Chapter Text
It is 20:46 on the sixth day.
Time drapes heavy in the Trammel, a leaden pressure against Daniil’s lungs and sinuses until he releases it from his grasp. Then all at once it’s slipping, liquid light, from between his fingers and he can breathe, and so can the rest of the world.
Burakh’s hand clamps on his forearm a split-second later, hissing the tailend of a “—you dare!” as he whirls Daniil around. Daniil left the first half of that sentence behind days ago, but he has rolled the argument around in his head every night since. Returning to it is like putting on a favourite coat.
And the ability to say the retort that’s been waiting on his tongue since? To snarl, “I did dare,” and watch Burakh’s wide-eyed surprise?
Delicious.
In Burakh’s slackened grip, Daniil yanks his arm away. The action is rather undermined by how unsteady he is on his feet—it always takes a moment for his mind to settle back into his body. Recalibrating, as it were. Between the sharp stab of a wound remembered and the hunger yawning open in the pit of his stomach, he ends up stumbling into the clock and has to hold onto it to stay upright.
He refuses to let that dampen his spirits.
Burakh starts again with, “You...You actually—”
“I met your Aglaya,” Daniil says, drawing himself straighter. Keeping one hand still on the clockface, with his other he tugs at the bottom of his waistcoat, then pushes his hair back from over his eyes. Reconstructing himself, his image. He smiles thinly at Burakh as he turns to face him, as nasty a politeness as he can muster. “I didn’t realise you had a type.”
And it is so, so satisfying, that knife’s edge of a flinch cross Burakh’s face. The Burakh that Daniil had been speaking to a moment ago, ensconced in his Lair on the eighth day, had been shuttered, cautious, much harder to read. Much less willing to be goaded into a fight he didn’t know the start of. That was a Burakh whose requests for help Daniil had denied, a Burakh he had gone out of his way to avoid.
This Burakh...Oh, this one he knows well. This one he can hurt, and it soothes that hissing, scrabbling feeling that’s been under his skin ever since he saw the bottle Burakh currently holds in his hand and knew, knew, he had been used.
“So...what?” Burakh says. “You went back, changed it all? You must have gone beyond this moment too, if you met her. So why are you here again? You can’t tell me it’s just to gloat. If you succeeded, it would have been the first thing out of your mouth. Instead, the first thing you did was draw blood.”
And here’s the problem: this Burakh knows him too. Not just the Daniil of another timeline that revolved around Town Saviour Artemy Burakh, this Burakh knows him.
But there’s no satisfaction in Burakh as he locks eyes with Daniil and says, simple as anything, “You had to see for yourself. And now you have. You know I’m right.”
Daniil refuses to be the first to look away. He also won’t lie. There’s something pathetic in having to lie, knowing Burakh knows. Knowing Burakh pities him.
Because it’s true. Daniil went back, redid it all, ignored Burakh entirely. He kept to his own path, his own work, certain that the only reason that other Dankovsky in the other timeline had failed so utterly was because Burakh hadn’t been playing fair but now he is the one with the power, so how could he fail?
Very easily, apparently.
Daniil gestures to the bottle in Burakh’s hand with his chin, never breaking eye-contact. “Where did you find that blood, Burakh?”
“It won’t save Thanatica.”
“Won’t it? It’s the key to your panacea.” Which he’d still managed to develop in the attempt Daniil just returned from even without Daniil turning back time at his every beck and call, and doesn’t that just rankle. “I thought a chimera’s blood was an impossible thing, and yet here you are, waving it around.”
“Your lab will still burn,” Burakh says.
“How do you know? If my Thanatica burned in your attempt, it’s because you were working alone.”
“And this attempt? The one you just came back from?”
“Have you ever tried to use any of that blood for a vaccine, Burakh? Or is your solution the only one that matters?”
“I…” Burakh tightens his hold around the bottle of blood, which is how Daniil knows he’s right. Burakh has never tried any other way except his. He doesn’t want to. “There’s a limited amount. A cure was more important than a preventative.”
“I agree,” Daniil says. “Which is why I need to save my Thanatica.”
The hand that had already been splayed over the clockface presses into it. He feels the tickticktick thrum in his bones.
It is 10:57 on the very same version of the sixth day he just left, and Daniil is in Town Hall. The wound that had been in his side has yet to happen, his hunger is somewhat less gnawing, and his pockets are heavy with his fund reward. In his hands, a missive informing him of the state of his Isolation Ward. The number of deaths had staggered him when he first read it. He’s seen worse numbers since.
He crumples the paper aside and sets out in search of an earlier Artemy Burakh.
*
It takes three attempts and a great deal of bribes to the local children, paid in precious walnuts, to map out Burakh’s movements through the town and pinpoint the time he comes into possession of this strange blood. Apparently, he goes out into the steppe for several hours, farther than his usual twyre-gathering rounds would take him, and when he returns, it’s with the blood in hand.
Further attempts at following Burakh into the steppe prove three things. First, that Burakh knows full well what he is going to find. Second, that he doesn't want Daniil to see it. Because, third, it's impossible to hide in the large flat expanse of the steppe; Burakh always spots him, and always pretends to just be getting more twyre.
Daniil grabs him by the collar and yells, “I know where you’re fucking going, you absolute hypocrite!”
Just the once.
He twists back time before he can hear a response.
Time to switch tacks, then.
At 16:12 on the sixth day, he comes crashing into Burakh’s Lair. It smells like he remembers it: dust and rust, humid, heavy with that blasted twyre. And blood. Still, blood. He worries for a second that he has the time wrong, or that somehow Burakh changed his trajectory and acquired it early, before he reminds himself of the organs Burakh has likewise been taking from the corpses in the theatre. Blood is what Burakh deals in, whether mundane or supernatural.
“Artemy, are you in here?” Daniil calls out. And then, because as he recalls he hasn’t been to the Lair in this attempt yet, “God, what is this place…”
He strides through, coming down the stairs just as Burakh, confusion knitting his brow, is coming up.
“Emshen, how did you—?”
“This is going to sound absurd, but if there’s anyone who will believe me, it’s you,” Daniil says.
He continues his descent, bracing his hands against the earth pressing in at either side of the narrow stairway. He feels like a cornered spider here, especially with Burakh blocking the other end.
Is it possible Burakh senses the lie? Daniil has never been the best liar. He decides he’ll brave it anyway.
“I had a dream.”
Burakh steps aside at last, and the concern on his face resolves itself into a spike of panic that, oh, just...perfect. Precisely what Daniil wants to see.
Daniil stifles the overwhelming urge to smile by reaching for the frustration that has been so close at hand since he first set foot in this accursed town and says, “I am not hallucinating. Nor am I exhibiting symptoms of the Pest. I assure you, that was my thought as well, and I tested myself thoroughly before I set out to find you. But I had a dream. I had a dream and it felt real, Artemy, do you understand me?”
“I believe you, calm down. It’s fine. I believe you. Sticky! Get the Bachelor some water.”
With a hand on his back, Burakh leads him through another doorway on the right, where a sad, narrow cot and some scant belongings tell Daniil this is where Burakh sleeps when he isn’t impinging on other people’s beds. Most important is the clock standing just beyond the threshold; Daniil had known there was one here, but not where. He brushes his hand against it in passing, pinning his place in the timeline, before he lets Burakh ease him down into the singular chair that sits opposite the clock.
The boy, Sticky, offers him a bottle of water without a word, eyes narrowed. Sticky makes no protest as Burakh shoos him off to keep an eye on the alembic, but Daniil has no doubt he’ll be eavesdropping. Burakh must have the same thought, because he leans out of the doorway to pointedly watch Sticky go and waits there for several moments before he finally faces Daniil again. Daniil catches a glimpse of fondness there before Burakh’s usual expression takes its place, the drawn eyebrows and deep scowl that Eva seems to find so scary, even when he’s told her that’s just how Burakh looks at everyone.
Here, see. Even with that scowl, he’s taking one of Daniil’s hands, pressing it between both of his. An attempt at comfort, as much affection as he’s willing to risk with that boy Sticky hanging around. Daniil is viciously thankful for Sticky’s presence; if Burakh had tried any more overt gestures, Daniil feels he might have torn Burakh’s throat out with his teeth then and there.
Infinitely soft, Burakh says, “Tell me about your dream.”
Daniil does. He weaves a dream out of whole cloth, stolen from snatches of what Burakh had muttered to himself out on the steppe, from what little he’s told Daniil of his own dreams, from what Daniil himself has seen.
A village, out in the steppe. An...ear? And a bull—because that means dreams are true, doesn’t it? A bull, leading the way, until he finds what he’s looking for. Blood, strangely heavy, still warm...but from the earth. And he watches, satisfaction curling under his ribs, as the blood in turn drains from Burakh’s face.
Yes, because he thinks this is his right alone, doesn’t he? The blood, the prophetic dreams. And now he sees his path to victory blocked, not by Daniil, but by whatever forces had first bestowed those dreams upon Burakh before. Fate, perhaps, favouring another after all.
Daniil crowns his story by pulling Burakh closer and whispering, “I know how it must sound, I know, and I can’t explain how I know this is real but I tell you it is and—Artemy, I think this might be it. The chimera we’ve been searching for.” He lets some hope crack his voice, and if it comes out with an edge of hysteria...well, that lends him credibility, surely. “Did you not find the same in your path?”
And Burakh, still looking him in the eye, says, “...No. No, this is new.”
The bleeding liar.
He straightens up, letting Daniil’s hand go. “But I believe you. I...think I might know where you’re talking about. Let’s go.”
*
The blood is impossible. Warm hours after its extraction, miraculous in composition. There is only enough for two bottles—”How serendipitous,” Daniil says, smiling to a Burakh who looks faintly ill at the gesture—and he knows there must be more. But there will be time for that later. Two bottles, one for the panacea and one for the vaccine, because Daniil can be magnanimous after all.
From then on, he avoids Burakh and ignores his messages. He does not accept Yulia Lyuricheva’s invitation on the sixth evening, spending his time instead perfecting his notes. And when he presents them to the Inquisitor, Daniil can taste his impossible victory, sweet and clear as fresh spring water. Once this is assured, he can devote time to Burakh’s children again. He can go back and lend his efforts to save the ones who didn’t make it. He can even figure out how to catch Eva, this time, before—
It is 15:46 on the eighth day when the Inquisitor tells him Thanatica has already burned. His victory is ashes, as are his papers. His colleagues, God only knows their fates. It doesn’t matter one whit that he developed a vaccine before she arrived. Clearly it wasn’t enough.
Daniil reaches up and pulls time to a stop before it can tick over to 15:47, the pendulum suspending in mid-swing. And if he hadn’t been frozen just like the Inquisitor and Bad Grief, who is inexplicably at her feet, he might have screamed or maybe cried or maybe laughed. As it is, there is no air in his lungs, no heartbeat to keep him company, nothing but his thoughts as he lingers there in the space between.
*
It is 17:03 on the third day. Once the three ruling families have assembled in Town Hall, Daniil sets the vial of vaccine down before them and presents his notes. None of them understand, naturally, but Stanislav Rubin pores over the papers and, wonder in his voice and in his eyes, confirms to the astonished crowd that it should, indeed, work.
“I have already tested it on myself,” Daniil says. “And while I would much prefer further testing, frankly, proper procedure is a luxury we cannot afford. The quantity of components is limited, as is the time we have to curb the outbreak before a vaccine becomes untenable.”
“What do you need to make more?” asks Vlad the Elder.
“I believe the secret lies in the Abattoir.” So the Inquisitor had thought, at least, and given where he found this blood, Daniil is inclined to believe her. “I need access.”
It isn't until the tail-end of Vlad the Elder’s tirade, accusing this of being a ploy by the Kains to get into the Termitary and shaming them for such power-plays in the middle of a catastrophe, that Burakh comes limping through.
“There is your own doctor,” Daniil says, gesturing to him with a broad flourish. “Have him examine it, if you doubt me.”
He holds the vaccine out to Burakh and relishes the way Burakh freezes in his tracks. Then slowly, mechanically, like a wind-up doll reaching the end, he takes the vial from Daniil’s gloved hand. He looks at it for several long moments, seemingly unaware of the pandemonium happening across the table, and then lifts his gaze to Daniil.
“This isn’t how this meeting is supposed to go,” Burakh says. His voice is a soft rumble, ground disturbed. More than anything else, he looks tired. He looks so very painfully tired.
Daniil steels himself against it, offering a smile he’s sharpened over his many, many attempts to get here, and says, “It is now.”
Burakh nods to himself and turns away, promising Olgimsky that he will conduct an examination.
Despite Burakh vouching for his vaccine that very night, however, Olgimsky will not open the Termitary, not for all the cajoling and threats in the world. And without access to the Termitary, Daniil cannot figure out a way into the Abattoir. Which means he cannot obtain more blood.
He got two bottles from that village in the steppe. After very many tries to wring the most use out of them, they gave him four vaccine doses. That’s all he has until the Inquisitor forces the matter. And without the Olgimskies’ support, their money for his hospital fund, their bullying the populace out of their medicine stores…
Burakh's shadow looms over him as he’s crouched by a patient in his skeleton of a hospital. It’s tempting to ignore him, but they both know there’s no actual work to be done here. The bodies that line the floor—because no Olgimsky money means no beds, no separating screens, nothing at all—aren’t here to get better. They’re here so they don’t have to die on the street.
Then again, even his successful version of a hospital didn’t do much good, did it?
Daniil looks up at Burakh, at the deep shadows the theatre lights overhead cut into his face, and like a hunted animal, he hisses, “I haven’t failed yet.”
Burakh has the gall to sigh, like he’s the one who’s been wronged.
“I get the sense you’re continuing an argument I don’t remember us starting,” he says. “I fucked up, didn’t I? Somewhere along the line. I’d planned to come see you after that meeting. Tell you about my path. Guessing I already did that?”
“Yes, Burakh, you did.” Daniil rises slowly to his feet. “Save for certain crucial details you opted to keep for yourself. Wouldn’t want me having my own ideas, now, would you? I wonder, did you plan to lead me by the nose down your path from the start, or was that just off-the-cuff?”
“Lead you by—what do you mean?”
“Off-the-cuff, then. Good to know.”
Daniil brushes past him, but Burakh catches his elbow. “Listen, Dankovsky. There’s still time. We can still work together. All I want is for my kids to be safe, and then the Town—”
“Can you get me into the Abattoir?”
“No, that’s what—Do you think I wouldn’t have done that already, if I could?”
“Then I won’t be sticking around this attempt for much longer anyway. Save your breath, Burakh.”
Far be it from Artemy Burakh to let him have the last word, however.
“Good,” he says. “You shouldn’t have gotten the blood so early.”
Daniil snorts a laugh, sparing a sidelong glance over his shoulder. “And why not?”
“Because it isn’t the time for it. Some things need to happen when they’re meant to. In order. Did you think I was waiting around because I wanted to? If I thought this would work, I would have made the panacea from the very first day. I would have gotten my people out of the Termitary before most of them died.”
“What I think, Burakh, is that you didn’t try. I think you found a way that worked and you’re too scared to look beyond it.”
This time, Daniil makes sure he gets the last word; he curls his fingers into the ambient time and reverses it.
*
The secret to unlocking Olgimsky the Elder is, in the end, Capella. Because Daniil is always going to seem like a creature of the Kains to him, but if he thinks his daughter has Daniil around her finger and that he, in turn, has managed to be the one puppeting Daniil, that changes things. Much as it rankles to be treated that way, he’s used to putting on a deferential face for rich people for the sake of his Thanatica.
And look at that, it gets him through to the Termitary.
*
It is 20:46 on the sixth day, and Daniil collapses to the floor of the Trammel with a gasp, now that his trachea is no longer being crushed. Burakh’s hissed, “—you dare!” is followed by a sudden confused stillness.
Daniil shifts himself onto his back, wheezing a laugh at the expression he sees, upside down, on Burakh’s face. He hadn’t meant to return here, but in death men make strange decisions.
“Have you ever wondered, Burakh, what’s left behind when you twist time? Does the world unravel like an old sweater so you can repurpose its yarn? Or does it freeze around you, a camera flash that only regains life if you return to it? What if you never do? Does it trundle on without you or does it stay there forever, floating in a timeless aether? And what if you die, do you just disappear or is a husk left behind?”
“No,” says Burakh.
“No as in that isn’t the case, or no as in...ah. You never wondered. Of course. Why would you?”
Daniil should get up. Burakh is even offering his free hand, so very gallant. Instead, Daniil lies there on Yulia Lyuricheva’s dusty floorboards and very deliberately laces his hands together over his stomach.
“You’re content to walk the path that was set to you,” Daniil says. “Or, no, what do you call them—your Lines?”
Burakh lets his hand drop, a marionette with its strings cut, and it slaps against his thigh.
“We all walk our lines, Bachelor. It’s just a matter of if you know it or not.”
“Victoria aut mors, Burakh. And when death means nothing in this state, why not at least try to fight?”
“You’ve died,” Burakh says. The way he tilts his head, moving around so he can observe Daniil properly, there’s a surgeon’s sharpness in that. “Several times, I’d estimate.”
“I have.”
How can he estimate? What does he see in Daniil that makes him so sure? As far as Daniil is aware, there are no observable physical changes as a result, only an iron vice clamped around his lungs that makes it harder to breathe sometimes, and certainly even Burakh’s keen eyes can’t catch that. No, that was just a guess, wasn’t it? A reasonable guess that Daniil just confirmed.
“I’ll likely die several more times before I get to the blood. Your people are very protective of it.”
Daniil expects anger. This Burakh had been in the middle of an argument with him, after all, those feelings should be fresh at the surface. He should be getting a proper fight out of Burakh, finally.
What he gets instead is the twitch of Burakh’s mouth, something that might have floored him if he hadn’t already been flat on his back. And then Burakh is lowering himself slowly—mindful of that knee—to sit on the floor beside Daniil. Burakh isn’t even facing him, the bastard. Instead, he looks to the opposite bookcase, squinting like he's trying to discern the titles.
“Do you know what that blood is, emshen?” Burakh says, and Daniil wants to strangle him for that gentle, conversational tone. Like they’re friends sat together in companionable silence.
“You weren’t precisely forthcoming about its existence, as you’ll recall,” Daniil says, pointed. He can’t quite muster enough venom in his voice this time, and now he’s just mad at himself for it. “I take it the blood is not, as the Inquisitor’s theory goes, a cache of infected blood from previous sacrifices.”
“She told you that? No. No, it isn’t.”
“Do enlighten me, then, emshen.” No, still not enough venom there. Damn it.
“It’s alive. You know that, right? If you’ve touched it, if you’ve used it, you can feel how alive it is.” As he speaks, Burakh tilts the bottle of blood in his hand this way and that to watch its colours in what scant light comes through the Trammel windows. “You wanted a chimera. Both bull and man. This is better: both bull and god.”
This, Daniil sits up for.
His time in the Termitary has been brief, hostile, and often lethal, so he hasn’t had the time to learn much more than what snippets he’s gleaned from passing conversations about Town, from the ferrymen, from Burakh himself. Even so, he’s vaguely aware of an earth deity they believe in, yes.
He isn’t sure what to do with the implication that said deity might not only be real but tangible. Flesh and blood. Has he observed divinity under a microscope and not known it?
“God?” he says.
This, Burakh looks at him for.
“You can see why we’d be so protective of her,” Burakh says, wry.
“And yet this is the basis of your panacea. She must be a generous god, if she lets you bleed her so often.”
Burakh is silent. And the silence stretches. And Daniil thinks he understands that subtle pull of Burakh’s mouth now.
Familiarity. Consideration. Maybe even sympathy. He’s done this too.
Daniil raises his hand and leans back into the clock.
*
This insider information does not stop him from getting clobbered on his next try, but it does make him somewhat less resentful of it this time. He returns from death to when he had been speaking to Taya Tycheek, promises her a vaccine and a story if she will bring him the ingredients he needs, and leaves.
Burakh is waiting outside the Termitary doors, arms folded, brow drawn. His feet squared with his shoulders, he looks like he’s grown roots.
“I’ve seen prettier corpses,” Burakh says.
“That was my line.”
“Not when you look like that. Couldn’t get them out either, huh?”
“Overseer Tycheek’s daughter is one of yours, isn’t she?” Daniil replies instead. “She’s fine, by the way. Stubborn, impossible to have a conversation with, but fine.”
“Good. I knew she would be, but…”
“But a lot of things have changed already, yes. Maybe you’ll finally realise your Lines aren’t nearly so static, hm?”
He pats Burakh’s arm in passing. For once, Burakh doesn’t stop him. Instead, he calls after Daniil with, “You should stop by your hospital, erdem! There are patients who need you!”
Daniil ignores it. Those patients are much better served by him finding another source of blood so he can stop the plague spreading this far in the first place and, anyway, their suffering is about to be undone by a twist of his hand through the fabric of time.
Now then, if the earth is alive and can be tapped for blood, where are her veins?
*
Unsurprisingly, digging is also taboo in this town.
*
It’s ironic that he came here to study death, has been given the power to regularly defeat it on an individual level, and can’t bring his notes across from one iteration to the next. As much as Daniil would like to think he’s capable of holding his observations in his mind, he knows better than to trust in the infallibility of the human brain. Especially when said brain is sleep-deprived, half-starved, and fuzzy with morphine.
Adding insult to injury, the one person he might have been able to compare notes and verify his observations with has shown a profound lack of curiosity in this regard—
Not that Daniil is inclined to go to Burakh with anything at this point.
—while the Kains offer nothing but riddles. He doubts any of them have experienced this themselves. They may have created it, facilitated it, but from the wide-eyed breathlessness when he explains the mechanism of his deaths, none of them have died only to open their eyes to the announcing bong of the clock, feeling just a little more frayed than before.
Although he does now have his suspicions regarding the so-called Leviathan, Simon Kain.
He doubts it would do anything, but Daniil is tempted to write his experiences in a letter to send to his colleagues. If nothing else, it would test whether this time loop is limited to the Town or whether it extends beyond the Town’s limits. He assumes the latter, purely for logistical reasons and the fact that the Olgimskies’ business partners would have noticed something amiss by now, but that has its own terrifying implications that would be fascinating to study.
Of course, this assumes they would receive the letter before Thanatica became a pyre. If he does it early enough, there’s the possibility a messenger could get out of the Town before quarantine and deliver it to the nearest functional train station, but he can control very little beyond that.
This also assumes they wouldn’t think he’d gone and had a nervous breakdown on the steppe—which, frankly, wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Agrafena would believe him, though, he’s sure. It might be worth trying to send her a note, even if only to thank her for her warning letter, and a fresh mind will be able to see the connections between Simon Kain and the strange mechanisms of time here that he, too close to it, has thus far been unable to grasp. Maybe she would understand what this bleeding Focus is.
Daniil gazes out of his window as he considers his wording, crunching idly on coffee beans to keep the exhaustion of his latest death at bay. He died half an hour hence, at 2:58, and is intent on waiting past that point before he returns to the same spot to dig in the hopes the Worm who saw and stopped him might have moved elsewhere by then. He can perhaps afford this little aside.
Some combination of his exhaustion, the bitter grit of coffee beans between his teeth, trying to find the words to explain everything to Agrafena, and the glowing Polyhedron that keeps drawing his eye...All of that collides suddenly to make him pause.
Daniil looks to the base of the impossible tower.
Considers how, even with the Stamatins’ genius, they should not have been able to build a tower from its own blueprints. And, relatedly, even with his own considerable intellect, he hardly has the expertise or the tools necessary to create a proper vaccine.
He used a god’s blood to do so. An earth god. The Polyhedron is anchored into the earth.
Daniil grabs time between his fingers and twists and twists, to when he was last at the Broken Heart.
*
The Kains are loath to risk their masterpiece, which of course makes Vlad the Elder all the happier to throw his weight around in aid of Daniil’s quest. The challenge is finding someone willing to dig in this Town and for that, surprisingly, it’s Vlad the Younger who finally has some use. It almost makes the many, many attempts Daniil has to make to weasel that information out of him worth it.
Under Andrey’s direction, they dig, and they dig, and they dig in the dead of the night.
Soil. Only soil. Iron-tinged, yes, the taste of it in the air and thick on the back of his tongue, but only soil. The iron keeps Daniil digging long after the rest have given up. It has him twist time back so he can ignore Andrey and start in another spot, and another, and another. It has him digging so close to the spike that anchors the Polyhedron to the ground that the children intervene at last, a wave of Dogheads crashing upon Daniil and everyone with him until he is left alone, there, to be dragged off to face Khan’s justice at disturbing the tower.
But still, in the end, only soil.
*
It is 20:48 on the sixth day, still on the floor of the Trammel, and once Daniil has recovered from the timeless inbetween, he says, “It’s underneath the Polyhedron, isn’t it? It is. It has to be.”
It is the start of a conversation, and so time obligingly holds its breath to let them have it in peace.
Burakh shifts on the floor to face him, and the look of undisguised hope that crests the crags of his face is very nearly heartbreaking.
Nearly.
“If you assume I’m going to go back to being your glorified nanny now, Burakh, let me disabuse you of that notion,” Daniil says.
The hope dims, Burakh’s expression shuttering again. But he doesn’t turn away.
“I get why you’re upset,” Burakh says. “Maybe I should have had more faith in you.”
“Touching.”
“You have to understand, Daniil. To save the Town, I had to tear down the Polyhedron, and for you, the Polyhedron was...It was like nothing else mattered. I found you in the middle of a bloodbath, all for the sake of saving that thing. It was the centre of your world.”
“Not my world,” Daniil says. Slowly. Deliberately. “His world. It wasn’t me you found, it was him. The Daniil Dankovsky who was in your attempt, trying to fight impossible odds and not realising you already had the secret to it all. Of course he latched onto every miraculous thing.”
The poor man hadn’t realised that he and Burakh were playing entirely different games.
Daniil does try to sympathise with this alter self, but it gets harder and harder every time Burakh equates them to each other. Vita ante acta and he is being judged in comparison. And, he’s fairly sure, found lacking. And the way Burakh looks at Daniil like he sees the bloody beating pulp at the centre of him...the way Daniil is certain he does, because that Dankovsky showed him…
Daniil sympathises with his alter self. He does. He also hates him.
“The Burakhs in my various attempts are all very adamant to set you apart from them,” Daniil says. “I exercise my right to do the same.”
Burakh’s eyebrows draw together, almost sad.
“He wasn’t so bad, you know,” Burakh says. Because he sees, he knows. “Bloodbath aside, I mean. He was...He tried his best.”
“Oh, I’m sure he did. But trying to solve an epidemic without this handy little ability to reverse time and with no knowledge of the miracle ingredient you found, I imagine his best didn’t amount to much. If he failed, Burakh, it’s because he didn’t have the full picture. Despite your best attempts, I do.”
Burakh winces.
“I only wanted my kids safe. And my Town. If I’d have told you from the very start, there’s miracle blood under the Polyhedron and we need to tear it down, would you have believed me?”
“I can bend time, Burakh. You’ll find there’s a great deal I’m willing to believe in this Town.”
“Yes! You can bend time! And I can’t, not anymore, and I knew—I...thought I knew...I thought, if you had all the information, you’d do what you...what he did before. I thought you’d use it to doom us all.”
“No. What you thought is that if I had all the information, you wouldn’t be the hero anymore.” A beat. “And that I wouldn’t need you.”
Burakh opens his mouth. Closes it. Works his jaw over the words he wants to say and seems to come to the decision that none of them are right, so he remains silent and shifts away from Daniil entirely, leaving Daniil facing only his profile.
There’s something painfully young about him then. The frustrated purse of his mouth, maybe. The hungry hollows of his cheeks. The curl of hair over his furrowed brow. Or maybe it’s the way he’s stroking his thumb up and down and up and down the glass bottle, what looks like an unconscious gesture, just taking comfort in its weight and familiarity.
It brings out something ugly in Daniil, some restlessness in his limbs that urges him to press the advantage, scenting blood in the air and baying for more. He says, “We could have worked together, you and I.”
Burakh shakes his head. At Daniil? At himself? It’s hard to tell and, anyway, it doesn’t matter. Because in a low rumbled whisper, never lifting his eyes from the bottle of magical blood between his hands, he tells Daniil instead about how he killed his god.