TT fic: Seeing the Light, 26/26 (part two of three)
Seeing the Light, Chapter 26/26 (part two of three). Chapter 24 part one (includes links to previous chapters), part two , Chapter 25 part one part two Chapter 26 part one
Pairing: This part - Jason/Mark, Robbie/Gary, Howard/Gary.
Rating: NC-17.
Words (this part): 3000.
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Sci-Fi. Top Gear crossover.
Summary: James and Richard want Cowell dead...and some members of that 'nancy-boy band' might also be a bit annoyed with Simon. But who will wrest control of the legendary pointy stick? Or will they all get sucked into a, erm, black hole???
Thanks to elfwhistletree for the wonderful beta :)
Chapter 26 - Part 2.
After James had disappeared back towards the palace, Howard and Gary followed after Robbie together.
‘Are you okay, mate? You look...’
‘...a bit of a state!’ Gary rubbed his jaw, smiling as Howard ruffled his messy hair, matey and affectionate. ‘But, honestly, I’m fine!’
He nearly added: ‘and ten times better for seeing you!’
Gary had missed Howard so much over the past two weeks that just thinking about him had brought him a dull, wretched ache of longing. The two of them had only rarely felt the need to verbally articulate their feelings for each other: the smiles, the earnest looks - they usually said it all. But Gary was understandably nervy and, now he was with his best friend again, he was terrified to delve too deep: what if Howard had decided Jason really was the only one for him?
He decided to be brave. ‘And, you...how...how’s Jay?’
‘It’s been a tough two weeks, Gaz,’ said Howard softly, his voice barely audible above the riotous crowd. ‘We managed to get out of the city with some of the rebels and, um, plan stuff....but we were so bloody worried about you. I don’t think either of us slept much.’
Gary stopped, turning to him: ‘Really? I mean, uh, I’m sure you were worried, but....’
‘Of course we bloody were!’ Howard had to laugh. ‘You’re not still fretting about me and Jay, are you? Because he’s been worried sick about you as well and...and...he is okay with it all. With us.’
Howard was mumbling again; he was even worse than Gary at talking about this kind of stuff. But Gary got the gist.
‘Thanks, mate. You mean the world to me, you know that? Without you, I dunno...’
That shy grin returned, but only for an instant. Then, in the full glare of the lights, and in front of several dozen witnesses, Howard gave Gary a quick hug, and pressed his lips to his cheek.
‘You need to shave,’ he murmured, his breath drifting warmly across Gary’s neck.
‘So do you!’ Gary pulled away, his laugh not doing justice to the shimmer of joy that had overcome him for a moment. But he had to focus: there were four of them stuck in this mess, and four of them that had to get home. Two of those four were still stuck in deeper than he and Howard had ever been - and, now he was sure of Howard’s love, what Mark and Jason meant to him slowly began to shift into focus.
‘By the way,’ continued Gary, some minutes later and a few, crowded metres nearer to the Abbey. ‘What did James just tell you? I’m a bit worried he’s bonkers, but I know he’s trying to help us in some way or other...’
‘Erm, I haven’t really got a clue. The spanner contains an, erm, thermonuclear nano-vial - I think that was it - which had got a particle of dark matter in it. He’s going to use it to help get us home, but today he’s going to open up some vortex...which might, um...help get rid of Cowell.’
Gary’s eyes widened, impressed.
‘So that’s what his quest for the spanner was really about! Maybe he’s not as mad an old goat as he looks...’
Howard shrugged, and they didn’t have much more time to talk about it. The chiming of the bells from the Abbey was taking on a whole new momentum, Robbie had disappeared into the scrum ahead of them, and they had to move fast.
The King was about to be crowned.
....................
A few days ago, James had taken the care to carry a large, elderly LP player, which he had found in a cleaning cupboard, to the smallish room where Cowell stored the Quantum Machine. Now, he put on an LP of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B minor, got out his spanner, and sat down at the computer. If this was going to work, he was going to have to get some very complicated calculations right, and there was going to be little time for double checking. It was most vexing.
‘I hope that Donald chap does what he’s told,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘If he doesn’t get the tracking device on Cowell, I’ll have to use the coordinates for the whole Abbey when I open up the vortex - which I will do, at precisely 4.30 pm. And then everybody inside it will probably die.’
James frowned, and then turned up the volume on the LP in order to drown out the sound of gunfire outside.
.........................
Mark was shown to a seat somewhere near to an on-off friend of Cowell’s, Louis, who had recently been told he was a Bishop, and who was looking very pleased with his flowing purple set of robes and ostentatiously silly hat. From where he now was, Mark could see the cameras positioned all over the Abbey, nestled high amongst the arches. All were pointed towards where the ceremony was now getting under way - although the newly-built solid gold throne was partially concealed by an enormous and extremely tasteless gold canopy. The designers, in their haste and with Mark too sick to be consulted, had got things a bit wrong there.
Outside, the crowd had now gone ominously quiet, and were finally drowned out completely by the swell of the organ and the lusty, rumbustuous voices of the female choral singers that Simon had hired to warble on his big day. Mark guessed that the masses were watching on the big screen, waiting for something to happen.
And now the music had faded and the ceremony had begun. The bishop was droning on and on, and the church was shrouded in a portentous hush. Nobody smiled; hat-wearing ex-Party members ticked and twitched. It was the calm before the storm.
Despite everything, Mark found it difficult to keep his eyes open. Nevertheless, whenever he let his posture slip, the corset dug in beneath his ribs and jolted him awake, reminding him he had an important task to do. Jason was sitting on the opposite side of the choir to Mark, and it was only when he rose to take to the lectern to speak that Mark, spurred by a jolt of nerves and adrenaline, checked the US Ambassador was still sitting in the first row of the congregational chairs.
He was.
All the cameras zoomed in on Jason’s intense, handsome features. His eyes drifted to the piece of paper in his hands. Then he crunched it up emphatically and, with a flourish, cast it to the ancient tombstones on the floor. Mark felt his breath hitch painfully in his lungs. Jason was going for it - and fast.
He was going to have to go for it too...
‘Simon Cowell,’ started Jason, before the cameras could be cut, ‘is guilty of endorsing the worst sort of torture, slavery and human trafficking. He made his fortune through cruel medical experiments upon human beings - and we’ve got the evidence. Mark?’
The cameras swung to where Jason had pointed. Mark had made it two steps from his chair, and the rest of the five metres between him and the ambassador seemed to gape like a vast desert before him. Somewhere far off he heard a shout, but he couldn’t work out who it was; he stumbled forward and found himself on his hands and knees. Yet, when somebody grabbed for him, he swiped them away with a ferocity that surprised everyone, even himself, and hauled himself up. Two fingers fumbling down the front of his corset were all it took to locate the paper.
With a rather sickly expression of defiance he handed it to the Ambassador.
‘Proof,’ he murmured. His legs buckled and Mark landed, face-first, in the ambassador’s lap.
But the cameras were still rolling. The ambassador, not yet removing Mark’s nose from his groin, pressed the dial button on his phone, which gave him a direct line to the US President. At that moment, however, two other things happened simultaneously.
The first was that the doors of the Abbey burst open and a small crowd of excited people rushed in, with Gary, Howard and Robbie at the forefront. The second was that the stained glass window located nearest to the throne was shattered to smithereens as some bloke burst through it with a jet-pack strapped to his back.
..........................
Richard’s life was, ironically, saved by the matter that, as the engines spluttered and failed completely, his fall was broken by the golden canopy above Cowell’s throne. With only minor cuts and bruises, he bounced off of it - and then landed rather more heavily and painfully on the cold, stone floor. Something crunched in his knee, but Richard didn’t care. He could endure pain; he was good at that.
For the first time in his life, his luck had held. So far.
All that mattered now was that Simon Cowell was standing two foot away from him, staring at him with a look of surprise.
And, yeah, there it was. It had to be.
Fear.
Richard had lived a life-time for this moment. He’d die for this moment.
With a steady hand, he reached inside his jacket for his trusty pointed stick.
....................
Gary kept close to Howard as they ran up the middle of the church; he saw the TV cameras swing onto them, and suddenly felt a bit of a mess.
‘Damn nice venue! I wish I’d had a chance to comb my hair. I bet I still look like Henry the bloody Hedgehog!’
But that only occupied his mind for a second. Gary spotted Jason being hustled away from the lectern by some of Cowell’s security men, and Howard saw it too. Steely determination flashed in Howard’s eyes as, not so shy now, he elbowed and shoved all obstructions, human and otherwise, out of his way.
‘Find Mark! I’ve got a couple of important things to do!’ Howard shouted back over his shoulder. Gary, trying not to look too alarmed, nodded enthusiastically. He was approaching the throne now and could see Cowell, backing away from a small man waving what looked like a very large, sharpened pencil. Gary did a double-take, shaking his head - and then something caught his eye, glinting on the floor.
The crown.
Gary froze and stared. It must have been knocked from its pedestal in the confusion. A feast of scarlet velvet, purest ermine and glimmering precious metals, it was very sparkly and pretty, although ridiculously heavy looking.
His fingers itched, and his brows furrowed thoughtfully as his purpose wavered. James had helped him understand more than ever that he had been sent to this Godforsaken place for a reason. He was Gary Barlow! He’d been chancellor - for all of five minutes - and now he was practically a martyr! He was suddenly acutely conscious of the camera upon him, as if it were palpably burning into the back of his neck.
A big, showy gesture from Gary Barlow right now might just save the world! It could certainly save the day...
A flagrant sense of self-importance bubbling through him, Gary leant down and picked it up the crown. That was when he heard the scream.
‘Fuck this,’ he thought, stuffing the crown up his jumper. ‘It can wait! That was Markie...’
.....................
Mark screamed when he saw Richard lunging at Cowell with the pointy stick. On his hands and knees on the floor, bruised and dazed and far from thinking straight, all he knew was that if anybody was going to be wielding that weapon right now, it was him.
Cowell reversed swiftly towards a side-chapel, and stumbled backwards through the door. He had yelled several times for his security men to remove this little psycho, but they were increasingly preoccupied with the full-scale riot that was now brewing in the Abbey. Funnily enough, neither Simon’s security team, or even his usually fawning friends and aides, seemed quite willing to be the one seen defending the fallen would-be King. They weren’t paid enough for that, so it seemed. So Richard had Cowell all to himself...but not for long.
Fury fuelling another spurt of energy, Mark launched himself to his feet, and hurled himself through the entrance to the side-chapel, pummelling himself bodily into Richard. With the aid of surprise and Richard’s injured knee, it was enough to send them both tumbling over, tangling together on the floor.
‘Give it to me!’ screamed Mark, and punched Richard on the jaw.
‘Fuck! Not you!’ yelled Richard. ‘Fucking Angel Boy! You’re sooooo fucking dead!’
He tried to knee Mark in the stomach. As it impacted with the corset, his good knee crunched painfully, and after that, frankly, didn’t feel much better than the injured one. But the blow sufficiently winded the already debilitated Mark for Richard (to) shove him off, ending up with Richard both on top and back in possession of the pointy stick. When Mark tried to scramble after him, Richard back-handed him mercilessly.
‘It’s sodding well mine!’ yelled Mark, not to be deterred by a bleeding lip. His hands flailed for the stick.
With one hand, Richard grabbed Mark by the collar, eyeballing him furiously; with the other hand, quicker than that Mark could do anything about, he jabbed the point of his whittling stick in to the bottom of Mark’s chin, piercing the skin but not yet digging in so far as to do any real damage.
‘It can have your blood on it first, then, angel boy!’
...................
James carefully unwrapped the very last of his wine gums, and popped it in his mouth. This particular equation was tricky, and had to be got right for there to be any chance of success - although the tracking device he had given Howard had still not yet been activated.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have trusted any one named after two ducks,’ he mumbled to himself. He noted it was gone twenty past four. ‘Oh well, looks like they’re all going to die anyway.’
This saddened him a little. So he reminded himself that Robbie couldn’t tell real ale from a ‘weird sort of lager’, and that Howard had probably never bothered making air-fix models of the Imperial Brittanic Air Force. There were always too many of that sort in any universe.
........................
As he got closer to the chapel into which Mark had temporarily vanished, Gary felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned quickly to see the American ambassador, his face smudged with something that looked suspiciously like blood.
‘Are you Gary Barlow?’
Gary grunted evasively, and went to hurry on, but the ambassador grabbed him by the collar, pulling him back.
‘What the heck have you got up your sweater, Gary? Is that...the crown?’
‘Yeah....you want it? Look - my friends are in trouble. I have to help them!’
Gary tugged away again, but the ambassador had both a tenacious grip and a beguiling way with words.
‘Don’t you see, young man? This is your moment, Gary. Those cameras are still rolling, and Cowell is running scared. Turn around and say Gary Barlow is going to be the one to repeal the ‘in-valid’ and citizenship laws, and institute free elections, and they’re going to love you forever!’
Gary paused a moment - then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw through the door of the side-chapel. Some bastard had Mark wrestled to the floor, and Cowell was merely standing there laughing, a small gun in his hand.
‘Sorry mate, maybe later...’
Gary turned swiftly to move on. That was when he heard the gunshot, and felt the strange, bruising jolt against his stomach. He tumbled backwards, arms and legs splayed wide, staring high up into the soaring Gothic arches and the desecrated medieval symbols of a God who had vanished. The lights almost blinded him.
.....................
Mark’s cry reverberated to the very apex of the rafters. He had seen it all.
Cowell had pulled out the gun, paying very little attention to Mark and Richard as they squabbled over the right to murder him; Cowell had had his eye on somebody else, standing just outside the chapel. Somehow, Mark knew who it was.
After that, Richard never stood a chance. Mark slammed his knee into his balls, and then followed it up with a blow to Richard’s nose, which crunched and bruised Mark’s knuckles, let alone its target. He then looked up to see Gary tumble backwards to the floor.
The sound of Mark’s scream was swallowed into the abyss of his fury; he was oblivious to the tears that streamed down his face. Mark wrenched the pointy stick from Richard’s hand, kicked him in the ribs, and hurled himself at Cowell’s back, the weapon aimed straight for the other man’s heart. Richard, not to be deterred, jumped to his feet and hurled himself after Mark, rugby tackling him to the ground again.
Turning, Cowell looked down upon them both, arms folded and mildly amused. Richard and Mark looked up at him, and then at each other, bloodied and battered.
‘What the fuck are we doing?’ yelled Mark; somewhere, deep in his subconscious, he noted that Richard had very pretty eyes - well, they would have been, if his fists hadn’t turned them purple.
Richard blinked back at to the man he was currently trying to throttle. ‘Shut your mouth, boy fucking clone angel!’ Richard was feeling dizzy, and the floor was starting to swerve at strange, uneven angles. ‘Err...err...let’s just kill him.’
They rose together as one, the pointy stick clasped between them and virtually propping each other up. Cowell quirked an eyebrow as he scrutinised Richard. ‘Oh, it’s you! Bloody hell, you survived?’
Simon didn’t sound that bothered. He’d taken a step back, but he still had the gun.
‘You can’t kill me,’ snarled Richard, edging forward, Mark with him. ‘Not in this, not in any fucking universe!’
‘And you’re going to try and kill me with that?’ Cowell regarded Richard’s pointy stick pityingly and smirked. ‘It’s nearly as pathetic as you are!’
‘How many others were there? Tell me? Tell me? You fucking psychopath...’
It was not Richard who yelled - but Mark. Brutally shoving both Richard and the pointy stick aside, he lunged for Cowell’s throat, and Richard dived frantically after him. Somebody else, a much larger and brawnier body than either of them, threw themselves into the fray, grabbing at Cowell and wresting the gun from his grip; somebody else wrapped strong, protective arms around Mark from behind.
It was Jason - and Howard had grabbed at Cowell.
Five bodies were now squeezed tightly together. A few metres away, Gary stood up, stared about himself bewilderedly, pulled the crown out from under his ragged jumper - which now also had a bullet hole in it - and put it on his head. It was so heavy that he nearly toppled over backwards again. Robbie pointed and laughed at him, punched someone in the teeth, and then, glancing through the door of the chapel, yelled ‘Hamster! You need a hand, mate?’ He charged in to see.
It was exactly 4.30 pm.
A gunshot cracked through the air, but its sound was obliterated by the sudden flash of white light, and a deep, sonic boom.
Jason, Mark, Howard and Gary had seen it all before. Six years ago, in the lift.
Somewhere, on the other side of the park, James May had finished his equations, slotted the thermonuclear nano-vial into the Quantum Machine, and pressed a button. Howard knew it - and, just moments before, the tracker had just been shoved right down Cowell’s throat.
Jason and Howard wrapped their arms tightly each other, with Mark squeezed between them. The windows shattered, papers swirled, cameras clattered to the floor. And Gary dropped his crown again, as the cusp of a boundless gravitational tide swept through the building and then evaporated into nothingness.