True Darkness

[warriorscribe]

Characters: Enoch and anyone (except one that's semi-closed but open to threadjacking)
Setting: Throughout the rest of the week (the first one is on his previous post), various floors
Format: Whatever works for you, I'll follow!
Summary: Enoch and the event
Warnings: Lots of angst, and a severed hand. Spoilers for El Shaddai chapter 9 and beyond. Also this is so long, holy shit.

Aug 12

Elevator

The four shadow children that had shown up yesterday proved to be patient. Enoch had woken that morning to find them clustered around his bed. It would be cute, if they weren't so unsettling, if he didn't just know something was amiss from the way Jason had said you'll see what you broke. That's not something you say when the result is harmless.

And yet, some gut feeling, some odd sense of familiarity, keeps him from striking out at them preemptively like he does any Imps he finds. Maybe he's still in bad enough shape he'll even take the dubious company of whatever these are. Either way he heads into the elevator, with any number of other residents with their own followers.

F78 - Mailroom

He doesn't realize when one more joins the crowd inside the elevator, until he steps out and it follows him. He looks at the newcomer as if asking what it's doing there. It just grins wide and trots up to the front of the group. Feeling more and more like he is leading a pack of shadowy imprinted ducks, he continues down to the mailroom.

Where he can be found, sitting slumped against the wall of boxes, cradling a broad, masculine hand, nearly identical to his own in proportions but darker in tone. The hand is open and a gold-plated hairclip, bloodstained, rests in its palm.

And he was doing so well, too.

But now he's just staring at it, weeping quietly. The newcomer shadow child wanders up and stands on its toes to get a better look at what Enoch's holding.


Aug 14, ultimately anywhere on the stairwell below F38

The hand had gone into his sauna locker. Not his trunk, he didn't want to scare any newcomer that accidentally opened the wrong one. And somehow he didn't want to throw it out. That was probably the emotional instability speaking. The hairclip was now pinning the plastic casing over the card Armaros had given him in Meridian closed. He was staring at this while the rain pounded the windows of the middle lounge, the one closest to his work floor. He had almost gotten used to the shadow children following him. At the moment, the original four had clusered around the sofa he's in, the newcomer having climbed up and onto the back to sit by his shoulder. It had been the most active and curious of the bunch, always taking a rapt interest in what he was doing. It should have been a clue, really.

"I miss him," Enoch whispers to himself.

"Armaros?" says one of the shadow children in front of him, in Uriel's voice, pointing at the one sitting on the back of the couch beside him. "But he's right there."

Enoch stares at the Uriel-shadow, and then looks back at the shadow child, fear quickening his breath. "Armaros...?"

"Yeah...or what's left of me, I guess." He says in a voice Enoch could only remember from hearing a mental equivalent in Meridian. He sounds sullen, disappointed. "Some hero you turned out to be. They shouldn't have made that card for you."

"Haven't I helped you when you needed it most, when you were about to die?" says Uriel. "Why did you leave me to die?"

For a moment, all Enoch can do is stare. The pain doesn't immediately sink in.

"I don't think you deserve that card anymore..." And with that, Armaros-shadow snatches it from his hand and rushes off. Others may encounter Enoch chasing the shadow child, desperate to get that memento of Meridian back. (Only one responder may take this. Currently: tohko_amano)

Or perhaps they'll find him having already taken it, looking very distressed at his crowd of shadow children, now in a circle and actively speaking against him. "No...please stop...I can save you." (Else)


Aug 15, Anywhere

More have shown up to follow him. Solas. Zeph. Lucifel. He might have thought it illusion if they didn't feel true the way being back in Meridian felt true. It was pure intuition and he knew that could be tricked, but it didn't change anything.

"It was supposed to be forever." I thought so too, Armaros...

"'I'm not going anywhere'. Least you could've done is return the favor..." I'm sorry, Lucifel.

"I'm dead now. Even if you restore everything, I'll be killed anyway." He didn't want to believe it. But...it was probably true. Either way, Solas would die.

"Way to get our world destroyed, Enoch. To think I actually trusted you." I'm trying to fix things, Zeph. It wasn't even his fault, but...it was his fault they were like this. Because Zo had saved him.

Enoch, his collar a lighter blue but not even noticing, leans on the wall, wherever he is, begging the shadow children to stop, his conviction wavering with each repetition until he just doesn't say anything anymore. He drops to his knees and tries to hug one, but his arms pass right through. He tries this several times throughout the day, appearing more and more distraught.


Aug 16, F101

Morning

Until he just doesn't have the energy for tears. Enoch has half-carried, half-dragged Lucifel, even worse off than he is, to Dax's sapling, his collar running mostly clear by now. He can see Princess Zelda against a tree nearby, but she seems too far gone to notice him, and to be honest, he doesn't have the energy either. He collapses with the barely-alive angel in the real dirt just as the glamour cuts out, rendering them a pair of wireframes, souls casting the barest blue and violet glows beneath their clothes. Lucifel's is much weaker than his own, and Enoch rests his hand over Lucifel's torso where the angel's soul is.

"Nice replacement," says Lucifel-shadow. Armaros-shadow wedges himself into the crook of Enoch's arm, not speaking but cooing softly, when hearing that comforting sound only hurts.

Enoch breathes shallowly, feeling the rise and fall of Lucifel's chest with his hand. Someone might be able to encounter them while they're both still alive.

After some time, Enoch realizes Lucifel has stopped breathing. There's a weak sob from him, but he can't react any more, can't lift his head, can't move his arm. He doesn't realize he's attracted one more shadow child with those that Lucifel's presence has driven away until a new voice speaks, strong and bold, female.

"My name is Ishtar, Enoch. But you will never know me by that name because you're here, playing a facsimile of my role. But instead of resurrecting me, you're trying to become me. You can't. You don't even care about people you should. Where are the voices of the Freemen?"

"That's not true," Enoch croaks.

He hears nothing more from the shadow children, feeling from them instead an overwhelming sense of disappointment.

He can still talk loud enough to be heard by someone nearby, and his presence might still drive away someone else's shadow children if his bond with them is strong enough. For however long he has left, he can at least be a guardian.

Afternoon - closed

As his consciousness grows hazier, the other shadows start picking up Ishtar's idea of who he isn't hearing.

"Come to think of it," says Gabriel-shadow, looking around, "You started families and made friends while searching for the Tower, correct? Did you love them? Where are they?"

"Um...weren't you married before Heaven?" Armaros-shadow adds. "What about your first wife and child, I thought those were important."

"You know who else you're not hearing?" says Lucifel-shadow. "Well. I guess you can't hear a voice you've never heard at all. But still, you know, He's dead too. 'Cause you're not. Just thought I'd remind you."

The color drains from Enoch's soul.

Comments

I did check your permissions post beforehand but I'll still edit if the fourthwalling isn't okay

[warriorscribe]

Surely Sephiroth has heard of survivor's guilt. Enoch would argue, too, that a display of emotion is not a display of a weak will. Here he is with the twisted shadows of his loved ones, obviously hurt so badly they seek to blame where they would not. Of course he would want to try to comfort them.

When Sephiroth speaks, he looks up, still kneeling with the shadow child he'd tried to embrace. He's had a hard month so far; there's a tired look to his eyes with no dark circles under them to lend blame to physical causes.

"Hello, Sephiroth." Still, he tries to be polite.

"This man broke your friend's arm," Gabriel-shadow reminds him.

"He aspires to godhood," says Michael-shadow.

"Did you know he killed a woman while she was praying?" Lucifel-shadow says, causing all the other shadows to look at him suddenly, as if this was unexpected. "He's kinda famous for that."

Enoch looks at him too, expressing all the confusion of the others and actually having a proper face to do so.

"I don't believe I've ever heard that one...ah, sorry." He looks up again at Sephiroth, remembering that other people can't hear his shadows. His gaze sweeps the other man's veritable parade of shadows, incredulous.

As if trying to be background noise, Armaros-shadow murmurs, "So why are you greeting him like normal, if he hurt your friend? ...I guess you'd do that anyway, you're still friends with Lucifel."

[neverbeamemory]

Displays of emotion, such raw emotion at that are a sign of a weakness to Sephiroth. Despite his own whispering shadows, perhaps for this reason he has had no problem so far in filtering them out. To let shadows of his past torment him would be having the past torment him by proxy and that simply cannot be allowed. He has surpassed his past.

The movement of said Lucifel-shadow, and Enoch's turn towards it as well drew a notable raised eyebrow from the silver haired man for when he turned his attention back at him. Part of him wondered what was said in the meantime but a larger part of Sephiroth reminded him that he shouldn't care. It had probably been something intended to further deteriorate at Enoch's resolve; Sephiroth's gaze rested on the faded blue in his collar and narrowed appropriately.

"Are they talking to you as well?" He asked, perhaps needing to verify it was the same for another and so he was right in ignoring them.

[warriorscribe]

A variance of cultures was likely at work too. In Enoch's day, there was something wrong with you if you didn't express emotion, no matter your sex or social standing. His only incentive to hold back tears was to keep others from worrying about him, and in this case he didn't have the presence of mind to do so.

"Everyone's seem to speak to them."

[neverbeamemory]

"Then everyone should know better than to take on board what they say."

Despite even Sephiroth's violet collar which had already started to get light by the hour, he would not allow himself to be driven to despair so easily. He's been in the Tower too long for such whispered insecurities to have very much of an effect. Enoch should really know better.

[warriorscribe]

Except what the tower has taught him is that seeming illusions are reality and seeming reality is illusion unless proven otherwise.

He'd thought the destruction of their worlds was an illusion too, like everyone else. He came to doubt that over time, as he heard more and more from other people who had gone home and from the administrators, and by the time he had vanished to his own world he had already accepted it was true. Even so, seeing it for himself was a slap in the face.

He had thought the phantoms were an illusion. Again, he had begun to doubt this. Again, these doubts proved true.

He'd thought their bodies were real. His return to his own world sowed doubt, and with the reversal of his own memory repression, he theorized the truth - only to have it confirmed at the end of that same month.

But he believed these bodies were still flesh. He believed the tower was as it was. He'd had no reason to doubt this, and though Dax's words hinted at something more, he had no idea what it was. Another illusion was uncovered, one he hadn't expected at all. The only one, of those he had lived through here.

Enoch put stock in his doubts even if they hurt. They'd had a good track record here.

Besides, these creatures obviously weren't meant to be up here, given their appearance only after damage to the tower. Why would an illusion be crafted if it was never meant to be shown to its intended recipients? The glamour was particularly unsteady so far this week, too, he'd had ample time to see these were no constructs.

"I pity them. They must be in incredible pain."

[neverbeamemory]

Perhaps this was the only way that Sephiroth would be able to deal with his own horde of shadows. Steeling his consciousness against them, reminding himself constantly that they can't even touch him. Even if, by what the Glamour failings told him, their voices were those real voices of the souls he'd left behind, of those he'd betrayed and even killed - Sephiroth doesn't feel guilt about any of his actions before and even now. In fact he had been using it to strengthen his resolve so far; of course he'd be the one soul strong enough to have been pulled to the Tower intact.

Even if a few of the whisper-y comments turned it into a slight against his heritage, how he so easily let go of Gaia. Moved on. What about Mother? That stung more than he'd let himself admit.

"Most things that get pulled here are twisted in the transition. These are no different."

[warriorscribe]

"You say that as if it's supposed to make me not feel for my friends, somehow."

"You certainly didn't need help with that before we showed up," Lucifel-shadow remarked. "Out of sight, out of mind, looks like."

At this point, Enoch is tired of responding to sentiments like that with but I never forgot you. They're too far gone to listen.

[neverbeamemory]

Friendship. Of course Enoch was one of those types. Sephiroth carefully hid a scowl at those words, having a particular distaste for that all too-human need to bond with others. Ironic, that it seemed they were all now paying for those very bonds at the hands of these shadow children. One point again to Sephiroth, it sure takes the edge off the whispered taunts when he kept in mind that perhaps it was worse for others due to their pathetic clinging to those that they had convinced themselves they were always to be supported by.

"I see no need in such bonding with others, neither do I harbor any desire to do so." Sephiroth took a breath, turned for a moment to a couple of those grinning faces but then, after a moment of tension, slowly exhaled. He would not be goaded by those who claimed to have been his own friends when he had already evolved beyond them, discarded them as the worthless tools they had been - he didn't even remember the owners of the voices that called to him then.

"One thing is for sure, regardless, these things most certainly do not have your best interests at heart."

[warriorscribe]

"But I have theirs. They can't be held responsible for their words. They're clearly...not well. In pain."

It was the only reason, of course, that any of these people would say things like this, he thought. Especially Armaros.

"What they say and do now won't change my desire to help them."

It was strange, but Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Zeph had fallen eerily silent. They hadn't moved away, but they weren't talking either. It wasn't a bond of friendship, certainly not with what he knew, but reaffirming his own morals against Sephiroth's philosophy strengthened him - if that wasn't a bond of sorts, what was it? It certainly wasn't strong enough or the right sort to help, but that it had an effect at all was novel. Clearly, he valued this opportunity that defined the ground he stood for himself, even if he didn't consciously realize...

"You wanted to help Meridian, too," said Armaros. It didn't cut as deep, in Enoch's moment of absolute confidence in his goals.

[neverbeamemory]

"Your asceticism holds your head under the water, Enoch."

Sephiroth had no time, nor any inclination to stand there and argue the morals with Enoch either. Clearly he's much too involved with those shadows of his past and they were dragging him down into despair and beyond. Being almost completely the opposite Sephiroth had so far, it seemed, been able to mostly ignore that which otherwise may have been hurting him just as much as it was the man before him. So further elevated indeed; just look at how many whispering children he could keep at bay with his iron-will.

The silver haired man turned to leave, casting only a disdainful look over his shoulder once more at Enoch before he swept on his way down the halllway. The bouncing of many a white-grin all around him, shadows clung almost to his very frame like some dark foreboding essence. "Time will tell."