a chaotic heart
Chapter 20

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I could have killed a baby. A – not even a baby. A foetus.

And that's enough to tell him he needs to break this impasse. And soon. Now, preferably. But no brilliant idea comes to mind and even if he does, he can assume a certain God is ready to force his way into the body's command centre to put a brake on it. What he really needs is somebody else's help but who the hell is going to do that? It's bad enough, with all those arguments against abortion and euthanasia and he's not qualified for either.

Would you manage to stop me, even then?

He wonders how long it will be before Bhunivelze just accepts that humans aren't meant to last forever, including this one. Will he lose his mind and not come back before then? Will he be a broken puppet if he does, or an animal out of control and locked away permanently in a cage? What? What will it be?

Patience…

He laughs at the whisper in his mind. Not at the sentiment, but if only he could still be patient. He can't. But his laughter is due to the presence of yet another voice in his mind because the voice of optimism died a very long time ago and it can't be the same. It doesn't sound like his voice anyway, his voice in all the different incarnations he's heard it in and he's heard a good many of them.

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It's an extra weight on his soul. He hasn't killed in this new world. Or, he doesn't think he has. But he's come close. Himself, mostly. But not always. And that little life growing in Light's body is the newest and latest and most fragile.

Even after he's apologised, it won't leave him alone.

Why do you even care?

He doesn't answer. Never answers. Just keeps him alive like it's a necessary thing, like he'll drown into the chaos entirely if this last link is cut off and maybe he will, he hopes he will but that thread just won't cut.

Patience….

'How!' he screams at the voice. 'How much longer?'

He doesn't respect a reply. He's surprised to get one. Thirteen days.

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Ten days. Is that supposed to be symbolic, he wonders? Or just his mind making things up to try and comfort him. He doesn't know. A part of him wants to tell Lighting. Another part of him doesn't want to talk to her again, lest she gets the idea to come down and she can't. And he can't get the words out anyway. Just ineligible sounds that force their way past his throat as he wriggles uselessly.

Thirteen days is a time limit that has the God in his mind going crazy. Luckily, he's back in the hospital. Restrained so he can't hurt anyone, hurt anything. He's not sure how it's happened this time but he won't complain. So long as he actually is dead at the end of the thirteen day limit.

And even his parents' presences can't make him feel guilty of the thought.

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Hope's in the hospital again. Bartholomew calls Light despite Hope's demand, and she calls Snow and Serah.

And Serah drops by her apartment the next day with an extra bit of news.

'I worked out the doll thing,' she explains. 'It's a common supernatural motif, that empty dolls can suck out souls, because they're in essence soulless themselves. Containers. I think what Hope is saying is that a foetus in the stage where it doesn't have a soul is similar to a doll.'

'Goddess Etro takes out the souls of the dead and puts them into the hearts of the newly born,' Claire repeats. Bhunivelze's words…or was it her, as the Saviour? She can't quite remember. They'd both tethered on the issue. 'Is Hope worried Bhunivelze will jump ship?' It's what he wants, but…

'Do you think Yuel and Caius will allow it?' Serah returns. 'They are the Goddess of Death now, aren't they?'

'You're right.' And she smiles, because Serah is right. No way Caius is going to let the god who used him so enter the world again if he can help it. And he probably can. He's stronger than her, after all. Defeated her in Valhalla. Stabbed himself on Noel's sword to end his endless life because no-one else could do it for him.

But later, alone, she frowns. Two burning questions remained. If offered the chance to save Hope by sacrificing this child growing inside of her, would she take it? But for Serah… I already sacrificed you once.

The other question was what Hope was afraid of? Bhunivelze jumping ship, or something else she's failing to see. Actually, he'll be even more powerless in a baby's body… More likely it is the other way around, she realises. Hope who's not always fully there, who's the weaker link right now, according to Serah and Snow and their report of indistinguishable mumbling and trashing and pretty much no coherence to talk about at all. In that case, she probably should be nearby.

But that also means he'll be dead in the next eight months, and that's painful blow to her gut, exactly where the new life is taking shape.

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Thirteen days. The voice promises him and it delivers. He is suddenly, and dizzyingly, spiralling through the black until something – someone – catches him.

'Hope Estheim.' He doesn't recognise the voice, or the hundreds of young female ones that echo after it.

There's a roar from somewhere deep, and then –

'That's the rest of Bhunivelze.' That man again.

He opens his eyes. It's still black, but he can make out shapes in it. A tall, elaborately dressed man. And young girl and her many twins, reflected on the backdrop like a bunch of little mosaics.

'We are the Goddess of Death.' It's the girls, speaking in tandem, their voices stretching through the black. 'And this is the Chaos.'

'You saved Lightning,' he realises. He's mostly slipped away, but he remembers that it was Lightning Bhunivelze had planned to take Etro's empty throne.

'You saved her,' the man corrects. 'And now, she will save you.'

He doesn't understand. He's not sure because the memories are slipping away like water in a stream, that the name Lightning he'd just uttered before is an echo now, that Etro is death and nothing more, that this was the realm of death and chaos and he was free, finally free. 'Aren't I already saved?'

'Not yet.' And he's falling again, falling and screaming suddenly because he can't remember what he needed saving from but he knows it was bad and he can't stand being caught in their net for a moment longer. 'But you will be soon. I promise you.'

He can't see anymore. The figures – what did they look like again? – are gone. But their voices are still there. 'It's time to be reborn.'

He's lost all sense of time as well, by then. Too much to even wonder why he doesn't get a break.

'And don't worry about Bhunivelze. He will sleep here for an eternity. An eternity, like all eternities, that won't last forever.'

The words disappear as soon as he hears them. Strings of words so that he loses the beginning before he gets to the end and understands none of it. The words are warm though…and he thinks, though he can't be sure, that they're for someone else's benefit as well.

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Not eight months. More like a week and a bit. The doctors can't explain it, even with an autopsy.

Claire's close to fourty days post-conception by then. Or she thinks she is. They don't let her go to the funeral. Still worried about floating souls and things. She respects them, but she sends flowers anyway.

Is this…all I can do?

But she knew a long time ago she'd failed Hope once again. But it was quite another knowing there's no second chances. Enough to drown out the unmistakable relief to know Bhunivelze's last ties with this world are gone as well.

Unless…

'Don't worry about Bhunivelze. He will sleep for eternity.'

She jerks upright. There's no-one here except her. Her and the papers scattered around her she'd been studying. Serah's idea, again. Go to college. Get a decent job. Work her way up in the world now that she's made her resolve. And she has. To stop running away. Her hair's a mess right now but in a year or two it'll be back to pure pink again and the whispers will probably follow her and she'll accept or ignore them. They're not dangerous. Never were. Not in this world.

'Who are you?' she whispers.

The voices don't answer her question. But they do speak.

'Look after both your second chances.' Female. Echoing. Realisation draws. 'Yuel.' The many Yuels, to be precise. Who become the Goddess of Death so she won't have to, so she can be here, so…

The tears stream down her face, and this time, she has no problem blaming those pregnancy hormones.

Both your second chances…

I get it.

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'I've got a name picked out,' she tells Nora, over the phone.

The other woman is surprised, surprised to see they've kept contact with her and Bartholomew but how can they not?

And how can she not tell her this much, at least. Not her suspicions, because she can't be sure yet, can't prove it yet. But this, she can. 'Boy or girl, I want to name them Hope.'

'I…see.' And it's a shaky answer from Nora, before a pause and a steadier. 'Thank you, Claire, for looking after him for all this time.'

'I haven't, much,' Claire says sadly, 'but I promise, I won't fail this time.'

'Visit us some day,' Nora tells her, before Claire hangs up the phone. 'Bring your child as well.'

'Of course.' Even if they're not Hope's parents in his next life, they still deserve this…and more.

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She's less sure, when five months later she wakes up from the anaesthesia to find a little baby boy in the incubator by her hospital bed. Not quite what she expects: red and swollen and so tiny but the doctors tell her the APGAR scores and birth weight and head circumference are all as good as can be expected for a premature baby and she can more or less relax.

But the baby has blue eyes and almost black hair. Neither of those things mean much, she's told. Lots of babies have blue eyes and they grow out of it. And hair colour at birth doesn't have a lot of bearing on what colour they'll have for the rest of their life as well.

And he does. The black roots, surprisingly, stay, but the rest of the hair goes silver, almost white. She'd never thought about it before, but now she thinks back and realises it's always been like that, since she first laid eyes on him in the old world. And by the time he's six months old and growing teeth, his eyes have changed from blue to green as well. But they're a warm green, darker than Bhunivelze's, and there's that whisper in her mind again. 'Bhunivelze will sleep for eternity.'

He better, she thinks.

And he grows. A fussy baby like babies are, but cute. Grows up nicely, hitting milestones and certain ones earlier than he should. Not fussing too much when she finally starts work (as a sports teacher, of all things and it's entirely Serah's fault, she's sure) and leaves him to be babysat, by Nora Estheim or, mostly, Snow. Auntie Serah teaches him how to read before he starts school so he can stop making castles out of her books instead and, somehow, the presence of a baby in their little family of three (because a studio is no place to raise a baby) have calmed Serah and Snow as well. The first baby, even if it's not from their bodies, in their dream.

This Hope knows nothing of the world of old. But she plans to tell him. Because the past teaches lessons: gives hope, fights despair. It's not the same shacks that bound him before. And she'll make sure they never become those shackles.

But, for now, he's an innocent four year old curled in the crook of her elbow and listening to a new bedtime story. His small hands, gloveless, intertwining with her own. And she smiles at him tenderly – and knows that, this time, nothing will stop her saving him, her son in blood and spirit too – and begins. 'The crystal age is just a legend, from before the world is born.'

He looks up to her with sleepy eyes. Sleepy, warm green eyes. She tweaks his nose, and he giggles.

'And it ended, before you were born.'

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A/N: And we've come to the end. My unexpected campnano project, but I'm happy I finished it nice and snug in April and before my exam as well. Always nice when that happens. Also nice when I can focus most of my energy on one project instead of a hundred of them, lol. Helps that that scene with Bhunivelze, Lightning and puppet!Hope is so addictive.

Those final lines are from the end of Lightning Returns. I'm sure you guys recognise it, but even so…

The Hope/Bhunivelze thing – when I first started writing the story, I imagined it like Lightning literally putting her fingers in and dragging Hope's soul back out. No reason why a bit of Bhunivelze couldn't be stuck too – especially since Hope's physical body was destroyed by that point and the soul is far more abstract. This Bhunivelze isn't strong enough to do much. It's arguable if he does anything at all, or if all the things Light and Hope associated with Bhunivelze are instead Hope's traumatic self -reflecting Bhunivelze's personality. Caius and the Yuels in the Unseen Realm are probably in the best position to determine, but I'm not convinced (I know I wrote the story, but still!) that their words can say concretely anything. It might be just be the consequences of Bhunivelze being laid to rest that they were talking about.

Why Hope dying and being reborn is a second chance – arguable again (yep, I argued with myself on this point), but most people in the old world die before getting to the new one, if not by the test of time, then by Bhunivelze in that final showdown. The exception is Light, and possibly Mog, Hope and the Eidolons. The first and last don't play a role in this fic, but Hope is the crux here. Bhunivelze does snap his neck, and then crush the body – but that's the body. The soul's gone by that point so does that qualify as death, or no? What confuses me about the ending is that the Hope Light rescues is still fourteen years old, when Hope's soul should be more in line with his twenty-seven year old self, like in trailer of memories. Which is admittedly what sparks this fic in the first place. So, anyway, the Hope in this fic is one following the idea that Hope didn't die in the old world to be reborn, and therefore doesn't get the benefit of dying and returning to chaos for a little r&r. Which he gets this time round.

And why Light is the mother – the simple answer is I've used this plunny in another fic and loved it, so it decided to spring up again when I was thinking of a way to end this one. The more reasonable answer is this is Light's another chance as well, and it is one of the few ways that Light is going to put anything about Serah (since the fic decided early on it wasn't interested in romance).

And…that's it. First FF multichap and it certainly took an interesting turn. Thank you to all of you who've read and supported this fic, and I'll see you guys again with another one…one day! Too many fandoms to play around with…