Welcome to Gaia! ::

The days passed by in a grey haze - in theory, at least. In practice, there was no sun to mark the change from day to day, only the tick of clocks that sometimes didn't seem to work properly. The caverns were in an eternal twilight. Things blurred together.

But through it all, under the voices and the nightmares, was a soaring sense of triumph. They'd done it. They'd saved the world. The Horsemen of the so-called Apocalypse were nothing but charred meat in puddles of slag. Charred meat and grey ghosts that whispered incessantly and pushed Kouki out of her head sometimes. But who the ******** cared? They'd won.

Sure, she woke up screaming every night, but... they'd won.

So it was okay.

Thus, dazed, Madison passed the time. Until one day the voices stopped hissing in her mental ear, leaving Kouki sole proprietor of her brain; the serpent-sword settled irritated, bristling coils around her. She was hungry, she realized, and headed out to the canteen. Had she eaten lately? She couldn't quite remember.

But they'd won, so...

A few minutes later, Madison was at a folding table alone, nursing a slice of toast that she didn't entirely remember picking up.

A shock of familiar red hair brought her to focus; a moment later, Madison smiled. "Hey... hey, Jordan. Hey, we won. Isn't that great?" She grinned at him, crookedly, then took another bite of toast. "We won, and they finally shut the ******** up. I knew I'd get them to be quiet. Just had to... beat them up enough. Right?"

"Yeah... yeah, a little bit. My head's still muzzy, and I... ugh." She shook her head slowly. "Kept seeing grey stuff all over the place, like ghost-bits hanging from the ceiling. Fingers, y'know? But I cut them off. They won't bother us again. No more screaming," she sighed, poking the toast with one finger.

"... This is really gross toast," she said, after a moment. "We have to go up and take out the rest of the ghosts, right? I think I remember something like that. Before or after Robert- ugh, no, no, that was a dream. I think that was a dream, right?" Her eyes closed tightly.

"Pretty much everything was a dream, I think," Madison sighed, putting down the toast and burying her head in her hands. "I just hope I'm not dreaming now." She spread her fingers just enough to allow one eye to peek out at him. "I'm not, right? You're not tainted by the ghosts? I'm so ******** tired of having to kill my friends," she added, with a weary sigh. She didn't sound erratic now. Just exhausted.

"Yeah," she said, after a moment, letting her hands slide back down to the table. "I think so." She offered Jordan a wry smile. "It's just kind of like the most ******** hangover ever, or something. But it was all worth it, right? We saved the world, didn't we - I know I just said that, but I gotta be sure. That part wasn't a dream?"

She was pretty sure it wasn't. Another bite of the awful toast seemed to help, at least - the grey fog that had hung over everything was no longer blurring her vision and making everything seem soft and strange, amping every voice into a grating intrusion. Not to mention the ghosts.

"Did you hear the voices too?" she added, hesitantly.

"Good. ******** them," Madison proclaimed, giving him a grin that was a bit closer to her usual. "And ******** the voices too. I've only got room in my head for one voice... Four voices. Whatever." Much of what had happened after the explosion was a grey blur in her memory, to be honest, and she'd taken a few wounds she didn't remember getting. But she trusted Jordan - as long as she wasn't dreaming.

She was pretty sure that she wasn't, now.

"... So what's next? Stuff's been going on, I guess," she added, looking around the cavern. "How're you doing? Everyone else is okay, right? We all made it back?" The thought made her shoulders tense, and there was a faint stab of guilt that it had taken her this long to consider the livelihood of her friends. But now that it was on her mind, the death toll of the previous mission glowed in her memory like a neon sign.

"... We did, right?"

"Yeah, seriously," she said with a sigh and a weary smile. "And do you see these hands? I gotta get some moisturizer." She held her hands out in front of her, fanning her fingers to show Jordan - not that he cared, but hell. "God, I'm so happy I can worry about stupid s**t like dry skin. I was worried about just having skin after everything went down, y'know? I'm glad we're all okay. I'm glad you're okay," she added, with a firm nod. "Dunno what I'd do without my best bro, or whatever."

"Heck yeah," she said, holding out one fist for a bump. "I need a manicure, seriously. At least nobody melted my hair this time, hah. You suppose they all got blasted to little grey bits too? That's a niiiiice mental image." And it'd serve that horsey b***h right, too.