shifted_logs | only one can take you from this place

Entry tags:

only one can take you from this place

Characters: Emil [d2] (

pactum) and the Tenth Doctor [d6] (

bit_impossible).
Location: The Ballroom on the Astral Plane.
Time: Before Marta and Emil leave Meltokio, a couple of days after he finds the first clue left by his amnesiac self.
Summary: Ten and Emil have a heart to heart.
Warnings: Dramaz with, as always, a dash of psycho. Poor kid. Also spoilers for the latter half of the game, since Emil in this deviation is a HUGE WALKING SPOILER. Yeah.

Emil felt a bit apprehensive as he sat there in the ballroom, waiting. They'd been playing tag for a little while now as Ten and Emil kept missing each other on the Plane. But it was the message that counted, right? Emil admired the Doctor greatly even if this wasn't the one he'd originally bonded with. But he was scared, too. Some weird things had been bothering him. And then there was something the Ninth Doctor said, and that blue-haired kid said something too, and... now Emil was torn between pursuing the leads he had or chasing the only goal that mattered. He wondered if the Doctor knew. He'd always looked after him, in any incarnation, and for that he was incredibly grateful— but guilty, as well.

He didn't want to know. The last time he'd looked into this, it ended up the death of at least one innocent person, and he'd hurt many others. His partners, creatures he'd tamed in the name of Ratatosk, were slaughtered in his defense. Emil's fingers trembled as he stared at the note before him.

Nothing made sense anymore.

He shoved the paper back into his scarf and pulled his knees to his chest. The boy sat alone in the golden pool of light the chandelier cast upon the ballroom, closed his eyes, and tried to imagine a happier time. But as he reached into the darkness for a memory of his parents, he could only draw out the same one.

"Mom..."

His grip in the fabric of his pants tightened until his knuckles turned white like bone.

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So far Emil seemed to be in control of himself. His grip on the camcorder was almost a deadly one. He couldn't have stopped the video if he wanted to. Wide green eyes stared into the pixelated face of his counterpart. The voice came through rather tinny, but it was still recognizably Emil's, as Alex went on to introduce himself, his condition, and went through the things he remembered.

Emil didn't move. He didn't even seem like he was listening to Ten. He blinked once or twice, but that was it. He might've been dead with his eyes wide open for all he cared.

This could not be happening. It simply didn't make sense. A third personality. No. No. No. Mr. Crane might have said something about that a long time ago, but that was Mr. Crane and he was a bad man and he made Emil kill people. He made Emil sick. He made Emil see things that weren't real.

And he was gone.

So how could this be happening?

"I will always be curious about how you-- or rather, I-- live in the future, what kind of friends I have, what I'm doing, that sort of thing."

Emil realized that he was doing exactly that. He was poking into this boy's life, trying to find out as much as he could, because he was curious to a fault. Curiosity wasn't really a Castagnier trait, or at least he didn't think it was, but what if this strange boy and his mission were connected? He had no way of knowing unless he found out everything he could get his hands on.

"Courage is magic, after all."

The tape ended. The camcorder shut off.

Normally people looked very happy to receive messages from people, but Emil looked like he'd just watched his mother die again. That could be a problem. He hugged the camcorder to his stomach and slowly slipped onto his knees, his tunic splaying around his feet.

Edited 2010-09-11 06:33 (UTC)

What Alex had said about living in the future made him wonder, if for a second, if there was some sort of time meddling shenanigans going on. Then again, he simply could have meant how Emil was doing after he resumed control every time. That was probably it.

A frown crossed his features, concern furrowing his brow. He squatted down in front of the young man, almost reaching out a hand pat him on the shoulder but thought better of it.

"I'm sorry, Emil. I'm so sorry." It seemed like the most appropriate thing that could be said.

"It's not me," he whispered, fingers tightening around the camcorder until his skin turned white as bone. "It's not me. It... it can't be me. It's not me. It's not me." He sucked in a deep breath. He wouldn't cry, not about this. He had to think, think, think.

"Doctor... It happened before. It happened a long time ago. I was... I was getting treated. I was getting help from Dr. Crane because I was scared of everything. And then people said I came to the Plane acting like a different person. I didn't believe them." He shook his head fiercely. "How could I? But then I found a notebook, a little blue notebook, and I gave it to Dr. Crane along with everything else. And then... and then..."

His grip on the camcorder loosened. He set it beside his foot, tried to keep hold of his own sanity. It was hard when he had a message from a twin sitting in front of him.

"And then I hurt people. I-I... I tried to kill the Doctor, the ninth one, and you, and Roxas, and Marta— oh, Marta..." He bit his bottom lip again. It was starting to bleed— black, too. "If this boy is really me, then it might mean that I'm about to do something terrible again. I don't want to kill anyone! I don't even want to hurt them, or fight, unless it's to help Marta. But I'm so messed up. I can't trust myself not to hurt the people I swore to protect!" And with that, he buried his face in his scarf as if that would hide him from the world.

His eyes flicked downwards when he caught sight of the black blood, but went back up to Emil's eyes before the young man bowed his head. He wanted to ask when and how that happened, but finding that out could be left for a much later time. At least he knew now what happened to the notebook his other self had given Alex.

"Emil, listen to me," he said urgently. Leaning forward, he gripped the young man's shoulders, all caution be damned. "You're not going to kill anyone or do any such thing. Do you understand? Crane isn't here to harm you or influence you in any way." Not that he knew this Dr Crane; only what his other self had told him and he certainly didn't like the man.

"This other you was kind and confident, and he certainly had plenty of opportunities to harm me if he so wished, but he didn't. He wanted to meet you and this video was the only way possible. He's trying to find answers just as badly as you are!"

That was one mystery solved. There were dozens to go, however.

The Doctor's outburst stunned Emil right out of his circle of despair. The blood rushing in his ears stopped, and it was just them, two lonely and desperate people hiding on the floor of an abandoned ballroom. Emil stared into the Doctor's face with wide green eyes, unable to look away. Ten wanted to fix him. Not some quick fix, not a lie, not... anything. Crane was never this passionate about wanting to help Emil; he only revealed the cool attachment one would expect from a therapist. An insane one, too. It was completely opposite from what Emil expected from the people around him.

"Doctor..."

He was well-versed in violence, the way that complaining would get him beatings from his uncle and aunt, so having anyone care about him to this magnitude was alien to him. Only Marta had ever really displayed that much passion. Richter cared about him, too, but he couldn't be sure how much. Emil wasn't that great at reading people.

So he had... one note from this strange boy who looked like him. There were more. He needed to find them now; he absolutely had to. But even if he did, he wasn't sure it would answer his questions. "I can't be that boy, though. I... remember my childhood. Where I grew up. And my parents. They were my parents, not someone else's. How can I be anyone else but me?"

He let out a soft sigh as he relaxed his grip. A sympathetic, saddened expression crossed his face. "It's difficult, but...there is a way. You see, the mind is a tricky, extremely complicated thing, especially a human's. I don't know anything about your past, but something traumatic must have happened then. Something you cannot recall voluntarily no matter how hard you try--but something else does remember, or did at one point in time. Think of it like the switch on that camcorder. Press a button, and it turns on; press it again, it turns off. Your conscious mind shut down, but another part of your mind turned on, something that had access to the same base memories as you to start with--which is why he mentioned parents and childhood--and it handled the situation that caused you to shut down in the first place.

"To you, you would've just blacked out. Probably woke up in a new place. Maybe others around you wouldn't tell you about the incident in question on purpose because they didn't want to scare or worry you--or make you remember." He paused for a moment, his eyes still on Emil's face.

"But perhaps...well, it's just a guess, but when you became a Ratatosk knight and began collecting those Cores, maybe that's when things started to change for that other self inside you. He started to lose hold on those memories and even now is having a hard time accessing them. That notebook you gave to Dr Crane, for example. Another version of me gave that to him for the express purpose of being able to write down things that have happened in case he lost even more memories--and from the sounds of it, he did. I don't know how yet, but I want to find out. It's not fair to you to live your life like this."

Granted, it might not have even happened in that order, if at all. The situation was far more complicated than he expected, only now...he really wanted a look inside Emil's mind to see if he was right at all.

Emil listened to the explanation, but it still didn't make sense to him. However, the part about people around him-- did. "Marta... said I had forgotten her, back then. That one time, after Dr. Crane. When I fight, though, it's different. Everyone says it's like I become a completely different person, but it's not true, because I usually remember..." He paused and adjusted his gloves. "But sometimes... I don't."

He shook his head again, feeling helpless and lost and confused, and not even the thought of the Doctor finally helping Emil solve the puzzle could help. He clutched the fabric of his tunic like a lifeline. "What happens when the 'other' me remembers everything? I have my own memories and my own opinions about things. What will happen to me? To my oath as a Knight of Ratatosk? You can't just say it'll work out, not when it comes to something like this! I don't feel like that boy is me, even though I..."

Words failed him once again. Silently, Emil tugged his scarf down. A star-shaped birthmark, identical to "Alex"'s, sat just above his collarbone.

"I don't know who I am anymore. Maybe I'm not even a 'who', but a 'what'..."

"No," he said simply, firmly. "You're no more a "what" than I am the President of the Earth Empire. Saying that you are would be the same as me saying that two very good friends of mine are..." He couldn't bring himself to finish. Tegan and Oliver had both been possessed with nasty, awful entities and neither were the same after. Even now, he worried about Oliver's well-being.

Not that he didn't have his own experiences with being possessed and losing his sense of self. But he'd never gone through anything Emil was currently experiencing. Or perhaps the things that took him over simply liked to torture him with the memories of what it did while in his body...

He dug into his pockets, pulling out a stethoscope a moment later, and held it out to Emil. "Listen, I want you to put this on and hold the end against your chest. Tell me what you hear."

Ten never did finish that sentence. It left Emil confused as to what that meant. He added it to his ever-growing, seething mud pit of doubt. No longer just a shadow at his bedside, he felt Doubt, wearing the garb of Death, hovering over his shoulder. His gaze when locked on the Doctor was at once terrified and completely hopeful. He wanted to believe that there was something better. That there was some big mistake. That maybe, just maybe, he wasn't screwed up after all.

"Okay," the boy managed. A flicker of courage crossed his torn expression. He reached out and took the stethoscope, fidgeted with the ear-things once he realized it wasn't a necklace. "S'cold," he murmured, slipping the metal part under his tunic a little ways.

"My heartbeat...?" It was such a simple reminder. Maybe even a childish one. Emil felt foolish as he realized what it meant, and a protest rose to his lips. "Doctor, I..."

"So long as you can hear that, for as long as it continues to beat nice and strong, you'll always be you. It's the same for those two friends of mine. Something bad happened to them, and they struggled to feel the same again, but they're doing well."

He reached out, gently putting a hand on Emil's shoulder, a faint smile on his lips. "And you will be too. Everything always works out in the end somehow. It just takes time."

Emil's eyes fluttered, but he nodded and took the stethoscope off. "Thank you," he murmured. "For everything. You're right... It'll work out." He had a terrible feeling that time was actually about to run out, but what could he do? He had to trust the Doctor, and he had to trust in himself...

"You don't mind watching me and making sure? I thought you would've gotten sick of this mess by now," Emil said with the lightest bit of humor. At least he didn't flinch.

He shook his head, holding his hand out for the stethoscope. "You don't need to thank me. Not yet. I help anyone who needs me--and even then, those who say they don't need the help. I want to help you figure this out. I'll watch for as long as it takes." A pause, then he added, "Or do a little bit more than watch if I need to."

Meaning that like always, he was more than prepared to interfere.

Emil handed the stethoscope over carefully. He took a deep breath. The fact that the Doctor would spend all this time on him to try and fix him just... it was intimidating, and flattering, and it moved him deeply. Behind those big green eyes was a spark of determination that once lit would remain for a while yet.

"I'll figure it out," he said firmly. "With you and Marta and everyone else supporting me, I know I can do it. I know it."

Though he said that, there would always be some element of doubt lingering in the back of his mind. He ignored it. He might not be able to fight under his own power, but he was gonna try, damn it.

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only one can take you from this place

Re: Silly tenses!

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I'm so terribly sorry for this being late, Saffy ;_;

awww it's okay! I WILL WAIT A MONTH. i love your ten so much ♥♥♥

♥♥ Thank you ;_;

xB ♥

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