Disclaimer: I do not own Gast, Mariam, or the Evillious Chronicles. I guess this chapter can't really stand on its own as a one-shot and it is okay as a backdrop-setter, so there we are.
To anyone else in the army, the Emperor's addition was little more than a symbol. A hero's descendant, a pitiful street-rat.
Zenon spoke no Beelzenian. His Elpegortian, as Aria had gleaned from pausing to scramble for her hairpin on the palace floor, was stilted and limited to basic vocabulary. He could not read.
And so, to anyone else in the army, he was but a naive child.
Two weeks were gone, then, simple and clean. Aria was aware of everything and everyone, this story just budding in her palm.
He took the name Gast. In his manners, Aria saw confusion and doubt as he introduced himself the day later at the behest of his superiors.
"My name's Gast now," he'd said with a tense face and mouth slightly curled in what might have been an attempted smile. "and you're the head of information...yes?"
"Yes," Aria had said. Yes, and he was holding back a sneer. Not out of distress, though, he'd said it easily enough, but of disrespect for the Emperor in- a minor way. A vision of him as naive himself. After all, what was the point of Gast taking another name when his life as a despised child would never escape him? The soldiers didn't see him as anything other than a pet, the life outside the army could not accept his stranger inclinations, and Elphegort would be burned in his mind for eternity.
The name did nothing but brush aside concerns.
Aria knew better than to assume Gast was anything less than dangerous. His mind was open but not welcoming. He was ignorant but not innocent. His eyes were wide but not bright, unless of course you counted the light bouncing off them without ever permeating his skull.
Weeks passed and Gast continued training. Aria kept small tabs on him, not much more than any other foreigner, but with a slight interest she didn't have with everyone.
He was a challenge to figure out, of course, and spoke little when he attended dinners. He preferred to spend more time learning to read. It made sense to Aria. No one wanted to be the dumb muscle, even if it wasn't their fault. When he did speak, he was polite, but always turned questions about his past around onto the present, ("Yes, being poor was difficult, it helped prepare me with continuing to work on my stance this week".)
Training was the turning point for him, though. Mastering ten techniques every week was something few people in the army had been able to do for all its known history. According to Logan, his batch's instructor, Gast was terrifying to duel with. He laughed.
Hm. She remained busy, collecting information on Lucifenian immigrants, leaks in the army, and Mariam, her star.
Mariam was five. Gast was twelve. In a few more years, they could be friends.
Oh, he was not an innocent and not a child. Gast had been torn from that role a very, very long time ago, so long ago that he didn't remember it and didn't regret it.
He was happy. Sometimes out of food, sometimes clothes, sometimes fighting, he was happy to be in the army and happy to be a respectable person. Not that they would think that if they realized what he looked forward to in the day, the images that went through his mind when he picked up a sword. No matter, they didn't need to know.
He was happy not to look out for his neck anymore, but he still had issues with his mind. It was hard to admit, of course, but the wholeness of self he'd gained during his time in Elphegort, the shamelessness, the sureness of what he was doing and how it had to be done, was the only positive thing from his childhood and not something he would sacrifice with philosophical debates on "right" and "wrong" and attempts to fix his twisted worldview.
He didn't kill innocents. He helped his country. He was a decent person, and he didn't have to listen to anyone contesting that.
Gast was fourteen. Recently, a girl named Mariam Futapie had been appointed general of the Silver Sparrow Unit. She was seven.
"Of course, she was picked because of her mother," a soldier had whispered from a corner while he'd tried to sleep before the protective conflict of a border town to Lucifenia.
"Undoubtedly." came another voice and it chuckled.
"Maybe," Gast had said and closed his eyes.
"Let's just sleep." said someone and they did.
Mariam's mother was Aria Futapie, also the daughter of a former intelligence head. And an extremely self-serving, deranged woman.
How Gast knew this had to be the aloofness in her eyes as she spoke the casualties Lucifenia imposed upon them as the soldiers were gathered before her.
"Another hundred in Luxu. That was a canon, by the way," she'd said and let her hands hang loosely clasped together, relaxed. Her face calm and lips set with her tongue behind her her teeth, curling mouth corners, watching the reactions of the soldiers with glistening eyes.
Gast was good at reading people. It had either developed while he deflected his comrades or helped with it, but he knew when he saw her gliding about the grounds or the palace he lived in that the only thing on her mind was something completely unrelated to the wellbeing of her fellows. She was constantly smiling. It terrified him.
Her daughter was different. Gast had seen Mariam when she was with Aria. Always standing back and watching with the same intensity but a different dullness than her mother. They had never spoken to each other. Yet he thought it noteworthy Mariam had never smiled once, and her posture was tense and rigid.
Maybe it was pity or some kind of empathy. But it seemed to Gast that if Mariam was a result of nepotism, she would try to act like Aria the Second. She was no Aria the Second.
Instead she was interesting. He would have liked to speak to her, but they were on two different pieces of the puzzle.
Gast didn't stop feeling as though she was what he was in a way. A pawn to a higher power. A gateway to a predecessor.
But he hated Sateriasis, and perhaps she had no qualms about being Aria's daughter. If she did, though…
Of course, Mariam was also a seven-year old general, and Gast could do no worse with his skill. He would always think about that when he heard of her.
But she would without a doubt be different than the rest. There was no use in denying that…
"Mother."
"Mariam?" Aria smiled at her daughter vaguely, eyes transparent. Light pooled into them. She was holding a pen in one hand and something else behind her, which she'd probably hid when she heard Mariam coming in from outside.
"The woman you spoke with-" Mariam's pause was brief, almost fluid, while it was not. "she was never in the palace or meetings."
"She," Aria said, enunciating every syllable, "is an outsider to the army. But necessary for the operation.
"Mari, you know I can't tell you much about my business," Aria said, "so just do your work and wait 'til you're older."
Mariam felt a sigh coming but remained quiet for another moment. She remembered the old, withered and twisted face of Aria's new colleague before evenly saying, "She is just suspicious. Please don't get into... trouble, Mother."
Aria nodded and began to write something in the journal she kept in hand half the time. Ah.
Mariam knew better than to ask what was in it. She had been scared to know, because whatever her mother prepared her for with cuts and bruises, broken resolves that reforged into stronger ones like anything else that was alive, and hyper-awareness must have been horrid.
"Don't worry," the soldiers said, "enjoy your childhood. It's a fast thing."
Mariam never said what she thought.
Her childhood was like being a grown-up with all the responsibility and yet none of the power.
She kept a small mirror in her sleeve and read like Aria had taught her, over her shoulder and backwards.
Because even the sixteen-year old who came to the army at twelve had known how to get by on his own, and if he could tread water for so many years, she could leap from one dock to another without fear.