Chapter 3: The Long Way Home
Pairing: HB/Myers
Feedback: Welcome.
Notes: Spoilers for first Hellboy movie, and the comics by Mike Mignola.
Myers:
I follow Hellboy across the most desolate landscape I've ever seen, ice-white sand and then more of the same with the ripped-paper edge of dark mountains squatting hazy in the distance.
It's hotter than it was.
Something's wrong, but Red hasn't said anything yet. - I kind of wonder if he's lost.
Hot.
No buzzards. Shameful.
Got to keep walking and not fall out.
It's a good thing we're not running.
Hellboy:
Jeez, doesn't the sun ever -set- around here?
Myers's watch is dead, but I can still tell we've been walking for hours, and I could swear that sun hasn't moved.
At least the walking is -getting- us somewhere. I recognize individual mountains now, and there should be Saguaro cactus in the foothills ahead, maybe even a spring. -Should- be, anyway. ...I've got a bad feeling about this.
DAMN, I was right. Not a blade, not a thorn.
They DID something to this place. There's all kinds of things that don't make sense in the desert, like perfect meteor craters, and marsh flats so alkaline they can eat through clothing. ...That's just the normal stuff. THIS is anything from a curse to global warming.
John's not looking so good. I try not to think about that.
Myers:
Red squints into the wavering heat ahead of us, his jaw set.
His swinging tail's making me dizzy.
We plod past some rocks on the left, and a dry creek bed opens up in front of us, maybe six feet to the bottom.
"NO!" Red runs ahead to the edge of it, looking from the rocks behind us to the creek bed, then drops to his knees and pounds his stone fist into the dusty ground with a roar.
He stands back up, wide shoulders bowed, and waits for me.
"-Red?"
"Oh, it's ah... this streambed. I used ta play here when I was a kid."
Red is such a bad liar.
"Where's the base?"
"Well that's just it. ...It ain't here."
"So where IS it?" I ask, sharper than I meant to.
Red looks over my shoulder at the perfect, untouched country we just passed through.
"It -was- right here."
I take a breath and tilt my head back, shutting my eyes. The sun still beats down from on high, unnaturally still.
"Has that sun moved at all?" I ask.
"...No."
"I don't think we're in New Mexico, Red."
"Me neither," Hellboy sighs, his dusty red tail a low, motionless curve behind him.
Hellboy:
Please God, don't make me watch him die.
We're walking North now, following the mountains up to a lake that should be there whether any soul's ever set foot in this land or not. It's thirty miles one way, and all I can do is hope it's there. I will -not- lose Myers. Won't. Not negotiable.
He fell out about five miles back, and since then he's been on my shoulder. We talk a little, but not about this place.
Finally I can't wake him up, but the turning in the mountains is just up ahead, and we're there. ...Except that there IS nothing there but a low place in the loose white sand.
I set Myers down in my shadow, and think really, really hard.
Myers:
I wake up from the screaming.
It's hot, but the massive cavern around us is dim, lit only by the glow of flames.
Oh my God, we're in Hell.
"Are we in Hell?" I whisper, starting to get up.
"Shh," Red orders, finger to his lips.
I shut up and look around. Yup, we're in hell. We're hidden on a high pathway above the pit of being eternally devoured. ...I -hate- the fact that I know that.
Red's crouched, watching something happening down below. There's a leather flask on the ground at my elbow. I pick it up, pull the stopper, and smell the contents.
"That's safe," Red assures me, glancing over, "-I cut it with holy water."
I drink half the water in the flask, eyes closed, and put the stopper back.
"Thank you," I whisper.
Red shrugs uncomfortably, then stiffens, staring at a group of demons meeting on the edge of the pit below us.
"Move. Now," Red takes a handful of the collar of my shirt, as if he's not sure I'll understand him. I'm a little lightheaded but we manage, slipping into a side-passage lit by a single Byzantine lamp some fifty feet further in.
"Yes, we're in Hell," Red recites, "No, we ain't dead. I got here by following directions from a leprechaun-lookin' guy I saw in a mirage, and I'll clean up the stumps of my horns -later-."
I stare at his horns. They're longer than usual, broken off unevenly as I've seen them only once before. The long, black-tipped points are tucked into either side of his belt like extra guns. I swallow.
"-How do we get home?"
"I'm still workin' on that."
Hellboy:
I hate this place.
It doesn't scare me as much as it would most people, but it's like being trapped forever at my ten year reunion. ...Okay, I WAS home-schooled, but that's not the point.
Myers is looking better. I don't like the way he's favoring his right arm, but nothing's crawled out from under the bandage yet, and that's always a good sign.
He sits on the dirt floor beside me, his back to the wall. I lean over and give him a quick kiss just because I can, and go back to watching the entrance.
"You're insane," Myers tells me, but he's trying not to smile.
"There's seven levels still ta go. Can you run if things get nasty?" I ask.
"Uh... where did we start out in this place?" Myers asks.
"Pandemonium."
"Where will we be if we make it?"
"Underneath the Vatican."
"The VATICAN?" Myers repeats.
"Yeah. Think of it like a- -holy manhole cover."
"You said a leprechaun told you how to get out of- -of that place where we were before?"
"I said he -looked- like a leprechaun. I've had a few run-ins with him before, but nothing we couldn't work out," I shrug, eyeing a passing winged imp.
"What exactly did he say?"
"Well, he showed up right after my horns grew back and I was beating the shit out of the base of a cliff," I begin.
Myers doesn't ask.
"-An' he said that if I wanted to get home that badly, all I had to do was break off a horn, dip the point in my own blood, and draw myself a door," I explain.
...And here we are in Hell. Again, Myers doesn't ask.
"Can I try?" He says instead.
"Huh? Oh, I tried again earlier. It just takes us right back to the ninth level."
"I meant with my blood."
I stare at him.
"NO. You've got no idea what you're fooling around with."
"Neither do you," Myers points out.
"I saw what my blood did to a monkey once. I will NOT chance that happenin' ta you."
"If I give YOU the blood, could you do it?"
"...Maybe. Let's give it a try." Considering my chances of getting Myers past seven more levels of Hell still breathing, we might as well. Myers starts to unwrap the bandage, but I put a hand over his, and shake my head.
"That bandage could be all that's holding the clots in place. Don't risk it."
...Plus the smell of an uncovered -living- wound would draw every monster for a hundred fathoms...
Myers takes out his pocket knife, and pauses.
"What happens to the door after we go through?" He asks, "-I don't want to leave a back way open."
"They disappear," I assure him, "-I found that out while we were escaping from Pandemonium the second time."
Myers nods, chews on his lower lip for a moment, then makes a small cut on his thumb.
I put my hand under his carefully, because no living being should leave blood on the soil of Hell if he doesn't have to.
One drop, two.
"That's enough," I say, closing his fist gently with my stone hand. "Keep that covered up, okay?" I can hear a confused screeching from down in the pit already.
I dip the end of the horn I haven't used yet into the bright, crimson spot, and quickly wipe my palm clean on my shirt.
Using both hands, I dig the outlines of the door into the crumbling red sandstone of the wall, and step back. The space between the lines goes perfectly black, and the lines themselves begin to glow a shimmering yellow and white. ...They glowed red when I did this the first couple times.
"After you," I say, without taking my attention from the crowd of demons creeping in from both ends of the tunnel.
Myers:
There's a wind, and I'm suddenly cold.
Red bumps into me, and we both go down in the bottom of a gray-timbered wooden boat, perhaps twenty feet long. A black-robed figure looks at us dubiously from the stern, and holds up an iron-bound lantern.
"Nice try," he says, impassively.
"Great ta see you too, Charon," Red grumbles, picking himself up. He sits in the bow, which raises the stern nearly clear of the water.
"Do you have the fare?" Charon asks, handing me the lantern. I hold it up so we can all still see.
"Didn't plan on dropping by this way," Red admits.
"Like I haven't heard that before," Charon sighs, without much interest.
The boat doesn't move except when rocked by an oily swell from below, and I wonder, with absolutely NO desire to find out, what it is that's swimming around down there.
"Hey," Red puts a hand on my shoulder, "-you still got those holdout bullets I gave ya?"
"Sure, why?"
...Red can't -shoot- the ferryman, can he?
"They're minted silver. Ol' Charon here has collected a lot of different coins throughout the ages, but I bet he don't have any like these..."
I unload four shiny rounds from my spare clip, and pass them to the ferryman.
Nothing happens.
"What's-" I begin.
"Give 'im his lamp back," Red hisses.
"Right."
I hand Charon back his lantern and once again, darkness and a cold wind takes us.
Hellboy:
I keep one hand on Myers's shoulder until I can see daylight.
Tannish quartz gravel crunches underfoot, and before us there's a long straight road, disappearing far off behind the gentle rolling land in either direction.
At the end of the gravel driveway is a farmhouse painted blue and white, with a big old tree shading the back half of it.
"Your place?" I ask.
"Not anymore, but I did grow up here for a while..." Myers is drinking the place with his eyes, breathing deep of things I can tell he remembers. "-I forgot how quiet it was," he murmurs, folding his arms.
"Hey, there's no place like home," I agree with a straight face.
"I -knew- you were gonna say that," Myers laughs.
Myers:
"Whaddya want?" A tinny voice demands.
"This is agent John T. Myers, authentication code um, Springfield. Can you put me through to extension 103?"
"Welcome back," the tinny voice says in the same tone, and puts me on hold.
I wait through sixty seconds of scratchy Mozart, and Manning picks up.
"This is Director Manning."
"Boss? I- I mean, we're back," I blurt out. -I never thought I'd be so happy to hear that voice.
"Calm down Myers. Do you have Red with you?"
"Y- yes. He's in the shower."
"What's your location?"
"Kansas, up near Wichita. We're at a motel," -I give him the address.
"Are you aware that you've been missing for the past three months?" Manning asks.
I blink.
"No Sir, I wasn't. ...It's been two or three days for us."
"Hmm. I'll send a decontamination squad out with the rest of the team," Manning decides.
"Tell them to pack lots of holy water," I advise, "I'll explain at the debrief."
"Noted. Oh, and Myers?"
"Yes?"
"There have been a few changes here at the bureau since you left such as Blue's liaison Ms. Adrianne Takuda, so ah, don't go getting any bright ideas without running them by me first."
For a second, I'm speechless.
Then the 'Adrianne Takuda' sinks in. She's the marine biologist I used to trade class notes with in college. And she's EXACTLY the person I recommended for the job.
"Understood Sir," I grin, and hang up.
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