Chapter Text
He felt himself dying.
Alone, as he had expected. The nakedness of it all wasn’t a surprise, either; it made sense to go the way he came. Still, vulnerability shook his core in ways alien to him, the sounds of thunder reverberating within the last breath of his lungs, rhythms of his exposed chest accompanying the drumming storm, marching its way across his ribs.
Delirious, Henry thought of the states of decomposition that awaited him. Timeless on his wandering mind, he paused to contemplate, realizing that no matter what happened to his remains, eventually, he’d be someone’s meal. Not as alone as he initially thought, he found himself surrounded by what he would eventually become; his death, in spite of him, would be just another step on the endless metamorphosis of his atoms.
Would he prefer to stay awake?
Would he prefer to remain aware of the rotting of his former self?
When would his body stop belonging, and start being what’s left of the person that once inhabited it? Once his consciousness was gone, his corpse would stay here, and he wouldn’t be able to know what’d happen to it afterward. And it wouldn’t matter. He couldn’t care less about a body that wouldn't be his.
If he wasn’t the body laying under the storm, then he was the electricity within it.
Every time lightning flashed, he felt grief grasping at his wounds and burying itself in his heart, like a stake of splintered meat. His arms weren’t by his sides anymore, yet decades and decades of Christian ideology being fed down his throat had imprinted in his brain the image of him laying there with extended arms.
What good had being an atheist done, when at the end here he laid, crucified.
Thorns rested upon his brow, crowning him king of nothing.
In any other situation, he would’ve been worried about the whole dying thing. But now that it was happening, he didn’t have it in him to worry. It felt easy, to act like he was at peace.
The rumbles vibrated within his chest, white flashes covering his vision; maybe the lightning was finally coming to pick his soul, maybe this time he wouldn’t survive it.
He knew these were the last instances of him being, and he wished for there to be music.
⚘ ⚘ ⚘
John MacNamara was really fucking tired.
One would imagine that “tired” wasn’t a very accurate concept to apply, once disintegrating and becoming part of the space between dimensions.
One would be wrong.
It sucked.
John wasn’t an angry person. He liked to think of himself as determined, composed, maybe a little too passionate, but not necessarily angry. Right now, however, he was furious .
Existence in the in-between was, to say the least, agitated.
He was doomed, never to fully stop, never to fully rest- he never got to do anything fully. In the Black and White, he was permanently in enemy territory- and right now under the unshielding, crying night sky, running after this, this goat-faced fuck , He could feel how lacking in resources they were.
The crushing weight of the end of the world was never enough, apparently, he also had to deal with the personal horrors of people under his guidance being put at risk, by no other than the incompetence of the people above him.
A pawn outside the chessboard, John had learned to process frustration and fear in ways his peers hadn’t had to. He meant more to the interdimensional idiots that called themselves gods than to his superiors; at least, to the eldritch horrors he was a person, he still was human. A pest, an inconvenience, even an enemy- but human, nonetheless. Outside P.E.I.P, he was just talking gun, a high-maintenance interdimensional machine, and John had seen how bad they were at taking care of those.
Taking a turn under some fallen logs, John was met with the gruesome scene that had been hiding under the treetops of the Witchwood Forest.
He came to a full stop after almost tripping over a severed human arm- no matter how desensitized he was, some things (like random arms) still got him to be taken aback.
Its owner wasn’t far either, he realized as soon as he recovered from the initial surprise. A few steps away, a naked and armless figure curled over, coughing in desperation as Tinky watched them.
The gigantic yellow goat had a demented grin expanding over its body, crooked teeth showing in delight. Its impossibly long neck twisted with the familiar crack of bones snapping; thunder clashed the night as the bastard spoke to the poor person, indiscernible whispers of its wicked voice that he wouldn’t wish on anyone, bringing nothing but madness and rotten words.
John took his shot.
⚘ ⚘ ⚘
There was only Void. Silence.
He didn’t feel anything and yet somehow he knew how cold it was, the eternal blackness.
Then, thunder.
It started in his chest, He saw blue; he saw impossibly long tendrils attaching to thousands of beings. He heard the harmony of the cerulean voices calling to him, grasping his mind. He felt his own desperation, the promise of peace, the music.
Memories that were simultaneously alien to him, and his own. The dread of preparing for something that no one else could see for decades, the certainty of its finality.
Henry Hidgens sat up, alive, and started choking on his own blood because of course he could not have nice things. His chest hurt like hell, his mind felt cramped and, and this was the worst part, there was some weird murderous-looking furry in front of him. The biped goat thing was bright, rubber-duck yellow, and had a little too many limbs; its hind legs were hooves, and it had creepy arms and hands, nowhere you’d like it to. There were at least 7 too many, and they did not flatter its awfully long and contorted neck.
The Nightmare Goat smiled at him with crooked teeth that did not end in its face, twisting all the way to the start of its warped scrag. “You’re not dead yet” it said, fucking charming fellow.
There was the distinct sound of a gunshot and a bullet colliding against the face of an eldritch fuck. The goat’s face shattered, leaving places where you could see its swirling flesh; then the rest of it shattered, like cartoonish glass. In no time, a handsome (very handsome) person came out of the forest and proceeded to set the thing on fire, indifferent to the pouring rain. Henry was convinced at this point that he was hallucinating hard, so he moved on and kept his attention on his dripping mouthful of blue shit, as one does.
The places where he used to have arms had stopped hurting, the burning pain being replaced with the sickening sensation of vine-like tendrils moving under his skin; because, say it with me: he could NOT have nice things. He looked down at his chest -which was a bad call because, what the absolute fuck- and had the horrifying confirmation: there was a hole there! a hoof-shaped one; not a surprise, but still very much annoying.
He couldn’t see any organs, bones, or muscles, only a fleshy, moist, pulsating ultramarine mass working on the wound, hopefully, to close it.
Henry paused, mouth agape to let the blue shit dribble. For a second, he wasn’t sure. The memories, the ones that both weren’t and were his, pushed against the limits of his brain’s capacity. It wasn’t prepared to deal with any of this; an ocean had broken free inside his mind, flooding his identity with alien information, what he thought was or wasn’t part of his initial, original existence; his consciousness buzzed around hitting against his skull like an overcrowded wasp hive, he wasn’t sure which thoughts were- he collapsed.
John saw the poor person drop on the floor, unconscious, in a dark sapphire pool of rain mixed with well, something. Once closer, he could see it coming from their nose, ears, mouth. To look at this thick honey-like slime installed a deep dread within MacNamara’s stomach, and yet- he reached out, ass clenched; He could touch it.
He instantly got up with a fistful, looking at Xander with his Holy Shit face. His spouse looked back at him with equal confusion and wonder. John was terrified. He didn’t remember how it felt touching slime or honey before he became interdimensional, but it definitely wasn’t like this, and it 100% did not make him feel in danger.
“This cannot mean anything good- no one should come in contact with this, especially if it is T’Noy Karaxis’ doing.” John bent over to put the slimish substance back, only to find that not only could he touch this thing, but that he was touching the person beneath too. He poked their stomach, carefully.
“I think I know who this is… '' Xander approached slowly to take a better look, whipping some mud away “I think this is the owner of the creepy manor we saw ea- wait wait wait wait” xe discarded all precautions as soon as xe saw John’s hand actually touching the skin; xe put xer hand over his, going through it but touching the person immediately afterward. “oh” Xe whispered.“Fuck. I’ll get them to send the specialized paramedical unit.”
John stopped poking the unconscious person, because he understood basic boundaries, but stayed close to the floor. It had been so long since he was able to feel anything from this world. He felt lightheaded, touch starved in the most literal, mundane sense; he pulled away and made himself concentrate on what was clearly the priority here: get this person to safety.
His incapability to keep up and shatter Tinky’s body on time had caused this person who knows how much pain. The Weaver of Impossibilities had a twisted sense of humor, and this person being a new victim for it to play with was his fault. He knew how sickening and nightmarish the grip of a Lord in Black could be, he had seen it, he had felt it. John knew better than putting himself down for mistakes that he couldn’t change, and so he decided there and then that this person, whoever they were, would not fall to -because or for- The Lords. He promised.
They were P. E. I. P.’s responsibility now.