Chapter 13 – Darkness Descending
Zelda til Rednaxelos
Terra's P.O.V.
I hate disclaimers. Same thing over and over again . . .
Damn it, Luna already died! That wasn't supposed to happen until chapter 14! Vamp Queen, I swear . . . oh, well. Nothing I can do – like there ever is anything I can do . . . (frustrated sigh)
Anyway – Luna, along with Terra, Raven, and the elusive Aris all belong to us. To be more specific, Raven and Aris are Vamp's, Terra is mine, and Luna is property of both. Everyone else is property of Squaresoft. This is so tedious.
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A jolt sprang through my head as I sat in Quistis's chair crying. I jerked out of my sad state and looked around me. Where had that come from?
What the . . .
"Luna!"
I leaped out of the chair and rushed to the door. The jolt had to have come from the infirmary . . . something was terribly wrong.
I ran down the hall as fast as I possibly could, past the other dorms, around the huge fountain, and into the infirmary. I passed Squall and Irvine on my way, but didn't acknowledge them.
"Terra!" Irvine shouted after me. "Where are you going?"
"Let's follow," Squall said. "Something's up."
I finally got to the infirmary, and rushed into Luna's quarters to find Raven standing above her . . . and I knew it was too late.
Raven looked at me in silence. "What's happened to her?" I cried. She just shook her head.
I pushed past her and stood beside Luna's bed. The color was gone from her lips. Her skin was turning gray, and her hair had lost its shine. I grabbed her wrist and tried to find a pulse – but there was nothing.
Then the realization hit me. Luna was gone.
Tears welled up in my eyes, and couldn't be held back, no matter how hard I tried. The tears spilled down my cheeks as I began to sob.
"Luna . . . Luna!" I shouted, crying so loudly I was sure I could be heard through the entire Garden. "You can't leave us! Please!" I knelt down beside the bed and cried into the mattress. "No . . . no . . . this can't be!"
"Stop it, Terra," Raven said coolly.
"Why did this happen to you, why?" I moaned, now making no attempt to hold back my screams.
"Terra!"
"This can't happen, it can't!"
"Stop this!" Raven grabbed my shoulder and shoved me to the ground. I hit my head against the wooden floor, but the pain was irrelevant. I was shaking too violently to notice.
I looked up at her angrily. "What do you want?"
"Stop these crocodile tears," Raven ordered. "Tears won't do any good. Luna is dead; accept it."
"Accept it?" I cried, in shock. "Accept it? Raven, how would you feel if one of your closest friends just dropped dead?"
"Look, you need to shut up," Raven said callously. "So she's dead. You really expect me to care? It happens. Deal with it – it's not any disaster."
I struggled to stand up. I wiped the tears away and looked her straight in the eye, enraged.
"No, actually, I didn't expect you to care," I said through clenched teeth. "How could you? You didn't care about her. You don't care about anybody – especially not your own partners!"
"I never said that."
"You don't. This is proof! 'So Luna dies – no big deal!'" I turned away from her and stared at Luna's lifeless corpse as I continued. "I always knew you didn't like her much at all."
"You are such a stupid and overdramatic sap."
"And you're insensitive and pathetic! You're nothing but a heartless beast!"
Raven was about to retaliate, but was interrupted when someone burst into the door.
I looked up. Irvine exploded in, followed by Squall. Irvine immediately started, "Okay, gals, what's happened here –"
Then his eyes rested on me. Normally I would have tried to hide my tears, but it didn't matter now; my world was falling apart at the seams anyway.
Squall took one look at Luna and sighed, bowing his head.
Irvine hurried over to my side. He put an arm around my shoulder and led me to a chair in the opposite corner of the room, away from Raven. He spoke to me softly, saying, "Terra, sweetheart, please. I know you're upset, but I'm begging you, don't do this."
As Irvine tried to comfort me, Zell stumbled in. "What's up?" he asked. "I'm sorry to be crashing in like this, but –"
The sight of Luna's motionless body silenced him. He froze where he was, eyes fixed on her.
For a while, no one spoke. Zell broke the ominous stillness by crying out softly, "Luna . . . she's . . ."
"Dead," Raven finished. "Don't say anything more."
"That bitch!" I screeched. "That thoughtless, uncaring, selfish fiend! The demon doesn't give a fucking shit whether any of us lives or dies! She doesn't care – Raven is so high above the rest of us, she feels no need to care about the rest of us lowlifes!"
As I was shouting, Seifer walked in. As Irvine tried to quiet me down, Seifer trained his sights on Raven, looking straight into her eyes as if trying to bore a hole into her skull. Raven met his gaze, and he asked slowly, "What did you say to her, Raven?"
Raven crossed her arms and replied, "I simply told that idiot over there that death is a fact of life. You can't change it, you can't stop it. There is no need to make a mountain out of a molehill."
I could see that Seifer was getting angry. He walked over to her, trench coat flowing behind him. Raven said nothing as he stood a couple inches in front of her, towering over her threateningly.
"A molehill, huh? Is that what you call it?" He snarled at her. "I don't see how something as heartbreaking as death, especially the death of a dear friend, could possibly be dismissed as a mere happening of life."
"What does it matter?" Raven asked him rhetorically. "I've been through this before. I came, I saw, I survived."
He growled at her again. "How dare you treat it as such," he said, "causing the people I thought you loved to cry, and expecting us all to move on. How . . . dare . . . you."
Seifer turned and walked away, joining the rest of us around my chair. Irvine stood, bringing me with him, and motioned the others to follow. We headed towards the door.
Irvine and Squall shot dark glances toward Raven. Seifer looked at her gravely and said, "I thought you were better than this. I thought you had the capacity to care about someone other than yourself. I suppose I was pretty foolish for it." He sighed and finished, "And you have the nerve to call me cruel."
With that, we walked out of the infirmary, leaving Raven by herself, with no one else around but a dead corpse.
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Journal entry #74
Date unknown
I knew, from the moment I met them, that Raven and Luna were not right for each other. It was evident in the way they looked at each other, the tones in their voices when they spoke to or about each other, everything. They claimed they were best friends, but I could tell that inside, they despised each other.
They never had a good relationship. In the past, they were constantly fighting. Every time I spoke to them, they had something to say about the other person. Raven was convinced that Luna could do nothing but wreak havoc on her life, and in Luna's opinion, Raven was the worst friend one could ever have. In some ways, they were both right. They gossiped about each other behind their backs, and then would try to kiss up to each other as if nothing had happened; they insulted each other on a regular basis; they were always making each other cry. Raven, too, whether or not she wanted to admit it.
All that was bad enough. But what really bothered me was that they would always drag me into it. One would come up to me and say, "Oh, Luna is such a brat" or "Raven is a bitch" or whatever. Then I would usually take sympathy on whoever the complainer was, since both of them were so good at making themselves look like the real victim. Then the other person would tell me to buzz off, that it was none of my business – unless I decided to switch loyalties. Funny how only then did the other person want me involved. Back and forth I would go, until I one day decided that I could no longer partake in their arguments.
Theirs was a yo-yo relationship. One week, they did nothing but bicker. Once Raven's mother even tried to issue a restraining order against Luna, which made no sense at all, since Luna had never physically threatened Raven in any way. Naturally, Raven's family was never able to convince anybody to give the order. And what do you know, the next week, everything's fine, they've forgiven each other, the usual crap. A couple weeks go by, and they have something new to fight about. It's all blown over the next day. On and off, on and off they went. They held grudges against each other. In arguments, they were constantly bringing up past flare-ups, just to ire the other person. It was chaos between the two.
They tried to pretend they were so close, but it was all a lie. They hated each other. It was clear to everyone else; why wasn't it clear to them? Each time they fought, they would say, "This time, it's over for good," but what happens? The next day, everything is fresh as a daisy between the two. They both were very immature about it; I was the only rational person in the situation.
The last time this happened, I scolded them both severely for what they put themselves and everybody else through. "I'm disappointed in both of you," I told them. "You ruined my week with this. I cried when I got home, because I was such an idiot to believe that you had more dignity than this. You let me down."
At least Luna listened to me and told me she was sorry for it all. The thing I liked about her was that she took responsibility for her actions, saying either, "Yes, I know what you mean – I'm sorry," or, "Yeah, I did it – what are you going to do about it?" Depending on whom she was talking to, of course. Raven, however, was stubborn. She always tried to say, "I didn't do anything." She put on this perfect-angel masquerade, but she was no lily. She seemed to believe that she could do no wrong, and though she pretended to acknowledge that she was no purer than the next girl, she still acted like she was the epitome of perfection. What a load of bullshit.
And here she would go, moping around even more than the typical Goth, trying to get everyone to take pity on her. So I basically wasted my breath on her – and that really irked me, because I wasn't saying these things to her just to hear myself talk. I was worried about her, and she shrugged me off.
I always thought that if one day Luna died, Raven wouldn't give a damn, just say, "Well, shucks," and move on. Though I never said it aloud, to me, Raven was really starting to become a bitch.
Now Luna truly is dead. And my prediction was right; Raven doesn't care what happens to her, which is making me think that she doesn't care about me, either.
~Terra
I closed my journal and set it beside me on the bed. Luna had given me the journal for my birthday last year. It was all I had left of her now.
I put the journal under my pillow and began to sob all over again, eventually crying myself to sleep.
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