Memory Cave

[voidtreckermods]

After the passengers see a glimpse of a life that is not their own they appear in a cave. It is light, a strange moss glowing on the walls and ceiling illuminates the cave nicely and it is large enough for them to pace around in without trouble.

They are not alone. In the cave with them is another voidtrecker. Maybe someone they know well, maybe someone they have only seen in the aisles of the train. But they are together in this cave together.

The cave has no exit, at least not yet. They know that it will, eventually. When the time is right.

But for that time to come, they first must talk...

(OOC: For reference: memories!)

Comments

[blitzcheer]

It's not his place to pry. He wondered because he was curious, it caught his attention, but Tidus realises the question isn't really answered fully, if intentionally or otherwise. This world or whatever may want to dig, but at most, Tidus just wants something familiar. As close as it can get.

It's why he says nothing himself about it when he could: about becoming real from a dream. Able to interact with the world outside Zanarkand, but in the end--in the end, still a dream to his core. Even then, still as lost as everyone else.

Ronan may already understand, but there's no reason to cement it. Death is unavoidable, life is stupid complicate--but nobody needs more reason to worry. To fear.

"Us--from Zanarkand," Tidus starts instead, a desire to be clear at least about one thing, "it was based on a city the Fayth remembered, but we-- we were real. We were dreams, but-- I don't know anything about the Zanarkand that used to exist. I'm just...me. I had a family. I wasn't anyone else but me."

Not a memory--just a hope to let a place cherished live on, even if it was tucked away, hidden from the rest of the world. But the people there lived too, and it was just a memory, an exhibition.

He has to at least make sure that's known, for them. The people now gone.

[aluciner]

"Of course you were." Ronan sounds confused, because reality is not an external condition for him. Of course a dream would be real: it wouldn't be a dream if it wasn't. "Chainsaw isn't any less a raven because I dreamt her."

It's the first time he's told someone directly that Chainsaw is not, in fact, a "real" raven that he's hand-reared for some reason. He assumes Tidus would know she isn't, even though there's really no reason that he would. She gives off a faint, unnerving magic but it doesn't necessarily point to her being a dreamthing. She's also something like a familiar, which is what Ronan has told some people when asked about her more unnatural qualities, and there's enough of those in other words that most people don't ask more questions.

A familiar isn't quite the same as a psychopomp, but Chainsaw has functioned like both: a grounding tool for Adam's scrying and a guide for Ronan's dreaming. It would be better and easier to dream if Opal were present too, but Ronan supposes that Opal is enough her own that she would have to come onto the train under her own power.

[blitzcheer]

"I just mean, I'm not a memory," Tidus explains, note low, but not quite sheepish. "They made Zanarkand from their memories, but after that... I'm pretty sure there wasn't another Tidus a thousand years ago."

It's the closest thing that comes to humour from him since all this, but it's soft, the actual desire to joke not present. Tidus hadn't known about Chainsaw, ad notes it, even if he doesn't comment on it. For him, a dream isn't supposed to know it's a dream--not dreams like him anyway. And dreams (or dreamers) walking around isn't a concept anyone knows to care or be concerned about in Spira. Not like Ronan's home.

cw: minor body horror

[aluciner]

Ah. Ronan had almost forgotten he asked whether there was a difference between dreams and memory, where Tidus is from. Apparently there is, and isn't that funny? Memories are nothing but dreams with more power, in Ronan's experience. What are Cabeswater or Lindenmere but memories? Things that are older than time, maybe, taking shape in the form that Ronan knew best: forests.

It is not yet time, the dream says to him, and Ronan breathes out. There's something to come to terms with here, maybe. Tidus admits that he's a dreamthing and implies that he found whatever it is that Ronan desperately wants: a way for dreamthings to wake up even when their Dreamer is dead. If the context was different, Ronan would demand to know what he did. Here, it's not worth asking because the answer is that Ronan won't be able to replicate it. He's learned, from some of the things that have happened, that it's the train's doing.

What is there for Ronan to admit, though? He's been Greywaren for long enough to wear it like a second skin. Tidus already knew that anyway. There's nothing much in the difference between their fathers: Niall a perfect and untouchable thing until he'd been dead on the driveway and a man called Jecht who Tidus desperately wanted to be proud of him. What is there but - oh. He supposes the last piece of context is, maybe, Adam.

"The clock I dreamed when you asked. It keeps track of when I last spoke to Adam." There's something left in the gaps of this non sequitur that Ronan doesn't quite know how to bridge for Tidus. Absently, he rubs at his nose and his fingers come away black. "Fuck. I don't know what you want! Adam is my second self, I love him the way Achilles loved Patroclus."

He's not quite directing this at Tidus, more at the dream itself as black goo drips from his nose. There's no way to fix the nightwash here, but it would figure that he's incompatible with a dream controlled by someone else.

[blitzcheer]

"Ronan-" Tidus takes a few steps towards him, concern in that name when he sees the smear, the residue on him. Something's happening, he doesn't know what, and he doesn't know if it's this stupid dream or some other problem. No, what else can it be than the dream? And Tidus looks at the ragged walls of the cavern, luminescent, unhelpful, useless.

"I don't need to know his life story," he adds to the open space; wanting to help, but what even is this dream searching for? "You love Adam? I love Yuna--I loved her, I still do. She would have died if Yunalesca got her way. And I never told her I'd go when I always knew--because I didn't want to see her cry. 'Cause I was scared."

He speaks, rambles, taking the declaration of love and going with it too, searching in his own history some way of helping Ronan, if that's even the key. A force in those last words, an ugly truth. Because I was scared. Because I was a coward. Because I didn't want to die. Because she was the only thing keeping me standing.

"Yuna showed me what being alive was," he says, the words meaning more than their face, not filled with beauty or solely admiration. "In a real world."

The ugly truth of it, but also the will to live on, and to hope for change.