Becoming Etro's Knight had required separating herself from the world.

It seemed so long ago. Fresh off their terrifying, backbreaking journey as L'Cie, she hadn't been ready to submit again to the whims of an uncaring god. But as it was with gods, they hadn't given her a choice. And in Valhalla, a world beyond time, the memories faded faster than they should have.

Hope and Vanille, singing Pulsian folk songs around their campfires on the Archylte Steppe. Sazh, delicately holding a freshly killed creature by the foot as Snow looked on; both had been united by their mutual disgust at the idea of consuming Pulsian wildlife. Fang had offered only a sardonic smirk as she tossed a knife end over end, offering to show them how to skin it.

All the small moments, the tiny joys that were theirs even in a world that wanted them extinct – they faded from her memories like flour sifted through a sieve.

She had felt it. She had come to terms with it.

So when Lightning opened her eyes, the view before her should not have felt so much like a punch to the gut.

The sky was a brilliant blue. The cool breeze whisked across her face, nothing like the irregular, painful gusts generated by the eddies of Chaos. A grassy plain stretched as far as the eye could see, craggy ridges of rock rising in the distance. Long, waving grass tickled her calves.

She had been on Nova Chrysalis. She had been preparing for transportation back to the Ark when Hope had asked her that inexplicable, damning question —

Hey, Light? When Vanille saves the souls of the dead, what will happen to me?

Lightning looked up.

On Nova Chrysalia's clearer days, it was possible to distantly see the silhouette of the Ark, high up in the clouds. This time as she gazed upwards, Lightning suddenly found it very difficult to breathe.

What —

The Ark wasn't floating in the sky. Instead, Cocoon hung there, as pristine and beautiful as if its collapse had never imbalanced the world.

This was Gran Pulse as it had appeared a thousand years ago. This was the past, and for the first time since Lightning had awoken, her chest felt like it was about to tear apart.

It didn't make sense. It wasn't possible.

It looked just like she remembered.

"This is a dream, you know."

Lightning spun around, and a man with silver hair straightened from where he had been knelt in the grass. His voice was deeper, rougher than he remembered. He was bigger and broader and dressed in a stiff uniform. She still recognized him.

"You grew taller than me," was all Lightning could think of to say. Twenty-seven-year-old Hope blinked in confusion, obviously not expecting the comment, then chuckled into his palm. "It's been a thousand years. I had to get my growth spurt sometime."

It felt wrong, somehow. She had been gone for centuries; it was only logical for the world to move on without her.

And it had. The Academy, the sweeping metropolis of 500 AF – everything had changed, and Lightning had watched it go by with the distant acceptance necessary to fulfilling her role as Etro's champion. In Nova Chrysalis, age didn't matter anymore. Even the youngest children had seen entire lifetimes unfold before them.

But seeing Hope grown up, rough stubble on his chin, tall enough to rest his head on top of hers – somehow that was crossing the line.

Not to mention that when she had last seen him, he had been a child.

She had so many questions. The only one that came out was, "How are you this age?"

What did you mean about your soul? What are we doing here? Why do you seem so different and yet so familiar?

Hope shrugged, but she saw the way his shoulders tightened and a shadow fell across his face. Don't press, it said. "Like I said, this is a dream. It's part of what I came to talk to you about. But… not now." He looks away, out across the Yaschas Massif. "Do you remember when we were journeying as L'Cie? Before Cocoon fell."

"How could I not?"

He grinned wryly. "I was terrified. I thought we were all going to die anyways, but the only thing we could do was keep pushing forward. It was all of you that gave me all that strength. You guys were relentless, you know?"

Lightning snorted. "All thanks to Snow, I suppose. He was the one itching to go be a hero. Dragged the rest of us with him." She remembered that single-minded focus she had once had, before Hope had made her reconsider her revenge against the Sanctum.

Guess they were walking down memory lane, then.

The wealth of thoughts that entailed was not particularly pleasant. Instead, seeking a distraction, Lightning motioned to the flower Hope was absentmindedly twirling between two fingers. "Is that an Oerban lily?"

Hope's smile was fond. "Yeah. Vanille and Fang were always talking about how Oerba used to be covered in flowers. After the Fall, the weather warmed, and the flowers began coming back. I used to keep them in a vase on my desk."

"You've explored Nova Chrysalis thoroughly, though. Oerba just doesn't exist anymore."

Another casualty of the clashing timelines.

"Was there anything we could have done differently?" Lightning murmured. From Valhalla, one could access all of time. She had seen all the possibilities. She had tried her best to avoid catastrophe. "I thought we did – I thought I did everything I could." Uncertainty was a bitter taste in her mouth.

And yet here they were. Serah was dead. The world was ending, destabilized by the merging of Valhalla with Gran Pulse. For all her efforts, they had fallen into the worst timeline.

She still wasn't sure how it had all gone so abruptly wrong.

"I did my best as Director," Hope said, and Lightning realized that if anyone could understand, it was Hope. Hope who had struggled alone in a different way, who had reached towards salvation even as the world had collapsed around him and his loved ones had disappeared. For all he had been through, Hope's eyes were still kind. "I thought I could change the world. There's not much use thinking about it now."

He kicked idly at the grass with one boot. "I'm just glad I could see you again — here at the very end."

"You almost sound like you're leaving."

Hope's smile stayed. His eyes shuttered. "You catch on quick."

The wind picked up, eddies of a playful breeze spiraling into something more threatening. The world around them darkened as if a shadow was passing over them. Hope's smile seemed to fracture at the edges.

And then she realized it wasn't just his smile. Hope himself seemed to be disintegrating, the edges of his silhouette dissipating into the breeze like spectral dust.

Lightning blinked, and fourteen-year-old Hope stood in place of his adult counterpart, a thousand years of sadness shining from behind a too-old gaze.

"The thirteen days are through," Hope said, "And God doesn't need me anymore."

Around them, Gran Pulse writhed and bubbled like lava, black mist slowly eating away at the landscape around them. It was as if Hope's presence had kept the nightmares away, and now that his influence had gone, the monsters were creeping in.

Lightning's fists clenched and unclenched. She couldn't seem to keep them still. "Was everything a lie, then? From the moment I woke up-"

"Bhunivelze needed a puppet." Hope's voice was flat. "He thought the leader of what was left of humanity would be a worthy vessel."

"It can't be," she snapped - (you still lash out at the truths you don't want to confront, a voice chided her) "Hope!" She reached towards him. He made no effort to stop her as her hand passed through his forearm.

Lightning's mind felt suddenly disconnected from her body as she lurched back.

Hope stepped back, clasping one hand over the spot her fingers had phased through. His entire body had faded transparent, glowing tendrils curling from his skin like smoke. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

"You should forget about me," he said. "There are other people you have to save."

"Like hell I'm leaving you behind," Lightning's voice cut like glass. That wasn't how she'd meant it.

"What about Vanille?" Hope countered. "Are you just going to let her throw her life away completing the Soulsong?"

Vanille, the resurrected saint. Exalted by the Order, chosen by Bhunivelze, and groomed like a sheep for slaughter.

"No one is going to die. Not you, and not her. I'm the Savior. I'll find a way."

"If it's you, Light… you really might." Hope's face was still unbearably resigned. "But I can't let you. Not when there's so much at stake."

"I get it. It's – it's harder than I imagined, saying goodbye. But in the end, I'm just Bhunivelze's pawn. My calling, my role – it's over." His voice grew more and more desperate, as if he was pleading with her to understand. "You're still alive, Light. And there's a difference you can make, in the here and now."

You can't help me, was what Hope didn't say. You shouldn't even try.

The teenager before her wasn't the leader of humanity that had struggled ceaselessly to save the world. He wasn't the bitter teen who had followed her on her path towards vengeance back when they were L'Cie, either, or the blank slate she had met upon her reawakening in this world.

She saw a man in a too-young body with very little left – and a staggering determination to protect what he still held dear, even as his own humanity slipped further away.

"A hundred and sixty-nine years, Hope. What did Bhunivelze do to you, to turn you into this?" She was replaying every interaction in her mind. Every day she had reentered the Ark. Every time Hope gave her that empty smile and told her he'd support her.

Little things jumped out at her. Lumina's warning. How he had carefully skirted the topic of Vanille's intent to go to her death, never airing his opinion. The implied threat in carefully neutral language.

Will you try to stop Vanille? Stop the Soulsong? You know it's God's will that it happens.

She should have known then. The real Hope would never have accepted the sacrifice a friend at the whim of a god. So why hadn't she acted sooner?

Hope had been tortured, broken, and remade. And Lightning –

Lightning had been asleep.

"You needed help. And I was too–" blind, pigheaded, focused on fulfilling my goal–

Lightning faltered. "I didn't see it. I didn't trust you enough to realize you needed me."

At that, Hope frowned, stepped closer. He still carefully maintained the space between them, but he extended his other hand towards hers. She almost pulled it back, afraid to let it phase through his, afraid to see another reminder of her stupidity. But instead, Hope carefully wrapped his fingers around hers, just barely touching without overlapping. His gloved hand was insubstantial against hers.

"You did the best you could. I know it doesn't feel like it, but…" Hope's gaze went hollow. "That wasn't me, but it was. It was both of us, Bhunivelze occupying my mind and speaking through our mouth. Even now, it's difficult to tell whose thoughts are whose. This is the most lucid we've – I've felt in…"

Her friend shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of unwanted thoughts. "It doesn't matter. There's one last thing you have to know."

"Bhunivelze lied to you," Hope continued, rushed and urgent. "As omnipotent as he is, he still can't differentiate the souls of the dead from the Chaos. He knew he couldn't keep his promise. The only beings who can find other souls in this darkness are lost souls themselves."

People like me, was what Hope didn't say but still rang clear regardless. There was an unfamiliar tightness in her throat that Lightning couldn't seem to breathe past. Her chest hurt, an outpouring of emotion that had been suppressed for so, so long.

Or had God cut that piece out of her when he woke her up?

Hope still held the Oerban lily at his side. It was the only thing that hadn't disintegrated into the Chaos that lapped at their feet, that ravaged the dulled grass with unnatural winds. Now he extended it towards her, every movement as ponderous and vague as the dreamscape shattering around them.

It wasn't a flower anymore.

The pale aura that surrounded him warped, flowing into the flower cupped in his palms. Its shape blurred as it reformed into a shining crystal tear suspended above his fingertips.

Against all odds, Lightning recognized it.

Snow holds the crystal up to the sky above Gran Pulse, admiring how Cocoon looked framed in its glass, so distant and frail-

"Light," Hope said, voice strained. "You know whose soul this is."

Serah's eidolith was fragile and beautiful, suffused in the same corona of light that cut through the swirling Chaos around them now. It was everything she'd been fighting for. Lightning didn't deserve it at all.

She couldn't get her sister back just in time for her to witness how thoroughly Lightning had failed everyone she cared about.

Snow. Vanille. Fang. Sazh. Hope.

"When you turned to crystal after Cocoon fell, Serah's soul was crystallized with you. When Bhunivelze purified you and made you the Savior –" Hope shook his head. "He didn't need Serah, or any of those petty human emotions. He threw them out."

His face was pale and vulnerable, a beacon amongst the vortex of black mist. "But the part of him that was me couldn't let that happen."

"I can't–" Lightning shook her head. Not like this. "Serah isn't the only person I have to save. Tell me how I can help you!"

But it was too late, wasn't it? A hundred and sixty-nine years too late.

Hope's face crumpled. "I'm sorry, Lightning. I wish I could go with you. But this moment will have to be enough."

He stepped back, leaving the brilliant stone floating between them, and Lightning instinctively reached out towards him. Instead, her hands closed around Serah's crystal, just in time for the gusting of wind to wax stronger.

She threw an arm across her face and dug her feet in, but was still forced back. There was a good ten feet of space separating them now, and without Hope's golden aura to keep them at bay (with you, her mind whispers, he gave it all to you), the Chaos whisked eagerly into the gap. Gran Pulse had already been consumed entirely by darkness, save for the small area that surrounded them. Now, the crack of the ground separating shook the dreamscape.

"Hope!" she shouted. The grass felt like sludge beneath her feet now, greedily sucking her feet in. Moving through the air felt like wading through viscous liquid. Lightning stretched out an arm, but only dust slipped through her fingers. Her eyes stung.

And Hope – he just stood there,as tendrils of oily shadow licked up the sides of his face, like his very body was cracking under the might of the Chaos. Bleak. Determined.

"Save their souls, Light. You know what you have to do." Hope squeezed his eyes shut, but his last words echoed in her mind instead of being spoken aloud.

I'm glad I met you.

His eyes flashed open, and this time, their unnatural, blinding gold burned through the darkness between them.

Lightning shot awake, lying on the floor of the Ark. There was something wet on her cheeks.

Her mouth tasted acrid, as if she had been asleep for a long time. Her hands were clenched into fists, so hard that the knuckles had turned white. It took conscious effort to release the tension. And as she did, Lightning's heart cracked.

In the palm of her right hand sat a crystal tear, cool against her skin.

She stared at it for a full ten seconds before she tucked it into her chest, curling around it as she heaved unsteady breaths. No tears came. Maybe she wasn't capable of them anymore.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

She didn't know who she was apologizing to.

An unidentifiable amount of time passed before she came back to herself. Lightning surveyed the room. It all looked so normal, except for how conspicuously empty it was.

Of course. Hope wasn't there anymore.

She slowly ran a hand over her eyes, and got to her feet. In front of her, Yggdrasil still stretched upwards, not quite in full bloom. She didn't yet draw on the energies within her to feed it, as wrapped up as she was in her own thoughts.

The crystal that housed Serah's soul was as clear as it was lifeless. Perhaps Serah was held in stasis, just like Lightning had been. Maybe Serah was disappointed in her, and that was why she hadn't returned yet. Maybe there was still a piece missing.

She remembered Dajh's unnatural stillness. The painstaking collection of the fragments of his soul, to help him wake up again. Was that what she had to do to bring her back?

There were so many questions. Where the missing piece had gone. Why her sister's soul had chosen to sleep within her for so long.

But Lightning had a task to complete. The rest would come after.

Vanille. Hope. Serah.

"Save them all, Lightning," she murmured. She stepped forward.

Fin.

Notes: Well, it has been a long time. Someone favorited another fic of mine a few days ago, and it was a shock that someone still cared and loved a story that had been posted years ago. I had been working on this, and I decided to post it. And yes, this alternate universe is in fact based loosely on the Lunafreya and Noct scene from FFXV. Enjoy!