Hey guys! Sorry about the late post today, my internet magically stopped working on me this morning.

But here we are. Caius and Lightning are back, and still quite confused.

One last thing: I don't own any of this. And... Thank you to everyone following The Final Paradox! :D

***Update*** I forgot something else. 0erbayunFang, extra thanks for the continued comments!

Chapter Eight: Fighting Fate

Release

Let me take on eternity

Taking one more step and let it rip through me

I'm building up my nerve

~Bye Bye Babylon – Cryoshell

There was a tense silence between Lightning and Caius as they strode through Valhalla. Lightning had made it clear she was the one with control over the situation. She walked ahead of him, even when that could have given him a chance to ambush her. She seemed confident that he wouldn't try anything.

The truth was, she was right. Caius's thoughts were spinning circles through his head, reminding him that if he did try anything, he couldn't be sure what the consequences would be. But he wasn't absolutely convinced by her plan. They had fought for a long time, and he still felt it was his duty to kill her.

Finally, they reached the edge of Valhalla, near the shores. There were a few gates clustered together on the sand. Lightning faced Caius and said, "If you change the future, you change the past. Right?" She didn't expect an answer, Caius knew, but he answered anyway.

"That is correct." He watched her carefully, waiting for her next suggestion.

She shifted her weight to one foot. "If we change the future, is it possible that we can bring the destroyed parts of the timeline back?" This question, rather than looking for a fulfilling answer, was looking for his opinion.

"Of course not," he answered coolly.

She watched him, as if waiting for him to clarify. She was trying to draw ideas out of him. But he refused to say anything more.

"Then we can find a way to prevent the damage," she ventured.

Caius didn't meet her gaze. He was still nursing the gap in his memory as though it were a nearly fatal wound, and vowed to hide that behind whatever kind of veil he could craft.

The dark silence overflowed for a moment, an awkward gap in the conversation. But an ominous note seemed to ring in the background – an omen of things to come. And it wasn't unfounded.

Just as Lightning began to continue the conversation, a massive bolt of shadow slammed into the gates behind them. They both looked up at it sharply, as it became an impossible distortion and started to spread. Lightning stood frozen for a second too long. The shadowy distortion lashed out at her, coming too close, when –

"Ugh!" she grunted as the air was knocked out of her lungs. She went sprawling to the ground, a crushing weight keeping her there for a few moments before she was free. Caius rose to his feet beside her, emotionlessly offering her a hand.

Caius pushed me away from that distortion. Caius just…

Lightning knew exactly what had just happened. But it didn't even seem possible in her mind. Had the distortion infiltrated their minds as well as their physical surroundings? With a confused look on her face, Lightning stood up from the dusty ground, refusing wordlessly to take his hand.

Caius just saved me.

"What is that?" she asked, looking over at the distortion. The mass of shadow was reaching out with black tentacles and consuming the gates. If she stepped too close to it or stared at it too long, her vision started to blur. With that she averted her gaze.

But the only other thing she could turn her eyes to was Caius.

"It is erasing the gates which should no longer exist," he muttered, a note of regret in his voice. Lightning wasn't even sure whether he had realized it. But she felt the same way he did – like there were things just beyond the edges of her mind, things she should have remembered but couldn't.

When she looked up again, Caius was striding along the water's edge. Meanwhile, the distortion dissipated, leaving a ravaged circle of dust in its wake. Lightning shook her head, wondering if she'd ever thought this would be at all easy.

She followed him for a while, trailing after him in his wake of silence. As she did so, questions kept running through her mind, predominantly, Where the hell does he think he's going?

It was a while before that question was answered. But then Caius stopped. He wasn't even anywhere near a gate, Lightning noticed, but was near one of the quieter parts of the shoreline. In the back of her mind, she considered the fact that it might be a trap. Still, she stayed where she was.

Caius sighed. It was a nearly inaudible sound, yet full of resignation and exasperation, things Lightning probably shouldn't have heard from him. Her response was to approach him, sword drawn at her side just in case.

"Leave me," was his answer. "We are done here."

"No, we're not. That distortion can't go overlooked. There might be others." Lightning hated the thought of cooperating with this man. But on the other hand, she refused to watch over Valhalla alone.

His silence seemed to be another sign of resignation.

The next few minutes were tense with a lack of conversation, and Lightning found herself unable to avoid the question any longer. She turned to Caius, her eyes skeptical as they burned into his, and asked blatantly, "Why did you save me?"

Surprise crossed his face – as if he hadn't expected her to address what he'd done. He tried to mask it, but there was no undoing his look of sheer confusion. Instead of answering, though, he turned his back and distanced himself from her.

Lightning wanted to demand that he answer. She wanted to press her blade into his throat and threaten him until she knew he would cooperate. But she also knew that almost no amount of torture would promise that, not after the events of the original timeline had granted him the Heart of Chaos. Caius would rather erase himself than work with her.

Or so she had thought.

"Those that I've forgotten," he finally said. "You remind me of them."

"What—"

"Forget it," Caius snapped, and stalked off away from the water's edge.

Lightning watched him with a mask of stone. Something was obviously wrong. Caius's temper was unpredictable, he had just saved his eternal opponent from certain death, and he was demonstrating a strange amount of emotion. She decided she would have to follow him, and find out what his problem was. After all, the fate of Valhalla likely depended on the two of them.

Instead of tailing him directly, she went up to Etro's throne so she could oversee things and think about what had happened. The gates led to some place early in the timeline, she thought. If they were erased, then those areas and time periods were erased, too.

She stepped out onto the edge of the stone platform and tried to clear her thoughts. Down below her, in the ruins of another temple, was Caius. He was pacing the debris-covered structure agitatedly. Lightning watched him in an effort to find out what was going on in his mind.

Caius grimaced and shook his head. From way above, Lightning kept her eyes glued to the scene, even though she felt like she shouldn't have been watching him. He continued to pace back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists as if he wished he had his sword. Lightning smiled to herself at this. That was one victory she knew she'd won.

After a minute or so of standing back, Lightning jumped down from her perch and rolled to a standing position in the temple where Caius stood. He whirled around and stared at her, but quickly veiled his thoughts with his usual emotionless mask.

"Caius," Lightning said, breaking the stiff silence.

She thought he was going to turn his back on her and ignore her again, but he didn't. Instead he replied quietly, "What is it?"

"We have to do something about this. Those gates disappeared for a reason." Her tone was unflinching, demanding.

"So the Paddra Ruins were erased," he said under his breath after a second.

"Yes." Lightning was still somewhat wary of speaking to him, but at least the conversation made sense, unlike the vague comment he'd given her after he'd saved her from the distortion.

"Those gates linked Valhalla to the ruins," Caius continued. "We must travel through the next gate if we wish to stop the timeline's destruction."

Lightning could hardly believe what she was hearing. Caius was planning where to go to fix the timeline. Earlier, she would have expected him to cut her throat before saying any of those words.

Clearly something had changed. Maybe since their memories were being lost, he was losing the reasons he'd had to kill her. Maybe he had finally resigned himself to being under her control, without his sword and everything.

She found it hard to believe any of that.

"We should find the next gate, then," Lightning replied. "If the ruins were erased, then the next area we should check out is…"

"Oerba," he said.

Visions of what had happened while they were changing the timeline surfaced in both of their minds – Caius showing up in Oerba, his fight with Noel and Serah, and the words that had passed between them before they parted ways.

I am not the Caius you once knew.

To change history is a sin.

Reminiscing on that fractured part of time and the things that had been said there stopped the flow of conversation temporarily. But after a moment, they both recovered and began walking parallel to Valhalla's shoreline. Neither of them trusted the other to walk ahead, so they walked side by side, but at a distance.

As they were closing in on one of the gates, their path was suddenly blocked by a rift in the air. It was somewhat unfamiliar to Valhalla's scenery, as the rifts usually appeared elsewhere along the timeline. Lightning nearly ran into it, reeling back just at the right time. Then, tentatively, she looked at Caius.

"Shall we?" he asked.

Closing her eyes, she nodded.

And they both stepped straight into the temporal rift.