The Death March - Part Nine (completed RP with doug_ramsey)
Title: The Death March
Part: Nine - The Marchend Cauldron
Previously: Prologue | One | Two | Three| Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight
Note: completed RP with the fabulous doug_ramsey
Earlier this week...
They've already been to three different countries, and five different cities, with no success.
"It's just a fucking bowl," John complains under his breath.
"Cauldron," Doug corrects.
"What the fuck ever. It shouldn't be so hard to get."
But, for whatever it was, bowl or cauldron, it was near impossible to find. It was the last thing, the very last thing, on John's list of things to get on his Death March. It was so rare, in fact, that the material it was made with some metal didn't actually exist on earth. It was from the place or time or dimension or whatever the fuck it was that this whole stupid Death March thing was from. It was not native to Earth. Or, their Earth. Or, whatever.
Doug and John couldn't find it.
They went to the last possible place on the planet that might have it... or, well, would have someone who would be able to track it down for them. John called up his new friend, Mariola, in South Africa, and explained the situation from her. She said she had a friend, a witch, who was very apt at performing location spells. If it was anywhere on Earth, she would be able to tell them exactly where.
Doug and John stand outside Mariola's little shop, in that little town outside of Johannesburg, and just stare at the door. John takes deep breaths - this is it, this is it, this is it, running a mantra over and over in his head. This is it.
"Come on," Doug says, and grabs his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "Let's go find your life."
They go in and Mariola greets them with a smile. "I was wondering if you were ever going to walk through that door." She walks up to them, and like so few others, doesn't mind looking at John. She even puts a soft, reassuring hand on his cheek, almost motherly, and kisses his forehead. He lets her. She might have the answer to his life.
"So, young man, are you not going to introduce me to your young man?" John had already told her about Ste on the phone.
"Doug, this is Mariola. Mariola, this is Doug."
Doug puts out his hand, and she takes it gracefully, though tugs him a little closer and places the same kiss on his forehead. Doug looks at her, surprised, but she smiles kindly at him. "It is so nice to know that you're with him, Doug. Now, young men, please follow me."
She leads them to a back room ("Always with the back rooms," John mutters,) and they slip in past the curtain. The room is dark, lit only with candles, one mounted on each of the four walls. In the middle, there is a round table, and a woman with dark black hair sits there. "This is my friend, Gwenyth. She will be performing the locating spell. Please, take a seat."
John takes the seat right across from Gwenyth, Doug to his left and Mariola to his right. There is a world map, painted out on old parchment, on the table before them. Gwenyth, very serious and never a glimpse of a smile on her face, looks at John intently. She asks him a number of questions, regarding the Marchend Cauldron, it is called in English, and where they've been and what else they have and more. Once she gets the information she needs, she nods twice. "I will begin."
She begins muttering under her breath, in a language that John doesn't understand - Latin, he thinks, but he has no fucking clue. Doug would know, but he doesn't want to interrupt her by asking that question. She speaks the same words over and over (there must be a rhyme and reason behind it). Finally, she holds out her palm, and there is a small dried flower in it. With her other hand, she holds a small vile over the flower, and drips out three drops of blue liquid.
When they hit the flower, it starts to fizz and bubble, then suddenly, it turns into three little balls of light. She pulls her hand away from over the map, leaving the air above it clear, and the three little balls of light start to float over the map. They start slow, but pick up speed, until they are whirling fast above the map, and start to glow brighter and brighter. She continues speaking softly, though more insistently. John watches her; it's like she's encouraging the balls of light, talking to them, telling them to do their job.
Suddenly, with a bright flare of light and a bang, they dissipate into the thin air. The room goes darker again, save for the faint light of the candles on the wall. Gwenyth is breathing heavily.
"It is done," she says quietly.
John stares at her, but she won't meet his eyes. "Well?" he prompts. "Where is it?"
She looks at him, and he sees sadness there, and he knows the answer before she says it, though he can't make himself believe it.
"I'm sorry. It doesn't exist in this space and time any longer."
A moment of silence, and then,
"What the fuck do you mean?" He knows what she means. That bowl, cauldron, whatever - there isn't one on earth right now, for whatever the reason. It isn't here. He can't have it. He can't complete the Death March.
He's going to die. Die for-real die. Dead, all the way.
"J.," Doug says, reaching out to touch him.
John flinches away, it's an automatic reaction. He stands up, gripping the edge of the table so hard as he pushes down to get himself up that he knocks it all over, sending the other three in a surprised scramble. John storms out of the back room, it's so suffocating in there, and goes into the main part of the store.
Luckily, there are no customers there to witness it.
"Fuck. Fucking shit. Shit goddamn fuck this crap," he exclaims angrily. Just a spew of angry swears as he kicks out around him. He kicks a large shelf so hard that he can hear glass on the other side of it smashing against the ground. There's a little display off to the side, and he kicks it over, and it breaks into pieces. He sweeps his hands across a table, knocking books to the floor, thud thud thud.
"FUCK!"
John's chest starts to squeeze on him, and his heart is pounding, beat beat beat, and he thinks he's having another attack. He falls to the floor, on his knees, and pounds his fist into the floor.
But it's not one of his physical attacks. It's more than that. There are tears welling in his eyes, and though he's tried so long and hard to ward them off, one or two fall, and he watches them splash against the wood panels. They aren't made of sadness, but of anger and disappointment and frustration. He says, so much quieter now, under his breath and to himself, "No. No. No no no. No no no no no. Nononononono." Until, finally, he catches his breath and stops saying it, and sits back on his haunches, and look up at the others. The three of them stand to the side, watching him. What else are they to do, in a moment like this?
Mariola places a hand on Doug's back, pushing him forward gently. "Go to him."
Doug's already moving before the hand reaches him, crouching down next to John, taking his hand even if John doesn't really want him to. "Hey," he says quietly. "It's okay. We'll figure something out, J." Already his mind is going over what Mariola had said, trying to find some kind of loophole in the meaning. "This magical stuff always has ten kinds of weird stuff going on, you know that. And it's not as if we're the experts in mysticism. We'll figure it out, or we'll find someone who can. But I'm not letting anything happen to you." He attempts a smile. "Worst comes to worst, I'll just have to challenge Death to a game of Scrabble, and you know who'll win that one."
John lets Doug take his hand, even twines their fingers together. Doug's touch, and his voice, calms John down, always has and always will. He even cracks a half-smile at Doug's joke. "It's okay, Doug," John says, and knows that he means it. Realization, acceptance, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, it was starting to spread through John. He was going to die, and that was that. John Allerdyce did not give up easily and they had done everything they could, and this was the outcome. Okay, then. It's okay.
It was too hard to put that all into words for Doug right now. So, instead, he reached over and cupped Doug's cheek with one hand, and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then rested his own in the exact spot. "Thank you," he says.
There's so much wrapped up in those words: Thank you for coming on this strange journey with me. Thank you for being there. Thank you for not wanting to give up. Thank you for putting up with all my shit. Thank you for caring. Thank you for loving me.
But, John's tired, so he just repeats, "Thank you."
He twists his head to the side, just slightly, and looks at Mariola. "Sorry I broke your stuff."
She waves her hand, and he see tears in her eyes. He wonders how much more of those looks he's going to get in the upcoming weeks. It'll probably eat him alive, the pity. "It's okay, John."
He nods, and pulls away from Doug, and sighs. "Let's go back to the hotel. I'm tired."
-----
It's much later when they arrive back at their luxurious hotel, but it still doesn't seem as if enough time has passed to make broaching the subject of what they do next any easier. Doug orders a meal from Room Service. He's not hungry, but it feels good to talk to someone, and to be doing something, and he guesses that, if John were hungry, he probably wouldn't say anything. But he walks over to the bed where John's sitting, and holds out a chilled can of Dr. Pepper, anyway.
"I meant it, you know," Doug says. "We'll figure something out. We know some pretty amazing people, after all. Dr. McCoy. Dr. Richards. Mike. Even Wolverine. I mean, if there's a way, and I know there has to be a way, we'll figure it out, okay? It's your decision, except, no, it sort of isn't, because there's no way I'm going to let you sit around and mope yourself to death. It just isn't allowed, okay? It isn't."
He sits down next to John, legs crossed under him on the bed. He pulls absently at one of his big toes. "So. What's the plan?"
John pops open the can of Dr. Pepper and takes a sip. He mulls Doug's words over in his head.
"Getting help would mean telling them, right?" John says out loud, more to himself than to Doug. "And if I tell one, I need to tell them all." He frowns. "I don't know if I can do that. If I should do that, you know?" It was bad enough putting Doug through this, should he do it to all his friends too?
But he thinks of Doug's question, and gives an honest answer. "I want to go home. But not to the penthouse. Fuck the Freedom Force, I'm selling it back to them at a ridiculous price. I'll call my lawyers tomorrow and get things sorted out."
Home. Huh. Where is that, now? "When this was all over, I was going to ask you to move in with me. You could have given the apartment up to Will, and we could have bought a house together." He gives a little snort. "Guess I'll wait before I ask, just in case, huh?" He glances over at Doug. "I'll rent a suite at some New York hotel for a while. I want to go back there. Cool with you?"
"Fine with me," Doug says. "And I know what you mean about telling people, but you owe it to yourself - and to me, and to them - to try as hard as you can to live, even if it means... you know, even if it means some of us go through some hard stuff. Can you imagine what JP or Kara or Mike or anyone would feel like if they found out you died and they could've helped? That they even could've seen you or hugged you one last time? C'mon, man. I know you'd give a lot to see Ste again. If it was him, you would want him to ask you for help, even if it meant you had to mourn him twice."
He nudges his foot over so his toes brush John's leg. "And I would definitely move in with you. But only if we have room for something other than Dr. Pepper in the fridge, and if there's a washing-up rota, and if there's a place for the Giant Match of Justice, and if we get to play naked twister a minimum of two nights a week."
"Only twice? I don't know, man, I'm thinking at least four times a week. It could happen in the mornings too, you know," John says, quirking a bit of a smile at Doug. The smile drops and he's serious again, but not a sad serious. Just serious. "Okay. No moping. But I'm not getting my hopes up, Doug. I can't. I... have to accept this, or it'll crush me in the end anyway, okay?"
He thinks about his friends, about telling them, and about how much he wanted to talk to or see Jean-Paul and Sasha and Sally and Bea and Mike and... well. The list could go on and on. He thinks about them, and wonders, "How the fuck do I tell them? I mean, if I decide to? Make a post that says, "So, I've been dead, but I'm not really dead, only I am. Oh, and I'm dying and will probably be dead - like, for real dead - in four to six weeks." He chuckles darkly, but then stops. "Huh. I should write that down. That might work."
He places his hand on the ankle of Doug's foot that is brushing against his leg. His fingers work their way under the hem, and rub lightly against Doug's calf. Methodically, almost, as he thinks.
"I want to tell Jean-Paul first. In person. He's lost a lot already, and this is going to fucking freak him out. And he should hear it from me that getting something back doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to stay."
"Okay," Doug says, even if he's already imagining how Jean-Paul might react. There might be tears. There will probably be yelling. Then again, how had he reacted? Maybe it won't be so bad... But then Doug has his boyfriend back, even if it just means the opportunity to spend time with him and to say goodbye. JP might never have that chance with Peter. "I'll set it up. Book flights online and things. You should get some sleep. I will too in a bit. This was a pretty rough day, man. Things will seem clearer in the morning."
"Yeah, probably," John agrees, though not with much conviction. He didn't know if this would ever seem any clearer - other then the him-being-dead part, anyway. He doesn't really want to think about that, not right now. So he leans over to Doug, and kisses him gently, thoroughly. When he releases Doug, finally, he says, "You're right. Hell of a day, and I'm fucking exhausted. We'll finish figuring it out tomorrow."
Part: Nine - The Marchend Cauldron
Previously: Prologue | One | Two | Three| Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight
Note: completed RP with the fabulous doug_ramsey
Earlier this week...
They've already been to three different countries, and five different cities, with no success.
"It's just a fucking bowl," John complains under his breath.
"Cauldron," Doug corrects.
"What the fuck ever. It shouldn't be so hard to get."
But, for whatever it was, bowl or cauldron, it was near impossible to find. It was the last thing, the very last thing, on John's list of things to get on his Death March. It was so rare, in fact, that the material it was made with some metal didn't actually exist on earth. It was from the place or time or dimension or whatever the fuck it was that this whole stupid Death March thing was from. It was not native to Earth. Or, their Earth. Or, whatever.
Doug and John couldn't find it.
They went to the last possible place on the planet that might have it... or, well, would have someone who would be able to track it down for them. John called up his new friend, Mariola, in South Africa, and explained the situation from her. She said she had a friend, a witch, who was very apt at performing location spells. If it was anywhere on Earth, she would be able to tell them exactly where.
Doug and John stand outside Mariola's little shop, in that little town outside of Johannesburg, and just stare at the door. John takes deep breaths - this is it, this is it, this is it, running a mantra over and over in his head. This is it.
"Come on," Doug says, and grabs his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "Let's go find your life."
They go in and Mariola greets them with a smile. "I was wondering if you were ever going to walk through that door." She walks up to them, and like so few others, doesn't mind looking at John. She even puts a soft, reassuring hand on his cheek, almost motherly, and kisses his forehead. He lets her. She might have the answer to his life.
"So, young man, are you not going to introduce me to your young man?" John had already told her about Ste on the phone.
"Doug, this is Mariola. Mariola, this is Doug."
Doug puts out his hand, and she takes it gracefully, though tugs him a little closer and places the same kiss on his forehead. Doug looks at her, surprised, but she smiles kindly at him. "It is so nice to know that you're with him, Doug. Now, young men, please follow me."
She leads them to a back room ("Always with the back rooms," John mutters,) and they slip in past the curtain. The room is dark, lit only with candles, one mounted on each of the four walls. In the middle, there is a round table, and a woman with dark black hair sits there. "This is my friend, Gwenyth. She will be performing the locating spell. Please, take a seat."
John takes the seat right across from Gwenyth, Doug to his left and Mariola to his right. There is a world map, painted out on old parchment, on the table before them. Gwenyth, very serious and never a glimpse of a smile on her face, looks at John intently. She asks him a number of questions, regarding the Marchend Cauldron, it is called in English, and where they've been and what else they have and more. Once she gets the information she needs, she nods twice. "I will begin."
She begins muttering under her breath, in a language that John doesn't understand - Latin, he thinks, but he has no fucking clue. Doug would know, but he doesn't want to interrupt her by asking that question. She speaks the same words over and over (there must be a rhyme and reason behind it). Finally, she holds out her palm, and there is a small dried flower in it. With her other hand, she holds a small vile over the flower, and drips out three drops of blue liquid.
When they hit the flower, it starts to fizz and bubble, then suddenly, it turns into three little balls of light. She pulls her hand away from over the map, leaving the air above it clear, and the three little balls of light start to float over the map. They start slow, but pick up speed, until they are whirling fast above the map, and start to glow brighter and brighter. She continues speaking softly, though more insistently. John watches her; it's like she's encouraging the balls of light, talking to them, telling them to do their job.
Suddenly, with a bright flare of light and a bang, they dissipate into the thin air. The room goes darker again, save for the faint light of the candles on the wall. Gwenyth is breathing heavily.
"It is done," she says quietly.
John stares at her, but she won't meet his eyes. "Well?" he prompts. "Where is it?"
She looks at him, and he sees sadness there, and he knows the answer before she says it, though he can't make himself believe it.
"I'm sorry. It doesn't exist in this space and time any longer."
A moment of silence, and then,
"What the fuck do you mean?" He knows what she means. That bowl, cauldron, whatever - there isn't one on earth right now, for whatever the reason. It isn't here. He can't have it. He can't complete the Death March.
He's going to die. Die for-real die. Dead, all the way.
"J.," Doug says, reaching out to touch him.
John flinches away, it's an automatic reaction. He stands up, gripping the edge of the table so hard as he pushes down to get himself up that he knocks it all over, sending the other three in a surprised scramble. John storms out of the back room, it's so suffocating in there, and goes into the main part of the store.
Luckily, there are no customers there to witness it.
"Fuck. Fucking shit. Shit goddamn fuck this crap," he exclaims angrily. Just a spew of angry swears as he kicks out around him. He kicks a large shelf so hard that he can hear glass on the other side of it smashing against the ground. There's a little display off to the side, and he kicks it over, and it breaks into pieces. He sweeps his hands across a table, knocking books to the floor, thud thud thud.
"FUCK!"
John's chest starts to squeeze on him, and his heart is pounding, beat beat beat, and he thinks he's having another attack. He falls to the floor, on his knees, and pounds his fist into the floor.
But it's not one of his physical attacks. It's more than that. There are tears welling in his eyes, and though he's tried so long and hard to ward them off, one or two fall, and he watches them splash against the wood panels. They aren't made of sadness, but of anger and disappointment and frustration. He says, so much quieter now, under his breath and to himself, "No. No. No no no. No no no no no. Nononononono." Until, finally, he catches his breath and stops saying it, and sits back on his haunches, and look up at the others. The three of them stand to the side, watching him. What else are they to do, in a moment like this?
Mariola places a hand on Doug's back, pushing him forward gently. "Go to him."
Doug's already moving before the hand reaches him, crouching down next to John, taking his hand even if John doesn't really want him to. "Hey," he says quietly. "It's okay. We'll figure something out, J." Already his mind is going over what Mariola had said, trying to find some kind of loophole in the meaning. "This magical stuff always has ten kinds of weird stuff going on, you know that. And it's not as if we're the experts in mysticism. We'll figure it out, or we'll find someone who can. But I'm not letting anything happen to you." He attempts a smile. "Worst comes to worst, I'll just have to challenge Death to a game of Scrabble, and you know who'll win that one."
John lets Doug take his hand, even twines their fingers together. Doug's touch, and his voice, calms John down, always has and always will. He even cracks a half-smile at Doug's joke. "It's okay, Doug," John says, and knows that he means it. Realization, acceptance, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, it was starting to spread through John. He was going to die, and that was that. John Allerdyce did not give up easily and they had done everything they could, and this was the outcome. Okay, then. It's okay.
It was too hard to put that all into words for Doug right now. So, instead, he reached over and cupped Doug's cheek with one hand, and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then rested his own in the exact spot. "Thank you," he says.
There's so much wrapped up in those words: Thank you for coming on this strange journey with me. Thank you for being there. Thank you for not wanting to give up. Thank you for putting up with all my shit. Thank you for caring. Thank you for loving me.
But, John's tired, so he just repeats, "Thank you."
He twists his head to the side, just slightly, and looks at Mariola. "Sorry I broke your stuff."
She waves her hand, and he see tears in her eyes. He wonders how much more of those looks he's going to get in the upcoming weeks. It'll probably eat him alive, the pity. "It's okay, John."
He nods, and pulls away from Doug, and sighs. "Let's go back to the hotel. I'm tired."
-----
It's much later when they arrive back at their luxurious hotel, but it still doesn't seem as if enough time has passed to make broaching the subject of what they do next any easier. Doug orders a meal from Room Service. He's not hungry, but it feels good to talk to someone, and to be doing something, and he guesses that, if John were hungry, he probably wouldn't say anything. But he walks over to the bed where John's sitting, and holds out a chilled can of Dr. Pepper, anyway.
"I meant it, you know," Doug says. "We'll figure something out. We know some pretty amazing people, after all. Dr. McCoy. Dr. Richards. Mike. Even Wolverine. I mean, if there's a way, and I know there has to be a way, we'll figure it out, okay? It's your decision, except, no, it sort of isn't, because there's no way I'm going to let you sit around and mope yourself to death. It just isn't allowed, okay? It isn't."
He sits down next to John, legs crossed under him on the bed. He pulls absently at one of his big toes. "So. What's the plan?"
John pops open the can of Dr. Pepper and takes a sip. He mulls Doug's words over in his head.
"Getting help would mean telling them, right?" John says out loud, more to himself than to Doug. "And if I tell one, I need to tell them all." He frowns. "I don't know if I can do that. If I should do that, you know?" It was bad enough putting Doug through this, should he do it to all his friends too?
But he thinks of Doug's question, and gives an honest answer. "I want to go home. But not to the penthouse. Fuck the Freedom Force, I'm selling it back to them at a ridiculous price. I'll call my lawyers tomorrow and get things sorted out."
Home. Huh. Where is that, now? "When this was all over, I was going to ask you to move in with me. You could have given the apartment up to Will, and we could have bought a house together." He gives a little snort. "Guess I'll wait before I ask, just in case, huh?" He glances over at Doug. "I'll rent a suite at some New York hotel for a while. I want to go back there. Cool with you?"
"Fine with me," Doug says. "And I know what you mean about telling people, but you owe it to yourself - and to me, and to them - to try as hard as you can to live, even if it means... you know, even if it means some of us go through some hard stuff. Can you imagine what JP or Kara or Mike or anyone would feel like if they found out you died and they could've helped? That they even could've seen you or hugged you one last time? C'mon, man. I know you'd give a lot to see Ste again. If it was him, you would want him to ask you for help, even if it meant you had to mourn him twice."
He nudges his foot over so his toes brush John's leg. "And I would definitely move in with you. But only if we have room for something other than Dr. Pepper in the fridge, and if there's a washing-up rota, and if there's a place for the Giant Match of Justice, and if we get to play naked twister a minimum of two nights a week."
"Only twice? I don't know, man, I'm thinking at least four times a week. It could happen in the mornings too, you know," John says, quirking a bit of a smile at Doug. The smile drops and he's serious again, but not a sad serious. Just serious. "Okay. No moping. But I'm not getting my hopes up, Doug. I can't. I... have to accept this, or it'll crush me in the end anyway, okay?"
He thinks about his friends, about telling them, and about how much he wanted to talk to or see Jean-Paul and Sasha and Sally and Bea and Mike and... well. The list could go on and on. He thinks about them, and wonders, "How the fuck do I tell them? I mean, if I decide to? Make a post that says, "So, I've been dead, but I'm not really dead, only I am. Oh, and I'm dying and will probably be dead - like, for real dead - in four to six weeks." He chuckles darkly, but then stops. "Huh. I should write that down. That might work."
He places his hand on the ankle of Doug's foot that is brushing against his leg. His fingers work their way under the hem, and rub lightly against Doug's calf. Methodically, almost, as he thinks.
"I want to tell Jean-Paul first. In person. He's lost a lot already, and this is going to fucking freak him out. And he should hear it from me that getting something back doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to stay."
"Okay," Doug says, even if he's already imagining how Jean-Paul might react. There might be tears. There will probably be yelling. Then again, how had he reacted? Maybe it won't be so bad... But then Doug has his boyfriend back, even if it just means the opportunity to spend time with him and to say goodbye. JP might never have that chance with Peter. "I'll set it up. Book flights online and things. You should get some sleep. I will too in a bit. This was a pretty rough day, man. Things will seem clearer in the morning."
"Yeah, probably," John agrees, though not with much conviction. He didn't know if this would ever seem any clearer - other then the him-being-dead part, anyway. He doesn't really want to think about that, not right now. So he leans over to Doug, and kisses him gently, thoroughly. When he releases Doug, finally, he says, "You're right. Hell of a day, and I'm fucking exhausted. We'll finish figuring it out tomorrow."