[Can’t Opt Out]

Other people Emilia had very awkwardly not noticed during their trek through the dozens upon dozens of people who had been tucked behind Curtisal’s playground? Jerrial’s friend.

That was awkward, to say the least.

The thing was… Emilia wasn’t even sure what had happened to her? She’d been one of those people who just sort of vanished after they left Lüshan. Hadn’t gone to Norvel. Hadn’t been carted off to Baalphoria. Hadn’t ended up in Seer’ik’tine, Crishar, or in a few tense but interesting cases, Dion. As far as Emilia knew, the woman hadn’t slipped back into one of Lüshan’s subterranean cities—after civil war had fully broken out, a few of the Lüshanians who were closer with those who hadn’t had the sense to get the fuck out of the collapsing government’s reach had requested aid in trying to remove them from Lüshan once again.

A few had been removed—or at least moved to an embassy or into the care of someone their collective group trusted. Jerrial’s friend had never been mentioned—not by Jerrial, not by any of the other people who had lived in this place.

It was strange, but in the aftermath of Falmíer, she and Jerrial separating minutes from now and not meeting again for days, Emilia had forgotten to ever ask about his friend. He had tried so hard to get to her—had risked all of their lives—and yet, where did she go?

Emilia suspected that the story wasn’t nice, especially considering the way the woman—his supposed friend and nothing more—was looking at him, practically ignoring the annoyed Vern lingering behind Jerrial, his gaze icy, his posture tight and unimpressed with the woman.

Jerrial had tried so hard to find this woman, and yet, he had never once mentioned her in the decades since this day. Such things were never a good thing, in Emilia’s experience—after all, out of all the people she mentioned in passing stories to her friends and classmates, rarely did she mention Daniel or Antoine, and even when she did, it was due to not wanting to lie.

Have you ever been in a long-term relationship? Yes, and Halen is complicated, the triplets are complicated, Daniel is complicated, but it's easier to say, “Yes, during the war. He’s dead.” Then, the topic is dropped; no one brings up her dead ex again because they don’t want to make her sad—and bringing Daniel up did break Emilia’s heart, but only because Halen was gone, because something had broken them apart and brought her to Daniel.

Then, Daniel had broken her, and Emilia knew Halen had put her back together, his careful, finicky fingers pressing each piece of her back into place.

Then, Halen had died and shattered her, those pieces of her that flaked off and washed away into the ashes of Alliance Ridge gone. No one could put her back together, only build rickety bridges between the parts of her that still existed.

Did Jerrial feel that way as well? Emilia knew he and his partners had found happiness, but the Jerrial who had existed these last forty years sometimes seemed as broken and angry as she was. He smiled, strained and cracking. He pressed kisses to his partners’ cheeks and tangled their fingers together as he stared into the abyss of memories. He had cried against her chest countless times—Clemence’s as well, because in the end, they were the only ones who had known Vern at all, the only ones who could mourn with Jerrial when the grief became too much for him to even breathe.

Emilia doubted anyone—not the children, nor Jerrial’s partners, nor any of her old friends, even those she saw occasionally—knew that whenever Jerrial called, she would answer. Anytime her friend wanted, she was there for him because in this, they only had one another. It didn’t matter that she had only known Vern for a few hours: she was the only one left who could remember him for Jerrial. Yet, she now found herself in a strange reality because for decades, centuries, millennia, she had held a skewed view of Vern within her memories.

It wasn’t completely false, but some of it wasn’t quite right. It made this so much harder, and as the aether pulled her towards Vern’s mind, she wanted to resist—wanted to pull back and not see the jealousy roiling under Vern’s skin, so easy to spot if she had only looked up from her xphern.

Young Emilia wouldn’t look up from her xphern, and floating Emilia couldn’t blame her—would never want her to be distracted from the mission laying itself out before her.

Still, it remained a harsh reality: had Emilia looked up, perhaps Vern would still be alive, Xavier dead or traumatized as a result.

✮ ✮ ✮ Vern ✮ ✮ ✮

To say I didn’t like Jerrial’s friend would be an understatement. Something about the woman, tugging on Jerrial’s hoodie, leaning in towards him, her smile bright, her eyes even brighter, dug at me.

Jerrial was mine—had been mine since we were teenagers, unsure of ourselves but clearly feeling something for one another. It was stupid, I knew, to have never let my love for the boy die, even after he had been gone for years, decades. I had known—had known deep in my heart, in the pit of my stomach—that he was still out there, though.

How was I to let my love for him go when I knew he was alive and suffering? That hadn’t seemed possible, nor was that the sort of heartless person I wanted to become.

So I had searched and searched and searched.

At first, I had remained in my parents’ care, taking care of the children they kept having more and more of without complaint, only flinches of fear because my parents’ ire came fast and fierce. I’d been the good boy, going to school and searching during breaks, sneaking out through my dorm window every evening, asking, asking—always asking everyone I came across if they’d seen my friend, if they’d heard anything about him, about kidnappings, about anything.

I’d followed a million leads, each leading nowhere, until I’d stumbled across a teenager, mangy and half-feral.

“Does he have an irregular deviation?” she’d asked, accepting the drink I’d gotten her with the last of my money—I’d long since abandoned by family and schooling, taking what little I could and vanishing into the streets. I’d been asking around, trying to find out if anyone had heard about kidnappings, rather than Jerrial specifically. The girl had popped up, stinking of shit and piss and even skinnier than I was by that point. It had been stupid but easy to buy her something to eat, get her a nice drink.

“There are, like, two criminals in the city who collect people with irregular deviations,” the girl had explained, giving me fact after fact about what had always been missing from my search: a reason.

I’d already known about Jerrial’s status as the last Lowdouran, of course—rarely had we kept any secrets, other than our mutual attractive, from one another. Even that secret had spilled out eventually, even if nothing had ever come from it—no kisses, no hugs, no bodies pressed against one another. We were young and awkward and had time, until suddenly, we had none at all.

It felt like we had no time still. As much as I was trying to deny it, Jerrial was dying. Sure, Emilia’s contact might be able to help him, but it wasn’t a given and all I wanted to do was tuck myself and Jerrial away from the world. It wouldn’t be long, but surely, we could enjoy a few hours together before the olthagri was back, pressing at his chest and dragging him closer to death?

Even the fact that we were both disgusting didn’t bother me. This was the boy—man—I had loved for decades, despite so little of that time having been spent together. I had thought of him so often while we were apart, my fingers slipping inside myself, wishing it was Jerrial fingering me open, preparing me for his cock.

Something like that seemed impossible now, but we could carve a little time out to be together, I thought—or had thought, until we found this woman.

If I tried to take Jerrial away now, the woman would object—would demand we stay with her. Who was she to demand such things? I was the one who had spent decades searching for Jerrial, not her! She was the one who, by virtue of being in this terrible place, had led us all into danger!

Were we likely to also save all these people as a result of Jerrial’s quest for her? Yes. I still would have preferred we not find her down here. Better she be dead than with us. Was that a cruel thing to think? Perhaps, but something about the woman didn’t seem right.

As the woman’s eyes met mine, Jerrial turning to say something to Emilia, a bubble of something erupted through me—that strange feeling I could never quite explain. Something between a gut instinct and something I had no word for.

What that instinct said, though? That this woman was dangerous—that she would lead to our ruin.

Somehow, I didn’t think Jerrial would listen to me, even were I to scream the reality that we shouldn’t be with this woman, shouldn’t let her out of this place, at the top of my lungs.

Something was wrong with the woman, and there was nothing I could do to stop her corruption from reaching out towards the man I loved or the sweet silverstrain who I increasingly considered my friend—Clemence as well, even if the girl was rather terrifying.

Rayleen… Rayleen could go.

✮ ✮ ✮

Emilia wanted to feel vindicated—wanted to scream to the world that she had known that Vern had some sort of irregular deviation. Clearly, he did, even if he himself had no idea of what it was, had no way of articulating what these abilities could do. If she’d stopped and talked to him, would she have been able to pull the truth from between his teeth? Would it have changed anything?

Probably—and wasn’t that the worst part of any of this? Seeing all these moments laid out where she could have taken a different path. A million things good and bad might have changed—and wasn’t that the entire point of Olivier’s aunt’s rambles, during that horror story? That each of them was a game piece in some cosmic war? A thousand more pieces were in play, each tugging the game about by accident, on purpose, because someone had manipulated them, tortured them, forced their hand.

Was it even possible to untangle all those threads? To glean facts and figures and determine which piece had been moved by whom?

Had the aether’s enemies erred and let Vtraní see Fräthk breaking down? Or had a slip up let the aether herself to pull that situation together? Let Vtraní hear Fräthk rambling, let Fräthk ignore Vtraní ‘s demands that Qoréa be taken out?

Was Qoréa left to live because the aether’s enemies were trying to get Emilia and Olivier and so many of her friends to this point? Had this situation been meant to wipe them out and leave the continent with no one to fight the war? Or had this been the aether’s doing, dragging so many of them together until they were a unit before the war even began?

It was terrifying to realize so much of what had occurred throughout at least this single day—and Emilia suspected it was more like a million days, a billion, a trillion, all manipulated by hands uncountable—had been out of their control.

Emilia could see it, the moment the aether tugged at her to go. Her eyes lit up—flashed away from her xphern for the barest of moments, a plan tugging together within her mind. In no world would Emilia ever regret going, but it still hurt to know that, had she stayed, this young man, who had been grumpy but kind and teasing, might have survived the night.