Chapter Text
The crack! of shattered glass rang like a gunshot across the miasmic streets of the Hindquarters; Artemy had his pistol raised and aimed toward the sound before he realized he’d moved. He expected to see a bandit, or… hell, even a child, messing with the mirrors laid against buildings with the other furniture cast out with their owners. He’d seen other household items subjected to misplaced vitriol, after all. The fog of death’s herald blanketed his vision, but over the sight of his revolver he made out a silhouette crouched on the ground. He narrowed his eyes against the soot, and carefully moved closer until the figure came into view.
As soon as he could make out enough detail to identify the interloper, Artemy lowered his revolver in slow, dawning surprise. The vandal turned out to be none other than the bigshot doctor from the Capital, kneeling on the soot-covered ground to prod at gleaming fragments of what had once been a mirror. Dankovsky’s movements were purposeful, if somewhat hesitant, as he skid his hands over the mess, his furrowed brow showing intense concentration.
After apparently deeming his exploration done, he turned to another, smaller mirror perched alongside the other, and…
…Smashed that one, too?
“Bachelor?” Artemy called, causing the doctor to jump to his feet, scrambling to grab something from his coat before meeting the Haruspex’s eyes and relaxing somewhat.
“Ah, Burakh,” Dankovsky sighed. “Don’t scare – er, startle me like that! I nearly shot you.”
“You’re one to talk,” Artemy replied, wagging his own firearm. “Having fun there?”
“Pardon?”
“The mirrors.” Artemy nodded to the mess. “Did they offend you? Show you something you didn’t like?”
Dankovsky huffed something under his breath, then cleared his throat. “Nothing of the sort,” he assured. “Just… well. It’s nothing, just… er… gathering glass to trade with the… locals.” ‘Children,’ he meant. Funny how he’s still embarrassed to say it. Dankovsky brushes dirt off his trousers.
A menkhu can do many things with the Lines he sees. He can watch someone favor their right leg and know if it was a sprain or a fracture just from the tangles. He can see someone squint and know they have a migraine, tracing the paths of their body and mind until he reaches a knot. All this to say, he can see tells very clearly, as though put on a spotlight.
Dankovsky’s hands – empty, he notes, free of the glass he claimed to be gathering – fidget with the cuffs of his slightly scratched gloves, and his eyes aren’t meeting Artemy’s.
“Why are you lying?” he asks.
“Excuse me?” Dankovsky says, more out of surprise than offense. “Why would I lie about that?”
“You tell me.”
The Bachelor stares for a moment. “...You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” Artemy urges, curiosity piqued.
Dankovsky finally meets his eyes – Artemy doesn’t mean to loom over him, but it’s inevitable with their height difference. To his credit, Dankovsky doesn’t look too unnerved, a fact proven by the half step forward he takes, putting them nearly chest-to-chest. (Or chest-to-abdomen, but that’s beside the point.)
“If you must know,” he begins, performatively casual, “I’m gathering liquid time which seeps from shattered mirrors and painless deaths in order to jump between days using the many clocks scattered about town. This is my fourth fourth day–” He cuts himself off, furrowing his brow for a moment. “Actually, this may be… Oh, right. This is my third fourth day, as I’d skipped to the fifth, then to the third.” He meets Artemy’s eyes again. “I also use the great timepiece in the cathedral to mend my temporal instance vessels so my death will hopefully never be final. Got all that?”
Artemy just stares at him in utter bafflement.
“Well?” Dankovsky demands, tapping his foot impatiently. “I haven’t got all the time in the world to talk with you, as I still need to gather more. These mirrors didn’t give me nearly enough amalgam to go back far enough to fix today without worrying if I have enough to see any tomorrow.”
“Why do you need to go back a day?” he finds himself asking above all other questions.
The nerve of this man to look at Artemy like he’s lost his mind.
“That’s what you ask? Those are the first words out of your mouth?” Dankovsky asks, bewildered. “It shouldn’t matter to you. You can’t afford to waste time more than I, and the fact that you’re even entertaining my ramblings is a bad sign for your sanity. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have delusions to feed.” He resolutely sidesteps the Haruspex, but Artemy catches him by the arm to hold him still.
“I’m going to be entirely honest with you, Dankovsky,” Artemy deadpans. “Time travel is the strangest thing I’ve come across in this town by a very slim margin. I doubt you’re prone to hallucinations, and I don’t smell twyrine on you.” He drags Dankovsky closer, prompting a gasp from the smaller man. “What breaks today? What are you preventing?”
Dankovsky meets his eyes, a baffled sort of resoluteness in his locked gaze.
“Filin,” he says. “He’ll die this afternoon.”
Artemy nearly drops him. “What? Why? He didn’t get sick, and the plague has already burned through the warehouses.”
“Not the Pest. A mob.” The Bachelor tugs his arm from Artemy’s grasp, scowling. “A riot starts, and they pin him to the warehouse wall like a butterfly.”
“...And you can… you can save him?”
“I can try. I’ve narrowed down a means to calm the riots in the area, all I need now is to test it.”
They spend a moment in silence; Artemy knows how intense his eyes are, and he gives Dankovsky credit for holding his gaze without flinching away.
“Will that be all? I have to gather more time before the day is out. It costs more to go back two.”
Artemy glances over to the sun, sliding wearily toward its daily death. “Ah. That makes enough sense, I suppose.” As Dankovsky brushes past him with a nod, Artemy turns. “What will happen to me? The me of right now?”
“You’ll likely cease existing,” the Bachelor intones, carefully neutral. “I’ve… been trying not to dwell on that too much.”
“And you’ll just go back to gathering… er, things? So Grief will still die here?”
“Amalgam,” Dankovsky corrects, “and… yes, likely so. I’d advise against trying to visit. It’s a gruesome scene.”
“I can fight them.”
“No you can’t. I’ve tried, and I likely have more bullets than you.”
“I can talk some sense into them, then!”
“You’ve clearly never dealt with a riot. You could try, but then you’d die with him, and the town needs you more then it needs him.”
Artemy was getting tired of poignant silence pervading between the two’s eye contact, but alas, it seems that is their fate.
Drama queens, both of them, Artemy thinks, somewhat hysterical.
“...Alright,” Artemy agrees. “Do you need help?”
“I don’t know,” Dankovsky answers. (Imagine that, Mr. Big-City-Doctor admits he doesn’t know everything.) “I’d rather not test it when things are this dire. If you break a mirror and nothing comes of it, that’s time wasted.”
“Alright then.” Artemy nods. “Good luck.”
Dankovsky nods, and walks to his next glass victim.
—
He was right. Grief was killed, and pinned up like a bug with workman’s tools.
For a brief, delirious second, Artemy convinced himself this was Dankovsky’s doing; after all, the method and presentation of it are quite drastic, not to mention creative. There was no way he could’ve predicted it otherwise. Unless, of course, he knew the future.
Thousands have died by now. Thousands more will, over the next indeterminate period of time. This is the first one which truly got to him. Strangers, acquaintances, numbers on a chart – those were barely real to him. He can see that now, as the stark reality of death now made itself painful instead of disquieting.
Then something happened – a crash, or maybe a bout of silence, or maybe someone shoving him, or reality blinking like it had dirt in its eye, and the warehouse was bare, and Grigory Filin had never been pinned to its wall.
Artemy blinked. Then again.
Still nothing there.
What? I’m either losing it, Artemy thinks, or I owe Dankovsky a drink.
—
He sees Dankovsky again in the Broken Heart, taking a blood sample from one of its patrons. As soon as he wraps the wound and turns to leave, Artemy intercepts him, grabbing him by the arm like he had in the timeline that reality had shaken from its shoulders.
“You were right,” he says, and watches a spark of what seems like hope and looks like fear bloom in Dankovsky’s eyes. “It was a gruesome scene.”
The strange expression melts into stark, abject baffled relief. “You…?”
“Yeah,” Artemy nods. “I remember.”