onepassingnight | Night 1

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Night 1 | ~ Remember ~

[There is a sleepy town cast in the soft orange light of the setting sun. It is built on hills, so the brick streets of the town rise and fall in great slopes in some areas and gently rolls in others. At the very top of the highest hill, there is a clock tower perched atop a train station. When a world is trapped within perpetual sunset like this one, keeping track of the time is difficult, and so that tower is of the utmost importance, the ticking of its clock the heartbeat of the town.

Wherever you are in the town, there's a young teenager dressed in a black coat. The hood is drawn up to where his or her face is mostly obscured. On top of the clock tower, he or she -- it's surprisingly difficult to tell -- the teenager is sitting on the ledge, holding a light blue ice cream bar in one hand, staring out at the town below. Elsewhere, s/he can be found wandering around, as if exploring the streets, or standing awkwardly along the building walls.]

[ooc: A list of canonical locations in town is here, if you want it! All of Twilight Town is there to visit (except for Yen Sid's tower, since Xion doesn't exactly know that place exists).]

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[She's been here before. She's sat with Axel here, on the clock tower. She's walked these streets with Sora grown up. So there's no hesitation when Mizuno Ami finds herself in Twilight Town. She assumes the person in this dream, too, is perhaps even someone she's... acquainted with (she has trouble with that word, friends, even more than she did when she was younger).

So Ami simply sits down right on the ledge beside the cloaked figure. How she's suddenly there is something she doesn't bother explaining; it'd ruin the effect of the impossibility, even if it's only dream logic this time. Her smile is somewhat sly, but it seems to simply be her habit.]

It's been awhile since I've been here. It was sunset that time, too.

[Somehow this seems important in the dream. Ami glances beside her, but still can't make out the features beneath the hood.]

This is your world then.

Edited 2011-12-04 07:40 (UTC)

It's always sunset here.

[It's tough to even make out the gender of the voice. The figure looks down at the ice cream in his/her hand.]

I wouldn't... call it "mine."

[If this person is questioning the strangeness of a stranger joining him/her, it isn't showing. Not like much of anything is, except for the downward tug on his/her lips.]

[She considers that for a moment. She can understand the sentiment of not precisely totally feeling a part of the world she resides in. After all, she has been an outsider for much of her experience there.]

I can understand saying that.

Is it still important to you?

[Without hesitation, the figure nods.]

It's very important to me.

[The grip on the ice cream's stick tightens.]

Edited 2011-12-04 07:51 (UTC)

[She sees it all in that tension. This is somewhere this person wants to protect.]

If it's like that, be sure to become strong in your own power. That's what you can rely on for this.

In my own power...

[That voice is in a murmur. Underneath the hood, the unseen brow furrows.]

Is that really something I can do?

Oh yes.

[Whatever methods, whatever extent, whatever world, that much is the same: a struggle towards the power to be able to do what you want, to chase off the future you don't want to see and fight to keep the things you don't want to see disappear.]

You can become more powerful.

[After a moment, the figure shakes his or her head.]

Power... This power isn't mine. None of it is. Nothing belongs to me. And... I don't want it. I don't want any of it. I just want to give it back...

[Eyes lower again.]

[It's quite honestly the first time she's heard someone refuse power. It's enough to cut through the comments she might normally make, and make her serious.]

You weren't born with this? Or, just what do you mean what you say that?

Edited 2011-12-04 08:17 (UTC)

I wasn't born with any of this.

[This strange child seems reluctant to say anything else about it. As if to find an excuse not to say more, s/he finally bites into his/her ice cream.]

Ever since I awakened my own powers, I've wanted to become more powerful.

[She won't back down from that; it's nothing wrong. Whether the gentle girl who'd been afraid her powers just weren't enough next to the others, or this cold and frozen soldier just wanting more, it's the same.]

I don't understand someone saying 'I don't want it'. So if you want to be understood, tell me.

[After a long moment of silence (during which several bites of ice cream is taken), the teenager finally speaks.]

This power... I didn't know it at the time, but I took it. I stole it.

If you didn't know, can that be called your crime?

[What she's never known is that the person who committed the worst crime of all was, at first, equally innocent.

But not later.]

Why continue to regret it?

Yes. [It can. Her crime is existing. If she never existed, Roxas would still be alive, and Sora would have a better hope of waking up. Her crime is her fear. Sora could be woken, right now, if only she...]

Because... Because I need to give it back, and I... [The voice falters, then continues, weakly.] I can't.

You're wrong.

If there's something you regret, you can't truly say you're sorry unless you try to make it right. Unless you do something. So if you have regrets, don't say words like 'I can't'.

Look for the way to do what you need to do.

[Both hands clasp on the ice cream stick.]

Even if it means the end of me.

[It isn't a question, not quite. This girl is right. Xion knows what has to be done.]

I made my decision... but then... [That voice breaks now, that breath hitches.] But then...

[Not even a week ago, Ami stood at the grave of a man who held fast to his beliefs and his path, even when it took him to his death by his own hand three years past. She understands the difficulty, and the choice - enough to pretend to herself that she's accepted his.

But somewhere in her, she doesn't like it.]

Then? [She prompts for the rest of the story, for the tragedy of this world.]

Now he's gone --

[Speech is hurried, now, trying to rush past that part, that part, that part that words won't stick to, not even in thought]

-- and I... I... All that's left of him, it's with me, and I can't -- but it's the only way...

[She understands so much more than she could ever say. She is all that's left of the man she mourned: his pupil, his protegee. And once, in a dream, she was able to accept her own death because she would live on in someone else.

Ami faces the cloaked figure directly now.]

If he exists inside you, then whatever came to you from him is already returned.

[The figure opens his or her mouth, but then closes it again.]

I... [blink. blink] I guess so...

You can choose to believe that, and live that way. [It's not entirely unfounded.]

So, what is it that makes you think something else is necessary?

Sora won't wake up if I don't go back to him.

Is his life worth someone else's? Isn't yours as valuable as his?

[Aren't those people killed indiscriminately worth more than the single life of Sailor Moon who killed them?]

His life is worth mine. [Her grip is so tight on the ice cream stick.] I never should've existed in the first place.

You can say "should've" all you want, but you exist.

[It's more than what she was allowed, in the distant past of tens of thousands of years ago.]

Instead of 'should', make that existence what you want.

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