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...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
Sanford hated that heartbeat monitor.
It had felt like ages since he had been in a proper bed, let alone get his wounds properly patched up instead of a haphazard hack-job done in the heat of a gunfire battle. In all honesty, any other day and, in any other situation, he would have been perfectly happy to sit in a hospital room in solitude, content to relax and take solace in the fact that he had literally helped save Nevada and, quite possibly, the world from either destruction or demon-spawn takeover, whichever came first. Any other day he’d have been sound asleep, dreaming his cares away in the softest bed he’d had in months as he recuperated from his near-fatal injuries.
But this was not “any other day”.
He hadn’t slept ever since he got checked into the hospital, and he didn’t even know what date it was anymore. Nevada has lost track of time long ago, ever since the sun mysteriously vanished (something he had a nagging feeling he should be blaming Hank for) and plunged the entire land into perpetual darkness, leaving it impossible for anyone, let alone Sanford, to figure out what day it was. But, then again, maybe that was just the excuse Sanford used. The sun had returned, after all; maybe Sanford just refused to look out the window.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
In all honesty, Sanford was surprised that he could hear the freaking heartbeat monitor in the first place. He had been hearing nothing but the sounds of gunfire, explosions and death-cries for the last several days, something that only got even worse when he was literally dragged through Hell and subjected to fighting an army of undead goons and screaming, demonic clowns. The fact that he could hear the heartbeat monitor at ALL over the sounds of bullets flying, vehicles crashing and clowns screaming in his head was a miracle in Sanford’s mind, although it did little to convince him to appreciate the mindless, monotone beeping the machine beside his bed was making.
The doctors considered it a miracle that Sanford was still breathing, let alone able to be still be capable of firing a gun, which is what position HQ had been told he was found in. They reported that Sanford was seen standing alone in a field of dead, bloody, mutilated and sometimes mutated bodies, still holding a smoking, well-used pistol, just staring at an almost-unrecognizable body at his feet with what looked to be a shell-shocked expression. It had taken a full team of ops to pull Sanford away from the battlefield and get him into an ambulance, and even then they had to approach him hesitantly because they worried he’d turn and open fire on them, mistaking them for more goons that needed to be put down.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
Sanford had no idea how long he was in the hospital. As mentioned, he hadn’t slept at all, and had barely spoken to any of the doctors that came to check on him, only answering their questions of concerns with one or two-word responses or a simple grunt accompanied by a slight nod or shake of the head. In all honesty, Sanford just wanted to get the doctors out of the room so he could be left alone again. He had literally gone through Hell and back and he felt he was entitled to at least a bit of alone time, though he tended to spend ninety-five percent of his alone time staring off into space and the other five briefly glancing at the heartbeat monitor, almost to check and see if he was still breathing since he couldn’t trust himself to make that confirmation.
That night in question replayed over and over and over again in Sanford’s head ever since he was picked up and put into the ambulance. Through all the checkups the doctors had put him through he could only see blood and dismembered body parts everywhere. Every doctor that he looked at was replaced by the mental image of a screaming, vibrating, green-skinned clown, and every time a doctor approached him with gauze he, out of instinct, recoiled back a bit, thinking that they were trying to strangle him with it. It actually took the doctors a good three hours just to get Sanford’s wounds properly wrapped, and that was after he had calmed down enough to let them do it.
Sanford’s wounds puzzled and baffled every doctor that looked at them. By their logic, he should be dead, or at the very least have multiple organs not functioning anymore when they clearly were. It was a miracle that none of his organs had ceased functioning, and none of them could explain how it was possible. They obviously didn’t yet know about Sanford’s journey to Hell and back, or the fact that, for a bit, he was honestly VERY close to death himself. Or at least that’s what it felt like. In all honesty, Sanford was too busy fighting for his life and completing the mission to think about the possibility of dying. The headlong trip into Hell itself, or at least what he could only describe as Hell, was the first time that whole mission Sanford had even thought about the likelihood that he may actually not get out of the mission in one piece.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
Sanford had fought off demonic, skeletal copies of that clownish hell-spawn for what felt like an eternity and, at the end, felt like he was close to just giving up and letting the void consume him. He could only describe the feeling as floating in an empty space of nothingness, and with no track of time he felt like he had floated there for an eternity when in reality it could only have been a few moments. He honestly didn’t know. All he knew was one moment he was in a near-death state, willing to just let himself go, and the next he was getting pulled back to reality, jolting himself to life after hearing a familiar voice he swore he thought he was never going to hear again. The first thing Sanford felt after regaining consciousness was someone helping him up, and though it took a moment for his vision to clear of the strange, black substance covering every wound on his body he had sustained in the unwanted romp in the underworld (and a substance he honestly didn’t want to know anything about), he got a clear look at whom was helping him up.
There stood Deimos. His brother-in-arms. The same one that, only a few moments prior, Sanford had seen laying on the ground in a bloody, mutilated lump of barely-recognizable flesh mass. The only reason Sanford had known the bloody body on the ground was Deimos at all was the hat he was still wearing and the carton of unlit cigarettes sticking out of his pocket, looking ready to spill its contents on the ground. Sanford only had the time to step over Deimos’ body because it was at that point he saw Hank, whom Deimos had clearly given his life for trying to revive (again) and had been turned into a giant MAG Agent. However, before Sanford even had the chance to mourn Deimos, a shadowy being (that he later learned was called “The Auditor”) materialized and started attacking him with a red-hot sword. Everything after that happened so fast that Sanford barely had the time to dwell on the fact that his best friend had been riddled with bullets and he wasn’t there to help him.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
What mattered was that Deimos had been dead, so how was he standing there now, seemingly no worse for wear?...Well, except for the fact that his entire lower face and the upper part of his chest were now covered in stone. A thousand emotions had gone through Sanford the instant he saw Deimos alive again, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to give the jokester the biggest hug he could muster or sock him in the face (in retrospect, he realized that the punch would hurt himself more than Deimos). However, there was no time for reunions as there was still very-much a battle going on. Hank was in the middle of mowing down more and more waves of goons by himself, though the Auditor was in the process of trying to wear Hank down again.
And then Sanford saw the clown. That God-forsaken CLOWN. He was STILL ALIVE and killing everything in his path trying to make a beeline for Hank. Sanford had seen the clown in multiple forms since the mission started (had the majority of this entire mission taken place over a single day? He had no idea anymore) but now it seemed like he was little more than a standard-sized skeleton-zombie, attacking everything and everyone with feral determination, as if the only thing that mattered to him was Hank’s suffering. How many times did that stupid clown need to DIE to finally STAY that way?!
Deimos had tried to make sure he was able to stand and offered an apology that they didn’t have time to rest yet; the mission wasn’t over yet. Normality was in the process of being restored and the Auditor was trying everything in his power to prevent that from happening. To this day Sanford didn’t know why the Auditor was so keen on preventing normality from being restored, but all that mattered was that, no, the mission wasn’t done yet. Sanford knew this. So, giving his best friend a nod of acknowledgement and making a mental attempt to block out the searing pain flowing through his body, Sanford charged into battle one last time with Deimos by his side.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
To say Sanford was surprised to see Deimos lashing out with stones and rocks at the waves of goons and undead that came at them, controlling them as if he was some kind of rock magician, would be an understatement, but he remembered asking him where he got the cool new powers over sounds of his pistols going off. All Deimos said was that he “had the doc to thank for it”, but that seemed to tell Sanford all he needed to know, as well as partially explain how Deimos was alive again at all, and after that Sanford largely went back to shooting the goons around him, suddenly feeling the odd one out considering that Hank now had superhuman strength and Deimos could seemingly magically control the Earth itself.
Still, due to Hank’s immense size and Deimos being prone to showing off and having fun using creative ways to kill his enemies, this left Sanford as the fastest killer of the three, with what he was sure would be the highest kill-count between the three of them. He even made a mental note to bring it up to Deimos after it was all done (Deimos would likely just insist that he get points for creativity, though), but reminded himself that he still had a mission to do. From the looks of things, the Auditor was making a last stand because he seemed to be fighting Hank with desperation and rage, screaming about being “so close” to whatever he was planning. At this point, Sanford didn’t care; that shadowy prick had been responsible for so much that Sanford just wanted him dead.
The fighting raged on for what felt like an eternity, the only sounds Sanford hearing being the sounds of bullets firing or that freaking clown screaming Hank’s name in an unholy, inhuman screech. Sanford, at this point, had learned to block everything out. He had been fighting non-stop for what felt like weeks (though it was in reality only at most a couple of days), and had spent the past couple hours alone dealing with the insane zombie clown’s ear-splitting screams on top of that, so Sanford had felt that he was at the point where nothing could distract him anymore.
However, as he soon found out, he was wrong. Sanford heard the distinct sound of metal breaking, followed by an inhuman roar of disbelief and agony from the Auditor, which in turn made Sanford stop shooting for a moment and turn his head to see what had caused the noise.
Hank held the remnants of the last Improbability Drive, in the form of the halo the Auditor had stolen, in his hand, having grabbed it and crushed it in front of the Auditor, whom was now desperately scrambling on the ground for the pieces in what looked like a pathetic attempt to put it back together somehow.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
Everything suddenly started changing. The undead zombies they had been fighting collapsed and turned to ash; the enhanced goons that they had been mowing down seemed to lose life in an instant and crumbled to the ground in a heap like puppets that had their strings cut; the open fissures in the area dragged the demon creatures the clown brought with him kicking and screaming back to the underworld before closing themselves up. It was like the world around them was healing itself the instant the last Improbability Drive was destroyed. A glint appeared in the corner of Sanford’s eye as he shielded his sight to look at the sun finally peeking back out from the cover of darkness Nevada had fallen under ever since that stupid Sheriff activated the Improbability Drive in the first place.
Normality was being restored, and in the process everything that shouldn’t have existed due to the lack of normality just...Stopped existing. The zombies? The demons? The magic enhancements? None of that was possible without the Improbability Drive, and with it gone, so were they.
Sanford would never forget how pathetic the Auditor looked as he scrambled to keep the broken Improbability Drive together, swearing up and down that he could still make it work as if he had forgotten that Hank, still a ten-foot MAG Agent, was towering over him menacingly. The Auditor suddenly started to dissipate, losing body mass as he looked more and more desperate. Sanford would never know what the Auditor actually WAS, but it seemed he relied on the Improbability Drive to survive. With normality being restored, the Auditor could do nothing but cry in anger and disbelief as he simply...Extinguished, going out like a flame in the wind as all traces of his shadowy body vanished in an instant.
The clown seemed to be unaware of this and, with a final scream, leapt at Hank with talons bared, but at some point in midair the monster seemed to lose all life as his motionless, soulless body fell face-first onto the ground, tumbled for a bit and remained motionless as it skidded to a halt at Hank’s feet. The clown was obviously relying on the Improbability Drive as well, and it seemed that without it he could finally die for good. Hank seemed to be aware of this, as he quietly reached down, ripped off the clown’s head, stared into his empty, soulless eyes for a moment before spiking it into the ground, reducing the demon clown’s head to a red paste in the dirt.
Sanford remembered feeling a weight being lifted off his shoulders as, for a brief moment, he smiled for the first time since this stupid mission started. They had won. They had actually won.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
They didn’t even have time to celebrate before Hank lowered his head, his huge arms drooping to their sides. Sanford remembered approaching Hank with Deimos to check on him and found that Hank wasn’t breathing anymore and, after delivering that last middle finger to that freaking clown, had simply died peacefully, standing upright. Sanford always thought that Hank would die in a blaze of gunfire and glory and, to be perfectly fair, he did. Multiple times at that. But this time if felt a little more permanent, like as if Hank had finally found peace and died his final death.
Sanford completely forgot about the fact that Hank had been literally brought back from death using methods and magic only possible through the Improbability Drives. The first couple of times Hank had been shot and stabbed during his assassination attempts on the Sheriff, the wounds had been declared non-fatal, but there was no way without the Improbability Drive that HQ could have Frankenstein’ed Hank back together after he blew himself up during the follow-up mission just after the Sheriff had been put down. Even ignoring the fact that turning Hank into a MAG Agent needed a lot of reliance on the Improbability Drive, the fact that he had been resurrected multiple times by that zombie psycho clown would have involved pumping a lot of the Improbability Drive’s magic into him. There was probably more Improbability Power in Hank than not by this point. Of course Hank would be affected by the Improbability Drives being destroyed.
But, in spite of all of this, Sanford felt Hank knew that. During his time fighting alongside the mutated Hank, Sanford could tell that Hank was tired. Hank had been fighting for what felt like ages, dying painfully and then being brought back to life to continue the cycle over again. Sanford could tell that Hank was done with everything; he just wanted to rest. Maybe he felt that destroying the last Improbability Drive would be what he needed to finally be able to have peace, which is why he had a look of resolve and contentment after doing the deed right up until he finally seemed to give up the ghost.
Hank, the new saviour of Nevada, was dead.
This left Sanford and Deimos the only ones left alive in a field of dead bodies as they took a moment to salute their fallen comrade. Sanford remembered asking Deimos what they should say to HQ to explain everything that had happened, and he remembered half-joking that they’d need a month to write up the report needed afterwards, though doing so in an attempt to lighten the mood in the aftermath of Hank’s death.
However, Deimos wasn’t laughing. He suddenly looked a little hurt as he made a couple of grunts of pain, and the parts of his face Sanford could see through the stone started looking deathly pale as he looked like he struggled to breathe.
Sanford remembered the dread he felt in that moment. Deimos had been resurrected using Improbability Drive magic too.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
Deimos collapsed but Sanford was quicker, catching him and lowering his best friend to the ground. The whole moment was a blur for Sanford but he remembered begging Deimos not to die on him; he hadn’t been brought back to life just to die on him again right after reuniting with him. He remembered Deimos gripping his hand as tight as he could (with an iron grip that Sanford guessed was thanks to the rocks) and weakly telling him that at least he “wasn’t dying alone this time” before his head fell back and the life left him too, releasing Sanford’s hand as he did.
Sanford couldn’t speak; he was too overrun with multiple emotions to even hear his own thoughts. He didn’t have time to mourn Deimos the first time he came upon his dead body because of the abrupt arrival of the Auditor, any time the two had when Deimos was brought back was spent fighting for their lives, and then all of a sudden, just when the fighting finally stopped, Deimos just dies in front of him. After everything that had happened, everything the two of them had been through and just when it was clear that they had WON the fight, Deimos just...DIED.
That was where the ambulance found him, standing in a field of bodies and looking down in silent, wide-eyed mourning at the body of his best friend for the second time now. Despite being wide awake, Sanford was unresponsive the entire ambulance ride to the hospital, and he was so unable to answer any of the questions asked of him that the doctors needed to check his medical files themselves before injecting him with anything or hooking up to an IV (Sanford didn’t even notice he was hooked up to the IV until his second day in the hospital).
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
During the stay, the head doctor seemed to notice what Sanford was asking himself, as he pulled up a chair beside his bed and gave a statement without Sanford needing to say anything, and as it turned out he was correct in guessing that Sanford was asking himself why Deimos had died when the Improbability Drive was destroyed but not him? Why was he still alive? As it turned out, the Improbability Drive didn’t revive Sanford because it didn’t need to. Sanford was never actually dead; just MOSTLY dead. Deimos, on the other hand, was so far dead that the only way to bring him back was through the magic of the Improbability Drive. With the last drive destroyed, the magic keeping Deimos alive was gone, whereas Sanford needed none of it.
In other words, Sanford had fought waves of goons, had a building drop on his head, was literally dragged to HELL and had to fight his way OUT, and he STILL hadn’t died throughout the whole ordeal. Sure, he got CLOSE, but not close enough that the Improbability Drive needed to be used on him like it did with Hank and Deimos.
The doctor told Sanford that he needed to rest, but that was days ago at this point. All Sanford could do was just sit in his bed and listen to the sounds of gunfire slowly fade and muffle themselves in his mind as the monotonous sound of his heartbeat monitor slowly started to drown them out. He knew right off the bat that he would never stop hearing these noises, but he strangely found that he didn’t care.
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
What would he do now? He and Deimos always said that, if the job didn’t kill them first, they’d grow old, retire, live out their days as crotchety old men in a retirement home, get together at the bar for a game of pool and a couple beers and reminisce about the times they fought to save Nevada, making sure they poked fun at each other as often as they could. Sanford had honestly never considered the idea that one of them, and not the other, would survive the battle. Hank was one thing; he had fought and suffered so much and so long that he himself just wanted to let it all end, but he knew Deimos would never have those thoughts. To be honest, the two had always agreed that, if they succeeded in the mission and got out of it in one piece, they deserved to take it easy. Maybe book a couple weeks vacation; Deimos always said he wanted to go back to some mouse’s theme park in Florida that he visited as a kid.
Sanford sat in his bed, without a thought for what the future held because he honestly didn’t know where his life was going from here. He was likely going to be heralded as a hero for helping to save Nevada; the doctor had already told him that there were talks about Hank and Deimos getting statues in their honour. But he didn’t feel like a hero. He wasn’t sure what he felt like right now; maybe he didn’t feel like anything. He’d done little other than stare off into space and relive the final moments of the battle over and over again in his mind. Would he ever recover mentally? Who knew? Maybe in the distant future Sanford could move on and put everything behind him?
He honestly didn’t know. He hadn’t thought that far ahead and thought Deimos would be sitting next to him to offer an idea or two. Deimos may have been the jokester of the two but he knew what to say when the time called for it. Now Sanford guessed that he’d be forced to make those decisions himself, but that involved giving himself the resolve to put himself into the right state mentally in order to make that first step. At the moment, he was content to just sit there in bed and listen to his heartbeat monitor beep every couple seconds to give himself a reminder that he was still alive...
...Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...
...Sanford hated that heartbeat monitor.