It takes him a while to pick himself off the floor. Virgil isn’t sure how long exactly, given that time has no meaning when he was just lucky to be alive, but no one comes and goes through the stairwell in the time that he’s sitting there.
Or at least he doesn’t think anyone does. If they do, he’d been too out of it to properly be terrified about it.
By the time he peels himself off the railing, and manages to stumble his way down the stairs with lungs that don’t quite work when air that tastes too sweet, the thunderstorm overhead has dropped to a light rain, a drizzle, a sprinkle overhead that does little more than tap on the exterior castle walls and windows to remind everyone it exists.
His whole body feels numb achey. His mind clouded with mud and dull pain in a way that makes it hard to think, much less think about anything for more than thirty seconds.
He knows he wants a shower now. A shower and a three-day-long nap, four if he can get away with it, although he doubts Remus will let him get away with more than nine hours of uninterrupted peace-- and even then it’s stretching it, considering that Virgil owes him a magic cycle that probably contained part of Remus’s soul. How does one come close to repaying that? With Blood? Does it matter if it's not his because he doesn’t have any?
The ache in his neck is a dull thrum, almost strong enough to convince Virgil there’s a real hand there patiently waiting for him to fuck up again, and he adjusts his poncho to make sure that no one else would be able to see the unmistakable blemish under his saltwater skin.
The last thing he wanted to do was let someone else know about it. Pride could make him fall to his knees, and Malice could threaten to poke it with a knife, and Envy wave a hand to unmake him, but Virgil will die before he lets anyone else know about such a blatant weakness in his otherwise undestroyable body.
((He doesn’t think about Patton’s soft, pitying gaze, about Logan’s horrified one, about Roman’s shifting from anger to confusion. He doesn’t think about how Guildmaster Clay ordered Envy and Malice to get rid of them and drag Patton back here or about how the Shadow Force have never failed a mission given to them because they don’t have weaknesses. He doesn’t think about how Roman had his heel so close to it that he could have killed Virgil without meaning to and Remus would have been left all alone probably never knowing exactly what happened because Virgil simply wasn’t quick enough to dodge.))
Due to the nature of Remus by himself-- namely his destructive habits, volatile personality, and the sheer amount of wealth he brings in through his jobs when he does them-- he earned himself preferential treatment in choosing his room in the castle back when it was still under construction. The Guildmaster called it a perk of being a Shadow Force member, and Remus had spit in his face for his troubles.
He picked one as far away from the others as he could get. It wasn’t exactly made for multiple people, even though it was probably larger than any of the rooms back at the orphanage Virgil had grown up in, with a bathroom that always had hot water, a large bay window with runes carved on the outside that insulated it, and a closet big enough for even Remus in his Dragon Force form to stroll through without risking damaging his clothes. It wasn’t made for Remus to have a roommate, but Remus had demanded that a second bed be provided and he’d dragged Virgil inside.
((“Like Hell I’m letting you live around the rest of them,” Remus had said doing that thing where he pretended to be preoccupied with their surroundings instead of every pump of Virgil’s watery heart. Virgil had reached out and gently pried his claws from his skin and bandaged the welts and neither of them had talked for the rest of the night.))
At night, when Virgil can’t sleep despite his near constant exhaustion, he curls up in the bay window and listens to the rain hit the glass over the sound of Remus’s snores and remembers the feeling of Remus’s arm hooking over his neck pulling him close. He thinks of that tone, that growl, those words that he said and how no one else had ever said anything close to that to him before.
Sometimes if he’s tired enough, eyes drooping, mind humming, limbs heavy as lead and bundled under his blanket with his head against the glass… sometimes he doesn’t feel the crippling guilt that comes with it.
Remus had become a synonym for safety long before Virgil had known what the word had even meant. Remus was the shield at his back, the strength in his knees, the determination in Virgil’s soul. They’d met on a fluke, but had chosen to stay together the rest of the time.
Virgil couldn’t even imagine the last time someone had chosen him. Foster families hadn’t liked that his raincloud couldn’t be cleared up with a few hugs and soft words, his various boyfriends had always found someone better, even the people they had helped through fighting the monsters that had plagued their towns had paid them and sent them away.
But Remus had picked him. When Virgil had had no one, he’d had Remus. They were their own little fucked up family; just the two of them against the world.
Chimera Tongue had certainly shown them that they couldn’t afford to wish for anything more. Virgil hadn’t thought of himself as selfish until he was clinging to Remus pleading please please keep fighting, please don’t leave me, please Remus I’m sorry--
And now Virgil had fucked that up, too, by losing the one last thing that Remus actually cared about.
Virgil stumbles into the wall, breathing deeply as his vision spins without a reason. He hovers for a second there, listening to the rain dance and gathering the balance he hadn’t realized he was missing. He’s lucky, so very lucky, that everyone else is brimming with excitement over their winning fight with Star Burst; they’re too busy getting drunk and shouting in the guild hall to wander this area and getting stupid ideas about picking fights with exhausted water mages.
Virgil breathes in deeply, and steels himself. There’s just a little more treading through the building-- the too big, too cold, too empty and miserable and stupid building. He shoves off the wall, and focuses on putting one foot in front of the other in front of the other in front of the other until he gets to their actual door.
And then he notices their door lock is broken.
There’s a large boot imprint in the metal reinforced door where the locking mechanism would be, bending the slate itself and the hinges are cracked in a way that only comes from being furious, made of metal, and part dragon.
Of course. Right. Roman had implied that he’d stopped by the guildhall before and most likely had come face to face with Remus, the only dragon slayer Chimera Tongue had. Judging from the lack of obvious missing internal organs, Remus must have not managed to get a good enough hit on him before Roman had fled the party or Guildmaster Clay had called Remus back to his side, with his perfect master plan in place.
Either way it suggested unfinished business. Horrible, angering, festering, unfinished business. And if Remus was already pissed off before knowing about his bike….Virgil does not look forward to what's about to happen.
His limbs drag for a moment, standing there on the other side of the door staring at the damage and thinking about how all of his possessions are on the other side, about how Rule Four had been a binding promise between both of them for so long but it hadn’t ever considered that Virgil would find the end of Remus’s patience for his fuck ups.
Remus loved his bike. It had been with him since before Virgil had met him. A raggedy old thing that was made of so many spare parts cobbled together that Virgil had once joked that it was an entirely new bike, a stupid dumb vehicle that Remus took care of with a reverance that he never afforded with any other object in his vicinity, a ridiculous familiar piece of stability that had probably been the last real reminder of the life he’d had before Chimera Tongue.
His stomach churns painfully, and Virgil forces himself to take the last step forward.
He doesn’t bother actually opening the door; at best it’s probably jammed, at worst he’ll force it open and it will fall off the hinges entirely and then Remus will have no door. Instead, he condenses his body into a puddle and slips under the crack in the floor and reassembles himself on the other side, making it exactly three feet before the world around him turns hazy and he slams face first into the floor.
The ground sways under him, the very gravity of the tectonic plates sending every drop of liquid in him swirling in confusion. He doesn’t actually remember the collision with the ground, just blinking his exhausted eyes and he’s staring at the wood grains instead of the interior of the room that he’d lived in for so long and his head is ringing with the same sounds of the “evil explosion” Logan had hit him with. For a long, endless moment, all the water in him tries to fill the shape of the room, spreading out like a spill before he remembers he’s actually human shaped.
“Hey Virge,” Remus says deceptively casually from somewhere far, far away.
There’s a telltale familiar sound of metal snapping, crunching, being torn and chewed and swallowed. Virgil would know it anywhere: He’s heard it a million times before when they were in the middle of a battle, when they were passing through a town and stopped at a random house to unhinge his jaw, when he was feeling some emotion and it was easier to gather up magical energy than talk about it.
Remus, Virgil thinks as he memorizes the wood grains of the floorboards, is an emotional eater. He wonders where he got it from. The mysterious magical dragon that pseudo-raised him and probably doesn’t actually exist? His parents, whoever they had been before Remus had been all alone with just a bike and rage towards a twin brother? Or was it something he picked up to cope like Virgil had picked up sleeping in odd hidey-holes where no one would find him?
His vision hovers in the solid darkness for a moment; the exhaustion of the fight, of using his powers so much, of successfully not getting murdered blankets over him and whispers that sleep would be very nice, very kind, very worthwhile. He deserves it.
Remus is safe, his brain whispers. Remus is safe, even though Virgil has seen him destroy buildings to make a point, seen him plunge his metal rods into and through people who said the wrong thing at the wrong time, seen him transform from something human to something distinctly not when someone else got too close to something he deemed was his own.
Remus is safe; he’s the one that proposed Rule One.
But no one likes the rain forever.
((And wasn’t that the crux of everything? If Virgil was just a little stronger, a little more in control, a little less of a giant magical waste of potential then neither of them would be in this mess: Virgil would have done something that would have stopped Clay and Greed and saved Remus and he would have fought back against Pride and Envy and Malice. He would have been a world class magician without the need for a fucking guild, and every town would have welcomed them without umbrellas and grumbles. Thomas Sanders would have tracked him down in that stupid orphanage and seen how powerful he was and adopted him on the spot and Virgil wouldn’t have to wonder what the sun felt like because he would be lov--))
“You missed all the fun,” Remus says, crunch, crunch, crunching, deceptively unbothered if there had ever been a bone in Remus’s body capable of deception. Instead his tone comes out pointed and jagged like his canines. “How was your trip? Did you enjoy your little errand run?”
“Let’s not call kidnapping an errand,” Virgil says, lifting his head enough to make out where Remus is lounging on his queen sized bed eating his way through a broadsword with a personalized handle-- which means that Virgil can look forward to the owner being pissed at them later.
Or well. Pissed at Virgil, later. Because when Remus realizes that Virgil totaled his bike, Virgil is going to be thrown directly into the maws of the other members and every single grudge they have against him is going to come pouring in. Remus is safe, but that’s because everyone knows better than to mess with something Remus owns, and he quite clearly declared Virgil part of his possessions in their first week there when someone stuck their whole hand into Virgil’s chest and Remus put a steel round bar through their left lung and dared them to try it again.
Without Remus’s protection, would he even last a day? An hour?
Could he get away with keeping it a secret just for a little bit? Would he fare better with a pissed off Remus when he’s able to run or a slightly less pissed off Remus when he can’t even picture getting off the ground right now?
“What would you call it?” Remus asks before Virgil can decide. “A favor? A pleasure? An indulgence for Dear Daddy Clay?”
“I don’t want to call it anything, actually. It was nothing.”
((Virgil is not thinking about big blue eyes or a soft welcoming voice saying, “You poor thing, you’re soaking wet! Here, let me get you some dry clothes before you catch a cold.” He’s not thinking about the magical exhaustion that slammed into him, a “minor arcana card” that implied he intentionally didn’t go for a heavier blow despite everything Virgil had done, the look of dawning horror on his face when he caught sight of the discoloration in Virgil’s collarbone, the fact that he can attack at a range with an ungodly precision and he still didn’t take the shot when Virgil had started running away-- He is not thinking about it because Patton Hart was nothing, nothing, nothing, but one of the only people who knows how vulnerable Virgil really is.))
Remus doesn’t look impressed. There’s a twitch of his mustache, a glint of his nose piercings as he sniffs the air, and whatever results he gets tells him exactly how much bullshit Virgil is full of.
“Nothing doesn’t get my bike destroyed.”
Virgil does not liquidate himself into a puddle but it's a close thing. He plops his head back onto the floorboards, too guilty to look up and face him. Virgil is, after all, a coward at heart who doesn’t like to fight. “You already know?”
“I knew the moment it took you longer than two hours to get back,” Remus takes another bite of the sword, and Virgil winces as he imagines the sharp shards of metal tearing through Remus’s throat on their way to his stomach. “What happened? Because I assume it wasn’t that you stopped for a booty call and your hook up stole the kid and my bike.”
Virgil groans, hitting his head on the floor boards in a way that makes the hollowed out sound. “I’m sorry. I’ll find a way to pay you back--”
“Like fuck you will,” Remus grounds out.
“But--”
“Does it look like I give a flying fuck about the bike?” Remus growls.
((The bike that he has nearly killed people for looking at. The bike that he spends more time working on than he does taking care of himself. The bike that is the only constant thing he’s had from even before they met. Virgil thinks he’s going insane; why wouldn’t Remus care about the bike?))
“Tell me what fucking happened, Virge.”
“Patton fucking Hart happened,” Virgil says, and almost immediately feels guilty about saying it out loud because he’s nothing. “I don’t know, I mean… He was just…He said he thought we could be fucking friends. I hate him so much. I hate that whole guild, Remus. I was distracted by him and I thought I did everything fine, but then the next thing I know is that I’m getting fireballs thrown at me by some guy falling right out of the air and if I wasn’t made of water I would be actually dead--”
Remus bites so hard into a sword that cracks down the rest of the blade and shatters at the hilt, showering him in fragments. The sudden sharp noise makes Virgil flinch and swallow the rest of what he was going to say, but Remus continues chewing without a care, swiping up the blade fragments with his free hand.
“Wondered where he ran off to,” Remus says after swallowing, a hard edge in his tone that makes Virgil very aware of all the similarities between him and his twin.
It doesn’t really take two guesses to figure out who he’s talking about from there. Virgil can close his eyes and see Roman’s furious expression all over again, can hear his grandiose tone claiming a familial relationship to Remus like Remus doesn’t actively hurt at the thought of him. Virgil never understood why Remus preferred to look like he’s never heard of a hairbrush, but he thinks that if his reflection was the spitting image of someone he can’t even say the name of… well, Virgil would have started avoiding mirrors too. Mostly.
But it doesn’t mean much now.
Virgil says, “I’m sorry about the bike. I should have put it out, I just…I didn’t-- I mean, I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I didn’t mean--”
“Stop bringing up the bike, Virgil! Are you fucking stupid?!”
Virgil jerks so hard that nearly chokes himself on his poncho.
Remus is staring at him with a harsh fire in his eyes that makes him look equal parts ready to skewer anyone who gets close and like he needs a hug. Virgil has never known which one that Remus actually wants even after all this time, but it never stops making Virgil feel awful for letting whatever caused that look on his face to happen.
“For someone who is immune to physical fucking attacks, you’re incredibly dense, Dumbass,” he says, and when that doesn’t magically make Virgil understand what key fact he’s obviously missing here Remus swings himself into a proper sitting position and says very slowly, “He almost killed you.”
Virgil blinks. “Yeah, I wasn’t paying attention--”
Remus throws the handle of the sword at him and it slides right through his head and clatters to a stop against the door at his back. Thunder rumbles over their heads, a flash of lighting that causes the lights to flicker, but even then Remus doesn’t look away from where Virgil is frozen in place.
“Apologizing for someone else almost fucking killing you is not endearing,” Remus spells out. “I swear when I see that asshole again I’m going to put a rebar in every single one of his limbs.”
“B-but he’s your brother!”
“He left me to fucking die, Virgil,” Remus snarls, and Virgil realizes that they just waltzed right into the biggest of Remus’s Third Rule Territories.
((They both have them and they’re both aware of the other’s; after so long together how could they not be? They learned to read each other well enough that they know when to back off without the other having to say it. Virgil doesn’t talk about the foster families who preferred sunny days to him, or the list of lovers that never loved the rain, or how he learned that it was easier to leave before people asked because then he could trick himself into thinking he never outstayed his welcomes. Remus doesn’t talk about his brother, the dragon that raised him (supposedly), or who he was before Virgil met him and who he had wanted to be before all this started.
Rule Three is the rug they can kick those memories and feelings back underneath where they never have to face them.
Except, Virgil gets the feeling Roman showing up in person just burned the shit out of the rug.))
There’s a pressure in the air as the lightning cracks across the sky, in a way that Virgil imagines would be pretty impressive. Somewhere deep in the castle someone hollers excitedly, but it seems like a whole other dimension compared to their little room.
Remus glares at him, but also not at him. It takes a beat, two, three, and then he lets out a breath and Virgil realizes that they both stopped breathing at the same time.
“He left me,” Remus says, as if now that he’s said it, admitted it, declared it…it actually happened. “He left me to die. As far as I’m concerned he’s nothing to me. Less than nothing. In fact, he’s an active fucking target I’m going to put in the ground when we see each other again. None of this would have fucking happened if Clay didn’t have me on a leash around this shithole.”
Virgil’s stomach twists inside him, more painful than the wrestling blob of poison in his collarbone, than the aching electricity that had zipped through him, than the flaming boot that had nearly evaporated him. “Remus… you don’t have to--”
Remus shuts him up with a glare. Which is on brand, because the rest of the words were fluttering in the air, unignorable, “care about me”.
Something in Virgil shakes at his core. The same part that still whispers about Thomas Sanders adopting him, the same part that memorizes the tingling feeling of Remus’s hugs, the same part that he takes and waterboards until it learns to shut up again, because no one loves the rain, no matter what they say, and the proof is literally right above their heads right now.
Remus reaches for a knife conveniently stabbed into the wall next to him and stuffs the whole thing in his mouth, handle and all and Virgil tries not to let the wishy-washy feeling in his entire body leak into the rest of the room.
He focuses instead on forcing himself up to his feet, teetering as the water in his body tries to decide the best way to get out. There’s a mud puddle where he’d been lying, but at least Virgil knows that it's not the worst thing they’ve ever had to clean off the floorboards. The lizardmen guts from Remus’s boots had leaked into the wood grains and created a stench so foul that they had to replace the boards themselves.
His bed is only a few feet away, and much more exciting than the hard wood. It’s only a twin sized, and Virgil had to buy the bedding himself, but it was his and it was more than enough for him right now at this moment. He settles down on the edge, focusing on the complex, cumbersome task of unlacing his boots and scooping the caked mud from in between the laces. Remus horks back up the polymer handle and then throws the useless handle across the room and watches it collide with the wall of swords he collects like he was expecting it to give him more satisfaction than it does.
“I can’t believe he’s a dragon slayer,” Remus says. “I cannot fucking believe-- Like he of all people deserves the right to talk to a dragon…fuckhead doesn’t even use the right forms.”
“There are forms?” Virgil asks before he can stop himself.
“What, you think I just lash out however I feel like?”
Virgil does not answer that because yes he fucking did think that. Remus once leveled a whole town, and his only comment was “are there anymore wyverns?” But to be fair, the more Virgil thinks about it, comparing his fight with Roman versus his many, many, many spars with Remus, there was a distinct difference in their fight stances and the way that Roman moved was nothing like how Remus did. There was still the power component, but Remus’s attacks were far stronger, backed by his own energy.
“There are forms,” Remus says, flexing his fingers as if fighting phantom pains. “It’s a lot of power and it can break bones if not handled right. He should know better.”
Virgil’s not sure if he means his own bones or other people’s. Logically he knew that despite his outward appearance Remus did pull his punches in fights-- his honoring of Rule Two, no matter how much of a pain it was for him to focus on that so much. Virgil hadn’t realized how much he had been asking Remus to do when the rules had been made, but it was touching that he still bothered with it all. Virgil slid his foot out of his boot, forcing his thoughts towards the relieving feeling of getting his shoes off after his unexpected two hour hike through the backroads, instead of how much of a shitty friend he was.
“There were stories,” Remus continues, his tone painfully bitter. “He was obsessed with those stories…He should know all fucking forms and all his special moves and everything. His dragon…”
Remus grinds his morals together. “We...There was a village along the coast about a week’s travel from here--”
“You don’t have to--”
“Rule Three,” Remus says, flicking a metal shard into the air and catching it between his razor sharp teeth. “Ya, I know. But I want… I want to tell you this shit. Why I don’t talk about him. You deserve to know.”
((I really don’t, Virgil thinks, but Remus’s red eyes are glowing like embers in a fire, staring a million miles away while he rolls his tongue piercing along his teeth. You’ve already given me enough, Remus.))
“It was a little place. Literally no name, so small that when we got into trouble Mom could scream our names and everyone in it would know we were doing shit again.” He says, holding one of the fallen factions of the blade up in the air as if he could see something in the metal that wasn’t just his reflection that looks exactly like his twin brother’s.
“I know you don’t believe shit about Dragons being real,” Remus starts.
“No I--”
“I can your heart beat, Wet Willy,” Remus says boredly, glancing at him unimpressed. “Don’t worry. No one believes me about Metallica. You get used to it.”
Virgil pulls off his boot and tosses it to the side to clean later, probably a little harder than he needed to. Yeah, Remus could get used to it, but it didn’t mean he should. It’s not like Virgil doesn’t want to believe in giant flying monsters that could eradicate towns with a simple breath attack, but he can’t wrap his mind around why anything like that wouldn’t have already killed them all.
When Virgil had first asked, Remus had just shrugged and said They don’t want to? Which led him to believe that as much as Remus claimed to have been raised by a Dragon and then abandoned by one mysteriously without warning, the truth was much more along the lines of Remus had gotten hit in the head very hard and woke up remembering that his magic was Dragon themed and made up his own backstory for it.
Except that Roman… Roman was a real, carbon copy of Remus who also knew this mysterious Dragon Slayer Magic that literally no one else in the whole of Fiore knows. Which means that everything Virgil had assumed was a fabrication now had a bit of weight and Dragons might be real.
And Virgil thinks he might be too exhausted, strung out, and emotionally ill-equipped to deal with that kind of revelation, so he shoves it in a box in the back of his brain to deal with never and focuses on wriggling out of his soaking poncho instead. The ache in his arms reaches all the way back to his collarbone leaving the phantom feeling of a hand pressing on his weakest point, testing, testing, testing.
“There were legends about dragons out there in our boring village; the type that everyone believed in. Except me, I guess,” Remus continues. “Fuckery about the dragon wars that literally no one remembers anymore… There was one about how the Dragons gave their favorite humans powers and trained them to protect themselves so other dragons didn’t come and swallow them in one gulp. Roman would not shut up about it. He insisted that we spend every weekend sneaking out of the village walls and go romping through the woods to see if we could find one and make it give us powers.
“Then one day sometime… fuck we must have been like eight…. some cultist bastards showed up. Don’t know who they were, and they didn’t introduce themselves before stabbing the village chief through his chest…they were rounding up all the kids, killing anyone over sixteen.”
Virgil pauses looking up at Remus as his tone gets bolder. Louder. Harsher. His piercing clicks over his teeth the same way Virgil imagines it might sound for a bloody sword to be dragging along a cobblestone town square amidst screaming innocent civilians.
“The Magic Council didn’t come?” Virgil asks tentatively. “A guild?”
“What Council?” Remus asks, grinning wickedly as though there’s some great part of him that finds all of this hilarious. “If any guild came around it was long after everything happened and they probably tripped on the skeletons we left behind!
“Roman and I were running. We knew all the ways out of the village but I was just a step behind him, and one of those fuckers grabbed me. I screamed. I screamed his name, and he just kept running-- Didn’t even turn around. And I tried to tell myself that he just hadn’t heard me, but that’s goblin shit. He had to have heard me and he didn’t stop. He left me to be used for whatever they wanted all the kids for and he had never tried-- he’d never-- I wasn’t ever--”
Remus growls, throwing himself into a sitting position and grinding his pointed teeth together. His hands come up tearing at his already messy hair, his metal scales appearing over his cheeks and arms like it could protect him from his own memories.
“Remus,” Virgil says.
“I got away because the cult fucker tripped over my dead mother’s body, Virgil! He let go of me and I landed inches from her unseeing face and every time I close my eyes I still see her green eyes.”
((Green eyes. Like Roman’s.))
“I…I scrambled up and ran until I actually dropped dead somewhere miles away from civilization in the woods around our village covered in the blood of my people, my family. He left me there!” Remus’s voice raises, booming and dangerous and deadly. His eyes glowed like embers of fire, red hot and pained. He’s standing all of a sudden, metal scales glittering across his arms, his legs, his chest, his cheeks, turning his hands into sharpened claws and his mop of hair dancing under the force of his own magic. The floor under his combat boots ignites in a neon green light, etching out the symbols of his magic circle effortlessly, and Virgil thinks that he doesn’t even know he’s doing it as his tail sways behind him.
“I should have died,” Remus roars. ”He left me to die and now he’s prancing around in the nations top magic guild, laughing with his stupid, little friends pretending like he didn’t kill me!”
“Remus, you aren’t dead,” Virgil says, carefully standing up to match him, the heart he doesn’t have beating just a little too hard.
“Why do I feel like I am?!” Remus spits. “He didn’t even stay for the full fight! He got that stupid calling card and suddenly I wasn’t even worth his attention anymore, again! Why is he always leaving me? Why does everything hurt inside? Why does the mere thought of Roman make me want to claw my heart out of my chest just to figure out what is wrong with it?! Why-- Why--”
His claws go for his own wrists and Virgil is lunging forward at the same moment, grabbing one of his muscled arms and yanking it away from the scales on the other. Green light floods the room as they grapple suddenly, thunder and rain shaking the very foundations of the castle.
Remus has always been the stronger of the two of them: it's what makes them such a powerful combo. Virgil’s wickedly fast water attacks from a distance and by the time that their opponent realizes that Remus caught up, he’s pile-driving a metal beam into their organs at point blank range with all the fury of an actual magic mobile. The metal he wears and eats and breathes is heavy and the force he swings with is debilitating.
But Virgil, however exhausted, however desperate, however hurting that he is, has more determination in his soul than he thinks anyone would ever understand. He digs into his core, wherever his magic comes from even if he’s depleted every drop of magic from today, he’ll dig into tomorrow’s and next week’s and next year's supply, if it means that Remus doesn’t gravely injure himself.
The Dragon Slayer’s knees give out and Virgil is just barely there to catch him, not that it means much because he’s 90% muscle and holding him up is like holding up the world itself. Remus shakes, and Virgil wants to scream as he clings around Remus’s arms, pushing him into the floor, ignoring where his dragon tail tries repeatedly to tear through his torso, ignoring the pounding fog in his head, ignoring how Remus growls more animal-like than human.
Ignoring how the line between anger and grief is fine and sharp and Remus, himself, probably doesn’t know which side he’s on.
((Virgil thinks of how Roman’s eyes burned with their own personal hellfires, how his body exploded into flames, how he towered over Virgil and slammed his heel into Virgil’s aching, vulnerable chest, and said, “Tell me again about how all of this is my fault.”
He thinks about how the first thing that Roman had done when breaking free of Virgil's Waterlock was check on his teammates. How Roman had come running for Patton the second he'd known Patton was missing. How Roman had called out to Logan when Virgil’s attack had hit him. How Roman had looked furious for the protection of his friends and yet Virgil felt himself getting equally angry at the fact that Roman couldn’t have done that years ago when Remus had needed it.
He thinks and he thinks and he needs to stop thinking because Roman was an asshole. He was an asshole. Virgil would pick Remus over him any day.
He’s seen the worst Remus can offer and he still likes his company more than any other person in this magic infested country. Remus has seen Virgil on his lowest days and picked him back up without asking for anything in return. There’s a bomb in Virgil’s neck right now because he refused to run when Remus needed his help, refused to stand by when Remus was in pain, refused to cave until Clay made him.
How could anyone leave him behind? Much less someone who claimed to be Remus’s brother?))
The rain pounds down on the castle, the sound of it seeping through the stone and wood until the chill of the room permeates with it. Luckily-- or not-- Remus seems to mixed up in his own thoughts to notice Virgil's thunderous silence. It’s sluggish and slow as the passing of time, and Virgil feels each second sink into his muddied body making him infinitely heavier than he’s ever wanted to be.
He doesn’t know how long it takes; if it's longer than the other times Remus has his breaks or if it’s mercifully shorter. If Virgil’s presence helps or if it’s just another thing spurring him on the teetering edge that he’s been sauntering across for years now, testing how far the cliff edge will carry him before it crumbles under his feet and sends him into a darkness he can’t come back from.
((Virgil’s wanted to be the good guy for as long as he’s been alive, and he thinks that Remus wanted to be once as well. He doesn’t know if Remus still does, doesn’t blame Remus if he wants to try burning the world to ground now, doesn’t quite have the courage to ask when he’s already holding Remus to the ground, begging him “please keep fighting, please don’t give up, please, Remus.”))
The magic glow around him dims and Virgil’s breath comes out short and sharp and just as pained as Remus’s. His tail dematerializes, his scales fade back into his tanned skin until there’s no trace of them, his pupils round back out from the slits they transformed into, but Virgil holds on, as if he can share every one of his thank-yous, all of his you’re-everything-to-mes, each of his I’m-sorry-I-got-us-into-this-messes through physical contact alone.
“You smell like Old Man Clay,” Remus says, voice raw.
Virgil tries not to sob or bury his head into Remus’s shoulder blade. A sheet of rain hits the window, rattling it. “Just got back from a meeting with him.”
“F-fuck.”
Virgil isn’t sure which of them say it. He doesn’t think it matters.
His arms ache, his stomach vaguely feels like it's not actually part of him anymore. His head buzzes, and the world sways, and everything is wrong about both of them. He wants to take Remus and run and disappear somewhere where neither of them have to think about the rain, fire, or the color orange.
But there are runes around the castle, meticulously placed, stacked, impossible to break without the Greed knowing, much less without injury.
And even attempting to break them is a breach of Remus’s contract.
Virgil shakes as he lets go of Remus’s arm, watching as he flexes his fingers to return the blood he doesn’t have to them and pretending that the unfurnished wall opposite of them is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
“My bike,” Remus rasps quietly, which is upsetting because Remus doesn’t do anything quietly. “Did it at least make a good explosion?”
Virgil shrugs, between the adrenaline, the fight, and everything that came after he doesn’t exactly remember most of it. He thinks if he opens his mouth he’ll start crying again, and he can’t afford to lose the little bit of water still left in him.
“The next one will,” Remus decides. “I’ll set it up with a remote detonator and ask Clay to take it for a test ride.”
The guildmaster would never. He has ten different vehicles in the garage and Virgil’s never seen him use a single one of them. But the idea of a bright and flashy explosion, heat so hot that it turns the rain to steam, and a force so great that not even ashes are left behind of the person who ruined their lives…
Virgil could dream for just a moment about it, couldn’t he?
“Do you…” Virgil croaks, “Do you think we’ll ever get your contract and rip it apart?”
Not Do you want to, not Can we try again, not Remus, do you remember what it’s like to travel somewhere for fun? Virgil doesn’t want to know those answers. Virgil’s not even sure he wants to know the answer to the one he asked.
For someone made of water, his throat feels really dry.
“This again?” Remus says, almost a laugh in his chest, that he’s pushing out like he can force normality through sheer willpower and is daring Virgil to call his bluff. “You know that bastard keeps it behind a wall of fifty curses specifically against the two of us, specifically against you, in case the first time wasn’t fucking clear enough. So what? Did you pick up a new magic while you were out? I don’t think magic rings are going to cut it.”
Thunder grumbles overhead, and Remus’s ears twitch, catching on to Virgil’s mood as he sighs and drops his head into knees. “No.”
“So no, we’re not going to try breaking into the archives.”
“I mean,” Virgil says, reaching up to rub his cheeks. “That’s just assuming he doesn’t keep it safely up his ass.”
“If it were just up his ass, I’d eviscerate him right now and pull it out of his mangled remains, before he could activate any of his stupid binding magic,” Remus says. “So until Greed’s that addled with age, what’s the point of pretending like I’m anything other than another one of Clay’s bitch boys?”
“I…” Virgil swallows. “I don’t know. To have something to look forward to?”
Remus is quiet for a moment, then he lets out a laugh. His real laugh: all sharp edges and grating that makes everyone else back away in fear, but sounds like protection and safety to Virgil. It makes his heart ache, and his lungs squeeze, and his collarbone burn.
“Even if we did get our hands on that contract, we’d still have another problem.” Remus glances at him, pupils trained on Virgil’s left side chest. Virgil fights the urge to cover up the orange blob floating there even though he knows that Remus can’t see it through the fabric.
“You know Rule Four applies to you too, right, Dipshit?” Remus nudges his shoulder.
Virgil nudges him back. “Just answer the question, will you? Do you think about ever leaving here?”
“Where would we even go?”
“Just somewhere else, Re. Anywhere. We could make it up as we go.”
Remus snorts, “What, like we did when we were eighteen?” He shakes his head, “Come on, Virgil you hated that year; never staying in a place for longer than a few days, getting run out of town, and spending the nights camping in the woods wild awake afraid that some creature was gonna sneak up on us because the rain made it impossible to hear anything…” He waves his arms around their room. “At least here… At least here you have a bed and food and a ceiling away from your mopey ass raincloud.”
Virgil doesn’t make a noise which causes Remus to look at him, those beady red eyes pinning him in place.
“Virge.”
“You are rationalizing this,” Virgil blurts out. “You are trying to rationalize the shitty things you’ve been coerced into doing. None of this is okay! We are not okay!”
“Have we ever been?” Remus asks and Virgil thinks that he means it as a joke but for some reason Virgil can’t find it funny.
He spins around and grabs Remus’s wrists. His hands aren’t big enough to wrap around the Dragon Slayer’s meaty arms, but Remus stays limp and lets him trace the metallic veins. “I want better for us! I want-- I want to walk through the guild hall without thinking I’m walking into a lion’s den. I want to go on jobs that I want to do, that help people and I want to get paid for my services in full. I want you-- I want you to be happy, Remus! Okay? This is not you being happy.”
Remus jerks away from him. “But what if it is? What the hell do you know about me?”
“I’d like to think I know when you’re faking shit!” Virgil snaps back. “You hate it here. Stop pretending for my sake. I don’t like it either!”
Remus’s fists curl in on themselves. If Virgil was anyone else he would have missed the subtle shake of them.
“There’s nothing different,” Remus says. “Between what I’m doing now and what I was doing before. Breaking things, punching annoying people, fighting, laughing as everyone runs and screams-- There’s nothing different about me with a collar and me without one! Clay just points me at a new target and I do the same shit I’ve always done! I don’t know why you’re upset about it.”
“This is different!” Virgil says. “You--”
“Rule Three!” Remus cuts in so sharply it feels like a physical bite. The air stills and rings and Virgil’s thunderstorm sounds so very distant. There are a million words in his brain, bubbling in his stomach and climbing up his throat to make their debut right there in between them.
But Remus is shaking, from his shoulders to his knees and he’s not looking at Virgil and Rule Three.
How many times has he ever called a Rule Three? Virgil can count it on one hand, maybe. There wasn’t much that Remus didn’t like to talk about, other than details of his past that Virgil understood now. So Virgil takes a deep breath and swallows every syllable that tries to escape his mouth and remind Remus of who it was that picked Virgil out of that rain puddle so long ago.
“I want to dye my hair,” He says instead, as washy as water trying to settle in a too-small cup.
Remus exhales equally uneven. “What color?”
“Don’t… I don’t know,” Virgil says. “Purple? I didn’t think about it much.”
“Then what brought this on?”
“I thought it was time for a change, Dickwad. Aren’t you supposed to be supportive?”
“You hate change,” Remus says, “That’s what you said when I was trying to get you to change your body shape, try some piercings, update your wardrobe because you’ve been wearing the same poncho since I met you.”
“I’m made of water, Remus,” Virgil cuts in. “My clothes have to be synthetically tailored to dissipate with my body when the surface tension breaks and that costs a lot of money we don’t have. And I have a thunderstorm over my head at all times! It doesn’t usually make sense to change anything about myself because I’m always….wet. No, wait, stop, don’t say anything--”
“You’re the one that said it!” Remus croons. “Wet, wet, wet--”
“Shut Up!”
“Tell me, Virgil, are you moist? Maybe a little damp? Does hanging around me and my hot sexy body get you--”
“REMUS!”
He laughs, leaning back and Virgil can almost believe that everything is fine, that minutes ago Virgil wasn’t keeping him from prying off his own skin, that Roman didn’t leave Remus to die when they were eight and now they are not kidnapping people for fun and that they are not one stray order away from never being able come back from the darkness.
((Because Virgil would follow Remus to the ends of the Earth, to the depth of despair, to wherever Guildmaster Clay makes Remus go, because everyone leaves, but not Virgil, but not Remus.))
“Oh wait, I forgot!” Remus says before Virgil can choke on the pretend pleasantry filling up the air. “It's not me you have the hots for! You’ve been wanting to jump Janus Ekans’s bones since you first saw him.”
“I do not--”
“Then you want him to jump your bones,” Remus says. “But the question is, are we sure he’s a top? What will you do if Mr. Mirror Man doesn’t want to hear you call him “daddy”--”
“Water Ray,” Virgil says, with his voice way too high for Remus to do anything other than laugh as his palm mists water into the other’s face as proof he shouldn’t even be conscious, much less using his powers. Remus shakes his head like a wet dog, with a feral, undaunted grin already lining up his next comment.
But then again, Virgil thinks it’s his own fault for Remus knowing in the first place. He didn’t mean to tell anyone-- not that he thought that dating guys was wrong or that Remus would hate him for it. His first three boyfriends hadn’t exactly been the best when it came to the constant rain, and after the disaster of flooding a town last time he’d been dumped, Virgil had just...decided to give up on romance.
But Janus Ekans.
Virgil hadn’t known his name at the time; just happened to have noticed him as he was walking back into the guild with Remus at his side having finished a job together that ended with Remus covered in mud and cackling wildly on top of a giant Sea Monster’s Corpse while Virgil accepted their payment from the grateful, but soaked clients. Remus had drawn all the attention of the other guild members with his boisterous kicking in of the guild hall doors and shouts of “WE’RE BACK MOTHERFUCKERS”.
Guildmaster Clay and Malice had been standing at the bar counter with two people Virgil didn’t recognize and immediately wished he did because holy shit that was a Hot Guy(™). Virgil always had a thing for blondes and dark colors, and the gold trims of his outfit glittered like how Virgil had imagined the sun might have. His eyes were sharp glancing over at them, or well at Remus, before they pinned Virgil in place with a soft smile like a knife.
Guildmaster Clay had apologized for the rain, outside through gritted teeth and Janus had laughed and said “It’s no bother. My abilities are rather powerful in the rain and I quite enjoy the sound of it hitting the windows. Perhaps we can work out a deal where I borrow your rainmaker for a day or two…?”
And Virgil had quite literally turned into a puddle. Which for obvious reasons had concerned the hell out of Remus and Virgil hadn’t been able to get more than a syllable out in his flustered state. Guildmaster Clay had herded Janus upstairs to talk more about “business” and an “alliance with Cosmic Dust” which was right about when Virgil realized that he was hopelessly doomed to never have a good romantic relationship.
Cosmic Dust, as everyone knew, was a dark guild. The antithesis to Star Burst: evil, illegal, and just as powerful. It was the number one Dark Guild in the region, the most sought after by the Magic Council and filled with the most dangerous people that Virgil never wanted to be found alone in a room with.
Or at least it had been, until about eight months ago when a group of unnamed, undisclosed Star Burst members literally stumbled upon their secret hideout and managed to blow it up and unleash a giant plant monster that wrecked the nearby mountains, scattering evil mages into the wind like the ashes of their base. Virgil had read it in the news, half in awe, half in disgust: the members of Star Burst weren’t named and the magic council was taking credit for what had happened, and there was nothing about Janus anywhere in the limited information about the mages that had been caught.
If there had been a deal in the workings to loan Virgil’s services out to them, well, the Guildmaster hadn’t brought it up to Virgil again.
“...he was there, you know,” Remus says after a minute, his smile slipping from his face. “Janus. With Star Burst.”
“REMUS!”
“What?”
“Used his freaky mirror magic to deflect an attack on Roman,” Remus says. “Wearing a Star Burst Guildmark on his chest pretty proudly for someone mixed up in Cosmic Dust shit.” Remus rolls his neck to the side to direct a cheeky little smile at him, “I bet that's fun in the bedroom, though. Mirrors wherever he wants them to be while he’s doing whatever he wants to y--”
“You wanted me to be supportive, didn’t you?!” He says. “This is supportive! I want my best friend to get absolutely plowed by--”
Virgil elbows him in the side. “Being supportive and being an ass are not the same thing and you know it!”
“You like my ass though! You just like Janus Ekans’ ass more!”
“Can we drop this, please?” Virgil sighs. “It’s creepy now. He doesn’t know I exist and probably never will. And talking about him like this feels extremely dirty.”
“This is really no different from you mooning over Socerers’ Weekly pictures of Thomas Sanders. Unless you want to tell me Tommy-Salami knows who you are?”
“Well if he didn’t before, he does now,” Virgil says, and whoops there goes the mood again.
He hadn’t been all that sure of what the whole plan had been for the Guildmaster; Virgil wasn’t trusted enough, nor did he want to be trusted enough for that level of confidence. He knew the bare bones though: Remus had been sent to Magnolia for a day spree of wrecking the Star Burst guildhall and a few members if he could find them (he could) and then sent to go straight back guild and wait for the provoked guild members to gather their forces and attack back. During that fight, Remus was supposed to keep as much attention on himself, by whatever means he could, but allow Thomas Sanders to confront Guildmaster Clay.
Meanwhile, Virgil was on a secondary mission back to Magnolia to kidnap the heir-apparent of the Hart fortune. How Guildmaster Clay was so certain that Patton wouldn’t be with the others or that no one else would be there that could out power Virgil was beyond him. Virgil wasn’t even sure what they were going to do with Patton. Ransom him back home? Force him into a contract like they had with Remus?
It was important enough to the plan that the Guildmaster had sent Malice and Envy to rekidnap him. Which well… it couldn’t be that hard, anymore considering Envy already got her hands on Thomas Sanders magical power. The strongest member of the the guild wasn’t going to be able to walk until Envy shattered his crystal, and the rest of Star Burst would likely fold under their attack even though Roman, Logan, and Patton might have told them about his near kidnapping.
Roman, Logan, and Patton who know his name and what he looks like and his biggest weakness.
Remus rolls his tongue piercing between his teeth and shrugs. “Well fuck him. It’s not like you were going to be part of his guild anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Virgil says.
Remus looks at him as if he should know. And well, Virgil does.
Even if it weren’t for the kidnapping, nearly-drowning-three-members-of-his-guild thing, Virgil can’t think of a reason why Thomas Sanders would want him in his guild: no one wanted him in their guilds, their towns, their lives. If this whole thing worked out magically where neither Virgil nor Remus get arrested by the end of it, there was no way that Thomas would allow them to join the number one good guy guild. They simply weren’t good enough for it.
But some part of him that he hadn’t realized had been silently, reverently hoping against logic cracks and shatters at how flippantly Remus says it.
“Oh come on,” Remus says. “You weren’t seriously hoping--”
“I’m going to take a bath,” Virgil says.
“Virgil--”
“Rule Three,” Virgil says.
“Wait--”
“I’m Rule Three-ing it!” Virgil says, sharper than he intends to. He fumbles towards the bathroom, heart beating stupidly, tell-talingly hard. If Remus calls out to him again, Virgil doesn’t even hear it.
The bathroom is small, but decent. One decent sized tub, a tile floor, sink, toilet, cabinets for towels and cleaning supplies and toiletries when they remember to stock them. Remus and him mostly share the same soaps, because Remus’s sensitivity to scents and the amount of time they spend in each other’s company. Virgil slams the faucet into the on position, shoving the plug in place as the tepid water creaks and rumbles through the indoor pipes before spilling into the basin, and hoping slightly, stupidly that Remus would come in and apologize even though Remus has never fucking apologized for anything in his life and it was a dumb thing to be upset over in the first place.
His head pounds, and his eyes ache, and he slumps against the tub suddenly finding it hard to stand again. He presses his forehead to the cool tile as he fumbles his way through emptying his pockets of anything he doesn’t want to submerge in water for an hour: a some pocket money that he had for emergencies, a multitool for all his billions of tool needs, the slightly damp paper map leading right to the house where Patton had been, those stupid spoons he grabbed from the Star Burst house.
He dumps it all on the floor next to the tub staunchly refusing to think about how Envy and Malice might both have one of those same maps now. He reaches for the soap and nearly drops the whole bottle of soap into the basin of quickly filling water. He wants to laugh. Maybe cry.
It’s a monumental task to drag himself up and over the edge of the tub into the water. It’s warm, Virgil’s skin turns translucent the moment he comes in contact with it, the mud on his fingertips, under his nails dripping away at the same time his frame of body does.
He glances back at the door, waiting, waiting, waiting.
((Remus doesn’t come. Virgil isn’t sure why that makes him so upset. He wasn’t wrong, and Virgil knew better than to want an apology for something that wasn’t his fault.))
He shoves off the faucet, breathes in the steamed air, and then he lowers him into the clean and clear waters.
Virgil passes out almost as soon as he’s submerged.
who’s older?: jesse, can you believe itwho’s more protective?: isaac afwhat’s their origin?: in paradise, when jesse saw how upset isaac was at the memorial bonfire and he didn’t know how to cheer him up so he just sat there with him so he wasn’t alone, because jesse knows how much it sucks to be alone :((( jesse had a soft spot for him from then on tbhwhat are four words to describe their relationship?: lighthearted, genuine, loyal & caringhow does each one feel when the other gets into a romantic relationship?:
jesse will be SO. PROUD the day isaac gets it on/gets together with someone (scott), he’ll definitely ask for all dirty details and would probably high-five him a lot
isaac would tease jesse a lot, but in a well-natured kinda way, like he’d be the biggest advocate for it?? and also probably make awkward comments about his own unsuccessful love life to compare it to lmao
list three problems that they’ve encountered in their time together: uhh general rebellion and paradise captures aside, none because they’re pure and untainted by pain (yet) :)how often do they fight?: NEVERwhat would their biggest fight be about?: uh… maybe about jesse’s drug use?? idk if it got super bad at some point, isaac tends to get super short with people when he’s scared, so i think if he fears for jesse, they’d have this massive argument about it where neither actually SAY OUT LOUD that they both deeply give a shitnicknames/terms of endearment?: WOLFMAN LAHEY otherwise mostly just surnames??how long will they last?: foreverrrr, friends for literal lifehow well do they know each other?: not super well because their friendship is lighthearted and Good, and neither know of each other’s past before the rebellion, but well enough to know when the other’s upset/needs a distraction.which of the two is more:
violent: isaac definitely; jesse’s got more of a violent past than a violent personality
expressive: jesse :( isaac prefers to joke everything off
affectionate: jesse!!
irritable: JESSE LMAO especially when walt or dylan’s involved
intelligent: uh.. both? in very different ways, i think. i’d say isaac mostly, but jesse’s knowledge of chemistry is astounding
attractive: BOTH AF again in different ways, like isaac is WAY more fashionable and really looks after himself, but jesse’s ‘my clothes are way too big for me and i’ve couch surfed my whole life’ look is subtly hot as hell
kind: jesse tbh
are there any chances of them n o t staying platonic?: noo, they’re both super into other people and i think they always will be??how would they react if the other were to die?:
…. jesse would be super lost tbh, isaac’s one of his Pure Friendships, someone he goes to to make him smile and relax, i think if he lost that he’d lose his mind and just wanna go back to drugs for ages tbh
isaac would be extremelyyy upset and take his grief out in anger, and just pick fights with EVERYBODY & wouldn’t sleep or calm down for weeks, and then probably breakdown with amy or scott later :((
what extent would one half of the brotp go for the other?: well they both care about each other a LOT, like way more than they say out loud, and they’re both extremely loyal, so if the situation absolutely called for it and there were no other options, i reckon they’d both give up their lives for the other. isaac would kill for jesse, and vice versa, though jesse would try and figure out any other way first. also.. isaac will be one of the few people ever in the world that jesse will tell the entire truth of his past to.list two headcanons for them:
in canon, jesse’s style changed over the seasons as he became more Serious and Responsible, and he actually started wearing clothes that fit him, so here i feel like isaac will help him make that change and they’re gonna go jacket and shoe shopping and isaac will try and talk him out of wearing his beanie so often, especially if he has a leather jacket on 8))
whenever there’s a pack meetup, isaac alwaaaays invites jesse even though he’s not an Official Member just bc he knows he’s loved by them all and vice versa, and jesse always shows up with beers and pizza
