Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Unlike most blades, you awaken to your new life knowing two things.

The first is your name, like any other blade.

The second is that you're tired of this, of being used like this.

You don't know what "this" is, but it doesn't take you long to find out.

----

"Asch," your driver says.

It is almost paternal, the way Van talks to you. If you were another blade, one more naive, you're sure you would think of him as a father. But his emotions along your resonance are a little too dull, a little too sharp, just out of sync with his emotions enough that they feel fake, and so you push them away. And if he can lie to you with his emotions, lying with his words seems like it would be child's play.

He told you that he rescued you from a lab that experimented on blades. That, you believe. There's something that tickles at the back of your mind, when you think about it. Something that makes your breath catch in your throat, a stifled scream, when you enter the too-clean medical facilities where healing blades spend their time.

You believe that you were someone's experiment.

It's every other word out of Van's mouth that's a lie.

----

People are always trying to imitate the power of an Aegis.

Those words float through your mind, whenever you look too long at yourself, at the forks in your ether lines where other blades have circles.

You don't know who said them. Maybe you, in another lifetime. Maybe you, in a dream.

It's true, though. The first thing you do with Van, really do, is the destruction of a facility designed to study the connection between blades and drivers. You enter and you leave a trail of corpses behind you, a guide for Van to follow. Occasionally, you pocket a core crystal, a dead guardian blade to be born again in some other, better purpose.

It doesn't bother you until Van asks you, at a crossroads of passages, "Which way?"

"Shouldn't you know?" you reply. No answer, only a feeling of quiet confidence. After a moment, you give up, and set off to the left.

It leads you, almost directly, to the center of the facility. With the bloody path that takes you there, you almost wish you hadn't been right.

The center of the research facility is just one room, with eight specimen tubes sized for humans, or human-sized blades. Seven of them are full, with an uncanny sight - human bodies, with core crystals embedded in their chests, the crystals gone horrifically dark. More than inactive, they're dead, as dead as the human flesh they reside in. Around the crystals, their flesh is bulged and warped, to the point that it almost doesn't look human anymore.

The occupant of the last tube is spread out on a rolling exam table, straps cross the chest and legs securing them to the table. As you approach, you can see that it's a woman, and that somehow, she's still breathing, and more tellingly, the light of the crystal in her chest flickers weakly.

When she hears your footsteps - or rather, Van behind you - her head swings in your direction. For a moment her eyes are wild with panic and fear, but then they widen, narrow, and lock onto yours with a fierce determination, almost lit from within by the ether the core crystal must be forcing through her body.

"Please," she says, voice so quiet it doesn't even qualify as a whisper. Maybe, you think, you didn't even hear it. Maybe you just know, the same way you knew which way to turn to bring you here.

You close your eyes, and take a step forward. For the first time you can remember, you call your sword to your hand. It's bigger than even the one Van uses, and yet the weight is easy to handle as you line it up with her neck.

She smiles at you.

"Asch?" Van asks, worry in his voice. You can't feel it. You can't feel anything, except the blade in your hands and the abyss that's opened up between you and everything else.

You take a deep breath, as you lift your sword up. "Better luck next time," you wish the woman, almost solemnly.

And then you swing -

----

Afterwards, when you've made a clean getaway, Van says to you, "You did well."

"Don't patronize me," you reply. "I did my job." Even if it makes you want to scream.

"They made their choices, Asch," Van says. "If there is to be any justice for blades in this world, those who see them as mere tools can't be permitted to exist."

The words echo, like you've heard them before. Van's voice echoes, like he's spoken them before.

"I know," is all you say, because you do.

----

Van gives you clothes that cover your core crystal, allowing only some of the red glow to seep through the fabric.

You don't understand why until the first time you see another blade, and your hand goes up to your chest involuntarily. The other blade's core crystal is neatly square, perfectly formed, where yours is sharply broken, as though a piece of it were cut away.

You understand why Van wanted you to cover it. And you are equally sure that you now understand what kind of experiments he rescued you from.

You feel sick, and the only reassurance you get is not from the way Van looks at you, his eyes at once sympathetic and pitying. The only reassurance you get is that if you ever encounter whoever did this to you, he won't stop you from making them pay.

----

The first of Van's allies you meet is a tiny wisp of a driver named Arietta, and her massive, animalistic blade. He doesn't seem to have a name beyond "Big Brother," which is what Arietta calls him in her halting speech, and the blade cannot speak, himself.

His core crystal is cracked - not sharply cut like yours, a piece missing, but cracked as though someone drove a nail or the point of a sword into it. Van explains, when you're outside of Arietta's hearing, that the damage prevents Big Brother from speaking, and that that in turn stifled Arietta's development of language, because the cracked blade raised her.

She doesn't fight, the way a driver normally does. If you didn't know better, you would think that she was the blade, with how she channels ether while clinging to Big Brother's back, almost hidden in the ruff of his fur. The way they interact really is like a family, or at least what you think a family must be like.

It gives you hope, in that little campsite, where she is curled up into her blade's side to sleep. It gives you hope for the world where humans and blades can live in harmony.

She accompanies you and Van through the wilderness, but parts ways with you as you approach the city. As she leaves, her words almost disappear into Big Brother's fur and the wind -

"It was good to see you again, Asch."

Again?

----

Daath, the city on the borderlands, the city of pilgrimages. It's said to be the place where the Aegises first touched down to earth, when they descended from the heavens. True or not, it's a town where blades are much more respected than they are in either formal nation. In Kimlasca, blades are viewed as technology, little more than machines; in Malkuth, they're simply the means by which drivers interface with the world's ether.

Only in Daath are they made holy, made whole by the echoes of the respect for the Aegis.

It's no wonder Van made his home base here.

Daath feels... Familiar, somehow. It rings in your memory, and when Van says he has other business to take care of and sends you to explore the city as you will -

Your feet know right where to go, even if your mind doesn't follow them. Before too long, you find yourself standing in the Temple of the Aegis.

You find yourself wondering, if you've been here before, or if this is simply a place that all blades feel called to. Diffuse light from the sunset fills the grand hall of the temple, lighting the oddly-shaped stained glass windows from without.

(You know, without being told, that those windows are in the shape of the core crystals of the Aegis. So too are the primary colors, blue down one side and green down the other.)

You walk down the space between the empty pews to the altar. Behind it is an impressive window of the Aegises themselves, a blond boy with eyes of blue and a beautiful woman with hair of green. Their hands extend upward, to the heavens, to a white light that represents the Architect, whatever form he might possess. A red diamond, a few shades darker than fresh blood (old blood, something in your mind whispers, dead blood) floats between their outstretched hands, serving as His symbol. A mark that all blades bear, the sign of their Creator.

You find yourself taking the slow steps up to the dais, one hand running over the cloth of the altar, the other resting on the crystal set in your chest. The signal of the Architect could pass for a core crystal, except that, at least in the stained glass, it has slight variations of color that you've never seen a core crystal to possess.

None except yours, at any rate.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

You turn around with the speed only a blade can possess, alarm rippling through your body. There is a boy - no, a blade standing behind you, small, with green hair, dressed in white. He's looking up at you, or perhaps the glass behind you, but as you turn, you see his eyes widen. His clothes obscure most of his ether lines, but you can see green glowing beneath the tights on his lower legs, and the glow of a core crystal underneath his shirt.

Thinking about it forces you to drop your hand away from your own.

"I'm sorry!" the other blade says. "I didn't mean to startle you." He drops his hands down, straightens his robe across his knees. "My name is Ion. I'm the priest of this church, or so they tell me."

You raise your eyebrows. "Or so they tell you?"

Ion's laugh is quiet, sheepish. "The truth is, my last driver died, and I only woke up a few months ago. So I haven't relearned what I'm doing yet - Anise helps where she can, but there's only so much she can teach me about the scriptures when she's barely more than a child herself."

"A blade priest?" You can't help but think that it's strange, and it must show in your voice.

"Why not?" Ion replies. "We're the closest to the Aegises, after all, and the Aegises are closest to the Architect."

Huh. "I guess it makes sense, when you put it that way," you say.

"Not a believer, then," Ion concludes. His voice is gentle, calm - yeah, you can believe he's a priest, even if he looks like little more than a child. How blades look has nothing to so with how old they are, and he has the right attitude for a man of the cloth, gently forgiving and nonjudgemental.

You somehow find yourself shrugging. "Haven't really thought about it," you say. "I only woke up a month ago, myself."

Ion smiles. "Well, if you ever find yourself in need of guidance, you are welcome here, whether it be in this life or another." He bows his head to you, making a gesture of a diamond between his thumbs and first fingers, over his chest. You bow your head in return, though you don't return the gesture. It somehow doesn't feel quite right, as though it calls attention to the imperfect diamond within your own chest, hidden under your shirt.

"Thank you, Brother," you say. "I'll remember that." If you can, anyway.

"Just Ion is fine," he replies. "Might I have your name?"

"Asch," you say. And even as Ion smiles at you, you find yourself filled with a sinking sort of panic, one that only doesn't show on your face because you (already know which emotions to hide) aren't particularly expressive around strangers, anyway. You step away from the dais and leave the church as quickly as you can manage without giving the impression that you're trying to leave quickly. Once you're beyond the borders of the sanctuary, you break into a run, startling passerby, and jump up onto a nearby roof.

No matter how fast you run or how high you go, you know you won't outrun the realization.

You never told Van your name.

----

By the time Van finds you on the rooftop, you've already decided not to bring the matter up. Your intuition is a force, it seems, that even your driver trusts, and it has been screaming at you the whole time not to trust him. So you don't, you won't, say a thing.

You don't tell him about the church at all, actually. You just go back to being his blade, no questions asked.

----

The next allies of Van you meet are a woman named Legretta and her blade, Sync.

Legretta is a tall, blond woman with a harsh expression and a set of blade-pistols on her waist, but she's almost forgettable except for the way she softens just a little when she sees you and Van. It's Sync who immediately catches your attention, because -

When you see his core crystal, your stomach wants to drop down to your knees. It's the same shape as yours, with the same cut-away top. It even has the same slight variation in shifting colors, though his is in green instead of red.

You're staring, and you know it. Sync smirks, below the mask that obscures the upper half of his face. "Noticed, did you? Van took us both from the same experimental facility. We were being used in the same project."

It makes sense, fills in a missing piece. And yet it's still not enough. But maybe if you can keep Sync talking...

"What kind of project was it?" you ask.

"Jeez, he really didn't tell you anything, did he?" Sync's mask moves just enough to indicate that he's glancing over his shoulder, at where your drivers are deep in quiet conversation. Earlier you strained to hear, but it just sounded like a mission report. "They were trying to create an artificial Aegis. Us? We're the failures."

He sounds so bitter about it. You feel like you're going to be trying to catch up for a while. You realize that you've unconsciously moved your hand to your core again.

"Did they succeed?" you ask.

Sync's harsh laugh is your answer. "If they did, do you really think Van would be resonating with you instead of them? No, all they managed to so was super-charge some regular blades. We might be the closest thing anyone has to an Aegis, but we're still miles away."

You nod. The pieces continue fitting into place. After a moment of hesitation you add, "Thanks. For telling me."

"Don't know why Van didn't," Sync says. "It doesn't make a difference in the end, anyway."

For some reason, those words feel like they should be a puzzle piece, too. But they just drift, without anything to connect them to, in the back of your mind.

There's the sound of chairs sliding out from the table. Both you and Sync look over as your drivers return. Van looks at you and smiles. "Up for another infiltration, Asch?" he asks. "According to Legretta's report, there's a library in Chesedonia that might have more information on the location of the Aegis."

You glance at Legretta, who immediately shifts her gaze away from yours, and then nod. "Should be simple enough," you say. "Let's do it."

You have a lot to think about, but you think better when you keep moving.

----

Chesedonia is similar to Daath, in that it's in neutral territory, neither Malkuth nor Kimlasca. That's where the similarities end. Where Daath is green and damp, Chesedonia is sandy and dry. And where Daath is a religious town, where respect for blades is ingrained in the culture, Chesedonia is mercantile, a place where even blades are bought and sold for the right price.

(No different from slavery or human trafficking, except that core crystals are easier to smuggle than humans, and once they're awakened, they don't remember enough to try to escape.)

You're lucky; in the right clothes you can pass for human, which greatly decreases the risk of someone trying to steal you and sell you off. But there are definitely places in the city where blades shouldn't go unaccompanied. If it weren't for the readily available mercenary work that keeps money in the pockets of most non-military drivers, you'd be surprised to see blades in Chesedonia at all.

Naturally, Van wants to scout out the blade market. You follow close behind him, covered in a cloak that obscures your core crystal and blade's clothes completely, but don't bother to hide your distaste for the merchants you pass. Core crystals with careful labels sit on cushions on the counters, under glass boxes to prevent anyone from attempting to resonate with them.

Lhant-class - Water element
Healer - Paired blades
Humanoid (male)

Fende-class - Earth element
Support - Umbrella
Humanoid (female)

Fende-class - Wind element
Attacker - Chain pendulum
Humanoid (male)

And then further along -

You pause in front of a well-locked case, eyebrows rising into your hairline at the label. Van comes to a stop when he realizes that you aren't immediately behind him, and turns to look as well.

Curtiss-class - Dark element
Attacker - Blade gauntlet
Humanoid (female)

The seller makes eye contact with you, but you nail him to his seat with a glare before turning and catching up to Van. "Do they really expect anyone to believe that's a Curtiss-class?" you ask once you've caught up.

It's more of a rhetorical question than anything, a venting of your frustration and disgust, but Van replies, "Not every Curtiss blade has the reputation of the likes of Brighid Blueflame or Jade of the Crimson Snow."

"They're still not common," you reply with a huff. "And I wouldn't trust any merchant who put a supposed Curtiss-class out front even if they did have one."

"Fair enough," Van says. He starts to walk again, but pauses when he realizes you aren't following. "Asch?"

You level another glare at the market stall. As you watch, someone approaches the table and begins to talk animatedly with the merchant.

"Asch," Van repeats. "I know how you feel, but don't do anything foolish."

It's not foolish if I get away with it, you think, but turn and follow after your driver anyway.

----

Climb the wall under cover of darkness, a tiny earth arte to move the latch on the window, and then you're in. Not the best security you've ever seen - and something about that thought catches in your throat, because this is only your second mission. What do you have to judge by?

Still, it's easy as breathing. Not like there's much reason to guard a library, even one with rare manuscripts. You slip away from the window between the shelves.

Van didn't come with you; he just gave you your orders. Orders putting a strange reliance, once again, on your intuition - to just grab the first three manuscripts that seem likely and get out. This time, you'd argued with how irrational it was, and had been met by Van's somber, almost sad look.

"Your intuition has always served our cause well, Asch. I just wish that it had been enough to save you, the last time I was your driver."

Which... Was too much to deal with right now. Way too much. So you do the mission, instead.

A scroll case goes into your bag without you even looking at the title, and you make your way to another shelf. A book, this time, the first one your eyes fall on in the dark. And then another scroll case.

You hesitate. And then - because if Van puts so much faith in your damn intuition, why shouldn't you? - you cast your gaze around for something that will help you, and find your gaze lands on a file of loose-leaf papers, secured with a metal binding clip. Unlike the other documents in here, they look relatively new, the folder and clip both of a modern design.

You take that, too.

----

You're quiet, when you return, and give Van his objective without a word. The two of you leave the city before dawn, which is fine. You're a dark-element blade, and so you can see perfectly well in even the dimmest light, and you have too much to think about to be tired.

You were made in an experiment to try to recreate the Aegis. You realize a moment later that Sync didn't say you were made there, only that Van took you from the facility, but... You think of your ether lines, forked where they should have circles, of the multicolored shimmer of your core crystal. No, 'made' is right, you think. Because even if the blade 'Asch' existed before those experiments, he would have been someone, something completely different from what you are now.

So. You were made in an experiment, along with Sync and... Maybe others. You're not going to ask Van directly, but you leave the possibility open in your mind. There might be others. You know that you haven't met (re-met) all of Van's faction yet.

You and Sync were probably taken from the facility at the same time. That makes the most sense. And after that, Van resonated with you, at least once before now. A time he didn't see fit to tell you about until you demanded to know why he held your intuition so trustworthy.

Van seeks the Aegis. He probably came across the experiments that created you and Sync in the process of that search. Or...

Maybe he seeks the Aegis because we were failures.

You don't like the shape of that thought. You don't like it at all.

But from the very beginning, your gut told you not to trust him.

Ugh. Having hyper-accurate intuition isn't all it's cracked up to be.

----

When you return to Daath, a different pair of Van's allies are waiting for you. And this time, unlike with Legretta's cool greetings and businesslike manner, the new arrivals are downright warm.

The driver is a blond man, skinny and between you and Van in height, with a slim blade-glowing sword at his side. His blade is a young-looking woman with an outfit mostly in shades of tan and brown, matching her hair - even her ether lines are a light grey like gentle rainclouds, the only spot of color on her the deep blue of her eyes.

It's clear that they're incredibly familiar with Van. Not just from the way they approach him, but from the way he reacts to seeing them, opening up in what you think is the most genuine smile you've seen him make thus far. You're content to fade back into the background again, and hoping that you can maybe slip away and finally crack open that file of papers somewhere you won't be interrupted, when the man turns to you and says, "What, Asch, I don't even get a hello?"

"...What?" you say, blankly, staring at him. Even understanding now why Van's allies recognize you, it's one thing to be recognized, and another to be treated as... a friend?

"There was an accident," Van says, and the blond looks from you, to Van, and back again.

"Shit," he says, quietly enough to be almost under his breath. "How long? Why didn't you say anything?"

"You haven't exactly been in contact," Van replies. "It was about two months ago, now."

"Shit," the blond says again.

His blade takes a step forward, and offers you her hand. You stare down at it, uncertain. "Please forgive my driver," she says. "The two of you were good friends, in your last life."

"I kind of got that impression," you say.

It's apparently the right thing, because her blandly professional expression turns to one of faintly fond exasperation. "My name is Tear, and his is Guy," she says. "Just give him a little while to figure things out."

"I think I can do that," you say, finally reaching out and shaking her hand in turn. You're pretty sure you need time to deal with this, too. "Tomorrow or the next day, maybe?"

"How about lunch the day after tomorrow?" Tear says, glancing at Guy, who nods.

"Yeah, that sounds... good," he says. "It's a date."

"I'll see you then," you agree, dropping your hand away from Tear's, and swiftly making your exit, now with even more to occupy your mind.

----

Once you're out of the house that serves as Van's base, you make for the rooftops again. But, no, Van found you there easily, and you don't know how long talking with Tear and Guy will stall him and keep him from looking for you. At the very least, you can't use the same rooftop spot.

Where your feet end up taking you is back to the church. Van's house is almost completely across the city; at the very least, it'll take him some time to get here.

It's not as empty as it was last time - people are just filing out of the big, wide-open doors. As you attempt to slip inside, a human girl barely out of childhood says, "Oh, I'm sorry, you've just missed the end of the service!"

You wince internally at being caught, and turn to her, keeping your face blank. "That's okay," you say. "Services... aren't really my thing. I'd just like to sit in the back for a while, if that's alright."

She frowns, looking you up and down. "I gueeeeesssssss that's okay," she says.

"Just stay out of our way!" chirps a voice from... behind her? There's nothing behind her but the wall. You glance around, but none of the departing humans and blades seem to be paying you any attention.

Motion out of the corner of your eye draws your attention back to her - or rather, to the doll-like blade that now leans over her shoulder. They grin at you, a construct of haphazard stitches and button eyes lit by the same color as their core crystal, a dark, unsettling purple. A fellow darkness-aspected blade - it's the first time you've seen one up close. No wonder they were able to notice you when no one else did.

"Ion's ours," they continue, peeking around the girl's hair. "If you do anything to him, you'll regret it."

"We've spoken before," you say, doing your best to sound like you're intimidated by a teenager girl and her not-particularly-powerful-feeling blade. "I don't mean him any harm, I swear."

The blade leans in, whispering something to their driver's ear under one of her pigtails, and she nods. "Okay, go on in."

"Thank you," you say, politely, and duck around the last of the stragglers, a human man in a brown coat and a catlike blade woman in a blue bodysuit.

Up at the front, Ion is dwarfed by a human man he's speaking to behind the altar. Neither of them notices you as you sit in a pew near the back. It's as close to privacy as you're likely to get, so you pull out the file and carefully slide the string off.

The page header at the front indicates that the report is from Hod Research Labs. You force yourself to inhale steadily. For the first time in a while, you're aware of Van's emotions along the resonance, waiting for the spike of a reaction to your own feelings. Fortunately, for as long as you're willing to sit motionless in the pew and listen to it, there's nothing.

You relax just enough to continue looking down the page. However, much as you had been expecting something about yourself, the report in your hands is titled 'Deterioration and Resonance in Flesh Eaters.' You turn the page and begin to read.

...Based upon these results, we have determined that flesh eaters created with the flesh of humans other than their own drivers deteriorate at a much faster rate. This is regardless of whether their drivers yet live, though a living driver does provide some reduction in deterioration...

...Samples taken from humans with no resonance capacity caused the most severe deterioration...

...The use of a blade's own driver is not a guarantee of the creation of a stable flesh eater, but should be considered a significant contributing factor. Research into other factors that may be related to a flesh eater's stability are ongoing...

Forcing yourself to feel numb instead of sick, you close the folder and close your eyes, tilting your head up towards the windows behind the altar. Even without being familiar with the subject matter, you can put enough together.

Flesh eaters - blades with parts of humans in them, who can survive the death of their drivers. You can understand that much, at least.

You just don't understand why this was the knowledge your intuition led you to, instead of something about yourself.

----

Your room in Van's house in Daath's outskirts is tiny, but it's yours. For the first time, you think to go through it systematically, but there does not seem to be anything to find, no matter where you think to look. And if you hid something, a journal or anything like that, from Van, surely you wouldn't be able to hide it so effectively from yourself?

Tear and Guy don't stay there, at least, so you don't have to figure out how to act around them quite yet. You're grateful for at least that much reprieve, and for the fact that Van doesn't come asking after you that night. In short stretches, you start to memorize the report, otherwise keeping it hidden away.

The day of your planned lunch dawns with a dreary rain, which fails to relent all the way through the morning. You glare out the window, and then grab your cloak to pull over your head going out when there's a knock at the door.

When you open it, Tear and Guy are standing outside, dry in spite of the rain as only a water blade and her driver can be. Tear raises her unhidden eyebrow at your cloak. "Not going to repel the rain yourself?"

You stop on the threshold to stare. "What?"

(Dry as you thought only a water blade or their driver could be.)

"You didn't know," she says, and then closes her eyes and sighs. "Van..."

"Okay, okay," Guy says. "Think of it like... tuning yourself to a different pitch, I guess?"

Tear nods. "You have multiple types of ether in your system, like a driver with multiple blades. That's why your core crystal and ether lines are shaded like that - or at least that's what you told us that Van told you."

They say it so logically - and you certainly can't deny the unusual quality of your ether lines. (Nor the fact that they knew you, if they know about that, because you always keep those lines hidden for exactly that reason.) But it's hard to wrap your mind around the possibility. Blades just don't have the ability to use more than one element.

You must be silent too long, because Tear extends her hand towards you. "Here, give me your hand." Skeptically, you do, putting your right hand in hers. She folds her left over your hand. "This is what water ether feels like by itself. You should at least give it a try."

It doesn't quite feel wet, but it definitely has ripples to the energy, like the surface of a pond. You give a slow nod, and pull your hand back when Tear drops it.

Now that you know what to look for, the ether of the rain is all too obvious. You pull it in, causing a sprinkle of rain to come across the threshold as though blown by a sudden breeze, and then away. When you stick your hand out into the rain, no drops fall on it.

A smile makes its way to your face and stays there. "...Think I'll keep the cloak anyway," you
say. "Water blades with red hair aren't exactly common."

"I don't think I've ever heard of one," Guy says, chuckling. "Actually, you might be the only redhead blade I've met who isn't fire. Or, primarily fire, I guess in your case - I've seen you use fire artes, too."

"Huh." Three is less unbelievable than two, though it seems strange, with fire and water being opposites. Can you use all the elements? It's a thought to test on your own time, so you file it away for later, making a note to keep your eyes open for chances to feel the ether of blades of other elements. To at least be able to identify them shouldn't be hard to learn.

You follow Tear and Guy through the rain, cloak over your head even as the water allos you to pass untouched. That trick of water blades is one of the best known, but you think there have to be some for every element, surely. Things passed down from blade to blade or known in the same place as artes, not getting completely wiped out when a blade's memory resets.

The restaurant Guy leads you to is a hole in the wall, but even before he opens the door you can smell the spices coming from inside. Curry, you think, and something sweet that might be grilling fruit.

"Figured you wouldn't mind, since you liked this place before," Guy says, and you nod absently.

You wish that 'before' got any easier.

You sit at the booth as Guy and Tear slide in across from you. You have a menu; neither of them bothers. The waitress is a blade that you think might be fire element, though you suppose it doesn't matter too much. Once she's gone, you'll probably forget about her.

"So..." you say, unsure of where to begin.

Guy looks at you, and then sighs tiredly. "Yeah, so... You're not going to like hearing this, but this isn't the first time this whole thing has happened."

"This whole..." you repeat, and then when the realization hits you, you have to nearly bite your tongue to keep from yelling and alerting the whole restaurant to the conversation. "You mean I've died and come back with the same driver before?"

Guy just nods. Tear says, "At least three times now. Van says it's because you're reckless, but..."

"It's kind of starting to sound like an excuse," Guy says. "You're a hothead, yeah, there's no denying that. But the kind of reckless that gets himself killed off that often? Not a chance."

"So you think..." You trail off, and sit in silence for a minute, rolling the possibility over in your head.

"You don't sound surprised," Tear says, quietly, face hidden behind her hair as she looks at the table. "Now that I think about it, you didn't sound surprised last time, either."

"The first thing I remember thinking when I woke up was that I didn't want to do this again," you say. "That's not a normal thing to think, is it?"

Tear shakes her head. "No... No, it's not."

"Wonder if it's that intuition of yours talking," Guy says. "I don't know why it works the way it does, but it's way more accurate than it should be. It's wild how you just know stuff sometimes."

"Seems like all Van's interested in," you say.

Tear and Guy look at each other, and Tear sighs. "He wasn't always that way," she says. "But more and more, it's like he's forgotten that the people involved with his goals are people."

"Van practically raised me," Guy says. Then he glances over at Tear, and smiles weakly. "Both of us, really. My parents were killed in... Shit, not like you would know. It was the incident at the labs on Hod - they hooked a high-class blade up to some kind of experimental weapon, and it destroyed most of the town."

"Shit," you say. "Explains why Van hates blade experiments so much."

"Yeah, you really can't blame him for that," Guy says. "The blades who get caught up in those experiments get treated worse than animals. I don't know exactly what happened to you, either, but if some of the other stuff I've seen is any indication, you're probably lucky that you don't remember that."

You nod, and go quiet for a minute, thinking. You're probably not going to get a better chance to ask, so... "Is Van a flesh eater?"

Silence. And then Guy buries his face in one hand. "See, this is what I'm talking about! You just come out of the blue with things that nobody should be able to just guess like that!"

"In other words, yes," Tear says. "But he keeps it hidden to pass as a human, because of the way flesh eaters are treated. Even in places accepting of normal blades like here, it's taboo."

"Taboo to talk about the one option blades have to escape bad drivers," Guy says, and for a moment it's incredibly obvious that Van did raise him, because the anger is the same. Or, not quite the same, but similar - Guy's lacks the omni-directional bitterness that Van has. You think that you like the sound of it far better. "Yeah, he's been a flesh eater for over a decade, now. It's the only reason we survived Hod. What makes you ask?"

"Some documents I grabbed on the last mission Van sent me on," you say. "They talked about flesh eater experiments at the Hod Labs."

Guy exhales slowly and brings his hand down from his face, almost deliberately putting it across the table. "I don't even know where to start with that. Even for your intuition, that's a hell of a leap."

"And you stuck the landing, as usual," Tear mutters.

You shrug slightly. "I was looking for something that would tell me something I needed to know. I thought it was going to be something about me, but I'm pretty clearly not a flesh eater, so I guessed the next most likely target."

Guy just shakes his head. "Man, you'd think I'd get used to that..."

"Van took you from a research facility in Kimlasca about six years ago," Tear says. "We've known you for most of that time."

"Interruptions aside," you say, because it's better to think of them as 'interruptions,' when you come back to the same driver and the same people every time. "And Sync's from the same facility, he told me that himself."

Guy nods. "Sync and another blade, yeah. That one resonated with someone in the church, I think - they're outside of Van's control now. Van said there was a fourth he wasn't able to get his hands on - apparently you and that blade are twins."

You raise your eyebrows. "Twins? I've never heard of that."

"Me either," Guy agrees. "You get sibling blades sometimes, but that's tradition, and sometimes they don't even look alike."

You nod. "It sounds right, though." Unconsciously, you lift your hand and rub at where your core crystal is hidden under your shirt.

Guy watches your hand, and says, "Thinking about your missing piece?"

You freeze, and then carefully lower your hand to the table. "Something like that." It doesn't really surprise you that he knows, but you're not sure how you feel about it. But then again, they cared enough that they wanted to tell you all this, when it would have been so easy to just not say anything.That is worth some trust, you think.

"Whoever your twin is, Van's been looking for them for a long time," Tear says. "Almost as long as he's been looking for the Aegises, and he's had about as much luck."

"The Aegises..." You repeat.

"'A new society for blades is only possible with the power of the Aegis,'" Guy quotes. "I don't think he's wrong, exactly, that nothing's going to change without the Aegis, but... I don't know. I'm starting to think that his ideas aren't any better."

"If he really is resetting my memory for whatever reason," you say, "then he's not any better than the worst of the human drivers."

Guy sighs. "Yeah. You're right. It's just... not the kind of thing you want to think about the guy who raised you, you know? Van's been the only thing like a parent I've had since I was a little kid. Now it's like I don't even know him."

"I'll see what I can find out," you say. "Maybe he won't be as cautious if he thinks I'm still ignorant."

"Maybe," Guy says, "but be careful."

"There's a blade researcher here in town named Dist," Tear says. "He works with Van sometimes, but his main area of research is blade memory. I think you've spoken with him before, so it might be worth talking to him again."

"I'll do that," you say. Any kind of a lead will help. "Thanks."

"If you get the chance," Tear says, hesitation clear in her voice. She reaches up and pushes some of her hair out of her face. "I'd like to see that report on flesh eaters, when you're finished with it."

You nod. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you," she says. "If I notice anything, I'll be sure to let you know."

----

Since you have time after lunch, you wander around the city, half an eye open for that researcher Tear mentioned. It seems like the kind of place that wouldn't be right in the center of town.

Your feet lead you to a fairly ramshackle looking house more on Van's end of town. You hear someone's voice pleading behind the door as you prepare to knock, and instead of being polite, you swing the door open.

The scene that you intrude upon is the opposite of what you expect. A human man, thin and with huge glasses on his face, seems to be pleading with a blade in teal. The air possesses a strange chill, which at least tells you the element of the blade. Neither of them acknowledges your presence.

"Please, Jade." The human man's breath forms a foggy cloud in front of his face as he speaks. "I'm on the edge of a breakthrough, I know it - "

"And so what if you are, Saphir?" the blade asks in return, his tone as chilly as the rest of him. Your brain catches up on his name, his red ether lines (so out of place on an ice blade) - Curtiss-class Jade of the Crimson Snow, the Malkuth Imperial Blade. "Even if you succeed at making it so that blades can remember their previous lives going forward, it won't bring my memories of the Professor back. I'm not that blade; I do not even know him."

"But you're the same!" Saphir explaims. "You're exactly the same as you were then. Blades aren't purely biological, you operate on data principles, so there must be some way to... Please, Jade, with the two of us together..."

"The answer is still no, Saphir," Jade replies, cool rather than cold, as he pulls his shirt free of the other man's grip. His eyes, a piercing red, move from Saphir to you. "Save it for those you have some hope of convincing."

Saphir's gaze turns to you in turn, and there's clear recognition in his features. "Asch's assistance has been invaluable to my research, it's true, but he isn't like you, Jade. You're a genius; that's the reason you're Curtiss-class. Raw power is meaningless in a delicate theoretical operation like this, you know that."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Jade says, turning away from Saphir - Dist, they must be the same person - and towards you. "And what brings you here? Another of his volunteers?"

"Probably," you say. "I can see why a blade whose driver is murdering him to reset his memory might be interested in blade memory research. Some friends of mine told me I've been here before."

It's almost imperceptible, the way Jade's widen and then narrow, surprise turning immediately to distaste. "I suppose you do have a valid interest in the subject, at that," he says, reaching up to adjust his glasses on his face. "You have my sympathies. I forget, sometimes, how truly despicable humans can be, when they have power over a blade."

"Not just humans," you say. "Any driver."

More curious than anything, now, the way Jade's eyes rest on you. "Asch, was it? I think I would like to speak to you at greater length, if you have the time after you're finished here."

You nod. After a moment's consideration, you say, "I'm probably going to the church after this. My driver never goes there."

Jade nods. "Until this evening, then," he says, and sweeps past you out the door. The chill of ice follows him.

You turn back to the house's resident, who stares out the window to where Jade's figure retreats down the street, and say, "Where's my flattery?"

It seems to bring him back to himself, and Saphir snorts. "You're an Aegisite; you don't need flattery."

"A... what?" you repeat.

"You did get reset again, didn't you?" Dist asks, coming in close - too close - and leaning over your chest, as though he could see something of your core crystal through your shirt. "An Aegisite - a failed attempt at producing an artificial Aegis by combining resonating core crystals. It turns out that the Aegises are far more complex than we ever thought - all we manage to produce is blades that can use multiple elements, from the core crystals that were used to make them. Shirt off."

You hesitate before complying. "You were one of the researchers on the project, then?" you ask, refusing to let your nervousness show.

"I was," Saphir acknowledges. "Because of my research in blade memory - Aegises remember, instead of resetting with every new driver and resonance. My goal was to accomplish the same in normal blades - of course a project trying to imitate the Aegises needed me, the great Dist the Rose!"

What he says makes sense, even if it is more than a little egotistical. You allow yourself to be waved in the direction of a chair and sit down, shirt in your hands and all too aware of the strange nature of your core crystal and ether lines now that they're on full display. Dist doesn't give them any acknowledgement, which is both comforting and disturbing.

"Then, you were..."

"One of the researchers who created you, yes, yes," Dist continues. He starts to pick up wires, diodes, laying them gently on your core crystal and securing them. You can feel the faint thread of a current, and as you watch, numbers you have no idea how to begin to interpret begin to fill a screen behind him. "It's dreadfully annoying to have to tell you this anew every time. Why don't you keep a journal?"

"I know you just heard me say that my driver is killing me off," you say. "A journal isn't exactly safe."

"You weren't so certain last time," Dist replies. He secures another diode to your core crystal, and the feeling of the current distinctly increases. "Tell me if the buzzing stops."

"Sure," you say. You glance around. "If you're a researcher, why don't you have a blade of your own?"

"I can't resonate," he replies, bitterly. "Really, if you're always going to ask the same questions, I'm going to write up an explanation for you every time you come in here myself. Before you ask, you were last in here six months ago, this is the seventh time, and I've never known you to have a driver other than Van."

"The seventh time?" you repeat.

"That's what I said," Dist says, stepping back behind his desk to monitor another pair of screens. "Perhaps it will be our lucky number. You and the other product of the Lorelei Aegisite were composed of seven blades."

The other product... That must be the twin Guy mentioned, the one Van is looking for. "What about Sync?" you ask, because if this man knows your history, then he must know Sync's as well.

"He's from the Ion Aegisite. Also seven blades."

You almost miss the second part, because of the way your breath catches in your chest. The memory of a sweet-faced blade priest - and he did look a lot like Sync, at least what you've seen of Sync's face - sits with the buzzing of the current in your chest. A white robe covering a core crystal, leggings over ether lines that showed only the faintest hint of green...

You have to think about it later. Dist needs your attention now, him and the information he holds, and you can't afford to get distracted by processing it. It just all goes into the back of your mind for later thought.

"Are there any others?" you ask.

"Nosy as always, aren't you?" Dist says, like he's not really surprised and mostly annoyed at being distracted. There's the sound of him typing at a furious pace on a keyboard. "There were no other attempts that produced functional blades - most people can't drive more than three. Even once the Aegisites were created, they were too powerful to be stable - that's why they were divided in two."

So you really are twins - one composite blade, then divided in two. "What about... our original drivers?" you ask. "Or did the process combine inactive core crystals?"

The way that thought makes you sick is another thing that you put to the back of your mind to process later. Dist pauses, the sounds of his typing going silent.

"One driver," he says. "Seven blades resonant to one driver - that's why the process was so difficult to get results from. Estimates put the number of people who can drive that many blades without dying on the spot at less than a tenth of a percent of the total population." Another pause. "You've never asked about him before."

"What was he like?" you press. Something burns, needing to know.

"I didn't know him," Dist says, almost too quickly. You'd bet your core crystal it's a lie. "But he was expelled from the military for insubordination. Luke Oslo - if you ever get the chance to dig through the Kimlascan military records, you might be able to find out more."

It's probably all you're going to get from him, so you nod your head. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet," Dist says. "You always complain about this part. Code patch ready... And, executing."

The buzz in your chest grows to a crackle, and then to thunder, and the world around you goes black.

----

Executing...

Executing...

Updating System Operation...

14%... 28%... 56%... 73%... 98%...

Copy system update to luke.lorelei.abyss.exe?

Y

Copying system update...

Resonance stable... System boot initiated...

System boot complete.

----

"You're right," you say when you come around again, lines of code still streaming behind your eyes in a way you almost understand. "I do hate that part."

"Every time," Dist says. "Well, we're done here. Be gentle with the diodes when you take them off."

"That's it?" you say, starting to pull the electronics off.

"Blades are functionally biological computers," Dist says. "Also, you were unconscious for almost two hours."

"Shit," you say. You glance out the window, and it is indeed late afternoon.

"Come back any time," Dist says, blandly. "Especially if the attempt was successful this time."

"Sure," you say. "Assuming you're still alive."

"At the rate you've been going, I'm not the one who needs to worry about that," Dist says. For a moment, his expression of bored disinterest slips. "Though I can't say I don't understand why you don't just become a flesh eater, I won't complain about the consistency of your data. Don't keep Jade waiting, now." There's a hint of bitter jealousy in the last few words.

"Thanks," you say, sarcasm in your tone diffusing the sudden awkwardness of what seems to have been a genuinely emotional moment with your... whatever he is. Creator? It feels like it should be more meaningful than it is.

Then again, seven blades and a human life were destroyed to create you, and you don't know if the man in front of you cared about any of them.

You don't ask. Something tells you that it's better that you don't know, if he cares about anything but his research (and Jade of the Crimson Snow), so you just leave.

At least you understand why you only come here when you die.

----

The church is not as full as the time you arrived on the tail end of the service, but there's still more people than you're used to. It takes you a moment to spot Jade, and you only do so because his red glow sticks out against the darkness of the corner he's standing in.

You can hardly blame him, considering how little you like crowds yourself. You make your way over to his corner. "Sorry, I didn't expect that to take as long as it did."

"Don't concern yourself with it," Jade says. "I of all people know what Saphir is like."

"I guess you do," you say. "Was there something specific you wanted to ask?"

Jade folds his hands behind his back silently, and for a moment looks past you, at the people praying in the pews. "Was I correct in my assumption that your driver is a flesh eater?" he asks.

"Yeah," you say. "Why?"

"I see," Jade replies. "According to the records I have of the last life I lived, under Professor Nebilim, I was involved in a great deal of research on the subject. I wasn't involved in what took place at Hod, but my research provided a great deal of the backbone of what would be done there." He reaches up and adjusts his glasses. "You really are in an unfortunate situation. You can hardly take your driver's heart for your own when it isn't his in the first place."

You shift uncomfortably. "It is what it is."

"If you wished to escape, no one would blame you," Jade replies. "One more swift blow, and - well. I can at least promise that your next driver would possess some moral capacity."

It takes you a minute to process what he's offering. You shake your head, but offer him a weak, bitter smile.

"Thanks," you say, "but I have to take care of Van myself, whatever I decide to do. Otherwise, he'll just..."

You think of your twin, somewhere out in the world, and think of Van getting his hands on that blade, one who won't know any better what he's up to.

"He'll just use someone else," you say. "I can't just abandon someone else to the same fate."

"Commendable," Jade says. "Plenty of people would cut and run. After all, it's not like they'd remember it to feel guilty about later."

You reach up to your core crystal, running your finger over the upper edge through your shirt. "Even if I didn't remember, I feel like I'd still know," you say. "And even if I don't remember, I'm going to live as though I would."

"Just in case Saphir's trick works?" Jade asks, amusement in his voice.

You shake your head. "Because that's what seems right."

Jade is silent for a moment. "You truly are a remarkable blade," he says quietly. "Be wary - we blades are deeply affected by the mindset of our drivers, even those we despise. I need not the memories of my previous lives to know that; the evidence of the blade who wrote the journal I left behind is enough to make that clear. Take care that you do not become a monster yourself, in the course of fighting monsters."

"I'll remember," you say, and hope that the words remain as true as you mean them. "Thanks."

Jade smiles a little more genuinely and adjusts his glasses. "If I might ask a personal question - why the church? Even a Daathic blade wouldn't want to discuss the matter of flesh eaters here, blasphemies that they are."

You didn't even know that flesh eaters were considered blasphemy by the church. You can kind of guess why, when you turn it around in your head - something about the mixing of human flesh into the divine body of a blade, or something. You shrug.

"It's peaceful here," you say.

"I suppose it is, at that," Jade replies. "I wish you well in finding the solution you can live with."

"Thanks," you say. "And if we run into each other again, feel free to restate your offer. At that point, I might take you up on it."

Jade chuckles darkly. "I'll keep that in mind," he says.

You watch him leave, and then catch the nearest usher's attention. The young woman - human, as far as you can tell - visibly startles when she realizes that you're there. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize - "

"I get that a lot," you tell her. "Can you point me to Brother Ion? There's something I need to talk to him about."

"O-oh, of course," she says. "Right this way, I'll see if he's available."

----

"I confess, I didn't expect you to seek me me out personally," Ion says. In the few short months since the first time you met him, he seems to have gained greatly in confidence and serenity.

"It's something rather personal," you say. "Not the kind of thing I could just go talking to anyone about."

Even as you speak, you're looking him over in so much more detail. You notice that all his ether lines are covered, that his height and build are the same as Sync's, the color of his hair if not the style, the shape of his jaw. Yes, they are identical, or close enough to being so that it makes no difference.

You wonder if Sync came into being with a mask to hide behind, or if Van gave it to him.

"Of course," Ion says. He's good at this, at least based on your admittedly limited experience with priests; of he's at all uncertain, he doesn't show it. "What is it that troubles you so?"

You take a deep breath. "Sorry if this is a personal question," you start, before reaching up and pulling the upper part of your shirt open to reveal your core crystal.

It feels stressfully intimate, the way his eyes lock onto your crystal, the red glow reflecting off his green eyes in a way that makes them seem almost black. You can see the faint shift of the colors over his face.

"Yours is like this too, isn't it," you say, not really a question, but not quite a statement.

Ion exhales slowly. With one hand, he undoes the part of his robe sleeve that extends past his wrist, allowing the fabric covering his palm to fall back. Underneath are the same forked ether lines that you're familiar with on yourself, except in a glow of shifting green.

"The missing piece on my core crystal points downwards," Ion says. "But otherwise... It's the same. I'd gotten used to never thinking about it."

"I know what you mean," you say, because you do. Avert your eyes and forget that you're any different from any other blade.

"How did you know?" Ion asks, all curiosity in his expression.

"I heard your name in connection with the research project that created us," you say. "And there's another - we're both twins, apparently. There's another blade who looks just like you, and one who looks just like me, though I've never met him."

"Twins..." Ion repeats. he folds his hands in front of his chest, gripping one set of fingers tightly in the other. "What's he like?"

"Sync? He's kind of an asshole," you say. "I think he might have been born bitter."

Ion chuckles. "I suppose it's good that we don't have identical personalities, at least. ...Thank you, for telling me."

"You deserve to know where you come from," you say. Even as you say the words, they stick in your mind, growing and developing into a full thought. "Humans know where they come from, they have parents and family. Blades should be able to have that too, if they want it."

"You're right," Ion says. "That's why blades keep journals, if they can - but not everyone is that fortunate."

"Even if we write a journal, that's still only a record of that life," you say. "Not really where we come from. No one really knows that."

"The Architect, perhaps," Ion says. "But none other."

You can't really argue with that. If the Architect exists, you suppose he probably does know the truth about where blades come from, and everything else about this world.

"...We were created by people trying to imitate the Aegis," you say quietly. "I suppose if anyone should be in the church, it should be us."

Ion chuckles again. "I suppose so. Though I'm not sure if that brings us any closer to understanding the Architect's will."

You shrug one shoulder, reaching up to close your shirt again over the oddity of your core crystal. "I think I'll leave that question to you."

"That's fair enough," Ion says. He follows up with, "That makes us both very young, doesn't it? I don't think there's been a major core crystal discovery in a few centuries, now."

"I wouldn't know," you say. The number of things you don't know itches somewhere in your throat. "Do you know anything about how blades are normally born?"

"According to scripture, when a core crystal is broken, it must be returned to the earth, in view of the stars," Ion says, "so that new blades can grow from those who have come before. And certainly, the church gathers the remains of shattered blades where we can, and takes them to a place that meets those requirements."

"A blade graveyard," you say.

"I think I prefer the term 'sanctuary,'" Ion says. "But to my knowledge, no new core crystals - no new blades - have been born at that site. So I suppose you aren't wrong, on that account."

You sigh. "So the only new blades that are being born are created in labs - and we were made using other blades as raw materials." You say it calmly, but Ion looks away, something stricken in his face. You allow him a moment before you continue. "If that's the only way new blades are born, then eventually we're going to disappear entirely."

"You're right," Ion says quietly. "Perhaps not for a long time, but eventually..." He folds his hand over the core crystal beneath his shirt, and sighs, looking at the window of the small room that serves as his office. It too is stained glass, but depicts only an abstract spread of blue and green, the colors of the Aegises. You think that it might look like the scattering of petals from flowers.

"...Doesn't it bother you?" he finally asks. "To know that so many died that you could be born?"

"It does," you say, "but I can't do anything to change it. Looking out for the future is the best thing I can do for them."

"Perhaps that is the best outlook to take," Ion says. "Thank you. I will try to live by that as well - to make proud those who have come before."

"And to make a world for those who come after," you say. "Whoever they might be - even ourselves."

Ion chuckles. "That's the lot of a blade, I suppose. Perhaps I'm the one who has been given guidance today."

You shake your head. "I'm not trying to do anything like that. I just thought it was something you deserved to know."

"Perhaps, but how many people would have taken the time to tell me?" Ion asks. "If there is one thing that my role here teaches me... It's that the people who act are far less common than we would all like to think. That you take action to correct wrongs is admirable."

It's those words that stay with you, after you leave.

----

You don't exactly avoid Van, after that. That would be too noticeable. But you do try to not say too much. for fear of giving him the idea that you know, that you've heard Guy's suspicions (which are right, you feel it in your gut and you know they're right, even putting aside that they're probably your own suspicions in the first place).

But there's only so long that you can avoid it. And so you're not surprised when you're returning to the house one evening, and Van calls you over to the table.

You feel a sense of dread in your gut, but keep it out of your face and squash it down with a thought so that it doesn't appear in the emotional bleed. (Van's side is nothing more than faint affectionate warmth, as it always seems to be.)

"What is it?" you ask.

"As you know," Van says, "I do my best to keep up with experiments on blades, and put a stop to them when they do too far."

"I remember," you say, trying not to put sting in the word. Trying not to think about how Van's definition of 'too far' might be very different from yours.

Van nods. "Some years ago, I destroyed another facility similar to the one you accompanied me to before. That was where I found you and Sync, among other blades, as the subjects of those experiments. However, I wasn't able to recover all of the subjects."

You feel a spark of alarm, of hope, of wanting to know, that you quickly quash as he continues.

"Recently, I've received news of one of the researchers who escaped that facility," Van says. "It's possible that he may have been the one to abscond with the missing research subject. Would you like to help me come and find out?"

You hate yourself a little for how quickly you say, "Absolutely."

----

Sheridan is a dry city, a working city, red stone different from Chesedonia's sand but every bit as dusty. Their research labs are nothing to write home about, in comparison to Belkend, but they do their share of work even so.

You see the way Van looks at the gates, hatred clear in his posture even if it's muted in the emotional bleed, and shake your head.

"They're not doing research on blades," you say. "Just machines." Even though you're not certain of the claim, you say it like you are. There haven't been many blades in Sheridan at all, and most of them are military issue, step-in-step with their Kimlascan drivers.

You hope that Van is confident enough in your intuition that he won't ask for further explanation, and your hope bears fruit as he shakes his head and looks away from the labs.

"Perhaps not now," he says.

"A pre-emptive strike that hurts innocent people is just terrorism," you say. "It's not going to help us." You turn your face away from him and back across the researchers leaving the lab in the late afternoon sun.

"And what of the ones who aren't so innocent?" Van asks. "Will you just let them walk away?"

The words are to arrest you, convince you, make you doubt yourself, but you just turn back to Van with a smile that you feel raising the hair on the back of your own neck. "Only so that I can follow them home. Later."

Picking a researcher at random, you take the escape from the conversation, the wicked smile slipping from your face as you slip between the buildings and away.

----

The researcher you choose to follow is an old, balding man, who leads you back to a modest house on the outskirts on the edge of the city, built of stone bricks like so many others. You catch up as he opens his door, rooftop to rooftop, quiet even on the ceramic tiles, and slip into an open window.

You aren't Van. Even knowing this man has done horrible things, or at the very least sit back and let horrible things happen, the idea of simply appearing to strike fear into him before killing him puts a bad taste in your mouth. Even though you're hyperaware that it's exactly what your driver would do, you've already decided that you will let him live, unless he leaves you no choice.

If he never sleeps easy again in his life, well, that's a lot easier for you to live with. No rest for the wicked, as they say.

Your footsteps are loud, demanding not to be missed, as you step from the man's kitchen into the main living area. He freezes and jerks away, one step short of stumbling and scrambling.

"You're..." Behind the frames of his glasses, you see the man's eyes flick towards the door to what must be his bedroom. You keep your ears primed for the sound of a blade approaching, but don't hear the sound of any defenders approaching.

(Good. If the first time you laid eyes on your twin was in battle, you don't know what you would do.)

"You know what this is about," you say. As harsh as your voice comes out, you try to make your expression more gentle. "I'm not here to hurt you."

He stares at you for a moment, and then shakes his head. "No, I suppose you wouldn't be. Even the harsh side of Lorelei would want to preserve life. That's the nature of a healing blade."

A healing blade.

It sinks into you with finality, like a scream alone where no one can hear, like the certainty of the sun rising in the morning. A healing blade. That's what you are, what you were supposed to be, what you were ripped apart from, shattered to become.

Ether buzzes under your fingers, asking to be your sword, asking to be fire, asking to be a thousand things, but you shove it all down, lock it away. Even feeling the curiosity you feel isn't something you allow yourself, keeping your voice and your face and your heart all toneless.

You ask, "Is that what we were?"

"That's what the original Lorelei was," the researcher replies. "The blade who was first in the train. The Aegisites drew personality traits primarily from the first blade and the driver."

The first blade and the driver. You think of the person that unknown soldier was, and still the ether hums in your hand. Wind-aspected ether, now, curling between your fingertips, not solid enough to keep a grip on. Just like any of this that you might have known before; ready to slip out of your grasp, just like this chance, if you don't seize it now.

You say, "Tell me about them."

The researcher trembles, taking a glance at your hand and gulping the air before speaking again. "Lorelei was a healing blade with the ability to see the future," he says. "Notoriously difficult to resonate with - a Curtiss-class, one of the most powerful blades involved in the project, but they were deemed useless because they had only resonated with two people in the entire course of the records. The last person they resonated with is said to have been the founder of Daath's church, visited by the Aegises directly, but that's nothing more than legend and rumor. If it weren't for the name the blade gave upon awakening, they would have remained nothing more than a legend."

It always leads back to the Aegises, doesn't it? And of course, some bitter part of you thinks, what good is even a Curtiss-class blade that refuses to resonate with anyone? Expendable; might as well use them while you can.

"And the driver?" you press.

"Luke Oslo," the researcher replies, looking even more nervous now. "He resonated with Lorelei unexpectedly and was pressed into the military at a young age. When it came to put him on the battlefield, he refused orders. Rather than having him executed, he was directed into our program. I... believe he may still have family living."

Something flashes through your emotions, and you shut it down before you even recognize what it is. "Family?"

"A sister," the researcher says. "Giselle, the name may have been."

"Giselle," you repeat, locking the name into your memory. You'll look for her, if you can.

The wind trembles in your grip, and you let it go as the researcher glances at it again. "I-I'll give you the other core crystal," he says. "That's what you came for, right?"

"I'd appreciate it," you say, trying to keep your tone centered. You don't feel centered.

Not as the researcher slips off to his bedroom, which you follow him to, leaning against the door and watching. Not as he pushes a chest at the foot of his bed aside, lifts up a floorboard, and takes out a case of the same kind as you saw the blade merchants in Chesedonia carrying. Not as he offers the box to you, his hands shaking.

"I admit, I tried to sell it, or even give it away," he says. "But no one had any interest in what looks like a broken blade. I imagine it wouldn't have resonated anyway."

No, you don't feel centered until you crack the lid of the box and see the crystal inside, a shifting red that matches the one inside your shirt. Then you exhale, and pull the crystal out of the box, tucking it into your bag.

"You may as well sell this," you say, offering the case back.

"You're..." The researcher hesitates, before taking the box, shaking his head. "Whoever your driver is, they won't be able to drive the both of you at once. Aegisites may have been a failure at creating the Aegis, but they're still much too powerful to be considered normal blades."

"I don't think he's worried about that," you say. You force yourself to close your bag carefully over your twin's crystal.

(It weighs so heavy. A wild thought passes through you, of running away with it - but where would you go? To Malkuth, to take Jade up on his offer?)

(No. Van is still your problem, and the only thing this proves is that now that he has you, he'll never let you go.)

The researcher frowns, but then shakes his head. "It's better if I don't know. I don't want anything more to do with that cursed project."

"Good plan," you say, turning to go. In the threshold of the bedroom, you pause, turning to look over your shoulder. "...You said that Lorelei could see the future?"

"Or so they claimed," the researcher replies, holding the crystal case and staring down into its open cavity. "I didn't put any stock in it, until today. The way they spoke, it was impossible to know if something was prophetic or not until it happened."

You pause. "Did they ever say anything about us?"

"That the Aegisites would be there to remember, when the world is made new."

Well, you think, as you slip back out the window, fat chance of that happening any time soon.

----

You return to Van. Van, thankfully, accepts the core crystal in your bag without another word of explanation. You're perfectly happy to let him assume what you did, perfectly happy to get out of the city immediately, perfectly happy to not actually hand over the core crystal until after you get back to Daath.

Legretta and Sync are there again, when you arrive. You look them both up and down, wiser, more aware. You can guess why they're here.

If it turns out that Van can't support the ether demands of both you and your twin, then they'll be here to carry on his twisted will.

You let your emotions go dead, as dead as they can go, and then bring them back up to a normal level of nerves, as you place the core crystal from your bag on the table. It's warm under your fingers, and you can almost feel the blade inside, waiting to be born, for perhaps the first time.

You push away, in a refusal. Not me. Not me. You know what would happen, otherwise.

Legretta is surely Van's most loyal follower, otherwise he never would have entrusted Sync to her. If she somehow doesn't know about the blood-colored ether on his hands, you don't think it would sway her opinion any to find out.

And Sync... If he feels any loyalty, it isn't to you, shared circumstance of birth or no.You can almost feel the calculations going on beneath his mask as you put your twin's crystal down before Van and step back.

You don't want to watch, but can't look away. You don't want to feel anything, least of all the ether that threatens to rise up from your stomach, but the back of your throat burns.

"With this," Van says, "We come a large step closer to our goals. After this, all that remains is the search for the Aegises themselves, and our dream will become a reality."

He looks the small group over and smiles. "Flesh eaters are able to support other blades, beyond the limits of even the best of humans. Once the Aegises no longer have need of drivers, they'll be able to support the rest of bladekind without limit. Finally, we will know true freedom from the cruelty of humanity."

Your mind skips on the implications, and you let it get only as far as Van wants to turn the Aegises into flesh eaters? before you put all of it in the box, and away, and focus your eyes back on the crystal glowing underneath his hands. Everything else has to go away. Concentrate only on what's in front of you.

The core crystal on the table pulses with ether, a pulse echoed in your own chest. You see without seeing, staring forward still but too focused on the way something snaps into place in your head, another anchor of emotional resonance, something that shouldn't be there, something that makes you complete.

The glow spreads, into limbs, red hair, white clothes. He more than looks like you. He's an extension of you, your ether flowing back and forth in a cycle unbidden, a loop seesawing through your mutual driver.

You don't look at Van. You kill thoughts of Van, ordering halt to the routine, a break in an unresponsive program, as your twin, your other half takes form in front of you.

His eyes are gold, for a moment, before they fade back to the same green as your own. You wonder if that flash of gold was in yours as well, once. It seems too innocent to have ever been a part of you.

And then the moment is over, as his eyes sharply break away from yours, and suddenly he's just another blade, except for the sheepish feelings somewhere at the fringe of your consciousness.

"Hi," he says, looking around the room as he rubs the back of his head. His eyes fall on Van, and he lights up, a bright smile that burns you up inside, sends a cascade of crashes through something inside you. "You're my driver, right? My name's Luke."

----

You escape that room as soon as you possibly can, and when you're gone, your memories of what happened inside are hazy at best. All you can think about is trying to keep a hold of the emotional bleed.

When you're free, you run for the church. But services are going on, and that's far more people than you want to deal with. So instead of going inside, you climb onto the roof of the building, the little lower part around the front, and tuck your knees into your chest to try to breathe.

It takes you longer than it should to figure out what has you so distressed. It isn't just that Van's goals sit in your gut, roiling and squirming. It's that he intends to use not only you, but your twin to accomplish them.

It was bad enough that it was you, but you can't be fixed now, not when you woke up into a new life already hating it. Something deeper than memories has been broken inside you, and you don't think you'll be right again no matter how many centuries and how many drivers you have. But Luke...

You have to get him away from Van before he winds up like you. That's all there is to it. No matter the cost.

Your hands tighten over your knees. Van is your responsibility. If he wants the Aegises, you'll bring him to them.

You sit like that long after the services end. What finally starts you moving again is the feeling of rain on your face, soaking into your hair.

You look up, over the edge of the roof. Services have ended for the afternoon, but not everyone has left. On the ground in front of the doors, within view of the roof, Tear stands, the rain repelled from her form like she's within a bubble. You don't bother to imitate her, as you unwrap your hands from your knees and stand, jumping easily down from the roof. The chill of the rain gives you focus, gives you something to feel that doesn't provide any particular emotion.

"Heading back to Guy?" you say, well aware how bad your impression of being casual is. If you were crying - you honestly can't be sure if you were or not - it'll be hidden by the rain soon enough.

"I was," Tear says, not bothering to hide her suspicion as she frowns at you, the way your hair sticks to your face, the way the wet fabric of your shirt makes the shape of the core crystal underneath clearer. "Is something wrong, Asch?" That sounds more worried.

"I'll tell you when we get there," you say. "I don't want to repeat myself."

----

Tear and Guy don't even have a house of their own, instead living over a cafe where Tear works as a waitress. You're glad; that means they're more likely to stay in town.

Guy is startled to see you, dripping in his doorway alongside his own blade, but he doesn't turn you away. He even gets you a towel, which you promptly bury your face in, regretting only a little the decision to let the rain clear your head.

There is something nostalgic about the smell of the towel, the apartment, something that tells you with pounding certainty that you've been here before, and often. When you sit down in a chair at their meager kitchen table, it feels like habit.

You tell them everything. Dist and Jade, the researcher, Van, Sync and Luke. The only thing you hold back is the identity of Sync's other half.

(Ion, by some fortune, has escaped from this madness. You won't take that away from him.)

When you're done, they're silent. But in Guy's case, at least, it is in silent fury, and he doesn't stay silent for long. Rather than looking up at you as he speaks, he glares into a whorl of the table's wood, hard enough that if Tear were a fire blade, it would probably burst into flame from her driver's ire.

"Turning the Aegises into flesh eaters..." he repeats, and then looks up at you. "And then what happens when they die? Flesh eaters aren't immortal, and when they die, there's nothing left. Sure, it might change the world for a while, but afterwards?"

"There won't be any Aegises at all," you say, following his train of thought. It's not one you'd considered, your thoughts in too much upheaval from Luke's awakening. You didn't even know for certain what happened if a flesh eater was killed.

Nothing left? you think to yourself, with a sort of twisted satisfaction. Good.

"And that's if the Aegises even respond well to whatever flesh he puts in them," you continue, thinking. You pull the report you've been keeping on you out of your bag, slide it across the table to Tear. "Even if he uses whatever unfortunate people he gets to drive them, it's not a sure thing."

Tear takes the report from the table, turning to the first page. Her visible eye flickers as she skims over it, then narrows as she looks back up.

"We have to stop him," she says. "He's my brother, but... there's no choice."

Guy sighs, leaning back in his chair as he presses a hand to his temple. "To think that he said he wanted to protect blades..."

You look them over, and for a moment you feel like you can see everything in perfect clarity - the way Guy's hand pressed to his head holds back the tears, the way Tear's focus on the practical is a cover for her emotions.

They still love Van, on some level. You can't ask them to do this.

"I have to stop him," you correct. "I have a plan. I just..."

You look at Guy, and wonder what it would have been like if he were your driver instead. He's looking at you now, like he knows exactly what's going through your head. You wonder, you wish, that you could remember the time you spent with him before.

"Promise me you'll take care of Luke," you say. "Resonate with him, or find someone you trust to do it, someone who will treat him well."

They love Van, and you don't. All you want is to be free of him.

Guy meets your eyes, and then breaks away from your gaze, closing his eyes as he sighs. "Alright," he says. "On one condition. You're the one who's going to explain to him what happened."

You don't understand, until he turns and pulls a pen case from the shelf next to the table. But then... You nod, and get to writing.

----

It's late into the night when you finish, fragments of drafts each set alight in succession as you find yourself frustrated with your words. There are no signs of life in the house, but you don't attempt to go to sleep yourself, roaming around the kitchen until morning.

"Are you certain you've gotten enough rest?" Van asks when he finds you that way when he awakens. "You were out until quite late. I didn't expect to see you until later this morning."

"I'm fine," you say, letting perhaps a little of the tiredness you feel into the emotional bleed. Aside from the exhaustion, you're almost numb, like you left every emotion you can feel behind in the letter you left with Guy. "I had an idea, though."

"Oh?" Van says, pausing halfway into the motion of cracking an egg. (You let yourself imagine it as his core crystal, just to keep yourself going, as it cracks open against the side of the frying pan.)

"You've trusted my intuition to lead us into places before," you say hedging your bets. "What if I just... point at the map, and we go look for the Aegis there?"

Van turns away from the egg to look you over, expression briefly surprised, and then chuckles. "Well," he says, "I suppose it's worth a try. We'll take out the maps after breakfast."

"Where are we going?" asks a voice from the hallway. You know without looking, but you look anyway, to see your twin standing with a towel over his shoulders. His hair is still damp, and he hasn't put on the shirt Van gave him that will cover his core crystal and color-shifting ether lines.

The warmth of fire-aspected ether accompanies him as he comes past you to look into the pan of frying eggs. If that's the element he has, or at least seems to be, no wonder he hasn't put a proper shirt on. Rare is the fire blade that doesn't run hot, and you suppose that extends to blades who are just faking that aspect, too.

"You're not coming," you say.

"What?" Luke says, turning back to you with a snap of his head. (It's lucky that blades don't shed hair like humans do, or you're absolutely certain he would have shaken some loose into the pan.) You can feel shock and then indignation through the three way emotional bleed - he doesn't have a filter at all.

"You're brand new," you say. "You should stay here and get a handle on your abilities before you come out into the wilderness with us."

"But I - " Luke starts to say, and you throw a glance at Van that looks pleading enough.

"I've died out there, and I'm not fresh from the crystal," you say. "It's dangerous."

Thankfully, Van seems to consider, and put a hand on Luke's shoulder. (You kill the part of you that screams don't touch him.) "Asch has a point," he says at length. "The kind of wilderness areas where we would expect to find the Aegises are risky for even the most experienced drivers and blades."

Luke pouts and folds his arms, but doesn't argue any further. You let a sigh into the air and a little relief into the emotional bleed, carefully measured.

"We have some friends around town," you offer, as a sort of consolation prize. "I'm sure Guy and Tear would be glad to help you train while we're gone."

"That sounds like a wonderful idea," Van agrees. "Now, Luke, would you like some eggs?"

----

After breakfast, you unroll the map across the table. Under the eyes of your twin and your driver, you look it over thoughtfully, waiting for your instinct to kick in.

It isn't the Aegises you're looking for, not really. It's somewhere far enough from civilization that no one will interfere, that Van will let his guard down, and that no one will find you afterwards - not for a long time, at least. Maybe not ever.

Even if you won't remember, a part of you knew. You don't ever want another driver like Van, and the only way to be certain of that is to never have another driver at all.

So when your drifting finger lands on a part of the map in the no-man's-land between Malkuth and Kimlasca, near the southern coast of the main continent, you let yourself light up, like you've found the solution to all your problems. You have; they just aren't the problems Van thinks they are.

----

That night, you make your way out to the roof and stare at the stars. To your surprise, there are soon the sounds of someone else's footsteps on the tiles, and the faint feeling of fire ether as your twin sits down next to you.

You look at Luke, watching as he fidgets. Normally, if it were anyone else, you'd demand to know what they wanted, but...

This is going to be the only chance you have to speak to him without Van, isn't it? You leave in the morning, never to return.

So you just watch him, waiting with rare patience, as he fiddles with the hem of the longer shirt Van finally convinced him to wear. Eventually, he manages to find the words for what he wants to say.

"Do you hate me?"

It's not a question you expected to hear, and you let the mild shock flow freely across the emotional bleed. You let yourself notice the emotional bleed, instead of pushing it out of your mind. He's nervous, a little bit afraid, and you...

"Of course not," you say, maybe too fast to be believable, but you mean it, let meaning it fill your emotions. "I just don't want you to get hurt. I don't know if I could handle that."

"...Oh," Luke says, pausing in his fidgeting before he goes back to it. "I just thought - Van's been your driver for a while, I was worried that you didn't like me because you had to share him or something."

"Don't be stupid," you tell him. "You're more important to me than Van will ever be." If that isn't the understatement of the century...

Luke finally drops his shirt, putting his hand over his chest and the core crystal hidden there. He looks up at you, still nervous. "Really? But I thought drivers were supposed to be the most important person to a blade."

"Maybe for normal blades," you say, carefully not thinking, and normal drivers. You reach out, putting your hand over his on top of his core crystal, feeling how warm it is. "But drivers disappear when they die. We don't remember them forever. But no matter what happens, even if we don't have our memories, having core crystals like this means we'll always recognize each other."

That you'll be a part of each other, because you were once the same.

(If he can find a new driver, someone who will treat him well and let him be happy, that means that at least a part of you will be happy, too.)

Luke looks at your hands, then back up at your face. The red glow through your shirts isn't dim enough to really light your faces, but you imagine that it is, play that shifting red over the way he smiles at you.

"You're right," he says, and he sounds halfway to sniffling. Relief floods outward from him along the emotional bleed, and somehow it calms your nerves as as well, lets you truly appreciate this moment. You blaze it into your memory, for however long that will last. "We'll always have each other, even if we have different drivers someday, right?"

"Exactly," you say. That smile is the reason you're doing this. "So don't get worked up about it."

"Okay," he says, sliding his hand out from under yours. You let your hand drop back to your lap, but before you can shift back away from him, he wraps his arms around your shoulders, just briefly.

You freeze, for the whole space of a breath, in his arms, as he says, "Thanks, Asch," into your shoulder. And then he lets go of you and jumps off the roof, landing as easily and catlike as you do.

You stay frozen on the roof for a long time, long enough that he's well and truly gone. Pushing the emotional bleed away from yourself again, you look up at the stars, and whisper to him -

"I'm sorry."

----

Out into the wilds, alone with your driver, and the whole time you can feel your anxiety ramping up. All the more so when you begin to actually approach the location you'd chosen on a whim, only to see a strangely shaped tower rising into the sky.

"I feel sure something like that should have been mentioned on some map," you say, coming to a stop as you look up at it.

"It bodes well for us," Van says. "Inexplicable towers reaching towards the heavens are certainly a place where the Aegises might reside."

"It does look promising," you agree, letting the numbness wrap over you, showing only a little bit of nerves into the emotional bleed. Distantly, you can still sense Luke, a bubble of cheerful accomplishment.

You tighten your mind around the thought of him training with Guy, somewhere safe, and tighten your hand around the hilt of the sword that appears in it. You'll only get the one shot. If you fail...

If you fail, you'll just be erased again. That isn't what you're afraid of, anymore.

If you fail, Van might shatter you, now that he has Luke. That doesn't scare you, either.

You're not afraid of any of the possibilities, because you won't fail. With no emotion and the silent approach of only a dark blade, you follow after Van, lifting your sword to level with your shoulder and bracing it.

You charge. Only once it's in him, once you're certain that Van will die on your sword, do you let go. You release all the anger, the fear, the hatred, into your blade as you shove it further into his beating, stolen heart.

Blood-tinted ether drips from the wound. Van struggles to suck in a breath. "You..."

"You're never going to get the Aegis," you say. "You're not going to get to hurt Luke like you did me. It ends here, Van."

And you jerk your sword free, letting it vanish as you do. Already you can feel the resonance connection breaking, your tie to the driver that kept you tied to life - and in the distance, Luke's panic at the feeling of the same thing.

Van turns, just enough to look at you, and through the bloody remains of his shirt, you can see the glow of his core crystal for the first time. It was white, almost pure white, before the old blood of becoming a flesh eater and the flesh blood of the wound stained it. Only at the edges does that color remain.

As you'd hoped, your sword has cracked it in two. Even if flesh eaters could survive and be brought back from their core crystals, Van won't be. You made certain of that.

White flecks of ether begin to float upwards from his wound, leaving behind only the blood. Van looks at his similarly fading hand, then back at you.

"Foolish boy," he says, and even though he's never taken this tone with you before, you know it, somewhere deep in your chest, in your core crystals, in your memories. It sends a jolt of fear through you, and you know, this is how he speaks to you when he kills you, but you're dying anyway, and he's going with you, so what does it matter.

"And now that you've killed me," Van says, "who will create a world where blades can be free? You've damned yourself and every other blade in the world."

It's getting hard to pull in enough ether to sustain yourself. Still, you lift your head, meet his eyes through the growing cloud of ether from both of you... And shake your head.

"You're wrong," you say. "There will be someone else - someone better than you. Someone who doesn't believe in freedom by climbing on top of a mountain of corpses."

Van looks as though he's going to reply again, but the ether floating away from him increases in pace, and then he's gone. A white light, a few drops of blood, and the two dead halves of his core crystal falling to the ground.

And then you're free.

You drop to your knees, pressing your hands against your own core crystal. Breathing is a struggle. Against the back of your mind, you feel Luke's emotional bleed dissolve. Whether that's because you don't share a driver connecting you anymore, or because he's not stubbornly holding out as long as you are, you'll never know.

You look up at the sky, broken by the tower of the Aegis in the distance, and you're okay with not knowing.

Because, if you had to guess, you'd say that he'll be okay.