Chapter Text
Peter Nureyev makes his escape (or rather, facilitates Juno’s escape) from the Dokana facility as he does every time he needs to disappear: perfectly, and without a trace. Now, he stands on a strangely squishy sidewalk, looking at Juno Steel, Private Eye, for the final time.
It should be a relief. Juno Steel, for all Nureyev had loved him, has been nothing but a thorn in his side as of late, jealously clinging to the remnants of their relationship. Peter had spent the past year mourning what he had, inevitably, destroyed, and Juno's refusal to understand that there was no future left for them together had made him furious.
Instead, he aches at the sight of Juno awash in the simulated sunset. He looks as beautiful as he ever did in gold, and when a tear drips down his face it runs right through his concealer, revealing just a fraction of the scar that runs across his nose. In a kinder world, Nureyev would wipe it away with his thumb and scold him for not properly setting his face. Here, Juno swipes a hand down his cheek, further smearing his makeup, and gives Peter a shaky smile.
“So,” He says, “I guess this is it.” There’s a wobble to his lips that feels more alien to Peter than the ground beneath their feet. Peter has always known Juno to wear his heart on his sleeve: a face like the sky and his mood like the weather. He wishes, for a moment, that he could see Juno without the crumbling disguise. If this is the last time they ever see each other, he wants to pop the glass eye from his socket and wipe away the concealer smeared over his nose. He wants to ask Juno to smile at him the way he used to, soft and bright like sunlight breaking through clouds. To see him as he was once more.
He doesn’t let it show. At least— he hopes he doesn’t. He hopes he’s imagining the shake in his voice when he responds, but the hollow confirmation barely leaves his mouth before Juno pulls him down by the shoulders and into a hug. He’s thinner than Nureyev remembers, but the curl of his arms and the warmth of his body are familiar. Nureyev is too stunned to return the embrace, and before he knows it, it’s over, leaving him alone once again in the stiff breeze of an alien planet that feels so much colder than before.
“Uh, sorry.” Juno says, tears spilling freely down his cheek. He turns away, looking back briefly to give Nureyev a wave and one last look at his watery smile. “I just— Sorry.”
Nureyev watches him walk away, a hunch to his posture that he hadn’t seen since Juno was a shadow in a hotel room door, just another dream that fled him. Part of him expects Juno to turn back around, to beg or yell or plead with him once more, but he just keeps going, until at last he turns the corner and disappears.
A dream that fled him once again, but Nureyev has more important things to worry about.
He gets the message at three in the morning, two months later. He hadn’t been sleeping, exactly, but the buzz of his comms knocks him out of a bleary reverie.
He knows who it is. He’d long since thrown away all his burner comms, including the ones he’d used for over a year on the Carte Blanche, leaving him with one twenty year old device wrapped up in a thick protective case and a single contact that holds his future— Slip’s future— in their grasp.
New job. Amun. Be there ASAP.
If there was any chance of him sleeping tonight, it’s gone now. He’d only left the planet a few times, in pursuit of funds so he could continue paying for the ever-growing cost of Slip’s care. The second shot at the procedure hadn’t worked, exactly, but the executives mentioned that they had a new lead… the chances were thinner than ever, but Nureyev had never been more willing to pay.
He tugs on his shoes, still dressed from the day before, although considerably more rumpled than he had been. The Dokana facilities are always open, always filled with workers and executives alike. He assumes each employee must sleep at some point, but within the confines of the building, they seemed to be but one entity, an endless swarm of workers. Regardless, it serves him well now. It’s only a ten minute walk, and then he is standing in front of the facility, on the same stretch of sidewalk he had said goodbye to Juno all that time ago.
His hands tremble as he reaches for the door. He remembers the look on Juno’s face, the tears spilling down his cheek. He remembers the feeling of Juno’s arms around him. He thinks about tattooed skin stretched over bone, a brain scan as dark as a cave, and the mechanical creak of a heart that hadn’t beat unassisted in two decades.
He files it all away, and turns the handle.
The scene is familiar, but has gotten no less unnerving over time. Peter Nureyev sits in front of a desk, while two executives with identically blank expressions stare out at him with glassy eyes.
“Mister Nureyev,” One of them starts.
“We have completed our research.”
“We may start development on a new procedure.”
“But we require one more thing.”
“I’ll get it. Anything you need,” He says, breathless. He wishes he could say he felt hopeful, or excited… but in truth, he just feels desperate.
“It is not within your typical purview.”
“I don’t care,” He pleads. “There’s nothing I can’t get for you. I think I’ve proven that much, at least.”
“Very well.” They slide a paper over the top of the desk, and his heart drops.
A familiar face scowls up at him. Younger than he’s ever seen it, with both eyes intact and a rounded, clean shaven jaw, set so fiercely that the picture looks more like a mugshot than anything, in spite of the barely-visible silver badge on his jacket. The picture is captioned with a name and an address.
“Is that… Is that the mark? What is it that you need from him, exactly?” Nureyev's fingers shake as he takes the picture, as if a closer look will change what is sitting plainly in front of him. Perhaps he can salvage this. Not every job requires interaction with his marks; if he’s very careful, he may be able to slip in and out of Juno’s new home or office without anyone the wiser.
(He steadfastly ignores the way the idea makes his heart skip a beat. The thought of seeing where Juno has made his new home, finding his way inside a bedroom with rumpled and still-warm bed sheets or an office with handwritten notes scattered across the desk… It’s hardly the point. That chapter of his life was over and done with. That much was clear, if little else.)
“His blood.”
“His— Excuse me?”
“There is alien matter within Mr. Steel's blood with significant psychic and regenerative properties.”
“We have been unable to track him down until recently.”
“But now that we have, he will be perhaps our greatest asset in completing the revivification procedure.”
“You… you want me to steal a person .”
“We are aware this is not your area of expertise.”
“If you are unwilling or unable, we may hire someone else.”
“The cost would be added onto your debts, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And if I didn’t want this?” His voice comes out small, unsure, and it feels like a betrayal to both of them at once.
“We would complete the procedure regardless of you or Mr. Jackson’s involvement.”
“We have invested too much time and money into this procedure to abandon it now.”
“But if you don’t feel the same…”
“No!” He shouts, a white knuckled grip around the photograph in his hands. “No, I’ll do it. I… I won’t let you down. I promise."