A/N: Hello, I'm back! After I think a year I finally got back to writing fanfiction. Honestly, even I ask myself why I sign myself up for so much at school when I can't even get 6 hours of sleep each night ~.~ Anyway, here's the next chapter to the fanfic I finally got around to...

Oh, and please, I'm warning you right now this chapter won't be pretty. And don't murder me after you finish, I'M NOT DONE WITH IT YET. There is a method to the madness, I tell you!

At first, it was very faint and hard to see. Hope's vision was blurred with so much chaos and tears, he didn't even see it at first. But it grew stronger, pulsing steadily with increasing warmth.

Light.

It shone vibrantly and flooded the terrain overwhelmingly, enveloping the darkness. The light flooded over the chaos, the two dancing around for dominance in the misty terrain. Hope shrieked from the overwhelming power of the light, his wing beating furiously as if attempting to bat it away. And then, the brightest light of all appeared before Hope.

Her steely eyes glistened with a new power beyond mortality. But when they fell upon hope, it all seemed to melt away, replaced with another emotion that cannot be explained.

"Hope," Lightning whispered. Her painfully familiar voice echoed around him, provoking him to wail thunderously. Hearing Lightning's voice was a stab in the heart to Hope. He couldn't control his furious, clumsy swings at her. When he was a human, he had loved her. But the remaining shreds of his humanity couldn't stop his blind Possessed nature from reacting to her.

She dodged each strike swiftly, floating lightly above his crystal-ridden fists. "You can fix yourself," Lightning said. "Get rid of the chaos infesting your heart. You just have to try to listen to me."

Hope could only howl in anguish, the hollow cry of a Cie'th beyond healing. Lightning averted her gaze from him with an expression he had never seen before.

"Please, Hope, listen to me," she said darkly. "Etro knows what might happen if you can't."

He felt hopelessly blind and deaf to her pleas. The only thoughts swirling in his mind were those of chaos and inner destruction. And inside, he was vaguely aware of something struggling to find its way through the broken ruins of his heart. Why did it feel so foreign to him? Hope's fists then mindless swung at Lightning once again, and she again jumped out of the way.

"Hope, I know what you must be feeling." Lightning's piercing blue gaze bore into him. "But you have the strength to break through this monster and find yourself again. I know you can."

The struggle in his heart was becoming stronger, and more painful. The sudden surge of aching clouded Hope's mind, and he only tried to attack Lightning more desperately. And somehow, he was aware that his humanity was trying to fight his Possessed nature.

"We'll kill it," Lightning said. "We'll take out your Possession and get rid of it."

Get…rid of it…

Hope's inner Cie'th seemed to be outraged at this. Before he knew it, Hope was throwing himself at Lightning. She just barely managed to roll out of the way, and Hope crashed to the ground. A few crystals seemed to shatter on his body, and he felt something shatter inside of him as well.

Something had broken inside of him. He felt an enormous surge of pain and let out a howl of bitter agony. He realized the remorse he felt was mixed in with another emotion he had almost forgotten as a half-Cie'th – love. Lightning was one of the people near and dear to him, and he had been trying to kill her. The floodgates of his heart were opened, overwhelming him enough to simply crush him.

He realized he was weeping. Weeping for his pitiful life, what he had become, and what he had failed to do. Everything burst from him in the bitter tears that seemed to flow unceasingly. It was something that should've been impossible for a Cie'th who lost him human identity. But there Hope was, crumbled and buried in the crystals of his own body, crying for his fate.

Then it happened. He felt an excruciating burst of raw pain in his chest that came suddenly and swiftly, like a flash of lightning. Slowly, he looked up. Lightning had driven her gunblade right through him. His tears had abruptly stopped from utter shock as chaos puffed out and clouded his vision. He couldn't see the expression on her face through it.

Lightning…why…I thought you said…

She peered into his shocked face, and he was startled to see the pain in her eyes. He could feel her hands shaking through the gunblade impaled in his heart. "Hope… "

Lightning slowly withdrew her blade, and fresh blossoms of chaos puffed from his open wound. His body went completely limp, and through the haze in his head, he couldn't comprehend why Lightning would do this. The worst part of it was that the little humanity Hope had left in him was absolutely despairing. The pain of what she did was unbearable, overshadowing even the pain of the impalement. Hope was beyond heartbreak, and his human emotions were becoming painfully clear.

After all she said…she still decides to kill me…

Before giving into what he thought was to be his lonely death, he thought he felt gentle tug on his mutated arm and a magnificent light. Was it heaven…?

It couldn't be. A monster like him didn't belong there.