Night 46: M41-50 Hallway
[from here]
622 headed down to the last door in the cell block corridor, keeping alert for anything that might already have set itself up in the hall. There usually weren't any ambushes this early in the night, but better safe than dead.
He knocked on the door to M41, waiting slightly back from the door for the Commander to open it.
622 headed down to the last door in the cell block corridor, keeping alert for anything that might already have set itself up in the hall. There usually weren't any ambushes this early in the night, but better safe than dead.
He knocked on the door to M41, waiting slightly back from the door for the Commander to open it.
All in all, Kaworu had done severe harm and help both. Albedo had been able to gain his own mind, though he hadn't truly doubted that. The fact remained of what there was to regain, however....
The solitary fact allowed was this: Rubedo was not to be trusted. Rubedo, or whatever he was calling himself, was another person, or maybe the actual truth was that Rubedo was simply being the person he had been all along. Could Albedo refute that? Didn't his twin's sweet actions at the Conflict point to that line of logic? Had it been all along, that Rubedo was simply this: one who lied and hid, ran and raged. Had Albedo expected more?
Yes. Because Rubedo was his brother. His other heart.
Albedo's eyes squinted shut, the boy buried his face in his legs and arms. A need rose, habitual and fierce, and he extended his waveform, testing, feeling. A broken link, cracked and distorted as it had been when he tested it days ago. A heartbeat, solid and sound. He swallowed, wondering. He had assumed the break was him, was it instead, Rubedo's lapse of time? His hands fisted in his pants and his waveform retreated, pulling inward as it--
--Brushed against misery, a sensation becoming familiar. Close by. And in this?
Nothing moved in the moment, Albedo didn't breathe. Then he carefully got up and walked towards the door.
[to here]
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There was a step of hesitance at the doorway, then it passed. Albedo slid into the room, pulling Nigredo along. The hand was dropped as soon as feet passed the threshold--Albedo stepped away, something awkward in the motion. Something frantic slid into his movements, an agitated shifting. The boy moved to shut the door, then, stared at it with a frown. There was no way to lock it. And why, would it need to be locked? What, above and below, would threaten his existence that he would feel a need to keep it out?
An ever-present heartbeat, perhaps?
Here, the boy's eyes widened, staring. His hand remained against the door. There was something ticking. He wasn't sure if it was aloud. An empty hollowness had rose to overtake the dull apathy he had previously held. In it, two hearts beat. Out of step, and one behind. There was a sharp gasp, a moment, and then Albedo started laughing uncontrollably. Under the corruption, it could be confused with the sound of mourning.
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Silence filled. Then, laughter, or a sound that could easily be considered borderline. The younger shifted, casting blank eyes on his elder, and he wondered. What was so funny? Which joke had he missed?
Nigredo remained wordless. A part of him waited for the moment Albedo would pontificate, deliver the punch line he so sorely lacked.
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"Since you're making yourself at home, you might as well sit." A gesture to the bed he usually occupied. The top layer was ruffled, as if one had sat for a time. The white-haired Variant looked at the sword Nigredo had leaned against the wall, and for a perfect moment, remembered how exquisite it had been as it was drove into his flesh with such hatred. A pause, and then-- Now the breaking could be seen in his eyes, the fear--a flare and then fading. Albedo pulled his gaze away, and seemingly calm, again watched Nigredo.
"So what happened?"
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Nigredo did pull away from his cant position and walked to the bed as suggested, shrugging off an increasing need by sitting at its very edge. A hand crept forward, clutching at the folds of his pants. The effect was calming, a point to focus upon, and his breathing stabled. Evened.
The spoken question called for the usual concise, true-to-type answer. What Nigredo settled on was the opposite: a complete explanation. His voice wavered in the effort, but eventually, "I asked Rubedo if I could look into his recent memories. He let me, but..." He trailed off, shuddering at the recalled words. "I found he knew more than I expected."
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But the withheld calm simply deteriorated at Nigredo's words. Had Albedo guessed? Of course, Rubedo had came to mind, but when, other than when Rubedo hadn't been himself (or perhaps that had been the self he truly was), had the eldest ever did Nigredo harm? To the point of breaking down in a public place, to not paying attention where an aft-times volatile sibling was dragging him to? There lacked comprehension momentarily, a brief confusion flitting into place and then, just as quickly dispersing. Because Albedo understood the next words all too well.
Something pushed against his mind; Albedo ignored it. There was heat in his eyes, some reaction of tears, and he kept the pattern. The pain wasn't allowed. No, no. Not here.
--But where else was there?
This, too, was ignored--his denial remained apt. "He does," the boy said softly, quietly, shaking. Then stilled. His body and mind shifted quickly, back and forth with no regard to the user. "Too much more." And what had Nigredo retrieved to garner this reaction? Nigredo's own death? Rubedo's age? The many and myriad other things?
He leaned against the door heavily, a fingertip tracing the frame. "You know, then," a question as a statement. "That he's from later than us."
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Nigredo stared dumbly for a minute, frozen in incomprehension, pausing at the one word caught among many. As it locked into understanding. The boy hadn't known that detail; it had, for all intents and purposes, never reached confirmation. Suspicion was entertained, of course: alternating timelines and the ever-changing flow of time were common subjects of discussion here. His first, in fact, involved the very topic.
No, he had never known. It had always existed as a possibility--now made real by his sibling. Nigredo slid his gaze to his brother, something weak in the movement. "How much 'later'?" Too late? Too early? Their family must have had some time to congeal before meeting the end.
He might have been unfair to assume the worst when Rubedo had tried to justify the situation. (Situations, he corrected.) Technically, the eldest had presented enough reasons to suspect no malice. Even in knowing...that. And the--
His breath caught neatly at his throat, before exhaling slowly. "It must have been long enough, if lunch was any indication," he finished, knowing.
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There was loss in this room, there was mourning, and Albedo was losing the careful detachment he had somehow gained. Something like pleading slid into his eyes, but then Albedo looked down. The floor seemed ever so interesting. "I don't remember lunch." A truth. A lie. He remembered nothing but the painful touch of Nigredo's hand brushing his own. "But I remember what happened before."
Albedo moved forward, slid to the end of the bed as if drawn there, touched the corner as if for comfort. It was still between them, one Variant on each side, and somehow this was important. A line not to be crossed. And he didn't know why. (Because Nigredo would leave.) No, there was no reason he could consider.
"A lot," he finally answered, voice cracked open and raw. "Fifteen years after us." And he had never said, no; Rubedo would have never spoke it. And so Albedo would right his wrongs, by destroying the both of them with this truth. He understood then, in the vaguest of ways, that Rubedo saw it as protecting.
But it was not protecting, as simple as lying about Sakura didn't mean he had abandoned them to spend time with her. The truth remained, worse still for the subterfuge. Worse still for-- The silence locked between.
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For fifteen years explained most everything: use of ancient firearms, the acrobatics, and later knowledge of a sibling's worst fear and another's death. Enough time would have passed for Rubedo to experience, master, and process into memory, to reach the conclusions he did and exhibit the odd behaviors shown. This weighed down like prophecy fulfilled, like long-awaited betrayal. Nigredo had seen this coming in a sense: regardless of how one regarded events, drastic occurrences drew from equally drastic reasons. Fifteen years for lives ended and discoveries made manifest.
With this conclusion in mind, he bowed his head in acknowledgment. His words, on the other hand, seemed to pull opposite. "He doesn't look 27," the child stated quietly. Fingers curled into fists. "He looks like us."
One could mistake the words for doubt as opposed to a request-- Nigredo didn't particularly care. Either stance could answer the one question he sought.
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"He looks like us," Albedo echoed, reaching for the humor he had found earlier, but missing entirely. "Opposites," he said with a self-depreciating grin. "Regeneration. And stopping in time." Ironic, so ironic. Did that mean, that Rubedo too couldn't-- Stop. Don't start thinking about that now. Don't. Start. (You die, remember? Rubedo kills you anyway.) "He doesn't age." Albedo words were forced, harsh, and at the end he took in a shuddering breath, releasing it on something that sounded like a sob.
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This, of all things, spurred Nigredo to quote, to draw on a source he hadn't considered significant until now. "What was youth at best?" he muttered to no one in particular. Of course, the end result happened to be the same: a green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Life preserved for a pack of lies; never mind the good intentions.
The thought was enough to shift the youngest, who folded his hands against his chest and twisted the fabric between his fingers. Distress bubbled and once again surfaced, and despite himself, the boy sighed. As a reassurance or a deterrent from further emotionality, Nigredo couldn't say. In the end, the act hardly helped.
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Albedo could have said a great many things, offered information in exchange. Instead he asked, questioned the same as he had before. "If you didn't know that," he started softly. "Then what did you learn?"
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He would, however, answer his brother's question. There had been a choice to offer a complete explanation, after all. "I learned he killed someone I love," replied Nigredo, "and he knew I exist to kill him."
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Albedo had stopped breathing. He realized this, and inhaled on a gasp, mind shifting sideways. Saying himself... would be denied. Despite Nigredo's claims that he didn't hate, despite the morning from yesterday, some things remained ingrained. "He's destroyed many," came the murmur. And for all that he had, he couldn't place his thoughts in a pattern to understand who would be that one. And the second thing said? Albedo's fingered stretched to curl inward at nothing, eyes widening. His blackmail would have been useless, in the end. Was this to be another irony?
His eyes moved to Nigredo, watching. There was something like a memory in this, an echo. He, too, had known Nigredo's role, and now, Rubedo as well. A dull hostility claimed a kind of thankfulness--now Rubedo would know to protect himself. Something else slid against--a movement unknown. Albedo continued staring. "And what did he do?"
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It vaguely occurred to the child that this was the first in a while he'd shown a kind of anger. The last had been the meal following a crude declaration of his secret, when the boy couldn't stand to breathe in the same space as his elder. How funny they happened to be discussing the very topic. How funny.
"He said he didn't care." That the youngest was more than his executioner, but how could Nigredo believe that? "But he does. It's obvious that he does." It was the only possibility that fit; the rest were the aftereffects of deluded optimism. Optimism that was rapidly dwindling, one that his waveform suddenly couldn't bear to stand. The once transparent boundaries of his mind moved out of reach, the boy beginning to withdraw into himself.
Yet he continued unknowingly, spurred on by his one remaining conclusion.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked. "Rubedo should know now it's better to kill me." As it should have been from the beginning.
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When Nigredo stopped speaking, Albedo blinked, sending tears to spill down his cheeks. "It's not you," he whispered, the words utterly clear in their pain. "He doesn't kill you. He kills me."
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