A/N: A promise is a promise, and since I promised to finish this chapter before January ended, I have to be consequent. It wasn't easy, though, since I've been busy as hell and quite dead-brained for a long time. I'm sorry I kept you waiting, but I guess that means you might read this new installment with renewed hype! Yeah, you wish Me, but whatever. (?)
This chapter… Oh, this chapter. Sweet, beloved and goddamn frustrating chapter XXV. Oddly written in terms of structure, with two crucial plot moments, and one of my most anticipated scenes in all this story. The reason I spent so much time stuck on this was because I wasn't sure if I was ready to properly make it justice. I'll leave to you to tell me if I got what I wanted for that one.
And… well, after all this waiting, I guess it was time to remind you, my dear readers, this is a Hoperai story and that it's getting somewhere, right?
Wings of Light
| XXV |
Understand
"So, you're meeting Fang and Noel today again?", Serah asked Lightning while they were both having lunch at the dining table. Her sister nodded, thoughtfully poking around the steaming contents of the plate before her.
"One day after another. I get Fang's concerns and I share them, too, but I think she's losing it. If only we could go out there and be on guard duty… But we just spend all time discussing strategies that make no sense at all."
"Keep in mind the Order's still on alert, sis. They've lost two squads and they know there are l'Cie on the loose", Serah noted. "Fang just wants to protect us all until we're ready to take action again."
"I already know that. I'm just saying I'd rather take that action instead of wasting our time", Lightning sighed resignedly. "Specially now that we know what our next destination is."
Serah shook her head, bus she gave her a half-smile.
"Well, don't you worry. Thanks to you, things seem to be getting better. I'm sure you'll soon be able to get back to work."
Lightning frowned at her younger sister's comment, but she said nothing. "It's indeed true things have improved in these last days, but there's still a long way ahead… if ever waters calm down, that is."
"I wish I could go with you guys", Serah continued since Lightning didn't reply, "but given that you won't allow me, it'd be nice of you if you told me what are you planning to do."
"You're still not ready to come to the Wildlands. The Dead Dunes' was an accident", she growled, "and it could've been pretty bad for you. Your brand is healing well enough for you to reawaken it after these five years of efforts."
Serah let out an exaggerated sigh:
"Well yes, you've told me hundreds of times. And I know that, and that's the only reason I'd stay here while you risk your life out there. But if I'm lucky enough, my brand will go dormant soon, and then it'll be the time for me to catch up, as long as you haven't defeated the Order by then, that is."
"You wish", Lightning let out a short muffled laugh. "But at this rate, I doubt it. Fang won't stop ranting about ways to storm the Cathedral when we haven't even set foot in the Wildlands, and almost all of the ideas that come to her mind end up in us charging into the front gate. I'm starting to think either she's too bored, or maybe frustrated, or even both."
"Fang has always been much less patient than you", Serah smiled, "and that's saying something. I'm sure she was ecstatic when you told her about the improvements."
The young woman shrugged.
"In her own way. From the moment I told her, she talks more about the Wildlands and less of the Cathedral, which is a relief. Noel went on to say he was thinking of bombing the Cathedral all by himself if only that stopped Fang from rambling."
"He certainly wouldn't have to bear many ramblings if his plan ended up killing Vanille."
"Well, yeah. He said he'd rather have Fang impaling him than having to hear every day how to raid the Cathedral and in the end going back to square one again and again."
Serah laughed, but she didn't comment. For a while, the Farron sisters ate in silence, each one lost in her thoughts. "We've been doing nothing for more than a month", Lightning thought, "and that'd have riled me not so long ago… I can't say it doesn't frustrate me though, but I must admit, our mission isn't our priority right now."
When she finally finished her lunch, she got up not so enthusiastically and put the plate in the sink. Her sister looked at her amusedly, undoubtedly well aware of how resigned she felt.
"I'm dazzled about how much you fancy to go hear Fang's ramblings."
"You don't say", Lightning replied in sarcasm, to which Serah's smile widened.
"You could always tell her you're sick and that you can't go, if it's that terrible as it seems."
Lightning looked at her as if she'd just lost her mind:
"If saying that ever crosses my mind, Fang would come straight home to take me in tow. Besides, I don't think she'd even believe I'm sick, l'Cie don't get sick very often."
"Your problem, not mine", Serah sighed feigning exasperation; then, when Lightning was about to leave, she stopped her with a wave of her hand. "Oh, wait, could you please take the bowl I've left in the fridge to Hope before you go?"
"He hasn't eaten it?", Lightning frowned; if that was so, then it wasn't a good sign.
"He asked me to leave it in there for later, but it's getting late for lunch. Maybe he's fallen asleep", Serah said soothingly when she noted her sister's concern. "Take it to him, and see how's he doing, just in case."
Lightning nodded, somewhat calmer. Even though things were starting to get better, they couldn't stop paying constant attention to Hope, and at the same time they couldn't overwhelm him with their presence. It was a balance quite complicated to keep, as fragile as the angel's current mood. "Sometimes it's like the slightest thing could break him", the young woman thought as she took from the fridge the bowl of soup Serah cooked specifically for him, and as she went up the stairs to her room she heated it up with a variant of the Fire spell. "And the fact that he guesses what we're thinking makes things even more difficult. I'm beginning to understand why mind reading is actually more like a curse than a gift."
She hesitated for a moment before knocking the door. She still remembered too well how, just three weeks ago, Hope reacted whenever someone entered the room. Even if it didn't happen anymore, Lightning couldn't help but getting a bit nervous. The angel's stability was hanging from a thread. A very fragile thread. "But it's better than nothing."
"Hope?", Lightning called after gently knocking. There was no answer, so perhaps Serah was right and he was asleep. Without any other choice, she opened the door and peered inside, hoping to see him lying on the bed. However, she found that, in fact, the angel was sitting on the small couch next to the window, his face absent and in deep melancholy considering what his usually marble-like expressivity allowed him to show. Although it wasn't the best change in the world, at least it was no longer a constant grimace of horror… and for Lightning, that was a source of relief, albeit at the expense of his apathy.
She sighed, worried despite everything, and went to him with the bowl in her hands, trying not to make any noise in order to not startle him. Sometimes it seemed like she had to walk through a minefield… which, actually, it wasn't that far from what reality was. One wrong step, and Hope could again explode in the way he'd done over a month ago.
However, the angel didn't realize her presence. It wasn't the first time, and that was what most concerned Lightning lately. If he concentrated, Hope could sense people's auras around two-hundred meters away from him, and of course it wasn't hard at all for him to feel if anyone was getting close. Either the recent events affected his powers, or he'd withdrawn into himself so much the auras of people were simply bouncing off his shell.
"Hope…", Lightning said softly, gently touching his shoulder. He quickly turned his head around, which proved that, despite what might look, he wasn't as absent as it could appear, yet his eyes were still strangely languid and dull when he looked at her.
"Hello, Light", he simply murmured, blinking slowly. Lightning held back a relieved sigh: despite his apathy, his answer was as kind as… well, as it had been for around a week. But he didn't seem like he'd worsened, not at all.
Though she couldn't be sure that he'd gotten better, of course.
"I brought you lunch", Lightning told him showing the soup bowl. "Serah told me you said you'd eat later, and she's asked me to take it to you."
Hope slowly looked down to the bowl, as if he had to focus to understand what Lightning was telling him.
"Oh… I forgot", he replied, and looked away to the window. "Thank you… You can leave it on the table."
It wasn't a very enthusiastic reply, and Lightning worried that Hope forgot again about lunch. It wasn't the first time it happened, and the last thing he needed was to stop eating. He'd already spent a few weeks barely being fed when Lightning and Serah had been forced to keep him sedated under the Sleep spell, and it had taken a severe toll on him. The young woman had wondered quite a few times if his lack of energy wouldn't be a side effect of that starvation period. However, she couldn't argue with him; she knew what was at stake, and bluntness was no longer an option.
She left the bowl on the small table next to the couch, as Hope had asked, and she turned to leave, but she gazed back at the young angel and she couldn't help but turning around. Seeing him so listless, so out of it, after having witnessed how his life force grew stronger until it exploded in such a terrible way in the Dead Dunes gave her a painful twinge in her heart… and the sad thing was, the state he was in now was loads better than the one he'd been in until about three weeks earlier.
"Hey, Hope…", Lightning crouched beside the couch and, a little hesitant, she rested a hand on his wrist, wrapped in that yellow cloth she'd given him to cover the now healed wound that assassin of the Order inflicted to him; he slightly stiffened at the touch, but he didn't take his hand away. "You okay?"
The angel took some long seconds to answer.
"I can't say I am", he said then, his voice weary. "I am not feeling worse, which is something."
"I know, but…", Lightning bit her lower lip, not quite sure of how to say what she meant. "The other day I did it by instinct… I don't even know if I could do it again", she thought in frustration. "If there's anything haunting you… you know, you don't have to keep it to you. You can share it."
That made Hope finally look away from the window and directly at her. For a moment, Lightning feared she'd said the wrong thing, but the angel didn't seem to be losing control. His eyes had a sad, faint spark, almost guilty, but they were serene.
"I appreciate the offer, Light", Hope replied, and shook his head, "but you did enough for me the other day. I am aware you felt bad for several days after you did so."
He was right, Lightning had to admit. But she didn't regret it, though. It had been necessary, and she'd do it again if she had to. Not in vain she had managed to understand…
"You sensed that?", at least that was good news, since it meant Hope wasn't as oblivious to what happened around him as she thought. "Well it's true, but… if you need any help, those bad days aren't that terrible."
The angel's expression barely softened, but Lightning noted it before his face went back to his usual deadpan. However, the warm gleam in his eyes remained in them.
"I've had worse", he replied blinking slowly. "Besides…"
She waited for him to finish the line, but Hope didn't continue.
"Besides, what?", she insisted to his silence, but he frowned and shook his head.
"It doesn't matter. Don't worry, Light. You helped me the other day… but now I must follow the path by myself, without dragging anyone else with me."
Lightning wanted to keep asking, but Hope had already drifted his gaze again to the window, a sign that meant he didn't want to talk anymore. Still, she thought she guessed what he meant, and that meant he'd been thinking all that time about what happened days ago. "Could that be why he hardly speaks and reacts? Is he so absorbed brooding about it?"
In any case, she had no time left to continue chatting. When she looked up at the clock, she realized she was late for the meeting with Fang and Noel, and she knew well enough how little the Vermilion Dawn's leader liked the lack of punctuality.
"Well then…", she nodded, and took away her hand from Hope's wrist before getting up, but then she briefly put it on his shoulder. "But remember, if you really need it, you can count on me. Right?"
Hope's only answer was to barely narrow his eyes, but Lightning knew that with that gesture, the angel meant he got it. Without another word, she left the room, trying to make as little noise as possible, as if she didn't want to disrupt his thoughtful silence.
She said goodbye to Serah, and as she left home and headed for Noel's pub, Lightning couldn't help but think about how much everything had changed from that day, only three weeks ago. Not just because things had gotten better, even if in a way that was completely different from the one they headed until what happened in the Dead Dunes…
They had changed too because she had been able to understand.
The following days after their return from the Dead Dunes hadn't been easy at all for the Farron sisters. Not only because they had to be constantly on guard in case the Order identified them as the l'Cie fugitives of Yusnaan, but they now had to tend Hope, who was in extreme shock, pretty much round the clock. And that, as Lightning found out shortly after returning to their house in the capital, was lots harder than keep the Order at bay.
Not that it was particularly dangerous, but it was heart-rending seeing Hope, the serene and innocent angel, consumed by the horror that had taken over him.
The Sleep spell the young woman cast on him to take him from the Dead Dunes to Luxerion lasted a couple of days, as she'd calculated. That allowed her and Serah to enhance their house's magic defenses and accommodate him better without worrying about his condition all the time. But as the spell wore off, the Farron sisters had to resort to sedation almost on a daily basis, despite themselves.
It couldn't be said that Hope was violent, not at all. If had been left all alone, he'd have been consumed almost in complete silence except from the periods of time in which he endlessly repeated 'what have I done' between tormented whispers. And he'd been literally consumed, since he completely lost appetite and he couldn't even sleep, no matter how exhausted he was or how many hours he'd been awake. And as it was to be expected, the moment Lightning or Serah appeared in the doorway, the angel didn't hesitate to block their way with his powerful Protect spell.
In the end, the sisters decided to keep him under the Sleep spell's effects, both to grant him the rest his state didn't allow him and to at least made him drink and keep him alive by vitamin supplements and energy transference, since they couldn't make him eat as he was asleep. And yes, that prevented him from dying of absolute starvation, but inevitably, Hope, who already was quite lean, lost more and more weight and muscle mass to the point his ethereal looks turned outright spectral.
The only times Lightning had been able to get close to Hope since the moment the angel had saved her and Fang by reaping the lives of those Secutors amidst of his outburst of rage was whenever he was fast asleep under the Sleep spell. And she was realizing how much it affected her to see him in such a terrible shape. "I accused him of being an empty shell", she thought one night in which she'd gone to give him some water; by then, Hope had alarmingly thinned and his dark circles under his closed eyes highlighted how extremely pale his skin was getting. "If I had only known… It is now when he really seems so, and I wish I didn't have had to see him like this."
And even though Serah insisted over and over again that it wasn't her fault, Lightning still felt responsible. Hope had done something completely against his nature when he saw her in danger, and thus he'd dealt himself a brutal blow. If not for him, they'd most likely be dead along Fang, and the Vermilion Dawn would've been doomed. And all of it to save her life, the life of someone who so far hadn't shown him the slightest sign of gratitude.
"I treated him like an item", Lightning mused, angry to herself at seeing the young angel so fragile, so emaciated, lying in bed, perhaps in an even worse condition than when they rescued him in the midst of that storm outside their house with his wings ripped away. "I made him believe the whole world hated him, I despised each and every single one of his actions, I judged him without even letting him speak for himself. I've done nothing but demand of him, and even though I never thanked him for anything wholeheartedly, he's not only never complained, but he's never stopped supporting me, even in a quest that everyone else considers a utopia. And I've been blind to all of this until he's saved my life at the expense of his own sanity."
She couldn't help but feeling that rejection towards the angel and his bonds to Bhunivelze. But she'd learned to read past Hope's marble face, beyond his limitations, and she'd managed to decipher emotions through his deadpan. Long ago, she'd wanted to convince herself that she was imagining things, that Hope was merely an unwilled servant of God. But as she spent time with him, it became crystal clear that had nothing to do with how reality was. As much as she wanted to think otherwise.
And for that reason, she had never shown gratitude to Hope for everything he'd done for her. The angel had been doing nothing but to give without getting a single thing in return.
"Serah keeps telling me I'm the only one who can help you out of this…", Lightning thought, with a lump in her throat, unwittingly stroking the yellow wristband she'd given him not so long as it seemed, after another time in which Hope had risked his own life to protect hers. "But the truth is, the only thing I've done is getting you into all of this mess. How can I help you, if I haven't even been able to take care of you? How?"
A couple of hours after Lightning left to her reunion with Fang and Noel in The Farseer's Rest, Serah went upstairs once she'd finished washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. She'd just noticed a bowl was missing, the one her older sister had brought Hope with her special soup she'd been cooking for him for a few days now; his condition had left him with a weak stomach, and even though the angel was unable to expel bad digestions from his body –and that was in many ways a good thing– he could spend whole hours feeling awful until his metabolism eliminated the toxins in his organism. So Serah had decided to cook him meals that weren't difficult to assimilate until he felt better, and that soup was the one that he tolerated the best, mostly because it was easier for him to eat, or rather drink, it.
Serah sighed, shaking her head, as she headed for her sister's room, which ever since they took Hope in it had basically become his. Even if she wasn't as responsible of him as Lightning was, she'd gotten used to the angel's presence in their house, and there was no denying she'd ended up growing fond of him. It was very hard for her to see him in the state he was in, and she wanted to help him overcome his grief. And even though Lightning strove to deny it, she'd grown fond of the angel as well, and Serah knew for a fact that it was incredibly frustrating to her to not being able to do anything to help him.
She also suspected that, for her sister, helping Hope wasn't just in pursue of her mission of finding the Heart of Bhunivelze as soon as possible anymore.
The very idea made her smile to herself. Since Lightning refused to admit what she'd been long trying to make her understand, maybe she'd end up realizing it herself. But she didn't want to harbor a lot of hopes: she was well aware of how stubborn and close-minded her older sister could be.
And after all, that mission was what had allowed her to keep going for almost two centuries… She wouldn't give up that easily what she'd been yearning for so long.
She frowned, trying to push aside those thoughts from her mind, and turned the doorknob trying to not make too much noise in case Hope was sleeping. When she looked inside, she saw the young angel lying on his back in bed, but Serah knew he wasn't asleep, not when he had a leg crossed over the other.
"Hey, Hope", she greeted him with a sweet smile. "Sorry if I startled you."
"It's alright", he replied calmly; he didn't even bother to open his eyes. "I knew it was you even before you opened the door. Besides, Light always says you never knock."
She widened her smile. She couldn't say that Hope was precisely prone to sarcasm, but for a few days now –that is, since he'd begun to show signs of improvement– she'd noticed his replies were much drier and direct than before. It was a noticeable change coming from the cautious, shy angel who always weighed his words to avoid hurting those around him, but Serah preferred to consider it remarkable. Even if it was at the cost of his pure, genuine innocence.
"Ah, I see this time you've not left anything on the bowl", Serah nodded, pleased to see that Hope had eaten all the soup; other times he'd left almost half of it, but she knew they couldn't force his fragile stomach to take more than he could. "Atta boy. I hope you're not bored of all these frugal meals…"
"No. In fact, I thank you for them. I'm not as picky as you humans are with food, I don't really mind if it tastes better than other. I would rather have a bland meal instead of spending hours feeling worse than I already am."
Serah smiled, but Hope didn't notice since he hadn't opened his eyes. To be honest, he looked far better in recent days. At least he seemed no longer to be deader than alive, both physically and emotionally. Whatever Lightning said, she'd managed to get Hope out of the pit of his own horror, and with it, the angel was loads more receptive to the Farron sister's positive energy. Sometimes, indeed, it looked like Hope fed much more from that energy than from any meal.
She took the empty bowl and headed for the door without saying anything, with the intention of leaving Hope alone because it was hard enough for him to find moments of genuine peace for anyone to ruin them. However, when she was halfway, the angel's voice stopped her:
"Serah…"
She turned to him and found out that Hope opened his eyes at last. His expression, as always, was unreadable, but his eyes had a strange spark that she couldn't identify.
"What's wrong, Hope?", she asked him, worried.
He didn't answer right away. He furrowed his brow as if he didn't know what exactly to say before going on, once he probably gave order to his thoughts. Which was unusual, Serah noted, because rule of thumb up until then was that Hope didn't usually hesitate when he wanted to ask something.
"You were the one who made the prophecy about Light and King Mikhail", he finally said in a low voice. "That prophecy Light wants to happen so much."
Serah blinked in surprise by how sudden his assertion was, puzzled.
"Yes, that's right. Why do you ask? You saw it yourself with my sister and Fang when you were in the Dead Dunes–", she stopped short in her tracks: they'd sought not to mention the Dead Dunes in front of Hope to not trigger him with memories. But Hope merely closed his eyes for a second as his only reaction.
"I saw it, yes. I heard as well what the prophecy said. And it showed Light together with that king. She looked happy… Happier than I've ever seen her. Everything seemed perfect…"
The angel stopped and pursed his lips. It was difficult to guess what was going through his head, but Serah felt like he had trouble to express whatever he wanted to say or ask. But what she found most interesting was that, in those circumstances, Hope was talking about something that had nothing to do with the Secutors' death –or rather, slaughter– at his hands in the Dead Dunes.
That was undoubtedly a good sign, but she had no idea of where was Hope trying to go with such conclusions. At his silence, Serah nodded to let him know she was listening and that he might keep talking, in part because she was curious about what he thought about the prophecy.
What she didn't expect was Hope's question, dry and straightforward, and most of all, a lapidary one:
"Do you think that prophecy should be fulfilled?"
There was a brief silence in which Serah blinked a few times, stunned; the question had completely taken her off-guard. That was definitely not like him: it wasn't the first time Hope proved to disagree with them, but it had always been after someone else exposed their own ideas or plans. Up until then, the angel had never voiced criticism born of his own criteria. And of course, she didn't expect the criticism in question was about the very mission everyone took for granted that it had to become true.
"Hope…", Serah tried to regain her composure when she realized he was staring at her, waiting for her answer. "Why are you asking me? Shouldn't you tell my sister? It's she the one who's truly interested in bringing back King Mikhail, not me."
"That is why I am asking you", Hope replied briefly raising his eyebrows. "Light wishes so much the prophecy comes to pass that the simple question would be unconceivable to her. You, on the other hand, don't look to agree that much with her. I'm not stupid, despite what you may think of me", he noted when he sensed Serah's surprise to that remark. "I have been spending quite some time by now among humans and it wasn't yesterday when I learned to identify when you agree with something and when you don't."
Serah shook her head, not knowing what to say at first. She was surprised at the sudden strength coming from Hope's words, and it was a pleasant surprise, even though she hadn't seen it coming after everything that happened to him. Perhaps, after all, his horrible experience in the Dead Dunes had been useful for him more than she thought.
And of course, his question was deep and interesting enough to not grant him her opinion on it.
"You're not too wrong in your guess", Serah gave him a tiny smile and left the empty bowl on the table with a sigh. "But the truth is, it's much more complicated than just agreeing or not. It's a prophecy we're talking about, and in theory they're visions of things that will happen in the future. There would be little point in trying to defy it, and much less if it's a vision that promises good things to come. And if it's going to happen, it wouldn't be logic that someone would try to make it true, you see?"
"Not too much", Hope replied raising his eyebrows. "But I gather you're trying to say that if the prophecy is to become true, it wouldn't be necessary to do anything to ensure it happens, since it is the future that it will come to pass."
"Yeah, more or less. However, things happen from time to time… Actions or circumstances that alter the original timeline in which the prophecy took place, and history takes another course", Serah explained. "I told you that way because that way it's easier to understand which this prophecy's quirk is. If King Mikhail's return is recorded in a prophecy, then why are we struggling to make it happen?"
Hope narrowed his eyes, his gaze fixed on her.
"I think I get what you mean."
"When the timeline changes, the affected prophecies become blurred", Serah confirmed with an approving half-smile. "That means they can no longer take place, they're but echoes of routes that could've been but no longer are. A mere trace is left, but the image is lost. It doesn't happen very often, but as you've probably guessed, it's our prophecy's case."
The angel remained silent for long seconds. Serah could almost see the gears spinning in his brain as he processed all this new data.
"If the King's image was blurred, does that mean it won't happen? Then why Light is so obsessed about fulfilling what can't take place anymore?"
"Because according to my sister, the timeline is always changing. And in a sense, she's right", Serah sighed, almost bitterly. "If our actions can change a prophecy, then they can correct it as well. That's the theory, and it makes sense, but if I'm honest, to my knowledge no one has been able to change the timeline at will in order to correct a particular lost prophecy. Besides, in the prophecy only Mikhail's image was blurred, which to date had never happened. That's why Sis is so bent on believing that she only has to change what prevented the King's return… and I'm sure you've guessed how she intends to work that miracle."
"The Heart of Bhunivelze", Hope muttered, frowning. "Does she plan to use it to correct the timeline? And how will she know what she has to change in order for the King to come back from the dead?"
"To be honest, I don't know. I think her plan is just using the Heart's power to bring him back. And if it's true the Heart grants the deepest wishes of its owner, then I suppose it'd correct the timeline by itself to do that… But since you asked me my opinion, I'll tell you that even if Mikhail's return was completely out of risks, I've spent many years trying to convince my sister out of it", Serah confessed, her voice suddenly tired. "You see, the prophecy has been blurred from the very moment I made it. She insists that if I was able to see it was because it could still happen, but I'm not that sure. The Seers' powers aren't easy to understand even to ourselves, Hope. And my sister has been grasping at straws for almost two centuries… All because the prophecy showed a future where she could live in peace together with someone who loved her."
"So the only reason Light is so obsessed with fulfilling the prophecy is because it promised that the King would be her future love?", Hope tilted his head.
"There are other reasons, of course… but that's the most powerful one, indeed. Not that I blame her", Serah sadly replied, "because our lives haven't been overflowing with love, to say the least. She strives to keep that from interfering with our mission, but the truth is it has become our mission, and she's given up too much in pursuit of making it happen. I lost faith in the prophecy long ago, Hope, but I keep fighting on for my own convictions. And seeing my own sister suffering more every day because she's unable to leave that prophecy behind and with it, the promise of Mikhail's return, hurts me more than you can imagine."
Hope said nothing at first. He'd been deeply thinking about what the younger Farron sister had just told him. It was true, the angel didn't doubt Serah's sincerity; he sensed clear as water her sorrow and frustration at her older sister's plight. The same way he'd been feeling the longing in Lightning's aura. "Light doesn't know what living truly means… For almost two hundred years, she has been chasing a prophecy that can't take place anymore, searching for the only thing that could make it true, in exchange for her own happiness", he thought, and briefly closed his eyes. "I begin to understand why Light says we're more alike than we thought. I haven't known what living is truly like, and I might never get to know that. I am not human… and I've committed crimes that make me unworthy of calling myself an angel. If only I knew what my path should be… At least Light does know what she wants."
"But this is just between you and me", Serah's voice returned him to reality. "Lightning has heard my rants about it enough times and I doubt she'd like to learn I've been 'biasing' your opinion. I just want you to know you're not the only one who thinks so. Finding the Heart of Bhunivelze is one thing, but using it for what my sister wants it sounds wrong to me. As you've rightly noted, we shouldn't dig in the past. Clinging to it prevents us from moving forward, and Sis is a fine example of that."
"I won't mention this conversation", Hope replied resting his head on the pillow and closing his eyes, as he let his mind wander between his restless thoughts. "Thank you, Serah. I appreciate you trusted me with your opinion… Now I need to think about all this. If you'll excuse me…"
She smiled warmly and took the empty bowl again before heading to the door.
"Of course, I won't bother you anymore. If you need anything, let me know, okay?"
He nodded, barely reacting when Serah left the room and closed the door behind her. That conversation had given him much to think about…
"Light doesn't share her hopes and fears with anyone. She keeps them inside, without letting them out ever, until there comes a point where she's unable to restrain them anymore", Hope mused, understanding a lot of things. "What she did with me… it was so unlike her. But now I get why she did it. It was all she could do for me. Maybe I should follow her example, even if it is not like me. Maybe the path I should take starts by stopping thinking about myself… and think for myself."
"This can't keep going on like this", was the conclusion Lightning had come to terms, several weeks after the Dead Dunes' incident, unable to deal with the vision of Hope being consumed day after day by his own horror and not being even able to get close and try reasoning with him when he was awake and conscious. "I must try something, anything, for him to listen to me. And if he doesn't the easy way, then it'll be the hard one."
That night, after hours without falling asleep because of her growing concern about the angel's state, she'd decided to take drastic measures. She got up from the bed trying to not wake up Serah –since they only had two bedrooms and Hope had taken hers, the Farron sisters slept together– and headed down the hallway, where her bedroom was. She hadn't the faintest idea of how to get Hope out of that trance, but at least she had one thing clear: he was going to listen to her, whether he wanted it or not.
And even though the basic idea of how to do that had been roaming her head for a long time now, she'd been unable to carry it out until a couple of days ago, when she'd finally felt that her magic was again fully recovered: the side effects of the Demon's Bane spell, as the Order called the kind of dark arts they used to block crystal-origin magic like l'Cie had, didn't wear off instantly. That was why it was so dangerous to l'Cie and so effective against them. And without her magic at one-hundred percent, Lightning knew she couldn't counter the magic of an angel like Hope.
She hadn't done it before she was waiting to find out how to help Hope, as Serah told her. But weeks passed by and nothing came to her mind, and she wasn't willing to let the angel's condition to robe her any more hours of sleep.
Once she got to her bedroom's door, Lightning stopped and closed her eyes. Judging by what time it was, the effects of the last Sleep spell they had used to sedate Hope would already were gone, but she preferred to be sure about it, since her determination wouldn't be of any use if he was asleep. By focusing on the traces of magic at the other side of the door, she confirmed it was as she guessed: Hope was awake, and probably so absorbed in his inner horror that he wouldn't have even sensed she was on the other side. But it could be a matter of time that he felt her aura, so Lightning decided not to take risks. Focusing as much as she could, because the spell she was about to cast was complicated and she didn't use it often, she made a quick magic wave towards the door and into the room. She felt a change in the air around her, some kind of distortion in her surroundings, and she smiled to herself.
It had worked. Now only remained to see if her spell was strong enough to counter Hope's power.
After taking a deep breath, Lightning opened the door, bracing herself to face the young angel, extremely pale and drawn, hugging his legs with eyes open wide. He was almost unrecognizable, nothing to do with the serene and innocent creature he was before what happened in the Dead Dunes. A ghost of his former self, trapped in a nightmare from which he couldn't wake up.
As Lightning got into the room, Hope reacted like a spring, something that although she'd seen before, was still surprising; no one, human or l'Cie, would have any energy left to even move after whole weeks without eating and hardly sleeping. Much less to keep up a Protect spell powerful enough to prevent a l'Cie from undoing it.
"Get away!", he exclaimed, as usual, raising his hand to her to create the magic barrier Lightning had come to hate with all her might.
However, this time, something went different than the usual way: the Protect spell didn't materialize. Not even when Hope tried again.
"What–?", the angel looked down at his hands, terrified and confused when his magic had no effect at all, before Lightning's satisfied look. "No… My magic… What is happening? Why it isn't working?!"
"Calm down, and don't bother. Your magic hasn't stopped working because of you, but of me", she told him, unable to hide a little smirk. Hope looked up at her, a spark of panic in his eyes.
"It can't be… What have you done?! You can't counter my magic!"
"I've already realized that casting Deprotect against you is a waste of time. I'm no expert in the saboteur branch of spells. But even though I can't aspire to match an angel in terms of power, among my kind I'm a l'Cie with enough power to seal any non-damaging spell", Lightning raised an eyebrow. "If you've heard of the Dispel spell, you'll know you have no choice now but to forget about your Protect and listen to me once and for all."
If there was any trace of color left in Hope's face, it faded away at these words. It wasn't hard to get why: all that time, he'd shielded behind his magic to prevent the Farron sisters to get close to him, and he apparently had grown confident that both were unable to counter his power. And it was true, yes… but he hadn't thought that an enough skilled l'Cie like Lightning could cast Dispel to create a magic interference that outright dissolved any spell from the synergy and saboteur branches. Now he was left without any kind of resource, cornered in that room and without any way of escape.
"No!", Hope jumped out of the bed, trying to back off and get away from her, but it was then when his lack of sleep and food showed up, making him stagger as his feet touched the floor; still, he managed to not collapse right there. "Don't come near me! You don't know what you're doing!"
"I'm going to come closer and you're gonna listen to me", Lightning replied walking toward him, to what the angel looked around desperately, undoubtedly searching for some way either to run away or stop her. "Hope, look at you. Is this what you want to become? One thing is grieving for what you did, but not letting anyone help you?"
"Nothing and no one can help me! Don't you get it?! There's nothing and nobody in this world who can justify what I have done!", despite his legs had obvious trouble to keep his balance, Hope didn't stop backing away in a vain attempt to make distance between him and Lightning. "I took away the lives I was supposed to protect! Even among you humans, murder is punished by death! And that is what I deserve for my crimes!"
Lightning expected many possible replies, but she certainly didn't imagine that Hope basically answered that, since he couldn't sentence himself to death, he considered fair just to let himself die. "Has he fallen so deep down without us even realizing?"
"Are you telling me you think you must die to atone for your sins? Have you lost your mind?!", the young woman shook her head in disbelief. "Get a hold of yourself already, Hope! You haven't done anything wrong! Or are you idiot enough to consider the lives of those who want to take yours more important than your own?"
"I– I… I don't know!", Hope exclaimed in confusion; in his vain try to get away from her, his back ended up meeting the wall, and panic swallowed him up when he realized he was cornered. "But there's no greater crime than taking the life I had to protect! And if I have done that to them, who's telling you I can't kill you or your sister with the same ease and no reason at all?!"
"Stop talking nonsense! You had every reason to do what you did! Besides, don't you remember your promise? You said you'd never hurt Serah nor me! And for all I know, angels can't lie!"
"Angels can't either go against their masters' direct commands!", he replied, growing increasingly terrified as Lightning slowly got closer, for she didn't want to scare him more than he already was. "I was supposed to watch over all life on this planet! I don't deserve to be called an angel… I'm nothing but a murderer! I failed my purpose and my hands are stained with blood for all eternity! On what moral or principles I can live on after what I've done?!"
Lightning felt anger and frustration begin to bubble inside her, but her rage wasn't specifically aimed at Hope, but rather his blind beliefs in what he had been taught by Bhunivelze. She was starting to understand what was devouring the angel from the inside, and if it was what she thought, helping him wouldn't be that hard… if not because Hope wasn't letting her do that at all. "Damn your moral and your principles! To hell with whatever your goddamn master instilled on you!"
"It was a matter of life or death, Hope!", she snapped at him, taking a couple of bold strides toward him, feeling how her tension and impotence overcame her. "It was either your life or theirs! Haven't you learned anything in the time you've been down here? Have you forgotten this soon all the lessons I've been trying to make you understand in these months?"
Suddenly, the angel stopped trying to get away from her and turned to her with the speed and energy alike to a wounded and cornered animal, which triggered all of Lightning's alarms; she'd seen for herself that Hope could be a ticking-time bomb if he lost control of himself.
"You can't understand me! Nobody can!", he lashed out at her; in his eyes there was a furious gleam of anguish and despair, as if he were a caged beast. "You consider me a fool for wishing over and over to go back in time and bring back to life the people I cast away from it! I've seen hundreds, thousands, millions die without anyone regretting the deaths of countless fallen in your senseless wars… You humans don't even care about death! You don't spare a thought for those you kill to keep your lives, as long as you're the ones who are left standing!"
Lightning couldn't take it anymore.
All the tension and frustration she'd been long restraining inside her overflowed her self-control, and then she punched him on the cheek in such a quick and sudden motion that Hope didn't even see it coming. The strength of the impact knocked him down and pushed him back quite a bit, and the angel fell over backwards to the floor with a red mark on his face where Lightning's fist had hit him.
"I can't understand you, you say? It's you who doesn't know a damn thing about me!", Lightning snarled in anger, breathing hard and fast. "So you think I'm a killing machine without feelings? That I enjoy slaughtering those who want to hurt us? That I don't wish with all my heart and soul, more than you can begin to imagine, to not having ever shed others' blood? The first time I killed someone, I spent entire weeks without sleeping, for I couldn't stop crying. My sister went through the same when she was forced to kill in order to survive! We've been years, decades, fighting and killing, ever since we were more children than adults, and the only thing that allows a warrior to keep his sanity intact, the only thought that allows him to move forward without taking his own life away in remorse, is the belief that with each death he's protecting those who he loves! How dare you even imply that we don't care about every life we take? If I keep fighting and standing is because it's been a long time since I have no tears left to shed for those who died at my hands! But once I decided that my life and my sister's were worthier than the ones from those who wanted us dead! And you have the nerve to tell me I can't understand you?! If there's something I can't understand is why you don't even consider your own life more important than the people who don't respect it, or why can't you accept that what you did was self-defense, or why have you isolated from us when you needed our help the most!"
There was a long, tense silence. Lightning tried to calm down, to compose herself again, already regretting losing control and hitting Hope. "Not so long ago, I tried to do that and I wanted to do it so much, and now… I wish I hadn't. Fine, Lightning, if you wanted to fix things up, you've just ruined everything."
Yet Hope didn't react. He'd been left sitting in the floor, clearly shocked and confused, with one hand over the cheek Lightning had punched him in. And he was trembling, his eyes wide and unfocused, his breath ragged and his jaw clenched. It seemed almost as if the wounded, cornered beast she'd seen in his eyes just minutes ago was fiercely trying to get free, clawing at the walls of its cage. She felt her anger and impotence rising up again at watching the angel right there on the floor, without even lifting a finger to protest or even defend himself despite the gratuitous punch he'd taken. "Dammit! Does he even holds a bit of self-respect at all? No normal person would be sitting still after what I did without flying into a rage or burst into–!"
And then there was made light in her mind.
Hope's hard breathing, his trembling body, his unfocused eyes… Despite his expressive limitations, Lightning realized it was the body language of anyone sobbing. Yet the angel hadn't shed a single tear. His eyes were completely dry, wide open, like an empty dam.
It was then when she remembered Hope's words that evening in Yusnaan, when she and Serah had a walk with him through the streets of the city, wondering why he looked happier than usual: "The happiness isn't mine. It is what is around me what you see. I am… let us say, quite limited, experiencing it for myself."
Hope was some sort of channeling device. The same way he felt happier whenever joy was around him, he felt sad when he sensed others' sorrow. But he was but the reflection of his surroundings, an ephemeral vessel designed to feel the flow of the planet's energy in order to identify any changes in its balance.
His purpose was to channel the energy he felt from the outside and give it meaning through him. He hadn't been created to do the same with energy coming from himself.
When Lightning came to grips to what this meant, all of her anger towards him was gone, immediately replaced by an unbearable lump in her throat. "It's not that Hope is too shocked to cry…", she realized. "He's outright unable to cry. He can't channel outside him the energy that he feels. Either it's stuck inside him… or it uncontrollably explodes, just like it happened in the Dead Dunes", the young woman guessed, turning pale. "Bhunivelze, you wretched bastard… Who would be cruel enough to deny his servant the very right to cry and laugh for himself?"
If this was true, Hope had been whole weeks with all that horror and remorse stuck inside him, eating away at his soul and sanity, completely unable to vent because of the plain and simple fact that he hadn't been created with that purpose. No wonder he'd ended up coming to the conclusions he'd said in despair. Any other person would've turned hopelessly insane for less than what the angel had been enduring.
Instinctively, Lightning then knew what she had to do. She took a deep breath to calm down, and knelt beside him. Without giving him time to react –which, immersed as he was in his own trance, he didn't– and not allowing herself to think that what she was about to do was against her own principles, the young woman pulled him into her arms, as firmly as carefully.
"… Light, what are you doing?", Hope weakly protested, tensing, and he tried to pull her away. "Don't get close to me! Don't you realize the danger you're–?"
"Shut up, dummy head", she cut him short, hugging him tighter to not let him push her. "Share it with me."
The young angel was left speechless. He was still in tension, but he stopped trying to back off.
"What–?"
"Share with me all your pain. You can't keep it forever inside you, Hope. If I have to be the one who channels it for you, so be it."
"But…", Hope whispered, almost breathlessly. "Light, I… If I do that, you–"
"I know what I'm doing, and I don't care. Now shut your mouth and do it already", Lightning's words were blunt, but her voice was soft. "You won't go through this alone."
He hesitated, but he finally embraced her back after some long moments, and he buried his face in her shoulder, deeply breathing. Just a few seconds later, Lightning felt a stream of energy, very weak initially, that began flowing from the angel to her body, and she sensed how her heart gradually absorbed it. At first she nearly ran out of air: that energy was overflowing with fear, sorrow, regret and horror. It was like drowning in a pit of the darkest despair, with no way out of it. She held back a gasp and clung a bit more to Hope, as if he was her only lifeline: she had to resist, no matter how grievous was what she was feeling. She was well aware that despair was only a fraction of what he'd been feeling inside for quite a while.
For several minutes, Lightning and Hope held each other on the floor, as the angel transferred to her that negative energy he couldn't get rid of by himself. She did her best to remain steady, but the pain and sorrow were getting so unbearable they began to cloud her mind and weaken her body which started shaking, and her eyes moistened more as seconds passed. But she couldn't allow herself to stop, no matter how deep the suffering getting over her was. "I must endure", she told herself over and over, trying to stay focused, "I can't stop now. I have to help him… I must channel everything he can't… I have to–"
Then, all of a sudden, the energy flow sharply decreased until it was gone. Puzzled at this, Lightning tried to find again the transfer bond, but she was met by Hope's light-green eyes, exhausted and framed by dark circles, yes, but lightened by a faint spark of seriousness. It had been so long since she had last seen the angel's eyes so serene that she was left without words.
"That is enough, Light…", Hope muttered, resting his hands on her shoulders and pushing her a bit away from him. "Leave it."
"Don't be stupid", she protested, but her voice failed her and she had to take a couple of breaths to prevent her voice to break again. "I haven't yet finished. I can still hold on a bit longer–"
"No", the angel shook his head. "You told me to share it, not to pass all of it to you… And you've suffered too much for me when you didn't have to."
Lightning wanted to reply, but then she felt her head spinning when all the negative energy she'd absorbed from Hope overcame her. She was about to break down crying, but she made a huge effort to control herself. She couldn't allow him to see how much it had affected her, not if she ever wanted to help him again. She knew Hope well enough to know he wouldn't let her do it again.
The angel hold her quietly, patiently waiting for her to get better. He also seemed to be trying to give order to… whatever he was feeling right then. He still looked so fragile, so drawn as before, but now Lightning could see in him the Hope she had known. Perhaps the sharpness in his face, the jaded gleam in his eyes, they weren't there before… but at least he no longer looked like a specter consumed by the torment of the horror he couldn't break free of.
"I'll be fine… Don't worry about me", the young woman said once she regained her breath and strength to not let all the despair she absorbed take over. "But I'd have wanted to help you more than I've done…"
"You have done more for me than you can imagine", Hope replied staring at her with those weary eyes, but loads calmer than they had been during those long, terrible weeks. "You don't know how much."
She tried to smile, but it was an extremely weak one. The negativity she'd channeled from Hope clouded her positive energy, but seeing the angel out of his trance relieved her more than she'd believed it would. "I did it… Serah was right, as usual. All I had to do was to understand the real problem… I only had to put myself in his place, just that."
"Can you stand up?", the young woman asked Hope as she pulled away from him and tried to get up; she inwardly cursed the weakness all that negative energy caused her because it almost was as if her legs were made of butter.
"I could ask you the same", he replied when he had to hold her to keep her from falling over, and she did so when the angel, to whom the lack of food and rest was beginning to take its toll, nearly lost his balance. "I am sorry, Light. I didn't want to–"
"You apologize once more and you've earned yourself another punch", the young woman grunted, to which Hope chose to not argue. "I can handle myself… You have to rest now, okay? So go get some sleep and stop protesting. Will you need a spell to sleep?"
Hope, who had sat on the edge of the bed, shook his head:
"No, I won't. I… I think I can fall asleep by myself, thanks to you."
Lightning smiled, this time a bit more successful. Walking slowly to not fall flat on the floor, she went to the room's door.
"Right. Now try get some rest and don't think too much about what you don't have to think about for now, you hear me? And if you need anything, no matter what it is, let me know. I'm gonna sleep, but just remember… You're not alone, Hope. I'll be watching over you."
Before closing the door and leaving behind at last those terrible events that had threatened to plunge them all in a dark point of no return, she heard the angel's voice, weary but soft and serene when he whispered:
"Thank you, Light… Thank you so much."
Lightning sighed in resignation as she went down the hallway towards the stairs; once again, like almost every day, she was meeting with Fang and Noel in The Farseer's Rest, to discuss more action plans that were plain useless as long as Hope was still recovering. It had been two weeks since that day when she'd brought him that soup, and while it hadn't been the last time they'd talked, it was the last long conversation they had shared. In fact, since that day, Hope had locked himself away in a state of deep thought, and neither Lightning nor Serah knew for sure if that was good or not. During his recovery, they'd gotten used to the angel barely uttering more than three sentences in a row, but his sudden silence after his slow but progressive improvement had taken them off-guard.
To be honest, more to Lightning than to Serah. The younger Farron sister seemed to know why it happened, but no matter how much she nagged her, Lightning failed to make her speak.
"If he just told us what's he gotten in his head this time…", the young woman thought, frustrated. "Sometimes I think it'd be much easier talking to a wall and get some answers."
It wasn't easy to understand Hope. Throughout their coexistence with him, Lightning and Serah learned to decipher the course of his thoughts from his minimal gestures, but of course, not always their guessing was correct. At the end of the day, he was an angel: despite he didn't look that different from humans without wings, he wasn't.
However, following the moment Hope shared his energy with her, Lightning now knew much more about how he thought and how he felt. During the days she'd spent filtering all that negative energy, she had processed in passing other emotions that, probably unintentionally, the angel had transferred to her as well. Deciphering the emotions of such an emotionally limited creature like him wasn't an easy task, but at the very least Lightning had one thing clear: she couldn't say anymore Hope was an empty shell.
"He thinks and feels similar to us", Lightning thought, still sorrowful at the revelation that had been the key to get Hope out of his trance, "but he can't express it because he's not been created to feel for himself. He's been denied his own consciousness from the very moment he was born… and he's only know to live through those around him. That's why he values infinitely more other people's lives than his own. If only we had learned of this before…"
And even though Hope seemed to regain his health and stability, who knew when he'd be able again to continue searching for the Heart of Bhunivelze. How long it had been since they returned from the Dead Dunes? Lightning estimated that it'd been around two months. All that time stuck in a dead end, and it was, as usual, the Order's doing.
All they could do was to wait… and endure Fang's endless ramblings in the meantime.
But then, when Lightning had already went down a couple of steps, she heard behind her a calm voice that made her stop short, mainly because it'd been almost two months since she last heard it outside her room:
"Light, wait…"
She turned, stunned, to find Hope half-leaning in her room's doorway, as if he didn't quite dare to leave it; however, he'd locked himself up in there all that time, and that was what left Lightning speechless. She realized she'd come to think he'd never see daylight again.
"Are you in a hurry?", he asked, making her come back to reality. "I wouldn't want to delay you… I just wanted to tell you something before you go meet Fang and Noel."
"No, don't worry. They can wait a bit longer", she wasn't going to tell him she was already late when the angel had finally decided to leave his burrow to talk to her, of course. "What is it, Hope? Is everything alright?"
Hope slightly shrugged. There was a spark of insecurity in his eyes, but he didn't hesitate when he stared at her.
"I have had better times, but I'll survive. That is not what I wanted to talk about, anyway… Tell me, do you know when you will be going to the Wildlands?"
Lightning didn't know what to answer at first. She'd expected any other question coming from him, but certainly not one as straightforward.
"Well, Fang's been making plans for several weeks now, but there's still nothing official on the table. We were waiting for things, so to speak, to calm down… Why you asking?"
"Because there is no need to keep waiting", the angel replied not taking his eyes away from hers. "Once you decide when you'll be going, let me know. Is that okay with you?"
If the former reply had left Lightning puzzled, the latter stole every single word she might have in store. She couldn't believe what she heard. Was he really saying what she thought he meant?
"Hope… Are you implying that you…? I mean… are you aware of what you're saying?"
"I've had plenty of time to be so", he replied as he briefly raised his eyebrows. "And yes, I am saying I will go with you to the Wildlands whenever you consider we must go. It is not that hard to understand, right? Or would you rather prefer I don't go with you?"
"No! No, not at all. It's just… are you completely sure?", Lightning made an effort to put an order to her rushing thoughts. "If you come, we'll have to deal with who knows how many dangers, and there will be no choice but to fight our way in… Are you ready to go through it? I know you don't fight the same way we do, but–"
She was cut when Hope tilted his head, as he always did whenever he was lost in thought. But there was no trace of doubt in his eyes, which stared at her in deep determination.
"My hands are stained with blood forever. I will stay true to my principles, but if I must take any lives again, I'll do it if I have no other option. I have been thinking a lot all these days, and, you know, you were right… I don't consider my life more important than any other living being's. But I do consider yours and your sister's like that. You saved my life, and I haven't forgotten that debt to you", he replied, and he let out a long, weary sigh. "If in my intent of not spilling blood I allowed you to be killed… then I'd be betraying my principles in the same way I do when I end a life with my own hands. I care more about your life than mine, and of course much more than anyone's who wish you any harm."
At first, Lightning found herself unable to react coherently. She knew too well how much violence and death affected Hope, specially if he was responsible for it. She herself had felt in her own soul the pain and regret it caused him inside. But he was willing to go through that suffering again… for her and Serah. Because they'd been the ones who had saved his life in the first place.
He had always been returning the favor.
Once again, following an impulse that her logic and pride would've rejected, the young woman embraced him, overcome with gratitude. Hope didn't resist, but neither hugged her back; in fact, judging from how his lean body tensed up, he seemed rather to have been caught completely by surprise.
"Light, what are you doing? I am telling you I'll go with you. I don't need to share with you any bad things to feel better…"
"Dummy head", she chuckled, pulling away from him, "humans not just share bad things to feel better. We can share positive feelings too. If you transferred me your pain, I can do the same to you with my gratitude, don't you think?"
Hope stared at her with a mix of confusion and curiosity.
"You owe me nothing. You've had a hard time because of me, you punched me in the face and now you pay with gratitude the suffering I have caused you. I don't understand you, Light."
The young woman smiled and shook her head, but she said nothing. She set out to get back on her way to The Farseer's Rest, eager to tell Fang and Noel the good news, not before saying goodbye to the angel with a wave of her hand after pointing to the clock on the wall as an explanation, to which he nodded and went back to the room to not steal any more time from her.
"I owe you more than you think, Hope. And if not for you, I'd have never come to understand it… nor I'd been able to understand you."