Awakened

"Awakened" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread written on [IRL DATE].
==Summary==
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==Full Text==
The sounds were different that morning.
A quiet rush of water, the murmur of soldier and refugee as they woke, but also the silence of the cease of battle, replaced with a calming winter breeze, and billowing clouds rolling overhead.
Juro had stayed still for as long as he could bear, floating between sleep and not, but more not. By breakfast he was at his end, and he swung his long legs over the bed, sweeping a hand over his journal and pen, and escaped Milae and Dario with a cheeky wave of the hand and a grin.
There was much to explore, and only some time, so Juro did what he did best and watched, and wrote. Many portals, and many pages. Aftermaths of smaller battles, evidence of the Conclave's activities. A decisive period as he finished the trenches, and Virion rippled again.
"Alright, what's our next stop Vir--" he stepped through space easily, but paused when he looked up. The construct rose high against the blue sky, broken, dead, the icicle melting through its chest.
Juro lifted his chin in observation, taking in limb and body with his eyes. The stun appeared in his mind, and he faltered slightly, tongue frozen against his bottom lip in thought. Even so, one slender hand lifted towards the construct, moving to touch it out of curiousity.
foresight-botgd
Yun’s feet touched the wet ground a few yards behind Juro, and as he lifted his head, he also traced the dark silhouette of the mech with his eyes from under his hood, his pulse quickening on sight. However, the Jaw was bright and clear, with a brisk wind and a low amount of activity and movement, as opposed to the night before, and it helped calm him for the moment. It was probably a nice day for a hike. 
A different kind of nerves mounted in him as he slowly approached Juro’s side, trying not to spook him as he watched the tall man run his hand along the nearest limb, curving out of the ice and stabbing partway into the ground. The shadow the construct cast made the immediate area damp and chilly. Yun tucked his hands in his pockets and straightened his arms, trying to guard against the weather. 
“You think we’re done with this thing for good?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
Juro turned his head slowly to look at him, the hand paused in its path. The expression on his face different, not pained or angry or unhappy, but it was obvious that the bookkeeper had a lot of thoughts running, before changing himself back to that lopsided grin. It was quick, and would've been easy to miss. Not for Yun, though. Not anymore.
"I should hope so," he dropped his arm, tucking notebook and pen under a hand as his robes swayed in the wind, "This is the first timeline that has come out victorious against it; any other events after would be as much as a surprise to me."
He stepped away from the construct, boots squelching in the mud, towards a seat where he could see the whole thing better, "So you've returned," he said, eyeing Yun's get up curiously, "Is he... How'd it go?"
foresight-botgd
“Um...”
Yun’s hands slowly twisted inside his jacket. He kept his face down to the ground, watching the toe of his boot as it scuffed into the dirt. Something ached at the bottom of his lungs; he inhaled to try to dispel the feeling. “It...it went.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
"It... went?" he blinked, trying to decipher the short answer. The pencil spun once, "There's still no activity, and it's been-" Juro had to pause to do the math. Passage of time was always so inconsistent, "-five... no, six Earth days since... uh, the two days I mentioned. So a week of nothing..."
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Yun shut his eyes briefly, heart throbbing, and then slowly paced over to sit on Juro’s right, leaning forward and entangling his hands. He’d done it so often that he was surprised the joints of his fingers hadn’t turned into noodles yet. The wind caught his hood and blew it back a little, and he shook his head to let it fall all the way. He cleared his throat, knowing his silence was only confusing Juro more. “I...he...he was worried, I think, or busy, for most of it. But for...for those first two days, he was...he was out.”
Finally making himself lift his head, he met Juro’s eyes, and the heaviness, discontent, and pure, unabashed understanding that Juro saw in his face was nothing short of staggering. If “sorry” could be distilled into a single expression, Yun was wearing it.
The young man quickly looked away again, shrugging. “I don’t know past that. I don’t know if I’d blame him. It...I don’t think it went terrible, but it...it didn’t feel great, either.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
The wind roared again and there was a cry from one of the infirmary tents, but Juro didn't hear any of it as he continued to stare at Yun, black mop of hair wildly shifting while he faced away from the bookkeeper.
Flashes of memories seared his mind: rows and rows of old books, kind weathered hands, grinning faces of those he adored, and a girl with jet black hair and red eyes, as red as the blood that was spilt. Screaming, crying, and running. Gold and blue magic that went out of control, then forcefully pushed back in. The dying breath of a mentor, passing on the will to live.
Juro swallowed, discovering his throat was dry. He shut the notebook and put it away in his sleeve, tucking both hands in them as he leaned his head forward, his long bangs hiding his eyes.
Seconds turned into minutes before he spoke, voice low, "Was it... Jin?" The name stung on his tongue.
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Yun nodded, but then he abruptly sat up, running a hand through his hair and sighing. “Look, don’t...don’t blame him. I had a really bad dream that told me some things, and I think it was a different timeline, but...either way, I went poking around in the Library, and saw things I shouldn’t, and he found out, and it kind of snowballed from there, and...it’s...it’s not his fault. Or yours. Or...” He rubbed his knuckles into his palm harshly as he rambled. “Sorry. I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. It just messed with me. I don’t want to make this harder for you, y’know. I get it.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
"Amazing."
That was the first thought that Juro uttered amidst Yun's rambling. And it was nothing less than astonishing.
Because it was also laced with... envy. Heavily controlled, muted, almost nonexistent in the expression as he tried to keep himself steady, but it was there.
"He told you... huh," he kept his face hidden and himself completely still. Bookkeepers don't get attached. Some are able to connect better than others, like the Left, the Right, and the Royal; but at the end of it, they were alone. For Juro Jin to lay it out truthfully to the young seidkonur...
"Will you ask me again in the future?"
Juro's hands were clenched tightly in his sleeves. I want... to be able tell Milae...
His blonde fringe flapped as he shook his head slightly, before slowly raising it. His brows were furrowed in concentration, a grim smile plastered on his face, "It's fine. I'm sorry. Don't worry about it, I... I'll be okay. I'll still help you, I promise."
foresight-botgd
Even though he was expecting it, somehow it was still the biggest relief to actually hear him say it. Yun huffed and bounced his clasped hands in his lap a few times. “Okay, if you’re sure. I can try to...I can stop being, um...” His face flushed and he pushed up his glasses. “L-likable?” He immediately rubbed his forehead in embarrassment. 
akkeyagentofhelheim
Likeable-! The comment caught Juro off guard and he choked, fingers coming up over his mouth as he looked away, stifling a laugh.
“No, no. You don’t have to do that,” he shook his head, the corners of his mouth still upturned, “Just… apologies in advanced if I suddenly seem… off?” He grinned apologetically and rested his chin on his palm, managing to relax as he studied Yun.
“Are you… alright?” he asked, but he knew it was a general, loaded question.
Yun grinned back at his reaction, and then looked back up at the construct, tapping his leg as he thought. 
“It…it sucked,” he admitted, dropping his head again. “I ended up staying the night, ‘cause…I didn’t know when I was gonna see him again. And I kind of…made it worse, cause I didn’t know about…” He waved his hand vaguely in the air, the bright sunlight playing off his patterned fingers. “You know. That maybe that could happen to you. So I’m…I don’t know. I miss him a lot. And worried, and all that. And I’ve just been thinking, like, harder than I’ve ever tried to think about stuff in my life. And also been sort of g–” His throat suddenly swelled and he stopped talking, trying to breathe through a clogged nose. “Sort of guilty,” he continued quietly. “Just working through a lot of things.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
Juro breathed in shallowly through his mouth then shook his head, “Please don’t be.”
He uncrossed himself and leaned back on his hands, watching the mud and snow melting together by his feet, colours turning murky as they mixed, “It’s just my lot in life. Your existence is not a bad thing. I…”
He exhaled again, in that self calming manner, tilting his chin up to stare at the construct, where the cage used to be, “I don’t regret coming here… and finding you…”
foresight-botgd
You don’t, but I do.
Yun tore the thought away and smiled shyly, rubbing his nose with a sniff. He very purposely kept his eyes off the same punctured ribcage. “Heh, it’s probably not something I’m going to get over any time soon, but…I saw you climbing to get me, and Milae’s memory told me who you were, and it was like…if I hadn’t been so freaked out, it would’ve been like meeting a celebrity, in a way. Everyone here is like that. I feel like I walked into a story. I don’t even know how to act half the time.” He laughed self-consciously. “I stick out so badly, I hope I don’t have to do any kind of spying here because I would suck at it…” 
akkeyagentofhelheim
He couldn’t help but squint in thought, flipping through his memories of Library entries like a filing cabinet, Celebrity… What… Oh. He remembered the term quickly, and let the grin stay lazily on his face in amusement.
He straightened and flicked the pen up, pointing towards Yun in his characteristic, Juro way, “Tell you what. Give me a story you’ve never told Jin, and I’ll find something for you to wear to help you blend in better.”
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The way Yun’s eyes lit up at Juro’s request could’ve drowned out the sun. He turned on their shared perch of a fallen guard tower support beam and pulled up his muddy shoes, crossing his legs and tapping his fingers on either of his knees. “Oh, góðir guðir, um…okay, okay…” He tried to think of something that was as little universe-intensive as possible, to cut down on the explanations. 
“Oh, geez. I never told him about the first time I saw Nala in that timeline…okay, so…I know I don’t have to, but I work jobs there, because I don’t want to just steal stuff. I don’t like that. So I’m working a late night shift at…at a store, pretty much. Because I don’t have to talk to a lot of people that late, and for some reason the tattoos make all the scary guys pretty nice to me? So I’m just standing at the counter and reading…I don’t remember what, but I heard someone shouting across the street, really loud. Something I hear a lot, a lot of ‘Stay back!’ and ‘Get out of here!’ and stuff. I can see her out the door, this super tall lady, and normally I’d just ignore the stuff that happens out on the street. But she’s pointing a gun at something beside the store.” He held up a finger. “What I didn’t know is that was the Pariah. That was right after that demon got launched out of her timeline into ours and was trying to get someone to help her. She was following Nala around because, well, she felt similar, but it wasn’t clicking because Nala doesn’t know anything about Aidorin. Then I guess she disappears, because Nala looks straight at me–” He held up both hands flat next to either side of his face “–and I swear I thought she was gonna come in and kill me. But Liam came out of one of the rooms behind her and called her back in. She looked really freaked out. I don’t blame her. We had our own mess with the Pariah, but that was probably the scariest because I didn’t even know what was going on. I was just trying to do my job,” he finished with a familiar lopsided grin. “I didn’t go back and repeat that shift for a long time. And I am still a little scared of her.” He put a finger and thumb close together at the word “little.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
Pen flew across parchment as Yun spoke, keeping up remarkably well with the speed of the telling, almost comparable to the quickness of Jin typing on his notebook. Juro wrote, journal perched on a thigh while he leaned on his left hand, features illuminated softly and prettily by the sunshine that filtered through the clouds. There was a mix of excitement and concentration on his face as he followed, grinning slightly at Yun’s intricacies, alternating his gaze between him and the paper while listening carefully. It was refreshing to be engrossed in a story again.
“I remember the Pariah entry. It was… curious, to say the least. A little jumbled. Your bookkeeper was quite frazzled in it,” he commented at the end of the spiel, noting to himself how he wrote what is technically a modern entry into the Golden timeline. He lowered his lashes in quiet amusement, “You’ll find that the Warden here is also… uh, big and scary but so long as you don’t harm her Rebellion you are relatively safe.” He pressed on the term relatively, considering how Yun was almost drained empty by the demon upon first unofficial meeting.
He stood up and closed the notebook with a snap, stuffing it into his bag. “Virion.” Air rippled and yawned open into a portal to the Library, and Juro went up to it. But he paused right before the entrance, as if considering something, tousling the back of his hair in hard thought.
“Your new garments are in here,” he said after a moment, and stepped through and disappearing before Yun could respond. But the hole in the air before him remained open.
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Yun bounced to his feet and came up to the portal, and he waited in front of it for a second, imitating the same meditative breath as Juro before reaching out and gently brushing his fingers through it. It wasn’t painful or frightening, so he steeled himself and walked through.
akkeyagentofhelheim
It was more mundane than one would think, similar to walking through a door, perhaps forgetting what you came into the room for for a second, but remembering immediately after.
Yun found himself in a place he’s never been before, but knew enough. Rows and rows of books, stacks of parchment, contrasting humourously against a few flat boxes he immediately recognized as notebook computers, ink stained floorboards, the sounds of wheel and machine overhead. No longer the bitter cold of Aidorin, windows betraying that it was night where they were. A door where a staff had leaned beside on the wall once. No place to sit anywhere, and a clutter that was painfully familiar of another bookkeeper.
“Keep all your inner layers on, you’ll need them against the weather, and they’ll be hidden anyway.” Juro’s voice called out from somewhere in the Library–it was a little uncertain exactly where, until he appeared again from a door, tucked away in the corner of the second floor. Yun didn’t even realize there was a second floor at first–there were no stairs to be seen. The bookkeeper grabbed the rung of a ladder that was attached to the ceiling high bookshelf beside him, and slid down with practiced ease, carrying a bundle in the other arm.
“Mhm, here…” Juro began passing the pieces of clothing to Yun and helping him put them on. A thick long sleeved black button down with a high collar that matched seamlessly with his fingerless gloves and many layers. A light, leather chest armour on top of it that wore diagonally from the right shoulder to his left side, belted together at the seams and waist, buckles engraved with an old, departed king’s crest. Tan pants that were similar to the bookkeeper’s in its cut, but fit more snugly and tied less traditionally, proper pockets and embroidery down the side seams, tucked perfectly underneath the boots he already wore. A forest green kimono over everything, that curiously would’ve been too small for Juro, with teal woven in between threads that shimmered when catching the light just right, tucked into the waist of his pants, long sleeves swishing when he moved. Despite the looseness of the garments, Yun felt incredibly cozy in them.
Juro spun him around to place a shoulder plate, similar to some Aidorinian’s he’s seen, but only on his left side, strapping it around his neck, underneath his armpits, and forming an X on his shoulder blades, buckled again with the Wilderwest crest at the shoulder. It doubled as a bag strap, clipping a messenger type bag that laid against his right hip.
Juro stepped back with a finger placed lightly on his mouth, as if inspecting his work, “Well… it’s a mix of Aidorin and Nippon, if you don’t mind that. But you’ll blend in a lot easier. I’m not certain if you want to keep the chest armour–it also has matching bracers–because of your seal and all.”
“Wow,” Yun breathed. His hands ran across the front of the armor and down the kimono, and did a test flex with one of his arms, to see if the seal would still interact properly with the new barrier. The tattoos lit up just fine, pulsing far more intricately than Milae’s below thick fabric. “No, it works fine, it’s like…armor, real armor…wow…”
His glasses reflected the light of the Library as he looked up at Juro, beaming, and he stepped forward, hands lifting, and then stopped. Like he’d touched a hot stove, he cut off his intended hug for the second time that day, instead tucking his hands into his elbows and smiling awkwardly. “Thanks,” he said, quietly and sincerely. “I’ve still got a lot to learn. I…I hope it’s enough to be able to help fight off Frigga.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
His eyes flicked up and down, catching the movement then immediately casting it away. He raised his brows, and grinned wryly, lifting the bracers and motioning for Yun to slip his arms through so he could see how it was fastened over his gloves, “Oh boy, well… it’ll be something alright. You’ll need way more than armour though. You should ask Milae to teach you. He’s the best person to learn from, particularly for your… err, situation.”
Juro tugged the last buckle tight in its place, then reached over to place a black hat with a short, stiff visor on Yun’s head, partly blocking his vision for a moment, “There you go, kid. As promised in exchange for the story.”
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He giggled and pushed the hat up to see better, and though he remained bright, the smile faded a little and was replaced by a more somber, thoughtful expression. “Hey, speaking of him, if it’s okay to ask…he still doesn’t know, right? About the…lock? I didn’t get those memories from him when he broke his seal. Because I was just wondering…if it makes it any easier, I can bring it up to him.” Yun shrugged hastily. “I don’t know, I don’t have to. It was just something I was thinking about. But…it’s not my choice to make.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
Juro had turned away to fiddle with something on the desk at that moment. He paused, for a while his back was all Yun could see, suddenly seeming a little… small, under the navy blue robes.
“Thank you. But I’ll tell him,” he finally said, head lifting. Yun could see the blond strands interrupted by black fabric better when he did, “I’ll tell him.”
Juro pushed the parchment under his hand away and faced the shorter man again, raising a brow and grinning easily to one side. “Okay time’s up. Back to the Jaw you go,” he waved a hand up and Virion moved towards Yun, intent on scooping him and his belongings to Aidorin all in one go.
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Returning the expression, Yun pinched the brim of his new hat between his fingers in a bit of a salute. “Okay, thanks Ji–Juro!!” The world warped around him and he was standing in the mud of the Jaw again, the wind picking up and wildly blowing around his clothes. He puffed his cheeks, which were tinged with heat from his slip-up, and marched forward, back to where he had just visited Milae and Dario.
akkeyagentofhelheim
Juro watched the young man disappear from the Library, and when he was certain he was gone, he leaned back heavily on the table they were standing next to, slowly letting himself fall to the ground with a soft thump.
That was a gamble on his part. The exchange of garment and story, purposefully letting Yun in the Library, helping him into an old kimono that used to be his. It was an experiment, and there was mutual struggle… but it was possible.
He sighed, ruffling the top of his head, and opened the other hand to reveal an old gift of embroidered linen. He studied it for a moment. I can do this. I can control this. And one day when I do, I can tell Milae…
Juro stared at it for another breath, then stood with new vigor. Virion crooned from where it stayed open, and the bookkeeper eased himself into a smile again. He gathered his things, and returned to the Jaw, leaving behind the soft whirring of cog and wheel, and a pair of broken spectacles placed on an embroidered sun tucked away in a bookshelf out of sight.