One Year Out (Part One)

A year doesn’t do much to erase any wounds when there are too many wounds to even know where to start. How does time make the pain of friends dying go away, how does it make losing allies and family and even local royalty just fade into nothingness? How can it be expected to heal the physical scars, the quirks and the traits that now define some of these people? It can’t and it doesn’t, and the concept of time caring about anything enough to make it disappear is just close enough to aggravating that hearing the off-handed remarks made by people in the Tostian bar that it’d been a year since the final battle to save humanity, the kids moping around inside needed to drink up and get over it.

“You know, we’re not going to exactly ‘get over’ anything anytime soon,” Jayde snapped, sloshing the drink she’d been handed around in its glass so that it spilled over its rim a couple times, splashing onto the wooden bar. “Don’t talk to us like we’re supposed to.”

“I don’t know if I like that you’re giving out free drinks to people who look like they were involved in that whole mess,” Mason chimed in, pushing his own drink away and looking towards Jayde to try and convince her to do the same. She recoiled when she saw his eyes pointed in her direction, stopping playing with the drink and pushing her chair back from the bar to stand up. “H-hey, what’re you taking that as? We can still order something before you head out, for the memories.”

Jayde was already out of her chair, her hand grabbing her ear and holding it tightly as she looked around and saw that a lot of the people there in the bar were looking in her direction—not necessarily *at* her, but they could have been. “Something tells me I don’t want to spend another second in here that I don’t have to.”

“It’s what happens when you come to a bar in a country of rogues and thieves, good leadership can’t make all people good.” Apologizing to the bartender for not accepting his drinks and for not ordering new ones, Mason also got off of his chair and followed Jayde outside, the midday sun bright overhead once they had exited. “Something made you uncomfortable in there, didn’t it?” he asked, noticing that Jayde had let go of her ear but was still glancing around making sure people weren’t staring at her. “It was being in a large group and standing out, wasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say it was, because it didn’t start until you looked at me, but I guess so?” Jayde saw that, upon hearing that, Mason looked regretful and was opening his mouth to apologize to her, so she shook her head and grabbed his shoulder, almost hitting him with too much force in her grasp. “Don’t feel bad about it! It’s only been a year, and I haven’t spent a lot of time around anyone who’d bother looking at me, it’s still weird for me to think that when you look in my direction I’ve only got half a face. One ear, one eye, and a huge ugly scar that defines who I am.”

Accepting her explanation for what it was, Mason gave her a small smile to try and assure her that things were okay even if she thought they weren’t. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve got half a face, you’re still my friend and I don’t see you for what you have or don’t have. I’ve known you way too long to only look at you for your appearance.”

“You might, but other guys? They look at me and see a flawed product, something that doesn’t deserve any of their love! Time’s not going to fix that, and that bartender in there’s a huge jerk for giving us drinks thinking that those will fix the problem!” Her hand touched the lowest point of the scar on her cheek, the ruined flesh feeling weird to her even a year later. “I guess I should be thankful you pointed out that the drinks could be messed with, even though you reminded me I’m flawed at the same time. Ugly girls don’t get free drinks from anyone.”

Mason’s smile grew for a second, until he caught on that he’d managed to bother Jayde without trying to and it disappeared entirely. “I didn’t mean to do that, I really didn’t. Well, the hurting you part, I’m still working on trying to be less gullible and it just…didn’t sit with me that we were given free drinks, knowing who we are.” He shuffled his feet as he thought of what else to say, looking at the good side of Jayde’s face for any kind of non-verbal clues for what to do. “I don’t think you’re ugly, if it’s any consolation.”

“Go back to the part where you’ve known me too long to see me for my appearance. That guy in there was trying to creep on one or both of us, and not in the flirty way. Bet he thinks that killing off two heroes will earn him a prize or something.” Jayde shrugged, still touching her scar. “He must not have realized which two heroes he was dealing with.”

“Eh, we’re in Tost, everyone kind of knows who I am nowadays.” Mason was also shrugging, still trying not to look anywhere close to Jayde’s facial scar as to not offend her further. “It’s not easy to ignore who I am when my father is kind of one of the rulers around here. That might, uh, actually be why the guy wanted to poison us, if he wanted to.”

“That’s probably true, glad you remembered that now and acted like you did earlier, otherwise we might already be dead, and I’ve got somewhere I have to head today.” Her hand dropping to grab her other one, Jayde tilted her head back to look up at the sun’s current location in the sky, the bright glare irritating her eye. “If we start heading that way now, we’ll get there by dinner, and maybe Mom won’t be too upset with me that I brought company along for the trip.”

She started walking in the direction they needed to go not long after finishing her sentence, and Mason was quick to follow her. “She’ll appreciate it, I know she will. And when we get there, and my father gets there, then—“

“Hold on.” Stopping in her tracks, Jayde waited until Mason had passed by her, unaware she’d stopped walking, to let out a long scream that startled him into stopping as well, looking at her confused. “You didn’t tell me you invited your father to this! He’s got his own things to deal with today, since he lost a lot of friends in all that mess, why did you invite him to come deal with my sad sack of a mother?”

“Because I thought she’d appreciate having a friend around for the day, not just you and me?” Mason offered, hoping he hadn’t angered Jayde too much by what he’d done. “It’s not like we can get back to the capital and tell him not to come, he’s probably already there or close to it knowing how long we’ve spent doing things that aren’t walking. How many bars did we need to stop in today, anyway?”

“Clearly more than we did, now come on! If he shows up before me, I’m not going to hear the end of this!” Breaking out into a run, Jayde used her beaststone to transform into her Taguel form, sliding across the ground in front of Mason for him to jump on her back, so that they could cover twice the distance in half the time. Upsetting her mother on a day where she’d be more emotionally fragile than normal did not sound like a good idea to Jayde, and she was going to try preventing it if it was at all possible. The last thing she knew her mother needed was to sink back into a depressive state that she wouldn’t get out of easily.

But a year’s time was enough to heal all wounds, wasn’t it? There shouldn’t have been anything for her to be worried about, right?

The twitching of Augustus’ arm wasn’t stopping no matter how hard he was begging for it to, his fist beating against his leg as he leaned against the wall, hoping that he’d be moving and hopefully done twitching soon. “Can you hurry up? We have places to go, people to see, jokes to crack!” he called, nearly making his hand start hitting against the wall rather than his leg to see if that was effective in getting his companion to move. “We’re wasting daylight with you taking your sweet time!”

“I’m sorry, I’m still trying to decide if I even want to go anywhere today, thanks though,” Danica replied, sounding annoyed as she spoke. “The moment you forgot to mention meeting with my dad for a meal or something to remember the day, I lost all interest in wanting to bother with doing anything.”

“You said you didn’t even know if your dad was anywhere around here! At least I *know* my parents are in the city, they wanted to see some friends for the memories and I’m not going to pass up a chance to unleash my newest round of jokes on my dad. Besides, you know you’re a sucker for baby me, just like you’re sucker for this me.” Whoops, his hand slipped off his leg when a big twitch overtook his muscles, sending his fist pounding into the wall louder than his words had been. Danica’s scream on the other side of the wall sounded like she was startled by the noise he’d made, and he almost felt sorry for her, until he remembered he couldn’t control a thing that was happening.

Time hadn’t done a thing to fix his nerve damage and he was fairly certain it wasn’t going to get any better for him, and the past year had been a lot of learning how to really deal with his new disability in non-battle settings. He’d definitely picked up his axe a time or two since that last battle, and he still had a pretty good sense of how to fight, but existing as a normal person, not as a warrior, hadn’t gotten easy at all. “You’re such a jerk,” she said as she caught her breath, not having been told that him startling her had been on complete accident. “What if I’d been cutting my hair right then, huh? You could have just killed me.”

“You being dead would have shut you up, so maybe I should be sad that it’s not the case.” He smirked as he heard her groan, before she threw the door open and exited the small room she’d been holed up in, looking exactly as she had when she went in, albeit with some obvious tearstains on her cheeks. “Uh, Danica? Why do you look like you’ve been crying?”

“No reason. Don’t look at me.” Her lips pursed together once she finished speaking, and she walked past Augustus without further explanation, which left him confused and slightly concerned. She wasn’t normally like this, she didn’t typically start crying, and she most definitely didn’t act like she hadn’t cried when she had. Figuring this was something to do with him startling her, Augustus quickly followed her, his upper body still being wracked with spasms as he did. Hearing his footsteps behind her, she shook her head and said, “No, don’t follow me either, damn it. Give me some space.”

“Is this about me scaring you? I didn’t mean to, you know how my arms have a mind of their own sometimes and I can’t help it!” She shook her head again, faster this time. “Well if it’s not about that, what is it about? Can’t be about me wanting to see my parents over your dad, you’d never cry over that.”

“I wasn’t crying, don’t act like I was. I was just…having a moment. Thinking about how it’s been a year since everything finished reminded me of something that made me need that moment, and then you went and ruined it.” Flipping her hair so that it whacked Augustus in the face, Danica tried getting away from him again, but he kept up with her step for step. “Please, stop following me just this once! Go find your parents and your baby self and let me take today to do my own thing!”

Now it was his turn to shake his head, reaching towards her with an arm that was lightly shaking. “If you don’t want to see them, I won’t force you to. We can do whatever it is you want to do today, if it’ll make you feel better.” This offer was as genuine as he could make it sound, even though he wasn’t fully on-board with what he was saying, and he was quick to make that clear. “I did kind of want to get to see little me again, it’s been a few weeks and I bet he’s already gotten so big.”

“I knew you didn’t mean what you offered, so go be with them, let me go find my dad and find the time to get over myself.” Now Danica was running fingers through her hair to untangle it after what she’d done, throwing it back to where it belonged as she went through each strand. “I’m sure he’d need a shoulder to cry on today, seeing as he doesn’t have one if he doesn’t have me.”

It took a moment for Augustus to piece together what she was meaning, but once he’d reminded himself of why he wouldn’t have anyone, everything made sense. “Oh, damn, I didn’t realize that’d be the case for him, I should’ve known you’d just want to be the best daughter you could be and make up for the fact that he doesn’t have a lady friend to cling to when the nights get hard. Or, uh, when the one-year anniversary of the life-changing battle we all went through is upon us.”

“I’m sure there’s a better way you could have worded that, but I can’t be picky, you’ve figured out something partially on your own and I’m a tiny bit proud of that. Sorry to throw a wrench in your day’s plans, Augustus, but I just can’t let him be alone today.” Danica turned to look at him, a faint smile on her lips that was easy to ignore when one saw she was crying. “He’ll need me because he doesn’t have my mother around for the job.”

“Then you have fun with that,” he said, trying not to look at how the tears were trailing down her cheeks once more. “I’ll go visit my parents and you visit your dad, we’ll spend today with the people who are filling in for the ones we lost. Great plan, Danica, glad you thought of it.”

Even his remark at the end did nothing to cheer her up, and he had to let her leave the little place they’d been renting out in Waydrn’s capital city by herself, believing that she knew where to go to find who she was looking for. He knew that he could find his way on his own, because his parents were going to be at the castle most likely, and if not there they’d be somewhere nearby. As he heard Danica leave, he quietly mumbled, “I hope you have a better day today than the rest of us,” before preparing to set out for himself, both of his arms twitching the whole time.

He was ready a lot faster than he’d expected to be, and it was just a quick walk to where his parents had been staying, right outside the castle but basically part of it, their closeness with the royal family after everything that had happened apparent in the way their temporary home was completely outfitted to their needs. He didn’t even have to knock on the door, it already cracked open when he approached it, but he stopped right outside of it anyway, peering inside to see who might have been there already. His parents, leaving their door open when they had a newborn with them? Impossible. They were too careful, too caring, too responsible to do such a thing.

So when the first thing he saw was the glean of a sword at someone’s hip, the hilt being carefully held onto by the person’s hand, worry built up inside of him; he’d just walked up to an attempted murder, hadn’t he? But as he looked up the person further, he recognized things about them that turned his worry into relief, such as their blue hair that was creeping out of the back of the hat they were wearing. “Wow, I didn’t expect to come all this way to get to see the *Exalt* of all people!” he said, knocking the door open and startling the people gathered inside of the room, all of whom turned to him with unamused glares.

“There might have been a better way to announce your presence,” Janice snapped at him, trying her hardest not to look angry. “If someone outside heard you, they’ll come to see what’s going on, and I have had enough interacting with people I don’t know today. Do you know how many questions I’ve gotten about the validity of me taking the throne today alone? Far too many, Augustus.”

“Hey, I was just making the point that I wasn’t expecting to see you, don’t get your panties in a bunch over it.” He kicked the door closed, thankful a spasm hadn’t taken over right then to throw him to the floor, and once it was shut he gave an overdramatic bow at the Exalt and her companion. “It’s an honor to be in your presence, blah blah, what are you doing here bothering my parents?”

“That would be of my doing,” her father answered, shaking his head at Augustus’ behavior. “As they are friends of mine, I figured spending the day with them would be a good way to pass the time, and Janice chose to slip out of her Exalt duties to join me.”

Janice shrugged. “It wasn’t really me choosing to do it, I had no other choice. Did you really expect me to go through all that by myself right now? These people still aren’t convinced I earned the throne fairly, and today of all days I’m sure that argument’ll be made more times than any other day so far. It *is* the one-year anniversary of the rightful heir to the throne dying, and I don’t want to hear people yelling about how my uncle wouldn’t have wanted me, some actual stranger, to take his place.”

“You did still make the choice to come, instead of put up with everything else. You can’t act like you had to do this.” The no-nonsense look Janice shot her father at that told him to shut up and stop arguing with her, which he did with a sigh.

“She’s not ‘bothering’ us anyway, you didn’t need to greet her like that,” Augustus’ mother said to him, her attention waning from his behavior as she looked towards the baby she was holding in her arms. “If her and Jimmy want to come check on one of the next actual generation of Shepherds, I don’t think there’s any kind of problem with that.”

Standing back upright, Augustus smiled in his mother’s direction, hearing the way she talked about his infant self and loving that he could be witness to it. “Yeah, guess you’re right on that. So…when are you gonna break the news to the kid that I’m not his brother but instead the actual older version of him, huh?”

“Maybe when he’s not a few weeks old and can actually make sense of something as ridiculous as that,” she replied, still looking at the baby. “Let’s at least try to allow him to live a normal life, even if…” Her voice trailed off as the sound of something crashing in another room echoed through the home, everyone looking for its source. “…You know what, maybe that’s a far-fetched dream I shouldn’t be having. Given who his father is, there’s no way this boy’s going to be raised to be anything close to normal.”

Augustus’ smile got wider, as he thought back to his actual parents for a second and how they’d have thought the same thing about him when he was a baby. “Just as it should be.”

==> PART TWO