a chaotic heart
Chapter 13

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At some point in his new life, he read a book called The Long Walk. In it, the characters walk nonstop for over two nights, passing many towns along the long and empty flat road just to prove they can – or can't. If they stop, they're warned. Three warnings and they're shot. Last one standing wins the race and it's a race of the dead for death, because the winner gets a load of cash and their own corpse, still thinking it's alive. A horror tale more potent than any other he's read and now he knows why. He's on the long walk now, and he knows the moment he drops, he'll be fighting again and there's a fog in his head, thick and palpable like an anaesthetic haze and he can keep walking because it's there, dulling the world.

He doesn't know where he's going or why, but he's walking straight so it must be towards something. To somewhere. And the road's not empty. The spectators watching him. The guards ready to shoot if he falters. The other walkers on the road – shadows or real, past or present. In any case, there's always two: the puppet and the God and he's under no illusions that he can outlast said God.

Who picked the direction, anyway? It's too late to wander. The road is set, and the race and he's walking and he can't stop. He needs to get somewhere and he needs to be alive at the end of the road.

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They're taking the same road as yesterday. Claire's not sure what makes her call Snow again but here they are, her having hooked her arms around her brother in law's waist as they sail through the countryside. Snow's focused on the road. Her job is to watch both sides of it. Looking for green hair in green foliage – maybe the choice of dye had less to do with reversing the image than she'd initially thought – or at least orange pyjama clothes.

And she spots them, finally. Before she does some quick math in her head and realises that, for him to be where he is, he's walked all night. Literally. And he's still walking, one foot in front of the other and head down, like he can't stop, like he's forgotten how to stop. Even the sound of the engine cutting as Snow parks the bike haphazardly doesn't make him look up or around. Nor his name when they shout it: Claire solo, then the two of them together.

And even when Claire grabs his shoulder, he just continues walking. Making her stumble because she's reaching for him and not restraining him, and he's just walking on like she's not touching him at all.

It takes Snow's brute strength to make him stop. Snow who manages to lift him completely off the ground and he doesn't struggle, doesn't speak. And Snow's words are gentle, unlike his hold which is rough at the best of times and even rougher now. 'Hey, kid. You're back to being a kid again, you know. Remember me? Remember that dumb blond hero?'

The boy just hung limply, staring with green eyes – contactless eyes. Only his legs moved. Twitching, as though they want to keep walking still but have realised there was no ground underneath his feet. An impasse, until Claire decides to try her luck and she tips a scale she can't see with her call.

She doesn't know why this one reaches his ears when the first one doesn't, but the boy stiffens, then looks up and his eyes are burning. 'Saviour,' he says, voice dull and – familiar. Bhunivelze. 'My failed Saviour.'

'Hope!' Snow shakes him, unaware. In danger.

Claire has a warning on her lips – but it comes too late. Hope – Bhunivelze – has already lifted a leg and kicked the other between the legs. Luckily, Snow is made of sturdier stuff, even in this new life of his. He stumbles and grunts in pain, but he's still holding on to the other boy. Stopping him from running away, or doing something else. Not stopping him from kicking again, but she comes closer. Maybe she can.

Her fingers tighten around an invisible sword. She remembers driving it into Bhunivelze's chest, into his head, into his heart. Three lethal strikes and he's still here, echo or otherwise. And she can't even rebuke his claim because she has failed: failed to save the last soul she'd said she'd save.

'Hope!' She repeats it sharply. No change. The real Hope is tired from his long walk. Asleep. She switches tactics. 'Bhunivelze!'

Snow really does drop the boy this time, but he lands gracefully. Puppet-like. God-like. Turning to stare at Claire, as though Snow has faded out of existence, as though he's forgettable – and one thing Snow isn't is forgettable. Not to humans anyway.

At least there's a line. Is that a good thing or bad? She doesn't know.

The boy stands straight. Green hair and green eyes, boring into her. 'What do you want?' she snaps at him. The most powerful weapon she has available to her: her words.

'Freedom.' His lips barely move.

Freedom? Then he is as much a prisoner of Hope as Hope is of him?

But he hasn't finished speaking yet.

'And for you to – ' He cuts off, eyes bulging, body pitching forward. Snow catches him again and this time he struggles: arms and legs, and chest, heaving as though something wants to explode. His eyes have squeezed shut, his fists clenched. 'Stop. Stop!'

'Hope. Hope!' Snow shakes the boy again, and this time it rattles through his thin frame and forces him limp, unconscious.

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'What the hell?' Snow snaps at her, after they've stopped moving again. Because they couldn't leave an unconscious sixteen year old on the country highway. So they took him home. Then tagged along to the hospital because he'd picked up a fever on the way and his feet needed some looking into anyway. And now they hung outside because the waiting room is oppressive in a way neither of them can stand.

And, it seems, there's something else Snow can't stand.

'What?' Claire asks. She knows what. Maybe she just wants someone else to draw that conclusion too. Or doesn't want to say it herself.

'Why did you call Hope – that?' He chokes on the name. Never utters even a syllable of it. In his mind, Hope and Bhunivelze and the current world can't be in the same sentence because, because that means she's failed.

And she wonders which failure's the real one. After all, it was Hope who told her it didn't matter how many times she failed in the past, so long as she succeeded in the end. But I didn't, did I Hope? I failed you one times too many.

'You never met him,' she sighs. He can't see. Or maybe he can. 'Bhunivelze. Regal and arrogant, but not as incapable of understanding human emotion as he thinks. He feels grief for the old world. Anger at me for ruining everything.' She smiles bitterly. 'Especially anger at me. As for you…I think that's all Hope, because you're nothing except dust in the palm of a God to him. Just like Serah. And the others.' Even Vanille…and why? Because she doesn't sing the Soulsong after all?

'Bhunivelze had him for a hundred and sixty-nine years.' Snow closed his eyes.

'It has nothing to do with that,' Claire interrupts. 'I just – failed to save Hope. Again. One time too many.'

And he can't rebuke that, because there's no proof to the contrary. Is Bhunivelze still alive, or is it the echoes, the trauma burned permanently into Hope's soul. Either way, she's failed, and of the two it's only Bhunivelze she can fight.

'You weren't the only one protecting him,' Snow frowns. 'I made that promise first, to his mother. Noel promised, in one of the paradoxes – which, funnily enough, screwed with a lot of things and we had to hope Hope could escape his assassination by himself because we just messed things up even more –'

'I know.' She saw it all from Valhalla. 'We should've gotten Vanille to use her death magic on him.'

Snow snorts. 'Maybe that's why he likes you more than her. Scarred of an eighteen year old with pigtails.'

It is amusing, but far too late. She doubts the Vanille of this world still has that power.

'But…' The humour's dropped out of his voice, leaving it vulnerable. 'He's still in the Unseen Realm, right? I mean, Caius or one of the Yuels would tell us if something went wrong.'

'Not if I chopped out a bit of him when I pulled out Hope,' Claire muses. 'I mean, he was still fourteen after all that. Still fourteen now. His soul's not fourteen. Far from it. Why isn't he an adult in this world? Or is it just because we're born the same distance away from each as we originally were – but that's not true either.' She's no good at this. It's Hope's domain, hypothesising. And then finding the solution. Like the new cocoon. And she was sure that, if he'd had those five hundred years as he should have, he'd have cracked the problem of Chaos as well. Hope, you could outsmart even a God if you wanted to.

'Sis,' Snow begins, before sighs heavily. 'What's done is done. We can't change it. We just have to fix what we have.'

Kill Bhunivelze all over again? Or convince Hope it's all just a figment of his imagination?

'And not just Hope.' Snow's hands fold into one other. 'Serah told me you quit your job.'

'I'm looking for a new one.' It's not a lie. She is looking. Thinking. Just not particularly hard.