#seklos

“And a song someone sings…once upon a December…”

He tries to grasp at them, to hold on tighter, but it’s no use; they slip through his fingers as ephemeral as mist, leaving him just as lost as he’s always been.

“Hey!”

K whips around at the shout to find a pair of men standing on the balcony that’s at the far end, directly across from the grand staircase.

Kleb.

“What are you doing in here!?”

Not knowing if they’re maybe guards or some kind of authority, K takes off toward the opposite end, the way he came. He can’t find Douxie if he gets arrested.

“Hey!” Douxie shouts again, zipping down the stairs from the far balcony to take off after the boy, Jim not far behind. “Stop!”

Luug barks as the three sprint across the enormous room, though whether from excitement or in some attempt to intimidate the other two, K isn’t sure. He scrambles up the stairs, not even caring to grab his stuff—it’s not like it’s worth anything.

“Hold on a minute!” one of the young men shouts, the same one who’s been shouting.

But K can’t keep this pace up. After walking for two days through the snow, his legs just can’t keep going like this. He comes to a stumbling stop on the landing, panting hard, halting just before an enormous painting he hadn’t noticed earlier—a painting of a family, a mom and dad, four daughters, and a son.

“How did you get in he—” Douxie starts to demand, skidding to his own stop at the base of the stairs, but his words get stuck in his throat as he takes in the scene before him. The boy now looks at him, standing beside the painted visage of Tsarevitch Krel, and the resemblance is uncanny. The hair, the eyes, the face, it’s all perfect, like that image came to life and stepped right out of the painting, just aged about a decade or more—the very picture of what might’ve been, if only…

Just as Jim catches up, Douxie grabs him by the lapel of his coat, pulling him in close. “Jim, do you see what I see?”

“Huh?” Jim looks at Douxie, confused. But Douxie doesn’t look back at him, not for a moment. So, he turns his attention in the same direction as Douxie, and he lets out a gasp at the sight before him. “By Deya…”

K looks between the men who are now both gawking at him. Both have dark hair and wear blue, though the slightly shorter one with the stubble has warmer-toned hair and a long, lighter blue jacket, while the taller one with longer, cooler-toned hair has an unbuttoned dark blue vest over a white shirt. But what really strikes him are the eyes. The bearded one has blue eyes, not terribly uncommon around here, but the taller one has gold. K doesn’t think he’s ever seen a color like it.

After another moment, though, he sighs and crosses his arms. He doesn’t have the patience for whatever this is. “Look, is one of you Douxie?”

“Oh, er, that depends on who’s looking for him,” Douxie says, snapping out of it. He needs to play this perfectly. He cannot afford to mess anything up whatsoever, not when the perfect stand-in for Tsarevitch Krel has presented himself practically on a silver platter!

A snuffling and a nudge at his ankle grabs his attention, and he looks down to find what he thinks is a corgi staring up at him. “Uh, hello there, little guy.”

The corgi seems satisfied by his acknowledgement, giving a yap before going over to Jim to sniff at his pant legs.

“Well, I’m K,” the boy says, “and I’m looking for travel papers. I heard Douxie was the guy to go to for stuff like that.”

“K?” Douxie asks, now moving around the boy, getting a better look. “Like the letter?”

“Yep,” K says.

“Just ‘K’?” Douxie asks.

“Just ‘K’,” K says. “Why are you circling me? What are you, some kind of vulture?”

“No, it’s just…it’s just that you look an awful lot like—” He cuts himself off. He needs to sus ‘K’ out a little more before he can really go all in on the plan. “Well, nevermind that. You said travel papers?”

“Yes,” K says. “I’d like to go to Paris.”

“You’d like to go to Paris?” Douxie cannot believe his ears. There is no way he’s just hit a jackpot this big; there’s gotta be some kind of catch. He looks back at Jim to see if he’s hearing what Douxie’s hearing, but his friend is thoroughly enraptured by the puppy, scratching him behind the ears, doing that baby talk people sometimes do with dogs.

Well, Douxie can’t exactly blame him—the dog is pretty cute.

“Let me ask you something, K,” Douxie says. “Travel papers require a bit more information than just an initial. ‘K’ has gotta stand for something, yeah? And what about a last name?”

“Ugh. ‘K’ stands for Kristoff,” K says, annoyed. “But do not call me that.”

“Any particular reason?” Douxie asks.

“It’s just…never felt right,” K says. Then he wrings his hands, his demeanor shifting. “As for my last name…well, this is gonna sound crazy, but I don't know my last name. I was found as a kid, when I was something like eight or nine years old. I don’t know exactly what age.”

He doesn’t like thinking about that time—though his memories are fuzzy around the event itself, he does remember the confusion and terror he felt waking up alone in a strange place, no idea of where he was, or how he got there, or even who he was.

“And before that?” Douxie asks.

“I don’t know,” K says. “I have no memories from before then. I don’t remember my birth name aside from the fact that it started with a ‘K’—” that’s how he got ‘Kristoff’, against his wishes “—or anything about my family or past…”

What little he remembers of then flashes through his head, an old ache igniting behind his sternum.

“They said I was found at the old train station,” K says. “No tracks in the snow, new precipitation…in the darkness and cold with the wind in the trees, a boy with no name, and no memories but these.”

The images are blurry, that old hospital…

“Rain against a window, sheets upon a bed. Terrifying nurses whispering overhead, “Call the child Kristoff, give the child a hat.” I don’t know a thing before that.”

And after that wasn’t much better. So little space, so little money, his stay was much shorter than it probably should’ve been. He’d ended up with nothing and no one and nowhere to go. He did eventually find himself at the orphanage, but before that, well…the time between the hospital and the orphanage was much too long for a child to have to endure. But endure he did.

“Traveling the back roads, sleeping in the woods. Taking what I needed, working when I could. Keeping up my courage, foolish as it seems. At night, all alone in my dreams.”

Huddled in the darkness, alone as much in his dreams as in the waking world.

Almost.

“In my dreams shadows call.”

Distorted voices from people beyond his field of vision, mixed-up syllables and words that he could make sense of if only he could get closer.

“There’s a light at the end of a hall.”

A grand hall, big and vaulted, the floor a rich carpet, the walls decorated in blurry swirls of gold. There’s someone waiting at the end for him. Is it the one talking?

“Then my dreams fade away…”

But he always walks forever, that hall getting longer and longer, and always wakes up before he can see who it is, before he can make sense of the words.

Somehow, he just knows that if he could reach the end, if he could finally see who stands there, who’s waiting for him, he’d have his answers. He can just feel it.

And because of that, he’s refused to give up.

“But I know it all will come back one day.

“I dream of a city beyond all compare. A faraway place, Paris…”

Comrade Bagdwella always said it was just because of his necklace, just because of how much research he’s done on the city over the years, trying to feel a connection, trying to figure out what his necklace could mean. But he’s certain that’s not it. At least, not all of it.

“A beautiful river, a bridge by a square, and I hear a voice whisper, “We’ll be together there, in Paris,” Paris…”

The only words he’s ever been able to decipher in these dreams, though he couldn’t tell you anything about the voice to save his life. In all his attempts to listen and remember, he can never quite grasp even an inkling of who might be saying it.

The sound of a light cough brings K back to reality, and his eyes zip to Douxie and Jim, who are standing there, watching him. He can’t decipher their expressions.

“You don't know what it’s like, not to know who you are, to have lived in the shadows and travelled this far,” K says. “I’ve seen flashes of fire, heard the echo of screams—”

These are what haunt his nightmares, the flipside to that hallway. These, and confusion and pain and this strange red light.

“—But I still have this faith in the truth of my dreams.”

He has to. Without that…without that, he’d truly be utterly lost and alone in this world. He’d have less than nothing. He’d be nothing.

“In my dreams, it’s all real, and my heart has so much to reveal. And my dreams seem to say, “Don't be afraid to go on, don’t give up hope, come what may,”…

“I know it all will come back one day.”

And perhaps the key to that is in Paris.

“So, can you help me or not?” he asks Douxie.

“Jim, the tickets,” Douxie hisses. Jim gives the dog one last pat before standing and pulling them from the depths of his coat to hand them over.

“What’s the plan here?” Jim asks, keeping his volume low.

“Just follow my lead,” Douxie says.

He takes the tickets and turns back to K. “You know, we sure would like to help you. In fact, funnily enough, we’re looking to head to Paris ourselves. And I’ve got three tickets—”

“Really?” K says, hopeful.

“Yes, but,” Douxie says, “the third is for him—” he motions toward the painting, toward the small boy sitting down in front next to his twin sister “—Tsarevitch Krel.”

K looks back at the painting, eyes catching on the boy in front. Tsarevitch Krel, huh?

He’s heard the rumors of the tsarevitch’s potential survival—who in Russia hasn’t?—but he’d never given the royal family or the prince much thought. Well, much thought beyond the fact that he quite likes the name, far more than ‘Kristoff’. He couldn’t exactly go around calling himself the same name as the lost heir to the throne, though.

“See, Jim and I have a plan to reunite Tsarevitch Krel with his twin sister and grandmother once we find him,” Douxie says. He slings an arm around K’s shoulders to start guiding him up the stairs. “And you, K, you resemble him quite a bit.”

“The dark eyes,” Jim says.

“The face shape,” Douxie says.

“The tsar’s smile,” Jim says.

“The tsarina’s complexion,” Douxie says.

“Even the dowager empress’s hands,” Jim says.

“And you’re the same age and the same physical type,” Douxie says.

“Are you saying that you think I am the lost tsarevitch?” K scoffs.

“All I’m saying,” Douxie says as they come to a stop before another painting, this one of only the twins, “is that I have seen thousands of men all over the country and not one of them has looked as much like the tsarevitch as you. Just look at the portrait!”

K scoffs again, shaking his head. “And here I thought I was crazy, but you’ve definitely got me beat.”

He turns to walk away, but Douxie circles around, blocking his path back down the stairs. “Come on, you don’t remember what happened to you.”

“And no one knows what happened to him,” Jim says.

“You’re looking for family in Paris,” Douxie says.

“And his only family is in Paris,” Jim says.

“And you did say that you know your birth name started with a ‘K’,” Douxie says, turning K back around, making sure he really looks at the portrait this time. “Have you ever thought about the possibility?”

“That I could be royalty?” Krel says. “I mean, it’s kind of hard to imagine yourself as the tsarevitch when you’re sleeping blanket-less and hungry on a damp floor…though, I suppose every lonely kid has wished at least once that they were someone so special…”

Douxie makes a show of checking his watch and then says, “Well, really wish we could help, but the third ticket is for Tsarevitch Krel, and we’ve gotta get going. Good luck.”

He then grabs Jim, and they start off back down the stairs, leaving K alone under the painting.

“Ok, what are you up to?” Jim asks as they descend.

“All he wants to do is go to Paris,” Douxie says. “Why give away a third of the reward money?”

“Douxie,” Jim says, his tone disapproving.

“I know it’s a little underhanded, but it’s far from the worst thing we’ve done,” Douxie says. “And it’s not any worse than lying to the empress.”

Jim’s not much a fan of that either. But he made a promise a long time ago to a lost little boy to look out for him no matter what, and he refuses to break it, even for a hairbrained scheme he finds deeply questionable at best.

“Please, Jim. You’ve played along this far, yeah? Just trust me,” Douxie says.

“I don’t like this,” Jim says. “But…I’ll trust you.”

“Thank you,” Douxie says.

“So, why are we walking away so soon then?” Jim asks.

“Patience,” Douxie says. “And walk a little slower.”

Still by the painting, now with Luug in his arms, K can’t help but look a little closer at the boy on the right, Tsarevitch Krel. He must admit, Douxie and Jim do have a point about the similarities.

But it’s the girl on the left that really gets him. She wears a dress to match the suit the boy wears, and though her physical features couldn’t be more different from the boy’s, he can see something there. They’re siblings, he’s sure of it. This has to be the sister, the tsarevitch’s twin.

Potentially, maybe…his twin…

His fingers go to his necklace, lightly running over the words and detailing, over where it’s supposed to attach to—

Its missing half.

Its missing half in Paris.

At the bottom of the stairs, before Jim can ask another question, Douxie holds up three fingers. “Three, two, one…”

“Douxie!”

Douxie shoots Jim a grin.

“Douxie, wait up!”

He turns to see K rushing down the steps.

“You need something?” Douxie asks.

“If I don’t remember who I am, then who’s to say I’m not the tsarevitch or whatever, right?” K says.

“Go on,” Douxie says, nodding along.

“And if I’m not Krel, then no doubt the sister and the empress will be able to tell right away, and it’s all just an honest mistake,” K says.

“Sounds plausible to me,” Douxie says.

“And,” Jim tacks on, “if you really are the tsarevitch, then you’ll finally know who you are and have your family back.”

“He’s right,” Douxie says. “Either way, it gets you to Paris.”

“Right,” K says. He sticks out a hand, which Douxie takes, and gives a far firmer shake than Douxie had expected. It actually kind of hurts. But that doesn’t matter! Because they’ve found their tsarevitch!

Three thoughts about why Douxie showed up in Arcadia: 1. He can sense magic and Claire’s ultimate portal forged a connection between her and Morgana allowing Morgana to start taking a foothold in the real world. Either of these events could have set off magic alarm bells. 2. He has some future site and Arcadia has had multiple events worthy of a premonition. Merlin’s future site is an inherited trait from his demonic father that cannot be taught. If Douxie had a demonic bloodline it would be three for three on at least partially inhuman heroes. 3. Someone just told him to come to Arcadia or he’s been there for a while, Ash Dispersal Pattern did open for Papa Skull.