There's No Place Like Home [Hope]

"Agh...not again."

Hope Estheim stared from underneath silvery bangs at the cell phone he'd just freed from his jacket pocket and at that same name and number that had hovered over him like a bad head cold for the past several days. "What is it, Hope?", asked the individual sitting to his right - a kind of pasty guy in his late teens, with his own tuft of hair so blond and bright it might as well have been called silver too. Both were perched before a piece of machinery that would have looked like one of the old bikes from Cocoon if not for the lack of a place to sit and for the wires and other miscellaneous objects jutting out from it in all directions. Hope had been trying to install a device on the top of the massive, deformed machine when his phone had started buzzing.

"It's that...girl again. She's calling me," Hope stated as if he were thinking about something else entirely, still staring at the phone's screen as if it held every secret to the universe yet discovering these secrets meant he had to....cut off his own finger or something else just as unpleasant. "What girl?", came the response from the pasty male, a fellow that went by Grey for reasons Hope had never actually understood, because it wasn't his real name. "The girl from the lab who-" Before he could even finish, he was interrupted by a short, almost-breathless roar of laughter. "The one that talks your ear off every time you step inside the door! Ahaha! Where'd she get your number? I thought you-" Hope raised a hand to interrupt Grey, finally prying his eyes from the screen. "I accidentally left my phone lying on a desk in the lab last week. She found it and apparently spent a great deal of time looking through everything in it before deciding to tell me she had it." After another roar of laughter that left Hope sighing and rubbing his neck, Grey stood and sat the datapad he was working with off to the side, stretching to the sounds a body makes only when it's been in the same position for far, far too long. "Well answer the phone, Hope! She's not bad-looking, just...hyper. We should grab some food before we finish up with this thing, anyway." Before Hope could protest, his friend interrupted him, already making his exit. "Catch you in an hour!"

Well, there went a potential excuse. Sorry for earlier, I couldn't answer the phone. We were working on a research project. Staring at the phone again, Hope began walking towards the exit, returning a couple of greetings as he did so. This would have been a great time for his dad to call to check on him (though he typically complained about those calls) or for....something..anything..distracting to happen so he wouldn't feel compelled to answer the phone. But still it rang, as it had been doing for the past two minutes, incessantly compelling him to answer though he really didn't want to. Hope decided that if the phone hadn't stopped ringing by the time he stepped out of the ringing, he would answer it then. With that promise to himself in mind, he took up an almost absurdly slow pace as he made his way towards the door, wondering how the heck he was supposed to get adjusted to talking with a girl on the phone that already talked his ear off in person. Hope had already run out of things to say to her ages ago...and they'd only talked seriously twice. Hope had two late projects to prove it.

Before he knew it, the front entrance sat before him, the doors parting to allow him exit and reveal the city of Academia before him. Out into the light stepped not the puny teenager of three years before, during the l'Cie crisis, who couldn't put on an ounce of weight. Instead, Hope found himself to be a not-so-puny teenager who still couldn't put on an ounce of weight but who was now pushing six feet tall. Gran Pulse had grown just as much in that time...and Academia was a testament to that. Though not everyone was aware of the fact, Hope's own dad - and Rygdea, the Cavalry veteran from Hope's time as a l'Cie - were credited with the formation of the Academy government that now ran this capital city. Not that his dad's position as an administrator of the city amounted to all that much for Hope. He still had to get his education...and boy had he heard those exact words from his father plenty of times. He didn't need that much reminding, considering how quickly Academia was expanding. In order to find your own car keys in this city, one had to know how to use all the new, human-engineered technology, absent of all the fal'Cie's hand-me-downs. Plus, it didn't hurt to know how to develop new technology too. Besides....all of it kind of interested Hope anyway.

One last time Hope looked at the name and number, searching for messages he could respond to before he answered. All in all, someone observing as they passed by on the sidewalk might have gotten the impression that Hope didn't want to answer the call. And boy would they have been right. Not that Hope found this particular female all that bad or anything, but...something was definitely off about her. It could have been that she imagined some sort of odd chemistry with him that didn't actually exist. Or it could have been that she looked at him kind of funny. Or it could have been that -

Hope stopped short at the edge of the sidewalk, shoulders drooping a bit. Or it could be that she reminds me of someone..., Hope thought, frowning a bit at the phone before he opted to ignore the call. Pushing the thought to the back of his mind, since she...and they...only existed in his memories and dreams these days, he started down the street as a part of the large Academia crowd of pedestrians, planning to actually get that bite to eat Grey had recommended...even if his stomach suddenly didn't quite feel right.

Words - 1100-some (forgot to count)
Muse - Good!
Outfit - Similar to what he wears in XIII-2, but without the tie and travel pack stuff, maybe?
Notes - I don't even know. [/size]

If realizing whom his not-so-secret admirer reminded him of hadn't been bad enough, Hope wondered if hearing things would help him reach his sadness quota for the day. Having at first believed he heard a specific, overly-enthused voice call out his name from within the crowd, Hope stopped himself before he turned to scan the faces nearby for the source, certain he hadn't actually heard anything of the sort. No, Hope's mind was just playing tricks on him, letting him hear what he wanted to hear. Feeling a headache starting to come on, Hope checked the time on a nearby screen and made a beeline for one of the escalators that would take him to one of the restaurant-filled squares of Academia. Just get some lunch, ignore the distractions, and get back here and back to-

The very last thing Hope had been expecting, more than likely, was for something to collide with him from his blind side and grab a hold of him like a tackling dummy. Hope let out a grunt of surprise and felt himself falling sideways with the momentum of the impact. A couple of people gasped, and good reflexes allowed Hope to.....well, to mostly catch himself on a sign just off the edge of the sidewalk. Mostly meaning he could have probably held himself up if not for whoever was attached to him...though he did manage to fall onto his back easily enough that he didn't land on an elbow or shoulder. Once sprawled out, Hope found he could only lay there, blinking up at the sky and trying to gather his bearings. How often did people just tackle you in the middle of a sidewalk like that? Hope would have thought someone was attacking him if he hadn't realized about four or five seconds had passed without the other person hitting him. So he shook his head fervently to snap out of it, finally turned his eyes downward to see just who had done this.

He froze, eyes widening, as he lost half of a breath as he successfully choked on oxygen.

Orange pigtails.

The appearance of the person still attached to him as he lay there, even though he could not yet see her face, brought Hope's thought processes to a standstill. He could not vocalize what little snippets of sensible thought remained in his mind. Only a pair of jumbled, incomplete words managed to pass his lips. How? ...Just...how?

Rational thought only plagued his mind intermittently. Who could be rational when they were seeing - no...no, when they'd been tackled by - a ghost? He could have been dreaming. He knew he wasn't. He could have been hallucinating....but again, not true. Then.....how? He would have to ask himself again and again. But did it really matter anyway? The facts were the facts, and as Hope slowly began to recover from his shock at seeing this...person....this friend and comforter. Why would he need any questions answered when she was already here?

Blinking again in some sense of amazement, Hope hugged Vanille - yes, he told himself again, the Vanille - around the head and hated that he couldn't really think of anything to say. What did one say to a memory, anyway?

Words - 587
Muse - Good!
Notes - Short and....not great. [/size]

If only Hope's thoughts could have fallen in line with his emotions, he may have been able to say something sensible to a friend whom he had never been guaranteed to see again. Hope himself had begun to accept the fact that Vanille was lost to him, along with Light and Fang. So this couldn't have been really happening, right? He'd hit his head somehow on the sidewalk when this strange person had hit him, and now he was believing her - whoever she was - to be Vanille. Regardless of who this stranger was, Hope continued to hug her, not knowing anything else to do, and not wanting to let go, with the small hope that this really could be Vanille, come back to the land of the living yet again.

As she unlatched herself from him and sat up before him, Hope couldn't even fathom what his expression must have looked like, staring into the smiling face of..well, of a ghost. He knew he was making a valiant effort to smile back, but the feeling of shock had his mouth must have had his mouth - and possibly other aspects of his features - hanging limp a bit. He was caught between wanting to scream to the world that Vanille was back and a strange need to keep it secret, like she'd be taken away again if he let it slip that she had been away for so long. She looked...exactly the same. And her voice sounded exactly the same. And she smelled exactly the same. And-

Hope would not have even realized he was still lying on his back had Vanille not offered him a hand after she finally spoke. Hope accepted it and slowly made his way to his feet, though he could not take his eyes off of the Pulsian before him as he did so. She might...what? Disappear if he looked away? Maybe. He couldn't be sure of anything at this point, aside from the fact that people passing by were looking at him and the "strange" girl who had just tackled him to the ground like they were both absolutely out of their minds. Hope was slowly beginning to realize that he wasn't crazy at all. Here stood Vanille before him - looking....so much smaller than he remembered - and the only crazy part was that he couldn't think of anything to say in response to her words, simple as they were.

"I..." Three years. How could a hello cover three years? Of course...Vanille had been in crystalstasis the entire time. That meant the time had passed differently for her, hadn't it? Hope didn't exactly think she'd been counting the years, months, and says since the fall of Cocoon, wondering if it would take another five hundred years before the l'Cie would once again awaken from their eternal sleep. "I-I missed...you." As soon as the words passed his lips, Hope Estheim had decided he'd made one of the bigger understatements of his life. Sometimes...understatements were good, though. Hope counted this among those times.

"But...." Should he ask? He kind of had to, didn't he, just so he could know? Acting as if Vanille's awakening had been determined to happen and moving on with...normalcy would have been preferred, but Hope needed to know what had happened. He shook his head, trying to display his disbelief. "But...how?"

Words - 614
Muse - Great!
Notes - A successful post! ...Right?[/size]

Rationality was not the toast of the moment, but Hope certainly tried to rationalize Vanille's return. What was the date? Well - it was close to the fall of Cocoon, but not on the exact day. It wasn't even the same month quite yet. So it couldn't have been that Vanille's crystalstasis was meant to last three years before she was freed again. Besides, Hope knew crystalstasis to technically be a permanent state, though he himself had only been in crystalstasis for a few minutes (so he was told) without any fal'Cie intervening. He couldn't figure out what the significance of three years was, anyway. And where were Fang and Light? Hadn't they both been in the crystal pillar too? The more Hope tried to figure everything out, the more confused he became, and the less interested he became in reasoning out Vanille's return. He was, though studying to become an Academy researcher, willing to take some things, like the return of one of the kindest friends he'd ever known, at face value.

Vanille seemed to know exactly how long it had been since she went into crystalstasis. Had he been wrong about the passage of time thing? He quirked his eyebrows but quickly lowered them, deciding it didn't matter anyway. Someone on the street could have just as easily told her. He stood there awkwardly after she'd finish speaking, not quite knowing what to say but happy enough anyway. And he doubted Vanille would mind if he just stood there like he didn't have any sense at all. He felt like he should be...doing something....more. He was being pulled in several different directions. He almost wanted to return Vanille's earlier tackle-greeting with one of his own, but that didn't seem like the wisest thing to do in the middle of the street, especially since the people who had witnessed the first tackle would start to wonder why these two crazy teenagers were abusing one another. But Hope couldn't just stand here staring at a girl he hadn't seen for three years with a stupefied expression on his face, could he? That seemed like selling short just how happy he was to see her here, among the living again.

But he hesitated long enough to give her a chance to speak again, bringing up Fang. Hope kept waiting for her to mention Lightning, too, but she never did. Maybe...she didn't know Lightning had been locked in crystalstasis too? "I...haven't seen Fang. You wouldn't believe how surprised I was to see- well, to have you tackle me like that," he said, rather apologetically, accompanied by a soft chuckle and a hand moving awkwardly to rub at his neck. He quickly brought the hand down. He'd broken himself of that nervous habit until today. A small worry broke into his mind. What if Vanille had been the only one to come back? Thrilled as Hope was to see her, he knew she couldn't be happy with Fang still locked in crystalstasis. And...he wanted Light back, too...but he supposed all of those questions would answer themselves, eventually. Right now, he needed to be thankful for the extended family member that fate had been kind enough to bring back to him.

Hope was debating on whether or not to tell Vanille about Light, she asked him how he was doing. Again, such a simple question...but he felt the need to answer it in about a thousand different ways. He wanted to further express his joy to her and tell her how great he was now that she was back. He wanted to explain the last three years. He wanted to tell how his day had been. He wanted to talk to her about anything that would keep her in his presence for a little while longer. Stumbling over a couple of sentences to express this confusion, Hope finally closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them, smiling meekly. "I...think if we're going to talk, we should go sit down somewhere. There's a lot to talk about..." He stepped forward, pointing towards the escalator behind the Pulsian. "I was headed...to get something to eat for lunch. Would you come with me?", he asked, bubbling over inside. Good thing he didn't show it on the outside....or he would have been a complete and total mess.

Words - 790
Muse - Great!
Notes - He is a confused little sea monkey.[/size]

” I am unpredictable!"

Hope laughed under his breath a little. ”Maybe more than ever…” Hope had never expected the older girl sitting beside him while he waited to be purged to even care whether he lived or died, like most everybody else in Cocoon. She would be dumped off on a foreign planet and left to die, too, and Hope thought he’d probably never see her again, since he knew at that time he wouldn’t last a day on Pulse if it turned out to be hell like everyone claimed. As it turned out, that girl would be one of the main reasons he managed to survive Gran Pulse when he finally made it to the lower planet. In between, he’d found out that, not only was she from Pulse herself, but she had once been a l’Cie assigned to tear his planet out of the sky and had partially helped cause the Purge and…well, yeah, a bunch of things he never would have guessed. And now she was here, out of crystalstasis, for no rhyme or reason. Vanille’s whole niche seemed to be unpredictability…not that he’d have it any other way. He just hoped she wasn’t hiding another brand from him, but she seemed so genuinely happy that he was sure she was brand-free this time around. Thank Etro if it was true, and they – meaning Fang and Light too - were really, finally past all this stuff. This was the best surprise he thought he’d ever had, to be honest.

”Well…” Hope didn’t want to admit to Vanille that not everything was the same as when he, Snow, Serah, Sazh, and Dajh had been released from crystalstasis, but… ”…Everything has been pretty…complicated since all of you went into crystalstasis. I- I’ll tell you about everything when we get there, it might be too much to absorb here in the middle of the sidewalk,” he told her, making a save before he started spouting out all he wanted to tell her right here in the street and managing to match her smile. ”Okay,” he said, as confirmation that he would lead the way before he took a purposeful gaze at the nearby escalator. He almost wanted to take Vanille’s arm or her hand to help leader her past the massive crowds and to a good spot to stand on the escalator, but he hesitated and never did. Instead, he wedged his way around a small group of people stepping onto the escalator and waited for Vanille to do the same before he stepped on and started up. They would only have to step off the escalator and round a corner before they reached their destination, and so he tried to hold in what he wanted to say until they’d reached their destination.

--------------------------------------------------

A few minutes later found them starting to sit down with their food (which Hope had asked to pay for in full) as Hope placed his tray down on one of the few tables still open at this time of day to pull out a chair for Vanille. Hope came here quite a bit to eat and study, since it was close to the main Academy research building and most everyone he knew there liked the food here. Plus, Hope actually studied better with more going on around him for some reason. He supposed he liked being surrounded by people for some reason.

Gran Pulse’s midday sun poured in even between Academia’s always-increasing quota of skyscrapers and spilled over the table as they both took their seats. Eyes kept turning in his general direction – mostly people whom Hope had become acquainted with over time – to see him with a girl they probably thought to be extremely enigmatic just from the way she dressed. Normally, Hope would have been at least a little bothered by this, but he hadn’t exactly noticed them. He was still too distracted with the reappearance of the girl to pay attention to the goings-on around him. Part of his mind was still trying to figure this whole situation out, but he couldn’t develop a reasonable explanation. Vanille was just…back, and there was nothing either one of them could do to explain it away. A slight worry found its way into the back of Hope’s mind despite the butterfly-laden elation that gripped his body. Was this the work of fal’Cie again? He didn’t even want to entertain that possibility, but…

Peering across at Vanille, Hope inattentively fumbled with the wrapping on one of his sandwiches and mulled over what he could say to her. He didn’t….feel like he’d expressed how happy he really was to see her yet, but he didn’t exactly know what to say to her. Finding himself staring at her, he finally diverted his eyes to the sandwich. ”I don’t know…where to start,” Hope admitted, keeping his eyes lowered. ”I rehearsed everything I would tell you about once you came back a thousand times, and now I can’t think of anything.” Hope chuckled to make light of his stupidity. He had no reason to feel this overwhelmed by Vanille… ”I- don’t really know how to tell you how glad I am you’re back.”

Words – 943
Muse – Good!
Notes –Nothing really. :3 [/size]

"I'm glad it did come soon...", Hope responded to Vanille, though with him staring at nothing in particular it seemed as if he were talking to himself. He was thinking that maybe this was what it would take to keep everyone completely going their own ways with their lives. Three years hadn't changed everything, but Hope definitely didn't see as much of any of the rest as he would have liked. They had taken to living their own lives, and Hope could understand why, because he'd experienced the same kind of...drifting away. They were never whole without Vanille, Fang or Light, so they....just drifted back towards their own lives. Hope couldn't really understand what had caused it. Of course, most of his own drifting had been due to speeding through school and his dad's involvement in the reconstruction of the government more than anything. As it turned out, Snow, Sazh, Dajh, and Serah weren't much a part of that life...Hope was happy to know they were still out there in the world, but he wasn't really involved in their lives anymore. He barely even knew where to find most of them, especially Sazh...

But that was what he needed to explain to Vanille without knowing exactly how she felt about it. She probably expected them to all stick together better than this. Hope had expected the same thing, but life...wasn't really all that cooperative, as it turned out. He looked back across the table to her, letting out a reluctant breath before he finally mustered himself enough to speak. "I should...probably tell you what happened to everyone that was left after the fall of Cocoon," he started off, trying to pay attention to his food and not the curious eyes of the Pulsian in front of him. "I don't actually know where everyone is anymore. We were all together for a while, but Snow and NORA started New Bodhum and Serah went to teach there and Sazh and Dajh keep to themselves now..." Hope rubbed lightly at his temple. "Snow left to find Lightning sometime recently, too. Serah...didn't believe that Light was in the crystal pillar with you and Fang, and Snow decided he'd go looking. I don't think he's come back yet."

It was really strange to think about all of these things. Hope was so far away from them here in Academia...he almost felt too safe and isolated from the rest of the world, even though this was the most populous place on all of Gran Pulse. He'd never felt that way in Palumpolum...but back then, he'd never been a l'Cie and grown bonds like he had with the other l'Cie either. "I've really only seen my dad and Rygdea in the past year...you remember Rygdea, don't you? He was with Raines in the Cavalry..." Hope had mentioned a lot of times that Raines would have been happy to see everything that had happened by now. It was kind of strange...Hope had barely known Raines, and yet he wondered about the man quite a bit sometimes. Forgetting Raines' speech to them when he'd attacked them in the Ark wasn't going to happen anytime soon, at least not for Hope. He heard the same things through Rygdea sometimes.

Hope probably could have ranted for at least a little while longer about all that had happened, but he decided to stop it there and see how Vanille reacted. Staring into her face almost apologetically, he picked up one of his sandwiches as if it were almost a shield, holding it up in front of him. A shield from what, exactly? Hope had no answer to that whatsoever.

Words - 681
Muse - Great!
Notes - This is terribad. [/size]

"You need to meet him!" Hope had forgotten that the closest Rygdea and Vanille had come to meeting one another was when Rygdea had dropped Hope, Light, Snow, and Fang off on the Sanctum flagship to break Vanille and Sazh out of custody. If not for Rygdea's piloting, the whole idea wouldn't have worked at all... "He helped save you but...we were transported to the Ark and never made it back to the Lindblum..." There had been a time when Hope believed Rygdea to be dead along with Raines, but the day his dad told him he was working with Rygdea to build a new government, he'd found out he was wrong. The two were about as different as any two people could get...Hope supposed that was why they were able to work well together. They could merge up conflicting ideas...

But that was something to talk and think about later. Hope could tell Vanille was about to tell him something important with the way she looked away and fidgeted. He grew a little worried about what she was ultimately going to say, and once she spoke, his eyes grew wide. Lightning...not in the pillar? Then...where was she? It was good news, wasn't it? Or...maybe not... If she had been in the pillar, then she probably would have returned with Vanille. Where...else could she be, and how would they find her now? "Serah was right...", he mumbled, quietly, his mind in an entirely different place. "I mean...something told me she was, but Lightning just-" Just what? Why did half of him feel like there was no doubt that Light had been in the pillar since the fall of Cocoon and the other half knew that she wasn't? He'd found her knife on the day of the fall... A determined look crossed over his face. "We've got to find her." Maybe that was obvious, but Hope felt like he needed to say it out loud. He felt...guilty knowing he'd spent all this time accepting that Light was gone, when in reality she was...lost. Or...something. Boy did he hope Snow could find her...

His appetite having disappeared momentarily, Hope put down his sandwich and only sipped at his drink until Vanille spoke again, being as optimistic as ever. Well...this was what he wanted, wasn't it? To find out that everyone could be back together again. That Vanille had appeared out of the blue was a reason to think that the others could come back just as easily, wasn't it? Only half an hour before, this would have been the last thing Hope would have expected as he set out to have his lunch for the day. Straightening himself in his chair, Hope nodded about Academia and glanced at the city around him. Watching all the construction going on made the observation of a city popping up on the plains of Gran Pulse a little less shocking, but it was still impressive to him. Academia would always be growing, too. Where it was much bigger than most of the villages that had been built and the ones that were leftover from the old times, it still was still a lot smaller than Palumpolum.

"Well, you see...my dad had a part in organizing the government. The Academy and Academia was his idea, along with Rygdea. He'd rather people didn't know, so it usually stays between the closest of us," he told her, with a little bit of pride at what his dad had been able to accomplish. Sure turned out to be a greater man than the unfeeling idiot Hope had once proclaimed him to be...but that was the past. The distant past. So he could forget about it completely. What did Vanille think about a huge, Cocoon-like city just...covering her planet, though? Hope gathered himself to ask her. "What do you think about it? This is your home, after all..."

Words - 726
Muse - Good!
Notes - Baaaaad.[/size]