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umbry-fic · 3 years

Text

Equation+**

Summary: Lagrange wanders the improbable world of Arcaea, hoping to finally find the value of the elusive x.

Fandom: Arcaea Characters: Lagrange, Charon Relationships: Lagrange & Charon Rating: G Word Count: 1936 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 28/05/2021

Notes+Warnings: Spoilers for the Esoteric Order side story pack.

Charon goes by they/them pronouns in this.

Title from siinamota's song.

~~~

This world, objectively, made no sense. The crumbling towers of the ancient city that gave way to desert, the desert that gave way to a strange ocean, the ocean that gave way to plains of grass that swayed despite the lack of wind. Their transitions weren’t gradual or anything approaching natural - each biome simply ended at an imaginary line. Stepping past that line immediately yielded the next biome, like one was moving from one world to the next with but a single step. It was as if the God of this world had plopped each location down without any consideration for cohesion, like they were childishly playing with building blocks instead of shaping the world she was now trapped within.

Not even the laws of physics seemed to apply here. At first glance, it seemed they did, for the buildings with their impressive architecture remained standing and the water remained in the ocean instead of floating in the air. And yet the shards of glass that populated this world, that she instinctively knew were named Arcaea, utterly shattered those laws that she held dear. Even something as fundamental as Newton’s Law of Gravitation, which dictated that her feet would not leave the ground, could not hold up under the reality-twisting forces of the Arcaea. The shards lazily floated in the air by some unknown power, sometimes darting about with incredible speed, as if they were following an invisible trail drawn by an invisible hand.

Charon seemed to wield that same power, able to flit about without any visible jets on their exterior. Made sense, given that they were constructed out of Arcaea and had most likely inherited the same properties. But they had not fulfilled their original purpose for existence - giving her any answers about this mysterious world of chaos.

How did she even know these laws by heart? Newton’s Three Laws, which dictated that a natural force propelled each step she took instead of purely will, Coulomb’s Principle, useless to her in this world without a hint of electricity, even the surprisingly applicable Fermi’s Paradox.

Perhaps she had once studied physics at a university level. But there was no way to confirm this, to learn about who she had been before, for her memories had been plucked straight out of her head, leaving behind nothing but useless knowledge. Just as there was no way to confirm that the reason she could not take flight was because of gravity pulling her towards the core of this world - did this world even have a centre? Was she even on a structure resembling a planet? On her endless journey, she had come across no answers to her numerous questions, the true identity of this world remaining veiled behind an impregnable wall.

Perhaps, she stood in an alien world, where the solution to Fermi’s Paradox finally presented itself. That alien life had made itself manifest in the form of Arcaea, incredibly complex but unable to communicate apart from its motions and the images displayed on its rippling surface, populating a world that seemed to contain human structures but did not contain a method of transportation to reach humanity. Perhaps, she had entered the realm of the subatomic and was seeing things that had only been theorised: composite particles and elementary particles, that somehow took forms that she could put names to. Perhaps, she was trapped in the prison of her own mind, experiencing the torture her subconscious had decided to subject her to. In any case, all she could confirm was that the Arcaea provided small glimpses of other worlds, worlds that must have reason in them, but which remained untouchable.

Or, perhaps, this world held no purpose at all, no driving force behind its strange environments, no person playing God and pulling the strings.

But such an idea warranted no further thought, for it simply wasn’t possible. There was no such thing as fate or coincidence. No action, no world was without purpose. Every element must be here for a reason. She simply had to slot the puzzle pieces all into place to restore order, and reach enlightenment.

Just as the brightest of human minds had discovered the gravitational constant, the speed of light, the Planck constant, and more, to help make sense of the human world, she would find the answer to the equation that made up this world: the unknown variable. That was the final thing she could think of to do, for having wandered this world for days, months, perhaps even years, had yielded her no clues as to who she was, and how she had come to be here.

“Come, Charon,” Lagrange muttered, petting the satellite that, as always, hovered above her right shoulder. “Let us continue in our quest to find x.”

And the pair walked on, Lagrange following the trails of Arcaea to their final destination, determined to reach the edge of the world, to go where no one had traversed, where surely the answer could be found.

There were no other options left.

~~~

Lagrange spared little time staring through the large windows formed from the accumulation of tens of thousands of Arcaea. Observing the other girls who walked this world and their struggles was interesting, but not productive. Perhaps the tragedies and joys painted here could one day make moving stories, but these girls did not hold the elusive value of x.

Where was she, anyway? How was it that this strange place now gave her a view of the whole world? It was almost like she was looking down from above... If she were religious, she might even have said she had reached Heaven. But Heaven did not exist, and she had faith only in cold science and logic. And if this was Heaven, then it was artificially made, as was this entire world. This was God’s perch to laugh at the suffering of all that went down below, and God was nothing more than a special name given to one who held enough power to lord it over others.

She had a feeling she would soon reach her destination. There, she would finally come face-to-face with the hand behind it all - if the driving force behind this world even had a face. But no matter what kind of being it was, she would get her answer, by hook or by crook. If force was necessary, she would not hesitate.

She had come too far to turn back.

“Perhaps you could help me, huh?”

Lagrange chuckled a little at that ridiculous statement and the absolutely blank stare Charon directed at her in response. They never had a different reaction - no little dance, no nod, no robotic sound of acknowledgement. Charon would be of no help in a fight. They would just float motionless, as always.

And yet, despite having been utterly useless so far, the empty space around her was made just a little less cold by their presence. Someone to talk to and spill the thoughts that echoed far too loudly in her lonely mind, proof that she had existed at all, even if she doubted Charon even registered her. Perhaps all their actions were just instinctive programming it had received when it was born, much as she had received some knowledge upon waking up in this world.

“Not much further. And then our journey will finally come to an end.”

Lagrange soldiered on, her trusty companion close by. There was nothing. There was only inky darkness, so deep that it encompassed all. There wasn’t even “her”, in any sense that mattered, just her consciousness, floating without a physical body to control. Soon, she suspected, even that consciousness would fade, until there was nothing left in this void, the deafening silence reigning supreme. There would be no sign of her meagre time left behind to be found by anyone else foolish enough to wander here.

Cognitive psychologists would marvel at the achievement of consciousness without a body. Data scientists would be jumping up and down in joy at the possibilities this could open up in the field of robotics.

But she didn’t have the capability to gawk like an awed idiot. She didn’t even have a mouth anymore, nor was her non-existent chest flooded with ecstasy.

There was only despair, despair that was rapidly drowning her in its neverending depths. But… Why was there despair? She had come here for a purpose, a purpose that had not been fulfilled. To find… Something? But what…? She couldn’t remember.

Even the despair was fading, morphing into coldness that seeped in from every corner. She couldn’t shiver anymore, but the cold was causing her mind to cloud over. It was becoming progressively harder to form a coherent thought.

Who was “she”? Why had she tried so hard, once upon a time? There was something or someone she was forgetting, that had once known her and the sum of everything that she was.

C…?

She couldn’t hold onto that fleeting memory, even the single pathetic letter fading away and leaving her alone.

And so she floated within the void, having come to an end that she herself had chosen, for it was better to become nothing than live in a world without reason. How long she did so, whether it be seconds, days, months, years, an eternity, was not known, nor did it matter.

All she knew was that the monotony was broken by a ray of light, shining from who knew how far away. Maybe it couldn’t be reached. Maybe it was nothing more than an illusion. Maybe there was no purpose in continuing to struggle, in trying to become herself again, when all she had done had never left a substantial impact upon this cruel world that had long since been abandoned.

But light… Light was warmth, warmth to save her from this biting cold…

And so she reached out, even without hands to reach, even without eyes to see…

~~~

Lagrange stumbled out onto solid ground, into the place she had once sarcastically called Heaven but which now truly was her salvation. Behind her was Hell, from which she had narrowly escaped.

Charon was held tightly in her hands, the purple diamonds in their eyes sparkling up at her. She was solid again, her legs in their lavender leggings visible, as was her yellow dress and the braid of her lavender hair that sat on her shoulder.

“You saved me, huh?”

But Charon still did not acknowledge her words, simply sitting lifeless in her hands. Were they even alive? Were they able to make conscious thoughts? Had they saved her out of choice, or simply coincidence? But it didn’t matter, for she did not need an answer to those questions.

“Thank you,” she whispered, holding Charon to her forehead. Their metal-like surface was smooth against her skin, but somehow not cold, as true metal would have been. Breaking the laws of physics once again.

But that was alright, for they were still here, by her side.

Her purpose in waking up here… Perhaps there was none. It was still terrifying to contemplate, an impossibility to process. But this entire world had been filled with impossibilities from beginning to end, so what was another?

Her way to understand this world, to solve the final problem, to crack open the final equation… It sat within her hands. She had never needed to derive the hidden variable, for it was right in front of her, all along.

As long as she was with Charon, she could make sense of this impossible world, and the improbable events that populated it.

For they were her x.

#fanfiction #one shot #arcaea #lagrange #charon

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