A/N: Written for Suriyel again, the original benefactor of this bizarre little universe. Much love to her.
This section:
Fandoms: Tales of the Abyss, Blood+
Characters: Jade x Saya, Peony, Kai
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IX: Intrigue
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Jade's trademark is a straight face. It isn't always easy.
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Peony catches him on the way to the Kurotsuchi Science Hall, guiding him into the shadow of the trees with a firm hand on his elbow. His eyes catch Jade's earnestly, blue as ever even in the dim light. "There are a couple of new students in your class. The boy you don't have to worry about, he'll drop out soon enough when he realizes how out of his depth he is, but the girl... watch out for the girl, old friend."
Jade nods and adjusts his glasses calmly. However, his mind is racing. Peony appears to be merely a janitor on the Apeiron grounds... but he knows things, things he shouldn't know. Jade has his suspicions, knowing Peony's past, but never voices them. There must be a reason he wishes to hide his true position from his best friend. Jade is not averse to letting him have his secret. For him to issue so direct a warning, without even a pretense at his usual ambling facade, means something has gone wrong. Somewhere, somehow, something slipped through Peony's fingers, some key piece of information.
Ah, and here it is, Jade realizes: Peony doesn't know why he needs to be careful. He knows she is dangerous, but not what she is, or what she can do.
Walking back into the sunlight, Jade allows himself a small smile. Today will be interesting.
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She's a pretty thing, Jade thinks, and so small.
That hardly lessens his wariness. Anise taught him well enough not to underestimate small pretty girls, and this Saya is taller and stronger than Anise ever looked.
And smart. So very, very clever, this girl. Though she always gives the impression of being distracted by something far away, she seems to be having little difficulty with the finer points of genetic engineering, and none at all with the basic concepts. What the other students are struggling to learn she is absorbing as easily as breath, though she does not seem to realize it, scrutinizing her textbook with furrowed brow as though it were hard to understand.
Jade is not fooled. He has been a professor for many years and knows a good student when he sees one.
Her brother, on the other hand...
Kai, his name was, Jade remember. He is sitting in the back left corner glowering at his textbook, knuckles white around the edges of its covers. It isn't that he's a stupid boy. That much is obvious. He has a fine mind, well suited to such studies as this. The problem lies in his attitude-- Jade knows nothing about him, but he can tell without a shadow of a doubt that this is not the first Kai has heard of genetic engineering, and what is more, he has no love for it. What exactly lies in his past that gives him this angry expression is a mystery, but Jade is certain that he will not last the week, as Peony said.
It will be a loss, but not a great one. Jade is content to concentrate on Saya.
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This is highly inappropriate. Jade knows it, and he knows that there are dozens of professors on campus who would have his head if they knew. It isn't as if Jade is doing anything wrong, exactly, but they would not stop to hear it before eliminating the threat to the Academy's reputation.
"Professor Curtiss," she says, tapping the textbook rhythmically with the eraser end of her mechanical pencil and offering him a rueful smile, "I think I'm done for the day. I can't see straight."
"Day?" he says with a lightly mocking smile of his own. "Miss Otonashi, it's past midnight."
She gasps and spins in her chair to search out the glowing microwave clock, then cringes when it corroborates his words. "I'm so sorry," she says, horrorstruck. "I've kept you up so late. I should go."
Jade smiles placidly. "There's no rush, Saya. I am accustomed to sleeping approximately four hours per night. It's not quite my bedtime yet."
She slows slightly in her frantic rush to shovel her books and supplies into her bag, making a rueful face. "Still. It's very rude of me. And Kai will be wondering where I am."
Ah yes, the protective older brother. He played the part so well. If not for the experiment on the very first week of classes, some three weeks ago, wherein each class member sampled their own DNA to compare it to others in the class and identify its components, Jade would never have known for sure that he wasn't her blood sibling. He had suspected-- they had nothing of familial resemblance between them-- but suspicions are not proof. The experiment provided proof, and as a scientist, he took pleasure in that in one way.
Another way had him frowning at her back when she wasn't looking, wondering if she was aware of the way Kai looked at her. Judging by the way she could become oblivious to everything else while focused on something which interested her, he rather doubted it.
"Good night, Professor, and thank you for all your help. I really feel like I'm beginning to understand."
That was an understatement, he thought ruefully, though he knew he'd never convince her otherwise. She was not his equal, and likely would never be, but while this was his only talent, it was only one of her multitude. She was good at everything.
What's more, he knew now at long last why she was good at everything, or at least part of it.
Her blood sample was at this moment safely hidden in his personal laboratory, beneath his cabin, preserved for future scrutiny. The students, frivolous and uninformed, had not known what it was that they were looking at. To tell the truth, Jade hadn't know either. He still didn't know.
All he had were hypotheses upon hypotheses, and each of them crazier than the last.
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"You are being amazingly stupid," Peony informs him, leaning against the opposite side of the trunk.
Jade sighs. "I'm not doing anything."
"Try explaining that to the board when somebody finds out. Yes, when. Not if."
It is rare to hear Peony angry-- he is a genial man, very nearly defines 'laid-back,' but he can afford to be like this because he has real power behind him which allows him to speak up in situations such as this. Very few people have ever been on the wrong end of his cold fury, and even fewer ever dare incur it again. Jade, however, has seen it many times over their years together and is not as fazed as perhaps he should be.
"I will, if it happens. There's no point worrying about it. I'm personally tutoring a gifted student. That's all there is to it."
Peony heaves a frustrated sigh. "I warned you to be careful, Jade. Is that what you call this?"
Jade holds his breath for a moment before replying so that he won't say 'yes' and betray himself. Him being truly careless would be much more disastrous than this inconsequential risk. "I'll watch my back," he promises quietly. "You know me. I have to know. Even if it gets me in trouble."
"Trouble, huh," echoes Peony softly. "That's one word for it."
And he is gone, leaving Jade to wonder what he meant by that as the endless stream of students pours past him on the western avenue.
It occurs to him that Peony is right: he should be worried. How curious that he isn't.
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He contemplates the short dark spill of her hair against his spotless white table for half an hour, but no viable solutions present themselves to him.
Waking her and letting her sleep both carry their own risks-- who is to say what a superbeing with unknown capacities for violence would instinctually do if roused unexpectedly from a deep sleep? what would people say if they saw her leaving in the morning in her rumpled clothing from the day before?-- and alternate options are frustratingly scarce. He has no way to move her without endangering himself, if she is indeed a danger, which is not yet established beyond doubt but is also not disproved beyond doubt and is thus not worth risking. He also has no way of sneaking her out of his home once she wakes naturally without arousing suspicion.
"Ahem," he says experimentally.
Unsurprisingly, she does not stir. It is after three in the morning. She is exhausted from her overambitious courseload and its corresponding out-of-class mountains of homework. She has pushed herself too far even for her superior capacities, much farther than any regular person would have been physically able to handle.
She is a wonder of nature, endlessly fascinating, perpetually forbidden.
He wonders just how old she really is. From what he has been able to discern from his limited samples and observations of her, it is entirely possible that she is older than him, possibly by quite a lot. Her cells do not seem vulnerable to the decay of age inevitable to ordinary humans such as himself. They renew themselves instantly after damage, as evidenced by an event last week in which she accidentally injured herself drawing herself a drink in his kitchen and healed nearly before the minor blood splatter reached the floor. Though she appears hardly older than twenty-one, her true age could be many multiples of that. He has no way of knowing without examining her brain more directly, which would be crossing one of the very few lines he considers actually forbidding.
The temptation of knowledge is very difficult to resist, however, and made all the more difficult to resist by the fact that she is sleeping, perfectly vulnerable, inside his unsurveilled cabin in the middle of the night when security is focused on the perimeters rather than the heart of the campus.
He could do anything he wanted for hours, perhaps days if he attended and taught his classes as if nothing were amiss, before questions started being asked.
It is not that he is an evil person. He is merely a scientist, perhaps too scientific to leave room for compassion to develop, valuing information over the prevention of temporary suffering. It is not a trait many love in him but being a person who cares little for the regard of others, commanding respect by this very unconcern, it does not bother him.
What bothers him is knowing that his power over her would be temporary at best, and very likely met with bloody retribution when she escaped it-- and she would. He cannot learn if he is dead.
"Ahem," he says again, knowing from experience the statistically probable outcome of this train of thought and not wishing to venture that way at this time. "Ahem."
Mercifully, she stirs, dissipating the last shreds of temptation.
She rubs her dark eyes and peers over at him through the dim, surreal light. "Did I fall asleep? I'm so sorry, Professor. Where's my stuff... I'll get going."
Without at trace of his internal debate present on his face, Jade helps her gather her belongings and points her in the general direction of her dormitory with a benevolent smile. It's strange, he thinks-- she trusts him, but he is not precisely in a position of power, since she could likely kill him without any significant effort at all. The dynamics of it are quite unusual. If she were the male and he the female it would be more easily understandable and volumously backed up by historical evidence, but this configuration and her particular flavour of power are entirely new as far as he knows.
The prospect of knowing something no one else knows nearly makes him slaver with anticipation and asexual desire. It is the holy grail of his life's effort, the elusive ace in the hole which would guarantee superiority and a sort of victory over his rivals.
He wonders how long he will be able to resist this hypnotizing siren call.
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As it turns out, he does not have to.
"I want to know," she says, standing in his entryway with her fists clenched white and her face pale. "What am I? How am I different? I need to understand before I can move forward. I need to understand what I am capable of. Will you help me?"
He stares, and takes a moment to breathe deeply and try and ascertain if he is dreaming. The fact that he is actively concerned about the possibility of dreaming, however, essentially rules it out by its very existence. Dreamers do not wonder if they dream, unless they have trained themselves to dream lucidly, which is a discipline he has not paid enough attention to master.
He is awake, and she is offering to fulfill his dearest fantasies.
"Of course," he says calmly, no hint of his inner storm surfacing for even a moment.
There are tears standing in her eyes, whether tears of fear or relief he cannot tell.
"Thank you," she whispers. Her nails are digging harsh circles into her palms. She does not appear to notice, and they will heal soon in any case.
His elation is so great that he cannot actually comprehend it at this time, like a vast balloon encompassing him which is blotting out the sky and ground and all between them. It is all he can see and so he can see essentially nothing at all, not even her relieved and terrified face, not the stairs in front of him though his feet navigate them with the unerring ease of habit.
There are mysteries to unravel and opportunities to unravel them. Jade has never been happier.
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"Old friend, you are in a world of trouble now," Peony says with sad resignation.
Jade hardly notices. "Do you realize the magnitude of this," he says, punctuating his words with short, sharp gestures with his hands. "She is essentially the living varient of the ancient vampire legends. A myth made flesh."
Peony looks at him sharply. "She's also a girl," he reminds Jade, not ungently, "just an ordinary human girl. Try not to forget that."
"She is so much more than ordinary, even as a girl," Jade says, hardly hearing the tone of reverence in his own voice. "She is a goddess among mortals."
"You aren't a religious man."
"Religion implies worship. I don't worship her for her existence. I am fascinated by it."
His oldest friend, and now only friend since the passing of Nebilim and the betrayal of Dist, looks at him with plain, undisguised concern written wide and simple across his face. "I've already told you to be careful, but really, please, be careful. You don't know what you're dealing with."
Jade seizes the opportunity without a moment's hesitation. "Why don't you tell me what I'm dealing with, then? If you're so concerned."
Peony glares at him. "I can't. You know I can't."
"It was worth a try," Jade replies with a shrug. "Any scientist worth his salt knows that trying things only when they are likely to succeed leads only to predictable outcomes, not real discovery."
"Nothing can be accomplished without first an attempt, right?" Peony fills in, resigned. "Well, all right. Just don't say I didn't warn you."
"Nobody could ever say that," Jade says, teasing. "You've warned me enough for three catastrophes."
Peony smiles, neither relieved nor sad but something in between. "Only because I care."
"Thank you," says Jade. He honestly means it.
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Kai comes to class the next day and glares all the way through it, clearly not hearing a word of the lecture. A quick glance at the class roster confirms that he is no longer actually a student of this class, even informally. This gives Jade the right to have him forcibly evicted if he so chose, but instead he chooses not to, to let him stay and watch and hopefully learn where the borders of his influence lie.
After class he lingers, waiting for the chance to come up to the lectern and growl angry words under his breath about leaving his sister alone and suffering consequences.
Jade smiles placatingly through the short tirade, then ushers the boy out without a word of argument.
He is of no consequence.
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What matters is Saya. She is artificially still under his dispassionate gloved hands and instruments, heartbeat elevated but not to dangerous levels, her face displaying no sign of discomfort, only a chill resignation.
When a test is finished, they pore over it together, her mind adapting to the new concepts he introduced with greater and greater ease. He suspects-- and later confirms the suspicion-- that earlier in this portion of her life she had been unremarkable as a student, dull-minded with lack of practice in this area. She hardly remembers the previous eras but they seem similarly unawakened, left dormant by the lack of present and intriguing challenges to her mind.
They are present now, and testing the limits of her abilities without any luck at finding borders so far.
She is already at the point of suggesting things he would not have thought of himself, capitalizing on her lack of experience in the field to prevent her ruling out things which his mind did not even bring to his conscious attention before striking down as impossible. He still has the benefit of long years of experience and still believes his capacity in this sole area to exceed hers by a small margin, but she is by no means lacking as a discussion partner on the topic.
Slowly, bit by bit, they piece together the alien story her body tells them, until they are too engrossed, too close to what they are viewing to understand how terrified they ought to be.
"I am a monster," she says at one point, but she says it as a joke.
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Then comes the day her chevalier comes for her.
He is the first person since Peony-- since Saya-- to meet Jade's eyes directly. There is no fear in them, no anxiety, nothing but silent, placid, calm assurance that all will happen as it should. It can't be the truth-- no one is that confident, it's always an act, always-- but even Jade cannot see through it despite all his years of practice.
This inspires a reluctant respect, mingled equally with frustrated resentment that Saya appears to intend to leave with this strange, flat-eyed man, abandoning her explorations with him as though they were only a whim to pass the time.
Perhaps they were. Jade forces himself to face the possibility that she really was only there out of idle curiosity while waiting for this man's return. It is a sour prospect.
"Are you going, then?" he asks, smiling inside at how smooth his voice is despite his turmoil.
She frowns faintly, turning to meet her chevalier's eyes-- he makes a note to look up the term, he knows what it means but it clearly has deeper meaning between them specifically which perhaps history can help him piece together-- and having what appears to be a silent conversation with him while Jade waits anxiously.
Kai lurks just out of earshot across the avenue, hands in his pockets and corners of his mouth deeply downturned. It is not clear what he wishes, other than for Saya to be as far from Jade as possible.
At last she turns back to him with a small, rueful smile. "I'll stay," she says, "as long as I can. There's more I want to know."
The flood of relief and triumph is almost too large to contain, but he manages somehow by freezing his expression into an ingratiating smile and staying still until it mostly passes. "I am glad to hear that," he says honestly, if understating the truth rather spectacularly.
Saya smiles, girlish and almost innocent..
For the first time Jade sees the humanity in her and is staggered by the scope of his oversight.
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It is from Hagi that he first hears the word chiropteran.
It is from Saya that he learns respect for it.
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In the end, all of Peony's distraught hand-wringing proves itself farseeing.
"This is a matter of grave import for the reputation of this school," says a grizzled veteran of the overarching counsel with a beard bound in ribbons trailing to his midriff. "You have violated the sacrosanct rules of teacher-student interaction. Such actions merit consequences of equal severity, as I am sure you are aware."
"What consequences? Will you suspend me from teaching? Where would you get another teacher of my caliber? Or perhaps banish me from the island entirely, to do my research for others who would perhaps also find uses for it as you have?"
"Do not provoke us!" the council thunder as one. "Know your place!"
Adjusting his glasses, Jade makes a flippant gesture with his right hand, as if encouraging the council to do its worst. "I do know my place. I was hired by someone who outranks you, and as far as I know he still deems me necessary to the school's goals. I will not be concerned until I hear from him."
"Vice Principal Peony has left the decision to us."
For the first time Jade feels a stir of unease. Why is Peony silent? Is he afraid to upset the delicate balance of power in the upper echelons of the Academy's country-sized ruling structure? Are there rules which prevent him from exercising his influence for personal reasons beyond certain limits? Whatever the reason is, Jade realizes that he is much more alone in this than he had previously thought. It is a cause for concern.
None of it, of course, shows in his face. His poker face is legendary.
"Then what is your decision?" he asks, somewhat more respectfully.
"We have not come to one as of yet," they reply. "We desire to know exactly what happened between this girl and yourself before we decide your fate. We are not so cruel as to inflict a punishment disproportionate to the crime."
Jade resists the urge to roll his eyes like a recalcitrant teenaged boy. "I have done nothing, as I said. I tutored a willing student after hours at her own request. Nothing untoward took place. Ask the girl herself."
"Perhaps we shall," says another member of the council coldly, one who rarely speaks and defers unfailingly to the first speaker in Jade's experience. "What would we find, I wonder?"
"Nothing," says a familiar voice from the entrance of the hall at Jade's back.
He almost whirls to stare in astonishment, but elects instead to stay as he is and smile sardonically. "Ah, speak of the devil and she shall come." The less-than-metaphorical accuracy of the phrase does not escape him, and his adjusts his glasses with an amused snort.
"You were not summoned," Yamamoto, the first speaker, says disapprovingly.
"Whatever," Saya replies with a shrug. "Here I am. Nothing happened. I'm leaving today in any case, so the threat to your academy is removing itself without any action on your part."
Jade feels a pang in his chest but says nothing. He has been granted time and cooperation beyond his wildest dreams. To demand more would be unspeakably greedy. He has material enough to pore over for years to come anyway. Still, the thought that he might not have had enough time to discover everything gnaws at him like an ulcer. What if he has missed something crucial? He will never have another chance.
The council mutter amongst themselves, ancient and decrepit but still infused with the ancient and unquestioned power of their positions. At last they straighten and rearrange themselves into a picture of stony dignity, sitting in a half-moon of white robes behind an ancient curving mahogany table. "This solution is satisfactory."
"I should hope so," murmurs Jade under his breath.
"Well, good," echoes Saya unknowingly, "since that's all I planned to offer. Thank you for the opportunity to study here, it was most informative--" and with this she flicks a glance over at Jade for the first time, and he is surprised to see regret there, "--and I may return at some time in the future if possible."
At this his heart leaps in renewed hope. He had not considered the possibility of her returning to the Academy, to him, even in his flightiest fantasies.
With that and a respectful though somewhat shallow bow, she turns and sweeps out of the hall with grace disproportionate to her schoolgirl stature and appearance.
After a few more moments of formal closing exchanges, Jade follows her nearly at a run, catching her just as she makes the right turn down the colonnade towards the docks on the western shore. The sun is setting behind her, setting her dark hair alight with unholy crimson flames.
"Will you really come back?" he asks, boring into her skull with unblinking eyes.
She meets him, unfazed, her eyes deep in the evening shadow. "Maybe," she answers with a noncommital shrug. "I'm not sure yet. Things are pretty unstable on the mainland and I have no way of knowing how long it will take to straighten things out. But," she says with a rogueish smile, "if I get the chance, rest assured that I'll come here first. There are still lots of things I want your help in figuring out."
It takes Jade a long moment to identify the strange swelling feeling in his chest: pride. He is honoured by her reassurance, like a wide-eyed subject at a queen's smiling platitude.
He files the sensation away for later examination and reaches out to shake her hand formally, holding her eyes as long as he can until she turns away and strides off into the sparse crowd, vanishing in seconds.
Someday, he knows with the unfamiliar vague press of intuition, she will be back. She is like him in her insatiable need to know the truth.
Until she does, there is much to do.
Jade turns and walks in the opposite direction with purpose and a quiet smile.
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A/N: Yes? No? I don't know.
