Lukas's abandoned shouts ring through Aiden's head for the whole rest of the day. Justifiably angry, left-behind Lukas. Confused, worried, searching-for-answers Lukas.
Breathing, alive, real Lukas.
He can't wrap his head around that one fact.
Alive, alive. How is he alive? What changed?
He has not fully understood himself in years.
Why did you make that choice? Why did you say that? Why did you agree to go with her? Why did you pledge your loyalty to what you knew was the wrong person? Why did you walk away?
He doesn't know.
Essa is nowhere.
He knows, of course, that she must be somewhere. But she does not seem to want to be found, which makes her as good as nowhere.
He searches the underground fortress for ages. She is not in her quarters, nor any of her usual haunts. She would not be anywhere aboveground, not after that nasty fight.
On some level, Aiden does not even know why he's searching for her. He wants to know, of course, how the appearance of the two Primes will change her plan, but that is not urgent. He wants to demand if she knew that the Lukas of that timeline was still alive, but he already knows that too. Of course she knew. She knows everything.
Maybe he'd just rather not be alone.
Because, at the moment, he feels very, very alone.
Finally. There she is, in the shadows of the map room. He could swear he looked down here earlier, but maybe she wasn't here then. Or maybe he just didn't look hard enough.
Aiden does not like this room, not in the slightest. It makes him uncomfortable, all the charts and notes and scribbled drawings splashed messily with black ink. He is uneasy with how Essa acts when she's in here as well, all cryptic and ominous and strange.
Of course, she is cryptic and ominous and strange even at the best of times, but in here, it is somehow much more noticeable.
She is standing in front of one of the tables, tracing her fingers down a shambolically scrawled list of events. He doesn't know which timeline she's currently studying, and doesn't particularly care.
Essa doesn't look up when he pushes the door open and enters the room, though her pet pig comes bounding over to sniff at Aiden's legs and beg for pets. Aiden obligingly scratches behind the pig's floppy ears, thinking that Reuben acts more like a dog than anything else.
"How was your chat with them newbies?" Essa asks. She is still not looking at him, and, were they not the only two people in the room, Aiden would wonder whether or not she was talking to him.
Instead of answering her directly, he says, "That was Lukas in there. Really, honestly him. He recognized me."
"Yep. Thought so."
She is very infuriating sometimes, and she knows it. Aiden doesn't bother to question why she's being difficult at the moment, just rests his hands on the desk and leans towards her. "How? How is it him? Why is he alive?"
Essa finally glances up at him. She does not have her bandanna on anymore, and he is once again struck by how strangely pretty she is. There is a strange sort of delicateness to her face that does not suit her personality, accented by her slanted brown eyes and framed by her long black hair. Her eyes drop back to her research, and she says in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, "Deviations, Aiden. Things happened differently there."
He huffs. "I know that. But what? What changed that let him live?"
She has the gall, then, to look directly into his eyes and lie. "I don't know."
She knows. She knows exactly what caused every single deviation, and she knows how she could've changed it. She knows, she knows, and he is aware that she does.
With another annoyed huff, he leans away. "What are you going to do with them? They're prisoners for now, but are you planning on leaving them there forever?"
She assumes a thoughtful expression. "Mm…no, not forever. I'll figure out what to do with them once my plan is complete. Once my world is perfect again, then I'll deal with them."
He scowls. Essa's plan is a twisted, complicated thing, and even after years and years by her side, he is still not entirely sure of all its details or how it ends.
That does not matter too much, though, because he has promised to be loyal to her, and he's not intending to go back on that just because he doesn't understand how her brain works. He knows she has good intentions and is striving for a happy ending for all of them. That is enough. It has to be enough.
So he follows her lead. He does what she says. He is her guard, and her informant, and whatever else she needs him to be.
He has since stopped asking himself why he chose to be any of those things.
Essa looks up at him again, with earnest brown eyes. "I'm so close, Aiden. It's unbelievable. I'm so, so close."
"How close?" He presses. The answer will not mean too much to him, and he knows this, but he asks anyways. He has never been good at understanding how exactly the timelines work and why they do what they do.
She purses her lips. "I don't have an exact time. All I can really do is wait until the newest timeline is ready, but after that it will only be a matter of a week or two. As long as I can keep the other Primes out of the way, everything will be fixed within the month."
A faint smile darts across her face. "Less than a month." she says, obviously savoring the words. "I've been working on this for how long, and now it's less than a month before everything's set right. Everything."
She again returns her attention to the sets of papers that cover the desk, picking one up and examining it briefly. Aiden watches mutely as she does this, his head full of too many thoughts.
She has indeed been working on this for a long, long time. It was roughly six years ago when she first learned of the timelines, first began delving into the secrets that now drive her entire life.
Six years ago, there had only been two deaths. She had not yet lost everything, not yet begun to spiral down into the dark, vengeful woman Aiden knows her to be today. She had been fascinated by the timelines, but she had not yet begun to weave her elaborate plan. That came later, after more tragedies occurred and more lives were lost.
Sometimes, Essa frightens Aiden greatly. She says strange and terrible things, reacts to events in ways that he doesn't know what to do with. She has always been a little unusual, but sometimes her uniqueness is too uncanny for even him.
Sometimes, in these moments, he forgets that she was not always like this, that many years before, she was simply a girl with dreams of being a hero. A girl with friends, in a life she enjoyed, a girl who still went by her own first name.
Though she does not have a place in the graveyard alongside said friends, that girl died a long time ago.
"What are you going to do?" he asks.
This is a common question between the two of them, almost like a game. If the mood is lighthearted, he will ask what she will do when she succeeds, and she will rattle off something optimistic and hopeful and never-quite-within-reach. If they are feeling a bit more somber, he will ask what she will do if she fails, and she will say something grim and determined and occasionally terrifying.
She will never, ever, say anything about giving up.
Now, she looks briefly up at him again, waiting for him to continue. He is still not sure which question he is going to ask.
Essa takes matters into her own hands, flipping idly through a few pieces of paper before finding the one she wants.
"When I succeed…I'm going to go here."
He looks politely at the sketch she holds up, which looks a little like a portal and a little like a gate and a little like neither of those at all. Across the top is written, in her familiar handwriting, the word 'Else'.
"Else." He comments. "Where or what the fuck is that?"
Her smile is bright and wicked as it flits across her face. "Nowhere, and nothing. And yet, at the same time, everywhere and everything."
He rolls his eyes. Essa is full of riddles, and while her more cryptic ways of speaking can be fascinating at first, they get obnoxious very quickly.
She sits down at the chair behind the desk, leaning her elbows on the wood as she speaks. "There's a something else out there, Aiden. Something so far beyond everything we know. A brand-new dimension, but not like these ones. Different, in nearly every way. No monsters. No blocks. No god-forsaken Primes."
He shakes his head, trying and failing to picture a place like that. "How can something like that even exist?"
"That's one of the many things I have yet to find out. It might take me awhile, but I will. You can bet I will."
He gives her a questioning look. "Really? So, after taking the reins of the dimensions and plunging everything into chaos, your next big scheme is to travel to another universe entirely?"
She gives him a demure smile. "That does seem like a logical next step, doesn't it?"
"Essa, I think every 'logical' bone in your body has long since deteriorated, if any ever existed at all." he says with a frown. "What are you even going to do in this new universe, anyways?"
She arches a dark eyebrow at him, her elegant face the very picture of secrets yet to be told. "Well, that depends on what's there, and what the people are like, and how I'm feeling at the time, and how easy it all would be to, I dunno…conquer."
Somehow, he is not surprised that she says this. He has, after all, heard quite a bit of her idea of a perfect world. But for some reason, the words settle uncomfortably somewhere near his stomach, giving him an overall heavy, uneasy feeling.
He doesn't enjoy the sensation of doubting his leader.
She does not seem to notice his discomfort, returning to poring over her pages and pages of plans like she was before he arrived.
"It takes a very broken, twisted soul to do the things you're planning to do. You know that, right?" Aiden remarks as he turns to go.
Essa's slight smile widens into a wicked grin. "Thanks. I thought you'd never notice."
Shaking his head, he lets the door slam behind him.
He walks without aim, and somehow eventually comes to a stop in front of the iron door that leads to the obsidian trap cell. The same cell that the four new prisoners are in: the two Primes, the little traitor boy, and Lukas.
He is held in fairly high regard among Essa's other followers, high enough that Romeo does not hesitate to move out of the way. He does not trust the former Admin, having seen what he did to Beacontown at the height of his power. But Aiden, who has been a part of Essa's inner circle for a number of years, has nothing to fear from him anymore.
At least two of the four were in the middle of a fairly heated argument when he approached, but they go quiet as soon as they realize he is the one paying them a visit.
He doesn't fully know why he's down here, but he is.
Lukas- gentle, handsome, intelligent, alive Lukas -immediately moves towards him, blue eyes staring through the invisible barrier blocks. Aiden briefly panics when he realizes he doesn't have his bandana over his face, but just as quickly remembers they already know his identity.
"It really is you?" asks Lukas. Aiden nods once.
"It really is you." he echoes.
Lukas's eyes are confused and sad as he inquires, "What did…am I really, you know, dead in this timeline?"
"Seven years ago." Aiden says by way of reply. "You fell from the Witherstorm, and you broke just about every bone in your body, and you were dead before any of us even had time to fully realize what happened."
Lukas reels back slightly, while the female Prime- Julia, he thinks her name is -steps forward. Her eyebrows are raised in surprise, and she indicates Lukas with a jerk of her hand. "He fell from the Witherstorm?!"
Turning his head only an inch towards her, Aiden answers, "Yes. He refused to let Essa go alone. He said it would be too dangerous, not to mention terrifying, for her to go up on her own. He offered to go with her. She didn't say no. She came down alive, and he did not."
The two Primes exchange a wide-eyed look, the shock between them so thick one could probably cut it with a sword. Part of Aiden wants to ask what happened instead, in their timelines, but he doesn't.
Radar, the young traitor who is not yet a traitor in his timeline, is the next to step closer and ask a pointless question. "If Lukas isn't…around anymore in this dimension, why are you here?"
Again, Aiden doesn't deign to fully look at him as he simply says, "I'm loyal to Essa. I may not always agree with her methods or understand her plans, but she's the one in charge, and that's it. I follow her."
He is aware that he did not fully answer the question, and the boy frowns as he realizes this too.
"Ugh, this is so confusing. I can't figure out what's actually a deviation and what's just…the future." Julia mutters. "Obviously, there's things that happened or didn't happen here that throw things off, but how does it affect the end product…?"
"And is there an 'end product? Where do the timelines 'end', if they do at all? Do things just keep going on forever, becoming more and more different from each other as time goes on?" contributes Radar.
Aiden is not concerned by or even interested in their discussions. He does not understand the timelines well, partially because he doesn't care.
Lukas looks over at him again, and Aiden's mind is abruptly filled with unfamiliar thoughts and questions he doesn't want the answer to. He tries to think of something he does want to know.
"The way you reacted when you figured out who I was." he starts. "Are we still friends, in your reality? After all this time, and everything?"
His voice is uncharacteristically quiet and soft. In stark contrast, the male Prime lets out a loud and somewhat obnoxious burst of laughter, leaning back against the far wall with a false air of nonchalance.
"Still friends? Nah. You're screwing him."
The glare he receives from Lukas is fast and sharp, though it doesn't seem to affect him all that much. With an aggrieved sigh, Lukas looks at Aiden again, his face slightly redder than before.
"Yes. We are still friends. Things were rocky for a while, and we weren't talking, but we got through it."
Aiden nods slowly, while the Prime makes an amusedly disdainful noise. He is wondering again how his life would've been different if the version of Lukas he knew had survived. Would he still have chased Essa up to that accursed city in the sky, hungering for revenge? Would he still have gone with her, on the mad quest through the Portal Network? Would he still have stayed by her side long enough to have to go through all the torture he did when the Admin took over Beacontown?
He wants to stay, wants to learn more about their timelines and how things could've been. Thinking like this and asking those questions ignites a strange sort of pain in his heart. It burns like anger and it aches like loss, but there are times when he welcomes that feeling.
Not now, though. He can't afford to right now.
He turns away, aiming for the door again. "I'm sorry things had to go this way. I wish…well, everything could've been different, for me and for all of you."
The door has already opened in front of him when he hears Lukas's voice, and he turns on instinct. After not hearing that tone for so long, it's impossible not to respond to it.
"Aiden…if I can ask…why are you working for Essa? She seems like a pretty…dangerous person. Why would you want to be allied with someone like her?"
He gives Lukas a long, sad, look. The blond man stares back at him with earnest eyes, begging for a valid answer. Aiden sighs softly, turning to leave for good.
"There's nothing else left."
The graveyard is misty and silent in the cool evening air. He very, very rarely comes here on his own; it's normally Essa who visits this place and him who lags behind.
But he feels duty-bound to go there today.
He knows the names of every single person who lies below the dirt here. He was even there when several of them died.
Goosebumps spring up on the skin of his bare arms, though it's not easy to tell if they are caused by the chill of the air or the chill in his heart. This place makes him uncomfortable, in a strange, slithery way that causes him to glance repeatedly over his shoulder at every hint of a noise.
But he lays his nervousness aside as he approaches the very first of the seven graves. They are spaced out into two rows; three headstones, then four.
He pauses, then kneels next to the second of the upright stone slabs. Even without reading the name carved there, he knows very well who rests below the dirt. He knew the boy when he was alive, and he was there when that boy died. It's so impossibly real, the unbearable truth of it weighing on his consciousness for the past seven years.
And yet…
And yet, right now, that boy still stands, still breathes, still lives. And yet, in another time, he survives.
Aiden reaches out and brushes his fingers along the top of the headstone, as if testing to see if it really is there. His body is still, but his mind is a flurry of motion.
What if Lukas hadn't died?
Who would he be, if his life hadn't been so quickly ripped away?
Who would Aiden be, if he hadn't lost that precious friendship that kept him stable?
What if he'd never been ensnared by Essa and her plans?
How would his life be different?
Would he even have a life at all?
The questions circle his head, around and around, looking for something he knows can't be found. Getting him lost in a loop of impossible pasts. It's far too late to find the answers to any of these queries; all the possible paths have already long deteriorated.
He knows this. He knows this very, very well.
But he can't help but wonder.
He sits alone, unmoving, as the darkness becomes thicker and more complete, and the night fills slowly with the sounds of mobs moving about. He sits alone, and when he finally rises, his joints are stiff from the long lack of movement.
Aiden doesn't know why he is loyal to Essa. She is dangerous, and unpredictable, and she's already gotten so many other people killed.
But he follows her anyways, because what he said to this new Lukas is true.
He doesn't have anything else left.
