[Week 25 | Day 4] (Dream) Never Let You Fall Alone
(Around 4 in the afternoon)
The first thing you notice isn’t sight or touch or scent, but sound.The faint tapping, almost like marble upon marble, and the steady, dispassionate cadence of voices. Yet these voices, for all that they’re speaking in a language that is too vast for you to grasp, ring with the clear echo of many, many voices.
As if the two speakers - and you can make out that much now, that there are only two - are nothing more than the collection of countless voices speaking with an unnatural unity. The sound of their voices, so melodic and hypnotic, still echo with varying traces of an almost smug triumph in the one and bitter defeat in the other, for all that you can tell they’re superficially polite.
And beneath it all, the occasional tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to wrap your senses around these being - your mind, like any mortal mind, shies away from the sheer wealth of an ageless knowledge and power and so you scramble to find an anchor, a way to ground yourself before you lose yourself to their overwhelming force of simply being.
What surprises you into opening your eyes isn’t something that’s said - it’s something you feel. The light weight of something delicate in your hands. The darkness fades as you blink your eyes into focus, only to see a little chess piece, carved in intricate detail, in the form of a vaguely familiar face.
The old man, who’d owned a teahouse. He’d been soft-spoken and kind…Iroh. Yes, Iroh was his name.
But why…
Another piece, and this one more familiar, the conversations with her interesting. Valeria. Her idea to try to reach a god worth the attempt, though they’d had little by the way of luck.
Another blink to show your confusion before you lift your eyes…and stare across a vast chessboard. At least, it has the vague impression of being such.
Yet even the board is almost too complex to grasp, curving in intricate arcs, as if a flower in bloom or ripples of water from a pebble dropped.
You try to struggle, to grasp something far beyond your reach, the muted shades of fear threading their way into your heart because there - there - you see familiar faces.
Lavi. Rin. Vincent. Lenalee. Chrome. Byakuya. Johan. Lelouch. Kakashi. Jay. Renji. Matt. Miharu. Kanda. Allen. Juudai. Ginko. Marco.
Yoite.
Yourself.
Gau.
So many, many more - faces you don’t recall ever seeing. Faces you’ve seen across the Hitomi yet don’t know the names. There, gone, here, lost.
People you’ve struggled against and struggled for in your tumultuous time in this place.
But the board is confusing - you can’t tell just which pieces belong to which side - or which hand that reaches out to move one or the others is the one you should accept or reject. And even as you struggle, grasping like a child for an adult understanding just beyond your reach, piece after piece is placed in your outstretched palms.
So you stare at those palms and curve your hands protectively, because that’s all you can do - protect those within your grasp, gently. Calmly.
Your hands remain steady with their weight of responsibility.
It’s in that moment, where you realize responsibility was charged and accepted, placed squarely and evenly across your shoulders that you glance back up - because there is a piece missing, isn’t there?
And that missing piece - the one you’ve been reaching and reaching for only to watch it step further beyond your grasp - that’s the source of your fear.
Which is why your gaze snaps up to the pieces on the board, your focus sharp, intent, as your sight slips past one perfect replica to the next, looking for the scar, until your eyes clash with what was once a warm sable regard, now a hardened umber.
Your breath catches in shock at the sight because kind, gentle, strong Iruka - the man that had somehow become friend and mentor, confidante and brother-in-arms - has changed. This man standing on the opposite side of this quagmire board is lost, his light fading. There is an ugly shade of bitterness and resentment slowly poisoning his skin, darkening his mind, unbalancing him.
Even from where you stand, you can see the tremble in his hands, the way each piece placed there forces the man to list a little more to the side.
You want to shout past the rising unease, the hint of panic. Because he can’t - he cannot give in to those thoughts and that despair. You want to remind him of the boy he’d mentioned back in his world - the blond that made him smile and gave him hope, yet your voice is too small.
It cannot reach him, no matter how hard you try.
And still, your hands never waver. Your stance remains balanced, as if on the tip of a blade.
Another piece is taken off the board, then another... but the last...
Kakashi’s piece. Almost placed in Iruka’s hands and you can see them begin to shake, the pieces nearly rattling out of his grasp, when in a divine twist of cruelty, the piece is placed in your own hands instead.
It’s too much - why would they do such a thing?
You want to scream that question at these beings, terrible in their inhumanity, yet you can’t find the voice to, because Iruka is already screaming.
He’s screaming and screaming, rage and an impotent anger pushing him beyond his endurance and you watch in abject horror as the pieces fall like raindrops from his hands, lost in the void as your friend finally falls.
But it’s not gentle hands that reach up to catch him - no that’s not a kindness being offered to soften the series of blows - it’s gaunt hands, cracked and bleeding, black talons dripping in blood that bite into flesh and pull him through the gate to hell.
And Iruka...he just smiles.
“What will he do? Will your Bishop follow the Rook? Or will he let the pieces fall?”
“These children are quite unpredictable...but we choose our pieces wisely, and with a purpose. That is the difference between us that you have yet to grasp.”
"...so you deem the exchange sacrifice acceptable?"
The pieces are gone from your hands, and the flash, like a key to a lock is there in your mind: The gate to Yomi there, clear before you. It’s a place you know, that you found with Iruka through all your research.
The image there and gone, those echoed words there in your mind...and without hesitation...
[He wakes with a sharply drawn breath. The message couldn’t be clearer, not even if it was spelled out in every language he knows. Which is why, for the moment, he ignores the Hitomi around his wrist and springs to his feet from where he’d fallen asleep in prayer. The temple flashes past as he strides quickly towards the entrance, pauses only long enough to slip on sandals and return the gleaming white katana to his side, his expression set with a grim kind of determination before the Hitomi cuts off.]
(OOC Note: Every face currently in Kannagara can be seen in that chess set - it's only that there are a LOT of new faces that he's yet to meet, so HE can't place name to a face yet. This was plotted with the Iruka-mun before she left - I'm just now getting to it ICly. >.< Feel free to react to that if you want!)
The first thing you notice isn’t sight or touch or scent, but sound.The faint tapping, almost like marble upon marble, and the steady, dispassionate cadence of voices. Yet these voices, for all that they’re speaking in a language that is too vast for you to grasp, ring with the clear echo of many, many voices.
As if the two speakers - and you can make out that much now, that there are only two - are nothing more than the collection of countless voices speaking with an unnatural unity. The sound of their voices, so melodic and hypnotic, still echo with varying traces of an almost smug triumph in the one and bitter defeat in the other, for all that you can tell they’re superficially polite.
And beneath it all, the occasional tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to wrap your senses around these being - your mind, like any mortal mind, shies away from the sheer wealth of an ageless knowledge and power and so you scramble to find an anchor, a way to ground yourself before you lose yourself to their overwhelming force of simply being.
What surprises you into opening your eyes isn’t something that’s said - it’s something you feel. The light weight of something delicate in your hands. The darkness fades as you blink your eyes into focus, only to see a little chess piece, carved in intricate detail, in the form of a vaguely familiar face.
The old man, who’d owned a teahouse. He’d been soft-spoken and kind…Iroh. Yes, Iroh was his name.
But why…
Another piece, and this one more familiar, the conversations with her interesting. Valeria. Her idea to try to reach a god worth the attempt, though they’d had little by the way of luck.
Another blink to show your confusion before you lift your eyes…and stare across a vast chessboard. At least, it has the vague impression of being such.
Yet even the board is almost too complex to grasp, curving in intricate arcs, as if a flower in bloom or ripples of water from a pebble dropped.
You try to struggle, to grasp something far beyond your reach, the muted shades of fear threading their way into your heart because there - there - you see familiar faces.
Lavi. Rin. Vincent. Lenalee. Chrome. Byakuya. Johan. Lelouch. Kakashi. Jay. Renji. Matt. Miharu. Kanda. Allen. Juudai. Ginko. Marco.
Yoite.
Yourself.
Gau.
So many, many more - faces you don’t recall ever seeing. Faces you’ve seen across the Hitomi yet don’t know the names. There, gone, here, lost.
People you’ve struggled against and struggled for in your tumultuous time in this place.
But the board is confusing - you can’t tell just which pieces belong to which side - or which hand that reaches out to move one or the others is the one you should accept or reject. And even as you struggle, grasping like a child for an adult understanding just beyond your reach, piece after piece is placed in your outstretched palms.
So you stare at those palms and curve your hands protectively, because that’s all you can do - protect those within your grasp, gently. Calmly.
Your hands remain steady with their weight of responsibility.
It’s in that moment, where you realize responsibility was charged and accepted, placed squarely and evenly across your shoulders that you glance back up - because there is a piece missing, isn’t there?
And that missing piece - the one you’ve been reaching and reaching for only to watch it step further beyond your grasp - that’s the source of your fear.
Which is why your gaze snaps up to the pieces on the board, your focus sharp, intent, as your sight slips past one perfect replica to the next, looking for the scar, until your eyes clash with what was once a warm sable regard, now a hardened umber.
Your breath catches in shock at the sight because kind, gentle, strong Iruka - the man that had somehow become friend and mentor, confidante and brother-in-arms - has changed. This man standing on the opposite side of this quagmire board is lost, his light fading. There is an ugly shade of bitterness and resentment slowly poisoning his skin, darkening his mind, unbalancing him.
Even from where you stand, you can see the tremble in his hands, the way each piece placed there forces the man to list a little more to the side.
You want to shout past the rising unease, the hint of panic. Because he can’t - he cannot give in to those thoughts and that despair. You want to remind him of the boy he’d mentioned back in his world - the blond that made him smile and gave him hope, yet your voice is too small.
It cannot reach him, no matter how hard you try.
And still, your hands never waver. Your stance remains balanced, as if on the tip of a blade.
Another piece is taken off the board, then another... but the last...
Kakashi’s piece. Almost placed in Iruka’s hands and you can see them begin to shake, the pieces nearly rattling out of his grasp, when in a divine twist of cruelty, the piece is placed in your own hands instead.
It’s too much - why would they do such a thing?
You want to scream that question at these beings, terrible in their inhumanity, yet you can’t find the voice to, because Iruka is already screaming.
He’s screaming and screaming, rage and an impotent anger pushing him beyond his endurance and you watch in abject horror as the pieces fall like raindrops from his hands, lost in the void as your friend finally falls.
But it’s not gentle hands that reach up to catch him - no that’s not a kindness being offered to soften the series of blows - it’s gaunt hands, cracked and bleeding, black talons dripping in blood that bite into flesh and pull him through the gate to hell.
And Iruka...he just smiles.
“What will he do? Will your Bishop follow the Rook? Or will he let the pieces fall?”
“These children are quite unpredictable...but we choose our pieces wisely, and with a purpose. That is the difference between us that you have yet to grasp.”
"...so you deem the exchange sacrifice acceptable?"
The pieces are gone from your hands, and the flash, like a key to a lock is there in your mind: The gate to Yomi there, clear before you. It’s a place you know, that you found with Iruka through all your research.
The image there and gone, those echoed words there in your mind...and without hesitation...
[He wakes with a sharply drawn breath. The message couldn’t be clearer, not even if it was spelled out in every language he knows. Which is why, for the moment, he ignores the Hitomi around his wrist and springs to his feet from where he’d fallen asleep in prayer. The temple flashes past as he strides quickly towards the entrance, pauses only long enough to slip on sandals and return the gleaming white katana to his side, his expression set with a grim kind of determination before the Hitomi cuts off.]
(OOC Note: Every face currently in Kannagara can be seen in that chess set - it's only that there are a LOT of new faces that he's yet to meet, so HE can't place name to a face yet. This was plotted with the Iruka-mun before she left - I'm just now getting to it ICly. >.< Feel free to react to that if you want!)