Asch the Bloody (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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starwardbestrewn2020-09-13 01:25 am
bloodyashes) wrote in starwardbestrewn2020-09-13 01:25 am
Entry tags:
weird bad soup: I'm a trauma therapist, Jade
The rest of the group is perfectly content to enjoy the downtime, hair braiding, and laughter. Your Asch, for his part, looks like he'd rather be getting on the road again; you imagine he's only sticking around because of Lorelei's direct involvement. Were it not for that, you have no doubt he would have performed his usual rapid escape from Luke's vicinity, gleefully abandoning his double to the company of the other blades.
And it is curious, watching the other Asch. Either Mythra or Jade has done his hair up as well, similar but not quite the same style as Mythra's, with a number of smaller braids in the lower half of his scalp working their way towards the back of his head and the bulk of his hair. His bangs are mostly pushed back, but not to stick up the way you're used to. Instead, they swoop slightly to the side, secured with hairpins that one of them got who-knows-where. The whole thing gives off an air of refinement that would make him look more in place in the Kimlascan court than his counterpart.
He's noticed you looking. Rather than participating in the lollygagging, he catches your eye, and inclines his head away from the group. So that's how it's going to be, then.
You nod, and take advantage of everyone else's captivated attentions to slip away. Only Auldrant's Asch notices you go, and he either thinks you two unlikely to kill each other, or doesn't care enough to interfere. You're perfectly content not knowing which.
(You don't think the new Asch will kill you, either, if only because Luke likes you. And that is hardly a sentence you ever thought to think, but the look of hope and relief on his face... You imagine he'd far rather be talking to the alternate version of his estranged brother than to you.)
Being Asch no matter what else he is, he gets right to the point. "That was unacceptable."
From Auldrant's Asch, the words would come as a joke. But the reminder that the other Jade is much older than he looks still sits near the forefront of your mind, and so you give the Asch in front of you a second, more thorough look.
The authority in his stance isn't military bearing. It's not the scraped-together wreckage of what could have been royal manner, either. This Asch is visibly older than the one you're used to - early twenties, perhaps, in place of seventeen - and has the maturity to match. He's confident and at ease calling you down, hot temper from before under casual and patient control.
No, where the body language of the Asch you're used to is a demand to be taken seriously, this is simply a statement.
"I am aware," you admit. Not without some shame, that you needed Ion of all people to point it out, but you have been made aware, and you intend to rectify the situation.
"Are you?" More mature or not, Asch is Asch, and the level of accusation carried in two words and the way his eyes narrow is impressive.
"I didn't think my other self would appreciate a public apology," you say, which is true. You certainly wouldn't, and surely a blade is not that different.
"He wouldn't," Asch agrees, and there's a slight softening, enough to confirm for you that the affection blades have for their drivers does indeed run both ways. You cannot imagine any other circumstance in which Asch would think so fondly of you. "But an apology isn't enough. How are you going to keep it from happening again?"
"Always so proactive," you say, well aware that you're deflecting. There's a minute shift in Asch's expression that says that he knows exactly what you're doing, and it is about as capable of flight as the Tartarus. Dealing with people who know you so intimately when you know them not at all - and you do not know Asch much better than a casual acquaintance, really, and this one even less so.
You sigh. "I admit fully that I am not used to dealing with most people as equals," you say. "And that my usual manner is... shall we say, smug, towards those I don't expect to be able to keep up with me."
"In other words, you have no idea what it is you did."
The words cut sharply through your delicate admission of your own flaws, characteristically Asch, taking no quarter and leaving no mercy. And it leaves you wrong-footed, not for the first time in this entire debacle, but this time you aren't sure how it is you're supposed to respond.
And from the way Asch pauses just long enough to allow you to process that, but not long enough to formulate a response, it was calculated. You really are starting to hate this.
"It isn't about just talking down to him," Asch says. "It's annoying, but he can handle it. It's that, plus the 'this is what you must do right now and the explanation doesn't matter,' plus the casual callousness and emotional aloofness."
His tone is firm, but not angry. You keep waiting for the anger, certain that it's there, and the longer this Asch is calm the more it goes from waiting for the other shoe to drop to waiting for the guillotine.
"I don't know that I can do much about the latter," you say. "It simply isn't a part of my personality to feel emotions the way others do."
Asch rolls his eyes. You count another level of annoyance at this, at how someone you're used to thinking of as a child acts as though he knows you better than you do yourself. "You say that - tell me, how's the Professor doing these days?"
For a moment, your brain stops, restarts. It isn't as though you see crimson, that's only a metaphor, but it's a physical experience of crimson, clouding your senses and any other impressions you might form of just why Asch would have said that, how he could even know -
It lasts less than a breath, but your spear is in your hand, only summoned and clenched firmly. You stopped yourself before pointing it at his throat, well before injuring him. And yet you can't deny that for a moment, the only thing on your mind was using it to make a hole in his body.
The other thing that you can't deny is that Asch was prepared for it. Fonons cluster around his hands, an arte not manifested, but what makes you most curious in the part of you that can still be impartial is that they're First fonons, tinged with the constant bit of Seventh. Not the mostly-Fourth blend of ice or the bright Sixth fonons that hang ambiently around Mythra.
Blades can only use one element, or so you've been told. Therefore, in order to use a third element, Asch must also be a blade. Which leaves the question about who, exactly, the driver in this equation is once more an open question.
"Thanks for proving my point," Asch says, still casual, but now also more than a little smug himself. And oh, you are an idiot, to not have realized that a version of Asch so closely involved with you would have more subtle ways of making his displeasure known than a mere show of temper. "And what you're feeling right now? You should be glad that our Jade reacts to that by shutting down instead of lashing out, because that's what you did to him."
The casual veneer slides off as he continues to speak. Yes, this is how this Asch shows his anger, and you have to reassess the degree, because this is not a simple anger that will diffuse on its own. The Asch in front of you is livid beneath the surface.
(The Asch you know is impossibly devoted to his family, even if he goes about it in the most foolish way possible. You're a fool for not thinking that they would be the same in that.)
You take a deceptively deep breath, dismiss your spear, and adjust your glasses. "I see," you say aloud, because you do.
It's a roundabout way to say, 'take more care because you're lucky to be alive right now,' but far more effective than if he had simply told you so. A deeply risky way to get his message across, but it seems that he was prepared for that, as well.
And even in the face of all the more important questions you should no doubt be asking, the one that comes to your mouth first is, of course, "How do you know about Professor Nebilim?"
"An educated guess," Asch says, as though it solves everything instead of raising more questions. "I knew Jade in a lifetime long before this one, one with enough similarities to your world that it gets unsettling if I dwell on them for too long."
"Hm," you hum, turning that over for a pause. "Then were I to ask Jade and Mythra, they would know nothing of it?"
"It was over nine hundred years ago," Asch says. Simple, but a definite nail in the coffin to the idea that he was ever human. "And even in that life, he said of the Jade before him, the one who had your Professor as a driver, I don't know him."
Pointless, then. Oh well. You would like to pick his mind more, over exactly what similarities are so strong that it led him to think that that would be an effective weapon against you, but at the same time... You find that you almost don't want to know.
It explains Mythra's surprised glee at Peony, though, if Asch had known him as well in some ancient lifetime. If there are any secrets between the three of them, no doubt they are of the harmless sort, the kind reserved for birthday gifts and breakfast in bed the next morning, the kind that have never particularly been a part of your life.
"And you aren't curious at all?" you ask, because you have to know, because it will stand out like a splinter if you do not.
"I won't lie," Asch says, and no, you never thought that he would, "but I won't ask or dig around into it unless I have a reason to."
"...I appreciate it," you find yourself saying. You try to put some feeling into it, even, even if it feels like a mockery.
"If that's the case, then quit digging into Citan," Asch replies, blunt as ever. "It's the same thing."
"You drive a hard bargain," you say, "but I suppose I have no choice but to accept."
Asch watches you for a moment, clearly considering whether or not your words are meant seriously. Eventually, he says, "If you do, I'm not even going to pretend to try to protect you. You've been warned about poking that hornet's nest."
Which is unambiguously fair, you'll give him that, and a more measured and realistic response than you would have expected from Auldrant's Asch as a baseline. But then, he rather has just admitted to being centuries old, and by Mythra's accounting, blades aren't ever really children the same way humans are.
Perhaps it's natural, then, for there to be such a gulf of confidence and self-awareness between the two.
"I'll keep it in mind," you say. "Was there anything else?"
"Depends," Asch says, and there's a bit of lightness back to him that certainly is unique to witness in comparison to his Auldrant counterpart. "Do you know of any psychologists I can drag my other self in front of that will sit on him until he gets some of his shit worked out?"
You blink. You... can only think that you've missed something in translation, here.
"I realize that he can be... erratic," you say carefully, measuredly, "but surely you don't think Asch is so nonfunctional that he needs to be institutionalized?"
The lightness vanishes instantly. (Clouds in front of the sun, suggests the part of your mind that's still trying to parse the weather code.) "What are you talking about?" Asch says, and then, "Are you saying the only form of therapy your world has is fucking institutions?"
You are not sure what you are supposed to say in response to that. You merely nod, watching to see how the rest of his reaction plays out.
You quickly reassess that to add 'taking a step back,' as First and Seventh fonons gather around Asch. Just for a moment, where he looks very much like he would like to scream but cannot without alerting the rest of the group (though you're sure, with that emotional bond, that the other Jade and Mythra are alert to his distress nonetheless). Then the fonons sharpen into a proper arte, a rain of black arrows into a patch of ground some fifteen feet away from either of you, utterly obliterating an unfortunate bush.
When that is done, Asch's shoulder sag as though some great weight has been placed upon them. "No fucking wonder," he says. "If that's the state of psychology on this fucking planet..."
You clear your throat. "Mind clarifying?"
"I'm a fucking trauma therapist, Jade," he responds instantly. "You just told me the equivalent of 'oh, Auldrant doesn't believe in the heliocentric solar system' for what I do."
Ah. That does explain a great deal, if you're reading between the lines correctly. If this Asch has specialized in the study of the mind, then at least you can comfort yourself knowing that it isn't just because of his Jade that he can get under your skin so effectively. It's less personal if it is genuinely his job.
Though it does amuse you that professional offense gets a more characteristic outburst out of him than the genuine, personal anger.
"I'm surprised they would allow a blade to hold such a position," you say instead, testing his reaction to you having figured out what he was hiding.
There's not even a blink, disappointingly. "Oh, my degrees are under fake names and I'm not formally licensed, so technically everything I do is illegal," Asch responds without skipping a beat. "But there aren't exactly a lot of options for blades, considering that most humans don't think it matters when they just forget anyway. Who cares about their quality of life when they're dependent on their drivers and most blades are only for military use anyway? Why even bother studying to see if trauma responses carry across lifetimes, which they do, it's only the conscious recall that disappears and the trauma reaction is filed under procedural memory - "
"A fascinating diatribe and I would be interested to hear more at a later date," you interrupt, because you would, you learned a great deal about both blades themselves and the society surrounding them in three sentences, "but not immediately clarifying of your concerns."
Asch pauses, looks you over, and frowns. "Unless you're going to sprout a degree in the next ten minutes and take the case yourself, you'll have to wonder," he says. "I'll violate conflict of interest if I have to and apparently I do, but that doesn't mean I'm crossing any other ethical lines, and patient confidentiality is the biggest one there is."
You sigh dramatically. You know better than to think that any version of Asch is less than completely serious when it comes to whatever ethical code he sets for himself, even if the one you're familiar with has had to burn most of his to survive. "Pity."
"If you want to talk about yourself, we can make an appointment," Asch replies, some of that cheer back in place. You hate having your sense of humor directed back at yourself. "Talk through some of your issues with emotional expression."
"I'll pass."
"My calendar's open for the foreseeable future."
"I'll pass," you reiterate. In truth, you're curious about the entire idea in the abstract, if only because of the cheerful way Asch talks about it and the way the idea of institutions as the only option offended him deeply. Auldrant's Asch was precocious at caring for others, by all accounts, and if his other self chose this as his road, you cannot think it merely the dissection and study of the deranged that you're thinking of.
But not curious enough to subject yourself to it, at least not yet, and probably not ever. And from the expression Asch is wearing even as he lets the subject drop, he didn't truly expect anything different.
You reach up and adjust your glasses again. "Well, we'd best get back," you say. "Lorelei alone knows what they've been up to in our absence."
"Go on ahead," Asch says, and though his tone is still casual, the smile is gone. "I need a little time."
You simply nod. "Anything I should tell your company?"
"'Sky wasn't red this morning,'" Asch replies. You can figure that one out easily enough, yourself, but you nod and take your leave.
You'll count yourself lucky, to have escaped that encounter without a storm brewing on the horizon.
And it is curious, watching the other Asch. Either Mythra or Jade has done his hair up as well, similar but not quite the same style as Mythra's, with a number of smaller braids in the lower half of his scalp working their way towards the back of his head and the bulk of his hair. His bangs are mostly pushed back, but not to stick up the way you're used to. Instead, they swoop slightly to the side, secured with hairpins that one of them got who-knows-where. The whole thing gives off an air of refinement that would make him look more in place in the Kimlascan court than his counterpart.
He's noticed you looking. Rather than participating in the lollygagging, he catches your eye, and inclines his head away from the group. So that's how it's going to be, then.
You nod, and take advantage of everyone else's captivated attentions to slip away. Only Auldrant's Asch notices you go, and he either thinks you two unlikely to kill each other, or doesn't care enough to interfere. You're perfectly content not knowing which.
(You don't think the new Asch will kill you, either, if only because Luke likes you. And that is hardly a sentence you ever thought to think, but the look of hope and relief on his face... You imagine he'd far rather be talking to the alternate version of his estranged brother than to you.)
Being Asch no matter what else he is, he gets right to the point. "That was unacceptable."
From Auldrant's Asch, the words would come as a joke. But the reminder that the other Jade is much older than he looks still sits near the forefront of your mind, and so you give the Asch in front of you a second, more thorough look.
The authority in his stance isn't military bearing. It's not the scraped-together wreckage of what could have been royal manner, either. This Asch is visibly older than the one you're used to - early twenties, perhaps, in place of seventeen - and has the maturity to match. He's confident and at ease calling you down, hot temper from before under casual and patient control.
No, where the body language of the Asch you're used to is a demand to be taken seriously, this is simply a statement.
"I am aware," you admit. Not without some shame, that you needed Ion of all people to point it out, but you have been made aware, and you intend to rectify the situation.
"Are you?" More mature or not, Asch is Asch, and the level of accusation carried in two words and the way his eyes narrow is impressive.
"I didn't think my other self would appreciate a public apology," you say, which is true. You certainly wouldn't, and surely a blade is not that different.
"He wouldn't," Asch agrees, and there's a slight softening, enough to confirm for you that the affection blades have for their drivers does indeed run both ways. You cannot imagine any other circumstance in which Asch would think so fondly of you. "But an apology isn't enough. How are you going to keep it from happening again?"
"Always so proactive," you say, well aware that you're deflecting. There's a minute shift in Asch's expression that says that he knows exactly what you're doing, and it is about as capable of flight as the Tartarus. Dealing with people who know you so intimately when you know them not at all - and you do not know Asch much better than a casual acquaintance, really, and this one even less so.
You sigh. "I admit fully that I am not used to dealing with most people as equals," you say. "And that my usual manner is... shall we say, smug, towards those I don't expect to be able to keep up with me."
"In other words, you have no idea what it is you did."
The words cut sharply through your delicate admission of your own flaws, characteristically Asch, taking no quarter and leaving no mercy. And it leaves you wrong-footed, not for the first time in this entire debacle, but this time you aren't sure how it is you're supposed to respond.
And from the way Asch pauses just long enough to allow you to process that, but not long enough to formulate a response, it was calculated. You really are starting to hate this.
"It isn't about just talking down to him," Asch says. "It's annoying, but he can handle it. It's that, plus the 'this is what you must do right now and the explanation doesn't matter,' plus the casual callousness and emotional aloofness."
His tone is firm, but not angry. You keep waiting for the anger, certain that it's there, and the longer this Asch is calm the more it goes from waiting for the other shoe to drop to waiting for the guillotine.
"I don't know that I can do much about the latter," you say. "It simply isn't a part of my personality to feel emotions the way others do."
Asch rolls his eyes. You count another level of annoyance at this, at how someone you're used to thinking of as a child acts as though he knows you better than you do yourself. "You say that - tell me, how's the Professor doing these days?"
For a moment, your brain stops, restarts. It isn't as though you see crimson, that's only a metaphor, but it's a physical experience of crimson, clouding your senses and any other impressions you might form of just why Asch would have said that, how he could even know -
It lasts less than a breath, but your spear is in your hand, only summoned and clenched firmly. You stopped yourself before pointing it at his throat, well before injuring him. And yet you can't deny that for a moment, the only thing on your mind was using it to make a hole in his body.
The other thing that you can't deny is that Asch was prepared for it. Fonons cluster around his hands, an arte not manifested, but what makes you most curious in the part of you that can still be impartial is that they're First fonons, tinged with the constant bit of Seventh. Not the mostly-Fourth blend of ice or the bright Sixth fonons that hang ambiently around Mythra.
Blades can only use one element, or so you've been told. Therefore, in order to use a third element, Asch must also be a blade. Which leaves the question about who, exactly, the driver in this equation is once more an open question.
"Thanks for proving my point," Asch says, still casual, but now also more than a little smug himself. And oh, you are an idiot, to not have realized that a version of Asch so closely involved with you would have more subtle ways of making his displeasure known than a mere show of temper. "And what you're feeling right now? You should be glad that our Jade reacts to that by shutting down instead of lashing out, because that's what you did to him."
The casual veneer slides off as he continues to speak. Yes, this is how this Asch shows his anger, and you have to reassess the degree, because this is not a simple anger that will diffuse on its own. The Asch in front of you is livid beneath the surface.
(The Asch you know is impossibly devoted to his family, even if he goes about it in the most foolish way possible. You're a fool for not thinking that they would be the same in that.)
You take a deceptively deep breath, dismiss your spear, and adjust your glasses. "I see," you say aloud, because you do.
It's a roundabout way to say, 'take more care because you're lucky to be alive right now,' but far more effective than if he had simply told you so. A deeply risky way to get his message across, but it seems that he was prepared for that, as well.
And even in the face of all the more important questions you should no doubt be asking, the one that comes to your mouth first is, of course, "How do you know about Professor Nebilim?"
"An educated guess," Asch says, as though it solves everything instead of raising more questions. "I knew Jade in a lifetime long before this one, one with enough similarities to your world that it gets unsettling if I dwell on them for too long."
"Hm," you hum, turning that over for a pause. "Then were I to ask Jade and Mythra, they would know nothing of it?"
"It was over nine hundred years ago," Asch says. Simple, but a definite nail in the coffin to the idea that he was ever human. "And even in that life, he said of the Jade before him, the one who had your Professor as a driver, I don't know him."
Pointless, then. Oh well. You would like to pick his mind more, over exactly what similarities are so strong that it led him to think that that would be an effective weapon against you, but at the same time... You find that you almost don't want to know.
It explains Mythra's surprised glee at Peony, though, if Asch had known him as well in some ancient lifetime. If there are any secrets between the three of them, no doubt they are of the harmless sort, the kind reserved for birthday gifts and breakfast in bed the next morning, the kind that have never particularly been a part of your life.
"And you aren't curious at all?" you ask, because you have to know, because it will stand out like a splinter if you do not.
"I won't lie," Asch says, and no, you never thought that he would, "but I won't ask or dig around into it unless I have a reason to."
"...I appreciate it," you find yourself saying. You try to put some feeling into it, even, even if it feels like a mockery.
"If that's the case, then quit digging into Citan," Asch replies, blunt as ever. "It's the same thing."
"You drive a hard bargain," you say, "but I suppose I have no choice but to accept."
Asch watches you for a moment, clearly considering whether or not your words are meant seriously. Eventually, he says, "If you do, I'm not even going to pretend to try to protect you. You've been warned about poking that hornet's nest."
Which is unambiguously fair, you'll give him that, and a more measured and realistic response than you would have expected from Auldrant's Asch as a baseline. But then, he rather has just admitted to being centuries old, and by Mythra's accounting, blades aren't ever really children the same way humans are.
Perhaps it's natural, then, for there to be such a gulf of confidence and self-awareness between the two.
"I'll keep it in mind," you say. "Was there anything else?"
"Depends," Asch says, and there's a bit of lightness back to him that certainly is unique to witness in comparison to his Auldrant counterpart. "Do you know of any psychologists I can drag my other self in front of that will sit on him until he gets some of his shit worked out?"
You blink. You... can only think that you've missed something in translation, here.
"I realize that he can be... erratic," you say carefully, measuredly, "but surely you don't think Asch is so nonfunctional that he needs to be institutionalized?"
The lightness vanishes instantly. (Clouds in front of the sun, suggests the part of your mind that's still trying to parse the weather code.) "What are you talking about?" Asch says, and then, "Are you saying the only form of therapy your world has is fucking institutions?"
You are not sure what you are supposed to say in response to that. You merely nod, watching to see how the rest of his reaction plays out.
You quickly reassess that to add 'taking a step back,' as First and Seventh fonons gather around Asch. Just for a moment, where he looks very much like he would like to scream but cannot without alerting the rest of the group (though you're sure, with that emotional bond, that the other Jade and Mythra are alert to his distress nonetheless). Then the fonons sharpen into a proper arte, a rain of black arrows into a patch of ground some fifteen feet away from either of you, utterly obliterating an unfortunate bush.
When that is done, Asch's shoulder sag as though some great weight has been placed upon them. "No fucking wonder," he says. "If that's the state of psychology on this fucking planet..."
You clear your throat. "Mind clarifying?"
"I'm a fucking trauma therapist, Jade," he responds instantly. "You just told me the equivalent of 'oh, Auldrant doesn't believe in the heliocentric solar system' for what I do."
Ah. That does explain a great deal, if you're reading between the lines correctly. If this Asch has specialized in the study of the mind, then at least you can comfort yourself knowing that it isn't just because of his Jade that he can get under your skin so effectively. It's less personal if it is genuinely his job.
Though it does amuse you that professional offense gets a more characteristic outburst out of him than the genuine, personal anger.
"I'm surprised they would allow a blade to hold such a position," you say instead, testing his reaction to you having figured out what he was hiding.
There's not even a blink, disappointingly. "Oh, my degrees are under fake names and I'm not formally licensed, so technically everything I do is illegal," Asch responds without skipping a beat. "But there aren't exactly a lot of options for blades, considering that most humans don't think it matters when they just forget anyway. Who cares about their quality of life when they're dependent on their drivers and most blades are only for military use anyway? Why even bother studying to see if trauma responses carry across lifetimes, which they do, it's only the conscious recall that disappears and the trauma reaction is filed under procedural memory - "
"A fascinating diatribe and I would be interested to hear more at a later date," you interrupt, because you would, you learned a great deal about both blades themselves and the society surrounding them in three sentences, "but not immediately clarifying of your concerns."
Asch pauses, looks you over, and frowns. "Unless you're going to sprout a degree in the next ten minutes and take the case yourself, you'll have to wonder," he says. "I'll violate conflict of interest if I have to and apparently I do, but that doesn't mean I'm crossing any other ethical lines, and patient confidentiality is the biggest one there is."
You sigh dramatically. You know better than to think that any version of Asch is less than completely serious when it comes to whatever ethical code he sets for himself, even if the one you're familiar with has had to burn most of his to survive. "Pity."
"If you want to talk about yourself, we can make an appointment," Asch replies, some of that cheer back in place. You hate having your sense of humor directed back at yourself. "Talk through some of your issues with emotional expression."
"I'll pass."
"My calendar's open for the foreseeable future."
"I'll pass," you reiterate. In truth, you're curious about the entire idea in the abstract, if only because of the cheerful way Asch talks about it and the way the idea of institutions as the only option offended him deeply. Auldrant's Asch was precocious at caring for others, by all accounts, and if his other self chose this as his road, you cannot think it merely the dissection and study of the deranged that you're thinking of.
But not curious enough to subject yourself to it, at least not yet, and probably not ever. And from the expression Asch is wearing even as he lets the subject drop, he didn't truly expect anything different.
You reach up and adjust your glasses again. "Well, we'd best get back," you say. "Lorelei alone knows what they've been up to in our absence."
"Go on ahead," Asch says, and though his tone is still casual, the smile is gone. "I need a little time."
You simply nod. "Anything I should tell your company?"
"'Sky wasn't red this morning,'" Asch replies. You can figure that one out easily enough, yourself, but you nod and take your leave.
You'll count yourself lucky, to have escaped that encounter without a storm brewing on the horizon.
no subject
"Oh," you say, and then, "Oh, holy shit."
Because that isn't just a dude, that's the dude. If it weren't for the established this-Jade-is-human-and-blades-don't-exist-here, you'd have to question if you hadn't been blasted a thousand years into the past instead.
Jade's driver, from the lifetime in which he and Asch first met, from the days of Jade of the Crimson Snow so, so long before you were even a thought. You take your time looking him over, this time - the casual posture, the blond-and-blue contrast, the young-features-but-settled-expression, they way his eyebrows lift just slightly as he looks at his Jade, needing nothing more to ask the obvious question of what's going on here, Jade?
You might even get a little lost in it, because suddenly Asch tugs at the resonance in the way that means Hey Mythra, wake up and pay attention, and it's incredibly unfair that Foresight is broken but hyperintuition is working fine.
"Sorry," you say out loud. "It's just... It's an honor to meet you, after all."