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[FFXIII-2] Anonymous (Part 2 out of 4 ) 8106 words
Title: Anonymous
Fandom: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Character/Pairing(s): ...Hope and IT'S A SECRET
Rating: PG
Warning: Wordy. I just rewrote Hope's life, part the second. (Thanks to Bekas for looking it over for me!)
Summary: Hope's got a secret admirer who only leaves presents on Valentine's Day.
Bartholomew Estheim rarely looked at the dates on his calendar without seeing deadlines and weather reports. The past several years he had been so busy with his work that he couldn’t afford to see dates as anything other than that, and it was one of the biggest regrets in his life.
Had he looked at a calendar to remember all the time he had marked off, had been meaning to mark off, in order spend time with his family... maybe things would have been different.
But he couldn’t think like that. Instead, Bartholomew learned to be grateful for what he still had after the Fall. He had his knowledge and his experience, he had enough stashed away in case of anything and influence with both soldiers and politicians... and most of all, he still had his son.
Even if he couldn’t afford to have his son in public schooling anymore, and worried continuously over Hope’s safety and health as well as his happiness. The teenager was quiet and withdrawn; perhaps not as sullen as he had been in the year previous, but still distant and so very hard to reach. Nora had been so much better at handling Hope and his distance than Bartholomew ever had... but now it was up to him. Hope was nothing like the child he had once been, or even the teenager he had been mere months ago. He was driven now in a way the older man had never seen before in a teenager, getting just as forgetful about the calendar as Bartholomew was.
Seeing that in someone he loved dearly... Bartholomew was starting to understand just how his family must have felt whenever he forget about dates.
The man had tried. He tried to urge Hope to go out and spend time with the friends he had, to rejoice over being alive and to enjoy the last vestiges of childhood. But Hope had only shaken his head; “...They don’t want me there.”
That was the truth of it. People feared the ex-l’Cie, and despite the fact that his son barely reached the shoulders of most people and still had the round cheeks of a child, Bartholomew would have been blind and deaf to not notice the whispers and glares whenever he was out with his son. That wasn’t the fact which struck Bartholomew the hardest; instead, it was the calm acceptance that Hope reacted with, as if he understood and accepted the people’s hatred and fear of him.
As if he deserved it.
Bartholomew was at a loss for what to do.
“Hope,” the man tried to wheedle this morning, feeling like he was failing spectacularly as a father with every word, “It’s Valentine’s Day. Shouldn’t you at least phone up Elida? I’m sure she’d want to hear from you and know you’re alright.”
“She doesn’t want to hear from me.” The teen said; not sad, not hateful... just stating a fact. He didn’t even look up from his reading. “She wants to hear from Kai, but Kai’s not around anymore.”
That was another strained subject. With the amount of deaths after the Battle in Eden, there was no one left unaffected by events. Everyone lost someone... even Hope and his small amount of friends. But it was a day he didn’t want his son to spend alone, especially since he had work to get to within the hour and leaving Hope with no one there (Nora had typically been the one to celebrate the holiday with their son) didn’t sit right with him.
But what could he say to make up for the absence? What could be done?
“Alright.” Bartholomew finally gave him several awkward seconds later, reaching to pat his son on the shoulder lightly. “Just... don’t study too hard today, Hope.”
It wasn’t what Nora would have said; she would have encouraged their son to go out and play, to take his work from him so that he would talk to her without interruptions, and then wheedle smiles and laughter from their usually taciturn child. But Bartholomew was not Nora, no matter how much he missed and loved her, and even knew what she would do. He didn’t have the tact nor the words to do what Nora did. All he could do was comfort in his own distant manner.
He excused himself with the sound of the doorbell, going to answer the door.
There was no one outside. At least no one who could have possibly rung the bell. Instead, placed very carefully at the doorway, was a single red rose... wrapped generously in a red, velvet ribbon and tied off to form an elaborate bow.
Bartholomew felt as if his throat had gotten thick, his voice stuck as he bent to pick up the rose. He remembered the ribbon, of course. He and Nora had fussed over it yearly, discussing late into the night whether it was dangerous or not for their child to be receiving Valentine gifts like that at so young an age, with her going so far as to suggest hiring investigators to find who the culprit was. They never had, when the gifts appeared to stop. They had been so relieved.
Now, though...
Not want him there, huh? The older man chuckled lightly under his breath as he closed the front door behind him to deliver the gift to his son, suddenly glad for this person out there who had at first caused him so much distress.
There was still one person out there who kept their fondness for Hope outside of those involved with the l'Cie.
Fifteen, Hope decided, was a difficult age. Not that any age seemed easy, but fifteen was especially difficult for him when he had managed to help save most of the world at fourteen. Now what would he do? It didn’t feel right to just sit back and do nothing when everyone else seemed busier than ever. All he had left was his studying, and even that had grown tedious quickly enough.
He felt, and thought he was old enough to say it, tired. He wanted to do more than he could, but at the same time felt far too small to do anything right. Not enough knowledge, not enough experience... he only managed to grasp half of things most of the time. Could explain portions, but would need other information to be shared with him. It was a difficult transition, and Hope absolutely despised it. He hated knowing just enough to grasp the basics but still be schooled by everyone else. He hated that everyone still treated him like a child regardless of what he had accomplished by fourteen. He hated when people treated him like an adult when he missed the protection and security he felt as a child.
There was no good compromise. Nothing that he could do, or even that others could do, that could satisfy. He missed his mother sorely, and even his father when the man was gone. He missed bickering with friends, and hated walking down a street and listening to people talk and laugh with each other; all of them slowly but surely healing from the catastrophe over a year ago.
Sazh and Dajh had disappeared from the radar, and Hope still wasn’t sure whether that was intentional or if there were other forces behind it. Snow was always out on patrols, and his dad was more often than not in meetings and organizing a new society for the inhabitants of Gran Pulse.
That left Hope alone most of the time, not even with tutors but computerized lesson plans that he would complete one after one with nothing else to interest him.
Well... not nothing.
He peeked from behind the curtains of his house again, just for another moment, before letting the heavy fabric fall back into place. It was Valentine’s Day, and...
He wasn’t nervous, per say. It was just that he had expected to be disappointed last year and hadn’t been, and now with that one strange constant in his life, Hope didn’t want that to disappear on him as well. He just wanted to know... wanted to know if this mysterious gifter would finally abandon him, after all. Kai was gone, Elida wasn’t speaking with him, his mother was... gone as well, and the way his father had reacted last year when he had brought in the rose spoke volumes about just how it hadn’t been his parents.
That meant there was someone else out there that took a notice to him, and someone else who not only stayed with him his entire life, but still cared. And he wanted to know who it was. Wanted to speak to them and thank them and maybe yell at them and just — he just wanted to get to know this person.
He wanted...
Hope wasn’t sure. It was a funny feeling, to be certain. He was older now, and much smarter and aware than he had been as a child. Maybe it was due to Lightning’s brief tutelage, but Hope was finally turning over the years in his mind to garner clues that he hadn’t noticed there before. The notes he had gotten had all been printed. Not written. Even the notes that had teased him and warned him away from finding the gift giver had been printed, despite him spontaneously coming up with ideas.
The person knew whenever he tried to find them. Knew, and could anticipate (or predict) his actions. Someone who knew him well, then? Hope wasn’t sure who that could be. It wasn’t as if he were close with many people throughout his life.
He checked through the curtains again, and this time jumped up from the couch as he saw a delivery man approaching, pulling his hat firmly over his hair and ears before throwing opening the door long before the man could knock, startling the guy.
“Uhh.” The delivery man held up a package uncertainly. “Mail for Hope Estheim?”
“That’s me,” Hope replied as cheerily as possible, although he felt more jittery than anything else. Mail? He was used to packages delivered when he least expected it, not through someone else.
The delivery man certainly didn’t look like he approved; probably thought Hope was far too young to be ordering anything. But really, he wasn’t young at all; Hope was just waiting on that growth spurt, that was all…
(What he had forgotten about was how the central heating unit had broken down not two days ago and Hope had insisted on being the one to fix it rather than let his dad call someone in, but that was taking longer than he thought it would since the mechanics were fascinating and he hadn’t even known it contained such complicated programming and —
It was just that the house was still very cold and that meant sweaters and scarves and hats and thick socks and maybe the oversized colorful fish print flannel pajamas that, combined, made Hope look a little young to be home by himself.)
“Sign here,” The man instructed, and Hope did so, script wobbly with anticipation as he finally got the package (heavier than he expected), and waved the man goodbye before shutting the door behind him.
There wasn’t a return address, not that he had expected one. That would have been far too easy. Hope ripped off the tape on the box and reached inside past the package peanuts to find the familiar red box wrapped in red velvet ribbon.
“Gotcha,” He whispered softly, smiling despite himself. It had come this year as well. The box was small and filled with only three chocolates, and he set that down curiously to rummage through the rest of the box. Why send an entire box when the bit of chocolates could have just been placed on his doorstep?
He hit the jackpot after a few seconds, and used both hands to pull out a heavy snow globe, this one much bigger than the small one he had received previously, depicting that very same futuristic city, but this time with the crystallized pillar of Cocoon in the background and... what looked like another large sphere in the works? It was on the ground, though, not in the air, and settled firmly behind the beautiful city.
Hope shook at the snow globe curiously, and then set it down on the ground where he watched as the white flakes whirled around and slowly settled.
Maybe... maybe he would show his father this. A new city on Gran Pulse was exactly what people needed.
“ — Hope!”
The teenager turned with a curious hum, blinking as his father waved at him from the next room. Hope had recently been slowly taking over his father’s study, which had been just fine with Bartholomew who was away more and more with work and securing contracts to construct the newly proposed Academy. It would take a while yet before the whole thing went off the ground, but they were making good progress, and Bartholomew had already drawn up plans on where he wanted the institute located.
Lately, Hope had been busy with both his studies and drawing out plans for Academia — the city that his father wanted to build. He had sketched and re-sketched on his computers just how the city should be constructed, as whimsical as it felt. He was fairly certain that people wouldn’t take his winding roads and levels seriously, but it was a hobby to construct those roads and watch how they looked on his 3D imaging program. It was a good way to relieve stress after the days he got fed up with his studies.
Studies that, he had been assured, he was progressing much faster in than other kids. He was now sixteen and taking courses on theoretical physics and advanced quantum mechanics. But it was his electives that interested him the most — mythologies and religions of Gran Pulse, archaeology, and even architecture. He’d have to choose a subject and interest for his thesis soon, but...
His father looked rather pleased from where was approaching. “You’ve got mail, Hope.”
“Mail?” He didn’t mean to sound so absentminded, and shook his head to clear his own thoughts before focusing on his father again. “Me?”
“You forgot the date again, didn’t you?” His father looked amused.
Hope hadn’t forgotten; not entirely. He knew enough to know that it wasn’t his birthday, or even his father’s. It wasn’t the anniversary of the Purge, or that of the Fall. It was late winter still, with the chill heavy in the air despite being inside.
“No?” He responded, uncertain and still shaking equations and theorems from his head. “I don’t think so?”
Why would he receive mail? All his assignments were done electronically, and he had very little communications from people now that Snow had disappeared as well. At first he had been extremely worried, agitated and bursting with the need to follow up and find out what happened to the other ex-l’Cie, but his father had convinced him that the best way to solve the problem was to arm himself with more knowledge first. Finish his studies, learn as much as he could, and then perhaps he would come to understand what was happening.
It felt like a shallow promise, but at least it was a promise.
His father laughed, and put down a package in front of him on his desk. “Happy Valentine’s, son. It seems like your secret admirer has struck again.”
It was the same colored box and soft ribbon, and Hope startled to realize that yes, he had forgotten about the day. He thought there were still weeks until the holiday, not —
There was a thread of old excitement that stirred as he fingered the ribbon, and he barely heard his father excuse himself back to work, leaving Hope with some space to open the present himself. Eleven years of presents, and Hope smiled as he tugged on the ribbon, feeling warm and pleased as he opened the lid of the box —
It took him a moment of staring before he registered was he was seeing and the slammed the lid down again, this time with his cheeks flushed a deep red as he shoved the box under his desk and then kicked it to the wall, out of view.
(At dinner, he stammered his way out of answering when his father asked curiously what he had gotten as a present this year.)
At seventeen, Hope had learned his lesson and marked off his calendar early to make sure no one intercepted the present. Whether it was because he was suspicious as to if the person would accidentally open the box or whether it was because he was suspicious as to what was inside the box, Hope hadn’t be able to tell.
But it was just —
He flushed deeply again at the memory of utter mortification that day a year ago. It was weeks before he dared to look into the box again, but...
Well. He looked away from his holographic monitors briefly to glance toward the front door. He was mostly done with his thesis, and the past year had been... turbulent, to say the least. Enlightening? With the discovery of the Oracle Drive and Serah’s disappearance as well and the idea of prophetic visions and time travel, of all things...
Time travel. That's what he had heard from Team NORA. He didn’t know if he believed in it, if he should let himself believe in it. If it was true, if it was possible, then things could be so very different. It could mean that things could be changed for the better.
With the paradoxes and disturbances appearing everywhere on Gran Pulse and Cocoon, Hope wasn’t sure what to think. It would explain all the disappearances. At the same time, it explained nothing at all. If such a thing were possible, why wouldn’t someone else have already gone back and fixed everything? Or was it possible but not yet accomplished? Did that mean it was possible to unlock the secrets of time travel within his lifetime? What if something had already been changed and he didn’t even know it?
It was just a bit challenging to relate his thesis with all the things that couldn’t be proven. The Oracle Drive could tell the future, but to what end? Prophecies were either a foretelling or self-fulfilling wish, after all. It was hard to tell one from the other when the moment you know what’s going to happen in the future.
...But no. Valentine’s Day. He told himself he’d take a day away from his studying and his work, because it was a day that he wanted to save for a semblance of normality. A link to his past, his childhood, and the memories of happier times. He had spent a good while debating with himself as to whether he wanted to trace where the gifts had come from. Did he?
What if he was disappointed somehow?
Hope didn’t think he would be, though. He could only admit to himself in his thoughts that he wanted nothing more than the attention that had been afforded to him through the gifts. It didn’t matter to him who it was behind the presents — he wanted to meet someone who cared enough about him to send them.
He wanted...
It was a dull ache in his chest, a welcome ache, knowing that despite everything that happened and no matter how many people still blamed him for the downfall of Cocoon (which was, luckily, less and less each year as the truth became common knowledge)... there was still someone out there who cared.
Someone who — he turned red again at the thought of last year’s present. Well. He had a fairly good idea that whoever it was, they were certainly... interested? In him. Or at the very least...
The doorbell had him scrambling from his seat and racing toward the door, making sure to overtake his father, who had poked his head from the kitchen in amusement.
“Manners!” Bartholomew called out to remind him just as Hope threw the door open. It threw the teen in a loop enough that he startled the delivery girl outside the door.
“Uh!” The girl in question squeaked, looking mousy and timid as she held the box toward him. Hope found a note of satisfaction that he was just the slightest bit taller than the girl. It wasn’t often that he got to be taller than other people. “Package for Hope Estheim?”
“That’s me,” he breathed out, and then remembered: “Thanks.”
He signed for the package (the action so familiar to him now) and thanked her again before giving a polite wave as she walked away, closing the door behind him gently and belaying his impatience to know what had been sent to him this year.
“Am I allowed to see it this time?” His father called from the kitchen, to which Hope responded with a quick and loud negative (that didn’t sound like a petulant teenager at all, if he could say so himself) before racing for his room, his work and thoughts of work entirely forgotten as he slammed the door shut to ensure that his dad wouldn’t ‘accidentally’ push the door open.
Honestly. Hope was fairly certain that it was his father’s way of slowly pestering him out of the house — or maybe that was just the way of parents, that when their kids neared adulthood, they’d do their best to shove their way back into their children’s lives. It would explain how many teens were eager to move out when they came of age, if only to get away from the constant smothering.
Besides. If the gift was anything like the year previous, Hope didn’t want his dad seeing it at all.
Carefully, and so very tentatively this time, Hope placed the box on his bed before digging his fingers under the tape to pry the sticky adhesive off, managing to pull off a strip of the cardboard along with it. The first thing he saw as he lifted the flaps of the box was a thick, white card: much bigger than the business sized cards from before, but more like a greeting card, folded in half so that it would stand by itself with the familiar golden font stretched across the surface.
Never forget, the words were elegantly printed. You are important.
The words continued on the inside of the card: Don’t doubt yourself. Don’t hesitate.
The words were so familiar to him, and Hope brought the card to his lips, feeling the thick parchment against his skin. Don’t hesitate, huh? Like it not being a matter of can or can’t?
Minutes later, when he finally tossed the thoughts of familiarity off, he rummaged through the rest of the little package to pull out the familiar wrapped red box of chocolates, with it’s soft, velvet ribbon.
Later on, he tried to share half his chocolates with his father, but Bartholomew just laughed and insisted that Hope have all of them, and smiled gently over the card that his son showed him and reminded him that those words were irrevocably true.
His eighteenth birthday came and went with little fuss: Bartholomew had taken the day off work and switched off his phone so that he could spend the day with his son, delegating all Academy information to Rydgea for the day, as ill prepared as the military man was for the role. There was very little fuss, and Hope worked on finishing up his thesis the rest of the year, meandering through various digs and archaeological sites in order to get the final details ready for revision. Any additional facts, or anything at all that he could find in the dig sites to help him provide support for his paper was greedily grasped at.
Hope had been due to be home by Valentine’s, as per tradition for the past several years, but the weather on Gran Pulse was fierce and unpredictable, and an unexpected snowstorm had managed to halt all the train lines going from the Paddrean ruins back to any semblance of civilization, never mind back to the still little known small town that was being built to be the new city Academia.
He had sulked, perhaps more than he should have for his age. Hope was an adult now, decently taller than the girls around him even if he didn’t quite match most of the men yet. It was just... he wanted to get the usual present on Valentine’s Day.
His sulking just seemed to make people around him smile knowingly whenever he commented that he wanted to try and make it home as soon as possible, even if he was fairly certain they didn’t actually know anything about why he wanted to get back.
With the delays, Hope decided he would just stay in the room that he had rented for the rest of the day rather than wait every minute for the train that wouldn’t come for at least the next two days.
Valentine’s Day, he thought vaguely as he stared blearily at the computer terminals, was a disaster this year. At this rate, he’d have to call up his father and make sure he didn’t open the present. Or look at it. Or anything of that sort.
He wondered how he was supposed to phrase that, though. Politely.
Hope was reaching for his phone when there was a knock on his door, and he looked up curiously. He was fairly certain there was no one here who could possibly need his attention today, especially when he had scheduled everything here to be done before Valentine’s.
He stood from his chair and padded quietly over to the door, opening it just a crack to be greeted with the overwhelming scent of flowers.
“Delivery!” Came a cheerful female voice. “Valentine’s delivery for Hope?”
Bewildered, Hope opened the door wider. “...That’s me?”
The girl startled, and then squinted at him over the large armful of red roses. It took a few moments before Hope realized that she had expected a girl behind the door... likely because of the flowers and because of the name. But she seemed to brighten up fast enough as she moved to shove the flowers into his arms.
“Oh, good.” She said cheerily. “I was beginning to think I might have gotten the wrong room. These are for you!”
The bouquet was insanely large — there must have been three, four dozen roses at the very least; all tied together with thick wraps of red velvet. Hope nearly staggered not under the weight, but under the sheer amount of flowers, wondering just how the delivery girl managed to carry that to his room and still be able to see where she was going. It was ridiculous and completely impractical.
So why was it that he felt so... pleased?
“Who sent this?” He asked, not having to fake how bewildered he was.
“You don’t know?” The girl sounded surprised. “Huh. Guess you’ve got a secret admirer, then! Someone’s really crushing on you, the way I see it.”
Crush was one term for it. He wasn’t sure it was a term he would have used. Hope had seen crushes before when he was younger, and it usually involved a lot of whispering and confrontations and then crying. It didn’t have the years of courtship, the knowing words, or the persistence to always keep him upright.
It wasn’t a crush, he thought. It was a pillar of his stability.
He had never met the person, of that he was certain. And sometimes, like now, he wondered if he ever would. If anything, wouldn’t it have been opportune to meet now that he was eighteen? Hope just wanted to know, to see and understand with a need that had been driving him for years. He hadn’t pried, hadn’t chased after the mystery as had been asked of him, but it was making him antsy. He didn’t like the feeling of being kept in the dark.
“Don’t look like that!” The girl said, having noticed his expression. “Cheer up, it’s Valentine’s and you’ve just got the biggest bouquet I’ve ever delivered in my life. It should be flattering!”
It was. Flattering. Hope managed a small smile at the delivery girl, who perked up again at his attitude change (or at least his small attempt toward it), and thanked her, leaving her a tip before she went off again, whistling this time.
There wasn’t a card with the roses, but there didn’t need to be when it was wrapped with the same velvet red ribbon. Two thoughts concerned him.
Just how had his admirer known that he would be stuck here in the ruins?
And.
How in the world was he supposed to get this home without drawing an embarrassing amount of attention?
Hope had been far too busy to bother checking a calendar by the time he was nineteen. After having submitted his thesis and then having it picked apart by the newly formed Academy was nothing short of hair-raising. He hadn’t felt so put on the spot ever since he was a l’Cie, but when the board finally finished examining his findings and actually formed a department just for the research on time paradoxes and how the Oracle Drive could help identify them... Hope had been ecstatic. Ecstatic and terrified, especially when they asked him to lead the new department.
He couldn’t lead... could he? Hope didn’t actually have enough experience with people to tell someone what to do, much less order them around like he was their boss. Who would actually listen to him? He was — he still preferred his own computers and blasting meaningless music in headphones while he worked. He tended to toe off his shoes and pull his legs up onto the chair and lean too close to holographic monitors and not turn the lights on when he should. He had grown a few more inches in the past year and felt gangly... stretched and clumsy with a tendency of tripping over thin air if he didn’t pay enough attention to his steps.
None of that was leader material. Just because he had written the thesis...
“You’ll be fine.” His father continued to reassure him, although with less open amusement at his nervousness now that they were within the central building of Academia, still being built. The walls were tall and beautiful already, and the actual Academy a wonder to behold. It was all gleaming steel and polished floors, reminiscent of Eden but with its own unique flair. Solid and reliable rather than epherescent.
Hope was dragging his feet behind his father as they toured the newly built laboratories, watching as people nodded and tested each piece of equipment; as eager participants showed them around and demonstrated just what the Academy had to offer.
As if Hope didn’t already know.
“And your office,” The guide continued, as eager as ever. “Is just through the hall this way!”
That certainly startled Hope out of his thoughts. Office? He didn’t feel old enough to have an office. He tried to catch his father’s attention and wave off the excess that was being offered to him, but rather than take his side on this, Bartholomew looked smug.
This, Hope thought with faint distress, wasn’t exactly what he imagined would happen when he applied to the Academy, wanting nothing more than to contribute to his father’s work.
The hall was long and brightly lit, still smelling a bit of fresh paint and steel, of cables and electricity. The door at the end of the hall might have been plain looking, but it was made of thick wood as opposed to the normal steel doors, and looked beyond luxurious. Too much so for someone with no prior experience and still in his teens. It certainly didn’t feel right to him; too much too quickly. It was, Hope thought, enough that it actually made him feel bad.
“There are a few supervisors who need to go over the final details,” the guide continued to ramble, entirely unaware of the unease. “And outside of several more experienced researchers, you’ll be allowed to assemble a team of your own. The department is new yet, and we’ll need fresh perspectives to make this work —”
The guide opened the door to usher them in, and while he should have noticed the spacious room with the stylish desk and holographic surfaces boasting the latest and greatest in technology, Hope’s eyes were drawn to the splash of color at the edge of the room.
“That’s not supposed to be there.” Was the guide’s only exclamation of surprise as Hope headed toward the splash of red.
He had forgotten, in the midst of his nervousness and excitement from the acceptance of his thesis as something more than the delusional words of some crazy teenager who once nearly destroyed the whole world. It hadn’t felt as... important, and he couldn’t get over it now. How could he have forgotten? It had been such an important factor in his life for so long, and had gone on to give him courage through some very dark years.
Seeing the bouquet of roses and box of chocolates now, he felt altogether too adult. Nineteen and Hope managed to push aside all frivolities of childhood.
Including things that had made him happy.
He ran a hand over the petals of a rose, and then over the ribbon tying it together, easily imagining the softness underneath his gloves. There is another white card propped up next to the chocolates, script gold and glimmering as he picked it up to read through it.
Congratulations.
I knew you could do it.
“I swear,” The guide was still speaking the background, sounding surprised. “That wasn’t here when we last inspected this place. We don’t let just anyone into our sites, you know. We have excellent security systems, even if... well.”
His father was murmuring something in the background as well; reassurances, most likely, but Hope wasn’t paying much attention to that. Instead, he was wondering about the person who kept sending the gifts. It was a little strange to think that he had been getting them since he was five, and this would be fourteen years now. Just who was that person?
And to be able to get into the newly instated Academy and their defences...
The mystery deepens.
The next few years are a blur to Hope.
Well, not really. He recounts it all with astonishing detail, his mind honed from day after day of mental challenges, and often surprised himself with the amount he had learned from the moment he had taken the job at the Academy. They hadn’t been kidding about needing to be at the pinnacle of human skill. His studying prior to joining the Academy felt more like lazing about when compared to the hours that he pulled with other researchers.
For a long while, Hope was able to forget about the missing pieces in his life and throw himself wholeheartedly into his work. More than that, he was able to find people who had the same drive and motivation as him. The same interests, and same goals. It was almost scary to be able to speak to someone and not be afraid of messing up his words or having the other person hate him for some reason inexplicable to him.
Being at the Academy meant that everyone’s goals were the same: create a better future for mankind. Anything else, and every other difference, could be pushed to the background. It didn’t matter that he was an ex-l’Cie or that he had mostly been homeschooled since the Fall. It didn’t matter that he had a harder time talking to people about personal things, because most of the time, they spoke of work and science and things that Hope didn’t feel he had a disadvantage in.
Valentine’s becomes a regular occurrence after the first time at the Academy, enough that people don’t quite question where the sudden flowers and chocolates came from, and also know exactly who they’re for. If it was a subject of gossip, the scientists were normally too polite to mention it where Hope could overhear them.
Normally.
There were a few times...
But then, those were few and far in-between. Hope had assumed, prematurely, that it would remind him of the gossip he had been through in his childhood, where people were virulent and vehement about wanting to know things they had no right to be privy to, but for the most part, those in the Academy had been rather... polite about it. If they were curious, they would ask.
It became a thing for Hope to receive presents for Valentine's every year in the Academy, and people eventually found out that even Hope didn't know who the presents were from. There were various delivery services, all of whom denied knowing who was sending the flowers. Anonymous admirers, was the common consensus. Hope Estheim had someone sending him Valentines each year, and it was someone both dedicated and persistent.
That information led to an unforeseen circumstance where women would smile at him in hallways, looking misty-eyed for some strange reason. It made, Hope realized, looking for any sort of relationship outside of strictly professional parameters, nigh impossible.
That said, it didn't mean that there weren't any uncomfortable situations once in awhile. Uncomfortable situations that more likely than not involved a certain Alyssa Zaidelle, who had taken the fact that Hope's 'admirer' refused to reveal themselves as an open invitation.
An invitation to what, Hope never understood.
There were no more spectacular gifts, or at least the kind that he had gotten in his childhood. No more books on mythology or science or art, even though Hope had worked hard to be proficient in those subjects. He found that the gifter had left a sizeable impression on his life. Now, there were notes of encouragement and (Hope flushed thinking about it) professions of love and devotion.
At least it was... Modest and safe for work. Nothing like his sixteenth year.
(That one still embarrassed him to think about, despite all the years.)
His life, as strange as it sounded, became... somewhat normal. Normal in that there was that daily routine, and that daily trial and error. He knew what he was going to do, he knew what was going to happen, and for the longest time Hope found himself content with the schedules he built around himself and with the predictability of his days. Sometimes it was hard, mostly because he couldn't understand how progress was going so slowly. It was understandable for a world just getting back on its feet after disaster, as well as how slow progress went to begin with, but for some reason he expected it to go faster.
For the most part, Hope was happy with how the Academy was progressing. But sometimes he couldn't help but be frustrated over the fact that it had already been so many years and he had managed absolutely no progress on getting Fang and Vanille back; on finding Lightning. That the people dear to him were still gone despite all his work and all that the Academy managed to do. No matter how much progress and how many accomplishments, he was still so... Powerless.
It wasn't right that they sacrificed so much, all of them, and that he would be the only one who could live peacefully. But no matter what he did, or how much he wanted to be with them and put in his portion of sacrifice, Hope couldn't seem to figure out how.
As such, Valentine’s Day got pushed to the side in favor of attempts to push science as much as he dared, attempting to find the meaning as to why he had been left behind. There had to be one, right? And when Alyssa told him that she had seen Serah with someone else, that she theorized they were travelling through time... he felt his want solidify into a need. The Oracle Drive was one thing, but to be able to change events in the past in order to create a better future... that was another thing altogether.
It was something Hope could aspire to, even if he had no idea where to start on a project like that. How do you do the impossible?
Hope dreamt of a happier time, a non-existent time, where he surprises his mother with a call in the morning to tell her that he had gotten the day off to spend with her on her birthday, or that Vanille would visit the Academy regularly to skip down the halls and embarrass him in front of everyone by coming up behind him and covering his eyes for childish games. Serah and Snow would have started the giant family they wanted, and he and Dajh would be the ones roped into babysitting when Lightning needed to rid her hands of children from time to time (which was more frequently than she would admit). They’re good dreams, and he wonders if that might have happened in another lifetime.
Another dream he has regards a darkened sky, Fenrir cutting off the light and lamps settled across the ground to keep people safe from monsters that would suddenly appear in the darkness. It happens frequently now, completely inexplicable to modern science: that creatures could appear from (what he theorized were) paradoxes in time.
It was fascinating, and despite the tragedies it incurred everyday, made the thought of time travel feasible. What if he could utilize that energy? Harness it? It shouldn’t be possible, but it was.
But then that dream ends, and Hope would attempt to grasp at wisps before it faded away and he forgot all the details.
When he was twenty-four, he decided that he had to know what the dreams of darkness were about. Fenrir was not supposed to create an eclipse until hundreds of years into the future, and even then, it would only be visible from a small area... the Paddrean ruins.
Alyssa didn’t understand. She didn’t know why he had to visit the site and why he lingered despite the fact that his work back in Academia was far more important than whatever little he could find and confirm out in the digs. There had been a time when Hope would go to all the archaeological digs, but that had been back when he was a teenager. As the Director of Academy Research now, he was too important to be sent off for a week looking through old manuscripts and findings.
He didn’t understand why he was out there, either. It was a — gut feeling. Intuition of a kind he rarely had. Hope worked with facts and theorems, not instincts and magic anymore.
(Perhaps, once upon a time, he would have gone down a different road; but not in this world.)
The gut feeling paid off when he met up with Serah and her time travelling companion — Noel. It was one thing to read on the files about time travelling, but quite another to see it with his own eyes. Serah hadn’t aged a bit since... seven years ago. It was startling.
It was frightening. The knowledge that Noel provided, the young man having come from a distant and bleak future where mankind had faced their extinction, meant that Hope had a new goal to strive for. If no one had come to get him yet from the future, it meant that technology devising a method of traveling back into the past and changing things may never have occurred... or that no one had the future to devise one. The first thing Hope had to do was ensure that mankind had a future. And then he could worry about why he wasn’t allowed to change the past (since that was the second theory — if time travel had been unveiled by the Academy, then maybe his contributions and history was a fixed point that people were not allowed to change).
Meeting Serah and Noel ignited a flame within him for answers, for more knowledge in subjects he had previously not given a second thought about. What kind of future were they preventing? From what he had seen, Cocoon could crash into Gran Pulse and end most life on both planets. But what else? It was jarring to finally be given information like that, and even worse to know that everyone else seemed to play a key part... Serah had come back from her travels before to quietly inform him that she had seen Snow and that he was still alive, and he stood there awkwardly as she covered her face within her hands and wept for the future that they most likely wouldn’t have because Snow had gone and done something stupid, something heroic, again. Noel had come back once to tell him they met Sazh’s projection in a snowy ruin, and that the man was with his son somewhere in time.
Everyone... everyone else had such a purpose. Hope kept his eyes downcast whenever he was given new bits of information like that, information he would have cried over just a few years ago. He couldn’t yet face Serah’s sadness, nor Noel’s strange and sympathetic tone. They had such hardships to face, he didn’t understand why they would take the time to bring such information to him.
Lightning was fighting in the timeless place of Valhalla. Snow was once again saving the world and defying fate. Sazh was... well, he was on an adventure looking for his son (although Hope didn’t envy him that — he knew the other man well enough to understand what Sazh wanted more was to settle down somewhere stable to raise Dajh), Fang and Vanille had sacrificed everything to save the people of Cocoon, and even Serah was journeying through time in order to save the future. Hope was... he was...
Years of thinking like that, of wondering in the back of his mind why he had been left behind, was pushed aside with a new vehemence as he decided, demanded, his own place in history. If he had been left behind, then he would make up a purpose to being left behind. He couldn’t let his imaginings take him away any more. He wasn’t a child. He couldn’t keep clinging to a past that would never change, or wonder about things that he doubted he would ever get an answer to.
What little proof he had to go on were in the Oracle Drives (not solid proof) and in Serah and Noel’s words (also not solid proof). He would have to focus on something else and leave the time traveling to people who could actually do it. It was hard to admit to himself that maybe this thing... this was out of his reach entirely because he hadn’t been chosen to it, rather than because he hadn’t worked hard enough.
(It was hard to leave behind that ideology that if someone worked hard enough, anything was possible. A childish dream, maybe.)
“You going to be okay?” Noel asked before he and Serah left once again, and Hope felt a surge of confusion by the familiarity in the tone. Time travel, as it had been explained by Serah’s desperate words, meant that they had meant him before already in another timeline. Hope wondered if it was anything like any of his dreams, or if there were just so many tangents that he couldn’t fathom what they had gone through. Perhaps they had met a hundred times before; a thousand. Perhaps even the time travelers didn’t know the extent of their own wanderings because it may have been erased from even them. If they weren’t the only ones to change time, then would they know if their own time had been changed?
Hope had no idea how many times they had met before. All he knew was this once.
All he would know was one lifetime. It was up to him to make it a memorable one.
That Valentine’s Day, members of Team Alpha laughed as they felt their young leader’s embarrassment radiate from him as the stories of a ring and a cheeky letter consisting of ‘this is a promise we'll meet again’ circulated around the Academy.
Hope’s glare was rendered ineffective by the redness of his cheeks.
End part 2.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Character/Pairing(s): ...Hope and IT'S A SECRET
Rating: PG
Warning: Wordy. I just rewrote Hope's life, part the second. (Thanks to Bekas for looking it over for me!)
Summary: Hope's got a secret admirer who only leaves presents on Valentine's Day.
Bartholomew Estheim rarely looked at the dates on his calendar without seeing deadlines and weather reports. The past several years he had been so busy with his work that he couldn’t afford to see dates as anything other than that, and it was one of the biggest regrets in his life.
Had he looked at a calendar to remember all the time he had marked off, had been meaning to mark off, in order spend time with his family... maybe things would have been different.
But he couldn’t think like that. Instead, Bartholomew learned to be grateful for what he still had after the Fall. He had his knowledge and his experience, he had enough stashed away in case of anything and influence with both soldiers and politicians... and most of all, he still had his son.
Even if he couldn’t afford to have his son in public schooling anymore, and worried continuously over Hope’s safety and health as well as his happiness. The teenager was quiet and withdrawn; perhaps not as sullen as he had been in the year previous, but still distant and so very hard to reach. Nora had been so much better at handling Hope and his distance than Bartholomew ever had... but now it was up to him. Hope was nothing like the child he had once been, or even the teenager he had been mere months ago. He was driven now in a way the older man had never seen before in a teenager, getting just as forgetful about the calendar as Bartholomew was.
Seeing that in someone he loved dearly... Bartholomew was starting to understand just how his family must have felt whenever he forget about dates.
The man had tried. He tried to urge Hope to go out and spend time with the friends he had, to rejoice over being alive and to enjoy the last vestiges of childhood. But Hope had only shaken his head; “...They don’t want me there.”
That was the truth of it. People feared the ex-l’Cie, and despite the fact that his son barely reached the shoulders of most people and still had the round cheeks of a child, Bartholomew would have been blind and deaf to not notice the whispers and glares whenever he was out with his son. That wasn’t the fact which struck Bartholomew the hardest; instead, it was the calm acceptance that Hope reacted with, as if he understood and accepted the people’s hatred and fear of him.
As if he deserved it.
Bartholomew was at a loss for what to do.
“Hope,” the man tried to wheedle this morning, feeling like he was failing spectacularly as a father with every word, “It’s Valentine’s Day. Shouldn’t you at least phone up Elida? I’m sure she’d want to hear from you and know you’re alright.”
“She doesn’t want to hear from me.” The teen said; not sad, not hateful... just stating a fact. He didn’t even look up from his reading. “She wants to hear from Kai, but Kai’s not around anymore.”
That was another strained subject. With the amount of deaths after the Battle in Eden, there was no one left unaffected by events. Everyone lost someone... even Hope and his small amount of friends. But it was a day he didn’t want his son to spend alone, especially since he had work to get to within the hour and leaving Hope with no one there (Nora had typically been the one to celebrate the holiday with their son) didn’t sit right with him.
But what could he say to make up for the absence? What could be done?
“Alright.” Bartholomew finally gave him several awkward seconds later, reaching to pat his son on the shoulder lightly. “Just... don’t study too hard today, Hope.”
It wasn’t what Nora would have said; she would have encouraged their son to go out and play, to take his work from him so that he would talk to her without interruptions, and then wheedle smiles and laughter from their usually taciturn child. But Bartholomew was not Nora, no matter how much he missed and loved her, and even knew what she would do. He didn’t have the tact nor the words to do what Nora did. All he could do was comfort in his own distant manner.
He excused himself with the sound of the doorbell, going to answer the door.
There was no one outside. At least no one who could have possibly rung the bell. Instead, placed very carefully at the doorway, was a single red rose... wrapped generously in a red, velvet ribbon and tied off to form an elaborate bow.
Bartholomew felt as if his throat had gotten thick, his voice stuck as he bent to pick up the rose. He remembered the ribbon, of course. He and Nora had fussed over it yearly, discussing late into the night whether it was dangerous or not for their child to be receiving Valentine gifts like that at so young an age, with her going so far as to suggest hiring investigators to find who the culprit was. They never had, when the gifts appeared to stop. They had been so relieved.
Now, though...
Not want him there, huh? The older man chuckled lightly under his breath as he closed the front door behind him to deliver the gift to his son, suddenly glad for this person out there who had at first caused him so much distress.
There was still one person out there who kept their fondness for Hope outside of those involved with the l'Cie.
Fifteen, Hope decided, was a difficult age. Not that any age seemed easy, but fifteen was especially difficult for him when he had managed to help save most of the world at fourteen. Now what would he do? It didn’t feel right to just sit back and do nothing when everyone else seemed busier than ever. All he had left was his studying, and even that had grown tedious quickly enough.
He felt, and thought he was old enough to say it, tired. He wanted to do more than he could, but at the same time felt far too small to do anything right. Not enough knowledge, not enough experience... he only managed to grasp half of things most of the time. Could explain portions, but would need other information to be shared with him. It was a difficult transition, and Hope absolutely despised it. He hated knowing just enough to grasp the basics but still be schooled by everyone else. He hated that everyone still treated him like a child regardless of what he had accomplished by fourteen. He hated when people treated him like an adult when he missed the protection and security he felt as a child.
There was no good compromise. Nothing that he could do, or even that others could do, that could satisfy. He missed his mother sorely, and even his father when the man was gone. He missed bickering with friends, and hated walking down a street and listening to people talk and laugh with each other; all of them slowly but surely healing from the catastrophe over a year ago.
Sazh and Dajh had disappeared from the radar, and Hope still wasn’t sure whether that was intentional or if there were other forces behind it. Snow was always out on patrols, and his dad was more often than not in meetings and organizing a new society for the inhabitants of Gran Pulse.
That left Hope alone most of the time, not even with tutors but computerized lesson plans that he would complete one after one with nothing else to interest him.
Well... not nothing.
He peeked from behind the curtains of his house again, just for another moment, before letting the heavy fabric fall back into place. It was Valentine’s Day, and...
He wasn’t nervous, per say. It was just that he had expected to be disappointed last year and hadn’t been, and now with that one strange constant in his life, Hope didn’t want that to disappear on him as well. He just wanted to know... wanted to know if this mysterious gifter would finally abandon him, after all. Kai was gone, Elida wasn’t speaking with him, his mother was... gone as well, and the way his father had reacted last year when he had brought in the rose spoke volumes about just how it hadn’t been his parents.
That meant there was someone else out there that took a notice to him, and someone else who not only stayed with him his entire life, but still cared. And he wanted to know who it was. Wanted to speak to them and thank them and maybe yell at them and just — he just wanted to get to know this person.
He wanted...
Hope wasn’t sure. It was a funny feeling, to be certain. He was older now, and much smarter and aware than he had been as a child. Maybe it was due to Lightning’s brief tutelage, but Hope was finally turning over the years in his mind to garner clues that he hadn’t noticed there before. The notes he had gotten had all been printed. Not written. Even the notes that had teased him and warned him away from finding the gift giver had been printed, despite him spontaneously coming up with ideas.
The person knew whenever he tried to find them. Knew, and could anticipate (or predict) his actions. Someone who knew him well, then? Hope wasn’t sure who that could be. It wasn’t as if he were close with many people throughout his life.
He checked through the curtains again, and this time jumped up from the couch as he saw a delivery man approaching, pulling his hat firmly over his hair and ears before throwing opening the door long before the man could knock, startling the guy.
“Uhh.” The delivery man held up a package uncertainly. “Mail for Hope Estheim?”
“That’s me,” Hope replied as cheerily as possible, although he felt more jittery than anything else. Mail? He was used to packages delivered when he least expected it, not through someone else.
The delivery man certainly didn’t look like he approved; probably thought Hope was far too young to be ordering anything. But really, he wasn’t young at all; Hope was just waiting on that growth spurt, that was all…
(What he had forgotten about was how the central heating unit had broken down not two days ago and Hope had insisted on being the one to fix it rather than let his dad call someone in, but that was taking longer than he thought it would since the mechanics were fascinating and he hadn’t even known it contained such complicated programming and —
It was just that the house was still very cold and that meant sweaters and scarves and hats and thick socks and maybe the oversized colorful fish print flannel pajamas that, combined, made Hope look a little young to be home by himself.)
“Sign here,” The man instructed, and Hope did so, script wobbly with anticipation as he finally got the package (heavier than he expected), and waved the man goodbye before shutting the door behind him.
There wasn’t a return address, not that he had expected one. That would have been far too easy. Hope ripped off the tape on the box and reached inside past the package peanuts to find the familiar red box wrapped in red velvet ribbon.
“Gotcha,” He whispered softly, smiling despite himself. It had come this year as well. The box was small and filled with only three chocolates, and he set that down curiously to rummage through the rest of the box. Why send an entire box when the bit of chocolates could have just been placed on his doorstep?
He hit the jackpot after a few seconds, and used both hands to pull out a heavy snow globe, this one much bigger than the small one he had received previously, depicting that very same futuristic city, but this time with the crystallized pillar of Cocoon in the background and... what looked like another large sphere in the works? It was on the ground, though, not in the air, and settled firmly behind the beautiful city.
Hope shook at the snow globe curiously, and then set it down on the ground where he watched as the white flakes whirled around and slowly settled.
Maybe... maybe he would show his father this. A new city on Gran Pulse was exactly what people needed.
“ — Hope!”
The teenager turned with a curious hum, blinking as his father waved at him from the next room. Hope had recently been slowly taking over his father’s study, which had been just fine with Bartholomew who was away more and more with work and securing contracts to construct the newly proposed Academy. It would take a while yet before the whole thing went off the ground, but they were making good progress, and Bartholomew had already drawn up plans on where he wanted the institute located.
Lately, Hope had been busy with both his studies and drawing out plans for Academia — the city that his father wanted to build. He had sketched and re-sketched on his computers just how the city should be constructed, as whimsical as it felt. He was fairly certain that people wouldn’t take his winding roads and levels seriously, but it was a hobby to construct those roads and watch how they looked on his 3D imaging program. It was a good way to relieve stress after the days he got fed up with his studies.
Studies that, he had been assured, he was progressing much faster in than other kids. He was now sixteen and taking courses on theoretical physics and advanced quantum mechanics. But it was his electives that interested him the most — mythologies and religions of Gran Pulse, archaeology, and even architecture. He’d have to choose a subject and interest for his thesis soon, but...
His father looked rather pleased from where was approaching. “You’ve got mail, Hope.”
“Mail?” He didn’t mean to sound so absentminded, and shook his head to clear his own thoughts before focusing on his father again. “Me?”
“You forgot the date again, didn’t you?” His father looked amused.
Hope hadn’t forgotten; not entirely. He knew enough to know that it wasn’t his birthday, or even his father’s. It wasn’t the anniversary of the Purge, or that of the Fall. It was late winter still, with the chill heavy in the air despite being inside.
“No?” He responded, uncertain and still shaking equations and theorems from his head. “I don’t think so?”
Why would he receive mail? All his assignments were done electronically, and he had very little communications from people now that Snow had disappeared as well. At first he had been extremely worried, agitated and bursting with the need to follow up and find out what happened to the other ex-l’Cie, but his father had convinced him that the best way to solve the problem was to arm himself with more knowledge first. Finish his studies, learn as much as he could, and then perhaps he would come to understand what was happening.
It felt like a shallow promise, but at least it was a promise.
His father laughed, and put down a package in front of him on his desk. “Happy Valentine’s, son. It seems like your secret admirer has struck again.”
It was the same colored box and soft ribbon, and Hope startled to realize that yes, he had forgotten about the day. He thought there were still weeks until the holiday, not —
There was a thread of old excitement that stirred as he fingered the ribbon, and he barely heard his father excuse himself back to work, leaving Hope with some space to open the present himself. Eleven years of presents, and Hope smiled as he tugged on the ribbon, feeling warm and pleased as he opened the lid of the box —
It took him a moment of staring before he registered was he was seeing and the slammed the lid down again, this time with his cheeks flushed a deep red as he shoved the box under his desk and then kicked it to the wall, out of view.
(At dinner, he stammered his way out of answering when his father asked curiously what he had gotten as a present this year.)
At seventeen, Hope had learned his lesson and marked off his calendar early to make sure no one intercepted the present. Whether it was because he was suspicious as to if the person would accidentally open the box or whether it was because he was suspicious as to what was inside the box, Hope hadn’t be able to tell.
But it was just —
He flushed deeply again at the memory of utter mortification that day a year ago. It was weeks before he dared to look into the box again, but...
Well. He looked away from his holographic monitors briefly to glance toward the front door. He was mostly done with his thesis, and the past year had been... turbulent, to say the least. Enlightening? With the discovery of the Oracle Drive and Serah’s disappearance as well and the idea of prophetic visions and time travel, of all things...
Time travel. That's what he had heard from Team NORA. He didn’t know if he believed in it, if he should let himself believe in it. If it was true, if it was possible, then things could be so very different. It could mean that things could be changed for the better.
With the paradoxes and disturbances appearing everywhere on Gran Pulse and Cocoon, Hope wasn’t sure what to think. It would explain all the disappearances. At the same time, it explained nothing at all. If such a thing were possible, why wouldn’t someone else have already gone back and fixed everything? Or was it possible but not yet accomplished? Did that mean it was possible to unlock the secrets of time travel within his lifetime? What if something had already been changed and he didn’t even know it?
It was just a bit challenging to relate his thesis with all the things that couldn’t be proven. The Oracle Drive could tell the future, but to what end? Prophecies were either a foretelling or self-fulfilling wish, after all. It was hard to tell one from the other when the moment you know what’s going to happen in the future.
...But no. Valentine’s Day. He told himself he’d take a day away from his studying and his work, because it was a day that he wanted to save for a semblance of normality. A link to his past, his childhood, and the memories of happier times. He had spent a good while debating with himself as to whether he wanted to trace where the gifts had come from. Did he?
What if he was disappointed somehow?
Hope didn’t think he would be, though. He could only admit to himself in his thoughts that he wanted nothing more than the attention that had been afforded to him through the gifts. It didn’t matter to him who it was behind the presents — he wanted to meet someone who cared enough about him to send them.
He wanted...
It was a dull ache in his chest, a welcome ache, knowing that despite everything that happened and no matter how many people still blamed him for the downfall of Cocoon (which was, luckily, less and less each year as the truth became common knowledge)... there was still someone out there who cared.
Someone who — he turned red again at the thought of last year’s present. Well. He had a fairly good idea that whoever it was, they were certainly... interested? In him. Or at the very least...
The doorbell had him scrambling from his seat and racing toward the door, making sure to overtake his father, who had poked his head from the kitchen in amusement.
“Manners!” Bartholomew called out to remind him just as Hope threw the door open. It threw the teen in a loop enough that he startled the delivery girl outside the door.
“Uh!” The girl in question squeaked, looking mousy and timid as she held the box toward him. Hope found a note of satisfaction that he was just the slightest bit taller than the girl. It wasn’t often that he got to be taller than other people. “Package for Hope Estheim?”
“That’s me,” he breathed out, and then remembered: “Thanks.”
He signed for the package (the action so familiar to him now) and thanked her again before giving a polite wave as she walked away, closing the door behind him gently and belaying his impatience to know what had been sent to him this year.
“Am I allowed to see it this time?” His father called from the kitchen, to which Hope responded with a quick and loud negative (that didn’t sound like a petulant teenager at all, if he could say so himself) before racing for his room, his work and thoughts of work entirely forgotten as he slammed the door shut to ensure that his dad wouldn’t ‘accidentally’ push the door open.
Honestly. Hope was fairly certain that it was his father’s way of slowly pestering him out of the house — or maybe that was just the way of parents, that when their kids neared adulthood, they’d do their best to shove their way back into their children’s lives. It would explain how many teens were eager to move out when they came of age, if only to get away from the constant smothering.
Besides. If the gift was anything like the year previous, Hope didn’t want his dad seeing it at all.
Carefully, and so very tentatively this time, Hope placed the box on his bed before digging his fingers under the tape to pry the sticky adhesive off, managing to pull off a strip of the cardboard along with it. The first thing he saw as he lifted the flaps of the box was a thick, white card: much bigger than the business sized cards from before, but more like a greeting card, folded in half so that it would stand by itself with the familiar golden font stretched across the surface.
Never forget, the words were elegantly printed. You are important.
The words continued on the inside of the card: Don’t doubt yourself. Don’t hesitate.
The words were so familiar to him, and Hope brought the card to his lips, feeling the thick parchment against his skin. Don’t hesitate, huh? Like it not being a matter of can or can’t?
Minutes later, when he finally tossed the thoughts of familiarity off, he rummaged through the rest of the little package to pull out the familiar wrapped red box of chocolates, with it’s soft, velvet ribbon.
Later on, he tried to share half his chocolates with his father, but Bartholomew just laughed and insisted that Hope have all of them, and smiled gently over the card that his son showed him and reminded him that those words were irrevocably true.
His eighteenth birthday came and went with little fuss: Bartholomew had taken the day off work and switched off his phone so that he could spend the day with his son, delegating all Academy information to Rydgea for the day, as ill prepared as the military man was for the role. There was very little fuss, and Hope worked on finishing up his thesis the rest of the year, meandering through various digs and archaeological sites in order to get the final details ready for revision. Any additional facts, or anything at all that he could find in the dig sites to help him provide support for his paper was greedily grasped at.
Hope had been due to be home by Valentine’s, as per tradition for the past several years, but the weather on Gran Pulse was fierce and unpredictable, and an unexpected snowstorm had managed to halt all the train lines going from the Paddrean ruins back to any semblance of civilization, never mind back to the still little known small town that was being built to be the new city Academia.
He had sulked, perhaps more than he should have for his age. Hope was an adult now, decently taller than the girls around him even if he didn’t quite match most of the men yet. It was just... he wanted to get the usual present on Valentine’s Day.
His sulking just seemed to make people around him smile knowingly whenever he commented that he wanted to try and make it home as soon as possible, even if he was fairly certain they didn’t actually know anything about why he wanted to get back.
With the delays, Hope decided he would just stay in the room that he had rented for the rest of the day rather than wait every minute for the train that wouldn’t come for at least the next two days.
Valentine’s Day, he thought vaguely as he stared blearily at the computer terminals, was a disaster this year. At this rate, he’d have to call up his father and make sure he didn’t open the present. Or look at it. Or anything of that sort.
He wondered how he was supposed to phrase that, though. Politely.
Hope was reaching for his phone when there was a knock on his door, and he looked up curiously. He was fairly certain there was no one here who could possibly need his attention today, especially when he had scheduled everything here to be done before Valentine’s.
He stood from his chair and padded quietly over to the door, opening it just a crack to be greeted with the overwhelming scent of flowers.
“Delivery!” Came a cheerful female voice. “Valentine’s delivery for Hope?”
Bewildered, Hope opened the door wider. “...That’s me?”
The girl startled, and then squinted at him over the large armful of red roses. It took a few moments before Hope realized that she had expected a girl behind the door... likely because of the flowers and because of the name. But she seemed to brighten up fast enough as she moved to shove the flowers into his arms.
“Oh, good.” She said cheerily. “I was beginning to think I might have gotten the wrong room. These are for you!”
The bouquet was insanely large — there must have been three, four dozen roses at the very least; all tied together with thick wraps of red velvet. Hope nearly staggered not under the weight, but under the sheer amount of flowers, wondering just how the delivery girl managed to carry that to his room and still be able to see where she was going. It was ridiculous and completely impractical.
So why was it that he felt so... pleased?
“Who sent this?” He asked, not having to fake how bewildered he was.
“You don’t know?” The girl sounded surprised. “Huh. Guess you’ve got a secret admirer, then! Someone’s really crushing on you, the way I see it.”
Crush was one term for it. He wasn’t sure it was a term he would have used. Hope had seen crushes before when he was younger, and it usually involved a lot of whispering and confrontations and then crying. It didn’t have the years of courtship, the knowing words, or the persistence to always keep him upright.
It wasn’t a crush, he thought. It was a pillar of his stability.
He had never met the person, of that he was certain. And sometimes, like now, he wondered if he ever would. If anything, wouldn’t it have been opportune to meet now that he was eighteen? Hope just wanted to know, to see and understand with a need that had been driving him for years. He hadn’t pried, hadn’t chased after the mystery as had been asked of him, but it was making him antsy. He didn’t like the feeling of being kept in the dark.
“Don’t look like that!” The girl said, having noticed his expression. “Cheer up, it’s Valentine’s and you’ve just got the biggest bouquet I’ve ever delivered in my life. It should be flattering!”
It was. Flattering. Hope managed a small smile at the delivery girl, who perked up again at his attitude change (or at least his small attempt toward it), and thanked her, leaving her a tip before she went off again, whistling this time.
There wasn’t a card with the roses, but there didn’t need to be when it was wrapped with the same velvet red ribbon. Two thoughts concerned him.
Just how had his admirer known that he would be stuck here in the ruins?
And.
How in the world was he supposed to get this home without drawing an embarrassing amount of attention?
Hope had been far too busy to bother checking a calendar by the time he was nineteen. After having submitted his thesis and then having it picked apart by the newly formed Academy was nothing short of hair-raising. He hadn’t felt so put on the spot ever since he was a l’Cie, but when the board finally finished examining his findings and actually formed a department just for the research on time paradoxes and how the Oracle Drive could help identify them... Hope had been ecstatic. Ecstatic and terrified, especially when they asked him to lead the new department.
He couldn’t lead... could he? Hope didn’t actually have enough experience with people to tell someone what to do, much less order them around like he was their boss. Who would actually listen to him? He was — he still preferred his own computers and blasting meaningless music in headphones while he worked. He tended to toe off his shoes and pull his legs up onto the chair and lean too close to holographic monitors and not turn the lights on when he should. He had grown a few more inches in the past year and felt gangly... stretched and clumsy with a tendency of tripping over thin air if he didn’t pay enough attention to his steps.
None of that was leader material. Just because he had written the thesis...
“You’ll be fine.” His father continued to reassure him, although with less open amusement at his nervousness now that they were within the central building of Academia, still being built. The walls were tall and beautiful already, and the actual Academy a wonder to behold. It was all gleaming steel and polished floors, reminiscent of Eden but with its own unique flair. Solid and reliable rather than epherescent.
Hope was dragging his feet behind his father as they toured the newly built laboratories, watching as people nodded and tested each piece of equipment; as eager participants showed them around and demonstrated just what the Academy had to offer.
As if Hope didn’t already know.
“And your office,” The guide continued, as eager as ever. “Is just through the hall this way!”
That certainly startled Hope out of his thoughts. Office? He didn’t feel old enough to have an office. He tried to catch his father’s attention and wave off the excess that was being offered to him, but rather than take his side on this, Bartholomew looked smug.
This, Hope thought with faint distress, wasn’t exactly what he imagined would happen when he applied to the Academy, wanting nothing more than to contribute to his father’s work.
The hall was long and brightly lit, still smelling a bit of fresh paint and steel, of cables and electricity. The door at the end of the hall might have been plain looking, but it was made of thick wood as opposed to the normal steel doors, and looked beyond luxurious. Too much so for someone with no prior experience and still in his teens. It certainly didn’t feel right to him; too much too quickly. It was, Hope thought, enough that it actually made him feel bad.
“There are a few supervisors who need to go over the final details,” the guide continued to ramble, entirely unaware of the unease. “And outside of several more experienced researchers, you’ll be allowed to assemble a team of your own. The department is new yet, and we’ll need fresh perspectives to make this work —”
The guide opened the door to usher them in, and while he should have noticed the spacious room with the stylish desk and holographic surfaces boasting the latest and greatest in technology, Hope’s eyes were drawn to the splash of color at the edge of the room.
“That’s not supposed to be there.” Was the guide’s only exclamation of surprise as Hope headed toward the splash of red.
He had forgotten, in the midst of his nervousness and excitement from the acceptance of his thesis as something more than the delusional words of some crazy teenager who once nearly destroyed the whole world. It hadn’t felt as... important, and he couldn’t get over it now. How could he have forgotten? It had been such an important factor in his life for so long, and had gone on to give him courage through some very dark years.
Seeing the bouquet of roses and box of chocolates now, he felt altogether too adult. Nineteen and Hope managed to push aside all frivolities of childhood.
Including things that had made him happy.
He ran a hand over the petals of a rose, and then over the ribbon tying it together, easily imagining the softness underneath his gloves. There is another white card propped up next to the chocolates, script gold and glimmering as he picked it up to read through it.
Congratulations.
I knew you could do it.
“I swear,” The guide was still speaking the background, sounding surprised. “That wasn’t here when we last inspected this place. We don’t let just anyone into our sites, you know. We have excellent security systems, even if... well.”
His father was murmuring something in the background as well; reassurances, most likely, but Hope wasn’t paying much attention to that. Instead, he was wondering about the person who kept sending the gifts. It was a little strange to think that he had been getting them since he was five, and this would be fourteen years now. Just who was that person?
And to be able to get into the newly instated Academy and their defences...
The mystery deepens.
The next few years are a blur to Hope.
Well, not really. He recounts it all with astonishing detail, his mind honed from day after day of mental challenges, and often surprised himself with the amount he had learned from the moment he had taken the job at the Academy. They hadn’t been kidding about needing to be at the pinnacle of human skill. His studying prior to joining the Academy felt more like lazing about when compared to the hours that he pulled with other researchers.
For a long while, Hope was able to forget about the missing pieces in his life and throw himself wholeheartedly into his work. More than that, he was able to find people who had the same drive and motivation as him. The same interests, and same goals. It was almost scary to be able to speak to someone and not be afraid of messing up his words or having the other person hate him for some reason inexplicable to him.
Being at the Academy meant that everyone’s goals were the same: create a better future for mankind. Anything else, and every other difference, could be pushed to the background. It didn’t matter that he was an ex-l’Cie or that he had mostly been homeschooled since the Fall. It didn’t matter that he had a harder time talking to people about personal things, because most of the time, they spoke of work and science and things that Hope didn’t feel he had a disadvantage in.
Valentine’s becomes a regular occurrence after the first time at the Academy, enough that people don’t quite question where the sudden flowers and chocolates came from, and also know exactly who they’re for. If it was a subject of gossip, the scientists were normally too polite to mention it where Hope could overhear them.
Normally.
There were a few times...
But then, those were few and far in-between. Hope had assumed, prematurely, that it would remind him of the gossip he had been through in his childhood, where people were virulent and vehement about wanting to know things they had no right to be privy to, but for the most part, those in the Academy had been rather... polite about it. If they were curious, they would ask.
It became a thing for Hope to receive presents for Valentine's every year in the Academy, and people eventually found out that even Hope didn't know who the presents were from. There were various delivery services, all of whom denied knowing who was sending the flowers. Anonymous admirers, was the common consensus. Hope Estheim had someone sending him Valentines each year, and it was someone both dedicated and persistent.
That information led to an unforeseen circumstance where women would smile at him in hallways, looking misty-eyed for some strange reason. It made, Hope realized, looking for any sort of relationship outside of strictly professional parameters, nigh impossible.
That said, it didn't mean that there weren't any uncomfortable situations once in awhile. Uncomfortable situations that more likely than not involved a certain Alyssa Zaidelle, who had taken the fact that Hope's 'admirer' refused to reveal themselves as an open invitation.
An invitation to what, Hope never understood.
There were no more spectacular gifts, or at least the kind that he had gotten in his childhood. No more books on mythology or science or art, even though Hope had worked hard to be proficient in those subjects. He found that the gifter had left a sizeable impression on his life. Now, there were notes of encouragement and (Hope flushed thinking about it) professions of love and devotion.
At least it was... Modest and safe for work. Nothing like his sixteenth year.
(That one still embarrassed him to think about, despite all the years.)
His life, as strange as it sounded, became... somewhat normal. Normal in that there was that daily routine, and that daily trial and error. He knew what he was going to do, he knew what was going to happen, and for the longest time Hope found himself content with the schedules he built around himself and with the predictability of his days. Sometimes it was hard, mostly because he couldn't understand how progress was going so slowly. It was understandable for a world just getting back on its feet after disaster, as well as how slow progress went to begin with, but for some reason he expected it to go faster.
For the most part, Hope was happy with how the Academy was progressing. But sometimes he couldn't help but be frustrated over the fact that it had already been so many years and he had managed absolutely no progress on getting Fang and Vanille back; on finding Lightning. That the people dear to him were still gone despite all his work and all that the Academy managed to do. No matter how much progress and how many accomplishments, he was still so... Powerless.
It wasn't right that they sacrificed so much, all of them, and that he would be the only one who could live peacefully. But no matter what he did, or how much he wanted to be with them and put in his portion of sacrifice, Hope couldn't seem to figure out how.
As such, Valentine’s Day got pushed to the side in favor of attempts to push science as much as he dared, attempting to find the meaning as to why he had been left behind. There had to be one, right? And when Alyssa told him that she had seen Serah with someone else, that she theorized they were travelling through time... he felt his want solidify into a need. The Oracle Drive was one thing, but to be able to change events in the past in order to create a better future... that was another thing altogether.
It was something Hope could aspire to, even if he had no idea where to start on a project like that. How do you do the impossible?
Hope dreamt of a happier time, a non-existent time, where he surprises his mother with a call in the morning to tell her that he had gotten the day off to spend with her on her birthday, or that Vanille would visit the Academy regularly to skip down the halls and embarrass him in front of everyone by coming up behind him and covering his eyes for childish games. Serah and Snow would have started the giant family they wanted, and he and Dajh would be the ones roped into babysitting when Lightning needed to rid her hands of children from time to time (which was more frequently than she would admit). They’re good dreams, and he wonders if that might have happened in another lifetime.
Another dream he has regards a darkened sky, Fenrir cutting off the light and lamps settled across the ground to keep people safe from monsters that would suddenly appear in the darkness. It happens frequently now, completely inexplicable to modern science: that creatures could appear from (what he theorized were) paradoxes in time.
It was fascinating, and despite the tragedies it incurred everyday, made the thought of time travel feasible. What if he could utilize that energy? Harness it? It shouldn’t be possible, but it was.
But then that dream ends, and Hope would attempt to grasp at wisps before it faded away and he forgot all the details.
When he was twenty-four, he decided that he had to know what the dreams of darkness were about. Fenrir was not supposed to create an eclipse until hundreds of years into the future, and even then, it would only be visible from a small area... the Paddrean ruins.
Alyssa didn’t understand. She didn’t know why he had to visit the site and why he lingered despite the fact that his work back in Academia was far more important than whatever little he could find and confirm out in the digs. There had been a time when Hope would go to all the archaeological digs, but that had been back when he was a teenager. As the Director of Academy Research now, he was too important to be sent off for a week looking through old manuscripts and findings.
He didn’t understand why he was out there, either. It was a — gut feeling. Intuition of a kind he rarely had. Hope worked with facts and theorems, not instincts and magic anymore.
(Perhaps, once upon a time, he would have gone down a different road; but not in this world.)
The gut feeling paid off when he met up with Serah and her time travelling companion — Noel. It was one thing to read on the files about time travelling, but quite another to see it with his own eyes. Serah hadn’t aged a bit since... seven years ago. It was startling.
It was frightening. The knowledge that Noel provided, the young man having come from a distant and bleak future where mankind had faced their extinction, meant that Hope had a new goal to strive for. If no one had come to get him yet from the future, it meant that technology devising a method of traveling back into the past and changing things may never have occurred... or that no one had the future to devise one. The first thing Hope had to do was ensure that mankind had a future. And then he could worry about why he wasn’t allowed to change the past (since that was the second theory — if time travel had been unveiled by the Academy, then maybe his contributions and history was a fixed point that people were not allowed to change).
Meeting Serah and Noel ignited a flame within him for answers, for more knowledge in subjects he had previously not given a second thought about. What kind of future were they preventing? From what he had seen, Cocoon could crash into Gran Pulse and end most life on both planets. But what else? It was jarring to finally be given information like that, and even worse to know that everyone else seemed to play a key part... Serah had come back from her travels before to quietly inform him that she had seen Snow and that he was still alive, and he stood there awkwardly as she covered her face within her hands and wept for the future that they most likely wouldn’t have because Snow had gone and done something stupid, something heroic, again. Noel had come back once to tell him they met Sazh’s projection in a snowy ruin, and that the man was with his son somewhere in time.
Everyone... everyone else had such a purpose. Hope kept his eyes downcast whenever he was given new bits of information like that, information he would have cried over just a few years ago. He couldn’t yet face Serah’s sadness, nor Noel’s strange and sympathetic tone. They had such hardships to face, he didn’t understand why they would take the time to bring such information to him.
Lightning was fighting in the timeless place of Valhalla. Snow was once again saving the world and defying fate. Sazh was... well, he was on an adventure looking for his son (although Hope didn’t envy him that — he knew the other man well enough to understand what Sazh wanted more was to settle down somewhere stable to raise Dajh), Fang and Vanille had sacrificed everything to save the people of Cocoon, and even Serah was journeying through time in order to save the future. Hope was... he was...
Years of thinking like that, of wondering in the back of his mind why he had been left behind, was pushed aside with a new vehemence as he decided, demanded, his own place in history. If he had been left behind, then he would make up a purpose to being left behind. He couldn’t let his imaginings take him away any more. He wasn’t a child. He couldn’t keep clinging to a past that would never change, or wonder about things that he doubted he would ever get an answer to.
What little proof he had to go on were in the Oracle Drives (not solid proof) and in Serah and Noel’s words (also not solid proof). He would have to focus on something else and leave the time traveling to people who could actually do it. It was hard to admit to himself that maybe this thing... this was out of his reach entirely because he hadn’t been chosen to it, rather than because he hadn’t worked hard enough.
(It was hard to leave behind that ideology that if someone worked hard enough, anything was possible. A childish dream, maybe.)
“You going to be okay?” Noel asked before he and Serah left once again, and Hope felt a surge of confusion by the familiarity in the tone. Time travel, as it had been explained by Serah’s desperate words, meant that they had meant him before already in another timeline. Hope wondered if it was anything like any of his dreams, or if there were just so many tangents that he couldn’t fathom what they had gone through. Perhaps they had met a hundred times before; a thousand. Perhaps even the time travelers didn’t know the extent of their own wanderings because it may have been erased from even them. If they weren’t the only ones to change time, then would they know if their own time had been changed?
Hope had no idea how many times they had met before. All he knew was this once.
All he would know was one lifetime. It was up to him to make it a memorable one.
That Valentine’s Day, members of Team Alpha laughed as they felt their young leader’s embarrassment radiate from him as the stories of a ring and a cheeky letter consisting of ‘this is a promise we'll meet again’ circulated around the Academy.
Hope’s glare was rendered ineffective by the redness of his cheeks.
End part 2.