The Radiant Nightmare misses a lot. This, she remains aware of despite everything else that has happened to her.
It’s a natural side effect of how she exists. When your Heart has been shattered and pieced together in a parody of its last shape, things are guaranteed to be missing. Whether it’s past memories or current events, can go either way.
All the Radiant Nightmare knows at this very moment is this: food and territory. She has to protect her territory from enemies and those enemies often can be eaten.
A perfect mixing match, whatever one wants to refer to the situation.
Most of her remains in the Dream of Radiant Garden, as matches her name. Some of her, though...travels more far afield.
Splitting Hearts means a person can be in more than one place at the same time, each Heart fragment to its own Dream-shaped body. Not as stable as the main mass, of course, but it does well enough to fuel the Nightmare’s curiosity.
Her remembrance.
This fragment of her stretches out into an entirely new worldline, as this alternating universe is called. Far from her own, only able to be reached because her past self currently resides there.
(Hearts attract Hearts and magnets push and pull. Everything and nothing is the same.)
This Dream-world is the same but different from the one her territory brushes up against at times. Still called Mirage Arena, but with a different ruler.
Who would have guessed? That somewhere, somewhen, the Ultimecia would have fallen prey to her own games. Allowing another to take the throne. Another that the Radiant Nightmare has never met before. Not in her past life or her current one.
This Ruler speaks to her now. Angelic yet not, a swirl of white and sky blue to the Nightmare’s senses. Singing but also incredibly silent.
“Why are you here? Wandering Nightmares don’t tend to linger as long as you have.”
The Radiant Nightmare hears the unspoken, for once in her life.
Not unless they want something.
She knits her claws together. All six of them.
“My past walks in your world,” she says simply. “As is the one I promised myself with. I am only following after them.”
The Ruler’s brows knit together. Metaphorically or literally? It’s not like the Radiant Nightmare can tell, she’s mostly blind. “I see. If you harm anyone...”
“I will not but I take your warning.” Besides, this is only a fragment. If the main Radiant Nightmare loses this, it will be no loss.
Not when she’s lost so much of herself already. What’s a little more to add to the pile?
“You should be more careful with yourself.”
The Radiant Nightmare blinks with the eyes she hasn’t got. Her fins flick back. Flick forward. “What’s there to be careful with?”
A hint of a frown. “If you’re asking me that question, you’ve already forgotten yourself.”
“You cannot judge me on that. You do not reign over me.”
“But I know a you,” the Ruler corrects. “You are more similar than you’d like to pretend.”
What is she talking abou- ah. The alternate Ruse. “Not so much. Maybe my past and this other Ruse are the same. But I’ve changed too much to be considered that,” the Radiant Nightmare says while violently swishing her tail.
Another polite smile. Too polite for the words that leave those lips. “You lie.”
Her ice flares. “You think you know me? Think again. Because Ruse would have never sold the future to Xehanort.”
The names echo. Creating meaning, creating vibrations that cannot be ignored, even in these shadowy depths.
The Ruler’s wings flick out. “Oh. I understand now. That’s why you’re so insistent on you being a different person. Because you did what would have been unimaginable.”
“Shut up.”
Too quick, she needs to mind her words here!
A bright smile. “No. You need to face yourself, before you hurt my Radiant Nightmre. And I won’t let you do that. Mind yourself, Nightmare.”
Another Radiant Nightmare...Ruse, hm? The Ruse of this world.
“I will...leave her be. I am merely watching.”
The Ruler nods. “Then you may stay.”
Radiant Nightmare flicks her fins out in a flourish of a bow. “My thanks.”
So she will stay quiet. She will not interfere as she walks in this Mirage Arena. If another Nightmare or Spirit wants to talk to her, then she will. But the Radiant Nightmare will not reach out first.
As to the bargain between them.
But the rest that this Ruler has told her, about denying being Ruse...
