NaNo2014 day 20

[shamera]

“There is one more element missing before you can start, and it is up to you to decide what that is.”

Hope turned the crystal over and over within his fingers, the small glowing stone a near perfect sphere gathering the light that shone through it. He aligned it up to the light of his room from where he was lying on his bed, trying to make out the different colors that prismed through.

He knew what Lightning would say. He knew what Serah would say, what Snow would say.

Caius had looked murderous when Yeul gave him the crystal, although Hope didn’t understand why. Or maybe he did. The power it represented was not one to be taken lightly. Even now he didn’t want the responsibility of having to chose.

“All the other players are in place.” She told him. “You must choose the last.”

Alyssa Zaidelle had no family. Everyone who could care for her had died in the fall of Cocoon. Because of this, she pushed herself with a drive unmatched by anyone else, seeking to distract her talented mind by creating solutions no one had thought of, by solving problems no one could comprehend. She spent years under the care of the government, and then caught the attention of the Academy.

She was a brilliant person, filled with life and purpose. Despite her origins, despite what happened to her, all Alyssa wanted to was live. She wanted that so much Hope couldn’t understand it.

Noel Kreiss came from a desolate future. Hope didn’t know much about the man, not like he had known Alyssa, but he understood loneliness when he saw it. He recognized the relentless determination, because anything was better than the alternative. The young man was cheerful and optimistic, willing to go through near impossible lengths in order to create a better future for mankind. He had been one chosen by Etro, chosen by Lightning, to undertake a task so important that Hope had never heard more than a few words from anyone about it.

He knew who the others would choose. Snow had been the one who came with Alyssa’s arrest, after all, and Lightning’s tone when he brought up her name said it all. Serah still missed Noel even now.

“There is one more wish left unfulfilled.” Yuel told him before. “The others wished to save you. But your wish was never considered.”

He could save one person, and only one.

He knew what the others would say. Knew what the obvious choice was. But even knowing, he didn’t want to be the one who made the decision. He didn’t want to bear that burden of knowing I chose to let you die. He understood the obvious choice, but no one else knew Alyssa like he did. She was brilliant. She was driven. She stayed with him for years when no one else was there. She was obsessive, and tended to be a perfectionist and would double, triple, check both his results and her own.

Alyssa laughed harder than anyone else, worked harder than anyone else, lived more than anyone else. She smiled and she lied and she helped him and deceived him, and Hope had never been able to understand her, but he also could never blame her for turning on him. He had known from the very beginning that she preferred her lies, and that she valued her own life above all. He accepted that, just as she accepted his tendency to stay silent on his past and his obsessive focus on saving his friends.

They had been an odd pair, true, but they got things done together. Hope would never have made it to 400AF without Alyssa Zaidelle. He wouldn’t have accomplished half of what he did without her. She was important to him.

On the other hand, Noel was also an important person to him. He was so important to Serah, and was one of the few people Hope could consider a friend despite their brief encounters. He deserved to live, must want to live, just as much as Alyssa.

Hope closed his eyes, letting his arm fall back down so that the crystal rested lightly against his chest. It should have been his decision alone. No one should have the power to decide between human lives, no matter how they were supposed to save the future. It shouldn’t be his decision. Rather, he was willing to argue for both sides, or perhaps play Devil’s advocate for Alyssa.

He breathed out in a huff, lips twisting into a sardonic smile.

Devil’s advocate, huh…? The phrase seemed so final to the decision. Was even he biased against her now?

“It’s up to you.” Lightning told as they left Bresha, still tense despite having left Caius and Yeul behind them. This time, Yeul had given him a number and pulled out her phone, explaining that in this lifetime she was born on Cocoon and wanted to stay there for a change. Hope had glanced over for Lightning’s opinions on that, but her lips were tight at the exchange.

“It shouldn’t be up to me.” Hope had argued, shifting in his seat on the airship and trying to display his unease. “I’m not the only one this affects. Aren’t we all in this together? I mean, we need to work together this time if we’re going to succeed. Isn’t that the reason why we’re all together again?”

In the end, the choice had been left to him.

My wish, huh? He opened his eyes slowly, gazing at the empty ceiling. He had so many of them, and yet none at the same time. He wanted to save the world, but that could be accomplished through time and hard work. If nothing else, Hope had just about everything he could have wished for. His friends were back, safe and sound. And it had taken so many wishes, so many different people, and so much sacrifice, just to get to this point.

”This is a bargain. An exchange.” Yeul told him carefully. ”I am not entirely selfless. In return, you will have to do the impossible once more. This time, you will have to save me.”

She wasn’t looking at him when she said that, but at Caius, who gazed back at her steadily.

The Seeress lives short lives, dies, and is reborn. The cycle continues endlessly, and Caius is immortal. How many times has he had to watch her die? How long did she have yet to live?

Hope didn’t know where to start. But then again, apparently he was still missing an element.

Given the choice… his grip on the crystal tightened. If given the choice, Hope would be selfish. Rather than Alyssa or Noel, he would have chosen his mother. To see her again. While in this timeline her passing was still recent, still painful, add all the years he had experienced altogether and it was sad to know that her loss stayed just as raw and painful.

But she wasn’t from the future. Rather, she was already dead.

“You will find someone to help you from your future. Yours, and no others.”

From his future. The future with a world being built up in the sky to replace Cocoon, with a bustling city of happy people, with children laughing in the streets and playing carelessly because they don’t need to worry about the future anymore. Hope wanted to think it was a good future regardless of his own fate.

It was the very same future he came from where Alyssa’s eyes darkened with hate and she struggled against her captors when Snow accused her of planning murder. But then, he didn’t know if she existed in other futures. The very same future where Noel had been dropped off to stay with him during a very tense time.

Hope frowned up at the ceiling. Snow’s prophetic words turned out to be true, after all.

There was a sudden knock on his door.

“Hope?” His father called out from the other side. There was a strange intonation in his voice. “Your test results came in.”

Hope shoved the crystal under his pillow, and pushed himself up from bed. “Okay. I’ll be right out.”

He pulled on another sweater along the way, large and baggy to give him room to grow into, the yarn soft and the collar excessively high into a folded down turtleneck. It was getting colder still in the settlement, although there was no sign of snow anywhere. It was a different region, he knew, but it still seemed strange to have the weather so drastically different when other areas were only a few hours away. At least, it was strange to the child him, the one who had never experienced a winter off the Cocoon that had been completely temperature controlled. Sometimes he lost himself between the memories of the future and the wonder of the present.

He wondered if his test results would be good enough to slot him into a spot with a research team. Probably not, especially with his lack of experience (not entirely true, but how could he prove otherwise?), but it might get a foot in the door at the very least.

He wondered what kind of research teams Eden still employed. Hope had never really been noticed, had rather been deliberately ignored, by academics before the Academy sprouted up. It had been both frustrating and extremely productive in the prior timeline, as it just made him throw himself harder into his studies. This time he would try harder, push harder, in order to create changes earlier and make things better. This time he wanted to wipe out the need to travel four hundred years into the future to ensure everything was on track.

“What does it say?” Hope asked as he stepped into the living area, rubbing his arms in attempt to warm them. The apartments had been turning up the heat to compensate for the colder weather, but it didn’t help all too much when the building was made for temporary residence. The walls just weren’t thick enough to hold in all the heat. It was still far warmer than outside, but colder than the residents were used to.

“I’ve saved it for you to open.” Bartholomew told him from where he sat on the couch with his tablet, handing a stark white envelope over to him. He had a strange look about his face, though, and Hope took the envelope wondering just what had his father in a loop. If his test results hadn’t even been opened yet…

He pushed a finger under the cavity of the flap and pulled it open, pulling out a thin sheet of transparent imprint paper. Fancy. the datachips embedded were nearly entirely transparent and so thin it could barely be told from a thicker and more formal sheet of paper. It was flexible as well, although the fold smoothed itself out when Hope pulled the sheet taut, and a question at the top of the page flashed for identification.

“It’s not the only letter that came in today.” Bartholomew spoke up unexpectedly, prompting Hope to look up from the sheet. The older man was seated comfortably on the couch, although there was an unreadable expression on his face. “As the scores go on public record, Eden University’s scientific departments have sent along several letters as well.”

Hope didn’t see any other letters. He startled, breathing in sharply at the thought. Maybe he’d actually be able to continue his work sooner than he thought?

“Hope…” His father hesitated, brows furrowed in thought. “They have questions. And to be honest, so do I. I’d like to think that I give you enough space, and I know you’re smarter than anyone realizes, but those… those are some very high profile names requesting to speak with you.”

The lights on the sheet continued flashing, continued to request identification. Hope found himself tongue-tied.

“Each assessment test, I’ve recently been told,” Bartholomew said slowly, “contains several questions meant to be unsolvable. It’s not to be counted against the tester who gets it wrong. I was told today that there are currently fifteen such questions in the most recent rendition, none of which would be included in the actual test results.”

That was something Hope was vaguely familiar with. Those who took assessment exams were usually ahead of their peers, and thus the Academy had a tendency of sneaking in harder questions sometimes based on current research to get some topographical data and an outside perspective on how to tackle problems. Those who came close to solving the equations would be monitored and then invited to the team of scientists working directly with that area. It helped with early recruitment to put brilliant minds at work without making them jump through more hoops than necessary.

Suddenly, Hope wondered if he shouldn’t have worked quite that hard on the exam, after all.

“According to quite a number of scientists who have called me today, you managed to solve three out of the eleven you encountered on the exam. The reason the scores came back so late is because they decided to double, and then triple, check everything.”

Solve. Oops.

Hope winced. He had been fairly sure that he avoided all those questions. Had been quite proud of himself for having seen quite a few of them, too.

“Hope… you…” His father breathed out a quiet sigh, bringing up a hand to adjust his glasses. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“I know.” Hope interjected quickly, hands tightening around the envelope and sheet. “I know that.”

Bartholomew watched him carefully for a long moment, and then nodded. “...Alright. I know that I’m not always there, and I’m not always — your mother always knew what to say in this situation.”

There was a tightness in his chest just at the mention of his mother, and Hope swallowed hard. With this kind of conversation, he didn’t really have to see his results to know that he had perhaps focused so hard at advancing his work by bypassing his studies that he hadn’t thought enough about the repercussions.

“I know.” Hope repeated, hands tightening once more on the sheet. It was obvious that his father knew something was going on, and that Hope was keeping something from him. But at the same time, Hope couldn’t figure out a way to reveal anything without sounding absolutely crazy. Crazier than normal, anyway, having come home that day to reveal himself as a Pulse l’Cie. His father had believed in him then, but right now… right now Hope didn’t think it was best for his father to know about the alternate futures. To know that the world would end, and that there was a girl out there who could see the futures.

To know that Hope had come from a future where he died, and that the others also all came from futures that had his death.

“I know things are…” he struggled for a word, feeling his father’s stern gaze on him. “Really weird right now. I can’t really explain things yet. But I will.” Eventually. When things made more sense. At the moment, Hope was still trying to piece things together himself. It had taken him far too long to even put his memories together, and he just needed more time with everything before he could string up the words to tell his dad what was going on. How could he possibly convey that? “...I promise.”

The words, perhaps his tone, seemed to appease Bartholomew.

“Alright.” His father agreed reluctantly. “I’ll forward you the messages I’ve received. Then you can decided what to do with them. If you don’t want anything to do with it, that’s alright. If you want to meet with the professors… that’s fine as well. Just give me some warning.”

“I will.” Hope promised, this one easier.

That signalled the end of that conversation, and Hope settled in to sit down next to his father as he pressed a finger against the sheet to identify himself, and they shared the results of the examination.

Strangely enough, the high scores didn’t seem to please Hope as much as he thought it would.