There were some days when the wind's whistles sounded instead like a crowd of human voices. Today was one of those days. It murmured and complained around him, as if displeased by the dispersion of the miasma, but Sync himself didn't echo it as he trudged through a grassy field towards a pair of graves. He hadn't intended on visiting them. He'd told Largo as much, too, but then Largo had asked him to pay respects to Arietta's resting place for him.
Why should I do that? he'd asked.
I don't have time to go back again, and it shouldn't take long for you, Largo had replied. You don't need to do anything special. Just bring some flowers for her grave. I'll leave it to your discretion what kind.
And Sync had called it stupid and a waste of time, but he'd agreed anyway. Largo had been unsurprised, which annoyed Sync, but he'd kept that to himself, much like he usually kept his feelings about Arietta.
He vaguely understood the purpose of flowers at a tomb, but he had no idea which ones were right. On his way towards the burial place, he'd noticed flowers blooming along the road, untended and uncut by anyone. The way they lived their lives freely, yet were always at the mercy of whoever passed by, made him think of Arietta. He'd gathered a handful and changed course.
The closer he got, the more he didn't want to go. Arietta... They'd been inducted into the God-Generals together, but usually they'd been apart. It was by watching Fon Master Ion with envy in his curdled heart that he'd noticed her, because she'd been watching the seventh Ion too. By watching from further away, Sync came to realize that she, too, had been discarded. By working with her, he'd seen how the Score meant nothing to her, seen the brutality with which she fought. It was by observing her that he realized how people formed bonds - by protecting others and being protected in return - and in turn realized that he had none of his own. Yet as much as he'd hated that, he couldn't reach out to her. Now he never would.
He felt foolish, letting sentimentality get the better of him. At this point, he knew it was sentimentality. He could have always refused to go, but he'd let himself go along with the excuse Largo gave him, and he knew why. He'd rather try to do something to put his mind at rest regarding Arietta's death than let her constantly linger at the back of his mind.
It wasn't going to work, Sync knew. He'd be lucky if he left feeling only as awful as he did before he started. He knew it made complete sense for her, and it was no doubt what she'd have wanted had she had any inkling of how long ago he'd really died, but did Largo really have to bury Arietta next to the original Ion?
All the same, here he was, carrying a few wildflowers in one hand and coming up on a pair of unmarked mounds in the middle of the field. One had a small liger skull on top; the other, a doll already battered by weather. Both were unmarked by monsters or beasts. Sync had figured that'd be the case.
He came to a stop before the mound with the doll and stared down at it under his mask, still feeling stupid. Now that he'd come all this way, it felt like there had been absolutely no point in doing this. Arietta was dead. There was no changing that. She was gone, never to return. The best he'd get like her was a replica, and like hell Sync would ever have anything to do with that.
Why bother with what one hated completely, after all?
All the same, he was here, so... Sync knelt down next to Arietta's grave and placed the blossoms on top. Folding his arms over his knees, he stared at it for a moment, then let his gaze wander over to his original's resting place.
"To think," the fifth replica said softly, "this all started because of you. Fon Master Ion..." Sync chuckled cynically. "I'm glad you're dead, you bastard. And that's all I have to say to you."
His cynical smile stayed in place even as he returned his gaze to Arietta's grave. "If you were still alive, you'd probably be screaming at me right now, huh?" he mused. "Yelling, 'Don't talk like that to Ion!' It always pissed me off so much, how dedicated you were to someone who, as far as you knew, threw you away. And you got to have it easy - you never learned the truth that would've broken you."
He sucked in a breath, then exhaled it slowly. "...Broken you. Van always said he thought you'd kill yourself if you knew the truth. And you did get yourself killed, you idiot. But when the one you thought was Ion died, you went down fighting to take revenge. Would you have kept living on if you'd managed to kill Anise...?"
He was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head. "No, there's no point in wondering that. Either way, you died in despair, never getting to do anything for the one you wanted to protect. Though then again, you're probably better off this way than before, when you were living in despair..." He made a noise of irritation at the realization. "Okay, okay. You win. It wasn't easy. You were ignorant, but you still suffered." He glowered at her grave. "So fine. I guess it wasn't your fault. You were supposed to think Ion was still alive. That was the whole point; it made you nice and easy for Van to manipulate."
He hesitated, then reached up. When he lowered his hand, he rested his mask next to the lumpy doll Arietta had always used to aid in her arte-casting. Sync's expression behind the mask was sullen, bordering on angry. "Maybe I did like you, even though I knew you never thought of anything but Ion. What irony, right?" He threw his hands up in the air. "But nobody could know I was a replica of Ion, either! And who would want a piece of garbage like me, anyway?"
His mouth twisted with resentment. "I couldn't even serve as a proper replacement. Never mind that I looked just as much like the original. Never might that that dopey idiot made all kinds of stupid decisions when the Maestros weren't making his decisions for him. Don't make that face at me; you should know by now that he's just a replica, too."
He glanced again at the other grave. Van had buried Ion himself, Largo had told him, and Largo had buried Arietta. Arietta had always liked the Black Lion, had always trusted him. Sync didn't like Largo per se, but he was comfortable around him - had grown used to him during the extended training Largo had given both of them. For him, it was as close to "like" and "trust" as he'd ever get. Either way, it was one of several things Sync and Arietta had had in common.
"At least you'll get the satisfaction of knowing Anise'll suffer thanks to all this, huh?" Sync continued, thinking of another one. "Though if you're in a position to feel anything at all, you're probably busy in the afterlife with my original. I doubt you care about anything else by now." He lifted his right hand to stare at it, then squeezed it into a fist. "I'm not going to carry out your revenge for you, after all. It's none of my business. I'm going to follow my orders my own way, and without all the recklessness and self-centeredness you had."
The wind chattered at him, possibly because it was so cold. Sync heard but didn't listen, and after a moment, he hunched over, letting his spiky bangs fall into his eyes. "...You know, I really hated you sometimes," he murmured. "I could understand how you felt - how much it hurt to be told you weren't good enough, so you were being thrown away. How enraging it was to get pulled out of the trash can and put to work even though you aren't needed."
His jaw clenched. "But you never shut up about stupid Ion. You were always rubbing it in my face how I was a failure, and you didn't even know it. Do you have any idea how much I wanted to hit you sometimes?" He shook his head. "No, of course you didn't. I'd never have gotten this far if I didn't have self-control. I can at least be proud of that much."
The green-haired replica rocked forward onto the tips of his toes, then stood up. In an odd way, he did feel calmer. It was probably just because enough time had passed since the news of Arietta's death had shocked him. The wind chided him forcefully, and the flowers he'd brought began to blow away. Sync started forward but hesitated. In the moment he failed to commit, the wind shrieked into a gale and ripped away most of the wildflowers. He stomped his foot down on the last one just before it shared their fate.
"I figured you'd like wildflowers," he said quietly to nothing and no one. "But maybe you don't after all. All the same, I hate wasting effort, so I'm sending this last one down with you."
He bent down and began to dig, clutching the half-crushed bloom in one hand as he made a hole in the mound. He realized as he did so that Largo had staked Arietta's doll into the earth.
So that was why it hadn't gotten blown away. Sync had assumed that the local monsters, sensing one of their own, had kept putting it back, but maybe they didn't get that attached to when other monsters died. Arietta had, but Ion and Van had taught her how to be human, and maybe she was never totally monstrous to begin with. The other monsters obeyed her because they lived in the present, and she'd been in the here and now. Now that she was gone, most of them had returned to the wilderness, hunting, eating, defecating, sleeping, killing and being killed.
Then again, some had remained, still following the commands of those Arietta had left behind. Unable to speak with monsters himself, Sync would never know for sure.
He chuckled darkly. "Monsters don't get sad when other monsters die," he mused to himself. "I wonder if it's true. Even if it's not, I ought to learn from that. Huh, Arietta?"
When he'd dug deep enough, he set the flower at the bottom - maybe another couple of feet away from Arietta, whose rotting corpse Sync didn't particularly want to see - and began to fill the hole back up. Once he was done, he brushed the dirt off his gloved fingers, picked up his mask, and stood up again. His chest still ached, but the pain was abating. To think, when Largo had first told him, he'd been empty, even more so than usual... Maybe because he was empty, it was easy for the pain to rush in and fill him up.
Sync clutched at his chest with his free hand, lips parted as if to speak. It was another moment before he actually did.
"You're dead, Arietta," he whispered. "You and the Ion you loved both. No matter how many replicas Van makes, that won't change." He breathed in, breathed out, and chuckled humorlessly. "If only the Necromancer had figured that one out, I wouldn't have had to live this pathetic life. But I can't die yet; not 'til Van's done using me. You've reached the end of your usefulness, Arietta. Sooner or later, I will too, and then I'll disappear. I won't even get a grave like you two. I'll just turn into nothing, like the seventh Ion."
He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. "...But that doesn't matter. I've known all along that that's how it would be. After all, if our plans succeed, all originals will die, anyway - including you. That's the stupidest thing about all this, that I'm getting upset about your death when it was inevitable anyway. Largo will die, too, and so will I..."
But at least Dist would also die, and that gave Sync a slight amount of bitter comfort. Mohs and the Necromancer and everyone. The death of everything he'd always hated. It was something to look forward to. Something worth working for. That was the whole reason he'd decided to throw himself into being Van's tool. So letting something like this slow him was beyond stupid. He may as well put himself on Luke's level, and though Sync hated himself, he at least had enough pride to elevate himself over that reject.
"I won't be coming back, Arietta," he said, turning a half-step away. He paused, then glanced back, eyes steeling. "I really liked you. But I won't be like you. I know exactly what I am and who you were. Van can preach about remaking the world and everyone in it all he wants, but dead is dead. So I won't get fooled. Even if I meet someone with your face..."
He turned his back and donned his mask. "...I won't insult either of us by making the mistake of falling for her, too."
The wind wept as Sync walked away.