Kingdom come, their will was done – closed

[pacificator]

Who: Wynonna Earp & others
What: Endgame catchall
When: April (backtagged)/May
Where: Milton/Blackwood

Content Warnings: idk man it's endgame! warnings for some dark shit, probably

Comments

and every single one of us still left in want of mercy – Ned

[pacificator]

[ ...after this, I will give you the choice you want.

Bullshit. They've been dragged from their worlds, from their homes, and yeah, even from their deaths, to this place because one thing Enola didn't think they should get was a choice. Not the one that actually mattered.

This place is freaky as shit, the trees stretched and bare, branches rattling in a chill breeze (or in the poisonous huff of the Darkwalker's breath, look at it, it's real–), like the badlands on steroids. Rule number one: never get off the bus. But what if you're dragged, and the only choice you actually get is which pile of shit you want to step into?

No one steps into either, just yet. Everyone looks sick and weird in the green glow of the Darkwalker's presence, half dead already, and fuck if she isn't so goddamned tired of being a chosen one. She's so tired of being afraid, of being exhausted and hungry, of being cold. She badly wants to point out that if the Darkwalker wants them out of the way so badly, it can just send them to Puerto Vallarta. This choice is bullshit, and she doesn't give a damn about this world but at least she doesn't need to decide which cliff to throw herself from alone.

Her hand lifts, finds the sleeve of Edward's coat right next to her (he's always right next to her, always within reach, he said he'd stay and he did–) and her fingers pinch the fabric briefly before letting go so she can grip his arm firmly and tug him with her as she steps back, out of close earshot to the others. ]

Okay, so–

[ Her voice is low, a harsh whisper, but she dips her head and speaks only to him. Edward, always the first person she wants to talk to when they're up against some impossible odds. The solid foundation to her wild, reckless motion. She pulls him aside and feels like she's stepping out of a storm-lashed sea onto a steady shore. ]

This is bullshit, right?

[fidior]

[ Bullshit is— ....well. Actually not a bad descriptor for what's just been revealed, what's just been asked of them, what precipice they've all just been left standing on. ]

It's certainly......... unfavourable.

[ The word he manages to choose might be a tad less colourful, but his brows are knit tight and severe and so stressed it looks painful. One can practically feel the bellyache emanating from him as he stands there, head dipped towards Wynonna's, drawn into the orbit she creates for them without a second thought or hesitation.

Everything feels— wrong. It's felt like that for a long time, to be fair, and his own wrongness is an ever-present thing now: tempered in some ways by Enola's return, the madness of his own mind having softened back into some kind of focus, but he's still wrong, and being so near the Darkwalker as some true beast makes him feel like he's been peeled open and seen too, too much. He's tense, frightful, restless, he keeps flinching, and he's so tired, but then, they're all so tired.

....Everything's felt wrong for so long. But this has swept out the last lingering corner of the rug from beneath all of their feet, thrown them down some abyss, and shock renders him numb. Enola brought them here, with intention. Enola's been.... shaping them all, for all of these years. Enola's asking for blood, for sacrifice, for strength. The Darkwalker's asking for release.

And they're to choose.

Edward looks up at Wynonna, gaze intense through its horror and strangeness, searching. He hears the puff of heavy breathing that's closer than it's ever been (except for when it's inside of him, demanding more and more) and shudders as something icy rolls down his spine. ]

We can't allow it to be released. [ Is the knee-jerk reaction he's able to voice, but Edward pauses in the next breath, looking to her. ] ...Right?

[pacificator]

[ Her glance sweeps up, pale eyes reflecting the snow and shadow all around them, glimmers of venomous green glinting in her irises. She lowers her free hand to the familiar ivory grip of Peacemaker, slung there at her hip. Her frown is almost petulant as she looks at the three-headed thing that seeks only destruction.

She'd hand it out in a heartbeat if she could. But Peacemaker has been cold and dead in her hand since the moment she first arrived in — since the moment she was first pulled to — this godforsaken frozen hellhole. It won't be any help here, even if some small petty part of her thinks it would be worth trying just for the satisfaction of shooting the damn demon in the face. Es. Faces.

But she doesn't answer for a long moment, her mind a staticky whirl of thoughts. This world has brought them nothing but grief and pain, why not let it fall apart? And if they can be sent home...

Not Edward, though. If he's sent back, he dies. Her jaw works, muscles stubbornly tight as she slides her glance from the Darkwalker to Edward's face. He looks miserable, expression pinched in on itself, indecision scrawled over his features. Her hand grips his arm a little more tightly. ]

I'm not all that excited about its 'everything dies' agenda, yeah.

But I'm so fucking tired of us having to pour out our blood to fix some other world's problems.

[fidior]

[ There's a hitch of breath as Edward inhales, as he thinks, forces himself to think through the sludge of his own mind, the thick heavy muddled confusion as of late, with pieces of aching clarity piercing through like beams of light (he put a bullet in the rotting burning forehead of something that was once Crozier, how long ago did that happen—? he killed an Interloper, sucked him dry). Everything's been too much for a long time now, but this— this feels like he's been turned inside out. It's a slowburn horror, something felt but not quite sending him reeling sideways yet. But it's there in him, hammering up under his ribcage, a slow drum that might get too fast as the seconds tick by, might swallow him up whole.

Wynonna squeezes his arm more tightly and it snuffs out the swell of panicked upset, or at least pushes it back down to a place that's more manageable, and he turns even more towards her, leans even more into her, the side of his head brushing hers. ]

It says it can send us back. Return us to where we came. You can go home.

[ All of his fears about the demonic entity being unleashed butt heads against the concept of what it promises — or no, not promises, there's nothing that keeps the monster's word true.

But— mind spinning, thoughts tumbling, voicing it all to try and make sense— ]

You.... can go home, can you not?

[ His eyes look in, almost as though trying to draw something out from the crystal-flash of storm clouds looking back at him. The question is one that visibly wounds him, because he doesn't know for sure. For all that he's gleaned of Wynonna's world, he doesn't know this much. She'd said she was cursed once; what does that mean? Is her own end just as close by as his? Just as looming, some fated horror she can't escape? Will she die just as soon as she returns to her world? Is it possible at all to do so? He remembers her screaming up at the sky once, challenging it to send her back right then and there. Maybe there's more waiting for her; maybe she can continue onwards.

It's the unspoken part to that question: Or are you going to die there? ]

[pacificator]

[ She feels the shift of air at her cheek as he breathes it, the brush of his hair against her temple. Her eyes flutter almost closed as she sways toward him, what feels like a thousand sense-memories of his face tucked against hers flitting through her mind. He's lost in a memory and fire is licking at the creaking wood of the house around them; he's bleeding out in the snow and her skin feels like it'll crack from the cold; she's waking up in a borrowed bed to find him right next to her; they're curled together in the little flat above the post office and she's laughing because his hair is tickling her nose...

Her throat works with a swallow, and she forces her eyes open, her hand still clutched tight around his arm. You can go home.

An offer growled in an echoing, eldritch voice. Probably a lie. Maybe a lie. And even knowing that, some part of her is leaping toward it, desperate. The part that wakes up in a cold sweat from a dream of Waverly's face, only to find she's forgotten some small detail. The part that remembers Doc's lazy smile, Dolls' intense stare. She has a home, a place she belongs. She's tied to Purgatory by something stronger than any magic or demon here.

And more than that — she misses it. She misses warmth, and seasons that are more than just a slight lessening of the ever-present cold. She wants to step outside and find herself on her own porch at the homestead, her coffee misting in the early morning air as she looks out over the prairie, gleaming gold with sunrise. She misses Chinese food. She misses beaches. ]

I can go home.

[ It's reluctant, almost petulant. She purses her lips, aggrieved, and flashes a warning look up through her lashes at him. ]

But you can't.

[ If Edward goes back, he's dead. There's no way she can stop it, no way she can help him; she can't travel back in time and force her way up to whatever desolate frozen island he'd died on. Even if there were a way, she wouldn't have the first idea where to find him. ]

This thing wants to put things right, send us all back where we belong? Fine for me. Purgatory sucks but at least it's not gonna kill me. Right away, anyway.

[ Can't count out all the revs slavering for her head. ]

But it dumps you back into the Arctic to starve and freeze and die? No. No way.

[fidior]

[ 'I can go home.' There's a sweep of relief to hear it, even if he knows it's no perfect guarantee of safety; Wynonna's world, what he's learned of it, sounds about as dangerous as he could imagine (ironically, much more so in ways he can't imagine). But there's a particular truth in those words: she can go home which means she's alive. She can go home and have life. She isn't going home to certain death.

It's such a relief he could cry. He doesn't, too tired and dried-out, all of them exhausted and sick and healing but only so they can be worn right back down again. He's still hungry for what he can't live without anymore, up under everything else. But his eyes do gleam with a fresh coat of wet, and he nods as he looks at her, arm twisting position so his hand's facing up, so it can lock right back onto Wynonna, squeezing firm. ]

I am a ruined man. Back in my world or in this one.

[ Stripping emotion out of it, though his voice shakes, that truth is clear. Back home he knows he's dies slow and cold, the way all of his remaining men will. And here... here, he's been reshaped by this world, by Enola and the Darkwalker alike, by both of them combined. Their handiwork of him has resulted in a monster, a thing dangerous in whichever form he occupies, as man or as wolf. There is no escape from it.

Edward's other hand moves up to grasp the front of her coat, fingers curling so tightly into the material that it pulls her a little closer to him, the gesture one whose meaning changes wholly on a situation. A snarl of aggression, a lover's passionate hold.

Right now it's just— holding onto her. Just holding on, not oblivious to the world around them, some stagnant in-between space waiting for whichever door to open, but not seeing it at all for this moment. He tips his head again, forehead practically to hers. ]

You mustn't... consider what outcome will leave me well and whole. It is impossible. I've only grown worse.

But I don't... I don't know what to do. [ He sighs heavily, closes his eyes, breathes in the only thing that does make sense, which is the smell of her, the closeness, the security, the comfort. ] I don't know what to trust to keep the rest of you as safe as possible.

[pacificator]

[ Once, they'd been entangled in a glowing string as red as blood, wrapping around them both until she'd thought there was no way out of the snarl. That thread no longer exists – although sometimes, sometimes, she thinks she sees it pulse into life when she's lying next to him in the dark, legs tangled together and his breath coming slow and even as he sleeps – but they're still twined together: her hand to his arm, his to hers, the fabric of her coat gripped in his fingers and pulling her close. He leans down into her and her breath mingles with his, steam dissipating in the frigid gloom. Despite everything, despite the Arctic and the mutiny and the demonic bear and the Aurora and the Darkwalker, he's still alive. He's alive and he's here with her and she can't stand to think of these being the last few puffs of warm breath he might ever have.

Her own free hand goes to his side; she's barely able to feel his body beneath the mass of the heavy overcoat he wears. But she can feel his ribs expanding, can feel the warmth trapped inside. He's alive, still alive, and if one answer will keep him that way, that's what they should choose, right? ]

The only thing that gets to ruin you is me.

[ She can't make it a joke, it comes out too grim, too possessive for that. He came and he stayed and he gave himself to her, and that makes him hers, and she always has been a selfish person. ]

If Enola brought us here, maybe she can send us back again, too. Maybe... maybe she can send you with me. You, John...

[ Her voice trails off. There used to be so many of them here: Tommy and Crozier and Fitzjames and Goodsir, and now there are only a handful left. Wynonna shakes her head, her forehead rolling against his, and pushes forward. ]

And even if she doesn't, we can handle it. We can handle this place, and one day I'll find a way home, and I'll drag you with me, because I am not going anywhere without you.

[ Her hand tightens on him, like she wants to shake him, like he hasn't been listening to reason. ]

I won't leave you behind.

it's essay o'clock again...

[fidior]

[ There's so much to this that's— that feels impossible. No good choice, no right one (and how many times has he stood on the edge of such a cliff, been faced with such a crossroads, knowing that no matter what act he takes, it can never be the right one, even if his soul tries again and again to make it?)

But there's no guarantee of safety, of security, (and certainly not of happiness, a concept Edward once thought no longer had any home in him, but these days... beneath all that's gone so wrong as of late, there has been happiness. He did find it. His hands held it, his heart held it. He found a home, found a family. Wynonna, John, Kate, George — the ones who are left, the ones who are still his.)

And he found a type of happiness altogether different from anything he's ever known, right in the grasp of the woman he's wrapped all up in right now. There's a temptation in him to refute what she says, plea against it whether that's as an argue or as a beg, to insist that Wynonna keep going for herself because he's one big lost cause, but—

—but he knows her better than that.

'I won't leave you behind.'

The words aren't a surprise. He knew she'd say them, even if he didn't know exactly what form they might take. And maybe he deserves, more than everything else he deserves, for the person he loves and trusts to leave him behind. To keep walking, to live — to try to live. And he'd do that for her, let her go if that's what she could do, but she won't and she can't and she's fighting to keep him. And what she's really doing is holding onto some kind of hope, desperate and scant as it is, that there can be hope. Fighting for hope.

Edward's eyes open again to gaze almost hazily back at her, both of them pushing tension up against one another with something that could feel like resistance but isn't. It's the opposite of that; it's the push into each other, the unrelenting grasp against one another, not in opposition but in some kind of harmony that's always only existed for the two of them.

Maybe Enola can send them back again. Maybe she can send them someplace together. She can do a great deal, apparently. She can bend and manipulate. Maybe....

And even if that fails, that maybe, Wynonna finds another. 'one day I'll find a way home, and I'll drag you with me'; it could be an impossible maybe. Maybe they survive this choice and this world keeps crumbling and he keeps dissolving into some horrible thing that has to remind itself of its own humanity, instead. But it's hope, and through everything, despite everything, even now and how he sometimes has to be reminded the way he never used to, (but she's there reminding him again and again, clearing off the dark ashes, the thick fog, reaching out to find him when he loses himself—) Edward's heart holds to hope. He stares and stares at her for a long moment, time frozen. ]

We stay together, [ he finally says, so soft it's almost a whisper, so gentle it almost directly contrasts the way he's squeezing onto her tight enough it'd bruise, if not for the layers of padding between them. Okay. Okay. No pushing her to go on living without him. No staying behind. Together. ]

If we help her with what she asks, then we... There is a chance this world lasts. That we can keep helping the people here. Keep helping one another. [ Now both of his hands move, up to cup her face, gloved palms against skin. The pair she gave him once, now worn and tattered in places but still holding strong. Edward holds onto her like that. There's a chance it doesn't last, either. That it all goes wrong, that the Darkwalker wins this battle and those who didn't bend to its will end up torn apart.

Everything's chances. It is unfavourable, it's bullshit, it's unfair, but— fair has stopped mattering a long time ago. Fair, good, right. There is no right answer, maybe just... the only one. ]

I do trust that she... means all she says, [ he adds breathlessly, even if it's hard to say without a sharp pinch of brow, with the weight of everything that's happened. Enola's... a complex subject, and his mind is a dizzy spiral of shock and horror as to what's just been revealed, but Edward can't fault her. He can't even blame her. (How could he?) He glances up and back for a moment, watching where time seems to stand still, where Enola is with her weeping palm, blood in the snow, before his eyes move back to Wynonna's, earnest. He meant when he said he didn't know what to trust, but... he does trust what Enola says to be honest. ]