Disclaimer: Lightning Returns does not belong to me. Lyrics are from "Only If For a Night" by Florence + The Machine.

Author's Note: This turned out… weird. I wanted to make it more fluid, but then I got to thinking about Hope's soul being almost completely severed from his body and since it's somewhat from his perspective, the choppiness just took over. This doesn't really have a conventional finale – it's more like a drabble, I think. The idea for this story was just a random one that came to me and I wanted to explore it so… Read and review?

phantasmagoria

(it was all so strange
and so surreal
that a ghost should be
so practical)

o

In the darkness that is the Chaos, there is no one but him. He floats in it, having given up finding a way out long ago.

Perhaps, he reflects, it is because unlike the souls of the dead, he has a body that is still alive – in his circumstance, however, the body he has is barely tethered to its proper soul and is instead being controlled by God. It is a very unfortunate predicament, being able to see and hear all that his body experiences but being unable to interact with it. He has learned to settle down within the darkness, close his eyes (his soul seems to have eyes, so ergo it must have some sort of body; how very strange – or perhaps his ethereal brain cannot rationalize being without a body and so has created a false sense of one for him) and focus on the sound of Lightning's voice.

His (pretend) heart beats painfully at the thought of her – when he dreamed of seeing her again during his time of living, he certainly did not plan it out to be like this. Momentarily he feels jealous of his mortal body, which is able to touch her and see her and speak with her with that blasted fourteen year old voice he was once so happy to have outgrown. Hope would take being a kid in Lightning's presence again over eavesdropping on God's conversations with her at anytime.

His erratic pace of thought (side effect of being not quite dead, not quite alive, he has decided) comes to a halt. There is a flash of pink in the distance.

"Lightning?" The word slides out of his mouth instinctively, and at the back of his mind he wonders how long it has been since he has talked to the abyss. He thinks he remembers screaming and cursing when he first found himself locked in and all alone, but when you are a soul, time is such a strange concept, the fluidity of it slipping through your fingers. Until Lightning awoke and the end of the world began, he had no way of keeping measure of how long he'd been here.

The flash of pink disappears. He wonders if he imagined it – until he hears the giggle.

(He must be going crazy at last, loneliness can do that to people—)

Lightning does not giggle, but the small speck of pink in the distance (what distance? Can an abyss even be measured? his brain runs away without him) and the giggle seem familiar. He hesitates.

"Serah?" He tries again, the name voiced with less hope than before. The giggle moves closer to him.

There's a flash of light in the darkness and a girl stands where there was previously none, pink hair and blue eyes so reminiscent of the Farron sisters. "Nope, not quite, sorry," she says, drawing out the last word in a sing song voice. She does not look very sorry, bouncing towards him with her hands clasped behind her back and lips quirked into a mischievous smile. Hope tries to back away with his make belief body and not let the shock of seeing someone here with him send him over the edge.

"My, my," the girl exclaims, pacing circles around him. "So this is where you have been hiding, Mr. Hope Estheim. I have to say, it took quite a while to find you. You couldn't have made yourself home in the proper Chaos like the others, could you? Finding you would have been so much easier like that."

He is still reeling from seeing the familiar combination of pink and blue and the slope of her nose and the curve of her lips – younger than Lightning and Serah ever were (in his presence) but familiar none the less. "Who are you?" He asks, half certain that she is a figment of his imagination, or Bhunivelze has decided to torment him, or he is finally losing it.

The girl wags one finger. "Ah ah, I'm not telling. But we have met before, Mr. Hope Estheim. I know you very well." Her voice turns as taunting as her smile, eyes narrowing as she leans in to examine him. She is below his sight of vision, in this proper body his soul has conjured up for him. She peers up at him through her eyelashes.

(the blue of her eyes does funny things to his heart)

"I was there to hear you beg for Lightning to return every day, did you know that?" The girl mocks, pink wisps of hair falling down her cheeks. "Back when the Savior was all crystal and ice upon her abandoned throne, and you would come visit and fall to your knees at the sight of her and beg—" She imitates him, her prepubescent voice not quite hitting the deeper notes, "Please, Lightning, we need you here. I need you. Come back. Come back. Please."

She trails off, watching him. He remembers those days and wishes he doesn't; it had taken time for the land around Etro's Temple to erode away and be eventually sealed off by an unknown force. He had been a frequent visitor to the abandoned temple before then.

"Poor Hope," comes out the whisper and a giggle, laced with false pity and sympathy. "Everyone he had ever cared about had left him, and once again he was all alone. Left behind. Serah was dead. Sazh had disappeared and taken his son with him. Noel and Snow didn't even last together with you to figure out how to stem all this Chaos. Vanille and Fang were still crystal, and the best part? So was Lightning. Again. And this time she wasn't waking up!"

A moment passes, and she laughs at his silence. "Well, Hope Estheim? Am I right, or am I right?"

He feels like gritting his teeth – he does not know if he has any proper ones to grind. "I'll ask you again – who are you? Did Bhunivelze send you?"

"Bhunivelze?" The pink haired girl scoffs at the name, her lips curling with disgust. "Please. You're asking the wrong question, Hope! Maybe we should go back to me doing that, hmmm?" She reaches out with one hand and he feels the faint sensation of her fingertips trailing down the side of his face. "Are you even still sane in that pretty head of yours? The Chaos does funny things to people's souls, you know, and you've been here all alone, all this time! How many years has it been now? And you're not even properly dead…" She grips his chin with surprising strength, her nails digging into the soft underside of his jaw.

"Poor little Hope," she says again, more quietly, eyes alight with malice. "Lightning promised to watch over you, but what did she do instead? She up and disappeared and turned into crystal and left you all by your lonesome to figure out what the hell was happening to the world. Did you ever blame her in all those years of toiling away, Hope? Did you ever hate her?"

"I would never do that," he manages to say past the harsh grip she has on him, his eyes glaring down at her (achingly familiar) face. She merely laughs in response, jumping back to peer at him from a distance.

"No, of course you wouldn't," she exclaims, rocking back on her heels. "You spent several hundred years trying to find a way to save her! Tell me, Hope, did you ever love her?" Her grin turns leering, her eyes focused entirely on him. "I bet you did! You probably loved her all that time while she abandoned you and left you all by yourself! It is probably driving you absolutely insane to see Bhunivelze using your body to get friendly with her, trying to pretend to be you! She has finally stopped treating you like a little kid, and you're not even in your own body to enjoy it! She probably doesn't even realize that she's not talking to the real Hope Estheim, but a fake. And I bet you continue to love her, even right now—"

"I do love her!" He finally bursts, stalking forward to grip the small girl's shoulders with hands he didn't know he had. He brings their faces close enough for him to make out the specks of silver in her irises, the length of her eyelashes. His hands on her skin tighten enough to know that he is bruising her, but the smile present on her face remains, unflinching. "I have loved her all this time! Ever since we were l'Cie! And it does drive me insane to watch him control my body, pretending to be me and lying to Light straight through my own teeth! I have loved her for the past one thousand years and who are you to question—"

"Good," the word slips out quietly from the girl below him, the mocking smile on her face turning softer. It interrupts his tirade and he stares down at her, confused – she takes this moment to remove his hands from her shoulders, dusting herself off before stepping away. She tilts her head to one side, face vaguely amused.

"Now, that wasn't so hard to say, was it?" She asks, giggling when he continues to stare at her in shock. "Lightning will need that, you know. To find herself. Bhunivelze took something from her and soon she'll be ready to find it again. But she's going to need you for it." He remains silent for several long moments; she sighs, her lower lip jutting out in a pout. "Really, for someone who is supposed to be so bright, you sure are difficult sometimes."

A strange light begins to surround her, portions of her limbs beginning to disappear back into the darkness. Hope watches her fade, rooted to the spot he stands in.

"Wait!" He finally calls out, reaching out one hand towards her. "Who are you!"

The girl laughs, the darkness erasing her from existence as if she was never there to begin with. "We won't meet again, Hope Estheim," she responds smilingly at him, one severed hand waving in a mock goodbye. "Just remember everything you just told me and everything will be a-okay!"

She disappears, and the echo of her laughter is the only thing that remains. Hope is left alone once again, staring deep into the abyss. His own voice echoes back to him – "I do love her!". The girl's mocking laughter follows, setting his teeth on edge.

He squares his shoulders and glares out into the darkness. I love her and I'm done giving up, he directs somewhere to where he imagines Bhunivelze rests, biding his time. Just watch me.

Hope starts walking.