Chapter Text
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Raleigh wakes up to an empty world.
He rolls off the bed, gets tangled up between the blankets that Chuck insists on piling onto their bed (demons and their delicate constitution, ridiculous) and hits the floor with a crunch. His mind registers the irony before he realises that it’s too quiet for two in the evening in a city like Hong Kong. He blinks, spreadeagled on the carpet as he listens for the familiar throbs of the city that never sleeps.
Nothing.
Just an eerie stillness that reminds him of abandoned churches and late night horror flicks. That movie about a walk through desolate woods at twilight and he doesn’t quite remember which because he’s seen too many throughout the years. He trips when he tries to get up, an uncharacteristic ache burning under his skin, and spends several more minutes on the floor.
“This sucks,” he says, staring at the ceiling as if it can offer him answers to questions he hasn’t asked yet.
The world agrees in morose silence.
When he stumbles into the kitchen, he finds a glass of milk on the counter, a half-eaten bagel on a plate next to it. Raleigh thinks of Chuck leaning against the counter, munching while the television rattles on in the background (sometimes he watches the weather channel, sometimes absurd reality shows just to criticise everything and everyone). That is what it should have been, when normalcy doesn’t include a world that has somehow learnt how to hold its breath.
“Chuck?” he calls, staring blearily at the coffee maker. His voice echoes too loud over the silence. “There’s some weird shit happening right now and I hope you’re not part of it.”
Raleigh walks over to the balcony and the day is bright enough that he has to squint when he looks out. There’s the endless blue of the sky, the streets decorated with cars without drivers. Blinking traffic lights with tiny red-and-green men that run even with the absence of actual pedestrians. He stares at the traffic lights for a few minutes before something like dread kicks in.
“Hello?” There’s an answering echo, amplified by the abysmal lack of noise and he leans over the railing, makes a concentrated effort to sense something. Anything. “Chuck?!”
"Quit your hollerin’, old man.” There’s a hand on Raleigh’s arm, much too warm to be human and Chuck appears in his peripheral. “I’m not deaf.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he replies irritably, despite the relief rattling through his bones. He gestures at the emptied streets and raises an eyebrow. “You’ve got any idea what’s going on here?”
Chuck grimaces, teeth worrying over his lower lip. It takes him a while but he eventually says, ”I need to tell you something, yeah? But you gotta listen until I’m done. Q&A can wait for later.”
“What—”
Chuck levels a flat stare at him. Which shouldn’t work considering the fact that he’s wearing a multi-coloured oversized sweater that Raleigh has knitted for him during one of the longer winters, but the gravity of the situation supersedes his impulse to gather Chuck into his arms and worm his hands underneath that layer of yarn. Priorities. What a shame. He makes a zipping sound as he mimics a line over his mouth.
Chuck’s narration is clear and concise. A direct order from Below, delivered with the usual aplomb of a madhouse slaughter. The hospital in a small town somewhere in Japan. A nurse who isn’t really a nurse and a baby who is a baby as well as being the Antichrist, to be swapped with a diplomat’s newborn child. Raleigh might have made some sort of a strangled noise at that because Chuck pauses, green eyes flashing with flecks of gold and self-deprecation.
“The Antichrist?”
"I distinctly remember asking you to keep the questions for later, mate.”
“Are we talking about the harbinger of Apocalypse, the End Times is near, the Final Judgement is rolling into town kind of Antichrist here?”
“Didn’t know there’s another kind,” Chuck deadpans. After a second, he scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t want to do it. But it’s not like I can say ‘nah, maybe some other day’, you understand? They would’ve dragged me back for the barbie.”
Raleigh stares.
Chuck rolls his eyes. “Barbeque. Giant flaming pits of lava and things you’re better off not knowing. Not very original, I confess, but exceedingly efficient in getting their point across.”
Raleigh exhales slowly, still trying to wrap his head around what Chuck has just told him. It doesn’t help that the silence around them is getting to him. It shifts like a corporeal entity, entirely too self-aware to be natural and there’s something unsettling about the brand of quiet that seems to be listening to their every word. Raleigh snaps his fingers, willing a chair to materialise so he can properly digest this new information, but he finds himself hitting the floor again when he attempts to sit down. It hurts. There’s a recurring theme here and it makes him feel like he’s the butt of a colossal joke he doesn’t actually get.
“Yeah, you can’t do that.” Chuck holds out a hand for him, fingers barely sticking out of the sweater sleeve. It would’ve been cute if Raleigh isn’t nursing a sore ass. “Not here.”
Staggering onto his feet, he scowls at offending flat surface. “Why not?”
Chuck shrugs. “My best bet is that we’re in some sort of a vision. Post-Apocalypse. What the Antichrist considers as the perfect world after reset.”
“This is what he considers a perfect world?”
“She.”
“What?”
“The Antichrist is a girl.”
Raleigh groans, puts his arms around Chuck’s shoulder and buries his face into that scratchy sweater.
Great.
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