Chapter 70: A Different Kind of Fight
Julian turned the plan over carefully that night, testing it from every angle the same way he’d once tested weak points in a barricade, looking for exactly where it might hold and where it might collapse under too much weight too fast.
’he wants me to want him right,’ Julian thought, staring at the ceiling, cold and calculating in a way that felt almost foreign after weeks of raw, exhausted grief. ’not just have me. want. that’s the crack in this whole thing. Ian’s precision, Ian’s control... none of that’s built to handle Xavier’s ego. and Xavier’s ego is the one thing in this entire place I actually understand how to work with.’
He didn’t need Xavier to believe he loved him. That would never hold, not with everything already between them. But resignation, gratitude, the slow, believable erosion of resistance in someone who’d simply run out of fight... that, Julian thought grimly, he could manage. He’d watched enough people break for real, over three years of a collapsing world, to know exactly what it looked like when someone finally, quietly gave up fighting. He just needed to perform it convincingly enough that Xavier’s possessiveness filled in the rest of the story himself.
’i will let him think I’m finally accepting this,’ Julian thought. ’let him get comfortable. get careless. loosen the watch, loosen the chain, give me an opening I can actually use.’
It made his skin crawl even planning it. But three years ago, he’d learned that survival sometimes meant doing things that made your own skin crawl, and he wasn’t about to forget that lesson now just because the monster wearing a human face happened to also be cruel in ways zombies never could be.
When Xavier returned the following morning, Julian didn’t turn away.
"you came back," Julian said quietly, voice carefully pitched into something tired and hollow rather than sharp.
Xavier paused in the doorway, visibly caught off guard by the shift. "I did," he said carefully. "I brought more food. you barely touched the last..."
"I’m tired of fighting," Julian said, cutting him off, letting his shoulders sag with practiced, careful exhaustion. "I don’t... I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. the anger. all of it."
Something flickered behind Xavier’s eyes, cautious hope threading through the possessive interest that never fully left his expression. "Julian..."
"don’t," Julian said quickly, sharp enough to sell the exhaustion underneath it. "don’t say anything yet. just... sit with me. please."
Xavier crossed the room slowly, settling into the chair beside the bed with careful, uncertain movements, like he half expected the whole thing to be some trap he simply hadn’t identified yet. Which, Julian thought grimly, it was.
---
Word of the failed expeditions had spread through the academy faster than the war room could contain it, the way whispered gossip always did, twisted and exaggerated with every retelling.
"heard they’ve stopped searching entirely," one student murmured to another near the training yard. "too costly. too many losses for one Guide."
"he was F-Class before all this," another added. "maybe the whole SSS-Rank thing really was a mistake. maybe that’s why nobody’s trying so hard anymore."
Even Guides who’d spent exhausting weeks treating Sentinels wounded in the earlier corruption incidents found themselves drifting toward the same conversations, exhaustion making gossip easier to indulge in than grief. One young Guide, still bandaging a Sentinel’s arm from a training injury, paused mid-wrap to listen in, murmuring her own agreement before catching herself and returning, guiltily, to her work.
The rumor spread exactly the way rumors always did... not through any single malicious source, but through dozens of small, tired, half-convinced conversations, each one lending the story a little more weight until it started to feel, to everyone repeating it, like simple, accepted fact.
---
Mika heard the gossip secondhand from one of his few remaining friends, delivered in a low, gleeful whisper across the dinner table at his family’s estate.
"they’ve given up," his friend said. "word is the Emperor’s stopped sending anyone north. too many losses. guess even an SSS-Rank Guide isn’t worth infinite Sentinels."
Mika’s mood, which had been sour and resentful since his humiliating dismissal from the academy’s Guide corps, brightened instantly.
"finally," he breathed, setting down his fork with something close to genuine delight. "finally, some good news."
He excused himself from dinner early, practically floating up to his room, and settled in front of his mirror with a giddy, satisfied energy he hadn’t felt in weeks. He pulled out his makeup case, humming softly to himself as he began the careful, familiar routine, blending color across his cheekbones with renewed enthusiasm.
"no more useless nobody stealing all the attention," he murmured to his reflection, admiring the effect with visible satisfaction. "no more Logan mooning over some F-Class charity case who got lucky with one rank. just me. finally, just me, the way it should have been from the very beginning."
He leaned closer to the mirror, applying a careful line along his lash, imagining already the way he’d approach Logan once enough time had passed, once the grief had properly faded and people stopped talking about Julian at all.
"you’ll see," Mika told his reflection, smiling faintly, something petty and satisfied settling deep and comfortable behind his expression. "you’ll come around eventually, Logan. once there’s nobody left to compare me to."
He set down his brush, admiring the finished look, something warm and triumphant unfurling in his chest for the first time in what felt like ages.
"finally, Julian," he said quietly, almost fondly, the way someone might address an old rival they’d finally, decisively beaten. "you are really gone from my life."
He didn’t know, sitting there in his richly appointed room, admiring his own reflection, that the rumor he’d so happily embraced was nothing more than exhausted, grief-fueled gossip, built on nothing but a few devastating losses and the Empire’s understandable need to regroup rather than any actual decision to abandon the search at all.
He also didn’t know, sitting there content and satisfied, exactly how much further Julian still had left to fight before any of this was truly over.