Author's Note: I AM SO SORRY. It's been entirely too long since the last update. The sad thing is, I really don't have an excuse.

BUT I do have a confession: I honestly had no idea how they were going to resurrect Etro until now. (yeah, great idea, put something in a story and have no idea what you're talking about... *facepalm*) Figuring this out had brought you this hopefully-better-than-the-last-one chapter.

Enjoy!

The idea of Noel being - for lack of a better phrase - a fake, made way too much sense to ignore, as much as it hurt. Nothing was certain here, even their goal was clouded. Hope felt it was only logical to question everything. And unfortunately, 'everything' included his friends. Maybe he should question Fang as well, but there was a certain something about her that couldn't be faked. If anyone was attempting to deceive them, the most likely candidate was unfortunately Noel.

Vanille didn't like his approach to the situation, but he privately thought that she was too trusting at times. Yes, Noel was his friend, but he could have been fooling them from the start. He hadn't shown up until his mother had disappeared, they hadn't woken up together. Until Hope had definitive proof, Noel could still be back on Pulse for all he knew.

Fang hadn't taken her hand off of her weapon since she'd stopped threatening Noel with it. She held it loosely, however, the way she had always done when merely wandering. But if Noel even stepped in a way she didn't like - toward Vanille for instance - her grip tightened. She wasn't taking any chances.

Noel himself was solemnly walking alongside Fang, as directed. If he tried to run, he wouldn't get more than two feet. If he tried anything else, well, it wasn't called trying for nothing. Whatever he was, though, the heaviness in his eyes was genuine.

Vanille walked ahead of the others, wanting to feel space around her. After a couple centuries, the borders of her mind and dreams became claustrophobic. She'd always been one for exploration, a trait that sometimes got her in trouble and often irritated Fang. Confined spaces or restricted movement drove her crazy. Now that she could move again, she would.

If only they weren't in Valhalla. The nonexistence of the sky, the tight, untrustworthy buildings, the general darkness of the place, the silent stillness, combined, it almost made her wish she were crystal again.

"So this is where Lightning went." She murmured to herself. She and Fang had known what really happened to her, just like Serah. She'd been taken.

Vanille tipped her head toward...up. "Hope?" She called back.

"Yeah?"

"What did you think happened to Lightning? After everything?"

"Well, everyone but Serah thought she'd been crystallized in the pillar with you and Fang."

"You said you weren't sure, though." Said Noel.

"...Yes, I - well, we all had our doubts. It didn't take long to realize that it didn't make much sense." He sighed. "I always believed Serah, but I still don't remember what really happened."

"We do." Fang said. "We were still watching when it all changed."

"I remember watching you give Serah the knife." Vanille added. "I was sad, because I thought if anyone would notice she'd disappeared, it would be you."

"Why me?"

"Because you were talking to her."

Vanille was still looking ahead, so she didn't see the confused look on his face. "I was?"

"Yup. Talkin' about changing fate, about how it wasn't goodbye." Fang chuckled. "There's always one."

"One what?"

"A dreamer. I thought it was that blockhead Snow, before. But now I think it's you."

"Yeah, well, dreams won't do anyone much good here." Hope replied. She heard his shoe scuff at the ground.

With that dreary thought, Vanille recalled a dream she once had. There was no prompt for it, the memory simply sprung into her mind. It set her cheeks ablaze. W-why would she remember that now? The blurrily vivid images played themselves for her mind's eye, and for some guilty reason, she wanted them to be clearer. She told herself it was because she wanted to understand them, but that was a lie.

Lost in the sights and sounds of her dreams, however, she was nearly blind to reality.

"Vanille! Look out!"

She felt the weight of Hope's body as he threw her tot eh cold ground, heard his hiss of pain. Her bones knocked against the street as she fell, causing her to cry out, feeling an explosion of pain. She heard Fang's battle cry and heard the swish of her lance slicing though metallic flesh. Several times. It was all over by the time Hope released her.

"Back off." Fang growled.

Vanille slowly sat up, mostly ignoring the lingering pain. There were four of those almost spider-like creatures lying dead on the ground. If Hope hadn't gotten her out of they way, they probably would have impaled her with their razor-sharp legs. As it was, they seemed to have gotten Hope, who had a pretty nasty gash on one of his calves.

"Can you heal? I don't think so." Soon Noel's hand was enveloped in the familiar light of a cure spell. He was right, Fang never had any skill in healing magic. He released the spell, and Hope sighed as it did it's job. "Thanks."

"No problem."

Vanille wondered. She reached inside for the friendly warmth of her magic, but it wasn't there anymore. She realized that for the first time in centuries, she only had her weapon to rely on.

Hope picked at the torn and bloodied cloth of his pant leg, under which his injury had previously been. "So there's monsters here now."

"That's just nice." Fang said sarcastically.

"At least they weren't behemoths." Hope reminded her. He turned to Vanille. "Are you okay?"

Except that she didn't really hear him. His words passed through her ears like smoke as she stared off to the side. The building next to her was another fake, but the Chaos contained an object. There was something in there.

Hope wasn't sure why Vanille was staring at a perfectly solid, unmarked wall, but that didn't concern him that much. It bothered him that she wasn't responding. "Vanille?"

She continued to ignore him, and began to rise. On her feet, the walked toward the vertical surface and passed straight through it.

Hope had seen some really strange things in all of his days, but nothing so odd as a human body passing right through a solid wall. Not much made sense in Valhalla, but he was pretty sure that the basic laws of physics and nature still applied. Like not being able to walk through a solid wall without leaving you, it, or both unharmed.

"Vanille!"

He heard Fang behind him. "What's your problem?"

"She just walked through a wall."

"So? That place is another fake."

"No it's not." Hope stood, and immediately, selfishly, wanted to sit back down again. Noel might've healed his leg, but it still hurt like hell to use. He stepped up to the wall and pressed his hands against it to show Fang that it really was solid. "See?"

She came up beside him to do the same, except her arm passed right through. "Would ya look at that."

Noel decided to test the wall as well, but it was just as substantial for him as it was for Hope. "What's going on?" He slammed his hands on the cool surface.

"Can you see her?" Hope asked Fang. Whatever was going on, Vanille was quite literally in the middle of it, and he didn't like it one bit.

"Yeah, I can see her." Fang replied. "She's looking at something on the ground, I can't tell what it is."

Hope pushed against the building, even though it was futile. He was frustrated and nervous that Vanille was out of his sight, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

Fang pressed her hand against his shoulder. "Back up."

He did, and Vanille stepped out of the wall exactly where he'd just been, carrying something in her hands. It looked like some sort of tablet, an ancient-looking stone with something etched into it.

"What's that?" He asked, his inner scientist itching to discover it's meaning.

"I'm not sure." Vanille answered. "I recognize these symbols, but I have no idea what they mean."

"They could be from some ancient Pulsian language." Noel suggested.

"Fang?" Vanille handed her the tablet. She took it, but threw Noel a nasty look before attempting to read it.

"Yeah, I know some of these. Unfortunately, most of them have a double meaning. This might take a while."

Finally, a clue. But what could it possibly mean? Hmmmm...

Again, sorry for taking so long to update, but hopefully this chapter makes up for it?