The Tainted

Interlude: Her Paper Heart

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Riviera or Seth or anybody else, but I do own The Tainted and this associated oneshot. Don't steal plx, for Reiko is hungry and you are crunchy and good with ketchup. :D

Some days I can't help but feel as if none of this is real. It's as though I'm nothing more than an empty shell with a paper heart, and my memories are no more than badly-drawn things of pencil and crayon…

Seth sighed and stretched a hand out towards the ceiling, feeling worn out and irritable despite the fact that she'd barely awakened five minutes ago or so. Lately, her dreams were full of darkness, smoke, and pain, and they never failed to put her in a bad mood.

She had no idea why she felt so out of sorts these days. After all, she had everything any sensible girl her age would want—loving parents, the rare freedom of her own small studio apartment, flowing finances, good grades, and better friends. Her life had been good to her for sixteen years, and it didn't look as though it was going to change any time soon.

Annoyed by the fact that she felt so annoyed, Seth drew the covers back up to her chest and rolled onto her side, glaring at her clock.

She managed to stare at it for a grand total of half a minute before she realized the position the hands were in and leapt out of bed with a shriek.

---

"OH MY GOD!"

Seth pelted down the sidewalk towards the school gate, her bag in one hand and a piece of half-eaten toast in the other. She'd barely managed to get herself in order today—why had she decided to reset her alarm last night when she'd known that meant it probably wouldn't go off?!

Furious with herself, she charged through the schoolyard and into the building, her nearly-black Oxfords sliding on the newly-polished floors and the skirt of her uniform billowing almost all the way up to her hips. Today was going to be close—but she was pretty sure she would make it. Damned if she was going to get her first-ever tardy just because of her stupid dreams!

The bell rang just as she blasted into the classroom, startling her so badly that she slipped on the floor and would've wound up flat on her butt if a supportive arm hadn't been there to break her fall.

Blinking, Seth looked up at her savior and sighed with relief. It was the president of the Student Council—blonde, carmine-eyed Ledah Rozwelli, who while not one of Seth's closest friends was someone she trusted absolutely. Everyone did. Quiet, sober, mature Ledah was the type everyone knew they could depend on.

"Thanks," she managed weakly as he gently propelled her towards her seat.

"Be more careful," he admonished her, then went to sit down towards the front of the room, where his best friend and fellow Student Council member Ein Legendra was getting up in order to take the roll for the teacher, who was as yet absent. Seth smiled at him in thanks as she headed for her desk. Half the girls in the school were in love with Ledah due to his beauty and his kindness, but Seth knew where his true affections lay—she'd seen him with Ein a few times in the halls at the end of the day. Instead of being jealous, Seth was happy for the two of them and thought they were a very cute couple.

"Cutting it a little close today, aren't you?" Seth's best friend Rose asked as she sat down. "You almost didn't make it. Are you sure your alarm's working?"

Seth groaned and slumped against her desk. "I know I need to get a new one, but I just don't have the time with all this homework. I can buy one after the stupid finals are over."

"Maybe I should start coming over to wake you up just in case," Rose suggested. "You can't afford to be late with the school you're trying to get into."

Seth made a face, then sighed in acquiescence. "I hate to make you go out of your way, though."

"Don't worry about it. After all, your apartment building is just a street down from mine."

The sound of angry voices in the hall interrupted their conversation; even Ein, who'd been halfway through the roll, fell silent and looked awkwardly towards the door as a pair of latecomers burst in.

"Malice, what is it?" Ein asked at length, looking towards the older of the two girls, an irate blonde with the Student Council badge pinned to her sleeve and a T-square in her hand.

"I caught this imbecile trying to cut class for the sixth time this week," Malice fumed, pointing at the girl she'd dragged inside. "Someone honestly needs to do something about her!"

The other girl—Serene, a friend of Seth's who tended to be a bit of a delinquent—stuck out her tongue at Malice. "It's boring in here! What's wrong with wanting to go do something worthwhile for a change?"

As the pair of them squabbled, ignoring Ein's hesitant attempts at mediation, Seth covered a smile. She was on time, Rose was here, and Malice and Serene were at each other's throats as usual. Her day was officially complete.

She didn't stop smiling until the teacher came in and finally broke up the fight, letting everyone get down to business.

---

It was cold and dark in the castle, and she could see her breath in the dank air before her.

"My lord, the spell you set seems to be eroding. Are you sure it's going to be alright to—"

"Stop your incessant complaints." This voice was cold and cruel and made the hair on the small of her back stand on end. "Look at her—she's dreaming deeply. She isn't going to wake up anytime soon."

"—wake up."

"…nnn…"

"Miss Armitage, wake up!"

Seth yelped and practically jumped out of her seat, clenching her hands on the pages of the book she'd been holding as she gave the angry teacher a panicked look. "OHMIGOD! N-Nagisa-sensei… I am sooo sorry! I swear it's not gonna happen again!"

The teacher sighed and folded her arms, looking worried. "I hope it doesn't. This is unusual for you. …Now, who has been awake for long enough to answer the question?"

Seth sank down in her seat, crimson all the way to the ears, furious with herself and her dreams. Up until now, school had been the last place she'd had where she still felt entirely real, the only refuge she had from that odd hollow feeling that had been bothering her for so long.

What was happening to her?

---

"Are you sure you're doing okay?" Rose asked as Seth waved goodbye to Ein and Ledah at the school gate. "I mean… I know you've been kind of spacey lately because of all the stress, but I've never seen you actually fall asleep at your desk before! I was poking you with a pencil while the teacher wasn't looking, but you didn't even flinch! Have you been feeling sick or something?"

"No, I just…" Seth sighed. "I've just been feeling a little weird. That's all. And my dreams aren't very… restful." She couldn't tell Rose any more than that—the other girl would never believe her.

"Maybe you should take a day off and just rest," Rose suggested. "That's probably all you really need, you know."

"Maybe…"

Wearing a smile made awkward by her friend's gloomy aura, Rose shrugged. "So… Serene and Lina and some other kids are having a get-together down at the ramen shop on the corner, and we're going to go out for karaoke afterwards. Do you wanna come?"

Seth made a face. "No… I think I'd better just go home. I'd just weigh you all down, anyway."

"Well, if you're sure…" Rose hesitated for a moment, then went off in another direction, waving goodbye to her friend.

Seth stood still and watched Rose leave, then turned around and began the walk back to her apartment.

She just couldn't understand what was wrong with her these days. Sometimes when she thought of her parents or her old friends, she couldn't remember their faces, and her dreams got worse and worse every night. Maybe she really was sick, as Rose thought… or maybe she was just going crazy. Seth was tired of it, either way, and it was scary.

Seth was jolted from her reverie as she brushed shoulders with someone and realized that she hadn't been watching where she was going. She looked up, an apology already formed, and found herself facing a tall, elegant woman with long blue hair and violet eyes who stood silent and dignified, wearing only a length of bandage that trailed across her body like a thick white ribbon.

"Do you remember?" the woman asked.

Seth stared, shook her head, and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, the woman was gone.

Confused and afraid, Seth stared into the window of a nearby store to clear her head. However, while she could see the merchandise and the people inside, the reflection on the glass was something out of a nightmare. Her mirror-self wore a shellshocked, empty expression, a gold-and-black tiger-striped leotard, and heavy chains that wrapped around her arms and legs, fixing her to an arcane-looking circle in a bleak, dead landscape shrouded in smoke and flames.

Seth did what any sensible girl her age would've done.

She bolted, and she didn't stop running until the door to her apartment was locked behind her.

"What's… happening to me?" she asked aloud, and walked on unsteady legs into her bedroom.

Every time she blinked, the familiar surroundings seemed to haze and fade like a transparent image over the dank, chilly castle room of her dreams.

My heart and my mind… are like blank paper. I don't know if the drawings there… are the ones I've made with my memories, or fabrications made by someone else… where do the lies end, and where is the truth…? I can't tell them apart…

What's happening… to me? Is the truth becoming the lie… or the lie the truth…?

"You're waking up."

Seth jolted; she knew that voice. Whirling around, she saw Ledah standing in the doorway—however, instead of being a comforting, familiar presence, seeing her classmate scared her even more. He wasn't wearing his usual uniform and silver-framed glasses, but instead rich, bloodred priest's robes and a brighter red mantle. His hair was wild, his expression cold and unforgiving—but his eyes as kind as she normally remembered.

And… he had wings. Angel's wings—but the deepest black Seth had ever seen in her life.

"What's… going on? What do you mean, I'm waking up? Is this… is any of this real…?"

"You've been dreaming," was what Ledah told her. "But you're waking up, because you're too strong to be held by even a spell as complex as this one. Your captors fear you, and so they thought to bind you—but you're not weak enough or stupid enough to be caught in their web. The feelings you've been having, the dreams—you know this isn't real."

"Then who are you?" Seth demanded, her voice shrill. "And how do you know all this?"

"I am a soldier of the gods, but those who seek to use you have already defeated me. Because they used me as part of your dream, I was able to get through to you… to watch over you as you started to wake. Hector may be cruel and cunning, but he is not all-knowing. So with the last of my spirit's strength… I came here, to tell you these things when the time came."

Seth's mind rebelled at his words, but something in her heart recognized the name "Hector" and sent chills through her body. "What's… going on here? How am I supposed to trust you? This is insane!"

"A struggle has been taking place in our world… one that reaches back through the millennia. Hector is attempting to usurp the gods through your powers, and those who wish to help you—those who are coming for you—stand in his way. You have suffered atrocities at his hands, and you have made your choice." Ledah cocked his head a little as he regarded her. "As for trusting me… you don't have to. You only have to trust yourself.

"You know the truth. In all probability, you can't even put images to most of the memories that have been created for you here. You've clung to the life of your schooling—I've watched you. Is that because it feels more solid to you? It would… Hector and his spellweavers used the faces of his victims, and of your own loved ones, for the images that would make up your day-to-day life here. Your friends here are the only things you know in this dream that have some basis in reality.

"Now… Seth, the Sealed One, the emissary of death… what is it that you want?"

What is he, stupid?! I want him and all of this to go away! I want to be normal and hang out with Rose and forget all this tomorrow and go to college and live my life and…

However, the frantic thoughts running through Seth's mind didn't reach her lips. "I want… to be someplace where I don't feel like I'm not real," she said softly.

Before she could retract her words or even take another breath, the fabrications around her shattered like so many fragments of broken glass.

---

She opened her eyes.

The blue-robed man on the opposite side of the room smirked as he watched her. "That interfering wretch. I should've destroyed the remnants of his soul when I had the chance."

"I… aM aWaKe nOw." Seth shuddered in her chains. "YoU cAnNot bInd mE. YoU lAck tHE pOwER, aND ThE rIghT."

"We shall see about that," Hector replied in a scoff.

Painfully, laboriously, Seth raised her head to give him a baleful glare. "He WiLL cOmE. EiN… wIll cOme fOr mE. AnD yoU wILL RUe thE dAy yOU sOuGHt tO cOnTRoL tHe pOWers oF thE GODS."

She sighed, and lapsed back into dreamless sleep, free of the memories of other world and might-have-beens, trusting the words of the dead priest and waiting for the young angel she knew was coming to save her even now.

She slept, and her paper heart was once more as white and empty as it had been on the day she'd first drawn breath.

:TBC: