Lady Midnight (After the Iratze)

Secret Message

Something was wrong. Julian could feel it in his chest, a tension in the invisible rope that bound him to Emma.

He'd known it as soon as he woke up, later than usual because of the nightmare that had interrupted his sleep. It was 9:15. Emma always woke him up for training by nine, if not earlier. He had rushed to her room and pushed the door violently open, already suspecting that she wouldn't be there. She felt distant, as if the bond between them had been stretched out like a rubber band. Still unwilling to accept it, he'd raced downstairs to the kitchen where his younger siblings and Cristina sat around the breakfast table eating cereal.

He watched them now, yawning lazily and chatting with one another, not knowing that Emma was almost certainly in danger. Panic rose in his chest as he scanned the room again, checking to make sure he had not glanced over her. She wasn't there. His parabatai was missing.

"Has anyone seen Emma?" He heard the tone of desperate panic in his own voice. All talk ceased as the other children of the Institute turned toward him.

"No," said Dru, the first to speak. "You guys?" The word 'no' echoed around the room, and the dread in Julian's heart seemed to solidify.

"Something's wrong," he said, and his hand involuntarily rose to his bare chest to cover his parabatai rune. Looking down, he realized he hadn't even gotten dressed. He was only wearing the old Lakers basketball shorts he usually slept in. Normally he might have been embarrassed for Cristina to see him like this, but not now. He had zero consideration for modesty right now.

"Dios mio," said Cristina, rising from her seat and stepping toward him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "What is it Julian? Is Emma ok? Is she hurt? Did I miss something last night? Maybe one of those Eidolon demons got her with something poisonous, and I missed it..." She grabbed her medallion with her left hand, as she always did when she was really worried. It was one of the only ways anyone could ever tell when Cristina got upset, because she was always so calm and levelheaded.

"No, it's not that..." Julian hesitated. "She's alive, and I don't think she's physically hurt. But something feels wrong. She's not here for one thing, and I can feel the distance. And I think she's...scared." The emotion had been hard to put his finger on, because Emma was almost never afraid. She had told him just over a week ago, when she had broken down in the back of the car after healing him, that she had not been afraid since they had become parabatai until that night. Whatever was scaring her now, it must be bad.

"Emma, scared?" Livvy piped up from the table. "You sure she's not just angry?"

"She's angry too, I definitely feel that. But this is bad, you guys. I don't know what to do. I don't know where she is or how to reach her. Uncle Arthur's not here and we have to find her!" His voice rose at the end, sounding alien to him. He was not usually one to panic. But this was Emma, and he didn't even know what was going on, so how was he supposed to help her? A voice in the back of his mind seemed to speak. You can't protect her. Just like you couldn't protect your parents, or Mark. You're useless, and Emma would be better off without you as a parabatai.

Ty, Livvy, Dru, and Tavvy went to go search the Institute for any clues to where Emma might have been taken, or who might have taken her. Julian just stayed where he was, standing with his hand on his chest, trying to escape from the maddening accusations that clouded his mind. After a few minutes, he realized Cristina was speaking to him.

"Julian? Julian? Jules!" She slapped him lightly on the face to bring him back to reality. "What's going on in your head?" She sounded annoyed, like maybe she thought he was formulating a plan and she wanted to be included.

"Nothing," he said shakily. "I was just thinking about how useless I am as a parabatai. I can't protect her."

She slapped him again, this time with a little more vigor. "Shut up, Julian, and snap out of it!" Her voice was strict and firm, like a scolding teacher. It was harsh, but not unkind. Cristina was good at that kind of thing. As the eldest child of the Institute, she had looked after the younger Blackthorn children along with Julian and Emma. Despite the fact that they hadn't known her as long, the Blackthorns respected and listened to her. Now Julian was benefitting from her down-to-earth authoritative manner as well. He raised his head to look at her, silently pleading for her to continue talking sense into him.

Her eyes softened as she continued in a more gentle tone. "¿Estas loco? You are crazy if you think you're useless to Emma. She needs you, Julian. You two are the most closely bonded parabatai I've ever seen. You're so in-sync it's like you communicate telepathically or something." She smiled encouragingly.

"Well, not telepathically..." he shrugged and allowed himself a small smile, thinking about how he and Emma had learned long ago to communicate without speaking aloud. Almost as soon as they had learned to read, they'd learned to trace letters onto one another in order to talk. It was like their own secret language, something that only the two of them shared.

That's it! In an instant, Julian was bolting down the corridor toward the training room. He flung the doors open with all his strength and took a mad dash toward the wall of weapons. Selecting a knife at random, he began to carve into the flesh on the under side of his left forearm. Blood rolled from his skin and poured into the floor. There were jagged lines marring the smooth skin that seconds ago had been unmarked. His eyes burned and blurred from the pain, but he smiled at the wounds he had inflicted upon himself.

Cristina, who had followed him, screamed as she saw him standing over a pool of his own blood, which was still pulsing out of him, streaming in rivulets across his mutilated arm. She stepped toward him, looking horrified, reaching out to take the dagger. Then she looked down at his wounds from above, and understanding dawned on her face.

"Oh!" she gasped, one hand flying to cover her mouth and the other to clutch her medallion.

The jagged lines had not been carved at random. They were a message. A message that only Julian and Emma would be able to understand, not only because they each could feel what the other felt, but because they had trained for this for years. For any other pair of parabatai, this type of injury would have felt like senseless pain. But Emma would recognize the pattern; recognize the letters that Julian had written on his flesh, written in his blood. A-R-E-Y-O-U-O-K-?

Julian met Cristina's gaze, which held a mixture of shock, horror, and admiration. Ever practical, she quickly composed herself and spoke in that reassuring, businesslike tone. "But how will you know if she responds? You'll feel your own pain too much to sense anything she writes back, won't you?"

"I need an iratze," Julian admitted.

Cristina swiftly pulled her stele from the pocket of her dark jeans and drew a careful, precise healing rune just above the crux of his elbow. The blood stopped flowing, the grooves of open flesh began to shrink, and his skin began knitting itself back together. Within a minute all pain was gone and the skin looked pink, but firm and healthy.

They waited, both of them holding their breath, hoping against hope.

Then Julian winced in pain and clutched his forearm. It was not really his arm that was hurting, but Emma's. He stood concentrating for a moment, reading the message in the invisible lines of pain. Thank the Angel, she's writing back. He sighed in relief.

When he looked up, he saw Cristina peering at him expectantly. She was practically bouncing on the tips of her toes in anticipation.

"Oh," he said with a smirk, "Did you want to know what she said?"

And he flinched away too late as Cristina's hand came up to slap him yet again. Three might be a record for one day. At least I deserved that one.

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A/N: Comment if you want to know what she said!!! :P