towerofanimus | 01.5 - Nightmares Within Nightmares

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01.5 - Nightmares Within Nightmares

Characters: Kain and anyone else
Setting: Dorms (Room 3-06 and nearby), Floor 61
Format: Prose to start, happy to follow with either
Summary: Kain is back, after two months wandering the husk of his dead world. He's not taking it terribly well.
Warnings: An angsty and volatile dragoon?

Darkness. Cold. Solitary suffering in the ruined remains of the world he had once saved, that was the existence he had come to know so well in these past... how long? Time had quickly begun to lose meaning, when the same grey sky and same blackened land was all there was. Which was why when he felt soft sheets beneath him and heard voices somewhere nearby that he jolted sharply, violently awake. He tossed aside the sheets, gasped, coughed, and passed his hands over his face as he tried to get his bearings. When his hands reached the collar around his neck, things began to make a sick sort of sense.

The Tower. I've been returned to The Tower.

And then a sick feeling came to his stomach, as he could no longer deny that the letter from his first morning had been truthful. His world was destroyed. Those were the remains of it. Heedless of anyone that might have also been in the room, he bolted for the door. He needed to breathe. He needed water. He needed to be away, to be somewhere high, if he could find it.... but that would have to wait until later. The bathrooms were closest. He would duck into the first one that he found, to splash water on his face and to drink. To collect and compose himself, and fight back the urge to have an ugly and undignified emotional outburst. Or an uglier one than he was already having.

-

The Tower had... changed since he had last explored it. To his knowledge, the graveyard had been at the very top. But he had gone thirteen floors past that, for the stairs kept leading ever higher and higher. This was mad. This was impossible. Was this a further sign that he had somehow lost his mind?

This was as good a floor as any to stop and rest and try to recompose himself. A blue sky and warm weather was comforting, after what he had been through. And he had yet to notice that the hills and clouds quite literally had eyes. So he stretched, and then he found a rock to sit on, and he breathed deeply....

Wait. Was that a chocobo rushing through the grass? That was a chocobo, wasn't it? When was the last time he had eaten roast chocobo? Far too long. Well then, this was a chance to rectify that, wasn't it? And roast chocobo would be a far finer meal than the dusty bars that The Tower administrators were providing. He gripped his makeshift spear and lowered himself so that the high grass concealed him. Let it come closer, just a bit closer, just within range of a good, long jump... and he hoped, as he waited, that something or someone wouldn't show up and frighten it away.

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Of course he hadn't been watching where he was going. While it was something of a relief to know that there were people here, he was fine with them just existing. They didn't need to make contact with him. But here he was, just blundering into someone in his haste, and reflexive politeness had him recoiling, and half-bowing, and uttering an apology.

"I-I... forgive me. I was..."

He turned his head to look at who he was apologizing to, and the first quick glance nearly made his heart stop. Cecil? He suddenly straightened and sprang back, eyes wide and no small amount shocked. But that meant he was really looking at her... and that shock became confusion. No. Not Cecil. A woman that looked astonishingly like him, but...

He attempted to speak again, but words were failing him.

It would be hard to miss how he looked at her as though he'd seen a ghost. More eerie than that, though, was how much he reminded Cecil of someone from her past as well. The same hair, the same eyes... even the facial bone structure was uncannily similar, only sharper, with angles where curves should be. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought that it was Sir Ricard, Kain's father. It had to be... The familiarity couldn't make any sense any other way.

"Are... Are you... all right?" Cecil asked, mentally shaking off her musings about the man's appearance and forcing herself to focus on the matter at hand. She took in the other details about him and realized he was indeed a new arrival. "Please, don't concern yourself with me. I see that you are recently arrived and I apologize. I am deeply sorry that you have been brought here."

She put out a hand in greeting.

"I am Cecil Harvey."

"Cecil Harvey?" He looked down at her offered hand, but did not take it, for he scarcely believed that it was real. This wasn't Cecil, it couldn't be Cecil, but she called herself his name, and...

...he had gone mad. Completely, utterly mad. There. That was the explanation. He had collapsed in the dead wasteland that was once the Kingdom of Baron, and simply lost all sense, and this was the result.

He fell back heavily against the wall, letting out a sound that was mid-way between a laugh and a sob.

"No. No, I am not alright."

Edited 2013-04-06 05:02 (UTC)

Cecil gasped when he fell back and hurried to his side to help. She tried to support his weight so that he wouldn't slide down the wall and land on the floor harshly, worried he might accidentally injure himself in his condition.

"You're in shock," she said quietly, her voice low and as soothing as she could make it. "I know this is a lot to take in at once. Just... try to gather your wits about you. Breathe deeply. Calm down. I'll stay right here with you. You're safe here for the moment, I promise."

Gravity seemed quite intent in pulling Kain down to the floor, but Cecil's efforts made sure that he didn't hurt himself in the process. His legs didn't want to support him for the moment. Everything seemed to be crashing in on him at once.

"Safe? Safe, no, no... this tower isn't safe." He laughed again, shook his head, made proper eye contact with her and put a hand on her forearm. "If this is that tower. If I'm not dying in the ashes of..." Abruptly, his voice caught, and his grip upon her arm became tighter.

Predictably, Cecil allowed herself to be dragged down with him. She was thinking about how best she could help him, but what he said shocked her to her core and all other thoughts immediately disappeared from her mind. The paladin cupped his face in her hands and she stared back at him hard, unfazed by how he was actually hurting her a little.

"What? What did you say?" Her voice had lost all the calm and control it'd had just moments ago. There was little left but the rasping of quick, shallow breath and emotion. Her gut fluttered madly and she felt her frame trembling just slightly with adrenaline. Was it true...? Did he really mean...? "Do you mean to say you've been here before?"

If he was telling the truth, then he knew. He knew, didn't he? He'd been sent back to his homeworld and he'd lived. Surely that meant that their worlds still existed, didn't they?

He'd have looked away, if he could. But Cecil's hands upon his face kept his gaze fixed upon her, and put him at a loss for several long moments. It was no soft and gentle touch. It was kind and it was desperate. It was Cecil, had to be Cecil, nothing but, even if it seemed impossible. Hadn't Diarmuid said as much, not long before this encounter?

"I have been here before." He spoke slowly, evenly, as though every word was painful. "And then I wasn't. I was... everything was dead. Everything. Everything laid to waste. Baron, Mist, Kaipo, Damcyan... ashes. Nothing but ruins and ashes." Oh, how he wanted to look away. To flinch away from that light that he knew so well, to bury all of this in the dark and never unearth it again. He released his grip on her forearm, brought both hands up to try and pull hers away... and they just rested there, barely holding, shaking subtly.

His words ran through her head, but they felt empty and meaningless. "...waste... ashes... ruins and ashes..."

No. No, no, no, it couldn't be. It wasn't true. She couldn't accept that. He was a stranger and nothing more; those lands he spoke of also did not belong to her universe.

"Baron, Mist, Kaipo, Damcyan... ashes..."

No... This wasn't... He wasn't...

Cecil choked back a sob, her face crumpled as a wave of nausea hit her, and she felt her body quiver again. Her hands from his face to his chest, not because she was disturbed that he'd touched her, but because she was losing her will to stay upright as well. The white knight dropped her head and gritted her teeth, unable to meet his eyes any longer. They were her eyes, but she was dead. They were all dead. It did not matter that their worlds obviously differed— she carried the hopes and prayers of the people from every single one of those lands inside her soul and to hear that they were destroyed...

"How? Why?" Her heart wrenched violently in her chest and she hissed quietly from the pain of it. This was worse than anything she'd suffered in the past. Had she been foolish to hope? Had they all been blind and ridiculous to refuse to accept what they'd been told by the administrators?

What Lancer had told her about her own survival and the death of her world not being her fault bubbled up through the tempest of thoughts in her mind to the surface and she tried to cling viciously to those words, but she felt them slipping away with every breath she took and all she could do was fumble for Kain's hands in a sad attempt to stay afloat in her anguish.

Pain shared was pain made bearable? No, that was a lie. It was no comfort to know that he was dragging this Cecil down into despair with him. He could martyr himself for months on end, deprive himself of all comfort and joy, but would never impose that upon those he treasured. He could no longer free-fall. Now was the time to climb. Pressing back against the wall, he sat straighter, spoke lower.

"I don't know. I don't." His hands slipped into hers, holding firm, a faint quiver still in them. "Have they told us? Have they said why? I'll tear it from them if I must."

His head dipped forward, forehead just about touching hers. "...Perhaps it is only mine. Perhaps yours is safe. You... you are the Cecil I know and you are not the Cecil I know...?" There was a questioning in his tone, but what was the question he was trying to ask?

Make them? No. No, he absolutely could not do that. Cecil shook her head and although she wished to shield him from her tears, she looked up into his face again, letting her brow rest against his. If he lashed out at the administrators, they would hurt him— kill him. The paladin couldn't bear the thought, especially not when she knows what he likely does not about death in this place.

"Does it matter?" she cries softly. "You are the Kain I know and you are not. Your Baron is mine and not, your Blue Planet mine and not. Would you not be similarly devastated if I'd told you I'd walked my obliterated world before arriving here?"

He was not about to accept a 'no', not to any of that. And with that additional bit of contact, forehead-to-forehead, a sudden ferocity lit within him. Perhaps she wasn't the Cecil he knew, but she was Cecil, and that mattered more than anything else right now.

"If a Baron still stands, somewhere out there... then yes. Yes, it matters. If there can be more than one of you, more than one of me, then... then there's hope in that." His grip upon her hands tightened for an instant, and he began to try and rise. And he'd try to bring her along with him.

The paladin looks up at the other knight, surprised. She has already accepted him as Kain Highwind, albeit of another version of her universe, but to hear him speak the way the Kain of her world would in such a moment is... shocking, yet comforting. It reinforces what she already knows and she comes to feel that it is true, her heart reconciled with her mind.

For all her hardships, Kain never gave up so easily. Even when Cecil felt she had no more hope, Kain did. They were best friends, family, enemies, and allies.

Cecil cries, quietly, the tears brimming her eyes spilling, but she stands with the dragoon. The tears sting, for they are painful, but Kain's words have had their effect and she brushes them away almost impatiently.

"Forgive me. You are right," she says with a nod. She tries to smile, but the expression won't cross her lips. "I've been praying you'd still live, my friend, but still, I'm sorry. I know it is selfish of me... to be happy that you are here."

Standing made it all feel easier to face. He had let it vent, let his shock and horror escape for a few brief moments... and that would be enough. Cecil didn't need to see any more. No one did. Though his own eyes were wet, he strove to hold his composure. For the sake of his own pride, and for Cecil's sake. It never sat well with him to see his friend upset, and he didn't care for when women cried. This was some kind of emotion-rattling combination of the two that he must not succumb to.

"Better here than there." And he, too, tried to smile. His lips thinned, the corners of his mouth pulled, but he, too, was unsuccessful. "I had wished to know what had become of everyone, and I had prayed that they would be safe. I prayed that..."

And then a thought came to him, and with it, urgency. He reached forward, grasped Cecil's upper arm. "...Rosa. Is she here?"

The surprise on Cecil's face stopped her tears for a moment, but she felt her heart wrench again at the mention of Rosa.

"'She'?" she blurted out dumbly, then shut her eyes when she realized what this meant. "I mean... no. Neither the one of my universe nor the one of yours is here." She didn't bother to claim that she would know it; she took it for granted that Kain would understand. Even if Rose were female, there was no possible way that Cecil would not realize it was the white mage. She'd recognized Kain right away, after all.

The moment the words had left his lips, he knew he had said the wrong thing. Cecil's expression was only further confirmation of it. He released his grip, and drew back. "...I see." He opened his mouth to speak again, excuses and reasons on the tip of his tongue, but they were swallowed. "I'm sorry." If the idea that Rosa was dead, gone, and nothing but ash hurt him this badly, then it could only be much, much worse for Cecil.

And then he turned and looked away, down the hall, down towards the stairs. "...I should eat. We should sit. A hallway isn't the place for... this."

Cecil was grateful when Kain changed the subject. She could tell that he understood and that was both comforting and sad, that someone knew without doubt what she felt. She shook her head, agreeing that the corridor wasn't the best place for a reunion, even one such as theirs.

"You must be hungry," the paladin said and she bit down on her lip momentarily, nervous, about the question she wanted to ask, but she still managed to get it out: "And then you can rest in my room. Would you mind that? I-I realize your room must be nearby, but I would feel more comfortable if you were closer still."

She would respect his wish not to, if he preferred his space, but she was lonely and homesick and he was the only thing she had that reminded her of happier times. She didn't want to lose that.

"I haven't for the entire while that I've been gone." And it was odd, he didn't feel as utterly ravenous as he thought that he ought to be after such a long period of deprivation... but the idea of eating held immense appeal. He was alive, and perhaps there was hope, and he should make an effort to live now.

"...eh?" Cecil's request caught him by surprise, and momentarily struck him as strange. She would want him nearby? ...but of course she would. If she had been alone all this while, without anyone familiar... he had to silently admit to himself that he wanted much the same. "I don't mind. Of course I'll rest there. Assuming your roommates don't object?" Women tended to be protective of their private spaces, right...?

"I don't think they would," Cecil replied, though in truth, she could not say for sure. It didn't seem to be in their natures, but then she didn't want him to make them uncomfortable. Still, the white knight couldn't help but only see what was right in front of her and that was a small piece of home. "I know they won't be in the room most of the day, at least. Failing that, there are other places to sleep as well."

"Other places to..." An odd sort of smile crept onto his face. "Just how long do you plan on keeping me there?" It felt good to joke. It felt so good to have said that. There's a visible sense of untensing to him as he starts towards the elevators. He's quite confident that she'll follow.

Cecil blinked in surprise for a moment, then once what Kain asked her registered, she blushed fiercely in embarrassment and hesitated in following him towards the elevators. Suddenly, she become very aware that they were still from different — albeit most likely extremely similar — worlds and that they were no longer of the same sex.

"I-I'm sorry, Kain..." she stammered, but continued to walk after the dragoon. "I didn't mean to be presumptuous. It's just—"

—It was just that she didn't want to be alone anymore and she didn't want him to be either. Weren't they stronger together than apart? Ah, but she wasn't his Cecil... And she could never replace him.

"I... I didn't...! I mean..." Wait, what had he just apparently accidentally implied? Joking with Cecil was... natural, wasn't it? Part of how they related to each other, back before... everything happened. He turned abruptly around, face already reddening, and then quickly turned away to face the elevator doors.

"No, it's fine. I'll... spend a night. If anyone's bothered, then... I do have a room." He hoped that his words implied 'her roommates' and not 'her' or even 'him.' Cecil was Cecil was... not... precisely Cecil.

His words put her mind at ease though and she nodded, letting a little smile cross her lips to show her genuine happiness and relief at being told that she hadn't offended him after all.

"All right," the white knight answered, "I understand. That is most fair for now."

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01.5 - Nightmares Within Nightmares

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