A/N: Aaaaaaand after years of being away from this fandom I am back with this new piece of happy angst! I was clearing out my old notes, and found this story lurking in the folder. Snow/Light is still one of my first OTPs of all time and so I chose to complete this story. I didn't complete the game when I was younger and had to catch up on the ending on Youtube, but guys, it did make me cry :') If you still jam with these two and enjoyed my ramblings please leave a review and let me know!

Since I haven't played the game in ages and FFXIII-2 was basically a time jumping game, the timelines get pretty confusing; I included time and location markers just to be clear of when scenes were taking place.


The Archylte Steppe, 1BF

It's hard to believe but there was a time when they didn't always hate each other. Anyway, he never really hated her. Just All This Guilt and Resentment. Five lifetimes ago, they roamed large open plains, unbridled, wild and free, saving the world together with their band of rebels turned comrades turned family, you set out on a journey to save home and along the way find home can be some other place, wild grass and a wide uninhibited view of the stars, and one day she's smiling and countering every spell of his to bring home the meat together, he says, just for today, and lets go of his worries, just for today, and today turned into months and weeks, and one day he hands her a log over the fire and their eyes meet and he thinks, I'm living like this, their family settled around them, they understand each other wordlessly, move in tandem in a seamless dance around these plains, she looks at him quietly, happily, openly, kindly, and he thinks, I'm living, I'm happy.

With Lightning, he's free. And as her gaze turns puzzled, tugging the log from him, he thinks, I wouldn't mind if she kissed me.


In transit, Yusnaan to the Dead Dunes, 1000AF

"What are you doing?" She scoffs at the bandana he's ripped in half, making a bandage that's being slowly wound round the gash in her arm that she felt no pain from, that would heal in a matter of hours, as if she wasn't already half a magical being. It's almost hilarious, his futility.

"I don't need you to save me." She says, looking out of the train at the desert, looking every bit like a 500 year old soul hallowed and tired from living way too long for a war that's lasted far too long and who only has thirteen days now to end it all, one way or another.

His hands take their time tying up the bandage on her forearm, the wound warranting no attention at all but he'll take anything to have something to do with her.

"I know." He smirks, but its lost its edge after 500 years, thirteen days to the potential end of the world - now it's a wry thing wrinkling up his face like his favourite glass of scotch, "That's your job. Saviour and all."

And she scoffs but rests her feet up on the chair beside him and he takes this as an absolute win. Watching her closely for any sign of life beneath the alabaster veneer of stoicism, whatever the God up there did to her in their gamble, he knows her well enough through several lifetimes to understand the smallest raise of her brows, the slightest glimmer in her eyes, she was always brooding and raging but never without life, and thirteen days to the end of the world he's taken it upon himself to goad, nurture back any spark he can find.

"You've already done it with me," he says, "so relax." He knows she can't. Let me pay back the favour.


The Archylte Steppe, 1BF

The first time he kissed her it was behind a waterfall, after a wild goose chase to nowhere that led to her deciding to take a bath and there was only so much of this he could take. He thinks he had at least rid himself from a large part of the guilt, having thought about this for months now and punishing himself, making his amends to Serah, because god he was happy, and he missed her, but he also loved her sister, and Lightning was everything he could never have thought of and everything he wanted. The sky was pink and dusk was approaching, and he remembers the flush of her face, the slap she gave him that turned into a sting that became where her hand caressed as she breathed into his kiss, the blush that spread across her skin, the unfamiliar way they tore at each other that turned into soft movements becoming familiar, the way they grappled at each other, grasping, gripping, but when she was close she held him near and whispered please, please and he came apart.

Just the other week she had planted her fist into his back and told him it was all okay. After that evening he tells her what he really feels, what he's worked out, the mess of it all, tells her he's happy like this, and sits next to her during their nightly fires giving her all his best cuts of meat, and she turns red the whole time, staying silent, but never saying no.


Yusnaan, 1000AF

In the end they don't save each other.

It's enough for them to be real.

"Serah forgives us." He says one night. He doesn't say for what. That gets her to look up. In her silver eyes behind the cool veneer there is a faint grey spark, the beginnings of storm clouds out at sea. He'll talk about all things before they go. He sighs. "It's been a long time, Light.

"Humans don't last this long. Not normally. But we haven't been just human, huh?" He looks and sees the familiar brew of stormy rage in her, faint, struggling, but there all this time. "I know you don't always believe me. But I've been talking to her. Ever since the first day." The tear is in his palm. Crystalline. He can't tell if she remembers when that was, or what happened on that day. He certainly does. Punch to the face and all.

He turns to face the lights of the city. "She's at peace." He's sighing all the time, old, old as this war, worn. "She just wants us to be happy."

Lightning doesn't move. To their credit, he thinks, those gods really took her soul away good. If she were fully herself he'd get another sock to the face and she wouldn't have let him finish. He thinks he can let out a scream. But he looks at her again and she's enraged, that familiar cloudy storm, winds that he got lost in for so long, and she's crying. He doesn't move to touch her. This is more than he's seen of her in his eight days of post- saviour living. Everything could break.

Her fists clench. She's heaving. Accusing. Hurting. He feels the sting of her stare and can already hear it. First you fail to protect my sister then you fall in love with me.

He breathes, "Forgive me."

She hiccups, trips on her own breath in shock, and something happens. Beneath that alabaster mask something cracks, something on her face.

The storm clouds part. A clearing. Lightning looks at him for the first time in 500 years, sharp eyes, lucid. Alive.


She doesn't punch him. In the end Lumina is Claire Farron is Lightning and it's enough that she saves herself.

When she gets the shards of her heart back it's with glee, her smile, her childhood, and all her beloved memories with Serah. These are warm. These are known. They slot back into her chest like home. She knows how to laugh again.

But curiously, she also remembers fragments of sunlight. Glimmers of memory like cave paintings from five lifetimes ago, a never-ending sky, crystal caves, a wide open plain, dinosaurs the size of mountains, jokes traded over a fire, a flower field, and a face, she remembers smiling at a face so friendly, with eyes such a clear icy blue, emanating light like the sun itself, saying, trust me, trust me, and she did. She surprises herself.

She wasn't even angry.

They reunite briefly before they all enter the new world. Reborn again. Nothing will ever be the same. But isn't it?

She takes one look at Serah, descending from the portal, real and true this time, sees the warrior's bow and the settled glimmer in her eyes that can only mean found love, and she knows. Serah says, this time I can fight, and Lightning knows. Sees the way Noel glows with pride, the same reflection of something fierce and found within him, and before Serah even makes it to tackle him disentangling herself from Lightning she knows, she knows. One look at Snow and he knows too. Through the fog she remembers the words he said. Serah forgives us. Laughs. Serah knows. They all hold hands, laughing with promises, and he looks at her with a promise she can't quite catch but feels, and then off in the air, one by one, going, going, go.

See you next time.

Promise?


Japan, 2015

She's on a train. It feels like an again. It feels like she's forever on trains, and suspicious of them, but she can't understand why. Claire Farron only takes this train once every few months, to visit relatives in the countryside. She clicks her heel against the carriage, resisting the urge to place her feet up on the seat on front of her. She touches her arm for a phantom itch, looks back at the seat. It feels like somebody should have been sitting there.

Her little sister wanted her to meet someone today. Two very important people, Serah had said over the phone; Claire had already guessed she would be getting a proper introduction to Serah's mysterious boyfriend, whom she'd only been hearing wonderful things about, but had yet to test him herself. To which Serah had pre-emptively said, Claire, please don't ask Noel to spar with you, I'm not fixing up anyone's bones, and he's nice. And to which she had responded, with a quiet roll of her eyes, I wasn't, relax. Two? Who's the other? To which Serah had just giggled and said, You'll meet him at the station.

Claire Farron uncrosses and recrosses her legs, huffs, and stares out the window.

To say she's grateful for her life is an understatement. Working for the Peace Corps, an international peacemaking organisation, has given her fulfilment and pleasure. She travels the world for missions, and when she is back home, splits her time between her comfortable city apartment close to her friends, and the country, where her little sister lives running a farm and holistic healing practice with a shaman and a mechanic. She's not quite sure how that panned out, but everyone is happy, and Claire herself has little complaints about the tinctures Vanille whips up for her headaches when she visits. So, Claire is grateful for her life. Everything has been perfect. Except, she keeps feeling like something important is missing.

She dreams. She dreams of the strangest things, sometimes waking her up in horror, other times, leaving her curious, enraptured. She dreams of things she can never tell people just for how certain she is that they were once real, that would seem absurd. In her dreams she throws fire from her hands. Ice. Blizzard. Lightning. She has half a cape and a wicked sword, and with a group of people, they're fighting. In her dreams with these friends they fight giants; cursed beings; one-eyed monsters; she fights gods. There are countless nights spent in tents, sometimes with an actual roof over their heads, most times under the open sky. There is a warmth in this group as they tend to wounds over a fire, huddle together, make dinner, a conviction for survival, a mission, and yet a wildness, a freedom. When she wakes, sometimes, she cries.

Most of all, she dreams of warm hands and ice-blue eyes, a wonder that never leaves her side, in one dream she punches him in the face because of Serah, and in another he's all warm hands and soft mouthed and she's pressing into him until she can't feel where either of them ends or begins and when she wakes she's wide-eyed in her empty room, alone, dreaming that she's mad and something horribly important is missing.

How could I forget?

To tell the truth, she feels like a stranger in this world. If she's honest, she can't say she's been here very long at all.

When she woke that morning with yet another dream that left her heart racing, this time with Vanille and another woman nearly dying, she resolved to tell Serah and Vanille about it. But she wasn't sure what to make of blue-eyes.

There are phantoms that follow her around. Almost like breadcrumbs leading her to a trail. A silver motorcycle that she swears could convert into twin goddesses; trench coats with bears on them that shift into wolves; black leather gloves. Any stranger with blonde hair to their shoulders and a sleek smile, but all of them are wrong, and in bars she finds herself searching for a laughter she's never heard before but knows. In trains, she's always restless, wanting to stretch, and there should always be someone in the seat in front of her that remains empty. But she thinks, the click of her heel against the carriage loud as the train slows to a stop, maybe she'll get answers today.

She's carrying only a briefcase with a day's clothing in them, steps out of the carriage into daylight. The day has never felt so bright.

There is a man waiting on the platform, trench coat, leather gloves, long blonde hair. He raises his head. Blue eyes, clear like ice.

She knows, she knows, she says his name. "Snow."

He grins.

She's expecting her name and he knows it, Claire, and she readies her polite response -

"Lightning." He says instead.

She jolts. It could be that dimensions collide, worlds align, dreams that weren't dreams come alive, the world clicks into place, and it all makes sense.

Promises, promises, in the end.

She goes to him, and surprises herself again, she's hugging him tight, and he's not letting go either.

"Sorry," she says, thinking of all those silent nights, dreams that were not dreams where she averted her eyes, "am I late?"

And he presses back against her, warm, chuckling, sending shivers down her spine, kisses on her forehead, cheeks, eyes, "No, no. Right on time." And kisses her properly, again.

And she feels, in her belly, these are what his promises mean. Something so right, that this time, this time, they can be. After centuries, he feels the same, after all: warm, alive, and free.