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This was not what Terry Jr. wanted. Well, not what he wanted in the present moment, the now, anyway. If you dialed the clock back a few months and asked him if he would’ve wanted this, then he absolutely would’ve given you a loud ‘yes’ (and probably would’ve even meant it too).
But that was then, and this was now, and Terry really, really didn’t want his stepfather’s smoking body laid motionless at his feet. Okay, motionless was pretty generous, given the small twitches that seemed to jump across his joints, squeezing muscles and burning skin and-
This was not what Terry Jr wanted.
How had it even come to this anyway? They had- they had made a plan, right? And it had actually been going pretty well (for longer than they had expected, to any extent).
It was simple. Set up the trap at the end of the dock for when Willy appeared to hunt them down in Swankery Hills. Check. Have each of the dads at a corner of the sigil that Terry drew ahead of time? Check. Activate the magical, interdimensional cage? Check.
What they hadn’t accounted for was Willy using his final moments to turn towards Ron with a smirk and move his hand a single centimeter to the right. Where Terry was crouched thirty meters away behind an old, wooden ship.
He had been looking between the cracked wooden planks, craning his neck to avoid getting any more splinters, when he saw it all go down. Everything had been fine. Willy has been firing shot after shot towards each of the dads, but they’d managed to activate the spell first, which meant he couldn’t hit any of them.
Keyword: Them. Not him.
Another thing they also hadn’t accounted for was Ron’s split-second decision (was it really a decision if he couldn’t possibly have had any time to think about what he was going to do?) to step away from the sigil and directly into the line of fire.
After that? Chaos. Absolute Chaos.
Terry heard some yelling and the sounds of bodies hitting water, but it was all static as he pulled himself over the boat’s side and ran into the frey.
As he skidded to a stop at the edge of the pier where he saw Ron land, he found Henry already there, glowing hands hovering over a body that was too red and too hot. His breathing quickened, which frankly shouldn’t have been possible, because in that moment everything around Terry had become frozen in time, and frozen people didn't breathe or move.
Henry’s moving though, his fingers frantically flying from neck to lungs to where Terry could only guess was the intestinal tract, then back again for a second round. Then a third. Then a fourth.
Distantly, Terry heard the wet sound of an axe hitting something soft and saw the flash of some explosive going off, meaning Darryl and Glenn and Willy are moving too.
Ron’s not moving though. Not consciously.
Terry’s kneeling beside him now (when had that even happened?) and is close enough to Ron that he can see small bits of white scattered among all the puffy red skin and muscles and-
It’s kinda hard to tell, honestly. Everything’s merging together into one big, blurry kaleidoscope image.
He blinks. It makes everything clearer. It doesn’t make it better.
“I-“ His throat tightens up around the words he doesn’t have. “No. No. No, no, no…”
In the back of his mind, he thinks of the rated R flicks he would sneak out of his parent’s dvd collection. They were cheap, low budget movies with plots of brain eating butterflies and murderous toasters, so even when his parents caught him one day (aside from one afternoon-long talk and the loss of tv access for a few days) they ended up letting Terry watch the ones they deemed so strange they turned silly.
One of them did successfully manage to scare him, despite its 80s-esque effects. The toaster one actually, where some haunted AI was programmed into some family’s house. Every scene was chock full of actors with either way too much or too little emotion, and he’d laughed the whole way through.
It was only after his father’s sudden heart attack did the kitchen scene- where the protagonist died because the toaster snuck under where he was placing his metal teaspoon- become a whole lot more chilling, as he watched the man gasp for death, his family playing catch in the front lawn only a few feet away.
That scene from then looked a lot like the one now, actually. It felt just as real too, like Terry was sitting on the coach that had three blankets spread out around him, watching on a flat screen as his father was dying agai-
Oh god. His father was dying. Again.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, gentle even in its urgency.
“-erry? Terry Jr? Terry, buddy, I need you to look at me. Okay?”
It was Henry. He was looking at him. Terry looked back, reaching inside himself for something, only to feel his fingers scrape along an empty bottom. Luckily, it seemed like Henry wasn’t looking for something anyway.
“Listen, I need you to do something, can you do something for me?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Henry cursed and Terry felt the hand on his shoulder tense up. Henry closed his eyes for a moment before turning back to Terry. When he opened his eyes again, they were filled with a kind of focus that Terry had thought only existed in books.
“I need to go help Darryl and Glenn. I’ve got to- They need me…They need me.” He looked down at Ron for a moment and his face broke. “He’ll be stable for a bit longer, so could you-“ He let out a sputtering gasp and then looked back up at Terry.
There were tears in his eyes.
When he continued, it was with a strained voice.
“Can you stay here with Ron?”
Terry knew he must have nodded because Henry gave his shoulder a one last squeeze, then turned around and ran down the dock. He stumbled a bit as Terry watched him go, head growing leaves and skin growing bark. Then, a nasty cough from below pulled his attention right back down.
Shit.
What were you supposed to do with dyin- with super badly injured people again? Fuck. Right now, he was really regretting not watching more of those medical soap operas with his mom.
His mom. God. What was he going to tell her? How could he even explain that-
Another cough rattled throughout Ron’s body, and Terry pulled himself kicking and screaming up and out of his stupor. His dad was still here, dammit. He was still here and he was staying here. Terry grabbed Ron by the shoulders and pulled him up so he was half over Terry’s knees.
“Hey, Ron.”
He felt his voice catch and forced himself to zone out at the area just beyond Ron’s head. There was a patch of wood with some moss on it.
“It’s me, uh. It’s Terry. And you’re gonna be a-o-kay.” He dragged out the “o” part, letting his eyes flicker to meet Ron’s. They were staring out into the distance.
He would have been sure that Ron wasn’t aware of anything around him, but then his stepfather let out a low moan, and Terry felt fingers tap again left forearm, and all the sudden his vision was blurry again.
“You’re going to be okay, alright? It’s all going to be okay.”
He just knelt there for a while, like that. At one point, he considered carrying Ron out of the area, but the sound he made when Terry adjusted his grip on his shoulders quickly derailed that train of thought.
After what could’ve been a minute or an hour, the sounds of bodies scuffling on wood stopped, and Terry heard a faint splash.
Then, silence.
Then, a single set of footsteps.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Before Willy could get any closer, Terry held the magic sigil he’d drawn earlier tightly in his left hand and pulled Ron even more tightly towards him with his right. Around him and Ron, a blue wall, adorned with patterns probably created by whatever the Forgotten Realm’s version of cave men were (cave wizards?), appeared, encircling them in a faint ring of light.
Willy actually stopped for a moment, which Terry would’ve counted as a win, if he hadn’t then proceeded to snort and casually extend his arm.
He’d barely brushed a finger against the wall before it cracked, a thousand spider web strands splintering out from under his touch. Willy paused, lifting his finger, and looked down at Terry. Then, with a single eyebrow raised, Willy tapped the barrier again and it shattered.
A thousand shards of blue light rained down around the Stamplers.
“Ready to go, grandson?
Terry just glared back. He felt a flare of something between anger and fear and reached behind his back. He had one more ace up his sleeve. After all, what friend of Glenn Close’s son wouldn’t have a knife in this troubling, grandfather-fighting time?
Unfortunately he never got the opportunity to unsheathe it because one moment Willy was standing smugly in front of him, and the next he was gone and Terry felt a cold hand grab his wrist.
He gasped and threw his entire body forward, ripping his arm out of Willy’s hold in a jerking, twisting motion. Holding Ron close to his chest, Terry tried to run, but only managed to get a few steps away before stumbling over Ron’s leg and losing his balance. He felt the entire right side of his body hit damp wood, seawater oozing up between the planks. They both groaned, and Terry let himself lie there for a single moment, black spots dancing at the corners of his vision.
Then he remembered where he was, and who he was facing, and flung himself upward into a sitting position. Sea water sprayed, soaking into his back as he watched Willy idly twirl the knife. He looked bored.
Terry hated him more in that moment than he ever had before.
Shit.
Shit, Shit.
Where were the others? He flicked his eyes to his left for a moment, out to where he’d heard the fighting stop. Nobody was there. Willy caught his gaze and stood up, taking the time to stretch his legs.
“Looking for Ron’s ‘friends’?”
He tilted his head towards the area where they'd been fighting. Aside from some fresh axe marks and thin pillars of smoke, the dock’s end looked almost peaceful in its emptiness.
“I wouldn’t be worried about them…”
Terry saw a hint of white appear from beneath Willy’s mustache as his smirk widened.
“Y’know what they say,” Willy turned back to Terry and shrugged. “Sometimes, you just gotta throw them in and see if they swim…”
He took a step forward.
“Or if they sink.” Another step.
Terry scooted back until he felt his hand run along the dock’s edge. Ron groaned again, though it was softer this time, more of a half-mumbled whimper than a shout.
Willy rolled his eyes and let out a loud sigh.
“Of course, a whiner to the end.” He clicked his tongue. “Disappointing, but not surpri-“
“Shut up.”
Raising his eyebrows, Willy shot Terry an unimpressed look and threw his knife into the water. He placed his hands on his hips and tilted his head slightly to the right, like Ron did when Terry told him something he didn’t understand.
Though this look lacked all of the newly familiar warmth that Terry had recently begun to know.
“Excuse me?”
Another step. Now Terry could feel the vibrations from Willy’s feet as they hit the wooden planks.
“What did you just say to me? Because, I know you didn’t just tell me to ‘shut up’.”
Terry looked up at him for a few seconds more, then quickly looked down at his stepdad. His stepdad, who was burnt and dying and looking a lot less awake. Shit. Terry took a deep breath. Or at least he tried to, it came out a lot more hiccupy than intended.
“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Terrance Junior.” Willy’s voice got low and quiet. “What exactly did you just say to me?”
He was standing right in front of them now.
Terry held Ron closer.
“How- How could you,” Terry paused, a wasp nest nestled between his ears. “How could you do all this to us?” He nodded towards Ron, “To him?”
He ground his teeth together until he was sure he could taste dust.
“...Sir.”
There was a moment of nothing but waves crashing.
Then, faint laughter. Willy leaned back, a look of disbelief lighting his face.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and another gust of wind blew throughout the bay.
“Are you kidding me?” Willy let out another exhale, lifting his right hand from his hip to motion down at Ron. “I do this for you, and this is the thanks I get? God, kids these days are so spoiled, no wonder none of you have any manners.”
Terry looked up at him. The wasps flew faster.
“What did you just say?”
Willy crouched down so they were eye to eye.
“I mean, didn’t you want him dead? Don’t get me wrong,” he chuckled, jabbing Ron with his toe, “I can’t exactly blame you.”
Flinching, Terry scooted away until he was practically teetering on the edge of the dock, pulling Ron back with him and up towards his chest.
“I- I never said-“
“Sure you did. You said you wanted him gone a lot actually, if I remember correctly. As a matter of fact,” Willy brought his right hand up to his chin and hummed, pursing his lips as he pretended to be deep in thought. “It was basically all that you said to him- and about him, really- up until the day you decided to exchange your real father for this poor excuse of a pans-“
“Shut up!” Terry bent over and curled into Ron’s chest. It was warm and smelled like the bacon his father used to burn in the kitchen on Mother’s Day. “Shut up, shut up, shu-”
He felt a hand grab his shirt collar and yank hard, but Terry just held onto Ron tighter. He swore that if he’d had any air in his lungs right then and there he would’ve screamed, but he was running on empty so he just settled for a strangled sob.
Cold fingers changed course and dug into his shoulder instead, pushing him up and away from his stepfather until he was practically dangling over the crashing waves.
A cool sea breeze blew across the docks. Terry stared into the sky. It would be dusk soon. The puffy clouds and skyline blurred together. Terry shut his eyes and felt the hand gripping his shoulder tighten.
When he opened them back up, Willy was right where the sky should’ve been.
“Your manners will be the first thing that we work on.”
Terry closed his eyes again. Then he opened them and looked down at his last hope.
“Ron.”
Even to his own ears, he sounded pretty pathetic, with his nose filled with snot and his throat thick with tears.
Willy rolled his eyes again and gave a short huff.
“Jesus. How do so many fucking fairies keep getting the Stampler name? Looked like you learned something from him after all.” He paused. “Not that it really matters.”
Terry watched as Willy’s hand lit up with a pale green light.
“You’ll learn, I’ll make sure of that.”
He just continued to stare, frozen as the hand came closer and closer and closer to his face.
It was just barely hovering above his nose when Terry saw the flash of motion spring up from the bottom of his vision and latch onto Willy’s arm.
Crack.
“Don’t touch my son.”
There was an orange flash, and then everything went dark.