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rogloptimist · 3 months ago

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when i first saw you, the end was soon

Primoz has been here before. He knows these hours like the back of his hand, he can trace the minutes like a signature, every second he has lived so thoroughly that simply moving through time is like walking home— until now. Until this. Amber tufts of hair. Gray eyes sharper than a scalpel. It’s as if he’s lived from birth knowing daylight, but for the first time in his life, has been shown a sunrise. Brightness is redefined.

He understands Icarus now. It was neither hubris nor stupidity that sent him barreling towards the ocean’s unforgiving waves, but the thrill of discovering a marvel you thought you already understood. If they put wings on his back and told him to fly, he doesn’t think he could resist the urge to touch a miracle either, whether or not it burned.

heeey guys i needed to perform an exorcism as assassin!rog + time loop!pogrog has been haunting my mind like i disturbed a grave so here it is?? non-summary fic is below the cut, you can read it here on ao3

Primoz comes to as his hand shakes off the dripping plaid umbrella in his grasp. His vision lags for a moment, the droplets seeming to scatter in slow motion before his senses snap into place like a rubber band pulled taut and released, and the world comes into abrupt focus. He’s standing in the middle of a concrete staircase, the gentle sunlight streaming through the rain-slick glass dome above him hitting like a punch as the warmth registers all at once. The sound of hurried phone calls, pattering rain, and intercom announcements rush into real time like a slow clock hand catching up with the second. He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking off the dazed feeling collecting in his temples. Three uniformed schoolboys bolt past him, cackling and grabbing at each other’s collars to pull themselves up the concrete stairs— he sidesteps as to not get trampled. On his wrist, his watchface reads 5:14:37 pm. About 15 seconds for his mind to connect stimulus to his body. Not a personal best, but it’ll do.

His black loafers click rhythmically against the ground as he begins to walk down the remaining steps. The air is sticky with humidity, making his white dress shirt cling to him like wet paper. He appears to be decked out head to toe in corporate attire- a nondescript black suit utterly unsuited to the weather, mahogany tie tied slightly too loose, still-wet umbrella in one hand, and leather briefcase in the other. He hopes there’s a firearm inside-- or a knife, at the very least. With his luck, though, it’s likely manila folders full of legal jargon. He stops at the base of the steps and cracks the latch open to confirm his suspicions- nothing but stacks of papers in what looks to be a language he can’t even understand.

That’s fine. He can improvise. He clicks the case closed and continues forward.

A quick turn around a bricked wall reveals a few things he doesn’t like. First, more people. There are masses of people flowing up and down the stairway and through the small shops littered throughout the station. From the looks of it, it seems to be the beginning of an evening rush hour. He doesn’t like killing in a crowd- too many eyes, not enough space, and it becomes a pain to reach the target in the first place. The effort typically isn’t worth his odds-- even less so without a decently subtle weapon.

Second, he’s inside of a subway station. Moving vehicles, particularly ones that he isn’t driving, add infinitely more variables to trailing a target. Not to mention it appears all the signs are in the script written all over the documents he’s lugging around- Korean, he thinks. Upon closer inspection, there are English translations underneath, but he’s still not pleased-- being unarmed on the job during a foreign country’s rush hour is likely a grand total of no one’s forte. He fights the urge to curse himself for taking work nearly exclusively in Europe for the last few years of his career. Panic makes him sloppy, and he can’t cover his own bet on an unsteady hand. As he approaches the turnstiles blocking off the remainder of the station, he swallows the beginnings of alarm creeping up his throat. He checks his pockets for a ticket, transit pass, a wallet- anything to get him onto a train legally, for the most part. Shockingly, he finds a crisp, one way ticket from Myeongdong to Apgujeong in his breast pocket. He lays the slip on the scanner, allowing himself a small sigh of relief, and silently crosses breaking and entering off his list of chores. Once through the turnstiles, he checks his watch. 5:18:57-- he has about 22 minutes. Time to pick up the pace.

As he follows the signs directing towards Track 3, he melts into the crowd around him. This is where he’s most at ease: floating in his environments like shadow through liquid. Back at the agency, there was ongoing confusion and debate as to whether he was a control freak, or simply didn’t care. The answer? Both. Primoz craves a gamble-- but unlike most junkies, his obsession lies in carefully reconstructing the odds around his bet. The thrill comes from engineering the chain reaction, not the explosion itself. He likes to test himself. Controlled risk. An intercom announces that the train will arrive in 10 minutes as he rides the wave of people towards the glass-gated tracks, barely even corporeal. For his own schedule, he’s down to 19 minutes. He settles against a pillar and does what he is best at-- he waits.

* * *

The train is utterly packed. Every time he thinks it’s about to empty as passengers flood out, just as many people (or inexplicably more) board the train for the next stop. He’s been wedged in between a little old lady holding a massive icebox and a college student who looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks for the last eight minutes- the latter of whom keeps nodding off and falling into Primoz’s back. As best as he can without pummeling anyone in his immediate vicinity, he checks the time again. One minute. He begins to scan the train car for signs of anything unusual. He’s curious as to how things are going to play out this time around- practically nobody has the space to move, and the train isn’t due to stop for an additional few minutes.

Or not. Suddenly, his body is jerked forward as the train grinds to a violent halt. The intercom buzzes to life over the rising wave of confused chatter- first in Korean, then Japanese, and finally English. “Due to technical difficulties with the vehicle, we are currently unable to depart from our current location. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your patience as we address the issue.”

Well. There’s his sign. Like clockwork (which, upon second consideration, it quite literally is), he spots a bright green and navy blue jacket slipping through the yellow car door in front of him. Primoz snaps into action. He begins pushing through the sea of bodies, apologizing as he squeezes through the mess of limbs and heads. Through the glass, he can see the back of his mark doing the same. Good, he thinks. Better if we’re both slowed down. He reaches the door and bursts through, just as the figure pops out the other end of the horde. Apologies forgotten, he bulldozes his way through the crowd and pulls the next car door open.

This one lacks a window of any sort, and it takes him aback when he opens it to see the car is nearly empty. Green jacket is nowhere to be seen, and there’s about 6 people scattered around all looking curiously on guard. Seeing as to how they all draw blades or battering rams of sorts the moment he stumbles into the car, he can guess as to why. Stupidly, his first instinct is to check his watch and think, six minutes earlier than usual, giving an excellent opening for the nearest man to lunge. It’s only muscle memory that makes his right leg kick out towards his attacker. Luckily for both parties, however, at that exact moment, the train jolts into motion. “We apologize for the delay, and hope you have an excellent remainder of your trip!” the intercom chirps as both men tumble to the ground. Their eyes meet in brief and mutual mortification before the entire car jumps back into action. Various deadly objects begin flying at Primoz, and he barely has time to block a knife whizzing towards his face with the briefcase (if he had one, he would take a moment to thank his past self for not abandoning it in the station) and jump to his feet before the assaults redouble. He stands, slightly crouched, and six bodies descend upon him in a frenzy.

As is commonly understood, the human body’s near universal response to immediate threat is to fight, flight, or freeze. However, it’s been in Primoz’s job description for nearly the last quarter of his life to reject all three. He is paid to turn the tables, to swallow his pounding heart, ignore the blood rushing through his ears, and instead become the threat. He has painstakingly trained himself to remain perfectly level despite an onslaught, transforming from a man tasked with murder into a perfectly oiled machine. He responds to each strike with surgical precision. Every punch is meant to crush a windpipe, every knife he disarms from an assailant he puts to good use against throats and arteries. There’s not a swing that misses, not a single movement that goes to waste. The briefcase also continues to be remarkably useful- he takes two of his assailants to the floor with a crushing bash to the head, and hears ribs crack when he swings it at another’s torso. The umbrella, not so much. The thing breaks in half upon impact, but the broken metal pole makes for an excellent stake to the eye. In the back of his mind, he savors the violence. This is as close as it gets to being home.

And as quickly as it began, all the movement in the car ceases with a finishing knife to the back. Primoz scans his work. Certainly not his best, judging by the amount of blood on the floor. He much prefers to be the instigator of a conflict; being caught off guard makes him messy. He purses his lips at the caved in skull near his foot. He’ll have to do better next time.

Scratch that-- if he does well enough now, there won’t be a next time.

After shedding his blood-stained jacket, he escapes to the next car over. Thankfully, no one seems to have taken heed to whatever they were hearing next door. Or the train has excellent soundproofing. Either way, he goes unnoticed as he does his best to compose himself while pressed against a wall. And as luck would have it, the train rolls to a stop at Apgujeong. He follows the flood of bodies out the doors as a cheery voice thanks him for his passage over the speaker. He looks around, and doesn’t see much that’s new-- more concrete tunnels and tiled walls.

Okay, he thinks. What now?

By instinct, he looks at his watch. After no longer being able to rely upon basic truths of his environment, he has learned to live solely by time. He’s dissected the constant reiterations of the various worlds he is thrown into by the second-- although he may be in the middle of an abandoned amusement park one day, and a salt marsh the next, he has the patterns of events carved into the back of his eyes. If he doesn’t know how disaster will strike, he sure as hell knows when.

Which is why it is deeply disconcerting when he looks down and the analog face reads 6:02:19. Again, ahead of schedule. By about 11 minutes, in fact. The initial onslaught after the first moment of crisis ends at exactly 6:13:29- no earlier, no later. Never. He looks around, feeling as if he’s forgotten a limb on the train. He scans the space for anything suspicious, but sees absolutely nothing. Are there things embedded in the walls? Drones? Once, the loop put him in some sort of space station where an army of microbots swarming through the vents and cracks between metal plating bore through his skin and crawled through his lungs. He particularly hated that one. He finds an empty plastic seat nailed to the wall and pretends to go through his briefcase as he eyes the woman who he momentarily thought was staring right at him, before she began walking in the opposite direction. He shuts the lid much harder than necessary. He’s been thrown off his rhythm-- he feels like he's been blindfolded and told to steer a bike off muscle memory, he-- he sees something. In the corner of his eye, a flash of green and blue darts up the stairs. Recognition blares like an alarm bell as he begins sprinting in pursuit, subtlety utterly forgotten.

The figure weaves through the crowd, deft as a pianist’s hands. Primoz silently thanks whoever it is he’s chasing for choosing to don the most crass of greens on their shoulders that morning. The oversaturated windbreaker sticks out like a sore thumb, his eyes locking onto it instantly. The two are nearing the stairs heading up to the busy street above when the target suddenly takes a sharp right turn away from the exit, and Primoz briefly loses sight of them. In a panic, he follows in the general direction. Fortunately, the individual quickly returns into his line of sight. Unfortunately, they’re now inexplicably on the other side of a set of turnstiles. Primoz pats himself down for any more tickets, or perhaps a slip of cash that he missed earlier, but no such luck. Not that he’d have the time to buy a new pass anyway, though. He looks at the green and blue-clad torso getting smaller in the distance, then at the attendant assisting a young tourist at the ticket station next to the turnstiles. He mutters a quick apology and leaps over the metal bars, hardly hearing the shout of surprise and ensuing multilingual demands for his return as he runs forward and disappears into another crush of people.

The pair snake their way through the station at a distance as if connected by bungee cord. Every time Primoz tries to get closer, someone stops directly in front of him and blocks his way, every time he’s on the verge of losing the trail, a path miraculously opens. They make their way through the concrete halls like this, bouncing around equilibrium, until they arrive at Track 5.

He skids to a stop just as a few stragglers board the closing train. The glass doors separating the station from the tracks are nearly shut, and Primoz thinks he finally has his moment, when the figure sharply dives toward the leftmost door, just barely making it inside. Primoz on the other hand, isn’t quite fast enough to bridge the gap from the turn in the tunnels to the departing vehicle. Astonished, he watches as the train begins to inch forward. The figure turns around and meets his gaze through the glass. A young man-- barely in his early twenties, with a shock of spiky honey colored hair and slate gray eyes. He cocks his head at him, slightly, then the train snaps into its full speed. Primoz almost thinks he sees him smile as he disappears into a blur of color down the dark tunnel. The last thing he notices about the train itself is a large ‘131’ printed into a white circle on the doors of his mystery mark’s car.

That was the door? It’s hardly six!

Flabbergasted, he checks his watch. For a moment, he sees nothing but black screen, until the white digits begin to flash erratically. He watches the pixels jump across the small, rectangular face before they come to a stop, reading ‘83:29:41’. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels like he remembers the six digits from somewhere, but he can’t quite place it. He stares at the empty tracks, dumbfounded, heart pounding from the chase.

“What the fuck?!”

He has just enough time to hear his voice echo on the tiled walls before, hours ahead of schedule, everything goes black.

#it’s getting serious genuinely this au is making me crazy #i promise things will make more sense as it continues i just hate explaining time mechanics because i suck at worldbuilding #or at least i’ll try. pinky swear #primoz roglic #tadej pogacar #pogrog #cycling rpf #cycling #my writing

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