LOOP

By MargaritaDaemonelix

Loop 1

The first time Add announces that he'd discovered a way to travel to the past, Ara is very, very skeptical.

"Sure, I guess you can see the past, because time zones and all," she tells him, "but really, travelling to the past?"

"Are you doubting my abilities, miss Haan?" He retorts, stepping into a machine the size of a telephone booth. The door closes. Ara hears Add tinkering with the controls inside.

Then suddenly there was a lot of light, and the machine is gone.

Moment later, it reappears, right in front of her. "ADD!" She screams, smacking the door with her fist. "You open up right now if you're still alive!"

Slowly, the door creaks open. Add is there, but he's holding a hand over his eye. "Ara," he croaks, "please get Rena."

Ara doesn't need to be told twice. As Add crumples to the floor, she runs into the hallway of the guild base, screaming for medical help.

"So what have you learned about time travel?" Asks Ara, tying the black eyepatch over Add's now permanently scarred eye.

"That I shouldn't pick fights with people from the past," he mutters, sitting with his arms crossed angrily over his chest. "Really, Ara, I don't need another mother. Rena already treats us like we're her kids."

When he smacks her hand aside and leaves, Ara feels just a little bit hurt inside.

Loop 2

The second time Ara catches Add travelling back in time, he brings her something from her past, something she didn't think she'd see again.

"Is this your cookie jar?" He asks, handing her the object. It's filled to the brim with chocolate chip cookies, still warm. Mother must have just taken them out of the oven.

"Where'd you get this?" She asks him. "The last time I saw this was when Aren told on me for trying to steal cookies."

Add shrugs. "I saw a younger you trying to sneak into the kitchen, so I just grabbed this and ran. Can I have a cookie, please?"

Mother's cookies are always the best, even better than Ciel's. When Ara shares them with the entire gang, the half-demon even admits to it himself. Even Raven, grumpy, grumpy Raven, likes them. The nostalgia of her mother baking cookies and croissants and making those tiny little shrimp dumplings fills Ara's eyes with tears, but she manages to keep them to herself.

The next day, she walks into something she hadn't seen in many, many years: her brother, Aren. "Hey, Ara," he greets, hand in hand with Elesis(of all people, Elesis?!) as they walk around town. "How's your training coming along?"

She can barely believe her eyes, but she manages to choke out that yes, her training with Eun is fine, and that he and Elesis should be getting along now and having a nice date. She runs as fast as she can, back to her room in the guild.

The plaque she received from the Hamel government for ridding them of the demon known as Ran is gone.

It's as if Aren never became Ran in the first place.

Loop 3

The third time Add does it, his eye still hasn't healed yet. Rather, it's only gotten worse.

"Your sclera is turning black, Add," she frets, "are you sure you don't want Rena to take a look at it?"

He only snorts. "Bullshit. It'll be fine."

This time, he doesn't even have to step into the stupid box. He just opens a portal into the past and disappears.

This time, he's gone for over a day.

Ara spends the time while he's away destroying trees, blowing up a few demons, and consoling Elesis over her breakup with Aren. He's still as passive as he was, years ago, and that clashed with bold, broken Elesis, a little too much.

"I'll go have a talk with him later," promises Ara. "My brother can be such a jerk sometimes."

"Not a jerk," laughs Elesis, "just a dork."

When Add finally reappears, he drops out of the sky and narrowly misses the balcony in Rena's room. Thankfully, his Dynamos catch him in time. "Where have you been?" Ara yells, running to greet him.

His eyes are alive and fiery, his eyepatch gone. "I got Eve's code," he says with glee.

Ara never sees the nasod queen again.

Loop 4

It's like they never knew Eve even existed. Ara misses Eve a lot, despite her being a little cold and hard to talk to at times. She doesn't bring it up with Add, but when she sees his Dynamos and their new functions, she knows he's not feeling guilty for killing the last of the Nasod race, after all.

When he disappears for the fourth time, Ara tries to stay up all night with his remaining supplies, waiting for him to come back. She doesn't make it through, though, and at around two, she falls asleep.

Her surroundings when she wakes up are very different from the surroundings she fell asleep in. It's not the guild base anymore; rather, she's lying across a bed in an inn somewhere.

Add pops up at three thirty in the afternoon. "Okay, what did you do this time?!" Demands Ara.

He looks horrified at his own decisions. "I killed Banthus," he mutters, stepping forwards to wrap his arms around her, "before he even took the El from Ruben."

Ara does the math. If Banthus was dead before he took the El from Ruben, it means that he never took it. That means the balance of El was never upset. Rena never left the elven village. Elsword never had to set out on that journey.

That means the Elgang never existed.

Loop 5

Ara is grabbing her belongings from around the room in the inn, preparing to leave and go live with her brother when she catches Add opening another portal to the past. "Oh no, you don't!" She exclaims, dragging him back by the collar. His armor clicks around him as she hauls him out of the now closing purple hole to hell, but she doesn't really care.

"Ara, I was this close to going back! Why can't you just let me go?" He demands. "Aren't you going to go live with your brother anyways?"

"Yes, but if I have half a mind of what you're about to do, I can't just let you go!" She yelps. "You're going back to rescue your mother, aren't you?"

He's silent, and Ara instantly knows she's hit home. "That was your goal in the first place," she continues, "for making time travel technology. Look how much your meddling has affected our world! Sure, you brought the world to peace, but you've separated us from the rest of the Elgang! You killed Eve! Have you considered what it'll mean for you to save your mother from the past?"

"Yes, it means I'll finally be free of the guilt that's been holding me down for all eternity!" He snaps, getting up to go again.

But Ara knows him well. She presses the deactivate button on his armor, and it comes to a complete standstill. He can't move.

"Add," she says, "if you rescue your mother, it means you'll grow up to have a happy childhood. It means you won't ever need to meet the Elgang. You won't have an obsession with Eve's codes. Maybe you'll grow up to develop your own, even."

"SHUT UP!" He shrieks, reactivating his armor to push her down. Her back hits the bedframe, sending arcs of pain up her spine. "You don't know what it's like to lose a family member, knowing that you could have full well saved them!"

"Oh yeah?" She challenges. "What about Ran, then? How do you think I felt when he turned into a demon, and I couldn't do anything to save anyone in Fahrman?"

Add shakes his head. "I prevented all that from happening," he retorts, "and now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go prevent my mother's death!"

Shaking all over, Ara stands up. "You can't," she says, grabbing his hand. "Don't you see? If your mother was alive, and you grew up with her by your side… Then for what purpose did you build the time travel equipment in the first place? You won't be able to return to recreate the loop again."

They're both silent for a moment as Add considers the idea of locking himself in an infinite time paradox. The black drains out of his eyes as he falls to his knees. "Oh, El," he says, "what have I done? Did I just throw off the balance of the entire world?"

She nods. "Well, maybe it's not that bad," she amends. "Maybe you can reset all of this. Go back to the first time you ever travelled through time. Have a stern talk with yourself. And, maybe," she says wistfully, "you can bring me along too."

Add nods wordlessly. Ara holds onto him tightly as he opens a new portal below them, into the void…

Bonus

"And that's why you should put the time travel equipment down, and focus on figuring out Aisha's flipping teleportation work instead," finishes Add. "Just remember to come back to this time to give this speech all over again to yourself. Well, ourself." He holds up a tape recorder. "Now, I've recorded this entire conversation so you can rehearse it and not screw up time as badly as I did. Oh, and remember to bring Ara with you. She volunteered."

Around the corner, the two Aras are peeking, giggling as they watch Add argue with himself. "Is the future really as bad as he says it is?" Asks the younger, her golden and red eyes alive with excitement.

The older laughs. "Oh, it's much worse. Just imagine Fahrman, times three."

"Ouch."

They share a giggle as the older Add steps towards the older Ara. "Time to go," he tells her, smiling softly. "Get what you need to say to little you out now."

"Yeah, sure," she smirks, pushing him aside. "Any questions you've got for me, spit them out ASAP."

"Does Rena still fawn over Raven in the future?" Blurts the younger. "Oh! Do Aisha and Elsword still call each other names?"

Ara smiles as she leaves her younger self, walking to where Add is waiting with an open portal. "I guess that's your job to let me find out," she says.

This time, when Add follows her into the void, Ara can only guess what will happen next.

A/N: I'M ALIVE KIDS I'M SO ALIVE of course I'm not I'm totally dead inside I feel like a pile of mush

Anyways, this is just a quick little thing I came up with after reading way too much on time travel. This one was inspired by the butterfly effect theory, the game Life is Strange(dammit, Dar, you've infected me with time travel obsession) and to an extent, Homestuck(e.g. closing off time loops, dead Daves are the enemy). I hope you enjoyed reading!

Be sure to check out my new story that's coming out on Monday, called Addiction! Also, if you're reading this and intending to read Addiction, please listen to the song I loosely based it off, [A]ddiction, sung by EVO+ and written by GigaReol.

Maybe I'll actually get shit done this summer...

-MargaritaDaemonelix