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CHAPTER 53:
CASTAWAYS DRIFTING AMIDST THE OCEAN OF STARS
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Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene, 'Frozen Flame,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after it, 'Orphanage Of Flame,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after it 'The Girl Who Stole the Star,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three. All three of these pieces can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Anna knew the sole reason she could tell what her name was as awareness returned was, with all the emotional and physical aches crowding out much of her perception, was because she knew she needed to take stock of where she was.
She was lying on a hard surface that felt like reinforced glass with intricate carvings spun into it.
For what she hoped would need to be the last time in the near future, she pushed the terror and self hatred, and what else was attempting to swallow her, at bay, and she opened her eyes.
"You have our deepest thanks," an unfamiliar voice that sounded as though it was coming from right in front of her, and everywhere around her, at once, spoke to her, with slight traces of bitter anger beneath its surface that reminded her of Vanitas.
"You allowed the guardians of light to fulfill the destiny we have rehearsed you for since Xehanort first removed Vanitas from Ven, and Vanitas' connections with us gave us a limited amount of influence in the realm of light once more."
Shock tore up through Anna, and she opened her eyes and pushed herself to her feet to discover she was standing on a tall circular dais of blackness as opaque as the most starless night, with clouds and mists of gray rising up all around her.
Surrounding her were twelve featureless figures around the height of an average sized human that appeared to be comprised of nothing more than shifting, dancing motes of alternate shades of black, and gray.
A corona of a larger amount of lighter shades of grays, and blacks, cascaded out in all directions from each figure to extend to a distance of a small number of feet, forming rough ellipses of night around each entity.
"With the destruction of the Gazing Eye, the hearts of the Foretellers that to this day refuse to make the choice to give up their last traces of light, and set us free in their hearts to claim them, have been thrown into turmoil," the humanoid of night standing right in front of her enunciated.
"So too has the datascape of the Book of Prophecies, otherwise named Data-Strelitzia, for which the Gazing Eye functioned as a firewall.
"After almost twelve millennia, we now have our free reign to do as we will in the World.
"And the supernal vessel you have spent much of your life preparing for us is almost in readiness."
Anna suppressed the urge to clench her teeth, the rush of self hatred and terror that ran through her at the knowledge these entities must be referring to Roxas, or Xion, and how Elsa would take that, almost too potent to keep away.
But she'd kept history from repeating, this time.
The crazy eternal darkness that had ruined Arendelle hadn't done to Sora what the eternal winter had done to Elsa in the ice palace.
For whatever difference that makes.
Among so much else, you still have no guarantee you freed Elsa from her pr
"Y"
Again, Anna could push the memories away with enough effectiveness.
That did count for something.
It did.
Her gunblade was then in her hands, and she shifted her feet into a ready stance, moving her gunblade into a neutral position facing the humanoid in front of her.
"You're the darknesses that Ven broke off from the real Strelitzia," she said, not making it a question.
"Is there any chance you'd be willing to give me an honest answer, in a way you can convince me it's honest, about whether you're Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, Dream Eaters, or something else?"
"That secret will remain undisclosed," the figure in front of her spoke back, a pulse of hateful envy passing through its voice in response to the names Ven and Strelitzia.
"But you may call our conclave the Dregs of the Versed."
Anna suppressed the urge to cringe as so much horror flooded through her at the recognition of what that name meant that she wasn't sure she wouldn't have retched violently if this hadn't been right after she'd kept the tragedy of the ice palace from repeating, at least for now.
So that was the most essential reason for why there was so much darkness in Vanitas' heart, enough he could create legions of other hearts that had never been intended to exist out of his own Nobody heart.
And the Dregs of the Versed, in means uncounted, were condemned to a nightmare very possibly past the encompassment of any concept, or measure, worse than even Mare, who had been born from the will of someone else who should never have existed solely to inflict as much pain as possible, on as many people, and places, as possible, and then die.
And this was why these dark entities were so terrible Master Yozora, Luxu, and the Foretellers hated them so much.
They were brimming with hatred, and a desperate longing to reclaim a greater heart, not just because they weren't even unnatural entities who hadn't been meant to exist, such as the Nobodies, replicas, and even the Heartless.
However the precise reasons were it had come about, Strelitzia had formed not just Vanitas, but all thirteen dark fragments from her heart, because she'd sought to cast them out of herself.
These dark entities hadn't just been not meant to exist to begin with, they had been discarded detritus of the very hearts that had given birth to them, not just created by brute chance or apathetic intention and afterwards unwanted by others and the cosmos, but born and created specifically because they were unwanted, so that they could be cut away from their hearts of origin as though they were nothing but infestations.
And Vanitas hadn't just been created, not just as a heart that was never meant to exist, and not even just as the silts of not just Strelitzia's heart, but Yozora's as well.
He'd then been reborn a second time, at Xehanort's hands, as the detritus of Ven's heart, and given his own second chance because, just as he'd been born because one, or two, hearts had rejected him from themselves, Ven had then rejected him a second time, and the sole reason he had gained a new life for himself was because the heart he'd believed he'd at last found some semblance of the home he'd never been meant to return to in had then betrayed him and treated him as garbage, so he'd been born a second time not just as an abomination with no home to dwell in as Mare and Roxas and Xion, but once more specifically because he'd been an anathema.
Vanitas, and the other twelve denizens of darkness belonging to the Dregs of the Versed, were, with the possible exception of Mare, the absolute castaways from all hearts.
This was how deep a Nobody's darkness needed to plummet in order for him, her, or it to give being to Unversed?
Furthermore, while Strelitzia may, or may not have, hated these thirteen dark entities when Ven had separated them from her heart, and, if Ven had been aware of Vanitas' presence in his own at all, Ven may, or may not have, hated Vanitas, Anna knew for certain that Master Yozora had hated Vanitas, with everything he'd encompassed, when he'd given birth to Vanitas as someone who also hadn't been intended to exist as much as any replica, Nobody, or Heartless.
Anna made her voice as welcoming, and reassuring, as possible.
How Vanitas, if he hadn't already recollected that, and come to at least slight terms with it, would react when he at last remembered how his original self had felt, when he'd been created, was a worry for another time.
"You don't need to shut others, or the world, out," she spoke, turning her gaze to look at all of the darknesses.
"You already have a place to belong, here with me."
All twelve Dregs shifted chaotically as though they were photonegatives of dancing candles.
When the Dreg in front of her spoke, its voice was as empty of sentiment as the hardest diamond.
"Unlike the Heartless, the Nobodies," if it were possible, the dark entity's voice lost more feeling still, "Master Yozora, and the Foretellers," perhaps tiny embers of vigor returned to it, "the Xehanorts, Mare, and even Maleficent, we have no interest in returning to a greater heart to exist wholly, and completely. Or, as we define it, make it easier for others, or ourselves, to continue to do so.
"We intend to complete ourselves, and exist wholly, and completely, not by calling upon the light and darkness of the heart of all worlds, but by infecting the realms, ending the experiment of Kingdom Hearts within Gaes that it may be cut away from Gaes, and making the heart of all worlds none other than us ourselves."
Anna suppressed another urge to clench her teeth.
That made sense.
If you were just denied by hearts and existence, forcing someone, or something, to accept you could catch your tears, however much it did so with nothing more than hands of frozen ice rather than a warm embrace.
But if you hadn't just been displaced from people's hearts, and the heart of the world, but you also specifically came into being because you were hated, or, at least, disliked, the sole way to avenge yourself was to treat people's hearts, and the hearts of reality, the same way, was to transpose them into the infestation in your place.
Anna wasn't sure she could keep the pain away if she spent any time attempting to figure out what a New World burgeoned by this kind of darkness would be like.
Nor did she have any idea at all how to reach hearts this broken.
But she still needed to make the attempt.
And that meant she could not let this confrontation collapse into violence, and she needed to buy time to think of some way to convince these hearts they still had light to return home to.
Do you honestly believe you can beat even one of these things, all by yourself, far less twelve?
You don't even know what they are.
And you aren't even a match for Vanitas, and he doesn't even have all of his memories of his life as one of these entities back yet.
You have no reason to believe any of these twelve have lost any of their memories, and if that's an accurate assumption.
You don't stand a chance.
Anna pushed it away.
She wasn't going to let it reach that point.
She'd just kept Sora home.
She could now bring these entities home, as well.
And even if she couldn't do that, she needed to return to Elsa, so she would.
All of this was simple and clearly clean itself.
She didn't know if she could trust anything she'd learn, if the dark entities were even willing to reveal anything, but asking if they were willing to tell her what they'd meant by the ways they themselves had dabbled in Elsa's, Sora's, Kristoff's, and so many others' lives looked like one of the best places to begin attempting to play for time.
And, if she had any reason to believe any of it was trustworthy, if she couldn't bring these dark entities home, or not all of them, at least talking to them wouldn't end up being fully for nothing.
"If you want to effectively thank me, if we really have fulfilled it, dare I hope you'll at least tell me what this role was?" Anna questioned with cheerful affability she felt lighter at the knowledge still came effortlessly to her voice.
The Dreg before her shifted as though it was snorting, making it clear it knew Anna was attempting to extract information.
"If you're willing to take what we tell you at face value, that much can't hurt," it answered, its inflections back to its ordinary intonations.
"First and foremost, the Destiny Islands is an entire, mostly oceanic, planet.
"Do you honestly believe it's mere chance Sora's heart, born about a year later than that of a child who was already beginning to grow into someone we could tell had the capability to become a Keyblade wielder, to parents who Riku's mother, and father, knew well, was the one that repaired Ven's after Vanitas' release from him?"
So much self hate, and horrified terror, rose up at the meaningful likelihood that the Dregs of the Versed were telling the truth, Anna did need to take a small amount of seconds to blink back tears.
"Sora was your puppet in this from the instant of his birth," Anna stated, and now her voice was steady.
"And if not for you, Ven would have fallen asleep then, or become a Heartless, or even died.
"Was it you who gave Xemnas the idea of doing the same thing with Roxas, and Xion?"
"Indeed, as regards why Sora first connected his heart to Ven," the Dreg answered.
"As matters were progressing, Ven would have just fallen asleep, but there was little question Xehanort would have shortly afterwards realized from this how to create ordinary Heartless and Nobodies from Ven, and then it would have been a true Nobody of Ven Xehanort would have left with Eraqus.
"For all his own hypocrisy, Eraqus wasn't Ansem the Wise, so we're sure he would have taken Ven in, even though he would have almost certainly have distrusted Ven's darkness so much he'd have believed Xehanort if Xehanort had lied about Ven lacking a heart, in order to prevent Eraqus from realizing Ven still had the ability to become half of the Kye-Blade.
"This might have prevented Eraqus' tutelage of Terra from becoming strained. He and Aqua would have inevitably clashed with Eraqus in other ways due to how Eraqus almost certainly would have both sheltered and distrusted Ven in different manners, particularly if he believed Ven had no heart, but it was too likely those potential conflicts would have alienated Terra from Eraqus so much Xehanort would have also lost access to him.
"For Xemnas, no.
"We did, however, ensure Roxas manifested in Twilight Town, and not the Chamber of Sleep, to avert how drastically all of Xehanort's plans could have been derailed if he had."
Anna suppressed the urge to clench her hands into tight fists, even the one around her gunblade.
"Then there are the Darksides, the Dark Follower, and the Twilight Thorn.
"Sora, Roxas, and Xion have never confronted more than one of those at once, and as you must have surmised by now, the Twilight Thorns served Aeleus before his recompletion.
"Yet every single time one, or both, was challenged by a Darkside, or the Twilight Thorn, they struck as though they had been lying in wait.
"They were our most frequent means of ensuring Xehanort lived long enough to die in the Sleeping Scala ad Caelum, and Luxu was unable to set Xehanort up to revert to the script he had been destined to recite.
"We sent the first Darkside after Sora in Destiny Islands' Station of Awakening to ensure Kairi felt the darkness endangering him, and was the one to discover Mickey was talking to him before Riku. Thus kept him from claiming Riku's Keyblade as a result of defeating all the Heartless in the Station of Awakening at the same time as Riku woke him up, and also ensured he wouldn't slow down Destiny Islands' eclipse the minority of hours long enough to board the raft, be cast to the Dark Margin along with Riku and Kairi when it then fell to darkness, and thus meet Mickey and Aqua along with them both.
"We sent the second to ensure he didn't plunge into the almost gone heart of Destiny Islands out of his own reckless choice, where Pluto, as a result of training Mickey had put him through Yen Sid had recovered from Scala ad Caelum about how wielders can bond with Dream Eaters, didn't lead a conscious Sora to Mickey, and Aqua, without Riku, and Kairi, at his side.
"The third Darkside was our means of ensuring Xehanort's Heartless had time to recover from his initial injuries. As things turned out, Riku was still able to convey his voice to Sora when Xehanort's Heartless' initial transformation into the World of Chaos intimidated him, but had we not given Xehanort's Heartless a chance to rally before he altered the familiar Terra currently resided within into the World of Chaos, Riku would have been able to talk to Sora for longer.
"Long enough to alert Terra, present within the greatly improved familiar of the World of Chaos and able to perceive every single thing Riku said to Sora's heart, precisely where Ven was located, at the same time this selfsame familiar had Sora, and Ven, on the edge of defeat.
"Sora had no ability to free Terra's heart at that point, but you know as well as I Terra would have responded to Ven's peril with the primarily familiar forged World of Chaos the same way he did with Terra-Xehanort's familiar during the Second Keyblade War, and Aqua was also nearby, on the other side of the Door to Darkness.
"We could not permit Ven, Terra, and Aqua to reunite that soon, particularly with Mickey also in the vicinity.
"The Darkside Xion first unleashed her Keyblade against was our means of ensuring it didn't manifest in response to Roxas falling unconscious, and she actually lost it then.
"Had she first called her Keyblade in response to Roxas' weakness, that would have enabled her to begin siphoning him that soon, and while that had a chance of benching them both much sooner than they got out of our way. However, not just Roxas, but Sora himself, were coated in darkness at that point, and the memory facsimile of Traverse Town, in the realm in between where corridors of darkness manifest when worlds fall to darkness, along with a memory facsimile of the endless abyss itself, hadn't yet returned from whence they came.
"This would have caused Xion's memory absorption to call a corridor of darkness out of the endless abyss that would have taken her to the Chamber of Sleep.
"The Dark Follower was our means of giving Dilan something more to worry about than the comparisons he was beginning to draw between the Beast and his rose, and Lauriam and what little he knew of the reasons Lauriam was so interested in flowers.
"It would not have done for Roxas to learn about Namine at that time.
"We sent the Twilight Thorn to the heart of Roxas' Station of Awakening to keep him from discovering the faint traces of Xion that remained within it, allowing his memory of her to be jogged hard enough it was very possible those shards of her would have remained within it at least until after his first reunion with Axel during the Struggle Tournament had ended, perhaps in ways far more detrimental to us if they had, if not for the entirety of the rest of his time before he at last did us the kindness of benching himself.
"The two Darksides who lay in wait for Sora during his final sally against the Xehanorts, however, had a far greater purpose."
Anna suppressed the urge to clench her teeth.
Those were the ones who had been drawn to Elsa's darkness, and her own.
"That is not for you to know, at this time, though.
"But if you mull over why the pathways between the worlds haven't shifted since Sora's journey then, and Scala ad Caelum's position in the realm of light as the nexus of its worlds, you may be able to grasp the shreds of the answer that aren't too sensitive for you to know, and that aren't worth the trouble for us to disguise with a cover story."
Anna would take up the challenge of deciphering that riddle when she didn't have as much to worry about.
"Y"
She'd just prevented history from repeating.
The memories were gone.
Anna could tell that the Dregs might be telling her that Elsa's Darkside in Sora's Station of Awakening, and her own in the Sleeping Scala ad Caelum, had locked the pathways between the worlds to Sora's heart more tightly than they had been before, or at least in ways they hadn't been before.
That would also suffice, for now.
"Yet in our production, you yourself have been our own central protagonist."
Icy shock ripped through Anna, but she pushed it away, and she kept herself from starting even a little.
"Consider this.
"During his first journey, the castaways Sora sought for were Kairi, and Riku.
"He found Kairi, or should it be put, Kairi found him, yet he lost Riku.
"During his second journey, the same thing happened in reverse with Riku, and Roxas, although he didn't learn of this until that journey was almost over.
"Who, then, was the castaway he was searching for during his third journey, when he sought to bring Roxas home as he'd found, and lost him, and Riku home, as he'd likewise found, and lost, him?
"And who is the last and final castaway he is destined to search for, and endeavor to bring home from the darkness, in the final act of Master Yozora's play?"
Anna suppressed another urge to clench her teeth.
"You're either being particularly clever with your lies, as I just got lost in darkness myself, and I've been with Sora since the beginning of this adventure, or you're being redundant.
"If it isn't me, I have no clue where to begin identifying this person, regardless of the connections he, she, or it has to me, and my heart."
There were now faint traces of a surety so smug in the voice of the Dreg before her it sounded almost like the Dreg was stating its forthcoming pounce wasn't even just fate, or prophecy, but factual recorded history.
Frost so icy it burned crawled up Anna's spine at the knowledge there could be just two reasons for that.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Elsa
Kristoff
Anna blinked more tears of terror, and self hate, away.
She'd just unfrozen one crazy eternal darkness everywhere without things getting as bad as last time.
At least for the time being.
Taking one step at a time, and concentrating on the simple, and clean, here, and now, and doing the next right thing, genuinely could still be a light to guide you, as long as, no matter how dark things became, or how long it lasted, or how inescapable it appeared, or how many people were willing to believe in the reality of warmth and kindness you did and not forget about it, you still kept believing in them, even if you couldn't prove they weren't anything more than the childish whimsies of a fanciful imagination.
And now she had her proof they weren't just dreams.
She'd learned from the mistakes of her past, and she hadn't repeated them, so, as long as she didn't give up, she could keep doing it.
Anna's voice didn't tremble at all as she queried, "Which of them is it?"
"As you were able to take in this much, you should have brought your head down from the clouds enough to grasp the rest," the Dreg spoke back.
"Thusly, to forestall that, I'll lay it out plainly.
"It took him falling down the mountain three times, and refusing to give up even after it kept happening, to make a difference, but Sora did protect you, in the end.
"And if you were the last castaway heart Sora was destined to search for, Yozora wouldn't have given you a role at all, far less scripts to choose between; he doesn't utilize strategies that can be taken at face value.
"Yet, even while both of you have been right there with him all along, searching for you would mean nothing to you if he couldn't bring this person home."
This time, Anna clenched her teeth, tightly.
Her hands spasmed with the effort to not clench them at all, and she corrected her gunblade's position quickly before any of the Dregs possibly attempted to exploit the opening its shifting gave them.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
It truly was Elsa.
And, for all she knew, she had at least protected Elsa from both prophecies.
"And now you are here, and the envoy from the Treaty of Flames has just arrived on Arendelle's doorstep, with the two best friends you have given Elsa not her protectors, but her liabilities, while she and Arendelle teeter on the laser horizon of a war against forces led by the two people most able to ensure their strikes at her weaknesses connect."
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I ca"
"How about you tell me something I really don't know?" Anna challenged back, but this time she couldn't tell if her voice lacked all tremors.
"Very well," the Dreg replied, unruffled.
"All Ephemer needs to do is unlock the datascape of the True Dandelion, Strelitzia, the original and vital Book of Prophecies, and acquaint Elsa with a denizen of its most secluded data world named Arthur, and all the pieces will have arrived upon the last and newest stage of game boards Yozora has spent so many millennia erecting.
"Oh, and as a not that you care, but just so you know, extra, extra, don't read all about it, teensy side morsel of a tidbit, the ambassador from the Treaty of Flames who has just come ashore is now the sole family Elsa has with her."
"Y"
The memory must not have existed even in her reminiscences, because Anna's free hand was extended, palm out, to call up a corridor of darkness almost before she was aware she'd made the decision to move.
"I'm sorry, but all I'll promise is to tell Elsa and you and Kristoff if I choose to give into the darkness before I do so, so you don't worry about what I might do to others or myself if you aren't continually wary of me; and so, if I do give into the darkness, I don't do it behind your backs."
The first thing she did when she saw Sora was tell him what she'd done.
Or, if he saw her arrive, as soon as she knew how Elsa was, she'd tell him she'd been the one to call up the corridor.
"I promise you that I'm not going to stop arguing about this with you until I've convinced you to change your mind. And if you do tell me that you've made a self-destructive choice, I won't strike at you, but you will need to strike me down, or otherwise go through me, in order to hurt yourself, or anyone else."
Calling up a corridor of darkness wouldn't hurt her, far less anyone else.
Her heart did possess darkness, but she still had far too much light for the darkness to erode, so she was in no danger of becoming a Heartless, or anything similar, against her will.
It would endanger the world order in an incredible number of far worse ways than any of the ways she had yet, with the exception of when she'd harnessed the darkness to knock sense into Kairi, but that couldn't truly hurt anyone.
"To return to the former problem, before I say anything else, I won't think less of you if you admit that you're considering giving into the darkness, or even if I can't convince you to stop considering it. That in mind, what you also need to know is that it's a bad idea.
"Riku, and another one of my friends, Terra, tried that. Even when you believe that it's okay to hurt someone to help someone else, you're still losing faith in connections, and you're still taking your eyes off of how to help people in one or more fashions. So you'll lose your full awareness of how to consider their feelings and your own, and keep hurting them and yourself because you don't understand how to avoid doing so, or increasingly isolate yourself from them and have no recourse left but to focus more and more on your own feelings. You won't help Elsa that much, if at all. Or Kristoff or I. You'll make things worse for all of us. To apply Riku as an example, say that you use the darkness to cut down people, friends or allies, or enemies or opponents, to learn a skill that will enable you to keep someone; not Elsa; safe. You'll have kept that person safe, but the person you protected will feel terrible that one or more other people were put through pain to keep her or him or it from being hurt."
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
But if she didn't return to Elsa, without much more than seconds more delay, if any, Grandpa would destroy Elsa.
Grandpa's disapproval of her was the one thing Elsa would never be able to face at the best of times, and after everything that had happened since Lauriam and Elrena had first told them the real reason Mom, and Dad, had died, this was so far away from the best of times Anna couldn't think of any way at all she could define the concept of measuring the balance between this light in the deepest darkness, and this best and worst.
"There's always a way to a better answer. You don't need to hurt people to help people, no matter what's going on.
"So, can you please promise me that, no matter how terrible the danger of the Foretellers or Maleficent's Successor Organization Thirteen become, and whether or not you harness darkness in the future; you'll just accept it and look through it to the light and not hurt anyone with it, and you won't give into it and let it rule you?"
It felt like everything she knew, didn't know, wasn't, and was had been wrenched with anything outside as well as insides contorting and distorting illness out of her, and all existing reality, to lower her hand, but Anna dropped it.
The Dreg in front of her snorted audibly this time.
"Don't get any bright ideas about attempting to create a door to light yourself," it uttered, and now there was clear warning in its voice.
"We'll let you leave if you use a corridor of darkness to do it, but you're not getting out of Vanellope's heart with any kind of light."
Anna forced herself to give the Dreg a confident smile she couldn't even feel on her face, a lot less inside.
"Then I'll just need to find the next light thing, won't I?" she retorted with entirely steady confident and determined challenge.
"The ways you keep adapting your party lines are getting as old as the party lines themselves," the Dreg said back, a small amount of irritation in its voice now.
"But you can be my guest, as long as you still believe light and darkness are opposites that balance each other, and not one and the same, and light resides within it to guide you.
"The key phrase being as long as.
"Because we still haven't told you your true role, thus far, on both sides of the gameboard, ours, and the now obsolete Books of Prophecies we indulged Master Yozora's flibbertibigget of a strategizing capability by spying on.
"You still haven't remembered the exact reason Elsa's ice struck you in the noggin, and her life became a living nightmare for most of it thereafter.
"Reflect on what happened, and repent, Princess of Fracture, repent!"
"Wait!"
Not in this starscape!
Anna kept jumping from snow spire to snow spire, picking up her pace.
"Whoo-hoo!"
"Slow down!"
Elsa wished!
This was far too much fun; and Olaf was watching her; and Elsa was a whiz with ice, so there was nothing to worry about; and, most of all, Elsa still hadn't cheered all the way up after the sad story Mommy and Daddy had told them about the magic forest weeks ago, so Anna needed to smack her negatude upside the head by having as much fun as possible now, and showing Elsa just how awesomely radical she could really be with her ice talents when she put her mind to it!
No way was Anna going to slow down!
She leapt once again, and then again.
Elsa repositioned herself to attempt to keep up with her, but she misplaced one foot, slipped, scrambled for balance, and then fell on her back.
Undeterred, knowing Elsa would catch her, and refusing to let this turn into a literal wet blanket that disheartened Elsa, or just as literally dampened the good time they were having, Anna jumped, crying out in glee.
"Whoo!"
"Anna!"
Something solid and icy struck her on the left forehead, and then the stars out the window were replaced by full black.
No sentiment was present.
No self was present.
No thought was absent.
No knowledge was there.
No heart had once been.
Not one single thinnest and most frail spun glass shard of a ruined dream had existed since before the last and never wouldn't have been and always for eternity could never be real instant of imaginary time had first been hallucinated by feverish insanity.
This was the light that had guided her, through even the deepest darkness, for all of her life?
This was what love and warmth and trust and laughter and bringing home and childhood's fairy whimsies and protection and cherished dreams lit the way for people to?
"Never mind."
there was no there was within which a voice could have neverfor whispered imperceptible words untilfornever spoken for hearts to learn about, and understand.
extended
it was forever did a palm that couldn't there join hand in hand, and do wasn't hadn't clap in scintillating ebullient reflecting soaring spirals in complementary matched symphony with anyone
oval of the amorphous abyss burgeoned
barreled into it
.
"How can I repay you, brother mine?
How can I expect you to forgive?
Clinging to the past, I shed our blood
And shattered your chance to live
.
"Though I knew the laws, I paid no heed
How can I return your wasted breath?
What I did not know has cost you dear
For there is no cure for death
.
"Beautiful mother, soft and sweet
Once you were gone, we were not complete
Back through the years, we reached for you
Alas, 'twas not meant to be
.
"And how can I make amends
For all that I took from you?
I led you with hopeless dreams
My brother, I was a fool
.
"Don't cry for the past now, brother mine
Neither you nor I are free from blame
Nothing can erase the things we did
For the path we took was the same
.
"How can I expect to call you wrong?
How can you be blamed for what we've done?
Both of us were fools in our desires
And we flew too close to the Sun
.
"Beautiful mother, soft and sweet
Once you were gone, we were not complete
Back through the years, we reached for you
Alas, 'twas not meant to be
.
"My dreams made me blind and mute
I longed to return to that time
I followed without a word
My brother, the fault is mine
.
"And where do we go from here
And how to forget and forgive?
What's gone is forever lost
Now all we can do is live"
'Bratja'
FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST