an_alien_sky (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} an_alien_sky) wrote,@ 2005-08-10 17:19:00 |
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In between the Evenwhen & Hell...
A fragment of "maybe" based on Barb Stearn's "Wielding an Absent Hand" series. This takes place after the 2nd book, when initially, Steve Perry was supposed to be dead...
-------------
Jonathan stumbled across the uneven land. He hugged himself tightly, shivering. It wasn't cold, not outside, anyway. He'd been asleep, Liz curled beside him. Home, in his own bed, his own house. He was dreaming this. He had to be. He'd dreamt that he'd slipped on something, fallen, and his sleeping body had jerked with impact. His eyes had opened and he'd found himself walking here, skirting the edge of a silent forest.
The trees were white and even, methodical skeletons of branch and leaves that were all the same in every detail. There was no underbrush, no noise, no variation.
Except for the body.
It was a dark lump against the faded green. Jonathan slowed, stared, seeing it without any reaction. Just a body. That was all. It hadn't changed, not in the months they'd been home. Still battered, still lifeless, still kept as an example to whatever lived here. The arm was still bent in its broken angle and skin and muscle hung shredded from bone, though no sign of decay touched any feature. Perry lay curled on his side, just as they'd left him, his hair still hanging in his eyes. Save for his shattered arm, he looked asleep.
"Still," Jonathan whispered. He eased to his knees beside the body. He had to be dreaming this. He had to be. He reached to touch Perry's face. If it were a dream, Perry would wake up...
The flesh was cold, unyielding to Jonathan's hand.
He remained there, kneeling beside Steve, absently brushed Steve's hair back from the dead face. "You still causing the bitch trouble?" His hand stopped, rested against Steve's cheek. "Yeah. I thought so. You would." Jonathan slid his feet from under him, twisted to sit against the silent earth, his hand still against Steve's face. "I hope you're giving her hell. Wherever you are."
For a long moment, Jonathan didn't speak again, just stared out over the monotonous landscape. There had been no funeral, no mourning, nothing to mourn over, and officially, no reason to mourn. They hadn't dared show anything, to anyone. The death hadn't happened, back home. There was no way to explain.
Steve would be forever lost, forever a dead body against this dead land because of it.
Jonathan closed his eyes. He hadn't been able to cry, back home. He still couldn't, despite the cold stillness under his hand. He couldn't tell how long he sat there, through light and darkness both, unmoving and unspeaking in silent vigil beside the dead singer. It was all Jonathan could give, now.
Something shuffled in front of him, something dark. Something big.
Jonathan lifted his eyes. A Keeper.
He should've been scared. He should've been panicking. But he only sat there, unfeeling and empty, and watched it. It shuffled within arm's reach, and stopped. It hunched over to settle against the land, its eyes fixed on Jonathan. As if it waited. As if it knew him...
Wherever you are...
"You're not gonna get me that easy," Jonathan whispered.
The creature didn't move. It only sat there. Watching.
"I'm not dreaming, then," Jonathan said to it. "You'd've attacked by now, if I was. You always have before." So he was back. Again. Alone.
No reaction. It was ugly, skinny and grey and rotting, bones poking through, scabs of flesh and rotted cloth hanging from it. Long, sharp claws, fangs.
"Let me guess. You used to be a groupie. Someone Steve fucked and forgot."
That got movement, sharp motion, as if a shudder. Right when Jonathan had said Steve's name.
Jonathan felt his mouth quirk in contempt. "Forget it, bitch. I don't believe in Disney tales. Not from you. Try again."
"Holy shit..." Breathed awe, fear, a new voice, familiar and different both.
Neal...?!?
Before Jonathan could do more than start in surprise, the Keeper reacted --
-- and leaped --
Jonathan didn't think. He tackled the Keeper headlong. He and it tumbled sideways together, and Jonathan kept enough presence to shove himself out and in...
Light flared green and blinding. The creature screamed, flung itself away from Jonathan. It ended up crouched a few feet away, panting. Jonathan remained in a half-crouch between the creature and where the voice had come from. He was ready. He wouldn't let it get close, wouldn't let it do anything...
"That the best you can do?" Jonathan said softly. "Steve did better than that stoned." There was a choked noise behind him. Jonathan ignored it. He kept his gaze on the keeper, waiting.
The thing settled back, its eyes gleaming.
"Holy fuckin' shit," Neal breathed from behind Jonathan again. The guitarist's voice trembled high and tight, as if a hair from hysterics.
"Get up here," Jonathan said over his shoulder. He heard movement...
The keeper leaped again, aiming for something on Jonathan's right --
Jonathan shoved himself up, crashed full into the Keeper, lashed out with hands and light...
It scattered into dust motes.
Jonathan hit the ground hard, lay there for a long moment, getting his shaking under control. Then, only then, did he look up, about to tell Neal off...
...and froze, open-mouthed.
Neal, but younger. Much younger, looking as he had around the time of Escape. Staring back at Jonathan in open, unashamed grief.
Then Jonathan saw who stood close behind Neal, arms crossed and staring down at the dead body, and Jonathan was on his feet in a thrust of movement.
The second person looked up, backed up a singled step, his face flashing shock, recognition. “I know you.”
"Steve," Jonathan breathed. "You can't be --"
"You can't be here," Neal said to Jonathan at the same time. "You're fuckin' dead..."
"I'm dead, too, man. Here. They said it the last time." Steve's voice shook. "Fuckin' christ."
Jonathan got his breathing going again. This couldn't be Steve, not the real one. This man was younger, as Neal was. But... "Here?"
The two stood close together, staring at Jonathan as if scared witless, as if fearing he'd disappear completely. Steve glanced quickly at Neal. "I think the password is, 'Siaron sent us'," Steve said softly. He glanced down at the dead body, his own, older. "Not that it's gonna do any good."
“Steve,” Jonathan said, a quiet question. He’d been fooled before. He wouldn not be taken in again.
The younger man didn’t look up, only stared at the body. “I died here.”
“That’s not --”
“Before.” Steve trembled, as if on a knife’s edge of sanity. “Before. I died. When that other one broke the rock.”
...stone meeting rock, an explosion of light, a shattered body...
This was close, too close, too much coincidence...
A trap.
Steve still stared at the body, broken and torn against the earth. “How?”
The man didn’t mean his own death. Jonathan was certain of that. Something else trembled underneath Steve’s words, something Jonathan couldn’t get clearly. It could be a trap. Could be. He had to be sure, somehow. He decided to be blunt, short, unwilling to give anything away. “Neal.”
It didn’t work. Even that single word tore the memories from him, pulled them out from hard, high walls of pain and grief. Jonathan bowed his head, fighting back grief. The memories, the feelings had been forced from Neal originally, after the blood and death were done, then forced on all of them...Neal, chained under the Lady’s hands, tortured, rended, hollowed out -- then turned loose on Steve...
...and Jonathan, helpless to help either of them...
He forced himself to look up, to look full into their faces. They stood unmoving. The younger version of Steve stared at Neal, stared and shook his head in slow, horrified negation. The younger Neal’s face was blank and terrible.
They felt that?
Stiffly, uncertainly, Neal reached to touch Jonathan’s shoulder...
...contact...
Blood and grief and gunshots exploded behind Jonathan’s eyes. Onstage, and lights poured heat down on him, his shirt damp with sweat. He tore the guitar off --
...guitar?
-- handed it to a roadie, then turned, grabbed Jonathan in passing, dragged the keyboardist center-stage for their bows. Neal felt his face stretch in a true grin as Steve grabbed him from the other side, as they heard the crowd roars swell. Success, goddamned success, finally, after all these years --
...years? But...
He didn’t hear it, only felt Jonathan jerk, felt something wet splatter against his face and arm. Neal turned in time to see the second bullet rip Jonathan’s cheek and a third drive through the keyboardist’s chest. Jonathan crumpled to his knees, one hand against his chest, the other pressed for support against the stage, and then collapsed. Neal stood shocked still, uncomprehending, saw roadies dive from sidestage and pile into someone in the front row, saw Jonathan curled up and bleeding at his feet. Steve yelled something at Neal, then pulled him down to Jonathan’s side. Together, they helped Jonathan uncurl. Blood... too much blood...the keyboardist’s chest was a smashed mess, and the right side of his forehead...
....oh fuckin’ christ...
Suddenly there were people everywhere, screaming, running. But Neal only held Jonathan tight between himself and Steve, only watched helplessly as Jonathan bled his life out on that Chicago stage, his eyes wide and reflecting death in the harsh spotlights...
...no...
Jonathan jerked back, jerked free of the contact. He was on his knees, somehow, staring into Neal’s face again...
...too young, too damn young...
Neal broke, crumpled against Jonathan in shuddering gasps of harsh, choked noise. Jonathan rocked him, even as he tried to control his own shakes. It was then the smell registered, damp iron, and Jonathan looked down. There were bloodstains on Neal’s clothes, huge blotches of reddish brown on his jeans and smeared across the lower third of his t-shirt. Jonathan stared numbly, but then movement had him lifting his gaze again -- the younger Steve still stood over them. There were identical bloodstains on the younger man’s clothes, stained as if he’d held a dying friend, bent over him, praying, begging.
...”Siaron sent us...”
Christ, bitch, couldn’t you even give them time to change?
Jonathan couldn’t shut out the sight, the feelings. He leaned on the other two, shaking, somehow aware that Steve was on his knees now, too, and that they both leaned on him, that they trembled with him...
“Fuckin’ christ,” Neal whispered. “Oh fuckin’ christ.”
The Lady wasn’t in either of these two. Jonathan hadn’t sensed anything as her in their feel, their thoughts, those memories...
...but his death onstage in their timeline had her handmarks all over it.
“Destroyer,” Steve whispered. “I...”
“No.” Jonathan gripped the younger man’s shoulder hard. “No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t you.”
Steve shook his head, his mouth moving silently in shock. They hadn’t even had time to take in what had happened, and they’d been grabbed here, leaving a dead friend, alone and bloody on a cold gurney in a Chicago hospital...
Dizzy, Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment, forced their memory away. “Look at me.” Jonathan lifted Steve’s chin to face him. “Look at me, dammit.”
A breath of sound, choked grief. “You’re not --”
“No, I’m not. But I know. I know. It wasn’t you, dammit!”
“But --”
“You didn’t pull the trigger. You didn’t tell that bastard to shoot!”
“Siaron said --”
“Siaron,” Jonathan spat, “can fuckin’ go to hell. She doesn’t know shit. She got it wrong with us. She’s still getting it wrong, and she’s gotta ask us clueless pee-ons to straighten it out. That has to tell you something.”
“Light-bringer,” Neal whispered.
It made no sense. Jonathan didn’t care, but the words brought him up short. He sagged against their shoulders, but he could see beyond them, to where the body still lay.
Dammit, Steve, why?
Maybe it was a trick of the uncertain light, maybe just the effects of rigor mortis. But the battered face looked as if it was smiling. Jonathan stared for a long moment, slowly nodded.
Revenge, brother. I swear.
“You’re dead in my world,” Jonathan murmured to the younger Steve, inside the close, comforting triangle that they’d made. “I’m dead in yours.” He looked up into that younger face, held the man’s gaze. “That bitch did it. You didn’t. I didn’t.”
“Revenge,” Steve whispered.
Jonathan smiled grimly, through sudden tears. “Yeah. We’re gonna make sure you two become the biggest assholes in this land you possibly can...”
A fragment of "maybe" based on Barb Stearn's "Wielding an Absent Hand" series. This takes place after the 2nd book, when initially, Steve Perry was supposed to be dead...
-------------
Jonathan stumbled across the uneven land. He hugged himself tightly, shivering. It wasn't cold, not outside, anyway. He'd been asleep, Liz curled beside him. Home, in his own bed, his own house. He was dreaming this. He had to be. He'd dreamt that he'd slipped on something, fallen, and his sleeping body had jerked with impact. His eyes had opened and he'd found himself walking here, skirting the edge of a silent forest.
The trees were white and even, methodical skeletons of branch and leaves that were all the same in every detail. There was no underbrush, no noise, no variation.
Except for the body.
It was a dark lump against the faded green. Jonathan slowed, stared, seeing it without any reaction. Just a body. That was all. It hadn't changed, not in the months they'd been home. Still battered, still lifeless, still kept as an example to whatever lived here. The arm was still bent in its broken angle and skin and muscle hung shredded from bone, though no sign of decay touched any feature. Perry lay curled on his side, just as they'd left him, his hair still hanging in his eyes. Save for his shattered arm, he looked asleep.
"Still," Jonathan whispered. He eased to his knees beside the body. He had to be dreaming this. He had to be. He reached to touch Perry's face. If it were a dream, Perry would wake up...
The flesh was cold, unyielding to Jonathan's hand.
He remained there, kneeling beside Steve, absently brushed Steve's hair back from the dead face. "You still causing the bitch trouble?" His hand stopped, rested against Steve's cheek. "Yeah. I thought so. You would." Jonathan slid his feet from under him, twisted to sit against the silent earth, his hand still against Steve's face. "I hope you're giving her hell. Wherever you are."
For a long moment, Jonathan didn't speak again, just stared out over the monotonous landscape. There had been no funeral, no mourning, nothing to mourn over, and officially, no reason to mourn. They hadn't dared show anything, to anyone. The death hadn't happened, back home. There was no way to explain.
Steve would be forever lost, forever a dead body against this dead land because of it.
Jonathan closed his eyes. He hadn't been able to cry, back home. He still couldn't, despite the cold stillness under his hand. He couldn't tell how long he sat there, through light and darkness both, unmoving and unspeaking in silent vigil beside the dead singer. It was all Jonathan could give, now.
Something shuffled in front of him, something dark. Something big.
Jonathan lifted his eyes. A Keeper.
He should've been scared. He should've been panicking. But he only sat there, unfeeling and empty, and watched it. It shuffled within arm's reach, and stopped. It hunched over to settle against the land, its eyes fixed on Jonathan. As if it waited. As if it knew him...
Wherever you are...
"You're not gonna get me that easy," Jonathan whispered.
The creature didn't move. It only sat there. Watching.
"I'm not dreaming, then," Jonathan said to it. "You'd've attacked by now, if I was. You always have before." So he was back. Again. Alone.
No reaction. It was ugly, skinny and grey and rotting, bones poking through, scabs of flesh and rotted cloth hanging from it. Long, sharp claws, fangs.
"Let me guess. You used to be a groupie. Someone Steve fucked and forgot."
That got movement, sharp motion, as if a shudder. Right when Jonathan had said Steve's name.
Jonathan felt his mouth quirk in contempt. "Forget it, bitch. I don't believe in Disney tales. Not from you. Try again."
"Holy shit..." Breathed awe, fear, a new voice, familiar and different both.
Neal...?!?
Before Jonathan could do more than start in surprise, the Keeper reacted --
-- and leaped --
Jonathan didn't think. He tackled the Keeper headlong. He and it tumbled sideways together, and Jonathan kept enough presence to shove himself out and in...
Light flared green and blinding. The creature screamed, flung itself away from Jonathan. It ended up crouched a few feet away, panting. Jonathan remained in a half-crouch between the creature and where the voice had come from. He was ready. He wouldn't let it get close, wouldn't let it do anything...
"That the best you can do?" Jonathan said softly. "Steve did better than that stoned." There was a choked noise behind him. Jonathan ignored it. He kept his gaze on the keeper, waiting.
The thing settled back, its eyes gleaming.
"Holy fuckin' shit," Neal breathed from behind Jonathan again. The guitarist's voice trembled high and tight, as if a hair from hysterics.
"Get up here," Jonathan said over his shoulder. He heard movement...
The keeper leaped again, aiming for something on Jonathan's right --
Jonathan shoved himself up, crashed full into the Keeper, lashed out with hands and light...
It scattered into dust motes.
Jonathan hit the ground hard, lay there for a long moment, getting his shaking under control. Then, only then, did he look up, about to tell Neal off...
...and froze, open-mouthed.
Neal, but younger. Much younger, looking as he had around the time of Escape. Staring back at Jonathan in open, unashamed grief.
Then Jonathan saw who stood close behind Neal, arms crossed and staring down at the dead body, and Jonathan was on his feet in a thrust of movement.
The second person looked up, backed up a singled step, his face flashing shock, recognition. “I know you.”
"Steve," Jonathan breathed. "You can't be --"
"You can't be here," Neal said to Jonathan at the same time. "You're fuckin' dead..."
"I'm dead, too, man. Here. They said it the last time." Steve's voice shook. "Fuckin' christ."
Jonathan got his breathing going again. This couldn't be Steve, not the real one. This man was younger, as Neal was. But... "Here?"
The two stood close together, staring at Jonathan as if scared witless, as if fearing he'd disappear completely. Steve glanced quickly at Neal. "I think the password is, 'Siaron sent us'," Steve said softly. He glanced down at the dead body, his own, older. "Not that it's gonna do any good."
“Steve,” Jonathan said, a quiet question. He’d been fooled before. He wouldn not be taken in again.
The younger man didn’t look up, only stared at the body. “I died here.”
“That’s not --”
“Before.” Steve trembled, as if on a knife’s edge of sanity. “Before. I died. When that other one broke the rock.”
...stone meeting rock, an explosion of light, a shattered body...
This was close, too close, too much coincidence...
A trap.
Steve still stared at the body, broken and torn against the earth. “How?”
The man didn’t mean his own death. Jonathan was certain of that. Something else trembled underneath Steve’s words, something Jonathan couldn’t get clearly. It could be a trap. Could be. He had to be sure, somehow. He decided to be blunt, short, unwilling to give anything away. “Neal.”
It didn’t work. Even that single word tore the memories from him, pulled them out from hard, high walls of pain and grief. Jonathan bowed his head, fighting back grief. The memories, the feelings had been forced from Neal originally, after the blood and death were done, then forced on all of them...Neal, chained under the Lady’s hands, tortured, rended, hollowed out -- then turned loose on Steve...
...and Jonathan, helpless to help either of them...
He forced himself to look up, to look full into their faces. They stood unmoving. The younger version of Steve stared at Neal, stared and shook his head in slow, horrified negation. The younger Neal’s face was blank and terrible.
They felt that?
Stiffly, uncertainly, Neal reached to touch Jonathan’s shoulder...
...contact...
Blood and grief and gunshots exploded behind Jonathan’s eyes. Onstage, and lights poured heat down on him, his shirt damp with sweat. He tore the guitar off --
...guitar?
-- handed it to a roadie, then turned, grabbed Jonathan in passing, dragged the keyboardist center-stage for their bows. Neal felt his face stretch in a true grin as Steve grabbed him from the other side, as they heard the crowd roars swell. Success, goddamned success, finally, after all these years --
...years? But...
He didn’t hear it, only felt Jonathan jerk, felt something wet splatter against his face and arm. Neal turned in time to see the second bullet rip Jonathan’s cheek and a third drive through the keyboardist’s chest. Jonathan crumpled to his knees, one hand against his chest, the other pressed for support against the stage, and then collapsed. Neal stood shocked still, uncomprehending, saw roadies dive from sidestage and pile into someone in the front row, saw Jonathan curled up and bleeding at his feet. Steve yelled something at Neal, then pulled him down to Jonathan’s side. Together, they helped Jonathan uncurl. Blood... too much blood...the keyboardist’s chest was a smashed mess, and the right side of his forehead...
....oh fuckin’ christ...
Suddenly there were people everywhere, screaming, running. But Neal only held Jonathan tight between himself and Steve, only watched helplessly as Jonathan bled his life out on that Chicago stage, his eyes wide and reflecting death in the harsh spotlights...
...no...
Jonathan jerked back, jerked free of the contact. He was on his knees, somehow, staring into Neal’s face again...
...too young, too damn young...
Neal broke, crumpled against Jonathan in shuddering gasps of harsh, choked noise. Jonathan rocked him, even as he tried to control his own shakes. It was then the smell registered, damp iron, and Jonathan looked down. There were bloodstains on Neal’s clothes, huge blotches of reddish brown on his jeans and smeared across the lower third of his t-shirt. Jonathan stared numbly, but then movement had him lifting his gaze again -- the younger Steve still stood over them. There were identical bloodstains on the younger man’s clothes, stained as if he’d held a dying friend, bent over him, praying, begging.
...”Siaron sent us...”
Christ, bitch, couldn’t you even give them time to change?
Jonathan couldn’t shut out the sight, the feelings. He leaned on the other two, shaking, somehow aware that Steve was on his knees now, too, and that they both leaned on him, that they trembled with him...
“Fuckin’ christ,” Neal whispered. “Oh fuckin’ christ.”
The Lady wasn’t in either of these two. Jonathan hadn’t sensed anything as her in their feel, their thoughts, those memories...
...but his death onstage in their timeline had her handmarks all over it.
“Destroyer,” Steve whispered. “I...”
“No.” Jonathan gripped the younger man’s shoulder hard. “No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t you.”
Steve shook his head, his mouth moving silently in shock. They hadn’t even had time to take in what had happened, and they’d been grabbed here, leaving a dead friend, alone and bloody on a cold gurney in a Chicago hospital...
Dizzy, Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment, forced their memory away. “Look at me.” Jonathan lifted Steve’s chin to face him. “Look at me, dammit.”
A breath of sound, choked grief. “You’re not --”
“No, I’m not. But I know. I know. It wasn’t you, dammit!”
“But --”
“You didn’t pull the trigger. You didn’t tell that bastard to shoot!”
“Siaron said --”
“Siaron,” Jonathan spat, “can fuckin’ go to hell. She doesn’t know shit. She got it wrong with us. She’s still getting it wrong, and she’s gotta ask us clueless pee-ons to straighten it out. That has to tell you something.”
“Light-bringer,” Neal whispered.
It made no sense. Jonathan didn’t care, but the words brought him up short. He sagged against their shoulders, but he could see beyond them, to where the body still lay.
Dammit, Steve, why?
Maybe it was a trick of the uncertain light, maybe just the effects of rigor mortis. But the battered face looked as if it was smiling. Jonathan stared for a long moment, slowly nodded.
Revenge, brother. I swear.
“You’re dead in my world,” Jonathan murmured to the younger Steve, inside the close, comforting triangle that they’d made. “I’m dead in yours.” He looked up into that younger face, held the man’s gaze. “That bitch did it. You didn’t. I didn’t.”
“Revenge,” Steve whispered.
Jonathan smiled grimly, through sudden tears. “Yeah. We’re gonna make sure you two become the biggest assholes in this land you possibly can...”
