Archive of Our Own

Exactly 11 minutes after midnight on the longest night of the year.

He sees the rest of them check and double check their phones and watches, but doesn’t look at his own wrist. It would probably be silly to say he could feel it was time somewhere along his bones. The mouth of the cave didn’t look any different to his eyes but something was pulling him in, like a magnetic buzz attuned just for him, like it knew why he was here. His legs itch to move, so he forces himself to turn to the others.

“See you soon,” Nikolai’s half lit face seems more grim bathed in the foggy light of the headlights, but his voice is gentle, sure in the way that had always gotten through to Albert, no matter how old he was or how long it had been. It’s why he had made Nikolai the one to promise him whatever happened or didn’t happen, he would break the news to his mom and-well, it was better to get a move on rather than dwell on what could happen.

Nick doesn’t pat him on the shoulder like Nikolai, just stares before saying, “you’re a crazy son of a bitch for doing this.” like he hadn’t been the first to volunteer, but it makes Albert laugh anyway.

“I know,” He sobers up before it turns into full-on hysteria. He thinks it might be the stupidest plan he’s ever had and that’s really saying something, considering he’s been in and around tour shenanigans with Nick and Fab more times that he can count.

“Good luck.” is what he leaves him with, literally, as he stalks off to the open car. Fab shakes his head after him but immediately launches himself into Albert’s arms. It’s a tight hug that lasts a fraction of a usual Fab hug.

“Here, found them in the car.” Fab puts the crushed pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.

Albert looks back at Nick’s silhouette hunched over the wheel.

“Why?” They had all quit smoking over the years. He’s not even sure if it’s a rental or one of Nick’s relatives’. It hadn’t seemed important in the whirlwind of searching for an answer and stumbling upon a lead in France of all places.

“Call it a hunch, take these too. I don’t know if it’s true but I doubt they take credit cards down there.” Fab slips two coins into his sweaty palm. He puts them in his pocket, wishing he could ask for another hug, but knowing time was still a factor.

“Thanks,” Albert says before facing Ryan who looks as pale and worried as Albert should be.

“Bring him back so I can yell at him, okay?” He jokes desperately.

Albert is the one to comfort him, because it’s really the only thing he can do. He’s not sure of anything besides the fact that this was the right decision, even if he couldn’t bring Julian back. He had to try and if it meant going spelunking in one of the oldest caves in France then he would. Ryan clings to him, before clearing his throat, and offering a keychain with a tiny maglite attached.

“It might help.” He shrugs. Albert nods, throat closing a little in gratefulness that it was just them. It would always be the six of them, no matter how far they scattered. They just needed Julian to be complete.

It was like they were back in 2003; Julian without a phone and without a clue where he was. Albert just had to retrace the steps, figure it out to get them back in time to meet up with the rest for rehearsal or dinner or just to hang out back in the 2A apartment.

Except it was ten years later, and they didn’t have an album to work on, or a tour to go on, and half of them weren’t living in New York anymore.

He gives up his wallet to Ryan and takes in a deep breath before marching into the cave. It seems a little too warm for December. He doesn’t know if it’s just his nerves or if the air really is getting warmer as he keeps going. The dripping water makes him jumpy and he hears an intermittent hiss punctuating the drips like a snake was following him, but only warning him every so often.

The dark that surrounds him is less scary than he thought.

His ears pop, the humid air suddenly drops like a curtain trying to suffocate him. He clicks on the flashlight, shining it wildly as he gasps, but all he sees is the natural rock formation.

“Boo,” he hears to his left before he instinctively swings.

Nick doesn’t call him as a rule. It’s not written anywhere, but Albert knows Nick prefers face to face conversation, would rather see a person’s reaction than try to read it through a line in an email or through a phone. Technology has advanced enough to give into the demands of video calls and long chains of texts for the mundane and ordinary not related to their shared careers.

He’s with Gus in the barn, mostly goofing off and catching up before Gus has to leave to catch a flight to Chicago later in the evening. They’re somewhere between the fifth offer of giving him a ride to the airport and Gus throwing foam blocks at him when Justyna shows up with his phone and a strained smile.

“You’re not Ryan,” His voice shakes a little, but he was certain because even if this was hell, Ryan wasn’t dead.

Not-Ryan smiles, the smarmy full of himself one that always sat wrong with Albert, like he was a punch-line away from being the butt of his joke.

“Should I give you a cookie?” He mocks, before giving him a half-assed bow. “I’m your guide for this little trip you’ve found yourself on. I’ve gotta say, it’s been a long time since we’ve gotten an actual mortal on a quest. Everyone’s been real excited about it.” It keeps up with him, walking backwards to keep his eyes on Albert without tripping or faltering on the uneven ground. He thinks he should’ve worn better shoes for the trip.

“Why do you look like Ryan Adams?” He asks, unsettled at its easy gait, like not-Ryan isn’t actually there, just a figment of his imagination.

“Would you prefer this?” It shifts in some cross between static snow and a horrifying shaking that makes Albert’s eyes hurt, even though it’s over in seconds, and not-Ryan transforms into Agyness half a decade ago.

“No,” he forces out. Agyness doesn’t deserve that.

“Oh well,” She winks before blurring back into Ryan.

He’s got a suspicion on why those are the two options open for the demon shade but doesn’t want to voice it out loud.

It's a long path that stretches out ahead of them. Albert can't trust his own sense of time, but he consciously knows, it's been too long, too much walking to not hit some sort of end in a normal cave. His flashlight bounces with every step.

His eyes don't adjust to the darkness normally but he hears a low, long whistle, feels the air cool down again.

“Nelly sends her regards and a choice,” Not-Ryan puts his hands out with flowers in each palm.

They’re familiar, the ceibo flowers in the left and the jacaranda in the right. He remembers walking under the jacaranda trees with his grandmother in Buenos Aires, waiting until the petals fell just right, but the ceibo cluster brings back Nelly’s voice telling him the story of courage in times of misfortune.

He picks up the ceibo and it melts into his skin like warm red watercolor, scalding him up to his elbow. It doesn’t hurt, just a sort of numbing sensation like he’s gotten out of the cold and immediately put his arm into hot water. The numbing stops and concentrates, leaving a picture of ceibo flowers right above the rabbit shadows he has on his wrist, like a strange magical tattoo.

“This is where I leave you.” It says as they approach a door.

“Will this take me to Julian?” He grabs the handle but keeps his eyes on the guide who tilts his head left and right in ambivalence like a snake ready to strike.

“Eventually, if you make it there.”

“Julian is missing.” Nick sounds so far away, he thinks he’s misheard, but that doesn’t explain Justyna’s face, full of worry. She had given him the phone already connected to the call. Albert drops heavily onto the old couch in the studio. It doesn’t make sense. He can hear Nick calling out his name, but it’s Gus’s hand on his shoulder that wakes him up, shakes him out of it. His face looking down at him in concern.

“Albert, did you hear me? You had to fucking have a house in the middle of nowhere with shitty reception, didn’t you?” He curses some more, and that’s when he knows it’s serious, because Nick would rather chew on his own tongue than curse that much in front of the twins.

“Where are you?”

The ground has seismically shifted underneath his feet. Albert knows he has to do something, has to act and get in the middle of it.

“What?” Nick sounds surprised. He recovers in barely a blip of a pause before supplying, “New York. I got the first flight out I could find, crashed at Fab’s for a couple of hours. We were going to meet up at Wiz Kid. Nikolai’s my next call.” Nick sounds tired, under the strung tight tone.

“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

The door opens easily.

It’s cold enough for him to shiver in his shirt and jacket. Those are the first things on his mind and then he catches onto his surroundings.

He’s ended up in his first apartment. The one Julian squatted in for a whole semester before they found something together. He chews on the inside of his lip, touching the kitchen counter with the ding around the corner.

It feels real enough.

“Julian?” He doesn’t get an answer and the eeriest thing is seeing the strewn blanket and pillow on the pull out couch like Julian had just left the room. The living room was small but the radiator was positioned in such an awkward way that it would take the whole day to warm up the apartment. Julian would bitch and moan about never being comfortable until Albert offered to share his bed.

It was cold.

He eyes the door to his bedroom. The only time he closed it shut was when he knew no one was going to be around for a couple of hours. It was a weird hold over from when he had stayed with his paternal grandparents that one summer.

Albert touches the couch, skims his fingers over the arm that wasn’t too mangled yet. It ended up meeting a slow death in their rehearsal space. Nikolai took naps on it whenever he had an early shift before they hit the streets to hand out flyers and scoped out bars. Fab had fucked up the pull out function about six months into its new home. He hadn’t thought about that in such a long time, it took him by surprise that he still remembered it.

There were a lot of things he hadn’t thought of since those early days.

Ryan looked like shit.

He had his hands wrapped around a disposable cup of coffee like it was the only thing keeping him from flying off the handle. For all that Ryan had grown up from awkward and skinny, it was all Albert could see when his hair wasn’t combed back and he was in casual wear.

“How many days?” Nikolai gets in his question first and the board room is filled with nervous tension.

It had to be at least 48 hours, if they were throwing around the word missing. They weren’t back in their 20s when Julian would disappear for hours at a time, until someone found him in the studio or at the bar or in the diner picking at a plate of fries.

“I don’t know,” Ryan says, and the room explodes with something that is squeezing Albert’s throat in a vice. He drinks some water as he watches the color drain from Nick’s face.

“I’ve been calling around since Nick called me. No one has seen him since Thursday night. Juliet took Cal to visit her parents over the weekend. She didn’t think anything of him not picking up the phone because he’s been booking studio time and rehearsing for a new project and well,” Ryan shrugs. They all knew how Julian was with a new project.

“Jesus christ,” Nick rubs the corners of his eyes, holding the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t even think of calling Juliet.”

“Beardo called him, in LA.” Fab pipes up, his eyes sliding away from Nick who was practically vibrating with pent-up nerves. “Julian was supposed to meet up with Alex for lunch and I guess run some stuff by them and Bercovici. One of them got in contact with Sam at Cult. They said he hadn’t been in. Someone had a key to the house, his car was still there, but nobody was home.”

Nick holds his head in his hands, elbows on the heavy glass table separating them all from each other.

“Fuck,”

“Okay,” Albert says to the air. The door had opened to his bedroom, but it wasn’t the same apartment anymore. It was the one they traded the convenience of Julian’s workplace being across the street for having another whole bedroom. The barbell shaped apartment, two bedrooms with everything else squashed into the middle.

This time, he didn’t stop to look at his old room. He stared at the door.

“I don’t care if this is a maze. I’ll find a way out. I’m going to find Julian.” He took a deep breath in, and nudged the door open with his foot.

It was still their apartment.

“Julian?” The other bedroom door, Julian’s bedroom, was ajar. Silence surrounded him. The air was stale. He felt wrong, haunted, just standing here. This had been the first apartment that had felt like it was theirs. A year and half with a front door that always got stuck and more beer bottles than actual food in their fridge. This was where Julian had written some of the Strokes’ first lyrics, where JP had given them guitar lessons.

It was the only apartment that had felt like a home instead of somewhere to crash between tours and flights.

They had been so young and hungry back then, to make music and share it with the world.

He doesn’t go into Julian’s room. He never did, back then, if Julian wasn’t around. Albert wraps his hand around the doorknob to the bathroom and closes his eyes, sending some sort of plea out to the universe.

“It isn’t your fault.” Nikolai puts a hand on Nick’s shoulder, who only looks at him with wild, accusing eyes.

Albert thinks back to when the last time he had heard from Julian. The last time they had all been in a room together was when they were wrapping up the last album--November, maybe early December, he remembers it had already snowed, the dirty slush in Manhattan and the snow crunching under his boots upstate.

It’s been almost a year since then, and Albert knows there had to have been some email chains, or text messages, in between, but he suddenly can’t remember them, whether they were significant or not. He just remembers the studio time back in November or December. The walk to the coffee shop three blocks away to avoid the Starbucks where a bunch of tourists were camped out. Julian and Nick extra bundled up because they weren’t used to the cold anymore.

“We wouldn’t have known, if you didn’t call.” Albert says with a voice he doesn’t recognize. He still feels like he’s experiencing everything outside of himself. He feels like he did a decade prior, under a haze and desperately trying to cling to something that wasn’t there anymore.

It was sobering that he couldn’t remember what his last words to Julian were, even as he tried his hardest to scrounge up the memory.

“Let’s make a timeline okay? Let’s get the facts down, what we know, what we don’t.” Ryan says with authority.

He throws down the syringe in horror. It clatters into the porcelain sink.

“No,” It was like a blackout, one moment he was holding open the door, the next he was in a bathroom about to shoot up. He looks at his arm, checks it to see if he had slipped the needle under the skin. There’s nothing, but he rubs his arm anyway, feeling, trembling.

When he looks in the mirror, it’s not him.

“What the hell,” He rubs at his cheek, and the reflection does the same, hitting stubble that isn’t actually there. It’s not him now, it’s him younger, with purple smudges under his eyes, too skinny to look at without knowing there was something wrong. Albert wants to say he doesn’t remember this moment, because there were so many of these moments, but he has a feeling it’s the one that broke something within him, with him and Julian and the rest of the band.

It’s the outfit he thinks he remembers. The shirt and suspenders, the corduroy and unkempt hair.

“This isn’t me anymore.” He says to the mirror, focusing on his eyes. “You are going to be okay. You’re going to do things you couldn’t have dreamt of. You just have to hang on.”

He doesn’t think it’ll reach him in the past, but he has to try.

His hands hold onto the edges of the counter, knuckles prominent against thin skin. Albert wasn’t going to give up, wasn’t going to run scared because of this. He was the only one who could reach Julian now, and he wouldn’t stop until he saw him again.

He straightened up, walked away and to the next door, yanking it open with force.

Julian wasn’t here, and Albert never would be again.

In the end, it was depressingly clear that no one had been in contact with Julian recently.

They were all to blame really, it was easier to drag out their downtime, the stretch between albums and concerts, and they had all decided to not do any promotion this time around. Julian had called it an experiment, and the rest of them had just shrugged and smiled. The last album to fulfill their contract ended with a whisper instead of a bang.

It had felt like the clock was ticking against them. Nick and Nikolai with families, Fab focused on the art world, and Albert with his solo stuff.

In retrospect, he wonders if Julian had felt like they were leaving him behind. If that’s why he had bought the house on the west coast, found other people to bounce ideas off of, started a new band without really calling it that.

“I’m going to check on Nick.” Fab eyes the door where Nick had gone out for a bathroom break that was lasting well over ten minutes.

Nikolai glances at him before sighing out an “Okay,” and cracking his knuckles.

It was a nervous tick of Nikolai’s that Albert hadn’t seen in years.

“I don’t blame him.” He says, maybe to himself, maybe to Jimi Hendrix in the sky, but Albert nods, feeling somewhat better after Ryan had ordered take-out for them to take a break. He had called Justyna, had stared at his phone screen for what felt like twenty minutes before booking a hotel room to stay in the city.

“He’s gonna keep blaming himself until…” He trails off unsure of how to end it, until they find him, until the police find him, until they get more news.

“Yeah, I know.” Nikolai keeps wringing his hands.

It wasn’t like Julian didn’t come to the east coast, like they didn’t all have opportunities to catch up or talk to him. Nick might’ve been the closest to him geographically but he wasn’t the closest to him emotionally. They both had their own little LA circles that rarely overlapped if Nick were to be believed.

They had grown up, grown apart. They were still friends, but it wasn’t the same.

There were less reasons to stay together now.

He’s tired, and there’s a bed in the room.

He’s tired, and there’s actually a window in this room to give him a clue when and where he is.

“You’re not real,” He says, staring out into the mountainsides of Japan in the morning. They had been miserable by this point, exhausted from touring and of each other. Ryan had them on back to back to back tours, the venues getting weirder as time went on.

They needed a break. Albert needed a break.

The bed feels like a cloud after walking through the labyrinth of memories. He tries not to think about where he is, caught in some static memory used to taunt him. The sheets are mussed and vaguely smell of cigarettes and aftershave he doesn’t use anymore. The ceiling is blank and boring.

He wonders if Julian is trapped in some liminal space too, a personal purgatory made of things and places he hasn’t revisited since 2005. Did Julian see Albert in every corner of his past or was that just his luck, his mission coloring everything in with shades of Julian.

“You never cared if I fell asleep on you,” whether it was his insomnia or something else. “Just wait for me a bit longer.”

His eyes closed.

There’s a knock on the door, soft like Julian didn’t want him to hear it, but Albert’s awake, Julian’s awake, they might as well be awake together.

“Were you sleeping?” Julian asks awkwardly, dragging his feet across the threshold. His hand leaning on the door between their rooms like it’s some sort of safety net. They had gotten into a fight hours earlier, brought on by something small, tempers already short, hurt feelings like a current waiting to drag them under, layering every conversation between them. It was annoying and exhausting. Albert just wanted his friend back.

“No,” He steps back, making room for Julian to either come into his room or not.

Julian shakes his carton of cigarettes at him in apology, as an offer, and Albert takes it, even though he’s been trying to quit because Catherine hates the smell and refuses to kiss him when his mouth tastes like an ashtray. He had laughed the first time she had said that, remembering the months they had teased Julian for drinking ash from a repurposed beer can.

She hadn’t found it as funny as they did.

“Let’s go to the balcony.” He turns his back to Julian, opens the sliding door just enough for them to squeeze through before closing it.

“It was stupid,” Julian says around his cigarette. The cherry burning bright against the dark.

Albert doesn’t have to guess what he’s talking about. He’s heard enough of Julian’s apologies to know that’s what it is. Spinning the wheel of the lighter in his hand twice, three times before the flame shows up, he changes his mind.

He grabs the cigarette out of Julian’s fingers, inhales in a rush.

“It was,” He agrees.

The dream memory melts away with a shout in his ear.

Albert bolts up, startled out of sleep.

“Julian?”

He walks around the house, circuits that take him from the kitchen to the bedrooms to the back door. It’s been a week officially. Seven days without knowing where Julian was. He wakes up every day with a start, like he’s going to miss out on knowing something, on a phone call, on any scrap of news if he doesn’t get up in that instance.

They keep in contact more now. Albert calls Nikolai, Nikolai calls Fab, and Fab calls Nick. Sometimes it's early in the day, sometimes it's late when he knows Justyna is asleep and the dogs are keeping her company.

He can’t play guitar, feels sick just thinking about it.

So he paces around aimlessly like a ghost in his own house.

Ryan hadn’t given up on using any string he could pull to find out what happened, where Julian could’ve gone or been taken. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the earth. The cops had been useless, since it wasn’t a kidnapping and there weren’t any leads to follow. Julian was just gone, into thin air, just like that.

Albert felt like he was going through the stages of grief over and over again. Angry one moment, sad the next.

No matter what had happened between them, between the band, Julian wouldn’t disappear, wouldn’t worry them like this on purpose.

If Julian was out there, somewhere, he would be fighting to get back.

He swears it was him shouting for Albert to wake up.

The room is the same, the view is the same. Time isn’t passing as it should, so why shouldn’t it be morning in a hotel room in Japan.

Albert’s heart is racing in his chest.

Was Julian close, could he see Albert, was it just a figment of his imagination, another trick like the bathroom, just to torment him. He doesn’t wait to find out, marching over to the front door, but it doesn’t give. He pushes harder, putting his shoulder into it.

“Let me out,” He’s frantic, done with this fake room and its fake calm. “Let me out,” He shouts.

It swings open, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“Julian?” His hands slip into water. He’s in a fucking bathroom again. The lights are too bright and the checkered tile is sparkling. The water on the ground is the only thing out of place. He goes to one of the sinks, sees himself and nothing else in the mirror.

He turns on the faucet, washes his hand, splashes some water on his face, trying to regain his bearings.

Albert sees something out of the corner of his eye, turns to the stalls.

Something is carving words into the doors, slowly scratching into the wood. He freezes as the message gets clearer and clearer, getting to the last stall, five words in total: Your time is running out

He runs to the exit.

It’s been a month of life being slightly surreal, having to go on living with the fact that Julian was missing in the back of his mind.

Ryan wanted to get them together at Albert’s house, somewhere they wouldn’t be hounded by the press after the news was officially announced. There were rumors flying around, but nothing had been confirmed by anyone of importance. Juliet had been staying with her parents, flying back to LA once with Nick to see to the house, but leaving Cal with his grandparents.

Nick had stayed back in LA, and Juliet had come back to New York.

He had seen her once over the course of everything, when he had gone to visit Jeanette and Sam. Justyna had gone with him, making noises about driving him afterwards to a dinner place her friend had recommended.

“It’ll be good for you, Albert, to go out,” He nodded and swallowed down the guilt threatening to come up his throat along with bile.

“I know, I know,” He’s been a mess, he could stand to go out, to get cleaned up and focus on something other than Julian. He still had Justyna, he still had his parents, and everyone else in his life and they were starting to get worried that he wasn’t coping well enough.

Somewhere along the way, it had become less about Julian not being there, and more about Albert reflecting on how he had missed it, missed Julian quietly leaving his life.

He had realized some part of him had blamed Juliet for Julian staying away, staying in LA, and seeing her with Cal in Manhattan after everything, had put certain things in perspective about the assumptions he’d made in order to be okay with Julian leaving. He knew he had been happy in LA and Albert had been happy as well, learning to be a musician without drugs in his system.

He just couldn’t remember how to be happy now, without knowing if Julian was okay.

Albert hadn’t made it to the second course of dinner before excusing himself to the restroom to quietly shake apart.

This room wasn’t empty. The game had changed.

It was a party, like the ones the label execs would throw and they would have to show up to mingle with people they didn’t know and who didn’t care who they were. Julian had hated going to these types of functions, had hated anything that reminded him they weren’t really in control of their music.

“We’re like dogs on a leash.” He had said, jaded and surly at the last RCA party. Fab had made a joke about a big juicy bone. Albert had laughed, but Julian still looked around like he expected someone important to clap their hands and make him sing. Nick had changed the topic of conversation to cars, specifically his own being a pain in his ass, and that had effectively chewed up twenty minutes of the evening.

Albert wonders what the rest of the guys are doing, whether he'll get to the end of this and find them old and gray, like that one kid’s movie.

Nobody looked familiar, until he caught a flash of long blonde hair.

It’s a trick, he knows, but he follows her anyway.

Before Aleksandra was on the team, Juliet was the one to look for if they had needed anything.

“It’s a nice night out.” She says, stopping at the doors of the lobby. This copy of Juliet sounds just like her, looks like her, even if he can’t quite figure out when this Juliet is supposed to be from, but the ring clues him in as she fiddles with her hair, pushing it back.

“Do you know where Julian is?”

Her face is blank, like she doesn’t register the question, before she smiles again.

“Don’t you?” She asks, following a different script.

Albert tries again, “Juliet, I need to know where Julian is. Have you seen him?”

She shimmers like a faulty signal on a screen before she meets his eyes, aware of him. He leans back at the anger he sees in her blue eyes.

“It’s your fault.” His breath catches in his throat as she utters the words of his nightmares, the things he told himself at his lowest points because that was the only way things made sense when all he couldn’t climb out of the hole he had dug himself into.

“It’s your fault he never loved me.”

“I went to LA, to Julian’s house, and found this.” Ryan puts a stapled packet of papers on his dining table. It’s not as formal as their last meeting, all of them scattered between the dining room and the kitchen. Fab was picking at the cheese board Justyna had picked up. Nikolai had brought a wine bottle presumably as a late housewarming gift before Albert gave him his blessing to open it.

Nick flipped through the mystery packet way too fast to glean anything useful from it, “Okay?”

“He signed it,” Ryan adds, like it’s supposed to help.

Nikolai holds it up, scrutinizing the front page.

“It’s from the label?” He passes it to Albert like he wants him to double-check the legalese none of them had ever been good with interpreting. It looked like a standard contract or label missive with the additional goal of killing a tree or two.

“It’s not, I checked with them. There’s no record on file, there’s no reason this should’ve been couriered to Julian’s house when it was.” Ryan sounds like he’s building to something, like he’s found some sliver of hope in the mysterious contract. Fab grabs a seat at the table, making grabby hands at Albert to pass it his way.

“Did you check with the lawyers?” Fab squints at the random page he flipped to.

Ryan’s face twists sourly, “I did. Jerry thought it was a joke.”

“Why would he think that?” Nick says, curious with only a hint of anger that anyone would think Ryan would be messing with people in the light of Julian’s disappearance, that they wouldn’t take Ryan seriously.

“Because it’s fake. It looks like RCA tying up loose ends, complying with the end of your five album contract and being free henceforth et cetera on the surface, but then reading more closely--”

“What the fuck, ‘The client hereby engages the provider to provide services up to and including musical talent and forfeiture of mortality.’ Does that mean what I think it means?” Fab asks after reading the line out loud.

No one breathes. None of them had entertained the thought that Julian might be dead. No one had ever said it, even as the days rolled over and the chances of him being found were getting slimmer. It wasn’t possible. It was unthinkable that Julian could be dead because then they had nothing to do, nowhere to go.

“That’s not true.” Albert forces himself to keep calm.

Juliet sneers. He’s never seen her with hatred in her eyes. He’s never even seen Juliet angry. He tried not to complicate her life on tour. Ryan had been angry enough to threaten to quit when the secret of Julian and Juliet had come out. Albert didn’t even remember the details anymore, too wrapped up in his habit that the memory was in pieces.

“You think I don’t know what you did?” The question is so open-ended that Albert is immediately swallowed by every thought, every single moment that shouldn’t have been, that shouldn’t have happened, but Albert couldn’t make himself feel guilty anymore. He had worked through it, knew it was wrong at the time, knew it and still couldn’t regret it.

Therapy had been hell for a long time.

“He was in love with you. You guys were in love, and he stopped,” His voice cracked, “He didn’t need me anymore.”

Juliet doesn’t look convinced, still radiating anger.

“Am I supposed to pity you, Albert, for coveting what I had, for making him leave our home to go chase after you?” She says without raising her voice. It’s just a cold and cutting tone.

“What? That’s-that’s not what happened.” Albert falters, he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

“Albert, Albert, Albert, do you really think I’m stupid, poor little Albert always getting high and making my husband clean up his mess. Do you think your time away didn’t come with a price? Julian paid it, for you. The rest of the band had to wait for you to come back and what do you do? Ruin it.”

He shakes his head. This wasn’t real, Juliet wasn’t really here.

“You aren’t Juliet.”

She smiles, “You ruin everything Albert. You don’t deserve Julian.”

Albert clenches his jaw, reminding himself there wasn’t time, the warning flashing in his mind.

“Maybe I don’t.” She flickers. “Maybe I don’t deserve him, and I’m sorry. I don’t know if the real Juliet feels this way or not, but I’m sorry. Julian...” probably felt sorry as well, for hurting her, for every day he hadn’t spent with his family.

“I loved him too.” He admits quietly, and she dissipates into a shower of sparks and smoke.

“He’s not dead.” Nikolai says firmly, without a doubt.

Nobody argues with him, not even Nick, who only gets up to shuffle past them for the wine bottle.

Albert doesn’t tell him where the glasses are because it’s already futile with Nick drinking straight from the bottle and smacking his lips obnoxiously as he finishes. He trades a look with Fab who only lifts a corner of his lips in acknowledgement.

He had guest rooms to spare, but he had a feeling Fab wouldn’t wait until later tonight to drag Nick into one to have a conversation about the way he was coping with Julian’s disappearance. Amanda and Fab were probably tag-teaming the effort.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nick says to Nikolai, “If Ryan wants us to believe in some magical fucking Faustian deals, then I’m going to drink some wine because that’s insane.” He pulls out his educational pedigree like they all hadn’t been silently thinking it.

Ryan looks heavenward for patience. “He signed and dated it, the day he disappeared. I know it’s crazy, but what other option do we have?”

Fab snickers, and they all turn to look at him.

“Jules would do it all backwards, fame and fortune signed away for his life.” They all look at one another and start cracking up because it’s true. The laughter dies down but it feels easier to breathe now, with something to go on. A farfetched clue was better than no clue at all.

The outside of the lobby turns into the woods around his house.

He looks at the snowdrift, and doesn't see any footprints besides his own. The snow is melting into the bottom of his pant legs and his socks by the time he reaches the house. Albert has a feeling he knows who is going to be behind that door.

The magic that helped make this place wasn’t trying to be subtle anymore, not with Juliet, and not with the abrupt scenery changes.

“Hello Albert,” Justyna greets him. “Welcome home.”

“Justyna,” He’s wary that she’ll turn into some technicolor demon, but she doesn’t so much as blink wrong. It’s the inside of the house that’s wrong, missing art pieces on the walls, knick-knacks on the side table, the hook he installed for the extra dog leash. It’s his house before Justyna moved in. The more rooms they moved through, the more he can see the differences like everything Justyna touched was disappearing before his eyes. It’s a silent trek up to their bedroom, except it wasn’t theirs anymore.

Only his clothes hung in the closet. His bed spread was the dark blue one his mother had bought him when he first moved in, and there wasn’t the stain by the full-length mirror where he had made her spill her perfume.

She’s a ghost, standing in the middle of what should’ve been theirs.

“Please don’t, don’t say what I think you’re going to say.” Albert doesn’t touch her, doesn’t want to know if she’ll feel real or if she’ll be a mirage he passes right through.

“Were you really going to propose to me?” She wasn’t supposed to know that. He reflexively checks his pocket, before realizing he had left the ring behind in the suitcase he didn’t bring to France. He had bought the ring before the whirlwind of Julian going missing. He’d had a plan, or an idea, to ask her for the holidays.

He nods, a knot in his throat.

“Why?” She’s got a little furrow between her eyebrows, like she doesn’t understand, and he’s so familiar with that face, that it hurts.

The doubt hurts the most. Months ago, he would’ve been sure of his answer. Now, he doesn't know what to say besides,

“I love you.”

It takes another month going on the most unlikely theory, but they get a tip from an unlikely source that isn’t filled with stories about crossroads and musicians desperate enough to sell their souls.

“My aunt is into this sort of stuff, the supernatural right?” Fab says, “So she hooks me up with this shaman dude, and he’s talking about this cave in France. They call it caverna de iluminação, cave of enlightenment. People go in, seeking to find something, come back changed. Supposed to be really intense, scary shit.”

“I don’t know how enlightened you can be if you don’t come back.” Nick scoffs from the speaker phone.

“So I talk to my cousin, asking her to really dig into this guy, see if he’s just bullshitting me.” Fab continues, ignoring Nick’s interjection. “And she tells me, she’s heard of this before, but less enlightenment, more ‘mouth of hell’ type of thing. That her friend went on some backpacking trip of haunted places across Europe, checked it out as a side thing, was completely wigged out by the, I quote, “chthonic vibes” of the place.”

“In France?” Nikolai says skeptically. He’d been the last one to go down a rabbit hole and take a trip to New Orleans that hadn’t panned out to anything besides a sleepless night and 300 dollars of antiques shopping.

Albert doesn’t blame him for finding it suspicious.

“How does that fit in with Jules’ contract?” He asks, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. Last night hadn’t been a good one, but when Fab had called to meet up at his place, he couldn’t say no.

“We’re talking about souls in purgatory, trapped in the underworld through metaphorically shaking the devil’s hand. We have to think outside of the box, and this is definitely outside of it. If Jules can’t leave, then we have to go get him.”

“Do you? Enough to share the rest of your life with me?” She asks with a frown. Justyna was his rock in these last couple of months. She had put up with his moods and the way he fell apart at the slightest suggestion that reminded him of Julian, the way he pushed instead of pulling her closer.

The doubt grows, unfurling viciously like a coiled snake inside him.

“I-maybe it isn’t the right time, but I would,” He says desperately trying to appeal, to close the distance he feels. “I would spend the rest of my life with you.”

Justyna’s eyes grow brighter, tears forming, “Albert, why are you here?”

Why was he here? Albert looks down at his arm, the red petals leeching the color from the rest of the room. He was here because the labyrinth of his mind had decided to face every demon it could throw at him in the hopes of finding Julian at the end. Justyna was just a part of that.

She had been there to see the best of him, the person he was after he had picked up the pieces of his life and was starting to really live. She was a part of that life that had a future, something warm and bright instead of bleak and hopeless. He had worked so hard to be someone better, someone who deserved the sort of love Justyna had given him.

“I’m here because I want Julian back.” The certainty that floods his chest wars with the guilt he feels.

Is it selfish, to want to see Julian when Justyna is right in front of him. Is it stupid to keep going back to the band, to Julian, when his future is right there, right in his grasp with his own music and his own voice.

He doesn’t think so.

Justyna reaches up to touch his face. It’s feather-light, barely there but he bows his head to hear her whisper.

“Carry that love into the next part.” Her kiss on his cheek is a puff of air. The gust makes her disappear into multi-colored dust that scatters, slides between shaking fingers. He wipes beneath his eyes, finding them wet.

He knows what door is left.

Nick is the first to volunteer, which is ridiculous considering he has kids and a family. That rules out Nikolai as well but Albert knows, just knows, it needs to be him.

“I’ll do it.” Fab stays silent, staring at him with an apology in his eyes. Nikolai grabs his arm, like he’s trying to prevent him from going this instant, and Nick keeps arguing on the line, making a case for him to go instead.

“I have to.” It feels like the moment after he reached rock-bottom, when he knew he had to stop or he would die. Julian wasn’t there for that either, he thinks, trying not to laugh in dark humor. Fab had looked at him like that back then too. Nikolai and Nick like bookends at his side. The words were fuzzy, but he remembers his mom crying and Nikolai trying his best to keep everyone steady.

All he really remembers was how numb he felt, like his body wouldn’t respond even if he tried to reach out.

“Are you sure?” Nikolai asks him, and he can almost taste the deja vu.

“No,” he’s honest, because that’s all he can be. “But I have to try. Julian and I,” He lets it hang there as everyone acknowledges the unspoken.

It had always ended with Julian and him.

“I guess we’re going to France then. Do you know where exactly the cave is?” Nikolai directs the question to Fab, after squeezing his bicep once in assurance, in blessing that he believed in Albert, that he could do this.

When he tries the bathroom door, it opens without any resistance.

The bathroom sink is full of water, the taps running at full blast, making it overflow over the counter and cabinet onto the floor. He steps into the puddle to turn it off, stares into the water still rippling out and sees him appear behind his reflection.

He turns around.

“Hi,” His clone says almost cheerfully before wrapping a hand around his throat.

It’s eerie, seeing a carbon copy of himself, walking around like a puppet that he can’t control, boiling over with anger enough to try to kill him. His fingers scrape against the hold he has with both hands. He can’t get in enough air. The back of his shirt is getting soaked as he’s shoved against the counter.

“O...kay...it...s...o…” He chokes out.

He won’t die like this, not by his own hand.

He kicks out a foot, hears something crack before losing his balance and crab-walking backwards towards the tub dizzily. He tilts his head back, wheezing, the spots from his vision receding with every gulp of air.

Looking up to the other Albert is like trying to keep his eyes on a constantly moving funhouse mirror. It keeps growing more and more flawed the longer he stares.

“Wait, wait,” He gasps with his hands up.

His clone’s side is dark, wet, and splintered, the cracks spidering like glass across his chest and leg yet still maintaining the appearance of being solid, three dimensional.

The other Albert laughs without any sort of mirth, mean and dry. “You don’t control me here.”

“You don’t have to do this.” Albert gets up on unsteady feet.

“I do,” He swings at him, “because I’m you.”

Justyna doesn’t help him pack.

She sits in the living room with her arms wrapped together, biting her lip when he emerges from their room.

“It’s only going to be a couple of days,” He reassures her. Albert doesn’t tell her there’s a possibility he could disappear as well, could end up with the same fate as Julian. He hadn’t told her any of the details of the trip really, just that it was connected, that he had to go along with the rest of the guys.

Nick was already in France, and Fab had taken a connecting flight from Italy last night.

“Good luck,” She says at the door. The dogs are at his feet, jingling with their excitement at the possibility of getting to go outside.

It would be like leaving for a tour, except that Albert wasn’t packing up his guitar and Justyna hadn’t been around the last time he had been on tour.

She hugs him tightly, her head landing on his shoulder, and he gets the feeling he isn’t fooling anyone.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Albert.”

The second swing connects and Albert tastes blood.

“Are you willing to die for him?” He taunts, dragging him by his hair to the sink.

“Look at yourself, Albert, you think this proves anything? All of this suffering, all this complication, for what?” His clone holds his face, forcing him in place, watching their reflections. The bathroom dims, darkness closing in.

“No one is going to love you. No one.” He whispers spitefully, and Albert hears the whisper multiply, all of them voicing things he’s told himself before. They’re all alone with his worst thoughts. He tries to shake his head in the hold. It wasn’t true. He was trusted by the guys. He was cherished by his mother. He was loved.

He was loved.

“I do,” He says softly.

His clone shatters the mirror, shouting, “No, you don’t,”

Albert stands straighter, meeting his copy’s eyes in the pieces of the glass. He wasn’t perfect. Some days were more of a struggle than others, and he was still learning his limits, still figuring out how he fit into the world, into the life he’d built for better or worse in recovery.

“I do,” He repeats louder, surer.

He was proud of himself with all his flaws because he’d survived everything he’d thrown at himself, even this, especially this.

“Do what you want to me, but I’m not giving up. I’m not.” He isn’t throwing his life away for Julian. He isn’t trying to sabotage himself by caring too much. He’ll get out of this, and he’ll drag Julian back to the land of the living.

“We’ll see,” The other Albert says darkly before pushing his head underwater.

He flails until nothing feels solid, until he’s certain he’s dead.

Darkness all around.

“Albert?”

He can’t see. He feels at his face, bumps into his nose without seeing his hands. It’s just darkness, utter darkness, pitch black all around him.

“Albert?” He registers the voice, blinks sightlessly.

“Julian, are you, are you really here?” Albert’s crying and shaking, but he still reaches out into thin air until someone grabs his hands.

“Albert,” He says breathlessly, closer than before. “How, what did you do, how did you get here?” He grips his shoulders and Albert can’t stop the choked sob in his throat from escaping. He falls, weak at the knees, everything catching up to him. He still feels like he’s drowning. Julian helps him back up, half-hugging him, clinging to him tightly.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Albert stills, blood rushing in his ears, “What.” If this was another trick, it would be the ultimate one, the one that breaks him. If this Julian was a trick, he wouldn’t be able to tell, not without being able to see him.

“There isn’t a way out. I’ve been trapped in here for,” There’s a pause. “For a while. There isn’t a door. It’s just me and a banquet table full of food.”

“How did I get into the room then?” Albert asks.

“You just appeared, soaked in water, on the floor. I thought you weren’t real. You didn’t move, like you were,” Julian exhales noisily, “then you woke up I guess. How long has it been? How long have I been gone?” He’s touching him, making sure he’s really there, that he’s okay.

Albert covers one of his hands with his own.

“I think you know why I have to ask, I trust you, okay? I just don’t trust where we are.” He explains, gripping onto his hand like a lifeline. If Julian knows how this place has been messing with their minds, he can forgive him for being a little suspicious.

Julian doesn’t let go, holds onto his damp shirt, warmth radiating off of him replacing the cold.

“Tell me something, anything we would know, just us.” There’s a lot to choose from, and that’s a test on its own. The labyrinth had a pattern, trying to get him to focus on his guilt, his feelings for Julian, how they were wrong and out of place.

“I-” His voice breaks, low like he’s afraid the room itself will overhear, “I asked you to be Cal’s godfather. You said no, told me Nikolai would be a better choice.”

Albert presses his lips together, feeling the burn of more tears from relief.

“Sorry,” he chokes out, his hands skimming up, trying to find his face and ending up on his shoulders. It didn’t matter because he hugs him, and can hear his heart beating, the pulse drumming. He was real. It was Julian. He had finally found him.

“It’s been months, and I’ve been losing it. We’ve all been fucking miserable and now I can’t even see you, I’m sorry, I had to make sure, you can ask me something too,” It all rushes out in one breath, strung together like taffy. Julian is holding the back of his neck so he hears the huffed out laugh right next to his ear, feels it when he shivers.

“I don’t need to ask you anything. I know it’s you.”

He lifts his head up.

“How?”

Julian makes that same shuddery laughing sound.

“You didn’t yell at me like the other ones.”

They sit on the floor, trading bits of stories. Albert is cross-legged, and he can almost pretend he’s just in a really dark room with Julian instead of temporarily blind. The floor feels like packed clay, cool to the touch.

“You got a new tattoo?” Julian asks, in a funny tone like he isn’t sure he should be asking.

Albert reflexively touches his forearm.

“The flower?”

Julian taps at where Albert thinks the head should be, where the red petals stood out against his vein and skin. His knees are touching Albert’s now. He swallows down the nervous flutter in his chest.

“It’s missing some color,” Julian’s amused tone cuts through his thoughts.

He feels around, like he can somehow tell, but it isn’t like an actual tattoo. The picture flat, because it was some sort of magic. Not-Ryan had said it was from his grandmother, something to help him maybe, to do what. They didn’t know how long it’s been since Albert had gotten there, and they hadn’t talked about it. He had forgotten to tell Julian about it.

“How much of it is missing?”

“There’s an outline, but the petals only have a bit of shading in red at the bottom.” Julian traces half-moons on his skin, where Albert guesses the color still held on.

“It’s pretty, but not really your style.” He goes on, oblivious.

“It’s not a tattoo. I think,” The words ‘Your time is running out’ flashes in his memory. How long has it been since he went into the cave. What was going to happen if all of the color bled out. “I think it’s the time I have left.” He licks his lips.

“The time we have left to escape.” He concludes.

“There isn’t a way out, I’ve checked every corner of this room since I was dropped into it.” Julian says, certain in his hopelessness. Albert shakes his head. This place didn’t cheat, unless you counted the fake contract, but that was out in the real world where you had to see it to believe it. He wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a way out. He hadn’t made a deal.

He had taken the risk of wandering into Purgatory to save Julian, so he had to have a fair shot at it.

“Describe the room to me.”

“There’s us, a table full of weird fruit, and floating orbs of light instead of sconces. The walls are bare except for the creepy Zeus-like guy glaring down from the wall over there.” Julian gestures, because he can hear the shift of his clothes, then remembers, and turns Albert by the shoulders to face the direction.

He walks slowly, hesitating with every step, before he reaches the wall and feels the stone relief, not recognizing anything by the shape, just knowing there’s curves and sweeps.

“That’s hair, his beard. His mouth is right above your head.” Albert stretches to see if he can make it out by touch, and remembers his other question.

“How is the fruit weird?”

“What?” Julian sounds distracted.

“How do you know the fruit is weird?” He repeats himself before turning around and giving up on the wall having some sort of secret button only he could touch.

“I ate a green tangerine. Well it tasted like a tangerine, but it was white on the inside. I thought it was an apple. The skin was too bitter to not be something you peeled off.”

“You what,” Albert rushes to where Julian’s voice was. It was the first rule you came across in the folklore of this type of place. Never to eat or drink anything for the fear of it keeping you there under hospitality rules. They had all bought and borrowed books of fairytales, fables, stories with hidden warnings and morals to figure out how to get Julian out of his contract.

“I ate one of the weird fruits. It doesn’t matter. The table resets everything after a while. I climbed on top of it to touch one of the lights, and everything that spilled disappeared. All the plates were full like nothing happened.”

Albert’s hand smacks into his face by accident.

“You’re not supposed to eat anything, Jules, it’s just another trick to keep you here.” He raises his voice, frantically thinking. What did they do in the stories, what could do they do with what they had. What did Albert have to fix this?

“I wasn’t even hungry-I just, there was nothing else to do.” He says, voice edging into the thin despair that tells Albert that Julian had been trapped in here much, much longer than he has and he should remember that before getting angry at what he had to do when he was alone.

“Did it have segments?” Albert blinks rapidly, getting an idea.

“Not really. It wasn’t actually a tangerine, more like a big kiwi. It made a six pointed star in the middle.” Julian traces the shape in the palm of his right hand.

Six, six.

“I have cigarettes.” He was going to kiss Fab and his crazy gut feelings when they got out.

“And?” Albert takes the soggy pack out of his pocket, shakes it to hear if the cigarettes had survived the journey before opening the lid to show Julian.

“And we’re making a trade. There are six, right?” Six cigarettes for one fruit.

“Yeah, here, hold on.” Julian takes them from him, his steps heavy in the quiet of the room. There’s a crinkle of film, and then he’s laughing, coming back to him. Julian sets something round in his hand.

“It worked.” He says with wonder.

Albert grins, “Put it back.”

They try moving the table without any luck. Julian had warned him it weighed a ton, but he figured between the two of them, it might budge. The lights were insubstantial, magical without any sort of mechanism they could touch or see. Nothing to use.

“How’s the color?” He flashes his arm, stretching it out so Julian can tell him.

“The green is fading.” Julian rubs a patch of skin high up on the side of his arm. He shivers.

“There has to be something with the wall. The lights are useless, the table is useless. It has to be our way out.” Alberts says, half turning away.

Julian makes an exasperated noise.

“I told you, it’s just-wait.”

“What? Is there something different now?” Albert asks, excited at a possible breakthrough.

“He’s not glaring.” Julian mumbles more to himself than to Albert, “His pupils are missing.” He tells him, puzzled at the change

Albert fishes the coins out, holding them in sweaty palms.

“Are they small enough to fit these?” It had to be the way out. They didn’t have anything else left. Julian had come into this with just his wallet and Albert had nothing else in his possession to give. He needed this to work for the both of them.

“I think so. I’m going to have to sit on your shoulders to reach it.”

Julian leads him by the wrist.

“Bend down.”

Alberts swallows around his dry mouth, doing as he says, bending at his knees to let Julian climb on. It takes seconds but feels like longer. He holds onto the rough texture of his jeans, feels the weight shift with every breath Julian takes.

“Ready?” Albert asks.

“Yeah,” He straightens out, trying not to jostle him too hard.

“Move to the right a little.” He moves and Julian tightens his grip with his knees, biting off a curse. Albert laughs. They haven’t done this since they were twenty and it’s so absurd that this of all things is what it’s come down to, the blind leading the faithless.

“Come on, Albert.” Julian complains, “a little more to the right.”

When he gets to the right spot, Julian supports his one hand on top of his head, balancing to stretch his other hand to place the coin in the indentation of the stone.

“There,” Julian says when he’s done with both and Albert hears a rumbling, rocks sliding against each other with a groan. He hears a rush of wind like a tunnel opening.

“What was that?” Albert asks.

Julian stays silent before leaning forward enough that Albert has to readjust his grip on him or risk toppling.

“Julian?”

“It's a joke.” He sounds shaken, worse than the flashes he's heard in the time they've been trapped together. There's a scrape, a faintly metallic tink that hovers in the edge of a memory like everything in this place wants to launch him into the past by force. Albert is sick of it, knows himself better, knows Julian too.

“What is?”

Julian hands him something before scrambling to get off him, using the wall as support and practically kicking him in the kidneys.

“Jules, hold on, I don't-” He doesn't know what he's holding until he does, until he fumbles with it enough to spark some familiarity. The cool handle, edged with flourishes, the thin slot where the blade is still tucked away.

It was actually a joke. Grooming products had been gag gifts for them for a very long time and somewhere along the way, Albert, being the one who could actually grow a beard between them, had acquired an old-fashioned straight razor. He doesn’t remember who gave it to him, but he knows he lost it somewhere between the move and tours and countless luggage bags. It wasn’t something he actually used, but Julian had made it an inside joke once the third album came out.

“I lost this.” He says dumbly, holding it tightly.

“Good.” Julian still sounds wrong. “It should’ve stayed lost.”

He wants to reach out but isn’t sure of which direction to turn to, and even less sure of Julian’s willingness to take comfort from him. Patience has never been his strong suit and there was the factor of time still hanging above their heads.

“What’s wrong?”

Julian doesn’t respond, and a vague chill overtakes him because being alone and not being able to see would be worse than not just being able to see. He wasn’t trying to dwell on it, figuring it was part of the game, but if Julian and him were suddenly separated this far in.

He wouldn’t handle it well.

“Hey, you’re scaring me, man.”

Julian’s hands are suddenly on him, tight at first and then smoothing over his biceps, wandering down lightly until they reach his wrists.

“You’re real. You’re the real Albert.” His thumbs press down into his skin, and he lets go of the razorblade to grip right back. Julian makes a punched out noise that covers the sound of the razor hitting the floor. He moves in increments, telegraphing before surrendering the inches between them into a hug, reassuring himself that Julian was real too.

“The last time I saw that thing,” Julian’s shaking slightly, “One of the other you had it,” He doesn’t continue but Albert can fill in the rest, can still feel the phantom water in his lungs from before, the needle tip against his arm. He knows the path of his own self-destruction had left scars on everybody close to him.

“I’m here. I’m real.”

Julian folds into the hug, and Albert pretends he can’t feel him crying.

They sit again when Julian calmed down enough to examine the wall again. The mouth slot was barely big enough to fit an arm through and there isn’t any indication on what to do with the razor. Albert doesn’t ask about his tattoo.

“It has to be a clue to get out.”

“They don’t want us to get out.” Julian replies.

Albert shakes his head, “I’m on a quest. There’s rules to that. There’s rules to this place. My guide even said, it had been a long time since a mortal came down here, so there must be a way to get out. This,” He holds up the razor, “has to be part of that. We exchanged for the fruit, we gave them the coins, what’s the next step.”

“Maybe only one of us can leave.” Julian says grimly.

“No, don’t think like that.” It wasn’t a test of wills, it was a puzzle. They knew he came down here for Julian, they proved it with every apparition he went through. His quest wasn’t done until he could bring Julian back to the real world.

“My quest, I’m the mortal…” Albert thinks out loud, turning the words over and over.

“Didn’t Hercules go on a quest?” Julian asks, and Albert gets an idea.

“I’m mortal.” He repeats himself, “Everything in here is part of the underworld, including you, sort of. You’re on a timer, because of the contract, but I’m part of the real world. I’m still alive. What’s the difference between being mortal and being a part of this world?”

And what did it have to do with the straight razor? It was simple, and Julian had known it all along.

Albert slices into his hand with the razor.

A sacrifice was always needed at the end of a quest.

Suddenly, the whole room is shaking, dust making him cough as his hand throbs and stings. The rumble of the rocks stops, settling with the dust in the air. The dark doesn’t seem as dark anymore. He blinks and waves his hand out in front of him, and sees the movement like his hand was backlit faintly in the dark.

“Julian?” He takes a step forward. “Julian, I’m-I think I can see shapes.” He squints, taking another step.

“Albert, stop moving. You’re pulling me.” He says from within the darkness of the room.

“What do you mean I’m pulling you?” Albert twists and turns but there’s nothing attached to him that he can feel or see. Julian’s hand brushes against his neck, shocking him like he stuck a fork in an electrical socket.

“Shit,” Julian jumps back, is forced back, like they’re poles on a magnet.

“I think you have to go first.” He heaves out.

Albert resists trying to look for him or reach out to touch him to make sure he’s okay.

“How much time do we have? You have the flashlight.” He hears the click, but doesn’t see the light. The shadow of his arm seems to be brighter but there was still too much darkness to tell if it was just him being hopeful.

“Not a lot. The green is almost all gone.” Julian reports with a thread of worry lacing the words.

Albert nods. So he couldn’t take baby steps. He would have to walk, run if he had to, without Julian’s guidance to get them back to the others outside of the cave.

“Is it straight ahead, the way out?” He takes a step in the direction he means to follow.

“Yeah, Albert, I’m-” He shushes him.

“Tell me later, we’ll have time later. We have to go now.” The urgency takes over, his blood rushing in his veins. He could do this. He wouldn’t turn back now. Holding his arms out, Albert takes two more steps, doesn’t bump into anything, keeps going.

His chest hurts, his breathing too loud in his ears.

“Julian?” It’s barely been five steps but he needs the reassurance that he’s there.

“Yeah,” he sounds winded.

Albert keeps going, tripping once in what feels like a slow eternity. Julian is wheezing behind him. His eyes are adjusting, getting better with every step he takes forward. He wishes he had asked for the flashlight to keep track of his tattoo, but he just had to have faith they would make it in time.

A thump, a groan.

“Julian?” Albert stops.

“Don’t, just keep going, keep going. It doesn’t matter.” It’s not a great reassurance, but he does as he’s told, keeping one foot in front of the other until the next time he hears Julian coughing and gagging.

Albert prays, hopes they’re close, that he won’t keep dragging Julian through more pain.

He sees rocks that look lighter, like they’re getting nearer to the end, getting to the light source. It would be daylight outside. Nikolai was probably keeping watch while the rest of the guys tried to sleep in the car. Nick has probably already threatened to strangle Fab in his sleep. Ryan was probably wrapped in everybody’s blankets like a burrito.

“We’re almost there, Julian. Just hang on. Do you see it? There’s more light up ahead.”

“I see it.” He slurs back faintly.

When they finally reach the bend, where the wall seemed lighter, he blinks back the headache that colors bring. He can see the difference between his clothes and skin. He checks the flower. There’s barely an inch of green at the tail end of the stem. The rest of the outline is fading as well.

“We can do it,” He says to himself, but it echoes back.

“I trust you,” Julian is hoarse from the coughing.

The light at the end of the tunnel is bright, bright enough to blind him again, except this time washing everything out in white.

“Albert,” Julian yells.

He keeps going. He keeps going because he has to. Becoming human again was always going to hurt. He couldn’t stop because of Julian’s pain. He had to do this for him. The air is sweeter, fresher and he can hear the birds singing.

“Julian?” He shouts back one more time, trusting he’ll be behind him. Albert slips against the grass, crawls the last steps from under the shadow of the lip of the cave, laughing wildly. They made it outside.

He did it. They made it.

Albert turns his head back, the light surrounds them in a strange static but he can see a hand reaching out. He grabs it and pulls.

They’re outside.

They’re free.

Finally.

When they stop staring up at the blue sky, they figure out something is wrong.

“They were supposed to wait for us to come back.” Albert can’t help but look at Julian, dusty but alive. No pain on his face, nothing wrong besides his haircut being too long at the sides. They were still holding hands, lying on the grass. He could pretend this was Central Park and they were still kids trying to make it, but this was better.

He was older and wiser and still watching Julian like he was his own personal miracle.

“Maybe they went to get breakfast.” Julian half-jokes.

“Without leaving someone behind to warn us?” He’s skeptical and something flickers across Julian’s face before he turns his eyes up to the sky again.

“So the whole gang showed up, huh?” Julian says it softly enough that Albert could choose to ignore it, let it hang between them unanswered but he doesn’t because he wants Julian to know they all cared enough to follow him whether on stage or off it.

“Mmhmm, Ryan even started crying on my shoulder before I left.”

Julian scoffs but he knows it’s hiding a laugh.

“I think there was a church down the road, not too close but it probably means there’s some civilization around here. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a phone to borrow too.” Albert gets up, dusting off his pants, trying to feel like he might be more presentable than the mental exhaustion catching up with him after the rush of adrenaline and triumph.

“Albert,” The sun is rising and his shadow is cast upon Julian, hiding half his face.

“I’m glad it was you.” He says hesitantly, in the way that Albert is familiar with, like he’s waiting for the context to get lost or muddled. Julian always chooses his words so carefully, and still years after the drinking and drugs, keeps a margin of error to be misunderstood by everyone.

“Me too,” He says warmly, before offering him a hand.

Julian takes it, holding on.