[FFXIII] Resemblance (3088 words)

[shamera]

Title: Resemblance
Fandom: Final Fantasy XIII
Character/Pairing(s): Bartholomew Estheim, Hope Estheim
Rating: PG
Warning: actually a little dark emotionally.
Summary: Some days, Bartholomew Estheim couldn't stand to look at his son.

Some days, Bartholomew Estheim couldn’t stand to look at his son.

It had once been a great source of amusement to him and his wife when Hope was little, that the boy looked so much like Nora. He had joked with her one night on the couch after Hope had gone to bed, the two of them sitting there with glasses of wine and an ignored movie in the background, that had he not known any better, he would have claimed Hope to just be Nora’s son and not his. The boy certainly took after her in just about every way, almost as if Nora had managed to clone herself but change the gender of the child.

It was easier as Hope grew older and started developing that sense of style kids in Cocoon liked to claim, with gelled hair and colorful clothes. That was less like Nora, who was always wore subtle colors and never bothered with appearances so much. And Bartholomew would look at his wife and smile, knowing that although he couldn’t spend as much time with his family as he wanted to, she was beautiful and patient and would teach their son how to be a good person in place of him.

Being rarely home meant that the moments he did manage to spend with his family were precious, and Nora’s smiles all the brighter when he was gifted with them.

He never thought he would lose her smile.

And there was no time to breathe, no time to properly grieve. He didn’t think he would ever be able to properly grieve had he all the time in the world. From the moment he heard about the Purge, Bartholomew had done everything in his power to look for his family again — taken time from work, hired investigators, stayed home on the off-chance — just in case — Nora and Hope would make their way home. Nora was cunning, after all. He never managed to win an argument against her; surely she would be able to convince the soldiers guarding Bodhum that neither she nor Hope were Pulse l’Cie. At the very least, he knew, she would get Hope home. And then Bartholomew would go after her, his beloved Nora. He’s chase and find her and rescue her because that’s what he would do, because she was his life and heart and the reason he worked so hard each day away from home. To give her and Hope a good life.

He had worried and fretted and scoffed when the news said that the Purge trains made it to Pulse. He had packed his things, ready to move there himself — to follow his family to hell, when the private investigator he hired pulled him aside to tell him that the trains never made it past the Hanging Edge.

That Nora and Hope were most likely dead.

Bartholomew refused to believe it. He shouted and threw items and ordered the investigator out of his house, crashing things to the ground and raging like he never had before… not since before Hope had been born, not before he met Nora. And for an hour after the rattled investigator made a hasty exit, Bartholomew had cried in his large and empty house, realizing that he had been the one to make it large and empty. He had been the one who wanted to give his family bigger, better things — never realizing that they never really needed it. He wanted the best for Nora so that she could live her life in luxury and relaxation, and the best for Hope so that his son would never lack for anything. The best clothes, the best home, the best school…

All of it. Wasted.

Instead, he should have taken the time off like Nora had requested. Gone with them on this simple vacation to see fireworks. Before Hope started high school, she had told him with a laugh and a gentle hand on his arm to keep his attention, before his interests were diverted to girls and being cool and growing up. Before, before, before. She had been the perceptive one. He should have just followed her advice, and gone with things before, before. Instead, he had always seen the after. After high school, Hope would go to college. They would need to save the money for that —

Wasted.

He cleaned up the mess of broken glasses and pictures before the doorbell rang again and Bartholomew rushed to the door, his movements wild and desperate, praying that beyond everything, it was his family back again. That Nora and Hope would be standing at the door with tired smiles and say that they had managed to talk sense into the soldiers. It would be just like Nora, too —

Except it wasn’t them. It had been his secretary, tired and worn and concerned for his well-being since he stopped answering his business line and she had left him messages every hour for the past day before regarding the extremely important meeting coming up with his investors.

He had slammed the door in her face, unable to deal with the matter without wanting to scream at her face that meetings like that weren’t important, that nothing in the world was important next to the matter of his family, and why hadn’t he figured that out before all of this happened, so that he could have spent more time with them, instead of promises promises promises that he had broken. So that he could have gone with them to Bodhum to watch the fireworks, and perhaps have seen the happy shine in his wife’s beautiful pale green eyes as he held her under the bursting lights and promised her all over again that he would be there to take care of her for the rest of their lives. He put off their vacations for a meeting, one of so many that he had to attend day after day. Meetings could be delayed and replaced. Nora couldn’t!

So when the news of l’Cie in Palumpolum had come, Bartholomew had to bite down the hard sting of irony. Perhaps they had come for him, so that he could join his wife and son. The Sanctum would of course Purge Palumpolum as well, and then perhaps he would go where his wife and son had gone. It wasn’t until he caught the glimpse of silver-white hair on the emergency broadcast regarding the status of the l’Cie dangers in Cocoon that his heart had sped up.

Nora!

But no. After hearing the rush of blood ringing through his ears, he realized that the figure on the screen, barely visible behind a pink-haired woman, was too small to be his wife. Was wearing brighter colors, even if the clothes looked dirtied and worn in a way he would never have allowed of his family. It was Hope, even if the defeated posture didn’t look like his son’s. Hope was always too headstrong, too willing to speak his mind and argue to be that figure huddling on the screen. He had always been a little too vain for worn clothing, and Nora had indulged him shamelessly, only too happy to dress her son up in new clothes all the time. Even when he had been slouched and sulking, Hope had been able to draw his father’s attention from across the house. Perhaps he was biased, but Hope always had the presence that he was sure would develop into a charisma Bartholomew himself never quite had when the child grew up.

But Hope — Hope was alive! And as much as Bartholomew wanted to be out in the streets, searching for his son, for that elusive glimpse of silver hair and nearly blindingly orange and yellow clothes, he knew the best place to find his son would just be… at home.

The wait was grueling, even as Bartholomew distracted himself by clearing the house of debris and all the smaller bits that he had broken in his fit of anger. He lingered over photos of his family, where Hope stood sullen in front of his parents, where Bartholomew had his back straight and faced the camera dutifully, while Nora was the only one who smiled.

And soon enough, his doorbell went off once more.

—

Seeing Cocoon like that — gleaming in the harsh sunlight of Pulse, made Bartholomew’s heart race with fear. While the visage was beautiful, he was looking at the safe home provided to humanity for the last thousand years. Looking at it from a world filled with dangers.

Everything was different now. He would have to build a new life for him and his son (and thank goodness, thank goodness he didn’t lose Hope during all this as well, because he knew exactly what happened to l’Cie and despaired over the fact the past several days. If his son wasn’t captured and killed by the Sanctum, then there would be a good chance that he would run out of time and become Cie’th. Bartholomew barely dared during those dark days to believe that his son and the makeshift group of strangers accumulated along the journey would actually be able to complete their Focus. The impossible Focus.

Looking at the planet now, looking at Cocoon… it was undeniable proof that they managed the impossible. And more than that, when Bartholomew thought of the best case scenario being his son frozen in time as crystal for the rest of eternity, he had already been preparing to sort through his grief on the matter. He hadn’t expected to see Hope running his direction minutes within his airship’s rough landing on the planet below. The truth of the matter was that Bartholomew rationalized never seeing his son again after the group of l’Cie left his destroyed home in Palumpolum.

His destroyed home.

During that time, he had been too caught up in the cacophony of bullets and soldiers, but it was only after when the Guardian Corps picked him up that Bartholomew allowed himself a moment to breathe and step through the broken glass of his home. Broken furniture and bullet-ridden walls were the only thing that greeted him then, and the man quickly took the bags he packed earlier before leaving with the soldiers, determined not to let the overwhelming sorrow in his chest debilitate him.

Nora was gone. His Nora. The light of his life he had taken for granted to always be there. Her death made all the more painful by Hope’s confirmation, by the understanding that there might never be a body to bury. Those days he waited, guarded by soldiers, had him go back through his memories of her. Of when they first met, when he first gathered the courage to ask her out, when she agreed to spend the rest of her life with him, when she told him he would be a father…

He wanted nothing more than to go back to those days once again, when he took the time in the mornings to watch her wake and smile at him, and when they would talk so far into the night that he would fall asleep on her mid-sentence. He wanted her back. He wanted her there with him, finding some kind of optimism in the situation he landed himself in.

Staring at the crystal of Cocoon, Bartholomew allowed a hand to rest on Hope’s shoulder, offering comfort in the only way he could manage. If Nora were here, she would have drawn their son into a hug, would have murmured soothing words and promises into his hair even as her very presence comforted Bartholomew. But he wasn’t Nora, and he and Hope did not have the type of relationship close enough for such words or actions.

It was standing there in the sunlight of Pulse, with the crystal glow of Cocoon reflected in their direction, that Bartholomew first looked at his son only to backpedal immediately. For a moment, just a moment, as he glimpsed Hope’s unreadable expression half covered by his bangs and so much older than his years, Bartholomew thought he was looking at Nora. Just for a split second. Just…

And then Hope turned to give him a curious look, and Bartholomew shoved the thought to the very back of his mind, smiling for his son.

The next few years would barely take the edge off his grief, would increase his discomfort each time he glanced at Hope, whose features grew sharper as he grew, as he got taller and slowly started to display the grace his mother had. Slowly, Hope shed the awkwardness that often plagued him despite still being stuck in the stage between child and adult. He stopped styling his hair, stopped wearing the childishly bright colors he had once been so fond of, and Bartholomew couldn’t, just couldn’t, stop to tell his son that each added similarity to Nora was another knife in his heart.

He threw himself into work instead, into the process of rebuilding society and civilization on both Cocoon and Pulse (Gran Pulse, he would have to remind himself each time) now. He wrote proposals, signed contracts, and edited bills to ensure the freedom and acknowledgement of l’Cie (or former ones, although there only existed a handful) as humans with human rights. When other educational facilities refused to admit his son, Bartholomew created his own facilities. He wheedled at the fledgling government for the excavation of Bresha, for the monument dedicated to all the lives lost during the Purge. Bartholomew Estheim became the forefront name in progress, in getting things done, in equal rights.

Nora was gone, and now it was up to him to care for his son in an increasingly hostile world, and he never did anything by halves. If he had to move mountains to ensure Hope’s future, then that was what he would start with. All this and more he would do for his son, for Nora’s son, for the one thing he had left in the world to remind him of his wife. Hope was his last remaining treasure: the more time he spent with his son, he more the realized just what Nora had seen — why she took every effort in the world to spend more time with her little boy before he grew up and stopped needing her. Hope was bright, brilliant, and had such a quick grasp on every topic out there that Bartholomew was left breathless whenever he scanned over his reports and projects.

Hope had accomplished the impossible, winning against the fal’Cie, against fate, against everything history had taught the human race to believe. There was no doubt in Bartholomew’s mind that Hope would grow up to be even greater, to leave people dazzled in his wake, and it would be up to him as a parent to pave the way.

…Even if there were times when Hope would slouch over a book, curled up at the edge of the sofa to catch the last rays of light in the day, and Bartholomew found himself having to look away (Nora used to sit like that all the time, used to pull Hope up next to her and read aloud to him while Bartholomew watched fondly from the doorway), because everything Hope did reminded him of Nora.

Because he still had dreams, nightmares, where he lost the both of them during the Purge. Where he ended up with nothing, just an empty house sitting in an empty city. There were dreams where he would face Nora’s accusing eyes about not having been there, not being able to save her, not being able to save Hope.

Rarest were his dreams where Nora survived, where it was Hope who died, and he would see his wife sitting in the moonlight at the windowsill she used to sit at all the time, wearing her grief openly. Bartholomew would fall to his knees on the ground next to her, grasping at her hand so she wouldn’t leave him, pressing his forehead against cooled skin in attempt to share the burden of her despair.

In those dreams, he begged for her forgiveness, cried for the future torn from them, and pleaded with her to respond to him. Please, please… Just a single word from her, even if it wasn’t forgiveness… he needed to know that they would be okay. Yes, their lives would never be the same again, but at least he hadn’t lost her. He couldn’t lose her now, now that she managed to survive the Purge, not when she wasn’t the only one to lose a child. They still had a future; they could have another child, they could adopt, they could never try again at being parents.

It would be okay, he would whisper to her reverently, forcing himself to believe it. So long as she was there, as long as she was there, it would be okay…

.

.

.

.

.

Hope had frequent nightmares of the Purge, of the journey as l’Cie, of fal’Cie and cie’th and everything in-between. He dreamed of a time when things were simpler, happier; dreamed of a future denied where Fang and Vanille and Lightning were still with them, where he could reach them when he needed to talk to someone because there were so many times when he needed their advice.

Those nights, he found himself waking and unable to go back to sleep, just staring at the ceiling of his bedroom emptying his thoughts until he couldn’t stand the sight above him anymore. Those nights, he would wander out to the windowsill his mother loved, would try to see what she had once been fascinated by. Those nights, he would count the stars in the sky and press cold fingers against the glass in attempts to trace shapes between the points of light.

And sometimes, just sometimes, his breath would catch and he would freeze when he heard his father stumble out, still completely asleep and murmuring words that Hope was sure he was never supposed to hear. He would wait, try not to hear the words spoken to him, wait until his father completely exhausted himself before guiding Bartholomew back toward bed.

A part of him would reel, would recoil, but Hope always said the same thing those nights.

“Go back to sleep,” he would tell his distraught father as Bartholomew tossed and turned in agitation, echoing words his mother used to tell him after a nightmare. “Things will be different in the morning.”