Kain Highwind (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ajealouswind) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
towerofanimus2013-04-03 09:34 pm
ajealouswind) wrote in towerofanimus2013-04-03 09:34 pm
Entry tags:
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.
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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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.
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"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?
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"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?"
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"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.
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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."
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"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?"
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"'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.
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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."
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"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.
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"...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...?
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"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.
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"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.
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"All right," the white knight answered, "I understand. That is most fair for now."