1. Divergence

Thom (formerly of Trebond before he died) wasn't sure if it were spite that prompted this particular decision to go back in time. Or on the other hand it could also be attributed to the innately human want to relive his life once more, and amend everything.

Or maybe, it was just spite. That and vengeance.

They whom judged, they whom passed sentence on what they were wholly ignorant of, they, those faceless statistical entities that made up Tortall- they had underestimated him and his Gift, and he would prove them wrong once more.

It wasn't atonement, getting the chance to do everything over. In fact, he felt even less inspired by that.

It was compensation, for a life not lived, for the many infinite, irredeemable, recondite choices that had never been foretold nor had what would have been the saving grace of being questioned by a more experienced and more powerful person than his young teenage self (not that there had been any of those around whom didn't question his motives or sanity).

It was the beginning of a long, long requiem for the paths not taken and then paths that should have never been trodden by any being, least of all himself.

Although that in itself was more an impulse on his own part rather than a finished product of thoughtful meditation; He'd always been reasonable, and it was as good a time as any to begin disputing that part of his reputation, being Trebond to the core.

Reason: his twin- unforgivable, almost, in her good luck- had none. He did, probably having been alloted by Mithros her portion of it as well as his own.

She couldn't be coolheaded, not when everything teetered on the precipice of war to be decided on a chessboard upon which she was only a pawn. Not when her own friends were on the front lines, and he couldn't name all of them simply because she had given too much of herself to too many people, inasmuch as she claimed to have wanted to always keep herself for herself and not promise it to any man. (Of course, she'd been only talking about romance like that.)

And still, even with the Gift that surpassed all brawn that she could have mustered, Thom couldn't have compensated for the greater powers of charisma and strength and loyalty. He wasn't supposed to have sickened. And the irony, that he finally couldn't resolve a problem, and that something he raised had come to haunt him, oh the thrice-damned irony! Of having his own Gift turned against himself, the poison from his corrupted magical core- the core that made him himself because there was never anything or would there be anything for him other than his Gift-that slowly infused his physical being. And then there was the zombie sorcerer that leeched away at it, but that was something else altogether.

All in all, in the grand master scheme of things he wasn't supposed to wind up dead.

Or something just as unpleasant along the lines to that effect, although at the moment it wasn't so much his physical state that Thom was worried about than his mental.

After all, one didn't try to attempt to time travel every other day, especially when one was incapacitated of the ability to even breathe. Being dead tended to do that to him.

Even for such a vaguely defined and volatile thing of the supernatural like magic- there were transgressions for the Gifted to avoid. The word 'taboo' never had meant much to him, even when it was irrevocably linked to interesting topics such as necromancy and chimera-breeding that were in no way covered in the general curriculum for mages.

And then there was time-travel.

That most elusive and longed-for wish for malcontents not quite happy with the life they'd made for themselves, a matter consisting entirely of had-beens and what-ifs, all backed by no reason other than the fallible logic of maybe. (Although Thom remembered the unhappy circumstances of his latest experimentation with necromancy...)

Duke Roger had tried his best to disburse Thom of the notion when both of them were still alive, although the young mage had noticed that he had said little about his resurrection, which by all accounts should have also been beyond human grasp.

(Neither had Delia: all parties had been more-or-less satisfied with the results of the necromancy procedure, especially Thom and his ego, and they weren't going to bicker over such petty insignificances in the past.)

"Time-travel, you ask?...It's entirely impossible, for the most part." His Grace had informed him curtly not a month before his imminent demise at the hands of one lady knight, citing several aging resources from one of the tomes in his massive archives. "Bending the fabric of space and time- even with the Gift, that is not achievable. You do realize that paradoxes could occur, and you'd be creating a sort of warp that could affect the entire world?"

"And if I did?" Thom had answered coldly, taking a shuddering sip of bourbon from Alex's private stocks that came straight from Tirragen. The man-at the very least when he was still alive- was as good a liquor connoisseur as he was a swordsman, even if the former quality wasn't exactly publicly known to anyone other than Roger and Thom.

Delia- she had been overly groomed as usual, wearing a dress with a lacy flounce in her trademark green- had gotten baffled and left the room with glazed eyes under the pretense of having to 'freshen up,' as she and Josiane always did when Roger and Thom discussed the Gift in depth. Heck, even Alex found an excuse to leave when the two of them talked magic.

"You could have spacetime rip itself apart in resolving an irresolvable, contradictory conclusion. You have heard of that hypothetical 'Grandfather paradox,' haven't you? If you went back in time to kill your grandfather so that your father wouldn't be born and thusly neither would you, and yet you are still alive in the past..." The handsome duke shook his head, his big hands waving around in the air as if to punctuate the point.

And since when did Roger care about anything other then the throne of Tortall?

Thom remembered the exasperated sigh that the elder man had gave at his response, and that telltale twitch between his eyebrows that meant that he was getting a headache, something normally induced solely by Jon and his infuriating tendency not to die. And then there was his sister and the green-eyed goddess who had chosen her...

...He'd think about Alanna later. And what to do with her, second time around if it ever occurred. As much as he loved her, he had way too much experience with she and her inconveniently meddlesome tactics.

"If you purposely meant to create a warp- well, that would involve the...manipulation of the dimensions. And then there's you as a person to deal with." Roger had been in a pensive mood that day, as could have sufficed to be seen from his willingness to ponder that usually only came after a dip in the brandy from Delia's medicinal cabinet. "There's the principle of self-consistency-"

"As in, I would have to mess around with it. Is there any way to ensure not screwing up in an unfortunate way? And that doesn't involve accidentally depositing myself two thousand years into the future in a fit of trial-and-error? Or some other just as unpleasant harm to my person."

He could imagine inconveniently forgetting to warp his heart along with the rest of him to another time.

"Let's avoid the word 'travel,' Thom."-Well, that eliminating warping anything. "-It only implies spatial movement. And then, there's your physical form and what you'd want to do with it."

"As in, would I have to somehow transport my entire body somewhere sometime else. What if I intend to just insert my consciousness into that of my former self in a past time?" Thom snapped.

"...If you put it that way. There isn't a foreseeable way of calculating the myriads of possibilities that could have happened, the many choices that you'd have tampered with. If you as a person exist already in the space of time- well, as relative as that is- that you want to...insert yourself into, I'm not exactly sure what the consequences would be. If you'd have to juxtapose yourself upon the person you were during that time, or would you become an interruption, something newly introduced into that time as a entirely different variable that is capable of ."

"..." Thom had hummed thoughtfully.

"The latter goes against all the laws of conservation that I know of. Of course, the Gift is the Gift, and physics is physics, but it's still energy of a sort. Theoretically they'd still be one and the same, only from different sources." Duke Roger had reminded him with no little chiding.

"And what where would gravity come from? It's magic." Thom growled sarcastically in retaliation.

"And it's not invincible, magic or not."

Tough words, Thom thought in retrospect, coming from a man who had made his career off the power of his Gift and saw its strength as his birthright to something greater.

"I suppose you can't just contradict those- some sorcerer two thousand years ago did experiments regarding the nature of the Gift itself, or rather source of it...while somewhat unfinished, the evidence that he had managed to discover suggests that the Gift itself flows very much like any other earthly force, inasmuch as it is-" Thom had remembered pausing, digging around for the right word.

"Out of the ordinary." Roger was given to the tart euphemisms of court nobility, after all.

"-witchcraft. Coram says that. But it still has to obey the theoretical give-and-take." Thom had said, giving Roger a look. "While we Gifted could circumvent most rules of common sense with for example abilities like Alanna's healing Jon-"

Roger had scowled. Twirled his wizard's rod around and around and around in big, powerful hands that were more than capable of snapping a grown man in two. No doubt he had wanted to do that to a certain nephew with the tenacity of a cockroach.

"-the fact remains that we have to draw the force from our own bodies, and thus we are drained."

"-That still says nothing about the source of the Gift itself- it only observes its behavior, which is akin to...momentum. Energy. And it's certain that it could be unpredictable at the very best."

Sometimes, Thom wondered just how Duke Roger had managed to cultivate such a formidable reputation as a mage. Part of it could be ironically attributed to the complacency and elitist narrow-mindedness that normally accompanied genius.

"Time-travel would mean going against the natural procession of things, and if we were to superimpose the present upon the past, or rather just a little portion of, namely one single person or thing..."

"So I'd take it that you want to go back in time?" Roger had commented, with his normal unsettling capacity to magically guess one's thoughts, no pun intended. "No doubt you'd like to cause a couple of paradoxes, to change things around. But who's to say that you retain your existence as a person now? As you are now, you may merely revert to whom you used to be without nary a bit of knowledge of the future- we can't tell."

"Just a thought."

"The fact remains that it's impossible without divine intervention. Even we mages cannot defy the rules of the universe." Roger assured him, almost bitterly, with none of his usual charm lurking in his brilliant eyes. "Or otherwise we'd have ruled the world long ago."

That was the last time Thom had ever spoken with Roger, although from that one conversation he learned more than he ever did. Divine intervention- choice words, even if they were meant as a joke of sorts.

Screwing around with the innate properties of the universe went well beyond any mortal's abilities without the aid of some otherworldly deity that looked favorably upon wrongdoing or at the very least had tolerance for it and/or were easily amused by the actions of pitiful human beings below on the earth.

And now, Thom had an opportunity for a face-to-face encounter with one of said deities.

Of course, he hadn't quite planned on dying first, but where there was a will there was always a way.

But to fully realize in all its implications of what he had lost in death, was something that was suddenly upon him in all its full magnitude as Thom of Trebond panicked at the consciousness fleeing his body and all sensation- even pain, which he'd never appreciated until he lost the ability to feel- deserting him. Especially how he wasn't so afraid of dying as he was of merely not living, not being able to immerse himself within his studies and everything familiar.

And then the world stopped crumbling before him, and he knew that the Black god was arriving to take him away.

"...I propose a deal." He said, addressing the hulking shadow figure of a hooded man that had came to claim him.

How terribly amusing. A deal, with a mortal.

The death god, by Alanna's word, seemed to be one that was quite accepting of interference from the living as she had positively attested to from having met him at least twice, the first time to reclaim her prince's soul.

"I have nothing to lose- I'm already deceased, obviously." Thom said carefully.

And then realized that that quality would make him by default the property of the god that held the dead in servitude until the end of time. And thusly it went against all strains of logic to try to escape being dead.

A bargain, say you?

"My sister came before you, once, and took one marked for the afterlife back to the living with her." Thom reminded him coolly.

But that had been Alanna. And being the unusual girl she'd been all her life, she defied all logic and gender expectations, as well as had the patronage of a goddess to smooth her way.

It was not her time, nor was it that boy's.

Thom grimaced. Debating the issue of what consisted of a proper time to die was not high on his list of priorities, since one could never successfully argue metaphysics with a god and not be trounced on every point.

"But still, no doubt you would have liked to have kept them- I see that neither of them have turned up yet."

Although Thom suspected that the Death god would have to go see one Alex of Tirragen soon, if his soft-hearted, idealistic sister managed to overcome her conflicted feelings over fighting against her former friend and rival.

"War-even the uprising such as the one currently occurring in Tortall as we speak- it is...profitable for your particular realm, is it not? It exponentially increases the population here, as I have observed while living. And I daresay that increased thrall increases the influence you have upon the sphere of those still living-"

Thom paused, quickly trying to establish within his mind just what he was attempting to play off on. To quickly make a definition, some preexisting reason to strengthen his motive and to organize an entire argument around. He wasn't quite certain that immortals possessed human flaws like greed and envy that provided loopholes.

"-but I do notice one caveat to your power. The fact that you cannot go and claim those whom you will, not until they stop living. You cannot influence their choices, you have no say in the actions of the living- because you are death itself."

Eventually, all fall within my thrall.

"The living are not yours, not yet. It is more often that men cause their own demises, rather than you going to claim their souls. No, it must be that a dagger, a fistfight- all by the hands of men-takes lives, leaving you their souls in the aftermath as spoils. You cannot be proud, death, not when it is men and not you responsible for their passage into your realms."

The deity was silent. Although the amusement was gone.

"-And so I propose a bargain to amend that such fault." Thom said quickly, to strike while the metal was still hot with the inflammation brought up by the point he had made. "I, unlike you, can influence the living. You must wait for them to...well, die, kill each other off. I can directly cause them to do that, or I can even send them to you."

You cannot. Because you, too, are dead.

"That'd be the rub, wouldn't it?" Thom said pointedly. "I'm dead. But that could be easily amended, wouldn't it. I've accomplished that, once before, in resurrecting Duke Roger. If a mere human like me is able to do that, no doubt you can. If I was alive, it'd be a completely different matter altogether to be able to influence the world."

You wish me to return you to life?

The loud growl that seemed to emit from the shadow was not something that Thom thought could pass as laughter.

"No. I just wish you to turn back time, to when I was still alive, so I could start a war with the Scanrans a few years earlier." That was as close to an excuse his mental processes were able to take him. Thom conveniently didn't mention that he had his own reasons of self-fulfillment to his request. "Technically speaking, I'd assume that such a strong deity as you can accomplish such a trivial thing."

Actually, it wasn't so much trivial as risky, as it would be reintroducing infinite variables back into play, allowing once more for choices long made to be reconsidered, and multitudes of possibilities to occur. Of course, hopefully everything would proceed as it had done in his first life- with the exception of what he changed with his knowledge of how the future would be otherwise.

"Hypothetically, I'd be creating a parallel universe in a way, since I'd be doing things differently and thusly be making a divergence from what had been."

Divergence. That was an excellent word.

Thom wanted, specifically, to remain in the plane that he had used to exist in, abet just in a different time. "Of course, I'd have to retain being the person I am now to be of any use- in mind, if not body, if I am to be...taken back to the past. It would be a dually beneficial thing- I live once more, and your halls of the dead will be fuller than ever. We both mutually benefit from war, you see. And if we can overwrite the present- well, I'm sure you understand."

The death god did. So you intend on using your knowledge of one life to aid you in your second.

Everything pivoted upon that provision; That Thom himself would in his second life be capable of what he wasn't in the first. Of course, his mind would contradict the child's mind he had at ten or twelve...

"That would be roughly what I plan to do, if all goes well. So do we have a deal?"

Why? And why would you raise what your kind has always tried to stamp out?

The immortal deity seemed genuinely, sincerely bewildered, as out of sorts as he'd ever believed an all-powerful, omniscient thing to possibly be.

"We don't stamp out war; I'm not even sure we strive for an end. We rather encourage it, because the oversized egos of our rulers need boosting, which comes by winning conflicts." Thom grumbled.

Why wish you so much to live once more? To experience pain and suffering within the restrictions of a terrestrial form- something that will die again? Your typical mundane, tertiary body with all that can potentially trouble it.

"The fact remains," Thom said patiently and truthfully, feeling a migraine coming on. "The fact remains that I don't want to die yet." His voice wavered, as tremulous as he would ever noticeably allow in anyone's- including a god- presence.. "There is too much that I haven't accomplished yet- and I'm sure that what I have to do can benefit you in some way. What I mean to say is that I live again, and in the process you get more people. Deal?"

Blunt, artless, and...surprisingly useful? The Black god actually seemed to be considering the notion, if the bobbing of his hood seemed to be indicate deep pondering. Thom resolved to develop more straightforward communication skills, preferably more civil than those George was inclined to use and less witty than young Naxen. And certainly unlike his impulsive twin.

The first course of action once he returned to life was to start a war to ensure that the black realms would increase its populace, which was really a chore best left to more morally ambiguous, chronically dissatisfied scoundrels like Roger, whose one-dimensional, banal obsession with the throne should be realized in the next life, if for the sole purpose of fulfilling Thom's bargain with the black god in that Roger's reign in Tortall would be a very bloody one and Jonathan wasn't a warlike sort (and therefore had to be eliminated).

Now, if he could only wrap his head around that.

The banality of Thom's earthly ambitions did not escape him for all its stock upon temporal delights like knowledge and the power of his Gift, only accessible while living; Nor did the selfishness of his wish to have one more chance at life at the expense of the people whose lives would be most definitely...not improved second time around for obvious reasons there.

And the next thing he remembered was regaining consciousness, in a fief he'd deserted, facing the anxious face of a sister he hadn't spoken to in ages. Familiar violet eyes, so much like his and yet not- they weren't identical anymore, not in his past life. She'd lost that innocence and hardened, and he'd hardened, just hardened and withered away.

An adult in a child's body. As much as he'd appreciate the opportunity to make sure certain things didn't happen, he'd have to inadvertently go through puberty a second time. Which was not good, considering that the process of growing up had not been kind to him, especially to his skin. He did not look forward to the duration of two years or so when he had resembled a walking infestation of acne.

Thom sighed, braced himself for facing Alanna's worry and what would come in the years to come.

His sister didn't disappoint, intrusive and overbearing in her worry: "What were you thinking of, drawing back so hard on the reins?" She demanded shrilly. "Of course you'd be bucked off!"

Oh. He'd been thrown by a horse. Of course, that'd happened many times in his past in countless riding sessions and he wasn't quite sure just which of those times he had landed in. With satisfaction, Thom noted that he retained the consciousness of just before he died, with the only change being that he was in a much younger body.

He'd need to depend on a small change in the initial condition of the situation, which would cause a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events...which meant...Thom steeled himself, not allowing a single trace of calculation appear on his face: Page Thom would have to replace Page Alan when he started attempting to change history.

"Cook made strawberry tarts- shall we go eat them before they get cold?" Alanna suggested now that the danger of losing her twin was a thing of the past. Thom allowed a wistful smile to pass over his face, before replacing it with blankness; Back then, desserts had been a bigger priority and they weren't worrying about surviving a war. Her twelve-year-old self was practically vibrating with excitement of getting her little paws on sugary stuff.

Alanna had always liked sweets, and that hadn't changed- somewhere along the way to being the person that he was, Thom had forgotten that. Forgotten the almond tarts, the cookies, the sponge cake, and all that they had swiped from the Trebond kitchens.

Of course, Alanna conveniently neglected that the tarts were reserved for dinner time only; Snacking in between meals was discouraged.

"I'm sure Cook wouldn't mind us relieving him of such delicacies that would otherwise go to waste- nobody appreciates sweets like we do, anyway-"

And he cringed, at Alanna's wide-eyed stare, so familiar and so curious. He'd forgotten in addition that twelve-year olds, even precocious ones, didn't talk like the adult that he mentally was.

"I mean, let's go get them." Thom corrected himself hastily.

"Thom- for once you're agreeing with my plan!" His sister remarked with all the glee of her former-or rather current-self. "You've never liked to steal from cook. You didn't even want to set that illusion-" Alanna made a grimace, at the mention of the Gift that she feared so much. "-on Godmother when she came to get father to marry her. Goddess knows she needed some sort of reality check, that she can't always get men to fall for her. But no, you'd have to be careful-"

Apparently, he'd also forgotten that he was 'the cautious one' among the two of them.

But that too could be taken care of, in this life.

"It's good to be back. I've missed you." He whispered, to her turned back. Missed you like this, like this and not like Squire Alan and not Lady Knight Alanna, even if I approved of your getting your shield.

"...I think the fall really messed up your brain." Alanna told him, stopping in her steps and holding out hands that were smaller and softer than he remembered and already laced liberally with the soft amethyst glow of her trademark healing gift. "Shall I check? In case?"

"No. I'm fine. Remember, the pastries?"

Five minutes, two spilled soup tureens, and one angry cook later, Thom bit into the crispy dessert and grinned at his sister-slash-partner-in-crime, who was currently in the swift process of messily demolishing her crumbly tart and getting it all over her stained frock...under which she had prudently layered a pair of his breeches, doubtlessly nicked from his drawers.

He remembered what happened next, and it did for the second time: Coram lecturing him on horsemanship and Maude then dragging Alanna away in a painful fashion by the ear to change into a clean dress. He'd have to start a civil war or something this time around, but at the very least he would be able to utilize his life to the fullest, starting with the consumption of a treat that he hadn't eaten in ages, not since he left Trebond.

Gods, he'd missed being twelve.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliver.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better then thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.