paixaorpg | In The Dark Of The Night [COMPLETED]

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In The Dark Of The Night [COMPLETED]

Characters: Dias, Maya
Content: Both Dias and Maya aren't really getting a good night's sleep - get your minds out of the gutter, thank you.
Setting: Morem o Lisboa, room 316
Time: Early morning, Saturday
Warning: None, really(I told you it was innocent!)

He'd finished two rough sketches; one had been of Riku, pulled almost as much from his own memories of the boy when he'd first encountered him at the gate as from their brief encounter at the fortress. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd chosen to draw the brat; it certainly wasn't affection. Perhaps it was just so that Dias had a picture of him in case he wanted to inquire about him at some point...

Much of the same logic had gone into the second picture, a more detailed facial sketch of Hojo. Dias didn't trust the man, but it would be a lot easier to find him if he bolted or escaped if they had a picture to show around. He'd prefer to avoid that if he could, but Dias never planned for the ideal situation...he'd never yet been caught unprepared by one so he didn't consider it necessary.

In any case, it was late, his clothes had finally started to dry a bit, and he needed sleep. He wrapped his sketchbook up again before tucking it back into his satchel, then rolled over on his bed and closed his eyes.

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It was strange how sometimes, no matter when you went to sleep and how dead tired you were, you found yourself slowly awakening despite that. It was the third time Maya had drifted off to sleep and cracked her eyes open again, and she was starting to get irritated about it. Honestly, was a long, nice rest too much to ask for after everything that just happened?

Apparently so, because this time she had rolled over with a sharp headache. "Fine, you win," she huffed quietly to the heavens above. If they weren't going to let her sleep, whatever. Maya craned her head in the direction of Dias, who looked to be asleep for at least an hour-and-a-half by now. She wondered if he'd have any asprins on him-- which she quickly doubted. Like this place or any of the people in it would have anything like that.

Maya sighed and rubbed at her temples. Go away, go away, I don't need to deal with you right now.

When she looked back up across the room, she let out a slight shriek.

Slight or not, it didn't make much of a difference to Dias; it woke him just the same(you learned to sleep light when you slept outdoors as much as indoors, especially on Expel where aggressive monsters outnumbered harmless animals), and the shot of adrenaline had him on his feet even before his eyes had been open long enough to focus properly on anything. His sword was already in his hand; he'd gone to sleep with it in easy reach.

Maybe he wasn't on Expel anymore, but old habits died hard. Or didn't die at all, sometimes.

The mercenary blinked at their surroundings as the sleep cleared from his eyes; Maya seemed to be in bed still, and there appeared to be...absolutely nothing at all out of place, actually, even after he'd done a second quick scan of the room to make sure. Finally, his gaze settled on Maya. "Did you have a nightmare?" he asked, trying not to sound as irritable as he felt. His nerves were singing; no chance of getting back to sleep for awhile.

Maya didn't reply right away-- there was a figure there, a human figure standing right there. It didn't dawn on Maya that the figure could barely be seen, given a split second; but even though it was quick, the image clearly stuck inside her mind.

It was a small girl, approximately nineish, Maya had to guess. Her head was bowed down with dark, royal blue bangs covering her eyes; her hands were clasped tightly in front of her. As she looked up in that quick moment, Maya noticed a necklace of daisies that hung from around her neck. The small girl was facing Dias-- who looked completely oblivious to the figure in front of him-- with a soft, saddened look. She seemed to notice Maya, then turned to her, suddenly growing a slight smile.

And then, just like that, the figure faded. Maya stared, but then realized that the sharp pain in her head was slowly going away. "T-That," Maya pointed where the small girl once was. "Did... did you not see that?"

Dias frowned, lowering his gaze to the spot between himself and Maya that the girl seemed to be pointing to - the entirely empty spot. What in the name of Tria's mercy...?

"See what?" he inquired, somewhat cautiously.

"That-- that girl!" Maya waved her hand frantically at the general area. "There was this girl there! And then she just like, disappeared or something!" She turned her puzzled gaze towards Dias. "D-Don't tell me you didn't see it? Or is it just another one of this stupid place's creepy tricks?"

Girl? Disappeared? Dias' eyes narrowed a bit; he'd both heard and seen stranger, frankly, and he couldn't think of any reason Maya would be lying to him...after all, what did she stand to gain?

"No, I didn't see anything," he said simply, finally feeling secure enough to loosen his hand on his sword hilt again. "If it was just a girl, and she's gone now, I don't think we need to worry about it."

Maya bit her lip and gripped at the end of her bedsheets. Maybe 'just a girl' wasn't the right way to putit... it felt more than that. The girl's appearance may have been only a few seconds, but something inside Maya told her it meant something.

"... She was looking at you," Maya softly said.

Dias, who'd been turning back to his bed, froze. A vision of a girl might not mean anything - but one that had been looking at him specifically was too much of a coincidence to not make his skin crawl. Not with fear, exactly - not fear of the girl, anyway. More like fear that the suspicion that had instantly arisen in his mind might be correct...

Expel had been known to have much stranger things than ghosts, after all, and Paixao was far stranger than even Expel had ever been. Who was to say that it wasn't - ?

He forced himself to straighten up again, but didn't turn to look at Maya. He wasn't sure if he could deal with looking at someone else, not if his hunch was right. "...Did she have blue hair?"

If his voice was a little softer than usual, it was just because he didn't want to wake anyone in the neighboring rooms. That was all.

"Y-Yeah," Maya looked up at him quizically. "So you did see her? Oh, good, I thought I was starting to go crazy."

"I told you, I saw nothing." Dias bowed his head. Oh, Tria...so he'd been right. Why did he always have to be right about things he wanted desperately to be wrong about? Blue hair...outside of his and Rena's families in Arlia, it had been an extremely rare color on Expel. "I just - had a hunch."

Now he allowed himself to sit down on the bed, if only because it would be less obvious how uncomfortable he was that way. "You don't need to worry about her. She won't hurt anything."

"Huh?" Maya frowned, and still a little confused, she looked at Dias with concern. "You act as if you know whoever was just standing there."

As much as Dias would have preferred to keep his face turned away, he couldn't help turning to give Maya a slightly disbelieving look at that. She...didn't catch on quickly, did she? "Of course I know her. Why do you think she's haunting me?" He ran a hand through his hair. "I've never seen her...but my friend Rena used to talk about her like she was still alive, right after she died. And even as she grew up, sometimes she'd say she could hear what Cecille was saying." He snorted, if only because he didn't like how much he was talking...but he couldn't seem to stop himself. The thought of Cecille, watching him, had unnerved him more than even he'd realized, it seemed... "Of course, Rena is a lot closer to heaven than I am."

"H-haunting?" Her stomach twisted in a knot when she found out about the girl-- Cecille, she caught. She was dead, Maya realized; she wasn't just some sort of... whatever, floating around.

Maya's grip tightened on the bedsheets. "But... if she's dead, I shouldn't have been able to see her... Not like this."

Dias glanced over at Maya. The whole 'I shouldn't be able to see dead people' made perfect sense, of course; what wasn't quite as self-explanatory was the last bit of the sentence that he'd caught. "What do you mean, 'not like this'?"

"I'm a spirit medium," she started. "Well... sort of. ESP runs through my bloodline, but I'm not exactly full-fledged, yet." Maya gave a determined expression as if Dias was supposed to know this all along. "But I was trainin' really hard before I got here, honest! I know I've been kinda slacking off, and then with the whole mysteriously coming here and that Hojo guy and everything I haven't had a whole lot of time to focus on my training!" She let out a sigh, hanging her head. "I-- I didn't summon that girl-- Cecille. I've always had such a hard time calling spirits, and even then it's always through a form of posession... I don't know how I was able to see her so easily."

Dias gave Maya a faintly bemused look; some of what she spoke of made sense, and some of it was utter gibberish as far as he was concerned. But the gist of it seemed to be that she could see and even summmon the spirits of the dead...yet Cecille had appeared without her prompting.

"Don't look to me to explain it," he said with a slight shrug. "All I know is that Cecille should be in heaven, where she belongs. Not here."

"I guess... some spirits stay behind when they feel like they need to finish something," Maya said; she wasn't entirely sure if it was the right thing to say. "Sometimes my sister comes to help me. I think she's just worried about me, but I've realized I need to stop being so dependent on her. So maybe once I become a full time spirit medium, she can go back there as well." She gave Dias a slight, hopeful smile. "Maybe Cecille is worried about you, too."

"She shouldn't be," Dias said, more sharply than he had intended. "It's bad enough that she was killed; do you think I want to hear that she can't even have a peaceful afterlife because she thinks something is wrong with me?" He glowered at his bed, since at least that meant he didn't have to meet Maya's gaze again. "She should be in heaven, and happy. Not watching over me and - the things I have to do."

Just the thought of Cecille watching his mercenary life made him wince. She'd been so gentle that she wouldn't even kill bugs...and Dias made his living killing monsters, animals, people - he'd always made a point of not thinking about what her opinion of his lifestyle would be. Perhaps the thought of a loved one watching over them would have pleased other people, but to Dias it seemed more like a curse than a blessing.

"Maybe you summoned her in your sleep." That would be a lot easier to accept than anything else.

"Wha--What? I can't do that!" Maya protested. "Calling upon a spirit requires intensive amounts of concentration and skill! This isn't some sort of magic where I flick my hand and they appear just like that!" She scowled at Dias, even if he wasn't looking at her. "There isn't anything wrong with a loved one looking after you, even after death. It just goes to show how much Cecille still cares about you. Maybe she is happy already, knowing you're okay and still going on, even without her by your side."

Dias snorted again, almost grateful for the long hair that hid his face. "If Cecille is waiting for me to be 'okay' before she goes on to heaven," he murmured, "she'll never get there." He glanced over at Maya. "What do you know of it, anyway? For all you know, she's haunting me because she blames me for her death."

Even Dias didn't believe the words as he said them. No; Cecille would never have blamed him for what happened to her, not even if he'd painted a bullseye on her back. But again, instead of reassuring him that knowledge somehow made it all the worse; he deserved to be blamed, deserved to be haunted. Cecille had died because he hadn't been able to protect her, and what were big brothers for, if not that...?

"What do I know?" Maya snapped. "My own sister, the only family I had left, the one person who I depended on and looked up to for everything-- She was attacked and slowly died right in front of me! I could be blamed for it all; that I agreed to hold on to those case documents for her, that I didn't arrive earlier and maybe even save her, that I didn't do a darn thing to even keep her alive..."

She bit her lip and rubbed at her eyes again; maybe those were tears forming at her eyes again, but Maya made no attempt to hide them this time. "B-But even then, she still helps me. She wouldn't want me to blame myself for everything that happened. The worst of things sometimes happens to the best of people, because bad people out there take advantage of them being good. So I can't blame myself, becase... things happen. But you-" she pointed a sharp finger at Dias. "-keep that entire burden on your shoulders... Do you think Cecille would want that? When I saw her," she waved a hand at the empty spot again. "she looked sad. Maybe that's why she's sad."

Dias stared at Maya throughout her outburst, somewhat wide-eyed. It wasn't that it had never occurred to him that Maya, that indeed anyone might have their own grief; he'd been more than aware of that. It was just that he'd never really expected it from someone like her, someone who had seemed so - upbeat. And he certainly hadn't expected a rant like that - it was like being savaged by a kitten.

Of course, even kittens could leave scars. And the news that Cecille had looked sad - might be sad because of him - hit him like a sledgehammer. He sat on the bed in stunned silence for several long moments before he found his voice again. "...She looked sad...?"

It wasn't that he hadn't been paying attention to the rest of what Maya had said. It was just that he couldn't focus on anything else, not after what he'd just heard.

"Why wouldn't she?" Maya asked harshly, still rubbing at her eyes. Even she wasn't expecting such an outburst. "I would be too, if all someone I cared about did was mope and blame themselves for my death. In fact, I'd haunt their sorry butt until I could actually punch 'em in the face and tell them to get over it already!"

"I completely understand missing the deceased," Maya said, more softly this time. "But I had to learn that you can never truly heal until you move on. It doesn't mean you can't be happy anymore." She paused, letting out a sigh. "But you've also gotta remember Cecille, and you gotta remind her that you're feeling great and awesome, and that you're still capable of being the best you can. Being all mopey makes you a wimp."

Dias scowled in Maya's general direction. So perhaps she'd lost a sister, too...that didn't mean that she had any right to give him advice on how to handle his own grief. "Don't think you're qualified to tell me how I should or shouldn't feel," he growled. "I'm sorry about your sister, but just because something bad happened to you doesn't mean you can understand what happened to me - you don't know anything about it."

Dias turned away then, stretching out on the bed with his back to the girl across the room...not that he'd be going to sleep for awhile(if at all, with the sickening new knowledge that even Cecille's afterlife wasn't peaceful; believing her to be in heaven and happy was one of the very few consolations he'd had over the past eight years), but he hoped it would signal a definitive end to the conversation.

He found his fingers absentmindedly tracing over the deep scar on his abdomen and jerked them away. He was not going to think about that, not with other people around. Some things were too private.

"Hmph, fine!" Maya puffed up her cheeks in frustration, crossing her arms and turning her head away from him. "Maybe I don't know what happened, but it doesn't give you a reason to act like there's nothing for you anymore."

After leering hard at the back of his head for a given amount of minutes, she flopped back down on her pillow, back facing Dias, and pulled the blanket over her. "You're not gonna listen anyway," she muttered.

"And if there is nothing for me anymore...?" Dias had, at least, the wisdom to say this quietly, too low for Maya to catch unless she had far better hearing than he expected; he knew she'd want to argue that point with him and frankly, he wasn't interested in having that argument. Even though she'd only known Dias for a few hours, Maya was reiterating many of the arguments Rena had thrown his way on Expel(at least, the arguments she'd been able to get him to sit still long enough to hear)...and he'd known Rena all her life. Dias wasn't sure if he liked the similarities he was seeing.

He waited for a few long, silent minutes before he shifted, rolling over so that his back was facing the wall, eyes searching the dim room with a faint hope not even torture could have persuaded him to admit to. He needn't have bothered; aside from Maya in the far bed, the room looked completely empty, at least to his eyes.

Nevertheless, Dias wasn't able to tear them away from where Maya had indicated Cecille had been standing. Not if there was a chance...

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In The Dark Of The Night [COMPLETED]

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