francisco javier es una (pesadilla) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-01 02:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, castiel, gwen stacy, hoban washburne, plot: switch |
Who: Gwen!Sam Alexander, Beast Webster, Scary Cas!Chloe Murphy, & Lin "I say some things in Chinese" Alesi
What: Hurting, biting, cutting, bleeding, scaring, crying, ditching
Where: Marvel door, Gwen and Flash's apartment
When: After this
Warnings/Rating: Violence; a lot of cursing.
Sam had retreated to Gwen's bedroom. Door closed, and she'd huddled behind the door until it was only her in the shithole of an apartment that Gwen shared with Flash. She was in shock, that was for sure, and she lost track of how much time was lost sitting there, waiting for Neil (no, not Neil, Norman, Goblin, not Neil) to come back and hurt her again. Yeah, by then she realized that he wasn't going to kill her, even if he did come back, and she was pretty sure that was worse than if he just ended her outright. She was pissed that Neil hadn't warned her, hurt that he hadn't been able to fight the fucker off and keep her safe, and she couldn't let her eyes shut without remembering Micah. But this time it was Neil's face she saw in the dark, and fuck this city. Her limbs like weights, Sam wanted to move, but she was scared Neil would be outside. That he would have turned around once Louis was out of sight. She knew she was a fucking bargaining chip in all this shit. But, worse, she knew he liked hurting her. That got her moving. She didn't want to get caught like a mouse in a trap, behind a fucking door in her underwear. She just wanted to cross to Las Vegas, to let Gwen deal with this shit that her world had caused. Sam dressed quickly in one of the few pairs of jeans Gwen owned, and she slipped a blue sweater over the blood-stained wifebeater. There was no hiding the bite-bruise purpling around her mouth or the bruises that lined her throat, and any bit of movement showed the restraint splotches along her wrists, but at least she didn't feel as fucking vulnerable as she had before, when she'd been barely dressed. She didn't just look like a teenager now, she felt like one, and she fucking hated it. And, in all this shit, Sam had forgotten about her invitation to Chloe. She had forgotten the promise to fuck the other woman up, and she had no idea that Chloe was now infinitely powerful. She just slipped on a pair of Gwen's sneakers, and she tucked her messy, blood-dotted hair back in a ponytail, and she made for the door. Along the way, she picked up a baseball bat that was lying against the hallway wall, because there was no fucking way that anything was getting close to her again. With that, she yanked open the door. Chloe, however, had not forgotten the invitation to come and visit, threat of bodily harm or no. So she had given it thirty minutes before exiting her door, and with only a small amount of coaxing, convinced Castiel that she should get another trip, and then they were stepping through the door that had been propped open in warm invitation to her. The power flooded through her, intoxicating in its scope, and she embraced it like a good friend coming home to see her once more. It washed fears out of her, the normal human anxieties and worries, leaving behind a cool assurance that no matter what she faced, she would come out ahead eventually. There was patience laced into the feeling, the sort that comes with a being who has existed for longer than most could think to imagine. Waiting a day, a week, a year, it was nothing to her any longer. And wait she did. The door had opened into a hallway, run down and ragged with heavy use, and she had simply leaned back against the wall, arms folded over her chest. She trusted that Sam would seek her out when she had gotten through with whatever or whoever was occupying her time, because even Neil had ceased to exist as a point of concern with her now. So much of the things that had occupied her thoughts and energy, they were trivial now. There were bigger concerns to be bothered with, now. She was a cool presence against the wall, dark blue skinny jeans and a gauzy, flowing blouse. Her dark hair was straight and flowing down her back, and the heavenly powers now at her fingertips imbued her with an energy that was almost palpable. Unlike Castiel, she had not bothered to tone down her presence; she was there, she was glorious, and she was dangerous. When the door to the apartment to her right cracked open, Chloe turned her attention in that direction, a slow smile coming to her lips, and sure enough, she was not disappointed. No matter the fact that she and Sam had never made acquaintance of one another in Las Vegas, Chloe was positive that this girl was her. Young, scrawny, a slip of a thing that she did not feel threatened by. “Do you think the bat is going to help you?” she asked smoothly, striding towards the newly opened door, her head tilted to the side. Sam didn't recognize her, because she'd never met Chloe. She didn't remember, either, even after a few minutes passed. She was a raised bat, and she was fucking ready to swing. She wasn't even going to ask questions. It was defensive, the reaction of an animal that had been cornered and was done with that shit. She'd bite first, before she was bitten, and fuck the consequences. And maybe a lot of that was old, old shit. Her own anger and self-guilt for not fighting back in that dark kitchen, and for letting herself get caught up in shit she knew she wasn't going to be able to resist once everything was back to normal. And it came with an aching sense of loss, the reality that the one fucking person she trusted in the middle of all this shit had betrayed her more than anyone else. And that wasn't fair, she knew. It wasn't Neil's fault, but that anger was still there, and it made her swing the fucking bat without asking a damn thing. Blame that question the woman asked because, yeah? Help? That sounded like a threat, and she was small and hurt, but she was done being fucking threatened. It happened before the bat had moved even a centimeter. A raised hand, a sweep to the side, and two things happened at once. The bat was torn from the girl’s hands, clattering down to the end of the hallway where it finally came to rest, and then an immense pressure slammed Sam against the hall’s wall, flattening her there before even a second had passed. The power swelled in her, aching for an outlet, and Chloe actually let out a laugh. “I think I finally understand the phrase ‘drunk on power’,” she said, dark eyes practically sparkling. “Or maybe it’s even better because it’s you.” With the girl pinned to the wall, there was no threat to speak of, but there hadn’t been one in the first place, had there been? Stepping closer, Chloe ran a manicured nail over the line of Sam’s jaw, scraping beneath her chin, taking in the bite mark around her mouth, the bruises that purpled her neck. “It’s good to finally meet you, Sam,” Chloe whispered, dragging a nail down the front of the girl’s neck. “I thank you for leaving that door open for me. It’s an invitation I will make sure you do not regret.” Sam didn't get it at first. She actually watched the bat as it flew across the hallway, confusion on her young face, and then the slam against the wall came, and she was too shocked to even scream. What the fuck? And she just wanted to give up, to call it a fucking day. There were tears at the corners of her eyes, and she was barely listening to the woman in front of her. It was the assertion that this was better because it was her that made her remember about Chloe at all, and she started laughing a panic-mad laugh. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Much like Neil, she just spit in the woman's face, because fuck this. She struggled to get away from the nail that was scraping beneath her chin, but of course that didn't do jackshit, which just made her panic more, made her think of being pinned to the couch, to a counter, and she started screaming her fucking head off a moment later. At first, it was just sound, agony, really, without words, madness kissed. But that changed pretty quick. "You fucking bitch. Seriously? We have to do this shit now? He doesn't want you, so just let me go." And all of it sounded desperate, because fuck if she even had any faith in that anymore. Everything was crumbling, and she couldn't do anything to make it stop. Chloe could nearly see the lines of thought coursing through her, the way they contorted her features, the tears in her eyes, the laugh that echoed through the hallway. Human emotions were a curious thing, and while Chloe understood how they could change a person, she didn’t particularly care about that just then. But this Sam was certainly an interesting person charged with emotion like she was. Her nail dragged further down, catching on the collar of the sweater, pulling for a moment before she released the fabric. She took her time examining her, not reacting a moment when Sam went so far as to spit in her face. Instead, she simply wiped it off, reached a hand out and pushed up the sleeve of the sweater from one hand, fingering the reddened skin around the girl’s wrist. “He may not want me,” Chloe said slowly, dragging her gaze back to Sam’s eyes, making sure that she was being watched. “But he seems to want to destroy you. I wonder which of us he likes best.” She smiled then, fingers stroking up the tender skin of that inner wrist, exploring and testing. “Do you want me to make it go away, Sam?” Chloe asked, her voice saccharin sweet. “The pain? The bruises? Everything that aches inside you? I could do that for you now. That’s how powerful I am.” She pulled her fingers from Sam’s wrist and brought them back to her cheek, laying against that pale skin feather-light. There was the feeling of immenseness coming from her, shadows shifting and forming, and for a moment, the feeling of wings unfurling and spreading wide could be felt before it faded abruptly. “You threaten to hurt me. To punch me. And I offer to help you. Curious, is it not?” On the other side of the Doors, the tall young man with the calm amber eyes who stood outside the Fairy Tales Door hadn’t said a word in the Passages hallway, but he’d listened to what the sandy-haired man had said and walked through the door without a single word of comment beyond an affirmation that yes, he was Daniel’s Alter. He did give Lin a frown that could have been concern, and might have been warning, but Henry hadn’t read the journal, nor did he have the kind of close emotional connection that others seemed to have with their Alters. He went through the Door opened for him, trying not to think of all the times his anger became deadly. The sheer amount of mass that tumbled through the alley door was several times that of Henry. With weight, claws, teeth and sheer determination, the Beast was fully capable of taking apart small foreign sedans. Every hair, fur, and feather was on end, and he looked like a nightmare come to life. New York was cold in the Marvel door, and steam clouded around the overlarge wolf snout, graying out the yellow teeth and wide blue eyes. It looked for about five seconds that he was going to tear into the person coming into the door behind him, and the big gray wings spread out to fill the alleyway and cram against the bricks as he whirled to face the way he had come. A growl that was meant to destroy any semblance of resistance in prey of all sizes echoed up the walls. Wash had met Mary Jane Watson of Spider-Man fame in the hallway in what was sure to be one of the world’s strangest crossovers. But unlike your average internet underbelly AU fanfiction, there was no creepy (hello, age difference), redheaded sex in the admittedly erotic corridor. No. Mary Jane handed off the key to the door and departed. Wash followed her through at Lin’s urging. He had left Serenity without a pilot, but March was there, and he had faith that the other boy could channel River’s own ability to fly the rig. This was more important. On the other side of the door, Lin held the thing open, waiting. He finally glanced up when the somber young man with the weird, yellow eyes appeared. Something in his frown, a subtle downturning of the corners of his mouth, told Lin all he needed to know and he stepped hastily back to allow the other man through. He tried not to say anything. (Do you know how hard that is for someone like Lin?) He just bit his bottom lip and pushed the panicky thoughts about about how this was a bad idea, given that they didn’t know where to go and didn’t have a clue as to what was even happening out of his head. They had to do something, he supposed. Sam needed help. Then, the strangest thing happened, and helped Lin’s mind empty itself quickly enough. What the fuck? The man was gone. The boy scrambled backward on the pavement when the beast turned toward him, hitting his back hard on the slick bricks of the wall behind him. For a second, he managed to knock the wind out of his own lungs and he just stared and choked, obviously horrified at whatever the fuck that thing was. It had familiar blue eyes. Daniel? Every cell in the boy's small body urged him to run, run and never look back, Simba-style. He wasn’t even dressed for this shit. “I-” It was like God’s first draft. Yes. That’s what he was looking at, wasn’t it? God’s horrible kindergarten drawing. Something that had just rolled out of the primordial soup, without checking itself in the mirror, a piece of every kind of animal imaginable sprouting from its body. It had wings, for chrissake. Lin’s words caught in his throat and he just flattened himself against the wall as the creature snarled at him. One weak finger pointed down the alleyway toward the street and the lights that burst at the end there. His eyebrows peaked in a worried question and a plaintive wish to not be eaten alive on the streets of a strange city. His palms hurt from where they grabbed at the rough edges of the bricks. He shook his head and smiled stupidly. “Sam?” Yes. Very clever, Lin. They were Daniel’s eyes, but somehow that was not reassuring. It was as if Daniel wasn’t home. Claws of varying make and size dug into solid concrete and sent chips skittering to either side. One of the misshapen forearms was bent like that of a wolf, with shaggy bear’s fur and boar bristle sticking out at the awkward joint; the other had the disturbing ripple of a jungle cat, and both were disturbed by the truly disturbing spiral of iridescence that might very well have been scales. The Beast moved with absolutely no grace, no cohesion. He had to do a lot of dragging with the back feet, which had toes nearly joined into one. Monochrome stripes worked down the haunches of one side, and chestnut muscle implied that the Beast was propelled by not only by the stamina of wolf and boar, but by equine speed. The Beast took in a deep breath of the scared boy on the wall. He growled again, but there was enough of the human in there to keep the Beast from taking a bite out of whatever was in his way. He wasn’t hungry, he was angry. “Stay behind. You get in the way, I will bite you.” It wasn’t Daniel’s voice. When Daniel said the word bite it had calm hints of flat teeth and maybe midnight passion in it; when the Beast said bite he meant tearing, he meant muscle separating from bone and ligament, he meant pain and blood. He bared his teeth one more time, and then (slowly) he remembered his purpose and turned away. He was looking for a woman, not a boy. He sniffed at the air again and took off down the alley. We’ll not say the kind of chaos a huge monster attracted running down the streets of New York. People fled in all directions before the Beast even had a chance at batting them out of his way. After the first few minutes of news coverage, however, people could be heard saying that the Hulk had been worse. The Beast started tearing through the street door of an apartment building. Literally. There was enough racket while he tried to cram himself up the stairs to bring the walls down, because he started roaring. It began like a howl, high and long, and then deepened down into a roar that was designed for savannah that went on for empty miles. That sound was death on its way. Chloe's statement that Neil wanted to destroy her hurt. It mingled too closely with Sam's own insecurities about him not fighting off Goblin, and it tangled itself the fuck up with the feeling of him pressing down on her against her will. Yeah, no, not good. She closed her eyes, and she shook her head back and forth. She decided, then, that she just wasn't going to say a fucking thing. She was done. She was so done. She didn't even comment about the wings, though she felt them when they spanned and moved the air. But she couldn't help but laugh at Chloe's offer. Like she could do anything to help her. Like anyone could help her. She knew perfectly well that she looked like teenage domestic violence victim, and she felt even worse than that. And, what's worse, she had no idea what the fuck happened to her life back home now. Did she even fucking have one anymore? She wasn't even sure, and she almost decided to tell Chloe as much. But then there was a horrible fucking sound from downstairs, and Sam's eyes flew open. Frightened, inky things, she forgot about her decision not to fight against the bitch that held her pinned to the wall. Fuck, that, because something was coming, and she thought it was Neil. God help her, right then, she thought he had that glider thing that Flash had told Gwen about. "LET ME GO!" she screamed. The way she looked at Sam, it was as though the girl was a curious thing to be examined, dissected, pulled apart to see what made it tick inside; it was a look void of humanity and compassion. And she might have continued to examine Sam in that fashion had the howl not echoed through the hallways, making even the hairs on the back of her neck stand in response. Her eyes narrowed, contempt living there, and with a gesture of one hand, the scream that erupted from the girl’s lips was promptly silenced. “Quiet,” she muttered, her gaze turned down the hall in the direction it had come from. There was danger in the sound, and though she did not recognize the source, she was intelligent enough to have her defenses at the ready. Head tilted to the side, listening, waiting, her lips finally turned up at the corner in a sliver of a smile. “A knight on his beast. Are they coming to save you?” she asked, glancing back towards the silenced girl. It was only after wrestling his amygdala’s primal, and very persuasive, insistence that he run, the heels kicking him in the ass kind of run, that Lin managed to pull himself off the wall to follow the creature as it cantered unevenly down the alleyway and out onto the street. Screams of terror rose up in its wake. Oh, God. Lin squeezed his eyes shut against the very real, cold fear that threatened to render him useless and sped after the angry, hateful thing, hoping it knew where it was going. In whatever news reports caught footage of the strange amalgamation racing through the streets of New York, a boy also appeared. Short, with dark hair, and a ways behind, but obviously trying to keep up. Lin wasn’t an athlete, which meant he was flat out sprinting after the Daniel-thing and that he was completely and totally out of breath by the time he skidded to a halt in front of the splintered door of the dingy apartment building that he assumed housed Sam. He froze for a second time. There was a roar like nothing he’d ever heard - like nothing he ever wanted to hear again. A high-pitched scream split the air seconds later. What on earth was he walking into? Was he really going to die? Here? No. Gross. Lin, still short of breath, gingerly stepped over the threshold, folding his arms over his chest, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he hurried up what was left of the stairs. He had to stop once to bend in half and cough. One of his lungs thought now might be the time to jump ship. It might never get another chance. He couldn’t blame it, honestly. The boy shoved himself off the wall and stumbled into the hallway that contained a view that almost rivaled his first encounter with Daniel as the monster. A beast. An ...okay, then … an angel. And there was Sam. She was black and blue and red and being held, struggling, against the peeling wall by... by... Chloe... with wings? A discarded bat rolled on the ground at the other end of the corridor. Lin squinted. What had happened here? His stomach churned, reminding him that he still had a chance to run for it and that if he were smart, he’d take it. But Daniel - oh, no. Lin’s eyes widened. He was going to kill her - Chloe. “No,” he whimpered uselessly, trying to keep as far away from the lusus naturae that filled the hallway as he could, while simultaneously attempting to circumvent it. Lin coughed into his hand. “Don’t.” In order to force his way through the door to the apartment, the Beast had to destroy the thing much the way he had the building door, though with less glass and more impatience. He’d had to pull himself through the resulting hole like a cat through a bottleneck, and the result left torn feathers and fur in his wake. He clawed down on the carpet to force his way in, yowling in pain and anger on the way in. There wasn’t even a speck of awareness in him just then; he was on the defensive, the territorial certainty of the Beast marking certain things as HIS and anything else a threat to those things. He bounded in so quickly the two small horns at the crown of his skull under the thick mane scraped on the low ceiling, and bits of white stucco rained down as the Beast sprang forward, claws out, for the other animal attacking HIS girl-Sam-thing. The Beast’s curse was like a swirling black hole of entropy. At the heart of it he was exactly the man he was meant to be, contained in the shell of muscle and fur. The bit of magic was adept, as it was tied to his soul and therefore not unraveled except by a certain state that soul needed to achieve. As a result, the spell created something that resisted supernatural influence of any kind, like water on wax. The Beast was a thunderstorm rolling out of the empty sky, unstoppable, black, and unthinking. He heard nothing and felt nothing except his rage. Not having a voice just made Sam feel more vulnerable, and the thing coming through the door didn't help. In her fear, Sam didn't even recognize Lin right away. She just wanted down, away, and she fought against the invisible hand that held her, silent screams which eventually gave way to shocked silence, her eyes unseeing, pupils blown wide after a few seconds longer still. Then, yeah, nothing. Just shock calm, eerie and still. Whatever it was that Chloe had been expecting to approach them in the hallway, the creature that appeared was not expected. The beast was feral, animalistic in a way that defied the senses, and as it sprang for her, claws out, the killing edge it wore obvious to all around, Chloe felt no fear. No apprehension. No anxiety. A smile tugged at her lips, and in an instant, the silver blade given to all angels was in her hand. She did not know what kind of damage it could do to the creature that sprung at her, but she was not going to let it approach unarmed. One hand clutched the blade, and the other swung out in front of her, a wall of energy leaving her palm designed to blow the creature back to where it had come, but it passed through it, unaffected. Only then did her eyes widen slightly in surprise, and then she struck out, meeting it with her blade extended, dark eyes bright with energy. The screaming finally died down, but by then, the sounds of the already-not-so-sturdy building crumbling apart in huge pieces all around them filled what would have otherwise most certainly been a boring bit of silence. Yes. Because what they needed right now was more earth-shattering, ear-splitting roars, shrill screams of terror, and whatever the fuck else. A silence really would’ve just killed the mood, like snuffing a candle out on a romantic date. They couldn’t have that. As the Daniel-thing charged, Lin more or less just huddled, feckless, against the wall and covered his head with his hands, because, oh my God. The weirdly otherworldly and utterly serene Chloe-angel was turning to intercept the beast, something sharp and dangerous flashing in her hand, and Sam was still there, her eyes dangerously wide and her mouth empty, restrained by something the boy couldn’t see. Fuck. A small blast threw him a few feet backward, ass over tea kettle. He felt like he was having a heart attack, but he couldn’t let that stop him. With a pitiful sound and a hand over his heart where it pounded furiously against his ribcage, Lin was up and running, elbow scraping the wall and leaving skin there. He zoomed past the two clashing creatures, ignoring them as much as one could a snarling, hulking monstrosity and a glowing, winged woman, with whom one has slept, actually (sans wings). He only stopped when he was near enough to Sam to try reaching for her. His palms were slick and his fingers cold and uncooperative, but still he tried. He hooked his hands around the girl’s narrow shoulders, grabbing onto her blue sweater - she was smaller now than she had been before, smaller, younger, and so very scared. “Sam -” He was breathless. There was nothing more to say. The boy closed his eyes to the rainbow of bruises on her face and tugged at her as hard as he could, trying, ultimately fruitlessly, to pry her from her prison on the wall. Meanwhile, the Beast hit the angel like a train at full speed, over fifteen hundred pounds of solid muscle and flailing teeth. There was no thinking involved, no calculation. When the crackling wall of energy passed through him, it only made his fur stand further on end, every whisker aquiver in a long cat’s leap through dead air. The Beast didn’t register the angel’s silver toothpick beyond a cold, distant hint that it was something unusual that he should be avoiding, and it certainly didn’t sink through quickly enough to change his approach in the slightest. The Beast, like any other creature, could be damaged by purely physical means. In this fight, the ethereal blade was just that: a blade. Sharp, no doubt, and virtually indestructible, but the insane animal was generally beyond pain. The thick, boar-like chest resisted puncture, sliding a deep cut over the shoulder joint. By the time any imposition registered, the Beast already had ten claws, two venomous spurs, and over twenty teeth tearing into whatever he could reach of the small winged thing under his paws. The moment the beast and the angel collided, the pure strength between them, that born from heavenly powers and that of the beast, exploded in something that was tangible in the hallway. Chloe could feel the angelic blade slice into the thick hide, and while it didn’t penetrate, it was enough to draw a smile to her face. That was until the thing’s claws, spurs, and teeth met her body, the human part of her that still lived just beneath the surface suddenly filled with fear. She could feel skin tear, the venom slip slide into her bloodstream, but it did not come with pain. There was heat flooding through her, pushing her own, and with a roar that reverberated, filled the air with its strength, Chloe evaporated from the beast’s grasp. She was gone for only a moment, reappearing mere heartbeats later behind Lin, that silver blade pressed to the man’s throat, something unstable shining in her dark eyes. One arm was wrapped around him, the slender limb belying the strength afforded to her by heaven; there would be no breaking out of this grip easily. Blood soaked her clothing, stained her skin, and a normal person would not still be standing with the injuries the beast had given her. But she stood, and she glared at the beast, the tip of the blade pulling the smallest drop of blood from beneath the surface of skin. “He’ll be dead if you come near me,” she said coolly, and the tone came with a heavy promise that she would follow through with it. The human known as Chloe may have known Lin, shared a bed with him, but the angel that rode her now had no such feelings or compassion. This was a game of survival, and there was no hesitation to move the pawns on the chessboard to suit her best. This pawn was distracted, and whatever was going on between the storybook creatures behind him - whatever was eliciting the snarls and sounds of pain, he didn’t want to know. It all terrified him. And Lin knew that if he got too frightened, he wouldn’t be of any use. He would freeze and cry and generally be a small mess of a boy, whom Daniel would then bite because he was in the way. That was why he didn’t bother opening his eyes. No. He just kept pulling with all his strength, fingers digging sharply into the girl’s shoulders, and trying to separate Sam from the fucking wall. A sheen of cold sweat broke out on his forehead from all the exertion. But none of it made a bit of difference. She was there, somehow holding fast to the wall, silent and - Lin opened his eyes, wide and wild. There was an unexpected change in air pressure behind him, preceded only by an eerie sigh of wind that made no sense, given they were, like, in the middle of a fucking hallway. (Though, to be fair, not many things were making much sense right now.) This was all followed by the sudden, overwhelming feeling that someone was standing behind him. Very, very close behind him. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Lin attempted to get away. He really did. He kicked away from the wall with all his strength, but, like his attempt to free Sam, it was wholly, tragically, ineffective. He was caught, one startlingly strong arm cinched around his shoulders, and there was nothing he could do about it. The boy fought against the angel’s grip - Chloe’s grip? - but he was so weak. When the needle of a blade, wicked, long and whip-thin, the color of a nickel, came out, he just kind of shook his head at it, blinking tears back in his eyes. His mind forgot Daniel and it forgot Sam. Lin really didn’t want to die and, if he had to die, he didn’t want to die because he was gutted by an angel holding a tin blade. Oh, but, she was warm though - Chloe was. It was a stupid, inane, trivial thing to notice, but, her body’s entire length was pressed against his and a strange heat poured out of her with the red of her blood. She had a heartbeat, too. So she was alive. Could she be killed? Lin squeezed his eyes shut as the point of the angel’s dagger found the skin of his throat and drew a bead of blood. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He tried to turn his head away, but there was nowhere for it to go, and he mostly ended up just jerking violently and hurting himself more. Chloe’s distant, unfeeling words tickled his ear and sent his heart tumbling. No! This was such a dumb way to die. He couldn’t die like this. His hands shot up to the arm that held him by the shoulders and tried to claw them off of him. “No, please,” he pleaded with the woman - with the woman he hoped was still somewhere inside the angel’s beaten and bloody form, even as his nails raked at her skin. Not even the arrival of death on his doorstep could stop Lin from babbling, it seemed. And though he could only manage broken, halting words, he did his best to get them out, certain they were important, that they could change her mind. “I’ll - b-b-but, Chloe - I’m - the cookies and - w-what about - the ingredients and the funeral -” Nailed it. Perhaps if Daniel had lingered in the skin of the monster long enough to understand the influence of the animal on the man; or perhaps if it was not Daniel, but Henry, who had learned to be a creature, and dwelt as one in a far greater number of years than he had lived as a man; or perhaps again if Daniel had not allowed his own bitter anger to join the Beast’s in one hopeless swirl of impotent, territorial rage... then perhaps the Beast would have taken the trouble to understand the nature of the angel’s relocation. The short, eloquent threat was just noise to the monster, who took at least ten seconds to even notice what he was tearing at was carpet and not bloody flesh. The Beast had difficulty turning, as he was not a creature made of fish bones and soft pink scales. What was serpent about him was in venom and in the close bones of his tail, and there was not much of grace except in the hulking curve of the wings that served to counterbalance the massive weight he hauled around to face the rest of the room. He growled and hissed at the same time, wailing in the back of his throat like a young wolf with treed prey. Coming victory and blood was in his nose, and his muzzle dripped with blackened blood that tasted foul on hs wide purple tongue. He opened his mouth and showed ugly teeth of all sizes and shapes. The Beast brought his head low to the ground, wolf muzzle scraping down along the carpet. He showed no sign of understanding the threat or the blade, no real knowledge of who was friend and who was foe. He did not appear to be thinking at all. He hissed again. It gurgled on his tongue. During all this shit, Chloe's angelic grip on Sam dropped. Dazed like she was, the teenager didn't actually get what was happening at first. It was the hard landing on the floor that even drew her out of the silence and wide-eyed nothing she'd become. And, really, she wasn't fucking thinking. Yeah, so there was a monster, an angelic bitch, and Lin? The fuck. But thinking wasn't big on her to-do list. She wanted to get the fuck away. She wanted to never, ever be pinned beneath or by anyone ever again. She didn't want to deal with that monstrosity with teeth either, though it didn't fucking shock her as much as it would have at the beginning of the day. It wasn't Neil, and that was the main thing. Just out of reach, the baseball bat that Chloe had knocked out of her fucking hand caught Sam's attention. It was close enough now that only a scootch in its direction let her reach it with her fingers, a swallowed back moan of pain on her lips. And it was unthinking when she swung the fucking thing, full force, at the back of Chloe's head, sobbing all the while. She was working in basics. Black and fucking white. Fear and survival. The thing with teeth couldn't stop her from escaping without getting close, but Chloe could, and fuck that. And she was pissed at Chloe. So fucking pissed that the other woman had taken all her fucking rights away. Fuck, that. She swung, and she swung hard, waiting until wood impacted something before dropping the damn baseball bat and running. Fuck this. Fuck this city. Fuck everything. She was done. Gwen could deal with everything in Las Vegas. Jesus fucking ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng Christ. No! Why the fuck was this happening? Seriously, why? Lin, in a panic, briefly considered some of the worst things he had done in his short stint on earth, and still, the count didn’t seem to add up to desert of karmic retribution of this magnitude. So now he was going to be eaten by the fucking leviathan horror he had been stupid enough to bring along? This was some serious bullshit. If he died, and if there was, by some miserable twist of fate, an afterlife, someone was going get a serious earful. As the Daniel-horror lumbered toward him and his captor, looming ever larger, wings bumping against the ceiling tiles, teeth bared, purple and dripping saliva, whatever few scraps of composure he had left ...just - vanished. Something inside him broke. Lin started to cry. And I mean the straight up terrified, incoherent bawling kind of crying. Like he was going to die and he knew it was going to suck kind of crying. Words were of no use to him now, he knew, and that was all he fucking had. Goddamnit. Daniel was such an asshole. Such a fucking, incorrigible, rude, reclusive, blue-eyed bastard and a half of an asshole. Why in the name of baby Jesus had Lin agreed to this? He was such an idiot. If he hadn't already been sobbing, he would have laughed. The boy’s babbling for mercy had ceased the moment it dawned on him that the little, shiny knife in the angel’s hand was the least of his worries. (At this point, he would have been grateful if she would just slit his throat and fucking go.) It wasn’t like he could fucking fight Daniel off - yeah, with what? His tears? Throw a fucking punch? It didn’t help that, as far as he knew, Sam was still glued to the wall, unable to talk, much less offer assistance. He didn’t want to die. Why did no one seem to care about that? Lin’s knees went weak and tried to fold under him. It was only Chloe’s arm around his shoulders and the press of cool steel against his throat that held him upright. The angel was breathing slow and easy, imbued with a calm that should not have been possible considering the situation at hand. Her gaze was on the beast, the lumbering turn, taking in every bit of detail from the creature as it moved, and it was that lapse of concentration on Sam that allowed her to tumble to the ground, released from the hold Chloe had had on her moments before. It wasn’t often that one could get one up on an angel, but her attention was so much on the beast and the now-sobbing man held up only by the arm she had around her shoulders, that she didn’t notice Sam approaching with the bat until it was far too late to respond. The bat connected true and hard against the back of her skull, a blow that would have felled a normal human being. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Chloe was hardly human at that point. The blow reverberated through her, rattling her vision for just a moment. It wasn’t enough, however, to let her lose her grip on the man she had her arm around, the bite of the angel blade still pressed against his throat, stained red from where it had nicked thin skin. The sound of footsteps, of sobbing, echoed in her ears, and she couldn’t help the faint smile that tugged at her lips. “Run, run, run. Don’t ever look back, little girl,” Chloe murmured, and then she turned back to the beast, brows lifting for a moment. “You going after her?” she asked the beast, ignoring the fear-filled sobs that filled the man in her arms, relentless in her hold on him, refusing to let that one escape. She meant Lin no harm, but he was still useful in case that creature decided to attack. “Or are we going to dance a bit more?” Whether or not the thing understood her words was beyond her caring. It’s next move would be the telling one. All the feathers slicked flat down along the Beast’s strangely colored flanks. His entire profile became narrow and close while everything about him sank low to the ground. Sharp wings of bone pressed into patterned fur and rose up above his head while the strangely blank eyes glistened in the deep tangle of golden mane. The Beast crouched down as if to spring, and he waited for his moment. He felt patient for the first time in days, ready to wait for that moment to come for all eternity as long as the blood kept pumping and the song kept rising. The Beast almost went after Sam as she was leaving. It was just motion in the background, his prey trying to get away, and while perhaps the humanity was only to be found in the calm of the Beast’s eyes (as they were Daniel blue and not Henry’s hazel) on a good day, they didn’t see all that well. The Beast hunted by sound and by scent, like the great serpents and aging jungle cats. This close, he could make things out if he tried, but he wasn’t trying; he was hunting. He wasn’t listening either; he was hunting. Sam’s crack of bat-on-skull only made the Beast jump forward, not quite in his pouncing leap, but in a confused reaction to motion, as a kitten concerned about a mouse going astray when he isn’t looking. She fled, and he could track her scent, but Sam’s danger had brought the Beast here, and as far as he was concerned, the trespasser, the enemy, the prey and the danger, she was still here. He could smell her blood and her heartbeat. The Beast dropped out of his dramatic little twitch, now at an angle, and crouched again, facing the angel and her captive. He noticed that she was holding something in great distress, and he could both hear and smell Lin’s wailing, his fear and his blood. None of those things were good to the Beast. He wasn’t here because he was hungry. They only served to make him angrier, to increase that instinctive protection of his territory, that need for reconciliation and vengeance. He came forward again, this time striking like a snake, darting down and snarling up with huge teeth that missed Lin by an inch. The Beast clamped on to the angel’s arm and shoulder to prevent the silver thing from cutting him again, and he held on for all he was worth. Chloe may have had the innate powers of the angel, but that did not mean she had Castiel’s honed senses. When the beast struck again, it was true and hard, leaving her arm enveloped in a white-hot pain that lanced through her, stealing her breath. Almost instantly, her hold on Lin was forgotten, her free hand coming up to push at the beast, a muttered curse lost in the sound of the snarling, growling thing. It was rare that the angel came across something it could not subdue, but the beast certainly fell into that category. Retreat was whispered to her in the back of her head, in a voice she recognized as Castiel’s, and Chloe was quick to listen for once in her life. There was no dramatic wind, no pomp or circumstance when the woman disappeared from the grip of the beast’s jaw. One moment she was there, and the next she was not, though her blood stained his teeth and the carpet where her feet had once rested. So Chloe was hit in the head with the bat Lin had seen earlier. Okay. That much he gathered, somehow, just after the angel’s skull snapped forward from the impact and, losing none of its momentum, smashed into his. There was half a second there were the world was black and silent, and it was in that frozen moment that it occurred to him that Sam had gotten free. And that she had most likely wrought her vengeance on Chloe via baseball bat to the back of the head. Okay. Without warning, the hallway came rushing back with his consciousness, and, wuh de ma, it was bright and it was loud and everything was a blur. And his head fucking hurt. Like, fucking hurt a lot. Like maybe he was bleeding. The angel was saying something in that flat, cool voice of hers, but Lin couldn’t hear what it was. The words got caught somewhere in the gauzy nothingness that currently filled his head, buzzed around in his ears, but that was it. The boy was vaguely aware that he was still crying, he could feel his shoulders shaking, the shortness of his breath, and the wetness on his cheeks - and the slow spread of warmth on his neck tipped him off that the devilishly sharp point of Chloe’s celestial dagger had bitten into him a little more as he’d jerked forward. The Daniel-thing appeared as confused as he was when it sprang forward skittishly. Ungainly and huge, a blue-eyed abomination, it still made Lin’s stomach sour with fear, but even he had to admit, it looked more than a little ridiculous hopping around like some hideous, gigantic kitten-monster, and, had he not been where he was - you know, about to die, he might have laughed at the whole thing. As it was, he made a sound more akin to a scream as the beast lunged forward in a flash, mismatched jaws snapping, and latched onto Chloe’s shoulder, like, not even fucking two motherfucking centimeters from Lin. He dropped to the floor. The two creatures tussled above him. Blood, he realized with horror, was splattering onto his head. Chloe’s. Jesus fuck. He didn’t look up. “No, no, nonononono. You stupidstupid, fucking drunk.” The small, sad boy whimpered deliriously, and a little angrily, to himself between sobs, his head killing him. He was hardly breathing. Tucking his chin to his chest and with his eyes shut tight, he crawled away. He did exactly as his amygdala ordered. Yes, sir. He didn’t know Chloe had gone. It didn’t matter, either. And he didn’t care that he probably looked pathetic. A (semi-)grown man, on his hands and knees, bawling, and running away like a child. The fact was that Lin knew he could easily be dead inside of two seconds if Daniel forgot, again, that he wasn’t the bad guy/squeaky toy. All the brute had to do was flick him with its... scorpion tail or claw or hoof or whatever - in the part of the head Chloe’s skull had already softened and bam. Sayonara, Lin Alesi. No, fucking thank you. The Beast reacted predictably when his prey vanished entirely out of his jaws without warning. A coolness flickered over his gums, and it startled him into opening his eyes and shying back. He snapped at the air a couple times, growling his deep grinding growl, but after a wild look around with his near-sighted eyes, he finally came to the conclusion that she had escaped. This drove him absolutely wild with rage, his purpose denied to him and his prey somehow stolen from under his paws on the brink of victory. The Beast tore at the carpet, the wall where she had stood a moment before. He paced in a short circle around the spot the angel had just vacated; he pressed his nose down to the floor and scraped the molecules of her blood into his muzzle, hoping he could track her very existence. The growls and howls finally tapered into a muttering quiet, and then finally a quiet. The serpentine tail with its odd little red fur tuft stopped flicking madly to either side. The Beast looked around to see what was making the sounds and the smells of distress, and he remembered (vaguely) about the other thing in the room, the not-prey but not-right thing. It took him a few moments more to remember thing as person. An actual name was slow in coming, and the Beast began to show signs of confusion and even fright. He put his head up in the air and to all sides, obviously trying to understand his surroundings, and then he dropped belly to the floor and put his head down on the mismatched paws. He was feeling the awkwardness of his form again, and a general awareness of self began to filter back in. The Beast moved cautiously in Lin’s direction and put out a suddenly soft, clawless paw to see if he was still living. The paw hung there a moment as the animal quested for something to explain the situation, and then Daniel blinked and said, blankly, “Lin?” The wall was right there. So, so close. Lin had been reaching forward, his left hand stretching and stretching, to try to find some purchase to help pull himself to his feet, so he could at least pretend he had some human dignity left, when the ruckus broke out behind him, far surpassing the boy’s pain threshold pressure by, like, 50 decibels. His ears felt like they were bleeding. After that, his muscles just froze. They refused to continue moving. No matter how much steeling of nerve Lin did. So there he was, still on the ground, one arm held out stupidly, as the thing behind him went straight up bananas. The poor kid didn’t even have the heart to make a mental Gwen Stefani reference. Claws met drywall, met chalky ceiling, met carpet. With backup vocals done by what sounded like a wolf, some kind of freakishly large jungle cat, maybe a snake or something, and some sort of terrible, screeching bird. Just. What the hell. His head throbbed. Lin’s eyes closed again, tears still leaking out of them, and his muscles relented enough to let him flatten his palms to his ears as hard as he could until it all stopped. It got eerily quiet there in the hallway. Had it... was Chloe... dead? Lin’s eyes flew open and his hands dropped, but he didn’t look back. He just sat there. Uselessly. His arms crossed around his middle in some pathetic attempt to comfort himself while he continued to be the most terrified he had ever been in his entire life. (Would it ever end?) Briefly, he considered the likelihood of being able to climb to his feet fast enough to throw himself down the demolished stairwell before the monster decided it wanted dessert. His mental calculations told him he stood no chance. Shit. It was only when something flashed out of the corner of his eye that Lin moved at all. And then, when he realized that that something was the Daniel-thing creeping up behind him (how did something that big fucking creep?), he was about this close to curling up into a ball and cursing the cruelty of the world. But then it poked him. And said his name. Lin glanced over his shoulder, wondering if this was some kind of sick joke. The beast was there, breathing down on him, as ugly and horrifying as ever, but something in its eyes had changed, it seemed to the boy. A weird pause hung in the air, and Lin waited for more to come, for whatever was supposed to follow his name. When nothing happened, and after peering down the corridor and realizing that there was no dead, shredded angel there, he finally turned all the way around, though he remained on his knees on the ground. “I swear to fucking God, if you eat me right now, -” He frowned. His voice was small and shaking and he just wanted to go home. He couldn’t finish his joke. Glaring up at Daniel through his tears, he just said: “What the fuck, man?” The huge paw stretched forward, questing kitten, and again prodded at Lin’s stained shoulder. It was just a nudge, really, and the Beast’s huge body stretched out on the torn carpet full length. The wicked wolf’s muzzle widened, dropping open the comical purple tongue, and then closed again, cocking a flopped ear to the side too. First kitten, now puppy. Blood was all over his face and down his front. Daniel blinked blue nearsighted eyes again and put his nose up in the air to sniff. Everything smelled strange and metallic. “What happened? Are you alright?” He bared his teeth and then whined like a sheepdog. There was a half-hearted rattle at the top of his throat to finish the sound off. “Where’s Sam? I was going to come find her. He pissed me off.” Unthinking, Daniel looked down at the alien paw, the right one, which was heavy with unfamiliar brown fur layered over stripes and scales. The needle claws crept out and caught at the carpet fibers, distressed. “Is she okay?” Daniel dropped his mouth down to the ground and both ears pointed forward, staring. “Is that blood?” He couldn’t seem to stick with the topic. “Where is she? Should we go find her?” Lin fought the urge to slap the paw away. He let Daniel prod him again, feeling physically and emotionally wrung out. Mostly though he was just happy to not be bits of flesh stuck between the creature’s teeth. Yes, he was cut, traumatized, and felt like he was going to puke, but at least he was alive. Today that was a great accomplishment. When the beast stretched out in the middle of the hallway, tilting its head just so like some kind of fucking puppy (with blood all over its adorable face), Lin finally got himself to his feet. The whining confused him and he had half a mind to attempt to actually pet Daniel comfortingly - before his mind kicked in and asked him if he enjoyed the use of his arms or what. He decided he did. Alas. After that, the questions came, in that strange voice - from the even stranger being. The boy didn’t even try to answer them. Instead, he hugged himself again and let his eyes fall to where the thing’s razor-sharp claws dug into the torn carpet. Had it - no, he - the Daniel-thing, had he blacked out from rage or something? He seemed suddenly so tentative and awkward in the hulking body. After a bit of uneasy shifting on his feet and a paranoid look over his shoulder (because someone had to have heard some of the bullshit that just went down and who knew if the police or someone were on their way), Lin shrugged wearily. The cut on his throat was still bleeding, his head, feeling very much like it was stuffed with cotton and bricks, was enjoying itself by sending stupid little shockwaves of pain shooting down his spine whenever he turned too quickly, his tears had only just barely dried, and his knees threatened to collapse out from under him again if he so much as saw a baby spider. God. He was in rough shape. He sighed and opened his eyes on Daniel. Lin didn’t think he had ever felt more like a child than he did right now, like he wanted a hug or a bed or gorram something. He sniffed. “I don’t know. She left. She - she was stuck on the wall -” He spoke uncertainly and gestured feebly to where he’d last seen Sam, what felt like days ago. He swallowed thickly, which turned out to be a terrible idea. Lin winced as he placed a hand over the gash on his throat. It wasn’t a deep cut. It was just painful. “She got away when you attacked Chloe, I think.” Was she okay? Lin shook his head as gently as he could. “She looked bad. Like, she had bruises and blood on her face, and she was tiny, and -” There was an angry red incision - the blade had been so sharp as to literally just slice, rather than tear. It that ran through the forest of clashing, matted furs and over Daniel’s shoulder, Lin saw. He looked at the creature with obvious alarm. “You - uh - “ Hesitantly, he reached forward - not to touch the injury, but to get a closer look. It was only with very light fingers that he brushed the patch of wiry bristles near where the wound began. Still, he retracted his hand quickly. “You’re hurt.” An expression of worry passed over the boy’s tired face, making him appear even smaller than normal. Determined to not be such a fucking baby, he wiped it away hastily as his hand rose to brush frustratedly at the remnants of his tears. Daniel’s big head swiveled from side to side. The Beast, in his thoughtless anger, had never moved so clumsily, but Daniel was as tentative as a man should be when trapped in a body that was not his. He seemed lost in this space, and slowly he sidled in Lin’s direction, nose questing first, body low and paws soft. He stood still when Lin reached out, and he dropped his chin to see where the soft fingers were going. Obviously he couldn’t see his own neck and shoulder, so he just made a huffing sound of faint pain and watched Lin’s hand dart out of way. “I don’t feel hurt. Feels kind of stiff. My mouth... tastes funny.” Daniel awkwardly shifted his back end in a slow semicircle so he could stand next to Lin and ease up to him like a very large cat or a snake seeking warmth. The result crowded Lin toward the wall and the door. “Sam was... here. Yes. I remember seeing her. I... I got mad.” The vague blue eyes peered out from under the tangled and bloodstained mane, staring at the wall as if Sam would manifest there. “I think... I can’t remember. I got angry and I wanted to hurt something.” Daniel straightened, stiffening suddenly. “Did I hurt Sam? All this... this is blood. You’re hurt?” Daniel hauled his front paws backward off the ground and hopped away as if Lin had suddenly caught fire. “Did I do that?!” He was scared and angry, and it came out like a bark. Gos se. While it was an improvement to not only find the beast not gutting him/not sucking up his entrails like spaghetti, but also to find it sentient, Lin did not much approve of being shoved against the wall by the bulk of the thing. Daniel - yes, it was definitely Daniel now; the eyes were the same clear blue as before, but the confusion behind them, obvious and bright, made him more human than beast - came closer with a small noise of pain, and, honestly, he didn’t know what to do with that. With a sliver of certainty that he wasn’t about to get his arm bitten off at the elbow (Daniel seemed a bit too distracted for that), the boy finally did...pet him, one palm pressed flat to his broad, prickly forehead. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but he got a little too scared to let his hand linger for more than a few seconds. The fact that the creature stared for a moment like he was trying to set the wall on fire with his mind, attempting to comprehend what had happened, before literally jumping away from the boy and yapping didn’t help soothe Lin in the least. He tried to keep his eyes from widening so much. His arms dropped unwillingly to his sides from their new, defensive position in front of his face. “No. No. Well, yes, it’s blood, but. You, uh, didn’t hurt Sam. It was Chloe’s,” Lin stammered, stretching as far forward as he could without moving from the wall, even going so far as to lean onto his tiptoes, to place another couple faltering pats on the beast’s head. “I’m - I’ll be fine. We should go. I’m afraid if we stay someone’s going to find us. I can’t imagine that being pretty.” The blue eyes stared blankly at him. “What is Chloe?” The phrasing of the question was frightening and telling. It was getting more difficult for Daniel to make people out of things, and the thoughtless anger and vague assignations came easily to him. The Beast wasn’t in his own place or with his own people, and Henry had left a little bit out of his nonexistent warning an hour past. Daniel came out of his stiff-legged concern, and returned all his attention to Lin. Lin was small and bloody and smelled of fear, but Daniel was doing his best to keep “boy = friend” in his mind whenever he had it clear. The Beast turned his bloody head entirely sideways so both ears were forward and his neck had a bit of a stretch to it. He leaned into the pats, which felt okay, if a little unsatisfying. “Lin,” Daniel said, abruptly. “I need to get back through the door. Something is... wrong.” The monster looked around, anxious, and then he trotted awkwardly through the doorframe. He did not appear on the other side. Not in that world, anyway. |