Ollen70: Hey, what do you know? One whole chapter, and I haven't been overwhelmed by my own sappiness yet. Oh well, give it time.

As always, Crono Trigger doesn't belong to me. Magus, Ayla, Crono, Marle, Lucca, Frog, Robo, Leene, Gasper, Melchior, Belthasar, Banta, and Schala are not original characters, as anyone who's reading this probably already knows. That said, Please review this when you finish. It helps me write more effectively if I know what people think.

Chapter Two -- The Builder

"Where could he be?" Lucca asked herself, before it dawned on her that she was actually worried about Magus. "He can take care of himself," she said aloud once more for what must have been the seventh time that morning, but something inside of her refused to let it go at that. Magus wasn't as stalwart and cold as he pretended to be, that much was certain. In a moment, she remembered the look on his face when Schala had transported them away from the doomed palace beneath the waves. To spend a lifetime searching for someone, only to be sent away helplessly when they were finally within reach...would that happen to her, if she ever came close enough to retrieve Crono? Would time leave her bitter and cold if she tried to cheat it, as Magus had?
Wearily she abandoned the inn and braved the cold, at least for a few yards. The blacksmith's house in Truce was close by, and even though she couldn't say for certain, it was her sneaking suspicion that the kindly blacksmith Banta and his wife were, or would be, related to her somehow. Since this whole experience had started, she'd given up trying to keep her tenses straight. The man was ingenious for his time, but Epoch was a perplexing combination of technology from the ancient past and the far-distant future. She doubted if anyone other than Belthasar himself would have been able to fully fathom it.
For a moment she considered using her time key and traveling through the portal in Truce Canyon, not far away. Belthasar was still alive, in a sense. Before perishing, he copied all his thoughts somehow into one of the many, highly strange creatures known collectively as the 'Nu.' If he was of no help, she still might find her way to Melchior, the old sword smith living near the village of Medina in the present, or to the old man, eternally sleeping beneath a lamp-post in the abyss that was the End of Time. She figured that one did not come to the End of Time accidentally. Whomever he was, he must surely know of the guru Gasper.
It was a good plan, with every possibility of success. Doing something, anything, would be better than standing over a glowing forge, instructing a man with too little knowledge on how to repair parts that she herself might not ever understand. The problem was her own apathy. As much as she had tried to continually dismiss what Magus had told her, the words echoed inside of her, growing more influential the more she let them rebound.
"It doesn't matter." She said aloud, causing Banta to raise an eyebrow at her. He hadn't heard what she'd said over the racket he made with his hammer, and she made no move to explain, feeling stupid. The others would have an absolute fit if she went off on her own. Or at least they should. Stranded, without ship or time key, anything that could go wrong probably would - Lucca had long since come to the realization that the world had no intention of playing fair.
Nonetheless, the idea of Magus out by himself still bothered her. She told himself that it was because his frame of mind was dangerous, and he might decide to hurt himself. Without him, she might not be able to save Crono...
'Is that really why you're worried?' The other part of her asked. 'Isn't there something that you haven't admitted to yourself yet? Something about him?'
'No! Stop it!' She thought forcefully. 'Enough of this!' With that she excused herself from Banta's smithy, encouraging him to go ahead and take a break for awhile, and that she would return just as soon as she took care of something.
"I'll tell Robo what's up, find Magus and bring him with me, then go to Belthasar and fix Epoch." She said, her voice swallowed almost instantly by the whiteness all around her.
"That pompous jerk," She added with a bit of venom, thinking of all the places Magus might have vanished to. "Thinks he's the only one in the world. Never takes time to think about all the trouble he causes.." Still muttering impotently, she wandered in a generally western direction. Without the key, he would have had no reason to travel north to the canyon, nor would he head to Guardia castle, north and a bit west. Even still, those omissions left a great deal of territory for her to search. "He'll be sorry for this.."

The rail of Zenan bridge was wet with snow, as the sun had broken through enough to make the floorboards hazardous. Any minute now the hole in the clouds above would seal itself and the storm would begin again. Running a finger idly along the relatively new wood, Magus paused a moment.
It was his army that had smashed the bridge in the first place, leading to the new, more broad one on which he now stood, but the snow cared little over how well the bridge was constructed. In any way possible, it would do its best to foul his feet as he walked, or to chill him.
'Wherever I go, winter follows. It hunts me, from 12,600 years in the past to now. Schala used to love the snow...'
For a brief moment, Magus wanted nothing more than to embrace the winter and plunge into the icy tributary below, to forever end his suffering. Rocks glistened in the sun, lurking in the shallows under the bridge, anxious teeth waiting to bite into him.
'Or, to begin a whole new kind of suffering,' he thought with a shudder, considering the cathedral from whence he had come. In many ways, he was ready to surrender. His life was but one failure after another, with the only end coming far too late, when he was once again alone. Abruptly, his mind formed a picture of the travelers fate had thrust his way. That blasted robot, the Neanderthal who understood nothing, his archrival the frog, the spoiled princess, and the girl...
The more he considered Lucca, the less appealing the water below became. She would be pleased, if he went ahead and fell, he had little doubt of that. To her he was a nuisance, a sideshow on the way to retrieving the worthless, feckless Crono. But he would show her. Her words in the inn had been crueler than she had known. Was it selfishness that kept him on the search for Schala for so long? Had she been right about him?
"What ho! Magus! What bringeth thee here? Dusk approacheth."
For reasons that baffled the mage, Glenn's sudden appearance wasn't altogether unwelcome. Yet it seemed fitting that in his moment of weakness, the man to whom he had brought the most misery would stumble upon him.
"...leave me be.." He monotoned, not looking away from the water.
"I thinketh not. The bright lass be looking for thee, though it be my 'pleasure' to find thee first."
"What does she want?" 'And why would any of you care, for that matter?' he thought, but didn't add.
"Ask it of her thine self." Glenn's tone was one of equal annoyance. "Perhaps Epoch be repaired. Then Lavos once again hath reason to fear us."
"Think something like that can feel fear? I doubt if it has any emotions at all."
"What, perhaps it has much in common with thee after all?"
A dark glance at the impudent frog was wasted. Glenn had come to stand beside Magus facing the river, though not particularly close, for obvious reasons. Even still, the way Glenn had said it was almost in form of a jest, rather than a personal barb.
"What are your thoughts, Magus?" Glenn's voice was softer, much more personal now. "Why dost thou stare at the river thus?"
"Why do you care? I thought you, the brat and the savage were still at the castle. Why did you come here?" He hadn't meant to sound so curt, but the tone by now was customary.
"The princess remains, true enough, and chief Ayla with her. I find reason to return to my home, in the woods yonder. Since I can yield no help to Lucca on the Epoch, I travel hither, then shall return nigh. As to the reason I hath come..." Glenn's eyes stayed fixed on the horizon. "The lass told of what transpired between her and thou. Perhaps, as thou stands, dwelling in lands and times far away from here, thee knowest, in thine heart, that somewhere she standeth, feeling likewise."
For a long moment each stood, neither speaking. When the silence was broken, it was by the sound of Glenn's boots on the bridge.
Realizing their time together was accomplishing little, Glenn had gone. Unsettled and a bit perturbed in more than one way, Magus remained as the light began to fade.

Ollen70: This chapter is short, I know it. But it really has to stand by itself. If I'm lucky, I'll get another chapter up in a few days, now that I know there are people who kind of like it. (Thank you, all you people who reviewed it!)