43 Twilight

Snow returned home to find the place tidied up, which concerned him a little bit. He knew Lightning was pretty good at housework, but what could've possessed her to clean the place up? More than that, she probably hadn't done it alone. But, in the end, he decided not to pursue the matter.

Besides, it made Serah, who smiled distractedly and seemed to stare into space most of the time this evening, look a little bit happier – especially the bunch of bright yellow, pink, and blue sweet-smelling flowers sitting in a vase on the coffee table, their scent apparently strong enough to draw a fat bee in to work quickly on the petals before flying once around the room and zipping back out into the sunshine.

Lightning was the one who came out to greet them, but though she managed to take Serah aside, it didn't last long, and soon thereafter, she left to the master bedroom. Lightning looked bemused; Snow tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut at the sight.

Within days, he discovered that Bartholomw would survive the attack, but he would be injured for the rest of his life, as the blast had penetrated his abdomen and injured several vital organs. He would be in pain, as well, and for the time being, bedridden. This left the government without a direct leader, and so both halves went their separate ways to recuperate and figure out the next step in the plan.

Hope, worried about his father, did one of the two things: visited Bartholomew in the hospital, or worked at the still-fledgling Academy, throwing himself into projects he never spoke of. Snow grew a little suspicious of the way the other man delved into his work – obsessively, it seemed, with long enough hours to cause dark circles to form under his eyes and his steps to be a little less energetic each day until he almost seemed to drag himself from one event to the next. Snow wanted to ask what was up, but couldn't find the opportunity, couldn't corner him, couldn't catch him alone, and so he let it slip for the time being.

Senna withdrew with her group, but he saw her once in a while, under careful watch, in the halls in Academia.

Serah was quiet for a while, and he never asked why, afraid to know.

A month passed, and Bartholomew recuperated enough to return to his duties. No more was said to Snow, and whatever happened next between Cocoon and Pulse consisted of things that were apparently not important enough for him to know about. Hope, too, seemed to be excluded, and without his father to visit, he seemed to dig even more into his many projects, still working hard in the Academy, and Snow finally caught him, as the man had grown too tired to escape Snow's determination.

"Why are you so exhausted?" Snow demanded of him in the grand hall of the senate floor. The two of them stood before large picture windows overlooking the growing metropolis and a sunny blue sky heralding the continuation of the summer months for just a little while longer.

Hope looked reluctant to speak, and didn't for a while, a frown visible on his face, green eyes meeting Snow's blue ones, but eventually, he relented, saying, "There's a few projects I'm working on."

"The metashield, and your capstone, right?"

"Not… just those." Hope took a breath. "If you must know, I've been working on a project that might allow for the creation of a stasis field. With it, a person could, theoretically, travel into the future. Time flows around them, but the person inside the field would just sleep through it all."

Instantly, Snow knew what he was referring to. He had seen that stasis field – in the form of a "capsule" – during his moments of time-gazing from within the Coliseum. Back then, however, Hope had built it because of prophecies and having no one to leave behind when he left to witness Cocoon's fall. What reason would he have for doing such a thing when things were relatively peaceful, and they might need him?

"Why, though?" Snow had to ask. "What's the purpose?"

Hope's eyes were serious. "Sometime in the future, Cocoon will fall. You, Lightning, and Caius probably know when that happens. I want to see my metashield work, so that I know the fruits of my labors are not in vain. Vanille and Fang will also be removed from the pillar just before it happens, or so I hope." He looked out the window at the cityscape, voice softening. "I want to be there and see it all happen."

Snow let his mind wander a moment, thinking of their journey to save Cocoon so long ago. Back then, the boy had not interacted much with Fang, but he had spent a great deal of time with Vanille and grown close to her. No doubt he wanted to see his friend again, and he couldn't blame him.

"Hope, that's a long time from now. Even if you get that stasis field working, what then? Are you going to just leave all of us behind and travel into the future?"

Hope was quiet for a long time. "It's something I feel compelled to do."

"What about your father?"

He could tell that had struck a nerve when Hope turned his face a little further away. "I think he'd understand. The Academy was his idea, and he knows how I feel about the future. He would probably let me go."

"You'd leave everyone behind just to see Cocoon fall?"

"Well, how about this, then." The other man looked at Snow with eyes still very serious. "What if Fang and Vanille woke up once their Focus no longer had relevance? It would be good to see them again. Besides, I have to know that my certainty about the metashield isn't all hollow words. It convinced Senna, but despite the simulations, there's always that twinge of doubt. I need to see it happen. My father would understand. He knows."

Snow hesitated, then said, "Does he know about the sleeping l'Cie?"

Hope nodded once. "He knows I want to see them again."

Snow said, more softly, "Does he know why?"

Now he said nothing, eyes widening so slightly that Snow almost felt he imagined it. Instead of speaking, he looked in the direction of Cocoon on its crystal pillar, glittering like a delicate jewel. Snow felt as though his silence were all the response he needed, but stayed where he was all the same, waiting to see if he would speak again.

After a time, he did. "It doesn't matter why."

Snow sighed. "Everyone knows you two were close."

"She was my friend. I miss her smile."

"You don't have to explain it, you know. I know what you mean, and I…" There were a few moments of silence before he laid a hand on Hope's left shoulder and squeezed. "I understand. There's some things in life you really don't need to explain, and this is one of them."

Hope said nothing again, but looked down at his hands as though searching for answers there. They flexed, fingers curling and uncurling in seemingly random patterns. "It's been so long," he murmured. A furrow came to his brow; his lips tightened for a moment. "I've visited the pillar before and stood on the plain looking up at it, but sometimes, I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I keep… promising to get them out, but…" The man had taken to speaking much more softly than in his early teen years, so when his tone sharpened, as it did now, there were few ways Snow could have ignored the change. "What am I even doing out there?"

"They probably know you're there. Maybe they're watching you, waiting for you to save them." He hesitated again, and said, even more softly, "Maybe they know you're planning to meet them."

Hope looked at the floor; Snow released his shoulder.

"I shouldn't do it, should I? I shouldn't go after them. Shouldn't want to see them. You're right, I have a life here. Everyone I know and love is here, in this time."

"Not everyone," Snow said gently.

Hope's vivid green eyes were normally fairly mellow, maybe a little determined, as he had taken the time to learn to control his emotions. To see them displaying anything else was unusual, and striking. "We defied the fate chosen by the fal'Cie for us so that we could build a new future. Vanille and Fang should be able to see that future, too." His voice was unusually stern, bordering on sharp, and would have startled Snow had he not suspected it would come.

"They're literally carrying our future on their shoulders."

"But they can't see it."

Snow grew stern. "Hope, you belong here with us."

The silver-haired man said nothing for a while, only staring out at Cocoon, but without really seeing, a faraway look in his eyes, fingers hanging loose now, before turning away, still wordlessly, and walking away from Snow down the hall. Snow watched him go, hoping against hope that his words had reached the other man, but only time would tell if anything he had said had been able to dull Hope's determination.


Two months passed, and summer became the early days of fall. The color began to fade out of the vegetation, just enough to be noticeable, and the sun went down a little bit earlier. Summer grew more and more each day, able to sit up on her own, able to smile, able to reach out for things and pull on hair – as she was rather fond of doing to Caius, no doubt fascinated by the beads and feathers he still wore woven into it – and Serah continued to care for her with a smile and looks of absolute joy, accompanied by her husband.

Lightning grew well used to sleeping beside Caius every night, even after he had emptied the room he had occupied for a year and his greatsword now stood in the corner, leaned against the wall. Sometimes, she said they should spar again, for old time's sake. On the weekends, though, the best time to do such a thing, they sometimes didn't get out of bed for an hour, and so they didn't get around to it just yet.

There was a shadow on Caius's heart, though, that refused to leave even when she slipped her fingers through his and caressed his skin and stroked his hair, trying to soothe his too-passionate heart. He responded well enough, but the uncertainty remained, so she finally convinced him to go to a psychiatrist that specialized in PTSD for soldiers – and warriors like himself – but he refused to go alone, so she went with him, sitting with him, content to be all he needed during those difficult hours.

She heard things that bothered her during those sessions, though his emotions always said far more than the words that fell from his lips. He didn't go into details when he didn't feel the need, but the therapist – a man who had been a high-ranking PSICOM member for many years before retiring from the service at forty-eight – did not need them all that often, and it was though they spoke the same language, for he always knew what to say and what Caius was trying to say when he couldn't.

Slowly, throughout the three months of daily one-hour sessions that were eventually reduced to weekly sessions, he began to change, visibly, doubts vanishing, darkness fading from his heart, and as fall became winter, the only major issue that still haunted him were nightmares – of losing her, of losing Yeul, of losing everything he cared for in the world – and she stayed with him even when he rejected her affection in favor of wandering off on his own to lose himself in the uncertainty that came on the heels of every nightmare.

"You won't lose me," she whispered to him on a night deep in winter when he didn't leave the bed. "You won't lose me, my love. I won't leave you. I won't abandon you for anything. No matter what happens, I made a promise, and I am keeping it forever."

He always knew what promise she referred to, and he often rested his head on her shoulder, or her breast, or her lap, seeking comfort in her touch as she reminded him that she regretted nothing.

Even that her immortality had made her infertile.

No matter how many times they tried, no child came of their unions, and when she had gone back for her checkup and asked about it, a few tests had shown that her natural cycle seemed to have stopped, frozen in time, making her unable to release her eggs. The idea of having a child through in vitro came up, but in the end, they decided possibly outliving their children would be worse than anything in the world.

Serah, on the other hand, became pregnant again when she began to wean Summer in the late winter of 5 AF, and she seemed happy enough, though Snow looked more worried as the weeks went by. Summer grew, learning to walk with the help of her father more than her mother. Lightning could already tell she would be a beautiful woman and that she would probably be hounded by suitors when the time eventually came.

The government was peaceful enough under Bartholomew's direction, and even with a bullet wound and permanent injury, his spirit had not dulled. Rygdea remained as the commander-in-chief of Pulse's military. Snow was promoted a rank, putting him in charge of several more military groups. In response, he promoted Lightning up from sergeant and encouraged her to go after her officer training, as did Caius, and so she eventually decided that it couldn't hurt to follow an ancient dream.

Serah grew more and more with each week, and soon she could no longer stand. Snow looked strained.

Spring came. Serah had two months before she gave birth and was bedridden.

Caius became quiet, withdrawing from Lightning, but their many unions had made it impossible to close themselves off to each other anymore, many threads forged in fire and love still binding them, leaving it up to them to merely turn the eyes of their hearts from each other for the sake of privacy. There were many times, though, when she was grateful those powerful bonds existed, for she could touch him across vast distances and hear his thoughts, when before she'd been grateful just to get the slightest brush of emotion.

Even when he traveled to see the dwindling descendants of his people, she could touch him, firmly, across the distance, and meet him in her dreams.

Meanwhile, around them, twilight settled across the world, and time flowed into the future.

She rarely saw Hope as he worked on his projects.

She rarely saw Sazh and Dajh as they worked together, pilot and copilot, for Cocoon and Pulse.

She rarely saw Serah except when she carved out time after work.

She rarely saw Snow, so busy was he, and concerned.

She learned the contents of the lingering shadow on her love's heart, that he blamed himself for Snow's concern and Serah's pain, and did her best to comfort him. He was a great warrior, had always been and would always be, and sometimes he responded best to a spar on the beach, her tripping him onto the sand like old times, being kicked into the surf and landing on his back. At other times, however, he responded best to a sweet caress of her lips on his skin, or their hands meeting and twining at their sides – things he never believed his curse would allow him to experience for himself that she now had the ability to give him.

There were times, as Serah's delivery date approached, that he grew short-tempered and disappeared for long periods of time, though she could still feel the coals of his heart as though they were her own. When the time did at last come, he did not accompany her, remaining somewhere in the wilderness, and found out that the second child was a boy named Cecil only when he came back several days later and she told him.

What made his attitude even worse was Serah's continued discomfort, and after the birth, she was no longer able to stand on her own feet.

Three weeks later, and she could hardly stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time.

The day came far sooner than Lightning was ready for.

It was a day in mid-autumn of 6 AF, a peaceful and beautiful day full of sunshine and the sweet scent of flowers on the breeze, when Lightning received a call from Snow, who had taken to visiting his wife at the hospital every day now since the birth, telling her to come as soon as she could. She didn't need specifics; she knew, in her heart, what was happening, and took her reluctant, too-quiet husband with her, though he faced the consequences of his actions bravely despite the tremble in his body. She stayed close at his side, though she wanted to run to her sister as soon as possible, and kept her fingers laced through his. This time, it was not her who needed strength and comfort, but him, he who would be faced with the last and greatest consequence of his sins.

"She's being held in comfort care," the nurse said. "She doesn't have a whole lot of time. We've been keeping an eye on her for the past few days, and she has progressed to the last stage. If you need to see her, now's the time to do so. Snow has requested your presence."

Lightning stared at him without really seeing, not understanding how her strong, beautiful, lively sister had come here so soon. "Tell me where she is."

Serah's room was one in the corner of the building with an enormous picture window, the curtains drawn back and sunlit patterns dancing across the floor. There was a vase of bright pink lilies next to her and something wrapped in tissue paper beside them. The lilies filled the air with a beautiful scent that somehow only made her feel worse. Snow sat at her side, dutiful, hands tightly clasping hers, and it was an obvious struggle for her to even look around, though she managed a weak smile when Lightning came in.

"Hey, you came," she murmured.

The rose-haired woman warrior wanted to cry at the sight of her sister. Serah had visibly aged, though it seemed to have been in a layer over the top of her youthful skin, bones showing where they never used to, lips pale, eyes dull, but still bearing a spark of life. The soldier had seen death before, had seen her comrades fall at her sides, and knew the signs of the oncoming twilight of a person's existence when she saw them.

Serah's sun was sinking, her dusk approaching fast.

Feeling Caius hesitate, she gently tugged him along with her. "Are you alright?" she said.

Snow looked up at her with hollow blue eyes, skin pale and expression drawn. Lightning swallowed. There was no time, not enough time, and soon she would have to go and let the man who adored her care for her in the final moments of her life. She was no longer the center of her sister's life. No, Snow had that privilege, and he was the one who had to be there when her body fell asleep forever.

"Doctors said not much time." The woman summoned more strength than Lightning would have supposed she had from her appearance, enough to speak rather clearly. "See that by the… flowers? In the paper? Take it, and you be… sure…" Her face contorted. "…take it to… take it to… where's it supposed to go?"

"Noel," Snow said, voice trembling. "It's supposed to go to Noel. They're taking it to Noel."

The woman hummed softly, and when she blinked, her eyes had trouble reopening. "Caius? Are you… are you here too? You… better be here."

Lightning heard him move closer to the woman's bedside. "I am."

Serah looked at him, but her eyes didn't completely focus. She struggled, hanging on to the last vestiges of life that she had, long enough to her final words, and Lightning admired her. In turn, she kept a grip on her own emotions, though they welled up as though trying to break a dam. Now was not the time to cry, and now was not the time to be weak. That would come later. Much later.

"My sister's a jewel," she said. Her voice cracked. "You… you take care of her… like one, you hear?"

Lightning looked at Caius; he nodded. "I will, I promise."

Snow gazed at Serah without blinking or moving. "Those flowers smell good," he murmured gently.

Serah exhaled. "Can't… smell anything."

Lightning didn't clamp down on her emotions fast enough and bolted out of the room, gracefully enough not to make a lot of noise, but too clumsily to avoid collapsing against the far wall when her knees suddenly gave out. The signs of fast-approaching death were too clear, far too clear, to a woman who had seen too much of it, she realized then, and part of her, a tiny part, was thankful she could still feel at all

Even if those feelings, now, were some of the most painful she had ever experienced.

"Get off me!" The words shot from her lips without her really understanding why she said them, hands lashing out to push the intruder away from her, and heard a breathy grunt. "Don't touch me," she added, hissing the words this time, hugging her arms against her. "Don't touch me, don't even touch–"

Something caressed her heart, and someone took her hand, holding onto her even when she jerked sharply away.

"Claire," a voice, once of her nightmares, now her dreams, her heaven, said to her.

She blinked and stared through blurry eyes.

And she realized that beautiful, wonderful, strong, deep voice was shaking, on the verge of falling apart, even as his grip stayed firm on her hand and his other hand took hers as well. Lightning felt herself snap, bursting into tears without understanding why, making weak attempts to keep her lover away from her, but like he did so well, he pushed through her barriers and gathered her tight against his own shivering body.

She sobbed something nonsensical into his chest, so ashamed and grief-stricken and angry and helpless that she dug her nails into his flesh until she gathered the fabric and clung to it instead. The Heart of Chaos flared, their hearts binding tight, and only together did they become strong enough to hold each other up.

"It's not happening," she cried pitifully into his chest, but it was the only clarity she could manage before her words became senseless babbling, the sobbing gone to be replaced by tears and a singular, desperate need to be held and loved and protected by this man indirectly responsible for killing her sister.

She choked out an apology for her completely uncharacteristic behavior, but he said nothing, and she sensed not even an ounce of judgment within his fiery heart.

Perhaps he understood best.


Inside the too-quiet room, at Serah's side, Snow leaned over her, seeing her breathing grow longer and the pulse on the monitor begin to slow. She stared at the ceiling, eyes dull. Something clamped his heart in a vise. Neither of them spoke, and neither of them needed to, for a time. He could only watch, helpless, as his love's last moments in this world ticked away too quickly before his eyes.

"Remember what… I told…" Her words were barely breathless mumbling now, and he discerned them only by listening carefully. "Love again," she managed at last. "Love again."

Snow felt a crack form across his heart.

"Love…" She closed her eyes, skin wrinkling, as if the light hurt them. "…again."

He wanted to ask her how he was supposed to live without her, how he was supposed to raise Summer and the still-newborn Cecil without her, how he was supposed to love again when his entire life up to this point had revolved around her. Love again? As if he ever could, as if he could ever give his heart so completely to another ever again, as if he could whisper those three words again to anyone or caress another woman's skin the way he had hers or have another child with another woman or spend a future with another or–

"It wasn't supposed to end like this. You were supposed to be with me forever, and I was supposed to be yours, and we were– we were– you were supposed–"

He didn't finish. They were words that would remain unspoken forever.

The beautiful woman's hand went limp in his, the monitor flatlined, and there was silence. Snow sat there for a few moments, staring at her unmoving form, not understanding what had just happened, until it struck him, and he bent over her body, pressing his face into her chest, and cried.


There are still a few more chapters to this story yet to come, but it should end before it hits the fiftieth chapter, or so I'm planning. Anyway, thanks to those of you who have stuck around this long. Enjoy the rest of the ride as we come ever closer to the end!