i try to keep my hands clean

[cantic]

Date & Time: Today, early afternoonish
Location: North Wing, Room 117
Characters: Tear Grants & Jade Curtiss
Summary: Team Mom and Team Embarrassing Uncle need to have a chat.
Warnings: Jade Curtiss

In her week since arrival, Tear has had time to settle in. She's used to doing things on the fly, adapting to new situations, but this...this is something else entirely. This is entirely uncharted territory. Still, she's gotten things in order as best she can. She reunited with Luke, the memory of his trembling hand in hers still makes her heart twist in a complicated mess of emotions. She's started the beginnings of collecting what information she can, and she's signed up to help at the clinic.

Since her network post the other day, the revelation that the UE has been using replicas has been weighing on her. It's time to talk with Jade about that, and about Asch, and about Luke. Her knock on his door is sharp and decisive.

Comments

[cantic]

"I know," she says automatically. Yet even so... "You said he's in good health. Do you mean his fonons...they've stopped separating?"

She's ashamed to be asking behind Luke's back, but he doesn't exactly have the best track record of telling them when things are bothering him.

[clinical]

Jade pauses, then adjusts his glasses. "If my understanding is correct, it would be more accurate to say they have completed their separation. Relative to his own time line, he has already died. I don't know much about the Initiative's resurrection technology, but it's most likely that the body Luke now lives in is a replica of Luke's own body."

Even for Jade Curtiss, there is distinct discomfort as he voices the probable explanation for how the Initiative can keep Luke alive.

[cantic]

The pronouncement hits her like something physical and heavy. Tear shoots to her feet, her body responding with vehemence even as her mind and heart struggle to comprehend what Jade is saying.

Luke has already died - no. No. Tear can't accept it. She refuses to accept it. Abruptly she turns and paces away from Jade, her hand clutching at her heart where she's sure she feels physical pain. She can't lose Luke as well as Van; she needs to believe in his return. And Luke - he's only seven. He's been through so much in his short life, shouldered so much pain and so many great burdens; no one deserves to live his own life, in his own body, as his own person, more than Luke does.

"He promised, didn't he," Tear says, a small tremor in her voice. "He promised to come back to us."

[clinical]

Even for the Necromancer, that face is a difficult one to meet impassively. He locks his fingers together, and he doesn not let himself look away. "He did. Unfortunately, we can't always keep our promises."

He has no desire to crush the hopes of the others. Otherwise, he might have told them how Luke is doomed twice over—how even without the fonon separation, Luke was destined for death from the moment he met Asch. Jade cannot pile that cruelty on all the other cruelties Tear has faced. But neither can he lie to her about this.

[cantic]

"He will," she says fiercely. "He has now, and he will back home."

It's said with absolute conviction in spite of all evidence to the contrary. She tries so hard to be calm and rational, to be an adult - but faced with the prospect of losing everyone she cares for, Tear feels like a little girl again. It was Luke who taught her that it was okay to be weak. It's okay to fight and claw against fate and hold on to irrational hope.

"If anyone can do it, Luke can."

[clinical]

Jade truly wishes he could believe that. He truly wishes that all his science is wrong, and that Luke will come back home.

But the dead cannot return. He knows that well enough. "Tear . . . At present, there is little purpose in us discussing that hypothetical. There is nothing we can do here to tip the scales."