In a While Now I Will Feel Better
Normally, when Joshua went to his cafe, he sat in a corner and focused on what he was supposed to be doing. Nobody really bothered him, since nobody really knew him. Sure, some Kuoh students and tangentially related people had seen him and they knew he existed, but none of them knew him, not really. Even the clients of the cafe knew him in passing, from the days when he worked there more. At most, they'd make the smallest of talks before carrying on with their own things.
He kind of missed those days though.
They were days in which Joshua was freer, had less responsibilities. He missed that; he missed being able to turn off his brain and just wait tables or prepare orders. It was something so small, but it was something he appreciated. It was also something grounding, because there was nothing magical or supernatural about it. It was normal, mortal, something that he could have done back in his old world too.
He didn't have much of that those days and he missed that too.
Back to the matter at hand, those days, Joshua would mostly just do his own thing and appreciate the atmosphere on occasion. However, there was a little something that caught his attention and gave him pause in his latest visit. Just when he'd been about to turn his gaze to the accursed books and notes that plagued his days ever since Ophis' visit, he noticed someone working at the cafe that was definitely new.
"Since when do they work here?" he asked when Sona approached his table. Not unexpected either, since she usually joined him, even if she worked on her own stuff on the other side of the table. Serafall thought that was positively adorable and he didn't necessarily disagree.
"Well," the Sitri girl started, looking up from her own pain, also known as paperwork. She then gave him a flat look and a raised eyebrow. "There's not much to do around town now that your spells take care of most of our previous duties," she explained and he blinked. That was… fair, but how did that translate to Akeno and at least one member of Sona's own peerage working in his cafe? He also had some doubts about some others.
It had been a while since he saw Sona's peerage, after all.
"There's only so much my peerage and I can do regarding the school," Sona continued and he turned towards her. Then he mimicked her previous actions with a raised eyebrow directed at what she'd brought with her. "This is, um," she mumbled then, surprising Joshua a lot when she blushed a little bit. "Getting a headstart with the Rating Game school," she added, looking away from him and a little down.
"Hm, so they're just killing time working here?" he asked, sparing her the embarrassment by getting the conversation back on track. Maybe another day though, he'd poke some fun at that. For the moment though, he wanted to satiate his curiosity so he could turn his mind back to his work properly afterwards.
"Yes," Sona confirmed with a nod. "Rias has been working to help her Bishop, since she can finally give him the focus he needs," she added then and he nodded slightly. Gasper, right. The poor guy had kind of fallen by the wayside with Joshua – and Rias, by the sound of it, at least in canon –, but in his defense, nobody had truly talked about him with Joshua.
Maybe once Valerie felt better, he'd try to nudge things a little to help both of them. As it was, the vampire wasn't doing so well yet, even if she was doing better. He had ideas to help her with that at some point, but that was in the future, a future that he had to make sure he'd see.
"I hear Koneko visits you a lot," Sona continued and he nodded. The nekoshou did do that a lot. "Yuuto… I don't think it needs to be said." Yeah, Jeanne. He'd know a thing or two about that. Probably a thing or two that he didn't want to know, if he were honest. "And as for Akeno… Well, here she is. The same goes for my peerage. They help me prepare for the Rating Game school of course, but there's only so much that they can do, or that I'll allow them to do, for the time being."
"... I see," he mumbled, leaning back and taking a sip from his cup of tea. That was a funny side effect that he hadn't considered, or noticed, until it was right on his face and being pointed out to him. "Still though, why here?" he asked, because that was really the part that he couldn't wrap his head around. They were devils, strong ones too, even if Sona's peerage would likely never match Rias'. Just because they were side characters at best in canon didn't make them weak. That was the misconception that tended to happen when there were ridiculous power levels at play.
And DxD seemed to make it a point to be as ridiculous as possible in that regard.
"The atmosphere is… very welcoming, warm," Sona started, as if she didn't rightly know the answer herself. "I'll admit, I think most of them just wanted to see for themselves, how it is and why you are so attached to the place. I think they understand now, or maybe they reached different answers that worked for them."
"It grounds me, reminds me that I'm human," he told her, because it wasn't really a big secret or anything. Although, as he did, he caught himself almost saying "I was human" instead towards the end. He didn't feel human those days, even though he knew he was. The System had a lot of failures, but he didn't think that was one of them.
He didn't want that to be one of them.
"Hm, that's what Momo thought was the case," Sona replied with a nod, and from there the conversation seemed to end as both of them focused on their own thing.
It was a pause that he very much appreciated though.
[}-o-{]
Applying a mental and soul aspect to the void he was trying to create/imitate was easier said than done, Joshua was aware.
He was even more aware after actually trying to make that happen though. Try as he might, he couldn't figure out much to do on that front as he worked on the Room spells. Funnily enough though, the soul aspect was the easiest of the two. He had most definitely not been expecting that, considering how decidedly harder it was to approach anything regarding souls when compared to minds.
That happened because there were soul traces everywhere in the world, but there was no mind where there was… well, nothing. So, Joshua had to approach the soul aspect first while brainstorming on the remaining one as he went. Easier said than done though, both of those things. Just because there was something to work with didn't mean he had any idea how to make a soul void, after all.
He tried all the same, but he had to be careful. Messing with souls was no joke, after all, even if they weren't attached to anything. He was wary of what he could do if he went at the soul traces carelessly, very much so. In the spirit of not causing more problems for himself, Joshua took his time to come up with a plan that hopefully would reduce the risk a lot.
And that was to not try and delete those traces.
Instead, his plan was to just… brush them aside, push them out of the room, leaving the space "clean" in a manner of speaking. Not any easier than the alternative, but hopefully less dangerous. Fortunately for him, he was no stranger to soulwork by that point either, so he could try to do something about it, even if neither of his options, not the one he wanted to go with nor the one he was trying to avoid, were anywhere close to what he'd been doing so far.
Although, he'd worked on healing and patching damaged souls so far, maybe poked a little bit at what made each soul special for different races and Sacred Gears and such. Joshua had never tried to move them though, nor had he tried to vanish them or destroy them. In a way, he guessed what he'd done was at least tangentially related to that latter option, since it was basically the opposite, but he didn't want to do that, so…
Yeah, he'd have to figure out how to move around soul… 'Is soul element an appropriate designation? Calling it soul traces will get tiring,' he thought idly before shaking his head. The point was that he'd have to learn how to move soul traces from scratch and he was not looking forward to that. He just knew that it'd be a nightmare, but such was his life, he supposed.
And then there was the elephant in the room.
'Is there even a mental aspect, or am I reaching too far? It could just be body and soul, no mind at all,' he considered, tapping on his notebook as if that'd somehow give him an answer or a clue. As if he could random-Morse-code a sign from someone. Sadly, the only gods around were as lost as he was, so that was more than a little useless.
Still, it felt wrong to outright dismiss that. It was a possibility, but the Gap was a big deal. If he'd learned something ever since he started delving into the supernatural, it was that meanings, impressions, reputations held a lot of value, a lot of sway. Hell, Boons and to a lesser extent Hexes, two of his main magics, worked directly alongside the concept of subjective value.
The Gap was a void, a void of everything, a space between dimensions with literally nothing that said dimensions might have. No matter, no souls, no thoughts. A void beyond the void itself, or a space filled with an element that could be found nowhere, maybe both and neither.
Joshua was sure he was onto something with the mind aspect.
Body, Mind, Soul.
It just made sense.
'Right?' wondered a corner of his mind, the part of him that was afraid he was reaching, grasping for straws. The piece of his consciousness that worried he wasn't going to be good enough that time. The one that whispered to him that maybe he'd found his match, his limit and that it was it. His grand journey reached its end not in a grand battle or sacrifice like the heroes of stories he loved to read, but in failure.
He pushed that thought aside, silenced it, and focused.
'Might as well try to do the soul thing and see how things look afterwards,' he decided, giving up momentarily on the mind aspect. He'd revisit that later with a fresher mind… hopefully. 'Might need to revisit the Gap just to check that and see if something comes up… Actually, I'll brainstorm that if I can't directly think of something related to that. Yeah, that sounds good.'
Well, that'd been a train of thought of all time, but at least he'd stumbled on a direction to follow. Joshua wasn't going to look at the gift horse in the mouth, especially not then and there. Instead, he just dove into that, trying to come up with spells and ways to use his senses to look into that. A step further was asking the Egyptians, who were more than happy to present options to him, members of their Pantheon that were directly or tangentially related to the mind that could help him pick up information, clues…
Hopefully, at least.
Joshua had quickly realized that even deities were stumped by the Gap, absolutely so. That wouldn't stop him though, couldn't stop him. Not with all that was at stake. And he was eternally grateful to the fact that it didn't stop the Egyptians.
With how detached they were, he'd half expected them to ditch him when the situation was looking as dire as it was.
They hadn't though.
He made a mental note to do something nice for them once all was over.
"Dad?" a voice called and Joshua was pulled out of his mind and notes. He turned to see Kunou, all innocence and seriousness rolled into one look. "It's break time," she told him with all the solemnity of a child that had no doubt about what they said. She was adorable like that.
Still, he momentarily regretted asking her to keep an eye on the time and snap him out of it if he worked too long without a break. He had done that for a reason though, so he stretched his arms over his head and arched his back. He might have heard a crack or two, but that was neither here nor there.
"Thanks, Kunou," he said, giving her a smile as he ruffled her hair. She didn't even try to protest that, as she often would have. As he did though, he looked at her blond hair and was acutely aware that his wasn't that color anymore. She had truly not been affected by that change, which had surprised him plenty as the days passed and she remained completely unbothered. "You want any snacks, girls? I want some," he added, glancing around at Ravel and Koneko, almost permanent additions to his work time by then.
Not that he was complaining.
Kunou needed all the company she could get and if they were friendly all the better. His familiars did that plenty, but they… hardly counted. Even Morag, now more human than ever, was… odd, out of place. She was getting the hang of being humanoid, but she wasn't there yet and it showed.
Like then and there, as Joshua felt her joining Cheshire for a hunt, her more animalistic instincts and mind took over almost completely.
"Yes."
"If it's not too much trouble, Mr. Davis."
He didn't even bother giving any response to Ravel's overprofessionalism. His mind was still trying to process the ideas he'd gotten, trying to work without actually working. He wasn't very successful, admittedly, but he wasn't diving into it, so he counted it as a win all the same.
"Can I help, dad?" Kunou asked and he saw the other two girls perk up, heads turning his way and back straightening.
"Sure," he replied with a smile. Then he glanced towards the other two as casually as he could. "You two want to help too?" he asked and they were moving before they actually spoke their answers. He found that incredibly endearing, if he was honest.
Even Joshua wasn't dense enough to not notice the writing on the wall regarding the two girls. It showed in the way they tried to do everything Kunou did, in the way they wanted to do things with him that he did with Kunou, in the way they looked for approval or care or affection. Hell, they'd even let slip questions or statements that were clearly not as subtle as they often tried to be. There was no missing any of it, not when he had an example right next to them in the form of his first – did his familiars count as first, actually? – daughter.
They never voiced it though and neither did he, but that didn't mean he wasn't aware. They weren't kids, after all, no matter how much he sometimes treated them as such. They deserved some of that childhood they had likely lost, but they weren't children. Maybe he was wrong, or maybe he wasn't, but he thought there was a reason why they avoided the topic while also trying to poke at it all the time.
Maybe they were unsure, or maybe they just wanted a taste without a full dive.
Either way, Joshua had no problem adding two more daughters to his family. If he could make them happy, then that was enough, as far as he was concerned. He feared being a little stretched thin, especially in regards to time those days, but if they still thought it was worth it… Then he'd smile and try his best.
"Not everything has to be teethrottingly sweet, Koneko."
"I don't think that's a word, Ravel," he pointed out, a little amused. The rivalry/antagonism the Phenex and the Nekoshou had for each other was cute, in his opinion. They could take it too far at times though, but those incidents were becoming rarer and rarer.
"Is so!" The instances in which they acted their age – sometimes younger, even – were even cuter.
"Hm, well, Koneko can have her teethrottingly sweet snacks and we'll get something less so for ourselves," he decided, before that could devolve into an argument he knew would just go in circles. "I actually want something on the salty side, I think."
"See," was all Koneko said after that, but she managed to squeeze so much smugness in her flat tone that Joshua was actually rather impressed. Or he would have been, if he didn't know that single word was going to spark the argument again. So, he had to act quickly and decisively.
"No fights," he said firmly.
"Okay, Joshua."
"Of course, Mr. Davis."
And somehow, both of them managed to make it seem like they said "dad" instead.
"Now, remember to listen carefully and pay attention to what you're doing," he told them, taking a deep breath in as he prepared himself. It was going to be a long few minutes. "We don't want to burn down the kitchen again."
"I didn't burn down the kitchen!" Kunou protested and he just raised an eyebrow at her. "Just a bit of the counter," she mumbled with a pout.
"And I'd rather that not happen again," he told her, poking one of her puffed up cheeks with his index finger. "Now, come, anything in particular you girls want?"
In hindsight, he should have asked one of them and not all of them at once.
[}-o-{]
With repeated visits to the Gap, Joshua was bound to have his mind wander about it in non-project related trains of thought.
If anything, it didn't happen nearly as much as he'd have expected.
Yet, it took him surprisingly long to reach one particular line. Maybe it happened then because he was checking the place in regards to soul and mind matters. So, with his legs tucked under him as if he were sitting cross-legged in the void with Georg and Kokabiel on each side, Joshua considered something he should really have noticed before.
Maybe he'd avoided the thought on purpose, or his mind had done so subconsciously.
"I love you."
"I'm proud of you."
Cold.
Silence.
His last moments before dying, before waking up again in a completely different world. He remembered them and he considered them. 'Silence,' he thought with a hollow half-smile. It was funny, that he found himself chasing silence when he'd had nightmares about silence for months.
One silence had nothing to do with the other though, or, at least, he remembered that silence very differently from what he'd experienced in the Gap. Similar, but also different, somehow. Like saying green green liquid was similar to green gas or a green solid cube. Less clearly different, but also less clearly similar at the same time.
The Gap seemed incapable of being easy to deal with in any regard and it was proving to be so again.
He'd also gotten a glimpse of something similar when he'd looked at Ophis' eyes, he remembered. Also similar, also different, from both the Gap and… and Death, for lack of a better term. Where the Gap seemed to be nothing at all, Ophis was everything… and then there was the beyond, or what he assumed to be so.
Yet, despite the differences, he sometimes could fool himself into thinking the silence he'd experienced while dying was similar to the Gap. It made him think that there was a chance he could go back, see his parents again. Maybe he'd finally get some answers to the million questions he had regarding what had happened back then.
One way or another, once he tried, things would never be the same again. He had a life in the DxD world, he'd built something beautiful and meaningful, so he didn't think he could just leave. His parents likely had continued with their lives, but if they needed help, he might be able to do something about that and…
And he wasn't sure what'd follow, what to expect or what he'd do, despite his thoughts.
It was all a bundle of nerves and fears and doubts in his chest. Joshua didn't know how to even begin to deal with any of that, but maybe it was a good thing that he didn't need to. Not then, at least, not for a while. There were a lot of things that needed to be done before any of it could even be within sight.
"Davis," Kokabiel called and Joshua sighed, knowing time was up. He was happy with the interruption though, because he had better things to do with his time than just sitting in a place that didn't do his frayed mind any favors. So, he "stood up" and nodded, wordlessly waving for Georg to do his thing and take them back.
Not a minute later, both the magician and the Fallen were dismissed and sent away while he stood in the middle of the empty area where they teleported in and out of the Gap. He stood there, with his mind half turned off and half stuck in thoughts of silence, his old world and possibilities. 'No point, Joshua. Let it go,' he told himself, but that was hardly effective.
He needed a distraction. That was how he always dealt with matters like that, with anger or sadness or anything that overwhelmed him. So, he applied what little he could of his mind to find something to occupy himself. As it turned out, he didn't even need to try very hard, there was something going on that very moment that worked perfectly for him.
"Been a while, hasn't it?" he commented when Cheshire caught up to him and started walking by his side. "You're not allowed to make a mess, Morag," he added when his arachnid daughter jumped and clung to his back with her many legs. Piggyback rides with her were always an experience.
"Where are we going, daddy?" she asked, peeking over his shoulder curiously.
"You'll see," he commented, taking a deep breath in and already feeling better just imagining his destination. Still, walking outside and coming face to face with Asia's garden never got old, especially because there was always something different.
Even when the nun didn't add new plants or anything, Joshua would still feel like it wasn't the same garden he'd last seen. The plants grew, they got trimmed, they flowered, some of them even moved. It was all so alive that he couldn't help but feel refreshed just looking at it, warm. He was pretty sure the way he reacted to nature was how Gabriel felt about her historic places or artistic spots or architectural wonders.
"Joshua!" Asia called when they approached her, Margalo on her shoulder and singing. She looked so happy to see him that he felt most of the bad emotions he still carried melt off of his chest. "Did things go well? Did you need anything?"
"Things went alright," he answered, ignoring the fact that he was just coming off one of the least productive Gap dives he'd performed so far. "And I actually wanted to know if you need anything. I kind of wanted to distract myself. If you don't though, we can just walk around. Your garden gets more and more beautiful every time I visit it."
"Our garden," she corrected and he smiled a little wider.
[} Chapter End {]
Hey guys! How's it going?
The usual for all of you, guys. Some progress, some development and some slice of life with sprinkles of the stories going on in the background (and not so background) being shown. Sometimes I feel bad about writing chapters like this, admittedly, because I know there's no real "advancement" of the plot or anything. And I know they sometimes feel same-ish to other chapters and such…
But this is the kind of stuff that I set out to write when I first started. I wanted to take things slowly, show what characters do in their day to day life in between plots and the slow development of… everything regarding them, how training and tinkering and relationships take time and more than a scene or two.
I know I've written this speech a bunch of times, but it never feels like enough because there's always someone commenting on stuff regarding this.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.
As always, if you can't wait until next week for the next chapter, or if you just feel like supporting my writing, there's up to three new chapters in my Patreon (linked below).
Random Question: What sport did you play last? I played padel with my family this last weekend. I'm still sore from it, but I had fun in the moment so… yay?