Golden Sun belongs to Nintendo and Camelot, not me. Support them if you like the series! I just write fanstuff. And if you feel like borrowing any of my original ideas, please, go right ahead.
"Waitwaitwait... what?"
Sveta folded her arms stubbornly.
"Let us change the subject, please," she demanded. "Anything else. But I was perfectly happy with pretending Karis did not exist."
Matthew didn't know what to say.
For one thing, Karis had been his friend since childhood. He couldn't remember a time when the two of them – and Tyrell, of course – had been anything less than inseparable. Matthew felt that it was incredibly insensitive of Sveta to speak so harshly of her, even considering their recent troubles.
But even more importantly, Sveta and Karis had become fast friends over the course of their travels. As Jupiter Adepts, they had naturally bonded quickly. But they shared many interests as well; on the nights the group spent in the wild, the two would always share a tent, and they would often stay up chatting long after the sun had set. After the fall of Belinsk, and Volechek's apparent death, no one helped Sveta through the grief more than Karis did. Matthew himself hadn't even been able to find the right words to say during that experience.
"Sveta, look, you're allowed to hate anybody you want, but Karis is our friend-"
"Do you know? I think Ivan is still in the other room," the beastwoman interrupted. She wore the fakest of fake smiles over a venomous glare. "I would prefer to speak to him right now, I believe."
"Sveta, wait-"
Matthew then made the mistake of grabbing the girl's shoulder as she turned to leave.
With the slightest movement, she gripped the offending wrist, turned, and bent his whole arm sharply and painfully in the wrong direction. She stopped before causing any serious damage, but her intentions were clear. She moved up against him and held her face right next to his.
"Let us get one thing straight," she hissed. "I care for you as you do for me. I want this relationship to work. I do not intend for it to be abusive in any way. But if you keep pushing and pushing, trying to remind me of my time in that godsdamned cell, I will fight back. Because when I think about that torture, it hurts me all over again. The very MEMORY of that event causes pain. So if you talk about it, you hurt me, and if you hurt me, then with the gods as my witnesses, I will hurt you."
Matthew struggled against her, but to no avail. She was without match in hand-to-hand combat. It hurt, but at the same time, he could see the pain in her eyes. She looked insulted and betrayed, yet desperate and threatened. Her reaction had been defensive.
She eased her grip ever-so-slightly as tears began to form. She blinked them away and released Matthew's wrist entirely. He rubbed it with his other hand as Sveta took several steps toward the hole leading to the other room.
Then she paused. She took a deep, ragged breath, and then spoke quietly enough that Matthew had to strain to hear her.
"You asked why I did not list Karis among my friends," she muttered. "It is because she did it. By her own hands, she did it. She knowingly, intentionally put me through all that horror though I begged her to stop. She laughed as I bled. And all because of jealousy."
Matthew couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Sveta started toward the hole again. Her voice was empty and emotionless. "There is nothing human in that shell, Matthew. No moral being can do that to another living thing and just walk away as she did."
And as he silently followed after, unable to come up with a coherent response, he heard her utter one final curse.
"I wish she was dead."
Jenna only witnessed the end of it, but she already felt that she had seen enough.
Felix was on the ground, unconscious from the force of Garet's blow. Garet looked to be on his last legs, though he was physically almost uninjured. As he staggered to finish the other man off, Garet had a look of crazed victory on his face. He was practically foaming at the mouth. He raised a heavy boot over Felix's head.
"...Finally... won..." Garet growled.
Jenna hesitated for only a moment.
The gout of flame that burst forth from her hands struck Garet full in the chest, only a fraction of a second before he could curb-stomp Jenna's helpless brother.
It wasn't a particularly powerful burst, and as a Mars Adept, Garet was already resistant to it. But the surprise attack from his childhood friend sapped his momentum, and he had already passed out from exhaustion by the time he hit the floor. Some lingering embers clung to his clothing, but there was no lasting damage.
Jenna dashed to check Felix's vitals once she was sure Garet wasn't getting back up. When she finally felt a pulse, she rolled her brother over onto his back to check for damage. He was covered in dust and debris from being thrown through several walls. He had some minor scrapes and scratches all over, and a few nasty-looking red marks that looked like they would become bruises soon enough. The only thing that looked like a major concern was the broken arm, and Jenna knew from experience that a Mercury Adept could heal that with little trouble.
Even so, once she was certain her brother would live, Jenna allowed herself the luxury of breaking down with emotion. She let all of the tension and fear roll out of her, sobbing and cradling Felix's unconscious body. Thirty years... thirty years since they had last seen each other, thirty years that he'd apparently been in the thrall of a genocidal maniac, thirty years that she hadn't even known that he was alive... and in the space of an evening, she almost lost him again. The grief would have torn her apart.
On another day, she might have felt something about needing to deal with Garet in the manner that she did. After all, he'd been one of her closest friends for most of her life. But she knew from past experience that he couldn't be reasoned with when he got into that state, and after what Isaac had just done... well, she wasn't in the mood.
"Jenna, is everything alright?"
Speak of the devil.
Jenna didn't even grant Isaac the dignity of a passing glance. "Felix is still alive, no thanks to Garet. I'm taking him to Rief. He needs medical attention right away."
If the tension in the air hadn't been so thick, the image of the smallish redhead picking up her massive older brother would have been comical. But Jenna carried Felix with deadly determination, coldly walking right past Isaac in a way that implied she would have gone THROUGH him if she needed to.
"Grab your friend, if you like," she said, gesturing absentmindedly toward Garet. "I'm not taking responsibility for the guy who would have killed my brother if I'd arrived even a minute later."
"Jenna, Garet's OUR friend, and he's been through a lot-"
"Doesn't excuse him if his foot goes through my brother's head. Grab him if you want, but you're dealing with him. I've always been a firm believer that loyalty to your family comes first."
Isaac cursed under his breath as Jenna strode away. He picked up Garet in a hasty fireman's carry, and then hurried to keep pace with his estranged wife.
"Jenna, I'm sorry that all this has happened, but-"
"Weren't you supposed to be telling our son all about how you ruined our marriage?"
"That's not-"
"But I guess you had to act as if you still cared one bit about me, didn't you?"
"I said I-"
"You should become an actor. That stuff down in the prison really proved it to me, how you acted like you were going to defend me from that evil ex of yours when all you wanted to do was jump her bones-"
"Will you let me finish one godsdamned sentence please!"
If Jenna was at all intimidated by Isaac's outburst, she didn't show it. She did, however, stop in her tracks and incline her head toward him. His face was beginning to deepen in hue, which amused her in a small, twisted way. Her amusement didn't show through her hate-filled scowl.
"You have ten seconds."
"What, I have a time limit now-"
"Seven. Six."
And then Isaac lost it.
"Jenna, why are you trying so hard to convince yourself I've turned against you? We can still salvage this. Or do you not WANT to salvage this? Is that it?"
Her eyes narrowed to thin slits and her nose scrunched up in disgust. "...What are you trying to say?" she asked.
"I'm trying to say that maybe you're projecting. Maybe the reason you keep giving me these baseless accusations of adultery is because you got a little lonely these past four years-"
With a fierce, wordless growl, Jenna nearly launched herself at Isaac. Realizing that she was still cradling her fallen sibling, however, she caught herself. She tried her very best to cool her head. She really did.
But Jenna had always been a passionate woman. She set Felix down carefully against a wall in case she found she just couldn't help herself.
"How dare you?" she screamed. "How do you even have the gall to accuse ME of cheating on YOU? I loved our family, and I devoted myself endlessly to its well-being before you went and ruined it-"
"And so did I, but apparently that's not enough!" Isaac countered. "Even though I single-handedly raised our son from the age of thirteen onward, I apparently haven't made enough contributions to the 'family unit.' I even organized the whole trip that got us here in the first place in an attempt to make amends! Of course, this was right after the fight we had back in Kalay, where, if I remember correctly, Garet went back to your house to comfort you. He lost his wife, you threw out your husband, and you've certainly been friends for a while-"
"You SLIMY SCUMBAG-!"
Jenna drew her sword and held it at the ready as Isaac tossed Garet unceremoniously to the side. His own weapon remained in its sheath.
"I shouldn't be so surprised that you took Felix's side against him, anyway," Isaac spat. "You threw ME out easily enough."
It was all she could do to keep herself from running him through, right then. Every part of her mind screamed for his traitorous blood at that moment, but for one; somewhere, far at the edges of her consciousness, a voice cried out, telling her that what she was doing was wrong. It told her to rethink what she was doing. A memory flashed by, a thought of the pair of them sitting alone and happy on a hillside, married only a week before, dreaming of what the future would hold for the two of them-
She hissed out loud in frustration at her self-contradiction.
"I never cheated on you, Isaac," she said. "I loved you with every fibre of my being ever since... since you were there for me when my parents died!"
"What, a few weeks ago when Lady McCoy took out all of Vault?"
"Fuck you!"
Isaac's reflexive step backward saved his life as Jenna slashed her light blade right through the air that his torso had occupied a second before. His undershirt found itself with a thin slice through the front of it, and a line of blood came to the surface of his skin through the scratch beneath.
She watched him run a finger along the cut, blink in surprise at the blood, and then furrow his brow in thought. He unstrapped his greatsword from his back, dropped it to the ground, and threw his hands out to his sides, daring her to strike again.
Realizing how close she had come to killing him, she sheathed her sword. She spent a little bit of her pent-up fury punching a hole in the nearest wall instead.
"I'm trying my best, Isaac! Stop provoking me! I want to forgive you, but it's so very, very hard when you're doing such a great job of making me hate you!"
Isaac took on an eerie calm. He folded his arms directly below the cut across his chest, which helped emphasize the irreversible mistake Jenna had nearly made. His expression was completely neutral, blank as stone. His eyes seemed to pierce her very soul.
"Alright then. Carry on as you were."
Panting from an exhaustion that was far from physical, Jenna stopped to collect her thoughts. Her eyes met his. She didn't know whether to take it as a challenge, or...
"When... when I THOUGHT I had lost my whole family..." she continued, "back in Vale, beneath the Aleph Boulder... you and Garet were both there for me. I was suddenly, in the space of a night, an orphan. Even my older brother was gone. And... and you two felt responsible..."
Isaac nodded. "That was when we started practicing psynergy in earnest. We both felt that if we had had some more control over our powers, we could've helped stop the boulder. Garet even got the fool idea into his head that he could learn Venus psynergy if he tried hard enough... I still don't know how he managed to teach himself Move."
Jenna let herself sink deeper into her memories. Her anger evaporated as she drifted back to simpler times. Not necessarily happier times, not with the apparent loss of everyone that had ever been important to her... but still certainly simpler. She felt her eyes begin to water.
"You and Garet... you became my best friends after that. And you especially, because you lost someone in that tragedy, too. I lived with my grandparents, officially, but you and Dora filled in as my family. We all knew the pain of loss, and we all helped each other to work through it. You were the boy next door, the shoulder I could cry on, and... a strong, silent type. And I was thirteen years old myself, at that point. It was inevitable. I had a crush."
"And I, being a fourteen-year-old otherwise distracted by psynergy studies well beyond the scope of what most would consider reasonable, was completely oblivious."
A sound escaped from Jenna's throat, a strange mix of a giggle and a sob. "Yeah," she said, "you had no idea. And I loved a challenge. So the crush grew and grew... right up until you had the opportunity to be a knight in shining armor for me."
Isaac smiled sadly. His posture visibly relaxed, and he approached Jenna slowly and carefully.
"When you decided you were tired of waiting," he said, "I really never stood a chance. I remember you coming back from Vault, after helping rebuild it for so long, and you basically went straight to where I was living and asked me out on a date. That was all it took, and I remember thinking, 'How the hell could I have let this slip by for so long?' I was in love, too. Maybe I was all along and I never realized it."
"...So then why did you date Mia?" Jenna asked, wiping the unbidden tears away. "If you really loved me, how could you have done... well, all those things you did?"
"I was seventeen. I had no idea what it felt like to be in love. I thought that you and I were just the closest of friends, and that my relationship with Mia was deeper than that. But I guess it was just the opposite, and Mia and I realized that we didn't feel a hint of romance just a little before going up Jupiter Lighthouse."
"...And the second time?"
"We thought maybe we had made a mistake," Isaac explained, "and that now that we were rational adults, we could finally have a real relationship. It was about as shallow as the first time."
Jenna squeezed her hands into fists. She stared intently at her feet, wishing desperately that she didn't have to ask her next question.
"And..." she stammered, "what about the third time?"
A pregnant pause filled the room.
Jenna felt her emotions flare up again, and then settle. She no longer felt angry. She just felt weak, and confused, and... and she felt like everyone in the world was taking advantage of her.
"Jenna."
His voice took her by surprise, coming from directly in front of her as it did. With one hand, he grasped hers, squeezing it comfortably. With the other, he raised her chin until their eyes met once more.
"I don't believe the third time actually happened," he said, "and that's what I came here to talk to you about."
Jenna's fury snapped back with a vengeance.
"Oh, I see what's going on here," she said as she yanked her hand back. "You were trying to toy with my emotions so you could convince me to forget about it again. Nice try, really. But we both heard the truth, that all it took was a little push-"
"Jenna, I believed her too at first. But I need you to hear yourself explain it." Isaac spoke quickly and smoothly, making his points before Jenna lost control of herself again. "So tell me, in your own words, why you're so convinced that it was 'just a little push.'"
She watched him carefully for any sign of a bluff. He seemed honest... but then again, when didn't he? She had thought that she could read him like a book after all their years of marriage, but...
Fine. She'd take the bait. "I know that you still love Mia because we had it confirmed by an outside source, one who actually had reliable information about what happened that night."
"A villain."
Jenna blinked. "...What?"
"Our outside source," Isaac clarified, "was a villain. An admitted one. She was a warrior trained to kill us by a man who sees us as the only obstacle on his way to world domination. She was outnumbered and outmatched, and she couldn't possibly have taken all of us on in a fight, but... well, Felix DID warn us that she had a silver tongue."
Jenna gasped. "So she took the information that she DID have about us, twisted it to her own ends, and manipulated us so that we'd fight amongst ourselves..."
Isaac smiled weakly, and nodded. "After all, who better to defeat a Warrior of Vale..."
He drew his fingers across the wound on his chest and then held them out toward her, showing her that they were stained with sticky blood.
"...Than another Warrior of Vale?"
Jenna cried out in fury once again – this time, however, it was not at anything her husband had done.
"That... that colossal bitch!" she screamed. "She played us... she played me like a fiddle! I'm so, so sorry, Isaac, I never should have-"
"It's okay, Jenna!" he replied. "I believed her too. In fact, Sveta's the one who explained it to me. She made me look like a complete fool, but I think it was worth it in the end."
"Sveta did? Well, I guess we owe her one, then," Jenna said, as she bent down to pick up her brother once more.
Isaac similarly slung Garet back over his shoulder. "I think our debts are squared pretty evenly, actually," he joked. "After all, she's taking our son."
Jenna smiled. "We'll see. Anyway, we should probably be getting these two... and, uh, you, I guess... to a doctor. Rief's probably still parked outside, right?"
Isaac shrugged.
"Well, the good news is that if she lied about one thing," Jenna said, "she probably lied about the others. That means Felix wasn't responsible for Garet's wife's death. Hopefully we'll be able to convince him of the fact before they start fighting again."
Isaac nodded.
"Strong, silent type again, huh?" Jenna said with a laugh. "Well... I guess I can deal with that. I just... I don't want you to assume that we're right back together again. Not quite yet. But... hey, do you think Tuaparang really does have information on what happened?"
Isaac put his free hand to his chin, scratching it absentmindedly.
"Well, if the High Empyror is as obsessed with stopping us as he seems to be... then yeah, I wouldn't be surprised," he said.
"Then that's our next stop. Tuaparang." Jenna's eyes fell to her brother, still unconscious but alive in her arms. They then fell to his sword, still abandoned on the floor. That damned thing was nothing more than a symbol of pain for each and every one of them, and even if she COULD pick it up without passing out, she would leave it behind. Let some other fool find it.
"It'll be tough, but I think it'll be worth it," she continued. "We can see their mission reports with our own eyes. Maybe there'll be some other explanation in there, something to clear everything up for good..."
Isaac nodded again. "But for now, we should really check on Ivan. We left him in there with that woman alone, remember? I hope he's still okay."
"I hope so too," Jenna muttered grimly. "That Lady McCoy's caused us enough casualties already."
"NOOOO! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"
Mia pulled Caudgel back and tossed her away heedlessly, leaving her hands free to catch Karis as she fell. Working with years of a healer's experience, she laid the girl down on her front, the gleaming knife still sticking out perpendicular to her back. Mia pulled it out quickly and threw it aside, then took a quick account of Karis's health.
The accuracy was near-perfect – just an inch to either side and it would have destroyed a major organ. As it was, several vital blood vessels had been severed. Massive internal bleeding, unconsciousness from shock, not to mention the extra damage that had come when the knife was jostled about... Karis only had seconds to live.
Luckily, with Mia nearby, that was all she needed. A moment later, Karis was back in (mostly) perfect condition. She was still out cold, and her outfit had a fresh rip and heavy bloodstains, but she would live. Mia picked Karis up, glared at Caudgel, and set the poor girl inside the airship across from Karst.
"You deranged godsdamned psychopath!" Mia cried. "You nearly killed her! What were you thinking? What in the world could have POSSIBLY possessed you to make you think that would ever, ever be a good idea?"
Caudgel sat up slowly, still quite dizzy from being thrown several feet by an angry demigoddess. She hadn't yet gained her senses back well enough to answer.
"Karis is innocent!" Mia continued. "She has done nothing wrong to you, or to me, or to... to anyone who didn't tresspass against her first! Do you really think murdering an innocent teenage girl would be in His Highness's best interests?"
"I-"
"Of course it wouldn't!" Mia walked over and picked Caudgel up by the front of her robe. "Especially not Karis! His Highness needs powerful allies, right? Karis is a talented Adept in her own right, but what's more important is what her father brings to the table! We bring Ivan's daughter with us, and he'll follow to try and rescue her. Then Ivan gets a chance to meet the Empyror for himself. If we bring Karis's corpse, on the other hand, Ivan will follow and rip the entire city in half to get revenge. Maybe literally, too. He can kick up some seriously strong winds."
Mia dropped Caudgel, letting the other woman catch herself with her own two feet. She then turned and boarded the airship, glaring at Caudgel all the while.
"I can't believe His Highness trusts a backstabbing traitor like you," Mia muttered. "You're lucky I need you to fly me to the City."
Caudgel brushed herself off and then pushed past Mia to get to the cockpit. Noticing Karst still breathing unimpeded, she chuckled to herself.
"Bit of a hypocrite, aren't you?" Caudgel asked. "You were just planning to kill this defenceless woman-"
"Karst is hardly innocent. She's tried to murder me herself on at least two separate occasions."
"Even so. I don't think you're allowed to call me a backstabber anymore, especially after Felix left her in your care."
Mia shrugged. "Felix is a traitor now, too."
Caudgel sighed and shrugged. She opened up the door to the cockpit, and-
"W-wait a second!"
Both women spun to look out the airship doorway.
A young woman stood outside, clad in a simple green dress. Her long, brown hair looked rather frazzled – unsurprising, considering what she had probably just witnessed – and her eyes were wide with panic and excitement.
Mia thought she looked very familiar.
"Oh, what now?" Caudgel groaned.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Apologies to everybody who read Chapter 50 before August 26th, 2011. See, when I originally wrote the chapter, I decided to sit down until I finished it, which meant I stayed up until 5am writing it. By the end, I just sort of went, "screw it, I'm done." And that meant that the section leading up to Karis' betrayal was really, really half-assed. I've fixed it up to hopefully seem more believable – when you have an intelligent character like Karis, it's hard to give them the runaround without giving the audience the runaround, too. If you don't feel like re-reading it, you shouldn't feel obliged to. If you DO re-read it (or read it for the first time) and still find it lacking, tell me, because I don't want it to feel forced.
Side note, my biggest distraction outside of writing left me recently – it's kind of depressing, but it means I'll have more free evenings, and if I dedicate my time I should be able to burn through this story rather quickly. I'm tentatively planning to put out a chapter every 3 days until we hit the end. That means you can expect the next chapter late Sept 12 or early Sept 13. It's a snail's pace compared to how I started, but leagues ahead of what I've been doing recently. I'll adjust the update schedule as needs require.
Also, none of you reviewed Seekers. Shame on you! It's a good story, and I want to read more, and reviews are a good way to motivate people to write. -_-
Speaking of which... review responses! I'm trying to get in the habit of doing fewer responses, because otherwise I end up writing an extra 10 paragraphs that the chapter doesn't need. If I don't get to your review, then I apologize! It isn't intended to be an insult. It's just that this section originally started as a way to answer questions posed by people with PMs disabled, and it grew into a catch-all comment-on-everything event. It was bigger than it needed to be. If you've got a question, I'll answer it here, but I'll try to hold back otherwise.
barefootbean: Heck yeah sequels! I'm gonna write two stories in the same universe, and keep them going simultaneously. First one is "Means to an End," following the third generation of Warriors (OC heavy, but hopefully people won't mind too much). It'll be a similar format to DoJ, but probably/hopefully a lot shorter. Second one is "Chronicles of the Wardens," following the surviving Warriors of Vale and taking place about 500 years after the Golden Sun. It'll be episodic – maybe 5-10 chapters per arc – and the setting will be essentially modern, with a lot more political intrigue and a darker feel.
Meat Wisdom: Thank you so much for the TVTropes shoutout! It makes me feel all tingly inside.
And about the Empyror's manipulation, it isn't completely based in psynergy. It's habit-forming. If Mia had been zapped with the Masher within a few minutes of the spell being cast, she probably would've walked away unscathed, but she spent enough time under its influence that it made an impact on her psyche. It's like teaching a dog to do tricks by rewarding it with food, except the tricks are murder and the food is pure happiness. Both Mia and Felix have come to associate victory-at-all-costs (and making the Empyror happy) with emotional stimulation. You can see it coming back into play with Felix in Chapter 50, for example.
I should probably have tried harder to explain that in the context of the story, actually. Might get a chance to elaborate later on.
Lumino: A whole bunch of awesome stuff in review form, thanks a lot! Don't worry, DoJ won't die before its time unless I do. And thanks for pointing out my unfortunate tendency to do fakeout deaths. I'm gonna work on that – I've been pussying out of ACTUALLY killing/incapacitating people for a while. Karis, above, was actually just going to be "asleep all along" in the original draft. Ugh! So much more realistic this way. So much less of a cheap trick.
It's funny how different people react to the fluffy, sappy parts. Some people hate them, some people (like me) just want to do the Happy Spongebob Face at the very thought of it. Glad you like it, though, there'll be more where that came from.
(Lumino's writing a MatthewxSveta fic of his own, by the way. It's called Don't Cry, and he updates so frequently that you'll find it, more likely than not, at the top of the Golden Sun story list on . Go read and review!)
