Chapter Text
Once upon a time, it was a stormy night…Sounds familiar, right? Here's a trade secret though: Most of the stories that started out that way never actually took place in a storm. So why even bother to mention it? Well, even if the rain had no bearings on the actual plot of a story, the presence of storm clouds bearing down upon a foreign landscape have always been enough to excite the imagination.
Except, Roman thought as he trudged along, all those bards should really have added an addendum:
Once upon a time, it was a stormy night. Which made everything absolutely, completely miserable.
Roman and Virgil, by some miracle, had managed to make it eastward towards the riverbanks before the rain began in earnest.
In the Imagination, rain began without warning. The sky had been beautiful and bright one moment, and then clouded over with grey cast the next.
And then a torrential downpour had begun, the sky gargling water down below with vengeance. Soaking everything in sight. Roman had been semi-tolerant of it at the start —he always did look very dashing slightly dampened and glistening after all.
But when the rain dragged on for the next few hours, his mood, along with his patience, had decayed to a barely held together skeleton of itself.
He heaved a sigh, brushing a lock of hair sticking to his forehead. Tepid droplets had been steadily dripping down his nose for the better part of an hour.
Roman's decidedly very drenched-and-miserable state managed to drag forth a memory to the forefront of his mind, shining with the gleam of nostalgia.
He had been thirteen, and roughhousing with Patton in the gardens, trying to preserve the last few moments of their childish friendship. Even then, he knew the Court would expect him to act like an actual prince soon enough. And being a prince meant no more tussling with his childhood friend under the shaded trees, sticky with sweat and laughter.
It was a summer day, the beaming sun bearing down on them like a chaperone. And Roman had been content. He leaned back against a tree trunk when they finished another bout of wrestling. There was no sounds in the garden except for the trickling of water from the Grand Fountain a few feet away.
Roman had watched the water tumble down the stone basin, up, and then down again. A microcosm of waterfalls, right in front of him. Then his eyes caught, turning instead to the chubby little squirrel racing around on the rim of the fountain.
He watched, rapt, as the squirrel scurried across the stone ledge, its fuzzy body swinging and swaying with the force of its movement. Then, he witnessed as it tumbled straight into the fountain, splashing madly.
Back then, Roman could only think to laugh at the scene. But Patton had gasped and rushed over, picking the thing up by the scruff and rescuing it. Even as the damned thing scratched viciously down his arm.
Even all those years ago, Patton had always been a better man than Roman.
Now, Roman felt distinctly like the squirrel he had been so quick to make fun of. Soaked and fumbling. Wanting nothing more than to scratch and bite.
"Hurry up, Sir Storm-Cloud! I want to make it to the crossing before we wither and die of old age." Roman turned, calling over his shoulders and shook his head, half to dislodge water, half to dismiss the memory hanging in the back of his head.
Thinking about Patton these days made something in him twist with an emotion that Roman had yet to learn how to fully endure: Guilt.
Fortunately, the bitter pit in his stomach turned swiftly to frustration when Virgil's affronted noise from behind reached his ears.
"I already told you, we can't make it in this storm!"
And really, it was already a bad omen that the stirring of the skies had become so loud that Virgil had to yell, just to be heard over the last few steps separating them.
Roman ignored it. Jaw grinding, rainwater lingering in the back of his throat. It was true, perhaps, that he couldn't see more than a couple of paces ahead of him. And it was possible that the soil beneath his feet had become supple mud, trapping him up to the ankles every time he trudged ahead. But Roman couldn't bear the thought of stopping. Of waiting for the storm to pass when he was so close to where the damned book (that now rested dryly in Virgil's satchel) had come from. So close to finding once and for all if this whole quest had been worthwhile. Or if it had simply been the delusions of a prince too eager to abandon his duties.
"We'll make it if you stop being such a whiney baby!" Roman snapped, and even he could hear the brittle tone in his voice.
"Are you serious?" He heard —more than saw— Virgil yell back. "You can't even see right in front of you! You'll fall into the river before we make it halfway to the crossing!"
Roman crossed his arms staunchly, and tried not to think of how he had slipped sideways on the mud just minutes earlier, nearly falling headfirst down the riverbed into the stream of water that they had been following for several hours.
Then he thought of Patton. Sweet, selfless Patton. Who didn't really believe that Roman had found a way to restore magic, but had agreed to help him anyways. Patton, who he had left to the wolves of the palace with nothing more than a meager disguise.
Two days, it hadn't seem so long when he was running full force towards destiny, or running away from bandits. But now, in drenched clarity, two days seemed like an entire lifetime.
The guilt slammed back into Roman with full force again. And he really, really was starting to tire of it. Everything. The guilt. The rain. The stupid book. The even-more-stupid smuggler he had found himself stuck with. He wondered then, vaguely, if any adventurer had felt as miserable as he did.
"You're too cautious." Roman said when Virgil stepped closer, looking for all the world like a drenched cat. He was scowling.
"That's why I'm alive." He bit out, a droplet of water sliding down his chin with every word that he managed to grit out between his teeth. "You, on the otherhand, seems so eager to rush into danger."
"I cannot afford a delay!"
"A delay?" Virgil's knife-edged voice, normally spoken with an uncaring, sly affectation reached the loudest volume Roman had heard yet. "Do you know what's a delay, Your Highness?" A glower. "Drowning!"
"Don't be ridicul—"
Virgil, who was quickly discovering the emotion of True Frustration, cut his protestations short. "Enough! I am not going another step, Princey. You can either wait out the storm with me, or I'll tie you up and gag you with your own sash until the rain passes."
And even Roman, who was unparalleled when it came to thickheadedness, snapped his mouth shut at the sharpness in Virgil's voice. Roman blinked at the threat. Then he flushed, indignant. Roman felt as though he should sputter, or make some equal noise of protest. But all he could manage was stunned silence.
Somehow, he didn't doubt that Virgil would make good on his threat.
"We'll rest for a few hours. Then continue on." Virgil was already striding away before Roman could even finish speaking his compromise.
They found shelter by the riverbed, a small cave hidden behind a front of watercress, with shallow water lapping at the entrance of the stony alcove.
Rigid silence filled the space as they settled in, broken only by the echos of harsh raindrops on stone outside of their little hiding place.
Roman knew they had walked nearly the whole day just to get to the riverside, but with the storm, all of his timely senses seemed to have evaporated. There was no longer the sun to tell him how much time had elapsed. Only the dark grey curtain of storm clouds pressed down upon the outside world.
There was still anger broiling inside of his chest at having to be forced to rest like an unruly child. But in truth, it was rather difficult to remain crossed at someone for so long when you both were sharing the same sort of misery.
"How long will it be until we get to where you were given the book?" Roman asked, drenched and shivering.
"Half a day, once the storm lets down." Virgil answered. Also drenched and shivering. Virgil opened his satchel then, letting the book slide out of the leather pouch. It flapped happily into the air, swooped down towards the river water creeping in front the stream outside. Then jerked away.
It was the most demented pet Roman had ever witnessed.
"Alright." He answered. He should be hopeful, maybe. He could find the owner of the book. Find those missing pages. Restore Cerebrum to its former glory. That was the narrative he had built inside of his head. But now, he just felt doubt. Foolishness, maybe.
There was a moment of silence where Roman leaned back against the stone wall of the cave, trying not to shiver at the coolness of the rocks slithering onto his already damp spine. He curled his knees upwards, wrapping an arm around it.
Virgil stood. Hovering for a moment, perhaps contemplating the merits of finding a spot far away from where Roman had situated. But in the end, some primal instinct to be warm won over, and Virgil slid down to sit besides Roman. Not close enough to touch. Of course not. But close enough that their body heat stopped them both from shivering.
"You look horrible, you know that?" Virgil spoke. And Roman made an affronted noise, his tiredness drawing away to age-old indignation.
"Excuse you? This is coming from someone who looks like a shadow that got cut loose? I look fantastic, I'll have you know." Roman gestured to himself, a move that perhaps might have reinstated his point if he had been dried and well-coiffed. Now though, it only emphasized the way his hair stuck to his forehead with tepid rain, the blotchiness of his skin, the wrinkled tips of his fingers from being drenched for too long.
Virgil shook his head, his face unchanging. "No, I just mean you lost your bravado. It's weird."
Those words curbed Roman's annoyance, bringing back that weariness he had been trying to keep at bay.
"I haven't." He insisted. It was true, in a way. Roman's bravado was not something of endless supply. In fact, he was quite sure it didn't exist at all, and was little more than a well-worn facade. One couldn't lose what they never had, could they? But well, that was a relevation for another time. Another story.
"I'm just…tired." Roman whispered that last word. As though he might not have to confront that particular weakness if he could simply let it be swallowed up by the sound of the storm around them.
"So you do feel regular emotions after all." And there was that sharp-edged amusement in Virgil's voice. Though, this time, it was tempered by something almost like teasing. "I was worried that you could only feel pompousness, stupidity, and arrogance."
Roman scoffed. But then found that he wasn't as offended as he ought to be.
"Only half of the time, Shadow Man. The other half I reserve for feeling superiority." Roman answered, rolling his eyes, trying to keep his mouth from ticking up in a smile. Because smiling was not very conductive to the general air of frutration that he wanted to cultivate.
It was a lost battle when Virgil scoffed out something almost like a laugh. Roman could feel the motion of it jostling against his shoulders where they were sitting nearly-but-not-quite pressed together.
They evened out to silence. More companionable than last time. And Roman really, really should have been concerned with how much he enjoyed it: Sitting in a cave, side-by-side with a half-stranger who seemingly had no regards for the laws he was expected to uphold. Instead, he was almost content, nearly lulling asleep. But he jerked his head up when it dipped down, not quite allowing rest to take him yet.
Virgil turned to him when he did it for the third time in a row.
"Sleep." He said simply. "I'll keep watch, Highness." And there was that mostly-mocking-but-also-teasing tone again. Roman looked at Virgil for a while, that gaunt, pale face half covered by shadows from the cave, glistening with rainwater. He looked like a ghost.
"I don't know if I trust you to do that." Roman answered, too honest, but too tired to care. Despite his words, Roman was already stretching out his legs. Letting his head tipped back towards the wall.
"You don't have a choice,"
True.
It took Roman longer than he wanted to admit to feel eased enough to fall asleep. But rest was quick to cascade over him when it came, heralded by dampness and the noise of falling rain.
Roman is asleep. He knows he is asleep. Except he is also awake. And he knows that too.
Dreams were not unfamiliar to someone as imaginative as he was, there is almost a thrill in it. All the things his brain could conjure up in sleep.
Except this is different. A dream. And not a dream.
Roman is standing on a bridge. Barefoot. The stones digging into the soles of his feet. His head moves from where it gazes upon the river below. Tumultuous. Deadly. Soothing. He looks up.
Up.
Up.
There is another him. A Mirror Image. Staring at him from the other side of the bridge. But his eyes are green. And his eyes are angry. The landscape behind Not Him undulates, washes away into a black void. Roman knows to be afraid. But when he tries to run, his movements are sluggish. Limbs encased in tar.
The Mirror Image moves. Quick. Quick. Quick. And then Not Roman is bearing down on him, hands wrapping around the tender twig of Roman's throat.
The black void crawls out, swallows either ends of the bridge. And Roman cannot breathe and he is staring at himself but Not Himself and the hand on his throat tightens. Then loosens.
And it was never a stranglehold after all. The Mirror Image touches his forehead once. Kindly and sadly and sweetly and and and—
And he is falling over the edge of the bridge. Down. Down. Down. Into the river below, the cold rush of water reaching up to catch him. He sees the Mirror Image standing above, looking below. The black void crawls in and swallows up the bridge, the sky, Roman and Not Roman.
He feels a revelation before his back hits the water. Dying. It felt so much like sleeping.
"—ke up, idiot!"
Roman woke with a start, his body jolting up like a branch caught in a snap of thunder where he had listed slightly to the side in rest.
The first thing he noticed was the cold. The second was Virgil's pale face above his, sunken eyes wide, water tracing trails down his cheeks. He was shivering, still damp and soaked through. Comprehension eluded Roman (as it did more often than he cared to admit) until a strike of lighting lit up the cave.
The reverberations burrowed into Roman's bones, sending his teeth clacking in his skull.
Virgil's hand slid off of Roman's shoulder as he scrambled to stand, eyes already sweeping across the cave.
A curse slipped past his lips, something he had learned young from one of the palace knights back home.
The river outside —which had previously been a docile stream, if only a little unruly with rain— was rabid now, churning white with foam, waves crashing with vehemence against the stones. Flooding into the cave.
"The book— The book! Where is it?" Roman hissed, reaching out blindly for Virgil and tried not to panic at how fast water was climbing up to his ankles. Halfway up his calves already.
Roman's hand caught Virgil's arm and he saw the book in question before Virgil could even answer his panicked question. The noise Roman had mistaken to be the sound of waves crashing against stone was instead the frantic flaps of the book's pages as it swept over their heads.
The water was creeping up to their knees now.
The spelltome seemed to be, if such a thing was even possible for a book, just as panicked as Roman was. It flew over their heads, too fast for Roman to make out the runes on its pages, then looped around, frantically making way for the sliver of an exit out of the cave. Just before it could breach out into open air, a particularly vicious rush of river water rushed at it, and the book banked backwards. Too late.
Roman watched with dread flooding down his spine as the water soaked its pages. Smudging its ink lines illegibly. Another piece of magic gone forever.
Then Virgil was grabbing onto Roman again, his grip tight around Roman's forearm as he shook him.
Halfway up to his thighs, the water crept. Up and up and up. Fast. Too fast.
"We need to go, now!" And then Virgil was bodily dragging Roman along, towards the cave opening. Which was already entirely covered with a wall of rushing grey water.
"No! We need to— We can't leave the book!"
Roman pulled himself away, ignoring Virgil's frustrated shout, and lunged for the book. The damned thing flitted away from his outreached hands, making way instead for Virgil. Roman's eyes were wide, desperate with panic as he jumped for the book again. His fingers curled around it, tugging it to rest at his chest. The book was angry. Soaked though and displeased. Just like Roman himself. And it refused to be held.
"You can't swim through the water with it!" Virgil was shouting to him across the cave, still close to the exit, yet still not diving through. If Roman had a better impression of him, he might have thought Virgil cared whether he lived or died. And perhaps he did, but perhaps only for the reward money.
It was a strong enough motivator when they weren't near death. But how far would Virgil's greed stretch? Roman didn't want to find out.
"I know!" He shouted back, wading through the water. Waist level now and rushing through faster than ever. The cave darkened, a blot of shadow, water swallowing any light as it grew higher and higher. "You need to take the book. It'll go with you! Not me!"
"Are you insane?"
"Yes!" And Roman was starting to find himself holding too many memories that was perhaps evident of that fact. Starting with, but not limited to, finding a mysterious book at his windowsill and chasing it across the entire kingdom.
He released his vice grip on the tome and watched as Virgil caught it.
"Keep it dry! You have to keep it dry!"
Virgil was still staring at him, something wide and disbelieving in his gaze. He tucked the book into his satchel and bundled it tightly under his cloak for good measure. Dry enough, Roman thought, shivering when water brushed below his sternum.
"Go! I'll follow you out." He shouted, drawing back that bravado he had lost in the midst of exhaustion earlier. Virgil paused, as though to argue, but there was no time. None at all.
Instead, he nodded. "Don't die, Princey." And turned back, wading into the water, holding the bundle to his chest and made for the exit.
Roman's chest loosened for a moment. Somehow, he knew the book would be safe. Intact. Now, there was only the matter of him.
His head tilted up, trying to keep the rapid water from flooding into his mouth as he pushed forward. By the time he made it to the exit where Virgil had swam through, the river was already up to his nose and the cave was pitch black.
One step. Then another. And another. And he could see the sliver of light at the mouth of the cave. Nearly swallowed up by the water but not yet, and he was almost there and he was impossibly close and—
His leg was stuck. He felt the water slam back into him before he felt that he was trapped. The laces of his boots had come undone in the torrent and fastened steadfast into a crevice of a rock or another. Roman gasped, then found that to be a mistake when water eagerly rushed into his mouth, seeking to push out the air from his lungs.
The sliver of light was gone now. The cave entirely dark. He tugged at his leg, and could no longer tell where he ended and the water began. The laces would not budge. Roman did not panic when water swallowed him whole, he had learned enough to know panicking now would mean certain death. While not panicking at least kept him in the territory of probably dead.
He bent, groping the floor of the cave for any traces of where his boots have caught, but his fingertips grazed nothing except the cold bumps of stone. Unforgiving. Unyielding. His lungs constricted, painful. The water was so cold. Impossibly so.
And now it was time for panic to arrive, he thrashed, trying to free himself to no avail, trying to kick off his own boots. But Roman was growing weaker, pale and shaking, and lacking of air. For a moment, he thought of Virgil. Had he and the book made it to safety? Yes, surely.
The book would sell for quite a handsome sum, Roman thought. Artifacts of ancient magic always did, even if it was fake. He had given Virgil the book, given him the means to create his own reward. Virgil was no longer beholden to Roman. For a moment, he was angry at himself, for his lack of foresight. He had given his leverage over, and now he would drown here. While Virgil ran off to make his own fortune with an item of power beyond comprehension.
Roman gritted his teeth and turned his attention instead to the magic always rushing under his skin, his fingers curled, then uncurled, his mind fogging with the attempt of harnessing pure magic.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing—
Then he was too busy trying to seek out breath to think of anything else.
He thought of his dream. Of being pushed over the edge of the bridge. Of the water catching him. How it had almost felt like an embrace to land in the waves. He wished he felt comforted now. Instead of fearful. Instead of his lungs constricting tightly in his chest, desperate for air. Roman had wanted to die a hero. He hadn't wanted to die at all.
His eyes fluttered shut. His body went slack—
Then there was a vice grip on his arms. A silouhette in front of his eyes. A haze. A mirage. It wrapped around him, warm. And pulled him up, up, up.
Roman broke through the surface with a gasp, and water was spilling out of every crevice of him by the time Virgil had managed to drag them both to the river bed. Roman turned, dragging in painful gasps of air before he bent. Vomitting water into the soil. And he had never been happier to feel his lungs expand and deflate, even with the pain that followed.
He collapsed on his back, blinking water from his eyes.
"You don't need me to do mouth-to-mouth on you, do you, Highness?" He heard Virgil asked from beside him. Also panting, his head tilted to look at Roman. The storm was ebbing above them, and Virgil was glowing with the shine of water, Roman thought, like a nyphm. Somewhere down the riverbed, he caught a glimpse of the book. Virgil must have left it to dive back in.
Virgil had saved him. Even when he hadn't needed to.
The breathlessness that came to Roman this time wasn't because of water seeking out air from his lungs.
"You wish." Roman managed to wheeze out. And Virgil didn't laugh, but it was a close thing. Just as Roman didn't trust him yet, but now, it was a close thing.