Crystal Cocoon

Leaning against the porch of their Corps-issued cabin, Serah looked out at the crystal pillar, her arms crossed, and watched as the colours mirrored on the surface changed when the sun began to rise. The settlement was quiet, the dense forest around it only just stirring to life. The only thing that broke the silence was the sound of Snow thudding around inside their home as he prepared for the day ahead, and the occasional curse as he managed to sleepily lurch into another door frame.

It had been nearly a year since Cocoon had almost fallen, and a year since the Purge and the beginning of Barthandelus' plan to bring back the Maker. While the people of Cocoon had survived the initial evacuation, things down on Gran Pulse had been tougher than Serah had ever imagined. Without the fal'Cie manufacturing their food, their building materials, regulating their lives and the very environment itself, everything was a struggle as humanity was suddenly left alone.

Sanctum no longer ruled the people, and while the new government was bickered over and wrangled out, the Guardian Corps had stepped into the void left behind, and had quickly taken charge of the day-to-day law enforcement and construction efforts.

Things had calmed down as houses and eventually whole townships had cropped up, and Serah felt like things had come as close to 'normal' as they ever would again. She and Snow lived on the edge of a beach-side settlement to the far east of the Oerban coast, out of the way but not all that far from where the crystal pillar met the ground. New Bodhum was quiet, away from the epicentre of political and military activity, and Serah liked it that way.

Gadot wouldn't be too far away from picking Snow up for their latest salvage expedition up on Cocoon's inner shell, now that the sun was rising. Snow and Team NORA had managed to make a small business of their exploration – with Maqui's technical know-how, Gadot's piloting and Snow's crystal-altered cells allowing him to survive in places ordinary humans couldn't, they had far outstripped the Corps and PSICOM's own efforts at salvage.

While Snow had managed to make a living off of it, Serah understood that it wasn't money or equipment or anything like that that drove Snow's efforts. He was looking for old friends. Back when she'd just woken up and didn't understand the bond that had grown between the other l'Cie, she'd asked him why he was so fixated on finding them. He'd just given her an amused look and a laugh, but he'd sobered quickly.

"They're alone up there, Serah."

They were Fang and Vanille, two people that Serah had only barely met, yet had heard so much about.

Snow, Sazh and Hope had all told her stories about the two Pulsians that had stood with them against Orphan, two would-be enemies who had ended up saving them all. That was the way Snow had put it, and while Serah well appreciated her fiance's penchant for the dramatic, the fact that Sazh had gone on to tell her so many stories had made their heroics seem so much more real. Serah almost felt like she already knew them as friends, even if she'd only ever met Vanille once and had never met Fang.

The two Pulsians had changed everything, just by waking up. What Serah was the mostconcerned about was the change that they – Fang, Serah supposed – had wrought in Serah's sister, crystal pillar and new life on Pulse aside.

Unlike the rest of the l'Cie, Lightning, had not shared stories about Fang or Vanille. The deep and lingering anger over the loss and their sacrifice had stayed all of Serah's questions for her sister, and by the time the anger had faded into acceptance, Serah felt as if she'd missed her chance to ask at all.

Of course, Lightning seemed lighter, and maybe she smiled more often than she'd used to. She was less torn between past regrets and future fears, seeming more anchored to the present than Serah had ever known her to be, and despite the buried anger and grief, Serah knew that was genuine. Serah liked that, but it didn't change the fact that she never got to see Lightning any more.

Lightning travelled a lot, just exploring the land and transmitting her findings, but she seemed to be waiting for something.

In more quiet moments, Serah wondered if Lightning and Snow were searching for the same thing in their own ways – but was it closure to their friends' sacrifices, or was it a desperate search to somehow beat the odds once more?

Snow joined Serah on the porch with two mugs of coffee, and she accepted his offering with an appreciative murmur. Together, they watched the sun rise fully and stain the crystal pillar in brilliant reds and golds. Serah leaned against his shoulder, feeling warmth and a sense of solidness through the sleeve of his battered old coat.

"Reckon your sister is around?" Snow asked her softly, wrapping his arm about her shoulders.

"Last I heard from her was a week ago. You were there, remember?" Serah nudged him with an elbow, prompting a rueful chuckle. "She's still out there, finding all the dangers that Pulse hides. Sometimes, when she tells me about what she's seen, it scares me. Other times..."

"It sounds like damn fun?" Snow finished for her, smiling when Serah nodded. "Well, once I'm done up on Cocoon, maybe we can do a bit of adventuring of our own."

"Done..." Serah murmured, looking down at her now half-finished coffee. "You're still looking for them, right?"

"Always." Snow winked at her, then raised his cup as if in toast to the crystal pillar. "You know I'm not likely to forget something like saving the world, and they deserve to come home too."

"What if you can't?"

"No such thing as can't, Miss Farron." He grinned at her, all insolent playfulness, and Serah wanted to whack him lightly on the arm.

"You know what I mean," Serah told him with a frown, feeling like he wasn't taking the question seriously enough. It had been a question Serah hadn't wanted to have asked, but as the months had stretched on, she had to wonder. What would happen to her sister, if Fang was never found? What if she never came back? Serah thought of that deep anger and grief that had been carefully smoothed into the illusion of acceptance, and wondered if Lightning would really be okay.

"That I can't bring them home?" Snow shrugged, not looking like he cared to think too hard about that outcome. "What are the chances what two crystal statues are all that are holding up the whole pillar, you know? We'll get them out, it's a promise."

They stood in companionable silence for a while, as Snow drained his coffee.

"Gadot and Maqui'll be here soon," he told her quietly, and he impulsively reached out for her free hand and squeezed it. "I got a good feeling about today. That Lady Luck of Fang's, I'm sure she's in my corner right now."

"Unlike every other time, when you've said exactly that?" Serah returned his grin, then looked up at crystallised Cocoon. Fang and Vanille... "When you find them, can I come meet them?"

"Sure," he said, his voice gentle. He looked a little sad, even when he tried to smile past it. "Me, you, and Lightning. We'll all go see them together."

The rumble of approaching velocycles broke the morning stillness, and Snow's smile became a grin. Swooping down to take Serah in his arms and kissing her swiftly on the cheek, Snow released her and bent to grab his gear for the salvage. He slung the bag over his shoulder, and even though the steps were right there, he vaulted off the porch.

He ran for the velocycle as Gadot and Maqui pulled up, shouting over his shoulder, "Loveyouseeyousoonbye!"

Serah watched Snow and Team NORA roar out of sight, and sighed.

The rocky, narrow beach was freezing as Lightning worked her way along it, and she was grateful that the tide was going out.

The year since the near fall of Cocoon, since Barthandelus, since Fang, had dragged on for Lightning, for all that she'd tried to keep busy. She explored, mapping out the world and uncovering what old technology she could uncover in the ruins, and when she brought it back for Amodar, Team NORA or any other interested party, sure, she felt useful, like she actually had a purpose for being out there in the first place.

Out in the middle of nowhere, on some godforsaken beach with no pretences and no place to hide, Lightning wasn't so sure her travels weren't pointless. Initially, when she'd rejected her old position in the Corps, she'd helped with salvage efforts on Cocoon, joining Snow and Team NORA as they'd dug through the rubble and crystal. She'd started out with the best intentions, but at some point she'd started to wander more and help less, even when she tried to enjoy the family that had grown around her.

She wasn't even sure why she was out there, Lightning thought a little bitterly as she trudged through wet sand, unmindful of the waves that lapped at her boots. It felt like she was going through the motions, like she was living out someone else's dream. It felt disturbingly like giving up on that someone, but what the hell was she supposed to do about it?

Back on Eden, travelling Gran Pulse had sounded perfect, but she was quickly learning that it wasn't travelling that she'd wanted at all, but the company.

As she'd trawled crumbling skyscrapers and forced her way into sealed-off command centers, she'd learned more about what had happened to Gran Pulse's people. The physical evidence and records she'd only barely managed to parse with her rudimentary knowledge of Pulsian lettering seemed to point to a slow and lingering death, rather than one explosive end. She'd found logs of a civil war, information on rogue fal'Cie, even disease.

Ragnarok, as it had turned out, was not responsible for Gran Pulse's current state. Lightning rather looked forward to seeing the look on Fang's face when Lightning showed her the evidence.

Lightning's heart clenched a little, and she pushed aside the feeling that she'd never get to see it at all.

The old command centres had yielded the most information on the world that had been, and that was why Lightning was working her way toward the iron-clad blast door built into the side of a cliff face. The old and rusted door had only just caught her eye early that morning, as she'd crouched on the cliff's edge, trying to sketch out the curve of the coast to the west of Oerba. Now standing before the rusted storm hatch, Lightning paused for a moment and reached out. Her gloved fingers traced Pulsian lettering etched into the metal that she couldn't make out through the stain of orange rust.

Above her, Cocoon and the crystal pillar stood in the sky, oppressive and always on her mind. Lightning tried not to think of how Fang would have snickered at her difficulty reading the strange symbols, before translating them as if she were explaining things to a complete idiot. Lightning's throat felt raw all of a sudden, and as she blasted the brittle doors open with a fire spell, she might have put a little more power into it than she had needed.

Her jaw tightening, Lightning allowed another fire spell to condense above the palm of her hand. Without hesitation, she strode into the old command centre, wrinkling her nose a little at the rank stench of age and death.

Dusty bones and old weapons littered the hallway before her, and automatically she knelt by the nearest of the bodies. Her gloved fingers immediately sought the bullet gouged metal beneath the dust and dirt, her fingertips skimming it for a moment as she cursed softly. She shook her hair out of her eyes as she followed what she estimated would have been the bullet's trajectory, ricochets aside. A quick scan yielded her nothing but a blank metal wall, but those were not the first bodies that she had found in such a manner.

The fact that no one had been left to give the dead men proper burial sat uneasily with her, and Lightning hazarded a guess that, like the others had been, their deaths had been at the very end and that something – or someone – had taken it upon themselves to snuff out the last of them.

Enemies? Traitors? Those rogue fal'Cie? She didn't understand enough of the records she found to really know for sure what had gone down in those last years. Lightning wished she'd paid a little more attention to Vanille's lessons on Pulsian language. She wished that Fang was there to ask outright.

Climbing to her feet and wiping her hands on her trousers, Lightning began to make her way down the empty hallway, toward what she guessed would be the central command room. She didn't wonder if Fang had ever walked the halls, or if the place had been built after her time.

The blast doors and hatches that should have blocked her path instead gaped open, like all the others had been. The command room at the end of the hallway was small, and also grazed with bullets from that unknown enemy, but it was the faded map of Gran Pulse on the wall that drew Lightning's gaze. It wasn't just a fragment, or a map that was limited to a single area of Gran Pulse. That map had to be of the whole world itself, with islands and continents even bigger than the one Cocoon's survivors had made home.

Lightning reached out, her fingertips brushing faded and perished plastic, before withdrawing quickly.

Perhaps there were other people out there, people who had avoided the chaos and death and survived somehow. People who knew how fal'Cie and l'Cie worked, who could tell her what triggered waking from stasis, why Lightning had woken up while Fang had not. She tried not to wonder if Fang simply didn't want to wake up, and she pushed those feelings aside because they were of no use to her now.

Fang.

The radio on her hip crackled to life, and for once Lightning was glad that nobody had been around to see her jump at the sudden noise.

"Hey, Sis. You about?" Snow's voice was distorted, but Lightning had to commend Snow's engineer kid for making a radio out of odds and ends that still worked when she was a good twenty foot underground.

"Snow," Lightning said, her voice abrupt and feeling just a little irritated that he had interrupted her at that moment. Why would he have contacted her? He knew the radios were for emergencies only -

"Thought you'd want to know – we've found them."

Lightning froze, the radio halfway to her mouth, as the last time she'd seen Fang flashed through her mind like a repeating nightmare. Orphan, falling, Ragnarok. Her heart began to pound loudly in her ears, and she sucked in a steadying breath. Her voice, thankfully, was perfectly even when she finally came through with her response.

"I'll head for town immediately. I'll see you tomorrow."

Maps and old Pulsian mysteries be damned – Lightning had something far more important to attend to.

Lightning arrived back in New Bodhum under the cover of night, and with little of the usual fanfare. Most people, she'd found, were eager to hear of her travels and the world beyond the Corps' patrol perimeters, and while Lightning usually welcomed the questions, after a day's hard travel and having been driven to distraction by Snow's news, she wasn't sure she could keep a leash on her temper.

She'd turned up on Serah's doorstep, tired and dusty, and had been relieved that when Serah opened the door, she hadn't said anything, and had simply thrown her arms around Lightning's rigid shoulders. Snow, too, seemed to pick up on the tension practically bleeding off of Lightning, and simply told her that they'd be going up onto Cocoon at first light. After nodding wearily in agreement with Snow's plans, Lightning had trudged up the short hallway to the cabin's tiny spare room.

Tossing her travelling bag to the floor with a thud, Lightning sat uneasily on the bed that had been made up for her. She rubbed a hand across her face, feeling more drained than ever before, and she tried to let the tension escape her as she breathed out, long and slow.

Eden, Lightning was meant to be better than she was now. She had tried so hard to be patient, to move on, but she supposed that Fang had always managed to mess with her emotions and force her way under Lightning's skin. Palumpolum, the Steppe, Taejin's, Oerba... The fact that her memories of Oerba had been so good made remembering them all the more painful now.

She wasn't sure if she hated Fang for doing that to her. She hated their sacrifice and the crystal pillar that shoved it in her face every damn day. She hated that she felt so alone.

Tomorrow morning, she'd see Fang for the first time in a year, and Lightning wasn't sure what would happen. Would she lose hope and finally move on? Was that what she wanted?

Sighing, Lightning tiredly rose to her feet and went to wash up. Perhaps she'd go and spend a little time with her family. If she was back in New Bodhum for a change, then she might as well make the best of the situation.

In spite of her tiredness, Lightning's night was mostly sleepless. She rose well before dawn, too wired to force herself back to sleep. To her surprise, Serah was up, already seated at the rickety wooden table, eating breakfast and sipping from a mug. She looked tired but triumphant at having beaten her older sister up, and it reminded Lightning of their childhood games, back before their parents had passed. Serah's victorious smile faded as Lightning wordlessly moved to grab a stale bread roll from the bench top.

"Are you all right?" Serah asked, like she had a hundred times before. Instead of brushing her sister's worry aside with reassurances and a smile that felt fake and real all at once, Lightning paused and stopped to consider her answer.

"I'm not sure," Lightning admitted finally, moving to lean by the cabin's window. The sky was growing lighter outside, and Lightning noted with a hint of irritation that Snow was yet to haul his ass out of bed. She could see the pillar from her position at the window, and her jaw tightened as she turned her back on it.

"Are you worried?" Serah frowned at her, her mug forgotten off to the side.

"A little." Lightning looked down at the bread roll in her hands, unsure if she had the appetite for eating. "I'm not sure what I'll do after I... see them."

See that there is no chance, that there is no way they'll ever wake up.

"You'll need to introduce me, you know." Serah's voice was deliberately light, and Lightning looked at her questioningly. "Properly. I want to meet my sister's girlfriend."

Lightning smiled, even as her heart began to ache with a sudden ferocity.

"It was nothing as formal as that," Lightning told Serah, crossing the cabin's kitchen to sit at Serah's side. She accepted Serah's comforting hug, and she squeezed her offered hand once before letting it drop down.

"Then what was it like?" Serah asked Lightning, her tone just a little bit teasing.

"Complicated," Lightning said with a sigh. Her memories of all her wasted chances with Fang were still rising up like a tidal wave inside her, and she swallowed. "Really, really complicated."

"Well... how did you feel?" Serah asked slowly, and Lightning almost laughed at the question. Of everything from that dizzying month spent with Fang, the thing Lightning felt the surest of was how she felt about the other woman.

"I loved her." Lightning's words were as true then as they had been back in Oerba, no matter the anger and grief that had followed.

Serah was quiet for a long moment, staring down at her clasped hands. Outside, the sky steadily grew paler, and Lightning wondered if her honesty had done nothing more than worry her sister. That was a responsibility that Lightning didn't care for, no matter how stressed the events of the day would make her.

"I'm not upset at you, so don't worry." Lightning reached over, prying one of Serah's hands free and holding it between her two. Serah still looked unhappy, so Lightning added, "I'm serious, Serah."

"I know. I just... thought you'd be happier, once we found them. That maybe you'd be able to stay in town a bit longer, spend a little time with us all. You, and Snow..." Serah toyed with the mug's handle, biting her lip. "It's not that simple, is it?"

"I'll try to be around a little more." Lightning squeezed Serah's hand, and her sister looked up, her eyes a little red. "I promise."

In the room next door to the kitchen, Lightning heard Snow swear and lurch out of bed, and knew that it was almost time to go. She settled into a carefully controlled feeling of wariness, and she ignored the sad looks that Serah gave her from across the table.

The trip up the crystal pillar took longer than Lightning had expected, even with the improved engines that Maqui had boasted about having installed. Back during the Focus, Lightning remembered their journeys to and from Gran Pulse as being quick, but they didn't have the means to open the portals between worlds, not as Barthandelus had. The air was thin even to a l'Cie when Lightning stepped out of the craft and onto the crystallised landscape, but she declined the oxygen mask that Maqui and Gadot offered her.

Lightning rolled her shoulders, taking a slow breath as she took in her surroundings. Her hand immediately went to her weapon as she listened to her surroundings, as Team NORA and Serah disembarked behind her. Back when she'd been salvaging with Team NORA, during those early months after the fall, her major role in the operation had been threat elimination. A number of Pulsian monsters had managed to survive the destruction and subsequent crystallisation of Cocoon, and at first they'd made all salvage efforts dangerous and foolhardy.

As time had gone on, the monster population had dwindled, thanks to a combination of other monsters, starvation and Lightning's own blade. While few would have still survived, it did not pay to become complacent, Lightning told herself.

The crunch of crystal underfoot made Lightning twitch and look up, and Snow grinned down at her from where he stood at her side.

"You seem a little distracted," he said, and Lightning just snorted softly.

"Let's get on with it." She didn't need to add that she was wound so tightly that she could hardly bear her own tension, or that she was dreading and welcoming the moment fast-approaching. Snow nodded as if she'd voiced her thoughts anyhow, and he began to lead the way through crystal wreckage, toward where Edenhall had once stood as the base of Sanctum operations.

Gadot and Maqui remained with the airship, but to Lightning's right, Serah walked behind Snow, looking determined not to be daunted by the alien surroundings. Unlike Lightning and Snow, Serah had needed to wear the oxygen mask and equipment, as her l'Cie changes had been minor and her time under her Focus having been fleeting.

Serah could hardly be blamed for her apprehension – the place was as silent and still as a mausoleum, and they continued onwards resolutely.

Though the walk had to have been objectively short, for Lightning, it seemed to take an eternity. She just had to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other. She kept telling herself that as she walked, willing it to be true.

When compared to the ornate pillar they'd formed as Ragnarok, Fang and Vanille's own cavern was small, hard to spot and understated. The entrance to the cave was narrow, just a fissure in the side of mirror-smooth crystal, and as Lightning slid herself through the gap, she was forcefully reminded of that cavern on the Steppe. It felt as if an enormous pressure weighed down on her shoulders and chest, as if she couldn't breathe, and she looked up to see them, hearing Serah squeeze in through the fissure behind her but not listening.

Fang and Vanille were curled on their sides, all brilliant and cold crystal. They were alive but lifeless, frozen in time as they'd been before the Purge. Lightning let out her breath slowly, surprised that it didn't shake. She had a lot that she'd wanted to say, and a lot of anger that she'd wanted to vent. It all seemed to die on her lips as she took them in, and she felt -

Determined. Not at all like she was going to break, not like she'd been afraid of. Lightning tilted her head back, closing her eyes. She wondered if Fang was dreaming of that better tomorrow that they'd promised themselves, or if she dreamed at all.

"Serah, the one on the right... that's Oerba Yun Fang. The one on the left is Oerba Dia Vanille, who I believe you've met before." Lightning opened her eyes, still seeing crystal, taking in the way the weak light played off the smooth surfaces of Fang's skin. It was beautiful, but nothing compared to the warm, tanned skin she'd loved so much before.

"You two... you really did it. You went and saved everyone, even when the rest of us didn't know how. I know you have a bit of a martyr complex, Fang, but I can't say I'm really happy with your reward."

The silence from the crystal was deafening – what had Lightning expected? Were they listening? Could they hear her? On the off-chance that they could, she forced herself on.

"I wish you could answer. Stasis don't suit someone like you at all..." Lightning heard Snow or Serah shift behind her. She considered asking them to leave her for a few minutes, but decided against it.

"I thought that seeing you like this would give me a little peace of my own. That seeing you sleep would make me stop." Lightning crossed her arms in front of her chest, her eyes narrowing as she steeled herself. "I have my answer, now. I said it back in Oerba, and I'll say it again. I'm not going to let you become another one of my regrets. Not you. Not Vanille, either. That's why I'm going to find a way to bring you back home."

She'd drag them back, if that was what it was going to take, no matter what their thoughts on it were.

"Hold on, and I will too. I'll be damned if I have to live your dreams for you, Fang. Come back and do it yourself." Lightning took a long and deep breath, feeling herself relax now that she'd made her choice. Turning to Serah and Snow with a slight smile and resting a hand on her hip, Lightning told Snow quietly, "Thank you, Snow, for finding them."

"They were my friends, too," Snow pointed out with a chuckle, and wrapped his arm around Serah's shoulders. Lightning looked to Serah, feeling mixed on her next actions, but knowing that they had to be done.

"Serah – I've got a lot that I need to do now, and -"

Serah's eyes widened, and she quickly cut in before Lightning could get her words out. "Don't tell me you're going to be breaking your promise to me, Lightning!"

Lightning paused, suddenly a little unsure. Was Serah going to hold her to that morning's promise, even knowing how badly Lightning needed to find a way to free Fang had Vanille? Snow looked down at Serah in surprise, but when he met her eyes, unbelievably, he nodded in agreement.

"You aren't going off by yourself, if that's what you're gonna say," Snow added, his grin flooding back in full-force, and Lightning had to frown at the two of them. What in Eden's name did they think they were doing? She couldn't believe that they were actually going to stop her from-

"You aren't going alone. We're coming along, and don't you dare say otherwise, Lightning." Serah sniffed in a feigned haughtiness from behind that oxygen mask, and Lightning wondered when her little sister had gotten to be so sure of herself. It seemed that there was a lot Lightning was missing back home, just as sure as Fang and Vanille were.

"Fine, I won't say otherwise, then." Lightning felt her own smile tug at the corners of her mouth, and the three of them left the cavern together. As she stepped out and into the cold sunlight, Lightning had to admit that she felt happier and freer than she'd been in a very long time. The walk back to the airship seemed to take only moments, and as they boarded, Serah pulled the oxygen mask from her face with no small amount of relief.

"So am I allowed to give Fang as much hell as you gave to Snow?" Serah asked then, just a little too innocently, and Lightning laughed.

"I'm counting on it."

There was going to be no more doubt, and no more regrets. Lightning wouldn't just be waiting for Fang and Vanille to wake up, or for some charitable god or fal'Cie to take mercy on them. Lightning was going to go out and save them, because there were no miracles aside from the ones they built for themselves. She'd go out and do the impossible once again.

A/N: The end. Two years of being largely unconvinced by the SnowSerah pairing, and then I write a scene of their dorky-true-love romance and suddenly I'm down with it. In a fic where SnowSerah has barely rated as a background pairing, I had an inordinate amount of fun with that scene and it was surprising.

This fic was originally much shorter in my head when I first started writing, and was more the PWP type of fic. Then, all of a sudden – issues! Thousands of them! Okay, perhaps not thousands, but we skipped between concepts of idealised vs. actual self (Lightning's initial struggle with her attraction to Fang), issues of consent and boundaries, bias, common distortions or mechanisms like rationalisation catastrophising, rumination, bias to negativity and how all of these human factors can lead to bad choices when we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle.

Let's be fair. I've put these two through the wringer.

Somehow, this fic is now complete. For those who are familiar with my inability to finish a fic, well, it's as much as a surprise for me as it is for you. But it's done, with the ending that I originally intended all those years back, and while it's not a happy ending, it's hopeful. I, er, hope.

But. While this is how I originally intended to leave the fic, people asked for a happy ending. For those that do want that happy ending, please head to my profile and click on the link to the fic, "Little Need to Sleep but to Dream". It's been posted on AO3 because I like the way I can link series together. It's a oneshot fic that has its own character arc and resolution, but for those who just want to leave it here, they can.

A deep thank you to everyone that read along, reviewed, commented, fave'd, followed, or kudos'd. You guys were all awesome, and it was an honour to share my (at times) frustrating tale of human weakness and strength. This chapter, though, is the last I'll be posting on this site, so this is goodbye. I'll be only posting on archiveofourown now, but don't think I've quit! I've still got a few more tales in me, haha.

This is Z out, folks.