Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This story is mine, as are the OCs.
Gah! Finally! The final chapter is here. This thing underwent about five different rewrites as I tried to get the atmosphere just right. This is what I wound up with. I dunno; I like it.
Reminder: this will be the stage-setter for the first story of my finale to the Alliance universe, titled Sentient Midnight.
Enjoy and thanks for reading!
..:-X-:..
150 – Epilogue
Merlin sat alone in his study, reclined in his wingback chair behind the old, weathered desk. The surface, usually cluttered with books and an assortment of parchment, was clear that afternoon, except for one object. The silver, handheld recording device remained where he had set it hours earlier. The sleek silver body of the machine was an anachronism screaming out of place in his office, where time seemed to have stopped some fifty years ago or so.
Today, however, it was all that the wizened sorcerer would focus on. His fingertips were pressed together, forming a steeple against his chin as he stared at the device. He hadn't listened to it yet since recording it roughly a week ago, when the shadow first encompassed Radiant Garden. They were still no closer to answers about the event; perhaps the answers were locked away in these broken sentences that he had recorded.
Pensively, Merlin leaned forward and clicked the play button on the device. The reels inside the recorder began to turn, and Beth Marshall's hoarse, halting voice flitted out.
"I…I think I want…I want to talk about it now."
Merlin reclined again, staring at the blank wall of his study as he listened, his mind teleporting back to the session he had had with the woman, the day after the blackout occurred, when she had finally offered to tell her story.
"I would love to hear it, Beth. I'm listening." His own voice replied gently.
Outside, the perpetual night continued over Radiant Garden. From the ground, they could see no stars. There had been no sunrise or sunset in nearly a week. No moon. No clouds even. Just…blackness. It was so all-encompassing that it made the eyes hurt after staring at it for too long. There was no point to focus on; the sky was a solid wall of inky darkness. A void.
Cid stood in the cool air outside the Allied headquarter building. His watch told him that it was half past three in the afternoon, but it felt like the dead of night. It had felt like the dead of night for damn near a week now. He squinted up at the sky, placing a cigarette between his lips and tugging out his lighter.
Without looking down at it, he snapped the wheel on the lighter, deftly lifting it to light the end of the cigarette in his mouth. The flame caught, and he shook the fire out from the lighter, puffing lightly on the cigarette until it began to burn. He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill his lungs and the nicotine flood his veins.
Reaching up, he plucked the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled. The wind caught the smoke as he breathed it out, causing the gray wisps to be flung off and faded into nowhere. It was a nice distraction from the abysmal nothing hanging in the atmosphere. They had launched a half dozen scout ships into Radiant Garden's orbit to observe and analyze the phenomenon.
It wasn't a storm. It wasn't a spell. It wasn't a natural event in the atmosphere. By all measurements and readings by their equipment, the shadow wasn't even there. Major Banks had settled their fears in her scout flight that the stars were still there, the worlds were still out there, that they weren't alone, but they were isolated.
"Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum…It's…It's like a canyon, but not…Word like a ravine…Ravine-ravine-ravine…"
"Beth, stay with me."
"…I-I'm here…"
Deep in the catacombs of the Alliance's archives, Rinoa and Yuffie dug through old files. Between Tifa checking out all of the Stasis materials and Aerith checking out all of Ansem's old notes, it was both easier and more difficult to navigate through the endless data.
"I remember…blue. I remember screams. I remember…a cage."
Yuffie grunted in frustration and stood, lazily kicking away the box of papers that she had been sorting through. She ran both hands through her hair and exchanged a look with Rinoa. Rinoa, for her part, knelt beside another box and resumed rummaging. Citizens of Radiant Garden, momentarily placated by the Alliance's assurances and the Restoration Committee's confidence in finding an answer, were beginning to panic again.
When the shadows fell over the Sun Kingdom, the night had remained incessantly. The sky was still black as pitch over Traverse Town as well. No stars. No moon. No sun. Nothing. The Alliance was helpless and had no answers. They had plenty of weapons, enough artillery to blow up Kingdom Hearts itself, but they had nothing to aim at. They couldn't very well light their own atmosphere on fire, as tempting as that had become over the past days of frustration.
Patience was wearing thin, Yuffie could feel it in the air. Not just her own patience, but Rinoa's, Leon's, Aerith's, the Allied Council's, everyone's. It felt like a rubber band that was being pulled tighter and tighter and tighter…When would they snap? What would happen when they did?
Yuffie nibbled on her lip and continued searching. The Allied archives had to have some document, some scrap of data or information that might shed some light on what was happening. The Alliance had the most comprehensive electronic library in the galaxy. Surely they would offer at least some insight into the shadows that had swallowed the sky.
"You were in a cage?"
"No, not me. I could see it…She wanted…He stopped her."
"Who?"
Beth's voice cracked. "I can't…I can't. I can't. I can't!"
Tifa stood over the crib as the pediatric nurse lifted the clear lid separating her from her daughter. For the past week, the clear incubator had been Mikayla's home. For the past week, neither Tifa nor Leon had been allowed to hold the five month old baby, not to touch her, not to be too close to her. They had been separated by glass, as the wounds on her tiny body had compromised her immune system, and the doctors had insisted on an isolated environment until she stabilized.
Now, the barrier was being removed.
Tifa wore the sterilized surgical scrubs and gloves, the mask and a hairnet, to make infection as minimal as possible. Her eyes burned and her throat clogged as the nurse offered her a small smile.
"You can pick her up now."
She had to be allowed permission to hold her own baby. Nearly choking on her tears, Tifa slowly reached down and gently, ever so gently, moved her hands under her daughter. Mikayla gurgled at the movement, but her eyes were open and staring up at Tifa's face, what little of it wasn't covered by the surgical mask.
"Hi. Hi, baby." Tifa cooed, tears breaking free from her eyes and beading against the top of the mask. "It's okay. Oh, Mikayla, it's okay, sweetie. Mommy's here. I'm right here."
Mikayla squirmed but didn't start fitting, and Tifa felt her heart break at the thick gauze dressing around the baby's shoulder, where the burns were. Where the burns had been.
Tifa held her daughter to her chest, humming softly and rocking side to side, still sobs wracking her body.
"I love you." She whispered, pinching her eyes closed. "I love you so much. So much." She pressed her lips to the baby's head, and only tasted the paper-cloth of the mask over her mouth.
"I saw the boy…when he locked the door…So much heat…So messy…"
"I love you. Daddy loves you too." Tifa murmured, tears of relief and pain and love carving their way down her face. "We both love you so much. We promise to never let anything bad happen to you ever again."
Mikayla had been admitted to the hospital after the accident, after Cloud used the healing spell to mend the burns on her arm. She had been in that room since then. Tifa had hardly left the room, and the past half hour had been the longest that Leon had been away also. There were no windows in the pediatric isolation room, which was just as well, as there was nothing to see besides the darkness that had claimed the sky.
Tifa held on tighter to her daughter, gently rubbing her back soothingly. Her sobs subsided as she felt Mikayla's heartbeat against her own chest, but the silent tears continued to pulse past her eyelashes against her will. She had never been so terrified in her life. She thought that she had known fear when it was her life on the line, when it was Leon on the hospital bed, but this…this was a level of terror that she had never known, and hoped to never feel again.
"Never again." She whispered.
Mikayla cooed, the tiny fist of her uninjured arm swatting at the air curiously. She wasn't in pain. She wasn't scared. She wasn't uncomfortable. Tifa pursed her lips and smiled, finding relief in that.
"Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum…It was so loud…It was all I could hear…"
"A heart beat?"
"I don't…yes."
Tabaeus paced across the floor. The cavernous chamber hall of the castle ruins yawned around her. Her eyes kept being drawn to the gaping hole in the wall, where just a few years ago the Heart of Radiant Garden had been locked away. The scorch marks on the ground from Gainsborough's experiments remained; they were blackened and gouged deep into the stone.
A single crack cut deeper than the gouges, and it stretched deeper into the bowels of the castle than their technology could accurately measure. The other members of her squad continued to run their sweeps, monitoring as much of the castle as they could. The strange activity that had ballooned around the ruins at the time of the blackout had persisted consistently for the past several days. They were no closer to finding its point of origin.
Something about the energy permeating the space was causing their technology to behave erratically. Devices specifically designed to detect dark activity were flatlining, while other machines specifically designed to monitor dark activity were on the fritz, throwing out measurements that were impossible without anything less than Xehanort himself waltzing around.
She checked the clip in her gun for the third time in an hour. Finding it predictably fully loaded as ever, she flexed her jaw and slid the clip back into the gun.
"I was there for…years…decades. It wasn't—Time was different there. I saw…"
"It's okay. You're safe here."
Leon stared at the pediatric surgeon, his entire body numb. "Permanent scarring."
Dr. Marge Baum adjusted her hold on the clipboard in her hands. "Healing spells can be dangerous in any situation. Their use is restricted to life-threatening situations for a reason." She spoke gently, but her voice was so low and gruff that it sounded harsh. "They are expressly forbidden and strictly illegal for use on children under the age of eight."
Leon exhaled heavily. "Is she—" He cleared his throat and rephrased. "Will there be any adverse side effects? Will Mikayla be all right?"
Dr. Baum pursed her lips briefly. "There should be no long term effects on her health, but the scarred tissue on her right shoulder is irreversible. Children so young are still in such sensitive states of development, you understand. Forcing their bodies to heal at an accelerated rate…like Cloud Strife's healing spell did to Mikayla…"
He closed his eyes briefly. The idea of his daughter, his tiny, painfully vulnerable Mikayla, under those bandages, made him nauseas. He snapped his eyes open again, glaring at the doctor. "Will she be okay?"
"Safe." A dry snort. "What do you know of safe? We're not safe. Keyblades like toothpicks…I saw the sky tear open and the flashing blue lights." Her voice rose in pitch with a tremor. "I saw it. I was there. I felt it."
The surgeon was pensive. "She will bear the scars on her arm for the rest of her life, unless she chooses to have cosmetic surgery when she is of age. Other than that, she is strong, and the healing magic did mend all of the burn wounds. We'll continue to monitor her for several months, but she has a very high chance to live a completely normal life."
His bones nearly vanished in relief upon hearing that, and he ran both hands over his face once before half turning toward the room, looking through the glass window at his family on the other side.
"You should know," The doctor continued. "That the police are standing by to arrest Cloud until—"
"No." Leon glared at the surgeon. "I'm not pressing charges—God, no…He—" He glanced down the hallway and narrowed his eyes, staring back at the surgeon. "Nobody touches Cloud. He saved Mikayla's life. No." He said firmly.
"He didn't see me. They never see me."
"Beth."
"Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum."
"Beth, please keep speaking to me. Fight the madness."
Aerith stepped into her shoes, mechanically tying the laces before straightening and smoothing her skirt. Tugging her purse up over her shoulder, she glanced toward the bedroom of the apartment that she shared with Cloud. He had hardly said a word since they both reunited after the blackout started.
She nibbled on the corner of her lip and walked over to the open bedroom door, peering inside. He had stopped throwing up in the adjoining bathroom and looked like he'd collapsed in bed. His back was facing her, but she knew he was awake. He had hardly slept.
"I'm going to the hospital to see Mikayla." She prompted. "And to see Tifa and Leon. I've…I'm going by their house to pick up some fresh clothes for them…They've hardly left the pediatric ward since…Are you sure that you don't want to come?"
A palpable silence passed for a beat.
"I scarred their daughter." His voice was low, hoarse. "I could have killed her."
Aerith grimaced. "You didn't know that would happen. They don't blame you. They're grateful that you saved her."
Cloud visibly flinched, his shoulder hunching toward his head, as though she'd thrown something at him. It pained her heart. Aerith drew a breath and crossed to the bed. She leaned over and put one hand on his side, giving his ribs a light squeeze as she knelt forward. She pressed her lips to the top of his shoulder.
"I'm trying…but I can still hear them…"
His eyes remained staring at the corner of the room, carefully averted from her own gaze. She could feel his bones trembling, though the muscle and skin over the bones hid it well. If she could have her way, Aerith would have crawled into bed and just held him until the trembling stopped; she wouldn't have to leave him while he was like this. But Tifa and Leon had been close to being zombies when she had left the hospital. The worried parents needed someone to order them to eat and sleep and shower, otherwise they would waste away keeping vigil over Mikayla.
"I'll come back as quick as I can." She murmured against his shoulder, and then she straightened, reluctantly moving toward the door. "Get some rest, okay? This isn't your fault."
"It's like…being aware of everything all at once…All of time, all of space, all of everything is happening simultaneously…I saw you. I saw the Cetra. I saw the sky tear apart and the impassable walls fall. I saw Nowhere."
Cloud heard the apartment door close and let his eyes fall shut. His stomach was still churning, but he had run out of anything to vomit. Only mortification remained, pushing through his veins instead of blood. He had felt that way since he had found out about Mikayla's condition.
Scarred. Permanently. Because of his Cure spell.
But he had saved her life, hadn't he? She had been burned, bleeding, and she was just a baby, there was no way to—But she was just a baby and now she was permanently scarred. She was forced to bear the evidence of his ignorance. He should have known, should have responded better to the situation, should have handled things differently.
He couldn't have stopped the blackout. He didn't know when it was happening or why it was happening. This matter didn't make him feel any less awful about it. He had had direct contact with a time traveler and had let her slip away. He should have forced her to answer him, to help him figure this out. He should have turned her over to the Alliance for questioning.
Instead, he had let Agent Mike go back to her home time, and now Tifa and Leon's daughter had been disfigured. Because of him. They would want nothing to do with him now. Tifa would banish him from their little family, as she had the right to. Leon would rescind whatever fragile friendship existed between them, as Cloud fully deserved. He might even take a swing at Cloud, and that was almost a relief, compared to the worse alternative of both Tifa and Leon simply turning cold on him.
Who was he kidding? Neither of those situations was preferable.
"I'm sorry." He whispered, immobilized in the apartment by his own horror and deprecation. "I'm so sorry."
"I saw Chasm."
"The Chasm?" Merlin pressed, remembering the term from Leon's woebegone mission several months earlier. "The ship?"
"Ship…yes, yes it was a ship…THE Chasm."
In the ruins of the old castle in Radiant Garden, the crack in the floor of the central chamber, where Aerith's experiments had gone so horribly awry, cut deep. Through the stone and the concrete, stretching down and down and down through the levels of the castle, the crack widened and narrowed, carving its way through the dungeon floors and the frozen foundation until it reached the cornerstone chamber. The single room at the very base of the castle had no lamps or candles or fires within it, but every corner of the room was illuminated by a soft blue glow. The veritable forest of crystal formations had swallowed the epicenter of the chamber, branching outward like fire frozen in a spell.
The crack carved through the concrete and into the crystal itself, though from the point of contact, it splintered into a dozen smaller veins that branched across the surface of the crystal in a web. A puff of blue-green smoke slipped out of the crack, like a soft exhale or a sigh. A pair of cold eyes watched the wispy smoke slip free from the crystal, and the eyes followed the smoke as it curled upward into the crack in the ceiling. The eyes closed. The countdown had begun.
"I saw the cage…Light, the realm of light…locked away. Darkness has no cage. Put everybody to sleep…That's what happened."
In the psychiatric ward of the Radiant Garden hospital, Beth Marshall stood by the barred window, staring up and out toward the endless black sky. They had stopped sedating her; she had stopped screaming and fighting them.
Sanity came in brief spurts, precious moments where her mind felt clear and she could form coherent thoughts. But it was like holding smoke with your bare hands: it didn't last long.
Her bones ached every time she looked at the sky. It was staring back at her; she could feel it. Paranoid returned afresh, stabbing through her mind like a knife, and she trembled, holding her arms around herself.
It was coming. She could hear it. She could feel it. It was coming. She closed her eyes and turned away, lifting her hands to cover her ears.
"Go away…Please…Make it stop…"
From the recesses of her mind, a cold, menacing voice drifted across her thoughts, giggling a single word back at her: No.
"I saw the bomb." The word came out like a whimper.
"What bomb?"
"Nowhere. Cage. Chasm. Bomb." She gasped. "It's coming."
The blue flash ended, and the time agent found herself standing in the Great Maw, facing the town perimeter of Radiant Garden. As soon as the light faded, she choked on blood. The strength left her legs and she collapsed to her knees on the purple stone floor of the canyon.
"Agent Mike?" The voice in her earpiece jarred at her hearing. "Agent Mike, come in. Did you make it? Are you there?"
She straightened, wiping the blood from her mouth and studying herself. There were light burns and singes on her clothes, and nausea crawled through her torso, but otherwise she was in one piece.
"I made it." She grunted, climbing back to her feet. "I'm—" She glanced down at the device on her wrist.
It was fractured, and a nasty crack had rendered her reading screen almost useless. She was able to make out the date, confirming her destination.
"I'm here. A few weeks earlier than I aimed for, but I'm here." She replied, breathing heavily.
"Hey," His voice over her earpiece was suddenly gentle with concern. "Are you sure you can handle this? We both know what will happen if this—"
She narrowed her eyes, pulling her torn sleeve up, covering the old scars on her shoulder. "I'm fine, James. Have a little faith."
His response was a low snort, and she smirked, making her way across the Great Maw toward the town perimeter.
"Please don't send me back there!" Beth's voice became hysterical.
"Shh, it's all right, child. We aren't sending you anywhere."
"Find him! You'll find him Nowhere! She knows! I know she does!"
"Beth, calm down."
Sobbing broke across the recording.
"I saw it…I saw it…I was there…" She choked on the words.
"Where?" He pressed gently, but he had to know. "Where were you, Beth?"
A long, staticked silence waned as the recorder whirred on.
"I was inside…I was with the Heart…Radiant Garden…"
"You were inside the Heart of Radiant Garden?"
"I can hear it…Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum…I can—please—this—I can't—PLEASE DON'T SEND ME BACK THERE!"
Merlin reached forward, turning off the reply on the recording device. Beth Marshall had become incoherent after that, and the nurses had been forced to heavily sedate her and put her wrists and ankles in restraints in her bed. It had been disturbing to see the young woman in such a state.
He could remember seeing the clarity in her eyes for the bulk of the session. It wasn't until the end that she began to regress. She had been almost entirely composed until that point. He had been back to see her every afternoon since then, but she had been mute. She had offered no more words for him to consider, no more stories or attempts to explain her trauma. Her eyes, however, had remained clear.
Beth Marshall was finally awake, but her battle was far from over.
The old wizard removed his spectacles, rubbing tiredly at his eyes.
Was it possible? Was it possible for a human being to survive inside the Heart of a world? Had Beth Marshall truly been exposed to the raw power of the Heart of Radiant Garden for nearly 20 years? If so, how was she alive? How was her body intact?
How did she know about the Chasm?
What was Nowhere? Where was it?
And this talk of cages and bombs…It unsettled him.
Beth Marshall's incoherent babble that continued after he turned off the recorder echoed back through his head. 'Death will come. I heard the final words…I may not rise from this, but together we will rise from this.'
Beyond Merlin's study, above the roof of his small house, stretching far from the skyline of Radiant Garden, the murky darkness continued to roll across the atmosphere of the world. The shadows pulsed through the boiling clouds, coating the sky like spilled ink and refusing all light to enter.
Silence pressed in from all sides as the darkness looked down on the world, and the Heart of Radiant Garden looked back up. An acknowledgement passed between them, a nod between the ancients, and the sentient midnight narrowed its gaze.
Soon, the cage doors would open.
Soon, the war would end.
..:-X-:..
A/N: There you have it, folks. The stage is set. I'm elbow-deep in the sequel now; I'm hoping to have the first chapter out by this time next week, if maybe a little later, depending on where the muse winds up. I'll post a teaser-esque thingy in a few days; sort of like how I did with As the Sun Sets on Mushroom Clouds.
Thank you all so much for reading and sticking with this oddball collection of stories.
