paradisalost | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Yuan and Chris
What: Eggnog of truth! and discussion of their lives.
When: Tonight, probably for a while.
Where: The kitchen.
Rating: PG, maybe a light PG-13 depending on any swearing that might crop up

Yuan made his way down to the kitchen, in the mood for a light snack. He wondered idly, as he swerved to avoid yet another clump of mistletoe, whether he would start gaining weight now that he was eating again. Not that that would keep him from snacking; tasting food was still a novelty, and he'd come to actually enjoy trying new things. Arriving, he opened the fridge. "Hm, eggnog," he said. "I suppose now I can see what Rebecca's always trying to force on me this time of year."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What was wrong with everyone?

Stalking into the kitchen, Chris had his hand half over his face in exasperation and in an effort to hide the emotions that were playing so easily over his face. Right now, he was trying to figure out the reason that, in the course of about five hours, he'd been kissed. Twice (technically, thrice if you counted both of his halves separately). Both by men.

It was entirely possible the Castle had something to do with it, he acquiesced to himself. It only started when the Castle had redecorated. At the same time that most people seemed infected with some sort of jolly bug. It just seemed a little too coincidental.

Sliding his hand off his face, Chris looked around in the hopes that the kitchen would be empty enough to work in without being bothered. He needed something to take his mind off of--everything. He spotted some familiar blue hair over by the refrigerator and debated walking back out, or just hoping Yuan wouldn't notice him (seeing as orbing was apparently out of the question now, thanks to the Castle).

Not seeing Chris just yet, Yuan took the eggnog over to the counter and began pouring himself a glass of it, humming a few bars of a song he'd heard earlier. He stopped as soon as he noticed himself humming, and shook his head. Something was clearly up, but whatever it was wouldn't let him be grumpy about it, so he was doing his best to ignore it until it went away.

As he shook his head, though, something by the doorway caught his eye. "Ah, Chris," he called. "Want some eggnog?" The other man was looking distraught, which wasn't surprising given the difficult time he'd been having lately. "You look like you could use it."

Well, there went the 'walk back out' option. It had been looking so nice, too...

Shaking his head, Chris gave Yuan some sort of half smile and approached. "Hey, Yuan... You think it's spiked?" he asked, almost hopefully. Yuan was at least right in the last statement; Chris could certainly use to stop thinking for the rest of the night.

"Not yet, but I'm sure we could remedy that," Yuan replied dryly. He got down another glass and began to fill it. "Looking for anything in particular here, or just wandering?"

Chris sat himself up on the counter, not wanting to go find a stool or a chair. Lightly knocking the back of his foot against the counter in some sort of rhythm, he shook his head.

"Just wandering," he lied, not wanting to have to explain the emotional turmoil swirling around. It was hard enough for himself to understand, much less try to tell someone else about.

When the second glass was full, Chris didn't wait for anything alcoholic to be found before accepting it and taking a sip. He hadn't had eggnog in a long time... it was hard to believe he'd almost forgotten what it tasted like.

Yuan took a careful sip of his own drink, and his eyes widened. "This is good," he murmured in surprise, drinking a bit more. "I see why everyone's always going on about it." Surely he must have had it before at some point, but it had been far too long to remember.

"I didn't hear anyone talking about it before," Chris replied, giving Yuan a raised eyebrow. He took another drink of it and tilted his head a little. "But it is good, I'll give you that."

Thinking back for a moment, Chris compared the taste to another somewhere in the back of his mind. "Not as good as Mom's, though," he murmured. Then, he froze, trying to figure out what made him say that.

"I meant back in my world," Yuan replied absently. "My senior staff tended to be more festive than I was, and most of them loved eggnog; one rather persistent woman kept trying to feed me sweets even when I repeatedly told her I couldn't taste anything." He frowned a bit. "I didn't mean to say that," he added conversationally. "I don't usually talk much about the Renegades."

"The Renegades?" Chris asked curiously. He wondered about the 'couldn't taste anything' part of what Yuan said, but wanted to know about these 'Renegades' more. "It sounds like the resistance back home," he said, the words coming out before he could even think them, much less stop them.

...Okay, now he knew something weird was going on. Even in his own dimension, back in 2004, he had never mentioned the resistance. It had just as much to do with the fact that he'd never wanted any of the sisters to find out he'd led it as the fact that he didn't want the sisters to find any of the future members in the hopes of harassing them for Chris's identity (whether they actually would know it or not).

Could it be the Christmas Cheer that had been infecting everyone else was finally getting to him too?

"Something like that, I would imagine," Yuan agreed. "A secret guerrilla-warfare group made to look like the ones we were fighting to outsiders, ultimately trying to make things better and break the cycle of hatred."

This was wrong. Admittedly, he didn't think Chris would use the information against him, but he never spoke so freely about the group he'd tried so hard, and for so long, to keep secret. Perhaps it was more of whatever had been making him feel happy all day.

"Sounds similar." Chris took another sip of his eggnog before tilting his head back. "The resistance is a group of good witches, Whitelighters and mortals in my time, all trying to end Wyatt's rule. We didn't infiltrate so much, but we did have a few people on the inside for insurance."

For a moment, he couldn't even remember why it felt wrong that he was talking about this. He never talked about it. Why didn't he talk about it more--because it was private and unnecessary and he really didn't need to.

Yes, something was still wrong and seemed to be getting worse.

Dammit.

"Wyatt is the name of your enemy?" Yuan asked rhetorically. "Seems rather commonplace, I would have thought he'd choose a more dramatic name." He glanced at Chris. "Or did he, and you use his old name anyway? But that would seem to imply that you knew him before." He wasn't terribly keen on putting Chris on the spot like this, he had to admit, but it was better than continuing to ramble about the Renegades.

"Wyatt..." Chris closed his eyes and tried, for a moment, to keep from saying anything. It didn't work. "Wyatt never changed his name; he kept it in order to remind others of his power. Everyone knew to fear the name Wyatt Matthew Halliwell before he was twenty years old."

Something about that name rang a bell in the back of Yuan's mind. "Halliwell?" he said slowly, gaze distant. "I've heard that name, that's..." He looked at Chris suddenly, remembering; it had been only earlier today, after all. "Your mother's name," he finished. "...That must be difficult." It seemed he and Chris were even more alike than he had realized, though admittedly he hadn't actually been related to Mithos by blood.

Dammit.

Chris sighed and brought a hand up to the bridge of his nose, trying to collect himself. He had revealed more to Yuan in the last half an hour than he had revealed to the sister over the last five months.

He blamed the Castle.

"It is," he answered. "Seeing him like that... I can't stand it. He's turned into a monster. But... he's still the Wy I grew up with. I couldn't forget any of that long enough to do what needed to be done, so we came up with the other plan." Chris absently pulled one of his legs up to wrap an arm around. He didn't want to talk about this. So why was he so eager to do it anyway?

"I...know all too well how that can be," Yuan replied, with a touch of bitterness that even Christmas cheer couldn't overcome. "Except that Mithos...it took a long time, but he changed too much to have any hope of bringing him back. Kratos still feels bound to him, that knightly honor thing of his that Mithos has learned to abuse, but I know better. The boy I knew is already dead." He sighed. "And now he's come back. At least yours isn't here."

Chris listened intently, but whether it was the Castle's effect or something else, he couldn't help but snort at the mental image he somehow just got. "Oh... oh, God, I just imagined Wyatt... as a catboy," he murmured, trying to tone down the amusement, but it was difficult.

Taking a breath, he nodded. "Uh... yeah." He knit his brows together and tilted his head slightly. "Kratos?"

Yuan squeezed his eyes shut. "Please don't remind me; that's got to be one of the more disturbingly-bizarre things the castle has done while I've been here." It did raise his mood a bit, though.

"Kratos is my best friend," he replied. "The first human who ever showed me kindness, the one who freed me...we may have gotten more distant over time, but he's still...so important. I hate what Mithos has turned him into, he's so broken now, and he won't leave again after what happened with Anna..." He couldn't help himself; he was saying far too much, and he couldn't stop.

Still grinning slightly, Chris gave a not-quite-sincere, "Sorry," before letting Yuan explain.

"I'm sorry," he said again, serious this time. "It's hard, seeing something like that..." He trailed off, frowning in confusion for a moment. None of his friends had ever defected to Wyatt's side, nor betrayed him in some other manner; they were a very close knit group as a world like theirs required. So why did Chris feel like he knew the feeling of being betrayed by someone so close?

Quickly, to keep the subject off of himself, he asked, "Anna?"

"His wife," Yuan replied, a bit more comfortable talking about Kratos' history than his own. "Well, I don't think they were ever officially married, going near a Church might have caused problems. She bore his child, but then Kvar used the Exsphere embedded in her to turn her into a monster. Kratos was forced to kill her, and his son and pet apparently ended up dead in the process - it was hard to get details out of him while I was trying to keep him from killing himself." He paused. "Lloyd lived, though, apparently, because Sheena said he's the one who saved the world. Never would have thought it, myself, but I haven't seen him since he was three."

"Exsphere?" Chris murmured, trying to figure out what sort of thing that could be to turn someone into a monster - literally, if he was understanding correctly.

The last part is what struck him as familiar, though. "Lloyd didn't grow up with a father either?" he asked, almost lowering his voice for some unknown reason. He hadn't meant to add the 'either', even if it was true.

Leo had never been around for Chris growing up, and hearing that this Kratos's son may have gone through the same thing made Chris feel as though they were kindred spirits. Never mind that the circumstances leading up to their fatherless states were as different as night and day, the end results were still the same.

As an afterthought - and hopefully something to work as a distraction to keep Yuan from asking about Leo - Chris added, "How did he save the world? Didn't you say it was split in two?"

"A crystal that grants extra powers, but if improperly equipped it absorbs the soul of the person it's attached to," Yuan explained. "They're stronger once they've absorbed at least one soul. If a person dies with one attached, their soul will be bound within the gem until it's destroyed."

Yuan thought for a moment. "I believe Sheena mentioned something about Lloyd being adopted by someone, although I don't know who," he said. "But he grew up without any knowledge of his true father, that is certain."

To the final question, he frowned a bit. "I wasn't there," he admitted. "It happened after my time, remember. As I understand it, he gained control of the Eternal Sword, that let Mithos split the world in the first place, then used it to reunite them. After that, he must have used Derris-Kharlan's mana to sprout the Great Seed, so that the Tree would be revived to provide mana to the unified world. That was why the worlds were split in the first place, because the Great Kharlan Tree died, and there wasn't enough mana to sustain life."

"Derris-Kharlan?" Chris asked, all of the terms he either knew in half-measures or not at all confusing him. "You mentioned a Tree when you were a kid, too... What exactly is the Great Kharlan Tree?"

"Derris-Kharlan is a comet made of pure mana," Yuan replied. "It's where the Elves came from originally, and when they arrived they planted the Great Kharlan Tree to provide mana to the new world they had found. No one knows exactly how the Tree produced mana, but it was extremely important to the world. When it died, only the Seed was left, and it only gave off enough to sustain half a world."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only