This was for the prompt "break me" (aka write some angst) w/the Tarron siblings.
Do I own Rise of the Titans? Hell no, and I refuse to watch it on the principal that a time-travel fix-it is incredibly rarely the best option for a canon ending, but especially not something that undoes the entire trilogy. Therefore, take this very much not-a-fix-it fic. Do note that Steve's entire subplot just doesn't happen in this fic, because I am going with my old headcanon that Akiridions sexually reproduce (not just kissing!) and lay eggs.
Also, sorry to everyone else who's a fan of Jim, but I treat him very negatively in this fic because the decision to go all the way back to the start infuriates me and so I take that out on him in this.
Everyone stared at Jim in disbelief and horror as he finished his explanation.
"Jimbo, just how many times have you lived this day?" Toby asked. How many times have you watched me die was his unspoken question.
How many of us have died in Toby's place, Aja couldn't help but think as well.
"I... I'm not sure," Jim said, and he almost sounded like he had in the group video calls she'd spoken to him in a week ago. Given the looks on their friends faces, Aja could tell that everyone else was thinking the same thing: Jim sounded so much younger, and not like the jaded time traveler who had taken his place. But, just as quickly, the tone of Jim's voice changed back. "I lost count given all the times I reset the timeline early."
Out of the corner of her eye, Aja saw her brother's brow furrow.
"In all honesty, I don't know how or why I managed to end up in the original timeline."
"You don't know what you're doing, do you?" Krel asked with an incredulous tone. No, not just incredulous. There was a venom to his voice, one that Aja only ever remembered him using once on Varvatos. "You don't have a plan, and I bet you're just going to leave us when everything starts to go wrong. That's what you did before, isn't it?"
The look that Jim gave to Krel was a little too kind, no, pitying to be complete and utter disdain for Krel's outburst.
"You're just going to let the..." Krel turned his head in Nari's direction, and his gaze managed to somehow become both softer and more poisonous. Krel slammed all four of his hands on the table. "Let the two of them get tortured, again, in a few horvaths, aren't you?"
Jim stayed silent in what Aja hoped was disbelief and not agreement with Krel's words.
"Fine, then. I guess I have to do everything myself." Krel pushed away from the table, spinning himself to walk away.
"Krel, what are you going to do?" Toby asked right before Krel could walk through the doorway. Krel looked at the rest of them over his shoulder, and there was a manic gleam to his eyes that Aja was uncomfortable with.
"Ask Jim," Krel said, and Aja was really uncomfortable with the way Krel sneered. "If he doesn't know, then this might work."
And then he exited the room, and conversation resumed. Aja wanted to go back after her brother, but she knew him. He wouldn't do anything too drastic; he just needed to work on an engineering project and try to calm down. She was queen, and she had to plan.
Being queen was frustrating. There had too many meetings with her extended family and other, lesser royals that had made Aja head to her room and scream into a pillow.
No meeting in the past two keltons had been nearly as exhausting as the one she had just exited. They were barely any closer to having a plan.
Aja walked the halls of one of the floating castle, looking for her brother. Claire had told her where his back-up lab was, but Aja was finding herself questioning if he was really there. There were none of the usual noises of her brother engineering.
Aja tripped, rolled, and looked back to see what she tripped on.
It was a canister, made of Akiridion technology with arcane runes along the rim. It would have been able to contain something powerful, like a highly radioactive substance. A grim feeling wrapped its way around her core, and Aja looked up to see a pair of open doors. She ran through them and stopped upon seeing her brother.
It wasn't that she wanted to stop, of course. Oh, no, she wanted to run to her brother and knock the horrible thing he was holding out of his hands. She couldn't, though. Her horror made it so that she couldn't do anything but remain rooted to her spot, unable to even scream.
What was he thinking? That thing had meant the death of their parents; what was he thinking?
Krel lined up Gaylen's core with his own, so that they were perpendicular to each other.
He closed his eyes as he brought the core away from his chest. His lips moved like he was saying something, but Aja couldn't make out the words.
Krel stabbed Gaylen's core into his chest, gasping as he did so.
Too late, Aja was finally able to scream.
Krel turned to her. Gaylen's core stuck gruesomely out of his chest, cyan blood seeping out of the wound, and there was something wrong with his eyes.
"Aja, what are you -" He coughed up blood that was now a little too azure to be cyan. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I-? What are, what were you thinking?"
"I'm at a location of the castle that isn't integral to the-" Krel coughed again and made a gurgling noise as pale electric purple blood exited his lips. "The structure, so if I become a giant then it, it won't..."
He slumped against the wall, and Aja ran to him. He raised up an arm in front of himself and Aja was thrown away from him by a wall of force. She pulled out her serrator and stopped herself. There was a horrified expression on his face and in his eyes were -
His eyes were -
His eyes were wrong. They were electric purple and neon red in a way that no Akiridion's eyes were, even half-Akiridions had solid colored eyes and the two rings of Krel's eyes were different colors in a way that stabbed dread into Aja's core.
"I... 'm sorry," Krel said, and he sounded so tired. "Didn't want to hurt... not you. Just wanted to save the people I love."
Krel's eyes slipped closed, and along the stab wound his body began to fracture. Aja screamed and ran to him, because she saw this happen to their parents and she wouldn't let this happen to her brother.
Not even if Jim could reset everything again and make it so this never happened.
Before Krel could be reverted to his core, before Aja could make it to her brother, Gaylen's core glowed with red light, and that same red light formed an opaque dome around Krel's body.
Aja banged her fists against it. "You can't have him! You already took my parents; you can't have my brother!"
Aja pressed her forehead against the domed shell keeping her from her brother.
It made sense, she supposed. Akiridions were born from eggs, and so Krel would be reborn from one. But why did he have to be reborn at all? Why did he have to do something drastic? And why hadn't she recognized that he would take a drastic route?
Aja didn't leave her brother's side, not even when Nari started screaming.
