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He rose from emptiness.
It was like something had gently carried him over to this form, and while it should have felt new to be alive, he remembered everything it had been through. The way it had seen the world through too-clear vision and travelled on too-fluid limbs. He knew every inch of this body, the way it breathed and moved and talked, and he also knew that it wasn’t his own.
He jolted upright, crying out when the movement left him dizzy and aching. His hand automatically moved to where it hurt the worst, and faint flashes of memory – not his own – echoed in his mind. The flash of a blade, the rumble of stone, something being pulled out of him and loss – and then, waking up. He rested the now bloodstained hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat as it raced and stuttered, trying to keep up with the obviously grave wound in his side.
A stab wound, some part of him registered, but all of that seemed secondary to what he was seeing. The world in his mind had been far brighter, far more vibrant and livelier. Now, it seemed like the colour had been sucked out of it, like varnish over an aged painting. His free hand, the one that supported him, slipped a little as he looked back at the sky, and he could feel the press of cold metal against his palm.
Even as his eyes sought the hues that streaked across it in his memories, his hand shifted across the length of the metal object and curled around a grip of leather. He frowned as he brought it up before him – a sword. A gemstone laid into the pommel of the blade, looking like it was missing something.
So whose was it?
Everything seemed distant, his memories, the ache across his body, the way it reached for something that wasn’t there, that wasn’t his – everything seemed distant, even the pain that slowly lanced through his body, but he could hear the screaming loud and clear.
He felt that strange pull again, with the faintest strain of memory that came with it – a single word.
A name.
“Vash?” he called nervously to the stone before him. There was a large crack across it, like someone had split it in half, and a blue glow flickered across it once before dissipating.
The screaming changed tone, like the voice knew it was being heard. And every inch of him hurt, but getting to Vash might give him some idea of what was going on, so he pushed himself to his feet and staggered to the boulder. He swung the sword into the crevice, pushing with all the strength he could muster, and tried to wedge the blade deep enough between the huge slabs of rock so that he could try to pry them apart.
A small voice at the back of his mind wondered whether the sword would snap, but the memories that slowly trickled into his consciousness easily did away with the thought. The blade wouldn’t break, certainly not with the way he was running on adrenaline and a fraction of the power this body used to hold.
Something must have broken through, because the screaming only became louder and carried through the sword, echoing strangely. His heart ached, reaching out for a familiarity that he could feel but didn’t understand. His vision greyed around the peripherals and the screaming changed pitch, sounding… concerned?
He supported himself with a hand on the stone, still trying to pry the massive rocks apart, but the pain in his side was becoming too much to bear. The stone cracked, but it didn’t give, and the voice, Vash, started to push, and he snapped. He yanked the sword back, pulling a chunk of rock with it, and dropped it unceremoniously as he scrabbled at the stone, desperately trying to break it apart with his bare hands. Logically, he knew it wouldn’t work, but that voice was getting softer and further away, and he had to reach –
He fell to his knees, faintly aware of the blood dripping from the wound once more, seeping into the sleeve of his tunic.
The soul reached out once more, but he was already falling.
He rose from emptiness.
He hadn’t really thought about what that had meant for him, but when he said it to the kind elf who’d saved his life by healing him, the truth was jarring. But even then, it wasn’t entirely true – he didn’t know what had truly happened, save that Vash’s soul had left this body and his had woken inside it, but he was beginning to doubt whether the emptiness had happened at all. Had he been dormant all the while Vash had been within this form? That didn’t sound quite right, but he wouldn’t discount the theory that quickly.
How long had this body lain in the sand, empty, if his soul had landed in it and not been discovered within?
He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know.
What was he, now, anyway? Not quite human, with the way this body was constructed – a bit too fast, too strong, too anything to be human, but not a god anymore, or anything else. He was a soul in another’s body, and had no idea how it had happened or what to do with it.
Vash had all but signed off, he thought. He’d only existed for a few minutes at that point, but the god had been worried about him, the way he was about the rest of his people. Like he was one of his people. He understood that worry too, felt it like the god did, for the people of Vash. How much of his feelings were his own, he wasn’t sure, but he did know that he wanted to chase after the Collector and find out what she’d done. It wasn’t right, and there was more to it than simply stealing away a soul that powerful.
Alinua seemed to sense his discomfort and didn’t press the topic.
And then she asked him about his name, and all he could think was that he hadn’t existed for nearly long enough to have one. Should he have named himself by now? Surely, it wouldn’t be too difficult to choose, since he had all of Vash’s memories of his people, a lot of whom had had rather lovely names.
But it felt wrong to name himself after Vash’s people. Not when he didn’t really hold any claim to them, and especially not after what the Collector did to the city.
His stomach churned at the thought. He wasn’t too sure what she’d done, either. Vash’s recollection of that moment was blurred and murky, and all the god seemed to remember after the rumbling and great pillars of stone shooting up to form a dome over the city was screaming. Not unlike the screaming he’d heard from Vash upon waking up, he realised. The tortured sound of lost souls.
How could he spend time thinking about a name for himself when he still had those duties to perform? He wasn’t even sure if any of them had survived, and he’d have to perform last rites for all those lost lives –
Not to mention, catching the Chimeric Plague was an awful setback to his plans, and though it didn’t seem likely that he had caught the Plague, he didn’t want to risk anyone else’s life by transmitting it to them. However, if he hadn’t caught it, he was letting the Collector slip further away when he could be chasing after her. He flopped back against the ground with a soft groan, trying to get his mind to stop racing. It was bad enough to try to rally together all of Vash’s memories, which phased in and out as they liked, and to come up with some idea about how to fix this entire mess.
So he pushed it aside and moved on.
“Kendal.”
“Hmm?” Alinua momentarily stopped working on the tree to cast a questioning look at him.
He gestured to Vash’s sword. He supposed it was his, for now, with all that had happened. He hoped Vash wouldn’t mind him borrowing it.
“Vash named his sword Kendal,” he explained, twisting his head to look at the blue gemstone. “In the first language spoken in this region, it means ‘right hand’. I think it works for me too.”
Plus, he liked how it sounded.
Alinua stared at him for a few moments, and shrugged. “It’s better than nothing,” she said lightly.
Oh, no.
“Is that bad?” he asked frantically. Was it wrong to name himself after Vash’s sword? Was it that he’d named himself after a sword, and should he have gone with a regular name instead? “I thought it was clever!”
“Eh,” she said indifferently, corner of her lip twitching in amusement, “I’ll get used to it.”
The two of them met each other’s gazes and burst out laughing.
Yeah, so would I.