Chapter Text
England, five hundred years ago.
The room, if you can call it a room, is small and cramped. It smells of unwashed bodies, of lamp oil, and, distant but ever-present, of thick, cloying black smoke. It’s chilled, despite the dim orange lamplight, and the two of them have long since grown accustomed to the rattle of chains, links clinking against each other like the sound of ice slowly cracking underfoot.
It was maddening when they were first chained down. Now it is just another sound. An accompaniment to those of the suffering that come from outside the cell walls. It isn’t as if they can escape—they’ve tried already. Many times. All they can see is futility, the flickering flames illuminating rough stone walls and thick wooden doors, straw strewn across a hard stone floor. All they can feel is the tension of those who are sentenced to death but can never truly die.
…This does not mean they cannot starve, though.
Joseph huffs a laugh as Nicolas’s stomach growls in the quiet. It’s been more vocal than his own in the past few days since they were hanged and subsequently revived. He suspects that Nicholas hadn’t been eating for some time before that, sneaking his rationed food to those imprisoned and awaiting the joke of a trial that would be afforded to them. He had tried to split his own rations, leaving half for Nicolas, but that, too, may have wound up with the prisoners. This is not the first time they have seen such suffering, not the first time Nicolas has done everything in his power and more to try and help those who cannot help themselves.
It is, however, the first time they are to be burnt alive for the trouble.
“What do you think they’re waiting for?” Joseph asks, angling his head to the side to Nicolas beside him, his profile dark against the lamplight, nose sloped and jaw sharp.
Nicolas stares across the way for a long moment before he shakes his head, his light hair falling forward as he leans down to scrub a hand over his cheeks, chains rattling. “I do not know. It does not take this long to stoke a fire.”
Joseph hums, waiting until Nicolas lets out a sigh and turns his head to meet his gaze. “…I’ve been thinking,” he says.
Nicolas blinks oceanic green eyes, studying him through the grime of dirt and charcoal that smudges his face. “Thinking what?” he asks.
Joseph purses his lips, staring at Nicolas as Nicolas stares back at him. He takes courage in the lightness of that look, the way Nicolas’s lips twitch as if suppressing a smile. It is a look Nicolas has rarely had in recent times. “Malta,” Joseph says, and sees something vast and beautiful but also sad bloom in Nicolas’s eyes.
“We should go back there,” Nicolas says, finishing the thought that Joseph began. After this, his words imply. After the pain and suffering, after burning alive.
Joseph nods. “We should,” he says, and he doesn’t have to say the words they’re both thinking. They both know that Malta is a promise—that they will get through this side by side, once, twice, as many times as it takes. They are strong alone and stronger together.
…Too strong, as it turns out.
Joseph fights. He twists and punches and bites as hard as he can, and delights in the screams of the guards who are trying to subdue him. He is nearly lost in the frenzy when he realizes that Nicolas, beside him, has gone still, staring through the open doors.
“Nicolas—” Joseph says, and grunts as the guard he bit knees him in the gut, doubling him over. He watches from there as they switch targets, moving from him to Nicolas. They grab his pale wrists, wrenching them down with far more force than necessary for someone who isn’t fighting back.
“You bastards!” Joseph spits. “Get your hands off of him! Nicolas, Nicolo, what the hell do you think you’re doing?! For God’s sake, fight them!”
But Nicolas doesn’t, his eyes trained on the open doors. Joseph turns his head, as well, and there—there is something waiting. A box, or a coffin, or a statue—he cannot quite tell. All he knows is that it is made of black iron, and that Nicolas is trained on it, as if he understands something that Joseph himself has not.
“What are you doing? What is that?” Joseph says, and fights harder. He groans as the guards slam him up against the wall, cinching his chains tighter as they do.
The priest before him bares his teeth, holding the large wooden cross up as if shielding himself with it, separating Joseph from Nicolas. “It is called an iron maiden,” he says. “It will contain his witchcraft so we may break your bond.”
“I’ll break you—” Joseph snarls, and receives another kick for his trouble. This one breaks his knee, and he screams as it bends wrong. The whole procession moves, Nicolas in front and the guards at his back pushing him forward, the priest bringing up the rear, as Joseph’s knee heals. As soon as he’s able to stand again, Joseph hurls himself forward—but he is already too late. They are shoving Nicolas inside the box, this iron maiden, and Nicolas goes without a fuss.
Joseph yells, his voice so loud that it vibrates through his lungs. “Why are you doing this?” he says, and fights harder still, now against the chains holding him back rather than the guards and their hands. “Let him go, let him go—Nicolas, don’t let them do this—”
But Nicolas does not fight. He does not turn, does not acknowledge Joseph until he’s stepped up into the metal beast, turning around to face Joseph through the holes in the top that take the shape of a grotesquery of a face. He shakes his head as the guards slam the iron doors shut, his eyes distant and unfathomable, the vast beauty of Malta, of a haven for them to find together, long gone.
Joseph can’t help it—he screams, in fury and fear and pain, as his wrists break behind him, his shoulders dislocating from their sockets as he wrenches his body forward. So hard, and so desperate, as the guards wrap ever more chains with inch-thick links around the iron box and padlock it tight. There is a ship at the dock behind them, and Joseph realizes all at once what Nicolas probably understood this entire time—they don’t intend to just leave him in the box. They intend to take him to sea and throw him overboard. And still, still—Nicolas, his sweet Nicolo, who gave every scrap of bread he had to those starving in cells—doesn’t say a word.
Joseph cries out, thrashing again, but it’s no use. Not even at the speed at which they heal. The bonds are too tight—no matter how many bones he breaks he will not get through. Not now. He wails as the guards begin to close the doors, wheeling the iron maiden down the path to the dock.
“I’ll come for you!” Joseph yells, through the ever-smaller gap. “Nicolo, I will come for you! Stay strong, love, please stay strong! Hear me now, I won’t stop until you are in my arms again—”
And though Joseph knows that Nicolo is scared, so scared, he does not fight. He does not throw himself against the inside of the iron maiden, he does not scream—he does nothing. Nothing except flash a fleeting smile through the holes and call out, “Come sooner rather than later, yes?”
And the doors close, and the lamplight flickers, and Joseph screams, and he does not get free. Instead he burns, three days later, and rises again to slay the monsters who imprisoned them, who sent Nicolo to the depths. It is with a fury unlike anything he’s ever known that he tracks down the guards and the priest and the sailors, all, one by one by one, torturing information from them and disposing of them when they are of no more use, becoming the demon that they originally thought him. And yet, no matter how many throats he slits, no matter how many eyes he takes or ribs he spreads, he does not find his love.
He does not see Nicolo again.