creator_raven | (no subject)

The engine room is familiar to Lilly, even if its current state is not. The worry that's been nagging at her solidifies into a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach.

"This is it, Raven, but... God, what's happened to Serenity? Where is everyone?"

"I do not--"

He stiffens, nostrils flaring. His shoulders twitch.

"There are things."

He gestures, vaguely.

"Everywhere. It is remarkably unpleasant, I think."

He reaches out, but there is chaos everywhere, and he has the sense that there is really not enough time to puzzle everything out. Some things must be done on instinct.

Lilly's pale, eyes darting over the battered room.

"Let's get up to the bridge, see if we can figure out what happened to the ship or where the hell everybody went. It's right this way."

She steps into the corridor, dark but for the red glow of the emergency lighting. It's... wrong, seeing Serenity like this. Passing Kaylee's bunk with nothing twinkling around her door, edging around debris in the corridor.

It's a million times more wrong when she gets to the bridge, Raven a step behind her.

"... no. Oh god, please no..."

"Wash?"

It's a mirror of the engine room up here: wrecked, torn apart in ways that have nothing to do with rust flecks or the occasional exposed wire. Serenity's back-up lights barely illuminate the cracked windscreen and the metal framework that's been twisted back. Thick spikes, large around as telephone poles, gouge the floor and ceiling.

And Hoban Washburne sits in the pilot's seat, unmoving.

One of the harpoons has slammed all the way through his chest.

If Raven were someone else, perhaps he would hesitate upon catching sight of the unmoving Wash.

But he is himself, and so he picks his way carefully through the wreckage, eyes watchful.

He touches the back of the pilot seat, very gently.

"Well. This is surprising, I think. Mostly."

His voice is very quiet, but not sad. These things happen, after all.

These things happen too fucking much lately for Lilly. She's staring at Wash's... Wash's body and seeing it, seeing a bus plunging over a cliff, a ballerina lying motionless forever.

This is what you didn't stop.

One of his dinosaurs is tipped over on the console. Lilly reaches out to right it, realizing as she does that her hand is shaking and there are tears dripping down her face.

It's not right, not Wash, and Lilly knows that ka has no heart but she does and there's been too much death and... she can't take any more. She turns to Raven.

"Is there... Raven, is there anything you can do?"

Raven's attention is on Wash, one hand still resting on the back of his chair.

"There are many things I can do, Lilly. Almost an infinite amount of them."

He tilts his head, and fixes his attention on her.

His eyes are old, and piercing, and very dark.

"What I will do, I think, is another matter."

His voice is still quiet. Almost hushed. He is waiting.

Lilly's looking straight back at him.

"Bring him back."

It's not a demand. It's a plea.

"He's not supposed to be gone, Raven. I should have told you earlier, we should have gotten here earlier, I should have stopped this."

She takes a shaky breath.

"It's my fault, but... I can't fix it. You can, I know you can. Will you?"

Her eyes stray back to Wash's slumped body.

"Please?"

Raven looks at her.

He looks at her for a very long time, one hand flat and still on the pilot's chair.

His eyes are black, and sharp, and strangely distant.

"There are prices for things, Lilly. It is the way of of it. It will always be the way of it. And though I help as I can, this is not a light thing you ask of me. And part of the price will be yours."

Lilly nods, slowly.

"I know... I know this is big and there's a price, Raven."

Voices in her head, a howl echoing through the Dreaming, a blade scraping her ribs. There's always a price.

Her voice only trembles a little as she continues.

"This wasn't supposed to happen, I was supposed to stop it and I didn't. So whatever it is, I'll pay it."

He nods.

"You will."

It is not a question.

He looks down at the body, and lays one hand on its head.

Then he turns back to Lilly.

"I require a service from you. Keep the bodies safe, while I am gone. It may be some time."

The light fades from his eyes, then, and his body goes slack.

Moments later all that remains is a vaguely humanoid clay figure, and a faint heat haze. It is the haze that spills over the pilot's chair, enveloping Wash's body, then disappearing--not inside it, but through. It is a difficult thing to explain, if one has not seen it.

The air hums, faintly. It sounds like a voice. A very rough voice, very far away. And then it is gone.

Lilly is very still, eyes fixed on the scene in front of her. She's alone except for Wash's body and Raven's figure now and it's more than a little creepy. But it's what Raven asked, it's what he needs to do this and this... this has to work.

"Please," she whispers into the eerie redlit stillness of the destroyed bridge. "Please let this work."

It's not quite a prayer, but... it's close.

It is shadowy, in this place, and there are Things in the darkness.

Some of them are even benevolent.

They speak in whispers, muttering fragments of their lives, fragments of others lives, fragments of the lives they've eaten.

And then there is the Other, who is not. Not really.

You could keep going, you know, into the black. It is endless, here. You would not be bound in clay, or stone, or even flesh.

The heat haze stretches itself thinner, reaching through space and time, picking through threads of lives and worlds and trees and fish and stars to find the one thing that isn't here.

Come now, bird-that-is-not, you know you have longed to escape. Now is the time. There are none here to say you nay. Not even yourself. Fly free.

There is a pause.

It stays.

Soon there's a gap, in the tangle of threads; a suggestion of presence by absence alone.

It leads to a door.

There are so many jokes about knocking on Death's door, but even the tired sayings are born from truth. That's what they hear when Raven reaches them: a knock, sharp and insistent, on the door of Death's apartment.

Wash is the one who answers it.

Back on Serenity's bridge, Lilly shivers.

It's not cold.

It's silent and still and she's alone with Wash's body and Raven's... whatever and no idea where the rest of the crew is. She's trying hard not to wonder if they're going to find them alive or just... more bodies because they got here too late.

Lilly hopes to whatever god might be listening that the rest of the crew is okay, is saving themselves, because Raven can't save everyone and these days she can't seem to save anyone.

In the space-between, a door opens.

*?*

There is a heat haze watching Wash. Or it feels that way, to him. Beyond it is blackness. Stretching away from it, in the light from the door, is a shadow that, slowly, almost painfully, resolves itself into the shape of a raven.

*Wash. It is time to come back now, do you choose. You and yours have paid enough to the universe, I think. It is time and past time to give back. So.*

And the bird swells back into a heat haze, sweeping to cover Wash, then turning to venture once more into the space-between.

Wash shuts his eyes, breathes deep as he follows --

and very nearly rips away from the heat haze as he doubles over, screaming.

Back on Serenity, there's a pole twelve inches in diameter that's still embedded in his chest. His death was painless only by virtue of speed; to linger in that wrecked body, even for seconds....

They all must pay a price, to take one from the Lady's realm. Even him.

And oh, God, it hurts.

He keeps screaming, long and wordless, and on the bridge, his body twitches.

It's the first movement since Raven left, a few minutes or a million years ago, and it scares the hell out of Lilly.

She watches, her hands clenched into fists. She wants to look away, to close her eyes against the grotesque image of Wash's corpse jerking like a puppet on a string, but... Keep the bodies safe, Raven had said.

Lilly takes a hesitant step forward and lays her hand on Wash's shoulder, in case the twitching knocks him out of the chair.

She won't let him fall.

The heat haze pours out of Wash's body, flowing upwards along the arm of the clay figure.

It shivers, faintly.

There is a pause.

It moves again, and Raven blinks.

He twitches, faintly, and looks down.

He blinks.

"Wash?"

One hand moves, carefully, and touches the wooden pole gently.

"I begin to see the problem, perhaps. So."

He tilts his head, considering. Then he nods, decisively, grips the poke, pulls, and twists.

It removes itself from Wash's chest, the sound a sickening cross between a grating squeal and a sucking squelch. He slaps one hand immediately over the wound, voice harsh and musical and chanting fiercely. His other hand draws a pattern, in blood and sweat and his own spit, on Wash's cheek.

"Wake up, Wash. Settle in. You will be here some time, yet."

And he waits.

The twitching stops.

For a long, suspended moment, he neither stirs nor breathes.

But then, suddenly, the destroyed muscles remember how to move

(tha-thump)

, remember how to

(tha-thump)

contract, start pulling and slamming together

(babyNOcomeonyougottamoveyougottamovebabyplease)

sharp and all at once

(MOVE)

-- and Wash's eyes fly wide as he gasps in a huge, choking breath.

Lilly's breath catches, tears welling up in her eyes again as Wash's open.

"Wash?" she manages, her voice shaking. "Wash, hang on, please. We're going to take care of you, I'm going to be right here. I'm going to watch out for you, okay?"

Wash can't answer; he's too busy coughing in deep, uncontrollable fits that bring up traces of blood. When they end, he swallows hard, dazed. There's no sign of recognition when he looks up.

"How'd...." he mumbles, the word garbled by more blood.

His eyes roll back.

Raven looks at Wash, then back to Lilly.

"It is best to go now, I think. If I heal him more, I think it will kill him."

He snorts, softly.

"Leaving him here will certainly accomplish that, and I do not like my work wasted, so."

He twitches, again, and picks Wash up.

"You are ready to go, Lilly? It is best to be quick, yes."

Lilly hesitates.

"What about the rest of the crew? I mean, if Wash was..."

She trails off.

"They might not be much better off."

Raven exhales a sharp breath, then tilts his head.

One second passes.

Then two.

He frowns, eyes gone black and distant.

"They are well enough, I think. Things will sort themselves out, here. It is better, so."

He looks back at Wash.

"This, however, will not. It is best to hurry."

He nods, sharply, and begins to walk back to the engine room.

Lilly trusts Raven. There's no hesitation when she moves to follow him, because she knows he wouldn't bother lying to her if the crew wasn't all right.

Or, you know. Going to be.

Right now, she's more worried about Wash anyway.

"Raven?" she says softly, as they make their way carefully to the engine room.

"Thanks. For doing this."

She smiles a little wistfully at him.

"Kinda makes me wish I'd had someone like you around when... well. Anyway, thanks."

Raven pauses, momentarily, and turns to look at her.

His eyes are very dark, and very gentle.

"You are welcome, Lilly. You are welcome, indeed."

A moment later, he steps through the cluttered devastation of the engine room and into the light and bustle of Milliways.