Imaginary Friends: Chapter Four
Misha tries to call Jensen for the fifth time, hanging his head when it goes to voicemail. He ignores Jared telling him to give it a rest already. He came here to try to help, and it feels like he’s failing already. He can’t even keep the three of them together, and for all he knows, Jensen is…
“He’s not gonna answer,” Jared says, toweling his hair dry and grabbing the car keys Jensen left. “He doesn’t want us to follow him.”
“You’re not the least bit worried?” Misha asks, feeling dismayed when Jared just shrugs, standing there waiting impatiently.
Jared sighs. “If you want me to be honest? I’m relieved. We don’t have to sit here trying to make awkward small talk after what happened, pretending like we’re still friends while we run for our lives. If I’m in my last few days of life, I’d rather spare myself that anxiety.”
Misha glares at him, standing up and grabbing the keys out of his hands. “God, you two are just so fucking impossible sometimes.”
Jensen sits in his own motel room with a charger he bought, doing his damnedest to find something on Joy and the Key. It takes him a long time scouring the depths of the internet to find the Book of Tarnis, but when he does, he sits up in his creaky bed, the light from the phone the only light in the room.
It’s late, and he still hasn’t slept. He can feel the fatigue in his body, can feel his eyes burning with exhaustion, but he can’t let up yet. He’s been drinking tap water and had only managed to grab some snacks at a gas station he passed earlier, his stomach rumbling, but he continues to ignore it. This is what he’s been searching for.
The book gives no indication of where the Key came from or how the deadline for its use was determined. It’s archaic enough that there are still a lot of unknowns. But the book does give the deadline itself. It’s more of a calculation than anything, and Jensen feels inferior in that moment, knowing that Jared was always much better at math and anything in that wheelhouse than he was. Still, Jensen continues to read through people’s formulas and theories and the calendar on his phone, and he concludes that the Key has to be used by midnight the following night.
Jensen’s heart is thudding in his chest, which feels like it’s constricting with the realization that the time is practically here. That gives him less time to act, to help Jared somehow, but he also wonders if maybe it could be a good thing, if maybe Joy will just run out of time before she can find him. But the fear remains that Jensen still hasn’t been able to find the location of where the Key has to be used.
The knock on his motel room door nearly makes his heart stop. He can’t fathom it’s anybody but Joy, come to kill him for taking her Key away. He stays in bed for a moment, paralyzed, but then the knock comes again. He gets up and makes his way to the door, shaking, cautiously looking through the peephole, only to see the monk.
His first reaction is annoyance. He wishes they’d never met the monk in the first place, not to mention that the Order of Dagon is responsible for this whole mess to begin with. But he opens the door, allowing the monk inside. He waits until they’re securely locked in again to turn a light on. “What do you want? And how do you keep finding me?”
“I want to help,” the monk says, sounding both pathetic and urgent. “I have information you may need. Or at least want, so you know what area to avoid.”
Jensen drops onto the bed, rubbing a hand over his face, feeling even more tired than before. “What do you mean?”
The monk steps forward, looking as if he’s begging for forgiveness. “I want to save Jared, too. I want to stop what we set in motion and then leave our magic behind. It’s the only way I can try to make up for what I did.” Jensen just stares at him blankly, not willing to give him anything. “I might know where and when Joy will want to use the Key, if she can find him.”
That piques Jensen’s interest, and he scoots closer to the edge of the bed. “Where? Is it tomorrow night?”
“Yes,” the monk says, taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I found the Book of Tarnis,” Jensen says impatiently, waving a hand. “It had some kind of calculation, so I figured out the time, but I couldn’t figure out the place.”
The monk seems to know better than to take a seat beside Jensen and simply sits cross-legged on the floor in front of him. “The Book is vague. But there’s so much mention of energy. The Key itself is energy, and it would be most effective to use it where energy is generated. Somewhere powerful.”
“Yeah, but that could be anywhere.” Jensen leans forward, raking a hand through his hair. “Energy is everywhere. Not the same level as the Key, but…a ritual like this-”
“That’s the thing,” the monk says, cutting him off. “You’re thinking of rituals and modern religions, where everything has to be so specific. But this doesn’t need to be done in one specific place. Otherwise, the danger wouldn’t be as great. We could have created Jared and set him up on the other side of the world, and it wouldn’t make as much of a difference that Joy found him here.” He pauses, taking a breath. “The Key and Book are much older than I am. I don’t know of anybody who actually knew either of their origins or interpreted all of the text. We just did what we thought we had to do to protect the Key in the moment.” Jensen just glares, and the monk continues, “I believe the Key must be used at the closest source of power. Some may not be ideal, but she would still make the attempt. Here, in Vancouver? You’ve got the Stave Falls Powerhouse.”
Jensen just shrugs, though he feels his own spark of energy at having a possible solution to this mess. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“It’s not far,” the monk says. “An hour, at most. A couple, if you take public transportation. She could get him there easily, if she found him. But the Powerhouse has multiple kinds of energy: hydroelectric and supernatural. It’s supplied people with power, and it’s known as the most haunted place in the lower mainland. There were supposedly a lot of deaths in the early days, and the ghosts of those victims are still there. Seems like the sort of power Joy would gravitate towards to activate the Key.”
Jensen stands, unable to keep still now that he might have a real clue as to what’s happening. For the first time since he left the last motel, he grabs for his phone with the intent of calling Misha. “I have to warn them. Tell them to start driving and get as far away as they can, while they can.”
“You’re not going with them?” the monk asks, surprised and staring up at him from the floor.
“No.” He shakes his head, hand shaking as he scrolls through to Misha’s name. “No, I’m gonna try to get closer. She’s followed me before, and I was the one who pulled Jared away from her at our last run-in. I have no idea how any of this magical Hell-beast shit works, but maybe if she keeps her sights on me, thinking Jared’s with me, I can buy them some more time.”
“What if she catches you?”
“I’ve escaped her before, I can do it again.”
“If you’re getting closer, she may not be alone.” Jensen pauses to listen, meeting the monk’s eyes. “She’s got friends. Or she did. Maybe more like followers. From what I can tell, she’s been killing them off as quickly as she killed off my Order. But she’ll keep at least one to help her. She’ll search for Jared herself. She won’t leave that to any minion. But she’ll leave them to prepare the site for the sacrifice.”
Jensen freezes, gripping his phone tight in his hand. “You just said ‘sacrifice.’”
The monk nods solemnly. “Whatever you want to call it, ritual, sacrifice, ceremony, it all means the same thing: she needs to bleed Jared dry. And now she has the right knife to do it, from what you’ve told me about the incident with the Knights.”
When Misha’s phone buzzes with Jensen’s name on the screen, he picks it up immediately. Jared tries not to show too much interest, but he watches Misha’s body language carefully after his panicked, “Where are you? Are you okay?” From the way Misha’s body sags with relief, he can glean that Jensen is just fine, though he feels like that shouldn’t matter to him anymore. But as hurt and angry as he is, Misha pointing out that Jensen had turned around and saved him is stuck in his brain.
But it isn’t just that. It’s reality settling in. He can’t deny that all of this Key mess is true anymore. But where does that leave him? What does that make him? And how would he have reacted if he were in Jensen’s place?
He’s lying back on a bed in yet another motel room while Misha talks to Jensen, and he can’t even listen anymore, feeling the weight of depression on his chest. But how can he even feel it? How can this vessel be so real that he’s had no idea all this time that he had something else, something massive and powerful inside of him?
He thinks that maybe it actually explains a lot. Maybe it’s why he has so much nervous energy. Maybe it’s why he shreds napkins while talking during dinner. Maybe it’s why he overreacts sometimes or can’t sit still. All this time, he’s thought it’s just some quirk of his personality. But all this time, he’s had an actual ball of energy trapped inside of him. Maybe all these qualities that his friends have accepted or laughed off aren’t traits but symptoms.
Suddenly, he wants it out. He wants it gone, or he wants to be gone. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that he was created as some temporary fix to such a huge problem. He didn’t ask for this life, and neither did the people he thought were his parents.
That thought hits him hard. He isn’t here because he was wanted. He’s here because he was necessary. And now he can’t even defend himself or his friends from the beast who wants to use him. He feels so useless. He was created for a purpose, but in his mind, it isn’t much of one. He can’t fathom how he has all of this energy and power and no way to use any of it to stop Joy. He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to search himself for any sign of something he can harness and take control of, but it just makes him feel more out of control as he notes every twitch, every shake, every fidget, because he’s so fucking freaked out right now.
“We have to go,” Misha says, hanging up the phone and cutting into Jared’s thoughts. But despite all of his energy, Jared suddenly doesn’t feel like he can move.
“Why don’t you want to kill me?”
“What?” He can hear the sympathy in Misha’s tone, and he sees that Misha wants to come closer and talk this out, but stops himself short. “Jared, look, I don’t mean to be an asshole, but we really don’t have time for this right now. We have to get on the road and keep moving.”
Jared sighs, closing his eyes again. He’ll do it, for Misha’s sake, because he knows Misha won’t leave him here. But his question lingers. Now he thinks it would make sense to have him - the Key - destroyed. All of this would be solved, and they wouldn’t be risking the end of the fucking world just to save him.
“Fine.” Jared gets up and moves to the door, grabbing the duffle while Misha grabs the car keys. “What’s Jensen doing?” It’s the first time he’s said Jensen’s name since before the betrayal, and it feels odd rolling off his tongue again.
Misha takes a breath, pausing before the door. “Something fucking stupid, as always.” But emotion is making Misha’s voice waver, and Jared presses him to find out why. “You didn’t hear me arguing with him? He’s heading towards her, while we run away. He thinks she’ll keep following him and not us.”
Something twists inside of Jared, like a weird compass telling him to go find Jensen, to stop him, and take him with them. But he ignores it, pushes it down, and tells himself it’s just because of the fake bond the monks created. He still finds it difficult to speak with the lump in his throat. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he loves you, dumbass.” Misha glances over at him, exasperated. “We both do. But you know how he feels about you.”
“But that was forced,” Jared says, looking down at the floor. “It’s all been forced. They made you feel this way about me. And now you’re going through this. Don’t you want to fight it? Don’t you feel…?”
“Jensen asked me that same thing,” Misha says, when Jared trails off. “That’s why he did what he did. It’s not an excuse, but…you have to admit, this is all pretty fucked up. But I - we - can’t just turn our backs on you. This all happened so fast, and forced or not, I think we’re more afraid of how much we might regret it afterwards, if we did. Because, forced or not, you became a part of our lives. And a good one.” He looks at Jared, trying to make eye contact, but Jared keeps his eyes down, feeling them well up. “We can’t just turn that off now. Losing you now, whether we really knew you for 4 years or 9, would hurt.” He pauses and Jared swallows, blinking rapidly and trying to get it together. “I want you to remember that, that some of these years we’ve spent together were real. Not all of our memories were created for us.”
Jared clears his throat, still battling this demon. “But they created the bonds between us.”
“Bullshit.” It’s plain, simple, and emphatic. “Jared, the way you were created…is the way you were created. Whether you came out of a womb, a lab, or a spell, you were always gonna have some intrinsic qualities to you. Everybody does. Nature or nurture? I say a little of both. And with your nature, I would have been your friend, regardless of some magical ‘bond’ they set up between us.”
It’s harder to speak now, too much emotion choking him up, and Jared wishes he didn’t feel like he was on the verge of a huge, sobbing breakdown in these tense moments. He feels like Misha’s words are all more than he deserves, and he still wonders if Jensen feels the same way. But Jensen is putting himself in harm’s way…
There’s suddenly a knock on the door, and Jared’s head snaps up to look back at Misha, who’s gone ghost-white. For a second, Jared expects for someone to call out “Housekeeping!” and for both of them to laugh with relief. Instead, Misha’s away from the door and pushing Jared back just as the door gets thrown open with the force only a god could have, the locks and chair splintering and flying across the room like shrapnel.
“Don’t,” Misha says, facing Joy as he still keeps his hand pressed back behind him against Jared’s chest. It’s the only word he gets out before she storms into the room, grabs the front of his shirt, and tosses him like he’s no more than a rag doll.
“MISHA!” Jared watches horrified as Misha’s body collides with the nearest wall, head smacking against it. He feels an odd surge in his body that he’s never felt before when Misha collapses to the floor, lifeless, but it subsides when he sees that Misha’s still breathing. “No,” he still says, tears springing to his eyes again as he realizes his friends are being hurt because of him. “No, please.”
“Aww.”
Jared hasn’t even looked at Joy yet, too preoccupied with Misha’s wellbeing. He looks at her now, sees her walking towards him with a little sympathetic pout on her lips. She reaches out to him, and he flinches, but all she does is brush the hair back from his face.
“I didn’t mean to upset my Key.” She still looks at him with an awe that makes him cringe a little inside. His heart pounds in his chest, and he tries to just remain still and keep calm. “This is a big day for both of us, and I want you to be as comfortable as possible.” She glances over at Misha. “Is that your friend?”
Jared nods, his throat dry, knowing there’s no point in trying to fight her. “Yes. Yes, please, he’s my friend, and I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but I need to make sure he’s okay.”
“Of course, sweetie. He did try to get in my way and hide you from me,” she says with a sneer, but it quickly gives over to a smile. “But he’s still harmless. We’ll bring him with us! He can take his nap in your car, and you’ll have a little friend with you for your ceremony. Sound good?”
Chapter 5