Chapter Four: Fragmented Infinity

"Fou-Lu is still here." This would perhaps win awards for obvious statement of the year, but it had to be gotten out of the way. Nods from the half-ring around the campfire, watching him stand before them. They didn't mind the obvious, as long as he followed it up with something of import. "But sooner or later," said Ryu, "I doubt he will be." That got their attention. "Deis? Can you explain?" He'd had a quick conversation with her while they were making camp, just to be certain his fears had a legitimate foundation.

"Sometimes you get constructs - you might call them child minds, they're made specifically to hold apart from the one they came from. But when you've got two actually different minds in there, not a construct, if they've got much in common they can't coexist for too long. They might hold out for a month or six, but sooner or later something happens."

A half-ring of silence around the campfire. What happens? drifted in the air, unspoken. Deis picked up the question. "They start flowing into each other. Letting slip memories and feelings and traits and whatnot. Then you can't tell them apart, and then they are one mind. That kid in Chek told me, when I wondered why she was so standoffish."

"Says Deis."

Cray frowned. "So how did you last so long in that armor?"

"Simple. It was built in to avoid it from the start. You can't have armor operators taking on the emotions of their armor or some such thing. And we're so different-" Nods of agreement. "-there's not so much exchange. But if Ryu and Fou-Lu were alike enough to reunite, they'll have some problems."

"Says Deis."

I am also Fou-Lu.
Fou-Lu is still here.

Nina pressed her hands to her collarbone and spoke. "Since Ryu's remembering Fou-Lu's memories, and Fou-Lu… talked through him in the village, does that mean it's already started?"

"Deis says it certainly sounds like it, though if Fou-Lu is still speaking for himself it means that merging will probably be delayed."

Ryu said, "It's a good thing, isn't it? That he's speaking for himself."

"Deis says that if you do not wish to merge, it is good."

Cray said, "But if the two of you are supposed to be one… then wouldn't it be…"

"Wouldn't it be good if we got together again? Yes." Ryu shook his head. "Only, we're not one. Not anymore. He remembers that girl with the bell in Sonne, someone I never met and he remembers being in love with her. How can we be one person if one bit of us remembers loving someone and the other bit doesn't?

"Maybe this could've worked out hundreds of years ago, back when it'd just happened, but now - if we merge minds now, someone's going to give, someone's going to lose himself… and… it'll probably be Fou-Lu."

"W-what can we d-do t-to stop it?"

Ryu sat down and bent his head forward. "That's just it, Scias. I don't know."

Nina leaned toward him. "Don't you have any idea?"

"Well, one, maybe. But it's a bit-"

"One's better than none. Please, tell us."

"Umm. I was thinking, maybe if we got separate bodies, like it was before…" He cupped the bell in his hand and stared at it. "I mean, now that the powers of the Endless are gone, we don't need to be together for our full power, because that power's not there anymore. So why not split?"

"Deis says, that is a good point."

"But we'd probably just start wanting to be together all over again. And anyway, how could we do it? Like I said, we haven't got powers anymore, so how do we do it? I've got no idea about that bit."

"No idea?"

He looked up at her. "Absolutely none."

Nina wished they had started on this before eating. As it was, there was no convenient silverware to scrape around a plate, no cups to clink together, nothing to chew, no "pass the sweetfish," nothing but the normal sounds of the night, which served only to call attention to their own silence.

Then, "Deis says what about Yuna?"

Cray punched his fist into his other hand. "What about that bastard?"

"He was studying up on us Endless, right? For the wrong reasons maybe, but he'll likely have written up his experiments, and some of that might actually have something useful. And there was something I wanted to look up."

"Says Deis."

I see. She wants another body. Has all this talk about Ryu and Fou-Lu made her worry about maybe merging with Ershin? Not necessarily. I know I'd want another one too, after so long.

"And if we h-happen to find h-him then…" Scias trailed off and looked at Cray.

Fist into hand. Nina winced at the sound. "Then I'll kill him."

"She says, 'We'll be cheering you on as you do. What do you say, Ryu?'"

Ryu looked at Ershin, then at Nina. "I don't know… using what he got from his experiments… who knows how much he got wrong?" The accuracy of the information was obviously the least of his worries.

She looked back and nodded. "Couldn't we… I don't know, couldn't we just ask the Abbess about it or- well, something. Something that's not that."

"You two might care about where it comes from, but I don't. Astana's on the way back, in any case, and it wouldn't hurt to have a look. Look, when we've got the papers - or not, as the case may be - we can get a second opinion in Chek, okay?"

"Says Deis."

"I don't give a damn about his papers," said Cray. "What I give a damn about is his neck."

It hit her. "And Elina…"

"Yes. Her." Ryu shook his head. "We can't very well let him get away with what he did to her."

"I'm not going to let him!"

He nodded. "Me neither, Cray. Count me in."

"Oh! You're right, but I was thinking that we should try and bring her… we should bring her home - to Wyndia. For… you know. For…"

"Burial?" Ryu nodded again. "Yes. Let's do that."

"I… I think it's a g-good thing to d-do."

"Yeah." Cray released his fist and rested his chin in his hand. "We should do that, too."

Ryu said, "We should do all of it except for maybe the using his papers part."

Ershin swiveled about. "Deis says that sounds like a good course of action." Pause. "She also says that until a solution to the problem is found, Ryu should try to block out Fou-Lu's memories."

"I'll do that." Ryu looked around. "Let's all get to sleep."

A-Tur listened to their conversation and stifled a number of monstrous yawns. Their words were intriguing, to be certain, and he'd taken note of them and worried for his master, but he was tired - at least, this was what he believed it be, as he had never experienced it in all his centuries of guarding the Imperial Castle. But he had witnessed tiredness in mortals from time to time, and it was often accompanied by his symptoms.

This was the second night he was in this state. Was it something to do with the vanishing of his master's powers, which had removed his sleeplessness? Would he next begin to require food? He would have to ask this, when he revealed himself.

But it wouldn't be for a while, he didn't think. Surprise was an excellent tool. And until then he half-slept, ready for the sounds of danger or breaking camp.

Ryu woke in the middle of dream that reproduced a confrontation with a false Endless. Once he realized whose memory it was drawn from - partly due to the absence of his friends, partly due to his telltale manner of speech during - he groaned and placed his face in his hands as he sat in the tent. Blocking out memories that resided in your own head was like trying to hold back a flood with a sieve.

He tried speaking to Fou-Lu again, whispering so as not to wake the others. There was no response - could he even hear what he was saying?

Ryu sat with his eyes wide open and thought of jumping down the cliffs near Sarai to save Nina, who hadn't needed to be saved. He thought of the mischievous faeries of the Wychwood. He thought of sliding down a waterfall on a log raft with Nina clinging to him and Scias grinning his teeth-baring grin. He grabbed at any memory he could, except for what had anything to do with Fou-Lu.

The barrier prevented him from taking more samples from the regenerated area, but he could observe well enough, and do some basic reflex testing and the like. Once he had observed and tested and confirmed that she was, indeed, alive but unresponsive, there was not much else to be done, besides observe the same state some more. Still, it was an unprecedented event in the recorded history of the Empire, if one didn't count the First Emperor's long rest, and Yuna was drawn away reluctantly when a frantic assistant finally took the step of swimming halfway through the organ chamber and screaming for him.

There seemed to have been a spate of misplaced papers and contaminated cell cultures in his absence; setting it right was long and tedious and he didn't return to the room until dawn of the next day.

Elina lay on the bed as before and stared up at the ceiling; over time, for lack of other things to do, she'd memorized every fissure in the plaster. It had surprised her back then, how banal everything could become when given time.

As she moved her lips, choked sounds emerged. She tried again, and again, until she heard what she recognized as her own voice. Cracked and hoarse, but still her own. "I… I'm… supposed… to be… dead." The next sentence came faster, as she remembered the workings of her tongue.

"I'm not coming back, not for even more of it."

But I'm already back.

She remembered being pulled away - though away from what she no longer knew - and she still felt the gate in her mind. It was sealing, eradicating itself, but before it did nothing stopped her from running back through it. Then, I'm going back.

When he returned he was carrying a refilled pitcher of water and a stack of boxes of cheap shisu that had been pressed upon him. Irritated as he was by the lengthy interruption, he had declined to tell his assistants his reasons for staying in the room so long, and they likely chalked it up as another one of "Lord Yuna's little idiosyncrasies" - they hadn't known he was in the room when they used that phrase, and he hadn't cared to enlighten them to that fact either.

She was still and silent and blank-eyed as before. Yuna sat her up, poured a cup of water and put it in her hands. "Drink it." She did so. This convinced him that she was well and truly gone, leaving only memorized reaction - were she aware she would have put up at least token resistance. He then took apart a few of the shisu and guided her through the process of swallowing before he went to get the necessary medical equipment. It would be a fine thing for her to be retrieved from the dead by whatever cause and then killed of thirst and starvation before anything but a few notes in a log came of it.