parts unknown.
alternatively titled: how charlie learned to stop worrying and love the gate.
just a little something for halloween featuring charlie hesketh, or agent zenith, or roanoke, @agent-nova, and technical officers drake, longma and wyvern. also starring the infamous agent andhrimnir.
there are some depictions of injury, gore, and sci-fi-induced stressful situations below the cut. proceed with caution.
... i am very sorry.
seraphim closed the front door behind her with a contented sigh, eyes flickering up to one corner of her specs as she did, checking the time in the u.k. merlin was probably dead asleep already, but she quickly typed out a message anyway: home safe. mission a success. love you. going on a food quest. message me when you wake up. next year i promise we’ll celebrate your birthday on the same continent. she winced as her stomach growled and she unzipped her jacket, hanging it up on one of the hooks by the door.
it had been a second since she’d had just a routine, local exorcism call, especially with twins. she made a note to bring that up with carter and parker at some point. ‘did you know you two have a greater chance of being possessed? you remember that the next time you want to fuck with something you shouldn’t be fucking with, carter—‘ ‘oh my g—it was one time!’
it went off without any major hitches. the bridge of her nose was a little sore, but other than feeling she was about to devour the entire manor, no other adverse side-effects, not even the usual cold chills. she still had the father’s business card in her back pocket—he’d offered the estate free plumbing work for life.
some nights, seraphim loved her job.
and she loved it even more as she walked closer to the kitchen. someone was busy, and whatever they were doing smelled wonderful.
“hey tony. you’re up late, are that many people in and out right now?” she heard agent andhrimnir hum as she grabbed a magnet shaped like a tiny ufo, putting up rory linn’s aaa plumbing service card on one of the shared refrigerators.
“you that surprised given what day it is? besides, i scored a metric fuckton of squash from the market today. thought it’d be a good idea to get started on meal prep for the week, making up a few things people can just grab and heat up.”
“no, guess it’s not that surprising…” seraphim crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her biceps as she walked casually—a little too casually—towards andhrimnir, who just shot her a look as he tapped a wooden spoon against the rim of a giant, steel pot he had in front of him on the massive stovetop.
“… morgan.”
“yes, tony.”
“could i interest you in some mexican turkey and squash stew?”
she feigned ugly sobbing, “oh my god please.”
andhrimnir rolled his eyes. “you are so dramatic, go grab a bowl and i—“
they both jumped at the sound of heavy, quick footfalls crashing by the kitchen opening and then fading away. andrhimnir asked first: “… who the hell was that?”
“i—i think that was charlie? uhm, let me—go check on him, save me some of that, i’ll be right back.” people moving at a full sprint through the manor wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary, but seraphim had only recognized charlie briefly, not who was behind him. what was going on?
behind her, andhrimnir just sighed, shaking his head. boys will be boys… but, given the holiday, maybe a little bit of shenanigans couldn’t hurt. he started humming thriller as he turned back to the stew, grabbing a little bit of cayenne pepper from the spice rack.
as soon as seraphim started walking down the hallway, heading towards the nearest door that went downstairs, she could hear muffled shouting. “—ch it!”
and she walked down the stairwell to the tune of longma, charlie and drake’s voices all chiming something like “catch it!” “don’t let it go over there!” “are you sure this is gonna work?” “we’re going to find out!”
“what on god’s good earth are you three doing?”
drake had a small, ornate box in his hands that seraphim was fairly sure he was not supposed to have, and was flanked by longma and charlie, who all just stared at her like deer caught in headlights. drake was on his knees on the floor by a corner, which looked—unnaturally dark.
“—this was drake’s idea.”
“charlie hesketh you traitorous bastard. this is the thanks i get for trying to show a little innovation and initiative.”
longma shrugged, “bro i think we can all admit that we just really wanted to use the box.”
“yeah, morgan, look, we got this gremlin fucker cornered and—“ but drake turned around and the corner was a lot lighter. “… uh-oh.”
charlie lifted his metal hand in a signal, and all four of them stood, listening.
there was a ten-second stretch of silence followed by a skittering noise that sounded like it was coming up by the ceiling. “ohhh shit there it goes!”
“‘shit’ is right.” now all of them were jogging along the wall, staring hard upwards at a vague blob of a shadow that almost wasn’t there, like cats chasing a laser pointer.
and they were jogging towards the gate.
“woah, woah, woah, stop—“ seraphim managed to grab charlie and longma by their arms but drake kept running froward. “drake get away from there, if it turns the gate on—“
“relax, i got this! crowley brought this back after he and andi were in yokohama like all last month. guess the head of the kingdom gave it to him as a thank you gift—“ drake had his eyes up, and wasn’t watching where he was going. they could still sort of see it, trapped up at a new high angle, and it startled them by chittering, like a squirrel. seraphim hadn’t heard one make a noise like that before.
“fergus said that this could trap anything. don’t you wanna see if that includes these little guys?”
longma scoffed, “yeah, and then told you to leave it alone three seconds later—“
“hey, i don’t remember you arguing with me to put it back twenty minutes ago asshole!”
“oh my god, enough! i literally just got home and am not in the mood to play step-mom!” seraphim pulled charlie and longma back a few more steps, “charlie, watch him, drake, get back here!”
“does this make you step-dad?” “shut it.” “yes sir.”
the chittering was getting louder, more rapid-fire. it sounded like nails falling on glass.
and then a hum.
the gate was on.
fuck.
but seraphim wasn’t the only one who moved forward on instinct to grab drake—charlie did too.
* * *
nova and he’d had a—well. he wouldn’t call it a fight, exactly. she was more just a little exasperated. not that charlie could blame her.
“charlie,” she’d groaned, moving his hands off of her waist. “i really, really, re-he-eally, need to get this done for wyvern. he wouldn’t have asked for my help unless it was really important. this math is—hieroglyphic. but i think if we can figure out which of the formulas is the right one, then everything will make a lot more sense.”
“what is it again?” charlie asked, frowning at the endless lines of numbers, figures, scattered across her desk. his hands may have moved from her waist, but they just traveled up to her shoulders. charlie rested his chin against the top of her hair. nova opened her mouth once, closed it, and then just shook her head.
“i’m—i think wyvern’s trying to come up something he called an emergency traceback. probably just as a sort of backup because of all the uh, critters running around downstairs. but this is... sort of some kind of mix of algebraic cartography, divination and like three other kinds of math that i haven’t used in a while.” her voice vibrated through his jaw, before she tilted her head back. “so. i need to concentrate. just—for a bit. okay?”
charlie grinned. “okay.” when he kissed her he was delighted to find that she tasted like the candy corn from earlier—which didn’t give him that good of an impetus to stop…
“mm… charlie, knock it off!” she playfully smacked him. “i just said not to distract me!”
“if you could taste you, you would understand.”
a furious blush overtook her face. “oh my g—go find someone else to bother for a while!”
he’d laughed roughly as he left their bedroom, thinking about going to the kitchen—he was positive that there was some of that oktoberfest craft stuff somewhere, and he’d grown a soft spot for agent andhrimnir, despite his sometimes prickly demeanor—when he had the wind knocked out of by him drake, who slammed into him at what felt like a hundred miles an hour.
as charlie was grunting on the floor, trying to re-inflate his lungs, he could he heard clicking go right by his ear. like a dog running on hardwood. “drake? what the bloody hell—“
“charlie! charlie, my bro, my dude, my buddy, my pal, how would you like to get in on something that i am a hundred percent sure will get us all promoted?”
charlie shook his head, blinking, as longma offered him a hand up.
“uh—why does this sound one of your normal ‘good intentions bad idea’ bits?”
“that’s because it is.” longma answered for him. “but in his defense, it did all come together like magic.”
“uh, yeah, like a gremlin just so happened to be down in the archives, which never happens, and we just so happened to like, rediscover this box that we can use to finally solve this issue? guys.” drake just made a grand gesture with his arms as soon as he stood up. “… it’s providence. like. we have to. it’s like god gave it to us with a big red halloween bow on it. c’mon, charlie, please?”
right at the second that charlie found himself with both the officers looking at him expectantly, he had two thoughts alongside each other.
one was that he hadn’t thought of his own brother in about a week. the stretches of time were getting longer.
the second was that the word ‘brother’ brought only muted images of james to mind now. pictures of drake, wyvern, longma—that is, drake, cody, and jeremy—were much clearer. more reflexive. much in the same way he realized that when he looked at seraphim, or succubus, he thought ‘sister.’ as natural as a rainstorm.
and when he looked at nova—at ellie—the first word was ‘love.’ and that was even more effortless these days.
strange, how this place had sort of rewritten his mental dictionary.
“… all right, i’m in. … what are we doing?”
drake clapped him on the shoulder, and opened his mouth to speak, before glancing and then staring down the hallway.
charlie followed his gaze and his eyes landed on what looked like a tiny puff of charcoal smoke, hiding behind the leg of a side table.
and it would’ve continue to just look like a bit of darkness, until two bits of dim light blinked at him.
“what the fuck—“
“step one,” drake interrupted, whispering. “we have to catch that thing—“
as if on cue, it bolted,
and the chase was on.
* * *
the humming got louder, a pitch too deep. seraphim grabbed drake by the collar and flung him backward—straight into charlie, who basically caught him and tossed him.
and tendrils, like normal, formed in the gate’s mouth. but they weren’t the soft white that spawned from a normal jump. they were more of a milky pink, like the whites of an infected eye.
oh, this was bad. get out, get out, get out—
seraphim tried to sprint forward, stuck a hand out and tried to push charlie too.
but they both got caught.
longma and drake watched in muted horror as these pastel strands wrapped around both agents, starting from the base of their chest cavities and moving out in both directions. seraphim could not stop the panic building in her stomach, even as charlie was very gently lifted up and pulled to stand next to her.
they had seconds.
her eyes were wide and focused on drake’s face. he had tears in his eyes.
he couldn’t hear her. but he could read her lips.
go find jeremy and ellie. find us. ... it’s okay. it’s going to be okay.
seraphim wasn’t the only one whose heart was hammering. charlie was visibly trembling, his breath coming out in shaky gasps.
there was nothing they could do now.
“what—morgan, what’s happening—“
so she gripped his hand as hard as she could, as silence surrounded them, and they were torn line by line from home. “brace yourself. don’t let go of me. it’s going to be f—“
snap.
longma and drake stood staring at the spot where they’d been for approximately four seconds before getting up and sprinting to the monitors to try to find their signal in the aether, to try and track them as far as they could.
in the five minutes it took for them to find an estimate of where their exit split might have been—which was surrounded by coordinates that they hadn’t ever even touched—charlie and seraphim landed. and by ‘landed’ it was more ‘thrown into the side of a mountain hard enough to knock them out.’
* * *
seraphim wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she opened her eyes, blinking them a few times.
the sensation of an intense, dry heat made it hard to move. it was like she was lying in a tanning bed, or in direct sunlight on some lazy afternoon outside. and she almost closed her eyes and let herself be taken back under until she remembered how they got there. deep breaths. deep breaths.
charlie was lying next to her, blood oozing from his nose. it had formed a small pool by his mouth on the ground. her glasses were cracked, but—
no signal. just power. she grunted, lifting herself gingerly into a sitting position.
she didn’t wake charlie. not right away.
she didn’t want to scare him, so she took a few minutes while he stayed in the blackness to compose herself and try to get the fear off of her face as the weight of it hit her.
she was unable to tear her eyes away from the sky, and as she stared at it, she wondered what merlin would do.
charlie came to slower than she had, and seraphim turned as she heard him murmur, “ellie.”
“hey there big guy.” she prayed it didn’t sound like she’d been crying. “you ready to join me in this waking reality?”
his eyebrows went into a frown and seraphim sighed, feeling sweat form around her hairline. not the voice he wanted to hear. “don’t get up too fast—“
she didn’t have to tell him twice, as soon as he was on his knees he let out this long, low groan, his good hand going to the socket where his metal arm met his flesh. he glanced down at his side, “shit…”
“charlie? what is it?” he shifted around and she gasped.
the exit split had thrown him into the rock and right onto his arm. he hadn’t been able curl and protect himself from the machinery, there hadn’t been enough time. the socket had been driven upwards and inwards, tearing his skin open in places. he had a veinwork of blood going down his side, soaking into his v-neck. “okay… okay.” seraphim said quietly. “on a scale of one to ten, ten being it’s so bad you can’t walk, where’s your pain?”
charlie was taking huge, gulps of air, but it burned all the way down into his chest, and he coughed. “let’s say a very strong seven. i can—i can move. it’s fine. and i—“ there were whirs and clicks as he moved his arm, although he tried to hide from her that his range of motion was a little more limited than he was used to. “—can still use it. not broken. ellie can fix it when we…” his voice trailed off as his eyes lifted to the horizon. “… get home.”
seraphim was calm as he took in where they were.
the rocks beneath them were milk white, aside from where they’d been stained by blood. and they went on and on forever towards the skyline, equal parts rolling and jagged. whatever mountain range this was, they’d landed in the foothills.
if there anything else alive here, it was nowhere near them. the silence was thick.
“it’s—it’s really hot—“ he shook his head, trying to pull himself together, find any kind of solidity in his mind. his hand went to his face, rubbing it, wiping at the sweat. “morgan, are we—are we in hell?”
when seraphim didn’t answer him right away, he turned to her in time to see her gazing upward.
the sky—wasn’t a sky at all.
it was a city, hung upside-down, black, violet, and solid. it glittered overheard like a palace ceiling. a tower spiraled towards them in the center, with rings and rings of buildings going outward from it, mimicking, charlie thought ruefully, the mouth of the gate.
the light they were seeing it by was bright white. it seemed to be coming from the line in between both halves of the world, where they didn’t—couldn’t?—touch.
“no, charlie. we’re not in hell. i uh—“ she didn’t want to lie. “i think we might be somewhere worse.”
* * *
drake knew just from glancing at the map that they’d been ripped out of the general continuity. he knew that where they’d gone—time did not flow there like it did here.
they had still been asleep where wyvern came barreling down the stairs, out of breath, with ellie close behind him.
“my glasses went off, what happened?” he demanded, his accent coarse in his panic. he found his anger evaporating when he saw the looks on drake and longma’s faces.
at first, neither of them could speak.
until ellie broke their cautious quiet with a question.
“… drake? drake, where’s charlie?”