https://i.imgur.com/Fe9yilS.gif

[blyat]

WHO: Cain, Markus, Fitz, Peggy, Riku, and Sora. We're doing our best.
WHERE: The Facility.
WHEN: October 12, during the sleep event.
WHAT: Continued from here. Cain went in guns blazing, rolled a crit fail, wiped out the party, and now they're going to need the power of friendship to save them.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Language, gore, disassociation/ego death, psychic death, JUST DEATH, buckets of guilt, and Disney Magic™ (including KH3 spoilers). Will update as necessary.



[The impact of their actions doesn't register at first. Due in part to the immediacy of his ability, Cain can only watch as the spear is extracted from its tangled bed of roots, blinking out of visible existence and reappearing several meters to his direct left. The weapon glints in a refraction of eerie, milky-blue underwater light. Where there would be a rush of success upon victory — moving the immovable — and where he might feel the tickle of curiosity in the aftermath, there's nothing but a peculiar emptiness. Slight and small, like he's disengaged from the part of his brain that processes raw information into higher function, a brief interim where no single thought enters his head, and he looks at his surroundings with a detached faraway appreciation. Meditative, almost, all pain and pressure from the landscape's oppressive environment gone.

And then it grows.

A yawning void eats through the peripheral of his awareness, even as he turns at last to check on Fitz and Markus. It's at that point his sense of individual self begins to slip, and the people he's looking at have no names, felt more in physical warmth and closeness. Cain extends a hand out as if to touch one of them on the shoulder — but stops, fingers spread, dark eyes lowering down to look at his own arm as if he doesn't recognize it. It doesn't feel as though it should belong to him. His gaze travels further, over limbs and torso dressed in the sleek black material of a flight suit, and that feeling of disconnect only heightens, mind elevated above the anchor of an unfamiliar body.

Slowly, gradually, another sense begins to bleed into the fine boundary of Cain's (but not Cain anymore, not Alexei, not anyone, what is he?) consciousness. Pinpricks of light at the edges of his mind, little flashes of red scales, the gauzy white outlines of humanlike shapes in the distance, and the two solid pillars of men in front of where he stands. Life everywhere. Death, too, clinging onto the dredges of what once was. Cain watches himself begin to fade from the feet up as if unattached to the process.

Death, watching Fitz and Markus now succumb to an intense and severe pain he doesn't feel at all. There's no fragment of sympathy, there's no sadness — only an impression of responsibility. The entire facility becomes a single entity stationed somewhere in his mind. And then Fitz and Markus are no longer alive, they're dead, a hot spray of blood and red guts and cooler blue mechanical shards across the surrounding area, but he doesn't feel anything beyond the understanding that it happened as the effect of a singular cause.

An imminent air of rightness overtakes the man who was there only moments ago, before he's gone, disintegrated into nothing.]

Comments

[blyat]

[Something happened at the facility.

Fitz and Markus are waiting for us.

Two sharp spoken fragments that rake away the calm veil over his mind until it returns him to clarity: final memory summoned up to remind him of what he did. The vague awareness of Fitz's and Markus' shared agony, a sense that he had a hand in it, that mountain of responsibility so heavy he looks down at Peggy's returned touch with blank shock. Cain wrenches away from the touch a second time. Stands, wavering, and tries to put more physical distance between them. A difficult maneuver on the narrow hull of a ship. His ship, he realizes. Cain's steps carry him toward where he recognizes the fighter's cockpit sits, a hatch that opens at the top, buried now underneath layers of blue and green.

He looks at Sora, registering at last. Their conversation in the safehouse's kitchen seems to have happened a lifetime ago, to someone else. He looks at Peggy, but the guilt's almost too much. Black eyes fall to his bare feet, then the flowers out over the idyllic scenery. Looking at the landscape fluttering in a gentle breeze tempts him almost to lay back down.

They've come to take him away from this place, this shelter, a sanctuary both peaceful and right, where he doesn't have to feel and he doesn't have to—]

Forget it.

[—face them. He's afraid. He wants to stop feeling afraid, but he's a coward. Always been a coward.]

I can get back on my own, just... leave me alone. I'm fine now.

[lighthearted]

[ When Cain looks at him, it's almost like he's looking right through him. It really is like he's a different person, but Sora knows that can't be true. While he doesn't know what exactly happened to make Cain end up in this strange dream, he's certain that they need to bring him back to himself somehow. They won't be able to leave otherwise.

Every time Peggy reaches out to Cain, he pulls away, which means they need to try and convince him with their words. The last thing he wants is for Cain to run, lost from them in this field of flowers. ]

I don't think it works that way. Unless you come with us, you might be stuck here forever.

[ Just like Sora would have been stuck in the Final World, eventually turning into one of those nameless stars that he'd found there. Just a remnant of himself, a piece of emotion lingering in some in-between place even though his body was long gone. That's what would happen to Cain, and they can't allow that.

Sora takes a look around them, his head tilting to the pink sky. The breeze kisses his cheeks, the sun a pleasant warmth on his face. When he draws in a breath, the air tastes sweet. Everything about this place is nice, but... ]

I know that doesn't seem like such a bad thing, but none of this is real.

[revlon]

[ Where he goes, she follows. She didn't do that when they were dumped in the Insomniac's Ball and she won't make the same mistake again here. The circumstances couldn't be more different, a dark and dizzying rave and a serene meadow, but the danger is inherent in both even if it isn't in plain sight.

Peggy is right on Cain's heels, letting Sora do the talking for a heartbeat before her own words overlap. (No, none of this is real. But they are. That's what Fitz said to shake her out of the war. But there's no war here. Or is there?) ]

You're far from fine and I doubt you can get anywhere without Sora's help. [ Sharper, firmer. Not impatient, but unrelenting. Her hand catches onto his sleeve, holds fast with metal — her ability. Not getting away this time. ] You might not see it, but this world is coming apart at the seams and we are not leaving you to do the same.

[ Her free hand, still warm flesh and blood, braces itself on the opposite shoulder but lays her thumb along the side of his neck. The bond again; it's worked enough times in the dreamscape that it's the only tool in her arsenal she can rely on now. ]

So look at me, snap out of it, and get your arse into gear, Fighter. Do you hear me?

[blyat]

[He hears both of them. Through the thick gauze of half-aware, half-awake consciousness, he hears Sora tell him this isn't real and he hears Peggy reaffirm it. As if he doesn't know. As if there's some reason that isn't reassuring, being not real instead of real, because why would he want to be real? Why would he want to go back to where everything hurts, where he keeps fucking up — where he's alone, where Abel isn't — and maybe if he's come so close to that edge of a cliff twice (no, more than twice), maybe he's meant to be there. Maybe he's meant to go over it.

Peggy snags him so he can't move, and that rises panic in his throat, an upset that translates into wild anger. He's never learned another way to communicate in these high-stress, choke-point scenarios where it builds to such a volume he can't contain it.]

I don't care! I'm not going back!

[Like a cat twisting in a grasp on its scruff, Cain pulls with force that threatens to split and tear the threads of his shirt where he's caught in that immovable metal hold.]

Don't fucking touch me!

[The return to a thinking, feeling body is too much after the peace of before. Woken from the bliss of this sanctuary, he's lashing out, not himself, not clear in reason and logic, overwhelmed by the rush of reality and the reminder that whatever happened to Fitz and Markus is definitely his fault. He could have put it back. He could have stopped it. All of that blistering anger and guilt channels into the joined path of their emotions, and he wants it to stop. Hands come out to physically shove Peggy away.]

[lighthearted]

[ When Peggy grabs for Cain, it seems to be with an iron grip. No matter what Cain tries, he isn't able to rip himself free, and Sora is there to witness how quickly the interaction devolves into something violent. It's as if Cain has gone berserk, a far cry from the laidback (yet foul-mouthed) person that Sora had met before.

When Cain shoves at Peggy, that's when Sora rushes forward, placing himself bodily between the two of them as his Keyblade is summoned again, held horizontally with both hands in front of him as a barrier of sorts. ]

Cain, please, we're trying to help you! Turning on us isn't going to fix anything.

[ Sora doesn't try to make physical contact since that's only going to set Cain off even more, but he knows they need to find a way to snap him out of this. It would be easier if he knew him better, but even Peggy isn't having much luck. ]

If Fitz and Markus don't get to see you again, how do you think they'll feel?

[revlon]

[ She should have anticipated this. Cain's brand of stubbornness is familiar to her, if only because she's been known to dig her heels in at the best and worst of times too; but there's something painfully young about how he phrases his resistance, the way he won't look at her. Guilt, she realises a heartbeat later as he twists in her grip, and something far more petulant than she's witnessed in the time they've known each other. Something happened. Something he doesn't want to face. Something — ]

Cain!

[ He shoves her and she releases him before she takes them both tumbling off the ship, righting her balance by flinging her arms out. For God's sake, first Fitz (before he bolted off after Ophelia) and now Cain, when she's bloody trying to help drag them out of whatever horrific tangle they've knotted themselves into. They don't have time for this.

Sora, bless him, is trying to appeal to Cain but it's clear words aren't going to do much good if the empathy bond hasn't been given the chance to work, either. She's been in the ring with him before and the field before that, she knows how he can fight, can see he's gearing up for one now; panicked, backed into a corner, ready to lash out. They can't afford that. She straightens and cuts around the younger man with a silent apology — maybe to him, maybe to Cain, for what she's about to do. ]

Good thing we won't have to find out.

[ It's shortly said, just before she swings her elbow back and punches Cain clean in the jaw with a solid right hook. She doesn't use her ability as a kindness, but even so: Peggy Carter doesn't need a fist made out of titanium to knock a man flat on his back or close to it. Wake up. Cognitive recalibration. ]

[blyat]

[Sora's words are what destabilize him, so that when Peggy edges around and swings the momentum of that fist forward, he's in no position to defend against it.

It cracks across his jaw in bright pain. Cain's sent down, flat palm out to catch his weight, bare feet slipping over slick grass. He lifts one hand to touch shaky fingers over the mark when he lands — sure to bruise. Clarity spikes through disordered, detached thoughts as his heart begins to slow its savage pace, and the world around him gradually pieces itself back together.]

Fuck, that hurt... [He turns his head and flexes his jaw, dark gaze sliding between both Sora and Peggy as if shocked to find them here. How? Why Sora, and what's in his hand? The moment seems to hang on a tenuous thread. Cain's voice falls to a lower volume,] Remind me not to piss you off.

[He's looking directly at Sora then.] Are they okay? [Fitz and Markus. It's all he can think.]

[lighthearted]

[ It all happens so fast that Sora's left to stand there in stunned silence as Peggy's fist flies for Cain's face. She took the idea of snapping him out of it pretty literally, but it actually works. Sora isn't about to argue with those kind of results, and Cain doesn't seem to bothered by it either. His head's on straight now, and Sora exhales in relief as he steps up to stand at Peggy's side.

He could offer a Cure spell for the swelling of his jaw, but that's something that can take place once they're out of this weird place (back into another weird place, but it's one they've come to know a little better out of necessity).

At the question, Sora nods without hesitation. ] Yeah. We were able to find them too. [ He doesn't actually know if that's the case with Markus, but he does know that there's no way Riku would fail in that task. Just like Peggy probably knows Fitz wouldn't; they seem to be close on that level. ]

Are you ready to go back now? [ He looks between the two of them, preparing to return everyone once he gets the okay. He makes a gesture to Peggy, indicating that she should grab for Cain's hand before offering her his own. ]

[revlon]

[ As Sora answers Cain's question with the same confidence she feels, she extends a hand to Cain to haul him to his feet. ]

You'd do well to remember that, [ she says with a quirk of her lips, between his comment and Sora's reply.

They don't know if the other team was successful, it's true, but she won't entertain the idea of failure, either. They all make it home and back to each other as promised, spoken aloud or silently made. Because she did mean what she said to Fitz — whatever world is out there, whenever or however they wake up, the only way forward is together as a team.

She claps a hand on Cain's shoulder, bracing, pleased. Relieved. Then glances at Sora. ]

Absolutely. [ She takes his hand — the bond echoes warm gratitude, the vibration of impatience — then offers hers to Cain. ] We'll explain later, but just go along with it.

[ Click your heels three times. There's no place like home. ]

[blyat]

[With the world returned and his own self-identity fastened back into place, the promise that Markus and Fitz are okay is a relief that cuts straight through any lingering fear. Still, he hesitates before taking Peggy's hand to haul himself back up. Eyes sweep over the blue landscape and pink sky one last time — feeling something, some nostalgic ache. He could have stayed here forever, he thinks, and it wouldn't have mattered. He wouldn't have felt anything at all.

There's something sinister in the idea of that eternal nothing.

Pulled to his feet, Cain's emotions are threadbare and raw through the empathy link of skin touch, exhausted and sullen. Equal parts dread for seeing Markus and Fitz again, but also the desire to finally wake up and return to what's familiar. The irony of fatigue in this dream-place isn't lost on him.]

Fine.

[There's so much he doesn't say, can't say, about how he won't feel entirely better until he sees Markus and Fitz in the flesh, not after the horror of what he witnessed — that he watched them die, and he knew he could move the spear back, but he didn't when that feeling of peace began to leech into his body — that higher level of oneness and joined feeling of that eerie place, as if everything was connected and he was only another part of it. He doesn't have the words for that yet.

So he'll follow them wherever they lead, quiet, internally locked in thought.]

[lighthearted]

[ The warmth coming through from Peggy's side of the bond is all the encouragement that Sora needs to get them back. Not quite home, all of them are still far away from anything that could be called that, but at least away from this place. Beautiful and calm as it is, there's also something wrong about it, something that they've all picked up on.

With a connection formed between all three of them, hands gripped tight, Sora has everything that he needs. He nods toward Cain, something meant to set him at ease, before lifting his Keyblade for the last time.

A Keyhole appears up in the pink sky, shining with a gold light. Again, Sora's Keyblade links to it, and soon after that all three of them will be whisked back up through the world of dreams toward a somewhat more stable level.

If all goes well, they'll all be reunited before finding themselves in another dream. ]