Searing white pain.
That was all that Hank could register. His grip on his gun was weakening. His hands were shaking hard, too hard to be able to fire a steady shot anymore. Blood dripped down his face, down his chin. He almost felt ready to collapse.
And still the clown kept striking him.
It would have been better if it had just been that street sign. That would have nothing, a gentle pat on the back. Anything would have been better than those…those claws. Gnarled, searing hot claws.
He would have taken a thousand A.A.H.W. agents over this. He would have taken anything over this fight right on the edge of a cliff. Anything over this goddamn clown, anything.
Another slash of claws from the clown, and then his gun was over the edge of the cliff. He reached for his axe, blood smearing from his hands onto the grip of the weapon. Steeling himself and grounding his feet into the loose desert rocks below him, he took another swing at the clown.
He wasn't even expecting to hit the monster at this point, but he was forcing himself to keep fighting. He just couldn't give up, not like this, he wasn't going to fail and get killed by this demon…
But he knew he was, and for some reason it made him want to laugh.
Hank J. Wimbleton fought on a wall.
All he could see was white fire. All he could hear was maniacal laughter taking form in the shape of demonic growls.
All he could feel was another strike of that white flame, another scratch of those claws, and his feet leaving the ground as he was pushed over the side of the cliff.
His limbs started to flail, but only on instinct. He was falling so fast, so fast but so slow at the same time, but all he could think about was how much it felt like flying and how the cold wind actually felt nice on his wounds.
But he couldn't help chuckling, even as the dull grey of the ground started rushing up towards him. How very ironic. The great Hank J. Wimbleton, killed by a simple fall. The ground would get him before blood loss did.
He closed his eyes and smiled.
Hank J. Wimbleton had a great fall.
He wondered just how many people would notice he was gone. The agency would have to find a new person to head their charge, new cannon fodder. Hell, they probably wouldn't even last a whole month without him.
It sounded self-absorbed, but it was true. He knew that he was the cannon fodder, the distraction, the first one sent in. He had taken the job willingly.
How many others were somewhere in Nevada with him? Two for sure, that pair, Sanford and Deimos, had dropped off a sword for him a bit earlier. Maybe one or two more. He hadn't been keeping up with who was being sent out and when and where and why.
Not to mention all of the bodies. So, so many bodies, and he knew that most of them were his own victims. He almost wished that he felt guilt over it all, but he didn't. He just had grown so used to it, so used to infiltrating an A.A.H.W. building and seeing one of his fellow agents impaled up on the wall, warnings to other potential traitors written in their own blood.
How had everybody died so quickly? It was all mostly because of him, wasn't it? He had been one of the very first to even entertain a negative thought towards the A.A.H.W.
All Nevada's corpses and all the agency's men
He smacked into the ground so hard that at first he couldn't feel it. The sudden pain was too much to register. He couldn't feel, couldn't see. The only thing he could hear was a deafening buzz in his ears.
He could have sworn that he could still hear the clown's laughter, very faintly but still very much there, through that buzz.
If he could feel, than he might have realized just how much of him wasn't there anymore, and he might have realized that he wasn't going to be able to get back up.
He deserved this sort of death, he thought, especially after all that he had done. He'd never had a noble cause, never had a brave heart or even an inkling of compassion. He couldn't even remember the last time he had slept and actually dreamed something pleasant, or dreamed of doing something exciting with his life. He had nothing left but proficiency in combat, a genius' IQ, and a cold, dead heart.
Please let me stay dead. Just let me stay dead.
He wasn't sure what his last coherent thoughts were, other than just begging for real death over and over. He couldn't do it anymore, there was no way he could ever actually be alive again. There was just no way. Just let him stay dead, he'd taken part in this sick war long enough.
Couldn't put Hank back together again.
A/N: Whew! I'm somewhat back. I wrote this one up the other day, whilst giggling maniacally and pretty much just fist pumping the air because I finally had my writing mojo back. It was really fun to play around with writing from Hank's point of view, considering that I do so so rarely. But yeah. Fun times. Dead Hanks, hecking insane clowns, and writer's block slowly dying away. Heck yeah.