Everything came crashing down 3 days after Noel and Serah left. Hope had just finished his work for the day, in other words the actual lead scientist of his cocoon project, Legia, told him to go home or get tranquilized to sleep. He shut down his terminal and stretched his arms above his head. No one ever understood the fact that 'stopping' meant time wasted to him. He knew more then anyone that you couldn't get time back.
It wasn't unusual for him to be leaving close to midnight, so seeing Alyssa waiting for him at reception wasn't unusual either. He approached her and greeted her warmly. She looked up at him with red eyes, as if she'd been crying for hours. Alarmed he motioned her to follow him to the side.
"I think it's too late for me." Alyssa was trembling now. "I thought that it worked... but there's only one other way to fix things."
"Alyssa what's wrong? Tell me, I can help." He asked as for the first time, he reached out and touched the young woman, placing his hand on her shoulder.
She threw his hand off and then launched at him. Unprepared for such an action he was knocked to the floor, his head bouncing painfully against the marbled floor. "It's your fault! Couldn't you just be satisfied with me?!"
He fumbled against her and managed to grab one of her hands, but his vision was distorted from the pain, he'd probably had hit something else on the way down and hadn't realized it. "What are you talking about?!"
"Saving the world?! For all these ungrateful people? You'll die Hope. I'll die! Cease to exist!"
He grabbed her shoulder and rolled them over, trying to pin her down. He could use his magic, but he worried that he would take it too far. He didn't want to hurt her if she was just hysterical. She bucked up against him uselessly for a few seconds and then her hands were up and around his neck.
"Pain..." Alyssa whispered softly, magic sparking from her hands. "Silence."
Hope's head slammed back against the hard floor again as the spells allowed the girl to roll him. Alyssa had never shown ability to use magic before. He knew there were those that could. He was using his magic again even before his durability as a l'cie were returned. His hands slipped off Alyssa and he stared up at her. The adrenaline was rushing through his veins but he couldn't attack with magic, his strong point. And the pain coursing through his body was making it hard to gather himself to launch a physical attack.
"You never really listened you know?" Alyssa said as she stared down at him. "Always looking to the future. Light this and Light that. When Vanille and Fang wake up! You never saw me! And now you want to go to 500AF! Why? Because of Serah and Noel?! They can't save the world! They're creating the paradoxes! Why couldn't stopping here be enough for you? Look at the world! It's amazing!" She was becoming more and more hysterical.
Hope willed himself to relax. It was obvious that the only magic Alyssa had was in the Saboteur class which meant she couldn't kill him. Nor had she made any moves to. He could see the guards were looking for a moment of her to lax. It seemed like she had had a mental break.
"If Noel and Serah solve my paradox I'm gone." Alyssa whimpered and Hope swallowed hard, he weakly lifted his hand, causing the guards to back up. "I was there you know... All the way back then. The purge. You and me were the same. I wasn't from Bodhum... I was from Palumpolum like you. I died because of The Purge... because of creatures like you! I saw the mark! I know what you are! And I heard about Snow. As those two in the crystal... They are the reason I died! And now you're trying to kill me again!"
She was sobbing now, trembling above him and she fumbled with her pockets searching for something. He watched her, trying to look kindly at her, something he wasn't sure he remembered how to do. Finding what she was looking for, she pulled the gun out of her utility pack.
There was an irony there, the gun she held now. It was the gun that Rydgea had given her to help her defend herself. He remembered that when she'd become his assistant. Rydgea had insisted that she have some sort of weapon because the Academy still had enemies... Hope still had enemies. She pressed the gun to his chest. Trembling and shaking.
Hope had always wondered how it would be that he would finally die. He knew the guards were now on full alert. But any wrong move would end his life just as surely as if they let Alyssa do what she wanted. It was odd, he'd spent a lot of time thinking of his death. A lot of time walking with death as a close friend. But here, when he'd thought that death was the furtherest from him that it'd been since before The Purge. Here he was, so close to that strange feeling of fear.
A gun shot sounded. One of the guards firing a warning shot. Alyssa shook in fear and squeezed the trigger. Hope gasped in pain as the bullet hit his shoulder with a force that was jarring. He'd hadn't been shot in a long time. Alyssa snapped the gun back to his heart...and then the gun disappeared. Alyssa stared at her now empty hands in shock.
With the adrenaline surge, he rolled them back over, but in the process of the roll Alyssa disappeared completely and he was left on his face on the ground.
"DIRECTOR!" Someone screamed and then people were moving all around him as everything faded to black.
Hope sat at his desk wearily. His assassination attempt was still a source of confusion for him. He remembered blond hair and a face that should have sported a snarky smirk. Which didn't align with the fact that the man that had attempted to murder him had brown hair. It was someone who had read the files on the proto Fal'cie project. Cocoon was remembered as a paradise. A fragile paradise where no pain existed. A fanatical cult had sprung around his old research.
Wanted him out of the way so they could build a human paradise with a Fal'cie at the center. As if that would save them from catastrophe. People who hadn't lived there and could never understand. A mere human could not control a Fal'cie. If Fal'cie were to exist, humans would be nothing more then fancy pets.
Once they had gotten silence off him, reflex had kicked in and he cast healing spells on himself. He had to be up. He had to keep moving. Falling was not an option. His mind had been fourteen again, stuck on Pulse in the Archylte Steppe.
Heal and heal fast Hope, we can't wait on you. Hold your own weight, we can't wait for you.
After the adrenaline wore off, he'd collapsed in his hospital bed and slept for two days straight. His brand had woken him towards the end of the second day, bright and burning. He'd held it for hours. Swallowing down the pain. When it was over, his brand was even stranger then before. No longer a mark of Pulse, it had merged with Etro's mark.
He recognized it from all his research of the Paddra Ruins. Unsure of this new cause of events, he laid back down on the bed and let his worry, his pain, anxiety and fear consume him. He wept bitterly and wished that Noel and Serah would return. They couldn't make things right, but once again, he was all alone in this world.
