Fear
Theme: Something I wrote up for an event for a tumblr rp I'm in
Background: a crazy ringmaster abducts characters from all over, bringing them to his debilitated circus to work as performers. Run down and full of dangers, he loves to play tricks.
The event was during a storm, peoples worst fears come true. It's all fake, in their mind, but whatever happens to them will be seen by any and all onlookers. Once they are freed, either by themselves, another person or once the event ends, everything disappears, including any wounds they may have sustained.
Tifa's fears: Losing her father again even though it's impossible since he's dead, being betrayed by her friends, being separated from her friends by the life stream.
Tifa watched as the weather changed. Thunder and lightning and pelting rain as fog crept in slowly. She found it nice, maybe a touch relaxing. She was alone in the rundown trailer, currently washing dishes that he had used to make herself something to eat-the food here might not be something that she would have eaten back in Nibelheim, let alone served in 7th Heaven but it would have to do. Last dish finished and set aside to air dry, the woman ran her hands along the towel she had hanging from the pocket on her skirt before placing it on the counter. Except for the noise outside all was silent and her knees bend, back sliding against the front of the counter until she was seated on the ground, a sudden wave of drowsiness overtaking her. Blurry, blurry, blurry still her surroundings got until things went black as she slipped into slumber.
Cold. Cold, cold, too cold. Something was wrong and eyes slowly cracked open to see the colors around her dulled from the fog that was let inside by an open window. With a small groan and tight joints she was standing, looking around for the source of discomfort that the fog didn't provide. Something didn't feel right. Something had her stomach knotting and her heart beating a little faster. Something was wrong and she knew it, she just didn't know what and then all of a sudden it hit her. There was a smell, strong and bitter, and every bit as familiar as her name as it came in through the open window, slowly overpowering the crisp smell of the fog. Something was wrong and she knew it. Places were burning.
Hurried steps and frantic breathing leading up to the trailer door being almost blown from its rusty hinges in the haste to open it. A red glow lit up her frail face, illuminating the horror that resided there. It was everywhere. Everything was covered in a blanket of flame and it brought back memories that almost dropped her to her knees. But there was more than just fire surrounding her. There were bodies and she took hesitant steps forward, going further and further from the safety of her trailer, the only place that seemed untouched by the madness.
At first the bodies seemed faceless, but as she went on the identities made themselves known. There was Anne, the little girl who lived two doors down from Tifa growing up, Ro who brought her flowers every year on her birthday. People she grew up with, learned with, helped, served. All here admist fire and blood and with every face that was recognized her footfalls came quicker and quicker until she was all but running, stumbling through the burning buildings and slashed bodies.
Then, up ahead, a figure in the middle of it all that made her stop. The way it was laying, broken and dejected, it left her with all air flying from her lungs in a rush and all of a sudden she no longer felt like a 22 year old woman and instead felt like that 15 year old dressed in her cowboy tour guide outfit and with jilted steps, slowly yet steadily gaining momentum she threw herself towards that body on the ground.
"D-dad…"
He was saying something, but she couldn't hear the words through the roaring in her ears but that didn't matter for she knew the words he spoke for they often visited her dreams. Her hands clasped his and she screamed words that she put oh so much emotion into that it hurt. Not again, please not again. She couldn't lose him again. He was all she had, no one else since her mother died and if went too then she would be so alone here in this world ad she didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to be alone. Tears flowed over her cheeks, and she shook her head as she saw the light fading, there was nothing she could do and she hated it. People had been killed, and she didn't do anything and now her father was next. Please no, no, no, no! Her hands shook, and her breathing came out in ragged breaths and then his hand fell limp and she watched as it hit the ground, everything seeming to go into slow motion. There was only one person who could have done this and with an angry sound bubbling from her throat she closed her father's watching eyes and leapt to her feet. One person who did this, and he was going to pay.
Her feet pounded the earth with ferocity, following a path that she barely deciphered, winding through the wreckage with a clear purpose clouding everything else out of existence. There. There he was and she stumbled to a halt, screaming his name through the tears that still fell. Somewhere her mind murmured that this was all a rut, familiar, had already happened but her mind blocked it out as well. He turned to face her and he was not alone, flashes or red tinted blond, brown and black appearing behind him in a line that finally registered in her mind. This man wasn't finished; her friends were there as well, waiting in line like cattle and she got even angrier. Fury leading into a fear that she hadn't noticed that she had felt. Fear of being alone, fear of losing those she cared about, them being in a place that she was unable to reach. Her father was gone, left behind like a discarded plaything and now it was their turn. She couldn't let that happen but she didn't know how to stop it and she was moving before she even realized it.
There was a chance that she would lose this but she didn't care. Her fear wasn't making her act any different and she lunged forgetting that she was unarmed but she was blocked, blocked by a wall of her friends who refused to let her past and she fell back, not wanting to hurt them but they kept advancing on her, pushing her back further and further and there was something in their eyes that she didn't like. They just kept pushing and pushing and she didn't like it. She was afraid and her leg caught a rock and she fell, looking up with wide eyes as they kept coming, a figure coming up behind them, a sword lifted to strike, the red blood coating the sharp metal making it sheen and down it plunged as she screamed.
They weren't the ones going to an unreachable place. She was, but it was all the same in the end after all. Her worst fears coming true and all she had to do was realize that it was fake, that it was a trick but she was too caught up in her feelings of revenge, of anger and of throat clenching terror that she could barely see past her own feet and as the sword carved patterns on her flesh she screamed and wept for the friends that just turned their backs and allowed it to go on.
