Surface At Last

After feeling the boy's arms wrap around his neck, Hope grabbed onto the metal rungs he happened to come across in the dark. He turned and started to climb up the ladder.

The rungs coldly met his hands and scratched his palms with rust. With each ascend, it crumbled beneath his fingers as fragments trickled down below as they climbed in the confined darkness.

"So...where are we going now...sir..?"

"Sector Two."

Hope slightly paused. The echoes didn't carry as they used to. He hesitantly reached to the sides and behind and felt that the darkness had shrunk.

'Ah...Tight spaces.'

That thought strangely made his heart throb heavily in his ears like a loud drum.

Hope shook his head from the feeling and moved his sweaty palm up ten inches till he found the next rung. He moved his left leg as well and repeated the same process for the other side.

"Oh...." The boy replied with a groggy voice. "My dad and I were going...there too."

Hope blinked at the tone of his voice. The boy was being carried away again by sleep, and not by Hope's help this time.

"What's your name, kid?"

The boy twitched back awake from his question.

"Ah Adam..."

"Like that in the Bible."

"Mm...that's true..." The boy said, yawning. "..adam..adam...mum called me adam..."

Hope stopped as he finally touched the ceiling.

A quick spark of flurry lights appeared then vanished as Hope summoned his shield and pressed it against the lid overhead.

"...!" A noise of surprise escaped the boy's lips. "Are you- A-are you an Awakened...?"

"Yup. Sure. Let's just say I am."

"...? What-"

Hope took a deep breath and pushed up against the heavy lid with all his strength. His muscles strained and his bones ached from the hefty weight. Maybe at full strength with enough nutrition and hydration, it wouldn't be a problem as a Dreamer.

But it most certainly was with the many damn odds he'd experienced recently-

'Oh shut up.' Hope grunted at the thought.

Krrrr-

Finally, a silver crack appeared.

The sight immediately resurfaced a tangent thought of those wicked smiles from the behemoth, dozens dancing faintly across his vision. But Hope quickly shook his head from the memory as he huffed and began sliding the lid off to the side.

Krrrrrr-

Before he created enough gap to pass through, he saw the boy's thin fingers reach over him and try to push the lid as well. Not that there was any supportive strength behind it. But Hope didn't comment on the gesture from the boy.

They climbed out, leaving behind the dark tunnel and its foul belly as they were greeted with the smell of fresh nature. A dampened breeze pressed against them as their bodies poked out and crawled onto a random street.

Hope dropped to one knee to catch his breath, dismissing his shield, and felt the boy slide off his back.

The boy paused as he stood nearby, his feet awkwardly shifting as if he were on loose ground.

"..."

'The hell is he thinking now?'

"What?"

The boy hesitated before speaking: "You are an Awakened..."

"..."

It was Hope's turn to respond in silence.

'Now where the hell did he get that confirmation?'

Hope would have assumed it was from dismissing his shield, but he felt the boy's eyes inspecting something else on his face. When he met his gaze, he looked hurriedly away.

"Tsk. Nevermind that."

Hope stretched his arm out to him.

"Don't even think about trying to walk. Just climb on my back. Ok?"

***

With the boy on his back, Hope walked down the streets close to the ruined buildings if they ever needed to run and hide for cover. Buildings of long past apartments and stores gloomed overhead; words printed over doors and windows. Some in English.

Others were in ridiculous printed language that didn't look at all like runes but bizarre, nonetheless.

And that uniqueness changed every other store.

Just how many languages were there in the world?

The streets were like frozen crowds of automobiles in every dull color of red, black, white, blue, etc. They were like cocoons that shelled their rotten passengers; gray bodies slumped forward or back with noticeable bullets in their heads or savage claw marks across their necks.

But the bodies weren't much of a distraction. For the first couple of minutes, Hope was confused on where he was. The greenery was thicker here than there was on the main road as if some unnatural spell had encouraged its infestation.

Had a lot changed in simply a month and a half?

But to silence his confusion, Hope looked up and observed the rooftops. In all their arched shapes and flat ledges and colored walls, he remembered again where he was and the distance to the glass dome.

"I...never thought I'd see this part of the city." The boy muttered as he slumped on his back.

Hope stayed quiet for a few moments.

What was the saying? Ah. He remembered. Of course he did.

"There's a first for everything, kid."

As he continued forward, the vines became thicker and bolder as nature roped themselves everywhere.

No longer did they hide in corners or slither meekly on the street like veins, but their numbers draped along the walls like tattered curtains and hugged on buildings like a large shadowed hand.

Down one street was a collapsed glass building. It had a thousand shattered holes where windows used to be. Vines wrapped around its hollow vessel as if wanting to drag it down beneath the earth with it.

In other buildings as well, they crawled between their frames and choked them as if exploring their insides with their multiple meddling stems.

Tall grass grew between the cracked asphalt and leaves cluttered like busheled hair on vines. Some had streaks of red under their layers, others green with a tinge of yellow, and some others blue.

Was nature always this colorful?

Did such a world exist like that outside of cities before the Spell?

That seemed hard to believe. But maybe not as unfathomable compared to a monster gate opening and releasing a Titan with its colossal nature infecting a whole city.

"Umm..."

Hope blinked. "What?"

"What's your name...sir...?"

Before Hope responded, the boy continued: "I-I feel bad I don't know your name...especially you carrying me and all..."

"It's not worth remembering, kid."

The boy awkwardly fidgeted on his back. "I still would like to know..."

"..."

Hope frowned and waited again for the silence to prolong just a little longer.

"It's Hope."

"..."

"..."

"Hope...?"

"Yeah, kid. I know."

"A-ah no!" The boy's voice croaked. "I mean it's-"

Hope frowned as he waited for the boy to finish what he was going to say this time.

"Umm..."

If he could even finish what he was going to say.

"Yes?"

"Umm...It's a lov-"

"Anything but that, kid. It is anything. But. That."

The boy quickly clamped his mouth shut.

Hope had already felt his mother's voices rushing in his mind, and quickly tried to shut them down.

At this point, Hope had been doing somewhat well in training his mind to rear back away from the rising sea of voices. Sort of. Failed at most times. But there were certain subjects that his mind refused to easily pull away from. It was always half and half for him to dismiss them completely.

"Umm...who named you that...?"

"..."

Hope cursed silently in his head.

"My mother." Hope answered flatly.

"Ah...mine to y'know."

"Mm."

"And she named you that because...?" Hope could feel the boy playing with his hair now.

"Propaganda."

"Propa- Prop...what?"

Hope internally sighed as his mother's sea voice rose again, and he did little this time to fight back.

He couldn't blame the boy for proposing the question.

But he also could...

But at that moment, not only her chimed voice started to ring in his ears, but images of her fleeted past his eyes.

'Ah Hope my dearest!'

'You know the sun shines at least once a day. I'm sure of it."

'What would you wish for, darling?'

Images of her lips pulled into a smile as she called out to him, one of those kinds of smiles as if she had a secret surprise to share. There was a memory of when she stood in the kitchen on a late afternoon while her delicate long fingers carefully repaired a broken cup he had dropped once before; or the times when she would sit on his bed and hum a tantalizing lullaby about streams and stars; or the times when she would give a cold embrace in the night as thunders resounded in their walls.

"What is she like?" The boy asked softly, his voice carrying a sleepy tune to it.

"Mm..."

Strange. It felt forever since someone had last asked him that. Because it didn't matter anymore. Just as it didn't matter if he asked the boy in return when neither of their parents were worth mentioning or benefitted on their lone journey.

But he supposed if he could summarize, his mother had a knack for connecting things as if each gesture and event were caused by the universe. She wasn't necessarily religious—none he could recall such a pious thing from her—but she always tried to find the 'silver lining' as people would say.

During the time of Immortal Flame's ascension, when Quadrant I at that time were suffering innumerable damages within and outside of settlements, Hope's mother grasped onto that warrior's story and held it close to her heart like a soothing spell.

That hero.

The supposed symbol of humanity.

And people placed their faith in a renowned warrior who wasn't even in their Quadrant.

Why would people torture and gamble their hopes on someone who they would never meet? And that was not considering Awakened.

Hope shook the thoughts away as he repositioned the boy on his back, the contact on his injured hand stinging as fabric brushed against it brought him back to the present.

"She was the kind of person who hoped too much." Hope said as a matter-of-factly.

The boy remained silent, and Hope didn't care why as they reached the end of a street.

As Hope turned the street corner, they were greeted again with another long street of crowds of abandoned cars flanked with ruined buildings in nature's embrace of vines and leaves stalking up and down the walls.

But further down at least two blocks, a light gleamed like the face of the washed silvery sun, stinging his eyes from its reflection.

But Hope didn't care about that.

His whole body felt itched to run towards it even.

"H-hope! Is that-!?"

"Yeah, kid." Hope blinked. "It is."

Hope felt his leg take one quick step forward.

Step.

Then another.

Step.

And another.

And he continued that stride towards the glass dome knowing that the boy felt hopeful again that all the stories his father had told him were finally within reach.