darker_london | I love you as Icarus loved the sun (Teagan, Kenzie, Liverpool) [warning for violence, blood]

Joss had been almost asleep, his eyes closed, leaning against Leon as the sounds from the TV wound themselves into his half-dreams. Leon too had started to drift off, and Ellie and Geordie had gone to bed over an hour ago. Merry was the only one still properly awake, still feeling like she had to watch over them all, still too worried to relax, and she was curled on an armchair sipping peppermint tea, when all the lights went out.

Joss heard Teagan’s scream through his half asleep state, and jolted himself awake. Disorientation spun him for a moment till he saw Leon, recognised him even in the dark. Leon was there. Leon he thought, looking at his brother in the glow from the streetlights outside. Leon is here.

“JOSS!” Kenzie screamed from outside, her voice hoarse. “JOSS I NEED YOU!”

Joss pushed himself off the couch, automatic, and groped around the couch, then along the wall, to the door. “Whoa, wait up,” Leon said, as Merry snapped “Stop!”

As Joss reached the door and pulled it open, there was a strange breath of warmth, not quite like a wind, and a moment later the power came back on. He held onto the doorknob, swaying in surprise, as the hotel’s protective ghost put the electricity back to rights.

“Kenzie,” Joss said, stepping into the car park. “Teagan.” She stood half way across the carpark, looking like a wraith. When she moved she moved jerkily, as if Kenzie was the one lifting her legs and Teagan was in charge of catching her balance each time her feet fell. She moved like a possessed girl, escaped from hospital.

A moment later the welcome sign flickered back into life and the carpark was all light and shadows once more.

Joss just stood, blinking, as Leon came to stand next to him, followed by Merry who was grasping her nearly empty mug of tea like it was a weapon. Merry grabbed Joss’s sleeve with her other hand to stop him moving forward, but he’d stopped of his own accord.

Calm down love, the spirit of the motel set itself (himself? herself? It was hard to tell, it had been dead so long it was little more than comfort and safety – perhaps it was even dual spirit, speaking with one voice) down in front of Kenzie. This is a safe house.

“Fuck off,” Teagan growled out loud. “I’m here for my boyfriend. Joss?” She looked through the spirit toward Joss, her eyes narrowing when she saw Leon and Merry. Kenzie held out her hand. “Joss, we’re leaving.”

Joss’s mouth opened like he knew he should answer straight away. Kenzie demanded an answer. But he was so tired. He’d said to Merry the other night I thought I just needed a night’s sleep, but it’s more than that and it was so, so true. He was bone marrow tired, so tired he wanted to cry, but too tired to cry.

“Joss,” Kenzie said firmly, stepping toward him. “We’re leaving.”

He closed his eyes, shaking his head just a fraction, but it was enough to tell Kenzie that she was starting to lose, and Kenzie did not lose. The protective spirits were murmuring other calming words but they was floating in Kenzie’s way and as Kenzie stepped toward Joss again they pushed back against her – firm enough to stop her. Kenzie felt wrapped, like multiple pairs of arms were trying to hug her, stroke her hair, whisper her a good safe night. Kenzie hated all of them.

Teagan’s eyes widened. Her burst blood vessel had come back on her journey from the hospital, spilling red into the white of one eye. “Get out of my way,” she hissed.

Get out of my house, the spirits stood firm.

“I am a MEDIUM!” Teagan screamed, loud enough to rouse more of the motel’s guests, a couple pushed their curtains back to watch.

Merry tightened her grip on Joss’s sleeve as Teagan began shouting at nothing. “We should go back inside,” she said to Joss, but looked at Leon when Joss didn’t respond. Leon nodded, murmured his brother’s name, and when he still didn’t respond, took his hand. Joss’s fingers closed around his and held tight, which was enough of an answer for Leon.

There was a fight going on in the carpark, though Merry and Leon and Joss could only see one side of it. Merry was quick enough to guess, Joss was too tired to give a shit, and Leon, who had been given the bare bones of the backstory, only knew he would rather be somewhere with four walls and electric lights.

A strange shudder ran through the air, like the change in pressure when a door slams shut, only more intense, and silent. Merry felt eyes watching her from every shadow, saw hands reaching for her from the corner of her eyes – fear shot up her spine. “Inside!” she snapped. “Now!”

Leon agreed. He could feel in his bones that something was happening beyond the realms of ordinary, and it scared him in a primal way.

Something waiting in the dark where the campfire light can’t reach.

He pulled Joss’s hand and Joss didn’t resist, and the three of them ran back toward their room-

Just as all the lights went out again –

Just as Ellie and Geordie appeared in their pyjamas, wondering what was going on –

Just as the door slammed shut –

“Ellie!” Merry screamed through the door. “Call Matt! Call him now!”

“What’s going on?” Geordie called out, trying the doorhandle. It rattled, but refused to open. “Merry? Are you alright?”

Merry had both her hands pressed against the door, her forehead too. She didn’t want to look over her shoulder, didn’t want to see. “It’s Kenzie,” she said, her voice sounding exactly as scared as she was, no pretense right now, no bravery. “Get Matt, please, please, call him.”

“Merry it’s okay,” Geordie’s fingers came out the little letter crack. “Ellie’s getting her phone.”

But it wasn’t okay. Merry knew it was not going to be okay because ghosts were not okay. Ghosts had too much power, ghosts were strong and ghosts would kill you, torment you, take you away. Ghosts made you carve your sister’s name into your own arm. Ghosts shot you father in the chest. Ghosts pointed a gun at your own knee and nearly crippled you for life. It was not okay, it was not okay. They were trapped outside with a ghost who hated her (“She told me, tell Merry to keep away from Joss,” Geordie had said to her, after visiting Teagan in the hospital. “I don’t think she likes you very much.”)

There were a few shouts from other people in the motel, woken by the commotion, or disturbed by the power cut, who’d tried their doors and found them all sealed shut. Geordie had given up rattling theirs and had tried a window, with the same results. He was sealed in, or the others were sealed out.

All the lights were out on the property, but the streetlights on the other side of the road still glowed. There was enough light for Joss to see Teagan, just feet from him, holding out her hand. “Joss, come on,” she said.

“Kenz,” he said. “I’m going home with Leon.”

She bristled, and reached to take his other hand. “No.”

“You can come home with us,” Joss said, tightening his grip on Leon’s hand. Leon squeezed back, promising his support. “We’ll keep you safe.”

“No.”

“Kenz,” Joss sighed, too tired, so tired. “Please.”

“NO!” Kenzie screamed, pulling his hand toward her. Joss stumbled, not fast enough to stop the force of her pulling him arm from tearing out two of the stitches in his wrist. The pain of it shocked him, and he let go of Leon’s hand, stepping forward, and Teagan wrapped both her arms around his back. “You’re mine,” she whispered, feeling the warmth, the life of his body. He gripped the back of her shirt in his good hand, gripping it tight, squeezing her tight against the sudden fresh pain in his wrist.

Teagan nearly blacked out from the pain in her body, the pressure of Joss’s grip was torture against her broken ribs, her bruised back, but Kenzie delighted in the fact that he was holding on to her so hard. It meant he didn’t want to let her go, whatever his mouth said, whatever his friends were forcing him to say. He didn’t want to go home, it was obvious. “I’m your home,” Kenzie whispered in his ear, her teeth grazing his earlobe. “Only me.” Joss felt the hot ooze of blood creeping down his wrist, felt the slime of it between his fingers.

“Kn-“ he tried to say her name through the pain, teeth gritted.

She knotted her fingers around the back of his head, the ball of one of her thumbs pressing too hard against the wound near his temple. “Say it,” she whispered, needing to hear her name, his choice, come out of his lips.

“Kenzie,” he gasped, and she kissed him so hard white bursts of light flared across his closed eyes.

“Guys,” said Leon’s gentle voice, from what seemed like a very long way away. “Guys, careful with each other.”

Something red rushed toward him, a flash of red hair that turned quickly to a flash of red ragged flesh – pale arms carved with words – and it felt like a truck hit him. He blacked out for a second, and when he opened his eyes the world was on its side, and Merry knelt by him frantically repeating his name, and Teagan had collapsed against Joss’s arms the moment Kenzie left her, and Leon couldn’t breathe.

Kenzie reunited with Teagan and pulled her to her feet. She grabbed Joss’s wrist, slick with blood now, and pulled him toward Leon’s car. The side window shattered – and Kenzie reached in to unlock it and pull the door open. “Get in,” she said to Joss. “We’re leaving.”

But Joss was looking over his shoulder. “Leon?”

His brother had been thrown near the door of their room, his eyes open, his mouth open as he tried to suck air into his winded lungs. “Leon,” Joss said, pulling against Kenzie’s grip. It felt like his arm was unzipping, vomiting blood, splashing it across the concrete like a libation.

“Mmmnph, okay,” Leon grunted, struggling up. He slung an arm around Merry’s shoulders but she couldn’t pull him up, her knee couldn’t take the weight of both of them. So they sat on the concrete, cold seeping into them, as Leon fought on to get his breath back.

“Kenzie seriously!” Merry pleaded, her arms both around Leon. “We don’t want to hurt you, please don’t hurt us!”

“You tried to have me killed!” Kenzie screamed back at her, making Joss wince with the volume. “You hunted me down with a medium! You bought him with you and Ellie is calling him now!” her eyes, shot with blood, amped up Merry’s terror to new dimensions and it was all she could do not to use Leon as a kind of wounded human shield.

“You won’t destroy me,” Kenzie continued, her voice half shriek, half growl. She pushed Joss toward the car with an order for him to get in and he almost did, but couldn’t take his eyes off Leon, and lingered in the open door, clutching it for support. His wounded wrist was raised, pressed against his chest, and it felt like his heart beat pulsed painfully in his arm.

“You can’t destroy me. I am stronger than the living and stronger than the dead! I killed a man, I tore his soul from his body and sent him to death. I killed the bog man, I tore the world open and sent him to death! I destroyed the spirit of this place because it stood between me and my love. You want to do that, Merry? You want to stand between me and Joss? I’ll tear you apart.”

Merry shut up, her lips clamped together, her arms tight around Leon and her body shaking.

“Good,” Kenzie growled, turning from Merry and Leon to Joss, who was still standing there. “GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!” she screamed and Joss practically fell into the car with the strength of her voice. He sat on broken glass, which poked through his clothes and forced him into stillness so they wouldn’t slash him open.

His chest tightened as the feeling of being in a car again (being surrounded by broken glass, being covered in his own blood) wrung the breath from his lungs. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to move either. He wanted to stop stop stop please stop.

Kenzie got into the driver’s seat beside him and slammed the door, making him jump. She reached down and tore off the plastic cover of the steering column with – Joss didn’t see how she did it, probably the same way she forced the window to shatter without touching it – and began to mess with the wires. Joss turned to look out the window, where blessedly Leon looked like he was starting to breathe again, though neither of them were getting to their feet.

Beyond them he could see Geordie and Ellie looking like ghosts themselves in the window. Ellie had her hand pressed over her mouth. Geordie was trying to signal something – something like wait, Joss thought.

Stop stop stop please stop, Joss thought.

The lights on the dash flickered to life and he turned back to see Teagan’s hands fumbling with the starter wires. He reached across and grabbed her hands, though one of his hands had no strength to grip at all. “Stop,” he croaked. “You’ll kill yourself.”

“I’m already dead,” Kenzie snapped.

“Teagan’s not,” Joss said. “You’ll electrocute Teagan – Leon had these wires replaced a couple of years ago, that isn’t the starter wire you’re holding – you’ll kill Teagan-“

Kenzie narrowed her bloodshot eyes at Joss. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” he whispered, stroking her hands with his (smearing blood across her skin.)

Kenzie’s face shifted and she smiled, linking her fingers through his. “You love me,” she said, dropping the red wire. “Which one is the starter wire? Brown?”

“I don’t know,” Joss said. “Honest I don’t – I can just get the keys, from Leon, I can just get the keys and we can go.”

“Keys,” said Kenzie, and looked out the window at Leon. “Leon? Keys! Now!”

Joss saw Leon whisper something to Merry, who shouted back. “They’re inside!”

Kenzie’s face darkened like she suspected a trap. “Get out of the car,” she said to Joss. “We’ll fucking run.”

Joss wanted to burst into tears at the idea of running, but he was scared that if he didn’t, she’d throw Leon across the carpark, maybe kill him. He was scared if he didn’t, she’d try and hotwire the car and electrocute Teagan. So he moved, hearing the broken glass tinkle onto the ground beneath him as he clumsily climbed out of the car.

I survived Patrick Ravensdale thought Merry as she clutched Leon, feeling the breath come back to him. He seemed to be just winded, she hoped. He wasn’t coughing up blood, which was a good sign, but even the fact that Kenzie had been strong enough to toss him a few feet just with the power of her ghost-self frightened Merry enough to keep her on the ground. I survived Patrick Ravensdale! she thought ferociously to herself, trying to pump herself full of courage. But fear paralysed her as Joss and Kenzie got out of the car and Kenzie took his good hand and started to lead him out into the street.

Matt couldn’t be far – Merry hoped. He was staying with an old friend but they were close, she knew. A matter of blocks or minutes away, if Ellie had got through to him… if Kenzie hadn’t somehow done something to the phones.

They wouldn’t get far walking, Merry didn’t think.

But if Matt was even only minutes away they could turn a corner and she would lose them. Panic – real panic started to close in on her. Think think think, Merry! Think think think think! If she didn’t think then Joss could end up lost to her, or even dead.

Dead. “Leon,” she hissed in his ear. “Leon, play dead.” He met her eyes for a moment of shared understanding before he went down.

Leon did a good job – the heel of his hand pressed to his chest as he exaggerated his need for breath, his body twisting, his movements tight and jerky enough to look really painful, really dangerous. Merry gathered all her strength and screamed just as Leon shuddered and lay still. “HEEEELP!”

Joss twisted around to look over his shoulder and stopped walking. “Leon?”

Merry had her ear near his mouth, then her fingers at his throat. “Joss? He’s not breathing!” she yelled across the carpark, her voice shaking which wasn’t part of the act, not even close.

It was working though, Joss pulled at Kenzie’s grip, though Teagan’s cold fingers did not budge.

“Let me go!” Joss strained against her. “Kenzie let me go right now. Leon!”

“He’s fine!” Kenzie growled at Joss. “He’s faking.”

“Leon!” Joss wasn’t listening. “LEON!”

“Joss!” Merry was crying now – it hadn’t taken much. She wasn’t faking. They were real tears of real fear. “Joss I can’t find his pulse!”

“Let GO OF ME!” Joss screamed at Kenzie. “Let THE FUCK GO OF ME!”

“He’s a FAKE!” Kenzie screamed, grasping his unwounded arm with both of Teagan’s hands. “I’m NOT A LIAR, JOSS. He’s a liar! THEY’RE BOTH LYING!”

“LEON!” Joss screamed, his voice feral. His voice like nothing Leon had ever wanted to hear, like nothing he hoped he would ever hear again. “LEON!”

“Joss please!" Merry sobbed. Over the howls from the carpark she could hear sirens and please be coming here please god send them to us please. She’d take cops, fire engines, anything. Kenzie couldn’t kill everybody. God please don’t let Kenzie kill everybody.

“LET GO OF ME!” Joss kept railing against Kenzie’s undead grip, bringing his other hand up, the wrist with the torn stitches and blood soaked bandage and blood streaked hand. Bringing it up and slapping it down against Teagan’s cheek, then again in a loose-fist against her chest. “Let me go! Kenzie let me go! He’s not breathing! Let me go!”

“HE’S A LIAR!”

“You’re a liar! You’re a liar let me GO! You’re a liar you’re a killer let me go! I don’t want to go with you LET ME GO!”

Kenzie’s eyes widened, her grip slackened a little. “You don’t - want me?”

Joss was wild. “I DON’T FUCKING WANT YOU YOU KILLED MY BROTHER LET GO OF ME!”

Merry was bent over Leon, her forehead almost touching his chest, both her hands gripping his warm t-shirt. She didn’t know what she was going to do when Joss got over here and found Leon was still alive – this ruse was not an extended one and she needed a plan for what to do after but she also needed to stop crying.

Fuck – she needed to stop crying and think.

She could still hear the sirens but they were fading, now. Not heading toward them.

Merry needed to start considering that maybe they were fucked.

Something ran into her and she screamed – knocked sideways but it was Joss, crumbling next to Leon, his throat making low guttural screams as he shook Leon’s body. Leon grunted and gasped in another breath but Joss didn’t notice – he was too far gone, exhaustion and pain turning into grief and loss so quickly, so easily. It was like they’d been waiting for him all his life, perched on the edge of his consciousness, waiting. Joss always knew he’d lose everything. He didn’t sleep, as he waited for it to happen. He’d pulled his sister from the bath and pounded on her chest as he was pounding on Leon’s and he knew it was hopeless hopeless hopeless because this fate had been waiting for him all his life.

Behind him, Teagan collapsed to the ground like a marionette as Kenzie left her body – and next moment every window in the once blessed motel had shattered inward. It started in a wave with the windows closest to Teagan and traveled inwards – Ellie saw it happening and grabbed Geordie and dragged them both to the floor before the glass blew out over their heads, both of them screaming.

Kenzie grabbed onto Merry who had scrambled to her feet – grabbed her not with her hands but with her mind – intending nothing but pain cause her pain just make her suffer for daring to stand between her and Joss for daring to lie for daring to follow her here Kenzie just poured all her hatred into Merry and Merry screamed in terror as Pat’s wound on her arm – the D-for-Daria he’d carved into her arm burst open like it was new.

Kenzie let her go and she fell to her knees – shooting pain up her bad knee but fuck it was the least of her problems.

“Merry!” Ellie called through the shattered window. “Merry it’s Matt!”

Merry looked up at her friend in wild hope, her hand pressed against her arm as blood poured through her fingers.

“He’s not answering!” Ellie was this close to crying in fear as well. “Merry - he’s not coming!”

Merry really needed to start considering the possibility that they were all completely fucked.

I love you as Icarus loved the sun (Teagan, Kenzie, Liverpool) [warning for violence, blood]

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