Chapter Text
Growing up, Nicolò had always known that if he was meant to be with another person at all, it would be with another beta, like himself. God had blessed alphas and omegas with the gift of fertility, had commanded them to pair up, had ordained them to be fruitful and multiply. The betas were still his children, of course, particularly well-suited to a life within the church, a life of service to others, a life undistracted by family.
Nicolò had a secret, though.
He was attracted not only to the beta women he was expected to like, pretty and demure, but he also found himself attracted to beta men. It was strange but not unheard of.
What’s more, he often found himself gazing absentmindedly at another person only to realize, as their scent reached him, that the person was not another beta, as he had assumed, but that he had been drawn in by an alpha, or an omega.
He knew this was far more serious than his attraction to other beta men.
It was an abomination for a beta to interfere in the sacred interplay that God had intended for all alphas and omegas, or for a fertile human to dally with a beta when no children could come of it.
Near fourteen years of age, Nicolò finally concluded that he was just malformed, somewhere deep inside, to lust after people of any and every sex and presentation combination. Once he had this realization, he no longer tried to make sense of his attractions; it no longer mattered much. The most logical thing to do was to join the church, the highest calling for betas like himself, and therefore preempt his yearnings altogether. The worst sin he could commit was to tempt an alpha or an omega into wasting their childbearing years in pursuit of a patrilineal dead-end like himself.
That was what he thought was the worst possible sin he could realistically commit. Until he joined the Crusades.
It had made so much sense when the call came down from the Pope. Betas had a special obligation to leave their homes and wrest the site of Jesus’s resurrection away from the Moslems, so that the rest of Christendom could stay home and care for their families. Joining the droves of betas prepared for war were many alpha criminals, assured that they could wash away their sins forever if they took up arms against the heretics.
Nicolò had a sinking feeling, as he watched the sacking of Jerusalem, that there were some overwhelming downsides to filling out an army with people who had already proven themselves too beastly to conduct themselves according to their society’s mores.
Nicolò had played a part, it was true, in allowing this day to come to pass. He had cut down three of the city’s defenders. Was it really so shocking to see what happened when Jerusalem’s warriors were dead?
...It was. Nicolò hadn’t thought so far ahead -- had harbored fleeting fantasies of perhaps a treaty of some kind -- the city’s rulers signing their land over to Pope Urban II -- maybe a celebratory feast within the city’s walls (as unlikely as that was, given the dearth of food on both sides, but Nicolò’s stomach was prone to wishful thinking). He had not imagined this.
It was in this long, drawn out, neverending moment of horror, transfixed by the screams of omegas against the backdrop of Jerusalem’s native churches, that Nicolò met his very first demise. The Arab had crept up behind him, and Nicolò turned too late to bring his sword up against the man’s spear, but not so late that he could not take advantage of his foe slipping on a blood-slick cobblestone and slice deeply into his side as they fell to the ground together.
Darkness crept in on Nicolò’s vision swiftly, and despite his miasma of pain and fear, he also felt an acute gratitude that he would be set free from this hellscape of war.
You know what happened after that. Nicolò was not set free. He woke from murky visions of two pale women as the Arab, also deathless, pulled his spear from his torso, and in his shock to see Nicolò convulse with life, stabbed Nicolò with it again, in much the same spot, even as it was slowly healing. Nicolò perished a second time.
He came upon the Arab again in the night whilst seeking out a place to hide from comrade and foe alike, for he desperately wished to close his eyes and be unaware of his surroundings if only for a few short hours. Adrenaline surged through him at the sight of the familiar face of the man who had fatally wounded him twice, and he sliced clean across the man’s throat, chopping off the ends of his beard in the process.
The man grappled at his throat as he collapsed to the ground, blood gushing between his fingers, and revulsion filled Nicolò at the sight. He sank to the floor to kneel at his side, choking with instant regret, clutching the man’s shoulders, a pointless and wretched apology stuck in his throat. His reward for this moment of insanity was a dagger shoved under his ribs.
When Nicolò awoke next, he could hear the man coughing and wheezing next to him. He rolled away stiffly and pulled himself to his knees. He waited for the man to catch his bearings, for his eyes to stop darting frantically this way and that, for him to sit up and touch his neck with disbelief and fear, staring at Nicolò.
Nicolò held his hands flat up in front of him and knee-walked sideways, putting distance between himself and his sword. “No,” he said, in what little Greek he knew, hoping this man was educated. “No kill. No sword.” He licked dust off his lips. The other man watched him warily. Nicolò looked at the blood-stained hands of the other man for a beat, then back up into his eyes. “I am sorry.”
The man narrowed his eyes at that and spat something in Arabic at him, unmistakably a curse of some kind. Perhaps that meant he was educated, Nicolò thought ruefully, since his response seemed to be a reaction to Nicolò’s apology.
Nicolò bowed his head in a calculated gesture of vulnerability. The man could have taken advantage of him in that moment, but there was no sound of movement in front of him. Nicolò looked back up. The Arab was staring at him, his face a conflicting mess of emotions: anger, confusion, and fear. Nicolò stood up slowly and offered him his hand. “No kill. No sword,” he repeated. He cast about for another word in his limited Greek vocabulary. “Peace.”
The man stood, but did not let go of Nicolò’s hand. He stared into Nicolò’s eyes, penetrating, judging. Nicolò felt sick shame creeping up in his stomach and struggled not to avert his eyes. “Peace,” the other man returned, finally, and let go of Nicolò's hand.
Slowly, Nicolò bent down to retrieve his sword and sheathed it. The other man put himself in order, and they crept from the building together, under the cover of darkness. And if several of Nicolò’s brethren had to die for the man and he to get past the gate and through the walls together, so be it.
They stole the dead Crusaders’ water skins and fled Jerusalem. They had no other choice.
They headed west, Nicolò following at the other man’s heels, hoping he knew where he was going. A false dawn was creeping across the sky, and as exhausted as Nicolò was, he wanted desperately to put the city as far behind him as he could before the sun rose. He could tell the man he was with was also in sore need of rest -- his shoulders hunched now, his pace slowing by increments. When they found an olive grove beside a trickling stream near daybreak, they paused to sit by mutual and silent accord.
The Arab said something to him in Greek, “I do not think I can…,” but Nicolò could not understand the rest of the sentence. The Arab saw his blank look and gestured to his feet, and Nicolò nodded.
The man drank from his water skin and examined Nicolò. Nicolò looked away, unnerved by the man’s intelligent eyes and embarrassed by the circumstances of their meeting. He’d heard all his life that the Mohammedans were barbaric, but this man had accepted his peace treaty, had helped him escape, and was now sharing words with him when Nicolò deserved, at best, stony silence. And Nicolò suspected that the city itself, far from being a place of persecution, had allowed its Christians the respect of worship. He thought of the cross-topped tower he had spied in the streets.
“Yusuf,” the man said, and Nicolò looked back up at him in surprise. The man touched his empty hand to his chest. “Yusuf,” he repeated.
Nicolò cleared his throat. “Nicolò,” he rasped. The man handed over the stolen water skin, and Nicolò took a large swallow. “Nicolò,” he managed, more clearly.
“Nicolò,” Yusuf repeated. He nodded to himself and gazed into the distance, a far-away look in his eyes.
Yusuf, for all he knew that he ought to despise this invader, simply could not muster the energy. The siege of al-Quds had sapped him of his customary love for life, and the massacre that had befallen the city’s residents when the walls had fallen had strangled all his hope on its deathbed. He felt hollowed out and empty, and that was before he turned his thoughts to the mystery of his resurrection.
Something incredibly strange had happened to his body the first time this man had cut open his side and spilled his guts upon the bricks of al-Quds’s streets, and he could no longer sustain so much as a blister upon his skin before it healed. Several mornings after they had left al-Quds, Yusuf breathed in deeply and realized that he had also left behind the stuffy nose that had plagued him every morning he’d awoken since childhood. Yet he could tire; he could hunger; he could thirst.
Yusuf felt a bit like he had at age nine, the first time his father had taken him to the sea and he had seen the ocean stretching past the horizon.
The world was bigger. Different. Shifting. Anything could happen.
Terrible things, like innocent children cut down by pale Franks, peaceful houses of worship desecrated and set alight, rivers of blood that ran as deep as his ankles.
And wondrous things, like death itself peeling away from Yusuf’s body and releasing him from its clutches, again and again.
Yusuf simply did not have the wherewithal right now to contemplate what it all meant. He only knew that he was glad, deep down, that he did not have to face this cataclysmic shift alone. He saw his own bewilderment and loss reflected on the face of this Frank. Nicolò.
Nicolò, who was currently bathing some distance away from Yusuf now that they had finally happened upon a stream deep enough to wade into, and was wiping away the filth that had clung to them for several days now.
Yusuf took the opportunity to examine the invader’s body. His shoulders were broad, his back dotted with moles, and his ribs stuck out much as Yusuf’s own did, speaking of too little food throughout the long siege. Yusuf felt an unwanted pang in his heart at that evidence of the invader’s vulnerability. The other man’s hair hung flat and straight behind his head, a strange texture, and his beard was much the same.
Yusuf averted his eyes before Nicolò could notice him watching and focused on working the blood clots out of his own beard.
Until that day at the stream, Nicolò didn’t know quite what he had assumed about the other man’s presentation -- had just thought him a beta, much like himself, since that was the most common sex in his own army -- but he hadn’t truly stopped to consider it, more concerned with the man’s religion and place of origin, since those were the (admittedly excellent) reasons he had to put his foot down and insist that Nicolò stop following him around.
Then the gore and grit of Jerusalem was washed away as best they could manage without soap, and the breeze carried the alluring and unmistakable scent of Omega to Nicolò’s nose.
Nicolò froze. An omega? Perhaps the Moslems were indeed, at least in this respect, as barbaric as Nicolò had been taught, to allow an omega to take up arms when he should be at home with his children. But no, he thought to himself. This man was probably born of Jerusalem, and Nicolò could not begrudge anyone at all for taking up arms in defense against imminent harm to their home, their family.
Another thought wrenched at him, then. Had this omega a family that he had left behind? He was clearly old enough to have a brood by now. Worse -- perhaps his alpha and children had perished at the hands of Nicolò’s brothers-in-arms.
With feet of clay and a stomach of lead, he finished his washing and sat upon the riverbank, staring at nothing, until the omega joined him in the sunbeams to dry off.
Nicolò didn’t want to know.
Nicolò had to know.
He turned to the omega. “You…” he began in Greek, then trailed off. The omega regarded him steadily, a brow quirked in curiosity. “Omega,” he offered in Ligurian. Yusuf only tilted his head. Nicolò gestured to the man’s abdomen. “Child?” he asked, and then felt a wave of shame at his disrespect for asking such a personal question. The man’s brow furrowed in pain.
Nicolò gestured back the way they had come. “Jerusalem? Child?”
Yusuf’s face softened minutely, and he shook his head. “No. No child in Jerusalem.”
“No Christians sword child?” Nicolò asked, seeking repudiation of his worst fear.
Yusuf shook his head again.
“And…” Nicolò cast about for words, but again he could not remember the Greek terms for presentation. “Alpha,” he proffered, in Ligurian. He gestured to the juncture of Yusuf’s neck and shoulder, which bore the unmistakable scar of a mating bite. Yusuf’s hand crept up to his scar and he caressed it with careful fingertips. Nicolò averted his eyes at the intimacy of the gesture.
“Alpha,” Yusuf repeated, in Greek, and Nicolò immediately recognized the word.
“Sì. Yes. Alpha. No alpha in Jerusalem?”
Yusuf shook his head. “Alpha --” and then said several words that Nicolò did not recognize. One may have been a place name. Nicolò stared at him blankly. Yusuf tried again, using different words. “Death. End.” He gestured at the ground between them, then fisted a handful of dirt to drop it listlessly down to the ground. He looked very solemn.
“Ah,” Nicolò acknowledged. “I am sorry,” he said, in the gentle tone he reserved for grieving parishioners. It felt inadequate.
“Thank you,” Yusuf responded, nodding, and he examined Nicolò’s face for a long, drawn-out moment. Nicolò fidgeted, but he did not look away.
“You...?” Yusuf asked, with another word Nicolò did not recognize. “No alpha? No omega?”
Ah. Nicolò could infer now the Greek word for “beta.”
“Yes, beta.”
Yusuf tilted his head to the side, lips pressed together and eyebrows creeping upward briefly, as if to say, Very well. Then he stood and said yet another phrase Nicolò could not parse.
He would have to improve his Greek at the earliest opportunity.