NaNo2014 day 12

[shamera]

“So what are you going to do now?” Vanille asked, her voice quiet over the phone.

“Don’t know.” Hope responded, carefully piecing together the model that Rygdea brought over just that day to keep him occupied. The problem was, the man didn’t know just how fast Hope could assemble and paint those things, especially when he had nothing else to do. “Dad said he’d take care of it.”

Which was an extra pound of guilt on him. Bartholomew Estheim already had more on his plate than most parents, and had casually offered to take up more for his son. Hope wondered when he might actually be able to take care of his own problems rather than have his father fight for him.

It was so different from his journey as a l’Cie before. Fighting had been easy then, and magic more so. Now… now the battle was on an entirely different area, one Hope couldn’t possibly climb into.

“That’s sad.” Vanille lamented, sounding genuinely upset for him. “Weren’t you looking forward to school?”

“Not really.” He balanced a small plastic piece he had carefully pulled from the frame earlier, sanding off the tip, and carefully applied it to the model until it snapped in lightly. He’d need to apply additional glue later, but for now he had to see what the finished product would look like. “Dad wanted me to go more than I wanted to go.”

Which now meant Bartholomew was coming up with suggestions for Hope to register for courses under an alias and take distance classes. Hope could see just how frustrated his dad was to have to suggest something like that, but he didn’t mind. Besides, college courses were more interesting and specific than years at high school anyway.

“Well, you can always come back to New Bodhum for school,” Vanille quipped optimistically. “I mean, you’ll definitely get in. Serah teaches school here, too.”

His movements slowed. It was just another reminder that the others were so far away. Sure, they spoke on the phone everyday, but Vanille probably visited Sazh and Dajh daily, and ate with Serah and Snow. Fang would hunt and provide meat for everyone. They’d all be together while he was so far away struggling to figure out what he was going to do. Even Lightning would go home at night to the warm house in New Bodhum.

It was just another reminder. And just another reminds that Lightning was out all the time trying to find answers.

Trying to find Caius.

He had still been wearing the clothes he wore to New Bodhum when he woke up at home again, and Hope was frighteningly aware of what it meant that they had taken him home: we know where you are.

It had taken him a long time to calm down enough to face his father again that night, although Bartholomew had not been particularly mad about Hope leaving the house, not having known where he went. His father had even apologized for not picking up his phone, straining Hope’s smile in response as he said it was perfectly alright because he should have remembered his dad was in a meeting at that time.

“Maybe.” He conceded, although there was little chance of him settling into Bodhum now that his father was so settled in here. The little seaside town was too small, too sheltered when there were promises to keep and big changes to enforce. Still, with what he learned recently, he wasn’t going to rule it out as impossible when far more impossible things have already happened.

Still, the knowledge that Lightning might be searching for Caius as well as a way to somehow fix things weighed heavily on him. If he didn’t tell her about his meeting, then… then what? He’d be doing the same thing he got so angry about the others doing to him: hiding information.

But what had Yeul meant? Just how did everyone return? They all came back from different places, according to varying accounts. Gaping dark holes in the future.

“Hey, Vanille?” Hope asked hesitantly, remembering the waves of crystal at Lake Bresha, still there even after the Pulse Vestige was taken away. A dark abyss. He fiddled with the rest of the model pieces still in the plastic framework in the box, slowly breaking each piece away. “How did — well, the crystal supporting Cocoon is still there. If we all came from the future, different futures, and we’re all here now…”

It was the question he had been meaning to ask for months now, but could never find a proper way to phrase. He swallowed. “I know you don’t like to talk about it. But if we’re all here and we came from the future, then… then how come you and Fang didn’t end up back in the pillar? I mean, I don’t mean I want you back there or anything! I’m really glad that you’re out and with us.”

There was a breathy giggle from the other side of the phone. “I know what you mean. But, well, I don’t know. We all just ended up here. I don’t know how it happened. That’s what Lightning’s trying to find out, right?”

“...Yeah.” He ran a finger over a sharp edge of the plastic that would need to be smoothed down, feeling the bite even through his gloves. “I guess so.”

He had a feeling Lightning knew more than she was willing to share. Knew, but was keeping the information from them because… because she was trying to protect them.

It was a heavy weight on the bottom of his stomach.

He just couldn’t keep the information from her, not when he understood perfectly well just how it felt to be kept in the dark. Not the mention, if she was actually looking for Caius (and he wanted to take the information from Yeul with a grain of salt, he really did, but there was something in her knowing eyes that spoke the truth), then…

He was already dreading the lecture he would inevitably get for being dumb enough to go off on his own.

Dumb, unprepared, and far too cocky for his own good. He sighed.

Vanille gave a questioning hum on the other side of the line.

“Nothing.” He murmured in response. “Just trying to figure out what to say to Light.”

She laughed. “She likes being the one to take care of things, but asking questions shouldn’t get you in trouble. Besides, you can get away with it more than most of us. Well, maybe except for Serah. Or at you embarrassed to talk to her because, hmm, she’s really pretty?”

“You’re really pretty,” Hope told her casually. “I talk to you all the time.”

Vanille made a cooing sound, and Hope caught his own words at that, feeling his face flush.

“That’s not what I—” He stammered out, dropping the plastic piece he had been trying to smooth out. “I mean, you are, but — it’s not what I.” He stopped, and then huffed. “Has Snow been talking to you?”

“I talk to him all the time, too.” Vanille confirmed, amusement never leaving her voice. “Why?”

He gave the phone a suspicious look, trying to convey that feeling through the line. “...Nothing.”

“She’s been out even more than usual, though.” Vanille told him. “But then, Serah and Snow have been busy, too. I think they’re planning on taking a trip around Gran Pulse… or back to Cocoon, I’m not sure. But they won’t be here for a while, either. Maybe Fang and I should come visit, too! We can ask Sazh to fly us out and make a trip of it ourselves.”

“I just saw you a few days ago.” Hope responded, answering her wistful tone rather than her actual words.

“Yes.” She drew the word out, ending it like a thoughtful hiss. “But we still haven’t you seen your home!”

Hope looked around himself at his small room with the low-hanging ceiling and dull walls. While it wasn’t the worst thing he had seen down in the settlements around Gran Pulse, it was a far cry from the type of home he had grown up in.

“Uh.” He bit his lip. “We wouldn’t have any room here. It’s a lot more crowded than it is back in New Bodhum. Not just this house, too. There’s a lot of people around all the time.”

Which mean that he took a bit of extra care every time he left the house, because people were still recovering from the disaster of the Fall, and the few who recognized him if he didn’t take enough care to not be noticed tended to cringe back from him as if they had seen some kind of monster.

He jabbed a finger at the plastic framework. Those people should really make a vacation out of visit the Archlyte Steppe, then. He’d like to see how they would react there with all the monsters roaming freely.

But then, he hadn’t been lynched on the streets, so that had to be a bonus.

“We should visit.” Vanille continued to gush. “See what they’ve done with the wildlands. I heard you guys are building a city! I haven’t seen much of those on Gran Pulse.”

“They haven’t started yet.” Hope corrected her.

“And it’s supposed to be the largest settlement away from Cocoon, right? Not even named yet? Maybe we should give them a few suggestions.”

Hope sighed, giving up. “...I’ll ask dad if there’s anywhere nice to stay around here.”

“You can make it a vacation.” Vanille told him. “Stay with us. If you’re not busy with school, then why not? And your dad should come, too!”

“He’s busy.” Bartholomew Estheim was always busy, busier now than ever because he tried hard to take a bit of time to spend with his son on almost a daily basis. And even busier because he had taken on extra duties as well, and Hope didn’t even know how his dad planned on fixing his education, not to mention the rest of the world. Sometimes he thought it was entirely un-fixable. People were just too… stubborn. Slow to change. Unwilling to see another viewpoint.

During darker moments, Hope wished that everyone could have gone through the Purge. At least then they’d at least understand a little bit and perhaps be more sympathetic. He squashed those feelings during the light of day, however. He didn’t actually want people to suffer that, he just… he wanted them to try to understand.

For the most part, people didn’t want to understand. They wanted to forget. Worse were the people who refused to forget, but instead raged and pointed fingers for blame rather than work on making a better future.

“Then it’s decided! We’ll come visit you.” Vanille said. “How about, hmm, next week?”

“Shouldn’t you be asking the others first?” Hope asked incredulously.

“Nope! I’ll just tell them you miss us too much, and everyone will race to see you.” She teased. “We just need a faster way to where you are, and we’d visit all the time.”

Hope wondered if that was true. Everyone else seemed rather content with settling down in a small town out in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by the wilds of Gran Pulse. Bodhum had always been rather small with only one real attraction a year, and people there were used to peace and quiet. It seemed perfect for Fang and Vanille, who had also come from a smaller place.

Hope, on the other hand, was used to the hustle and bustle of the city. He had grown up amidst shops and colorful ads, with stranger streaming up and down the streets every day and rapid transportation to the rest of Cocoon straight from his city. Palumpolum was a centralized hub, the commercial capital of Cocoon. He could hardly connect Serah’s tiny class of children all various ages with the classrooms he learned in, all highly advanced technologically and with at least twenty students of the same age every room.

It was a new age now. Or at the very least, it was a transitioning time for grief and for rebuilding. After… then it would be a new age, hopefully one better than the previous.

“Or we could set up our own place.” Vanille mused. “And then go hunting. Fang said you did really well last time.”

He felt a swell of pride at the casual compliment. “Y-yeah, that sounds good, actually.”

Vanille made a sound, consider the idea more seriously now. “We could teach you a few things about surviving in the wilds during the winter. I’m sure Lightning wouldn’t mind that.”

Hope perked up at the idea. “Well, it’s important, right? Now that we’re all living down here. I mean, sure we’ve got phones in case anything happened, but getting lost down here is still serious. Everything could be dangerous.”

“Yeah.” She agreed, and then, “I’ll suggest the idea to Fang. I’m sure she’ll agree, though. We’ll take Dajh too if Sazh is okay with it. It’s never too early to start learning survival skills.”

“I’ll tell dad about it.” Hope said. “I’m sure he’ll think it’s a good idea, too.”

—

In the end, Vanille’s phone call ended up with Hope planning for the trip (which would be in three days’ time rather than the week after as they initially though), contacting people, and then forgetting all about his previous anxiety in his excitement.

It didn’t kick back in until Lightning called that evening.

“Vanille said you wanted to speak with me.” Her voice was even, calm. “She’s been arranging that hunting trip of yours. It’s a good idea.”

At least they were all in agreement about that. It was the one thing going well at the moment.

“Will you be there?” He asked instead, stalling for just a little bit more time to gather his thoughts together. “I mean, it’s okay to take a break, right? From what you’re doing?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

“I may.” Lightning agreed. “If only to supervise and ensure none of you die on this trip.”

Hope smiled. Despite all the confusion and anxiety lately, at least Lightning was still the same as ever. The smile faded quickly, however, as he realized it was now or never.

“I found Caius.” He blurted out, and then amended himself. “Or at least, he found me.”

That still counted, right? Technically, he had been going to meet Yeul. So technically, it was Caius who found him instead of the other way around because he had been looking for Yeul in the first place. (Hope tried to ignore the nagging in his mind about how technicalities didn’t work out like that.)

“Hope.”

He winced at the emphasis. “Someone sent me a message! It had my name and everything, and it told me to go find them, and I did, and that wasn’t Caius — it was this girl named Yeul except Caius kind of happened to be there as well and they were saying things about timelines and the space left behind or the holes left behind and then they might have mentioned that you were looking for Caius so I thought you’d want to know—”

“What made you think it was a good idea to go meet a stranger alone?” While it wasn’t exactly a shout, it was perhaps as close to it as Lightning would get, her words filled with anger. “I didn’t take you to be that stupid, Hope.”

“I’m sorry.” He blurted, entire body tense as his grip on the phone tightened. “I want to know what’s going on. And I…”

It had been a dumb move on his part. The words appealed to his impulsiveness, and coupled with the sense that he was alone in this situation not because his friends weren’t there with him but because they kept telling him not to look into things, the result had been near disastrous.

“He could have killed you.” Lightning fumed. “I’m surprised he didn’t.”

He was surprised as well, but he didn’t want to admit that. “He said that if he wanted to, he would have done it a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t make it better.” She snapped, and then breathed out heavily, obviously trying to figure out what to do with him. “Give the phone to your father.”

“What?” Hope gaped, and shook his head despite her not being able to see it. “I said I was sorry, right? I’m not going to do it again! I know I shouldn’t have gone out like that; it was dumb, and I get it. You don’t have to—”

“Hope. Give the phone to your father, or I will call him directly and this will be worse than it is now.”

He shut up at that point, although still struck dumb. He had imagined that Lightning would berate him for his actions, perhaps yell at him, perhaps set a punishing pace during the hunting trip, but he hadn’t expected her to… to…

To go all adult on him.

He sulked. In hindsight, he should have seen that coming. Instead, he pulled the phone away and covered the receiver as he growled and stomped as hard as he could, trying to worth through the frustration as he fell face first down on his bed and muffled his disgruntled noises into the blanket. That lasted only for a moment, however, as he sighed deeply against his blanket and felt the warmth of his breath against his face. He got up again after that, calmer and a little more tired than he had been just a few seconds ago, and made his way out of his room and down the hall.

“Dad?” He called out, knocking on his father’s room. “Light wants to talk to you.”

There was a squeal of a rolling chair, and his father called back, “Sure, come on in.”

Hope opened the door, and then leaned in to hand his father his phone, slinking out as quickly as possible after that if only to avoid having to hear the following conversation.

“Miss Farron, hello—”

For extra measure, he also closed the door.

It wasn’t as if he needed that phone the rest of the day, anyway.

—

There was a knock on his door.

“Hope?”

Instead of responding, Hope dipped his brush into the dark blue paint, and carefully outlined the armor on the miniature model, making sure to keep within the lines of the image he used as reference. The rest of that tiny piece would be filled in with black, so it was alright if he accidentally slipped just a little bit at the moment. Blue could easily be covered up by black.

The knob for the old fashioned wooden door turned, and the door creaked open slightly, spilling extra light into his room. Hope hated having extra light when he was concentrating on smaller projects. That was the point of desk lights, after all, to make it seem like the only thing left in the world to do. It didn’t matter. He ignored it anyway.

There was the sound of a quiet sigh, and footsteps walking in. The door was left open. It figured, his dad never closed the door behind him. There was a dull groan from his bed, and then quiet.

He dipped his paintbrush into the bottle again and returned to that piece of armor.

“Of course.” His father said softly after several minutes of silence, exasperated. “This must have been what your mother meant when she said it’s impossible to deal with me when I’m upset.”

The paint dripped down unexpectedly, and Hope had to raise an already paint-splattered tissue to wipe outside the lines. He hadn’t meant to push down that hard.

“She used to be so loud when she got angry — always had to give someone her piece of mind. Yelling and stomping around… that was all before you were born. She just had to the in the middle of everything. Never could back down from a challenge, even though she’d get so frustrated when something went wrong. It didn’t matter if it sounded rude or inappropriate, if she had a thought, she’d say it.”

“Mom was…?” He didn’t mean for the words to slip out, didn’t mean to stop painting, but Hope couldn’t reconcile that image with the bright and calm mother he knew. She was always gentle, always ready with a smile and reassuring hug. Nora Estheim never got mad. Sad, yes, but never mad.

“You always took after her temper. That’s why I was never worried even when you used to throw those horrible tantrums as a toddler. She used to get so angry, but that anger would burn out fast. It’s when she got truly quiet, when she’s more upset than anything… that’s when she’d get quiet. Plot.”

Bartholomew chuckled. “She could leave some nasty surprises for people who truly angered her.”

Hope could see his brush shaking ever so slightly, but he didn’t know why. He would need a steady hand if he wanted to complete the figure tonight.

“On my part… I don’t like anger. It’s an emotion that yields very little progression in the best of times, and is entirely detrimental in the worst. When I get angry, I eventually end up angry at myself.”

Hope turned in his chair slowly, not putting down his paintbrush.

Bartholomew sat at the edge of the bed, fingers interlaced together and looking down at his hands with a wistful smile.

“She used to tell me… ‘I can never tell what you’re thinking.’ She’d always wear her emotions at the edge of her sleeves, but I couldn’t be like that. I’d rather not talk about it when I got upset. I would just rather it… pass me over entirely. And sometimes she’d…” His father gestured weakly with a hand and a nostalgic smile, but caught himself, smile fading. “She’d try to cheer me up, but I never wanted to deal with it. Just wanted to ignore everything.”

The older man looked up, catching his gaze. “You’re so much like her that sometimes I forget you take after me as well.”

Hope broke the gaze quickly, chest feeling oddly tight.

“Miss Farron told me you snuck off to meet a stranger yesterday. A stranger who ended up being an extremely dangerous man, although she would not disclose why he was dangerous. She seemed to believe I would have a suitable punishment for you.” Bartholomew broke off, looking somewhat lost as he ran a hand through his hair. “...I admit, I’m at a loss. Your mother always accessed situations like this more accurately. What do you think, Hope? I can’t tell what you’re thinking if you don’t say anything.”

Hope dropped his gaze as well, mulling over the words. “...What do I think about what?”

“What I should do. What your punishment should be. I want to hear your opinion on this, since these are your actions and I believe you’re old enough to understand just how dangerous they were.” Bartholomew held up a hand before Hope could say anything. “You’re a smart boy. There’s no denying that. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. But being smart and being wise are two different things, and perhaps you’re missing out on the experiences gained through wisdom. So I’ll start here. You don’t have to decide right now, or even tonight, but I would like for you to reflect on your actions. Miss Farron informed me that you are a very lucky young man to have escaped unscathed.

“What if things had gone differently? What would have happened to you?” His father paused, letting that sink in. “How do you think it would affect others who care about you?”

The questioned lingered heavily in the air, and Bartholomew nodded as he saw Hope’s expression twist. He stood up, and headed out the room in order to let Hope work through those questions.

“Tell me when you have it figured out.” He said at the doorway, and for the first time, shut the door behind him.