worst worst soup

[oncedriven]

It's the day after the fire, and nothingeverythingnothing has changed.

You don't got to the labs, like Klaus wanted to. There's too much. You can't go back to the labs.

Especially because Citan's been there practically the entire day, for no reason you can well explain. You simply have a sense of forboding about the whole thing, and instead mechanically fill out paperwork, mostly certain this time that the date is correct. Your memory is in shambles enough that you can't even tell which of these forms you had filled out before and which are new.

The ink of your pen splatters, frozen, across the page, and for a moment you're not even sure why. It takes a too-long moment for your mind to catch up with what your shaking hand has realized.

Another blade's consciousness has bloomed into the resonance.

For a moment your core jerks up into your throat, but - no, of course it isn't Mythra. There's no way it would be Mythra, and this blade feels like... The opposite, if anything. A dark blade sits in resonance, forming an unsteady tripod.

Their emotional bleed flares, and then goes silent, in a way that's too-silent, in a way that tastes like ether in the back of your mouth when you bite back your words. You barely have consideration for how the blade might be feeling, because you are far more concerned with the simple fact that Citan didn't even wait until you were dead to replace you.

Well. The bad manners inherent in adding someone to the resonance without even informing you beforehand surely justify a break from your work. You set down your pen, shake frozen flakes of ice into the trash before they can melt and sink into the paper, and leave it behind you.

As you do, you send a few investigatory probes towards the new blade. The first you discover - the thing that makes you stumble as you step through the door of your building towards the labs - is that the blade in your resonance isn't just a dark blade. Underneath that, there are layers, layers that go deep enough to contain... Every element except your own frosty chill.

You steady yourself on the doorframe, frowning. Just where had Citan even gotten a blade like that? Had you really missed so much of the last few months that the researcher team produced a blade like that without you realizing? That doesn't seem correct, but legend claims that the Aegises could use any element, so it wouldn't be entirely out of place for them to try...

Only one way to find out. You resume your progress towards the labs, unbothered by the light snowfall that settles without sticking over the base.

Comments

[oncedriven]

"Ah," Citan says, as soon as you open the door, and you let yourself taste the bile because you're concentrating on biting back other things. "There you are, Jade."

Something sharp and alert rises and falls in the emotional bleed. It doesn't come from Citan, and it peaks at the sound of your name. You don't dare take your eyes of Citan until he says, "You'll have to forgive me for acting suddenly, but one of the military exploratory expeditions brought back a blade that they thought might be helpful in our work, and someone had to resonate with it in order to get useful data."

To get useful data. It. You're not sure who he's making the point to, you or the other blade, but the message is clear enough: Don't step out of line. You're replacable. You can only tell that the other blade has noticed it because you're watching the emotional bleed as carefully as you watch your driver physically, and because you know that there's something there to look for, because the other blade has shut down emotionally far better than Mythra ever did.

This isn't going to be like Mythra, you tell the other blade, or perhaps yourself, as you turn to face him properly. It's not going to be like Mythra, because one way or another, you're not going to be resonance long enough to get attached. Citan made his move, now it's up to you to make yours, and even if you can't yet process what that move will be, you know that the time is rapidly approaching.

It's not going to be like Mythra. You'll kill Citan, and you'll apologize to this other blade when he wakes up next, even though he won't remember. At least this time, when your ether is stained in the metaphorical blood of your co-blade, it will be your decision and not someone else's.

He certainly looks the part of a dark blade, all dark colored clothes and an expression that seems to be set to sour by default. His hair is a vibrant crimson, spilling forward over one shoulder where he sits in what used to be Mythra's usual position in front of the computers, diodes likewise hooked to his core. For a moment, even though the two of them look nothing alike, there's a symmetry to red-core dark-blade and green-core light-blade that catches some shape like grief in your throat. You catch it before it kindles and, too cowardly to face it, freeze it solid for a later that may as well be never.

There's a shimmer to the exposed core crystal that you've never seen before, however, which makes it look more like an opal than a clear gem. It's also not quite the right shape, with a cut-off corner that makes you feel something faintly like concern (similarly frosted over the moment you notice).

You lift your gaze to his face, and become incredibly aware that he's watching you watch him. The dark blade is the first to look away, and even though his outward expression is something unamused veering into petulant, there's a flicker in the emotional bleed that's too much like your own grief for you to entirely ignore.

"Well," you say, your voice remarkably unstrained given the context (or so you can only hope), "it's a pleasure to have you here with us. Though it appears you've already been given my name - might I ask for yours?"

"Asch," the blade replies, short and quick and only not cutting because he still won't look you in the eye. It would be a stretch to think that a just-awakened blade would be able to put together that he's intended to be your replacement, but you've seen more unreasonable things.

Something of the procedural memory remains, after all, even if your conscious recall is reset. You had enough of an unsettled feeling about Citan to leave yourself notes for the future, for all the good it's done you. Perhaps - no, but it would fit, wouldn't it? Some previous experience like this would explain exactly the way Asch has clamped down on the emotional bleed like he expects it to strangle him the moment he lets go.

(It's not an inaccurate assessment.)

(You hope that a dark blade can keep his own counsel on the matter better than Mythra could.)

[oncedriven]

"Okay," Galea says, from her position over in front of the computer screen. "I don't think keeping you hooked up is going to make this data start making sense any time soon. Klaus, you want to unhook him?"

Klaus nods and steps up to Asch as Galea does soemthing to save the measurement she's taken and turns towards you. There's something carefully controlled in the worry in her face as she says, "Jade, why don't you go show him around? I'm sure we've taken up too much of Citan's time today as it is."

"I'm sure," you agree. "I'd be happy to."

"We still have a lot of work to catch up on after the fire," Citan says. "I'm sure someone else can give Asch the tour just as well."

The tone is warning and, you think, an indication that he doesn't want you to have any time alone with this blade. But Galea cuts in and says, "That's exactly why you should have given him a day off today! I know you work like a machine, Citan, but not everyone can be that centered immediately after something like that - " She didn't put a self- before that centered, but you hear it in the tone, and it jolts something inside you that instantly turns fearful and then gets smothered, too. " - and Jade was right in the middle of it. Give him a break, for Architect's sake."

You don't really expect Citan to concede, and it looks like he doesn't intend to, but at this point, Klaus is done unhooking Asch from the computer. He has far more confidence than a blade at most two hours old should have, and simply walks past Citan and both scientists while saying, "Well, he's already here, and I don't feel like waiting."

It should feel impertinent. It should make you freeze up. But the emotional bleed is even and steady in a way that's too even and steady, like someone taking a calculated shot.

And you see Citan weighing the benefits of keeping this new blade on a tight leash versus letting him have some lead now, but whatever he's thinking is stopped by the way Asch comes up close to you, well within the space that most people keep, and although he doesn't actually grab you, it arrests your thoughts as though he had, and you wind up following him out of the lab before you've entirely realized what you're doing.

It's the first time you've gone against Citan's suggestions in... months. Since Mythra, at the very least, but probably longer. And it just happened to you, like a storm descending, like the fire consuming everything you'd left to yourself, with no way of stopping it.

It's everything like Mythra, and what puts weight into your stride until you're properly walking with Asch instead of following after him is the knowing that you won't survive doing this again.

So you just have to kill Citan before that happens.

It's almost simple, when you put it like that.

[oncedriven]

You feel only a tiny measure better now that you're immediately out of Citan's gaze, escorting your replacement around the base. You see Hubert, across the base, and pointedly don't approach, because you can't deal with trying to explain to him what's going on, why the last nail in your coffin is walking next to you asking - actually, they're very thoughtful questions. Some of them you don't even have the answers to, either because you never thought to ask in the first place or because you've lost them over the last few months where you moved in a daze.

There seems to be a pattern to them, though you're not sure exactly what the pattern is, everything else taking up too much of your thoughts - you've gotten good at putting a mask, a film, a soft-looking layer of snow over the way your thoughts are frozen, but the way that Asch cuts past it all makes you think of a wind blade, rather than a dark blade, another form of truth blowing all your hiding places away.

You're leading him around the back of a building, out of sight of anyone else on the base but only for a moment - when Asch comes to a sudden stop.

He says, "Brace yourself however you need to to keep one hell of a shock from leaking into the bleed."

You hesitate, turning a half-step towards him as you pause on the path. You don't know what to expect, because -

(You can't handle another Mythra. You can't hide another Mythra, not from Citan and not from yourself.)

You say, "I would prefer not to."

"I'm going to do what I'm going to do whether you're in or not," Asch says, and there's a straightening-up of him again. No change in the emotional bleed, but he controls it as tightly as you do, which perhaps explains why his posture is almost overpronounced, a banner of his determination hanging from his brows. "You can't just expect a justice blade to sit back and watch, Jade. That's not what we do."

You know it. You know that, better than he has any idea, and it makes something you refuse to acknowledge tighten and crack around your control, because you know, you know how much waiting was killing Mythra even before it killed Mythra -

"He'll kill you," you say, because that's what your thoughts hang up on. "Even if you manage it - you'll die."

Something tight, in your chest. You should -

(If you kill him here, then Citan will certainly kill you. No more playing around.)

(And you aren't going to defend Citan in even that smallest of ways.)

"It wouldn't be the first time," Asch says, with the same set of determination pulled tight around him, a spot of darkness and blood-red hair against the glare of the snow.

It takes a moment for the words to sink through the drifts around your thoughts. It wouldn't be the first time.

Asch remembers. Asch is a blade who remembers, and he has killed his driver before.

You seize your emotions and flash-freeze them, another addition to the glacier in the cavity in your chest, and reflect that he did warn you, for a single insane moment, before thought resembling rationality reasserts itself.

(He's better at hiding it than Mythra. If he hadn't told you, you don't think you would have put it together, at least not this soon.)

"In that case," you say, "you'll forgive me for saying that I have a more vested interest in the matter than you. Not all of us are so lucky as to keep our memories."

"I didn't think I would." It's no less determined, but there's something raw underneath, a desparation that... Hits uncomfortably close to home. You remember thinking don't let it get to five. You think about being a blade with nothing to lose. "I thought..." Asch finally looks away from you, going quiet, but not at all because he's backing down. There's something far too melancholy about it for that.

"And that was worth it, to you?" you ask, trying for simple curiosity and knowing, knowing that you aren't sticking the landing, but too (exhausted) (frozen) to care.

"Didn't I just tell you that I'd do it again?" And once again, here's the blade who stalked out from right under Citan's nose, this time with exasperation that actually leaks into the emotional bleed, startling you when you realize that you're feeling it. It doesn't make you smile. It doesn't, because the part of you that would smile at something like that is frozen solid.

All too quickly, though, Asch sombers up again, and he says, "I know more about flesh eaters than any other blade you're going to run into in the next week, and I have no desire to become one. Take that knowledge and figure out shit out for yourself."

And with that, he turns and walks off - as much, you think, because you can feel Citan approaching from the direction of the labs as anything, no doubt wondering why the two of you were standing in one place behind a building for so long. You follow after, your mind not at all on your feet.

A week, then. Asch might not have intended it to be a deadline, but you'll make it one. You sure as hell haven't managed to get anything done without a deadline thus far.

One week, you tell the building where dormant core crystals are locked away, as you pass it by. Just another week.