Chapter Text

A deeper breath turns him in, the falling sensation subsiding, the weightlessness growing. A wail awakens in his ears, long and pitched. He tries to move away from the howl, tries to open his clenched eyes. Move away, move away, away, away, away… He tries extending his arm to shield himself away, face away from the crushing weight of darkness, the sudden loop of gravity, the rush of blood picking up the tempo, loud, loud, too loud, never-ending, blending, smudging. No, no, no, this is not the way, this is the wrong turn, why, where, what, how…

Julian wakes up with a start, breath caught in the back of his throat.

Blurry shadows scatter on the ceiling, flickering this way or the other in the candle light. It’s rather cold in the room, the matted curtain in the window blown to and fro against the window sill.

For a long moment he just looks up, trying to get enough air, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he counts inside his head – he is safe, it is night time, he slept, it is okay, everything is okay, okay, okay, okay. The logical part of his brain helpfully supplements that it was just a nightmare, one of a passing feeling that will go away in a moment, it’s okay, okay, okay, okay…

Something warm moves at his side. It feels strange. Inviting and welcome. Very strange. Too strange. Julian sobers at once.

Immediately, heat rises to his cheeks, and Julian is sure his face is just as red as his hair. He swallows thickly.

Their limbs are intertwined, legs and arms draped around each other. Her face is obscured, hidden in the crook of his neck. Her weight settles around him like a blanket, enveloping him in her scent. It’s heavy with incense, warm with the herbal dust and pleasant, oh so pleasant in its complexity.

Julian stills, his breath hitching again, as she nuzzles closer. Her breasts are full, swaying inside a modest white chemise. Gentle movement up and down, swaying his arm draped around her waist. Her long dark hair weaves over his chest like a vine, fragrant and soft. She moves in his arms, deeply asleep, her breath an even rhythm – in and out, in and out, a delicate puff of air against Julian’s cheek.





It’s the woman from earlier. The Apprentice. Asra’s Apprentice.

Heat pools behind his eyes and for a long moment, Julian hopes he is still dreaming. But one of her hands clenches with a possessive grip on his shirt, a strained word mumbled between rosy lips, and her forehead bumps into his chin. The pain makes him pause but the woman seems not to have woken up.





It takes him a moment to see Malak peering curiously at them both from his post by the beady door, a crooked shelf a makeshift branch for the bird to perch itself on and observe whatever interesting things may be happening in the bedroom.

Julian makes a helpless face at the bird, gesturing with his chin at himself and the Apprentice, a silent question: “How?” mouthed at Malak. The bird’s dark eye seems to glisten with humour as it cranes its head left and right.

It croaks quietly, as if to say: “You should be happy! Why are you complaining?”

“I don’t know” Julian mouths at Malak feeling ridiculous talking to a bird, lying in bed with a woman he just met and might have probably kissed a dozen of times by now if given a chance, might have fantasised about meeting a hundred times, has been dreaming about for at least the last ten years.

It seems so perfect. It seems so peaceful. So carefree, to lie down like this and look at her, and wonder how long they could stay like this. For a day? A month? A year? The Apprentice huffs in her sleep, her head lolling slightly within the crook of his arm. Julian looks down at her dark eyelashes, at the slight frown forming round her chubby cheeks and troubled lips. With a gentle puff of breath, he blows away the few stray thin hair falling down her forehead.

With faint amusement he notices the gloves still on his hands, having been too exhausted to get rid of them before collapsing and falling asleep. He gets rid of one of his gloves with his teeth, the leather bitter and acrid in his mouth. It feels so different to touch her with a naked hand, his fingers splaying over her throat, silky and smooth, so warm to the touch. Her skin is smooth against his fingertips, warm and soft where his is littered with criss-crossing scars, frayed burns and where bones healed crookedly or not fully. It’s different since the curse and the mark and being able to heal other’s pain but whatever past Julian had had before Lucio’s death and that curse, it’s there, mapped out like an outline of Vesuvia across every limb, across every space he could think of. It’s there in the frayed cut over his stomach, in the crooked toe that hurt after having walked too long, in that damn eye that frightens him each time he takes the eyepatch off, the long moments spent staring into the water, into the mirror, hastily putting himself together before anyone can spot the bloody sclera, the illness, the sign of another incoming Plague.





“You’re so beautiful” Julian whispers gazing at the Apprentice's sleeping face, murmuring in that hyperventilating tone he gets when things get too much, when the alcohol fizzes out of his system via sweat, saliva and those few traitorous tears currently snaking their way down the crevice between the eye socket and the cheekbone, a lingering moisture that rolls down his collarbone. He swallows whatever's left, swatting the sadness away, away, away, it's not the time, no no. He adjusts the woman in his arms, gently jostling her closer, driving a hand down the small of her back, smoothing the other down her neck, over her brow, the uneven cheek. “You are so, so beautiful.”





The Apprentice’s hands are small, with nicks and cuts here and there, with fingers inundated with baby fat, so delicate and fragile in his grasp, and before he can dissuade himself from the idea, he traces each knuckle, each fingernail getting mapped out with kisses. It’s sweaty and her skin smells faintly of herbs, myrrh and incense, heavy together with hints of musk.

She smells so much like memories on the edge of Julian’s memory, she smells so much like the lazy, long evenings and the restless evenings, like everything and nothing he knows at once. She is a magician’s Apprentice, and she smells like their shop, like the myriad things stuck in the back, like the countless sleepless nights, like the far, far away things that will never come back.

And yet, she is helping Julian now, whether from morbid curiosity, misplaced trust, gossips and half-truths fed to her by people left behind in the city or good heart, he has no idea. He hopes and doubts at the same time that’s it’s the last option, because where were such people when his sentence run in the air? Where are the survivors of the Plague now, those who survived under his dreadful care?

Where is Asra when he needs answers, why has he never been there when needed most?





“You think she is like Asra?” Malak’s quiet croak makes Julian flinch. It peers across the room at them, its head tilting up and down in interest.

The candlelight makes the bird’s shadow twice its size, twinkling as Malak sweeps down from the branch and hops onto the floor. Julian remains silent, his brow strained as he observes the bird looking back at him, its soft creak reminiscent of mock laughter.

It paces on the floorboards, wood echoing the tiny pitter-patter. Tick – tick – tick – tick – tick the bird jumps across the room, black feathers rustling, shimmering, glistening in the wavering candlelight.

Julian feels his throat tighten as the Apprentice moves once more in his arms, throat bobbing, fingers entwining with his in her sleep. He observes the rise and fall of her chest. He runs his fingers through her fair, never-ending dark waves across the sea of the white linen pillow, its wheat insides poking through the side.



Tick – tick

Tick – tick



Her neck is long, speckled with freckles and moles, tendons and collarbones stretching the skin taunt as she moves, and adjusts, kicking Julian slightly, pushing and pulling, stretching and shrinking on herself. She dreams troubled dreams, huffing and puffing, breathing loud and then so shallow and quietly he must bring his ear across her chest to be sure she is still drawing air.



Tick – tick

Tick – tick

“Cat caught your tongue?” Malak’s beady black eye shines in the candlelight, dry and unyielding. Its beak moves left and right, “Isn’t that what you fear the most? That history shall repeat itself?”



“Would that be so bad, even if it happened again?” Julian looks down at the Apprentice, having propped himself on an elbow, fingers playing in-between her hair, smoothing stray lines behind her ear, “Maybe I am destined to be unhappy in love?”



“Again?” Malak croaks angrily, loud enough for the sound to pierce Julian’s ear. It ruffles its feathers, puffing up, its beak snapping loudly, “How many more times do you need to learn? How many more?” Before Julian has time to react, Malak jumps onto the bed, its wide wings beating angrily at him, black feathers catching in his wide white shirt, tangling, scraping, stirring against his naked skin.



“Stop it!” he bats at Malak with his free arm, shielding the Apprentice. “You will wake her, stop it!”



Sharp beak picks at Julian’s ear, picks at his hair, drills into his skulls, feathers graze at his face, the raven bouncing on his shoulder now, furious in its pecking, unyielding in its assault.

Pain blooms in Julian’s temple, dull, unrelenting pain, and there are tiny scratches healing themselves immediately across his cheeks and his hands, the more Malak pecks, the more he stutters, the more time passes, and the pain swells in his throat.

Julian huddles over the Apprentice, muscles groaning as he huffs a breath, quiet and shallow, as Malak beats its wings against his neck.



“I don’t care how many times I try” Julian mutters finally, feeling blood trickle the very same way tears have rolled, small steady streams shaping his cheekbone. Happily, each droplet smooths down the crevices of his neck, omitting the Apprentice’s features, healing each riverbed. “Maybe this time it’ll be different.”



Malak croaks in his ear, the bird having exhausted itself in frustration at not leaving any lasting damage, sad long wail that sounds almost like Pasha all those evenings, long, long evenings spent with him drinking away his nightmares, looking for the missing pieces of his memory in each next tankard of Salty Bitters, waving her concern away, saying it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, he just needs some alone time, Pasha, he will make it all up to her, she will see, they will be happy again, just give him time, and please, please don’t cry.



The Apprentice’s lashes are long and dark, her cheeks like full apples and he whispers in her hair, hand clasped over his heart, her back so small and delicate when gathered in his arms, that he will be okay, whether she loves him, whether she stays long enough to know him, they will be okay whatever she chooses to do because for some reason they fit like pieces of a jigsaw together, like a fishing line and a hook, like a cloud and a passing rain, like each red sunset before a frostbite.



It will be okay because he will try, running away is too long overdue, Asra will not come and save him, he never would have, Pasha is better off without him in the picture, and Mazelinka, sweet fiery Mazelinka will take better care of her than he could have ever hoped to try and offer. It will be okay, and whatever may come, whatever shall come, he will be ready and not be a burden. She will be okay, having Asra there for her, having so much support and love, and whatever else that he can give, no matter how meagre, how useless he is, he will be there, he will try harder and be better, and not run away, he will stay whatever the Countess says, and once he hangs, it will be over soon.





He tosses and turns for the rest of the night, and eventually falls into a dreamless sleep once more, the Apprentice cradled, lulled by him in her own restless sleep.



Julian feels her wake up at the crack of dawn, her body easily rolling out of his grasp, slow steady stretches at the brink of the shared mattress, careful, nearly soundless steps across creaking floorboards. For a long moment he feels her eyes on himself, but it feels different, it feels so much different to be looked at in silence after that night, and he stalls each of his breaths just so that wakefulness shall come later, and he can imagine her looking at him the way he looked at her in her sleep. Imagine, dream a silly fantasy for a while.





She stands in the room for a minute or two and then leaves, the wooden beads of the door clattering.



In a flutter of feathers Julian shuts his eyes tightly, tight so that the morning light shall turn back, and Malak smooths its head against his arm, black velvety feathers tingling the healing themselves pecks and nicks, a mournful gurgle bending its throat in an echo. It’s the start of another day, and another, another and a day after day, it’s all the same, it always runs the same way. And at the same time, it feels different, something hanging in the air - and when he looks at the ceiling again, trying to decipher its patterns like he always does, Julian hears the woman moving in the kitchen carefully, walking to and fro on light feet but not running, not turning away.

Perhaps, this will turn different after all, and Julian tries to smile to himself, tries to stash that hope in the back-pocket, in the wider stride, the new shirt and the quickening of its pulse at the thought. Perhaps, it'll be different with her.