Yes, I am aware it's only Wednesday. I am posting early this week to let people know that I have a fic (or several fics, depending on the amount of the final bid and the bonus wordcount) up for auction on the lj group Help_Japan. If you want a direct link, go to my profile: the link where it says homepage will take you to my livejournal, where the top public post should link to the comment with my offer. I'd recommend checking out the rest of the post, though, because there are some good authors on there, and apparently so many authors are participating that the Help_Japan group added another post for them to make offers on. There are also posts offering art, physical goods, etc. etc. If there's a fic you wish existed, check it out: it's for a good cause.
You stupid…! Asch tried hitting Luke upside the head, but his other arm passed right through him and letting go of Luke with the arm relative to which Luke was solid was clearly a very bad idea. He didn't want to end up stranded in the bedrock under Grand Chokmah.
Get us back up there right now! Grow those wings again or something! Are you listening to me? Stupid, stupid replica! Dreck! Listen to me when I'm yelling at you! He focused in the way he had to talk to Luke before, channeling his emotions about Luke into it. If he couldn't hit Luke, he could still give him one of those headaches.
Asch, stoppit! Luke's body jerked. I can't stop falling and we're almost there and you're distracting me!
There? Asch didn't regret hurting Luke at all, in this case. If that was what it took to get Luke to answer when he was spoken to.
Themiasma.
A burst of panic suddenly, as fonons that Luke had recently shaped into wings exploded outward, into and through Asch as Luke panicked and Asch felt a blurring that had become too familiar recently. Since he'd figured out how to reach his replica, he'd tried to get information from Lorelei, but he just couldn't handle its mind, it sucked him in the way Luke was now.
No, they weren't sucking him in, if they had he'd be dead. Nothing left of him but a hand puppet, just as much a part of them as their left hands.
Even that fear of being absorbed was Luke's fear for him right now. This was too much for him to think. It didn't manifest as physical pain, but the sheer feeling of being overwhelmed, full to bursting with something he couldn't handle wasn't pleasant. The only reason he wasn't registering it as pain was probably because his mind didn't know how to deal with it.
For now there was nothing but panicpanicpanic, Luke blaming himself for whatever he'd done this time, and he really was useless, and how was he doing to fix this, and…
Suddenly they were in open air and Luke's mind pulled away, flinched away, not so much from Asch as from where they were.
His arms and wings wrapped around himself as he shivered, hearing the cold dead empty hatred, feeling its claws, the despair of being alone and abandoned. Like he'd been after Akzeriuth, and this was what he'd done to Akzeriuth!
Luke was too far gone to even register that he'd let go of Asch when panic and the desire to live finally overwhelmed fear and guilt and his wings spread, sending him shooting upwards to the surface through the crust of the outer lands. Even that wasn't fast enough, so instinct summoned hyperresonance to get him to safety.
He threw himself into big warm arms, the only ones that had ever held him, the only person who had ever said that it was alright when he messed up or got upset. The only person who would be patient when he was like this instead of yelling at him. The only person who would pat him on the head and let him finish when he cried, instead of trying to make him stop with cruel words instead of kind ones.
"Master Van!" The words rushed out. He almost babbled, clinging and not thinking, because he was memory and a part of him did remember that any second now he would be pushed away. Or stabbed.
Only one safe place to cry in this world. Only one pair of strong arms willing to hold him. Only one person who understood him and cared about what happened to him. Only one person who really did believe that he was trying and it wasn't just that he was lazy or weak or despicable.
And part of Luke did know that the Master Van who had offered him refuge, who had offered him a home, found a way for Luke to be free, free to be with the one person who cared about him, his real family, had never really existed.
Master Van might have made him, and part of Luke had been so happy to find that out, to think that Master Van really was almost his real father, but the Master Van who had loved him… existed and didn't exist.
There was Vandesdelca Musto Fende, who had destroyed Hod and used him to save Asch by destroying Akzeriuth. That man, Luke had to kill.
There was Master Van, who had taught him and said that one day Luke could go to live with him and escape the manor. That man, Luke loved and would never hurt. Never.
Two natures, two fates, two sets of memories. What Lorelei had known all this time, about Hod, versus what Master Van had showed Luke in order to give him hope and earn his love.
If Luke became Eldrant, he could determine what the past had been and what the future would be. He could make Master Van Vandesdelca's scored fate.
It would have been an incredible temptation if he'd been thinking clearly enough for it to occur to him. For him to be tempted. No, he was too exhausted and distraught, half awake and entirely desperate. He didn't want to think, not when those arms closed around him and he heard Master Van's voice, in that tone that he used to ask what on earth had happened this time? What had Duke Fabre done now, what cruel thing had Natalia said to his student that had killed his appetite?
A hand touched his back, stroked his wings soothingly, and there was a harmony in that murmur that was right somehow, that soothed his mind as those hands soothed ruffled feathers, and even though Luke had never been allowed to take refuge in his parents' bed after a nightmare he had still craved it. Was still innocent enough, still enough of a child, to recognize that promise of safety.
To be reassured by sound and touch that it was safe, and they wanted him to calm down.
And go to sleep.
"There now," Lorelei murmured softly, brushing away the few remaining fonons that had made up Luke's wings. He hadn't needed them anymore once he was safe, but he had stopped keeping them in order instead of dematerializing them. Until Lorelei started cleaning them up Luke had been shedding red-gold feathers everywhere. "Hush, little one." He kissed the back of Luke's head when Luke snuggled up against Van a little bit more and made a little sound in the back of his throat that was really nothing more than asking for confirmation that they were there, that they cared enough to reassure him. "It's alright." Lorelei's eyes were shadowed: he and Van both knew that was a lie, but the sleeping child was so very trusting.
Luke weighed practically nothing like this, so now that he'd mostly stopped squirming and dropped off Van simply stood there and raised an eyebrow at Lorelei. What was all this about?
Lorelei was humming under his breath, and Van recognized the tune of the grand fonic hymn. If it could really be called a tune, given how idiosyncratic every line's rhythm and meter was. It seemed all the more genuine for being unpolished, as though it was something an amateur had come with on the spot just for the sake of soothing a child.
Or perhaps Van thought the Grand Fonic Hymn sounded like a lullaby should solely because he'd sung Mystearica to sleep with it for years.
There was love in Lorelei's eyes, the kind there had probably been in his when his little sister was trying to fall asleep after a rough day. The other children had given the ignorant outer worlder hell, and Van hadn't been able to protect her from everything, especially after she'd stopped telling him what they'd done this time so he didn't get in any more trouble for beating up one of them to get a stolen toy back, for example.
She'd blamed herself for causing him so much trouble, but he hadn't minded at all. Just like Luke didn't want to get his beloved Master Van in trouble for sticking up for him, so he'd had to coax Luke to tell him about his day.
He'd known exactly what he was doing when he'd earned the boy's trust. He'd been Luke's parents just as much as he'd been Mystearica's. He knew how to fill that void.
Lorelei was an excessively paternal creature. Or maternal? The ancients had called the sentience 'Mother Auldrant' before the discovery of the seventh fonon. All of Auldrant's people were Lorelei's children, and so was Luke. Eldrant.
If Van didn't make a habit of getting up well before the sun rose Luke might have ended up in his bed, and then Van would have skewered him with the knife he kept under his pillow. He never slept without one, not after too many defenseless nights in Hod's cells. As long as he wasn't killed no one had really cared what was done to or with him.
"I think the miasma distressed him," Lorelei finally told him, still in a soothing tone of voice for Luke's benefit, the sentience's eyes still focused on the sleeping boy.
"Like a uniceros?" They had survived the fall of Hod since they were able to fly, but they hadn't escaped unscathed. Van had found easily two dozen of them on the islands he'd searched for survivors. One of them had breathed its last as he stood there, trying to sing and heal it. Even if he had been able to purify it of the miasma, it would have been fruitless: it would have just breathed more in.
The uniceros was a symbol of purity for good reason.
The miasma Van had breathed in back then was still killing him, it would simply take longer. Of course he never had been pure, had he? He'd been marked as a murderer before he was born.
"The miasma is… a nightmare," Lorelei said softly, a hint of mourning in his voice. And guilt. Always old guilt.
"Can you keep him asleep?" Van had considered telling Lorelei to recapture and imprison Luke after Luke had vanished, but how did you hold someone with the power of hyperresonance? Luke could teleport, destroy any barrier that got in his way… If only Van had that power back then, instead of just enough control of the fonon for that accursed machine to make use of him!
"For now, yes, but he needs to accept what he is, and while he is sleeping he isn't gathering… Or is he?" Lorelei looked at Van questioningly. "What is your name?"
"Van Gra-Vandesdelca Musto Fende. The one who would seize glory." Why was Lorelei asking?
"Hmm." Lorelei closed his eyes, looking as tired as Luke, only without Luke's peacefulness. "What would I do if… Vandesdelca, do you wish to live on in Eldrant? To be Luke's beloved Master Van, and only that? To be forgiven and believe yourself forgiven?"
"He has that power?" To convert originals into replicas without the need to construct a second body, yes, but stripping Van of his guilt? Tampering with his mind like that. "Ah. Your power is akin to the Score, after all," Van murmured to Luke.
"You would be happy." There was a hint of longing in Lorelei's voice, as though he wished Van would choose that fate but knew better. He knew Van wanted to die, he knew Van couldn't stand the thought of being tampered with or controlled even if Luke's only goal was to give Van the life he should have had, if he had been free of the Score. Free to be the good man he was, despite everything. "He does love you. Even if you were lying, the memories the two of you made are real."
That was the secret to acting, after all. To pretend that he was Master Van, to pretend that it was real. To be in character as Luke's patient teacher, the one who encouraged him and scolded him because he knew Luke had it in him to do well.
At fighting and at being? "He could hardly do worse than you." And Van would control Luke's heart. As long as he did that, there was no need to fear Luke's power. The boy would never want to hurt anyone, would never think of rebelling. "Is his power affecting my mind? Yes, that's why you asked who I thought I was, wasn't it?"
"He is hope," Lorelei said simply, stroking Luke's hair. "I hope that you can find it in yourself to believe in that. To believe in him."
Lorelei hoped that Van would choose to be Luke's instead of his. Lorelei didn't want Van to die.
Lorelei smiled down at Luke, happy the child was here and on the verge of tears because he knew what loneliness was. Lorelei's greatest wish now was to die alone. For his children to live.
"No," Van said finally. "No. The new world should remain pure." Someone who would condemn millions to death would only taint it.
