Prosfic - The Lyke Wake
So... the other day I asked for prompts for fic, and I actually wrote some - and then I was interupted by something that's finally happening after not-happening for over a year. Yesterday I did something about that, and today I actually managed to finish a fic for another prompt. Wheeee for writing! *g*
This one was from greengerbil as we drove the sunny roads of East Anglia after a rather fab Pros-y day out. She gave me The Lyke-Wake Dirge (and here's a link to The New Lyke-Wake Club which was founded by Bill Cowley!, and I went away and this was what came back...
The Lyke-Wake
by Slantedlight
The storm was more battering than he would have thought possible, coming upon them like a shove as they sped up the hillside after Giles and Wisbech, guns drawn but not firing, not yet, not on unarmed men, no matter how vile. There was a sudden wind, a darkening of the already dark skies, and then the heavens opened in purple tumult upon them.
Bodie felt himself slipping on grass that suddenly ran with water, managed to push back to his feet with one hand as it met the ground, gasping and blinking as he tried to keep their quarry in sight. There was a building above them, sitting square and low and somehow spiked on the crest of the hill, barely more than a shadow now against the clouds behind, and he caught a final glimpse of two figures as they vanished into its depths.
A hand grasped his arm as Doyle caught up with him and came to a slithering halt by his side. Bodie didn't bother trying to shout, instead he gestured towards the building with his gun, tapped his own chest and held his hand out. He'd go straight in, Doyle could circle around the back, check the other exits.
Without looking back, Bodie began moving more cautiously up the hillside, tucking his gun under his jacket, still in his hand ready to fire at a moment's notice. It'd do them no good if he had to tip water out of the muzzle first.
They'd be watching of course - and they were still in the building, he could feel their presence as surely as he knew where Doyle was, a tingling in his skin, a sense of the air disturbed. Of course most of the air seemed to be water right now, his skin ready to start soaking the stuff up at any moment. Dark the building might be, and full of villains, but at least it would be dry.
He reached the comparative shelter of the brick wall just as the sky cracked and tore itself apart, rent by lightning and a great doom of rolling thunder. It wasn't much, but the light was enough to give him an idea of the place - a window either side of the gap that passed for a doorway, and what looked like a metal ladder leading up to a flat, railed roof. Just another odd building of no apparent purpose, here on the long-abandoned airfield.
It wasn't very big - surely there couldn't be more than one room inside... Swiping impatiently at the rain as it gusted across his face, he edged closer to the gap of the doorway, gun out again, held solidly in two hands. Ready.
There was another roll of thunder, and he chanced his arm crossing in front of the doorway, in the hopes that it would have distracted Giles and Wisbech. It did more than that. Sheets of lightning lit the world again - one, two, three, this time - and there, highlighted as he leaped through an empty window, was Doyle - and Giles, knife poised to sink as he landed inside. There was no time for thought - there was never time for thought. Bodie fired, a single clear shot. In the third flash of lightning he could see nothing but Doyle completing his jump, heard nothing but another gunshot ring out. Doyle's Browning? It had to be, he knew they didn't have shooters - but he couldn't tell for sure, not with the rain and the next peal of thunder, not as he completed his slide back into cover on the other side of the doorway.
For a moment the wind died down and the world seemed to still, and then Bodie heard his own name called.
He waited a heartbeat, and then it came again - a frustrated Doyle roar this time. A figure appeared beside him in the doorway, one hand thumping his leg as it reached out to the doorframe. He grabbed it, as much to reassure him as to get Doyle's attention, felt his arm grabbed in return.
"Alright?" he asked, as nonchalantly as he could manage. Stupid bastard, practically deserved to be cut up, coming in against the window like that. It might be dark, but it was never that dark at two in the morning in July, and if the cloud had shifted at the wrong moment...
"Yeah - you?"
"Yeah." He pushed Doyle back into the pitch black dry, waited hopefully for his eyes to adjust even a little. "Taking a chance against the window weren't you?"
"They were looking out your way the flash o' lightning before that - must've moved a bit sharpish in between."
"Yeah, it's right over us," Bodie said. He'd only seen them watching for Doyle.
"Nice." Doyle nodded at the storm in appreciation, a dark shape that turned back to the doorway to watch outwards.
"Got the job done anyway." Bodie stretched a hand back towards the edge of the door, let his fingers brush over Doyle as he started a circuit of the room they were in, feeling the brick roughly under them all the way back to the other side of the doorway, seeing the occasional flash of their surroundings as the lightning struck again and again. His feet hit something soft twice, and he dropped briefly down to ensure that they really were bodies rather than casualties, but he could feel one neatly holed through the heart - how did Doyle manage that with less than a second of light to aim by? - the other seemed to have lost an eye and perhaps his nose, his face a soft, wet mush. Both were unmoving.
By the time he got back to the door - a single room it was, maybe twenty by twenty, no more - the heat of the chase had drained out of him, and he was starting to feel both the rain and the wind that blew over the hill and straight through their windows and doorway.
He crowded close behind Doyle, still watching the storm, felt warmth against his chest, his stomach, his thighs, even as another lash of rain blew across them. It wasn't as if they could get any wetter...
"How's it looking?" he lifted a hand to Doyle's shoulder in warning, half-shouted into his hear.
Doyle shrugged and shook his head slightly, so that still more drops fell over them both. "I think it's circling round!"
"Do you... fuck!" Another massive roll of thunder cracked, surely right above them, and lightning flashed hard, struck ground just beyond their hill, again and again and then gone, leaving behind slanting, branching shapes surely burned into his retinas. He blinked, wiped his face with his sleeve, more for comfort than because it would help, and pulled Doyle back inside. "Gonna have to sit this one out!"
"Yeah..." Doyle's hand found his arm, circled it lightly and held on. "The Cow won't love us if we play lightning rod."
"Might be the better of two evils, mate - those two've had it."
He felt - had to be - rather than saw the quick flash of Doyle's white grin.
"Shouldn't have run then, should they?"
Shouldn't have been playing with knives, Bodie thought, seeing again the flash of silver, sharp in the lightning, and aimed surely for Doyle's stomach. He could almost feel it, the sick certainty that there was metal slicing through the meat of you, the strange heat of it, the pull of flesh, the drag of insides trying to become outsides...
Lightning flashed again.
"Here." He led Doyle to the far wall, away from the open doorway, from the empty window, from the two bodies lying still and bloody on either side of the room. "Dunno about you, but if we've got to wait around I'd rather do it from the comfort of a stone-cold floor." He slid down to sit, considered briefly taking off his jacket for cushioning, before deciding that it wouldn't do them much good, wet as it was - better to have the thin warmth it gave. At least it was summer, they'd be uncomfortable and wet, but not dangerously so.
"Siddown, mate," he suggested again, "Get some kip." It'd be almost warm enough to sleep with Doyle down beside him.
"In this lot?" Doyle asked, as a sudden gust of wind howled around the corner of the building, "You've got to be joking!"
Yeah, but it wasn't gunfire, and that on its own filled Bodie with a strange contentment. They were sitting in an old airforce shed, in the middle of a raging gale and thunderstorm, in wet clothes, and with two dead bodies, but no one was shooting at them. It could be worse. He let his eyes lose focus, let the darkness surround them. It was just night now, nothing but the night.
Outside, the storm passed overhead, the rain eased to a dull but sullen fall, and dark turned finally to dawn.
Eventually Bodie realised that the square of window he was gazing at had become defined, no longer an imagined lightning-flash of shape, but something solid, with hard edges, cracked panes, dirty glass, and he became aware of a stillness beside him, not sleep, not quiet, something different. He turned his head.
Doyle was staring at Wisbech in the gathering light, right into his dead eyes. He didn't look at Bodie, but he took a breath to speak, and in the half-sleep of the small hours, Bodie felt as if he was pulled with it, taken in with the wet air, dread heavy in him.
"Be us one day."
Yeah. It would. Bodie closed his eyes, cold-water awake.
"No one lives forever," he said shortly. "Knew that when you joined this mob."
"Yeah..."
Quiet again, except for the rain drumming on the roof, a rushing of water from the gutter by the doorway. He found he was staring at Wisbech himself, a pale blur in the growing light, one eye somehow brighter than the rest of his face, swathes of blood turned black as it trailed cold skin, pooled in the concrete below.
Was it worth it, he wondered to the bodies in front of them, did you enjoy your ill-gotten gains for a year, two? There were alot of people dead because of them, people here and in far-off lands both, from the guns they'd bought and sold; probably alot more in pain, and still more who woke up in the middle of the night wondering what the sound had been against their bedroom window, whether their fears had caught up with them yet. Nothing they'd done gave them the right to live for even another minute.
He'd done something similar himself, a long time ago in countries far away. That would be him some day. Would it be Doyle lying on the other side of the room? Would some other poor wet sod sit staring at his empty carcass, wondering where the rot had set in? Except...
He'd got out, hadn't he, changed to the side the angels were on? When would the balance even out, how long would he have to keep himself alive, keep the devils at bay to make up for it all? Keep Doyle alive - maybe that'd be enough. Doyle might have his own devils, but he'd left them behind alot longer ago than Bodie had. Maybe keeping Doyle alive to fight for both their souls would be enough...
Then again, Doyle probably thought he was immortal - look at tonight. And how many times had he gone chasing off after a grass on his own? How many broken arms, cracked ribs, because he'd taken a risk too far? It was the job, they both did it, but... they did it because...
One day they would be dead.
Beside him Doyle was quiet again, a heavy, warm weight against Bodie's shoulder, his arm, his side, breathing softly.
"Not tonight," Bodie said suddenly, and again he turned towards Doyle.
He turned towards him, and he leaned forwards, and he kissed him, in the strange greying light of the new day, and Doyle let him do it.
Doyle kissed him back.
After a while they drew apart, and sat, side by side, still pressed together all down one side. Bodie watched Doyle, watching him, and neither of them moved.
"Storm's over," he managed eventually, as the world faded back into colour around them.
"Yeah." Doyle stood up and stretched, glancing at the room, at the bodies on the floor. "Come on," he said, holding out a hand for Bodie to grasp and pulling him up. "Let's go home, then."
August 2008
This one was from greengerbil as we drove the sunny roads of East Anglia after a rather fab Pros-y day out. She gave me The Lyke-Wake Dirge (and here's a link to The New Lyke-Wake Club which was founded by Bill Cowley!, and I went away and this was what came back...
The Lyke-Wake
by Slantedlight
The storm was more battering than he would have thought possible, coming upon them like a shove as they sped up the hillside after Giles and Wisbech, guns drawn but not firing, not yet, not on unarmed men, no matter how vile. There was a sudden wind, a darkening of the already dark skies, and then the heavens opened in purple tumult upon them.
Bodie felt himself slipping on grass that suddenly ran with water, managed to push back to his feet with one hand as it met the ground, gasping and blinking as he tried to keep their quarry in sight. There was a building above them, sitting square and low and somehow spiked on the crest of the hill, barely more than a shadow now against the clouds behind, and he caught a final glimpse of two figures as they vanished into its depths.
A hand grasped his arm as Doyle caught up with him and came to a slithering halt by his side. Bodie didn't bother trying to shout, instead he gestured towards the building with his gun, tapped his own chest and held his hand out. He'd go straight in, Doyle could circle around the back, check the other exits.
Without looking back, Bodie began moving more cautiously up the hillside, tucking his gun under his jacket, still in his hand ready to fire at a moment's notice. It'd do them no good if he had to tip water out of the muzzle first.
They'd be watching of course - and they were still in the building, he could feel their presence as surely as he knew where Doyle was, a tingling in his skin, a sense of the air disturbed. Of course most of the air seemed to be water right now, his skin ready to start soaking the stuff up at any moment. Dark the building might be, and full of villains, but at least it would be dry.
He reached the comparative shelter of the brick wall just as the sky cracked and tore itself apart, rent by lightning and a great doom of rolling thunder. It wasn't much, but the light was enough to give him an idea of the place - a window either side of the gap that passed for a doorway, and what looked like a metal ladder leading up to a flat, railed roof. Just another odd building of no apparent purpose, here on the long-abandoned airfield.
It wasn't very big - surely there couldn't be more than one room inside... Swiping impatiently at the rain as it gusted across his face, he edged closer to the gap of the doorway, gun out again, held solidly in two hands. Ready.
There was another roll of thunder, and he chanced his arm crossing in front of the doorway, in the hopes that it would have distracted Giles and Wisbech. It did more than that. Sheets of lightning lit the world again - one, two, three, this time - and there, highlighted as he leaped through an empty window, was Doyle - and Giles, knife poised to sink as he landed inside. There was no time for thought - there was never time for thought. Bodie fired, a single clear shot. In the third flash of lightning he could see nothing but Doyle completing his jump, heard nothing but another gunshot ring out. Doyle's Browning? It had to be, he knew they didn't have shooters - but he couldn't tell for sure, not with the rain and the next peal of thunder, not as he completed his slide back into cover on the other side of the doorway.
For a moment the wind died down and the world seemed to still, and then Bodie heard his own name called.
He waited a heartbeat, and then it came again - a frustrated Doyle roar this time. A figure appeared beside him in the doorway, one hand thumping his leg as it reached out to the doorframe. He grabbed it, as much to reassure him as to get Doyle's attention, felt his arm grabbed in return.
"Alright?" he asked, as nonchalantly as he could manage. Stupid bastard, practically deserved to be cut up, coming in against the window like that. It might be dark, but it was never that dark at two in the morning in July, and if the cloud had shifted at the wrong moment...
"Yeah - you?"
"Yeah." He pushed Doyle back into the pitch black dry, waited hopefully for his eyes to adjust even a little. "Taking a chance against the window weren't you?"
"They were looking out your way the flash o' lightning before that - must've moved a bit sharpish in between."
"Yeah, it's right over us," Bodie said. He'd only seen them watching for Doyle.
"Nice." Doyle nodded at the storm in appreciation, a dark shape that turned back to the doorway to watch outwards.
"Got the job done anyway." Bodie stretched a hand back towards the edge of the door, let his fingers brush over Doyle as he started a circuit of the room they were in, feeling the brick roughly under them all the way back to the other side of the doorway, seeing the occasional flash of their surroundings as the lightning struck again and again. His feet hit something soft twice, and he dropped briefly down to ensure that they really were bodies rather than casualties, but he could feel one neatly holed through the heart - how did Doyle manage that with less than a second of light to aim by? - the other seemed to have lost an eye and perhaps his nose, his face a soft, wet mush. Both were unmoving.
By the time he got back to the door - a single room it was, maybe twenty by twenty, no more - the heat of the chase had drained out of him, and he was starting to feel both the rain and the wind that blew over the hill and straight through their windows and doorway.
He crowded close behind Doyle, still watching the storm, felt warmth against his chest, his stomach, his thighs, even as another lash of rain blew across them. It wasn't as if they could get any wetter...
"How's it looking?" he lifted a hand to Doyle's shoulder in warning, half-shouted into his hear.
Doyle shrugged and shook his head slightly, so that still more drops fell over them both. "I think it's circling round!"
"Do you... fuck!" Another massive roll of thunder cracked, surely right above them, and lightning flashed hard, struck ground just beyond their hill, again and again and then gone, leaving behind slanting, branching shapes surely burned into his retinas. He blinked, wiped his face with his sleeve, more for comfort than because it would help, and pulled Doyle back inside. "Gonna have to sit this one out!"
"Yeah..." Doyle's hand found his arm, circled it lightly and held on. "The Cow won't love us if we play lightning rod."
"Might be the better of two evils, mate - those two've had it."
He felt - had to be - rather than saw the quick flash of Doyle's white grin.
"Shouldn't have run then, should they?"
Shouldn't have been playing with knives, Bodie thought, seeing again the flash of silver, sharp in the lightning, and aimed surely for Doyle's stomach. He could almost feel it, the sick certainty that there was metal slicing through the meat of you, the strange heat of it, the pull of flesh, the drag of insides trying to become outsides...
Lightning flashed again.
"Here." He led Doyle to the far wall, away from the open doorway, from the empty window, from the two bodies lying still and bloody on either side of the room. "Dunno about you, but if we've got to wait around I'd rather do it from the comfort of a stone-cold floor." He slid down to sit, considered briefly taking off his jacket for cushioning, before deciding that it wouldn't do them much good, wet as it was - better to have the thin warmth it gave. At least it was summer, they'd be uncomfortable and wet, but not dangerously so.
"Siddown, mate," he suggested again, "Get some kip." It'd be almost warm enough to sleep with Doyle down beside him.
"In this lot?" Doyle asked, as a sudden gust of wind howled around the corner of the building, "You've got to be joking!"
Yeah, but it wasn't gunfire, and that on its own filled Bodie with a strange contentment. They were sitting in an old airforce shed, in the middle of a raging gale and thunderstorm, in wet clothes, and with two dead bodies, but no one was shooting at them. It could be worse. He let his eyes lose focus, let the darkness surround them. It was just night now, nothing but the night.
Outside, the storm passed overhead, the rain eased to a dull but sullen fall, and dark turned finally to dawn.
Eventually Bodie realised that the square of window he was gazing at had become defined, no longer an imagined lightning-flash of shape, but something solid, with hard edges, cracked panes, dirty glass, and he became aware of a stillness beside him, not sleep, not quiet, something different. He turned his head.
Doyle was staring at Wisbech in the gathering light, right into his dead eyes. He didn't look at Bodie, but he took a breath to speak, and in the half-sleep of the small hours, Bodie felt as if he was pulled with it, taken in with the wet air, dread heavy in him.
"Be us one day."
Yeah. It would. Bodie closed his eyes, cold-water awake.
"No one lives forever," he said shortly. "Knew that when you joined this mob."
"Yeah..."
Quiet again, except for the rain drumming on the roof, a rushing of water from the gutter by the doorway. He found he was staring at Wisbech himself, a pale blur in the growing light, one eye somehow brighter than the rest of his face, swathes of blood turned black as it trailed cold skin, pooled in the concrete below.
Was it worth it, he wondered to the bodies in front of them, did you enjoy your ill-gotten gains for a year, two? There were alot of people dead because of them, people here and in far-off lands both, from the guns they'd bought and sold; probably alot more in pain, and still more who woke up in the middle of the night wondering what the sound had been against their bedroom window, whether their fears had caught up with them yet. Nothing they'd done gave them the right to live for even another minute.
He'd done something similar himself, a long time ago in countries far away. That would be him some day. Would it be Doyle lying on the other side of the room? Would some other poor wet sod sit staring at his empty carcass, wondering where the rot had set in? Except...
He'd got out, hadn't he, changed to the side the angels were on? When would the balance even out, how long would he have to keep himself alive, keep the devils at bay to make up for it all? Keep Doyle alive - maybe that'd be enough. Doyle might have his own devils, but he'd left them behind alot longer ago than Bodie had. Maybe keeping Doyle alive to fight for both their souls would be enough...
Then again, Doyle probably thought he was immortal - look at tonight. And how many times had he gone chasing off after a grass on his own? How many broken arms, cracked ribs, because he'd taken a risk too far? It was the job, they both did it, but... they did it because...
One day they would be dead.
Beside him Doyle was quiet again, a heavy, warm weight against Bodie's shoulder, his arm, his side, breathing softly.
"Not tonight," Bodie said suddenly, and again he turned towards Doyle.
He turned towards him, and he leaned forwards, and he kissed him, in the strange greying light of the new day, and Doyle let him do it.
Doyle kissed him back.
After a while they drew apart, and sat, side by side, still pressed together all down one side. Bodie watched Doyle, watching him, and neither of them moved.
"Storm's over," he managed eventually, as the world faded back into colour around them.
"Yeah." Doyle stood up and stretched, glancing at the room, at the bodies on the floor. "Come on," he said, holding out a hand for Bodie to grasp and pulling him up. "Let's go home, then."
August 2008