"when we return to battery city they won't welcome us like heroes", MCR Killjoys RPF, Gerard-centric
Title: when we return to battery city they won’t welcome us like heroes
Fandom: MCR RPS (Killjoys ‘verse)
Characters: Gerard, Mikey, Ray [implied Frank/Gerard]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1535
Genre: Gen
Disclaimer: The fabulous killjoys and all their fabulousness belong to My Chemical Romance, and My Chemical Romance belong to themselves, and I don't own anything and please don't send ninjas to break my legs.
Warnings: Contains major character deaths... sort of.
Summary: so we'll die on the road; we were always going to die on the road.
Author’s Notes: Set in the Killjoys ‘verse but not the video ‘verse. If that makes sense. Like, it doesn’t take the actual events of Sing into account and it alters the events of Na Na Na. Basically, this was inspired by the tracks Jet-Star And The Kobra Kid and Goodnite, Dr. Death on Danger Days. Probably bears no relation to actual canon or anything so, er, yeah. You know. You can decide if Gerard is crazy or not. Also: it’s so nice to finish writing something in one sitting. Must go back to writing short things; in this case, short and sad.
So remember: even if you’re dusted, you may be gone - but out here in the desert, your shadow lives on.
- Dr. Death Defying
Dr. D broadcasts to an empty room. Gerard wraps sticky fingers around his gun and considers the logistics of silence. He counts to ten with his forehead pressed to the wall; his teeth taste like dust and blood and motel rooms.
He waits until all he can hear is static, and then he heads out.
Mikey's asleep in the back of the trans-am, head resting against Ray's shoulder. It's too hot out here, too bright. The Girl's picture is taped to the dash and Gerard squints through his sunglasses; the left lens is cracked.
Ray raises the brow above his one remaining eye, asking a question he doesn't need to verbalise. Gerard smiles back, tight, with the corners of his mouth. They listen to the airwaves and wait but no one knows anything; no one ever knows anything.
They drive in silence for a while, the air thick, car bumping over the sorry excuse for a road. Gerard tries not to look too hard at the split leather of the empty seats, the spaces left behind.
The last thing Frank said to Gerard before they took him was so we'll die on the road; we were always going to die on the road. It was a platitude and a reassurance and a promise and said with a smile, a real one. There are hardly any real smiles anymore; BL/ind. has taken them, regulated them, slapped their grinning logo on instead.
He kissed Gerard after he said it; a quick smash of mouths that tasted like gasolene, that wasn't enough and was already too much. Frank pulled away with that smile still in place, brushing his thumb over the flaking dye on Gerard's throat, and dragged his mask back into place.
Twenty minutes later he was gone, ray dead and abandoned on the road, marks where his boots had been.
"Gee," Mikey says quietly, and he fixes him with one of those looks Gerard has never known how to back away from.
"I'm getting them back," he mumbles, switching his gaze to his boots. "We're getting them back."
Mikey sighs, saying a thousand things without needing to do it aloud. He's Gerard's brother, they know each other too well; they always have.
One of Gerard's ribs is cracked and his head is throbbing and he's got the masks of three dead dracs in the trunk because maybe he should start collecting trophies, scalps, something.
"I just..." Mikey bites his lower lip, frustrated. "I just hate being this fucking helpless."
"You're not helpless," Gerard tells him, and they both watch Ray kicking at a vending machine, something angry in the line of his mouth.
"Yeah," Mikey sighs, "yeah, we kind of are."
Show Pony looks sympathetic through his visor. "I heard," he says to Gerard, as Gerard hands over the stack of CDs Mikey managed to acquire.
"Everyone heard," Gerard replies, "right there on the traffic report."
His voice is dull; he fights to put some of that anger he used to feel into it. He's too tired to be angry nowadays.
Show Pony curls his fingers around the jewel cases; his bared stomach looks vulnerable in the sunlight but also defiant, like it's a target and he's just waiting for someone to try and take the hit.
"We're searching for the news on your motorbabies," he says. "We'll tell you if we find anything."
"Not on the airwaves," Gerard tells him, and catches a hint of a smile through the tinted plastic.
"Not on the airwaves," Show Pony agrees; it goes without saying that no matter how many times they switch the frequencies, Korse always manages to listen in. "I'll find you."
"You always do," Gerard replies, and his lips tug upwards, just a little. He nods his head towards the road, Show Pony's skates. "Good luck."
"You don't believe in luck, Party," Show Pony reminds him, and leaves before he can say anything.
Gerard slots his mousehead helmet into place and trudges back to where the trans am is concealed. "How'd it go?" Ray asks; his fingers are wrapped superfluously around his ray.
"Pony says hi," Gerard tells him, and drops into the driver's seat.
Nights are the worst; Gerard listens to the radio crackling static and sits by the fire he builds for himself and eats the shit they dole out in battery city where everyone's too drugged up on behavioural modification drugs to notice what they're spooning between their teeth. He lives on theft and lies and the last shreds of hope and it's all too much.
He sleeps sprawled across the backseat of the trans am, shivering in his leathers. Sometimes he looks at the photographs they took of The Girl; sometimes he looks at the only photograph he's got of Frank. It's a Wanted poster he stole, Frank's face scored through with a red cross, Fun Ghoul stamped across the bottom.
He keeps it folded up secret and safe.
Gerard re-dyes his hair in the sink of another abandoned diner, fingers slick with red. It's weirdly messy, given how clean and tidy deaths are these days; no blood, no bruises, no mess.
Wet strands stick to his cheeks as he goes back outside, hands stained crimson for the forseeable future, gazing out over the desert.
"They didn't have any peroxide," he tells Mikey.
Mikey touches his hair absent-mindedly; it's tidy and perfect-looking, shining white under the sun. "I'll cope," he says, and Ray smiles.
"You can't do this alone," Ray says. His helmet is balanced on his knee, dented and scratched.
"Of course I can," Gerard tells him. "I'll get in. I'll get them."
Mikey huffs. He strokes the lines of Good Luck on his helmet, the lettering startlingly white. Gerard can see him struggling, wanting to tell Gerard to get help, knowing there's no one to ask. No one's heard from Cherri since he tried to infiltrate BL/ind. and there isn't a lot of time. It might even be too late already.
Gerard opens the trunk and dumps another handful of white masks in, rubber clinging to his palms. They're sent out here, expendable, and Gerard gets the feeling he's being played with. He's used to running the game; they used to set their own rules. Things are different now.
He doesn't look at the two helmets jammed on the left hand side; the words Good Luck are peeling off one of the visors, almost unreadable now.
He misses the way Frank's breath was cigarettes and his eyes held laughter and the way his skin tasted of salt and rubber, oil spilled down his jeans, hot and worn beneath Gerard's palms.
He misses The Girl so much it aches, the way she smiled, the way she could ask questions that she didn't know not to ask, questions that could stop Gerard in his tracks. Is this the part where we die? was the worst one, two days and six hours before they took her.
No, he told her, no. No one dies. Sometimes people get Ghosted but, well, that's not so bad.
Being Ghosted isn't like death in Battery City, it isn't slow and ugly and there's no incinerator at the end of it all, another body in regulation clothes to get rid of because there are too many of them pressed close. Being Ghosted leaves you burned into the world, shadows on the ground; while the sun's up your reflection's still there. It's complicated and Gerard doesn't really know enough about it to be a voice of authority; he could ask the voices of authority but, well, maybe he'll just find out when it happens to him.
Sand is embedded under his fingernails and he lies in the back seat and looks up at the vague promise of stars, mostly lost beneath the shit Battery City fills the atmosphere with. No one dies, he thinks, and wonders if he made a promise he couldn't possibly keep.
The thing that makes Gerard think he's maybe gone crazy is the way that, in the sunlight, Mikey and Ray still look completely real.
Sometimes you keep running because it's the only thing you know how to do. Gerard's been on the road a long time; it's soothing, the buzz of sand beneath the wheels, Ray and Mikey in the back seat, eyes hidden by dark glasses and grim smiles on their mouths. They were smiling like that when Gerard found them; undamaged but still and silent. He doesn't ask how Dr D found out soon enough to broadcast it with the traffic report; there are some things Gerard doesn't want to know.
They're not gone, though. Not here but not quite missing, not quite dust. He hasn't asked if anyone else can see them because, well, that's another thing entirely. He can't ask them either; he's not sure that they know.
He'd love to storm Battery City but his army of one isn't enough, and while he's always liked the idea of going down fighting, there's more than himself to consider here. Sneaking it is.
"We'll be here when you get back," Mikey says, and Ray nods beside him.
"Will you?" Gerard asks.
No one says anything; they don't know, after all.
Fandom: MCR RPS (Killjoys ‘verse)
Characters: Gerard, Mikey, Ray [implied Frank/Gerard]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1535
Genre: Gen
Disclaimer: The fabulous killjoys and all their fabulousness belong to My Chemical Romance, and My Chemical Romance belong to themselves, and I don't own anything and please don't send ninjas to break my legs.
Warnings: Contains major character deaths... sort of.
Summary: so we'll die on the road; we were always going to die on the road.
Author’s Notes: Set in the Killjoys ‘verse but not the video ‘verse. If that makes sense. Like, it doesn’t take the actual events of Sing into account and it alters the events of Na Na Na. Basically, this was inspired by the tracks Jet-Star And The Kobra Kid and Goodnite, Dr. Death on Danger Days. Probably bears no relation to actual canon or anything so, er, yeah. You know. You can decide if Gerard is crazy or not. Also: it’s so nice to finish writing something in one sitting. Must go back to writing short things; in this case, short and sad.
So remember: even if you’re dusted, you may be gone - but out here in the desert, your shadow lives on.
- Dr. Death Defying
Dr. D broadcasts to an empty room. Gerard wraps sticky fingers around his gun and considers the logistics of silence. He counts to ten with his forehead pressed to the wall; his teeth taste like dust and blood and motel rooms.
He waits until all he can hear is static, and then he heads out.
Mikey's asleep in the back of the trans-am, head resting against Ray's shoulder. It's too hot out here, too bright. The Girl's picture is taped to the dash and Gerard squints through his sunglasses; the left lens is cracked.
Ray raises the brow above his one remaining eye, asking a question he doesn't need to verbalise. Gerard smiles back, tight, with the corners of his mouth. They listen to the airwaves and wait but no one knows anything; no one ever knows anything.
They drive in silence for a while, the air thick, car bumping over the sorry excuse for a road. Gerard tries not to look too hard at the split leather of the empty seats, the spaces left behind.
The last thing Frank said to Gerard before they took him was so we'll die on the road; we were always going to die on the road. It was a platitude and a reassurance and a promise and said with a smile, a real one. There are hardly any real smiles anymore; BL/ind. has taken them, regulated them, slapped their grinning logo on instead.
He kissed Gerard after he said it; a quick smash of mouths that tasted like gasolene, that wasn't enough and was already too much. Frank pulled away with that smile still in place, brushing his thumb over the flaking dye on Gerard's throat, and dragged his mask back into place.
Twenty minutes later he was gone, ray dead and abandoned on the road, marks where his boots had been.
"Gee," Mikey says quietly, and he fixes him with one of those looks Gerard has never known how to back away from.
"I'm getting them back," he mumbles, switching his gaze to his boots. "We're getting them back."
Mikey sighs, saying a thousand things without needing to do it aloud. He's Gerard's brother, they know each other too well; they always have.
One of Gerard's ribs is cracked and his head is throbbing and he's got the masks of three dead dracs in the trunk because maybe he should start collecting trophies, scalps, something.
"I just..." Mikey bites his lower lip, frustrated. "I just hate being this fucking helpless."
"You're not helpless," Gerard tells him, and they both watch Ray kicking at a vending machine, something angry in the line of his mouth.
"Yeah," Mikey sighs, "yeah, we kind of are."
Show Pony looks sympathetic through his visor. "I heard," he says to Gerard, as Gerard hands over the stack of CDs Mikey managed to acquire.
"Everyone heard," Gerard replies, "right there on the traffic report."
His voice is dull; he fights to put some of that anger he used to feel into it. He's too tired to be angry nowadays.
Show Pony curls his fingers around the jewel cases; his bared stomach looks vulnerable in the sunlight but also defiant, like it's a target and he's just waiting for someone to try and take the hit.
"We're searching for the news on your motorbabies," he says. "We'll tell you if we find anything."
"Not on the airwaves," Gerard tells him, and catches a hint of a smile through the tinted plastic.
"Not on the airwaves," Show Pony agrees; it goes without saying that no matter how many times they switch the frequencies, Korse always manages to listen in. "I'll find you."
"You always do," Gerard replies, and his lips tug upwards, just a little. He nods his head towards the road, Show Pony's skates. "Good luck."
"You don't believe in luck, Party," Show Pony reminds him, and leaves before he can say anything.
Gerard slots his mousehead helmet into place and trudges back to where the trans am is concealed. "How'd it go?" Ray asks; his fingers are wrapped superfluously around his ray.
"Pony says hi," Gerard tells him, and drops into the driver's seat.
Nights are the worst; Gerard listens to the radio crackling static and sits by the fire he builds for himself and eats the shit they dole out in battery city where everyone's too drugged up on behavioural modification drugs to notice what they're spooning between their teeth. He lives on theft and lies and the last shreds of hope and it's all too much.
He sleeps sprawled across the backseat of the trans am, shivering in his leathers. Sometimes he looks at the photographs they took of The Girl; sometimes he looks at the only photograph he's got of Frank. It's a Wanted poster he stole, Frank's face scored through with a red cross, Fun Ghoul stamped across the bottom.
He keeps it folded up secret and safe.
Gerard re-dyes his hair in the sink of another abandoned diner, fingers slick with red. It's weirdly messy, given how clean and tidy deaths are these days; no blood, no bruises, no mess.
Wet strands stick to his cheeks as he goes back outside, hands stained crimson for the forseeable future, gazing out over the desert.
"They didn't have any peroxide," he tells Mikey.
Mikey touches his hair absent-mindedly; it's tidy and perfect-looking, shining white under the sun. "I'll cope," he says, and Ray smiles.
"You can't do this alone," Ray says. His helmet is balanced on his knee, dented and scratched.
"Of course I can," Gerard tells him. "I'll get in. I'll get them."
Mikey huffs. He strokes the lines of Good Luck on his helmet, the lettering startlingly white. Gerard can see him struggling, wanting to tell Gerard to get help, knowing there's no one to ask. No one's heard from Cherri since he tried to infiltrate BL/ind. and there isn't a lot of time. It might even be too late already.
Gerard opens the trunk and dumps another handful of white masks in, rubber clinging to his palms. They're sent out here, expendable, and Gerard gets the feeling he's being played with. He's used to running the game; they used to set their own rules. Things are different now.
He doesn't look at the two helmets jammed on the left hand side; the words Good Luck are peeling off one of the visors, almost unreadable now.
He misses the way Frank's breath was cigarettes and his eyes held laughter and the way his skin tasted of salt and rubber, oil spilled down his jeans, hot and worn beneath Gerard's palms.
He misses The Girl so much it aches, the way she smiled, the way she could ask questions that she didn't know not to ask, questions that could stop Gerard in his tracks. Is this the part where we die? was the worst one, two days and six hours before they took her.
No, he told her, no. No one dies. Sometimes people get Ghosted but, well, that's not so bad.
Being Ghosted isn't like death in Battery City, it isn't slow and ugly and there's no incinerator at the end of it all, another body in regulation clothes to get rid of because there are too many of them pressed close. Being Ghosted leaves you burned into the world, shadows on the ground; while the sun's up your reflection's still there. It's complicated and Gerard doesn't really know enough about it to be a voice of authority; he could ask the voices of authority but, well, maybe he'll just find out when it happens to him.
Sand is embedded under his fingernails and he lies in the back seat and looks up at the vague promise of stars, mostly lost beneath the shit Battery City fills the atmosphere with. No one dies, he thinks, and wonders if he made a promise he couldn't possibly keep.
The thing that makes Gerard think he's maybe gone crazy is the way that, in the sunlight, Mikey and Ray still look completely real.
Sometimes you keep running because it's the only thing you know how to do. Gerard's been on the road a long time; it's soothing, the buzz of sand beneath the wheels, Ray and Mikey in the back seat, eyes hidden by dark glasses and grim smiles on their mouths. They were smiling like that when Gerard found them; undamaged but still and silent. He doesn't ask how Dr D found out soon enough to broadcast it with the traffic report; there are some things Gerard doesn't want to know.
They're not gone, though. Not here but not quite missing, not quite dust. He hasn't asked if anyone else can see them because, well, that's another thing entirely. He can't ask them either; he's not sure that they know.
He'd love to storm Battery City but his army of one isn't enough, and while he's always liked the idea of going down fighting, there's more than himself to consider here. Sneaking it is.
"We'll be here when you get back," Mikey says, and Ray nods beside him.
"Will you?" Gerard asks.
No one says anything; they don't know, after all.