[OPEN] oh, the king

[sunderings]

Who: Sion & You!
Where: The Meshwork.
When: The duration of Chapter 4!
Summary: Dream catch all! From casting spells and engaging in shenanigans to escape match-meetings, to talking to your "other self", Sion's dreams are sporadic???
Restrictions/Warnings: Violence, spoopy imagery, possible (literal) self-sacrifice...!!

❶ You are running for the love of it.
❷ You sink and you cannot breathe, air catching in the throat and refusing to reach the lungs.
❸ You are happy.
❹ You tread upon a pathway comprised entirely of dango.

( all dreams are OTA and written in second person, Sion's POV. tags will be returned in regular third person! feel free to PM or contact me here if you'd like something specific. o9 )

Comments

[sunderings]

[ He can't.

The sound of her voice—Sion, look at me—is gentle, its intonations a tenderhearted caress against the cheek, but he cannot look up, away from the body in his arms, all remaining warmth draining from the person he'd come to call his family with the seep of blood which soaks into the carpeted flooring and Sion's uniform, the fall of his hair staining red as it shrouds them both. It is a younger brother who he holds fast to, knowing for himself the boy's hopes and dreams, and in a year's time, they'd walked forward in pursuit of them together only for it to end like this: a life taken away, aspirations gone unrealized, and only one person to blame.

Perhaps Alice can feel it, the despondency which has settled over Sion, his eyes fixed upon the boy's face—why is it that, even in death, his subordinate has chosen to wear a smile?—tears collecting along his jaw to fall upon the body.

Alice, she is close enough to reach out to, her skirts rustling with a whisper of fabric as she hovers before him, and yet--... ]

I did this.

[ ...he would withdraw, were it possible. She should not be here, it's much too dangerous, she'll be hurt too. ]

I killed him, it is my fault.

[ So why should he not look at what his own hands have wrought? He'd been foolish enough to think that the repercussions of his actions would fall upon himself alone; that those beneath him would be safe, if he were to keep them in the dark, shielded from his own pursuit of idealism and equality for all in the Quad. ]

Take your leave of this place, Alice. I could not bear it if you were to meet a similar fate.

[digophelia]

[ Alice can understand the sentiment very well, somewhere deep down. There's a nagging feeling that she's forgetting something. Or someone. For once, Alice doesn't scorn him or push him to move along. She sits patiently there in front of him, with her hands still neatly in her lap. The feeling of despondency is much like her own feelings. ]

You've done nothing wrong, Sion. [ How funny their roles are reversed at this moment and Alice like a fretting mother. ] You're always so hard on yourself, placing the need of others before your own. He wouldn't want this, Sion.

[ Her? Meeting a similar fate? ]

I promise you, nothing will happen to me.

[sunderings]

You cannot keep that promise. The reach of the Company is too great, and I--...

[ He would like to believe in her words, in her voice which is patient and kind, urging him to see those facets of himself he has always been blind to. But the more she speaks, the more he sinks into himself, and the heavier the body in his arms becomes, because there is no escaping it, his own inability. All this time, he'd struggled and he'd fought, rising through the ranks of the Company in order to garner power enough to protect all those he cared for and loved, only to realize that nothing had changed.

He cannot safeguard anyone.

And he is still only the doll that they'd made, playing at diplomacy between the moons of the Quad. ]

Haven't the hands to protect anyone. I could not protect him, nor could I protect you on that night.

[ Shaking his head, he blinks the tears from his eyes, looking up if only to greet Alice with his unwavering, unfaltering decision: ]

Already, I have failed you once, and I would sooner end my own life than have harm befall you because of any association with me.

[ Because Alice—... She is his friend, and his care for her bleeds throughout the room, manifest in the strange auras of green and blue pervasive here, in his office. ]

I am dangerous. Please, I beg of you, leave.

[digophelia]

Why would I leave you?

[ Alice leans in, so unsure of herself of how else to offer comfort and support for him. A man so insistent on fussing over her at every turn, someone who seemed to show more care and support than anyone else higher up for that matter. Jack, of course, like a fussy father. Sion was her peer and it made it different. It gave her more reassurance than she cared to admit. So she nudged herself closer to him, leaning somewhat to get a better look at Sion's face.

She had every intent to show him that she would not budge, stubborn as she was. ]

I have been too cruel to you.

[ She starts to speak, still believing it to be an odd dream or even just a distorted reality. ]

Quite honestly, it upsets me how you fret over me and my well-being. It makes me feel so small at times and I would worry that you saw me so ill that I was unable to care for myself. However-

[ It pains even her to see her cry. ]

I could never leave you, no matter what.

[sunderings]

I never thought you to be incapable, only--...

[ She leans in, and were the circumstance not what it is (a meeting in a dream, something which does and does not feel like reality), she would be close enough such that their foreheads might touch, if only he were to lean forward too. But gold eyes only shy away from green, falling downcast as he searches for the words which he should have said to her in any of their many meetings, perhaps even on that night when he'd whisked Gwen away from Alice's home in Leith: ]

Alone. As I once was. And so, I reached out to you as I reached out to him, but in the end...

[ Abruptly, his tears stop. His voice sobers, going cold in a way it never before has been— ]

My touch is poison, Alice.

[ Potent enough to dissolve away the body in his arms, the boy's limbs, torso, and head dissipating into aetherous particles and mirrorlike fragments, glittering and glinting before they disappear in the blink of an eye, and Sion is left with nothing and no one to hold, only--...

An envelope, addressed to him, though the Director cannot bring himself to open it and read its contents.

Instead, he extends it to Alice, his hands bloodied and trembling. ]

I do not wish to read this.

[ If Alice should open the envelope, inside she'll find a directive meant for him—acclimation training, to be completed to standard, involving the silencing of resistance members said to have overtaken a Company storehouse. ]

If you cannot leave, please take it from me. I don't want to hurt anyone.