Chapter Text
The wind rustles the trees into frenzied whispers, and an owl is being particularly vocal tonight. It’s an atmosphere that deserves the ominous ticking of a generations-old clock, Barry thinks. Or at least, having one to listen to might ease some of his anxiety.
His eyes have adjusted to the moonlight streaming in through the window, the only curb on the otherwise pitch darkness. The armchair’s crusted velvet prickles into his skin. It came with the house, and he doesn’t want to think about what could’ve made the stains.
Magnus Burnsides is sleeping lightly on the couch, the duvet pulled snug around him. Magnus, the werewolf. A werewolf who had almost died fighting some unfathomable horror in the backyard.
Barry doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to leave the house tomorrow morning.
He’ll have to, of course. Magnus needs medical treatment, and Barry’s not going to let the man limp all the way across town on his own. He tries not to think about the thing that made the injuries, and how it could still be out there, in the daylight. That’ll just add to the worry.
Not that Barry has a whole lot of energy to be worried, for the moment. The adrenaline took just about everything out of him, and as he sits heavily, his every deep breath sends him deeper. His eyes close, just for a moment.
It’s enough. When his eyes open, there’s another figure in the room. “You again?” Barry whispers.
She’s standing over Magnus, and she doesn’t acknowledge Barry at all. She just mouths words that, as always, Barry can’t quite make out. He wishes he could wake up Magnus in this dream, too, to see her. He’d been so concerned for her well-being.
“K-Kind of reassuring that you’re a real person,” Barry continues in a breath of a whisper, for nobody to hear. “And not, uh, proof that I’ve lost my actual mind. Unless you’re--unless all this is, uh, that. Proof.”
Lup doesn’t notice him talking, but she does step back when Magnus abruptly sits up. He shoves off his blanket, and she steps to the side. Barry realizes that Magnus is staring directly at him.
“Barry?” Magnus groans, starting to stand up. There’s obvious worry glinting in his eyes.
“Yes? W-What? Don’t get up, you--you’re still hurt,” Barry says in a rush.
Magnus walks up to Barry’s armchair and starts shaking his shoulders. “Shit, Barry, hey! Are you okay?”
Barry’s head flops about on his neck, too heavy to bother properly moving. He’s way too tired for this. “I-I’m fine, Magnus, you’re--you gotta get to bed, dude--”
He feels Magnus’ fingers pressed flat against the side of his throat. “Fuck,” Magnus says. “Kravitz, you bastard, not--not now , dammit, he saw Lup! He could’ve… This can’t be happening…”
“I’m fine! I’m fine, what the hell are you--”
Magnus works his arms under Barry’s back and legs, ignoring Barry’s exhausted protests. He’d probably do it with ease if not for those injuries. “You’re gonna be okay,” Magnus says shakily. “Just, just hang in there, buddy.”
“Put me down!” Barry shoves against Magnus’ shoulders, trying to drop back into the chair.
Except he doesn’t move.
He can’t move. It isn’t just the fatigue, now--his body isn’t listening to him, just lying limp in Magnus’ arms. He can’t even feel the movement of his own lips when he says, “Magnus! Magnus, fuck, I-I’m not dead , I’m just--I’m in a dream? I-I think?”
He strains his vision to look at Lup, who’s watching the scene with similar surprise, but far less distress. “W-What’s going on?” Barry asks, his voice cracking. “Can you--can you tell me? A-Anything?”
As ever, she doesn’t seem to hear him, but she follows them as Magnus carries him out from the house and towards the street. Magnus’ breath is still shaky from the effort, and Lup looks concerned, but mostly eager.
The stars are all wrong for winter, and Barry can’t feel the cold at all. The fire that burns across the town, as it always does in these dreams, illuminates Lup’s face but not Magnus’. Lup keeps coming in and out of view, as she walks around the flames in a practiced pattern, but Magnus goes right through it all.
Across the street, Barry sees a flaming balcony, broken off from its window. The fire on it is alive and flickering, but the balcony is suspended mid-fall. And when his head gets shaken into facing to the side, behind Magnus, Barry sees the light glinting off a shiny blackness between cracks in the sidewalk. Something blinks.
“Am I dead?” Barry asks helplessly. “Is this what death is? Th-That thing where--Am I going to be conscious in my c-corpse forever?” He’s sure his stomach would be clenching up in terror at the thought, if he could feel it.
Lup, who has been looking increasingly excited about all of this, just gives Barry a well-timed thumbs-up.
So she still can’t hear him. He realizes that Magnus is carrying him in the same direction that they usually go in his dreams, and that they’re passing the Hammer and Tongs--around where he usually wakes up.
“I don’t want to die,” he whispers. Then, louder, “Lup--Your name’s Lup, right? P-Please tell me that--that saying your name undoes some magic curse and lets you talk a-and tell me what’s going on.”
“Wrong,” she says. “But that was well-timed!”
“Wait,” Barry yelps, “W-Wait, you can--y-you can hear me?”
“Yessirree!” Lup grins. “As of now, anyway. Wasn’t giving you the silent treatment before, or anything.”
“S-So, okay, so… So you’re really Lup? T-Taako’s sister?”
“Twin, in fact! See the resemblance?” As if it wasn’t obvious enough, she grins, displaying fangs that unmistakably mirror Taako’s. “Oh, man I’m excited as shit. I don’t even care if I sound weird. I haven’t had a conversation in ten years, y’know?” She laughs. “So you got my name, then? I don’t think I know yours.”
“Oh, uh--it’s Barry. B-Barry Bluejeans.”
“Fuck, that’s ridiculous, I love it,” she says, and he senses a slightly deeper recognition when she next meets his eyes.
She pats him on the shoulder. It feels more solid, more real than Magnus’ grip does on his entire back. “What’s up with your, uh, situation here?”
“I-I don’t know? Am I dead?”
“Dead? I mean… I doubt it. You’re not even out of your body this time, and you’re pretty good at gettin’ back even when you do leave it, so…”
“B-But I… Wait, this time? Have I been--been out of my body before?”
She tilts her head, and her smile is just as lopsided. “Yeees? Astral projection, looked like. What, you didn’t… did you not know? ”
“I’m new here. I-I learned werewolves were real, like, an hour ago.”
“Holy shit. So that took you two weeks and how much denial?”
Barry laughs wryly. “And then I found out that my weird dreams w-were actually--that I’m actually communing with a dream ghost on the nightly.”
“But like, a cool dream ghost, though.”
He exaggerates the eye movements--all he can move, really--of looking back and forth. “What? Th-there’s a cool ghost, too?”
“Rude!” She punches his arm harder, but she’s laughing.
Magnus adjusts his grip on Barry and lifts him up higher, angling his head up again.
“So,” Barry says, “Why can I hear you now? I-It’s why you were trying to get me to come down here, right?”
“Yeah. The barrier’s thinner on this end of town, near as I can tell,” Lup says. “I mean, it’s always thin for you, I guess, with your astral projecting. But now we can hear each other, so like I thought, we get better signal down here.”
“Uh. Barrier?”
“Barrier between… worlds? I mean, this isn’t a different world , but it’s a split-off moment in time from ten years ago. And I... The split happened near this end of town. So that’s probably why they’re closer together here.”
“So… I h-have to be limp to be here? In--in my body, I mean?”
Lup shrugs. “Uh… I don’t know? I thought you usually got tossed back into your body ‘cause you were getting too far from it. But now that your body’s down here, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to step out of it and still hear me.” She smirks. “But I can understand the desire to be held in Magnus’ arms.”
“I-I’m not--I can’t move !”
“Really? That’s weird, you usually step right out of your skin.”
“What--Th-that’s--”
Barry is interrupted by Magnus kicking on someone’s door, his best effort at knocking with both arms occupied. He’s yelling, “Merle! MERLE! Wake up, I think Barry’s really--”
The door swings open, and there’s Merle, wide awake, not even in pajamas. He looks irritable enough that he might as well have just been woken up, though. “I’m here, for Pan’s sake! Come inside before you wake the whole damn street.”
He steps back to let Magnus in. “What’s wrong?”
“He--I was at his house, and then I heard him stop breathing, and he didn’t have a pulse, so I brought him here--”
“Get him laying down,” Merle gestures to a row of small beds lines up against the wall. Out of the corner of his eye, Barry can see a figure resting in one of them.
Merle keeps grumbling as he rustles with something else in the room, out of Barry’s sight. “And you crossed town without a goddamn jacket on either of you? Have you lost your damn mind? God, I don’t have time for this at all.”
“I didn’t have a jacket at his house!” Magnus protests weakly as he brings Barry to the bed.
“I really am dead,” Barry says faintly.
Lup frowns. “You’d better not be. You’re the only damn connection I have to anyone I know, and this misery prefers salvation to company, thanks.”
“Who’s that?” Magnus asks as he lowers Barry.
“I dunno. Saw him collapse in the street an hour ago,” Merle says, his voice disguising worry under irritation.
As Barry’s body gets laid gently on the bed, his head falls naturally to the side. He gets a clear view of the adjacent bed and its inhabitant.
It’s pulsating under the blanket in some approximation of breathing, but it isn’t shaped anything like a person. It’s a familiar dark ooze, dripping off the edges of the bed, sparkling with flecks of color like black opal would. Just like the one Magnus fought in the forest--the thing he could see in his dream, but was invisible to Magnus when awake. Several of the bedridden monster’s many eyes move to meet Barry’s.
Barry screams and jumps out of the bed.
Lup claps. “Whoa, someone’s up! Well, sorta.”
In scrambling back off the bed, Barry realizes there’s something remaining in his place--his own body. His… corpse, if he’s to believe he didn’t have a pulse.
“What the fuck is going on,” he mumbles, nauseous.
“Those things are freaky,” Lup agrees, looking at the adjacent bed.
“I-It’s just--what is it doing here? A-And I’m out of my body again, and I might be dead in this nightmare monster realm--”
“Wow, first I’m uncool, now I’m a nightmare monster?” Lup asks, jokingly.
Barry can’t muster up the mirth for it. “O-Okay, but you can see it, right?”
“Yeah, like I said--freaky. No idea why there’s one in Merle’s house, though. I thought folks couldn’t see ‘em.”
“They can feel them, though,” Barry responds, looking at Magnus’ injuries.
Next to Barry’s incorporeal self, Merle checks the pulse on his corpse and curses. He walks away again, and grabs Magnus’ arm to stop his nervous pacing. “You sit down, pal. Stop working your wounds up. I’m a healer, not a harmacist.”
“A what?” Magnus asks distractedly, tapping his fingers against each other even as he sits down on the couch.
“Opposite of a pharmacist,” Merle responds, pulling several things out of a cabinet.
Barry looks up at Lup as the two corporeal men continue talking. “So… I can hear them. Can you hear them?”
“Yep,” Lup says, “But just on this end of town. Which is, y’know, how I figured it might work the same with you. And whaddya know! I was right.”
“I could hear Magnus at my house, too, though.”
“That’s gotta be a you thing. ‘Cause your physical body was in his world, right? You’re still more connected to there than here.”
“And where is here?”
The front door flies open again. Merle yells out, distinctly annoyed, but doesn’t take his hands off of whatever he’s doing on the table. Pouring a flask of weird liquid into a mug of some other indistinct, dark substance.
In the doorway, there’s a skeleton--and actual skeleton--in a dark cloak, holding a scythe. Barry feels terror claw into him. It looks like a perfectly classic grim reaper.
“I’m dead,” Barry whispers.
The grim reaper speaks with a voice that is loud, clear, and… exactly like Kravitz’s? “I finally caught you in the act! Barry Bluejeans, dying again!”
“Again?” Magnus asks, already standing again, stepping between the skeleton and the beds.
“Knock like normal people, god damn it!” Merle shouts, stirring whatever’s in the mug around with a spoon. He walks past Magnus, towards the beds.
“Rest in pieces,” Lup jokes shakily, wide-eyed, and then she composes herself. “I mean--sorry, that was--hey, don’t die, please? I don’t know what the fuck Krav is--”
And then Barry sits up abruptly, head pounding, a horribly bitter taste in his mouth.