towerofanimus | [.001]

Entry tags:

[ou] naminé

[.001]

Characters: Naminé

Setting: Twelfth floor

Format: Starting this way, matching responders.

Summary: A new arrival discovers the twelfth floor. This is not exactly good for her world view.

Warnings: Angst, low self-esteem, tl;dr. In summary; those stairs are blocked by an outwardly calm but internally angsting teenage girl.

Naminé had read the letters, of course. It had seemed prudent, considering that there appeared to be no one around to explain why she had woken up in a bed rather than… well, she hadn’t known what to expect when she went back to Kairi, for all her attempts to be optimistic, but this hadn’t even been on the metaphorical list. At the very least, shouldn’t there have been fewer beds? Sora was the one who always had guests in his heart, after all, not Kairi.

The letters had proved informative, as they were no doubt meant to be, but….

Try though she might, it was just impossible to wrap her head around the idea that the worlds she knew no longer existed. If the Heartless had tried to destroy them and failed, then how could something nameless and faceless succeed? It was an utterly stupid notion, of course, but something in her just couldn’t quite let go of it… until now.

Her feet had prompted her to take the nearest exit, to try to find her way back to something she recognized or make sense of this world. It wasn’t the first time she’d woken up in a strange place, and so she had found herself calm, but understandably apprehensive. It hadn’t ended well, last time. Her search had yielded no fruit up until the point where she stepped down onto the twelfth floor of the tower.

Vertigo and a lurch in her stomach were instant, forcing her to a stop right in the middle of the stairs. Once her mind had managed to convince her body that she wasn’t going to fall, she began to take in her surroundings – and, more specifically, what was going on in them. She ended up feeling sick all over again.

All of those worlds, destroyed as easily as one snuffs out a candle.

Seeing it was much more powerful than hearing it. Watching this destruction, endless and absolute, tore aside her disbelief and replaced it with much, much heavier understanding. Everything that she’d ever worked for, everyone she’d ever known, met, or – impossible for her to admit to herself – cared for was gone.

Her knees went weak, but did not buckle; they, too, seemed to be in shock. Her face was ashen, her arms limp at her sides, her expression still frozen in place. The prickling at her eyes went unnoticed in favor of the tumult in her mind.

She’d been able to handle the idea of herself no longer existing as a separate entity (after all, she would be whole, wouldn’t she?) but the idea that Sora and Roxas, that Riku, that Kairi, Donald, Goofy, the King, everyone else were no longer— she couldn’t even think the word. She was no stranger to death and the threat of it, but still, still--

Why her?

Why her, of all people? Of all Nobodies? What right did she have to be spared? What purpose did she have, beyond finishing the duty to Sora that her failures had put upon her and then going to make Kairi whole? What was Naminé supposed to do? All that time she’d had the answers, or at least answers that she could make herself believe, but now… she was really and truly nothing, without purpose or tie.

Still, she did not break down. She didn’t know how to. She didn’t have the right to. Her body stayed motionless like the shell it was as she tried so hard to figure out whether she wanted to scream, or weep, or laugh, or if she really didn’t want anything at all. In the end, it probably didn’t matter what she did. The only thing that did was that one question, the one that someone else always answered for her.

What now?

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After a few minutes of Naminé's miniature crisis, soft (almost unnoticeable) footsteps would sound from behind her. Someone else is coming up the staircase just as she had, his intention being to see if he could identify any of the worlds pictured in this insane tumble of explosions. (He's gotten good at ignoring the fact that those are worlds dying in there.) He likes keeping tabs on things, you see, and over the past few months he's developed a little pattern to go checking around the tower, to see if anything had really changed -- as it inevitably did. A nice example would be this floor itself, which was most definitely not here when Ienzo had arrived.

Were Naminé to turn around, she would probably think from a distance that it was her dear old friend Zexion -- but it's not Zexion, it's much too young to be Zexion, plus it's wearing different clothing.

Hello, Naminé, meet one of your tormentors as a little boy. And he has no idea who you are.

He's probably not going to tell her what she's supposed to do. He's having hard enough of a time figuring that one out for himself. But he is going to stop a few steps behind her, and speak. (You lucky girl.)

"...Excuse me," he said, the look on his face as expressive as a brick. "May I pass?"

Naminé's entirely too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice that someone is there until she's addressed, and when she is, she stiffens slightly. It's not because she recognizes the voice - it's different, after all - but rather because she still has yet to meet the other inhabitants of this place. Perhaps it will be a comfort, or perhaps it will only be salt in the wounds left by such a grievous loss-- either way, it's these possibilities together that make her hesitate briefly and try to compose herself (internally, because on the outside she already seems to be so) before turning, and--

What?

Her already glassy eyes widen in surprise, and... fear? Something close, anyway, but it's quickly overtaken by confusion and apprehension, all of which have some fleeting placement on her expression before she forces them all behind a guarded look. What kind of trick is this? An illusion, maybe? One of Zexion's? But he's... dead. Gone. Disappeared. Or at least, it seemed that way. Even if this is one of his tricks, why make himself so obvious in it? Naminé cannot help but shrink away, automatically taking a step back and nearly sending herself tumbling down the stairs in the process. The recovery of her balance is quick enough, and she makes an effort to make sure that balance stays... well, balanced. Her stare is searching, but even as a child his face is hard to read. It's about that time that his request catches up with her. She blinks - quickly, so that she doesn't lose sight of him for long - then, after another moment's hesitation, edges carefully out of his way, not taking her eyes off of him. She clasps her hands together, as if trying to keep all of her extremeties as far away from him as possible.

This child.... Even if she hadn't seen those memories that she'd found buried, she'd have known who he was going to grow up to be. The resemblance is striking, as it should be considering that the difference is only a matter of age. But it doesn't make any sense -- how could he really and truly be here, looking like this? So that means it has to be either an illusion or a case of mistaken identity. She's never heard of time being distorted so, and because of this it's not part of her considerations. After all, the other two seem more likely. When she manages to speak up, her voice is cautious and just slightly tremulous. "I'm sorry." It's more of a precaution than anything else, just in case this really is the wrong person. The pause here is a little longer, because it seems such a horrible question to ask, somehow. "...What's your name?" She tries not to let it sound accusatory, and she succeeds relatively well.

It seems he had startled the girl, for when he spoke, her posture stiffened considerably. Judging by the nature of the room they were in, he figured that she was just lost in thought looking at all of the little moving diagrams on the walls. He didn't recognize her from anywhere else in the tower, either, which further suggested that she was just a newcomer who hadn't come to terms with Floor Twelve yet. Perhaps it was for this reason that she had to hesitate for a few seconds before turning around, presumably to gather her thoughts.

What happened next was an interesting mush of facial expression. (Hm. Interesting.) Perhaps this girl was just easily upset by new things, for her reactions seemed a little too extreme for two strangers meeting one another for the first time -- and yes, looking her up and down, Ienzo could not identify her in the slightest. Though she appeared to be able to identify him, and from her reaction, he seriously doubted that there were any pleasant memories attached.

And a moment later, her expression had solidified into a deadpan very similar to what he himself might use. You made a valiant effort, dear, but unfortunately Ienzo is more perceptive than that.

Whereas a normal person probably would have said, 'Do I know you?' in a situation like this, Ienzo is very very far from a normal person, so he simply stood and watched her while she attempted to put her thoughts together in a (hopefully) logical progression. She very nearly lost her balance, he noted, and looked rather like she wanted to grab onto a wall or railing to keep herself more steady. A second later, the girl apparently came to a decision on what to do, and timidly stood out of the way, clutched her arms to her chest and staring at him. He stared back.

"Thank you." He took a few steps into the room and broke the connection to check the walls, expression betraying nothing at all, but soon enough the girl took a jagged breath like she intended to speak, and his eyes flicked immediately back towards her. She began with apologizing, in a similarly shaky and timid voice which reinforced his suspicion that something about his presence here had thrown her for a loop. And when she paused, he expected her next words to be just a bit more stable. They weren't.

"...Ienzo," he said. He didn't need to ask if she was new here, nor did he particularly want to. And if she wanted him to know her name, then she would give it. If she didn't, he would leave her to her panicking and monitor the walls.

Had Naminé been more familiar with 'normal' people in the first place, she might have found it unsettling that a child so young could be so... calculating, and so inscrutable. But that was what she had come to expect from him-- or at least, come to expect from his Nobody, and it did not capture her attention any more than was required to make her mouth tighten into a slightly harder line.

Ienzo. So it was him. But it just didn't make any sense at all...! He was dead. Or at least, he'd seemed that way. After all, Axel had faked his death enough times to prove that it was possible, and for someone like Zexion, it would probably be all the easier. Still, why his younger self? Why be so open about it? Unless that was all part of the plan, too. Was all of this some kind of trick? It was elaborate, yes, but what could be the goal? How would this secure her cooperation, especially if he'd already tipped his hand? If that wasn't the goal, what was?

It was all just such a big mess that she couldn't makes heads or tails of it. Perhaps all that was left was to wait, and maybe to play along. Her brow had knit slightly when she heard his name, but now she worked to ease it, along with the rest of her face. She wasn't a liar, or an actress-- at least not of her own volition. She'd learned to keep a pretty good control of her face, when she was trying, and when she wasn't shocked out of it, but... she didn't have much faith that it would be good enough. Her body language remained tense, but her expression drifted into something a little more controlled but for a suspicious hardness around her eyes. "...My name is Naminé." It was an offer of bait, perhaps, or maybe a feinted move to take some bait she'd been offered herself but wasn't quite sure existed. Either way, she watched his face closely, careful to make sure it didn't look like as careful an inspection as it really was.

Temporal mishmash abound. So far, Ienzo had seen nothing to suggest that there were people here who were from the future of his world; he only recognized one person, Ven, who was from his time. And the overwhelming majority of the people here came from worlds completely independent from his. So what reason did he have to believe that she was from his future, in which his very sense of identity (or, what little remained of it, anyway) had crumbled and withered away?

Ienzo had been putting up this stone-faced facade for several years now, and while he did so, he had learned to better understand the physical cues given by others that tipped him off to their internal thoughts; this girl Naminé, it appeared, had learned much of the same thing. She seemed to soften, just a little, but she clearly meant for him to see the doubtful look in her eyes; he did. His face remained absolutely still and unreadable. She was tripping over mental wires, waiting for a reveal that would never come. Because of course the whole discussion, from his point of view, was completely baitless -- just Ienzo acting on his natural, if unnerving, tendencies and habits.

Which, temporarily, he decided to put on hold. His self-contained obsession with acting 'proper' mercifully shut up for a few seconds, in the face of this extremely unfavorable situation. The girl knew something that he didn't. Unacceptable.

"...Do you know me?"

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Hope you don't mind the power usage, I'll change it if you want. ;3;

I don't mind at all~ 8D

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It feels so weird to be doing this

Whatwhy? Because never any Namines ever?

That and all the D_Ming. GDI Rox you can't 4thwall here.

:3c Misbehaving muse?

No Rox, down boy, we have to be professional now.

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