Very, very minor spoilers for Odyssey in this chapter (if you've done the Atlantis missions where you bring the artifacts back, you hear them giving little monologues). This fic takes place pre-Odyssey for that character though, so the only real spoil is that they exist.
-/-
Elina stands up so fast that her chair clattered over, eyes wide as she stares. There's an isu here. An actual isu, and it's not Aita, which would at least have been normal. For her, anyway. She's used to him, at least. Other people might still think it's weird.
"Elina?" her roommate asks. "Hey, you okay?"
"I—" She looks again at the isu, who is now sitting at a table directly across the room from her, looking directly at her, watching. To Elina, who is used to seeing Aita, it couldn't be more obvious that his woman is an isu. It's stamped clearly across her features, and she has the same look in her eyes that Tyler and Aita get when they just knew something that's going to end up being really annoying. But… she's also clearly younger than Aita. Smaller, or at least small enough that she looks more like a taller than average human, instead of a member of a long dead species. And she's dressed in normal clothes. That alone makes her blend in way better than Elina has ever seen Aita blend.
No one else even gives her a second glance, and for a second Elina feels straight up crazy. "Yea," she says, not taking her gaze off the isu. "I'm fine, everything's fine, why would everything be fine?" She pauses, then corrects herself. "Why wouldn't everything be fine?"
"I mean, you're the one freaking out," one of the other girls says. "So… obviously something's not fine?" She looks up from her phone and raises her eyebrows. "Chill, maybe?"
"Have a pancake," a third offers. "They're great."
Elina does not want to chill, she does not want to eat pancakes, and she does not want to sit here and act like there's nothing wrong when there's some random isu lady sitting on the far side of the room.
"Hey," Elina's roommate says. "Hey, Elina." Her eyes are saying please don't be weird please don't be weird please let's not be the weird room already.
"What?" Elina asks.
"Your phone keeps buzzing."
"What? Oh." It doesn't exactly seem important right at the moment, but Elina glances down anyway. If something happened with Elijah and Khemu, one of them might be texting her. Instead, she sees a message from an unknown number on her screen.
If you sit down and do what your new friends are asking you to do, no one will think anything strange is going on.
Elina isn't sure whether to be more confused by the message itself, or by why anyone would think these people that are looking at her like she's a crazy person could be called her friends. As she's still trying to puzzle it out, her phone buzzes a second time, and a new message pops up.
Eat your pancakes, please, and stop staring at me.
Elina's butt hits her seat so quickly it makes a little thumping noise. The isu. The isu somehow knows (she knows, of course she does) Elina's phone number and she's texting her.
As Elina reaches for her phone and fully focuses her attention on the texts, the conversation at the table starts to move on without her. Now she's just a normal person with more interest in her phone than in the conversation going on around her. It's the kind of first impression she can live with, and everyone else can accept. Fine. That's fine, that's okay.
What's your name?
She hits send, then taps her fingers on the table, staring at the unknown isu as much as she can without being incredibly obvious about it. There are so many other questions she wants to ask—what are you doing here, why are you pretending to be a student, why hasn't anyone noticed you're not even human?
Her phone eventually buzzes again, and she almost dives for it.
My name is Aletheia.
And why are you here?
I followed another of my people to this time. I think you know him.
Aita?
Yes.
Elina bites her lip, wondering if Aita even knows that someone's been following him from his time to this one. She looks up again at the woman, Aletheia, who is looking back at her with just as much curiosity. Embarrassed at being caught staring, Elina looks back down at her phone.
Can we meet up somewhere and talk?
A long pause follows. It's so long, in fact, that Elina isn't fully sure that Aletheia is actually going to answer. Finally, just as the rest of the group is starting to break up and head out to different parts of campus—some to find their classrooms for the looming first day of school, some to go back to their rooms, some to go… Elina isn't really listening that closely—her phone buzzes again.
Yes.
Where?
Follow me.
So Elina slips away, using the cover of the group to make sure no one notices when or where she goes. She's part of the crowd, but always on the edges, never near the center, and no one is looking when she walks right up to Aletheia and stops. "Hi," she says.
"Hello," the woman says, although… now that she's closer, Elina is mentally reassessing woman. She'd assumed Aletheia was an adult because she's never really thought about younger isu. Kids, sure. Every year when Ana comes to visit, she's absolutely full of stories about the kids her age, and which ones will talk to her and which ones won't, but she's always sort of subconsciously assumed that the isu could just jump over being teenagers, or something.
Aletheia looks like a teenager.
"How old are you?" Elina asks.
"Seventeen," Alteheia says, her voice as perfectly accentless as Aita's is when he speaks English.
Aletheia is younger than her.
"What are you doing here?" Elina asks. "I know you said you followed Aita, but why? Why are you dressed like a human, and why did you start talking to me?"
"That's a lot of questions," Aletheia says. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Why are you here?" Elina asks.
For a long moment, they watch each other from across the table, and the Aletheia sits back down. "It's a long story," she says. "And I have to start by asking how much you know about isu society."
Elina sits down too, putting them on the same level. Close to the same level. Aletheia has at least three inches on Elina. "Not much," she says. "Most of what I know is just stuff I've heard in passing from Aita." Or from Ana, although Elina doesn't mention her. The isu aren't all knowing, and if there's a possibility Aletheia doesn't already know about her, Elina wants to protect her.
"Then you have to understand," Aletheia says. "Everything in our world starts and ends with blood."
"Uh—"
"Not violence," Aletheia says quickly. "Ancestry. Genetics. We're a monarchy, and under the King, a council of advisors all inherited positions. Aita's part of it."
That makes Elina's eyebrows shoot way up. "He's someone important?" she asks.
"Yea," Aletheia says. "Do you think just anyone would be allowed to take an apple and use it for time travel? Or steal a little human girl and adopt her?"
So she does know about Ana. "I guess not," she says. "I don't know what's normal in your time."
"Not that," Aletheia says. "Definitely not that."
"Okay," Elina says. "So he's… important, apparently. What does that have to do with you?"
"My mother served on the council with him," Aletheia says. "And when she died, her place passed to me."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Elina mumbles.
"Are you?" Aletheia asks. "That's very kind of you. Most people at home aren't." Her face twists into the most human expression that Elina has seen on her face so far. That would probably count as an insult, if she said it out loud, so she doesn't. "Mother was curious about humans."
"Curious?"
And for some reason… for some reason, that makes Aletheia fumble. "I mean… she was—she was interested. Always—she wanted to know more about them. And when I took her place on the council, I thought that the best way I could honor her memory was to learn what I could about humans. I went to Aita to learn—everyone knows he's been pro-human rights for years now, everyone knows he has that little girl. But nobody knows that he still comes here, and meets all of you. And when I found out—I had to follow him. I just had to." Her eyes are big, and there's a spark in them.
It's the spark that makes Elina pause. She recognizes it, from every time she and Elijah and Khemu have gone on an adventure. Aletheia's having one now.
"How long have you been here?" Elina asks.
"Long enough to find a box of clothes that didn't make it to where they were supposed to be," Aletheia says. "And then I came and found you."
"You were looking for me?" Elina asks. "Specifically?"
"No," Aletheia admits. "I was looking for whoever it is that Aita's always coming to visit. I knew you were the one, the minute I saw you."
"Well I hate to break it to you," Elina says. "But you're not going to get the answers you want from me. You're going to get them from Elijah."
"Who's Elijah?"
Elina sighs and stands up, gesturing for Aletheia to follow her. "Listen," she says. "I don't understand how you isu just know what you know—"
"Subconscious information given off by electro fields and processed by the brain," Aletheia says.
Elina blinks. She hadn't been expecting a response.
"Humans can't do it because that part of your minds never developed."
"Okay," Elina says. "Let me correct that. I don't understand how you isu just know what you know, but Elijah does, I bet, and he'll be better to explain everything to you."
"Great," Aletheia says. "So let's go see him."
"Sure," Elina says. "Let's go." She snaps off a text to Elijah and Khemu to warn them she's coming upstairs (although she can't explain Aletheia, she'd be here all day if she tried), and leads the isu off.
There's an odd sense of… unreality. The college seems, somehow, so quintessentially human. It's full of ordinary people going about their ordinary business in their ordinary lives, with no idea that they're passing so close to something so strange. Aletheia seems fascinated by everything she sees, touching walls as they walk past, the buttons on the elevator, the handles on the doors.
"People are going to think you're weird," Elina warns her when they're on the floor where Elijah and Khemu's room is.
"No one's looking," Aletheia says. "This is it, right?"
She's stopped at a door Elina had walked right past—she realizes with a start that it is the right room. She's just not used to it yet. It's not like back home, where she knew their homes as well as her own. "Yea," she says, and knocks to cover her own embarrassment.
Khemu answers the door, and his eyes go at once to Aletheia. "Oh," he says. "Oh."
"Yea," Elina says. "Oh is pretty much right. Move, Khemu, we need to get in."
He moves, and when all of them are in the room, shuts the door behind them. Elijah is kneeling in front of Ana, talking quietly to her. Elina notices the way he looks when he spots Aletheia, and then the way he stands in front of Ana, shielding her. For a second, it makes her heart stop, because if Aletheia was a danger, Elijah would know while she would only be guessing. She's actually relieved when his first words are only confused.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"Aletheia," Ana pipes up. She ducks past Elijah and goes to Altheia, who gives her something that's close to but not quite a high five. Another little reminder of how different the isu are, in so many subtle ways. She turns around to look at Elijah, and explains. "She works with Dad. She likes me."
"Well I guess that's okay then," Elina mutters.
"What's going on?" Khemu hisses at her, as the other three start into what looks like an intense conversation in the isu language. Elina catches him up as quickly as she can, and by the end Khemu is just staring at her.
"That's it," Elina says, when he's been quiet for a while. "That's all I know, for now."
"But what's she doing here now?" Khemu asks. "I mean, they're in the middle of a bloody revolt in her time, right? Assuming… I mean, she must be from right around that time, if Ana knows her."
"Seems like a pretty good time to get out of dodge to me," Elina points out. "I'd run from bloody revolution, if I could."
"No you wouldn't," Khemu says. "You're a Hidden One. You'd run toward it."
"Well alright," Elina allows. "But I'd feel stupid while I did it."
"I was scared."
They both look up at once to see Aletheia looking at her, frowning.
"You were—"
"Scared," Aletheia says. "Yes."
Next to her, Ana reaches up and tugs on her sleeve. "That's okay," she says. "Me too."
Elina looks at her two friends, and she doesn't have to be an isu to know what they're thinking. There's no way they can kick Aletheia out now.
"I figured this was as good a time as any to get away," Aletheia says. "I don't want to see… whatever's going to happen."
"It's that bad?" Khemu asks.
"It's bad," Aletheia says, and something twists in Elina's stomach. It's not her home, it's not where her family lives, but… that time and this one are so connected, so unavoidably connected, that she can't help but feel like they're in danger in some way they can't actually see yet.
"And," Aletheia says. "It's probably going to get worse, before it gets better."
-/-
Aita is patched up and taken farther into the city center, where it's supposed to be safer. Not that anyone really knows, of course. A situation this busy and chaotic, with so many unknown factors and factions at play, makes the isu sixth sense almost useless. It's like the way staring into the sun for too long can blind you—the sheer amount of variables and possibilities in this situation makes their sixth sense.
There are two or three high rise buildings that are being used as sort of makeshift safehouses, with guards patrolling the streets around them. The buildings are probably big enough for the short term, Aita thinks, but they're not going to have much space. They'll be stepping all over each other soon.
"Aita! Aita."
He turns to see a harried looking man hurrying toward him. "Yes?" he says.
"The council is meeting upstairs," the man says, panting slightly. "You and Aletheia are the only two that aren't there yet."
"Thank you," Aita says, brushing past him and running up the stairs. There's no question what the council is going to be discussing considering the human rebellion taking place outside, and there aren't that many pro-human members of the council. He needs to be there, to try and talk them down from doing something drastic.
He finds his way to the room where the rest of the council is waiting, and sure enough everyone else is there, apart from Aletheia. He's not entirely surprised to find that she's not there, although he is disappointed. She's young, and probably upset. Safe, hopefully, wherever she is. But she's also one of the only people that will back him up when he argues that they shouldn't march out into the streets and put down every human they see.
He takes a second to compose himself before stepping into the room, but it turns out it's not enough. As soon as he opens the door, a deluge of sound washes over him, half a dozen people arguing at the top of their collective lungs.
Juno's, of course, is the loudest of them all.
-/-
I'm so weirdly excited to finally have Aita and Juno in the same scene. xD