WHO: Eve Ritter → Asuna WHEN: Shortly after lunchtime on September 12 WHERE: The kitchen of her apartment SUMMARY: Asuna finds herself very much alive, much to Eve's surprise. WARNINGS: Talk of death
"I love you so very much."
Her words, directed toward Kirito -- no, Kazuto -- echoed over and over in Asuna's mind as she woke up. But, she wasn't supposed to wake up, was she? She had fought through paralysis, sacrificing herself in the hopes of protecting the one person she loved above all others. It may not have saved him in the end, but it gave him another chance and he'd needed that chance. He'd used that chance and he'd saved everyone.
And now they were dead. Weren't they?
Though she couldn't see it, Asuna's form appeared in the gilded cage. It took a moment for her eyes to flutter open, only to then blink rapidly against the bright sun. One of her hands rose to shield her vision, allowing her eyes to lock on the sleeve of what she was wearing. It wasn't what she had been wearing; the colors may have been the same, but this was nothing like that of the uniform that marked her as one of the Knights of the Blood Oath. Her hand slowly fell and she looked around, taking in her surroundings. If she were to wake anywhere, Asuna would have assumed it would be the hospital room that she assumed she had been moved to years ago. She might have even accepted that she had somehow found herself back in Aincrad, despite having watched Sword Art Online get deleted with her own eyes.
Tentatively, Asuna took a step forward. Her gaze dropped, looking at her bare feet against the stone of the floor. One more step and then she was running, stopping only once she reached the bars that blocked her path. Her hands raised, taking hold of the bars; it was then that she noticed for the first time that her wedding ring was gone. Pushing herself onto her bare toes, she tried to peer through the bars, trying in vain to catch sight of anything that might give her a clue as to where she was. She needed to get out, she needed to find her friends -- she needed to find out if Kirito was alive.
That thought solidified in her mind and Asuna's jaw tightened and brow furrowed. Again, she started to move, then paused. One swipe of her hand left her more confused; no user interface came up like it had in Sword Art Online. Letting out a huff of a breath, she started forward, her pace fast as she inspected the bars in hopes of finding an exit or even a gap that might be wide enough for her slight frame to pass through. With each step, she felt panic starting to bubble in her chest.
She made one pass, then another. Finally, Asuna came to a stop.
It was then, in that moment of stillness, that she forced herself to admit the truth. She was alive. She wasn't in the real world, but she was alive. Somehow she had survived, despite how impossible that seemed, but she couldn't celebrate it. Not when on the tail of that realization came the understanding she was in a cage. She was trapped.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Eve's shoulders shook as she jumped, even as her hand reached out on instinct to stop the sound from the microwave. The door sprang open, the scent of half a cheeseburger wafting out toward her as it was released. The sounds and smells weren't enough to completely orient her, not when half of her mind was still in a golden cage and the other was standing barefoot in her familiar kitchen, a hopeful looking Yui at her feet and staring in the direction of the counter.
It had been around a month since she'd had her last dream. Eve had watched as Kirito battled Kayaba Akihiko. She'd felt Asuna's fear and despair as though it were her own -- because it was her own. She had fought against the paralysis, throwing herself between Kirito and his foe to save his life by giving up her own. She'd felt that pain as the sword made contact; even in a digital world, she still somehow had felt the pain. And then she was gone. That was supposed to be the end of the dreams. If she or Niall were visited by Asuna or Kirito again, it would be in memories of happier times; they might have had no control over the dreams, but they could only hope.
But Asuna hadn't died, it seemed. Eve didn't understand how or why she was saved, but she had been. Did that mean Kirito was alive, too? Her mind drifted to Niall, who she'd said goodbye to with words and a kiss less than an hour ago when she'd dropped off lunch for him and her brother before coming home to enjoy her afternoon off. She had seen the guilt he'd carried after he experienced their deaths and knew just how much she'd wished she could have spared him all of it.
Abandoning her food for the moment, Eve hurried through her apartment to find her messenger bag. Fishing through it, she found her phone. She didn't know what was going on or why Asuna had found herself in another video game and trapped in a cage, but she was alive and that was news Eve had to share.