Eileen, Henry, Richard for l_syllabub
Author: evil_gummiworm
Characters: Eileen, Henry, Richard
Recipient: l_syllabub
Pairing Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Summary: Henry is tired. Richard is dead. A heroic battle ensues, followed by a heroic impromptu funeral.
Notes: I’m sorry about this. In the interest of staying canon, I managed to avoid a pairing altogether. Somehow, what was supposed to be Henry/Richard turned into epic gen.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.
That’s all that’s in Henry’s head as he opens the door, Eileen limping behind him. This thought eclipses all others, for the moment, useful thoughts and painful thoughts, thoughts of survival and of fear and is she going to make it through this, am I. It repeats in his head senselessly, matching the pace of his footsteps:
I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I can’t anymore. I can’t protect Eileen and I can’t escape this place and I am going to die here, surely.
It’s exhausting just to walk.
And yet he knows he must, now, if he ever is to walk again, and so he puts one foot before the other, even though he’s tired, even though he’s afraid, even though he’s seen so much madness and horror that he’s sure he will never sleep soundly again. He walks forward.
For a tenth of a second, when this door opens, he thinks he may be safe.
No monster paces before him or growls from the shadows. No worsening headache (because at some point, the headaches stopped leaving him, and now there’s a constant dull pain in the base of his skull, one more hurt on his ever-lengthening list of injuries) to signal the arrival of a ghost. No maniac laughter of the psycho that started all this.
An empty courtyard. A fence and an elevator.
It doesn’t last.
He feels it before he sees it, and then Eileen gasps behind him and there’s a sick thud as something hits the ground close by.
Richard.
Something like him, anyway. It has the same form, the same face, but it moves like a ghost, and as it draws close, the pain in Henry’s head increases, and he backs away, one arm out to shield Eileen.
“We have to go,” he says, as if it’s not obvious.
Henry doesn’t know just what Richard has become, only that whatever it is is even more dangerous in death than the man had been in life, that he can’t fight it here, certainly not with Eileen around. So they run.
It’s not much of a run, really, more a panicked dash across the little courtyard to the elevator, and Richard (or what was once him, what now floats and mumbles and makes Henry’s head ache more the closer it gets) follows them a short distance. Henry tenses as he - as it - approaches the doors, but it does not pass through. The elevator comes to life with a shudder, rattling dangerously as it takes them down, down.
He finds a sword, sometime later, along the way to where-are-we-going what-can-we-do we have to stop him, down, down. Really, he doesn’t know how long it’s been since he saw Richard walking-dead - the time passes differently in this place. His watch says it’s taken hours to walk down one hallway, than tells him the long, blind crawl from one world to his apartment has taken five seconds, ten. He doesn’t believe it, doesn’t believe anything anymore.
The sword, it looks like a fragile old relic, meant for a museum or a history book, not for slaying monsters. (Are they, really? The ghosts - did they ask to be killed? Did they come back voluntarily? Will he and Eileen maybe, if - when - Walter eventually catches up to them- but he tries not to think like that.) Henry picks it up from its odd resting place on the floor, feels its weight and its age and knows, somehow, what he must do.
Eileen stays back. It’s a routine they established quickly - despite her initial protests, it’s clear that she’s in even less a condition to fight than he is. She hides and he goes ahead and somehow, they’ve made it this far, so surely they’re doing something right. Even if she were strong and healthy and well, Henry knows by the fear and pity in her eyes that she could hardly make herself kill, even a monster. So he grits his teeth and tries not to feel the bones break under his heel when he brings it down on the rotting ribs of another monstrosity, tries not to flinch when it squeals and screams and kicks as it dies. He is strong. He is impassive. Eileen stays back, and he goes forward.
At first when he steps out of the elevator, the stillness strikes him: Henry feels as if he has stepped into an arena, a gladiator to do battle with a lion. But he is no hero, just a tired man with a dented aluminum bat and an ancient sword. He knows, even, that though Richard’s ghost may be a monster, there was no devil in the man whose face it wears, only the misfortune to have died at the hands of a supernatural murderer.
A moment’s wait is an eternity of tension.
The sound of metal on concrete, high and grinding, alerts him to the ghost’s presence behind him, and Henry just has time to dodge away as the metal pipe is brought down through the space where he was, half a second ago. The Richard-thing freezes, then, suddenly, and there is a sound like a videotape catching, the smell of electrical burning.
Richard moves again, again, in jerking, impossible motions toward Henry, who stumbles back, a visceral, animal fear gripping him. The thing before him - and he is sure, now, that it cannot be Richard, cannot even be his ghost, only a twisted imprint made solely for killing - slides out of existence again, and Henry whips about to face it. He’s never sure where it will be, only that it will be close, and here it comes again, moving for him in ways no living creature could imitate - a damaged recording, projected into flesh, hitching and repeating on itself.
Henry steels himself and strikes, as hard as he can, again and again, pausing only to avoid a blow or look around for the ghost when it disappears. As it advances on him once more, he knows that this must be the final time, for one of them. His head is full of white noise, feeling about to burst, so full of pain and static that his vision is blurred and going black.
He has no more strength to run, and even the adrenaline diluting the blood in his veins barely curbs the exhaustion that is constant, now, dragging and hopeless. He swings the bat with all that is left in him, and even that is not much (I am going to die here, I am going to die and I just don’t care anymore).
It hits Richard (not-Richard, Richard-thing) in the head, so hard Henry feels the pop and crunch of bones in his (its) neck breaking.
It drops to the ground heavily, finally, and lays still. Its eyes (his eyes?) lay open and sightless, head lolling to the side.
Henry raises the sword - Sword of Obedience, and oh if only, if only this wretched, broken creature would obey him, he would order it to peace, to rest. But that’s not how it works. So Henry raises the sword with two hands, and brings it down through Richard’s chest with all of his might.
At once, his (its its this is a monster not a person) eyes fly open, and he cries out, sounding terribly human, sounding old and hurt and it’s almost a relief when he begins to gurgle and growl and grasp at the air, because then he is a beast again, a dangerous creature. Henry can almost convince himself that this is necessary.
He kneels on the ground for a minute, a minute more, trying to think around the strain on his body, on his mind. Eileen. I have to find… I need… a bandage. My arm… He realizes, dully, that it is numb from shoulder to elbow. He flexes his fingers, tentatively, and then decides it doesn’t matter. If it’s broken, at least it doesn’t hurt now. (When did this happen?) He does worry, a moment - has he become so disconnected that a maybe-broken arm raises no alarm in him, no panic?
His legs shake as he rises, walks unsteadily to the elevator, thinking numbly, Eileen.
She gasps and clutches his arm as they step out together, and he remembers, realizes maybe, that she’s never seen a ghost like this.
“It’s okay,” he says, “it’s safe. It can’t get us like that.”
The concern on her face, though, looks not for her safety. “That used to be a person,” she whispers. “That’s one of the people Walter - oh.” She steps forward, away from him. “Richard. Oh my god.”
Henry puts a hand on her shoulder, awkwardly. “Did you know him?”
“I - not really,” she admits. She looks on the verge of crying. “It’s just. I’d see him sometimes, coming upstairs. I don’t know. He yelled at me for running into him, once.” Eileen stops, sighs a little. There’s a tremble in her voice when she continues. “No. I didn’t know him. But he was a real person, Henry, I - I just wish there was something we could do.”
“There’s not,” he says, unable to meet her eyes.
They leave him there, growling and spitting and pinned.
Henry doesn’t know why he comes back. To please Eileen, maybe. To aleviate his guilt, his horror, because no matter what he tells himself, he still thinks of Richard as a person, not a monster.
He hates the thought of him just lying there, unable to bleed, unable to die - to move on. Trapped here forever by Walter’s ritual, Walter’s malice.
It feels right, somehow, a decent thing to do. A small kindness in the midst of insanity.
He brings matches, a candle. One of his last, though he knows he may need it later. He and Eileen stand beside Richard’s body, just out of reach of flailing arms, screams that sound like curses.
He sets the blessed candle as close to Richard’s head as possible. Lighting it, fingers feeling so cold and dead that he wouldn’t notice if the flame consumed them, he wonders what he could possibly expect from this. An exorcism, maybe. Peace, for them all.
He doesn’t get it.
The moment the wick catches, Richard shrieks as if he himself is being lit aflame, and Henry jumps away in alarm. Richard spasms and wails and Eileen is crying, shouting at him to move the candle, it’s hurting him somehow and Henry tries, too cautiously, to knock it over, blow it out, without touching Richard, who writhes and groans and then, all at once, goes very still.
Eileen gives a small sob. Henry reaches out to move the candle where it stands undisturbed, flame hardly wavering.
She catches his arm.
“Wait,” she half-whispers. “Maybe… it worked.” He pauses. “Look.”
Richard is still unmoving, but he looks different somehow, more solid. Less like a ghost and more like a humble corpse. The candle throws a soft light onto him, giving his face an almost relaxed look. Hesitantly, Henry reaches out and touches him - he is cold but certainly real and, even more certainly, dead.
“I think it did,” he says at length, looking over at Eileen. She is younger in this light, and - impossibly -
The bruise on her cheek shrinks, lightens. Disappears. Henry blinks.
“Eileen,” he starts. “You’re-“
“Oh!” She stares in mute fascination as a cut on her leg seals itself, leaving no blood or scar - all over her, injuries are vanishing, evaporating.
“That candle,” she murmurs. “What is it?”
“I’m not really sure,” he admits. “It’s used for exorcism, but I didn’t think it could heal people.” Even saying it, though, Henry realizes his headache is gone, and he feels stronger, more whole, as if the candle’s light has burned away some of the madness and horror of the past few days.
He sits up, looks down at Richard. After a moment’s consideration, Henry kneels over him, folding his arms over his chest, laying him carefully in a position of rest. Having no prayer to offer, no way to bury or cremate him, Henry smoothes the blood from Richard’s forehead and presses a kiss there, hoping silently that they will all, soon, find peace.
“Come on,” he says, finally, and he and Eileen rise and leave him, walk on, into darkness.
Characters: Eileen, Henry, Richard
Recipient: l_syllabub
Pairing Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Summary: Henry is tired. Richard is dead. A heroic battle ensues, followed by a heroic impromptu funeral.
Notes: I’m sorry about this. In the interest of staying canon, I managed to avoid a pairing altogether. Somehow, what was supposed to be Henry/Richard turned into epic gen.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.
That’s all that’s in Henry’s head as he opens the door, Eileen limping behind him. This thought eclipses all others, for the moment, useful thoughts and painful thoughts, thoughts of survival and of fear and is she going to make it through this, am I. It repeats in his head senselessly, matching the pace of his footsteps:
I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I can’t anymore. I can’t protect Eileen and I can’t escape this place and I am going to die here, surely.
It’s exhausting just to walk.
And yet he knows he must, now, if he ever is to walk again, and so he puts one foot before the other, even though he’s tired, even though he’s afraid, even though he’s seen so much madness and horror that he’s sure he will never sleep soundly again. He walks forward.
For a tenth of a second, when this door opens, he thinks he may be safe.
No monster paces before him or growls from the shadows. No worsening headache (because at some point, the headaches stopped leaving him, and now there’s a constant dull pain in the base of his skull, one more hurt on his ever-lengthening list of injuries) to signal the arrival of a ghost. No maniac laughter of the psycho that started all this.
An empty courtyard. A fence and an elevator.
It doesn’t last.
He feels it before he sees it, and then Eileen gasps behind him and there’s a sick thud as something hits the ground close by.
Richard.
Something like him, anyway. It has the same form, the same face, but it moves like a ghost, and as it draws close, the pain in Henry’s head increases, and he backs away, one arm out to shield Eileen.
“We have to go,” he says, as if it’s not obvious.
Henry doesn’t know just what Richard has become, only that whatever it is is even more dangerous in death than the man had been in life, that he can’t fight it here, certainly not with Eileen around. So they run.
It’s not much of a run, really, more a panicked dash across the little courtyard to the elevator, and Richard (or what was once him, what now floats and mumbles and makes Henry’s head ache more the closer it gets) follows them a short distance. Henry tenses as he - as it - approaches the doors, but it does not pass through. The elevator comes to life with a shudder, rattling dangerously as it takes them down, down.
He finds a sword, sometime later, along the way to where-are-we-going what-can-we-do we have to stop him, down, down. Really, he doesn’t know how long it’s been since he saw Richard walking-dead - the time passes differently in this place. His watch says it’s taken hours to walk down one hallway, than tells him the long, blind crawl from one world to his apartment has taken five seconds, ten. He doesn’t believe it, doesn’t believe anything anymore.
The sword, it looks like a fragile old relic, meant for a museum or a history book, not for slaying monsters. (Are they, really? The ghosts - did they ask to be killed? Did they come back voluntarily? Will he and Eileen maybe, if - when - Walter eventually catches up to them- but he tries not to think like that.) Henry picks it up from its odd resting place on the floor, feels its weight and its age and knows, somehow, what he must do.
Eileen stays back. It’s a routine they established quickly - despite her initial protests, it’s clear that she’s in even less a condition to fight than he is. She hides and he goes ahead and somehow, they’ve made it this far, so surely they’re doing something right. Even if she were strong and healthy and well, Henry knows by the fear and pity in her eyes that she could hardly make herself kill, even a monster. So he grits his teeth and tries not to feel the bones break under his heel when he brings it down on the rotting ribs of another monstrosity, tries not to flinch when it squeals and screams and kicks as it dies. He is strong. He is impassive. Eileen stays back, and he goes forward.
At first when he steps out of the elevator, the stillness strikes him: Henry feels as if he has stepped into an arena, a gladiator to do battle with a lion. But he is no hero, just a tired man with a dented aluminum bat and an ancient sword. He knows, even, that though Richard’s ghost may be a monster, there was no devil in the man whose face it wears, only the misfortune to have died at the hands of a supernatural murderer.
A moment’s wait is an eternity of tension.
The sound of metal on concrete, high and grinding, alerts him to the ghost’s presence behind him, and Henry just has time to dodge away as the metal pipe is brought down through the space where he was, half a second ago. The Richard-thing freezes, then, suddenly, and there is a sound like a videotape catching, the smell of electrical burning.
Richard moves again, again, in jerking, impossible motions toward Henry, who stumbles back, a visceral, animal fear gripping him. The thing before him - and he is sure, now, that it cannot be Richard, cannot even be his ghost, only a twisted imprint made solely for killing - slides out of existence again, and Henry whips about to face it. He’s never sure where it will be, only that it will be close, and here it comes again, moving for him in ways no living creature could imitate - a damaged recording, projected into flesh, hitching and repeating on itself.
Henry steels himself and strikes, as hard as he can, again and again, pausing only to avoid a blow or look around for the ghost when it disappears. As it advances on him once more, he knows that this must be the final time, for one of them. His head is full of white noise, feeling about to burst, so full of pain and static that his vision is blurred and going black.
He has no more strength to run, and even the adrenaline diluting the blood in his veins barely curbs the exhaustion that is constant, now, dragging and hopeless. He swings the bat with all that is left in him, and even that is not much (I am going to die here, I am going to die and I just don’t care anymore).
It hits Richard (not-Richard, Richard-thing) in the head, so hard Henry feels the pop and crunch of bones in his (its) neck breaking.
It drops to the ground heavily, finally, and lays still. Its eyes (his eyes?) lay open and sightless, head lolling to the side.
Henry raises the sword - Sword of Obedience, and oh if only, if only this wretched, broken creature would obey him, he would order it to peace, to rest. But that’s not how it works. So Henry raises the sword with two hands, and brings it down through Richard’s chest with all of his might.
At once, his (its its this is a monster not a person) eyes fly open, and he cries out, sounding terribly human, sounding old and hurt and it’s almost a relief when he begins to gurgle and growl and grasp at the air, because then he is a beast again, a dangerous creature. Henry can almost convince himself that this is necessary.
He kneels on the ground for a minute, a minute more, trying to think around the strain on his body, on his mind. Eileen. I have to find… I need… a bandage. My arm… He realizes, dully, that it is numb from shoulder to elbow. He flexes his fingers, tentatively, and then decides it doesn’t matter. If it’s broken, at least it doesn’t hurt now. (When did this happen?) He does worry, a moment - has he become so disconnected that a maybe-broken arm raises no alarm in him, no panic?
His legs shake as he rises, walks unsteadily to the elevator, thinking numbly, Eileen.
She gasps and clutches his arm as they step out together, and he remembers, realizes maybe, that she’s never seen a ghost like this.
“It’s okay,” he says, “it’s safe. It can’t get us like that.”
The concern on her face, though, looks not for her safety. “That used to be a person,” she whispers. “That’s one of the people Walter - oh.” She steps forward, away from him. “Richard. Oh my god.”
Henry puts a hand on her shoulder, awkwardly. “Did you know him?”
“I - not really,” she admits. She looks on the verge of crying. “It’s just. I’d see him sometimes, coming upstairs. I don’t know. He yelled at me for running into him, once.” Eileen stops, sighs a little. There’s a tremble in her voice when she continues. “No. I didn’t know him. But he was a real person, Henry, I - I just wish there was something we could do.”
“There’s not,” he says, unable to meet her eyes.
They leave him there, growling and spitting and pinned.
Henry doesn’t know why he comes back. To please Eileen, maybe. To aleviate his guilt, his horror, because no matter what he tells himself, he still thinks of Richard as a person, not a monster.
He hates the thought of him just lying there, unable to bleed, unable to die - to move on. Trapped here forever by Walter’s ritual, Walter’s malice.
It feels right, somehow, a decent thing to do. A small kindness in the midst of insanity.
He brings matches, a candle. One of his last, though he knows he may need it later. He and Eileen stand beside Richard’s body, just out of reach of flailing arms, screams that sound like curses.
He sets the blessed candle as close to Richard’s head as possible. Lighting it, fingers feeling so cold and dead that he wouldn’t notice if the flame consumed them, he wonders what he could possibly expect from this. An exorcism, maybe. Peace, for them all.
He doesn’t get it.
The moment the wick catches, Richard shrieks as if he himself is being lit aflame, and Henry jumps away in alarm. Richard spasms and wails and Eileen is crying, shouting at him to move the candle, it’s hurting him somehow and Henry tries, too cautiously, to knock it over, blow it out, without touching Richard, who writhes and groans and then, all at once, goes very still.
Eileen gives a small sob. Henry reaches out to move the candle where it stands undisturbed, flame hardly wavering.
She catches his arm.
“Wait,” she half-whispers. “Maybe… it worked.” He pauses. “Look.”
Richard is still unmoving, but he looks different somehow, more solid. Less like a ghost and more like a humble corpse. The candle throws a soft light onto him, giving his face an almost relaxed look. Hesitantly, Henry reaches out and touches him - he is cold but certainly real and, even more certainly, dead.
“I think it did,” he says at length, looking over at Eileen. She is younger in this light, and - impossibly -
The bruise on her cheek shrinks, lightens. Disappears. Henry blinks.
“Eileen,” he starts. “You’re-“
“Oh!” She stares in mute fascination as a cut on her leg seals itself, leaving no blood or scar - all over her, injuries are vanishing, evaporating.
“That candle,” she murmurs. “What is it?”
“I’m not really sure,” he admits. “It’s used for exorcism, but I didn’t think it could heal people.” Even saying it, though, Henry realizes his headache is gone, and he feels stronger, more whole, as if the candle’s light has burned away some of the madness and horror of the past few days.
He sits up, looks down at Richard. After a moment’s consideration, Henry kneels over him, folding his arms over his chest, laying him carefully in a position of rest. Having no prayer to offer, no way to bury or cremate him, Henry smoothes the blood from Richard’s forehead and presses a kiss there, hoping silently that they will all, soon, find peace.
“Come on,” he says, finally, and he and Eileen rise and leave him, walk on, into darkness.