Chapter 83: What They Were
Xavier sat alone in his private chamber, staring at nothing, turning the same anxious thought over and over until it wore a groove into his mind.
’is he actually accepting me,’ he thought, restless and uncertain in a way he rarely allowed himself to feel anymore, ’or is this all some careful performance I simply want to believe. is he planning to leave. does he mean any of it at all.’
The uncertainty gnawed at him worse than any battle wound ever had, and in the quiet, restless dark, his mind drifted backward, unbidden, toward memories he rarely let himself revisit anymore.
He remembered being careless. He’d always been the reckless one, running headfirst into things Ian carefully calculated his way around, laughing too loud, taking risks that made their mother’s face pale with worry every single time. Ian had been the steady one even then, the one who caught him by the collar before he tumbled off rooftops, the one who cuffed him lightly on the back of the head whenever his carelessness pushed too far.
*"you’re going to get yourself killed one day,"* Ian used to say, exasperated but never truly angry, dragging him back from whatever foolish thing he’d been about to attempt.
*"that’s what big brothers are for,"* Xavier used to answer, grinning, utterly unbothered, "*catching me before I fall.*"
Their father had been a Sentinel, strong and steady, the kind of man whose presence alone made a room feel safer. Their mother had been a Guide, warm and patient, her healing hands mending every scrape and bruise Xavier’s recklessness earned him over the years. They’d been ordinary, once. A family like any other, bound by love rather than corruption, laughter filling rooms that would later stand cold and silent and wrong.
Xavier remembered the night everything changed only in fragments now, blurred and disjointed, the way trauma so often blurred the details it couldn’t bear to hold onto clearly.
He remembered his father’s voice, sharp with fear for the first time either of them had ever heard from him. He remembered his mother’s hands glowing gold, desperate and failing against something neither of their considerable combined strength could properly resist. He remembered something vast and wrong pressing in from every direction at once, something that didn’t belong to this world at all, something that had crossed over from somewhere else entirely and simply decided, with cold, patient hunger, that their family made a convenient doorway.
He remembered his parents trying to shield them. Trying, and failing, the way even the strongest Sentinel and the most gifted Guide in the world couldn’t hold back something that had never once belonged to the rules either of them understood.
He remembered pain. Cold, spreading, wrong. He remembered Ian’s hand gripping his, tight and desperate, the last purely human thing either of them ever properly felt.
And then, nothing. A long, formless stretch of darkness, and when awareness returned, everything had already changed. Their parents were gone, consumed entirely by whatever had first entered them both, and Xavier and Ian remained instead — twins already sharing an unusually deep, instinctive connection, now bound together by something ancient and hungry that had found their shared bond convenient, easier to work through two minds already so closely linked than to start fresh elsewhere.
’we became this,’ Xavier thought now, staring at his own hands in the dim candlelight, ’because something wanted an easier doorway, and our parents’ love for us gave it exactly that.’
He’d never told Julian any of this. Never told anyone, really, beyond the barest fragments Ian occasionally alluded to in his clinical, detached way. The full weight of it sat locked away somewhere Xavier rarely let himself visit, because visiting it meant remembering exactly what he’d lost, exactly what had been taken from both of them before either had any say in the matter at all.
’the thing that made us,’ Xavier thought slowly, something bitter and old rising up through the memory, ’is still out there somewhere. still unknown. still more powerful than anything Ian or I have ever managed to become, even together, even after everything we’ve built since.’
He’d spent years since that night refusing to think too hard about the original source, the first and most powerful entity that had crossed into their world and simply used two grieving, terrified children as a convenient vessel for its own continued existence. He and Ian were echoes of it now, in a sense. Powerful, corrupted, capable of extending its reach and influence across an entire territory. But not it. Never quite it. Just what it had left behind once it moved on to whatever it did next, wherever it went, however it continued existing beyond the two lives it had irreversibly altered that night.
’is that why I want him so badly,’ Xavier wondered, thinking of Julian, of his stubborn defiance, his sharp wit, the strange, aching warmth Xavier felt every time Julian’s guard slipped even slightly around him now. ’because some part of me remembers what it felt like to have something worth protecting, worth loving, before all of it was stripped away and replaced with this instead.’
He didn’t have an answer for that. He rarely allowed himself to look closely enough to find one.
A soft knock interrupted his thoughts, and Ian entered without waiting for a response, expression as flat and unreadable as ever, though something in the careful, measured way he studied his brother suggested he’d sensed the direction of Xavier’s thoughts even without being told.
"you’re thinking about them again," Ian said. Not a question.
"sometimes I can’t help it," Xavier admitted, voice rougher than he intended.
Ian was quiet for a long moment, something almost gentle flickering behind his usual detachment, a rare crack in the clinical precision he wore like armor. "I think about them too," he said finally. "more often than I let you know."
"do you ever wonder," Xavier said quietly, "whether they’d recognize us at all now. whether they’d even want to."
Ian’s jaw tightened faintly, the closest thing to visible emotion Xavier had seen from him in longer than he could properly remember. "I’ve considered it," he said. "I’ve concluded the question is unproductive. they are gone. we are what remains. dwelling on what they might think accomplishes nothing beyond unnecessary distress."
"that’s very practical of you," Xavier said, something tired and fond threading through the observation despite everything.
"someone has to be," Ian said, and for one brief, unguarded moment, something almost like grief flickered behind his flat, careful eyes before he smoothed it away entirely, retreating back into the cold, clinical composure that had carried him through every single day since that night without once fully cracking apart.
"is that why you’ve taken such interest in Julian," Xavier asked slowly, something wary sharpening beneath his own lingering grief. "because he reminds you of something we lost too."
Something flickered behind Ian’s expression, brief and unreadable, before he turned toward the door without answering.
"get some rest," Ian said instead, voice flat once more. "dwelling on the past accomplishes nothing. I’ve told you that before."
He left without further explanation, and Xavier sat alone in the dim candlelight long after the door sealed shut, turning his brother’s silence over with new, uneasy suspicion, the same fragile uncertainty about Julian’s loyalty now tangled inseparably with a fresh, unwelcome fear about his own brother’s growing, unspoken intentions.