Work Text:
When Javier Asrahan finally comes to realise, without a doubt, that the man standing before him is not Lloyd Frontera, cannot be Lloyd Frontera, he at first thinks his heart is breaking to pieces in his chest. What else could hurt so badly?
A breath, two. Lloy- the monster that pretends to be the oldest Frontera son keeps chattering to himself, pacing the room that isn't his. He has not noticed Javier. He has not felt the noose of the experimental spell construct draw tight around him, and yank out the confirmation Javier needed from it.
Then the agony crystalizes under his sternum, and Javier understands it isn't actually pain he feels.
It's rage.
He has been tricked, by that- that thing. He has failed in his duty to protect the Frontera family from harm. And he was drawn in so cleverly, wooed so sweetly, by the body-snatching beast.
Javier has been made a fool of.
He has never in his life felt such pure, suffocating fury; and through that rage, eventually, duty emerges.
His hand closes around the hilt of his sword. He steps forward, into not-Lloyd's path, who falters and blinks at him in a way that a fool - a fool like Javier was, until mere moments ago - might mistake for guileless.
Javier draws his sword, and knows, burning with hatred for what stands before him, what he must do.
[Wait,] says a voice, bright-white and sharp-blue as it stabs through Javier's frontal cortex - and at its sound, all the world comes to a stop.
[Are you sure this is what you want to do, Javier Asrahan?]
YES, every fibre of Javier's being screams.
It is. It has to be. This imposter does not belong. He needs to be eradicated, cut out, wiped from this world. Lloyd Frontera has betrayed and mistreated him one last time, has lied to him, has drawn him into his treacherous web, and it will, it will be the last. He will end this wretched creature in his master's body, he will end it, he will rid the world of-
[Hm. It's your choice, of course.]
His sword is raised, the blade keen, frozen in time before the final thrust. The man that is not Lloyd Frontera has made no move to defend himself. His horrible demon-mask of a face rests slack on his skull, eyes wide in uncomprehending terror. Good. Good! Be afraid, monster! Be terrified! Die in fear!
[But we think.... we think you should understand the consequences, if you do.]
Blue fills his vision, blue and a script he cannot read, a power he cannot fight against.
[Preview start,] says the voice, which isn't a voice at all, but words without a mouth to speak them, burning themselves into his very being with a sort of cold fire that he has not felt since he was freezing in the snow just before the Fronteras found him.
If he could, Javier might have screamed.
You, Javier Asrahan, will kill a man who is and isn't Lloyd Frontera.
He will not defend himself. He could. He would not be able to stop you, of course, but he might have delayed his death for a few moments. He might have made you fight for it. Perhaps, if he might've been very lucky, he would have made you bleed in return, and left you with a scar to remember him by.
But he will not defend himself. He will not move, other than for one desperate attempt to catch your eye, mouth shaping words.
You will not meet his gaze to see what might be found there. You will later regret this.
You will not let him speak. You will later regret this.
You will kill him, and it will be quick. It will be as painless as you can make it. We know this, Javier Asrahan. We know that even now, even at the apex of your betrayed fury, you do not desire his suffering. Quick, painless, almost clean. Well done.
You will pierce him through the heart. You will feel the shudder of its last beat through your blade. When his mana heart dispels, you will feel that, too.
You will hear a sound. Maybe an exhale, maybe a whimper of pain. Maybe your name. You will not be able to recall later. You will also regret this.
He will collapse at your feet, dead.
And now, NOW you regret it.
The first wave of remorse will be swift, and it will be merciless, and it will break you. Will it help, Javier Asrahan, if we tell you that this will be the worst it gets? That this, the first moment as you see him lying there, will be the greatest and most cruellest hurdle of shame and guilt you will have to overcome? Later, oh, later you will remember your reasoning, you will rationalise your way through the regret; but not then. Not yet. Your heart will be laid bare to the horror of it, and you will know with the piercing clarity of truth, of revelation:
You made a mistake.
You will know, then, that you should not have killed him. You will know it was wrong. You will have no reasons laid out in your mind, but you will know it in your soul, Javier Asrahan, and the knowledge will near as rend it from your bones. You have killed him, and you will wish with every fibre of your being that you had not, just then, in that breathless moment right after it is too late for all regrets and wishes.
It's the worst it gets.
Knowing that won't comfort you at all, will it?
You will lose your mind a little over it. That's okay. This too will pass. Eventually. Mostly.
You will fall to your knees and feel his blood seep through your clothes, wet and still warm on your skin. It will stain. You will scrub the fabric, and your skin, for hours and hours. The stains will never come out.
You will press your hands to his chest. You will attempt to channel mana into him, to heal him. How very ridiculous - look, Javier Asrahan, look at his dull eyes, the stillness of him. Look at your sword still piercing his chest. What do you hope to heal?
You will call his name. You will, in that moment, not recall that the name isn't really his at all. You will call this name like a newborn calls for its mother to come warm it in the cold and darkness of the world. You will call this name like a sinner praying fervently to their God for forgiveness. You will call this name like a beggar pleading for alms.
You will collapse atop him. The blood really will go everywhere, even in your hair. He will be with you, always, in those stains that only you can see. And then, under tears, you will whisper his name again, just once, like Juliet breathed Romeo's with the dagger already at her breast.
Oh, you don't understand that reference? He would, despite being a science major. He would, perhaps, even explain it to you, if you could only ask him.
Just one more secret the man that is and isn't Lloyd Frontera will take to his grave.
Others will come, alerted by your screaming. You will, at this time, not know you are screaming; but you might feel it later, the rawness of your throat.
Do you want to hear something funny, Javier Asrahan? Until you manage to tell them what happened here - and you will, you will tell them, and it will be the truth and nothing but the truth - they will believe someone else killed him. They will believe that you arrived too late to stop them. They will believe that you merely failed in protecting your master. That you did everything in your power to save him, and that it simply wasn't enough.
They'll think you innocent. Your sword still in his chest, his blood on your hands, and they'll think you INNOCENT. Isn't that a great and fantastic joke, Javier Asrahan? Can you hear us laughing?
You will laugh too, when you realise. A manic, broken laugh. And you will regret that, in those first few moments after you truly understood the gravity of your mistake, you did not have the fortitude to take the sword from his heart and fall upon it yourself.
You might have managed it then. You will not manage later.
They will drag you away, attempt to comfort you in your mad grief.
(There will be no more comfort for you, Javier Asrahan. None.)
You will snarl and rage and claw the air for his body, as they pull you from him. What do you think distance will change now? He is dead. His corpse will not rot any slower if you cling to it, and you know that.
After some hours of torment, you will have exhausted yourself enough to fall asleep. Savour it. You will not rest easily ever again for as long as you live beyond this day.
We lied to you earlier. Sorry.
The worst of it won't be the first wave of regret.
The worst will be when you wake and think for just a moment that it was all, all a horrible dream. That Lloyd Frontera is no more and no less than he appears to be, that he lives, that you will spend this day and all others at his side, where you know you belong.
You will think this, and then realise it isn't so; and you will not know how to go on. You will not know how to live without him. You will not know how to continue existing in the knowledge that you have killed him. You, Javier Asrahan. You.
You will never truly sleep again. Because you lost the soothing whispers of his lullaby, yes; but also because you dread this moment of waking more than you dread all the evil in this world and every world beyond it.
You will have to be the one to tell his parents.
You will tell them what happened, truthfully.
Oh, Javier Asrahan, the way they will look at you! All these years they loved you like a son. They still do. But for a moment just there, they will look at you and see a monster.
But that won't affect their love, of course, never fear. They loved their real son, too, and he was monstrous enough at times. Maybe they even loved the monster wearing his skin more. We couldn't say.
They will always love you. They will even forgive you, in time.
This will be worse, in your eyes, than if they had chained you up to rot in the basement, which is the closest the Frontera Estate will ever have to a dungeon.
You will beg for banishment, over and over, and be denied each time. You will think of fleeing on your own, of running and running and running to the ends of the known world, until you will no longer hear his voice whisper when the wind moves through the crops he has planted; until you will no longer see his face reflected in the waterways he has dug; until you will no longer feel his warm blood on the floors his system keeps heated.
But you will stay. They need you, these people, whose brightest hope you stole from them with your own two hands. All you can do is kill, but at least you can kill to feed them, to protect them, to keep them alive just one day longer.
You will stay. You owe them that much.
His last project will never be finished. Nobody knows how. His plans are incomprehensible, and his summons vanished. Work cannot continue.
But the heated flooring remains. The mine produces coal. The wetlands remain farmable. The people live by his creed. The family's debt shrinks, at a slow, steady pace.
The Lord and Lady will find no joy in this. And neither will you, knowing that every coin and every good that passes through these lands are all thanks to him.
Let us assure you of this: your people will live. They will suffer, they will persevere, some will die, but most will live. More comfortably than they would have if not for that man so briefly brushing their lives. You will tell yourself it is a good thing that you killed him before he could work some evil upon them, and know it for a lie.
You will think about it every day. Every night. You will think about a stranger's eyes gazing out from Lloyd Frontera's face, and wonder what else he could have done. What miracles he might have achieved. How he might have smiled after a grim battle and said your name as if it had greater value than gold to him, if only he had lived.
If only you had let him live.
It will take you years, but one day you will realise that you loved him.
You will remember, of course, that he was and wasn't himself; you will remember also how you hated him, once. This will not change the fact that he was the one you could have given your whole life to, and been content. That he completed you, two parts of a whole, a matched set, never one without the other. That he was a true hero, and all you are is a hero's murderer.
(They will rename the bridge, upon his death. They will strike your name from its title, will remove it from anywhere it is written in the capital. Queen Alicia will despise you until her dying day.)
You cut out your own heart when you pierced his. You are a dead man walking, Javier Asrahan, from the moment you spill the first drop of his blood.
And there is one thing you will never know. Which you will always regret not knowing.
So let us give you, Sir Javier Asrahan, brave knight, heroic protagonist, would-be murderer of Lloyd Frontera, this one answer you will spend your whole life yearning for, if you make the great mistake of killing him:
Why, yes. Didn't you realise, when he let you raise your sword and run him through with it, without even defending himself? Without shouting for help? Without even asking for OUR assistance, so that we had no choice but to interfere directly?
Of course he loved you too.
[Preview end.]
The vision fades.
Javier drops his sword, half-throws it, away, away with it, the blood, the blood, stuck in his chest, and feels so sick he cannot remain standing.
His knees bend, and he drops. His body, the sound it made when it hit the floor. His sight is still blue, blue, blue, and he can't breathe through the stench of blood and iron and something strangely like lightning magic, filling his chest. Lloyd, Lloyd, it was a mistake, I'm sorry, what have I done, no, please-
He lies there on the ground, shaking, and waits - wishes - for death.
"Javier? JAVIER!"
Hands. Calloused, warm. Touching.
"Shit, shit, shit... come on, man, come on- Javier!!! Can you hear me?"
Tearing open his cravat. At his pulse. Above his heart.
"Okay, okay, he's not- Javier, please, talk to me, say something, anything-"
Mana, pressed into him. A flash of blue at the edges of his awareness.
"YOU! You did this! What the hell did you- never mind, I don't care, I don't give a damn. Reverse it! Now!"
[I'm not going to do that.]
"What!? Are you getting uppity with me now, huh? Huhhhh!? I said, reverse it! You can have all my RP, I'll go into RP-debt if that's possible, just- just fix him, I mean, look at him, look at the state he's in, please!"
Arms, pulling him up. Cradling him against a chest. A heart beats there, fast, worried. Oh.
"Do something, shitty messenger! Why did you even-"
[He was going to kill you.]
"Wh- Javier? Don't be stupid. He would never."
[You underestimate him. He realised who you are - who you aren't - and for a moment, he was capable of it. He had to be stopped.]
"So you, what? Fried his brain!?"
[He was going to kill you!]
"That's no excuse!"
[The young people of today are so ungrateful. We saved your life, you know! Would you have preferred it if we'd let him go ahead?]
"I- well, no, but... there must've been another way aside from 'I die' and 'Javier gets brain damage'."
[There wasn't any time.]
"There's always- no. No, you know what? I've got enough of you. If you can't help, piss off."
Touches, again. Cheek, hair. Wet drops, falling on his face. Not blood.
"Javier, come on... hey, open your eyes, you idiot... it's me..."
It isn't you, Javier realises, but it is. It always was. You.
He opens his eyes.
Lloyd Frontera, the man who is and isn't him, fills his vision, gloriously alive, and making the ugliest crying face known to man. Behind him, like a halo, hovers a box of horrifying blue.
"Ll-lloyd," Javier rasps, stirring, twisting in his arms. He needs to... his sword, he needs to... protect... "M-master..."
He does not fear the imposter anymore. But he fears that thing. He fears the blue that watches, protective, dangerous, warning him, tormenting him, driving him mad with its visions. It needs to get away from Lloyd, his Lloyd. "I- the-"
"Javier!" A smile, radiantly relieved. It tears Javier's eyes away from the box of blue. "You frightened me half to death, swear to- oh, hey, hey, no, don't-"
"D-death," Javier's hands feel clumsy as they grasp at Lloyd's clothes, incapable of reversing their positions, of putting him in harm's way and Lloyd out of it. "It- you- the blu-"
"Tut tut," Lloyd shushes him, face distorted into something smug and insufferable that only barely masks the raw and naked relief in the depths of his eyes. His stranger's eyes. "I think something upset you unnecessarily, so how about you sleep it off, hm? Yeah, that'll help, I think. I hope. Good little knights say beddie-bye-bye now!"
"No-!" Javier groans, and hope his eyes convey don't you dare, Lloyd Frontera! to a sufficient degree.
They do not. Lloyd begins reciting one of his strange lullaby-incantations, and Javier's consciousness fades away under the blue glow of that dreadful box.
"I have noooo idea what you're talking about," Lloyd Frontera lies, baldly, and also badly, to Javier's face. "Blue? Huh? I don't know anything about that. You probably had an aneurysm or whatever, and hallucinated something strange."
"I know what I saw." Javier attempts to sit up. "Master Lloyd, my sword-"
"Uh-uh-uh." Lloyd presses him back down into the pillows. Javier... lets him. "You also said you saw me dead. And I'm not dead, am I?"
Javier glowers. It would probably be more effective if he wasn't reclining on Lloyd's bed with the other playing nursemaid in a way that Lord Arcos and Lady Marbella have, in whispers, called "so very touching and adorable!", and which Javier perceives as rather more threatening. The first few times he attempted to discuss matters of Lloyd's real identity, his vision, or the evil blue box, Lloyd slapped a wet cloth into his face "to lower your fever!" or stuffed a spoonful of chicken broth into his mouth "because you have to keep your strength up!"
It is already quite the improvement that he lets Javier get far enough so he can respond with a lie.
Javier glowers harder. Lloyd sighs.
"There, feel." He holds out his hand, wrist-first. "Not dead. I don't know what else to tell you, Javier, your 'vision' was bullshit from start to finish."
Javier takes the hand. Feels for the pulse.
"I was going to kill you," he admits, and the pulse spikes. "That part was in keeping with the facts."
"Eh. You think about killing me a lot, don't think I can't tell." Lloyd grins. It would be a good performance, if not for his heartbeat stuttering under Javier's fingers. "If you got close to actually doing it that time, I'll just have to behave myself more."
"I never think about killing you, usually," Javier argues immediately. It's the truth, too. Public humiliation, oh yes, more please. Physical harm, maybe sometimes. Death? Never. A life without Lloyd Frontera did not seem imaginable to him before his moment of madness, and he will never again attempt to imagine it now. "My lord, this is serious!"
"Nah. You're overreacting." Lloyd attempts to extract his wrist from Javier's grip. Javier does not let him. "Drop it, Javier. Okay?"
"Something else was revealed to me," Javier bursts out, before Lloyd can twist and wriggle and weasel himself out of this conversation, and then get into so much trouble that Javier will not remember to bring any of this up again. "And it rang with truth."
Lloyd hesitates. So curious. He never used to be like this. "...what was it?"
"This," Javier says, brings Lloyd's wrist up to his mouth, and presses a kiss to the pulse point. Lingers there as Lloyd makes a sound - an exhale? A whimper? Javier's name? - and feels blood pumping to and from an intact heart, moving steadily under his lips.
"Aww, damn," he hears Lloyd huff. "Did that asshole messenger seriously snitch on me and my dumb feelings? I'll kill it."
Javier raises his mouth from Lloyd's skin, about to comment how "that is an excellent idea, Master Lloyd, allow me to eviscerate it into little shreds of blue confetti", when he suddenly finds his lips rather more occupied with Lloyd's own, pressed against his.
Javier forgets about the blue box.
He forgets about the suddenly crippling terror of losing Lloyd, still lurking in his heart.
He forgets to ask if his master knows who he was before he became Lloyd Frontera, what he was, what his true name is or his original world or what he intends to do with this one.
He forgets to ask about Romeo and Juliet.
(He even forgets to earnestly beg for forgiveness for a crime he was stopped from committing at the very last minute.)
He kisses back, and forgets all the rest, because it is true; he could live his entire life at this man's side, in his shadow, and be content. The rest has never mattered all that much.
Lloyd, for his part, realises about halfway through the ensuing make-out session that kisses are, apparently, basically a Get-Out-Of-Javier-Interrogation-Jail-Free card, and grins like a particularly ugly Cheshire cat who has trapped the canary in a 50-year work contract at minimum wage.
[Well?] The messenger box pops up behind Javier’s shoulder, radiating self-satisfaction. [Isn't this all working out great for you? Aren't you grateful now that I-]
Lloyd slaps the stupid blue panel away.
And then, he smiles like a young man who is in love to an almost embarrassing degree, and kisses Javier again. The rest doesn't currently matter all that much.
The next day, the work continues, and life goes on.