For the first time since the rise of the new moon, the click of footsteps can be heard echoing through the halls of the former False Moon Institute. Where one Doctor was struck down, another has come to collect any materials left over from the creation of the artificial moon marrow. The notes will surely be invaluable, and many of its components can likely be used in future work. The first iteration of the artificial marrow had given him a massive surge of power when combined with the others; there's still potential there. Fate won't dominate him forever.
"There, be careful with that," Dottore says as a cohort of Fatui soldiers start moving the more delicate machinery into a storage box. "If you break it, you'll have to put it back together."
It's an effective threat. Nobody but the Doctor knows how to build these things. While others do the physical work, he flips through the research notes. Of course he was the one who wrote them, in a manner of speaking, but review is essential, and it's important to make sure it's all accounted for.
It takes the better part of a day to get everything loaded up onto an inconspicuous ship docked at the Institute's small pier. Dottore is reviewing a checklist before boarding; it won't do to have missed something important and have to come back.
The letter from Nefer came unmarked and without a signature, but there's only one person in Nasha Town who would send missives on parchment from Sumeru — green ink still wet and seeping into the paper, bearing a hint of incense. And yet, despite the elaborate trappings, the message inside was incredibly simple and straightforward:
You might want to investigate the False Moon Institute.
So Aether went. Might is a polite way of saying that he should, which means there's something of such dire importance that Aether needed to know about it immediately. And, lo and behold, the traveler arrives to find Dottore himself loading machinery and other odds and ends into a ship docked at the pier.
How? Didn't they kill him? But then, he's like a cockroach with his segments, isn't he: you crush one and another pops up to take its place. Aether has to resist the impulse to groan.
Right. This is probably the one that was located in Snezhnaya this whole time. And the one they killed, the one that was experimenting with the moon, that was just another one of his many little clones.
Aether thinks of bugs. Squirming, disgusting bugs.
Dottore is somewhat more pleasant to look at than a bug, of course. But not by much, when one considers his interests.
Aether decides not to make any immediate and impulsive moves; he decides not to approach, at least not immediately. He wants to wait and see if he can figure out what Dottore is doing. He's not really making any special effort to stay hidden, though. Can Dottore see him where he is — a lone figure garbed in white and gold on a cliff's edge just above where he's directing his soldiers? Aether hasn't used a bow since he left Inazuma, but he imagines it, sometimes. The care he'd take in aiming. Pull the string taut and aim for Dottore's chest, maybe his throat...
If such a thing as killing intent exists, then maybe Dottore will be able to feel it from up above. At the very least, perhaps he will sense Aether staring.
If the Doctor could take notice every time someone wanted to kill him, he'd never get any work done. It's not until he waves one of his subordinates over to discuss something that there's any indication something's wrong, because the gunner spots Aether on the ridge and immediately drops to one knee to line up a careful shot. "Lord Harbinger!" he barks, bracing the butt of his rifle against his shoulder.
Dottore turns, following the sightline of the gun, and smirks a little when he spots the descender on the cliff. He reaches out and pushes the rifle down before the soldier can fire off a round. "Well spotted," he says, and gives a subtle sign for the soldier to stand. "Go with the others, sail back to Snezhnaya with the supplies."
"Lord Harbinger, are you certain? We don't know his intentions." The man does stand, though, shouldering his gun again. The full-face mask hides any expression he might be making but his bearing is uncertain, caught between instinct and orders. Dottore shakes his head.
"Look at his position. Far away, but with a significant height advantage; I dare say he had a clean shot on me, yet he didn't take it. What does that tell you?"
"That he doesn't have a gun," the soldier says grimly, which draws a sharp laugh from the Doctor.
"True, true. My instruction stands. Take the supplies back to the mainland."
"Of course, sir. Do you require another ship be sent back to pick you up?" His warning had been heard and acknowledged, and subsequently discarded. The gunner supposes he did his due diligence.
"No. 'I' will meet you there," Dottore says mildly.
As his troops withdraw and the ship pulls away from the pier, the Doctor doesn't take his eyes off the Traveler, arms folded neatly behind his back. He can wait.
It's an unsettling feeling. To have the Doctor's gaze on him — a gaze that he himself cannot see for the way that the man's mask obscures his features. Aether's never liked it, the way that he has no idea what the man truly looks like past the mask. But would it matter even if he did? Either way, he knows that he's looking at one of the most reprehensible people he's ever had the misfortune of meeting.
That being said, the conversation with his subordinate was really very funny. Aether almost laughed, too, which says terrible things about how he and the Doctor may or may not have similar taste in humor past their differences, but it's easier to hold back his chortling when he remembers the things he's seen throughout the nations. Abandoned labs, faded medical records. Aged passages describing deaths that the writer did not even conceive of as deaths so much as experiments.
No — it's really no laughing matter at all.
Though the other unsettling piece of this puzzle is this: Aether feels like he spent an eternity with that segment of Dottore in the time between the moons, but rationally, he realizes, the Dottore in front of him now is a completely different man entirely, and shouldn't have any knowledge of what that was like.
Does he know Dottore, or does he not know Dottore? He knows the Dottore that he killed; what does that make this Dottore? Thinking about it feels like it's going to lead into some kind of bland tautological philosophy, so Aether simply sighs, steels himself, and —
— leaps from the cliff, landing heavy on his heels.
Normally, he'd summon his sword at this junction, but the hands behind Dottore's back implies that he intends to make this an unarmed conversation, so Aether relents. He knows full well that neither of them are ever truly unarmed. He rises slowly to his feet, now standing some short distance away from Dottore.
"You seem awfully busy," Aether says lightly, as though greeting an old friend. The look on his face suggests something closer to unfettered rage, though. "Moving day?
The Doctor chuckles. "Descender," he says by way of greeting. Notably, he keeps his hands out of sight; this is still a friendly chat, and he has no intention of escalating unless he has to.
He very rarely has to.
"It would be a shame to leave useful materials behind, don't you think?" Dottore looks off towards the institute - fully gutted of anything valuable, though he doesn't doubt that scavengers might be able to find trinkets to sell. "It was all very costly, and I do like to keep my expense reports short." Not that he ever gets much in the way of a lecture, not the way other colleagues might; being friends with the purse-strings has its benefits.
"Very impressive work, thwarting my ascension. Bringing down the moon? Playing on my expectations for Sandrone's behavior? Quite clever. Terribly sorry about her, by the way." He starts pacing a wide circle around Aether, sizing him up without coming closer. This is the first time they've met, in a way - it's rare for the original to spend time outside of Snezhnaya. It's what the Segments are for, to wander the world and bring back knowledge, but his stores of them have been... reduced.
He really should be thanking the Traveler for putting down the one that erased the others.
"But you hadn't known her long, and she was hardly the gentle soul that Columbina is. Did you truly understand her? Enjoy her company? Or was she simply a convenient ally?" It's something that's hard for Dottore to get a bead on, but his relationships with people couldn't be more different than Aether's.
Dottore paces him like a panther stalking prey in the underbrush, waiting for the chance to strike. Aether is suddenly reminded that the man hailed from Sumeru, long ago, and thinks of Rishboland Tigers. It's not Aether's first time being sized up this way, so he maintains his poise, staring straight ahead, not bothering to follow Dottore's movements as he steps into his peripheral vision and then out of it entirely.
Did he? Know Sandrone very well? He knew her long enough to get a sense that she had a softer side past the outward bluster, but that softer side was largely reserved for Columbina, not for him. He did not really have tender moments with Sandrone, he can admit that much. But it wasn't necessary for them to be friends, really. It's not what everyone expects of him, but the truth is, Aether has always been very practical at heart. No, he doesn't believe that everyone he works with is a friend.
Were they friends? No. But did he respect her? Yes, greatly. Was he devastated when she gave up her life for their cause? Yes — and that wasn't because she was an ally that he needed, but for her as a person, as a thinker, as the last living legacy of Alain Guillotin, a man he met in spirit if not in fact.
She was neither a friend nor merely a 'convenient' ally.
But telling Dottore all of this has no upsides. Why confess to anything that might even remotely resemble vulnerability?
"To be honest, I didn't know her very well," Aether says coldly, gold eyes fixed straight ahead.
"But I do have a message from her." His fingers curl slightly, aching for the weight of the sword he hasn't summoned. "'Go to hell, Dottore.'" A faint twitch of the lips, one that may have been a repressed smirk. "Sound familiar?"
"I can rebuild her, you know." The Doctor's voice is suddenly much closer, not quite in Aether's ear, but clearly he's taken a step or two closer while out of sight. He respects the willpower needed not to turn to face a foe as they cross out of view. When he comes back around, he's absolutely close enough for Aether to reach with his sword, should he choose to. "She would be too proud to ask, but I happen know another little piece of her philosophy - only the living get to decide what happens next."
The thought has crossed his mind, in the past. Guillotin was a singular man, and to examine the inner workings of his magnum opus isn't an opportunity to be passed up. He'd offered, once, to improve her, but she'd simply thrown her tea in his face and had Pulonia show him out. A pity.
It wasn't entirely unexpected — his segment was also fond of doing things like this — but even so, Aether does flinch slightly when Dottore's voice comes that much louder, at just the right frequency that it seems to trickle down the back of the traveler's neck. A muscle tenses in Aether's throat when he swallows.
"No thanks," the Descender replies — not the most graceful response, perhaps, but he is a bit unsettled by the proximity — "and it's not my choice to make."
Arlecchino already took Sandrone's cores back to Fontaine — to do what, he doesn't know, but if anyone has the right to rebuild her then it certainly would be Arlecchino over Dottore.
Aether changes tack. "Why are you still here, Dottore?" he asks, turning his head just slightly, but not enough to glare at Dottore over his shoulder. "Are you really just here to recover what your segment left behind?"
Dottore's eyebrows raise behind his mask, not that Aether can see it. "I'm surprised you picked up on my status as the original. Well done." The Segment did quite a lot of this as well - praising what he sees as effective intuition and reasoning. "But perhaps it's your status as a Descender that allows you to discern where my soul lies. I won't hazard a guess." He stops once he's in front of Aether again.
That he has a soul might be the bigger revelation.
"I did return to recover my materials, yes, but I believe now I've found more interesting questions." He puts a hand to his chin, the first time he's moved it from behind his back. "I must ask, what does it take for you to consider someone worth allying with? Arlecchino's hands are stained with as much blood as mine are, and it doesn't seem like you took the time to hear Rosalyne out before you killed her. Well, allowed her to die, but she would surely still be alive without your intervention."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
"There, be careful with that," Dottore says as a cohort of Fatui soldiers start moving the more delicate machinery into a storage box. "If you break it, you'll have to put it back together."
It's an effective threat. Nobody but the Doctor knows how to build these things. While others do the physical work, he flips through the research notes. Of course he was the one who wrote them, in a manner of speaking, but review is essential, and it's important to make sure it's all accounted for.
It takes the better part of a day to get everything loaded up onto an inconspicuous ship docked at the Institute's small pier. Dottore is reviewing a checklist before boarding; it won't do to have missed something important and have to come back.
sorry for the wait ♥
You might want to investigate the False Moon Institute.
So Aether went. Might is a polite way of saying that he should, which means there's something of such dire importance that Aether needed to know about it immediately. And, lo and behold, the traveler arrives to find Dottore himself loading machinery and other odds and ends into a ship docked at the pier.
How? Didn't they kill him? But then, he's like a cockroach with his segments, isn't he: you crush one and another pops up to take its place. Aether has to resist the impulse to groan.
Right. This is probably the one that was located in Snezhnaya this whole time. And the one they killed, the one that was experimenting with the moon, that was just another one of his many little clones.
Aether thinks of bugs. Squirming, disgusting bugs.
Dottore is somewhat more pleasant to look at than a bug, of course. But not by much, when one considers his interests.
Aether decides not to make any immediate and impulsive moves; he decides not to approach, at least not immediately. He wants to wait and see if he can figure out what Dottore is doing. He's not really making any special effort to stay hidden, though. Can Dottore see him where he is — a lone figure garbed in white and gold on a cliff's edge just above where he's directing his soldiers? Aether hasn't used a bow since he left Inazuma, but he imagines it, sometimes. The care he'd take in aiming. Pull the string taut and aim for Dottore's chest, maybe his throat...
If such a thing as killing intent exists, then maybe Dottore will be able to feel it from up above. At the very least, perhaps he will sense Aether staring.
you're good bestie
Dottore turns, following the sightline of the gun, and smirks a little when he spots the descender on the cliff. He reaches out and pushes the rifle down before the soldier can fire off a round. "Well spotted," he says, and gives a subtle sign for the soldier to stand. "Go with the others, sail back to Snezhnaya with the supplies."
"Lord Harbinger, are you certain? We don't know his intentions." The man does stand, though, shouldering his gun again. The full-face mask hides any expression he might be making but his bearing is uncertain, caught between instinct and orders. Dottore shakes his head.
"Look at his position. Far away, but with a significant height advantage; I dare say he had a clean shot on me, yet he didn't take it. What does that tell you?"
"That he doesn't have a gun," the soldier says grimly, which draws a sharp laugh from the Doctor.
"True, true. My instruction stands. Take the supplies back to the mainland."
"Of course, sir. Do you require another ship be sent back to pick you up?" His warning had been heard and acknowledged, and subsequently discarded. The gunner supposes he did his due diligence.
"No. 'I' will meet you there," Dottore says mildly.
As his troops withdraw and the ship pulls away from the pier, the Doctor doesn't take his eyes off the Traveler, arms folded neatly behind his back. He can wait.
no subject
That being said, the conversation with his subordinate was really very funny. Aether almost laughed, too, which says terrible things about how he and the Doctor may or may not have similar taste in humor past their differences, but it's easier to hold back his chortling when he remembers the things he's seen throughout the nations. Abandoned labs, faded medical records. Aged passages describing deaths that the writer did not even conceive of as deaths so much as experiments.
No — it's really no laughing matter at all.
Though the other unsettling piece of this puzzle is this: Aether feels like he spent an eternity with that segment of Dottore in the time between the moons, but rationally, he realizes, the Dottore in front of him now is a completely different man entirely, and shouldn't have any knowledge of what that was like.
Does he know Dottore, or does he not know Dottore? He knows the Dottore that he killed; what does that make this Dottore? Thinking about it feels like it's going to lead into some kind of bland tautological philosophy, so Aether simply sighs, steels himself, and —
— leaps from the cliff, landing heavy on his heels.
Normally, he'd summon his sword at this junction, but the hands behind Dottore's back implies that he intends to make this an unarmed conversation, so Aether relents. He knows full well that neither of them are ever truly unarmed. He rises slowly to his feet, now standing some short distance away from Dottore.
"You seem awfully busy," Aether says lightly, as though greeting an old friend. The look on his face suggests something closer to unfettered rage, though. "Moving day?
no subject
He very rarely has to.
"It would be a shame to leave useful materials behind, don't you think?" Dottore looks off towards the institute - fully gutted of anything valuable, though he doesn't doubt that scavengers might be able to find trinkets to sell. "It was all very costly, and I do like to keep my expense reports short." Not that he ever gets much in the way of a lecture, not the way other colleagues might; being friends with the purse-strings has its benefits.
"Very impressive work, thwarting my ascension. Bringing down the moon? Playing on my expectations for Sandrone's behavior? Quite clever. Terribly sorry about her, by the way." He starts pacing a wide circle around Aether, sizing him up without coming closer. This is the first time they've met, in a way - it's rare for the original to spend time outside of Snezhnaya. It's what the Segments are for, to wander the world and bring back knowledge, but his stores of them have been... reduced.
He really should be thanking the Traveler for putting down the one that erased the others.
"But you hadn't known her long, and she was hardly the gentle soul that Columbina is. Did you truly understand her? Enjoy her company? Or was she simply a convenient ally?" It's something that's hard for Dottore to get a bead on, but his relationships with people couldn't be more different than Aether's.
no subject
Did he? Know Sandrone very well? He knew her long enough to get a sense that she had a softer side past the outward bluster, but that softer side was largely reserved for Columbina, not for him. He did not really have tender moments with Sandrone, he can admit that much. But it wasn't necessary for them to be friends, really. It's not what everyone expects of him, but the truth is, Aether has always been very practical at heart. No, he doesn't believe that everyone he works with is a friend.
Were they friends? No. But did he respect her? Yes, greatly. Was he devastated when she gave up her life for their cause? Yes — and that wasn't because she was an ally that he needed, but for her as a person, as a thinker, as the last living legacy of Alain Guillotin, a man he met in spirit if not in fact.
She was neither a friend nor merely a 'convenient' ally.
But telling Dottore all of this has no upsides. Why confess to anything that might even remotely resemble vulnerability?
"To be honest, I didn't know her very well," Aether says coldly, gold eyes fixed straight ahead.
"But I do have a message from her." His fingers curl slightly, aching for the weight of the sword he hasn't summoned. "'Go to hell, Dottore.'" A faint twitch of the lips, one that may have been a repressed smirk. "Sound familiar?"
no subject
The thought has crossed his mind, in the past. Guillotin was a singular man, and to examine the inner workings of his magnum opus isn't an opportunity to be passed up. He'd offered, once, to improve her, but she'd simply thrown her tea in his face and had Pulonia show him out. A pity.
no subject
"No thanks," the Descender replies — not the most graceful response, perhaps, but he is a bit unsettled by the proximity — "and it's not my choice to make."
Arlecchino already took Sandrone's cores back to Fontaine — to do what, he doesn't know, but if anyone has the right to rebuild her then it certainly would be Arlecchino over Dottore.
Aether changes tack. "Why are you still here, Dottore?" he asks, turning his head just slightly, but not enough to glare at Dottore over his shoulder. "Are you really just here to recover what your segment left behind?"
no subject
That he has a soul might be the bigger revelation.
"I did return to recover my materials, yes, but I believe now I've found more interesting questions." He puts a hand to his chin, the first time he's moved it from behind his back. "I must ask, what does it take for you to consider someone worth allying with? Arlecchino's hands are stained with as much blood as mine are, and it doesn't seem like you took the time to hear Rosalyne out before you killed her. Well, allowed her to die, but she would surely still be alive without your intervention."