Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy XIII
Thanks once again to Cocoon02! I'm glad I could cheer up your day at school :) I'm really glad you liked it so much, and I'm sad it's ending, it's been really fun writing this! Yeah, crystal stasis really is just one big, shiny grave...
As this is the final chapter, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed: Cocoon02, Psianabel, HoshisamaValmor, guest, and lightning613. Thank you all so much for your very kind reviews! Not only those who have reviewed though, thanks to everyone who favourited, followed, and even just read.
I'll have some more oneshots in about 6-8 months, when all this exam crazy is over and I can actually BREATH AGAIN! As for now however, for the last time, enjoy!
050. Eyes
Mutual
You know, I'd kind of hoped for something else... Not that I didn't love Hope for all he is - Hope is all that I had hoped for. But if I'm honest, when I first saw his eyes I didn't see much. Not much at all.
It was on the day of the fireworks - I still haven't asked what that was for yet. I was walking around, hoping that I'd find Fang, and trying not to remember my home. I was weaving in and out of the thick throng of people all watching the sky when I saw him. I'd never seen another person with such white hair, never mind two - it intrigued me. His mother was standing next to the boy, but he was the one who intrigued me the most. With such white hair, he had pale skin - smooth, but not without the typical bumps and marks that all teenagers had. He was short, but with the promise of growth, and a face with small but very pleasing features. His eyes were the exact shade I'd seen in my five hundred year long dreams, but they weren't exactly them. They were cut off from the world, dull in a way, and reflecting every shade and spark of the fireworks above. He was just like the man I'd prayed for, but not close enough to it. Not yet.
I was surprised when I saw him next. In the end of their world, with the harsh, green, fake light shining down on them as they watched as the bridge collapse and hundreds of people die. I watched, right next to him, as his mother fell to her death and he cried out for her, reaching out his hand in attempt to cling one last time to the only person who'd ever cared for him. In the light of that foul place, his eyes were full of anger, dark and stormy. His ears were tipped red like his nose, and the peachy water lines of his eyes were stained red, from the anger and the held in tears. But the teal eyes themselves - they were barely a feature. They were harsh in the manufactured light, and stained by anger and hatred and upset. Still, they weren't the eyes I'd dreamt of.
In the cool icy-snow that reminded me too much of the brief flash of home I'd got hundreds of years ago, his eyes were cold, and flat. The whites were lined with red from the muffled tears I'd heard from last night, and the skin around them looked thin, and tired, and purple, and red. His eyes... They were sorry. And in them, I could see nothing but a disconnect, a strong echo of the look that I'd seen on that first evening. The teal was more blue than green now; less of a river hue than an ocean - a vast, expansive ocean of the purest sapphire. Of the tears that fell at night when he thought I couldn't hear. Of the crystal ice that contained the girl for whom most of this had started - all because of me. I wanted to see his eyes - his true eyes, not the eyes that were haunted and scarred and saw all too many visions of his mother, falling and falling and falling... I wants to see the true teal.
I thought I was close when, on the crass, grassy plains of the Archylte Steppe, his eyes looked warmer. His smile reached all the way to his eyes, and the teal colour wasn't too far towards a tearful blue, nor was it a melancholic green. It was just teal, with equal amounts of both hues and just he colour if the ocean in Oerba - the eyes I'd seen in my dream. But there was still something missing. Something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Rather than shimmering in the light and glistening in the moon like perfectly still water, they were fairly contented, but they weren't completely happy. They didn't have that same sparkle that a happy person should have. They weren't fully there yet, but I was willing to be t that they were almost close enough.
In a strange way, I'd expected his eyes to mirror mine in Oerba - flat, and missing something. But they weren't. When I joined him sitting on the shore front, looking out over the frozen teal waves and the hardened platinum sand that was muddied over by now, I looked into his eyes and saw what I'd being dreaming of for over five hundred years. His eyes, the shimmering teal eyes, staring back at me. He grinned at me in a muted fashion - censored because he knew how much I hated what my home had become. But I was too taken aback by the sight that I'd dreamed off to be sensitive to anything else - here were his glimmering teal eyes, shining as brightly as the crest of a majestic wave, matching the platinum hair like the sand like hair which I'd prayed for. I didn't believe it at first, I had to blink and pinch myself to put all doubt out of my mind. He really was here, the the exact same ones that has appeared in my dreams.
In the light of the oceans I'd grown up by, and the beach I'd gambled a marriage on to see if the man I'd wished for had the eyes like the sea I'd prayed for, and the platinum-gold hair with it. It was almost difficult to believe, but after five hundred years I just wanted to believe it so readily that I did without a flicker of a doubt.
Although it'd taken until I returned to my ruined home for his eyes to brighten up, I didn't regret it, not one bit. I was glad for the pain in a sadistic kind of way. My pain brought him happiness of recovery, and I'll stay by him and his eyes for as long as the em world will let us.
I hope you liked this final oneshot (for now, anyway). As always, please review if you liked it and follow for future updates. Thanks!
