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rainsonata · 7 years

Text

Unstable

Fandom/Pairing: Elsword; none Rating: K Word Count: 2,044

Summary: With no signs of Diabolic Esper returning, Dominator begins to wonder when the time traveler will show up. One day, Dominator hears a crack and finds a new face waiting for him.

Doom Bringer’s job change fic: [LINK] Dominator’s job change fic: [LINK]

Dominator turn to the sound of the familiar crack, expecting to see eyes the color of the night. It was painful to see no signs of the time traveler after the years he had grown to associate it with him. The frequency of the cracks was as sporadic as his appearances, but it was a welcomed one because it meant Esper was home and a full dinner table to look forward to. Even now, he had a tough time admitting that he missed it after weeks of the man’s absence.

Expecting Esper to crawl out of his portal to surprise him, Dominator backed away in what he thought was the time traveler when he saw someone in his peripheral vision. Adorned in deep shades of violet and magenta was a child wearing a pair of boots two sizes too big. Their clothes were baggy around the arms and legs, jacket unbuttoned to reveal a black turtleneck underneath.

“Time?” He saw the child’s eyes and gasped, the left one with a black sclera and the right remaining clear. Refraining himself from pulling down the child’s hoodie he wore to cover his face, Dominator asked, “What happened to Esper? Have you seen him?”

Something was wrong.

He was too small to be the Time Tracer, who was getting closer to his height as of late with how much he ate because of his and Bringer’s encouragement. It was hard to tell how old this child was because of the baggy clothes. The heavy bags under his eyes gave him a forlorn expression, he didn’t smile when he gave Dominator his attention, having to stand on his tiptoes to look at the scientist.

Could the child be another alternative version of them? It wouldn’t be the first time Esper brought home another, with the tracers and all. Having placed his hand on the child’s shoulder in what was meant to be a gesture of kindness, Dominator dropped his hand when he saw it.

Their left shoulder lost its tangibility, no longer holding form with the lines where it should have been reduced to broken particles, bits of it chipped off and glowing in a color unseen by the human eye. With alarmed eyes, Dominator threw off his coat and wrapped it around the child, in a desperate attempt to hold him together. The rest of their body wasn’t any more stable, sometimes other parts of him losing form. Was he looking at a ghost?

“I’m not Time,” the child’s eyes were closed.

His voice was rich and deep, sounding like it belonged to a man than someone his age with his baby face. It was an aural dissonance that had Dominator turn his head around to look at the child with alarm. There was care in the words he chose, slow pauses before he talked. The lack of intonation in his voice or how still he was when he spoke was unsuited for a child.

Shrugging Dominator’s jacket off, he handed it back to the scientist, “That won’t be necessary. The effect is already in place.”

Many questions ran through his head on what the child meant, but he knew it was poor timing to ask when they had just met. It was better to get more acquainted with them first before pressing on the questions.

Dominator felt stupid for pointing out the obvious, but the child showed no concern for it when he gestured to his shoulder again. “We should still look at it at least.”

Staring with wide eyes, he opened his mouth to object, but the gentleness in Dominator’s tone and the insistence of joining him for a drink left the child to agree with a weak smile. Left on the living room couch, he sat with his legs dangling and his hoodie off to reveal bed hair not unlike that of a certain time traveler. He looked up when Dominator returned with two cups of hot chocolate and a jar of sugar to place on the coffee table. A bag of mini marshmallows, a can of whipped cream, and a cinnamon shaker was spotted alongside the hot drinks for toppings.

It was hard not to stare when the child dumped at least a spoonful worth of sugar and chucked several marshmallows into his hot chocolate to splash some of it onto the coffee table. Dominator sighed at the thought of having to clean that up later, but if it would make it easier for the kid to talk, so be it.

“You’re going to get high on sugar if you’re not careful,” Dominator chuckled and pulled it away from the child when they were going for the third spoon.

Taking a sip from his own drink, he hummed when its sweet taste of chocolate and cinnamon hit the tip of his tongue with sweet delight. It wasn’t as good as when Esper made it, his counterpart had perfected the art of making hot chocolate, but it was enough to satisfy the scientist.

“What’s your name?” Dominator decided to go for an easy question. “Was your shoulder always like this?”

“If you mean being dislocated, I’ve always been close to losing my head.” A grin popped out from his pale features to reveal sharp teeth, “So are my arms.”

It affected other places too? Dominator took note that they ignored his first question and even joked about himself! He huffed at how they weren’t taking their condition with concern and wondered if it was a way for them to cope with it.

“Well,” the child rubbed his chin. After the time spent as a slave, Dominator felt sick when he saw the collar around his neck. “It affects my feet, legs, body... everything really. Even my hair.”

It was a rare moment for Dominator to be unsure of what was wrong with the child. Even after years of researching Nasods and the like, even time travel, it was the first time he saw anything like this. If they were struggling to maintain their form, or what looked to be their own existence, that would be something Esper would know about, not him. Could this child be involved in time and space like Time and Esper?

“Is there pain?” Dominator asked, “Do you feel anything when it happens?”

“It doesn’t hurt, so don’t worry. In fact, it kind of tickles!” The child gave a dark chuckle, “All these questions you’re throwing at me... To the point as always, Add. I suppose things remained the same since I left.”

A smirk curled at his lips, pink seashells against paper-like skin, his eyes glowing magenta to match Dominator’s. The Cheshire grin and how his nimble fingers picked a stray marshmallow from the bag to pop into his mouth as he hummed, as if he read what was on the scientist’s mind and relished that moment in time. The child took a sip and remained smiling, giggling when Dominator lost his grip on his own cup and had to place it down to hold his head.

“Esper,” Dominator breathed his name. “Is that you?”

He clapped his hands and beamed, “You figured it out~ It was cute how worried you were. Did you really think I was a lost child?”

Looking at the child’s face and comparing it to Esper’s in his mind, Dominator saw the similarities. The resemblance was uncanny, but he looked more like Time. The sad dispositions, the small body frame, how could Esper reverse to this state? The prerequisites to reach to that would hold heavy consequences he couldn’t imagine.

“You act like one,” Dominator used the cup to hide his red face with no avail. “Look any younger and someone will ask you where your mother is.”

Dominator covered his mouth, but it was too late. Esper frowned, biting his lips with a hazy look in his eyes that spoke little but an emotion he couldn’t name. Regret? Pain? When he looked at the time traveler again, Esper replaced it with a neutral expression, his lips lying into a hard line. There was a pang of regret when Dominator saw the damage his words had caused.

Gritting his teeth in the pain of his own words, some of it from guilt, Dominator looked up when to Esper when the other disappeared. It happened again. Esper’s form distorted, his body growing transparent and disappearing, filling the air with thick static that made one’s arm hair stand up being in the same room.

His tiny body regained palpability, becoming solid when Dominator tried touching him, but it shocked the scientist when he didn’t pull out his arm back in time. Growing dimmer, Esper faded away with his face regressed in anger and let out a high pitch screech that made Dominator cover his ears.

When he opened his eyes, a tall man dressed in a black high collared suit solidified in where Esper once was. The jewel in his chest shone bright like the long hair falling pas his ankles, wearing a coat falling over his loose shoulders to show the unstructured left shoulder Esper had. Familiar black scleras stared back at Dominator with displeasure.

“Esper… I’m sorry,” Dominator flinched when he saw Esper’s face.

Esper didn’t speak, looking down at his gloves with wet eyes. His face was contorted with raw emotions, fat tears rolled out when Dominator awkwardly wrapped his arms around Esper to pull his counterpart into a tight embrace. The time traveler didn’t reject his touch, so at least a part of him was forgiven, or at least that’s what Dominator hoped for. He wanted Esper to know he didn’t mean what he said with bad intentions, but words be damned. Any form of apology seemed pathetic when what Esper needed was his touch, his presence.

There was more than one form for Esper. From what he had witnessed, those forms were malleable, almost fluid with how quick he was to change between them. It was something unnatural he couldn’t understand because of the likelihood of its relationship to Esper’s unstable existence, but it was enough for Dominator to know that he was in pain.

“Do you want me to stay?” Dominator asked, squeezing Esper’s free hand that wasn’t clinging to his waist. “I’m sure we can figure out what to do about your unstable forms.”

Esper had a sad smile.

Omake

Doom Bringer cheered when Dominator gave in to letting him take them to a new cafe in Velder and Esper wanting to join them for the… special benefits.

Sitting at a benched table outside, the scientist looked at the seats in disgust, not wanting to imagine when was the last time the restaurant employees bothered wiping them clean. He had his drones clean it before he and his counterparts sat of course, but waiting for the food to be brought over to them made the minutes they sat there long and strenuous. At the back of his mind, the scientist wondered if it was too late to take it back and return to his lab.

In his child form, Esper sat with his legs too short to reach the ground, swinging them back and forth as he ate his sandwich, only stopping to steal a sip of coffee from Dominator. Having control over two different age ranges, Bringer saw no problem in ordering a kid’s meal for the discount. Not eating much to begin with, Esper was more than happy to oblige.

“So,” Bring said in between bites with his mouth full of fries. “You can switch between the two forms.”

“Uh huh,” Esper nodded. “Well, it’s harder than I make it sound, but that’s how it works.”

“You’re like a Mad Paradox or something,” the brawler cackled.

“You’re just slapping words together now,” Dominator sighed. The brute probably thought it sounded cool in his head or something like that. There was no way Esper was going to agree to that name-

“You can call me that then,” Esper shrugged and dipped a fry into his milkshake before dropping it in his mouth.

Unbelievable.

Bringer grinned. “We should do this more often.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Dominator hissed.

“Why not?” The brawler laughed, “You get a free toy with it.”

Dominator groaned, but Esper found humor in it and giggled.

#elsword #eltag #Add (Elsword)#Mad Paradox #Dominator #Doom Bringer #Elsword fanfiction #mywriting #my writing #HI I HEARD ESPER’S THIRD JOB IS HERE ARE YOU EXCITED #OFC YOU ARE HERE LET ME WRITE ABOUT THE TRASH #AND CRY OVER HIM BEFORE THE LORE IS PROPERLY TRANSLATED

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