Warnings: Serious AUness, plenty of OOC, mentions of boy-boy-smooching and something a hell of a lot more serious…nyaahr.
…and no flaming me for the Yuber/Luc pairing. Bash me for my blatant use of deus ex machina and run-on sentences, if anything, but not that. You have your OTPs, and I have mine. Read on if you choose to risk it. And Happy Valentines' Day. XP
Come Autumntide
The season of Yule arrived as she always did, on the dying breath of autumn with its chill breezes and piles of bright flame-colored leaves that lent the land a semblance of warmth. The land's people finished gathering in the last remnants of their harvest and settled in to await the snow. Though there was already an icy bite on the air, there was even for the least and poorest of them a home, with fire's heat and the shelter of four walls against the elements. Without the tight communal cluster of their village there lay fields that had been stripped bare to stubble and the slightly forbidding outskirts of the forest where all life chose to sleep away the lean season; within people laughed and sang together, or took up handcrafts and other tasks that had been laid aside purely as winter activity.
It seemed as though the world had sunk into a dream-filled sleep, so still it had become. A tableaux of hazy gray mountains and smoke rising in slow steady columns from rude chimneys; milkwhite of the sky with its promise of snow to come; and the dark walls of the houses within which smiles still thrived and the wheel of seasons did not seem to matter.
The man walking down the central path was the only thing that did not belong, with his cloak the color of dried blood and hair so brightly gold it had all the effect of a shout. His other features were obscured by the sweeping folds of reddish-brown, but the few still thick-skinned enough to sit out upon their porches shrank back from him nonetheless. Perhaps it was simply that they were unused to outside visitors; perhaps there was something about this stranger's unnatural height and graceful cat-foot tread that marked him out as alien, even to their weak mortal sight. One old man made the sign of the Goddess against his forehead and skinny chest, for whatever scant protection it might bring.
Though the weak winter sun was high and pale, the stranger cast no shadow on the snow.
-
The White Hart did good business no matter the time of year, for the men of the village (and many of the women, too) enjoyed their ale and the comfort of the inn's roaring hearth. This was the village's core, for whenever a gathering was required, or a judging of disputes, or the celebrations of birth and joy as well as the solemnity of someone's passing, here was where it was held. Often cramped and crowded, it could still take in the entire population of the village easily,though there would be no small lack of seats were that to happen. But that afternoon, it held fewer than it usually did, and all that were there instinctively placed at least one of the rough hardwood tables between themselves and the man at the bar.
The cloak had been removed and folded neatly over the stool next to him, revealing a near-completely black outfit that must have once been dashing, but was long ruined by the wear and tear of constant dusty travel. Cupped in the newcomer's fingers was a gently steaming mug that he sipped from sporadically, giving the villagers some reassurance that at least he consumed food and drink like any other being.
Only the barkeep had been brave enough to approach and speak, for business was business no matter what form it came in, and he would serve even a feral griffon provided it damaged nothing and offered good coin in exchange. He had inquired of the stranger his name, for which he had received an unnerving glance and a quiet word that could have been an answer or a denial in some foreign language, and then indulged in the quiet small talk that needed no answer and was meant to make nervous strangers more relaxed with both their drink and their purses.
This one refused to respond, staring into his drink with eyes rendered colorless by the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. After a matter of minutes had passed and he had neither finished his first serving or killed the still-murmuring man, the everyday patrons decided it was safe enough to straggle back in ones and twos for more drinks, to take up their usual places, and exchange whatever gossip there was to be had in a community of less than fivescore. One, old Robyn Cutterson, who knew every meager slice of interesting news to be had within a mile, was given center-stage, and the barkeep noted how the man with golden hair turned imperceptibly in his direction when he began to relate the local news. Mostly nothing of interest to an outsider who did not know little Hilda's predicament with cats or the level of water in the well by the tiny medicine shop tucked half into the earth, but Cutterson often saved his best tidbits for last.
"And Margie says she did see someone walking among the gravestones, three days back" rasped the old man, and the blonde head turned still farther in his direction, no expression upon its features. "One of that pair, no doubt, since no one else dares to go out there aside'a Sunsdays."
This sparked a murmur of interest.
"They're wandering around Burial Hill this close to winter"
"Well, those two always were odd"
"-never see 'em in the village nowadays"
"-did, once"
"-though the boy's said to be a bit touched in the head, so"
"Excuse me."
Heads turned at the new voice, soft and deep. The stranger's face was raised now, and an involuntary shiver ran through everyone who looked into his eyes, though the blaze of firelight in them continued to hide their color. Not the eerie sparkle in them, though, or the faint smile that would have been called handsome were it not so off-putting for reasons unknown.
He didn't notice their discomfiture, or was very good at ignoring it, digging in a pocket and coming up with a scatter of coins which were laid on the counter. His next comment was addressed to the barkeep alone.
"Do you have a room available"
When the man nodded, his smile widened. "Then I trust this amount will be sufficient for a few nights' stay." And he stood and headed out, closing the door on the renewed buzz of voices, wondering how far he had come to be bearing gold from both Harmonia and the Zexen lands.
-
The boy didn't even turn at the sound of footsteps on the worn gravel path, statue-still but for wayward bangs that fluttered in the wind. His eyes were closed, turned into the current that kissed his skin with cool fingers and ruffled the rough cloth of his simple garments. It told him secrets for his ears alone, but he did not need them to know what to say.
"You tracked half this world just to find me?"
The man in black would not reply until he stood next to the youth and observed him neutrally. When at last the wind had its fill of play and died down to the merest whisper, he regarded the intruder with an equally calm gray gaze, unreadable as stone.
"I told you I would."
A mild cant of the head in acknowledgement, and he waited, still infinitely patient, until the not-quite-stranger ducked his head and pulled away the concealing hat, revealing at last that his eyes were contrast rather than colorless, ice and fire that sent frozen heat sparking through the other's veins when they locked with his.
what will you do now yuber? He asked without speaking, the old quick way of words which only a few had ever been able to use. And received the answer before time dared to steal into their midst and block the flow of meaning that connected them, fragments and spidersilk threads of déjà vu making the not-speech possible. i would stay as long as i am able luc.
The moment was over and he had to answer with ordinary words that seemed clumsy and thick when they escaped his lips. "My name is a little different, now."
Yuber hid his smile. It was not so hard to understand, after all.
-
Surprising, after the strangeness of Luc's previous life, to find him in this tiny unremarkable place, running, of all ironies, a rune shop. Lukkas - Yuber found the harsher northern version of the name difficult to remember, but only faltered in using it once or twice after the old-speak on the hill - had none of his former bitter arrogance left; that had been left behind in the collapse of the Cyndar Ruins (long reduced to dust) and left this gentle, soft-spoken boy who only listened to the breezes now instead of harnessing them as his weapons.
The demon found himself rather liking the change.
Neither was he surprised to enter the once-mage's home and startle the delicately tiny child perched upon a stool into dropping the pebbles and stones she had been playing with. He had known that she was bound to follow her Master wherever he would go. And Serralyn no longer distrusted him so, though she watched him at first from behind the safety ofher elder brother's legs. She had the place she needed, not as lover but as loved, and he had no desire to usurp it. She seemed to sense that, whether or not she had yet grown into her previous memories, and within an hour was peeking at him from around corners and doorways, an adorable pale shadow.
Thus began Yuber's stay with these familiar strangers.
-
He did not even know his own reasons for lingering, but when his residence shifted from the Hart to the tiny back room of the siblings' shop it was so natural that not even the most suspicious villager questioned it. There was a kind of peaceful lull about them all, one that wove its gossamer strands about the demon's usually bloodthirsty soul and bade him rest—for a while, in the quiet, just for a little while.
Serralyn did her growing with typical solemnity, handling her child-matters with more grace than most adults ever had, while Lukkas went about life and work calmly, and was quicker to smile than he had ever been. Yuber blended seamlessly into their lifestyle, as hunter and guard and unlikely teacher…and while the full depth of the cold season wrapped itself about them, stilling even the voices of the winds to silence, they three were strangely content.
But change will still not, and there were other things in the past that, while unspoken by mutual consent, began their nearly imperceptible intrusion back into those lives so concerned.
-
The first was that Yuber remembered too well, and did not have the benefit of another lifetime to dilute his memories. Lukkas was still Luc, still looked and acted far too much like him despite the aged features, longer hair, greater care for the world and its inhabitants. And Luc had been…special, unique; there was no other word for it. It was why he had cared to know his fate (and Sarah's, then, by default), even after their ephemeral deaths.
The demon refused to put a name to it; refused to call it infatuation, devotion, though others might well have seen it in as any of those lights. Perhaps they had understood each other in a way so deep it was indescribable by mere words, and did still – what of it?
That was why, when Lukkas actually dared to kiss him one late evening, he was unprepared for it, not having considered that perhaps the younger man knew him far more clearly than he had given him credit for.
And Lukkas had blushed and shifted from foot to foot, while he stared blankly. No one had been brave enough (foolish enough?) to have done that to him in the past.
He didn't have to return the kiss, but then again, he had never in the past denied himself what he wanted. And Serralyn, who had probably known from the start, only hid her smile behind her hands when they stumbled out of Lukkas' room late the next morning, yawning and pleasantly sated.
So life went on with them all. Changed? Yes. Better? Undoubtedly.
-
The second change came when winter waned, giving way to the new vivacity of spring. The demon began to wake in the dead of the night when before he had slept quietly in Lukkas' arms, gasping for breath and soaked with chill sweat from nightmares he could never remember. The other man's rest became uneasy and disturbed too, and when they lay together there was a quiet desperation in their pleasure, a fierceness to their lovemaking that had not been there before.
Yuber held fast to his sanctuary as long as he could, but in the end, confessed quietly that it was time for him to move onwards, away from what pursued him always and was beginning to draw close once more.
-
They stood at the open village gate, wreathed in the morning mist like ghosts.
"Must you go?" asked the smallest of them, eyes sorrowful; he nodded slowly. He couldn't apologize. He'd never learned to.
order comes, he had not-whispered tiredly into Lukkas' flesh, that last night. you will not live if i stay here. he must pursue me past you—he knows. he senses. luc…
i know him. we have met before. i understand. sarah i will tell. tomorrow?
tomorrow. remember.
always.
They were all so naïve, he realized, but then, how else would they have snatched their chance at happiness? It was all they had to protect themselves. He hoped it was enough.
"You'll come back." Grey eyes shimmered at him out of the haze, flickered dimly green, then back again. It wasn't even a question.
He nodded.
wait for me; come autumntide, whether it is one or another hundred years, i will find you again.
He turned and walked away, and the unspoken promise was farewell enough.
-
Authoress-ramble: Yay, finally got a Suikoden fanfic done. And damn but it's so incredibly cheesy that it HURTS.
...This was hard to write. Very, very, VERY hard to write. The style of 'myth and legend' is not my own, but...I tried, because the plotbunny wouldn't let me do ANYTHING ELSE and went into a rage and gave me writer's block when I deviated from it. Ugh. I hope the underthreads of a plot were at least understandable and reasonably paced; God know I nitpicked at the story enough before giving up on it x.x;