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crystallizedkingdoms · 1 month

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The Wordless One

Lucas doesn’t know why Johann’s memory is affected differently. He swears.

wc: 2,027

The Birds in this fic are: ████ & ███ (Twins), ██ (Lover), ████ (Protector), Lucas Miller (Lonely Journal-Keeper), ████ (Peacemaker)

day 7 of @johann-appreciation-week! thank you to @avijohann for the amazing art. I can’t believe it’s the final day! I’m so glad I could participate this year. can’t wait for the next :’)

I don’t know what happened, I swear.

Please, trust me when I say I really don’t know what happened. There are a million reasons that I cannot possibly calculate that can explain why Johann is having such an adverse reaction to Fisher’s erasure when the others aren’t. There are a million reasons why he hasn’t spoken a single word since I found him lying next to ████ after the erasure. There’s a million reasons I can’t find him a home like I have with the others. There’s… there’s…

Oh, I don’t know. I hate it just as much as anyone else would that I don’t know why this is happening to him. I wish it wasn’t. Johann was never the loudest person, his voice never filled the room incessantly like ████’s did, but it is so fucking weird that he doesn’t say a single thing anymore. Not even when I prod and poke at him, or when I bother him with all the little arguments I used to bug him with. Landing procedures, retrieval missions, how to file paperwork, how to brew the best coffee, who should clean our desks, worst musical composers across the planes we’ve visited nothing nothing nothing gets him to talk.

It’s hard enough, having ██ on the loose while also having to take care of Johann. It’s a suffocating rock and hard place to be between. Of course it had to be those two. They’re the inseparable pairs that I have separated. Have to continue to separate, because I know ██ is going to figure out that I haven’t placed Johann anywhere and he’s going to come crawling back to me. A highly annoying block in my road to saving the world.

Would it… would it be easier to leave Johann off somewhere? Even if he can’t speak, he— he can still walk. He eats when I tell him to. He’s not as dexterous as he used to be, he moves slow and he’s tripped enough times on his Robe that I’ve had to hide it away, but… it’s still survivable. And— and he’ll be off my hands! ██ will find him, but he doesn’t have access to Fisher. He couldn’t fix whatever’s happening to Johann… but he would take care of him. Better than I can do.

It’s… unnervingly cruel. Looking at him as I write this down, I don’t know how well this can go. Johann is barely moving, his ears flop down more than a half-elf’s normally should, and though I’ve found no evidence of a fever, he keeps holding his hand up to his forehead. I don’t know if I can be sure someone else doesn’t get to him before ██. Maybe I can attach some tracking device to Johann, something to keep tabs on him, make sure he doesn’t get hurt.

Yeah… yeah, yeah. That sounds good. I’ll get to working on that right away.

—

I couldn't do it.

How could I have done it? I tried, I did, and I hate that I even tried it. I didn’t even leave Johann for a whole five hours before I rushed back to pick him up. Nothing happened to him. Some people looked at him weird, some guy got in his face when Johann stared at him for too long, but he didn’t get hurt. It was me, I just couldn’t keep my eyes off of his little point in my tracker, I couldn’t stop worrying about what would happen to him, I—

I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could fix him.

It’s not— It is wrong. It’s wrong it’s wrong it’s wrong I know exactly what I’m doing. I know why I’m fretting about him when I’m not fretting about ████, ██████, even ██████, my own mother. It’s not that I’m not worried about them, I have visited my mom, I have visited ████, but I can’t just visit Johann. Especially if ██ gets to him.

I need to figure out if I can fix Johann. I can’t leave a project of mine, failed.

I’m not— I’m not saying that Johann’s a project, no, no no. He’s not an experiment, that’s not what this is. I just want to right the single fixable wrong in this mess I’ve made. I don’t want to prove anything else. That’s not what this is. I won’t let myself turn it into that, I promise.

…Right now, Johann is attempting to clean my desk. I don’t know why, I swear. I didn’t tell him to. I didn’t— I didn’t tell him, I don’t know why that has his attention, I don’t know. Hold on.

—

Nothing’s working.

Not a single fucking thing is working.

I have run multiple tests on Johann, as much as I can with these limited amounts of resources, and there is nothing physically wrong with him. He can make noises— I found out he can say his name when prompted, but absolutely nothing else— he’s eating well, his sleep schedule is actually better than it was when he was normal. His balance is still a little off, and he keeps picking at his fingers, but otherwise he’s in perfect health.

I thought I had fixed it all when I realized it couldn’t have been physical. When I started trying to jog Johann’s memory, the ones I was so sure I hadn’t touched. I made him repeat his name, over and over and over, using it to communicate. He’s still monotonous, as he usually was, but he’s starting to use tone again and that’s all I can hope for when it comes to speaking. So I tried something else. Something that should have been easier.

I gave Johann his violin. I watched as he held it in a way I would never have expected him to. Limp in his hands, his grip awkward and strained, I couldn’t even get him to hold it in the proper position. It got to a point I couldn’t leave it in his arms in good faith. I took it from his hands carefully, and he stared at me with empty eyes.

I tried again. Multiple times throughout multiple days. I brought out his other instruments. Johann acted even more clueless around them, looking over them so clumsily and inquisitively that he almost snapped the strings of his lyre. If he can’t figure out his music, the thing he dedicated his entire life to, what he loved more than leading our mission (he barely even wanted to be called Captain, he much preferred being called Maestro despite the entire ███ hating that their star astronaut wanted to be called that stupid unique title), then… fuck, what’s left of him?

I… I don’t know what happened, I swear. I don’t know where to go from here. I can’t just stop, but if it’s impossible to figure out…

I need a drink.

—

██ knows.

I knew I should have put up that ward earlier. I didn’t know he would use my own creations against me— I need to adjust the mechanism of the fusebox, so a soul can only be taken in and not voluntarily joined. What a flaw in my blueprints, I should’ve accounted for the undead using it against—

That doesn’t matter right now, Lucas, holy shit! ██ knows.

I saw him, in that shitty prototype body, somehow my detection didn’t go off and he was kneeling hovering right in front of Johann, who only stared blankly at the strange robot in front of him. I heard ██ plead, his voice staticky from my terrible audio system I made on the fly, trying to communicate with Johann, and quickly realizing he wasn’t understanding. Wasn’t even responding.

██ only realized I was there when Johann got up from his bed and ran to hide behind me.

I tried to subdue him, I swear. I grabbed the metal pipe on the nearby desk and swung it hard on the robot I had spent so long making to keep him there. So I could talk to him. But no, he’s the one who blew his own fuse to eject himself from the body. He’s the one who attacked me. I don’t think he wanted to kill me. I don’t think he’s like that. But, I mean, he got so so so close until…

Until Johann swung at him with my pipe.

It didn’t hit. Of course it didn’t, a lich isn’t affected by blunt attacks like that. But it made ██ stop moving and get off of me. He stared at Johann, and though he had no eyes to speak of, I just… I just know what they would’ve looked like. Confused. Scared. Pained.

I should’ve captured him. I should’ve gotten him trapped, hurt, anything, but I was too late. He reached to try and take Johann’s hand, but when Johann backed up behind me again, he didn’t waste a second. He must’ve seen me reaching for my device because he left without a single word.

██ knows, and that leaves me a dead man walking.

—

I… lie. A lot.

Even when nobody's watching. Even when nobody’s hearing. Even when nobody’s reading.

It’s a habit I’ve gained even before joining the ███. I lied more than I should have even during the mission. I got a lot better, but near the end, when we landed in this world and I saw the horrible damage we were doing with our own creations…

Well, I picked it up again.

I’ve been lying to myself. And by extension, I’ve been lying to Johann. I realized this when I chided Johann for staring at the new bard Seeker’s violin and trying to grab it. I said I didn’t know what got into him as I apologized to the Seeker.

I thought maybe if I lied to myself, I would forget. Like the memory of my own horrible mishap would melt into Fisher’s galaxy eventually. It never did. And reading back on my old notes, I recognize how insanely stupid I sound. It’s embarrassing, really, how I thought that was convincing. I even added “I swear” to every single lie I told. What loser does that?

…How was I supposed to know, though? How was I supposed to sort through the dozens of papers on our shared desk? How was I supposed to know that, mixed in with my journals of our mission, Johann had stored all his musical compositions? Every single one, even the ones from back home, because even when we initially thought it was just two months, he couldn’t bear the thought of going to a whole new planar system without his music. “They are me, and I am them,” he told me once. I laughed in his face when he said that.

But he was right. Somehow, in some way, every composition held pieces of him. Johann spread his entire existence throughout his compositions. And when we shared our desk, the late nights doused in black coffee and brainstorming, our life’s work were intertwined. They were cluttered on our desk. Desperately needing some reorganizing.

And I threw it all in Fisher the Voidfish’s tank, hurried and rushed, because I could hear my mom coming down the hall when I only had the main journal in.

Now look at him. Johann is… empty. He helps around the Bureau, leading people to the Voidfish. He sits near the Voidfish all the time now. At first, it would sing to him, prod at his location in its tank, begging for the food he could lovingly create for it back during the mission. But eventually, it gave up, once it noticed it was going nowhere. Johann looked at it with tired eyes all the same, the awe that once filled him when looking at its beautiful structure all but gone.

And… now it’s gone. All because of me. But I have the Bureau now. A whole organization to myself, dedicated to finding our Relics. When I have them all, my plan will finally be put into place, and the world will be safe. Then, the chase will be over. I can gather everyone back, ██ included, and we could be together. Johann will get his memories back. It’ll all be okay.

I can fix everything. I swear by it.

#taz #taz balance #johann appreciation week #taz johann #lucas miller #taz avi #my writing

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