Hello, hello, as usual thanks for your kind words :)
A bit of sadness here, but then, there is more sadness to follow, albeit of the political and growing pains kind,
In chapter 56 - Where Stark is actually brave, bless.
Why fear, God-child? it is you, after all, who has brought us to the dream.
- Jon Irenicus, Baldur's Gate 2
'I've missed you,' Lilinette said.
Stark awoke, but did not rush to open his eyes; when he did, he glanced upon the broken gothic arches which rose above him without fear and without doubt, knowing and not knowing that he was not truly awake, but giving the sensation no thought.
Indistinct, milky light, which could only be seen on dusk and dawn when neither sun, nor moon graced the sky, drifted in though stained glass windows, borrowing their colours. Tiny particles of dust danced in the air about, and the mist bore the smell of old wood, old pages, incense and melted wax.
He rose to his feet, and glanced about himself, at the two rows of wooden stalls which lined to his left and right, finding them quiet and empty, and indifferent to the light above; long, precise shadows flowed from the small spaces between the wooden benches, streams of darkness pouring into the central isle, where he'd been standing. An old door stood some thirty feet away. Its hinges were rusty, and time had dented the carvings which had once graced its wood into dull waves and dents. Its handle hung limp from decay, but polished by frequent use.
'I have missed you too,' he said, not feeling her, but simply feeling whole and unafraid.
White stone carvings of long forgotten saints drained the light from their surroundings, standing resplendent but casting more darkness behind them.
'You wanted us to be married here,' Lilinette spoke once more; her voice did not echo below the tall arches. It simply rang in his mind and in his heart. 'I never really understood why, even then you did not believe in anything.' she added, with a bit of scorn, making him smile bitterly and lower his glance.
Stark turned about, to glance at a familiar altar. Tall, candles stood upon it in golden, intricate holders, awaiting to be lit; he stood in doubt for a second, waiting and hoping for them to come alight on their own, and chase the shadows or at least add to the light, but the miracle evaded him once more. The candles remained unlit, new and untouched, underneath the heaviest shadow of them all.
Not even in dreams, he thought.
'I don't know either,' the man answered, finding that his own voice did bear an echo. 'I imagined you would have wanted it.'
He did not find speaking to her like this strange, nor did he worry that this vision, like the many others which had recently plagued his nights would turn deceitful and vicious; if this dream had had anything to do with the others, the candles would have become lit, and the illusion would have hasted to fulfill his wish. It was also, he thought, that he was used to speaking to Lilinette like this, in the life before Aizen and his gem, when years, weeks, hours and minutes had no more meaning than specs of white sand. Maybe even in the life before that; his memories blurred for a second, as if a sheet of water had suddenly fallen over the surface of a clear painting. Once, the water would have carried away all colour into a murky, grey outpour, leaving the canvass blank; now, there was not enough of it, so the lines merely drifted. The colours remained in place.
'I didn't know if you wanted me to come,' Lilinette added, with tired reproach; he suddenly felt cold with her sadness, and lowered his glance. 'I needed to come, though...I thought...I guessed that with all the new, you would be...'
She did not finish the phrase, but the thought finished itself.
'I am.' Stark answered. 'I am, both frightened and bitterly tired.'
...and I miss you.
'I am frightened, too. I have seen...' she whispered. The phrase remained unfinished yet again, but this time, neither of them rushed to complete the thought. He felt the urge to apologise – after so long, and after so much he'd failed at, he felt as if he'd failed to deliver on even this single one promise.
Resolution, peace...the semblance of a future.
All seemingly close, all, yet again, lost...Warmth rose, from within and without, despite the fact that the sadness had not disappeared; for reasons unknown, and though his heart was not lightened, he briefly felt safe; she seemed happy to have caused the feeling.
'We can talk here, if you like,' Lilinette said.
Stark's glance lingered on the altar, and, for a moment, he felt the temptation of sitting down in one of the stalls, imagining she come to would sit beside him, with her new body, and speak to him in a voice that would echo beneath the arches. In fact, with strange conviction, he knew that if he sat, she would come too, and the desire of seeing her and hearing her almost grew overwhelming.
'Are you happy, outside of us?' he asked.
Lilinette hesitated.
'I don't know.' She answered, at length. 'I imagine...I imagine I was trying to learn how to.'
Images of Shinigami that he did not know overwhelmed him; he heard Grimmjow curse and laugh, and had an odd flash of three empty rectangular bottles. Two young girls, one blonde, like the frightened and overly thin young woman who was their mother, and the other as dark haired and blue eyed as their father rushed towards a man whom Lilinette held dear, another Shinigami that Stark did not know. He felt shy and awkward in her shoes, as the picture of the man putting his arms around his children rushed through his mind, and as the overly thin, blonde young woman offered a shy, hesitant bow, while stealing a glance that was filled with dread her husband's way. In Lilinette's thoughts, he tasted food that he found too spicy and too bland at the same time, and swallowed it quietly, looking only to the plate, before a toddler too young to hear commands, and yet too old to be caught by a briskly outstretched arm, put his small hand through the Hollow hole in Lilinette's stomach, then bent to the side, to see his fingers wiggling behind her back. There had been a moment of silence, but then she'd laughed, and the child laughed with her, then grabbed her by the nose before either his mother or his father could stop him; the Shinigami, whom her mind called Takeshi, had blushed furiously, and hasted to take the child away, but the boy had held on to Lilinette's shoulders for dear life, and she'd only laughed harder, as the blonde young woman had forgotten to be frightened and simply turned embarrassed.
He tasted minor hollow flesh, and fought through skirmishes that somehow seemed crucially important when seen through the russet eyes of a man that he knew without knowing – he felt frightened of many things, but proud of as many. There were Ulquiorra's shadow, Ichimaru's grin, Apache's laughter, with play fights, hair pulling and the odd, warm glances that passed between her and Grimmjow when they thought no one was looking…a distant, but no longer cold image of Halibel…a white scroll of paper, sealed with the emblem of two fishes, and ink stains on her fingers, two boys huddling on a shabby bed, a cherry tree bonsai passed to her by pale hands – the image hastily erased, as was the brief touch of those same pale hands over hers, and the warmth of his gratitude...an entire world, from which he was absent, and in which he painfully felt his own absence, as the drifting shadow of a single cloud always present on the corner of a sunlit sky, just before all began to fade to grey, and more heavy clouds gathered on all corners of the horizon…
Stark felt cold.
'I guess it was never really the case,' she concluded. 'Time…'
He sensed her just behind him, beginning to take shape, and the weight of her disappointment caused his shoulders to grow even more crooked – he wanted to turn around and see her, but at the same time…
The feelings she'd shared, the images she'd shown were all incomplete and inconclusive, but they were all beginnings he could recognize – and though he knew that holding her would once more shut the world out and once more lock them in the safety of their shared memory, he understood with equal clarity that if he would, indeed, allow her to take shape and hold him, if he'd allow himself to see her, he would be doing nothing more than denying her the chance of seeing her beginnings through.
Was that not what he'd already been offered, in the dream? Stark thought, with a shudder. In all of the other dreams, in all of the other visions? The chance of stopping time, the chance of stopping her from taking journeys into this world of her own, the world in which he was absent and where so many uncertain beginnings which only led her further and further away...
'No,' he whispered, not knowing whether he'd done so out of strength, or for the fear that this dream would turn to be a more elaborate version of the others. 'No. Let's talk outside.'
Stark hastily turned away from the altar and the image that was tentatively taking shape beside him, and walked towards the door; he felt she was confused, and quickened his pace.
'There is nothing outside,' Lilinette said, when he placed his hand on the polished door handle. She'd sounded surprised, but not scared, and Stark hesitated for the final time.
'I know,' he answered, then resolutely pushed the door open, and stepped out into the mist.
He smiled when she followed.
There was truly nothing outside – not even the outer shell of the church, as they both remembered it. The door closed behind him, hanging into nothingness for a moment longer, before melting into the thick fog that swirled all around, and vanishing as if it had never been. Stark supposed he should have felt some amount of fear at being suspended into nothingness in his turn, but sensed her all around him, and succumbed to the eerie feeling of certainty that only dreams could deliver.
He even felt a little smug.
'You didn't think I'd come out here, did you,' he quipped, making her chuckle.
'No. That's why I didn't make anything,' Lilinette replied. 'If I'd known you'd come out, I would have at least made the garden.'
She danced around him, nothing but warm light in the twisting mist, and he only now noticed that he'd been wearing his old white tunic, and that the blue trimmings around the buttons and on his sleeves were new – it was the uniform that for some reason or another, their released incarnation had always worn, yet now, though the top three buttons were still open, there was no hollow hole between his collarbones.
He'd worn that, he remembered with sudden clarity, when he'd last seen her alive.
'Yes,' Lilinette confirmed, seeming pleased with the recollection. 'That's how I remember you best, so…'
'I should never have left you,' Stark whispered. 'I should have taken you with me…'
'You know why I like to remember you on that day?' Lilinette pushed, not taking note of his sadness. 'Because that day, when you said goodbye, you looked at me…like you had never looked at me before. Like…'
He remembered that too, and the contours of a tall ornate gate rose through the mists.
'You looked at me as if you'd been taking my clothes off with your eyes,' she laughed.
Stark felt as embarrassed as he had centuries before, when he'd indeed looked and she'd caught him looking. He hadn't known whether to apologise or not – he still didn't know. He simply remembered that he'd blushed and she hadn't.
'You never looked at me like that before,' she repeated. 'Or ever after…'
'I couldn't,' Stark answered. 'You were never the same, after…you were always…'
Like you are now, he thought, watching the light stream through his fingers.
'I am no longer like that,' she rushed to say. 'Now, I am…'
The words got lost, and the light grew scalding hot.
'I thought you would want to see me,' she said. 'But you still don't want to see me, and I don't understand. I know,' she began, sounding rebellious, 'about her. Everyone knows.'
'It is not her,' the man tiredly refuted. 'Just like it never was Halibel, Lilinette. We both know that.'
'No, we don't,' Lilinette whispered. 'I thought…That seeing me would help, now that things are changing again.'
'It would', he admitted, wondering forth though the unwinding image of a sunlit garden; the shadow of a manor rose behind him as well, but he paid it no heed. 'I've never known you to lose your courage,' Stark said. He looked on, at the hinted figure of a tree; he knew it was an apple tree before her mind rushed to erase it. 'That was where we met,' he said, softly.
'That is where you died,' she scolded.
But it is your dream, Stark thought, feeling neither fear, nor pain. You're keeping me safe.
'I've never known you to lose your courage, Lilinette. If you do,' he chuckled, 'what hope is there for me?'
The young woman didn't answer.
'What did it show you?' he asked, knowing she would not hide from the direct question; she did not, but she bided her time; the light slipped away from his hands, and danced over the shifting images of grass.
'It doesn't know what to show me,' she answered, at length. 'Sometimes, it shows me you, and what our life together might have been like; sometimes it shows me great battles, sometimes it shows me families – Takeshi's, Uki's…'
She stopped abruptly, sensing the approach of the cold; the grass swayed under a sudden gust of wind, and the entire image of the garden vanished. The mists solidified and formed walls; a single chandelier, with burned out candles hung over a shabby wooden staircase that led down into the darkness of a cellar.
That is where he killed you.
'Don't do that,' she whispered, erasing everything. 'It is my dream.'
'I know,' Stark answered. 'I'm sorry.'
'I cannot keep you safe if you go to dark places.'
He ran his fingers through his hair. 'I know.' He repeated, dully.
'What does it show you?' Lilinette asked.
'You,' he answered, promptly and without hesitation. 'You, and you alone. It is quite odd, I would have thought…'
He chuckled, closed his eyes and let himself fall back, arms crossed under his head.
'I would have thought there would be something else too,' he continued, drifting and watching the mists drift. 'I would have thought it would offer me Ukitake's head or Aizen's liver, or at least a couple of Gin's teeth…Or, on the positive side, some form of utopian image of some remote, perfect society, an endless library written only in French…'
Stark felt her light all around him, and drowned in the sound of her laughter.
'You should be serious,' Lilinette reminded.
'Why?' he sighed. 'It hardly matters. It only ever shows me you. It doesn't know how you truly look like, though – I have no memories of that - so it only gives me flashes of your body as I remember it, from that day…Of you standing in against the light of a window in my parents' house, of children, and books, and laughter…'
He swallowed dry, and she tightly gathered the light around him.
'Do I have breasts, in these flashes?' she asked.
'Lilinette!' Stark exclaimed, laughing despite himself. 'Now who is not serious?'
'Just checking whether it's an optimistic insight,' she giggled, holding him tighter.
'It is,' he said, softly. 'It is…So much so, in fact, that the first time it happened, I did not even wish to chase it away, though I was in the middle of battle – it felt, you felt,' he whispered, 'so good, that I almost wanted to close my eyes and surrender to it. As if time could roll back and undo itself...'
'Or as if the present itself had a million faces, and it could always show you the one you most wanted to see…' she picked up; he quietly nodded. 'At first,' Lilinette said, 'I only saw it when I was in the human world, but then...It followed me in Rukongai, until, finally…'
'Until it started springing in your mind, regardless of where you were,' he whispered. 'And it always leads to the same place.'
Whispered words. A broken lock, and arches of fire rising from the darkness beyond it.
Death.
Sokyoku Hill crumbling under its own weight, as legions of winged creatures stormed the sky above, and a single figure towered hundreds of feet over the ruins. The magnificent white walls of Sereitei cracking and dissipating to dust, as nothingness and decay swallowed all in growing tides, and the sky itself darkened and cracked, as if it had been no more than a frail glass ceiling.
'Do you think it can actually do…' she began, losing her voice mid-way; he still felt no fear, but the sensation was artificial, and he knew that she was frightened.
'I think even we can do that,' Stark answered. 'I think we already have, in a sense…'
'No,' Lilinette contradicted. 'We did nothing like that, we…'
'That is exactly what we did,' he insisted. 'They…it followed us here, through the gates that we opened. Whether we open this final one, the one that seems to be keeping it from outright bursting into Sereitei may even be of lesser importance than what has already been done.'
'Why must you always be so final, about everything?' Lilinette bitterly asked, and the sensation of wanting to see her, and hold her returned with terrifying intensity.
'Because I wish that something was final, for once,' Stark answered, at length. 'Or maybe because I don't know anything either, and I fear uncertainty more than I fear anything else, even terrible endings. I don't know. I certainly do not mean to frighten you more.'
'The thing that terrifies me,' he continued, 'is that while I understand what it means me…us…to do, and I grasp the fact that the happy visions that always precede the destruction are meant to be the rewards, is the fact that I have the uncanny certainty that we would not be…alive?' he whispered. 'Conscious? Us? when we receive them. I feel as if it offering that once its plan has come to pass, we would vanish within it and…'
'Do you feel it intends to keep its word?' she asked, and he sensed the frown in her voice.
'I sense no deceit,' he answered, after a moment of hesitation. 'The images are so raw that they feel like they are coming out of the mind of a child who has no voice yet – a wicked child, and one with powerful thoughts, but a very simple one nonetheless. I do not feel it is lying. I think it feels it has no need for it,' Stark added.
'But why does it need us to shatter that lock?' Lilinette asked, in a voice that was full of protests. 'If it is powerful enough to crush Sereitei, like…like in the things it keeps showing us, what does it need us for? I…'
'I'm scared,' Lilinette said.
Stark cringed.
It was not even a year since the mere hint of the feeling in her heart, let alone the sound of the words would have sent him into a madness of movement; he would have stood, he would have smiled, and he would seriously considered whether the new enemy too would be like all the old enemies – whether it could be pactised with, and whether it could be deceived for long enough to keep them both safe. Those thoughts rose now, too, yet…
He felt across his chest, wondering when the feeling of the Hollow hole beneath his collarbones had begun to feel natural. It must have, at some point, because now, the feeling of uninterrupted skin and the heartbeat beneath it was anything but.
'Are you scared that I will give in?' the man bitterly asked.
'Just as much as I am scared that I will,' Lilinette answered.
The light which had sustained him drifted upwards, around his body and through his heart, and stretched above him, shimmering like bright sunlight over clear water. She didn't speak for a while, and neither did Stark. He felt he should have.
'I know that you are scared, Lilinette. I am too, and there is little else I would like more than to tell you to show yourself, as you are now, embrace you and wake up with you.' He said. 'We could give in to it, and find out what it needs us for, then plan around it, as we have always planned around everything else. I even have some confidence that we may succeed, and that if we did not, we would never even know that we had lost – I think it truly intends to keep its word, and offer us whatever it has already shown us in the visions.'
Imagine that. Imagine a dream that lasts forever. A dream unending.
'But every single time that I have had these visions,' he whispered, 'I've rejected them without a second thought…well,' he chuckled, 'perhaps without a third thought, the second thought was always there. I also know that you have rejected them; you do not even need to tell me that you have, because you are the one of us who knows that being happy is never giving up on trying to learn how to…'
'I'm really scared, Stark,' Lilinette insisted; there was not only fright in her voice, now. There was outright panic.
I know, he thought. Else, you would not have come, after all this time. I think I should be entitled to resent you a little for that, hm? But I won't, because it's your dream.
She quietly accepted the berating, and Stark felt sorry as soon as she did.
'I am scared too,' he offered. 'Not only that, I am monstrously angry as well. No matter which way I turn, I never seem to catch a break, but…Do you understand why I do not want to see you?' Stark whispered, dismissing her answers in thought one after the other.
Because of that those pale hands across yours…I still wish they were paler still, and cold, and unmoving…But he is not the reason.
Because of a single strand of grey hair, stranded in shimmering darkness…But she is not the reason either.
'If I saw you,' Stark said, 'I would deny you all of your fights – I never had the courage to let go of you, and I won't have it now; you are the brave one, you have always been the brave one. Knowing that I will have to wake up, once more without you…' he said. 'It doesn't matter,' he told himself, feeling his newly returned heart was breaking. 'It doesn't matter. It is not a vision of you that I want,' Stark said. 'It is simply you. It cannot give me that, Lilinette, and neither can seeing you, here.'
'You know,' he continued, struggling for strength at each word, 'all these things that we thought our human lives would have been…What if they had never truly come to pass? What if I had taken you to Paris, on that day, and you would have died in my arms anyway? What if you had lived and fallen in love with somebody else?'
'Don't be stupid,' she scolded, sounding small. 'Come on.'
'No, seriously,' Stark said, sitting up. 'What if my love of you, our love of each other was only so perfect because it never truly came to pass?'
'Is that what you think now?' she whimpered. Stark pressed his fingers to his heart, not feeling the Hollow hole, but knowing that it was there.
'No, that is not what I think.' He answered. 'And you know that. The fact that I love you will never change, and if it were only me, I would like nothing more than sinking into that dream, or this dream, and staying here, with you, for the rest of eternity. But…'
He chuckled at first, then laughed out loud, sensing her confusion, and then, as Halibel's words returned to his mind, her irritation.
'You have some gall thinking of her, here,' Lilinette muttered.
'I know, I'm sorry,' he chuckled again. 'But she was right. You cherish your journeys, your beginnings, and I cherish you because of them. I always have, since I have so few of actual ones of my own... In truth, we too only had a beginning, and waiting for all the possibilities that lay beyond it, not all of them good, but all certainly worth waiting for…I'd forgotten that, in Hueco Mundo…' Stark whispered. 'That, in the end of all things, I like waiting for you,' he said, softly.
Despite her efforts, the flesh beneath his fingers dissipated into the familiar darkness of the Hollow hole.
Don't do that…Don't do that…It's my dream…Lilinette cried, but he didn't truly hear her.
'Even when I'm afraid that you won't come,' Stark whispered; he reached up, running his hand through the light, in a clumsy attempt at soothing her. She streamed through his fingers, coating them in liquid gold; the mists around them thickened and swirled, almost hiding the light.
'It cannot touch us,' he said. 'It is your dream.'
Up next - It's not going to be Lili giving the game away.
