242 - Twisted Past

Lexie sat up, her mood instantly shifting. “It was bad?”

“I mean…” Dewie took a deep breath. “Okay, so basically I saw a lot of stuff. Mostly with her fighting monsters and stuff, and most of it was really bloody and gory, and I didn’t want to see it anymore. It was making me sick. The Mountain said that I could tune my visions with the right practice, but I’m not great at it. But I just focused really hard on not seeing any of the bloody stuff. I was hoping maybe I would see something that would show…you know..."

“That she was alive?” Lexie instantly got what he was trying to do, why he was so insistent on touching the gem. Ah, Dewie.

“Yeah,” Dewie said. “I know it's stupid and I know she’s been gone for a while, but maybe I thought...I just wanted to have good news for you.” He sounded like he was about to cry. “I’m so sorry, Lexie.”

"It’s okay.” Lexie swallowed past the knot in her own throat. “It’s okay, Dewster. I understand, and I'm really grateful you did that for me. Just tell me what you saw.”

“One of the non-violent visions I had was of her and Vacek. I don’t know why I had it, maybe because he was standing there? I don’t know. Anyway, they were arguing.”

“About what?” 

“‘I don’t know exactly. My visions are usually fragmented, and I don’t always understand the context of the conversation, but it sounded like…he was trying to force her to k-word someone that she didn’t want to.”

"K word?"

"You know..." He completed it in a hushed voice. "Kill."

“Oh." Lexie had forgotten that most people didn't know her mother was an assassin. "Do you know who he wanted her to kill?”

“No. Only that he was getting annoyed that she wouldn’t do it, and she kept saying that she wouldn’t budge, no matter how much he pushed her on it. Oh, and I think she told him if he killed them anyway, she would report it.”

“Okay.” Lexie barely registered Tate getting up and heading to the kitchen. "That's weird."

“Right? I mean, I knew Mr. Vacek wasn't a squeaky-clean guy, and my dad warned me about him, but I didn't think he killed people. I just thought..." Dewie sounded nervous. "What if he makes me kill people too?"

"He won't. Or I'll kill him. And I'm sure I'll have to get in line behind your mom." Vera, for all faults, didn't seem like the type of woman to allow Vacek to turn her new golden boy son into a murderer. "But if he tries to take you anywhere alone, just let me know. I'll put a mental tracker on you just in case." Lexie would ask Aiden to place one for her if he could.

"Okay."

"What exactly did he say after my mom said no? If you can remember."

"He said, 'there will be consequences,' in a very scary way. He also mentioned something she and your dad had done to you. He said that one like this: 'Or do you think I don’t know what you and Aiden did to Lexie?'"

“That sounds like a threat.”

“I think it was." Dewie waited for a beat. "I saw other stuff too, like your mom with Aiden and with you. You were there a lot.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but chose to close it.

Lexie didn’t ask him to complete the thought because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.

In her many dreams of Lara, she’d always felt the love palpating off the woman, so much that it made Lexie hurt, like there was a sore wound on her soul that she refused to acknowledge.

It made her feel guilty as well.

She'd blocked out most of her dreams of Lara.

She didn’t want to think about losing someone who loved her that much and who she had loved once upon a time. So she would rather not think about it.

There were just too many things complicating her feelings for the woman, including the fact that she was Eldritch and chaotic emotions were often both her strength and her weakness.

With Aiden, it was easy to work through that and maintain that affection for him, but with Lara, the possibility that she was alive was just so small that Lexie would rather consider her an abstract concept rather than deal with her as a mother who had died unjustly.

It felt like that would hurt too much to control. So she was better off avoiding it.

At the same time, the universe wasn't letting her avoid it for long.

Whether it was Aiden bringing it up, or it was Max or Vacek or Stella or a plethora of people who'd known Lara in her life.

And even now that Aiden had said he was trying to get over her death and no longer fixate on why she died, guess what happened?

They'd found her life gem, as if she could sense they were moving on and didn’t want them to. 

Wait, not 'she'. He. 

Vulcan. This had his nasty fingerprints all over it.

He’d probably placed that gem there to send them down a false lead or to distract them from their ultimate goal.

Vacek was right. They were probably better off putting this on the back burner while they focused on finding the criminal.

Then again, Aiden had revealed that Lexie was Vulcan's weakness, and her chaos made her difficult to predict, even with The Mountain's powers.

So Vulcan couldn’t have known all of this would happen exactly like this. With Lexie involved in the investigation, he couldn’t have predicted beyond a reasonable doubt that they would find the gem.

Even if he'd placed it there, there was no reason they couldn't do two things at once: track him down while investigating the circumstances behind Lara's disappearance.

Not to mention that Vacek might have his own ulterior motives for not wanting them to focus on the lifelink gem. Most likely, he didn’t want them to see all the secrets he’d shared with Lara.

He most definitely didn’t want Aiden to discover that he threatened Lexie’s mother and her family. 

This was a difficult decision. “What else did you see?”

“Um…I’m not sure. A room with a painting. Throwing knives. Some other stuff, but it's hard to describe."

"If I came to you right now, could I psychically connect to you? So I can see the images for myself?"

“Oh, sure. That's fine."

"Wait, crap, I don't think I can." Lexie bit her lip as she recalled that she’d told her father she wouldn’t teleport willy-nilly anymore. Damn it. She didn’t want to break her promise to her father so soon, especially since he was already having such a shitty day. If he came downstairs and found her gone, he would be even more upset, and he might spiral.

Also, her body was starting to feel the long-term strain from all the frequent teleportations as well, so it was good that she was taking a break.

Ultimately, Lexie wanted to get to the bottom of this before she shared the news with Aiden. If she told him what she knew now, given his mental state, he might lash out and end up doing something that would hurt him in the long run.

Vacek could retaliate by locking Aiden up, or he might simply try to get rid of him.

Lexie felt a surge of protectiveness toward her father. She would protect him from Vacek, from Vulcan, and even from himself.

“When are you going out with Vacek again?” Lexie asked.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I want to make up an excuse to visit you tomorrow. I’ll tell my Dad that we're working on a card or something. He'll bring me over."

“Okay. Can I tell Xena you're coming over?'

“Yeah, of course." Lexie blushed, feeling bad that she hadn't initially thought to include Xena. “I'll see her too. In fact, you two can take an exeat, and we can hang out in Capital City."

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to get exeat on short notice, and I kinda have a full day tomorrow, but I'll try."

"Don't try too hard, it was just a suggestion. Anyway, thanks, Dewie."

"No problem. I just wish I had better news."

"It's okay. You did great. Take care of yourself and don't use your powers anymore if you don't have to. I haven't yet made the healing cards yet."

"Okay. Bye."

After Lexie hung up, she noticed Tate, now back in his seat with a bowl of popcorn, staring at her. 

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“No,” Lexie responded. “My friend Dewie just had a vision of Vacek threatening my mom in the past because she wouldn't kill someone for him. I think he knew what she and Aiden did with my soul.”

“How would he know?”

“I don’t know. The vision didn’t say.” Would Lara have told him? Aiden did say they shared a close relationship, but somehow Lexie didn’t believe that Lara would share something so vital with Vacek, especially since it was something that could get Aiden in trouble and get Lexie confined to a research facility.

So he had to have found out by other means. Did he have Monty read her mind? Or did he spy on her?

Aiden did say that Vacek was good at finding out information, especially stuff that he could use to blackmail people. So it wasn't really a surprise that he'd discovered this.

Or at least it shouldn't be a surprise, but Lexie was surprised regardless.

Vacek had never given any indication of knowing anything. While revealing her Eldritch powers, he'd reacted like all this was a surprise to him. ***

Leie wondered if Aiden would know who Vacek wanted Lara to kill. Lara apparently had had no qualms about killing people she thought were bad, so it could be that this target wasn’t bad, but Vacek simply needed them gone for his own motives. Maybe they knew something they weren’t supposed to. Or maybe they were disruptive, but they were also someone close to Lara.

For example, the Firebringers. 

It was no secret that the Stella Firebringer's parents did not really get along with Vacek. They were the major forces that prevented his dominance at the association, and he might have wanted to use Lara to get rid of them.

And Lara, of course, being best friends with Stella, would say no to that, and Vacek might have threatened her to do it.

So then what was Lara’s response? What would she say to that threat?

“There’s something you should know about that guy,” Tate spoke up suddenly as he munched on popcorn. “Dominic Vacek.”

“What is it?”

“He's a Chosen.”

It took Lexie a few seconds for it to sink in. Then her jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

Tate nodded and tossed more popcorn in his mouth as if he didn’t just share mindblowing, earth-shattering news. 

Lexie got up, went to him, and smacked him very hard on the arm. 

“Ow!” 

“That’s what you get, you jackass! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” 

“Well, I didn’t tell you before for obvious reasons. And after you got back, so much was happening I just kind of forgot.”

“You forgot? You forgot to tell me that Vacek was a Chosen? How do you forget something like that? Wait, how did you know in the first place?”

“Like Vulcan, Dominic Vacek doesn’t show up anywhere in the original game. The head of the association is Stella Firebringer, and after her death, Theo takes over for a short time but ultimately hands it over to Maxim Fox, a character we haven't seen yet. He helps them track down Aiden. That's when the association goes through an overhaul.”

“Wait…Stella dies that early?"

“Well, not anymore, probably,” Tate said. 

“How does she die?” 

“Villain fight. She was overworked and dealing with a lot at the time, and got distracted. She gets taken out by a Villain. It’s indirectly Aiden’s fault because he helped that villain escape in the first place. So Torin killing Aiden was kind of like revenge for that, even though Torin tried not to see it that way.” He said. "The Association was very different from how it is now. It was more like the Wild West, where might makes right. Stella tried to instill some of the same codes of conduct and heroic rules that Vacek did, but she was much less effective at it, and so there was more instability, more villains, more wars, more everything."

“I see,” Lexie said, but her mind was running amok.

So if Vacek was a Chosen and he knew that she was a Chosen too, then… what did that mean? Was he trying to get rid of her? It didn't feel like it.

Or wait, maybe he didn’t know she was a Chosen. At least he didn’t give any indication to her that he did.

Maybe he only knew that a soul had been stolen from an ISTS facility and that it had been combined with that of Lexie Sparrowfoot, but since it was outside the official program, he didn't think she would count as an official Chose.

But if he did, if his guide told him, then…

“If that’s the truth, then how come he doesn’t have prior knowledge of everything that happens as you do?” Lexie asked. “How come he let my mother die like in the game?”

“Who says he didn’t? You and your friend were just talking about how Vacek threatened her, right? Or at least that's what I heard."

"Yeah." It was sinking in all at once, like curdled milk, to the base of her stomach. "Yeah, he did."

Tate held up his hand and said, “Hang on, I’m not entirely saying for sure that he knew she would die, though. The game mentioned that your mother died in a dungeon, but it was very vague. Maybe he protected her from one form of death and let the other one happen.”

“Or maybe he didn’t." Lexie’s lips moved slowly as the puzzle pieces fit in her mind. "Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he wanted her dead so that Aiden would go crazy and seek revenge on the Firebringers. So he would kill them and take revenge on Lara’s behalf.” Aiden had thought that Stella’s parents were behind Lara’s death. There had to be a reason he thought that. It couldn’t just be because they argued or didn’t get along. Someone must have put that in his mind.

Was it Vacek? Had he manipulated Aiden into inadvertently setting off a chain of events that ended in his death? 

"You told me that in the original game, Aiden had strongly suspected the association of being involved in Lara's death, too. And he'd lost his mind searching for answers, but never found them."

“Yeah."

"Did the Firebringers have something to do with that? Or was it someone else at the association?"

"I'm not sure. As I said, we never actually really find out what happened. Why do you ask?"

Lexie shook her head. A dangerous theory was forming in her mind, one that was making her blood boil, but she didn't want to reveal it just yet.

She tamped it down.

If it were true, it meant that Dominic Vacek wasn’t just a self-serving, power-hungry bastard.

He was a truly evil man. 

But that was only if it was true. Lexie might very well be jumping the gun here and leaping to conclusions. She didn’t want to do anything until she knew for sure. 

“But you should know that Vacek might know less than I. Every Chosen is brought in differently, and my way was much more different than others,” Tate said. 

“What does that mean?” Lexie asked. 

“Let's just say that I was…a special case,” he said. "That’s how I was able to convince them to bring you over, too, even though it cost me all my fate points.”

“Wait, really?" Lexie was taken aback. "That's how that happened?" That's why he accused her of taking his fate points?

"Yeah." He nodded. “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew that I would lose my fate points, though. So don’t bother kissing my feet or anything like that.”

“Ew, I wasn’t going to do that.”

“Good, because that would be supremely awkward.”

Lexie hesitated, then threw her arms around him, hugging him.

“What the hell?” He sputtered, spitting out some popcorn into her hair. 

“Thank you,” she told him. “I don’t know if I ever told you that before, but thank you for giving me another chance at life and bringing me here.”

He suffered a pregnant pause and patted her back awkwardly. “This might be even weirder than you kissing my feet."

Just for that comment, Lexie lengthened the hug, despite her own discomfort, and even kissed him on the cheek for good measure, which of course made his entire face turn the color of a tomato.

"Also, listening in on my conversation with your mist powers is really creepy. Don't do it again."

Then she ran off in search of her father. 

“Dad?” she knocked on his bedroom door and walked in. He wasn’t in his room. She'd expected to find him napping, because he was lying down when she left. But no.

The window was open, a breeze blowing the curtains. Did he climb out like a cat burglar?

“He told me not to do that anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Jeez." Lexie jumped and spun around to find Aiden standing in the middle of the room right behind her. “You scared me!”

“I know. I’m sorry, honeybee.”

“Where were you?”

“In the bathroom,” he said, but Lexie glanced behind him at the bathroom door. It was closed, and at no point had it opened. She would have heard it and not been so startled.

"You weren't really in the bathroom, were you?" she asked.

Aiden shook his head. "You caught me. I was running some experiments with pocket dimensions and teleporting through them. I figured I might as well do something to take my mind off things.”

“Oh, okay.” Then why didn't he just say that?

Lexie didn’t want to bring his mind back to the thing that he‘d worked so hard to get his mind off, but she had to ask, “Can I borrow Mom’s lifelink gem for a little bit?”

Aiden cocked his head. “Why?”

“I just…I don’t know. Maybe it will help me dream of her tonight.”

He gave her the saddest nod possible and opened a pocket dimension from which he withdrew the life gem.

"Be careful with it."

“I will. Thanks,” she said. She almost left instantly, but since she was already on a hugging spree, and it looked like Aiden needed it, she gestured for him to come lower.

He cocked his eyebrow in confusion, and she gestured again for him.

Once he bent forward, she threw her arms around his neck and held him close.

"I'm sorry about mom," she said, feeling awkward with the words. “I know it's hard, but...I'm here. You'll always have me. I’ll always be by your side. So you don’t have to worry so much.’

Unlike with Tate, it didn't take him more than a second to recover.

He crushed her against his body, kissing her on the hair.

"Yes," he said. "I'll always have you."

***

Lexie didn’t manage to get much sleep that night. She ended up spending most of her night talking to Ryn about the differences between the Fae system and the Earth system.

After a long history of unrelated topics, Ryn finally told Lexie that she didn't know much about the differences, but an ambassador might know.

"Ambassadors get more in-depth education into the planet they're going to be overseeing. That includes the planetary system and its creation."

"Right." But the only ambassador Lexie knew was Naem's guy, and she couldn't visit Naem if she couldn't sleep.

Fortunately, though, she knew an ambassador-in-training. 

The next day, Aiden and Lexie were the only ones at the visiting tower, given the odd hour of the day and the odd day of the week. While waiting for Dewie and Xena to show up, Lexie asked Buifur, who was overseeing the process, noting their names and who they were visiting, "Can I go visit some of my old professors?"

"You're a visitor now," Aiden said. "Not a student."

"Oh, come on, please? I even came in the proper way now and didn't just teleport in."

"It's a good thing you didn't," Buifur said. "That was a terrible night you inflicted on us, young one. Very terrible. Security breach alert, missing student, half the guards unaware, I thought we were all going to be taken by monsters. Truly terrible."

"Sorry." Lexie actually cringed in earnest now. She hadn't thought about how much trouble she would be creating for other people by kidnapping Dewie.

"It's alright now," he said. "And Vacek already ordered the Headmaster to give you advanced authorization on campus, so you don't even have to ask me."

"He did?"

"Yes."

Well, that was confusing. Why would he do that, knowing how potentially dangerous Lexie was? Or did he not see her as a threat?

She couldn't help but be offended at that.

She shared a look with her father, but he merely offered her a shrug. "It's not like they can stop you anyway, so they might as well make it official, so they don't seem as impotent as they are."

"I see." It could also be seen as an olive branch, or a bribe, so that Lexie wouldn't feel as obligated to sneak in and out, and so they could actually know when she was there.

"I'd like to visit someone too," he said. "Stein. Is he around?"

"Nah, he's out on a school trip. He might be back soon, though."

"Then I'll just wait for him here."

Lexie waited for Buifur to turn back to her, and he jabbed his head in the direction of the professor's offices.

"Just stay out of student dorms for now."

"Okay, thanks," she said and scurried off.

But as she was crossing the courtyard, however, she heard a familiar nasally, annoying voice, "Hey murderer."

Lexie paused and addressed her with a single glance.

Rufina.