This may become a two-part? Maybe?
Hmm.
I'll see when I get there I suppose.
Ah, standard disclaimer applies of course. And the notice that I'm being very liberal with one piece of information we have about the game, the chances of this being completely wrong are HIGH, so I recommend taking this one with a grain of salt. ;;
Sometimes, I can't control it.
The flares of pain as I lose myself pull at every tendon, ever muscle until they scream. On those days, when keeping it in hurts, I simply don't. I let myself vanish - abandon my name, my memories, and my mortal form. It's easy then, to fade and become nothing because nothing is what it expects of me, and I have no time or ability to fight it.
But sometimes, it comes over my slowly, in little aches and foreign thoughts that feel simply like irregularities. Not like the irregularity, and by the time I realize the truth I'm already half-way gone. It's the slow days that get me. The days in which I've succeeded believing in my normality only to be hideously reminded otherwise.
Today has been one of those days.
I'm stumbling down the forest path hissing at every movement, vision blurred around the edges and the screaming in my head. I thought I could ignore it, maybe, just maybe if I willed it away - but no. Willpower doesn't stop the pain but adds to it with a headache. I've already fainted once today trying to fight with willpower, right into Hinoka's arms, and I can't will it again.
So to the forest I go. Where the only arms that I can fall into are the arms of dying trees.
The forest path changes under my feet. It becomes solid, flat. My feet trip over themselves in their confusion and my hand reaches out to catch my fall, scraping against solid wood planks.
A sense of dread goes through me and I try my hardest to stand again, despite the wave of pain that wants to bring me to my knees. I swap on my way up, eyes unfocused, and they catch a figure of blue and white. My stomach turns as the person does, a constant display of grace even in the slightest of movements. Her hair falls against her back like sheets of pale water.
In the light from the setting sun, I allow myself the moment to think she looks beautiful. And then it takes over, and I'm no longer thinking.
There's alarm in her face, a hand outstretched to reach me, and a voice that sounds like it comes from the forest and not from right in front of me. "Kamui?" she asks, fingers ghosting over my shoulder. "What's the matter? You look pale..."
I am pale. I feel pale.
- i aM daRKness and death -
"Kamui..." Her hands have moved now - when? when did they move? - and they grip my arms, the only thing holding me upright now. My legs have long since abandoned their need to function for their want to be different, to change. I feel the tugging, the rippling under my skin, the roaring in my ears as blood pounds and dragons of old scream -
- i Am dArkNess... i ... DeVouR light -
No. The only part of my mind untouched is pleading. It claims to be a thing that devours light and before me is light. Touching me is light.
"Kamui, speak to me," and she's suddenly in my space. She snakes one arm around my waist to hold me and the other touches my face. Her thumb brushes near my lip and I shudder, a part of me at the touch and a part of me at the impulse. These wooden slabs are beautiful, even and thick and with a lovely color, and I have no intent to stain them (but I may not have a choice).
"Please - go..." is what I can choke out before the world goes white. A void of space, time, sound, and sight; it's empty and hot as my senses scramble to take control again, to make things right again. The world returns and I'm half-draped in Aqua's arms, just like I said I would try to avoid, and the raspy breaths I heave are mine but no longer have my voice.
No. No. No.
- yeS -
I shove her away and fall into the embrace of the pier. Limbs shake, rocked by earthquakes of inner battles. Each time I try to lift myself my head drops back onto the ground and it feels a little more helpless. A little less okay.
Aqua is steadfast, beautifully stubborn in the fact that she stays and still tries to help me. Her touch is back, on my back and curled into my hair. She's trying to pull me up, out, but there is no out. She's trying to talk to the rational, the human part of me but her words fall mostly on the ear of a dying god. A dragon that doesn't want to hear.
"GO!" The word rips out of me and the voice isn't me. I grab her, dragging her around me and pouring every ounce of strength into pushing her away one last time. And I'm gone, gone, gone.
Gone is rationality and gone is humanity, and gone is the word go itself.
Go turns into another word, into come, into a deceptive beckoning - COmE, To yOUr doOm, cOme, cOme, COMe - and suddenly the alarm on her face is not disturbing, but delicious.
I remember water.
I remember her screams.
I do not remember much else.