Chapter Text
Szayel is half-heartedly grinding down a dry stick of liquorice root when he hears the door to the apothecary creak open.
“I’m closed,” he shouts without looking up from the mortar’s quartz speckles, sinking his cheek deeper into the palm of his hand.
He’d long pulled the curtains shut at the front of the shop and more recently considered finally sending himself off to bed, but he resolved to finish an ointment order now. Tomorrow morning would no doubt be a tumult; his shipment of lion bones and scorpion tails was expected and the dock boys were outrageously incompetent at being able to comprehend words such as ‘dangerous goods’, ‘hazardous materials,’ and ‘handle with caution’. Nice to look at, especially on a hot summer’s day, but about as intelligent as a bag of rocks.
The door slams shut. Some shuffling through the shop. He doesn’t have clear vision through the dark and rows of cabinets and shelves stocked with various treatments and apparatuses.
“I do so loathe repeating myself…”
Szayel is interrupted by the blade of a great axe splintering into his bench only inches from his mortar, nearly cleaving the solid wood into half.
His eyes follow the line of the great axe’s handle up to its wielder, a tower of a man with a grin wider than Szayel’s head. He tightens his grip on the pestle as if it’s anything more than a pebble against this giant.
“You some kind of quack, or do you know how to fix a guy up?” The giant’s voice booms so loudly Szayel thinks the tenants beside him might hear, but his tone is lazy and drawling. His tongue must be as fat as his gut.
“Who says I can’t be both?” Szayel narrows his eyes. “If I do turn out to be a quack, you’d no doubt be back around with that,” he looks pointedly at the great axe, “and it’d be in my skull instead.”
“You gonna help me or not?”
Some big lumbering buffoon who doesn’t know how to process anything besides yes, no, and, oh dear gods above, please don’t kill me.
“What do you need?” And how much are you going to pay me, Szayel thinks, but doesn’t say, in case two questions at once is too much to process.
The giant pulls his tunic apart to reveal a mottled, wet looking wound over his entire stomach. “Gotta deal with this.”
“You don’t say,” Szayel mutters as he leans closer. He’s more drawn to the tattoo in the centre of the giant’s chest, a filled black circle. The simplicity of it is somehow harrowing, as if he half expects the giant’s heart and lungs and all to fall out of it. “In recent years, the Auditors College of Physicians has recommended that apothecaries should transition away from providing invasive medical services of the sort you are seeking —”
The giant stares blankly at him before his thick lips twist in frustration. “The fuck are you on about?”
Szayel sighs. “Go lie down,” he gestures to the cot in the office behind him. “Five silvers. You pay extra for destroying my poor workbench with your unnecessary brutishness.”
The giant’s shadow looms large over Szayel as he unsheathes his great axe from the table, nearly wedging it into the ceiling as he swings it over his shoulder. “You get it after. If you do it good.”
“If I do it well,” Szayel says. “I said I was closed, didn’t I? I’m doing you a favour no matter how well I do.”
A wide grin tears the giant’s face, but it’s matched with a terrible darkness in his eyes. His huge hand comes down around Szayel’s throat, not even needing to squeeze to feel his little rabbit heart trembling
“Big mouth,” the giant rumbles.
“Yammy.” A voice sounds from between the rows full of tinctures. Both Szayel and the giant look over to a wisp of an elf, black-haired and pale. Szayel never noticed him come in. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Yeah,” the giant Yammy mutters as if the reprimand finally knocked something together in his head. He heaves over to the cot, so small for him that he can lay down with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Szayel rinses his hands in a water basin, hangs a fresh oil lamp above Yammy’s abdomen, and pulls up a stool to his bedside. It’s difficult to inspect the wound with the little elf staring at him from by the door still, strategically standing in such a way to be in perfect eyesight of the back room.
He clears his throat. “I’m beginning to think,” he says, loud enough for the elf to hear, “that I shouldn’t have laughed at that witch in the market last week. All her evil eye charms might have some use after all.”
The elf gets the hint and starts to move. Except he only walks straight into the room to watch Szayel more closely. Szayel clicks his tongue, exasperated.
“Shut your mouth and hurry up,” Yammy snaps.
“Don’t worry, there is no charge for the privilege of hearing my lovely voice.” Szayel shakes the elf’s spider-crawl gaze off and gets to work. It’s late enough already. “How did this happen to you?”
“It’s a burn,” the elf interjects.
“I can see that,” Szayel’s fingers skim over the crispy edges of the wound. “From what?”
Yammy’s chest grumbles with a laugh. “A huge fuckin’ acid-spitting wyvern!” His fists clench as if he’s reliving the apparent thrill.
Szayel spreads out a leather roll of small, precise metal tools. “As your designated medical practitioner for the evening, I must dutifully warn you against fighting acid-spitting wyverns.” He cuts away the dead, flaky skin and scrapes at any debris caught in the oozing, fresh pink flesh beneath the patches of blisters. “I suppose you needed to save your little friend here from this wyvern, valiant man you are.”
Yammy doesn’t seem to detect any amount of sarcasm. If he did, Szayel’s head would have already been crushed. He’s distinctly aware of the fact that he needs to stop testing his luck, before it’s too late.
“Nah.” Yammy waves his huge hand at the elf. “I stepped on its tail by accident. Ulquiorra ripped its heart outta its chest.”
“Did he now,” Szayel hums absentmindedly as he peels away the last of the dead flesh. He pours a small vase of an antiseptic solution over the wound followed by a slathering of ointment. “Sit up,” and wraps Yammy’s entire torso with clean linens.
Yammy shrugs his tunic back on, but his fingers are too big and clumsy to do up the hook-and-eyes. His breath comes out fuming from his nostrils on the fifth attempt.
Ulquiorra is watching him struggle almost sadistically. But Szayel is also watching, absently wiping down his tools. “Don’t rip it,” Ulquiorra warns Yammy.
“You do it, then!”
The elf’s eyes narrow. “I wouldn’t humiliate myself.”
“Gah!” Yammy resigns himself to leaving his tunic open, stomping into the front of the shop.
Szayel lurches off his stool when he realizes Yammy is leaving entirely. “You can’t just leave —” the front door slams shut, little bottles of tinctures clinking together, “without paying me…”
Ulquiorra silently digs beneath his long white cloak and throws an uncounted handful of silvers onto the cot, into the dent caused by Yammy’s bulk. Szayel’s fingers twitch at his sides, but he doesn’t want to be seen scrambling to gather his coin. He finds himself at an impasse with the elf, caught in his miasmic gaze.
“Where did you train?” Ulquiorra asks.
“The Sovereign's Library,” he replies. “And before that the university. It’s not just a pretty face that you pay for, but an academic pedigree.”
“Do people often care about what their doctor looks like?”
“I think everyone likes something nice to look at.” Szayel doesn’t try to hide his roving, discerning eyes up and down the elf’s figure. “Did you really kill a wyvern, or is all the meat in your friend’s head so thick he can’t even remember what he had for breakfast?”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.” Ulquiorra clips his cloak closed at the shoulder, though he was already drowning in its fabric. “I did kill it.”
“With what?”
“My hands,” Ulquiorra says, flatly, as though it should be self-evident.
Szayel shakes his head, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I think the both of you are very funny. Now I mean it in the most politest terms when I ask you to please get out.”
Ulquiorra leaves without hesitation, and Szayel had never fallen asleep faster before than the moment his head met his pillow.
“Is this where academic pedigree belongs?”
A voice catches Szayel in the middle of a glass of wine at the local, unfortunate tavern.
He lets his sip burn the back of his throat all the way down before he turns around in his tall seat to see the elf from his apothecary.
“Ulquiorra,” he purrs, remembering his name only by the shape it takes in his mouth. It tastes like poison. Or he’s being given a very direct hint by the bartender to stop coming around. “How unpleasurable to see you again.”
“I paid you."
“You kept me up until two hours before sunrise.”
“You shouldn’t have been in your shop so late.”
Szayel raises an eyebrow, a languid smile pulling at his lips. “That’s what academic pedigree demands of a person.”
“Then don’t complain.”
“You don’t strike me as a bar crawler, either,” Szayel changes the subject quickly.
The elf shrugs one shoulder.
“Really, this doesn’t strike me as a usual place for you to haunt.” He chooses his words deliberately.
“I’m hunting,” Ulquiorra replies.
“For wyvern hearts?” Szayel smirks over the rim of his cup.
“Not tonight.”
“Ah,” Szayel hums in understanding. “Carnal desires, carnal desires.”
“Something like that,” Ulquiorra says, unsettlingly. Szayel wants to continue to believe that all Ulquiorra wants from the tavern is some burly slice of a man. Well, that’s competition for him.
“I assume you’re not from the area.”
“No.”
Szayel waits for a moment, but Ulquiorra doesn’t elaborate. He’s fascinating in a way that makes Szayel want to run with his tail tucked between his legs. And straight to that witch. “What brings you and your brute here? Speaking of, where is he?”
“Work.” Ulquiorra lazily points with one bony, crooked finger upstairs to the balcony that oversees the ground level. Yammy is chugging a flagon of ale with a group of rowdy men cheering him on.
“Work,” Szayel repeats in a mutter as he watches Yammy slam down the emptied drink and pick up another, to the great glee of everyone gathered around him. A few exchange money, but don’t look any less happy as they part with coin. The entertainment must be worth it. “Is that work?”
“It is for Yammy.”
“You need a drink, too, I think.” Szayel doesn’t offer to buy him one, because frankly he doesn’t want to bear the cost. He’s already paid for enough tonight, and he should start prowling for someone to leech off.
“I don’t drink.”
“What, not anything?” Szayel laughs, but Ulquiorra just stares at him blankly in a way that makes him think yes, probably, Ulquiorra hasn’t eaten or drank in decades, and it’s not even out of the realm of possibility.
Ridiculous. He’s had enough.
“I can’t say it’s been lovely or enlightening to converse with you, but…” Szayel trails off as he slides from his seat. “Well, that’s all, really. Enjoy your time in the city, as you… work.”
Ulquiorra doesn’t stop him, just turns and withers away into a crowd, like he’d never been there at all.
On Szayel’s way home, alone and unsatisfied, a mob of ravens flutter above the street, piercing the fullness of the moon. They land to roost on top on his shop as a single black mass, cawing and clicking beaks and talons.
Seeds, some of them squawk.
Bread, another. Beer.
Szayel snorts as he listens to them repeat the words to each other. Some drunkard from the tavern was teaching ravens how to order for him. How darling.
He digs through his trouser pockets for his key ring. He usually keeps it on the right. It’s not there.
Blood, he thinks he hears one of the ravens croak.
He doesn’t think ravens are even nocturnal creatures.
Keys not in the left pocket either. The back ones? Empty.
Blood.
Szayel feels a trickle of panic creep hot up his neck, his fingers hasty and clumsy as he goes through all his pockets again as though his keys will suddenly materialize if he only checks once more.
Desperately, he checks the loops on his belt, though he never attaches anything besides herb pouches there.
Blood!
A subtle jingle in his ear. Szayel pats at the breast pocket on his overcoat, the lumpy shape of his keyring beneath the fabric. He swallows his heart back down his throat and rips through each key until he finds the one for the apothecary door. He jams it in and bolts the door behind himself, catching a thin breath.
Scared of a bird saying bread with a strange accent? Birds don’t even have lips, or teeth. It can’t say either of those things correctly.
“Stop it,” Szayel whispers to himself, pulling a hand through his hair.
Blood, he can still hear it cawing from inside the apothecary. Blood.
His dreams are plagued with strange white-robed wyvern hunters.
In the next few days, nothing goes right for Szayel.
It’s almost comical, actually, the fifth time a perfectly stable chemical spontaneously combusts in a flask. Almost.
But it’s not just the fact that he keeps misplacing his glasses when he never used to before, or finds things mislabelled and has to restart an entire prescription. Stranger things are happening than that.
He hasn’t gotten more than a handful of hours of sleep because something is always scratching at the roof. At the end of the week, Szayel finally clambered up there with a ladder and found nothing. Well, not the thing that left enormous claw marks scored into the stone slabs. Then he went up there the next morning to set a trap and the roof was completely unmarred.
So, he’s being haunted, and he’s not going to admit it, not even to himself.
Because that’s an absurd conclusion to come to. Szayel is a well-educated man of rationality, and he believes in only what he observes in the world of the material.
Though, hadn’t he seen those claw marks appear and disappear in the real world…?
A dangerous red string to pursue. Maybe the roof had been replaced while he’d been out. An introductory lecture in architectural engineering in his second year of studies tells him it’s unlikely to do such a thing in only a few hours. Logic chimes in to say he didn’t go anywhere that day.
He was dreaming, no doubt. Sleep walking, trapped in that strange place between reality and fancy because he’d been so deprived.
He hasn’t smoked the things that make him really hallucinate in several months.
Then he steps out from his apothecary one morning and sees his brother, and he thinks, truly, someone has been poisoning him with something psychotropic.
Szayel fixes a hard stare at his brother who is leaning against the doorframe, evidently waiting for him. He continues walking quickly, their shoulders brushing past.
“Hey!” Yylfordt jolts in surprise, not having expected to be ignored. He grabs the strip of Szayel’s stole floating behind him. “Hold on!”
Szayel slaps Yylfordt’s hand away. “I’m not interested.”
“Roro, I have to talk to you about something—”
“Yes,” Szayel hisses, turning on his heels to face his brother. “You need something from me. Not this time. I’m not giving you anything.”
Yylfordt’s expression leaps from emotion to emotion. “I need— me, it was always you— never mind, just fucking listen to me this time.”
“You’re the one with the failing hearing, given how little you ever listened to me!”
Yylfordt makes a noise that can only be compared to a growl, and punches Szayel in the jaw. Szayel stumbles back against the corner of an alley entrance, the sharp angle of the wall hard against his spine. He works his jaw, feeling it crack and pop, and the ringing in his ears subsides quickly.
Yylfordt held back. That pisses him off just a little bit more.
Aware of how undignified it is, but not caring enough to stop himself, Szayel yanks Yylfordt into the alley by a fistful of his long blonde hair. Yylfordt doesn’t manage to catch himself from falling onto the cobblestones, but he takes Szayel down with him, hooking Szayel’s neck in the crook of his arm.
Then Yylfordt pins Szayel by the shoulders, plants his weight on his stomach, and winds Szayel with a well-placed strike to the front of his chest.
Szayel knows his brother has always been more powerful than him, stronger and built better, but it never made him reconsider a fight, even if he always ended up in this same position.
It was unseemly and unruly, but their birthright was degeneracy.
Szayel guards himself with his forearms, but Yylfordt’s fists connect with the sensitive flat of bone on the side of his arm and the pain immediately blossoms into hot, tender welts. He flings one of his knees up and rams it into Yylfordt’s back, throwing him off Szayel. Heaving his breaths, Szayel turns onto his stomach and grabs at Yylfordt’s leg as his brother tries to squirm away. Yylfordt wriggles his leg as Szayel’s hand slips further down to his ankle.
Yylfordt props himself up against the wall of the alley, and Szayel does the same opposite him, his sweaty palms losing grip. They pant out the last of their adrenaline, practically able to hear each others’ heartbeats.
“So, little brother,” Yylfordt says between gulping breaths. “Want to listen to me now?”
“Not particularly.” Szayel scrubs a hand down his face, smearing a few drops of blood from his nose onto his fingers. “But it seems like I don’t have much of a choice.”
“You don’t,” Yylfordt agrees. “Someone will hunt you down.”
Szayel frowns. He thinks of something green. “An odd choice of words.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Tell me what you want. Quickly, so you can leave faster.”
“I thought you would have changed even a little bit by now.”
“On the contrary,” Szayel drawls, letting his hair fall in dirtied-up strands across his face. “I am worse than ever.”
“I believe it.” Yylfordt tilts his head back into the alley wall, props his knees up to let his arms dangle over them. “We need a doctor.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. We may not even require a stitch.”
“Not us,” Yylfordt gestures between the two of them. “We as in—“ he pauses with a troubled look on his face, “I’m part of a mercenary group.”
“For fuck’s sake, Yylfordt.”
“So we need someone with… How should I say…”
“This is the most I’ve ever seen you think. You know you look like you’re trying to piss out a stone when you do it?”
“Questionable morals.”
Szayel chortles. “Not me.”
“Oh, don’t—“
“I have rather few morals to be questioned.”
Yylfordt rolls his eyes. “Always with the theatrics.”
“I learned from you, my older brother.”
“We were born only ten minutes apart.” He gets up, dusting off his trousers and tunic. Szayel only now notices his clothing is pure white, crispy tailored and trimmed with black thread so intricately detailed it looks solid from afar. The image of a wyvern floats through Szayel’s mind.
“And you probably kicked me out of the way so you could be first.” Szayel only gets up after Yylfordt offers him a hand, a firm and warm grip pulling him to his feet. “But what your natal mind failed to realize is that being an older brother comes with a duty to protect. Somehow, introducing me to mercenaries doesn’t quite line up.”
“If I was trying in any way to protect you, I wouldn’t have just tried to break every bone in your face.”
Szayel avoids prodding at his cheek to assess the damage. He’d just make it worse, even if Yylfordt wasn’t really giving it his all.
“I know I’ve never asked, or wanted to know,” Yylfordt says, “but do I know you don’t follow whatever Imperial rules there are for doctors. Not all the time. I’d be hung by dusk if I went door to door asking every doctor if they would be willing to do this.”
“There is at least a bit of sense in that head of yours.” Szayel reconfigures his stole around his neck, straightening the long bands over his chest. “What is it, then?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know what the job is either.”
“This is a joke.”
“They said they needed a doctor. No questions asked, from either side. Ah. No. There’s one question.”
“Which is?”
“Yes or no?” Yylfordt stares him down, searching every millimetre of Szayel’s gold irises.
Szayel runs his tongue along the ridges of his teeth. They’re opposites, he notes not for the first time, their palettes reflecting back on each other. They may have come into the world together, but that’s where the similarities end. Oil and water. They won’t be leaving it together either.
“No,” Szayel says.
“No?” Yylfordt echoes, incredulous.
“Don’t involve me in your nonsense, Yylfordt. I can’t leave everything in my life, like how you left yours. And all of it to join some mercenaries.”
Yylfordt’s face hardens. The camaraderie vanishes. “I didn’t leave. You told me to go.”
“It was the same action in the end, wasn’t it? You leaving.”
“As if you care.” Yylfordt hangs his head, tucks his chin to his chest. “I don’t know why you pretend like this. It makes you happy to see people hurt, doesn’t it? You enjoy that I left, so you can use it against me.”
Szayel grins, protectively. “I told you I was worse than ever before.”