Chapter Text
He’s hurting. They are hurting. The little shits are throwing fireworks at them. The girl is struggling, still trying to get away. It’s futile. They will run out of fireworks. He will kill them, he will make the girl watch, and then he’ll kill her.
She’s struggling, he’s fighting through the pain to keep her down, to keep her still, and then she stops. Stops struggling, stops trying to get away, just ... stops. She looks up at him, desperate but still not trying to get away, and gasps out, “Seven ... feet.”
He freezes. Billy freezes.
“You told her ...” Her eyes are searching his face, looking at him, looking through him. She saw him freeze; she’s looking for the parts of Billy that are poking through. She knows he’s in there somewhere. “The wave was seven feet.”
She can see the moment the memory flashes in his mind. He unfreezes, trembling a little, eyes wide in disbelief, looking down and then back up, looking at her while not looking at her, his eyes are unfocused like he’s miles away. “You ran to her, on the beach.” She takes in a shuddering breath, eyes still darting over his face, still looking through him, waiting for him.
“There were seagulls.” He tilts his head away from her in confusion and what might be disbelief, eyes widening for a second, and he’s almost there. He’s almost free. He tilts his head back down towards her and freezes again, waiting. It’s a more natural stillness this time. She keeps talking.
“She wore a hat ... with a blue ribbon. A long dress with a blue and red flower. Ye - Yellow sandals, covered in sand.” Her voice breaks on the word yellow in a way she can’t help, in a way that betrays her fear and pain. She’s nearing the end of the list of things to describe about the memory. He looks down for a moment, and as his body sways a little, she sees that the black veins on his face are receding. He looks back up at her confused and a little pained, and she knows he’s trying. She knows. She takes a deep breath and gets ready to finish this, to say what she knows will reach Billy in whatever corner of his mind he’s trapped in.
“She was pretty.” His face relaxes and he closes his eyes, like he’s remembering her. He looks almost peaceful, and his body may be here crouched over hers in the mall, his mind may not fully be his again yet, but the parts that are, they’re on that beach again. Billy is basking in the warmth of that memory.
“She was really pretty.” She’s nodding and crying, remembering what she saw in his mind and how she felt, how Billy had felt. He nods back at her, eyes full of tears, face tight in order to stop them from falling, and more of the black veins are receding, more of Billy is coming back to the surface. He’s so close.
“And you ... you were happy.” He’s frozen again, tears collecting on his lower lashes looking ready to spill at any moment, and the black veins on his face are gone. She tentatively reaches her hand up, slowly, letting him know what she’s going to do before she does it, and he still doesn’t move. She rests her hand on his cheek, gently, softly, and he closes his eyes almost reverently. Tears drip down out of his eyes immediately, and he sits there for a beat, cheek in the palm of her hand, not quite leaning into it but not pushing it away, and then Billy opens his eyes.
*****
There is a girl under him.
He is crouching over her and her body is tense, she’s crying, and as she rests her hand on his cheek, to ground him, to help him set himself free, he closes his eyes and cries. He hasn’t been held like this in as long as he can remember. He cries and as he opens his eyes again, he thinks that the bruise on her neck is exactly the same size as his hand.
The memory comes to him slowly and then all at once, like puncturing a tiny hole in a balloon only for it to explode a moment later.
She’s on the floor, crying. He’s sweating. He’s straining against himself, but not in a way anyone can see. Not in a way that matters. He kneels over her, grabs her by the hair, looks around at all of her useless pathetic friends, knowing they won’t stop him, that they can’t stop him, he can’t even stop himself, and he puts his hand on her throat, choking her. He lifts her off of the floor and into the air like she’s a ragdoll. He squeezes tighter, cutting off her screams, her air, and as her face goes red with exertion, he squeezes tighter still. She’s flinging her arms at him, kicking him, still trying to wheeze out a scream, but he’s been working out since he learned what it meant. A thirteen-year-old girl is no match for his body, not when he isn’t in control of it. He feels sick. He’s crying, but nobody notices. Nobody sees. The annoying one cracks him over the head with a metal rod, and he hits the ground. He’s relieved, but the thing inside him is angry, gets up instantly, ready to attack. He’s trying to stop himself but failing, and then he’s in the air. For a single moment, he is suspended in the air. The creature is using his body to scream like it’s being murdered, and the girl is screaming right back in his face as blood gushes out of her nose. In that moment he thinks, thank you, he thinks, I’m sorry, and she flings him through the brick wall.
He gets up. He stands up and turns towards the creature, the monster he helped build, and he’s terrified.
He has to do this. He has to stop what he started. It wants to kill this girl, this girl who somehow managed to dig through his entire life, his entire mind, and found the one happy memory he had. This girl who brought his mother back to him, even if only for a moment. It wants to kill her. It wants to kill him. He doesn’t give a shit about himself, he hasn’t since the first time he saw his father hit his mother, but this girl, she’s young. She’s innocent. She has her entire life ahead of her. She has so much left to do, so much life left to live, and she deserves it all. He isn’t a good person, he hasn’t been for a while, but he can do this. He can do this, and even if it isn’t for himself, he can do this for her. He can make his death mean something, to make up for all the shitty things he’s done in his life. He’s hurt so many people, he can die helping someone. It’s poetic, almost. The monster turned hero in its final moments.
The creature is staring him down now, willing him to move, realizing that it’s lost its hold on him when he doesn’t, when it sees that he isn’t backing down. It rears its ugly tentacle tongue arm back, ready to strike, and it lunges.
The girl raises her arms in front of her face in an X to protect herself, to ward it off, and his vision goes misty red with rage as he lunges at it, as he puts himself in its way and grabs it, as he pushes back.
The entire time he’s just pushing, screaming so hard his throat burns, just screaming “NO!” She won’t die like this. She won’t die here. Only one more person has to suffer, only one more person has to die, and it’s not her. It’s him.
He pushes harder, screams louder, and the creature has slackened the tentacle minutely in what might be surprise, enough to give him a moment of reprieve, and he swears he sees Max in the corner of his eye. He’d recognize that hair anywhere.
The creature stabs a tentacle into his side, and it’s teeth bite into him instantly. He’s still holding onto the first one, still pushing, still screaming, but all he’s thinking is I am going to die, and Max is going to see it.
Another tentacle comes around to his other side, biting and angry and painful, and it cuts his scream off abruptly. He slips a little. He looks down to catch himself, and everything sounds echoey and far away, like he’s underwater, but he swears he hears Max screaming his name.
He can’t let her watch him die. She has to get out of here. She has to leave.
He looks back up at the creature and sees two more tentacles snaking out towards him. He lets them stab him. He lets go of the main one, or maybe he’s so weak he lets it just slip out of his hands. The pain forces him down onto his knees and he’s screaming again, black blood coming out of his mouth. It burns like fire going up and he swears it singes his skin as it pours down his front. But he keeps screaming. He lets the creature hurt him, lets it focus on him, in the hopes that it’ll give everyone else a chance to run. A chance to get away to safety.
He sees the creature rearing the main tentacle, the one that comes out of what seems to be its mouth, and it’s aiming for center mass. This is the killing blow. This is it, but he won’t go down easy. He’s been fighting monsters (a monster) his entire life. He won’t go down quietly, not this time. Come and get me, motherfucker.
He screams louder and harder than he has in his entire life, he clenches his fists, collects all of his anger and hate and pain and fear, and pours it all out into a scream that he’s sure will be his last. The tentacle lunges at him, he feels the initial piercing pain of the bite into his chest, feels it slice into flesh and muscle and as his scream reaches fever pitch, as he’s raising his arms away from his body, just screaming, putting his entire body into it, ready to die, it’s gone. Just as fast as it came.
Something is happening.
He stops screaming. He notices the mouths of the tentacles attached to his sides are ... loosening. They drop away from him and don’t move to reattach themselves. They lay there, and the creature starts to sway on its many feet.
The creature is wailing and stumbling like it’s been hurt, like it’s afraid, and he forces himself up to his feet. His shirt is soaked in black and red blood, blood that belonged to the creature and blood that belongs to him, but he doesn’t understand.
He sways as he stands. He’s lost so much blood. But he has to fight it off, and since he clearly can’t kill it, he’ll have to die trying. He has to make sure it doesn’t take anyone else.
He hears shuffling behind him, like someone unsteady on their feet. He turns to see the girl from before limping towards him, and he sees Max rush towards her to help her stand.
“It’s you.” She’s trembling, her words slurring together a bit because of pain and exhaustion. “Your scream.” She reaches towards his face, to do what, he doesn’t know, and he flinches back. He hurt her. She’s done enough. She shouldn’t be anywhere near him.
“Billy” Max’s voice breaks through the fog of pain and fear he’s in, and he finally lets himself look at her. She’s sweating and crying, and the bruise on her face is red and angry and it looks like it hurts. He did that to her. He presses his lips together tightly and looks away from her immediately. They should’ve left him at the mercy of the monster.
“Max. Take your friend and get out of here.” They’ve shuffled over too far to the side, so he maneuvers himself in front of them again, between them and the monster. He needs to protect them. This is something he can finally do, it’s the only thing he can do. They have to let him do it. “If this thing is focused on me,” He flits his gaze back to it quickly, it’s gone from wailing and stumbling to crashing into various storefronts and balconies, disoriented enough to not be a danger in the immediate moment. He looks back at Max, looks her in the eye and tells her, “If this thing is focused on me, you can all get away to safety. You need to take her and run. Now.”
Max’s face goes through a myriad of emotions at once. She finally settles on something that looks almost like agony. “Billy! -” He steps back, away from them, towards the creature again, who’s screams have been coming fewer and far between. “Billy! Listen - You can fight it!” Her voice is frantic, words rushing out almost on top of each other with how fast she’s going, showing how desperate she is to get everything out before he turns back towards the monster and she loses him again, for good this time. “When you were screaming before, you were hurting it! Like how El hurt it with her powers, and they’re going to close the gate soon, and it’ll be dead, you just have to hold out until then! Billy! Please.”
He’s confused until the girl, El, wipes under her nose and points to him. He mirrors the gesture and feels wetness. He looks at his hand and sees it covered in blood. Red blood. His blood.
“I- I did that?” He points back towards the monster.
“Yes.” El says solemnly, “You are like me.”
Billy scoffs and his eyes start watering, and he turns his head away. He has to look away from her. She’s seen every terrible thing inside his head, every shitty thing he has ever said and done, and she still treats him like this. Comparing him to her. As if he was even a hundredth of the person she is, as if he could ever be.
“You have to concentrate. It will hurt. I can’t help, sorry. My powers are used up like bad battery. But you can do it.” He turns back and looks at her earnest, honest face, her skinny arm still around Max’s shoulder, the way she’s reaching out to him, and he relents. He puts his hand in hers.
He looks into her eyes, and they’re ancient. They are eyes that have seen and endured unspeakable horrors. Things that would make grown men shit their pants and pass out in fear. She has stood against evil with nothing but her own mind, endured inhumane treatment and torture with her teeth bared. She has killed monstrous people and creatures with a single nod of her head and done it without blinking. She has turned her unflinching anger and stubbornness into something he never could, she’s taken her power and helped. She’s done good. She is good. And she has only had herself for so long.
She can’t fight right now, not like she used to, and as she clenches her hand around Billy’s, he realizes that she’s trusting him, she is trusting him, with this. With her life. With all of their lives. She is trusting him, and she doesn’t even know him. She does it without a second thought, like it’s innate, like it’s obvious. His eyes are watering again, and he’s shaking his head no, because he can’t believe it, no one can be this good, and he tries loosening his hand from her grip, but she just nods at him in understanding, and maneuvers around Max to hold his hand in both of hers, not letting him go.
“Yes. I know you can do this. You are good. I trust you.”
Max is holding her around the waist now, nodding along feverishly, eyes owlishly wide, mouth and face still tight with fear.
“Billy” Max reaches out to put one hand on top of El’s while still holding her around the waist with the other. Her eyes are watering too, and she looks as embarrassed as he feels to be crying this much in so little time. “You can do this. We know you can.” She gestures to the entire mall. “We all know you can. We believe in you. You’re an asshole and yeah, you’ve done bad things, but you’re not a bad person. You don’t deserve to die. Not today, and not like this.” A couple of traitor tears escape her eyes and run down her cheeks, she rubs them away almost furiously, collecting herself as she finally says, “Don’t turn me into an only child, you ass.” Her voice cracks with the final insult, and El nods at him with a soft smile on her face. She heard what Max was really trying to say too. I love you. Don’t leave me.
He’s crying now. He’s crying like a goddamn baby, and El is wiping away his tears but they just keep coming, like he’s finally opened the dam. He’s crying about the fact that they care about him, they care about him after everything he’s done, after everything he’s let happen. He doesn’t deserve it, but maybe it’s not about deserving.
The monster has reoriented itself, picked itself back up and planted itself firmly again, and he hears everyone on the balconies above screaming warnings. He hears the sharp intake of breath behind him as Max shuffles El back, away from it, and he thinks that she couldn’t have picked a better time to start listening to him.
Billy turns back towards the monster, stalks towards it, closer than he’s ever been as himself, and he puts his arms out in front of him like he remembers seeing the girl do. He takes his rage and pain and fear and love and channels them into his balled-up fists, and then he opens them, palms out towards the monster, fingers splayed open, and pushes, and screams.
The monster screams back.
He pushes and pulls with everything inside him, mind going fuzzy with pain, mouth filled with the familiar and now welcome coppery taste of blood, and the monster wails.
“You’re not killing anyone else today, motherfucker. No one else is going to die. You’re not going to get her. You’re never going to get anyone ever again.”
It falls down onto its front legs, and then it’s back legs collapse, and it reaches out with a multitude of tentacle mouths. He manages to snap a few of them off, but more keep coming, and he can’t keep them all back, he can’t stop them all at once, and they’re getting too close. He’s straining. Every wound the tentacles inflicted on him burns like hot pokers have been stuck into them, blood is coming out of his ears, his nose, pouring into his mouth and washing away the monster’s filth, his body throbs, his vision is going blurry and he doesn’t know if it’s from pain or blood loss. He falls down to his knees, still pushing, still fighting. The monster starts to split in two and everything is static, someone is screaming, louder and louder and louder until the monster collapses.
It’s silent.
He collapses soon after.