1 || Half A Hero

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

This dream is set on a beach with ruins embedded in the cliff that rose from the sand, cracked stairs leading up to a building above that's also falling apart.

Seira herself sits on the remains of a pillar, bare toes curling in the warm sand. The wind off the sea tugs at the grasses and her hair, seagulls crying above and the smell of salt fill the air. Despite the lonely nature of the setting, the young woman seems almost happy to be there.

It's home; or had been once upon a time anyway.

There's a ragged photograph clutched in one hand, and she looks at it with a nostalgic smile. "I guess...there's no going back, is there?" She asks, not expecting a reply.

Comments

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"Not once you go far enough." A blue-haired girl, strangely dressed in a short-skirted uniform, seems undisturbed by that idea. Whatever she makes of it, her path is set, and has been for quite some time. There is no chance of a reversal; she knows that.

"So why hold on to such a meaningless trinket?" She means the photograph, to judge by the slight nod she gives towards it. She's gotten rid of all such things she once owned herself. She doesn't need the reminders. She remembers without them. She remembers the inevitable ending of all of that sort of wishful thinking.

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

Seira scowled, giving the girl a look. "It's not meaningless, it's all I've got now."

Her memories of being a kid here were fuzzy at best, Guardian Force training and usage in Garden having eaten away at most of them. The ones that had come back were all the more treasured for it.

"Now. If you're lookin' to see some Centran stuff the lighthouse is your best bet. Mind you, nobody's really been up there in over eighty years so it's not gonna be clean."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"Be my guide." It's toned as more of an offer than an order, despite the bluntness of the words themselves. She can also pay; money's never been an obstacle for the daughter of a wealthy doctor and well-known painter. "I don't know this area."

"And, it interests me."

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

Seira chuckled, pulling on her socks and boots with practiced speed. "Everyone's interested in Cetran stuff, few thousand year of civilization just up and crumbles eighty years ago? Hyne, they had flying buildings and floating cities."

Impressive technology they couldn't figure out, she'd seen the controls that flew the Gardens and while they'd figured it out well enough to wage an airborne battle and crash it in to the side of a cliff.

"I don't think the lighthouse can fly, but who knows."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"That's worth the interest," Mercury maintains. "It's similar to the lost legends of Atlantis in my world." Everyone has a fascination with lost technology, with what could have been - and with what could be now, if those losses hadn't occurred.

"If it can fly, shall we find out?"

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

"Atlantis?" Seira asks, standing and shaking the sand from the hem of her coat. She frowned a little at the mention of another world but considering she'd seen time and space fuse together in to a singular point... maybe this girl had fallen through or something.

"Sounds like a plan. How well do you know the monsters around here? There's a few that might give us some trouble if they're hiding in there."

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

"I don't know them in the least, but, if they make trouble, I'll defeat them." She smiles too-brightly, as if this is part of the fun for her. It is. She's used to thinking of most creatures or monsters as trash, controlled by the ones above them.

"So are you ready? You can always run away and hide if you're scared of fighting them."

[repudiate]

[ This sort of setting is more than just a little familiar to Ange - it's quite like a regular beach, after all, sans the ruins. And beaches are something she's familiar with, with the seagulls flying overhead, making her think back to Rokkenjima as she looks up to the sky, blinking against the sun.

When she hears another voice, though, she stares at the girl. Of course she recognizes that kind of look, that nostalgia, but she just shrugs casually as her expression turns a little deadpan after the initial surprise. ]

That depends on the circumstances, doesn't it?

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

[ Seira blinks, obviously having been deep in thought. ]

It does, doesn't it.

[She frowns, looking Ange over briefly before looking back at the sea.]

How bad d'you think someone has to get before they can't go home anymore?

[repudiate]

'Can't go home'? You'd have to define that first, since it can mean a lot of things. [ she - of all people - would know. ]

Is 'home' a physical location? A house, a country, a city? Or is it a family, a comfortable situation or something like that?

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

[There was an eyeroll at that.]

It's a metaphorical one, the place is long dead.

[repudiate]

I'm just making sure, before I go off on some long ramble that actually doesn't apply to anything at all.

[ she shrugs, before turning away from the girl but still talking on. ]

So you can't go home either way if it's dead, right?

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

Well aren't you just a right little ray of sunshine.

[auncyenhalig.livejournal.com]

"No turning back time. Some things can't be undone." Like a death... still, it's a hopeful note Aerith tries for as she crouches nearby the other girl. "But a lot of things can be changed, for the better."

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

"That's what screwed everything up, trying to change things." It's a sigh, "Not me, but someone else. In the future, she wanted to change how people treated people like her but..." She shook her head, "She was crazy."

[auncyenhalig.livejournal.com]

"In the future?" It's the part that catches Aerith's attention at first, as it confuses her. "Like a dream?"

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

"No, like after we're all dead and our kids are dead future." Seira explained, "It's all sorts of quantum physics and time-space relativity."

She didn't quite understand the whole premise herself, that time and space could be manipulated to change the past, that time travel was a very real thing. Seira hadn't paid much attention to the theoretical side of physics during classes.

[auncyenhalig.livejournal.com]

"...I don't really get that kind of thing."

Aerith hadn't had classes for applied physics, let alone the theoretical side of it. "But you're saying she managed to come all the way here from that time? That does sound pretty strange...I'm not sure about 'crazy', though." After all, Seira had given a fairly good reason to want to change things...though Aerith would abhor Ultimecia's methods.

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

That was the thing, really, Ultimecia sounded like she was doing something good but was doing it in a way that would only lead to ruins.

"She was..is... will be... whatever, she's nuts either way and no matter what anyone does. She doesn't care about anyone other than herself, everyone's to be used and tossed away. Even if they're... supposed to be more."

[tasercopter.livejournal.com]

Nah, you can't exactly fit in a photograph.

[Reno's half-napping in the sand, but she half-rises at this, raising herself up on her elbows. Hey, just a second ago, this was her beach dream, wasn't it? She thinks so. It's hard to tell with dreams. She shifts her weight so she can move an arm to wave lazily at Seira.]

Hey, Scarface. [She sort of means this to be friendly.]

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

[Beach dreams were beach dreams.]

Don't be a moron, I was being metaphorical.

[tasercopter.livejournal.com]

[She smiles back.]

Don't be a moron, it's called a joke.

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

You'd better stick to your day job then, it was terrible.

[rhapsody-onfire.livejournal.com]

She rests on the warm sand, hands locked behind her head. Remnants of bruises and cuts on her arms and legs. She's wearing a simple tank top and a skirt, her bare feet disappearing into the sand. "I didn't think anyone else held onto old photographs."

Her own photo (http://i.imgur.com/pzEn0.jpg) lay in the sand next to her.

"But no, there never is any going back," Genesis said. "That's always the hard part, even if you know it to be true."

[ladyhyperion.livejournal.com]

"I didn't even remember it existed until I found it up there." She replied, "I... forgot so much."

It was embarassing, and hurt in an odd sort of way. If she had forgotten that they'd all grown up together, what else had been eaten by Guardian Forces? Maybe her real parents were still around, though they'd probably want her just as dead as the rest of the world.