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"Anywhere" -- Chapter 14: Whisper
By The Last Princess of Hyrule
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"Catch me as I fall,
Say you're here and it's all over now,
Speaking to the atmosphere,
No one's here and I fall into myself,
This truth drives me,
Into madness,
I know I can stop the pain,
If I will it all away,
If I will it all away . . ."
-Evanescence, "Whisper"
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So many are already dead because of a change in fate that wasn't meant to exist. Hitomi felt the world begin to slow, as if Time itself was reducing its pace. I've tried to change fate several times, and every time people who shouldn't have died, did. The only way to repair the fate of Gaea is to change it again and let more people die.
Everything stopped, and Hitomi found herself frozen amidst a still frame of the world. Time had paused.
This is the story of the world, isn't it? Her gaze lingered where Folken and Dornkirk were frozen. Everyone fighting to be the most powerful. It's in our nature, this thirst for blood. It's our fate.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head upward, rolling her neck in a tired fashion. Dornkirk hasn't ever truly controlled all of fate. A part of it has been controlling him all this time in his desire to rule it. And yet it couldn't--or didn't--stop him from manipulating other parts of fate.
"Maybe that's because fate is not as powerful as everyone thinks."
Hitomi opened her eyes, and the image of her grandmother as a young girl appeared before her.
"I was your age when I first came to Gaea," said Yuri. "It was with the power of that pendant that brought me. But it wasn't because it was fate that I came here. It was because the love a man named Leon had for me was so strong that it could cross between worlds and bring us together."
Yuri turned and looked at Folken. Hitomi saw a wispy tear glistening as it rolled down her translucent cheek. "Our emotions are so strong. If we wanted, we could even arrange the heavens at our will. The people of Atlantis knew this power. That's why they created those pendants, so that they easily could channel their emotions into a type of usable magic."
Yuri sighed. "The Atlanteans had such strong wills and solid beliefs that this was possible. With their strong minds they could use the wishes of their hearts to work wonders. But, if any hesitation existed in their minds, anything less than a pure wish, the pendants didn't work."
She turned back to her granddaughter. "You, Hitomi, are able to do the great things you do because your mind is strong and confident enough to make it work. The pendant by itself doesn't have any amazing or miraculous powers. The only magic it has is to focus the mind's ability to transform thought into substance."
"Then there's no fate," Hitomi said aloud. "Is there? Isn't that what you're trying to say? Fate didn't bring you to Gaea, and fate didn't destroy Atlantis."
"There has never been fate," Yuri confessed. "There have only been people wishing to blame something other than themselves for their shortcomings."
"If there isn't any fate, then there's not really anything to believe in." Hitomi walked forward past her grandmother, and reached up to Folken. Her hand lightly brushed his. "It's like there isn't even any God anymore. We really are alone in this world. There's nothing watching over us."
"Hitomi . . ."
"You know, they say there's bliss in ignorance." Hitomi held up her other hand and clasped them both around Folken's. "But I've never been meant to feel like that, have I?"
"Hitomi, you expect to be able to protect all of Gaea yourself. That's why you're always so frustrated with yourself--because you keep failing. But you were chosen to change Gaea's fate, not save it's people. You cannot expect yourself to protect the lives of all the people on this planet. That's impossible. You can only do what you must do, and that is to destroy the control over fate."
"What does that matter when there isn't any fate? How can I destroy something controlling something that doesn't exist?"
"It isn't so much that Dornkirk controls fate, but that he has the power to control Gaea. He uses his wishes to get what he wants the same way you do and the Atlanteans did. With the Power Spot in Freid at his disposal, anything he wishes for, he'll have, because he has no doubt in his mind that it'll be granted to him. He has the power that the Atlanteans hid away when they created Gaea, and fate or no fate, he can use it to its full potential."
Hitomi didn't look convinced. In fact, she wasn't even watching her grandmother. Her eyes were locked on Folken's face, trying to see the reason behind the intensity of his expression.
"If you believe nothing else," Yuri added, "then believe this: there may not be fate, but there is still time, and right now it has stopped. You are frozen in a single instant, one split frame out of millions in a single second. When Time resumes, all of this will be over, and you will never remember it. Your doubts in fate will be gone."
"No." Hitomi shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears. "No, you're lying to me. You're trying to make me believe everything will be better again, and it won't. There is no way things can ever go back to the way they were."
She leaned her forehead against one of her arms, drenching it with tears dripping off her cheeks. "I just can't take any more of this! I'm sick of it! I'm sick of Gaea, and of all the death that's my fault." Hitomi bit her lip and squinted her eyes shut, listening her words echo through the vast room. "God, and more than anything I'm sick of fate!"
"I hoped you would be."
Hitomi couldn't see it when Yuri vanished, or when her pendant began to glow.
A ring of white smoke formed around her, made of delicate wisps--like fine strands of fluffy cotton. It circled her, borne by invisible winds that chilled her legs and brought with it tiny flecks of rain. The deathlike smoke bore the cold whisper of, "Hitomi . . . Hitomi . . ."
The chill that the words carried down her spine caused Hitomi to open her eyes. The ring thickened and spun faster, growing larger and larger until it seemed to consume everything in a swirling mass. Faces started to appear, and the forms of people became distinguishable from the shapeless cloud, and just as she started to get dizzy, the spinning stopped.
Grouped around Hitomi stood a ring of many ethereal figures with more spread out behind them, each chalky colored and made of smoke-like substance. The giant observatory room was filled with them.
The one closest behind Hitomi spoke first, his gentle voice familiar. "My lady . . ."
Hitomi turned around and met a pair of delicate blue eyes. "Shesta?"
Shesta smiled. "It's nice to see you again."
"What is this?" Hitomi turned in a slow circle to get another sweeping look at the sudden crowd. "Who are all these people?"
"You were looking for all the dead whose lives were ended prematurely by fate alteration to destroy the Atlantis Machine," Shesta answered looking somewhat smug. "Here we are."
"How can there possibly be so many?" Hitomi asked. "Fate doesn't even exist."
The smiled vanished from his face. "You're one of the only people on Gaea who believes that. Your grandmother told you that things are real because people believe in them. The fact that Gaea believes in fate makes it real."
"She said only the people of Atlantis had the power to make thoughts real with their beliefs."
"You misunderstood. As long as there isn't any doubt in a person's mind, their faith can make their wishes real. That's why fate is so strong here, because everybody believes it. Fate isn't concrete like the laws of science, but because we believe in it, it exists."
"That's why I was brought here, isn't it?" said Hitomi. "So I could be stuck with all you other loonies who think fate is real."
"Fate is real," Shesta assured her. It was obvious that he wasn't very entertained by their discussion. "Your belief in fate was--is--much stronger than ours because you have the power of your pendant to focus it. You can change what Zaibach is doing to it. That's why you were brought here. The people that didn't want to see fate be controlled wished for a way to put things back to the way they should be."
"And so they got me."
Shesta's eyes narrowed in concentration. "You doubt your faith. I hope that soon you can gain it back. Regardless of what you think, this world is governed by fate and the belief in its power. It's as real as I am standing here." He paused to think about what he said and smiled. "Well, maybe that isn't the best analogy."
Hitomi tried to smile, but her heart felt heavy with guilt. She no longer knew what to do, much less to believe in. She wasn't sure that she believed in fate anymore after what her grandmother said, but if she didn't believe in it, then Gaea would suffer under Dornkirk's fate alterations forever, or whatever they were.
"Don't you believe the emperor can control fate?"
Hitomi turned to the sound of Naria's voice as the silver cat-woman stepped forward. She didn't answer.
"Well? You've seen it before," said Naria. "You know what he can do with that power he's got. If it isn't fate he's controlling, then what is it? There's nothing else on Gaea nearly powerful enough to do the things he's doing."
"And we would know," added Eriya, stepping out from the crowd to stand by her sister. "Zaibach searched for that ultimate source of power in Freid for many years so it could control Gaea, probably even since the empire was formed."
"But there's no such thing as fate," whispered Hitomi.
"Oh, bullshit." Eriya rolled her eyes. "Your grandmother told you that? Has it ever occurred to you that she might be wrong? I don't know about things on the Mystic Moon, but here on Gaea, fate is one of those things you just don't argue with. It exists, we all know it, so get up and move on with your life."
"Eriya, that was harsh," said Naria.
"It's the truth." Eriya looked at Hitomi with her expression cold and unfeeling. "This isn't the time to be moping around and doubting yourself."
Hitomi covered her face with her hands, shame and guilt making her face red. The other souls were talking too now, everyone shouting their opinions of fate at Hitomi and each other. Everything they said seemed to contradict what Yuri had told Hitomi. Havocked noise engulfed the room, each voice too loud and meshing into the ones around it, making the roar nonsensical.
Why can't I just talk to someone on this planet who makes sense? Hitomi thought desperately. I wish everyone would just shut up and leave me alone!
Suddenly, the room went silent. Hitomi opened her eyes and looked around. The chamber was empty again, save for her, the people frozen in Time, and Shesta. He watched her with a look bordering between bemusement and incredulity.
"Where'd everybody go?" he asked.
"I wished for them to leave, and they did," Hitomi said.
"And you don't believe in fate." He shook his head. "You know, it was your faith that your wish would come true that allowed it to. What is it your grandmother would say? 'Keep repeating 'I wish I were' or 'I want to be' and it will come true.' Believing in the power of fate will do the same thing--it'll make it real."
Hitomi opened her palm and looked at her pendant as she reflected on this.
"Your pendant has little to do with it," said Shesta. "It only acts to focus your wish in order to make it easier to become real."
"Does this mean my grandmother lied to me?" asked Hitomi. "About there being no fate?"
"Not exactly. She told you what she knows about fate on the Mystic Moon. There are so few people there who believe in it that it almost doesn't even exist. Things are a lot different here on Gaea. Our world was created by a wish that became reality, the way your wishes do, so the power of people's beliefs is much stronger here."
"So that's why you stayed behind." Hitomi looked up with a grateful smile. "I just wanted someone sensible to talk to."
Shesta shrugged, blushing a little. "I don't think I told you anything you don't already know. You seemed like you must have just forgotten. No one can force you to believe anything, but I wanted to remind you what you used to believe, and I hope you believe in it again on your own."
"How do you know all this?"
He smiled. "Your grandmother told me."
His smile was calming. It made Hitomi feel the way she did when she was alone in Folken's presence, and the whole world seemed to melt away. In the absence of all the outside noises that seemed to complicate them, her thoughts and beliefs finally came clear. She almost couldn't believe she'd ever doubted them.
"Now I owe you twice," said Hitomi as she closed her eyes and held out the pendant in front of her, letting it dangle. "Talking to you just seems to make everything clear. Now I know what I want to do."
With a swift jerk of her wrist, Hitomi swung her pendant. In her mind, she tried to picture what life would be like if fate were uncontrolled, and she found herself thinking about Folken. Did all her thoughts sway toward him now? Her time with him left her with a feeling that what they had together was not the result of something that controlled their actions, but that they were free to chose their own.
That's what fate is, Hitomi realized. It's not so much a map of how our lives will be, but a guideline to how our different choices can shape them. That's how Gaea was before the fate alterations happened.
Even though Time was stopped, the swinging pendant continued to beat in perfect seconds. She couldn't feel it, but power was building in the large room, apocalyptic power strong enough to turn the entire city to dust, waiting for Hitomi to release it.
That's how I wish for it to be again . . .
A gust of frigid air whooshed past her, and Hitomi opened her eyes. The white souls of the dead reappeared, and their forms melted back together in a churning cloud. They were silent now, but on the faces closest to her, Hitomi could see looks of gratitude. Putting an end to the altered fates would finally let them rest in peace.
As she watched them, Hitomi felt something feathery brush her cheek. She turned back and saw Shesta drawing away from her, his pale face slightly pink with embarrassment. He gave her a small, mischievous smile. "Now we're even."
The cloud of smoke swallowed him up, and amassed around the giant telescope. As this happened, Hitomi suddenly felt a very odd sensation of movement, even though she was standing still. It reminded her of the way one felt on a carnival ride freefalling down to from its highest point where it had balanced for several minutes. It was Time was coming back to the world.
The crystal lenses on the Atlantis Machine, the engine allowing Dornkirk to control fate, began to spin. Just end it all, Hitomi prayed fervently, closing her eyes. I wish Gaea could return to the way it used to be . . .
The world moved in slow motion, like watching a movie frame by frame. The lenses on the Atlantis Machine cracked and shattered, the shards of glass drifting slowly to the ground like snowflakes. A rumbling tremor ran through the room, spreading out from the telescope and shaking the entire fortress in rampant cataclysm.
I wish all the bad fate, and this entire old world, would just crumble away . . .
The quaking seemed to pass, but a moment later, Hitomi felt it again. Strong vibrations resonated beneath her feet. She looked down and saw a jagged crack form beneath her, and several others coming from different directions to join it. She could hardly comprehend what was happening as the two feet of solid concrete crumbled and fell away from under her feet.
But even though Hitomi knew she was falling, she didn't feel like it. It felt more like she was drifting in a hammock. The fortress was deteriorating quickly, crumbling away around her into a vast ruin; things above her started moving faster, and the world was speeding up as she was pulled down. Then suddenly, everything jumped forward into Time's normal flow.
Hitomi threw out her arms and reached up to grab something as she shot downward, but the world was falling too fast. She flew though a rush of air and debris, her heart pounding uncontrollably with fear. Stop! I wish I were safe away from here! I wish I were safe!
But her wishes couldn't take her away.
"A person's mortal fate is one that cannot be changed or escaped," said the emperor.
No! Hitomi squinted her eyes shut and wished harder. I'm not going to die! I'll be safe! I believe in fate, I really do, and I know it's not my time to die!
Maybe it was the fear setting in, but Hitomi almost thought she heard someone calling her. The thought passed out of her mind immediately. She curled her body tightly together, whimpering in hopeless fear, and didn't see the two white feathers drift down past her.
No more! she cried desperately. Please, just make it stop!
It did.
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"So by the morning's light,
We'll be halfway to anywhere,
Where love is more than just your name . . ."
-Evanescence, "Anywhere"
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TO BE CONCLUDED . . .
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