Chapter Text
In retrospect, the ominous words of "trip and fall in each other's shoes" accompanied by a strange stick being thrown at the both of them should have been the first flag.
In additional retrospect, maybe they shouldn't have gone after the suspiciously dressed wizard on their estate in the first place, but that was also Master Lloyd's decision, so he can't say much on that regard.
It was supposed to be a short visit. When the Count and Countess summon their eldest son, claiming that he never visits (he does) and they're getting older (the last visit was just shy of four months ago), who is he to say no? And when said eldest son drags his knight along, who is the knight to say no?
Then, their attention was grabbed by an old man dressed in a rather tacky robe and an obnoxiously tall hat, blabbering something about vengeance or something along those lines. It's far from out of the ordinary, besides the long wooden stick in his hand. He's fairly certain mages stopped carrying staves around a long time ago; Siluria mentioned it to him once.
Whoever he was, he was spitting an increasing amount of vitriol towards them that Lloyd paid no mind to. The noble started picking at his ear, waiting for the old man to finish, which set off an even longer spiel of rambling.
The man twisted on his heel then, declaring something about changing things up, and that got the engineer's attention. He stood straighter, watching as the man stomped a bit.
Lloyd had let the man go for a bit longer, before he feigned a relaxed sigh. "Suppose we should stop him," the noble says, glancing at his knight.
Javier raised a brow. "Suppose?" he echoed, and then tacked on, "... My lord?"
"What, did you want to let him go?" Lloyd chastised with a click of his tongue, but there wasn't any bite in the remark. "Some knight you are, Javier."
Said knight rolled his eyes, and that sparked a grin out of the noble. It's easier than ever, to have their back-and-forth, to tease at their supposed stations and how the lines of them blur. There's missing banter time to make up for, after all.
They had given chase to the wizard, and to both of their surprise, the old man was quick on his feet. He hadn't made it very far into the estate, and was actually straying away during the chase, continuously yelling insults and profanities.
It was when Javier was closing in on the man when he had pulled a weirdly gnarled stick out of his robes. It looked blackened and curled, like it was a victim of some strange burning but couldn't bother turning to ash.
Then he said the thing ("Trip and fall in each other's shoes! HYAH!"), and the stick smacked itself across Javier's forehead in unceremonious gusto. It somehow bounced (bounced??) off of him, and continued bouncing along until it tapped Lloyd's shoes.
Then the stick sat there, and nothing happened.
"The hell?" Javier heard his master wonder, a quiet mutter leveled beneath a breath.
The knight paused then, turning to face him, and he caught the remains of concern slipping from the noble's expression. It's a look that Lloyd hides well, but Javier has known him long enough to know the way worry appears on the engineer's face. A barely ticked brow, and the slightest press of his lips.
"I can still hear him," Javier said, turning back to the treeline. The wizard was gone, but his escape wasn't at all quiet. "Should I continue, Master Lloyd?"
"Uh, yeah yeah," Lloyd replied, bending down to pick up the mystery stick. He twisted it in his hands, observing it from every angle. "I'm... I'll head to the library. Bring him back, put him in a room or something. We'll interrogate him about this."
The actual capture was very anti-climactic. That stick trick was the only peculiar one the old man had, apparently, because every other attempt at fending the swordmaster off was just the typical "fireball! Fireball! Fireball!"
It took a bit longer than the knight would have liked, but he wrestled the wizard back to the estate, placed him dutifully in one of the spare rooms, and kept watch. Now that the man was contained, he didn't seem too interested in trying anything else. He had even started whistling at some point (very, very poorly, and Javier had to resist the urge to grumble about it), and then he asked the knight if they had any tea.
They did, plenty thanks to their relation to Asfahan, but Javier wasn't about to tell him that.
Lloyd reappeared shortly after, and the knight stepped aside. The look on the engineer's face was carefully blank, but a fist collected the fabric of his coat tightly behind his back.
"So what's with the stick?" his master asked, and he almost sounded light and jovial. "It's kinda cool looking, I gotta say."
"Really?" The old man seemed... excited? "I worked hard on that one, y'know!"
He stuck his chin up, eyes closed and smile full of pride. The noble and knight shared a baffled look.
"Uh huh," Lloyd said, "you uh, put a lot of care into it, I can tell."
The wizard squinted back, and then he had the audacity to laugh. It started low, but rose into a near-giddy volume as he leaned back. "You still don't know," he said, and Javier couldn't really place what that tone was. "I'm not telling you~!"
The swordmaster heard a quiet tsk before the noble pressed further. "So it does do something," Lloyd concluded, but that didn't earn any other response, so he continued to coax. "If you worked so hard on it, wouldn't you want to show it off?"
"I am showing it off," the man replied, "and it'll change everything."
There's something to the way he spat those words that reminded Javier of earlier, when he was chattering on angrily to the two of them at the front of the estate. This feels bad. This feels really bad, Javier thought, and he glanced at his master.
The engineer's neutral expression hadn't changed, but the grip he had on his coat was tighter. The visible knuckle on his thumb was tensed in white.
There was suddenly a loud ding from the wizard's pocket, and he gave a wide grin. "That's my cue!" he said, bounding up to his feet, "I'd wish you good luck, but I don't want to, so bad luck. Bad luck to you."
A popping sound followed, and the wizard was gone. When did he prepare—but Javier's wonder was cut short by a palm cupping his face and the back of a hand pressed against his forehead.
Lloyd was quiet as his gaze searched Javier's face, a frown slipping onto his lips. This was another look that the knight had gotten to know over the years, that sharp and taut stare. It always appeared on the engineer's face just before whatever storm disrupted their calm next, piercing through the swordmaster as if he was seeing something just beyond Javier's reach.
"You don't feel any different?" he asked, strangely low, carefully soft.
"No, sir." The stick hadn't even left a mark. Javier didn't know whether that was a good or bad sign.
Lloyd hummed, dropping his hands, but the tension in his body didn't subside. "Is he still around?"
The knight took a moment to exhale a breath, and he let his mana go with it, his senses spreading down the foundation of the manor and across the ground outside. Javier couldn't recall when he picked this skill up, but it had been useful in locating Lloyd whenever they were separated.
(It didn't work while Lloyd was across worlds, but Javier didn't know that at the time, so he got a lot of practice in.)
Javier shook his head. The presence of the wizard was totally gone, which was strange. Teleportation spells always leave a trail of mana behind, according to Siluria, but there was no such trail even remotely near the estate.
"I don't believe he used teleportation, my lord," the knight reported. His master's shoulders drooped with a sigh.
"That's alright. Maybe he was just a weirdo, and nothing's actually happened." The engineer tried for a light smile, but it came out a little wry, as if he didn't really believe his own words.
"With your luck?" Javier quipped, raising a brow, and that earned him a light shove from his master. There was no real fight to it, and the half-smile was now curled into something a little softer.
"Oh, hush. I'm the luckiest man alive," Lloyd snorted, "we'll figure this out. We always do."
"Of course, my lord," Javier said, fully genuine.
They both exited the room, and the engineer quickly made his way back towards the library, his knight in tow. "I'll look into this stick, see if I can find any useful information on it," he said, "and you will sit tight."
"I can—" Javier began to argue, but his master whirled around and pressed a finger right into his chest.
"You will sit tight," Lloyd continued, "because that wizard was clearly a freak, so we don't know the extent of what his magic will do. I need to monitor you."
"I can handle myself," he retorted, but it's weak on his tongue, because that sharp stare was back, coupled with that furrowed brow Lloyd always gets when he's fretting over other people. He's the most stubborn when he gets like that. Javier decided then to let this one go.
"I know you can," the noble said, "so come with me, and you can track your mana while I research."
The knight gave a muted nod, and Lloyd returned a satisfied one. The walk to their estate library was silent.
Said library had freshened up well over the years. Before everything, it sat in dusty disuse, due to be given up as part of the original foreclosure. Then, Lloyd started visiting rather frequently, and it has brightened up ever since with regular cleanings and fresh new pages. The engineer had even carved a little nook for himself; a stacked corner of hardcovers he intended to work through, all piled around a rolling ladder. At the base of the ladder was a fluffy sea of blankets, brought in by Countess Marbella whenever her son fell asleep there.
"I swear to god," Lloyd grumbled as he fell into rhythm of snatching books and sliding them to the ladder—Javier still isn't sure what god Lloyd is referring to, even after all these years—"This better be nothing. Can't even daydream about catching a break..."
Javier hummed in agreement, and he took a seat at a table nearby. There wasn't any change to his mana flow, and he really felt fine. It's not like this was part of fate, or anything like that; they resolved that so long ago, and nothing dire had happened since. Hell, the two of them had a whole argument about it, where Lloyd had sent himself into a paranoid spiral of fate returning with a vengeance.
... that was likely part of why Lloyd reacted the way he did to this incident.
The sound of Lloyd's reading murmurs slipped into Javier's ears, and much like a dog heeding a bell, the drowsiness came racing in. It doesn't help that the wood of the table had been warmed by the sunlight's gentle stream, and the rest of the library was blissfully quiet.
Lloyd would wake me, should something happen... His lingering thought came and went as the world in his vision blurred. He can barely focus on the curve of Lloyd's back, hunched and focused. Everything's fine, so...
The tide of sleep washed in, and Javier was pulled in deep.
Javier wakes, and something is wrong.
The first indication of this isn't actually anything he sees. It's the mana that rings the alarm first, how different it feels. The knight reaches into his heart, and finds that his own heart isn't a manaheart at all. Hell, even his mana circles are rotating differently; they're sloppily round, instead of perfectly curling around the shape of the heart like they should.
The second indication is the utter exhaustion. There's a stubborn pounding in his head, and every thought—What happened, I feel different? What's going on?—feels soupy and thick. He hasn't felt like this since before the lullabies began.
He can't help the groan that escapes, and that immediately brings pause. Eyes still closed, he reaches for his throat.
Javier recognizes that sound, but it's not his own. It shouldn't—can't be his.
The swordmaster sits up, and finds himself in a pile of blankets. That can't be right. He was sitting at the table. He had laid his head onto the edge, staring at Lloyd, drifting to sleep. Did someone move him? Did Lloyd move him?
He looks up. Lloyd isn't on the ladder above him, nor is he next to him in the mass of blankets. It was deep into the night now, the sunlight was long gone. Did he go to get dinner? Why wasn't Javier woken up?
Something had to have happened. An old, familiar dread sinks through his ribs. He takes in a breath, to reassess, to calm the manaless heart that was beginning to race out of his control. Did Lloyd go to get assistance?
The swordmaster's gaze drifts to the left, and—oh, that's not right at all.
There, slumped over the table, was a head of silver-blue hair, soft and near-glowing in the moonlight. The body attached breathed in and out, without a care in the world. The sleeping expression was soft and relaxed, with lips slightly parted.
That's him. What is he doing over there?
What is Javier doing over here?
The knight lifts a hand to reach, but his stomach churns at the dissonance as his own body makes no motion to move.
"How—" he begins to say, and immediately, his hand comes to his throat again. He knows this voice, now. He knows that soft tone, the way it rumbles a little deep after waking from sleep.
That's Lloyd's voice. Javier looks down, and below him is Lloyd's clothes.
His knees—Lloyd's knees—are quick to feel weak, and he fights the urge to drop to them. What is happening. What happened? Is this what the wizard did? How—
He can't stop Lloyd's heart from picking up, the mana circles whirring erratically around in his chest. It feels hot beneath his skin, everything bubbling into a wrangled gasp for air.
This causes Javi—the body at the table to shoot upright, bright blue eyes struck wide. He takes a harsh, loud breath in, and then he winces, hands shooting straight up to plug his ears.
They stare, and they breath quietly.
"'Trip and fall in each other's shoes'..." Javier watches his own body whisper, and his eyes dawn in wide realization. It's uncanny, watching his own face make an expression so... knowing.
He hears a low laugh, and another whisper follows, barely audible in the dark.
"Our minds have swapped."