Chapter Text
Till.
Whether it was a challenge, or the singular proof of Luka's innocence, the grey-haired guy was behind the counter the next time Ivan entered the bakery, his arm in a sling and an everlasting bruise on his right cheek.
He looked up, eyes ringed with dark, exhausted circles. Unrelated to the situation as he was, or so Ivan hoped, he looked nearly as wrecked as Ivan. Ivan glanced around and noted that the pastry display case was empty. The trays of bread were moved to the front of the store only half full, and he would've theorized about whether Till had baked them or not if he cared, but he didn't.
“What do you want?”
Till stood upright and fastened his apron. The question sounded scathing. Customer service long gone, maybe even the respect one would have to another in terms of humanity, because Till looked at him like he wanted to bash his face in.
“To interrogate you,” Ivan replied simply. He didn't miss the way Till’s lips twitched.
“Get lost.”
“I have the right to arrest you for this.”
“Then do it,” Till’s lip twitched again. He looked restless as he dug into his pockets and retrieved a cigarette, patting them again in search for a lighter. “You think I don't want to know where that bastard is?”
“You mean to tell me,” Ivan slid a lighter over the counter. It belonged to Unsha, arguably such a funny item to inherit from a dead friend, but he didn't ponder it, didn't have time to. “That you're uninvolved?”
Till ignored the question. He blew smoke under his breath, slamming the lighter back into Ivan's outstretched palm. “I saw this thing before.”
Ivan glanced at it blankly.
“I'm sure you did see a lighter before.”
“Unsha’s,” Till ran a shaky hand through his hair. Ivan strained to figure just why Till looked this restless. Maybe he was stressed out about the surprise visit, especially after the unmissable explosion and the prompt destruction of Ivan's entire workplace. The bakery was small, infrequented, in the same street, same little town. That would make anyone stressed, but Ivan greatly doubted Till’s innocence.
“You have a bone to pick with him?” He chuckled against his own disbelief. “You should've told me before his wife sprinkled the ashes yesterday.”
Till blew another gust of smoke with a rather disgruntled expression. “Too much information.”
Ivan found himself chuckling again. If anything, he was going crazy. There was nothing funny about the situation. It was just him and the stench of smoke and misery filling the entirety of this space that he once associated with Luka, with serenity, infatuation, fragile peace but peace nonetheless, now so thoroughly hollowed out the peace collapsed on his head with no Luka and no light. Certainly, he had seen worse things collapse. But it still hurt. It couldn't be funny even if he wanted it to be.
“An espresso, please.”
“What?”
Ivan smiled. “An espresso, Till.”
Till’s eye actually twitched at the request. He threw the half-burnt cigarette at the place Ivan stood, on the other side of the metal block, as violently as one could with a small, insignificant object.
It sizzled against the nerve-wracking silence, but Ivan’s smile didn't budge, even when Till snapped something incomprehensible. “How the fuck were you one of us?”
Ivan caught it, suspended in the thick air.
“Your ability, right?”
He knew to trust his intuition by now. For reasons other than a preppy suit, a satisfaction at clocking out, or a feeling of personal fulfillment. He knew, in a hollow moment of realization, that he wasn't chasing the pristine image of justice anymore.
Justice wasn't interpersonal and even God wasn't above the law. Justice was neutral, was virtuous and ever-changing. Justice wasn't what Ivan wanted to establish by catching Luka.
“Tell me, Till.” Luka’s omniscience must have rubbed off on him somewhere along the corridor. “How does what you see influence Luka’s crime pattern?”
Till’s tired, sharp eyes didn't budge either, although he put the espresso machine to work. Not bothering to line the carton cup or secure it with anything, but with the same logic not bothering to poison Ivan, so that was more than enough cooperation.
“You damn well know we can't have some cool, fucking mystical abilities around here,” he slammed the coffee on the counter. Ivan grabbed it in the same breath, taking the longest sip he could before the enchanting brown color faded into transparent, flat shades catching the light. He didn't drink coffee because he enjoyed it. He just drank it because he needed it. It cushioned some part of his mind, the one intercepting the rest of what Till said. “It's not like I see parallel universes or decipher timelines.”
“Get to the point.” He didn't entertain the excuse.
It wasn't an excuse, either way, there truly were no cool mystical abilities. Only lame, useless quirks with varying degrees of tamability, walking hand in hand with the varying degrees of malice and cunning of their owners. Ivan had only after all this time figured out Luka's ability, and it almost made him laugh, how objectively stupid it was. How inherently destructive Luka had to be to find such a use for it.
“When I kiss people,” Till averted his gaze. “I see what they were in their past lives. If I kiss different people who had some connection in their past lives, I can see the full picture, like a movie.”
“That's not exactly uncool.” Ivan replied drily. “So you kissed me expecting I'm just some daft newbie your friend is toying with, but then it clicked to you that my past life has something to do with Luka’s usual motives.”
“Quite,” Till’s expression hardened again. “Unsha had been your owner, and you were one of us. Human pets, Ivan.”
For a reason Ivan couldn't understand, something twisted in his stomach. Like his body recognized the word before his mind did and absolutely loathed it.
“We don't murder people based on what they were in a past life.” Ivan shook the idea – that Till had to kiss Unsha to see that part of the picture – out of his head. And the idea that not everyone was necessarily forgiving, or even rational. “I'm a little disappointed, if this had been Luka’s only drive.”
“Hey.”
Till grabbed the half-full carton cup and tossed it into the trash, splashing water all over the floor. His eyes were dark, impossibly sharper. It grabbed Ivan’s attention before he could start blaming Luka in the midst of his frazzled emotions. Before he could start spiraling.
“You don't know what Luka went through,” Till continued, voice tingling with frustration, a tiny, but perceptible hint of nervousness. “I'm not going to let you hurt him. He's not going to let you find him either.”
Unfortunately, Ivan was the last person in the world that Till should have felt the need to threaten about such a thing.
Possibly the last person in the entire world to feel any type of animosity towards Luka, something he thought would change given his current mental and physical state. But that didn't change even when justice itself twisted into an unrecognizable, insignificant body to his blurry and exhausted eyes. He was hurt, betrayed, to a certain point vindictive, but he still imagined Luka as the divine, envisioned an angel when he merely thought about him.
“I don't plan on catching Luka to put him behind bars.” Ivan added nonchalantly. Till recoiled, only slightly, at Ivan’s unblinking gaze, staring right into his soul. Yes, Ivan thought, he was probably going crazy. “I have matters to settle with him, that's all.”
“Can't you just…” Till took a sharp breath. “.. Stay away from him?”
“No,” Ivan smiled. Except it was quick and hard and made Till recoil backwards, rummaging blindly for a truce of sorts. It was outright hilarious, considering how much Till seemed to genuinely dislike him, that Ivan’s accidental unhingedness pushed Till to offer something. “Look, I don't know much about what Luka does, or how he does it–”
“But?”
“I will help you find him,” Till fumbled with his words in probably the most obvious bluffer Ivan had seen in his life. “So maybe you can understand it from him, my only condition is that–”
“I said.” Ivan retrieved the lighter on the counter with his good hand. Stared at it a little, imagined Unsha shouting at him to do better. Imagined the past life where Unsha must have owned him in that so very terrible way that made an angel like Luka fixate on revenge. “I won't hurt him. Has anyone told you that you're horrible at bluffing?”
Till scowled. “I hate you.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Ivan simply smiled.