Wind Blowing Across Utopia(Cecil)

Nadia smiled at the message she had just sent and closed her phone. To be honest, she still had this nagging fear that Cecil didn't want anything to do with her. But, even so, here she was calling him out and expecting him to come running. Somehow this was okay. This was a good status quo for now, until things changed again. She wondered what shape they would take in the future.

An autumn breeze blew across the roof of the school as Nadia sat, looking through the fence down at the school yard below. How many of these little dots where Cadets? How many of them were terrorists, all eating lunch together and laughing and joking. What beautiful, blissful, mortal creatures they all were, Nadia included.

There would be no reply to Nadia's text. No hint of Cecil's willingness to come. No indication that her expectations were well founded, and that Cecil would come running at a moment's notice simply because she'd texted for him.




Other than him bursting out onto the roof.

Cecil looks around as he closes the doors to the roof behind him, calming his breathing and smiling as he spots Nadia. With a great huff out he approaches, taking a spot to Nadia's side.
Not too close, though. For all the relaxed look on his face, beneath the surface his mind still toiled away to reconcile the events that occurred before he found his rest in the pillow fort.
"Didn't I say I'd rather not you call me that?" He gives Nadia an easy smile, though he seems a little worn out beyond what could be expected from simply getting to the roof in short order.

Time ticked on, and no reply. A gaping emptiness was starting to replace the hope inside Nadia's chest. She really had "scared him away." She was leaned forward, pressing her fingertips into her temples, as he came bursting out onto the roof.

As he sat next to her, the look she gave looked like she had seen a ghost. The nickname, his comment, none of that mattered at the moment. "You came." she said, lips curving into a hesitant smile. "I was afraid I had finally scared you away for good...after what I did that night." No beating around the bush here.

It was at that moment Cecil seemed...conflicted. It was no longer in the back of his mind - the events of that day had come to the fore, and he still had no clue how to mentally address them. But the fact of the matter was he couldn't exactly ignore them. This was something that seriously bothered Nadia at the moment, and trying to ignore it would only make it more painful.
Cecil swallows as he glances to the ground. "...I...I'm not going to lie. I'm still having trouble acknowledging that happened. Trying to make it all make sense in my head." He looks back to Nadia, running his fingers back through his hair. "But...scaring me away? That seems a little excessive." He chuckles weakly, trying to put on a smile. "It was shock enough to drive me into my shell, but there's no way I can go anywhere like that, is there?"

Nadia was conflicted. Part of her thought she should put whatever this feeling was away, but part of her felt like there was still something here that needed to be said. She just needed to find the words that he needed to hear. That was, of course, never her forte. She sat, examining him as he joked about not being able to go anywhere while he was in his shell, and she hesitated, blinking curiously.

In truth, she was still hung up on the first thing he said. He was having trouble acknowledging what happened? Denial was not a healthy thing for anyone in any situation. Especially not when it came to a shared experience with her. "What do you mean when you say 'having trouble acknowledging that happened?'" She asked curiously, with a distinct note of concern in her voice. Had it been so bad he wanted to block the memory out completely?

Cecil chuckled awkwardly, and fell silent for a moment, before leaning forward and pressing a hand to his head. "It...just doesn't feel real. It feels impossible. Impossible, incomprehensible, alien and surreal...I know it happened, you're telling me it happened, but my brain says it can't have and that it never would. I just can't...understand it. At all."
He opens his mouth to continue speaking, and finds he can't. How are you supposed to say the prospect terrifies you to someone worried they scared you? How do you say that it's them you're scared for? How do you explain it all without being worrying? Insulting? Hurtful?
There was no good way to say that this was the worst possible idea they could ever have. The most horrible thing they could ever do to themselves.

Only pain could come from this. Maybe not immediately, but later on, as they fell further and further into the depths.

"you're telling me it happened, but my brain says it can't have and that it never would. I just can't...understand it. At all."

Nadia did her best to try to understand what he meant by that. But it seemed there was some internal struggle going on that she wasn't a part of. Yet, now she was a part of it. She'd inserted herself into it, and, like before, felt that she needed to push through it rather than withdraw.

Nadia moved to put a hand on his knee, gently, but with a small squeeze so he knew it was there. "What exactly is so hard to understand? I was unclear in my intentions. Should I elaborate on what they were? Will that help you understand?"

"Ah...ahaha...ahahaha...ugh..." The nervous laughter ends with him groaning into his hands, shaking his head. "I...I-hihi..." He swallows. "I understand. I know. I get it. I think. That's...that's the problem really. If - if you said it? Explained it? Said out loud what you were thinking? That'd just make it worse. You - right now, this is just in my head. An idea. It could be wrong. Maybe you were just curious." He swallows again, breath starting to shake. "...but if that's not it. If it's what I thought of. If there's something to it, if it was what I was thinking. Then - then it's out there. You said it. It's the case. The impossible thing, the thing that could never be - that would be the thing. And then I just get stuck in whys and hows and reals and fakes and dreams and reality and...everything. How this could be, why it would be, what would push you to something that..."

He falls silent before he lets that one slip, the way he'd let things slip with Tomomi before. She would notice, she would comment, but hopefully it could still be diverted.

Now we were getting somewhere. He was pushing through it, thinking out loud. She let him talk, uninterrupted as he carried on a one-sided conversation, doing her best to understand the implications of it. Maybe she should say it out loud. Maybe he needed to be pushed over that edge in order to really find his footing.

"what would push you to something that..."

He trailed off, and suddenly a picture was coming together. Push her...? "Push me to what?" She asked, after a moment of waiting for him to finish the statement. She could say more, assert that no one pushed her to do anything, but she wanted to see where this train of misery would lead unhindered. Maybe she was finally getting to glimpse the demon behind the curtain.

He stayed...very very still. Considering. Mulling it over.
He couldn't just say it. He wouldn't. He knew what would happen.
But if he didn't do anything, they wouldn't stop...this would keep going on.
"...what do you think?"

What did she think? What conclusion would she come to?
It would probably be accurate to the situation.
She probably wouldn't say what he was thinking though.
He could probably handle that.
It was avoiding the problem. She'd notice later, if not now.
But he couldn't. He just...couldn't.

So he was putting it her her court now. What did she think? What did she think? This wasn't just about his problem. If he was going to overcome this, maybe he need to hear about hers....and how he'd already helped her. Maybe then he could understand what happened.

"I think...you think I would be better off having that experience with someone else. That's what you always say 'someone else could do it better' but..." Nadia stood and walked up to the fence that separated them from the drop to the ground. There were people milling about, eating and laughing, oblivious. Just like she remembered. "I was raised in a shoebox, kept like a pet because my parents couldn't bother to include me in the lives they led, or take time to help me figure out how to live mine. When I came to school here, I didn't know anyone. I didn't know anything about how to act or how to join in. Even with so many students I felt like I was invisible...like maybe I never really existed in the first place."

"When I came up here the first time, I was going to throw myself off. And no one would cry for me. No one even knew my name. But, as I stood here I thought 'I wonder what they're thinking? I wonder what they are doing? Even if I can't participate, wouldn't it be a shame to not find out? I was so curious." She turned back toward Cecil and his sad eyes, crossing back to him. "So that's what I did. I watched and listened, excited by seeing how and why they laughed and cried." She knelt in front of Cecil, and laid a hand on his knee. "but the other day, with you...was the first time I ever felt like I was really part of the world around me. It made me so happy. You did that, Cecil. Nobody else. So...when you say that it could be anyone else, that it should be someone else...you couldn't be more wrong." She did her best to make eye contact with him as she spoke, "because you're the only one who makes me feel real."

...as Nadia began to talk, she wasn't completely wrong, but she didn't seem to get the scale of it. That was...workable. He might be able to handle that.
But then the 'but' came, and he knew something was coming.
Cecil might say what he like, but at least he had his family. They cared for him. He cared for them. And for all they loved to jab and prod, he knew that he had their support.
He didn't want to know how much worse it could have been without that.

His body went rigid and his blood ran cold as Nadia admitted her original plans. He stared in horror as a corpse splattered against the ground flashed into his mind, briefly flickering to a body floating in the water. He kept listening as the girl talked, pulled back from the edge by curiosity, and startled as she knelt and touched him. Told him of how he brought her into the world she had surveyed, looked up into his eyes. That it couldn't be anyone else. That it had to be him.
It made his head hurt. It made the world spin. It hammered into the filter that shaped his perceptions, to warp it, dent it, break it.
He made her feel real.
She made him doubt what was real.

"What is...is this a dream? A nightmare? Some mad hallucination?" He wasn't there any more. There was no world. There was no girl. No roof, no school, no gentle breeze and chatter from below.
Just him. And his thoughts.
"The world goes on. People go on. They move on with their lives, reach to their goals, reach out to the lights in the distance where their potential lies. They move down that path at a run and a walk and a crawl, to better places than where they came from."
"Good things, great things, beautiful things await them. All the others. They can go there."
"They can go there."
"All these beautiful lights to wonderful futures...the ones that lie ahead. They can have that."
"So why linger on a stepping stone?"

His eyes focus in a little. Someone else appears in the world.

"Why shackle yourself? Lock yourself off from the paths? A cage is a prison even if it shines with its gilding, but you look toward it like the world. The things you imply, the feelings you suggested then...these things are an anchor, they bond you to things, wonderful things that take you forward. They should take you forward. That's what it is. That's what this perfect ideal is for."

"I don't belong in it. Not in that ideal. At most, those fleeting attempts to create it. To realise it. But it will not, cannot happen with me."

"That would be a death worse than the fall."

Cecil's eyes unfocused. He wasn't looking at her, even though she was looking at him. And, as she had hoped, his misery unfurled before them. He felt like a stone in a river, with the rest of the world's people rushing past him. She knew this feeling all too well. He focused on her as he told her that he couldn't move ahead with her, that spending time with him would shackle her...but She had already done that, and she didn't feel shackled. He wouldn't hear that, though, if she said it. It would just give him more fuel for this looming darkness in his soul. So, she wouldn't deny it. Afterall, that deep sadness was the reason she had spoken to him in the first place, Ironically.

Instead, she'd sit in that darkness with him. And dig then both out in time. "I don't have big dreams or a path to follow either, Cecil. People don't move forward with me, they move past me. Just like you." She took his hand and pulled him up off the seat, taking him to the fence, to look down at all the people that weren't paying attention to them. "That cage of yours, that watches everyone move by and doesn't go anywhere...we've been in that same cage since the beginning." She finished, standing beside him and looking out at the sky through the fence links. "and I like it in this cage with you, Cecil. Whatever that means."

His eyes trailed Nadia as she moved. He'd done it now. He'd said it. This was his world, and she'd glimpsed it. But...she...didn't quite understand, it felt like. The important difference went unnoticed.
He shook his head, slowly.
"I'm...not in a cage. You can leave a cage. Beat it, batter it, open the door, bend the bars, break the lock. There's room in a cage, tiny little amounts of space to shuffle back and forth within. It holds you in place. But there has to be room to hold you in. That little space for you to go to. So...what does it mean when you can't go anywhere? When you're motionless?"
He'd come this far. He'd already said too much. He'd crossed the line where he must say nothing, so now he had to say everything to make the imperative clear. "I see lights. The starts to paths. I know not how to walk them, but they are there. I've tried to walk them. But I can't move. There is no space. There are no bars. No lock, no door, no chains. By all means, I ought be able to move. But motion is impossible. I see people walk forward to their own lights, but I can't even crouch down to tap the floor with my fingers. Motionless. Anchored in place. So why do I go nowhere if I have no shackles to bind me, despite my best efforts? What does that make me?"

He blinks, and suddenly there's a world again. Everything's returned, he thinks about what he's been coming out with, and it's hysterical. What kind of melodramatic nonsense was this? By all rights he should be dying his hair black, slitting his wrists, writing shitty poetry about pathos or something. He was a fucking caricature. People don't talk like that! Why was he talking like that? Why was he believing that?
It was just...so...funny. Morbidly, bitterly, soul-crushingly funny.

...he was laughing, wasn't he? And those were tears streaming down his face. He just noticed the cosmic joke, and it was him. The final result of an effort to make a ridiculous model of what it was it was to feel worthless. Taking the creations of shitty writers, of jeering strangers, of all the worst examples people had created of people in pain wrapped up in self loathing - it had become real. It was him.
Even that felt dumb. The forces of the universe, conspiring to make shitty melodrama real in the form of his life? What kind of ridiculous idea was that? This was real life!

He really needed to get a grip already. This was dumb. He was just wallowing in himself and creating dumb fantasies about why his life was terrible, even when he had more than he'd ever hoped for right now. When he should be happy, and looking forward to the future.
Still, even that was a funny thought. As he wracked himself with tearful laughter, it remained a funny thought. So, so funny, in all the wrong ways.

He just had to stop being a dumbass and be happy, right?
No excuses. No wallowing. No dumb monologues out of a terrible fanfic.
Just be happy. He had every reason to now after all, didn't he?

Nadia watched as he kicked back from her sentiment, went ahead rolling down his sad little hill until he hit the bottom. Then, when he had said all he felt, tears buffed, streamed from his eyes, and he was laughing. At first, she looked at him curiously. Then...she realized what was happening. This must bee what it looked like when you pushed through such maddening anguish to its end.

She rolled up a sleeve and reached up to wipe his tears away. They really were coming out, weren't they? When the tears finally seemed to be stopping she asked, "Are you done now?" such a general question with such grandiose meaning behind it. "School is over rated. Let's go experience something new, okay? I think it's about time you moved. We're making up for lost time, remember?"