Chapter Text
The first thing Julius sees is the pocket watch.
Early afternoon sunlight peeked over rooftops, reaching just beyond the slant of shadow still shielding parts of the open area, and hitting the rim of the watch's brilliant silver casing at the perfect angle. With every minute movement, the light flickered like a winking star in the hand that held it, capturing Julius’ attention as he re-approached the front of the building after taking out the trash. The color of the watch appeared brighter in contrast with the dark glove framing it, and only when Julius came closer did its owner turn his way, their focus now seemingly aimed at him.
(It caused a strange, unpleasant feeling to rise in his chest.)
Realization stops Julius dead in his tracks. He pales upon recognizing the shape of the watch and the distinct clockwork pattern imprinted on its cover, signaling to him that its owner must possess a chromatus. Without further lessening the distance between himself and this person, Julius attempts to confirm that the watch isn’t, in fact, his own.
The design of a pocket watch bestowed upon a chromatus bearer could be likened to the uniqueness of a fingerprint. No two watches should look exactly alike; but from where Julius is standing, this one appears virtually identical to the watch he’d grown accustomed to keeping on him at all times, right down to the placement and color of the printed gears.
It looks the same as the watch that he knows is still in his pocket – though he can’t help but reach down to verify, holding his gaze in place as he does so.
Metal greets metal with a subtle clink when his room key rattles against the watch. The sound is nearly imperceptible, though Julius feels like anyone in the vicinity must have heard it – and that certainly includes the person standing before him. Julius still hasn’t brought himself to look at their face, but he can feel the weight of their scrutiny, searing through him to observe the thoughts spinning in his head.
Julius swallows thickly, keeping his face blank as he struggles to convince himself that he’s mistaken. Maybe the inside design is different. That can’t be his watch. That – that can’t be him; because based on what he’d learned from his father, that would have to mean that this dimension isn’t the–
“Ah, I see,” the man mutters out of nowhere before Julius can even think to say something. His voice is smooth and deep, unlike Julius’ own. The man is maybe twenty at the absolute most, but he carries himself with some degree of coldness that makes him seem even older, more mature.
They also share the same hair color.
The watch is shut with an audible snap, and when that gloved hand closes around it, Julius’ gaze follows along as the sunlight slips from the man’s grasp and travels upwards to his rectangular glasses. The harsh glow obscures his eyes, and the lenses reflect nothing back at Julius while the man finishes his thought.
“I'm guessing you found something you wanted to protect, and then you ran away from home.”
Julius only narrows his eyes at him. He's unsure of how to interpret that empty tone, but also deeply alarmed by what was essentially a confirmation that the man knows who he is – and must surely assume Julius now has some understanding of the situation.
He almost wants to ask what those words meant – if the intended implication was that he hadn’t done the same thing. But then the man starts to move, and right as he takes a step in Julius' direction, Julius turns on his heel and runs toward the back of the building again.
For a fleeting instant, Julius caught a glimpse of the exact shade of blue he sees when he meets his own eyes in a mirror.
Julius knows he shouldn’t be leading him straight to their home, but his aunt is still out, and he can’t leave his little brother all alone in the apartment. He sincerely wishes to be wrong, but chances are astronomically high that the man’s appearance here means the... divergence catalyst has to be nearby, and Julius is afraid it must be Claudia or Ludger. He doesn’t spare even a moment to look back, but he’d heard the man entering the stairwell behind him, following closely and with purpose. Whatever he’s after, Julius feels that he is guiding him right to it.
Worry spurs Julius up the stairs two steps at a time. He swears the man said something, but Julius couldn’t possibly hear him over their echoing footsteps and his own anxious heart drumming in his ears. He can’t say he's feeling particularly inclined to pause and ask him to repeat whatever it was he'd said, either. Julius can sense his already negligible lead dwindling, every step eating away at the precious seconds separating himself from the man.
Julius bursts through the heavy door leading into the third floor corridor. He hardly slows as he sprints down the hallway, throwing his hands out as he rounds the first corner to avoid slamming completely into the wall. Behind him, he hears the door reopen.
Should he have gone higher? Gone to the top floor, maybe, and taken the elevator or the other flight of stairs back down to the third, to shake the man off of his tail? No; even if Julius wasn’t ahead of him, the man probably knows just what floor and what room Julius is headed to.
He retrieves the key from his pocket with urgency, but also care, right before he reaches the entrance to his home, using everything to keep his hands steady as he unlocks it. He'd been gone for hardly a few minutes, but his aunt made sure to drill the habit into him any time he left the apartment, even if it was only to run a quick errand downstairs. Maybe it’s a good thing he’d been outside, but–
“Damn it!” Julius curses under his breath. There’s just not enough time.
Once he's inside, he slams the door shut and locks it again at record speed; though any confidence he had in that layer of security seems to have fled him. These simple locks will do nothing to dissuade the man from merely forcing his way in. Julius yanks the chair closest to him out from beneath their small dining table and wedges it against the door, for whatever that’s worth.
"Nii-chan..?"
Ludger.
Julius almost didn’t hear him. Ludger's voice was quiet, muffled by the wall separating the living area from the single shared bedroom where Julius had left him, curled up and napping beneath a hand-me-down hoodie that practically swallowed him whole. The noise must have woken him.
Julius hurries into their room – closing that door behind him, as well – and finds Ludger in the process of clambering off of their bed to meet him. He ignores Ludger for the moment, instead striding across the room to the closet. He climbs onto the short step-stool kept inside and reaches for the uppermost shelf, pulling out the thin box that stored a trusted pair of blades.
Even now, Julius regularly practices his swordsmanship on the roof of their apartment building, striving to refine and build onto the techniques he'd been taught when he still lived under his father. Though it'd been nearly three years since he abandoned his immediate duties to the clan, Julius still trained tirelessly, driven by the promise he made to Claudia that he would keep her and Ludger from all harm.
It was pure coincidence that night he overheard his grandfather on the phone with Claudia, speaking with hushed words of a plan to gather her belongings and find a secure place for her to stay. Julius followed in secret when his grandfather left to meet with her, and despite his responsibilities, despite all of their arguing against him, Julius just… He just couldn’t stand the thought of letting his aunt, who he loved so dearly, go into hiding alone. Not after the unexpected loss of his own mother, and not when Claudia had spent so much of those long months looking after him herself. When on that same night he discovered Claudia was also pregnant, Julius, in an uncharacteristic display of acting his own age, tried to make it very clear that he’d have to be physically dragged back to the manor if they wanted him to leave.
Apparently his stubbornness paid off in the end. From that point forward, he decided that he would protect the two of them and become someone they could depend on. If Claudia wanted to live a normal life with her actual son, without the familial pressures and duties hanging over their heads, then Julius would do whatever he could to ensure they could have that. He wanted Claudia to have that. She deserved to have that.
She and Ludger both do, and Julius can’t let all of this be taken from them.
The watch still sits in his pocket, though he isn’t sure how much good having it will do. He kept it with him whenever he trained without Claudia's awareness. Knowing she didn’t want him to try using its power brought him considerable guilt; though even after these last few years, the watch had yet to grant him its strength.
Julius still felt the weight of his father's expectations on his shoulders, pushing him to chase after a strength that would not come so quickly, so simply, to a child like himself – a strength that he feared he would never be able to attain, no matter how much of himself he poured in to someday making it his own. Still, he stayed up for hours into the innumerable nights, knowing that he needed to fight through his insecurities. Whether or not the watch ever worked, he naively believed he would just procure the strength to protect on his own.
Julius doesn’t doubt he could hold his own against the average burglar or Spirius grunt, but this is completely different.
That man – an older version of himself – would already have gained the strength Julius is still seeking. Julius is currently the only one who can stand in the way of the destruction of their world, but it would be foolish to believe even for a moment that he has any real chance of winning this battle.
There's no way around it: challenging that man directly is out of the question, and so is using himself as a diversion. For Ludger’s safety, Julius must prioritize keeping him close and avoiding unnecessary risk. If he’s to escape through the front door with Ludger in tow, then he's going to have to rely on his wits and sheer luck to create an opening for the both of them.
Julius thinks he might have a plan: one that feels solid in theory, although putting it into motion depends entirely on his capability to get Ludger and himself out of this room. There’s little optimism to be found in the thought of pulling this off within such a narrow timeframe, but Julius has to make it work. He needs to.
He takes his swords into his hands, gripping onto them in the way he’d found felt the most natural, and exhales an airy, "Okay.”
After he’s back on the ground, Ludger speaks.
"Nii-chan, what was that noise?" he asks, rubbing his eye against the back of one hand and tugging at Julius' shirt from behind with the other. When Julius turns, Ludger gets a good look at his face – and instantly, the curiosity in own sleepy expression shifts to a mixture of confusion and concern. “What’s wrong?”
Julius takes a deep breath and kneels in front of him, concealing his apprehension behind a flimsy smile that he can only hope his perceptive little brother won't see right through.
“Don’t worry,” Julius says, somehow stopping his nerves from spilling into his voice while he offers the best thing he can come up with on the spot. “It looks like a monster wandered into the city from the highroad and made its way into the building. I’m gonna go take care of it, so I want you to stay in the closet 'til I come back.”
There's a loud bam! outside of their room: likely the man trying to kick his way in. Ludger jumps at the sound, automatically leaning in and clinging to Julius, hiding his face against his shoulder.
"That sounded scary," Ludger whimpers quietly. "Don't go out there."
"Hey," Julius manages a weak laugh, aiming to ease Ludger’s fears at least somewhat. "That's what big brothers are for, right? Taking care of all the scary things?"
Ludger pulls away slightly, responding with another whine and an affirmative nod. He seems unsure, but he also doesn't think to ask why Julius – who is still very much a kid himself – would even need to be involved with this in the first place; nor does Ludger wonder how a single monster could have reached this far into the city, much less this specific building, which isn't exactly close to the outskirts.
Julius continues, speaking clearly and calmly. "But if it looks like staying here might become too dangerous, I'll call for you. When I do, you're going to run as fast as you can out the front door. Don't stop for any reason, and don’t look back. Just keep going and head for the second stairwell past the elevator. Once you get there, I want you to –”
Ludger flinches again when they hear the door being kicked open and the chair clattering against the floor. Julius knows this means they're out of time, so he shoots back onto his feet, completing his instructions and then ushering Ludger to the back of the closet.
"Got it?" Julius asks him in a whisper, setting his swords down for a moment to ruffle Ludger’s hair, then reaching for his hood and pulling it over his head. "I need to make sure you understand.”
"I do," Ludger replies without delay. His pleading eyes remain fixed on Julius when he backs away, blades in hand again as he slides the door nearly shut, leaving a sliver of light with Ludger in the closet. "But – but wait, what about you? Will you be okay? I-I don't wanna go by myself."
Julius really doesn’t like lying to Ludger. He rarely does, if he can help it.
Ludger's inquisitive babbles eventually grew into probing questions about the world or their family as the months of living together became years. Julius could only answer with missing truths and half-lies that a tongue still so used to bluntness could not form without an awkward beat of hesitation. Sometimes it seemed Ludger could easily tell whenever Julius was hiding some of the details.
Claudia apparently thought it was cute, often failing to hide her laughter whenever she needed to rescue Julius with lies that flowed more naturally than his own; though Julius knew she disliked keeping Ludger out of the loop about certain things just the same, even if it was necessary.
Julius knows he needs to get better at lying, so he instead pretends his next words are the utmost truth, speaking them in a measured tone that bears enough casual confidence to convince he and Ludger both that there is little need to doubt them.
"Of course I'll be okay,” he states simply, parting then with one final reassurance. “And I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”