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Lightning wasn't really sure why she was still sad about her. She never really existed to her and yet – that's exactly why she was sad. She knew first hand how it felt to be so single-minded. How liberating it was to feel nothing at all, save a lone face in your mind.
Unlike her, however, Lightning had only fooled herself. She had an entire host of people who clamored at the edges of the cold and callous demeanor inside her. Truth be told, "Lightning" was the hard-assed snap of energy that traveled between the positive and the negative, back and forth, over and over again, never tiring. That was what "Lightning" did during their pilgrimage when she'd been a l'cie – from good to bad she jumped through the air, making it expand and ending with an ear splitting explosion of victory.
But Claire was the woman behind the vicious spark and snap of light, like a whip made of electrons. Somewhere along the way, long before she saw her home held aloft by two of her friends, inside she became Claire again. Maybe it was when she could look Snow in the face and know he was right for following Serah.
No. For believing Serah.
She wasn't a soldier then – she was a sister with a broken heart. The lightning in the sky doesn't have a heart. But the human, Claire, does. It's sort of a requirement.
Maybe it was this same heart that propelled her to climb the many levels of Taejin's Tower - searching once again. But not for a Focus – to find a woman.
No, not Serah. Not this time.
To find Fang.
There was no other place she'd be, since she hadn't been spotted on the outskirts of the rapidly re-building Oerba slaughtering the local wildlife. Plus, Lightning knew Fang wouldn't travel far from Vanille. Not now. Not ever again.
No one knew exactly what it was that drove Fang, other than her fierce protectiveness of Vanille. Lightning would bet that even Vanille didn't know – she just accepted and refused to question it.
It couldn't have been the fulfillment of her Focus. If she was prone to madness before – and she'd admitted as much in Palumpolum – she was fully mad toward the end of that journey. Mad with love, someone like Snow would say. She'd been willing to kill everyone she knew in her new world, in order to save Vanille from that cruel fate. Fang wouldn't think of anything else.
After Fang had reached that goal she'd been "rewarded" with an eternity of peace. If Lightning had to guess, "peace" wasn't a word in Fang's dictionary. Stasis would have been akin to an eternity of perpetual madness with nothing to do but reflect on the past, and how she'd gotten the two of them there. Because, make no mistake, Fang HAD been the one to herd Vanille in to her Focus, reminding her that, no matter how badly she wanted to, there was NO escaping the beast they'd been destined to become centuries ago.
Perhaps it was Vanille who had changed Fang's mind when they'd blended as Ragnarok, to keep Cocoon alive as much as they could. Unlike Fang's option all those years ago to simply tear it from the sky. Regardless, their Focus was fulfilled, and they had finally been given respite.
To one day emerge from her stasis couldn't have driven her either. Though Vanille seemed oblivious (or more likely remained purposefully ignorant), Lightning could feel something in the woman that said she wasn't at "peace" now that she was awake again. The endless roaming Fang had taken to now only made it worse.
That was exactly what a Focus was, Lightning supposed. Pure, single-minded madness. In a way, perhaps that had driven Fang to whatever she called "peace." How funny was that? In the end, Fang didn't really defy the odds after all - because with her, they were always in her favor.
From the top of Taejin's Tower Fang looked out over the slowly-but-surely repopulating Pulse with an anger inside her, a sickness that didn't dissolve simply because she'd been crystallized a few times.
Anima had branded her and Vanille, and charged them with the destruction of Cocoon 500 years prior to the chaotic events of bringing Orphan down.
The Goddess had seen fit "to take pity on those subjected to that fate of Focus, crueler still than death" when she'd become Ragnarok the first time, and "rewarded" them with their first crystal slumber.
Anima awakened the pair from that recompense to protect It from the soldiers sent to investigate the Vestige, and put into motion the events that would see her taking that bestial form once again. That time, their Focus would not fail. Cocoon would be brought down – but not to its knees.
Roughly half a year's time since they'd sacrificed themselves properly, in the Goddess's infinite Mercy, She'd shaken them both awake yet again. As Fang and Vanille weren't "necessary" to keep the crystallized pillar – and Cocoon – aloft.
Fang was not necessary to keep that floating shell of children above "hell."
Children.
Fang, in stasis, had watched Cocoon's inhabitants blink their eyes against the bright light of their new life on Pulse. She was never built to be a martyr.
Stasis. "The state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces." She'd been reduced to a balance. Laughable really, since she'd hardly had a "balance" in life. Truth be told, she liked it that way.
While searching for a way to keep Vanille from becoming Cie'th, when she'd seen her hometown for the first time in 500 years, the sight only reaffirmed the feeling she'd find nothing when they "came home." She'd felt absolutely nothing, even though she'd feigned something to soothe Vanille – and perhaps to seem human again. But something inhuman burned inside her even then, just as it did now.
She knew the state of her hometown.
It would be as many other bastions of human existence on the former Pulse when she'd first became a l'cie. They'd been wrecked, empty - or worse, already full of Cie'th. The Fal'cie hadn't done a damn thing to stop the destruction of Oerba, so to see their home lifeless, quiet – meant nothing to her.
Her priorities had shifted; She'd watched Vanille's face closely as they'd walked through the ruined streets. Perhaps the Cie'th they'd encountered had been l'cie created in their stead, to destroy Cocoon where Fang couldn't, try though she might.
"I'm Oerba Yun Fang," she said quietly, to no one. She pointed toward the reviving city with her staff. "That Oerba is not my Oerba. But it is my name. Neither the Yun nor Dia clans exist anymore." The past ate at her brain like a cancer. "Even our names mean nothing, now." Something inside her said she was the only one thinking that thought on a regular basis.
Fang's anger was entirely unparalleled – and even moreso – unresolved. Perhaps too many years had passed for it to ever be unearthed, looked at and examined properly. Regardless, even if one knew where to find unresolved issues in someone's head – to be sure that's not where they would be found in Fang's.
Her screws were more than "loose."
Her issues had only been broken, scattered and misplaced further after a third go-round at "living."
Alive, crystallized, alive, crystallized and alive again.
Like a smashed clock some parts were hopelessly lost, too tiny to pick up and put back, too bent and broken to ever tell the correct time again.
Fang would never know the correct time ever again.
Whether in conscious state or crystal stasis, it was all the same. Sometimes disasters like earthquakes brought artifacts to the surface. But Fang's fury and internal detonations had only served to bury them more – the pressure building until it was so great her issues were as hard as any precious stone, any hope of malleability lost to the centuries of her life.
On the wind, from her perch in the tower, she heard Vanille laugh. She set her jaw and watched Snow haul large sacks of dirt while Serah patted the earth with Vanille's help. Snow and Serah were planting a garden as a show of "new life" outside of the happy couple's newly restored home. Oerba had been the only city in Pulse with buildings still intact, so naturally the area had been the first choice to begin repopulating.
A town coming out of hibernation just as she and Vanille were.
Vanille had helped Serah plant flowers nearly every day since the Goddess had brought them back.
She could have killed the lot of them, right then.
Her trigger: Vanille's laugh.
Her target: Her former hometown.
Vanille always looked toward the future and actively ran from the past. Just as Fang watched and protected from the shadows, Vanille danced in the sunlight, watching and waiting for flowers to grow, positive one day they would. Vanille looked forward to that day.
Fang only saw the future as far as she could throw it.
She was so mired in the past, rarely did she gain ground toward any sort of balance between the two. She didn't envy Vanille for that gift. In fact, deep down, she very nearly hated her for it. Reality was that those flowers were in a ground that could be ripped up at any moment, and to hinge your happiness on seeing them bloom was nothing but folly. Until the day came when you could smell their sweetness, one could never be sure.
Fang lived by that motto. She wore the past as an armor, a black pool of anger and hatred that snaked around her arms and legs like the tendrils of some awful plant of her own design. It solidified around her limbs and kept her – ironically – alive long enough to do what she needed to do.
HER certainty, HER "future" was only sure of one thing: Death.
Death was the only thing she'd ever seen happen without fail. THAT was a future she could believe in, and to plant flowers, build houses or even bask in the sunshine that Vanille was basked in now, was child's play. It was ignorance begging to be exploited. Optimism asked to be ran straight through with a bladed lance.
Even if it smiled at you while the inevitable end soaked the ground with its blood.
Lightning's nails were still trimmed Guardian Corps regulation-short, but regardless they brought goosebumps to the warrior's skin when they lightly scraped her arm.
"You got your hand on me for a reason, or are you just feelin' friendly?" Fang said. She didn't look at her.
"Isn't that one and the same?" Lightning said, in her matter-of-fact way. "Feeling friendly is a reason, or it could be, if you'd let us…" Lightning stepped in front of her. Fang towered over the former soldier. "…Or at the very least, let ME help you."
Lightning had a way about her eyes, where they didn't waver, even in the face of sadness, despair or fear - and they didn't waver now. "Just let things happen, Fang. There will always be a place for people like you. Do you think that because Pulse is being repopulated conflict and chaos will suddenly end? We're human beings, Fang. HUMANS. It's in our nature – we never needed a Fal'cie to orchestrate that."
"It's never been my goal to bring order to anythin'," Fang snapped, looking down at her. "It's only been my goal to throw myself into as many fights as possible, get stronger, and throw myself into more still. This whole gang-friendly motto of rebuildin' a future was never my cup of tea, and just because I'm startin' a third circus doesn't mean I aim to change that any time soon. I protect Vanille. Your conflicts are just that – yours. Once you start creepin' in on me and mine, well…" Fang tilted her head. "...Then I might join in the fun. Until then, you can have your own merry time. But don't think for a second I'm part of it."
"All I'm saying, Fang, is to look at—" Lightning began.
"Look at what, exactly? Hm?" Fang gestured widely with a long, scarred arm. "At this? At what's more terrifyin' than before I was a l'cie, and a Cocoon Fal'cie came through and ripped the whole lot of this up while Vanille and I watched? At what's more depressin' than comin' back 500 years later to an empty wasteland?!" She looked over Oerba again and stabbed her spear out toward the hustle and bustle. She jabbed at Snow and Serah, at herds of chocobos being used to help carry lumber and supplies, at Dajh playing with the chocobo chick that wasn't a chick any longer. "This, THIS," she grit angrily, "pisses me off more than any of that ever did. I've half a mind to wish some new demon would fly out of the sky and tear it to shreds."
The fire in her eyes then washed over Lightning again. "I'd take Vanille, and tell it to finally take us both." She slammed her spear into the rock beside them. "For good." She looked down at the temple ground and wondered when the spine of the great Taejin's Tower would be snapped for good. "Tch. Like that'll ever happen." She listened to the various sounds of life below them, the sounds of happy speech and construction fuel for internal war. "If there is a Hell, Light, it's this damnable, undying THING that cursed Goddess keeps giving us over, and over, and over again." You wouldn't hear the waver in her voice, were in not for the tremor in her arms, the shudder in her biceps. "That the cursed bitch keeps giving me again."
After a tense, silent moment between them, Fang sighed. "I suppose I could patrol the outskirts," she said, in her drawn out accent. "Give me somethin' to do while everyone else is in town making babies and all sorts of other drivel."
"Right," Lightning said quietly.
"I finished my business here – I shouldn't be here. I never asked anyone to take pity on me!" Fang spit, having flipped on a dime. "I'd have rather stayed in that pillar if you don't mind."
"Would it help to think about still living for Vanille? There's only one person she calls out for at night when she sleeps, Fang." Lightning knew yelling wasn't going to work with the woman before her.
"I'm still a slave, Fal'cie or no," Fang said, almost like she'd been…defeated? "I'm a slave to Vanille and her safety." That fact bothered Fang - how easily the girl could skip off into the sunshine, smiling, hell, LOVING her new chance at life. A new chance to watch the flowers grow.
Because always, in the shadows, would be Fang.
"I don't know what it's like to be in your shoes, but I can be a friend, Fang. You told Vanille she had a new family when we were trying to find a way to save Cocoon. And she believed it. But I have a feeling you didn't. You told her that because that's what she needed to hear. Some would call that a lie. Others would call it love. So I'm going to say it to you, Fang. You do have a family here, whether you believe it or not. Take that as a lie, or as love."
"Tch," Fang spit again, and turned her back on the woman who had climbed the endless levels of the tower to find her.