Destroyed
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Chapter 13: Your Hand on My Heart
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~
"You become a part of me,
You'll always be my fear.."
Linkin Part~ Figure.09
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~
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Little girl..
In this strange world...
Your heart's misplaced, as is your trust.
You don't see me.. you don't feel me yet. Your body denies me and your magic refutes me, but you don't see me and who I am until it is too late and then.. then this world will come crashing down.
I watched you in those fields of flowers and grass and listened to you sing songs and invent words for your own pleasing, but now you're stuck here and displaced but not like me. You were given life by the light, where I was dragged back to the shadows that adore me as their master. Ansem doesn't comprehend the beginning, how can he know anything if he never knows where everything starts and ends?
But you, a mere girl, a small child who plays among those green stars, you understand more than he will ever know and how it shows upon that fragile face and the scarred lips of rose. Your soul shines like a light in the dark and now I seek to consume again.
Why?
Fear?
Racial hatred?
Disgust?
None of those.
I am not my mother, I do not remember the origins of my race nor do I ever wish to be thrust with those obligations. I am born of a gene spliced between human and jenova.. you of the Cetra and human and who therefore inherits the more power? Who inherits the grace of the stars and has the very earth sing her to sleep?
Do you know what eats me up inside, little girl?
It has eyes of green and a tail of hate and the sting is more bitter than any poison..
Envy.
I am jealous of you, I revere what you are and hate myself for never being able to acheive what you have. So I take the easier route in this life and do all that I can do now, I force you down in the shadows and hope to make you like me, as me. I will destroy you, I will have you and hold you and the shadows become you. Remember me Aeris, in your dreams and in your soul, for now I have hands latched inside you for that terrible need for you to live in your desperate past.
It is gone.
But you and I, we live on... and now I have you, little bird, cupped in my hands.
And you shall...suffer.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
She felt her way along the shadows, towards the eyes and presently light flooded down onto the eyes and illuminated only the figure with a kind of bright halo over white hair.
Her breath caught.
For a moment, she had thought this was Sephiroth, not the girl Kairi she had seen earlier in her dreams, fevered and sore.
It was a young man, his head bent so he stared at the ground and on his knees, folded over slightly like a broken paper doll. His hair was cut to his shoulders and left in spikes over his eyes there stared down, green and full of magic and promise but despite the halo of light circling his form he seemed broken and torn.. he seemed almost swallowed by the light.
"E-excuse me?" she whispered softly.
He gave no response to her, instead turning his face and looking off into the dark. Aeris lifted one brow, for his profile was strong and she guessed he would be handsome when he grew, not in the way of Leon's dark and brooding looks, or even Cloud's guiless and sometimes innocent demeanour.. but strong and foreboding, with the force of charisma behind them to draw to him people.
What did he stare at?
She turned to look and saw nothing but the gaping darkness of the dream-scape looking back, sightless and voiceless but definitely malevolent.
When she looked back, she saw the boy had lifted his head and was looking directly at her, the pale green eyes almost a direct mockery of her dreams about Sephiroth, about the violence and blood. He lifted hands in his dreams, and she could see the very violence there she had tried to push away, staining his clever fingers and open palms, dripping onto the floor where it vanished into nothingness.
"You're in my dream," he said in an almost monotone tone, and then with a nod, he looked her over.
Aware of the intensity of the scrutiny she nodded and stayed fast where she was. She always felt the urge to fiddle or fix her hair whenever someone looked her over in such a manner. But a small part of her sensed that this boy needed a connection to reality again, from this prison of dreams.
A connection she lacked right now.
"Yes, and you are in mine."
"Our dreams have crossed?"
"I imagine so.."
The eyes looked back up at her from under the ridge of spikes that were set, like icicles on his brow. "What is your name?"
"Aeris Gainsborough."
Was it her imagination or did the eyes flicker to the ribbon in her braid, then to her chest? Did this boy know something of her past.. curious she pressed with her own questions, sitting down before him and tucking her skirt modestly about her pale legs.
"What is your name?"
"Riku."
~ Riku! Kairi... ~
Blinking, she felt a burning sensation rise up in her throat, and looked away reflexively, the residue of the magic unlocked inside her suddenly as bright and as strong as the sun and it faded then shone brighter inside her.
Riku, the boy that the Keyblade Master had been looking for, the companion of his childhood.
"I-" she began, but stopped as a strange wailing assaulted her nerves and sensations, and the boy too, despite wincing, reached out and covered her eyes with his hands.
"Don't listen!"
Helpless, she covered her ears and waited for the tremors to stop, feeling the convulsing and shaking of Riku as he held onto her, then he fell back and slowly she opened her eyes and removed her hands.. a smear of blood leaving a ring about her eyes from where he had pressed his hands in all earnest.
The dreadful sounds had stopped.
"Riku.." she breathed and winced, reaching out to touch his face.
The boys eyes were ridden with blood that trickled down from bloodshot eyes, onto his cheeks and leaving ghastly smears of death and destruction down cheeks that should never know such a touch. The hair about the ears was tainted red, but even though she could feel his pain as soon as her fingers touched his face, she didn't pull back nor did she wince for him.
She knew he didn't want pity.
"It's him.. I should never have made the deal."
"Who?"
"Ansem."
She blinked.. Ansem. The scientist who had fallen into madness and shadows was the one making the terrible keening and hurting this boy, she didn't understand.. and it showed plainly on her face, so he explained.
"Ansem seeks the door to the ultimate power, the shadows and the darkness, to be all his. He uses the Heartless and others to reach this goal.. I was one of those others caught up in this, he thought that if he had captured one who could wield the keyblade then he too would have access to the powers it contains. But the Keyblade was smarter than that, and chose someone who would be able to control it better than me as I sank lower and lower into the shadows and sickness. I got too close, and no matter what I tried, Sora's heart was always stronger and always will be.. even now, as Ansem uses my body.. I am stuck in here.. and Sora comes.. for vengeance."
"Riku...?"
"Ansem is a madman!" he exploded, teeth gritted and she shied away from the force he imbued the words with. "Don't feel sorry for him or for me! I'm ruined now, he Destroyed me! He's going to destroy everything I ever knew or wanted.. then what do I do?!"
Aeris let her hand rest on his bloody one, and smiled.
Once she had faced something like this young man's dilemma, and knew right now, this was one of the things she had to do. She had found a way for this young man, not boy. She could give him her light, her wisdom.. and set him free.
"What do you do.. I'll tell you what you do, Riku," he looked up at her, and faintly his eyes flickered with an emotion she clung to fervently and always, hope. "You get up and fight, you never stop! Even when everything looks the darkest.. there will always be a light to guide, trust in that."
"Ansem.. used to speak with a man named Sephiroth."
Her blood quickly chilled as she stared down with a smooth face at Riku. How random that comment seemed, but this meeting too was strange. Her entire life after the Heartless had seemed a dream anyway, and a small voice told her she was always stronger in spirit than body, this place was her natural element.
"He did, did he?"
"He knows of you, Aeris. Ansem was told details of you, and how dangerous you were, but you don't seem that dangerous to me. You gave up your light for the world.."
"It seemed right at the time."
He shook his head, "I'm not that selfless.."
She smiled then, "Aren't you? You came all this way for Kairi, for her alone and everything you accepted was in faith for her life.. if that's not selfless, then what is?"
"I..." then he shrugged and narrowed his eyes shrewdly, "but if you died, then why are you alive?"
~ Because I'm trying to find a way.. that's why. ~
"To help you, I think.. to help others."
"Be careful Aeris," he warned and stood, starting to slink into the shadows, leaving her in the fixed halo of light that streamed down onto her folded form and bathed her dress in a strange halo of pink, chapping her hands and cupping her fragile face, "the sickness is in you."
~In me? Now..what?~
Dreadfully, the light switched off.. and shadows crowded and drowned her...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
His form felt twisted and shallow.
Over a month spent fighting his way here, and now on the edge of it he was relegated to the form of the very creatures he had fought, but above all, he had helped defeat Ansem/Riku.. and also in a way, helped bring Kairi back to life much to his own relief and he was sure, the secret relief of Riku before he had fled.
Hopping his way into the entrance hall, he blinked his bright, orb like eyes and was met with the stuffy stares of Donald and Goofy.
The journey had taken it's toll on them.
Goofy looked like he hadn't slept in a week, with heavy bags under his doe-like eyes, his hair unruly under his baggy cap and his clothes all dirtied and the shield nicked. But he had grown more confident, more self assured about what he wanted and less willing to accept whatever someone gave to him.
Donald had lost weight, his clothes hanging slightly from him but his magic was second to none. The small heartless he had become could feel the blaze of magic coming from the duck creature in was drawn to it inexplicably. Kairi was backed into a corner, in one hand she held rather loosely the keyblade he had helplessly dropped upon turning.
His friends leapt for him and quivering he jumped over their heads, landing badly and rolling over.
Kairi stared at him, with fear in her bright blue eyes..
He looked up at her from his prone position on the floor.
~Sora?~
Then tentatively she came forward and picked him up, holding him at her eye level and trying to stare into his depths.. trying to see some small part of him.
He wiggled his antannae back at her.
"Kairi, gee, be careful!"
"That's a heartless!"
"I know but.. it feels like Sora.. I can almost sense him.."
Wordless, they watched as she brought the heartless to her chest. Pressed close, Sora shut his yellow eyes and prayed silently even as he fell into the darkness..
His heart, her heart, and the magic of her own special power grabbed and twisted at him, pulling him back to reality.
"Sora!"
He opened his eyes and pulled away, looking down at Kairi.. who gently smiled back...
And he knew, for a split second.. that Aeris Gainsborough had been right. No one should be afraid as long as there was light in their hearts.. and he had found his again..
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Whispers. I can hear them now.. stronger in the shadows clawing at me. They're hurting me!
~Afraid of a little pain?~
...!
~ Ahh.. little little bird... I'm in you. ~
The sickness... is you?
~I told you once.. I would follow you anywhere. I am the shadows, I am the air you inhale, I am the faces you see, the dreams you wrap yourself tightly in. I am the food you eat and the water you imbibe, I am the sweetness of your voice and the tap of your feet, I am the way, the word and the Everlasting. ~
Why?
~ I shall Destroy you. ~
Is it not enough to leave me alone?
~ But you will not leave me alone, either? We both seek one another's destruction, death and deviance... One way or another, we are fated for war and battle, you and I, our spirits locked in eternal struggle. In the end, Aeris, lies only death and chaos and madness. ~
You are the one who is mad.
~ So sure? So sure... I am going to use your body, Aeris.. much like I did Cloud's.. much like I have seen Ansem do.. ~
I shall fight!
~ How? Even now, I have spread you thin with sickness. ~
Why not simply face me like a man!
~ Because I'm a spirit.. a feeling and emotion. Here in the shadows, I can be and live.. but in the real world I am but a sensation, a shade of everything I was. Just because *you* were given a body in your light blasted lands, do not think the demons of myself would give me form because they did not.. I am lifeless. ~
...I see now.
~ I infest and intake, I keep you. ~
The others shall know..
~Never, sweet Ancient.. ~
With my last breath, Sephiroth, I shall see you die.
~ No, Aeris, with your last breath you complete the work I started.. and elevate me to a god, born of shadows... hahahahahaaa ~
Never.
~Never, say never.. You are weak. I have Destroyed you.. and soon I shall destroy your little entourage too.~
Leon..Yuffie...Cid..
~Remember, I hold your heart, in my hands...~
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Chapter 13: Your Hand on My Heart
~
~
"You become a part of me,
You'll always be my fear.."
Linkin Part~ Figure.09
~
~
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Little girl..
In this strange world...
Your heart's misplaced, as is your trust.
You don't see me.. you don't feel me yet. Your body denies me and your magic refutes me, but you don't see me and who I am until it is too late and then.. then this world will come crashing down.
I watched you in those fields of flowers and grass and listened to you sing songs and invent words for your own pleasing, but now you're stuck here and displaced but not like me. You were given life by the light, where I was dragged back to the shadows that adore me as their master. Ansem doesn't comprehend the beginning, how can he know anything if he never knows where everything starts and ends?
But you, a mere girl, a small child who plays among those green stars, you understand more than he will ever know and how it shows upon that fragile face and the scarred lips of rose. Your soul shines like a light in the dark and now I seek to consume again.
Why?
Fear?
Racial hatred?
Disgust?
None of those.
I am not my mother, I do not remember the origins of my race nor do I ever wish to be thrust with those obligations. I am born of a gene spliced between human and jenova.. you of the Cetra and human and who therefore inherits the more power? Who inherits the grace of the stars and has the very earth sing her to sleep?
Do you know what eats me up inside, little girl?
It has eyes of green and a tail of hate and the sting is more bitter than any poison..
Envy.
I am jealous of you, I revere what you are and hate myself for never being able to acheive what you have. So I take the easier route in this life and do all that I can do now, I force you down in the shadows and hope to make you like me, as me. I will destroy you, I will have you and hold you and the shadows become you. Remember me Aeris, in your dreams and in your soul, for now I have hands latched inside you for that terrible need for you to live in your desperate past.
It is gone.
But you and I, we live on... and now I have you, little bird, cupped in my hands.
And you shall...suffer.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
She felt her way along the shadows, towards the eyes and presently light flooded down onto the eyes and illuminated only the figure with a kind of bright halo over white hair.
Her breath caught.
For a moment, she had thought this was Sephiroth, not the girl Kairi she had seen earlier in her dreams, fevered and sore.
It was a young man, his head bent so he stared at the ground and on his knees, folded over slightly like a broken paper doll. His hair was cut to his shoulders and left in spikes over his eyes there stared down, green and full of magic and promise but despite the halo of light circling his form he seemed broken and torn.. he seemed almost swallowed by the light.
"E-excuse me?" she whispered softly.
He gave no response to her, instead turning his face and looking off into the dark. Aeris lifted one brow, for his profile was strong and she guessed he would be handsome when he grew, not in the way of Leon's dark and brooding looks, or even Cloud's guiless and sometimes innocent demeanour.. but strong and foreboding, with the force of charisma behind them to draw to him people.
What did he stare at?
She turned to look and saw nothing but the gaping darkness of the dream-scape looking back, sightless and voiceless but definitely malevolent.
When she looked back, she saw the boy had lifted his head and was looking directly at her, the pale green eyes almost a direct mockery of her dreams about Sephiroth, about the violence and blood. He lifted hands in his dreams, and she could see the very violence there she had tried to push away, staining his clever fingers and open palms, dripping onto the floor where it vanished into nothingness.
"You're in my dream," he said in an almost monotone tone, and then with a nod, he looked her over.
Aware of the intensity of the scrutiny she nodded and stayed fast where she was. She always felt the urge to fiddle or fix her hair whenever someone looked her over in such a manner. But a small part of her sensed that this boy needed a connection to reality again, from this prison of dreams.
A connection she lacked right now.
"Yes, and you are in mine."
"Our dreams have crossed?"
"I imagine so.."
The eyes looked back up at her from under the ridge of spikes that were set, like icicles on his brow. "What is your name?"
"Aeris Gainsborough."
Was it her imagination or did the eyes flicker to the ribbon in her braid, then to her chest? Did this boy know something of her past.. curious she pressed with her own questions, sitting down before him and tucking her skirt modestly about her pale legs.
"What is your name?"
"Riku."
~ Riku! Kairi... ~
Blinking, she felt a burning sensation rise up in her throat, and looked away reflexively, the residue of the magic unlocked inside her suddenly as bright and as strong as the sun and it faded then shone brighter inside her.
Riku, the boy that the Keyblade Master had been looking for, the companion of his childhood.
"I-" she began, but stopped as a strange wailing assaulted her nerves and sensations, and the boy too, despite wincing, reached out and covered her eyes with his hands.
"Don't listen!"
Helpless, she covered her ears and waited for the tremors to stop, feeling the convulsing and shaking of Riku as he held onto her, then he fell back and slowly she opened her eyes and removed her hands.. a smear of blood leaving a ring about her eyes from where he had pressed his hands in all earnest.
The dreadful sounds had stopped.
"Riku.." she breathed and winced, reaching out to touch his face.
The boys eyes were ridden with blood that trickled down from bloodshot eyes, onto his cheeks and leaving ghastly smears of death and destruction down cheeks that should never know such a touch. The hair about the ears was tainted red, but even though she could feel his pain as soon as her fingers touched his face, she didn't pull back nor did she wince for him.
She knew he didn't want pity.
"It's him.. I should never have made the deal."
"Who?"
"Ansem."
She blinked.. Ansem. The scientist who had fallen into madness and shadows was the one making the terrible keening and hurting this boy, she didn't understand.. and it showed plainly on her face, so he explained.
"Ansem seeks the door to the ultimate power, the shadows and the darkness, to be all his. He uses the Heartless and others to reach this goal.. I was one of those others caught up in this, he thought that if he had captured one who could wield the keyblade then he too would have access to the powers it contains. But the Keyblade was smarter than that, and chose someone who would be able to control it better than me as I sank lower and lower into the shadows and sickness. I got too close, and no matter what I tried, Sora's heart was always stronger and always will be.. even now, as Ansem uses my body.. I am stuck in here.. and Sora comes.. for vengeance."
"Riku...?"
"Ansem is a madman!" he exploded, teeth gritted and she shied away from the force he imbued the words with. "Don't feel sorry for him or for me! I'm ruined now, he Destroyed me! He's going to destroy everything I ever knew or wanted.. then what do I do?!"
Aeris let her hand rest on his bloody one, and smiled.
Once she had faced something like this young man's dilemma, and knew right now, this was one of the things she had to do. She had found a way for this young man, not boy. She could give him her light, her wisdom.. and set him free.
"What do you do.. I'll tell you what you do, Riku," he looked up at her, and faintly his eyes flickered with an emotion she clung to fervently and always, hope. "You get up and fight, you never stop! Even when everything looks the darkest.. there will always be a light to guide, trust in that."
"Ansem.. used to speak with a man named Sephiroth."
Her blood quickly chilled as she stared down with a smooth face at Riku. How random that comment seemed, but this meeting too was strange. Her entire life after the Heartless had seemed a dream anyway, and a small voice told her she was always stronger in spirit than body, this place was her natural element.
"He did, did he?"
"He knows of you, Aeris. Ansem was told details of you, and how dangerous you were, but you don't seem that dangerous to me. You gave up your light for the world.."
"It seemed right at the time."
He shook his head, "I'm not that selfless.."
She smiled then, "Aren't you? You came all this way for Kairi, for her alone and everything you accepted was in faith for her life.. if that's not selfless, then what is?"
"I..." then he shrugged and narrowed his eyes shrewdly, "but if you died, then why are you alive?"
~ Because I'm trying to find a way.. that's why. ~
"To help you, I think.. to help others."
"Be careful Aeris," he warned and stood, starting to slink into the shadows, leaving her in the fixed halo of light that streamed down onto her folded form and bathed her dress in a strange halo of pink, chapping her hands and cupping her fragile face, "the sickness is in you."
~In me? Now..what?~
Dreadfully, the light switched off.. and shadows crowded and drowned her...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
His form felt twisted and shallow.
Over a month spent fighting his way here, and now on the edge of it he was relegated to the form of the very creatures he had fought, but above all, he had helped defeat Ansem/Riku.. and also in a way, helped bring Kairi back to life much to his own relief and he was sure, the secret relief of Riku before he had fled.
Hopping his way into the entrance hall, he blinked his bright, orb like eyes and was met with the stuffy stares of Donald and Goofy.
The journey had taken it's toll on them.
Goofy looked like he hadn't slept in a week, with heavy bags under his doe-like eyes, his hair unruly under his baggy cap and his clothes all dirtied and the shield nicked. But he had grown more confident, more self assured about what he wanted and less willing to accept whatever someone gave to him.
Donald had lost weight, his clothes hanging slightly from him but his magic was second to none. The small heartless he had become could feel the blaze of magic coming from the duck creature in was drawn to it inexplicably. Kairi was backed into a corner, in one hand she held rather loosely the keyblade he had helplessly dropped upon turning.
His friends leapt for him and quivering he jumped over their heads, landing badly and rolling over.
Kairi stared at him, with fear in her bright blue eyes..
He looked up at her from his prone position on the floor.
~Sora?~
Then tentatively she came forward and picked him up, holding him at her eye level and trying to stare into his depths.. trying to see some small part of him.
He wiggled his antannae back at her.
"Kairi, gee, be careful!"
"That's a heartless!"
"I know but.. it feels like Sora.. I can almost sense him.."
Wordless, they watched as she brought the heartless to her chest. Pressed close, Sora shut his yellow eyes and prayed silently even as he fell into the darkness..
His heart, her heart, and the magic of her own special power grabbed and twisted at him, pulling him back to reality.
"Sora!"
He opened his eyes and pulled away, looking down at Kairi.. who gently smiled back...
And he knew, for a split second.. that Aeris Gainsborough had been right. No one should be afraid as long as there was light in their hearts.. and he had found his again..
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Whispers. I can hear them now.. stronger in the shadows clawing at me. They're hurting me!
~Afraid of a little pain?~
...!
~ Ahh.. little little bird... I'm in you. ~
The sickness... is you?
~I told you once.. I would follow you anywhere. I am the shadows, I am the air you inhale, I am the faces you see, the dreams you wrap yourself tightly in. I am the food you eat and the water you imbibe, I am the sweetness of your voice and the tap of your feet, I am the way, the word and the Everlasting. ~
Why?
~ I shall Destroy you. ~
Is it not enough to leave me alone?
~ But you will not leave me alone, either? We both seek one another's destruction, death and deviance... One way or another, we are fated for war and battle, you and I, our spirits locked in eternal struggle. In the end, Aeris, lies only death and chaos and madness. ~
You are the one who is mad.
~ So sure? So sure... I am going to use your body, Aeris.. much like I did Cloud's.. much like I have seen Ansem do.. ~
I shall fight!
~ How? Even now, I have spread you thin with sickness. ~
Why not simply face me like a man!
~ Because I'm a spirit.. a feeling and emotion. Here in the shadows, I can be and live.. but in the real world I am but a sensation, a shade of everything I was. Just because *you* were given a body in your light blasted lands, do not think the demons of myself would give me form because they did not.. I am lifeless. ~
...I see now.
~ I infest and intake, I keep you. ~
The others shall know..
~Never, sweet Ancient.. ~
With my last breath, Sephiroth, I shall see you die.
~ No, Aeris, with your last breath you complete the work I started.. and elevate me to a god, born of shadows... hahahahahaaa ~
Never.
~Never, say never.. You are weak. I have Destroyed you.. and soon I shall destroy your little entourage too.~
Leon..Yuffie...Cid..
~Remember, I hold your heart, in my hands...~