...

empty days

...

Jade stepped into his house with the afternoon sun spilling at his back. Pushing the door closed with a hip, he set down his stack of boxes with a soft grunt. Before, he would have just magicked the boxes along with an arte. Before, when artes had more power. He missed before.

But he didn't mind now, either. Now was, on the whole, a better time. Certainly much more restful, if nothing else. He picked up his set of boxes, padded upstairs to his labs with the stairs creaking under his weight. It was a long, spiral staircase, dotted on the railing with carved rappigs and entirely impractical for carrying objects with any reasonable alacrity. It was also a product made entirely of Peony's whimsy. Well, the whole seaside structure was Peony's much-loved brainchild, which explained why his lab was upstairs, in the daylight, and not secreted down in a basement like he would have preferred, and why everything was decorated in blues and golds and whites and seagulls and rappigs. It didn't explain how the Emperor could ever conceive that such a house would be perfect for his dear old friend Jade, and that Jade would love it, and that even mad scientists needed sunshine and shiny things, sometimes.

But the house came on its own island, off the coast of Grand Chokmah, and so Jade took it. There were worse things than free privacy.

...well, it was supposed to be private. Except that, upon cresting the rise of the third story and toeing open the door to his storage room, there was someone there.

Jade actually stopped in his tracks. "Luke?"

The young man stood with his back to Jade, facing out the opened window with the Key of Lorelei strapped across his back, as it always was, anymore - a child's security blanket twisted to an adult form. His hands were quiet in the pockets of his pale cloak, and when he turned to smile at Jade, his green eyes were calmly unreadable, Asch-like.

"Hi, Jade." He smiled wider. "I think I actually surprised you."

Jade sniffed and resumed his entrance. "Like one is surprised at the return of bathroom mold." Truthfully, his heart was pounding a little faster than normal, but... "I hope the House of Fabre is prepared to reimburse the cost of my locks."

Luke looked amused. "I'll replace the artes before I leave."

"Ah. Yes..." Because this Luke could do things like that, now.

"You want help with those?" Luke nodded towards the boxes Jade hefted onto an empty table. One of many empty tables, in a wide, open room, with myriad empty spaces still waiting to be filled with apparatus. It was lit by skylights and long bay windows – Peony had been adamant about the bay windows, harmful effects of sunlight completely brushed aside with an Emperor's sly grace. Probably why Luke chose this room in which to wait, from among all the others. This Luke liked open spaces. Empty spaces.

"The offer is appreciated," Jade exhaled as he released the weight, "but I believe even an old man such as I can manage."

He awaited the expected retort on his age, taking the topmost box from the stack and slicing neatly through the packaging tape with a handily-produced spear-tip. But none was forthcoming.

Jade looked up. Luke was watching him. Closely.

It was...bizarre.

Jade wasn't easily unsettled, but there was something here that... "Well, Luke," he covered, silky tones taking on a familiar drawl, "I must say I'm fairly tickled pink you came to see me. You've only just returned, after all, and Tear is ever so much more enthusiastic about these triumphant homecoming things – or at least, yours." He unpacked a set of beakers; frowned disapprovingly at a crack running down the faded measurement lines of a particularly dusty specimen. "I'm surprised Guy let you out of his sight, to say nothing of the Princess." He didn't look up for a reaction, but Luke's silence spoke its own kind of answer.

Too bad he hadn't a clue what it meant.

"I'm afraid the most I can offer is a repeat welcome and an Emperor's demonstrative opulence." He waved a flask in a vague inclusive motion of the room around them. "Regrettably, I'm fresh out of hearty back-slaps."

He heard motion and looked up. Luke had placed his hands on the windowsill and didn't answer. Jade shook his head silently and returned to unpacking. This new Luke was contemplative in ways that neither replica nor original had ever been, and with an added wistful, fey air that cleaved to his skin and was frustratingly indecipherable.

Leaning out the window, looking out at the blue sky and seagulls, the upward slant of his chin and his somber wide-eyed gaze gave Luke a doleful appearance.

"I know," he finally said, softly. Nothing else. Jade glanced at him, watching him for a few moments before turning away, picking up another cardboard box to give the impression of occupation while this not-Luke collected his mind. The box held worn test tubes and a few racks to house them, which Jade unpacked methodically, taking out test tube after test tube, inspecting them critically, and lining them up in a stand with delicate glass clinks, a counterpoint to the far-off seabirds' cries that drifted in and out of hearing on the breeze.

When Jade finished, Luke's eyes were fixed on the test tubes.

"Luke might have been born in one of those," he remarked.

Jade was more surprised than he showed. "Oh? You know those were-"

"Dist's, yes."

"If you'd like, I don't have to-"

"No, use them. They'll have a cleaner use with you."

Jade's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sorry, you don't like being cut off-"

"Stop that," Jade interrupted.

Luke turned slightly then, as if his body could angle away the criticism. "I don't mean to, Jade."

Jade sighed, reaching to place the completed rack on a shelf, then looking directly at Luke. He wasn't so inclined to pussyfoot around him, not since he came back from...wherever. "How much of you is Lorelei?"

He shrugged, a bit of Asch's nonchalant arrogance creeping into the gesture, but his eyes flashed golden with the iridescence of an oil pool. Lorelei was all in the eyes, with Luke.

"Can I help you do something, Jade?" Luke said instead.

Jade held his reply long enough to let Luke and whatever preternatural presence rested inside him know that this topic wasn't resolved yet. Then, with a raised eyebrow, "Like what?"

"I don't know. Anything." This time the shrug was Luke's: insecure and wanting. "You're still unpacking, right? I can help you put stuff up..." but he pressed his lips tight when he glanced, involuntarily, at the test tube stand. "Or I can cook you something downstairs. Anise always had to remind you on the road. Scientist-type people never eat on their own, right?"

Jade raised the other brow. Mildly, "Much as I love a good self-poisoning, I'd rather you don't, unless you can cook any better than before your leisurely two-year hiatus."

"Asch can."

Jade peered at Luke sharply, but the young man's face was guileless and steady. Was this second instance of implied duality purposeful? Should he take it as an invitation to comment on the blatant wrongness of the young man before him? Because Luke may have returned to them, but Luke wasn't right.

And another part of him reasoned that this, here, ah – this was the true reason Luke ended up on Jade's more-or-less doorstep, far from his more appropriate friends. Doubtless they couldn't handle this kind of Luke, who was cognizant of his own super-existence but footloose and rootless, who was increasingly intuitive but spoke in an artless riddle of proper nouns and tenses.

He rubbed a hand over his neck. When did he become the parent, to fix all wrongs? "Make me something bland, please."

Later, Jade came downstairs with a pile of Dist's old lab aprons – trashed for practical use, but with good bets on an afterlife of endless scullery. A suitably plain meal was laid out on the table, at which sat Luke, looking unexpectant and casually sure of the moment of Jade's arrival. Bright green eyes locked onto the aprons, first, before shifting to meet Jade's.

"Spaghetti and toast. Good enough?" No mention was made of the aprons. Jade set them in a pile on an island barstool to be laundered at some point. Perhaps Luke could do it.

"Marvelous."

They ate more or less companionably, if Jade discounted those moments where the room would abruptly fill with a looming oppression, as if it were suddenly too tight for just the two – three? four? – of them, and Luke would press at his temples and grit his teeth in an animal snarl. Then Luke would close his eyes and mutter things Jade couldn't hear, and the feeling would pop like clearing one's ears after an abrupt ascending of the Albiore.

Usually these little scenes happened after Jade caught Luke staring solemnly at some scattered article of lab equipment – not necessarily just Dist's, but his things, as well.

After witnessing the sixth such internal battle, Jade calmly patted his lips with a napkin and resettled it on his lap. "You know, Luke," he began, watching the young man blink slowly and with a vaguely alarming lack of focus, "we could continue this charming dinner and a show routine all evening, I'm sure, but I'm a busy housewife and I have cleaning to do. So allow me to be unusually direct for the both of us tonight: what are you here for?"

Luke set down his fork and looked away. Jade waited evenly, a Cheshire interest peaking inside him. Whatever else he was or wasn't, this new Luke exuded enigma. Jade generally hated enigmas when they were materialized in people other than himself; but, in a self-destructive aberration of character, the things he despised most were what drew him in with the kind of single-minded, intense thirst that mothers warned their children about, usually accompanied by lectures about cats and curiosity and untimely demises. Dist had said it was what made him, them, scientists. Peony would blithely comment about twisting the knife, and pleasure, and it would all denigrate into lewd masochism and roleplay jokes. Nephry just called him an addict.

When Luke spoke, however, it was still more of a shock than he cared to admit.

"I'd like to split."

Jade sat back slowly.

Luke glanced at him out the corner of his eye. Then turned away swiftly, wringing his fingers in his coat.

"You'd like," Jade repeated slowly, "to split. Luke, tell me you don't mean what I think you do."

Luke rolled his shoulders and made an aborted gesture towards his temple that would have ended, Jade was sure, in him clutching familiarly at his head and grimacing, an expression that was becoming irritating in its own right.

"If I could tell you that, I would."

Jade let out a breath. "Alright. Why."

Luke turned to him with a sudden vehemence, heat in his eyes and in his words, spilling out of him too quickly, nearly slurred, like lancing a boil. "I'm not comfortable in my own skin," he said, leaning forward with his arms on the table and facing Jade intently, long strands of flame-red hair slinking over the shoulders of his white coat, luridly. "I'm not comfortable in my own mind. It's not Lorelei – I'm part Lorelei anyway, just like Luke and Asch are – were. Are. I don't know, you see?" He threw up his hands but didn't stop. "It's not Lorelei that's the problem. It tries to help in the only ways it knows how. But it doesn't really understand how to work on a, a mortal level. A human level. We're not right, like this." He pressed forward even further but drew his arms back in to clutch at the fabric over his chest. "Here, we're not right." He raised black-gloved hands to his head. "And here. Luke and I don't fit in me no matter what Lorelei does. I'm both Luke and Asch but I'm neither, which could have been fine, we think, if I were originally one person. But we weren't, so it isn't. Do you understand?" Then, "Don't look at me like that!"

Jade jolted slightly at the snap. He cleared his throat a little. "Explain it to me more, Luke."

Futilely, it seemed, he was hoping the coherence in his speech would breed an answering coherence; Luke carried on hastily, an uncomfortable desperation bleeding into his expression. "I've always been connected to Asch. Luke needed that connection, and Asch needed Luke after he was born, whether I knew it or not. But we, I, we were never the same person. We were two identical people, but not the same. They're meant to be separate, but connected and whole. Separate, but whole! Not together and, and prickling at each other all the time. I can't stand it." His voice took on a ragged quality. "We can't stand it. We want to be Asch and Luke again."

He gave Jade one last hard, wild look, then sat back, spent.

Jade took off his glasses, set them on the table and rubbed the space between his eyes, shutting out the world and this – this mess, dumped on his lap. I don't even know where to start was on the tip of his tongue; but he held in the face of Luke's crestfallen expression, tinged with just enough hope to be crushable. He ought to crush it – nip it in the bud and send Luke on his way. He might not be...worth much, for a while, but he was young. He would adapt.

With Lorelei inside him, Jade didn't see how he couldn't. No matter what Luke might think.

He stayed quiet and still, and with each passing minute that he didn't say no, he could feel Luke's hopes rising exponentially. He brought his hand down, opening his eyes and resettling his glasses with a measured motion, fixing Luke with a careful expression.

"Have you been thinking about this for a while?"

Luke's eyes shifted quickly to the side before returning to his – an embarrassed, dodging motion.

"Almost since I came back." Said like an admittance, as if he expected to be chastised.

"Weeks, then."

"Yes." And then, with a slight bodily squirm echoed in his voice, as if he couldn't help it when he blurted, "Do you think you can do it?"

Jade pointedly raised his eyebrows. "I? My dear boy, if any of what you want is even remotely possible, it will be you doing the doing."

Luke shifted back in his seat. "Me? But I'm-" he shook his head, gaze wavering somewhere between the bits of sauce clinging to his plate and his half-emptied glass of water. "I'm not right. Things get messed up in my head. Do you know how hard I have to think to get the right words to come out? To say I?" Each word came with a hesitation, a pause of concentration as if he really were focusing that much.

"And besides," he added plaintively, "I don't know what we can think of that's any better than what you can come up with."

Jade tapped his wineglass thoughtfully. "I thought we weaned you of this insufferable insecurity a long time ago."

Luke jolted upright, brows snapping together. "What?"

"I'm flattered you think I can solve everything, Luke, but even my considerably vast knowledge of fomicry can't compare to what you have, now." Jade raised a brow. "You were gone for two years, time you haven't accounted for and during which I can only speculate as to where or what you might have been doing. But in the vaguest possible terms, I can guess. And considering the way you've been flouncing about with seventh fonons sprouting at your feet like daisies, I think you're much more capable than you're letting on."

That pressure was building at the edges of his senses again, and he knew by the darkness gathering at Luke's not-so-green eyes that he was flirting with some kind of dangerous line. "What would you have me do? You must recognize that another replica would only compound your problems, and that's about all I could offer, were either of us willing to go that route. I can't reach inside your head, stir up your multiple personalities, and make it come out all better-"

"Shut up!"

Jade shut up. But not because he wanted to – with a brief flare of panic, he discovered he really couldn't move his jaw, couldn't even hum, no matter what he tried. That alarm morphed rapidly to outrage. Trust Luke, with his impulsive accusations – Asch, with his uncompromising temper – to not only misunderstand the point he was driving at, but to cut him off before he could even get there.

Luke was on his feet across the table, white-faced and an arm splayed into the air, fist clenched and shaking. "Fine! Don't help us! Luke trusted you enough to tell you first – and you throw it back in our face!"

Jade simply glowered.

"Just – agh!" Luke pressed a fist to his forehead, gritting his teeth. "We don't want to see your face right now," he muttered between his teeth. "The dreck won't bother you for such a stupid thing as help again."

He didn't even give a final snarl, or look back over his shoulder to sneer – just swept out of the kitchen with ire in his steps and a crackle of gold in his wake.

Only after he heard the front door slam did Jade uncross his arms, lean back in his chair and tip back a –

Wait. He couldn't tip back a nice long swallow of wine because an overly-touchy fonon-inhabited young adult had left his mouth stuck shut.

Jade rose, sliding his chair in with poised grace, pulling his gloves out of his pocket and pulling them on precisely, each fingertip given attention. He was going to find every single arte Luke hadn't fixed after his lovely little break-in and write it down – and House Fabre was going to have a very, very large bill, very soon.

...

The skies were bright and clear – good for flying, Noelle told him cheerily from the cockpit more than once as they cut their way through midday sun. He suspected she was just trying to lighten his mood, and he appreciated that, and it even worked, to some extent – it was hard not to be uplifted by the beautiful landscape spread far down below them, green and vast and colorfully alive. But all the same, his determination would not be swayed.

Guy was going to find Luke. And then he was going to demand what possessed –

– well, they all knew what possessed Luke –

– demand what possessed Luke to go haring off in the middle of the night to who knows where, leaving them to discover his absence only when he didn't show up for morning sparring and couldn't be found anywhere around the estate. It wasn't like he was confined there like he used to be – he was as free to come and go as he pleased as the rest of them. But not even a note left behind, and that's what got him. Luke was usually more considerate than that.

Usually being something of a novelty. Go back a few weeks, and there wouldn't have been a Luke around to make a usually.

Guy crossed his arms over his chest and frowned out at the horizon. He wasn't really worried about Luke's physical safety. To give his friend well-deserved credit, even before he'd come back, he was pretty damn good in a fight. He'd come a long way from how he started out.

And now, what with part of Lorelei inside him...there wasn't much that Luke couldn't handle, anymore.

Except possibly, Guy thought with a sigh, his own mind. It wasn't just that he wasn't the same as before – they were all fine with Luke acting a little differently than he used to. He was part Asch now, so it was expected; and so, when sometimes he'd go silent rather than banter back at them, or when he'd seek out a quiet, empty space to be alone in for a few hours, they let him. They didn't think much of it – he was still, in all the ways that mattered, the Luke they'd all grown fond of.

Looking back, Guy could admit to himself that they were probably too willing to overlook any little strangenesses because they cared for Luke that much. Relief and unexpected happiness were heady feelings.

But lately, there were small things, occasional things that just...made him worry.

Like pausing in the shadows of the training salle to watch Luke stare at his sword because he couldn't figure out which hand he wanted to hold it with, only making a decision when Guy had emerged, whistling loudly to spare his friend the knowledge that his indecision had been witnessed. Or hearing him talk to Natalia and Tear during their frequent visits, and how the words Asch and Luke would slip out, just once or twice, but with enough of a jarring silence afterwards to make Luke swallow and look down with embarrassment, no matter how much they assured him they understood and didn't mind. Or the way that, after Anise had professed a giggly, outlandish desire to marry him for his money and latched onto him clingily – her antics so comfortably well-worn that no one, least of all Anise herself, took them at all seriously anymore – he'd pushed her off him with more roughness than usual, and wouldn't let her, or anyone else, touch him the rest of the night.

And so, selfish as Luke's disappearing act might be, Guy couldn't help the paranoia creeping in at the edges of his nerves that, maybe, all those small things had finally added up to something Luke couldn't stand, and he'd just...

...left them, again, to a place none of them could follow.

But.

They sure as hell weren't giving up on the idiot. Not by a longshot. And that was why, after setting Tear, Natalia, and Anise to the search, Guy and teams of White Knights had relentlessly scoured the Fabre grounds and beyond for any sign of Luke's passing. And, when none had been forthcoming, why Guy had unflinchingly climbed inside the Albiore to pay a visit to the creepiest person he knew.

"Colonel Curtiss's residence is in visual range, sir," Noelle chirped brightly.

Guy repressed a shudder.

They alighted on perhaps the only expanse of open field that could fit the Albiore – stepping down the gangplank, Guy could easily see one edge of the island standing at the other. Noelle bid him good luck, but opted to stay in the cockpit to wait when he suggested, hopefully, that she come as backup. Whippy and untrimmed, the long grass reached up to his waist as he waded through to Jade's front door.

Not one to miss an airship landing daintily in his backyard, Jade was there to meet him, leaning against the doorjamb and smiling pleasantly with a glint in his eyes that immediately put Guy on edge.

"Hey, Jade..." Guy waved a little sheepishly, feeling even more nervous when the scientist merely smiled more widely and nodded, crossing his arms. "How's the new house working out? It, ah, looks pretty nice."

With his free shoulder, Jade shrugged casually, still smiling right at him.

"Right..." Guy brought a hand behind his neck, grinning nervously. If Jade wanted him gone, he could have picked a less eerie way to make his point... "I guess you're busy, so I won't bother you much. But has Luke passed this way at all?"

Jade slowly pushed off the wall, eyes narrowing in a decidedly predatory manner, something sardonic to his raised eyebrow and casually deliberate nod.

But the hope flaring in Guy's chest completely disregarded the warning signals coming his way. "He has?" Honestly, Jade's house was only the first stop among many he had planned for the day; at most, he figured he'd alert the scientist to the search and be on his way. Of all the places he thought Luke might willingly go – or might flee to in times of distress – Jade's house was far from the top.

Apparently he was wrong, to his good fortune. "Oh, that's a relief." He smiled for real now, less alarmed because Jade, for all his surliness, didn't seem to be. "When? Was he okay?"

For some reason, this seemed to amuse Jade, the way a private joke might; it only baffled Guy. "Um, Jade? Are you okay?"

Silently, the scientist reached into his pocket, withdrawing, of all things, a notebook and pen. Guy watched in growing confusion as he wrote a few lines, smoothly, then presented the paper to Guy.

Other than acute thirst and notable hunger, I am quite alright.

Guy looked from the paper to the scientist and back again, confused.

"You can't talk?"

Jade turned the notepad back towards himself, wrote more, and held it out for Guy to see. The swordsman peered closer, shocked to read, Nor eat or drink, as I am a bit close-mouthed these days. A legacy of our dear friend Luke's visit, I'm afraid.

Guy looked up, finally noting the pinched anger at the corner's of Jade's eyes but not wanting to believe the cause of it. "Luke did this to you?"

Another scratch of the pen. Yes.

"Why?"

He considered himself provoked, I believe.

Ah. Guy regarded Jade suspiciously. "Did you provoke him?"

I honestly didn't expect him to react so strongly.

"So you did, then." Guy sighed, frowning. "Not that it makes it any better. First he runs off, now this..."

Jade simply smiled unpleasantly and invited him in.

Sitting on Jade's second story back porch sipping lemonade and having an entire conversation via notepad was decidedly surreal. Each comment Guy made was punctuated by the ensuing silence of Jade's reply, and even when Jade would look down mid-sentence, shaking his head as if to cut him off, Guy was able to carry on regardless, a fact that gave him a certain amount of glee. Never before had he ever felt this much in control of a conversation with the scientist. Though he did feel a bit guilty about drinking in front of him. Luke had been here and left only the previous evening, but the island was hot and already Jade must be pretty thirsty.

Guy asked if Jade knew why Luke had come, but the scientist just gave an elegant, smarmy shrug, all aristocratically raised brows and delicately innocent smile, and replied I simply have no idea.

A lie if he ever saw one.

"I suppose I'd better be going," Guy said finally, tipping back on his chair and looking out to the ocean. It was bright; he could only stand it for a few seconds. He looked out to the grassy field instead, rustling softly in the breeze, and the metal hulk of the Albiore beyond, looming like a large insect. "I'm sorry to leave you here like this," he added apologetically, "but you and I both know there's really nothing I can do to help, unless you want to come with me and we can swing by Tear or something. I swear when I find Luke I'm gonna...well, first he's gonna fix you, whether he likes it or not, but after that – what?"

Jade was holding out the notepad, waiting with pointed patience for Guy to notice him out the corner of his eye.

"'Stay here and he'll return eventually?'" Guy repeated aloud, looking up questioningly. Jade nodded as one might to a slow pupil, spreading his hands palm-up in front of him in a gesture of see, that wasn't so hard now, was it?

"Well, I know now he's not in any kind of trouble," Guy countered with a slight frown, "but I really don't think we should just let Luke wander around right now on his own, when he's..." he trailed off hesitatingly, unsure of how much Jade did or didn't know of Luke's...weirdness, other than the fact that, somewhere along the line, he'd learned how to sew people's mouths shut. He still didn't have the details of what caused that little spat.

Jade had written more, starting almost as soon as Guy opened his mouth so that when he finished, the scientist was already presenting the pad across the table.

If he doesn't want you to find him, you won't.

On its own line, set apart like an ultimatum. Then:

But he has to come here to reverse his arte – which, assuming he retains a conscience, he will.

When Guy looked up, Jade gestured to his mouth with a flourish, smiling sweetly.

And that was how Guy became a reluctant houseguest of the Necromancer.

...

A flash of gold. Footsteps on the rooftop, glowing, muffled, and muted like the farthest-seen rays of a lighthouse. A jump to the ground, sliding through the grass to the ship. Touching the grass, touching the ship, running hands over sleek metal. Finding it empty.

Standing under the stars.

Returning to the house, waiting out the dawn.

...