Chapter Text
When Claire Farron was three years old, she almost lost her father in an automobile accident.
It was early on a Tuesday. The other driver had been tired after working into the early morning and Claire’s father was on his way to the airport to catch a six A.M. flight for business. Luckily, a cat ran into the road right as the tired driver nodded off at the wheel, causing Claire’s father to change lanes just before the other vehicle swerved into the lane he’d just vacated. Claire’s father would go on to recount the tale often at social gatherings, saying that someone up there was looking out for him and his family that day, because if circumstances had been slightly different, he’d have left behind his wife and two little girls, one of whom had been an infant at the time. The story lost much of its entertainment value after being heard time and again, and by the time she was ten, Claire was well and truly sick of it. However, she never forgot the lesson she learned from it: to be grateful for and cherish the family you have, because you never know if the universe might snatch them away.
oOo
When Claire was eleven, she discovered a talent for tennis. She’d always been a coordinated and athletically capable child, a good runner with great reflexes, so she fell naturally into the sport alongside many of her peers at school. Tennis was the Big Sport for preteen girls since her city had mandated the expansion of sports education, and everyone wanted to make the school team. It was unsurprising to all when Claire was offered a spot. Pretty, popular, and sporty Claire was a shoe-in. The jealousy of some of her classmates upon her receiving the news was palpable, but Serah was all smiles and congratulations as she helped their parents make a special celebratory dinner for her sister that evening. As far as she was concerned, her sister deserved a spot on the team more than anyone else in the world, and when she was old enough, she would of course try out for the tennis team too.
oOo
Becoming a teenager brought with it a previously unknown whirlwind of drama to Claire’s life. The highs were high and the lows were subterranean. Emotions and friend groups erupted and changed. Jealousy became cattiness while admiration evolved into ride-or-die levels of near hero-worship. At fourteen years old, Claire was the star of the school. A tennis prodigy who was certain to make the varsity team despite still being a freshman. Urged by her friends, she began to take an interest in makeup and fashion, which propelled her to even greater social heights. She was asked out weekly. Sometimes by boys who were nice. Often by boys who were not. Naturally, Serah joyously followed in her beloved big sis’s footsteps and had become something of a modern-day princess among her own school friends. Bright, sweet, and gregarious, she never wanted for friends and she often told Claire how much she looked up to her and wanted to do all the fun high school things Claire did when she was old enough. Claire didn’t tell her about the vile, jealous messages sharpied on bathroom stall walls or the horrible gossip whispered in dim hallways or why some friends didn’t come around the house anymore.
oOo
When Claire was fifteen, she discovered her mother had been hiding an illness. There were a tense few months during which Claire forgot about fashion, about friends and tennis. She spent her hours after school following her mom from appointment to appointment as medical professionals tried to figure out what was wrong with her. Luckily, her father’s work gave him connections to good doctors and in the end, thanks to some new technological advancement they were able to access through those connections, the disease was caught and treated before it could become life-threatening. Once again, Claire was reminded of the ephemeral nature of good fortune and that you should never forget to look out for family because the universe isn’t going to do it for you.
oOo
At seventeen, Claire’s life was back on track. Her mother’s medical scare had cooled the opinions of many of her naysayers and granted her the sympathy of her teachers who promised to write her good recommendations to university. She was back in tennis and supported her team to many victories. The highs were higher than ever while the lows were less low, and if she ever saw a face around town which caused her heart to ache in a strange and nostalgic way, she ignored it. Her life was full and happy.
oOo
Graduation came and went. Some classmates went off to join law enforcement or the armed forces. Claire chose to pursue fashion. She’d been scouted to be model in her final year of high school and she split her time between work and studying fashion at a premier university in the city. At twenty years old, she was making a name for herself in the industry, appearing in occasional online ads at first but soon elevating her image to posters and magazines. Her fame and connections grew, and soon she was being invited to high profile parties and events. It was at one such event, on the eve of her twenty-first birthday, when she began experiencing the oddest episodes of recollection. The event had been a fireworks show at their local beach, and as she stood on the sand looking up at the bursting colors of light and noise, she was overcome with a dreamlike sense of déjà vu. For a moment, she saw another sky, one twinkling not with stars but with the lights of civilization from across a great distance. She felt a pang of longing accompanied by a great and confusing sadness.
That longing followed Claire as she navigated the days following her birthday. She felt it keenly when Serah glowingly gushed about her new boyfriend, a rough and tumble delinquent-looking sort whom Claire only tolerated because he genuinely adored her sister. She felt it as she watched a happy couple enjoy a picnic with their young son in the park while she sipped her weekend latte on a bench. She felt it when a bubbly teenaged girl excitedly pulled her older friend into a boutique that Claire was about to enter. She felt it as she passed a pair of high school sweethearts on her walk back to her apartment after a morning of classes. She felt it from the smiles of strangers in cafes, from musicians warbling on street corners.
She grew to hate it. She was trying to enjoy her life, and yet the universe persisted in throwing confusing feelings about strangers her way. She went out of her way to avoid the street the high schoolers walked on; the boutique; the park. She kept busy with school and modeling and family. She accepted dates, grew her connections, and cut people from her life who became unproductive weight. She devoted herself to her burgeoning career, spending her energy only on those who would help her advance.
She blocked everything else out.
The new world was meant to be a fresh start.
Gloved fingers gripped a felt-tipped pen stiffly, a physical reflection of their owner’s humor. The tip of the pen hovered over lined paper; a crisp, well-maintained notebook. Soon, more words followed, carefully penned in neat strokes.
And so it is. Exactly as advertised. A cruel, blank canvas. A world with no past. Like a child born alone, never having known its mother. Fresh, but contextless. There are no gods here. None for the living. It could be called a perfect world, well worth the blood and tears shed to see it realized. A world full of promises. If you asked anyone but me.
I can’t call this place anything but a prison. The longer I spend here, the clearer it’s become to me that I don’t belong here. The world I belonged to has vanished and it took the people I loved with it. I’m a remnant of the old world trapped in a foreign place.
I want to go home.
The tip of the pen paused, still resting atop the paper. Ink from the felt spread, causing the freshly penned ending punctuation to grow to an ugly blotch which bled through the page to stain the paper underneath. Still, the hand didn’t move. Green eyes stared down at the paper, reading the last five words over and over again.
I want to go home. The felt tip slowly scrawled above the printed blue line once more.
I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.
The gloved hand moved in a sudden frenzy, the clean lines becoming disorderly. The letters tumbled frantically from the pen.
I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. Save me—
Wide eyes burned and blurred from being held open past the point of needing to relubricate.
Lightning.
Twenty-one was a busy year for Claire. As if some cosmic floodgates had opened, new experiences and life events were thrown relentlessly into her path. She was invited to a multitude of functions for work and embarked on personal adventures, and yet no matter where she went, she seemed to encounter the same familiar faces over and over again as if destiny willed it. She got used to seeing the same pilot as she boarded private flights, a tall, good-natured family man who liked to shoot the breeze before settling into the cockpit for departure. The same unlikely duo of women always seemed to show up at whichever venue she was scheduled to hold a photoshoot. Her sister’s obnoxious boyfriend always managed to be around whenever Claire visited home. Moreover, the high school couple whom Claire had frequently encountered near her apartment had somehow met and befriended Serah at an interschool event and they were now thick as thieves.
It seemed like the more Claire tried to avoid them, perplexingly, the more these people persisted in popping up in her life. She was well and truly tired of it. Barring the pilot, there was no benefit to her to be friendly with any of them. She hated the way her emotions roiled and vacillated when they were around. She hated the way her body and mind would begin to feel, in brief flashes, like someone else’s. Pretty, popular Claire had no time to waste on thugs and randos.
“What’s got you down, Sweetheart?”
Claire barely glanced at the man occupying the driver’s seat of the luxury vehicle she demurely sat in the passenger seat of. She’d been looking out the window, resting her cheek on her knuckles as she watched the scenery go by. The man she was dating had one hand on the wheel and was watching her sidelong as they sat stopped at a light. His fingers drummed the leather in a fashion that was meant to come off as thoughtless but was really a ploy to get her to notice the expensive new watch he’d bought to impress her today. He was smart enough to recognize that she was losing interest in him.
She made a noncommittal noise in her throat—not quite a grunt. “Do I look down?”
He let out a laugh that was a little too casually-offhand to be genuine. “You were in an awful hurry to leave the restaurant tonight. Don't tell me that guy you kept staring at was an old flame?”
Claire did grunt this time. How insecure. By no means was Cid Raines an old flame, and she hadn’t even been staring at him for his sake. She’d merely been distracting herself from the tacky décor of the restaurant by focusing on a face she knew. Raines was yet another often recurring presence in her life, though she didn’t have any particular feelings regarding him. On the contrary, he was much easier to look at than the awful black and white checkered tile the business had barfed all over its walls and floor. Claire had found herself so agitated by the environment that she had jumped to put on her coat the moment the check arrived.
She had no reason to divulge any of that to him, however, so she simply said, “I’ve had better steak.”
Months passed. Claire spent all of them on edge. The same feelings of uncanniness and agitation continued to dog her steps. Her patience was running razor thin, and it was for this reason that when one day, as she was walking across campus and a man she’d never seen before stopped and stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost, she rudely avoided eye contact and power walked in the opposite direction. Naturally, she assumed that he recognized her from social media and was dreaming up an excuse to approach her, and she had absolutely no desire for that. The way he looked at her with shocked eyes, his posture ramrod stiff, radiated recognition and intent.
Claire had experienced this exact situation enough times now that she didn’t feel remotely guilty about fleeing. She felt his gaze like a laser on her back the whole way as she rounded the nearest corner and concealed herself within a great crowd of students waiting to enter the Center for Life Sciences. It was helpful that today her university was hosting a big shot guest speaker, meaning every science-adjacent major at the university was on campus. Claire expertly wove through the throng and circled back using a lesser travelled walkway to her building.
The next day, she was excitedly pulled aside by the receptionist to the main building of her department.
“A man came around here asking about you yesterday!” the woman told her, her eyes sparkling and a sly grin curling her lips. “He wanted to know if we had a student with pink hair and blue eyes. He was very adamant about finding you. I heard he asked around at all the departments.”
Claire regarded the woman with a confused frown. She wracked her brain for anyone she knew who might do such a thing but came up blank. Everyone she was close to knew what department she belonged to. A stranger, then?
“He was super handsome,” the woman added when she saw Claire’s confusion. “And very well-spoken. Claire, you don’t have a new mystery beau, do you?”
Claire stared at her and then shook her head, completely perplexed. “If I did, don’t you think he’d at least know my name and what I’m studying at school?” she remarked levelly. “Did he give a name for himself?”
“Estheim,” the woman answered readily. “Here, he left a card. Said to give it to you.” She pulled a mint-colored card from behind the reception counter and handed it to Claire.
Claire took the card and read the front curiously. It had a name matching the one the receptionist had given as well as a phone number and a business address. She turned it over but the back was blank.
“Do you know him?” the woman asked eagerly. “He said he really wanted to speak with you. He didn’t state any business, but he talked like he knew you. He seemed hopeful that you’d call him when you got his card.”
Claire lowered the card. The printed name lingered before her eyes even when she’d set the stiff rectangle back on the counter. She scoffed and shook her head. “Well, he’s living in a fantasy then, because I’ve never heard of him.” She crossed her arms across her chest and raised a brow. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s a stalker hunting for my personal information? You didn’t give him any details, did you?”
The receptionist’s face fell. Clearly, Claire’s lack of recognition of the man had taken the wind out of her sails. “Well, of course not. I didn’t even confirm that you were a student here. I just said that I’d hold onto the card in case I found someone matching your description. You really don’t know him?”
Claire shook her head. She would definitely remember meeting a man with such a unique name. Whoever he was, it was bold of him to go around doling out business cards on the assumption that she would call him despite never even providing a reason for her to do so. The whole thing screamed ‘stalker’ to her. He was probably some nutjob who had convinced himself that he was her boyfriend because he couldn’t tell the difference between a parasocial relationship and a real one. It was a common occurrence in her industry.
She glanced again at the discarded business card. The color stirred something in her memory. Eyes of the same color, staring at her, wide with shock. Could the owner of the card be the man she’d seen yesterday? She tried to recall his features. She’d really only gotten a brief glimpse of him, but he definitely wasn’t anyone she’d met before. She fought to picture him in her mind. “Wait, by any chance, did the man you met have silver hair? Tallish?”
The receptionist’s expression immediately brightened. It was all the confirmation Claire needed. “Yes! He was very striking. Absolutely stunning skin. You can’t airbrush skin that good. So, you do know him?”
“No,” she denied quickly. “But I’m pretty sure I ran into him yesterday.”
So, that man had continued to look for her after she’d made her escape. He could be a student in another department, perhaps a graduate student, but whatever he was, he was no acquaintance of hers and she had no business with him.
She put her hand on the card and slid it toward the receptionist. “Do me a favor,” she said. “If he comes back, return his card to him and tell him you never found me. My life is hectic enough without adding a stalker to the mix.”
The receptionist took the card but her lips turned downward into a pout. “It’s a damn shame,” she lamented. “He was so handsome.”
“He’s all yours,” Claire declared as she brushed past the reception desk to head upstairs to her classroom.
Twenty-one continued. Claire broke up with her boyfriend and struck a deal with a luxury brand. Serah and their parents celebrated with her. Her likeness was pinned up on storefronts and in subway stations, all dolled up in fanciful, high fashion whimsy. One of these Serah insisted on stopping in front of when the two sisters were out together shopping and spending some quality time together.
“Look at you!” Serah gushed. She clasped her hands together in delight as her eyes roved over the larger-than-life image of her sister sporting a silver designer mini dress and matching handbag. “My sister, the supermodel.”
Claire shook her head and laughed. “Hardly. One brand deal doesn’t make a person a supermodel.”
“But you’re well on your way,” Serah countered back over her shoulder. “And it’s not like it’s just one brand deal. You’ve been invited to all kinds of fancy parties and even taken private flights. You got this deal because you’re already big in the industry. You’ll keep getting bigger and bigger, and before you know it, you’ll be a household name. Your future is bright.”
Claire scoffed. “You can see the future, can you?”
All at once, a feeling of such affliction washed over Claire that she felt momentarily nauseous. A strong burst of emotion that felt as if it were tied to a memory had crashed over her.
Loss. Devastation. Anguish. A raging torrent of emotions for a sister who could see the future.
The feeling passed as quickly as it came, leaving Claire shaking where she stood. Serah had already turned back to look once more at the advertisement and carried on the conversation none the wiser to any physical manifestations of her sister’s odd episode.
“Your future,” she laughed. “Since it’s so obvious.” She turned back around properly and gave Claire a big, genuine smile. “You’ve worked hard for this. You earned it.”
Claire shook her head, as much to clear it as in response to Serah’s statement. “Thanks. Let’s just hope—”
The words died on her tongue. Her attention was caught suddenly by a familiar figure emerging from a taxi just a short distance behind her sister. Despite only having briefly glimpsed him once before, her brain instantly identified him.
Either destiny or happenstance was obsessed with her. She was convinced.
She hurriedly grabbed her sister’s arm and tugged her across the sidewalk toward the open door of an adjacent café. Gently but swiftly, she pushed Serah through the entrance and followed behind. “Sis, what…?” Serah protested as Claire quickly found a table near the window and set their bags down.
“I’ve been wanting to try this place,” she lied. “I’ll watch our things. Would you order a coffee for me? Get whatever you want. My treat.” She pulled her wallet out of her bag and passed her credit card over to her sister.
Serah gave her a confused look but took the card and obediently left the table to get in line at the counter.
Claire took a seat in one of the wicker chairs and made a show of straightening their shopping bags but really her gaze was directed outside to where the mystery man still stood on the sidewalk. The cab had begun to pull away and the man was now walking up the sidewalk toward the café. She took the opportunity to study him.
Today, he wore a dark jacket overtop a black shirt. Around his neck, a teal, tasseled scarf was loosely tied, the ends tucked beneath the collar of his jacket. Long legs were encased in charcoal-colored pants and finished with beige Chelsea boots. It was a sensible weekend outfit which suggested a tidy personality.
Rather than his outfit, Claire’s attention was drawn to the man’s face. He had one of those effortlessly handsome faces. Boyish rather than manly. His curious platinum hair was well-kempt without looking deliberately styled. Claire had made the acquaintance of enough narcissists to be fairly certain that he wasn’t one, and that was a small virtuosity to help his cause, as it was common for stalkers to be narcissists.
His gaze was directed away from the café toward the store Claire and her sister had been standing in front of moments ago. She watched his pace accelerate into a half jog until he was standing right in front of Claire’s image. It was hard to tell from his face what he was thinking as he studied the advertisement. His expression seemed… hopeful, maybe? Surprised? Whatever he was feeling, he stared at her like a starving man might stare at a feast.
Scratch what she’d just thought. He was clearly not functioning normally. Claire couldn’t think of many non-creepy reasons why a man she didn’t know would stare at her likeness like that, and those were much less likely to be the case than the creepy ones.
She considered what she should do. Ignore him and hope whatever fixation he had on her dried up on its own? Go out there and confront him—nip this in the bud? She had half a mind to do the latter. If talking to him now could potentially save her some greater grief down the line, it was worth doing. The problem was that she was out with Serah. Supposing he was not only a stalker, but a violent one, she couldn’t put Serah at risk.
She ultimately settled on doing nothing about the mystery man today. If he appeared before her again, she’d confront him then.
Luckily, the man didn’t loiter for long and Claire was soon able to enjoy a pleasant hour of drinking coffee and chatting with her sister. By the end, Claire had put all thoughts of Hope Estheim from her mind and was able to chalk her time out with her sister up as an afternoon well spent.
We’re all cursed in some way. I’ve spent centuries believing that. We’re all cursed in frequently tiny, always unique, and often ambiguous ways. Colloquially, we refer to it as being unlucky. In the span of a normal human lifetime, one might find a pattern to their unluckiness and get curious about it. It took just twenty-seven years for me. I realized very quickly the pattern to my unluckiness, and as the centuries passed, I studied this phenomenon in both myself and the people around me.
My curse is that I am the odd one out. I was fourteen years old and in the wrong place at the wrong time when I got swept up in a purge that had nothing to do with me. I had no connections to any l’Cie, and yet I was branded and swept into the Fal’Cies’ plot simply because I was there. When I was twenty-four, I learned that I alone had been left behind while all my friends found paths through time. I stubbornly invented my own. Near the end of a dying world, I was—
The hand holding the pen stopped abruptly. A shuddering breath fell across the page, drying the ink. There were some experiences that couldn’t be put to the pen. Not yet.
I was forced to play housekeeper for a mad god while every willing soul, living and dead, in Nova Chrysalia was saved but mine. Now, here I am. The only person in the world whose heart still lives in the old world. That’s the price for passing on with uneased regrets. In the end, I was just like him. I built a world, hoping it would last forever, but my dream was shattered, I couldn’t stop it, and I was dragged down with it.
The funny thing is, it wasn’t until I got here that I realized that world meant everything to me.
Usually when Claire dreamed, it was because she was processing some form of real world stress. The life of a college student and fashion model was full of deadlines, obligations, and delicate social navigation. Stress dreams weren’t enjoyable by any stretch, but she was accustomed to them and knew how to handle them.
The dream she’d just woken from, on the other hand, she did not.
In her dream, she’d been back in the café with her sister. Her mystery stalker was in his right place in front of the store ad, and the dream was stuck on the part where she was deliberating about whether or not to approach him. Dream Claire was ready to stick to her awake self’s decision to ignore him, but whenever she’d try to, the dream would send her right back to the point of decision. Again and again, she tried to stick to the plot, but it was as if the dream was telling her that was the wrong answer.
While she struggled with progressing the scene, the mystery stalker remained where he was, though his form morphed and shifted so sometimes it wasn’t him but the pilot, or the high school sweethearts, or the bubbly girl with her older friend. As the repetitions went on, the man stopped changing into other people and instead seemed to shift between himself and a more youthful, teenaged version of himself. His form flickered before her eyes and dream-her began to have trouble telling which version she was looking at. Finally, the teenager turned to look right at her but his face was hazy and unclear and she woke up before she could discern his features.
In the end, she rolled out of bed and began her morning routine, choosing not to dwell on it.
She did this quite successfully for about a week, focusing on classes and photoshoots. Her agent reminded her of the upcoming Spring Gala, an enormous party and important networking event that would be held in just a few weeks’ time, and she began planning her outfit for it.
Then, on an otherwise typical Thursday evening after her final class of the day, she exited her department’s building and there he was, sitting on a bench under an oriental plum tree which had just acquired its blossoms. He’d been looking up at the building, perhaps admiring its architecture, but his eyes snapped to her just a handful of heartbeats after hers found him. She stood frozen in place as he stood from the bench and swiftly approached her, his eyes never leaving her face.
“Light…” The voice that issued from his lips was nearly a whisper, but Claire heard the word as if he’d shouted it.
Now Claire was faced with another decision. Hear him out, or go on the offensive. He’d already confused her with just his first word. What was “light” even? A name? A description? If it was a pickup line, she swore…
“I finally found you,” he continued before she could make her choice. This close up, she could see his facial features clearly. His eyes, rather than being green like she’d thought, were really a pale gray-blue which darkened at the center in a ring of flecked emerald. Those eyes watched her with a soft and very evident fondness beneath gently furrowed silver eyebrows. “Do you, by any chance,” he spoke slowly, tentatively, “know who I am?”
“A stalker, I’m beginning to think,” she answered, making her voice firm so that there was no room for misinterpretation. “I hear you’ve been snooping around campus looking for me. I need you to understand that that’s incredibly creepy and absolutely not okay.”
The man’s eyes widened. He leaned forward and placed a hand on his chest. His fingers were long and slender and pale. “No, I—” he started to defend himself but faltered. He was silent for a moment as he seemed to pull his thoughts together. His eyes studied her face for a long moment, roving across her features and looking deep into her own. She watched him back impassively, and at last Claire saw the light of hope dim within them. His eyebrows unfurrowed and the line of his mouth straightened. He seemed to decide something, and when he finally continued, his tone was gentle, if reticent. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’ve been searching for you for some time now.”
Claire crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side. “Searching for me,” she echoed. “For a reason I expect you’re about to tell me.” She deliberately framed this as a statement to convey to him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t in the mood for nonsense or faffing about.
The man’s lips pursed; a tiny gesture, but one that spoke of disappointment. It was a look that seemed somehow familiar despite being on the face of a stranger. “I hoped that I would find an old friend,” he said softly. “I hoped that not everything had been lost.”
This hardly sufficed as an explanation and did nothing to endear the man to Claire. She was tired and hungry after a long afternoon of classes and she felt very much that her time was being wasted. She moved her hands to her hips and exhaled a frustrated sigh. “I’m going to be frank with you,” she said plainly. “I don’t know you and I have no desire to. Please leave me alone. If you approach me again, I’m going to call the police.” She punctuated her statement with a turn of her chin to indicate that he was encouraged to take his leave before she made good on her threat here and now.
The man closed his eyes. His mouth didn’t frown, but it was easy to see his dejection. He dropped his arms to his side and Claire saw his fingers curl into loose fists. He took a deep breath and then opened his eyes. “I understand,” he said in that same soft voice. “Your feelings have reached me clearly and I have no intention of disrespecting your wishes. I won’t appear before you again.”
Claire watched with satisfaction as the man turned to leave. Stalker averted. That had been easier than she anticipated.
The man walked a few steps away from her and the building and then stopped. Without looking back, he added, “I just want you to know that I was really, from the bottom of my heart, glad to have met you. I hope your life is full of happiness.” His head bobbed briefly downward. “Goodbye.”
Claire’s eyes remained on the man’s back as he walked away and then eventually disappeared as the path bent around an adjacent building. What a bizarre encounter, she thought in the privacy of her mind. In the end, the man had been less a stalker and more just a straight-up weirdo.
At least he was easy to get rid of, she mused as she adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and resumed walking. He’d been a respectful weirdo, if nothing else. Perhaps she’d been a bit harsh. Then again, there was no guarantee that he’d keep his word. If he tried showing up again later with some convenient excuse she wouldn’t hesitate to call the cops on him.
Good riddance, I suppose, she thought as she walked home.