The most probable outcome is that he doesn't walk back out.
He's made peace with worse.
"August." Sidney's voice is careful. He's still standing in the doorway, watching the frantic spread of papers and the look on August's face, and his expression has shifted from casual concern to something quieter and more serious. He knows August well enough to read what that expression means. "You don't have to do everything on your own."
August swallows. "I think this time I do. Or a lot of people are going to die."
"And what about you?" Sidney doesn't say it loudly. He doesn't need to. "When does someone take care of you?"
It's not an accusation. It's the kind of thing Sidney has been saying in different words for years, every time August turns up at Willow's battered and exhausted and running on nothing, every time he waves off concern and heads back out into the dark. Sidney has never once tried to stop him. He just keeps asking, quietly and without expectation, when August is going to let someone help carry the weight.
August doesn't have an answer. He never has. The truth is that no one can carry this particular weight for him, because no one else can do what he does, and the weight isn't something that can be shared. It's in his bones and in his blood and woven into every black vein threading through his body. It's the price of being what he is, and he pays it willingly, and he doesn't know how to explain that to someone who loves him without it sounding like a goodbye.
Despite his reluctance, Sidney helps him pack. He doesn't comment on the fatigue or the trembling hands or the veins crawling visibly up August's forearms. He just moves beside him with the quiet competence of someone who has accepted that he can't stop this but can at least make sure August has what he needs. They gather what they can: chalk for protective wards, salt and iron filings, commonplace enough at a bar frequented by the otherworldly, and all of August's notes. He doesn't know if he's coming back, so he wants his research found on his person if it comes to that. Someone should know what he figured out, even if he isn't around to explain it.
His hands shake as he packs. The black veins pulse with every heartbeat, sending spikes of pain up his arms. He's so tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of hurting. Tired of having to be brave when he's terrified, tired of smiling at spirits when he wants to scream, tired of being strong because the alternative is letting people down and he has never been able to bear that.
For a brief, treacherous moment, August lets himself imagine a world where things are different. Where necromancy isn't a death sentence in every sense of the word. Where people like him could train properly instead of teaching themselves from stolen texts and paying for every mistake in blood and years. Where he could use his gift to help spirits and it wouldn't be considered a crime. Where he might have friends who aren't worried about him all the time, a future that extends past the next few months, a life that includes more than pain and purpose and the slow, steady march toward an early grave.
Where a handsome Templar with warm brown eyes might have looked at him with understanding instead of duty. Might have listened. Might have seen him as something other than a monster wearing a human face.
He shakes his head. That line of thinking is just as poisonous as the kind in his veins, if sweeter. The world is what it is, and wishing doesn't change it. It just makes the truth harder to swallow.
He shoulders the bag and is heading for the door when a wave of dizziness hits him so hard his hand shoots out to catch the wall. The room tilts. Black spots swarm his vision. His chest constricts and for one horrible moment he can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but cling to the doorframe and wait for it to pass. He can feel Sidney's hands on his arms, holding him up, steady and warm and real, but the other man's voice is distant and muffled beneath the rushing noise in his ears.
The corruption is spreading faster than he calculated. He's overestimated how much time he has left. By a lot.
He waits for it to pass. Breathes through his nose, out through his mouth, the same rhythm he's been using since he was twelve. Lets Sidney bear his weight without protest, because pride is a luxury he can't afford right now. When his vision clears, helooks down at his hands and sees new veins branching across his palms.
Maybe he won't survive tonight even without facing the rift-maker. Maybe his body will simply give out the moment he starts casting and he'll die alone in a subway tunnel, surrounded by chalk circles and good intentions. Maybe the Templars will find him in a day or two and assume their rift-maker died of his own corruption. Case closed. Problem solved.
Maybe the Templar from the cemetery will be there. Maybe he'll see August's body and feel nothing but satisfaction at a job done. Or maybe he'll see August's research scattered around him, the maps and the notes and the careful, desperate work of a man trying to save a city that wanted him dead, and he'll wonder, just for a moment, if he'd been wrong.
August doesn't know which possibility is worse.
"I could come with you," Sidney says, though the offer is careful, honest in the way Sidney is always honest, without pretense or false confidence. They both know the truth: he'd be a liability. No magic, no defenses. He'd be the first thing the undead went for. "Maybe Xela could come. Or I could make some calls."
"There's no time." August steadies himself and closes his hand over Sidney's. Holds it for a moment. Sidney's hand is warm and calloused from years of bar work and it feels solid in a way that August desperately needs right now. "Thank you for being such a good friend, Sid. For all of it. For every time you opened that door."
Something crosses Sidney's face: frustration and grief and the helpless anger of someone watching a person they care about walk into something they can't follow them into. His jaw works. His eyes are bright. He doesn't try to stop him. He's known August long enough to know that would be pointless, and he respects him too much to try.
August lets go and steps into the hallway.
The bar is filling up for the evening, so he slips out the back to avoid drawing attention. The alley behind Willow's is cold and dim, the last of the daylight draining from a slate-colored sky. The Old City is waking into its nighttime rhythms: bars opening, street vendors calling their wares, the hum of magic and music and life that August has navigated for eight years.
He might never see it again.
He lets himself feel that. Doesn't push it away, doesn't rationalize it, doesn't dress it up in bravery. He just stands in the alley for a moment and lets the grief of it wash through him, cold and clean, and then he lets it go. There's no room for it where he's going.
He pulls up his hood and starts walking. Keeps to the side streets. Moves with purpose but doesn't rush, because rushing draws eyes and he's drawn enough of those for one lifetime. The subway station is a twenty-minute walk, less if he cuts through the warehouse district, though the Templars have been circling that area since the last rift opened. He'll use the service tunnel he mapped six months ago while tracking a wayward spirit, a teenager who'd died in the tunnels and hadn't known how to leave. August had found her in the dark and walked her out, and she'd gone into the light with her hand in his. He'll use the maintenance door behind a dumpster that no one has bothered to secure, because no one cares enough about an abandoned subway to seal every access point.
The black veins throb in time with his steps. Every breath hurts. Every moment is a reminder that his body is failing, that he is held together by stubbornness and compassion and not much else.
He keeps walking.
People pass him on the street without a second glance. Just another strange resident of the Old City going about hisbusiness. None of them know he's dying. None of them know where he's going or what he's walking into. But some of them know who he is, even if they don't know his name. The woman who runs the fruit stand nods at him. The old man sitting on his stoop raises a hand. The children playing in the gutter don't notice him, but their parents do, and the looks they give him are knowing and kind and tinged with something that might be gratitude.
He's helped their dead. He's sat with their ghosts. He's done this for eight years, quietly, invisibly, asking nothing in return.
