happen, then so could this chapter. Huzzah! (And successfully updating a fic is an early birthday present to myself. :P)

I'm a little obsessed with "Pride & Prejudice" at the moment so, that whole hand thing was probably a result of that - and I regret nothing! That's actually the type of love story I'd like to model this one after so, here's to hoping I can keep that up.

Also, we reached ten chapters! Hooray! Only about thirteen more to go eheh. To commemorate this tenth chapter occasion, I am actually going to respond to your reviews like I've very rarely done because I'm a pansy. So, if you've got questions, I may or may not have answers. Or if you just want to fangirl the frig out, we could just do that too. It'll be reviewer appreciation month so let me snuggle you!

Lastly, if you're ever curious about the progress of this story - or anything else - I've taken to including a little "status bar" near the top of my profile here to keep everyone in the loop. It's frequently updated so you always know where the progress of this thing is going so, check it out if you're ever worried!

That's all folks! Hope you enjoy. :)