summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

[Sheena waves that off with her free hand and a small shrug. It's the middle of the night and her friend's having a tearful reunion with the alternate universe version of his dead mom on the floor in the other room; maybe it's not that weird that they're just getting around to this.]

I owe a lot to him. [She sounds impossibly fond.] But yeah. We were travelling together with a couple friends when I somehow wound up here. I didn't expect him to follow, though. [If anyone's gonna transcend space and time for friendship, it's going to be Lloyd, she guesses.]

You're... Lloyd's mom's dad, right? [He absolutely does not look old enough to be a grandfather, but that's clearly just a running theme in Lloyd's family members, huh.]

Edited 2019-03-18 20:44 (UTC)

Malos considers Sheena for a second, then makes a call. "Hey, that's just what you do for family, you know?" He knows he'd follow Anna to another universe if it came to that-- provided being in separate universes didn't snap their resonance, first. Hell, he'd do it for any member for his family, not just his daughter.

He laughs a little, at Sheena's uncertainty.

"Yeah, I am," he answers, unable to keep the grin off his face. He's talking about his daughter, of course he's grinning. "Anna's adopted, if that you helps any. I mean, 'course she is, blades can't have kids. Unless you're Kratos." He laughs, louder. He's the only one listening who gets the joke but it still brings him endless joy. "We never did figure that one out!"

Edited 2019-03-19 03:01 (UTC)

[... oh. Now that she thinks about it, that tracks, huh? She smiles back at Malos, a little more (pleasantly) surprised by the revelation than she would have expected to be.] ...yeah, I guess you're right.

Unless you're Kratos? [Sheena is definitely not up on blade biology, but she's filing all of this away, intent. She looks sheepish about her lack of knowledge, at least.] Sorry, this is still all kind of new to me.

"Nah, don't apologize. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me either." He'll explain what he knows, but honestly it isn't a lot. "'Cuz like, blades can't have children. That's not how blades are born. That's not how blades work. And as far as anyone in the history of ever was concerned, blades and humans can't have kids together, either..."

He shrugs.

"But, well, Lloyd exists. Even though his father's a blade."

Was a blade. Same difference, really. Malos doesn't care what Akhos says, if it was just the flesh eater thing, there'd be way more kids like Lloyd in the world.

Fuck, he misses his grandson. When Anna's done over there, he definitely needs to talk to her about-- His thoughts derail, a little, when he looks at the clock on the wall. Architect, is that the time!? Not tonight, then. He'll have to out-stubborn Anna tomorrow.

"Anyway, fuck, it's getting late," Malos says, sending an apologetic look at Sheena for having to end this converastion early. "Y'all should probably get some sleep, huh? We got a big day tomorrow."

Malos makes his way over to where Anna and Lloyd are, rapping his knuckles on the wall to get their attention. "Hey, kids, hate to interrupt," he drawls. "But it's bedtime."

Edited 2019-03-21 17:10 (UTC)

[Zelos watches the exchange with crossed arms and a smile on his face, tucking away the information they share and building himself a nifty little relationship chart in his head. So far the dynamics seem awfully close: Malos, a blade, adopted Anna, his driver, and at some point gave him part of his core crystal to turn her into a blade eater. That sheer amount of trust is something foreign to Zelos, but, hey, with everything that a blade eater's connection to their blade implies, he guesses he could probably work with that information somehow.

Lloyd and Sheena are friends and hail from the same world. Out of the corner of his eye, Zelos spares a glance to Lloyd and Anna's general direction, hums, and then looks down to the floor, pensive. He vaguely remembers someone dressed in red in that memory he'd seen. Just in case, Zelos should probably be careful around this Lloyd guy, then, if Sheena's reaction to him is anything to go by. God. Zelos pouts a little, mentally cursing his alternate self for leaving him his mess to deal with. And it hits him, then, how odd it is to think of himself as dead in another universe, but...

He blinks when Malos moves, hears him call out to the humans in the house and call for bedtime, and laughs. Well, at least someone here has the right idea. Blades are always smarter than humans like that.]

"You know what? I agree," [he says to Sheena, a shit-eating grin on his face. He shrugs.] "You humans are sooo delicate when you don't sleep!"

Honestly, Lloyd stopped crying like fifteen minutes ago but Anna is still holding him in a hug and he can't really bring himself to pull away. It feels so weird to finally be able to hug his mother, a mother he never really got the chance to talk to, and now that he has the ability to do so, he's. Well, he's hesitant, the feeling that he's going to stand and blink and all of this will be ripped away from him pressing deep into his chest, an anvil on any sort of mood he could carry. So he just ignores it for as long as he can, keeps curled up on Anna and talks to her.

He can hear the others in the distance, and he enhances his hearing just the slightest bit when Sheena speaks, making sure she's doing alright, but he just - can't focus on them when he's enjoying something he's never been able to call his before: Anna's presence.

He doesn't actually talk to Anna about what he knows she's curious or worried about, doesn't bring up exspheres or his own Anna, doesn't even acknowledge Kratos' existence because the last thing he wants to do is to show her how fucked up her alternate universe son's life is, how badly he wishes he could turn back time and start all over because it's hard to wake up in the morning and hard to sleep during the night.

Instead, he talks about small things. He loves red but hates tomatoes, adores walking through nature after a fresh rain but hates the rain itself, loves his friends more than he could ever really describe. No, he never finished school, but his best friend's sister was an excellent teacher and helped him learn what he needed to know to survive in their world.

Small things, tidbits about himself that anyone who saw him grow up would know, but. This Anna didn't see him grow up, and neither did his own, so instead they just share little fun facts about themselves. It's like a game of twenty questions, he asks a question, she answers, she asks a question, he answers.

Malos does come, eventually, and Lloyd decides that yeah, I should probably try to sleep. Now that he knows Sheena is alright, that she's here and he can reach out to her, he thinks maybe he'll have a little bit more luck than he did for the week prior to today. He tries to stand up, unwrapping himself from Anna's hug, but finds resistance.

Lloyd laughs. "Mooommmmm. I gotta get up."

Anna knows she should have let go of Lloyd ages ago, but it's hard. He's her son, even if he's not, even if the son she should be holding is-- elsewhere. But Anna knows how to be selfish better than anything else, so she holds Lloyd, because he lets her, and it seems like maybe he needed this, too. (So it's not all selfish, okay?)

He hates tomatoes like his father. She laughs and tells him her favorite color is red, too (specifically the bright rust-red of Kratos' eyes, but she doesn't need to get that sappy on main), tells him that hey it's not like she ever finished school as a girl, either. She didn't even go to school. Learned just enough from her grandma to get by, and then Lora and Jin helped fill in the rest. She tells him she likes her coffee so doctored up it doesn't even taste like coffee anymore, tells him stories of some of the dumb shit she's put Malos through.

She listens to his stories, fond and delighted to see herself in him, though it's easy to see someone else, too. Someone who she somehow doubts is Kratos. He hasn't mentioned Kratos. Should Anna assume the worst, then? Can she assume anything better?

It makes her think of her Lloyd, raised by someone else for the past five years. Guilt stirs in the depths of her soul and makes her stomach clench with regret. She drinks in everything this Lloyd tells her, eager to know more about the son she didn't get to watch grow up, but the delight is somewhat overshadowed.

She's used to being selfish. She isn't used to regretting it this deeply.

(The only person she has to blame for not getting to watch her son grow up is herself.)

Malos calls and-- fuck him, he's right, especially since Anna can't even calculate how long it's been since she last slept. Too long, probably. She doesn't want this to end so she holds Lloyd, for just a second longer--

The way he whines, exasperated, makes her unbearably fond and breaks her heart at the same time.

"Fiiiiine," she sighs back, over-dramatic, trying to push down the longing she will likely never stop feeling, not until she's held her real son in her arms. (She's not even sure she made the right choice, any more.) She squeezes Lloyd one last time before she lets him go. "I guess you should listen to your grandpa."

"You should listen too, young lady," Malos shoots at her, mostly smug. She sticks her tongue out at him.

Having a grandpa to listen to is weird, Lloyd thinks as he watches Anna and Malos interact with each other, but there is definitely a grin on his face and he knows he's rapidly becoming accustomed to having them around him. It's scary how fast he's become attached, knowing that this will come to an end at some point, that he'll have to say goodbye because this world already has a Lloyd Irving and it isn't him.

But he ignores it for now. Right now, Lloyd has a mom and a grandpa. Right now, they're standing in front of him, cracking jokes and being family. He'll think about this tomorrow when he's at least a little more rested, ready to take on the day. For now, he stands up, stretching, because sitting on the floor for that long was a little uncomfortable but it's Fine, it was worth it, and yawns a little.

He really hopes he can sleep today. For one, he's cried two times today and came rather close a handful of other times, and he's going to attribute that to the fact that the longer he stays awake without rest, the easier it is for him to lose control of his emotions like that. Ugh, being an angel fucking sucks. Lloyd can't even wait out sleep until exhaustion overtakes him, because unless he expends way more mana than he's supposed to he's never going to feel physically exhausted.

Whatever. He's too emotionally tired to acknowledge his transformation more than that.

Lloyd holds a hand out for Anna so he can help her up and scans the room for Sheena, vaguely remembering a joke she had made about knocking him out if he couldn't sleep and being somewhat tempted to take her up on that offer. She's standing by ~~not his~~ Zelos, so there is a bit of fear that leeches onto his heart, making him wonder if he should really walk over there, if he could take being that close to a Zelos that isn't his own.

The ring hanging on the chain tucked under his shirt burns hot on his chest, so he looks away, deciding to wait until Sheena comes closer to talk to her. He can't handle properly introducing himself to Zelos right now, not when his mind is still racing and he wants nothing more than to just chill out with the one person in this world who truly knows him. Lloyd wants to know what happened to her, why she just disappeared. (He knows it wasn't her choice. Sheena is as crazy over Colette as he was over -)

"I could use some sleep, to be honest," Lloyd says, running his free hand through his bangs, "where should we plop ourselves for the night? I can sleep anywhere."

Malos considers the question as long as he needs to, which is about half a second.

"There's two beds and a couch," he says. "Anna and I can share, and I'll let the rest of y'all duke it out over the rest. We do have blankets and shit if one of y'all needs to sleep on the floor."

"Do you have a basement?" [Zelos calls out from where he stands, one hand raised. He scoffs.] "I mean, I don't think you wanna attract unnecessary attention to yourself by having an Aegis glowing like a sun inside your house. You should hide me in your basement until tomorrow."

[He's smirking mischievously and trying to pass it off as a joke, though annoyance and a general dislike for the situation as it is course through his veins, countered by a vague threat hiding in his words. Zelos is the Aegis. Zelos has been stolen, and his driver is a fugitive. These are facts that no one here can afford to ignore. It won't be until they leave Meltokio's general territory that he lets himself relax even a bit, but, in the meantime, his new keepers should at least make sure he's out of harm's way.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. The little bird has spent enough time inside cages to recognize one even when its stripped of all its luxuries. For now, at least, he'll have to pray this cage is as temporary as they say.]

[Sheena takes in Malos's explanation with a thoughtful but intent look, trying to keep it all together. Kratos is a blade, so this world's Lloyd is... half blade? But Anna has that crystal that... doesn't seem to be the same as a blade's. Alright. Maybe this will all make more sense in the morning. She just nods at Malos's suggestion, not really having any arguments.]

That... might be a good idea. The sooner we can get out of here, the better.

[She turns to Zelos when he speaks, that thoughtful look back on her face.]

What about you? You don't need to sleep? [Well, he'd heard those officials coming when she couldn't, earlier - Aegises are like angels, she guesses. Hm.

She sticks by Zelos's side for the moment as Malos collects Lloyd and Anna, though she's not really sure what to say. The last few hours have given her plenty to process, and it is late.]

I'm fine anywhere, too, [she says, after a pause to take in Zelos's words. The stressful feeling that's keeping her on edge is definitely not entirely her own, and she can see it in Zelos's stance when she looks for it. It's a pretty stark reminder that this Zelos hadn't even been allowed outside the castle before, nevermind the city, and her tone comes out gentler than it would have without that reminder.] So long as we keep the curtains closed, it should be okay, right? You're not glowing that much. [It's just his shoulders and core crystal that are visible, really, now that his wound is closing. It'd be a problem if anyone looked in to see her or Zelos's faces, but that's easy enough to prevent.]

"Sheena's right," Malos says, in case Zelos needs to hear it from someone else. "Leave the curtains closed, maybe a light on to diffuse the intensity of the glow, and no one's gonna notice you're here-- not 'cuz you're glowing, anyway."

Since both Sheena and Lloyd said they're fine, Malos makes an executive decision as the dad in the room.

"Sheena and Lloyd can take my bed," he says, and before Anna can even open her mouth to protest (he feels that flare of concern-idignance from her), he counters her with: "Blades don't need as much sleep as y'all do, and someone's gotta keep watch, right? Chances are no one's even gonna drop by, but if they do, better if I'm awake for it!"

Anna glares at him for a half-second, then sighs. "Yeah, you're right," she says, but she's not at all happy about it. Malos doesn't bother being anything other than smug. Anna gestures for Lloyd and Sheena to follow her, and leads them up the stairs.

Malos turns to Zelos. "You plannin' on sleeping? Can't imagine you want to, if you spent, what, five years dormant?" He's pretty sure that's the correct math, anyway. Zelos died in the same cannon blast that nearly killed them. "Company'd be nice, if you wanna stay up. ...Just sayin'."

"Blades don't really need to sleep as much as a human does, so I can keep watch with Malos here," [Zelos announces in a laugh to both Sheena and the blade in question, shrugging.] "Should be fun! And like, what better defense system than a couple blades, right!"

[He very purposely ignores the comment about his dormancy, not really wanting to acknowledge it, nor explain the why behind it to people who probably don't know it happened (like Lloyd and Sheena), or anything of the sort. Zelos quickly pushes himself off the wall he's resting against and walks up to Malos, sets two friendly slaps against his forearm before leaning against him with one arm like he's a goddamn tree, grinning.] "I'm warning ya, though," [he says,] "I might actually go ahead and take a nap if I get bored. Hope you don't mind, chief."

Edited 2019-03-22 18:35 (UTC)

Lloyd hates the apprehension that takes hold of his heart as soon as this Zelos walks closer into his space, hates the way part of him wants to cry and yell and the other wants to run and hide, because this isn't fair to this world's Zelos, who obviously has problems of his own and doesn't deserve the problems Lloyd might reflect onto him. It's not fair.

(His life has never been fair, but c'est la vie.)

Instead, he grins, brilliant and wide, and decides to play it safe and run from this tonight. Following Anna's lead, he grabs Sheena's hand and drags her upstairs with him. "Looks like we're roommates tonight!" He announces, and the excitement is only partially faked. He's honestly glad he'll get the chance to talk to her now, even if only for a little bit before they both (hopefully) fall asleep, because Sheena's as dear to him as Genis, Colette, or Raine, an equally important part of the little makeshift family he clings to back home.

They're led through a narrow hallway and up to a door on the far left side, and Lloyd is about to enter the room with Sheena before he pauses, a thought coming to mind. Quickly, before his hesitation can overcome him, he pulls Anna into another hug, mumbling a "good night!" and then strolls into Malos' room.

It's actually quite organized, Lloyd realizes, as soon as he steps in. He's kinda surprised that Malos isn't as messy as he thought, but it hits him that the scattered textbooks and work pages were probably Anna's doing, so maybe he judged a little early. With a deep sigh, he turns to face Sheena, letting the smile fade into something smaller, tired, but no less fond, and walks up to her, arms outstretched.

"Can I - can I hug you again?"

[Sheena looks at Zelos for a moment, like she's worried he won't be there anymore if she lets him out of her sight for too long, but - alright, they've got a point, she does need to sleep. She nods assent to Malos's suggestion.]

Good night, then. [And then Lloyd grabs her hand and pulls her along, and she laughs softly at his enthusiasm. They do have a lot to talk about, but just having him here helps.]

Yeah, come here, [she says, then steps forward to pull him into a hug, arms around his chest. She hadn't really noticed that he'd been getting taller, before she'd wound up here, but it's hard to miss now.] It's... a lot to take in, huh? [Her tone's careful, gentler than she usually is - just finding Zelos had been enough of a shock, but she's not the one who'd met two family members for the first time today.]

"Yeah, it's - it's a lot," Lloyd chuckles, something exhausted and overwhelmed, face in her hair, arms around her neck. "Some otherworldly force must be trying to give me a heart attack or something with so much shit happening at once."

He pulls away after a few more moments, shaking his head and widening his smile instead of dwelling on the events of today, ready to ignore them for the rest of the night. He walks over to the bed and kicks off his boots, then stares at Sheena expectantly, patting the bed next to him. "So what happened? How did you end up over here, and what did you do from there? Aside from - uh, breaking Zelos out?" Lloyd pauses, squinting, "I knew the soldiers running around had to do with you."

Trouble has the habit of following Lloyd and his friends, he's noticed. Or maybe they're just really bad at following the law. Both are plausible.

Sheena pats him on the back, gently, as he tries to laugh his stress off. "Yeah, tell me about it," she says, weary. "At least we're together."

She takes a seat next to him, pushing one boot then the other off as she tugs her hair free of its tie. (It hadn't taken many cuddle piles for them to realize that a fanned-out ponytail to the face is a very unfun way to wake up.) Sheena stretches her hands out in front of her, trying to ease the tension that had been building in her since she first decided to break Zelos free. They're not safe, not exactly, but she's not going to be any help if she can't relax enough to rest.

"Honestly? I'm not really sure. I fell asleep with you guys, and when I woke up... I was in this version of Meltokio, alone." She shrugs, twisting at the waist to face him as she pulls a leg up against herself. Oh-- "Are Colette and Genis okay? And... I may kind of have lost my temper." Just a little. "But the way everyone all kept talking about him... I couldn't stand the idea of letting him stay there any longer." Her expression drops into something unhappier as she talks, running one hand through her hair. "You would've done the same."

The first half of what he'd said reminds her of something she'd been wanting to ask, though, and she shakes her head to clear away the thoughts of how this world views Zelos. At least she'd gotten him away from that, for now. "Seriously, how'd you get here? I didn't expect anyone to be able to follow me."

Edited 2019-03-22 22:15 (UTC)

"Genis and Colette are... well, they're okay. Upset, worried, but they knew you'd be alright." Lloyd replies, sugarcoating it all just a little bit, running a hand through his fringe. "They're gonna be fine. I left them a note explaining I left to find you, and it's not - well, it's not ideal, but I didn't have the time to explain to them."

He lies down, crossing his arms behind his head, and blows his bangs out of the way. "Origin popped up in my room. I hadn't really been sleeping, but he told me he had an incredibly weak signal of where you were and he needed to send me immediately before he lost it. I barely had time to write that note," he chuckles, "I hope they could read what I wrote, 's not like my handwriting is pretty."

There's a small silence, and then Lloyd admits, "yeah, I would have done the same thing. Regarding Zelos, I mean. It's -" he stops, sighing. "What the fuck have we landed ourselves in, Sheena?"

Lloyd's voice is exhausted, and he feels that tiredness seep in through his bones, the excitement of the day leaving him an emotionally drained and stressed skeleton of himself. He slips his arms from under his head and unbuttons his coat, shifting just enough to take it off and toss it somewhere around the general area of his boots.

"Ugh, you know what? That's a problem for future Lloyd," he says, grabbing at the covers and pulling them over him, and then lifting them and gesturing for Sheena to join him. "I want to try to sleep. If I'm not asleep in five minutes I give you permission to knock me out."

Sheena frowns at Lloyd's casual mention of not sleeping, but doesn't press it for the moment. "I can't feel any of the summon spirits from here," she admits, with a frown. That new connection to Zelos is distracting, at least, but it's been a strange few weeks for her, without those threads in her mind. "I guess it makes sense that Origin would be able to track me, though." She lets out a slow sigh, just letting everything settle.

"A mess, I think," she says. One that she'd certainly made worse, by jumping straight to murder. "But you know what? Yeah," she says. "Let's figure it out tomorrow." She flashes him a smile and reaches back to untie her obi, letting it and the obijime drop to the floor, before she joins him, climbing under the blankets. Not sleeping alone is always good for preventing nightmares, at least.

[There is nothing of value here.

White walls, a tall white ceiling, a white floor, white, white, white all around pulsating in a light that burns brightly, yet flickers on and off in a quickly pulsing pattern. Bright, then dark. White, then black. Nauseating, yet almost like a heartbeat, though it is merely a mockery of one, for its owner has none. It is interrupted only by neon orange lines that spread through the floor, up the walls, all the way to a central point in the ceiling where they coalesce and drip, drip, drip down into the a ball of snapping, electric ether suspended in midair, loud and echoing in the otherwise empty room.

The ball of energy croaks and snaps and screeches, too much hatred fed to it from its source that lies motionless on the floor, eyes shut tight, mouth opened in a soundless scream that instead reverberates out of the orange tinted lightning ether ball. It is an agonizing screech, something ripped out of a silent, aching throat and amplified through its ether. And there on the floor, at the center of the orange lines and powering this creature up and giving it shape, lies a poor, broken doll.

And the only thing he knows is pain.

Pulling from within himself, an aching, intrusive screeching scraping at his veins that takes and takes and takes and takes everything it can find, something acidic, something sick and satisfying that mixes at the bottom of his stomach in a concoction of pure hate. Hate for the world that birthed him, hate for lights behind his eyelids, hate for himself, for every second of this torture that he's forced to stay alive for, death a mere, unattainable dream so far in the horizon and already snatched out of his hands by a smiling doppelganger in a mirror.

Agony exits not in sound, but in clear, transparent tears trailing down his cheeks and falling onto the pristine floor. The screeching ball of ether roars and rips thunder out his veins, using him to exist, to live, to destroy and kill. A harbinger of death. An angel's thanatos.

It's taking everything he has.

Someone, please, let it end.

Someone,

please,

let him end.]

She's been here before.

She's been here before, and she'll be here again, because it all leads back here in the end, doesn't it? No matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard she swears that she'll be stronger this time and that it'll never happen again, it always seems to work out that someone's dying and it's on her hands.

The colors are all leached out of Volt's temple, black and white and orange rather than blue-gray stone lit by violet, but she'd know it anywhere, often as she revisits it. Just as she would have expected, there's Volt, furious and upset and completely impossible for her to understand, and there's someone lying on the ground below him, like a stringless puppet.

She's frozen in place, the crackling of lightning too sharp and overwhelming for her limbs to obey. She can't approach him, not here with no one to help her understand Volt's pain and no pact to rein in his power. She's alone, and unprepared, and it looks like she's going to get one more person killed, if she hasn't already, and she hangs her head, fists clenched.

But something in her tells her to look, at least, to see just whose life she's ruined now, and--

-- it's Zelos, the orange light pooling beneath him as it bleeds out of him, the sight familiar and deeply alien at the same time, and she can't let this happen, not again, not one more time.

A bolt of lightning flashes past her cheek as she takes a step, and she ducks but keeps moving anyway. Volt's words rattle through her bones, hard enough to make her tremble, but she doesn't stop til she reaches Zelos.

"Let him go," she snaps, and even through the tears streaming down her face her voice is iron. She steps forward once more to stand over him, body interrupting the flow of ether between them--

And then there's nothing but orange light.

[He

hears

a

sound

A voice, he realizes after focusing, after it comes closer and takes with it some of the pain. It's familiar, somehow. He must've heard it recently before. He can't open his eyes, but he knows the way it echoes from remnants in his brain, in his ether, and with herculean effort the source attempts to open them. Violet eyes slowly, slowly open to see the way that the orange thunder coming from his soul grows in intensity, and in that bright, bright flash of light he sees a shadow standing over him, shielding him, becoming engulfed by his own destructive force--

--and Zelos screams.

It only lasts about a second or two before he slaps his hands over his mouth, eyes wide and lost yet staring ahead. He's jumped into a sitting position, the knee-jerk reaction a reflection of him wanting to get as far away as possible from the dream, and his breathing comes in harsh, shallow breaths that he struggles to control. Zelos nearly chokes. Where is he? What the hell was that?

Breathe, just breathe. One, two. You can do it.

Slowly, then all at once, everything comes back.

His awakening, his driver, their memory share and their escape. Anna, her blade, Sheena's friend and their tentative plan to go see Mithos. The nap he took a few hours into his watch with Malos when he got bored. The port he'd opened in his sleep, the Aegis dreamspace open and apparently mixing with Sheena's restless dreams. Sloppy. Careless. Foolish. Zelos takes a deep breath. Holds it, exhales shakily, notices his own trembling. It wasn't real, he tells himself. It wasn't real, it wasn't real, it wasn't real, but the leftover ache in his bones still keeps him half-anchored in the dream, that all-too-familiar feeling of his ether being pulled from his veins to power something horrible burned into his retinas from both the dream world and reality itself.

And then he remembers Sheena. Remembers her voice, her shielding him.

Remembers his ether destroying her.

Zelos lowers his head into his hands, groaning. He doesn't know why that feels as wrong as it does, why it hurts, but the feeling is intrusive and he wants it gone. Come on, wake up. Wake up, wake up. It's okay. It's alright. You're not in the cannon anymore, you're out, you're out.

It's okay.]

Edited 2019-03-23 07:30 (UTC)

Sheena wakes to the sound of her own screaming.

She cuts herself off quickly, choking on the sound, the momentum of the dream carrying over as she sits up, almost certainly disturbing Lloyd in her scramble. She can't catch her breath, doesn't trust herself to open her mouth without screaming again.

It's just a dream. It's not like she's not used to nightmares, by now, so this one shouldn't be any worse than all the others. She'll get over it.

But... this one had been different, somehow. Immediate in a way dreams don't usually feel after waking up.

She sweeps her legs over to the side of the bed, burying her face in her hands.

It's over. It's over, but why does it still feel like it actually happened?

Malos is lazily packing supplies for their journey, since he has nothing better to do with the time, and staying still too long makes him kind of antsy (he's honestly not sure if he was always like this, or if it's a bit of Anna rubbing off on him) so he might as well. He's in the middle of refolding a travel blanket when it happens.

The thud of a textbook hitting the floor, followed immediately by a scream-- two screams, separate. One from Zelos. One from-- Sheena? He knows it's not Anna (she's still asleep, he can feel that) and... Well, simultaneous like that, the Aegis' driver certainly makes the more logical choice, here. (He knows, if only vaguely, about the Aegis dreamspace, since Kratos talked about it before.)

Well, shit.

Sheena's probably fine, if Lloyd's with her, so Malos goes to Zelos instead-- finds him in the living room, upright on the couch with his head in his hands, breathing heavily, desperately. One of Anna's textbooks lies discarded on the floor. Zelos must've been poking through it out of boredom, must've fallen asleep in the middle of it. (Valid as hell, though, those things are unnecessarily dense.)

"Hey," Malos says, gently, loud enough to get Zelos' attention the first time (hopefully). He holds his hands up and in front of him, a little, where Zelos can see them. He doesn't get close, either. He's dealt with enough people post-nightmare to know not to do anything dumb.

He can only guess what the nightmares are about, but knowing wouldn't much change what he says next, anyway.

"Hey, it's alright, you're safe."

[Zelos is still heaving when Malos calls out, still pushing himself out of the dream and into reality. He doesn't hear the first one, though the sound of the other blade's voice definitely ripples in his conscious, distracting Zelos from the remnants of pain in his veins and the image of Sheena shielding him from his own ether. When he calls out the second time, speaking for longer so that his words actually manage to rip the illusion of a white room and orange lines away from his eyes, Zelos gasps.

He blinks. Lets out a shuddering breath, looks around. He's on a couch. It's night. There's a textbook on the floor that he vaguely remembers reading through, the subject matter reminding him way too much of his previous life to be comfortable, so he'd dozed off. Right. Of course.

Right.

Malos isn't hard to find in the darkness, the purple glow of his core crystal giving him away in a second. For the first time tonight Zelos notices the light illuminating a web string of scars around his core. He tucks the information away for later use, raising his eyes to meet the blade's again. Malos stands far away, hands up, cautious, and Zelos feels a little embarrassment crawl up his spine at the sight. He shuts his mouth. Clears his throat. Looks for an empty mask to construct, then at least some words to diffuse this situation with, anything at all.

He finds none.

Tongue like lead in his mouth, face carefully blank, shivering repressed and kept to a minimum, Zelos hums low in his throat.] "Hey," [he calls out. His eye twitches just a little when his voice still comes out wobbly and small, but he otherwise remains deceivingly calm. Zelos clears his throat again.] "Must've fallen asleep."

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curb your enthusiasm coming out of malos' eyes

you got speakers in there my dude?

i didn't think so but at this point i'm too afraid to ask

Guys I'm still here

[lloyd voice] mmmmoooooooommmmmmm

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DID SOMEBODY ORDER A FUCKED UP DREAM

make it a double

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la6Kc7RAmWc hey

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

hoo boy

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