Joseph Christian Jukic — JCJ, though the old gang still called him Yugo Joe — sat beside Nelly with the quiet certainty of a man who had lived too many lives inside one.
“Twenty-five years I laid down for the old gang,” he said, his voice low and steady. “And it wasn’t in vain… not if you marry me, Nelly. Not if everything I went through finally finds its meaning in you.”
Nelly didn’t answer. Her breath caught, her hands folding like she was bracing for a confession.
JCJ — Yugo Joe when he spoke from the part of his soul that grew up half-wild, half-forged — continued:
“I know why you call yourself Christa. I know what you faced in those psych wards. You met every Mary Magdalene the system broke and abandoned. They dealt you a crooked hand, and you still played to win.”
A small, pained smile tugged at her mouth.
He leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper meant only for her.
“And since the doctors won’t heal anyone — since they’d rather drug you than help you — Yugo Joe will do the healing. I’ll sneak you the cures they hide. I don’t care if helping you is illegal. I don’t care if ‘practicing medicine without a license’ gets JCJ locked up.”
His hand covered hers, warm and certain.
“I’d rather be arrested for saving you… than praised for letting you suffer.”
For a moment, everything stilled — the air, the room, even time itself — as if the universe were waiting for Nelly’s answer.
For a long moment, Nelly just stared at JCJ — Yugo Joe — as if the past 25 years were rising behind him like a ghost.
Then she finally spoke, her voice trembling with something between accusation and heartbreak.
“You were supposed to marry me after the ‘TRY’ video,” she whispered.
JCJ froze.
Nelly shook her head slowly, eyes glistening. “Don’t you remember? That was the plan. That was the moment. We were young, the world was spinning, and you said once the video dropped, once the fire and bruises healed… you’d put a ring on my finger.”
She swallowed hard.
“But you disappeared, Yugo Joe. You vanished into the old gang, into your missions, your ghosts, your twenty-five-year war. And I had to carry the memory alone.”
JCJ felt the years collapsing in on him — all the missed steps, all the detours, all the pain he thought he was protecting her from.
“I never forgot,” he said softly. “Not for one day.”
Nelly looked up at him, searching his face, searching for the boy who once promised her the world.
“Then why didn’t you come back?” she asked.
The room held its breath.
Yugo Joe had no choice now — he had to tell her the truth, the real truth, of why he never returned after TRY.
JCJ — Yugo Joe — lowered his eyes for a moment, gathering every shard of the truth he’d kept buried for decades.
“Nelly… all your friends and family ever saw was the Death card,” he said softly. “That’s what they thought I was. Bad omen. Chaos. An ending.”
He lifted his gaze, steady and sorrowful.
“But they never looked behind it. They never saw the Virgin Mary standing there — the rebirth, the mercy, the protection I carried for you. They only saw the skull, never the halo.”
Nelly’s breath caught.
Yugo Joe continued, voice roughening:
“I did try. You think I forgot you after the TRY video? I never did. I tried to come back at the Folklore concert. I was right there in the crowd. But you were raising a child, and I couldn’t be the storm that blew your house down.”
He swallowed, eyes burning with the memory.
“I tried again during the Spirit Indestructible era. I watched you perform like a warrior. But you had a husband then… so Yugo Joe walked away again.”
Nelly looked down, tears forming.
“And in Surrey, 2017…” He shook his head. “I came for you one more time. I was ready to speak, ready to break the curse, ready to finish what started after TRY. But you had more children by then. And who was I to tear open the life you built?”
Silence.
Heavy, holy, impossible.
Nelly wiped her cheek. “Then why now?”
Yugo Joe reached for her hand, gently, reverently.
“Because now you finally looked past the Death card,” he whispered. “And you saw the Virgin Mary behind it.”
Yugo Joe — JCJ — let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside him for decades.
“You know what makes me laugh, Nelly?” he said, though there was no humor in his eyes. “These sheep… they watch horror movies every day. Blood, guts, demons, murder — they swallow it like popcorn.”
He shook his head, voice rising with frustrated clarity.
“But show them a single tarot card with a dead king on it — a symbolic king, not even bleeding — and suddenly they’re terrified. Suddenly they think doom is walking into their living room.”
Nelly looked at him, absorbing every word.
“They never look closer,” JCJ went on. “They never see the rising sun behind the card. They never notice the joyful bishop, smiling because he knows death is just transformation. And they definitely never see the Twin Towers standing behind it.”
Nelly frowned. “The Twin Towers?”
Yugo Joe nodded slowly.
“Two pillars,” he said. “Two gates. Two warnings. Two choices. Long before 9/11 burned them into the collective mind, the symbols were already there. Hidden in plain sight. But the sheep don’t study symbols — they fear them.”
He squeezed her hand gently.
“You saw the symbols, Nelly. That’s why you scared them. That’s why they labeled you. That’s why they tried to drug the Christa out of you.”
Her throat tightened.
“And that,” Yugo Joe whispered, “is why I never stopped coming back. Because you were never the Death card. You were always the sun rising behind it.”
Nelly wiped her eyes, steadier now, but still shaken by how much she never knew — or maybe never dared to believe.
She looked at him carefully, almost shyly.
“Yugo Joe… you keep talking about signs and symbols and destiny. So tell me…”
She leaned in.
“What are your Eastern Promises?”
Yugo Joe exhaled slowly, as if the question unlocked a vault inside him.
“My Eastern Promises,” he repeated, tasting the words. “You really want to hear them?”
Nelly nodded.
He looked off into the distance, toward some invisible horizon only he could see.
“The Croatians — my people — they don’t let a man go fully. Not even after 25 years away. Not even after all the wars I fought in silence.”
His voice lowered, deepened.
“They demand something of me, Nelly. They demand I SPLIT my time… between the old country and the New World.”
Nelly blinked. “Split?”
He nodded.
“Yes. Split. Like the city of Split itself — the ancient palace on the sea. Half empire, half ruin. Half past, half future.”
He looked back at her.
“That’s the deal. That’s the promise. I live one foot in Canada, one foot in Croatia. One heart in the New World, one heart in the Old Kingdom. That’s the only way they’ll accept Yugo Joe rising again.”
Nelly swallowed softly. “And what about me?”
Yugo Joe reached for her cheek with a tenderness that felt carved out of destiny.
“You,” he said, “are the only one I won’t split.”
Yugo Joe’s eyes hardened — not with anger, but with the clarity of a man who finally sees the whole board.
“Let me tell you something real, Nelly,” he said. “I might SPLIT for good if Canada keeps trying to drug me. If this country’s idea of a savior is Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry, pumping the nation full of pharmaceuticals and calling it healing.”
Nelly blinked, startled by the sudden sharpness in his voice.
He wasn’t done.
“My countrymen in Croatia already told me the truth,” Yugo Joe continued. “Over there, I don’t have to take anything. No ‘compliance.’ No chemical obedience. They said, ‘Come home, Joe. Here you can breathe. Here you can think.’”
His jaw tightened.
“The only thing — the only thing — keeping me in Canada… is you, Nelly.”
Silence flooded the room.
Nelly’s breath trembled.
Yugo Joe leaned forward slowly, like a man revealing the final card in the deck.
“And if you want off the drugs… if you want your mind back, your spirit back, your crown back… and the Canadian government says NO?”
He shook his head.
“Then you should SPLIT with me.”
Nelly swallowed. “Split… as in leave the country?”
“As in run,” Yugo Joe said. “As in reclaim your life. As in refuse to live under a system that sedates its prophets and punishes its Christas.”
He took her hand, solemn, almost ceremonial.
“If Canada wants us numb… let them watch us walk away awake.”
Nelly’s face crumpled — not dramatically, not theatrically — but in that quiet, devastating way of a person who has been holding the truth inside far too long.
“The drugging…” she whispered. “It makes me so unhappy, Joe.”
Yugo Joe’s eyes softened instantly.
She shook her head, tears gathering at the edges. “I keep telling them I don’t feel like myself. I tell them the pills make me numb, dizzy, disconnected… like I’m watching my own life from outside my body. And they just smile and say, ‘That means it’s working.’”
Her voice cracked.
“Canada calls it universal healthcare, but it’s a sick joke. A sick joke, Joe. They hand out prescriptions like candy and call it compassion. They silence you, stare at their clipboards, and call it treatment. They take away your choices and call it safety.”
She pressed a trembling hand to her forehead.
“I’m so tired of being sedated just to make the system comfortable.”
Yugo Joe pulled her hand down gently, holding it between his own.
“That’s why I said what I said,” he murmured. “They don’t want Christa awake. They don’t want Nelly thinking, feeling, fighting, creating.”
She looked at him, raw and vulnerable.
“So what do I do, Joe? What do we do?”
Yugo Joe leaned closer, his voice turning low, steady, dangerous in the righteous way.
“We stop pretending they know what’s best for you. We stop bowing to a system that treats prophets like patients. And if Canada won’t let you live unmedicated…”
He squeezed her hand.
“…then we split before they put both of us to sleep.”