Enraged: My Own Apocalypse (Cooper Dies At The End)

[Cooper Gallows]

[Original Post Date 10/02/2017]


The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

-Edgar Allan Poe





Smoke and ashes…

They were thick in the air, curling around burning trees and rolling down over the jagged outcropping of rocks like something out of one of those crappy disaster movies Fist and Alex used to like watching when they’d camp out on the couch of my old house in New Haven. Familiar (and not so familiar) forms kept disappearing in and out of the gray murk as it shifted and moved on a strong wind. It clung to me unnaturally, like one of those handsy hookers at that brothel Mesteno used to hang out at when he thought I was long past due for getting laid, trying to choke me on deathlike kisses and…

The smoke. It was why I couldn’t smell the blood.

But I tasted it. It was a coppery froth on my tongue and lips, flying from me in little red specks when I wheezed a cough. It was a sudden, hazy reminder of how hard it was to breathe, one lung feeling like lead in my chest while I stood half doubled over. There was a dull, thumping throb in the middle of my ribs and when I looked down at my chest… more frothy wet blood, spilling free and staining my shirt (AC/DC… Back in Black… DAMNIT!). There were holes in me, gaping ones, and with the pain oddly fading, I was dimly aware of the soft hissing sound coming from them.

...So this is what sucking chest wound feels like…

I heard someone shout my name. Then someone else. Eden. Then Mesteno. I recognized the voices, instinct, but when I tried to understand the words, all I could think was ‘Why do they sound like the adults from the Peanuts cartoons?’. Mesteno snarled at something (it reminded me of the night we first met, chasing that nutjob down in the sewers) and then I lost the sound amidst the power chord riff of new roars battling echoed sentiment of people I knew. I almost laughed when the first thing to break through the growing fog of my mind was to compare it to a Cliche Rhy’din Dueling Banjos. But I didn’t laugh. Instead, I coughed up more foamy blood, the motion jerking my head up.

And that’s when I remembered the man standing in front of me.

He was smiling; the long silver talons tipping his large fingers still glimmering wet with my blood. A mountain of a man, he was tall and broad and his eyes were afire with the anxious, anticipatory confidence of someone who had gone past eight seconds during NFR in Vegas (that’s a bull riding reference for those watching at home), and was just waiting for them to hand him the trophy. I wheezed out a rumbling snarl and he laughed, a deep baritone thing of grim mirth that shook his shoulders, ending it with a **** eating grin that was too white against the coarse black stubble of a neatly maintained five o’ clock shadow. And all I could think when he did was ‘Man, eff this guy, I used to rock that look. And better’.

Because how easy is it to know when you’re going into shock.


I barely felt it when he plunged his hand into my body again and wondered, idly, why I didn’t stop him. Hadn’t I just been winning this fight a few minutes ago? Or was it hours? Time is more wishy-washy than a southern investment banker. Something else in me ruptured… or I think it did and… Man, those were my best boots! I grit my teeth and bellowed something incoherent at him (really, I just moaned and coughed more nasty bits), but when I took a lurching overhand swipe at him everything went fuzzy.

When did I end up on my knees?

A dozen paces away someone went down in a tangle of fur, dark chitin, and limbs; it could have been Jess but… wait, was Jessica here? I don’t remember seeing her. Lisa and Lola have dark hair… Maybe? I dunno. Eff me for a sorry, forgetful S.O.B. They were there, the faces, familiar but blurred until I couldn’t tell (or remember) who had shown up for this barn burner. I’ll take solace in the fact that having so many women for friends prevented this from being a sausage fes--

He was looming over me.

I don’t remember losing my hat, but he had it in his hand, dropping a satisfied stare at me as he settled it atop his head. The played out furnace of my anger flickered to life for a half a fading heartbeat, a testament to my withering pride and diminishing indignation. Never jack another guy’s status symbol. That’s just asking for an ass whooping. Well, when you’re not bleeding out at someone else’s mercy, I guess. He said something to me then, but this isn’t the movies. No monologue. No witty gloating. All I could really here is more Charles Schulz-esque ‘Wah. Wah-wah-wah-wah. Wah-wah’. I’m sure it was clever. I was tired. Too tired to be afraid. For me, anyway.

There were plenty of people out there in the smoke and the fire to fear for. Some who had shown up for me. Some for what needed doing. Nobility or the feels. Did it matter?

But I just wanted to lay down for a minute. Get my second wind or whatever. They never ask for Time Outs in the movies. Maybe it would be just funny enough of an idea to work?

Someone’s scream pierced my wandering thoughts. It was feminine but unrecognizable. Someone needed me. But then I couldn’t see. It had gotten awful dark on me all of a sudden but, hey, my body stopped hurting. Everything stopped hurting. Hurray for me!

And then I thought about her. Claire. My wife. ****, how did I get so lucky? I had her. My precious Belle, whom I’ve become so awkwardly fond of. The twins and my precious little boy on the way. I broke all of the rules for this. Everything I never thought I’d get to have. I’m a dad and it’s gonna be so gr--

“It’s time to go,” a familiar voice said close to my ear. So familiar, like, I expected him to just be standing there beside me, casually smoking a cigarette like he’d just stepped out of some silly 1950’s noir film about the 20’s or 30’s. I had heard that voice a thousand times or more in the last decade and a half. At the tavern. Sunday football. Holidays. But it was different this time. It was commanding and, yet, it was also full of regret. He didn’t want this any more than I did. “It’s time. You have an appointment to keep.”

Nononononono. Not now. They need me. I need them so bad. Man, don’t do this to me...

It got really bleak there in the end. And black. I wanted to argue. But as the last of the world fell away and the cold touch of oblivion tried to grab me by the ankles and make me hold its outturned pocket (watch some TV shows about prison, then you’ll get it), all I could think was…

...man, my inner monologue is way less twangy than I am out loud…

It shouldn’t have to end like this.



[To be continued…]

[Cooper Gallows]

A mile was too far away, Claire had said.

A quarter mile was too close, Henry had said.

They could split the difference, Raven had said, set up shop at a half mile out.

A half mile wasn’t the difference between a mile and a quarter, Henry had protested, but the pair of looks he received from both women was enough for him to concede defeat with a lift of his hands and a shrug of metalclad shoulders. Smart man. Instead he led the way through the dead woods until they found a suitable place to set up their so called operating base. The landscape was a dreadful thing, painted with browns and greys, death and decay permeating the very essence of the once lush forest. The silence was eerie, broken only by the crunch of boots and equipment over the brittle twigs and crumpled leaves that carpeted the forest floor in garish gold and broken bronze, a reminder of what should have been. Sure to swing wide of any garou territory, they at last found a partially obscured alcove formed by the intersection of a limestone outcropping and a pair of fallen trees.

There Henry set up perimeter monitors and shortly after him, Raven retraced his footsteps to add a dose of protective warding around the area, obscuring them from malevolent parties and hapless passersby alike. When all was settled, it offered a buffer between them and the outside world, muffling the crack and whistle of the wind blowing through the dead trees. Silence would have been too much for Claire, so as she fidgeted with the portable comm-pad, she glanced back to the newly engaged couple here and there. “Have you two set a date yet? I know it’s still early…”

“We have actually…” Raven said with the curl of a fond smile for the taller man.

“November twenty-fifth.” Henry supplied.

“Of… this year?” Claire asked, blinking. That was quick. It must have shown in her expression because Raven was quick to speak up again.

“Figured why wait, you know? If we’re sure about it, after all. And Thanksgiving was kind of our… I don’t know, that point where it really became a thing.” She explained. It was the first time she had introduced the man to Adelaide, the first holiday they had spent together as a trio, and the first time that she had realized that she quite liked having Henry in her life. Her last engagement had proved that a long engagement did not necessarily equate to a strong marriage, let alone a marriage at all.

“I suppose that makes sense.” Claire scratched at her cheek and glanced down at the comm-pad. An intermittent stream of updates and images scrolled across the screen, giving her snips and pieces from the various tech worn by the men she had in the field. In particular she watched for anything from Remi or Ezio, her sharp gaze intent on any hint of Cooper.

“Say… Claire… would you maybe be interested in… I dunno, being a bridesmaid?” Raven asked softly. The question easily met Claire’s ears, drawing a wide aqua gaze from the tablet to meet the sapphire of Raven’s own eyes.

“Really?” She asked quietly. Raven nodded, her smile growing by degrees. It was more than enough to drag Claire’s remaining attention from the tablet. It was set to the side so she could cross the scant distance between herself and her friend for a hug. “Yes. Yes, I’d be honored to.”

“Wonderful! I’m thinking about asking Ad--” Raven was cut off when the shrill sound of a howl pierced even their little veil of solitude. Both women froze and three pairs of eyes had shifted to the edge of their perimeter, intent on anything that might be coming their way. The wedding talk was tabled as Claire released Raven and returned to the comm-pad, where the feed had slowed to a trickle.

“Rem, update when you get a chance.” Claire said, her fingers touching the edge of a silver cuff around her upper ear. There was a crackle of static and a grunted affirmation that said at the very least Remigio had heard her. That was something, she supposed, not as though it took the edge off at all. A boom, a grenade, Henry hypothesized, had Claire’s full attention, her gaze ticking between the datapad and the edge of their alcove. “C’mon Rem… gimme somethin’...”

Nothing came. The silence passed in leaps and lulls, just how much time went with it, she didn’t know, but it was enough to wear a rut in the dirt under her feet from her pacing. Eventually she stopped and looked over her shoulder to Raven and Henry. “Anything?”

Far more attuned to the uses and varying foibles of technology, Henry had taken over Claire's makeshift operation center without asking or having been asked. The engineer and pilot had foregone pacing back and forth between screens and had opted to plug himself directly into the system. A single wire ran from the monitoring systems into the helmet of the more mobile of the two mechanized response suits he had brought along, allowing him to keep track of multiple feeds as the fighting progressed.

"It's not pretty," he told Claire, sparing a look to one side to where Raven stood. "But our people seem to be giving better than they're receiving." It was a vague response, but honest. Sharing the grim details of who pressed on and who fell in the battle seemed superfluous; Henry already know who her concerns were and he would have called them out if necessary. But the fighting was bloody. Visceral. Giving her the play-by-play was pointless. What would they do if it all fell apart? There were no reserves. Those on the field were whom they had. "Save for some play on the flanks, people are movin' forward."

He didn't move very much. Didn't need to. Armored arms were crossed over his chest, his gaze forward other than the occasional glance towards his new fiancee.

"I see... Thank you, Henry." She said softly. Quiet as she may have been there was no resignation in her tone, no giving in to the worry. Her fingers fidgeted with the zippers on the pack-belt around her hips before drifting lower to the sidearms holstered around her thighs. There were only the slightest of comforts, all things considered, not when she needed to be out there instead of pacing in here. Speaking of which, the pacing continued, a zig-zagged back and forth that had her venturing to and fro across the little space they had taken for their own, drifting from the couple to the edge of the perimeter and back with the occasional tap at the cuff around her ear as if that might prompt Remigio to check in. Slowing near the edge of the protective warding, she squinted out into the dark of the trees as if doing so would give her the insight she was looking for. "It's taking forever... right? It's been a really long time?"

"Seventy-seven, thirty-seven seconds since our people crossed into the bowl of the valley." He would have been a much different man had be been down there in the valley, if it had been years before. Older and a little more world-weary, Henry tried to be as clinically detached from the situation as he could while still being sympathetic to what Claire must have been going through. He liked her, after all. And, for the most part, her husband.

More time passed like the previous had. Slow. It would have been monotonous under more certain circumstances. Every now and then, his armored fingers twitched with the desire to do more than just stand there and monitor the combatants. He never would have made for a good general. More and more life sings blinked out of the screen, many of them enemies. Some of them friendlies. None had been faces he could properly identify, so they weren't called out to the two women nearby. Knowing now or knowing later, it wouldn't make it any better or worse.

"S***." The word came from his mouth unbidden when the HUD in his visor suddenly started flashing. "There's one hell of a pile-up going on at the north end of the valley, a few hundred feet from the rocks. Looks like our people are pushing in, maybe. Something big just came out of the mouth of your target, all spikes and scales and, wait, that vampire of Cooper's has its attention. Jesus Christ, they're both stro-- Something else got to Cooper! You didn't tell me he really turned into a giant -- it's got fangs and fur like him! Everyone's all jumbled up. It's getting ugly out there."

There at the mouth of their alcove, she rocked heel to toe in a bid to soothe her nerves. To her very core, Claire Gallows was a warrior and even with the entire Lucian Royal Army at her beck and call, she still never shied away from the fight. Instead she was often on the frontlines, fighting side by side with the men and women she commanded. This just felt so wrong. So she did her best not to think about it and instead focused on getting through each minute as it passed. Henry's sudden slew of information was a sudden jolt from her reverie, whirling her around to cross the space between him and her.

"Cooper. Focus on Cooper and tell me what you see. Please. What do you mean it's got fangs and fur like him? Werewolf or bear or what?" She plead, the tight balls of her hands at her sides clenched enough to turn her knuckles white.

"Too difficult to tell," he replied, holding up a hand to halt her. "There's a lot of interference. Lots of energy being thrown around. Some sort of magic, I'm assuming, since sensors can't tell me what it is." Henry was silent for a moment. "It's one hell of a scrap. They're really thundering down there and there's a few dozen combatants all clumped tight together, friendly and not. He and the other thing are still upright. I don't know what it is."

"****." Claire hissed through clenched teeth. She knew she should have been closer, somewhere she could have at least set up with a scope and her rifle or something. A look was cut aside at the equipment they did have, contemplative. But Raven caught it and grazed her fingers against Claire's elbow.

"You gotta breathe, first and foremost. I know you're scared right now but remember, trust, right? You trust me and you trust Henry... and you trust Cooper to come out the other side." Soft, soothing, it was bedside manner at its very best. Claire exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding and nodded twice.

"Okay. Okay. Just... let me know if anything changes..." She smeared her hand over her mouth and stepped back from the couple, once more electing to stand sentinel at the base camp's mouth so close that her toes touched the ward-line.

"Someone's down," Henry said less than sixty seconds later, one armor-encased hand rising to slap at the side of his helmet, a gesture that was pointless but satisfied some human need. "One of the big furry ones is down, crumbling into dust. There's a lot of shouting but the static is making it impossible to understand. Most of the melee is boiling off to the side. The big one still moving, it looks like a bear. I think your boy but I don't see his escort anymore."

Before Raven's armored fiance could elaborate further, warning sounds began rising from the speakers attached to their equipment. "Incoming hostiles just crossed the sensor lines outside of our post. We've got trouble." His visor came up for as long as it took for him to close the distance and give Raven a quick kiss, a fierce expression disappearing behind the visor before he started towards the front of their cover. "Moving to engage."

There was no one else to send.

"Who?" Claire breathed the word with a look over her shoulder. A single step, that's all it would take to put her beyond the boundary and oh was it tempting but soon the distant perimeter sensors sounded their alarm and rather than move forward she stepped back. It nearly knocked her right into Raven who steadied her with a hand to her shoulder, her other hand occupied with the weight of the Glock 22 she had pulled from her shoulder holster. Though primarily the doctor was there for medical support, she was by no means defenseless and instead moved around the pregnant woman and behind Henry.

"Trevisano, li Fonti, do either of you copy?" Claire asked into the cuff like headset worn on a single ear. There was no response save for muffled static much like what Henry had reported. Swallowing back her frustration, she too unholstered both of her own handguns, their magazines filled with silver nitrate rounds, a variation of the standard silver that Raven carried. For a moment there was only quiet, broken by the steady chirp of the perimeter alarm. The so called calm before the proverbial storm, Claire thought, and stepped up to join Henry and Raven at the camp's edge.

A short silence that followed the armored man's departure was broken by the sound of small arms and blaster fire, sounds that signalled Henry's engagement but failed to drown out the piercing shrieks that came in response. Muzzle flash marked his position, which changed frequently as he goaded the arriving creatures and tried to coax them away from Claire and Raven. The mechanized suit, smaller that his others and built for speed, was barely able to keep pace with the attackers but sufficed for exactly what was intended.

A small missile visibly sent twisted bodies flying as it lit up the night bright as fireworks.

"The wards'll keep us concealed, you gotta stay back." Raven whispered through clenched teeth. Watching Henry go out unaccompanied was painful at the very least but she knew that if she stepped past the ward-line she would be a far easier target in her kevlar light armor than he in his mech suit. She could feel the tension radiating off of Claire, almost palpable in its heat as the pair remained behind. One creature broke away from the pack though and ventured a little too close for comfort, sniffing closer and closer until finally Claire's arm came over top of Raven's shoulder for the single squeeze of the trigger. A nearly point blank shot of a silver nitrate round which was not only jacketed in silver but also excreted a silver solution directly into the bloodstream of the target. The shifter dropped like a rock just beyond the wardline as Raven hissed and clamped a hand over her ear. "Do you want tinnitus? Because that's how you get tinnitus."

"Better your hearing than your face." Claire said with an apologetic grimace and whipped her gaze over to the hamstrung throng drawn away by Henry to see how he was doing.

The engineer was outnumber and harried, but not outgunned and undaunted. What he lacked in superior size and speed, he made up for with heavily armored skin and technologically enhanced strength. It made all the difference when he was knocked off balance by a sudden rush of beasts covered in fur and scale, finding him suddenly buried beneath their combined weight.

"****!" Claire swore when the horde overtook the armor clad man and turned back to their gear to snag a few more tools of her trade, a ring of flash grenades, and another magazine for the road. By the time she turned back to Raven though, the healer had already bounded over the fallen shifter to dash toward the heap of metal and fuzz and scales. A pacifist by trade (and to extent by belief), this seemed to be an extreme exception to that rule, an exception she would make for only a handful of people when it came down to it. The pop-pop-pop of fired rounds midway there was enough to draw Claire across the wardline too, intent on covering her friend. "Raven! Jesus, wait!"

There was no waiting, not at a time like this. Instead, the dark haired woman ducked a swing of a clawed paw and thrusted a silver lined knife into the creature's exposed ribs before ripping it free in time to whirl into the quick squeeze of two more rounds into the next nearest abomination.

"Claire!" An all too familiar voice called her name suddenly from one side, rolling off the tongue with a growl as a massive hand caught the back of a lupine head and forced it into the hard ground with a sickening crunch. Just like that, Cooper was there, his favorite Stetson cocked low on his head, his face and tattered clothing a mask of blood and grime from the churned morass of another battlefield. Long, heavy strides carried him towards her until thick arms couch reach out. "The way is open! We gotta go!"

"Cooper?!" She spun a half circle, coming short of engaging the mass of writhing bodies through which Raven was currently shooting, slashing, and kicking her way through in a bid to get to Henry. He looked like hell but sure enough, it was the cowboy. She diverted her path, sidestepping a mostly dead something or other on the ground before rushing to meet the gurahl with a throw of her arms. "Go? Where the **** are we going?!"

"Into the caern!" One big arm was slung around her smaller frame possessively, his hip turning to the side to catch hers and force her into his side. As if in a sudden afterthought, the big man's attention snapped up to acknowledge Henry and Raven's plight. Frustration mixed suddenly with the current urgency. "We need t' be in there! I need yo' magic... we can end this!"

"Raven! Get yo' Tin Man movin' and meet us along the south east fringe leadin' inta the caern. Way's clear!" Wasting precious little time, the hurried cowboy was already tugging at Claire, his hands caked with blood still drying. "We've gotta move now. S' not much time left."

"They'll... they'll be okay." She told herself. Torn between Raven and Henry or Cooper, so tipped a conflicted look back and forth between them just as his arm settled in around her and gave her the first of several tugs. He called out to the couple and covered exactly what Claire needed to get her feet moving again. Lurching into motion and hooking the trio of flash grenades onto her belt, she traded it for her handgun and gave the gurahl a bobbling nod. "Okay. Okay, let's go."

"It's almost over," he promised her as they rushed through the rolling forested land, half-carrying and half-dragging her across the rugged terrain. It was difficult to tell which direction they were heading in the darkness or if they were even taking the route that had been barked out to the embattled Henry and Raven, but the path skirted the majority of the fighting. Where it didn't, the combatants were heavily engaged and the couple's involvement was a paltry necessity at best. "C' mon, Claire. We're gettin' so close. Then we can finish this."

There was a fierce determination in Cooper's voice. Almost obsessed.

His pace was a grueling, unforgiving thing but where she stumbled, he was plenty quick to help though Claire wasn't sure if that was out of care or sheer urgency to get where they were going. Ever alert, she paid more attention to anything coming their way than to where they were actually going and if anyone had asked her what direction they were headed, she wouldn't have been able to answer honestly or accurately. Still, she couldn't account for the nagging feeling at the edge of her consciousness. Maybe... "Cooper... where's Remi and Ez?"

Beyond the worst of the fighting, the gaping maw of the caern's entrance suddenly loomed before them, spurring the large man pulling on her to move along even faster. At times his insistent tugged even hurt, pulling her over rocking outcroppings and across dessicated brambles. A single guttering torch fought in vain to cast a muted, sickly light across the lichen covered stone just inside.

"Dead," he told her in a tone that was suddenly unapologetic. Then they crossed a threshold. Capital T. There was a sudden vacuum of power when she was dragged across. Capital P. "The older one was disemboweled when he tried t' protect yo' husband in vain. The younger was all but wearin' his entrails when he fell beneath a tide of teeth and talons. They both failed you, y' know."

In the better light, she could see his face. His smile was the sort of smug that created despair.

"I turned him to bloody mud and sticky dust."

Thankfully the graphene fabric that covered her from shoulder to toe held up against the tug of thorn and branch alike, leaving them to glance off of her harmlessly despite the rough tug of the cowboy. She nearly tripped on her own boots when they made it there, the bombshell dropped so haplessly sapping the air from her lungs.

"Dead?" She repeated, her chest aching with the sudden, unexpected weight of grief. Or maybe that wasn't grief but rather the weight of a Threshold she couldn't quite power through. They were usually minor things, especially for her, but this felt as though every ounce of her being had been caged in lead. She felt the Power there, bubbling in her veins where blood should have been, but she couldn't reach it no matter how hard she tried. And oh how she tried when the red flags became too much. With a firm jerk against his grasp, she turned a look laced with devastation up to his partially shadowed profile. "No... I don't... I don't understand..."

"You don't need to," the deep baritone voice told her, twin to another. "It'll all be over soon. Soon, you'll know real Despair." The thick fingers of one hand curled around her throat.

The torch winked out.

[Cooper Gallows]

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

-Samuel Johnson




There was no tunnel. No light at the end of it. The pain was gone and I don’t remember having felt anything else. No stairway to Heaven. No highway to Hell. I couldn’t smell the sweet fragrance of the Summerlands or the barren cold of the Winterlands. There was no cinematic whoosh that carried me away to anywhere. I don’t even remember closing my eyes but I suddenly found myself opening them to a hazy, muted yellow glow that bathed my final destination (punny Cooper is punny) in its light. Instinctively, I stepped forward towards the source(s) and… promptly tripped over something and fell when my shin smacked hard into something heavy. Solid.

Well, cowboy, you’re not a ghost and welcome to the Hell Of Tripping Hazards For Giants.

If there’s some nebulous force out there in the universe or beyond, who was given the task for creating my reality from the flowing script of its hand…

...then he or she has a twisted sense of humor.

What I had tripped over? It was a stool. A big, heavy, wooden *** stool. Can you believe that ***? And it was a nice one, all thick hand-carved wood straight from a tree, the sort I had at my the old house before… Nevermind. In the time it took me to grumble and lurch up to my feet, the random pass of my hands over my torso brought about the realization that I wasn’t bleeding or blood. My clothes were intact. My hat -- damnit -- where’d my hat go? I suppose it wasn’t so hard to believe that this was some weird, as-of-yet-unidentified place in the Hereafter but, after finally getting over the sudden marveling over the state of my body (this is where I let myself believe I was still corporeal, I think), I took a less distracted look around. For a few long moments (because, are we really counting time down here?) I just sort of gaped at the entire scene laid out before me and I really wasn’t sure if I should have been appreciative of the attempt or irritated at being so horribly stereotyped.

Because, ladies and gentleman, apparently someone got it in their head that my afterlife should look like Cabela’s and Hooters threw up on Ted Nugent’s Man Cave.

Seriously.

I found myself surrounded on all sides by tall, stacked-log style walls, the bark looking as fresh as if the walls themselves were still living. They were lined with rustic paintings wreathed in custom wood frames and other pictures I was too far away from to make out, or maybe I just couldn’t focus on them. There were the mounted heads of trophy kills in places in between. The floors were dotted sporadically with tables that looked like the tops of freshly hewn tree trunks, stools like the one I’d just tripped over (still not funny), and gaudily patterned Native American rugs. Horns and antlers of all shapes and sizes had been used to sickeningly dramatic effect in filling out the decor. To one end of the great room was a laid-stone fireplace big enough to walk through, flanked by a pair of tall wingback chairs, and a I-***-kid-you-not grizzly bear rug (is it terrible that, regardless of poor taste, I wonder if that’s what was actually left of me?) spread out between. To the other end, a long bar ran most of the length of the opposite wall, the oak surface polished to a high shine and begging to be patronized. The tap behind it boasted all of the beers I loved (and hated) most, with the liquor shelf behind boasting a similar spread. In lieu of mirrors, there were colorful tin signs with every make and model of busty beauty trying to hawk anything from shaving implements (screw that) to tobacco products. And there were the big screen teevees.

Lots of them.

I half expected to see football on them, or some trendy overplayed hunting show (The Nuge IS his own biggest fan), but like some of the pictures hanging on the walls, whatever was there was clouded over with the same stuff that made them hard to focus on. Like it wasn’t all that important at the moment. It made the solitary bottle of beer sitting on the bar easy to notice, though I might have sworn that I hadn’t recalled it being there the moment before. The brown, translucent bottle still full; it must have just been opened because the air above it moved faintly with cold rising from the bottle’s mouth.

But that’s not creepy or anything.

But, Hell, I didn’t have anything to lose at this point. Right? Right then, everything that came before fell sorta fuzzy. Like the distance past, fond memories where you recalled the feeling more than the details or terrible events that had long since scabbed over and left their scars. Deep down, I knew I shouldn’t be here right now, slumping down onto one of the stools and reaching for the bottle. It felt strangely like sticking around for one or two more rounds with the guys when you knew there was something you should be doing at home. You know you’re doing the wrong thing but, in the moment, at that next taste on your tongue, the right thing just kinda clouds over in your mind. You keep doing the easy thing. So I did the easy thing. I drank. One more swallow was one less worry. Each swallow made it easier to focus on something else, like the faces of the pictures on the walls, faces I knew all too well but now didn’t want to think about. Really, I wanted to think about them. They were all I wanted to think about. It was just getting more difficult. I looked up at one of the teevee screens farther down the bar; it had become more focused now, but unlike my surroundings, it lacked any sort of color. But it was something to distract me, so I began to watch.

It looked familiar enough, as the scene unfolded on screen (who knew black and white looked so damned good in high def?), but it took me a moment (okay, it was like a minute or two because ghost beer, alright?) to cut through the thickening haze of my thoughts to first pinpoint a thought.

Gaia, please don’t tell me we’re watching ‘Cooper Gallows, This Is Your Life.’

Seeing the scene brought the events back to the forefront of my mind, clear as day. Like the had only happened the night before. Coming to in a jail cell lined with silver bars, Eden Harrington on the freedom side looking badly shaken but resolute. The beautiful sleeves Gaia had given me were worn on her slender, toned arms, a temporary gift that flipped the script on a terrible curse and made me, well, me again. The battle with the horrific creature in the Pentex warehouse that followed. Racing in to fight alongside Eden, Mesteno, and Ava, even as Lola sacrificed herself to create the right moment to finish the fight and save the little boy that was to be its sacrifice.

Losing Lola. That was hard. So damned hard.

We were almost a thing, her and I. Before and right about then. All it would haven taken was the right moment. That’s what made losing her so hard. The ‘what is’ versus the ‘what might have been’. It made losing her in any form intolerable. It made going down that dark road so easy. I’ve heard tell that fighting a losing battle is okay if you’re doing it for the right reasons. In retrospect, maybe there was a better way. Hindsight, right? I challenged Mangi himself. Me, still so new to what I was, comparatively. It was no contest. Sure, I was valiant as all get-out. I Davy Crocketted the *** out of the Alamo (Yes, picture me now, coon skin hat and all. Revel in it.). But the fight was lost before it was began. Death doesn’t play fair.

But he does play ‘Let’s Make A Deal’.

Let’s just say I got the chest full of beads, Mangi got Manhattan.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. Lola was and always will be more than a chest of beads. She got her life back. Her kids got their mom back. To this day, I still have one Hell of a loyal and devoted friend. It’s one of the many things better than I deserve.

But these words: “From here until until the end of your life, you will be my creature and you will serve. Only when Cooper Gallows is dead and his purified body is given back to the earth will ills of a naive choice be healed; only when he stands to the right hand of the Gates of Winter will the debt be paid.”

Claim all the courage you want, but that’s the sort of ominous stuff that has you waking up at night with the cold sweats. And when you start to feel your body slowly dying?

Yeah.

It’s the sort of stuff, in that moment of reminiscence at the bar, that had me reaching over the polished wood surface looking for the remote. Because nope, nope I don’t need the reminder. I just couldn’t shake the feeling though, as I hit the button and the screen went black, that I was missing something. But when the teevee turned off, something inside me did too. That memory. That painful memory. It dulled. I don’t wanna say it went away, but it felt something like tucking away a picture that you would always know was there, but you never want to look at. Eventually, you know it holds a painful memory, one full of despair, but you start to gloss over the details until only the feeling remains.

So, I looked at the next screen. Maybe there was a football game on…


[To be continued…]

[Cooper Gallows]

No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.

-Louis L'Amour


Another pull from the bottle helped. Idly, I wondered if this thing would ever be empty. Not complaining, though. The stuff taste good going down, with only the faintest of odd aftertastes. The kind you know you should be able to put your finger on but can’t, like the smudge of a memory. The drinking made me want a cigarette but I had been painfully without. Claire had been coaxing me slowly into quitting. I hated every damned second of it, until she incentivized it. Now that had become quite the enjoyable experience. No details. I’m a gentleman. So, yeah, no smoking.

But I totally would have right then if I’d had any.

With nothing more than the beer and a darkening series of thoughts to occupy my mind, I found my attention drawn slowly back to the lit screens hanging above me. There was the one I had been hoping would have some football on. Maybe my Redskins weren’t eating hot garbage against…

Have you ever had to relive a moment that shattered your heart into a million jagged little pieces?

That was the way I felt the night my house was burned to the ground. It wasn’t supposed to be my house anymore. I had lost it, legally, when Hauk and his Lords had somehow gotten themselves access to my financials, to the guy who kept my books, and screwed everything six days to Sunday. It had been at the height of their assault on me, a shadow (no pun intended) war in which the Shadow Lords had politicked and extorted their way into taking everything from me. Kurran and I watched it all (It was the first of many times he had ventured deep into territory that we were both no long welcome, though they had tried and never been able to expel him) from the boundary of the forest to my ranch, acres upon acres of empty pasture and trampled corn stalks. The house had built into the side of a tall, rocky hill, jutting lazily out from the steeply angled long and out towards the open land. It would have been considered a ranch home from the style, save for the second ‘story’ I had dug deep into the earth with the aid of local stone spirits. The sprawling deck had boasted a stone ringed pool and a hot tub on a higher oak rise. It was a dream come true and for all the bad memories that walked hand-in-hand with the good, I loved that place fiercely. I had built it for my first wife, during troubled times, when I was still naive enough to believe that good people persevered through all things. Every brick and stone. Ever tile. Every screw and piece of lumber. I had done it all by hand, despite every splinter and scraped knuckle.

It wasn’t enough to keep her. She left. I stayed. Too much of my heart had gone into that place.

And then I had to watch it all burn. No, I didn’t have to. I could have not shown up. I could have walked away. But I stood there for hours, watching the rise of the flame as it consumed a piece of me. I saw every shift of the frame as the place collapsed in on itself, heard the every timber give out. In my head I could see the intricate wood relief I had created in the basement shrine, my promise to the earth spirits who had been curious about human emotion. I had added to it over the years, a small homage for every person who had touched my life, through their arrival, existence, or departure. It was all destroyed now. Ashes. It belonged all to the earth and none of it to me.

Kurran had wanted to act. In my despair and to my shame, I didn’t.

It wasn’t my place anymore.

It took the screen winking out after I had shut if off for me to realize my face was damp and I was quick to wipe the tear away with the back of my wrist (laugh all you want, but that’s some sinister *** to make even the toughest guy relive). I took another pull from the bottle; this effing thing must have been magic because all of the pain dulled slowly and while I could still feel it, the poignancy of what I had just relived sort of just… ebbed and the flowed away, like driftwood on the tide.

The next screen showed me the more recent past: That night at the Owl during the riots.

Not for one Gaia-damned minute will I EVER regret what I did to those people. They ignorance and gate put MY family at risk. My wife. My kids (go ahead and call foul on that one but, with all due respect to the departed, no self-deprecating pun intended, feel free to help tell me at any time which man was helping raise them even when he was still alive). I had to protect them. Who else would?

No, I didn’t regret what I did.

But, in the aftermath, I remember what it meant. I knew what the consequences would be, even if they weren’t immediate. Mangi had been very clear in regards to my involvement in the world of the living. I had already spent too much time bucking the system, straddling the line of acceptable with what I had been using the waters of the Life Spring for. I had already has strikes against me.

What I did for Serah. Strike One.

What I tried to do for Lila. Strike Two.

...The irony’s not lost on me, you know. The connections to Claire. But in my defense, what I did for Serah was before Claire and I really knew each other, except for in passing. And the Lila thing… that poor girl, I still didn’t really know Claire all that well, even after the Serah thing, but… coming across that poor, sad girl waiting for her turn beneath the Eyes of Judgement, those assholes… I had to do something. That Claire and I ended up where we were… I’d like to call it coincidence, though looking at it now, maybe it was Mangi’s ultimate payback. Look what I’m losing…

Man, I’m a dumbass. I had looked up at the memory and hadn’t batted an eyelash. Hadn’t felt a shred of guilt or sadness for the part I played. Until I put two and two together, that is.

It’s pretty unfair, not getting to relive any of the good memories. But I already knew from experience that no one really cares what’s fair to the dead.

I made the screen go black and I took another deep drink. The brew was running out.




[To be continued…]

[Cooper Gallows]

"Never anythin' good on television anymo'," I grunted, soured in the moment but quickly losing track of just why. But hey, it was at least obvious that I kept my charming drawl, inner monologue be damned. There were still a pair of teevees running but I had lost interest right about then, turning my attention to the beer and stealing another swallow. There wasn't much left. Good thing this was a bar, right? I took another painfully appreciative look around the room and then leaned across the bar, just to check the cooler.

It's good to be sure about these things.



“Why not pace yourself, appreciate the flavor?” I didn’t step as if from nowhere, it just always seemed like it. For once my suit felt restricted, tight but I knew that wasn’t a realistic notion. The pressure I felt wasn’t something caused by something material. I couldn’t tower Cooper, I couldn’t loom over a man who held the closer side of a foot over me in height, but I could still play the brooding smoker that I’d been for years.

I doubted that anyone would have been surprised that I would be here.



I didn't have to turn around. I knew that voice. It rarely ever changed, that tone, but the notion brought to mind a host of Sundays where it fired up enough over touchdowns and blown calls. Worse when his Green and Gold battled (and often beat) my Red and Gold.

"There's more t' be had, m' sure." My voice was momentarily hoarse as reality came crashing back in. He had been there in those final moments. He was there now. It wasn't rocket science. "Did it have t' be you?"

Jake *** Ives Reaped me.

I didn't know whether to be touched that my BFF popped 'Sorry, dude, you're dead' cherry or bitter that he was sharing the moment with me. It made an ache in my heart and, right then, I only half remembered why. Only half understood. When I looked back at him, only could only image what he read in my expression. Did he see past my smile to the despair, fading slowly with whatever this place was doing to be? Did he see the bottle shaking in my hand, I don't even know if it was my nerves or the neutered Rage beneath my skin.

"Here we are, I guess."



It was a deep dark secret just how much I felt. The blank stone expressions and dry boring tone was a necessary farce less I accidentally betray the knowledge I had, that I knew when their clock stopped and what moments they would miss, which promises they couldn’t keep. I would walk away feeling their pain, know the ache of death because it was my own touch.

“Are you going to croon to me?” I even hummed a few bars to lead him in for a ballad that would have made my wife sway with a star dusted look in her eyes. If it only could be a few months earlier, we wouldn’t be standing in an overdone and ridiculous hunters lodge and instead at my own bar. I could keep playing at not knowing exactly what was happening and how this would all play out.

Should have kept your distance, Ives. It would have made all of this so much easier.

Had I done so, I wouldn’t have been here.

I couldn’t tell how angry he was, I always had trouble reading Cooper, but the bottle in his hand at least didn’t shatter. Not that it would have mattered.

“Mind if I smoke?” I pulled out the pack from my front chest pocket, along with a thin book of matches as I readied to light up.



I kinda wanted to punch him, but I couldn't resist:

"It's a Dead Man's Party," I rumbled out a low croon, though I wasn't sure if it was for his amusement or mine. "Who could ask fo' mo'. Everybody's comin', leave yo' body at the door..." That was Jake. Without even trying he brought something out of you... and not just your soul. If you spent enough time with the guy, there was no doubting why Reva loved him. A hard read but more than the sum of the little traits your saw off the cuff. I'm not going to say that it didn't hurt, it being him, but in that shared moment, I was glad he was here. It felt as though an important piece of a puzzle I didn't even know I was working on felt into place.

When he mentioned smoking, I cleared my throat.

Claire wants... had wanted me to quit.

"Don't mind so long as you're sharin'. You gonna drink with me?"



If he tried to punch me, I had every intention of cheating. A Reaper only has a few perks after all.

I laughed in my own way: a forced exhale, short and sharp through my nose. Glad for the jokes, glad for a little bit of time that I could steal because this job was one of the few that I’d feel for a long while afterwards. I hoped that was a smile at the corner of his mouth, one that would grow into its common crooked shape, but I was kidding myself.

My mouth only bent into an almost smile (and it wasn’t real considering the circumstances) in order to hold the cigarette in place, end cupped after the match was struck and I had offered the pack to him.

When he offered me a drink I looked down to the bottle on the bar and gave a slow shake of my head.

“I can’t drink that,” declining finally, but then reaching into another inner pocket of my suit. “But I’ve always got my flask.”



I wanted to smile. I really did. Jake was being Jake. There was a warmth in that familiarity and it suddenly made me realize how cold this place felt. Funny, I couldn't see my breath. Couldn't cut glass. Huh. Jake felt like home but the rest reminded me of where I was, ruining the moment just as it started.

No, no smiles.

Instead I took the cigarette from the pack and let it, inhaling deeply. The familiar burn in my chest felt somehow muted. "Can't drink it?" I glanced down at the bottle, only half suspicious. "What's wrong with it? I'm dead, you're... you. Seems like it adds up."



He had questions, but when was I a nice guy to give straight answers? At least he wasn’t asking the loaded questions, the ones that I’d wondered if I could get away with lying if I tried to answer. Questions that were left better asked of gods than a former shadow of a man.

“It’s not for me. It’s yours,” I skirted the essence of the answer. But it was all true. That beer wasn’t for me, just like this bar wasn’t for me, the screens weren’t for me. It was all for him. I glanced around the room then, hoping he’d catch on to the subtly without my mouth spoiling more secrets of this afterlife’s notion of a waiting room.

The flask I had drawn out was traded with the cigarette for a quick pull, and soon that was offered out to Cooper as well. I knew he’d recognize its contents if he had a taste.



Jake was trying to tell me something. I knew it.

Sadly, in the moment it was hard to catch onto. Despite the reassurance and significance of his presence, my mind and memory were still fogged over in places that left open chasms that had been slowly filling with despair. I glanced down at the bottle again, wondering after it momentarily before clinking it lightly against his flask. It was tempting.

"Naw, if'n this is fo' me, I guess I'm good fo' now." I took another pull from the bottle and then a drag of the cigarette, blowing a smoke ring over my shoulder at him. I'm good like that.

"So..." I stretched it out. How do you make small talk with a friend in a situation like this? "... here we are."



I took the sip I intended for him, the flask was too good to let it go to waste after all, but I recapped it and set it down on the bar between us. I didn’t figure he’d reach for it now, and wondered if he was too far gone now, or too far relaxed and if this would be the beginning of the last few moments.

I didn’t think it was going to be this hard. (No homo.)

The silver lining in all of this was that I at least didn’t have to explain to him what was going on. We’d shared too much in the decade, (longer?) that we’d known each other. But my messages to him now were too subtle, too indirect to come across and click.

We stood there in otherwise silence in the smoke, the ring he blew over to me returned with one of my own until he broke it. What to say in a situation like this. I wasn’t so much of an inconsiderate dick to parrot back his own words to him, or quip something inconsequential to him like some cookie cutter flat character that favored the local bar.

“What do you think of it?”



"I dunno whether to be appreciative fo' all the effort or insultin' fo' being so unforgivingly stereotyped." I have him a wry smile sidelong and flicked ashes onto the barroom floor.

What? It was my afterlife. Don't judge me.

I stole Jake's pack of cigarettes back after than and lit another off of the first, giving him a wan smile to follow the wry, but not apologizing for the theft. Claire would have wrinkled her nose in disgust had she witnessed the act but it wasn't as if she could really disapprove now. I'd like to think that, under the circumstances, she would have understood. I looked back Jake's way in profile, he wasn't loooking my way at the moment. This guy had been one of my best friends, if not the best, for over a decade. He may have been playing suave, mister chillaxed Frank Sinatra of Grim Reapers but I could read between the lines. He was holding back.

"Ain't like I haven't been here befo'," I said after I let the silence hang between us again. "Maybe not here-here, but the situation. Similar anyway. You don't have the monopoly on shepardin'. You just take 'em there. Me... Ol' Mangi had me draggin' 'em back kickin' and wailin' after they'd escaped. You don't have to say nothin' you don't want to. I get it."



“At least there isn’t a Big Buck Hunter Arcade game in the corner,” I offered, and then hesitated to look over my shoulder on the chance that I was wrong and it was in fact there but had yet to be noticed.

“I can’t say anything,” I confessed too easily. I knew I couldn’t say anything because I could already feel the faint cracks in my own composure, but my reply could just as easily be confused for my following of the regulations of my practice. Cooper would understand. Like he said, he was familiar with the situation.

And though the Cowboy wasn’t showing any signs having to be dragged kicking and screaming. There were rules to follow. Hadn’t the both of us already lucked our ways this far with finding loopholes and second chances that it would be too damning to seek out another one?

We both knew there was always one inevitable. Death.

“You get that.”



"Big Buck Hunter would be mo' up my alley than all of this antler art." I spat at that. "S' wasteful. Serves no purpose and it's disrespectful to the animal spirits."

It the end, waxing philosophical didn't do me much good. Indignation wasn't going to get me anywhere. I could have narrowed the focus of my attention, could have pushed harder. Or maybe it couldn't have. In the end, my attention continued to drift back to the sinking feeling in my heart. The despair.

"So this is it, huh? I take this walk down memory lane and fo'get or accept?" I wanted to be daunted by the notion, but mostly I felt numb. "Just watch the boob tube, down muh beer, and then... roll over?"



Part of me wanted to point out to him that none of this was real, that it was all a farce to smooth over a transition and that the illusion of it all was probably just as much created by him as it was by some twisted powers that be with an ill-fitting sense of humor. But I had to admit that I was an interrupting interloper here, one who had bargained his way and traded favors to be present, and if our only way countering the frustration of this whole situation was complaining about the décor in the bar, I’d go with that.

So, I gave a mild shrug and just kept up the brooding smoker routine as I lit another unnecessary cigarette.

As he mentioned the screens, I gave another glance to the one that was closest to us. “Don’t finish your beer then.” The dryness of my tone made it more prone to sarcasm, but I knew that if he took the message to heart, in the end it would only buy us a few more minutes at best. And I might not have anything to say that he wanted to hear, but doesn’t everyone fight for a few more seconds? I wasn’t so different.



"And what? Sit here fo' eternity, thirsty and bummin' yo' smokes?" I turned a glare his way, but it lacked any heat. It had been a long time since I had been good at getting angry, save for some very special circumstances, as of my Rage had long since abandoned me. "That's just what I need, an angry call from Reva wantin' t' know where her ol' man is."

I mentioned Reva, but it made me think of Claire.

Almost against my will, my gaze was drawn towards one of the two remaining screens that was on. And there was few face. It was so often stern or neutral but it didn't take much to think about one of her smiles. The kind that were only reserved for me. But in the scene above me, she wasn't smiling. We were laying there in bed, freshly bathed and still enjoying that post-coital glow, ruined only by he concern she had suddenly ambushed me with. I had promised to fight. Had promised her that everything would be fine, even when she cried into my should and confessed her fear of the worst. In those moments, I had promised her the moon.

And now? She and my unborn little boy were only Gaia knew where and there I was, dead, and waiting for... probably some cosmic buttfucking that would have made my mother blanch and Mesteno say 'I always knew he was a catcher at heart, hahaha-insert-some-cool-latin-words-and-edgy-gay-i nterrogator-guy-stuff-here'. They were in danger and I was, well, I guess I really was just rolling over and showing my belly, wasn't I?

I took another long pull from bottle. It looked like there was only one swallow left.



“You’re right, I can hear her foot tapping already.” Admitting and I turned away to hide the ache and shame in my eyes. But maybe he’d think it was because of the image that had flashed across the screen. Damn she’s got a rack on her.

Reva was going to kill me. But I figured I wouldn’t tell her any of this part.

He didn’t need or deserve any of my own grief for this moment, and I was doing my best to shield him from it, but my shoulders must have sagged a little as I noticed the last small splash of beer in the bottle. There wasn’t time to call for another round.

“I can’t change the names in the book man. You know that.” I wasn’t made like him, wasn’t made to throw down and challenge his gatekeeper like Cooper was. There was an air of defeat in my typically bland voice, but as soon as I said it I felt the walls start building back up.

How did that song go in that cartoon the twins and Edward watched? Conceal, don't feel.



"Naw," I conceded and paused momentarily when I sensed something akin to regret in his tone. "Naw, you can't change the names. Not when it's yo' time. Not really."

It was nice, Jake showing that bit of emotion. In retrospect, I find it comforting. But in that moment, I was bitter. In the moment, I didn't want to appreciate that he was here, that he accepted this burden, because he really was my best friend.

So, in BFF dude fashion, I twisted the knife. One emotional dick punch, coming right up.

"You're gonna have t' watch out fo' little Jacob Ezekial when he's born, y' know. S' no other guy in the world I trust 'nough t' do it."



I wanted to tell him about the time I tried to change a name in the book and got caught, about how I’d argued with dark hooded figures and disembodied voices, about how I would have done anything to simply erase it, and failed. But that story wasn’t meant for now. And it wouldn’t have made either one of us feel better.

Hearing him felt like a kick in the teeth, the gut and the groin all at once, I should be impressed that I didn’t double over and barely made a sound and no expression when he told me. I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to remain stoic when I told Reva, that I’d break down with my head in her lap later.

“I will watch him.” It was only four words, but Cooper would understand the volumes that were going unsaid. As well as the simple, thanks man.



"He's gonna be his mama's boy," I told him. I didn't drink from that bottle. I wasn't ready. That memory was still fresh on the screen, my last night with Claire and my unborn son. I cleared my throat when my voice went suddenly hoarse. I struggled with the words. "He's gonna get into fights. His mouth's gonna get him in trouble. Let him take his lumps and don't let Claire let him off easy. He needs t' be a good man. Better than me. He's..."

Gaia, I couldn't do this. "... he's gonna need someone t' watch football with. T' tell him right from wrong and... Help him be a gentleman."



Anyone would have broken at that point, but my jaw was too clenched to allow for any fissures in my features. Plus, on a technicality I was more smoke and ash than flesh and bone, and the former didn’t allow for tears.

“Buy him his first pack of cigarettes,” I added, trying poorly for a joke that we likely wouldn’t laugh at.

My hand reached out and slapped his shoulder hard before a firm grip allowed a squeeze. “The way I figure it, Edward,” as in Edward Cooper, “will be there for him too. And they’ll do more than we ever could.”



"Edward's a good boy." Silently, I thanked with with my eyes for deflecting some of what I was going through. That was Jake. Solid as rock for a dead guy. "You and Beev did an amazin' thing with that kid. He's somethin' special."

I wasn't sure how much of this I could take. I was hurting so damned bad. Who knew a spirit's heart could ache this bad? It was like getting stabbed in the chest all over again. Considering the bottle in my hand, I instead stole another one of Jake's cigarettes and lit it, my hand trembling as I took that first drag. It's embittering, still feeling alive, when you know you're not. I sat there like that for a while in complete silence. My friend, my brother, he understood. He didn't try to ruin the moment while I got myself back together. Or tried to. My thumbnail worried at the bottle but there was no label to idly peel.

I don't have any witty jokes for what was going on at the moment.

So I looked at the final screen.

The only thing about the scene I recognized was watching Remi die. Horrible. Looking back, it was heroic in its own right. That werewolf fought like a God damned demon to watch my back. No one who tried to get at me through him, not a single... ***... one..., made it to me. But when he died, he died hard. He died ugly. This wasn't a movie. He didn't get to tell me anything inspirational before Death took him (okay, so maybe I eyeballed Jake for a moment, looking for any sign that he might have Reaped Remi too). He was there in one moment, gone in a wet mess in the next. Dead. Gone.

He had been there for me.

But it was what came next that shook me to my core.

Piece of advice: Just when you think things can't get any worse? They do. When you think the universe can't hit you any harder? It does. Karma is a crock of ***. The only Law in the Universe that seems to track every single time is Murphy's Law.

Up on that screen, my wife wasn't safe. She was in pain. That could only mean two things, one or both. If the bottle in my hand would have been breakable, it would have shattered. Claire laid there on a rock formation, her face pale and glistening with sweat in guttering torchlight. Someone large loomed over her but I couldn't see his face, but the talons on the end of his fingers were still smudged with drying blood. My blood. I was more lucid in those moments than I was when I was dying, lucid enough to recognize a voice that I'd heard every day of my life. It would have been confusing, if it weren't for the Power that lingered behind the drawl. I knew that voice too. It was the last drop of water in a hundred miles of desert. It was nothing but a cane field between a little boy and a hurricane. It was a chemo treatment that failed to take and a couple being told that they couldn't conceive. It was the battle you knew you had to fight and had no chance of winning.

It was despair.

I looked at Jake again, my mouth dry, and started to lift that bottle for the last mouthful.



It was almost a smile that formed when he spoke of Edward, and I wouldn’t disagree with him, but I wouldn’t add on further to this moment. It was a confusing mix of struggling to watch him go through this, wanting it to all be over and wanting these last few moments to last forever.

So, I just gave his shoulder one more squeeze and followed his gaze to the last screen still up.

I could feel the muscles in my face twitch as my brow furrowed in confusion. I knew that voice and that drawl. The owner of it was standing right---

Horrified at my realization, I jerked my hand out to knock the bottle in his hand hoping that this day wasn’t going to end up in me decking my best friend after I reaped his soul.

“Don’t finish that!”



For a moment, I wanted to drink it. Drink the last of the bad memories away until only the dull throb of the pain remained. I wanted to empty that bottle and shut off that television, then look for a better bottle to drown in before I went before The Three to accept what was supposed to be coming to me. But it was Claire's face that stopped me. Her beautiful, strong face and it was locked in such a terrible mask of anguish. And that voice, THAT voice.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

The bottle stopped short of my lips and I'll swear this to you: Had Jake not knocked the bottle from my head there and then, I don't care what it was made of, it would have shattered in my hand.

I'm one strong S.O.B. when I'm mad. No, when I'm Enraged.

"Flask," I told Jake without tearing my eyes from the screen. In hindsight, I can only hope the sudden spark that lit up my eyes was enough of a thank you for his sudden desire to act. He must have come to a similar if not the same notion I had in those moments. Broternal mindmeld, or whatever that nerdy stuff is the Trekkies are into. He handed it over without a word but I could almost feel him vibrating with... well, whatever he was vibrating with, I hope it wasn't Reva's and wasn't in his pocket. The flask came up to my lips. I swallowed once for every teevee screen that was black, once for every memory that should have been dulled away and all but forgotten.

It was in that little delicious pool that I found them waiting for me, a deep watery grotto of despair that wanted to suck me away. I was supposed to give in. Instead, I got angry. I could feel in there beneath the liquid indifference I had imbibed. It was getting warmer, aglow with with a rising flicker of flame that the brew couldn't quench. I grasped it. I held on tight to it and let it grow.

"Jake." I snarled his name. Oops. "Open the way. M' ready fo' Judgement."


[To be continued...]


((OOC Note: I cannot express enough gratitude and love for the player of Jake Ives, who has not only played Cooper's best friend for most of the time I've played him but the player has been one of my best friend. Family, really. Thank you so much for this scene full of epic, amazing feels.))

[Cooper Gallows]

[Continued immediately after...]

"Cooper!" Claire yelped, her voice echoing from stone to stone in the dark. There was something to be said for the fight or flight instinct, particularly when it came to protecting a child. An unborn one at that. He caught her by the throat and stifled her air supply but not before she sideswiped his torso with a hooked throw of a heavy fist. She had little time after that with which to fight back and instead wrapped her hands around his wrist and fingers, grasping and clawing and doing her best to bend the digits away from her windpipe. Breathing was a terribly overrated thing but the fluttering in her stomach said that the baby disagreed. Gasping against his grip, she managed a single word.

"Please."

The man wearing her husband's face was silent, nonplussed.

"Hush now, darlin'," he said quietly back to her with Cooper's voice, a mockery of a tone she had become so familiar with in the last year and a half. "You're not gonna die yet. Neither is that squirmer in your belly. Everything in due time."

The was a large tunnel beyond them, tall and cavernous in its own right, with sporadic side chambers of varying sizes. From within them, dozens of eyes glowed a luminescent, sickly green, the eerie stares often punctuated by huffing growls and maddening laughter that echoed off of the walls. This had been a place of healing once, the home to a totem and spirits long devoted to the healing and protective arms, a place for caregivers and hospitalers alike. The cowboy had told Claire that, on quiet nights alone when he was feeling wistful and the walls between them had long since melted away in favor of a unflinching trust. Now, for as full as the place was, it felt hollow. Hope had abandoned the site of power and, from the very feel of it, was being replaced by something... terrible.

Ahead in the darkness, more torchlight danced from around the corner of a bend, signaling a turn and the passage through larger caverns, though there was little to see. There were damp stone walls and hazy torchlight that guided them deeper. The man wearing Cooper's face dragged her along when she wouldn't walk of her own volition, content to squeeze hard enough to make his point when necessary, reminding Claire that she was currently little better than a ragdoll in his hands.

"Then you... gotta let me... breathe." She beat at the broad hand around her throat until she was able to sneak enough of a breath to relieve the swimming of her head. You're not gonna die yet. It was the final word of that sentence that sent chills down her spine. There were few things in this realm that could do enough to her to accomplish such a thing but she had also said there were few places her Power couldn't touch either. This was one of them... who knew what the coming moments would hold. For now, she had to simply focus on taking it one step at a time, or one stumble at a time, whatever the occasion may call for.

There was something innately wrong about it all. Every inch of shadow and every sliver of pitiful light was tinged with corruption, radiating the very essence of despair. It shook her to her core and found her casting furtive looks up at the harsh pull of her "husband's" face. That wasn't her Cooper though, it couldn't be. The way he talked about Remi and Ezio, the way he referred to Cooper as her husband without referencing himself, the harsh way he handled her when she was so clearly in distress, and of course, the flag that had started it all. Rarely did Cooper ever refer to her by her name unless it was absolutely necessary. The cowboy bled levity even in the worst of times and in that moment, there was almost nothing she wouldn't give to hear him call her Slugger, to tell her everything was going to be okay.

"Talk to me, Coop," she intentionally cut his name short. There was an insistent plea in her tone, desperation limning each quiet word that broke the eerie dread that seemed to permeate the very air they breathed. "Somethin', anything, where're we going?"

"This isn't a bad movie." The tone was casually cold and indifferent to her plight. "No big reveal fo' you. If it were a bad movie, it would be horror. Your legs have spread so much you'd likely have been dead already. Now hush."

The repeat of his command was emphasized with another air-stealing squeeze, though it would have let up whenever she complied.

A little farther on, the pair descended down a very slight incline, where a large room way ahead. The vaulted ceilings seemed almost natural, a formation that might have been centuries (if not millennia) in the making. Within, they were met with a collection of creatures, from the Dancers of the Black Spiral the Shadow Lords had become or summoned beings of a more grotesque origin, likely of some demonic nature. They seemed to breathe out a collective sigh of approval (some of it seemed much more like the same mad laughter from the halls, only muted) upon seeing the man and his prize, so much so that they surged forward to greet him.

There were no words that spilled from his mouth to ward them off, only a single snarl that was sulfurously ursine that sent the bulk of the skittering bodies dancing away in a panicked flail of mutated limbs. In their retreat, the creatures had parted to reveal a single table beyond, with no chairs surrounding it. The look of it was reminiscent of his previous commentary. Nothing about the piece of furniture looked ceremonial. Or even important. It was a cheap, sturdy hunk of thick, hard plastic that was dimpled upward for a coarse, slip-free texture and already smudged with... who knew what. The legs were a stock stainless steel, the gray paint chipped with time and gross misuse.

It was an homage to sacrilegious irreverence and a testament to the corruption of the place.

"Asshole," she spat the word. True to her nickname, she lashed out at him with a fist, swinging for whatever she might be able to hit on the big gurahl. Because really, what did he expect after saying something like that? Still he stole her air (or more specifically the baby's) and subdued her only a moment after. Preservation was more important than pride, she had to get out of here alive. She had to get her son out alive.

As the tunnel opened up into the cavernous room and they were rushed by all manner of abominations, Claire refused to flinch away from them, resisting the primal urge to shrink into the cowboy's side. There would be no giving him the satisfaction of seeing the brief lurch of terror that had jolted her very being. As the sea of sacrilege parted to reveal the centerpiece of the room, she cast another furrow browed look up at the man dragging her and promptly dug the heels of her boots in with a vehement shake of her head. Not just no, but hell no.

"Y' are what y' eat." He leered down at her with Cooper's crooked grin. It might have been as endearing as the cowboy's if not for the dead malevolence behind his too-dark eyes. Her fist slammed into the thick, hard muscle of the arm that held her and, while it didn't do much to facilitate her release, something visibly crawled beneath the skin as if it lived within.

Progress had been steady up until Claire's sudden bout of resistance, the hard press of her heels into the natural crevices lining the floor enough slow and then suddenly halt their progress forward. A stern look was cast down at her for the act of defiance, one more annoying than her vain punching.

"You can go onto the table gentle or you can go down hard." His other hand came up and around, a backhand strike landing across the side of her head that was more knuckles than flesh. "Makes no difference t' me."

There was nothing charming about this iteration of her cowboy and her disgust showed in the curl of her lip and the turn of her head away from his leering. It did little to keep the stomach churning vision of rippling flesh away and for a flicker, she glanced back to see if her eyes were playing tricks on her. Claire felt her heels catch on a stone lip and she locked one knee to keep herself there as long as she could. It was her only saving grace when a heavy hand connected with her temple and lit the cavern up with lights and stars. It should have brought her to her knees.

It almost did.

But this wasn't Claire's first rodeo. Before he even finished with the backswing of his hand, her unplanted foot came up for a stomp of a boot sole for the side of his nearest knee with all of the vicious brutality she often held back in more formalized brawling settings. As she did, her left made a reach for the thigh holstered handgun that had so easily dispatched the were that had drifted too close to their base camp. A firm grip would help keep it in her possession even if things got froggy... which she pretty much figured would happen after she got done running her mouth. "You hit like a bitch."

The pink-haired warrior knew her craft and when her foot connected with the inside of of the knee, it folded sideways with a sickening crunch. Her reward? The man who wore her husband's face bellowed a roar that threatened to shake the very stone of the cavern they were in, but it was a pain that segued too quickly into obscene laughter. It was a laughter that continued and was turned down towards her upturned face, even as the sickening sound continued while the knee pop itself back into place.

"Cute," he told her in response and if he had seen the gun, no concern showed. "Just remember. Fair play is foreplay."

That very same leg came up and the boot came down, the favor returned as a heavy blow with plenty of weight behind it came down on her own leg at a horrible angle. Without even waiting to see what damage was inflicted or what she might do with the pistol, the grip on Claire's throat was used to heft her up off of her feet and bring her down hard onto the table.

The wet snap of bone and cartilage was seldom something that made her flinch, whether it was her own or that of someone else, so accustomed to the sound of violence as she was. It was a whole different matter though to hear it in reverse, unprompted and unflinchingly done by the beast of a man as if it were nothing more than a dislocated finger. His laughter only served to boil the Chaos in her veins but before she could swing the SIG up to put it to use, she was treated to a dose of unaccounted for turnabout. She bit back a snarl of her own only to have it cut off by the meaty grasp around her throat as her feet left stoned and her back came down hard against the stained table. Instinctively she curled in on herself knowing that the webwork of protective enchantments and wardings that she and Cooper had worked so hard on were nothing more than a faint flicker of gold across her skin.

"Go *** yourself." She gasped, the words lacking the bite that would have come with a little more air. The ripple of pain through her back stole the rest of her thunder and when it radiated upwards through her abdomen, any remaining color drained from her cheeks. It was too early for this. Not unbearably early but enough to be cause for concern. Again she shook her head, her frame bucking beneath his hold in an effort to try and squirm away. "It's not time, you can't do this. It's not time!"

"I did." The leer she was given was upside down now, the hand still firm on her throat. "Didn't you know that's how we got here? I've worn his meatsuit across dozens of realities, all to get here. He's lost everything, including his life. Now that is despair."

As if he knew that very moment what was occurring, dead eyes snapped towards Claire's writhing body. Towards her swollen stomach. "And now I get to finish what he and I started."

"Yes, yes, you're so big and bad," she croaked, one hand prying and peeling at the vice grip of his fingers. Her hips bucked but quickly came back down when another tightening of her muscles spread a new wave of pain through her midsection. Damnit, Jacob, this is neither the time nor the place for this! This time she winced though, the first real show of pain in her expression as she twisted left and then right in a bid to relieve it.

She was just about to open her mouth to smart off some more when a din of chaos erupted from the tunnel they had ventured down to get here. There were unearthly shrieks, the rapid pop of gunfire, and... what sounded like tires screeching on stone and the whirl of a high performance engine. Motorcycle, not car.

What might have been planned for her next was lost beneath the din that tore through the stone corridors of the caern. Between the gunfire and the screams and the tenor of an engine (which fell short of a classic chopper's rumble but wasn't the pitched whine of a crotch rocket), the palpable tunnel of sound that ripped into the cavern was nothing short of painful. It was punctuated all too soon by the sudden explosion of the source from the main tunnel.

The armored motorcycle, bearing two riders, braked hard at the sight of so many mutated bodies in one place but didn't stop. Instead, the operator laid it down in a controlled slide letting the momentum carry rider and passenger through the crowd of enemies. The cycle itself came apart during the powerful slide, disengaging in pieces and reforming itself around Henry's broad frame, turning his body into a heavily armored battering ram that sent bodies flying. In lieu of shooting, his arms wrapped about his passenger, protecting her from the flesh scraping ride across the stone and leaving her hands free to wreak a havoc all their own.

It had taken them longer than Raven would have liked to mow down the slew of creatures that had piled on Henry in the forest and as such, it had given Cooper plenty of time to abscond with Claire. Raven hadn't been worried at the time, not with the bark of the cowboy's directional orders that reached her ears between the pop of shots that tore through furred flesh around her. It wasn't until they had made it halfway there and Henry has asked at least half a dozen times if she was sure that Cooper had said to go this way that they realized something was terribly, terribly wrong. Thankfully the threshold of the shrine did little to affect the simplistic tracker that had been attached to several of the items Claire carried on her. With a quick double back, they ultimately reached the mouth of the caern in what could only be so cliche as to be called the nick of time.

The eerie glow of supernatural eyes from the darkness had given away what lurked in the shadows and between Henry and Raven, they had more than decimated the ranks before the cavern. What Raven hadn't counted on was the sudden sap of energy that may as well have stolen the air from her lungs for how hard it affected her. Asterians were such an innately magical people, try as she might to bury it deep within her veins, that crossing the threshold was comparable to hitting a preternatural brick wall. Only by the grace of the bike's driver did she have it in her to press on (mostly whether she liked it or not). When they reached the cavernous room and the horrific display within, a sudden contrary rage filled the snarl the raven haired woman let loose along with a hail of silver jacketed rounds. She may have been a healer by trade but her marksmanship was second to only a handful even in motion as they were.

The roar of the engine nearly deafened Claire but there was no better moment than then to pushed a boot against the table to jerk sideways even in Not-Cooper's grasp. A moment later, she kicked her legs up, bending awkwardly despite the rounded bump of her midsection, for the sake of wrapping them around his arm to lock it at the elbow and twist with everything she had. Every ounce of pain, every shred of agony, every sliver of the very despair he had inflicted, she poured into the motion, pushing through the stabbing feeling in her gut with one thing on her mind; survival.

Where Raven's hail of gunfire didn't outright kill, it maimed or it slowed, creating a mass of confusion as she and Henry slid through the mass of bodies until the pair nearly ended up on the underside of the cavern. Her fiance was up a heartbeat after she was with a sudden protest of servos and a lift of metal-sheathed arms. His gunfire joined the chorus of hers, drawing as much attention as it obliterated. And like that, the fight was really and truly joined.

Even injured and in agony, Claire's legs were dangerous where they were around the arm of the man wearing the cowboy's face, a face that contorted in as much pain as annoyance as bones wrenched and muscles tore. Even then, he lifted her bodily with that one arm and used the grip she had on him to raise her up, only to bring her weight and his forced back down onto the table, hard enough to bend one of the legs. It threatened to topple the cheap piece of furniture. Worst still was the fist at the end of his free arm, which came down in a hammering blow on her already injured leg.

"Kill them," he said calmly with a thrust of his chin towards Henry and Raven, an irritated command that immediately whipped the fallen werewolves and mutated monstrosities into a fanatical frenzy that outweighed any fear the couple had created with their blitzkrieg attack. Dead eyes fell back to Claire.

On a good day, Cooper Gallows outweighed his wife by a solid two hundred pounds of damn near pure muscle. This wasn't a good day but that didn't make his weight any less dangerous. The crash of a heavy fist against her knee elicited the first scream she had let out since he had dragged her into these forsaken grounds. But the white hot fire that felt like it was incinerating her ligaments was nothing compared to the next tight contraction of her abdomen. It was perspective, a reminder of what she was fighting for. Perspiration trickled down her pale face, stinging her eyes and tickling where it slipped down behind her neck. Or maybe those were tears in her eyes, she couldn't tell. Everything was blurry and loud but she still had a precarious hold on his arm. Where one leg was weakened, she wrapped an arm around it and gave him a firm jerk toward her at just the same time she straightened her good leg, her boot heel aimed for the blur of his face.

To one side, she saw the repeated muzzle flash of rapid gunfire volleyed by her supposed saviors. There was brief pause to reload and Raven took cover behind her armored fiance to do so, giving her just enough time to swap magazines and get back to business. They were vastly outnumbered though and their ammo was a finite resource. None of that mattered though when she heard Claire cry out again, another pained howl and a panicked sob with the wet realization that this baby was coming whether she wanted him to or not. Raven swore and broke away from Henry's flank with only enough sense to call out behind her as she went. "Cover me babe!"

"Go!" Henry's voice didn't need to carry, as it filtered through their comms with ease. Two spent magazines ejected themselves automatically from the machine pistols mounted in the armor along his forearms, only to be replaced with fresh ones when he slammed his wrists down against hard points at his waist. Raven's sudden sprint was greeted with a hail of gunfire that flanked either side of her as she went, the much taller man firing over her slender shoulders to create a path to her friend.

Claire's booted foot connected solidly when she shifted her weight, snapping the imposter's chin up and his head back. In that moment his grip on her was relinquished and he stumbled backwards nearly a half dozen steps. A clawed hand rose to rub a palm along his jaw, smudging it with that was left of her husband. There was murder come to life in those previously empty eyes. That gaze flickered briefly towards Raven and he smiled.

There was something satisfying about the solid boot she gave the cowboy-imposter, doubly so when he let go and tripped back. Claire gladly let go and tumbled to one side of the table, knocking it sideways in the process. Where the hell had her gun gone? She hadn't even realized she had lost her hold on it at one point. A fruitless scan of the dark floor gave her nothing to go one but hardly left her unarmed. Fully expecting Not Cooper to come back after her, she grabbed for her remaining handgun and turned only to find Raven dashing her way through a steady fall of bodies brought on by the tag-team fire of the newly engaged couple.

Far too much of the imposter's attention was on her friend and he was what stood between the two women. Claire lifted the gun and tipped its trembling muzzle toward the cowboy's back. Her finger hovered over the trigger, just a twitch away from her best shot at putting the beast down.

But what if...

What if it wasn't all this... this thing? What if her Cooper was in there somewhere, fighting to break free?

Before she could pull the trigger, another contraction jerked her attention away and she choked out another cry, sinking to her knees and hunching over the swell of her belly. Somewhere... it felt really far away, she could hear Raven call her name, hear some regretful lamentation of the pretty doctor as she brought her own gun up to bear (ha) with the intent to put two in the man's trunk like legs. Raven didn't want to kill Cooper but she had no qualms about popping him a couple times if it meant getting to her friend.

Behind them, Henry had been successful in drawing much of the attention from Raven. Being the more overt threat, many of the remaining creatures broke towards him. More than the rounds he had remaining to bring them down. The armored man clicked empty before being knocked from his feet by the rush of two particularly large brutes who blindsided him and within seconds he was sucked under a tide of rotting scale and mangy fur.

The sudden change in momentum seemed to be enough to make Raven hesitate, drawing her attention long enough for the large beast of a man to react. The upended table was snatched up in one taloned and flung at her center of mass with tremendous force, connecting cleanly and sending her right back to her unfortunate male companion.

It once again left Claire at the mercy of the man who wore Cooper's face and his crooked smile. "This is where it ends."

[Cooper Gallows]

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems - not people; to focus your energies on answers - not excuses.

-William Arthur Ward




It was a long, dark tunnel, all ancient stone smoothed over with moisture and lichen. Pretty sure I saw it in two different horror movies and at least a dozen reoccurring nightmares.

I was too pissed off to appreciate the spook factor.

Nearly every step I took involved a wet slap on the stone as I trudged my way through small, stagnant pools of water built up from the random bits of condensation and leaking ground water. In some random recess of my mind, I registered the inconsistencies of what I felt and smelled during my angry trek: sometimes it was cold and wet in the seemingly never ending tunnel, other times warm and filled with the smell of fresh, fertile earth. A sane man, erm, spirit (or whatever, okay!) would have been concerned about what verdict he was walking into, about what what decision had been made on the way he lived his life.

Instead, I was working my way through some other heavy *** on my mind.

I’m a smart guy. I got one four year degree while in the Army, the other not long after I got out. But puzzles had never been my forte. I had never been a fan of mysteries. The long walk gave me time, my anger allowed me to focus on the problem. Really, the mystery was solved, but the Devil was in figuring out the details. I needed those. I needed to understand ‘how’ I got to this point, now that I knew the ‘who’ or more importantly the ‘what’. The pieces were there. They were coming together slowly. As each one slowly fell into place, the angrier I became.

I knew that voice, the one that lingered like a bad echo over the mirror of my own. It was that voice, that presence, that had nearly torn my mind to pieces years ago. I had banished him at the cost of Lola’s life… and my soul.

Or had I?

I’ve worn this meatsuit across dozens of realities, were his words. Then something-something-diabolical. Now that is despair.

That sadistic ***.

I could only wonder idly beneath the growing layers of fury how many times he had done this, how many of my lives he had ruined to arrive here, all for what was happening now. These moments. What he was about to do. It all made sense. Leaning on the Shadow Lords. Yanking the rug out from under me where guardianship of the caern was concerned. They never would have taken me back then, not in a direct confrontation. Too many of the other Fera were in my corner back then. They had to… god damnit! Everything! The caern. My ranch. Most of my other holdings. That sonuvabitch slow played me all the way to this. He took everything from me. No, not everything. He hadn’t taken everything yet.

There were still two things left to take.

Not only no, but *** no.

It felt like the walk lasted an eternity. I had started it with purpose, like an angry powerwalk that I’m glad no one (except maybe Jake, but Bro Code forbids him from telling) every really saw, that propelled me down that darkened tunnel like some superpowered hipster health nut on a rampage. The longer it lasted, the easier it was to tether the final threads together, understandings that continued to fuel my anger when they created fireworks in my mind. It helped that I had some place to focus it all. The focus gave birth to ideas. I was going to need those little nuggets of creativity sooner rather than later. The deeper I went, the more the zeal in my step faltered, but not my anger. I had slowed to a lumbering walk, but the anger was still a growing fire in the furnace of my belly, spreading the Rage throughout my body at a commensurate rate.

“What are you going to do?” I was focused. Hyper focused, really. So when the words came from behind my left shoulder so suddenly, I jumped. Hell, if I wasn’t dead, I probably would have *** myself. Instead, I unleashed some of that pent up Rage and took a large chunk of stone out of the wall with my fist.

Right next to Jake’s head.

“Asshole!” I hissed at him in a low voice. Apparently my subconscious thought I was the one sneaking up on someone. It took me a few moments to quit seething and, really, glaring. The Suit, to his credit, just stared me down as impassively as he ever did but I could tell he was still curious. And maybe a little concerned. “Don’t you worry ‘bout what m’ gonna do. I’ve got a bone t’ pick with the Powers. Then with that sumbitch who did this too me. You… just do what y’ do. M’ thinkin’ once the way is lit, you’ll know what t’ do. ‘Til then, do me a favor and just stay out’a muh way.”

To his credit, Jake just nodded.

I had gotten some time to work up another good head of steam by the time I spotted the door. The tunnel widened and then dipped lower, another descent closer to the earth’s proverbial heart. The interlude with Ives seemed to have shortened that eternity and brought me up just shy of the only stop I planned on making before my final destination. The doors were large stone half-circles, vined over and caked with the dust of ages, as if they hadn’t been touched in ten forevers. There was a symbol beneath all of it, carved into the stone surface by very large claws. It was a symbol I was all too familiar with, intimately so. That nostalgia, that ages old respect, it didn’t stop me from planting a Rage-fueled boot heel to that door. The stone shattered like dried clay, blown inward in a shower of rubble.

Fists clenched, I stepped inside.





[To be continued…]

[Cooper Gallows]

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

-Calvin Coolidge




I guess I don’t know what I was really expecting to walk into. I mean, in the action movies, the hero makes the door explode inwards and there’s like bodies everywhere, the injured and the dead flung down from wherever they were knocked. Then I would walk in and either say something clever and cliched before opening a can of whoop-ass. Or maybe I’d just look all stern and open up with a machine gun until no one was left. Or maybe it would have been something out of popular American kitsch art, with bears of varying sizes and breeds playing poker around a card table. Realistically, I didn’t see Mangi with a little clear visor hat and a cigar…

I definitely wasn’t expecting to be greeted by familiar faces.

But there they were. I know these people. Or, well, I knew the faces. It was a little surreal, if not more than a little disconcerting. For a moment, it threatened to derail my anger. My righteous indignation. There were three of them, seemingly unphased by my destructively grand entrance, sitting in the loose approximation of a half-circle on the floor. They were facing me. A modest fire, little more than burned down kindling, flickered at the center of their little conclave. They all wore varying expressions: curious, stern, amused. I just, man, I couldn’t get past the faces.

This was just eerie.

You’re late, the on the left said to me with the voice of an annoyed, petulant child, the amused look vanishing from her face as she turned her attention back down to the GameBoy (or whatever the hell they’re called these days) in her slim little lands. Jules. Jules Malirecci. My pseudo-goddaughter. I hadn’t seen her in forever, not since she had elected to go live with Shi in Heathfield. She would be an adult by now but here, now, she still looked like the awkward preteen girl who I used to toss overhead into the water at Eric’s old pool parties. God, that was a lifetime ago.

Submit, said the one on the right. It’s over. He looked… holy ***, okay, picture this: Mesteno. Yeah, that Mesteno. All wiry and suave with his red hair (it was matted and streaked with lots of gray and white) and Latin-speaking coolness. Now, age him sixty(ish) years and give him a fu manchu mustache. Maybe a little post-pubescent sprinkle of whiskers on the chin too. Hollow dead eyes that show you the doorway to the darkest abyss and a voice that sounds off inside your head like a sledgehammer on granite. It was like an old, wrinkly, grumpy... Deathsteno…

The figure in the middle didn’t say anything. Instead she gave me a knowing smile and inclined her head like the benevolent principal welcoming the rebellious storm from a problem child in her school. Or, more appropriate to the situation I now found myself in, a mother wise beyond her years preparing to chastise her unruly child. I guess it wouldn’t have phased me much had she been wearing any face other than the one that was smiling at me right now. I knew exactly whom I was looking at, a presence that I could feel down to the deepest parts of me being, but it was hard (and I mean that in the punniest not punniest way possible at the same time) coming to grips with her sporting the visage of a woman I had crushed on (and, let’s be honest, lusted after) for years. It was almost enough to stop me dead in my tracks and derail my anger completely.

Almost.

I had a lot of anger built up.

The Child. Mangi. The Mother. I guess I should be honored that they were the ones lined up to Judge me. In retrospect, I am. At the moment? Not so much. I was met with terse words and silence. Not exactly what you need when you’re whipped into a near-frenzy and determined to do something. They probably expected me to stand there stoic and take it like a man or, maybe less likely, beg for mercy or a second chance like some knobby-kneed chump trying desperately to avoid becoming someone’s prison bitch. At least, that’s what my own wild imagination told me in those silent moments between their greeting and when I finally spoke. Someone had to have left this clandestine meeting disappointed.

It wasn’t me.

“Yo’ public transit system sucks,” I growled at the Child before flicking a dismissive look the Death Bear’s way and responding with, “Submittin’ is what got me in half’a this mess in the first place, so you can shut yo’ trap ‘til I want ghostly groomin’ tips or am ready t’ leave. Won’t be long. And the real Mesteno wouldn’t wear a stupid mustache like that. He’s not a kung-fu porn star.”

I had turned my attention back to Paiva -- er, the Mother, ready to address her in what I’d like to have thought would be a more respectful, if not reverent, tone but I opened my mouth in time with the Child’s laughter, only to bite my tongue when an invisible punch from Mangi sent me flying. I was dimly aware of having hit a wall. Hard. I was only slightly more cognizant of the fact that Mangi-steno (Sorry, I couldn’t resist) had stood up at some point, his outstretched arm revealing the fact that maybe that fist hadn’t been so invisible after all.

Holy *** that hurt. Like, not my body. My god damned soul hurt.

He was stock still and staring at me with his dead eyes and frozen scowl. No heaving breath, he didn’t breathe, but I could still tell that he was seething with anger. Good.

Eff that guy.

With as much dignity as I could muster, I climbed back to my feet, staring him down boldly. I squared my stance, my shoulders. I did that cool thing where you tilt your head to one side until your neck cracks ominously. My bearded chin lifted in open defiance, practically daring him to take another shot. You wanna say it was more balls than brains in that moment, go ahead. I hadn’t expected the shot, sure, but I knew what I was about. Trust me. “Time out,” I told him before turning my attention back to the Mother (who was still smiling that matronly smile and ruining over a decade of dirty fantasies).

“There’s still time t’ make this right, ma’am.” Hey, wasn’t sure how I was supposed to address her. How do you address the most powerful avatar of, well, something that is godlike if not a real deal god, capital P for Power and everything. I tempered my anger when I said the words, trying to offer her what she was due without losing sight of where this conversation needed to go. “I’m needed back there.” I didn’t say who or what needed me. I didn’t have time for a long, drawn out argument. The truth was, everyone there needed me. The land. My friends. My family. I thought immediately of Claire and my little Jake, because it doesn’t matter how good of a man people think I am, how good of a man I think I am. I’m still (sorta) human. I’m selfish. They needed me. I needed them. “I will make this right.”

Not can.

Not will try.

Will. Absolute.

Perhaps you aren’t ready. She didn’t sound like Paiva at all. Boner killer. For that, I was thankful. She regarded me with an appraising look. That wasn’t sexy either.

“Who’s ever ready fo’ anything? I’ve got the experience,” I assured her. “I just needed t’ finish puttin’ the pieces together. I know what needs t’ be done. I’ve got the tools t’ do it.”

Cooper Gallows is supposed to die. Her tone may have been benevolent, but those words and they way she said them were most certainly meant to be an absolute. Mangi must have his due.

I didn’t look at the Death Bear. Not yet.

“That won’t be an issue.” Did she see the determination in my stare? “There’s a lot’a debts t’ settle t’night. That one’ll still be settled. Y’ got muh word on that. And the Death Bear ain’t the only one owed its due. The land is owed too. Maybe mo’ so than anyone else. Someone’s gotta see t’ that.”

He has much yet to learn. The Child chimed in again. Her words said one thing, but the tone sounded an awful lot like ‘He was a point, you know’. She went back to playing her little handheld game with a shrug of slender shoulders.

Hey, someone was in my corner! Bonus.

He is mine! At another time, that thunderous voice inside my head might have driven me to me knees. Not this time. When the Death-Bear-In-Mesteno-Skin-Clothing came at me this time, I was ready. I hadn’t expected that first shot (though I should have). This one, I had been waiting for it since I first blew the door in on them like the big bad wolf in a straw village (nobody tell Lisa I compared myself to a wolf, please). I was full to brimming with Rage and drawing more power (Capital P, bitches) in by the moment, since I had started my walk, really. I knew how, now. When he swung at me again, I saw it coming. My left shoulder dipped and I twisted at the hips, the devastating fist sailing right by. I pivoted around his other side and drove both palms into his exposed back, letting enough Rage trickle through to make him stumble. It was just a little thing but in that moment it made him look like something other than the avatar of Death.

It made him seem almost mortal.

Told you I knew what I was about this time.

Now, I’m a big guy. I’ve been strong and tough, sure. I’ve never been the speedy time. Quick enough but not the most agile or graceful. But when he roared in frustration loud enough to shake the room around us and came at me again, I continued to sidestep each blow and counter with shoves; with my hands, a knee, my shoulders. Each time, I slipped past his reach or his guard, sending him stumbling off in some other direction. The one time he got close? That scary bastard almost got a hand on me, his hooked fingers nearly getting me along the ribs when he tried to get under me. For half a moment he got those nails into my shirt, got a grip on it. Sensing my impending predicament, he came around with the other, snarling his triumph. I met the incoming hand with a slide of my right arm along his arm, the silver-blue living ink on my flesh flashing brilliantly (think of it like getting a halogen light in the eyes while it’s pitch dark), and caught the back of his own shirt.

(Note: For the record, the real Mesteno dresses much better than this guy.)

I’ve got a pretty solid boxing and wrestling background. Nothing fancy. So, what did I do next?

I uchi mata’d that godlike ****.

You see, when you’re married to a badass dueling chick, you pick up some useful ***. Thanks, Slugger.

I dropped a hard knee to the center of his chest and the brought it up sharply into his chin before disengaging. I propelled myself up to might feet fast, creating some distance quickly. I had no illusion about that move hurting him. It wasn’t meant to. I wanted him embarrassed. Angry. Not thinking clearly. My Rage was focused, a fine honed blade in my mind, heart, and soul that I applied to every move. Rubble shook free from the ceiling with his anger when he rose and, from the corner of my eye, I could see the Child make an annoyed face when a small chunk of it struck her videogame. Seemed like she had little interest in the scrap, but that little secret smile on her mouth, full of mischief when I looked, might have said differently. I couldn’t really spare the time to consider it, because Mangi charged again, growing larger, hairier, and more corpse-like by the moment.

There. That’s what I had been waiting for.

When he reached me this time, I didn’t move. He threw a wild swing of massive left fist. This time, I caught it. Stopped it cold without budging. Raw power exploded outward and upward with the meeting of hands, my fingers closing around his fist. Red-gold fire licked up off of my skin, the living ink rolling up over the Death Bear’s hand and attacking his essence. His empty eyes went wide at that, surprised. For one iota of heartbeat (if either of us had one then), I sensed his fear.

You cheat, he rasped at me.

“No such thing as a fair fight,” I told him with a mirthless smile.

I took all of that Rage (I wouldn’t be short on it any time soon) and all of that borrowed power (is it really borrowed when it was always yours, by right), and a threw one hell of a nasty uppercut.

At his dick.

It’s okay. You can laugh. Dick punches are funny, regardless of species.

Mangi folded up like a cheap lawnchair. I just didn’t have time to enjoy the moment. Instead I dropped to a knee next to him, deflated as he was, and spoke quietly to him. “This doesn’t change anything. Cooper Gallows dies t’night. You’ll get yo’s. Just not quite yet. I’ll make this right.”

The Child’s giggling brought my attention back around to the other two, almost forgotten in my triumph. She had her dainty little hands covering her mouth as she did, but I could see the Little Dipper’s lights twinkling in her eyes. I found a similar light in the Mother’s eyes, only bigger. Her expression, however, was inscrutable for the first time since I had stepped into this situation. For moments I couldn’t try to count if I wanted to, she appraised me between glances down to the fallen Mangi. Finally, as I was about to break the silence again, she spoke.

You have something to do. It would seem someone is already here who can show you the way.

She was right. I did. The reminder only rekindled the Rage that still lingered in my veins but it didn’t stop the momentary, fierce grin I gave her. I started to dart past her, but then I paused. Imagine her surprise when I stopped long enough to plan a hard, firm kiss on her mouth. Paiva’s mouth. I had been waiting years to do that.

Unlike so many other things I had almost lost that night, that was something I was more than happy to finally let go of. Somewhere above, the love of my life was waiting me. When you tell a woman you’d move heaven and earth for her…

“JAKE! Let’s go! S’ time t’ go put foot t’ ass and save the girl!”

...you do it.




[To be continued…]

[Cooper Gallows]

Rage only works if it is justified. That's the trick with rage. You gotta have a reason to be mad.

-Sam Kinison



This is not how it was supposed to end.

Those were the words. It was a sentiment that was timeless, whispered upon the lips the lips of the dying in a thousand different ways; it was a desperate cry at the gates of Heaven or Hell by the innocent and the guilty both. The spat those words at the Death, screamed the at God(s).

This isn't fair.

Take it back.

Give me another chance.

In nearly every circumstance, those pleas, those demands, they fell upon deaf ears. Judgements were made and those souls were shepherded onward to partake of the rewards and punishments of the hereafter. Who could change the mind of a god? Who could challenge Death in its own place of Power? Some wills were too strong to be denied. Some souls would Rage against fate and carve another path.

He did.

In the land of the living, a battle waged, a struggle for the fate of a sacred place. Good people (Mesteno was an honorary good person, Charlie Nine... not so much) bled for that, bled for the pair who had called them there to fight. The spilled blood soaked into the earth, fuel for the Cycle of Life and Death, immutable in nearly all things. Life. Death. It was that very power, what good energy was left in this place of Power, that Cooper Gallows drew into himself. That energy created matter and that matter took form, coalescing from the ground and growing in size, as the spirit of the gurahl came to inhabit it, forming his living body anew. Thick, trunk-like arms that had long been sleeved in a smoky black ink had those dark hues fall away, bits of color falling away in ashy chips to reveal the burning bright light of the living ink beneath. The dense musculature of his left arm burned a fiery red-gold, the shifting ink taking on the resemblance of dancing fire; the right was silvery blue lightning, like a storm raging across his skin. A silent, terrible anger rolled off of the cowboy's form in palpable waves, his shoulders bowed up and ready to unleash a Rage unlike none who knew him had ever seen. A Rage he had suppressed a long time ago.

This isn't how my story ends, he had told them, the three faces of Bear. I'll show you.

It was a whole man that stepped across the threshold and into the darkness. A whole soul.

It's not supposed to end like this…

Deep within the putrescence of the caern's dark belly, the sputtering rage of a life long warrior was fast dying out. Never in a thousand lifetimes did Claire Gallows ever think that she would die on her knees. She heard the heavy thud of plastic when it crashed into her friend and the heavier thump that came when the woman finally hit the ground some distance away. Boy had a swing on him... maybe he should've been the one they called Slugger. Strangely the thought roused a pained chuff of a giggle, contrary to everything about the moment's mood. This wasn't funny, this wasn't funny at all.

Claire was a survivor by right. The Purge, the Fall of Cocoon, Etro's judgment and her subsequent atonement, she had survived each and every one. The War of Lucis, the end of Nova Chrysalia (and by proxy the death of Bhunivelze), and even Noct's death... somehow she persevered. But the shadows were long, drenching her in a heavy shroud as the cowboy imposter loomed over her. She could have stood, maybe for a second or two before her leg gave out on her, but she didn't try. Panting through the pain of another tight contraction, this one only five minutes after the previous, she knelt on the stone floor with her shoulders hunched and her arms the last bastion of protection wrapped around her belly.

"You won, you killed him... if he's dead you don't have to do this..." She said, her voice rough. Whether it was from emotion or the manhandling her throat had taken through the evening, it was hard to say. "Just... please."

"Think about it," the creature wearing Cooper's skin told her. "You are goin' t' die horribly. But not befo' I rip your child from yo' womb and give him to the darkness. Think about that, Claire. Think about that and despair."

With no reason now to have concern over her companions, he moved closer to her again, looming over her prone form and reaching taloned hands towards her belly...

__________________________________________________ __


They tried to stop him, the denizens of the darkness did. The creatures of the Wyrm. They threw themselves at him bodily, trying to rake and bite and dismember with all of their howling fury. Cooper caught the first of their number mid-leap, a big hand curling around his throat and using the momentum to slam him against the opposite wall with a bone-jarring force. The stone of the wall instantly responded to his presence, the earth shifting to his will and creeping outwards in broken chunks. It stretched and rolled and wrapped it around the furry fallen werewolf's head and when the cowboy finally let go, it was to the sight of the creature's thrashing body as it suffocated to death.

As he turned to meet its brothers, the earth continued to respond to him, with the very stone continuing to shift its shape to stop attackers, thorned vines erupting from the cracks. When the caern itself didn't rise to clear him a path, Cooper did so himself, the ink responding to his will and rending flesh asunder wherever he swung or grabbed. The world around him had come alive in support of his Rage, every step he took bringing him closer to his destination.

The last to confront him was a monstrous beast, a hulking champion sheathed in matted black fur and hard insectoid chitin. When it bellow a challenge, the angry gurahl returned the sentiment with a force that threatened to strip patchy flesh from its body. The two titans met with a thunderous clash, and Cooper without shapeshifting, the collision ending abruptly when the man's immolated hands but through the monster's bulky torso like a piece of superheated steel through a block of butter.

It was that very creature's head that preceded him into the torchlit cavern, rolling to a stop at the feet of the man who wore his face.

"Been there, done that, got the shirt." She spat the words with a groan. Try as she might to focus her attention on breathing through the pain, it was becoming increasingly difficult. Each breath taken, each tiny shift of her body, it all hurt. Still she clenched her teeth and looked up at the hulking figure standing over her. "You don't know who the *** you're dealing with, do you?"

Raven and Henry were down, the numbers too great to contend with. They were likely the only ones who knew she was here too. Claire heaved a breath and set her hands to her knees before pressing upwards in a bid to get to her feet. If she was going down, if this was truly her last stand, then she couldn't go down without a fight. Every muscle in her leg screamed in protest but it was nothing compared to the angry roar that came from beyond the cavernous chamber and in spite of her focus, her gaze was torn away to the mouth of the tunnel, reeling back to the imposter only with the bloody tumble of the severed head of something particularly ugly. Claire's cheeks puffed up before she blew the held air out with a whoosh.

This was either good or really, really bad.

Then again... how much worse could it get?

Cooper's old black Stetson sat near the entrance of the cavern, where it had tumbled to a stop at the edge of the shadows after Claire had leveled her vicious kick to the imposter's chin. A large, bloody hand reached out from the shadows to take it up and Cooper, the real Cooper, was placing it atop his head with a vicious scowl when he stepped out into the flickering torchlight. His bearded chin lifted slowly, until his harsh gaze had finally lifted from the prone Claire to meet that of the man wearing his face. The gurahl's eyes burned with a horrible, supernatural Rage, and invisible but tangible power rolled off of him.

"He's 'bout to," he answered the question for his wife, his mirror image's eyes going wide with surprise. "This time there's gonna be no banishment. No comin' back. Death's ridin' in my posse t'night."

As if on cue, the air behind him grew cold, as whatever survivors of the impostor's that lingered in the hall screamed. One by one those screams cut off abruptly, until an unseen presence lingered over one shoulder.

Cooper.

Her Cooper.

If Claire had a tangible heart, it may have very well stopped right then and there. He was alive, he was whole, and he was livid. It was kind of sexy, actually, the palpable rage that radiated from him. Of course now was neither the time nor the place to think about things like that, but still. Her husband was damn fine. Before she could make another smartassed comment, another contraction squeezed a pained sound through her clenched teeth and rather than finish getting up, she sank back down. Across the cavern, Raven stirred with a stifled groan, drawing a glance from Claire before she looked back up at the faux-cowboy and those razor sharp talons.

"Cooper, baby's not doin' so great..." she said, as calmly as she could manage, one hand over her stomach. See Also: Help me. Please. Between Claire's plea, Fake Cooper's surprise, and the rolling wave of death in the hall, it gave Raven a few moments to reorient herself before she made a second bid to get to Claire, this time with a low to the ground slink that was half army crawl, half normal crawl, slow going to avoid drawing attention.

"Raven," the cowboy called to the woman without even looking at her. "M' wife, please." One of the fallen werewolves reached for the crawling woman but was stopped when an armored hand shot out of the dogpile (no pun intended) and caught it by the ankle, dragging it away from her.

Cooper himself advanced on the man, the thing that might have once been him but now just wore his visage. Red-gold fire licked at his left arm without burning him, silver-blue lightning dancing along the right. The living ink moved without any prompting, vibrant and eager.

"I'll kill you ag--Hrk!" The creature, having gotten over its surprise, leveled a threat as it began to shapeshift was was stopped short when the cowboy reached it. A blazing hand shot out and slammed an open palm into its widening maw with enough force to drive it off its feet. Big fingers clamped over its face as it was driven hard into the ground, a knee dropping hard on the stomach to pin it in the center of the cavern. It fought back, lashing out with fist and talon, but every time it was bested with an enraged roar from the gurahl that shook the cavern and was slammed back down into place hard enough to crack the stone and bone, to shake the earth.

"No mo' reality hoppin'." Cooper flexed his fingers until his knuckles cracked. "No mo' takin'. No mo' threats." Raw powered poured out of him, washing over the impostor and into the earth beneath its body. "You've taken enough from me and from muh Little Girl, Cooper and Jessica's little girl. Never again. Y' hear me? Never. Again." He hadn't noticed Belle's arrival, so intent was he on the thing in front of him. The young woman lingered at the cavern's entrance, battle weary and leaning against the stone. She wore more of the enemy's blood than her own, having beaten her way to them ahead of so many others. A single tear rolled down her cheek, but there was a look of fierce determination on her face, resolute defiance that made her a mirror image to her mother.

The creature's jaw cracked in Cooper's grip, more power pouring through it, until it actually whimpered. What remained of the enemy threw themselves at him in a fanatical desperation; some were greeted with the back of his fist, raw power exploding through where his knuckles struck and spraying their living matter across the walls with an accompanying snarl.

Suddenly, more earthen vines were bursting through the cracks in the stone, a vibrant spring green and laced with Power. Then wrapped around the throats and torsos of the fell beasts and hauled them back towards the walls. Where they touched, flesh and bone crumbled, until they were little more than food for the earth, quickly consumed and gone. It left the six of them there alone: Raven and Henry, Belle, Claire, Cooper, and... it. Cooper himself squeezed all the harder, lifting the thing up with another growl and slamming it into the earth again.

"No mo' despair," he snarled the words at it. "Cooper dies. You die with him, Gree. He's free, you go t' Hell. Now the land gets its heart back. The land gets its due."

More vines rose from the cracks in the floor and began to wind themselves around the prone, whimpering body. It rambled and raved, threatened and begged, the words lost into the smothering pressure of the cowboy's massive hand. Cooper hadn't changed his form, but was exercising strength beyond measure as the shapeshifted beast was held down and slowly consumed by the hungry vines. Little by little, the beast shrunk and shriveled, diminished by its verdant prison, its execution chamber. A thick black smoke leaned through the minute breaks in the vegetation attempting to escape. It unleashed an eerie wail when it was met by an unseen force and eventually dissipated into nothingness.

While Cooper dealt with... well, Cooper, Raven's hands pushed off of the slick stone floor with a quickness. The woman shot to her feet and dashed unimpeded (thanks Henry!) to her friend. Looping an arm around her, she pulled the pink haired woman to a foot and half pulled her away from the power emanating from the brawl. They dropped again before they made it ten feet as Claire let out a pained groan and gave in to the overwhelming pain. At the very least, Raven made it a controlled fall, sinking with her even as Claire hunched forward with a vehement shake of her head. Their quiet interchange was lost to the chaos but there was no lacking amount of begging and pleading.

Not now.

Not here.

You gotta push.

Nonononono.

This baby needs you to push, Claire.

Please.

Claire didn't want to push, she didn't want to bring a baby into the world in this place. Rather she wanted to see what Cooper was doing and if he was truly okay. She needed him to be okay, desperately. The power that reverberated through the cavern made her head hurt and her chest ache and all she wanted was to get out of there. But there wasn't time for that, Raven was right. Ever since the springs had been cut off as a source of Life and Power, she could feel the change in the baby. Claire wasn't meant to bring new life into the world by way of her own body.

In fact, her own body was hardly more than a vessel for a greater essence. Just as it had been with the twins, without assistance (that time from the Tower of Earth, this time from the springs), she surely wouldn't have made it through either pregnancy. If this little miracle of a baby boy was going to make it, she had to do everything she could to help. Claire ticked a little nod to the other woman who let out a sigh of palpable relief that doubled with the realization that she didn't feel as if her own power was being strangled like it was.

"Okay," Raven said with a reassuring smile. "Just like last time. Focus on me and I'll get you through. I promise it."

Both of Cooper's massive hands had pushed into the stone, funneling raw, Wyld energy into the earth. His face was growing paler, the dense muscle in his body convulsing with the effort. His dark gaze ticked upwards, away from what he was doing, to Raven and his wife. "Bring 'er here, Rave. S' gonna be aw'right..."

"Hear that? It's going to be alright." Raven got an arm around the laboring woman, curling her fingers into the graphene fabric of her shirt until she had a solid grip. With one more quietly murmured assurance, she hefted Claire to her feet and ducked beneath an arm to support her on her injured side. "It's not far, you can do this."

Claire wanted to run to him, wanted to sprint across the scant distance until she could fall into his arms. But... the anxiety rose, her fingers digging into Raven's shoulder. They were caught midway until Raven urged her forward again, bringing her close to the cowboy (the real one). A wobble of her bottom lip spoke to his wife's hesitation as she neared. "Is it you? Tell me it's really you..."

"Shh, Slugger. S' me. I got you, baby. Raven's got you. Jake's gonna be aw'right. I promise." The cowboy leaned to one side, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. There was power there, with a capital P. In that moment, Cooper say everything. Claire. Raven. Henry. Belle. Everything within the caern and deeper, farther without. On the uneven landscape of the battlefield, he could tell whom had lived and whom had died, and in that there was a moment of joy that clashed with the lamentation. "Just stay with me."

Another low, rumbling growl broke past his lips. Power leaked from the stone in vibrant tendrils, the stuff of life rising up from within the earth. He nodded a grateful affirmation when it seeped into Claire, grinned a small, private grin when it seeped into Raven, and then grunted painfully when it began to expand outwards.

Slugger. If he never called her anything ever again, Claire would be perfectly content. The tears that she had refused to give the thing wearing her husband's face finally fell, an ugly spill of restrained emotion that poured down her dirty cheeks as she nodded. The power that filled the emptiness in her being was a secondary relief to his presence, a soothing balm that said she didn't have to hold on anymore. Alone it was an exercise in trying to hold water in her splayed fingers. Now? Now she could do this. She looked up at Raven, who had a furrowed look of confusion etched across her expression. The healer shook it off a moment later and turned a serene smile down to her friend.

"See? I told you. Now breathe... and push."

"You do yo' work, Slugger. Lemme do mine. S' make a miracle."

And well before sunrise, they had.