Lightning stared at her ceiling, thinking.
This used to be her parents' room. She could remember how the bed was positioned to face the window and how the sun would rise and wake her parents up every morning. She remembered how the dresser was positioned in the corner of the room, just to the left of the window, and to the right was a wardrobe, passed down from generation to generation inside her family. The walls had been painted a light gray (her mother's idea, she knew, for the woman was a lover of simplicity) but framed photographs littered every surface in the room, from the dressers to the bedside tables to the walls - hand drawn masterpieces courtesy of four- and one-year old Claire and Serah Farron in an array of colors and shapes that made no sense whatsoever and yet their parents adored every square inch.
Serah was too young to remember their dad, but Claire could remember waking up before the sunrise every morning and deciding it was a good idea to wake her parents up too. They never complained: her father would grunt and groan before turning a bleary eye to his daughter, a grin betraying his otherwise sleepy features. Her mother would rise and check on Serah, even though Claire would repeatedly tell her that she already did that, and that Serah was fast asleep in her crib. Serah was only a year old when their father died.
Their mother tried, Lightning knew. More than once a neighbor was left to keep an eye on the girls while their mother worked… and worked, and worked. Once Claire turned fourteen, it was her job to keep an eye on herself and eleven year old Serah. In the end it was sheer exhaustion that killed their mother when Claire was freshly seventeen.
Serah may not have been able to remember their father, but she was old enough to remember their mother. In a simple dress and shiny shoes, Serah tied up her hair and wore a veil over her face to mask the puffiness of her cheeks and redness of her eyes. Claire wore slacks and a button-up to the funeral, and she wore slacks and a button-up to the interview immediately after, her hair loosely draped over her shoulder and skin pale.
It was under a special circumstance that Claire successfully joined the Guardian Corp at only age seventeen, but she did. She felt like her mother, spending more time at work than at home, but she needed to prove she was capable of taking care of fourteen year old Serah Farron. She could not lose her sister as well as her parents. At work, she made no pretense of trying to make friends. She did not smile when she locked eyes with a coworker, did not wave if she saw someone she recognized in public. Claire arrived at dawn, diligently performed her assigned tasks, and left at dusk, speaking to no one save her higher authorities. Behind her back, she heard whispers, but she paid no mind to them.
She was called a variety of words by men and women alike who disliked her impersonal personality. Rain or shine, she did her job and left. Finally, a nickname stuck: during a particularly nasty thunderstorm, Claire did not even blink as lightning struck only yards away from the corner she patrolled. Lightning, they started calling her, as unemotional and striking as Claire Farron.
This nickname became her new name at work, and she found it easily differentiated her work life from her personal life. Serah soon became the only person to know her as Claire, and even so, as time passed and her sister climbed through the ranks, Serah began referring to her sister by this alter ego's moniker. Claire Farron, little girl with bright smiles and joyous laughter, was put to rest, and Lightning Farron arose from the bed Claire was put to rest in.
Lightning stared at the ceiling of her parents' old bedroom. At the pale pink Serah insisted on repainting the walls. At the wardrobe in the corner of the room that housed a dozen identical uniforms. It was barren, she knew. It felt more like a hotel room than a bedroom. She shook her head at the thought; for so long, she put so much of her time into work and into making money to pay for Serah's schooling. She was nearly through with her first semester, and she wasn't forced to pay a dime. (No, she instead paid for the groceries, and for any maintenance the house required.)
Tomorrow would make Lightning twenty-one years old, and it was a day she was determined to focus on Serah entirely. No work, no business, just Serah and Claire Farron.
Instead, it was to be the first day in a series of living nightmares.