Hello again! I'm back. More chapters of The Final Paradox are on the way. :D

When I initially wrote this chapter, I was in an insanely good mood because I didn't expect to get to this part of the story. Everyone around me then was really tired and probably wondering who gave me coffee.

Thanks 0erbayunFang for all your reviews and stuff by the way. X3

And I don't own Square Enix, nor do I own any of these songs or their lyrics.

Planning on finishing this thing out! Reviews are welcome! :3

Chapter Eleven: Your Heart's Desire

When it seems all lost and I can't find

What I'm searching for

And I still believe that you know

Reaching out for something to hold

~Reaching Out – Nero

Lightning had to fight hard not to say anything as she walked back through Valhalla. She hated having to leave her sister like this, but Serah coming in and witnessing the fight wasn't part of the plan. She would have to go back and find her later, she decided, when the deal had been sealed. At least she was in Valhalla and not part of the collapsing timeline.

"Do you prefer walking to teleporting?" Caius asked her amusedly.

"If it spares me from touching you, yes," Lightning shot back through gritted teeth.

His smirk disappeared and was replaced with a hardened glare. "Your sister's thoughts about what happened here make no difference."

"I don't want to just leave her here without an explanation," Lightning answered. "And in fact, if I don't have to, I won't—"

Caius shook his head. "Our deal still stands," he reminded her. "If you try to explain everything to her now, it could put her in more danger."

She knew Caius didn't care how much danger Serah was in. But Lightning didn't want to do that to her sister. She hated the way Caius was manipulating her, but at the same time she almost admired the sense of strategy.

She watched him closely, suddenly detecting something else behind the mask of displeasure and constant apathy. The expression she saw was almost undeniably…hunger.

Shaking off the spontaneous startled feeling she got, Lightning whirled around and started to walk again.

"Are you sure you want to walk all this way?" Caius asked.

"I'm sure," she told him. "Let's go."

They gradually made their way back to the opposite side of Valhalla with Lightning far in the lead. They'd both agreed that after they drove back the rift beast, they would go through the gate to Oerba and try to fix what was broken there. So when they finally reached the gate, seeing that it was still intact, there were no words between them. Lightning didn't even look back as she stepped through the gate.

But she had no idea what they were about to face.

Oerba wasn't an unfamiliar place to either Caius or Lightning. However, the amount of temporal rifts that seemed to appear as they resurfaced in the deserted town made it look like a whole new area. Caius's lips twisted into a snarl of annoyance as he looked upon the scene before them.

"Looks like we were a little late," Lightning muttered.

Caius was silent for a moment. "Where shall we start?" he asked finally, once again showing no emotion.

"Anywhere," Lightning responded.

She took a few steps forward, entering the first rift. Caius went after her. In half a second they were transported into the Void, where multiple disconnected paths led to a gate. Crystals floated scattered in the air, just asking to be reunited, and the tiles of the paths glittered as they awaited the steps of the two warriors. Lightning led the way through this first rift. When they reached the gate and came out into Oerba again, she felt a wave of relief.

"That wasn't so hard."

Caius glanced out at the rifts that were swarming over the town. "We must split up," he said.

She gave him a sideways glance. "Why?"

"We'll be able to fix the rifts more quickly." With that he stepped forward and entered the next temporal rift, leaving Lightning to her own devices.

She knew she could easily go back through the gate and leave him. But that would be breaking the deal, and would only encourage them to begin their eternal fight again. Leaving wouldn't fix anything. So Lightning took one last look at the spot where Caius had disappeared, and then stepped into a rift herself.

By the time Lightning had finished repairing her share of temporal rifts, she had witnessed so many memories from the Void that she thought her head was going to explode. The sight of them all had wiped her anger out of her system and replaced it with pure exhaustion and near sadness. There were experiences that had belonged to herself, her sister, other people and creatures she didn't know existed. There were memories that were long lost, memories that were being erased, and memories she felt a fresh stab of pain at when she looked at them again.

She could tell there was a difference between the Oerba they'd arrived in and the Oerba she now stood in. Before, the entire plaza had been covered in rifts, shimmering distortions in the air. But they'd managed to get rid of most of them. Still, who knew how long that had taken?

Lightning strode through Oerba feeling a little subdued. She let her thoughts wander, and they were pushed back to Caius's strange actions in Valhalla, the way he'd forcefully pushed her away from the all-consuming distortion. Saving her. For no apparent reason.

Forget it, she told herself. It doesn't matter.

But she found it harder and harder to tear her thoughts from it. Even the incident in Valhalla had her mind fighting its own battle. She didn't want Serah to see her with Caius, but at the same time, she really hadn't minded the feel of his hand against hers…

She climbed the steps to the deserted schoolhouse without even thinking about it, but then realized it was a good vantage point for looking at the rest of Oerba. She reached the roof and stared blankly out at the water for a moment. Shortly after, a sound from below shook her from her thoughts – the sound of footsteps, an indication that someone was there.

Of course. Who else?

Lightning jumped through a space in the broken glass on the roof's skylights, deciding against avoiding him. She emerged on the middle floor of the schoolhouse. This floor still bore windows that looked out on the rest of the town, but was more secluded than the roof. She moved forward slowly, wondering if Caius really hadn't heard her enter or if he was just ignoring her.

"Caius?" she asked quietly.

He turned around, covering up some expression of feeling as was typical of him. "Ah. You've returned."

"Yes. I think we're done here." Lightning sensed that he was hiding something from her, which didn't really surprise her, more unnerved her. They stood without saying anything for a while, but then Lightning broke in with "What is it?"

Caius's eyes flicked up to meet hers. "What is what?"

"There's something you're not saying." She aimed to get the truth from him right away, as directly as she could.

He sighed and turned to face one of the windows. "The Void holds memories of the past, belonging to others as well as myself."

"Yes."

"It causes me pain to remember them," he stated.

Lightning wasn't accustomed to hearing him say such things, but before she knew it, she was replying, "I know."

"I have seen the things I had forgotten," Caius continued. "But they will not last. Nor will your temporary memories."

"They're only temporary. They don't matter." Her eyes didn't meet his; they both stared at the sands beyond the window. "What happens now is what matters."

A few seconds passed without either one speaking. Then Lightning said, "I've held up my end of the deal. We should leave."

"No," Caius said quickly, and then looked down as if he hadn't meant for that to come out of his mouth. "There is one more thing."

She spun and looked up at him. "And what would that be?"

His eyes flashed with that strange emotion again, the same one Lightning had seen before they went off fixing temporal rifts. Her heart skipped a beat suddenly, and she wanted to slap herself. Something lay beyond that mask of displeasure that always seemed to be on his face.

Right at that moment she realized what it was.

Caius raised a gloved hand, and suddenly, his fingertips were brushing her face. Lightning drew in a breath, but didn't pull away.

"Face it," he said. "Your only concern in Valhalla was your sister's interpretation of what was going on."

She looked down, trying to deny it for at least a few more seconds. Caius dropped his hand and took a step toward her.

"Do you remember what I said in the Void?" Caius asked. "The time I met your sister?"

"What?" she breathed. They were so close to each other that they could have spoken in barely audible whispers and still understood each other clearly.

"Surrender to your heart's desire."

There was an electrifying moment during which everything clicked in Lightning's head, and then Caius pushed her swiftly against the wall, his lips brushing hers in a gentle but deliberate kiss. At first every instinct inside her told her to push back, get him away from her.

Instead she relaxed.

After hardly a second he took a step back, but Lightning was frozen to the spot, her heart racing. Before he could retreat from her, she grabbed his wrist to keep him from going anywhere. Her breath came quickly and her pulse pounded with the thought of what she had just done. It felt as though a thousand live wires had been plunged beneath her skin. But as she backed off, the full realization hit her in the face.

One side of her screamed, What the hell just happened? The other side kept her eyes on him, wishing it would have lasted longer.

The first side won out. As Caius stared openly at her, Lightning muttered, "I… I should go," and left the deserted schoolhouse as quickly as she could.

She blinked hard as she strode through the village again, making sure she wasn't dreaming. Caius's kiss still lingered on her lips, and she hated herself for liking it. She had earlier refused to admit that she might have felt anything for him. But now it was too late. It had already happened, not a temporary memory, but one that would be burned in her mind for eternity. Lightning had even said it herself: What happens now is what matters.

No. She had screwed things up. She was supposed to kill Caius, and instead she had managed to stop their eternal fight, make a deal with him…And now this? Lightning knew it was only him manipulating her, like he had earlier in Valhalla. Both times he'd done it for the same reason.

She broke into a run so as to get out of Oerba as fast as possible and rid herself of the immediate reminders.