Bring Me To Life
| Bring Me To Life | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 29 November 2012 |
| Location: | Traverse Town |
| Synopsis: | Having sensed the terrible Darkness of Riku and Angantyr's battle, Jasmine follows it to the former's broken body, dying in an alley. Spoiler alert: he doesn't die. |
| Thanks to: | No apologies for the Evanescence reference; when could it be more appropriate? ;) |
| Cast of Characters: | Jasmine, Riku |
- Riku has posed:
The first thought that filtered up from the ruins of his consciousness was that he was dying.
At least this is very much what he thinks dying should feel like. No fiery hell of burning mirrors. No echoing footsteps or mocking laughter.
Just this peaceful dimming of the light and the urge to sleep. Riku lay with his cheek warming the cool cobblestones, his blinded yellow eyes open and staring. He doesn't know where he is. The wild portal could have taken him anywhere. It had taken the last shreds of his willpower to fight the nightmarish images long enough even to do that much. Now they were gone. Garland's apprentice had hollowed him out. They had snuffed the dark flames at the peak of a raging blaze and his heart had stopped.
There was no more fire now. No more pain. The terrible, mind searing scream of the voice was gone. The greater darkness would have to be someone elses problem. Would Mercade eventually have to turn on his own friend? No. Riku couldn't see him doing that.
The light gradually dimmed. He curled himself around the last remaining spark of light. The light which had struggled against the dark blaze that had consumed him. It was only a whisper of thought anad memory. A faint echo of who he used to be. It was all that was left of him now. As it faded, there was a faint longing, as if a greater light were just out of reach-- just beyond his fingers reaching across the cobbles as he lay prone in an alleyway of Traverse Town.
He couldn't reach it. He couldn't even name it.
Riku finally gave up, letting it all slip through his fingers while he was surrounded by an endless darkness. He remembered Sora, and Kairi, and Destiny islands... and with the lulling sound of a familiar ocean filling his ears, the darkness didn't seem so terrible at all.
- Jasmine has posed:
As the final spark of light begins to wink out, it suddenly glows fiercely, as though a cool, sweet breath has blown upon a coal. It only takes the softest whisper to fan the flame from gray dust to white heat. It twists, and blossoms, becoming a girl.
A girl's hand, cradling his. /Refusing/ to let his fingers slip any further. It's delicate, and slender, but not unmarked by difficult times; the fingernails are unpainted, the palm a little bit callused. Strong for its tiny size, though its true strength is not physical.
Her other hand, guiding his head onto her knees -- she's kneeling beside him, leaning over him. Once he's resting on something softer than the stones of the alleyway, the hand drifts down to rest gently on his heart.
And then she opens her own heart.
Connection: momentary yet transcendent, infinite potential condensed into an instant of time and a boyful of space. For a single heartbeat, Riku feels what it is to be one of the seven conduits of Light, as his body completes the circuit, the fires of creation passing from her, into him, then back into the heart of the worlds. It's exhilarating, and terrifying. Power overwhelming, overwhelms. It has desires, perogatives, of its own.
But it loves him, all of him, his Darkness as well as his Light; the bright mirror to a darker one he once saw a vision of beauty in, it reflects him exactly the way he is, rather than as he could be, and sees no less perfection in the present struggle that is Riku. And so does she.
"Riku... Riku..."
...Kairi? No. The voice is different, though the concern, the compassion that throbs at its core is exactly the same.
"Come back, Riku. "Live!"
The fiery defiance of impossible darkness, clear as a bell, is as unmistakable as her face, as her features resolve from a luminous but anonymous young woman, into herself. Jasmine.
"Please..."
- Riku has posed:
Riku says, "Good morning sweetie. Bad dreams again?" His mom. Riku reached out for the memory, touching the edges as the light wraps around him. It does not muffle the insane screech, the deafening wail of darkness that reverberates around and around in his head but it makes him strong enough to bear under it without shattering.
The light is soothing water but not a tame thing. A healer, but not exactly a kind one. The water burns even as it heals him. He begins to thrash in secondary reaction to that antipode between darkness and light.
It loves him, but Riku doesn't love himself. He doesn't deserve it. He needs it but he can't have it. It's a struggle to see past the blinding brilliance but Riku tries to turn away, struggle away-- back to where it is calm and quiet and there is--
He catches a glimpse of it again, faded out in the powerful surge of emotion and terrifying light. The last piece of night swallowed by dawn. A finger of orange fire that cracks away from the collison of burning emptiness and shimmering light.
Riku wakes up, jerking forwards with his hand extended towards the invisible. Searing pain lances through his head as another repetition of the scream rakes across his conscious mind. He forces it away, bracing himself against it as he squeezes Jasmine's hand slightly. The muscles work but he feels disoriented and detached from his body from the healing magic. He also can't see very well, great patches of darkness making it difficult to see more than vague movement and shapes.
"Hello?" The words, the voice haven't quite registered yet so he sits there looking into the blank distance, turning his head back and forth.
- Jasmine has posed:
"Hey there. Welcome back..."
His head is on clouds. Soft, shimmering, faintly opalescent blue ones; a silken fabric, in fact, that he's never seen before in any quantity. Pooled around them is a much more familiar brown burlap.
"Don't try to move just yet," Jasmine murmurs soothingly, serene, joyous with relief, once it's obvious to her that he's awake. In her mind, he was never /not/ going to be okay, failure wasn't even an option. Her hands, still on his heart and entwined in his own hand respectively, are as warm as his voice. She squeezes back, when he does, firmly but painlessly reinforcing the knowledge that he isn't alone, following his motion when he reaches out to grab nothing. "Easy now. Breathe."
Notably, she doesn't ask him what happened; either she knows, doesn't want to know, or wants to know desperately but doesn't want to hurt him by asking. Whatever the reason, she seems to be firmly in the present, and looking towards the future. As usual.
Sensing his pain, either directly -- a real possibility -- or just from his expression, the way he manages it, she sends a second pulse of Light through him. It's just as strong as the first one; she is not very good at settings between 'on' and 'off'. The latter is hard enough, as it is. It -- they -- love him just as fiercely, the second time.
With every breath, wounds knit, muscles mend, vitality is restored; the Light is not restful, but though the emotional response it drives may be painful, it, itself, is not. The fires of purification may not exactly be euphoria, but there's a blissful edge to them, one that sharpens to a razor's width of sweetness, just as it retreats.
For retreat it does. If he manages to look up, he can see the girl's face frozen in fierce concentration, as she does battle, not with what dwells within him, but within herself. Afterwards, when she's forced the gates of her heart shut again, turned the tap dry, she can feel the pressure building immediately.
But then, she can also feel the consequences starting to rise, on the edge of her perception. She's still got time. Not much, but some. Enough.
"Can you tell me who you are?" It's a clinical question, taught to her by SeeD in a first aid class that was great for teaching her the basics of battle-wound management ("keep it clean"), and totally useless for teaching her how to deal with herself. But no words that pass her lips ever escape casually, or automatically; in the fondness, the supportiveness, of her tones, she's already answered it.
- Riku has posed:
Riku gasps at the fierceness of the healing. Maybe it could stand to love him just a tiny bit less. As that thought passes through his mind, the faintest hint of a smile returns to his face. He felt raw and absolutely scoured.
Can I tell you who I am?
Now that. That is an interesting question.
It's one that is too complex for his bruised mind. Riku's shoulders heave slightly with reaction. His body starts to shake as he realizes that somehow he has lived through another night. That his path has been put in front of him again and there is no choice but to continue walking it. Perhaps the princess would have been better served to let him fade.. but he was not going to burden her with that. Not now. Not ever.
"I'm--" he swallows, trying to fight off the shuddering as he tries to focus on the source of her voice. There was almost a relief as he realizes there is no aching, demanding hunger. It was given freely when he had nothing but ashes. Riku is sure that the darkness in him will return when the princess has gone away, but for the first time in memory he is not troubled by it. There is a hollow ache in the place where it always pulls, and he turns his thoughts away before they can betray him by missing it. "I'm-"
Who am I again? Who am I pretending to be? Back to first principles.
"I'm.. Riku. Yes." he says in sad, tired little voice. "..I know who I am."
- Jasmine has posed:
Jasmine has lost her home, her family, her friends -- many of them permanently, at Garden. No: she would not have been better served to let Riku slip through /her/ fingers, even if she knew his full situation. There is no path through the darkness that cannot emerge into the light. And after the sense of connection they just experienced, her awareness may be a very real concern.
She beams at him, with an innocent radiance impossible to counterfeit.
Nevermind.
"Good," she says simply, moving her hand at last from his heart to squeeze his shaking shoulders. The hand in his remains, becoming a hand /up/, as she rises, a slow, fluidly controlled motion, to give him plenty of time to do so... or to not be able to do so, in which case she can cushion his sinking back down. She doesn't expect that problem, but preparing contingencies is an act of humility that Jasmine embraces regularly. She doubts herself so fiercely, sometimes, while believing in everyone else.
Glancing off to one side, her dark canopy of hair rippling when she turns her head, she spots a solution to her time constraints: the nearby hotel. "Let's get inside," she suggests. "My ship's about to leave," more to the point, I'm leaving before Heartless attack Traverse Town again looking for me, "But you should get some sleep, and a meal, before heading off again." The matter-of-fact way that she states this will not easily brook contradiction, a subtle sort of firmness rather than overbearing domination.
- Riku has posed:
Riku actually does collapse to one knee before rising. He gasps in a small, needle sharp breath and has to grip her hand a little harder than he desires as he can feel something twist inside him. It felt like the entire inside of his being had been sunburned and movement was painful. The Light was a cheerful salt rubbing up against the wounds, both healing and at the same time aggrivating.
Riku has to hold on tightly to her arm for a minute as a surge of panic courses through him. He couldn't see. Riku closes his eyes for a moment trying to get his bearings. This manages not quite to be a mistake. His perilously weakened darkness makes the vision of the hearts of others so dim and distant he can only see the brilliant pillar of Jasmine's light through a deep and muffling fog. On the, ahem, bright side-- it doesn't immediately sear him for his proximity.
Riku shakes his head, opening his eyes and trying to make sense of the vague smears of light and shadow and movement around him. "I.." Riku's voice cracks from the strain and terrible doubt that begins to creep around his mind as he clears his throat and continues. "Lead the way."
- Jasmine has posed:
Jasmine falls with Riku, a steadfast font of support until he's all the way back on his feet. Watching him like a hawk -- or a tigress, more suitably -- she seems to be following his problems, and perhaps even understanding them. She ducks her head remorsefully when he winces. "I'm really /very/ sorry," she whispers. Trying not to make things worse, she cradles his hand with extraordinary care, while hooking her arm around his in a guiding motion.
There's a surety, a confidence to the way she moves that's infectious. Surely there's a story there, because she's obviously led the blind before. "Try not to talk. Lean on me."
It isn't at all far to the hotel, where she pays, not in coin, but with some probably absurdly valuable tiny jewel, for the innkeeper to see to Riku's needs, and house him for up to a week, if necessary. She swiftly makes the transaction, and if her brief companion notices the underlying nervousness thrumming through her veins -- these sorts of everyday things are important to her, but still not trivial -- the innkeeper does not.
She doesn't let go of him until he's clearly safe, whether that's in a chair for a meal, or in a bed for rest, whichever he prefers. "I wish I could stay longer," she sighs wistfully. Then she sets her chin, preparing to do what's right, and hard. Just at the moment, leaving him is very much so; one gets the impression that nothing less than a life or death situation would stir her from his side.
Unfortunately...
"Hang in there, Riku," she bids him, by way of farewell. "Please, leave a note with the staff when you depart. So that I..." Her voice chokes a little, revealing how very touch and go things felt with him, lying there on those cobblestones, how afraid she was, "...know." Not that she'll be back to pick it up any time soon, one assumes, but all the same.
Her mental clock, which is marvelously attuned by now to the ebb and flow of Darkness lapping at her heels, announces that she has two minutes, maybe less, to get out of town. Nodding to him, and softly thanking the innkeeper, she disappears out the door without any further ado.
