"For the record, I could be there in three days. Four tops."
"And I'll just stay inside with the rugrats?" Merle carefully tucked Chip into his pack; Mavis had bought the small pickax for his birthday. He hadn't had much occasion to use it yet, but truthfully that was probably down to forgetting he even had it more than anything. "No thank you. I'll take my chances with the haunted mine."
"There have got to be other places you could take the kids adventuring, Merle."
"Sure, but that way lies paperwork and Mavis is off with Troop B for the month. You know me; I'm not cut out for all that political guff."
"I mean, you're literally an Earl now."
"Pshaw, I'm a figurehead, if anything."
"Artemis Sterling is personally building you a bar because you asked for it, but okay. It's not like you have real political power or anything." Merle wondered if it was magic that allowed the unassuming Stone of Farspeech to project the impression of Magnus rolling his eyes so strongly or just more than a century of familiarity. "By the way, if you want me to do the crown moulding, my schedule's starting to look pre-tty full for fall."
"No, no. I appreciate the offer, but he has to do it himself. It's the only way he'll learn anything."
Magnus lapsed into silence for long enough that Merle wondered if the signal had dropped before saying: "I'm not the only one who'd come, you know. Taako might complain about it, but he'd drop everything if you told him you were in trouble."
"Come on now, Magnus, there's no point in bothering Taako about this. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to him either; I'm not sure I want any unnecessary attention on this just yet."
Taako was evidently experimenting with something he called 'honesty and mutual respect, my dudes'. What this meant in practical terms was that anything that might have been shared with Taako in confidence now came with the caveat that it was also fair game when he needed something to gossip about with Kravitz. While it was great that Taako was apparently comfortable enough to open himself up to someone, it was less great to find out that Kravitz knew about Merle's weird mole that looked kind of like Pan if you stared at it from a forty-degree angle until your eyes got tired.
Merle liked Kravitz – he really did. It turned out that he was a pretty all right guy as long as there wasn't a bounty on your head and Merle had never known how to hold a grudge. That being said, there was a reason that they had all worked so hard to keep Kravitz from striking up a conversation Brad Bradson last Candlenights; there was only so much work-oriented, rule-sticklership a man could tolerate. So telling Taako was definitely a no-go unless he was really settled on ghost jail as the only possible outcome for his little outing and then that would be a whole thing. Probably not worth it.
"Besides, I'm not in any trouble," Merle said.
"I believe that you believe that." Magnus spoke in that clipped, rushed way that ensured that any diplomatic meaning that could be derived from the words was entirely unintentional.
"I'm a cleric, for crying out loud. Dealing with dead guys is my speciality."
"Name one time you remembered that Turn Undead was something you could do and I'll concede that point."
Merle thought there might have been at least one time in Lucas's Lab, but wasn't certain enough to risk being called on the claim. "So I don't always remember all the spells in my repertoire. We both know that's not the most important thing I've forgotten."
"Three days, Merle."
"I just don't see why you're so worried."
"Because you called me," Magnus said, sounding honestly bewildered. Merle found himself in the uncomfortable position of being genuinely touched. "Also, I've met you."
"Look, Magnus, I'm gonna be fine. Promise. Now go sand a chair or whatever it is you do these days and leave the adventuring business to the professionals."
"Just…call me when you get back. And don't leave your Stone on silent again, old man."
Mineshafts tended to suffer from the unfortunate design flaw of looking exactly fucking alike to the untrained eye. Still, Merle had no doubt that he was headed in the right direction; the gnarled branches of his tree-arm creaked reassuringly as the bark grew thicker, rougher. Some old folks might claim that their bones ached before a rainstorm, but Merle's tell was far more useful and he'd had some time to explore the full benefits of his renewed divine connection over the past year. If he was a gambling man…well, he'd probably bet that there wasn't something dead and vulnerable to holy smiting down here and lose his house, to be honest.
Of all the things that Merle had lost over the years, his darkvision wasn't one that haunted him all that much. Wonderland had asked for a lot of fucked up shit from all of them and that sacrifice had felt trivial in comparison. Creeping through the dark now, he could grudgingly acknowledge that the inconvenience was a little bothersome. At least Light was a cantrip so it wasn't like he needed to waste a spell slot (not that he'd ever been conservative in that regard anyway), but it did make him more noticeable to anything that might be lurking outside that twenty foot radius and looking to cause trouble. Still, between the light on his helmet and Chip's helpful assistance, the journey didn't feel all that treacherous and he felt a little bad about bothering Magnus with the whole thing.
All in all, he might have been feeling a little confident when the path he was on abruptly ended in a steep drop and that might have contributed to his decision not to regroup when faced with the sudden obstacle. Merle swung a leg over the Vroom Broom, gave the handle an affectionate pat, and called out "Hang Ten" before descending into the depths below.
When Merle told the kids he'd only be gone for an afternoon, it had been partially bravado in the way that anything said to reassure a child often was, but only partially. He'd had no reason to suspect that he'd be gone long.
Merle had sunk far enough that cliff's edge was no longer visible within his twenty foot radius when his Light spell flickered out and the Vroom Broom abruptly stalled. He barely had enough time to form the thought just my luck before he was plummeting into darkness.
Merle had never been gifted with a strong memory, even before age had worn it away and a giant jellyfish had selectively edited his head. Someone like Lucretia might have been capable of remembering and interpreting meaning from her dreams – she struck him as the type to keep one of those dream journal things on her nightstand. To Merle, dreams were never anything more than fuzzy feelings and impressions that faded beyond recollection by the time he stood upright.
Even so, he felt that this dream was probably not a new thing. And as a face peered down at him, recognizable even under startlingly unkempt salt and pepper hair, Merle thought he could probably name the emotion that belonged to it.
"Aw, hell," he said, wincing when his back ached uncomfortably as he shifted, "it's gonna be a rough night, I guess."
"Merle?" John said and Merle frowned – his dream-memory must be even worse than his awake-memory because he knew that John and that uncertain tone just didn't go together.
Merle looked at his surroundings, dimly lit by a source he couldn't identify. He wasn't especially claustrophobic by nature (he was, well, kind of built like a little tea pot – the short and stout part, not the handle and spout part - and he had volunteered to share a space ship with six practical strangers about a century ago, after all), but even so he felt that their current accommodations offered a measly amount of space for two people. "And this location just sucks. My subconscious needs to get some taste."
"It wouldn't be my first choice either," John said, eyes darting rapidly around. "Merle, how are you here?"
"Probably fell off the Vroom Broom and hit my head. No offense, but this is a crappy dream so far."
"Merle, I need you to believe me when I say this is not a dream."
"Nah, I'm not falling for that one. It's gotta be a dream if I'm talking to you because you're – " Merle choked unexpectedly on the conclusion to that sentence. He didn't know why, here and now, acknowledging it was so hard; he'd had a long time to come to grips with it. "Anyway, it's gotta be a dream."
"I did die, Merle," John said, blunt, and wow, he really was saying Merle's name a lot, wasn't he? "But that doesn't mean I'm not here."
Merle winced as he sat up, the persistent movement making his nerves sing with bursts of fire. "Right, talking skeletons." Oh, Magnus would have just loved this. "Say that's true and I believe you. You came back from the grave to what – shoot the shit in a cave?"
"I don't know why I came back. I wouldn't have - I don't know why I came back." John's gaze darted around again, still uncharacteristically nervous. "I think I'm in trouble. I'm being – hunted is not the right word precisely."
The room felt abruptly darker. Merle felt more awake. "And, uh, what would be the right word? Precisely?"
A sound like gravity tripling resonated in the small space around them. John grimaced. "Detained."
Huh. Magnus had been right after all.
What Merle had first taken for a small cave, turned out to be an alcove with in a labyrinthine network of passageways. To Merle, they looked no more distinct from one another than the mine shafts had, but John move quickly and confidently through them, pausing only long enough to glance back and ensure that Merle's short legs were keeping up. John eventually paused at an apparent dead end, backed pressed tight to wall, tapping his index finger three times against the stone beside him. He paused, tilted his head as if listening intently for something, then repeated the process twice more.
"Checking for hollow rocks?" Merle brushed one hand against the wall curiously, surprised to feel that rock was vaguely fuzzy. His hand came away with a dim neon glow, remnants of moss clinging to his glove. Ah, so that was where the light was coming from.
"It becomes…upset if I stay in one place too long," John said, sliding his back against the wall as he moved to sit, headless of the moss potentially staining what looked like it had once been a nice suit jacket. "I've found it difficult to time exactly, but I think that we're alone for the time being."
Merle paused, wiping his glowing hand against one thigh as he got a good look at John. He'd never appeared to be a young man by any stretch, but there had been something eerily timeless to his manner before. For the first time, John looked to Merle as a man who had aged. "How long have you been down here, John?"
"Hard to say." John rolled his eyes skyward as if to underscore the lack of sun before smiling wryly. "Long enough, I suppose."
It occurred to Merle to ask 'long enough for what' and occurred to him just as quickly that perhaps that wasn't the most prudent question to ask. Merle cracked his knuckles. "Yeah, well, don't know about you, but I've got shit to do and it doesn't involve hanging around this dump." John watched quizzically as Merle sank to his knees. It was a risky gambit and it took destroying any undead out of the equation, but he figured now, of all times, was a good time to ask for a little Divine Intervention.
He earned a strange look from John for the manoeuvre, couldn't quite help picking up on it even as he let his eyes slip closed to concentrate. He supposed that the subject of his religious beliefs wasn't a hot topic back when Parley was a yearly routine and, besides an all-encompassing existential dread, he had no idea what, if anything, John believed in. Hopefully, if things went well, there would be time to talk about that later.
"Hey, um, Lord." He cleared his throat self-consciously. Beginning was always so damned awkward. "I know I only call when I need something – which is bad manners, to be sure, and that's on me. But I, uh…I really need something right now, so if you could just do me a solid and find my friend and I find a way out of this cave, I'll…try to remember to keep up with the rites and supplications." A little lacklustre, but at least it was honest. And Pan hadn't failed him since – well, not for a long time. Just to be sure, he added: "I mean, I did save all worlds so, like, I should have earned a little leeway."
Merle waited, eyes closed, drifting in the silence. At length there was a shuffling sound and quiet, hesitant footfalls. Merle only squeezed his eyes shut harder, holding onto the vestiges of his concentration. A hand fell on his shoulder without weight. "Merle."
Merle blinked his eyes open, feeling abruptly disoriented as he took in John's unreadable expression. "I mean, this doesn't always work," he said, mostly to himself. His good hand was shaking.
John shook his head. "I told you, I'm being detained." There was a hint of apology in his voice and Merle almost flinched away from it, repelled by the awful, dawning implication. John's head snapped up and something almost like panic spasmed across his expression before it hardened. John urgently ushered Merle to his feet. "Come on. I need you to show me how you got in, Merle. I thought – I'm cut off, but if you're here – "
Merle allowed himself to be led, trying to find an anchor that would stop his mind from reeling. His tree arm was very heavy at his side.
"So, this thing, like, locked you out of the Astral Plane?" Merle rocked on his heels, feeling a little useless and still a little raw around the edges, but he'd still come to the conclusion that the silence wasn't doing him any good. John was staring contemplatively into the dark above the cliff face he was pretty sure he'd fallen down. Not that either of them could tell where the top was in all this blasted dark. No Pan, no spells, no Light.
"Maybe," John said, running his hands searchingly over the rock. "I don't remember much after the beach."
Merle squinted his eye, but honestly it didn't really do much to improve his vision situation. "You wanna climb it?"
John glanced at him, maybe a little sharply. "It's dark, it's steep, and we can't even see what's at the top." He paused. "And unless I'm mistaken, I believe that you have reached the conclusion of your unexpected immortality."
Merle scratched his beard thoughtfully; John kind of had him there. He really didn't feel like falling a second time. "Yeah, but I don't see what's stopping you. I mean, you're – you know." He twirled a hand through the space the words should have filled, trusting John to follow without making him say it. "Just saying, you could try."
John was quiet for a long moment, expression hard to read in the dark. Then he abruptly turned, striding off without even checking to see if Merle was following this time. "There has to be a way out, something I've missed." The frustration in his voice simultaneously made Merle wonder if he'd said something he shouldn't have and decide that it was better not to ask.
John and Merle didn't talk much; their conversations were saved for the stuff that mattered while the unimportant guff fell by the wayside and that just felt all kinds of backwards. The quiet itself wasn't that unfamiliar; there was only so much to say when you spent everyday on the road with the same faces. This, though – this was different. Silence in a relationship that had always been defined by conversation was difficult in a way that he didn't know how to remedy. Merle wished fruitlessly for a chessboard, even if most of their matches resolved in a stalemate. Even a pack of playing cards would do. At one point, he tried to scratch a shaky grid for tic-tac-toe into the earth, but the dim lighting made the lines hard to define.
Merle wanted, with all his heart, to feel glad to see John again. Almost more than that, he wanted to be able to say that he was glad and know that the statement would still fly within a Zone of Truth. He had mourned John, in his own way. He had mourned the loss of something that he'd thought he'd given up a quarter century ago, that he didn't realize he could still lose until it was already gone – a singular presence in his life, something that he wasn't sure that he'd even want to replicate if he could, but that he felt the absence of all the same. He had mourned and then he had…lived on. Made a real home for the first time in over a century, felt like a real father for the first time in this or any lifetime, been sure of the worth of the man he'd seen in the mirror for the first time in memory. It hadn't been an easy sacrifice, one sort-of-friend to save all existing worlds, and he'd often wondered, lying in the dark on the verge of dreaming or waking, if he could have changed things – if there was something in their last conversation that he'd missed. But there had been closure before and now nothing was certain.
And all of it piled in his throat and put a stopper on his voice. Merle had never been known for great application of tact and he wasn't sure that his reservation was a good thing now. But John didn't say anything either.
The glowing moss was really the only redeeming feature that the place had. Serviceable light source and, evidently, edible. Or at least, neither Merle nor John had succumbed to poison yet (could dead people be poisoned?) even if it tasted terrible. They had been rationing the hardtack Merle had stowed in his pouch to make tiny, unappetizing moss sandwiches. Merle wondered if this was the first time John had eaten 'real' food since The Hunger's formation; the thought was like a weight on his sternum.
Merle's finger swept over what felt like a groove as he tried to scrape some moss free for a quick snack break. He paused and then ran his finger over it again curiously. The shape was too deliberate to be a natural part of the wall. "I think there's something here – under the moss."
Merle could feel John's presence heavy on his back even though he was sure there were inches between them at least. "Show me."
The noise was constant now. Merle and John scrambled through the narrowing tunnel, already beyond the point of no return. Merle wondered how long it would be before the tunnel narrowed too far and they were beyond the point of going forward as well.
John's breathing was hard and loud behind him. It should have been too far away to feel, but the ghost of it sent shivers down Merle's neck. "Go."
Merle thought about telling John that following directions written on a cave wall had been a stupid idea in the first place – if those people were so smart, they'd be here instead of whatever was chasing them. He thought about telling John that people were probably already missing him back home. He thought about telling John that it had been nice knowing him. He bit his tongue and went.
There was a perfect circle of black opal on the dais. Something about it tickled at Merle's memory uncomfortably. John was a statue at the edge of the room behind him.
"'Look not to oneself for judgement. Only those unbound by regret are free'," Merle muttered, tracing his hand carefully over the decorative engraving around the stone. "Sounds pretty judgemental to me." Silence was the only response behind him. "John?" A glance over his shoulder was enough to tell him that something was wrong. John had, if anything, retreated, holding himself stiff and alarmed. Merle took a tentative step towards him.
The now familiar, heavy sound rippled throughout the room, so loud that Merle had to clap his hands over his ears against the force of it. Merle had become accustomed to the dark, but now it seemed to surround them with a weight and malice. John shouted, the sound nearly drowned by the all-consuming presence of whatever had been hunting him. Merle called his name again, sharper – or, at least, he thought he did. His own voice was a mere vibration in his throat. Apparently, the time for talk had passed them both by.
Merle brought Chip down on the opal with a decisive swing, but the tip of the pick ax merely bounced off the smooth, unblemished surface, jarring his arm painfully. He tried to clamp down on his own panic and brought it down again – same result. "Come on, come on." Merle glanced frantically over his shoulder, but he couldn't see John anymore. Were those hands he saw reaching in the darkness or was that his memory, overlapping the past with the present between one stressed heartbeat and the next? Merle raised the pick ax again, glaring down at the dais. "You listen here: I won already. I beat this shit a year ago. It's time to move the fuck on." This time when he brought it down, he drove the tip home.
The black opal exploded like smashed tempered glass, arcing outward so that Merle had to curl away and shield his face. When the tinkling sound of falling shards quieted and he felt safe to look up, it was like the light in the room had been turned up ten settings. Scattered around his feet were fragments of mirror, reflecting his own grimy, bewildered face back at him. Huh. Interesting.
When Merle looked for John, he found him easily this time, leaning heavily against the wall and struggling to put weight on his right leg. It wasn't so much intention as it was the frantic aftershocks of fear that spurred Merle to raise his hands and cast Healing Word, momentarily forgetting the loss of his divine connection. The warmth of healing magic flowed past his finger tips and Merle laughed in grateful surprise. John, for his part, stood gingerly on his now fully functional leg and stared at Merle in shock, wide-eyed and pale.
"Merle," he said, voice rasping strangely. "Merle, you healed me."
"Oh, come on, I do do that sometimes. I'm a cleric!"
"No, Merle," John said, slow and deliberate, "you healed me."
Merle stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. And then: "oh."
Merle wondered if the path to the outside had always been there or if it had somehow opened up after he had smashed the mirror. He hoped it was the latter; they'd both look like a couple of buffoons otherwise. Merle hadn't really intended to lead the trek, but John didn't seem inclined to do much more than follow. Merle figured he'd cut him some slack and not make a big deal out of it; a man probably had the right to be a bit off-kilter after finding out that he was not, in fact, dead.
The return to the surface was weird, tense, and silent. Merle's shoulder blades itched the whole way, but something like superstition kept him from glancing back. He was half convinced that John wouldn't be there if he looked. When they finally stepped out into sunlight, it looked to be about midday and Merle had to furiously blink spots out of his eye, unprepared for the light after so long in the dark. John's emergence was announced by a soft, indecipherable vocalization at his side. When Merle finally turned and looked, John, dirty, disheveled, and blinking owlishly, was staring like a man who hadn't seen the sun in a hundred years. Come to think of it, maybe he hadn't.
Merle's stomach did a funny little flip and he tried not to think about it.
When Merle finally made it back to base (John trailing along behind, possibly only for the lack of anywhere else to go), he was greeted by a teary-eyed Mavis hugging him around the middle. He held her back, even if she was squeezing tight enough to be a little bit painful and the crying made him feel about ten inches tall – just the worst. That was part of being a dad, he'd learned. "Aw, come on, Mavis. You're gonna fog up your glasses; I know you hate that!"
"That's a stupid thing to say, Pops," she said, trying for firm, but not letting go. "You can't just disappear like that. I'm really mad at you."
"Fair." When Mavis pulled back to wipe at her blotchy face and rub her glasses with the hem of her shirt, Merle took a better look at the base. "Where are all of our young adventurers?"
"I sent them all home, Pops. You've been – you disappeared." She glanced somewhere past his shoulder and exasperation turned to honest confusion. "Who's that?"
Merle honestly hadn't thought far beyond reaching the surface and getting back to the kiddos. Neither, apparently, had John – though, to be fair, they'd both kind of half-assumed that he'd wind up going wherever ghosts go when they're not being bound to the mortal coil by a malevolent entity. Neither of them had really considered a less phantasmagoric selection of possibilities.
So John just kind of…followed Merle home. Or, well, Merle and Mavis loaded him into the wagon and took him home with them. Or maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle.
Merle hadn't been sure of how he'd explain John to Mavis, but he mostly didn't have to. John was strangely charming when he spoke to other people – charismatic. He seemed to have an easier time speaking to Mavis than Merle had since she'd hit the double digits, talking about the classes she'd taken last year and the books she'd read. If Merle was being truthful, he was kind of jealous – maybe of both of them.
Merle dug his old, wooden chess set from under the bed. It was a little chipped, a lot dusty, and he had to substitute a thimble for one of the rooks, but when he planted in front of John after dinner one night, he did it with as much dignity and self-assurance as he had in him. "Fancy a game?"
When Mavis entered the kitchen a few hours later, book clutched to her chest, it took them both a moment to notice her. Merle had been in the middle of regaling John with his confrontation with Cassidy in Refuge's quarry and John was, honest to god, laughing.
"I thought it would work!" Merle said. "In Pan Camp they always told us that song was the way into the hearts of the desperate and the lost."
"And then she hit you with her shovel?" John said, disbelief and creeping amusement warring for dominance in his voice.
"Yeah. Hurt, too." Merle paused, considering. "Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time face down in the dirt over the course of our adventures."
On the board, Merle's knight was one move away from putting John's king in check. Neither man so much as glanced down.
Mavis maintained that being a hero didn't preclude Merle from responsibility for his share of the household chores. This week, his name was next to dishes on the wheel. When Merle carried the plates off to wash up, Mavis followed him, offering to help by drying them. She was silent as they worked, but Merle could see the cogs turning in her head as she tried to settle on the words she wanted to say.
"I think it's good for you," Mavis finally said, voice firm and decisive. Merle opened his mouth to put voice to his own confusion, but Mavis waved her hands quickly, warding the words away. "No, nuh-uh, don't really want to talk about it. Just – I'm happy for you. I think it's good."
Finding John at the beach was not an uncommon occurrence. Merle got it; he'd always felt the most soothed by watching the tide roll in himself. There was always something eerie about finding him there, though. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of what he had once assumed was the last time that he would ever see John.
Merle sat down next to John, unmindful of the damp sand clinging to his shorts. The kids had taken John shopping for clothes that would fit him the other day and he was wearing a shirt that Mookie had picked out – a cheerful pineapple print button-up that looked all the more out of place with John's serious-looking grey slacks. Merle was warm and comfortable under the sun, breathing in the tang of the salt in the air. The gulls were only kind of annoying as they circled overhead. It was the first time in a while that Merle would have felt totally at-ease just sitting with John, not speaking.
"I don't know how much longer I can stay around, Merle," John said.
Merle sighed and rested his elbows on his knees, watching a piece of driftwood bob aimlessly over the low, shore-bound waves. "I thought you might be getting antsy."
"I don't want to seem ungrateful. You and your family opened your home to me. It's more than I should have expected." John was still and tense, not looking at Merle, not looking at the driftwood, not looking at much of anything. "But I've got a lot of questions that I need to answer."
Merle laughed. "That's life for ya. As soon as you think you've got it figured out –"
"I need to find out what happened to The Hunger, Merle."
"Pretty sure we destroyed it." At least, that was what sealing it in that barrier was supposed to do.
"And yet I'm here," John said, the words settling between them like stones.
"Look, I'm not saying it's not worth looking into and I'm not saying you shouldn't be part of looking into it – you gotta do what you gotta do and I can't rightfully say that I would do any different in your situation. And, I mean, I don't want to be the only reason you stick around if that's not what you want. I can't be that be that guy." Merle sniffed and scratched at his nose. "I know you weren't that fond of, uh, living. Before. But I just wanna say that I think there's a life here. For you. If you want it."
"I never wanted to die, Merle," John said, dodging neatly around the suggestion. "Dying is terrifying - horrible. I didn't want to be at all."
Merle shrugged, a little uncomfortable. "I'm not gonna pretend that I get it or that I know your mind better than you do, John. It's just…the last time we sat down to chat – before all of, you know, this – you told me that you just wanted to say goodbye to someone." Merle let the silence around the last time they didn't speak hang in the air, a moment too large to package into simple words.
"I did." John's fingers clenched in time with the muscles of his jaw, grasping at nothing. The part of Merle that was actually capable of learning from past experience was vaguely surprised to not currently be on fire. "I was, perhaps, not as clever or as certain as I once thought myself to be."
"That almost sounds like you're admitting to being wrong."
John hummed, but maintained his stony vigil. "Actually, I need to apologize to you, Merle. I wasn't entirely honest with you at that time."
"Well, I mean, we were both a little distracted - end of the world and all that -"
"No, Merle –" John sighed and his face took on an uncharacteristically pinched expression. If Merle didn't know better, he would have thought John looked nervous. "We had an agreement to be truthful and I didn't honor it. I'm sorry."
"All right, I forgive you," Merle said, slow, as if he could catch the meaning of John's words if he waited long enough. "Water under the bridge. New beginnings, right?"
John didn't look particularly relieved. "Merle, I'm going to be honest with you now and I need you to listen and to understand."
"Sure, buddy. Whatever you need."
"I said I wanted to say goodbye to someone. That wasn't wholly true. I wanted to say goodbye to you."
Tension had become as much a part of Merle's relationship with John as conversation or wagers or chess. But ever since the beach, it had taken on a strange, waiting quality that Merle didn't entirely know how to quantify. Being in the same room as John was like static electricity, tingling along his skin. Sometimes their hands would touch – by accident – or they'd bump when passing each other and every time John would get this odd, startled look in his eyes.
Merle watched John. A lot – maybe more than was necessary. And he thought about John. And he thought about touching John. A lot – maybe more than was necessary. Maybe more than in a just-a-couple-of-guys-being-friends kind of way. Merle wondered when the last time someone had given John a hug was and thought of desperately wrapping his arms around him, trying to save his life during their final Parley, and both did and did not want that to be it.
Mookie and Mavis had packed their overnight bags and left that morning – their mother's birthday, apparently. Mavis had rolled her eyes at him for forgetting.
Merle thought about touching John a lot.
John was seated on the most comfortable chair in the living room. Like he belonged there. A fire was crackling in the hearth. It all looked very domestic. Merle's pulse was loud in his ears.
Merle's height was only rarely an advantage. Right now, he was the perfect height to comfortably rest his hands on John's knees without having to work too hard to avoid eye contact. John's mouth was a thin, tight line, but he didn't do more than inhale a sharp breath. Merle let the pause linger before carefully, slowly sliding his hands along the starched fabric of his pants and up the perfect creases along his thighs. He only made it half way before John stopped him, hands snapping to capture his. Merle smiled sheepishly, readying to pull back, but John only tightened his grip and held him there.
"Just give me a minute," John said and there was a weird tension in his voice that finally made Merle look up.
Merle's grin might have been rude, but it was equally inevitable. "Wow. I guess it's, uh, been a while, huh?"
"Oh, you have no idea."
The question of The Hunger's status lived with them like a part of the household. It was there when they sat down for meals together – more often at the beach than at the table with no kids around for the moment. It was there when Merle argued for the position of big spoon after lights out. John smiled more often and seemed to mean it; Merle was increasingly at home in companionable silence. John still hadn't set off on his self-appointed quest. And still it lingered.
Merle thought about calling someone, tipping one of the others off that the whole thing might not be as done and dusted as they'd hoped. He told himself that he didn't because they all deserved to be happy, that he couldn't do that to Lucretia or Davenport or Lup or any of them. That was what he told himself.
Merle didn't always answer knocks on the door (too many salesmen), but a little group calling themselves the Brothers of Istishia had been going door to door peddling scripture and something about his professional pride wouldn't let their encroachment on his territory go unanswered. It was for this reason that when Magnus swept him off his feet into the definition of a bear hug, the Extreme Teen Bible ended up uncomfortably digging into both of their chests.
"I told you not to leave your Stone on silent," Magnus said, setting him down and grinning.
"Yeah, sorry to drop in unannounced and all, but you left us literally no way to do that and the big guy's been pestering me to road trip and check in on you." Taako didn't go so far as to offer a hug of his own, but he did give Merle a pointed once over from his position just inside the doorway, which amounted to about the same intent.
John's entry into the room was perfectly timed and without fanfare. "Merle? Who was – "
There was a moment where Merle considered lying. Magnus's brows were low over his eyes, unable to place John's face in this new context. Taako might have figured it out eventually, but it was hard to say if and who he'd tell when he did. For just a moment, Merle wanted to be selfish and keep his secrets to himself – to keep John and to have everything not be damned complicated for a change.
But things were already complicated and he didn't have the right to be selfish when all of them had already sacrificed so much for what was at stake. In what might have been a reaction to the visceral self-disgust, holy energy rolled out from him and across the room. Merle hadn't said the words, hadn't even solidified the thought, but he knew Zone of Truth when it had been cast. The other three men blinked owlishly in the aftermath, like they'd made the mistake of glancing at the sun.
"Fellas," Merle said, with complete honesty, "we have a fucking problem."
"I'm sorry, Merle, but your friend never checked into the Astral Plane." Kravitz's voice sounded notably disgruntled, even through the Stone of Farspeech.
"Babe, you'll give yourself wrinkles." Taako practically sang the last word for emphasis.
"I don't have skin," Kravitz said. "And I don't like it when things don't add up. Souls have to go somewhere, but I don't even have a record for this one."
"The Hunger was, like, destroyed though," Magnus said, eyes never leaving John's position at the other end of the table. "The laws of physics caught up with it when we put it in a bubble and Jeffandrew put all the worlds back where they're supposed to be. Who's to say that souls from inside it even go to our Astral Plane?"
"That's a lot of assumptions for something this unprecedented," Kravitz said. "Theoretically, sure, that tracks. But you said that your friend technically died before you destroyed The Hunger, right? Where did his soul go then?"
"And, I mean, that first world was The Hunger," Merle said, fingers twisted into knots on the table in front of him. "That Jeffandrew guy wasn't exactly, you know, clear about how the world-fixing process worked. Do we even really know what happened to that world? Like for real?"
Taako glanced between Merle and the stone before saying, "don't worry about it. If he pops up again, we'll take care of it." Huh, apparently John ranked higher with regard to Merle's right to privacy than vaguely religious skin conditions.
"Keep me posted," Kravitz said. "I'm going to run this by the Raven Queen; I think she needs to know."
"Hey, we're still on for dinner at seven, right?" Taako asked.
There was some genuine warmth in Kravtiz's voice when he answered: "wouldn't miss it."
And then he hung up and unintentionally left the rest of them to deal with the awkward fallout.
"So," Magnus said, drawing the word out with a note of hostility he didn't sound like he was trying very hard to suppress, "what's the game plan here, John? We looked into it, we got some answers – admittedly, not great ones. What exactly is it that you're planning to…do?"
"I know that from your perspective, the things I've done are – I know that I've caused a lot of problems for you all," John said. Magnus snorted. Merle stared down at his hands and tried to find comfort in the points of tension where his fingers touched. "You have no reason to trust me. But these are…my people. I led them to this."
"That really doesn't answer my question," Magnus said.
"If any of them are out there, trapped as I was, I intend to free them."
"Yeah, that's a noble sentiment and all," Taako said, "but, I mean, normal people aren't always good. Your people created a horror movie monster out of sheer willpower in a way that I still don't fully understand and I think at least three quarters of this table are with me on that. If you set them free, how do we know that they're not just gonna set off doomsday all over again?"
"I – " John cut himself off, scrubbing a hand over his face in a way that Merle knew meant he was tired and trying not to show it. "I know that I'm asking you to take a risk."
"You can ask. The answer's 'no'," Magnus said.
John's mouth hardened, but he kept his voice carefully neutral. "I guess I don't have a choice then."
"Sorry compadre, but that's horseshit," Taako said. "The choice that's going to end with everybody happy may not be on the table, but you've still gotta sit down to eat. Either you decide to potentially free a living plane monstrosity that may still be out to devour the entire universe - in which case, yes, Magnus and I may be duty bound to stop you - or you potentially leave your home world and everyone in it to fester and rot and not even die apparently. Either way you don't get to pawn this one off on someone else."
John finally let the frustration bleed into his features, a simmering anger that Merle was intimately familiar with. "I don't understand what you want from me."
"He's telling you to make a choice," Magnus said, "and fucking live with it."
The beach was overcast, waves whipping violently at the shore. Merle and John stood, side by side, watching the brewing storm from the shelter of the cliffside.
"So," Merle said, "are you going then?"
John's hand hovered awkwardly by his side for a moment, a little too close to Merle's personal space to be accidental, before he abruptly shoved it in his pocket. "Yes. I am. I have to know."
Merle nodded, unsurprised. He watched the sea for a moment longer, drinking it in, before stretching his back with a satisfying pop. "I'll give Mavis a call and pack my bags. We might as well wait until morning to head out – storm might blow over by then."
John turned to him, mouth forming a small O before snapping shut. He slumped a little as if bracing against the wind, even if it wasn't any worse than it hand been a moment ago. His hand pushed further into his pocket. "You once asked if we were friends," he said. "Do you still want to know the answer?"
"Do you think I still need to ask?"
Goodbyes were always awkward in Merle's experience, but this one was made worse by the stakes attached to it. Magnus kept shuffling his feet and Taako hadn't uncrossed his arms once in the past five minutes.
"So. You're really going then?" Magnus asked.
"Yep," Merle said, unhappy, but resolute.
Magnus nodded. Sighed. "All right. Well, Taako and I have some business in the next town. If you're lucky, you won't see us tomorrow."
"So you're just gonna let him…do it? After everything you said?"
"Nah, if he goes through with this, I'm coming after him as hard as I can. I'll put your boy in the ground before I let him undo everything we did to stop The Hunger."
Merle shook his head. "I don't know what your plan is, Magnus, but this whole thing's going over my head. I mean, you know, most things do, but I'm just saying. I don't get it."
"Sometimes you need to give people the chance to do the right thing, even if you don't know what the right thing is yet," Magnus said. "I'm basically just following my gut - which has worked out pretty okay for me so far, when you think about it? I've only died thirty-three times and none of them have stuck yet, so, like, not bad considering the lifestyle. Servants to the goddess of fate and whatnot; I'm counting on things to work out the way they're supposed to."
"I mean, listen, from my perspective this worked out pretty much perfectly," Taako said. "Either a world gets saved and we don't even have to lift a finger to do it this time or I get to add a new chapter to my autobiography about the second time I killed The Hunger. It's win-win."
Magnus clapped Merle on the shoulder firmly, held his hand there for a moment and jostled him a bit before letting go. "Take care of yourself, Merle."
Taako bumped his shoulder on his way past. "Don't die before we get back."
Merle watched them until even the vague shapes of their figures weren't visible in the distance anymore. He supposed that was as close to a blessing as he could ask for.
"I'm going to warn you up front: adventuring rarely goes according to plan," Merle said.
John smiled wryly. "My plans have a poor track record."
"I'll say." Merle tried not to linger too long staring at the home he'd made for himself. He was coming back. They both were. "You ready?"
John exhaled, long and slow. "No." Merle felt John fumble awkwardly for his hand; he grabbed back, squeezing hard. "Now. Yes."
When they set off down the road, neither one of them looked back.