These three talking about each other...I am so happy and then Geronimo makes me SO sad. I love his friendship with Billy—I love that all three stayed a bro unit after the America arc but also my heart. :’-]

Bonus: Billy being himself

I don’t remember much. There are jumbled sounds and fragmented images, but I’m not sure if they’re my memories from tonight, or before.

Where am I?

Where am I…

I…

Somewhere…different. Not the workshop I’ve been in. The room is a different color. I’m seeing hazy ceiling through the darkness and a fan up above when I open my eyes. I don’t remember where I’d be, or why it’s different. My head hurts, my arms hurt, my chest is on fire. I’m still dying. Shit. Why did they move me?

There’s someone there, above me—a fuzzy outline. A girl, I think. It’s dark. She sees me looking up at her and pauses. Shit—there’s something in her hand. I remember now; I remember contracting with her. I remember her promising to help me. So why is she bent over my chest with what looks like a long, thin knife? Why is the pain I’m in worse than it’s ever been?

I’m looking at her in search of answers, adrenaline not quite kicked in yet, but about to, when she looks down at me and says, “Don’t move.”

I feel it almost before I hear it. There’s a flash of energy by her hand and the command seal slams into me and I can’t move. I choke on a pained cry as the curse travels through me and freezes me in place. I can feel the mana locked onto my core, like I’ve been frozen solid, turned to stone. It’s agonizing. I can’t even move my head; I can’t shut my eyes; I can’t look away. I can barely breathe.

She’s gonna kill me. I thought this would happen. I thought there must be somethin’ even worse than what they’d already done. Why else send her? Why else get me to agree to anything at all? I had to be betrayed. They’ve been recreating how I died for months now, and that was the only element they couldn’t get. How could I have been this stupid again. I knew the risk. I still don’t know what they’re going to do to me, but I knew the conditions they might be looking for, and still; still. I just looked at a face I couldn’t see, and thought ‘I am who I am,’ and I didn’t shoot. Again.

Again…

I’m scared. I’m terrified. I haven’t been terrified in a long time. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I see Pat, stooping to say, “You did this to yourself,” to me, to make those the last words I hear before I die. I feel it. I feel my heart stopping. I see faint New Mexico moonlight. I smell so much blood. I don’t see my mother waiting for me. I never got to see any of them again. I never got to see anyone again. He was right; I did it to myself, and the Throne took me. I didn’t get an afterlife.

I’m so afraid whatever is happening to me is going to somehow be worse. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’m there again. They say you see your life flash before your eyes. I didn’t. I saw things I never got to make it to crumble away, and there was just…nothing waiting. Nothing at all. It was like watching your soul disintegrate to nothing. Ending. Thread cut. I’d always been promised there was something; I thought there would be. I know now there is for almost everyone. Just not for me.

I don’t want to know what could be worse than that.

I can feel my heart pumping once every six seconds, my core fading, the pathetic trickle of mana I’m getting from the girl that’s keeping me alive. I can feel the blood pumping up from my heart and over my chest with every feeble beat. I can’t look. I can’t move. I can’t speak. All I can do is stare at the girl and wait.

She stares back, and I see horror and shock flood her features in the dim light.

Why?

“No! No—I-I’m sorry,” she stammers, starting to cry, “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to—I-I don’t know how to use the spells—I didn’t think they’d just happen. I didn’t mean to do that!”

I can’t process that.

She stops whatever she was doing to my chest, and reaches out her left hand shakily and cups my face. I can’t move.

“I-I’m sorry,” she pleads. Her hand is shaking. She’s still crying. She’s scared too, I realize, watching her, confused. My hair’s matted to my head with sweat, and she tries to brush some of it back. It takes me a second to realize that she’s trying to comfort me. I don’t know how to feel, genuinely. I don’t at all. This is…foreign.

But. There’s a faint memory there. Bein seventeen, starved and dehydrated. Dropping near dead on a doorway of a friend’s mom. I hoped she’d help me. I didn’t know. She did. First time since I was fourteen I’d felt like that at all. I don’t think it’s ever happened to me as a spirit.

This girl is young. Maybe about that old herself—can’t possibly be older than eighteen. She’s a kid.

I must have been crying too. Not sure which emotion was strong enough for that—I don’t think it was fear. I think it was shame, having made the same mistake. I think it was feeling betrayed by myself even. I don’t know. But I must’ve, because the girl wipes tears off me with a trembling thumb.

“I-I’m sorry,” she chokes out. She’s struggling to stop crying too, but not quite made it. I’m realizing slowly she was crying because she felt bad. It’s such an oddly endearing thing to picture a mage of any kind crying over. I wish being in agonizing pain didn’t make that so hard to think about. “I really didn’t. I promise. I’m not trying to hurt you—I—I’m not a very good mage,” she explains, tripping over herself with a voice still strained and breaking every few words, “I haven’t had much training—I can’t heal you, l-like I should. I don’t know how.” She starts to cry again in earnest. Starts sobbing on my chest. I want to smile now, I’m so overcome with relief and somethin else, but I still can’t move at all. “I tried! I tried to look it up—I tried to heal you! I can’t! So I—h-have to get the bullet out.” She has to take a second to keep talking at all. I’m getting soaked with tears now. This poor kid is going to dehydrate herself if she goes on like this. “Or you’ll die. But I can’t use magic, so I have to dig it out,” she sobs, face a ridiculous, miserable mess of snot and tears and nothing but earnest agony of her own, “I’m sorry—I know it hurts. I only wanted you to hold still so I wouldn’t mess up and hurt you with the pliers—I didn’t mean to use a seal on you.”

I wish I could nod, or something, but I can’t. The command seal is still digging into every cell in my vessel, and I might as well be a block of wood. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m…relieved. Shit. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m relieved enough to cry, and my body would like to, but I know she’s going to take that the wrong way if I do, so I fight it back.

Command seals are the worst. I’ve always hated the things. Usually people use ‘em on me because we’re not getting’ along too well, and they either want me to kill someone I don’t want to shoot, or they want me to put my gun to my chest and kill myself. You can resist them a little—I know, because I’ve tried. A lot of times. Depends on the power of the spell, and the spirit, and it depends on your motivation too. Some are easier than others. No one can resist one for long, though. Learned that the hard way too. Got too many memories of someone else making my body move and do something that haunts me.

I try to resist a spell again, now, but not for myself. I think this might be the first time it hasn’t been because I wanted to resist the spell. I can tell now I don’t really need to, probably. But I feel bad for this gal. Digging in with every bit of magic resistance I ever had, I meet her eyes and manage the faintest hint of a smile for just a second, before letting the paralysis take me again.

She stares at me, shocked, then relieved, and starts to cry again, and it’s funny to me. Guess we both want to cry over relief. That’s a couple things in common now.

“Thanks,” she manages, trying to smile back. She strokes back sweat-logged hair from my forehead again in one last little gesture of goodwill, then picks up her pliers, and returns to her task.

Honestly, it’s hard not to let some of the fear back. Dying how I did leaves a guy with a little bit of paranoia in his head. It could be an act. But I know there’d be no point in that, and I don’t honestly believe it was. I just hate being paralyzed. Even stuck with someone I could almost begin to feel something a little like trust towards. God, I never learn. I know nothin about this girl at all. Trust is a lot to put in a mage. I guess I do never learn, but it makes me happy, like that’s a victory. I guess in a way it is. I s’pose it’s okay to be proud of that. Don’t have a lot to my name; might as well keep my disposition.

Got no idea how long being stuck like this’ll last, but it has to wear off in a little while. I believe her about what she’s doing, but that doesn’t make it hurt less to have a piece of metal digging around in my chest. I should try and sleep. It’ll conserve what energy I got left, and I won’t have to be awake for this.

I go with that, once the command spell wears off enough to let me shut my eyes. It’s not until I’m about out that I remember I’ve seen her before. Remember one day a while back, when a kid saw me for a second through an open door, and looked horrified, and I thought it was novel to be looked at with pity again after so long.

Guess it was something a little more than novel.

I think I smile. Can’t believe something good came my way. Usually all I’m a magnet for is misfortune and trouble, and I gotta make whatever luck I want to get.

But I’m passin out from the pain in my chest again, and I’m not sure she’s gonna get that bullet out in time for my core to keep from disolvin, but there’s not nothin looking back at me this time.

It feels good. Like I thought it would. I’m not scared. I think it would be okay if I die like this.