Trigger warning: Suicide. (It's an Inception crossover – of course it involves suicide.)
When Hope opened the door to his and Lightning's hotel room, the first thing he noticed was the open balcony door. He frowned, putting down a bouquet of red roses on the hallway table. It wasn't like Lightning to leave doors open, especially not in the middle of the winter. Telling him to meet her at the hotel wasn't like her either; they usually did everything together during their weekend trips around the world. She'd suddenly told him she'd had some errands to run, and Hope still hadn't figured out what those errands could possibly be. He'd had to stroll around aimlessly in Stockholm for a few hours and had quickly realized that there wasn't much to do in Stockholm during the winter. In the end, he'd just grabbed the flowers from a shop near the hotel and headed back to their room, hoping she'd be back sooner rather than later.
He looked around the simple hotel room, but couldn't find anything indicating that she'd even set foot in there at all – nothing except for that suspicious, open door.
"Light?" he called, walking towards it. "What are you doing out there?"
He took a step out on the balcony, and found to his great surprise that it was empty. "Light?"
"Hope."
Hope followed the sound of her voice and found her sitting on the railing of another balcony right across the one he was standing on. "Light? What are you doing?" he asked, getting a bad feeling in his gut.
Lightning didn't answer. Her legs were dangling freely over the edge of the balcony, her eyes fixed on the ground far, far below them. Even though there were just a few meters between them Hope felt like she could just as well have been miles away, the gap between the balconies forming an impassable barrier.
With a small nudge of her toes, she let one of her black, high-heeled pumps slip of her foot. They both watched it fall through the air and hit the pavement several seconds later.
"Light…" Hope breathed, staring at her in awe.
"It's not real, you know," she said, looking at the fallen shoe. "None of this is."
"Of course it's real. Please, go back inside. It's cold. You'll get sick," Hope said, panic growing in his chest. He'd seen that look in her eyes before; the look she'd sometimes get while holding something sharp in her hands or while walking over high bridges.
"That's just what he wants us to think. He's playing with us, Hope. We need to get out of here. We need to wake up, and this is the only way."
"We defeated Bhunivelze. This is our world now, Light. It's real. Serah is real. They're all real. We saved them! Please go back inside," Hope begged, helplessly watching as Lightning shed her other shoe.
"They aren't real either. Can't you tell there's something missing in them? The Vanille of this world doesn't smile as brightly as the real Vanille does. This world's Fang lacks sarcasm, and this world's Snow lacks stubbornness. And Serah… It's not her. That person is not my sister." Lightning finally looked up from the ground and met his gaze, her eyes full of determination. "They're all just bland, heartless copies created by a bland, heartless god."
Hope had heard this theory many times before, but this night, something was different. Before, there had always been some doubt in her eyes, some insecurity in her voice. This night, she spoke with absolute certainty.
"What happened? What changed? I thought we had moved past this. I thought you were happy! Please, don't do this to me. Please, Light, just go back inside." She set this whole thing up, he realized, looking back on their afternoon. To make sure I couldn't stop her.
"She called me Claire, Hope," Lightning said calmly. "On the phone. The real Serah would never call me Claire."
"Maybe it was a mistake?" Hope tried. "An accident?"
His brain was desperately trying to come up with a way to get to her, but the gap separating them was just too wide. To get to her balcony, he would have to take the elevator down to the ground floor, run over to the other building and then take the elevator back up again. He wouldn't make it there in time.
"I'm asking you to take a leap of faith," Lightning said, a sad smile playing on her lips. "It's like waiting for a train – a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't know for sure. Yet it doesn't matter…" She paused, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
"… because we'll be together," Hope breathed, finishing her sentence.
Lightning smiled again. "I'll see you when we wake up," she said, and then she jumped.
Hope cried out in despair, a guttural howl of pain. He watched her fall, every millisecond bringing her further away from him and closer to the ground.
He didn't believe her. He couldn't. He was certain that this world was in fact the real one, and was just as certain that if they died, they would stay dead. Yet still, he climbed over the balcony railing and threw himself after her. He trusted her, more than he'd ever trusted anyone. It was just like she said; it was like waiting for a train. Even though he was fairly certain of its destination, he didn't know for sure. Of course he'd follow her, even if it meant dying with her.
He could hear her body hit the ground, and knew he only had seconds left in this world. We'll be together, he thought, and hoped.