Edited in August 2017.
I don't own Final Fantasy XIII or its sequels.

fandom: final fantasy xiii and its sequels
characters/pairings: platonic hoperai
summary: he's changed, but so has she.
a/n: set in lr

Soko ni iru kimi wa
Ima dake no, kimi ja nai
Kyou made no yorokobi ya
Kanashimi to issho ni ikiteru

(The you that is there
isn't the only you there is now
You are living together with all the joy
and sorrow you've experienced up until today)

Maaya Sakamoto, More than Words.

partners (day one)

She sees him again after waking from her crystallized slumber to this ill, apocalyptic, dying world. He has the body of a child.

He tells her what happened after her sister's sudden death, when the goddess Etro vanished and let the chaos infect their world, how it changed everything and stayed the same for the next five hundred years and as he talks, Lightning watches him, stares at him and can't help to compare the Hope she sees now to the Hope she'd gone on a reckless adventure with hundreds years ago.

The boy she's facing looks exactly like the boy she remembers. It's the same messy silver hair, the same face, heck, even the same clothes save for the green, childish-looking scarf which has been switched to a simpler, soberer black one.

And of course, his eyes too aren't quite like she remembers them—his grassy big eyes no longer hold the pure, sparkling glow she'd seen so long ago. He doesn't have the innocent glint anymore. His eyes don't even reflect any emotion.

She wonders if he still feels human, alive.

He looks like the Hope from a millennium ago but it's not him, it's not Hope. Lightning can see how he has changed, how his green eyes look at her yet they aren't really. He stares at her, staring through her as if she doesn't exist—she knows that look because she shares the very same one.

That indifferent, apathetic gaze, as if nothing in the world really matters.

She doesn't understand this, the way she now feels, so indifferent and so unfamiliar from her past lives—when she was still human, or l'Cie, or Etro's champion and protector because at least, in these lives, she was able to feel, she still had feelings but now there's only emptiness.

Her voice is cool when she speaks, similar to Hope's as she wonders how she doesn't feel very much human right now. Hope replies in the same aloof voice. He has a theory about this, that the god, the maker or whoever had kidnapped him one hundred and sixty-nine years ago and placed him in the ark and waken her up from her five-hundred-year sleep had chosen to cast their feelings aside for it decided they have no need of them to do what it expects them to. She watches him explain his theory, blue eyes like ice staring at him with apathy and agrees with him—they are no longer who they were before. No longer l'Cie nor gods and they aren't quite human either.

And so, as she gets ready to go back to this dying world to saves souls because she's that savior woman, hair of the color of pink that goes along with the savior legend, Lightning looks back at him because she can't help to stare at him and there's a flicker in his eyes, she notices, something that wasn't there earlier akin to a feeling she acknowledges as joy or happiness or relief or hope and it catches her off guard.

Her eyes widen just a bit in surprise and as she vanishes from the Ark, Lightning is certain he saw that little, almost unseen movement of her eyelids and they both know, somehow, that they felt something even though they shouldn't be able to.

Maybe it's because the god has made a mistake, or maybe it's because they've found each other again after a millennium apart of loneliness, or maybe it's simply because they still have a part of humanity left inside them that they somehow can feel again.

He has changed, Lightning concludes as she emerges from the train of Luxerion's north station, and so has she and yet, a millennium past their first meeting, she knows there's one thing that would never really change between them.

They're partners.

Just like old times.