Episode Two: Present

A/N: Takes place pre-affectionate-message for both Serah and Noel.

ANOTHER THRONE

New Valhalla 1ASF

Hope looked upon the crystalline masks of Vanille and Fang with a mixture of longing and gratitude. The project to remove them from the heart of the pillar had been a triumph; the stability was weakened but it held and they were removed separately without much trial. On Vanille's round and youthful cheek a white crystal flower had bloomed only recently, following the example of the rest of growth that had succeeded in filling the room.

It was strange and yet it was not. To study their ageless faces; they'd already kept up this appearance for 700 years when he'd met them, and it'd been another 500 since, to imagine time pulling at their smiles or weighing their shoulders wasn't something that came easily. Even as he watched the very things mark their beginning in his own reflection.

Cocoon was dead, a broken corpse on Gran Pulse's vast shores, and still they would not wake. It was only thanks to Noel's information that Hope could finally understand. The magnitude of the situation was not lost on him; one thing mattered more to them both. Without the Goddess Etro, there was no waking from the stasis. Eternal youth- the Fal c'ie's gift and curse, was not to be undone by human hands.

"I'm sorry," He apologized first, his voice awkward and small from disuse and sounding very young. "You'll have to wait just a little bit longer."

The crystal was silent; a mere sparkle instead of sound. Outside the hallowed space there was a clang of metal and bone piercing enough to reach them. Bhunivelze quaked ominously as a battle cry ripped skyward followed shortly by a volley of gunfire. The familiar sounds shouldn't have riled him but his palms fell nervously to the belt at his hip and prickled until he could soothe the urge to touch the weapon there.

Vanille and Fang's hands were clasped, but it had altered to how they had been in the pillar; a faint touch of finger pads as though simply re-establishing contact. They no longer appeared to swirl as perfect opposites in a fleeting yet eternal twist of fate, now they rested atop the newborn crystal bouquets in symmetry.

"We all have important jobs to do," he reassured himself. "But I suppose you already knew that."

Vanille's thin neck bent every so softly towards a third set of delicately sloping shoulders. A long and twisting curl of glass and rainbow fell gently past a swell of breasts and a fluffy outlandish creature that continued to sleep snugly in her arms even now; a different sort of crystal to the rest, but locked in perpetual silence nevertheless.

"Right Serah?"

Hope straightened from where he kneeled, the tie and collar of his suit settling back into place faultlessly, though maintaining a few uncharacteristic creases. The noise of blade and bullet was getting closer. With a flick of his wrist the pocket at his hip was open and the boomerang expanded. Crystal-light glinted off its chipped and worried edge.

Director no more, it was time to make his stand.

Serah...

Yes. I must be dreaming.

Because I'm already dead.

It's strange. This doesn't feel like death. It's...nostalgic somehow.

Serah?

But it's also painful.

Lightning! Snow?

Where are you?...Noel?

Xyend went spinning; a blur of black uniform and spattered red masking his smooth angular features. There was no time to reach him where he fell. The beasts born of Chaos flood against them in thick waves, leaving the battle to the swift and the enduring; there was little opportunity for healers.

As Hope sent his weapon high Noel defended instinctively, twisting his blades through the bodies that tore towards his momentarily unarmed partner, ripping clear of hide, metal and bone all the same. In a twisting circle, much like a dance, blood coursed through taught muscle and steel sang. The moment the circle was complete the ex-Director swung wide; a product of his own devising sailing up in time with the boomerang's return.

White light flashed, the reverberation tore open the sky, and smoke exploded. Sazh, who was situated further behind alliance lines, was thrown off his feet. Too far back it seemed to enter the flow of thought transference that appeared to pass between the younger two. Or just too damn old, he thought sourly. He lost the chance to even cry out the indignity before his armpits were seized and he hit the ground running; not even enough time to connect with his descent.

"Come on, Sazh," Hope said softly over one arm, undisturbed by the continuing explosions that lit the air behind them.

"Run!" Noel urged on the other, his sandaled feet moving faster and surer than any of the other soldiers on the field.

The confusion of the blast was necessary to allow the platoon to regroup. More of Xyend's men had been swallowed by the horde, and many of those still decorated in the colours of the Academy had followed- heroically or otherwise.

Noel's long-sword arm had angry gashes riding up to the elbow; the leather bands that he kept tied there provided little real protection and had shredded easily. The remains slapped at his wrist with every stride.

In Sazh's understanding, his unique bitterness might tempt him to grin and bear it, to continue to deal retribution even as his battle-mates fell around him, but Hope had reached him first. A hunter's prowess and progressive magical capabilities made Noel the most formidable among their ranks by far. While Sazh had unlocked a variety of his old Synergist spells to cloak them, Hope Estheim, former prestigious Academy Director and a previously remarkable Ravager and Medic, had only his own dwindling arsenal to rely on. Without Noel it would be an impossible effort.

"Fall back past the stronghold." Hope ordered. The crescent of his boomerang disappeared and rang off the tusk and horn of the diminishing horde still close enough to trace their footsteps, stunning them.

"Right behind you!" Sazh called a little too loudly, finding his pistols empty.

He wouldn't say it, wouldn't even let on that he thought it; he'd fight until his dying breath so long as Dahj was safe. But as his old fingers slipped nervous and sweaty over the next clip Sazh recognized the deepening fear stretch a little bit further, a little too closely to the bone.

Noel or no Noel, it seemed an impossible task any way you sliced it.

The morning returned and the floods of chaos ebbed. The timekeepers marked a new day.

In Hope's penthouse apartment built for two, friends reunited and comrades of the militia collated intelligence. It wasn't difficult to guess the purpose behind the siege on Bhunivelze and this district in particular. The crystal drew the creatures much as it had those on Gran Pulse. Chaos preyed on anything with living will and bled out the light.

Hope found himself wishing- and not for the first time- for Snow. Wounded or outnumbered, Snow would barrel through even the darkest hour and laugh blithely on the other side. As much as he felt with unchanging certainty that Lightning was his answer, Hope could not find it in him to be Snow. There were too many important lives at stake to charge in without thinking. Ironically, it was Serah who taught him better.

Noel had his freshly bandaged arm draped across his lap where his blade lay in waiting; always prepared, even while mending. Hope deigned to chew his lip when he saw it. Sazh too looked weary and on edge, even as Dahj spoke quietly to the chick and clattered his toys intermittently in the next room. The space was permeated with question and there was only one person who could field it. The dread that he might not be fit to do so remained unspoken.

"We'll need to split up," he began carefully. "We can't leave the people and our families unprotected."

Noel shot straight without preamble, "So who goes and who stays?"

It was the subject that they feared the most. It wasn't safe to stay but it was safer; at worst desperate moments could be lived out in the arms of loved ones tucked away in their would-be new homes. Set out and prepare to be gunned down like dogs or wait in their safe holds like cages. For the weaker willed neither felt like much of an option. The hush of concern rose amongst the men.

Hope had already pre-empted the very sentiment.

"I will go."

Noel, who had been wading through the thick of his pain for nearly a month, had the maturity to be dismayed. "Just you?"

"Sazh," Hope identified, allowing the subject to linger. "You need to look after Dahj. We don't want to replicate the past." The older man softened. While the charge was issued like a reprimand it just barely glossed over the true implications: Hope was setting him free.

"Wha-Hope," Noel interjected, only to be brushed aside again.

"Xyend's division will remain here. Scout activities should be minimized although the final decision belongs to you." The room heaved a sigh of relief, even as some of the soldiers watched him anxiously.

"If the world was in any other state now would be the time I might offer you a way out... but I think we all understand there isn't any chance of that at present. Noel will lead you on the field."

"Wait a second!" the hunter snarled.

"Noel," Hope tried his most soothing voice; the same one that he used to unwittingly commit comforting lies when they needed them most. It was cruel to think, but Lightning had seen everything, had known all along. Yet she was unable to come to him, to prevent him from cheering them down a doomed path. It was useless to continue guessing at her intentions. His gloved hand found his comrade's shoulder and grasped it firmly. No more lies.

"Things like the past, the present, and the future... they don't hold any meaning here. Even our precious memories...Everything we've spent our years working towards now results in nothing."

Noel swallowed roughly in his throat; the Adam's apple rising and falling dramatically like a stone. The placid blue lakes of his eyes were wild. Sazh grew tense like he was suddenly caught in that storm, shooting Hope a look that lasted mere seconds but its meaning sank like a bullet.

What're you doing: You'll kill him!

Hope smiled apologetically, "Even so, for the people that are lost, for the people still here: we'll make our own reality."

Noel and Sazh, suddenly appearing boneless were staggered. While the latter was giving a hasty show of collecting his jaw from the floor the former burst out laughing. It was cold and hollow in stark comparison to their brighter days when there was time and sanction for merriment. It was even hysterical, but all the same when he was finished and wiping tears from his eyes he returned the familiar gesture on Hope's shoulder with a squeeze.

"Now you're talking."

Noel was uncertain.

Hope was a man of his word- honest to a fault- there was no ulterior motive, no stink of false information. There was never any doubt that he meant every expression the moment it touched his features. But older darker ghosts still haunted him. Solitude and loneliness followed in his shadow and threatened to devour him. His reservations toward the separation only made them stronger.

And wasn't Hope one of Serah's beloved people? She would never allow this. It was his responsibility to do as she no longer could without a complaint... wasn't it? He wavered in the doorway of her crystal paradise.

Still and beautiful she dully reflected the shine that pulsed from her throne. Her eyelashes were fanned flawlessly against her cheekbones in a mockery of peacefulness. His heart trembled as he approached. The other two crystalline women, Fang and Vanille, were blue glass in comparison to Serah. He reached out and ran his touch over the cool marble of her face. For a moment there he almost expected...tears? His hand fell away with a sigh.

It'd been him who'd brought her here. The way the other two women appeared to twist and entwine under her weight until she was perfectly contained seemed momentous. He had rushed to Hope, to sanity, a friend to tell him he hadn't imagined it all in the darkness, wanting something new to cling to.

His memory played tricks again, he couldn't recall why he had moved her when the nature of this war demanded she should be buried and forgotten with the rest of their dead. The crystal flowers seemed a fitting memorial. Or had he been drawn to it? A night spent within the light of the crystal had changed her. She was no longer of silent flesh and blood but now a sort of radiant stone. Her clothes were a faded presence, he noted without embarrassment. While they still covered her modesty her shape was no longer defined by them. Instead rolling orange light like embers lit from the inside licked along the edges; exposing toes and the soft muscle of her belly.

At the time Hope had wondered aloud whether it had been Lightning's doing, but without a shred of evidence to dictate such he had quickly refused the idea. His feelings on the matter remained unsaid but it was easy for the hunter to guess: there was no reason for magic to be cast over someone who was already lost.

Noel wasn't as convinced. He had met the new Lightning many times and she was far from blameless; she was no longer a mortal being. Her existence had become something infinite and ageless. Just as Serah protected her precious people at the risk of herself he sensed the same fire in Lightning, if not stronger. This was a woman who loved strongly and housed enough power to rival Caius. Was it so unlikely that she might be bending the rules for her sister?

Now the crystal had become pillars. Great creeping vines that wound to the ceiling and dropped like stalagmites back to the floor, all sporting their own individual clusters of the ghostly white blossoms. The two l'cie continued to rest, deeper now inside thick pearly rock.

He wanted to believe that this change, this preservation, was more than a happy coincidence.

Just as Hope had reassured him before, with this small thing -just this- perhaps there really was something more left to fight for. A reason to seek out Light.

Night fell absolutely and the glow from Serah's tomb left him none the wiser.

The world was dark. When she'd entered this place it had been in the company of strength and warmth she'd known very well. But now there was nothing, only hours of silence and solemnity on end. She sensed the warmth was very far away now.

Wake up.

Curious. She was awake but there wasn't any meaning to it. The threads of her will had slipped too far to even lift her small finger. To define the nostalgia she felt here was terrifying, yet she couldn't remember why.

Serah.

The voice became stern.

The voice was like the warmth; something she'd known in another life. She cried out as the razors of its concern probed deeper. Though the dark quiet here was terrible that concern was more frightening, she scrambled away like a feral creature. Deeper, darker, deeper...

She longed only to hide.

Plagued by the familiar things she could never hold again.

The last of Hope's supplies clicked into place within the extra belts of pockets slung across his hips. Sazh had gone to retrieve Dahj and Noel continued to hesitate at his side; picking through drawers and boxes, pulling odd bits of old weaponry- excavated artefacts Hope had studied for a time, dusty with memory- and enquiring to their worth on his trek. Hope merely shook his head, his hair floating with the movement, and the item would drop back into obscurity.

"Noel," he started, unable to bury the edge of admonishment in his tone.

"I'm coming with you."

"No, you aren't." Hope frowned.

"Yes. I am. It's what she he broke off, the strength in this voice paling"It's what Serah would've wanted."

Hope blinked, startled, the seriousness of the other's expression reminded him of himself. Just a young boy offering hesitant insight to a band of adults; he was always being protected. But this was his interpreted result, his impossible struggle; he had to take responsibility for their efforts up until now.

"If you're coming with me who will protect Serah?"

The room dimmed, the light of the crystal waning. Noel gave pause.

"But Serah is..."

Don't say it.

"With Vanille and Fang right now and they need you here."

That cerulean gaze was intense in its search for answers.

"And Lightning?"

His cherished Bhunivelze rattled distantly, tremors running through in its place in the sky. In New Valhalla science and mythology became one and the same. There was no goddess here but unexplainable circumstances still held sway. Hope fought a constant battle with his sense of realism built alongside his extensive knowledge of technology and a mysterious intuition. He couldn't deny that he'd considered it as well. Maybe it'd even been him to offer the suggestion to Noel once.

There were still too many indefinite factors.

"I suppose I'll find out."

Even as the answer failed to deliver any revelation, Noel seemed to accept it. He nodded jerkily and crossed his well-muscled forearms over his chest. "You'll take five others with you."

"Huh?" Hope bleated awkwardly. He wasn't used to the difference in their ages being quite so ambiguous.

"It's nowhere near as good as just one of me, but I guess we'll just have to accept that." He laughed. Some peace seemed to have returned to the way he held himself, the way his tones lifted and his eyes reflected clear. While Hope had always felt some guilt for pushing his own somewhat unjustifiable ambitions onto Noel now he drank from that unguarded confidence. His intuition blazed, indomitable once more.

He would find Lightning. He would bring her home. And Serah...perhaps there really was something more he could do for her.

"Thank you, Noel." He said. Meaning every syllable.

I am dead, she thought. There was no other reason for this darkness. Heaven and the afterlife didn't exist, she was merely lost.

Serah. Was that her name?

We haven't got time for this.

The voice had found her again. This time there was no hiding; it pulled her like a limp puppet on strings into a brightness that exploded behind her closed eyelids. She yelped helplessly as it tugged.

A milder more buoyant sound soothed her. It was as if her head had finally broken water. The waves rippled around her shoulders and the air was clear. Fear forgotten, she tread on thin muscular legs, held a hand out in front of her and counted all the fingers. Smooth, young, manicured fingers. With these hands she touched her face, finding soft cheek and fine brow, generous lashes, and a small pert nose.

Don't lose yourself, Serah!

The second gentler expletive was Vanille. Her heart plummeted as she understood; the last place Vanille had reached her was through her dream. She was still in stasis. And Serah must be dreaming again.

Did we fail? She floundered weakly, eyes darting up to find the sky blank and starless. Noel?

"He's not here." A figure materialized ahead of her causing the light to pulsate anew. "There's no one here."

"Lightning!" she cried; it was the voice. She looked wane and tired, no doubt from their continued chase, and Serah hadn't even noticed it. She ran, tears threatening to overwhelm her, and tripped into her sister's embrace. Her embrace was cold and sharp, still adorned with the heavy armour that marked her as Etro's Knight, but her gloved hands rested tight against her shoulder-blades. Here, Serah realized that the terrible dark loneliness she wanted to forget was finally over and a sob broke free.

I'm sorry. The voice said; not from her sister's lips but from the atmosphere around them. The very air seemed to wrinkle with broke away awkwardly.

"It's really you... right Claire?"

In reply Lightning smiled, "Yeah, it's me."

Serah breathed another sigh of relief, softer this time, she had grown too accustomed to deceptions and false faces. Lightning really was here, Snow could finally come home. Hope and Sazh could rest, and Noel-

"But Serah, you have to remember..."

"...What?"

I'm sorry, the air crackled again.

All at once Serah felt the space around her brain contract. Electricity coursed through her veins and ignited a reel of images, each impulse stroking a memory like an old friend. The timeline came alive within the confines of her mind. At last when she reached the end, that final vision, her breathing stilled. A tear slipped free of her wide-eyed gaze and her knees buckled.

Lightning was beside her, a comforting hand on her back while she wrestled with the urge to heave.

"This is Valhalla." She whispered solemnly. "And you are..."

And I really am...

Her sister's apology echoed through the waves. The light growing brighter until vast shores were unearthed, mottled and broken buildings uncovered. Never enough, never enough, the voice lamented and with it the Goddess's Knight did not hide her shame.

Lightning knew that Serah would do anything if she only asked. They were sisters, blood and circumstance bound them together the moment they were left alone. There was no limitation to their devotion. But as Lightning had watched and studied the timeline's every possibility, every slim measure of chance and change, she could still not quell her remorse. She needed Serah. Serah, the one person she vowed always to safeguard.

It was a cruel decision, made so by the ruthlessness of fate, but Lightning felt every part responsible to be the one to make it.

"Please..." Serah spoke again, recovering slowly, "don't apologize."

Her smile was a radiant twin to Lightning's own and so much more easily given.

"The future I saw...

Was worth protecting."

FINAS