---

Dreogan sat in Head Auror Musallam's office, across from the empty desk.  Even without the Head Auror there, there was a strong sense of focus in this space: the papers were neatly stacked, the quill in its inkwell.  Like a ghost of a room.  Everything there--the stapler, the scissors, the tea pot--seemed so mundane, so average and logical, that, to a man who had been living the better part of a year underground, it seemed surreal.  Dreogan reached a hand out curiously for the stapler and seemed to, for the first time, catch a glimpse of his hand: bare, sore nail beds and covered in dried, flaking blood.  Out of a sense of shame, or perhaps dread, Dreogan recoiled, tucking his hands somewhere in the folds of the white robes that Topluluk had given him.  Those, too, were covered in blood.

He had never felt so out of place in his entire life.

This feeling was driven home only moments later when he heard the doorknob turn.  He heard a low, muttered "God!" and the door clicked shut.  The movement of fabric; Adnan Musallam was coming around now to sit behind his desk, having regained composure.  Dreogan sat stock-still, not knowing what to expect of this encounter.

Adnan Musallam didn't seem very certain, either.  He debated whether to sit for some time, hands pressed against the edge of his desk.  When he finally did, he frowned deeply.

"Dreogan Eleor," he acknowledged in the deep booming voice that Dreogan decided quite fit his image of him.  "Forgive me, for having you brought here. They had not said--This can wait. Do you need a healer?"

Dreogan swallowed, aware only in part of what the man must see: flaking blood, exhaustion, any number of things.  "I just want to know my brother is alright."

"Yes," the Head Auror said quickly. "Yes, he is safe.  I detained him here, when he came.  We made certain that he did not leave."  After a momentary pause, he added, "I, too, wanted him safe."  This gesture was, however, lost on Dreogan, who felt the need to confirm:

"And you are certain it is Adon? You spoke to him?"

The Head Auror hesitated.  Dreogan felt his stomach drop.  "...No." Dreogan was not sure what Musallam read on his face, but it seemed to have a strong impact upon the Head Auror, who spoke quickly, reassuringly.  "He was stunned by a team of our hitwizards upon his arrival.  I have not had the chance to speak to him, but I am certain--"

The feeling in his stomach rose into his throat.  "You cannot be certain," Dreogan said, voice tight.

Muslim seemed to deliberate internally for a moment before saying, "Perhaps not.  But I think you should see him. He is awake now. I will take you there myself."

Legs like jelly, Dreogan used the arms of his chair to push himself upwards.  He followed, shakily behind the Head Auror, trying not to notice the shocked and pale faces that bored their eyes into him. 

The holding cells were only several paces beyond Musallam's office.  When Adnan entered the holding area, a guard in Auror's robes nodded a greeting to his boss before his focus also drew in on him.

Dreogan anxiously deflected the man's stare, eyes going to the only occupied cell in the area.  The man inside, seeing him, lurched to his feet, hands wrapping around the bars.

“Dree! Harah…”the Adon Eleor in the cell gasped. “Dree—“ he looked panic-stricken, and pale--like the blood had drained from his face.  Dreogan again felt a lurch of his stomach at the memory of it.  He walked slowly up to the holding cell, examining the Adon Eleor before him with scrutiny.  The mannerisms were indistinct; the accent hard to detect through the screaming.  This Adon was yelling now, pulling at the cell bars for him to answer.

“Answer me, metumtam! Dree! Lama hu asa et ze?! What happened?”

Dreogan held his hand up firmly to stop the guard, who was already moving forward with the keys.  There was one thing more he needed to be sure of before this nightmare could be over and they could all be safe.

“What name did you call my first girlfriend,” he said quietly, watching the face of his brother with hard skepticism. Dreogan had held on to the hope that this man in front of him was truly his brother.  If it was not, then everything he had gone through the past six months would have been for nothing.

The Adon in the cell was slow to speak, and when he did, it was a stubborn response—changing the subject; avoiding answering.  “Dree—Moloch, Dree you’re covered in blood. Let’s get you—“

The fear in Dreogan’s stomach began to rise; it was panic, not anger that caused him to raise his voice.  “Answer my question!” This seemed to have startled this Adon; his hands dropped from the bar and he took a step back, as though he’d been kicked.  There was a pause. “Now, for G-d’s sake,” Dreogan managed, his throat suddenly dry.

M for language

---

This was not the reunion Adon had dreamed of with his brother.  With white robes drenched in blood, hair wild and eyes flashing, Dreogan looked for all the world like a mal’ack ha-mashhit approaching to ring in the Apocalypse.  Not only on account of the blood smeared across his face, Adon could barely recognize his brother.  He’d come with not the slightest smile, spoken sternly, and considered him suspiciously.  His question was spoken with such levelled intensity that Adon, for a moment, had missed entirely that it was a prompt for information.

“I—“ Adon halted, shrugging helplessly.  Dreogan seemed unable to bear the wait, battling off a growing despair.  Adon wanted to make this right—instantly.  “I have no fucking clue, Dree. I’m sorry.  All of your girlfriends were so…” He felt self-consciously cognizant that Gwen was hearing all of this.  He looked behind at her. She looked back. Yes. She certainly was. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say.  Was she the one who looked like…” he winced as he said it, sensing not only the significance of his answer, but also—20 years later--its awful cruelty, “a … Cabbage Patch doll?”

In apparent relief, Dreogan exhaled with a shuddering laugh that shook his frame.  He collapsed against the bars for support, nearly sinking to the ground.  Through the bars, Adon attempted to help his brother up and was about to shout for that manyak, Ori Peretz—but his guard was already at their elbows, keys fumbling.

“It’s him; let him out,” Dreogan said in a low voice. With Dree’s back against the bars, Adon could not tell if his brother was laughing or crying, now.

From the moment the door was opened, Adon did not miss a beat.  In one motion, he passed through to the other side, wrapping his arms around his brother who--ah, fuck--had, in fact, been crying.

“Of course it’s me,” Adon whispered, wondering why they’d had to play that horrifically idiotic guessing game at all. Dree had never fallen victim to a case of mistaken identity like he had: that time Adon had let slip information to the man possessing Dreogan’s body; or the time Adon had landed in the hospital after being lured in by a metamorphagus impersonating his brother. 

He pulled Dreogan away, evaluating him at arm’s length.  Unlike his brother, Adon could consider only one question since he first saw his brother: What the hell had happened.  From head to toe, his brother was absolutely coated in dried blood, which was already turning the robes brown and stiff.  It seemed heaviest upon his chest and his hands—but great smears still extended to the folds of his robes above his feet.  His cheek and forehead seemed to have come into contact with it, too, though Adon—taking his face between his hands to closely examine the skin—could not see any cut or contusion to account for it.  Still, one could not be too certain.  “Dree, we really need to get you to hospital.”

“No—“ his brother pushed his hands away irritably.  “It’s not my blood.”  Something inside his brother collapsed, then; his composure crumbled, and Dreogan visibly withered, losing his balance.  Adon caught him again, alarmed when his brother sunk into him, his forehead resting heavily against Adon’s neck.  The sensation was not entirely unlike when he held Gabriel in the moments before he fell asleep.  Still supporting his brother, Adon snapped his fingers in the air. “Peretz!” He ordered in Hebrew, “A chair! Quick!”

At some point, Gwen Irving must have slipped out and joined them.  It took several moments for all three of them—Adon, Ori Peretz, and Gwen—to shepherd Dreogan comfortably into the chair.  Dreogan seemed to have expended all of his energy asking that fucking cabbage patch question, and was left slumped forward, head buried between his hands.

Adon picked up his line of questioning precisely where they had left off just before the collapse.  Crouching down on his knees, Adon attempted to catch his brother’s eyes, which seemed exposimised to the floor.  “Whose blood is it, Dree?”  It was probably—well, most definitely—too late for whoever had lost that much blood, but they could perhaps do something about it if they got an answer.

Instead, Dreogan gave a stifled whimper and covered his eyes, causing the dried blood on his face to flake.  Adon winced and looked up at the ceiling, attempting to compose himself.  He exhaled.  “Please, Dree.  We need to know.”

“I thought--at least maybe--it was yours.”  His brother’s voice was muffled.  His gaze was still on the floor.

Anxiously, Adon dropped his gaze to Peretz and Gwen, wondering if they could have heard the same thing.  Adon could not breathe. He snapped his fingers again, “I need you to keep talking, brother.”

“I thought that…” Dreogan pulled his head up, finally, to look at him.  “It must not have been you, but only two hours ago, I held you as… he was hit by the exsanguination spell…” he shook his head.  “There was blood everywhere.  He—whoever he was—died and...” Dreogan broke off.

“Harah.  Oh, Dree...” Adon felt a wave of compassion for his brother.  As the implication of the narrative sunk in, however, Adon felt the muscles in his back, his jaw tense in anxious anticipation for the answer to a much larger question.  The realization was one of blazing clarity: nothing else in the world mattered. “Dree… You are describing the Dream to me.  You know that?”

Dreogan swallowed heavily and nodded his head.  “It happened, Donnie.  You died. Just like in the dreams.”  His hand quivered, unable to decide whether to rub his forehead or reach out to Adon.  He let it drop. “It happened.  But not to you.”

Adon rolled back onto his heels and rose, taking several steps back—then forth--to process what this could mean.  Another man, in his guise, had been killed--thereby, for all intents and purposes, fulfilling the prophecy.  The death sentence he had lived under for over two years had been lifted.

Adon turned from the group, covering his mouth with his hand, trying to hide the hoarse sobs that escaped.  He felt the eyes of all three of them heavily on his back.  Filling his lungs with a new breath, he took a moment to steel himself.  Finally, he turned about.  “Well,” Adon attempted a recovery and a weak smile, “wish I hadn’t bought all those guns. Two years of doomsday preparation for nothing.” His resolution wavered and, without control--but with a great deal of shame--Adon Eleor began to cry.

Now in the cold steel space of the Law Enforcement Morgue, the body of the Man without a Name was stretched out on the table, skin pale as moonlight from the loss of blood. The dark brows of his face stood out in stark contrast from the marble skin, the surgically silver surroundings.  Even in death, bloodless and naked, the Man looked just as Dreogan remembered: young, strong, and formidable. 

“Who was he?” Dreogan asked the examiner, distantly.

“Rami Hamza,” Adon rasped.  Dreogan turned to look at him in surprise.  Of course.  This had been Adon’s office for the better part of four years.  He had probably worked alongside this man at some point.  They might have been friends, even.  The medical examiner looked up from his tools uncertainly. 

“Adon,” he whispered, the pronunciation of his voice clearly and distinctively Hebrew.  In a daze, his little brother shifted his focus from the body to the colleague.  “Auror Eleor… I will need to perform the autopsy now.  It could be… upsetting for you.  You may want to step outside.”

Both brothers nodded.  Adon draped an arm reassuringly over Dreogan’s shoulders, closing the door slowly behind them.  He exhaled sharply, breaking away to lean against the wall, head tilted upwards.

“Did you know him well?” Dree asked.

“Well enough…Yeh.” Adon’s face shifted in light of a dawning realization.  His whole face seemed to contract in pain.  “Dree--I’m so sorry. Did you?”

Dreogan shook his head.  “I did not know Rami Hamza, no.  When he was just the Nameless Man, working with Topluluk, he questioned me. He took two of my fingernails.  But when he would come to me as you…” he threw a wan smile at his brother, “he was my best hope.  That was when he let me know who he was working for.  And it was when I regained sight of the importance of getting back.”

Adon nodded, back still pressed against the wall.  Eyes still averted upwards. “Why did he look like me, do you think?”

“Polyjuice, most probably.  He would have had ready enough access to your hair. Even Topluluk could have had that.”

Adon shook his head fiercely.  “But why would he do it? He was already undercover. Why the double-persona?”

Dreogan hesitated, unsure whether the next words would be hurtful or helpful.  But surely his brother already knew… “Because everybody knew that was the easiest way to get me to do anything.”

His brother said nothing.  Finally, after a time he pushed himself off the wall, voice feigning a brightness that did not make it to his eyes.  “So! Have you seen Kiv?”

Dreogan’s stomach dropped.  He suddenly felt very apprehensive, anxious.  Dreogan had been focusing his energy on mere triage: setting himself free, bringing the truth to light.  He had spent very little time on how he would return to his old life.  It had been the content of distant daydreams, not an actual plan.  It could not happen soon enough, but he dreaded it all the same. “Akiva?” he asked breathlessly.  “No.”

“Good," Adon said emphatically. "You’re balagan atomi. I mean, you really look like shit.”[1]

"Thanks," Dree said dryly, cracking a faint smile.   His brother gave a bark of laughter, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Come on," Adon said, easily looping his arm over his shoulders. "You are gonna  be swimming in my workout attire, little-big brother..."

1.	An atomic hot mess