Archive of Our Own

Crystal stasis was frozen and silent, much like being caught in a state of living dead – Fang's mind was aware, but her senses were dark, empty and her body was no longer her own. It was a prison and an exile that had been of Fang's own making, but acknowledging that didn't help things at all. She didn't remember being so Etro-damn restless last time, either – last time, her sleep had been deep and dreamless. Five hundred years passed her by in what had felt like an instant.

A part of her wondered if failing to take out Cocoon back then had simply drained her so completely that she could have done nothing but sleep.

Fang couldn't rest, but she knew that she had to. She did not fancy spending another five hundred years alone, as she slowly lost her mind. She had no idea of how much time had passed already. It could have been hours since the fall, or it could have been years. Besides, chances were that even if she were to wake in up what, to her, would be the next moment, it probably still would be too late, and they – Lightning – would have slipped through her fingers, just as Oerba and Gran Pulse had last time.

Her fate was fair and she'd gotten more than what she'd even dreamed was possible, Fang told herself angrily. They weren't cie'th, they weren't dead, they weren't even crystal. She loathed the part of herself that always wanted more. More time, more laughter, all of Lightning, a damn happy ending.

Fang reached out impulsively with her mind, seeking Vanille or anyone. Nothing and nobody reached back, and she laughed wearily in the recesses of her mind. She was alone in stasis, even if she was with Vanille. With an effort, Fang willed herself back to her restless sleep and hoped that the next time she woke up, it would be the end of her penance.

It was better this way, she repeated. She began to believe it.

At first, Fang had almost been fooled into believing that the dreams were real, that somehow she had been freed, and that everything was okay. The sun was shining in the flawless blue skies above the Archylte Steppe, and the heat warmed the deep chill of crystal from her bones. She could smell, hear, feel everything the world had to offer. The sudden sensations were dizzying after being deprived of them for so long, and with a short laugh, Fang threw herself back into the grass.

Etro, she'd missed feeling. For a long while, she'd simply lain there, staring up at the sky and soaking up the sun.

"Fang?" A voice sounded from somewhere on the plains, and she looked up to find one Snow Villiers barrelling toward her in a headlong run with a huge grin and a hearty laugh. Fang found herself snapped up into his arms and spun around a few times for good measure, and she could swear she felt her ribs creak as he squeezed her in a bearhug.

"Get off me, blockhead," Fang wheezed out, prompting another round of laughter from the big lug attempting to squash her once and for all.

"It's my dream, I'm the hero, and we'll do what I want!" Snow said loudly, before finally giving in to her demands and setting her on her feet. Fang took a few exaggerated gasps of air, eyeing him off warily and trying not to feel so crushingly disappointed at his words.

Of course it's a dream, Fang told herself, feeling like an idiot for having believed, even for a moment. No matter how good the dream felt, she was still trapped in place she'd once hated so badly, cut off from everything, and there was nothing to be done for it. Moodily crossing her arms, Fang looked out across the empty plains, wishing she was back in the cold of stasis. At least it was honest about the prison, Fang thought a little viciously.

The dream went grey and faded, and Fang felt raw and angry as she woke up to nothingness.

Of course, Snow was not so easily waylaid, and of course the stubborn fool saw to it that he kept worming his way back into Fang's consciousness. Maybe he was just the first of the l'Cie to sense Fang's loneliness and reach back. That stupid crystal rock he'd always carried – supposedly some link to Serah Farron – must have been good for something after all. As his dreams began to regularly invade her own forced ones, Fang slowly relaxed and began to enjoy the long-craved company.

Her shared dreams with Snow were always filled with sunlight and laughter, banter, and simply being able to act like a total blockhead with him. Sometimes, he dragged her on hunts, and the adrenaline thrill of battle was absolutely intoxicating as they went toe-to-toe with Undying in deadly rematches. Other times, they simply spent the dream lazing in the sun, just talking about jack all and rubbing one another the wrong way and snickering at the ruffled feathers and wounded pride.

This time, they were just walking, talking about nothing in particular as they walked along the eastern wall of the Steppe. It felt good to spend time with him without being so frightened of the brands.

"You know," Snow said thoughtfully as they walked, his voice completely casual. "I'm not so sure I believe Lightning when she tells me that you two did nothing that night you spent alone out here. There has to be a reason she was so Eden-damn twitchy and bad-tempered the next day."

Fang just shot him a level look, and Snow laughed at her simple answer. Her heart ached a little, though. It had been a bit of an unspoken rule that they wouldn't speak of everything that went on outside, how the world had changed since the fall, how everyone was moving on without her. Fang wasn't sure she could cope with the knowledge that she'd become another of Cocoon's myths again, that Lightning would go on without her.

She didn't want to think of all she'd had and all she'd lost.

"Well..." Fang stopped, scanning the Steppe's walls and plains for a distraction – anything would do. "She was quite the charmer back then, I gotta tell you. You weren't kidding about those brass knuckles absolutely caning."

Snow grinned, and Fang looked along the Steppe's walls again, remembering kissing Lightning by the fire, enjoying the way the other woman had just melted against her. Fang remembered focusing a lot on Lightning and the potential physical distractions she could have offered, rather than paying attention to the growing shadows of her memories. She'd wished she'd paid more attention to Lightning's body language back then, noticed and eased the woman's uncertainty and fear. Maybe if Fang had paid attention, it wouldn't have blind-sided her so badly in the subterra...

Fang's gaze sharpened as a familiar outcropping of rock caught her eye, and she led Snow over with a commanding jerk of her thumb. She leaned through the fissure in the Steppe's rocky cliff, seeing the faint outline of the small but sheltered cave. She felt herself smile a little and pulled back.

"Spent the night right here, that time you were talking about," Fang told Snow as he followed her lead and looked inside. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her, and she punched his shoulder, not needed to say more.

They continued on their way, moving on to less threatening topics like the taste of rust pudding, or what came first – the adamantoise or the egg? The conversation was deliberately light until Snow waved goodbye, pumped his fist, and the dream faded to grey until Fang could see nothing but blackness.

The dreams with Snow were great, Fang had to admit it. They warmed her, kept her busy. They were fun. But when he was gone, and Fang was alone, she felt even worse than before.

Vanille had been quiet for a long time, and it almost felt like she wasn't there at all. She rested more easily than Fang, maybe more content in her actions and hardly as enslaved to her own regrets as Fang knew herself to be. Fang knew she was dwelling on what-ifs and could-bes, but she couldn't help it.

Occasionally, between her restless dreams and more morbid thoughts, Fang reached out to check on Vanille, to find out if she was there, or if in the end she'd left Fang alone too. Fang's sense of awareness would always skim over Vanille's sleeping mind, getting a strong sense of summer and white Oerban flowers, but her slumber was so deep that even Fang's best efforts would rouse her for what only felt like moments.

Fang hated the loneliness of stasis even more, but in the end, what could she do but resign herself? She wished she was out there, even if there really was no real place for her or Vanille.

When Sazh started appearing in Fang's dreams, he seemed just as surprised to see her as she was to see him. Fang had supposed that she'd never been overly close to the man – generally speaking, he was more fond of Vanille, who seemed to be the teenaged daughter he'd never had. At the time, on Gran Pulse, when all the strongest bonds between l'Cie seemed to have formed, Fang had had more than enough on her mind between Lightning and Ragnarok, and she'd never taken the chance to get to know him.

In his dreams, Sazh mostly went about his business. It wasn't really ignoring her, per se, but he didn't exactly acknowledge her presence with much more than a few sidelong looks. Fang just watched, trapped in a dream of his making and somewhat anchored down, but unsure if she should open her mouth and disturb him more than she already had. She didn't even know if he'd welcome her conversation!

Sazh slowly warmed to her presence, maybe relenting, maybe deciding for sure that yes, she was actually there and that she had as little control over it as he did. Eventually, he began to talk. He seemed to steer clear of the general things, like the state of play of the world after the fall, but mostly he talked about Dajh. He spoke about the new school being built, showed her a picture that he drew the other day of his dad and the rest of the l'Cie. He talked about Dajh's new friends, the birthday party in the near future, how fast he was growing, his fussy eating habits and the strange love of Gran Pulse that he'd grown.

It was nothing huge, not at all. But listening to it all made Fang's throat itch and ache, and she had to blink rapidly to dispel the burning sensation in her eyes.

Sazh, after all, had been the one that Fang had hurt the most in her recklessness, selfishness and ill-will toward Cocoon. To have Sazh tell her all about his most precious person was nothing short of amazing. Fang couldn't help but admire his quiet strength and his ability to move past regret and anger.

Were their places swapped, Fang was not sure that she could have done the same.

"You know..." Sazh said, thoughtfully, as he'd bent down to begin to paint the weatherboards that made up the outside of his cabin. "Time was, back on the Palamecia, I thought I'd never forgive either of you."

Fang was quiet, leaning against the railings of the cabin's tiny veranda, just watching him work. She'd once asked him why he dreamed of doing chores, and Sazh had smiled and said it relaxed him and gave him time to think. Apparently, he'd been thinking quite a lot if he was going to bring up Euride Gorge again.

"Could never really get a proper reading on you, you see. Were you sorry, were you just saying it for peace's sake, yadda yadda yadda..." Sazh laughed softly, straightening and leaning against the cabin, careful to avoid the parts he'd already gone over with paint. "Then I realised how much was going on inside, and how much you were hurting. That, and learning about Ragnarok, really helped me out with perspective. It's easy to say you forgive. It's harder to actually do it."

Sazh fell silent after that, just focusing on going back to his task, while Fang digested his words. What exactly was he trying to tell her? That it wasn't easy to forgive, but to try anyway? Exactly who did she need to forgive?

Yourself.

"I tell him stories, you know. About you and Vanille. I try to pass down the stories of you, and the stories you two passed down yourselves. Dajh just loves them to bits." Sazh smiled, looking up at her as he worked. Fang hurt. She'd paid the price knowingly, she told herself again, like some empty mantra, but it was this that she missed so terribly that it felt like a physical weight on her chest.

"One day, I tell him, it'll be you telling your own stories to him when you get back. He's excited – he wants to hear them from his heroes, all proper-like. How does that sound to you?"

Fang's throat felt tight, and she nodded sharply.

"I'd like that," she told him hoarsely and unsteadily, and for once, it was the honest-to-Etro true.

Fang rested more easily after that, and long stretches of black calmness littered her memories of stasis. For the first time, her dreams were her own. They were disjointed and sometimes too sharp, and they lacked the bizarre lucidity of her shared dreams with Snow and Sazh, but they were her own. Sometimes, they would be of the past and Oerba, and other times she would dream of the later stages of the War of Transgression, when she'd become a l'Cie and had everything to lose and nothing to gain.

When the dreams of the war grew a little too bright or vivid, Fang slipped down into something deeper, calmer and infinitely more welcome than the insanity of Ragnarok. She'd always settle into warm memories, a helping hand outstretched, good times, or even her fingers knotted in soft hair as Lightning nipped at her earlobe in the dark.

There was always something tugging, though, and whenever Fang felt rise up in her chest, she'd find herself awake again and alone in stasis.

Fang began to wonder how much time she'd lost.

After so many dreams shared with Snow and Sazh, and then such a blank gap of nothing at all, suddenly being confronted by Hope Estheim of all people was baffling. Fang wondered, as she regarded him suspiciously, if it meant anything - if it was them who was causing her restless sleep and controlling the dreams, or whether it was her fault after all.

Hope, of course, was aware of her immediately as he walked along Oerba's exposed beaches, his boots kicked off on the paved steps as he let the approaching tide wash over his ankles. He acknowledged her straight off the bat as Sazh had not, but he didn't smile and embrace her as Snow had done. Hope had simply cast a considering eye up and down her, as if he'd expected her presence all along, and simply continued walking.

Fang kept easy pace with Hope, waiting for him to sort through his throats at his own pace. The kid had grown, and it wasn't just reflected in his height, but his bearing as well. They kept walking along the beach, and Fang inhaled deeply, enjoying the wind on her skin and the salty taste of the air. The last time she'd been in Oerba, she'd hardly been in a mood to go and experience the joys of the coastline.

"You always seemed so strong," Hope finally said. "And harsh. You were exactly like what I always though a Pulsian would be like, scary and powerful."

Fang didn't reply to that, wondering where it was all going.

"Back then... yeah, it was a little intimidating. It was hard to match your stride, because I'd look around, measure myself against you, and I'd always find myself lacking." Hope's voice was neutral – not cold, just thoughtful. "At times, I still do. You and Vanille, you saved the world. You're heroes, and everyone knows it."

"Snow'd tell you that heroes always got a happy ending," Fang pointed out, carefully keeping her tone light and not at all as bitter as she felt.

"We both know that Snow likes to shoot his mouth off," Hope replied dryly, and the response was so reminiscent of Lightning that Fang felt her heart clench. Was she training Hope? Was she okay? What was she doing, and who was she seeing? The questions longed to come out, but they died on Fang's tongue as she forcefully decided that she didn't need to know those answers.

"I know a little of what you're feeling," Hope said quietly, and Fang snorted.

"Do you just?" she asked, keeping her voice deliberately mild, to humour him.

"Back then, I was scared. Scared of what we were all becoming, what we were doing, what Orphan wanted us to do. Even if you were an asshole -" Hope shot her a look as Fang pulled a face. "- I figured that you were just scared, too."

"I don't get scared." The flippant words came easily, but he seemed to know them for the lie that they were.

"Whatever. What pulled me back that then were the helping hands of others, and following their leads. Lightning, Snow, Vanille, Sazh... and you, I guess. I figure that sometimes, even the strong freeze up. They get scared of the next step, deny that they need to take it at all. But you do, there's no escape, and things can get better." Hope took a deep breath, finally stopping and meeting her eyes directly.

"Are you saying that I don't want to wake up?" Fang said it slowly, feeling a spike of anger as she considered his words. "You think I want to be stuck in a crystal, while you all enjoy the future I gave you?"

Time was, Hope would have immediately backed down as her fury had made itself known. Now, he continued to meet her eyes squarely, unflinching as she reached out, dragging him up and off-balance. She'd show him a thing or two, and then -

"Everyone is waiting for you."

Fang's grip on the front of Hope's shirt loosened, and he gently pried her fingers free. He brushed off his clothes as he put some extra distance between them, and Fang said nothing. She wanted to demand all the answers, but she had none of the courage to do so.

"You know that I'm right," Hope told her, sighing.

"It doesn't make a lick of difference." Fang's voice was rough and unsteady in her own ears, and she turned on her heel and stalked back to Oerba. She needed quiet, stasis, somewhere where Hope's accusations wouldn't hurt so badly.

The dream faded into nothing, and this time, Etro was merciful. Fang didn't dream of them again for a very long time.

Initially, it felt like one of Fang's own dreams – it was sensation-less, disconnected, vague – but it grew sharper as she walked along the palisades under Taejin's Tower. Sounds and feelings began to trickle in, until she knew with a certainty that it was one of those dreams.

"Everyone mentioned that they'd met you. I thought you'd skip me, seeing as we've never actually met before. Not really."

Fang froze, her fingers immediately going to the lance strapped to her back as she looked around at the speaker behind her. Of course, Fang recognised that voice from the bridge in Oerba, and even if it lacked the detached venom that Barthandelus had given it, he'd gotten the appearance dead-on for sure. Serah Farron looked surprised and somewhat happy to see Fang, and it was the naturalness of her expression that finally convinced Fang to ignore the nerves that screamed, run, she's dangerous.

"Ain't exactly up to me, so I'm as surprised as you are," Fang told Serah, finally releasing the grip of her lance. She still felt on edge, though – Serah was the most important person in Lightning's life, and just by virtue of that, Fang was uncomfortable.

"Running theme of these dreams is usually 'wake up'," Fang continued, crossing her arms and looking over the drop, toward Taejin's Tower and the darkening sky beyond. The scenery reminded her of another time and another Farron telling her where to go. Fang's mouth twisted bitterly. "If we could just cut to the chase, that would be great."

Serah's footfalls were a lot softer than Fang remembered Lightning's being as she approached.

"You gave me a sister back," Serah told Fang, with all of Lightning's confidence and none of her sternness. Fang reeled a little from the odd assortment of similarities and differences. "Is it too hard to wait until I've at least thanked you?"

"She did it herself," Fang corrected Serah, looking back at her over her shoulder. "I was neither a driving force or a factor. The whole situation back then was just a pressure cooker, but I'm glad she seemed to come out of it for the better."

Fang had betrayed Lightning, manipulated her, had pushed her away when things had gotten too tough to bear. Fang had managed to hurt Lightning many times over, so to be thanked for doing all that didn't sit too well with her.

"Maybe it's too soon to thank you," Serah abruptly decided, seating herself on the hanging edge of the palisades, motioning for Fang to follow her lead. "She's still pretty mad at you."

"Is she now," Fang replied vaguely as she knelt. Of course, Lightning had every reason to be mad. It didn't change the fact that it stung, just a little.

"Mm," Serah said with a nod, leaning back on her elbows. "Enough that she's pretty quiet about you. There was this one time, back before we started travelling with her, but... not a lot since then. She loved you, then you went away."

By that point, Fang was tired of explaining her reasoning during the fall, so she simply shrugged.

"Someone had to save the world," Fang pointed out tightly. "None of us would be here if I hadn't."

"Was it ever real for you? Was she just someone you thought would leave you behind so easily?" Serah pressed on insistently, and Fang's temper flared.

"Of course it was real for me," Fang snarled, her voice harsh but right now? She didn't give a damn. "She gave me a reason, beyond survival and protecting Vanille. She gave me a future I wanted!"

"Then why are you still asleep?" Serah asked, softly. "Why don't you just wake up?"

"I don't know how." Fang bit the words out, rising to her feet fast enough to make her head spin. She began to walk away, and behind her, she heard Serah scramble to follow.

"You'd better find out soon," Serah called out, jogging to match Fang's quick stride. "If this next thing fails, then I'm not sure what Lightning is going to do!"

That stopped Fang in her tracks.

"'Next thing'?" Fang asked, turning back to Serah. Lightning was trying to wake them up? Fang nearly kicked herself. Of course Lightning would, the woman would never rest until she had things her way, but a colder part of Fang wondered what would happen if that 'next thing' did fail and Lightning was out of options.

Based on her past experience, there were two sure-fire ways to wake up l'Cie in crystal stasis – by god or by fal'Cie. Fang's stomach was frozen with horror as she considered the very real possibility that Lightning would bone-headedly go down either of those paths. What would either of those demand of Lightning as payment? Servitude, enslavement to a Focus, or Ragnarok again? It was her worst nightmare. Bad enough that stasis prevented Fang from being with her family, protecting them, but to be the cause of a losing bargain like that?

Fang tore herself from the dream, her mind racing as she tried to find a way out. She needed to find a way out, she couldn't wait any longer -

In the darkness, a tiny light sprang up. Fang watched it for a few tense moments, wondering if she really had gone mad after all. As she considered it, it grew brighter, wavered less, and in an explosion of fear and desperation at the idea of being left alone in the dark while Lightning sold her soul to a fal'Cie or worse, Fang reached out.

The light grew brighter as Fang clawed her way toward it, and Etro it hurt but she couldn't stop.

Memories flashed through her mind – she was seven years old, resentful and angry as she met a newly-orphaned Vanille for the first time. She was twelve and defiant of the orphanage laws, refusing to accept that she was not to leave Oerba's boundaries. She was sixteen and everything went to hell between Gran Pulse and Cocoon. She remembered Anima and the dreadful honour of the Focus, of shoving herself in the line of duty so that Vanille wouldn't have to.

It felt like she was being gutted of her memories and being restuffed with them one-by-one, and she remembered Dajh at Euride Gorge, Snow at Lake Bresha, Lightning at Palumpolum. There was Sazh on the Palamecia, and Hope in the Vallis Media.

Everything hurt, but she needed to keep going, and she could feel the walls in her mind falling. The gaol-cell she'd confined herself to exploded outward, and then there was blinding light.

Fang's eyes snapped open to barren, crystal-dusted hills, not unlike those that surrounded Oerba. These ones, though, seemed to go on forever,. The sun in the sky was pale, but the crystal threw off a reflective glare that stung in Fang's eyes. Aside from the hills themselves, it seemed like there was nothing in sight.

It wasn't like Fang's dreams with her family, where she felt sensation just as well as if she'd been alive – she was cold and numb.

Fang resettled her shoulders, undaunted by the lack of anything around her. All she had to do was keep walking until she found the end, right? Things turned out to be a little more difficult in practice, as she walked for some impossibly long time without the landscape so much as changing.

Pulling to a stop, still cold and numb but unable to walk any further, Fang wanted to throw her lance at something. She was going to be too goddamn late from stopping Lightning from doing something stupid. Fang would never forgive herself.

"There are no miracles, except for the ones that come from inside us."

The sudden, familiar voice came from just behind her, and Fang whirled around.

"Vanille?" Fang asked softly, because after so many dreams and such long silences from her sister, she wasn't sure what to say, even if this was real. Vanille smiled in response, a real smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes, and she walked forward to stand by Fang's side.

"You looked like you could use a hand," Vanille said simply, and Fang felt her own lips twitch in a smile, despite her frustration.

"Don't tell me that you were watching me wander around like a blind lobo all this time." Fang placed a hand on her hip, appraising her sister critically. Etro, she'd missed Vanille...

"Are you ready to wake up with me now?" Vanille asked softly, and Fang nodded without hesitation.

"I'm ready." Fang smiled, letting her voice become a little teasing. "Those idiots can't take care of themselves, and Lightning especially is far too stubborn for her own good. Besides. What's Gran Pulse without a couple of full-blooded Pulsians running around, hey?"

"Is it what you really want?" Vanille's green eyes were thoughtful, as if she was trying to guess Fang's answer.

"More than anything. I thought penance would work, but it's caused more pain than good. I'm sick of being a relic of the past, to be left behind forever. I want a future... same as anyone, really."

"That's what I wanted to hear," Vanille said with another one of those bright smiles, and her hands were warm in Fang's frozen ones. Fang wondered, just how long had Vanille been waiting for her to get her head together? "Close your eyes, and no peeking! I want you to focus on that feeling..."

Fang dragged a ragged gasp through lungs that didn't seem to work any more, her head still spinning from when she'd knocked it on the concrete floors. She must have fallen down, she realised vaguely, but there was a dull roar in her brain that seemed to flood out everything else as sensation returned to her. Her eyes were blurry, and even the sound of footsteps on the ground made her head want to explode outwards. Her breath felt too shallow, too cold, and she couldn't seem to get enough air.

Her first attempt to get to her feet sent her sprawling, and abruptly there were hands on her shoulders and knotted in her sari as they tried to pull her up. Fang swatted at them uselessly for a moment before she realised that it had been Vanille's too-loud footsteps before, and that her sister was shouting for help as she struggled to help Fang to her feet.

Somewhere ahead – Fang couldn't judge distance at that point – a door slammed open. The light stung in Fang's eyes and the reverberations of more footsteps on the ground made her ears ache. She vaguely heard some voices – a part of her wanted to identify them as Snow's merry band of thugs, that Team NORA – but she still couldn't see properly.

Vanille finally released her clothing as one of the newcomers threw Fang over his shoulder, and Fang couldn't help the agonised groan that slipped through her clenched teeth. The world seemed to shake violently, and as Fang's grip on consciousness slipped loose, she wondered if it had been real or if it was just another dream the gods had sent to torture her.

When Fang woke up again, it was to sunlight falling across her eyes and a cool breeze stirring her hair. She groaned quietly, trying to force her eyes open as she rubbed at her face. Her whole body felt raw inside, like she'd run a hundred laps of the Steppe in a day, and her skin felt over-sensitive and hot.

Her breath caught in her throat as she blinked up at the ceiling, because even in her most vivid dreams, she hadn't felt so... tired. It was the bone-deep exhaustion more than anything else that convinced Fang that maybe it was all real, and with that realisation, she decided that she desperately needed information.

Fang didn't recall her arms being so weak the last time she awoke, but she forced herself to sit up and take stock of her surroundings and the potential danger that could be anywhere.

The room was small, with large, curtained windows that were open to let the sunlight and afternoon breeze through. Her eyes fell on where Vanille slept on a narrow bed next to her own, snoring lightly, peaceful and safe.

Fang closed her eyes, exhausted but so completely through with the idea of sleeping that she couldn't bear to just roll over and do it all again. With a muffled groan, she pushed her blankets down and swung her legs over the bed. Her bones ached terribly – she hadn't had the chance to fully heal from Orphan's torture before she'd ended up as a lump of crystal, so she supposed that was why she felt like such garbage.

The walk over to the door was harder work than it should have been, but fortunately it was unlocked and swung open with a small amount of fumbling. Fang leaned against the door frame and looked out, breathing a little hard, but victorious. She seemed to be in some sort of small house, probably on Gran Pulse. The house seemed to be relatively new, still smelling faintly of wood and varnish. Fang leaned her head against the frame, pressing her palm to her aching forehead.

A house on Gran Pulse, then, not a cave on Cocoon. How...? Fang needed answers, and as the door at the end of the hallway opened, her eyes snapped up, her body tensing. A tall, silver-haired young man entered, and Fang blinked at him for a moment. The familiar mop of silver hair registered, even if the rest of him had changed drastically.

"I see you're up. Finally." Hope's voice was brisk as he crossed the distance between them with an ease that Fang envied, and he looked a little concerned as he openly examined her. The kid – well, not really a kid any more – was acting like he was a doctor. "How are you feeling? Are you feeling any lasting effects – disorientation? Hypersensitivity? Unstable emotions or memory loss?"

Fang watched him with narrowed eyes – so she'd been under long enough for him to start training at the least. Fang tried to stop the all-too familiar feeling of crippling guilt at how much she'd missed -

Lightning came flooding back, and Serah's warning was ringing in her ears as Fang reached forward and gripped Hope's shoulder with what little strength she had left.

"Hope," Fang ground out though her clenched teeth. "Where is Lightning? We – we need to go get her and stop her from-"

Fang cut herself off as Hope reached forward, laying his bare palm against her forehead with a troubled look.

"I'm not messing around here!" Fang growled as she shoved his hand away, angry that he was just going to dismiss her concerns as the ravings of a feverish lunatic! "If you aren't going to help me, then get the hell out of my way-"

"Fang. Fang. Look at me." Hope's voice was a little alarmed, and he reached out instinctively to steady her as she felt herself begin to sway in exhaustion. "Lightning is fine. She's with Snow and Serah, and she already-"

"What did she do?" If Hope thought that hearing that Lightning was with Snow and Serah, doing Etro only knew what, then he had another think coming. It only made the danger more real and suddenly Fang couldn't breathe. "How did she wake us up – what did she sacrifice?"

Fang's head was spinning, and she tightened her grip on Hope's shoulder. She was still too weak and overwhelmed by sensation, but if she was too goddamn late then -

"Okay." Hope drew the word out, as if that would calm her. "If it helps, I spoke to Lightning just this morning. She's okay, and she's on her way back, like... as we speak. She's coming back, Fang. Don't worry."

The fact that Hope had spoken with Lightning that morning did a lot to ease the feeling of desperation clawing at Fang's stomach, and she released her grip on Hope's shoulder with a shaky jerk. He rubbed at his shoulder, wincing, and Fang let herself sag against the wall. Lightning was coming back, so Fang would be able to see for herself if the woman had gone and done something monumentally stupid.

"You said you spoke to her," Fang asked, her breath slow to recover. "Is it possible to do it again?"

Hope shook his head. "It's not easy, and most of the time it doesn't work. Besides, I really think it'd be better for you to go back to bed for a while. You're not looking so great, you know."

A short time later, after unsuccessfully arguing the point with Hope that she was fine and had had enough sleep to last her a lifetime, Fang sagged back onto her narrow mattress. Maybe he'd been right about her needing some sleep – she was beat. On the bed next to her own, Vanille stirred, rolling over and blinking up at Fang sleepily.

"You're awake," she said simply, and Fang nodded.

"So it seems, though with everyone telling me to go back to bed, I might as well not be," Fang replied sourly, but as Vanille sat up and hopped across to flop over Fang's own bed, she felt herself smile. That was the Vanille she remembered.

"It's been four years." Vanille's voice was quiet, and Fang let her head roll back and thump gently against the wall at the head of her bed. Four years, and she'd missed it all while dreaming and envying them...

"It's a long time, but it's short when compared to five hundred." Fang didn't mention how restless her sleep had been, or that she'd felt every dragging moment. Suddenly, she yawned widely and her eyelids grew heavy.

"Why don't you go to sleep again?" Vanille asked, and Fang shook her head stubbornly even as she struggled to stay awake.

"Can't sleep. Light's on her way back, don't want to miss her."

Vanille gave her an odd look, before sighing. "From what Sazh has said, I'm fairly certain that you won't miss her arrival if you take a quick nap this afternoon."

A quick nap sounded great, but Fang wasn't so sure she could promise it would be 'quick' at all. The need to see Lightning and the need for sleep warred inside her for a few more seconds, and then she nodded finally. Vanille scooted over to her own bed as Fang resettled herself – Etro, her bones ached so badly...

"Promise you'll wake me up?" Fang asked, letting her eyes close. She felt sleep rise up to claim her almost instantly, and the last thing she heard before she went under was Vanille's murmured promise.

It felt like Fang hadn't been asleep all that long when something pulled her back up. She cracked her eyes open to the sound of someone humming a short tune at her bedside. Fang jerked to full awareness then, propping herself up on her elbows as she stared at Sazh. He glanced up from the book that he was reading, looking a little surprised as Fang swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her strength seemed to have returned to her, and she frowned as she looked over at Vanille's empty blankets.

Judging by the light, it was mid afternoon. She'd either not slept at all, or she'd lost a full day at the very least. She rose to her feet quickly, and she only stumbled a little this time. Fang felt herself bare her teeth – she was doing a lot better already.

"You're going pretty fast for someone that's been asleep for four years and counting," Sazh said, rising to his feet and reaching out to steady her as she lurched for the door.

"I slept for five hundred years, then four more. I think I'm more than ready to get up," Fang told him as she rolled her shoulders, feeling the bones crack and shift in response. "Never felt so bad last time."

Sazh sighed, but he was smiling a little. "Should I go grab anybody for you, or do you want to do it all yourself?"

Fang shook her head quickly. "Where's Vanille?"

"Doing it yourself it is, then. She's outside, on the grass. As usual." Sazh's smile widened as he led her through the house, and then gestured to the door to make sure that Fang knew the way out. "I'll go fix you and her something to eat – but it's good to see you up and about again."

Fang nodded to him, and as he said, she found Vanille lying on the grass at the back of the small house they'd been holed up in. The fenced off area was filled with familiar Oerban flowers and other Pulsian flora. If she'd harboured any further doubts that she was on Gran Pulse, they were gone. Fang flopped onto the grass beside her sister, and Vanille lifted the arm that had been thrown across her eyes.

"Well, you're looking a lot better," Vanille said, slowly sitting up. Her skin was a little red from the afternoon sun, and Fang wondered if she'd have to listen to endless complaints that night when the sunburn let itself become known.

"Saner too, I bet," Fang replied mildly, pressing the heel of her palm against her forehead as she remembered her feverish demands of both Hope and Vanille. Well, that was just a tiny bit embarrassing...

"I know what you came out here to ask, so I'll save you the trouble of asking. She's not here yet." Vanille looked a little subdued, and Fang tried not to feel so disappointed at the news. She let herself fall back on the grass, staring at the clouds, and began to wonder if things were as 'okay' as Hope had led her to believe.

"Where did she go?" Fang asked, frustrated, and she reached up a hand to trace the outline of a cloud.

"Sazh mentioned a map of Gran Pulse that they found. He said that they went to go and see if there were any Pulsians left, or if you and I were really the last. Maybe they were looking for help?" Vanille shrugged, picking at the grass. "Crossing a whole continent on foot isn't exactly fast, you know."

Fang rolled her eyes at the reminder to be patient, but she still had this core of unease that would not go away, no matter how she turned it around or reconsidered it.

"Besides," Vanille continued, poking Fang in the shoulder. "You woke up with me because you said you were ready to live. Why not try it for a bit? Leave the worrying for when Lightning actually gets back, when you can do something about it."

Fang sighed, before giving Vanille a reluctant smile. "Maybe you're right, but I'm going to tell her that you fobbed me off on her. Now who's the worried one?"

"Not me, that's for sure," Vanille huffed and crossed her arms, and Fang laughed. It felt good to laugh, without a war or a Focus or Ragnarok weighing on her mind. As far as she knew, now she was free? What was she going to do with herself?

"I am glad they stopped me from trying to destroy everything." It felt obvious, but Fang felt like it needed to be out there in the open.

"Would you really have done it?"

"I tried," Fang pointed out, maybe a little too harshly. Her mouth twisted, and she fought the downturn of mood that usually accompanied such questions. "Isn't that enough?"

Vanille said nothing, and Fang stared up at the clouds, thinking back on the times that she had failed and the one time she'd succeeded. Eventually, she had calmed, and she took a deep breath.

"Didn't succeed, though, thank Etro. I don't remember a lot of my time as... you know." Fang's throat felt tight all of a sudden, and she stubbornly kept her eyes on the moving clouds above her. "But I think that the reason I kept failing was that I didn't really want it, not with you and all the others shouting me down at every turn. I tried because I was too scared to really consider another way in case I lost you all, so I guess... when I didn't really believe in my cause, I was doomed to fail."

"So you believed in saving Cocoon?" Vanille asked, and when Fang looked over, she was smiling again.

"I believed in a future for my family, because they deserved one." Fang felt the corner of her lip twitch. "Just like we do, impossibility and shitty bargains aside."

"You have changed," Vanille said, giving Fang a narrow look, even if she seemed pleased.

"Nothing wrong with that," Fang replied, and from the warm feeling in her stomach, she knew that she meant it this time.

Over the next few days, Fang managed to completely recover her strength, and had spent enough time holed away in the military-issue cabin that she would have gone stir crazy if she hadn't decided to take a walk down to the growing township that had sprung up in the area. She'd slipped out of the house early, well before Hope usually showed up for his daily visits to feed them updates on the new life on Gran Pulse, because she was not about to wait for Hope Estheim's permission to do anything.

The town, Sazh had mentioned on one of his own frequent visits, was one of the largest on Gran Pulse now. As she'd crested the hill and looked down over the uneven assortment of buildings and houses, a quick scan of the area had confirmed Fang's suspicions that it had been constructed in what she'd known as the Daigoba Vale, to the north west of the Steppe and not all that far from Oerba.

The strong Cocoon military presence in the town had been enough to make Fang's skin crawl even at a distance, but she'd tried to push the feeling off to the side as she made her way down, and when she was actually amongst the people, it was actually a little surprising at how normal the place was, even with the over-abundance of Corps soldiers. It was peaceful but busy, the people didn't seem so uptight and fearful as they'd been during her time on Cocoon.

As she did a quick walk-through of the town to scope it all out, she received none of the suspicious looks she'd gotten before, and some even nodded to her in a brief, if impersonal way of greeting. It all felt very surreal, and Fang had to pinch herself to stop herself from wondering if she was still dreaming after all.

In the end, she'd used the last of the gil stashed away in her back pocket to buy some cleaning supplies and components for her lance – the poor thing hadn't seen a proper clean since the l'Cie had left for Oerba from the camp in the Vallis Media – and some banjora fruit for the trip home.

Peeling the waxy skin from the fruit as she made her way home again, she supposed she couldn't be dreaming, because even when her dreams had been the most strange and vivid, she'd never have thought Cocoon survivors would have adapted so well.

That afternoon as she sat cross-legged on the grass, Fang carefully laid out her cleaning supplies all over a wide towel and began the pain-staking task of cleaning the delicate internal mechanisms of her lance, and upgrading or replacing the parts that had seen just a little too much wear and tear for her comfort. The afternoon of tedious weapon care would do her good, Fang decided as she'd left Vanille watching the television that Hope had scavenged for them, and better yet, the task would keep her occupied.

She was just getting into slowly taking apart the spring-loaded blades at either end of her weapon when she heard the scuff of boots on the decking behind her – and she froze. That was a gait she'd recognise anywhere, and suddenly her throat went completely dry. Carefully placing her partially-disassembled lance back on the towel, she looked over her shoulder.

"Not even going to spare me a 'hello'?" Lightning asked quietly, from where she leaned on the railings of the cabin's sheltered veranda. "Then again, I didn't get a 'goodbye' either, so I suppose you're consistent."

Fang rose to her feet immediately, her heart in her throat. Four years had passed since she'd last seen Lightning, and some things about her had changed, while others had not. Lightning lacked the military uniform that had been so ingrained in Fang's mental picture of her, and a lot of the harshness in her face and stance had gone with it. Instead, she seemed more balance and more sure of herself, even if she looked tired and dusty from her travelling.

There was no obvious sign of a fal'Cie brand or any god's dubious gifts but she couldn't feel any magical residue. Confronted with Lightning now, with the events of Orphan's Cradle and the fall behind them... she was at a complete loss as to what to say.

She could demand to know where Lightning had been, what she'd seen, or just lunge forward and take Lightning in her arms, show Lightning that she'd never willingly leave like she had ever again, but there was something off about her. There was something about the deliberate and careful distance that Lightning was putting between them that made the idea of Fang just giving in to her impulses seem foolish and unwelcome.

Unable to help it, Fang felt a yawning sense of loss open up in her stomach, and she fully realised that it had been four whole years. Four years of growing, of moving on with life. Chances were, Fang noted with a growing coldness, that Lightning had simply moved on past whatever it was that they'd shared back then.

"So you finally made it back," Fang managed, trying to smile and only half succeeding. "Took your time about it."

"Same goes for you," Lightning replied, her voice neutral, her expression closed and thoughtful.

Fang wondered, in spite of her better judgement, if Lightning simply hadn't wanted to come see her. They stood in silence for a while, and Fang found herself unwilling to break it, because the lukewarm reception was only confirming her worst fears. Lightning had moved on, and Fang had not.

"I always imagined how this meeting would go," Lightning said, crossing her arms and slowly making her way down the set of steps. "I thought I'd punch you one for the stunt you pulled back then."

"More shit to hang on me for that, then?" Fang could have laughed or lashed out, but she stuffed it all down inside of her. It figured that some things never changed, and she turned her back on Lightning. "Hate to break it to you, Light, but I saved the world. All of it wouldn't be here if not for me and Vanille stopping Cocoon's fall. The fal'Cie would have gotten their way, and game over for the rest of us."

It all felt like a familiar trap, rising up inside of Fang to wrestle her down to misery again. She knew where this path led. She had to give it a chance, no matter the void between them, because Lightning had understood about Ragnarok, Vanille, everything. She needed to give Lightning more credit, because at the very least they were friends, right?

"That was a little harsh," Fang finally said, looking back and meeting Lightning's blue eyes. Etro, she'd missed those eyes, and her chest began to ache. "It's true, though."

"Fine," Lightning allowed, seating herself on the top step. "It's true. But having you up and sacrifice yourself like that, without a word... that wasn't exactly a nice surprise for me. Losing you like that... you're acting like I should have been happy about it."

"You were alive – and you were free. Not like me, trapped in a gaol-cell you can't even see, much less break out from." The memory of endless stasis stretching out before her made Fang's skin crawl, and she shifted her shoulders to rid herself of the feeling.

"You managed somehow, though," Lightning murmured, resting a hand on her hip, and Fang shot her a sharp look out of the corner of her eye.

"What're you on about?" Fang asked slowly, unsure of exactly what Lightning was implying. Lightning had done something to wake her up... hadn't she? From the equally odd look Lightning was giving Fang, maybe things hadn't happened the way Fang had initially believed. Fang's mind began to work overtime.

Lightning hesitated for a moment, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully. "Fang... what do you think happened? That I did something to actually drag you back out of stasis?"

"I..."

There are no miracles, except for the ones that come from inside us.

She remembered Serah's warning and Vanille's words. She remembered blinding terror at the news that Lightning could be doing something incredibly idiotic and letting the fal'Cie use her again, throwing away the freedom they'd fought so hard for, and after that it had all become so much clearer. A light had opened in the darkness, and suddenly Fang had seen a way out. She'd assumed that it had been Lightning's doing, somehow. But that would have meant that she'd paid a price to a fal'Cie, because nothing was free.

Lightning was whole and unburdened with a Focus. Lightning was okay.

If Lightning had done nothing after all, then what had made the white light appear back then? What had given Fang a way out? She began to wonder, then, if those shared dreams with Snow, Sazh, Hope and Serah had actually happened the way she'd initially believed. Had they been shared? As she turned the idea about in her mind, looking at the dreams in a new light, she became more convinced of the twisted truth of it all.

There had been no shared dreams, because they'd all been in her head. The careful avoidance of news of the outside, the minor details she could have simply fabricated by her own mind. They'd been desperation, loneliness and a way of dealing with the problems holding her captive.

"...I woke myself up, didn't I?" Fang blinked slowly. It all made sense, because Vanille had actually been waiting on her. She could have woken up with the others, but she'd waited. And while the others had clawed their way out, Fang had not, because she'd believed in the necessity of her sacrifice, and considered it her just punishment for Gran Pulse. She'd been afraid of the future beyond the Focus, and even if she'd wanted it so badly, she had been terrified of moving to take it.

"You freed yourself," Lightning confirmed with a nod, and Fang felt a rush at the words. "After Team NORA were able to extract you and Vanille from the pillar and take you back Oerba, we tried everything from theoretical magic to just going through what archives we could find. Nothing worked."

"I was worried that you'd try your luck with a fal'Cie," Fang admitted, but she'd freed herself. Her earlier panic and fear over Lightning going to a fal'Cie seemed so stupid, now that she knew the truth.

It still took her four years. Years. The time stretched between them like a barrier, but even if Lightning no longer felt the same way that Fang did, she'd still looked for a way to free her friends.

"I couldn't just leave you there... like that." Lightning looked up, towards where the pillar stood in the sky, her expression flickering for just a moment to bitterness before it was smoothed over to a neutral mask just as quickly. "Stasis wasn't your style, and exploring Gran Pulse is not nearly as much fun without you there."

"You actually went off and did all that?" Fang asked, thinking back on that spur of the moment dream of exploration and rediscovery of Gran Pulse that she'd shared with Lightning before the Cradle. She wondered what she had found out there, if there was anything left. "You should tell me all about it, sometime."

"Sometime," Lightning agreed quietly, and Fang watched the wind stir her hair and clothes. "It seemed like a good idea to stay useful, and it kept me busy. At least until I decided to take matters with you into my own hands. Turns out I just needed to be patient."

"Sorry to inconvenience you." It came out a little more bitterly than Fang had intended, but Lightning was so carefully distant that it was hard not to get the message that things had changed between them. Four years. Etro, Fang wished that she'd woken up earlier. As Lightning opened her mouth to say something, Fang waved a hand, effectively cutting the other woman off.

"I know, I know." Fang ran a hand through her hair, before shaking her head. She didn't think she could actually take hearing it from Lightning, because all through stasis she'd wanted life, wanted Lightnng and now her dreams were in reach, reality was setting in and it hurt. "Four years is a long time, and as long as it's been for me, it's been longer for you and... you've have time to move on. I can see it."

She looked up at the afternoon sky, down at the partially-disassembled weapon on the towel, trying to distract herself. She didn't want Lightning to go, but Fang couldn't exactly force Lightning to stay so that she could see just how much she meant to Fang.

"Moving on?" Lightning's voice was slow, almost unbelieving. Fang heard the wooden steps creak as the other woman rose to her feet, heard her cross the grass to stand at Fang's shoulder. "Is that what you think has happened?"

"Isn't it?" Fang asked, turning back to face Lightning and -

Lightning's fingers were in her sari, pulling her around, down and close, and Lightning's lips pressed against Fang's own for half a second. The kiss was sweet, harsh, needy, and entirely too short to have legitimately caused Fang's head to spin like that, and if Fang thought the news of her breaking stasis on her own terms was a rush...

"You and your ridiculous assumptions," Lightning told her in a low growl against her ear, burying her face in the crook of Fang's neck in a way that made Fang shiver in delight. "I thought you needed space."

"You think that I didn't want you sweeping in like some knight in shining armour, taking me in your arms and just showing me how you actually felt?" Fang laughed as Lightning exhaled sharply, and she impulsively brushed a few strands of hair out of Lightning's eyes. "I guess you're still awful at the romantic gestures. At least that hasn't changed."

Lightning's arms tightened around Fang's hips, and she withdrew slightly, looking Fang square in the eyes and Fang wondered if she'd spoken too soon.

"Things have changed, but not in the way you thought they had. Things... they can't be the same as they were during the Focus, and I don't want them to be. Me and you, we're beyond all that. But even if they can't be the same, maybe they can be better. If you want to let them be." Lightning swallowed, suddenly looking uncertain for the first time. "If you want to try."

It was a silent question – one that Fang immediately knew the proper answer to.

"If I want to 'try' with anyone, it'd be you." Fang nodded to herself, leaning in close, just enjoying the feel of having Lightning there with no time limits and no Focus. "That settles it, then."

Lightning made a sound of agreement. "So it's official?"

"Was it ever not?" Fang asked, her eyebrow arching. If that night in Oerba hadn't made her feelings clear, then she really didn't know what to tell Lightning.

"When Serah asked me, I was never quite sure where we were actually at. We were a little preoccupied with the end of the world."

"No end of the world going on right now," Fang noted unhelpfully, and she reflexively caught Lightning's hand when she went to go swat Fang's shoulder. She laced her fingers with Lightning's gloved ones, a little pleased with the way the other woman's lips twitched at the open show of affection.

She wanted more of that. It was dizzying to realise that she could have more, because they had all the time in the world now.

"When you get to meet Serah, you're going to wish there was." Lightning's voice was low and amused, and Fang stared at Lightning for a few moments, before laughing.

"You're kidding, right?"

The corners of Lightning's mouth twitched again, and she looked perfectly nonchalant as she told Fang, "She's my sister. If you think she's not willing to end you for the stasis stunt... think again."

"...perfect," Fang drawled, eyeing off the door as Lightning squeezed her hand once and began to lead her back to the cabin. Serah and Snow were probably in there with Vanille, and Fang suddenly wondered if the three of them were eavesdropping by the curtained windows. "You're just lucky that I love you."

It felt good to just come out and say it, even if it had been true for a long time already. Lightning stopped on the steps, looking just a little surprised at the frank admission, and then smiled.

"Likewise."