The Thing About Bad Pennies
Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.
Warnings: Language, homosexuality, (eventual) sexual situations, etc.
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Supernatural lack of noise was not a problem this time around.
In fact, Jack seemed to be having kind of the opposite of that problem, momentarily startled by a gentle roar of noise that he couldn't immediately place.
Luck was on his side, though—it was broad daylight and he could at least see enough of his surroundings to take a guess at what it was.
Big-ass waterfalls, in Jack's experience, tended to make that sound and there just so happened to be one right in front of him.
The two might just be correlated.
Clearly, Jack's skills of deduction in this were so great that the universe decided to reward him by making Chase just a little easier to find this time around.
Just slightly distant from where Jack now found himself stood, Chase hovered in the middle of the waterfall itself, only a foot or two above the surface of the lake it emptied into. He seemed to be meditating if the rigid lotus posture was anything to go by, but not so deeply that his elemental control failed. The curtain of water parted around him with precision, not a single drop dampening any part of the dragonlord-to-be.
As always, Jack couldn't help but admire that about him: mystic power and barely-human beauty, all in one.
Jack also couldn't help but start when over the din of the water he heard, "I know you're there, Jack."
He frowned, feeling (probably unduly) annoyed at being caught so quickly. Voice raised to carry, Jack declared, "I wasn't hiding," because he wasn't.
Chase's mouth quirked slightly. "You couldn't," he said simply, uncrossing his legs. "Not from me."
Jack resisted the urge to huff out loud as Chase walked to the shore on top of the water, his sandaled feet lighting so gracefully as to only ripple the surface.
Unfair bastard.
"You were meditating in a waterfall," Jack said, just a tad petulant. "How'd you even know I was here? And don't you dare say 'Tiger Instincts.'"
"I am a student of magic, now," Chase reminded him, "and a creature of one as well. There are many ways of perceiving."
Oh. Alright, Jack could concede that one. "How'd you know it was me, then?" he wondered. "For all you knew, I could've been anyone."
Chase's grin was muted, but there; a partial-smirk to go along with a shake of his head. "Not with your qi."
"…What's wrong with my qi?" Jack demanded, half-ready to be offended.
Chase just waved it off. "Not wrong," he corrected, breezing past Jack to sit in the grass. "Unique. Your energy is not of this time and does not flow the same. It disrupts the order of things." He graced Jack with an inscrutable look. "That is how I knew it was you."
"Oh, great, I'm disruptive," Jack muttered with a roll of his eyes, but Chase turned away from him, staring at some point off in the distance.
Aaaand, Jack's Not-Tiger-Instincts were officially screaming at him.
Here he was, offering up perfectly good banter-fodder and Chase was just not taking the bait. Not that he had a lot of experience with pre-future Chase but even then, when it was something rude (at best) or aggressive (more likely) he always did respond.
A past version of Chase, one he was actually on good terms with should be talking a lot more than this.
Jack was getting the feeling that whatever he was here for this time, it had to be a hell of a lot bigger than a scraped knee.
Cautiously, Jack sat in the grass next to Chase. When several seemingly interminable seconds had gone by without so much as another glance, he tried, "Sorry?"
That got him a response, though Chase still sounded noticeably distracted as he gave it. "For what?"
Jack shrugged. "Being all 'disruptive' around your meditation, I guess."
"I was unsuccessful in concentrating, anyway," Chase dismissed lightly, and said no more.
Jack's frown deepened. Definitely not normal. He watched Chase out of corner of his eye, trying to pick up on…something he might've missed.
Now that he'd finally undergone his transformation, Chase looked the same as he always did, physically— young and gorgeous and radiating power, even with a total lack of motion.
He had taken to wearing darker clothing since the last Jack had seen him, but it was neither as fine nor as layered by armor as it would one day be. It somehow made this Chase seem a tad more approachable than Jack was used to, to have the broadness of his chest and the plane of his shoulders so bluntly visible.
Those shoulders, Jack noticed, were stiff; rigid like the rest of Chase's posture. He was definitely upset about something, because the Chase that Jack knew only exerted that much control over himself when he was on edge.
Unfortunately, that told him precisely nothing that he couldn't have already guessed: Jack wouldn't even be here if something wasn't wrong.
Jack sighed. "Chase?" he prompted, hoping against hope that Chase might just volunteer an explanation.
Apparently Jack wasn't that lucky. Chase didn't even acknowledge that he'd spoken this time, continuing to space out and stare at the super-interesting nothing in the distance.
Jack fidgeted briefly in the increasingly awkward silence, internally warring between sympathetic decorum and simple annoyance.
After only another moment or two, the obvious choice won out.
"Alright, seriously," he blurted. "Are you okay? You're being weird."
Finally, that got Chase to look at him, head tilted in question.
"Unusual," Jack clarified. "Distant. Not…yourself."
Chase stared at him with that inscrutable look again, long enough that Jack was tempted to start fidgeting again. Then the far-off look in the man's golden eyes was fading and Chase gave a soft snort, shaking his head.
"You truly must know me in the future you come from," he said wryly, "to know when I am not 'myself.'"
Jack hesitated. "Am I wrong?"
"Not at all. Either I am more distracted than I thought, or you are shrewder than I gave you credit for."
And there was the jibe. Jack felt a little tension of his own seep out of him, grinning as he suggested, "Probably the first one. I don't get subtle, never have."
Chase made a point of looking him up and down. "Yes," he agreed, "that was obvious."
Jack gladly snickered at his own expense, relieved to see Chase sporting a full smirk in return.
It made him feel a little bolder—if he could still get Chase to laugh at him, then whatever he was here for this time couldn't be as far outside his purview as he'd feared.
It was with that confidence that he daringly asked, "Okay, so now that you're not being weird anymore, how have you been?"
Much as it would probably be more prudent to ask outright what the issue was, Jack didn't much feel like running the risk of making Chase space out all over again by killing the lighter mood too soon. This question felt a lot safer, and true to form Chase's response bordered on the flippant rather than the dismal.
"Not much of interest to you, I'd wager," he said. "Bean's tutelage has consisted mostly of sorcery."
"Sorcery's pretty interesting," Jack protested. "What makes you think I don't like sorcery?"
"Your qi," Chase said, grinning again. "Your energy tells me that you're attuned to magic and may use it when it's provided to you, but you don't have the power to produce it yourself."
Jack squinted at him suspiciously. "Okay, really, how much does my qi give away about me? Is it stamped with my name, date of birth, and zodiac animal too?"
Chase met his gaze and studied him. "You're a ram," he said at length.
Jack sputtered. "Holy hell," he breathed, "I was joking."
Chase flashed him a fanged smile. "So was I," he teased. "That, Jack, was a bluff."
"A damn lucky one," Jack muttered. "Are you sure you didn't get that from my qi?"
"Your qi is just your energy," Chase assured. "I can feel how it interacts with the world around you and its relationship to magicks, but nothing else." He chuckled suddenly. "You really are a ram, then?"
"Metal ram," Jack confirmed, briefly throwing up the horns and regretting that the implications of the visual gag were totally wasted in this time. "Zodiac's not taken too seriously anymore when I come from, but it's still used for fun." He almost didn't ask because of the connotations, but ultimately, Jack couldn't resist. "What's your sign?"
"A wood monkey," Chase replied.
Jack felt his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. "A monkey? Really?"
"Yes."
Clearly, it was not Jack's fault that he immediately burst out into laughter, prompting Chase to give him a look that seemed to vigorously question his sanity.
"What is amusing about that?" the man demanded to know.
As he got his giggles under control, Jack could only shake his head, eventually managing, "Years from now, in retrospect, this conversation will be hilarious to you, I promise, but that's all I can tell you."
Jack thought it just might compromise the future for Chase to know so early of Jack's first encounter with the Monkey Staff and the eventual reputation it earned as being his Wu. Less generally than that, there was also the matter of that whole fiasco he'd had with the green monkeys, in which Chase was directly involved and he really shouldn't know the specifics of that one if the timestream was to be preserved intact.
Even so, the idea of Chase's zodiac being the monkey, when monkeys were almost always Jack's thing… Laughing was really the only thing he could do, faced with that.
Chase, however, just snorted. "And you were the one who said I was unusual."
"I never denied that," Jack agreed, grinning easily. "You shouldn't either. You can control the forces of nature, shapeshift into a dragon, and you're being tutored in magic by a talking bean. That's not exactly usual, is it?"
"I guess that would depend entirely on your definition of 'usual,'" Chase returned, so airily that Jack had to laugh again.
As something occurred to him, though, he paused. Nonchalantly as he could he asked, "Where is the old ball and chain, anyway?"
Chase raised an eyebrow at him. "Ball and chain?"
"Hannibal Bean? Your master?" Jack tried not to be too obvious in glancing around the lakeside. "He's not lurking around here…is he?"
Apparently he wasn't subtle enough. "You seem inordinately concerned with him," Chase noted and Jack grimaced.
"I'm not concerned," he protested automatically. From the look on Chase's face, it was clear that he wasn't quite convincing. "I'm not! Just…doesn't it make sense to kinda be aware of where a guy like that is?"
Chase eyed him curiously for a moment. "Are you on bad terms with him?" he wondered. "In your future?"
Jack actually had to think about that one. "No…" he decided slowly. "No more than anyone, I guess. It's hard to tell with him," and Chase was nodding so apparently he wasn't the only one, "but like…I'm not magic and I can't fight, so if Bean's around, I'd prefer to at least be forewarned, you know?"
The curiosity in Chase's gaze only sharpened. "You did say you couldn't fight," he mused, as if just remembering. "Yet without that and without magic, you also claim to be Heylin."
Jack frowned. "That's… Is that against the rules or something?" If that was a rule, that you had to specialize in one or the other to join the dark side, it could explain why so many of the older Heylin rejected him out of hand.
"I suppose I'm wondering how you could be a formidable Heylin with neither magic nor skill."
Ah, not a rule, then; that attitude was just the usual annoyance and hatred.
"I never said I was formidable," Jack shrugged, all self-deprecation. "I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, though, just not magic ones." Thinking of just a few of his beloved creations, presumably safe in the time he'd left them, he added, "Although I guess you could say they'd be indistinguishable from magic, at least in the here and now."
Chase looked at him strangely. "What?"
Jack shook his head. "Part of a quote that won't be relevant for quite a few centuries," he explained. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. "I'd say more, but there's too much that won't make sense to you without context, and I can't explain the context because—"
"—it could affect your future," Chase finished for him. "You are a mystery, Jack, aren't you?"
"I choose to take that as a compliment," Jack declared brightly.
Chase seemed to only just resist rolling his eyes. "Yes, well…mysterious tricks up your sleeve or no, you need not fear Bean anytime soon."
Jack perked up. "Oh, yeah? Why's that?"
"He is gone."
"…gone where?"
"Elsewhere," Chase said vaguely. "I banished him."
Holy shit, already? "How'd you manage that?" Jack wondered, honestly curious. Of course he knew the story—the Ying-Yang World—but he'd never heard it told firsthand.
He would be waiting for that telling awhile longer. "I told him to leave me," Chase said simply and oh.
Oh. Chase hadn't banished-banished him, he'd just…told him off.
Which wasn't an epic battle of the greats or anything, but that was still impressive enough to keep Jack's attention. "You told him to leave," he echoed, "and he actually did?" Not many people could get away with a trick like that.
"Ultimately, yes," Chase said. "He seemed to think I required 'guidance.' I disagreed."
By the clipped tone and the sneer in his voice, Jack understood the need to start mentally translating from Chase-speak instead of just taking his words at face-value if he wanted to understand the whole story.
From what Chase had just said, he got: Bean was smothering me so I told him to go fuck himself.
"Okay," Jack replied slowly. "And…he just accepted your 'disagreement'?"
Chase made a face, quick and subtle enough that most people probably wouldn't have caught it.
(Most people weren't Jack, of course.)
"He did try to convince me I wasn't in a good position to be making those kinds of decisions," Chase admitted. "I insisted, and he left in his usual way."
He tried fucking with my head by calling emotional compromise, but I yelled louder and he left, being a haughty, omniscient bitch about it like always.
"…huh," Jack said profoundly. When he remembered a moment later that he wasn't actually an idiot, he gathered a few more words together. "And how long ago was this?"
"Five days," Chase answered succinctly and while that needed no translation, Jack inferred that it was too unusual to go so long without hearing from Bean for it to be mere coincidence.
"Well…congratulations," Jack said at length. "On getting rid of Bean. That probably felt long overdue, right?"
Chase looked at him, vaguely suspicious. "You seem unenthusiastic about my newfound freedom," he said. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"
No. Yes. Jack couldn't be enthusiastic, not with the knowledge that Chase wasn't going to truly be rid of Bean until he'd trapped him in the Ying-Yang World. His 'newfound freedom' was temporary, but of course Jack couldn't tell him that.
Jack grimaced. "It's not that," he settled on saying and as far as he was concerned, a half-truth was better than a full lie, so he continued, "it's just that…you don't seem enthusiastic about it and I'll level with you, I don't know what to make of that."
"How so?" Chase asked flatly.
Jack seized on the lack of affect. "Well, that, for one thing. You don't sound like somebody's who's just broken some chains. You sound like somebody who's not even here. You're…you're distracted."
It was a sign of how distracted Chase really was that he didn't even attempt to deny it. He just exhaled heavily, not quite a sigh, and agreed, "Yes. I am."
"And I totally respect your privacy and all that, but the circumstances…" Jack bit the inside of his lip. "You know I gotta ask."
"Of course. It is the reason you're here."
For a long time, Chase said no more than that. The lapse back into silence quickly put Jack on edge and for a moment he wished, illogically, that he hadn't brought it up at all.
Just as he was about to cave and retract the question, though, Chase spoke.
"Have you ever killed a man, Jack?"
Jack's mouth dropped open in surprise. Quickly getting control over himself again, he managed a mostly casual, "Can't say that I have, no." Chase no doubt heard the slight tremor in his voice that gave him away.
Once more staring out over the lake, Chase drew no attention to it. Instead, he declared, "I have. Five days ago."
Jack was beginning to think his first assessment of the situation was right: this was definitely something beyond his ability to 'fix' with a bit of talk therapy.
It didn't really seem like he had any other option but to try, though.
"Okay. Well," he began awkwardly, "that's kind of a…a milestone. Not an everyday thing. It's…fine to be a little broken up about something like that."
"I'm not."
Jack blinked. "Huh?"
"I'm not," Chase repeated easily. "Broken up about it. I don't regret it in the least."
And once again, Jack felt totally out of his depth. This…particular issue…wasn't entirely unexpected. Jack knew—of course he knew—that it was impossible to claw your way up to where Chase had gotten without getting blood on your hands in a very literal way.
Chase was a man with power and magic and a monster-side, and he controlled an army of minions and had carved himself a kingdom from a wasteland. There was simply no way he could've done that without hurting someone somewhere along the way.
Academically, Jack knew that. He'd known it from the minute he'd started hero-worshipping the dragonlord and had decided it didn't really bother him. It still didn't, honestly, even now.
It was just that…accepting something and knowing how the hell to talk about it were two very different things.
Jack had never killed anybody. He'd never even seriously injured somebody, and maybe the Chase he was talking to right now wasn't the same one who probably thought of murder the same way Jack thought of an item on his To Do List, but it was still a Chase with more experience here than Jack had.
It was impossible for him to advise from experience on this one, the way he'd done with all the problems before this.
Jack found himself biting his lip again and folding his arms across his chest. He tried to think of how he'd approach a conversation like this if it were any other issue—if it were an online colleague asking for help in a field he had no experience in.
In a situation like that, his first step would be to ask questions until he understood the problem.
"Alright, so if you don't feel bad about doing it…what do you feel about it?"
Chase frowned, looking like the question had deeply thrown him. "I don't know."
Now that he had translated it into a format he could deal with, Jack didn't hesitate to press. "Come on, you have to feel some way about it. You don't snap and run off Hannibal Bean over nothing." He reconsidered that. "Not that I doubt he would've given you reasons on his own, but it doesn't sound like that's what happened."
Chase seemed to think it over. "I…suppose I was…disturbed."
"Why?" Jack pushed. "Was it," he wrinkled his nose at the thought, "messy?"
"No," Chase answered immediately, and Jack had kinda figured. There was no way a kill of Chase's could be anything but precise; clean. "It was…easy."
"Disturbingly easy?"
"Yes." Chase's gaze fell to his hands, folded in his lap. "It takes very little effort for me to break bone now. You would be afraid of me if you knew just how little."
Jack very pointedly did not mention the years he'd obsessed over Chase; that he knew perfectly well the upper limits of pressure the man sitting next to him could exert on an object and that the maximum statistic he'd ever recorded was enough to snap a titanium bar—to say nothing of mere bone.
Instead he zeroed in on the implication. "It wasn't an accident, was it?" That, Jack had a hard time even picturing.
So did Chase, apparently, for he scoffed. "No," he denied. "I meant to do it. I fully intended to kill him and I did."
Lacking all forms of etiquette, Jack might've blurted out, So what the hell is the goddamn problem here? but as he put together the pieces of what Chase was saying, he began to think he saw the issue.
Taking away the morality of the act itself, Jack tried to look at it from a more Chase-like perspective; just a few notches further on the scale of sociopathy than where Jack was currently at himself.
Chase had done something society as a whole considered wrong. Except, it didn't feel wrong to him, and he wasn't guilty about it at all.
And suddenly, this was a problem Jack had plenty of experience with.
"You don't feel bad about doing it," he concluded. "You feel bad about not feeling bad about doing it."
Chase turned to stare at him, apparently startled.
Jack took it as his cue to explain. "Well, like…okay, this is gonna sound like a ridiculous comparison, but when I was ten, I took something of my mom's and made something else out of it without her permission."
Jack was still getting lectured over that damn juicer, even when he almost never saw his mom in person anymore. He grimaced at the thought of every annoyingly passive-aggressive mention of it in her notes and emails and the rare phone call.
"Anyway," he continued, shaking it off, "she wasn't too happy about it and I say I feel guilty about it, but I don't really. Honestly, I don't think I would've given it a second thought if she'd never found out about it."
"And what does that have to do with me?" Chase demanded to know.
"It's pretty much the same thing," Jack pointed out. "You killed some guy and that should really upset you, but you say you're not upset—"
"I'm not."
"I believe you! But when everybody's saying you should be feeling something and you just don't, it's weird. Taking other people's stuff is wrong too, and I haven't felt guilty about that since I was a kid." Jack shrugged. "I do it all the time now and the only time I ever think twice about it is when I get caught—and even then, y'know, it's less being sorry that I did it than it is being sorry I got sloppy enough for those losers to catch me in the act."
Chase looked at Jack. "You're…comparing the act of petty theft to taking a life?" he asked incredulously.
Jack practically felt the wind go out of his sails.
"N-not the acts themselves, no," he sputtered after a moment, "just… I mean, the underlying concept is kinda similar and it…it made sense in my head, but maybe I didn't explain it very well. See, like… When you look at them both and compare the…"
As he spoke, Chase's eyebrows climbed (judgmentally) higher and higher on his forehead until Jack totally gave up with a noise of frustration.
Dropping his definitely reddening face into his hands, he muttered, "Never mind, forget I said anything, I am clearly not the expert on this, just…never mind."
He heard Chase snort out a chuckle and felt his cheeks burn hotter, but he cautiously looked up when he felt a light touch on his shoulder.
Chase was grinning at him and it didn't look at all like mocking. It was something friendlier than that, more like…
Like teasing.
"I understood your meaning," he assured. "You make a surprising amount of sense for someone who has never killed before."
Jack looked away from the almost-warm expression on Chase's face, willing his cheeks back to paleness and awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah, well," he coughed out, "I probably could've phrased it better. I bet it sounded pretty dumb."
"A bit," Chase agreed, and at least he wasn't sugarcoating it, "but there was some sense in it. The attempt is appreciated."
"Good," Jack quipped, "I'd hate to have embarrassed myself for nothing."
"Not for nothing, no," Chase agreed and Jack tried not to feel bereft when his hand left his shoulder.
He covered it with another blithe grin, one that lost a little bit of its wattage when Chase continued to look at him.
Jack prided himself on being able to read Chase's expressions—it was pretty damn useful to tell the difference between subtly pleased and subtly displeased—but if the dragonlord had ever looked at him like this, he sure as hell hadn't let Jack catch him at it.
"What?" he asked, going for broke.
Chase didn't pretend not to know what he meant. "Sometimes," he admitted, "when you are gone, I doubt you."
"What about me?"
"Everything. I doubt that you exist," he said. "I doubt that you are sincere. I doubt that you are Heylin and sometimes, that you are from a future of mine at all."
Jack just nodded. He didn't have it in him to be offended over skepticism, especially the kind as pragmatic and so totally understandable as this.
"And then," Chase continued, "you return and it is somehow harder to doubt."
Jack wasn't entirely sure how to take a statement like that. He said as much.
"When you sit beside me and attempt to deconstruct morality for my sake, I have trouble disbelieving you are anything but what you say you are," Chase answered simply.
Honestly, Jack wasn't sure how to take that, either.
He shrugged, saying, "The long con was never my best area. I can handle short-term just fine, but I don't think I have the attention span to lie about something for too long. There's too much risk of slipping. Actually," he decided, "I think that's exactly the reason this Back to the Past thing is kind of a waking nightmare for me." Aside from the whole 'no wifi, no fast food places, no hotels that accept modern currency' thing, of course. "This spell is one big fine line between interfering just enough to keep the future on course, but not so much that I change it into something else completely."
"You seem to be handling the pressure adequately," Chase noted. Casting him a sidelong glance and a wry grin, he added, "Though I was sure your biggest complaint about being trapped in your past would be the lack of future luxuries."
Jack blinked at him, briefly startled at the unerringly accurate reading of his mind; the kind that the Chase who'd known him for eight years could've done just as easily as this one had.
Then, he just laughed, putting a hand to his forehead. "Oh man," he sighed, "you got me. Are you sure you can't read my qi or something?"
"Quite sure."
"Then I've got to be the most obvious guy in the world. Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work."
"I'm certain your skills of subterfuge are just fine," Chase dismissed, looking amused. "They simply aren't going to work on me anymore. I know you too well now."
"A handful of meetings and you know me that well," Jack muttered. "You are really good."
Chase smirked. "I shall consider us even, then. You certainly know me."
That drew Jack up short. "You think so?"
"Yes." Chase tilted his head. "Does that surprise you?"
"A little bit, yeah," Jack said honestly. "You're… Don't take it the wrong way or anything, but you're not the easiest person to know."
"I would consider that a compliment in our 'line of work,'" Chase replied.
"I meant it that way," Jack assured, and then paused. "You really think I know you?"
Going on ten years running in the same circles as someone, occasionally working alongside him, you'd like to think you knew him. In Jack's case, having stalked the same guy for a year or two and having a massive crush on him that persisted to this day, he'd absolutely like to think he knew the guy pretty well, if just for the sake of his own ego.
But that really wasn't the same as hearing it directly from him.
"I do," Chase said simply. "You've demonstrated that several times already."
Jack blinked owlishly. "When?"
"Since the beginning." Apparently sensing Jack's dubious look without even turning to face him, Chase added, "You would not have made it this far into the spell if I were a stranger to you. You certainly would have had difficulty the last time if that were the case."
Chase didn't have to elaborate on that. Not to be immodest, but there really weren't too many people who could've handled a semi-feral, half-dragon man on the verge of a tantrum and walked away unscathed.
Jack could concede that he had the Chase-navigational skills to be one of them.
"I guess so," he said out loud. "Maybe it's just…not something I'd have expected you to say."
"Perhaps the Chase Young of your future wouldn't say it," Chase mused, "because I have already said it to you now."
Jack pondered that.
"New rule," he decided after a moment. "We're not going to theorize future paradox riddles. I have enough pressure on me without having to think about entirely new ways to screw this up."
Chase's laugh was loud and genuine and in spite of himself, it made warmth fizz in Jack's belly.
"I can accept your rule," Chase said magnanimously. "I would certainly not wish to cause you any stress."
Jack saw through that one instantly. "You're such a liar."
Sharp fangs peeked out from Chase's lips. "And you pretend as if you don't know me."
"Alright, alright, so I know you. Happy?"
"Yes."
Jack could hear himself faltering in the silence that followed.
Chase took it in stride. "Another thing you wouldn't have expected me to say?" he wondered.
"Uh…yes. To say the least."
"Because to be known is a weakness and I should want to rid myself of all weaknesses?"
"Well…yeah," said Jack, though he hastened to add, "Not that I'm not grateful that you aren't ridding yourself of me, I really appreciate that for the record."
Chase didn't bother to conceal his amusement. "Certainly. But you assume too much—being known by you is no weakness."
The vaguely (embarrassingly) giddy feeling that had started up somewhere in Jack's chest at Chase's surprising declaration was replaced by something heavier; a sinking realization.
"Right," he murmured. "Because I could never be a threat to you." Obviously. It wasn't like Chase just trusted him or anything. Jack was stupid to have even kind of hoped otherwise.
But Chase surprised him again. "Likely also true," he said with what could almost be a shrug, "but I was referring more to the power in mutual knowing."
"…Power?" Jack echoed stupidly.
"Of course. One you know well who knows you in return is the best kind of ally there is."
And there went that giddy feeling again.
"So…we're," Jack's tongue just barely avoided tripping over the word, "allies, then."
"Yes." Mild suspicion in the raise of an eyebrow. "Unless you would prefer otherwise."
"No, no!" Jack exclaimed. "Allies is…good. Great, actually." By way of explanation for his hesitation, he added, "I, uh…I don't have too many of those, to be honest."
"Neither do I," Chase said breezily, apparently accepting that. "You are the first in a long time."
"Since Bean?" Jack guessed.
Chase dipped his head faintly, acknowledging. "Since Bean," he confirmed. "Since before Bean. The last one I could trust as an ally was my own brother."
Jack vacillated just a moment before asking. "You can't trust him anymore?"
They were on opposite sides now, sure, Jack knew that, but Dashi was Xiaolin. Real, good Xiaolin too, unlike Guan or the monks of Jack's future who sometimes lapsed. Last Jack had heard, he was on the way to becoming bodhisattva so of course he was good.
Even if they weren't going to be collaborating on anything anytime soon for obvious reasons, Jack really didn't get the sense that Chase's twin had any plans to betray him—or even to actively oppose him. Enlightenment didn't exactly make a guy raring to fight.
But Chase said simply, "No, not anymore." In response to Jack's curious glance, he dismissively continued, "It was no great loss of an ally. It has been many years since I could say he knew me."
Jack spared a thought to his familial parallel to Chase's situation and realized he got it. His parents were hardly his enemy, but they probably wouldn't approve or be of any use whatsoever. Jack certainly wasn't about to call up mom and ask for advice on staging a coup to try and climb in the Heylin ranks.
(Granny was an entirely different matter, but that was neither here nor there.)
"You know me," Chase said, drawing Jack's attention back to him, "in a way that Dashi hasn't since we were children."
Jack blinked, momentarily thrown. "Not just since Bean?" That far back?
Chase snorted derisively. "Dashi distanced himself from me long before I turned. If he had been paying even the slightest bit of attention, he might've seen it coming."
Jack flashed back a couple days, to a cute little Chaseling one monologue shy of supervillainy; his own judgment that with or without his own interference, the kid was headed Dark Side.
"Yeah," Jack quietly agreed. "I saw it then. If Dashi managed to miss it for that long, he can't have been looking at all."
Chase exhaled loudly, just barely a huff. He was once more looking out over the lake, apparently spacing out again.
Just when Jack was starting to suspect he was being ignored and he was just about ready to squirm some more, Chase spoke.
"Maybe that's why I killed him."
And that…
Well.
Wow.
For a long moment, Jack was pathetically speechless. He'd known that Dashi died young. He'd maybe suspected it hadn't been natural causes.
He definitely hadn't guessed that Chase had killed his own twin brother.
That was…something else.
Chase's gaze—or rather, the lack of it—felt pointed and Jack realized that Chase was waiting for a response.
He's testing me, Jack thought with sudden certainty and knew his response to this was crucial.
Just being conscious of that allowed him to take a second, to try to react rationally instead of saying something stupid without thinking it through.
Was it…really that big a deal?
It felt vaguely weird to think a question like that in response to fratricide, but… Well, Jack had already accepted the fact that Chase had committed murder. This was currently his first one, but by the time Jack met him simultaneously eight years ago and some 1500 years in the future (time travel, ugh), Chase would have had to have racked up a much bigger body count than that.
If Jack was fine with that, as he'd decided he was, it didn't make sense to distinguish any kind of moral difference between killing a stranger and killing your brother. Actually, now that Jack thought about it, as Dashi's brother Chase probably had better grounds for killing him than anyone did. Certainly more personal right to than any stranger off the street would.
That in mind, Jack carefully, honestly replied, "That's as good a reason as any, I guess."
The vague feeling of tension in the air eased almost immediately.
Pass.
"Indeed," he heard Chase tease over his own relief. "In that case, you'd best be mindful of your attention span, if you value your life."
Jack laughed out loud. "That shouldn't be a problem," he said easily. "I've pretty much always paid attention to you. I can't think why the hell I'd stop now."
It was an honest statement—more honest than Jack usually was with people and probably way more honest than he'd have been within a fifty mile radius of the future-Chase if he planned on saving any face at all—but this Chase felt…different.
It was weird to think because at this point, Chase should've been about the same as his future self. He was physically the same since he'd made his choice and drank the Lao Máng Lóng. That was a given. His personality didn't seem fundamentally different either, but there was just something…
Jack couldn't put his finger on it. This Chase just seemed…smaller, somehow, more real.
Maybe it was the lack of armor?
Or maybe not, Jack thought distantly as Chase smiled at him, an expression bordering dangerously on fond as he reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder.
"Thank you," he said, quietly and so startlingly genuine that Jack actually froze a little, unable to process it right away.
Chase was perceptive. He noticed.
The feeling of the air changed again, a tiny bit of tension creeping back in. Chase's hand…twitched, there was no better word for the movement, so subtle that Jack probably wouldn't have caught it had that broad palm not been curved around his shoulder.
"You're uncomfortable," Chase said, simply like it was nothing more than a casual observation.
It felt a lot more important than 'casual' to Jack, though.
He answered honestly again, foregoing a prideful attempt to sound less confused than he really was by the statement. "Not really. I'm just…not used to being thanked, I don't think." He paused, trying to puzzle out why his own state of comfort would be something Chase concerned himself with and coming up with precisely nothing. "Why do you ask?"
Chase seemed to be gathering his words. Eventually, he said, "I would expect some discomfort considering the way we parted last time."
The words were decidedly vague, skirting around any real description, but Jack understood immediately.
Oh my god, he still thinks he scared me with…what happened.
It was admirable, in a way. It showed that Chase was keeping the promise he'd made—to have control—and didn't want to compromise his developing code of honor by stooping to violation again.
That was good. Of course it was good. Just…
It was kind of hard for Jack to focus on how admirable it was when he didn't think there'd even been a violation; when Chase's control was making him stingy about his touches when he actually, unusually seemed inclined to give them.
It was frustrating and there was no reason for it and that might've been why Jack's tone was just a little bit petulant when he asked, "Are you still on about that?"
Chase blinked at him. "What do you mean?"
"I said there was no harm done," Jack reminded. "And that was how long ago?"
"Two years," Chase supplied.
"Two years ago and you're still on about it," Jack scoffed, rolling his eyes for dramatic effect. (He drew no attention whatsoever to the fact that by his perception, the incident had just happened yesterday.) "Really, Chase, I forgave you."
Jack probably should've stopped there.
He'd reassured Chase, probably stabilized the conversation, and their 'working relationship' could've gone on just fine.
But the misunderstanding would've hung over it. Chase would've gone on thinking that what had happened was an assault when really…
Jack had wanted it.
He should have left it there. He couldn't risk soliciting anything from Chase, no matter how interested he still seemed to be when his…infatuation or whatever it was should have gone when Chenglei did. Interest or no interest, the integrity of the timeline was still hanging over Jack's head. That was too heavy for him to be messing around here.
But then, whether Jack could solicit or not, he was also in far too deep to want the little that Chase was giving him to stop over a stupid misunderstanding.
So, quietly and definitely against his better judgment, he said again, "I don't mind if you touch me."
When Jack found the courage to look up, Chase was watching him. His gaze was focused, cautious like Jack had just surprised him and now he was recalculating everything else he'd said and done.
That was probably exactly what was happening. You couldn't hand a master tactician some game-changing intel and not expect him to put it to use.
Before Jack could even start to wonder if that was a good thing or a bad thing, the hand still wrapped around his shoulder squeezed. The pressure was nothing even approaching painful, but it was impossible to ignore and Chase had Jack's full attention instantly.
"Really?" he wondered, as quietly as Jack had spoken before. "You don't mind this?"
Jack swallowed reflexively at the sound of Chase's voice. It should probably be illegal for him to speak with so low a pitch. "No," he managed to answer. "That's…that's fine."
Chase tilted his head just so, like a curious raptor. Jack distractedly let his eyes be drawn to the fall of hair over his shoulder and so he conveniently missed Chase catching him in the act of admiring it.
If he had been a little more 'there,' he might have seen the exact moment that Chase's expression went from curious to predatory.
Jack's heart sped up when he felt fingers trailing along his back, curling firmly over the opposite shoulder. A line of warmth—heat, really, braced solidly across his shoulders. Jack's mind blanked when he realized what it was.
He's got his arm around me, he thought and could go no further. Chase Young put his arm around me.
"What about this?" Chase asked, barely a murmur and that really, really needed to be criminal because a tone that husky was not doing Jack any cognitive favors. "Does this bother you?"
"I don't…"
Jesus Christ, Jack, you're not fifteen anymore, you don't have to think with your dick! Use your words!
Jack cleared his throat and tried to focus. "That's okay," he said, ridiculously proud of the way his voice didn't waver. "I'm not, uh. I'm not bothered."
He was. But Chase didn't really need to know about 'hot and.'
(…Because he was, unfortunately, pretty observant. He'd undoubtedly already picked up on it himself.)
As if to prove it, Chase's hand slid lower, fingers dragging slowly over Jack's arm. Jack was hyperaware of every inch of movement, even through the thick leather of his sleeve.
"Is this also acceptable?" Chase asked, ostensibly inquiring but Jack shivered, hearing the intent in his voice.
Intent.
It was looking a little different now that Chase was calm and in his right mind, but this was unmistakably a seduction. However improbable it seemed, Chase was really, actually still interested.
Jack was only distantly aware of the flush starting to color his face, his physiological response to Chase's question a resounding, God, yes.
He didn't trust himself to say it out loud coherently.
That didn't seem to concern Chase too much. He leaned in closer, his body a hot length along Jack's side. When Jack turned to look, his eyes were molten gold and eager.
"Jack," he said, just that one syllable but Jack heard multitudes.
Chase was interested. He was interested in Jack, specifically. If this kept on, he fully intended to have sex with him, right here in the grass.
Wow, this is gonna be hard to explain to Chase when I get back.
The whimsical, stray thought was more effective than a bucket of ice water.
Nothing had changed since the last time, or even the time before that. This was still the past, the thing he was supposed to avoid significantly altering at all costs.
What the hell was he doing?
Jack stiffened in Chase's half-embrace, firing on all cylinders trying to figure out how to extract himself from this situation. It was made all the more complicated by the fact that in no way wanted to extract himself—he just had to and he wasn't entirely sure how to do that…delicately.
Unfortunately, the most prominent image in his head was of getting to throttle Guan. Cathartic, sure, but not exactly helpful.
But then, the problem was soundly taken out of his hands.
Chase pulled back all on his own.
Belatedly, Jack remembered how damned perceptive Chase was—he'd have definitely noticed the sudden rigidity in his response. Jack just resisted the compulsion to wince when he risked a glance and saw Chase's expression.
The electrifying passion had gone from his eyes like it had never even been there. Chase looked colder than Jack had ever seen him outside of his own decade, but the chill this time was somehow directionless; muted instead of cutting. He looked…resigned.
The expression wasn't nearly as knife-in-the-heart as Chenglei's devastated face, or even as frustrating as Chase's self-disgust from only two years ago.
But it wasn't good either.
It's official, Jack decided, feeling like an absolute jerk. I am the goddamn king of mixed signals.
Jack opened his mouth, wanting to explain somehow, make excuses, spin whatever bullshit would be necessary to get past the unbearable awkwardness that was going to ensue. He wasn't sure it was even possible, but he had to try.
"Chase," he said, and that was as far as he got before he was suddenly unbalanced by a shove that left him blinking up at the clear azure of the midday sky.
A hand splayed out in the middle of Jack's chest and Chase was leaning over him, still sitting perfectly upright.
For one confused moment, Jack wondered if there was a cutting edge to Chase's coldness after all…but then, the hand easily pinning him was firm, but gentle. Chase didn't look angry or even annoyed, and the resignation was still there in his eyes but with an added dimension that Jack couldn't quite label.
"What about this, Jack?" he asked. "Are you still unbothered?"
At first, Chase's decidedly cheerful tone only compounded Jack's confusion. He'd just led Chase on and then epically cockblocked him and Chase's response was to be playful? To roughhouse?
He'd nearly voiced his total lack of understanding when he caught something forbidding in Chase's eyes.
And then he got it.
This was a change of subject. They weren't going to talk about it. Chase didn't need to hear whatever excuses Jack was going to make and by his cues, he wanted for them both to pretend that it had never even happened.
It was an avoidance, but it was an assurance at the same time. There was no way around the awkwardness, but this was Chase's way of showing him that it was okay; no hard feelings.
Jack remembered doing the same for Chenglei and nearly laughed bitterly out loud.
Playing dumb, huh? He could handle that.
Jack shifted up a little, bracing his palms in the grass and trying to sit back up. As expected, Chase's hand stayed right where it was, keeping him pinned.
"Wh—oh, come on!" Jack sputtered in mock outrage, pushing up harder to absolutely no avail. The fact that Chase was holding him down with one hand and no effort inspired a bit of real outrage to make the performance more realistic. "Get off me!"
"Why?" Chase wondered, all faux innocence. "Are you uncomfortable?"
"A little bit, yeah," with just a nip of sarcasm for effect. Jack struggled a little more, continuing to get nowhere fast, before finally groaning, "Alright, you've made your point! What do you want me to say? I surrender, you're the alpha dog, you win, already, come on!"
Chase nodded slowly. "That is pleasing to hear," he decided and did not move his hand.
Jack was amused in spite of himself. The mismatch in strength was just too obvious and both of them knew perfectly well that Jack wasn't getting up until Chase let him.
He laughed as he flopped back to the grass like a ragdoll, vaguely waving his hand. "Okay, okay, I really do give up." He chuckled. "You are evil, you know that?"
Jack said it—and meant it—lightheartedly, but Chase's response took just a bit too long for it to have been taken that way.
Chase's hand moved and Jack sat back up frowning, wondering if he'd already screwed up their fragile truce.
Then, "Yes," Chase said slowly. "I am evil."
From the sound of it, Chase had just had an epiphany.
It seemed strange that he should be realizing that now, when he'd already been Heylin for years, but then Jack had claimed to be evil for a long time before it was really a part of his identity. In comparison, two years wasn't too shabby.
As Jack watched him Chase seemed to relax, at first by slow degrees and then all at once. It was a relief, like he had just unburdened himself of something inordinately heavy.
Conscience, probably, Jack thought distantly. He had a feeling that his offhand comment had just done more to fix the 'problem' this go-around than any of the heartfelt assurances before.
Really, whatever got the job done. As long as Chase was done feeling bad about not feeling bad because being evil meant you didn't get all bent out of shape over the conscience you didn't need to have.
Everything was still on course to happen. Nothing was screwed up yet.
Jack felt a relief of his own at that. He wished that…a lot of things could be different about all this, but as long as he was fixing what needed to be fixed and his future was preserved, he thought he could live with it. That was the mature thing to do.
He was still gonna do something nasty to Guan when he got back home.
Jack cleared his throat, bringing Chase's attention back to him.
"It probably goes without saying at this point, but whatever it is you do about food," because the Xiaolin temple certainly wasn't providing it anymore, "can you do that for me, too?"
Chase snorted softly. "You always ask about food," he noted. "Is it my duty to feed you every time you appear?"
"Short answer? Yes," Jack declared. "It's your life I'm tied to right now and if you don't help me find something to eat, I'm just gonna be ten times more annoying about it the next time I see you. Besides," he added, "it could be years before I get to eat again, I have to ask while I can."
Chase caught the joke. A wry grin spread slowly across his face. "I see your point," he said. "Fair enough. Come."
Jack took the hand Chase offered and they both got up. The silence that followed was companionable. Platonic.
It wasn't everything Jack wished for, not by a long shot, but it was…fine.
Everything was fine.
-.-.-.-.-.-
A/N: So, I think I've officially decided three chapters at once is too optimistic. Or at least that posting that way keeps you guys waiting for a lot longer while I try to get enough together to post, and I feel like the people who are reading this would prefer to see less more often than a lot with months and months in between. ^^;
That said, I'll be posting this chapter by itself this time. Hope you all like it! :D
