In which things are worked out, for a certain degree of worked out, and Asch has the breakthrough he must wish he'd had before the end of the game/Luke's death…

-

"Okay. So shutting off the planet storm nipped everything they had going in the bud. Without it they just don't have enough power for Eldrant. The only thing that could restart it is the Key, which I have, and now that Dist is gone the only people Van has left with enough power to try to get it are himself and Sync." Sync should have died after casting that arte and falling into the core but Van had revived him. They had made sure of the other God-generals, after they'd survived Mt. Roneal.

"So we're almost finished with this?"

"I wish. No, Natalia. While things were going his way Van didn't really care if we found out what he was up to. Now that they're most definitely not he'll start getting sneaky and Van? Is very, very good at sneaky." Touching her stomach gently Luke's eyes grew sad. "I want it over with, but we have the upper hand. He's not going to move until he does."

"Are you okay?"

"No. I want a minion, someone who will promise me they'll protect and take care of me or die trying, but I'm the leader and I have to be strong. I can't ask for hugs."

"It sounds like you want a knight more than a minion."

"Oh, think about what a knight in shining armor does. Guy's one. But if I let them see that I want someone else that will let them know that I'm not certain I can do it by myself. They need to have confidence in me. Man, you really don't know anything about leadership, do you?"

"My model was Van."

"Van works in the shadows. It's his element. It's subtleties and confusion and I don't get that."

"Ahem."

"What?"

"I used to work for Van. I know how he works, even if his tendency to leave people out of the loop meant the entire replica world idea surprised me. I used to be the god-general in charge of Special Operations, which is the nice name for spying, assassination, and other things the Order doesn't want to know the Order is doing, much less anyone else. I know tactics and trickery even if I may not be the best at strategy."

This time Luke was the one who didn't know how to answer.

"I may be a bastard, but I'm actually good at it. Not that you've seen me at my best, admittedly."

"I can't let you free. If you have access to your power you'll try to hurt my baby." No. She'd fight Van herself, no matter how long it took, instead of trade her child's life for the possibility of a quick end to this.

"And I can't promise you I won't."

"Why not?!" Why? Why couldn't he just leave her baby alone? Did he have to attack or destroy by his very existence everything that made her happy?!

"Because I hurt people!" Asch yelled back, angry now. "I'm a bastard and a jerk and I hurt you, my family, Natalia, everyone! I let Akzeriuth be destroyed, I helped Van get that far willingly, and I'm an idiot! You're right, I was practically begging for him to take advantage of me and pinning the blame on you! Are you happy now?!"

"Why would that make me happy? Acknowledging the truth doesn't change it."

"You realized that you fucked up and changed yourself after Akzeriuth."

"If you want me to believe that you're actually going to change, then swear that you're not going to hurt my baby."

"I just explained why I can't promise that! I hurt everything I touch! And I won't swear not to touch your child because like it or not she's my baby too and I won't turn my back on anyone for stupid reasons anymore! That's, she's my child and I have a responsibility and you are not going to force me to turn my back on it any more than I should have let Van trick me into turning my back on my family in the first place!"

The others had noticed the telltale signs that Luke was talking to Asch and known better than to interrupt, but now they started to wonder if they should.

Asch continued, "Yes, I run away from my responsibilities and I pin the blame on other people and I'm not going to be anything resembling a good father but I am. And that's the way it is! If you want me to accept that she's a person, or going to be one instead of just a thing then what do you think that means?! Why do you think I didn't want to accept it?! Because if you're people then you're my family and…" He didn't know how to say what that meant, except a lot. "You wanted to make up for what you did to me by taking my family. If I'm the one that did you wrong, and you've forced me to admit it, then I have to try to make it up to you. You don't have to like it any more than I liked your attempts."

"Do you actually mean that?"

"I can't promise anything. But you can put me back into a coma or whatever with your power if I misbehave, can't you?" If this had been a physical conversation Asch would have been looking to the side, scowling, pouting and blushing slightly simultaneously. "I suppose I can't undo all this any more than you could Akzeriuth. But I at least need to try to clean up my own mess."

"Mess?"

"Yes. My life is a huge mess. But I didn't mean it that way. You're not garbage and I'm sorry for calling you that." How much was Luke going to force him to admit of all this shameful and embarrassing stuff?

"…I'll be watching you." They all knew that was as good as an agreement.

"You'll probably need to. Don't expect miracles."

"I know, I've done this myself. It's hard."

"If you can do it, I can."

"Riiiight."

"Just watch me." Half challenge, half…

"I will." Challenge accepted, help promised. "But I can't watch you if you're dead."

"Jade said that Lorelei should be able to save me." Or, more precisely, that nothing else had any chance of preventing this.

"Then we'll just have to free Lorelei. If… If there's any chance, then I want my daughter to have her father."

"Luke… I'm dying. But I'm not the one that would end up dead."

-

"Jade."

"Yes?"

Luke closed his study's door behind her. "I looked it up. Patient-doctor confidentiality does not cover threats to other people's health like this."

This was more than half-expected, from watching Asch and Luke interact. "Telling you wouldn't have done any good."

"That's what the Order used to say about Scores of death. Like the Score predicting Akzeriuth. And you didn't tell me I was a replica, either."

"The only thing that can save you is Lorelei, and you are already doing your best to free Lorelei. I suppose I could say I didn't want to distract you, or wanted you to be happy until the possible end, but I suppose what it comes down to is that I've never been able to handle death. I don't think it was so much lack of ability to understand it as denial of it, all along. They call medicine a war against death, do you know that? They also say that true courage is to fight a losing battle regardless. But I've never really gotten the hang of losing."

Jade turned to another page that he had also read before. "When we discussed your origins, do you remember that someone commented that perhaps I should be regarded as your father? You are, Lorelei willing, the closest thing I will ever have to a child. And I can fight beside you, I can fight for you, but I cannot win. Only your… other parent, perhaps, may. I told Asch so that he would go to the requisite effort to keep himself alive and delay the Big Bang effect's occurrence. But to tell you… would have made it real."

"If it were only my life on the line… But, Jade? If Asch's soul takes my body, mine will take my daughter's."

Jade turned, raised an eyebrow. "If that is the case… I may have something. It would take control of the seventh fonon equal to that of the Daathic Fonic Arte that caused all this, or perhaps greater, but it's something. How much do you know about the phenomenon that causes identical twins?"

-

"I'm reading them, I'm reading them," Asch told Luke when she knocked on the door. Now that he had his body back he had physical reactions again, and he couldn't erase the too-vivid memory of the… not so much moment of insanity but several hours of impossible bliss that had brought about the reason he was currently reading not only baby care books but guides for pregnant women. At first he had partially wanted to get rid of the baby so that Luke would switch back and he would have a male body, but if he was accepting responsibility he would take it. And if the baby would be Luke's new body then he truly, truly would have to take care of her.

Luke was… gorgeous, and he was seventeen, and the memories.

"Jade says there's a possibility that if you move into my body and I move into the baby's that I might be able to create a new vessel for the baby's spirit and contain it until I can, or you can I guess, carry her to term. If I sort of… bud it off, like an identical twin, then I could possibly even have both of us born at the same time. The Big Bang Effect would have first have you enter me, then gradually force me out so I would have time to arrange that, then I would be gradually forcing out my, our daughter, so I could 'catch' her fonons and construct a body around them. Not possession but reincarnation. It… I'd rather find Lorelei first." Luke sighed. "But it looks like we should be able to pull this off."

"That's a relief." It was, it truly was.

"I get that you're going to protect her, and me. But…" The original discussion had been about slightly different matters.

"I am a red-blooded male, and I have the same memories that you do. I won't turn you down, if… If you want that." It wasn't like Natalia hadn't moved on.

"I was a virgin, so I probably won't be anywhere near as good without the arte making me go nuts."

"I wasn't a virgin, but that was the first time in my life I was actually bothering about the other person's pleasure. And it's a lot harder to, well, satisfy a woman than a man. I doubt I'll be the one with a right to complain about someone's performance."

"I'm horny. I've been in a body all this time, unlike you, and I have boobs and it's not like I could masturbate with you watching." Asch had curled up and died during Luke and Guy's experimentation.

Asch stared. "You really do have no modesty."

"It wastes time." And who knew how much they had of that? "And if I didn't have any modesty I would have taken care of myself despite you. I have hormone swings as well as mood swings, you know."

"I suppose. Do you think…" He tried to open their connection: Luke allowed it. "That we could share sensations?"

"I suppose that would let us know what works and what doesn't." Luke took the book out of Asch's hands, put in a smaller book to keep the place, and put it down on the pile of books. "This is my room, you know."

"I gathered, since that chair is here." Dist's chair.

"My throne." Luke grinned and sat down on Asch's lap. "I'll let know which of you I love more after I give riding you a try."

-

Afterwards they lay entwined, body and mind, and Asch realized that the contented Luke was no longer barring him from her, no, their daughter when he heard a small wisp of dreaming song that shared their voice but was not either of them. "May I?" He knew better than to touch without permission: this trust was still too new.

Luke answered by pulling him closer, letting him share Luke's own connection to the singer and thus restoring Asch's. "Isn't she beautiful?" Asch remembered how much of Luke's desire of someone to share her burden with had been for someone to share her joy in the child, their daughter, as well.

"I can hear her, but I can't see her."

"That's because you aren't listening right."

Oh. She didn't really look human yet, not at all. But then a baby's shape was different from an adult's. It would have been ugly if he didn't know what she would grow into, like a caterpillar would become a butterfly. If it lived, if she lived.

Utterly helpless, unable to even survive outside the shelter of Luke's body. She did not demand, she didn't have the concept of it, but she needed. She needed them, she needed… Well, she could live without him, but he wanted to hold her. To help protect her.

There had been so little happiness for them, but their daughter's song was content, happy, as she grew and was warm and was held and had everything she could want and the person she did not yet know as 'mother' but 'everything' sang to her and loved her.

And now he touched her, and there was no fear or comprehension of fear. A trust of total innocence. A blind kitten licking at his hand, so easily crushed but he simply couldn't.

No wonder Luke and Natalia had thought he was a monster for even contemplating it.

"I've caused the deaths of so many. There's no way to pay it back. But I can't fix the past, but I can make the future better. I can create life, not just destroy it." So amazing, her daughter, such a miracle, to think that she could, could have a chance like this, be trusted with something so precious and so fragile.

"It's not as though it's an honor or a prize. Just about anyone can make one of these." And in fact, that made Asch a little sick. This was what he had been? What Van had been, what Arietta had been, what they all had been, and life had twisted them into what they were? How had it been allowed to happen? He knew, by people. "What kind of world would we be bringing her into?" He had the sudden mad desire to keep her locked her up inside Luke and lock Luke up in a tower somewhere, and kill anything that even looked at the tower. He knew he couldn't get away with that, and after all it hadn't worked for Luke (not that he would allow anyone like Van inside, of course), and so the only recourse was to teach her how to defend herself as soon as possible, and…

"Asch, breathe!"

Oh, right. Yes. As such a powerful seventh fonist he could go without long enough that sometimes he stopped bothering when something that urgent (terrifying, more like) came up that he needed to contemplate (spaz about).

"Everyone has the chance to live and redeem themselves by default too, you know."

"Actually, we only have this despite the Score…" If Asch were Lorelei there would be fewer Hods allowed to happen and more smiting. Van was right, human nature had been behind Hod, human nature combined with the Score, and therefore Lorelei had been forced to choose between what free will humanity had (they could at least choose to fight or submit, choose their route to their fate), and human lives. Freedom or peace.

It was probably selfish of Asch to both want his daughter to have freedom and no one else to have the free will to choose to lay a finger on her, but there were apparently good and bad sides to selfishness and he personally wished his father had possessed more of this sort.

Alright, the first order of business would be to kill Van and make sure he stayed very dead, since he would be coming after Luke and their daughter by extension, then to destroy the Score since he was not permitting his daughter to have any sort of inescapable fate that he couldn't rescue her from or at least raise her right enough that she could rescue himself, and of course free Lorelei so that they wouldn't have to waste any time going through that whole rebirth nonsense that could be spent on his daughter, and then succeed his father as Duke of Belkend so that he could have some actual medical research happen there, just in case, and then start interviewing tutors and do very, very thorough background checks, or perhaps Luke would want to handle teaching her (meaning there was no chance of her tutor being another Van), and of course he would need to ensure world peace, and…

Only a little more than sixth months left until she was born! And he'd wasted all that time!

"Who said you get to kill Van?"

"If you fight him he will aim for our daughter. That is not acceptable. You can kill him, if you're willing to let me hold our daughter during it."

"…Hell no. Alright, alright. I think I'm starting to get more of this gender stuff. I think it has to do with priorities more than anything."

"Delegation? I can't plan, not when it's something this important. You handle that, just tell me who to kill and what exactly needs to be done so I don't have to worry this much all the time." The thing about battles, Asch realized, is that they had beginnings and ends. Once Van was dead, that problem was solved. Children were always there, at least until they grew up and moved out, and it wasn't one task to make sure that happened but thousands, like feeding them, and getting them dressed, and diapers, and…

"I think being a leader has a lot of parts to it. But I can do that, I'm used to keeping track of things like how much food we have and item usage and weapon stats so I know what to buy and price comparing and…"

"…I never knew shopping was so complicated."

"It is if you do it right. It's like warfare, only you're spending gald instead of troops." And Luke had always liked fighting, but only if no one got hurt. It wasn't like he'd had much to do or look forward to at the manor besides practice. "And no one gets killed, unless you really mess up, run out of life bottles, and let Tear die." That hadn't happened and she wasn't going to let it. "So it's really spending gald instead of lives. And it's easy to keep track of your score." Bwa ha ha ha.

"How rich are you?"

"Currently I've got other priorities, but let's just say that our daughter will never be outdoors alone without not only a full supply of bottles and gels but a rebirth doll until she moves out and leave it at that." She wouldn't want her to equip it all the time in battle: that would be wasteful and teach her bad habits like wasting items, but as yet another insurance policy. Assassins didn't give you a chance to switch equipment.

"…you're already planning out her stat growth?"

"I'll have to redesign to suit her individual fighting style, of course, but it makes me happy." For instance, they were both sword wielders, entirely in her case and primarily in Asch's case, but their daughter was going to learn to heal as soon as possible and while of course she would have to be adept at close-range combat in case there weren't any people nearby to guard her while she was casting if she decided to be primarily a fonist a staff, or perhaps a spear might be better suited. In fact, the best weapon for a normal seventh fonist (who needed to stay distant from the enemy since the healer could not be allowed to place herself at risk but still had to be able to attack) was the bow, that was the entire basis of the Lanvaldear style, and Luke had already made Natalia promise to teach her daughter if she wanted to learn it, but…

Asch hesitated. On the one hand, he wanted to teach her himself and that meant the sword, but the idea of his daughter being able to kill people before they went anywhere near her held a certain appeal.

"I wasn't sure if I could change the world and save it at the same time. I mean, we have to stop Van and the Score. Now that I have a child, though, it's not if I can but I have to. The things that happened to me… part of me still thinks I deserve them, but I know she doesn't and they are not happening to her. They are just not." Period.

"You said that all children are minions. I wonder if the difference between children and adults is who they serve."

"Living up to the past or creating the future?"

"Perhaps. Whether our job is to learn or to teach."

"We'll have to think about that, since we're going to be helping her grow up."

Asch knew better than to let Luke catch even the slightest hint of the fact that part of Asch wanted to keep her a child forever so that he could keep her safe. Asch knew it was ridiculous and Luke would not react well to someone wanting to stunt their child's growth the way hers, or theirs, had been.