I was the more deceiv'd

[champagnedelis]

Characters: France [AU2] open to all
Setting: Floor Eleven, night time
Format: Either is fine
Summary: Francisca's just returned from being 'home' for about a month, straight after her shaky recovery from the teddy bear event. Needless to say, she's lost it.
Warnings: potential violence, potential suicide, language.

She felt cold.

On her abrupt return to the tower after weeks of wandering the decimated streets of France alone, after weeks of feeling as if someone had cut her heart out with a rusty knife, after week of nothingness, she broke down. She'd barely had enough time to get to a bathroom to vomit whatever little her stomach had held and proceeded to fall into a state of hysterics, screaming and clawing at her skin in the empty cubicle, her nightgown soaked with sweat and bare feet kicking at the walls.

Now that she'd 'calmed' somewhat, she'd come out of the bathroom and found it was night, the tower lights dimmed and no one in the hallways. Restless, she'd made her way to the eleventh floor, needing the comfort of life after so long without that when she reached it tears had started streaming down her cheeks as she got trembling handfuls of flowers, holding the delicate blossoms to her face and inhaling the scent.

Following the sounds of running water, she stumbled to the lake, mutely staring at the phantoms that seemed to dance under the reversed rainbows in the darkened sky. Strange that she found the sight of such apparitions more comforting that frightening - her people had been dead and not even their ghosts had left whispers behind. The phantoms let her be as she stumbled into the lake, dropping several flowers in the process and letting the little blossoms float around her in the rippling water. Soon the water was to her knees and she felt some relief in the cold she could feel seeping up her legs, contrasting with the warm air around her, but it wasn't enough. She felt numb and soon she was crushing the flowers in her hands, nails digging into her palms as she began to have another panic attack, breath coming faster and louder.

Comments

[myblueskies]

It was dark, Romeo wasn't scared of course; not of the dark or the thunder. But it did make doing things a little bit difficult, he came down the staircase onto floor eleven, gripping his knife in his pocket in case one of the ghosts tried to hurt him when a flash of lightning lit up the room.

He gasped when he saw miss France, she was back! His relief was followed by worry because what was she doing in the water? "Miss France?" He ran towards her.

[knightime]

"I'm sure the flowers don't appreciate being crushed."

Dave almost didn't approach her. He didn't know how to comfort. Add another thing to shit he can't do to his list. Still. He could try. Trying wouldn't make it worst, right? And she was nice to him and he wanted to help somehow. He was floating a few inches off the ground, taking full advantage of the powers of god tier hood as much as possible. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again.

This was a terrible idea. "Want to talk about it?" Ugh no. That was a shitty thing to say. Who wants to actually talk about the shit that keeps happening? No one. "I mean, company. You want company?"

[thisclinchesit]

Call it crazy, call it foolish - call it whatever you want, Shoutarou was out and about in the darkness as well. He was restless. Too many questions were about and unanswerable at the given time, and Philip was gone again. Terui was still here, though - the comfort of that was questionable, given the nature of this place.

His mind wouldn't shut off, so he thought it best to occupy it with something. Patrols. Looking to make sure everything was okay - as okay as it could be, anyway.

Reaching the eleventh floor, he steps off of the stairs, and the figure he sees out in the water seems familiar.

"...Francisca?"

[amant]

The Tower giveth and the Tower taketh away.

It had been a hard month. He had been submitted to a game where he was prey (that had ended poorly), and when he had awoken Francisca had been gone. He had checked for her, looked for her, and mourned the moments that did not have her soft glances in his direction in them. She'd been one of the few good things here, something he could pour himself into and not fear repercussion. There were no games.

He'd caught her walking toward the staircase by chance, just a glimpse of silvery hair and pale gown. She'd looked like an illusion -- one he'd been too shocked to stop himself from following. Part of him was scared though, that she would disappear again if he spoke up. It was a fear that left him trailing behind in those dimly lit halls, too transfixed to really worry about the creepy crawlies that wanted to claw off his skin in the shadows.

It isn't until he's barefoot in a patch of flowers, watching his other half walking out into the lake, that some of the magic righted itself and a nagging worry began to lurk just under the surface. Francis wasn't stupid; he knew what hid itself just under the water; things that would snatch and possess and never let go and he refused to chance losing this one again.

He called after her, his voice sounding foreign and dampened by the floor, so he called again as he made his way toward her.

"Get out of there! It is dangerous!"

THIS IS LATE I'M SORRY

[keepscalm]

England hated this floor. Something about the phantoms felt like they sapped the remaining life frozen within him, the last preserved memoir he had of his people. They made him feel weaker. Hollow. As a nation, hollowness hurt. And it made him feel vulnerable.

But, surely, he did not feel as vulnerable as the woman in the water. This was the second time he'd be conversing with her somewhere that she could drown. That was just unfair. It was hard to talk someone down in front of something that you yourself fear. At first, she appeared merely disoriented. Only when he saw her fingers crush the delicate petals resting in her palms did England approach in earnest, his voice ringing clear and level through the dissonant beauty of the floor, despite his unease.

"Francisca."

[sovietbear]

Honestly Ivan didn't know what had brought him to this floor. But he was getting tired. Tired of being trapped in this tower, tired of feeling the stunning emptiness of not being connected to his people, tired of everything in the tower, having mostly kept to himself the past year with the occasional attempt to talk to someone else. Of course it had been a long year, and it did not look as if it were going to end anytime soon. Usually when life gave him lemons he would just drink the problems away--this time he couldn't, because the tower had not just trapped him in body, but it had trapped him in sobriety too. His liver might have thanked them, but he certainly did not.

It took a lot to break him and he wasn't broken yet, but the tower was slowly chipping at him and he was tired. His eyes scanned the sky, wishing he had something, anything to get himself back home and it wasn't until he saw the tiny movement from the corner of his eye that he looked up, pulled himself from his thoughts. "Frantsiya?" he asked, before slowly moving forward, watching the phantoms sprouting up, ghostly images.

He moved to the water to the edge, brows furrowing--what on earth was the smaller nation trying to accomplish?

"Frantsiya? Are you alright...?" Which was a stupid question because she was obviously anything but alright. He could see that clearly, the tear tracks on her face, falling down her cheeks. He slowly moved, slightly into the water, boots keeping the water out more or less, keeping it from soaking into his feet. "I am not thinking this is a very good place to be at night... In the water I am meaning... You are tiny and I am not knowing if they are... ah, under water too?"

He paused a moment.

"You are crushing your flowers. Come here and we will be getting you more?"