Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIII does not belong to me.

Author's Note: Bonus chapter time because I know people wanted this, and because I found myself writing it despite telling myself I would take a break. Thank you all once again for sticking with me through this story!

Also, the formatting for the line breaks seems to not be working entirely. It looks messy, sorry.

BONUS: HOPE ESTHEIM

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He opens his eyes, and the Savior before him is dying.

Or perhaps his eyes have always been open and it is only now that he sees; he is uncertain, his existence clouded and abstract. Does he have a body? Does he have a soul? Is he a soul?

A feeling somewhere from within stirs as he watches the Savior choke on the blood filling her lungs. A crystal stem juts out from her abdomen, reflecting the pinprick light of stars and his eyes; and a face, one that is unfamiliar.

The feeling grows, fuelled by the surprise garnered by his reflection. He does not know this face - it is not his. Who is he? Who's reflection is in the crystal?

The Savior uses her last breath to utter names of the dead; bemused, he listens.

Hope. Serah. A pause, a hitch of her breath. Bhunivelze.

Unease churns further within him as her eyes bear hatred into him. He knows the names. He is one of the names - but which one? He is uncertain. His existence is convoluted. He is one, he is both, he is all. All what? Who is he?

The Savior wavers on her knees, the crystal sliding further through her body. The opposite end peeks out between her shoulder blades at the angle it sits impaled at; her eyes flicker with resolve. He laughs, certain of her defeat. The Goddess is dead. He is victorious once more.

The names burrow themselves into his mind and dig viciously for his core - he is one of them, he is certain. But which name belongs to him?

The Savior's eyes dim, her skin clammy and white beneath the faint light of the stars and his radiance. He can trace the map of veins along her smooth neck, rushing to keep her alive. Her gaze seems to find his, and not of the one in the reflection.

"Hope," she repeats a name, her mouth choking each letter to the brim with regret. "I'm sorry."

The Savior falls and Hope Estheim remembers - from within Bhunivelze's body he screams out his despair, his rage. He beats against the prison holding him captive.

"Lightning!" His voice cracks as he calls out her name, watching her body as it slumps forward and stills. "No!"

His tears choke him as he howls. No! No! This can't be real! Claire!

From within her body bursts a light show of brilliant white - souls escaping their final vessel. They pulse in response to his anguish, the agony of their loss as brilliant as them.

Go! They call out to the body whose own soul slowly seeps away. We will not fail!

Bhunivelze's laughter stills, and so does Hope - they both watch as the souls pulse as one and then there is a tug at Hope, pulling him away - Bhunivelze cries out in rage, Mwynn, Etro, curse you-

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He opens his eyes, and the Goddess before him adorns her throne.

The colors of her are the only vibrance in this grey world of ruin; the pink of her hair shines, the creaminess of her skin akin to untouched marble. She is adorned in black, the eyes he once knew to be steady yet stubborn covered by a mask. He feels anguish - she is alive. She is dead. His soul cannot properly comprehend.

Beside him, a figure wreathed in light appears and lands heavily on its feet. It towers above him even when hunched over, falling on all fours the moment it materializes.

"We failed," Snow's soul chokes out to the cold ground, beset in the form Hope remembers him. Tears pattern the dusty stone and color it a near black.

The Goddess does not shift on her throne, does not acknowledge the tragedy that lies behind her almost-brother-in-law's words. She is as dead as can be - immortal. "Bring me the truth," she intones and her voice is not unlike thunder, reverberating through the ruined temple of her predecessors. "And destroy that which ends us."

Silence descends on them, broken only by Snow's sobbing. Hope realizes that her words are a request and not an order. Despite himself, a spark of hope flutters within him.

His hand finds Snow's shoulder beside him and he grips tight into the muscles corded there. "We accept," he responds to the Goddess wearing the face of Lightning Farron, not daring to call her by the name he once cherished her by. He holds back the tremble in his voice, taking upon himself the fate of the world once more. Humanity's hope.

The Goddess inclines her head in the smallest of nods, everything about her as smooth and emotionless as the stone around them. "Do not fail, Hope Estheim."

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He opens his eyes. A beach stretches out before him, ocean waves lapping at the edges and a pier leading into the distance some ways off. A seagull flies overhead somewhere, cawing.

His body tingles. The world is wrong. The smell of briar in the air is not as it should be - the waves are synchronized in their cresting, all equal in size. The sand beneath his feet looks a perfect yellow with not a speck out of place.

"Bodhum," comes the bitter word beside him as Snow takes in the scenery. Hope cranes his head behind them and sees the houses lining the streets there, the trees all identical and lush with greenery, and suppresses a shudder. He has not remembered the wrongness of the artificial Cocoon for a very long time.

"So," Snow comments, taking in the view with a twisted grimace. Hope looks up at him, once again far too short for his aging soul - there is knowledge present within their heads - a schematic, supplemented by a wallet digging into the inside of Hope's cargo shorts. The feeling of being abstract, of simply being with no physical limits lingers for them both, a ghost receding into what is neither the past nor future, but simply a state of being where the Goddess now keeps an eye on them. "Brothers, huh?"

The man reaches out a closed fist towards Hope, knuckles first. The boy knocks against it with his own. "Brothers," he agrees with a bitterness in his voice, and the two begin walking.

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Hope's heart breaks at the sight of the rose haired child glaring suspicious daggers into his eyes from the safety of her mother's side.

She is so young.

"Claire Farron" rolls off her tongue so naturally for her, so alien to him. He is suddenly afraid of the future they are meant to inflict on her.

I'm sorry. It will be different this time, I swear it.

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He goes on to attend the prestigious Eden University, a feat he vaguely and with some amusement recalls had always been a goal for him before the whole l'Cie fiasco. The memories of his past life remain a blurry presence in the back of his mind for the most part; it is at night that the nightmares strike with vicious claws that burrow into his sleep and force him to relive both reality and fiction. He wakes up in cold sweat more often than not, going into the kitchen to rummage for warm milk and typically finding an equally hollow eyed Snow already sitting there.

Who, through the sheer force of his will and personality - of which there are a lot of, considering the man once ruled Yusnaan through the literal chaos and world's end - has managed to secure an entry position within the Cavalry unit. Snow breaks the news to him with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, but has a trace of hope in his voice when he mentions that he passed by an officer by the name of Cid Raines - we will make a difference from behind the curtain this time, Snow vows. In the beginning they decide to compile a list (one that they burn after memorizing) of all the events that would require change within this new world, uncertain which one of those - major or minor, within the next ten years or in another hundred - would be the catalyst leading to Bhunivelze's defeat. Within the first is, of course, the situation of soon-to-be-orphaned Claire and Serah.

Elize Farron is dying, slowly but surely; Hope can see it as bright as day. Old age had not taken anyone from him in the past several hundred years but he recalls terminal sickness with a stark clarity, having seen more than one case of it as the newly Chaos-full world changed entire ecosystems to adapt. He lets himself be distracted by the crush little twelve-year-old Claire has suddenly developed for him (which is better than her petulant childhood years where she strove to one up him at every turn) but soon enough he is standing with her at Bodhum's graveyard, wrapping her small body with his and promising all the support he can.

That night, as Snow rushes to fill out and submit proper paperwork for the girls, Hope shifts in his bed and stares at the ceiling all night long. His stomach churns with every small, nervous twitch of his body.

The pebble had been dropped in the water long ago, but only now he knows the ripples are big enough to take notice. The first, possible change to change the future into a better world.

He dreams of Lightning that night once he does finally slip into a fitful rest; a vision he knows cannot be real, since upon her throne of crystal as the newly anointed Goddess, she smiles warmly at him and beckons to the younger Claire that stands at the foot of her throne.

"Take care of her," she tells him, in a voice not that of the Goddess but of the woman she once was, so very dear to him. It is only because he knows her so well, so intimately that he knows he is capable of projecting her visage to such a perfection, her words to ones she knows he would tell her.

"Don't let her become me, Hope."

They relocate to Eden a short while later, far away from the slumbering Anima Serah had so foolishly encountered once. Hope dares to breathe a small sigh of relief.

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When Claire Farron is seventeen she corners him in their house and kisses him. Corners might not be the right word for it, but to Hope, that is what it feels like – the girl with her lips pressed against his in the clumsy teenage attempt (what does he know about kissing, though, the thought passes through his brain) is seventeen and undoubtedly underage and, undoubtedly, not Lightning Farron.

She pulls away eventually from his still body and he shakes his head at her and tells her, "You're seventeen, Claire," and when she runs out on him he doesn't tell her: you are not the woman I love. You will never be the woman I love.

His stomach churns with the realization he's been pushing off for so long, now no longer lurking in the back corners of his mind. He barely makes it to the toilet before his stomach empties its contents and he sits there sprawled on the tiles, staring at the swirling water, running the thought through his mind:

Lightning Farron is dead. There will never be another Lightning Farron, twisted into existence by the loneliness of Claire Farron, because I will not let it happen.

"I won't let her become you, Light," he promises to the empty house around him. There comes no answer.

Lightning Farron is dead. There is only the Goddess now.

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He sees his parents once, when he is walking through Eden one morning. He turns the corner to the street market and suddenly they are just there, exactly the way he remembers them to be – laughing together as they peruse Eden's wares, no trace of a care around them. No l'Cie son to be afraid of – for – and most importantly, no dead Nora.

Hope had looked up their files as soon as he was able to covertly at his job, of course. As he watches them, recalling the fact that there was no Hope Estheim born to this world – a miscarriage late into the pregnancy – they have a perfectly normal, brilliant daughter now with brown hair and his father's eyes, he thinks with sudden clarity:

Hope Estheim is dead, too. Hope Estheim never existed in this world; he perished in his mother's womb.

There is only Hope Villiers now.

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Claire introduces Cid Raines as her boyfriend to her family soon after and when Snow comes over to Hope's apartment and breaks the news with a degree of awe, Hope listens quietly and does not offer much commentary. Snow slips into the usual work ramblings and Cavalry plans and his ever present optimism about the future and leaves with a small bounce in his step, because Claire is almost twenty-one and last time it was then that she became a l'Cie, but they are not at Bodhum now and have no plans to attend the fireworks this year and it will be different this time, Hope—

Hope Estheim is dead, Hope muses as he cleans up the dinner table afterwards, putting the dishes methodically into the sink. Hope Estheim never had a brother, and did not grow up to attend Eden University or acquire a job within the Sanctum. Hope Estheim tried to save the world and failed.

He grips the ceramic plate in his hands until his knuckles turn white. Hope Villiers will not fail. He can't. He won't.

His mind flashes back to the news about Cid and Claire and he lingers there for several moments, trying to untangle the knot of emotions that rise up within him at the thought. Relief and joy because Claire has this chance for normality, and envy, because a part of him also wanted his own normality with her—

He cuts off the train of thought before it can finish. The plate in his hands cracks.

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They miss the fireworks but of course some poor fool still stumbles upon Anima, and Fang and Vanille's faces are plastered all over the news dubbed as terrorists and Hope doesn't need to see their faces to remember the absolute terror all of them had felt at that point in their lives. The chase continues for an entire week, during which him and Snow come to arguing many times as Snow has suddenly realized that nothing has changed, which Hope vehemently disagrees with.

"We have Serah with us, and Claire." His voice breaks. "We have Claire."

Snow stares up at him with hollow eyes, face warped by grief. The graying in his hair suddenly stands out so much more clearly to Hope.

"Dinner's ready!" Serah's call comes from the kitchen and breaks them out of their reverie. The grief on his friend's – brother's – face fades as he pushes his chair back and stands, closing his eyes for several long moments to compose himself.

"You're right," he eventually says, his hands clenched into fists on top of the desk. "We have them. And we'll do anything to keep them from coming to harm."

Hope lingers on these words when the news report the capture (and subsequent execution, he doesn't doubt) of Fang and Vanille. They had all known what they were giving up, in that moment their souls escaped from Lightning as she stood dying and gave themselves to make her rise as the Goddess – they knew that their alternate selves would perish more than once, that the chances of them all living again were very slim. And yet they still did it.

Hope remembers that warmth, the caress of his friends' presence as they surged around him and with him into Lightning. Go. We give ourselves for you, for the future.

He buries his head in the pillow and summons up that memory, that warmth. I'm sorry I couldn't save you, too.

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Snow tracks down Sazh immediately after Dajh's crystallized form makes headlines and strong arms him into becoming his personal pilot – for Snow has risen through the ranks, and has his own private cruiser ship, of all things. Hope almost bursts into hysterical laughter when he meets the man, who is all but wringing his hands nervously at the prospect of meeting his new, very important client's little brother (no doubt still influenced by Dajh as well, for Hope has rarely seen Sazh's confidence this shaken).

He almost asks where the chocobo who had nested in Sazh's hair is. He keeps his mouth shut.

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Hope Villiers wakes up one day and lying there in the light of Phoenix, half asleep with half formed thoughts floating through his mind, thinks of Claire's smile.

He calls in sick to work that day and tries to bury his head in the ground once more, to escape the thoughts of Claire and how he was mistaken, he loved Lightning once but Claire was Lightning, not the woman he remembered Light to be but at her core they were one and the same, because Lightning was formed by Claire's grief but she was also Claire, underneath it all, and Hope loved her—

He drives himself insane that day, all but making a list of pros and cons to confessing to Claire, still in her relationship with Cid. He does not want to interfere but he had been selfless so often, and for once, he wants to be selfish, to at least give her the choice because he loves her and love has never been entirely selfless.

The confession goes better than he planned (which he didn't, because he certainly did not plan on kissing her while leaning over a couch they had just carried up several flights of stairs, sweaty and out of breath) in the sense that she does not physically force him out the door, telling him to never come back. In fact, she had remained scarily calm and he was the one to leave her, sitting on that stupid couch.

Snow's the one to tell him of the breakup some time later. He agonizes for another day about whether or not he should go see her, and in the end he does, because that is what love does to people – when she struggles for words to say to him, standing on the threshold of her front door, he is not surprised by the fact that he does need her words to understand all that she wants to tell him. He understands her because she was Lightning, once, but mostly because she has always been Claire. And Hope has always loved the woman underneath the moniker.

"I know," he tells her, softly, and they both know that it is both an I'm sorry and an I love you. She hesitates, then, and opens the door for him.

He steps through.

Hope Estheim is dead, but Hope Villiers is alive and hopelessly in love with the woman that is Claire Farron. And he will change the future.

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Snow and Serah take the news well, Serah more so than Snow, who pulls him aside from the two sisters and stands there silently, searching for the words he wants to say.

"It's fine," Hope speaks for him, smiling up at his friend and brother and confidant; the smile is more bitterness than happiness, the smile of a man who has lived for as long as he has and carries the world on his shoulders. "I will always love her, no matter what name she takes. I love Claire, Snow, even when she was Lightning. It's just taken me an absurdly long time to realize this."

"She will never be Lightning," Snow tells him quietly, gauging him with cautious eyes. "We won't allow that. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Hope answers and doesn't say more than you know, because Snow does know – because he will never be with Serah again. Because that is the sacrifice he has made, the one that Hope has not been forced into.

The two men tasked with saving the future smile at each other then, the corners lurking with grief and irony, and return to their normal lives.

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They marry and it is the happiest day of Hope Villier's life, second only to when their daughter is born – she has Claire's pink hair and his green eyes and they name her Vanille, and Snow's first gift to her is a miniature fishing rod that Hope spends far more time than appropriate laughing over. He catches his wife's eye and the strange look on her face and wonders, as he sometimes does and then tries not to, what does Claire know?

He hums wordless Pulsian lullabies that Vanille once hummed to him on the wild plains of Pulse to his daughter, and promises her – I'll protect both this time. I promise.

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Failure looks a lot like Cocoon falling and Snow's frantic call in his ear, about the Primarch and Orphan and the airship waiting to take them to Pulse, away from the destruction, but as Hope vaults over debris all he can think of is Claire, Vanille—

He finds Claire standing in the front yard of their house, a crying Vanille clutched to her chest and a gaping hole where their neighbor's house once used to be. The ground beneath him trembles as he catches her shoulder and turns her around, her eyes glazed by panic as she says his name.

"What's going on?" She asks him and he wishes he had the time to explain everything, all the things he had kept secret; perhaps that was the secret to preventing this outcome from happening, perhaps Claire herself was the key in an entirely different way than they had thought, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Time slows and from behind him comes the sound of the fabric of time itself being ripped open. He does not need to turn around to know who it is that lingers behind him now, but he does so anyway with a degree of awe as he glimpses the black armor once more, the pale face covered by a visor and the pink hair curling so perfectly over one shoulder.

"Lightning," he breathes the name of the Goddess, and within his chest his heart stutters.

"HOPE ESTHEIM," the Goddess intones and his mind thinks, rapid fast, Hope Estheim is dead as she continues, "YOU HAVE FAILED."

The words do not register at first but time has resumed in the world and he wrenches his head back towards Claire, who is both a reflection of the woman behind him and an entirely different Claire Farron, and as Lightning's arms lock around him he tries to lurch forward towards his wife and child, his voice breaking as he registers Claire's face blurring as he is pulled back into the void—

"Claire, no—!"

Darkness and silence. The universes spin, a kaleidoscope being shaken into patterns. One cannot cry when one is not dead, not yet alive.

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He opens his eyes. A beach stretches out before him, ocean waves lapping at the edges and a pier leading into the distance some ways off. A seagull flies overhead somewhere, cawing.

His body tingles. The world feels wrong, he feels wrong, as if he is forgetting something important.

"Bodhum," comes Snow's bitter voice beside him and something sparks within Hope's brain, his heart lurching painfully and it all comes rushing back—

"No," he sobs out as he falls to the perfect sand and fists his hands in it, digging into the ground. "No, no, no, no—"

They have failed. The Goddess has chosen to restart once more. His tears color the sand and he clenches his eyes shut, forces the memories away that sweep him up beneath their current. He does not want to remember.

YOU MUST, the Goddess' voice breaks the sanctity of his frenzied mind, the voice booming and manipulating his limbs under he stands again, swaying under her pressure. YOU WILL NOT FAIL. BRING ME THE TRUTH, HOPE ESTHEIM, AND DESTROY THAT WHICH ENDS US.

He walks towards Bodhum a broken man, and through his grief, promises himself—

This time will be different. I'll save you, I promise.