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Suddenly The Voice had returned and had finally come to claim them...Sigrún took a deep breath to steady the shaking in her legs. The only thing was....that shaking was not her. Still cut off from all senses except for touch Sig felt the rumbling start. Her whole body shook as the tower trembled. Sigrún was frantically trying to feel around for a way out and trying to scream for Moriko. Still no sound could be heard.

As she stepped back from a break in the floor Sig began to feel something strange. She felt empty... Of everything. Sigrún began to disappear at that moment. Her memories began to blur together and she began forgetting thing piece by piece as if someone were removing the puzzle that made up her life. Grabbing for something to steady herself Sig slammed into a pillar, but she couldn't really feel it. Slowly her fingers began to dissipate like a wisp of smoke.

With a sob that no one heard Sig sank to the rumbling floor, her back to the pillar. She felt herself being pulled apart from the inside. As she quickly unraveled and her memories went the last thought she could cling to was of the most important thing to her Momo.
.……with that Sigrún Valdís disappeared completely.

[FIN]

She didn't know much beyond her urges to avenge the sleeping kin. Whatever was in here was a key to removing the real from this world. Somewhere around here was the Voice. It had been so nervous when she'd been climbing those steps and now it spoke more forcefully.

They were all going to disappear; she wasn't alone up here. Deaf, blind and mute, the ghoul could only await the outcome as intended by the Voice. It was time to wake up, she thought, but when she saw herself, the opposite became true. Why wasn't she waking up?

The voice spoke. It would take everything from him. What? Andrew felt his fingers go numb. There was no pain, only a feeling of distance as they unraveled. He was already deaf, sightless and unable to speak; it seems that the voice would finish the job now. Still his managed to frown in silent resentment as it took from him the powers it claimed to have given him.

But he had no last regrets. He had fought for life with everything he was. Memories flashed in his mind, the other blues turned silver struggling up the stairs, which were the endless ascent into death. He had made connections with some from the other side, hopefully they would remember. His family, and his brother flashed though his mind. They too were a figment but equally as important to him, his brother had taught him how to hold a face when he needed to, not that Andrew was quiet so successful in these past few days. He had lost his cool more times than he could count, and had been forced to rearrange all his priorities. But he had a few prizes, a few last hours with the blue kingdom and even… a few last minutes from Olivia. Maybe one regret, maybe he should have waited instead of impatiently going to his death. Maybe he should have kissed her back, what would it have hurt?

Too late now.

And then everything unwound faster, his body vanishing, not burning, just an empty hollowness as his cloths, his wings and then finally the core of his body spun into nothingness.

[end]

He remembered the first time he saw her.

Just a little thing, wrapped in robes too big for her, and she was already walking away. It wouldn't be the last time he'd watch her walking away from him, but it never seemed to get any easier. That was all he ever remembered, anymore, was her back.

That memory lifted up as soon as he thought about it, and with a gentle sigh, it faded away.

It wasn't hard to realize what was happening. The Voice wasn't going to give him everything, as it had promised. Perhaps it was going to give someone their wish, but not him. He hadn't been good enough. Just a fragment, just a memory. Maybe not even that. He knew he was more than that sad, pathetic vision he'd seen in the afterlife. He knew he deserved to live so much more than that other one did. But he wasn't being given a chance. He wasn't even allowed to fight for it. He wasn't worth a second thought.

He couldn't feel Shaheen's hands on his neck anymore. Had she stopped choking him, or had he simply lost feeling in his body? He assumed both. He wanted to lift his hands to feel her again, a real live body there to prove to him that they were both real. But when his arms lifted, he felt nothing. Everything had gone numb; coupled with blindness and deafness, he was sure this was the end.

And why did it have to end this way? The Voice could have taken him. He welcomed it, really. Everyone else was fighting to stop this from happening, but this was all he wanted. He wanted to be real, he wanted a fighting chance. He wanted to know what life could be like, because he hadn't truly lived a single day of his life since his heart had attuned itself to her presence. He didn't know what life was like, anymore. He'd just been wandering, waiting for the end - but now that the end was here, he was finally ready to give life a chance.

Life was not prepared to give him a chance.

Bastion's memories started to peel away, like layers of an onion flaking off of him. He remembered the exact hue of her eyes - and then suddenly, he didn't.

He remembered the way her hair smelled when the breeze was kind to him and blew his way - and then, he didn't.

He remembered everything, every little detail, one by one, simply to prove to himself that he could.. and they, too, were taken away from him. Until finally, in the very end, when his body had all but faded away, there was one single thought left.

Mjoll? He wondered to himself, his phantom heart aching at the sound. Mjoll who?

He hadn't even made it up the tower when it began to happen. Everything started to unravel, starting at the tips of his digits. It wasn't even painful - just a little unnerving at the beginning. A void where his feet should have been hardly even bothered him as the memories flooded back.

The two pillars, the woman and the man, the golden beauty, serving the King, tumbling with the Tiefling, The Harvest Festival.

His entire lower body was gone, as were his arms. He felt a slight sadness, the kind of remorse one feels when they say goodbye to a friend in person after having already detached themselves from that friend. An empty remorse - a feeling that was there because you knew you were supposed to feel something.

He didn't even have memories before The Harvest Festival - those had been left at the pillars. Those were false, as he was false, and this all was false.

False - like his remorse. Even his last breath before shattering was a fabrication.

He was there, he walked through the darkness and into the crumbling shambles of a tower others were already disappearing. Everything, everything was pointless, others were trying to hang on wanting to still exist in this fake world where they didn’t belong.

Joachim wanted to end it.

End it all with the loathing bitterness and there was really no reason for him to hold on to it.

He did feel a little bit of concern, he would no longer see the one girl the only friend he had met the entire time he was in the silly dream world. He hoped, though foolish to even think.

Maybe she wasn’t a fragment like he.

With the last thought he let go, his being dissolving into an explosion of fragments.

Nothing in her expected to feel whatever she'd bumped into move. Reach back, touch her hand. She hadn't realized she'd stepped on someone's tail, either, or she would have been highly apologetic for that one. At least, as apologetic as one could be in such a situation. She even would have forgiven the smack to the back she'd gotten after landing on.... whoever it was.

All she knew was the hand against hers, colder than the stone. Fingers curled around her hand and her eyes shut. Relief to find another, gratitude they were not attacking her, and for a moment, she felt happy. Her fingers closed on theirs, giving a squeeze in an attempt to say, We're okay. She could not see them, hear them, speak to them... but she could feel they were there. Feel the pull towards them, and her body did adjust its placement in her crouch to move a little closer now that she was at least somewhat sure there was no danger. From them at least.

A spark of hope. There was a chance, with another, things could... change? Maybe they could find a way out of here, or find... whatever it was the Voice had been so reluctant to lead them to? She felt the lightest, happiest she'd been since learning the truth of her existence. Even if her hand was getting a bit cold, she had no intent on pulling back.

Her wide grin, the excitement of a child strewn across her face, all vanished with the arrival of the Voice.

No. No no!

Her wings unfurled and wrapped forward, curling somewhat around herself. And the one in front of her. As if the bone, veins, and membrane could somehow be a barrier between the Voice and them. If only, if only. Take what is its? No! It wasn't fair! Agsil snarled soundlessly, fangs snapping in the darkness towards the disembodied voice. Her grip tightened on the cold hand. She'd just found someone. Things... things changed. Things seemed better. As the body drew closer, she did similar, closing her wings more around them. A wish for protection. Meaningless yet... she knew even if she lifted them from the ground as everything began to shake, it would do no good. Her head dipped forward, and she felt her forehead hit something-- ...their shoulder, maybe? Certainly, she could feel the chill from a body very close to her. It could have been.

The ground began to crumble, the winds swirled and sliced. She felt her clothing and hair being tugged and snarled by the air, yet all she could do was press her face more into the body beside her. Memories played within her skull before the winds snatched them away. She had made it.

Made it to the top of the tower. Found someone. It was not the ending she had hoped for, but as such thoughts were whisked away, and bit by bit her body began to peel and pull away, she could only focus on that last part. She'd found someone. She wasn't... alone. She came into this place by water, cold and alone. And now... she could leave it cold, and with another. No name, no face. Only the scent of winter and chill in her skin. Skin that flaked and fell, spiraling into nothingness.

Agsilved did not let go. Falling into black, into the void, she went smiling. She didn't let go.

[ End ]

Ash wipes the blood from his fingers, dragging them along the fabric of his vest, slow. His hands shake. Both his arms are still bleeding; they're slick and sticky and warm, uncomfortably so. It starts from a distance, all the way out in space, all the way out in a place beyond this tiny room in a thin tower and a small world that isn't real. It starts and it works itself up his feet, and Ash thinks-- not for the first time-- that he's coming apart, unravelled like a poorly knitted sweater, undone like a slip knot when the give is yanked, and--

He tears a strip of cloth from his toga, he has to stop the bleeding, maybe if he continues the way he is then it won't matter how he feels, and--

Ashford shivers from head to toe, because he sees himself in a haze, and his pulse is racing in a tight band across his forehead, like there's a wire cutting into his skin there, pressing down and intensifying this migraine, like he'd outgrown his laurel of keys and it was embedded into his skull, and--

This is his true self, second year student at Amityville Academy, boilfriend to Thackery, aspiring Boogeyman, casual knitter, occasional reader, and both of the Ashfords, (the real and the fake but which one's which) jolt with a sharp inhalation. and--

The areas of grey are first to go, where Ash had torn himself asunder, and the real Ashford starts awake, looks down at his hands and the patches of grey where he'd torn himself asunder shred away, dissipating, sliding away and the ribbons lift off from his arms, his legs, his face, and they flutter away like leaves on the wind and--

Darkness seeps in all around, again, it takes over like a storm, descending upon Ash without a word or a sound or a hint or a hope and--

Ashford sleeps.


He doesn't wake.