[Fic] KKM -- Time Imperfect [ConYuu] - R - Chapter Two
Time Imperfect
Author: Coley Merrin
Pairing: Conrad/Yuuri
Rating: R
Genre: Romance, Drama
Summary: What if the one you loved would die tomorrow because of a mistake you made almost 10 years before? What if you could go back to correct it, even if going back meant that there was no guarantee that you could return to your rightful time… or to the one you loved?
Chapter Two: The Goblet, part two
Chapter 2 - The Goblet - Part Two
***
Conrad woke, under the cover of his old bed, in a room he had not seen in years. He woke, disoriented, the dream fresh on his mind, every bizarre part of it. He woke reaching out for Yuuri. He woke alone.
***
Yozak found him before Conrad could properly put on his boots. The room arrangement, after nearly four years of sharing a different room with Yuuri, was like returning to a childhood place after being out and alone. It had a peculiar feeling to it, familiar, and yet one that was not exactly right. It was not home any longer. More like a dream. He had been comfortable here. He had worried for Yuuri, and dreamed here. He had been lying on that bed while love and fear had tangled inside, misery and happiness tumbled together like stones in the tide.
He stole a quick glance at the window seat as he stood, closing his eyes briefly at the remembering feeling of Yuuri’s hands clasped behind his neck.
“You rang?” Yozak said pleasantly.
“Where is the Maou?”
The other man glanced at the window. “In his bed, as I believe he is at this time every morning.”
Yozak kept close behind as Conrad strode through the hallways.
“Something the matter?”
“I hope not.”
Though there were questions on the tip of his tongue he could not ask them. He could not ask Yozak how old Yuuri would be turning today. He did not sleep separate from Yuuri unless… They had not fought, and neither were due to leave. It would be Yuuri’s birthday soon. He would be 26, and he would laugh at any number of ridiculous presents he received, and endure the slavish attention Gunter would provide, and he would smile at Conrad out of the corner of his eye…
His jaw clenched tighter as he pushed open the door to Yuuri’s room, their room. He could have sighed in relief as he took in the figure on the bed in the rising morning light. He was alive. Tousled black hair, breath deep and even in sleep.
He had nearly called his name when he noticed the slimness of the shoulders, and the groan was silent as he watched Yuuri shift, and he saw the childishly round features of the boy, features that in his eyes had had ten years to refine.
The door closed easily, quickly, as if it being closed would mean what Conrad had seen on the other side was not true. He stared at the door handle, glared, but it was not the door that was at fault.
“This week is his 16th birthday,” he said, his voice sounding hollow to his ears.
“You lose a week somewhere? They’ll be running around like fools downstairs fixing food. Are you all right, Conrad?”
All right? It wasn’t every day that Conrad was forced to steady himself against the stone door frame. And it definitely wasn’t every day that he woke to find the dearest person to him, his lover and king, still almost yet a child. And there was a quiet irony of claiming the knowledge of how much he relied on Yuuri to quiet his mind when he found himself ten years behind him.
“Where are the gifts? Can you show me where the gifts are?”
Yozak did not question him, leading him down the stairs, though he stared with a furrowed brow that spoke volumes on how he would be watching Conrad closely. Before he could not ask questions of Yozak, and now there were things he could not tell him. He was from the future, and he was sleeping with, living with, the Maou, and had been since Yuuri’s 22nd birthday (after Yuuri, in his frustration at Conrad moving their relationship at glacial speed, had shouted to a full dining room that Conrad was sleeping in his room that night and that was that. It had cued silence, and scattered whistles and cheers. Conrad had never seen Yuuri quite that shade of red before…). It seemed Yuuri’s birthdays had a way of being events.
And oh yes, there was a cursed goblet, that Conrad had purchased with his own hand which would kill the Maou ten years in the future. It would be easier to cut off a leg than explain in full detail.
“The gift room,” Yozak announced, allowing Conrad in ahead of him.
He had known there would be quite a few. People trying to gain favor, foreign kings showing tribute, those in the castle who were loyal and loved him… Heaped on tables in orderly stacks, there were more things than Yuuri could possibly use in the next year.
A cheerful-looking maid appeared around one stack with a list in hand.
“Can I help you, Sir Weller?”
What was her name? Heidel? She had not been employed at the castle for some years…
“Has a gift arrived… A box from the antiquities shop, Allay’s, addressed to the Maou from me?”
“Not that I know of, Sir Weller. Let me check for you. Some gifts that arrived without wrapping have been moved, though.” She shuffled pages. “Yes. It arrived yesterday. It would be in the wrapping room around the…”
Conrad pivoted without a word, following Yozak who had started moving at the look on Conrad’s face.
If the gift room had been regimented, the wrapping room had had the benefit of a very strong wind. Colored paper from where Conrad knew not lay in stacks and piles, crumpled here and there. The maids here looked harried.
“A gift,” Conrad barked before the nearest maid could speak. “My gift to Yuuri. Is it here?”
“No, Sir!” piped up the maid at the table over. “The Maou was naughty… That is, Sir, he got around the guards, Sir, and came in to see what we were doing. He saw the gift from you, but it was wrapped! And he looked so hopeful… We thought it wouldn’t hurt if he was able to open one gift before his birthday. Oh, I hope you’re not angry!”
“When! When did he take it?!” He stepped forward, and she cowered back.
“Last night, Sir! Oh, I’m so sorry! We didn’t know!”
This time he didn’t have to wait for Yozak as he shoved blindly out the door and ran. He had not reached the stairs before he began to shout Yuuri’s name. He was barely aware that Yozak was right behind him, or that they passed a startled Ken on their way.
“Yuuri!”
He fumbled the door knob, but gripped it, and the boy king looked over, as he lifted a dark, etched goblet to his lips.
“Yuuri, no!”
One arm pushed Yuuri’s down as Conrad crashed into Yuuri, batting the cup away. He barely caught himself on his knees as he fell, keeping Yuuri from sprawling out entirely on the carpet-covered stone.
“Had you drank from it?” Conrad demanded, shaking Yuuri’s shoulders.
“No.” Yuuri was staring up at him with wide eyes. “I thought… I wanted to see what your gift was, and they said it was okay if they just took one. Conrad?”
His strength left him, and he sank fully down as he breathed. He had not been too late. And the goblet… it had fallen at the edge of the rich carpet, onto the stone. Heavy, solid, it had felt to Conrad’s hands, and yet it had fallen… broken… and a shadow grew dark around it.
A strong breeze ruffled through the room, seeming to solidify as it swirled around Conrad and Yuuri. It came to rest over the goblet, boiling gray and black, and through it, a voice.
“Who denies me the blood of kings?”
“Yuuri, stay back.” With sword in hand he stood, nearly lifting Yuuri to his feet to push him towards Yozak and Ken. “Yozak, stay in front of them.”
This was the curse, Conrad could feel it. And it was angry at being unfulfilled. By addressing his gift to Yuuri… he had promised the curse a victim beyond all others.
“I almost tasted royal blood,” the mist hissed at him.
“You’ve chosen the wrong king.”
“But you gave him to me, Your Excellency…”
A cool tendril of mist stroked along Conrad’s jaw.
With a yell that seemed to have no end, Conrad swung… and he watched his sword slice cleanly through empty air. The sword tip clanged in protest as it was forced down onto the stone, into the puddle left by the broken goblet. He sliced now, desperate, and was rewarded with a roar as his sword found purchase in the dark form… as the wetted sword found him purchase. But he realized it at nearly the same time as the dark spirit. It swirled to him, surrounded him as he spun sword-ready, knowing Yozak was more than a sword distance away. It swirled quicker, faster than he could move, faster than he could see, knocking him, cutting him, while Conrad wielded the wet sword and nearly chanted a prayer. Dry, the sword slid through the mist with no resistance, but wet, wet he thrust and it held. He felt the mist contract around the sword, a sort of gasp as it shrieked and howled its denial. Dark and viscous it fell, sliding over the floor, to the shards, where it faded.
“If I gave him to you, then he is mine to take back.”
Conrad dropped to one knee, gasping for breath and looking for Yuuri. The boy was being restrained by Yozak’s arm, but he looked fine. Fine, Conrad thought, swiping a hand across his neck where a cut beside his ear had bled. As fine as one could be when a curse, a spirit, whatever it had been, had attempted to kill him only days before his birthday.
He half crawled forward, seeing again the broken goblet. Crack it, the dream had said, fight what was inside it, but keep the goblet whole. He had fought, but… the pieces in his hands were nothing but little shards. The rest that littered the ground were smaller. He had saved Yuuri’s life, and the goblet had smashed. If it had fallen on the carpet, would it have…?
“Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri.”
Closing his eyes, he saw with clarity the first time that Yuuri told him he loved him. The little hitch in his voice, the softness in his eyes, the feel of the heart beating rapidly against his palm, where Yuuri held it with determined hands.
“I’m so sorry, Yuuri,” he whispered.
“I’m all right, Conrad!”
Conrad jerked to attention, looking to see Yuuri crouching next to him. He squeezed his eyes shut, and in a moment of weakness, let his forehead rest on the young Yuuri’s shoulder.
“What was that?”
“A curse,” Ken said. “A dangerous one.”
“We can sweep this up and get it out of here,” Yozak said.
“No!” Conrad spoke so sharply he knew that he startled each of them. He stood. “I want every piece of this. To… study it. Yuuri might have gotten hurt because of this.” Might have gotten killed.
“Will you give it back to me, Yuuri?”
Yuuri glanced at the shards. “Sure? I’m sorry we had to break the cup, Conrad,” Yuuri said, still seemingly off balance from Conrad’s outburst.
“What’s more important is that you’re okay, Heika. And it was my fault. I brought it to you.”
My fault, he thought, as they packaged up the shards of the goblet. Seemingly broken beyond repair… The goblet had been the greatest danger to Yuuri’s life.
But he remembered the words spoken to him in his dream. The goblet had also been his chance to return.
***
*PRESENT - Yuuri*
***
Yuuri woke slowly, swallowing convulsively when he found his mouth dry. Conrad’s breathing was steady beside him, and he smiled…shifting slightly so he could look at him more easily. He touched the still cheek, kissing the brow that was furrowed in sleep. He knew Conrad would want to wake early and he stroked his face as he leaned to kiss him awake.
Conrad’s eyes opened before he could, and the other man half rolled, half leaped out from under the covers, not stopping until he was crouched several feet from the bed.
Yuuri sat quickly, his heart racing with concern at the unusual reaction. A nightmare?
Conrad stared at him, confusion and almost a lack of recognition on his face. “Yuuri?”
“Were you expecting someone else?”
Conrad touched his face where Yuuri’s hand had been. “You… aren’t sixteen.”
Yuuri gave a half hysterical laugh. What was going on? “Not for ten years.”
Conrad sat hard on the floor, staring around him as if he had never seen the room before.
“I didn’t believe it was possible.”
Surely no simply nightmare could explain this odd behavior. Was Conrad sick? Had he fallen?
“What was possible?” he demanded. “Conrad, what’s happened?”
“Ten years ago you received a goblet for your sixteenth birthday. It was a gift… from… me. But the goblet was cursed. It would have killed you ten years to the day. But… somehow he found out, somehow…”
“Who?”
Conrad took a deep breath, and looked straight into Yuuri’s eyes. “The Conrad from this time.”
Yuuri blinked. “You’re not…”
He spoke quickly, urgently. “In my time, you were turning sixteen. You were to decide to acknowledge your Mazoku blood… But instead I dreamed, and I woke here… with you. You’ve changed in ten years, Heika,” Conrad said softly. “And apparently… so have I.”
Yuuri was sure he must be gaping like a fish, but Conrad had looked him straight in the eye. He had not lied to him, not like that. Still he was half ready to call for a doctor. And yet, if it were true… This Conrad knew him as a gangly, unsure teenager, and… Yuuri nearly blushed. It was like confessing all over again.
Certainly their relationship had made a difference in their locations. Conrad’s room had the qualifier “old” in front of it, and Yuuri’s room stood open to both of them. Their daily duties were not so much changed. Their actions around each other had always been casual and polite as the situation called for. Conrad had never been overly forward and Yuuri was demonstrative when the situation begged for nothing less. But when the situation between them changed… or rather, when any such denial of the situation had ceased, no one paid much mind to Yuuri’s hand straying over Conrad’s if they sat next to each other, or to Conrad’s fingers that occasionally trailed along the often-too-long hair at the young Maou’s brow. There may have been a few more knowing smiles between them, but Yuuri preferred to think that those stayed between him and Conrad.
Yuuri flushed again when he recalled the look of shock as Conrad registered the looming face moving in for a kiss. He wouldn’t have known who he was recoiling from. But it was much less embarrassing than if the knowledge of “their” relationship was a secret.
He could see differences now, unless delusion had gripped him, too. The way this Conrad looked at him was not the same familiar way that he had come to know, but slightly distanced… No less gentle or affectionate, but distanced. So the step back was small, but not insignificant.
Yuuri blinked. “But if Conrad’s in the past… Is there any way for him to catch up?”
“No. I asked as many questions as I could while I was…while I was brought here. It’s more like… an alternate reality now, this present time. And your past… His being there should not have happened, and he has altered its presence in time. Your future will not be known fully, not unless he is removed and I return.”
“And the goblet…” Yuuri sprinted to the dresser where it had sat neatly for ten years.
The goblet, whole only the day before, had been neatly rendered in two. Inside were what looked like droplets of drying blood.
“He’s managed to remove it from you in the past and break it some way,” Conrad said from behind him. “That’s good. Or else you would be dead now.”
“So everything might change, even if Conrad saved my life and came back everything now could change.” Yuuri reached to yank at his hair. No, he was awake. Conrad, how could you leave me? Even to save me… He breathed, feeling tears burn. No, he would have time to fall apart later. “Is there any way to bring him back?”
“I know that we can try. We have the goblet after all. That’s the link.”
Conrad lifted a hand to lay on Yuuri’s shoulder, and seemed startled at how high he had to go to do so from the way he stared.
“I’m sorry I’m not the Conrad you wanted, Yuuri.”
Yuuri smiled, not feeling it reach his eyes. It was as if Conrad had, ten years out of his own time, sent a version of himself to help Yuuri along. It was not as though he could reassure this Conrad with “But someday you would be the Conrad I wanted.” There was no guarantee, when messing with time itself, that either one would be the Conrad he needed after this.
***
Authors notes: It takes an impressive writer to be able to present time travel in any way that approaches making sense... I do not claim to be that writer. The first chapter was almost bound to cause confusion... Laziness on my part? It bounced out of my head in approximately the way it is. If any of this at all makes sense, it's due in no little part to
crystaltear
, who prodded me down the straight and narrow. Any errors, though, are due to the author's stubbornness and artistic whim. With this chapter, I'm hoping some of that confusion is cleared up. Conrad's first day trapped in his past has begun, and through the last scene, we see that Yuuri's first day "without" Conrad has begun as well.
A note on point of view: It is the first time the POV changes - each chapter will be prefaced with this type of note (Past - Conrad, Present - Yuuri) from now on to let you know without a doubt whether we are in the Past with Conrad's pov, or in the Present with Yuuri's. Those are the only two there will be. I'm aiming to confuse no one, so if the instance to change POV arises again you may be sure that I will be waving a flag to let you know. I don't want to chase anyone away, after all!
But I thought I would take this opportunity to throw this out there as we start to ramp up... Thanks to all of you for reading!
Chapter Three
Author: Coley Merrin
Pairing: Conrad/Yuuri
Rating: R
Genre: Romance, Drama
Summary: What if the one you loved would die tomorrow because of a mistake you made almost 10 years before? What if you could go back to correct it, even if going back meant that there was no guarantee that you could return to your rightful time… or to the one you loved?
Chapter Two: The Goblet, part two
Chapter 2 - The Goblet - Part Two
***
Conrad woke, under the cover of his old bed, in a room he had not seen in years. He woke, disoriented, the dream fresh on his mind, every bizarre part of it. He woke reaching out for Yuuri. He woke alone.
***
Yozak found him before Conrad could properly put on his boots. The room arrangement, after nearly four years of sharing a different room with Yuuri, was like returning to a childhood place after being out and alone. It had a peculiar feeling to it, familiar, and yet one that was not exactly right. It was not home any longer. More like a dream. He had been comfortable here. He had worried for Yuuri, and dreamed here. He had been lying on that bed while love and fear had tangled inside, misery and happiness tumbled together like stones in the tide.
He stole a quick glance at the window seat as he stood, closing his eyes briefly at the remembering feeling of Yuuri’s hands clasped behind his neck.
“You rang?” Yozak said pleasantly.
“Where is the Maou?”
The other man glanced at the window. “In his bed, as I believe he is at this time every morning.”
Yozak kept close behind as Conrad strode through the hallways.
“Something the matter?”
“I hope not.”
Though there were questions on the tip of his tongue he could not ask them. He could not ask Yozak how old Yuuri would be turning today. He did not sleep separate from Yuuri unless… They had not fought, and neither were due to leave. It would be Yuuri’s birthday soon. He would be 26, and he would laugh at any number of ridiculous presents he received, and endure the slavish attention Gunter would provide, and he would smile at Conrad out of the corner of his eye…
His jaw clenched tighter as he pushed open the door to Yuuri’s room, their room. He could have sighed in relief as he took in the figure on the bed in the rising morning light. He was alive. Tousled black hair, breath deep and even in sleep.
He had nearly called his name when he noticed the slimness of the shoulders, and the groan was silent as he watched Yuuri shift, and he saw the childishly round features of the boy, features that in his eyes had had ten years to refine.
The door closed easily, quickly, as if it being closed would mean what Conrad had seen on the other side was not true. He stared at the door handle, glared, but it was not the door that was at fault.
“This week is his 16th birthday,” he said, his voice sounding hollow to his ears.
“You lose a week somewhere? They’ll be running around like fools downstairs fixing food. Are you all right, Conrad?”
All right? It wasn’t every day that Conrad was forced to steady himself against the stone door frame. And it definitely wasn’t every day that he woke to find the dearest person to him, his lover and king, still almost yet a child. And there was a quiet irony of claiming the knowledge of how much he relied on Yuuri to quiet his mind when he found himself ten years behind him.
“Where are the gifts? Can you show me where the gifts are?”
Yozak did not question him, leading him down the stairs, though he stared with a furrowed brow that spoke volumes on how he would be watching Conrad closely. Before he could not ask questions of Yozak, and now there were things he could not tell him. He was from the future, and he was sleeping with, living with, the Maou, and had been since Yuuri’s 22nd birthday (after Yuuri, in his frustration at Conrad moving their relationship at glacial speed, had shouted to a full dining room that Conrad was sleeping in his room that night and that was that. It had cued silence, and scattered whistles and cheers. Conrad had never seen Yuuri quite that shade of red before…). It seemed Yuuri’s birthdays had a way of being events.
And oh yes, there was a cursed goblet, that Conrad had purchased with his own hand which would kill the Maou ten years in the future. It would be easier to cut off a leg than explain in full detail.
“The gift room,” Yozak announced, allowing Conrad in ahead of him.
He had known there would be quite a few. People trying to gain favor, foreign kings showing tribute, those in the castle who were loyal and loved him… Heaped on tables in orderly stacks, there were more things than Yuuri could possibly use in the next year.
A cheerful-looking maid appeared around one stack with a list in hand.
“Can I help you, Sir Weller?”
What was her name? Heidel? She had not been employed at the castle for some years…
“Has a gift arrived… A box from the antiquities shop, Allay’s, addressed to the Maou from me?”
“Not that I know of, Sir Weller. Let me check for you. Some gifts that arrived without wrapping have been moved, though.” She shuffled pages. “Yes. It arrived yesterday. It would be in the wrapping room around the…”
Conrad pivoted without a word, following Yozak who had started moving at the look on Conrad’s face.
If the gift room had been regimented, the wrapping room had had the benefit of a very strong wind. Colored paper from where Conrad knew not lay in stacks and piles, crumpled here and there. The maids here looked harried.
“A gift,” Conrad barked before the nearest maid could speak. “My gift to Yuuri. Is it here?”
“No, Sir!” piped up the maid at the table over. “The Maou was naughty… That is, Sir, he got around the guards, Sir, and came in to see what we were doing. He saw the gift from you, but it was wrapped! And he looked so hopeful… We thought it wouldn’t hurt if he was able to open one gift before his birthday. Oh, I hope you’re not angry!”
“When! When did he take it?!” He stepped forward, and she cowered back.
“Last night, Sir! Oh, I’m so sorry! We didn’t know!”
This time he didn’t have to wait for Yozak as he shoved blindly out the door and ran. He had not reached the stairs before he began to shout Yuuri’s name. He was barely aware that Yozak was right behind him, or that they passed a startled Ken on their way.
“Yuuri!”
He fumbled the door knob, but gripped it, and the boy king looked over, as he lifted a dark, etched goblet to his lips.
“Yuuri, no!”
One arm pushed Yuuri’s down as Conrad crashed into Yuuri, batting the cup away. He barely caught himself on his knees as he fell, keeping Yuuri from sprawling out entirely on the carpet-covered stone.
“Had you drank from it?” Conrad demanded, shaking Yuuri’s shoulders.
“No.” Yuuri was staring up at him with wide eyes. “I thought… I wanted to see what your gift was, and they said it was okay if they just took one. Conrad?”
His strength left him, and he sank fully down as he breathed. He had not been too late. And the goblet… it had fallen at the edge of the rich carpet, onto the stone. Heavy, solid, it had felt to Conrad’s hands, and yet it had fallen… broken… and a shadow grew dark around it.
A strong breeze ruffled through the room, seeming to solidify as it swirled around Conrad and Yuuri. It came to rest over the goblet, boiling gray and black, and through it, a voice.
“Who denies me the blood of kings?”
“Yuuri, stay back.” With sword in hand he stood, nearly lifting Yuuri to his feet to push him towards Yozak and Ken. “Yozak, stay in front of them.”
This was the curse, Conrad could feel it. And it was angry at being unfulfilled. By addressing his gift to Yuuri… he had promised the curse a victim beyond all others.
“I almost tasted royal blood,” the mist hissed at him.
“You’ve chosen the wrong king.”
“But you gave him to me, Your Excellency…”
A cool tendril of mist stroked along Conrad’s jaw.
With a yell that seemed to have no end, Conrad swung… and he watched his sword slice cleanly through empty air. The sword tip clanged in protest as it was forced down onto the stone, into the puddle left by the broken goblet. He sliced now, desperate, and was rewarded with a roar as his sword found purchase in the dark form… as the wetted sword found him purchase. But he realized it at nearly the same time as the dark spirit. It swirled to him, surrounded him as he spun sword-ready, knowing Yozak was more than a sword distance away. It swirled quicker, faster than he could move, faster than he could see, knocking him, cutting him, while Conrad wielded the wet sword and nearly chanted a prayer. Dry, the sword slid through the mist with no resistance, but wet, wet he thrust and it held. He felt the mist contract around the sword, a sort of gasp as it shrieked and howled its denial. Dark and viscous it fell, sliding over the floor, to the shards, where it faded.
“If I gave him to you, then he is mine to take back.”
Conrad dropped to one knee, gasping for breath and looking for Yuuri. The boy was being restrained by Yozak’s arm, but he looked fine. Fine, Conrad thought, swiping a hand across his neck where a cut beside his ear had bled. As fine as one could be when a curse, a spirit, whatever it had been, had attempted to kill him only days before his birthday.
He half crawled forward, seeing again the broken goblet. Crack it, the dream had said, fight what was inside it, but keep the goblet whole. He had fought, but… the pieces in his hands were nothing but little shards. The rest that littered the ground were smaller. He had saved Yuuri’s life, and the goblet had smashed. If it had fallen on the carpet, would it have…?
“Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri.”
Closing his eyes, he saw with clarity the first time that Yuuri told him he loved him. The little hitch in his voice, the softness in his eyes, the feel of the heart beating rapidly against his palm, where Yuuri held it with determined hands.
“I’m so sorry, Yuuri,” he whispered.
“I’m all right, Conrad!”
Conrad jerked to attention, looking to see Yuuri crouching next to him. He squeezed his eyes shut, and in a moment of weakness, let his forehead rest on the young Yuuri’s shoulder.
“What was that?”
“A curse,” Ken said. “A dangerous one.”
“We can sweep this up and get it out of here,” Yozak said.
“No!” Conrad spoke so sharply he knew that he startled each of them. He stood. “I want every piece of this. To… study it. Yuuri might have gotten hurt because of this.” Might have gotten killed.
“Will you give it back to me, Yuuri?”
Yuuri glanced at the shards. “Sure? I’m sorry we had to break the cup, Conrad,” Yuuri said, still seemingly off balance from Conrad’s outburst.
“What’s more important is that you’re okay, Heika. And it was my fault. I brought it to you.”
My fault, he thought, as they packaged up the shards of the goblet. Seemingly broken beyond repair… The goblet had been the greatest danger to Yuuri’s life.
But he remembered the words spoken to him in his dream. The goblet had also been his chance to return.
***
*PRESENT - Yuuri*
***
Yuuri woke slowly, swallowing convulsively when he found his mouth dry. Conrad’s breathing was steady beside him, and he smiled…shifting slightly so he could look at him more easily. He touched the still cheek, kissing the brow that was furrowed in sleep. He knew Conrad would want to wake early and he stroked his face as he leaned to kiss him awake.
Conrad’s eyes opened before he could, and the other man half rolled, half leaped out from under the covers, not stopping until he was crouched several feet from the bed.
Yuuri sat quickly, his heart racing with concern at the unusual reaction. A nightmare?
Conrad stared at him, confusion and almost a lack of recognition on his face. “Yuuri?”
“Were you expecting someone else?”
Conrad touched his face where Yuuri’s hand had been. “You… aren’t sixteen.”
Yuuri gave a half hysterical laugh. What was going on? “Not for ten years.”
Conrad sat hard on the floor, staring around him as if he had never seen the room before.
“I didn’t believe it was possible.”
Surely no simply nightmare could explain this odd behavior. Was Conrad sick? Had he fallen?
“What was possible?” he demanded. “Conrad, what’s happened?”
“Ten years ago you received a goblet for your sixteenth birthday. It was a gift… from… me. But the goblet was cursed. It would have killed you ten years to the day. But… somehow he found out, somehow…”
“Who?”
Conrad took a deep breath, and looked straight into Yuuri’s eyes. “The Conrad from this time.”
Yuuri blinked. “You’re not…”
He spoke quickly, urgently. “In my time, you were turning sixteen. You were to decide to acknowledge your Mazoku blood… But instead I dreamed, and I woke here… with you. You’ve changed in ten years, Heika,” Conrad said softly. “And apparently… so have I.”
Yuuri was sure he must be gaping like a fish, but Conrad had looked him straight in the eye. He had not lied to him, not like that. Still he was half ready to call for a doctor. And yet, if it were true… This Conrad knew him as a gangly, unsure teenager, and… Yuuri nearly blushed. It was like confessing all over again.
Certainly their relationship had made a difference in their locations. Conrad’s room had the qualifier “old” in front of it, and Yuuri’s room stood open to both of them. Their daily duties were not so much changed. Their actions around each other had always been casual and polite as the situation called for. Conrad had never been overly forward and Yuuri was demonstrative when the situation begged for nothing less. But when the situation between them changed… or rather, when any such denial of the situation had ceased, no one paid much mind to Yuuri’s hand straying over Conrad’s if they sat next to each other, or to Conrad’s fingers that occasionally trailed along the often-too-long hair at the young Maou’s brow. There may have been a few more knowing smiles between them, but Yuuri preferred to think that those stayed between him and Conrad.
Yuuri flushed again when he recalled the look of shock as Conrad registered the looming face moving in for a kiss. He wouldn’t have known who he was recoiling from. But it was much less embarrassing than if the knowledge of “their” relationship was a secret.
He could see differences now, unless delusion had gripped him, too. The way this Conrad looked at him was not the same familiar way that he had come to know, but slightly distanced… No less gentle or affectionate, but distanced. So the step back was small, but not insignificant.
Yuuri blinked. “But if Conrad’s in the past… Is there any way for him to catch up?”
“No. I asked as many questions as I could while I was…while I was brought here. It’s more like… an alternate reality now, this present time. And your past… His being there should not have happened, and he has altered its presence in time. Your future will not be known fully, not unless he is removed and I return.”
“And the goblet…” Yuuri sprinted to the dresser where it had sat neatly for ten years.
The goblet, whole only the day before, had been neatly rendered in two. Inside were what looked like droplets of drying blood.
“He’s managed to remove it from you in the past and break it some way,” Conrad said from behind him. “That’s good. Or else you would be dead now.”
“So everything might change, even if Conrad saved my life and came back everything now could change.” Yuuri reached to yank at his hair. No, he was awake. Conrad, how could you leave me? Even to save me… He breathed, feeling tears burn. No, he would have time to fall apart later. “Is there any way to bring him back?”
“I know that we can try. We have the goblet after all. That’s the link.”
Conrad lifted a hand to lay on Yuuri’s shoulder, and seemed startled at how high he had to go to do so from the way he stared.
“I’m sorry I’m not the Conrad you wanted, Yuuri.”
Yuuri smiled, not feeling it reach his eyes. It was as if Conrad had, ten years out of his own time, sent a version of himself to help Yuuri along. It was not as though he could reassure this Conrad with “But someday you would be the Conrad I wanted.” There was no guarantee, when messing with time itself, that either one would be the Conrad he needed after this.
***
Authors notes: It takes an impressive writer to be able to present time travel in any way that approaches making sense... I do not claim to be that writer. The first chapter was almost bound to cause confusion... Laziness on my part? It bounced out of my head in approximately the way it is. If any of this at all makes sense, it's due in no little part to
crystaltear
, who prodded me down the straight and narrow. Any errors, though, are due to the author's stubbornness and artistic whim. With this chapter, I'm hoping some of that confusion is cleared up. Conrad's first day trapped in his past has begun, and through the last scene, we see that Yuuri's first day "without" Conrad has begun as well.
A note on point of view: It is the first time the POV changes - each chapter will be prefaced with this type of note (Past - Conrad, Present - Yuuri) from now on to let you know without a doubt whether we are in the Past with Conrad's pov, or in the Present with Yuuri's. Those are the only two there will be. I'm aiming to confuse no one, so if the instance to change POV arises again you may be sure that I will be waving a flag to let you know. I don't want to chase anyone away, after all!
But I thought I would take this opportunity to throw this out there as we start to ramp up... Thanks to all of you for reading!
Chapter Three