Easter Break came about soon afterwards. With no Lucius to ease her mind, Hope felt horrible. The boy was always there, always nagging her, like some sort of unstoppable mosquito. She simply couldn't stop thinking of him, but being unable to see him was unbearable. All of the horrible things that she had been repressing surfaced. Her tears came back again, seeping unstoppably like blood from a wound, and she felt as if her heart would burst. She felt worthless, and tried to study and be positive to remain optimistic and feel good about herself, but it was failing miserably. There were still nights when she cried herself to sleep, to tormented and restless nights filled with bizarre dreams that she only wished would leave her. Many of her dreams involved Lucius. In one of them, she went to talk to him in the hallway where she had first arrived at the World of Vice. But as she pursued him down the red corridor, he turned around, glared at her, and entered into one of the hospital-like rooms, where Kira opened the door and found a frightening, old and dying man instead of the young boy she knew. She awoke in terror, trembling, and it took her a good while to realize that it was just a dream. After that, she couldn't sleep.
Hope stared out at the starry sky. It remained there, so easy to see, but so far beyond her reach. It was mocking her, the sky.
Hope realized as she viewed the tiny beacons of light that they were truly important. Life was a like a vast, unpredictable night sky, black and dark, polluted by evil. The only lights were tiny and twinkling and unreachable, so far away, and intangible. But those little lights had to mean everything to her, she told herself firmly, as she fought back tears that were welling up painfully in her eyes. Those little lights were her only hope, tiny pinpricks far away.
Hope shivered in her cold room, and she found herself wishing with her whole heart that Lucius was there, sitting by her, hugging her and comforting her. He was always on her mind. She wanted him to be there, too, holding her and looking at the stars with her. That was all she really wanted, all she needed to survive forever, fighting these things with her cruel destiny. Emotion welled up inside her, but she couldn't even cry. She felt numb dazedness as she stared out at the stars.
"Lucius," she breathed softly, and wondered where he was and if he was looking at the stars, too.
She couldn't tell him how she felt, not now. She most certainly could never tell him about the World of Vice, and she couldn't tell him that she -
She didn't dare say it in her mind. She couldn't tell him how she really felt about him. What if he really liked her, as well? What if he wasn't content with the relationship, either, and secretly longed for her affection? Lucius wasn't the most outgoing person in the world; his social skills were rather moderate.
But when could she tell him? There were only a couple months until this year ended, and she might not see him very much in the summer -
Summer. The thought of summer break, which normally filled Hope with glee, filled her with an enormously painful dread that at last caused all of the tears to leak uncontrollably from her eyes, non-stop, one after the other. Summer break...she wouldn't get to see Lucius nearly enough! She needed to see him, he was her only hope, he was -
Something struck Hope instantly, a thought she couldn't ignore or put down. Lucius was her happiness, her only truly tangible joy, in a way her family and other friends could never be. He was there for her, and without him, she could not sustain herself; he was vital energy for her. Indeed, he was a medicine for her poisoned wounds that had swelled up after she learned of the invisible horrors that lay undetected beneath the vision of all but Six citizens on Earth, but, she knew, fate had brought them together. Even if she hadn't had to traverse through dimensions to fight evil, she would still have felt the same way. Her feelings had come so powerfully and quickly that they had nearly knocked her off her feet, and she couldn't even admit them until now. Lucius was by far the brightest radiance in the darkness that it was now impossible for Hope to ignore. He had come as a lantern for her, a fated angel from God. Her feelings for Lucius triggered an image, a bright beam rushing into the darkness. The beam, she knew, was Lucius. She realized it now, and it stung painfully in her heart, only to heal itself as it formed: the strange knowledge that she loved him, and she couldn't possibly live without him.
Hope couldn't sleep that night. Lucius was there, beside her, in her thoughts. She gave up on it, eventually, yielding to insomnia because her mind was too full of racing contemplations, all on the same topic. She lay in bed instead, watching the sky through her window. The stars in the heavens faded slowly and gently as she watched, and the birds chirped shrilly, ringing in the new morning. Brilliant shafts of sunlight soon stung her eyes through the wall of glass. She hadn't noticed them until they had been upon her, and they had traveled so quickly...and now, she couldn't use another light in their place, because they outshone all else.
Lucius was like those sunbeams, she realized. He, too, was a light, a swift and subtle light, which had crept up on her sweetly and numbed her to all else; he was shining so brightly that she could never do without him again. But he, too, was as elusive as the dusty beams, or even more so...
He was as distant and unreachable as the brightest star she could see, shining powerfully and encouraging her through her darkest hour, only to fade tenderly from her sight and leave her grasping helplessly for him and wondering if he was only a dream or a figment of her tormented imagination...