the spectrum heart cathedral system

"nsfw" warning for open discussion of intimacy.

 

1228. thursday.



We woke up around 8:30, and spent approximately 20 minutes in the frigid beautiful dawn, deciding whether or not we should go for a run.
...Actually, that's the problem. We didn't decide. Our poor sleepy social frontrunner(s) was/were trying to decide on his/her/their own, worried about whether or not it was "bad" to leave the Arrows alone and asleep, to get food for later in the day, to have any sort of opinion or preference or decisive thought. They were asking for "signs from God" to "tell them what to do," something Tilly and Iscah used to do constantly-- looking for "yes" or "no," "stay" or "go" in the words they saw on printed packages all around them, not trusting a single one because "what if it's my brain wanting to see a certain result?" Those poor frightened good-hearted souls. They are so afraid, so afraid to do the "wrong thing" that the simple reality of an undefined reality terrifies them. They want morality laid out in front of them clear-cut and unquestionable, undoubtable... but they look for righteousness with their mind, not their hearts. Their poor hearts are so full of love but it's getting choked under the whirling moral fear of their thoughts.
There is nothing wrong with buying food. There is nothing wrong with going for a run. There is nothing wrong with liking the cold air against your face, and there is nothing wrong with being too tired and chilled to want to throw yourself back into it after 5 hours of sleep. There is nothing wrong with waking, or resting, or sitting, or exercising, or eating, or fasting, or anything. Life is life is life-- it's all the purest white, a blank canvas, a blank musical score, an empty plate, all of it waiting with utmost divine affection for us to decide. 
That's the beautiful terrible beloved reality of life, of free will, of human consciousness, of the infinite possibility of the world, of the unfathomable palette of existence. It's all a work of art waiting to happen. It needs an artist, and That Which Is-- God, or Goddess, or Source, or Light, or whatever you may wish to call that primordial spark of the cosmos, that original Artist, that first Musician-- couldn't help but create a universe full of artists to join in the joyous act. 
We adore that. Creation creating itself, ad infinitum, through us. An endless dance. 
So it's inherently blank. Not white, not black. It's clear, like a prism, and we're all lights passing through it, splitting our lives into swathes of color. Everything and anything we do contributes to it, and none of it is judged, none of it is labeled as "good" or "bad"... none of it, that is, save for what our own mind labels it as.
We have a lot of thoughts on this, from years upon years of feeling and thinking both, and there's no time or space to expand on it here furthermore... but for now, suffice to say that those frontrunners of ours this morning were unable to trust their own hearts, were unable to see themselves as capable of doing anything But the "wrong thing." They were labeling all their paints as "bad" before they even opened them. Poor beloved fellow souls of ours. We adore them. We know their hearts. We feel their aching desire to be harmless and helpful, to be kind and true and good and pure, but they have let fear in, and fear only knows itself. Therefore, whatever decision they made, they would second-guess it. They would be too scared to surrender to the quiet warmth of their hearts, to listen to That echoed within them, to realize that whatever they ultimately chose, the canvas had opened its own heart to them and sang, paint. Create. Choose a color, any color, and continue me. 
God doesn't mind if you run or walk or rest or sleep or eat or not. God just wants you to act according to your heart, to your dearly beloved heart, for it can do no wrong. We firmly believe that. It is the core of our faith.
If God is Love, and our hearts are built for Love, then if we act upon that Love, everything and anything we do is sacred. Every choice we make is holy. 

To wake up with that lesson... we had no idea how relevant it would remain for the rest of the morning.

We went for the run. Someone wanted to get bacon and ginger and cinnamon and lettuce, and so we wrapped ourselves up in Kyo's scarf and Jewel's red boots and we jogged down to the local grocery store to do so.

We don't remember the run up, save for passing a fellow jogger by the bus stop, and we don't remember much of being in the store itself. Our brain was tired and confused and still scared, tangled up in "do I buy for the family or for myself," scared of making a foolish decision, scared of acting on impulse, scared of being spontaneous, scared of being neglectful. Memory recalls them buying two Christmas candles that were on sale, left over from that one day two weeks ago or so when we planned on buying them but had no money for luxuries. So basketed them both (one red spice, one vanilla cookie) and then memory cuts out again.
We don't remember coming home and going to bed or waking up. What few things we do recall are so soaked in guilt that we're being begged not to write them down, but we have to be honest, we can't hide anymore. They bought bananas and a tiny tin of oats with the intention of making banana bread, and one ripe orange to see if they still liked the taste (Iscah did; she likes everything, and the other socials still haven't differentiated between her preferences and their own), as well as a package of oregano for the same purpose, and four mini-pizzas for the family. They did get the bacon, and the candles, and the ginger & cinnamon, and that's all we can remember. It's not shameful, loves, I promise. They're just so guilty about buying oats; they knew they'd get in huge trouble if Oliver found out, so they hid them in the closet. They're crying upstairs, loves it's okay. You just wanted to try once more, remembering that one time Someone liked them, but someone else got horribly sick from them, but you don't want to hate anything, you want to know the truth, you wanted to check now that our brain is in a better place. But loves, oh loves, you bought it with fear, with guilt, with shame. You'll never know if it's healed, or if anyone likes it, if that's the mindset you go into it with. And you don't trust our intuition either, which is wincing at the thought of eating them again, remembering past contexts of pain and fear and compulsion. But, again, Iscah liked it, she treasured it, and you just want to learn to do the same. Not now, loves. Now's not the proper time, not if you're still terrified. Once your heart can release that shameful panic, you can learn properly, that door will be open. But it's okay. We forgive you. You're safe and loved and you did nothing wrong. We promise. Everything you did was done out of love, too, even if it didn't know how to safely apply itself. We love you, and we know you love us and the Arrows and everyone too. It's okay. You're good. We love you.  

So we don't remember going to bed, or waking up later. All we remember is sudden groggy kisses and someone, some poor social, wanting to cry from it because they were wracked with guilt and shame and couldn't feel that pure affection in return although they were begging God to, and then suddenly our beloved System anthem of Familiarity was playing in their head and Lotusheart was called out to that confetti chorus, that soaring heart-wrenching prayer, and it broke our heart wide open and suddenly he could return the love pressing softly against our lips and chest and self, God knows I mean it, God help me feel it, and our memory is just as soft with golden light in response, tearful and joyful and desperate to hold this forever, forever.

And then Infinitii showed up, soft and black and just as sleepy in the body, but with a mouth full of grinning loving teeth and the next thing we knew, Omen was there and she pulled Infi onto their chest and suddenly we woke up, aware and in love, and fangs met skin and we were alive again. Thank God for daemons. Thank God.
They just adore each other. There's always fangs tearing at flesh with the ardent desire to get beneath that, to blood and pulse points, but there's no malice, no harm-- just love, always love. The two of them, all kisses and claws, smoky shadowy laughter and snowy frigid gasps and humming and growling and I love you, where are your wings, why can't you be closer, this isn't fair, I love you--

Then suddenly we're hearing them saying that it isn't just Omen, that it's Kris and Oliver and Hiccup and who is around for us, where are We? 
Immediately Chaos Zero shows up, feeling like the ocean in our chest, saying that there's more of us around than you think," and then Genesis is on his heels, smirking golden bright and biting their cheek in a kiss, and then Laurie was there for a moment, and I was there, and Celebi was there, and then suddenly EVERYONE was there, wanting to feel this love, to give our love, to be part of this, to make this everyone's.
Everyone in Central moved through. Lynne, Spine, Javier, Josephina, Celebi, Nathaniel, Leon, Waldorf, Julie, Sherlock, Wattson, Eros, Kyaneos, Algorith, Jude... Knife, Razor, Mulberry, Jeremiah, Wreckage, Leanne... even the kids, David and Marigold and Simeon & Sylvain and Toby and Ashen, all of them shyly moved through too in the quieter moments, happy and hugging our partner System, deeply simply joyfully happy that they were safe, they were loved, and they could feel it.
Lynne pointedly kissing Omen with this secret sneaky joy at kissing a 'girl' in another System, Nathaniel learning to live openly, not as quiet and docile as he usually stays, hidden in green... Waldorf finally feeling herself, eyes red as rubies and smiling with her own teeth as she returned kisses without hesitation. Julie purposefully anchoring her lipstick and earrings into her overlay, refusing to reject her complete self anymore, tearfully treasuring the fact that even looking like this, a color scheme switch away from looking like she did as the ultimate nightmare of our nascent System, she was truly and completely loved, and she felt the same in return. Sherlock taking off his glasses and trying as hard as he could to truly feel this love too, to saturate his Gray with hidden color and light... Wattson there alongside him, smiling warmly at his friend's quiet scholarly courage, himself unafraid to show affection colored the same sunlit-page glow as he. Eros fronting for the first time in ages, still unsure on his name but being fiercely anchored into his true color, richly Cerise and feeling it in every atom as he channeled it through his every action... Jude fronting for the first time ever since his birth, not knowing himself yet but knowing he had been called here, knowing this was love and that was what he was born from and into, and he let it happen and let himself reciprocate simply but truly. Kyaneos wobbly in fronting as well, only there for a moment but feeling like a breath full of sky...Algorith smirking in amusement as she felt her goggles brushing against their face as they kissed her, felt how strange but lovely it was against her own robotic mouth. 
Josephina ended up being spoken to at some point, and I can feel his nervous surprised happy laughter as he returned a love bite in spite of his hesitance, in spite of feeling he "didn't deserve to be in such a position," realizing that he was in fact included in this global love and he had every right to embrace that. Leon, too, suddenly being wrapped in an embrace, breathing deep to still his shaking nerves, bravely relaxing into that closeness that was still so alien to him, learning. Spine curiously feeling hands on skin that she personally did not own, amazed at it. Javier feeling kisses on our collarbones and momentarily being surprised that their teeth didn't catch on his dermal studs, feeling his own snakebites and tongue stud and bridge piercings every time he ardently kissed them back, or when they peppered his/our own face with tiny kisses of their own. Altairre was hovering behind him, then in place of him, learning how to be in a body, learning about his own body, his huge broad red shoulders the only things clearly anchoring in, the suggestion of massive armor-like hands over our body's own. everything else about him still a mystery.
And I swear Scalpel was there, too. He's been in Javier's peripheral vision lately, seen only by him, his Red prince, this leader of the Darkspacers. We have no clear memory of him fronting, but there's the smallest bit of data that he did, just for a moment, a fiercely glad kiss, defying everything lurking in the depths he ruled over, a simple profound testament to what we were and would forever be in glorious spite of any and all terrors we did and will survive.
Knife was only there for a moment (and later, kissing the knuckles of their soft white hands), but he was entirely his color, claret pink, dark and soft and sweet. Razor followed him, also only there for a moment, letting herself curl up like a purring cat in the latter half of a kiss that felt just as warm as their hands soft in her blood-red shock of childlike-messy hair. Mulberry's twirling hair and facial scruff locking in immediately as she fronted, herself content to be there albeit surprised, wondering why she had been isolating herself from this. Jeremiah suddenly fearlessly soft in his own Cerise tone, kissing and being kissed, knowing there was no danger here. David knowing he wasn't comfortable with kisses on the mouth but still wanting to feel this love, and Joshua moved in affectionately to share that with him while returning that gesture in his stead. Marigold hugging the Arrows and smiling with her face in their shoulder, and Toby quietly moving in with her, suddenly alive and not knowing this but knowing he needed this, to be loved, to be safe and warm. 
Simeon & Sylvain showed up sometime elsewhen, with Infinitii, as they had spoken about this previously. Infi affectionately embraced them with one arm and let them share in hir deep black love, safely for them, but just as deep and pure as they needed to know. Both of them feeling it entirely, like anise gumdrops on their tongue, sweet and spiced and light and heavy all at once. They held each other inside and smiled, knowing four years ago they had been torn in two, separated by sudden death and despair, and now they were together, and alive, and loved and safe and free. Both of them such a soft light creamy yellow tint against that velvet black, both of them like french vanilla and banana cream pie, little sweet fluffy things held in the arms of something fathomlessly rich and dark, perfectly happy.


Rio and Markus were there, both of them feeling more joy than they even expected of themselves, finally feeling that they belonged, not just with us but here, with them, exactly as they were, as whoever they'd grow into being as we all continued in this loving growing process. Markus's back tattoos and chest scars and warm dark skin tone searing into our collective memory, Rio's lovely shaggy smoke-blue hair and paler delicate but craft-calloused fingers doing the same. Both of them so belovedly real, our collective heart treasuring this, missing them.
Their Daemons, too, were so clear and real, relishing their time with Omen, learning how to Be more strongly than ever. Lethe moving like dark blue poured out, all spindly legs but heavy and darkly elegant as water. Medallion fronted more than she Ever has before, shockingly lithe and graceful, all points and edges but still as poised as a dancer. She holds the body's hands so uniquely, almost cradling our beloveds with the sides of our hands, the flats of her blades. And yes, she too has learned how to facemouth, but I can still feel her actual main stomachmouth dormant and unusable when she fronts. Lethe, too, as well as the rest of his long insectoid body that does't translate.
On that note, both Rupture and Cake tried to front, but were too strange in form to come through so easily and suddenly, especially since neither of them have experience in a human form before. Rupture's overlay was a terrific burst of nonsense below our plexus, totally nonhuman, a crablike clatter of legs-- and if that wasn't bad enough, she cannot get a facemouth to work at all, and kept trying to talk out of her throat like she normally would. But she was aware that this wasn't the shape she was currently borrowing, even though the huge dissonance made her consciousness terribly hazy, and she was both surprised and intrigued by this. In memory, I can feel her filing this away in her mind, thinking upon it, what it means to Be, now, tangibly and real even away from her nebulous heart-host. And Cake, too, body too lithe and long to understand legs or  bipedal arm structure, let alone such a small face, still trying to figure herself out in the first place... but trying nevertheless, called in by the other Daemons' existences, herself also now feeling glimmers of wanting to Be, briefly wondering Who she was, who she was bound to, what it meant for her to exist at all now... wondering at her own shape, her own color, how many eyes she would have on her face should she choose to open some. Both of those monstrous girls only there for a few seconds, if that, but both of them remembered dearly, both of them real.
Nexus was there too, and Axis and Chocoloco and Iolite and Jess, every Daemon losing themselves in the ardor of things, all of them always madly in love with each other, and every nousfoni flooding with grateful relief at this love that they too were now a part of, seen and treasured for exactly who they were, unafraid.
Nexus didn't front long, unusually, choosing to let his fellows have the spotlight, choosing to stay within with Laurie, who was also mostly missing from this whole affair, hesitantly learning what she could and couldn't do, learning the difference between fear and simple preference and function clashes. But Jess and Iolite were there, not for long but long enough, both of them temporarily but truly releasing their frustration and sorrow to feel a new but complete love and acceptance that they'd previously only felt from their Daemons, both of them tearful with happiness, arms flung around the shoulders that embraced them in turn, their colors clear and healthy and good.
Axis and his skeletal fingers, huge and weirdly fused at the metacarpals, looking like bleached bone or plaster or old ruins, covered in tiny plants and fungi and moss and fluttering insects, his eyes deep spruce-green and surprisingly soft with compassion. Chocoloco, too, feeling more love than anyone previously expected of him, all coffee-harsh anger and fierce red-slash eyes, but here he was melted chocolate and cherry jelly and there was a depth to the kisses he delivered like his throat opened up into an endless warmth, deep down. A totally different vastness than Infinitii, a striking contrast to Axis's flung-open birdcage ribs, to Nexus's galaxian entrails studded with gold-hot lanterns. All of them so strange, so clear, so real. God bless Daemons, I'll say it forever. There's something about them, even just touching this form so temporarily with their lives, that makes us, too, feel like we're more real than ever, like we're something etched into the very essence of things, lead-lined stained glass figures in the church of existence. Indelible and true. It's a blessed wonder.

The Archivist trio showed up at one point, too-- Garrison first, almost as hesitant as Leon but driven by the love and pursuit of understanding, of System knowledge, and ended up getting his lip bitten, aha. He took it like a champ, learning that this was something others in both our Systems did in love, and I can feel his mind and heart opening a bit more in that memory, becoming less tense, less paranoid. Bless our Archivists, they all have Protector hearts in their own way.
Isadora and Kalisha were there too, of course, but they ended up in embraces, and Isadora had a split second of actual disappointment at not being kissed before smiling and laughing genuinely and just melting into that hug. Love is love and she was glad to have it, to be there. She actually drew Kalisha in with her, the two fronting side by side, and then unexpectedly, Kalisha in turn reached out to find Karissa! She hasn't been around in many many months, but those name sisters have forged a sort of passive fondness, and so even if our Chartreuse Protector wasn't all there, this experience still touched her heart too, and if anything can wake up a dormant nousfoni to themselves and the world, it's being loved On the outside. So we'll see how this affects her in the future.

One after another, flowing like blood and water and sunlight, a quiet multitude moved through this newly-beloved body to experience that same affection and compassion and devotion anew, whether or not we'd ever touched it before. Every time is the first time. That's the miraculous thing about it. It never gets old, never ceases to amaze us, never ceases to hit us as clear and true as an arrow to the heart.

And then Infinitii was back and someone was asking us, had been meaning to ask us for a long time now, can we do something, do you trust us, and the quiet careful deliberate emotion in their voice was like a singing glass in our heart and we said yes, Infi said yes, (please, whatever you want, I want), I trust you, we trust you, we love you too.

 

...I cannot even put into words how suddenly, starkly alive and adored we felt.

 

So many of us were there. So many of us. It was a total shock, but thank God it happened. 
Infinitii was there at the start, but suddenly and totally, Julie was there. Thinking about it, I'm not surprised. This is the sort of thing that her original days as a Tar-corrupted hacker were inundated with. In the past, the very thought of this would have had us kicking and screaming and looking for knives or pills or worse. We had suffered this enough, never again.
...Except that's not what this is. It's NEVER what this is. What we were experiencing now was love, total and pure, and Julie knew it, and if anyone in the System was going to make damn sure that was crystal clear, it was her.

But... Lord. So many of us were there. Lynne and Spine, Waldorf and Josephina, Eros, Markus... and then when the Arrows moved to kiss us, suddenly Celebi was there, her heart strangely aching and determined, and she said no, don't stop. Go back. I need to know what this is like. I need to know.
And it hit me, that even if she didn't live through the beginning of 2012, her heart did. Her bloodline did, inevitably. Tar-mangled or not, her soul was affected by both the love and pain of that time, and she had just as much a right and reason and responsibility as Julie to be there right now. 


...There's so little literal memory, at least, nothing that translates into structured language. Everything is color, light, emotion. 



----------------------------------------------------------

(rough notes, from the Arrow's writing on this, as their memory is inevitably different than ours)

(currently unfinished; it's 6am so we will refine this later.)


(eucharist feelings again, on both sides apparently. "being/essence/spirit." SEAWATER.)


omen, oliver, kristanova, hiccup, kyo. the fact that all of them were there... what that does to our heart is inexpressible, but we have to try. 
just... all of them. they love us that much. ALL of them. and god we adore them all too, we hope they know, we need to make sure they know, they deserve that so dearly.



javier after, embracing them like his heart would break, "thank you so much for this being the next morning." choked with tears.
swearing we'd never leave them, ever. "you have all of our heartbeats" and "we just want ours to beat next to yours."
"four years ago there wasn't much left behind that." his FEELING that time, that emptiness, barely 10 left.


(feeling their heartbeat, after, pounding and sincere. genuinely shocked that THEY were feeling for US in this. that hadn't even crossed our mind. that's sadly telling as to our past, to expect that this sort of thing was devoid of emotion from the other, but what bliss in that assumption being proven false.)

infi laughing like every easter carillon in the universe. the joy endless, all love and light like stars brilliant against the limitless cosmos. ze could not keep it in, could not help it, could not stop. it was beautiful.
"good things come in threes"
hir eyes were open. just like at the eclipse. feeling so completely, totally hirself, that hir overlay was flat-out eyes and teeth both and ze couldn't be otherwise. couldn't be half, as ze was feeling too whole.

oliver asking if "this was one of the things ze hoped for" 
later when he told me this, i immediately remembered this, the first time that was openly referenced in any form. lord we were terrified even that recently.



"this is like the first time i was with jay" 
"this is what i am-- pure transmutation"
the FEELING in those statements. god.


JULIE'S DAEMON. 
I FELT HER TEETH.
we were worried about her; since her "birth" last week or so she's been almost impossible to see. but now, good lord, today she came through clear as anything, hard as infi almost. she's still half (hot pink) viperfish and that mouth is Unmistakable in her overlay. all those huge needle teeth. and her other half appearance-wise is a feathered serpent, and that too is obvious-- she feels so sinuous when fronting, so elegant but lethal, so much bigger than the body.
the arrows say her voice is similar: hissing, seductive, beautiful. i don't doubt it. i have no idea what she said, or how it felt, but i can feel the echo of it, tinged with the lipstick terror of the old julie days, that sort of warzone femininity, and i wouldn't expect anything less of her. 
julie and her daemon were cofronting so hard, so totally. practically sharing the same breaths. their very beings meshing perfectly together, blurring into one, without losing any of their individuality.


DENDRITE!!!!
came out when the arrows were asking who was there? julie and her daemon responded first i think, then suddenly,
"and me, me, me, me"
FRONTING more solidly than ever, her spindly arms and claws and tentacles and feelers SO clear in her overlay, her color clearer than even that, a beautiful rich pastel red, glossy like flowers and candy apples and heart lockets
she was struggling to talk, couldn't get her voice to translate on such short sudden notice
"i don't have a voice of my own yet but i found her, i found her, i found her!!" "i found mine, she's mine!" not ownership, but recognition of the most blissfully aching sort. pure joy, overwhelming joy, weeping from it.
and THAT JEWEL. the pinkish one, different hair-- no klonoa ears!-- from 2004 or so. heartspace anchor. the one who was in love. i can feel her exact vibe now, in music. i know her soundtrack. but she resonated EXACTLY with dendrite's own heart, embracing her as her own, both of them so happy, so in love with each other's souls, like every daemon and their host should be, and ultimately always always are.


eros, "how could anyone call this selfish," feeling that so powerfully and unquestionably, that needs to be global.
that sad old religious-mangled teaching that to want to be loved was wrong. that to receive love was manipulative or demanding or otherwise sinful. that's a lie. this proved it.
remembering what chaos zero said on the porch. "there's nothing wrong with wanting love returned for love," effectively. it being a divinely mutual force. love naturally reciprocates itself, it aches for it, and that's pure as anything. 
us lying there, holding them, and eros recognizing immediately that we were feeling such deep love towards them, for them, about them, it wasn't selfish at all, but it ironically wasn't self"less" either. it recognized our selves and their selves, and it adored them both/all, and it wanted to share in that forever, and that is love.


one of their tears falling directly into our right eye. the exact sting of seawater. it was utterly transcendent, holy.


me, touching their chest, dying from love and holy fear, "who am i to dare"
then realizing we, too, have a heart just like that




------------------------------------------------------------------

we didn't get out of bed until like... 4:30. no regrets, ever. no better use of a day than this sincerity, this total living.

kristanova made the dearly-loved after-breakfast tradition of grits, eggs, & bacon (lord who would have expected This future for it that first morning he cooked for us, months ago). it was amazing.

we watched an episode of sense8, "i have no room in my heart for hate," as we haven't watched that show in months either, and we were feeling it so hard this morning, with how headspacey it is, with how much more clearly we are living as systems now and how much more clearly we can understand both the people and the topics of the show as well.

...

(we typed ALL NIGHT)

 

 

 

(written all at once, without warning, as it was happening ( stream-of-consciousness). left unfinished. god willing, will re-enter this timespace and finish the event in the future. nevertheless what is written here is real.)





Jewel Lightraye stepped onto the battlefield, sneakers crunching in the snow.
Everything was so pale. The ground was covered in a bleary cold whiteness, forbidding life from growing, the low wind blowing away all footprints in swathes of dusty, frigid air. It didn’t even look clean, not underneath that dark and dim of a sky, suffocating in a fog so low and thick it felt like being trapped under a carpet of insulation. Everything was painted the dimmest shade of bleached-out indigo. Everything felt dead.
She stopped, shivering hard all at once, as the temperature data finally bit into her, like needles through her summer clothes. Her body responded with the sudden urge to cry and curl up in a ball in that dingy ashen floor of a snowdrift. Her reply was to reach up and adjust her baseball cap more tightly onto her head, before taking a resolute step forwards.
The crunch surprised her now, even though she had heard it just as clearly the first time. After having taken in all that desolation, the sudden squeak of ice and rubber soles was shockingly alive, a sign of something moving, something with hope in it yet, striving forwards—

“Jewel! Is that you?”
She spun to her left at the sudden voice, in time to see three familiar and beloved individuals appearing out of the dark fog, running up the sloping hill to her.
Ryou was the first in line, his arms wrapped tightly about his signature blue-and-white striped shirt. At least he’s got long sleeves, Jewel thought amusedly.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she replied, feeling oddly nostalgic at that. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” Ryou repeated, eyebrows raising slightly. “Where are we? What is this?”
Jewel peered over his shoulder as he spoke. Marik was there, but he had pulled on his old Rare Hunter hoodie, which was virtually the same color as the sky here. Despite having more clothes cover than the rest of the gang, he looked positively distressed, at least as much as he would let show like this. He was shivering more than Ryou.
She shrugged, focusing her eyes back on the snow-haired boy before her (the flakes weren’t even visible in his hair until they melted into drops; if it wasn’t so depressing here it might have been pretty).
“I have no idea,” she stated, “but that’s typical fare for us I guess.” Ryou smiled at that, but it was tinged with something like… regret? Sadness?
“It is.” His voice was starting to sound like the weather.
A small silence settled into the wake of those words, and Jewel, heart beginning to twinge with concern, pushed up on her toes to peer over Ryou’s other shoulder. Sure enough, there he was.
Standing with his back half-turned to her, a creature looking like the ocean tide personified stood in silence, wrapped up in himself just as much as the rest of them, his gem-green eyes rife with enough turbulent anguish to drown everyone around if it got loose. The very sight of that sent a lightning-sharp strike of pain straight through Jewel’s heart.
“What… were you all this sad before you came here? Or do you not know?” she asked Ryou, as she began to shiver for real this time.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “It could be both.”
“We were all sad and this is making it worse,” Marik’s voice sparked like a dying fire from under his dark hood.
For a moment no one said anything, then all their attention turned silently to Chaos 0.
His wet eyes darkened. “There’s something dark and carnivorous here,” he began, his voice far more level than his friends expected in this situation. “It’s in the air. It’s in the snow.” He turned his deep-sea gaze to Jewel, so pointedly that for a moment she wasn’t sure where she was. “Where are we, Jewel?”
Now both the other boys turned to look at her.
“I…” she faltered. She had said she didn’t know, but now thinking it over, she supposed it was only half true. She had no idea what this place literally was, true, but if there’s one thing she knew for sure about Heartspace it’s that it was always, always, adherent to that term.
Whatever place they were in right now, it had existed inside them first.
“…Hopelessness,” she said all at once, and saw a flash of pain sear through Marik’s eyes. “Despair. The sense of being lost and not knowing where one is, let alone where to go.”
She paused. “…Loneliness? I-I mean,” she faltered, “we’ve got each other, but—”
“…Do we really?” Ryou responded, and everyone looked back at him.
“I know you all feel it,” he continued, his voice picking up a twinge of too-dark paranoia. “Who are we now? Where DO we go from—“
“That’s the REASON this place is like it is, Bakura!!” Chaos suddenly snapped, like a dam breaking. “You—you were never this existential, you were never this doubtful of your own existence! Markus, you were never this scared!!”
A sudden profound silence fell over them. Chaos had used Marik’s new name.
“…It’s a little hard not to be scared with that in the air,” the boy in question replied, withdrawing further into his hoodie. Whatever fire was in him before was now turned to slush.
Chaos looked up, starkly into the distance, as if planning something. Then he turned back to Jewel.
“This place is unstable, Jewel. I know you’re trying to hold it together but the very nature of this place is messing with everyone here. Including me,” he added, pressing a hand to the gem in his chest. Jewel
was struck by the sudden remembrance of it. “Whatever this place is, it IS from us, and we’re here because we’re here on the outside too, and we need to get through this.” He winced. “…Or we’ll freeze to death.”
Jewel set her face like flint at that. Nodding once, she turned to the right, raised her arm, and sent a tunnel of fire blasting through ahead of them.
The two boys watched, wide-eyed, as the fire seemed to stretch on terribly far, even as the fog swallowed it up.
“Shoot,” Jewel said, a hint of despair creeping into her voice.
“Don’t,” Chaos put a huge clawed hand on her shoulder. “Don’t give in. It’s hard enough for me to hold out for your sake; if you lose hope we’re all doomed.”
She looked up at him, heart aching with what he had just said, but she nodded again. “I’ll try,” she said.
He smiled, just as achingly. “You’d better.”
“…Jewel?”
She turned back around to see Ryou—or was it Rio now?—wringing his hands with a sudden lack of fright, and an equally surprising clatter of insect-claws against his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, somewhat confusedly. “I’m… let’s just go.” He took a few steps forwards to stand beside her, eyes shining blue, and still following where the fire had gone.
A giant spidery figure crept up to overshadow the boy.
“Rio,” it pronounced, and Jewel swore it had managed to say both his names at once, “Walk.”
He did. One step in and he quickly turned to look at Jewel, a pleading sort of helplessness in it, a total lack of understanding that required as much support as it could get.
In turn, Jewel turned her head around to give Markus (as he was now, so many years later) a look of fire, of confidence, a silent statement of “I believe in you and I want you with us.” Then, unable to help it, she grinned in her lopsided way and motioned for him to follow. A tiny smile crinkled his violet eyes in response, and with one last (and not unmissed) glance towards the shadows behind him, he hurried forwards to join the rest of them.

“So why is Lethe here.”
Rio looked scared at Jewel’s blunt question, and opening his mouth in surprise, failed to say anything at first.
“I—”
“He needs to carry his fears separately,” the monstrous being replied with unusual calmness, looking down at the boy. “They will devour him otherwise.”
Rio said nothing to that-- he only tightened his lips and kept his eyes locked straight ahead.
“Markus,” the daemon spoke, “you should do the same.”
He flinched hard at the near-accusation. “I-I can’t,” he stuttered in real fright, “I’m not ready to face her yet, not like this—“
“You may have to,” was the reply. “Especially in a place like this.”
Then, silence. Jewel looked back and saw that Markus was looking down, fighting back real tears. This was so unlike how he used to be when they first met—all proud enthusiastic daring—that it broke her heart. She hung back a step to fall in sync with him, and tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her, his deep bronze skin seeming washed-out in the pallor of the place.
“You don’t know what she’s like,” he whispered. “She frightens me, Jewel. She’s…” he broke off momentarily, struggling with words. “…She’s a reminder of what I’ve been trying to ignore all these years-- a blatant, un-ignorable reminder.” He took a sudden breath as his eyes hardened. “She’s an in-your-face statement that ‘you’re not as tough as you think you are! You’re just a scared little kid playing God to forget the fact that you’re terrified and helpless and you’ve never felt so alone in your life.’ And then I met you guys.” Almost apologetically, his voice softened again. “Then I… I slowly stopped wanting to rule the world. I slowly started to be happy with what I had. But I was so scared of losing it, losing you, all of you, in any way, that I… the fear just changed shape. And now it looks like her. She’s pride and glory on one side, and helpless despair on the other.”
“Rags and riches?” Jewel offered.
Markus chuckled. “Kind of. More like… power and the total lack of it. Success, and the total lack of it. Gold and dirt. Rags and riches,” he shrugged, and laughed a little more genuinely this time. “I guess you’re right.”
Jewel smiled too, but it was still sad at the edges.
“So your Vice is… what? Pride?” Chaos asked, his brow furrowed.
Markus shrugged again, quickly, as if trying to shake the thought from his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“What does she feel like?” Jewel asked.
Markus considered this, looking momentarily up and ahead at Rio, who as obviously listening but not daring to turn or stop with his own embodied Vice pushing him forwards.
“--Rio, what does Lethe feel like?” Markus suddenly asked, audibly pushing through hesitation to do so.
“What?” came the baffled reply, as the boy faltered to a stop to turn and face his friend. The creature in question did the same, its single eye appearing to smile, as neutrally as one could imagine.
“I…” Markus’s hesitation replied in the shadow of that thing. “…Y-your daemon, it… aren’t daemons supposed to be Vices? Worst fears? Your biggest shadows?”
”Yeah…” Rio began, noncommittal.
“Well…” Markus gulped. “W-what’s yours?”
Rio said nothing for several seconds. The question hadn’t appeared to fully register, and it was obvious he wasn’t planning (or able) to respond.
“’What do I feel like,’ you mean?” Lethe murmured, amused. “Tell them, Rio. Tell them how I’m your fear of what lurks in the dark when you turn off the light, or the utter lack thereof. Tell them how I’m the sound of nothing when you lock all the doors. Tell them how I’m the redness behind your eyes--”
“Okay, okay!!” the white-haired boy nearly sobbed. “Lethe is… my fear of my unknowing. He’s my fear that nothing out there really exists, or even worse, that the only thing that exists is nothing. I’m scared that… I’m scared of everything out there that can turn me into nothing. Of laziness, and “Sloth,” and of not wanting to do anything but waste my days away with addictions and distractions because I’m scared of facing the emptiness beyond. I’m scared because I know he’s right, but I don’t know how to… how to learn from him yet.”
“It takes time, River,” the daemon spoke with unusual softness. “But the waters will move.”
Chaos visibly pondered that.
“You’re forgetfulness and death,” Jewel suddenly said. “Lethe and Styx.”
“I am,” he replied. “I am emptiness. I am the Void he runs from.”
“But I thought Daemons held both good and bad sides of the coin?” Jewel continued unsurely.
This time, Lethe’s smiling eye was far darker.
“Do I not?” His voice was like distant thunder. “Tell me, Jewel. Who is Dendrite to you?”
Jewel was the silent one now, her mind outright blanking out at the question. “I don’t know,” she said simply.
And Lethe laughed, a low watery rumble of a thing that shook her bones. “You run from your own heart and interrogate others who do the same. Be not a hypocrite, Jewel.”
Shamed by the harsh but too-true accusation, she lowered her gaze.
But… Dendrite. The name of her elusive alleged Daemon. Jewel knew she existed, but… where? How? Then again, Jewel had never given much of a thought to her own “vices,” had never even considered that she might have any at all… her innocent ignorance of sorts had gotten the better of her. Now, it seemed that the simple reality that she HAD a Daemon manifested somewhere was unsettling enough.
“…What is death, but only a door?”
She looked up.
“What is forgetfulness, when tied to fear?” Lethe continued. “Consider it, Jewel. A Daemon is a curse and a blessing. It is our nature. We cannot be otherwise. Fear us as you will, but remember—” and he smiled again, like crinkled silver—“we cannot exist without you. We are of you. And if there is any good in you, then there is just as much good in us.”
“…And what if there’s a lot of bad in us?” Rio mumbled, his voice almost stomped flat.
Lethe turned to him now, and in one liquid motion, curled up to be almost face-to-face with the boy. “What is ‘bad’ to you, Rio?”
“’Bad’ means harmful to my soul, or someone else’s,” he replied, a bitter sharpness creeping into his tone.
“Am I ‘bad’ to you, Rio?”
A pause; he was struggling with the question. “…I’m… not sure. You feel bad, you feel like all the bad in me, but you’ve never done anything to hurt me…”
“Then take that as a lesson, child,” the creature responded with subtle gravity. “You do not have to act on it. You can die to it. And then you can forget being what you were when you fell victim to it in the past.”
“Why would I want to forget the wrong I’ve done??” Rio burst out.
“So you can move on,” Lethe said simply. “Forget, after you have died to it. Don’t go back. Don’t drag yourself back into the grave you must rise from.”
Rio was again silent. His face was hot with tears and confusion and he looked even more knotted-up than Markus had earlier.
“Does that answer your question now, Jewel?”
She jumped, surprised at the Daemon’s sudden question. “I—yeah. I’ll have to think about it. But I’ve got it.”
“Don’t think too much,” the spidery thing chuckled.

They started walking again. No one was speaking. The fog and snow continued to whirl about
them, as dead and cold as ever, and Jewel noticed with no small amount of fright that she was starting to numb to it. Her mind, in an attempt to “protect her” from the inclement environment, was shutting down her ability to feel the cold, to see the shadows.
Almost impulsively, she flared up another burst of fire around her body, and flung it forwards into the half-night. Again, it seared through the fog and snow, but this time, the further it went, the darker the sky got around it, until it seemed to hit something solid and pitch-dark.
They all stopped at that.
“What are you trying to do, Jewel?” Lethe lazily inquired.
“Is that a wall?” Chaos questioned agitatedly. “Is this a dead end??”
Almost instantly Markus ran up to it, his hood falling away in the sudden burst of speed, champagne-gold locks catching a few feeble snowflakes. He closed the distance between them and the wall in a surprising matter of seconds—as intention tended to do in Heartspace—and without warning, began striking at it with the bladed end of his Rod.
“No!! This can’t be it!! You can’t just trap us here, you can’t just block us from getting any further!!” Furious and despairing, he struck the wall again with all his might. “Damn it!”
A solid chip of wall shattered off and flew to land on the ground behind him. The snow was fading here, the cold was dulling out, the sky above them losing what little color it had. Everything was now slowly vanishing away into that odd brassy-black stone, into an even more pervading sense of night… or no, something even darker than that; this darkness was in the absence of a sun or a moon, the sort of total black one only felt underground.
Markus was sobbing now, slumping against the wall, Chaos standing behind him in a desperate attempt to comfort. Rio appeared torn between numbness and compassion, and some awful sort of fear was holding him still, tears streaming down his face.
A voice came.

“Markus.”

He jumped notably, his whole body convulsing with fear. “No!!” He cried. “No, not you, not now, not here!!” Hysterical, Markus ran into Chaos’ arms and clung to the blue creature, almost choking from terror.
At this, Rio cast a heart-wrenching glance towards Jewel, and in that moment she understood just how lost he really was here, in the place that was just as white and dark and lonely as… wait.
Her eyes widened for a moment, but she cast that away just as quickly, refusing to dwell on that detail when it was obvious he needed support now. She moved over to him and wrapped her arms about his shoulders. He returned the gesture, tangibly relieved, but still shaking.
It struck her that he still felt as young as he did years ago, that he still felt safe to be around, like this. Despite his fear there was no ego to it; there was no sense of pride or performance or pity to it. No, he felt a need for love and he turned to someone he knew he could feel that with. There was nothing but childlike trust in that, something she treasured, something their quadruple-friendship here was built upon. Whatever bitter edges he had begun to show earlier had been completely rubbed down to velvet nubs now, so to speak. Everything was as soft and safe as it should be.
She wondered if Lethe’s appearance was responsible.
“Jewel,” Rio began, his voice thick with regret and apology.
“Yeah?”
“I… I’m so sorry, I didn’t know how to comfort him, I—” he broke off, audibly crushed by this.
Jewel looked at him compassionately. “Maybe don’t try so hard?” she began. “I mean… you and me, I think we worry too much. Chaos just kind of… went over there. He didn’t do anything, but that might’ve been intrusive? I dunno,” she hesitated. “He was there when Markus needed him. He was close enough.” Another tight pause. “And I was here for you. Maybe that’s all we can do?”
“Hm,” Rio considered. “You sure that’s enough?”
“Maybe we should ask.”
“Rio!! Jewel!!”
They both turned at Markus’s shout.
“On second thought, there’s our chance,” Jewel said, and the two ran over to their friend.

Rio began apologizing before he even stopped running. “Markus, I’m so sorry I didn’t come over here earlier—”
“You had that thing behind you, it’s okay,” the violet boy said-- and then appeared abashed for having expressed such a sentiment in earshot of said ‘thing.’ “I’m sorry,” he added ruefully.
“You know she’s here,” Lethe stated simply, and Markus’s face turned into a tangle of frustrated fear and sorrow all over again.
“Of course I know,” he spat. “I knew as soon as I saw her wall. She always…” he swallowed. “She always traps me in here.”
“Seems rather indicative of your subconscious,” his friend’s Daemon again calmly retorted.
Markus clenched his fists but remained silent. “What, that I’m trapped in here with her?” he replied at length.
“No, that you’re trapped because you refuse to face the minotaur. There is a way out of this labyrinth, child,” Lethe continued. “But she is guarding the exit.”
…



“…I’m scared of her,” he whispered once more, terribly vulnerable in the confession.
“We know,” Lethe observed, but his voice was oddly reassuring. “As is right, for we are indeed Daemons. Rio is terrified of me as well, if you have not forgotten.”
“But—but he—“ Markus gestured with a sort of frustrated despair at his friend. “But he’s letting you near him!! He’s TALKING to you!!” He stopped, his breath hitching, as his eyes caught a new light emanating from somewhere above—something gold. “How can he be scared if he’s just… letting you be there?”
Rio fidgeted a little at that. Lethe gave him a knowing look, and waited.
“…I bury it, Markus,” he said at length. “I… I’m scared of admitting that I’m scared? You’re a stronger man than me in that respect.”
“Oh, only that respect?” Markus retorted, a slight but brave smile in his shaking voice.
At that unexpected, familiar jab, Rio actually smiled back, a real smile, with a real chuckle lighting it up. “Y-yeah,” he added, just as bravely, and reached up with a slightly trembling hand to indicate his thick smoke-blue locks. “That and your hair game, I’ll give you that.”
And Markus laughed.

The gloom around them was suddenly warmer. The indigo shade had now shifted into something strangely luminous, even in the pervading shadows-- something bringing out a glint of sun-yellow even in the black walls.
Every one of them was smiling now, remembering what life had felt like back in the old days when they were kids; always joking with each other like this, never doubtful of each other no matter how dark it got. And now, once again, they were all momentarily wrapped up in nothing but that simple happiness, the lightness of being so suddenly triggered by a genuine bit of laughter, of good humor, of optimism even in the midst of strife… …And Lethe was still there.
He slowly curled into Rio’s shoulder again.
“So how does it feel to forget?”
Rio’s smile disappeared. Yet his face did not darken—instead, his eyes widened, his mouth now quiet with surprise.

Markus was still giggling at that old injoke, fingers playing with his gold-dust hair, but his eyes were wet, and his voice was quickly changing to match.
“…Markus?” Jewel asked, hesitantly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he insisted with an oddly bright calmness, but he was smiling up at her with those same sad eyes.. “I’m absolutely fine. And this is what I never want to lose, ever,” he emphasized, his expression now beginning to crack at the edges. “This. I don’t want to go back to being afraid or confused or alone or—I don’t want to lose this anymore—”
“Have you ever really lost it, Markus?” a voice cut through the air.
And he breathed in as sharply as a knife.
Something gold was stepping out of the shadows behind Rio, where there was no trace of fog or snow, only the edges of a maze deep beneath the ground.
It was a towering, sharp thing, with limbs like needles, clock hands, dagger-blades… it walked with unfaltering precision, with unsettling poise. Everything about it was polished and deadly.
It stopped, thirty feet away from Markus, and gazed down at him with a single, brilliant yellow eye.
Then its gaze softened.
“Markus.”
He clamped his hands to his ears and fell to his knees, sobbing.

Rio was now looking back and forth between boy and beast in utter shock,



“Why are you so afraid of me?” she asked, quietly.

 

It suddenly struck Jewel that she’d never seen any of their Daemons act so kindly before.

 

***daemons do love their partner-souls but they also TAKE NO SHIT. They will NOT mollycoddle ANYONE for ANY REASON. If markus is running from his fears, his daemon is going to catch him and make him face them, no questions asked. A daemon knows ones bleakest parts and it exists to help you RECOGNIZE AND TRANSMUTE THEM. They literally cannot help you if you wont accept their existence— as rejecting them is rejecting that part of YOUR SOUL!!! The shadow IS vital for growth! A daemon just makes it that much easier to grapple with, when that dark awareness is held in something with a face and a heart that loves you, even if it has a rather sharp way of showing it. If you can learn to love them in return, then congratulations, you can now love yourself the same way. And that love is MANDATORY to reach one’s best self. The toughest part is the first acceptance though… that initial cognizance of what a daemon IS, what it carries, and the fact that it is part of you. The shame, guilt, fear, anger, and denial can be potent. Hence the separation of selves—if you can’t accept that part of yourself literally at first, at least accept it in them as something taken from you. Again, the ultimate goal is to learn UNCONDITIONAL LOVE for yourself and EVERYONE ELSE, without losing honor and righteous devotion. It’s a process and at first it is indeed rocky. But step 1 is always to open your mind and heart. It all goes from there.***

 

“We are not evil, no more than you are. Take that as you will.”
But Markus’ face was shaken.
“Why is everyone here so afraid of being evil?” Chaos frustratedly spoke up from behind his friend. “

 

Later, in response to “what’s Infinitii’s vice, then?”
“It’s… the vice of not realizing that my vices are vices.”