EVENT LOG: GRAVES

[inthenightmods]

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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Comments

[equinoctials]

It concerns him, the subdued distance in her, even if he understands how their circumstances contribute. They are, all of them, trying to deal with their own deaths and this lightless scenario in their own ways. Sometimes, their reactions aren't all that unique. There are patterns enough to this that people smarter than he on the subject of death and grief have written whole books about it.

The familiarity of years together on the islands has him recognizing that she's about to ask something of him, in that first moment that her gaze alights on his face. It isn't this that makes him inwardly brace, but the question when she asks, the presence of her hands around his palm roots him there.

His exhale is an aborted attempt at speech, a small puff of sound.
Riku averts his eyes, though they show the struggle it costs to answer. He had hoped in vain that no one, Sora and Kairi least of all, would discover the delphic tripod or, worse, leave an offering and experience his own last moments alive.

But that pandora's box has been opened and there's no closing it now.

"The answer won't give you any comfort," Riku's answer is honest, soft, "Kairi, I think you know why."

It's always the same.
Sora's adventure began when they lost Kairi.
Riku has been chasing after Sora for years.

Having lost Kairi yet again, of course history would again repeat itself, their bond too strong to not buck against the fate that would see it broken.

[carriedbylight]

It's when Riku averts his eyes that she knows. The answer to the questions is one she already knew. Given her own death, it's likely that Sora just couldn't accept that she was gone. Riku's right. The answer to the question doesn't given her any comfort at all. It twists the guilt weighing on her heart all the more, making it ache within her chest. It's a familiar feeling, a companion that she's gotten used to throughout the years. After all, fate had a decidedly twisted sense of humor. She's been the catalyst for so many things and this time, it's lead to not only Sora's death...

But Riku's, too.

Her hand releases its grip on Riku's hand, dropping away to rest at her side limply. She takes a step backward, placing a step of distance between them as she averts her own gaze from him, her expression showing the hurt that makes her heart ache. She's never been very good at concealing how she feels, especially in times like these. How else could she possibly feel? She's responsible for the deaths of the two people she loves more than anyone else in the world and the realization is sinking in on her. Perhaps she's known since that first moment seeing them in this place and chose not to see it for what it is.

"I'm sorry, Riku." She said, her voice tight with emotion. "It's my fault...that you both died."

How is she supposed to face them?

[equinoctials]

When her hand loosens, withdraws from his, there's a stiff and subtle twitch in his own fingers, the aborted instinct to chase after the contact that isn't his to claim. There's no way to address her question that doesn't sting, even a dishonest answer only delays the inevitable, makes the hurt worse for the betrayal of her trust. So he observes in silence how she concludes on her own the level of her own fault, sees it weigh down the slope of her narrow shoulders.

Her voice sounds tight. His own mouth feels shut tight, his jaw creaking at the gritting of his teeth.

"That's not true," Riku denies flatly.

It's like her to assume the blame, to assume that what had been done to her was another sign of the weakness that makes her vulnerable, thinks he can understand what that must feel like. To train so hard only to have one's long toil blown away like so much dust. But it wasn't meaningless, the time she and Lea spent in training.

"None of us saw what he was planning," that he intended to use Kairi to force the Guardians - specifically Sora's hand probably should have been predictable enough to see coming. That's his failure, at the least, after fighting against every time Xehanort, the Organization, all of them tried repeatedly to get to Sora in the same way.

"Whatever happened as a result was never your fault."

[carriedbylight]

"Yes, it is." She replies to Riku's denial. It's exactly the sort of thing Riku would say to her to keep her heart from becoming too heavy, no doubt feeling a sense of responsibility, himself. This time, however, there's no way to reason away her blame. Perhaps she's known since finding them in Beacon that their deaths link back to her, hiding in a sense of denial due to the fact that it was simply easier to swallow. Now, however, the veil has been lifted and the fact is laid bare before her. The time for denying it has passed.

The string of thoughts that follow the guilt can't be stopped. Maybe if she had been stronger, this wouldn't have happened. She should have been more alert, aware of her surroundings. Xemnas had taken her from them as easily as picking fruit from a tree. That thought makes her heart ache, the thought that, despite what must have been the equivalent of months of training, she had been taken out of the game so easily gnawed at her insides. She should have been more prepared. And if she had thought she wasn't prepared enough, she should have simply stayed to the sidelines, instead of following them into battle and becoming a liability.

"Sora went after me. You went after Sora. There's no way you can say that it wasn't because of me, Riku." She says, her voice taking on an uncharacteristically somber sort of sound. She knows that none of them blame her. It's why Riku is so adamant about telling her it isn't her fault. But it doesn't stop her from blaming herself, the disappointment far greater than anything she's ever felt.

But what good is acting down in front of them going to do? It will make Riku worry all the more about her, causing a whole new set of issues. It's time to put on a brave face. Kairi offers him a small smile, crossing her arms behind her back. "I'm sorry." She says. "I'll definitely find a way to make sure we all go back home, alive and well." Or, at least, Sora and Riku.

[equinoctials]

She's headstrong, and that's something he's always admired about her. That she doesn't fold, she never gives up. His gaze drops; Riku finds himself caught between a bullheaded desire to argue and something else. Something softer, that doesn't think battering itself up against her resolve will do either of them any good, the thought that he can't change her mind.

That thought. That's the one that doesn't needle so much as gut him, because he can't convincingly argue against it.

Much as he wants to.

Riku's breath hisses out between his teeth, gritted tight enough that he swears he can hear his own jaw creak from the pressure, the muscle in his cheek jumps once at the strain as he looks away. Shame chases hot on the heels of his speechlessness, with it snaps the jaws of Guilt, because there's always more he could have, should have done.

These things don't freeze him in his tracks like they once did.

"You would have done the same," he says instead, "You waited, and when we didn't return, you looked for us. It could have been any one of us," he adds, and immediately hears the liar Xehanort made of him. Of course it would have been her. It was always... meant to be her.

Hadn't he always been trying to manipulate Sora by using those closest to him?

"Don't..."

He breathes, "Don't, not for our sakes." Be angry, be sad, be anything but this, this smile that isn't reaching her eyes. When it's their blue or Sora's that lay claim to whole leagues of his memory, when the only smiles of theirs he wants to recall until the end of his time are the ones they mean.