Fic: Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? Chapter 12: I Am Lazarus Pt 1

[frkmgnt1]

Disclaimer: Plot mine; characters not mine.

Remember when I said I was back? Yeah. Well, this is the second chapter in less than 48 hours. I think this is the chapter most of my readers were hoping Chapter 10 would be.

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."
~Harriet Beecher Stowe

~12~
I Am Lazarus

Odin.

It makes no sense, and it makes Lightning wonder if she has lost her mind completely. She looks at the Eidolon, feels an awful hope spark that they might actually be able to fix-

She looks down at the man in her arms.


-Sn-No!

Blood.

So. Much. Blood.

Lightning thought that she'd already maxed out her capacity for grief and horror tonight. Feeling the wreckage of Snow's body as she fought to rekindle the spark of life within it; tasting and smelling his lifeblood as it coated her hands, face, lips and tongue; hearing the agony of his every breath and heartbeat as he first groped for, then clung to, the lifeline she crafted just for him out of bits and pieces of herself.

She knew that they'd done everything they could to destroy him, utterly. Still, seeing the results of those cruel efforts fractures something in her, sends her mind skittering away in search of a hiding place.

It's impossible. She can't do this. She doesn't know how to do this! She flails around for something that makes sense, eyes landing on Odin again, and for the first time in over a year, she wonders if she's gone completely mad.

She almost hopes that she has, because that might mean that none of this is real.

She's sees Odin, but he can't be here. Then again, Snow can't be here either, and yet he is. He's bloodied, and dying, and gasping his last breaths in her arms instead of sleeping back at home with Serah, where he belongs.

So, maybe Odin is here. Of course, his appearance is so convenient that she can't help but wonder if he's not some figment conjured by her broken heart and grief-stricken mind. How did she summon him at all? Odin is of the past, yet here he kneels. Odin is of magic, and focus, and a part of the Lightning who was tasked to end all human life.

As her eyes survey the ruined man before her, take in the gouges, lashes, slashes, weals, gashes, and punctures, all overlaying layers of blue-black bruises, Lightning wonders for the first time if she and her friends didn't make the wrong choice those long months ago. For what good are humans if they are capable of…this?

They cut him. Those words don't do justice to what Lightning is looking at, but the only other word that she has is one that she can't even think about.

/flayed/

What remains of his shirt hangs in strips and ribbons from him, pieces of it embedded into the deeper furrows of flesh. Both whips and knives. Maybe something blunter for the punctures, she doesn't know. But she recognizes the damage that blades and whips cause. How could she not after months with Vanille and years wielding a gunblade?

-His coat is gone. The shirt he was wearing is shredded in place, indicating that they left it on when they lashed him. The cotton of his light t-shirt is adhered in places by dried blood, embedded in him from the force of the whip cutting through both cotton and flesh. Where they'd used the knife-

She can't.

-The matting and tangles in his hair that she felt in the dark are the result of his own blood and sweat drying. It's unrecognizable as blond, and she has no idea what damage they may have done to his head; if his brain is swelling as well. As though destroying his heart and lungs wasn't bad enough-

-Oddly - thankfully - his face is untouched except for the healing bruise she left on him forever ago. But considering how much Snow loves to antagonize, taunt and talk shit, Lightning expected them to have knocked his teeth down his throat-

/I'm more than just a pretty face./

-A horrible thought worms its way into her brain. She shakes her head to dispel it; considers using her shiv to dig it out.

/Maybe they'll see just how very pretty you are…/

Her whole being recoils in horror before the idea can form, and it spirals away from her.

-noNoNoNO-!

She. Just. Can't.

She'll kill them all.
All of them!
She'll hang them with their own entrails. She'll-

-But they didn't just cut and whip Snow. Oh, no. That might be too pedestrian. Under all the cuts and blood, Snow's black and purple with deep bruising. On one of the only places of unbroken skin on his torso, Lightning can see the outline of a boot sole. Right over the floating ribs. They stomped him. That explains the rib cage-

-Snow's lips are blue, and she can't figure out if it's from the cold - he's not shivering, which she knows is a bad sign in these temperatures - or lack of oxygen.

/Both./

How is he even alive, she wonders? This damage is beyond anything she's seen outside of shuttle crashes or accidents involving heavy machinery.

-She thought the time Cerberus used him as the rope in a tug-o-war wrecked him, but these creatures managed to outdo a pissed off Eidolon-

-Lightning recalls a time when a man slipped between a train platform and the train itself. He was severed at the waist, pinned, held together by the pressure of the train hydraulics and the concrete of the platform. Everyone knew that the moment they jacked the train up to get him out, his bottom half would fall, his guts would spill everywhere, and his body would know it was dead, and behave accordingly. But for nearly thirty minutes, the dead man breathed, and talked and insisted that he barely felt any pain at all.

Space Case, they called it. It was horrific, and no one's fault, but she can't help recall it as she catalogs the damage done to Snow's body.-

How will she ever survive this? What will she say to Serah?

-Odin is before her and she still doesn't understand. Maybe she's lost her mind, but if she hasn't…if there's even the slightest chance that her Eidolon is actually here-

"Odin," she whispers. "Please."

Please do something. Please anything. Make it stop, old friend.

Odin looks around the room, finds no threat, and casts his gaze upward.

She grabs him. He looks astonished that she would dare lay hands on him. She wonders if he'll kill her for the insult.

The thought is almost a relief.

"Please help him," she begs.

She knows Odin is no healer, and yet, she also knows Odin can, and has healed her. Her Eidolon is powerful, as skilled in magic as in swordsmanship. She believes he has the power to save Snow. She doesn't know if he will have the desire to do so.

Perhaps he'll kill them both. She almost hopes he does just that. An end would be…better.

Then Odin takes her hand and places it on Snow's chest, and covers it with his own. Now that she can see, she sees the places where the muscle is visible, and where the bone shines through skin-

Snow's first and only thought, upon being resuscitated, was for her safety.

/'Go. Please. Get away from here.'/

Everything about him amazes and infuriates her, and she has no idea what she'll do if Odin can't or won't help save him.

/Kill them all./

Well, yeah. Obviously, that. But they're already dead. If Odin kills her right now, she knows he'll kill them next.

Win-win.

Odin reaches out, dips a finger in Snow's blood, and sketches something over her heart that burns and tingles and shocks and shocks and shocks.

Like electricity.

It's like being branded all over again, only there's nothing in her mind except for Odin and their bond, and Snow and their bond.

Then Odin places his palm over the mark he just drew, and everything is blazing blue-white heat.

Lady. I await your call to arms.

The words rumble and roll like a distant thunderclap, make her feel safe for the first time in longer than she can remember. Lighting is comfortable. Her body is warm, which is a rare enough occurrence lately, that even her sluggish, semi-conscious mind marks it as noteworthy.

She smells something foul. It's a familiar chemical smell, and it's giving her a headache. Some part of her brain is raising every red flag it can to warn her that she needs to seek the source of the smell immediately.

She thinks of airships, shuttles, and motorcycles. And piles and piles of corpses.

Something brushes her hair off her face, tucks it behind her ear, and everything floods back. Leaving home. The blizzard. Heavy ordnance. Sazh. Hope. The camp. The women.

Snow.

Dead, then alive but dying.

Odin

She bolts upright, poised to attack anyone daring to put their hands on her. She's in the horror dungeon. When the hell did she get here? She must have blacked out and left Snow in the final moments of his life. She can't-! How-? She sobs. The last thing she remembers, Snow was -

"Light?"

Her brain stops, trips over itself in its effort to do a 180, and there he is, sitting against the wall and staring up at her.

The sound that tears its way out of her feels like birth and dying. It's relief, and horror, and joy, and rage, and wounded animal, straight from the lizard part of herself. She drops to her knees before Snow and cups his face in her hands. Gentle, gentle, Lightning. He closes his eyes when she touches him. "Snow!"

She kisses him.

His lips are dry and cracked, and taste of blood when her tongue touches them, slips past them to trace the inside of his bottom lip, then top. Somehow, there's no blood to taste under his tongue, but the breath he sighs into her mouth is still laced through.

But it's better.

He's alive! Not just gasping for air like a beached fish, but actually alive, and she can't figure out how, but she doesn't actually care either. Maybe that asshole absentee landlord finally did something useful, after all.

Who cares! He's alive. She doesn't care if Barthandelus himself is responsible for healing Snow.

Snow is alive, and whole, hands cupping her face, giving as good as he gets in this kiss, and she wants to cling to him for eternity but she just. Can't. They're in a goddamn torture dungeon.

For Fuck Sake!

She breaks away from him and he pants, "Wow. That was different." She huffs a laugh and sits back.

What was she thinking?

I wasn't, she admits. She's unmoored, running on grief, terror, desperation and heartbreak, and she can't figure out how to get her bearings again.

Snow hauls her back in with the hands still on her cheeks and kisses her again, soft and sweet. She knows she shouldn't let him - it's only going to make it harder on them both later - but every part of her heart and mind are still back in that dark pit, clinging to him as he gasped his last breaths.

Screw it! She'll worry about it later. There's still a better than average chance that they'll die in this camp, and she's not going to spend what might be the last few hours of their lives hurting both of them.

When he breaks the kiss, he keeps his hold on her, refusing to let her back away. His eyes flicker over her face, studying her in silence before asking, "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"What?" Did they hurt her? She's not the one who was dead, then mostly dead, then nearly dead again a few minutes ago. It's a ridiculous question.

He brushes his thumb under her eye - tracing her bruised face, she realizes - and waits for her to meet his eyes again. Then, voice soft but serious as a heart attack: "Did they hurt you?"

Oh.

"No." He huffs out a breath as big as him, closes his eyes and presses his forehead to hers for a moment. "They didn't hurt anything that won't heal in a couple of days."

"When I heard your voice, here of all places, I just-"

"I'm okay," she promises.

There's no time for this now. It has to wait. She'd love nothing more than to sit here with him, put her head on his chest and her fingers against his throat, reassure herself by listening to him breathe, and counting the steady beats of his amazing heart, while he finds his bearings. But they're on very strict time limit, and Lightning has no clue how much time she has left before Sazh blows this whole place to hell.

No pressure.

"Come on, let's get you up," she says.

"Great. Can't wait," Snow mumbles. He lets one hand fall to her shoulder, while the other presses against the wall. "This is gonna suck," he says, and she can't help but agree.

"Alright, just hang on a second." She repositions herself, braces her body so she can bear his weight up. "Okay, just let me do the heavy lifting here, alright, Hero?"

"…That your way of calling me fat?" Snow asks with a chuckle. Lightning snorts, then feels her face heat at the humiliating sound he's managed to surprise out of her. Snow's smile is all teeth and amusement, but the look in his eyes is soft, and so fond, that Lightning gives into her urge to kiss him again. He looks startled as she moves in, but Snow has always adapted to accommodate her on the battlefield, and it seems like it's a comprehensive skill set.

"Come on, Fatass," she whispers against his lips. Then: "up you come," as she manhandles him off the floor. They're both panting and sweaty by the time she leverages him upright. Snow certainly isn't fat, but at nearly six and half feet of solid muscle, he's no lightweight either.

"That my coat?" Snow makes to bend for the coat but Lightning stops him, and presses him against the wall. "How the hell did that get here?"

/Odin/

"Who cares?" Lightning replies. She's not willing to look a gift horse (or a horse bearing gifts, in this case) in the mouth. Snow's worst injuries may be healed, but he's still clammy and too pale, and so bruised that it hurts Lightning just to look at him. She retrieves the coat and hat from the floor. "Here, just put this on, now."

She pulls the hat on over his hair, and he cocks his head at her with a smirk; she wrestles him into his coat and buttons it all the way up. She knows that he prefers to leave the top buttons open, but his skin is too cold, and his shirt is little more than blood-crusted tatters. She can't look at it anymore without remembering the total devastation that had been there only minutes earlier. Besides, it's still freezing out, and between the blood loss and the remnants of shock, he would succumb to exposure in under thirty minutes without his coat. Probably much less. She takes a moment to thank-

/Odin/

-whomever or whatever returned it to them, and just hopes it was her Eidolon and not that asshole absentee landlord of a Maker. She's not interested in mending fences with that one just yet.

She smooths the coat down, and Snow is breathless when he says, "I love it when you get all handsy, Light. You can manhandle me anytime."

She huffs as she stands straight again and looks into his smirking face. "Shut up," she commands.

"Yes, ma'am," he says, before surprising her by grabbing her face in both hands and kissing her for all he's worth.

He still tastes like blood, but he's alive, and his heartbeat is slow and steady, and his chest is solid and strong beneath her hands. There's no more blood misting out of him with each breath, and she wishes she could stand here and enjoy this small proof of life, but-

She pulls away, and they're both breathless this time. He hums out an 'mmm,' wets his lips, and gives her a warm smile. "I could get used to that," he declares, and her heart lurches and her stomach twists. He pushes off of the wall and says: "Alright. Time to go. Ladies first."

Link to Part II