Apocalypse Squared (p17)
I'm not suuuper happy with this chapter and this fic is a little tricky for me to write atm but I wanted to update it and better to drop something I was unsure about than nothing ig raahhh
A03
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Chapter 17 - Objecting to a Marriage
Stan felt tense. Well, obviously he did – his brother just got dragged off by a bunch of lunatics after being… well, himself, a little too hard. Stan was going to pointedly refuse to acknowledge the implications of any of the information that got spilled for the time being.
He needed to slip these binds, get the stupid morphine (because he would not let this trip be a waste of time) and get his stupid brother out of here.
But the concerning part is that even though he’d made pretty decent progress on that first part and he had a good inkling on how to manage the second part, the third part remained disconcertingly unclear. He had no idea where they’d taken Ford and it had definitely been a long time by now. Anything could be happening to him. Really, literally anything. These people were insane conspiracy theorists who had started an end of the world cult – anything was on the table. Especially with Ford’s newfound… immortality?
He cursed himself for not insisting they tested that. He had no idea how fast it would kick in for anything smaller than an instantly fatal injury. Did it only activate with a fatal injury? Would his body respond just as fast to a paper cut? Just as intensely? He really had no way of telling.
A person entered the room. Okay, yeah. That’s some development, at least. He didn’t appreciate them conspiratorially whispering to the other guy but, you know, beggars and choosers and all. The subtle crease of the brow did catch his attention, though. What unnerves crazy people? He tried to wrack his brain for some sort of answer that would apply to the situation at hand.
That’s when he felt his chair get moved, yelping instinctively in a manner perhaps less dignified than he would’ve preferred. He held his hands tight around the ropes he’d loosened so that they wouldn’t slump down and give him away.
“Hey—! What’s the big idea, buddy?!” He yelled backwards at the man dragging his chair. He got stony silence in response, “oh come on! You lot were so chatty earlier!”
He tried to use his frustration as a mask for just how concerned he was. It seemed like concerned was all he was able to be these days, frankly. That’s what having a brother will do to you, eh? He kept trying to crane his neck around.
He was turned around after a long while of simply being dragged through a corridor, chair legs making an unpleasant and grating scraping sound against the unkempt hospital floors. Seriously, would it be that difficult for one person out of an entire cult to sweep the floors sometimes? It had only been, like…! However long it had been!
The room that he was shifted to face was… weird. And that was coming from the guy who had ziplined from a floating pyramid with a high as fuck twin in tow. He was on one side of the room, centrally positioned, whilst the other side was full of rows upon rows of chairs. Between his ‘section’ and theirs, there was a gap with a line of sheets used like a carpeted walkway, leading up towards an elevated platform at the far end. It looked like this had been a seminar room? But the podium had been long since moved out of the way.
There was an attempt to decorate, with coloured wraps cut into makeshift bunting and patterns drawn upon gauze used as banners. It was about the best one could do using exclusively hospital supplies, he guessed, but he still thought it still looked kind of stupid.
What really caught his attention, however, was what stood on the stage itself: an uncanny construction, made of broken… crutches? In a pattern that resembled a trellis grate. They were joined together at angles to keep the structure standing, looping over to form… an arch?
Wait. This set-up felt familiar.
He heard his brother’s yelling from the other room drawing closer and froze for a moment. There was no way, right…?
Oh, he should stop tempting fate like that, really.
Ford stumbled in, half-rushing, hands bound in front of him with a mostly wilted bouquet tied into the ropework, yelling numerous protests to the people following him before he stumbled over the edge of the stage, falling back and hitting his head hard on it. Stan winced in sympathy as he saw the visible delay of Ford reeling from the experience.
“Come on! It’s tradition!” One of them complained, dragging the still half-limp man upwards.
That seemed to shake him back into reality. “No! You don’t understand! It’ll—!”
It was only when they drew attention to it by reaching that Stan noticed Ford’s shirt was unbuttoned just a little lower than usual, exposing… bandages? Underneath. The closer the hand reached towards them, the more he seemed to panic in a way that didn’t seem to convey a fear of reopening a wound. Stan began to yell his protests, too – using the squirming as a good cover for loosening his own ropes further.
“UM, HEY?” Stan yelled, trying to draw all the attention off of Ford, “what the fuck is happening?”
Surprised heads turned to face him like they hadn’t remembered he was there.
“He is the apocalypse-bringer! The immortal herald of the new world!” One responded, exclaiming in a sort of concerning joy. Great, so they’d figured that part out. That did raise concerning questions, actually.
“He is to be wed to the leader.” Another announced, proudly. Oh for the love of—
“Stanford!” Stan groaned, “why are you a magnet for maniacs?!”
“I didn’t choose this!” Ford hissed back, holding back one cultist with his leg. “I don’t know why they thought this was the best way to handle their worldview shattering!”
“You know I’m teasing you relentlessly about this afterwards, right?”
His brother groaned, “I know—” his sentence was cut off with a yelp as one hand managed to catch onto him – specifically the bandage coiled around him. He visibly panicked.
“NO, WAIT, HE’LL SEE—” the thing tore under the weight of the entire man the hand was trying to pull up.
A veil of drawn-out silence encompassed the room as the ‘wound’ beneath the bandages revealed itself. Welted skin, drawn neatly into 3 points with a large eye in the middle. Ford yelled, rushing to cover it up with the flowers tied to his hands – but something about the way he glanced around in fear made Stan think that perhaps it was too late.
His brain stalled. Ford had been hiding that the whole time…? He hadn’t mentioned it to him, at least. Was he ashamed? …Stan could relate to that, actually. But more, he was concerned at how terrified Ford was at it having shown. More concerned with the fact that his brother had been branded by the demon.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t considered that Bill Cipher would have hurt Ford physically, too. He seemed perfectly capable of any other form of harm, certainly, but when it came to physical violence… it seemed so obvious, in a way. That it was tangible evidence that the creature surely couldn’t ignore if he actually liked Ford the way everything seemed to suggest he did. Or did he just not care? The thought sent chills up Stan’s spine – almost as much as the groaning, ripping sound of tearing metal and stonework that followed.
Fucking hell, that was fast.
“ S I X E R “
A shrill yet deep and reverberating voice called downwards, as the roof was torn off.
Stan took this moment to slip his bindings, rushing across the room to sling what looked like a bag of supplies over his shoulder before he reached Ford.
There was another long moment of tense silence where nobody dared to say anything, didn’t dare to move. The being’s pupil constricted and dilated, fixing on Ford like a spotlight. Ford himself was pale, somewhere between shocked and horrified and terrified, and that intensity in the creature’s expression wasn’t helping matters.
“YOU’RE COMING HOME, NOW.” The triangle had abandoned any semblance of his showman’s charisma, reaching one massive hand down towards his twin immediately.
Stan did the only thing he knew how to – and began to run his mouth. He pointed, frantically, to the people across the room.
“THEY TRIED TO FORCE FORD TO MARRY THEIR LEADER!”
“ W H A T ? ! “
The yellow light bathing the room abruptly turned to red. Seems playing on that possessiveness had its own benefits. As the attention turned, so too did Stan as he, without waiting to see if Bill even noticed, slung his brother over his shoulder and bolted.
The car was protected, the car was protected, the car was protected—as long as they could get there, and assuming he had the evasive driving skills he hoped he had, they would be fine. Surely they would be fine.
He ignored the screaming behind them. He ignored the ripping of walls, and the demonic echoing of his brother’s name through the hospital wards; he ignored the pounding in his ears as he reached to the door, the car door – one hand behind him, extending ready to—!
Collide against the barrier. Stan breathed heavily as he fell back into the driver’s seat, dropping Ford into the passenger’s, door still open as he stared wide-eyed upwards at the monstrosity of red pyramid layers, yellow arms, teeth and black tongues which loomed above, slamming its fists against the shimmering ward with increasing fury and disbelief.
Not even closing the door, he didn’t miss a beat before he slammed his foot on the ignition as hard as possible, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it which made the creature cry out in a mortifying shriek of rage and pain as it entered its eyes.
The car was accelerating too fast, and yet not fast enough. He kept his foot full strength down on the pedal, not even holding the wheel properly, only sitting half in the right direction, even. It didn’t matter. They just needed to get away, out of view, out of sight, out of mind—
He kept driving until he couldn’t hear the thudding of the beast in the distance any more. Until he couldn’t hear his brother’s name being shrieked at full volume. Until Ford stopped shaking like a leaf, silently clutching his hands over his chest like a lifeline.
He had no idea how they’d managed to outrun a god – perhaps the car’s wards made it harder for the demon to tell where they were? Either way, he was so relieved when he felt he’d completely lost the creature. Even still, he kept at his accelerated pace, stopping for nothing, until they had rushed fully into a random direction.
Fucking Exes.
