Work Text:
He’d made a promise, so instead of heeding the call of the swarm, Stack lingered in the shredded remains of the Juke Joint while his brother went outside to kill Remmick. It was the last time he would see Smoke alive.
There was something hypnotic about his mind now. He could feel Mary, knew that she was safe in the woods, blood decorating her pretty dress and prettier neck, but it was hard to think of her as an individual while Remmick was alive. She was like a puzzle piece, divorced from meaning when examined alone.
The remains of the joint also meant… well, he was certain he would have felt differently about the shattered wood and bloodied floors if he were still alive. He and Smoke had worked so hard, for so long, to come back home and make something that could be theirs in a way nothing else had been. But it wasn’t just the work, the days of tension and danger they’d survived. He knew there had been a place in his chest that had opened when the dancefloor had been full and the music soared. It had been a homecoming for his spirit.
He remembered this feeling, but it was from a distance. Like looking through a window at his former self. He wondered if it would always be like this. He had eternity to find out.
The pain when Remmick died was like all of his organs curdling. Or maybe boiling. All his bones turned to liquid and then a snap as the connection to the others was broken, disintegrating with their bodies. He could smell their dust. Taste the smoke of them in the air. They hadn’t been able to resist the call to swarm and claim Sammie’s gift. Stack felt the desire, the yearning for memories and people long gone, but he’d made a promise. Smoke would let him live as long as he swore that he would leave Sammie alone, and Stack, even this strange and possibly unholy version of himself, was not willing to make his brother kill him. He couldn’t let Smoke live with that pain. Their lives had been harsh enough. Smoke had protected him from so much, Stack could give him this.
After Remmick was gone, there was a sense of loss followed by relief. Remmick had been a weight, and even though the music that he’d brought with him was gone, maybe forever, Stack didn’t think he could grieve for it in the way he once might have. All of his feelings were unfamiliar.
Mary, he felt, and she was making more sense of this than he was. Of course. She was clever, and quick, always had been. And without the threads of a hundred other thoughts, without Joan and Pearline, Bert and Cornbread, Mary’s thoughts were clearer. She felt like cool water. There was a threat of malicious glee inside her, an acceptance that the carnage she’d left behind would have bothered her yesterday but meant nothing today, and a catlike satisfaction that she still had Stack. No thoughts of the husband she’d left behind on the farm, for the mother she’d just buried, for the friends she would never see again. She was conscious of this absence, and curious about what it meant. What creature didn’t feel loss? Even birds mourned their companions. But her thoughts circled around Stack, and how he could make her happy now because she really didn’t need protecting anymore.
Stack felt her, strong and clear as if she was beside him and saying her thoughts out loud. He could feel, too, how vicious she was. It thrilled him.
But without the frenzy, the fierceness of the hunt and the assimilation and the dancing and the prey running around screaming, they had a long day of nothing ahead of them, and no idea what to do next.
“We could make more,” Mary suggested. “It doesn’t have to be us two alone.”
“You leave Sammie be,” he said immediately, projecting his thoughts into her as he accepted hers into him. “I promised.”
“I didn’t promise a thing,” she said, a sharp smile flickering across her beautiful lips.
“We don’t need him,” Stack argued.
“But don’t he need us?” She murmured, that sultry voice of hers so intoxicating. “Don’t he need to live forever with us?”
“Three’s a crowd,” Stack snapped, though he knew he wasn’t being very compelling. He wanted Sammie. The kid had a gift, and he was family. And the music he’d made—Stack could still feel it coursing through him. It made him feel like water, no beginning and no ending, a part of something vast and beautiful. Enchanting and alive in a way that he could sense nothing else would ever be. Didn’t he want that?
But Smoke. He wanted something else for Sammie. Which mattered more without Remmick in his head.
“You’re being sentimental, Stack.”
“So what?” Stack felt like he was being toyed with, and he didn’t much mind it, except he knew Sammie’s future lay in the balance. The distant part of him that remembered what it felt like to be proud of his little cousin knew that was important. “You like me sentimental.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Mary said. Like a purr. Soft as velvet. “I like you a lot of ways.”
Oh that was a temptation. What would it be like to be with her now? Before it had been dangerous, so thrilling to lay with her and feel her and smell her, there was always a risk he’d never let her go. And now? He didn’t have to, did he? The vague justifications he’d had were all gone, he couldn’t even remember why he’d ever let her go. Something selfless sounding? Stupid more like. What in the world could take her from him now?
Logically, he should have had the answer to that. Sunlight, a stake to the heart. It had just happened and he’d felt it happen to the others. But his body was so powerful. It felt eternal. Invincible.
All his life he’d been vulnerable. Never able to show it, not to anyone but Smoke. Because the world looked at him and thought danger in a way that put him in danger. Like a tightrope walker in a strong wind. The war had been like that, too, a constant drumbeat of death hounding every step he took. Bullets, disease, hunger. He’d made himself look tough, unassailable and unbothered by the danger, but it had kept him up at night. Even when he’d been little to cause any trouble at all, their father had fists and worse for him. Talk too loud, too often, laugh too much, smile, smirk, all the things that came so naturally to him—all of it came with consequences. It made Smoke serious, and it made Stack rebellious. But only because he knew he had his brother watching his back.
Smoke was doing something outside. Stack had forgotten about the Klan.
They arrived and it made him furious. He knew what Smoke was going to do, and he wanted to do it too, tear those fuckers apart and show them who they were messing with, give them something to be scared of, give them nightmares. Make them afraid to ever even look at a black man the wrong way again.
But Mary was in his ear reminding him of the smoke and the dust still littering the ground, telling him no and wait and Smoke know what he’s doing which was true, but Smoke was also his in a way that no one else could ever be. They came into this damned world together, had always been the mirror images of each other, and now he had to face the mob alone. To face the end alone. It wasn’t right.
Smoke fell. Stack could hear the moment when his heartbeat went missing. He and Mary spent the rest of the day dead silent.
She joined him after the sun fell. Somber. It didn’t suit her. But he appreciated the effort she was making. They stood over Smoke’s body. Handsome devil that he was. His blood smelling so sweet as it sank into the soil. He wasn’t like the ones consumed by the brood. Their dust was fading into nothing. But Smoke left a mark on the world. This place would feel like it belonged to him forever. Stack was sure of it, sure he’d always be able to smell his brother’s ghost lingering here.
“We don’t take no one else,” he said to Mary. “Promise me that. No one unless they ask for it.”
Mary didn’t like that. Had never much liked being told what to do. And her body was primed to consume, to take people and turn them and steer them. He could feel her. That mind of hers, that brilliance, she had the power to lead a hundred, a thousand, anyone she wanted. Like a queen bee, that one.
But she was angry too. He could feel her remembering. She’d known these men, and resented it. The way they spoke to her, so courteous, with no time or kindness for her kin. If they’d known who she was they would have hated her, spat on her, done horror to her. Two-faced and shit inside. Mary hated that they’d looked at her and decided she was one of them, the audacity that they thought they had any right to claim her. Her hate commingled with his rage, and it was a feeling that was close enough to grief and nothing like regret. He supposed immortal beings might not be capable of regret. Too heavy, to carry the loss of several lifetimes into the future.
“Just us two then,” Mary finally said, and Stack realized it was the first time he’d heard her voice all day. It had been echoing inside his chest, but she’d said nothing out loud until this.
“Just us two.” He smirked at her. “Think you can handle an eternity with me?”
Mary laughed.
“Suppose there’s one way to find out.”
They started eternity by burying his brother, the human half of him. Stack didn’t need protecting from fists anymore, but there were hunters, and his brother had given him one last gift. As long as they didn’t turn anyone, the hunters would leave them be. He and Mary could be dangerous creatures, even killers, for every predator needs to eat, but those were natural things to be. As long as they didn’t take anyone with them, they were free of the sin of stealing.
Smoke was nestled in the ground, his bones granted peace. Stack would find none, but he found it didn’t bother him. There was music on the wind, calling, for he and Mary had dancing to do.