AN: I promised Sephiroth. But you know what- this chapter will be waaay too long if I do. So what I'm gonna do is upload 3 & 4 at the same time so you can go right ahead. :) Sorry about the length with Alexiel, btw, I just want to lay her a firm foundation before I start rolling in the KH characters. ^_^ She is NOT, if you haven't noticed by now, a Mary Sue, and while Mary Sues take minimal time and effort to write, Alexiel is gonna need a bit of work. Any comments or suggestions are welcome, even flames! they're constructive too. Keep an eye out for Ansem, Seph, Sora, Riku, and all sorts of goodies in upcoming chappies.
"To break down and cease all feeling,
Burn now what once was breathing,
Reach out and you may take my heart away
Imperfect cry and scream in ecstasy
But what befalls the flawless?"
Aeris Gainsborough was almost never allowed in the Coliseum, for reasons that she never could understand. So she had jumped at the chance to finally see this place, this new world, and grinned. This wing, here, she understood, was some kind of place where they kept the fighters. But why was everything so white, so stark? It looked more like a prison or a looney bin than a barracks.
Aeris laughed slightly in spite of herself, and frowned as the hall swallowed the sound completely. Dreadful place, she mused. Where is the arena? Her footsteps rang as she continued down the hall.
A dead end.
Aeris huffed, tossing her thick, auburn braid behind her shoulders. Really, what was the meaning of all this? She had followed the directions the small gruff goat-man...Phil, wasn't it? had given her, so there really shouldn't have been any problem.
Aeris looked before her. A dead end, it was, where all hallways stopped, and at the very back, a thick, steel door.
Well, maybe it's out that door. Doors don't just lead to nowhere, now do they?
Smiling, she reached out one delicate hand, placing it on the thick, cold metal handle of the door.
For a moment every thought in her mind dissapeared into a silent white explosion of revulsion and horror. Her skin turned to ice and her pale throat closed, and she jerked her hand back as though it were on fire.
W-what?....What was that?
The sound of approaching footsteps diverted Aeris's attention, and she turned, to see a tall woman in the white coat of a worker standing there, with light blond hair that falled just below her thin shoulders, and almond, piercing grey eyes on an aristocrat's angular, sculpted face. The woman smiled, but it seemed to Aeris that the smile was anything but friendly; not agressive or demeaning, but rather blank and weary.
"Hello there." Aeris greeted nervously.
"Hey, sweetheart. Did you lose your way?"
Aeris sighed, melting with relief. "Oh, yes, I'm afraid so. It's my first time here you see. I'm trying to get out to the Arena."
"What a coincidence. So am I." the stranger said bitterly, with a small, choking laugh. Aeris smlied nervously.
"Go back down this hall and hang a left. Down the staircase and out the double doors on your right will take you to the Arena."
"Thank you so much." Aeris gushed, and was about to turn and go. But that small bump of curiosity was screaming at her to ask, to know.
"Pardon me, ma'am...What's behind this door?"
The woman grinned sufferingly, saying through gritted teeth, "My next patient."
"Oh." Aeris said, not expecting much more. "Thank you again...umm..."
"Alexiel. No problem, don't mention it."
A new patient. The weight of the world on my shoulders, I walk down the sterile corridor. I didn't get any sleep the night before- that boy haunted my dreams and my waking. His face is even now burned onto my retinas. I've gotta get a grip. I shake my head, hoping to at least shake the images, if not lose them completely. And as if that was not enough- I was told Solitary. Revered only for the finest of the insane and otherwise worthless. What was Phil thinking?!
I had come early, and alone; Michelle and the others were probably not even up yet. The sun certainly wasn't. That suited me just fine; it matched my dark mood almost perfectly. I was the only one here at this unholy hour- or at least I thought I was. Hell, in Solitary, it could be any time of the day- it wouldn't matter. It would still be plagued by the same silence, the same abscence of noise that was even more pronounced than the rest of the building. It had thye untouched, fragile air or a museum or a graveyard.
I see McCoy, then, walking in the other direction. He stops, and waves at me, and smiles. I smile back.
What else can I do, really? I can't spit that far. And there's nothing here to throw.
If I had something to throw, I might be able to hit him.
But he's gone now. Another lost golden opportunity.
You learn not to listen to opportunity anymore when you're here. You can't even look for it, there's no use, like a cat that crawls onto the page when you're trying to read. We lived...as usual. Everyone does, most of the time, anyway. What is the ususal? Whatever happens to be going on is the usual. Even this. We live, as usual, by ignoring.
Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. We are a place apart from the world; nothing from the outside touches us. There were stories in the newspapers, but those paper stories were like dreams to us, dreams dreamt by others. Nothing could ever touch us in this cold, blank, white, silent prison. Not even ourselves. We muffled the dries from inside and out. The rest of the world was another, an unstable dimension.
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in cold, blank, white, silent spaces at the edge of print.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.
I ought to feel hatred for this. I know I ought to, but I don't. What I feel is more complicated than that. It looks like freedom but it feels like death. I guess it's just somewhere in between.
Help me.
He was a General, they said. The greatest his world had ever known. The greatest warrior of ours. I knew his name, we all did. No one said it. His cell was the last one, in the very back. They brought him out to fight, nothing more. The risk was too great, they said. So why me? Why now?
My hands shake as I touch the metal lock. Why am I afraid? I've crossed no boundaries, taken no risks, I've given no trust, all is safe. He's just another one of them, another Heartless, another crazy one. No different at all, I'm sure. And then a thought so alien, so completely unfamiliar entered my head. I suddenly wondered something I'd never wondered before.
I wondred...how it must be strange. To have someone watching you all the time. Every inch, every flicker. To have them wonder- what is it going to do next? To be referred to as 'it' rather than 'he' or 'she'. To have people flinch when you move. I wonder...if this one is...He was a General once. A commander of men. Locked inside a cell no bigger than my bathroom until his hate consumed him.
But he is an animal, the cold slap of reality entered. A Psycho and a madman. They all are or they wouldn't be here. They're not good for anything but the Arena.
Still, it must be very hard, to be a man, like that.
It must be just fine.
It must be hell.
It must be very silent.
Trembling, I open the door.
AN: Join us next time for Alexiel and Sephiroth! For real this time. *nudge* You're gonna wanna stick around- I don't think the meeting will turn out quite the way you expected....^_*