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It was an unlucky shot.
But Hope assumed that he was an unlucky kid, so it made sense.
The Sanctum Orion probably wasn't aiming the harpoon for his left ankle. That's just where it ended up. The sharp tip ripped skin like it was butter, and he felt a sick pop and a heard sucking sound. A searing pain erupted over his ankle, radiating down into his foot and up into his calf, so bad that he assumed the harpoon had been aflame before it came at him. Bone shattered and tendons tore. It poked out the other side, flaring open into a grappling hook.
The scream he let out was involuntary. It came from the deepest part of his chest, straining his voice. Tears sprang to his eyes instantly and his leg buckled.
The Orion retracted the cable, and the harpoon tugged on the wound. His foot was wrenched across his body, and his legs tangled as he was slammed to the ground on his left side. Coherent thought was knocked from his mind, and he was overcome with the impulse to get it to stop, stop, stop, but he didn't have the strength to curl up far enough to even grab at it while his leg was pulled taut.
The Orion dragged him over the bricks of the Palumpolum Eastern Promenade. His jacket and his black shirt rode up, and he felt skin all over his back shred and scrape on the harsh concrete. The pain was nonexistent compared to his leg. The Orion tugged again, stretching his already mangled wound, and Hope yelped. A new type of loose, limp, but no less vicious agony lanced through his ankle. The Orion didn't seem to care about the state that its captives were in, and as Hope was pulled close enough to it, he came to a rest underneath its legs. All of his weight dangled from his wound, and he thought for sure his entire foot was just going to tear completely off.
That might have felt better.
The Orion jabbed its electromagnetic arm down, and the sharp tips ripped into his thigh and the side of his knee. It curled protectively over him, its sirening red display screen facing his companions, daring them to come and get him.
Blood was oozing out of the wound and down his leg, seeping into the cuff of his pants. Everything that had held his ankle straight, kept it attached to his body, appeared to be destroyed. His ankle was bent at an unnatural angle, and the revulsion churned in Hope's stomach and made him nauseous. That wasn't supposed to be his ankle, but every time he looked at it, it was still attached to him by what appeared to be skin alone.
He retched once. Twice. The last thing he ate threatened to spill over the sidewalk and the Orion.
"Hope!" Lightning yelled. He heard a few quick bangs as she shot her gunblade at the Orion's face. It danced to the side, and Hope was tugged along with it, sliding on the ground. He screamed again. He wasn't sure if anybody heard it beneath the mechanical whirring that was too loud, ringing in his ears. The steam it puffed out of its gears was too hot, and it was burning his already on-fire ankle.
He renewed his efforts to claw at the harpoon, a cry on the ends of each of his breaths, but he never got close to it. He wasn't sure how long he lay there, stuck underneath it. It felt like an eternity before the humming died. The thing sparked and jerked like it was seizing, then thick, black smoke poured from somewhere on its body. The pounding of feet on the stone vibrated against Hope's head, and then Lightning was suddenly there. She dove over top of him, hooking one arm around his back to hoist him up. She curled over him, covering her own head with her other arm and shielding the both of them.
The Orion exploded and Lightning bore the brunt of it against her back with a sharp cry. Shrapnel and broken material clattered to the stone around them, and his leg and the rest of his weight was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. His throat was so tense that only air passed through when an impulsive shriek escaped him. Lightning climbed off of him, no worse for wear.
The Orion was destroyed but the harpoon was still in his ankle, rubbing, scraping against raw flesh. She immediately crawled down to the wound, eyes flicking back and forth over it as she analyzed. Tears were streaming freely down Hope's face, clogging up his nose and his mouth, and he realized he was struggling to breathe. He couldn't move. The pain was too bad, and he couldn't move.
Through his tears, he saw the others begin to crowd around him. Sazh's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.
"Damn," he cursed, turning away. He threw his arms up and clasped his hands behind his head, strolling away. Snow at least stuck around, but when his pale complexion turned kind of green, Hope felt panic rise up inside his wildly beating heart. Snow tried to put on a brave face, smiling down at Hope in a way that was visibly strained.
"Aw, man. That looks gnarly, kid. But don't worry, alright? We'll take care of you."
Vanille recoiled when she saw it as well, hands clasping over her mouth, and that shattered any possible hope he had to hold on to control.
It was bad. It was bad, it was really bad, and a sob wrenched out of him, jerking his chest off the ground. The adrenaline of battle faded, and in its place was a hyper-sensitivity he had never felt before. It was like he could feel every shredded nerve ending in his leg, and his nausea rolled.
Fang pushed Snow aside as she knelt next to Lightning. Her lips pulled back and she hissed in a breath through her teeth. "Ouch," was all she said.
"What do we do?" Vanille asked.
"Get it out and heal him," Lightning said, and he felt her energy shift as her paradigm switched, accessing the spells to do that.
They were going to destroy his ankle even more. He lifted his head to get another glance at it, groaning against another wave of pain. Lightning caught him trying to peek, and she put her hand flat on his chest, pushing him less-than-gently back down to the ground.
"Don't look at it!" she snapped.
"Oh, man. I think I'm gonna be sick-" Hope muttered.
Lightning leaned over him, into his face. "Hey! Focus on me." His breath was coming hard and fast. He had broken out into a hot and a cold sweat at some point, and he could feel it trailing down his face and his neck, making him shiver. But Lightning's stern presence seemed to cut through everything for just a moment. He took as deep a breath as he could muster, which wasn't very deep, to try and soften his breathing. He accidentally shifted his leg. His ankle rolled, but he swallowed down his scream to a muffled moan.
"Are you sure about that, Light?" Fang asked. "You're really supposed to leave whatever it is in until you can get help-"
"And what help is that?" Lightning asked. "In case you forgot, we're public enemy number one. We can't just walk into a hospital. We're our own help. Hope?" she said, staring down at him again. "Listen carefully. I'm gonna pull this thing out. It's gonna hurt. So I need you to stay as still as you can. You got me?"
Hope's fear at further pain spiked. His tears renewed, and he shook his head. He didn't want her to touch it. Didn't want anybody to touch it. He desperately wished he would pass out, but his body had other plans. He couldn't stop her, though, when he felt Lightning's hand wrap around the grappling hook. Her fingers dug between his skin and the metal, and she peeled the barbs out.
He threw his head back against the ground and squeezed his eyes shut as if it would do anything. Somebody took his hand - Vanille.
"I've got you," she said, smiling down at him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. He knew from the way she winced a second later that he was squeezing her hand way too tight. Her fingers were scrunched together in his grip, but Vanille didn't say a word. Hope wriggled his back into the ground, bracing for the coming torture. He knew it was ridiculous to try. It hurt too bad, and he wouldn't be able to control himself.
"That's a bad idea!" Fang protested before Hope felt anything. She grabbed a fistfull of the cape that dangled from Lightning's shoulder and ripped her away from him. Lightning fell backwards onto the ground, then jackknifed to her feet and squared her shoulders to Fang with a nasty sneer.
"Look at his leg, Lightning," Fang continued. "His foot's hanging on by a thread-"
Hope's heart squeezed in his chest. He felt dizzy. His stomach took a leap into the base of his throat, and it took everything in him to keep it under control.
"-and you're, what, just gonna piece it back together? You set that wrong, and you heal it wrong, and it's over for him. He'll be crippled for life. I know you were trained in first aid, so you already know that this is beyond what White Magic and first aid can do. He needs a hospital."
"What are you, crazy?!" Light snapped back. "The hospital will be crawling with Sanctum personnel! You want us to get captured?
"No. But better to risk it for proper care than doing something wrong out here and causing the whole leg to have to be amputated."
"No, no, no, no-" Words finally occurred to him. He gasped in a breath. "No, no! I- I can't- I don't want- Please don't-"
"It's alright," Snow soothed, but his horrified facial expression didn't match the calm energy he was trying to exude. "I won't let that happen to you. He needs a hospital, Lightning."
Sazh trailed back over finally. He scanned the wound in Hope's ankle and the tears on his face, and his face crumbled in sympathy. "I think," he sighed, throwing his hands out in a shrug. "I think that's the only option we've got."
Lightning glanced from Fang to Snow to Hope. The gears in her mind were turning. She was analyzing risk versus reward, the amount of guards that would be in a hospital, and the likelihood of capture. The possibility of hiding their identities. She looked down at Hope, and he knew he must have looked terrible, his face and his whole body tensed in pain.
She let out a frustrated huff. "Let's go."
After a brief deliberation, Sazh was the one to carefully gather him up and not Snow.
"Nah, nah, nah," he said. "Move, Mr. Hero. I'm a pro at this. I used to carry Dajh into the house from the car all the time." Even with how gentle he was, Hope's leg still dangled, and the weight pulled at everything inside of there. Every twitch of movement was agonizing. He tried his best to push through, but his willpower crumbled pathetically fast and soon he was crying out with every jolt and every step. Snow offered to hold his ankle in place, and as soon as it was elevated it felt fractionally better. But his teeth had been clenched so tightly for so long that his head was throbbing.
He was lucky they didn't have to go far. The Palumpolum Hospital was across the Agora on the Western Promenade. But by the time they were getting through triage, he was shaking so violently that Sazh nearly dropped him a few times. Triage itself was a blur. Each time he opened his eyes there were new and different people around him, but he never realized he passed out until he was waking up again.
He came back to full awareness with someone tapping a latex-gloved finger against his cheek.
"Hey, kiddo!" she said, and her voice was too loud and too happy, piercing into his ears. He shied away from her and curled up, but when he pulled his knees to his chest, he unwittingly tugged his ankle with his full force. He met resistance, like somebody had been holding onto it before he slipped free, and all the damaged tissue wrenched. It shot straight through his entire leg, flaring with the same intensity as the moment he'd been injured. And it didn't stop.
Hope rocketed straight upwards with a hoarse scream that burned his strained throat, and then his breath froze in his chest. The intense burning caused his tears to begin anew, streaming down his face. He grabbed at his knee in a mindless attempt at bracing it still to stop the pain. That didn't help.
The room erupted around him. What sounded like a hundred people started talking all at once.
"Hope, stay still!" That was Fang's voice.
"Hey, hey!" Sazh bubbled, reaching out like he wanted to help, but he didn't step away from the wall.
"Get his ankle stabilized!" that cheery voice was suddenly harshly serious. Gloved hands belonging to two people he didn't know with masks covering their faces reached for his ankle. A deeply ingrained, unconscious sense of self-preservation rose up in him. He didn't want anyone to touch it and set it off worse, so he scrambled away until his back his something and he couldn't go any further. He whined as his ankle accidentally rolled to the side and slapped down, limp and dead.
The hands weren't deterred. Two wrapped around his calf and squeezed, tugging his leg straight again, and the other two collected his mangled foot, manipulating it. He clenched his teeth against the pain they caused. He kicked his good leg in their direction, a panicked sound punctuating the ends of each breath.
"Don't - don't touch me!" he screamed. "Let me go!"
"Hey! Hey, kiddo! Can you hear me? What's your name? Can you tell me your name?" The questions came rapid fire from that voice that had changed again, back to a bubbly tone that was definitely forced. His pain-addled mind couldn't even process what she was saying.
"Hope," Snow said. "His name's Hope."
"Hope, honey?" The person attached to the sweet and serious voice poked her head into his periphery. He recoiled away from her, but her hand landed on his shoulder. "Let go of your leg. Lay back down, okay?" Her commands were firm but her tone was lifted and sweet. She applied a gentle pressure, but he didn't want to lay down.
He just wanted it to stop.
He threw her hand away from him and rolled forward to pry at the ones around his leg. Before he could do anything, more were on the front of his shoulders, shoving him flat against the soft surface that was underneath him and holding him still. He struggled as hard as he could, trying to scramble out from under them and get away from whatever they were doing to him.
He couldn't understand where he was or why they were trying to cause him more pain. The last time he had been restrained in any capacity, he had been loaded on the Purge Train by the Sanctum-
And then it hit him.
The Sanctum. Somehow they’d managed to capture him again.
"Please, let me go!" he sobbed. "I didn't do anything!"
"Okay, Hope? Stop moving your leg!"
"You're scaring him!" Vanille shrieked in her high-pitched, Pulse-accented voice.
"Yeah, can't you be a little more gentle? He's just a kid!" Snow added.
"Stop! I swear I didn't do anything! Let me go!" Hope ripped his wrists from their grips. He sat up again and went to throw his legs over the side of whatever the Sanctum had lay him on. The hands didn't give him a chance. They were back on his chest.
"Tch! Well, I'll hand it to him. He's strong when he's upset," Fang commented.
"Is he right-handed or left-handed?"
"Uh, uh, right!" Sazh sputtered.
"We'll try to get the IV going in his left hand then. He may calm down if he's not in so much pain."
Left hand. His brand was on his left hand. The Sanctum would see it.
"No, no, no-" he stammered. He tried to pull his hand away again when the Sanctum personnel ran to that side of him. A new kind of panic bloomed inside of him, and his chest tightened around his wildly hammering heart. White spots blurred the edges of his vision, and the sound began to spiral away from his ears. His breathing strained, the air that he pulled in passing in and out rapidly without processing in his body. "Don't!"
"Hope! Hope!" said one voice that was louder than the others. It snapped into his distorted hearing and drew his attention to his other side. Lightning was there, stiff and tense, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked angry, lips twisted in a disgusted sneer. She pushed off the wall and strolled over to him. She stood over him, nudging one of the guards to the side, and put a surprisingly soft, comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Hope," she said again. "I know you're in pain right now. But you gotta calm down."
He didn't understand how he was being apprehended, but Lightning wasn't. "The-the Sanctum-" he tried.
Lightning's hand squeezed, shaking him gently. Her eyes flicked once to the team around him. "Relax. You're in the hospital," she hissed the word like it was a poison off her tongue. "They're just nurses, and they're trying to help you. Breathe."
His surroundings began to pepper his awareness. He was on a bed. It wasn't comfortable. There were thick, plastic rails on either side of it. The walls were a plain, emotionless white and the ceiling was textured tile, interrupted every few bricks by florescent bulbs. A crowd of people were around him, all dressed in the same royal blue scrubs, not the dingy tans and beiges and yellows of PSICOM or the Sanctum. The realizations cut through his panic. Sensation that had previously been dulled slammed back into him full force, and he winced against a bad spasm in his ankle.
All of his exhaustion caught up to him, and he slumped back against the bed. Lightning offered him a small, sympathetic smile.
"Yeah, just relax," the cheery nurse said, and Hope finally attached the voice to the person. "I'm sorry we scared you, sweetie, but we're gonna take care of you, okay? Now, I can't have you moving that leg, and we need to elevate it. So my friend that's holding it right now? He's going to keep holding it."
Hope still had to resist the urge to pull away. He grit his teeth and threw his head back against the bed.
She began to tug at his glove. Something he had felt in his panic had told him that was a bad idea, but it was a distant thought, fuzzy around the edges. That didn't stop the feeling of dread that washed over him. He blamed it on the pain until he saw her pull his glove all the way off and go for his bandana.
The bandana that hid his brand.
"N-no!" he cried, ripping his hand away. "You-you can't touch that!"
"I need some help," the nurse said. "Hold his arm steady."
"No, no, no! Wait!" He tried to roll away from them again, but the agony that pulsed in his ankle prevented him from doing it. More hands pressed his arm flat to the bed again, and he tried to clutch at them with his other hand. "Don't touch me! Get off!" he pleaded.
The nurse pulled at the knot. It unraveled.
He glanced pleadingly at Lightning, who met his eyes. For just a second she tilted her head questioningly at him. Then her eyes lifted to his arm and to their bandana. She gasped as she realized what they were doing. Lightning reached out to stop them.
"Don't!"
The nurse's eyes widened, and she let out a shriek. She dropped his arm like she had been burned and leaped away from him, crashing into the wall behind her. The room went dead quiet as their group held their breath, and the other nurses stared questioningly at their coworker.
"He's a l'Cie!" she screamed. "Call security!"
The sob Hope had been holding spilled out of him. "No, please don't call security! Please, please don't turn us in!" he begged, but one of the nurses immediately ran for the door. Lightning's reflexes were faster. She sprinted there first and slammed it shut with a loud bang that shook the room. She turned and stared at the room, the absolute rage in her eyes and her hand trailing towards the gunblade on her back warding them off.
"You're not calling anybody," she said, her voice low, quiet. Threatening. "Don't move, and don't touch your comms."
"I knew I recognized you," one of the nurses said, pointing to Lightning. "You and the kid. You're the l'Cie they tried to execute in the square some time ago."
"Which is why we really don't want a scene," Snow replied. He raised his hands in a gesture of peace, a casual and easy smile on his face like he wasn't nervous. He lumbered over and stood coolly next to Lightning. "So everybody just caaalm down," he soothed, drawing it out. "Look, the kid needs help, alright? Can we just worry about saving him? And then nobody will get hurt," he said, staring at Lightning and imploring her to follow along.
As if on cue, a sharp pain seared through his foot. He let out a soft cry before he could bite his lip and swallow the whole thing down. The nurse was still holding it. He hadn't dropped it before his partner sounded the alarm.
"We're not helping l'Cie! The Sanctum forbids it."
Lightning ripped her gunblade from the pouch behind her back. They must have let her keep it believing she was Guardian Corps.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Snow said. He stepped a bit in front of Lightning, cutting off a clean line of sight to the nurses, protecting the both of them. "Come on, now. There's no need for everybody to panic. Why can't you just keep working like normal?" he asked them. "You can just pretend you didn't see anything. That wouldn't be too hard. What all does he need? X-rays? Probably surgery, right?"
Nobody answered him. He took that as an invitation to continue.
"We can get that done no problem without anybody knowing! So we cover up his arm with a little bandaid - okay, a big bandaid - and we do everything we gotta do. And then once he's okay, we'll leave. No harm, no foul. Nobody gets hurt. Don't you want to help a kid in pain?"
Hope didn't dare breathe in the stillness. But Snow's negotiating did impress him, just a little. He even had the sense to use 'we', like it was a collaborative effort, eliminating the 'me versus you' dynamic.
"Just do what you gotta do, please," Snow begged.
" . . . We called down to get him an x-ray already," the sweet and stern nurse said.
"Okay, that's good, that's good," Snow said. "Business as usual. Let's get him down there."
Lightning turned to a flip chart that was dangling from a hook on the wall. "Code Silver is for security threats." She pointed her gunblade at the group, and a few froze while the sweet and stern nurse and a couple others shied away. "If I hear anybody call for a Code Silver, it's over." She put her gunblade away.
"I'd do as she says," Fang said, cocking her head to Lightning.
"Fang, Vanille, Sazh go stand by the nurse's station so they can't tell anyone to call the Sanctum on us. Snow and I will go with Hope while they x-ray him."