a chaotic heart
Chapter 18

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'What's almost over?' Lightning – the Saviour – Claire – asks.

Shouldn't he be happier to see her? She breaks the monochrome, the pure white that's engulfed him for so long – and yet she also brings something with her, something changing, something frightening… She's kick-started something, and it could go off the tracks or stay on them and it was mostly out of their control.

'The end of the world,' he answers, and then he blinks because it's not an answer, but an echo. A conversation they've already had before, in the correct context. But his mind is muddled. He can't align the past with what is now. What is now? 'Is the world ending?'

'Not as far as I know.' Her voice is shaking. She's trying to keep it steady and calm, but it's shaking anyway.

'I wonder…' The world's not ending. It's the new world, and it's his mind tangled with its parasite and it's past. 'What'll happen if the world goes this time?' Is that what you want?

There's no answer. When it comes to what that errant God actually wants, there's never an answer, and it's frustrating. Because he's wandering blind. And that probably suits the God very nicely. That was all he did before, too. Walk blind, and lead the Saviour around equally blind.

She broke out. He didn't. She's free from him. He's not.

'I don't know.' Her tone is wrong. She's said those words before. He can't remember when, or where, or why (maybe when they were all l'Cie? Or maybe it was when she was trying to save someone – Noel or Sazh or Snow) but he knows the tone was different then. Is different now. 'It's up to humanity to find the strength to save it once again.'

'Really…' He hums. He feels laughter bubbling in his throat and he swallows it down. 'I wonder where all our human strength has gotten to?'

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It's…almost a normal conversation. Sort of. If she dips her head and squints through one of those weird cellophane glasses Serah sometimes takes for her students. She wonders if Hope's managed to mistake the hospital room for the Ark. His voice sounds like it at first, echoing the past.

It's her answers that are different, that spoil the illusion. And how many times does she have to shatter these dreams of his? Built on innocence. Built on revenge. Built on a hope that turns out to be impossible, and now…what are they built on now? A God who'd taken up a permanent residence inside his head and he doesn't belong there.

But it's Hope's face, Hope's body and most of the time Hope's voice and that stops her from doing anything about it.

And then the questions. The conversation's moved on from the past, into the future while leaping none too gently over the present. What makes him ask so suddenly, she wonders? What makes him lock himself in his room for two days without food and water, for that matter? And how does he manage to do it in a way that forces the Estheims to saw through the door? Kid's always been too clever for his own good. And she wonders if the God had seen a possible death by dehydration coming. Too macabre, Claire, she scolds herself. And killing Bhunivelze this time round…impossible to do without killing Hope as well. Breaking someone with words alone… just wasn't possible. It took more than words. It took feelings, actions – even the playground bully didn't caw his prey with only words.

And his last words make her crumble.

'I wonder where all our human strength has gotten to?'

And she knows. Maybe it's egotistical, maybe it's just their efforts to run away from things, but it's still the truth – a truth. And she hugs him while she says it. 'We've left you to fight alone, haven't we?'

At least she's had Serah, and Snow, even before Noel showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep. And Noel's had Yuel, and Serah. And Vanille and Fang have had each other. And Snow's had Serah too. But Hope – Hope's only had his parents and family's different, family's not enough. She knows because she's spent an eternity chasing after Serah and she's seen the consequences and yet I'm still screwing over my own life, aren't I? But that's nothing but her own pride and cowardliness.

'Good.' Hope coughs suddenly. His throat's still raw. The tubes are feeding his veins but not his mouth, though he ignores it and talks on anyway. 'It was right.'

'It was the right thing to do.'

'It's never right,' she whispers, barely loud enough to be heard. 'You said that last time too…and that's a regret I'll always carry.'

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Her feet take her wandering. Her body, as always, is on high alert but she's forgotten, forgotten just where she's been walking in the last few weeks until her muscles are screaming and she's pinned to the wall with a lecherous grin.

Her face is still stained by the tears she'd shed in that hospital room. And the kid wasn't even in any danger this time round. Once they got some water into him, she reminds herself. Once they shaved off the seizure and the delirium.

She's distracted again. She's been doing this too much recently. Letting her body do all the work but her body can't handle the same calibre of fighting in this world as it did in the old one. She can handle drunkards just fine but the folk looking for a street walker and more than happy to get a feisty one – not so well. She's spent too long running for that.

And…it's what she's here for, in a sense.

It should disgust her. It doesn't.

Killing should have disgusted her once upon a time. It didn't.

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She's presented herself as feisty. She gets treated as such. When Serah and Snow drop by to pick her up the next day, she's a walking disaster and they know it.

Snow speaks first. 'What the hell, Sis?'

Serah doesn't say it quite like that, but she means the same thing.

She doesn't answer them. 'Can I borrow some make up?' she asks. 'Don't want Hope freaking out – '

'What about us?' Serah asks, in a small voice.

Claire loses her own.

'Tell us,' she pleads.

She doesn't want to, but it's so much easier to cave now, bruised in both body and soul as she is.

'I was –' Easy to cave, but not so easy to say. 'I've been –'

Serah's small arms encircle her waist. She stiffens. Her ribs are still sore, but even if they weren't, even after the shower she's had at four in the morning she knows the real reason why she's frozen like that, why Serah's already withdrawing with hurt plastered on her face, why Snow's got a big comforting hand on her shoulder –

'Streetwalking!' she bursts out, and her skin burns. She knows – She knows and she knows there were other choices too, easier choices, better choices. 'It's my own damn pride.' And she's crying. 'And me just running away from everything: responsibility, who I even am –'

Serah's arms are around her again, and this time they both ignore the stiffness in her limbs, in her back. And Snow's free hand is in her hair, ruffling it like she's Hope and she might've snorted if she's not busy battling with her tears instead.

'I know,' she sobs, before either of them can say it (and they don't, maybe because they've already pierced it together). 'I know I could've come to you guys.'

'Damn straight you could have,' mutters Snow.

They don't ask why she didn't.

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Everything at once… Maybe this is what Hope meant.

They sit on her couch, their visit to the hospital deferred. Serah's made them tea and it sits on the coffee table, cooling. None of them are really sure what to say. They all know though they have to talk.

'It's not just me,' Claire sighs, finally. 'It's not just Hope. I think we all forgot…just what we spent an eternity fighting for.'

'Happiness.' Snow closes his eyes. 'Our fairytale ending. Lots of mini-Snows and mini-Serahs and even mini-Sis running around our big house in the country – '

'I'm sorry,' says Serah, knowing it's mostly her fault that dream hasn't yet come true.

'We weren't ready,' Snow replied. He knows it's not, it's never been. Though they all have a bit of the blame to shoulder, a bit of responsibility to bear. 'You always said…adopting felt like giving up.'

Another problem. The only one Claire's been aware of for years and has done nothing about. 'It's not the only way,' she points out. 'Adopting, I mean. There are treatments. IVF.'

Serah snorts at that. 'We can't afford it,' she says.

And Claire knows she can't help them either. If she had a better job, a proper job. 'Responsibility,' she sighs. 'If I'd just gotten a proper job from the get go, instead of running around looking for one that didn't come with strings attached when there's no such thing…' Her wrists are bruised as well. The bruises she can stare at with having both hands on her lap. Stark reminders.

'Please stop.' Serah's staring at them too, reaching out a tentative hand and ghosting them. 'You don't want to hurt yourself like this, do you?'

No. No, she doesn't. Too many barriers are crumbling down in this new life of hers.

'I was just running away.'

She knows. She knows.

'It's okay to run.' It's Snow. Surprisingly, Snow. 'If you know you're going to get killed standing and fighting instead.'

The tickle of a smile flickers across her lips. 'This is coming from the Hero who never had a care for his own life?'

He shrugs. 'I've got too much blood on my hands to not care.'

She nods quietly. 'Fair enough.'

It's so much easier to stop running when you've tripped and fallen, then if you're still going full speed ahead. But whether she can stop running or not – that's a whole other matter?