Chapter Text
If there was still someone to witness the end of the world, they’d see a wolf.
In the vastness of white (tundra snow? desert sand bleached by the moonlight?) the animal is a firm speck of black. It looks almost like a bullet, a dead metal thing in relentless propelling motion.
Up close, it’s very much a living breathing creature. Or rather a dying creature agonizingly grasping for air. It looks unscathed, but everything about the sheen of its fur and the glint of its eyes is horribly wrong. Strange unnatural heat is coming off of its body as if its insides are on fire. Thick, dark oily liquid drips from its bared teeth. It’s not the blood of a pray or a rival beast. It is something sick and twisted and it’s coming from the inside.
Still, the wolf is running. Like something somewhere out there is calling it. Pulling him in like gravity.
And you know what they say about gravity – she’s a heartless bitch. Forget space, it is said to crumble time itself. What good can a power like this be for a puny creature of meat and bone? No happy endings here. What can there possibly be at the end of this fall but heartless ground or an even more heartless maw of a black hole? Squished, splattered meat, blood, some viscera and other even less (or more? depending on your tastes) appetizing bodily fluids and solids. Or maybe just complete annihilation, nothingness, null. Here one moment and – puf! – gone.
Speaking of moments and space-time correlation, we’d better come back before our little pet has run its course.
If there was still someone to witness the end of the world and if by some miracle out of all living creatures this someone happened to be a human, and the human followed the wolf’s track, they’d see… a man. With canines just a little too big and eyes inhumanly fierce – but still a man, just another human being in a proper white shirt and a classy suit, and a pair of absolutely unreasonable shoes. Running for hours and days. Running without stopping. Running towards a ruin of a church or maybe an orphanage – nothing but a bell tower to judge by. Running as if his life depends on it. Running as if there’s almost nothing left of his life.
He runs into the gates that used to lead somewhere – probably a safe place, maybe a home even – but lead only to a shell of a place. He rushes through the deserted nave – broken branches covered with shards of colorful glass, no ceiling to speak of, hardly any walls, – then through the remains of the corridors – holes for the doors and dead silence for the rooms – then past something resembling a kitchen – a large table miraculously visible under the wreckage of the front wall.
There might be hesitation to his stride, a side glance to one of the doors, a breath even more strained at the sight of the abandoned table, maybe there was even a misstep. Or there might be not. He’s too fast, inhumanly fast, animalistically fast. Subtleties of his movement are not for a human eye to catch.
He did hesitate, and glance, and stumble, though. He even made a weird wheezing noise, coughed and spilled more of the dark non-blood over his chin and neck, unable to cry and run at the same time – but also unable to stop, bound to his destination despite all the grief in his chest. He’d have loved to die here, where some of them found their resting place. Only he can’t. Can’t die (just yet), can’t stop (just yet).
Neither can you. Also “you” can’t see any of that or read his mind. We just cheated a little to clue you in on the fun stuff! Tss. That’ll be our little secret~
Finally, he’s out. In a courtyard, probably. Only it’s more of a junkyard now. A junkyard in the middle of nowhere.
And amidst the wreckage and garbage there’s… something.
For a moment our hypothetical onlooker wouldn’t quite parse who – what? – they are looking at, but then they’d write all the indescribable shapes off as a trick of light (not surprising, with all that white around whether it’s snow or sand) and decide that what they see is also just a man. An ordinary human in ordinary human clothes. A pair of plain blue jeans. A plain white shirt. Bare bones for an arm- oh no, that’d be the opposite of ordinary, what man can walk around with bones for an arm, that’s obviously just a prosthetics okay? A prosthetics for an arm. What else… Longish dirty blond hair. Blue eyes. Round glasses. Nothing special at all. And the paths of tears on his cheeks are not purple-black at all, it’s only shadows in the harsh midday light.
He’s sitting on a couch – god only knows how this old thing survived all the destruction and also ended up outside, - and it seems like he’s been waiting there for eons. Mourning the deaths of – well, all of it. The world is over, remember?
The two look at each other and there is not a moment of hesitation. The one in black continues running, the one on glasses jumps to his feet and – blink and you miss it, don’t blink you still have already missed it – and there’s no distance between them anymore.
It’s not an embrace per say, more of a collision. A hand of flesh and a hand of crystalline bone – we’ve agreed it’s a prosthetics, stop ruining the scene – and a hand of something else fall on the black clad back. Fall into it like there’s nothing solid anymore. And with that both of them fall to their knees. One in a cruel soul draining relief – having completed his mission, having found his paradise or whatever the fuck wolves are supposed to be running towards to. The other in an attempt to hold the heavy body and an even heavier realization, and then anger, and then grief and then pain. But tenderness too. That last one may be the heaviest, he thinks, as he presses his hand to the fur or the skin – it doesn’t matter, not for his kind. He murmurs something comforting. He tries but fails to smile. He pats the black hair or fur as gently as he possibly can. He leans in closer so that their foreheads touch.
And just like that he catches the last breath of the last creature he cared about.
So fast. So… anticlimactic. So fucking stupid.
And he’s alone again. Alone by the stupid fucking sofa that doesn’t even belong here.
A human might have seen all of it. Except there are no humans anymore, no eyes to be tricked by wolven glamour or their own desire to hide from a horrifying truth. So there is only a dead wolf pressed to the chest of a grieving... who?
What have been disregarded as shadows is revealed to be tendrils of not quite matter, a scatter of impossible shapes, a facsimile of wings growing from everywhere, a dark everchanging fluctuation. The stains on the face – deep crevices that form intricate patterns and pulse with frantic purple-red light.
And he is breaking in onto himself. Rapidly and painfully reshaping. He tries to hold the wolf in his arms, clings to it like a desperate child - but his body has the life of its own now. The fingers of his flesh hand elongate and split up forming bleeding twigs, the arm itself stretches out and bends like a branch. The left arm follows, except the crystalline bone – yeah yeah, okay, it has been bone all along! – can’t stand the pressure and soon burst into shards that scatter in the wind and, having touched the ground, burst into blooms the color of cosmos. And they are not the only ones. First his numerous scars and then the chest itself open up into a parody of a flower or a sea creature – or maybe, not a parody, but a prototype – each petal mottled with the same blinking red pattern, each millimeter of flesh exuding the same red-purple mist and the light that becomes brighter and darker shade of red until –
Until his every cell begins to unravel and cry.
And the sorrowful wail of a flower of a plant of a person of a black hole turned flesh becomes... a song.
And the song becomes light.
And the light becomes a door.
And behind the door is everything everywhere all at once.
Let's have a peek, shall we?