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023. Wish
"What do you think about wishes, Hope?" She'd said with a playful lilt one tepid evening when they'd been sitting together, under the thick blanket of stars that Pulse offered. He'd looked at her like she was crazy, with wide teal eyes and his platinum-haired head cocked very slightly to the side before he chuckled.
"What do you mean? What about wishes, Vanille?" He chortled, but quietened when he saw that her mouth only twitched very slightly at the corners. That was unusual for her. Every emotion of hers was painted clearly on her face, no emotion was let slip by.
"I mean, what do you think about wishing for something in general?" She asked again, breaking eye contact and looking up at the stars.
She realised that it was probably a mistake to ask him that - it was a fairly daunting question to ask after all, and she had had an extra five hundred years to think about anything and everything.
"Well," he began, surprising her to a degree, "I think that it's good to wish for things, but you can't be idle in it. You have to work for what you wish for, otherwise the whole point of doing anything would be lost." He said in a somewhat indifferent tone, as though he was somewhat loathe to take his own advice. She couldn't blame him - she couldn't blame any of them, this was just the way they'd been raised on Cocoon. "It'd be like every single thing in our lives being controlled by the Fal'cie again." He added, solemnly.
Nevertheless, she smiled at him. Fang had always said she'd been crazy with her 'far-fetched ideology' but if Hope agreed with her, then she knew that she probably wasn't going stir-crazy. Not yet, anyway.
"My Dad always said that too, about wishes. But Mom disagreed. She'd always said that there were some things that just happen in life, and sometimes we do wish for them."
"I think they were both right." Hope looked at her and raised one platinum eyebrow, asking her silently to expand. "Sometimes things do just happen. But sometimes we work for the things we wish for. Neither are wrong."
Silence pervaded the air for a while as memories of his deceased mother and estranged father were lifted to the surface of Hope's mind. Vanille felt guilty - she didn't want to be the reason that Hope's eyes looked so injured!
"You're right." He smiled at her with a mischievous look in his eyes, finally speaking again, "as usual." He muttered, only just loud enough for her to hear, and just quiet enough for her to doubt what she'd heard.
She opened and closed her mouth several times, no doubt looking like a fish, as a ferocious cherry blush spread across her face. She was five hundred and five years his senior for Etro's sake! So why could he so easily make her like this - a blushing, spluttering mess? Never mind, maybe she'd ask Fang - although that'd only convince her that she was crazy. Lightning? She'd probably get more luck asking Snow... Or Sazh. No, Snow was just far too over-zealous and Sazh was like her dad - over-protective to a fault. Bhakti might be a better choice at this point.
In her distraction, Hope had been speaking, and she absent-mindedly missed almost all of it. "-what do you think, Vanille?"
"Of what, sorry?"
Hope rolled his eyes, like he'd known all along that she hadn't been listening. "What do you think of wishes then, since you've found out what I think?"
Vanille was half taken aback. But then again, could she really have not expected this? Perhaps not.
"I think that wishes can come true. But not if you just wait for miracles. Miracles are things we make for ourselves. Here and now."
Hope raised his eyebrows at what she'd said, like he'd been expecting one or two words, not the entire pre-meditated answer that she'd decided for herself since she was half Hope's height, and age. He glanced at her with a smile and a look in his eyes like he'd just read the finest literature, and nodded. Nothing else was said that night. Nothing else had to be said.
And months later when his entire home planet had been turned into one giant, shimmering, ice like crystal, when she was back in her shimmering crystal with Fang, and when she could feel that even though Hope was nigh on heart broken, he still had a glimmer of his eponymous hope still left in his heart. She knew that he would take her advice about wishes, and all she could do was watch as the years went by, spent like headless coins, until his own wish came true.
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