Chapter 15: Maiden Voyage

Serah's business had entailed wanting information about certain historical data. She was sick of landing in time periods without the proper equipment. While the Director's files were vast, they didn't exactly cover areas the Academy hadn't bothered monitoring.

This was where Lightning and I came in. She instantly offered to personally visit each locale. So, when I wasn't doing busy work for the Academy, I was dragged all over Pulse and back and forth through time. Today, we were somewhere in the Steppe dealing with a Long Gui that Noel and Serah had 'gotten rid of.' They'd unknowingly scared it off in the direction of another nomadic clan. The monster had crushed half of them in their sleep when it had stampeded through the valley. No one was able to get near it, so it had roamed freely stomping anything in its path.

After I defeated the beast, I turned to see Lightning completely crumble to the ground in pain. No blood or gashes were visible but by the time I dashed across the grass and rock between us, she was completely invisible as she was hidden in an unconscious pile beneath the tall flora. I screamed her name repeatedly until my voice was hoarse. With no regard for our encampment or equipment, I ran with her in my arms all the way to the location of our arrival rift. There was still a slight sparkle in the air and I pushed through it.

By the time we'd reached Academia, I'd spent the remnants of my magic trying to heal her. We'd barely reached the first moving walkway when a vehicle dropped out of the sky in front of us.

"The Director will meet you at the hospital," a paramedic said as she helped lift Lightning onto a gurney.

Another nameless paramedic hoisted me into the vehicle as it began to accelerate. My adrenaline had finally run its course; I passed out from exhaustion.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed hooked to an IV. Everything seemed backwards since the point was to get Lightning to safety. There was technically nothing wrong with me.

"Oh good. The Director will be pleased to hear you're awake," Alyssa said.

I'd completely missed the fact that she'd been sitting on a stool next to me. She typed furiously on a small device, assumedly contacting her boss.

"Where's Lightning?" I asked.

"In the ICU." She looked up from her tablet and turned it to me. "He would like a word with you."

The small screen brightened as a frazzled Director came into focus. "Does she have any previous health conditions you know about?" In a nervous tick, he began scratching at both sides of his neck. Even from a distance I could tell that area was red from where he'd broken the skin. "Anything at all will help at this point. We have her medical records from the weeks that she's been here, but that's it. They didn't exactly store four hundred years' worth of patient information. We're not getting anywhere. Family history? Anything." He repeated himself on the verge of stuttering.

I took in a deep breath. "While her parents both had a variety of health issues, majority of them weren't hereditary. We had them checked with a geneticist. The only thing I can think of is from when she took a certain medication."

I relayed all of the information I knew off the top of my head. But I couldn't get over the fact that it was all probably useless. It was unlikely she would be taking a remotely similar prescription right now. I wasn't given much time to worry, since a doctor stormed in soon after. He berated Alyssa for disturbing my rest and then flooded something into my IV that knocked me back out.

"Hey," it was all I could manage when Lightning woke up.

"Hey," she responded back. Her was voice raspy from being intubated during the first few days.

"Gave me a bit of a scare there." I rubbed the length of her straight nose.

"Did something eat me?" She loosely lifted each limb, flailing them to check if they were still attached. When she assessed that all were still present, she looked at me for an answer.

"No. Just your meds. You hadn't told the clinic you visited about your mother's history. Or even given them a heads up about the initial side effects you were experiencing. They could have switched you to something else and avoided all of this shit." I gestured frantically at the monitors beeping away at her bedside.

She looked at me perplexed. "What medication?"

I drew my hand down my face and sighed. "Lightning, we're both adults here." I pointed at her arm, where there was now a small incision. "Your birth control. They had to remove it. The type of hormones and dosage you were using was completely wrong."

She'd gone from completely pale, to an embarrassed shade of pink.

"Turns out your magic was involved in the rejection."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Now came the part where I got to be embarrassed. "You serve a Goddess." She looked at me like I hadn't clarified anything. "You're a priestess."

"Get to the point."

"A maiden."

A bit of recognition was flickering, but the painkillers were stunting it.

"Lightning, come on...those who serve gods usually take..."

She squinted at me, urging me to finish.

"Vows of celibacy. Part of your powers are reliant on you being a virgin." I brushed my bangs out of the way and stared at her heart monitor. The numbers began spiking. "Etro took it as a threat. That's why your symptoms spiraled out of control. But the Director is helping the docs with a work around. For now, there's the old-fashioned way." I mimed unrolling something down my fingers.

She turned over and curled into a ball. "He knows?"

"Everyone was worried sick about you. I'm sorry; I shouldn't be the one telling you all of this. The doctors will be back soon; if you wait, they'll explain everything more clearly. But for now, we're going to have to stay here longer. This save-the-world shit is on hold because you practically obliterated your organs. Thank the gods for future-medicine."

I wanted to yell at her for letting things get this bad. There really was no excuse. Apparently, we'd been running around for weeks with her in unbearable pain that she wasn't telling me about. So much for being a partner she could trust. By reminding myself she was fine now, I was able to calm down and relax into my chair. Briefly, I considered pumping more magic into her, but any of the times I'd tried, my doctor had run in and dragged me back to my bed. I could only visit her on the condition I didn't impede my own recovery. He took exhaustion way more seriously than anyone else.

Then she turned enough to see me from over her shoulder. She mumbled something but I couldn't make it out. "What about fertility goddesses?" she repeated.

"We're still talking about this?"

"Those priestesses must have done stuff during their ceremonies."

I breathed out a sigh. "Key word: 'fertility.' They were trying to get pregnant." I hoped that she'd forget this conversation when the drugs wore off. "The fal'Cie have this thing about fertilization. But I'm not in the mood to discuss it." I would never force myself to summarize Vanille's ridiculous explanation of sex magic, especially with Lightning in the state she was. "But Etro isn't one of those and you were doing the opposite of trying to procreate. She didn't like that since you are her personal representative. We already knew she was vengeful."

"Lightning!" The Director shouted way too loudly for a sick ward.

He stomped past me, kicked my chair out of the way, and threw himself at Lightning. Like I'd anticipated, I'd quickly become a third wheel and needed to get the hell out of there. At least he hadn't been in the room when she'd first awoken. He probably would have scared her with his overwhelming optimism.

"What the hell happened to your face?" she mumbled into his uniform.

I snorted, very pleased with myself.

"Nothing."

Hah. It was very much not nothing. His nose sported a large bandage that didn't quite cover the bruises. When he had told me that her birth control was no longer affecting her treatments, I'd made my way straight to his location. Wearing only a hospital gown and full of rage, I'd been a man on a mission. As soon as I found him standing in the hallway outside her room, I'd had a special present for him. Snow had been teaching me a punch that included a bit of a fog element. Technically it was meant for any creature small enough that could be taken out in several hits. He'd actually designed it to catch bunny-like creatures that kept decimating his garden. Serah didn't have the heart for it, and they had a bit of an infestation one of the times I'd visited. Once they couldn't zap him with their electricity, he'd relocate them to the outskirts of town.

Punching the Director squarely in the face with this technique meant that it would be a long while before he could magically heal it. I'd then gone off on him about being a selfish bastard and not remotely taking her health into her consideration. If he actually cared about her, he wouldn't have forced her to deal with something like that alone. He should have taken at least a modicum of responsibility in their relationship.

That was when, with his nose bleeding down his pure white jacket, he'd stared in utter blank confusion. Because, as it turns out, he was not sleeping with her. So how could he have possibly known what she was up to? If there was anyone to blame, it wasn't him. Then he'd made a shockingly clear point: if anyone should have known, that person would've been me. And I'd tried to make a point, about how she'd never indicated that she'd…but my words had died in my mouth. Because while she hadn't; I had that one morning in his apartment.

After which, he'd punched me back. But I'd healed my injury immediately like an asshole, before skulking back to my room.

Claire had tried several forms of birth control. Her body had rejected each one. None of the doctors could find the source. There had been nothing in her blood work or medical history to suggest why. The only theory anyone could come up with involved her status as a l'Cie. It had been a wild guess, because there hadn't been any other cases. Fang and Vanille hadn't needed any, and Serah had never tried. Even if it hadn't been a magic based problem, the family agreed that wasn't an option. If the issue had been genetic, there had been probability Serah would present with similar symptoms. Her fitness wasn't nearly at the level of Claire's and no one wanted to risk her hospitalization.

All of this had seemed irrelevant to my interactions with Lightning. There was no reason for me to spontaneously blab about my sex life to her. Claire had been twenty-five, Lightning was only twenty-one and not in any sort of relationship. I didn't realize any of that was on her radar. But still, I felt like her hospitalization was a failing on my part. There were so many things from my timeline I could easily prevent in this one. Starting with Fang and Vanille. All I had to do was bring Serah and Snow back together. If they loved each other here as much as they did there, then problem solved.

I was selfish. My purpose here wasn't to correct things. If anything, I was trying to meddle as little as possible. I'd been taking cues from Lightning. We were meant to work in the shadows.