Bandom Reverse Big Bang Fic
Title: Anubis Bar the Door (I'm not done with that heart)
Author: snarkydame
Bands (and pairings): MCR, hints of Frank/Gerard, GSF
Rating: R
Word count:~5200
Warnings: character death -- or not exactly. Lots of cursing.
Summary: Party Poison went down under Korse's shot in the lobby, but the others made it out. They just can't leave him behind.
Author notes: Thank you, mods, for a really fun challenge, and thanks to aneas whose work inspired this fic! I've included the artwork as part of the text itself (or you can see it all by itself here) since it's all very entwined at this point. :D I hope you like it. And S, tempore, and alpheratz -- thank you for the extremely helpful beta work. You all rock.
You can also read the fic by itself over at the AO3, if graphics aren't really your thing.
* * *
The Dracs kept shooting, even as the van screeched down the empty street, tires smoking. They swarmed around the Trans Am like maggots, hiding the scorch marks, the blown tires. Frank could still see it, listing sideways, until the van's door latch finally caught and all he could see was dark dented metal and the smears of bloody fingerprints.
He could feel the screams and curses still bubbling up behind his teeth, but his head was quiet, filled with a silent sort of buzzing, like he'd been too close to an explosion. Mikey was voicing the words for him anyway, shoving against Pony's hold, fingers clawing at the bandage Pony pressed to his side.
"Go back, bastards, go back and get him! Let me go back!"
Mikey stopped yelling eventually, words all burnt out, and fell sideways into Ray's shoulder. The kid reached around Ray's arm to hang on to Mikey's coat, and they all three sat there, quiet. Show Pony folded his long legs and knocked his head back against the side of the van, once, twice. Dr. D turned around to look at him.
Frank wanted to burrow his way into Ray's arms too, wanted to let the kid hold his hand. He was too far away, all the way over on the other side of the van. But the space between them was space meant for Gerard, and Frank couldn't take it. Couldn't. Not when he could still see him, face blank and white.
Slumped at Korse's feet, so fucking quiet.
* * *
He had expected it to hurt, and it really fucking did, but not in the way he'd expected. There was no lightning crack of heat and voltage. No sharp pain. Just . . . a pressure, sudden and heavy and irresistible, that forced him down into the dark and wouldn't let him up.
He pushed and pushed and pushed but the dark settled over and around him, reached inside and spilled itself into him, until all he knew was cold, silent void that swallowed even the thought of color or noise. Or breath.
He must have died, then. He couldn't think of any other word for it.
* * *
They slid into one of the King Snake's old bolt holes to lick their wounds. The concrete warehouse was surrounded by a dozen identical concrete warehouses; long, low buildings with walls scoured clean and sterile every night by blank-faced city employees in neatly pressed overalls. This one might have been a bottling plant, but none of the equipment looked like it'd been clanking around recently.
"It's stuck in a sea of red tape," Hot Chimp explained. "Friend of ours in the tax office makes sure the paperwork stays good and fucked, so no one tries to start it up again." Frank didn't ask the friend's name.
They parked the van next to the two delivery vehicles in the loading dock and covered all three with dusty white tarps. Frank thought the featureless canvas seemed somehow unfinished. He turned to ask Gerard how he'd paint them, if they could find some paints, and stood there, mouth open, for a full minute before Hot Chimp thumped him on the back and pushed him back towards the office.
The kid was still hanging on to Ray, but her big, serious eyes were on Mikey. Who was glaring down at the floor like he could torch it with his brain, and didn't seem to notice Show Pony putting his arm in a sling.
"And leave it on, this time," he was saying. "We're stuck here for a while anyway, so you might as well heal up."
Mikey, if anything, tensed further and said nothing. He hadn't said a word since he quit screaming curses in the van.
Ray tugged gently at the kid's curls. "What are the odds. . . " He trailed off, looking over at Dr. D with his good eye. It made it very obvious that he was Not Looking at Mikey when he went on. "What are the odds that Korse didn't kill him?"
Everybody turned and looked at Frank before he realized that the wire-tight, protesting sound had come from him.
If Gee wasn't dead . . .
"He took a blaster shot up his fucking chin," he ground out. The words scratched at his throat like sand. If Gee wasn't dead . . . "That's not how they make baby Dracs, Jet Star, that's how they make compost."
Mikey's shoulders hunched impossibly tighter and the kid was crying now, but Frank made himself say it. If Gee wasn't fucking dead . . .
"Why the hell would Korse risk that?" he heard himself ask, and that wasn't what he meant to say at all, not like that, all plaintive and hurt and small. But if Gee wasn't dead, they really had left him. If Gee was alive . . .
They'd left Party Poison behind.
* * *
After a while, or what he thought might be a while, the void changed. It didn't exactly lighten, really. It didn't get brighter. It was more like all the color that had been pressed together until it was just black began to bleed away, leaving the void bleached out and pale. Bone white. Corpse white.
He still couldn't feel his hands, or his feet (or his spine or his gut or his face or his fucking heartbeat), but he could see them now, steady and still on what was slowly becoming a polished tile floor.
"Oh, fuck me," he thought, at the sight of himself looking up from that faint reflection. White, all white, between black boots and his short black hair. "Fuck me, I'm in hell."
* * *
Their heads were so close together now Frank could feel Ray's curls brush his cheek every time he shook his head. All in a circle, him and Ray and Mikey and Dr. D. Frank could hear Chimp and Pony on the other side of the room, asking the kid if she wanted V-Juice or V-Juice to drink. But most of his attention was circling around Ray and Dr. D and their sand-blasted speculation. Across from him, he could see Mikey's fever-bright eyes, shifting from face to face, following the words.
"It'd be a goddamned coup for them," Ray said, choking up in his effort to keep the kid from hearing. "He knows all our bolt holes, where the camps are, where the drones can't find a signal - if they turn him they could shut down half the fucking zone runners in a fucking week."
"But in the middle of a firefight, with a shot to the head?" Dr. D's deep rumble didn't carry past Frank's shoulder, though it tried. "Not even Korse could be that damn precise."
Ray was nodding before Dr. D finished. "Yeah he could, if he was ready, if he was expecting the chance. And you know he was waiting for us, from the second he picked up the kid."
They'd all known that. Before Gerard ever turned the Trans Am back towards Battery City they'd known that. But Frank still felt cold, thinking of the way the white suits had closed in all around them, the Dracs and their reflections in all that fucking glass.
"Korse never tried to turn him before," Dr. D protested - though Frank thought he was playing Devil's advocate now.
"He never had him here before."
"How would it work?" Frank heard, and it took a moment to recognize Mikey's voice, it cut so razor sharp. "If Gee's not dead. What are they doing to him?"
Frank felt his own throat dry up.
Dr. D looked over Frank's shoulder - meeting Pony's eye, or Chimp's. Frank heard them leave, taking the kid out of the office. The door shut behind them with a quiet, dusty thud.
"We haven't confirmed this. But the Last Chance Kids haven't failed us yet."
Dr. D rolled back from their tight little circle, lacing his fingers over his knees. There was dried blood on his knuckles, dark and flaking. He rubbed at it with his thumb.
"They'll put him in a body bag," he said, voice coiling slow and dark. Mikey closed his eyes. "And while they have his flesh and bones on ice, they'll flush him out of his own head. Chase him down and white wash his soul. They'll track every flashing neuron and snuff out every bit of rebellion until he's empty. Blank. Then they'll fill him up again, and he won't recognize himself. Or us. Or anyone but the faces they tell him to know."
Mikey's eyes were still closed. Frank could feel his burning.
"Where?" Ray didn't sound angry anymore. He sounded so cold Frank felt ice spreading down his spine.
The smile that wasn't quite a smile crossing Dr. D's face, in contrast, was white hot desert burn. A blaster bolt, searing.
* * *
There was a desk in front of him. A shiny metal desk, one computer monitor, one keyboard. One of those sets of swinging silver balls.
He turned around and walked away from it. His boots (not his boots, the heel wasn't worn on one side, the toes were too polished) were soundless on the tile. The void had retreated farther, but still all he saw was white.
White walls. White tile. White florescent lighting in a white drop ceiling.
He could feel a growl rumbling up from somewhere. It was the first thing he'd felt since the black receded.
He let the growl grow until he could feel his bones trembling with it. He opened his mouth, and the sound escaped. Where it touched the walls, words left streaks of color and chaos- scarlet cyan marigold and violent pink, dove gray and toxic green, lavender bronze fuckers this is Party fucking Poison downoutKilljoys falllikerunrunrunbunnyrun. Streams of words and scrambled letters too chaotic to ever be words, splashed taller than he was and a hundred times more real.
The void erased them as quickly as he threw them up, until he was running in an isolated wash of color, half a step ahead of nothing at all.
* * *
They left the kid in a plastic chair, curled up with Pony's jacket draped over her. Ray stooped to tuck a curl behind her ear, and she sniffled in her sleep, smalls hands tugging the jacket a little closer around herself.
Dr. D parked his chair in the door, shotgun across his lap. Pony, sitting on the floor next to the kid, looking as relaxed as a cat in the sun, had his ray gun in his hand.
"Don't take this route," Chimp was saying, running her finger over the sewer line on the map Frank and Ray held between them. "The access tunnel was closed three weeks ago. And you can't just walk over the bridge the way you did before."
"Underpass?" Mikey's sling was looped around his neck and flapping loose, his arm free to point.
"Only way left. Gonna have to cover up the colors, though."
"Fucking coveralls. You haven't got any in my size." Frank wanted a cigarette, wanted to knock ash all over the cleansuits laid over the desk.
The smoke would only set off an alarm.
"Roll up the fucking legs, Ghoul. You don't wanna get shot before you find Poison's body bag." They all snarled at Chimp for that, in unison. She glared at them.
"Fucking suicidal bastards, all of you."
Frank grinned, wide and true. "Just because you want to come with us . . ."
"Hell no," she said, crossing her arms. "Someone has to be around to drive the fucking van. Motorbaby over there can't see over the dash."
"Leave it running for us," Ray said, folding up the map.
Chimp sniffed. "Waste of gas. Get going, before there's no point in going at all."
Frank made sure to turn away before the smile could drop off his face.
* * *
He panted, mouth wide open, head thrown back against the wall. A spray of blood red words fanned out around his head, a gory, profanity laced halo. His knees shook, but he could only barely feel the ache in his legs. The stitch in his side was the barest wisp of pain, more like a memory of what he should be feeling.
The hall he'd been racing down shifted, rearranged. The desk was back in front of him. Someone sat there, hands steepled before a featureless face. The figure was about his size. About his shape.
He snarled at it. Just for a second, as his lips curled back from his teeth, he could feel a sweaty lock of hair brushing down across his cheekbone, see a scarlet shiver at the corner of his eye. Then the shape at the desk cocked its head, and it was gone.
He swayed a little as he pushed himself upright. Deliberately, he turned his back on the desk and the figure there. He couldn't really say he stalked away, since he had to trail his hand against the wall to keep his balance. But he left smears of color from his fingertips, and he thought maybe that made the point just as well.
* * *
The coveralls were a good four inches too long. Frank tried to keep the makeshift cuffs from getting too obvious, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about the way the shoulders drooped low on his biceps.
Ray and Mikey walked just a step in front of him, overlapping his silhouette for the cameras. Still, he hoped the only ones watching were taking their full complement of happy pills.
The underpass was lined with blinking lights, but only the bare minimum of holo adds, being only sparsely traveled. Frank had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from sneering at the few insipid banners that did flash up. He kept his eyes focused on the space between Ray's and Mikey's ears.
Walking down the underpass felt alarming like the march across the bridge, but there were no Dracs shooting from the other side. Just a handful of flat footed people in their own cleansuits, masks hanging down around their necks, walking the other way. They smiled and nodded as they passed - the expressions were so practiced, so empty, they looked less real then their masks. Frank couldn't entirely stop his shudder, but the BL/ind drones had already moved on. Forgotten them.
The utility door was card-coded, but Pony had tossed a set of key cards their way as they left, as casually as he would a can of puppy chow.
"They'll only work once," he'd said. "Probably."
Once would have to be enough.
They got in easily enough. Then again, they'd gotten in easily enough last time too. Frank knew the others were feeling the same creeping dread he was - he could see it in the set of Ray's shoulders, in the tense line of Mikey's back.
They all wore the smiling masks that folded out of the cleansuits' collars - hiding their decidedly non-regulation hair, hiding Frank's tattoos. Frank hated the way his vision narrowed under the mask, the way the brightly lit hallways seemed to roll out from under his feet. None of this felt solid.
He kept his mind on the blueprints. The same set they'd studied before they came in after the kid. Mentally, he outlined the lobby in red ink. Filled it with furious scribbles and then ignored it, resolutely concentrating on the lines that meant electrical cables, the ones that meant duct work. He hunted along those lines, looking for a nexus, a room kept as chilled as a slab of granite, and powered like a city block. A room where they might keep what was a essentially a corpse, hooked up to whatever fucking thing they used to chase the heart and soul away.
Frank could taste blood, iron sharp and warm, where he'd bitten his cheek. His grimace was hidden by the mask.
* * *
He didn't think this was fair at all. He glared at the desk ahead of him, while the faceless figure leaned his hip against the polished metal, crossed his feet at the ankle, and set the little silver balls clacking against each other.
It was the only sound he could hear, that sharp, steady, cracking impact.
The words were spilling out of him more wildly than ever, but the colors were fading. He could feel them losing cohesion, diluting in the flood of whitewhitewhite.
He held what he could in both hands, closing his fists to keep the most important words from leaking through his fingers.
Jet Star Fun Ghoul Kobra Kid MikeyFrankieRay friends lovers partners brothersbrothersbrothersbrothers
He could feel the names pulsing against his palms, against his fingertips. He couldn't feel his own pulse, but he could feel them. Couldn't remember his own name, but he knew theirs.
"Killjoys never die," he said, and though the words made no sound, the hallway pulsed around them. The faceless figure at the desk reached out and stopped the silver balls from swinging.
* * *
Balancing the necessary combustive force with a pressing need for not drawing attention was mentally exhausting. Frank felt the pull of it like gravity as he crouched behind Ray and Mikey, laying out the explosive filament with steady fingers.
With any luck, it would eat through the lock without touching off the alarms. With a little more luck, this would actually be the room they were looking for. And with a truly unlikely amount of luck, there wouldn't be a shitload of BL/ind employees on the other side of the door. With that kind of luck they would probably also find Gee sitting there with a cup of real coffee and a cigarette, and they could all waltz out to the motor pool to find the Trans Am fixed up, fueled and ready to go.
Frank told himself he'd settle for the first bit. For now.
The wire sparked and hissed fitfully, but he didn't think the sound would carry. Still, he felt horribly exposed - it was late, and traffic through the corridors was relatively sparse, but sparse wasn't nonexistent. They'd grabbed some janitorial equipment from a supply closet, and Ray was hard at work scrubbing at the floor while Mikey made a convincing show of rewiring the fire suppression systems, but Frank just looked like he was trying to hide a not very cooperative shower of vivid red-gold sparks.
It had been less nerve-wracking to drop charges at strategic points along their route. That had been easy.
"Found it," Mikey murmured, and Frank felt the tension that had been ratcheting higher and higher subside just a little bit.
"How much of a delay can you give us?" he asked, just as quietly. The hiss of the wire almost covered the words.
"Not long. Maybe five minutes."
It would take at least that long to get from here to the exit, maybe longer if they had to carry Gerard.
Frank let his head bow, just enough to stretch at the muscles knotting up his shoulders. They'd make it work.
They had to, so they would.
The sparks fizzled, and the wire was done. Frank pushed at the door with one finger - it swung, just slightly. The room on the other side was lit with a pale blue light that washed against Frank's white glove. The hum of machinery inside was only barely louder than his own breathing.
Frank peered inside, cursing the mask's narrow field of vision for the forty-second time that evening. But the mental snarling faded fast.
The room looked like a morgue, but for the banks of computer terminals lining the walls. Empty metal slabs hulked in front of them, LEDs blinking slow and orange at the foot of each one. Each one but the last one, where there were many lights, all of them bright and active, throwing shadows under the sheet draped across the body there.
In the corner, just past it, encased in plexiglass and steel, was Korse. He was still in his gray frock coat, the scorch mark from Mikey's desperate shot still dark on his right leg. His head hung on his chest, and his eyes were closed.
Frank stared through the narrow gap.
* * *
He felt like if he moved, if he ran, he might be able to outrun the desk and the figure there. But also, he felt like if he moved, the names he held so tightly might escape him.
There was an urge to let them go - to fling them out against the encroaching white like graffiti, to pour his soul into them until they were etched so deeply on the walls they'd never fade, even as he disappeared. He wasn't entirely sure what stopped him, other than a nagging fear that it wouldn't work.
All he could do was hold on.
* * *
There was no one else in the room. Just Korse, in his . . . tube, and the body that Frank both hoped was and hoped wasn't Gerard. It was within arm's reach of Korse, either way.
Consciously, he made himself draw in a slow, deep breath, filling his lungs once, twice, three times, like he was about to dive out into a sand storm. He swung the door open just far enough to slip through, and felt Ray and Mikey follow him. Very gently, Ray pushed the door shut behind them.
They kept low, below the slabs, and kept their eyes up. Frank focused on the body (not really a body, not just a body at all), focused on Korse. Ray and Mikey watched the doors and the monitors.
Korse didn't seem to be breathing. In the pale blue light his skin looked like wax.
Ray put a hand on his shoulder, and Frank froze. There were shadows moving under the door behind Korse - a night guard maybe, or a technician.
Ray pulled Frank and Mikey both down behind the nearest slab, watching the door in the reflection of a blank monitor on the other side of the aisle. Frank made himself sit still and quiet. He wanted to scream.
Something buzzed and the door swung open. A woman walked in, confident in her high heels, face serene. They watched her, holding their breath as she checked the controls on the side of Korse's tube, as she frowned at the monitor above the body on the last slab. She tapped at the line feeding a colorless fluid into the needle in its arm, and made some adjustment to the settings. She tapped a few notes into the tablet hooked next to the monitor, checked Korse's tube again, and walked out of the room as casually as she'd entered.
It took a moment more for them to let out a breath.
* * *
He thought maybe he'd lost track of something. He was kneeling now. The tile floor seemed less solid than it had - or maybe he was less solid instead. He could see his knees sinking into the floor. It was only vaguely alarming, but he still held his closed fists higher, tucked them under his chin. He couldn't remember what he held there, but there was a sort of glow coming from between his fingers, warm and red.
There was a desk, very close to him. It wasn't sinking, and he thought that probably meant the floor was more real than he was, instead of less.
If he grabbed hold of the desk, he could probably pull his knees back out of the floor.
For some reason, that thought made him frown and tuck his fists in even tighter.
* * *
"Fuck, fuck," Ray breathed, reading the tablet on the wall. The body (it was Gerard, and Gerard was not a body but it was a motherfucking body all the same) was clean and still and empty, dressed in scrubs that looked like they'd never been wrinkled. No heartbeat. No breath. Mikey was sitting on the floor beside the slab, holding one of Gerard's hands in both of his, as if he could warm it up. His head was bowed over his brother's fingers.
Frank stood mute at Gerard's feet. There were words clamoring at his throat, dark and wild, but if he let them out he'd never be able to rein them in again.
Gerard's feet were bare beneath the sheet - he reached out and wrapped his shaking hand around an ankle. It felt so strangely fragile.
"Ray?" he finally managed, choking back all the rest.
Ray looked over at him, face grim. His jaw flexed, and he reached over, pulled the needle from Gerard's arm with a savage yank.
Blood welled up, too slowly. Mikey came to his feet.
"Shouldn't we wait? Bring him out slow?"
"We don't have time," Ray said. "He's nearly gone." He unzipped his cleansuit and pulled out the extra coverall, paper thin and folded flat. "Get him dressed," he told Frank, tossing it over before turning back to the tablet, hunting through the records for something they could use.
Frank swallowed and stripped the sheet away. Mikey helped him get Gerard into the coverall, his jaw tight as they tucked his brother's red hair up under the mask. Better than a shroud, but hardly comforting, seeing that blank smiling mask over Gerard face while he was so very still.
Frank kept glancing up at Korse, just checking. The fact that he never moved didn't stop Frank from feeling his eyes on him.
Ray moved suddenly back into his field of vision. He'd peeled the mask up off his face and used his teeth to strip the cap off a needle as he bared Gerard's neck with one hand. He plunged the needle into the vein there before Frank could so much as flinch.
"Please, Gerard," Ray said.
* * *
The hallway flattened in an instant, went two-dimensional with a sound like the world ending. A scream ripped through him and the haze of featureless light fell apart like paper in a bonfire, flashing to ashes that curled and ate themselves in midair, leaving just a flash like a dying star behind his eyes.
Every muscle spasmed, locking tight.. His fists pulled open, fingers spread wide.
Released, all the color roared out, scarletgreengoldcrimsonbluepurpleorangepinkindigo, and spread and spread and spread . . . words and images and memories painting over the void until there was not a blank space to be found. The names he'd held so tightly overwrote them all. brothersKilljoysMikeyJetStarbrothersFunGhoulpartnersbrothersMikeyRayloversFrankie. Frankie. Frank.
Party Poison.
Gerard.
He was so full of them all.
* * *
Gerard sucked in air like he'd just remembered how. His heart beneath Frank's hand seemed to be trying to burst free of his ribcage. His whole body shook with the force of it. Mikey ripped the mask up before Gerard could hyperventilate.
His eyes rolled, wild and panicked, and Frank found his voice.
"Gerard, Gerard, it's us, you're back, we came to get you back, you fucking asshole, what the hell was that?" he hissed, pulling Gerard into his arms. For a moment he was so tense Frank thought he might break, but then he shuddered, and his arms wrapped tight around Frank's ribs and Mikey had his face buried in his brother's neck and Ray had his hands tight on his shoulders and none of them, none of them, could make themselves let go.
Until Frank looked up, and saw the lights flashing on the side of Korse's tube.
* * *
The white hallway made him doubt. But Gerard could hear himself panting now, could feel his heartbeat (it felt like it might explode). He could feel Frank gripping his hand so tightly his bones ached, could feel Mikey's shoulders under his arm, Ray's hand on his back.
He couldn't run right, kept tripping himself. Tripping Mikey, but Mikey wouldn't let him shrug away - none of them would let him go.
They huddled in a utility closet, and he thought Frank might be counting - he reached over and covered Gerard's ears, just as the floor shook, and Ray shoved the door back open, pulled them all out, pushed them back into a run.
The corridor seemed to spin around him, but Gerard could tell the difference now. This was real air he was dragging at, a real floor beneath his feet. He wasn't dead anymore.
* * *
They slid around the corner to the exit just ahead of the Dracs - Frank could hear their boots pounding down the long corridor behind them. No fucking glass doors this time, just a service door with an electronic lock. Frank's last charge blew it to hell just before they reached it, and they hardly slowed, hauling Gerard through the smoking ruin.
A delivery van, clean and bland and boring, sat idling there. For a moment, Frank put on the brakes, shoving Mikey and Gerard behind him, but then there was Pony, shoving open the sliding doors, and Dr. D reaching out to help them in.
There was a disturbing amount of deja vu as they pulled screeching out into the road. Blaster fire flashed white gold around them while Frank stared out. Dracs boiled out of it - but they were bottlenecked this time by that narrow service door. They had the van door shut and the van itself halfway down the street before all four tires were firmly back on the asphalt.
This time, Mikey was laughing, helplessly breathless as he clutched at Gerard's arm, and Pony was hanging tight to the doors instead, cursing at the latch. And this time, the kid was yelling, squirming in Ray's hold, trying to reach Gerard, and Ray was yelling too, trying to talk to Chimp and Dr. D over the noise.
Frank just held on to Gerard, who was filling the spot next to Frank, hands wound tightly in Mikey's coverall, twisted in Frank's sleeve. Gerard, who was pale and shaking and staring at all of them like he wasn't sure they were real.
"I slashed their tires!" the kid was saying, high and excited, hands waving dangerously around Ray's face. "Me and Pony. At least two on every car, and every bike. At least two."
Frank felt the death grip Gerard had on his hand loosen as she talked, until their fingers were barely intertwined. He tightened his own grip, unwilling to let go, but when he looked over, Gerard was smiling.
"We'll have to get you a better knife, Motorbaby, if that's the sort of thing you want to do," Gerard said. His voice was hoarse, uncertain, but something heavy and cold inside of Frank started to ease at the sound of it.
He closed his eyes. Tucked himself up against Gerard's side, let his feet kick up against Mikey's. "Noisy bastards," he said, smiling.
The more noise the better, he thought. Let them fill the world with it.
fin
Author: snarkydame
Bands (and pairings): MCR, hints of Frank/Gerard, GSF
Rating: R
Word count:~5200
Warnings: character death -- or not exactly. Lots of cursing.
Summary: Party Poison went down under Korse's shot in the lobby, but the others made it out. They just can't leave him behind.
Author notes: Thank you, mods, for a really fun challenge, and thanks to aneas whose work inspired this fic! I've included the artwork as part of the text itself (or you can see it all by itself here) since it's all very entwined at this point. :D I hope you like it. And S, tempore, and alpheratz -- thank you for the extremely helpful beta work. You all rock.
You can also read the fic by itself over at the AO3, if graphics aren't really your thing.
* * *
The Dracs kept shooting, even as the van screeched down the empty street, tires smoking. They swarmed around the Trans Am like maggots, hiding the scorch marks, the blown tires. Frank could still see it, listing sideways, until the van's door latch finally caught and all he could see was dark dented metal and the smears of bloody fingerprints.
He could feel the screams and curses still bubbling up behind his teeth, but his head was quiet, filled with a silent sort of buzzing, like he'd been too close to an explosion. Mikey was voicing the words for him anyway, shoving against Pony's hold, fingers clawing at the bandage Pony pressed to his side.
"Go back, bastards, go back and get him! Let me go back!"
Mikey stopped yelling eventually, words all burnt out, and fell sideways into Ray's shoulder. The kid reached around Ray's arm to hang on to Mikey's coat, and they all three sat there, quiet. Show Pony folded his long legs and knocked his head back against the side of the van, once, twice. Dr. D turned around to look at him.
Frank wanted to burrow his way into Ray's arms too, wanted to let the kid hold his hand. He was too far away, all the way over on the other side of the van. But the space between them was space meant for Gerard, and Frank couldn't take it. Couldn't. Not when he could still see him, face blank and white.
Slumped at Korse's feet, so fucking quiet.
* * *
He had expected it to hurt, and it really fucking did, but not in the way he'd expected. There was no lightning crack of heat and voltage. No sharp pain. Just . . . a pressure, sudden and heavy and irresistible, that forced him down into the dark and wouldn't let him up.
He pushed and pushed and pushed but the dark settled over and around him, reached inside and spilled itself into him, until all he knew was cold, silent void that swallowed even the thought of color or noise. Or breath.
He must have died, then. He couldn't think of any other word for it.
* * *
They slid into one of the King Snake's old bolt holes to lick their wounds. The concrete warehouse was surrounded by a dozen identical concrete warehouses; long, low buildings with walls scoured clean and sterile every night by blank-faced city employees in neatly pressed overalls. This one might have been a bottling plant, but none of the equipment looked like it'd been clanking around recently.
"It's stuck in a sea of red tape," Hot Chimp explained. "Friend of ours in the tax office makes sure the paperwork stays good and fucked, so no one tries to start it up again." Frank didn't ask the friend's name.
They parked the van next to the two delivery vehicles in the loading dock and covered all three with dusty white tarps. Frank thought the featureless canvas seemed somehow unfinished. He turned to ask Gerard how he'd paint them, if they could find some paints, and stood there, mouth open, for a full minute before Hot Chimp thumped him on the back and pushed him back towards the office.
The kid was still hanging on to Ray, but her big, serious eyes were on Mikey. Who was glaring down at the floor like he could torch it with his brain, and didn't seem to notice Show Pony putting his arm in a sling.
"And leave it on, this time," he was saying. "We're stuck here for a while anyway, so you might as well heal up."
Mikey, if anything, tensed further and said nothing. He hadn't said a word since he quit screaming curses in the van.
Ray tugged gently at the kid's curls. "What are the odds. . . " He trailed off, looking over at Dr. D with his good eye. It made it very obvious that he was Not Looking at Mikey when he went on. "What are the odds that Korse didn't kill him?"
Everybody turned and looked at Frank before he realized that the wire-tight, protesting sound had come from him.
If Gee wasn't dead . . .
"He took a blaster shot up his fucking chin," he ground out. The words scratched at his throat like sand. If Gee wasn't dead . . . "That's not how they make baby Dracs, Jet Star, that's how they make compost."
Mikey's shoulders hunched impossibly tighter and the kid was crying now, but Frank made himself say it. If Gee wasn't fucking dead . . .
"Why the hell would Korse risk that?" he heard himself ask, and that wasn't what he meant to say at all, not like that, all plaintive and hurt and small. But if Gee wasn't dead, they really had left him. If Gee was alive . . .
They'd left Party Poison behind.
* * *
After a while, or what he thought might be a while, the void changed. It didn't exactly lighten, really. It didn't get brighter. It was more like all the color that had been pressed together until it was just black began to bleed away, leaving the void bleached out and pale. Bone white. Corpse white.
He still couldn't feel his hands, or his feet (or his spine or his gut or his face or his fucking heartbeat), but he could see them now, steady and still on what was slowly becoming a polished tile floor.
"Oh, fuck me," he thought, at the sight of himself looking up from that faint reflection. White, all white, between black boots and his short black hair. "Fuck me, I'm in hell."
* * *
Their heads were so close together now Frank could feel Ray's curls brush his cheek every time he shook his head. All in a circle, him and Ray and Mikey and Dr. D. Frank could hear Chimp and Pony on the other side of the room, asking the kid if she wanted V-Juice or V-Juice to drink. But most of his attention was circling around Ray and Dr. D and their sand-blasted speculation. Across from him, he could see Mikey's fever-bright eyes, shifting from face to face, following the words.
"It'd be a goddamned coup for them," Ray said, choking up in his effort to keep the kid from hearing. "He knows all our bolt holes, where the camps are, where the drones can't find a signal - if they turn him they could shut down half the fucking zone runners in a fucking week."
"But in the middle of a firefight, with a shot to the head?" Dr. D's deep rumble didn't carry past Frank's shoulder, though it tried. "Not even Korse could be that damn precise."
Ray was nodding before Dr. D finished. "Yeah he could, if he was ready, if he was expecting the chance. And you know he was waiting for us, from the second he picked up the kid."
They'd all known that. Before Gerard ever turned the Trans Am back towards Battery City they'd known that. But Frank still felt cold, thinking of the way the white suits had closed in all around them, the Dracs and their reflections in all that fucking glass.
"Korse never tried to turn him before," Dr. D protested - though Frank thought he was playing Devil's advocate now.
"He never had him here before."
"How would it work?" Frank heard, and it took a moment to recognize Mikey's voice, it cut so razor sharp. "If Gee's not dead. What are they doing to him?"
Frank felt his own throat dry up.
Dr. D looked over Frank's shoulder - meeting Pony's eye, or Chimp's. Frank heard them leave, taking the kid out of the office. The door shut behind them with a quiet, dusty thud.
"We haven't confirmed this. But the Last Chance Kids haven't failed us yet."
Dr. D rolled back from their tight little circle, lacing his fingers over his knees. There was dried blood on his knuckles, dark and flaking. He rubbed at it with his thumb.
"They'll put him in a body bag," he said, voice coiling slow and dark. Mikey closed his eyes. "And while they have his flesh and bones on ice, they'll flush him out of his own head. Chase him down and white wash his soul. They'll track every flashing neuron and snuff out every bit of rebellion until he's empty. Blank. Then they'll fill him up again, and he won't recognize himself. Or us. Or anyone but the faces they tell him to know."
Mikey's eyes were still closed. Frank could feel his burning.
"Where?" Ray didn't sound angry anymore. He sounded so cold Frank felt ice spreading down his spine.
The smile that wasn't quite a smile crossing Dr. D's face, in contrast, was white hot desert burn. A blaster bolt, searing.
* * *
There was a desk in front of him. A shiny metal desk, one computer monitor, one keyboard. One of those sets of swinging silver balls.
He turned around and walked away from it. His boots (not his boots, the heel wasn't worn on one side, the toes were too polished) were soundless on the tile. The void had retreated farther, but still all he saw was white.
White walls. White tile. White florescent lighting in a white drop ceiling.
He could feel a growl rumbling up from somewhere. It was the first thing he'd felt since the black receded.
He let the growl grow until he could feel his bones trembling with it. He opened his mouth, and the sound escaped. Where it touched the walls, words left streaks of color and chaos- scarlet cyan marigold and violent pink, dove gray and toxic green, lavender bronze fuckers this is Party fucking Poison downoutKilljoys falllikerunrunrunbunnyrun. Streams of words and scrambled letters too chaotic to ever be words, splashed taller than he was and a hundred times more real.
The void erased them as quickly as he threw them up, until he was running in an isolated wash of color, half a step ahead of nothing at all.
* * *
They left the kid in a plastic chair, curled up with Pony's jacket draped over her. Ray stooped to tuck a curl behind her ear, and she sniffled in her sleep, smalls hands tugging the jacket a little closer around herself.
Dr. D parked his chair in the door, shotgun across his lap. Pony, sitting on the floor next to the kid, looking as relaxed as a cat in the sun, had his ray gun in his hand.
"Don't take this route," Chimp was saying, running her finger over the sewer line on the map Frank and Ray held between them. "The access tunnel was closed three weeks ago. And you can't just walk over the bridge the way you did before."
"Underpass?" Mikey's sling was looped around his neck and flapping loose, his arm free to point.
"Only way left. Gonna have to cover up the colors, though."
"Fucking coveralls. You haven't got any in my size." Frank wanted a cigarette, wanted to knock ash all over the cleansuits laid over the desk.
The smoke would only set off an alarm.
"Roll up the fucking legs, Ghoul. You don't wanna get shot before you find Poison's body bag." They all snarled at Chimp for that, in unison. She glared at them.
"Fucking suicidal bastards, all of you."
Frank grinned, wide and true. "Just because you want to come with us . . ."
"Hell no," she said, crossing her arms. "Someone has to be around to drive the fucking van. Motorbaby over there can't see over the dash."
"Leave it running for us," Ray said, folding up the map.
Chimp sniffed. "Waste of gas. Get going, before there's no point in going at all."
Frank made sure to turn away before the smile could drop off his face.
* * *
He panted, mouth wide open, head thrown back against the wall. A spray of blood red words fanned out around his head, a gory, profanity laced halo. His knees shook, but he could only barely feel the ache in his legs. The stitch in his side was the barest wisp of pain, more like a memory of what he should be feeling.
The hall he'd been racing down shifted, rearranged. The desk was back in front of him. Someone sat there, hands steepled before a featureless face. The figure was about his size. About his shape.
He snarled at it. Just for a second, as his lips curled back from his teeth, he could feel a sweaty lock of hair brushing down across his cheekbone, see a scarlet shiver at the corner of his eye. Then the shape at the desk cocked its head, and it was gone.
He swayed a little as he pushed himself upright. Deliberately, he turned his back on the desk and the figure there. He couldn't really say he stalked away, since he had to trail his hand against the wall to keep his balance. But he left smears of color from his fingertips, and he thought maybe that made the point just as well.
* * *
The coveralls were a good four inches too long. Frank tried to keep the makeshift cuffs from getting too obvious, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about the way the shoulders drooped low on his biceps.
Ray and Mikey walked just a step in front of him, overlapping his silhouette for the cameras. Still, he hoped the only ones watching were taking their full complement of happy pills.
The underpass was lined with blinking lights, but only the bare minimum of holo adds, being only sparsely traveled. Frank had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from sneering at the few insipid banners that did flash up. He kept his eyes focused on the space between Ray's and Mikey's ears.
Walking down the underpass felt alarming like the march across the bridge, but there were no Dracs shooting from the other side. Just a handful of flat footed people in their own cleansuits, masks hanging down around their necks, walking the other way. They smiled and nodded as they passed - the expressions were so practiced, so empty, they looked less real then their masks. Frank couldn't entirely stop his shudder, but the BL/ind drones had already moved on. Forgotten them.
The utility door was card-coded, but Pony had tossed a set of key cards their way as they left, as casually as he would a can of puppy chow.
"They'll only work once," he'd said. "Probably."
Once would have to be enough.
They got in easily enough. Then again, they'd gotten in easily enough last time too. Frank knew the others were feeling the same creeping dread he was - he could see it in the set of Ray's shoulders, in the tense line of Mikey's back.
They all wore the smiling masks that folded out of the cleansuits' collars - hiding their decidedly non-regulation hair, hiding Frank's tattoos. Frank hated the way his vision narrowed under the mask, the way the brightly lit hallways seemed to roll out from under his feet. None of this felt solid.
He kept his mind on the blueprints. The same set they'd studied before they came in after the kid. Mentally, he outlined the lobby in red ink. Filled it with furious scribbles and then ignored it, resolutely concentrating on the lines that meant electrical cables, the ones that meant duct work. He hunted along those lines, looking for a nexus, a room kept as chilled as a slab of granite, and powered like a city block. A room where they might keep what was a essentially a corpse, hooked up to whatever fucking thing they used to chase the heart and soul away.
Frank could taste blood, iron sharp and warm, where he'd bitten his cheek. His grimace was hidden by the mask.
* * *
He didn't think this was fair at all. He glared at the desk ahead of him, while the faceless figure leaned his hip against the polished metal, crossed his feet at the ankle, and set the little silver balls clacking against each other.
It was the only sound he could hear, that sharp, steady, cracking impact.
The words were spilling out of him more wildly than ever, but the colors were fading. He could feel them losing cohesion, diluting in the flood of whitewhitewhite.
He held what he could in both hands, closing his fists to keep the most important words from leaking through his fingers.
Jet Star Fun Ghoul Kobra Kid MikeyFrankieRay friends lovers partners brothersbrothersbrothersbrothers
He could feel the names pulsing against his palms, against his fingertips. He couldn't feel his own pulse, but he could feel them. Couldn't remember his own name, but he knew theirs.
"Killjoys never die," he said, and though the words made no sound, the hallway pulsed around them. The faceless figure at the desk reached out and stopped the silver balls from swinging.
* * *
Balancing the necessary combustive force with a pressing need for not drawing attention was mentally exhausting. Frank felt the pull of it like gravity as he crouched behind Ray and Mikey, laying out the explosive filament with steady fingers.
With any luck, it would eat through the lock without touching off the alarms. With a little more luck, this would actually be the room they were looking for. And with a truly unlikely amount of luck, there wouldn't be a shitload of BL/ind employees on the other side of the door. With that kind of luck they would probably also find Gee sitting there with a cup of real coffee and a cigarette, and they could all waltz out to the motor pool to find the Trans Am fixed up, fueled and ready to go.
Frank told himself he'd settle for the first bit. For now.
The wire sparked and hissed fitfully, but he didn't think the sound would carry. Still, he felt horribly exposed - it was late, and traffic through the corridors was relatively sparse, but sparse wasn't nonexistent. They'd grabbed some janitorial equipment from a supply closet, and Ray was hard at work scrubbing at the floor while Mikey made a convincing show of rewiring the fire suppression systems, but Frank just looked like he was trying to hide a not very cooperative shower of vivid red-gold sparks.
It had been less nerve-wracking to drop charges at strategic points along their route. That had been easy.
"Found it," Mikey murmured, and Frank felt the tension that had been ratcheting higher and higher subside just a little bit.
"How much of a delay can you give us?" he asked, just as quietly. The hiss of the wire almost covered the words.
"Not long. Maybe five minutes."
It would take at least that long to get from here to the exit, maybe longer if they had to carry Gerard.
Frank let his head bow, just enough to stretch at the muscles knotting up his shoulders. They'd make it work.
They had to, so they would.
The sparks fizzled, and the wire was done. Frank pushed at the door with one finger - it swung, just slightly. The room on the other side was lit with a pale blue light that washed against Frank's white glove. The hum of machinery inside was only barely louder than his own breathing.
Frank peered inside, cursing the mask's narrow field of vision for the forty-second time that evening. But the mental snarling faded fast.
The room looked like a morgue, but for the banks of computer terminals lining the walls. Empty metal slabs hulked in front of them, LEDs blinking slow and orange at the foot of each one. Each one but the last one, where there were many lights, all of them bright and active, throwing shadows under the sheet draped across the body there.
In the corner, just past it, encased in plexiglass and steel, was Korse. He was still in his gray frock coat, the scorch mark from Mikey's desperate shot still dark on his right leg. His head hung on his chest, and his eyes were closed.
Frank stared through the narrow gap.
* * *
He felt like if he moved, if he ran, he might be able to outrun the desk and the figure there. But also, he felt like if he moved, the names he held so tightly might escape him.
There was an urge to let them go - to fling them out against the encroaching white like graffiti, to pour his soul into them until they were etched so deeply on the walls they'd never fade, even as he disappeared. He wasn't entirely sure what stopped him, other than a nagging fear that it wouldn't work.
All he could do was hold on.
* * *
There was no one else in the room. Just Korse, in his . . . tube, and the body that Frank both hoped was and hoped wasn't Gerard. It was within arm's reach of Korse, either way.
Consciously, he made himself draw in a slow, deep breath, filling his lungs once, twice, three times, like he was about to dive out into a sand storm. He swung the door open just far enough to slip through, and felt Ray and Mikey follow him. Very gently, Ray pushed the door shut behind them.
They kept low, below the slabs, and kept their eyes up. Frank focused on the body (not really a body, not just a body at all), focused on Korse. Ray and Mikey watched the doors and the monitors.
Korse didn't seem to be breathing. In the pale blue light his skin looked like wax.
Ray put a hand on his shoulder, and Frank froze. There were shadows moving under the door behind Korse - a night guard maybe, or a technician.
Ray pulled Frank and Mikey both down behind the nearest slab, watching the door in the reflection of a blank monitor on the other side of the aisle. Frank made himself sit still and quiet. He wanted to scream.
Something buzzed and the door swung open. A woman walked in, confident in her high heels, face serene. They watched her, holding their breath as she checked the controls on the side of Korse's tube, as she frowned at the monitor above the body on the last slab. She tapped at the line feeding a colorless fluid into the needle in its arm, and made some adjustment to the settings. She tapped a few notes into the tablet hooked next to the monitor, checked Korse's tube again, and walked out of the room as casually as she'd entered.
It took a moment more for them to let out a breath.
* * *
He thought maybe he'd lost track of something. He was kneeling now. The tile floor seemed less solid than it had - or maybe he was less solid instead. He could see his knees sinking into the floor. It was only vaguely alarming, but he still held his closed fists higher, tucked them under his chin. He couldn't remember what he held there, but there was a sort of glow coming from between his fingers, warm and red.
There was a desk, very close to him. It wasn't sinking, and he thought that probably meant the floor was more real than he was, instead of less.
If he grabbed hold of the desk, he could probably pull his knees back out of the floor.
For some reason, that thought made him frown and tuck his fists in even tighter.
* * *
"Fuck, fuck," Ray breathed, reading the tablet on the wall. The body (it was Gerard, and Gerard was not a body but it was a motherfucking body all the same) was clean and still and empty, dressed in scrubs that looked like they'd never been wrinkled. No heartbeat. No breath. Mikey was sitting on the floor beside the slab, holding one of Gerard's hands in both of his, as if he could warm it up. His head was bowed over his brother's fingers.
Frank stood mute at Gerard's feet. There were words clamoring at his throat, dark and wild, but if he let them out he'd never be able to rein them in again.
Gerard's feet were bare beneath the sheet - he reached out and wrapped his shaking hand around an ankle. It felt so strangely fragile.
"Ray?" he finally managed, choking back all the rest.
Ray looked over at him, face grim. His jaw flexed, and he reached over, pulled the needle from Gerard's arm with a savage yank.
Blood welled up, too slowly. Mikey came to his feet.
"Shouldn't we wait? Bring him out slow?"
"We don't have time," Ray said. "He's nearly gone." He unzipped his cleansuit and pulled out the extra coverall, paper thin and folded flat. "Get him dressed," he told Frank, tossing it over before turning back to the tablet, hunting through the records for something they could use.
Frank swallowed and stripped the sheet away. Mikey helped him get Gerard into the coverall, his jaw tight as they tucked his brother's red hair up under the mask. Better than a shroud, but hardly comforting, seeing that blank smiling mask over Gerard face while he was so very still.
Frank kept glancing up at Korse, just checking. The fact that he never moved didn't stop Frank from feeling his eyes on him.
Ray moved suddenly back into his field of vision. He'd peeled the mask up off his face and used his teeth to strip the cap off a needle as he bared Gerard's neck with one hand. He plunged the needle into the vein there before Frank could so much as flinch.
"Please, Gerard," Ray said.
* * *
The hallway flattened in an instant, went two-dimensional with a sound like the world ending. A scream ripped through him and the haze of featureless light fell apart like paper in a bonfire, flashing to ashes that curled and ate themselves in midair, leaving just a flash like a dying star behind his eyes.
Every muscle spasmed, locking tight.. His fists pulled open, fingers spread wide.
Released, all the color roared out, scarletgreengoldcrimsonbluepurpleorangepinkindigo, and spread and spread and spread . . . words and images and memories painting over the void until there was not a blank space to be found. The names he'd held so tightly overwrote them all. brothersKilljoysMikeyJetStarbrothersFunGhoulpartnersbrothersMikeyRayloversFrankie. Frankie. Frank.
Party Poison.
Gerard.
He was so full of them all.
* * *
Gerard sucked in air like he'd just remembered how. His heart beneath Frank's hand seemed to be trying to burst free of his ribcage. His whole body shook with the force of it. Mikey ripped the mask up before Gerard could hyperventilate.
His eyes rolled, wild and panicked, and Frank found his voice.
"Gerard, Gerard, it's us, you're back, we came to get you back, you fucking asshole, what the hell was that?" he hissed, pulling Gerard into his arms. For a moment he was so tense Frank thought he might break, but then he shuddered, and his arms wrapped tight around Frank's ribs and Mikey had his face buried in his brother's neck and Ray had his hands tight on his shoulders and none of them, none of them, could make themselves let go.
Until Frank looked up, and saw the lights flashing on the side of Korse's tube.
* * *
The white hallway made him doubt. But Gerard could hear himself panting now, could feel his heartbeat (it felt like it might explode). He could feel Frank gripping his hand so tightly his bones ached, could feel Mikey's shoulders under his arm, Ray's hand on his back.
He couldn't run right, kept tripping himself. Tripping Mikey, but Mikey wouldn't let him shrug away - none of them would let him go.
They huddled in a utility closet, and he thought Frank might be counting - he reached over and covered Gerard's ears, just as the floor shook, and Ray shoved the door back open, pulled them all out, pushed them back into a run.
The corridor seemed to spin around him, but Gerard could tell the difference now. This was real air he was dragging at, a real floor beneath his feet. He wasn't dead anymore.
* * *
They slid around the corner to the exit just ahead of the Dracs - Frank could hear their boots pounding down the long corridor behind them. No fucking glass doors this time, just a service door with an electronic lock. Frank's last charge blew it to hell just before they reached it, and they hardly slowed, hauling Gerard through the smoking ruin.
A delivery van, clean and bland and boring, sat idling there. For a moment, Frank put on the brakes, shoving Mikey and Gerard behind him, but then there was Pony, shoving open the sliding doors, and Dr. D reaching out to help them in.
There was a disturbing amount of deja vu as they pulled screeching out into the road. Blaster fire flashed white gold around them while Frank stared out. Dracs boiled out of it - but they were bottlenecked this time by that narrow service door. They had the van door shut and the van itself halfway down the street before all four tires were firmly back on the asphalt.
This time, Mikey was laughing, helplessly breathless as he clutched at Gerard's arm, and Pony was hanging tight to the doors instead, cursing at the latch. And this time, the kid was yelling, squirming in Ray's hold, trying to reach Gerard, and Ray was yelling too, trying to talk to Chimp and Dr. D over the noise.
Frank just held on to Gerard, who was filling the spot next to Frank, hands wound tightly in Mikey's coverall, twisted in Frank's sleeve. Gerard, who was pale and shaking and staring at all of them like he wasn't sure they were real.
"I slashed their tires!" the kid was saying, high and excited, hands waving dangerously around Ray's face. "Me and Pony. At least two on every car, and every bike. At least two."
Frank felt the death grip Gerard had on his hand loosen as she talked, until their fingers were barely intertwined. He tightened his own grip, unwilling to let go, but when he looked over, Gerard was smiling.
"We'll have to get you a better knife, Motorbaby, if that's the sort of thing you want to do," Gerard said. His voice was hoarse, uncertain, but something heavy and cold inside of Frank started to ease at the sound of it.
He closed his eyes. Tucked himself up against Gerard's side, let his feet kick up against Mikey's. "Noisy bastards," he said, smiling.
The more noise the better, he thought. Let them fill the world with it.
fin