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rarsneezes---
“I was just thinking,” Nephry continues, “that checking to see if I’m governor of some city in that region would be a start—” If, as the other Jade said, their worlds retained thematic coherency, “—and from there…”
“Uh-oh,” the other Asch says, taking a step towards his Jade and away from his position near the door, where he’d otherwise seemed content to stay. It’s his interjection that stops Nephry, even before Mythra and the other Jade scoff in almost near unison.
“Yeah, fat chance,” Mythra says. “Sorry Nephry. Blades don’t exactly get to be politicians.”
“A politician’s secretary, maybe,” the other Jade quips.
And then quite suddenly he stops smiling.
Mythra turns to him, then to Asch, then back to her Jade, as:
“He can’t have,” he whispers cryptically, darkly. Nephry finds herself scooting back in her chair, just on reflex. Her brother’s foul moods are… well, foul is generally an understatement for them, to be frank. And there’s a kind of fury in his tone that she doesn’t like. “I mean, I suppose I wouldn’t know—”
Mythra is on her feet. “Jade, hey,” she says, urgent.
He doesn’t appear to hear her. His expression has gone distant. “He could have very well had the both of us, I could have met her, I will never know.” The room is suddenly very, very cold, but the other Jade’s anger isn’t at all. It’s hot and bright, his voice increasing in volume. “Because of course he would have separated us—not that I could ever know if he did—but if he ever had his hands on my sister—”
Asch is suddenly on the other side of his Jade, catching him by the arm as he rises to his feet. Nephry doesn’t know how he got there so fast. “Jade,” Asch says, gentle. “Jade, he didn’t.”
There is a storm brewing over the other Jade’s head, but he turns to Asch.
“He didn’t?”
“He didn’t.”
And like that, the building tension in the room releases, much like an exhale. The other Jade sits back down, though sit is a much politer word than the reality, which is that he slumps into the chair; collapses as if his energy has suddenly been robbed of him. Mythra slides so that she’s behind him, hands reaching up to undo the braid in his hair. She bumps Asch deliberately, affectionately, and Asch sends her a look that Nephry can’t quite read but the fact that’s all that Asch did...
That’s as far as Nephry gets in the thought, having processed the amount of fonon shuffling that is currently going on in her office. It’s not... it’s not casting an arte, she knows what that feels like, looks like. But something is definitely happening with the fifth, the seventh, the first; and...
“Asch?” Nephry’s brother asks, his tone a warning that would make most men quake in their boots.
Asch only looks at him, then offers an inquisitive hum, like he doesn’t quite catch Jade’s meaning.
And Jade sighs. “Is there a reason you’re casting artes right now?” he asks.
“I thought Nephry might appreciate it if Jade didn’t snow on her furniture,” Asch answers, blandly. And then, with barely a breath: “Someone has to explain blade sibling thing.”
“Ugh,” Mythra says. While they were focused on Asch, Mythra has begun to rebraid her Jade’s hair, which is a sight and a half to watch, in Nephry’s opinion, even if she was there that time as children when Peony managed to convince Jade of sitting down for just the same. “It’s—we can go lifetimes without ever meeting each other, you know? So I guess. It’s easy for them to make us a bit stupid.”
A bit stupid, she says, as if the blade named Jade isn’t currently kneading his forehand, the other frozen to the arm of the chair he’s sitting in. A bit stupid, as if that fury in his tone was anything less than what it was; a raging man, fearful for the fate of a sister he’s never met. It’s so antithetical to what she knows about Jade, what she thought she understood about him. He’s her brother, of course, but sometimes that means nothing. Sometimes that only means one doesn’t complain too much when he drops in unannounced. Certainly not...
Whatever this was.
Mythra shrugs, large and exaggerated. “I dunno. Like, it’s just this whole thing. Blades are wired to love their siblings—” And here, she turns to Asch. “Is that not a thing for humans? Starting to realize that all the humans I know don’t actually have siblings.”
“Depends on the humans,” Asch answers back.
“Huh.”
“Blades are wired to love their siblings?” Nephry’s Jade asks, in that needling information-gathering tone of his. “No exceptions?”
“Totally a regularly observed thing,” Mythra says. “Probably half of what even defines blade siblings? Admittedly all the ones I’ve interacted with have been artificial or Aegises, but also...”
As she trails off meaningfully, Asch gestures to their Jade, still clearly recovering from his display of—love is an awfully strong word for it, Nephry thinks, but she understands nonetheless.
“Glad I could be useful as another bit of empirical data,” he mutters.
((There’s probably somewhere to end this but I’m calling it here f or now lmao))
