[limbo] // do you walk in the valley of kings

[discutio]

[To cast out the Usurper and usher in dawn's light will cost the life of the Chosen. The voice that had shaken him down to the very core of his existence still echoed in Phoenix's head, words utter nonsense to him now and yet...something about them hurt more than he could measure. Hurt like the gravest news about a dearest friend, hurt like something tearing at his heart and soul. Though the details were lost in a haze of a previous life's memories, he understood the bottom line. One life, the one dearest to the man Phoenix once was, would have to be sacrificed to protect all else-]

[Don't try to justify this! She didn't need to die!]

[Hurt like the agonized rage in that snarl, thundering fury to match the torrential rain around them. The fury of someone who had lost everything, someone--someone whose name he should have known, whose loss he understood and yet couldn't remember the source of. That woman--no, his sister, something terrible had become of her and nearly become of someone just as close to Phoenix's own heart. Everything came in flashes; a man in white and a sword flashing with lightning, faces he failed to recognize and one he knew already. The man in black that had posed briefly as another was a danger above all others, and somehow in the chaos of memory Phoenix understood his past self had known that. 'Oh, what good is a world that only ever lets you down', said the mocking tone, a knife toyed with idly above the unconscious form of...of someone. Someone that meant everything, someone that Phoenix would gladly die to protect.]

[...Maybe he would, the relic of untold power in his hand before he had fully consider what he was doing. It didn't matter. it didn't matter at all what happened to him, because he had sworn-]

[Whatever it takes...I will protect him-!]

[In a memory of rain-soaked stone, the world erupted in flames and agony before going dark forever.]

[In a kitchen in Limbo, there was a clattering of whatever Phoenix had been holding falling to the floor before he very swiftly followed it.]

Comments

[discutio]

[He'd calmed down by the time he'd messaged Chiron, and spent the time between then and now focusing on memorizing everything he'd seen; not only in memory, but in Purgatory itself.]

Chiron.

[So his voice was even and steady, when he greeted someone who had once held a knife over his reason for living.]

[schardynfreude]

Phoenix. [He dare not close any gap, in his typical amicable fashion. Distance is...fine.] You wanted...to talk.

[discutio]

I did.

[A slow, controlled breath. Astrals, where to start.]

...The prince in black. Did you know his name?

[schardynfreude]

...I must have, before. In the living world. But not now.

[discutio]

Very well--I expected as much, and can say the same besides.

[He'd have to wait for that answer, no matter how pressing the question. And speaking of pressing questions, another left him as easy as inquiring about the weather:]

Do you want to kill me, Chiron?

[schardynfreude]

Wh-no, of course not! [It's an instantaneous reaction, doesn't even have to think about it. Does not have to consider his feelings or consult his memories.

Although even in memories...]

What...whatever prompted you to...?

[discutio]

... [The lack of hesitation was reassuring; whatever Chiron may or may not have remembered, he was still Chiron. Phoenix sighed, relief clear on his face no matter any effort to hide it.]

I know now what cost me my sight. Or rather, I know why I gave it up.

[schardynfreude]

...No. [He backs up a few steps, a touch of panic in his voice.] No, surely not. I know how your scars came about.

[discutio]

Chiron...don't go. I don't want to fight you. I only want to make sense of all this.

[schardynfreude]

You shouldn't want to fight me after I-- [What does it mean? What does it mean?] You did all that for nothing.

[discutio]

Why? Because I couldn't kill you?

[schardynfreude]

Yes.

[discutio]

I don't care about that. There was no way I could know what it would or wouldn't amount to, and whether the end result was what I wanted it to be or not, I did what I believed was necessary in order to protect him.

[That was all that mattered. Not his sight, not his life, but the assurance that person would be safe.]

The person I was would have made the same choice a thousand times over.

[schardynfreude]

And the person you are now? Surely--you surely must still want me dead.

[discutio]

If I wanted to kill you, why would I go to the trouble of calling you back here? I would just kill you instead of wasting our time.

[schardynfreude]

[He laughs--a surprised bark of a thing first, and then it pours out of him, between fingers, as though trying to stuff it back in.]

Maybe you managed it--perhaps you still managed it, in the end. Of course you can't kill me, the job's already done.

[discutio]

Perhaps I did, or perhaps you killed me first. Right now, there's no way of knowing.

Right now, I don't want to hurt you.

[schardynfreude]

Then what do you want?!

[discutio]

...I want to understand who I'm speaking to. Because as frustrating as I do occasionally find your insistence to help me, I find no malice or ulterior motives within it. I have no reason to believe you as anything but genuine, and that to me indicates one not so evil as to be utterly lost down to their soul.

I can not reconcile 'Chiron' with the man or monster I gave everything attempting to defeat. Whether we remember who we were or not is secondary to who we are now, and I want to learn who you should decide to be before this ends.

[schardynfreude]

So the past doesn't matter? Why even speak of it at all if who we were does not matter as much as who we are stumbling around pretending to be now?

[He cannot reconcile the two either. But some things are very, very clear to him. The man he was...whatever death he earned, it was fully deserved. It had to be.]

[discutio]

Did I say that it doesn't matter? Of course it does. I want to know who I would have died for, and I want to know why any of that transpired in the first place.

But is that what you think all this has been? Pretending? You've been pretending to care about any of us--Rei, Mona, all of them?

[schardynfreude]

...I don't know. I hope not.

[discutio]

...I don't think you have been. And I think that if it worries you, that alone is enough of a sign that you don't have to be what you were.

[schardynfreude]

I hardly know what I was. You were...a stepping stone, in a fashion. I didn't want you dead. You lived, after all, when you could easily have been crushed.

...Phoenix. [He hasn't moved back any further, and yet he sounds more away.] Who was she?

[discutio]

...I think...she was the reason we left the city. Some sort of...betrothal, between her and the prince in black. The man with the prosthetic--her brother, he called her the Oracle.

[Only once the darkness is dispelled is her calling truly fulfilled.]