Curse
author: Roony
summary: T-bag had meant it as a sick way of comfort or a demented way to give the doc a final scare. He hadn't meant to give the doc's karma an open door to attack.
rating: PG-13 (strange violence and light slash thoughts)
It's dark, but his eyes are adjusted so he can just barely make out the landscape. Jump over the log, watch out for that branch. He almost twists his ankle in an unseen mole hole, but after the stumble keeps moving.
The barking of the dogs roars in his ears. He can hear the shouts of the cops and tries to ignore how close their voices are. Shafts of yellow light from the flashlights fall on a bush right by his head. Damn, they know exactly where he is. He can only keep running. Maybe there's a road or a river near by. That's all he can hope for until-
Oh, fuck.
There's a hill he didn't see until his face hit it as he's rolling down it. He tries to stop, grab a stray root or something, but it's no good and he knows the sound of his fall will get the cops here right quick. He finally lands painfully at the foot of the hill. He rolls on his back and tries to catch his breath.
He sees the trees and sky above him. Damn, he's caught. He knows it. He can only stares at the trees and sky and-what?
A familiar face with intense eyes is suddenly over him. A face that, really, is quite-
"Pretty?" he breathes, stupified.
"Hey, T-bag," Pretty says right back in that calm 'holier-than-thou' voice that's so damn obnoxious but even more irritatingly alluring.
He furrows his brow and turns over onto his knees. Meanwhile, Pretty kneels down and their eye-to-eye now. "What you doin' here, Pretty?" he snarls, "Thought you and brother dearest was headed down to Utah." The barking gets a bit louder. He looks worriedly at the top of the hill. "Was headin' there myself as a matta of fact." He turns back to those intense eyes. He cracks a playful grin. "Can't get rid of me, Pretty. You're too fine a fish to throw back."
Michael just faces him dead on as he always does. Like the flirting is something he gets from men all the time. "And you're too damned to stop running."
He blinks. "Do I look like I'm runnin' much these days, Pretty?" He gestures to the hill. The lights are getting brighter. He starts to stand. "Better get goin'." But Michael's standing in his way. "Better move your fine ass, Pretty. 'Fore I kick it outta my way."
Michael looks at him simply. "How?"
He's taken aback and answers the question with another. "What?"
Pretty remains calm, like he's talking to a child. "How can you kick my fine ass when you don't have feet?"
"Huh?" He looks down and, lo and behold, he has no feet. Just stumps. He gives a short scream of surprise and terror at the instantaneous deformity. He looks at Michael, who only watches with a cool gaze. "What…what the hell did you do to me, Pretty?"
"I didn't," Michael says simply, "You did." Michael approaches, a tatooed hand extended… The damned tatooed hands T-bag had fantasized over more than once…
"Keep away!" he snarls, throwing up a hand as he tries to back away pathetically on his stumps. Wait… There's no hand either. Just…just a stump… he screams again.
"You did it," Michael says quietly, "You took the 'tomahawk' way out…"
"What…" And he stares as Pretty and his pretty self transform from tatooed and white to blank and brown… He's Gudat, stripped to his boxers and strapped to that table…
T-Bag snapped awake, sitting straight up. He's back is cool with sweat and his heart is thumping against his chest. He doesn't bother looking around where he is, there's something more important. He holds up his hands-struggling with the reattached one, still bandaged. And he can see his feet are still there. Okay. Okay, it was the dream…again.
He runs a hand through his newly blond hair. God fucking damn it, not again.
The nightmares were driving him out of his mind, and he knew he was unstable enough as it was.
The conversation before the vet's 'humane' execution came back to T-Bag's mind.
"There is a belief in my religion which I know to be true, and it applies to everyone Hindu or not. The acts that we commit in this life determine where we go in the next. And he who commits evil can never hope for eternal happiness."
The doc, T-bag must give him credit for, is surprisingly calm for a man who knows he's about to die. Did he know then, somehow through Hindu secrets, how to avenge himself?
T-bag picks up on the conversation. "Well, I'm more a here-and-now type." Was it then? Was that when it happened? When Gudat figured to tap into the karma bank now rather than later?
"I'll tell you something I know is true. The Indians here – the tomahawk variety – some of them believe, well used to believe before most of them were slaughtered, that when a warrior kills another in battle, he absorbs that fallen warrior's spirit."
He strokes the man's cheek. He can't help it. He owes it up then and later to feeling pity for Gudat. But he didn't make the man strip to his boxers for nothing… Is this where the Pretty part enters the curse? Pretty, whom even straight men must deep down admire physically on some level, comes to exact revenge for the secret sexual thoughts?
"So this isn't the end for you, Doc. You're with me now."
That, too, is sexual. And frightening. But he doesn't care. And he doesn't realize until later, when it's too late, that it's the Indian speech and the 'with me now' bit that seals his fate after his plunges the syringe and puts the doctor down.
T-Bag sat in the pickup, pondering his situation. Oh, the good doctor was indeed with him.
With him, and haunting him at every chance.