Detention, Depths of the Castle, Tuesday
Another bright, shining, and pink day had begun for the prisoners guests being held in detention, and while the morning started off the same as the day before, there was a strange sort of feeling in the air once people began waking up. A kind of... musical feeling, in fact
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Rinoa stopped singing abruptly as her eyes focused on Emma. Not the one who came here and hurt her. Safe?
Nothing was safe. If nothing was safe, then it didn't matter what safe was.
Did it? Didn't it?
"I want my magic back," she said, quietly. She was tired, and hurt, and almost past the point of caring about anything else.
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"I don't blame you," Emma said, softening her voice and going over to kneel beside the other girl, ignoring the filth on her pristine white pants. "If they took my power, I'd want it back too."
"What's your name, darling?"
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"Rinoa," she said, hesitant, yet eager to please her new friend. Maybe it didn't have to be like this? Maybe this was all a misunderstanding. "They ... they put a wall in my head so ... so I can't get to it. But I can't stop trying. It hurts."
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Amateur.
"Rinoa, I'm going try and make the wall hurt a little less, but it will funny for a moment," Emma soothed. On one hand, finally, she could help someone in her own way. On the other, this was very delicate. She was delicate. "Fuzzy, a bit. Can you tell me about your magic?"
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She was getting off-topic, and this was important. She used what dignity she had to pull herself together and focus.
"It's who I am," she explained. "I am magic. There's so much that I once had trouble controlling it. And now it's gone. But it can't ever really go away, because it's me. So there's ... a wall. To keep it away. It aches. It misses me. And I try to push through the wall, because if I can get through it everything will be okay again. I'll be me and I won't be here and I'll make them all sorry ( ... )
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"Rinoa, they won't let me take you out of here if you say you want to hurt people," Emma pointed out. "Uncontrolled magic is scary, and there's lots of young kids out there who might get hurt if it all burst out at once."
"But let's start with what I can fix right now. The magic is making you sick, trying to get out, so we're going to find a way to make it not hurt so much," she continued. "Did anyone ever teach you meditation?"
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Boulders falling from the sky, and landing on her face. That was a good start.
The question. That was important to focus on. Come on, Rinoa, think.
"Edea," she said. "Edea tried. I'm not good at meditating. My thoughts wander. And now I can't think about anything. I just push on the wall and it won't give."
Normal people would stop pushing. But then they didn't feel that deep, frantic need.
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Mean, Emma.
"Why don't we think about the wall? Only we'll make it Our Wall." Emma's voice fell into the sing-song quality she used with baby-psis, to help them slip into the transition more easily. "It's a tall, stone wall, like in the Secret Garden. Did you ever read that? But it's tall, impossibly tall, but old. You can see the rose trees inside starting to spill over the top, and bits of vine starting to creep through the cracks. The magic is in there, sleeping, growing, waiting for when your body is strong enough to turn the key. It will wait for you, because it was meant to wait for you ( ... )
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So Rinoa was going to see the wall in her mind. Stones. The rose trees. The warm, safe feeling. The itch, the need was dimming; she still craved the other part of herself, on the other side of the wall, but now, but now the pressure had dimmed. Maybe her magic was sleeping. She didn't want to wake it.
"C-can I have a field?" she asked. "A field with flowers, where Squall promised me he'd wait. And Angelo's running, and playing ..."
She could see it. It was almost as real as when Sookie drew it for her.
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Angelo had to be alive, because the world without Angelo was too horrible to imagine. Angelo was just an innocent bundle of joy. Bad things shouldn't happen to those.
"Thank you," she said softly. From her, the her that was still able to think, to someone who was kind when she didn't need to be. Who may have just saved what was left of Rinoa's mind.
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