towerofanimus | Is This Home?

The darkness that greeted her made her believe for a moment that her eyes were still closed. The more she blinked and rubbed her eyes and turned this way and that way, the more she realized that this was no illusion. The fact that she could see her hands in front of her when she looked down at them, raised in front of her, was proof enough that she could still see. Even then, her mind protested - where could she possibly be, for everything around her to be nothing but endless black?

Perhaps... perhaps this was Kairi's heart. But-- Kairi's heart had no darkness. Surely it would not look like this. And yet that was the only answer Naminé could come up with, as the seconds turned into minutes and still, there was nothing but the endless darkness. Had this been her fault? Had she somehow tainted the heart of her Other? The very thought knocked the breath right out of her lungs, and suddenly, urgently, she reached out with her powers, searching for evidence, any evidence, of what was truly going on. It had been so long since she'd used them that, though long ago they might have been second nature, now it was only after recovering from her initial bewilderment that the thought occurred to her. Her powers found only evidence that this was indeed Kairi's heart. So, somehow, Naminé had completed her return to her Somebody.

She was whole.

She was whole. She was whole. Desperately and in vain she tried to grasp that thought, to make it real, to somehow reconcile this dark abyss with the wholeness she'd forced herself to believe in, that - an even more excruciating thought - she'd tried convince Roxas to believe in. But this-- this endless and empty place was nothing like what she'd hoped for. And if she was here, more thoroughly isolated and incarcerated than in any place before, then what of Roxas? Was it the same for him? What had happened to Kairi, to Sora? Were Nobodies truly never meant to rejoin their Somebodies? Had she made some horrible mistake? Nothing was proven, and yet already the guilt threatened to consume her.

She wasn't certain how long it had been - minutes, hours - but her agony was still all too fresh when she felt something in her surroundings change. It was subtle at first, a faint and distant rumbling, and then all in one rush great streaks of lightning split through the darkness, so harsh and violently bright as to make her shield her eyes.

When at last the earsplitting noise ceased, it was replaced by a silence so complete that for a moment it seemed almost as loud. Beneath her was cold ground, solid and familiar in a way that sent chills creeping down her spine before she so much as opened her eyes. When at last she did, she saw the white walls of Castle Oblivion before her. Her first and severe urge was to leap to her feet, but her legs seemed to have turned to jelly, and she found that her quivering limbs had not the strength to raise her from the position in which she'd landed, sprawled on the ground. It was only after a few panicked seconds that she mustered the wherewithal to control her body enough to force it to stand her up. The edges of her vision seemed to teem with spectres of dark, hooded figures as she turned her head, desperately searching for any indication that she was not alone, and found none.

She didn't stay there long. Confused and afraid, she conjured what was probably the most slipshod portal she'd ever managed to make that was still functional and ran through it, shuddering at the feeling of the darkness around her once more but not stopping until she'd come out the other side and was stumbling across the sand of Destiny Islands.

It was deserted. At least, that was what she believed at first, when the portal had only just closed and she was practically spinning in her attempts to seek out any other lifeform. The portal she'd made just before she'd been taken by the tower should have sent everyone else there. But, she reminded herself harshly, time had obviously passed since she'd left. There was no reason for them to stay on this particular island. Once she'd had a moment to collect her thoughts, she reached out with her powers once more, seeking the hearts she knew best.

They weren't there.

Never before had they been so far out of her reach (anywhere but in the tower) that even when she expended as much effort as she was capable of she could not find even the barest hint of their presence. It was an exercise in futility, but again and again she reached out, again and again she sought the familiar memories, but again and again she failed. Just as she was about to give in, she discovered the heart of her Other. It was so close by that she couldn't believe she hadn't found it sooner, but a brief brush against it told her that there was a good reason. It was... wrong. So, so wrong.

She found Kairi in the Secret Place.

The redhead was on her back, still as death, her eyes open and staring. If not for the faint rise and fall of her chest, Naminé would almost have been convinced that the other girl was deceased.

Kairi's heart was nearby, hovering low to the ground. Naminé did not approach it; she did not need to to be able to see how the darkness had ravaged it, how its once strong light was muted and gray. Numbly, she wondered why it had stayed. Perhaps it was simply too damaged to return from whence it came. Naminé was afraid to touch it, lest it break, but in her desperation made only the concession to seek the memories within it with her talent to try to find out what had transpired.

The more she saw, the harder it was to breathe. She watched through Kairi's eyes as both Naminé herself and Roxas rejoined their Somebodies, as Xemnas made his return, as Sora and Riku stood against him... and perished, as the King and Donald and Goofy returned through the portal in time only to keep Xemnas at bay long enough for Kairi to escape before being defeated themselves, as the Heartless swarmed Destiny Islands and sought out the hearts of the inhabitants, including Kairi's, which, upon being assaulted, was nearly torn asunder by the darkness both from the outside and the darkness that her wretched Nobody had unintentionally brought into her formerly pure heart.

Naminé did not feel her own tears until suddenly she was on her knees in the dirt, sobbing into her hands. It was vehemently that she cursed herself, that she lamented her own existence, that she hated her own greed. If she had not so thoroughly ruined Sora's memories, she never would have had to take so long to repair them, and he could have spent all of that time better preparing to fight Xemnas. Riku would never have had to spend all that time working to assure his friend's recovery. If Naminé hadn't encouraged Roxas to return to his Other he might have been able to help them. If she hadn't returned to Kairi, that wreckage of a heart might still be intact. If Naminé hadn't caused all of that, Terra, Aqua, and Ventus might still have had someone to save them.

If only Naminé had never existed.

When he'd seen Signless go through the door, Ψiioniic had hurried after his moirail. He was worried about Suzaku as well... and also he hadn't seen Romeo or Naminé lately, and that concerned him. He expected to come through the door right on Signless' heels.

Instead he found himself alone, and felt the door behind him vanish. Cursing under his breath he looked around warily. There could be any kind of threat here, and he didn't yet know if his powers would work.

The sound of crying drew him, and he moved forward until suddenly he could see Naminé, on her knees crying next to what looked like it might be a dead body. The human laying on its back bore an odd resemblence to Naminé, though to Ψiioniic all the alien looked vaguely alike.

"Naminé?" he said softly, moving towards her cautiously.

Naminé was entirely too upset to take any notice of the sounds of Ψiioniic's arrival. She hardly even heard her name, but she did hear it, and it made her flinch, letting out something that, had she not been in the process of sobbing, might have been a gasp. As it was, it came out more like something closer to a yelp. She reflexively curled inward; there was only one living and mobile person in these worlds who knew her name, and since that was the person who had murdered all of the other people who knew her, the sound of her name was enough to make her fearful, even though the voice hadn't sounded like the right one. She hadn't been listening well enough to notice - she'd hardly even realized it was her name at all, and it wouldn't have been surprising if Xemnas came to finish the job.

Seeing her flinch back from him like that could have been hurtful, but Ψiioniic chose to take it as what it was - a sign of how incredibly distraught she must be. Whatever this place was, whoever that other human might be, it was so upsetting to Naminé that she was lost in it.

He understood how you could be lost in your pain, all too well.

"Naminé, it'th me, Ψiioniic," he said, softly, almost crooning it. He came to a stop just out of reach and crouched down, moving slowly, carefully, not wanting to alarm her with any sudden motions. "I'm not going to hurt you. Look up."

This time, she was listening, and very closely at that - or at least, as closely as she could manage while still crying. She tried to contain her sobs, but at this point it was a bit of a lost cause. The more she listened, the more it became clear that that was definitely not the voice she'd been expecting. It was hard to believe, but to the best of her knowledge, Xemnas couldn't change his voice like that. Even if he could, how would he know Ψiioniic? Unless the tower really was some construct of the Organization, but... she needed to believe that it wasn't. Her shoulders still rose slightly, almost defensively, when he approached, and she hesitated, but after a moment, she slowly lowered her hands from her face.

When she raised her head, it was suddenly, with wide, glassy eyes red from crying and wet cheeks. It was hard to see through the tears, but several blinks later, her eyes were welling up anew, because it really was him. "Ψ-- Ψii--"

"Shhhhh, it'th okay," he soothed her, holding out one hand in an invitation for her to check for herself that he was real. He suddenly had some sympathy for humans like Romeo who seemed to live for hugging people. There was a certain urge to try to comfort her physically, but he remembered that she didn't like being touched any more than he did.

Still, the invitation was there, if she felt like taking it. He'd never seen her so upset.

She'd never been so upset. Never in her life had something so horrible (supposedly) happened. She'd lived through being held captive by heartless people who wished to use her to hurt other, through the year that followed that time during which she spent all of her time removing herself from the memories of the first almost-friend she'd ever had and the attempt to have her executed after she was no longer useful, and through her return to the base of the very Organization that captured her to save the girl she would only ever be a shadow of, but this... this was something else. Before, it had been mostly her own suffering. Now... it was the suffering and death of not only the people in her original worlds that she cared about the most, but countless others, too, and it was all her fault.

The hand being extended to her made her tense, but lose that tension when there was no attempt to do anything intimidating with it. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, it was that she wasn't sure she could trust her eyes. It was just so hard to believe that he was really here at a time like that. Hadn't he been sent back to his own world? If not, shouldn't he have been in the tower? She wondered, but the thought became more and more distant as she tried to restrain her tears and failed. It wasn't okay. It would never be okay. But the words had helped and continued to help anyway. She reached out cautiously with one small, trembling, and somewhat soggy hand and gingerly touched his. Sure enough, she could feel it - if he was a hallucination, he was a very thorough one. Regardless, her hand curled more tightly around his, then was joined by her other hand. A hug probably would have helped, but she hadn't had enough experience with hugs to realize that she wanted one, so clinging to his hand like that and edging just a little closer was the most she could think to seek out. "I-it's--" 'not okay', she wants to say, but her throat won't quite listen.

The meaning got through anyway, mostly by way of her continued tears and the hopeless look on her face. He tightened his hand around hers, and when she edged closer he reached out his other hand to stroke her hair gently. "I'm here," he tried instead, because 'it's okay' seemed like kind of a stupid thing to say in retrospect. "I'm here for you. I wath worried about you. Are you hurt? What happened?"

His attempts at comforting her seemed to do some good, although the good in question came on the heels on a slight increase in tears - it was just such a strange feeling to be comforted like that, and even in the depths of her despair some part of her appreciated it more than she knew how to express at the moment other than by crying a little harder. She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, trying to get a hold of the rest of herself so that she could answer. When her eyes opened they were slightly drier than before, but definitely not dry by any means, and at least she could manage to keep from sobbing long enough to talk. "They're--...." She struggled with the word, turned her attention to the other question, "I'm-- not hurt-- but... they're--" The last word is so difficult to say, even though it's something she'd already recognized. "...d-- dead."

Ψiioniic took a closer look around, but saw only the one body. Which, on second study, wasn't a body at all... the chest was moving, faintly. There might well be others that he couldn't see, however. And he knew better than anyone how it hurt to lose someone you truly cared about.

"I'm thorry," he told her, low and sincere. "Nothing hurts worse than lothing someone important to you. But Naminé... I don't think this ith real. I think we're still in the tower - there's weird sh...stuff going on."

Naminé continued to blink back tears as he spoke. His efforts were appreciated, and now that she was a little more restrained, she realized suddenly how much of a burden she must have been. Just like she was before-- but that thought only made her want to cry again, and that would have been entirely countereffective. Fortunately, the thought didn't last long, because that last sentence was enough to distract her from it. "--What?" She blinked, her brow beginning to knit. After a moment she glanced around her, continuing to blink more than usually necessary to try to keep her eyes clear enough. "Why--... what makes you think--" Sniff. "--that?" ...Other than the fact that the people in control of the tower were tricky and apparently sadistic.

"Other than the fact that it'th the sort of thing they would do?" Ψiioniic asked wryly, unaware that he was echoing her own thoughts. "A door appeared in the cafeteria with a sign that just thays 'please rescue them'. I followed SS through, but wherever he ended up, it'th not here. I think they're screwing with uth, trying to break our minds, just like last time."

It made him worried for Suzaku, and especially for Romeo. At least he'd found Naminé, that was something.

Her lips pursed a bit as she thought, the edges of her mouth still downturned. It was like the tower to do something like that. "But...." It had seemed so real. Inescapably, her eyes are drawn to the form of her Somebody, and even though it made her feel ill to even look that direction, now that her mind was a bit clearer, she could (and desperately wanted to) admit to herself that things like that could be faked. The tower had already proved itself capable of illusions. In any other situation, she might have been ashamed of herself for falling for something like that, but at the moment, she was entirely too busy gratefully clinging to the idea that this horrible nightmare might not be real.

Her relief was obvious, but still she drew her eyes away from the motionless form of the other girl. "...You're right." One of her hands released his and swiped at her cheek in an attempt to scrub away the remains of her tears. "You're right, that is something they'd do." She swallowed, trying hard to make herself believe that it was really the case. "Those--...." She cast about for a moment, but couldn't seem to find a suitably unpleasant word to describe the people responsible.

"Nooksucking assholes?" he offered in an overly helpful tone, trying to bright a little lightness to what was a very heavy discussion. If he could distract her from her pain, maybe it would make it easier for her to believe this wasn't real. "Or how about taintchaffing bulgelickers? That's one of SS's favouriteth, and I've always liked it."

She'd missed some of the tear tracks, so he reached up and wiped them away for her, smiling sadly. "I really don't think it'th real. They made it too easy to get to - and too obviouth. And much too hurtful."

Naminé nodded with a touch of hesitation, only because she wasn't entirely certain what that first part of his beginning suggestion meant. It could reasonably be presumed, however, that it was something appropriately bad, and assume she did. His efforts to brighten things made the edges of her mouth turn upward; in the beginning, it was an attempt mostly for his sake, but after the second suggestion for what to call their mutual captors, it became a little more genuine, and she let out an almost-laugh. Although she was not one for insulting others, it was hard not to be angry enough to want to in that situation, and due to her lack of experience with 'bad words', it made her feel almost mischievous to even agree with such statements.

She blinked, momentarily surprised when he wiped at her face, but she did not draw away or flinch. Any reflexive inclination to was suppressed in time to avoid being shown - she knew he had no intention of hurting her, and honestly, once she got past how strange it felt, it was not at all unpleasant. She urged her smile wider to let him know she appreciated the gesture. "...And it's too easy to for something like this to be faked." She exhaled slowly, looking his direction as she thought. "They've already proven how well they can manipulate us, and even our thoughts. ...I learned a long time ago that the people left behind when we were taken to the tower were too important to give up on, no matter what the letters said. It's still true. I should have suspected it was the tower right away, I just--... I'm sorry, Ψiioniic, for-- acting like that."

Is This Home?

TL;DR: Namine Is A Bad Person Who Ruined Everything (1/2 oh boy)

(2/2 I am so sorry just scroll on by ;;) repost

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