Things Unseen, Chapter 5:

Trust May be Too Strong a Word

By Darknightdestiny

Lucca looked at the old man skeptically. 'Just like that?' she thought. The man had cheered up considerably given the circumstances, as if he had just remembered something that would be of use to them. She figured it would be wise to take a chance, since they apparently had nothing left to lose.

"You can help us?" she asked him, loud enough for the others to hear. Marle's head was the first to bolt up with new hope; she would jump at any chance given her if it meant bringing Crono back to them. She ran back to Lucca's side and watched the man's face with anticipation of some sign that he was filling them with a false hope, only trying to curb their sorrow. She saw that he was sincere and readying himself to continue, and so she waited patiently for an explanation.

The others soon filed around, and the man began to offer a bit of hope. This hope came in the form of a strange egg, which Ayla at one point tried to eat. The man kept glancing over at Magus, who had gone back to leaning against the railing and scowling at the mist that occasionally curled up around his feet. He didn't seem to be interested in the plan at all, and though anyone else would have questioned why on earth he had joined the rest of the group, the old man knew exactly why, for he saw most things quite clearly from his post near the gates.

The situation posed was simple in theory, but it would require a great deal of effort and commitment. Since Crono's friends were so committed to him, the effort needed would come naturally, as a result of that commitment. Lucca didn't need to worry about whether or not her friends would be willing to go along with it; they had felt that they were unable to complete their quest without Crono, and so they wouldn't be losing anything in the way of the future if they sacrificed their well-being to try to bring him back. Besides, they had begun to think of him as more then their leader; Lucca had known him her entire life, but the rest of them had come to look at him as their close friend as well. Traveling together on such an important mission, the group had become close, like a second family even. Lucca's thoughts wandered to what it would be like when they finally had to part ways.

They were to take the egg to Belthasar's Nu in 2300 A.D., where it would tell them what to do with it, and offer them help in getting anything else they would need. The old man told them that being from the future, Belthasar had been able to study all the available theories of time travel that had been developed during the reign of the human species, and because of that, he would be able to help them best. The egg held a certain potential; there was no guarantee that it would hold the power to bring Crono back, but if they held on to their hope, they would never feel the need to give up, and if they continued to work for it, some day they would find a way to see him again.

When he was finished explaining his idea to the group he turned to Magus again and said, "I see...so that's your story..." Magus turned to the man with a wary look, searching the man's face to find the thing he was referring to, whatever it was. How could that man know his story? He went on, his mouth slowly turning up. "You've become quite formidable as well."

Magus' short appraisal of the man's expression was halted immediately as he recognized him. In fact, he had seen him only half a day before. "I get it. It's you." Short and to the point, Magus made it clear that he understood the man's allusion, and it wasn't long before Lucca caught on. Who else would Magus have known in his lifetime that had the opportunity to come to the End of Time, and would also know of all these things?

"Wait...are you Gaspar, the Guru of Time?" Lucca asked him.

He looked into her eyes, lost in the memories of his home. "I believe that is what they used to call me...a long time ago."

Smiling, she nodded to him and looked around at all the others. They nodded back and turned to go, walking towards the Epoch. Lucca walked over to Marle and took her hand, holding the egg out with her own, and placed the object in the other girl's hand. Lucca closed Marle's hand around the egg and said, "Keep this safe at all costs. Keep it close to your heart, understand? We won't let anything happen to you...just concentrate on this one thing, okay?" Marle nodded her head and followed the others over to the giant time machine. Magus waited at the stairs, still unfazed by the whole event.

When Lucca reached Magus, she stopped to talk to him again. "You'll be coming with us until our agreement is up."

He shot her a sideways glance. "You want to keep an eye on me, do you?" he asked, a small smile of amusement playing on his face, along with slitted eyes. Why should she trust him? From the look he was giving off at that moment, paired with his comment, it seemed as if he was thinking of all the satisfaction he would get from doing something awful to the others the moment she left him behind. She suspected this was the effect he was going for.

"If you want the truth, I do. I don't trust you at all, Magus. I don't even know you, but I do know you're not one to play fair."

Both his brows shot up in feigned surprise, the small smirk still evident. "Now what on earth makes you say that?"

Lucca just rolled her eyes at him and then shot her arm out to point over in Frog's direction. She directed a hard gaze of annoyance at him, something in it saying, "Uh...hello? Remember that?!"

"Ah...I see." His eyes squinted up even more and his smile grew wider. "Are you afraid I will turn your friends into forest creatures?"

"I don't see why this is so funny."

"I wouldn't expect you to."

"That...is very childish of you."

"Do you think so? I think it is ironic, a much more sophisticated sense of humor, but I can see why you don't look at it from my point of view. I will go with you in any case; I wouldn't trust you to do this correctly anyway," he condescended to her, "but let me make myself clear on one point. You don't tell me what to do." His smirk had started to fade. "You may have control over this little entourage of yours, but I am not a part of it. I am here for one thing, and one thing only- two if you count your aim as one and my aim as another- and that is to get my revenge on Lavos. I'm not doing it for the planet, or for any of its miserable people. I am helping you, because you are going to help me get what I want. I am not one of your friends, only a temporary ally, and I only follow one person's orders. Mine."

"...You need our help then, you admit that?"

"You are depending on me as much as I am on you. But you knew that right from the start; you were smart enough to figure that out. I'm not asking that you trust me. I wouldn't trust me. But you can't help it, because right now you don't have a choice. If you think you can do it alone, be my guest, but I seriously doubt that you can. It's not trust, child, it's survival."

"...I really don't want to depend on you of all people for survival, Magus." Lucca's face twisted into a look of resentment at the thought.

"Oh, poor girl," he mocked her. "I suppose you can call it a necessary evil."

"What if we try to go it alone? What makes you think we can't do it?" Lucca looked a bit scared in anticipation of his answer, but she held her own nonetheless. Magus simply nodded his head over in the direction of Marle, who was standing over by the ship, watching Ayla tumble around on the floor, expressionless at the sight of the cavewoman's sommersaulting.

"Do you see that girl over there?"

"Her name," she retorted in another bout of annoyance, "is Marle."

"That is irrelevant. Do you see her face? What do you see there?"

"...Sadness."

"No. There is sadness, but it stems from hopelessness."

Lucca turned her head back to Magus, who was still looking off into the distance, but past the others rather than at them. "And since when were you a believer in hope?"

"I'm not. I think the situation is completely hopeless, but I'd rather go out giving everything I can to make that...thing...pay for what it has done. The difference between that girl-"

"Marle."

Magus sighed. "The difference between Marle and myself is that where hopelessness will not affect me whatsoever, it has broken her spirit. I have seen her twice previously, and when I did...she reminded me of my sister; very lively, that one. Now she seems nothing more than a shell, and I don't believe that she'll ever be the same again, unless we get that ignorant boy back. I'm still not convinced that she'll ever be the same, but she might be better for it. I on the other hand, have lived in darkness my entire life, and it's not going to deter me now."

Lucca stuck one hand on her hip and glared at him, begging him to give her a break. "You honestly think that Marle will be better off if she became more like you?"

"I only think that she should try to see things more sensibly."

"She is not naive, if that's what you're implying."

"Not anymore, she's not. That is what has destroyed her, because she was weak. And I wasn't implying, I was stating it for a fact. Did any of you honestly think that he wouldn't die? Because I doubt she believed he would die. She must have seen him as invincible. Even I could see the way she watched him when we fought at the castle, worrying over him as if by one look she could wish away any harm that would come to him. She looked at him the same way when he died, lost in a trance. She was nothing but a lovesick girl who couldn't tell fantasy from reality."

"You're a cruel and bitter, miserable man."

"Indeed. They say that ignorance is bliss."

"We are not ignorant."

"...If you say so."

Magus turned and walked towards the ship, prepared to join the rest of them on their journey to restore Crono. Lucca watched him go, her brain burning with rage, though outside she retained her composure. What she truly wanted was to smack the mage upside the head and see how he dealt with her own little version of reality, but she was afraid of being ripped apart with his extremely large threshing blade. She wasn't quite ready to test his patience any further than she already had.

She questioned herself again on the issue of why she had brought him along. She knew she didn't trust him, though on further exploration of her motives, she found that she wanted to. So afraid that he'd butcher her friends on their first night together in an inn, she still wasn't prepared to let him throw his life away on revenge if he could make it through alive. She didn't think he and she could do it alone, but she thought that maybe if they got Crono back, they would have a chance.

She didn't expect the others to want to help Magus defeat Zeal. She also thought that it would be unfair to ask Crono to help after everything he gave up to help them the first time, only to be awakened to do it all over again. But maybe if Magus helped them, they'd be willing to help him defeat her. She suspected that there were other reasons for his wanting to do so that didn't have to do with Lavos directly, but she figured she would try to extract those from him later. Right now, she had to get Crono back safely for all of them.

After that, she had made a deal with Magus, and she couldn't go back on it. She knew he couldn't do it by himself, but she was also positive that the two of them couldn't do it alone. She didn't want to take Marle along, even though she knew the princess would be the one most likely to take pity on the sorcerer, other than herself. But Magus didn't want pity; he wanted action. Ayla, then? No...she wouldn't understand. Or would she? No, Lucca would take full responsibility for the deal she'd struck; she realized the others would need her as well if they were to finish their quest. In that case, she had better make it back alive.

If that was what he wanted, that's what he would get. It wasn't like she had a choice anyways, was it? He would hold her to her word, because that was what he needed from her. She hadn't expected him to admit his need to her so readily, but she assumed he didn't expect her to make a big deal about it. He made it clear to her that it was only human nature to strike deals like their own, though he would never call it "helping each other". He would call it "using each other", because that's what evil magicians with reputations to uphold do with the people they meet.

Lucca sighed and walked off towards the Epoch.

(A/N): ::winks:: So...if action is what he wants then that's what he'll get, eh? Hee.

Wait, where was I? Oh...right, simple greeting. Hi! (And there it is.) I tried to get this one up sooner than the last update. I apologize again, and I feel the need to explain myself. I've been caught up in the middle of several projects, one being my Mid-term for my Art History course. If I don't maintain my grades, I'll lose my scholarship and owe a bunch of money that I just don't have right now. Also, I just moved into my own place, so I've been running around like a chicken with a severed head, trying to get everything in order, while trying to obtain a reasonable income so I can support myself. Simply put, it's been hard to try to find time to do everything there is to do. I make too many commitments, and now I have 4 fics going on simultaneously. Lucky me, one of them will only be a 3-part fic, but still.

Anyways, the sob story is over. Just wanted to explain myself and let you know I didn't give up and not write just because I "didn't feel like it" or didn't care. I've just been...busy, that's all.

I apologize if Magus seems out of character. I'm trying my best to keep him where he should be but also get my plot to work. Hope you are enjoying this.

...Thanks for still reading though. I have the nicest reviewers :)