But nothing turned out as expected

[wavesinherheart]

Characters: Aqua and anyone else who happens to show up
Content: In the aftermath of revelations, a moment to think
Location: The Clocktower, Twilight Town
Time: shortly after this thread
Warnings: sadness

It was, perhaps, just as well that Aqua had been in Twilight Town when she'd seen Lea's message in the first place. Not for the fact that it was more bringhtly lit, or had anything whatsoever to do with light chasing away the darkness. No, it was for the simple fact that even clearing out what Nightmares she found on her way to the tallest point in town seemed to be almost a chore. Last time she'd at least been able to let the fighting temporarily override her concerns. This time, there was nothing but a horrible feeling that she'd done everything all wrong and try as she might she couldn't even shake a fraction of it.

Needless to say, by the time she finally made it up to the top of the clocktower, she was feeling almost worse than she had when she'd first heard what she almost couldn't believe. She'd known that Terra had done... something at the end of their fight but what had it all been for? What was anything worth if it hadn't been Terra she'd saved, but Xehanort instead. Xehanort, who had done so much to them and was - because of her! - still doing the same things. In trying to make things better, she had, in fact, done nothing so much as make them worse and that was the worst thing of all. The hope she'd had - the hope that one day she'd step free of the darkness and see Terra again? Now there was nothing. Only her, and Ven, fast asleep and hidden from the world. And Xehanort, who had been locked away and came back anyway, with nothing to even suggest that he'd been gone.

She couldn't have said whether it was grief or guilt or anything in between. But there, atop the highest building in Twilight Town, Aqua pulled her knees up to her chest, put her head and gave in to the emotions that had been threatening to drown her.

Comments

[letteropener]

The top of a tall building was not, in fact, suited for any privacy at all, now that Celestia had decided to explore the other world she had heard of. She found herself... uncomfortable, in large part because the sun of this world was foreign, alien, completely not the one she knew and beyond her power to manipulate. So it was a fairly somber princess that happened to notice a miserable woman atop the heights.

Angling her wings, she settled down on the ledge far enough away to be respectful, and with enough clatter to announce her presence without being startling.

[wavesinherheart]

By the time Celestia arrived, Aqua had well and truly given into the various emotions troubling her, shoulders shaking with what was either desperate laughter or silent sobs. As a matter of fact, she barely even recognized that Celestia had landed nearby. There was entirely too much that she had to deal with. She'd tried to save a friend and in so doing had made things worse for everyone - hardly the action of Master, even if she'd done it out of the kindness of her heart.

Unfortunately, the fact that she wasn't really paying attention to anything other than her own misery meant that if Celestia wanted to hold anything like a decent conversation she'd have to make her presence known somehow, but the odds were fairly decent that Aqua wasn't entirely inconsolable. Merely mostly so.

[letteropener]

Celestia stepped quietly over to sit next to her, allowing a moment for her presence to register through the girl's misery.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," she said, softly. "But you look like you need it."

[wavesinherheart]

In that, Celestia wasn't wrong at all. Aqua did need something to help get her mind off things, even though she was hardly in a place where she could actually admit such things. On the other hand, even the depths of despair, she couldn't find it within herself to actually be too rude and after a further moment of silence she managed to dig up some semblance of an answer.

"Do I?"

[letteropener]

"Very much so. Although you might not want company, but what we need and what we want don't always line up very neatly," Celestia said, a touch of humor in her words. "Still, here I am, if you are willing to talk to me."

[wavesinherheart]

Even despite the encouragement, Aqua wasn't actually sure she was willing to talk. Not in anything resembling a coherent manner at any rate. Her thoughts were still whirling and looping back on themselves too much much to make any sort of sense to anyone save possibly to Aqua herself.

"I... there's too much."

[letteropener]

Appraising Aqua for just a second longer, Celestia then raised her head slightly as the warm glow coalesced around her horn. Twilight Town's perpetual state made any grand manipulations difficult if not impossible, but for Celestia, gathering up enough lingering sunlight to shine it gently on Aqua was no major feat. The light mattered less than the essence of it; soothingly warm, comfortably bright.

On a much less grand scale, she conjured a handkerchief as well, which she levitated over to Aqua helpfully.

"Take a moment," she suggested. "Breathe."

[shadearchivist]

Ienzo noticed the young woman up on the tower; she looked like she was in some distress. He hadn't quite gotten to speak with her, though she was clearly someone from their world. He headed up the tower, pausing at the top to catch his breath properly before he approached her.

"Are you alright?"

[wavesinherheart]

'Some distress' would have been putting it mildly, although Aqua was in no real condition to actually tell Ienzo as much. Honestly, she wasn't in much of a condition to tell anyone anything, although that was probably understandable under the circumstances. Still, she did finally find words to answer Ienzo's questions even if there was a significant amount of pause before she spoke up.

"No."

For once, she didn't even bother to hide the simple truth. She was nowhere near alright, and it wasn't like telling people otherwise would improve matters any.

[shadearchivist]

Ienzo settled next to her. "Would you like to talk about it?" This was...awkward. He'd never tried to comfort people before, and he wasn't sure he'd be very good at it. Though he knew enough of loss to sympathize; he'd certainly gone through quite a lot in his life.

[wavesinherheart]

She would likely benefit from speaking of it, or so she probably would have realized in just about any other situation. But just at the moment, speaking about it was absolutely the last thing she wanted to do. It was all still too new, and well, it wasn't like she didn't have a habit of bottling things up at the best of times.

"No," she answered again, uncaring of how miserable she happened to sound just at the moment.

[shadearchivist]

"I'm aware that it doesn't always seem as if it would help, and obviously it can't fix the problem, but speaking about things does tend to help one feel better." Pain shared and something...something. Ienzo didn't recall the rest of the phrase, it hadn't seemed important at the time.

[wavesinherheart]

Oh, it very much couldn't fix the problem. Not when there'd clearly been so much that had happened between when she'd last seen the world and whatever happened to pass for the present day.

"I don't know if it can, this time."

[unrecovered]

Wash had spent the past few days in a mood. He didn't have a specific name for it - it was somewhere between guilt at screwing things up with Ziva and missing her company and anger at himself for messing it up in the first place and frustration at his own inability to fix it and maybe even the slightest bit of worry (okay, no, that was fear) that he'd broken it permanently. He couldn't figure out what to call it; he just knew it sucked and he didn't want to talk with anyone.

So he'd taken a leaf out of York's book, imitated a stunt he'd called York out on when he did it, and fought his way through multiple staircases of Nightmares to get to the top of the Twilight Town clock tower. At least he could have some space to be alone and not be bothered up here.

Except that someone had already beaten him there. Even better, that someone was the girl he'd had that network catfight with recently. Well, great. He didn't move away from the staircase, staying quiet and trying to figure out if he could go around the back without alerting her to his presence or if he should just leave completely.

Melody took the decision out of his hands entirely. Deciding that her person was okay for now and this new person was obviously in need of help, the Necho Cat pranced away from Wash and up to Aqua, settling down next to her and rubbing her cheek against Aqua's arm. Cheer up, person! It'd be okay.

Wash resisted the urge to slap a hand over his visor. So much for not being noticed.

[wavesinherheart]

As things stood, Aqua would most likely have hardly noticed Wash if he felt the sudden need to do an impromptu dance number on the edge of the clock tower. She certainly wasn't looking at anything, and misery made a fairly decent distraction on top of that. However, it was also more or less a universal constant that it was very hard to stay miserable for too long in the presence of a cat. Not to say that it still didn't take a certain amount of time before she lifted her head to offer a proper hand to Melody, but that was better than nothing.

Of course, she also hadn't noticed Wash just yet, but that was probably a good thing, given their last few conversations. The last thing Aqua needed was anger on top of any already downright crippling mess of loss and guilt and other things she couldn't exactly name.

[unrecovered]

Melody preened slightly, rubbing against Aqua's hand before climbing into her lap. She braced against Aqua's shoulder and nuzzled her cheek, trying to provide comfort. It certainly looked like this person needed it. Whatever it was, it would be okay - Melody was certain of it in the way only cats could be certain.

Wash stayed where he was and kept quiet as he could. He couldn't leave now - either Melody would go with him, leaving Aqua without a source of comfort, or she'd stay and follow him later, and he didn't want to think about whether one Spirit - even one with Melody's spunk and determination - could hold up for long against a pack of Nightmares. Either way, he wasn't that heartless. He stifled a sigh and folded his arms; Fang, picking up on the situation for once, perched on his shoulder and stayed quiet.

[wavesinherheart]

Aqua wasn't so certain that things would be okay - she was no cat, after all - but the comfort was certainly better than nothing. There was, of course, rather a lot of misery left, but at least having some manner of company was better than not having any at all.

Under other circumstances, it might have occurred to her to wonder just whose Necho Cat was currently in her lap. But right now, it didn't seem nearly important. Petting Melody kept the worst of sorrow and guilt away (or seemed to) and that was all that mattered right now. If she could keep from having to deal with all of it at once than maybe - just maybe - she could work through enough of what had happened to fully process things. But right now even asking that of herself was rather a lot, and so she simply continued to pet Melody, even if it was sort of half-hearted at best.

[unrecovered]

Half-hearted pettings were better than no pettings at all, at least. On top of that, Melody was sure she would get more pettings from her person later, and her person always gave good pettings. Right now, this was more for Aqua than for her. She meowed quietly and nuzzled Aqua's cheek again. It seemed to be helping a little, at least.

[wavesinherheart]

A little, yes. However, for all that Aqua would have been more then glad to simply continue on as things had been, her Komory Bat took precisely that moment to return from exploring the airspace around the tower. It, however, did not particular take kindly to the idea of someone else's Dream Eater offering comfort - and never mind that brightly colored bats might not be everyone's idea of comfort.

Either way, before anyone could really do anything about it, Aqua's bat came diving out of the sky, screeching as it came.

[frostyfuntimes]

Jack found himself flying by the clocktower and almost flew right by the crying girl. He circled back around and perched on one of the bells, watching her for a moment. He had no idea what was wrong but, well, he just couldn't stand to see people sad. Maybe it had something to do with being the Guardian of Fun or maybe it was just the fact that he had seen too many people sad over the years.

It was even worse when it was a girl or a kid. He hadn't talked to Aqua much, but he'd seen her around and she didn't strike him as the type to cry easily. Something must really be wrong.

He jumped from the bell to the slopped roof just above her and casually dropped down to sit next to her. He leaned his staff against one of the pillars and crossed his arms over his knees. He didn't know what to say, he was more than a little rusty at talking to people. "I'm guessing you might not want to talk about it...but what's wrong?"

[wavesinherheart]

Under most circumstances, she wasn't, or at least not publicly. Situations that involved Xehanort, on the other hand, were about the furthest someone could get from anything intended to be ordinary, and more so when Aqua herself had had a hand in the whole mess. She might not have meant to, but did that really even matter, when her intentions were the very thing that had allowed Xehanort to hurt so many people.

There was a long moment before she spoke up all the same. It was one thing to admit that nothing was alright. It was quite another to actually bring herself to admit to what exactly was the matter, and so when she finally managed to bring herself to answer, the answer in question was largely unhelpful. it was, however, still an answer and that was at least a start.

"Everything."

[frostyfuntimes]

He winced. Jack wasn't sure he expected that but honestly he could relate. Sure things were great in this dream world stuff but back home...well...he'd screwed things up pretty badly. Jack was just used to being in denial and ignoring his problems. Besides, while he was here what was he supposed to do about it anyway? He couldn't help the other Guardians from here and he certainly couldn't try to fix the mistakes he had made with Pitch.

"That bad?"

[wavesinherheart]

"Yes," Aqua answered, without even so much a moment to think. There simply wasn't any other way to explain it. Not short of going into the full details of the situation and right now that was about the last thing that Aqua wanted to do. Honestly, she almost didn't want to think about it, for all that she couldn't seem to stop doing so. She'd failed, and the actions of her failure had had consequences that had been all but disastrous to those who had to deal with them.

It was a level of guilt that she wasn't really sure she was ready to deal with, and that was perhaps the worst thing of all.

[frostyfuntimes]

Jack watched the young woman for a moment. He couldn't really help if he didn't know the story or what was going on with her. He wanted to though, badly. He just didn't like seeing people upset. Jack looked away and put his hands on the ledge, frost forming under his hands.

"Well...I guess your next step is to try to fix it right? Turn it around."

[wavesinherheart]

"That's just the thing. I'm not sure if I even can anymore."

Ten years was, after all, quite a long time to leave something untended to, even if she hadn't really meant to still in the darkness for so long. Besides, she wasn't really certain what Xehanort had done - what needed to be fixed, then, was more than she could even say. She'd certainly do her best to help, but it was probably not something that one person alone could manage.