Authors Note: Fang is my new favorite character. Like most FFXIII fanfiction, this will probably be dreadfully inaccurate once the game comes out.

Hands

Vanille is a forthright sort of girl. One generally has to be, in order to find a bear so you can kill it and become a legal adult in the tribe. Yes, people occasionally cheat and say they killed an animal themselves when they just found it half-dead of starvation already, or something of the sort. But if one didn't cheat there was a good chance of death in the picture, and as long as they brought back a pelt and meat for the rest of the tribe then the headwoman would usually let it slide.

Though, if the pelt was rather too ambitious, odds were there'd be a call for hunters and a personal request from the headwoman. There were two options: One was to gracefully refuse and admit to having lied, allowing for a period of shunning, and then the whole thing would just blow over. The other was to agree, causing all kinds of disaster while other hunters who actually knew what they were doing fumed in their second-banana roles and plotted to maim said cheater yourself.

Vanille was the smallest member of the tribe, barely coming up to her mum's nose (who was formerly the smallest member of the tribe), but she wasn't the sort to cheat. Fragola was an accomplished hunter, having brought down an antelope from the plains, and she'd used her own hands to break the horn to pieces that dangled on her belt like more beads. Since her mother would have taught her everything she knew by the time she was fourteen, and it was standard for people to aim for an animal their parents had hunted, and she was even faster than her mum, everyone expected she'd do all right.

It was just that nobody, not even Mum, expected a bear. So when Vanille came back after three weeks instead of two, with the dripping hide on her belt and the half-eaten carcass slung behind her, she catapulted from the nicest girl in the tribe to that, and the next top hunter. While the end of the party drew close with guests stumbling home full of bear meat and alcohol, she had dozed looking at her bangles in the fire and thought being small and fast had something to do with it. Bears could run like anything, but really only in straight lines...

"It takes a special kind of hunter, to go after other hunters," her mum had said.

-
After they organize to bail out Snow, who rages about some other L'Cie woman with black hair and lion paws on her belt, Vanille stops herself from asking if they had been lioness or lion. Lightning looks cranky while she slides the stolen card key into its slot, as if this is all his fault. It's not, but they've long since given up on making Lightning see reason when it comes to Snow.

They get caught barely a stone's throw to the exit, then blindfolded. As they take one turn, then another and another, way past where Snow had been, Lightning gets more and more violent and requires handcuffs from one of the three guards on her. Then they're thrown into different cells, the bars slam shut, and no one comes to take them off. Lightning yells "This is your fault!" so it echoes a billion times.

Vanille stretches her arms out to feel for Hope, since she knows he'll be scared, but she hits the back of someone in a coat instead of her friend's knitted vest. "Sazh?" she asks.

"Nope, it's Snow."

"How are you holding up?"

"Great. I mean, we almost got out that time!" He laughs a little, but his hands are shaking while he unties her blindfold. There's no reason to press him if he's just going to dodge, so Vanille looks out of their cells.

"Hope?" she calls. "Got your blindfold off all right?"

The boy's arm waves between the bars of the cell next to theirs. "Yeah, Sazh is with me."

Even without that, Vanille can see Lightning across from them and she knows that there is no one else there. After fifteen minutes of listening to their leader kick, flail, and scream as she tries to fight her way out of the cell, there's abrupt silence when she either calms down or gets tired.

"Lightning!" Sazh yells. "You got your blindfold off yet?"

"No. But I'm fine now. I just needed to calm down a little."

"Can you get them off at all?" Vanille asks.

The pause is too long. "No. They didn't take off my handcuffs."

A cold-water sensation along Vanille's spine follows. Getting tied up with their eyes covered to keep them from kicking is the kind of treatment animals receive. At her best Lightning can hardly be described as nice, but she doesn't deserve this--especially when nobody else is alone. After an hour a guard comes in and observes her, then opens the door. Vanille's eyes start to sting when Lightning barely lifts her chin at the sound.

Vanille wonders if this is what the bear felt like, and then rejects the notion. She may have killed it and eaten it, but that was hardly torture.

-
The woman with black hair is called Fang, and she lets them out of the cells once she decides to be on their side after all. Vanille likes the thought of having another Oerba in the group, however far away they lived from each other before (considering Fang's dark coloring and blue clothes, the Yun must have been far off indeed). But she's nervous too--Fang doesn't seem sorry, really, for being the one who'd landed them in jail.

Vanille looks back and forth between Hope, who wavers behind her and Sazh in uncertainty, and the two older women. She can, by now, comfort the younger boy without looking, so she can focus her gaze on Lightning, whose voice is low and soft like a wolf's growl. After a while her invisible hackles lower, and she steps aside to let Fang talk to the rest of the group.

Even Fang knows this is just so Lightning can keep an eye on them--she doesn't step very closer to any of them, until she sees Vanille. "Oh, hey! Another Oerba?"

"Yeah... Oerba Dia Vanille." Everyone suddenly turns to look at her, and for the first time in her life there's a lack of confidence in her words. She knows why--they want to see what she thinks of Fang. Vanille isn't sure herself. How should she treat a person who put them in a very sticky spot?

"I guess you've figured I'm a Yun, eh?"

"Pretty much."

Lightning's eyes narrow, and Vanille blinks in an attempt to conceal any clues. Fang sees it anyway, but she doesn't seem to mind. She tosses her head and says, "Look, mate, you've taken down a bear. If I did decide to cross you again, you out of all these people would be all right. Probably."

-
Fang is a good fighter, but that happens when people hunt for food instead of sport. Vanille isn't surprised when Lightning puts them both on first watch. After a stealthy inspection out of the corner of her eye, she decides the lion had been female. However, she forgets to ask when Fang throws her arms in the air and flops down, effectively becoming invisible into the waist-length grass.

"All right! I get it. None of you trust me."

"Not really, no." Vanille sees no reason to lie about it and cringes anyway. After a moment, she sits down. Though she'd like to lie down too, for the sake of cover, that would mean...

"Well, I don't blame you. But you did notice I put myself in a vulnerable position first."

She had, but that doesn't mean anything. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Sure it does."

"What?"

"You've got to start trusting me sometime," Fang reasons from her patch of grass. "Why not now?"

"You were the one who threw us in jail!" Vanille argues, relieved that she can finally say something in her own defense. "It's barely been a day since you joined us anyway."

"And a tight lot you are."

"Don't say that. Lightning really only gets on Snow's case."

"Oh yeah?" The older woman sits up with a smirk. "How'd you know I was talking about her, then?"

"Er... Well..." Vanille flounders a bit, then finally asks, "Were you?"

"Yeah, actually." The grass rustles in a contemplative way as Fang lies down with her hands behind her head. Then she rolls onto her stomach and touches a hand to her spear, with a sudden hush to her movements. "What was that?"

"What?" Vanille drops forward onto her hands and grabs her fishing rod as she peers through the stalks. She only realizes her mistake when Fang laughs. "I--you tricked me!"

They are speaking out of habit in voices that don't carry very far, but the mellow sound seeps into Vanille's head as if they are in a cave with it echoing over and over. Fang sounds perfectly friendly and nice when she points out, "You trusted me!"

"Yeah, well, if Lightning hears of this she'd kick you right out!" Her face feels hot, and it gets hotter when she realizes it's just out of embarrassment instead of righteous anger--as if this had been a harmless joke (which it wasn't, despite the lack of any sort of danger she can see). Lightning probably wouldn't hold it against her, being tricked, but she would definitely disapprove of Vanille's naivete.

"If she did, I wouldn't argue. But I'm as good a fighter as anyone here, and you're a bit outmatched against the rest of the world." Fang adds, not helpfully, "And at least I came out with it once you discovered my foul lies."

Vanille frowns and sits up, running her hands through her pigtails. Her mum could do that in a quick, gentle way that she'd tried to learn, but it never felt quite the same. She tries to avoid thinking of the truth backing Fang's first point. There were friends who would leave you at the first sign of trouble and enemies who would change their tune and help you; and every hand counted if you were outnumbered.

It's a little hard to accept that when Vanille's staring a former enemy right in the face. As trusting as she is compared to Lightning or even Sazh, it might take more than a monster's surprise attack for Fang to gain her trust. Especially after this.

"You can always trust a dishonest person to be dishonest," Fang tells her. At a skeptical look (which feels funny as Vanille's never used it herself, only seen it on Lightning and Sazh) she goes on, "Because, your guard's already up with them! You know any honest people?"

"Yeah. Lots."

"They ever done something out of nowhere? Something that seemed really violent or stupid or just plain weird?"

An image of the tallest man in their group getting punched by a woman half a foot shorter than him flashes into her head. "Er."

"That would be a yes. What's the word?"

"Lightning likes to beat up Snow," Vanille sighs.

"Figured. He can't have done anything much--men like him are pushovers." Vanille thinks about protesting and gives up when Fang goes on, "You think she fancies him or what?"

"No," she replies. "He's--he was engaged to her sister."

"That can still--"

"Her younger sister."

"Oh. Hm." Fang sits up, smirking with her green eyes reflecting the low light of the sun.

"Don't even think about that!" Vanille warns her.

"Well, I wasn't! Thinking. About anything."

It takes a moment for Fang to absorb the full meaning of her words, and when it finally happens the conversation grinds to a halt. Vanille takes the silence, welcome for once, as an opportunity to look around. If she went far enough north in the Dia territory, there were plains that would look a lot like this--nothing but yellowed grass and the occasional stunted tree marking the horizon. Since it was easy to travel in and warm there were plenty of grazing animals, but the predators who hunted said animals were also there so the actual village was located closer to the edge of the woodlands.

When Fang asks her something, Vanille has to shake her head to remove the suddenly painful images of home from her thoughts. "What?"

"I said, how much longer till our shift is out?"

"Three..." Vanille squints at the red point of light. "Three and a half."

"Minutes?" Fang asks, in such a hopeful tone it sounds ridiculous.

"Hours," Vanille sighs. She's done that so many times her ribs feel sore.

"You don't sound like you're having fun with me." The usefulness of a shrug reveals itself to Vanille at that point. "And that is a shame because I am the sort of woman people have fun with. I'll prove it, too!"

"Go on then."

"Er. So..." While Fang casts about for something fun, Vanille makes a note of her discovery: arguing will not put this woman on the spot as well as passively accepting her boasts. Lightning would probably want to know. Then Fang gestures to Vanille's belt. "So how'd it go, then? With your bear?"

The last time Vanille spoke to another Oerba was so long ago that she'd almost forgotten how much of an easy pass that was--asking about the adulthood rites. It was something interesting about themselves that everyone could answer, and revealed a lot about peoples' characters (or didn't, if you were that sort of person). The memory of her hunt has faded, as well, so she takes a minute to think about the beginning.