Endgame: Not With a Bang

[animusnpcs]

The whole Tower went a brilliant, blinding white. Then it went black, and there was nothing. Surely this is it--something's gone wrong, something's failed, it didn't work, everyone is dead, or maybe worse--

And then light filters back in--it lights only the various residents of the Tower. No matter where in the Tower they were before this happened, they are all together again now. It appears that they are in a void, but after a few moments, as if their eyes are adjusting to it, more things become visible: the machine that may be their salvation is here. Ruana, with a visible pulse of energy encircling her, is here, but appears colorless and frozen. Aria is here.

Zo is here. And he speaks. "I can't hold her forever. We have to act now. I want to save you all, so I'll do my best. Just tell me, okay?

What do you want me to do?"

Comments

[neverbeamemory]

[For all that he's glaring at that frozen-Ruana, Sephiroth wouldn't have noticed even if she had tripped over him. Lost somewhere between throbbing physical and mental anguish, and a deeper something he couldn't fathom still multiplying in what should be his gut.]

You look like hell. [He hears it, yet only a minute tilting of his head in Elena's direction indicates that he even registered the comment. The remains of the film that had made up his hair under Glamour falls forwards across one shoulder with the motion, it's charred ends sticking on parts of skin where layers have been burned away. He hisses a breath outwards, blinks and then watches Elena squat beside him, he almost didn't recognize her.]

I- [What were words, again? They sounded strange after all the shrieking in his mind.

Nesir's screaming. He's sure that was mixed up in there somewhere.

He shouldn't care.
She was only ever human.
Humans die all the time.
But she was my human.]

....I don't know.

[Sephiroth blinks harshly and shakes his head in an attempt to dispel these thoughts. Despite the obvious injuries to his frame, the nano-film still moves enough to indicate a deep scowl.]

[provenworth]

[She's seen this sort of vacantness - or something thereof - only once before from him. Though, if she really thought back to it, this was on a completely different scale than how she had found him in the infirmary. It was alarming to see such an...emptiness in his gaze. And somewhat sad.]

Here, hold still..

[Like last time she doesn't even ask for permission, finding a particularly nasty wound on his arm and, after the slightest of adjustments, starts to wrap the gauze around to staunch the leak. Legs move so she's no longer squatting, but kneeling next to him, eyes moving from her work to his face, then back to the work.]

What happened down there?

[neverbeamemory]

[His aching gaze, still luminous violet where it would usually be mako green, fixes on a random point on the floor nearby to Elena. It felt as if whatever were left of him were leaking out from deeper than within skin and spilling out into the air around him, leaving him truly an empty shell.

Sephiroth doesn't even move to stop or hinder Elena in how she adjusts his arm, but the lancing pain of what should be deeply seared skin causes his attention to spark back to her in an instant. He makes an unintelligible grunt noise and sets more of his weight back on the opposite arm so that she can wrap it. He's about to look away again, over to frozen Ruana but Elena catches his line of sight mid-way.]

You know full well, what we went to do.