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Yesterday’s Hero

“Good afternoon, doctor.”

What a curious mixture of strength and vulnerability. The quiet confidence in the voice was utterly at odds with the furtive glances at the door. But as quickly as it had appeared, that vulnerability was gone, hidden behind an expression of icy calm. Aerith had seen it a thousands times before on the faces of soldiers who’d faced far too many battles, but Captain Lightning Farron’s mask was still one of the best she’d seen. If Aerith didn’t know better, she would have thought that the pink-haired woman was perfectly fine.

“Good afternoon, captain. Please, have a seat.”

Lightning paused half a step from the door and then shut it behind her before studying the rest of the room with those famously blue eyes of hers. Those eyes took in every last detail, cataloguing the books on the shelves and the paintings on the wall. They lingered for a moment on the framed photograph sitting on the desk before settling on the two seats on opposites sides of a coffee table.

Without a word, Lightning chose the seat facing the door but only after moving it out of line with the window. The seat was designed to be comfortable, the kind of seat someone could slouch on, but Lightning remained perfectly upright, perched awkwardly on the edge of it, her posture perfect to the point of being painful. Her eyes flicked around the room again, and she folded her hands together in her lap.

Aerith took the other seat and relaxed. She spent almost as much time in her office on the base as she did at home. She’d become comfortable here, perhaps too comfortable.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, captain.” Aerith straightened and reached across the table to shake Lightning’s hand. It was an undeniably feminine hand, slim-wristed and with long, slender fingers, but there was no missing the strength in it – or the calluses. “Tell me, captain, do you know why you are here?”

Blue eyes narrowed faintly. “You don’t like to mince words, do you, doctor?”

Aerith met Lightning’s gaze evenly. “My profession requires me to be good at reading people. I get the impression that you’d prefer me to be as straightforward as possible.”

“I see.” Lightning smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from her uniform. Aerith studied the uniform more closely. It was absolutely immaculate. And even without looking, she had a feeling that Lightning’s shoes were polished to perfection. “You’re right, I suppose. I’ve never cared much for wasting words. I’m here, doctor, because I was ordered to come here.”

What an interesting way to put it. It was true, of course. Aerith had been ordered by General Amodar to see to the health of the military’s most famous captain, but she knew the general. He was a good man. He wouldn’t have ordered counselling without a very, very good reason.

“And why were you ordered to come here, captain?” Aerith reached forward and picked up her mug of coffee. It was warm, just shy of being hot. The smell of it filled the room. “Do you mind if I call you, Lightning?”

“By all means.”

“Then, please, call me Aerith.”

“I prefer to stick with ‘doctor’.”

Aerith watched Lightning watch her. The other woman smoothed another imaginary wrinkle for her uniform before realising what she was doing and folding her hands together in her lap again. She’d have to pay closer attention to that. Lightning’s face and posture gave nothing away, but her hands told a different story.

“Would you like some coffee while you tell me why you were ordered to come here?” Aerith asked.

Lightning almost flinched, but she caught herself before the gesture could reach fruition. It was startling how aware of herself she seemed to be. “Some coffee would be good.”

Aerith readied another mug of coffee and went back to watching Lightning. The other woman lifted the mug of coffee up and stared deeply into it. Her fingers tightened around the mug, still for a moment, before one finger began to tap a steady rhythm against the side of the mug.

“I haven’t been sleeping,” Lightning began. “And it’s begun to affect my performance. I lost my temper with the new recruits.”

“I see.” Aerith caught and held Lightning’s gaze. The other woman looked as if she wanted to turn away, but her pride wouldn’t let her. “And why can’t you sleep Lightning?”

“I…” Lightning looked into her coffee. Her expression lost some of its icy calm. “I’ve been having dreams.”

“About the war?” Aerith had expected as much. They’d draped Lightning in medals and given her a job training the new recruits. But no one had ever bothered to check if Cocoon’s war hero had ever managed to pull herself back together after what she’d gone through during the war. Aerith knew all too well that even legends could bleed.

“Yes.” Lightning got up and walked over to the window. Aerith let her go. There were new recruits running laps around the base. They couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old – scarcely more than children, really. Lightning was twenty-five, but she might as well have been six hundred and twenty-five, considering everything she’d seen in the war. “Did you serve during the war, doctor?”

Aerith could make out the tense interplay of muscles in Lightning’s back. “Yes. I was a field medic assigned to one of the SOLDIER divisions.”

“And you saw combat?” Lightning murmured. She set her mug of coffee on the windowsill.

“I did.” Aerith stood and walked over to look out the same window as Lightning. Did the captain prefer to talk this way, with neither of them looking at each other? “I actually have a medal, you know.” Her lips twitched. “I got it for pulling General Sephiroth out of harm’s way when he was wounded. He’s a stubborn man, the general. I got the feeling he’d have been happier bleeding to death than retreating so that I could see to his injuries.”

“I know the type.” Lightning pursed her lips. “How did you end up becoming a counsellor?”

“I would rather be putting people back together than blowing them apart.” Aerith shrugged. “What do you see in your dreams, Lightning? What keeps you awake at night?”

For a long time, Lightning said nothing. Instead, her gaze was fixed on the recruits running outside.

“I was eighteen when I joined.” Lightning’s fists clenched. “The army was the only place that would take someone like me. But I never thought I’d see combat. I thought I’d serve my two years and find a job in the police force or something similar. Then the war happened. I was a private when the war started, Aerith. By the end of the first week I was a corporal. It was a field promotion – all of my seniors were dead.”

“But you kept going.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know how many people I killed that first week.” Lightning shook her head. “But I remember the first one. I remember the mud. Our transport was shot down over this big field of mud. Gran Pulse was supposed to be this big, beautiful wilderness, but this place… it was just mud. If I had to guess, I’d say artillery was responsible for that, but I didn’t know that at the time.” Her voice hardened. “The three people in front of me all got shot trying to get through the door. I don’t know why I wasn’t. When I got out, I ran. I ran as fast as I could.” She took a deep breath. “I only stopped running when I ran into one of them – the enemy, I mean. He looked just as scared as I was. My rifle jammed, so I hit him with it, and I just kept on hitting him with it until he stopped moving. Then I took his rifle.” Lightning made a disgusted sound. “They were just another dumb kid. I wasn’t better than them. I was lucky, that’s all.”

“Is that what you see in your dreams?”

“Sometimes. But it’s always something from the war.”

“How long have you been having these dreams?”

Lightning took a sip of her coffee. She barely seemed to taste it. “I never stopped having them.”

“Then what’s changed? Why do they bother you more now?”

“I don’t know.” Lightning sighed. “I think it might be the new recruits. This batch… they don’t seem to understand what the war was like. They think it was a game. They think being a soldier is great because of all the medals I won.” For a moment, she looked so weary that Aerith almost reached out to steady her. Then she straightened, every inch the perfect soldier again. “I fought because I had to and because our country needed me to. But those kids don’t understand that. They see a bunch of medals pinned onto my chest, but they don’t see all the kids – and most of them were kids, damn it – that I had to kill to get them. It could just easily have been me who died on that muddy field.”

“You do realise that the people you fought were soldiers like you. If they were kids, then you were a kid too.”

“I know that.” Lightning’s hands tightened around her mug. “But that doesn’t make me feel any better. I even understand why so many fresh recruits were out there. They needed every soldier they could find – every single soldier.”

Aerith gave Lightning a moment to compose herself. “Do you have flashbacks?”

“Sometimes.” Lightning ambled back to her seat. “Most of the time, I’m back in that field, a stolen rifle in my hand, and blood all over me.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “I could use some help, couldn’t I, doctor?”

“I think so.” Aerith returned to her seat. “But that’s why you’re here.”

“Do you record these sessions, doctor?”

“I intend to. In fact, I was going to broach that matter earlier.” Aerith paused. “I hadn’t expected you to be so forthcoming.”

Lightning sagged. “I have a problem. I need to get it fixed. If I can’t fix it, then I’m of no use here. I have nowhere else to go.”

“Then we’ll fix things.” Aerith leaned back in her seat. “Would you mind if I started recording now? All of the recordings are encrypted and password protected. Any written notes I make will be stored securely.”

“All right.” Lightning folded her hands in her lap again. Aerith frowned. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was something odd about them.

“How often do you wash your hands?” Aerith asked. “Lightning, how many times a day do you wash your hands?”

Lightning’s smile was grim. “Too many, but never enough.”

X X X

Author’s Notes

As always, I do not own Final Fantasy, nor am I making any money off of this.

Well, I’m back in serious territory again. I’ve always found it fascinating that the heroes in fiction so often emerge from their ordeals without any lasting psychological damage. I thought it would be interesting to write something in which that wasn’t the case. The Lightning in this story has emerged from the war a hero, but she hasn’t gotten through the war unscathed. It’s up to Aerith to help put her back together again. She’ll have help, of course, since some of the other characters from FF XIII will be making their appearance soon.

I also write original fiction, mostly fantasy. You can find it here . If you’re looking for something fun to read try Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf , or, if you want something more serious, try The Last Huntress .

As always, I appreciate feedback. Reviews and comments are welcome.