Eternal Fruit of the Eternal Tree

Its bark is rust-colored with vivid red streaks acting similar to veins along its surface. He presses a hand against the tree feeling a faint heartbeat beneath its fleshy surface that only withers with the coloration of the tree where His hand is still touching. Like root rot, the color grey spreads out from beneath His hand as fast as wildfire. He shoots back instantly but not quick enough. A numbing sensation spreads alongside the grey creeping over His skin nearly spreading past His wrist before slowing. Grimacing, He stares down at the grey limb moving by His own will yet there is no feeling. He doesn't recall anything like it, maybe similar events but this...He can't understand it.

"Strange."

He whips around half startled by a familiar haunting voice only to face a man whose life had long been erased. Yet he stood before Him, an exact image of the man He once knew in another life, another time. A man He loathed just as much as He did himself. Few traits distinguished them apart else one might assume they were twins. If one were to guess, they'd be only half right. But the thing standing before Him is merely mimicking him and nothing more. Just as He thought before, the man whose life had long been erased, that man is dead.

Golden eyes gleam with hints of fluorescent greens as his voice carries thickly through the silence creating false echoes, "Out of everyone else, you're the last I had expected to come here. But come here you did."

He clenches His jaw forcing Himself some restraint, "Jack."

A crooked smile, perfectly mimicking His lost brothers, spreads across his face, "I think you mean Joseph."

"Don't take me for a fool," He seethes, "he meant nothing to me."

"Yet he still affects you just the same, both in the flesh, alive or dead, and even in memory. Is it his voice when he calls to you? Or maybe it was that last look in eyes before his chakra left his body. Perhaps you fear a similar fate."

He scoffs, "You are wasting your time, JackaLer, and mine." He steps past the mimic creature and heads for the rift. The memory is hazy, one of the distant unrecognizable ones similar to the girl in white. But that doesn't stop Him from trying. Before He can progress any further, another voice catches Him off guard. His face pales moon white, and His heart sinks and knots.

"Valentine, my prodigy, my other half, why do you think so little of me? We would have accomplished so much, you and I. Joseph was never as clever, nor as bold as you are, my son. Nothing can compare to you. Nothing but me."

Slowly He turns to face her. Shadowy hair as dark as raven feathers, glowing white skin polished more smoothly than any river stones, and eyes as wicked as any darkling creature bleeding electric violet so intense one would kill and have killed for her affection. He was born with those same eyes once, before they bled sharp silver. Before He chose to be something else.

Anger quickly floods through Him faster than any current, spilling the threat clear as daylight, "Don't you ever speak that name to me bewitched cunt! You are everything I despise to be!" He could fight her again, and over again here in this place absent of time, and He'd even enjoy it. He knows she's already long dead as the rest, but resentment and betrayal still wrap themselves tightly around His neck like some wrathful chain waiting to break free of Him or break Him back down to nothing. His arm twitches and that familiar craving begins clawing at His insides as if He had swallowed shards of broken glass or knives. He tries His best to suppress it for however long it takes. Not now-its too soon, His mind screams.

Still using her voice, its appearances alters as it continues, "Still so quick to violence. You snap just the same too. Nothings changed, nothings learned. Perhaps you need more time to see."

"Don't patronize me," His voice is lower now, yet still seething with hatred. His lower lip quivers when He speaks again, "I know what you're doing and I'm not playing your pathetic little games-"

"Oh, but you used to love games, violent games. Bloody little pastimes." Its voice is different now but its appearance remains a constant blur of confusion, taking on random faces or none at all. It's hard to tell. "Jasper helped mend the pain of being a monster. He made it easier to accept, and the outbursts stopped all together."

"And you're just teasing your own horn," He spits with a maddened grin. The look is threatening with no real humor laced within the words. Jasper is a forgotten memory, nothing more than an imaginary friend, a split in his sanity with no sense of reason, a lie to everyone including himself. A mask, and nothing more, nothing less.

A voice comes out that is neither Josephs nor His mothers, but Ravens. "If you are neither of the two, then who are you now?"

He falters, completely stunned. Maybe it was another memory that carried the confusion alongside the daughter of the Prince of Shadows speaking in a tone that did not meet her eyes, or perhaps He's just never been asked those exact words before. As if the words felt familiar, His brows knit together recalling something forgotten amongst many, but what that certain thing is He can't grasp it. He swallows hard, and after a long moment He responds with the only answer He feels is valid, "No one."

"Lier."

If she meant it as a threat He doesn't stay long enough for her to ponder on it. He vanishes through smoke and shadow only to emerge before a tree of glistening amber. The twitching has stopped but the numbness in His hand remains, along with it that faint craving. He ignores it.

Difficult to explain let alone admit, but something had been pulling Him here. It's the memories He tells Himself, and it has to be partly true. There's always that something else to every question and answer, but He does not dare lurk further into those dark waters of His sporadic mind. He gets a good enough answer when the mimic creature shows itself again across from Him, beneath the golden branches. It takes Joseph's shape again, but this time lacking any emotion. Gone are the golden hues of his eyes now replaced with abnormal blood red iris. He locks eyes with it while gradually moving toward the tree. It could stop Him if it wanted to, but it remains as still as the environment around it.

"I did warn you," is all it says as He plucks one of the tree's amber-colored fruits from a tar like stem.

"You did. And like you said, the past cannot be altered. Time always corrects itself," He acknowledges coldly. The fruit pulses strangely in the palm of His hand like a living heart beating without a vessel. It's different somehow, unlike anything He's ever touched. The numbness tingles as grey skin slowly fades back to white. Even as He passes through the gate and steps far beyond that of the Surreal Dimension, the tingling sensation stays with Him. No longer numb and cold but rather warm and...humming like that of a small bird.