Please, I am begging you, have Hope as Ravus or a Nox Fleuret. He started a city and waited 300 years for Lightning, I cannot see him staying behind.
Me: Okay see- I did NOT know that bit about Hope since I’ve only watched some of the first game and the very ending cutscene of the last (I know, I know, out of order, but I wanted to know if it was a happy ending). But considering I love Hope and will never turn down an excuse to include him in a crossover like this-
-Hope isn’t ... quite sure what to think of being an eldest sibling now. Of course he LOVES his little brother Ravus, then later little Luna, but it’s ... it’s strange. Remembering being an only child.
-Remembering being Hope at all. His name is Zagreus now, a name he’s pretty sure his father picked because he knows his mother picked Ravus’s and Lunafreya’s names and they seem a little less ... strange. At least he’s talked everyone into calling him Rey as a nickname instead of Zag.
-He’s known as the odd one of the Oracle’s children. Always mature and vaguely distant, always a little too old for his age and looks.
-He’s also a living rule breaker, not by intent but just ... accident? Accident. Zagreus blames his past life for this (not that he can tell anyone) because it’s the only explanation he can think of for why he is the ONLY male Nox Fleuret to ever use magic. Ever.
-His mother’s shock had been a thing to behold the day she stumbled across him carefully healing the paw of one of the stray cats he’d befriended.
-It wasn’t just Oracle magic either. Because Zagreus remembers being Hope and Hope had always been very good at using elemental magic (it’s called elemancy now, which is ... catchy he supposes). It’s easy for him to twist the magic in his veins into the familiar patterns of ice or fire or lightning or wind.
-It all caused quite the stir, and people gossiped incessantly over the first “male Oracle” and what it might mean. Zagreus tried to ignore them and instead just enjoy his lessons with Mother (though the reverence she displayed for the Astrals, the stalwart faith in them as if they were gods even when she herself said they were only guardians ... it disturbed him. It made his magic feel a little too much like a Focus of old and thinking of Focuses made him think of his friends, of Lightning, and then his heart would ache from being alone).
-When Zagreus is 7, a huge stir erupts in the court over reasons other than Zagreus himself: the King of Lucis had had a child out of wedlock, a pale haired girl. More than that, he had named her his heir. Elpis Lucis Caelum, his eldest child born of another woman, was to be the Crown Princess. Zagreus’s status as a male Oracle wass temporarily forgotten in favor of this piece of gossip and speculation (why had he done this? How did Queen Aulea feel about a child born out of wedlock taking the heirship of what should have been her child? Did this mean the Queen was UNABLE to have a child and Princess Elpis had been a planned alternate conception?)
-Zagreus looks up from playing with his little siblings to stare at the news feeds and sees a solemn faced girl with pale hair and blue-blue eyes and something about the way she stands and stares at the crowd makes him think-.
-But no. Surely not. He’s not that lucky.
-Except when he’s 9, his mother is contacted by King Regis in hopes of answers, his 10 year old daughter (now eldest child) just used Oracle magic to aid Queen Aulea in her post-pregnancy complications. Zagreus thinks of himself, of the Oracle child who can use elemancy when none have before and feels something in him flare to life. He begs to go with his mother, pleads until she gives in with an uneasy glance at his unusual intensity (usually he is more laidback, more obedient, not wanting to make trouble for his busy mother).
-Queen Sylva and her eldest child arrive in Lucis two weeks later to meet with King Regis and his Crown Princess.
-Zagreus watches Princess Elpis like a hawk, sees her deadpan expressions and lazy movements, her too-old eyes and the way she bluntly says that she used healing magic because she wanted to. Magic is will. It’s not like it’s hard.
-And he ... he hopes. For the first time since he woke up with memories of being a boy with a Focus. For the first time since he realized he was all alone-.
-“Lightning?” He chokes out, heedless of the adults around them, too desperate to wait and think of a way to meet this princess alone.
-Her eyes snap over to him with laser intensity and for a moment he’s terrified she’ll say she had no idea what he’s talking about. Then her eyes narrow and she steps closer, “Where did you hear that name?” She demands, also ignoring the adults, who look like they want to interrupt but don’t quite dare, “That’s my preferred name, but the media was never told that. How do you know it?”
-Zagreus (Hope) licks dry lips and scrambles for where to start, what to think or say that would prove himself-
-“Sometimes,” he whispered, quoting an old, half-forgotten memory as he tentatively holds out his hands, “shadows will darken our path, we shall tremble in fear before the night. But we won’t be alone, we will reach out our hands...”
-Blue eyes widen in wonder and fragile, shaky hope, then slender fingers reach out and intertwin tightly with his, “And in the warmth of another hand holding our own,” she whispers back, “we will know hope.”
-He smiles past the tears dripping down his face, squeezing her fingers as she starts to cry in return, “Hey there, Light.”
-The girl who was once Lightning, once l’Cie, once warrior, once sister in arms, pulls him close and presses their foreheads together, “Hope,” she rasps past hitching breath, “I thought I was alone.”
-“Never,” he chokes out, fierce despite the quaver in his voice, “Never alone. Not this time.”
-Together they cry, wrapping their arms around each other and sobbing while the adults in their lives looked on in astonishment and confusion until Queen Sylva whispers shakily into King Regis’s ear, “Those Who Walk Twice.” And Regis has to sit down as they witness the reunion of two lost souls that knew each other a lifetime ago.
