Snapshot

by fowl68

The first clear memory is of a blurred movement of a ducked head.It's only after that meeting that numbers and times and dates started to begin keeping time in your head. RictherAster Pregame

Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note: I was going through all the RichterAster fics on this site and I noticed a sort of lack of fics from Aster's point of view, so naturally, my mind started going. I'm in Miami picking up some family that's going to stay with us for a few weeks. Hello, beach.

I've been playing a lot of Arkham Asylum lately—an absolutely incredible game in all concerns—and it's been just captivating. Can't wait for the sequel to come out, along with Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

-/-/-/-

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
~Edward de Bono

-/-/-/-

You're not a psychiatrist and you've never had a particular interest in the human brain, but you've heard the way that those kinds of people describe long term memory. Episodic and procedural memory was what helped people never forget how to tie their shoes or how to make a sandwich.

You've never quite understood these sorts of things beyond a point. Procedural made complete sense because, as a scientist, you know procedures and you find yourself doing them without thinking about it. But to you, episodic sounds like those late night television shows that the other students would gather in each other's rooms to watch. Like you could, one day, sit back and watch your like in neat, half an hour intervals.

That makes you come to the conclusion that A: the psychologists and neurologists are wrong or B: there's something wrong with you. Because when you look back at your life, you don't see short film reels. You see snapshots and sensations of moments, and you remember people as swirls and whorls of color.

Mama, for instance. You can't remember her very well, but you remember dark blue, like the waves that you saw outside her bedroom window. And Papa was grey, like stone. Sturdy and weathered and tired.

Your sisters are the pink of bubble gum and the sunrise that they would beg you to watch with them.

Your older brother is washed out green, like a shirt that had been left in the sun or that was worn so often that the material became soft and it got a little holey.

The last time you saw your parents is a snapshot that you try not to think about. The man handing over coins and your mother determinedly not looking at you.

The Director a silver-grey smudge on the snapshot memory of the Sybak Branch of the Imperial Research Academy. The building is there, all clean cut lines and square buildings, but, if you were asked to remember his face, you can only sometimes see square frame glasses or a neatly trimmed beard in the otherwise silver-grey blot.

Most of your memories of the early days in the Academy are blurred, like you were spinning when taking the photograph.

The first clear memory is of a blurred movement of a ducked head. The person is cinnamon and apples; the color of maroon sweaters and ripe kiwis with a core of gold.

The memory, in your mind, needs no label to tell you who it is because you know them as intimately as you know yourself. You know the precise place in between their eyebrows where they furrow in thought. You know the way their eyes crinkle when they belly-laugh and you know the way they feels pressed against you in the night, solid like a boulder warmed by the sun.

You remember the first time you spoke to them. It had been hesitant and wildshy, as many childhood meetings are. You remember wide green-apple eyes behind spectacles that kept slipping down their nose. You remember a stutter and a bristling temper beneath the tentative exterior.

("…Whatcha doin'?"

The boy jumped, book immediately disappearing beneath a too large shirt. "N-nuthin'."

Aster mimicked the boy and sat on the ground, leaning against the sea wall that surrounded Sybak. "Do you like to read?"

"A little."

"What were you reading?"

The boy's eyes stare at him like he doesn't know why Aster was asking. "Why d-do you want t-to know?"

"I like reading too!"

The boy's head ducked and the dusky red hair fell forward, exposing ears that ended in triangular points. "B-but 'm a half-elf."

"So? We can still talk about readin', can't we?"

"You d-don't care?"

"About…?" Aster was genuinely baffled as to why the boy's being a half-elf would matter at all. But he must have said the right thing because his head shot up and he just studied Aster before his face broke out into an unsure smile.

"I'm R-Richter."

Aster smiled back, tilting his head curiously. "Do you always talk like that?"

Richter bristled. "'S how I talk! What's wrong with it?"

"But you talked differently just now."

"I can't control it."

Aster's smile grew into a cheerful grin. "Then it looks like I'll just have to keep making you angry, then, huh?")

It's only after that meeting that numbers and times and dates started to begin keeping time in your head.

You remember being ten and convincing Richter to come outside with you. He'd shaken his head, had told you that half-elves weren't allowed outside. You remember rolling your eyes and telling him that that was why you were going to be sneaky about it.

The snapshot moment is when they're standing on the docks, the only place where the sea wall opens enough to actually see the ocean. You're both so small and you're holding hands and just feeling and seeing the people move by you and watching the ships.

You remember September and the first night that you had to share a bed because your shared room was too small. You remember waking up to no pillow, but most of the blankets and when you looked over at Richter—who likes his sleep and squinted at you blearily with a look that wondered why in the name of the Goddess you were already awake—and he just said, "You hog the blankets, I get the pillows."

You're not entirely sure when he stopped stuttering. You don't think that he knows either.

You remember being thirteen and he'd given you your Celsius Day gift—a silver chain which had a wheel with all the symbols of the Summon Spirits on it. Even then, he knew of your fascination with them—and you remember staring at him for a few minutes.

He was warm cinnamon and pine trees that night (He always smells of the pine trees from his native Ozette, even though he hasn't been back since he was forced out along with the other half-elves) and he tasted of sweet ham and eggnog.

You remember earthquakes and powerful thunderstorms that rattled the windows and shook the ground. You remember so many nights of being startled awake, him right beside you muttering curses beneath his breath. You remember feeling the need to find out why. You remember amber-through-the-glass sunlight peeking into the library, staining yellowed pages and smooth wooden floors.

(His hands were on Aster's wrists. He always had nice hands, Aster thought, strong, with long fingers. It took a moment for Aster to recognize the gentle ocean-murmuring in his ear as Richter's voice.

"…to eat. Come on, let's get out of here."

"I need to keep working. I've almost got it." Aster insisted.

Richter was unaffected by the slight puppy-dog eyes that Aster tried on him. They never worked on him. "Uh-huh. You've been saying that for the past week."

"I'm serious this time, Richter. I can feel it."

"Trust me, the feeling will still be there after you get food in your stomach. You can come on your own two legs or over my shoulder, but you're getting outside."

Aster weighed the odds of Richter going through with his threat, but, knowing Richter as he did, Aster knew that he wouldn't hesitate to haul him through the streets like a sack of potatoes. Aster sighed and stood, making a face at Richter's triumphant smirk.

"You owe me." Aster informed him.

Richter snorted. "For what, keeping you alive?"

"Yup."

Amusement made Richter's green-apple eyes glow a little. That, or Aster was hungrier than he thought. "Fine. I'll make it up to you later."

Aster laughed. "You make it sound like such a chore!" He wrapped his arm around Richter's waist. "And you can't say it is. I know you enjoy yourself."

Richter didn't answer, but let his arm rest on Aster's shoulders. "Let's just get some food before you start whining about needing to get back to your research."

"It's your research too." Aster pointed out. "You're just as eager to find the answer to this as I am."

"Yes, but I am not obsessive about it."

"Well, one of us has to be responsible."

"And thank the Goddess that it's me. The day you become responsible is the day that demons are ice skating in Hell.")

Your one memory of Raine Sage is silvery-blue with shock. She had come to the Academy to explain what all the strange weather lately had been. If her story was to be believed—and, according to Richter and your's research, it was—there had been two separate, but linked, worlds for close to four thousand years. The stories that you remember your brother reading to you were false.

There was no Goddess. Mithos the Hero was the creator of Cruxis, which had been manipulating both worlds for four millennia so that he could bring back his dead sister, Martel.

Your mind can fill in the blanks, but some part of you remembers sunrises and bubble gum, faded and dusty as the memories are, and you think that Mithos, regardless of what he might have done, couldn't have been all bad. After all—and the thought of green apples and pine trees brings the scents to your nose—he had loved someone too. Surely that had to count for something.

The epiphany comes in a dream of a beautiful, grand tree on which it seems that Time itself could hang from its branches. You have never seen it's like, have only heard the stories and seen illustrations in schoolbooks and religious texts, but you know what this Tree is, know what it means.

At the base of the Tree sits an amorphous shadow the color of rust and purple evening shadows. It shifts its forms—at one moment, a handsome man, the next, a powerful beast, a great bird, a child, a hulking panther—but the one thing that remains constant is the red red eyes. The shadow smirks at you and the smirk tells you that this shadow knows all the secrets of the world, if one knew where to look.

After that night, you could never remember the details of the Tree. You see it now only in pieces, like a photograph with a focus on a single leaf or a single root. Never on the entire Tree. But even those small pieces of the dream are incredible and breathtaking, even the piece that always stays. Red red eyes.

You awake in a hot flush of inspiration and you're instantly shaking Richter awake. He grumbles and groans and he is little more than a red blur beneath the sheets.

("Come outside with me."

"Timezit?"

"Early."

"Tell me in the morning." Was Richter's immediate response as he burrowed further into the pillows.

"I got it, Richter." Aster murmured in his ear. "I figured out the answer. It was so simple. I can't believe I didn't get it sooner."

Richter rolled onto his side, partially onto Aster's knees. His eyes cracked open to Aster's blurry face. "…You absolutely have it?"

"Yeah."

"Without a doubt?"

"Yeah."

Richter sighed. "Pass me my glasses. And you owe me a really big cup of coffee.")

You remember little of the conversation. You are not good at remembering sounds. But you remember the wash of expressions on Richter's face as you explained your theory. There had been excitement and the thrill of knowledge, of discovery. You love that look on his face. It makes his face look like it's being lit from somewhere within.

There had been gesturing and plans scribbled on napkins and arms and even your sleepshirts. You remember saying one thing that night. "Next time, let's try to avoid turning our shirts into a sketchpad, yes?"

The moment that is immortalized in your mind is Richter's exultant laughter, bright in the gentle darkness atop the sea wall. Here, he is in his element. Richter is a researcher at heart, a lover of knowledge.

(The red red eyes haunted him. They laughed at him in the darkness, a cold laugh that made shivers run down his spine. He saw the Tree, glorious and lovely, burn and blaze as brightly as the sun. Sometimes, his nightmares contain only the aftermath, ashes and char, and the withered skeleton of the Tree.

Somewhere, a child was crying. When Aster tried to see the child, all he saw was sharp blue eyes and an angel face twisted with anger and hatred before a burst of color made Aster sit bolt upright, cold sweat making his T-shirt stick to his body.

Richter was watching him intently, a hand on his shoulder and his voice quiet and soothing as the ocean's waves. "You're alright." Richter murmured.

Aster's eyes were wild, refusing to focus on one point, but Richter firmly grasped his chin, made him look at him until he recognized the face before him, a blur of red and apple-green until they solidified into the familiar planes of Richter's face.

Richter never asked after the contents of the nightmares. He never had to. Sometimes, the images, blurs and colors and sensations, would pour themselves from Aster's lips. Other times, Aster's lips seemed frozen—and occasionally, they were blue from pressing themselves together.

Those times, Richter would scoot out of bed, fumble for his glasses and make some of his terrible coffee. It took some enticing to convince Aster to drink it, but once he did, the color would return to his face and Richter could convince him to go back to sleep.

Those nights, Richter stayed awake long after Aster managed to get back to sleep.)

Aqua is shifting shades of blue in your memory, from the pale celestial shades of spring brooks to the dark churning almost indigos of the deep ocean. Her shades mix strangely with Richter's. They're not wrong, really. Just in a strange, constant juxtaposition.

Aqua makes you laugh. Sometimes, it's because of how she is with Richter. Other times, it's simply because she has a startlingly dry wit. (Richter commented on that once, when Aster mentioned it to him. "Ironic, isn't it? That the Centurion of Water has a dry wit?" Aster laughed and made sure to tell Aqua the next time he saw her. She just blushed a darker shade of blue.)

The last morning you see—not that you knew it at the time—is nothing special really. You and Richter were travelling to the see the Summon Spirit Ratatosk (). You're curled together beneath your shared bedroll, Richter's chest rising and falling gently in time with his breathing and you can feel the gentle thump-thump of his heart.

The sunrise was painted in swathes of golds and pinks and purples. You were the only one awake to see it.

You want to lay there forever.

("You're Ratatosk, Summon Spirit of the Great Kharlan Tree, correct?" It was a question that Aster didn't need to ask. He knew this shifting shadow from his dream and nightmares.

Ratatosk's voice was a cacophony of pitches and accents and dialect, all echoing and bouncing off one another. "Even if I were to adjust the mana, the world would die without a tree to sustain it."

"We heard that a new tree has been born. But the new Summon Spirit of the tree doesn't possess your power to control the flow of mana." Aster told him. How strange it was that, in his nightmares, this shadowy being terrified him. Yet now, facing him, Aster could find no fear in him.

The dark, cold sound of Ratatosk's laughter runs down their spines like melting ice. "So?"

"So please, use your Centurions to restore the balance of mana! If you do that, then the world will be saved!"

Ratatosk's voice was suddenly thunder and midnight caverns. "Awaken, Centurions! Restore your bond with your monsters and repair the mana of the world! And then, go and eradicate mankind who destroyed my tree!"

Aster's heart is ice in his chest. "What are you doing?"

The red red eyes are flat when the focused on him, always on him. Never Richter. "You wanted to save the world, right?"

"You don't have to kill everyone to do that!"

The air thrummed with power, with energy and it took Aster a moment to realize that it was Ratatosk, Ratatosk who was mana, constantly shifting and adapting. "Who destroyed the Giant Kharlan Tree, hm? It was the humans and the half-elves! That's why they deserve the same treatment themselves!"

"But a new World Tree has been born!" Aster protested. He hadn't seen the new one, not in his dreams or in his nightmares, but he knows of it. Raine Sage had spoken of it.

"And it's just a matter of time before you humans and half-elves destroy that one as well. Don't you understand? You 'people' are nothing more than parasites on this world."

"No, that's not true!" Aster could see Richter's hands with their long pianist fingers moving covertly, trying to shush him, but something in Aster would not quiet. "Humans and half-elves," Full blooded elves didn't even enter into his mind because they had retreated into their forests long ago. Communication with them had only just begun to really open up, thanks to the Heroes of the New World. "They're all a part of this—"

He saw Ratatosk's mouth move, felt the fury making the air aflame, but the next thing he was aware of was that Richter was no longer beside him. And then his mind noticed that there was no longer anything here, he was floating in an empty white space and he didn't feel pain, or anger, or much of anything really. Aster struggled to remember how he got here.

But he did remember one thing, though. Sitting with Richter on a sea wall, laughing and sipping at their coffee, feeling like the world was at their feet…)