Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Time. It always comes back to time, in the end.
He has always had a strange relationship with it; forwards, backwards, frozen, upside-down – the concept of temporal continuity has long since lost any and all meaning to him.

But for as turbulent as his personal timeline has become, there still is a beginning to it.
There is a point A to the madness, and a frustratingly linear stretch of time that spells out his early life.

Time. He rarely has a grasp on its flow these days, so lost is he in the unmaking of its laws.

Time.
There had once been a time when he had had no concept of it at all.

Yes, time – the child in his little containment cell doesn't perceive it.

He doesn't track the steps of those who pass by outside of the large glass walls that fence in his tiny world.
He doesn't count his heartbeats in those moments in-between, or wonder how long ago his last meal was and when the next one might arrive.
He doesn't search the sterile white room with his eyes to find something he can do to pass the time.

He doesn't do any of this, for he doesn't know boredom.
He doesn't know boredom, for he doesn't know time.

He simply sits in his little white room, surrounded by glass walls and pointy, gleaming instruments, and the world passes him by.

And he sits.
And he stares.
And he sees nothing.

The people that pass by his cell do so with purpose. Their stride is as clean and clinical as the rest of their surroundings, and the eyes with which they check notepads and machine read-outs are sharp and calculating.

Every now and then they will press a button or flip a switch and the child will jolt in his little glass cage, a physical reaction of pain or stress or maybe both, and then he will go back to sitting still and limp because the needles in his brain keep him from thinking or doing much of anything at all.

The people in their long white lab coats will clap and cheer and take notes on their notepads, and then they will flip a few more switches or press a few more buttons.

They also cheer, of course, on the day their experiment is finally complete. They cheer as they pull the needles out of the child's brain. They cheer as they replace them with five shards of green crystal, small and thin and unassuming, yet brimming with the power and potential of creation itself. They cheer as they seamlessly seal the incisions with technology we can't yet comprehend, and then they cheer some more as the child blinks his eyes and looks around in puzzlement, truly alive for the first time in years.

They cheer, and then they don't.

Because that is the moment the laboratory explodes.

Or perhaps, “explodes” isn't quite the right word. An explosion would imply fire and smouldering ruins.
What happens is more akin to a glitch in the fabric of space and time; there is a child, reaching up with shaking hands to clutch at his head, and then there is a shock wave that defies the human senses (though its flash would leave your blinded eyes with the faintest impression of the colour teal), and then there is nothing. No glass walls. No white ceilings. No metal instruments. No scientists. Just rubble, and a fine, red mist.

And in the centre of it all, there is a perfectly round crater, and in it there is a child, his mouth agape in a soundless wail as he clutches his silvery head, a tempest of pure, unconstrained chaos whipping around his small body.

It's hard to say how long this goes on for, but for someone who has only just woken up to the concept of time, it must surely feel like an eternity. However long it is, the child eventually slumps to the ground in exhaustion, his eyes rolling back into his head as he faints, and it is only then that the unnatural wind around him subsides, winking out alongside his consciousness.

It's no wonder the scientists were cheering in their final moments.

They had finally succeeded in creating their ultimate weapon.

And somewhere far away, on the other side of this burnt husk of a planet, the Ifrit roars and spreads its sky-encompassing wings.

Chapter Text

It is to the scent of ozone and the taste of dirt in his mouth that he awakens.
There is pain, too – thrumming through his body in sharp, uneven intervals and gathering at his temples in dizzying waves of agony – but it's not as bad as it was before, and his consciousness refuses to sink back down into that deep, comforting darkness. And so, he wakes up.

The child opens his eyes and stares up at the grey, ash-raining sky, and then wonders how he knows what a sky is, and how he knows that the fragile white specks drifting down from it are ash. He doesn't remember ever encountering anything like it before.
He doesn't remember much at all, of course.
Only white walls, white coats, and sharp, gleaming needles.

He's lying on his back, he realises dimly, and he shifts his head, his gaze trailing down to the empty horizon. There's not much there – only more grey sky, more ash, and the dark, soot-stained remains of long-ruined structures.
The remains of Spagonia City, his mind supplies, and the child pauses once again at the intrusive knowledge. How strange, that he would know these things without being aware of it.

His fingers twitch, and his gaze is drawn further downward still, to where his right arm is resting on the dusty ground. He stares at it, studying it with a detached sort of curiosity; the way his fingers tremble with every new wave of pain, the way his short, silvery fur shifts with the movements, the way a bright, searing circle of light hums and burns in the centre of his palm, seeming to twist and warp in a way that defies reality and makes him dizzy to look at-
He tears his eyes away, and catches his breath.

Carefully, haltingly, he draws his fingers inward, closing them into a loose fist, and traces the inside of his palm where he knows the anomaly to be.

There's nothing there.

He feels soft fur, and the shape of weak muscle underneath it; he feels no trace or imprint of that circle on his skin. And yet- it's difficult to identify, but there's a gentle tingling in his fingertips as he moves them across certain spots. A subtle buzzing that his mildly electric, as if he is disturbing some sort of current-

Hesitantly, he opens eyes that had drifted shut in concentration, and glances back down at his hand. It's not as terrible now that he's prepared for it, but the dizziness still hits him hard, and he swallows down the bile rising in his throat with some difficulty.
He tries to focus his eyes on the thing on his hand – it's such a bright and searing shade of blue, and it spirals and twists and loops back in on itself. And it's energy, his brain supplies in a brisk, scientific staccato; pure, raw energy of creation, a vortex of it, and it is on him, in him, housed within his body.

There's another wave of pain that travels down from his head, and though he winces and his eyes water in response, he sees it this time – the way the circle flares and pulses in time with the pain, like it has a heartbeat of its own, the way the pulsing light travels down to it from the channel on his arm-
He pauses again, taken with a new curiosity, and moves his attention away from the centre of his palm. Though the circle stands out against the pale fur of his hand, he notices now that it's hardly alone; there's a line on its underside that runs down his wrist and up his arms, made from the same searing light, and as he follows it with his eyes, he finds that it connects to many more lines and circles – a complex pattern of geometric shapes stretches across his whole body, all burning with that same blue brightness.
He traces the shapes with his fingers – first carefully, then more and more boldly – and then roams his hands across the parts of his body he can't see. His back, his face, his head; everywhere, he encounters the now-familiar tingling, and concludes that he must be covered in these strange patterns from head to toe.

Of course, his mind adds mechanically. The power is distributed evenly along the circulatory system. The fact that these streams of energy are visible even from the outside is a testament to just how successful the experiment truly was.

The thought, strange and foreign in his mind, sends a tremble through the child's body. His vision swims, and his roaming hands still; he focuses on his breathing and tries to ignore the sense of vertigo pulling on his consciousness.

He's distantly aware of the bright energy thrumming through his system; a second pulse just underneath his skin.

The vertigo doesn't subside.
Instead, there's a roar building in his ears, and the pain that has been radiating from his head this whole time becomes a splitting, agonising headache.
He moves, though he's hardly aware of it, sitting up and cradling his head in his shaking hands.
And then he's not sitting at all anymore, because he's floating, and there's a gale of unnatural, unearthly wind whipping around him, tearing at the dust and debris of his surroundings with violent force, but not disturbing even a single strand of hair on the child hovering in its midst.

It doesn't last long this time.

He's already so very weak.

As the storm of raw power dies down, the child slumps to the ground, his small body touching down gently before going completely limp.

The first thing he's aware of, the next time he wakes, is that he is very, very thirsty.
He feels the way the dryness pulls at his throat and lips even before he opens his eyes; his whole body feels heavy and lethargic.

The next thing he notices, consequently, is that he can barely move.
He has just slept, and yet, a heavy blanket of exhaustion lies over him and seems to muffle everything else. His mind feels fuzzy, and his vision is spotty; his arms and legs are weak and limp, and he can barely will his fingers to move, much less the whole limb.

Whatever basic survival instincts he still has left send a jolt of alarm through his system. On a primal level that doesn't need full coherency to function, he understands that this is very, very bad.

He needs water. He needs food.

He needs to get up and move and-

And then everything shifts, and turns, and suddenly, he is looking down onto the ground from much higher up.
Everything seems to freeze for a moment, and that strangely dry and brisk part of his mind supplies him with an almost sarcastic-sounding “Mind over matter, as they say” - and he looks down at his body, and can't help the gasp that escapes him.

The patterns weaving across his limbs are burning brighter than ever before; the energy seems like an almost tangible thing now, and his limbs are trailed by streams of teal light.

It's the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and his breath catches.

There's still pain, drumming out a staccato rhythm at the back of his skull, but for just this one moment, it feels like such a distant thing. For just one euphoric second, the world seems to right itself on its axis and everything feels good and true and perfect, and the power thrums through his body like a living thing, no longer discordant but rather in perfect harmony with the rest of him.

His vision clears, enhanced by the strange sensation, and as he gazes downwards, he notices a broken pipe sticking out of the rubble. Fresh, clear water is gurgling out of it in a constant, unbroken stream, and suddenly, it's all he can think about. He's so very thirsty.

There, he thinks. I want to be there.

And then he is.

There's a flash of light, bright and blue like the energy trailing from his limbs, and suddenly, he's not floating several feet in the air anymore. Instead, he is sitting on wet ground, and there's cold mud seeping into his pristine fur, and there's the sound of water right next to him and he feels so alive and whole-

The water is fresh and cold, and he drinks from it until he feels sick, and then he drinks some more – it distracts him so utterly that he doesn't spare even a single thought to the fact that he somehow moved to this spot without really moving at all. It seems of such little consequence, when it came to him as naturally as breathing.

He pulls back eventually, water still dribbling down his chin and onto the thick shroud of fur lining his neck, and sways in place for a moment.
It's only when the world seems to tip sideways and the muddy ground rushes up to meet him that the child realises what the thirst had been drowning out. The pain comes crashing down on him the moment he meets the ground, and his vision goes white as his body convulses in agony. Where he had been feeling exhausted before, he feels downright hollow now, like he has carved every last ounce of something out of himself, draining it until there is nothing left and then digging even deeper still.

There is no unnatural wind this time. No furious force tearing at the world around him.

There is just a spluttering, wavering blue light, flickering in and out of focus as the world goes dark around him once again.

He wakes again, by some miracle.

The world feels dim and hazy, and he can't get his eyes to focus. He hears the water babbling and he knows that it must be right next to him, but its sound is warped and feels much farther away than it should.
He blinks, but all he can make out are blurry shapes and silhouettes.

His head hurts.

“...seems to be the energy signature's area of origin, confirmed...”

It's barely audible over the roar of his pulse in his ears, but it's unmistakably a voice, a snippet of a sentence. Someone is here, close-by, and the child feels himself flinch, unsure if this is a threat and unwilling to find out.

“...huge crater where the Chaos Research Facility used to be, yes. Copy. Moving in to examine it more closely.”

It feels like a momentous effort just to shift his head in the direction the voice is coming from. He can hear footsteps now too, and is startled to find that it is more than one pair. Whoever this is, they came with a group.
The child presses himself closer to the rubble surrounding him, suddenly feeling very exposed and very, very trapped.

And he still can't get his vision to focus right.

A blurry shape moves into his field of vision. He can't make out much detail; they seem to be wearing dark clothing, and seem mobian in height. It doesn't seem like they have noticed him yet.
He watches with bated breath as they kneel down to examine the ground, and then reach up to fiddle with something next to their ear. “A long-range communication device”, his brain helpfully supplies.

“I can't determine the source of the explosion”, they say, in a voice that sounds both raspy and distinctly feminine. “The Chaos Energy readings in the area are even higher than we anticipated. An insane amount of power has been unleashed here.”

There is a long pause. Then a sigh.

“This place... It looks like it was practically vaporised. We're going to look, but I don't think anyone could have survived this.”

Some shuffling, more footsteps, and the child feels his vision grow dim as his exhaustion threatens to pull him under again. The pulsing headache is still there, and he focuses on the pain to keep himself awake. Through gritted teeth, he keeps his eyes on the figure.

“Hold on. Readings suggest that there was a second, smaller explosion that happened several hours after the first incident. Both energy signatures originate in the very centre of the crater, but there is nothing there now. What could have possibly-”

The pause is abrupt, and the child realises that the figure has frozen mid-motion.

They are staring right at him.

A cold pit of fear stirs in his chest, and a strangled exhale escapes his mouth. He has been found.
Instinct guides him to reach deep inside, to the pool of that strange power, and he distantly notes that the markings on his limbs flare up brightly in response, but when he tries to grasp that energy again, he realises that it is gone – he is hollow and empty and running on fumes. There is nothing left to take.

He snaps out of his trance when the figure in front of him moves, much quicker than he had anticipated. One moment they are just standing there, hands empty, and the next, they have fallen into a defensive stance, something long and sleek and metal gleaming in their hands, and even in his addled state, that clinical voice in his head doesn't hesitate to identify it as a gun.

“I think I might have found the source of our energy signature”, they murmur into their headset, just loud enough for the child to make out. “Requesting back-up immediately.”

There is the sound of running footsteps, and suddenly, there are people on all sides, equally as armed, equally as dangerous.

The figure from before stalks forward, with slow, deliberate steps. They keep their gun trained on him the entire time, perfectly steady and unwavering. They stop, some twenty metres away, and while their shape is still blurry, the child thinks he can make out a striped face, deep magenta on stark white.

They clear their throat and speak, their voice much louder and clearer this time.
“We have you surrounded on all sides. Any aggressive action on your part would be extremely ill-advised.”

There's a quiet click as they remove the safety from their gun, both a warning and a threat.

“You are in the presence of R.U.E., the Resistance Units of Earth. Identify yourself.”