When Sazh finally got there, several things happened at once:

First, an excited shout as a small boy ran to his mother.

Second, a joyful, "Hey, hey, hey!" came from Sazh as he walked in on more people than he expected.

And third: almost everyone started talking at once.

"Sazh!" Vanille cried happily, jumping up to embrace her eldest friend.

"Hey, kiddo! Really missed ya!"

"How've you been old man?" Fang teased.

"Oh, I'm old. Look who's talking."

"Sazh took me to the park!" Chase told Serah.

"Did you have fun?"

"Hey, Sazh." Hope spoke up.

"Hope! You finally decided to come back to us, eh?"

"I'll be honest, I wouldn't have if it weren't for the girls."

"You, my friend, have learned the most important lesson in life."

"Yeah? And what's that?"

"Always listen to women. Especially those three." Sazh gave a hearty laugh.

Hope laughed too, "Ain't that the truth."

"Well don't forget about me." Serah joked.

Her comment caused Sazh to laugh again, and he and Snow began to make fun of her. They joked about her size, about how she was pretty quiet most of the time. Practically invisible. Or so they said. Fang smacked them upside the head a few times, laughing along with them, and Vanille just could not stop giggling.

This. This is what family was. What they were. This haphazard group of personalities, thrown together by fate and the whim of the fal'Cie. A family. The thought brought a smile to Hope's face. He missed this.

Vanille noticed the content smile on his face. It made him look like he might actually be twenty-two, instead of several hundred years old. She sat next to him and chirped, "Well, someone looks happy."

Hope chuckled, "I just... miss this. You know? I never realized what having a family meant until a few seconds ago."

The two of them laughed as Chase shoved Snow, who 'got knocked over.' Everyone laughed. The amount of laughter in the past few minutes was almost ridiculous. But who really cared? It was relieving.

"Hey, Vanille."

She turned right into a trap. But she didn't care. She practically melted into him, barely felt his hands on her waist, hardly aware of her hands resting on his shoulders. It was perfection of the sort that only exists in dreams.

Dreams.

Vanille rememebered the past few dreams she'd shared with Hope, and pulled away.

Another thing she didn't notice: the laughter stopped.

The looks on their faces made her cheeks burn with embarassment. Only because they all looked amused.

"Well," Snow said jokingly, "I guess we know who to separate tonight."

They did indeed sleep separately that night. Not because anyone told them to, but because Hope refused to sleep.

Through all these years, Serah was the only one who never gave up on him. Though she knew him the least, the believed in him the most. No matter how much time passed, there was always a room for Hope in her house. Her insistance on keeping a place for him caused her to come to blows with her sister on several occasions. Lightning was the first to give up. "He's never coming back!" She'd say, "He's dead!"

Serah almost believed that she believed what she was saying.

Her sister might've given up on ever seeing him again, but Serah didn't think she really believed he was dead.

Hope's place in Serah's home stayed.

And that's where Vanille slept that night.

While Hope was deeply touched that Serah had always kept a place for him, there was no way he was sleeping. Not here. So he offered to sleep on the couch, saying that, "Vanille can have the bed. I've slept on worse things than a couch."

But did he actually sleep that night?

No.

Hope sat up on the couch, appearing to stare at the wall. But he actually didn't see anything. He just sat, thinking about everything, yet nothing at all.

He thought about his brand. What was that about? Why was it back? Burned, twisted, inactive. And who was that voice that kept talking to him? Calling him l'Cie. Maybe? Could it be?

He shook his head. He did not want to embrace that possibility.

Home. He was home. Everyone was back, and together. That's what he wanted, what he'd been working for.

But was it worth it? In the end, it probably was. But they didn't even know how Fang and Vanille were released. They probably would have come back no matter what he did. And if that was the case, all the people he hurt, all the pain he caused, all of that was for nothing. Not that he did any of that on purpose.

This topic was painful.

He wished he could turn off his brain. No matter what he did, his thoughts turned sour.

He was almost considering just giving in and going to sleep when he heard light footsteps. He looked up to see Vanille standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of Serah's pyjamas. Lucky they were roughly the same size. It was odd to see her in something other than her Oerban clothes. "Hi." she said sheepishly.

"Couldn't sleep?"

She shook her head, and quietly walked over to the couch, sitting beside him, "I guess... I guess I was afraid. I didn't want to..." She shrunk back into the couch.

"I understand." He mumbled.

He worked his arm around her, and she curled into his chest. They lay like that for a while, not speaking. They listened to each other breathe, the only noise in the house.

After a while, Vanille's breathing became uneven, hitching every once and a while. Her body shook. She was crying.

"Are you okay?" Hope whispered.

"Yeah, I just-" She sniffed, "I was just thinking."

"About what?" He mumbled, taking her hand and giving it a little squeeze.

She squeezed back, "Nothing... Everything. The past couple days have just..." She buried her face into him.

"A lot's happened." Hope agreed, "But not all of it has been bad." He began to trace little circles on her hand with his thumb, "I got you back."

"You also got your brand back." She said quietly.

"You don't need to worry about that." He told her, "You've gotten another chance at life, why don't you think about it like that?"

"What kind of chance is it if you-" She began to shake again, "What if we're wrong? What if you do have a Focus? What if-?" A sob cuts her off.

Hope pulled her closer and let her cry. Her small frame shook with every breath, she soaked her face and his shirt with tears. This whole thing, his brand, really scared her.

"I just don't want to lose you." She sobbed.

"You won't." He assured her.

"How can you know?"

He didn't give her an answer.

Because he didn't have one.