A/N: MUCHO IMPORTANTE NOTE!!! I sort of got a bit mixed up on a few things in this chapter, like the timeframe in which the prince got the Scorpion sword and the fact that it was AFTER he defeated the empress that one time. Yeah, that. But, oh well, the chapter has been written and I'm lazy and don't feel like rewriting it.
Also, the song is Undying by Flowing Tears, and it's pretty awesome.
XP
"You can't escape forever, darling!" she laughed, her face taking on a horrifying skull-like quality. She had me backed into a corner, and I was sobbing and sobbing, I begged her to leave me alone. "You're adorable." She cooed, bending down over me, and others appeared around her, all chuckling, "So cute, let's hear you scream some more." She said.
Lilly was sixteen when it started to hurt
In and out of reach in a silent alert
Lilly was sixteen when the sun in her heart stopped to shine
Clawed hands held me down, a child no older than 9, I screamed, I cried, I kicked and struggled, I begged, but that's exactly what she wanted, that's exactly what they wanted.
Mirror balls and dreams light the tears in her eyesStarlit of the scene and narcotic inside
Lilly was sixteen when her heart got afraid of the night
I was running again, running through black streets, trains whizzing past me. The ground moved, gears turned, buildings got in my way, then the next moment lifted in the air, giving me the ability to dive through holes in the clockwork mechanisms.
Walk undying, in the rainWalk undying, over again
All your sorrow, is what I will take
Undying
A horrible figure, 7 feet tall with four winged arms and the head of a vulture let out a hair-raising shriek and snatched me off the building I was climbing with its feet. I screamed, and tried to struggle, but froze as it flew me high, high over the moving city, and over a black ocean which frothed and bubbled.
Monday was the day when she left with a smileTook the urban train for her terminal ride
Monday was the day when the city swallowed her child
The storm blew at us and the bird flew on, the waters began to rise, and rise in an arch until it no longer looked like water, but a head with hair. Gold-filled eyes opened from the giant shape, and a dark hand reached out and grabbed the bird creature so that it dropped me.
Trying to believe and to never arrive
Flowers off the track, mark the end of her strife
Monday was the day when sweet Lilly followed the night
I fell, I screamed, terrified as water spouts and funnel clouds caught me and flung me all around. Monsters which laughed and toyed with me, playing a cruel game of catch with each other, and I was the ball.
Walk undying, in the rainWalk undying, over again
All your sorrow, is what I will take
UndyingBut something caught me out of the storm, and I held on tightly. It carried me far, far away, away from the darkness and into the sun. On an island of purple beaches and white trees of golden leaves. And the waters were so blue, the grasses gold. I held on to the creature that carried me here, if I let go, the winds would take me back to the storms.
It held me close, and I sensed the storms ceasing, heard the thwarted cry of the creatures that haunted me, safe in the arms of a mother, or father, or brother, whatever it was. I didn't care, I was safe, I was safe.
XD
The sense of safety followed me to the waking world, the feeling of peace, of security. The confusion was that this feeling was accompanied by a growing sense of panic that I recognized all too well. A little voice telling me over and over again to get out!
But, it didn't make sense. I was safe here, why should I leave? Why should I get out? The voice wasn't making sense, it was completely contradicting this feeling of security, and why? I simply couldn't think of anything…until I realized where this feeling of security was coming from, or rather, who it was coming from.
Once again I found myself lying down on top of him, only this time I was face down, with my head upon his chest near his shoulder, and my arms were around his neck, his head propped up on the makeshift pillows we had using the flower bags we'd found. And his arms were around me as well, one had a grip on my shoulder, the other draped around my middle.
His scent was all around me, it smelled of incense mixed with his own masculine airs to which I couldn't place. The purple beaches and white-gold trees came back to mind, which was probably the only thing that stopped me from screaming bloody murder and beating him to a pulp. Had it been him? Had he been the reason? The reason it stopped, the reason my nightmares quieted, and I saw a glimpse of the first good dream I'd ever had in my life?
I've never had good dreams, ever. I dreaded going to sleep because I knew that I would only wake up in a cold sweat, having just been caught by some night-terror of a monster. And the only heroes I ever came across died the moment they tried to save me. My only 'good' dreams were the ones when I died, when I was dying. Yet…
This one was real, and he had saved me.
I felt him move beneath me, and that was enough to jerk me out of my reverie, and back into reality. My eyes shot open and I yanked myself out of his arms, whose grip was reluctant to let me go. "What the hell!?" I demanded, the panic voice in my head suddenly taking control without listening to the single thing the logic lobe of my brain was trying to tell it.
"What—huh? What's going o—OWE!" He exclaimed, which he had good reason too seeing as I had punched him in the jaw in order to get him to let me go.
"What is wrong with you!?" I demanded, jumping back.
"What the—oh, I—I can explain!" He said, getting to his feet, his eyes wide and understanding.
"Start!" I snapped.
"I was, you were—that is to say, I just…I…" He jabbered helplessly, red in the face, probably just as red as I was, though to all appearances, mine was from anger rather than embarrassment, which wasn't exactly accurate. "I—simply cannot keep my hands off you and you have every right to kick me again." He finally said, and I just stared at him. "So go ahead." He said, closing his eyes and bracing himself.
I felt the panic voice in my head die away, to be replaced with guilt. No, that wasn't it, it was so obvious he was lying…lying for me. I was having a nightmare, and he had tried to wake me from it. I likely grabbed hold of him, and that was when my nightmares left and I had the first peaceful sleep ever.
I buried my face in my hands, "You're a horrible liar…" I said, my knees giving way so that I crumbled to the ground.
The silence stretched on, and he came to sit down next to me. For a long time we simply sat there, and then he finally decided to speak, "Do you…always have nightmares?" He asked in a low voice.
"Always…" I murmured. "When I was little, I hardly ever slept at all, they were worse then when I had no control, and in any case I was often too afraid to let myself sleep in case one of them showed up. I'd sleep for only a half an hour at a time, if even that much, before my body finally gave up and I passed out. Several times I've tried to just stop sleeping, but I've learned that I just need to grit my teeth and stick it out. My body needs sleep, even if I hardly get any real rest." I told him. "I clung to you, didn't I?" I sighed, guessing by his silence that I was right, "I'm sorry I hit you like that…I just…"
"Panicked?" He offered.
"Yeah…" We were silent for another moment.
"When I held you…did the nightmares leave?"
"Yes…"
"Why?"
"I don't know." I answered, shaking my head, "The nightmares come from them, if you didn't know already. I have them all in a place inside my head I call the Manor, and when I'm awake I can keep the door shut and everyone but Sacrosanct is stuck in there, they can't get back out unless I open it again. But when I sleep…my hold on the door lessens, it's not something I can just lock up and hide the key, I have to keep it a hold on the handle to stop them from opening it, something I can't do very well in my sleep. And though they can't usually come out in their own bodies while I'm asleep, they can enter my mind. Monigan's the most active and has the most…skill, when it comes to crafting nightmares. She knows what scares me, and just how far to push it before it's too much and I wake up. Somehow…when you held me…you kept the door closed tight…but the voice is still there. That little part of me which panics, remember? It's still there, and if logic could get rid of it it'd have left a while ago." I told him, curling up into a ball with my knees hugged to my chest. The soft grass tickled my bear feet.
"I know…I know you can't stand to be touched like that, I think I'm beginning to understand that, to really understand that…but is this really how you want to live? Unable to bear the touch of another human being?" He asked me.
"No…" I answered in a quiet voice, burying my face in my arms, my loose red hair coming to cover me up, hiding me from view. "It…" I hesitated, and decided that if I didn't confess this, it would eat me up inside, "It felt nice…" I murmured, "Being…held…I just can't stand it." I told him. "When…when I was a child, my parents wouldn't hold me, would hardly touch me at all. They were afraid to let me love them, afraid that if I did, they would come after them. As long as they remained aloof, neither loving nor abusive, my inner demons ignored them. The reason why? Neglect was more damaging than outright hatred. They simply ignored me, like I didn't exist, like I wasn't important enough for them to feel either way. And I know it was because they were afraid for their very lives…but I don't know that I've ever forgiven them for it. Even when I obtained control over my demons, they still wouldn't acknowledge me. I was living in a house apart from theirs, they would pay for my living, my food, my water and everything, and to the public eye they were my legal parents…but in all other cases they were more like my keepers, the people who sent me money to take care of myself or something like that. I've grown up learning that physical touch is dangerous, not just for other people, but for myself, and that never really went away."
"How is it…" He murmured, "That you managed to survive for so long like this? How can you stand it?"
"I never had a choice in the matter." I said, raising my head to look at him, "To live or die, it wasn't up to me." I told him bitterly. "Monigan is the most powerful of my Inner Demons next to Sacrosanct, the reason for this? Monigan was born from my desire to die, and she becomes stronger every time I do think of suicide. Rather than helping me, she's become the worst, the one I hate the most."
"If you couldn't kill yourself…what was stopping you?" He asked me, "According to what you told me, you had nothing to live for, nothing whatsoever. What's keeping you alive?"
I looked him in the eyes, "Sacrosanct." I answered flatly. "The most powerful, the most dangerous, and the only one who's determined to make sure I stay alive. Perhaps not whole, but alive. I don't know, maybe she's the only one who fully understands that if I die, so does she, so do they all. Perhaps she's my will to live or something, I don't know, and I'm not sure I care anymore. She can't keep me alive forever, eventually I'm going to grow old, and this body will simply give out one day."
"It seems to me like you're already old enough as it is." The prince murmured. "Do you think that, perhaps, if you got use to someone touching you," He placed a hand near my shoulder, hesitated, and then took it away, "Just a little bit at a time, it wouldn't be so bad?" He asked. "You could get use to it, learn to ignore your panic."
"Maybe…" I murmured. "But if you're volunteering to help, I just have one condition."
"What's that?"
"You let me touch you." I told him, "Let me initiate it, don't just come up and pat me on the shoulder without warning. Okay?"
"Okay." He smiled, and I found myself smiling back.
XD
"Just how many times does this guy come after you in a day!?" I exclaimed, having just used my braid to snatch the prince away from the impending doom of tentacle wrath and pulling him up onto the ledge.
"Well, seeing as I'm staying on the same island, he doesn't have as hard a time finding me!" He answered.
I was currently getting a bit more hands-on experience in wall-runs, lucky for me it was a lot easier to both do and practice when I had the whole one-sided spiderman deal going on and could use my daggertail as a rope, which I had to do often enough. You might not realize just how much I had to rely on the grappling quality of that chain, and the fact that it could grapple onto anything was a definite blessing. I used it for so much you might wonder how I could get away with walking around in my human form. Well, there are some parts of this place I could get through without it, most of them switches that I let the prince take care of. I was definitely no acrobat on my own, I couldn't balance on anything less than a foot wide, if even that small. I had to crawl along it, and sometimes I would say "heck with this" and force Monigan to let me ride her. Her body could stick to just about anything, and it was light like vapor, so doing acrobatic stunts with her, even though she was a giant, was easy.
And she didn't like it when I turned her into a horse, so that gave me a sense of satisfaction.
Still, I was getting good with this daggertail, not only in moving around the place, but in fighting as well.
It'd just be nice if I could use it to fend off the Dahaka.
We'd just fallen down a big chasm, and, unfortunately, the prince's sword shattered when he needed it most (Big surprise), thankfully the two of us got through it well enough, but it was incredibly annoying when we spotted a new sword, and the Dahaka appeared and tossed it off the platform. I'd screamed about that in the game, and so I was ranting about it now. It wasn't fair man! You can't take my shiny, no one takes my shiny!!! Okay, so it's the prince's shiny, but still!
We were currently at the end of our rope. The prince was nearly out of sand, I was low on health, and the Dahaka was gaining. But we saw the waterfall which fell over the sand portal, and dove through it like our lives depended on it (which they did, duh), and, once again, only then did Kukarkin decide to appear. "You know," I began irritably, "If you just stayed with us, you might have a better chance of catching him, and you could chase him off for us!"
"Oh yes, you'd like that wouldn't you, darling? And let Gorra find him in the time I spend waiting for him to show up again to start chasing you!" And with that she was off again.
"I hope she does catch him." The prince huffed. "Maybe afterwards he won't be in any condition to bother us." He said, as I began using the daggertail in order to hit the big buttons and figure out the right order for them. It was much faster this way because I didn't have to run up the walls, I could just stand there and hit them.
"I've been meaning to ask you…" The prince began, "How is it that you seem to know this place so well, and yet you claim to have never been here?" He asked.
"Ever heard of a thing called a map?" I answered, smirking at him.
"What map, I've never seen you use a map." He said.
"It's tattooed on my butt, remember?" I snickered.
"First of all, I know very well there is no map on your…end. Why would there be? How is it that you seem to know every inch of this place, where the traps are and where the strengthening disks are?" He pressed on as the two of us stepped through the sand portal.
"Do you really want to know?" I asked when we got to the past again.
"Yes, I want to know." He answered.
"The truth or a far more believable lie?" I questioned.
"What do you mean?"
"The fact is that you likely won't believe me, even if I tell you. Let's put it this way, say I went to a Seer, whose pool can show you moving images, and through that pool I saw a lot of things, not just this place, but many, many others. And so many times I went to this Seer for the same images that I learned them by heart, and this place was one of those I saw over and over again. So while the map is not on my butt, per say, it is in my mind. Believe me when I say I had no idea this place was real while I was exploring it through the visions of that pool, but that's the best way I can describe how I know where to go and what to do here." I told him.
"I see…so what was the name of this Seer?" He asked.
"Ubisoft." I answered, "Yeah, and you thought you had a weird name."
He made a face, "You don't even know my name."
"That's not for lack of trying."
"Forget it."
"Oh COME ON!!! Puleeeeeez!!! Tell me your name!!!" I begged, almost like a little child.
"No!"
"Tell me your name."
"No!"
"Tell me your name."
"No!"
"Tell me your name."
"No!"
"Tell me your name."
"No!"
Ten minutes later while we were fighting after the prince got his new sword…
"Tell me your name."
"CAN WE DO THIS AFTER THE SAND MONSTERS ARE DEAD!?"
"Why? I wanna know!!!"
"No!"
Another ten minutes later while he was attempting to take a wiz…
"Tell me your name!"
"KAIDA!!!"
"Oh calm down it's not like I can see through walls." I scoffed.
"Those poor plants, though."
"MONIGAN!!!" We both yelled at once. She disappeared laughing.
XP
No time to do the FAQ, got chores I gotta do and I wanted to get this chapter out today. So, yeah.
