The Second Hand of Fate
By: seraphimstarlight
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss.
Author's Note: Watch out for the sudden scene shift. And thank you to everyone who sent me info on Luke's favorite food. It was a big help!
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She took a deep breath of the fresh air, inhaling until she felt her lungs would burst. There simply was no getting enough fresh air. No matter how many times she breathed, it still managed to feel wonderfully calming.
But despite the fact that the air was yet clear here, in this place above the whole world, she could still detect in the undercurrents of the wind that terrible, malicious taint. She glanced away towards the ground first, not wanting to look out over the ocean, knowing full well what she would see there. Instead, after a moment's hesitation, she looked up towards the sky, feeling, somehow, that it was better to face the truth that way.
It was by no means a cloudy day. In fact, it was the height of summer, and, by all rights the sun should have blazed brightly in the sky. The day itself, however was dark as though a veil had been cast over the sky.
Tears sprung to her eyes against her will, but she blinked them away defiantly. This was no time to look away. She had done that once too often and look where it had gotten them. Now even this last, precious place was contaminated.
A voice rang out behind her, cutting into her thoughts.
"Even with The Shroud in place, it's not a good idea to stare at the sun, Yulia."
She turned, more to humor her companion than to confirm his identity. "Daath." It came out as more of a statement than a question. "It's here now. The Miasma, I mean."
He frowned, and she could tell that he had not noticed. "I'd thought it was everywhere."
"No," she said with a slight shake of her head, "not here. Until recently, this area had remained uncontaminated."
"But wasn't there a quake in this area recently? Near, what was that place called again?"
She looked away, her gaze becoming distant. "Rugnica. It will be called Rugnica."
"Rugnica? What the hell's that?"
The question jarred her from her thoughts, and she looked up at Daath apologetically. "Sorry. I meant Isetan." She hesitated for a moment as though to confirm what she had just said. "Yes, last week there was a quake in the area of Isetan."
She looked up to find Daath watching her intently. "You saw something again, didn't you?"
"Yes," she said, knowing that she could not fool him by saying otherwise.
He shifted, seemingly uncomfortable, and she could only guess that he wanted to ask what it was she had seen. But they both knew that she made it a point not to talk about her visions. Letting people know that she had seen their future—no, she corrected herself, their potential future—could only lead to misfortune. Still, his expression of wide-eyed curiosity was almost irresistable, and, for a moment, she felt like telling him that, for a knight of the Mydeiran Church, he was nowhere near as refined as he needed to be. In fact, with his head of long crimson hair, he looked almost like a mercenary. Odd, since a similar hair color would eventually become the symbol of Lorelei's scion.
Of course, she would never tell Daath either of those things, for they were far outside the scope of what he needed to know right now. Instead, she settled for telling him, "There was a town over there. A port."
She pointed off in the general direction of the sea. Daath moved to stand beside her. "Well, that makes sense, especially since the lowlands of this area are all but flooded with Miasma right now."
She rolled her eyes, grateful for the light teasing tone in his voice. It was so difficult to live under the constant strain of seeing your world devoured daily. "I didn't mean now, idiot. I meant in the future."
He sighed dramatically. "Yeah, I know you did. But, Yulia, you and I both know that Miasma doesn't retreat from an area. How can people build a port there if it's filled with that stuff?"
"Miasma can't retreat," she said, not having heard the second part of his statement, "it's not a sentient thing."
"Sometimes it sure feels like it," he said, suddenly serious again.
She agreed, but did not say so. They were both right in a sense. While the Miasma itself lacked a conciousness, from the way it slowly, tormentingly devoured their precious world, one couldn't help thinking that it was a living scourge sent by the sentiences to punish mankind for its arrogance.
"It's all my fault, isn't it?"
She had not meant the words to sound as self-pitying as they hand. The tone was a last minute addition that had slipped past her lips before her mind had a chance to amend it.
Daath moved to stand beside her but did not look at her. She was most grateful for that; she did not want him to see the ambivalance in her expression.
"It was our fault, Yulia. All of ours. We pushed this world and, finally, it pushed back. It was bound to happen sometime. That it happened now is no more your fault than it is mine."
"But, I'm the one who started all this!" She hesitated, fighting to keep her voice level. "I'm the one who first spoke with Lorelei. I'm the one who suggested that we use the new fonon to create a new source of power. I'm the one who brought the memory of the Seventh Fonon back to this world." Her arm swept out in a wide arc over the tainted lands below. "Don't you see! I'm the one who's responsible for all this death!"
She spun away, ashamed of the tears that were gathering in her eyes.
"And what of the rest of us, Yulia?" Daath reminded her quietly after a moment's silence. "What of the King who funded your plan? What of the Church, which supported you? What of all the engineers who worked with you? Are you saying that they're not to blame?"
"They never would have come up with this idea if I hadn't forseen it!"
"Stop being so conceited!"
She took a step backwards in surprise. Never, in all the time she had known him had Daath ever raised his voice to her.
"D-daath…"
"Stop thinking that humanity would be utterly incompetent without you! Sure, life would have been a lot harder without the power brought to us by the Planet Storm, but not having power doesn't make people stupid, you know. There's no saying that somewhere, someone wouldn't have thought of it eventually." His expression softened. "Like I said before, it was bound to happen eventually. You just brought it to us a little bit earlier. And, if you're so insistent on blaming yourself for this situation, then fine. I'm not saying you're not to blame anyway. All I'm saying is that, with all the people involved in this, there are plenty of ways to divide up the blame."
When she was certain he was finished speaking, she opened her mouth to say something but found, much to her surprise, that no words would come out. He, a knight of the Mydeiran Church was lecturing her—a person to whom his superiors bowed. If the situation weren't so ironic, it would have been hilarious.
She watched him, waiting for him to realize what he had just done and apologize, as most others would have done. Instead, he was merely staring off towards the horizon, seemingly completely at ease, and she couldn't help thinking that he was either very brave or completely oblivious.
A smile curled the corners of her lips, and she turned away to hide it, not wanting him to think that it was always all right to question her authority. This time, though, she was able to admit that he had a valid point and would not begrudge him that.
"Don't worry," he said suddenly, jarring her out of her thoughts, "we'll find some way to fix this."
"How can you be so sure?" she asked, resuming her serious demeanor.
He turned to her and smiled. "Because you predicted it," he said simply. "That's how." He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "There's a way around this, and we'll do everything in our power to find it. So don't go counting us out just yet."
His optimism was contagious, and she found herself grinning along with him. "I'll do my best too," she said after a brief silence, "because, someday, I want to see that beautiful sky again."
His hand slipped from her shoulder but he did not leave her side. "Someday you will," he said.
"Spoken like a true prophet," she quipped.
He made a face. "That's your job, not mine."
"And just what is your job, hmm?"
She waited for a response. When he remained silent, she noticed that he was no longer looking at her, but, instead was looking at the veiled sky.
"And you were telling me about not looking at the sun," she muttered sourly.
"I'm not looking at the sun," he retorted hotly, "I was just thinking. I wonder how high this thing goes."
She frowned. "The sky you mean?"
"Of course I don't mean the sky," he scoffed. "I was talking about the Shroud."
Yulia shrugged. "It doesn't matter," she said simply. "The air itself changed to become the miasma. The scientists think that there was some fundamental Fonic reaction that took place and changed our air to poison. Going higher probably wouldn't help."
"Probably, not definitely," he reminded her. "Have the scientists actually looked at the possibility that the Miasma is not a change in the nature of the air but rather something that's been—added to it, for lack of a better word?"
"They thought of that, but there was no definite proof. They couldn't pinpoint a source for the Miasma. Until they find a source, the Fonic Change Theory is our best option."
"But not our only one."
She frowned. "What are you suggesting?"
He grinned. "I'm—not quite sure. It's just that, looking at this, it kinda reminded me of fog and the way it sits over the water. I was just wondering if that's the same thing that was happening with the Miasma. I mean, I have no proof of it. It's just…the similarities struck me, that's all."
She sighed. "And even if this was the case, what do you propose we do? Leave all our land behind and go and live in the sky?"
"I don't know," he said defensively. "I was just…thinking, that's all."
"Well, keep on thinking."
He sighed. "Did you really have to say it like—hey, wait! What?"
She smiled. "I said, 'keep thinking'. I don't know if your idea is right or not, but, if we're ever going to present it to the King and the High Priest we need to have a plan to go along with our theory as well as proof as to the source of the Miasma. So start thinking about all those things."
He looked back at her, eyes wide. "You really think my idea is good?"
"I didn't quite say that," she said, thinking it best not to get his hopes up too much, "I just think we'd be negligent if we did not investigate all possibilities." She shrugged. "And who knows? You might just turn out to be right."
"Coming from a prophet," he quipped, "I'll take that as a good sign."
"Coming from a prophet," she said, "I say we won't get anything done if we don't get to work."
He grinned and nodded. "Right."
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Author's Note:
Oh man. I took one heck of a hiatus here and, believe me, it was totally unplanned. So much for finishing this fic by the end of January, lol.
For those of you who might be curious as to what happened, I decided to change the nature of this fic a little bit (just a smidge) halfway through the second part. I'd wanted it to be exclusively Luke and Tear in this story, but I decided that the events of The Thirteenth Hour needed a bit more foreshadowing than this story would have given them. Hence, this chapter.
Generally, the structure of the fic now should be chapters alternating between Luke/Tear and Yulia/Daath. It was certainly…interesting trying to flesh out Yulia and Daath considering there's surprisingly little mentioned about them and almost nothing written on their appearance or personalities. So…generally, I'm making it up as I'm going along. They're almost like OC's except for the fact that they were mentioned in the game. Still, I'll do my best to keep them in some sort of character. I kind of imagine them to be a little like Luke and Tear, so I'll probably model their personalities along those lines.
At any rate, sorry about all my babbling…and that insanely long hiatus. I'll do my best to get the next chapter out as soon as possible. I'm not certain when that'll be, but it'll be sooner than this one came out. I can almost guarantee that. Until then!—Sera-star
