Chapter 45: The Old Couple
Julian pushed everything he had into the pull, the strange, borrowed power tearing through his chest like something too large for the body carrying it, muscles and bone and whatever passed for a soul in this world all screaming in protest at being asked to hold something never meant for them.
[Warning. Displacement is destabilizing. Recommend host brace for partial failure.]
’partial... what does that even MEAN...’
The pull yanked hard, then faltered, snapping and stretching unevenly like a rope fraying halfway through a pull, and Julian’s whole body screamed in protest as the momentum threw him somewhere between where he’d started and where he’d meant to land, the world blurring past too fast to track, too wrong to process, colors bleeding into each other, sound stretching thin and distant like he was hearing everything from underwater.
He hit the ground hard, breath knocked clean out of him, limbs refusing to answer when he tried to push himself up. His vision swam, dark spots crowding the edges, and when he tried to call for the fox, tried to force his own name out, tried to do anything at all, only a broken, useless rasp came out, his tongue heavy and thick and completely uncooperative. ’can’t... can’t move... fox, where...’
[Host. Displacement partially succeeded. Location unknown to this unit. Vitals critical. Guiding reserves depleted beyond safe threshold. Speech and motor function severely impaired. This unit cannot assist further at this time. This unit is sorry.]
The world tilted, blurred, and finally went dark.
---
Julian didn’t know how long he lay there before voices reached him, faint and distant, an old man’s voice, rough with worry, and a woman’s voice close behind it, sharp with alarm, both of them growing louder as footsteps hurried closer across what sounded like packed dirt.
"There is someone there, by the road, do you see him..."
"Is he breathing? oh gods, is he breathing..."
Hands touched his shoulder, careful and shaking, rolling him gently onto his back, and Julian’s eyes fluttered open just enough to catch a blur of two faces hovering above him, elderly, weathered, creased deep with a lifetime of worry lines carved into skin the sun had long since darkened and softened.
The woman’s breath caught hard, both hands flying to her mouth, and for a moment she simply stared, disbelief freezing every feature on her face.
"it’s him," she said, voice cracking, barely more than a whisper. "Elias, it’s him. it’s our son."
The old man’s face went pale, disbelief and grief and something achingly hopeful all colliding at once as he stared down at Julian’s face like he was looking at a ghost he’d given up praying for years ago. His hands trembled visibly as he knelt closer, reaching out like he half expected the vision to dissolve the moment he touched it.
"Julian," he said, voice breaking on the name, rough with old grief suddenly cracked wide open. "Julian, is that really you? after all this time?"
Julian tried to speak, tried to force some sound past his throat, some explanation, some question, anything at all, but only a thin, broken rasp came out, his tongue heavy and uncooperative, his whole body too weak to do anything but blink up at two strangers who apparently believed, with absolute, desperate certainty, that he belonged to them.
’wrong,’ he thought weakly, panic flickering thin and helpless beneath the exhaustion dragging him back toward unconsciousness. ’I’m not... I’m not your son, I’m not...’
But the words wouldn’t come, his body simply refusing to cooperate no matter how hard he tried to force it, and all he could manage was a faint, strangled sound that seemed to break the old woman’s heart even further.
"don’t try to talk," she said quickly, tears streaming freely down her face now as she cupped his cheek with trembling hands, gentle despite how badly they shook. "don’t you dare try to talk, just breathe, just stay with us, we’ve got you now, we’ve got you..."
"where has he been," the old man murmured, mostly to himself, voice thick with a grief so old and worn it had clearly become part of the shape of him. "gods above, where has he been all these years, look at the state of him..."
Julian’s mind spun weakly, exhaustion pulling harder at the edges of his awareness even as fragments of understanding tried to surface. *these years. their son. the original body... this must be the original Julian’s real family, the ones from before the academy, before the engagement, before any of it.* The thought slipped away before he could hold onto it properly, consciousness fraying thin under the weight of everything his body had just survived.
The old man was already scooping him up with surprising strength for his age, arms trembling slightly under the effort but refusing to let it show, voice thick with emotion. "we’re taking him home," he said. "now. whatever happened to him, wherever he’s been, we’ll figure it out once he’s safe and warm and fed. that’s what matters right now."
"careful," the woman said, hovering close, one hand braced steady against Julian’s shoulder as her husband carried him. "careful, Elias, he’s so thin, what have they done to him..."
Julian’s vision blurred and darkened again as they moved, the gentle, unfamiliar rhythm of being carried lulling him further toward unconsciousness despite every instinct screaming to stay alert, to figure out where he was, to find some way to explain that he wasn’t who they thought he was. The last thing he registered before the darkness fully claimed him was a whispered, broken prayer of gratitude from the woman still holding tight to his hand, murmured soft and constant like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
"thank you," she whispered, over and over. "thank you, thank you, thank you..."
---
Back in Xavier’s territory, the moment the connection to Julian’s presence simply vanished from his senses, Xavier went very, very still.
He stood in the middle of his private chamber, staring at the space where that familiar, possessive thread of awareness had existed only moments before, now nothing but silence where Julian should have been. He reached for it instinctively, the way he’d reached for it a hundred times over the past weeks, checking on it the way some men checked their own pulse, and found nothing. No warmth. No presence. Just cold, empty absence where something precious used to sit.
"no," he said quietly, disbelief flickering thin over something far darker beginning to rise beneath it. "no, that’s not..."
He reached for the connection again, and again, found only emptiness, the mark he’d placed so carefully suddenly cold and unresponsive, severed by whatever desperate, reckless thing Julian had just attempted. His hand rose unconsciously to his own chest, as though the loss registered somewhere physical, somewhere that ached.
Something in Xavier’s expression cracked. The calm, patient composure he’d worn through every single encounter, every taunt, every careful, measured display of control, shattered all at once into something far colder and far more dangerous, his eyes darkening, the air around him growing sharp and heavy with barely restrained fury. The candles along the chamber walls guttered violently, flames bending sideways as though something invisible had just exhaled through the room.
"you left," he said, voice low and shaking with something that wasn’t quite disbelief anymore. "you actually left."
He turned sharply, sweeping through the chamber with sudden, violent purpose, servants and corrupted attendants alike scrambling out of his path as his fury rolled off him in waves, the whole territory seeming to darken and still around him, the ordinary, ambient murmur of his corrupted population going dead silent as if the very air had learned to fear him in that moment.
A high-class attendant near the door flinched back hard as Xavier passed, bowing low, not daring to speak.
"find him," Xavier said, voice carrying through the corridor with cold, absolute command, every syllable clipped and sharp. "I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care how far he’s gotten. find him before anyone else does."
He paused at the threshold of the chamber, one hand braced against the doorframe, breathing hard through a fury that felt, disturbingly, closer to something like panic than he cared to examine.
"you made the wrong move, Julian," he said quietly, voice dropping into something far more dangerous than any threat he’d offered before, cold and absolute and utterly certain. "I’m coming for you."