Claire snaps her head up, eyes glinting in the light.
"That's odd." Fang speaks before anyone else can, shifting her leather strapped sandals as she sits. "Neither woman was down there-it's impossible."
"Magic." Vanille states again, this time, more affirmatively. The two look at one another, then turn back to the group again. "It was a trick, a fake."
"Smoke and mirrors, is what Hope kept calling it. Like how the fal'Cie tried to trick us when we were in Orphan's Cradle." Sazh speaks over the rim of his glass, eyes downcast.
"I didn't know until the vision of the two disappeared." Hope speaks up, but his eyes are only for Claire as she stands on the other side of the room, quietly inspecting her nails. He continues. "The bars blinked out of existence, and I ran to them to wake them up-they were bound, tied, and unconscious on a bench. The moment that I reached out to touch their shoulders, there was a faint glow, and then they blinked out as well."
"We high-tailed it out of there, and you know the rest of the story. That's when Hope called a Code White, and we came here. That's it. That's the story."Sazh drops his glass on the counter, then starts pushing it around with a finger. "We didn't know what to do, or what to make of it. But we wanted to tell you that there is definitive proof of Bhunivelze's presence on Earth once again. That's all we really know."
"Yeah, from what you've said, the things you two experienced definitely can't happen on this world. It's bad news for sure." Snow picks up from the other end of the bar, his arm draped around Serah. "I don't think that there's any going back from this."
"We will need containment teams, a way to neutralize any spread of activity that Bhunivelze might be recruiting another human mouthpiece." Claire starts ticking facts off on her fingers. "We have to get access to some sort of technology, where we can find out what is happening around the world. That could be sketchy-"
"There's no need." Hope speaks up now, and all voices fall silent as they look the boy with the silver hair. "There isn't going to be any further attempts for Bhunivelze to commandeer human mouthpieces-there's only going to be one effort. Me." He raises his head, looking at all the eyes in the room. "It makes sense. He's weak and strained, and doesn't have the access to harvest a broad scope of people. He struck once, and he struck hard, and he met his objective-finding me. Now he knows where I am, who I am, and he will try to get to me again. The clues that the man left back in the cell all point to that. Besides, I don't want to subject any of you, or any other person, to the same job that I had been doing for the past few months now. We have all the clues we need. I know what I saw. That was the warning shot. There will be only one more bullet in the chamber-and that's the one that's pointed at my head."
The uneasy glances and nods around the room quietly affirm this reality, this worst-case scenario of the God being alive, of having an earthly presence-and of finding Hope.
"How do we combat this from happening." Claire says now, dropping her hand and looking up from lowered lashes at Hope.
"I have an idea." Hope had been harboring a hypothesis in his head for the past couple of hours, but perhaps a mix of the Bacardi, seeing his friends assemble at his mark, and witnessing the anomalies he's seen tonight has made him brave enough to propose his thoughts to the group. He stands up and walks around the bar, pausing at each barstool that his friends are occupying and pausing to address each one as he goes past.
"We use the pockets of Chaos against the God. For some reason, Bhunivelze has brought the Chaos back, perhaps that's the key. It's what makes sense. Everything that I saw tonight happened in that little bubble of spacetime. It's where he can bend physics to his will-it's what makes the God be able to reach out to this world. Within the Chaos, he thinks he can free himself from the prison that we put him in, by controlling our minds here. I don't know really what his plan is-or how Chaos appearing on Earth can influence anything in the spot of dark Universe that we dropped him in. All we do know, is that the Chaos has something to do with his evil plan. So we use his plan against him. We find the pockets of Chaos, and we run to them, instead of trying to contain them. We go to them, and try to find a way to communicate with him inside them, and see if we can hurt him from there."
"How, exactly, are you proposing that we do that?" Fang asks the obvious logical question. Hope has rounded the square-shaped bar and has now ended his route to stand by Claire, so he is facing Fang once more.
Hope curls his knuckles into the woodgrain of the bar in front of him, and leans forward to address Fang across the bar. "We use magic."
"Even if we have Magic within the containments of the Chaos, we don't know if it can backfire. We may end up hurting ourselves worse than if we try to start using our old skills arbitrarily inside the pockets." This is Claire speaking, and she pitches her voice so low that it almost sounds as if it is aimed specifically for Hope's ears alone, but the rest end up hearing her anyway.
The questions start popping up, one after another.
"What if you're wrong, and we can't use magic in the Chaos? Maybe what happened to you and Sazh back there is a fluke, and there really IS no magic."
"What if we enter a pocket of Chaos, and it's harmful to us? We could possibly die just from walking into one, even if we have magic. We have no way of knowing if they could be full of poisonous gasses or something."
"Even IF Hope is right, and we can attack Bhunivelze somehow in them, and we make it to the Chaos safe, and we DO have magic inside the anomalies…what do we do with our powers? Where do we aim our spells at? Bhunivelze isn't HERE. It's just…a pocket of nothing. Sure, weird stuff can happen in them, but that doesn't mean that we have a target. We're just risking everything, running in to them blind."
"Will we still have the powers that we used to have? This could be a completely different kind of magic altogether."
Hope hears all of the voices, a giant cacophony in his head, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the pain.
"AAH!" He tilts his head back and screams in the center of the room, hands clenched out from his sides. The din starts to recede as all eyes turn to Hope.
Blinking, Hope turns to face all of them. "I know what you guys are thinking, and trust me, I know your concerns are valid. But we have to protect our new home at all costs. Right now, Bhunivelze has delivered a serious blow, and doing this is exactly what he wants-the bickering amongst ourselves, and being scared. That's how he will aim to win this time. He wants us to be fractured. We are on the run from our newly adopted government, and we are infighting on how to proceed. Nothing good can come of this. Let's find a safehouse, and go over strategy on the morrow. All we know is that there is a possibility to fight the threat somehow inside of a pocket of Chaos, and that's exactly what we'll do. Of course there are risks, but it's worth it to protect the people of this world." After seeing all of the nods from his friends around the room, he decides to grin a shy, sloppy grin.
"Besides, I've been waiting to experience the feel of magic once again in my fingers. How 'bout you guys?"
A chorus of cheers sprout up from the room, with fists pumped high in the air.
Hope's grin spreads to a full-fledged smile, and he claps his hands together once. "Good. Now that we are all in agreement once more, let's have ourselves another drink."
This statement is met with more cheers, and Snow tips his hat, winking at Hope. "A double, coming right up."
0530 EST
Long after Snow had served the last drink, and after most of the others had slipped away to a local safe spot in town, the bar still remains occupied.
A lone man sits by himself, the clear liquid in his shot glass sloshing as he moves the glass around with one finger. It's the dead of the night, and the entire town is still. Nothing moves, save the man.
Or so he thinks.
"I've been curious about something." A woman's voice comes out of the dark, and Hope's soul shivers as he recognizes the tone. He doesn't look up from the bar, but his ears perk up at hearing the feminine voice that sounds like dark glass.
There is a pause as Hope remains silent in the face of the question, and movement to his right gives away the presence of the speaker.
The woman walks, no-saunters-over to the edge of the bar, slowly coming into the light. The hanging bar light gently illuminates the bottom of the woman to the top, finally coming to rest as the speaker stops at the other end of the bar. Her head is bowed, and she leans across the way to address Hope.
"I wonder if I was the only one out of all of us tonight that wondered why you saw the vision that you did. Why, I wonder, did Bhunivelze send you the vision of Alyssa and I both? Curious, indeed." The woman's tone is acerbic, sarcastic. Hope doesn't rise to the bait. Instead, he just tilts back his head and polishes off his double, sighing loudly as the burning liquid clears his throat, and slamming the glass onto the bar. He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand.
"Well, looks like I've been drinking too much. Lots of preparation tomorrow. I guess I should head in now, try to get as much sleep as possible." The chair creaks as Hope stands up from the stool, the noise of the chair legs scooting against the hardwood floor loud in the dead of night.
Hope flicks his gaze up to see Claire draped on the bar at the opposite end, leaning back on one propped elbow and gazing at Hope under hooded lashes. Her booted foot bounces off the end of the bartop.
Christ, she looks so sexy, no matter her environment. As he waves to walk past, Claire sticks out her foot and gently pushes him back into the nearest barstool.
"Not so fast, Hope. You didn't answer my question." Her words are slightly slurred, and Hope can't help but raise an amused eyebrow at hearing her speak.
"I didn't understand that you had asked one." He matches her tone, and leans over the bar to look at the bottles arrayed behind it. Grabbing the nearest bottle he can get his hands on, he latches on to the neck and pulls the heavy bottle over to him. Sitting, he starts to uncork. He doesn't even bother with reading the label-who cares what kind of alcohol he's drinking at this point. It's the middle of the night, and he's been drinking for hours. He can't taste anything anymore, anyway.
Claire grins, and after Hope takes a swing, wincing, she gestures for him to pass the bottle over to her. He does, smacking his lips loudly and shuddering.
"God, that's awful."
Claire doesn't care about his assessment of the liquid, just closes her eyes and brings the bottle to her lips, tilting her head back and matching his gulps stride for stride. She winces too, but to her credit, she doesn't shudder afterwards. Opening her eyes, she holds the bottle back out to Hope once more, silently indicating that they would take turns drinking out of the same bottle.
"It's awful, but it works. Besides, whatever it is, it's got to be chaser compared to drinking Bacardi straight." Hope shrugs at this statement, and just breathes, gathering his wits as he realizes that she's going to be staying a while, and he needs his faculties in order to speak with Claire. He takes his time, and just nurses the bottle of the strange amber liquid.
Claire sniffs. "I didn't ask a question, persay-I just made an observation. What's your take on that, Hope? Why do YOU think that you received the vision that you did last night?"
Hope squeeze his eyes, and rubs his forehead. "God, it WAS last night, wasn't it? It's late. Or early. However you look at it. It seems like it just happened a couple of hours ago." He sighs, then shrugs. "Who's to say? I can't reason the actions of a dead god. I don't know why I saw what I saw."
"Oh, Hope, dear, you're so much smarter than you're putting on." Claire laughs softly, her voice pitched even lower than normal. "Honey, as smart as you are, you must see a connection between your feelings, and the vision that was given to you. It's me that you're talking to, remember that. You don't have to be coy, now that the rest of our friends are gone. It's just me and you now."
Hope winces at listening to the gratuitous use of endearments in her speech. She must have been drinking after everyone else had turned in, too. Knowing Claire, she probably swiped a bottle and went off to drink and mope somewhere in the sands by herself.
"Neither one of us are thinking clearly. Now's not the time to say things we'll regret in the morning. There's no use hypothesizing on something that wasn't really there. The only thing we can do continuing this conversation is hurt each other."
"I wanna hurt each other." Claire mumbles into the wine. Hope blinks and whips his head at her, not trusting his own ears, but all he sees is her throwing back the bottle for a few more gulps.
No, she couldn't have said what I thought she said, he assures himself. That would be madness.
"You know that I know what went down with you two when you came home from BT." She lunges right into the thick of the uncomfortable subject, and Hope sighs and gestures for the bottle back. She obliges, pushing the glass down the woodgrain counter. He just squints and nods, taking a drink from the bottle without even looking at it.
"Yeah, I know." He acknowledges after his drink, setting the bottle down with a heavy thud.
"But I also believe that you care for me." Claire states this, and lets the sentence hang. Glancing out of the corner of her eye at Hope, he nods once in confirmation of her words. "So, let's see…if I were a God, one that couldn't see inside of a human's soul, I would be confused as to whom you truly cared about. If I were spying on your life, and couldn't grasp the intricacies of how you were feeling, I would try to psyche you out by sending you a vision of the person you cared most for in this world. But…which woman would garner a greater reaction from you? Me, or Alyssa?" She queries this out loud, using a mocking tone.
Hope snorts. "Well, the answer's easy. The answer is to send both. At the same time. To make me face you both at the same moment, fearing your reactions to one another. And that's exactly what the God did. Also, you hedge your bets that way. For being dead and gone, Bhuinvelze is very smart-"
"Ssh." Claire surprises Hope by dashing to his side, her movements quick even in her current state. Hope raises his eyebrows as she claps a hand to his mouth, the smell of alcohol strong against his nose as her thumb presses into his lip. She leans into him, eyes darting furtively around the room. "Now that we know that he has found a way to find and monitor us, don't invoke his name out loud. Bad stuff. It could lead to trouble." Hope nods against her hand once to show that he understands, then she moves away. "Good." She whispers down into his ear, then goes to hop back up on her barstool.
Before she can make it back to her seat, Hope reaches out and grabs on to her forearm. "Wait." The touch is very gentle, a baby could easily wriggle from his fingertips, but the intent behind the action is strong. It's enough for Claire to be caught in her steps, and she bows her head, still facing away.
"What is it, Hope." She pauses for a moment before she speaks, and Hope is hurt by the way she says his name now-the coldness of her speech rings hollow in the cavernous space of the empty bar.
"I hurt both of you. I know it. I'm so sorry." The words are coming out of him now, spurred on by the drink and the desperation of having his worst enemy now back on the land.
Claire inhales mightily, then throws her head back, eyes closed. "I know why you did what you did. What I was unprepared for, were my own feelings about witnessing it."
Hope is thrown off, and in his shock he drops his fingers from Claire's wrist. If he hadn't been already sitting, he would have crashed to the ground. The thoughts spin in a mad dance inside his mind.
She witnessed us? How? I had thought she heard a rumor somehow, not that she had seen my shame firsthand-
-FEELINGS? That could be good or bad.
Claire picks back up before Hope can process further.
"You've been a child far longer than anyone living has ever been. You've been robbed of that in-between stage that every normal adult experiences before they mature-after I had left you, you had to become the Director at so young an age. You had no time for mistakes, for failures, for the normal things that everyone experiences as a part of becoming who they are. It has to be frustrating. Now, in this incarnation, you are finally free to act out on your feelings. There's so much going on-and I'm sure that you are still reeling in gratefulness that all of the memories you did preserve proved to be right. You got hit when you needed time to come into your own. You need to be a young adult and make stupid decisions. No one can ask for you to become wise and mature yet again for the sake of the world. You've already done your part-I cannot ask for you to wait around and be chaste and immature yet again. To think that any human being can do that is insanity. It all makes perfect sense. You were being taken advantage of, and you knew it-yet you desperately wanted to feel the sensation of sex with someone so badly, you were willing to take a knowing risk." A pause in the diatribe. Claire takes the dramatic stance of turning slowly to Hope, who is running his hands through his hair in frustration.
"Hope Estheim, look at me." Blinking back tears of anger and frustration, Hope does exactly that, letting the fall of locks cascade around his green eyes as he grits his teeth and looks up from wet lashes in shame.
Claire smiles, and touches his head. "I'm not mad-in fact, I'm sorry that it took seeing such an act take place for me to finally get my head out of my ass. You did nothing WRONG. You wanted to experiment, and after eons, you were finally allowed to do so." She narrows her eyes here, thinking, and tilts her head. "That I know of, anyway. But I have a sneaking suspicion-never mind." She waves herself off. "It's none of my business, but old soldier habits of reading and assessing someone never really wear off. I've known you for too long, even on another world."
Hope swallows hard, barely trusting himself to speak. "You're right." His voice cracks here, and he clears his throat and tries again. "You're right. About…everything. Caught up in the moment, I guess I didn't realize. Being on the outside-the situation must be clearer to someone that isn't involved."
Claire sits down on a stool. "Hope, I don't know if you're truly older or younger than me, the way time has flowed, but I do know that what you did is nothing that I haven't done myself, on the old world and the new. I'm selfish and greedy with my feelings, hoarding people the way others hoard things. I did the same thing with Serah on the old world. I am learning to let go and give the people that I love the same freedom that I cherish for myself."
"The hard part is deciding what you want." She continues, the tone in her voice softening to almost a whisper, signaling an abrupt change in her dialogue. "Now that you are free to do what you want, you have to let us know what it is that you decide."
Hope laughs loudly, throwing his head back and clapping once. "That's a damn hard thing to do when you've been drinking."
Claire furrows her brows, then straightens them once more. "No, I didn't mean this moment. When you're ready, but-soon."
Hope believes that is where she wanted to end the conversation, because after a gentle squeeze on his arm, Claire hops off the stool to leave the bar.
Hope can't watch her walk away.
"I can't believe we are having this conversation." He shouts at her receding figure. She stops, hand characteristically resting on her hip. "In, fact, I'm NOT having this conversation at all!"
Hearing the stool scoot back loudly against the wood, Claire turns, eyes raised in alarm. She sees Hope wobbling to his feet unsteadily. She reaches out an arm and starts to go to him to help, but he is faster.
With a speed she didn't know that he had in him, Hope is by Claire's side, and holding her by the elbows. His eyes are wide, his breath ragged and excited.
"I NEVER said that I had any doubts whom I wanted to be with! To you, OR Alyssa! She knows my feelings-she's probably known them long before I was certain myself. I…I couldn't wait around for you anymore. On the last world, you had yet to embrace yourself with Lumina, so you might have had an excuse. On THIS world, you're acting as if you are still so cold! I've TRIED to take you out, to talk to you, to let you know that you're what I want. From my point of view, all you've done is take advantage of knowing how I'll always feel for you and still keep me waiting. After all this long, that's CRUEL! If you're still not sure what YOU want, that's fine, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't experience…sex." Here he blushes, and stutters slightly in his diatribe, coming to a halt. He takes a breath.
"It's so STUPID that you are telling me to decide what I want with the freedom that I have, whereas you have yet to make any decision at all! If I am lonely and have to search out attention, that is awful for me. But I can at least cope with my feelings. What about you, Claire Farron? What feelings do YOU possess? Other than those you have for your sister. Stop stringing me along. You know me, who I am, more than anyone. I am here, right now." Hope's chest is heaving, and he steps back, gesticulating wildly to underscore his point. He throws his arms wide. "You can have me. All of me. I know this. Alyssa knows this. YOU are the one who is confused. I. DON'T. LOVE. ALYSSA. Hell, I can't even TRUST her!"
Claire closes her eyes, and it seems that she is intensely listening to Hope. A single tear trickles down the corner of her face, and she opens her eyes once more.
"Will you always be by my side." She murmurs this out loud, so soft.
Hope walks over to her in two strides, gently taking her wrists. He tilts his head, his eyes narrowing in the dim barlight. "Is that what you're afraid of? Afraid that you'll be alone?" Claire opens her mouth to speak, but notices how Hope's eyes have a distant, far-away look.
"It definitely explains a lot." He pulls himself together and brings himself back to the present, his focus once again on Claire in front of him. The woman has no words, just closes her eyes for a moment in thought.
"Claire, I can't believe I am having this conversation with you. I can't believe I have to say this here, but I think it's something I'll always continue having to say to you for the rest of our lives. Claire Farron, I fight with you. I stand with you. I've been chasing after the ghost of you, the memory of you, for my entire life. When I was young, I wanted to emulate you, to be strong. Now I realize that we needed each other for different reasons-and we still do. We are a unit, a team, and with the strengths that we each contribute to a life, I know that nothing will stand in our way. Not even a god." Here he brings his forehead down to rub against hers, his index finger crooked under her chin. Slowly, she rubs counter to his movements, their heads slowly meeting in a tangle of pink and silver. She closes her eyes, and takes a big exhale-one of the first exhales she has experienced on this planet, when all she wanted was a lifetime of exhalation.
"Just as one more thing." Hope stops his movement, and Claire opens her eyes, so full of fear. She waits on baited breath for his next words.
"Will you have my back?" The words are whispered.
Claire brings her lips up to his, craning her neck and feather breathing her word over his mouth, before they seal their pact with a kiss.
"Always."