Chapter 13: Dive
Inspiration from FF9 taken and run with, along with a bit of Crystal Chronicles.
Namine is falling.
Sinking.
Yet she cant find it in her to care.
She sinks through a sea towards a mural far below, eyes lidded, thoughts slow.
She sees a herself painted on it asleep, resting on the edge of the mural as if it were a wall to lay against, one hand laying at her side, the other crossed over her lap resting a hand on her wrist. She is still garbed in that terrible, terrible, raggedy white dress, and she wonders if she will ever escape it. Laying on her lap is a blank sketchpad and a pencil. Shadowed behind her is Castle Oblivion in all its horrible glory, and yet... the sky above it isn't dark and dreary as Namine remembers, but dreamy, cloudy, like an actual painted mural, the castle itself is blurry around the edges, its sharpness dulled away. She notes that the painting of her lays on is on a pathway that leads back to the castle, but scattered along the pathway are circles with faces in them, of those who matter to her.
She also sees the divide.
On one side are those who were important or relevant to her in her previous life. Sora, Kairi, Roxas, Riku. On the other are more numerous circles, Aqua, little Kairi, Ame, the so many guards of Radiant Garden who had started imprinting on her life, Eraquas and Ventus. She was slightly disappointed to not see Terra, but she supposes she hasn't really interacted with him yet despite her desire to help him. Each circle is illuminated, lighting the pathway they enclose. But...
On either side are shadowed circles, imprints she doesn't want to identify, but are still there because of the dark scars they had left on her life. Diz, Marluxia, Larxene are barely visible stains that tint the ground on outer parts of the ground leading up to Castle Oblivion dark. On the other side, Jadis is her first true horror of this life, and Namine hopes, prays she is the last that can imprint herself here.
Namine instinctually corrects herself, flipping upright as she touches down. Her mind clears, though there is still a surreal blurriness to the edge of her vision. It takes her a moment after looking around to identify this kind of place. She'd seen something similar, in Sora's memory, and where Roxas had ended up once in the fake Twilight Town. There is significance to this place... but she's not sure what. She takes a cautious step forward, wondering where the staff, the shield, and the sword were that appeared both times before to the boys. She waits, but nothing appears, so she takes another step forward, then another, until she is dead center, standing on the door to Castle Oblivion...
There is a flash of light, and then she is in a White Room. She instantly knows its Castle Oblivion than the Mansion, the white was slightly different, no pictures on the wall either. The table and chair with her sketchpad and a pencil resting in the center, no one and nothing else. Her skin scrawls to be back here, even if in dream. She walks forward and spins her sketchpad around to face her, its empty.
"A blank canvass," she murmurs.
She sits down, a slight frown on her face. She wonders...
She sketches out what she vaguely recalls from Sora, a faded impression of the platform, a sword and a shield and a staff with Sora stepping forward, a hand raised.
The drawing fades when she finishes.
Then a new drawing draws itself on the page, tears itself off, and another page draws itself, rinsing and repeating until its done.
There is a shadowy landscape, heartless crawling over it, the sky purple and black and red and writhing. Another shows the vast expanse she had traveled through with Aqua, the lanes between and many worlds scattered through it. A third is similar to the last, but she recognizes the Land of Departure, Twilight Town, Traverse Town, and there are several more she doesn't recognize. The fourth is strange, its a lot like the ocean she had fallen through at the start of this place, only there are worlds at the bottom in the distance of the image, almost dreamlike. A fifth sends a shiver down her spine, its the place Sora and Riku fought Xemnas. The sixth is a world that is nothing but boundless sky, little faded stars flowing around, odd cube-almost-crystal-like structures in the distance. The seventh is a river of sand, clocks and hourglasses floating around, little streams breaking off now and then and becoming their own rivers. The final place pulls at her attention, something about it calls to her.. In the picture is a place kind of similar to the Land of Departure, a vast castle on a landscape hanging above dreamlike swirling clouds, a levitating stone path leading from the clouds to the looming castle. Towards the top of the castle is a bight light with... she squints... crystals? She's not sure, it is very tiny to try to make out.
She considers the images for a moment.
Its not that hard to figure out.
"The Realm of Darkness," she murmurs, a finger tracing over a little shadow, "The Realm of Light, the Realm Between."
Shes not sure on the fourth image, but the fifth she figures is, "...the Realm of Nothingness?"
She's never heard it given a name, honestly, she'd never heard or seen of the place Xemnas had taken the boys to outside that one instance, but it feels right. The sixth she doesn't know, the seventh... the symbiology suggests... "Time? A Realm of Time?"
The final one though... it pulls at her much like that book had...
"Memoria," she says quietly, laying gentle fingertips on the image, and takes the hint, "A... the Realm of... Memory."
Her sketchpad flutters, and for a moment, there are other places, but they fade back into it, and it returns to being blank. Was there other Realms? If so, why weren't they pulled out like these were? Or... was it perhaps that these Realms had significance to her? If so... what are the ones she didn't identify? She feels its important. So she considers them...
The fourth one in the ocean with worlds at the bottom, she stares at it for a long while. Considers its relation to the place she is in now, how both seem to be found at the bottom of this ocean, that she knows she is in a dream... "The Realm of Dreams? No... the Realm of... Sleep?"
That feels right.
Its the last one that truly stumps her, she has no honest idea what it is.
"Very few people can truly conceive of death, of the end," comes a soft, sad voice, making her freeze, "An end, the Final World, one could say the Realm of Death, of Endings, of Peace, of Passage. It could go by many names, but this is all those who aren't yet truly dead can perceive."
She looks up slowly, finding a hooded figure in the black Organization Cloak across the table from her. The voice was male, but not anyone she recognized. "There are no choices to be made here because you have already made it. This is merely the realization of that choice coming to fruition."
He raises a hand, and a pulse of energy rips out. She gives a scream as she is cast backwards, out the door, into darkness, and then she is falling and falling and falling...
"Your journey did not begin at dawn, nor midday nor dusk nor the dead of night," echoes the man's voice, "It began out of nothing. There was never a start to you, growing within a mother, or an egg, or cloned from someone, or anything else. You simply were."
Namine gets a feeling of dark amusement from the voice. "Some would say not supposing to exist is a short step from immunity to fate. I've seen it merely gives destiny an excuse to be cruel. You are not an original existence, not of the main strand of time, you are never guaranteed your happy ending. Your friend Sora was chosen by light in the original time, you were chosen by memory in this one. Never mistake this choice as kind."
Namine barely gets the chance to parse the words before she falls back to her station, landing with a hard thump. She winces, rising to her feet...
Shadows pool at the edge of the platform, and heartless start to crawl over the edges, shambling towards her. Namine swallows thickly and flicks her wrist, thankfully her wand exists in dream as it swiftly springs down the wand holster into her hand. She swings it, lightning surging out and blowing a cluster away. Then the warping of Nobodies is there, she forms a barrier in time, screeching scrapes sliding off her shield. She turns and casts fire as fast as she can at a cluster of dusks. Then new beings appear, bizarre and strange in appearance, animals in odd dreamlike colorings. She hesitates for a moment, but they charge at her the same as the rest. She swings her wand, a wave of frost springs up up that throws them back. Another new kind of monster appears, almost like a dusk, but shorter, golden and black in coloring, sand swirling around them, a broken hourglass symbol instead of the others, jagged sharp glass like shards for hands, dripping golden goop from them.
Too many, there are too many types of enemies here. She starts casting spells, trying to clear them out as more and more appear in different shapes and sizes and symbols, her heart thumping and thumping. She screams as she is taken to the ground, bodies of monsters crawling over her clawing and biting, she tries to raise her wand one last time...
Her wand explodes in light.
When the light fades, the creatures are gone, her injuries vanished, and in her hand is a Keyblade. Translucent, transparent, and changing in color, it looks more like its made of crystal then metal. She stares at the Keyblade, and swears she sees memories playing out, small and hard to see, within its crystal-like blade. Its Keychain is a tree with reaching roots and a large top. She stares down at it, a conflict of emotions surging through her, and surprisingly, the memories shifting through the blade respond and change with what she feels, a reflection of her. The Keyblade is... strange. She's seen weird looking Keyblades before, if Sora's variety of Keychains is any indications they come in a horde of forms, but this one is still... odd.
She rises to her feet and flexes her grip on the Keyblade. She knows its name as readily as she knew the naming of its Realm, for they are called the same. "Memoria."
It resonates in her hand, a pulse of translucent energy shimmering around her. The station around her melts away, and she finds herself at the entrance of the Twilight Town Mansion. She closes her eyes in frustration, if she could have gone her entire life without returning here, even in dream, she would have. She pushes open the door and steps inside, Memoria held out infront of her defensively, but the foyer is empty. There are no side rooms in this dream, just the stairs upward, she dreads knowing where she has to go. She walks up the stairs and makes her way to the 2nd White Room of her life. She takes it in, and walks over to the table, eying drawings left unfinished, then turns her gaze to drawings scattered along the wall, so many more than she actually ever did.
She walks over to the first near the door, of a younger Namine first waking up, completely alone. She touches it, and it resonates, dissolving into energy that flows down into Memoria. The memory of that moment sharpens in her mind, crystal clear as if she just barely lived it. She purses her lips tightly, having an idea of what she's supposed to do, but not wanting it. She does not want these memories refreshed in her mind. She turns away... but the door is gone.
She looks down at Memoria. "Do I have to?"
It pulses, and a sense of curiosity and yearning to know alien to herself fills her. Its... the Keyblade itself? Strange... none of Sora's memories she can recall led her to believe that Keyblades had that kind of capability. She knew they had some kind of sentience in choosing their wielder, but... this one can, and it wants to know her. She closes off her emotions as best as she can and goes through her miserable excuse of a life. Her awful time in Castle Oblivion under Larxene's knives, Marluxia's words and touch. What she did to Sora, and being saved by him. Trying to patch him back together, then Roxas and... and...
Something is wrong.
Holding her Keyblade in hand, she feels that something is off with her memory of this time...
Memoria pulses red.
Namine falls to her knees and screams.
There is a awful burst of pain, then...
Xion.
She lurches forward and heaves with nothing coming up. She clenches her fists tightly, crying softly. Another person she ruined. She listened to DiZ and killed not just Roxas, but Xion too. Its not fair. Its not fair. "I hate this. I hate my power."
Warmth rushes up her arm from Memoria, and Namine swallows, taking in shaky breaths. She takes a few minutes there, on her hands and knees, to properly parse the memories of Xion, make sure everything that was unlocked is properly linked back together, so the girl is properly remembered even if Namine isn't capable of telling those who needed to know that the girl had once existed. "I'm... I'm so sorry Xion. I wish... I wish it could have been different..."
If only there had been more time to unchain and rechain everything. It would have taken years to do it, yes, but all three of them could have lived if only she had more time... if only DiZ hadn't pressured her so much... if only the Organization hadn't been drawing so close... if only DiZ hadn't been so hell bent on revenge and had gone to Mickey for help and protection. Inside of Disney Castle she could have had all the time in the world to set things right. If they had Sora, Roxas, and Xion all sleeping in there, with Mickey keeping watch and the Cornerstone protecting the world, the Organization's Kingdom Hearts would have come to a standstill without Keybearers to feed it more Heartless. Then, all of them together...
She shakes her head bitterly and pushes off the floor. "Pointless. I can't fix what's been done."
Anger licks her heels as she goes for the rest of the pictures, forcing herself through sharing her memories. Memoria is quiet as she does so. She asks bitterly when she finishes. "Satisfied?"
Memoria resonates, like a hymn, then the room ripples and fades away.
She finds herself at the start of the pathway leading into the Realm of Memory. There is the echo of a harp playing in the distance, soft and lulling, soothing her anger away. She takes a single step forward, and dust kicks up. She glances down, considering it. "No one has walked this place in a very long time, have they?"
Her Keyblade doesn't answer.
But someone else does.
"Yes... it has been a very long time," comes a soft female voice.
She glances up to see a girl made seemingly of pure light floating towards her. "Who are you?"
The being stops floating a little away from Namine. "I am Mio."
"Its... nice to meet you Mio, I'm Namine," she replies.
Mio floats around her, inspecting and humming as she does. "Its been so long since anyone has come. Not since the shattering."
"The... shattering?" asked Namine.
Mio sighed quietly. "When the world was ripped apart from one whole into many was the last time Memoria was wielded or accessed."
Namine frowns, looking down at the Keyblade. "You make it sound as if the Keyblade and this place are one in the same."
Mio giggled. "Aren't they?"
The being turns and zooms away up the path. "H-hey! Wait up!"
Namine starts after her. "Have you been here all alone this entire time?"
Mio paused, and looks back at Namine, her voice quiet, "No."
Namine feels... uneasy, but keeps walking as Mio resumes floating ahead. "What... what do you do here?"
"I nibble on memories," answered Mio, "The heart is not an infinite expanse, memories exist within it as chains, but even that has limits. As you age, as memories lose their importance and you begin to forget, I tug on the unimportant ones, and help to draw them here."
"Oh," said Namine, considering, "So... you eventually bring all memories here then?"
"No."
"But... what happens to memories when someone dies then? When their hearts return to Kingdom Hearts?" asked Namine, "Are they just... lost?"
Will everything she went through just vanish one day? Part of her longs for it... but part of her burns at the notion.
"All memories are drawn out of a heart, cleansing it of its experiences as part of the path to rebirth, but... that is not under my purview," answered Mio.
"Whose then?"
"Oh... you'll meet him eventually," mused Mio, "Him and the others."
Namine doesn't particularly appreciate the vagueness, but doesn't get a chance to pester as they come to a closed gate. Mio turns to her. "Well Keybearer?"
Namine takes the hint, grips Memoria two-handed, and raises it into the air. It glows brightly with a spectrum of colors before a beam of energy pulses into the air, slowly the gate begins to crack open...
Mio giggles. "The Realm stirs, but you are not yet ready to enter. Not through dream, and not until you are at peace with your own memories, until you master them."
"Wh...," begins Namine.
Dark wind bursts through the gate and slams into Namine, making her cry out as she is gusted off the stone pathway, down down down through the clouds. She is sinking again, into an ocean below them, and lands on her mural again. Except there is darkness, so much of it covering the mural. Out of the dark rises shadowy versions of Marluxia, of Larxene, of DiZ and Jadis. Namine takes the imitative and lunges right for the Marluxia in a sudden red-hazed rage, stabbing Memoria into it. She drives it in deep, but the dark memory merely raises a single hand and brushes her cheek with a touch that sends shivers down her spine, leaning down to whisper...
"No!" she cries out, flinging herself backwards, withdrawing Memoria as she does, then swinging it in a wide arc, releasing a burst of fire in all directions. Again and again she fires, not caring if its fired blind. She just wants them gone. Doesn't want to ever see them again. She wants them gone-gone-gone-gone-gone-GONE. When she finally stops, her trembling hands lowering her Keyblade, the fire clears, the figures are gone, replaced by a shadowy version of herself and General Otim, the beastman at her feet begging and pleading as its memories are torn apart...
Namine flinches back and glances down at the darkness coating the mural. "Its... its my darkness."
The Otim fades, but the dark Namine doesn't, instead, it grows and shifts until a Darkside Heartless stands in her place. Namine takes in a shaky breath, tightens her grip on Memoria, and casts barrier as the Heartless takes its first massive swing, her barrier flashing with stress but holding. She springs back as the Darkside draws back its hand, not trusting herself to be ready for a physical confrontation yet, she sticks to magic and oh.
She hadn't noticed in her earlier panic, but magic flows so much easier and with greater power through her Keyblade. She cycles through fire, blizzard and thunder repetitiously, pausing only to shield herself when it takes a swing at her... then to scramble out of the way as it raises a giant glowing hand into the sky. She is not sure her barrier would take that, so she dives. It slams down, creating a large zone of darkness that shadow heartless start crawling out of. Namine goes with a chain of thunder-thunder-thunder-thunder to clear them out as they come.
The Darkside withdraws its fists, sinks to its knees, and its core begins to glow purple. Namine hesitates, trying to recall Sora's fights against this Heartless, what was it doing?
The answer came in the forms of missiles of purple darkness shooting out of its core and homing in on her. Namine steeled herself, casting barrier again and against as each missile came, sliding in a fire to launch at the Heartless between blasts. It sinks its arm deep into the mural, and Namine peppers it with spells before it slowly pulls out with an orb of black and oranges energy, rises to its feet, levitates the orb into the air, and detonates it, showering the area with slow moving exploding spheres which... explode against her shield harmlessly.
Slowly, her pounding heart returns to normal as she realizes how utterly in control she is of how the fight turns. So long as she puts up her barrier when needed it can't touch her. The shadows that it calls out of the darkness are more threatening if only because she either has to maintain the barrier longer to block them and burn more energy, or drop it to clear them out. Overall though... she likes this fighting style. She likes how in control it makes her feel. So when her final spell put a large chunk of ice into the Darkside's head, she was satisfied...
At least until it pitched forward and collapses right ontop...
She raises her hands in a desperate barrier...
It smashes down, shatters her barrier, and crushes her down into the swirling dark...
"Never again Riku, do you understand?"
Namine finds herself sitting on that one tree on Destiny Islands, the perfect sitting one she has so many memories of the trio sitting on. She's not alone. The man in the Black Coat is there, gazing out into the distance.
"Kairi... I..."
Namine looks behind her, seeing Sora, Riku, and Kairi, of her time, sitting on the beach a near the bridge. All three miserable.
"I know you wanted to help Sora, but it made you complicit in a truly horrible thing. She never deserved how DiZ treated her, no one does."
They were talking about her.
"...I know."
She really hadn't considered what would happen back there, it was the past, behind her...
"Promise me, promise us, Riku. Don't ever let anyone use you like that again, no matter the cause. Don't ever stand aside and let it happen again."
She watched Riku, wondering...
"I won't, not ever again, I swear."
She swallows and looks away.
"Does it bring you comfort? To hear regret? Guilt? Remorse?" posed the Man in the Coat.
"...I don't know," she admits, "I never really blamed him. Waking up Sora was more important than me."
The Man in the Coat chuckled. "Sora would disagree, but you wouldn't be surprised by that, would you?"
"...not really," she agrees quietly.
"Alright, I just wanted that clear before we go see whatever King Mickey wants, and no Sora and Riku, I'm not staying behind this time. Whatever is coming, I'm helping."
Namine frowns.
"You didn't think their struggles were over just because the Organization fell, did you?" mused the Man in the Coat, "What happened in sending you to your new time will have consequences, both big and small. Both personal to those whose life you impacted, and larger by your lack of influence in what events are to come."
"...oh."
There is a ruffling of clothing, feet moving along sand. She turns her head to see Sora and Riku walking off to the boats, ready to head to the mainland. Kairi stands on the shoreline, staring off into the ocean.
"Namine... wherever you are, I hope you've gotten your chance to be happy."
She swallows thickly and looks away. "Why bring me here?"
"Is kindness wrong?"
"After you blew me out of a door?"
He laughed, tilting his head back, and she caught sight briefly of the bottom half of his face, youthful. "I did do that then, didn't I?"
"It just happened."
He shakes his head, hood swaying. "Our reality is not quite... consistent, in matters of time, without even considering the notion of alternate timelines. Time varies between worlds, and the notions of rules that it follows have exceptions, you yourself having been made into one."
"And you?"
He chuckled, long and sad. "Exceptions are not always favoritism, sometimes, it is Penance."
She frowns, and calls Memoria to her, looking down at it. "You said being chosen by memory wasn't a kindness."
"Was Sora being chosen by the Keyblade, a kindness?" he asked.
She thinks long on that. Thinks of all the good Sora did with the Keyblade. The friends he made, the people he helped, saving the worlds... but... she also thinks of his struggles and hardships, of how he pushed on with a smile in spite of that. "...no, but it was needed."
"It was needed," he agreed.
"...am I needed?" she asks quietly.
"That is for you to decide," he answered, raising a hand and snapping his fingers...
Namine wakes with a sharp breath, staring up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly.
She does not sleep again that night.
