[Hold Onto Hope]
SPOILERS: FFXIII-2 FULL BASIC STORYLINE
It was over.
The world had ended and nothing made sense anymore.
Yesterday, they had buried Serah. It had been impossible to cry. It wouldn't have mattered, even if it meant something.
Pulse had been saved, because of her.
What hope was there for the future now? Without her?
Vanille and Fang were silent in their crystal stasis, suspended in their eternal sleep. He had saved their bodies, but their minds were still locked inside that shimmering capsule of silver and blue shades. Offering no clues about how to wake them.
Snow and Lightning had never turned up.
Noel was at wits' end.
It was as if what was killing the world wasn't the chaos surrounding them, but the loss of all those dreams.
Lacking the brighter future they'd imagined, people were lost, confused.
Hope was no exception. Only, he had a purpose.
When the world ended for everyone else, he saw the fatigue, the pain and the frustration with the eyes of a man who had been there. As one who had been a leader to his people despite tender years.
If this was the end of time, then so be it.
He couldn't give up, not here and not now. He wouldn't allow it to be the end of humanity.
He'd enlisted Noel's help in leading scouting parties into the wilds of Pulse, looking for places to set up new settlements. Sazh was on the job, too, and despite the heavy burden on them both they could connect in their grief.
He had collaborated with every branch of the Academy to keep their hopes up when their nightmares grew darker and their minds more frail.
He couldn't give up, or the world truly would end.
All that they had fought for... Serah had known what her fate might be, she wouldn't want her sacrifice to be in vain.
Not that any of them would have wanted that sacrifice to be necessary, but she had at least made it knowingly. Now, all they had to do was walk in her footsteps.
Protect the future, whatever the cost.
The lights of New Cocoon, where it hung suspended above him, sheltering the shivering life of the entire human race... it was a glimmer of hope within his chest.
Through the darkness, those lights flickered.
Despite their loss.
Hope would stand true to their memory. He had done everything in his power, to stop this terrible ending.
And he would not stop now.