[narrations + overflow]

[darkinferno]

[A collection of narration bits that don't belong anywhere else from Dante/Riku's time in Recollé.]

[Or, a personal overflow.]

Comments

10/13 - 10/15

[darkinferno]

When Dante wakes up inside the warehouse, arms and legs bound, it takes him a little while to realize what's happening. With all the nightmares he's had so far this month and how many other people's dreams he's ended up in, it takes a few minutes to realize that this isn't a dream, that this isn't some bastardization of the Family Feud nightmare that he's ended up in. It takes minutes more for him to remember what the last thing he'd seen before passing out was, to realize that Malik of all people had been able to get the jump on him and knock him out--Malik! He'd be offended, if not for the fact that he's too worried about that darkness he'd sensed in the other boy to care.

He's bound hand and foot and then again to one of the pillars, unable to summon his Keyblade even if he'd tried and unable to see to cut himself free if he could. So Dante waits, waits until Malik finally comes back.

When he does he's got others with him: James, Cleo, Ayano, another girl he doesn't know, Anya... Dante's startled to find out that there was another guy in the warehouse already, the two of them kept apart so that they couldn't scheme, but here and now they're brought together to balance each other out, counterweights in the first of many death traps Malik will create. He recognizes the irony in Malik's choice to suspend him upside down, but as the hours roll on and the blood rushes and settles in his head, he swears he'd do it again if he had the opportunity.

It only gets worse from there: screams echo through the warehouse, screams and whimpers and people yelling and cursing. Dante tries to get Malik's attention, to distract him from some of his other victims, but it doesn't work when Malik knows Dante's at his mercy, and all he can do sometimes is squeeze his eyes shut, heart hurting as he listens to the crying and begging for it to stop. Even he's not immune to it: when Malik comes for him, he can't keep his silence and Dante screams as his hands are crushed, a sob wrenching itself from his throat in spite of how hard he tries not to let it out. But he's hurt, goddammit; his entire body lights up with pain the moment he even tries to twitch a finger, and Dante knows that any "accidental" brushes against him or his hands are entirely intentional on Malik's part, born out of a sick desire to hear him scream again. "Stop," he's reduced to pleading, hating it even as the words come out of his mouth. "Please, just stop--"

But the words I give up never pass his lips, no matter how many times they cross his mind.

It's both the best and the worst part of it all, that he doesn't get any of those memories from Retrospec while he dangles, three feet up from the floor. On the one hand, Dante's glad: he doesn't want these memories, and he doesn't need any more of them popping up now. But on the other... on the other is a truth he's refused to admit to himself so far, how perhaps if his other self had gone through something like this... it might give him an insight on how to handle this, what to do. For the first time Dante realizes how much his other self's experiences guide his steps, and he hates himself for relying on that experience so much, and yet he can't (won't) vow to stop.

But for this, he's alone.

By the time the police raid the warehouse, Dante's doing good just to still be breathing. He's out of it, struggling to keep his eyes open and to focus on voices, but he's awake as they drop him down to the floor, cutting the duct tape away, trying to at least make him comfortable as they wait for the EMTs to get inside. He's aware of voices--Togusa, Tatsuo, Fynn, Derek--and screaming--more screaming? Why is there more screaming? It should be over now; they've been rescued, there should be no more... no more of any of this.

They load him onto a stretcher for transport to the hospital. And when someone tells him that it's okay, he's safe, that he can rest... Dante finally sleeps.

(The hospital might be a different story, with blood transfusions, a surgery to place a tube for where Malik's stab with Ari's dagger had glanced off his sternum and into a lung, and another one to at least begin the long process of rebuilding his hands... but for now, Dante sleeps.)