impersona | Just have to look me in the eyes and I fall apart (Reply)

I've been fighting forever to get this fic finished, and I think it is close to the best it will be. Still a little rough, probably needs another clean up in the morning. I just had to finish it though, to get some small sense of accomplishment that would lift my mood somewhat tonight.

This is a sequel to She's Going Out, the ~~very merry~~ unbirthday fic Kol did for me back in April. This is a sort of Long December AU, in which Mara ran off to kill stuff and Deon was forced to stay behind, instead of vice-versa. Kol and I imagined two possible endings to the fic she wrote, and this is one of them. Believe it or not, this is the happy ending.

Snow Patrol got me through the last push to finishing this fic. I love this damn song.

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He threw himself out of the car and started into the beach at a full run, as fast as his feet over the shifting sand could take him. The smell coming from the other side of the dunes stunk so bad, but worse than that the reek was the repulsive energy that hit him in waves, threatened to beat him down before he could even get close. The stink, the energy, all of it exactly like that night, the signatures of those goddamn wolfman things that took Lynn apart right in front of them.

For someone to go back and fight the same hoard, alone, was stupid and crazy. Made him crazy too.

Deon climbed over the barrier, fingers twitching, pulse throbbing. He hadn't any weapons to himself - she had taken good care of that - but he could make do with his bare hands if he was forced to. It would beat the hell out of him, but he was angry enough to try anything. He flexed his fingers in towards his palm, willed the crackling of energy between his fingertips. He was going to send the heat of the sun right through their damn heads. Rage, but not delusion, drove his intent. He wouldn't get far, not against these things, but even if he could even just cut through a few of them...

He hit the top of the dune. The energy from his hand flickered out as soon as Deon understood what he saw.

They were already dead.

She had her back to Deon, stood out halfway between the coastline and the shore. Staggered forward, found a face-up beast, and kicked it. He could hear the heavy thuds of her foot to flesh from where he stood. The fight was over, but she wasn't satisfied. She didn't whisper or scream, just kept kicking at the thing's head with a singular intent, even if it had been dead for a while now.

He walked forward, numb and entranced at once. Over and through the troupe of monster-men, perhaps humans, once, but now not much more than flesh punched through and through and through. Fist-sized hailstones pooled in the dips between dunes, most of them bloody. Some were still pocketed within the killed daemons.

The dead things did not hold his interest. Deon thought that pale purple hair had turned brown again - but no, it was a play of the rising sun, turning everything to yellow and orange and red. No trick in her complexion though. Mara was sicker and deader than he left her - than she left him. Carnage did nothing to revive her.

As he thought this, her face lifted, her eyes turned towards him. Deon hesitated, wondered if she saw him already, but she didn't have her glasses so she couldn't have. The sunbreak behind him, in the east, that must have been what she looked for. Her cheekbones suffered still, but a slim smile worked on her lips. She was entirely aware of her victory. Mara's eyes rolled to the sky, and she swayed backwards.

He ran the last dune between them, just as her knees buckled, lost footing on the sand. Only when Deon was upon her did she recognize him.

"You-"

He caught her by the wrist, wretched her upright. She was on her feet, as best as sand could support her, but he didn't let go. He wasn't satisfied either. He tightened his hold, vicing his fingers as hard as they would go, until they bit like iron. Make her feel it. Make her hurt as badly as she hurt him.

She knew to lock up his left hand, not his right. She expected his return, prepared Reed in anticipation for it. Kept the bat in reserve, must have watched him, knew the moment to subdue him, even if he freshly remembered the regret twisted upon her mouth. She used him, left bait that he walked neatly into, when he did nothing but wait for her and be there and do the right damn thing.

But she alone wasn't responsible for all of this.

He did do nothing. He got stupid and permissive when he should have been more vigilant than ever. He hung outside of her door and waited for her move instead of getting in her face and knocking the stupid out of it, all before it could fester into...into buckets of blood on her hands and a body weak and close to death, when she already burned out once before. God. How easily he could have wrecked her plans if only he thought about what Mara would do, rather than should. What she would do, and also what she could do, as evidenced by the beach around them.

And if she felt the need to crack him one over the head, she must have guessed of his woulds and coulds might get extreme too.

They had come to know each other too well, and came out scarred for it. Wasn't that the fucking kicker?

"God dammit." Deon loosened his fingers from around her wrist, moved his grip to her upper arm. She swayed, leaned heavily against his body to keep herself adrift.

She couldn't be aware of her hand clutching at his chest. He wasn't sure exactly what she was aware of. "Told you not to follow."

"Yeah, well your little speech went to the wrong person. I don't mourn." He moved his hand to her shoulder. "Or forget."

She stayed on her feet, though still considerably more unstable than she was after the worst shot wars he could remember. She noticed his wrist, and the uncovered wound there which still wept and bled. The salty air did the wound no favors. Mara brushed just a knuckle close to his wrist, like she didn't believe in the severity of it.

"Reed didn't get to you first."

"No. He did." Deon didn't realize how little breath he had in him. "I think I punched him."

He expected a bitter laugh, but her head instead dropped, and Mara sagged against him. Deon took as much of her weight as he could, and started the slow trek back to the car.

Maybe she was right to leave him. Maybe all he would've accomplished is getting some stray hailstones punched through his body as well. It seemed everything on the beach, down to his own stopped breath, was a finished thing. Over. There was nothing he could do in the aftermath, nothing to change the scene or undo what Mara had done to herself. The Hunter in her did not burn out, but he saw her eyes, and knew something human in her had.

Nothing to do. The best he could do was collect what was left.

Lynn's car still ran at the roadside - he hadn't possessed the foresight with which to turn off the car or take the keys. Mara saw the car, recognized the color, and then beat her fist against his shoulder.

"Got to," Deon said. "Otherwise the cops will find the car here, by all those dead things, and come ask questions about Lynn again. At the Fortress." He grabbed her under her arm, dragged her along. "We don't want them asking about her anymore."

Deon stared at her, kept his gaze fixed hard on Mara. She only had eyes for the dirt.

"This is over now. Buried."

She looked away from him, and also from the car, even while being lead towards it. "You do everything stupid."

"Yeah." He focused on Lynn's car, on getting the two of them those last long strides there. "What's new?"

He opened the passenger door, but she wouldn't have any of it. Mara crawled into the backseat, pulled the door closed behind her. Did she look up, and still see that other one, her Guy? Then she turned, and put her face and body towards the back of the seats, and it was like she left him all over again.

Deon didn't yell at her, though the words, pain, and hate were there in his throat so bad that the cords hurt from the strain. His hands quaked, even when clamped hard over the steering wheel, and he even pressed his forehead against it and begged everything in him to just lock down, to keep it all in. When he pulled himself back down from his rage - when he could feel his own fingers again - then he started up the car. Mara didn't notice him all the while, or budge from her tight huddle into herself. As if the cage of her own misery was all she required.

He hated that, as much as he hated that cave of her room. But he took the long road home, and a few extra turns and miles, till he burnt through most of the fuel. He'd give Mara that much, allow her one last instance of true retreat. Deon didn't know how to ask about the future she said she saw in him, and he knew the road of hers would be hard and uncertain. But he'd gamble on it, and make her put in her chips too.

Because he was going to yank her through hell to see the end of it.

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