A/N: Quote is by Joseph Brodsky. The Bartholomew angst just came to me as I read a very touching German father-son story (in its Chinese translated form, no less...)
I don't know if the next chapter will be Academia (Hope-centric) or Augusta Tower (a lot of Alyssa). I think I'll probably figure it out as I go. All my thanks to the Theory of Everything soundtrack and Homestuck/Clark Powell + Toby Fox's "Overture (Canon Edit)" for great music while writing. Oh, and my own Jayce angst from, like, two years ago? Always nice to realize you've written crumbling scientists before. (Probably because you were also one at the time.)
If there is any substitute for love, it is memory.
A part of him has always known that Lightning's knife would come back to haunt him.
Snow settles, as inelegantly as always, into his father's couch (he could have sworn that had been a new year's gift from Rygdea, why can't Snow just go sit somewhere else, anywhere else), and tells the story of Light's possible survival. Snow has a tendency to believe the most outlandish and tragic of Serah's claims. Snow has a (probably unfortunate) tendency of being right. "It took all this time for Serah to tell me everything. I fully believe that she's telling the truth."
Hope considers it and holds the smile, the brightness he presents to a friend he has sorely missed (and not seen at all, damn it, Snow) since that fateful day on Gran Pulse. A dormant wistfulness in his chest is slowly brewing into something resembling a deep regret sprinkled with hope. The Lightning he knew could give anything a run for their money.
(He cheerfully sits on the implication that says by that logic, she should have returned by now.)
The shock and grief on losing Lightning had felt wrong, unnatural; even his father had noted that he hadn't been as upset as expected, and he had walked away from the scene with but a hint of forlornness, having to convince himself to turn over the knife. It still had her warmth on it, he reflects now, hiding his turmoil with sips and sips of coffee. The nervous edge on the blade had been the same as when I last held it in Palumpolum. It had felt threatened.
(But where, if anywhere, can she be?)
Snow shifts his weight, embarrassed at Hope's claim that he hasn't changed a wee bit. "Can you help keep an eye on Serah for me? It might be a while before I'd be able to bring sis home because I don't have any leads, but –"
Take me with you. "I… will try my best. I haven't been to New Bodhum yet, you know."
"You'll love it."
"I don't doubt. I'll look into the Academy files while you're gone. Keep you updated if anything relevant comes up." There's still so much that I need to know. You can't just throw your fists at a time-eating and memory-rewriting black hole and expect it to work. He's not Snow, almost divinely gifted with the ability to blindly trust in himself and make it work, and if he's being honest with himself, he's apprehensive about reuniting with Light again, too, for it's been years and he hasn't exactly been looking for her and oh god what would she even say to me, we were supposed to be partners. He'll have to produce something miraculous to make up for it. Something only he can do.
Perhaps helping the reconstruction effort at New Bodhum and Cocoon would be a good start.
What had been lingering paranoia about Snow's safety turns into a full-blown panic attack when he hears that Serah has also disappeared.
"Okay, so," he rasps a few hours later, sitting in the café in New Bodhum with Lebreau and Yuj and having trouble believing just how okay they are with all of this, "You were attacked by these monsters, and then this guy – this Noel – just fell out of the sky and convinced Serah to go time-traveling with him to save Lightning?"
"More or less, yeah," Lebreau nods, stirring her drink sagely. Hope can't help but bury his face in his hands as Serah's cat climbs onto his shoulders, meowing softly.
"That's not – you're supposed to report these things and get them looked at by professionals before you just go through them! What if they end up 500 years in the future? Do they even know where they're going?"
"You mean, you wanted to look at them?" Someone is being just a little bit too perceptive.
Maybe. "Well, can I maybe take a look at them now?" he asks sullenly, scratching the cat on its chin. It meows again approvingly before settling down on his lap. He's going to have to apologize for all this rude behavior later. For now, he's just all kinds of mad about missing the one way ticket to Lightning and also somehow losing another friend to Bhunivelze only knows what.
(He's not going to even think about why Light had asked for the sister she'd gone to hell and back to save as opposed to someone who'd willingly lay down his life for her.)
It's a whole week before he packs again for Palumpolum. Serah's students have been inconsolable, and to placate them he has had to tell each a l'Cie hero story ("Tell us about the Grand Prix again! And Fang's dragon! And Ochu!") and promise a tour of the new Academy headquarters ("next next Sunday, call me and I'll get uncle Sazh to come pick you up"). Although he's never been to Serah and Snow's house or met the rest of NORA after that day on the Hanging Edge, he has somehow been immediately accepted as a member of the Villiers-Farron extended family, even though no one seems to quite know what his place is supposed to be (if he's actually some kind of younger brother, is he an adopted Farron, or an adopted Villiers?)
"Are you going to look for Lightning, too?" Lebreau asks, handing him a copy of the NORA special recipe upon his request. The NORA members have been absolutely stuffing him with gifts; he suspects it may have something to do with their guilt over his mother. "I suppose you can't just leave – you've got your father to look after."
"Right," he replies, finishing the math exercises he's been composing for the kids and rolling up the piece of paper. Not to mention the time gates don't so much as glow in my presence. "And there are the paradoxes, too – what if they just start popping up everywhere? I need to report back to the Academy, let them know what's happening. All the work we've done won't mean a single thing if a swarm of monsters can just erase them in a matter of days."
Gadot grunts in the background. "You really trust the Academy, huh? I guess your old man is one of its founders, so we can trust what it does."
"Oh, yeah." He flashes his brilliant adult smile and passes the exercises to Yuj. "Make sure they do at least one exercise a day. And if the Academy ever does anything suspicious, you can count on me to fix it. That's how I can help."
(He's not bitter about the totally enigmatic and elusive qualities of the time gates. Not at all.)
"Hope, my dear friend and team leader," a young man at the Academy moans, protruding spiky black hair and blue eyes into his field of vision, "you should get dinner with us sometime."
He blinks and drops his pen considerately. He had turned to work on the Kujata replacement project and the Gran Pulse manual irrigation projects after the time gates had (again) given him nothing but confusion and grief, and it appears that he has once again (ironically) forgotten the time. "Give me five. How are you all doing?"
"I think the trainees at the back have requested another derivation. When you go back to class – well, we just all start wandering like mindless sheep. We can't wait for you to graduate and start working full time. Haven't you basically already done everything you need to do?"
The other man's woeful eyes are making Hope grin. "I'm not doing this to torture you, I swear. I just… need one final section for my, uh, thesis on the time gates."
"Oh yeah, director-elect Hope Estheim's Honors Plus dissertation on time and space, and how we're all doomed and at the mercy of Almighty Bhunivelze." The man pretends that he's about to burst into tears. "What shall we do when he single-handedly saves the world?"
"Okay, okay, now you're just making fun of me. I have no special ambitions or aspirations for high office, and I've always needed and appreciated everyone's support and love. Come on. Let's meet the team." He concludes his report with a flourish, rises – and follows the researcher through the corridors past the wall of inspirational paste-its, titled (in elegant wine-colored script) WHY ARE YOU WORKING FOR THE ACADEMY. Noting Hope's okay-but-seriously-why face at the wall, the coworker playfully pushes him forward towards it. "Say, Hope, you are the most dedicated researcher Cocoon's ever seen. Your old man stays here 15 hours a day and you seem to stick around for even longer. Do you just love ancient ruins and turbojets that much?"
"Unfortunately," he nods agreeably, punching the Fibonacci sequence into the security door, "I know one of the pilots who fly the commuter route, and he has always been a terrible influence."
When he had approached Sazh about Snow and Serah's disappearances, the much older man had snorted and patted his shoulders sympathetically. "Those two just do whatever they want," Sazh had sighed, watching Dajh play with the chocobo chick with all the fondness in the world. "You know this."
Hope had felt almost glad, then, that Sazh had not been there to witness all his antics in the Vile Peaks and Palumpolum. He's classified me with the sensible ones. The words he was just about to let slip were very much only on the pretense side of sensible. "You'll stay here, right, Sazh? There's no way that you'll ever leave Dajh to do anything."
"Of course." Sazh had ruffled his hair and it had been awkward because unlike Dajh, Hope didn't actually possess an afro. "I trust the Farron sisters and their new… friend to know what they're doing, even if Snow doesn't." A chuckle. "And someone's got to keep an eye on you."
"Hey, I'm not a child anymore!"
"You're all kids to me. Every single last one of you."
(Hope Estheim had let out a cry when he heard three months later that the beloved Sazh Katzroy [and his child, Mr. Katzroy would never let go of his child] had vanished as well.)
He doesn't remember when he had really picked up the coffee habit, but he does eventually notice how he's memorized the location of every miniature crack on the wall of his Academy cubicle. There is no real pattern, geometric or otherwise, he had written in a notebook, perplexed, until it hits him how ridiculous he is being and he's forced to shuffle to the bathroom (is this the true walk of shame) to wash his face.
The bathroom (the entire floor, probably) is empty. He turns on the faucet and takes a long, good look at himself in the mirror. Here's the one that time and destiny has forgotten. Safe. Lost. Tucked away in a little pocket of make-believe, surrounded by gears and human sweat. He wonders if Light and the Oerba girls would even still be friends with him now, the white-clad sky blue-tied young man who breathes paraffin oil and naps in a storage room full of hand drawn blueprints and ferroelectric films. Blasting apart hoplites and flans with firaga and thundaga feels like a distant memory from a whole other world.
Missing them, missing her: one solitary soul paper-folding all his love and hopes around a time when he had been likewise touched by fate and truth-defying magic. True, they had fallen and fallen hard, but even her callouses had been so soft.
(Are you hurting where you are now, alone but never one to give up, breaking into new callouses and vigor with that same heart I've grown to worship?)
He graduates at the top of his class for the second year in a row, although there was widespread confusion on how to address his "class" since he's so often skipped ahead and left all his peers in the dust. What rumors had once existed about him utilizing his father's connections for his own ends have all but vanished. He holds nearly two dozen patents and have led a similar number of investigative teams, and as he balances the graduation cap on his own head, he sees something resembling reverence from even his own father's eyes.
There's wind chill, something in his mind registers, as he hears his own name being called. A thousand heads turn towards him. He smiles comfortably. Of the unnatural kind. There's probably a paradox around the city somewhere. After this ceremony, he'll need to retrieve his assortment of clocks, his boomerang and the team on the sixth floor.
The man on the stage clears his throat. "The rising star and hope of the Academy, Doctor Hope Estheim. Let us congratulate him on his achievements, for they are impressive and numerous, and hear what he has to say about our institution."
He steps up to the stage, shakes hands with his father and Rygdea as well as another six or seven people he vaguely knows, gives a small presentation on one of his thirteen latest projects. Thundering applause. He catches syllables of whispers from the honor row, words like "director" and "no election" and "support." He pretends not to hear them.
"I'd like to thank everyone that has helped me through these hard and turbulent years… the Academy founders and trustees, my mentors, coworkers and friends here at the Academy, my family." An agonizing pause. His father nods in his general direction – he knew Bartholomew would have preferred family to father. A thousand snaps from the cameras. "My heart also goes out to Lightning Farron, Oerba Dia Vanille and Oerba Yun Fang."
"We live in an unprecedented age. We had been manipulated and lied to, rounded up and nearly driven to extinction, yet we have persevered and flourished. We have believed in ourselves and with our own strength created new, wondrous cities of refuge and promise. If we look forward – examine everything with open, accepting eyes, think, and act – nothing will be beyond us. We may make mistakes, but unlike the Fal'Cie, we can rise from our own ashes and hold each other's hands. So let us dream, and let us believe. We will not have any regrets."
(The same speech he had given to his friends after defeating Cid Raines on the Fifth Ark ends up being broadcasted all over Cocoon and the new cities of Gran Pulse, and he doesn't quite know whether to laugh or to cry.)
The day he encounters Alyssa Zaidelle's report on the Bresha Ruins is the beginning of the end.
He had all but given up on his honors thesis – there have been no more credible sightings of time travelers, it's likely that Snow, Serah and Noel had gone into the past, perhaps he's already living in an alternate timeline, Etro forbid – when the word "rose" inevitably again catches his attention and he pulls a new report out of the pile, peeking (not without a slight degree of shame about his irrational fascination) at the name and contents. A.Z., a trainee, 5 AF. The author appears to be female, of the same age as him, and a mathematician. He frowns, pours himself another cup of coffee, and starts reading.
(He eventually finds himself having to resist flooding her mailbox with questions like a 14-year-old boy falling in love for the first time.)
A knock on the door. He almost jumps. It must be Alyssa. Adrenaline and nostalgia fill his veins, a longing that utterly strips him of his smile-mask and leaves him breathless. Somewhere his friends are alive and she's seen them and the path to the future is lighting up like a highway to paradise, and he only needs to speak to her, connect himself back online –
A creak. She has let herself inside. He doesn't know what expression he's wearing when she sees him, but he knows hers, and it only sends an all-too-familiar shiver down his spine.
Purged eyes.
"Director Estheim. I must apologize for my entry – I realized that you were already inside, and didn't want to take up too much of your precious time. All I wanted to say is – it'd be an honor to work by your side."
He stares at her, lips moving for a clever and polite dismissal, until he hears himself say okay.
10 AF is the milestone that he has been dreading forever.
"Happy twenty-fourth, Hope," his father beams, positively glowing as Hope decorates the dinner table with his own homecooked dishes. As Bartholomew had continued to age, Hope had picked up the chores around the house, attending to them with the same kind of diligence as he did to his work. They still live in the same house; there are too many memories neither of them are willing to let go of, and Hope has grown to enjoy napping incognito on the commute train.
"Mhm. Careful with these. I only learned that other one last week."
"My son the master chef. Your mother would be so proud, so shocked, but so proud."
"It's just scientist food. I'm glad you don't have high standards. Lebreau still chews me out whenever I try to make the NORA special." Ignoring his father's not-so-subtle dig on his spoiled child self (he's been so much more vocal about Nora and the past recently, it's hard to tell if it's because their relationship has gotten better or if his wits and conscience have started to wander since his retirement), Hope turns towards the mountain pile of gifts right inside his door (and presumably outside of it, too), and can't help but scowl. "Now that…"
"Is perfectly called for, Hope!" His father interrupts, grinning like a child. "Did you know, I got stopped by two young ladies the other day, approaching me for your signature –"
"By Etro, what did you tell them –"
"Oh, I know you're taken alright," Bartholomew responds thoughtfully, biting into a piece of chashu, "but I'm a good father, so I'm going to help you keep your secret."
He nearly chokes on his drink. "Wait, Dad, I'm not dating Alyssa –"
"I know you're not interested in Alyssa. I'm talking about Lightning Farron."
He actually chokes on his drink.
"It's been ten years, Hope. I wasn't there with you and Nora when it all happened – the gods cursed me for that – but I've been here after, and I'm your father." Beneath the slightly haphazard mix of white and brown hair, Bartholomew's eyes are too tender for comfort. "I also know how it feels to not get over someone for a whole decade."
"It's not like that, Dad," he responds sullenly, placing his glass back onto the table. "What you and Mom had was real. She'd always loved you, and she loved you, loved us, until the very end. All I have is a one-sided crush, okay? Light will never want me. I don't even know where she is, if she's still alive. My memories tell me that she's under us, frozen in the pillar. I'll get over it."
"But who would you love, if you're going to give her up?" Bartholomew inquires, draining his wine glass. "You value the heroic, the persistent, the caring and the passionately if not obstinately single-minded – someone not unlike yourself, if I can say as much. And look at yourself. You are the Director of the Academy, the most brilliant and productive mind in the world – who would even still be able to understand and stand next to you?"
He squeezes his eyes shut and tries his hardest to not sound exasperated. A part of him already knows the answer to the question he's about to ask. "Dad – if you know everything already, why are we still having this conversation?"
"I heard about the Oracle Drive in Yaschas Massif." His father reaches across the table, caresses his son's slightly shaking hand. "Listen to me on just one thing, Hope – don't let the people you love go. Stay by them. Protect them. Hold onto them as tightly as you can. You've already lost your mother due to no fault of your own – I don't want you to repeat my mistake, too."
Yaschas Massif will be his first solo mission after Bartholomew's retirement. While it's true that the old man never directly supervised his research anyway, always citing potential conflicts of interest, he can't help but shiver from a profound loneliness in his bones as he calls Alyssa to arrange for their transport. Lightning is in that Oracle Drive, he tells himself sternly, instructing Alyssa to file an application for two teams and paramilitary support. If the investigation goes well, you won't be lonely for long.
He gets far more than what he has bargained for. Serah and Noel descends from the time gate with tales of a version of himself from a different timeline and a wealth of new knowledge on time travel. The Lightning in the Oracle Drive fights in the unseen realm with all the power and drive that he remembers, holy light in her eyes and angelic feathers trailing her armor, and he can't help but gasp as he realizes that she's holding far more than just the weight of Cocoon on her shoulders.
By the research platform he spies Noel lingering, gazing at both the Oracle Drive and the vision it carries with an unreadable expression. He can guess half of the time traveler's mind: the oracle drive is the remnant of the love he has lost, and the vision a harbinger for the shattered pieces of his future.
It doesn't have to be this way, Serah cries out, and in one moment the threads of past and future weave together, show him the way: the poles of two opposing worlds, undying divinity and flawed humanity. Alone in Valhalla, Lightning will slash a path forward with faith and pure strength of will. Leading generations of humanity on Gran Pulse and Cocoon, he will forge a road from the crack she leaves behind, fortify man's souls and hopes into an indestructible castle.
Perhaps I have a role to play after all. As all my friends draw forth the strings of fate between times and worlds, I must put my foot down and grow roots. There's a battle here that will be fought for all the upcoming centuries. Since I won't have all the time in the world like Light, I'll have to send my heart and mind into overdrive.
"Do you understand what you've promised them, Director?" Alyssa prods the day after their return to Palumpolum, wary-faced under her cheery armor. "You've basically promised to become more than Ragnarok."
"It's not as beyond me as you'd think," he murmurs, and leaves it at that.
(He's not going to allow future mothers and sons to fall to their deaths from a shattered paradise.)
He had set himself up only to watch it all crash and fall.
Bartholomew turns towards him on what he knows would soon be his father's death bed, a wane smile on an emaciated face.
"You can't save me, Hope, and that's okay. The sooner you accept it, the sooner it'll be easier for both of us."
He turns to depart, nearly slamming the door shut before, resigned and unwilling to give in, leaves it ajar. "I refuse."
Bartholomew's not terribly old, but he's no longer young, either. In his mid-sixties, he has gone down with terminal metastatic cancer. The tumor had grown steadily, tucked away in an inconspicuous spot in his body, and both father and son had blamed fatigue and weakness over the years on the nature of Academy work, oblivious to the far more horrendous reality.
I never notice anything, Hope thinks sardonically to himself, pulling up another X-ray of his father's metastases and reading the measurements on the bottom right of the chart. Or when I do, it's always already too late, and I'm left with nothing but… rage.
But it's not over yet. He won't let it be over like this. What's the point of research and knowledge if he can't use any of it to save the people he loves? Worse yet, a tendril of fear curling in his gut that he refuses to admit: if I can't even save my father, how am I supposed to save the world?
So: overnight reading. Overnight testing. He sets up a folder for his father's case, opens it as soon as 6pm hits and he's off his regular work shift, and does not close it again until 3am the following morning. He instructs Alyssa to leave him food outside his office as if he's a feral behemoth locked up in a cage in a zoo and he probably has started looking like one. A pager keeps him updated on his father's condition, blood gases and albumin and level of consciousness. He'll pick disease and death apart, one dying man at a time.
It's a few days before he sees a small note on top of Alyssa's dinner package. A message from his father: You need to pick your battles, Hope. Remember Gran Pulse and Titan? Everything dies, eventually.
Not in Valhalla, apparently, he thinks bitterly, biting into a sandwich savagely as he evaluates the pharmacokinetic potential of a specific enzyme inhibitor. Not that I know how to get there.
The first machines and drugs he creates work. The doctors extend Bartholomew's life by three months, then two months, then two weeks, until they (quietly and abashedly, knocking on the door of his office and whispering to him from behind his monitor screens) declare his experiment over. He's no favored child of the god of death. Etro will take his father, regardless of what he might want to say about it.
He smiles brightly, thanks them, apologizes profusely for interfering with their already stress-laden work. That night, at 3am, he packs up the folder and saunters back home.
It's somewhere between the Rivera Towers and Felix Heights where he falls apart.
He watches the stars, the sharp edges of Fang and Vanille's crystal blossoms, the silence of the night, the quiet, frantic beats of his own heart under his chest. The grass is too coarse under his arms and neck, children of an infertile land of futility, evidence of his inescapable trap. The dawn bleeds Caius and Noel's dark violet and Lightning's rose pink, tales of hundreds of interwoven timelines that turn and breathe beyond his reach. Somewhere, Serah is fighting tooth and nail to save her sister. Noel pierces through life and death to seek a new human voice. Alone he remains the living grave of an abandoned time, the guardian of memories left behind, with the company of naught but an ever-building despair.
He turns the compiled booklet of Oracle Drive reports in his hands – recalls the utter lack of finds on this century, his lifetime, another battle he probably shouldn't pick to fight – and wishes there's a paradox somewhere, it has to be somewhere, the universe can't simply desire for everything Hope Estheim touches to disappear or die.
Another haunted soul picks up his shipwreck.
"Go talk to him, Director," she chastises, advancing towards him – he doesn't move to hide his pain, not anymore, not here – and her voice is surprisingly empathetic. "Some people know that they can't be saved, and the best thing you can do for them is just… acknowledge them and what they've done while they're still here."
He hasn't noticed that he's still not crying. He could have sworn he has been. "Tell him that I'm coming."
"Hope," floats his father's voice from the hospital bed, somehow still full of a laughter that fills life's empty and shattered bottles until they're full and brimming with joy, "stop sitting with your books and come sit with me."
He catches himself before the first tears fall. I will be brave enough to say my first goodbye. "I'll be here until the end."
In the last few days, Bartholomew tells him stories.
"Look at me! Look at all these self-indulgent toys my son's made for me. I am the happiest father on the planet." Bartholomew leans against Hope's metallic back support and regards an old photo album held by Hope's hanging object-holder, beaming, and the son sits down faithfully by the bed, waiting. A clock ticks behind them. They're counting down the seconds to midnight.
"What's the agenda for today?" The silver-haired young man asks, not without difficulty, not without swallowed tears. He's cradling one of his father's hands, careful not to touch the IV.
The smile slowly retreats from Bartholomew's eyes, but something more substantial gathers there instead. "Let's talk about us."
"There aren't any interesting stories about us."
"And that's where you are wrong. Listen." The grip from the dying man suddenly tightens. "Look at that moon. Thirteen years ago, to that same moon, I came back home, back to our house. The rooms and corridors were still suffused with you and your mother's presence. There were Nora's dishes in the fridge, your favorite documentaries under the TV – I sat, and I ate, and I watched, but I was alone. I waited. I pulled out all your notebooks from kindergarten to your last week of school, placed my wedding ring on top. I re-made all the promises I had ever broken and I hated myself."
"Dad, no."
"But you came back. You came back even though you didn't want to, even though there were PSICOM and Fal'Cie on your trail and a fate worse than death on your wrist, but you came back for me, and after Cocoon, too. I had imagined you dead, shot down or crushed under all the rubble, and after you left again, crystallized… I had gone down onto Gran Pulse to pick up my son's statue, not in my wildest dreams believing that I could hear him again. But there you were. And here you are. You gave me back a home I didn't deserve." The eyes of the founder of the Academy glinted under the faint silver light. "That, Hope, is an enormous thing."
"You are my father." His voice breaks, quivers. "I've always needed you and looked up to you. Sure, I was affected by the absence and the occasional harsh words… but your determination. Your faith. I wouldn't have gone into the Academy if not for you. There wouldn't be an Academy without you."
"Did you know? I asked Rygdea to create the Academy for you." Bartholomew pauses, catches his breath; he stares, unable to look away. "Your eyes when I handed you that PSICOM casualty list. Your vitality when you slept, shifting back and forth in dreams I couldn't even begin to comprehend, but yet so stubborn and beautiful in your persistence and idealism against the tides of truth. Your imagination and capability to love… you deserve more, better." A few rapid, shallow coughs. "I saw you, that day, with the boys. I saw you throw them back, with that thing you'd been tinkering with in your room. My heart had risen to my throat – I wondered if the world had indeed taken too much from you, if it had broken you, if you had finally decided to just push back. I knew your friends had taught you better than that… but I also knew that they had all disappeared from your life, and I am not the best person to teach you how not to hate."
Memories flood back of the Central Arcade, the anger that had risen in his air-starved lungs, and the lost moments of pain. He lifts Bartholomew's withering hand up, touches his father's wedding ring with his own lips. A strangled question. "… Was I wrong?"
"No," the father responds softly. "I'd never been more proud in my life."
The tears come out in a rush. He sobs as he did that excruciating night in Vallis Media, releasing all the bottled-up hurt and fear in a heart forced to grow up way before its time, and then there are the words, the things he's promised he'd never say. "I'm scared, Dad." Everyone's gone up and left and you are the last one.
Bartholomew pulls his hand back, slowly reaches up to stroke his son's head. "And admitting that is the first step to being human."
"I'll change history, bring both of you back." He pleads, desperate and anguished and just a child at the end of it all, and his father catches his tears with those weak palms, signs for a hug. The son clumsily climbs onto the bed with none of the grace of the world's beloved and they embrace, arms wrapped around each other, a strong young heart resonating against a fading elderly one as they drape each other with love.
It's the end of the road here, no doubt. But it will have to be a new beginning, too.
"Promise me, Hope," the father whispers, thin and weary but powered by a will of the world that they're both just starting to learn to confront, "Promise me that you will go on."
He scatters his father's ashes on a windy spring day, soaring into the sky in an Academy airship with Alyssa not ten feet away from him. The destinations are clear: the Hanging Edge, Palumpolum, and the wilds and new civilizations of Gran Pulse. So I'll always be found, Bartholomew had said, smiling until the end. Stay found, too, Hope, no matter where you are and what you will become.
"Alyssa?"
"Director?"
His pulse beats ceaselessly under the yellow knot. The time capsule calls. "It's time to go."
