i titled this "alt jade lol"

[rarsneezes]

fic post

the concept is just "lol, jademythra hop universes and there's an alternate jade and he's ALSO being driven by citan" and i kept having brainworms about jademythra, understandably, reacting extremely poorly to this,

so here's 1500 words of a sketch on the matter, thanks


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“Who’d you’d say your driver was?” the girl named Mythra asks.

Jade considers her and the alternate version of him that stands behind her, their hair in identical braids, his hand on her shoulder. It’s so casual. It almost disgusts him. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

He pushes glasses up his nose.

“You really need to know?” he asks.

The other Jade shrugs. “Curiosity, mostly,” he answers.

Mythra nods. “It’d be funny if it was someone we knew.”

…alright, fair, that is something worth checking. “His name is Citan—”

The change is instant. A flood of ice over the room, jagged icicles bursting up from the other Jade’s feet, the temperature dropping into what might as well be the negatives. The other Jade squeezes Mythra’s shoulder tighter. Her hand flies to his arm.

Jade watches, eyebrows raised. Bafflement bubbles up in him, pops and returns to the sea of apathy he’s so used to. “You do recognize him, I take?” he asks, but they aren’t listening to him.

“Where is he?” the other Jade demands, flat-note. His expression is indescribable.

“Pardon?”

“Jade,” Mythra says, urgently, “Jade, goddammit, I hate being the reasonable one.”

The other Jade takes a step forward. “Where is he,” he repeats, in a tone that no longer makes it a question, but a demand. Jade just raises his eyebrows, unphased.

Mythra tugs on her Jade’s arm, tugs him back—her hands fly up to his face, holding him, pulling him down to her level. “I want to put my sword through his skull as much as you do, but we can’t just—what are we gonna do? Rob the other you of his memories?”

The output of ice ether increases. But the other Jade, quiet, answers: “…no.”

“Then let’s be reasonable about this,” Mythra insists.

Alright, that’s as long as Jade can go without interjecting. “I’m sorry, why are the two of you discussing what appears to be the murder of my driver?”

They don’t even look at him. They just stare at each other for a few moments before Mythra drops her hands from her Jade’s face and sighs, letting her hands fall to her sides. The other Jade is immobile, other than the way he straightens back to full height. His expression has slid into unreadable, described only by the fact Jade has never seen his own face do that before.

“How long has he been driving you?” the other Jade asks, toneless, still hushed.

“I presume this is relevant?” Jade shoots back, not about to be compliant if he can avoid it. Honestly, alternate self or not, who walks in and talks about murdering a blade’s driver?

Mythra hesitates, but: “Let’s us gauge how urgent this is,” she gives him, her tone… gentle? It’s hard to read her expression, too, but for a completely different reason.

This whole thing is absurd.

But Jade does want to see where it’s going.

“Six years,” he answers.

Mythra looks to her Jade, startled. He just swallows and asks:

“Is this the first time you’ve been in resonance with him?”

And that… that strikes something in Jade’s core, something that’s overwhelmed by the sea of apathy he knows like the back of his hand. “Are you implying…?” he begins, but stops. There are so many possibilities here, each more absurd than the last. “What are you implying?”

Jade watches his alternate self take a deep a breath.

“I can—” Mythra begins, but stops when her Jade shakes his head.

“No, it won’t mean anything unless it comes from me.”

Jade has to admit that’s true; oh, he has no reason not to believe Mythra, but words from his alternate self’s… best friend (?) simply do not have the same weight. Sure, Mythra seems to know how to read them both well, seems to know a lot about what makes Jade as a person tick. But she is not Jade. There are some things, aren’t there, that only he can understand about himself.

The other Jade is hesitating.

Jade gestures for him to continue. “Well, get on with it then,” he says.

His alternate self flinches. Mythra grabs his hand—really? Really?—and something about that must do something for the other Jade because he inhales again, jaw set.

“Citan murdered me three times while he was driving me.”

Alarm, grabbed and dragged back under the waves. That’s not… that’s not something people lie about. That’s not something any blade would lie about, not about a previous driver. And it would explain the being-a-flesh-eater, would explain the strong reaction… Frost settles on Jade’s gloves, and he idly dislodges it. Ice’s virtue is truth, isn’t it? Which means this is true of one universe—is it true of this one as well? Jade realizes… he has no way of knowing.

And while he’s having these thoughts the blades in front of him just keep talking.

“It was four, you always forget the one Yui said happened.”

“We don’t know if that lined up with the first tally or not.”

“The math already adds up to six, Jade.”

“I know.”

Jade sits back in his chair. Three murders, four murders, six murders—it doesn’t matter. One is already too many, isn’t it? Who would do that to a blade? Has it already happened to him? It’s not like he’d remember it, if so. Something in his core flounders, is drowned.

He notices they’re staring at him.

“Why?” he asks, unable to find the words for anything else.

The other Jade sighs, readjusts his glasses. “Because I knew too much,” he says, still one-note. “Because I stopped being cooperative. Because I was actively sabotaging the experiments he was doing on blades. Because we were moving locations and better do it then than have to do it when other people would notice. It could have been any number of those things. I don’t actually know. He didn’t tell me.”

“He killed me because he was tired of having me around,” Mythra interjects, her smile sharp—something Jade recognizes from his own face. “And he said to my face he would have killed me for less. So.”

Oh, he killed both of them? Several things click together—several things he doesn’t like.

“I…” Jade begins, then realize he doesn’t know what exactly he intended to say. He folds his hands together in his lap. “I believe you,” he starts with, because from their expressions it seems important. “I just don’t see…”

“Oh, he likes us,” the other Jade says, his tone… indescribable, other than it’s cold. “He told me that much. Maybe he’s not aiming to kill you, any time soon.”

…but based on Mythra’s testimony, it still stands that Citan would kill a blade he doesn’t like just to get rid of them. And Jade remembers suddenly, sharply—one of Citan’s coworkers mentioning a previous blade, years ago. Jade can’t remember what Citan said about them. But that would mean…

He shudders, more from the cold than he’d like to admit. Even if Citan isn’t aiming to kill him, how is he supposed to sit with the certainty that his driver has almost certainly killed another blade before? And would kill any, at random…

It doesn’t matter. It matters a lot. It’s not at random. ‘Because he was tired of driving them’ doesn’t exactly constitute a good reason.

“Jade?” Mythra asks.

“Give him a minute.”

Jade breathes. Whatever emotion sparks in his core is out of his reach. Dare he say he feel lost? Dare he, when honestly he feels nothing at all?

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” he says, slowly. “Because I have no reason to believe you’d lie to me. Something about it just doesn’t make sense to me. Because… I know Citan. And I know he’s not necessarily the kindest man who has ever walked this earth, but he’s…”

He trails off. He’s never had trouble finding words, before. He doesn’t like it.

“He’s not cruel, either,” the other Jade finishes.

Mythra makes a noise like she doesn’t believe that, but Jade nods at his alternate self’s judgement.

“Exactly.”

 

[probably transition here but I’m really done]

 

“What do you want to do about it?” the alternate Jade asks. “You know my vote.”

“Hah,” he answers. But after that, he doesn’t know what he wants to do. “Can I have some time to think about it?”

“Twenty-four hours,” Mythra says, so rapidly it’s like she almost predicted this. Maybe she did? “We’ll be back same time tomorrow—if you think that’s a safe time for us to drop by, anyway? Citan can’t see us.”

“Rather, we can’t see him,” the other Jade says, smile brittle and sharp.

“Both,” Mythra laughs, but it lacks her usual brightness.

“Tomorrow, then,” Jade agrees