heaven ain’t got a vacancy (just get up and go) [1/1]
Gen (possible pairings if you squint)
My Chemical Romance/Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
9k | R | warnings: torture, blood, PTSD, swearing (c’mon, it’s MCR.) complete deviation from canon, a surprise guest
This is a fictional story based on a fictional setting that is not my own.
"It’s later on, when he’s cold and trembling and sweaty and still won’t open his mouth to utter a single word, that Ray realizes something. It’s not that he keeps on dying. It’s what he wishes would happen. Because while dying sucks, and coming back to life is worse? Wishing you were dead with every fiber of your being is a fate more terrible than both."
-“This could be the last of all the rides we take, so hold on tight and don’t look back.”
Dying sucks.
It’s a gross understatement, since Ray had sort of assumed from the beginning that dying wasn’t something a normal, sane person aimed for, but even so. Dying sucks. Having a hole blasted through his ribs and out his back? There was a brief moment of oh god please make it stop, a sense of shock and almost bewildered respect for anyone who makes it out of this alive. It’s blinding hot, agonizing, like it’s tearing apart his very being and spitting all over the pieces. All he wants is for it to stop.
And then, by God, it did.
It stopped.
-
What’s worse, though, what’s worse is coming back to life.
-
Delicate footsteps around burnt stains in the floor, a step over a lifeless figure with black hair and a scar. Korse kicks the body once for good measure and when it does not stir, continues on his trek. Behind him Draculoids pick the small body up, carry it without care to be sealed up tight for further use. He nudges the door open and stares for a moment at the other body sprawled on the hood of a battered car, smoke still gently swirling from the dark hole in its chest. Its one visible eye is still open, but only just, not seeing.
Korse tilts his head.
“Which one is the least dead?” he demands, and when the Draculoids scurry and point to the body on the car, a cruel smile twists his lips.
“He’ll do.” He turns on his heel, watches as they load the instigator, the devil, Party Poison, into one of the bags.
Him, Korse decides, he will deal with later.
-
When Grace had seen the Killjoys on the screen, her only real reaction had been that her heroes were there again, that everything was going to be okay. The Killjoys, you have to understand, were superheroes in her eyes. Frightfully good at defeating the bad guys, caring for the weak and the helpless, and cool names to boot. Whatever the Killjoys couldn’t do was something that no one in the world could do either. That was how the world worked.
A blast of a ray gun and that notion disappeared pretty quick.
Above her she can hear Mikey let out a terrible high noise that’s part anguish, part rage and then he’s running past her as she huddles on the ground with her hands over her ears. He’s the pure picture of that reckless insanity that can only be brought on by grief, and he’s charging straight through the fray like nothing else matters beyond Gerard.
It’s true, though. In Mikey’s world, nothing else does. And nothing else ever will.
Grace has only heard a noise like that once before, and it still didn’t compare. It was the noise Ray made when he was holding his best friend dead in his arms. She can still remember that day, remembers how that was the last time she’d ever really seen Ray happy. The last time she’d really seen him laugh had been with Bob. Then Bob had died and Ray hadn’t been quite the same.
Grace doesn’t know why she’s thinking of Bob at a time like this, when Gerard is dead too and a second later Mikey is jerked back by the impact of the shot, his eyes widening before he collapses to the ground. She screams again, hands clamped tight against her ears.
Then there’s a hand on her shoulder as Ray shouts, “Gracie! Grace! Come with me, baby girl! Don’t look back!” And she follows, because Ray has never let her down, never left her behind. Frank is there too, and Grace sees how he looks at Gerard and Mikey, the misery and rage shining in his eyes as he darts behind them.
They run, and they run, and when they reach the doors she hears Ray and the tiny noise he makes when the door shuts behind them.
Frank is staring at them through the glass.
Save yourself, his eyes say. I’ll hold them back.
She stares right back at him, mouth opening in shock, but Ray pulls at her, his one good eye locking with Frank’s for the briefest of moments before Frank turns around, all fierce determination as he raises his gun and fires. Grace runs behind Ray because there’s nothing else she can do. She can see the car, Frank’s beloved Trans Am, his baby, and she wants to cry because his baby is being shot over and over.
And then her whole world shatters when Ray is shot too.
“Ray!” she screams, but he doesn’t answer, just lays there on the hood of the Trans Am. He doesn’t move and Grace hears the screech of tires behind her.
“Grace!” someone shouts. “Grace, get over here! Leave him!”
She whirls around just in time to see the door of a white van slide open and Show Pony and Doctor Death Defying are there, the latter of the two holding his arms wide open for her. Grace recognizes Lindsey, Gerard’s friend, donned in her helmet and glasses, behind the wheel. Familiar faces, the faces of more heroes. She runs because Doctor D. tells her to, leaves behind Ray and Frank and Mikey and Gerard, leaves behind her friends because she knows that if she doesn’t them dying will be for nothing.
So she runs, and she doesn’t look back. Doctor D. encompasses her in a hug and whispers, “It’ll be okay,” just as she breaks down into hysterics.
Their voices still loud in her ears, telling her it’ll be okay, everything will be fine, Grace can do no more than cry.
They drive for a while without stopping, an endless drive that Grace spends crying and finally falling asleep nestled in Show Pony’s arms, tear tracks drying on her face. She thinks of Gerard, slumped over on the wall, of Mikey collapsing amidst his unstoppable rage, of the look in Frank’s eyes as he locked the door behind them.
Of Ray grabbing her hand and pulling at her before he was shot down.
It’s much later that Lindsey pulls the van into park, and when Grace peeks out the window, it’s with a start that she realizes they’re at the restaurant. When she looks over at Show Pony, he just shrugs and points at Doctor Death Defying.
“They followed us for a while,” the bearded man says as he wheels himself to the door. “We had to lose them. Last place they’d expect to find us, meerkat, is our little hole. Never gonna find us here as long as we stay low and slow. Besides,” he adds with a grunt as he pushes the door open. “Someone’s here to see you.”
He points, and Grace looks out. Sure enough, there’s a figure in the doorway to the restaurant, just out of sight and she shrinks back a little because the figure is huge and imposing.
But then. Then it speaks and her heart drops in shock.
“Hey, kiddo.” The voice rumbles and growls and is about two octaves lower than any other person she knows, but Grace knows the voice. The voice wouldn’t hurt her. She leaps out of the van and runs towards it, opens arms wide and buries herself in the scent of gunpowder and wintergreen.
It’s not possible. It’s not.
But at the same time, it is.
“Bob,” she whispers. “Bob.”
-
If dying were fire and rage and passion, then coming back to life was ice and silence and stillness. So much stillness. Ray breathes and opens his eyes-his eye-to stare at white ceilings, white walls, white everything, and blinks. Last he remembers he was running for his life, his friends dead behind him, and Grace-
Grace.
The realization slams into him with the force of a freight train and suddenly he’s shouting, struggling against the bonds he hadn’t noticed until this moment. Grace isn’t his daughter, but she’s as good as. Adrenaline counts for a lot and his love for Grace does nothing but add to his desperation. In the back of his mind there’s a naughty little voice trying to tell him that his friends are dead, he is alone, why is he thinking about Grace at a time like this when Frank and Gerard and Mikey are dead? But Ray can’t bring himself to think those things. He can’t begin to think that his friends are gone because when you do that, you’re lost. Gerard told them so. And so Grace takes front and center because if Ray has lost all of them, there’s nothing really left for him at this point.
The restraints are good at keeping him down, and Ray realizes this. He may not be a body builder, but he’s a big guy with the muscle to back it up and the restraints are almost mocking him in their solidity. Still, he grits his teeth and pulls hard until there’s a creaking noise, and it’s right about then that he dies again.
Or at least, it feels like it.
It starts at the tips of his fingers and then explodes outwards, a pain that encompasses not just his body but his entire being, spreading and burning until it’s all that exists. He can’t even hear himself over it, but his throat burns as if he were shrieking in a pain that is complete and absolute, one long line of agony that has him screaming, screaming, screaming…
Finally, after what seems like an eternity it stops and Ray is left to slump pathetically back against the unforgiving metal of his makeshift bed, coughing and choking on his own blood. He’d bitten clear through his tongue. He pants, tries to figure out where so much white-hot pain could have come from, when there’s a soft touch against his cheek and he flinches away from it. It’s a loving touch, it seems like, but when he can focus, he sees Korse standing above him. The touch is anything but loving.
No, that touch is the touch of a predator that has finally, after years of chasing and stalking, has finally snapped up its prey in cold hands and will squeeze until the life is squeezed right out of it.
Ray swallows.
Korse leans down until his lips are brushing against Ray’s ear, pushing away some of his wild hair.
“I have a few questions for you,” Korse murmurs, and Ray dies again, and again, and again.
-
It’s later on, when he’s cold and trembling and sweaty and still won’t open his mouth to utter a single word, that Ray realizes something. It’s not that he keeps on dying.
It’s what he wishes would happen. Because while dying sucks, and coming back to life is worse?
Wishing you were dead with every fiber of your being is a fate more terrible than both.
-
There’s a hand stroking through her hair, and Grace feels the deep rumble of his voice as he whispers to her, sounding awkward and out of his element.
“So uh. How much did I miss while I was on vacation?”
Grace half-laughs, half-sobs as she clutches harder to his jacket. He keeps petting her hair, the rough edges of his gloves scratching in a way that’s oddly soothing and gentle.
“BB’s given us a little edge,” Doctor D. says from his chair, and there’s a grim smile in his tone. They’re sitting in the record room, Grace perched on Bob’s lap. “Korse don’t know he’s here either. It’s not much, but at the moment it’s all we got, boy scouts.”
“We got Bob,” Grace replies firmly. “If we got Bob, we can save them. Bob can do anything.” She glances up at him, into his bright eyes, traces the long, thin scar from temple to the edge of his mouth. His souvenir, he used to call it smartly, running a gloved finger down the length of it. He got it during a raid the year before he met Ray, he would say, and it took him seven stitches to get it patched up.
His lips tighten, as if he doesn’t believe her.
“Bob, you’d do anything for your friends. Right?” Grace says softly.
For the first time in a long time, Bob hesitates before answering.
“Right.”
Doctor D., bless his heart, doesn’t say anything for once, but his intention is in the air nonetheless.
He wouldn’t have had to come back if he’d never left us in the first place.
Grace knows Bob and she knows that Bob, though loathe he may be to admit it, agrees with all his heart. So she kisses his cheek and hugs his neck and whispers, “It’ll be okay, Bob.” Rough hands reach up and hug her back, and for a long while, they just stay like that.
When his shoulders start shaking, when he makes the tiniest of noises, Grace tries to shush him.
It doesn’t work, but Grace knows better than anyone that when Bob is crying, when Bob has given up, things are bad.
Things are very, very bad.
-
“Where did they take her.”
Ray grits his teeth and holds his tongue. Another earth-shattering blast of pain later and Ray is groaning through his teeth, every muscle tensing as his eyes roll back and he thinks for a split second that he may pass out. It subsides again and he’s left panting.
Korse furrows his brow.
“You take pain well,” he notes mildly. Ray can only glare at him with his one good eye. Truth be told, Ray hates pain, but he’s good at keeping himself in check when it comes to it. He’s not sure how much of this he can take, not when he noticed that the machine he’s hooked up to is barely even at a middle selection-how high must the highest be, he wonders, if the pain he feels is barely the minimum.
“What about your name?” Korse says, and turns the machine on again. When Ray still doesn’t answer, Korse stares for a long moment at the machine before he taps his chin with a finger.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he says quietly, and that tone is ominous and menacing. Korse snaps his fingers at the camera tucked away in the corner, and when he turns back to Ray there’s an evil grin on his face.
“I’ve learned in the past,” he says, “that those who can tolerate pain have a harder time tolerating others’.”
Ray doesn’t want to know what that means, doesn’t want to think of what it must mean. He gets his answer, though, when the door bangs open and Frank is led in kicking and biting, his eyes wild.
“Bring it on, motherfuckers!” he snarls, and it’s clear he’s trying to scratch eyes out. “I’ll fuck all of you up!”
Korse looks over at Ray, an eyebrow raised as he takes in the look of horror dawning on Ray’s face. Ray knows Frank better than anyone, better than Gerard even. Frank is no baby when it comes to pain, but Frank is the youngest of them, and in that regard he is the baby. Frank was everyone’s little brother before Grace came along and took on the role of the child. Frank settles a deep-seated urge to protect in Ray’s chest.
They force Frank down on the table across from Ray’s, strap him down and try to avoid his teeth. Frank has always been a fighter, and even the ringing slap does little to make him stop as they hook him up to the same machine they’d hooked Ray to, and Ray watches them raise the little switch on the side, the switch that controls how much pain there will be.
Ray forces himself to speak.
“Calm the fuck down,” he says, because he knows it’ll work better than anything. Frank looks over at him, comprehension on his face followed almost instantly by a startling combination of dismay and relief.
“You’re alive,” he whispers, and goes off on a rant that Ray knows he can’t help. Frank’s always had a hard time shutting up. “Jesus fuck, Jet. You’re alive. What about the others? Where’s Grace? Is she okay?”
“That’s what I would like to know,” Korse says, and Ray can only watch on in horror as he presses a button and without any warning Frank is screaming, slammed back into the table with his eyes wide and almost bewildered as Korse pumps him full of agony. Ray shouts before he can help it because oh god, it’s Frank there, Frank who’s writhing in shocked suffering. Ray can see it’s almost twice as much as what they were pumping into him and Ray thinks that’s not fair, that’s not fair, they didn’t give him any warning.
Korse grins and turns the switch up that much more.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
-
It’s later on, much later on that Grace finally pulls herself out of Bob’s hold and twines their fingers together, tugs at his arm until he gets up with a bemused expression on what is normally an emotionless face. “I have somethin’ for you,” she says by way of explanation, and her voice becomes truly and heartbreakingly sad for a moment. “Well. Ray had something for you. I kept it safe. C’mon.” She tugs and tugs until he concedes and follows her down the narrow hall of the diner, stops in front of the rundown bathroom that doesn’t flush anymore. It’s used now as storage, treated with a respect you wouldn’t see for a running bathroom.
Bob watches on with interest as Grace gingerly lowers the lid of the toilet and steps up on it, reaches for a small cardboard box tucked away above the cabinet. It’s sealed with duct tape, too neat for Frank or Gerard, but too haphazard for Mikey’s handiwork.
She steps back down and hands it to Bob. She watches silently as he stares at it for a long moment, weighing it in his hands, before perching himself absentmindedly on the lip of the tub and gently, gently, gently pulling the tape off the box. When he takes the lid off he just stares inside the box for a while, and Grace could almost swear that she sees tears glittering in the corners of those blue eyes.
Finally, he reaches inside and pulls out his mask, sets it on his lap and returns for the matching vibrant purple gun, his finger on the trigger. The one long white strip in the center is as bright as it was when he first painted it; the insignia Sit Down + Shut Up written in careless, loopy handwriting across the barrel.
“You’ll help us get them back, won’t you?” Grace whispers. “You came back from the dead, Bob. You can’t get beat again. They can’t kill you. You’re Battery Bomber. Who can kill Battery Bomber?”
Bob swallows.
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely, or maybe that’s just his voice. He holds out his arms and she runs to him again, let’s herself be enclosed in strong arms. “Yeah. We’re getting them back.”
“Promise they’ll be okay?”
Bob’s hold tightens.
“Promise.”
-
Frank is still screaming. Ray doesn’t try to block it out because he thinks that would be a pretty fucking awful thing to do in light of all this. Frank’s not snapping, and neither will Ray, not as long as he’s still breathing.
The gravity of the statement is sort of lost, though, when he reminds himself that they can just bring him back to life.
The sparks stop and Frank collapses back against the table, breath coming out in sharp sobs and hiccups, but when Korse leans down to ask the question Frank spits in his face.
“Go to hell.”
Korse wipes the saliva off his cheek with a delicate hand, raises an eyebrow with something that could almost be relative to impressed.
“They told me you were a tough little one,” he says conversationally, hand gravitating towards the switch. “Fun Ghoul, the man who killed over fifty Draculoids.”
I’m not proud of it, Ray remembers Frank saying once.
“The thing about tough little men, though, is that there will always be something that will break them.” Korse’s finger traces a neat little line around the switch before he sets it to the highest level. “All it is is a matter of discovering your weakness. What makes you… tick.”
Frank shrieks as electricity arches his body clear off the table and Ray has a sudden flashback of the time Frank was blown near twenty feet back by a loose electrical wire just outside Battery City. He’d laughed it off later on when he was resting on the itchy couch in the restaurant, but no one would deny the terror they’d felt when Gerard had held a limp Frank in his arms, shook him and pleaded before CPR came into play and somehow, miraculously, Frank came back to them. Dazed and coughing and bleeding, perhaps, but so very much alive and with them.
Ray doesn’t know if Frank will come back this time.
But then, he doesn’t know if Korse won’t make him stay.
“Now then,” Korse says colloquially over Frank’s desperate gasping, watches as his body jerks and spasms, as his eyes roll back and his fingers clench. “How about we start with your real name?”
-
Grace is watching the TV as Doctor Death Defying and Show Pony and Bob are discussing tactics while Lindsey is repainting her gun. It’s hard, without the rest of the Killjoys there, to go on with her business. Grace knows deep down that they are probably hurting, if they aren’t dead by now, but there’s nothing more she can do at the moment.
Her program flickers, and she frowns. Getting up, she walks over to the battered television and smacks it a few times the way she used to watch Mikey do it.
The image shudders, and when it comes back on, Grace stares at it for a long moment.
Then she screams.
-
Three days, twelve hours, fourteen minutes and eighteen seconds later, Frank snaps.
“I don’t know!” he wails right before the next wave of pain hits him and when it subsides he’s sobbing outright. “I don’t know, fuck, please, I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“You do know,” Korse hisses, and Ray can only watch as he turns on the machine again, as he rips Frank apart from the inside out without touching him. “You know. Tell me and it will all stop. You can die as you wish. I’ll kill you quickly and painlessly. All you have to do-” Frank arches off the table again with a twitch of Korse’s hand, “-is tell me where the little girl is, who picked her up in the van. That’s all I ask.”
“I don’t know where they took her!” Frank pleads desperately, and Ray stares at him dully. “I don’t know!”
“Yes you do,” and Frank is screaming again. “You know.”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.”
Frank can hardly breathe from the force of his crying, shaking his head back and forth so hard that his skull makes dull noises against the table. Ray wonders if the machine can go any higher, if Korse is pumping Frank so full of pain that the younger man doesn’t even know who he is anymore. It seems like it when Korse turns it on again, when Frank makes a noise that is purely animalistic, all agony and terror and desperation all wrapped up tight and sealed.
It seems like an eternity later when Korse finally sighs and turns the dial down all the way, presses a button and suddenly the continuous whirring noise Ray had been hearing since he woke up, a noise that he hadn’t even registered, dies down until it’s silent but for Frank’s desperate, choking sobs.
“I had hoped you’d have some sense,” Korse comments mildly, looking over at Frank. “You are all stronger than I thought.” He touches a finger to his lips and then smiles evilly. “I suppose that next on the list would be Kobra Kid, would it not? I’ll be sure to bring him in tomorrow.”
When he turns to Ray, Ray barely has it in him to flick his eyes up to look at him.
“And you?” Korse asks, but Ray just shakes his head. He doesn’t know, either, or he would’ve shouted the answer a long time ago. That had been the plan all along, for none of them to know where Grace would be taken should they be captured alive. Ray wonders almost casually if he would’ve told Korse where to go had he known, but he likes to think that he wouldn’t have.
Frank’s screams are still ringing in his ears to join in the mantra of yes you would have.
“Hey. FG.” Ray’s voice is scratchy from disuse, and there’s no emotion to speak of. He wants to comfort Frank so badly that it’s like a desperate ache in his chest. He wants to call him Frankie and laugh with him and be there for him. Instead he can only act clinical, because he knows Korse is watching. “Talk to me.”
Frank whimpers.
“Are you in there? I need to know.”
He’s shaking and making soft, terrible noises of pain but Frank nods his head, looks over at Ray with tears still streaking down his face.
“I want to go home,” he whispers. “Fuck. I wanna go home.”
“I know.”
“I want P2 and KK.”
Those stupid fucking nicknames.
“I know.”
Frank turns away and his face crumbles into pure misery. “He’s gonna come back with KK and he’s gonna hurt him like he hurt me. Fuck. He’s going to hurt him.”
Ray wonders how delirious Frank is right now, and notes the flush across his cheeks. He thinks Frank might have a fever. He’s probably sick. He’s panting softly and sweat is dripping down his temples. He looks sick, and Ray has a sudden rush of terror that he’s going to have to watch Frank get sicker and sicker until Korse comes back and makes him all better just to fuck him all up again.
Ray just wants to make Frank feel better, if only for a few minutes. But deep down Ray thinks that he knows Frank is probably never going to feel better again.
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
Mikey was always a pretty hardy kind of guy when it came to fighting. When Doctor D. had told him he’d need a special extension on his arm to brace the damage, Mikey had sort of stared at him for a long moment before quietly questioning where the problem was. Mikey did everything quietly.
At least, if it didn’t involve his brother Mikey did everything quietly. Once you throw Gerard into the mix, though…
Well.
Ray manages to look up when Korse arrives the next day with Mikey, the younger man spitting and snarling and raging like a wild animal, and Gerard is led in next. It’s clear that as far as Mikey is concerned everyone else may as well not exist, not when a Draculoid has Gerard by the hair and won’t let go. Gerard, for his part, just grimaces and bares it. Gerard’s always had a sense of when to fight and when to stand down.
Frank makes a soft, terrified little noise when he sees Korse, trying to curl in on himself despite the restraints and Ray doesn’t miss the resulting flash of horror and rage that passes over Gerard’s expression before he’s forced to sit in a metal chair and strapped down tight. Meanwhile Mikey’s strapped down as well, and Ray can almost see how limp and useless Mikey’s bad hand is without its brace.
Mikey stares up at Korse with pure hatred, and if Ray had it in him to shudder he would. As far as his friends go, Mikey is by far the least emotional, and to see such intense rage concentrated in that single expression is startling and a little scary.
Mikey does “scary” very well.
Korse is supremely unimpressed, however, as he steps up to Mikey with his hands locked behind his back, an eyebrow raised. “The pair of you,” he says, “have missed quite a few the past few days you’ve been… indisposed. The guilt probably runs deep knowing your friends suffered while you slept.” When Korse glances over at Frank the smaller man pushes away from him as much as he can, and as the gaze is turned on Ray he just looks away and swallows.
(He can still hear Frank in the darkness, not just the soft noises he makes but the echoes of the screams, the three days of screams that Ray could do nothing about and if Ray could make it stop for even five seconds, he would. But he can’t, and every time he looks at Frank he wants to scream, too. So instead he tries to feel nothing because nothing is easier.)
“I’m going to kill you,” Korse says cordially, turning back to Mikey. Mikey’s determination does not waver, and it’s clear that he’s very near on the verge of declaring Korse to bring it on when Korse turns and, pulling his gun from his belt, shoots Gerard twice in the chest.
There’s a split second of pure disbelief as Gerard looks down at his chest, at the smoke swirling in gentle tendrils around his face.
And then all hell breaks loose.
Ray yells and thinks it’s possible he’s shredded his throat, Frank shouts “no!” over and over and Mikey thrashes so hard against his binding that blood drips slowly down the arms of the chair. His eyes never leave his brother, who’s beginning to hyperventilate, breath coming in horrified pants and gasps. It looks like he doesn’t know quite what to do with his lungs, as if he’s forgotten their function and is trying to remember.
“No!” Mikey screams. “You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch!”
“I’m not done yet,” Korse comments, and he walks up to Gerard and takes a handful of hair, jerking his head up. He’s got that terrifying smile on his face as he presses the gun against Gerard’s neck in a cruel reenactment of their showdown in the hallway. The look Gerard levels him with though is all fierce defiance even amongst the pain. Korse continues. “How would you like it if I killed you over and over and over, like I did your little friend over there? Or perhaps…” He turns to Mikey. “I could let you watch, like I did your other friend. How about that? What if I just let all of you watch each other die over and over, until you tell me what I want.”
And then that smile becomes so evil that Ray feels a shudder start from the tip of his head and work all the way down to his feet.
“Or what if,” Korse says quietly, “what if I let all your other little friends watch. Watch as I rip you from the inside out, slice you open and let you bleed.”
Mikey makes a noise when a Draculoid grabs him by the hair and yanks his head back, exposes his throat, pale and vulnerable. From his seat Gerard chokes out a “let him go” before he shudders out a hoarse choking breath. Over on his table Frank is staring at the entire scene, a look of horror on his face. Ray feels a sharpness on the inside of his elbow and sucks in a sharp breath when it breaks skin, when blood pools slow and sticky under his arm. It burns, it burns a lot, but Ray remembers Frank and doesn’t make a sound.
There’s a piercing cry and Ray can hear how Frank struggles against his bonds again, and Ray wonders if Korse is reaching for the machine again.
“S-stop.”
Gerard’s voice is quiet, but there. Korse pauses for a moment, and there’s a terrible twist to his mouth as he turns to regard Gerard for a long moment before he looks back at Frank, who is staring at him wide-eyed and frozen solid. Mikey, too, has ceased all movement as he looks at Gerard, and Ray had never begun moving to begin with. Gerard looks up at Korse, eyes lidded and sweat dripping down his face.
“Stop.”
“Will you tell me what I need to know?” Korse demands, but his voice is almost gentle.
Gerard opens his mouth, almost as if he has an answer, but then he closes it and considers before spitting a wad of blood at Korse’s eye.
It’s answer enough and Gerard gets a swift punch to the face that Ray can tell sends him reeling. He watches their leader blink bewilderedly at the floor, cheek reddening and blood dripping slowly from one nostril. Mikey tries to launch himself off the chair as Korse kneels down next to Gerard, head tilting.
“I’m going to rip you open,” he whispers, and Gerard’s eyes flick over at him. “I’m going to rip you open and watch you bleed. And I’m going to make everyone else watch too.” He steps up to Frank who outwardly cowers, eyes wide and terrified. “How would you like that? All of you?” He turns to stare at the ceiling as if in consideration, and Ray notices for the first time that the light on the camera is blinking.
It’s recording.
“No,” Korse says mildly, as if he read Ray’s mind. “It’s broadcasting. The Killjoys at their final hour. What do the heroes of the Zones do when faced with ultimate death? I imagine all of Battery City must be watching right now.” His face twists into that terrible smile again. “A final example for what happens when you oppose BL/ind.” Korse walks back over to Gerard, watching as his eyes flutter and more blood drips down over his lips, pooling on his chin and onto his lap.
Korse takes a small needle out from his pocket, taps it a few times with his index finger and regards it with something that would remind Ray of innocent curiosity if it weren’t so evil. When he rolls Gerard’s sleeve up, Mikey lets out another noise that’s pure defensive rage, watching as Korse injects the clear liquid into Gerard’s arm. When he’s done, he stands up and walks over to Ray’s table, and Ray can only watch in detached horror as Korse lets the rest of it drip on the cut on his elbow.
There’s a brief moment where nothing happens, and then there’s an odd numbing feeling spreading across his arm from the cut, and Ray feels a deep sense of trepidation.
And then there’s fire.
Fire and ice and rage and boiling and oh God, oh God it needs to stop. He can hear Gerard screaming and Mikey must be trying to match him and Ray is screaming again too because there’s nothing but fire in his veins and never before has he wanted to die more than this moment.
Years later it must be that the pain subsides, that Ray can breathe again and when he manages to loll his head over he sees that Korse is going back to Gerard, is injecting what looks like twice as much and then Gerard is screaming through his teeth, head jerking back and entire body spasming. Mikey isn’t moving anymore, he’s looking on in horror and Ray realizes in a rush that there are tears streaking down Mikey’s face. That his eyes are wide and childlike in their terror. That Mikey, in this moment, is exactly what he may have always been but never let it show.
Just a scared little brother clinging to his older brother for support and bravery.
“Gee,” Mikey chokes out and there are alarms going off in Ray’s head a second before Korse turns and looks at him. Behind him, Gerard slumps in the chair.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Korse says, and looks over at a suddenly still Gerard. “I don’t believe Gee would be a proper handle for Party Poison.”
Mikey ignores him, and there’s an edge of pleading in his tone. “Look at me. Please. Gee. Look at me.”
Gerard doesn’t move.
“Look at me.”
Nothing.
Mikey is shaking his head, eyes never leaving his brother’s limp body. “Look at me. Please.”
When Gerard still doesn’t move, Mikey breaks.
“LOOK AT ME!”
The door bursts open and suddenly everything is chaos as Korse is shouting and snarling and Draculoids are pouring in. Ray can barely focus, blood loss and pain and dehydration and malnutrition taking its toll as it all merges together with stress and rage and mourning. It’s why he sees a figure, a startlingly familiar figure that’s taking down Drac after Drac with deadly accuracy, eyes trained on each target with the skill of a master. There are shouts beyond them, in the hallway.
Ray blinks one last time before consciousness escapes him, the sounds of screams and pain still ringing loud and clear.
-
Standing in the middle of the carnage, Bob aims up at the camera, the pure portrait of calm fury. His next words are no more than a growl, eyes slit behind his mask.
“Show’s over, motherfuckers.”
The screen goes black.
-
“Oh god. Ray. Ray, please, wake up. Fuck.”
Ray feels a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently, but the voice doesn’t match up. There’s no way that voice could be speaking in a frantic tone to him, trying to rouse him, trying to bring him back. Ray fights against the darkness that’s still trying to crowd his senses, because he knows. He knows that voice can’t really be there. He groans, turns his head away from where he thinks the voice might be coming from. There’s fumbling around his arms as the latches are released, as blood starts to flow back into his fingers. A hand touches his cheek and the voice returns, soft and tender and so very, very desperate.
“Ray. Look at me.”
A long moment as Ray claws his way back to consciousness and sanity, and when he finally manages it he’s greeted with blond hair and blue eyes. There’s a long moment where he just stares up at the figure leant over him, as he stares at Bob and Bob stares right back at him. There’s blood dripping down the side of Bob’s face, and he looks haggard and worn down and frayed at the edges, but so very Bob in his huge presence and gruff voice. Ray knows that he’s gaping, that his eyes are wide and he’s just staring up at Bob like he’s gone and sprouted three heads, one of which was a turkey.
“Hey,” Bob says, and smiles tiredly.
Ray punches him.
-
“I probably deserved that.”
“Fuck right, you did.”
-
The Dracs are catching up, but Frank just lets out a whooping laugh and hangs himself out the window, long hair billowing in the wind as the Trans Am flies down the long stretch of road. Gerard is laughing too from behind the wheel and even Mikey’s got a shit-eating grin on his face, but nothing compares to Bob and Ray who are both out the same door, Ray keeping one hand on the door so it doesn’t go flying while Bob aims at the oncoming mini-fleet. Underneath him Ray closes one eye and fires, but the shot barely catches off the driver as the car veers off to the side to avoid it.
“Fuck this noise!” Frank yells over the roar of the wind. He reaches back in and before Mikey can so much as let out a squawk of protest he’s plucking the red gun from Mikey’s holster and shoving himself back up and out the window, Grace keeping a firm hold around his shins like he asked. She laughing too, and after a moment Mikey makes something of a pout and grabs Frank’s waist to hold him in. Frank’s laughter has always been infectious.
Ray goes for another shot and swears when it catches the mirror of the nearest car.
“Motherfucker.”
Bob turns to grin down at Ray, the wind whipping his hair around his face. His eyes are bright and teasing.
“You’ve gotta learn how to aim better, Toro, or else you’re gonna-”
Bob slumps forward and Ray just barely catches him, for one split second completely confused. And then, then he screams something close to “NO!” when he sees the charred flesh at the back of Bob’s neck, scrambles and pulls Bob back into the Trans Am with pure horror in every movement. The door is still wide open and Mikey is the only one with enough sense to reach over and slam it shut, his expression suddenly closed off.
“Oh god. No. Oh no. No, Bob, come on. No.” Bob’s limp in Ray’s arms, face pressed against his chest and eyes blank and the smell of burning skin is too much for Ray to handle. Bile rises in his throat but he continues to shake his partner, his best friend, fuck, his…
Fuck.
“Bob! Wake up! Wake up, you idiot!” Ray is frantic now, shaking Bob and running his hands through filthy grimy blond hair and from the front seat he can hear what sounds like a hitched gasp from Frank when he takes in the scene and a scared noise from Grace huddled on the other side of the car. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. Frank is wrong, Frank has no need for that, Grace has no need to cry because Bob is not dead. “Wake up!” There’s something of a grin still present on Bob’s face, an eerie shadow of what was laughter in a world so desperate for it.
Something’s bubbling deep in his chest, something horrible and dark and threatening to spill over along with the tears that he can’t seem to suddenly stop. He clutches at Bob, holds him tight, and pleads one last time for what once was, for something that he knows he needs to survive.
“BOB!”
Ray opens his eyes.
(His eye. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to referring to it as a singular, not when he spent so much time normal, at least in the physical sense.)
He’s lying in one of the cots at the far end of the restaurant, away from the noise and mayhem, and after a moment he realizes his patch is gone, replaced by gauze once again. Frank’s curled up next to him, one hand resting on Ray’s chest, and while he’s fast asleep there’s still that furrow to his brow that means Frank’s lost in some nightmare, some echo of the horror he was imprisoned in for three days straight. Ray manages to lift a hand and run it once through the tragedy that is now Frank’s crew-cut, wondering how long it’ll be before it’s back to the length Frank had always loved it at. His fingers brush against the thick scar at the side of Frank’s mouth, touches the bruise on his temple. In the crook of his own elbow Ray can feel the pull of stitches, and somewhere deep down there’s the throbbing ache in his chest. His throat has that faint beat of lingering pain as well, and he wonders briefly how that happened. He thinks of Gerard, if Gerard is awake, if Mikey is with him.
He wants to cry for it all.
Frank whimpers at the touch and presses closer, his face practically nestled in Ray’s neck. Ray returns his hand to the top of Frank’s head, threads fingers through the short black bristles-or what’s left of them, at any rate.
“He didn’t want to sleep alone.”
Ray doesn’t jump at that voice, doesn’t even really react other than to flick his eye over to where it came from, sees Bob leaning against the window sill. The bruise on his cheek is still deep purple, but Ray doesn’t regret it one bit. He feels his arm tighten around Frank’s shoulders, but not out of any protective urge against Bob-Frank made another soft noise and Ray wants to do what he couldn’t for so long.
“I can understand that,” he tries to reply, but nothing more than a hoarse whisper comes out and he starts coughing before he can help it. Bob is there in a second, picking up the glass of water and practically shoving it against Ray’s mouth, muttering “drink, motherfucker, before blood comes up next.”
It’s true. Ray can taste that sickeningly familiar copper tint in his mouth and he tries to keep his heaving under control before he wakes Frank. To his shock, Bob doesn’t try to rub his back, but rather presses two fingers firm but gentle against Ray’s throat and rubs in soft circles.
“You fucked up your throat bad,” Bob mutters, and the gesture is soothing despite the pain still lingering as Ray finally gets himself under control. “Doctor D. said that you probably didn’t talk for a while and then fucked it all up when you started screaming again. Disuse followed by overuse or some shit.” There’s a crease between his eyes as he looks down at Ray, still rubbing his throat. “That what happened?”
Ray nods.
Letting out a sigh through his nose, Bob leans back, fingers for a moment brushing against Frank’s cheek. He’s still got something of a fever, and he’s heavy and warm against Ray’s side.
“Fuck,” Bob says quietly. “We took too long, didn’t we?”
Ray turns away, mouth tightening. He should be thankful they came at all, but Ray’s still not so sure he’s completely lucid. Four days ago he would’ve claimed it impossible that Bob would be standing in front of him, talking to him and touching him and… and obviously alive, but now? Now he’s not really too sure of anything anymore and where does that leave him mentally-wise?
Bumfuck nowhere, that’s where.
Still.
Ray tries swallowing and though it burns, it’s bearable in comparison and he reaches out his free hand. Bob’s eyebrows furrow again and when Ray motions come closer he does so, leaning down. Ray touches his fingers to Bob’s cheek, cups it in his hand and just feels. Bob is cool to the touch, not hot like he used to be, but the bristles are the same. The scar is the same. There’s a tiny hole on the right side of his bottom lip, a remnant of a bad idea and a drunken night.
Ray feels his own face crumple.
“Hey, whoa,” Bob says a second before Ray loses it completely. But it doesn’t matter how badly his throat hurts from it, how Frank makes a sleepy confused noise next to him and raises his head blearily, it doesn’t matter that Bob’s looking at him in faint horror because Bob’s never been able to deal with people crying.
It’s really him.
It’s really Bob.
And for the first time since they stormed BL/ind, Ray just lets go and cries.
-
It takes two sedatives and slap to the face from Show Pony to get Mikey to shut up long enough for Doctor Death Defying to tell him that yes, with lots of bed rest and antibiotics and no hysterics, Gerard will indeed be fine. It will take a shitload of time and even more of what precious little medicine they have to get Gerard up and running again, but eventually the legendary Party Poison will be back on his feet and kicking ass like always.
Frank is a different story. He sleeps a lot, Ray has noticed, a way to escape the waking hours he spends living in constant fear. He doesn’t want to go outside as much anymore, nor does he really want anything to do with Draculoids, Korse, or being a Killjoy.
One day he clings to Ray and whispers sadly, “I want to be Fun Ghoul again, but I don’t know how.”
Ray could only screw up his face and hold in more tears and hug him back. Frank is broken, he’s broken beyond repair and even if he wasn’t, Ray wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing him. He can only hold Frank tight and whisper pathetic reassurances that they are grateful for whatever of Frank they’re lucky enough to get.
He spends a lot of time letting people cling to him. When Grace saw him for the first time since he was captured it was like she had rockets glued to her shoes as she jumped him and he barely managed to catch her.
“Ray, Ray, Ray,” she sobs into his neck, and Ray suddenly has the fleeting memory that she’d watched him die. “Ray, I thought you were dead. I thought you left.”
How do you tell a little girl that you were? That you did?
Ray doesn’t know, so he just kisses her forehead and rubs her back and murmurs, “I’ll always come back for you, baby girl. Don’t you worry about that.”
Bob watches on, rubbing the back of his neck subconsciously. Ray can’t help but catch the way he pulls his hand away and stares for a long moment at the blood that coats his palm before he casually wipes it off on his pants. He’s still the same old Bob, still gruff and coarse and rough around the edges. He still chugs Red Bull like it’s the last can on earth, still bitches sometimes about his wrist. But he lets Ray and Frank sleep in the same bed with him at night, lets Mikey steal from his plate instead of trying to fork his hand. He visits Gerard often and gives Grace piggyback rides, a hoodie pulled over his head so she doesn’t catch a glimpse of his neck.
It’s a sullen, lifeless echo of what they once had, but broken as they are it’s more than they could ever hope to get back.
-
It doesn’t take much in this day and age to make a legend.
Ray knows that people still talk of Jet-Star and the time he stood off against the group of Draculoids coming at them by climbing out the window and onto the hood of the car, Gerard still driving it at high speed. He can still remember how stupid a stunt that’d been, how the adrenaline had worn off and he’d realized that, yes, he’d stood on top of a car moving at least seventy miles an hour and lived to tell about it. Bob had nearly taken his head off.
Legends are born, not made, people used to say.
But the legend of Fun Ghoul, the man who killed fifty Draculoids, who singlehandedly disabled an eighteen wheeler carrying goods to Battery City by clinging to the underside? That was just Frank Iero deciding he’d had enough, and wanted to get back at the corporation for denying them their rights. How Mikey ay, the Kobra Kid, had leaned all the way out the window with only his knees hooking him to the door, before he’d decided to simply jump onto the car next to them and shoot through the roof? It was Mikey who was reckless and idiotic and wanted to show off to his brother. How Bob Bryar, the Battery Bomber, seemingly killed in the struggle for freedom, had escaped from his imprisonment in BL/ind. How they had brought him back in labs buried deep under the earth to become personality living in a body that no longer pumped blood. A living corpse with nowhere else to go. How Gerard Way, leader of the Killjoys, Party Poison, was a symbol of anarchy and hope, spread the idea that what they did was right. They fought BL/ind because someone had to.
They made their legend, and of those legends were born the heroes of the Zones.
And now, Ray wonders mildly if the people of Battery City, of the Zones themselves, still believe in them, still believe that those stories are true. If someone really did have to fight BL/ind. He thinks of all the people Jet-Star has killed, and how many Ray Toro regretted killing.
He wonders if the people of Battery City even need someone to believe in.
Ray knows the answer, because the answer was always there.
-
“They don’t believe in us,” Ray says softly one night, staring out the window, beyond the desert, staring at the lights of Battery City in the distance. Across from him Mikey is curled up with his hand resting just above the bandage on Gerard’s chest. Both brothers are fast asleep, for the time being without a care in the world.
Bob is sprawled out on the bed next to Ray, snoring softly, skin frozen and the flesh at the back of his neck still black as ever. Ray touches the identification on Bob’s hand, the barcode and the numbers, the property of BL/ind that’s forever emblazoned in flesh that is no longer alive. Frank is lying on his other side, practically on top of Ray, eyes blank as he too looks out the window, and there’s a long moment before a soft smile settles across his face.
“But I believe we’re the enemy,” Frank whispers dreamily, right before he falls asleep, leaving Ray to wonder quietly to himself whether the heroes of the Zones were ever heroes to begin with.
After all, you only live forever in the lights you make.
-
“All the cameras watch the accidents and stars you hate. They only care if you can bleed. Does the television make you feel the pills you ate, or every person that you need to be?”
-
the end.
My Chemical Romance/Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
9k | R | warnings: torture, blood, PTSD, swearing (c’mon, it’s MCR.) complete deviation from canon, a surprise guest
This is a fictional story based on a fictional setting that is not my own.
"It’s later on, when he’s cold and trembling and sweaty and still won’t open his mouth to utter a single word, that Ray realizes something. It’s not that he keeps on dying. It’s what he wishes would happen. Because while dying sucks, and coming back to life is worse? Wishing you were dead with every fiber of your being is a fate more terrible than both."
-“This could be the last of all the rides we take, so hold on tight and don’t look back.”
Dying sucks.
It’s a gross understatement, since Ray had sort of assumed from the beginning that dying wasn’t something a normal, sane person aimed for, but even so. Dying sucks. Having a hole blasted through his ribs and out his back? There was a brief moment of oh god please make it stop, a sense of shock and almost bewildered respect for anyone who makes it out of this alive. It’s blinding hot, agonizing, like it’s tearing apart his very being and spitting all over the pieces. All he wants is for it to stop.
And then, by God, it did.
It stopped.
-
What’s worse, though, what’s worse is coming back to life.
-
Delicate footsteps around burnt stains in the floor, a step over a lifeless figure with black hair and a scar. Korse kicks the body once for good measure and when it does not stir, continues on his trek. Behind him Draculoids pick the small body up, carry it without care to be sealed up tight for further use. He nudges the door open and stares for a moment at the other body sprawled on the hood of a battered car, smoke still gently swirling from the dark hole in its chest. Its one visible eye is still open, but only just, not seeing.
Korse tilts his head.
“Which one is the least dead?” he demands, and when the Draculoids scurry and point to the body on the car, a cruel smile twists his lips.
“He’ll do.” He turns on his heel, watches as they load the instigator, the devil, Party Poison, into one of the bags.
Him, Korse decides, he will deal with later.
-
When Grace had seen the Killjoys on the screen, her only real reaction had been that her heroes were there again, that everything was going to be okay. The Killjoys, you have to understand, were superheroes in her eyes. Frightfully good at defeating the bad guys, caring for the weak and the helpless, and cool names to boot. Whatever the Killjoys couldn’t do was something that no one in the world could do either. That was how the world worked.
A blast of a ray gun and that notion disappeared pretty quick.
Above her she can hear Mikey let out a terrible high noise that’s part anguish, part rage and then he’s running past her as she huddles on the ground with her hands over her ears. He’s the pure picture of that reckless insanity that can only be brought on by grief, and he’s charging straight through the fray like nothing else matters beyond Gerard.
It’s true, though. In Mikey’s world, nothing else does. And nothing else ever will.
Grace has only heard a noise like that once before, and it still didn’t compare. It was the noise Ray made when he was holding his best friend dead in his arms. She can still remember that day, remembers how that was the last time she’d ever really seen Ray happy. The last time she’d really seen him laugh had been with Bob. Then Bob had died and Ray hadn’t been quite the same.
Grace doesn’t know why she’s thinking of Bob at a time like this, when Gerard is dead too and a second later Mikey is jerked back by the impact of the shot, his eyes widening before he collapses to the ground. She screams again, hands clamped tight against her ears.
Then there’s a hand on her shoulder as Ray shouts, “Gracie! Grace! Come with me, baby girl! Don’t look back!” And she follows, because Ray has never let her down, never left her behind. Frank is there too, and Grace sees how he looks at Gerard and Mikey, the misery and rage shining in his eyes as he darts behind them.
They run, and they run, and when they reach the doors she hears Ray and the tiny noise he makes when the door shuts behind them.
Frank is staring at them through the glass.
Save yourself, his eyes say. I’ll hold them back.
She stares right back at him, mouth opening in shock, but Ray pulls at her, his one good eye locking with Frank’s for the briefest of moments before Frank turns around, all fierce determination as he raises his gun and fires. Grace runs behind Ray because there’s nothing else she can do. She can see the car, Frank’s beloved Trans Am, his baby, and she wants to cry because his baby is being shot over and over.
And then her whole world shatters when Ray is shot too.
“Ray!” she screams, but he doesn’t answer, just lays there on the hood of the Trans Am. He doesn’t move and Grace hears the screech of tires behind her.
“Grace!” someone shouts. “Grace, get over here! Leave him!”
She whirls around just in time to see the door of a white van slide open and Show Pony and Doctor Death Defying are there, the latter of the two holding his arms wide open for her. Grace recognizes Lindsey, Gerard’s friend, donned in her helmet and glasses, behind the wheel. Familiar faces, the faces of more heroes. She runs because Doctor D. tells her to, leaves behind Ray and Frank and Mikey and Gerard, leaves behind her friends because she knows that if she doesn’t them dying will be for nothing.
So she runs, and she doesn’t look back. Doctor D. encompasses her in a hug and whispers, “It’ll be okay,” just as she breaks down into hysterics.
Their voices still loud in her ears, telling her it’ll be okay, everything will be fine, Grace can do no more than cry.
They drive for a while without stopping, an endless drive that Grace spends crying and finally falling asleep nestled in Show Pony’s arms, tear tracks drying on her face. She thinks of Gerard, slumped over on the wall, of Mikey collapsing amidst his unstoppable rage, of the look in Frank’s eyes as he locked the door behind them.
Of Ray grabbing her hand and pulling at her before he was shot down.
It’s much later that Lindsey pulls the van into park, and when Grace peeks out the window, it’s with a start that she realizes they’re at the restaurant. When she looks over at Show Pony, he just shrugs and points at Doctor Death Defying.
“They followed us for a while,” the bearded man says as he wheels himself to the door. “We had to lose them. Last place they’d expect to find us, meerkat, is our little hole. Never gonna find us here as long as we stay low and slow. Besides,” he adds with a grunt as he pushes the door open. “Someone’s here to see you.”
He points, and Grace looks out. Sure enough, there’s a figure in the doorway to the restaurant, just out of sight and she shrinks back a little because the figure is huge and imposing.
But then. Then it speaks and her heart drops in shock.
“Hey, kiddo.” The voice rumbles and growls and is about two octaves lower than any other person she knows, but Grace knows the voice. The voice wouldn’t hurt her. She leaps out of the van and runs towards it, opens arms wide and buries herself in the scent of gunpowder and wintergreen.
It’s not possible. It’s not.
But at the same time, it is.
“Bob,” she whispers. “Bob.”
-
If dying were fire and rage and passion, then coming back to life was ice and silence and stillness. So much stillness. Ray breathes and opens his eyes-his eye-to stare at white ceilings, white walls, white everything, and blinks. Last he remembers he was running for his life, his friends dead behind him, and Grace-
Grace.
The realization slams into him with the force of a freight train and suddenly he’s shouting, struggling against the bonds he hadn’t noticed until this moment. Grace isn’t his daughter, but she’s as good as. Adrenaline counts for a lot and his love for Grace does nothing but add to his desperation. In the back of his mind there’s a naughty little voice trying to tell him that his friends are dead, he is alone, why is he thinking about Grace at a time like this when Frank and Gerard and Mikey are dead? But Ray can’t bring himself to think those things. He can’t begin to think that his friends are gone because when you do that, you’re lost. Gerard told them so. And so Grace takes front and center because if Ray has lost all of them, there’s nothing really left for him at this point.
The restraints are good at keeping him down, and Ray realizes this. He may not be a body builder, but he’s a big guy with the muscle to back it up and the restraints are almost mocking him in their solidity. Still, he grits his teeth and pulls hard until there’s a creaking noise, and it’s right about then that he dies again.
Or at least, it feels like it.
It starts at the tips of his fingers and then explodes outwards, a pain that encompasses not just his body but his entire being, spreading and burning until it’s all that exists. He can’t even hear himself over it, but his throat burns as if he were shrieking in a pain that is complete and absolute, one long line of agony that has him screaming, screaming, screaming…
Finally, after what seems like an eternity it stops and Ray is left to slump pathetically back against the unforgiving metal of his makeshift bed, coughing and choking on his own blood. He’d bitten clear through his tongue. He pants, tries to figure out where so much white-hot pain could have come from, when there’s a soft touch against his cheek and he flinches away from it. It’s a loving touch, it seems like, but when he can focus, he sees Korse standing above him. The touch is anything but loving.
No, that touch is the touch of a predator that has finally, after years of chasing and stalking, has finally snapped up its prey in cold hands and will squeeze until the life is squeezed right out of it.
Ray swallows.
Korse leans down until his lips are brushing against Ray’s ear, pushing away some of his wild hair.
“I have a few questions for you,” Korse murmurs, and Ray dies again, and again, and again.
-
It’s later on, when he’s cold and trembling and sweaty and still won’t open his mouth to utter a single word, that Ray realizes something. It’s not that he keeps on dying.
It’s what he wishes would happen. Because while dying sucks, and coming back to life is worse?
Wishing you were dead with every fiber of your being is a fate more terrible than both.
-
There’s a hand stroking through her hair, and Grace feels the deep rumble of his voice as he whispers to her, sounding awkward and out of his element.
“So uh. How much did I miss while I was on vacation?”
Grace half-laughs, half-sobs as she clutches harder to his jacket. He keeps petting her hair, the rough edges of his gloves scratching in a way that’s oddly soothing and gentle.
“BB’s given us a little edge,” Doctor D. says from his chair, and there’s a grim smile in his tone. They’re sitting in the record room, Grace perched on Bob’s lap. “Korse don’t know he’s here either. It’s not much, but at the moment it’s all we got, boy scouts.”
“We got Bob,” Grace replies firmly. “If we got Bob, we can save them. Bob can do anything.” She glances up at him, into his bright eyes, traces the long, thin scar from temple to the edge of his mouth. His souvenir, he used to call it smartly, running a gloved finger down the length of it. He got it during a raid the year before he met Ray, he would say, and it took him seven stitches to get it patched up.
His lips tighten, as if he doesn’t believe her.
“Bob, you’d do anything for your friends. Right?” Grace says softly.
For the first time in a long time, Bob hesitates before answering.
“Right.”
Doctor D., bless his heart, doesn’t say anything for once, but his intention is in the air nonetheless.
He wouldn’t have had to come back if he’d never left us in the first place.
Grace knows Bob and she knows that Bob, though loathe he may be to admit it, agrees with all his heart. So she kisses his cheek and hugs his neck and whispers, “It’ll be okay, Bob.” Rough hands reach up and hug her back, and for a long while, they just stay like that.
When his shoulders start shaking, when he makes the tiniest of noises, Grace tries to shush him.
It doesn’t work, but Grace knows better than anyone that when Bob is crying, when Bob has given up, things are bad.
Things are very, very bad.
-
“Where did they take her.”
Ray grits his teeth and holds his tongue. Another earth-shattering blast of pain later and Ray is groaning through his teeth, every muscle tensing as his eyes roll back and he thinks for a split second that he may pass out. It subsides again and he’s left panting.
Korse furrows his brow.
“You take pain well,” he notes mildly. Ray can only glare at him with his one good eye. Truth be told, Ray hates pain, but he’s good at keeping himself in check when it comes to it. He’s not sure how much of this he can take, not when he noticed that the machine he’s hooked up to is barely even at a middle selection-how high must the highest be, he wonders, if the pain he feels is barely the minimum.
“What about your name?” Korse says, and turns the machine on again. When Ray still doesn’t answer, Korse stares for a long moment at the machine before he taps his chin with a finger.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he says quietly, and that tone is ominous and menacing. Korse snaps his fingers at the camera tucked away in the corner, and when he turns back to Ray there’s an evil grin on his face.
“I’ve learned in the past,” he says, “that those who can tolerate pain have a harder time tolerating others’.”
Ray doesn’t want to know what that means, doesn’t want to think of what it must mean. He gets his answer, though, when the door bangs open and Frank is led in kicking and biting, his eyes wild.
“Bring it on, motherfuckers!” he snarls, and it’s clear he’s trying to scratch eyes out. “I’ll fuck all of you up!”
Korse looks over at Ray, an eyebrow raised as he takes in the look of horror dawning on Ray’s face. Ray knows Frank better than anyone, better than Gerard even. Frank is no baby when it comes to pain, but Frank is the youngest of them, and in that regard he is the baby. Frank was everyone’s little brother before Grace came along and took on the role of the child. Frank settles a deep-seated urge to protect in Ray’s chest.
They force Frank down on the table across from Ray’s, strap him down and try to avoid his teeth. Frank has always been a fighter, and even the ringing slap does little to make him stop as they hook him up to the same machine they’d hooked Ray to, and Ray watches them raise the little switch on the side, the switch that controls how much pain there will be.
Ray forces himself to speak.
“Calm the fuck down,” he says, because he knows it’ll work better than anything. Frank looks over at him, comprehension on his face followed almost instantly by a startling combination of dismay and relief.
“You’re alive,” he whispers, and goes off on a rant that Ray knows he can’t help. Frank’s always had a hard time shutting up. “Jesus fuck, Jet. You’re alive. What about the others? Where’s Grace? Is she okay?”
“That’s what I would like to know,” Korse says, and Ray can only watch on in horror as he presses a button and without any warning Frank is screaming, slammed back into the table with his eyes wide and almost bewildered as Korse pumps him full of agony. Ray shouts before he can help it because oh god, it’s Frank there, Frank who’s writhing in shocked suffering. Ray can see it’s almost twice as much as what they were pumping into him and Ray thinks that’s not fair, that’s not fair, they didn’t give him any warning.
Korse grins and turns the switch up that much more.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
-
It’s later on, much later on that Grace finally pulls herself out of Bob’s hold and twines their fingers together, tugs at his arm until he gets up with a bemused expression on what is normally an emotionless face. “I have somethin’ for you,” she says by way of explanation, and her voice becomes truly and heartbreakingly sad for a moment. “Well. Ray had something for you. I kept it safe. C’mon.” She tugs and tugs until he concedes and follows her down the narrow hall of the diner, stops in front of the rundown bathroom that doesn’t flush anymore. It’s used now as storage, treated with a respect you wouldn’t see for a running bathroom.
Bob watches on with interest as Grace gingerly lowers the lid of the toilet and steps up on it, reaches for a small cardboard box tucked away above the cabinet. It’s sealed with duct tape, too neat for Frank or Gerard, but too haphazard for Mikey’s handiwork.
She steps back down and hands it to Bob. She watches silently as he stares at it for a long moment, weighing it in his hands, before perching himself absentmindedly on the lip of the tub and gently, gently, gently pulling the tape off the box. When he takes the lid off he just stares inside the box for a while, and Grace could almost swear that she sees tears glittering in the corners of those blue eyes.
Finally, he reaches inside and pulls out his mask, sets it on his lap and returns for the matching vibrant purple gun, his finger on the trigger. The one long white strip in the center is as bright as it was when he first painted it; the insignia Sit Down + Shut Up written in careless, loopy handwriting across the barrel.
“You’ll help us get them back, won’t you?” Grace whispers. “You came back from the dead, Bob. You can’t get beat again. They can’t kill you. You’re Battery Bomber. Who can kill Battery Bomber?”
Bob swallows.
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely, or maybe that’s just his voice. He holds out his arms and she runs to him again, let’s herself be enclosed in strong arms. “Yeah. We’re getting them back.”
“Promise they’ll be okay?”
Bob’s hold tightens.
“Promise.”
-
Frank is still screaming. Ray doesn’t try to block it out because he thinks that would be a pretty fucking awful thing to do in light of all this. Frank’s not snapping, and neither will Ray, not as long as he’s still breathing.
The gravity of the statement is sort of lost, though, when he reminds himself that they can just bring him back to life.
The sparks stop and Frank collapses back against the table, breath coming out in sharp sobs and hiccups, but when Korse leans down to ask the question Frank spits in his face.
“Go to hell.”
Korse wipes the saliva off his cheek with a delicate hand, raises an eyebrow with something that could almost be relative to impressed.
“They told me you were a tough little one,” he says conversationally, hand gravitating towards the switch. “Fun Ghoul, the man who killed over fifty Draculoids.”
I’m not proud of it, Ray remembers Frank saying once.
“The thing about tough little men, though, is that there will always be something that will break them.” Korse’s finger traces a neat little line around the switch before he sets it to the highest level. “All it is is a matter of discovering your weakness. What makes you… tick.”
Frank shrieks as electricity arches his body clear off the table and Ray has a sudden flashback of the time Frank was blown near twenty feet back by a loose electrical wire just outside Battery City. He’d laughed it off later on when he was resting on the itchy couch in the restaurant, but no one would deny the terror they’d felt when Gerard had held a limp Frank in his arms, shook him and pleaded before CPR came into play and somehow, miraculously, Frank came back to them. Dazed and coughing and bleeding, perhaps, but so very much alive and with them.
Ray doesn’t know if Frank will come back this time.
But then, he doesn’t know if Korse won’t make him stay.
“Now then,” Korse says colloquially over Frank’s desperate gasping, watches as his body jerks and spasms, as his eyes roll back and his fingers clench. “How about we start with your real name?”
-
Grace is watching the TV as Doctor Death Defying and Show Pony and Bob are discussing tactics while Lindsey is repainting her gun. It’s hard, without the rest of the Killjoys there, to go on with her business. Grace knows deep down that they are probably hurting, if they aren’t dead by now, but there’s nothing more she can do at the moment.
Her program flickers, and she frowns. Getting up, she walks over to the battered television and smacks it a few times the way she used to watch Mikey do it.
The image shudders, and when it comes back on, Grace stares at it for a long moment.
Then she screams.
-
Three days, twelve hours, fourteen minutes and eighteen seconds later, Frank snaps.
“I don’t know!” he wails right before the next wave of pain hits him and when it subsides he’s sobbing outright. “I don’t know, fuck, please, I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“You do know,” Korse hisses, and Ray can only watch as he turns on the machine again, as he rips Frank apart from the inside out without touching him. “You know. Tell me and it will all stop. You can die as you wish. I’ll kill you quickly and painlessly. All you have to do-” Frank arches off the table again with a twitch of Korse’s hand, “-is tell me where the little girl is, who picked her up in the van. That’s all I ask.”
“I don’t know where they took her!” Frank pleads desperately, and Ray stares at him dully. “I don’t know!”
“Yes you do,” and Frank is screaming again. “You know.”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.”
Frank can hardly breathe from the force of his crying, shaking his head back and forth so hard that his skull makes dull noises against the table. Ray wonders if the machine can go any higher, if Korse is pumping Frank so full of pain that the younger man doesn’t even know who he is anymore. It seems like it when Korse turns it on again, when Frank makes a noise that is purely animalistic, all agony and terror and desperation all wrapped up tight and sealed.
It seems like an eternity later when Korse finally sighs and turns the dial down all the way, presses a button and suddenly the continuous whirring noise Ray had been hearing since he woke up, a noise that he hadn’t even registered, dies down until it’s silent but for Frank’s desperate, choking sobs.
“I had hoped you’d have some sense,” Korse comments mildly, looking over at Frank. “You are all stronger than I thought.” He touches a finger to his lips and then smiles evilly. “I suppose that next on the list would be Kobra Kid, would it not? I’ll be sure to bring him in tomorrow.”
When he turns to Ray, Ray barely has it in him to flick his eyes up to look at him.
“And you?” Korse asks, but Ray just shakes his head. He doesn’t know, either, or he would’ve shouted the answer a long time ago. That had been the plan all along, for none of them to know where Grace would be taken should they be captured alive. Ray wonders almost casually if he would’ve told Korse where to go had he known, but he likes to think that he wouldn’t have.
Frank’s screams are still ringing in his ears to join in the mantra of yes you would have.
“Hey. FG.” Ray’s voice is scratchy from disuse, and there’s no emotion to speak of. He wants to comfort Frank so badly that it’s like a desperate ache in his chest. He wants to call him Frankie and laugh with him and be there for him. Instead he can only act clinical, because he knows Korse is watching. “Talk to me.”
Frank whimpers.
“Are you in there? I need to know.”
He’s shaking and making soft, terrible noises of pain but Frank nods his head, looks over at Ray with tears still streaking down his face.
“I want to go home,” he whispers. “Fuck. I wanna go home.”
“I know.”
“I want P2 and KK.”
Those stupid fucking nicknames.
“I know.”
Frank turns away and his face crumbles into pure misery. “He’s gonna come back with KK and he’s gonna hurt him like he hurt me. Fuck. He’s going to hurt him.”
Ray wonders how delirious Frank is right now, and notes the flush across his cheeks. He thinks Frank might have a fever. He’s probably sick. He’s panting softly and sweat is dripping down his temples. He looks sick, and Ray has a sudden rush of terror that he’s going to have to watch Frank get sicker and sicker until Korse comes back and makes him all better just to fuck him all up again.
Ray just wants to make Frank feel better, if only for a few minutes. But deep down Ray thinks that he knows Frank is probably never going to feel better again.
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
Mikey was always a pretty hardy kind of guy when it came to fighting. When Doctor D. had told him he’d need a special extension on his arm to brace the damage, Mikey had sort of stared at him for a long moment before quietly questioning where the problem was. Mikey did everything quietly.
At least, if it didn’t involve his brother Mikey did everything quietly. Once you throw Gerard into the mix, though…
Well.
Ray manages to look up when Korse arrives the next day with Mikey, the younger man spitting and snarling and raging like a wild animal, and Gerard is led in next. It’s clear that as far as Mikey is concerned everyone else may as well not exist, not when a Draculoid has Gerard by the hair and won’t let go. Gerard, for his part, just grimaces and bares it. Gerard’s always had a sense of when to fight and when to stand down.
Frank makes a soft, terrified little noise when he sees Korse, trying to curl in on himself despite the restraints and Ray doesn’t miss the resulting flash of horror and rage that passes over Gerard’s expression before he’s forced to sit in a metal chair and strapped down tight. Meanwhile Mikey’s strapped down as well, and Ray can almost see how limp and useless Mikey’s bad hand is without its brace.
Mikey stares up at Korse with pure hatred, and if Ray had it in him to shudder he would. As far as his friends go, Mikey is by far the least emotional, and to see such intense rage concentrated in that single expression is startling and a little scary.
Mikey does “scary” very well.
Korse is supremely unimpressed, however, as he steps up to Mikey with his hands locked behind his back, an eyebrow raised. “The pair of you,” he says, “have missed quite a few the past few days you’ve been… indisposed. The guilt probably runs deep knowing your friends suffered while you slept.” When Korse glances over at Frank the smaller man pushes away from him as much as he can, and as the gaze is turned on Ray he just looks away and swallows.
(He can still hear Frank in the darkness, not just the soft noises he makes but the echoes of the screams, the three days of screams that Ray could do nothing about and if Ray could make it stop for even five seconds, he would. But he can’t, and every time he looks at Frank he wants to scream, too. So instead he tries to feel nothing because nothing is easier.)
“I’m going to kill you,” Korse says cordially, turning back to Mikey. Mikey’s determination does not waver, and it’s clear that he’s very near on the verge of declaring Korse to bring it on when Korse turns and, pulling his gun from his belt, shoots Gerard twice in the chest.
There’s a split second of pure disbelief as Gerard looks down at his chest, at the smoke swirling in gentle tendrils around his face.
And then all hell breaks loose.
Ray yells and thinks it’s possible he’s shredded his throat, Frank shouts “no!” over and over and Mikey thrashes so hard against his binding that blood drips slowly down the arms of the chair. His eyes never leave his brother, who’s beginning to hyperventilate, breath coming in horrified pants and gasps. It looks like he doesn’t know quite what to do with his lungs, as if he’s forgotten their function and is trying to remember.
“No!” Mikey screams. “You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch!”
“I’m not done yet,” Korse comments, and he walks up to Gerard and takes a handful of hair, jerking his head up. He’s got that terrifying smile on his face as he presses the gun against Gerard’s neck in a cruel reenactment of their showdown in the hallway. The look Gerard levels him with though is all fierce defiance even amongst the pain. Korse continues. “How would you like it if I killed you over and over and over, like I did your little friend over there? Or perhaps…” He turns to Mikey. “I could let you watch, like I did your other friend. How about that? What if I just let all of you watch each other die over and over, until you tell me what I want.”
And then that smile becomes so evil that Ray feels a shudder start from the tip of his head and work all the way down to his feet.
“Or what if,” Korse says quietly, “what if I let all your other little friends watch. Watch as I rip you from the inside out, slice you open and let you bleed.”
Mikey makes a noise when a Draculoid grabs him by the hair and yanks his head back, exposes his throat, pale and vulnerable. From his seat Gerard chokes out a “let him go” before he shudders out a hoarse choking breath. Over on his table Frank is staring at the entire scene, a look of horror on his face. Ray feels a sharpness on the inside of his elbow and sucks in a sharp breath when it breaks skin, when blood pools slow and sticky under his arm. It burns, it burns a lot, but Ray remembers Frank and doesn’t make a sound.
There’s a piercing cry and Ray can hear how Frank struggles against his bonds again, and Ray wonders if Korse is reaching for the machine again.
“S-stop.”
Gerard’s voice is quiet, but there. Korse pauses for a moment, and there’s a terrible twist to his mouth as he turns to regard Gerard for a long moment before he looks back at Frank, who is staring at him wide-eyed and frozen solid. Mikey, too, has ceased all movement as he looks at Gerard, and Ray had never begun moving to begin with. Gerard looks up at Korse, eyes lidded and sweat dripping down his face.
“Stop.”
“Will you tell me what I need to know?” Korse demands, but his voice is almost gentle.
Gerard opens his mouth, almost as if he has an answer, but then he closes it and considers before spitting a wad of blood at Korse’s eye.
It’s answer enough and Gerard gets a swift punch to the face that Ray can tell sends him reeling. He watches their leader blink bewilderedly at the floor, cheek reddening and blood dripping slowly from one nostril. Mikey tries to launch himself off the chair as Korse kneels down next to Gerard, head tilting.
“I’m going to rip you open,” he whispers, and Gerard’s eyes flick over at him. “I’m going to rip you open and watch you bleed. And I’m going to make everyone else watch too.” He steps up to Frank who outwardly cowers, eyes wide and terrified. “How would you like that? All of you?” He turns to stare at the ceiling as if in consideration, and Ray notices for the first time that the light on the camera is blinking.
It’s recording.
“No,” Korse says mildly, as if he read Ray’s mind. “It’s broadcasting. The Killjoys at their final hour. What do the heroes of the Zones do when faced with ultimate death? I imagine all of Battery City must be watching right now.” His face twists into that terrible smile again. “A final example for what happens when you oppose BL/ind.” Korse walks back over to Gerard, watching as his eyes flutter and more blood drips down over his lips, pooling on his chin and onto his lap.
Korse takes a small needle out from his pocket, taps it a few times with his index finger and regards it with something that would remind Ray of innocent curiosity if it weren’t so evil. When he rolls Gerard’s sleeve up, Mikey lets out another noise that’s pure defensive rage, watching as Korse injects the clear liquid into Gerard’s arm. When he’s done, he stands up and walks over to Ray’s table, and Ray can only watch in detached horror as Korse lets the rest of it drip on the cut on his elbow.
There’s a brief moment where nothing happens, and then there’s an odd numbing feeling spreading across his arm from the cut, and Ray feels a deep sense of trepidation.
And then there’s fire.
Fire and ice and rage and boiling and oh God, oh God it needs to stop. He can hear Gerard screaming and Mikey must be trying to match him and Ray is screaming again too because there’s nothing but fire in his veins and never before has he wanted to die more than this moment.
Years later it must be that the pain subsides, that Ray can breathe again and when he manages to loll his head over he sees that Korse is going back to Gerard, is injecting what looks like twice as much and then Gerard is screaming through his teeth, head jerking back and entire body spasming. Mikey isn’t moving anymore, he’s looking on in horror and Ray realizes in a rush that there are tears streaking down Mikey’s face. That his eyes are wide and childlike in their terror. That Mikey, in this moment, is exactly what he may have always been but never let it show.
Just a scared little brother clinging to his older brother for support and bravery.
“Gee,” Mikey chokes out and there are alarms going off in Ray’s head a second before Korse turns and looks at him. Behind him, Gerard slumps in the chair.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Korse says, and looks over at a suddenly still Gerard. “I don’t believe Gee would be a proper handle for Party Poison.”
Mikey ignores him, and there’s an edge of pleading in his tone. “Look at me. Please. Gee. Look at me.”
Gerard doesn’t move.
“Look at me.”
Nothing.
Mikey is shaking his head, eyes never leaving his brother’s limp body. “Look at me. Please.”
When Gerard still doesn’t move, Mikey breaks.
“LOOK AT ME!”
The door bursts open and suddenly everything is chaos as Korse is shouting and snarling and Draculoids are pouring in. Ray can barely focus, blood loss and pain and dehydration and malnutrition taking its toll as it all merges together with stress and rage and mourning. It’s why he sees a figure, a startlingly familiar figure that’s taking down Drac after Drac with deadly accuracy, eyes trained on each target with the skill of a master. There are shouts beyond them, in the hallway.
Ray blinks one last time before consciousness escapes him, the sounds of screams and pain still ringing loud and clear.
-
Standing in the middle of the carnage, Bob aims up at the camera, the pure portrait of calm fury. His next words are no more than a growl, eyes slit behind his mask.
“Show’s over, motherfuckers.”
The screen goes black.
-
“Oh god. Ray. Ray, please, wake up. Fuck.”
Ray feels a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently, but the voice doesn’t match up. There’s no way that voice could be speaking in a frantic tone to him, trying to rouse him, trying to bring him back. Ray fights against the darkness that’s still trying to crowd his senses, because he knows. He knows that voice can’t really be there. He groans, turns his head away from where he thinks the voice might be coming from. There’s fumbling around his arms as the latches are released, as blood starts to flow back into his fingers. A hand touches his cheek and the voice returns, soft and tender and so very, very desperate.
“Ray. Look at me.”
A long moment as Ray claws his way back to consciousness and sanity, and when he finally manages it he’s greeted with blond hair and blue eyes. There’s a long moment where he just stares up at the figure leant over him, as he stares at Bob and Bob stares right back at him. There’s blood dripping down the side of Bob’s face, and he looks haggard and worn down and frayed at the edges, but so very Bob in his huge presence and gruff voice. Ray knows that he’s gaping, that his eyes are wide and he’s just staring up at Bob like he’s gone and sprouted three heads, one of which was a turkey.
“Hey,” Bob says, and smiles tiredly.
Ray punches him.
-
“I probably deserved that.”
“Fuck right, you did.”
-
The Dracs are catching up, but Frank just lets out a whooping laugh and hangs himself out the window, long hair billowing in the wind as the Trans Am flies down the long stretch of road. Gerard is laughing too from behind the wheel and even Mikey’s got a shit-eating grin on his face, but nothing compares to Bob and Ray who are both out the same door, Ray keeping one hand on the door so it doesn’t go flying while Bob aims at the oncoming mini-fleet. Underneath him Ray closes one eye and fires, but the shot barely catches off the driver as the car veers off to the side to avoid it.
“Fuck this noise!” Frank yells over the roar of the wind. He reaches back in and before Mikey can so much as let out a squawk of protest he’s plucking the red gun from Mikey’s holster and shoving himself back up and out the window, Grace keeping a firm hold around his shins like he asked. She laughing too, and after a moment Mikey makes something of a pout and grabs Frank’s waist to hold him in. Frank’s laughter has always been infectious.
Ray goes for another shot and swears when it catches the mirror of the nearest car.
“Motherfucker.”
Bob turns to grin down at Ray, the wind whipping his hair around his face. His eyes are bright and teasing.
“You’ve gotta learn how to aim better, Toro, or else you’re gonna-”
Bob slumps forward and Ray just barely catches him, for one split second completely confused. And then, then he screams something close to “NO!” when he sees the charred flesh at the back of Bob’s neck, scrambles and pulls Bob back into the Trans Am with pure horror in every movement. The door is still wide open and Mikey is the only one with enough sense to reach over and slam it shut, his expression suddenly closed off.
“Oh god. No. Oh no. No, Bob, come on. No.” Bob’s limp in Ray’s arms, face pressed against his chest and eyes blank and the smell of burning skin is too much for Ray to handle. Bile rises in his throat but he continues to shake his partner, his best friend, fuck, his…
Fuck.
“Bob! Wake up! Wake up, you idiot!” Ray is frantic now, shaking Bob and running his hands through filthy grimy blond hair and from the front seat he can hear what sounds like a hitched gasp from Frank when he takes in the scene and a scared noise from Grace huddled on the other side of the car. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. Frank is wrong, Frank has no need for that, Grace has no need to cry because Bob is not dead. “Wake up!” There’s something of a grin still present on Bob’s face, an eerie shadow of what was laughter in a world so desperate for it.
Something’s bubbling deep in his chest, something horrible and dark and threatening to spill over along with the tears that he can’t seem to suddenly stop. He clutches at Bob, holds him tight, and pleads one last time for what once was, for something that he knows he needs to survive.
“BOB!”
Ray opens his eyes.
(His eye. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to referring to it as a singular, not when he spent so much time normal, at least in the physical sense.)
He’s lying in one of the cots at the far end of the restaurant, away from the noise and mayhem, and after a moment he realizes his patch is gone, replaced by gauze once again. Frank’s curled up next to him, one hand resting on Ray’s chest, and while he’s fast asleep there’s still that furrow to his brow that means Frank’s lost in some nightmare, some echo of the horror he was imprisoned in for three days straight. Ray manages to lift a hand and run it once through the tragedy that is now Frank’s crew-cut, wondering how long it’ll be before it’s back to the length Frank had always loved it at. His fingers brush against the thick scar at the side of Frank’s mouth, touches the bruise on his temple. In the crook of his own elbow Ray can feel the pull of stitches, and somewhere deep down there’s the throbbing ache in his chest. His throat has that faint beat of lingering pain as well, and he wonders briefly how that happened. He thinks of Gerard, if Gerard is awake, if Mikey is with him.
He wants to cry for it all.
Frank whimpers at the touch and presses closer, his face practically nestled in Ray’s neck. Ray returns his hand to the top of Frank’s head, threads fingers through the short black bristles-or what’s left of them, at any rate.
“He didn’t want to sleep alone.”
Ray doesn’t jump at that voice, doesn’t even really react other than to flick his eye over to where it came from, sees Bob leaning against the window sill. The bruise on his cheek is still deep purple, but Ray doesn’t regret it one bit. He feels his arm tighten around Frank’s shoulders, but not out of any protective urge against Bob-Frank made another soft noise and Ray wants to do what he couldn’t for so long.
“I can understand that,” he tries to reply, but nothing more than a hoarse whisper comes out and he starts coughing before he can help it. Bob is there in a second, picking up the glass of water and practically shoving it against Ray’s mouth, muttering “drink, motherfucker, before blood comes up next.”
It’s true. Ray can taste that sickeningly familiar copper tint in his mouth and he tries to keep his heaving under control before he wakes Frank. To his shock, Bob doesn’t try to rub his back, but rather presses two fingers firm but gentle against Ray’s throat and rubs in soft circles.
“You fucked up your throat bad,” Bob mutters, and the gesture is soothing despite the pain still lingering as Ray finally gets himself under control. “Doctor D. said that you probably didn’t talk for a while and then fucked it all up when you started screaming again. Disuse followed by overuse or some shit.” There’s a crease between his eyes as he looks down at Ray, still rubbing his throat. “That what happened?”
Ray nods.
Letting out a sigh through his nose, Bob leans back, fingers for a moment brushing against Frank’s cheek. He’s still got something of a fever, and he’s heavy and warm against Ray’s side.
“Fuck,” Bob says quietly. “We took too long, didn’t we?”
Ray turns away, mouth tightening. He should be thankful they came at all, but Ray’s still not so sure he’s completely lucid. Four days ago he would’ve claimed it impossible that Bob would be standing in front of him, talking to him and touching him and… and obviously alive, but now? Now he’s not really too sure of anything anymore and where does that leave him mentally-wise?
Bumfuck nowhere, that’s where.
Still.
Ray tries swallowing and though it burns, it’s bearable in comparison and he reaches out his free hand. Bob’s eyebrows furrow again and when Ray motions come closer he does so, leaning down. Ray touches his fingers to Bob’s cheek, cups it in his hand and just feels. Bob is cool to the touch, not hot like he used to be, but the bristles are the same. The scar is the same. There’s a tiny hole on the right side of his bottom lip, a remnant of a bad idea and a drunken night.
Ray feels his own face crumple.
“Hey, whoa,” Bob says a second before Ray loses it completely. But it doesn’t matter how badly his throat hurts from it, how Frank makes a sleepy confused noise next to him and raises his head blearily, it doesn’t matter that Bob’s looking at him in faint horror because Bob’s never been able to deal with people crying.
It’s really him.
It’s really Bob.
And for the first time since they stormed BL/ind, Ray just lets go and cries.
-
It takes two sedatives and slap to the face from Show Pony to get Mikey to shut up long enough for Doctor Death Defying to tell him that yes, with lots of bed rest and antibiotics and no hysterics, Gerard will indeed be fine. It will take a shitload of time and even more of what precious little medicine they have to get Gerard up and running again, but eventually the legendary Party Poison will be back on his feet and kicking ass like always.
Frank is a different story. He sleeps a lot, Ray has noticed, a way to escape the waking hours he spends living in constant fear. He doesn’t want to go outside as much anymore, nor does he really want anything to do with Draculoids, Korse, or being a Killjoy.
One day he clings to Ray and whispers sadly, “I want to be Fun Ghoul again, but I don’t know how.”
Ray could only screw up his face and hold in more tears and hug him back. Frank is broken, he’s broken beyond repair and even if he wasn’t, Ray wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing him. He can only hold Frank tight and whisper pathetic reassurances that they are grateful for whatever of Frank they’re lucky enough to get.
He spends a lot of time letting people cling to him. When Grace saw him for the first time since he was captured it was like she had rockets glued to her shoes as she jumped him and he barely managed to catch her.
“Ray, Ray, Ray,” she sobs into his neck, and Ray suddenly has the fleeting memory that she’d watched him die. “Ray, I thought you were dead. I thought you left.”
How do you tell a little girl that you were? That you did?
Ray doesn’t know, so he just kisses her forehead and rubs her back and murmurs, “I’ll always come back for you, baby girl. Don’t you worry about that.”
Bob watches on, rubbing the back of his neck subconsciously. Ray can’t help but catch the way he pulls his hand away and stares for a long moment at the blood that coats his palm before he casually wipes it off on his pants. He’s still the same old Bob, still gruff and coarse and rough around the edges. He still chugs Red Bull like it’s the last can on earth, still bitches sometimes about his wrist. But he lets Ray and Frank sleep in the same bed with him at night, lets Mikey steal from his plate instead of trying to fork his hand. He visits Gerard often and gives Grace piggyback rides, a hoodie pulled over his head so she doesn’t catch a glimpse of his neck.
It’s a sullen, lifeless echo of what they once had, but broken as they are it’s more than they could ever hope to get back.
-
It doesn’t take much in this day and age to make a legend.
Ray knows that people still talk of Jet-Star and the time he stood off against the group of Draculoids coming at them by climbing out the window and onto the hood of the car, Gerard still driving it at high speed. He can still remember how stupid a stunt that’d been, how the adrenaline had worn off and he’d realized that, yes, he’d stood on top of a car moving at least seventy miles an hour and lived to tell about it. Bob had nearly taken his head off.
Legends are born, not made, people used to say.
But the legend of Fun Ghoul, the man who killed fifty Draculoids, who singlehandedly disabled an eighteen wheeler carrying goods to Battery City by clinging to the underside? That was just Frank Iero deciding he’d had enough, and wanted to get back at the corporation for denying them their rights. How Mikey ay, the Kobra Kid, had leaned all the way out the window with only his knees hooking him to the door, before he’d decided to simply jump onto the car next to them and shoot through the roof? It was Mikey who was reckless and idiotic and wanted to show off to his brother. How Bob Bryar, the Battery Bomber, seemingly killed in the struggle for freedom, had escaped from his imprisonment in BL/ind. How they had brought him back in labs buried deep under the earth to become personality living in a body that no longer pumped blood. A living corpse with nowhere else to go. How Gerard Way, leader of the Killjoys, Party Poison, was a symbol of anarchy and hope, spread the idea that what they did was right. They fought BL/ind because someone had to.
They made their legend, and of those legends were born the heroes of the Zones.
And now, Ray wonders mildly if the people of Battery City, of the Zones themselves, still believe in them, still believe that those stories are true. If someone really did have to fight BL/ind. He thinks of all the people Jet-Star has killed, and how many Ray Toro regretted killing.
He wonders if the people of Battery City even need someone to believe in.
Ray knows the answer, because the answer was always there.
-
“They don’t believe in us,” Ray says softly one night, staring out the window, beyond the desert, staring at the lights of Battery City in the distance. Across from him Mikey is curled up with his hand resting just above the bandage on Gerard’s chest. Both brothers are fast asleep, for the time being without a care in the world.
Bob is sprawled out on the bed next to Ray, snoring softly, skin frozen and the flesh at the back of his neck still black as ever. Ray touches the identification on Bob’s hand, the barcode and the numbers, the property of BL/ind that’s forever emblazoned in flesh that is no longer alive. Frank is lying on his other side, practically on top of Ray, eyes blank as he too looks out the window, and there’s a long moment before a soft smile settles across his face.
“But I believe we’re the enemy,” Frank whispers dreamily, right before he falls asleep, leaving Ray to wonder quietly to himself whether the heroes of the Zones were ever heroes to begin with.
After all, you only live forever in the lights you make.
-
“All the cameras watch the accidents and stars you hate. They only care if you can bleed. Does the television make you feel the pills you ate, or every person that you need to be?”
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the end.