A little while later, after he has unpacked and Alyssa has left, Hope is lying on the bed when his phone buzzes.
I'm back, and I hear that you're almost ready to start your real job. We're waiting for you downstairs. Let's have a night to remember.
-S
Hope's brows furrow, then his tired face lights up into a grin as a bright as a moonbeam. "S" can only be one of two people that he knows, and the "I'm back" seals any doubt he might have had in his mind as to whom that could be.
'I'm ready.' The man-child texts back, and the spring in his step is back again. No amount of exhaustion can steal away the moment that he waited for months now to happen.
"Sazh." He murmurs aloud, throws a plaid overshirt on over his tee, and snatches up his keys before bolting out the door.
After rounding the landing leading down to the main hall of his dorm, he espies all of his friends in various states of casual disarray, all waiting for him. He looks down at all of his oldest and dearest friends, all buzzing and interacting with one another, but all for the same purpose-to welcome him back from the past few months of hell.
"This is why I do it." He whispers aloud to the Chaos, if such a realm exists here. No one has seen him yet, and he hangs back, savoring this moment just for him behind his mop of silvery locks. "This is why I will stay true-this is what has made all of the pain and sorrow worth the wait. This is why we have, and will always succeed-we have each other." He takes a moment to simply breathe in anticipation, his green eyes alighting on each familiar face in turn. He has a cold feeling that he may need to savor this moment, this night, for the future nights ahead of him-to keep him warm. He inhales, and knows that the moment will be shattered like glass the instant someone turns their head up and views him creepily standing on the landing in the shadows. For a moment, just a moment, he allows himself to be selfish with his time and his thoughts. He takes all of his bundled teenage angst-all the times he argued with the doctors and his parents that thought he was insane for having his memories-and assures himself that the struggle is worth it now. He was never wrong. Instead of holding on to the grief and sad days of his childhood, as he had been doing, he allows himself to grieve one last time for the sake of the little boy who was always different. He dips his head, and closes his eyes, giving in without remorse to the single tear that escapes from the corner of one eye. He gives this to the heart of the sad, lost little boy that was never understood, but who was right for holding on to love, friendship, and hope through those dark hours. He gives it to the void, and on his next big inhale, tilts his head back slowly, allowing his hair to fall back to his shoulders. He accepts his struggle, and is ready to move on to what the future has in store for him-good or bad. He bids farewell to the earthly teenager that held on to so much hate, and feels ready to accept becoming an adult in this form.
"Hey, Hope, whaddya doin' up there, buddy?" Vanille cups her mouth and hollers up the stairs to Hope, whose outline can only barely be seen. She bends over at the waist, rocking back and forth as she uses her hands as a megaphone. "Come down here and see your friends!" She jumps up and waves, and just like that, all of Hope's anger and sadness about the past eighteen years washes away, leaving him feeling empty of all negativity. Now he's ready to allow the good to come washing inside, and gives a big grin to everyone before flying down the stairs. Snow is the first to barrel through the line gathered at the bottom, and scoops the younger boy into a huge, barrel-chested hug. They laugh, hair blonde and silver whirling out around them as Snow pirouettes with Hope still in his arms, swinging them both around in a huge circle.
"It's about TIME you got back. You kept us waiting for too long." Snow is saying, and much to Hope's chagrin, Snow tussles his hair the way a big brother would do for a younger.
"Ouch, hey, quit that, alright?" Hope laughs, and is happy that he can genuinely look at the behemoth of a blonde man and feel no attachment to rage that he used to feel toward this guy for what he had gotten his mother into on the old world. It's such an incredibly light feeling.
"You mean, you kept us waiting for you too long…again." Sazh's smooth, lightly acerbic voice jolts Hope out of his flow of consciousness for a moment. He looks up and his grin gets wider somehow.
"Sazh." He breathes out in an exhale, and Sazh chuckles as the two pat each other on the back. He was never as close to Sazh near the end as he was to Snow and most of the others, but that doesn't mean that it has to continue in this fashion on this world. In this incarnation, he knows all of them equally for the same amount of time.
Sazh chuckles once more, and it's so odd seeing him without the charismatic chocobo chick in his hair all of the time.
"I'm glad you're back safe." Hope nods. He feels the rest echoing his sentiment, and finds himself standing in the center of his group of friends. An innate leadership role fills him, one that he has always had, but developed significantly after Vanille and Fang became crystal for a while. He knows that his friends are all extremely independent and self-sustaining people, but in the end, only he was equipped with the inner sense of calm and decision making-skills to gather these multiple personalities and make decisions for the good of the group. The rest were either too individualistic, or unable to take everyone's input equally and quickly equate that into a decision the others would follow. Hope realizes that they're all looking to him, waiting for him, to decide what they should all do this evening. Not only is it proper, since they gathered in his honor tonight in the first place, but Hope possesses a strength here that the others don't have: knowing the lay of the land. These people, though looking older, in a way, are more innocent to the ways of this world than he is. They've all shown an ease of adapting to a strange new planet (especially Fang's adaptability in Hell's Kitchen), but Hope can play the role of navigator and guide throughout so much more real estate.
He knows that he was always cut out as becoming the person to bind this group together. Fang was too independent, Vanille rocked by flights of fancy, Lightning too driven by ulterior endgame motives, Snow too protective of Serah, Serah would look after everyone before tending to needs of her own, and Sazh didn't have the organizational skills required. Hope was the only one with the calm head, inner peace, and analytical diagnosis of all situations to be considered for the guiding role. He has a near sense of panic for a moment, a dizzying second of anxiety that rushes to his head and makes blood flow to his cheeks. It's all true. He started out as the baggage, as someone that was shrugging responsibility and throwing everything to nothing but a hot seat of emotion, and somehow, through the help of his friends, he emerged from his maturing chrysalis into a man of thought and calm.
Tonight, however, he doesn't want to think.
He just wants to get shit-faced drunk. Too much has happened today, and he's only been off BT for a few hours. Frames of Alyssa naked run through his mind, creating a guilty flush on his cheeks whenever he steals a glance at Claire, who is acting odd for some reason.
"Let's go out for drinks. I don't want to feel anymore. I wanna be a kid for this week. Fuck it, I'm gonna live like I'm eighteen."
Fang whoops loudly, pumping her fist in the air, and Snow shakes his head, arms crossed over his chest. "Can't be privy to that, boss." His front as a club manager is allowing him to pick up a little of this area's slang, which impresses Hope for some inane reason. "I've got a solid cover to maintain. Can't risk being arrested being around a kid who is drinking underage. I could lose my liquor license." A hush falls over the jubilant crowd at hearing this, but then Snow laughs.
"Good thing I had some of the crew prepare just in case. I told the Bodhum gang to swipe a few top-shelvers and hustle them back to the beach house we used for your birthday. Good thing about liquor is, is that if you don't pop the bottle, it can be transported pretty easy. I wanted to hook you up. Tab's on me." Snow winks. "I ain't gonna hear about a celebration and it go down sober. No self-respecting bar owner would allow that."
Hope dips his head in thanks to his old friend. "Thank you, Snow." Snow laughs, and Hope can see that marriage is good for him. His arm goes to Serah, the both of them fresh from their honeymoon and practically glowing. If he didn't know how much they deserved their happiness and how hard they worked for it, the affection between them would almost make Hope sick. Almost.
"Alright then, let's meet up at the beach base."
Sazh slings and arm around Hope's shoulders. "Over and out, kiddo."
Hours later, Hope finds himself stepping away from the little cabin, eyes blurry, to pee in the sand. He walks far enough away to where the sound of the crashing waves overpower the noise from the crew in the cabin. Lebreau, Gadot, and Yuj had spared no expense, and even though Hope's mind is reeling, he makes a note in the still-rational part of his brain to remember to thank them the next time he sees them. They took more than just the liquor into the base-they stole some sound and lighting equipment as well. The atmosphere was more grown-up than the birthday party had been. There was no cake, only snacks and munchies in the stocked little kitchen. The parents weren't here. Neither was the extended friends that helped them back "home." It was just the seven of them. Cassius, Yeul, and Noel weren't even present. It truly was more of the reunion that Hope had been waiting for.
When Hope had been more in a right state of mind earlier, not too late into his drink, he had asked Sazh why Yeul, Noel, and Cassius weren't there. A greater part of him was happier that they hadn't shown up, but a small part of him was also curious as to why they chose not to welcome him back. Were they, like Sazh and Claire had been earlier, on some sort of military mission as well?
He remembered Sazh just shaking his head, then swirling around the mixed drink he was carrying, complete with tiny paper umbrella. "No, kid," he sighed, "they are kind of doing their own thing. Noel and Yeul decided to be civs in this world. They wanted no part of the military. They're here to help us, in any way they can, and they stay declassified on intel that we get. But they're not part of the action. They have their own little world." He shook his head, then glanced away. "No one here blames them. We are enough that their presence wouldn't make or break anything if the old god did decide to show up. We're enough to handle them. We can stay vigilant. Of all people, we know that Yeul deserves at least ONE happy lifetime. She has seen too much. We let Noel take care of her, and the both of them live in civilian bliss as much as they can. They earned it."
These words lightened Hope, and fill him with gladness even now. At least someone gets to enjoy this life, and their safety is assured, he remembers thinking. He cleared his throat after Sazh had finished his diatribe. "And…Caius?"
Sazh's liquid amber eyes had flashed at that, but he quickly guarded his expression further. "He can only visit us once in a while. He can't stay in this form for too long. He has a job to do, if you remember. He has a much bigger responsibility than even we do." Sazh had paused at that moment in time, then had given Hope a skeptical look. "You…you DO remember, don't you?"
Looking back at that conversation in the present, Hope stumbles in the sand. He sighs, allowing his drink to slosh onto his hand as he weaves back and forth in the wind. Allowing the moment to get a hold of him, he screams into the void, "I want to REMEMBER!" His voice catches at the end, and he is almost embarrassed to hear his own voice. Will he ever stop going through puberty?
"No, you don't." A very familiar feminine voice sounds behind him, and Hope doesn't bother turning. He decides that he wants to stay upright, and isn't sure about his balance at the moment, so he stays focused looking forward into the sea. He drops his head, shame and heat flushing his cheeks momentarily. He is glad that his back is to her.
"We have to stop running into each other like this." Hope says, hopefully loud enough that he can be heard over the crashing of the waves. "And you have to stop sneaking up behind me on beaches."
"As far as I recall, this time's the first." She counters easily, with almost a joking tone that can be heard over the sound of the sea. Hope exhales loudly, and decides his tingling extremities can't bear the weight of his body anymore. Giving in to the inebriated feeling, he sinks into the soft sand, and stretches out his knees.
The unmistakable sound of footsteps sliding through sand sounds behind Hope, then come to a stop right behind his bent back. There is a moment of silence, then her voice speaks again. "The last time, you were waiting for me, so it wasn't exactly like I was sneaking up on you. You were waiting. I came."
"I waited for you for almost eleven years. Every night." Hope's voice sounds raw, even to his own ears. "And I waited for you even LONGER before that!" The anger comes from nowhere, and Hope slams his fist down into the sand. The granules fly up, stinging his eyes. He shouts out, fluttering his lashes and wiping the crystals from his corneas.
There is no sound from behind him, but then Claire appears in his peripheral, softly coming up to sit beside him. She stares out into the ocean, calmly awaiting Hope to clear out his vision before she speaks without looking at him.
"Are you waiting for me now." The statement isn't a question, although it seems framed like one. Hope is curious, and his heartbeat slows in his chest at hearing her words. What does she mean?
"What did I say to you that night at your place. You know, the night I was creepily waiting for you with Fang's key." He is cautious as well, making sure to choose what he says carefully. Does she know?
"You said you would wait for me." Claire's words are deceptively calm, controlled, unlike her usual nature. She still isn't looking at him. "You also said that other people would come and go through our lives, but that, eventually, we would always end up with each other. Kind of like a team."
Hope nods at her words, and instantly regrets doing so. The throbbing in his head rushes to his temples with the sudden jerk movements. He opens his mouth to speak, but Claire cuts him off before he can do so.
"That still doesn't answer my question, Hope. You're dodging. On purpose." Here, she finally turns to him, and her eyes gleam in the moonlight eerily. Hope doesn't like the look. "So, I will ask again, even though I hate repeating myself. Are. You. Waiting. For. Me."
Hope blinks, and throws caution to the wind that rustles past him. "Yes." He takes his time to answer, and makes sure to look Claire in the eye when he finally does. "Yes."
She nods, and once more looks to the sea. "I waited for you, Hope. While you were at Basic Training. I waited for you to get back, and I had a few months to think while you were gone about the feelings I had, had been repressing, and the things you said to me." She pauses for dramatic effect here. Hope furrows his brows. Okay, what is she driving at? The normal good feelings he thought he would have right now on hearing what she has to say are tinged with extreme caution. Why does he get the feeling that what's going to come out of her mouth next wouldn't be what he has been waiting so long to hear?
He doesn't have to wait too long to find out what she's driving at. She gets right to the point. "So, I found out approximately the hour the recruits would be getting back, and I decided to swing by about a half hour or so after you got off the bus, after reading up on the drop-off schedule for today. I decided I'd give you time to unpack your things, and then talk to you about maybe moving forward together. I thought that tonight would be the night you and I could announce to all of our old friends that you and I were going to commit to one another. It was the perfect timing-you and I had some space to think, I was ready after you had been gone for so long. I had to prioritize. We had planned on going out tonight all as a group, so everyone could be there when you and I shared the news about our feelings. It was perfect. I had it all planned out."
Hope now knows what will come next. He braces himself for it, and surprises himself with how calm he is, considering his current state and the knowledge he has of what he has done.
"Tell me." He speaks, so low. He shifts in the sand to look at her. "Tell me why you didn't come." He says this, wanting desperately to hear her say what he already knows took place. He wants her to absolve him of his guilt, he wants her to have knowledge of what he's done. He wants resolution, peace.
Claire looks him dead in the eye. "I saw you fucking Alyssa through the window of your dorm door just as I was about to knock." She turns back to the sea, and shrugs those slim shoulders. "So, I left."
Well, that's it then. Hope lets the moment lie there, naked and uncomfortable for him. Claire doesn't seem too anxious, she looks on the outside to be a bastion of strength. It's unsettling, and far too obvious that she's trying hard to remain calm. Hope lets her be, and sighs loudly, taking another swig of his beer.
"What do you want to do now?" Hope asks, allowing Claire to take the lead from here. It's her turn. He'd been trying to start this dance, and now that they're out on the floor, she has to decide whether she wants to stay for the next song, or return to the wall.
"I want answers." Claire's acerbic tone is the only sign of her inner struggle. Good. She has to figure out how she feels. Hope nods.
"Okay."
"But I don't trust you." Claire exhales. "I've already told you this. Now, my feeling on that is even more pronounced."
"Wait…you didn't trust me all this time while I was gone, but you planned on becoming an item with me when I got back?" Hope shakes his head. "This makes no sense."
"Neither does fucking a girl you don't love. Especially when you say you love someone else." Claire's whiplash rebuttal takes Hope off guard, and it temporarily stuns him. Claire shifts, narrowing her eyes. "Let's try to stay on subject, please. This is your fuckup, not mine."
Hope scratches the back of his neck, realizing that he loves a warrior goddess, and that comes with pros and cons-one of the cons being her fiery temper.
"Fair enough." Hope concedes, but Claire harrumphs.
"Fair? You use that word-fair!?" She quiets down after her outburst, and Hope can see that she's shaking. "That's the LAST word that I would use in all of this. Of our entire lives-this one, and the last."
Hope almost gives in to sorrow, but struggles against it. "Okay, ask your questions. I will answer them as truthfully as I can. I will answer them truthfully to the best of my knowledge. Only you can decide whether you believe my responses or not."
Claire wastes no time. "Do you love her."
"No."
She nods. "Did you ever."
Hope squeezes his eyes shut, searching his feelings to the best of his memory. "No. Not that I remember. I can only tell you the things I have memory of feeling."
"Why."
It's probably the most important question out of all of this, isn't it? Hope sighs. It also just so happens to be the one he can't answer. "I don't know. Lust. Need. Easy access. Frustration. Being a virgin for too damn long. Hormones. She's hot." Claire shoots him a look, and he shrugs, takes a swig. The beer's horrendous. It's exactly what he needs, and deserves. "What? She IS. I told you, I'd be honest. She does have a cute little way about her that I find repulsive 100% of the time. Unless she's naked. Then, it's hot."
Claire sighs. "How do you expect me to feel about all this?"
Hope squeezes his eyes shut. "The only way I could answer that would be to put myself hypothetically in your shoes. Imagine you with another man. Walk in on you with another guy." He tries, in his altered state, to do just that.
Claire nods again, but then almost just as quickly, shakes it. "Don't. Don't even try. It's a waste of time and it doesn't solve anything right now. I want a future, a solution, a quick way to solve this."
"Here's a better idea." Hope interjects, as he can see Claire pounding her fist into the sand. "Hey. How do you feel about seeing what you saw?"
Claire turns to him, her shaggy pink locks interrupting her vision. "Like I never want to see that again."
These words flare a spark of joy inside of Hope that he hasn't felt in a long time. He wants to hold on to what she's saying, and his drunk nature allows him to make a fool out of himself. Lunging, knocking over the bottle into the sand, he feebly makes an attempt to grab Claire's hands. She easily snatches them away, arching a brow at him.
"Really, Claire? D'ya mean it? Honest?" He leans in close, and Claire retracts.
"Whoa, slow down there, Hope. I understand that you're not quite…yourself right now, but that doesn't mean I have to tolerate you acting a damn fool. Pull yourself together. Contain yourself."
The acerbic tone in Claire's voice shakes Hope out of his boyish daydreams, and he nods, almost instantly regretting the movement. Slowly, he sits back down into his patch of sand.
"Oh-okay." He sniffles, dragging his gloves across his runny nose.
Claire sighs, composes herself, and dips her chin once. "Yes. I mean it. I don't want to see anything between you and Alyssa."
"Why." Hope wants more than anything to hear her say it. That she's jealous, or that she wants to be in Alyssa's position, or that it makes her realize everything that she could be having for herself…
…of course, what she says next is none of the things that Hope's drunken teenage physical self wants to hear.
"Because you shouldn't be sleeping with the enemy. You should know better than to trust her. You of all people, I would have thought, would have known better than to trust someone that duplicitous. Especially when that person was directly responsible for putting MY little sister in danger." The more that she talks, the more heated she gets, and Hope finds himself gulping as she goes on. She pauses here for dramatic effect, but it doesn't stop there.
"The fact that she's sunken her fangs into you seriously distresses me. It could compromise our mission, and everything that we've worked so hard to achieve. I have to understand that you're at a physical age where these things are hard, and you're working mostly off your emotions and physical wants right now, but at what cost? The tensions between the two of us are only secondary to the true danger you could be putting all of us in with your careless behavior. It's not behavior fitting a soldier, and it's not behavior fitting of a scientist. You should act with more logic than that."
"She's like me." Hope says. He is shaking. Claire didn't hear him though, so she leans forward.
"What did you say, Hope?"
The young man looks up into Claire's eyes, and doesn't back down. He speaks louder. "She's like who I was before I met you all. The Hope from Palumpolum. The Hope I left behind. I was careless, passionate, full of hate and anger and seeing only my way about things. That's who Alyssa was. We both had to put on fronts and become logical in order to achieve what we thought were means to an end. In that way, we are so much alike." Hope reaches out to Claire, grains of sand sifting through his fingertips. The heavily implied gesture isn't lost on either of them. The two partners stare at Hope's quivering palm, the beach sand, so much like the lost sands of Bodhum and time, quickly slipping away. "We are all alike. You and I and her. You are passionate too, Claire, inside of you. The true you. The you Lumina is. Reckless, careless, fun and carefree. You would have handled your life completely different if your parents hadn't died. Lumina is proof of that. She's who you would have been, who your personality truly is. You saw me when we first met. Alyssa showed who she truly was in the end. We all had to become logical-you became a soldier, and so did we-just soldiers of the scientific field, not the physical. We all played our parts. The spark that I find at times attractive in her is also very much in you." The final grain of sand falls through Hope's hand, and he bows his head and clenches his fist. "I'm just so tired of waiting around for your capriciousness to come out and play." He looks up. "It's not FAIR. I'll say that again. This!" He swings his hand to the ocean, encompassing all the beach in one choppy stroke. "This! Was supposed to be our playground. We earned our time to be kids again." He brings his hands up to his chest. "It is my CURSE in life, either this one or the previous ones, to be a child, it seems. I want someone to play with. You are her. I don't want Alyssa. She never tried to make it better on her own. She's too weak. You and I are strong-we never needed someone else to help us, to coerce us. We found our own way. We didn't listen to anyone but ourselves. She is a poor substitute to the rose-haired phantom that I follow, still, in my dreams."
There, his secret is out. He blurts out the one thing that he hasn't told another soul living on this planet yet-not the shrinks, not Alyssa, and certainly not his denial-stricken parents, who lied to him for most of his life. He looks at Claire, pleading.
"Wh-what did you say." Claire's face turns hard, and Hope can see a glint of the old Light in her eyes as she turns toward him, locks swaying. She leans in close, eyes narrowed, her breath a fragrant fan on his face. The look in her eyes is predatory, dangerous.
He narrowly escapes the urge to gulp. "I see you, or a woman with your hair, in my dreams, still. Not all the time! Mind," he throws up his hands as if to stop the judging look she's giving him. "It's not at all like I remember it used to being. This…this I can handle. It's like…once every month or so, I'll remember having a woman with pink hair urging me forward to do…to do…" Hope frowns here, draws inward. He scratches his neck. "I…never wake up remembering THAT part, actually. It's just that I remember having to follow this woman to do something in my dreams. I always make it to some cliff, or barrier, or something, and I know that she's just on the other side, beckoning. Then, I always stop. That's when my dream ends. I can never go through with continuing on. Jumping that cliff, stepping past the barrier. I always either wake myself up, at that moment, or continue on with dreaming another normal dream. It's not terrifying like it once was. It doesn't consume me through my day like I remember feeling like it used to after I wake up. It's just…like a memory, or a very muted remembrance of what I used to feel like."
Hope takes a deep, ragged breath here, looking out to the ocean. "What do you think it all means?"
"Who's to say? No one can interpret dreams." Claire says bitingly. Hope can't ascertain whether her scathing rebuttal is due to emotional hurt over seeing him and Alyssa, or whether she's frustrated over their new topic of conversation. She continues.
"All I know is, is that it could mean nothing, nothing at all." She muses for a moment, looking off. Hope is about to speak, but Claire speaks once more. "Also, it could mean that the dreams are another sign that Bhuni is trying to influence your subconscious somehow. Trying to gain another foothold into this world, and using you as his strongest point of reference in which to do it." She turns her head back to him. "Using his same old tricks. Trying to drive you mad so that he can be the puppet master once more. It could be a signal across the void, getting at you when you're the most vulnerable to penetrate your new life."
All of these words fill Hope with a sense of dread. He might have thought of all of these things sooner, had he not grown up in a life of confusion over his past, and having the distractions of this new present-day Earth to gain his attention. Now that in the past few months, everything that he was told never happened to him has been, in fact, revealed to be true-he has time to think as he used to. He has to grab his life and navigate his emotions like he once did, but his man-child hands keep slipping on the wheel.
Hope no longer feels drunk. He feels…relieved, a bit, to confide to his oldest and dearest friend of his dreams, and of his indiscretions. He likes knowing that no matter how much he fucks up, Claire can be counted on to at least listen. She's pissed as hell at him, he can read it all over her body language, but there's no way that she will abandon him at his time of need. Their bond goes steeper than that. He makes a mental vow to be the man that she deserves, and stop acting like a child here. Just because he feels like one sometimes, doesn't mean that he thinks so immaturely. He can show Claire. He goes to take her hand, but she slides it away. She's not looking at him, so he doesn't know whether she moved intentionally or not, but before he can think too much into the action, she is standing up, brushing off the sand on the back of her legs.
"Come on, Hope, it's time to get back to your party." Here, she reaches out a hand to help him stand up, and looks down at him, wind whipping her hair into her face. Hope smiles, and clasps her forearm, warrior-style, to accept the aid in getting to his feet.
"Hey, Claire, about what you saw-"
"We can talk about it another time." Claire is already moving and across the beach, and Hope takes up a light jog in the sand to catch up. His longer legs easily gain on her, and he can see her steps falter slightly as she realizes that he can gain on her without much effort. It used to be that he had to work to try to keep up with her pace, now his taller body can keep point.
He emphasizes the difference between them now by pulling out ahead as she furiously strides down the beach, and he turns to jog backwards, smiling at her frustrated expression.
"Are you watching my back?" He teases, grinning.
Color rushes to Claire's face, and she averts her eyes. She's angry, he can see, and she wants to be mad, but his goofy grin can't be ignored. She grins in spite of herself.
"Dammit, Hope. Cut that shit out. I'm serious."
"So am I." Here, he slows, and stops in front of her, making her pull up short and commanding her attention. He gathers her gently into his arms, and looks down at her. After a moment, she looks up at him, eyes large in the moonlight.
"I mean it. I'm serious, too. Are you watching my back?" He says it softly, slowly, and he reads all of the different emotions racing across Claire's face. He waits for her to respond, watching the struggle and giving her all the time she needs.
Finally, she settles on anger and hurt, and Hope can see the visible change wash over her features before she speaks, knowing that what she's about to say won't be anything he will like to hear.
"Yeah, I am, Hope." She almost purrs. Confused, Hope's brows draw down. She continues. "I am, Hope. I watched it this afternoon as you were…"The two of them equally are sad and frustrated as she falters saying the words that she meant to convey, both knowing what she meant to do. He lets go, allowing the shame to creep on his cheeks, and she walks off, triumphant.
"Let's go. The sooner we get to our mission, the better. I don't like this news you told me, Hope. We will have to see what this means, if anything."