backlog: fragments, prompts, shortfic
Dec. 7th, 2018 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sword_logic“Attention: personnel approaching.”
He blinked and shook his head; the system he'd set up do he wouldn't get walked in on was unfortunately necessary, but the nap interruptions were getting out of hand.
“System offline.” A yawn caught the tail end of his sentence and he ran a hand down his face, frowning at the stubble. There was a soft knock right as York went for the handle. Wash stood in his doorway, disheveled, bruises under his eyes, and smelling suspiciously like the last of the vodka they’d squirreled away.
“Christ, what happened?” He stepped aside and let Wash stumble in. “The mission?”
“Maine–” Wash managed to choke out the name then shuddered wordlessly, throat working. York’s stomach dropped to somewhere around his knees.
“What happened?”
“Sim soldiers,” he mumbled. York scrambled to try and make sense of it.
“How the fuck did that happen?”
“I don’t know!” yelled Wash. “They shot him in the throat, York, he’s in medical and I couldn’t do anything and he might–”
His throat closed abruptly and he was reduced to a kind of panicked gasping, gulping for air like a fish out of water. York grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Wash, please, calm down,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. Shot in the throat? It’d be a miracle if– no, nope, not going to think about it. He’ll be fine. “He’ll be fine,” he repeated out loud. “C’mon, Wash, you of all people know Maine’s a beast.”
“But what if he dies?” The look on his face was twisted in an attempt to not break down, so heart-wrenching that York was momentarily frozen.
“Wash, Jesus christ,” he whispered, then swallowed. “Look, you need to calm down. You’ll end up in medical too, if you don’t.” Wash hung his head, shoulders shaking, and took a deep breath.
“It’s all my fault. I should’ve done something.” He was drunk and nearly out of his mind; the words kept coming with each wave of guilt and fear. “If he dies, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t–” He looked at York’s mismatched eyes with pure panic written in every tired line of his face.
“He’s gonna be okay, man,” whispered York, and put an arm around Washington’s shaking shoulders. “He has to be.”
Wash crumpled and buried his head in between his knees, hands knotted tightly in his hair, and York could think of nothing more to do except give his shoulder a tight squeeze.
It’s all in the little things – in the way Simmons puts in a request for Oreos every time they reorder supplies, in Grif’s remarkable patience as he helps unjam Simmons’ cyborg shoulder, in the way it’s grifnsimmons, one word, and not two names.
He felt home, honestly – he was like the un-favorite son with Lopez the favorite son and Donut being the middle child and Simmons, somehow, the black sheep. Sarge was like a mean step-dad to him, but there existed nonetheless that grudging mutual father-son bond. He’d never been happier to see the business end of that shotgun than when Sarge had showed up in Rat’s Nest and he’d realized that no matter how much he hated Blood Gulch, family was what had gotten him through it and he’d missed it.
Sincerely yours,
The Director of Project Freelancer,
Dr. Leonard Church
He ends the recording and takes a long draft of whiskey. After having spent days – months, really – literally picking apart his brain, he finally gets it. All of the pain he’s been through in every single reincarnation and fragment, it’s all been worth it because even though he feels older and more tired than ever, he knows what he has to do.
Forget her.
He waves a distracted hand.
“That’s it, though, inef-” And then he stops dead, because there’s an old leather-bound corner peeking out of the corner of the glove box. “Is that my copy of Paradise Lost?”
The Bentley suddenly jumps from going 85 to screaming down the road at 150.
He’ll never admit to preferring the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop to his own apartment. There’s something about the thick dust in the air, the old lighting – the angel still burns candles sometimes, for G–- for badness’ sake. The wood floor creaks under his shoes and his suit is looking distinctly more gray but, honestly, he doesn’t really care since the atmosphere is so damnably enjoyable. Old chairs and an old table and old books – he likes technology, of course, but there’s something about oldness that he really likes and the bookstore is the embodiment of oldness.
Oh, and there’s Aziraphale, too.
“The _thing _is– the _thing_, you know.”
He takes off his sunglasses because devil be damned if it’s not hard enough to see with half a liquor store in him. The flaming-hair-flaming-eyes woman sitting in front of him has had twice as much to drink and she’s fine.
“Congr– contra– good job,” he manages to string together. “With Poland, you know. Krieg and all that. Damn fine job.”
“Oh, I know,” she responds cheerfully. He leans forward across the table; the lamplight is glinting much too brightly off of her Gestapo pins.
“I did a good job on Culloden back in the day,” he says, pleased with himself – she’s being _cheerful_ so he _must_ be doing something right. “Humanssss, you know, all it takesss iss a little conni– conv– a little pussssh.”
Lucifer tempts and twists with honeyed truths and Sam knows it’s not just the word by itself or the sounds, not just a palatal glide followed by lax mid-front vowel followed by an alveolar fricative that’s going to screw him over, it’s the doubt sitting like a fog in his chest and the fact that he opens his mouth and says 'maybe.'
Maine is both on the verge of tears and on the verge of a panic attack at the state Wash is in; he’s shaking, crying, clawing at his face like he’s being eaten from the inside and it hurts to look at him being torn apart like this. Wash’s lips are moving but there’s no sound except for that same choked, quiet sobbing, but Maine is pretty sure he knows what it is that Wash wants so he takes that wrecked face between his hands and tastes the saline on his mouth.
The worst part isn’t that their enemies know, it’s that Dean and Sam themselves both know the fact that they hold such intense power over each other; Dean would be at Sam’s mercy in a second and he knows the reverse is true and if he’s honest with himself, it’s fucking terrifying.
The AI have him bound tight in his own little corner of the mind that used to be Maine’s and every single time he sees they gray-and-yellow armor he fights with everything he has, in the hopes that Wash won’t die by his hands, not his, not these hands.
Maine, for all his bulk and body mass, still manages to be one of the most graceful fighters he’s ever had the luck to work with (including Tex and Carolina) and it’s hard for him to tear his eyes away from the white-brown-gold blur moving with him on the training floor.
Epsilon had roared through him like a hurricane, leaving broken thoughts everywhere, and he had never realized how little there was holding him together until he’d heard Tex say ‘Church.’
They don’t match up, exactly; he’s the laid-back type of guy who’s prone to crashing through someone’s life and she’s the type of girl you introduce to your parents, but he thinks that’s exactly why they fit.
Hey, Cas, it’s me again.
I hope wherever you are, you can still hear me ‘cause I’ve been praying to you every night since then. Man, I can tell he’s still so wrecked and he’s been doing a great job hiding it, but it’s killing him. Maybe just… let him know you’re out there? If you are, I mean. I’d do anything to see my brother happy again and you owe me, you know you do. I don’t care if it’s a favor for me or for Dean but you gotta come back, Cas. You have to.
Uh, amen.
Love, Sam.
“Oh. Well, certainly,” he says, shifting the stack of books more comfortably against his arm. “Humanity as a whole has quite the view on angels.”
“Strange, though,” murmurs his black-haired visitor – there’s something both off and familiar about him and he really can’t place it, whether it’s the trench coat or the far-off look in his eyes or the wind-ruffled hair. “Why would humans apply their social constraints to something so clearly inhuman?”
Aziraphale is quiet for a while. Social constraints, indeed. Both he and Crowley are, by human standards, quite male, and after four thousand years on Earth (and a plethora of societies and social constraints) they’d had to learn very quickly what ‘male’ means for a human.
“Disastrous,” he mutters, and shelves one of his tomes. “Sometimes I feel like humans – er, that is to say, we – have got no place trying to understand an otherworldly creature.”
The guest furrows his brows. “Some hu-people, though,” he replies, almost unsure of himself, “I think they can catch a glimpse of it.”
“Maybe,” says Aziraphale with a shrug. “But who’s to say? Maybe such a being can only be understood by something like it.” He tries not to think of Crowley, currently sleeping in the back room under pretense that memories of fourteenth century are overwhelming him. The bell on the door tinkles, followed the sound of wet boots and dripping clothes. Both Aziraphale and The Guest flinch.
“You find what you were lookin’ for, Cas?” Aziraphale hides a smile behind his stack of books. It’s impossible to miss the bright spark in The Guest’s eyes when he turns to look at the disheveled, soaked-to-the-bone newcomer.
“Somewhat,” he responds. “Thank you for your time.”
“Aziraphale.” He holds out his hand politely and The Guest – Cas? – looks at it for a few seconds before shaking.
“Castiel.”
They can’t be serious. They cannot be serious.
It’s easy, reflexive, to channel his rage onto the Director and the Councillor and every higher-up involved in Project Freelancer but now, Wash has a special place for the Chairman, too.
He probably thinks he’s being clever and priming himself for a success in capturing the Epsilon unit (they were partnered together before, they worked flawlessly together before) or killing two birds with one stone (stick the two crazies together and maybe they’ll take themselves out) but Wash would like to think the universe is doing this on purpose, just to fuck with him.
He accepts the assignment and doesn’t let anything show, no trembling fingers or erratic breathing or crawling into a corner. Nothing to show that he cannot do this.
He can’t work with the warped, lifeless husk of someone he used to know. He can’t deal with potentially facing Epsilon again. Prison was a welcome relief from the shitstorm of the world and the Chairman is pulling him out of the shelter and back into the hurricane.
“Why birds and bees?” Dean can’t help but close his eyes and rub his forehead because this is painful to watch and even more painful to take part in. He takes a swig of beer.
“It’s just an idiom,” he replies. It’s a bit of a moral dilemma – he’s done plenty of bad things but somehow, telling an angel how sex (or, well, how human sex) works seems like A Very Bad Thing to do. This is normally where he’d make a ‘let me show you how it works’ joke but this is Cas. He would probably take it seriously and yeah, no, not going to finish that train of thought and he dives back into the realm of certain Egyptian rivers.
“Why are you so reluctant to talk about this?” asks Cas, and he’s pulling a bitchface to rival Sam’s. “You’re not unfamiliar with the subject.”
“Yeah, but come on, man.” He takes another drink of his beer, a little too fast, and okay he’s definitely had too much to drink because between the alcohol and talking about sex he definitely imagined Cas watching him lick off the beer moustache. “If you’re so curious, go watch some porn.”
He really, really should not be surprised that Cas is watching Casa Erotica the next morning.
It had started with a truce. A simple, harmless truce. Maine would stop going out of his way to piss Washington off. Washington would stop finding ways to hurt Maine. Washington could remember their first real, amicable conversation. They’d talked about rain. He’d caught Maine staring glumly out of the window at the bright sun and voiced a wish for a change, for rain. Maine had turned round and the grin on his face made something twist in Washington’s chest; a feeling he hadn’t experienced for years.
Wash as a nickname had stuck. He’d hated it at first. It was short, informal. Sloppy. He’d hated it when people had called him Dave instead of David. Maine started calling him Wash just to get a rise out of him; after their truce of sorts, Maine accordingly cut back on it. Washington realized after a while that he’d gotten used to being called Wash, and, most mortifying, that he liked it. He liked the way that Maine’s mouth formed the word, and the sly grin he always wore while saying it.
Fuck.
Maine pawed off the blood streaming into his eye and avoided a lightning-fast kick from Tex, then paused to wipe off more blood before shooting in to take her down. He heard Wash make an angry noise and spared him a glance; his lip was split and bleeding profusely, and Wyoming had managed to slash him right across the nose.
Maine wrestled the knife from Tex’s inhumanly strong grip and tossed it out of the ring.
Wash kicked the inside of Wyoming’s wrist and the Brit swore loudly, grabbing his throbbing hand; Wash swiftly ducked down, grabbed the knife, and hit the right spot at the back of his neck. He felt Wyoming crumple under his hands and whirled away from the unconscious man, not wanting Tex to catch him off-guard.
She and Maine were a blur of limbs; he couldn’t even tell who was standing. All he registered was a grunt of surprise from Maine and a flash of red hair as Tex barreled into him. There was a quiet snap and excruciating pain in his chest; suddenly, her weight was gone and he heard a soft whump.
“Break!” chimed F.I.L.S.S. cheerfully. “Agents Wyoming and Texas are the winners. Have a nice day!”
Black.
--
Washington came to slowly; he could barely breathe.
He was still on the mat, everything still hurt, so logically, he must not have been out for long. Everything had happened so fast, he wasn’t even sure what had happened. All he could focus on was the mind-numbing pain in his chest.
Maine’s sweaty, blood-streaked face appeared above him. A bruise was starting to bloom around one of his eyes.
“Stop bein’ lazy and get up,” he teased, but the grin quickly slid off of his face as he registered Washington’s pain.
“Medic,” coughed Wash, spitting out the blood that had run into his mouth.
Maine instantly sprang to his feet and yelled to F.I.L.S.S. for help, and was about to run to the med bay himself when Washington made an angry noise behind him.
“Don’t just–” He levered himself onto his forearms, face drenched in sweat, “stand there, you ass–”
His chest shook with shallow breaths. Maine crouched beside him.
“I figured you’d want me to leave,” he said with a chuckle, wiping blood out of his eye again. “I shouldn’t add insult to injury.”
“Help me the fuck up, cockbite,” groaned Washington.
“You need to stay still. You’re goin’ to make it worse if you move.”
Wash glared at him. Worry creased Maine’s ice-blue eyes.
“You’re bleeding,” Wash grunted, and wiped blood off on his shoulder.
“No shit, sherlock.” Maine tugged his shirt off and pressed it to the gash running diagonally from his right eyebrow, across his nose, and down to his left cheek.
“That’s gonna scar.”
“Yours too. We’ll match now. Cute, huh?”
Wash snorted. His eyes rolled back ever-so-slightly with the effort of staying conscious, and he could tell Maine wasn't doing great, either -- he was drenched in sweat and still breathing heavily, drops of blood coloring his pale skin in small patches.
Medics in white burst through the door and Wash let himself slip into unconsciousness again; Maine caught him at the last second.
--
“This is the second time I’ve woken up in the hospital to find you at my bedside.”
Maine opened his eyes blearily and checked the clock; it was past three in the morning.
“You fucker,” he mumbled grumpily, “why’d you have to wake me up?”
“Why are you here?” Washington’s voice was full of genuine confusion.
“Hunh?”
“You could be back in the room, sleeping in your own bed and not in that chair,” murmured Washington. “So why aren’t you?”
Maine gave a jaw-cracking yawn then fixed Washington with an icy stare.
“I told you,” he said quietly, “we’re in this together.” Washington’s stomach lurched. “I know you hate me, but they stuck me with you. I’m with you to the end.”
“I don’t hate you,” Wash whispered. He was suddenly very interested in the ceiling; his face burned as adrenaline rippled through his stomach again. “You’re okay, really. I guess.”
Silence filled the room and, for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe it was something a little more than not hating him. That living with him had somehow turned from necessary to bearable to enjoyable. Shit. Back out of this, Washington. Don’t let it happen.
“That’s the spirit,” said Maine cheerfully, teeth flashing in the semi-darkness, and ruffled Washington’s hair. “Now go the fuck to sleep so I can go the fuck to sleep.” He crossed his arms on the bed and rested his chin there. Wash could see those big, sky blue eyes staring up at him and repressed a shiver.
“Don’t stare at me like that,” he hissed, and turned his head away even though the darkness hid the flush on his face. His ribcage twinged.
Wash/York, apocalypse fic
The fire isn't much more than half-dead coals by now -- too warm to extinguish, too cold to heat any scraps of food. Wash picks at the pieces of two-day-old coyote on his stick with grubby fingernails, checks the sky, runs some quick calculations, and comes up with time for York to take watch.
"Hey," he whispers, and the scruffy pile of what used to be sand-colored clothing instantly sits up. York's hand is already curled around the handle of his bowie knife. "Your turn for watch."
"Nope," York grunts in return, "your turn to sleep." He kneads at the scars around his eye.
"But--"
"Wash," he interrupts, calm and cool, as if they weren't in the middle of the fucking apocalypse. "We're miles and miles away from the last scavengers we ran into. Get some sleep." And with that, he fists a hand into Wash's equally-grubby, still-kinda-gray jacket, and pulls him down.
"Fine," mutters Wash against York's neck. "If we wake up dead, it's your fault."
At first it was body heat, logic, that made Wash agree to let York sprawl himself across his chest. Now he's not really sure what it is.
Wash/Maine, huddling for warmth
Winter in the Project Freelancer barracks is a catastrophic mess of scrambling for extra blankets and lectures about how being cold builds character.
The first night Wash wakes up to find Maine curled up next to him, Maine growls a quiet, "for warmth."
The second night, Maine falls asleep next to him hopped up on pain medication for his headaches.
The sixth night, when Wash is lying awake, Maine's hair tickling his nose, he starts thinking that Maine hadn't been talking about the temperature.
Wash/Maine, telepathy
"Are you, like, reading his mind?"
"Excuse me?" He turns on Doc, still stuck in the wall like some poorly-executed mockery of Christianity, and glares through his visor.
"You always know what he's saying," Doc continues cheerfully. "I sure as hell have no idea. Oops, I mean heck. But you know exactly what he's talking about."
Wash doesn't have to ask who he is.
"Don't be ridiculous," he snorts. "I'm not telepathetic, I just... I used to know him."
“This is pointless,” snarls Carolina, and tugs at her black suit. “Why did we have to dress up, again? People go to this thing dressed normally. I don’t even look like that Black Widow or whatever.”
“It’s a time-honored tradition!” yells Sarge over his shoulder, readjusting the vintage Captain America Replica Mask™, shield slung over one forearm.
“Also, it is fun,” Caboose adds knowingly. Carolina looks like she’s going to throw up every time she so much as glances at him, because okay, Wash will give him credit, that’s a really fucking accurate Jar-Jar Binks costume. Accurate and, uh, fitting. Sometimes.
(Okay, so he’ll take Caboose over Jar-Jar any day, but still.)
At least he looks cool, Wash thinks, as he studies his reflection and Han Solo looks back at him.
The second Tucker’s fingers touch the hilt, he feels it.
It’s like a weird shiver passing all over his skin, like the tingle of static electricity and winter storms rattling windows and that first blast of cold air in the winter, and he feels like something’s watching him.
He curls his hand all the way around the hilt and the sword motherfucking ignites, blue plasma curving out in twin blades around his hand – he turns around, sword raised like he actually knows how to use it somehow, but no one’s there.
Weird. He could’ve sworn something had been watching him.
Well, at least now he’s got something even better with which to keep those goddamn demons out of Blood Gulch. Red Team better step up their fucking game. Devil’s traps? Please. He’s got a fucking sword.
Imagine Cas fighting against Naomi and her memory wipes and truth-forcing, though.
Imagine that he finally admits to the Winchesters that something is wrong in the state of Heaven, and Sam and Dean drop everything else to help him out. They find a way to help Cas stay on Earth when Naomi calls him, and Sam and Garth dig up dirt on this mysterious angel, find a way to summon her to Earth and confront her, get her to ‘fess up to her shady business.
There’s a fight, probably. A big one. Like Crowley said, Heaven’s so messed up that they didn’t even notice Samandriel’s absence.
Sam and Dean fight – have fought, would fight, will always fight – tooth and nail for Cas, and Naomi doesn’t get it. She can’t understand why Cas doesn’t want to help Heaven any more. She doesn’t get it, that Cas belongs with the Winchesters, because that’s home for him, and he stopped thinking of Heaven as home ages and ages ago. She doesn’t get that Cas – beautiful, righteous, loyal, big-hearted Cas – doesn’t belong in a Heaven that would force him to turn his back on the Winchesters.
She’s vindictive. How could he do this, when they pulled him out of Purgatory? How could he be so ungrateful? They rescued him. But fine, she says, if you like them so much, then join them.
Dean can’t bring himself to watch but he can still hear it, that fleshy, horrible ripping sound he knows all too well from his days in the Pit, and Sam’s hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him sane as Cas literally shatters brick with the force of his screams.
When Naomi leaves, she takes Cas’s Grace and leaves the slumped, shaking shadow of a broken hero on the floor.
Dean sinks to his knees, uses the sleeve of his favorite jacket to wipe some blood off of Cas’s face. It feels much too rough and like nothing at all. Everything is dulled and desaturated, hundreds of times worse than in the days before the showdown at Stull cemetery.
Dean’s fingers dig in too tight when he pulls Cas close against him, and his body is warm and solid and sweaty and gross and so, so human in a way he’s never noticed before. Dean’s stubble scrapes against his temple when he presses a kiss there. He takes a deep breath and inhales the smell of laundry detergent and old blood and the Impala’s leather.
Dean’s trembling. Sam can’t bring himself to form words. Cas breathes deep.
Family don’t end with blood, Bobby used to say, and Cas knows it with a blinding pain that shakes him to the core and burns white-hot in his limbs, his limbs. Human flesh. He hasn’t Fallen, he’s dived headfirst into the abyss.
But it’s okay.
He’s home.
“Can’t you just mojo us out of these?” Dean hisses to Cas, who’s way too gung-ho about this whole ‘being arrested’ thing.
“That would upset the officer, I think,” Cas replies, frowning. “Be patient, Dean. Sam will be here soon, and then we can explain to the sheriff that this is simply a gross misunderstanding.”
Dean takes a deep breath and counts to ten.
1. sam/gabe | pretending to be married
"Isn't that right, honey?" purrs Gabriel, and reaches behind Sam to actually smack his butt. Sam allows himself to be speechless for two seconds and swears that the fucking second they figure out what the hell is causing death by asphyxiation in the shower, he's gonna find out the quickest way to kill an archangel.
"My husband and I would love to see the place," he says through a tight smile, and slides his hand into the back pocket of Gabriel's jeans as vengeance. "He's such a princess about hardwood floors, you know how it is."
2. dean/cas | genderswap
Oh no.Oh, no.It shouldnotbe making her heart leap up to sit somewhere in her throat, seeing Cas wearing one of her old-as-shit t-shirts and a worn pair of sweats, hair clinging wetly to the side of her face and tangled to all hell.
Cas isn't supposed to be human. She was never supposed to be this human and she was never supposed to need showers and food and ibuprofen for cramps and sleep. Deanna swallows past the lump in her throat, wanting to do nothing more than curl herself around Cas's tired little form.
"C'mere, Cas," she grunts instead. "You don't brush your hair and you're gonna have a shitty time tomorrow." Cas furrows her brows.
"I believe my vessel had a stringent routine for the upkeep of her hair," she says. "Jamie was very meticulous about its health."
Deanna snorts.
"Ask Sam real nice and she'll braid it for you, but I ain't doin' that shit."
3. sam/lucifer | handcuffed together | i had to make this tangible!verse because it doesn't make sense otherwise??? ??/???????????? ?????
Of course something would go wrong on a case, and of course it would end up with three of them in handcuffs, and of course the only person currently not behind bars would be Cas.
Dean is glaring a motherfucking hole into the side of the cop's head as he paces up and down the hall and Sam isn't really sure whether it's good or bad that Dean's got his own cell. He and Lucifer are handcuffed to each other -- there's a terrible joke in there somewhere -- and he takes comfort in Lucifer's cool hand under his, fingers trailing over the scar on his palm.
Calm reassurance blooms from that tiny point of contact and spreads through his body -- it'll be fine, Cas is more than intelligent enough to make it look like they had nothing to do with the break-in, they'll be out of here soon, it's going to be okay.
The best part of it all, he thinks, is the look of relief that breaks over Cas's face when he sees the handcuffs come off of Dean.
“So what, is that your familiar or something?” says Dean, taking a long swig of mead and wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic.
“No,” Cas replies, frowning, “Kocur is my cat.” He flicks his fingers towards the mead-stain on Dean’s tunic and it disappears. “Angels don’t need familiars, Dean. I’m not a witch.”
Kocur takes that moment to stretch out and climb disdainfully over the table, sitting down with his back turned to Dean before meowing loudly at Cas.
“That’s rude,” he murmurs, but scratches under Kocur’s chin anyways. He’ll come around to Dean eventually.
Benny watches as Dean pulls the knife out of the werewolf’s slumped, broken body; Dean sticks it back into its makeshift holster without bothering to clean it more than a quick flick to get most of the gunk off. He’d bet money that Dean used to meticulously keep it clean whenever he’d first landed his ass here.
“How long you been lookin’ for this fella?” he asks, because he’s been with Dean for maybe three weeks, and Dean sure as hell knows what he’s doing.
[[MORE]]
“Since I got here,” Dean replies over his shoulder, head flicking right-center-left-center-right because he’s human, because he can’t smell and see the things that Benny can. He’s sharp, though. Sharp enough to have stayed alive (alive? are they even alive here?) in Purgatory for this long. “Few months, I dunno.”
He’s about to ask more -- I thought angels weren’t real, so how’d you end up with one -- but Dean’s making a face, hefting his sort-of-machete on his shoulder, and Benny knows he’s not going to get anything out of him.
------
Two more weeks of tracking down half-covens of scared vamps and roundabout answers later, he and Dean finally get a breather. Dean slumps against a tree, every line in his body dead tired, but his face is shining, eyes wide, mouth in a loose grin. The last vampire had said he’d seen the angel past the hills north of the clearing, heading west, and Dean hasn’t stopped smiling since.
It’s fuckin’ creepy, is what it is. Benny thinks there has to be some kind of dark, fucked-up past to him, more than whatever the hell he’d done to land himself in fucking Purgatory, because no human should be this gung-ho about torturing a land full of monsters to find an angel.
“Why are you so hell-bent on findin’ this angel, anyways?” he asks, scraping some dried innards off of the hilt. It’s been dragging against his palms for a few days, now.
“Because he’s--” Dean pauses, screws up his face. “--you know, important.”
Benny chuckles.
“I’m gonna need some more than that to go on, brother.”
“Well, I mean, dude raised me from Hell,” Dean grunts.
“So what, you owe him?”
“No, nothin’ like that. It’s, uh, complicated.”
“Awful lotta beatin’ around the bush.”
He has to duck his head down to hide his grin because Dean is squirming like a fish in a frying pan, and it’s honestly, truly funny. Dean has no compunctions about killing a monster pleading for its life, but talking about his angel is reducing him to a stubborn six-year-old.
“Fuckin’--” Dean gestures angrily. “He defied Heaven. He helped my brother’n’me stop the goddamn Apocalypse. So yeah, he’s important.”
Benny is grinning, grinning, because there’s a whole lot of nothing in those words but a hell of a lot of emotion behind them. Dean sighs and glares at a tree conveniently away from where Benny’s still grinning wolfishly.
“He’s family. I gotta find him.”
“Unless my eyes deceive me, you’re lookin’ a little red in the face, brother.”
Because under all of that dried blood and shit and rotted innards is a very flushed face.
“What?”
“What?” Benny replies, innocent and wide-eyed.
Dean continues glaring a hole into his tree.
------
Benny learns a lot about Cas.
(He doesn’t learn that ‘Cas’ is short for ‘Castiel’ until way after he learns that the angel has a name, but that just adds another mark in the mental tally he’s keeping.)
They trade a few stories back and forth. Benny mostly shares what he knows of Purgatory, what happened to the other people he’d traveled with, some of the reckless shit he’s done in his stay here.
Dean talks about Cas. A lot.
Truth be told, Benny only found out about Dean’s brother when he’d asked what his post-Purgatory plans were – Dean had answered, simply, me’n’Cas’re gonna find Sam, fix the whole Leviathan mess.
Benny hears the story about Cas And The Hookers and the story about Cas And That One Halloween and the story about Cas Getting Really Smashed That One Time, and then the stories get quieter, rougher, half-grunted at night when the wolves are howling way, way, out.
And he hears about when Cas flew them to the prophet’s house and said they’re making it up as they go, when Cas sent Dean to find Sam.
And about when Cas revealed his plan to overthrow Raphael, messed with Sam’s head.
And about when Cas walked into that lake and didn’t walk back out – and there’s real pain in Dean’s voice there, grinding deep in his throat, and Benny puts a heavy hand on his shoulder.
And about when Cas showed up on a sidewalk in Colorado and didn’t remember Dean.
And about when Cas grabbed a fistful of Dick Roman’s hair, exposing his throat, and Dean shoved the bone of a righteous mortal through the Leviathan’s neck.
Benny’s never been more in awe of a person. Of a hunter, no less. Dean is incredible.
He manages to be so complex, so human in a way Benny barely remembers being; the intensity of the relationships Dean has with his brother and his angel are staggering and if he squints, if the wind is blowing the right way, then Benny can catch a glimpse of how absurdly bright his soul is, underneath all that dirt and caked blood.
------
That being said, though, it doesn’t really click for him until the day Dean barks out Cas’s name over the murmur of a stream and a man in a filthy trench coat slowly stands up. Dean wraps up the angel in his blood-stained, reeking arms, and that’s when Benny realizes that oh, he means that kind of family.
The memory of Andrea burns fiercely in his chest.
Well, the person who normally works with newly-deceased Donald Westerly on his Thursday night bartending shifts is working -- surprise surprise -- tomorrow on Thursday, so that means Dean is now needlessly dressed in a suit and at a bar with Cas, waiting on Sam’s news from the morgue, while tonight’s bartender is making bedroom eyes at Cas.
“Definitely a wraith, though,” he mutters under his breath to Cas, taking a sip of whiskey. “An entry wound like that?”
“A kitsune would have produced a similar mark,” Cas reminds him snidely, and knocks back the entirety of his (seventh) drink in one go. Dean cringes.
“Dude, slow down. Most people would get an instant pickled liver, the way you drink.” The last thing they need right now is more attention drawn to them, because sitting in a decently upscale bar in Milwaukee dressed like Feds is giving them enough stares, regardless of the fact that there’s plenty of other dudes in suits here. Fuck big cities. Dean’ll take a roadside bar over this shit any day.
The bartender sidles back to them and offers to refill Cas’s drink yet again; Dean rolls his eyes and glances over at the door (because Sam needs to get his ass here pronto) and then groans, because he unfortunately recognizes the elderly woman with painstakingly dyed and curled hair and expensive clothing.
“Oh, shit,” he sighs, and turns back around to face Cas. They’re– well, okay, he swears they’re a lot closer than they were before. “The apartment lady is here.”
“The, ah, cougar?” Cas says wryly, clearly trying to hide his amusement. Asshole.
“It’s not funny,” he snaps back, “so gimme a kiss. Quick.”
He gets a split second to register the absurdity of what he just said and to take in the look on Cas’s face -- eyebrows drawn, almost indignant -- before he yields and leans in, and then Dean closes the space between them to press their mouths together, soft and chaste, lasting barely two heartbeats.
Cas stares at him from barely a few inches away and there’s something open and raw in his face, kind of like the feeling you get when walking into a warm room after being in a blizzard. He’s never worn that kind of look before. Dean thinks it suits him.
“You don’t want her to notice you,” Cas murmurs, amused, and finally takes a human-sized sip of his drink.
“Hell no,” Dean snorts back, and plays with the edge of his glass. He sneaks a glance as Cas and smiles to himself when he catches Cas doing the same thing and okay, they’re acting like fucking teenagers, but watch him give a shit.
“Agent Walsh,” comes a sickly-sweet voice from behind him, “is that you?”
Dean grimaces and knocks back the rest of his whiskey. This is totally karma for that bullshit with the ghost ship and Sam’s grandma lover.
He grits his teeth and turns around on his stool to face Ms. Tucker and her five-inch heels.
“What are you doing in a place like this?” she warbles, smiling in a way that’s way too sly for his liking. “And who’s this dashing gentleman?”
“This is my partner, Agent Clemons,” Dean replies, as cut-and-dry as he possibly fucking can, and Cas nods shortly to her. His face is back in its I Am An Angel Of The Lord mask, carefully neutral. “We’re here on business.”
“Oh, don’t try that one on me,” she laughs, high and girly – this woman is seventy fucking years old – and slaps playfully at his arm, jewelry jangling harshly. He can feel Cas stiffen next to him. “I saw you two canoodling.”
“Canoodling?”
Jesus christ, of all the times for Sam to finally show up. He’s got a manila folder in his hands and the slyest fucking grin he’s ever seen his brother wear; Dean can feel the tips of his ears going red and he knows Sam is gonna be a little brother about this at the worst possible time later. He clears his throat and grabs the folder out of Sam’s hand.
“Well, duty calls,” he says to Ms. Tucker, and waves the folder at her with Charming Smile #8 before walking the hell out of that bar as fast as he can.
Sam gleefully calls dibs on the shower when they get back to the motel, which leaves Dean alone in the room with Cas. He takes off his suit jacket and hangs it on the back of the chair, then rubs his forehead and yawns.
“Ms. Tucker seemed perfectly nice,” Cas says smugly, flipping through the autopsy charts Sam brought back.
“Ha, ha,” Dean fires back sarcastically, glaring. Cas smiles at him, barely a quirk of his mouth, and all of his irritation instantly dissipates.
See, Dean’s got no illusions as to what the mess in his chest is. He knows that he’s got more of a romantic attachment to Cas than a strictly platonic one but the thing is, he’s got no issues with where they stand. He likes the way Cas fits in to his and Sam’s lives and he likes the lack of pop culture references and he likes that goddamn confoundingly dry sense of humor. And yeah, he doesn’t really know what Cas’s thoughts on this whole thing are, but he sure as hell ain’t gonna start a goddamn conversation about his feelings, and he’s been perfectly content with things as they are. No point poking a sleeping bear.
Cas closes the folder and looks at him, eyes slightly narrowed and looking like he’s deep in thought about something, contemplating, searching his face for something. Or hell, his soul. Cas is probably digging through Best Of: Embarrassing Teenager Moments right now.
He starts undoing the cuffs of his shirt when Cas suddenly just moves in front of him, grabs his tie – holy fuck – and hauls him in for an open-mouthed kiss that’s just barely toeing the line between tame and fucking filthy.
“Dude,” he sputters, “what–?”
But Cas just smiles at him again, that one corner of his mouth pulling up higher than the other, and Dean decides he really doesn’t need an answer.
“You two park the car, I’ll take out the guards.”
Wash doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t breathe. Bites his fucking tongue and hopes against hope that North doesn’t––
“You wanna run that by me again, big guy?”
Maine slowly turns his head. Wash is pretty sure he can get out of the car and be 20 feet away in about 10 seconds.
“Park the car. The guards are mine.”
———
“Okay, in retrospect–” York’s laughing too hard to hear anything and even Carolina is grinning. “–in retrospect, it was fucking hilarious. You try hearing ‘pahk the cah’ twice in a row and not saying something.”
"Worth twelve stitches, though?”
“Worth every one of ‘em.”
Fingers drumming on a table and he’d checked three times that this is the right cafe, this is the right table, and there is no way that this disheveled, tattooed, nervous-energy disaster of a man could possibly house any of the brilliance, tact, and heart he’d seen in their correspondence, but he sits down and doesn’t even try to quash the growing, angry spite in his chest.
“Dr. Geiszler?”
“Call me Newt.”
bucky spending hours at that smithsonian exhibit, staring at everything, watching every single one of the little “newsreel” clips, getting escorted out of the museum because he’s the last one there, sir, you must not have heard our announcements, but we’re open at ten tomorrow
bucky going to the exhibit every single day for a week straight and that one older security guard is so nice to him, telling him in a low, conspiratory whisper one evening that he was there when the captain america costume got stolen by captain america himself, isn’t that just ridiculous? and you’re a dead ringer for sergeant barnes, son, you’d look good in that costume
bucky finally showing up on steve’s doorstep on a rainy evening – it’s a spacious old brownstone, sam up tippy-top, steve on the ground floor, nat in the basement – and he’d had a whole speech prepared and carefully memorized but when he sees steve’s shocked face it all crumbles and he just sort of scrambles to catch his breath, hands clenched tight in his coat pockets, prosthesis whirring, and steve just looks at him for a solid minute then tells him to come in, they’ll throw some couch cushions on the ground, it’ll be like old times, and bucky just breaks
it’s messy and it’s horrible and bucky wakes up screaming almost every night but steve is steady and solid and reassuring like he’s always been, and he asks natasha and bruce to help him find a psychologist after bucky confesses to him, barely whispering, that he thinks he needs some Help
steve being gentle with bucky because god it was hard enough to get thrown into the 21st century but getting tortured, electrocuted, tossed in and out of cryo, practically lobotomized––
steve being so fucking gentle when he helps bucky sort through his memories, starts telling him stories and leaving out details and watching that old grin slide across bucky’s face when he remembers something steve didn’t mention
steve and bucky going back to that smithsonian exhibit together on a slow, snowy wednesday morning when everyone’s at work and at school, taking their time, and there are a couple of moments where bucky starts to shut down but steve touches his shoulder or his back and they move through it together
running into that old security guard as they leave and when bucky winks at him, steve has to hide a grin because that’s absolutely the bucky that he grew up with
sometimes it’s a step forward and sometimes it’s three steps back; bucky is pretty sure the nightmares will be a constant for the rest of his life but that’s okay, because steve is there every time and–– -
well, to the end of the line, right?
“Jesus christ.”
Steve doesn’t even bother acknowledging the mutters anymore because Tony is 100% in I Am Working, I Talk To Myself, Deal With It mode, but it’s accompanied by a slam this time. He looks up to see Tony waving a cloud of dust out of his face.
“Some of us have dust allergies, you know,” Clint calls from where he’s sitting cross-legged on a half-crumbled counter, halfway through a bag of baby carrots and a tub of ranch.
“And some of us are actually working, you know,” Tony fires back disinterestedly.
“And this would be going a lot faster without you snapping don’t touch that every five minutes,” Steve adds.
“You know what?” Tony wipes. “I–” He frowns at Clint. “You’re eating. Why are you– this is my house. This is my poor demolished house. Have some respect.”
Steve rolls his eyes and goes back to carefully inching a collapsed beam out of the way. It’s lodged right under a slab of the ceiling and it’s slow work to try and ease them out without causing the floor to collapse in yet another place. The mansion is a disaster.
“In any case–” Tony rounds on Steve again. “–you weren’t there when we found the old box of Captain America pinups. That’s why you don’t touch my stuff.”
Steve stares at him.
“Can we pretend I didn’t just say that?” Steve glances over at Clint, who’s frozen with a carrot halfway to his mouth. “We’re going to pretend I didn’t just say that.”
He walks into the kitchen, still sleepy-eyed, and raises his eyebrows.
Sam gives him a grin around a mouthful of toast and eggs (Sam, ew, please) and Natasha raises her eyebrows over her coffee mug.
“Morning, sleepy,” she says.
“What’s this?” Steve asks, and gestures at the – what, five-course breakfast? – spread out on the table. Bucky tosses a plate at him, which he catches without thinking.
“Hey,” Sam says, finally having swallowed his food. “That could’ve broken.”
“But it didn’t,” Bucky sing-songs, and goes back to whatever is sizzling on the stove.
“Chef Barnes decided he wants to get hired at a five-star restaurant,” Nat says, and finishes off her coffee.
“Yeah,” Steve says, laughing. “I think you missed your calling, Buck. This looks amazing.”
“I know,” Bucky says, grinning smugly, and slides a plate of bacon on the table.
(the only problem is that somehow everyone hears about this)
(bucky regrets having to cook for the entirety of avengers tower) (no he doesn’t) (he just says he does) (he loves cooking because it’s quiet time where he can focus on just doing one thing)
By the fifth cup of tea left on his desk, Hermann is pretty sure he’s caught on to what Newt is doing. Attempting to do.
“Stop trying to cheer me up,” he finally snaps as Newt is slinking away. “My paper got rejected by the committee. It’s not the end of the world.”
He watches Newt’s face progress through a range of astonishingly transparent emotions – indignation, annoyance, frustration, sheepishness, stubbornness – and then he finally opens his mouth, closes it, and crosses his arms.
“Well, sorry for trying to make you feel better,” Newt grumbles. “That stuff leaves ego bruises.”
Hermann thins his lips.
“Yes, well, tea isn’t exactly the best salve.”
“It’s the thought,” Newt protests as Hermann turns back to his chalkboard, “it’s the thought that counts.”
Maine pulls off his helmet and yawns, scratching at his scalp, and pushes hair off of his forehead. It’s still weird to see him with hair, but. Well. Wash supposes he’s got a reason to cover the ink on his head.
“That’s a good look for you,” Wash says without thinking, and Maine narrows his eyes. Foot. Mouth. Now.
Maine runs a hand through his hair again, making it stand on end, and lifts an eyebrow at Wash.
“I’m just saying, you look good with hair.” Maine blinks slowly at him. “Your hair looks good. Not that it didn’t before. Or… lack thereof.” Maine starts looking like he’s trying to hold back a laugh so Wash butts him with his rifle. “You know what I mean.”
The old shit-eating grin is slowly spreading across Maine’s face and really, honestly, it’s a fucking wonder Maine and York didn’t get along better, because both of them shared a favorite hobby of making Wash regret opening his mouth.
“Fuck off.”
But he doesn’t actually hate it, he thinks, especially when Maine’s laugh sounds almost the way it used to.
“You know, when I said date night, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Simmons snaps, and kicks Grif’s feet further down the couch. “You’re hogging everything and there’s–” He wheezes as Grif’s elbow (his own old elbow, incidentally) lands squarely in his solar plexus. “–there’s food everywhere. If you get peanut butter in my gears, I swear to fucking god, Grif–”
“You’ll what?” Grif says, bored, voice muffled where his head is pressed into Simmons’ stomach. He’s seen this movie so many goddamn times that he knows it by heart. “Tell Sarge on me?”
“I’ll sell your Oreos to Caboose. You know I’ll do it.”
Grif looks up at him, stricken, and props himself up.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. Watch me.”
“…Nah.” Grif pauses in sinking back down to drop a very peanut-buttery kiss on Simmons’ nose.
“I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Aw, Simmons, you’re making me blush.”
Simmons notices instantly that something’s wrong when he wakes up, but it takes him a good ten seconds to figure out just what. Grif’s not snoring, which means Grif’s not asleep, which means–
“Grif, have you been up all night feeding your fucking pixel pet things?”
“One, not all night. I took seven power naps.” Grif smugly pops an Oreo – a full Oreo – into his mouth, and doesn’t even turn around to acknowledge Simmons. “And two, I stole your credit card again.”
“What?”
“Specialty items don’t buy themselves, you know.”
“What. The fuck.”
Maine stares at him, eyes narrowed, and dares him to change the channel.
“No, fuck this. I’m not watching—” Wash gestures helplessly at the TV. “—animated ducks play some kind of… pre-Grifball thing? How old is this?”
Maine huffs in response and swipes the bowl of ice cream out of Wash’s hands and then, before Wash can even react, Maine grabs a fistful of his t-shirt and yanks him down on the couch.
"Fucking ridiculous,” Wash mutters, and grabs his datapad. Animated ducks playing sports. What a fucking galaxy.
As much as it irks him to be grateful to Stark (Stark, not Mr. Stark, and in his head it’s just a bad coincidence because there’s no way this man is related to Howard), Bucky’s glad he’s got a smartphone whose touchscreen responds to his metal arm.
“Can I help you find anything?” asks the third sales associate, going for meekness this time.
“I’m doin’ just fine, thanks,” Bucky replies, and keeps scrolling down the list of search results. Fuck-me flowers. Nope. He gave you THAT bouquet? He wants to sleep with y– Nope. Decidedly not. “Actually–” He sighs in defeat, and when the sales associate (the nametag reads Maggie) turns in surprise, he tries a grin. “I just want flowers. Y'know, just some nice flowers for someone I care about. Just nothing–” He gestures helplessly at his phone. “–nothing that that ‘Cosmopolitan’ magazine would ever recommend.”
“Maine–” Holy shit, this dust is going to wreak havoc on his armor’s filtration systems. He gets a green status light in response, and sighs. “York, North, can you still hear us?”
“Yeah, I copy,” comes York’s voice, but it’s distant and crackly. “I gotta say, it’s a miracle you both survived. The place is wrecked.”
“Copy,” North says, and he sounds out of breath. “York, I’m coming down to you. Wash, Maine, see if you can’t get those recovery beacons to work. I know they’re still in alpha, but–”
“We’ll try,” Wash replies.
“I’ll get an evac started,” York says. “Hang tight, guys.”
Wash turns his long-range comms off, then starts shouldering his way to the lone yellow friendly tag on his radar. After about 30 feet of crawling through rubble, he makes it to the open-air courtyard that’s somehow miraculously still completely walled in. Great.
“Maine?” he tries again. His radar is starting to fizzle in and out.
“Two o'clock.”
Wash feels his heart jump somewhere into his throat. Maine is huddled under a sheet of metal that’s leaning precariously against the wall, and judging from the state of that leg, he’s not going anywhere soon.
“You said you were fine,” Wash hisses, and pushes the metal out of the way. It falls with a loud clang, and he winces.
Maine shrugs in response. Wash sighs.
“For the record,” he says, sitting down on Maine’s good side, “injury does not mean you’re fine. If you can’t walk, you’re not fine.”
Wash looks at him expectantly, and Maine just knocks their shoulders together.
“I’m alive,” he says. “Fine.”
“Well, at least all we have to do now is wait.”
“I fought them off singlehandedly,” Wash says, and a holy-shit-I’m-about-to-collapse yawn manages to punctuate his sentence in the totally-casual-bored-yawn way. “All fifteen of them.”
“Liar,” Maine snorts, shoving him over with his unbandaged arm and sitting down with a long sigh.
“So what, your unconscious ass got itself out of there?”
“Softened ‘em up,” Maine grumbles, and leans against Wash’s side.
“Right.”
“––next thing I know we’re in the Vegas Quadrant,” Mordecai mutters, reaching for his third glass of rakk ale.
“Quit complainin’,” Brick says with a booming laugh, slapping him on the back so hard that a precious millimeter of ale slops over the side of the glass, “you’re happy to be here.”
“Real happy, I can tell,” Lilith says, grinning, and Mordecai scowls at her.
“Ow! You little turd,” Bucky says, laughing, and gently tugs his right hand out from between Cat’s needle-sharp little teeth. “You’re a menace, you know that?”
Cat just rolls onto her side and chirps innocently at him.
“Gross,” York says, and pushes the datapad out of his way as he clambers over the back of the couch and straight into North’s personal space.
“You know, sometimes people have to write mission reports,” North says, lifting his arm obligingly, “and sometimes those mission reports have to be more than just ‘we went there and did it.’”
“D’s got it covered,” York replies, and grins innocently as he pins the hand that’s holding the datapad.
“Why me? Especially when you’ve got people that you’ve worked with for way longer, more recently?”
Wash is sitting still, hands carefully casual where they’re resting, an elbow propped up on the door of the ‘Hog, but Maine can see the anxiety thrumming through him in spite of the car jostling them both. Same anxiety, same coping mechanisms. He restrains a huffed sigh.
“Told you. Know what I went through. Went through it too.” Wash’s posture gets, if anything, even more casual, and Maine is sure that to anyone else it’d be a sign of ease, but it screams the opposite. He’s glad that even through everything his head has been through, he can still read his old partner like a fucking book.
“Why trust me?” Wash pauses. “Well, why trust me enough to ask me along, I guess.”
Maine nearly laughs out loud. Same stubbornness.
“COM channel not working? Both have a reason to track him down.” And all of a sudden it feels real, overwhelmingly real, that he can still read his old partner like a fucking book, he is back on the road with Wash, he does still trust Wash with his life.
Wash wasn’t the one who pushed that Warthog off the cliff.
He pulls up a dashboard map.
“Been with Sam and Lucía for over a year. Trust them with my life. But–” He pulls up their trip log overlay. “–trust you with this.”
“Thanks,” Wash says. “I think.”
His gut twists and it hits him hard, what he’s about to do and what he’s about to set in motion. He knows that this is probably one of the more messed-up things he’s done (not counting all AI-related incidents, at least) but he’s run through it over and over, laid out the best way to present the facts neutrally, ask him for help, apologize for – well, for goddamn everything. He resettles his grip on the pistol he’s holding, takes a deep breath, lobs the flashbang, and sprints straight for Washington’s limp body.
“Listen, you’re practically still drunk, she’s already banned you once–”
“All I gotta do is just, you know, I walk in, I order the pizza–”
“If botha you don’t shut up, I’m gonna punch y’all so hard my hangover cures itself.”
Bucky leans over the back of the couch and watches the proceedings on TV, then watches Steve’s face for a few seconds, then lets out a sigh and shakes his head.
“You know, all he’s really missing is the mustache,” Bucky muses, “since he’s got the racism, xenophobia, fascism, and the bad comb-over. I guess he could use a punch in the face from you, too, but I digress.”
The first time it happens, she’s at the Tower, absently checking through the list of active bounties, trying to decide which to take.
A Titan gleefully gets her attention and starts shivering. Shivering in response to her.
She clamps down, hard, on the tendrils of the Deep that are reaching out to her, forces her shape still, and waves back to the Titan. Her face is stony behind her helmet. The Titan stops shivering, gives her a jaunty salute, and moves on.
Lyca immediately takes on every bounty that’s on the list and sprints as casually as possible down to the terrace as a real, bona-fide Shiver runs down her spine, hoping against hope that no one’s noticing, a distant scream, a smell of ozone, stubbornly pushing back at the Deep as her Ghost calls up the ship—
And right before the transmat fizzles through her skin she can hear Eris’s voice falter, echoing from the hall below, ringing with a note of puzzlement as she trails off.
// // //
She’s in the Scablands, up on the cliffside, when her bones start aching in a way that had been terrifying a while ago. By now, she knows what it means. The dim wave of static that announces the Taken rolls through the dust.
There’s a pair of Guardians wearing a false shape (they call it Desolate, they have no idea, they might as well be calling the Light barren) who whoop as the first screams start to echo. One of them dances. The other shivers. It’s mocking. They both start laughing.
A Taken Goblin looks at her, cocks its head inquisitively, on the cusp of recognition, when a Guardian’s bullet sends it screaming back to the Darkness.
Numb roaring fills her ears; her Ghost is saying something but all she hears is the Dark screaming at her in perfect counterpoint to the incoming wave of Taken.
Lyca Shivers.
They don’t understand. They falsify a shape in the name of vanity (and she should know, the amount of things she’s seen and done purely in the name of Hunter vanity) but this shape is real, and it is Taken, not manufactured, not sold.
She reaches into the Dark, searching for the edges of her shape, and draws her bow.
The shot flies true, shrieking as it goes.
fell is the first interaction lyca has with a guardian after king’s fall – he gets sent by ikora to check out something strange that one of cayde’s scouts reported, a surge of taken energy squirreled away deep inside the dreadnaught, and fell, of course, wants to understand the taken better, so he goes
he’s expecting something big and awful that he’ll have to come back for with a fireteam, an echo of oryx or a taken champion or one of the court, but instead, after crawling through nearly half a mile of tunnels, he finds a hollowed-out cavern between support struts with something – someone – dead in the middle, Shivering, radiating darkness that’s almost choking. in the split second it takes him to call a lick of solar light into his hand the taken thing turns and the next thing he knows he’s staring down the end of a bow, oh, god, is that a nightstalker, oh, god, a guardian’s been taken–
but lyca hesitates, and fell hesitates, and then fell asks, “can you feel my light?”
and lyca Shivers, cocks her head curiously, and asks in return, “can you feel my blight?”
fell’s immediate reaction is equal parts curiosity and pity. he immediately asks lyca if she’s okay, and then he gives her the soft-and-quiet “it’s okay” spiel and puts his gun away, to which lyca responds with “[laughing nervously] what the fuck” and she draws her knife – this is kind of extremely bizarre and she doesn’t really know what he’s getting at until he says “i can take you back to the tower, ikora is studying the taken, we can fix you–” and lyca interrupts him, laughing an extremely unpleasant kind of laughter. she doesn’t need to be fixed, and she knows more than ikora does anyways – which isn’t much, but considering lyca’s actually taken and ikora isn’t? lyca will remain the expert here, thank you very much.
and fell keeps pressing that lyca’s this poor thing that he can help, something he can pick apart and fix, and lyca finally snaps and says, “His hand might have been what brought me to the edge of the deep, but in the end, it was my choice. i took up the knife.”
she keeps staring at him, still Shivering intermittently, and then fell’s ghost flits out, stares at fell, and then stares at lyca.
“ikora,” says the ghost, and immediately lyca pulls her bow from the void again, and immediately fell cloaks himself in solar light, standing protectively before his ghost. “whatever caused those readings is gone.” lyca slowly lowers her bow. “the dreadnaught has been full of energy surges lately. we might do better to talk to the clans who led the final assault on oryx.”
“thank you, guardian,” comes ikora’s voice. ghost ends the transmission.
“i can help you,” fell insists quietly, again, solar light leaking away from his frame, and lyca releases her bow into the void with a snap of air.
“are you listening to me?” lyca says, incredulous. “i don’t want your help. i’m not some mindless drone or hopeless prisoner under oryx’s thumb. i never was. i did this to myself, do you understand that? i took up the knife.”
“why would you turn against the light?”
“it’s not that simple.”
The second time Fell and Lyca meet, Lyca is dead. From the Other Place she watches him examine the Court, take readings of the rupture, shoo off a fireteam seeking a challenge.
Curiosity at its peak, she pushes through the rupture, feeling her shape coalesce into the material plane, and the second her boots touch the ground a storm cracks through the Court and so much arc energy slams through her body that she tastes the tang of ozone on her tongue, and the Other Place welcomes her again, soft and dark.
She doesn’t use the rupture this time, and instead she pushes herself through a prayer, a Knight who has yet to leave the Dreadnaught, who wants to see new worlds in the name of his king. She takes the thread of unknown places and runs along it.
The warlock is staring her down when she coalesces, framed in the arch of the Court, and she responds to his challenge. Her arrow flies true, shrieking, and hits him dead in the chest. Aiat.
His Ghost stares her down as she walks up, accusing her without a single word as he scrambles to piece together his warlock’s atoms. Lyca lets the warlock come back from his own Other Place. Harsh and full of light.
“An eye for an eye?” asks the Ghost.
“Something like that,” Lyca replies.
The Ghost brings back the warlock, sparks arcing between his hands where they’re wrapped around his rifle.
“You’re not dead,” the warlock accuses.
“I was,” Lyca says, and shrugs, and Shivers. “Now I’m not. I will be again. So will you. That’s how it works for us, doesn’t it?”
“Us?”
Lyca laughs.
"Oh, come on. We're not so different."
A Boomer cracks behind her; the warlock immediately raises his rifle and fires off three sharp, ringing shots. Lyca Shivers as the Ascendant Knight gets pulled back into the Other Place, and the Boomer’s shot goes wide, splashing Void light across her armor.
"You're creatures of the Darkness," the warlock says. "The Taken, you're abominations."
"I resent that," Lyca replies, frowning. "I could just as easily say that about Guardians. And I'd know. Reanimated corpses with magical powers?" She gestures, opening her hands. Your move.
To his credit, the warlock cocks his head thoughtfully, and lowers his rifle by a few inches. His Ghost blinks at him, and then at Lyca.
"What was your name?" the warlock asks. "Before... this."
"My name is Lyca."
"I'm Fell-14."
"No offense -- not that you’d take any from an abomination like me, I assume -- but why are you talking to me?" Lyca can feel some of the Acolytes starting to get interested in the conversation, starting to pick at the strings of her attention, now that their Ascendant has met his death.
"You interest me," Fell says. "You're-- we've never seen a Taken Guardian before. There might be more, obviously--"
"There are," Lyca interrupts, voice mild. "There have been. Is that what this is about? Your pity party? Sparing me now, so you can save me, bring me back to the Light?”
Fell takes a moment to reply, again, and lowers his weapon just a bit further.
“You interest me,” he repeats. “Me, personally. Not the Vanguard. I didn’t report you, or anything. It’s not my place. Not to be a walking warlock stereotype, but--” He shrugs. “I’m curious.”
“Well, ask Eris, then. I’m sure she knows more about this than I do.”
“Funny you say that,” Fell says. “She’s asked a number of Guardians to find and scan these-- fragments. Ikora says it’s Hive superstition, that I shouldn’t take it seriously. Eris seems convinced otherwise. Either way, Oryx isn’t my assignment, and I’ve been told not to touch them.” He tips his head back towards the Court’s rupture. “I’m just here to take readings. Nothing more.”
Lyca laughs bitterly.
“Typical,” she says. “So they’re still pulling the wool down over Guardians’ eyes, huh? Still waving taboos around to keep people in line?” Fell shifts, almost uncomfortably. “Tell you what. You’re so curious about the Taken, go scan a few of those calcified fragments. Then we’ll talk.”
“Knowledge is power, and some power can be dangerous,” Fell finally counters. “Rules exist for a reason. Look at Eris Morn. Toland the Shattered.”
“Funny you say that,” Lyca parrots. “Go to Luna some time. Go to the Hellmouth. See what you find there deep in the Hive’s tunnels.” She doesn’t say, go to Crota’s empty throne. She doesn’t say, you’ll hear his whispers in the green-fire sun. “Your questions have answers, Fell. I’m just not the one you need to hear them from.”
“I won’t–” He pauses, and considers. “You could very well be sending me to my death.”
“I just killed you, didn’t I?” Lyca shrugs. “There are worse things to practice than death.” Fell looks at her again, and she feels like he sees much more through that helm of his than he’s letting on. “Go search for your truth. Find your strength there.”
“Assuming I find this truth of mine,” he says, voice flat, tinged with sarcasm at the edge, “and assuming I’d like to find you again, how?”
Lyca thinks for a moment, tries her best to parse it in a way that would make sense for this warlock, thinks of everything she’s picked apart about herself, all the truths she’s found.
“Define me,” she finally replies.
“Define you?” Fell asks, and there’s a deep-seated skepticism in his voice. His Ghost blinks lazily at her, light flickering.
“Define me,” she repeats. “As in definition. Whatever I am to you, define it. I’ll know. That’s how these spaces work.”
“The Ascendant Realm, you mean?” Fell’s Ghost blinks at her slowly again.
“Yes,” she says, “and no. When you bring him back, are you not calling on a definition of him? Are you not defining what he is and was and will be to weave him together?”
Fell and his Ghost exchange a long, slow look.
“Alright,” Fell finally says. “Thank you for talking with me, Lyca. May the Li–” He pauses. “Well, I suppose the Light blessing your journey wouldn’t do you much good.”
“Not at all.”
------
A thread.
Unknowns, variables, the pull to explore; an incomplete definition, two-dimensional and full of hypotheses, but the thread holds, and then she feels the weave of more. A curiosity, the curiosity – Curiosity, as it were, capitalized and personified. Not entirely three-dimensional yet, but enough for her to follow, enough to bring an edge to her knife, enough to cut a wound.
Doesn’t hurt that some tryhard Centurion decided that Mars is lovely this time of day, cutting wounds so that the Blight spills over red sands, and she lets herself pass through.
“Oh, shit.”
That warlock – Fell-14? 13? No, 14 – is staring at her, looking for all the world like he’s just scrambled backwards. He very well might have. His Ghost is hovering close above his shoulder, blinking, no doubt scanning their environment.
“Hey there,” Lyca says, and fires off a small mock salute.
Fell seems to regain his composure, straightening his shoulders and giving the slightest shake of his head.
“I frankly didn’t think that would work,” he says. “I don’t quite understand how it works, yet.”
“You did do your homework, though,” his Ghost chimes in, and then projects scans of a handful of calcified fragments into the empty space between Fell and Lyca. “Even beggared some of Toland’s journal off of Eris when Ikora wasn’t around.”
“Still curious, O Warlock mine?” Lyca asks, unable to bite back the half-snide joke.
“More questions than answers,” he replies, and shrugs. “That’s always how you know you’re going down the right path.”
“Fell, we have more Taken inbound,” says Fell’s Ghost.
“You don’t say,” Lyca says dryly. “That Centurion’s doing his best to call Sho’oulth. If you leave him alone–” Lyca’s interrupted by a Shiver, a big, full-bodied Shiver, and she can feel the first cuts of that wound. “Never mind. He’s here.”
“Are you going to fight against your own kind?” Fell’s voice is tinged with both horror and curiosity as Lyca pulls out her rifle and loads in a new magazine.
“He’s issuing a challenge,” Lyca replies. “Don’t you want to answer it?”
And without waiting for a response, Lyca ducks out from the cave that Fell had summoned her in and sprints out into wavering Darkness.
