Fallen angels
Author: wanderingsmith
Started march 1, 2017
Summary: His leg started to collapse and
Billy felt darkness rising for him.
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: I ain't got no money, and nobody'd
be daft enough to pay me for this. As it is thought,
so let it be said; you make the toys, I play with
'em..
AN: ...I'm sorry?
His leg started to collapse and Billy felt darkness
rising for him.
But when his knee touched plank, panic bubbled up at not
seeing or feeling Goody nearby and he knew he HAD to
somehow catch himself from the drop and get.the.fuck.up.
and find Goody. NOW, Billy!
'That yell is the only thing that got my fingers on that
trigger, the battalion's last two fights.' The memory of
his voice snapped enough energy in Billy that he
remembered Goody had fallen back behind him as they'd
been hit: and then the Rebel yell flowed easily through
him and pulled him up, Gatling long forgotten, and he
yelled himself into a spin to face the break Goody had
fallen through.
His chest locked and cut him off as his last running
step pushed him off the ragged edge and into the
blinding sun.
--
The pain of the rounds blasting through him had shocked
Goody's mind to silence. No thought left but gratitude
that his last sight was Billy, standing at his side. The
agony of hitting something after the blind fall took his
last breath and he knew no more.
But he must have still been alive, because he heard
Billy yell and his eyes somehow opened to find him.
And he would have laughed if he was able. So long he'd
been convinced that winged shape was an owl diving for
him; instead it was his own dark angel!
Billy's body billowed dust as it shook the ground and
rolled into him and he distantly knew agony had to have
filled his mortal body. But Billy's earlier cry seemed
to have revived his hearing and he could hear the
Gatling, now, if as though through water, and without
thinking of the impossibility of movement, he sluggishly
sent his arm around Billy's shoulders, needing to
protect his fallen angel.
--
Sam's steps dragged ever slower as he passed dead and
bleeding townsfolk.
He knew who that crumpled grey shadow in the ash-hazed
dirt ahead was. Had watched the bell tower get drilled
and the shadows atop it disappear, before his horrified
gaze had been pulled to the explosion of the damned
Hell-spawned horror that had nearly destroyed yet
another town.
A step before he would have to crouch down and say
goodbye to the haunted man who'd followed him here, a
ray of light slashed through the ash particles in the
air and on across the ragged shape, and Sam's tired eyes
finally saw that it wasn't only thick Confederate grey
before him.
The angel of death's arm was thrown around his
mysterious man of the orient, whether in last futile
protection or dying affection.
So much blood soaked vest, shirt, coat and pants; even
trickles of iron-red playing specs of sunlight back at
him along Billy's side, as though there was anything
cheerful in this.
But when he made himself crouch down and stiffly reach
to shift Goody's wide collar aside to prove to himself
his friend's heart no longer beat, he froze. And almost
crumbled, himself, at the sight of the sweet *smile*
half covered in smeared ash and flying wisps of dark
hair. Even the blood tracing the lips like some mockery
of kiss-mussed makeup took nothing away from the clear
joy that had been in Goody's last moments.
"What you lost in the fire, you've found in the ashes,
my friend."
When he heard Mrs. Cullen's determined steps come up
behind him, Sam clenched his jaw and reached down to
touch Goody's throat, respectfully working around
Billy's face rather than disturb his rest a moment
earlier than necessary.
And then his breath caught and he dropped carefulness:
that had been air on the back of his hand! He was
silently praying as he quickly shifted his palm to
Goody's lips; he as little wanted to tell Billy his
partner was dead as he himself wanted to bury his
friend- Sam's eyes jerked up to Emma, already crouching
at his side to untangle the men with as much care as she
could, his voice nothing more than a whisper lost in the
crackle of fire nearby, "They're alive."
AN:This
just appeared out of nowhere as I worked.
..but since it was accompanied
with enough clarity of thought to analyze the
functioning of report that had been annoying me more
than a week.. I call it all good.
It wasn't clear about how it
wanted to end, though. (ie, canon or miracle)
However, when I mentioned it to
someone, there was a clear vote for 'They're alive!'
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