Chapter Text
Wake up.
It's time to meet yourself.
Legs sat upright, gasping. Everything was hazy, his vision a series of fractals slowly coming back together in a single image. The taste of blood lingered cold in the back of his throat, each and every muscle aching as consciousness came for him once again. Hurt. His chest cried out. To come to his feet was a task in and of itself, his legs shaking as he forced himself upright.
Where was he? What happened? The last thing he remembered he had been standing at the cliff edge watching the sunset. His hands had been shaking and Cleo had been crying and he had been so sure and yet so scared and… Was this the afterlife? Did it work? Did everyone else get out?
Legs looked around. It was just white. White stretching as far as he could see, no walls or floor or ceiling just an endless expanse stretching out. There was a sort of numbness that slowly settled in, taking the edge off the pain, clearing his vision. For the first time since Owen and the lake and all that red… He didn't feel the pang of hunger from somewhere deeper than his stomach.
That voice. It echoed in his mind. What did it mean? To meet himself? Legs already knew exactly who he was and that was why he was here in the first place, the reason everything went so wrong so quickly and he couldn't bare to look at himself in the mirror. There weren't any mirrors here, any lakes or rivers, anything to give reflection.
If there were, would Legs even be able to see himself? Now that he was this? He hadn't had the presence of mind to check… He ran his tongue over his teeth. The sharpness of fangs that still sat so unnaturally in his mouth. He didn't belong like this. Or maybe he did. Owen was right in the end, when he finally realized, when he finally knew what Legs had known all along…
"Hello?" A voice. A voice called out, loud and shouting and strange. It was a voice unlike anything Legs had heard before, an accent so distinct it was curious that he didn't recognize it. It had a boisterous fearlessness to it as it travelled through this empty space.
Tentatively, Legs answered. "Hello? Is someone else there?" He looked around again, whipping his head back and forth and making his balance hesitate all over again.
"So I am not alone." That same voice again, closer now. Was it closer? Or was whoever it was just speaking even louder? Was that even possible?
Legs took a step forward, then another, directionless. "Where are you? Who are you?"
He didn't get a response for a long moment. Then, "Behind you."
Legs turned around quickly and froze. Now stood within arms reach of him was a very tall and broad-shouldered man, shirtless, showing off his muscular physique and tattoos that ran across his shoulders. They weren't patterns that Legs recognized. A sun on one shoulder and a moon on the other but the rest of it was far less obvious. He was bearded with long dark brown hair and the little that he was wearing looked to be made from animal pelts or furs. If it weren't for the wide smile on his face, Legs would have been intimidated. Even in his prime Legs hadn't had anything close to that.
The strange man cocked his head slightly at him. "The voice… the voice said you would be me, but you are not me. Not the bird, not the windy one, and definitely not you. You do not even have my face. I have seen past far better lies than this." He looked up as he spoke that last sentence, as if intending it for the sky.
Legs listened carefully to his speech, trying to put pieces together but he was missing so many. What bird? "Who are you?" Legs spoke slowly, trying to hide his fangs. Something was wrong, he couldn't hear this man's heartbeat, he couldn't feel the warmth of his blood running under his skin.
The strange man stared at him for a long moment, looking Legs up and down. Legs was certain he was judging him just the same. What did he see? What was there at the surface now that so much had been brought up closer? "My name is Nikos. Nikos Legundo." He nodded in greeting.
Legs straightened his posture, trying to keep his expression friendly. Pieces were starting to click. "Well, in that case we have one thing in common."
"And what would that be bloody one?" Nikos' words caught him off guard. Legs had almost forgotten his white robes were now torn and soaked in crimson. It's funny, how such drastic and violent things seem to fall to the wayside. But Nikos didn't seem at all fazed by Legs' appearance. Legs couldn't tell if that was a good or bad thing.
"I'm Viktor Ambrose Legundo. Doctor Legundo technically, but you can just call me Legs." The title slipped out. Did he still deserve such a thing? Did he ever? The others still called him doctor after everything. Somehow, he had gotten used to it more than his real name.
Nikos took a step closer, his hand came down to his hip, resting on the handle of the axe hanging there. A threat. "You are not one of us. How do you have my mother's name?"
Legs stepped back, somehow in this infinite space distance seemed impossible. Calm. Be calm. He had done so much in far worse and now with claws and teeth… "One of you? I don't mean any offence, it's my family name but I don't know much about it's history."
The anger was palpable as it bubbled just below the surface. Nikos was like Owen in that way, so protective of those sorts of things. Of names. Of history. Loss did that to people. What did Nikos lose?
Nikos hummed in thought and took a step back, his grip on the axe loosening. "Did you bring me here? This is not the river."
What river? "No, no I don't know where this is or why we're here. Is this the afterlife?"
Nikos shook his head and laughed a little. "So this is your first time? This is someplace different." Again he turned his attention to the sky. "Have you not had enough?" There was rage seething in his words. He sighed, looking back at Legs. "You said you were a healer?"
"Something like that…" Legs tried to keep himself from laughing. Just his luck that the end wasn't the end. At least here there wasn't anything to damage. Nikos seemed like he could hold his own. Suddenly the whole of what Nikos said hit him. "Wait? What do you mean first time? First time dying?"
Again Nikos chuckled. "You are lucky bloody one." He didn't elaborate any further.
Legs really didn't like that name. "Why are you calling me that?"
Nikos looked him up and down. "It is what you are, is it not? Besides, names have such power and I do not yet know if you are to be granted it."
He hadn't though of it that way, but Legs couldn't disagree. Nikos looked around before his gaze settled back on Legs. "It seems we are alone with nothing to do but talk. Still they are petty." Mumbled annoyance.
"Who's petty? Who do you keep talking to?" Legs looked up, hoping to see whatever it was that Nikos saw in the endless white sky. He was trying to understand, he really was. It wasn't like it helped anything, it wasn't like it helped Owen.
Nikos laughed, a true and genuine laugh. What was so funny? "You really are lucky, not having to think about the gods."
"Gods?" Legs felt like an idiot asking all these questions but he couldn't help himself. He was back in the library at night, reading by candle light, the secrets of the human body opening up to him. Again he was a student, curious, young. If the last couple of month had taught him anything it was to not disregard such things. The world had far more questions than science alone could answer.
Nikos' eyes went wide. "You do not know?" He examined Legs closely again, like a specimen on the table. "You are not Greek." Legs couldn't tell if it was a statement or question.
"No, I'm not." Legs tried to remember what he knew about Greece. A people that were the father of so many things, the father of the very oath he had sworn all those decades ago.
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses…
That had just been a matter of formality and tradition, no one really believed in all those stories anymore. But what else could Nikos mean? "Do you mean gods like Apollo?"
"So you do know. The tiny one's god at least. How is it that you have survived still with questions?" Again he peered down at him with that questioning expression. Legs really hated being stared at like that, like he was something to dissect. How many others had he himself given that look without even thinking about it? "Their pettiness has not gotten in your way?"
Legs wasn't sure how to respond. Was Nikos really saying the ancient Greek gods were real? That they were physical and powerful and petty and interfered just like those stories? Well, if vampires and holy spirits were real why wouldn't the gods be? Why stop there? Was Apollo mad at Legs for breaking his oath? Did that even matter anymore? "Sorry I just…" Legs needed a moment to think. "You're telling me they're real? The stories of ancient Greece are real?"
"Ancient? I do not know this word. You tell me they are not? You tell me I am not what I am?" Nikos closed the distance between them again, his expression hardening.
"Ancient. Like… really really old. Your accent, I don't recognize it. Are you Greek?" Legs didn't want to press too hard but he couldn't help himself. Maybe if he figured out Nikos' edges quickly he could avoid them. "I don't mean to pry."
Nikos didn't speak for a long moment, thinking. Had Legs already crossed a line? Nikos didn't seem too far from that confusing rage. "The windy one was saying we are not all from the same time…" He paused, trailing off. Then he smiled again. "I am not Greek. I will never be of them." Once more that anger, Legs was getting closer to that edge. "Those from away call my home Thrace."
Thrace. Thrace. Why did that sound familiar… Wasn't Thrace a region in Greece? But Nikos said he wasn't Greek…
"We can play the telling game if you wish. You ask so many questions." It was strange, how quickly Nikos seemed to flip between anger and vulnerability and joy. He had an intensity to him.
"The telling game?" Legs frowned slightly.
"We take turns asking questions, like in the caves. It is much more fun than just talking." Again he played with the handle of his axe. He seemed to sense the apprehension in Legs' expression. "I tell you if you cross a line, and you do the same bloody one."
Legs really hated that name, but he didn't seem to get a choice in the matter. "Okay, we can play the 'telling game.'"
"Then it is my turn to ask." Nikos paused for a moment, thinking. "The blood. Whose is it?" He gestured at Legs' everything.
Well, Legs was pretty sure he was already dead so there was no point in not playing along, in not being truthful. They could both satisfy their own curiosities. That was what the voice wanted wasn't it? For them to meet and get to know each other? "Animals mostly, and mine, and a bit of Owen's." Legs looked down at himself, truly taking in the gore he was soaked in. Nausea rose in his gut thinking about it, how hazy everything had felt, how little control he had…
Nikos hummed a little at his answer, Legs wasn't sure how to take it. "Your turn then."
"Your tattoos, what do they mean?" Legs took a step to see them better.
"That is always the first thing you people ask…" Nikos smiled softly as he pointed to the sun on his shoulder. "The sun, the dawning of each day, a gift from the Mother." He pointed to the moon on his other shoulder. "The moon, a respite with those we love." He traces over the lines that went across his chest. "The sky between them, our home." His finger lingered on the swirl at the center below his collarbone. "And the promise of rebirth, the cycle of life. This is what I have left." Again he didn't elaborate, his voice having gone quieter, his expression gentler, a longing.
"That's beautiful." To carry such significance on his skin. Though Legs supposed he carried something similar now, in his blood.
"Yes, it was." Again, that longing. Legs had heard that same thing in Owen's voice, in those few moments he mentioned Louis' name without all that other pain and anger. Nikos pointed at Legs' face. "That scar, was that how you died?"
Legs couldn't help but laugh a little bit. "No, no I got this a long while before the end. A bayonet." He made a slashing motion with his hand across his face to emphasize his point. "Took my eye too." Legs went to knock against the glass, a small bit of humour in all of this, but it wasn't there. His glass eye must have fallen out somewhere in the forest, somewhere between the blood and the fighting and Owen's axe. It must just be the milky remains of whatever was left behind, now on display.
"Bay-o-net…" Nikos played with the word as if hearing it for the first time. He very well could have, if Legs' hunch was right, the idea that he was from a time far before. A time before Thrace was a part of Greece.
Nikos didn't seem at all fazed by his mangled appearance. Strange, Legs had noticed how even Abolish's expression had lit up with shock, how even Scott had averted his eyes. "You don't seem to mind it, the blood, all of this." Legs tried to wipe some of the blood from his matted hair only to smear the congealing crimson on his hand.
"I have seen far worse. What the soldiers do with those bodies they see as less than. They take everything" There was a quiet, sad sort of anger in Nikos' voice.
The words were haunting. All the horrors he had turned a blind eye to. All the horrors he hadn't, the ones he had been a part of. He remembered those sorts of people. Those who didn't just follow orders, who saw opportunity in such a terrible place. War makes monsters out of men and beasts out of monsters.
"Who was it that did that to you?" Nikos examined him again, but it was different, empathetic.
Legs thought for a long moment. Who was it, really? "His name was Owen. I made one too many mistakes and he tore into me. I tried to fight him, I did, but I was no match for his strength and he made himself part of me." Legs rambled as he recalled the memory. It came in hazy flashes, in crimson-soaked moments. It flooded through him.
"You have mentioned him twice now. You know blind one? This does not sound like her." Nikos asked another question.
Blind one? "The Owen I knew wasn't blind, not in the conventional sense. I can only assume we are talking about two different people." It was strange, the way things were lining up. It was one thing for the two of them to share a name, but two Owens? "Wasn't it my turn to ask a question?" He gave Nikos a bit of a smile.
Nikos shrugged. "I am sorry bloody one. Now you get two." He smiled back.
This was going much better than Legs had thought it would. "What soldiers? What did they take?" Legs didn't want to know but he did. He wanted to hear those horrors first hand from the other side. He wanted the guilt.
"The Athenians. When I refused they came and took everything. Everything I loved slaughtered and defiled. We fought but their numbers were greater. My people, the few that survived, became theirs. They do not sing our songs anymore, they do not love our gods. They took her from me, and I was cursed with a slow and painful death alone." Nikos pulled his hair to the side and turned, showing Legs his back. Down his spine was a column of lines like tally marks. The one at the top was no more than a jagged scratch, the others nearly perfect lines. "All of them, gone." There was so much pain in his words, a rage that seethed. Grief made so all encompassing that it became something else entirely.
Was this how they had felt? If any of them had survived? Watching everyone they loved die slow and painfully? Starved out of their own home? Forced to do the unimaginable to survive?
"I'm sorry, truly." Legs didn't know what else to say, what else could be said. He was sorry. He was sorry for what happened to Nikos and he was sorry for everything he himself had done and yet that didn't matter. That didn't change anything. That didn't bring back the dead or quell the pain or wash away the guilt. Monster. Monster. Monster.
What would Nikos do if he knew Legs was one of them?
Legs looked around again for an exit. There wasn't one. There never was.
"It is not you who are to blame bloody one." Lie. "Why so pale?"
Legs froze. Was he really that obvious? He was so good at schooling his expression, at keeping it all down when he needed to. But this, this blood it seemed to bring everything to the surface. It was impossible to hide. Maybe he was just asking about his complexion, this unnatural sunless skin. "You mean my skin?" How quickly it had become normal. How quickly Legs had forgotten vampirism wasn't a threat in the minds of anyone else who wasn't in that town.
"No no you are even more pale than before, you are hiding something." Again he fidgeted with the handle of his axe. If only it had been any other weapon. If only Legs didn't know exactly what it felt like to be cleaved by rage. "What are you hiding bloody one?"
Legs was dead anyway. Legs deserved the anger. Legs deserved to be torn apart again. "I used to be a soldier."
The words hung in the air for a long moment. "What kind of soldier? The child said he didn't have a choice but he found one in the end."
Legs didn't point out it was his turn to ask a question. He hadn't had a choice. He had. He knew exactly what he was doing and he could have refused and faced the consequences and he didn't. He had felt pride as he stood on that stage, if even only for that one brief moment. "I followed my orders and I did things I can never take back. I may not be Athenian but I took." It didn't feel any lighter to admit it again.
Nikos looked at him for a long moment. His grip on the handle of his axe turned white-knuckled. "Do you know how many of you I killed?" He took a step closer. Rage bubbled and boiled and Legs could feel it's steam.
"I know exactly how many I took. It haunts me every single day. I know exactly what I have done and I have spent the rest of my life trying to make up for all the damage I caused. I know I'm a monster." Owen's words rang in Legs' ears. I don't think monster cuts it.
If Nikos heard him, he gave no indication. "You take and take and take and take! You take everything and then say that this is better? You are just like them! Just like the bird! Just like them!" He drew his axe and pointed it at the sky, at the gods. "It has been a very very long time since I have had the pleasure of putting my axe through your throat."
Legs took a step back, and another, and another, and Nikos closed the distance. Legs' hands tensed, claws and teeth. The beast that tore apart the woods. "I wouldn't blame you. I deserve it. I took the easy way out. I really am sorry." The words rushed out. Talk and talk and where had that gotten him?
"I cannot believe I thought you were like me. They lie! You lie! The worst kind of liars and thieves!" He continued to yell but Legs didn't understand a word. He could only assume he was being dammed to hell in a language he didn't know.
Legs closed his eyes and he saw Owen standing over him with his axe. He saw the bayonet coming down. He saw all the other times he should have died. He saw the sunset. He heard Cleo crying tears he didn't deserve.
One last horrible thing.
"…No gods!" Nikos swung. The blade of his axe bit into Legs' shoulder and he fell. Blood, dark and thick, flowed out of him. Legs' hands came up out of instinct, to protect himself, to cower behind a shield he didn't have. He cried out as the axe sunk into his forearm, as bone cracked.
"Why are you not fighting?" Anger. Nikos was mad he was giving up.
"I swore I wouldn't be… that man again and… I broke that oath and I… won't break it again." He forced the words out between the pain.
Another swing and something else broke. "This talk of oaths, you really are like them."
I never once denied it. Legs meant to speak but he didn't get the chance. Nikos' blade buried itself in his throat. One other quick swing and his head split from his shoulders. And yet Legs was cursed to still be alive. He couldn't think. Again he was flooded.
But slowly, painfully slowly, his blood dragged his body back together again, sealed himself back inside his prison. And Legs sat up.
Nikos looked at him like he had seen a ghost, and it a way Legs supposed he had. "What magic is this? You do not have a coin. You are not of the gods." Still he was not afraid.
Legs didn't answer. He was too tired to care. Too tired of all of this. He was supposed to be dead. These were the hands that were supposed to do it.
"Here." Legs grabbed Nikos' axe from his hands while he was still in shock. He used what was left of this unnatural strength to break the head off from it, to use the blade to sharpen the end of the handle. Nikos stared at him, first trying to get his weapon back and then just watching. Legs handed him the newly created stake. "Right here." He pointed at his own heart. "This is how you kill a vampire."
"You die so readily?" Nikos examined the stake. Still that anger was there, but in the time it had taken Legs to piece himself back together it had abated just a little.
"You would be doing me a favour." Legs stepped closer.
Nikos' grip on the stake tightened. "In that we are alike, to die before one stops breathing."
Legs just nodded. He was close enough. To keep living after death.
"You do not even grant me the joy of killing you." Nikos' expression softened as he pressed the tip of the stake against Legs' chest.
Legs guided it just a little higher, right where his heart was. "If I could I would."
"Tell the ferryman you broke your oath again." Nikos plunged the stake into Legs' heart.
And everything, finally, went black.