Yuletide 2008
One of the two treats I wrote for Yuletide. Again, thanks to dragojustine for beta and general encouragement.
Fandom: Chrono Trigger (Video Game)
Written for dizmo and originally posted here
Time never passes at the End of Time. Lucca knows this, but still feels that her time is running out. Time never passes, but it seems like years have passed since Crono left her here, taking Frog -- no, Glenn, she corrected herself -- and the pretty princess Marle with him.
So she passes the un-time any way she can, tinkering with Robo until he needed to shut down to recharge his batteries, then chatting with Ayla until Lucca ran out of things to say. Ayla was a polite listener, but was clearly uninterested in her plans for a quantum multi-tool. So she opened the door to Spekkio's room, but the Master of War said he had nothing new to teach a scientist. Trying to pry some answers from Gaspar, the Guru of Time had no better results, any direct question he would answer with a riddle, or an enigmatic non-answer. "Just wait," seemed to be his mantra. Magus was the worst of the lot, any attempt to engage him in conversation was met with cold silence. So Lucca sat down in a corner and pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil from her belt pouch, and tried to design some improvements for the Epoch. After a while, the page was filled with idle doodles, but no real plans, no schematics, no ideas.
The sense that her time was running out grew stronger with each non-passing minute.
Crono and the others finally returned, and despite the strain on a space-time continuum already made fragile by the kingdom of Zeal, Magus's interference, Lavos's very existence, and their own attempts to repair the damage, all of them returned to Crono, Lucca and Marle's own time to see the forest they had saved and that Robo had protected for hundreds of years.
Lucca couldn't deny a surge of pride at that, for hadn't it been her repairs and reprogramming that made his help possible? And Robo's own innate goodness, which proved her theories about sufficiently complex machines possessing the capacity for emotion.
The forest was vast and lovely. They set up their camp deep within it, surrounded by its natural beauty. They sat around their little fire talking well into the night. But when the others had all gone to sleep, the feeling that time was running out returned. Lucca rose from her bedroll and decided to take a walk by herself, to clear her head.
As she passed between two trees, she noticed an odd glowing light, like a time gate. She walked around another tree, and saw that it was a time gate, opened unbidden. None of them, except Crono, had ever willingly gone through an unknown gate, there was no way of knowing what she would find on the other side. She turned back toward the camp, but the feeling that time was almost out grew stronger.
That sense of urgency (and her own curiosity) finally won out. Alone, she stepped through the unknown time gate.
And found herself in her own home. Lucca knew without needing to check any of the chronometers she had designed exactly what year it was. What day. What hour. Horror gripped her. She couldn't bear to live through this day again.
She rushed to the control system for the machine that had derailed her childhood, that had robbed her mother of the use of her legs. Not this time, she promised herself. Not again. Rules about changing history, about altering the past be damned, she was not going to let this happen. But she knew nothing about this machine, Taban had dismantled it the very next day; young Lucca never had a chance to study it.
Lucca stared at the keypad in horror. What could the password be? It would be something important to her father, but she only had bare moments before her mother would be caught in the machine, injured again, crippled again. It wouldn't be Lucca's name, that was the password to the other machine. In desperation, she shut her eyes. It was all going to happen again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Again.
"Oh mother," she whispered, feeling helpless for the second time in her life. "Mother!" Lucca's eyes popped open and she quickly tapped the four keys that spelled her mother's name.
"Lara," she said quietly to herself. The machine shuddered to a halt just as her mother walked through the door from the kitchen. A sob of relief escaped her, and below, Lara looked around.
"Who's there? Taban, are you in here? Lucca?"
Lucca shrank back against the wall. She mustn't be seen here, she shouldn't be here at all. The time gates were clearly made for a purpose, righting the course of history and defeating the threat of Lavos. But now the greatest wrong in Lucca's own past was righted. She dared another glance over the railing, saw her mother standing (standing!) on the floor below, shaking her head at the ungainly contraption that this day, had caused no harm. A tiny Lucca flew through the door and into her mother's arms, never realizing that being lifted and spun by her mother was such a precious gift that was so nearly lost.
With the widest smile she'd ever felt across her own face, Lucca stepped back through the time gate.
Crono was waiting for her. He didn't say a word, just listened to her gasp through her story in a rambling, incoherent way, smiling and laughing through tears, and wrapped his arms around her in a brotherly embrace. Her oldest, best friend, he knew how much this had meant to her. And before she had dried her tears, Marle was there, and Frog, and the others, each to offer their congratulations and share their joy with her.
The fight wasn't over, Lavos was still going to rend the world in a thousand years. But tonight, Lucca's world was healed. Tomorrow was soon enough to worry about the rest of the world. They had a time machine, after all, and all the time they needed.
Fandom: Chrono Trigger (Video Game)
Written for dizmo and originally posted here
Time never passes at the End of Time. Lucca knows this, but still feels that her time is running out. Time never passes, but it seems like years have passed since Crono left her here, taking Frog -- no, Glenn, she corrected herself -- and the pretty princess Marle with him.
So she passes the un-time any way she can, tinkering with Robo until he needed to shut down to recharge his batteries, then chatting with Ayla until Lucca ran out of things to say. Ayla was a polite listener, but was clearly uninterested in her plans for a quantum multi-tool. So she opened the door to Spekkio's room, but the Master of War said he had nothing new to teach a scientist. Trying to pry some answers from Gaspar, the Guru of Time had no better results, any direct question he would answer with a riddle, or an enigmatic non-answer. "Just wait," seemed to be his mantra. Magus was the worst of the lot, any attempt to engage him in conversation was met with cold silence. So Lucca sat down in a corner and pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil from her belt pouch, and tried to design some improvements for the Epoch. After a while, the page was filled with idle doodles, but no real plans, no schematics, no ideas.
The sense that her time was running out grew stronger with each non-passing minute.
Crono and the others finally returned, and despite the strain on a space-time continuum already made fragile by the kingdom of Zeal, Magus's interference, Lavos's very existence, and their own attempts to repair the damage, all of them returned to Crono, Lucca and Marle's own time to see the forest they had saved and that Robo had protected for hundreds of years.
Lucca couldn't deny a surge of pride at that, for hadn't it been her repairs and reprogramming that made his help possible? And Robo's own innate goodness, which proved her theories about sufficiently complex machines possessing the capacity for emotion.
The forest was vast and lovely. They set up their camp deep within it, surrounded by its natural beauty. They sat around their little fire talking well into the night. But when the others had all gone to sleep, the feeling that time was running out returned. Lucca rose from her bedroll and decided to take a walk by herself, to clear her head.
As she passed between two trees, she noticed an odd glowing light, like a time gate. She walked around another tree, and saw that it was a time gate, opened unbidden. None of them, except Crono, had ever willingly gone through an unknown gate, there was no way of knowing what she would find on the other side. She turned back toward the camp, but the feeling that time was almost out grew stronger.
That sense of urgency (and her own curiosity) finally won out. Alone, she stepped through the unknown time gate.
And found herself in her own home. Lucca knew without needing to check any of the chronometers she had designed exactly what year it was. What day. What hour. Horror gripped her. She couldn't bear to live through this day again.
She rushed to the control system for the machine that had derailed her childhood, that had robbed her mother of the use of her legs. Not this time, she promised herself. Not again. Rules about changing history, about altering the past be damned, she was not going to let this happen. But she knew nothing about this machine, Taban had dismantled it the very next day; young Lucca never had a chance to study it.
Lucca stared at the keypad in horror. What could the password be? It would be something important to her father, but she only had bare moments before her mother would be caught in the machine, injured again, crippled again. It wouldn't be Lucca's name, that was the password to the other machine. In desperation, she shut her eyes. It was all going to happen again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Again.
"Oh mother," she whispered, feeling helpless for the second time in her life. "Mother!" Lucca's eyes popped open and she quickly tapped the four keys that spelled her mother's name.
"Lara," she said quietly to herself. The machine shuddered to a halt just as her mother walked through the door from the kitchen. A sob of relief escaped her, and below, Lara looked around.
"Who's there? Taban, are you in here? Lucca?"
Lucca shrank back against the wall. She mustn't be seen here, she shouldn't be here at all. The time gates were clearly made for a purpose, righting the course of history and defeating the threat of Lavos. But now the greatest wrong in Lucca's own past was righted. She dared another glance over the railing, saw her mother standing (standing!) on the floor below, shaking her head at the ungainly contraption that this day, had caused no harm. A tiny Lucca flew through the door and into her mother's arms, never realizing that being lifted and spun by her mother was such a precious gift that was so nearly lost.
With the widest smile she'd ever felt across her own face, Lucca stepped back through the time gate.
Crono was waiting for her. He didn't say a word, just listened to her gasp through her story in a rambling, incoherent way, smiling and laughing through tears, and wrapped his arms around her in a brotherly embrace. Her oldest, best friend, he knew how much this had meant to her. And before she had dried her tears, Marle was there, and Frog, and the others, each to offer their congratulations and share their joy with her.
The fight wasn't over, Lavos was still going to rend the world in a thousand years. But tonight, Lucca's world was healed. Tomorrow was soon enough to worry about the rest of the world. They had a time machine, after all, and all the time they needed.