Archive of Our Own

There was someone in his apartment, and they had not triggered his security system.

Now that he was awake, Hope could hear the sounds of someone moving cautiously in the dark, uncertain of where things were. Hope kept his apartment devoid of any personal touches — after all, he was planning on leaving soon — but there was still furniture to an unwary person to hit their shins against. If this was a burglar looking for valuables however, they were both very inept and about to be very disappointed as Hope had little to steal. If it was another assassin … Hope closed his eyes and opened himself up to magic for the second time in two days. Being both temporarily disabled and in his underwear meant that any physical fight would go poorly. Besides, in a matter of life or death, it was better to be effective than deceptive, and magic had always been his true specialty even if it had never been mentioned in history books.

As a lightning spell sparked under his skin and itched for release, he squinted in the dim light cast by the street light outside. The person he could see was very tall and bulky, with the grace that suggested that they earned that bulk in combat rather than at the gym. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Hope recognized them and realized that this was why his apartment door had let the intruder in; he had instructed it to in the first place. He had thought, given the passage of time, his memories of the faces of the others would fade. He recognized Serah and Light, but he was pretty sure that the Farron sisters had been chosen by Etro herself and so that would have something to do with it. He hadn’t expected to see Snow again while the timelines remained tangled. It seemed that he was wrong.

Hope let the lightning spell dissipate, and reached over to the panel on his bedside table. He blinked into the harsh lighting of his apartment and heard Snow cry out in surprise.

“Snow?” It was a croak and Hope swallowed a few times to clear his throat. He frowned at Snow, more bewildered than anything else. This was the first time that he had seen Snow since he disappeared into the timeline when Hope was sixteen, and it seemed very disturbing that he was sneaking around Hope’s apartment. It was very out of character for Snow, who tended towards directness and honesty. What was going on that Snow felt that he couldn’t just come up to Academia’s headquarters in broad daylight and ask to speak to Hope? As Snow moved closer, holding Hope’s crutches, Hope could now see that his expression was a mixture of anxiety and worry.

“Hey, you’re awake!” Snow said in a harsh half-whisper. He smiled then at Hope, bright and fierce, like he had on their journey to defy their fate. In normal circumstances, Hope may have smiled back, as Snow’s smile had that effect on people. Instead, Hope frowned slightly. “You had me worried, kid.”

“What are you doing here?” Hope asked. He swallowed to clear an aftertaste from his mouth, a relic from his hospital visit earlier that day. Despite his surprise, or perhaps because of it, he couldn’t immediately understand what was troubling Snow. He made a face at how thick and slow his thought processes were, and hoped it wasn’t something that required immediate action. “Are you in trouble?”

“You’re getting assassinated in three days!” Snow exclaimed.

“What? Again?” Hope said sharply. “Who by this time?”

Snow frowned, seemingly not expecting this answer. “Uh … when am I?”

This, Hope could answer. “My apartment, Academia, four hundred AF. You’ve just missed Serah. She and Noel went through one of the gates here four days ago.” Answering the question bought him time to think about what Snow had said and try and think of contingency plans. Ordinarily three days was not very long to make arrangements, but Academia’s security was already on high alert. He could get more information from Snow and let security know so that they could take care of it.

“Four?” Snow sounded dismayed, which wasn’t a surprise. He had missed seeing his fiancee by a mere handful of days after all.

“That’s right,” Hope said, nodding.

“So you were almost assassinated … yesterday?”

Hope frowned. This conversation was not going the way he thought it would. That was the problem with time travelers, he supposed. “Yes,” he said after a moment, carefully. “That’s right. Is that why you’re here? To check up on me?”

“I meant to stop it,” Snow said ruefully. He rubbed at the back of his head, messing up his hair further. Hope never thought he would miss Snow’s beanie until now. “Though it looks like you had it under control. You look exhausted, by the way. Are you okay?”

“It’s been that sort of day,” Hope sighed. He levered himself into a sitting position, twisting so he was facing Snow with his bare legs hanging off the side of the bed. The left leg moved easily, but moving the right was still painful, even with the cure spells Hope had cast once he had returned to his apartment. As a l’Cie either he or Vanille would have healed the party’s bullet wounds within minutes, even with the threat of it accelerating their transformation into a Cie’th, but that was before Cocoon fell. While magic was more commonplace in this time than it had been when Hope was growing up, habit still meant that he kept his magic secret so as to not remind anyone that once he had been a fal’Cie’s puppet whose strings had pulled Cocoon from the sky. Magic may be more common now, but Hope’s talent with it was not.

He looked up to see Snow staring at him, looking appalled. “You are a lot worse than I thought you were when I saw these. What happened to you?”

“When I was almost assassinated yesterday, I dodged the first shot. This,” and Hope nodded at his leg, “was the second. I assume it was to slow me down, so that they could finish the job, but I can’t be sure just yet. The police are questioning the shooter to find out why, but Academia’s initial investigation into their organization suggests that they’re part of a separatist group. Apparently our work in stopping Cocoon from falling is against Etro’s will and therefore heretical.” He nodded at the crutches Snow was still holding in one hand. “Can I have those? I really do need them.”

Snow looked at the crutches as if surprised he still had them, then handed them to Hope. “Are you … sure you’re okay? You’re pretty calm about all this.”

“I knew when I started this project that not everyone would see it the same way I do,” said Hope. He pushed himself up to stand on one foot, gritting his teeth as the movement pulled at the stitches in his thigh and the bruised muscle underneath, and then balanced himself using his crutches. “Besides, even though I am worried about it, I can’t let it stop me from what I need to do.”

“Some things you just do, huh?”

“That’s what Lightning’d say if she was here.” Hope shook his head. Now wasn’t the time to indulge in wistful dreams. Once he was done, then he would see Light and the others again. “How are you here? Serah said you disappeared in the Sunleth Waterscape.”

“It’s a long story,” Snow said quickly, waving his hand in dismissal. “We can talk about that later.” It was uncharacteristic for Snow to dismiss anyone in that way. The movement caused the sleeve of his jacket to ride up his arm, exposing a black brand. Hope’s chest felt cold on seeing it. Snow followed the line of his gaze, and winced.

“Yeah, I was going to tell you about that.” Snow grimaced. “Eventually.”

“What have you done?” Hope breathed in horror. He felt like he couldn’t breathe around the weight on his chest. He looked down at his own wrist, which was still bare, and that was worse. No one would choose to be a l’Cie, especially not when they knew the price of that power. The six of them had fought to win themselves free of their curse, and there was no way that Snow could have been reactivated as a l’Cie. Not unless … Surely Snow wouldn’t have asked for be a l’Cie again?

Snow’s guilty look was answer enough.

“Is that when you disappeared? You should have taken me with you.”

“Hope.” Snow’s voice was as heavy as stones, and about as resistible to entreaty. Hope was still horrified at the turn of events, but now he was angry as well. There was nothing Snow could say to justify doing this. “I had to do this alone. To find Light and protect Serah, yeah? I needed that power, but you didn’t. You never did. That’s why I didn’t take you.”

“You can’t make these choices for me, Snow.” Hope scowled darkly at him. It was one of the most frustrating things about Snow, and something that Hope had forgotten Snow did; he would make choices for you where he would sacrifice himself and leave you behind to pick up the pieces. Hope remembered the misery of looking up at the crystal pillar and knowing that Vanille and Fang had chosen to to sacrifice themselves to protect Cocoon. He remembered Serah’s broken sobs as she curled around Light’s knife. Why would Snow try and sacrifice himself? Why would he do this to them? To Serah?

“Look. Hope.” Snow sighed heavily. “You were always smarter than all of us, even when you were a kid. What you’ve done with Academia, you couldn’t have done that if you’d gone with me. You couldn’t have helped Serah or Noel, or Lightning, if you’d become a l’Cie with me. You’ve done more important things than I ever could.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Hope shook his head. Normally he was more eloquent than this. “I mean … I mean that being a l’Cie only gives you two options. Turn into crystal or become a Cie’th. Neither of those gets you home to Serah. We can’t rely on the goddess to turn you back from crystal, and Vanille and Fang are still — ”

“I’ll think of something! Don’t worry about it.”

Hope caught his tongue between his teeth, holding it there with enough force to cause the dull pain to focus his mind on the physical sensation rather than what he was feeling. He had not been an angry, grieving child for many years now, and it wasn’t fair to vent thirteen years of lost helplessness on Snow. Besides, he knew Snow better than most, and he knew that Snow would keep up a facade of cheerful optimism if he thought that his audience needed it. If he thought that Hope needed it.

It had been a long time since Hope had lost his composure like this. It figured that it was Snow that got under his skin so quickly; he’d always had a knack of doing that. Hope closed his eyes and let the breath pent up inside him out slowly, before opening his eyes again.

“First, we need to work out what to do next,” he said after he was certain that his voice would remain calm and level. “How did you get to Academia in the first place?”

“My Eidolon,” was the laconic reply. “I can drive through space and time with it.”

“…I see,” said Hope, who had never foreseen anything of the sort. Could you do that? he asked Alexander. Eidolons didn’t communicate in words in the strictest sense, but the emotional impression Hope received back from Alexander was negative. It wasn’t a surprise, given that Alexander was a fortress and so didn’t have the sheer mobility of the other Eidolons, but Hope was disappointed nonetheless. Though, he supposed, it would be even worse if he had had a means of travelling the timeline the whole time and he hadn’t had the wit to realize it.

“You’ve found my kitchen,” Hope went on, consciously shading his words with wry amusement. It was a skill he had learned as he moved up the management ranks of the Academy. “If you want to make coffee, I can get dressed.”

“Yeah that — yeah. That’s a good idea.” Snow nodded several times as he spoke. He walked over to the bedroom door and paused, turning to say over his shoulder, “Man, it’s weird that you’re an adult.”

“That’s usually what happens with the passage of time,” Hope replied to Snow’s retreating back, peculiarly charmed that both Serah and Snow had said much the same thing. Then he wondered when Serah had said that. He remembered a place that was eternally night, with a fal’Cie that blocked the sun, but he was sure that he had never been to such a place. Fenrir, he knew from his reading of history, covered the sky two hundred years after he had gone into stasis, and certainly not when he had first met Serah and Noel for the first time.

He shook his head. He’d had these flashes before of memories that, on closer examination, made little to no sense. They tended to pass if he didn’t think about them and instead remembered the timeline he thought was correct. One day, he’d have to discuss them with Serah and find out which paradoxical timeline they had come from, if they ever had the time to sit down and talk about these things. Instead, he dressed for work in Academia’s uniform, thankful that at least that decision was out of his hands.

He hobbled out to the kitchen. Snow had managed to make coffee, setting a mug down on either side of the small bench Hope used as a table. Hope sat down, and propped his crutches up against the table. His hands itched to turn on the tablet he kept there and find out what had happened in the Academy while he slept. He’d asked to be kept abreast of any developments — both by the Academy and the police — as he’d been taken into the hospital to be treated, and he wanted to know what had been discovered.

Instead, he wrapped his hands around the coffee mug. It was black and probably unsweetened, which wasn’t how Hope drank his coffee. That wasn’t the point to asking Snow to make coffee. Instead, they both needed the time to calm down so they could speak rationally. He waited, the warmth from the coffee seeping through the mug to his hands, and said quietly, “Am I still going to be assassinated in three days?”

Snow shrugged. “Not that I know of. I meant to be here four days ago so I could catch Serah.”

“That makes sense,” Hope nodded to himself. “So you’re late.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” said Snow. “If it was just to stop your assassination then I shouldn’t be able to be here.”

“Oh?” Hope said, eyebrows raised, and his curiosity captured. “I didn’t know that. What are the rules for your time travel?”

“I … haven’t really thought about it,” said Snow, which honestly didn’t surprise Hope that much. “Just that I can’t just show up when I want, only when I have to do something.”

“Like what?” Hope leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table and leaving the mug discarded.

“Mostly, saving your life,” Snow said ruefully. “You’re a hard man to keep alive, you know that?”

“I didn’t know,” Hope said blankly. “Is my life really in that much danger all the time? I had no idea.”

“Mostly when you were asleep,” Snow said quickly. Hope wasn’t sure that he was meant to be reassured by that. Not only was he apparently constantly in danger, but the person stopping it was someone who had stupidly made a pact with a fal’Cie that had somehow survived Cocoon’s fall? He reminded himself that this was not the time to lose his temper; Snow would be leaving soon and he wouldn’t waste precious moments of time yelling at Snow for his stupidity, even if he completely deserved it. He took another calming breath and told himself he could think about how to rescue Snow from his self-chosen fate later.

“That aside …let me see what I have in my planner. Maybe there’ll be something in there that you’re meant to do in this time.” Hope turned the tablet on, and authenticated himself by thumbprint. The screen flashed once as it connected to the Academy Datanet, and then characters scrolled down the screen as his inbox loaded. Fourteen hundred unread messages — that wasn’t too bad, Hope thought, given that he’d been out of contact for most of a day and been taken out of action in a dramatic fashion.

Most of the emails weren’t particularly urgent, or could be delegated to others. Hope took a moment to forward the requests for a media statement to the head for public relations. The rest seemed to be the usual - requests for research data, or transfers from one team to another, or budget requests. Hope wasn’t sure why he was being sent most of these messages, given that he was no longer the head of the Academy, but forwarded them on to the relevant person regardless.

“Even if there isn’t, I’m not leaving you alone while I’m here,” Snow promised while Hope was scanning his calendar for appointments. “Even if it’s one of your budget meetings or … whatever.”

Hope did have a budget meeting for the New Cocoon project next week, but he thought that Snow would not be around that long. If he was being honest with himself, he wouldn’t mind it if Snow were to stay longer than a few hours. Serah and Noel could only spend a handful of hours with him before they were off to their next paradox, and it’d been a very long time since he’d had someone say his name and mean him rather than the half-mythic Director. Most of his meetings had been rescheduled by his assistant, presumably on hearing the news, but there was one that hadn’t been changed. Hope opened the appointment, and his lips quirked. Little wonder this one hadn’t been changed. It was well known amongst those closest to him in the Academy that he loved to go out to the field and would seize upon any opportunity he could get.

“Snow,” Hope said. “How would you like to be my escort for a site inspection tomorrow?”

“Sure!” Snow agreed. “How much trouble could you get into if I’m around?”

Hope quietly suspected that if anyone was to get into trouble it would be Snow. He emailed the dig site’s team leader to inform them that Snow Villiers would be accompanying him, and that Hope personally vouched for his reliability. The acknowledgement was almost instantaneous, suggesting that either they were keeping a twenty-six hour watch on communications, or the team leader had similar sleep patterns to Hope himself. Knowing Saka Hirule, it was far more likely to be the latter. He had several requests from Academy’s HR department over the last few weeks notifying Hope that Saka was in breach of their overtime policy, which he had duly forwarded on while acutely aware that he himself was far more in breach of those same provisions.

“All right, you’ve been approved to go with me in … five hours,” Hope said, glancing at the time displayed at the bottom of the screen. “I’m up for the day, so please use the bed if you need to.”

“Hope, you’ve been shot,” Snow pointed out. “I’m not taking your bed from you.”

“You’re not taking anything if I’m not using it,” Hope said mildly, his tablet back onto his emails. He waited a few minutes, pretending to read his screen, until Snow huffed a sigh and made his way to Hope’s sofa. At least someone was going to get some use out of it, Hope thought ruefully, as he really hadn’t. One day he would have enough time for a vacation.

Once Snow had moved, Hope started reading his emails in earnest. It looked like the project to test the Chaos transmitting qualities of crystal was moving apace, if the number of emails from the various team leaders was any indication. It was a project he had inherited from a previous head who had gone on sabbatical, and he’d found the research quite interesting. He was tempted to try some of the findings out on his own, if he ever found the time and a place that he could safely cast magic without being seen. “At the very least use the sofa.”

“Have you ever used your sofa?” Snow asked from his sofa, having audibly shifted on it a few times trying to find a comfortable way to sit on it. Hope ignored it, and instead skimmed three emails celebrating employees’ birthdays. “You just strike me as a real workaholic.”

“Unfortunately, my time is strictly sequential and there is a great deal for me to do,” Hope observed. He marked two emails as being sent to him in error — there was another Hope in payroll, he understood, though she was called Hope Astills — and deleted the joke email that was apparently sent to everyone in the organization seventeen times. “I only have twenty-six hours in a day and I can’t go out of the timeline to get more.”

“When we fix all of this, you’re going on a vacation,” Snow said. Hope looked up to see Snow had finally found a comfortable way to sit on his couch, with his head back against the top of the sofa and legs splayed loosely in front of him.

“All right,” agreed Hope, amused despite himself. He hadn’t had too many vacations over the years. He’d heard rumors around the Academy that it was due to the disastrous events of the vacation he and his mother had taken to Bodhum so many years ago, but really it was because he felt intensely guilty about taking time off when people were depending on his having all the answers when they needed them. “I do have some leave accrued.”

“Don’t you have four hundred years worth of leave?” Snow pointed out lazily.

Hope was fairly sure that Snow had meant this as a joke. Unfortunately, Hope did, in fact, have four hundred years worth of leave accrued. It was a quirk of the Academy’s payroll system that he really was going to sort out if it existed once the timeline was corrected, because it seemed that while the Academy’s computers were able to calculate time disturbances, they were unable to pause someone’s employment until they awoke from a temporal singularity. Rather than saying anything to confirm this, Hope hummed a song he had heard on his way to work earlier that week as he read through the preliminary findings into the graviton cores that Serah and Noel had discovered.

He was up to the third page, which contained some interesting — though admittedly very dense — theories, when he heard Snow snore like a chainsaw attached to a jet engine. Hope had the unusual experience of knowing exactly what that sounded like, after building one with a friend to celebrate his admission into the Academy, and so was possibly the only person left on Gran Pulse who could say with certainty that was what it sounded like.

Perhaps it was for the best that few knew what he had been like before he stepped into myth, he thought as he sent back some comments on the paper enquiring about the energy production of each core. As lonely as it was to be Director Estheim, it would hurt more if people knew him, liked him for who he was rather than what he could do. He would still have to leave.

His coffee grew cold and congealed as he worked his way through his emails, the sun came up as he accepted and rescheduled appointments, and the street outside buzzed with the early-morning commuters as he woke Snow. He’d factored in some additional time to get Snow awake, and was pleasantly surprised that he only needed half of it.

The Academy kept a private aerodrome just outside the city limits of Academia, as there were a number of Academy dig sites around Gran Pulse and it was simply more convenient for everyone if personnel could be flown in and out as needed. There were several planes on the ground at the moment, ranging from the ultralight planes that Hope would usually use to fly himself from place to place, to ones used to transport twenty to thirty people. The one that he and Snow were using today was about the same size as the one Sazh had used when they were escaping the Sanctum so many years ago. Unusually, it was partitioned into two: a cockpit, and a small briefing room in the cabin itself, with eight chairs in four rows of two, each with an individual dashboard connected to the Academy’s Datanet. On the partition between the cockpit and the cabin itself was a display board for meetings, and in the back behind a discreet panel was a small stash of weaponry. Hope hoped they wouldn’t need it.

Ordinarily the flight on one of these aircraft was unfortunately long, as the designers of the craft had prioritized the comfort of the passengers over speed. However, the research on how the Thirteenth Ark was kept aloft in the sky had yielded some unexpected fruit in the field of avionics. It was Hope’s understanding — though he was the first to admit that aerospace engineering was not his forte — that the graviton cores that Serah and Noel had found had resulted in the technology used in the walkways that ran through Academia being used to both keep the plane in the air and ensure that the passengers inside the plane were unaffected by the ultrasonic speeds they were now able to travel.

“Director Estheim!” their pilot called from her position near the front door. She was an Academy employee, wearing a modified version of the trousers and long-sleeved shirt that Hope himself wore, and her blue-purple hair cut short and spiked. She waved them over, and it took Hope a moment to remember her name: Elani Bhedlan, one of Academia’s best pilots, with a decade of experience under her belt. Snow hovered half a step behind him — an impressive task given how slow Hope was on his crutches and how tall Snow was — as he made his way over.

“Please, Elani, call me Hope,” Hope replied automatically as he walked over, smiling slightly as he did so. “I haven’t been the Director for three hundred and eighty-seven years.”

“You’re all right, aren’t you? I heard about the other day — terrible, that was — and that’s why I’m here!” She turned to Snow and said in a tone that was clearly meant to be confiding, “The Director normally flies himself but with the security lockdowns, it’s just not possible.”

“I bet he’s a handful for you guys to keep an eye on,” Snow said cheerfully. He draped his arm around Hope’s shoulders, not hard enough to disrupt his balance, but present enough that Hope was acutely aware of what he was doing. He stepped out from under it as surreptitiously as he could under the circumstances and raised his eyebrows at Snow. It was an expression Snow clearly missed, as he went on with, “I mean he looks like he’s not a problem but I’m sure that hasn’t changed.”

“Oh, very much so,” Elani sighed, smiling back at Snow and nodding. “Not me, of course, I’m just today’s pilot, but I hear stories from the security detail — one will be riding in the cockpit with me, and even getting him to agree to that was such a struggle. I know that he’s the Director but seeing him get hurt was so awful for all of us. He’s been a part of Academia for so long that I’m sure there’s some stories about him being immortal!”

Snow laughed. “You should have seen him as a kid. Take your eyes off him for a minute, and he’s turning on some battlemech or something.”

Elani’s eyes widened. “You knew each other as children? I had no idea.”

“Nah. I’m older than he is.” Snow said. He held his hand at waist height, and added, “It was only a couple of years ago that he was just this tall!”

Elani looked between the two of them, frowning presumably at how two seemingly contradictory statements could be true. Hope shrugged when she looked at him for guidance. It was true, from a certain point of view. Temporal mechanics had given him an all new appreciation of what ‘truth’ meant when it came to a chronological sequence of events.

“Ohhh, well that’s all above my pay grade!” Elani said brightly. “But it’s good for the Director to have friends from home. He’s always been very nice but we do worry about him being lonely sometimes too.”

This was a line of conversation Hope did not really want to have in public. It wasn’t that he wasn’t aware that he was alone — of course he was, he had been for years — but that here, within easy walking distance of Academia, he had a responsibility to the organization to present himself as a symbol of the triumph of science over adversity, rather than a man whose personal connections had been uprooted by divine intervention. He cleared his throat, drawing the attention of Elani and Snow both. “Forgive my interruption but these crutches are uncomfortable for me to balance in. Perhaps we could go inside…?”

“Oh yes, of course! Make yourself at home, both of you! Yaschas Massif will be a couple of hours away - shorter if we get a good tail wind.” Elani turned the seal that held the cabin door closed, and pulled the door open with a forceful jerk. “Sorry about that, the door sometimes sticks. But nothing a good pull can’t sort out!”

“Thanks!” Snow said. Hope nodded and made his way inside.

Once they were both safely inside the cabin, Elani closed the door with a firm thud. Hope claimed the seat closest to the door, and propped his crutches against the wall. That done, he cast a cure spell on himself. It was a strange feeling, casting magic in front of someone. Hope hadn’t done it in years. It felt like sharing a secret, and in a way it was. He sighed as the spell took effect; he hadn’t realized how painful his leg was until the pain was absent.

“I could have done that,” Snow said. While Hope had been busy with his leg, Snow had taken up a position facing him, leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the cabin.

“You could have,” Hope agreed.

Any response Snow could have made was cut off by the crackle of the intra-craft announcement from the cockpit. “Hello! This is your pilot speaking. Security has boarded the plane and we will be taking off in a few moments. Weather looks calm with a slight tail wind, so we should be arriving just a bit before schedule.” Elani giggled as she added, “Thank you for flying with Academy Airlines.”

The intercom switched off. Hope settled into his seat and closed his eyes against the unsettling sensation of feeling gravity slip away from him, before everything settled as if they weren’t moving at all. It was something he would get used to, he supposed, though he had yet to get used to the walkways in Academia. Maybe he wouldn’t before he went forward in time again, to meet Serah and Noel when Cocoon was meant to fall. He wondered if it would be an egregious abuse of the power invested in him if he require the walkways’ decommissioning. He suspected that it would be.

He looked across at Snow after regaining his internal equilibrium. Snow didn’t seem to be affected by it at all; one leg bent and foot pressed against the bottom of the cabin wall, arms folded, utterly unmoved by the change in elevation. He noticed Hope’s regard and cracked a grin.

“Director Estheim, huh?” He unfolded his arms and gestured expansively. “Who’d have thought?”

“They’re being kind,” Hope said. “I’m just an advisor now, one that is a relic of a forgotten age. Most employees of the Academy only know that I was born before the Fall and that I’m here solely to prevent Cocoon falling. It’s only the ones that are researching the Oracle Drives that know that my being here is more than a scientific marvel.” His lips quirked wryly. “When we arrive, it’ll be your turn to be recognized. You appear in the Oracle Drives from time to time, along with the others.”

“Yeah?” asked Snow. “But not you?”

“It’s my area of expertise,” Hope said. “But no, the only ones I have appeared in are of the Fall. The most interesting ones are of Lightning, though. They’re the ones most difficult to decipher, because they lack the same landmarks that we look for when identifying a scene. People, buildings, events — all of these are what we use to date when a vision takes place.”

Snow nodded, then raised his hand in question, index finger extended to the roof of the cabin. “But why do they need you? Big group like this, surely there’s other researchers who can pick that stuff out.”

“Yes, and no,” Hope said. “We’ve learned that most Oracle Drives can be accessed by anyone who knows how to unlock them. It took us several years of study to find the key, but now it’s common knowledge amongst researchers. However, there are some Oracle Drives that cannot be unlocked in the usual ways. It seems that whenever Paddra Nsu-Yeul recorded a particularly important vision, she would key it in such a way that only a particular type of person can access them. We haven’t discovered a pattern to what visions would be locked, though I would assume it has to do with Lightning in Valhalla, and so far, I am the only one who can unlock these particular drives.”

Apparently bored of standing still, Snow had started to pace the length of the cabin down the centre aisle while Hope spoke. When Hope had finished, Snow paused from a moment, near the back of the plane. “Wait,” he said. “How come?”

“I don’t know,” Hope said, turning his chair to face the aisle so that he could track Snow’s movement. “It could be because I was a l’Cie once. Or, perhaps, when we were woken up from crystal stasis, our awakening made us different. Perhaps Lightning could tell us what it is that makes me uniquely able to open the Oracle Drives. If I had more time, I’d do more research into it. ” He wasn’t sure how he would do that, given that the only known l’Cie were also those awoken by Etro, but it would be an interesting thought experiment. If only he had the time. It was a strange thing, knowing that there were so many things he could research and having to prioritize which ones he would dedicate time to. Sometimes he thought that the only way he’d be able to satisfy all of his curiosities was if he was immortal — true immortality and not that granted by crystal stasis — which he appreciated was a silly and ultimately futile dream.

Hope looked up from his own thoughts to see that Snow was looking at him, arms folded and frowning. It was a thoughtful frown, which made it all the stranger. Snow was not an introspective person. As Hope watched, the frown settled into clear certainty; whatever Snow had decided, he was comfortable asking the question. Hope wondered what was bothering him.

“You know, Hope, you don’t call her Light anymore,” Snow said finally. “When did you stop?”

Of all the questions Hope had anticipated and prepared answers for, this wasn’t one of them. That was the other problem with Snow. He was brave and reckless, but he occasionally had moments of startling insight. “Why is that important?”

“It’s just … when you were a kid you practically worshipped her, and now you can’t even call her by a nickname? What gives?”

“It’s nothing.” The silence dragged on, while Hope tried to formulate an answer that would answer Snow’s question to his satisfaction while not exposing Hope to more intrusive questions. “The me that called Lightning Light … that was a long time ago. I was a different person then.”

“Really? That’s it?” Snow slapped Hope on the back, knocking Hope forward until he could catch himself on the dashboard on his left. Hope only wished he had been surprised by that. “The only thing that’s changed is that you’re taller.” Snow laughed then. “She’s going to be so mad that you’re taller than her now.”

“I really don’t think she’d care either way,” Hope said firmly. “If she can see the entire timeline from Valhalla, then I doubt it will come as a surprise to her that I grew up in the intervening thirteen years.”

He hoped that was the end of the discussion, and that Snow resuming his pacing the cabin of the plane meant that he considered the subject over as well. It had been so long since Hope had seen Lightning that he wasn’t sure that what he remembered of her was true or whether he had made her out of whole cloth. Even when he dreamed of her during his journey in time she seemed unreal. The Chosen of Etro, something akin to a goddess herself. It was hard to remember that and remember her anger, her gritty determination, her recklessness. The woman in armor who took his hand and told him he was doing the right thing seemed more like an idealized version of Lightning, her flaws buffed away.

Perhaps there was something in the thought that he didn’t call her Light anymore because they were both different people. Maybe the Light and Hope that had fought together as a team were long gone. It was a depressing thought. What if by giving up everything for his quest to save them all, he had made himself so different that he could never have their companionship back?

Then he shook his head minutely in self-disgust. Pain made him maudlin, he knew, and this amount of self-indulgence was not usual for him. He needed a concrete goal to strive toward, something to revitalise his passion and drive. ‘Fixing the timeline’ was a grand aspiration, but he preferred a tangible goal. Something that he could aim towards, with intermediate steps that he could achieve and see progress. After all, if they did fix the timeline, that could erase the Hope Estheim who had grown up from the world. The thought of his possible removal from the timeline was a disquieting one, as was the thought of everything he had done being cast aside and being returned to a frightened, motherless fourteen year old once more. If it came to that, he’d like to think that he would make the sacrifice of his adult life.

Snow’s voice broke his musings as he asked, “So what happened to NORA after you left?”

Hope shook his head. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “There was so much history for me to catch up on that I didn’t have time to research individual people.” That wasn’t entirely true. He had started to look up people he had left behind when he first arrived, so that he could be sure that they had lived full lives, but it was strange seeing that these people had lived their lives and died so long ago. There was no one alive today who remembered Cocoon as it had been, or how the fal’Cie had been so integral to their way of life.

We can’t look back, Director Hope! He remembered — there was someone saying that to him once, her voice breathy and urgent. He had known her, he was sure. There was a moment when his memories felt wrenched out of place and settled into something new, and then he did remember something of her. Blue eyes, blonde hair, flighty as a bird. He remembered promising that he wouldn’t forget her. He remembered that he did.

“Did I have an assistant?” he asked, dry-mouthed. He knew his own career; he hadn’t been in a place to have a research partner since he was twenty-two, not as he moved further into management. There had been many people who had helped him along the way, but his memories suggested that she had been more than that, a true partner in his quest to stop Cocoon’s fall. Even if Snow had said no, Hope knew that whoever the woman was, she had been an assistant to him. She had been someone who had disappeared from the timeline when it was corrected, and he did not know who she was. It was terrible.

For a heart-stopping moment he thought that Snow was about to lie to him. He had that slightly cagey look where he was trying to formulate a plausible lie, his lips pressed together and his gaze somewhere behind Hope and to the right. He looked at Hope, reluctantly, as Hope did not look away from him, and there must have been something in his expression that made Snow change his mind.

“Yeah,” Snow said heavily. “You did. Her name was Alyssa. Alyssa Zaidelle. In at least one timeline it’s her who tries to kill you.”

“Oh,” said Hope, unsure what else to say. He felt an unsettling sense of betrayal, all the more strange because when he tried to think about Alyssa and who she must have been to him, the brief impressions he had of her slipped through his hands like sand. All he was left were fragments of memory: coffee strong enough to strip paint late at night chasing meaning in data, snowfall in the deserted streets of Palumpolum, looking for shades of the people they’d left behind, the ice-cold dread in his chest as he felt the hard cool metal of a pistol’s barrel against the back of his head and knowing that despite his clever words he’d never find the right combination to save them both — ah. That was it.

“You okay?” Snow’s voice was tentative and cautious, as if he was talking to a startled child or half-wild animal.

Hope realized that his hands were gripping the console now in front of him and he couldn’t catch his breath. His fingers ached from the way he grasped the edge in front of him, the metal unyielding under the flesh of his hands. He knew that he was not dead, and knew this by the way his breath sawed through his chest in shallow bursts. He knew down to his bones that he was, despite the visceral feeling of his heart thumping in his chest. He knew that he was not, and his will would not be subject to the vagaries of self-doubt and the winds of lost memories. He was Hope Estheim, once l’Cie, once Director of the Academy, current researcher and project head, and he was not dead.

He let the console go with a conscious effort.

“Yes,” Hope said, looking at his hands, once he was confident his voice would not shake and cause Snow to worry unduly. “I remember things sometimes from the other timelines. It’s been happening more frequently now, but that’s not surprising. Every time Serah and Noel resolve a paradox, the timeline corrects itself. My most current theory is that when they resolve a paradox, it collapses the false timeline into the true one, and that to resolve all the paradoxes is to resolve all of the timelines into one. That would explain where the memories come from; it’s not that the people who lived them cease to exist, but instead they are forgotten by the true versions of those people.”

“Judging by way you just acted, is that such a bad thing? I mean, you were really freaking out.” Snow’s voice still sounded very cautious, and Hope looked up at him, hovering by his side, hand not quite touching his shoulder. He didn’t know when Snow had moved there. It had been a long time since someone had been that close to him, and so he was hyperaware of Snow’s proximity. It was strangely comforting. Snow had been such a protective force for their group when they had fought the fal’Cie that even now Hope felt safer and calmer with Snow shielding him. More like his usual self. It made it easier for him to regain his equilibrium and reassure Snow that everything truly was fine.

“It’s not always like that,” Hope said. “In fact, it’s never been like that before. As to why … I think it’s because I want to. These other versions of me lived their lives and all of those lives were forgotten because we must fix the timeline. I want to remember them because it is through our actions that they are forgotten.”

“Hm,” Snow said, more of a thoughtful hum than agreement. He still didn’t move away from where he stood. “So, what did you remember?”

“Dying,” Hope said. Saying it aloud made it sound absurd; obviously he was not dead because he was alive to speak of it. He huffed a laugh at the thought that he had really believed that he had died for a moment. “I’ll just have to remember it for next time.”

“Next time?” Snow said, sounding incredulous.

“You did say that keeping me alive was difficult,” Hope said lightly. “Now that I’ve experienced it, I won’t want to do it again.”

Snow shook his head in obvious disbelief at his gallows humor, but the tension that kept him coiled by Hope’s side released, and he stepped back to lean on the console a few feet behind Hope’s seat. He snorted. “You always did have the worse sense of humor.”

“I’m afraid so,” Hope said, and grinned mischievously at Snow rolling his eyes. Part of it was an act — Hope knew the value of using your own mood to help improve the morale of others — but part of it was because with the exception of teasing Serah, Hope hadn’t been able to indulge this side of himself in years.

“When I was trying to find you, everyone was saying how serious you were,” Snow complained.

“Is that when you were trying to find my apartment to break in?” Hope asked innocently, raising his eyebrows. It was difficult to keep a straight face, especially given how Snow’s face darkened in righteous indignation.

“I didn’t break in! It was unlocked!”

“It wasn’t,” Hope said. “It’s just keyed to unlock for you and the others. I assumed that if I was in the shower, you’d be polite enough to wait in the living room for me to finish. And that you wouldn’t arrive in the middle of the night.”

Hope watched as Snow’s expression changed from confusion, pleasure, and annoyance all in quick succession. “And you didn’t tell me that?”

“You weren’t here to tell on account of your leaving when I was sixteen,” Hope said cheerfully. “My apologies. I’ll remember for next time.”

“You really haven’t changed,” Snow grumbled.

There wasn’t much Hope could say to that. Instead, he switched on the terminal — which he supposed he should have done already, but for Snow’s influence — and tried to connect to the Academy Datanet. The connection here was more patchy than usual, which was possibly a side effect of the anti gravitational field generated by the plane to keep it aloft. He made a mental note to look into that.

There were two hundred new emails since he had last checked his account, which was fairly standard for a work day in the Academy. Most were emails that weren’t particularly important at the moment, though he scanned through them all quickly just in case they were deceptively innocuous. He flagged a few for review by Aina but for the most part they were all matters that he could keep in his inbox until he had time to sit and read through them properly.

There was one message that did capture his immediate attention. The researchers down at the Yaschas Massif dig site had finalized the preliminary carbon dating for the Oracle Drives they had uncovered over the last week, including the one he was to see today. The results indicated that they had all originated at around the same time period and, to pique his curiosity further, all around the time that they had estimated Yeul had stopped recording her visions. It might be that it was just a coincidence, but Hope was intrigued regardless. Why Yeul had stopped recording her visions was something that scientists were still theorizing about, hundreds of years later. He sent a reply to the project lead, and then turned the terminal off in time for the descent announcement from Elani.

Descent was as disorientating as ascent: Hope’s inner ear said that he was not moving and his stomach said that he was. It resolved when the craft touched the ground. He shook his head to clear it, then turned to Snow. “We’re here. Let’s see what they’ve found.”

When Hope had been the team leader for the Yaschas Massif dig site, there had been a scaffolded pathway leading from the ledge at the entrance of the site down to a pre-existing stone platform, and then another pathway leading up the cliff to the meetings tent, accommodations and canteen. Overlooking all of this was the nameless fal’Cie who once protected the Paddran people and now projected the images stored on the Oracle Drives. Now, four hundred years after the Academy’s excavation effort started, there was essentially a satellite city at the outskirts of the ruins. The tents had been replaced with demountable buildings and permanent shelters, and the pathways were replaced by the moving platforms.

Hope missed the pathways.

Meeting them at the entrance to the site was Saka Hirule, team leader for the dig site for as long as Hope had been in 400 AF. She was dressed in the same dress that most women in the Academy wore, with her magenta hair kept close-cropped and pinned off her face. Saka was also one of the few people who saw past the aura that historians had seen fit to grace Hope’s life story with, even if she did insist on calling him ‘Director’ like everyone else. Hope valued her drive and her passion for her work even if he did have cause to remind her that leave protocols existed to prevent her from burning herself out.

“Director, a pleasure,” she said, nodding at Hope and Snow in turn. She looked very alert for someone who had been up for a day and a half, though Hope thought he could understand why she had done that. There was something thrilling about finding something new and, if her summary about the Oracle Drive was accurate, it would be very new indeed. In her position he would have — and indeed had — done the same thing. “I see you’re doing well.”

“It wasn’t as bad as the rumor mill would have you to believe,” Hope said ruefully. “I imagine the story has grown to ridiculous proportions?”

“Yes,” Saka agreed. “Seeing you here will not help you with that, you know.”

“I do,” Hope said wryly. “But it can’t be helped. I hear you have an Oracle Drive for me to unlock?”

Saka nodded. “We do, and thank you for coming here so soon.”

“So where’s this Oracle Drive? And is there a chair I can make Hope sit on?” Snow broke in impatiently. “Because while this Oracle Drive is all well and good, he got shot yesterday and you gotta make sure he looks after himself. He won’t otherwise.”

“I’m fine,” Hope said emphatically. He could feel the hot flush of blood to his face and he reminded himself that he really would miss Snow when he left once again.

“Just this way,” Saka said, and if her lips twitched in amusement at Hope’s mortification, it was only for a brief moment in time. She nodded at Snow in greeting. “It’s a pleasure to finally see you in the flesh, Mister Villiers. How did you leave the coliseum?”

“Huh?” Snow sounded genuinely baffled, and he looked between Hope and Saka, his brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t think he’s done that yet, Saka,” Hope said, and made a note to look into what she was talking about later. His focus had been towards the future and the fall of Cocoon and Valhalla, rather than Snow’s personal timeline. Another thing to chase up, he supposed. That is, of course, assuming that it would be recorded in the annals of history at all. If he remembered correctly, the coliseum was much like Serendipity; outside of time and therefore impossible to chart.

“Then when you do work it out, please come back here and tell me,” Saka said, unruffled. “The current theory suggests it’s impossible, so I would like to be proven wrong.”

“When Saka isn’t supervising the research here, she’s one of our best theoretical mathematicians,” Hope explained to Snow. “Her particular focus is the calculation of hyperstring resonance in artefacts used to key time gates, though that’s really the limit of my understanding of it. The mathematics is far beyond my capabilities.”

“The Director’s too modest,” Saka said blandly. “But please, come and talk to me when you do.”

“Okay…” Snow said slowly, his expression clearly dubious. “I’ll try to do that.”

The walk through the dig site was slower than usual, even with the moving platforms. The stone square was filled with researchers, all of whom had heard about Hope’s misadventure and all had something to say about how terrible it was and how fortunate they all were that he was doing well. Hope smiled and nodded automatically, and wished for not the first time he had gone into a career that didn’t involve quite so much face to face contact. He had learned to be better at it, because he was the only one who could ensure that Serah and Noel and the others had everything they would need, but he still didn’t really enjoy this part of his work.

However, it was what it was, and there was work to be done.

The Oracle Drive sat on the large wooden table they kept in the excavations shelter, within line of sight of the fal’Cie that displayed the visions. Hope felt his pulse quicken on seeing it. Despite seeing so many of them over the years, they still captured his imagination, and with each one that they unlocked and studied, he felt like he was making progress towards his goals: first to get back everyone he had lost, and now to save humanity from extinction. The device itself, small and weather-beaten by the passage of time, looked too fragile to be a symbol of all of humanity’s hopes and dreams of a future.

“The carbon dating’s confirmed?” he asked Saka.

“Yes, Director,” Saka confirmed. “The final results came in just as you were landing, and it confirmed the preliminary assessment.”

“Thank you.” He closed his eyes and rested his left hand on the top of the Oracle Drive. Underneath the bandanna tied to his wrist, the skin burned cold as if he had been marked by a fal’Cie all over again, and then he felt his perceptions shift. Rather than standing in the warm spring day, with sunshine so bright he could smell the way it heated the ground under him, he was instead in a place where his usual senses registered nothing but a swirling void. It was not empty of life and energy, but instead full of it in a way that he understood but could never have articulated.

The first time he had seen this place he had not recognized it for what it was. He had dreamed of it in crystal stasis, but it was not until he was finishing his studies that he understood that the dark, powerful place he had found in his crystal-dreams was in fact the Unseen Realm, where all souls went to be reborn and the goddess Etro watched over them all. To unlock a sealed Oracle Drive was to ask the Yeul that created the seal to remove it, and that meant speaking to her in the Unseen Realm.

Here, Hope was able to remember the timeline as it truly had been, the timelines as they no longer were, and the timeline that he currently remembered in 400AF. It seemed very contradictory, but here he was able to remember them all and understand them perfectly, and know how badly the timeline had been twisted. Here, he could see how Serah and Noel were progressing in untwisting the timeline. Unfortunately he wouldn’t remember this with the clarity that he did now, because he did not see time as a goddess would. Perhaps, he wondered, his exposure to the Unseen Realm was why he remembered parts of other timelines. It was as good a theory as any.

Time passed strangely in this space. To be more precise, despite the fact that he perceived that time was passing, his perceptions were incorrect. Objectively, no time passed at all, though Hope was at a loss to explain how that could be so. Another thing to look into, assuming that this time he will remember what happened. He hasn’t before, but he can see that they are closer to the correct timeline than ever before, and perhaps this will be the time that he remembers.

He turned his head, or at least what he thought was his head here, and saw her: a painfully young girl with dark green eyes and long blue hair. Her face, still rounded with baby fat, was not shrouded by a veil, and she looked at him in resigned sadness. The last Yeul he had seen in this space was nearly an adult. This one looked like she was too young to attend school. From what he understood, the differences in age mattered little; eventually their appearances would all shift to that of a young girl who looked to be about fourteen, because that was the age of the first Yeul. It still seemed like a terrible tragedy.

“You return,” Yeul said in greeting, her voice peculiarly adult despite the childish lisp. Perhaps it was the almost eerie poise she had, or how she had little inflection when she spoke. She had known he was coming and was speaking merely to acknowledge that fact. It probably should have unsettled him, but Hope had learned that his world was larger than he had anticipated at fourteen. This meeting was merely an extension of that.

“I do,” Hope said. “I want to see what you saw.”

“There are no answers here for you to find that you wish to know,” she said. “The timeline is eternal. The timeline is repaired. The timeline is broken. All of these are true. You, touched by Etro, are her hope in the sky. You change the fate of everything and help to guide the way.”

“I suppose that I will,” Hope agreed. He was not sure what she meant by this, but it had not been the first time that he had been told that he was to be a guide to someone or something in the future. Once or twice, he had been called a herald, but for what the girl he spoke to would not say.

“Knowing this, do you still wish to see what I died to see?”

“Yes, I do,” said Hope. “I need to see the whole timeline, to understand what I must do to preserve it.”

“That … is a mistake,” she said sadly. Hope felt the twist of magic that kept the Oracle Drive locked dissolve, a spark of light that guttered and faded in the swirling darkness that surrounded them. “But I hope that you will find a way to change your fate, and find a future I never got to see.”

Hope opened his eyes and blinked several time to adjust to the bright, clear sky and sunlight. His head felt unsettled, his memories of the last few moments vague and uncertain, and what he did remember slipped away when he tried to think about it. He dismissed it as being something to deal with later. “It’s done,” he said, and turned the Oracle Drive on. The fal’Cie at the back of the dig site lit up, and the contents of the Oracle Drive started to play.

The picture quality was grainy, as it always was when they first uncovered an Oracle Drive, but there were things that Hope recognized immediately. He recognized the crystal pillar that Vanille and Fang made, holding Cocoon aloft in the sky. He did not immediately recognize the city it showed next, but he was able to identify it as Academia when he saw the familiar silhouette of the Academy’s headquarters. The city itself was deserted and hollowed out. The Academy’s building still loomed in the background, but that was all that Hope recognized. Instead, everything had been replaced with long narrow building blocks that rotated around axes around each other. It looked more like a maze than an evacuation effort, but given that there were no sign of human habitation in Academia at all, appearances had to be deceiving.

The image changed and showed the crystal pillar fracturing before shattering entirely, sending Cocoon crashing to the surface of Gran Pulse below. Hope recognized this scene as well. The fall of Cocoon, the true fall and not the one that Vanille and Fang averted, was meant to take place at 500 AF, and it had appeared in several visions recorded in Oracle Drives. The first time he saw it, Hope had winced because it likely meant the deaths of Vanille and Fang if he did not save them from their entombment. Now, with the clarity that comes with desensitization, he was simply able to recognize it as a time point and appreciate that his plans to rescue them were still needed.

Snow made a frustrated sound in his throat, but didn’t do anything more. This surprised Hope; Snow was by far the most expressive of them all, and he expected more of a reaction from Snow on the sight of seeing their once home fall to the ground after crushing their friends. He must have seen it before as well. Or, Hope realized with a frisson of anxiety, Snow was not more distressed because he truly believed that Hope would save Vanille and Fang before their pillar shattered.

The image changed again to something Hope had never seen before: an aircraft with a long flat surface on its top. It was almost like an aircraft carrier, though smaller than Hope had come to expect, and also in the air. Serah and Noel landed on the roof of the aircraft carrier, holding each other and laughing through their exhaustion. Hope knew that they would have fought Caius at that point, as it simply made sense, and he understood the exhausted exhilaration that came with finally completing your quest and triumphing over the closest thing to a god. Then Serah’s eyes changed, marked with a sigil that covered her irises and pupils. The vision was in black and white, but Hope could identify that they were glowing unnaturally. Or, to be more precise, glowing with the light of the divine.

Hope sucked in a breath. He knew those sigils. How could he not? Digging up the remains of the Farseers and finding out what had happened had been his life’s work. What he did not understand was how Serah Farron, who was not a reincarnation of Paddra Nsu-Yeul, had the Eyes of Etro, and why.

With a sick certainty, he knew what this vision would depict, but still watched it to its bitter end. Serah’s expression changed to horror, the sigils faded from her eyes, and she went from standing to falling through Noel’s desperately outstretched hands to land on her knees. Noel kept her from falling to the ground entirely, and in his arms Serah’s body had the same boneless weight that Hope remembered his father’s body had had when he died. Hope bit his tongue to not react, and remind himself that this was a vision of a future, rather than the only future they had. He could still make it and save Serah as she had saved the entire timeline. He clung to that hope even when he saw himself, wide-eyed and devastated, after he had jumped onto Serah and Noel’s aircraft from another and seen the two of them. The sky went dark, the same darkness that was shown in the visions of Valhalla, and then the vision ended.

“No!” Snow growled. There was a heavy thump, as if something had struck a wooden surface. Hope assumed that it was Snow punching the table, and didn’t look at him. Not yet. Not while he wasn’t sure what his expression would be. “That’s not supposed to happen!” His voice broke as he added, “What’s the point if she still dies?”

Hope looked over at Snow, and thought he might understand why Snow chose to become a l’Cie after all. Snow had always been willing to give up everything out of love for Serah. He had to confirm it though. “Did you know?”

“Yeah,” Snow said, flat and lifeless. His shoulders were slumped in defeat. “Yeah, I knew. That’s why I became a l’Cie. To stop this. To save her — save her for good this time.”

Hope closed his eyes and sighed. What a fool he’d been, judging Snow for his choices without knowing why he had made them. Neither of them had changed at all in that regard. But he also knew that what they saw in the Oracle Drives changed when the timeline was corrected; the future itself could be changed. If Snow could see what Hope could see, could understand what Hope understood about the mutability of the future, and how even now the choices they made changed their future, then he would see this as a warning rather than a condemnation. He just had to find the words to convince Snow that they still had a chance to save everyone, including Serah.

“Snow, let’s go for a walk,” he said, opening his eyes.

Snow gave no indication that he had heard what Hope had said, so Hope pushed the issue by starting to walk away on his own, knowing that Snow would follow him. Several steps, and Snow was at Hope’s elbow once more, silent and despairing. Fortunately it wasn’t a long walk from the excavation tent to the office Hope used when out in the field, merely up two ramps and along a short passageway, a distance that Hope could travel on his crutches without needing to stop to rest.

“Are you all right?” Hope asked quietly as he guided Snow inside. It looked the same as it always did when Hope was away: a collapsible table, four chairs, and a tablet connected to the Academy Datanet on the table. The table was bare apart from the tablet, and the chairs were arranged neatly around it. Hope wondered if he could get Snow to sit down, but decided it was unlikely. If Snow didn’t sit, it’d be rude for Hope to, so he didn’t pull out a chair for himself.

“Am I all right?” Snow said, shaking his head in disbelief. Hope realized, with some surprise, that Snow was looking at him in concern. “How many times have you seen that, Hope?”

“The first half appears sometimes. The second … that was the first.”

That didn’t reassure Snow at all. In fact it made the lines of worry on his face deepen. “If that’s the first time you’ve seen it … how can you be so calm?”

“Because I know that the future can be changed,” Hope said simply.

Snow’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

“I’m living proof of that,” Hope went on, looking at Snow, willing him to believe what he was saying. “Serah told me that I died in Augusta Tower at the hands of a fal’Cie almost four hundred years ago. But here I am now, alive, in front of you, because of Serah and Noel. They changed my future. And now it’s our turn. This isn’t a curse, this is a gift. Lightning’s gift. We can use this to fix the timeline. We can use this to save Serah.”

In looking at Snow’s face, Hope knew he had captured his attention and he was saying the words that Snow needed to hear to believe him. Half-wondering, half-hopeful, it was an expression that Hope had seen before, though it had been a while since he had seen it on Snow’s face. He’d seen it when he spoke to his research team in 10 AF, convincing them that something would happen with a time gate and he needed to be there to see it. He’d seen it when he proposed using a gravitational field to allow him to travel to the future. It was the expression of someone who believed in a dream of something greater than they had initially dared to have, and believed it could become real.

“You think that’s what this is?” Snow said and Hope nodded encouragingly.

“I do,” he said, and he did believe it. He pressed his clenched hand against his chest, near his heart. “I don’t believe that the correct timeline would separate you and Serah. That’s not the happy future that Vanille and Fang would want to protect, and it’s not the future that Lightning would want either. Have faith, Snow. We will change the future.”

Snow stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed, and then a relieved smile crept across his face. “All right,” he said, the smile widening. “All right, I’m in.” Then he laughed. “Wow, you got good at this, kid. When did that happen?”

“Practice,” Hope said ruefully, the corner of his mouth turning up in wry appreciation. “It was one of the ways I could help you all.”

“Seriously, Hope. You should become a politician or something after this.”

Hope laughed of the thought of him in politics. He had learned how to navigate those murky waters out of necessity to keep the Academy functional, and to guide humanity towards a better future, but politics for its own sake wasn’t his true passion. He had simply learned to be good at it in order to be in a position to help the friends he’d lost in time. “Definitely not. Once all of this is over, I’m going to be just a researcher again.”

Judging by Snow’s expression, he was skeptical of this. Fortunately, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he asked, “So what do we do now?”

Hope tilted his head as he thought. There had been no real progress in keeping Cocoon from falling, and the vision he had seen showed Academia evacuated. It would take some time to evacuate everyone and strip the city bare — even if he was not quite sure what purpose the rotating blocks served — and they still understood so little of how the timeline worked. Further, Hope himself was not as familiar with the mythology of his world as he should be. He knew enough to understand and interpret the Oracle Drives, but it had never been his focus of his research. Apparently, that would have to change. Perhaps in understanding the divine, he would learn how to create another miracle to rescue Vanille and Fang from crystal stasis, as well as saving Serah.

“Let’s meet up again at 500 AF, before Cocoon falls,” he said. “We’ll travel there in our own ways, and on our journeys we can learn what we can

Snow punched his fists together, and Hope repressed a smile. It’d been a while since he’d seen that. “Yeah! I’ll go back and try and resolve some paradoxes on my own, so that Serah doesn’t have to. I’ll find a way to save her.”

“We will,” Hope agreed, smiling and nodding as he did so. Struck by a thought, he asked “Do you think this was why you couldn’t leave this time point before?”

“Maybe?” Snow said. His expression turned abstracted, which Hope recognized as being the same expression everyone had had when they spoke to their Eidolon. “Yeah,” Snow said, his expression clearing. “It is! How did you know?”

“I guessed,” Hope said. “Well, this is it.” He was pleasantly surprised that his voice didn’t betray the mixed feelings he had about Snow’s departure. He sounded matter of fact about it all.

“Yeah.” Snow too sounded very matter of fact, though for him he’d only seen Hope not so long ago. It might be easier for him to leave. “Good seeing you, kid.”

“You too, Snow. I’ll see you soon.” He extended his hand and Snow shook it.

Hope watched as Snow headed out the door to destinations unknown. It still seemed strange to him that after thirteen years of hoping that one day the others would return to him, the longest that anyone had stayed with him since the Fall was Snow’s day with him. One day, he would no longer have to treasure mere hours with his friends. He would have a whole lifetime to spend with them, in the world that they saved.

Until then, he had work to do. Hope sat down at his table and picked up his tablet. He had observations to record from the current Oracle Drive, and research to start.