Being Human: Good Times, Bad Times [Hal/Cutler + ensemble] 1/?
Title: “Good Times, Bad Times”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R
Timeline: canon divergence mid-Episode 4x08, “The War Child”
Summary: When Cutler comes to Honolulu Heights with the purpose of killing Eve, it is Hal who opens the door. And he doesn’t let him enter. From here on out, it’s either a horror show or a sitcom. Cutler is not quite certain what the difference is. [Hal/Cutler]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Epigraph and title from “I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer” by The Cardigans.
A/N: I’ve been toying with this idea for ages. It was supposed to be more serious but thanks to certain happenings I’ve decided I want to write something excessively wacky. This will probably have a few chapters. Plus, I shamelessly nicked the idea of chapter titles from Scrubs.
GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES
To the good times that we shared and the bad times that we'll have.
Part 1
Our Heroic Moments
So apparently he’s got unrealistic expectations.
Well, huh, Cutler reasons, what’s so unrealistic about coming to a house full of people who want you dusted and expecting them to accept help you are so graciously offering them?
Not that he knew the house was full of people who wanted him dead when he decided to drop by. He had expected Tom (who, let’s face it, had a bit of a right to be disgruntled about the whole massacre at the night club debacle) and he had expected whatsername, the guardian of the War Child. They would have been a handful already. But it was Hal who opened the door.
Rewind back to last night: Hal playing the tragic hero (or just hero, you never know, there’s always this patina of tragedy on those heroic types) in the darkness punctuated throughout with the pulsing strobe lights. A solitary supervamp versus a raging beast. (Sounds like a story out of Regus’s never-ending comic book; not that Cutler has ever read it.)
“You’re alive,” Cutler exhales, and feels stupid for spelling it out.
Last night: Hal on his knees (and not in the way Cutler would have wanted him to be), holding his hand, begging to stop the madness.
This morning: Hal glaring at him on the doorstep of Tom’s house (they live together!?).
The look makes Cutler’s skin crawl. It’s a bit like the look Hal gave him yesterday on the dance floor. The get-out-while-you-can-or-I’ll-flay-you-alive-when-I’m-done-here look.
It has only just occurred to Cutler that he seriously considered Hal to be proper dead once again. He believed Tom had torn him apart. He must have been in shock and too busy dealing with the Old Ones to react properly, and now pain and relief flood him at the same time, and all he can do is gape helplessly. He makes a move to touch Hal, as if to make sure he is not seeing things, but Hal steps back into the safety of the house, and Cutler meets the barrier that stings and bites and wouldn’t let him go through. He is very explicitly not invited.
There is another person standing behind Hal’s back. Grinning.
“Someone’s got a death wish,” she sing-songs.
Cutler knits his eyebrows, confused. “Hang on. Didn’t I-?”
The girl nods. Her grin turns positively wicked.
“Look!” he blurts out, getting down to business while he still maintains some composure, and has got all his limbs intact. “The Old Ones, they want the baby alive.”
“Well, duh,” the girl says. Very eloquent. No, really, what does Hal see in her? “What else is new?”
That throws Cutler off.
“You know about this?” He can hear the baby crying in the house. Un-fucking-imaginable. “Why on earth is she still alive then? You’re practically handing them the world on a silver platter!”
“Wasn’t that what you were gonna do?”
Hal turns to her and says: “Alex, please.”
Please. Is he kidding?
The ghost huffs but obediently steps back and disappears in the depths of the house. The baby’s whining becomes even more shrill. Cutler hears a female voice; then Alex’s voice interrupts. They are discussing him. He should really get the hell out of Dodge now.
“I get it,” he says, with a weak smile. “You’re some kind of a hero now. Well, let’s go be heroes!” He raises his fist like he’s Superman ready for take-off.
Hal gives him a condescending look.
“The Old Ones didn’t like your plan, did they?”
“We had a few disagreements. About the, uh… structure of…” Cutler deflates, and admits: “My videos went missing. And Mr Snow is kind of a dick.”
“That, he is.”
“It’s your fault! If you had driven the point home it would have spared me the embarrassment and you the… her.” He thinks about it and adds: “And Tom-.”
That’s clearly a mistake. Hal darts out of the house, teeth bared in an enraged snarl. The sight of him like this, so familiar, makes Cutler’s breath catch in his throat.
“You don’t even get to say his name,” Hal spits. “Not after what you tried to do.”
Okay, trigger material. Process and catalogue for future reference.
“I thought you died,” Cutler says in a small voice. That’s not what he wants to say, but his mouth betrays him. “I thought he ripped you apart.”
“Wishful thinking,” Hal says dismissively.
Cutler doesn’t know how to impress the point on him. He simply reiterates:
“I thought you died.”
He reaches out, fingers brushing Hal’s forearm tentatively. Hal is dressed in the same jacket he wore last night. Looks pretty stylish.
Hal lets Cutler’s hand linger for a moment, then takes a step back. His eyes are hard. Cutler suppresses the urge to keep clinging to him. He feels utterly lost of a sudden.
Unrealistic expectations, that’s right.
“I can help,” he says. “Obviously you’re reluctant to kill the baby yourself. I can understand that. I could maybe-.”
Hal reaches into the flowerpot hanging by the door and fishes a stake out of it. Must be Tom’s idea. Very creative.
The message is quite clear. Cutler decides not to test the “or else” option and gets off the property straight away.
* * *
One of the reasons he likes cinematography as much as he does is that films are often devoid of boring bits. A scene fades to black, and you wouldn’t see the characters going somewhere or waiting for hours, lamenting their sorry lot (unless it’s the whole point of a film). The film cuts to the action bits nine times out of ten.
Cutler wishes he could fast-forward his own life.
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. The Old Ones, that annoying bunch of deleted species, were supposed to like the plan. To fucking love it. To give him the statue and the country and everything (he thought) he ever wanted. Otherwise, what was the point of it all?
Cutler sighs. He has never been good at autosuggestion (unless it is to do with his potential greatness) and he finds it a bit hard to keep his chin up now. He has been waiting by the house for hours. He can’t come in, and nobody has come out. Meanwhile, the Old Ones are probably eating Wales.
Something finally starts happening. Hal and Back From The Dead leave the house, arguing. He urges her to go back inside and stay with Annie and the baby; she protests that he has yet to keep his promise. Cutler peers at the door intently. But for the stupid invitation barrier, he would already be inside, ringing down the curtain on this whole circus freak show.
At last Hal succeeds in persuading Alex to return to the house. Cutler hesitates. Perhaps it would be better to try and make contact with Annie directly.
Who is he kidding?
He trots after Hal and forces a small smile when his maker addresses him a murderous look.
“I’m all for stopping the invasion,” he says conversationally. If he can’t be a proper villain, he might as well settle for a half-baked anti-hero.
“Maybe I should just let Tom stake you,” Hal mutters.
“Oh, we’re going to see Tom? That’s great. I can apologise.” He doesn’t know where this sudden enthusiasm is coming from. Hal looks thoroughly unimpressed. “What? You apologised to me, and what you did was much worse.”
“You haven’t forgiven me.”
Point taken.
“Hal,” Cutler says, probing. “I don’t know the full story, but the Old Ones seem to be really interested in that baby. You may be throwing away your last chance to-.”
They enter a burger bar. The door bell chimes, alerting Tom to their presence. He pokes his head out of the kitchen, spots Cutler and flies into a fit of stake-happy frenzy. Cutler shrinks and hides behind Hal’s back. He fully expects Hal to step aside; that would be understandable.
Hal blocks Tom’s way and drops a heavy bagpack he was carrying onto one of the tables.
“Not our last chance,” he says, replying belatedly to Cutler’s interrupted speech. He looks up at Tom and adds: “Let’s focus on one thing at a time. If we can destroy the Old Ones, we may be taking Eve out of the equation entirely.”
Tom sends Cutler one last death glare, takes the bagpack and withdraws into the kitchen. Hal follows him, as does Cutler. Curiosity gets the best of him.
He stares at the ominous device Tom is putting together. It looks suspiciously like-
“Are you going to blow up the Old Ones?” Cutler asks in disbelief. It is as insane as it is ingenious. Why hasn’t he thought of that?
“Feel free to join them,” Tom mutters.
Cutler is building up to a clever retort, but Hal, true to himself, hogs the spotlight.
“Now that we’ve got the bomb, how exactly are we going to-?”
“Simple. I strap it to meself and I go in. Kaboom.”
“But then you’ll get blown up too,” Hal protests.
Tom shrugs. Cutler has never seen anyone so impassive in the face of imminent death. It’s a greatly unsettling sight.
“I don’t know how to build a remote detonator. McNair always did ‘em. I just knocked out the explosives.”
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Hal says quietly:
“Let me come too.”
“What are you two, the Suicide Club?” Cutler exclaims. There are only so many times he can stand having his heart ripped out at the news of Hal’s demise.
“Oi, are you volunteerin’?” Tom snaps.
Hal puts his hand on the hound’s shoulder. Now is really not the best time to be yelling at each other.
Another cinematographic save is in order. Surprisingly, it comes in the form of Alex and Annie bursting in. Annie is holding Eve swaddled in her clothes. She fixes her dark eyes on Cutler, and he resists the urge to once again hide behind Hal’s back.
Alex babbles about some people that came to the house, apparently in search of the War Child. So it has started. Tom grabs the bomb and they head outside. They’ve still got the police van, which somehow makes their ragtag Team Save the World even more syrupy. There is justice to be administered, and they are going to MacGyver the Old Ones into oblivion. All they need is to do a power walk to the car and drive off raising a cloud of dust.
In reality, they all pile into the back of the van at once and Cutler almost gets left behind. Tom fills the ladies in on the plan. Dying is fortunately not conducive to the loss of one’s sanity: both Alex and Annie stare at Hal and Tom like they’ve gone completely bonkers.
“We can do it,” Alex says. “Annie and I, we won’t get blown to smithereens by the explosion, right?”
“I’m with them,” Cutler pipes in. “Er… Not in the flesh, though.” Annie gives him another grim look. He thinks he should introduce himself. It’s a polite thing to do before quaintly asking a stranger if you may kill her baby. “Hi. Cutler. Nick Cutler.”
“Like Bond, James Bond,” Alex supplies helpfully. “Except not hot. And a loser.”
That is mean.
“Thank you,” Cutler says stiffly.
She flashes him a venomous smile. “My pleasure.”
The tires screech as the van comes to a stop. Are they at the docks already?
Cutler watches Hal from the corner of his eye. His maker looks sickly pale. His hands tremble; Annie curls her fingers around his and squeezes comfortingly.
“I’m sorry,” Hal says in a hollow voice. Cutler barely recognizes him. “You had to leave your home once before. And now it’s happening again.”
Annie nods silently. Cutler wants to say something harsh (all these apologies are just overkill), but his mind is racing. They emerge from the van. The last thing Cutler feels is heroic. Annie hands Eve over to Tom. The baby is snoring peacefully. Cutler experiences an awkward surge of jealousy. He would rather sleep through the Apocalypse too.
The girls take the bomb and vanish before any parting words are spoken. That’s nice of them.
The men wait. And they wait some more. And - seriously, how long does it take to blow a bunch of ancient vampires sky high?
Cutler silently makes a list of things he would rather be doing. Despite himself, he ends up giving Hal lingering looks, comparing what he sees to what he remembers. Hal keeps still, arms lax along his sides. He looks deceptively calm, but the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he gulps down a lump in his throat over and over again and the way he sweeps his tongue over his lips betray him. It’s been sixty years and Cutler still remembers that burning, dizzying hunger. He used to drown in it all the time back when he was too squeamish to feed properly, before Hal taught him better. He cannot fathom why anyone would voluntarily inflict such misery upon themselves.
A loud bang thunders through the docks. The warehouse goes up in flames. A column of fire rises to the sky. The sound is deafening, and Cutler belatedly covers his ears.
Annie and Alex materialize halfway between the van and the burning ruins.
“Go!” Alex yells. “Go!”
The noise has woken the baby up. She is wailing like a siren. Tom shoves the baby into Hal’s arms and dashes to the driver’s cab. But it’s too late.
The docks are teeming with vampires. They surround the van in a broad circle, the whole bloody army, and Cutler thinks that maybe he is betting on the wrong horse after all. It’s too late to change the game now anyway.
“You were supposed to get all of them!” Hal says as Annie takes Eve away from him.
“Mr Snow wasn’t there,” Alex answers.
As far as fuck-ups go, this one is somewhere between “the fuck!?” and the flat line. The sight of Annie throwing the attackers around with her telekinetic abilities while holding the War Child is somewhat inspiring and helps to take Cutler’s mind off the fact that Mr Snow is somewhere out there doing the villainous laughter.
Alex raises her hand like she’s just figured out that she can emulate Annie. Tom and Hal grab the stakes from the back of the van. Cutler contemplates hiding under it but decides against it. He staked Golda after all; how much harder can these guys be?
Fast forward through all the embarrassing mishaps to a smoking pile of ashes at his feet. Blade’s got nothing on him.
“I know that bloke,” Tom says, eyes fixed on the dark-skinned man leading the attack. “He’s a werewolf.”
“He works for Mr Snow,” Cutler says urgently.
A sticky sensation of anxiety settles firmly inside him. There is one thing Mr Snow was right about: Cutler knows only too well what failure tastes like, and if they don’t get into the van and get out of here now, he is about to taste it again.
“We have to go!” he shouts.
Fortunately, the others are inclined to agree. Tom starts the engine. The girls jump inside and continue to fling the attackers aside, but they both look drained already. Hal continues impersonating Chuck Norris (which is a rather amusing sight since he’s not much of a fighter in general).
The van starts pulling away. Cutler leaps into it, quite certain that they are once again looking for an excuse to leave him behind.
“Hal!” Annie yells. Cutler echoes her.
Hal stakes the woman closest to him and breaks out running. A black limo drifts slowly past him. Hal turns his head and stumbles, the look of sheer terror on his face. Cutler cannot see who is inside but he can guess. He shouts Hal’s name again, snapping him out of his reverie. Hal picks up the speed and finally reaches the van. He stumbles again and starts falling. Cutler and Alex catch him by the arms and pull him in. He rolls onto his back, breathing heavily, as the van swerves, grinds between two Jeeps that most likely belong to someone from Snow’s entourage and breaks away onto the road. Tom revs up.
A few minutes later, Alex asks quietly:
“What do we do now?”
“Go off the radar,” Tom answers. “Gotta hide. Regroup. Then take out Mr Snow.”
Cutler wonders how hard he should pretend this is not happening in order to kickstart the erase-and-rewind mode of the world.
Dear falling star, he thinks. You might have misinterpreted my last wish because I can’t remember asking for a road trip of doom with Childe Harold, his labradoodle, two man-eating slayerettes and a perpetuum mobile-powered wailing mini-goblin. So twinkle, twinkle, little bitch. You’ll get yours just like the rest of this stinking-.
“I did it,” Annie whispers, stunned. “I brought about the vampire Apocalypse. Just like Eve said I would.”
“I wouldn’t be so categoric,” Cutler notes. “Maybe it’s just Britain.”
“No. This is how it starts. I’ve seen it.”
He is about to ask what she means, but then he decides that he doesn’t care. They are all mad here. Especially him.
“Mr Snow must have some weaknesses,” Tom reasons. “We take him out, we take Eve outta the abrasion. Like Hal said. Right, Hal?”
After half a minute of strenuous silence, Cutler looks down. Hal is still lying on the floor between him and Alex. His eyes are glazed over, lips parted slightly. He is not moving aside from rare convulsive inhalations. Cutler curses under his breath, rolls Hal to the side and discovers a pool of blood under him. A large wooden chip of a stake is sticking out of his back, firmly lodged between the ribs.
“Hal?” Tom calls again.
“Hal is a bit busy now,” Cutler says in a flat voice.
“Doin’ what?”
What he does best, Cutler thinks.
“Dying.”
Part 2 - Our Group Decision
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R
Timeline: canon divergence mid-Episode 4x08, “The War Child”
Summary: When Cutler comes to Honolulu Heights with the purpose of killing Eve, it is Hal who opens the door. And he doesn’t let him enter. From here on out, it’s either a horror show or a sitcom. Cutler is not quite certain what the difference is. [Hal/Cutler]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Epigraph and title from “I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer” by The Cardigans.
A/N: I’ve been toying with this idea for ages. It was supposed to be more serious but thanks to certain happenings I’ve decided I want to write something excessively wacky. This will probably have a few chapters. Plus, I shamelessly nicked the idea of chapter titles from Scrubs.
GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES
To the good times that we shared and the bad times that we'll have.
Part 1
Our Heroic Moments
So apparently he’s got unrealistic expectations.
Well, huh, Cutler reasons, what’s so unrealistic about coming to a house full of people who want you dusted and expecting them to accept help you are so graciously offering them?
Not that he knew the house was full of people who wanted him dead when he decided to drop by. He had expected Tom (who, let’s face it, had a bit of a right to be disgruntled about the whole massacre at the night club debacle) and he had expected whatsername, the guardian of the War Child. They would have been a handful already. But it was Hal who opened the door.
Rewind back to last night: Hal playing the tragic hero (or just hero, you never know, there’s always this patina of tragedy on those heroic types) in the darkness punctuated throughout with the pulsing strobe lights. A solitary supervamp versus a raging beast. (Sounds like a story out of Regus’s never-ending comic book; not that Cutler has ever read it.)
“You’re alive,” Cutler exhales, and feels stupid for spelling it out.
Last night: Hal on his knees (and not in the way Cutler would have wanted him to be), holding his hand, begging to stop the madness.
This morning: Hal glaring at him on the doorstep of Tom’s house (they live together!?).
The look makes Cutler’s skin crawl. It’s a bit like the look Hal gave him yesterday on the dance floor. The get-out-while-you-can-or-I’ll-flay-you-alive-when-I’m-done-here look.
It has only just occurred to Cutler that he seriously considered Hal to be proper dead once again. He believed Tom had torn him apart. He must have been in shock and too busy dealing with the Old Ones to react properly, and now pain and relief flood him at the same time, and all he can do is gape helplessly. He makes a move to touch Hal, as if to make sure he is not seeing things, but Hal steps back into the safety of the house, and Cutler meets the barrier that stings and bites and wouldn’t let him go through. He is very explicitly not invited.
There is another person standing behind Hal’s back. Grinning.
“Someone’s got a death wish,” she sing-songs.
Cutler knits his eyebrows, confused. “Hang on. Didn’t I-?”
The girl nods. Her grin turns positively wicked.
“Look!” he blurts out, getting down to business while he still maintains some composure, and has got all his limbs intact. “The Old Ones, they want the baby alive.”
“Well, duh,” the girl says. Very eloquent. No, really, what does Hal see in her? “What else is new?”
That throws Cutler off.
“You know about this?” He can hear the baby crying in the house. Un-fucking-imaginable. “Why on earth is she still alive then? You’re practically handing them the world on a silver platter!”
“Wasn’t that what you were gonna do?”
Hal turns to her and says: “Alex, please.”
Please. Is he kidding?
The ghost huffs but obediently steps back and disappears in the depths of the house. The baby’s whining becomes even more shrill. Cutler hears a female voice; then Alex’s voice interrupts. They are discussing him. He should really get the hell out of Dodge now.
“I get it,” he says, with a weak smile. “You’re some kind of a hero now. Well, let’s go be heroes!” He raises his fist like he’s Superman ready for take-off.
Hal gives him a condescending look.
“The Old Ones didn’t like your plan, did they?”
“We had a few disagreements. About the, uh… structure of…” Cutler deflates, and admits: “My videos went missing. And Mr Snow is kind of a dick.”
“That, he is.”
“It’s your fault! If you had driven the point home it would have spared me the embarrassment and you the… her.” He thinks about it and adds: “And Tom-.”
That’s clearly a mistake. Hal darts out of the house, teeth bared in an enraged snarl. The sight of him like this, so familiar, makes Cutler’s breath catch in his throat.
“You don’t even get to say his name,” Hal spits. “Not after what you tried to do.”
Okay, trigger material. Process and catalogue for future reference.
“I thought you died,” Cutler says in a small voice. That’s not what he wants to say, but his mouth betrays him. “I thought he ripped you apart.”
“Wishful thinking,” Hal says dismissively.
Cutler doesn’t know how to impress the point on him. He simply reiterates:
“I thought you died.”
He reaches out, fingers brushing Hal’s forearm tentatively. Hal is dressed in the same jacket he wore last night. Looks pretty stylish.
Hal lets Cutler’s hand linger for a moment, then takes a step back. His eyes are hard. Cutler suppresses the urge to keep clinging to him. He feels utterly lost of a sudden.
Unrealistic expectations, that’s right.
“I can help,” he says. “Obviously you’re reluctant to kill the baby yourself. I can understand that. I could maybe-.”
Hal reaches into the flowerpot hanging by the door and fishes a stake out of it. Must be Tom’s idea. Very creative.
The message is quite clear. Cutler decides not to test the “or else” option and gets off the property straight away.
* * *
One of the reasons he likes cinematography as much as he does is that films are often devoid of boring bits. A scene fades to black, and you wouldn’t see the characters going somewhere or waiting for hours, lamenting their sorry lot (unless it’s the whole point of a film). The film cuts to the action bits nine times out of ten.
Cutler wishes he could fast-forward his own life.
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. The Old Ones, that annoying bunch of deleted species, were supposed to like the plan. To fucking love it. To give him the statue and the country and everything (he thought) he ever wanted. Otherwise, what was the point of it all?
Cutler sighs. He has never been good at autosuggestion (unless it is to do with his potential greatness) and he finds it a bit hard to keep his chin up now. He has been waiting by the house for hours. He can’t come in, and nobody has come out. Meanwhile, the Old Ones are probably eating Wales.
Something finally starts happening. Hal and Back From The Dead leave the house, arguing. He urges her to go back inside and stay with Annie and the baby; she protests that he has yet to keep his promise. Cutler peers at the door intently. But for the stupid invitation barrier, he would already be inside, ringing down the curtain on this whole circus freak show.
At last Hal succeeds in persuading Alex to return to the house. Cutler hesitates. Perhaps it would be better to try and make contact with Annie directly.
Who is he kidding?
He trots after Hal and forces a small smile when his maker addresses him a murderous look.
“I’m all for stopping the invasion,” he says conversationally. If he can’t be a proper villain, he might as well settle for a half-baked anti-hero.
“Maybe I should just let Tom stake you,” Hal mutters.
“Oh, we’re going to see Tom? That’s great. I can apologise.” He doesn’t know where this sudden enthusiasm is coming from. Hal looks thoroughly unimpressed. “What? You apologised to me, and what you did was much worse.”
“You haven’t forgiven me.”
Point taken.
“Hal,” Cutler says, probing. “I don’t know the full story, but the Old Ones seem to be really interested in that baby. You may be throwing away your last chance to-.”
They enter a burger bar. The door bell chimes, alerting Tom to their presence. He pokes his head out of the kitchen, spots Cutler and flies into a fit of stake-happy frenzy. Cutler shrinks and hides behind Hal’s back. He fully expects Hal to step aside; that would be understandable.
Hal blocks Tom’s way and drops a heavy bagpack he was carrying onto one of the tables.
“Not our last chance,” he says, replying belatedly to Cutler’s interrupted speech. He looks up at Tom and adds: “Let’s focus on one thing at a time. If we can destroy the Old Ones, we may be taking Eve out of the equation entirely.”
Tom sends Cutler one last death glare, takes the bagpack and withdraws into the kitchen. Hal follows him, as does Cutler. Curiosity gets the best of him.
He stares at the ominous device Tom is putting together. It looks suspiciously like-
“Are you going to blow up the Old Ones?” Cutler asks in disbelief. It is as insane as it is ingenious. Why hasn’t he thought of that?
“Feel free to join them,” Tom mutters.
Cutler is building up to a clever retort, but Hal, true to himself, hogs the spotlight.
“Now that we’ve got the bomb, how exactly are we going to-?”
“Simple. I strap it to meself and I go in. Kaboom.”
“But then you’ll get blown up too,” Hal protests.
Tom shrugs. Cutler has never seen anyone so impassive in the face of imminent death. It’s a greatly unsettling sight.
“I don’t know how to build a remote detonator. McNair always did ‘em. I just knocked out the explosives.”
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Hal says quietly:
“Let me come too.”
“What are you two, the Suicide Club?” Cutler exclaims. There are only so many times he can stand having his heart ripped out at the news of Hal’s demise.
“Oi, are you volunteerin’?” Tom snaps.
Hal puts his hand on the hound’s shoulder. Now is really not the best time to be yelling at each other.
Another cinematographic save is in order. Surprisingly, it comes in the form of Alex and Annie bursting in. Annie is holding Eve swaddled in her clothes. She fixes her dark eyes on Cutler, and he resists the urge to once again hide behind Hal’s back.
Alex babbles about some people that came to the house, apparently in search of the War Child. So it has started. Tom grabs the bomb and they head outside. They’ve still got the police van, which somehow makes their ragtag Team Save the World even more syrupy. There is justice to be administered, and they are going to MacGyver the Old Ones into oblivion. All they need is to do a power walk to the car and drive off raising a cloud of dust.
In reality, they all pile into the back of the van at once and Cutler almost gets left behind. Tom fills the ladies in on the plan. Dying is fortunately not conducive to the loss of one’s sanity: both Alex and Annie stare at Hal and Tom like they’ve gone completely bonkers.
“We can do it,” Alex says. “Annie and I, we won’t get blown to smithereens by the explosion, right?”
“I’m with them,” Cutler pipes in. “Er… Not in the flesh, though.” Annie gives him another grim look. He thinks he should introduce himself. It’s a polite thing to do before quaintly asking a stranger if you may kill her baby. “Hi. Cutler. Nick Cutler.”
“Like Bond, James Bond,” Alex supplies helpfully. “Except not hot. And a loser.”
That is mean.
“Thank you,” Cutler says stiffly.
She flashes him a venomous smile. “My pleasure.”
The tires screech as the van comes to a stop. Are they at the docks already?
Cutler watches Hal from the corner of his eye. His maker looks sickly pale. His hands tremble; Annie curls her fingers around his and squeezes comfortingly.
“I’m sorry,” Hal says in a hollow voice. Cutler barely recognizes him. “You had to leave your home once before. And now it’s happening again.”
Annie nods silently. Cutler wants to say something harsh (all these apologies are just overkill), but his mind is racing. They emerge from the van. The last thing Cutler feels is heroic. Annie hands Eve over to Tom. The baby is snoring peacefully. Cutler experiences an awkward surge of jealousy. He would rather sleep through the Apocalypse too.
The girls take the bomb and vanish before any parting words are spoken. That’s nice of them.
The men wait. And they wait some more. And - seriously, how long does it take to blow a bunch of ancient vampires sky high?
Cutler silently makes a list of things he would rather be doing. Despite himself, he ends up giving Hal lingering looks, comparing what he sees to what he remembers. Hal keeps still, arms lax along his sides. He looks deceptively calm, but the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he gulps down a lump in his throat over and over again and the way he sweeps his tongue over his lips betray him. It’s been sixty years and Cutler still remembers that burning, dizzying hunger. He used to drown in it all the time back when he was too squeamish to feed properly, before Hal taught him better. He cannot fathom why anyone would voluntarily inflict such misery upon themselves.
A loud bang thunders through the docks. The warehouse goes up in flames. A column of fire rises to the sky. The sound is deafening, and Cutler belatedly covers his ears.
Annie and Alex materialize halfway between the van and the burning ruins.
“Go!” Alex yells. “Go!”
The noise has woken the baby up. She is wailing like a siren. Tom shoves the baby into Hal’s arms and dashes to the driver’s cab. But it’s too late.
The docks are teeming with vampires. They surround the van in a broad circle, the whole bloody army, and Cutler thinks that maybe he is betting on the wrong horse after all. It’s too late to change the game now anyway.
“You were supposed to get all of them!” Hal says as Annie takes Eve away from him.
“Mr Snow wasn’t there,” Alex answers.
As far as fuck-ups go, this one is somewhere between “the fuck!?” and the flat line. The sight of Annie throwing the attackers around with her telekinetic abilities while holding the War Child is somewhat inspiring and helps to take Cutler’s mind off the fact that Mr Snow is somewhere out there doing the villainous laughter.
Alex raises her hand like she’s just figured out that she can emulate Annie. Tom and Hal grab the stakes from the back of the van. Cutler contemplates hiding under it but decides against it. He staked Golda after all; how much harder can these guys be?
Fast forward through all the embarrassing mishaps to a smoking pile of ashes at his feet. Blade’s got nothing on him.
“I know that bloke,” Tom says, eyes fixed on the dark-skinned man leading the attack. “He’s a werewolf.”
“He works for Mr Snow,” Cutler says urgently.
A sticky sensation of anxiety settles firmly inside him. There is one thing Mr Snow was right about: Cutler knows only too well what failure tastes like, and if they don’t get into the van and get out of here now, he is about to taste it again.
“We have to go!” he shouts.
Fortunately, the others are inclined to agree. Tom starts the engine. The girls jump inside and continue to fling the attackers aside, but they both look drained already. Hal continues impersonating Chuck Norris (which is a rather amusing sight since he’s not much of a fighter in general).
The van starts pulling away. Cutler leaps into it, quite certain that they are once again looking for an excuse to leave him behind.
“Hal!” Annie yells. Cutler echoes her.
Hal stakes the woman closest to him and breaks out running. A black limo drifts slowly past him. Hal turns his head and stumbles, the look of sheer terror on his face. Cutler cannot see who is inside but he can guess. He shouts Hal’s name again, snapping him out of his reverie. Hal picks up the speed and finally reaches the van. He stumbles again and starts falling. Cutler and Alex catch him by the arms and pull him in. He rolls onto his back, breathing heavily, as the van swerves, grinds between two Jeeps that most likely belong to someone from Snow’s entourage and breaks away onto the road. Tom revs up.
A few minutes later, Alex asks quietly:
“What do we do now?”
“Go off the radar,” Tom answers. “Gotta hide. Regroup. Then take out Mr Snow.”
Cutler wonders how hard he should pretend this is not happening in order to kickstart the erase-and-rewind mode of the world.
Dear falling star, he thinks. You might have misinterpreted my last wish because I can’t remember asking for a road trip of doom with Childe Harold, his labradoodle, two man-eating slayerettes and a perpetuum mobile-powered wailing mini-goblin. So twinkle, twinkle, little bitch. You’ll get yours just like the rest of this stinking-.
“I did it,” Annie whispers, stunned. “I brought about the vampire Apocalypse. Just like Eve said I would.”
“I wouldn’t be so categoric,” Cutler notes. “Maybe it’s just Britain.”
“No. This is how it starts. I’ve seen it.”
He is about to ask what she means, but then he decides that he doesn’t care. They are all mad here. Especially him.
“Mr Snow must have some weaknesses,” Tom reasons. “We take him out, we take Eve outta the abrasion. Like Hal said. Right, Hal?”
After half a minute of strenuous silence, Cutler looks down. Hal is still lying on the floor between him and Alex. His eyes are glazed over, lips parted slightly. He is not moving aside from rare convulsive inhalations. Cutler curses under his breath, rolls Hal to the side and discovers a pool of blood under him. A large wooden chip of a stake is sticking out of his back, firmly lodged between the ribs.
“Hal?” Tom calls again.
“Hal is a bit busy now,” Cutler says in a flat voice.
“Doin’ what?”
What he does best, Cutler thinks.
“Dying.”
Part 2 - Our Group Decision