#kettlekat writes

Alright, time for my debut I guess ; ) this is going to take place after Asra resurrects the mc, but before mc wakes up, this is the dawn after the fateful masquerade. This could be considered the prologue to my fic. (Wow this got long)

The sounds of alarms and soldiers keep Julian alert as he strides carefully and quickly in the dark. He can hear the clinking of armor. Too many men to count. Their steps are in unison marching in the through the streets, chasing a singular cause. Finding the count’s murderer. Him apparently. The tall streak of auburn clad in black dashes into the alleyway, mud clinging to his heels. He knows he needs to leave, but he can’t leave things as they were.

He rounds a corner, then another, a path he knows by memory. “Mezalinka is going to kill me when she finds out I left. Better than hanging at least.” She had to make preparations, to get him out of the city. He felt a wave of nauseating guilt, she was always at risk, salty sea dog that she was, but now it was his fault she was at risk. Time and time again he had been told not to risk family for adventure, and now he was risking just about all he had left and more so, just to see the witch he loved again.

A familiar lantern dark, as ever, greeted him. A signal that hadn’t been lit as long as Julian could remember. He wondered if it was ever lit and a sharp pain guided him to other thoughts. To why he came.

Asra. Waves of emotion wash over him as he unlocked the door of this shop for the thousandth time. Each step inside carries with it a memory, a kiss of pain and pleasure. He savors each one feeling himself melt into the past, and allowing himself to hope for more. Asra liked to go on journeys, perhaps he would go on this one with him.

As he reached the top step to an empty living room he turned for Asra’s room. “Napping like usual my dear?” he mumbles to himself, feeling pangs of sorrow at the words my dear a voice in the back of his head told him “not yours, not anymore”. He feels warnings in the back of his mind, warnings of words said that he can’t recall. Warnings that the reason their relationship broke off broke him too, the problem is he can’t quite remember what the reason was. His hand hovers over the handle. I shouldn’t be doing this. To myself or Asra… but I want - no, need to know. He reasons.

Asra was asleep, perhaps mid meditation, his head leaned back against the headrest, and in his lap was a mess of blond curls and satin, there was something painfully familiar about them. Julian tried to make out the stranger’s face through the curls, something about them hurt, he assumed it was the heartbreak of being replaced so quickly?“Oh? Did our years together mean nothing to you?” Julian bit out quietly. It doesn’t escape him how tenderly Asra holds them as if the last thing he wants to do is to leave their side for an instant. Julian wonders what Asra would say to him.

“I told you before, I can’t love you. That’s more the truth now that it was yesterday. You need to leave Ilya, you’re putting us all in danger.”

or maybe he would say

“I told you once, I’ll tell you a thousand times Ilya, you’ve outlived your usefulness. I swear if you take one more step near us with that plague-ridden body of yours I will do what I have to and put you out of your misery.” 

Julian almost wishes he would. Asra had never shown as much care about him as he does this stranger, and Julian and Asra were together for years and it hadn’t even been one since they parted. If he woke them would Asra hate him? The plague he carried? Asra’s lids flutter open, dazed, he focuses on the tall awkward anxious man in the room who looks as if he’s about to bolt.

“Ilya?” The doctor freezes.

“I was just leaving… I have to leave, uh, Vesuvia that is.  I thought to ask if you would come with me, but I imagine that you have other plans.” “Ilya, that can’t happen, and it’s.. It’s dangerous for you to be here. Do you need more help?“The guilt that has been shadowing Julian, hunting him, finally catches up to him, a dagger pricking an already overloaded heart.

  “Fine. I know when I’m not wanted” Julian bites out.“You really don’t, I tried to tell you. I can’t feel for you the way you do me. Especially not now.” Asra mumbles to himself, so quietly only he could have heard it. Julian understands just the same. “I know your secret now, witch. You have no heart”Asra looks stunned for a moment, a genuine break in his careful facade as if to ask who told you? but he recovers and instead doubles down, genuinely frustrated.

“You’re right at least when it comes to you. Go seek your misery somewhere else. I won’t be your absolution. I’m too busy finding my own. I thought it was clear I’m done with you. Now go. I’ll give you one last gift, for old time’s sake. Please, never let me see you in Vesuvia again. Go, live your life. Try to be happy. Attempt to avoid dying.” without me, Asra pleads. He casts a spell on Julian, a simple notice-me-not spell layered with an illusion of a random person. It should get him to Mezalinka’s safely.

“I didn’t ask for a spell. I asked for you” Julian honestly has no idea what he just cast, and considers it witchy nonsense anyways.

“You’re getting the spell, Ilya, now please go.”

Julian clenches his jaw and turns as tears just begin to fall down his face. He ponders getting himself caught, hanging doesn’t seem so bad right now but not one guard seems to notice as he walks in the middle of the street in the morning light, and he’s too overwhelmed to ask why.  Rain drowns his sobbing, absorbing tears as he makes his way down alleys in the light if early morning. He hopes the sky at least feels something for him.

As he reaches Mezalinka’s place he drags himself inside, feeling pangs of guilt for dripping water he has no energy to clean. He opens the hatch in her floor and slips on the first rung, hitting his head, fracturing his ankle and wrist and slicing his palm. He is no sooner assessing the damage to his palm when he watches it close. A faint glowing emitting from his own neck. “what The FUCK!?” Julian backs up in shock and notices his ankle doesn’t hurt.

Is.. is this the spell Asra cast?