I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 250

Juliet may have been able to breathe easier once Rukelion Blaze went off in search of Daisy but that didn’t change the fact that he could easily come back and kill her at any time. He knew where she lived.

Her first order of business was to move. She knew he could find her with a private investigator since he already knew how to utilize those but she still felt safer. She didn’t want to keep the memories of living in fear in her own apartment fresh in her mind either. A change of pace was best.

The movie and the prequel took off but that was little consolation, especially when he came back demanding money. That was when she found out Daisy didn’t remember him and her existing guilt quadrupled.

She had screwed Rukelion over in a lot of ways so though it was painful parting with her hard-earned money she did it without complaint. Her life was more important and she knew he wasn’t messing around. He would kill her if he ever saw her again.

Time went on and she thought she might be safe until she saw a comment from actualrukelionblaze on her “fanfiction” about teaching him to drive. It was entirely possible it was a joke account considering the name. People liked roleplaying as fictional characters, after all.

But there was another, scarier possibility. That the real deal had found her online presence.

Juliet wouldn’t be able to relax until she knew one way or another. It was going to bug her. So she messaged him and had her worst suspicions confirmed.

He not only knew it was her but was angry about the prequel to the point of threatening to kill her again if she wrote another word about him. She tried defending her actions but it didn’t exactly go well.

An angry villain on the warpath wouldn’t understand legal contracts and her obligation to publish the prequel after promising she would. If not for that, she wouldn’t have bothered after everything went down in Mirea because of her guilt.

What was Rukelion Blaze even doing on Tumblr? He hated everything to do with the books she wrote!

He hated her and the fact that he was a fictional character. Wouldn’t being reminded of that really piss him off? She didn’t understand and he wouldn’t answer her when she asked so that was yet another of the world’s unsolvable mysteries.

Rukelion said Juliet disgusted him and honestly that was fair. She had not only written him with the most tragic backstory she could think of, she had gotten his wife and child killed and now she couldn’t remember him. He had every reason to hate her but it still hurt.

She tried telling him she changed the draft to tell the truth and paint him in a better light than she originally intended but that only made him angrier. He left her with another death threat before blocking her.

With a sigh, she leaned her head back against her desk chair. He truly was impossible to deal with.

Juliet cared what happened to him since she felt responsible but he never told her anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. He didn’t want her to care but that wouldn’t stop her from doing it.

Rukelion may have blocked her on Tumblr but she figured there was some weird reason he was on there. She started looking his username up elsewhere and discovered accounts across several different fanfiction websites.

She subscribed to them since her username was different there and he wouldn’t know it was her. She doubted he would post anything but it was the only way she could keep track of her wayward creation so she had to at least try.

To her great shock, he started posting stories. Stories rich with detail about the history of Katalya and fire magic. They became so popular in the wake of the prequel that they became accepted as fanon.

What was he doing? Why would he pretend to be a fanfiction writer and tell the truth about a world she hadn’t fleshed out the way he did?

Juliet didn’t write much about Katalya. She had dreamt it up as a smallish kingdom by the sea where the royal family was made up of fire mages but that was about it. And in the revised prequel in Rukelion’s point of view he didn’t talk about it very often. Likely because it was too painful for him.

Why was he talking about it now to people he couldn’t care less about? From living together with him for months, she knew the only person he valued was Daisy. He didn’t speak unless spoken to with anyone else.

Whatever friends he may or may not have had among his cronies back in Mirea clearly didn’t matter to him because he left them to deal with the fallout of his chasing after his wife without a second thought. She had seen him interact with them minimally but since coming here he hardly interacted with anyone at all. Especially not her.

This continued to puzzle Juliet as Rukelion posted more stories. But she began to have an inkling of what was going on as soon as the first one about his siblings went up.

Having read through the entire modified prequel draft when she was editing it, she knew that one of his main motivations for becoming the king of Mirea rather than simply destroying everything like in her version was that he wanted people to remember his country and family. That would be difficult to do here since Katalya was fictional.

He hated everything to do with her books. It was difficult to believe he had come up with this idea on his own. She was inclined to believe someone had suggested it to him and he took it reluctantly knowing it was his only chance to have a platform for it.

Who though? Who would know about him being a fictional character? Had Daisy gotten her memories back?

If she had, that would be wonderful. Juliet’s guilt would decrease a lot if that was the case. But even if she had been the one to encourage him to write fanfiction to get his feelings across to people and still be able to accomplish that goal it was amazing that he utilized a tool he despised to do it.

Rukelion Blaze was nothing if not goal-oriented but it was astonishing nonetheless. She wondered what other goals he had now that he was stuck here in this world if he had truly gotten his wife back but he would never tell her.

The fanfiction continued updating for a while and became insanely popular but he never interacted with his commenters. Of course. He probably hated fans of the book nearly as much as he hated her.

When it stopped Juliet continued wondering what was going on with him but without the regular reminders of his existence she didn’t think about him as much over time. She flatly refused her editor pushing her to write more fantasy novels after the trauma of what happened with her first one. She was afraid to write again period knowing that the characters might be real people.

But writing was one of her favorite things to do so she couldn’t abandon it completely. She wrote fluffy fanfiction about existing characters that couldn’t hurt anything rather than risk bringing new creations into the world.

The author Juliet Gallagher, once so full of promise, faded into obscurity. She didn’t mind too much. She moved home to be closer to her family after finding another HR job and focused on more important aspects of her life that she had worried she would never get back while she was in Mirea.

She never quite managed to find her Mr. Right but she was the favorite aunt of her nieces and nephews and dated around when she got lonely. It wasn’t such a terrible life.

Eventually, she became a grandaunt and doted on those kids as much as she had their parents. The whole family was having a family reunion down in Disney World one year and she had been looking forward to it for ages.

While in line for a churro Juliet saw a flash of red that made her heart skip a beat. A girl in her late teens with hair the color of a tomato wearing a Minnie Mouse shirt talking animatedly to a younger boy with the same hair and a pair of mouse ears.

They walked over to a small group of people, most of whom shared the same unique color. A woman around Juliet’s age with dirty blonde hair and a bright smile held out ice cream cones for them that they took eagerly before sitting down at the same table next to their siblings.

There was another teenage girl and a boy that seemed to be around the same age as the one who just sat down. Four kids all together. But that wasn’t what made her freeze.

In between the woman and the younger teen girl was a man in his early to mid-forties with some white strands mixed in with his bright red hair. His arm was around the woman’s shoulders and he was more focused on his children happily consuming their ice cream than his own, which was rapidly melting.

The churro cart was close enough to their table that she could see the wedding rings on the adults’ fingers and the fact that the man had two different colored eyes. Rukelion Blaze. It couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

So he and Daisy were able to have a family after all. Juliet had wondered.

She couldn’t stop staring. They looked like a completely normal, happy family aside from their unique hair color. She had never seen Rukelion look so at peace.

The happiness she saw when he smiled at Daisy back in Mirea was different somehow. Less. She couldn’t fully explain it but just looking at him it was obvious this was not the same man as before.

Juliet’s eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t ruined everything after all. He was able to find peace and so was Daisy by the look of it.

Rukelion looked up suddenly and their eyes met. Tears were still streaming down her face but she froze instinctively out of fear. He had promised to kill her if he ever saw her again, after all. But there wasn’t murder in his eyes.

They hardened momentarily when he recognized her and he gave her a sharp nod of acknowledgement. Daisy didn’t even see it because she was too busy giving one of her sons a napkin to wipe his face with.

He turned to his wife and helped her pass out napkins to the other kids. The moment had passed and he was back in Dad Mode without caring about the woman who had unintentionally ruined his life at all. He laughed at something one of his daughters said and once again radiated a sense of being at peace with the world.

Juliet stood there like an idiot watching them until someone behind her told her to move up since it was her turn to order food. She tore her eyes away and got the churros.

As she walked back to her family she saw the Blazes get up and begin walking toward a ride. Rukelion and Daisy walked side by side with arms around each other’s backs as their kids chattered excitedly to each other.

“You okay, Jules?” her sister asked, noting her tears.

Juliet swiped her eyes and grinned at her. “More than okay.”

Something she had worried about for twenty years had been resolved. How could she not be okay? Rukelion had moved on with his life. That was the best news she had gotten in longer than she could remember.

She didn’t have to feel so guilty about what happened anymore. Maybe she could even write more than fanfiction again. A world of possibilities had opened up to her now that her greatest burden had been lifted. If she did write again, she would know better than to write throwaway characters.

“Real” or not, they were people with feelings and deserved to be treated as such. She would never forget that lesson she learned the hard way.

Rukelion may have been written as a villain but he had chosen to be so much more than that. Later that night when they were in their hotel room she looked him up on social media and saw that his life was so much fuller than she would have imagined.

He had his family but he had friends and was involved in his community too. He had built a real life for himself here and she couldn’t stop herself from crying again. He was doing so well! She never would have imagined that to be possible during the horrible days he stayed in her apartment learning how the world worked.

“Good for you,” Juliet whispered to no one. “Good for you, Rukelion Blaze!”