Work Text:
Julian Devorak coughs up sea water as his head breaks through the surface. His eyes burn from the salt as he forces them open.
All around him, water is churning up in frothy waves. The sky is screaming thunder and full of the darkest clouds he’s ever seen. The ship he and his family were on is now a splintered wreck.
His mother had urged him and his six-year-old sister down below when the lightning started. She’d had a worried waver to her voice but assured them that their father had everything under control. “Just go,” She urged, pushing them towards the door that led belowdecks. “Keep her safe, Ilyushka, we’ll be down in just a moment.”
If he’d had known that was the last time he’d see her, he’d probably have tried to commit her face to memory a little better.
Julian had taken Portia’s hand and led her to their quarters, trying every trick in his book to quiet her sobs. Despite his best efforts, not even her favorite story about Hjallan pirates could cheer her up. He finally just sat down against one of the beds and held her hand while she cried.
The first thing to break had been the porthole over their heads. Glass rained down on them and Julian wasn’t sure if the screaming sound was them or the wind. He’d yanked Portia into his arms, shielding her with his body.
Next to go was the side of the ship. He remembers being sucked out; a feeling reminiscent of the time he got stuck in the riptide at age seven but multiplied by at least a thousand. Portia’s sharp nails had dug into his sides as he clung to her even harder.
“Ilya!” She’s screaming his name as they surface, practically wailing. He looks around frantically for something to grab onto.
Before he can react, his sister’s body is ripped from his arms. “Ilya! Help!” She reaches out for him but it’s too late. A strong current yanks her under and he is alone. He barely has time to process what happened before he was pulled down too.
He’s not sure how long he tumbled around underwater before he surfaced again. “Pasha!” He screams, looking in every possible direction for any sign of her. Coughing, he spits seawater from his mouth.
This is all his fault. He was supposed to protect her. It was his job, his mom had told him. And he’d failed.
Screaming her name again, he is only greeted by a deafening roar of thunder. He looks around desperately for his sister in the few seconds before he is yanked back under.
Julian wakes up on the beach. The sands are pure white and grainy under his back. He pushes his wet hair out of his eyes. He stands and nearly falls off balance. He’s in his older body again and it takes him a moment to readjust to the lankiness before remembering what he was doing.
“Pasha!” He calls, frantically scanning up and down the beach. “Where are you?” There’s no sign of her. No matter where he turns, he can’t see anything.
Some invisible thread stuck through his chest starts pulling him forward. He follows it through a very fuzzy, unfocused version of Vesuvia. It feels like hours before he finally passes through the palace gardens and into the clearing where her cottage sits, but for all he knows it could have been seconds. Julian blinks as he stares at the scene in front of him.
Portia’s cottage is no longer the save haven that his sister had so diligently built for herself. Her meticulously well-cared-for plants are withering in the front garden. The stone that made up the front walkway is dirty and covered in moss. Julian narrowly misses a hole in the porch as he steps up onto it. “Pasha?” He repeats, but he knows that he won’t get an answer.
There’s nobody here. His sister is gone.
He forces the door open. Red fills his vision for a solid half minute and just as he’s starting to worry that he’s stuck like this, the redness dissipates like fog. He squints in the low light, eyes falling on a familiar stone floor.
A sense of dread washes over Julian as he realizes he’s in the palace dungeon. The smell of death hangs in the air and he manages to suppress the urge to vomit. It looks just how he remembers it: full of dead bodies and infested with those damned red beetles. He stomps on a beetle with his boot, but it just sticks itself back together and scurries away.
“Julian.” A familiar voice comes from behind him and he turns to see who’s speaking.
In his time as a pirate, wartime medic, and fugitive, Julian Devorak has seen many horrible things. Bone sticking out of a mangled leg, a knife pinning someone’s hand to a table, too many gunshot wounds to count. Blood stopped bothering him long ago (he really had no other choice) and sickness even earlier. There are not many things that can rattle him, not with what he’s seen.
When Julian turns, he is greeted with the worst thing he has ever seen.
His love is lying on one of the surgical slabs, their arm hanging over the side. He watches in horror as their chest rises and falls slowly, an action that looks like it takes a great deal of effort. He rushes to their side and they tilt their head to stare up at him.
Their face is gaunt, and their hair is matted to their forehead. Their breathing sounds even more ragged and pained close up. And, worst of all, their eyes are the bloodshot red that Julian has seen a thousand times, in every single one of the plague’s victims.
He gently takes their hand. Their fingers are limp around his. “Oh, oh, my darling. My love, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He can’t help but wonder if this was his fault. If only he hadn’t left them at the clinic to come work in this glorified morgue, if only—
Squaring his shoulders, Julian presses his other hand firmly to their chest. Their ragged breathing sends vibrations through his palm. He’s failed them once. He won’t let that happen again. Closing his eyes, he calls on his mark to heal them.
Nothing happens. He opens his eyes. MC stares back at him, expectantly. He swallows hard and tries again. Still nothing. Again. Nothing. Their face morphs into disappointment. He’s never seen that look on their face and it makes something twist inside his stomach.
He can’t cure them. Oh god, he can’t fix them.
“No, no no no, this isn’t, this can’t be. Why isn’t this working?!” He looks around himself and starts grabbing random instruments off of a nearby table. Object after object clatters loudly to the ground and he searches for something, anything to help them.
From behind him, he hears MC coughing. It’s a loud, wet sound that reverberates off the stone walls. “Julian…” They wheeze out. He turns. They’re sitting up as best they can manage, their arms shaking with exertion as they glare at him with red eyes. “It’s your fault. You…you let this happen.”
A lump forms in Julian’s throat. No, they don’t believe that. Do they? “MC, no, no, that’s not…I didn’t…” He rushes to their side, trying to make them lay down again. He doesn’t want them to tire themself out, he’d seen how quickly a bedridden Lucio had lost his strength. “Please, just lie back down, stay still. I’ll fix this, I promise.”
It’s not until MC pins him with another disapproving look that he realizes he’s crying. The tears are coming down silently but he’s aware of how pathetic he looks. They shake their head and their voice drips with something like pity.
“You can’t. You can’t fix this, Julian.”
A skittering sound makes Julian look down. The red beetles are running up the legs of the table, spilling over onto the surface and swarming over MC. A wave of panic washes over him. “No!” He shouts, swatting at the beetles. “Get away, get away from them—” Despite his best efforts, every beetle he manages to knock off the table gets replaced by two more.
He fights his losing battle for just a few seconds more before the beetles disperse as quickly as they appeared. He’s horrified to find an empty surgical slab staring back at him. He starts feeling around on the slab desperately, as though looking for any trace of them, but he knows they’re gone. “No, no no no, this can’t be happening, not again—”
He’s cut off by the presence of three more figures. They seem to almost materialize from one of the dark back corners of the room. He sucks in a breath as he realizes it’s his friends.
Asra’s face twists into a sneer. His red eyes burn with hatred as he moves towards Julian. “You should have been there for MC.” His voice is sharp and it feels like it’s slicing right through Julian’s chest. “They died because of you!”
Portia’s next to him, tears spilling from her crimson sclera. “I was fine without you! We were all fine without you!” She shouts, gesticulating wildly. “Mazelinka was right, you should have never come back!”
They’re both right, no matter how much he wants it to be a lie. Everything that has happened, both in the past and since he returned, has been his fault. He’d been the one to leave you at the clinic and he had been the one to let go of Pasha on the boat. It really wasn’t that big of a leap to say that he’d killed Lucio, too.
He swallows hard, taking a step backwards as he considers how quickly he could sprint away.
Nadia’s eyes look like red slits as she steps forward. There’s an expression on her face that Julian has never seen before, one of pure disdain. “Run, Doctor. Run from your mistakes, like you always do!” She snarls.
Julian does. Just before the three of them can close around him, he sprints to his office. Wrenching open the handle, he’s thrown into another pool of red. He feels sick as he stumbles through, watching the scenery change around him. The movement comes to an abrupt halt and he’s nearly wheezing as he takes in his new surroundings.
The deep crimson wallpaper is peeling back and the golden accents of the room are covered in dust. Some stray fabrics hanging from the ceiling flutter in a breeze that Julian can’t feel. He tries his best to catch his breath as he comes to a stop at the foot of a massive bed. He looks up and his eyes land on the bed’s occupant.
“You…!” He hisses.
A plague-ridden Count Lucio quirks one pointy eyebrow at him, frowning. “What do you want, Jules?” He spits. “Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?”
Julian can feel his body shaking. Lucio looks wildly unimpressed, despite the red tinge dyeing his eyes. He grins at Julian and it feels not unlike he’s baring his teeth. “It’s almost time…almost time for my party.” He says, pushing a chunk of greasy hair out of his eyes.
Before Julian can unleash the rage that is slowly building inside him, a voice whispers from one of the dark corners of the room. “You can still save them, Doctor.”
Julian blinks. “I…I can?” He asks, even though he knows what the answer is. He’s just too scared to think it.
“You know how to cure the plague. You can stop this, here and now.” The voice says. Julian stares down at Lucio. He’s frozen in place now, teeth still bared in a grimace. Only now can Julian see some of the tell-tale signs of the plague: pasty white skin, a gaunt face, and of course those eyes. The voice continues. “It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? He’s so weak, so delusional, so…pathetic.”
Something cold and heavy appears in Julian’s hand. He looks down and realizes with horror that he’s holding a knife. The blade glints under the low candlelight. “You know what you have to do.”
Julian drops the knife as though it’s burning. It clatters to the ground and he quickly steps away. “I…I can’t. I can’t. He’s helpless, and he…” He turns to look at the count again. He’s still frozen, but he almost looks like he’s grinning now.
“He was a murderer before you met him. He will murder again if he lives.” The voice says. Julian swallows hard. “Think of your friends. Your loved ones. Your MC.”
“Oh, MC, I…” Julian remembers how angry they had been for letting them die, how they’d looked at him from that slab with disappointment. He could fix them, now. They would never look at him like that again. He could save them this time. He stares down at the knife for a moment. It would be so easy.
No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Julian was not a murderer. MC had spent weeks convincing Vesuvia that he wasn’t a killer and he wasn’t going to throw that away.
MC…MC was alive. What was he thinking? MC didn’t have the plague. They were…They were fine. Alive. So were his friends.
It wasn’t his fault.
“No.” He says to the voice. “No, that’s…that’s wrong. MC…would never want me to do this.” Every word felt like a rush of adrenaline running through him. He straightened up. “They’d never say those things to me.”
“Wouldn’t they?”
Julian reaches up to wipe his face. Sweat mixed with tears rubbed off onto his palm. “No. Never.” He thought back to the images of his friends, staggering forward with red eyes. “And neither would Pasha. Or Asra, or Nadia. None of them would say those things to me.”
Putting the toe of his boot down onto the handle of the knife, he slid it across the carpet, as far away as it could go. He watched it glide away for a moment before returning his attention to the frozen count.
“I regret so many things. I’ve made so many mistakes.” He says, eyes drifting from Lucio’s red eyes to his golden arm. Then he blinks and raises his chin up, staring Lucio directly in the eye. “But I can grow. I can learn. I’m not the same man I was back then.” He feels his hands ball into fists and his face contort into a snarl. “And…I’m not a murderer.”
With that, he takes a step back from the bed. The image around him begins to swirl at the same time that he hears his name.
“Julian!”
MC. That was MC’s voice. Julian looks around wildly for a few seconds before his eyes finally land on his love’s face. Their arm is stretched out towards him. He doesn’t have the chance to reach out before everything goes black.
“Julian?” A soft voice shakes him from the darkness.
Julian’s eyes are open in a snap, and he sits bolt upright. He’s in the magic shop, but it’s different. The freezing air seems to be sinking into his bones. All around him, the shop is dusted with a light frost and he swears he can see tiny snowflakes in the air.
“MC!” His eyes fall on his love’s face again. Their expression is filled with concern. He reaches up and cups their cheek, hardly believing his own eyes. Their eyes aren’t red anymore. They never were. “It…It’s you, it’s really you, you’re here, you’re…you’re…” His voice breaks at the same moment that the tears start rolling down his face.
MC doesn’t speak, just wraps their arms around his shoulders and pulls him into their chest. A shaky sob escapes Julian’s chest as he clings to them, almost worried that they’ll disappear if he lets go. MC tucks their head into his shoulder.
“MC, MC, you’re safe, you’re safe-” His whole body is shaking so bad that he can barely get the words out.
MC shushes him quietly, speaking softly into his ear. “I’m safe. You’re safe. It’s okay, Julian, everything’s going to be okay.” Julian breathes in another shaky breath and tries his best to focus on their words. “It was only a dream. It wasn’t real.”
Curiosity gets the better of him and he pulls his head out of MC’s chest just long enough to stare up at them. God, he would never take this for granted again. “You…you had them too? The nightmares?”
Nodding, MC glances away, their fingers busy with his hair.
“Can I ask you, uh…” He pauses for a moment, sensing their hesitation. “You don’t have to tell me, but…”
MC’s fingers freeze in his hair for a moment. “I saw Vesuvia.” They say finally. “Overtaken by plague. Just me in the streets, and…” They trail off again and Julian almost apologizes for pressing until they tell him the rest. They recount getting into the boat with a vaguely familiar plague doctor and then watching Julian disappear into the Hanged Man’s realm. They’re clearly a little shaken but seem to relax once Julian starts stroking their arm gently.
He debates in his head whether he should tell them. What if they think differently of him? What if they realize start to believe that he did fail them, so many years ago? They look at him with concern and the words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them. “I dreamed…I dreamed about the storm.”
The concern on MC’s face morphs into confusion and he almost laughs. Almost. “Ah, I never told you, did I? When Pasha and I were little, we were shipwrecked in the storm of the century.” Something like a smile forms on his face as he remembers what really happened and how Mazelinka had taken them under her wing. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to smile. “We made it out alive. Washed up near Nevivon, and the rest is history.”
It takes him a moment before he can continue. He can almost feel the waves again, crashing against his face and filling his mouth with salt. “But in the dream…the storm ripped Pasha out of my arms. I woke up alone on the beach. I was looking for her, looking everywhere, and I couldn’t find her. Her cottage was abandoned. Everything overgrown, the roof falling in, nothing left. I went inside, and then…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Somehow, I was in the palace dungeon. I…”
As though sensing his discomfort, MC reaches up and cups his cheek. Warmth from their hand radiates against his cold skin and he leans into the touch. “I…I thought I saw you, the real you, at the end.” He whispers. That figure in the bedroom had been different from the version with the plague. They had seemed more tangible, more real somehow.
MC offers him a smile. “It was me.”
A laugh rips itself from Julian’s lips before he can stop it. “Seems like that’s becoming a running theme, doesn’t it?” He wipes his face, mostly as an excuse to look away. “How…how much did you see?”
“Everything in the dungeon and…Lucio’s room.” MC’s thumb strokes the side of his face. “I’m sorry, Julian, I tried to break through, but…”
Despite everything, Julian finds himself smiling. If he was in any other company, he would have found that reaction ridiculous. But this was MC. They were different. They made him different. “It’s alright, MC. I…I broke through on my own, didn’t I?” There was a time when…I wouldn’t have been able to break free. Before I met you, for the second time.” The smile falls from his face and the tears start to come back. “Those things they said, those horrible things…I know where they come from.”
Before he can stop himself, the tears are back full fledged. “I told myself those same things so many times. I…I started to believe them.” MC gently wipes some of the tears away and he manages to put the smile back. “But I’m not the same man I was three years ago. I’ve changed, I really have. Thanks to you, MC.”
Smiling too, MC leans forward and rests their forehead against his. Julian sighed, closing his eyes. They stayed like that for a minute or so, just feeling one another’s presence. Julian broke the silence quietly. “Thank you.”
MC pulled away. “Huh?”
“Thank you, MC.” He repeated. “I, ah, feel better. Do you?”
MC let out a little sigh and smiled softly. “I’m alright.”
Julian had never been so happy to hear that. He stands up and holds a hand out to MC. They take it, their fingers intertwining with his perfectly. They feel warm, solid, and real. They pull themself up.
“Then we, um. We should probably figure out where we are.” He says, but makes no move to let go of their hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches them smiling.
Maybe this would be okay after all.