~Another Day Older~

Vagrant Story, some shonen-ai, AU.

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It was a beautiful morning. The sound of melodic bells echoed through the streets of town, startling the sleepy carriage horses tethered in the churchyard. Ashley looked in the mirror for a long moment before giving up with a sigh. The slightly cloudy surface showed him nothing that he hadn't seen before.

Incomprehensible, what pen and paper told him. He had done the calculation twice, once in the Shadows while his lover slept, and again upon waking. The numbers were no less startling.

// … One hundred years…? How could a century pass so quickly? //

It was Sunday, but church was for other people. Instead he padded barefoot around his small house, aimlessly straightening tools and books. He tried to order his thoughts before he faced the chores of the day. It wasn't distracting enough.  Bemused, he found himself back in front of the mirror. There ought to have been wrinkles, or at least a gray hair. People weren't supposed to just go on and on and never age. It was unnatural. The Riskbreaker repeated the words to himself and snorted in amusement.

// … Unnatural indeed. //

His inability to age was the least of his worries in that particular category. Immortality had not been his goal. It had just been an inconvenient side effect of his adventures in that one particular ruined city.

Thinking of the shattered remains of Lea Monde still made him shiver slightly. What had happened, what could have happened, what /did/ happen. It was not the sort of thing a man could forget, even after a hundred years.  Memories of the yellow-granite city naturally lead him to seek out to the cultist, mentally reaching to the quiet corner of his mind that linked him to the dreamy world where Sydney usually dwelled.

Sensing something of his unease, the mage's consciousness awoke and flowed back along the link. The mental shimmer became a physical disturbance in the air next to him. Ghostly and yet undeniably 'real,' the blonde settled lazily back on his homespun quilt.

// You still live like a monk, Riskbreaker… you could afford a better bed, surely? //

"And whom would I appreciate it with… Should I take a lover here as well, do you think?" He smirked as his companion stuck out his tongue in childish rebuttal. "Leave it be, whelp. I've never noticed anything wrong with it. It is just a bed."

//You seem to enjoy mine well enough. //

"Perhaps I simply enjoy it for the company."  Ashley ignored his lover's incredulous look, resuming his morbid contemplation of the mirror.

Sydney tilted his head curiously. // Vanity? How unlike you… //

"It's my birthday today."

Surprised, the ghost sat up a little straighter. // Is it already? //

Time flowed erratically at best in the Shadows. The knight had often noticed that his partner did not feel its passage as he did.  Usually it didn't matter.

// We should celebrate this momentous day. // He paused at the lack of response, // Or maybe not, you seem troubled. //

"I just… never thought I'd live this long… that's all. If I were a man… I'd have been old and gray long ago."

// 'Tis overrated you know, aging. Think of all the trouble you've spared yourself, the joint aches, the hair loss, the missing teeth… It always seemed a lot of bother, if you ask me. //

"It is part of being human, Syd." The darker man sighed and sat down next to the ghost on the bed. Birthdays suddenly struck him as depressing occasions.

The cultist watched him carefully. // Do you miss it? //

"… I don't know that I do… Maybe… sometimes… when I think about it. I don't think men were meant to live forever."

// You fancy a little gray in your hair? To add to your aura of respectability? //

"You're teasing me." Ashley sighed in defeat. He could hardly expect his friend to understand something he couldn't even put into words.

// Yes, but you deserve it. Leave serious contemplation of life's deeper meaning to the poets, brawn. You'll save yourself a great deal of stress… //

The blonde curled around him in a way that would have been comforting if he had any physical presence. As it was, the close proximity to his aura sent crackles of tickling energy through the Rood tattoo on his spine. The knight resisted the urge to shrug the man off.

"I think I've grown tired of being old."

// I don't know… It could be worse… you could be /dead/ after all… // Sydney put an immaterial hand through the bed-frame and waved playfully at the larger man.

"You're not helping, whelp."

//Besides…// Grey eyes crinkled slightly at the edges when he tried to hide a smile. "Maybe I like you just the way you are…"

"There is that…"

// Feeling better? //

Wary of the sly look, the Riskbreaker raised a cautious eyebrow. "… I suppose so."

// Good. Because we have work to do. //

"Nobody works on Sunday…'Day of Rest' and all…" 

// Not for the wicked, beloved. //

One old adage deserved another. With the mage's ability to squirrel away volumes of trivia, he was not to be beaten at word games. Ashley watched his partner rise and peer out the window. It wasn't like he had anything better to do. 

"Right then, where are we off to this time?"

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by Lunar

Because the muses found the recent rash of birthday announcements/growing-old-worries  to be amusing.