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Nikolai is supposed to be dead.
Well— That’s not exactly how the story starts, is it?
The story starts eight years ago, in the ashes of a church, in a village that no longer exists, Микола Васильович Гоголь standing in the middle of it all with gasoline staining his clothes. Микола tilts his head towards the rising sun, looking directly into it with the one eye he has left. Dried blood crusts around the other socket.
For the first and last time in his life, he truly cannot feel a single thing.
He spends the next eight years desperately chasing that high, determined to recreate that sensation of ultimate freedom at any cost. He will kill anyone, burn anything, destroy the entire world—just for one more fleeting second of
complete
and
utter
peace.
So, Nikolai Gogol is supposed to be dead. But he isn’t, because where’s the fun in that? He could’ve let himself be sawed in half, and that would have been the end of it. What better way to experience true freedom than choosing to put yourself in the hands of death with no way to escape? What better way to prove the existence of free will, and rid yourself of all shackles tying you down?
But—
Well, there are still some things Nikolai would like to do. Fyodor is still alive, Sigma is still trapped under his thumb, and Nathaniel is—
Well, it’s not like Nikolai was truly at the mercy of the fate he chose regardless. He could use his ability to escape his fate easy-peasy, so it wasn’t really the sort of death he was interested in. And Fyodor is still alive, which is something he would very much like to rectify. If he kills Fyodor, surely he will finally succeed in ridding himself of all mortal ties, thus achieving true freedom.
Surely.
He can take Sigma out too, just in case, just because they were, like, nice to him a couple times. And Nathaniel is already—
Okay. So. Here’s the problem:
The only thing Nikolai cannot stand more than his own cage, is seeing other people content with their imprisoned. Sigma, and Nathaniel—they both bow to the whims of their gods, submitting because they believe they have no other choice, and it actually literally makes Nikolai want to claw his other eye out. It makes him want to slit his own throat, or maybe theirs, and definitely Fyodor’s, and. He can’t stand it. It’s horrific, it’s revolting, he can’t die with that taste lingering on his tongue.
He goes to the Sky Casino with the intention to save them both. To pluck them right out of Fyodor’s pocket, and then take them to—well, to Fyodor, because Nikolai needs to go to Fyodor, in order to kill him. And why not bring Sigma and Nathaniel along for the ride? Why not take a trip to Europe with the lads? It’ll be the best girls’ night out ever!
But Sigma goes over the edge, tumbling through an endless sky to their death, and Nikolai can either save their life, or grab Nathaniel before he follows the Guild girl into her ability space. It’s the worst sort of trolley problem in the world—having to pick which trapped soul he wants to save more. The sacrificial lamb, or the holy spirit? The innocent soul, or the bloodstained priest?
Who would you choose?
Nathaniel floats, and Sigma falls.
So Nikolai catches Sigma.
He goes back for Nathaniel, and arrives just a hair too late.
Nikolai is sitting cross-legged in the dirt, in the pouring rain. Shivers threaten to wrack his body, but he remains stubbornly still, face tilted towards the sky, drenched down to the bone.
“You are going to make yourself sick,” Nathaniel calls, from the porch of the safehouse they’re currently staying in.
A giggle bubbles up in Nikolai’s throat. “I sure hope so!”
He can’t hear Nathaniel’s heavy sigh over the sounds of the rainstorm, but he can imagine it just fine. His grin widens at the picture in his mind.
“Am I going to have to drag you back in here?”
Oh, now isn’t that a delightful idea!
Nikolai looks over his shoulder, smile stretched so far it stings his cheeks. “Would you really~?” he croons, sickeningly sweet.
Nathaniel hesitates. It’s like Nikolai can see him battling against his faith, his heart pit against his soul, should he offer a hand to someone in need if it’s a trap? Should he dare touch a sinner who will hold onto him just to watch how he squirms? Nikolai knows the answer already, of course; he knows Nathaniel worships his god above all else, so he will never—
“You are impossible to work with,” he grumbles, and then steps out into the rain.
Nathaniel consented to the procedure, which is perhaps the worst part of it.
When he stares straight past Nikolai, not even the faintest flicker of recognition in his gaze, it is because he chose such a fate for himself. He broke through the chains of love, but only at the cost of his own free will.
“Did you know,” Nikolai says, hand through his cloak and gun pressed against the temple of some journalist who got just a little too close to figuring out the truth behind the Decay of Angels, “I burned down the church in my hometown.”
“Is that meant to surprise me?” Nathaniel returns.
Nikolai blows a bullet through the journalist’s skull. Nathaniel watches her body hit the floor between them with a thump, expression impassive. Blood splatters on the carpet. Nikolai grins.
“Won’t you punish the sinner before you, Father?”
Nathaniel remains silent as he kneels. Hands folded, eyes shut, in the perfect execution stance, except when Nikolai fire a second bullet, it is deflected by blood. It snaps off course, whizzing past Nikolai’s own face and lodging itself into the wall behind him.
A giggle bursts out of him.
“How exciting!”
“I won’t miss if you try again,” Nathaniel threatens. But he allowed one warning shot, which is more than Nikolai deserves, and more than someone like Nathaniel should ever offer him. It is an unbearable kindness that has nausea rising in his throat, it is a display of almost-affection, to spare pain. Nathaniel could have sent the bullet towards a limb, could have buried it in flesh in a place where it would have maimed but not killed.
He could have, and he didn’t, and now they’re staring at one another with a corpse between them, with Nathaniel still on his knees still praying uselessly for a soul too far gone to save still believing himself to be righteous though he’s stooped down to the level of a demon and a heretic.
Nikolai tosses the gun towards Nathaniel. It lands directly in front of him.
“Kill me,” he says.
A smug smirk tugs at Nathaniel’s lips. “No.”
No? No?? For what possible reason would he not—
In an instant, before he can think it over or even understand what he’s doing, Nikolai jumps through his ability and deposits himself behind Nathaniel. Wraps one hand around his throat and squeezes. When Nathaniel refuses to fight, Nikolai fists his other hand into his hair and drags his head backwards.
“Do you want to die?” he asks, words sharp and bloody. Nathaniel’s pulse throbs against Nikolai’s thumb.
He doesn’t answer. He keeps his eyes fixed on Nikolai and his jaw set and he does not say a word, and Nikolai almost snaps his neck right there. He figures, as soon as he makes the move to do so, Nathaniel will activate his ability and take them both out. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, would it? One might even call it freeing.
But dying here will not allow him to live numb in the aftermath. If he wants to stand in the ashes of a priest like he did his childhood church, he must outlive Nathaniel.
“You make me sick,” Nikolai informs him.
“Likewise,” Nathaniel returns.
Nikolai loosens his grip on Nathaniel’s hair. Instead of pulling away, he rests his head against Nikolai’s thigh, and his eyes fall shut. Prayer and death look much the same. They both feel like burning alive.
After Meursault, after Fyodor dies and comes back and dies again, after Dazai traps Sigma in a new cage, after the good guys win and also lose, Nikolai
is left alone.
It jumps over the side of the cliff, and then saves itself from death at the very last second. It wonders, if it had killed Fyodor, how might things have changed? It would have been Nikolai’s worst nightmare, to be subsumed by that which it sought so desperately to free itself from, to lose itself entirely without truly dying. The thought makes it so sick it vomits into the sea, and then it considers drowning itself.
It stares at its reflection in the murky water, distorted and unreal. In the back of its mind, it still hears Fyodor’s laughter or maybe Sigma’s or maybe Nathaniel’s. Or maybe all three at once.
It slams its hands over its ears, but the noise won’t stop because it’s not real; it’s only in its mind. If it looks up, maybe it will see Nathaniel staring back but he won’t really be there because he’s gone because Nikolai couldn’t save him even though it shouldn’t want to even though Nikolai is literally genuinely actually the very last being on earth Nathaniel would wish for salvation to come from. It’d be kind of funny. Nikolai, the antithesis of everything holy, playing savior to the priest.
Who between them is the sinner and who is the saint?
Who sits numb in the ashes of a god they killed and free of all attachments now?
Nikolai bites its fist until the skin breaks. It bleeds and aches like a human. It hates itself it hates itself it hates itself it hates itself it HATES ITSELF. How is it possible to destroy every tether and lose every anchor that has ever held you down, only to look up and see a man playing God floating before you. The life is gone from his eyes, but he reaches a hand out to you and cups your cheek and tells you:
I love you.
like a blade dug between your ribs.
Nikolai laughs, hysterical, tears finally spilling over and running down its cheeks. “You would never say so,” it tells the Nathaniel who isn’t really Nathaniel at all but merely its own memory of him.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Nikolai lunges towards him, and he vanishes, and Nikolai falls into the water below. It should drown itself, really. It should just die. In the cold and dark aftermath, it should sink until it cannot feel anything at all, and then it should die peacefully.
It claws its way back to the surface with laughter still echoing in the back of its mind.
“Can it be undone?” Nikolai asks.
Fyodor tilts his head, one eyebrow raised. Nathaniel stands at his side, staring blankly ahead. It makes Nikolai’s skin crawl.
“Why would you care about such a thing?” Fyodor returns. It’s not an answer. Which means either it can be undone, and he knows Nikolai will kill himself to make that happen. Or it means it can’t be undone and he knows Nikolai will kill Nathaniel to save him from a fate worse than death.
Nathaniel’s empty gaze bores into him. Nikolai should kill both himself and Nathaniel right now, just to cover all his bases. Maybe Fyodor too, for the hell of it. Why not!
Why would he care?
“I don’t,” he lies. “It’s just so—”
(heartbreaking, devastating, miserable, the worst thing I’ve seen in my life pretty much which is saying a lot because I’ve actually killed a lot of people in incredibly gruesome ways you know but this is really so much worse because what the actual fuck!!!)
“—pathetic.”
An eerie smile stretches across Fyodor’s face. He turns his head, looking up at Nathaniel. “It is,” he agrees, like that’s a good thing. “Isn’t it?”
Nikolai spends exactly two weeks doing everything except going back to Yokohama, and thinking about nothing apart from exactly that. Finally, in a fit of mania or something close or maybe just frustration, it stows itself away on a plane and crosses the ocean to go back to the worst place in the entire world. Second worst place in the entire world. Third, actually, if you count a place that no longer exists. Whatever.
It heads straight for the café where the Guild girl with the ability space works, strides in at six in the morning, and tells her, “I’m here to kill you!”
She blinks at it tiredly. “Honestly,” she says, “I figured you were dead.”
It pouts. “That’s not very nice.”
She shrugs. “The detectives aren’t here anymore. If you’re looking for Dazai, he’s probably in a river or something. If you’re looking for Ranpo-san, they’ll find you. Not sure about anyone else.”
“I’m not looking for any of them, actually!” Nikolai slams its hands down on the counter. “I’m looking for you!”
She furrows her eyebrows. “…Why?”
“To kill you!”
“Why?” she repeats. “We literally have never met before now.”
Nikolai opens its mouth, and then snaps it shut. An admission of why it’s here is as good as a love confession, and it refuses to dirty its tongue with something like that. If love is a cage, professing it aloud effectively throws away the key. Not that what Nikolai feels for Nathaniel is love, but. Well.
It might not not be love either.
What even is love? Blood? A bullet? The gun that fired it? A rainstorm? A landslide? A hallucination? A laugh? Desperation, delusion, the downward spiral to destruction—
“I want to see your ability space,” Nikolai blurts out.
“You— what? No! Get out of here, or I’ll actually call Dazai.”
“I thought he was dying in a river somewhere?”
The girl folds her arms over her chest. “Ranpo-san, then. They probably already know you’re here, and what you actually want, too. I bet they’re on their way right now!”
She sounds like she’s fibbing.
Nikolai takes her hands in its, begging, “Take me into your ability please please please—”
She yanks herself out of its hold. “What is your problem! Are you trying to die or something?”
(Do you want to die?)
“So what if I am?”
She eyes it warily. “Is there something in Anne’s Room that you want?”
A Cheshire grin slowly stretches across Nikolai’s face. “Now isn’t that the question! Is it something I want? Is it something I want? Is it—”
Is it someone Nikolai wants? Does it want Nathaniel? Does it want Nathaniel? No. Yes. No. YES. Not at all, and more than anything. Why, why, why? To kill him? To save him? To save him by killing him? Yes! No? Yes. No—
The bell above the café door rings, and in walks the world’s greatest detective, a lollipop sticking out of their mouth.
“Nikolai,” they say, point-blank, “he’s not coming back.”
In Nikolai’s perfect fantasy world, it managed to nab Nathaniel back at the Sky Casino, figure out what Fyodor did to him, and hit the undo button. It brought both him and Sigma to Meursault and kept them both by its side through the entire game, and at the end of it all, they both chose Nikolai.
And then Nikolai killed them or something, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The point is—
there isn’t one.
“You don’t have to do this,” Nikolai comments, idly, like he doesn’t care one way or the other. He doesn’t. (He does.) He doesn’t.
Nathaniel won’t look at him.
“I do,” he says.
“You don’t,” Nikolai repeats, a touch too emphatic. He doesn’t want to think about this, actually. He should kill Nathaniel now. He should—
“It’s your fault,” Nathaniel bites out, finally turning to face him. Hatred hot as the sun blazes in his eyes. It’s blinding. It’s a good thing Nikolai already can’t see quite right. This might take out his other eye, though. He might dig it from his skull tonight so he doesn’t have to see Nathaniel afterwards, and so he doesn’t have to face an expression like this on his face ever again. “It’s because of you that I—”
“hate yourself,” Nikolai finishes. He knows the feeling; it’s just—
Nathaniel doesn’t mind cages. He doesn’t mind love, as a broad concept, but he’s limited his idea of how that can look to the point where anything outside of it is reason enough to die. He would give up his soul if it meant removing the part of him that loves wrong.
Nikolai, on the other hand, would give up his soul if it meant removing the part of him that loves at all.
And there’s the issue of freedom, of course. Nathaniel wants to be chained down, forced to only love in the way he has deemed right. But Nikolai wants to be released from it all.
They were doomed from the beginning, because any love between them would always be tainted by the deepest and darkest hate—the kind that comes from one’s own heart and is turned back on itself.
“Fine,” Nikolai says, flippant. “I don’t even care.”
Nathaniel’s lips part, momentarily, and then he presses them into a thin line. He rises slowly, crossing to where Nikolai is lounging across an entire couch, and comes to a stop directly in front of him.
“I don’t care either,” Nathaniel replies, too-soft and too-gently and it hurts, it hurts so so so badly. Everything hurts, not like fire, not like a knife or a bullet, but like a cage. Like a fever. Like death.
“Good,” Nikolai chokes out.
“Good,” Nathaniel repeats. He places one hand under Nikolai’s chin, tilting his head up, and then brushes their lips together.
In the early hours of the morning, before dawn has broken, Nikolai burns down a grand Catholic church in Salem, Massachusetts.
As sirens wail in the distance, it kneels in the smoldering ashes. It folds its hands together, allows its eye to slip shut, and prays to a god it stopped believing in by the time it turned ten. Familiar hands clasp Nikolai’s, but it knows he isn’t really there.
The scent of smoke tickles its nose. The murmuring of Nathaniel’s voice sounds in its ear. Its heart pounds frantically in its chest. It still isn’t numb, it still isn’t free, it still has not found peace, but—
maybe
it’s getting close.