It is as if the colossal stones sitting atop his shoulders is visible to the human eye, and for a moment, he is frozen by the level of astute she displays. She does not know him, this small girl sat upon the high-rise wall, the bottom of her boots not so much as able to skim the top of the crack skittering up the bricks.
( too young, far too young to know what she was talking about. but when he looked into her eyes, those depths reflected the horrors his own had seen.
––dear shiva, he had hoped to never again see another child soldier. )
For a moment he finds his gaze casting ahead, instead of at his nameless companion. Mulling the words over, and just how right they are. Though he has placed his one-man mission on hold until he can come to a better method of ridding the cosmos of Sephiroth’s entire existence––that doesn’t involve world-hopping in the hopes of finally catching up–he does not feel at ease with the near-tranqulity of his surroundings… or the overall contentment that permeated the lives of his long time friends.
( how easy it was for Aerith and the rest to find peace. did his DARKNESSdrenched presence not–– )
‘Maybe not,’ he does not allow the doubts and fears to enter his words, to coat his voice in a way she might read. But he wonders if perhaps she won’t see it anyway, as she seems to already know more than she should. ‘But I guess that’s the price to pay to see it end… like jumping over the edge. We don’t know what comes after.’ half a huff, half a scoff escapes him as he shakes his head briefly, && blond spikes whip with the motion. Coming from him, that sounded almost…
( honest? raw? )
…Regardless, he finally moves to face her again, and this time, holds her gaze. A million thoughts flitted in and out, gone before fully formed, leaving him only with a single question. ‘Think you can do it?’
A young man tortured by a past that still nipped at his heels. Xion was familiar with the look in his eyes. She had seen it in the mirror. The look of fractured glass, someone torn-up from their roots, repurposed for grand schemes. Then left for dead when no longer useful. They had seen things they cannot forgot. To win a fight a transaction is required. The payment and price is a shard of humanity, the cost of survival. Win enough and there might not be anything left, just a hallowed out husk of a person filled in by the nightmares. Most nights, Xion felt scooped-out, fragile as glass and brittle enough to shatter.
Xion perched on the retaining and her legs swung, lackadaisical. Her hands braced behind her to support her weight. No more the age of sixteen by appearance she was more than eager to strike-up a conversation about the hells of war. Someone to compare notes with, find some common ground. She was as lost as he was. The fighting is over. Xehanort is dead. Go home. Then Xion had replied, she never had one. As it turned out, heartless hunting was not a skill most functional teenagers possessed but it was her only one. The only thing Xion had ever been good at was fighting– at this point, she couldn’t even read.
“No,” Xion answered flatly. Because lea offered her a place to stay and a couple hours there drove her up the wall. The idea of days of quiet placidity was terrifying; Whole weeks with nothing to do, settled in her gut as rocks. She couldn’t do it. No way. It wasn’t in her design. She’d tip over the edge and fall to her doom.
If she did not find the war then it came to her. In her sleep, on constant replay. The fight, the wound, cruel faces. For a year she believed herself dead meat. Now she imagined it in vivid detail. Xion chopped up and given back to Sora to eat. What if she woke up one day with brown hair and blue eyes? She’d been wrong, Xion was the imposter and Sora the rightful owner.
“There’s always something else out there.”
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