Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIII does not belong to me.

Author's Note: See the end of the chapter.

The One With The Last First (and a First)

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The last time she sees Hope Villiers - her husband, her best friend, the father of her child - is when she is twenty nine and the world around her is falling.

It had started as a barely noticeable tremor - she had been in the office and glanced down at her coffee cup and saw it wobbling; the glass containing her family photo was rattling against the frame right beside it. The pen she had put down against her book rolled over to its side, just by a margin.

And then the shaking underneath her feet started, and with it, so did everything else.

Her mind doesn't register the situation for the first singular moment - she sees the books toppling off the bookshelves and then the shelves from the walls themselves, and the odd knick knacks she has collected over the years coming down onto the floor with a ruckus. Claire watches a glass sculpture of Cocoon - beautiful and one of a kind, custom made for her by Hope's request for their first anniversary (Serah had joked it looked like the engagement pendants she sometimes stared longingly at) be hurled from its perch on a shelf and shatter into hundreds of little pieces.

Outside, through the open windows, comes the first scream. It is a prelude to all the others that follow, a chorus of fear as their world trembles and thrashes.

Vanille, the thought passes through Claire's mind and she wakes from her trance with a horror that dawns quickly and painfully.

"Vanille!" She yells out her daughter's name and bolts out of the room towards the bedroom, dodging falling furniture and decorations with adrenaline fueled reflexes. A particularly large picture frame falls against her and she raises her arms to cover her face, almost failing to register the sharp cuts that form along her skin from the broken glass. She can hear Vanille's crying now, increasing in pitch the closer she gets.

Her daughter reaches for her from her crib with a red, tear stained face and nonstop wailing. Claire swoops her out and cuddles her as close to her body as possible with rushed reassurances - "Mommy's here, Vanille, it'll be okay now," she promises with a rising despair. The doorframe above them begins to crumble right as Claire runs for the exit and she presses Vanille closer, refusing to stop and shielding the girl with her body. A beam topples over in the living room and Claire had never realized how absolutely fragile her house was.

She makes it outside only to see the sky rain down debris.

All of Cocoon is crumbling, the realization strikes her.

"It's finally happened," one of her neighbors sobs out from her porch beside Claire's, staring skyward. "Those damn Pulsians are attacking us. There's nothing we can do."

And then the houses behind them cave inwards, and a hole opens up where her neighbor had just been not even seconds before and the woman disappears into it with not even enough time to scream.

Claire watches this all with horror that does not register, her body frozen with fear. She does not know how much time passes as she stands rooted to her spot, Vanille crying against her chest and her entire world falling down around her. Thoughts jumble themselves up inside her brain – Hope, Serah, Snow—

Someone grips her shoulder and spins her around. Hope's face appears before hers and his familiar voice shouts her name.

"Hope," the word comes out strangled and choked. "Hope, what's going on?"

"We have to get out of here." Hope's face is also tear stained, the trails wet against his dusty face and Claire briefly wonders how fast and through what he had to run to get from what she presumes is his abandoned car on his way home from work.

"Go where?" She questions as he grabs one of her hands - the other still supporting Vanille - and tugs her along. The gravity field within Cocoon has begun to fail, from the inside out, and the objects that have been descending at a steady pace above them now begin to plummet down. A half of a car crashes onto the road right before them and Claire screams.

"We need to get to Pulse—"

"Pulse!? Aren't they the ones responsible for this?"

Hope pauses in his frantic tugging, spinning around to look at her with such desperation and pain in his eyes that she instinctively grips his hand around hers tighter. "No, Claire," he manages to get out past the tears gathering in his eyes. "Pulse has nothing to do with this. I'm sorry, Claire, Snow and I tried to stop him - Orphan – but we must have missed something—" he chokes back a sob, his voice faltering as he begins shaking.

"We need to go, we need to do something - we need to find Snow, he has a way for us to get off Cocoon-"

And then comes an abrupt sound, like the ripping of the fabric of the world itself and for a moment, all is silent - the world around them slows and Claire can see Hope before her so clearly, clad in his Sanctum research uniform and hair littered with dust; his eyes, so familiar to her ever since she was a little girl and he, her annoying teenage neighbor, staring into hers with absolute heartbreak and affection.

"Claire-" he says her name again before the ripping sound spreads and nothing short of a hole in the space behind him opens up, a figure looming through it. Claire has the time to register the pink hair and tight black armor clad around the woman floating behind her husband before the stranger opens her mouth, and with the hole still behind her, speaks-

"HOPE ESTHEIM," she intones her husband's name by a family name Claire has never heard before, the voice not unlike thunder. Her face is emotionless, the eyes covered by a strange mask. "YOU HAVE FAILED."

A pregnant moment of silence descends down upon them before her husband cranes his neck over his shoulder by just the tiniest bit. "Lightning," her husband breathes out the name in awe, a tremble in his voice as he does so and Claire suddenly remembers - remembers all the strange names and conversations she's been meaning to ask him about but never did, what do you mean the world ended and Lightning-

Claire thinks she understands, she thinks she doesn't; the ground beneath her feet is still shaking, and Vanille is bawling against her shirt. The world resumes its regular pace and then the pink haired woman's hands are on Hope's shoulders lurching him away from Claire and into the hole in the air-

"No!" The man yells out as his hand drops hers and the figure - this Lightning - locks her arms around his chest. "Claire, no—"

He falls in with the phantom, the hole closing behind them as they disappear and the world around Claire is still shaking, the great monster of Cocoon caving in on itself—

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Claire first meets the new neighbours when she is seven.

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AN: A bonus chapter has been uploading alongside this one. Please make sure to read it before posing any questions.