So Wake Me Up Before It's Over

[salvagedlight]

Who: Ventus and ~you~!
What: Ven's just arrived, and he's a little confused, because who wouldn't be
Where: Meandering from the Wake-Up Stone to the residence
When: July 19th
Warnings: None off the top of my head? BUT, spoilers for KH3 if you're avoiding those

He was a getting a little annoyed at continually missing time. Or maybe more than a little.

Ventus had thought it was finally over and done with, that ...bad habit he had of checking out of the universe for awhile, falling into comas or out of reality or losing his heart or any of the other options that he could think of. How many times did that make, now? Three? One was too many, two was really pushing it, three was just absurd. Or even three and a half, since he'd only partially come out of the one he'd fallen into when Master Xehanort ripped his heart in two...

With a brief shudder, Ven pushed the horrible, patchy memory aside, continuing to walk in what might have been the right direction (he wasn't completely sure, the directions he'd been given seemed a little out of step with what was actually around him), choosing instead to focus on what the being - The Head? - had told him after his latest waking. Plague and disease were terrible things, but the city seemed to be thriving fairly well even with that in its history. Some parts looked more mechanical or industrial, some more natural, but all seemed fairly well cared for. Still, something was... off, just a little. It was nothing he could pinpoint, nothing more than a small flutter, just a slight unease that he couldn't be sure wasn't because of yet again passing out and waking somewhere completely unfamiliar with no real idea what was going on.

"...Chirithy? Are you here?" Ven called, seemingly to thin air. The connection was so new, less than a day for him, but so strong, so right, and even here he could feel it, so much a part of him that he wasn't sure how he hadn't missed it before now. He had no doubt that the spirit would answer, and he was right, a small light sparking in the air next to his shoulder that spun down almost to the ground, resolving into a grey-white catlike form next to his knee that put one "paw" on his leg as it looked up at him.

"I'm here! I'm not leaving you again, not even in this place. Whatever this place is," it responded, turning its stitched eyes out to look over the buildings and streets around them. "I've never heard of it, and that..."

"...It makes you nervous, doesn't it? I can feel it, a little."

The little triangle ears drooped slightly as Chirithy hung its head briefly. "You shouldn't be able to do that. But yeah, a little nervous. But maybe I'm just overreacting."

Ven bent down a little to put his hand on the spirit's head, giving it a scratch much like he would a real cat. "Maybe we both are. But we're together - and maybe we can find someone else." Straightening up, he gave the spirit a smile before picking a direction, mostly at random, and starting off, Chirithy trotting at his side and doing its best to keep up. "It'll be nice to see another face."

Comments

[aguidingkey]

Aqua hadn't honestly compared this place to the Graveyard, mostly because she's still getting used to being able to sense light and darkness again here. The second Ven mentions it, she nods, immediately seeing the connection. It doesn't make her feel any better about this world, though.

She's trying to do her best not to look like she's been through the ringer. Ven has enough to worry about without adding her to the list. But she can't deny that she's been better. She's been a lot worse, too, but she's definitely been better. After she was rescued from the Realm of Darkness, she didn't have time to let all of her insecurities and problems surface; she had to keep them hidden until the fight was over. Even then... she'd had maybe a day to deal with everything, a day to spend with her best friends and mourn their master, before she was brought back to the Iteration world.

"It's a long story," she admits softly, gazing across the street as she thinks back to everything. "I've been on this world for a month and before that, I spent eight months on another world that I couldn't escape. I've only seen you and Terra once since then, when I was sent home from that other world and then brought back. I don't know how or why. All I know is... the last thing I remember of home is being with you and Terra after the Master's memorial. Before that... I was in the Realm of Darkness."

Did she even tell him that? She thinks he knows it, one way or another. At this point, this world and the last one have begun to weigh too heavily on her.

"This world isn't safe, Ven. We at least have our keyblades and some of our powers, but we have to be careful. During the festival last month, there was an attack on the mayor and lot of people were hurt." An unspoken I don't want you to be one of them passes between them as she glances back at Ven. "I don't know where Terra is, but I know he isn't here."

[salvagedlight]

Ven keeps his focus on Aqua as she speaks, and for all that he can be maybe a little flighty and kind of unconcerned and chill about a lot of things, when something is important enough for him to devote his full attention to it's almost a little disconcerting. It's at those points he shows more of his patience and analytical mind, and it's almost as though a little old man is watching through his eyes, a little old man who's seen more of the worlds than anyone can guess.

"I know, Aqua," he says quietly. "I know you were there. You were trying to protect me, and you were trying to save Terra - we let you down." Bending a little, Chirithy jumps into his waiting arms with a squeak and without him needing to make any motion that he wants the spirit to do so, another example of the unconscious connection between the two. He takes another step forward, putting them into range to almost hug, and looks up at her with eyes that are more earnest than she's ever seen them. "But you're not there anymore, and you're not alone this time, okay? You protected me for twelve years - you don't have to do everything on your own anymore."

He knows she's used to being the one in charge, or at least one of the ones in charge. She and Terra had been neck in neck for their entire training, at least all that he'd been there to see - Master Eraqus wouldn't have tested both of them if he didn't think they both had the qualifications to be a master. And Aqua had passed. She was the one who made sure he stopped training to have some water when Ven himself would get caught up in practice and lose track of time. She made sure all of them got to bed at a more or less reasonable hour of the night. The bare handful of times anyone was sick, she helped take care of them. It's time and past for them to take care of her. If he got hurt doing so? So be it.

He'd already done that, after all. He'd gladly do it again.

Bumping her shoulder lightly with his, Ven gives her another smile, an offer of distraction from a heavy topic he knows she doesn't want to think about. "Why don't we go wherever you think we should go and you can explain what you know about this place. You said some of our powers? What's not working for you, so I know what to look out for?"

[aguidingkey]

Even before Ven finishes speaking, Aqua's head shakes gently. She appreciates what he means, what he's trying to do. He wants to reassure her, the way she tried to do for him so many times before. She was always trying to protect him, to help him and Terra both, but also to prove herself. They never let her down; she let them down.

"I promised I would save you both," she points out. Even if Ven had never exactly heard her say those words, she remembers saying them all too well. "I failed you. I was lost for so long. If it wasn't for Sora, Riku, and Mickey, we wouldn't be here at all. Xehanort would have won and the worlds would have fallen."

Aqua was a Keyblade Master and she couldn't even save herself or her friends. What good was she, really?

But she squares her shoulders against those thoughts. She'd spent more than a decade trying to push past all of those intrusive thoughts, a decade of fighting the darkness while she was lost in a place with no end and no one in sight. They shouldn't come as easily here as they had back then, but she keeps finding herself slipping back down every so often. She has to fight harder; she has to be strong enough to win.

Almost without thinking about it, she turns them in the direction of the dorms. Or at least, the direction she remembers the dorms being in earlier that day. That will be the easiest starting point. "I'll take you to the dorms. That's where a lot of us are staying. I've been placed in a room with a boy named Seifer. He's... a friend of mine from the last world we were trapped in." That... probably doesn't help Ven much, especially given how cagey she's being, but it's a good enough segue into the rest of what she needs to tell him. "This isn't the first world I've been trapped in. A lot of the people here are friends I made in the last one. The rules are different here and we think there's some kind of power-dampening field in effect. It would be easier to tell you what I know I can do than to list what I can't."

There's too much that isn't working here. But at least some of it does still work. That's better than anything the Iteration world gave her.

"I can still heal, but it's at half power. I can still double jump, use my barriers, cartwheel with fire, and air slide with ice. I haven't tried a lot of spells yet, but none of the lower level ones are working anymore and none of my attack abilities. I can't even use Break Time anymore." Not that she used that one a whole lot, but it had been good for stretching in the mornings. "My darkness and light senses work here, though, and my keyblade. I didn't have anything that worked in the Iteration world and I couldn't even summon the Master's keyblade there."

She's sure she doesn't need to explain to Ven what not having a keyblade was like. She'd felt like a limb had been severed or a piece of her heart had been broken off. She was incomplete without it. Now she has Stormfall back, somehow, and she isn't going to complain about that at all.