Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss.


Chapter Two: Breaking Even


"We don't need your pity," the village leader spits as he throws the bag of supplies into the dirt.

Natalia bites back a flicker of irritation. "Mayor, please, if you'd just listen…."

The man scowls. "Why? So you can just feed us more excuses? Where were you when we starved for days on end so our children could eat? Or when falling ill meant certain death?"

Natalia remains silent, knowing full well he has every right to be angry.

Beside her Luke frowns. "We were fighting a madman to make sure you'd be able to stand here and complain today."

To his credit, the Mayor does look somewhat apologetic. "Yes, I have heard the stories. But that has nothing to do with explaining why we went without any aid for two years after the end of the war."

"Of course not," Natalia concedes. "There is no excuse for what happened. The only thing I am capable of is offering you aid now."

"As I said before, Princess Natalia, we are doing just fine on our own. These past two years have made us self-reliant."

"Even so, I cannot simply abandon you and your people."

The mayor sighs and turns away.

"With all due respect, Princess, your kingdom already has."


That evening she and Luke set up camp near the outskirts of the village. Treit isn't even so much a village as a small congregation of buildings that seemed to huddle together seeking refuge from the darkness. Given the mayor's response to their offer of help, Luke and Natalia decided to keep some distance from the village. From around their small fire they can just barely discern the shadowy outlines of the buildings. Across from her, Luke is frowning at his food.

"You don't have to glare at it like that," she huffs indignantly. "My cooking's gotten a lot better recently."

"It's not that."

"Then what?"

"I was just thinking, why is it that whenever someone says 'with all due respect' they really mean the exact opposite?"

She laughs, drawing a stare. "You looked so serious I was thinking it was something terrible."

"You don't consider what happened today terrible?"

She shakes her head. "At least we're talking. That's what matters."

"I get the feeling we could talk to them until we're blue in the face and still wouldn't gain any ground."

"That's the way negotiation works sometimes," she says setting her food aside. The serious turn of conversation had snuffed out the last of her appetite. Not that the food was all that appetising anyway. "You know, Anise may have been a bit of a brat, but I miss her cooking sometimes."

Luke looks down at his food again. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

Natalia sees an opportunity to tease her cousin a little. "Luke," she began sweetly, "are you insulting my cooking? Because I assure you, I can make the next meal much, MUCH worse."

Luke pales. "Hey! You started it."

"Doesn't mean you should agree with me."

"And if I'd said your food was just fine?"

"I would have known you were lying."

"So no matter what I said I would have been wrong, huh?"

She grins smugly. "That's the way negotiation works sometimes."


The next several days go by in the same fashion as the previous ones. From morning until evening they try to persuade the villagers to accept their help often times taking up menial tasks without being asked simply just so they can do something useful.

Luke chops firewood-practicing his swordsmanship he'd said when asked. Natalia gathers medicinal plants from the surrounding woods-she'd needed them to make a salve anyway, but doesn't hesitate to share some blackberries she'd found during her search with a curious child who wanders over.

They fetch water, move furniture, guard the village's small herd of livestock-they even bring cooked food for the villagers but that is refused. Natalia says it is because the people still don't trust her. Luke says it's her cooking they don't trust.

The days pass quickly but the nights drag on. Once the sun sets, they retreat to their small campsite. The progress they have been making is barely measurable, but they reassure themselves that moving forward, even slightly, is better than standing still.

On one such night, Natalia speaks up.

"Back in Belkend, you had said something about Asch."

For a moment, Luke thinks he has heard wrong. It's been nearly a week since their storm-plagued stay in Belkend, and she hadn't broached the topic even once. He had just managed to convince himself that she had actually forgotten. He should have known better. When it came to Asch, there was no way either of them could forget.

"Yeah."

She hesitates, clearly uncertain but presses forward regardless. "What were you going to tell me?"

Instead of answering outright, Luke sets his food aside and pulls a small package wrapped in black cloth and hands it to her. "According to mother, this appeared in the manor one day. Coincidentally it was the same day that a large quantity of silver went missing as well, so I can only assume the Dark Wings left it."

As her cousin talks, Natalia carefully unwraps the bundle to find three things: a thick envelope, still sealed, a familiar looking pendant and another, much smaller letter that had obviously been opened. On the front of the smaller envelope in sharp but neat writing was the word Replica.

"The guards weren't sure what it was," Luke continued, watching his cousin carefully as she inspected each item. "But when mother saw the smaller envelope, she contacted me. The one letter was clear about what should be done with the other two items in the bundle."

He falls silent. She picks up the smaller letter and turns it over to reveal the broken wax seal. "May I read it?"

"It's your letter."

"No, I meant yours."

"Mine? Why?"

At first, she does not answer. When he looks up he notices the slight tremor in her hand. Her expression is deceptively neutral, but after knowing her for so long, he is certain she's doing her best to remain composed. "I just don't think I should read the other one yet," she says at last.

"Go ahead. I guess I'll...uh...go patrol the village perimeter or something."

That was a task that would take at least fifteen minutes. Bless him, he was trying to be considerate. "I'll hold down the fort here, then."

He only nods and disappears in the direction of the village.

She waits, listening as the sound of his footsteps are swallowed by the sounds of the forest before turning her attention back to the bundle. She slips the thick letter into her bag knowing she will not be reading it today. That would require privacy, and right now she had a job to do. There was no way she would permit herself to hole up for the week she would need afterwards. Instead she carefully pulls the other letter from its envelope and carefully unfolds the parchment.

The letter begins in the acerbic tone that Asch would always take whenever he had to deal with Luke.

Dreck,

Ideally this letter will never see the light of day.

I am looking forward to burning it when I return from Eldrant.

But things rarely ever go according to plan, and this is my last resort.

Only one of us will survive.

I hate trusting you with anything so important.

No matter what happens, she will cry.

A large smudge darkens the page here as though words were written and then blotted out.

You will look after her.

With this, we will be even.

The other two items are hers.

See that she gets them.

The letter is short, the sentences choppy, and they hurt. In the back of her mind, Natalia knows she is right to not read the other letter now. Even this letter, written to someone he supposedly hated was written with such care, she cannot imagine how much is packed into her letter.

Carefully, she folds the letter and places it aside, smoothing over the paper with trembling hands. She cannot bear to look at it anymore.

She almost wants it gone. It was difficult enough thinking he'd died angry with her; it was worse having proof that he had cared.

She looks at the last item in the bundle, a small round object wrapped in the same type of cloth as the entire bundle had been wrapped in. Against her better judgement, she unwraps the item to reveal a golden crest set with a small blue stone. The Maestro Stone.

"A farewell present," she murmurs to the stone. "You knew full well what would happen, didn't you? I must have been the only one foolish enough to believe that everything would be all right."

"No. You weren't."

She looks up with a start to find that Luke had returned. She hadn't even heard him approach. "Weren't what?"

"Foolish," he says, resuming his seat across the campfire from her. "It's not foolish to hope for happiness. If anyone was the fool in this ordeal, it was me."

"There was nothing you could have done, Luke."

"I should have realised something was wrong," he says sharply. "Instead I was so focused on my own imminent death that I didn't even stop to think that the same thing might have been happening to him."

"Luke, I don't-"

She reaches out, but he shrugs away the hand she has placed on his shoulder. "Just let me get this off my chest, Natalia. There's just not anyone else who I can really talk to about this."

She wants to object but cannot. She knows the feeling. Despite concern from Tear and the others, she never felt able to speak about Asch. He was off-limits because she knew the others would try to comfort her, assure her that she was not in any way at fault. But she didn't want to hear that. She didn't want to be coddled and comforted. She blamed herself and wanted someone else to blame her as well. Looking at Luke, she knew he felt the same, so she let him speak.

"I should have known something was wrong," he says quietly, glancing away into the darkness of the woods. "I should have done something-stopped him from going to Eldrant. Hell, I should have been the one to die. I mean, I wasn't even supposed to be born in the first place, and I'm the one who lived!"

"That's not your fault," she says firmly. "It doesn't matter your origin, you're still a living, breathing human being. You deserve to live as much as anyone." As much as she understands his need to blame himself, that is one thing she will not let him blame himself for. "And I'm to blame as much as anyone. You had your own concerns; I didn't even ask. I didn't even try to find out how he was doing, didn't even notice. I was selfish. I claimed to love him, yet I acted as though I didn't even care!"

He hesitates. "Did you?"

She looks up. "Pardon?"

"Did you care?"

"Yes," she said quietly. "I did."

"Then that should be enough."

"How can it be?" she burst out, unable to contain the guilt. "No matter what I was going through, he always, always helped me yet when he needed help, I couldn't even be bothered to notice!"

"Even if you had noticed, what good would it have done?"

The question stuns her to silence, but only for a moment. "You can't mean that."

He refuses to relent. "Think about it, Natalia. The only way to save one of us would have been to willingly sacrifice the other. Do you honestly think you would have been able to make such a decision?"

"Of course not! I wouldn't sacrifice either of you. There might have been another way that could have saved you both."

"If there was another way, don't you think that Jade would have told us? He may be callous, but he's not cruel."

"You don't know that." The words slip out despite herself. She'd grown up hearing terrible tales of the famed Necromancer, the enemy of her country. Even having met him face to face, she cannot totally discard the terrifying image she has of him.

"I trust him."

She can't bring herself to agree, and she knows he notices. Thankfully, he lets her silence slide.

"You know, we're one hell of a pair," he says with a rueful chuckle.

"What do you mean?" she asks, grateful for the change of topic.

"We both keep trying to take the blame for something that I'm sure, most people, would say we couldn't have prevented."

She looks down at the Maestro Stone still clutched in her hand. "It doesn't matter what 'most people' would think. We're the ones at the centre of this."

"Yeah. They wouldn't understand anyway."

They fall silent for a moment.

"Hey, Natalia. Let's make a deal."

She looks up at her cousin. "What kind of deal?"

"You agree with me, don't you, that none of the others would understand why we'd blame ourselves over Asch's death. But it's not healthy to bottle all this stuff up. So when it gets to be too much for you, you'll talk to me, and when I need to talk, I'll talk to you about it. How about that?"

What he's saying makes a certain degree of sense. They are the only ones who can truly understand why they both blame themselves for what happened. "Okay. But I won't let you blame yourself for surviving. I know I'm partly to blame for your thinking that, so if I see you going down that road, I'm going to haul you back by the ears."

"If Tear doesn't get me first," he laughs. "In exchange, I'm going to make sure you take care of yourself."

She recalls a line from the letter. You will look after her. "You don't have to feel obligated," she says quickly.

He frowns. "It's not about obligation. You're my cousin. There's no way I'd turn a blind eye to something like that."

"You're so stubborn."

"Look who's talking."

She can't help the bitter little laugh that bubbles up.


Author's Note:I don't know about the name for the village. Apologies if it's weird or anything. I suck at naming things.