Greetings! So, my first fanfic for WA3, and I'm hoping to make it the damned best Janus-fic I really Can. He's one of the most fascinating characters in the game, with so much incredible backstory and potential that was just thrown away, it seems. So, I'm starting from the beginning and making an attempt at amplifying that potential to its fullest. Even Dario and Romero are going to get their chances in the spotlight, and other characters will make appearances as well.
A good deal of this fic is inspired by the Duality album by RA, which seems to me to be the perfect representation for Janus' constantly evolving mindset. If enough people like this story, I will be making illustration slideshows with music on YouTube (because hooray drawings yes. I draw. A crapton. Of Janusish art. I need a place to put it.). Little referances of lyrics will appear here and there in the fic... you get brownie points if you find them.
NOTE: FF won't let me space the paragraphs like I want. I had a specific spacing between some of 'em to give that WIDEOPEN feeling. No such luck \:
ENOUGH of my ranting, on to the reading eh? I hope ya'll enjoy.
Their Names Will Echo
O N E: Dusky Dust, Powder Blue
Deep within a person's past, there are defining events that make them into who they will be for the rest of their lives, though we may not recognize these events for what they were. In this particular case, it was not trauma, not defeat, not love; in fact, it was incredibly simple. The something that defines a life simply resonates it.
He resonated with freedom.
Open, wide and blue like the open sky.
As a child, we should have this… but his freedom was different, tasting of dust and hollowing like hunger. Children dream of a world without parents, and there he was in this dream world, wishing he could have a Home. A Family. Children dream of a world without parents. All he worried about was getting his next meal.
No dreams.
Just survival.
Eventually he became as vicious as the curs he ran with in those dusty streets. As far as he was concerned, those dogs were more family than anyone. As it would happen, he slowly started to hate other people, to the point that he was willing to kill even just to eat. A life so gnawed by hunger would bring out the bloody side of everyone.
So close, so close. He's not paying attention. Hit him! HIT HIM AND YOU'LL SURVIVE.
The sandstone in his hand was grainy, with the wind-blasted smooth surface only the desert could create, and it had the weight to it that he needed; he knew instinctively that it would knock the man unconscious or kill him, the thirsty sand of ages soaking in blood like long-awaited rain. Then, he would steal the man's food, maybe his money (it was unlikely he had any, but it never hurt to plan).
A boy, just barely nine years old, was contemplating what could be murder, all for a piece of bread and some hypothetical coins. He snarled. He lunged. A ravening puppy on the street, his milk-teeth sharper than most…
A callused had caught his wrist and he dropped the stone, crying out with boyish fury as the man was startled, running with his stolen meal to prevent a second stealing. Survival was ruined, and all because someone held him back from doing what he needed to do.
"KID, what are you doing? That's—Look. You don't want to do that!"
At first he tried to fight her, but she was much taller and stronger than he and that got him nowhere fast. The lady even wrestled him to her home once she had deduced he was without caretakers. Getting the boy into the bathtub was questionably the bravest thing she had ever done.
The woman told him her name was Keziah, but only after he was properly fed. There was no reasoning with him until then, and it took her a long time and hard work to convince him not to eat too much in one sitting right away or he'd get sick; she suspected she'd be guarding the pantries for quite a while.
She spoke to him kindly, knowing that he probably hadn't had much of that living in Little twister. He didn't talk back at first, like a dog afraid to talk, until she found the right question. "Kid, what do you want most?" He let out a stream of words around a piece of pemmican in replies, and she smacked him lightly and scolded him. "NO, kid, don't talk with your mouth full, it's not proper."
He swallowed and huffed at her, before answering again. "I wanna' be free. Adventuring and stuff. I want my name to echo in the canyons."
"Well, what is your name?"
"… Kid?"
"NAH, nah, that won't do. Let's see…" For a moment she let her mind wander, thinking. "You have to have a GOOD name. 'Kid' isn't going to echo very far." His hair was unusual, she thought, like a waterfall? In a place where water was so precious, something like that was unheard of. "Cascade." She grinned. "How about Cascade?"
"Awww, that sounds like 'casKID'!" He grumbled, gnawing at the pemmican.
"It means something special though!" She explained to him, pouring a glass of water. It was dirty, even though she filtered it through cloth. Everything in Little Twister was like that. But it was still water. She poured what was in that cup to another cup, careful not to spill a drop (experience as a barkeep helped). "Tumbling, falling, either water or sand. Something that's always moving."
"… they used to call me Janus. When I was really little." He shrugged as if he didn't care. She could tell he liked that name anyhow.
"Janus Cascade… Now there's a name that'll echo. Lemme tell you something though, you've got to earn things like freedom."
He nodded. He believed her.
That was the first lesson of many. She became his older sister. In a town filled with bandits and constant chaos and against all odds, when everything was bursting in every direction, she pulled them together.
That was something he would never forget.
His first job was at the bar she worked. It didn't last long,.
Janus was only thirteen.
Disaster didn't care.
She didn't listen to him either.
Keziah was gone. And with her leaving, Janus turned his back on Little Twister and walked out into the desert.
No dreams.
He only survived because it was a basic instinct.
His body didn't give him the choice.
He wandered for years, seeming entirely detached and not once looking at his beloved sky.
Through the blur of the years that followed, he was shaken out of the dust by a pair of callused hands.
There were never soft hands in the desert. It could have been anyone. But it still reminded him of what had happened… how many years ago…? How small was he then…? Why was he angry…?
It took a bit for him to register that he was being spoken to.
"Whoa, whoa, you don't belong here kiddo what's a fine boy like you doing sleeping in a ditch." The voice of the man was soft, but it carried well through the dry air. He wouldn't look the man in the eyes though.
"Name's not 'kid', s' Janus Cascade." He would have growled if he had more energy, and if his lips weren't cracking from the lack of moisture.
A mass of blonde and scarf peeked over the man's shoulder. "I think he's an outlaw, can we turn him in?"
Another man peeked over the other shoulder. "I've seen his face before yeah. Bro's right, we oughtta' get the bounty on 'im."
"Hush, both of ya'. His bounty's small and he's not in good shape—"
He passed out at that point, from dehydration. He would have been ready to just lie down and die, too.
The next time he woke up he was in a camp with the three men he had seen, the burning desert sun. Hallucinating?
"Ah, yer awake!" Janus turned his head slowly to look at the speaker, trying to ignore the sudden pounding headache that had nested in his skull like a desert rat. He must have made a funny face, because the man cracked a grin that properly displayed the smile-lines at the corners of his eyes, there was mirth there. "it won't be so bad in a bit. Looks like someone cracked you on the skull and left you for dead. Yer damned tough to have lasted that long, kiddo."
"I told ya' already, 's Janus Cascade."
"Alright, alright, my mistake, don't bite me. 'Ere…" He handed over a canteen. "S' just some juice with a bit of brandy in it but I swear by it, it'll get ya' on yer feet."
Janus nodded thanks and took the canteen gladly, drinking .
That was only the beginning. As soon as he was "back on his feet", the very next day, Lucio introduced himself and the other two with him, Dario and Romero. "We were wonderin' if you'd need work and thought you might like to come with us."
Janus accepted quietly. Work. That's all there was to it, right?
Just as Lucio's words took a while to register the first time, it was a few weeks before Janus truly realized what was going on. Eventually, he came to trust Lucio and his two companions, as they worked together on whatever jobs the two older men could find for them.
For the second time in his life, someone gave a damn about him. It was almost like a family all over again, watched over by an older brother. Better than parents, maybe. Probably. Yes. He wouldn't say it out loud, though.
Lost boys. All of them. Even though Dario and Lucio were much older than himself and Romero, they were all boys. Somehow, being men didn't fit. Men had rules and logic and business. Boys had will and wild and wisdom, traveling with the Wind rather than the trains and horses.
It was Lucio that taught them about the desert. Where he once saw barren dirt and events took the form of survival or death, another vision was painted by the carrying voice of a man with eyes the color of wine. Through those eyes he saw the desert as his mother and the way of the gun as his father. He saw lessons from every monster, a church of sapphire in every spring of water. Every rare drop of rain on his skin was a message from the divine, all whispers of wind across stone and sand and sparse grasses were the words of his mother. Every wound and scar he received fighting bandits and creatures and from working hard was a reminder of things he had done.
Dario and Romero only barely understood Lucio. He was a brother, he looked out for them, got them work, told them stories and kept them out of (most) trouble. They didn't really understand the desert like he did, which may have been why he looked after them. Janus drank in his words and began to believe in the desert as a living being, which was only the second time he had believed in anything. Lucio respected the desert, and so Lucio survived… Not only did he survive, but he was happy.
Above all, Lucio was free.
To be free, to have family, to be strong enough to fight…. These were all Janus ever really wished for. All the wishes were granted not by some insane miracle but through a simple, road-worn man. A man with a carrying voice and eyes the color of wine.
The next few years did not define Janus Cascade. The freedom of those years did.
A mind as blue as an open sky was what he was given.
And that was all he really needed.