a chaotic heart
Chapter 14
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His body is a cage, for the both of them. Bhunivelze knows it, and in the last two years, Hope has come to understand it too. Oh, he'd always known his body is a cage for him, but the presence of the God is something that had been beyond his understanding until the memories returned.
Bhunivelze wants to do more goad his Saviour for her failure. There's nothing to gain from it, except a sense of self-satisfaction that doesn't exist. Perhaps then, he's afraid of her. Makes Hope, when he's the one that's more aware, want to be close to her. Not like his parents, who Bhunivelze doesn't interfere with. But a form of protection nonetheless.
But that's a fleeting dream and he knows it. Knows it when he hears grunts of pain, past and present. Feels blood on the pads of his fingers. Feels the air stinging his raw knuckles or the skin under his nails, exposed. If it's something good for him, he'll relax and then Bhunivelze will have as much freedom as a fragile human body can give. It's too dangerous. Too dangerous. Peace and safety. Both of them come at too high prices.
If he'd regained his memories earlier, he might have wondered what would happen to the God in his soul when he dies. Before he lifted the knife to his wrists of his own violation. Before he'd struggled against the God who tried to deflect his strikes until the yellow loops around his wrists were caked red with blood. But he fails. He wakes up in a hospital three days later, with his parents and lots of doctors and treatments that hurt far more than the persisting sting in his wrists and that's the only thing they give him painkillers for. And he tries again and again: more lethal, faster, methods and they all fail. The last is a jab to carotid that's supposed to take a person out in seconds and he still survives it. Bhunivelze deflects the strike enough to give him minutes, instead.
And by the time his memories return, he's far too deep to care about the consequences. But he also knows the fervour pitch like he's worked himself into some years ago is pointless. He won't die so easily. He needs to outsmart a God – and, worse, a God who can read his body and his soul. It's his raison d'etre now and everything else is trying to find a little comfort, or a little possibility, or simply slipping out of control.
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He's in the hospital. It's been a while since he's been here, and he doesn't know if that's good or bad. Bad because he hates them. They're supposed to make things better but they never do. They just make things worse. And, from a purely objective point of view, they're the reason he's still alive. And then there's the other stuff they do. The gaping holes in his memory, far worse than when he's at home, or wandering the streets, looking for a cosy little pocket where he can plot against a God or just escape him.
But you can't.
He feels something around his wrists and he panics and flails and they move and he forces himself to relax once more. There are restraints, soft and padded, but loose. More to stop him getting off the bed than stop him moving at all. His ankles are likewise shackled. Trapped in bed. His heart screams again, but logic, there's logic there and they show him his heavily wrapped feet and he's sure he'll walk on them anyway if not for being loosely tied to the bed and someone – his parents – have made sure they're not too tight, that he can still breathe and fight with his mind.
And when they come in, he's exhausted, too exhausted to wonder if they're dead or phantoms again, too exhausted to worry Bhunivelze might have something else planned and if that's their plan, it's a sneaky one and it's worked. He basks in their embrace, their arms weaving around his bound form and there's no whisper in his mind to jar him back to reality and, foolishly, he wishes things can just stay like this.
They can't. They never do.
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He's surprised to find an unfamiliar girl the next time he wakes – or woman, rather, even if she is small and petite and easily mistaken for a child. Her hair is pink and that's the first thing that catches her attention, until he's sure – or Bhunivelze's sure – that she isn't the Saviour.
And, after that, Hope remembers her hair was dyed black the last time he saw her.
'Are you hungry?' the girl – woman – asks. She's got a purse hanging on one arm, and a container in her hands. She's smiling kindly at him, as though she knows him but he can't recall. Maybe she does know him. Alyssa gives him that look as well, except there's more weight in hers. A weight he still doesn't understand.
In any case, she's a stranger and he wants to know. 'Who are you?'
She blinks, a flash of hurt appearing, before vanishing again. Like Lightning. And he wonders why the thought crosses her mind and almost misses her reply. 'I'm Serah. You don't remember?' He shakes his head. Serah, Serah – No, wait. He does. The echo of her name, sung like a song. The Saviour's song. He knows the name, yes. But not what it means. Something beyond the understanding of a God.
Until now.
'Serah Villiers née Farron,' she says. Her full name. Farron. Lightning. The Saviour.
'Th – Lightning's sister.' He almost slips. Bites his tongue to stop that cursed word escaping his lips. It's always a bitter taste on his tongue and yet it slips anyway, again and again and again.
'Yes.' And she looks hopeful, before a small frown dances upon her lips. 'I met you in the Pulse Vestige first, I think. Just before I turned to crystal. And then when we were all set free. Then 10AF – ' She babbles about a few more dates, but he doesn't know any time called AF and so those babbles don't matter. The crystal though: he does remember that, vaguely. More the death of his mother and the brand that burnt itself into the skin of his wrist than anything else, and even those events, so strong back then, dimmed with what had come in the future.
Serah. Lightning's sister. And her raison d'etre. The last one is a mere hypothesis at this point, but it makes sense.
'Hope? Is something the matter?'
He's staring at her now, unblinking. Bhunivelze used her, even though she wasn't there – and where was she? Dead? Murdered? Locked away? Remade like him? He should know this. He doesn't. Just that she – the her made by God, so woefully incomplete – was carrot to dangle in his Saviour's face. 'Are you real?' he wonders. 'Or the puppet made by God as well?'
Her eyes widen. Her lips part. She's got a faint idea of what he's talking about, it seems. Faint, but incomplete. Then she quivers, tosses down her container and purse, and embraces him.
He stiffens against her. He doesn't recognise her embrace and it's too tight, too stifling, a phantom in his mind, you can't escape me –
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His wrists hurt, though his ankles hurt more. He's not entirely sure why. It's not like he's tried to get up and walk before his feet heal…or he doesn't remember doing so. His room is empty this time, but it doesn't take long to fill and they distract him sufficiently. Bhunivelze never really tries in a hospital anyway. Too firmly tied to manage anything.
It's a sort of solace, but it comes with too many other prices to bear. Like Serah's guilty and worried face, and both of those things are his fault and he knows it. He expects Lightning is glaring in his direction as well, though he doesn't check. 'I'm sorry,' he says, looking at the crook of Serah's elbow. The purse is dangling from there again. And there's a container in her hand again. And something sitting on top of it. Completely unfamiliar.
She catches him staring, and smiles. 'I'm sorry too,' she says. 'Claire warned me, but I saw how sad you looked and sounded and just – forgot.' She offers the stuffed animal to him. 'It's Mog,' she explains, and there's a gasp of surprise behind her, and a snort and he realises Snow is towering behind the two as well. He really doesn't get it, does he? 'I tried to make it look like him, anyway.'
He can't cuddle it to his chest like stuffed animals should be – and never mind that he's too old for them anyway, because he's really not – but he clutches it in one hand and it's there and under his control and those two are the most important. And Mog, as though it should be familiar. It's not. He wracks his brain but can't remember anyone or anything called a Mog.
'You don't remember?' He stiffens. That's Lightning – Saviour. She knows. And she should know better but she's suddenly everywhere.
'Go away,' he mutters, not quite sure if he's talking to her or to the shadows, that pesky God, in his mind. But the words tumble from his lips like a mantra: 'Go away, go away, go away –'
'Whoa there, kid – '
'Hope – '
Snow and Serah. Important. Both important. One a raison d'etre. Both – all three – needing to stay far away from a God who'd crush them in his palm if he ever got the means again –
But he can't do that when in a weak sixteen year old body restrained to a hospital bed and that's only a small mercy that's easily forgotten in a frenzy.