Fire.
Fire burned the hairs on his skin, singed the flesh until it boiled and popped. Muscle burned, blackened, shriveled into nothing. His femur showed, the white of the bone shining like a freshly polished sword, a new sword, one that had never seen the blood of battle. He opened his mouth to scream. No sound. Nothing but a choked gurgle, all he could manage. This isn't how it ends, he thought, one final attempt at defiance, at shouting "fuck you!" to destiny. She couldn't have been right, she couldn't have, it's not possible, she was just a crazy bitch, oh God, the bitch the bitch—
But right she was. About everything. The fire raged and roared, flames gusting up, up, up to the roof of the barn. Blood boiled and evaporated, the stench a mixture of charred gristle and molten steel. He put all his weight on his other leg, the unbroken one. The muscles attempted to piece themselves back together as his heart pumped fresh blood to replenish what was lost. His body was trying to heal itself—but the flames were stronger. Faster. For every ounce of flesh that grew back, they burned through three. For every chunk of bone that snapped back into place, two more cracked off. And the blood... his heart couldn't keep up.
That bitch... that bitch.
She'd only reiterated what someone else already told him years ago. First, it was the old fortune teller: Mother Murphy, if he remembered correctly. Mother Murphy... she was nobody. A gypsy. Some old, crazy broad who made her living spitting up stories and legends and lies. A woman who ate until she gorged. A woman who drank until she pissed whiskey. She didn't know the future, didn't know his future. She would sooner spin a tale than tell the truth, would sooner attempt to scare rather than appease him.
And yet... and yet...
The other one—not Mother Murphy; God knows she wasn't Mother Murphy—was different. He'd thought her beautiful at first; beautiful, brilliant, and a desirable challenge. But she was a challenge that he failed. And she knew him. Even before they met, she knew him. How, he couldn't say, but she did. And even as he'd leveled the pistol at the back of his target's head, she'd haunted him. For what she'd said before he climbed the stairs to the box, before he'd fired that ball through his target's thick skull, were the same words Mother Murphy spoke all those years ago:
"You're going to meet a bad end, Mr. Booth."
And now, as he stood in a burning barn, one leg fractured and burnt to an unrecognizable mass of crispy sinew, John Wilkes Booth finally understood. He understood even before he sensed the other man's—
(no, that's not right; he's not a man at all)
—presence. He understood before he turned around, before he met the black eyes. Black eyes... eyes like mine.
("You're going to meet a bad end, Mr. Booth.")
And so he was... And so he did.