In lieu of Play Along, I've decided upon a sequel, which will be more dramatic, angsty, action packed, longer, and have more romance. I hope you guys enjoy the first chapter of the sequel to Play Along, Dust to Dust.

Disclaimer: I own none of this! All credit to Square Enix!

~Rude Awakenings~

"Hope!"

"Vanille?"

"Hope! It's me!"

The first thing Hope became aware of was vibrant vegetation around him, colorful flowers as far as the eye could see. The different types of flowers around him were amazing, there was everything from petunias to lilies to daisies, it amazed him how so much could grow in one field. The sky was a bright blue with not a single cloud to blemish the view. How had even gotten here in the first place? Where was this place? He had to bring Lightning here some time.

Wait.

Lightning. Where's Lightning?

Hope's eyes frantically scanned the field, looking for his pink haired lover.

"Hope, calm down, you're in a dream!"

Vanille's voice sounded as cheery as ever as she suddenly appeared next to him, causing him to yelp out in surprise.

"I'm in a dream? Then why are you here? What's going on?" Hope's eyes pleaded her for an answer. Vanille only giggled as she watched Hope's eyes continue to scan the field.

"Yes, silly! You're in a dream that I created to contact you! I have to talk to you about some really important things, mister!" Vanille gave Hope a cheery smile. "And as for Lightning, she's sound asleep, don't you worry!"

Hope heaved a sigh of relief. Lightning was definitely not someone that would need defending, but he definitely wanted to make sure she was okay. Just the thought of losing her sent a shiver down his spine. He had almost lost her once, he definitely wasn't going to go through that again.

"So what's going on Vanille? What did you need to talk about?"

Vanille gave him a sad smile.

"Hope, I needed to show you this…"

Suddenly, Hope found himself being whisked away into a now barren field. The once blue skies were now dark and the scent of blood immediately found its way into his nostrils. He grimaced at the sudden change in environment. The field that was once covered in flowers was now littered in dead bodies, some of which he recognized to be PSICOM soldiers, others looked to be civilians, everything from men to women to children. Others looked to be everything from dead Cie'th to dead Adamantoise to even dead fal'Cie. The most noticeable was the once monstrous fal'Cie, Atlas, now laid on the ground, a massive lifeless heap.

Hope's eyes shot over to Vanille, her smile no longer present on her face. It was replaced with a downtrodden look. Vanille placed her hand on Hope's shoulder and gestured to follow her. Vanille led Hope down a deathly looking path, the question lingered on his tongue, but Vanille beat him to the punch.

"This is Gran Pulse 7 years from now, Hope. It's the future." She explained as they neared a tunnel. The tunnel was damp and dimly lit by torches that glowed an ominous blue flame. The sound of water, or maybe even blood, dripping in the distance only added to the bad feeling Hope had in his gut. The only thing keeping him from losing it was the fact that he knew it was a dream, oddly enough. The location actually seemed very familiar to him, he couldn't quite put his finger on it, but the area's features tugged at his memories slightly.

As they neared the end of the tunnel, a doorway became visible, a faint red glow emitting from beneath cracks of the door. Upon entering, Hope discovered that the source of the red glow was a small stone sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the room.

'That pedestal… That was where that Cie'th's cocoon was!'

The red glow wasn't enough to light up the room entirely, their field of view not much more than a foot in front of them. Vanille paused before turning to him.

"Hope… you need to be strong here, remember that none of this is real…" She said.

They took two steps forward into the room before they noticed someone laying face down on the ground, very much dead and covered in blood. Hope felt the tears well up in his eyes as he realized it was none other than Snow. The bandana that he normally wore over his head was missing and the grey trench coat was now smeared with blood. Hope felt like puking upon noting that his left hand was gone, not wanting to know where it went.

"W…What… No… I…" Hope stammered as he fell to his knees, placing his hands gently on Snow's body. He winced as he felt Vanille place a hand on his shoulder, but looked up to her and nodded. He knew it wasn't real, but his brain was telling him otherwise. Slowly, he stood up and moved past Snow's lifeless body. Vanille and Hope moved slowly through the darkness before coming to yet another corpse. Vanille didn't say a word as she turned her head away from Fang's lifeless body. Her own spear had been used against her, the pool of blood around her was alarming to say the least. Her Glaive was pointed straight up into the air and could be traced into her left lung, effectively pinning her to the ground. The sight was gruesome indeed. Hope had forgotten how to breathe for the longest time as he looked on at his dead friend.

"Vanille… why are you showing me this…?" He nearly choked on his words. She wiped away a single tear as she turned to face him.

"Just wait… keep going…" She said softly, taking his hand and giving it a small squeeze.

Hope almost didn't want to keep going. He had already come across the sight of two of his friends mutilated in ways he never could've imagined. Just the thought of seeing anymore of his friends like that made his stomach wretch. Or even worse yet, seeing Lightning like that. The only thing that kept him moving forward was Vanille, who had taken his hand and was now leading him through the darkness of the room. The only thing he thought to do was close his eyes and let the red-head guide him through the darkness. Vanille stopped and gave his hand a squeeze, letting him know that he could open his eyes. In front of him laid the charred remains of a skeleton, the bones burnt almost completely black. There was absolutely no way to decipher who the poor person was without seeing it happen.

"Hope… This… This is me…" Vanille muttered.

Hope felt the bile in his throat rising as he stared in utter complete shock at the charred skeleton. His eyes widened and he turned away before he began retching the contents of his stomach onto the blood stained floor. Vanille turned to him and gently rubbed circles on his back as he continued his retching, a downtrodden expression on her face. It pained her to no end to see her friend like this, yet she knew in the back of her mind that she had to do this. If she did not, then this dream will become a reality.

Hope finally looked up to the red-head, panting. "Vanille… Who… Who did this…?" He asked quietly.

"Come… Let me show you." She whispered gently, taking his hand once again.

The two continued through the darkness, Hope completely unsure of where he was and where he was going. All he knew was that Vanille was there and that this was all a dream. It was an unnervingly realistic dream that held all of his worst fears in it. Vanille had come to him before in dreams, once, many years ago when he had first come out of crystal stasis, and again, only a year ago, but only briefly. It all seemed so convincing that this could just be another nightmare and that this isn't really the future and that this Vanille in front of him was just a figment generated by the part of him that missed his red-headed friend. But he knew better. He knew better than to be so close minded about such things. Weirder things have happened to him before, such as being turned into a l'Cie at age 14. That all seemed like something that was a nightmare to him. He never woke up from that nightmare if it was one.

Hope came to a halt as he quickly recognized the green pilot suit of Sazh. The dark-skinned man lay on his back, and embedded in his chest were two crystal shards. Hope, panicked, ran over to the pilot and immediately placed his fingers on his neck, checking for a pulse.

"Vanille! He has a pulse! We have to do something!" He motioned for her to come over, but she did not budge.

"Hope… This is all a dream… There's nothing you can do about this… There's nothing I can do about this… It's all inevitable unless you do something about it." She informed him quietly. "Hope, we need to keep moving, I don't have much time left."

Hope, although hesitantly, nodded before getting up from his position next to his friend, whom would eventually die of blood loss. The sounds of their footsteps seemed amplified to Hope, almost to the point that they were deafening. The bitter smell of blood still coated the air and Hope could only do his best to ignore the awful smell. Ahead of them was another small room. The door to it was old and worn away and under it, a brighter light than what they had seen before shone. Vanille gently pushed the door open, revealing what looked like a throne room, but instead of your conventional bright colors such as white and yellow and red, there were darker, more ominous looking colors such as black, blood red, and grey. The room was illuminated to the point where it was actually visible, unlike the other room, where their visibility was cut down to nearly arms length.

Hope and Vanille stepped into the room cautiously and Hope scanned the room looking for anything that Vanille might be trying to show him. Laying face down on the ground to his right was a man with messy silver hair. He wore a uniform similar to Hope's and lodged in his back was a gunblade. It took almost no time at all for Hope to realize that the gunblade was none other than Lightning's Lionheart. It also took almost no time at all to realize that the man laying on the ground with Lightning's Lionheart lodged into him was… well… him. Hope dryheaved at the sight of his own dead body. Why would Lightning's gunblade be lodged into his back? He figured that he would see himself dead already, considering that he had already seen all of his friends, but not like this. The worse still had yet to come for him as he looked to his left now. Laying on the ground, also face down, was a woman with long black hair. Coming out of her back were two large Cie'th like wings, and lodged in between the two wings was none other than his weapon, the Nue. The woman eerily resembled Lightning, her hair almost identical to her, the only difference being that it was black. The uniform she wore was exactly that of Lightning's as well. Hope quickly put two and two together before coming to the conclusion that laying there on the ground was none other than Lightning Farron, and she was dead.

"Vanille… what is this? What happened to Lightning?!" He nearly screamed, grabbing the red-head's shoulders and shaking them. "Why is my boomerang in her back? Why is her gunblade in mine!? What's going on?!" Hope dropped to his knees, head down. "Why is she a Cie'th…?" He murmured. Vanille watched him with pitiful eyes, but still said nothing. She didn't need to, the look on her face said it all for her. It brought her so much pain to see Hope like this. She never would've admitted it, but she did bear some slight feelings toward the silver haired boy during their travels. Slowly, she placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up at her. His emerald eyes were brimming with tears that threatened to fall.

"Hope… This… Was the place of the 'Final battle' if you will… Lightning… She… She had been turned into a Cie'th by means that I don't know of yet… It is possible to stop this, Hope. You just have to put all the pieces together." Vanille told him.

"But… How am I supposed to do that?" Hope's eyes looked pleading, like he was begging her for an answer. Vanille could only giggle at his antics.

"Hope, I'm not sure myself, Fang knows more than I do. Speaking of Fang, tell her I said hi!" She cheerfully said before happily skipping away. Hope's jaw dropped as he watched the red-head. How could she be so cheerful after what she just showed him?

"Vanille! Wait! What is that supposed to mean!"

"Hope!"

Ugh. Not this again.

"Hope, you need to wake up~"

Wait a minute. That isn't Vanille's voice.

Hope's eyes shot open as he quickly sat up in his bed. He rubbed his eyes vigorously in an effort to get rid of the haziness. When he finally re-opened his eyes, he found himself face to face with a pair of worried looking sky-blue eyes. Her pink hair was a disheveled mess, of course, this was to be expected, as it was your typical bed-head.

Lightning.

His wife.

The two had gotten married a few months following the whole incident with Snow and the Gaia Stone, which was about two years ago. It had taken a lot of egging from Snow and Serah to get Hope to propose to the aforementioned, but he finally did. Lightning hated clichés, but when Hope had proposed to her after taking her out on the stereotypical date out to the nicest restaurant in town, then taking her to the park where he'd emotionally propose under the stars, she could help but give him a chuckle, much to his terror. That look of terror was immediately wiped from his face when she had given him the smile that she had reserved for him and only him for the past two years and said yes. Hope and Lightning had sat down and discussed very intensely on whether to call her Claire or Lightning. They had come to the conclusion that he could call her either, as Hope's old habits die hard.

The happy couple didn't waste any time getting settled in. They had agreed that they would live in Hope's much more spacious home. Immediately following that, they refurbished the whole house, or more rather, Lightning had taken it upon herself to refurbish the whole house. New couches, cabinets, appliances, beds, oh did they shop for beds.

They wasted no time breaking in the new bed.

"Hope, are you okay?" Lightning's voice had a hint of worry in it.

Hope looked her in the eyes and gave her a small, but reassuring, smile.

"Yeah, just a bad dream."

Lightning looked at him intently, almost as if she were looking for something.

"You were calling out Vanille's name, Hope."

"Yeah… Vanille was in my dream. She came to me in my dream."

Lightning coyly cuddled up to her husband before looking up at him with a curious look. "She came to you?"

Hope wrapped an arm around her and rested his head on hers. "Yeah, she wanted to talk to me about something really important. She's come to me in a couple of dreams before. Once after I woke up from crystal stasis, and once more after the whole Snow thing, nothing bad ever came of it, though."

He felt Lightning shift in his arms so that she could look up to him. "Then why was this one bad?"

Hope felt a shiver run down his spine. Thinking about the dream alone scared the shit out him.

"Claire… She wanted to warn me about something. Something really, really bad that could happen."

"What was it?"

Hope felt a hitch in his throat as he went to reply. How would she react to hearing this? She'd probably just think he's crazy or been working too much or something.

"Well… Ummm… Everything was dead, Claire… And… We were all there… Snow, Sazh, Fang, Vanille, Me… You… We were all dead…" Lightning opened her mouth to speak, but Hope quickly silenced her with his finger. "Claire… You were a Cie'th." Lightning's mouth remained open, but nothing came out. "She showed me the future… Or at least what she said was the future. Seven years from now. She also said something that has me really confused…"

Lightning still said nothing, but gave him a look that said 'Well, what is it? Spit it out!'

"Vanille said something about saying hi to Fang or something along those lines… Then she left."

Lightning remained silent, obviously thinking about the words Vanille had said to her husband.

"Maybe she's going to come to you in a dream?" Lightning suggested.

Hope shook his head. "Maker, I hope not. I really don't need to be having another one of those deranged, demented dreams." Hope gave a wry chuckle, hugging Lightning close to him.

Hope was slightly surprised when Lightning pushed herself away from him. She scowled at the silver haired man briefly, leaving him with a both worried and curious look on his face.

"Hope Estheim, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not going anywhere, mister." Her voice was stern, yet playful and the question was rhetorical. Hope smiled and gave her a peck on the lips.

"I'm the luckiest man on the face of Pulse right now."

Lightning smirked. "That's right, and don't you dare forget it."

The next thing that was to be broken in was going to be the couch.