[log] [complete] [part 1]

[for-destiny.livejournal.com]

When; April 05, early morning
Rating; PG
Characters; Jowy [for_destinty] & Riou [bright_shield]
Summary; When Jowy and Riou wake up, the effects of Yurika's cookies have worn off. They have a long-awaited talk and try not to kill each other while at it ♥
Log;

It had been a long time since Jowy had slept so soundly, so peacefully. It was warm and familiar. He couldn't remember the last time he felt as rested and content like this. He couldn't shake off the thought that somehow, somehow he had been thrown back into the past and allowed to experience something he no longer could.

He groaned and tried to shift a bit, only to realize he wasn't alone in bed. That was then, at that moment, that he decided to open his eyes. He blinked at first, not quite sure what to make of the brown lump before him until he realized that it was hair-

hair.

Riou's hair - he'd recognize that thin band of gold anywhere. Jowy almost cried out, but he froze instead when Riou shifted slightly and allowed him a good look of his once-bestfriend's sleeping face. Calm. Eyes closed. This was a face he hadn't seen like this in months, let alone touch. Inwardly, he berated himself for reaching out to touch his friend's cheeks. It was warm and there. It wasn't a dream. This was really Riou. For the longest time, he thought he would never be able to see Riou like this - without the angry, hurt look on his face - and here he was.

And they were sharing the same bed too. That hadn't happened until... when? Almost forever.

He pulled back instantly when he realized he had touched Riou's face with his right hand, the hand that bore the Black Sword. What now? Jowy didn't want this moment to end. If he could, he would just calmly watch his friend and not speak and not do anything at all.

If the moments like this could stretch out forever...

But they don't.

And to think - he smiled bitterly as the memories from the past few days trickled slowly into his conscious mind. Children. Best friends. If only those times would return. They did but... like this?

It was laughable.

He didn't want to wake up.

A languid warmth had stolen over him, a feeling of such comforting familiarity that Riou simply wanted to roll up in it and entirely forget the waking world. It was safe, and it was right, and if he could just stay this way a little while longer...

But consciousness was slowly seeping through the levels of his mind. He sighed and snuggled closer into his pillow trying to deny the last call to wakefulness. The pillow was rather warm and actually not too comfortable as pillows went. And even though it smelled achingly familiar, pillows probably weren't supposed to have a pulse quite like that.

Don't.

But it seemed he was really going to have to.

Riou opened his eyes to find himself caught within a very familiar blue gaze. It took several moments for it to sink in as to what exactly was wrong with that.

Jowy.

"Holy sh--" Riou bolted upright, every muscle tense, and then fluidly leaped free of the bed, bedsheets fluttering fitfully in his wake. Then he not so fluidly clipped a hip against the nearby night-table and slammed into the adjoining wall, sliding halfway down it before catching himself.

The mask of calm and indifference came up instantly. Jowy had become used to it during the war. His life had depended on it. Even if lately he hadn't much reason to resort to it now, the act came to him naturally.

"You should be more careful, Riou," he said simply, resisting a sigh. Saying more, he realized, no matter how light hearted, would only cause Riou more panic.

With his back pressed against the wall, dimly Riou was aware of his hip throbbing. However, it was his head that he clutched as a whirl of memories flickered through his mind. Climbing a too pink tree, rushing from party to party, baking a cake and eating far too much of it, a rather traumatizing conversation, racing after eggs, and always always looking for Genkaku, Mukumuku, and Nanami... And even before then...

Oh god.

"...Jowy?" Riou muttered as he pressed fingers to his forehead.

"Yes...?" That was all Jowy could say as he avoided Riou's eyes. He stood up from the bed and began looking around for a hair tie of some sort - when he was in his younger form, his hair had been short, but now it was back to its normal length. It was messy and probably made him look a tad too feminine.

When Frey had told him he would look good with long hair, he had been happy, but right now, he was wondering if maybe keeping it shorter would be better.

Riou dropped his hands from his head and took a somewhat shaky breath, trying to calm his racing heart. He took a quick stock of his surroundings. The bedroom to the extra apartment. Two night-tables, a bed, a wardrobe, and the door to his immediate left, open and welcoming him if he needed to run. He should leave. Immediately. But...but he...

You can't keep running forever.

And Jowy had been watching him, not trying to strangle him in his sleep. He hadn't made any aggressive moves, as far as he knew, since Riou had unwittingly entered the city. And Jowy was most probably not looking around the apartment now for a weapon. Jowy assuredly was not going to challenge him to a duel to the death in the middle of Frey's apartments...

And Jowy certainly would never betray Muse and assassinate Anabelle. He wouldn't really work under that monstrous Luca or attack a peaceful settlement like Greenhill. And he most certainly would never ever try to kill you all at that peace conference...

Shut up.

Jowy had the Black Sword. Beyond that, Riou did not know which Jowy that this was. People could stumble in from different worlds and different points in time to the city. It was only a short little while from when Jowy received the Black Sword to when he betrayed Muse -- you should never have left him to face Luca alone!-- but still...

The rather strange thought that Jowy was rather attractive with his hair long and disheveled like that was pushed roughly out of Riou's mind.

"What.." Riou said quietly. "What is the last thing you remember from our world before coming here?"

Riou didn't leave and though he had the look of someone on the verge of fleeing, Jowy knew this was enough. He made a makeshift ponytail by twisting around his hair and leaving it to rest on his shoulder. That way it wouldn't be in so much of a mess, and he wouldn't look so feminine.

"L'Renouille's fall --" Jowy began, staring downwards. "Shortly after that, I came here." I was waiting for you at the Tenzan pass... but you didn't want to come, did you? I understand, of course. I probably wouldn't come too. "What about you...?"

It hurt a bit to think they had been good friends once more just several hours ago. Their friendship had dissolved to this. He was fortunate they had a chance to talk like this. Riou had really looked like he was going to avoid him forever.

You know he can't.

The Black Sword. He clenched his right hand, feeling a slight twinge, a reminder from the half rune. No, he told himself, he would resist the rune for now. He would never, never attack Riou like that again. He didn't want Riou to die.

If anyone deserves to die, it's me.

He'd thought about the reasons he could not, should not, kill Riou in his stay here in the city. Riou, for one, had a lot to go back to; a budding country, people who believe in him, friends. Jowy had none and last he'd heard, his stepfather had fled with his family to Harmonia. Everyone would be blaming him, for Agares' death, for Luca's, for Jillia even...

He'd envied Riou before. Just a bit. It was part of the rivalry... but now, perhaps, he could say he truly did envy his friend.

It had been a futile hope. If this had been Jowy from before the betrayal he would have searched out Riou and demanded a reunion long ago. L'Renouille... so he was from nearly the same point in time as Riou himself.

Perhaps here lay the answer to his once-friend's strange absence from the final battle. Well, it could have been worst... what if Jowy had come from before the fall of Highland, still full of those ambitions of conquering and subjugation? Although who knew if they were gone now with Highland or not...

"Dunan," Riou said as he continued to watch Jowy warily, somewhat relieved when the other boy did not quite meet his gaze. That look when I first woke up, what was that? "That's the new name for the Jowston Alliance and Highland. Several weeks after L'Renouille's fall with the remnants of your troops still uprising and attacking."

Riou surreptitiously slid his left hand over his right, but the Bright Shield Rune remained cool and dormant within his hand, even in this close proximity to Black Sword. Bright Shield had always simply been there for him, seemingly an extension of his own self. He had never really felt the battle of wills that he had heard so much about regarding other true rune bearers, but then again, up till now he had been battling against the bearer of the Black Sword, just as the two rune halves wished.

He had heard things about the Bright Shield and Black Sword, before and after acquiring the half rune. That they were destined to battle, forcing the wills of their two bearers, even draining them to death if that was what was required. But that didn't matter-- it was not some nebulous will of a rune that had forced him into that war, but his own choice. And he...

"What are you going to do now?" Riou asked Jowy and himself at the same time.

Jowy took in all that information quietly. It would take a while, but he knew their paths were right. For Jowston and Highland to co-exist, one must be subjugated, and even if Highland were resisting now, eventually, Jowy knew, they would truly become Dunan. Or is this just me justifying my choices...? Our choices?

He decided not to answer Riou's question yet. Surely, discussing that would only drive him away. Jowy needed time, needed to talk, at least.

"I heard about Dunan from Sir Percival, he's from the future... fifteen years from now." He didn't know if Percival were still here. Maybe not. Most likely not. He hadn't heard of the Zexen Knight in so long. "There were history books too from the library--" To be written in books and described biasedly; it was an odd experience. "So I know what happened. Basically. The remnants shouldn't have given you a problem, without all their generals, and their royal family, Highland is crippled."

It's a hopeless stand.

"I don't like forcing a union that all participants don't accept," Riou said rather dryly and frowned. Jowy was rambling on about future history and avoiding the question. But perhaps he had no answer for it... Riou certainly didn't.

Most of the other members from their world came from Jowy and Riou's future, but they had mostly adeptly avoided his surreptitious queries about it. Dunan existed in the time of the Zexen Knights, but beyond that...

"I wasn't able to find any information in the library myself," Riou continued.

When he had searched the vast resources of the city's library all he had found were rather pornographic romance novels. Which then reminded him of the "thex" conversation his child self and little Jowy had engaged in a few days past and what they had been planning to do then and suddenly Riou found that the heat lacking in his rune hand was suffusing his face.

I don't like forcing a union that all participants don't accept.

Somehow, that had a completely different meaning for Jowy. He remembered Jillia. It was silly, but deep down, he wondered how Jillia felt being married off by her brother to him.

"...the library, I heard you can find things by not wanting to find things. For the longest time, I didn't know how to find what I wanted to find-" He sighed, remembering his futile attempts back then. "It was silly."

"It seems I'm not very good at finding things I'm not looking for. Or things that I am looking for. I just want to find a way back." And out of this place. Will of the runes or not, having Bright Shield and Black Sword forced in such close quarters could only cause trouble.

"Are you trying to find a way back?" asked Riou, who was feeling very glad at the moment that Jowy was still not looking at him as he regained his composure.

Jowy smiled and managed to create an illusion that he was looking back at Riou, but he was far from looking at his friend. "I like it here," he said simply. "I was thinking of staying."

"You-- what?" said Riou in surprise, all other thought leaving his head.

Was Jowy telling the truth? Riou tried to read his smile but he just didn't know... That would neatly solve the problem of the fated duel between Bright Shield and Black Sword, if separated by worlds. But then again, they had been separated by worlds until Riou had been drawn into the city himself. He couldn't help but think there was a reason they both-- perhaps everyone-- had been taken to the city. And in the end, wouldn't the runes have to return to their own world, by their own nature?

"With the way this city is, that probably means you return and I don't," said Riou. He felt slightly sick over what that might mean. Jowy had mentioned that Highland had been crippled-- but could the other really give up so entirely when he had completely refused any compromise before?

"That doesn't mean I'm running away-" Jowy said quickly, and then, let the topic drop again. "Highland can never get back on its own feet, not on its own. Harmonia would need to intervene - considering the truce the Jowston forces had with the Toran Republic, Toran would not be meddling. There's the Grasslands too, but I don't think they'd be too interested if Teresa Wisemail is intent on undoing her father's mistakes--" He paused, realizing where he was going: a useless ramble. "I really... don't plan on returning," he finished firmly.

He thought he could hide here, enjoy anonymity, live a normal life. Here, not many knew of his past. They would never look at him differently. He could pretend to be simply Jowy. He had liked it here. He was running away then...

But even now that he was willing to face his destiny and possible death, he still thought this place - this nameless city - wasn't so bad. Curse or not, it meant life... even if he did die.