[Cursed Survival] (Noel)
SPOILERS: FFXIII-2 FULL STORYLINE, PLUS A PARADOX ENDING
In the wrong timeline.
He couldn't help but feel the chill. That he shouldn't even be here. Wasn't born until a few hundred years from now. Wonder what would have happened if he had somehow managed to convince Caius to save himself.
Wonder what had happened to Yeul.
Not that she was technically born yet, either. It had all made sense when they were trying to save both the future and the past, but nothing ended up being saved.
Serah died.
Lightning was stuck in Valhalla and Caius alone knew if he'd been lying when he said she was dead, too.
Sazh and Hope had taken him under their wing, but they were strangers in this timeline too, by even more years than himself.
Five centuries into the future, from their origin.
Sazh by way of the Historia Crux, Hope by way of technology created by that woman. Noel had heard the story, afterwards. How Snow had turned up on his bike, too late to save Serah from entering the Gate that pulled them into the Void where they were both killed by Caius. But not too late to stop her from doing any further damage.
Now, the Void was a tricky place. Noel was still alive.
His life was in shambles, but he still had it.
Tracking. Foraging. Surviving.
He taught them skills they needed in the darkness of Pulse's forested landscape.
All these things surprised him, still.
New Bodhum had been homey. Lots of people and houses and feeling like when he had been really young, only brighter, happier. When there were still more people around.
Sunleth had been terrifying, but he'd been distracted by Serah's visions and Snow's appearance then.
Once Academia came around, he was pretty dulled to new experiences.
The sheer amount of people.
How no one was a hunter in the entire city, give or take.
He still had a hard time grasping how you could feed that many. The behemoth he'd caught for Yeul's last birthday feast wouldn't have fed a fraction of them for a single meal.
So he trudged on.
Wishing, in the depths of his heart, that he could have traded his life for hers.
That he could have protected her, as he swore to do.
Then he wouldn't have to be the person to remind them of her, every time he showed up. Seeing in their faces how they missed her, hearing their reassurances that she wouldn't have wanted them to live without hope.
Neither would Yeul.
Both had treasured life more than anyone he'd ever met. Both were gone, ripped from this reality by a goddess that seemed crueler from a distance.
Noel supposed he could understand Caius' desperation, from that point of view.
Hope had instilled a sense of responsibility.
It wasn't what the man had tried, instead it had been more meant to bring him back to his feet out of the despair that surfaced through the breaking of the dream. When there wouldn't be a wonderful reunion where he could be accepted as part of Serah's dream team.
Where there would only ever be empty, meaningless faces anymore.
He had tried to save the timeline.
And when he had failed, Hope had convinced him in the man's usual logical way, that Serah would've wanted them to go on. Of course it was true.
It created the rickety layer of discipline that stood between Noel and the everlasting dark.
These eight years after doomsday, New Coccoon hovering safely in the perpetual twilight above, Noel could still look at his wife and wonder if he would ever stop hearing voices in the night.
If Serah's face would ever stop haunting him.
If the timeline would ever be restored, as far as his own life was concerned. One day, perhaps, his wife would wake with different memories, and the boy from the future she had married, the boy she knew would always love another woman more than her...
One day, perhaps, he would be gone.
As he rightly should.
A/N: I wanted the depressive side of the story, now that I'd written of Hope hanging in there, of humanity surviving like dratted cockroaches through the harshest conditions. And, assuming they don't come along with a sudden "save" courtesy of Light, I don't think Noel would really forgive himself for failing. Or for killing the Goddess, even if he didn't do it.