Lightning's Thoughts

On Odin

"To be honest," Lightning glared in the direction of Fang's voice. Anytime she heard that before someone spoke, it meant that they were going to say something either flattering or rude. Knowing Fang, It would most definitely be rude. "The first time I saw your Eidolon, I felt embarrassed for you, but then I remembered that you are a girl after all."

They had made camp in Gran Pulse, much to Lightning's initial protest. She hated feeling like she was wasting time. She couldn't sleep even when she was relieved from her shift in the night watch. "What is that supposed to mean?" Lightning didn't look at her in the eye, but her biting tone made certain that Fang knew the scowl was aimed at her.

A taunting smile came to Fang's lips. "It's a pony."

Normally she wouldn't take the bait, but Lightning couldn't help it. "Odin is a stallion!" Her eyes flicked up to meet Fang's, almost betraying the doubt in her mind, before focusing on Hope's back.

"Look at you pout!"

"I am not pouting."

Fang laughed. "What a riot! You're always pouting."

Lightning could think of plenty retorts, most involving the word "bitch." Instead, she grabbed her cape and laid down, draping in over her. "Aren't you supposed to be keep watch, not keeping the rest of us up?" She heard the woman scoff and shift herself, most likely to turn away from her.

She closed her eyes. So what if Odin resembled a pony? She thought of when she was young, before her parents died.

Her mother used to read her and Serah stories of knights and princesses.

Serah giggled and clapped her hands. "Can I be a princess?"

Their mother tapped her nose and smiled, "of course you can dear!"

Claire crossed her arms. "Well than I get to be the knight!"

"You don't want to be a princess too?" Her mother asked.

"No way! I have to protect Serah after all!"

Lightning opened her eyes again, trying to not think about how she had failed. She watched Cocoon and the stars from the cover of her red cape. It felt like a façade. Fang was right. She was no hero, no knight, she was just a girl.

Suddenly she felt so small, so weak. Who was she? Who was she that she had to save Cocoon?

Lightning though of when her parents died, when she changed her name and cast away the things that made her who she was.

"I am no longer Claire Farron." Serah was asleep in the other room. The fifteen-year old girl cut her long locks, awkwardly, but with determination. She crumpled the forms that she worked so hard on, no longer did she have the choice to go to school.

She broke open her piggy bank where she had kept savings for a horse of her own. It had been a silly thing to want anyway. The money was needed, so that her sister to have a place to live, so her sister could eat, so that her life didn't have to change the way hers' was.

She looked down at the table. There laid a form for enlisting into the army. It was the only thing she could think of. There, she knew she could succeed. There, she knew she could learn to protect Serah.

"I am Lightning," she whispered, scrawling the word to cover the spaces that asked for first and last name.

There was no going back.

Lightning had never wept for the loss of her parents. She couldn't show weakness, not to the enemy that she fought every day for six years, that enemy called life.

So Fang was embarrassed for her? That somewhere in her repressed state of mind, she still dreamed of owning a horse? That, when she was young, she asked year after year for a pony and nothing else? That he appeared in a flurry of rose petals? That she could not forget when she was little, a smile would come to her face when her father brought home roses for her mother? How it reminded her of her family? Of when she was happy?

She moved her gaze to Hope's back again. He laid, fast asleep, next to her. Would Fang be embarrassed for him to her his nightmares about losing his mother? She didn't know anything. Not about her, not about Hope, not about anything.

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement. Lightning followed it with her eyes. It was Fang, brushing the hair out of Vanille's face. She whispered softly to the girl.

She's just a girl too. Lightning thought. Fang wasn't so different from her. She knew, the only reason Fang picked fights with her was her own defense mechanism of sorts. Like how she wore her scowl to keep people away, or how Sazh made a joke out of everything.

Fang must have known too. She must have known that Lightning knew, and could handle a bit of abuse. Maybe it was nice to have that kind of faith in her, or maybe it was just another burden on her shoulders, another person to carry.

Lightning closed her eyes. She still could and would say numerous vile things about Fang, but she would not fail to hold her up.

No, she would not fail ever again.

A/N: I recently began to lay this game, much against my inner protest (coming off of the disappointment of 12 and hearing a lot of negative backlash for the game) I fell in love with this game. Lightning I think is a really great character, and so I wanted to write her and explore her character more.

Thanks for reading and reviewing! :D