Remembering Noel (A FFXIII Fan Fiction)

Chapter 13

        Serah awoke in a room that looked very familar for some reason. She couldn't place why. There was a bed in the corner, and by the bed, there was a mirror. She shied away from the mirror, partly because it unnerved her, and partly because she didn't want to see her morning hair. She sat up slowly and winced as her head ached. 

        So, today was a new day. Perhaps today she wouldn't dissapoint anybody. Perhaps she would remember. Sometimes there were foggy whispers and images in her head, but they were like a movie playing. The images, which she assumed were fragments of memories, always seemed like they were happening to somebody else. 

         She finally noted that she wasn't in the bedroom that she'd been sleeping in recently. Where was she? She glanced down and also found that she was in her familiar clothes, the plaid skirt and thigh-highs with a sheer jacket, instead of the odd dress she'd been given after she left the hospital. She hadn't liked it, it had holes in the sides. She felt much more comfortable in these clothes than she had been in the dress. 

        Serah pushed the blanket off her feet and swung her legs onto the ground. She began wandering around the...house? It seemed more like a hotel. When she exited the room, she saw it was just like a hotel, once her eyes adjusted to the horrible brightness. There were a line of rooms on either side of the hallway. She thought nothing of the labels until halfway down the hall.

        There, a particularly ornate door snatched her attention. Upon further inspection, she found that the label on the door was not a number, but rather a name. "Noel" it said. Serah frowned. She turned around, looking at the label on the door behind her. It said "Alyssa". The next, "Yeul". Then, "Caius". She ran back to the beginning of the hallway. The first door said "Claire" and then in subtext, "Lightning". 

        Overtaken by curiosity, Serah tried the handle of the "Claire" door. The door swung open almost eagerly. She stepped into the room tentatively. At first, the room was a normal hotel room. It had a couch, a twin bed, and a desk, with a little mini fridge sitting next to it. Serah half expected Lightning to be sitting on the couch watching some TV, but no, nobody was there. Her eyes finally fully adjusted to the dark-compared-to-the-hallway room. A hiss of air filled the room, and she turned quickly back to the door, but was too late. The door was closed. She grabbed the handle and tried to leave, but she could not. She was being sucked into the room. 

        Serah screamed for help, but to no avail. She thought she heard a familiar "kupo!" In the distance, but she was sucked into the swirling light in the center of the room before she could comprehend it.

        Before she could blink twice, her vision cleared, and she was standing in her childhood room, that she had shared with Lightning. There were a swirl of memories, and she forcibly remembered every single time she had spoken with Lightning that she was aware of. There was her changing her name from "Claire" to "Lightning" after their parents died, and then Serah introducing someone to her, although she could not make out who it was. A lot of the memories had been after the day her memories stopped. All of the people besides Lightning were blurry, and couldn't be made out. Then later, she was, meeting up with Lightning on the Archylyte Steppe, and her being wrenched from her grasp, blurry people trying to console her in their warped voices, telling her Lightning was gone, that she couldn't come back. Then even after that, there was a quick glimpse of Lightning in some type of armour, with an enormous sword, on a throne. 

        There was a jolt, and the memories seemed to materialise into the swirling white light Serah'd seen in the hotel room, and it floated for a moment, before the light surged into her eyes and mouth with such force, she was pushed to her back on the floor.

        It seemed like several minutes before she could finally open her eyes. Her throat was parched. She reached over to her bedside table where she always kept her water and took a sip. 

        Wait a minute. 

        Was she in bed?? Serah sat up much too quickly, and looked around her. A darkness threatened to cover her vision as her blood pressure adapted to her change in altitude. She was in her temporary room at Hope's house again! 

        With no explanation, she left her bed for the second time that day. Looking down, she saw she was in the dress that the hospital had given her. She remembered wearing that dress for the last two times she'd seen Lightning. She was fine with it now.

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A/N: WOOT WOOT. DONE. For some reason I was super reluctant to do this chapter, but once I got into it, I got a great idea for the plot! So here you go!