I
The first time it happens, they're in Palumpolum. It's not pretty, it's not tender. They're hiding from the PSICOM and the GC, and Lightning is angry. Lightning is furious. This stranger just confessed it's her fault if Serah is a l'Cie, and she doesn't even seem properly chastised about it.
Lightning slaps her, and then they're kissing.
It's raw, and violent, and Lightning puts all her energy into it, puts all her rage, all her hatred. The stranger answers with equal force, biting her lower lip so hard it bleeds, squeezing her hips. They detach after a while because of a noise behind the corner, go back to back, ready to fight.
They don't really talk about it after that.
II
The second time it happens, they've been on Gran Pulse for a few days. It's a planet that makes Lightning feel alone, and small, and desolated. There's just wild nature and big animals, no trace of human living there; it's not what Lightning is used to, not what she feels comfortable seeing. It's huge in a way that Cocoon never was, and Lightning feels out of his depth.
Fang approaches her for a round of exploring the Archylte Steppe together, because she's tired of going with Snow and Vanille is out with Hope looking for food. She doesn't think much about it, because Fang is a great fight partner, and her knowledge of Gran Pulse grounds her more than Sazh's age could ever do.
They march fast, and she talks, talks about bits of trivia on Grand Pulse, talks about the animals and the life there, talks about all the plants, all the rocks, about everything that's different from cocoon. Lightning hates when people talk too much, and that's also why she doesn't like Snow, but she can almost get used to Fang's voice, for once not cocky, and doesn't say anything. They arrive at the northern highplains in no time, hiding in the tall grass from the monsters. When they're attacked, it's like they act as a single person, and Lightning finds herself back while fighting, while doing something she's been trained to do. They stop hidden behind a rock, while Fang sketches the map of what they can see, and Lightning concedes herself a little bit of rest from the constant vigilance of the last few hours.
"Gran Pulse really makes me feel like I'm at home, even like this," Fang murmurs, almost to herself, and Lightning looks around, to the never-ending sea of grass, at the herd of Adamantoises in the distance.
"I guess," she says. She doesn't feel at home, never will.
Fang is behind her, and it should feel threatening, it should feel startling, but she's long used to her companions, she just tenses a bit, then goes back to the casual position she had. "Look," Fang says. "The sky is shining so bright, and the sun is blinding, and the grass is green, and the animals are plenty."
Lightning sighs, turns towards Fang. "It's still not where I grew up."
Fang looks at her, looks at her lips, then goes to her eyes. "It's how I felt on Cocoon," she concedes.
Lightning nods, looks down at her feet. "That's because you're too much of a bumpkin for Cocoon," she says, lightly, hoping to chase away the heaviness that's threatening to squash her.
Fang raises her chin. "Is that so?" she asks, derisive. She squares her shoulders, and her build is similar to Lightning, but she still looks a bit towering nonetheless. "Too much of an uncultured bumpkin for the land of snobbish technology?"
"I stand by what I said." Lightning is smirking and all the tension seems to have dissipated, and this is good.
"Well, we uncultured bumpkins are good for something, though."
"Like?"
And Fang kisses her. It's deep, it's sudden, and Lightning responds immediately, pulling Fang towards herself, and opening her mouth.
When they detach, they look away awkwardly. Lightning doesn't know what to say.
"We should head back before night," says Fang, looking at the sky critically. "I really don't want to know what happens here at night."
They don't talk about this one either.
III
It's not that Lightning doesn't know what she is, honestly. She knows, she knows it all too well, she's been known since she was still Claire Farron.
She never liked any boys, she never could understand Serah's obsession with boys' hands and boys' legs and boys in general. She didn't allow herself to like anyone else, but she knew that she could never be with someone like Snow.
(Not that Serah should ever be with someone like Snow, but that was a story for another time.)
And she managed not to like anybody, not to be with anybody, to concentrate on Serah and nothing else, she was managing so well, till Fang came along. Till overconfident, overflirty, oversensual Fang came along.
Lightning was a goner, really.
And yet, it seems like what happened on Gran Pulse stays on Gran Pulse, because they're ignoring the issue pretty consistently. Not that it's difficult to do it, in a planet that's hostile to all of them, and the only people they can count on are each other. Lightning sometimes thinks she can understand Fang someway, but doesn't say it. She's come to care about her, just like she's come to care about little Hope, and she wouldn't want to hurt her. After all, being asleep in a crystal for centuries is not exactly something that Lightning experienced.
Not yet.
Maybe it's Fang who gets her, and her desperate need to save Serah from her fate, maybe she thinks she can get Fang just because it's Fang who gets her.
The third time it happens they're in Oerba, still in Grand Pulse, and they're taking a break after Barthandelus, before going back on Cocoon.
Lightning is utterly destroyed by the fact that the bastard used Serah to try and get them to do what he wanted. The illusion looked so real, so close, and yet it wasn't her. She'd even hugged Snow, and she still didn't want him anywhere near Serah.
Fang comes when she's wandering aimlessly on the rail, takes her by the elbow. "Do you want to see my favourite place?" she asks.
Lightning doesn't react, doesn't have the strength to react, but she lets herself be guided towards a small passageway, then Fang opens a door that looks surprisingly still sturdy and takes her up a small row of stairs. "Here we are," she says.
It's a small terrace, quaint and cute in a way that something that's been abandoned for centuries shouldn't be. You can see everything from here, and Fang stares at the horizon, drinking everything in. They don't speak for a long while, Lightning trying to look at the panorama and feel something, anything that's not emptiness and sorrow.
"I get it, you know," murmurs Fang in the end. "I get what you're going through."
"Vanille is still here," says Lightning, and she wishes it didn't come out as bitter as it did. Fang just snorts, and if that's not a testament to how much she knows Lightning by know, she doesn't know what it is.
"Yes, she's still here. And everyone else is gone." Fang makes a gesture, embraces all the panorama. "Maybe the seeress is still here, but that doesn't count." The last piece is said more to herself that to Lightning, so she ignores it. "All the planet is gone, every single one but Vanille, and I don't even remember anything about my focus, about what we did."
Lightning looks away. She feels empty without Serah, and it's all her fault if her sister is in that situation, but all her old mates from the GC, and Serah's friends, and the people on her planet, they're still there. She likes to be alone, but she can't even begin to imagine the loneliness that comes with knowing everyone on your mother planet is dead. She doesn't apologise, but Fangs seems to have understood all the same, because she takes Lightning's hand in hers. "It's okay," she murmurs.
Lightning still doesn't look at her. "It's not okay," she replies. "It's fucked up. We're fucked up."
"It's a fucked-up destiny, but you make the most with what you have," says Fang. "And you'll be there when Serah wakes up."
"I'll be there when Serah wakes up," repeats Lightning, and she keeps repeating that like on automation, sometimes what Fang said is the only thing that makes her get through the day.
Fang's hands go up, towards her face, and force Lightning to look at her in the eyes, clear and open. "Everything will be relatively alright," she says, and Lightning allows herself to get lost and believe her words at least a bit.
Their kiss starts slow and becomes fast, deep, frantic. Fang squeezes her face, her neck, her hips, then pulls Lightning towards herself, and Lightning scratches her back in the tentative of pulling herself close, closer, become one person.
When they detach they're both panting, and Fang has a fire in her eyes that Lightning doesn't feel able to recognise yet. "Better now?" she asks, her voice back to the cockiness that Lightning is used to.
Lightning snorts and elbows her hard. "Don't flatter yourself," she reminds Fang.
IV
There's a break after that.
A long break, and Fang is a crystal, and Lighting fights chaos, kills Serah trying to save the world, doesn't even manage to save the world, and then sleeps, sleeps for a long time, and when she's woken up the world is at its final days, Hope doesn't look like Hope anymore, and she's forgotten everything about her and Fang, because there's other problems to think of.
She's confused, she doesn't feel much of anything, she just goes around and around, trying to save as many souls as possible, she doesn't even think of the possibility of meeting old friends—bar Noel, that is, she's not that surprised about meeting Noel—and then.
And then.
And then there she is, newly recruited in the bandit gang, in the boss's studio, looking at Fang, like the old times in Cocoon and Grand Pulse, like nothing's changed, like they're still part of a bigger groups fighting against the Gods and their Fate, and yet she's there, not really human anymore, and Fang notices, she always notices.
"What have you become?" she asks Lightning when they're looking around for the tablets. "Why does it feel like you're not really human anymore?"
Lightning doesn't even look at her. "I'm here on behalf of Bhunivelze," she says. "I'm here to save souls and bring them to a new world."
Fang is silent for a bit, doesn't even run her ever-present commentary, just launches herself in fights that look almost rehearsed, because even after so many years, they still act as one person when they fight, they still act in support of the other, they're still more powerful as a whole than as two separate people. It's ironic, really; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but Lightning couldn't have imagined that she would have this connection with Fang of all people.
(Although, maybe it's exactly that it's Fang of all people, the thing that should surprise her less.)
"I don't know," she says in the end, face ever-smiling. "We're much better at fighting gods than at following their orders, I'd say."
Lightning smiles at that, she can't prevent herself from doing it. "We were good, weren't we," she murmurs. "We did good."
Fang's smile returns cocky, and she says nothing.
They're caught by surprise by the men of the Order, and in the time they use to fight the monsters, the clavis is gone. At its place, Lumina tells them with a smile that it was her who tipped them off, and Lightning knows she shouldn't lose time, she knows that the souls need her, but she just sits on the ground, lost and defeated. Not the right behaviour for a Saviour, she thinks bitterly to herself.
She feels Fang's weight on her side, and Fang's head on her shoulder, and she's so tired she can't even bring herself to care about the proximity, about the fact that she doesn't usually allow it. She just stays there, breathing the air of the ruins, closes her eyes when Fang starts to caress her thigh.
This one is different from the others, Lightning can feel it. It's sad, it's tranquil, it's explorative. It's the kiss of long lost lovers, long lost friends. It's wet and it's not even sexual, just a slow exploration of mouths, a caress on her head, a hand grasping the back of her neck. Lightning keeps her eyes closes, trying not to allow tears to slip past her lids, but she's not sure she succeeds.
They stop kissing slowly, gradually closing their mouths, and Fang gives her small kisses on her open lips, hands framing her face. Lightning doesn't open her eyes, just places her forehead against Fang's, and breathes.
"I missed this a lot," Fang murmurs, hot breath on Lightning's lips. "I know you did too."
"I see you've not changed," Lightning can't keep the endearment outside of her tone. "Always as cocky as ever."
"You like it," Fang laughs, bites her lip. "Don't deny it."
"Not admitting to anything."
Fang laughs again, this time she bites lightning's lip, and kisses her again. And again. And again.
Lightning doesn't know how much time they spend there, on the ground, just kissing each other. She knows at one point Hope calls her back to action, and she realises she has to go, that time is precious. She rises, dusts off her clothes, then offers a hand to Fang.
Fang doesn't accept, of course.
"Till we see each other again, then," Lightning says, and she can't believe there's a fragment of Hope in her tone.
"Till the end of the world," Fang answers, and winks.
V
And then it's the end of the world. Time stops, Fang reappears, and they're back together working as a whole, ever-powerful, saving Vanille with Snow's help. And then Bhunivelze wakes up, and it's a mess all over again, and Lightning has to make peace with parts of herself she didn't even know existed to fight and banish him. It's tiring, it's heavy, and if it weren't from everyone coming to help her she wouldn't even have made it. But she did, and the whole is still greater than the sum of its parts. They're there, every single one of them, and even Yeul it's been freed from her burden as a seeress, and Lightning feels so happy like she hasn't felt in a long time, feels like everything is right, she has Serah again, and Hope as her acquired little brother, and Dajh as a nephew, Snow as a brother, Vanille as part of her new, large family, and, and,
And.
And Fang. Fang is there, smiling at her serenely, and this time Lightning doesn't wait for her to move. This time Lightning is in contact with all of herself, this time Lightning is unafraid.
She moves, glides towards Fang, throws her arms around Fang's shoulders and kiss her with all she's got.
(She can hear Snow whistling and Vanille squealing. She doesn't care.)
… +1
She's not Lightning anymore. She lives in France, she owns a small house in the countryside, she teaches self-defence to the women in the nearby village. She's been preoccupied with finding the others, but Sazh found her first, calling for a reunion in Provence. Sazh has a winery there, he told her Dajh is making friends with the other kids. Serah took the train after her own, having her teaching job that occupies her Saturdays, too. She'd asked her if she wanted to come with, but she preferred leaving Serah a bit of alone time with Snow, not wanting to be the third wheel with them.
So she arrives in Confoux alone, breathes deeply, and looks around to see if someone came to fetch her.
"So, Claire, how you doing?" Fang is there, cocky smile and full of tattoos, with a leather bomber and combat boots to complete the ensemble. She extends a hand. "I came here in my immense piety to bring you back to Sazh's."
Claire takes her hand, pulls Fang towards her, and kisses her when she stumbles. "Welcome home, Fang," she murmurs on her lips. She's not stopped smiling yet.
A/N
Okay so, FF is not my usual fandom, but I do love XIII and I do love the women of XIII, and I do love the Fangrai dynamics. So. Here we are.
I hope you liked this piece of work, I hope that, if you do, you decide to leave favourites or reviews, or IM me. I hope it's been an enjoyable reading.
I'm not sure there are wineries in Provence/Confoux, but I didn't really want to research half an hour for that. Could've put Sazh in Beaujolais because I do know that area pretty well, but honestly, Provence sounded cooler as far as weather goes.
C.