Abyssus
Summary: Three years post game. The heroes are all living separate lives on Pulse after the destruction of Orphan and the crystallisation of Cocoon, but when a massive explosion decimates over a hundred square miles of Gran Pulse with no explanation, the survivors are determined to find each other again, and discover the source of the new threat to the world. Fang x Vanille, eventual Snow x Hope. The POV will range between these four, for the most part.
Warnings: Yuri and Yaoi. If that offends you, don't read this. I don't need flames from people just because I happen to be a fan of these pairing. Constructive criticism is lovely and appreciated, however! Contains character death. Lots of it. Violence, blood, torture. Again, if that isn't your cup of tea...well, don't read it!
AUTHOR'S NOTE. This fic's central romance, Snow x Hope, will be a slow-burner, and the story starts out with some heavy Snow x Serah. (Sorry to anyone who hates her – I happen not to)
So, for those who like to jump right into a pairing, this one isn't for you. However, if you like a more realistic approach to love and romance...read on! :)
...
Chapter One – Burn
The constant noise of heavy machinery operating outside the window was becoming something of an irritation. Snow and Serah Villiers already had enough trouble getting little Nora to go to sleep, without this added racket. It seemed that every time the tiny baby finally dropped off, much to her young parents' exhausted relief, something would crash loudly at the latest construction site just down the road, and off she would go again, wailing in her crib and demanding attention. This would prompt long suffering sighs, and then a quick but fairly amicable argument as to who would go up and fuss her. Snow scowled out of the window, shutting it with a grunt of disapproval. Carting a quiet but very much awake Nora in one hand, and a half drunk glass of water in the other, he had to use his elbow, and ended up bashing it on the sill. He held back his curse, knowing Serah's infamous 'don't swear in front of the baby' lecture by rote, and having no wish to hear it again. She watched him, smiling, from the other side of the room, and he winked at her.
"Why don't you put the glass down?" She chuckled, walking the few steps across the room and relieving him of his handful of baby, cooing over the little girl with the mop of shaggy blonde hair that came straight from her father, and her bright blue eyes that belonged to her mother.
"Ah, because that would require the common sense I don't possess!" Snow laughed, leaning down to kiss her gently. "I wish they'd stop at a reasonable hour, though...I'm all for rebuilding Oerba, but sometimes, a quiet evening would be nice!" His beautiful wife's face crinkled into that gorgeous smile he'd fallen in love with, and she sighed. "It will all be finished, soon." She said softly. "I'd rather have a nice, fully functioning place for her to grow up in, than a half finished ruin of a settlement."
"True." Snow conceded. "Oh. Your sister called earlier. She said she was going to be away for a few days with a few new recruits, but that she'd be back in time for your twenty-first." He fluffed his wife's loose, slightly curly hair, ignoring her snort of annoyance and swat to the head. Lightning, who still insisted she go by that name, and not her given one, had joined the new branch of the army that had formed after the crystallisation of Cocoon, deciding that she was a born soldier, and that the lifestyle was the only one she could ever see herself leading. Thinking about Lightning led his thoughts to their other friends who'd fought so hard three years ago. Sazh and Dajh, now living just a few streets away from them, had settled into family life again, and during the day while Sazh, ever the technical genius, lent a hand with construction of the new city in Oerba, Dajh often came over to stay with them in their apartment. He and Serah got on like a house on fire, and the little boy was always fussing over Nora. He knew that Vanille and Fang still lay together, crystallised along with Cocoon, and the team often visited the site to reflect on their sacrifice and catch up with each other. Hope and his father had settled in Vallis Media, in a new town that was springing up among the deep wadis and canyons that framed the place.
Sometimes he found himself missing them. Missing the adventure he'd shared with them. He remembered telling Hope that his dream had been to settle down with Serah and have a family, and now he was there...it just felt a little empty. He missed the action, and being a body-for-hire just wasn't up to par with his previous lifestyle. However, it just took one glance over his shoulder at his wife and their daughter for the doubts to vanish. Serah was fussing Nora, and the little girl was giggling, fingers buried in his wife's long, dusty pink hair. He downed the rest of his water, having forgotten about it up until now, taking the empty glass out into the little kitchen and washing it up. He vaguely heard Serah putting Nora to bed, and hoped that the construction site, where the work continued long into the night hours, would be quiet long enough for the little girl to get some sleep. He idly did the rest of the dinner dishes, privately enjoying the domestic activity, despite his constant complaining about boring chores.
When he had finished, he returned to the living room window, staring out at Oerba with a slight smile. There were already several thousand people living comfortable lives here, and despite the fact that Pulse was still full of monsters, Cie'th and wild animals, the army was there to look after the people and ensure their lives were as safe as possible. He glanced down at the street, several floors below. It looked nothing like his home in Cocoon had, and for that, he supposed he was glad. Though he sometimes missed it, it was a reminder of everything they'd lost, and besides...he and Serah had a new life, here. He sighed, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the glass. The soft fabric of the curtains brushed against his face as his arm moved to rest against the wall next to the glass pane. This was how his wife found him several minutes later.
"She's sleeping." Her slender arms wound around him, and squeezed a little. Her hands were so small and dainty. "Hopefully she'll stay that way."
Snow nodded his agreement, moving over to the long couch, taking his wife with him. They lay curled together, flicking on the television. The only thing the current channel broadcast was news, the people of Oerba had not gone further than a news channel, yet, having more important things to do, and seeing no point in providing entertainment until everyone in the city was comfortable. He yawned, laying his head back against the couch, wriggling until he was comfotable. There was very little interesting going on in Pulse, at the moment. There never really was, which was good, it meant his life was kept fairly simple. It felt all too easy to simply drop off to sleep, his lover at his side.
He was woken again by a loud, echoing boom, followed by rumbles. "Wha..." It was a sound unlike any he'd ever heard before, and he blinked, sitting up. He forgot he wasn't in bed, rolling off the couch. Seconds later, Serah landed on top of him with a cry of surprise. Nora, from her nursery, began to wail loudly. "What was that?" Serah asked, eyes alight with anxiety. The rumbles were still ongoing, and a picture of the two of them on their wedding day fell off the mantelpiece. "Go see to Nora, I'll go take a look outside."
"Be careful..." She whispered, disappearing to calm their daughter. Snow stood slowly, unsteady on his feet. The glass in the windows was rattling, and the floor beneath him didn't feel particularly solid. He moved over to the window, throwing it open to look outside. The rumbling grew louder as he did. "What the..." Behind him, he could hear his wife murmuring to Nora, but he found he couldn't look away from what he could see out of the window. A bright white light flared in the distance, searing through the darkness and arching up into the sky. Below him, people were pouring onto the street, some crying out in fear, others standing, slack-jawed, pointing at the light. The rumbling grew louder still, and a feeling of foreboding crept up Snow's spine. He caught the eye of his next door neighbour, also leaning out of his window, then blinked and looked back at the eerie white light.
Abruptly, it exploded.
Snow could feel the air constricting around him as he cried out, flung away from the window seconds before a huge ball of flame rocketed through Oerba. The whole building groaned and creaked as the windows smashed, showering him with glass. He toppled into the wall, smashing his head, hard. He grunted. "S...Serah!" He cried, falling to the ground as the whole block of flats tilted forward and the front wall crumbled. A wave of heat slammed into him, and he let out a hoarse scream, sliding across the now almost forty-five degree floor. His head slammed once more into something solid, and he dimly registered a table leg in front of his eyes before his vision went black.
...
Hope listened from the doorway as his father talked business with one of his clients. The blonde man glanced up, and smiled a slight half smile in his direction before turning back to the other person in the room. The silver haired teenager hummed, moving off towards his bedroom. He lived in a fairly small dugout home set deep in the wall of one of the many canyons that made up Vallis Media, and as such, they used a large amount of false light in the back rooms. Luckily for him, his room had a view. High, thin rectangular windows gave him a panoramic outlook of the surrounding area, the natural beauty of the canyon made even more impressive by the feats of engineering that comprised the construction of Vallis – the newest city on Pulse, if his father had anything to say about it. He'd taken on development, and Hope had been surprised by the flair he showed when designing the project. The people who'd moved here were keen to help, and threw in their expertise wherever they could. There was a road that linked several of the other settlements together, and eventually, he knew, it reached Oerba, where most of his old friends had settled. What had taken them weeks to hike across now took barely half a day with a fast vehicle, and was mere hours in flight time. It was slightly annoying, knowing how long they'd meandered across the wilderness, scrapping with whatever monster had gotten in their way.
That he missed his old friends wasn't to say he hadn't gotten himself a decent group here. There was a rudimentary schooling system in operation, and his dad had sent him there, something the boy hadn't been overly impressed with. However, he'd found it easy to be around people his own age, although occasionally, exposed to the natures of the teenaged boys he encountered, he was embarrassed as he recalled what an idiot he must have come across to the older l'Cie three years previously.
He sat on the windowsill, staring out across the canyon. It was dusk, and the sky was streaked with gold and red. People still moved about on the street below him, and he watched them move between the large white stanchions that held up the parts of the buildings that jutted out away from the canyon walls. Vallis was a beautiful city, all glass and white marble, excavated from a nearby quarry. It had taken less than three years to build up, and they'd just moved into his current home, it having been completed just days before Hope's seventeenth birthday. He was proud of Vallis, as was his dad. He let out a sigh, watching the sun set, and wondering what the others were up to. He'd seen them all a few months previously, when they'd gone to visit the Cocoon crystal. They'd chosen it as a meeting place, of sorts, to honour Vanille and Fang. He rested his forehead against the window, thinking of Vanille, and how much they'd both changed on their flight from the fal'Cie and the Sanctum. He remembered their first meeting, and chuckled a little, embarrassed even now at how pathetic he'd seemed when she chose to take Snow's last gun and promised to protect him. Yes, they'd both changed, so much. And now she was crystallised deep in the core of Cocoon, along with Fang.
A rumble echoed through the valley. Hope didn't even flinch, he was used to this – Vallis sat atop a fault line, and little earthquakes were common. They never did damage, and weren't a serious threat. It was the shouting and screaming that got his attention. He frowned, glancing out of the window again. The people on the streets were pointing and screaming. Some had turned, and were beginning to run. "What...?" Hope craned his neck, trying to see. Through the encroaching darkness, a bright light was visible on the horizon, towards Oerba. "What is that?" He took a few steps backwards as more rumbles thundered through the valley. He threw open his window to call down to his dad, who'd gone outside when the screaming had started. "Dad?"
"Stay inside, Hope!" the man called back, quickly disappearing into the crowd. The silver haired boy leant out of the window, staring at the bright arc of light filling the sky in the distance. He felt somehow captivated by it, as though he couldn't tear his eyes away. The rumbles got more intense as the seconds ticked by, and one particularly vicious tremor flung him to the floor. These were not caused by deep earthquakes. He scrambled back onto his feet, horror gripping him when several stanchions holding up one of the buildings across the canyon broke, the building cracking and sliding several feet down the cliff. He could hear the supports under his very feet groaning as the ground shook beneath them. He gasped, staggering as the building swayed crazily, finally taking his eyes off the bright white light.
The second he did so, it exploded, and seconds later, a brutal shockwave ripped through Vallis, the metal stanchions attaching his home to the canyon wall tearing under the strain. He let out a gasp, and then a terrified cry as the whole place crumbled around him. He could feel the floor drop away from under his feet, and then, he was falling. The next few seconds were a blur, as heat flared all around him as he tumbled with the building. He could hear screaming, his shoulder slammed into something hard, and he cried out again, trying to grab onto something – anything – to stop his fall.
Darkness, as all the lights in the area went out. He could faintly hear something burning, and still, people screamed. Then, his fall was broken, finally, and his entire being exploded with pain. He screamed, shock permeating his system. He felt light headed, all of a sudden, and tried to call for his dad. Instead of words, a metallic tang filled his mouth, and he choked, spitting a mouthful of blood up, and only just turning his head to the side in time for it to land on the ground beside him and not on his face. After several minutes of just lying there, stricken, the pain began to centre around his stomach, and he forced his eyes open. Through a reddish haze he wasn't sure belonged to his own sight, or the post-explosive atmosphere, he could just make out a thick sliver of metal sticking up out of his stomach. It took several seconds to process this, before the horror of the reality struck him, and he realised he'd fallen on part of the broken stanchion.
He gripped the piece of metal, but there was at least a foot of it sticking up out of his stomach, and his body was in no position to attempt to manoeuvre him off it. He lay there in a daze for a long time, hazily aware that the screams were dying and fading. Finally, after what seemed like hours, all was silent around him. It felt a little desolate, and Hope's head was even more fuzzy, now. He was dimly aware that he was in pain, although it was slowly going numb. Not even when he'd been a l'Cie did he think he'd felt like this. Flashes of memory filtered through his numb mind, as he remembered some of the trials he and his friends had faced when they were l'Cie. He remembered first coming to Gran Pulse, and having a moment of despair when they were lost. Not even that matched the sudden hopelessness he felt now. Eventually, and almost gratefully, he lost consciousness.
...
Sobbing. That was the first thing he heard. Snow groaned, vision swimming in and out of focus. He tried to roll onto his side, and then he felt pain, white hot, shooting up his left side. A startled cry and a frustrated grunt later, he hauled himself up, staggering. The sobbing he could hear was coming from a woman, knelt on the floor a little way to his left. His first instinct was to go to her, but he'd hardly taken two steps when he caught sight of the apartment block he'd previously called his home. His heart shattered right there. It was a mess of twisted metal and rubble, and flames still licked at the sides of it. Apart from the sobbing woman, he couldn't see anyone. "Serah! SERAH!" He cried, running to the huge pile of rubble.
He assumed he'd been flung from the building when the wall had been ripped off, and thus had not been inside when the place had crumbled. But Serah, and the baby...they'd been in the nursery, the back room...
"SERAH!" He began to scramble over the rubble, not even sure which pile was which part of the block. He began to tug at big boulders and pieces of metal, slicing his hands to pieces. He ignored the searing pain in his left side as he frantically yanked at the pieces of his former home. "Serah!" His cries became more and more frantic. "No, Serah! Serah!" He dropped to his knees, slicing them both open, and buried his face in his bloody hands. How could she and Nora have survived that? How could anyone survive that? He had been lucky, he'd been thrown clear of the crumbling building. He ignored the smudges of blood on his face as he stood shakily, looking around him.
Then he saw them. Bodies. Hundreds of them, mangled limbs sticking up out of the twisted wreckage, which was not limited to his own apartment block. The whole of the newly built city was flattened, and burning. Smoke rose from the wreckage, straight up; there was no wind. Almost none of the bodies were recognisable as human, just twisted hunks of flesh poking out between the metal struts and brickwork. And the blood. There were splashes of it everywhere, great pools gathering under those poor smashed people who'd fallen too far to have survived. The smell of iron and death filled his nostrils as though he'd only just noticed it, and there was an eerie sort of calm, and silence, save for the continued soft sobbing of the survivor behind him, and the sound of his own laboured, panting breaths. "Oh...shit..." He couldn't help it, he fell to his knees again and threw up, a mixture of blood and bile, and whatever he'd eaten for dinner. He couldn't even remember. Tears and smoke-soot stained his face as he began to sob, anguish taking hold as images continued to flash through his head. Images of his beautiful wife, and their tiny little daughter. He vomited again, whole body trembling. He'd lost them. He'd lost her. Again. And for sure, this time. This time, there was not a shred of hope that she'd made it out. She'd never have even had time, it had happened so suddenly. He howled with pain and anguish, collapsing in the heap of rubble, anger and pain, numbness and shock taking hold.
He'd lost her.
...
Well, there you have it, chapter one! :D
Now you can see why this romance will be a slow-burner. Snow was pretty obviously still in love with Serah when she died, and the first part of the story will explore how he copes with it, having now lost her for good. Don't worry, though. I'm a Snow x Hope fan through and through.
I've never written Final Fantasy fanfiction I've published before...not even for 7 or 9, which I loved. So...congratulations, 13, you've inspired me with your pretty bishies and kick ass characters!
Next time: Snow snaps out of his misery and decides to tackle the onset of hopeless depression by trying to find out if his old gang are still alive.