In her room, the air started to feel stale. With the only airflow coming from a tiny vent in the middle of the ceiling, Light wasn't surprised. She doubted that PSICOM sent anyone to clean their rooms while they tested subjects. Why should they? What is the comfort of a test subject worth to them? We're not even human.
From what little information she squeezed from Hope, Light learned she had been in PSICOM captivity for two weeks now. She developed her own routine, but almost always deviated from it. The researchers studied her less and less, giving her ample free time to do as she pleased, but also making it much more difficult to make requests from Nabaat.
She frustrated them. Not personally, but they couldn't find a way to keep proper tabs on her power and progress. Lightning is too volatile, too unpredictable. The force of nature, not the person—but Lightning the Person began seeing herself more and more as a force nature. PSICOM was nervous, ending their experiments on her early, never trying to gauge her limits again. One wrong calculation, one mistake, and she dies or leaves the examination room permanently injured.
They already made a mistake, and it opened up her escape plan. She locked herself in the bathroom, the clinically white tiles covering the walls began accumulating dust in their grooves. Her pink hair had already regrown enough to tickle the base of her skull, but her reflection confused her at first glance every time. After so many months of seeing her hair discolored or mutilated, seeing its natural state felt foreign. Not that it mattered. She wouldn't be seeing it in the mirror for much longer.
Today, however, wasn't the day. Not yet.
From behind the bathroom mirror, Light pulled a piece of folded paper. A corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk as she opened it to reveal a map of the PSICOM building. A map of her prison.
Hope removed her handcuffs after another fruitless study, but she stopped him before he left her room. "I need you to do a favor for me," she said.
"I'm not the one who fulfills requests. You need to put in a formal request to Miss Nabaat."
"That's the problem," she said. "This is a request she'll never grant."
Hope shook his head and looked for a way out of her room, but she blocked the door. She expected him to resist, he was too loyal to PSICOM. The same kind of blind loyalty she once showed the Guardian Corps.
"Listen to me," she said, keeping her voice low. "All I need is a map of this building. Smuggle one in and give it to me, then never speak of it, and at the end of this I promise that your life will be spared."
"You're going to kill everyone," he said. He stumbled away from her, but she trapped him in the room by blocking the only exit. He never felt threatened under PSICOM's roof before, Light could tell by the way he trembled and how he put his arms in front of his chest to block attacks that weren't coming.
"Only the ones that get in my way. You knew that something like this would never last. The longer you keep people like us captive, the more dangerous we become. I guarantee you that I'm not the only one plotting, but I also guarantee that I'm the only one you want to succeed," she said. "You see, if I'm the first to get out, my priority target is Nabaat and anyone who gets in my way."
"Why are you telling me this? Why me?" he asked.
She couldn't quite meet his eyes when she answered. They were terrified, pupils dilated to the point where his beautiful green irises were barely visible. "Because you're young. You still have so much potential and I don't want to be the one to rip it away from you. You're the only one retaining humanity among the PSICOM workers and you know that everything going on here is wrong in every sense, regardless of whether or not we're criminals. Save yourself, because all the others signed away redemption a long time ago."
Something in her speech got through to Hope and a few days later, when he took her to another study, he slipped a folded map between her mattress and box spring. And he went above and beyond in the simple task she asked of him.
Light memorized the map days ago, but all her newfound free time made it easy. Over most of the rooms sprawled bright red marks in neat handwriting. 'CF' over her room. Claire Farron. Most of the initials she understood. 'JN' for Jihl Nabaat's office. A name that meant nothing to her in the Guardian Corps, but means everything now.
PA. GA. NC. SF. CS. SG. RH. The list went on. Most of them, she didn't know. But some she could guess at. One room seemed odd, having two sets of initials as opposed to one. She focused on her own room and Nabaat's office. Those remained the most important locations to her.
Still, her attention lingered on 'NC'. She didn't know Noctis' last name. Never needed to as she never intended to get as close to him as she did. Out of all the initials, only one had 'N' as the first letter. PSICOM put him in a room on the other side of the floor, as far away from her as they could get him.
She traced the path from her room to Nabaat's office obsessively. Could she make it to Noctis' room first and get to the office before security noticed her on the hall cameras?
She wraps lightning around her index finger as she walks to her bedroom, sharpening it at the tip until it's as thin as a needle. When the tip touches the wall behind the headboard of her bed, it sparks and burns another scorch mark alongside an always increasing line of them. But her head doesn't hurt as she marks the bedroom wall.
PSICOM made a mistake with the first test they put her through by increasing the voltage to more than she could negate, and it short circuited the implant. It no longer triggered the sensors in the wall to alert security or picked up signals from them and prevented her from utilizing her power.
They handed her an escape on a silver platter, but it wasn't perfect. She'd make it perfect.
With one man by her side, anything could be made perfect.
She sat face-to-face with Nabaat, map hidden behind a mirror hung in a room a world away. The constant creak, creak, creak of the hanging lamp barely registered anymore.
Nabaat folded her hands on the table between them and cleared her throat, while Light fought the burning desire to spit in her face. "Do you feel like talking today, Claire?" she asked, tone on the borderline of condescending.
"Do you feel like fulfilling a request of mine?" Light asked.
Nabaat smiled, and it sent shivers down Light's spine that she refused to let Nabaat see. "What request?" she asked.
"I want to see Noctis," Light said.
"Of course you do," Nabaat said. She leaned forwards, her eyebrows raised and mouth upturned in a smirk. "But I'll grant that request if you're cooperative today."
"Then let's hurry it up," Light said.
Nabaat leaned back in her chair, top lip curled into a snarl and brow furrowed. She regained her composure so quickly, Light thought she imagined the slip. "Glad to see you're...eager," Nabaat said.
She flipped through the papers attached to her clipboard. "When did you first use your abilities?"
"At Nautilus. Right before you captured me the first time."
She rattled off questions to Light about her powers for a long time. Light's throat started to feel scratchy from the amount of talking Nabaat made her do. The questions became more and more invasive as Nabaat demanded details of her past and of her relations to the Nightingales.
"People don't normally go from Guardian Corps soldier to criminal," Nabaat stated. "So, how did you make that transition?"
"Noctis."
"Right," she said. "It always comes back to him. Is there you'd like to say about the nature of your relationship with Noctis?"
"Does it matter?" Light asked.
Nabaat pulled her glasses from her face and cleaned them, despite the fact Light could see they weren't dirty. "You see," Nabaat said, putting her glasses back on, "it could open up a new range of studies."
Light felt a twist in her stomach, a sudden pang of terror and anxiety. The list of possibilities ran through her mind. PSICOM had been hospitable, in a way, but when it came to experiments and their research, there were no bounds.
"It's complicated," Light said. She remembered all the times Serah gave her that same response when Light asked about her relationships, but it fit.
Nabaat signed. "That's not exactly an answer, Claire."
"No," Light said. "But it's true. We aren't really anything."
She saw him and Stella in her mind, from when she walked in on them. Her face flushed. Thoughts made her more uncomfortable than PSICOM could.
"Your expression tells me otherwise."
"Think what you want. I told you the truth," Light said.
"Right," Nabaat said.
"Why does it even matter?" she asked.
Nabaat sat up straighter. "Your power is incredibly difficult to study, Claire. But you can provide us another service," she said. "Really, you can't be that dense. Two young, healthy individuals. And with strong, unique abilities."
"You just want to use me as a… a breeder," Light said. The words tasted vile on her tongue as she spat them. She strained against her bindings, terror gripping her. "You can't force someone to have a child. It's unnatural. It's invasive."
"Science allows us to do many unnatural things," Nabaat said. "But childbearing is one of the most natural things of which a human is capable."
"You're using us like toys. It's sick." Light knew PSICOM conducted questionable experiments. Even in the Guardian Corps, soldiers told stories about PSICOM, always believing they were only rumors. They were the kind of stories told around campfires to tease the imagination with fear.
The prospect of being used as a breeder sickened Light. She wasn't the maternal type, which Serah could attest to, but she'd be damned before any child of hers ended up in PSICOM's hands. They wouldn't see that child as human, just as an opportunity.
Nabaat stood and stepped behind Light's chair. "All the greatest advancements of our society were brought about through sacrifice," she said. "It's not about the parts, it's about the whole. And you best calm down now, or you won't get to go see Noctis."
Light took deep breaths, but her heart still pounded against its cage. "I'm calm," she said.
"Then why can I still hear you sucking in shaky breaths from between clenched teeth?" Nabaat asked. "Why can I hear the strain you're putting on your bindings with every desperate, futile attempt to break free? You aren't calm. You aren't composed. That little soldier mask that you try to hide behind? I see right through it."
Nabaat stepped back to the other side of the table, leaning over it so she was face-to-face with Light. Light turned her head down, focusing on the edge of the table in front of her and keeping her fists clenched. Her power burned and begged her to use it, but if she gave in now, her escape would be ruined.
Nabaat's just trying to break you, she told herself. She wants you rattled so she can use you easier.
She felt the cold fingertip of Nabaat on the bottom of her chin tilt her head up until their eyes met. Nabaat's full of sick pleasure and victory. Light's full of anger and anguish. "I'll give you five minutes here to calm down. Then have Hope take you to Noctis," she said. "Feel free to get as close to him as you wish. It'll only make my job easier."
The tap of her heels faded as she left and Light sat, stuck in her chair. Hope sat across from her in Nabaat's chair, but Light didn't bother to even glance at him.
She felt sick. A thought lingered in the back of her mind that Nabaat never cared for studying her as much as for using her for having children. Somehow, it made sense. Nabaat wrote her off even as a child. Called her weak. Even though she could use her power now, she still couldn't control it as well as everyone else Nabaat captured. But she could produce children. Nabaat would never pass up an opportunity to expand her study and see what happens when a child is born from two people with magic abilities.
"I'm sorry," Hope said.
Light shrugged, one of the few actions her limited motion allowed. "Why? All of this is Nabaat's fault. It's her stupid fucking project."
Hope didn't speak. The air of the interrogation room felt heavy and Light couldn't breathe. The world sat on her chest and crushed her lungs. But she couldn't break. Not yet. There's still hope, and she grasped it. She held it with a grip that would kill any living being because that was the only way it'd survive.
"It's been five minutes," Hope said," would you like to go to Noctis now?"
Light nodded. All words fled away from her tongue, unreachable in the back of her throat where they met their end and were replaced by the sharp taste of bile.
Yeul stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "Wait a moment," she said.
Fang wanted nothing to do with her anymore and Serah, while kind and accepting of her presence, had work. So Snow, her traveling companion for the day, stopped and faced her. "What?"
"Something's… off," she said.
Nothing in sight appeared out of the ordinary, just another cloudy day in Eden. But Yeul still felt an odd sensation teasing her mind.
Snow shrugged and looked around before settling his attention on the building they stood in front of. It towered stories above them, as grey as the rest of the city, but it had very few windows. "A warehouse, maybe?"
"Doesn't look like a normal warehouse," Yeul said. She stepped closer. "It feels like it should be dead inside, but at the same time, it feels alive."
Snow put one of his giant hands on her shoulder. "Hey, I know a lot has been going on lately and you've been facing a lot of change. Maybe it's nothing. Stress messes with your head."
"It's not stress," Yeul said, taking another step closer. "Please, believe me this time. There's something wrong here."
"All right. Fine," Snow said. He walked along the outside of the building until he found the entrance and a large sign carved from stone on the lawn nearby.
"'Eden Research and Development Center'?" Yeul asked.
Snow looked as puzzled as she felt. "I've never heard of it. Maybe it's new?"
"Looks new."
They stood side-by-side and stared at the building's walls. "You feel it too, don't you?" Yeul asked.
"I don't know," Snow said. "The building does feel off, but I don't understand why. It feels..."
"Sinister," Yeul said.
"Sinister," Snow agreed.
They stepped closer, hesitantly and constantly watching to make sure no one saw. The closer they got to the building, the more uneasy Yeul felt. Her legs grew heavier and her stomach knotted itself. Her head felt light, but also on the verge of collapsing in on itself. She felt Snow's hand on her back, knew that she looked as awful as she felt.
An army of minds crashed into her own once she touched the building wall and the intensity made her recoil and double over. Snow caught her before she fell, but she trembled. "Hey, hey, hey, what's wrong?" he asked.
"I've never felt such intense terror and disgust. Most minds were rather tame, but a few stuck out. There was rage. Incredible pity and sorrow from another mind. But the most fear and anger, it came from Light's mind," Yeul said, standing with Snow's help.
"You're sure it's Claire?"
"After all the time I've spent with her, I'd never forget her mind. I've felt it when she was distraught, but it's never been to this degree. It's never been so intense."
She caught a few words from Light's mind, the strongest among them being 'breeder'. The maelstrom from Light's mind still rattled through her own at full force. A couple weeks in PSICOM captivity was something Yeul never wanted to face. Not if this was the mental toll. The worst part was that Light was caught to protect Yeul. She hated herself for being used to lure Light into a nightmare.
"I'm gonna be sick," she mumbled.
Her mind went black and she felt herself fall into emptiness.
She woke up alone in a room with dark walls illuminated by sunlight spilling in open curtains. Whispers from the past grazed her mind and told her this room belonged to Lightning for many years. Remnants of her sadness and isolation lingered, but Yeul worried that her power evolved again. She never felt the past emotions in a room or object before. At this rate, what evolution was next? How long could she control it until it became too much?
She realized it's already too much. Just before, her power overloaded her mind and made her lose consciousness. Her head felt fuzzy, but manageable. The house seemed empty with how quiet it was until she went downstairs into the living room where the TV was on and the people on screen rattled off their lines while Serah sat on the couch and listened.
Serah caught sight of her and lowered the volume of the television. "Hey," she said, slow and careful. Gentle like a mother speaking to her child. "How are you feeling? When Snow carried you in, well, you were so pale."
"I'm better," Yeul said. "What did Snow tell you?"
"Just that he needed to talk to Fang immediately. He was pretty shaken. What happened?"
Yeul sat beside Serah. "We found something related to Light—or Claire, if you prefer," she said.
"Is my sister coming home soon? Is she all right?"
Yeul pressed her lips into a thin line. She felt Light's suffering like it was her own, but despite the state of her mind, Light still lived. Serah's mind emanated a fragile feeling, and it made Yeul afraid that it could shatter at the slightest provocation. "She's alive," Yeul decided on saying. A hopeful sentiment, excluding the state in which Light lived.
Serah sat up straighter, her eyes bright and lines wiped from her face by her small smile. "Really?"
"Really."
Serah wrapped her arms around Yeul in a tight hug. Yeul kept her arms close to her sides, waiting for Serah to let go. But Serah didn't. She held onto Yeul and didn't seem willing to let go anytime soon.
Yeul resigned herself to being Serah's temporary stuffed animal. When was the last time someone held her so close? So lovingly it made her feel like a normal family? The Nightingales loved her, but they weren't affectionate. Prompto tried, but she always sensed his hesitance from his experience with his brother. "There, there?" she said, patting Serah's back. "Everything will be okay."
Serah nodded.
Light snorted a laugh. "It's nothing. I was just thinking of my sister's fiancé. He always wants to be the hero."
"Snow will figure something out," Yeul said. "He's the hero, remember?"
Serah laughed with her face pressed into Yeul's shoulder. "I needed to hear that. You're a sweet girl."
Not really, but I'm learning.
Seeing Noctis in person settled her raging anxieties. His wrists were bound with handcuffs identical to her own. Hope let her into the room and the metal door slid closed, leaving Light and Noctis alone.
Noctis approached her first, running his fingertips down her cheeks, his touch as light as a feather. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You're so pale, what did they do to you?" His voice was soft, almost a whisper.
Light shook her head and pulled Noctis into his room's bathroom, locking its door behind them. "PSICOM's making mistakes," she said.
"That sounds like it should be good news, but—not to sound rude—you look terrible."
"I'll get to that, but let's free you from some of their control first. Turn around," she said.
Noctis followed her orders and she saw the scar at the base of his skull. She wrapped lightning around her fingers and hovered over his skin. "Do you trust me?"
"Yeah, I trust you."
When the lightning touched him, he jerked forward. It only took her a second to fry the small chip inside him. "They short-circuited my implant," she said. "So I can use my powers unrestricted and short-circuited your implant."
"A little warning next time," he said.
He turned to face her again. "You still look pretty pale," he said.
"I guess that happens after visiting with Nabaat."
He tried to pat her shoulder, his handcuffs making the gesture more awkward than comforting. "What did she do?"
"Decided lightning is too unpredictable to study, but I'm too valuable for her to risk killing. She wants to use me for breeding." The word still burned her lips and made her stomach sink when she said it. PSICOM took everything from her and wanted even her body as their property in the most intimate way.
Disgust consumed Noctis' expression. "I'm not gonna let that happen, Light," Noctis said. "The choice to have a child or not shouldn't be made for you like that."
"Have a child? That's not having a child, that's producing a new test subject. But I have a plan."
"I'm in," Noctis said. "Whatever it is, if it will free you, I'll do it."
"You should be able to use your power now. Against anything and anyone since the implant won't interfere with it now. I would have waited to plan more, but I don't think I have much time before they start using me," she said. "I'll break out and come get you from your room. I managed to get a map, so I'll just make a tweak to my route and come here first. Then we'll face Nabaat together."
"Simple enough, but things always sound simpler than they are."
"We have the element of surprise," Light said.
Noctis nodded with a half-smile. "Yeah, it might be enough for us to succeed. Or they might decide to kill us, but we have to take that risk."
They fell into silence, the reality of their situation weighing the air with tension and unspoken risks.
He leaned down to touch his forehead to hers, most other physical actions restricted due to their bindings. "I love you," he breathed out, breaking the silence.
"I hate you."
He leaned back with his mouth open, his terrified eyes switching focus rapidly between both of hers. "What, uh, I just thought-"
She cut him off with a shake of her head and his mouth snapped shut. His eyebrows pulled down and together to create lines in the skin between them. He stood too straight, tense and uncomfortable. She never saw the Prince with so little composure.
"Let me finish," she said. "I hate you because you made me love you. I had everything I thought I wanted, but you robbed it from me and showed me that what I wanted the most was the one thing I didn't have. Non-familial love."
She chuckled under her breath and shook her head. "I tried so hard to convince myself otherwise. Told myself it was just infatuation. Tossed around the idea of Stockholm Syndrome, like Fang suggested. But I knew, deep down I knew, that it was love. Lasting or fleeting, it doesn't matter. It's love right now."
Noctis breathed, relaxing his stance. "I don't deserve love, much less from you. I've hurt you more than anyone, but I'm trying so hard to be a better man. I'm trying so hard to be a man who deserves you and who can take care of you, even with my 'job' being less than conventional, but I'll never stop being sorry for everything I've put you through."
They stared at each other in another silence, but not uncomfortably. Everything that needed to be said was said. Her eyes drifted down to his lips, and they grew closer. Close enough that she felt his breath brush against her skin.
She didn't realize how much she craved physical affection until it was within her grasp. They stood for a moment like magnets, trying to move closer but repelled by something unseen to the naked eye. Their hesitation could only last so long and their lips crashed together in a furious dance of flesh fueled by lust and necessity. They only broke apart when they were both breathless, with small smiles.
"What took us so long to do that?" Light asked.
"Don't know, and honestly I don't care either," Noctis said. "We'll start from here, from now, and only look forwards. The past is irrelevant, it's done and over. We'll take over Eden together with our friends at our side."
He still felt the pressure of Light's lips on his long after she left, making him promise again and again that he wouldn't hurt Hope. While Hope seemed indifferent towards Noctis, if he was helping Light, that was enough reason to spare him.
The scar on the back of his head still tingled from her shock to short-circuit his implant. Pins and needles, like a sleeping limb beginning to wake. But he had to test out Light's theory about allowing him to use his power, curiosity eating at him. He started by summoning one sword and it materialized without causing the slightest bit of pain in his head, unlike before. He summoned a second sword. Then another. And another. He summoned one sword after the other, no two alike, until they filled his room.
He shattered them when there was no room for another to be summoned, filling the air with multicolored, intangible specs of crystal. I'll show you that you can't treat humans like toys. Can you feel the tables turning, Nabaat?
A/N: A Lightis kiss for Christmas. Happy Holidays everyone!