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The automatic door closed behind Julius, and the familiar smell of fried tomato combined with boiled pasta flooded his lungs.
Before Julius had the chance to announce that he was home, thin arms wrapped around Julius’ waist.
“Julius! I missed you, you know? And I made you your favorite dish!”
Julius smiled faintly. Pasta margherita. Julius’ favorite. Claudia’s dish specialty, then Ludger’s, and now Elle’s.
Elle had become quite skilled at cooking, though she always denied it, claiming that that was just because her only possible competitor was Julius.
“Hey Elle. Did you give a thought to what we talked about?” Julius said nonchalantly, hanging his coat on the wallrack.
Elle didn’t answer. Julius called her name, this time with the tone of an admonishing father.
“Yeah yeah, I have. Whatever.”
Elle was still hugging Julius, which meant that he couldn’t see her face, but Julius could tell that Elle was rolling her eyes.
Julius feigned ignorance. “People are saying things, you know.”
Elle’s hold on Julius’ waist tightened.
The Trial—and everything that happened after, including forging her a real identity so she could live in the prime dimension—had forced Elle to miss a year of education. Rather than starting university at seventeen, she was doing it now, at eighteen.
Or she was supposed to, at least: the closest university that offered Elle’s career choice was located in Drellin, and though Elle was jumping for joy when the news about her acceptance arrived, now that she knew Julius couldn’t leave Trigleph with her she was refusing to leave.
Julius couldn’t accept that. Elle had a brilliant mind, and she needed to seize her one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Julius could handle himself and, at worst, get a maid like he did when he was younger. He didn’t need Elle to be his housekeeper, and he certainly didn’t need more rumors.
Not that the speculations were wrong. That was part of the problem.
“They can keep speaking about us, then,” Elle said, her voice muffled against the fabric on Julius’ back.
Julius let out a sigh, an eerily similar conversation he once had with Ludger surfacing in his mind. His brother had shown the same reluctance to leave him behind. Ludger went as far as to choose a professional degree of only two years that was available at Trigleph, then decided that he would become “a Spirius Agent just like Julius”, which was a terrible idea for reasons that Julius could not disclose at the time.
Like father, like daughter. Ludger wasn’t this Elle’s father, but Julius wondered if there was still some genetic component between fractured versions, somehow. There had to. The stubbornness is the same, for sure.
The difference between Ludger and Elle, however, was that Elle knew Julius, and all of his secrets, far better than Ludger was ever allowed to.
“Stop saying that I have to leave the nest and find a boyfriend or whatever, it’s not going to happen! And,” Before Julius could protest, Elle turned Julius’ body around. “You would hate it, wouldn’t you?”
Elle pulled Julius by his tie, staring up at him with a serious expression. Julius gulped down. Shame crept up inside his chest as his body reacted to the closeness of Elle’s, as if trained into a Pavlovian response.
“It makes you happy, to come home and find I made you dinner. You want me to stay. You want me to be here, waiting for you… You know that, if I weren’t here, you would wither.”
Elle whispered against Julius’ lips, her free hand threading a finger in a loop of his pants, pulling her body closer to his.
Elle was right, of course. Everything that she said was the truth, as deeply ashamed as Julius was to ever admit it aloud.
Elle tried to kiss Julius, but broke away right away with a grimace. Julius threw her an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, you know how it is with Vera and the others. It’d feel nicer if I let it grow.”
It was a classic company policy rule: to keep a polished and professional image, you had to stay clean-shaven. Elympios was averse to facial hair, considered it unconventional and unkept, and Spirius was no exception: only Bisley was allowed to maintain a very trimmed goatee.
Julius, irremediably, always grew a clear 5 o’clock shadow by the time evening came. Unable to grow a full beard back when he was twenty, his facial hair was now coming with a vengeance, growing faster, thicker, and stronger—and it drove Elle mad.
“Ugh, really… It’s like I’m trying to kiss sandpaper!” Elle pouted. “And what’s the point of being CEO of the top company of Elympios if you can’t do whatever you want?”
“True,” Julius conceded. “Maybe I’ll let it grow and annoy my secretaries a little about it.”
Claudia’s eyes stared back at Julius. Ludger’s eyes. Elle’s eyes.
“That’ll be much better! And you’ll look so much more handsome with a beard, oh, fearsome president of the Spirius Corporation,” Elle grinned, victorious. “Vera has no idea.”
“Well, this is news to me too. Who was it who mocked Alvin relentlessly about his again?”
Elle giggled in response, lightly jabbing Julius in the chest with a “Dummy”. Incidentally, as they bantered, Julius’ eyes met his reflection in the mirror installed behind her. His heart skipped a beat.
Julius’ skin remained unblemished, but sometimes he could swear that he caught a glimpse of something there, a shadow from back when the catalyst transformation crawled down his shoulder, down his arm.
Despite everything that had happened, and Julius’ feelings on the matter, the world kept spinning and the years kept passing. The Julius from the mirror stared back at him, white hairs lost between blond ones.
It didn’t surprise Julius that, shortly after the completion of the Trial, his hair started graying—Bisley went through the same—but what Julius found the sight to be was unsettling. He was supposed to die long before he started visibly aging, just like all Spirius Agents had before him.
Julius knew his fate, had wanted Ludger to use his life to pave the way, to create his perfect world. Yet, instead of that, Julius lived and Ludger didn’t.
Julius, who was now pushing forty. Ludger, who would eternally be twenty.
As if she could hear his thoughts, Elle looked at the mirror. Meeting Julius’ eyes, Elle slipped her fingers into Julius’ hair, nails softly scratching scalp.
“I think white suits you. Maybe you could consider wearing glasses again?” Elle played with the white strand growing over Julius’ split eyebrow—Ludger’s scar, not his Ludger, but still a Ludger, once, somewhere—before pulling away. “I’m gonna get you the bath ready, alright?”
Despite the way she said it, Julius could tell that he wouldn’t be taking that bath alone.
Julius followed Elle’s reflection, the girl humming a song they both knew well as she walked away. His smile fell right as Elle disappeared down the corner.
The expression from the Julius staring at him in the mirror hardened, empty eyes watching him.
“It’s called the ‘Hymn of Proof’. It’s supposed to be about longing to see someone.”
The pain no longer held the acute edge it had during the first month, the first year, or the first five years, but it never went away. It was always within Julius, and it always would be. This was supposed to be Ludger’s perfect world, the one that he wished for when he chose Elle and Julius’ lives over his own—and Ludger’s perfect world was also Julius’ worst nightmare.
How many times had Julius watched the same scene unfold after he closed his eyes? How many times had Julius wished for everything to have played differently?
Maybe Ludger knew. Maybe that was why he tasked Julius with taking care of Elle, made him promise to him, made Julius attached to this world.
Whether Julius had actually kept the promise remained subject to debate. Julius and Elle were supposed to stay together, but Julius hardly believed that Ludger would have wanted it to be this way. Julius and Elle weren’t supposed to hold each other like two animals licking at each other’s wounds and picking at each other’s scabs.
Claudia, Ludger, Elle. Maybe this was Julius’ unique flaw, or maybe the Kresnik clan was always meant to be this unnormal, Trial or no Trial.
The newspapers would have a field day if they ever confirmed what was happening inside the ever-polite and perfect Spirius president’s apartment. Not like that’d ever happen: anyone who tried to dig dirt into Julius would get squashed like a bug.
Spirius’ power was endless across all of Elympios—and now part of Rieze Maxia, too. Spirius couldn’t afford its CEO to be persecuted, couldn’t afford to send the entirety of Elympios into panic or crash the market like it happened after Bisley’s sudden disappearance. Even if Julius left the apartment, and went on a rampage like he used to do in fractured dimensions while looking for the divergence catalyst, nothing would change.
Julius had the power to have and do anything that he wanted. Anything, except for what he desired most.
“If one of us has to die, then… let it be me.”
Death was unforgiving. Death made everyone equals. And Ludger, who sliced his neck ten years ago with no hesitation, with no one to stop him on time, would never live again. Neither Jude nor Elize could help back then: Normal spirit artes couldn’t heal mortal wounds, much like the only thing that could stop a catalyst’s degeneration was Origin’s power.
“You’re amazing, Julius... There’s nothing you cannot do... I always… wanted to be… As cool as you were…”
‘Stronger’, Ludger had called Julius. Stronger, in what sense? Julius had had ten long years to think about it, and he never came up with a satisfactory answer.
“Please save Elle… take care of her… Will you do that… for me…?”
“Uncle Julius?”
The words snapped Julius back to reality. Turning to an approaching Elle, Julius let out a chuckle.
“Isn’t it about time you stop calling me uncle?”
For most of their years together, it had made sense for Elle to call Julius that, but their relationship had changed—mutated. Elle now slept every night with Julius in a king-sized bed, wearing the nightgowns that she bought with his credit card. Julius now knew Elle’s cup size not because he incidentally read a label on the laundry, but because he knew how her breasts fit inside his hands. Julius knew, even, how Elle preferred to be held: from behind, with her legs closed and inside his.
Julius knew far too much of Elle that he shouldn’t, and he didn’t deserve the family label. This wasn’t the type of relationship to have with someone you considered your niece.
Elle grabbed Julius’ left hand, the hand that Julius once concealed with a leather glove, the hand once corrupted by a divergence catalyst, the hand that was still corrupted for every time that he touched Elle when he knew that he shouldn’t.
“They say there’s a vein in this finger that leads directly to your heart,” Elle said, brushing over Julius’ ring finger. The meaning was not lost on him, and Julius wondered, for the umpteenth time, how Ludger’s perfect world ended up this twisted. “Whatever happens, I’ll be here. Always. Forever.”
Elle would always be there for Julius, and Julius would always be there for Elle. Their worlds had been destroyed, the remains forced together.
Each other was all that they had. Each other was the closest they would ever get to Ludger again.
The mask fell off, and Julius hugged Elle, holding onto her like a lifeline, like there was nothing else for him, like she was the only thing that was real in a perfectly bitter world. He held onto her like he wasn't powerless, like they could always stay together, without death eventually doing them apart.