A Tour And Some Problems - Castle Oblivion [completed log]
[continued from this scene. It's probably a history thread by now, my apologies for putting it up so late! x_x]
Naminé happily accepted River's hand and she helped the other girl up before leading her through the hallways. Again, Naminé sometimes was very thankful for her photographic memory; she navigated the bland hallways and corriders like a pro, never once questioning her own directions or stopping with uncertainty.
But she didn't want to seem rude, and it may have been somewhat intimidating to traverse these long halls with a stranger, even though Naminé knew she was not the most intimidating thing in the world. Quite far from it, actually. She attempted to strike up a conversation anyway, naturally curious about River and why she was in Castle Oblivion, of all places.
"How come Zexion brought you here?" She asked, trying to keep her tone conversational instead of questioning. "I mean, there have been a few Somebodies coming to the castle lately and it's just a bit strange, that's all."
River followed obediently, but the maze of hallways was immediately lost in her memory. There was not room for a place like this. Her awareness of space was dependent on darkness, much like vision is dependent on the presence of light, and these white hallways were built over perpetual twilight. After so many years in a single room, it would take time for her to remember how to find her way with sight rather than intuition.
Visually, though, the place was blinding. The walls that seemed bland to Namine were soaked in detail. Small things, like the glint of reflected light, distracted her from the path, and as she followed the girl her wide eyes focused on the walls and floors as if she'd never seen the shade of white. When Namine's voice broke through her reverie she hesitated, derailed, but quickly continued walking.
"It's time for you to go home now," she whispered, her voice taking on Zexion's inflection as she recited his words. "It's dangerous for you to stay here." River reached out to touch a wall and it slid smoothly beneath her fingers as she walked forward. "Then he took me into darkness." A few seconds passed as she reviewed the past two days, trying to sift through static for the relevant signal. Zexion had brought her here, but why? "There was a man, before," she continued, her voice now almost conversational. "A white and red man and when I woke up everything was cold and he made the room silent. I was there to help him. He told me to keep the days in order and he took me on a ship to find a boy with two voices, but then when we found him everyone was...there was no one there at all." River could not understand the chaos that preceded her arrival at the castle, but Namine said that they were different, that River was Somebody and she was not. Maybe the difference would show the girl pattern where River could see none. "Then I listened, and I found...them, the dark ones that were always there, then Zexion came and took me and gave me a coat." She pulled the hood over her head and smiled, only her grin visible beneath the shadow of dark leather. River really, really liked the coat.
Naminé's brow furrowed as River began speaking. She was used to people speaking in riddles; Axel was like that, saying things and waiting for her to find the meaning of his words, but it didn't seem like River was trying to be enigmatic. Naminé soon realized that she was imitating Zexion was she continued to speak, in a strange, disjointed way.
A white and red man... DiZ? The blonde suddenly understood; perhaps she was here by order of the Superior. River still had a heart, but she wasn't a new recruit into the Organization... And a boy with two voices? River must not have known their names, and automatically Naminé began to think. It was possible she did not know whom River was sent to look for, but she worked through the vague clues regardless. It was a practice she learned trying to decipher Axel's speech, after all.
Either way, it sounded like River was the victim of confusion before she came here. Naminé resolved to be as hospitable as possible. It was scary to be lost in the confusion of chaos, she would know, she was facing all too familiar circumstances four years ago. Was her world destroyed by darkness, and DiZ found it fit to relocate her here?
"I... see," Naminé tried to understand, but she decided not to press the subject. It sounded like River had encountered Heartless. Were those the dark ones she was speaking of? And who was this boy with two voi-
Her eyes lit up. She understood now.
"The boy with two voices. Do you know his name?"
River nodded and the hood fell back around her shoulders. "Land," she said. "In Japanese. Riku." She remembered her sense of the teenager, the peculiar way he'd felt against the fabric of darkness. River did not know what he looked like, though some words had been particularly resonant in the pale man's thoughts. Silver. Blindfold. The man had called him a shell, but that wasn't accurate. Shell implied a hollow case, and Riku was not hollow, although he was holding something. He had substance, but it was the other voice, the mostly sleeping voice, that River heard most clearly. That was the voice that had allowed her to sense the boy's presence, and although the memory made her hot with hatred, that was the voice she missed the most.
Riku! So that was whom River was looking for! At first, the blonde's eyes were lit up, excited by the name, but then the glow faded and Naminé's face took on an almost sorrowful expression. How long had River been looking? If she had to be taken back by Zexion... she did not know how long River was looking for him, but if she hadn't found him yet... Was it because of her? Naminé fought the urge to wring her hands again and smiled instead. She didn't want to worry in front of River. It might make the other girl uneasy.
"I know Riku..." She said, but couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence. Maybe she should have said "I knew Riku." That is, if... No, she couldn't be thinking such things.
"We're almost there to the kitchen. I'm just glad you're not a research subject... I think."
The flicker in Naminé's expression caught River's interest, but as usual, nothing held her interest for long. Her eyes darted to the wall, then to the floor. "Riku," she said again, though it was more a matter of tasting the two syllables than repeating them to the other girl. "I didn't know him."
The statement was flat, final, and encompassed far more than her feelings for the boy whose merged presence had suddenly vanished. River's fingers returned to one of the silver beads dangling from her hood. She was quickly learning that no one was ever known. She pondered this, the relation between two people, knowing and unknown, and how she could be aware of presence without physical sight yet see this girl, that man, without sensing their presence, and her thoughts looped. The loop continued, and continued, and continued, and-
Research subject. The girl's statement had almost been lost, but those two words could have found her anywhere, broken any loop of thought. Her eyes widened and her hand immediately left the bead, crossed her body as the other pressed to her temple. Was this part of it? Was this research? Was this a simulation, an extension of the white room, a maze for a fragmented, reconstructed rat?
The girl was glad that River was not a research subject. But if she was not, the girl would not know to be glad. She thinks. Almost there, to the kitchen. The chosen path, the fork, leading to knives and cheese.
She backed up, her muscles tense. The girl was a part of it. Was the girl a part of it? So sweet, but nothing underneath, no shadow, simulacrum. A wall of the maze, a fork to see which direction she would take. Schroedinger. Her words were important, then. She could be destroyed and remade, a cat in poisonous gas. Cat and rat, mazed, amazed, razed. She could run, if the maze were made of walls, but only the girl knew the way. "No," she said, her voice half plea and half insistence. "Food and...no. Not forks and knives, almost there. No."
"Oh..." So River really hadn't seen Riku. Naminé frowned, but she told herself she'd have to stop that. It wasn't River's problem anymore, if River was returned to the castle. She could only hope that River would be set free after this. One thing she never, ever liked about the Organization was how they simply grabbed people based on their need. They never took the other person's feelings into consideration; but they couldn't, because they were Nobodies and they had no feelings.
Naminé was glad she still had a sense of empathy, and that was good because what she said earlier seemed to have caused River a great amount of distress. Was it the kitchen or ... the fact she said research, or...?
Naminé stopped and watched River back away. The older girl started to babble, worrying the witch even more. Knives and forks? Was she afraid of them or something?
"River? It's OK, there's nothing in the kitchen to be afraid of..."
"No!" River said, now forceful. Her fingers dug through her hair, trying to force their way into her skull to push out the painful invasion of thought. "Kitchens, and...No. No!" She moved back as far as she could, which wasn't far due to the smooth wall. Her body was tense as her mind spun through the muddy impulses of fight and flight. Nothing to fight. Nowhere to run. River understood with certainty that the kitchen, some kitchen, any kitchen contained a world she did not want to return to. The research was over. She'd been frozen and unfrozen and she was far away now, even away from the psychic noise of other peoples' existences. River remembered the pale man, the inexplicable certainty that she'd been given to him to help him. He hadn't tried to hurt her. She was no longer a research subject. Research was over. She was the completed prototype.
Naminé did not want to hurt her, and River knew that Naminé, if she were real and not an illusion, did not understand what was going on. Naminé did not understand that they were going to cut her up and sew her back together. With nowhere else to retreat, River slid a few inches sideways along the wall and glanced from one direction to the other, searching for escape. Every direction was the same. This was not a place, where every direction was the same.
Her wide eyes returned to the blond girl, but she saw her through the filter of this impossibly white building, these impossibly directionless hallways. Either illusion or construction. Nothing here existed. "This is not a real place," River told her, her voice shot through with panic
Naminé words seemed to have no effect on River, and it seemed that River was going to try to run away. Naminé starte to panic a little herself; River might get lost! Would she be able to find the wayward girl? Either way, the memory witch knew she had to calm the older girl down before someone got hurt. Naminé wasn't as concerned for her own safety as she was River's, and the smaller blonde was about to move forward and try to put a hand on her shoulder, to comfort River.
But what River said about Castle Oblivion made Naminé stop in motion, her hand outstretched in the air. It wavered for a second and the witch drew it back quickly, as if burned by River's words. This place... it was not real, was it?
She was reminded of how Riku described the world outside as "real", as if this place was not. If River said the same thing as well... The blonde shook her head and attempted to lay a hand on River's shoulder again.
"I... I know. This place isn't... real, but I'm real, and so are you, River. You are safe here, and that's real. I do not know why you're here but I will protect you, OK? There's nothing to worry about..."
Naminé did not make promises she didn't intend to keep. She would try to protect this poor girl. Surely, once Riku returned, he could take her back to wherever River came from? Or at least some place safer then Castle Oblivion...
The first time Naminé reached for River's shoulder, the girl recoiled, still terrified. Knives, silver scalpels. She remembered them as a hazy dream but she knew that life of anesthesia and sleep had been real, just as she knew that this world, so crisp and clear, was false. It wasn't the fiction of the white building that terrified her, but the implication of that fiction. Someone was creating this in her mind, building her reality with chemicals and electricity. She was still under observation, still held, her body in a small room as corridors blossomed like flowers in her thoughts.
And Naminé believed in it.
The blond girl, an illusion herself, seemed sentient and alive. She was a conscious simulation, a simulation without an awareness of being a simulation, an electric ant. Through her panic River felt a rush of sympathy, an understanding. The second time Namine reached for her, River stood still.
The girl could not protect her. No one could protect her, not even herself. For the first time, River missed something, but the memory short-circuited and crumpled into static.
"No kitchen," she said quietly, her voice still wavering and uncertain. "Knives and...no, I can't go back there."
Naminé couldn't even begin to understand what had happened to River to get such a response from the older girl, but she didn't press the subject. A quick look into River's memories might have given the blonde answers, but Naminé could not do that. Powers like hers were not meant to be used, after all.
"We won't go to the kitchen, I promise." Naminé reassured River, trying to get the other girl back up on her feet and back the way they came. Naminé knew the way, although she wasn't sure if River had her own room or if she had free reign of the entire castle. But either way, Naminé would make sure River got as far away from the kitchen as possible.
"I can take you back to your room if you have one.... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm really sorry..." The witch apologized, head bowed.
Naminé happily accepted River's hand and she helped the other girl up before leading her through the hallways. Again, Naminé sometimes was very thankful for her photographic memory; she navigated the bland hallways and corriders like a pro, never once questioning her own directions or stopping with uncertainty.
But she didn't want to seem rude, and it may have been somewhat intimidating to traverse these long halls with a stranger, even though Naminé knew she was not the most intimidating thing in the world. Quite far from it, actually. She attempted to strike up a conversation anyway, naturally curious about River and why she was in Castle Oblivion, of all places.
"How come Zexion brought you here?" She asked, trying to keep her tone conversational instead of questioning. "I mean, there have been a few Somebodies coming to the castle lately and it's just a bit strange, that's all."
River followed obediently, but the maze of hallways was immediately lost in her memory. There was not room for a place like this. Her awareness of space was dependent on darkness, much like vision is dependent on the presence of light, and these white hallways were built over perpetual twilight. After so many years in a single room, it would take time for her to remember how to find her way with sight rather than intuition.
Visually, though, the place was blinding. The walls that seemed bland to Namine were soaked in detail. Small things, like the glint of reflected light, distracted her from the path, and as she followed the girl her wide eyes focused on the walls and floors as if she'd never seen the shade of white. When Namine's voice broke through her reverie she hesitated, derailed, but quickly continued walking.
"It's time for you to go home now," she whispered, her voice taking on Zexion's inflection as she recited his words. "It's dangerous for you to stay here." River reached out to touch a wall and it slid smoothly beneath her fingers as she walked forward. "Then he took me into darkness." A few seconds passed as she reviewed the past two days, trying to sift through static for the relevant signal. Zexion had brought her here, but why? "There was a man, before," she continued, her voice now almost conversational. "A white and red man and when I woke up everything was cold and he made the room silent. I was there to help him. He told me to keep the days in order and he took me on a ship to find a boy with two voices, but then when we found him everyone was...there was no one there at all." River could not understand the chaos that preceded her arrival at the castle, but Namine said that they were different, that River was Somebody and she was not. Maybe the difference would show the girl pattern where River could see none. "Then I listened, and I found...them, the dark ones that were always there, then Zexion came and took me and gave me a coat." She pulled the hood over her head and smiled, only her grin visible beneath the shadow of dark leather. River really, really liked the coat.
Naminé's brow furrowed as River began speaking. She was used to people speaking in riddles; Axel was like that, saying things and waiting for her to find the meaning of his words, but it didn't seem like River was trying to be enigmatic. Naminé soon realized that she was imitating Zexion was she continued to speak, in a strange, disjointed way.
A white and red man... DiZ? The blonde suddenly understood; perhaps she was here by order of the Superior. River still had a heart, but she wasn't a new recruit into the Organization... And a boy with two voices? River must not have known their names, and automatically Naminé began to think. It was possible she did not know whom River was sent to look for, but she worked through the vague clues regardless. It was a practice she learned trying to decipher Axel's speech, after all.
Either way, it sounded like River was the victim of confusion before she came here. Naminé resolved to be as hospitable as possible. It was scary to be lost in the confusion of chaos, she would know, she was facing all too familiar circumstances four years ago. Was her world destroyed by darkness, and DiZ found it fit to relocate her here?
"I... see," Naminé tried to understand, but she decided not to press the subject. It sounded like River had encountered Heartless. Were those the dark ones she was speaking of? And who was this boy with two voi-
Her eyes lit up. She understood now.
"The boy with two voices. Do you know his name?"
River nodded and the hood fell back around her shoulders. "Land," she said. "In Japanese. Riku." She remembered her sense of the teenager, the peculiar way he'd felt against the fabric of darkness. River did not know what he looked like, though some words had been particularly resonant in the pale man's thoughts. Silver. Blindfold. The man had called him a shell, but that wasn't accurate. Shell implied a hollow case, and Riku was not hollow, although he was holding something. He had substance, but it was the other voice, the mostly sleeping voice, that River heard most clearly. That was the voice that had allowed her to sense the boy's presence, and although the memory made her hot with hatred, that was the voice she missed the most.
Riku! So that was whom River was looking for! At first, the blonde's eyes were lit up, excited by the name, but then the glow faded and Naminé's face took on an almost sorrowful expression. How long had River been looking? If she had to be taken back by Zexion... she did not know how long River was looking for him, but if she hadn't found him yet... Was it because of her? Naminé fought the urge to wring her hands again and smiled instead. She didn't want to worry in front of River. It might make the other girl uneasy.
"I know Riku..." She said, but couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence. Maybe she should have said "I knew Riku." That is, if... No, she couldn't be thinking such things.
"We're almost there to the kitchen. I'm just glad you're not a research subject... I think."
The flicker in Naminé's expression caught River's interest, but as usual, nothing held her interest for long. Her eyes darted to the wall, then to the floor. "Riku," she said again, though it was more a matter of tasting the two syllables than repeating them to the other girl. "I didn't know him."
The statement was flat, final, and encompassed far more than her feelings for the boy whose merged presence had suddenly vanished. River's fingers returned to one of the silver beads dangling from her hood. She was quickly learning that no one was ever known. She pondered this, the relation between two people, knowing and unknown, and how she could be aware of presence without physical sight yet see this girl, that man, without sensing their presence, and her thoughts looped. The loop continued, and continued, and continued, and-
Research subject. The girl's statement had almost been lost, but those two words could have found her anywhere, broken any loop of thought. Her eyes widened and her hand immediately left the bead, crossed her body as the other pressed to her temple. Was this part of it? Was this research? Was this a simulation, an extension of the white room, a maze for a fragmented, reconstructed rat?
The girl was glad that River was not a research subject. But if she was not, the girl would not know to be glad. She thinks. Almost there, to the kitchen. The chosen path, the fork, leading to knives and cheese.
She backed up, her muscles tense. The girl was a part of it. Was the girl a part of it? So sweet, but nothing underneath, no shadow, simulacrum. A wall of the maze, a fork to see which direction she would take. Schroedinger. Her words were important, then. She could be destroyed and remade, a cat in poisonous gas. Cat and rat, mazed, amazed, razed. She could run, if the maze were made of walls, but only the girl knew the way. "No," she said, her voice half plea and half insistence. "Food and...no. Not forks and knives, almost there. No."
"Oh..." So River really hadn't seen Riku. Naminé frowned, but she told herself she'd have to stop that. It wasn't River's problem anymore, if River was returned to the castle. She could only hope that River would be set free after this. One thing she never, ever liked about the Organization was how they simply grabbed people based on their need. They never took the other person's feelings into consideration; but they couldn't, because they were Nobodies and they had no feelings.
Naminé was glad she still had a sense of empathy, and that was good because what she said earlier seemed to have caused River a great amount of distress. Was it the kitchen or ... the fact she said research, or...?
Naminé stopped and watched River back away. The older girl started to babble, worrying the witch even more. Knives and forks? Was she afraid of them or something?
"River? It's OK, there's nothing in the kitchen to be afraid of..."
"No!" River said, now forceful. Her fingers dug through her hair, trying to force their way into her skull to push out the painful invasion of thought. "Kitchens, and...No. No!" She moved back as far as she could, which wasn't far due to the smooth wall. Her body was tense as her mind spun through the muddy impulses of fight and flight. Nothing to fight. Nowhere to run. River understood with certainty that the kitchen, some kitchen, any kitchen contained a world she did not want to return to. The research was over. She'd been frozen and unfrozen and she was far away now, even away from the psychic noise of other peoples' existences. River remembered the pale man, the inexplicable certainty that she'd been given to him to help him. He hadn't tried to hurt her. She was no longer a research subject. Research was over. She was the completed prototype.
Naminé did not want to hurt her, and River knew that Naminé, if she were real and not an illusion, did not understand what was going on. Naminé did not understand that they were going to cut her up and sew her back together. With nowhere else to retreat, River slid a few inches sideways along the wall and glanced from one direction to the other, searching for escape. Every direction was the same. This was not a place, where every direction was the same.
Her wide eyes returned to the blond girl, but she saw her through the filter of this impossibly white building, these impossibly directionless hallways. Either illusion or construction. Nothing here existed. "This is not a real place," River told her, her voice shot through with panic
Naminé words seemed to have no effect on River, and it seemed that River was going to try to run away. Naminé starte to panic a little herself; River might get lost! Would she be able to find the wayward girl? Either way, the memory witch knew she had to calm the older girl down before someone got hurt. Naminé wasn't as concerned for her own safety as she was River's, and the smaller blonde was about to move forward and try to put a hand on her shoulder, to comfort River.
But what River said about Castle Oblivion made Naminé stop in motion, her hand outstretched in the air. It wavered for a second and the witch drew it back quickly, as if burned by River's words. This place... it was not real, was it?
She was reminded of how Riku described the world outside as "real", as if this place was not. If River said the same thing as well... The blonde shook her head and attempted to lay a hand on River's shoulder again.
"I... I know. This place isn't... real, but I'm real, and so are you, River. You are safe here, and that's real. I do not know why you're here but I will protect you, OK? There's nothing to worry about..."
Naminé did not make promises she didn't intend to keep. She would try to protect this poor girl. Surely, once Riku returned, he could take her back to wherever River came from? Or at least some place safer then Castle Oblivion...
The first time Naminé reached for River's shoulder, the girl recoiled, still terrified. Knives, silver scalpels. She remembered them as a hazy dream but she knew that life of anesthesia and sleep had been real, just as she knew that this world, so crisp and clear, was false. It wasn't the fiction of the white building that terrified her, but the implication of that fiction. Someone was creating this in her mind, building her reality with chemicals and electricity. She was still under observation, still held, her body in a small room as corridors blossomed like flowers in her thoughts.
And Naminé believed in it.
The blond girl, an illusion herself, seemed sentient and alive. She was a conscious simulation, a simulation without an awareness of being a simulation, an electric ant. Through her panic River felt a rush of sympathy, an understanding. The second time Namine reached for her, River stood still.
The girl could not protect her. No one could protect her, not even herself. For the first time, River missed something, but the memory short-circuited and crumpled into static.
"No kitchen," she said quietly, her voice still wavering and uncertain. "Knives and...no, I can't go back there."
Naminé couldn't even begin to understand what had happened to River to get such a response from the older girl, but she didn't press the subject. A quick look into River's memories might have given the blonde answers, but Naminé could not do that. Powers like hers were not meant to be used, after all.
"We won't go to the kitchen, I promise." Naminé reassured River, trying to get the other girl back up on her feet and back the way they came. Naminé knew the way, although she wasn't sure if River had her own room or if she had free reign of the entire castle. But either way, Naminé would make sure River got as far away from the kitchen as possible.
"I can take you back to your room if you have one.... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm really sorry..." The witch apologized, head bowed.