It takes a month to find her, wandering aimlessly in the countryside. When you call her name her eyes are all crystal and clear and you’d think they were more beautiful than you’d remember if she didn’t look at you so strangely. As if you knew something that had been kept a secret for centuries. (And, perhaps that was true. In another life.) But for now you settle down beside her and her sister and she’s still looking at you, all innocence and wildfire, like something lost is reaching from the depths of her being.
It takes a week for the three of you to settle into her home. She remembers her sister, always has. You can’t blame her for only retaining that much.
(So many battles had been fought to reunite them, anyway.)
You wonder why it is that only the three of you are left with memories of your past lives. Fang proposed you hadn’t completed your focus, but the fal’cie are gone, and no one even remembers what a l’cie is.
(Sometimes your hand ghosts over a memory of a faint burning on your hip.)
You think Fang remembers it too, because it only takes a few weeks for her to get her old brand tattooed to herself. You don’t question it, you think it’s something like scars and past battles. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll forget too.
There is a time when Lightning (No, Claire, you start to think. Old habits and dying hard.) situates herself in her room. First it is hours, then it is days, and then only Serah sees her--- until you have to come in to bring her dinner and Serah’s had enough of this to last a lifetime, and you’ve worried your lip between your teeth until it was swollen and cracked and Li- Claire doesn’t even spare you a glance as you settle the tray beside her and sit on her bed. And for a bit, you start to think you recognize something again, but it is gone when she finally looks at you as if she’d never seen you before and you want to shrink until even the Gods can’t see you.
Though a moment passes and she smiles at you, and you wonder what sort of parallel universe you’ve been dropped in and- oh, well, you suppose this does count as a parallel universe. A world Lightning created with her own hands.
(She asks you about your lip, and your day, and you wonder why she isn’t seated with the Gods when she grins.)
It has been two months and you’ve learned this much about Claire:
First, she loves cats. This is evident every time she greets you, a short haired Calico weaves between your legs, barely leaving enough space for you to shuffle into the room without outright falling into the woman.
(You wouldn’t mind that, though you don’t think you can trust her to catch you in time.)
Second, on her best days she suffers from migraines. You want to ask her how that is, but you imagine it is something like having two brains squished into the same body. There’s Claire- and you’re certain - there’s Lightning, somewhere. You see her when she’s flicking channels and lingers too long on boxing matches and commercials advertising resorts on a world that looks like your home (maybe several lifetimes ago, but this is your home now.), hiding in a ghost of a killer smirk when Fang’s agitated prodding brushes a little close to a nerve, but she is gone just as quickly and Claire moves on.
(you’d love to move on, too.)
Third, on her worst days she suffers nightmares. These are days you tend to take over for Serah, when she’s been up for hours and refuses to leave her side. You don’t want her to see this, though. You think she’s been through enough, and when you come into the room Serah smiles weakly towards you before nodding her way out the door. You don’t know if she really does sleep after that, but you want to imagine you’re offering her something. Claire wakes up often, wildly swinging and screaming, you’re not nearly as strong as Fang but you used to wrestle her to the ground when you were kids and you certainly remember that much as you pin Claire with your weight. (She does get in a good few swings, but you’ve had worse injuries.)
(You start to wonder if this is the cost of having your soul forced back into a body.)
Finally, she loves art. You stumble out onto the porch and catch her painting the sunset over a crystal sea (you’d think this would be oddly sentimental, if it were Lightning and not Claire.) You don’t mention that you’ve been there before, because she is so certain it is a creation of her own imagination, and she’s beautiful when she’s so focused anyway and you would give the world to watch her all night if the post you were leaning on hadn’t given you away as you fell to the ground. She laughs and helps you up, muttering that the house is set for repairs. Fang complains as you drag her out the next day to fix the mess you’ve made, Claire insists that you’re fine. But you’ve been living here for free, and you think this is the least you can do. You do, however, make matters worse by accidentally breaking a window. At this point Claire thinks you should put the hammer down and come in for dinner.
(It is the hottest day of the summer, and she jokes that she needed the breeze in her office anyway.)
There are pictures of a family you think shouldn’t exist, hanging precariously on the living room walls. You think Serah feels the same as you, some days she refuses to look at them. Most days she falls into the lies. When you finally ask Claire, she stammers and reflexively lifts her hand to her chest to play with a pendant that no longer dangles from her neck. She tells a childhood story you feel is more to convince herself than you.
(The photos are gone the next day, and you never ask about them again..)
It’s strange to you that you look at her with such a fondness bubbling in your chest. A woman who barely offered you a glance in your travels, and you know you’re wrong. You know she cared, but it was a hard time and she had lost her sister and you couldn’t blame her for having priorities. When you’re brushing her matted hair back after one of her episodes you muse over the fact that this woman under you was a biblical figure in a different timeline. She created this. You were alive because of her.
You think of different universes, of different worlds, different Lightnings and Claires and all the Serahs they fight to protect. Of all the Hopes they take under their wings and all the Sazh’s and Snows they bicker with.
You think there’s a Lightning- or Claire- or someone out there, and she’s happy and normal with a family she’d never lost, memories that were never buried under frozen seas of grief and regret. Some days she makes offhanded comments of insecurity, and it takes everything within your willpower not to bring up memories she can’t recall. Not to tell her she created this. That she’s a God, and you worship at her altar.
You smile and you tell her she’s beautiful, and she flushes.
(You think you catch her stealing glances from then on.)
It’s Fall and she’s all rosy cheeks and pushed up bangs. You remember Serah fussing over her appearance all morning. It’s not particularly cold but you can’t remember the last time Claire has set foot outside of the run down country home, she’s wearing a bulky scarf and a light jacket, and all you can do in response to her appearance is wipe the sweat off of your own brow. You think next time you’ll talk Serah out of the extra layers, but for now you shiver at a welcome breeze and see Claire shrink in response on her own.
She’s all nerves and jitters and anxious glances at strangers and you don’t see her relax until you enter a cafe. The aroma rolls over her body like steam on wrinkles and as you settle down with your drinks she tells you she thinks she’d like to do this more often.
(You find you’re growing particularly fond of her small smiles and surprised eyes when she says things like this.)
She grows more and more uncertain about who she is. She’s not Lightning, you have to convince yourself, at least not the Lightning you know - knew - but you love her all the same. You think, mentally, she’s ripples in a pond in a hail storm. She’s narrow streets and alleyways packed with faceless strangers who offer odd nods of obligatory recognition. Her ends meet, but they never touch. The Lightning from the past never overlaps with Claire of the present, but she flashes in her eyes for seconds as though she’s battling to connect the dots and restore order to a kingdom under fire. She’s in her day dreams, and nightmares, and empty, blank stares at chipped wooden walls that she’s forgotten she’s stared at many times before. She’s in awkward glances, and grimaces, and scowls and “I never said that”s when you bring up conversations from days ago. The changes are sudden, and fast when she goes from warm to cold, when she’s standing in the middle of her kitchen, brandishing her knives like they’re weapons before snapping back to reality to cut carrots.
You wonder if this is what it’s like when Titans clash, but instead of ruins and rubble its harsh words that come at once without warning and reclusive nights and trails of tears pouring from fierce eyes.
Its weeks before she invites you back in, and stares at you long and hard like she’s remembered something, and in a way it makes you feel conscious of all the lies you’ve told to make her comfortable.
But she relaxes and pulls you close and tight and kisses you hard and it nearly throws you off balance the first time it happens and for a second you know its Lightning, but Claire settles into the moment and you wonder if this is just another way of hiding from the past.
You remember you’ve done that before. (Or at least you think you did.)
(The look in her eyes tells you the world doesn’t need a warrior anymore, anyway.)
She settles her head onto your chest and you think you can agree for the moment. You’ve seen enough suffering for one lifetime.
(You think there’s a universe out there with a Lightning who failed her mission, alone and cold and abrasive and tearing at timelines until her hands are bloody and raw and they all die, they die every time and each time she’s a minute off. An hour off. A century off. And it’s never right.)
She holds your hand in a tight grip.
(You think there’s a universe where none of you existed.)
She places firm kisses to your shoulders and cheeks and settles a steely look into your eyes.
(You think there’s a universe where you all existed at once and never met.)
She tells you to stop thinking about things you could never change.
(You think maybe in every universe there’s a Vanille who accidentally falls in love with a Lightning she never knew.)
Her lips are soft and warm this time, and you can’t tell which of you is crying, except that there is salt in the taste and damp cheeks and a hoarse chuckle that doesn’t sound like either of you and both of you at once.
(You think there’s no such thing as a happy ending.
You settle for bittersweet.)