melodiesoflife | Event || In Your Worst Memory

Event || In Your Worst Memory

Characters: All Heroes of Light. Only those who signed-up can start a memory.
Where: Interdimensional Rift
When: May 27th - May 30th
Summary: The Heroes of Light relive some of their worst memories, with a twist. All characters participating in this will be physically missing from Crystallis for the duration of the event.
Warning: It depends on the memory.

Where you were or what you were doing— It does not really matter. Not any more. Everything around you freezes, nearly as if time itself stopped, as if the world was frozen in time. And before you have a chance to understand what is happening, you can hear a voice right behind you.

"Kali Shashidhwaja."

Should you turn around, you may see a child who seems to be the only one aside from you unaffected by what is happening. And as she stares right at you, it makes no doubt these strange words are aimed at you. But before you can reply to her, the world around you collapses. Reality twists and shatters... Or maybe you are the one who is collapsing and shattering away from reality as you know it. No matter what the answer is, it will only take a few seconds for you to find yourself sinking into a void, Crystallis vanishing into the distance. There is nothing but darkness as far as the eye can see.

And once again you feel different: all the powers from your Jobs are fading. Not only that, but you might find that your Crystal is gone and your clothes back to what they were before you woke up in Crystallis. It is silent, cold and before long it feels as though life itself is slipping out of you... And yet, slowly the world reforms around you. The darkness fades away and a new world appears, yet at the same time this is not a world.

This is a memory. The question is, is it yours or that of someone else?

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Ashelia nodded along with Sephiroth's words. She followed his logic, but it seemed to her as if he had missed her point entirely. There was much about his situation she didn't yet know - her younger self had been so engrossed in fighting all the time, in gaining power and putting it to more direct use, she was unaware of the previous cycle's Sephiroth, and his betrayal. Ashelia wasn't generally one to try and simplify things to make them easier to deal with, but it seemed the best tact for this mess. There was no other word to describe it.

"Is it impossible to stop?" Ashelia crossed her arms, bringing a finger to her chin and tilting her head to the side in thought. "In the end, it is your decision, either way. You must decide what is more important to you, for good or ill. You know what events lie ahead from here." The queen gestured around them. "You did not, before, simply put. You've the power of foresight. Weigh your options. What did you pursue? Was it worth it?"

She sighed quietly, shaking her head. "And, I daresay, you've comrades where you did not before, as well. Lady Zelda, Ib, myself. Others, I'm sure. Third parties, unaware of your past, who trust you as a result of your actions." She shrugged, a strange movement for her, but there was nothing else for it. "My point is, Sephiroth, that your path is yours alone to walk. You put one foot in front of the other just as surely as you breathe in and out, as you draw and sheathe your sword. You've the information you need now to make a choice, it would seem. And so." She righted herself, standing straight and tall, short as she was. "Easier said than done, but there it is."

Groaning under the weight of a multitude of insecurities, flared up again in the wake of the scene presented before him, there would be little surprise that Sephiroth's usually sharp-mind may well have missed Ashelia's point entirely. He was quickly becoming consumed by something so much more bitter than simple self-loathing and the fact was it had been rooted in him for a while; the difference being he could distract himself from it before and was quickly running out of workable methods to do so.

"What if I don't have this foresight, when these events come to pass? If they come to pass at all?" With great effort Sephiroth forced himself to reply, quietly as if the words might shatter something delicate, with questions to her questions. It was all very well saying that now he held all of the cards that he should be able to play the game and win, but what if it didn't work like that. He knew at least two people from his world who had 'aged' when they had returned before.

"What will happen should I succumb to crystal stasis then - am I expected to come back changed, as the events of my life progress? If I come back at all?" He didn't much like that thought, and the inherent fear that he'd always had about the stasis came back with a new vehemence. It flared up along all the other emotions going on behind his carefully upheld facade, even though the strain was obvious just in the way Sephiroth held himself. Too controlled.

Still, the fact that Ashelia didn't know the details made it very easy for her to comment and easier to simplify things in her ignorance. He'd most likely regret it later, but Sephiroth couldn't expect Ashelia to fully appreciate the weight he was carrying over it all unless she knew a little more. The concern over whether he trusted her enough to know, for once, wasn't at the forefront of his mind. At the very least she'd already shared her demons with him and it seemed fair.

"To put it in context. You'd have destroyed a nation." He swallowed sternly, to dismiss an alien-feeling shakiness that had spawned "I will never stop in my attempts to destroy the entire world. In the name of vengeance, over all the lies that comprised my life, and a concept of destiny that I come to believe is mine to take where it had been denied by my Mother before me."

At the end, he took a breath and seemed to hold it for a few moments before forcing it out of his nose. As if making it seem as casual as a huff would somehow make it all feel lighter as a result.

"What if? What if I hadn't the foresight to see through the gods' tricks? What if I had, as man is wont to do, succumbed to the lust for power bred in me by generations of men and women worshiping the Dynast-King and his Golden Age? What if I followed what I was made to believe was my destiny, and brought down righteous judgment against all those who had wronged me? What if I did not stopped there - what if I kept going, anointed as I was as the gods' chosen Saint? What if, what if, what if."

Ashelia took a breath, shaking her head. Since ascending the throne and losing touch with her friends, she had rarely let herself get so emotional about things. It came as something of a surprise, that she cared so much about the torment of the man in front of her. He was from a different world, a different dimension. His problems were not her own; she need only occupy herself with the needs of her people, after all.

"Sephiroth..." She sighed lightly as she sat down on the steps, tucking her knees to the side in a ladylike fashion. "The longer I am alive, the more I am convinced that there is no good or evil. Just people, and choices. The choices one makes affects others, positively or negatively, and there is conflict as a result, or there is not. In the end, choices must be made. Decisions must be come to. To dither in the what-ifs cannot change anything. Only delay." She held onto one of the bars holding up the banister with one hand, squeezing it as she might the hand of a friend in consolation.

There was silence for a time before Ashelia began to speak again. "I was asked once," she began, "by the very man who orchestrated the destruction of everything I held dear, who I was and what was it that I wanted? Was I an angel of vengeance? Or a saint of salvation?" She paused, shrugging, looking altogether like a very different person than how she presented herself to the Heroes usually; in fact, she looked more like that young, scared princess crying in the servants' staircase in her shift, though presently she was far from tears. Just...wistful? "I told him, 'I am simply myself. No more and no less. And I want only to be free.' I didn't know what it meant at the time, not exactly. I still am not entirely sure. Here, in Crystallis, without my crown, without my people to protect, the law to uphold, who am I? What do I want?"

Ashe - because she was Ashe now, not Ashelia - tapped on the bar, feeling out one of the divots in the cold metal. "Well, Sephiroth, I now pose that same question to you. Who are you? What do you want?"

The weight maintained in Ashelia's words pressed down even harder on Sephiroth's shoulders the more that she went on. He had never been one to overly concern himself with the 'what-if', as the 'will be' was far more relevant to take into account. There was little point weighing up those variables which were uncontrollable and sometimes even random in nature; the silver-Hero had only ever dealt with hard facts. She was right, he was dithering and stumbling under the gravity of consequences presented to him...yet only as revelations they did little to change him at all.

But then why did it feel as if it changed everything?

Sephiroth closed his eyes firmly and canted his head down and away from Ashelia as she arrived at the final question. Within familiar folds of leather he felt almost unnaturally hot, feverish almost with shame rising up into the roots of his hair. It was sickening how he might have heard this question coming even before she spoke it, yet still even with that extra time he had no idea how to answer it.

It was like that time, once, within the midst of battle that his opponent had lowered her blade for a moment and they had both been caught in a pause; why do you fight? - the words rung around inside and for a few beats longer it was as if Ashelia were not even sat there.

"I-" It was almost as if that scene were repeating itself in his mind, overlaying itself across his minds eye as still Sephiroth kept his eyes closed, it was the only way he could keep a handle on the swelling sensation going on in his core. He had let his emotions have quite enough of a run around recently and given his mako-enhanced state here they needed to be kept under control now more than ever.

"-if only I knew the right answer for that question." The mood dropped noticeably, like a drop in pressure before a storm as Sephiroth turned from where Ashelia were sat. An attempt to get his stone-wall back up, but a poor one.

Ashe nodded slowly. "I understand. It is not an easy conclusion to come to, not when one is yet to finish their journey." And there was the inherent paradox - how was one to know if they were not finished? When does one finish their journey? Is it ever finished?

"Suffice to say that, you know where this road leads," she gestured around them, ending with a point up the stairs to that most ominous of doors. "Or, where it lead. But you know not where Crystallis' road goes. Further destruction, by your own hand or someone else's, or salvation?"

She sighed, pulling herself back up to her feet. "I want..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "I want to end the suffering of the people of Crystallis, of the Heroes of Light. I want to put an end to the cycle. I want to mend the Crystal. I want to see our companions home. That is what I want. That...that is enough for me, for now." She took a couple of steps toward the exit before looking back at Sephiroth. "For what it's worth, I do hope your goals align with mine in the end."

Edited 2015-06-29 18:43 (UTC)

The pointed gesture up at the door at the top of the stairwell led Sephiroth's glance that way where he had half-looked back over an armored shoulder at her. For a fleeting moment, it seemed his eyes shone with something other than just the inherent mako he was infused with but then he blinked and narrowed them instead.

Ashe didn't seem to be getting the whole point, or perhaps he were the one giving the revelation too much weight; that it might drag his past behind him regardless of where his future might now lead in Crystallis. Still, to disregard it completely would be to accept nothing but the lie of his entire history.

At the end, he found that he'd turned a little to look over Ashe again as she came towards the exit. She had left him with a great deal more to think about and he imagined his consciousness heaved with strain currently. But really, where -did- he intend to go from here?

"I hope that will be the case, as well. Anything less would be a failure."

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Event || In Your Worst Memory

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