summonerd | i just wanna know: who broke it?

i just wanna know: who broke it?

[Sheena'd thought she was all done with dimensional travel, now that the two worlds were united. But here she is, having fallen asleep in one world and woken up in a Tethe'alla that's just different enough from the one she knows to be constantly jarring. Her connections to Aselia's summon spirits dangle loose, snapped by distance - not even Origin's power could follow her here, it seems. That's more than a little unsettling.

It takes her some time, alone in a bizarro version of Meltokio as she is, but eventually she stumbles on a lead - an old scientific journal, a mention of the power of something called an Aegis being able to transcend space and time, at least in theory. And a little asking around tells her that Tethe'alla has its own Aegis, though no one's seen it for years. Well. Worth a shot, right?

Somehow she manages to talk her way into the Tethe'allan castle where the Aegis's core crystal awaits being woken up, with a series of smiles and her very best politicking - yes, of course she's got nothing but loyalty for Tethe'alla, of course she's skilled at this, of course it'd be a great honor.

(Zelos would be proud, she thinks, wryly.)

They're dubious, but her persistence wears them down, or maybe they're just desperate enough for a return of the Aegis's power to let her try, and the orange core crystal is offered out to her.

She takes a deep breath, and reaches out to touch it.]

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Sheena stretches a little as Lloyd writes out his answer, thinking about her own. She'd struggled more than she'd expected to, some of the letters harder to differentiate than she thinks they should have been, but then, she does still feel all wrung out. Having something to think about instead helped, though. It's not as hard as she thought it might be to answer Kratos's smile with a tiny one of her own, and she leans forward to see Lloyd's answer once he's done.

"What he said," she half-jokes, weakly, brushes her bangs out of the way with her free hand. "But... yeah, a little better. Thanks."

Kratos smiles back, relieved, and though he wants to say as much, he can get the point across with said smile and a thumbs up. That's good. Not perfect, not ideal, but neither is Kratos right now. They don't have to be 100%. Okay is enough.

There's a knock on the half open door, before Anna pokes her head in. Kratos relaxes immediately at the sight of her, which he admits is probably a little silly, seeing as in this company he isn't any safer with her around than he is without, but still. He waves at her, smiling, and she shoots him a smile back, her face full of joy in the way that suggests he briefly distracted her from what she even came here for.

"Hey!" she says, and its bright but kind of tight. Not completely distracted, then, but that's probably for the best. "Um, so, I just finished talking to Morag and I have... news."

That isn't comforting. Kratos would ask what kind of news, but whatever sign he'd taught Anna she's forgotten, and it's fine because Mithos is asking anyway.

"Good news or bad news?" Mithos asks.

"Uhhhh," Anna considers for a moment. "News," she says. "Listen. So, sometime last night, Sylvarant's cannon facility just, uh. Blew up."

"Where's Martel?" Mithos demands, before Kratos can even breathe.

"They looked, but no one found her," Anna says, clearly well aware she's giving bad news. Before Mithos can make more than a half-strangled sound, Anna continues, hasty. "But, there's been reports of some guy spotted near Asgard with the Aegis."

"Which Aegis?" Mithos counters. "Martel or the- or. Colette?"

"Colette," Anna answers. "But, uh, here's. The bad news." Based on the way her voice tightens with anger, it must be really bad news. "Morag believes Sylvarant was doing experiments that would have involved fusing Colette's core crystal with shards of Martel's."

"What the fuck," Mithos spits, sudden and furious. Kratos flinches, even though a part of him had expected this. "That's--" Mithos shouts, then cuts off. He twitches where he stands, clearly trying to keep a hold of his composure (Kratos fears what the emotion bleed must feel like right now, for Lloyd). "I. I need to. Go. I need to." Mithos's hands open, close, fists clenched tight at his sides, spine rigid and body trembling. "To talk to Father."

And then he slides out of the room, pushing past Anna.

"....a'ight," Anna says, hands up as she watches Mithos go. "So I guess the plan is to head to Asgard, or wherever else this guy ends up, track him down, find Colette, etcetera-- But I dunno if we want to wait for Zelos?" She looks to Kratos, and he takes a guess at what she wants to know.

2 D-A-Y-S, he spells out, which everyone in the room should understand.

"Two days," Anna repeats. "Colette's not in danger of being put in a cannon, but..." She looks to Lloyd and Sheena, now. "Well, what do you guys think? I don't think waiting two days is going to hurt the way things are right now, and we could all probably use a little more time to recover from that shitshow that happened yesterday, but... If you guys are eager to find Colette, then."

Edited 2019-11-19 05:01 (UTC)

Sheena sits up when Anna announces that she has news, uncertain - what kind of news would Sylvarant's royalty have that's so important? - only to gasp in horror, a sharp intake of breath, when she goes on. Lloyd grabs her hand under the table the second Anna mentions Colette, and she squeezes back probably-too-hard. "They what??" she manages, a little sick but mostly just thinking about how ready she is to make whoever hurt this world's Colette pay for it. It shouldn't be a surprise, the way this world reflects their own, but something about the way Anna describes it just sounds so much worse.

She barely even notices Mithos leaving, except for the way Lloyd squeezes her hand again, and she loosens her grip on his hand just long enough to properly intertwine their fingers, strokes the back of his hand reassuringly with her thumb. Her first response to Anna is that of course they shouldn't wait - who knows what could happen to Colette, in two days? - and she opens her mouth to tell the others so. But... she pauses to look over to Lloyd. He's trying to hide what's wrong now, but it's not like he'd been doing great before they'd found out. And Kratos is just as nonverbal as his son right now, and Mithos is as mad as he has every right to be, and she thinks she remembers Malos struggling yesterday too, and she's barely hanging in there.

"I think we should wait," she admits, instead, hating it the whole time. "At least until tomorrow. We really do need the time to recover, and if the cannon's gone..." She lets the thought trail off, because there's no way she can finish it and not hate it. Colette's not safe, and in two days she could be taken anywhere, but what could they do in a fight, like this? Rather than keep trying to justify it to herself, she shakes her head hard, looks back up at Anna. "What about the Sylvaranti government? Can they at least keep track of where this guy takes her?"

Lloyd barely has a moment to get over his initial wave of concern and furiousness about Colette, about what could have happened to her, about what could be happening to her, before Mithos’ tsunami of negative emotions floods their emotional bleed, overwhelming Lloyd under the weight of them. His eyes widen and he jolts forward, willing his heart to slow down as he tries to fight against the currents of Mithos’ anger, horror, and guilt. And - here’s the thing, what Mithos is feeling is - it’s incredibly justified, Lloyd’s worst theory about Colette and Martel’s shared existence being confirmed not at all helping him feel better, and for a moment, Lloyd embraces the fact that both of them are equally upset about the mistreatment of the Aegises, his own anger mixing with Mithos’ into some awful concoction of determined vengeance, but.

Lloyd bites back his fear, shivering as he feels the looseness of Mithos’ hold on himself, their bleed feeling unstable and unsafe, a distant reminder of what could be at risk should anything more happen to Martel, and - Lloyd squeezes Sheena’s hand again, attempting to keep his reaction hidden best he can from Kratos and Anna, wishing he could fucking speak, but even with the panic rising from his chest and appearing in the way his breaths quicken, because as Mithos’ sanity slips from him, Lloyd’s reminded of bitter, high-pitched laughter and manic energy, magic used against him and everyone he’s ever cared about with the sheer intent to hurt, hurt, hurt, take back what had been taken from the hero of legend -

Count to ten, Kratos’ voice whispers, and Lloyd does, using Sheena as a grounding force. Lloyd can’t talk yet, useless as he is, but he nods along with Sheena’s decision, knowing he’s in no position to fight at his best. Guilt not unlike Mithos’ joins the cocktail as Lloyd swallows, looking at his boots. He was too late to help Colette, and now he’s making her wait even longer. Keep holding on, Colette, he thinks silently, remembering a soft voice filled with gilded sorrow, thinking of her having to go through the unfair treatment Zelos has. Lloyd doesn’t know this world’s Colette, but he has no doubt in her mind she’s worth saving. We’re coming, I promise.

"Yeah, no, I definitely think waiting is a good idea," Anna tells Sheena, brightly, sending a gentle, reassuring smile at first Lloyd then Kratos. She doesn't know much about Lloyd or Sheena-- at least not how they cope with horrible shit like this-- but she knows that Kratos' downswings take at least twenty-four hours to ride out, and this was a downswing worse than she's literally every seen him have before. But this is also the first time she's seen him put in a literal, actual cage, so like.

Anyway.

"Yeah, we'll see how we're doing tomorrow," Anna says. "And then maybe take one more day after that, depending on how we feel. I think the least Morag can do is keep us updated on Colette's position, seeing as that's her job." Is Anna a little bitter? Maybe, but when isn't she with politicians, to be honest.

Kratos reaches into his bag and after some rummaging pulls out his journal. Anna waits while he writes (feeling guilty that she managed to forget nearly every inkling of sign he taught her, but that's just another guilt to add to the pile she's ammassed over the past five years) and then dutifully takes it from him when he's done to read to everyone else, seeing as she's done this before.

"'While I don't like leaving Colette or Martel with a stranger, we have no reason yet to believe she's in danger. Anyone could be driving her right now, good or bad. I think we can afford waiting until we know for certain.'"

Anna nods, when she's done reading. "Yeah. Yeah, me too. Not to mention laying low so no one can get their hands on Zelos while he's dormant is also... probably a good idea."

So they decide to wait.

Edited 2019-11-22 18:17 (UTC)

For all that waiting's the best option - for all that she'd been the one to suggest it -Sheena still kind of hates this.

The next day rolls around, and while she feels better, there's a tension in the air that's hard to ignore, and maybe they could push through and leave today, but she's aware enough to get the feeling it wouldn't end well.

So, okay. One more day. One more day, and then Zelos will be back and ~~everything will be okay again~~ they'll be able to catch him up and go wherever Morag says that Colette was last seen. She can handle that much.

... Except that maybe she can't stand another day of inactivity, now that she's gotten enough sleep that her brain isn't a haze of misery. She could train on her own, but the idea of sparring sounds a lot more appealing right now. Kratos is definitely out. Lloyd might agree to it if she asked, but she's not sure he really should, right now. And besides, Anna had seemed especially on edge, earlier. Maybe she'd appreciate the distraction, too. So she seeks her out, finding her in an otherwise-deserted guest lounge.

"Hey," she calls as she approaches, her smile not as weary as it had been yesterday even if Zelos's core crystal is still gripped tightly in one hand. She waves with the other. "Are you busy?"

Anna is absolutely, definitely, a little bit on edge, but good luck getting her to talk about why. Mithos promised he'd stop being an ass, and she has to trust that and so she needs to stop sitting here obsessing over it. It's not... as easy as just stopping, though, so needless to say she's very very very grateful for the distraction of Sheena deciding to ask for her attention.

Sheena looks better than she did yesterday, which is good, Anna thinks. Definitely good. Sure, Sheena looks kind of restless, too, but so is Anna.

"No, not really," she answers. The busiest she is right now is nervously braiding lanyards like Lora showed her how to do, which despite how difficult it is to be dexterous with her hands, isn't nearly distracting enough to stop her mind from playing back the events of last night, so. Absolutley yes she'd love to be doing literally anything else. "Did you need something, Sheena?"

Sheena's curious, a little, but decides not to ask just what had happened that she and Lloyd had missed out on. Unless it comes up again later, when they're all recovered and back on the road, or Anna wants to talk about it, it's really not any of her business. But Anna does seem happy enough to see her, which is more important at the moment.

"Just wondering if you might be interested in sparring, or anything." She shrugs, with a rueful grin, as she leans against the side of the couch. "I feel like if I sit still much longer I might explode," she confesses.

"A spar?" Anna asks, and even before she's finished saying it she's already adding on: "Oh, hell yes, absolutely." That's just the kind of distraction she needs. Can't think about bullshit if she's thinking about sparring. "I'm down."

She packs up her things and leaves them there-- the inn's empty, the only thing she has to worry about is forgetting where she left it. She and Sheena head outside, since sparring inside is a tremendously bad idea, of course. Mithos and Kratos are sitting not far outside the inn's back door, but, as if he hears Anna coming, Mithos gets up and walks before she can even breathe in his direction. Anna sighs. Whatever. Asshole.

"He behaving himself?" Anna asks Kratos, who shakes his head and rolls his eyes at her, not amused. He signs yes, though. That's good. This also isn't really a conversation she can have with Kratos right now, not with him nonverbal and Sheena right here, so instead Anna says: "Me and Sheena were gonna spar, you wanna watch?"

Kratos gives her a thumbs up. "Cool," Anna says, and trots into the empty space here behind the inn. There's plenty of space for a spar. The ground's all grass, which is gonna make landings soft, at least. Actually, isn't dirt softer? Anna doesn't know. Either way, she shakes out her limbs and eyes Sheena. "Weapons yes, weapons no?" she asks.

Edited 2019-11-28 21:34 (UTC)

Sheena laughs at Anna's enthusiasm, nodding, and trails after her out of the inn. She raises her eyebrows at both Mithos's abrupt departure and Anna and Kratos's half-conversation, because alright something definitely happened, but doesn't ask, just waves at Kratos with a smile as she follows aAnna out into the field.

"No, I think," she says, not having really thought about it much until this moment. Her fighting style isn't much different with or without her cards, but not leaving even a small chance of injuring each other more than a bruise or two seems like the better idea at the moment. She stretches, tensing her muscles a little, and then looks down at her off hand, remembering that Zelos's core crystal is still clutched in it as she runs a thumb over its edge. "I should probably put him down, though," she says, uncertain. Well - there's nowhere really safe for it, but she could let Kratos hold it, maybe? She trusts him with Zelos. She looks over to him, but hesitates rather than approaching to ask.

"No, yeah, that makes sense," Anna says, quick and easy. "Just checking." It occurs to her now that anything more than bare-handed would be a horrible idea without a healing blade around, anyway.

She starts to say more-- something unimportant, but closes her mouth the moment Sheena muses about Zelos. Anna blinks in surprise. Has... Sheena really been holding his core crystal this whole time? Not that she blames Sheena, but she's surprised she didn't notice...

Anna keeps her mouth shut, because Sheena's musing felt somewhat rhetorical, and saying something like yeah you probably should would just make Anna kind of an asshole. She turns her attention to Kratos when Sheena does, raising her eyebrows in silent question in a way that - even after five years - they're still capable of doing. (Though, maybe Sheena's own silent question was as loud to Kratos as it was to Anna.) Kratos nods, signs something that might have been "fine by me", and so Anna turns back to Sheena, translating for Kratos:

"Kratos says he can hold onto Zelos, if that's alright with you," Anna says, which isn't exactly what Kratos said, no, but she knows him well enough to know that's pretty close to what he would have said, had he better means of communicating with them right now. Even still, Anna pitches the end of her sentence up in question, looking to Kratos again for confirmation.

Kratos nods, deliberate, his gaze remaining fixed on Sheena.

Right. Yeah, okay, trying to spar with only one hand free isn't the smartest idea. Sheena looks back to Anna when she speaks, because she's pretty sure whatever Kratos signed hadn't been part of their lesson yesterday even if the nod was probably explanation enough.

Part of her still wants to balk at the idea of putting it down, but - Kratos'll probably keep Zelos safer than she physically can at the moment, even. So she nods in response and makes her way over to where Kratos is sitting, shifting her grip to one end of Zelos's core crystal so he can take it without having to touch her. "Thanks," she says, soft, as she holds it out. "I know he'll be safe with you."

With that safely handed off, she cracks her knuckles in anticipation, stretching her shoulders out a little as she heads back to Anna. "Alright," she calls, stopping a few feet back. "Ready whenever you are?"

Anna grins back, sharp and exhilirated, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Let's go!" she calls, and runs forward.

Sheena's way better than Anna had expected, actually, but Sheena has youth and more-recent practice on her side. Not that Anna hasn't been practicing, but she definitely hasn't been doing anything like daily drills, so she's let herself get a little rusty. It's fun, though. She and Sheena tussle until they're both too exhausted to keep going, and Anna accepts the bruises she's probably going to have tomorrow with good cheer as she collapses in the grass. Cross-legged, she rolls out her aching shoulders as she sends a grin Sheena's direction.

"Well, that was fun!" she says, bright. "Thanks, I think I needed that." She tilts her head, curious. "You feeling any better?"

Sheena'd figured getting active would help, but she hadn't realized just how much. It's a relief to think about nothing but the motion of her body and how she needs to react to Anna's movements, no room for her worries and frustrations unless she wants to get put flat on her ass. (Not that Anna doesn't manage it without Sheena being distracted.)

She's a little disappointed when they stop, honestly, but it is needed. Her Exsphere could give her more power if she needed to keep going, but Anna doesn't have that benefit, and Sheena doesn't need to, so she joins Anna in flopping down to the ground, a little short of breath from that last move she'd tried to pull as she listens.

Nothing's magically fixed itself in the time they'd been sparring, so far as she knows, but, well. She does feel better, she realizes. Like at least some of the weight has been lifted, with the good kind of exhaustion left behind rather than the miserable foggy kind she'd spent too much of the past few days in. "Yeah, I am," she tells Anna, grinning back at her. "Thanks." She leans forward, stretching out her legs in front of her to cool down. "Hey, show me that move you opened with again sometime? It looked really useful."

"Oh, absolutely," Anna agrees. She reaches over and jostles Sheena, brief and playful. "We can trade pointers and shit, sometime. I think there's a lot I could learn from you, too."

Mithos spends most of the rest of the day just... avoiding everyone. It's not really a big deal. By tomorrow Zelos should be awake again, and... and then they'll go find Martel, and it'll be... fine, really. Everything will be fine.

Since Mithos is avoiding everyone (but especially Anna), by the time everyone's gone to sleep he's flipping idly through one of the books the inn had laying around, not really reading but neither really willing to go to sleep. He doesn't really need the sleep, and he wants to be awake in case Kratos needs him (Kratos probably won't need him) and he doesn't want to run into his father in the dreamspace, either, even though he's pretty sure his father is avoiding him, too (fine by him).

It's some hours into the night when his awareness of Lloyd through their resonance link goes from quiet and dim - since Lloyd was sleeping - into sharp, gripping dread. A nightmare? It must be.

Mithos waits it out for a few minutes, but it doesn't really seem to get any better. In fact it just seems to get worse and worse.

He knows... he knows he promised Lloyd he'd make sure they couldn't accidentally meet in the dreamspace again, and also promised he wouldn't mess around with Lloyd's dreamspace... well, at all, but. He's not sure he can, in good conscious, leave Lloyd stuck in a nightmare that feels this bad when getting in there and then stopping it - and then getting out, if he has to, maybe before Lloyd realizes he was even there? - would be so easy, so fast.

He closes the book, closes his eyes, and then reaches for Lloyd's dreamspace.

The nightmare always starts off the same.

Lloyd stands in a vibrant cloud of green, opening his eyes to the feeling of his sword handles in hands and the knowledge that his traveling party, all of it, is with him. For a moment, there's confidence, a true belief that he can handle what will be thrown at him, that they can do this.

And then something shifts. Blurrily, two figures step away from the center of the cloud, from the rest of the group. The taller figure pulls the shorter one towards them, faces the group, and the image begins to sharpen, the haze of memory making way for the harsh clarity of trauma. The taller figure becomes a man with pale skin, light clothing, and ruby hair, while the shorter becomes a girl with robes of blue and white, shining gold hair almost as distracting as the sword at her throat.

The rest of the Tower of Salvation falls into place around Lloyd and the group as Colette gets caught and sent away, Zelos' grin sharpening into something angry and distant, twisting Lloyd's heart into anguish, ripping a question from his throat, one he never remembers asking but knows he did in the worst of the betrayal: why?!

And then, with a biting, venomous tone, Lloyd gets his answer. "I never could get you to trust me, anyways."

The truth is, Lloyd almost wishes he had taken some terrible wound during their fight. Maybe then it would have distracted from the pain of the toxic shock set into his system, diluted the poison that still runs through his bloodstream. Maybe then he would feel like he walked out of there with the punishment he deserved.

Maybe he wouldn't have walked out of there at all.

Before the Tower of Salvation, Lloyd and Zelos had sparred quite a few times. Before, their battles had been filled with the sounds of their swords clashing, with banter and breathless laughter as they both chased victory in the form of disarming the other. Here, Lloyd is quiet aside from cries of "I don't want to fight you!" and Zelos is loud, letting out a vicious cackle that gives the battle a raging pulse, freezes the way Lloyd's brows knit together in horror and regret. Lloyd fights defensively, tries to convince Zelos that it doesn't have to be like this, but with every plea, Zelos hits harder, swings faster, laughs louder. By the time Lloyd lands his first hit on Zelos, eyes widening as he cuts past Zelos' vest and tank to slice at his side, Lloyd's arms shake with the effort needed to block Zelos' previous strikes.

The battle forces Lloyd to put the majority of his thoughts on the back burner, letting them escape as nothing more tears that well up in his eyes, tears he blinks away before they distort the image of Zelos' attacks. With the first blood, defense is put behind them, Lloyd now having no choice but to strike back with the same force Zelos does. Zelos has patches of skin that are charred from fire magic, knicks and bruises from physical attacks, but Lloyd knows that Zelos has focused on him, and as such, the worst of his wounds are coming from Lloyd's own blades.

It's no surprise, then, that Lloyd lands the final blow. He doesn't even remember what led up to it, doesn't remember how Zelos spun into it, allowing Lloyd's blades full access to the more vulnerable parts of his chest, doesn't remember how Zelos' grin tightened with pain while the rest of him relaxed against it, knowing what he wanted had been accomplished.

What Lloyd does remember is the sickening terror that caused his heart to fall to his stomach, remembers the way his tears finally overflowed down his cheeks, racing past dirt and blood and stinging as they hit his cuts. He remembers letting go of his sword handles as though they had burned through his leather gloves and made his palms welt. He remembers dropping everything to catch Zelos as his legs gave out, gently cradling him close while he lowered them both to the ground, eyes closed shut against the worst of his heartbreak.

A ghost of warmth gently presses itself to his cheek and he opens his eyes again, leaning into Zelos' hand, staring as blood leaks out his chest and stains the pink silk of his vest. Lloyd opens his mouth to ask again, why, but all he can do is mouth it, no sound coming out.

And then Zelos chuckles, something tired but satisfied. "It's okay. To tell you the truth, I was getting tired of living anyways."

A sob rips itself from Lloyd's throat at that, causing him to sleep, head hung, tears falling and landing on Zelos' weak body, but he can barely bring himself to breathe, let alone try and compose himself. Who could blame Zelos, after everything he had been through, for wanting this? Who could blame him after his heart was thrown back into his face by the person he thought he could trust?

Lloyd did this. He's the reason it ended up like this.

Zelos drops his hand, and Lloyd wants to selfishly chase it, to press it against his cheek again, but he doesn't. He shouldn't be holding him like this, not after what he's done, but like hell will he let Zelos die on the cold floor. It wouldn't be right.

Zelos coughs, blood forcing its way up from his throat and past his lips, and Lloyd feels some splatter his face. It can join the blood that's staining his hands, his pants, his entire body. Zelos tells them of Colette's location, tells them what's needed to be done, but Lloyd hardly pays attention, wallowing in so much misery it's like the world around him no longer matters. The man he loves is dying in his arms, and nobody is to blame but Lloyd himself.

Once the instructions are given, Zelos lowers his voice, whispers as though he only wants Lloyd to hear: "You can drop the act, now."

Hope and his ability to speak aren't the only things that leave Lloyd when Zelos closes his eyes and takes his last breath, but there is no bringing back the dead, so Lloyd bows his head further, holding Zelos' body close, and presses a kiss to his forehead, allowing himself to selfishly grieve a man he killed. The fact that Zelos died thinking Lloyd didn't care about him or anything he had gone through leaves emptiness behind in Lloyd's shattered heart, and he lets himself drown in it, knowing that for all he wants to lie down next to Zelos' body and just stop, he cannot and will not be allowed to stay for too long.

But for now, maybe he can mourn the loss of someone he will never be able to make things up to.

Alright, first of all, what the fuck.

Mithos knows nightmares, he knows because he spent centuries wading through Kratos', Martel's, his own. He knows that there is no reason for Lloyd to share any nightmares with his family, and yet stumbling into a nightmare so vastly different than ones he has encountered before (usually, harsh neon lights illuminating bound wrists and wires plugged in to burning skin) still causes him to flounder for a few moments more than he should as he tries to take it all in. A place he recalls vaguely from having sifted through Lloyd's memories before. The singing ring of metal on metal, sword on sword, dread so thick in the air he can taste it, and--

Then it all stops, image caught for an eternity on Lloyd's swords slicing through tender flesh. Zelos' frame, illuminated by dissipating orange wings. Horror and regret on Lloyd's face. Horror that grips the very dreamspace, chokes all air out of Mithos' lungs.

He knows when a nightmare is more than just a nightmare.

He knows when a nightmare is more like a memory.

Lloyd killed Zelos.

Time passes strangely in dreams, so it could have been an instant or it could have been an eternity that Mithos stood there, trying to take in the truth and also the weight of Lloyd cradling Zelos as he died. Zelos - another Zelos - the Zelos that Lloyd knew, from his world - even though Mithos sees Zelos and thinks of the nervous artificial Aegis - sees Zelos and thinks of a moment they shared just before he died, consumed by his own ether - eyes far away but body relaxing as Mithos sang a cautious, soothing tune --

Mithos fumblingly grabs hold control of the dreamspace and wills it all to stop.

No Zelos. No Tower of Salvation. No blood on Lloyd's clothes.

A cold cradle of endless white, replaced habitually with a room from the Tower - Mithos' Tower - the Tower he calls home, a bedroom that might be Kratos' or it might be Mithos', it doesn't matter. Mithos realizes after the image has settled that Lloyd is not Kratos, and that the endless white would have only set Kratos on edge, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

Mithos sits down on the ground near Lloyd, not too close, but close enough that Lloyd could touch him, if he wanted. If he wanted.

"Sorry," Mithos says, after a moment or two, hopefully long enough for Lloyd to have realized what has happened, to have realized this was only a dream. A dream that Mithos has invaded, reshaped. "I know... you didn't want me in here. But I didn't want to leave you to a nightmare if I could stop it. I just... I was a little too slow. Sorry. I wish I'd gotten here sooner. Then I could have stopped it, before... Before..."

He can't say it. He tries not to think of Zelos, bleeding crimson.

It takes Lloyd several seconds to notice Mithos' presence, to notice how he shapes the world around them, and the only reason why Lloyd does notice is because of how Zelos' body is taken away with the scenery of the Tower of Salvation, ruby hair disappearing with crimson blood and the feeling of Zelos' warmth leaving his body. Lloyd blinks, tears still streaming down his face, trying to connect his heart and mind with the rest of his body, and finally hears Mithos as he crouches down and sits.

He should answer the Aegis, he knows, reassure him that he's not mad, that frankly, he appreciates his interference in the first place, but the problem with this memory is that knowing it is only a nightmare does not make coping any easier. In fact, knowing that Lloyd won't wake up to Zelos being alive and well only makes it harder, the knowledge that yeah, that happened, and there's no going back from it working against the few coping methods Lloyd does have.

So instead of answering, Lloyd pulls his knees to his chest, folds his arms over them, and hides his face as he cries.

He wants to be embarrassed, all things considered, of crying in front of the blade he shares resonance with, of not being able to talk either in real life or even in a dream, of being quite useless, in the grand scheme of things, but the corpse of the man he loved haunts him, the ghost of his hand on Lloyd's cheek and the whisper of "you can drop the act, now" forcing him into a spiral of thoughts that snake around his heart and squeeze until he thinks it'll stop beating.

Lloyd isn't sure how long it takes until he's able to stop crying, doesn't know how long it takes until his eyes can no longer cry, but eventually his shoulders stop shaking with the force of his silent sobs and all that's left is his red face, bloodshot eyes, and a chest that's wracked with hiccups. And once he calms down from the worst of that, he finally pushes his head back up from behind his arms and stares blankly ahead, refusing to look at Mithos.

"Thank you," he manages to say aloud, voice quiet and rough, "sorry you had to see all of that."

Mithos holds his tongue and he waits as Lloyd cries, uncomfortable but unable to do anything about it. He idly plays around with the dreamspace as he waits, focusing on creating-- something, anything, to keep his mind from thinking about anything, anything other than Zelos, lifeless and bleeding the wrong way, the wrong color. He creates little bouncing lights like fireflies around them, gentle yellow-green floating around, a distraction.

He doesn't know what to think about first, what to unpack. His driver, a murderer...? But from what glimpses he saw, Mithos knows Zelos started that fight. Zelos made his choice. A death in battle is much, much different than something pre-mediated, pre-determined. Lloyd is a killer, but not a murderer.

Not that that stops the grief Lloyd feels from sliding down Mithos' throat and choking his lungs. Whoever Zelos was to Lloyd... he was someone important. The fireflies around Mithos flicker, wingbeats faltering for a moment, as Mithos tries to imagine that grief, rationalize it within his own mind, but can't even come close, can only understand the grief that sits heavy on his tongue.

Lloyd speaks, finally, and Mithos winces at how clearly Lloyd's body does not want him to speak.

"It's fine," Mithos says, frustrated, uncomfortable. "I was the one who walked in here. You don't have to apologize for that."

He fidgets, a little. Fireflies flicker around them, yellow, orange.

Mithos swallows. He has questions, but everything he really needs to know about this situation, he already knows. And he's not completely dumb, he knows that now's the absolute worst time to ask Lloyd anything pressing. So:

"Is there anything I can do?" Mithos asks, quiet. And then: "...do you want me to go? If I leave, you should stay lucid in the dreamspace. No more nightmares then, at least. Not unless you ask for them."

Playing with the cuff of his left glove, Lloyd continues to stare ahead, willing his broken mind and soul into quieting down again, listening for the loud pulse of his stubbornly beating heart in his ears. Does he want Mithos to go? He's not sure. He's not sure if he wants to be alone, only knows that he probably shouldn't be, not with his fragile state and the ability to be in a dreamscape he can shape. Who knows what his half-aware delusions could form.

"It's okay," Lloyd says, after a few moments of silence, quickly glancing at Mithos with a weak, close-mouthed smile. "You can stay. Up to you."

And then he hums, relaxing his posture enough to bounce his right leg. Chances are, Mithos had seen everything, and terror grips at Lloyd just enough to worry about what that could mean for what Mithos thinks of his driver. Does he think of him as a murderer? It's not like he'd be wrong. It's not like it's far from what Lloyd thinks of himself.

And to see Lloyd kill the reflection of an Aegis in this world... If Mithos didn't trust Lloyd after this, Lloyd wouldn't blame him. Maybe he should offer to give up resonance. But for now, Lloyd can at least offer up answers to questions Mithos might have.

"You... Probably have questions. You can ask. I won't mind."

Lloyd says it's alright if he stays, so for now, Mithos stays.

"No, I think I saw everything I needed to see," Mithos says in response to Lloyd's offer to answer questions. He has very few questions left, very few that wouldn't be highly pointless to ask. "What's there left to know? He betrayed you. You didn't have much of a choice..."

The grief that doesn't belong to him still sits on Mithos' tongue, heavy and thick. Mithos still wishes he understood it. He's never had someone close to him betray him like that - no one except his father, but even that is a betrayal of a different sort. And certainly he's never had to fight anyone he...

Mithos pauses, fixing his eyes on Lloyd; curious, head tilted to the side.

"...did you love him?" he asks, quietly.

Immediately, Lloyd feels the need to defend Zelos, to take the blame for what he had done, for what he had forced the party to do. I betrayed his trust before he betrayed mine, rises from the back of Lloyd's throat, ready to be spoken on a moment's notice, but then Lloyd remembers what Sheena had said to him before, when they talked that day in the forest. Zelos had been selling out the party from the start.

Maybe he had always hated Lloyd. Maybe, some part of Lloyd's mind wanders, searching desperately for a reason why Zelos would have wanted this, he only got close to Lloyd to gain information from him easier. (Lloyd knows, in his heart, that that isn't true. Lloyd had a chance and he blew it.)

So instead, he continues listening to Mithos. And the thing is, Lloyd knew that as soon as he opened up for questions, his relationship with Zelos was going to be brought up, obvious as it is that what Zelos and Lloyd had was something a little deeper than friendship but exactly explored, not before Zelos' death at Lloyd's hands. But something still forces Lloyd to freeze when Mithos asks, bluntly, if Lloyd had loved him. Maybe it's the fact that Lloyd's never admitted to it out loud before - (everyone in the party just knew) - or maybe it's because he's talking to Mithos, who knows this world's Zelos. But either way, he sits, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and answers honestly.

"I loved him more than I can describe," he says, blinking, forcing himself to speak the truth of what he had been grieving about for months on end. "And for a bit, there, I thought… I thought we might have had a chance."

Edited 2020-01-02 12:39 (UTC)

"Well," Mithos says, and then says nothing more for a long moment. Something in his chest curls, something like watching Kratos sit at the window watching the rain for three days straight because the storm was so great he couldn't make his usual trip to see Anna, something like jealousy and disgust and he doesn't understand how love for a fucking human could break a blade so thoroughly--

(Lloyd's human, too, though. Isn't he?)

Mithos takes his disgust in his hands and bottles it up, smothers it, so Lloyd cannot feel it. To bring it up while Lloyd is grieving would be an asshole move at best. He's glad he knows, because it gives him more clarity on the situation, but a part of him still wishes he hadn't asked.

"Well," he says, again. His mouth feels dry, even though things like that are just abstractions in dreams. He doesn't really know what to say. "I'm sorry that... that that happened to you. I'm sorry things didn't work out."

He doesn't know how to comfort someone who's grieving, really. It's been so long he's forgotten how he and Kratos managed, when Martel died. And when Anna died - when they thought Anna had died--

Oh.

Mithos... is just as guilty as Lloyd is, isn't he? Worse than that. Lloyd killed in battle, but Mithos plotted, planned, snuck behind Kratos' back, and then--

He killed Zelos, too.

The cannon stopped firing before Mithos told it to, because it's power source had suddenly stopped. Because Zelos had died. Because--

Feeling shaky, Mithos laughs once, short and startled and desperately trying not to think about the weight of that. He grabs the guilt and the horror and bottles it up. Wraps his fingers iron-tight around the dreamspace so it cannot paint another image than it is painting right now. He can't let anyone know. He can't let anyone know, not ever, because if anyone finds out no one is ever going to forgive him.

"A- Anyway," Mithos says, forcing his tone to be bright. "Sorry. I don't have any advice, or anything, but I have a really, really stupid question. Zelos had... wings. Is that normal for humans, in your world? Here, only Aegises-- well, and Father, I suppose. I've seen him with wings a few times before too, but he's - honestly I don't think he's human."

Edited 2020-01-06 00:10 (UTC)

Ah. And we're back to the wings.

"They're not exactly normal, no," Lloyd states, not really wanting to explain the bullshit of Cruxis Crystals and exspheres and every shitty thing that's ruined his life but knowing he shouldn't really avoid the topic here, now, whatever. At the very least, switching to this subject takes his mind off of the previous, shittier topic of Zelos' death. "In my world, there are these stones - not really core crystals, but... They're called exspheres and Cruxis Crystals. They both offer strength and just generally better senses and shit, but Cruxis Crystals are different. They turn people into what we call Angels. Beings with incredible powers and stuff like wings."

Lloyd sighs, exhaling loud and raising his left arm to bring Mithos' attention to his hand, where the key crest lays embedded. "I have a... Mine was an exsphere, and eventually I gained powers like an angels, so technically, it became a Cruxis Crystal. Sheena has an exsphere too. Exspheres aren't uncommon in our world, but they suck, so I was trying to find a way to collect and destroy them before I found my way here. Cruxis Crystals, on the other hand... Those are incredibly rare. Only a handful of people have them, and Zelos was one of them."

Something of what Mithos says sticks to the forefront of Lloyd's mind, though. Lloyd had been running under the idea that this world's Origin - the Architect, whatever - was just going to be a reflection of his own. But Aselia's Origin doesn't have wings - or at least, not any like Zelos' or Mithos'. And Origin is definitively not human, not unless you call having four arms human, so Lloyd's left wondering this: If the Architect isn't a reflection of Aselia's, then who is Origin to this world?

"What... What did his wings look like?" Lloyd questions, trying to put together an image of a god he doesn't know in his head. "Our Origin - our Architect, I guess - didn't really have wings, but he had four arms and blonde hair. Does yours look like that?"

let's all go on the coffee run together next time

anna's paying and she can't tell me no

time to get a seraphim frappe

Lloyd cant feel exhaustion anymore but pls know if he could hed be about to take a depression nap

if he wants to nap it's fine malos can carry him around when they move

oh piggyback ride time

(malos voice) like lifting a couple of grapes

lloyd gets a kick out of being like nine feet tall

malos jokes about throwng hims straight to the moon

somewhere distantly that feels familiar to lloyd but he can't put his finger on it

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mithos why

killing your first love is fun, friends!

ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS HORRIBLE!

DID I SAY FUN, I MEANT TRAUMATIZING

CLEARLY! I'M FILING A COMPLAINT

WHO ARE YOU GONNA FILE A COMPLAINT TO, THE "MURDER OF JRPG LOVE INTERESTS" BOARD??

NO I'M FILING A COMPLAINT TO GOD!!!!!!! WHY DOES HE ALLOW SUFFERING!!!!!!

FUCK I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT but good point, @ origin what's your deal

I WISH I KNEW

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