lazybox | soup but it tastes bad

soup but it tastes bad

The forest is quiet, and almost trackless - who needs a trail, after all, when the only person who ever passes this way is a single flesh eater, coming and going from the tower in the distance?

(But this story does not begin with Kratos Aurion was a blade.)

It begins, instead, with two blades in a remote forest, the same way another one ended, in the distant past. A blade of justice, and a flesh eater driver, seeking audience with the Aegis who is rumored to reside in the tower. And the story starts, just as the other ended, before they ever reach the tower.

Ether flows through the air - light-aspected, with hints of water and wind - and converges on a point. The crystalline structure doesn't look so different from the trees and underbrush that surround it, save for the fact that it glows white with a brilliance that's visible even in the direct light of the sun.

(The last story began, Van Grants was a blade.)

(It was not a happy story.)

Near the 'roots' of the tree, there is another core crystal to be found. Although it seems broken, it pulses with a dull red glow, indicative of the blade inside being ready (perhaps more than ready) to manifest again. Equally clearly, it has not been disturbed in a very long time - only the glow separates it visually from the natural stones around it, moss and dirt breaking up the too-square outline.

To those who can sense ether, however, it is practically a beacon. And to those who can see the threads of fate...

(This isn't the story of the Aegis. But there's a thread tied here, nonetheless, that hasn't disappeared.)

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Asch, for his point, stayed as far out of the post-Mithos flurry of activity as he could manage. There were introductions, of course there were, because another blade in the resonance isn't ever a casual thing, but he avoided questions about his strangenesses, obvious and not, as well as he could. It helped, that there were no familiar faces other than Jade among the assortment of blades and flesh eaters. And the fact that he can't say that of the humans is...

His intuition screams that it isn't a coincidence, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to his conscious mind, so he'll deal with that later. For now, he'll count his blessings in not being poked and prodded.

"I was wondering if you were ever going to ask." He'd left it, for Jade to figure out at his own pace, but he never intended to hide it. "I didn't even get to how we met."

Which bears its own hints to the question Jade isn't asking. For the time being, Asch doesn't seem inclined to take to either of the beds crammed into the room, which is probably for the better. He'd taken up the desk chair instead, but as he considers how to answer, he leaves it for the windowsill. There's enough of a wind blade in him that he likes to be up, like some kind of particularly strange cat.

"As I mentioned, the work on my memory was done by an independent blade researcher," he begins. "Dist came to work on blade memory because he was fixated on restoring the memories of a blade he had known during his childhood, who lost their driver and then resonated with someone else. That blade was the Jade I met, or more accurately the Jade before him."

He pauses, frowning. "I'm not sure why you were there on that day, but I got enough out of the argument to make some guesses. That Jade, the one before, worked in research on flesh eaters at some point. And I don't think the one you were then liked what you knew of him very much."

Just an impression. But it sits right in his gut, so he doesn't mind saying it.

Jade laughs, just a little. "Research in flesh eaters, you say? I suppose that's a little ironic." He does not, exactly, believe in fate, nor does he believe that if the Architect is real he has purposefully set up a predestined chart for anyone through life. Still, one can find inherent humor in coincidences.

As for the rest, it's not difficult to picture, exactly, just strange to relate to. He appreciates that it's significantly easier to think about than the last conversation, though.

"Well, I can't exactly say I relate," Jade remarks. "But then again, I don't know much at all about any of the Jades who came before me." Cold warnings, desperate notes, and nothing more; that's all he has of any recent Jades, and he hates to think--as he always does-- that there were ever more than just one of him in Citan's hands. Either way, the notes were useful but not telling, in any fashion. Not about the man he was. "But then, I suppose that is generally the lot of blades. Not remembering. And only some of us are blessed enough to have left records."

To not have records burned by their driver-- ah, but there are plenty of blades who lose them through such more basic means, Jade is sure.

(The emotion bleed sings tight with a chilly frustration, but Jade has certainly felt much, much colder than he does right now. ...so much for this being a significantly easier topic, though.)

"Was that the only time you spoke with me?" Because he doesn't think it is, and he's curious about the whole story, if Asch doesn't mind telling.

"If you count both times we spoke on that day together, it was." As much as it seems like Asch knows, half of it is by Jade's reputation and another half of the remainder is what Jade himself explained. "Dist didn't exactly hide the general goal of his research, and I had good reason to be interested."

He's avoided saying it directly, and he knows he can't avoid it for much longer. "Van killed me. Not even just let me die when I got inconvenient for him. I wondered about that, until the look he gave me when I killed him, but then I knew for sure. According to Dist, I'd stopped by his lab seven times to 'help' with testing his research."

He takes a deep breath. "That Jade offered to make it quick, and to take me to someone less awful. I turned him down, because I couldn't let Van go on doing what he was doing. Not because I didn't think you would do exactly as you promised."

In a world full of things and people he couldn't trust, Jade's disgust, his offer of help... They were genuine. Even if the only evidence he has of that is his own intuition.

"Ah," Jade says, and just that, for a moment. His hunch was right, then. Distantly he thinks approvingly of the Jade Asch knew, knowing for certain he would have responded the same way, though perhaps for different, more personal reasons. Still, he takes comfort in the fact that as a baseline Jades despise the thought of a blade being murdered by their driver just for a memory wipe.

But then, it's a really, really sickening thing for someone to do.

Jade sets the journal back down on the bedside table -- there's no way he'll be touching it anytime soon -- and then he laughs. What else can he do? What were the odds? Not only for them to find another attempt at recreating the Aegises, but to find another blade who knows exactly what they'd been put through. So he laughs, short and bitter, reaching up and dislodging his glasses as he runs a hand over his eyes, massages the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry, I realize it's not a laughing matter. I just find myself astounded once again by the irony of us meeting in this lifetime. After all..."

He's always found this difficult to explain, to admit, but it's been his best guarded secret for several lifetimes. So if he looks a little bit pleadingly in Mythra's direction for her to pick up where he left off, well...

Mythra's paying attention, really she is - but this is Jade's past, things he deserves to know, and the least she can do is let him have the space to ask questions and absorb it all without cutting in needlessly.

That, and the fact that she's still caught up on the fact that she came home to meet two new siblings, who are also Aegises. That one's still preoccupying her.

She's stretched out on her bed, on her stomach with her legs crossed in the air behind her as she listens. If she'd been fidgeting idly before, it stops right around the point where Asch mentions just how many times he'd died thanks to his previous driver. Fuck.

Unlike Jade she doesn't laugh, horror ringing too loudly in her veins instead. A driver bad enough to murder, sure. That's not a surprise. But a driver who'd done the exact same thing as Citan, and that many times--

She realizes that Jade's stopped, looking over to her, and --

Well. Who's Mythra, to say no to a face like that?

Still, she doesn't say anything right away. It's easier for her to talk about it than it is for Jade, true - but she's spent the past ten years very determinedly not doing so, with anyone but him. That Asch is in resonance with them helps (she'll never really be a fan of keeping secrets, and with the bad nights she and Jade still have now and again it'd be bound to come up eventually) but she hesitates a moment anyway, actually rearranging herself to sit on the edge of her bed, before she picks up where Jade left off.

"... It's not the first time either of us have dealt with a driver like that," she finishes, flicking her hair back over her shoulder and out of the way like it'll disguise the way her side of the emotional bleed twists, ugly and anxious. Grins, more sharply than she feels, in Asch's direction. "Can't say it did much when he tried it on me," she says, but what that meant for Jade goes unspoken. She's pretty sure Asch can guess, with a story like that.

Perhaps he should be disturbed by Jade's reaction, but he isn't, and not just because Asch, too, tends to laugh when the other option is screaming.

Jade goes blank, Mythra paints the resonance in shades of horror, and his intuition tells him before either can open their mouth exactly what unspoken thing is going to be said.

For his part, Asch sags against the closed window as first one, then the other, speaks. "Feels like that's the way my life always goes," he muses. Thinking of Ion, and yeah, even as a remote a chance as that would be, it must be better than the chances that Jade of all people would pick him up, out in the forest. And yet it doesn't feel strange at all.

"...When it was just me, that was one thing," he says quietly, head dipped such that his chin is almost buried on his chest. "But he got his hands on Luke. Wanted the full set for whatever the hell he wanted us for. I wasn't going to let that happen to an innocent."

And Luke was innocent, as much as a blade born from the deaths of others could be. More than he should have been, and...

"...I hope he was able to understand why I did it, someday."

Jade sits in the silence for a minute and lets that all settle in. Seven times Asch was killed versus the three that Jade counted. Jade might suspect it was more than just three, but just same it could have been countless more than seven before Asch realized. ...not that it's a competition, of course. It's just humbling, in a way.

He pulls himself back into some form of working order, understanding Asch's decision-- How much higher did the stakes get when Mythra joined the resonance, after all? How much harder was Jade willing to fight, just to make sure his driver didn't poison someone besides him?

"I hope he does too, for your sake," Jade says, though it may not be his place. "I certainly understand," with an accompanying look at Mythra which is probably telling enough, "but I'm sure I'm not the one you want to hear that from."

Seven times keeps ringing through Mythra's brain, but she breathes slow, reining her emotions in without dulling them entirely, so they're not quite so overwhelming to the rest of the resonance. She cards her fingers through the ends of her hair as Asch continues, because Jade's all the way over there on his own bed, and there's really no way to casually move over there without it being awkward.

She doesn't need the look Jade sends her to see the parallel - though it has her ducking her head, a faint blush accompanying some probably-welcome warmth in the emotional bleed despite herself - but it's sobering. (As if any part of this conversation wasn't.)

At least Citan hadn't had any grand schemes for the two of them.

"I think he would have, too," she says, in agreement. Asch did it to protect him, so - regardless of how else his brother might have felt about it, he must've understood that part, right? That's just what siblings do, for each other.

"I was able to control who his next driver would be, at least," Asch says. "And I left him a letter."

It's... probably not enough, but at least it's something. More than most blades get, when they wake up.

He stretches against the window and then pulls his gloves off, revealing the unnatural ether lines underneath, as he begins to straighten his hair with his fingers. Few blades even have ether lines on more than their hands or wrists, but here he is with a set of lines too jagged to be called delicate across the backs of his hands, before they shift suddenly into almost-runic rings around the base of his fingers. The lines climbing back from his wrist, however, have all the elegant flourishes of a fire or water blade. And on the palms of his hands, a shape like a tuning fork, connected to the rest by a wide, shimmering line of red running straight down his inner forearms.

Whether or not Jade was intending to pursue that line of thought any further frankly doesn't matter. Asch takes off his gloves, revealing his ether lines, and all other thought simply grinds to a halt in Jade's mind. He his both fascinated and unsettled all at once. He's not close enough to make out the finer details, but even at this distance the sight of them makes something in his core scream of horror. Seven blades sacrificed to create one, indeed.

"Ah, so you don't layer as much as you do because of the weather, I see," Jade comments.

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soup but it tastes bad

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sneaks in two months later

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