Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIII does not belong to me.

Author's Note: I picked up so many shifts at work this week, now that I am done with school, that I am ready to collapse and enjoy my three day weekend before I go back. Hopefully I have the time to write the next chapters within that break (or as soon as possible, considering I already have the final chapter written and I am just aching to post it).

As always, thank you for your reviews – I didn't have the time or energy to reply to them at all this week, but they are always appreciated and always read. It brightens up my day to read what you guys have to say.

An edit was made to the last chapter to account for the age disparity between when Claire moves out here, and her dialogue about it last chapter.

The One With The "I Love You, Claire Farron"

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The first time Hope is the one to kiss Claire is when she twenty two and moving out into her own apartment.

Getting older had certainly put things into perspective for Claire. She understood now (at least to a degree) why he had acted the way he did when she was seventeen, why he had grown so uncomfortable in her presence. The age gap that had seemed so miniscule to Claire when she was a teenager suddenly dawned between her and the kids she helped teach at Eden. So, regretting the mistake she made as such a kid, she had worked on improving their relationship to at least a ghost of what it once was – the first time she asked Hope out for coffee, as casually as she could over breakfast while waiting for Serah and Snow to join them, he had looked like a wild animal under a search light before cautiously agreeing.

The patch work started from there – visits at coffee shops, public events they bold held an interest in, watching the evening news in the same room without an air of tension between them for once. Their stilted conversations turned amiable again, genuine smiles exchanged once more and ribbing jokes at one another.

But even so, the invisible line had been drawn - they never went out where they would be completely alone. Until today, where both Snow and Cid had to bail last minute on helping her move due to Cavalry business.

Claire doesn't know how it happens. He had just finished settling down a couch with her in the living room, and then she straightened and he was right there and she only has seconds to register his face above hers before he leans down and kisses her.

Her heart jumps, whether from surprise or long buried elation, she doesn't know - she doesn't want to know.

(Not after all this time and all this work - she doesn't. She does. She doesn't. She doesn't.)

He is the one who pulls back, and she is the one who doesn't kiss him this time. Instead, she tells him, "I think you should leave now."

He looks calm, about as calm as she feels - the peace before the storm, the peace that comes from shock. The one that will shatter almost certainly, given enough time.

"Claire," Hope says her name, and he looks as sad as she remembers him being all those years ago when he had no right to be. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for wasting all this time." He pauses, a split second of hesitation, and then he is once again the certain man she knows. "I love you, Claire Farron."

The world both stops and speeds up, the way novels always write and she never thought was possible; all she can hear and see now is her own breathing and his eyes staring at her.

She wants to tell him again - you need to leave. How dare you kiss me. How dare you tell me you love me. But instead she opens her mouth and asks, "Why?"

Hope furrows his brows at her. "Why, what? Why I love you?"

He says those silly words again and her world is back to normal, and her heart does a stuttering half jump as she processes them. It feels painful and wonderful - full of hope. She tries not to cry.

(All those years of heartbreak, of work to get over him - Cid. What would Cid even say of this?)

She doesn't want to think about what he would say (and that is horrible to realize, because that means she does not love him, and she had so wanted to). "Why tell me this now? Why not a year ago? Two years ago? What's changed?" The ugly feelings inside of her build up and she sneers, stepping away and crossing her arms over her chest. "What, suddenly I'm mature enough for you to love? Is this a reverse psychology thing, because I've been making us spend all this time together? You can't just push me away for all those years and then expect me to tell you that I still want you."

"What?" Hopes eyes widen at her words and he draws back. "No, that's not what this is at all, Claire, I promise." He stops again and takes a moment to gather himself. "I'm sorry, I know I have no right to tell you all of this."

Stop talking, she thinks, because every cell in her body hurts.

"I have... Always loved you."

Stop.

"But there were things that were difficult..."

Don't.

"...and I didn't think it was right for me act out on my feelings. There are… A lot of reasons. Too many and it took me too long to realize that I was wrong to break your heart when all I wanted was for you to be happy - with me."

Shut up.

"...And now that you're happy with somebody else, I know I've missed my chance but I want to fight for you, Claire, as I should have done all that time ago. I don't want you to make a choice right now, I just want you to know that I love you, and I will always love you, and I am a stupid, selfish idiot who will always put you first."

Her response is one of silence as she absorbs all of this, surprising even herself with how calm her face feels, how deep and even her breaths are. "So what reasons were they?" She snaps out after what feels like an eternity, her arms across her chest pressing tighter against her body. "They must have certainly been good enough to warrant all these past years."

Hope's eyes jump away from hers then and somewhere over her shoulder, his features softening with pain. "You reminded me too much of someone," he answers quietly, still gazing somewhere she cannot reach. "A friend I had growing up, a long time ago. I didn't think it would be fair to you - or her - until I knew that what I felt for you was real. And it is. I love you, Claire, and it took me far too long to realize this."

And Hope smiles then, a broken thing teeming with sorrow and self-derision, and leaves the apartment when she doesn't answer him. She stares after him and the shut door for what feels like eons, as if she is a crystal statuette perched on a throne of her own doing as the emotions whirl chaos inside her body and wage war between reason and emotion, selflessness and selfishness.

She sits on the couch they carried together up three flights of stairs and digs her fingers into her palms until the skin breaks under the force.

There was never a choice, she bitterly thinks. It has always been you.

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The worst part is how understanding Cid is when she tells him that she is in love with someone else. "In another time and place," he tells her, one hand gripping hers over the surface of his dinner table, "perhaps we could have been happy."

He stops then, and his eyes drift past her to where she knows his Cavalry uniform hangs washed and ready for his departure later. "This is probably for the best, anyway. There are things I must do and I don't want you involved, for your own safety."

She wants to know but she doesn't ask - the way things have always been between them, his job and secrecy a barrier in their relationship that they have never been able to overcome. So they bid each other goodbye, and she leaves that part of her life behind, wiser from the experience.

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Because she is wiser and not a child anymore, she does not run straight to Hope's arms as some would have expected one who has had a decade long love finally returned to do. Instead, because reality is harsh and cruel even through the conflicted happiness growing inside of her, she cuts off all contact and focuses on her studies at Eden and job as a teaching assistant. And because she had made herself stop waiting for him, had grown independent and realized that happiness does not depend on a man in her life (something that she hopes has passed on to Serah, who has a tendency to fall for boyfriends hard and fast and leave them because in her own words, they are not the one) the time apart even after his confession is not as difficult as some would expect. The situation is just there, almost like an old ache or a friend, lingering in the background of her life.

But she does still love him, in the way that the soul always does seek out its partner despite time and space and circumstance, and so when a knock comes on her door and she opens it to find him standing there, uncomfortable but determined at the same time, she does not make him leave.

"Snow told me you broke up with Cid," he says after a few seconds, as she leans on the half opened door and he stands with his hands buried in his pockets.

"It wouldn't have worked out, even without you," she answers and it is the truth, is why Cid let go of her as easily as she let go of him.

"Why?" He asks her with genuine curiosity.

"His job made things difficult," Claire answers, and doesn't say, because I would have always wanted you in some way instead and it would not have been fair to him and we both also knew that.

Hope's mouth quirks up at the corners, in a smile that's been frequenting his face more as of lately - a somewhat secret smile that Claire doesn't know what to do with, is almost too scared to get to the bottom of. "It is hard to have a relationship when you're busy keeping the world safe."

She lets the strange words pass, filing them away into a mental container of all the strange things Hope and Snow say that she doesn't know how to deal with, both wants to understand and doesn't because something urges her to ignore them for her own sanity. She will review then some day, she tells herself, but her instincts tell her: not today. Not right now.

"It is unfair of you to expect anything of me," Claire says quietly and with certainty, the both of them trapped within their own moment of time as the pieces finally fall together, years in the making.

"I know," Hope answers in the same tone of voice and understanding.

Claire wants to tell him everything she's felt since she ran out on him and he in turn ran out from her - all the heartbreak, and the shame, and the insult added to injury at his complete withdrawal from her life. She wants to tell him that she finally understands why he did it, too, but that it doesn't quite make it easier to forgive him in this moment. She wants to tell him that she loves him, in a way that somehow still makes all of this bearable; a way where what she feels for him eclipses all the negative moments and that she will forgive him, with time, but right now they need baby steps because they may have been friends for ten years, strangers for five, but learning how to show they love each other will take effort on both their parts.

Something in the way she shifts her body as she thinks all this, maybe the way her shoulders relax and her eyes soften, ways she doesn't notice but he knows better than her, makes his eyes both sad and bright and his lips curl up in a tender smile.

"I know," he tells her, softly, and it is both an I'm sorry and an I love you. It is a promise, a prelude to the chapters of their relationship waiting to be written.

She opens the door.