( as a leader--or, more importantly, as the person abandoned in the aftermath of a mess that's been left behind, like a child that's just left all his toys tossed out along the floor, waiting for unsuspecting adults to stub their toes on blunt toy carriages or pierce their skin with the sharp points of molded dragon wings--there are always sacrifices to be made. decisions, choices, reluctant and grim resolutions. but for a city that's been drowning in its own blood for years, is there really anything left that can fix it at all?
she finds out too late, of course, that julian's taken that task onto his own shoulders--the way he takes everything, like his body is some perfectly imbalanced scale of good and evil and anything he can desperately dump into one side of it may erase the guilt that burdens the other. she doesn't have the time to figure it out herself, to find the answers before he's making his deal and sealing himself away with the heavy weight of silver chain and deep, deep red demise--she doesn't get to tell him that it's not his job to do it, that he's already given enough with his death and his help and his constant vigilance even in the face of all her own failure. and it makes her angry, in a way that feels unrelenting, a climbing frustration that builds and builds and builds until she's lashing out.
lucio won't be returning - that's the first task, the easier task, and the one that requires no thought at all. the anger is useful, there, potent and powerful, and it tarnishes her shine a little. she knows it makes her dirty, but it's hard to care.
seeking her own audience with the devil - this requires a little more finesse, and she doesn't say anything against the warnings that asra gives her because she knows that he's right. she can't fight the truth, but she also won't let herself succumb to it; as bad of an idea it is, as much as she knows he'll hate it, as much as it feels backhanded and strange to trade for a wealth of power for the life of someone else, she does it anyway.
and - as odd as it feels, when the anger breaks and the power surges and the strange blood beads and crawls down the skin of her hand like it might find its way underneath. the weight of a heart in her chest that isn't hers. the overwhelming dread of being no longer human. her penance to vesuvia, to her family, to asra, to portia, to muriel, even to him, and how's that for the biggest self-sacrifice, julian? are we even yet?
maybe it's been days, weeks, months, there's no way that she can really tell--the transformation is nearly immediate, anyway, and the realm is covered in some sunset hue that never really betrays any passing of time at all. the city is safe, and given that she won't be trying to merge this world into the other--as least for now--that means everything gets wrapped up nicely, right? and she knows that julian is here somewhere, cowering in some dark room behind locks that her hands should easily find the key to; she knows because the devil ran on about it, proud and pleased, before she put her fingers through his chest and wrenched out a still-beating heart. julian's chains are her chains, now. so why is she so reluctant to find him?
maybe it's why her fingers whisper over the door handle like it's going to burn her--golden tips, honed claws, and hands drenched in a blackness that seems to emanate from her so thoroughly that she thinks even chandra would hate her, were she to make it to this realm at all. she misses her company. she misses company.
but then, power is a delicious thing in and of itself...isn't it? )
Well.
( the door opens, finally, a frame of light that shines a sharp triangle out onto the floor of the room where julian, in his cowering, feathered form, has been locked for some time now. he probably expects some towering humanoid goat there, ready to taunt him and rip him to shreds again, pluck his feathers from his wings one by one or make a fist to tighten the invisible chains like another noose.
what he gets, instead, is nadia standing there in the black silk of her gown, a tumbling sunset of hair that wisps over her shoulders and plunges in at her hips, red eyes and sharp horns and the urge to scream at him for doing any of this at all. )
( for as much as julian gets down on himself, kicks himself around and submits to dramatic feelings of perhaps at least somewhat artificial hopelessness, he used to have such an indomitable spirit. he was a survivor, you know? the storm that claimed most of his family couldn't claim him. the blood-soaked battlefields never dragged him down to their depths. the plague never landed him at the lazaret with the rest of half the population. the years he spent traveling the world couldn't whittle him down. hell, not even a hanging could actually take him out. it isn't enough that he lived through all these things, but that he fearlessly faced them down and was fucking determined to see his purpose through to the end. the same was still true when he was first dragged away in chains to the devil's twisted playground. he survived. he was indomitable. he fought. and fought, and fought, and fought...
and lost, and lost, and lost...
maybe he's getting old.
at this point it's hard to say. he doesn't know how long it's been, just that it's been such a slow, gradual, miserable process. not something that happened overnight. once he finally succumbed to his fate, submitted, accepted defeat, it's not like he opened his eyes and found himself covered in feathers and spines. it still took time. defeat, as he well knows, is not decided in a single loss, or even many losses. real defeat is in the weathering down of the army. it's in the process of exhausting their supplies, their morale, their constitution. this is like that. the torturously slow and horrific gradual transformation of man to monster was the process of his defeat. now he's beaten. thoroughly. it's over. he lost.
there's only one thread of hope left for him to cling to, and it's that, at least in his utter humiliation and torment, his friends are decidedly safe. his bargain made it so. that's all he's got. or so he believed.
when the door opens, he doesn't much have the will to look up. the illusions are such an old hat. the devil's visits are scarce enough that he doesn't fear them anymore. and anyone (anything) else that would come in here isn't anyone worth caring about. they're just monsters like him, that's all. he makes a croaking sort of warbling sound in the back of his throat, swishes his tankard around, and drinks from it. gestures drearily with one taloned hand at any of the chairs.
and then that voice. his chin lifts in a herky-jerky sort of way like he's a poorly oiled animatronic character, not a living thing. his eyes are just about the only recognizable feature he's got left, and even that's a stretch. gunmetal gray, but all the light's gone out of them. he expects an illusion. not... )
What is this?
( not what are you or who are you, but what is this? a trick of his eyes? a trap? a test? something made up just to hurt him? it's his countess, her shape, her voice, her commanding presence, but the design of her is all wrong in a way he knows all too well. it has to be him, doing something sick just to make him crazy. but why? he's already beaten. )
What do you mean, "now"? Stop playing games. It's over. I know already.
( they're crueler words than she expects to fall from her lips, and it's almost like they climb out of her mouth without her even recognizing them, almost as if they're pulled from a place that should be buried, deep and dark, hidden from even those metallic grey eyes that stare at her like she's some poorly-made illusion or like she's not precisely what he's made her to be. no, it's unfair to blame him for everything--in fact she can't really blame him for anything at all. it's her choice that has her here, even if it's tempting to force him to bear more of the burden than she knows he can rightfully tolerate.
he's beaten and low and hopeless, and sharp words and biting retorts aren't the sorts of things he needs to hear now.
julian gestures, wearily, towards any of the open chairs, and while he may have no realization of what she is, there's a shiver of something that goes through the room that makes it quite apparent to the rest of the monsters scattered about that she is not the creature any of them likely want to be caught in the path of. it's not unlike her days in vesuvia, though there was a circle of space around her built from admiration and awe, there, like a flower that needed air around it to breathe; here, it's the quiver of fear, of knowing the power that she possesses even in the unassuming flick of her fingers when she moves through the room and nothing remains in her path, no one left in the line of sight.
which just leaves julian and his sad little feathers, sitting there, with chairs aplenty near him. she melts down into one of them, folds her arms to the table, and curls a finger at him. )
You made an admirable effort, Doctor Devorak, but I couldn't just leave you here to atone for everything you've never had to. You know he could have chosen to dishonor your deal at any point, and would have, naturally, and then where would we be? Where would the city be?
( the minor movement jerks his tankard away from him by magic, slides it across the table until it ends up in the coil of her finger, seemingly held up by nothing at all. )
I make my own deals. And I can get you out of this one now, easy, if you ask nicely.
( but should she? there's a faint uncertainty there, tinging in the words, but it's selfishness that has her doubting. she can't keep him here. )
( he ought to flinch at the accusation, but he's used to the verbal abuse. or got to used to it back when there was still plenty of it to hear. the devil always did know just the right things to say to him to break his spirit, crush his confidence. make him doubt himself, fold in upon himself like a collapsing building and drown in his own guilt. the greatest weapon against julian has always been julian, really.
besides. it's hard to flinch when he's still staring, so stunned, completely unable to grasp what he's looking at. the devil, to be sure... right? but then why this form? why her face? why her voice? why? why? what kind of trick is this? he hasn't experienced anything like it before, and that makes it so much harder for him to reconcile. if it were more of the same old sisyphean torture, pushing that boulder of burden in the shape of his long-lost friends and family now only available to him forevermore as twisted illusions and haunted nightmares, he'd be able to shrug it off. but this—
julian's mouth hangs open, his gaze only shifting to watch the tankard she pulls toward her as if on an invisible string slide across the table. without really being conscious of it, all the feathers on his body start to stand on end, ruffled and frazzled until he's puffed up to nearly double the size he was when she came in. whether that's out of fear or a reaction to some perceived threat, even he doesn't know. )
...Countess?? Nad—
( no. no. there, you see, that's it! a deal> a trap! quickly, he shuts his mouth, shakes his head. )
No. No. I'm not falling for this again, just stop. I don't know what you're playing at, but why bother? What else do you want? I said I'd stay. Don't—use her face. Leave her out of this.
( it's amusing--or would be, in any other circumstance, because her eyes go from the tankard which, to some disappointment, is nearly drained, peering down into its depths, to the movement in front of her, the wide-eyed way that julian stares at her and how his feathers go, not all at once, but in patches, ruffling and spreading and rounding him up into a large black mess. it reminds her, again, of chandra, of the way she might get irritated with some perceived inconvenience and puff herself into something more menacing as though it might help her get her way; and her lips pull before she can stop herself, something rueful and sad and wiped off her face as quickly as it appears.
leave her out of this, julian is demanding, and part of her wants to slam her hand into the table--granted, it would most likely go all the way through, now, splinter the wood into pieces, and the urge to do it is there, that simmering anger that seems to spark up from somewhere in her chest like it's worming its way through all the good fairness in her heart and turning it into something else. like an apple that's got a worm at its core, eating away slowly but steadily. she doesn't blame him for thinking it's a trap. and yet-- )
Could the Devil really replicate my beauty so easily?
( it's another amusement, though it's mostly hollow. )
You said you'd stay, I know. He told me this. And now it's my realm where you will stay, if that's your choice.
( he won't believe that either, will he? she glances back into the tankard again--it's full, somehow, despite knowing it wasn't just moments earlier. she lets it rest on the table, props her gold-tipped fingers around it, drums her claws into the edge. it makes a rhythmic, rattling sound against the tin, and her lips press together against the pain that still threatens to sear through her head at trying so earnestly to remember things that are lost. )
Do you remember, before all this? Those years before he died? There was a night you were buried so heavily in your research, even Asra gave up on prying you away. You hadn't slept for at least a day, maybe more, and it was the middle of the night and you... had your hands in your hair, like you were likely to pull it out, and I didn't want you to shed all of that awful red hair all over my clean library floor.
( the memory swims, jolts--then goes stable, her red gaze focused on some knot of the wood of the table as she recounts it, or maybe it's that she can't look julian in the face as she speaks. )
And we went outside, to the garden, and the fountain, and then... You remember, don't you? How would the Devil know all this? Look at me.
( no, of course he doesn't believe that, and the hostility in his face remains. but it all falls apart when she starts to reminisce. if anything, his feathers only ruffle more as the memory pierces the hazy veil of his mind where the life he lived before used to be. the more immediate times, the ones before, and even earlier... it doesn't matter how long ago they were. he's forgotten most of them in equal measures. and then sometimes they'll come flooding randomly back, like the places in his mind where those thoughts belong haven't been emptied out, but have simply had a blanket thrown over them to stifle the light they used to shine. this—is like having that cover whipped off. his eyes squint, brows drawing together, like that figurative light isn't quite so figurative and hurts to look at.
yes... weeks before that fateful night. before he was sick and locked in his office. before he'd become so desperate and delirious that he'd be making the lesser of the deals he'd wind up making in his life. the library, where he constantly was, books spread over a table. papers everywhere. the parchment in front of him so full of notes that he'd taken to scribbling in the margins. an enormous tome propped up for him to pore through. candles burned down to stubs, almost too dim to read by anymore. his eyes had long since glazed over, and he hadn't turned the pages in a long time. asra gave up hours ago, said he was going to sleep. he hadn't replied. he'd just sat there staring miserably down at the book. clutching his hair. wanting to rip it out in clumps, to scream and throw things. so frustrated. so tired. hadn't slept in days. people still dying by the hundreds, the ashes from the lazaret so thick in the wind that everyone kept their windows closed even on summer nights. asra must've told nadia the state he was in. countess, i can't possibly stop now. i'm on the verge of a breakthrough. but he always said that. every time. little did he know he was nowhere close. )
I—
( his eyes close with consternation, struggling with the memory. it's only bits and pieces now. her hand on his, taking it away from his hair. stiff and sore as he stood up. being urged, practically pulled, out of the library. he utters the words as they come back to him in his mind's eye: )
I suppose I could use a little fresh air.
( his head snaps up in one sharp movement, eyes opening again. look at me. he's looking, alright. there's no way the devil would know. not unless—the way julian stares at nadia is like the moment she walked in all over again, only more horror-stricken, more agonized, because now the realization is setting in. the understanding of what he's seeing, even though he can't truly comprehend how or why he's seeing it, what's actually happened to her. she says "my realm" like she is the devil, but... oh, god. )
( there's something almost fascinating about watching him piece it together, the way his feathers shift and move as though there's some method to it all, a way to force his body to find the pathways that have scabbed over, where things have been taken from him, robbed from him, and left emptiness in their wake. she has those things too, little pieces that seem to scatter in the wind of her breath when she tries to focus too hard on them--it's much easier to let it all flow, like water, and the thought reminds her of asra and all of his beautiful magic, and her heart hurts, or what's left of it does, in any case, while the rest feels heavy like stone.
he says the words and it's like they slot in where her mind glosses over; yes, he'd said it that night, yes, had relented to her mostly out of obligation, surely, but she had been pleased to take him away. even with the library being one of her own favourite places--they both needed the cool night air to finally breathe. julian had taken the whole thing to desperate lengths, with desperate measures, and that's her fault too, and that's something that she's never gotten to apologize for. probably can't ever apologize for. and that's another reason vesuvia is, truly, in better hands now, right/
because if she had just been better, had found a way to weave past all of lucio's obstacles, thrown in her path, then perhaps it all wouldn't have happened like--
julian's head jerks, rights itself like his whole neck snaps back into place again. the thought makes her want to shiver. )
It's more that you should be asking what I did to him.
( and this is probably the part where she shouldn't tell him, exactly, what happened--because there is no way that he would look at her with those soft, sad eyes and still feel anything but contempt and, especially, disgust with her, for doing it at all. her gaze goes from his face back down to the cup with her hand clamped over it, and damn it all, she decides, and brings it up to her lips.
it's--
--utterly disgusting. how does he drink this? she skids the tankard back across the table towards him with the blunt base of her palm. )
He's gone. I'm here in his place. Which begs the question, really, of where you should be, now that I'm capable of helping you.
( julian catches the tankard between both hands and pulls it toward him almost protectively. except he isn't protecting his stupid drink from her, or, really, protecting her from the stupid drink, either, he just. needs to hold onto something. because the alternative is in the way he almost reaches past it, like he means to touch her instead, only to realize he doesn't dare. not because of her. because of him. because of the black scaled birdskin and claws and feathers that are his hands now, rough and decidedly wholly unpleasant. it doesn't matter what she looks like now, or what she's become, he can't... he can't. so he holds the cup, his eyes wide and round and almost betrayed, the anguish as plain as anything. )
Wha—no! You didn't do this for me. Please tell me you didn't do this for me, that's...
( why do anything, why should she have to? and why like this? and—gone? he couldn't have broken his deal, because then wouldn't his chains have been broken, too? it's a contract, isn't it? or at least those are the lies he was told, the foolishness he believed in when he did what he did to save everybody. no, it doesn't make sense. how she can be in his place. )
You shouldn't be here. You were supposed to be safe. You were all supposed to be safe. That was the deal. I don't need help, you need to go home.
( it's one of the many options she should have considered, maybe: that he might see this as some sort of betrayal, as though she couldn't trust him to do what had to be done, or to fully give himself up to something that she thinks, perhaps, he was almost too keenly ready to give himself up to. after all, what batter way to pay for the things he thinks himself responsible for than to do something like this? to live an existence of suffering and disappointment and loneliness, and to make it seem worth it by declaring that it's been done for the sake of everyone else?
it's not that she doesn't trust him. it's not that she thinks he would try to break free of it. but it's more that she's tired of trusting the devil when he's been nothing but contrary--and well, she's solved that well enough, hasn't she? still, the anguish, the wide look of his eyes, is almost, almost too much for her to bear. or maybe it would have been, if she weren't made partly of something now that doesn't much care for anything else; it feels like stone, again, wedged in her chest. she looks at the table instead. )
Everyone is safe. You needn't worry about that.
( and the city is safe, from her inability, now--everyone is safe from that, too. )
You don't quite understand, do you?
I am home.
( she can feel it, vaguely: the pull of him, of everyone around them, the way that her hands could wrap around invisible lengths and pull at hot metal and strangle all of them under the weight of her whims. and maybe that's what he needs, then: she would reach across the table and slap him, but she doesn't want to hurt him outright, doesn't want to give in to that sort of mediocrity; she settles for her elbow on the table, her index finger twisting in the air, tightening the chains around him little by little. just a little squeeze. the kind that faust would love. ah, her heart hurts. )
Julian. I'm him, now. ( the kind of plain words she doesn't like, but they may be best suited for his drowning anguish. ) I won't be going back.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secret option number three
she finds out too late, of course, that julian's taken that task onto his own shoulders--the way he takes everything, like his body is some perfectly imbalanced scale of good and evil and anything he can desperately dump into one side of it may erase the guilt that burdens the other. she doesn't have the time to figure it out herself, to find the answers before he's making his deal and sealing himself away with the heavy weight of silver chain and deep, deep red demise--she doesn't get to tell him that it's not his job to do it, that he's already given enough with his death and his help and his constant vigilance even in the face of all her own failure. and it makes her angry, in a way that feels unrelenting, a climbing frustration that builds and builds and builds until she's lashing out.
lucio won't be returning - that's the first task, the easier task, and the one that requires no thought at all. the anger is useful, there, potent and powerful, and it tarnishes her shine a little. she knows it makes her dirty, but it's hard to care.
seeking her own audience with the devil - this requires a little more finesse, and she doesn't say anything against the warnings that asra gives her because she knows that he's right. she can't fight the truth, but she also won't let herself succumb to it; as bad of an idea it is, as much as she knows he'll hate it, as much as it feels backhanded and strange to trade for a wealth of power for the life of someone else, she does it anyway.
and - as odd as it feels, when the anger breaks and the power surges and the strange blood beads and crawls down the skin of her hand like it might find its way underneath. the weight of a heart in her chest that isn't hers. the overwhelming dread of being no longer human. her penance to vesuvia, to her family, to asra, to portia, to muriel, even to him, and how's that for the biggest self-sacrifice, julian? are we even yet?
maybe it's been days, weeks, months, there's no way that she can really tell--the transformation is nearly immediate, anyway, and the realm is covered in some sunset hue that never really betrays any passing of time at all. the city is safe, and given that she won't be trying to merge this world into the other--as least for now--that means everything gets wrapped up nicely, right? and she knows that julian is here somewhere, cowering in some dark room behind locks that her hands should easily find the key to; she knows because the devil ran on about it, proud and pleased, before she put her fingers through his chest and wrenched out a still-beating heart. julian's chains are her chains, now. so why is she so reluctant to find him?
maybe it's why her fingers whisper over the door handle like it's going to burn her--golden tips, honed claws, and hands drenched in a blackness that seems to emanate from her so thoroughly that she thinks even chandra would hate her, were she to make it to this realm at all. she misses her company. she misses company.
but then, power is a delicious thing in and of itself...isn't it? )
Well.
( the door opens, finally, a frame of light that shines a sharp triangle out onto the floor of the room where julian, in his cowering, feathered form, has been locked for some time now. he probably expects some towering humanoid goat there, ready to taunt him and rip him to shreds again, pluck his feathers from his wings one by one or make a fist to tighten the invisible chains like another noose.
what he gets, instead, is nadia standing there in the black silk of her gown, a tumbling sunset of hair that wisps over her shoulders and plunges in at her hips, red eyes and sharp horns and the urge to scream at him for doing any of this at all. )
I suppose you belong to me now, isn't that right?
( nice to see you again, doctor. )
no subject
and lost, and lost, and lost...
maybe he's getting old.
at this point it's hard to say. he doesn't know how long it's been, just that it's been such a slow, gradual, miserable process. not something that happened overnight. once he finally succumbed to his fate, submitted, accepted defeat, it's not like he opened his eyes and found himself covered in feathers and spines. it still took time. defeat, as he well knows, is not decided in a single loss, or even many losses. real defeat is in the weathering down of the army. it's in the process of exhausting their supplies, their morale, their constitution. this is like that. the torturously slow and horrific gradual transformation of man to monster was the process of his defeat. now he's beaten. thoroughly. it's over. he lost.
there's only one thread of hope left for him to cling to, and it's that, at least in his utter humiliation and torment, his friends are decidedly safe. his bargain made it so. that's all he's got. or so he believed.
when the door opens, he doesn't much have the will to look up. the illusions are such an old hat. the devil's visits are scarce enough that he doesn't fear them anymore. and anyone (anything) else that would come in here isn't anyone worth caring about. they're just monsters like him, that's all. he makes a croaking sort of warbling sound in the back of his throat, swishes his tankard around, and drinks from it. gestures drearily with one taloned hand at any of the chairs.
and then that voice. his chin lifts in a herky-jerky sort of way like he's a poorly oiled animatronic character, not a living thing. his eyes are just about the only recognizable feature he's got left, and even that's a stretch. gunmetal gray, but all the light's gone out of them. he expects an illusion. not... )
What is this?
( not what are you or who are you, but what is this? a trick of his eyes? a trap? a test? something made up just to hurt him? it's his countess, her shape, her voice, her commanding presence, but the design of her is all wrong in a way he knows all too well. it has to be him, doing something sick just to make him crazy. but why? he's already beaten. )
What do you mean, "now"? Stop playing games. It's over. I know already.
no subject
( they're crueler words than she expects to fall from her lips, and it's almost like they climb out of her mouth without her even recognizing them, almost as if they're pulled from a place that should be buried, deep and dark, hidden from even those metallic grey eyes that stare at her like she's some poorly-made illusion or like she's not precisely what he's made her to be. no, it's unfair to blame him for everything--in fact she can't really blame him for anything at all. it's her choice that has her here, even if it's tempting to force him to bear more of the burden than she knows he can rightfully tolerate.
he's beaten and low and hopeless, and sharp words and biting retorts aren't the sorts of things he needs to hear now.
julian gestures, wearily, towards any of the open chairs, and while he may have no realization of what she is, there's a shiver of something that goes through the room that makes it quite apparent to the rest of the monsters scattered about that she is not the creature any of them likely want to be caught in the path of. it's not unlike her days in vesuvia, though there was a circle of space around her built from admiration and awe, there, like a flower that needed air around it to breathe; here, it's the quiver of fear, of knowing the power that she possesses even in the unassuming flick of her fingers when she moves through the room and nothing remains in her path, no one left in the line of sight.
which just leaves julian and his sad little feathers, sitting there, with chairs aplenty near him. she melts down into one of them, folds her arms to the table, and curls a finger at him. )
You made an admirable effort, Doctor Devorak, but I couldn't just leave you here to atone for everything you've never had to. You know he could have chosen to dishonor your deal at any point, and would have, naturally, and then where would we be? Where would the city be?
( the minor movement jerks his tankard away from him by magic, slides it across the table until it ends up in the coil of her finger, seemingly held up by nothing at all. )
I make my own deals. And I can get you out of this one now, easy, if you ask nicely.
( but should she? there's a faint uncertainty there, tinging in the words, but it's selfishness that has her doubting. she can't keep him here. )
no subject
besides. it's hard to flinch when he's still staring, so stunned, completely unable to grasp what he's looking at. the devil, to be sure... right? but then why this form? why her face? why her voice? why? why? what kind of trick is this? he hasn't experienced anything like it before, and that makes it so much harder for him to reconcile. if it were more of the same old sisyphean torture, pushing that boulder of burden in the shape of his long-lost friends and family now only available to him forevermore as twisted illusions and haunted nightmares, he'd be able to shrug it off. but this—
julian's mouth hangs open, his gaze only shifting to watch the tankard she pulls toward her as if on an invisible string slide across the table. without really being conscious of it, all the feathers on his body start to stand on end, ruffled and frazzled until he's puffed up to nearly double the size he was when she came in. whether that's out of fear or a reaction to some perceived threat, even he doesn't know. )
...Countess?? Nad—
( no. no. there, you see, that's it! a deal> a trap! quickly, he shuts his mouth, shakes his head. )
No. No. I'm not falling for this again, just stop. I don't know what you're playing at, but why bother? What else do you want? I said I'd stay. Don't—use her face. Leave her out of this.
no subject
leave her out of this, julian is demanding, and part of her wants to slam her hand into the table--granted, it would most likely go all the way through, now, splinter the wood into pieces, and the urge to do it is there, that simmering anger that seems to spark up from somewhere in her chest like it's worming its way through all the good fairness in her heart and turning it into something else. like an apple that's got a worm at its core, eating away slowly but steadily. she doesn't blame him for thinking it's a trap. and yet-- )
Could the Devil really replicate my beauty so easily?
( it's another amusement, though it's mostly hollow. )
You said you'd stay, I know. He told me this. And now it's my realm where you will stay, if that's your choice.
( he won't believe that either, will he? she glances back into the tankard again--it's full, somehow, despite knowing it wasn't just moments earlier. she lets it rest on the table, props her gold-tipped fingers around it, drums her claws into the edge. it makes a rhythmic, rattling sound against the tin, and her lips press together against the pain that still threatens to sear through her head at trying so earnestly to remember things that are lost. )
Do you remember, before all this? Those years before he died? There was a night you were buried so heavily in your research, even Asra gave up on prying you away. You hadn't slept for at least a day, maybe more, and it was the middle of the night and you... had your hands in your hair, like you were likely to pull it out, and I didn't want you to shed all of that awful red hair all over my clean library floor.
( the memory swims, jolts--then goes stable, her red gaze focused on some knot of the wood of the table as she recounts it, or maybe it's that she can't look julian in the face as she speaks. )
And we went outside, to the garden, and the fountain, and then... You remember, don't you? How would the Devil know all this? Look at me.
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yes... weeks before that fateful night. before he was sick and locked in his office. before he'd become so desperate and delirious that he'd be making the lesser of the deals he'd wind up making in his life. the library, where he constantly was, books spread over a table. papers everywhere. the parchment in front of him so full of notes that he'd taken to scribbling in the margins. an enormous tome propped up for him to pore through. candles burned down to stubs, almost too dim to read by anymore. his eyes had long since glazed over, and he hadn't turned the pages in a long time. asra gave up hours ago, said he was going to sleep. he hadn't replied. he'd just sat there staring miserably down at the book. clutching his hair. wanting to rip it out in clumps, to scream and throw things. so frustrated. so tired. hadn't slept in days. people still dying by the hundreds, the ashes from the lazaret so thick in the wind that everyone kept their windows closed even on summer nights. asra must've told nadia the state he was in. countess, i can't possibly stop now. i'm on the verge of a breakthrough. but he always said that. every time. little did he know he was nowhere close. )
I—
( his eyes close with consternation, struggling with the memory. it's only bits and pieces now. her hand on his, taking it away from his hair. stiff and sore as he stood up. being urged, practically pulled, out of the library. he utters the words as they come back to him in his mind's eye: )
I suppose I could use a little fresh air.
( his head snaps up in one sharp movement, eyes opening again. look at me. he's looking, alright. there's no way the devil would know. not unless—the way julian stares at nadia is like the moment she walked in all over again, only more horror-stricken, more agonized, because now the realization is setting in. the understanding of what he's seeing, even though he can't truly comprehend how or why he's seeing it, what's actually happened to her. she says "my realm" like she is the devil, but... oh, god. )
No. Oh no, no, no. What did he do to you?!
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he says the words and it's like they slot in where her mind glosses over; yes, he'd said it that night, yes, had relented to her mostly out of obligation, surely, but she had been pleased to take him away. even with the library being one of her own favourite places--they both needed the cool night air to finally breathe. julian had taken the whole thing to desperate lengths, with desperate measures, and that's her fault too, and that's something that she's never gotten to apologize for. probably can't ever apologize for. and that's another reason vesuvia is, truly, in better hands now, right/
because if she had just been better, had found a way to weave past all of lucio's obstacles, thrown in her path, then perhaps it all wouldn't have happened like--
julian's head jerks, rights itself like his whole neck snaps back into place again. the thought makes her want to shiver. )
It's more that you should be asking what I did to him.
( and this is probably the part where she shouldn't tell him, exactly, what happened--because there is no way that he would look at her with those soft, sad eyes and still feel anything but contempt and, especially, disgust with her, for doing it at all. her gaze goes from his face back down to the cup with her hand clamped over it, and damn it all, she decides, and brings it up to her lips.
it's--
--utterly disgusting. how does he drink this? she skids the tankard back across the table towards him with the blunt base of her palm. )
He's gone. I'm here in his place. Which begs the question, really, of where you should be, now that I'm capable of helping you.
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Wha—no! You didn't do this for me. Please tell me you didn't do this for me, that's...
( why do anything, why should she have to? and why like this? and—gone? he couldn't have broken his deal, because then wouldn't his chains have been broken, too? it's a contract, isn't it? or at least those are the lies he was told, the foolishness he believed in when he did what he did to save everybody. no, it doesn't make sense. how she can be in his place. )
You shouldn't be here. You were supposed to be safe. You were all supposed to be safe. That was the deal. I don't need help, you need to go home.
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it's not that she doesn't trust him. it's not that she thinks he would try to break free of it. but it's more that she's tired of trusting the devil when he's been nothing but contrary--and well, she's solved that well enough, hasn't she? still, the anguish, the wide look of his eyes, is almost, almost too much for her to bear. or maybe it would have been, if she weren't made partly of something now that doesn't much care for anything else; it feels like stone, again, wedged in her chest. she looks at the table instead. )
Everyone is safe. You needn't worry about that.
( and the city is safe, from her inability, now--everyone is safe from that, too. )
You don't quite understand, do you?
I am home.
( she can feel it, vaguely: the pull of him, of everyone around them, the way that her hands could wrap around invisible lengths and pull at hot metal and strangle all of them under the weight of her whims. and maybe that's what he needs, then: she would reach across the table and slap him, but she doesn't want to hurt him outright, doesn't want to give in to that sort of mediocrity; she settles for her elbow on the table, her index finger twisting in the air, tightening the chains around him little by little. just a little squeeze. the kind that faust would love. ah, her heart hurts. )
Julian. I'm him, now. ( the kind of plain words she doesn't like, but they may be best suited for his drowning anguish. ) I won't be going back.