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Drifting	By : NiaraAfforegate Category: Final Fantasy Games > Final Fantasy XIII-2 Views: 1980 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I have neither ownership, rights or permissions relating to Final Fantasy, its associated characters, or any related media. I make no profit from this work.

Chapter List
- 1-Drifting
- 2-Pt. 2
- 3-Pt. 3
- 4-Pt. 4
- 5-Pt. 5
- 6-Pt. 6
- 7-Pt. 7
- 1
- 2
Author Notes: This fiction was written for one of my partners, for the occasion of her birthday. She had been searching for fics answering the cue for weightless or zero-g sex, but hadn't been able to find any, and is a fan of the Serah/Noel pairing. This is the story that resulted in my efforts to write something she would enjoy. That said; here it is for anyone and everyone else, now. The story takes place around the first half of the game, and does intersect directly with game events or conversations occasionally, but for the most part weaves around the times we don't see.
I'm posting it in chapters, to make it more manageable for other readers, but it was originally written as a single long piece of prose, and to my mind reads better that way. I'll also put up some post-script notes about some of the things I allude to or reference in this story, and where they came from, for those interested, but they will all be saved until the end, so as not to break up the story with more notes hither and thither.
Please enjoy, and if you can spare a few moments to comment or review, I would most appreciate it.

-Niara

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Travelling in the Historia Crux was something that Sarah was still getting used to. It went smoothly enough if you just let yourself drift with the flow, but a comfortable ride could easily become unstable and unsettled if you tried to go against where it was leading you, even for something as short and thoughtless as turning back for a moment because she had gotten ahead of Noel.
"You alright?” Noel was still holding her forearm after she had nearly tumbled out of the flow as he looked her over. It wasn't the first time she'd noticed how fear and shock affected him, or rather, how it didn't. She had seen the sudden panic in his eyes when the current had buffeted her, and she'd nearly slipped away, but his reaction had been instant and sure; the hand that gripped her and pulled her back was steady and his voice, now, stable and calm. Her own heart was still hammering at her, and she wondered if it showed. She nodded to him, making a relieved smile and he grinned back. “You've got to be careful here. It seems safe and comfortable but, once you set out, you have to let it guide you. Go against it, and you'll get thrown off to goddess only knows where.” His grip loosened after he spoke, but rather that let him release her, Serah twined her arm to link it with his snugly.
“Well then I'll just have to make sure we stay together, won't I?” He laughed softly at her insistence, but she caught the edge of uncertainty in it. It had been there any other time she'd touched him as well, outside of combat or practicality... as though he wanted to welcome friendly gestures like that, but was holding back for some reason. Day by day she found herself wanting to learn as much as she could about the world he had come from, bleak as it sounded.
They drifted on, letting the Crux guide them from one gate to the next and relaxed again, though Serah kept a firm hold on his hand even afterwards. Travel through the Crux was strange in more ways than one; weightlessness aside, there was never any telling how long it might take them to reach their destination once they started, nor even any real way of measuring how long it did take. It made sense, she supposed, since talking about the passage of time while in the Historia Crux was an exercise in pointlessness to begin with, but still... Some of their trips had been very brief indeed, while others had seemed to take hours, or even whole days.
Noel, at least, didn't seem surprised by this, and whenever he spoke about time or travelling in it, he seemed quite sure of himself. She wondered again where he had learned all that he seemed to know. It was a puzzle that a young man from a world as bleak and dying as he described it to be, could know the things he seemed to. She shook her head and resettled the arm that was linked with his. No use over-thinking it; Noel has already shown her that he would talk about things when he wanted to, or when it mattered, but he'd proven impossible to drawn on the matter elsewise. If he needed time though, that, at least, was the one thing they seemed to have an abundance of. She stretched and stifled a yawn. At least time seemed to be more or less stopped for their bodies, too, while they were here... things that probably should have been a problem, mercifully hadn't been.
“Uh, Serah?” His voice sounded somewhere between wry and concerned.
“Hm?” She opened her eyes again, realising that they'd been closed, and lifted her head to look up at him. The action made her aware of the fact that she'd rested her head on his shoulder as they floated. After a startled moment, she told herself that she had nothing to be startled about, and that there was nothing unusual about resting her head down so. When she found his eyes, he tilted his own head and quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Feeling tired?” He didn't seem upset or uncomfortable, so the best deflection would probably be to just act normally. Sereah twitched a small nod and made it into the act of putting her head down again.
“Just a little. Wake me when we get there?”
They hadn't been travelling together all that long, really. Or maybe they had, it was hard to tell sometimes. A few days in Bresha after they'd been attacked by Atlas, and a few days more once the paradox effect had cleared up. It had been interesting, listening to the researchers discussing the possible origins of the giant monster, with some theorising it to be a form of Fal'cie, or the creation of one, while others wondered if it was something altogether alien. Noel had been quiet after the fight, watching on with that silent sadness she'd seen him wear several times now. He'd said that Atlas was created by humans, entirely man-made, and he'd said it with a certainty she couldn't question, but... it hadn't seemed right to press him any more about how he knew, then.
They'd moved on quietly, once things seemed to be settling down and they'd found what they needed, and ended up in the Yaschas Massif. At least, she was fairly sure she recognised it in the pitch of night they'd arrived in. As hard as it was to see anything, she wondered aloud what time they'd washed up at, and once again, Noel seemed to know; he was looking up at the sky, brow furrowed and she followed his gaze.
“What do you suppose it is?” It was hard to make out any detail on the object that hung in the sky, dark as it was, but she had a feeling that he was about to tell her anyway. Noel sighed.
“The fal'Cie, Fenrir. It covered the sun and plunged the whole world into darkness, back in the year two hundred, so the story goes.” It threw her, the way he often spoke like that; as though everything he saw was just ancient past to him already. Two hundred A.F. was so far in the future she could scarcely think of it, and still it was just history to Noel.
“Two hundred? I wonder if anyone is even out here...” She looked across to Noel, but his expression was hard to read in the darkness. He felt increasingly grim, though, and she looked around again instead. In the distance, a long way off, a small twinkle of light caught her eye. It had to be man-made and she pointed to it. “Over there. There must be people here!”
“Maybe. Let's get moving. The stories from this time say it was very bad for the people that lived then. The perpetual darkness left nowhere safe from monsters, and they got fiercer and more aggressive the longer the eclipse lasted. Just staying alive was harder, and even once the eclipse finally subsided, years later, the effects remained.” There was that same, tired heaviness in his voice. Sometimes it seemed as though nothing she did could raise his spirits again, when the mood struck him, but then Noel was usually so reserved to begin with, sometimes it really was hard to tell how he was feeling at all. For now though, he seemed to shake it off and start forward towards the light, unsheathing his swords as he went. Sarah followed close behind him, following his lead and holding her bow ready. Normally, she might have left Mog to fly around, and only grabbed him if she needed, but Noel's bleak description had her on edge.
It was hard to pick out the ground underfoot, let alone see where they were going, but one thing she did notice as they went was the grass. Most of all, that it was growing underfoot in the first place. Maybe it was the time travel and the anomalies they'd see so far, but little oddities like that were beginning to jump out at her more and more. It made her wonder though; if it was the eclipse that Noel knew, in the time that he knew it, and it was blocking out all the light everywhere, then surely the grass wouldn't be growing at all any more. Her thoughts were cut off as a low growling to the right sent Noel into his combat stance in an instant. It was hard to see anything at all, but the shape that was moving towards them was big.
“Hi there, big guy...” Noel's voice in the dark sounded more calm than she had expected. She could barely see the shape at all, but he was already moving towards it, ready. “Serah, stay back if you can, these things are nasty, I've fought them before.” The low growl turned into a challenging bark, then an all out snarl and the blob of shadow moved in a blur. Noel moved too, rolling out of the path of... something, and striking back quickly as he rose. So he could see it just fine, could he? She raised her bow, but it was no use trying to aim like this; she was just as likely to hit Noel as the creature. Light, she needed some light. Focusing for a moment, Serah arced one hand over her head, creating a broad trail of fire that drifted upwards and hung in the air, casting a red glow over the area.
The creature Noel was ducking and dodging around was a large, hulking beast, muscle-bound but leaping and slashing with a terrifying nimbleness at him. A behemoth of some sort, it had to be. She'd heard tales and reports of them, but not seen one herself before, but it couldn't be anything else. It looked to her and flinched back as the light washed over it, and Noel darted in, stabbing under one foreleg with his smaller blade before spinning on and around to slice at the tendons on its back leg in the same fluid motion. It stumbled and Noel jumped forward to deliver the killing blow, but, rather than falling down the creature staggered back, putting a good two body lengths between them. It began to circle as Noel rolled up again from his missed strike and she noticed it seemed to be shrugging off the severed tendons as though they didn't matter. She'd heard they had several sets, corded through the muscle tissue, and it made them almost impossible to disable.
When it charged in again, Noel ducked away from its swipe and scored another pair of deep cuts across the joints in its arm, making the beast rear back with an enraged roar. It struck down again straight away, the weight of its body behind the claws, but already Noel had jumped away. It was amazing the way he fought, with such precision and speed, even against something that could so easily tear him limb from limb. It was making it impossible to find a clean shot though.
She found an opening as it reared back for another swipe, taking shots as quickly as she could at its upraised head. One managed to stick in its neck, and another in the flesh of its cheek, making the beast stagger back two more steps on its hind legs rather than strike again. As she readied another shot, a small thread in the back of her mind wondered how Snow might have handled the danger. He wouldn't have let her fight at all, probably. He'd probably have ended up arm-wrestling the brute into submission.
It roared, then in the dim red light she saw it stumble, one foot slipping down a shadowed crevice in the land. Noel was on it a moment later. His back was mostly to her, but as he leapt up to brace one foot against the creature's chest, she saw his small blade dart in to first pierce, then tear out at its throat. A gout of blood caught the light and made Serah wince, averting her eyes. It was something she was still getting used to; the raw violence of having to fight the way they did as they travelled. A dying growl snapped her eyes back in time to see Noel's balance falter before he could leap clear, and a last swipe from the behemoth swat at him. Weak as the action looked, it caught him across the chest, tearing, and flung the boy away until his back hit the rocky wall, five feet away. The shocked shout barely made it past her lips before she was already halfway to him.
Noel had landed roughly and rolled to the side after hitting the wall, and had pushed himself to one knee, swords up, by the time she reached him, but she could see that that much was an effort for him. The light was too poor to see what damage had been done and curing blind was never as effective as seeing what you were doing, but she knelt and pulled his arm over her shoulder.
“Easy now. How bad?” He didn't resist as she helped him stand, but locked his weapons together as soon as he was upright, so he could lean on the strange spear they formed, as much as her. There was something familiar about the feeling, she realised; Snow's idea of practice often meant biting off more than he could chew, and she'd patched him up more than once or twice, before he'd left. Any moment now Noel would tell her it was nothing, and not to worry herself about it, and she'd have poke and prod until he'd admit enough to let her fix it properly.
“It's not good. Got careless. Feels like my ribs, on the right. Some deep cuts.” Serah blinked. Noel's voice was calm, if taxed and a little breathy, but it caught her off guard to hear him own to the hurt so readily. They had begun to move towards the spot light again but Noel stopped firm, holding her back. “It should be safe for a while. Other creatures avoid them, and they travel alone, usually. We'll move faster if you can fix this up now. I'll give you more light.” She nodded and eased him down again.
They both knew the basics of healing, but Noel had admitted early on that her talent for it was greater than his. Instead he laid his spear down and lifted a hand, but rather than an arc of fading fire, like Serah had used, what appeared above them was a small ball of mostly white light, with only the occasional lick of flame creeping out from its core. It lit up the space around them like a flood light. That was another thing she wanted to grill the boy about. Magical theory was still completely new to everyone, but for Noel there was seven hundred years of learning and refining technique backing anything he had learned.
She put the thought out of her head and focused on his injuries, pulling aside the torn fabric to look at the deep gashes below. He was bleeding heavily, and she got to work pouring curing energy into the exact places it was needed. Watching flesh pulling itself back together and feeling cracked bones refusing under her touch always gave Serah a sense of satisfaction and she nodded to herself when the job was done. To her surprise, Noel let his light wink out as soon as she was done and she found herself blinking in the dark while he thanked her quietly. She felt, more than saw, him standing up and walking over to where the behemoth lay.
“I don't think I'll ever get used to this.” The shadows of the distant spotlight gave her the impression of him looking down at it, hands on his hips.
“Noel?”
“The waste.” He sighed. “In my time, anything edible was precious and scarce. Behemoths were rare and savage, but if a band of hunters brought one down, it would feed us all for a long time. The thought of just leaving it here, for other wild things to scavenge...” He shook his head then knelt down. He heard the sound of tearing for a moment, then he was standing again. “We should keep moving before the smaller beasts come to investigate.”
As they approached the man-made light, it turned out to be a series of spotlights, moving in a line down through the passageways of the massif. They were almost at the lights before another thought occurred to Serah.
“A band? You said you'd fought them before, on your own.”
“Yeah,” the reluctance in his voice was clear, but she'd learned to wait it out. It was a few more moments before he clarified. “We always hunted together, or in pairs at the very least. Towards the end, though... I was the band. Just me.”
“Noel...” As usual, she almost wished he hadn't continued after all. He cut her off though, pointing.
“There is someone there! You were right, Serah!” Sure enough, a figure had just stepped into the nearest spotlight and was looking about. He was dressed in a smart, military-looking uniform, and not at all what Serah expected to see of a world where humanity was struggling to survive. As he caught sight of the pair, the man was clearly surprised, but raised one arm to wave at them anyway, gesturing them towards the light.
“Over here, you two! This way!” He lowered his voice as they drew close, but it retained a very business-like and formal tone. He was carrying a clipboard, too. “Have you been wandering around in the dark? It's dangerous out there you know. Are you tourists, then? Come to see the paradox effect?” He shook his head and the small sigh that followed sounded beyond exasperated.
“Tourists? Well... not exactly.” Serah looked away as she wondered what to say.
“We are, in a way, aren't we?” Noel seemed to have left the darker mood behind and was grinning now. “Did you say a Paradox Effect?” The man rolled his eyes then nodded.
“I suppose I'd better give you the standard talk then. Alright.” He cleared his throat. “As I'm sure you're both well aware already, earlier this year the fal'Cie identified as Fenrir appeared above the skies here in the Yaschas Massif, covering the sun completely. The Academy immediately investigated and determined that, visually, what was witnessed here ought to be affecting our whole world, and yet the shadow only falls here. We observed astrological markers and determined that, in fact, the sky you are now seeing would not be in line with the rest of the world for another one hundred and ninety years.” He paused for breath, glancing between them to see if his speech was having any impact. Satisfied, he continued. “It has now been determined that the phenomena is as a result of a space-time anomaly, triggered by the paradox effect in the area, and that while we may still expect the world to one day be shrouded in darkness by this fal'Cie, it should not be until the year two hundred, or thereabouts, rather than now.”
“So this is 10AF? I knew it, I knew it, haha!” Serah bit off her giggle enough to grab Noel's arm and shake him in triumph. “I knew something was off here; I didn't think it was actually two hundred AF. It's all too familiar. Sort of.” Noel's reaction to her victory was subdued at best, and their guide seemed mostly perplexed.
“Ah, excuse me?” He lifted a finger in question, trying to break through her enthusiasm. “Forgive me for answering a strange question with a stranger one, but, are you two, perchance, time travellers?”
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- 1
- 2
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Drifting