Wow, lots of changes on ff this week x) I want to get a cover up for this now! Anyone wanna help me make one? :D
I've fallen behind on my review responses ._. I'll be a much, much better author/friend after next week, I promise. It's just...finals. You guys know how those are. And I'm a freshman, so it's my first time going through this. That makes it even harder ;_;
But enough of my bitchting-I'm not the story. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 29: SO POINT ME TO THE EDGE OF LIFE, I'LL STAND UP ON MY TOES
March 21, 2014
Terry's Hut on the Rock, The Edge of California
11:51 AM
"So where do we go from here?" Terry wondered, absently stroking a hand over Lacey's tangled brown curls.
Something was lingering on the edge of Lacey's mind. It was a distant memory of a sunset sky and a dark room, loud, energetic music, and the handsome face of a kind stranger. There was talk of a rebellion, and almost a suggestion to join. A strange tingling filled her face as she felt color rise to her cheeks.
Gerard Way.
"Remember that Xero gig almost a year ago?" she began slowly. Terry nodded.
"I met a boy there. He said he was a rebel, and he lived in the desert. He was friends with the boy from the protest at Hawthorne Towers."
"The one with the sign?" Terry recalled.
"Yeah, him. But his friend—Gerard, he said his name was—danced with me, and he was telling me about his secret organization. The Killjoys. He wanted me to join."
He arched an eyebrow. "And he didn't even know you?"
"We talked a bit," she said hurriedly, furiously trying to quench the growing blush in her cheeks. "He didn't expect me to join up right away. But he told me to think about it, and that he wanted to see me again. Maybe…maybe they'll take us in."
"How do we find them?"
Lacey blew a chink of her bangs off her forehead. "That's what I'm not sure about."
"Well, it's a start," Terry said optimistically, pushing himself off the floor and extending a hand to pull Lacey up. "Either way, we'll have to get out of the house. At least now we've got something to look for. Did he give you a way of contacting them at all?"
"There was a radio station, but it doesn't work," she answered. "But it was frequency 104.1, I remember."
It was shockingly easy for her to recall every moment of that night nearly a year ago. Gerard's voice flooded her mind, the exact low timbre and warm tone of it as clear as if she was hearing it out loud. She couldn't remember what the club looked like, but she remembered his messy pitch black hair and those sparkling, intense hazel eyes. She remembered every detail Gerard had mentioned with an almost scary clarity.
"Try it again," Terry urged. "I think we've got maybe half an hour before they come looking. You try the radio, I'll pack."
How can he be so calm? Lacey wondered as he ambled down the hallway, disappearing into his bedroom. She herself was still in shock, and she couldn't look at the body of the Draculoid to see whether she'd actually killed it. But Terry managed to stay levelheaded, even as he watched their peaceful life be upturned. She had to be strong like him.
Lacey felt her toe hit the Draculoid's leg as she turned to return to the living room, throwing herself onto the couch facing the radio transmitter. A shudder ran through her body. She focused on the ancient radio and twisted the tuning knob through station after station of static.
Check station 104.1 tomorrow at twelve. Just listen. See if you agree.
Somehow, her mind had taken his words and filed them away. It was almost as if he had spoken them out loud. What was it about that guy that made her memory suddenly photographic?
Well, it was nearly twelve now. Lacey played with the knob a bit more until the dial rested on the frequency she wanted and then waited.
Don't fail me now, Gerard.
She jumped when a voice broke through the static. Half of her had been expecting it, but half of her had been cautiously skeptical, sure the Killjoys had given up by now. It was evident now that they hadn't.
"Hey there, motorbabies," a gruff, unfamiliar voice announced. Lacey raised an eyebrow at the strange greeting.
Someone else laughed. "You like? That's Poison's word. He thinks we should have our own secret lingo." That speaker was a female, and her words were lilting and pretty.
But the last voice was one she definitely recognized. She knew that tone, that warm pitch and that infectious chuckle. She sucked in a breath as she was brought straight back to that evening.
"I think it sounds cool," Gerard Way said.
"Well you would, wouldn't you?" the girl said, and there was the sound of light laughter and bumping which Lacey could only guess was the pair wrestling. She wondered who the girl was, if she was Gerard's girlfriend.
"Quit it, Poison, Sunshine," the third voice hissed.
The giggling quieted, and the girl Lacey assumed to be called Sunshine said, "At least things are finally settling down in the Zones."
"We're learning not to hate each other," Gerard added humorously, and there was another bump before Sunshine complained "Party!"
"Party Poison," the first voice said sharply.
"Sorry, Rev," Gerard said, but he didn't sound sorry at all.
Lacey found herself entranced by Gerard's voice as the casual, joking broadcast continued. He called the other two by ridiculous but affectionate nicknames, Shiny and Rev instead of Sunshine and Revolution as the older man and the girl usually called each other. The Killjoys seemed more relaxed than rebellious, and Gerard was the enthusiastic leader, almost as sunshiney as Sunshine herself.
"Sun and I are coming out this afternoon," he announced in one of the more serious moments. "Doctor D is staying behind. Shocking, I know, right? Maybe him and A had an argument."
Sunshine scoffed. "Doctor D and Agent A are perfectly fine, even if they're not together yet. He told me to tell her he's sorry he couldn't make it."
"This is completely off topic," Revolution protested. Lacey got the feeling that Gerard and Sunshine did that often, and Revolution had difficulty controlling the two seemingly less mature Killjoys, but he was making an admirable effort.
"Anyway, Poison and I are gonna be in the city today, so look alive," Sunshine announced. "Stay sharp out there, and never let them take you alive."
"Killjoys, make some noise!" Gerard finished enthusiastically. Lacey could practically see his bright, enthused smile in her mind's eye as the radio clicked off and transformed into static once again.
Her cheeks felt flushed, and her heart seemed to have increased its' tempo to a fever pitch. She didn't know if it was leftover fear from the Draculoid or excitement over the Killjoys or even simple curiosity, but it was pounding against her ribs like a caged animal as she pushed herself up from the couch and ran to find her companion.
"They're still there," she announced breathlessly as she skidded into Terry's room. He looked up from the haphazardly packed suitcase laying half-full in front of him.
"The Killjoys?" he asked.
Lacey nodded. "The station worked and I—I heard him. I heard Gerard."
He sucked in a breath. "You're completely sure it was him?"
"It was him," she assured her guardian.
"How do we find them?" he asked, already fastening the suitcase and straightening up. He grabbed hold of Lacey's hand as he brushed past her and tugged her out of the room.
"He's coming into the city today with another rebel. They didn't say where they'd be, but I just have this feeling…"
"A feeling isn't enough," Terry said gruffly.
"A feeling's all we've got to go on," Lacey argued. And she knew it was foolhardy, and desperate, and likely as not wouldn't work. But something about Gerard had imprinted itself on her memory, and she wasn't going to forget him any time soon. If her idea was correct, he hadn't forgotten her, either.
She looked down at her hands, suddenly shy and blushing. "I think we should go back to Spaceland Rock Club," she said quietly.
"Where you met Gerard?" Terry asked.
Lacey bobbed her head up and down. "I know this is stupid, but I have this…instinct. It's an intuition. He told me he was going to see me again soonl. If he remembers me like I remember him, he'll go there. I know it."
Terry sighed. "You sure about this?"
"I'm not sure about anything, Ter," Lacey muttered. "But this is my only idea."
"You better have good instincts, then," Terry told her as they started towards the front door. "Our lives depend on it. If BL/ind get us—"
"We're dead," she whispered. She tried her best not to look at the body of the Draculoid as she picked her way across the bloody carpet. Her toe grazed something, and she shivered, sprinting the last few steps to her big black Doc Martens.
"Do we leave it here?" she asked quietly as she pulled the familiar combat boots on and tightened the lacing.
Terry regarded the limp form with revulsion. "He's dead," he announced finally. "BL/ind will figure out what happened—what we did—soon enough. They're not stupid. It wouldn't buy us any time to move him."
"Hopefully they'll have the decency to bury one of their own," the young girl said bitterly.
"It's not the Draculoid's fault, Lace," Terry murmured. "It's not their choice. It was never their choice."
"We have to stop them," whispered Lacey.
The older man forced a weak smile onto his face. "That's exactly what we're going to do."
The first thing Adrienne asked when Gerard and Amy got out of the car was "Where's Doc?"
"That's all you care about?" Amy asked humorously. She stepped forward and embraced the older woman, smiling.
Adrienne rolled her eyes. "Sunshine, you're an idiot."
The pair of teenage rebels snuck around the side of the building, following Adrienne into the credit store through the back entrance that only they knew about. It was always a risk for them to go into the city. They'd taken to wearing plastic eye-masks, painted garish colors to match their rayguns, to try and hide their identities whenever they left the safety of the warehouse. Gerard's bright yellow mask was resting on his forehead, but he pulled it down to cover his eyes as they entered the tiny store.
"They've still got me under tight observation," Adrienne murmured as she keyed in the code to the stockroom door. "It's not the easiest thing, trying to be a secret double agent when your sister is one of the most wanted people in Battery City."
"Most wanted?" Amy grinned, her icy eyes sparkling behind her violet-and-navy mask. "That makes me feel special."
Adrienne groaned. "Maybe it's fun for you. They don't know who you are. They aren't questioning you about your sister, who's supposedly dead, in every spare moment!" She yanked open the heavy wooden door with a bit more force than necessary, sending it swinging back into the small hallway.
"So you'd rather me, Chester and Gracie did get caught by BL/ind?" The younger of the two sisters raised an eyebrow.
"Of course not!" Adrienne laughed. "Though you owe me time with Gracie, you know. She's my niece, too."
"I'll make sure to bring her sometime," Amy grinned.
Adrienne ushered the young rebels into the small stockroom that was so familiar to Amy. Gerard pulled out his gun and covered the entrance while their secret ally passed the food she had managed to sneak away from each day's shipment to Amy, who packed it into a box. It was never quite enough to support the fifteen Killjoys, but they had made do with what Adrienne could get, and the supply was steadily increasing as BL/ind spread their influence and captured more ravaged lands full of deserted stores and homes. It was one of the only good things about the Japanese regime growing larger.
Amy triumphantly dumped the heavy box into Gerard's arms and smirked as he staggered under the weight. "Is this heavier than last week?" he gasped, stumbling out into the hallway.
"That's a good thing, right?" Amy asked innocently.
"Fuck you, Sunshine," Gerard grumbled.
She smiled sweetly. "That's what I've got Revolver for."
Adrienne and Gerard groaned as Amy skipped ahead, raygun drawn. She thankfully didn't have to use it, as the short walk out to the car was completely devoid of people, especially Draculoids. It didn't take long to get the box into the backseat of the Trans Am, and soon the two sisters were hugging goodbye, Adrienne promising to try and sneak away from the college sometime soon to visit the Killjoys. Amy related her short message from Billie, and Adrienne grinned softly before asking her sister to tell him she missed him.
"They're in love," Gerard commented as Amy got into the car and waved at her sister one last time.
"How do you reckon that?" Amy asked absently.
The car's engine roared to life beneath the pair, and the vehicle shot off down the hill. "Just the way they look when they talk about each other," the older boy said. "You can see it in their eyes. They get this look. You and Revolver have it too, all the time. See, you're thinking about him now—I can tell."
"Well, who are you thinking about, Poison?" Amy asked playfully, nudging his arm.
He sighed. "You and Agent A are the only girls I've had contact with since Day Zero. Well, there was Lacey, but she hardly counts."
"Lacey?" Amy arched an eyebrow in interest.
"Just a girl I met one night last summer," he told her, trying to keep his voice casual. "It was at that one Xero show Ghoul and I went to last summer-the one Angel and Wolf always talk about, the one that got rock music banned from the city. She recognized Ghoul from his accidentally televised protest we were at, and we started talking. I…ended up dancing with her, when I was telling her about the Killjoys."
"Was she pretty?" Amy asked curiously.
"Um…I thought she was," Gerard mumbled, blushing and ducking his head. "She was…she was different."
Amy smirked triumphantly. "What happened to her?"
"That's the problem," Gerard groaned. "She said she'd think about it, and I was planning to keep going to the club until I found her again. But they burned the club down after they kicked Xero out. There's no point looking for her—Battery City is massive and she could be anywhere. She's probably got her memory wiped by BL/ind's pills already," he finished bitterly. He was surprised to find how much he cared. It was a completely irrational reaction. He'd known that was the fate of everyone in Battery City, but he couldn't help but hope that Lacey had somehow escaped it.
"How do you know?"
Amy was still pushing the point. She had turned in her seat to face him, and there was a determined look on her face.
Gerard's hands clenched on the steering wheel. "It's common logic, Sunshine. Agent A's told us what happens to anyone that's not important enough to BL/ind. They take the pills, or they get turned into Dracs."
"Well, who's to say she didn't rebel like us?" Amy asked softly.
"Then she'd be dead."
"You sound so certain about that," she mused.
He stared out at the road with intensity, refusing to look at her. "I refuse to give myself hope," he said tersely. "She's gone. I know it. If I think otherwise, then I'll start hoping, and that will only hurt more."
"Whatever you say," she said quietly.
Gerard hoped she would drop the subject—he wanted to put all thoughts of Lacey and that night out of his head. Wherever she was, he would never be able to reach her now.
Ten minutes later, the car had reached the divergence between the road into the desert and Battery City. Amy reached out and touched Gerard's arm lightly as he began to turn the wheel.
"We should go in," she said gently. He didn't need to ask what in meant.
He shook his head. "That's suicide."
"We haven't checked since December. We need to see first-hand—what if something else changed?"
She was partly right, but Gerard suspected it wasn't the only reason Amy was pushing for them to go back into the city. She was still on the topic of Lacey.
"Drop it," he growled.
"We can check for more hair dye," she wheedled.
That stopped Gerard. He glanced at the road to Battery City longingly and lifted a hand to his cropped hair.
"Aren't you tired of being bleach blonde yet?" she continued, smirking.
Gerard had to give it to her: Amy was good. She knew exactly what would get to him. BL/ind's ban on piercings, tattoos and any form of hair dye was a major thorn in his side—because of it, he'd been forced to stop dying his hair the shade of black it had been since he was thirteen, because all of the dye was gone from the city and surrounding areas. Rather than give in, he'd convinced Ray and Frank to help him bleach his hair stark blonde-white with an industrial bottle of household bleach, which had hurt more than anything else he'd ever felt. He didn't even like how it looked very much, but it was a thousand times better than letting his hair revert to brunette and do exactly what the government wanted.
"They took all the dye," he said slowly.
Amy grinned. "We didn't check everywhere." She began to fiddle with a long strand of her own naturally jet-black locks, twisting it around one finger casually while she waited.
Finally, he sighed. "You suck. I hate you," he muttered, turning the wheel to the right.
"It's for your own good," Amy laughed. "Believe me, Poison, you'll thank me."
They ditched the decorated and conspicuous Trans Am near the edge of the city, right at the border of the area they knew the Draculoids controlled heavily. Gerard pulled his mask over his eyes again and sighed heavily before following Amy out of the safety of the car and into the unknown.
"Where do we start?" he grumbled.
Amy's ensuing grin scared him a bit. He'd known it was coming, but she really was cunning. They'd end up at Spaceland Rock Club by the end of the day, there was no doubt about it.
"We can just wander around the inner city," she suggested, her voice deceptively innocent.
"Why would there be dye in the inner city?" he asked.
She slapped his arm playfully. "Always so selfish, Party. This is a recon mission too, remember?"
"Yeah, keep telling yourself that," Gerard grumbled under his breath.
But despite it all, two hours into their search, their spirits were unusually high. Maybe it was the thrill of being in the city again, or the almost playful spy-like darting between doorsteps to avoid Draculoids and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W patrol units, or even the strange looks they got from the citizens of Battery City for their bright masks. Gerard didn't even find any black hair dye. The closest they had gotten was a small convenience store already emptied of most normal colors. Regardless, he shoveled boxes of something called 'Atomic Red' into his pocket, cheerfully commenting that maybe he'd want something more colorful in the future.
And then he suddenly realized which alley Amy had dragged him into. He'd been so busy covering her as she peeked around corners and scanned for Dracs that he hadn't had time to identify where she was leading him. But this street was unmistakable—the dirty wooden doors, the overflowing dumpsters, even the positions of the chunks of rubble were familiar to him.
"Sunshine," he groaned, turning around on his heel to go back towards the car.
A hand shot out and caught him by the waist. "No, Poison," she murmured. "We've gone this far. It's stupid not to check. Aren't you at least a bit curious?"
Truth be told, he was burning with curiosity—and it pained him to know he had begun to believe just the slightest bit in Amy's crazy idea. There was absolutely no way Lacey had survived as herself. None…or was there?
"You have to know," she whispered. "If you don't, it'll haunt you forever."
"And if there's no evidence she was there?" he asked shortly.
She shrugged. "We assume the worst and go home. But Poison…something will be there."
And somehow, he didn't have to ask her how she knew, because it was like he felt it. He felt Lacey. He was in tune with her. If she was still free, she would have gone back.
Amy tugged on his wrist again, and this time, he followed.
There was nothing where the club once stood—not even ruins. But Gerard already knew that. BL/ind had burned it to the ground after Xero's first and last post-apocalyptic show.
But there was something—a hulking figure, shrouded in a black rain jacket, with his back turned to them. At the first sight of it, Gerard had thought it might be human, it might be her. But his heart sank as he came closer and realized the person was too tall and wide.
"Looks like a 'Crow in disguise," Amy muttered. Her hand snaked its' way to her holster, and she squeezed the trigger of her raygun to reassure herself.
"If it's a 'Crow, run," Gerard answered.
"What are you doing?" Amy whispered.
He sighed. "Looking for Lacey, like you suggested."
She began to protest, but he brushed past her and strode towards the figure with more confidence than he actually possessed. It moved as he came closer, a smooth, human movement. Not a 'Crow, then. A low murmur of voices became audible.
His heart was in his throat and he didn't know why.
His right thumb stroked over the polished yellow side of his raygun in a nervous tic, and he gulped. The figure was twenty feet away, its' back still turned. There was someone else behind it, smaller, just visible through the gap in its' legs. They were ten feet away, now five—
The hulking figure spun around, and Gerard nearly dropped his gun. It was an unfamiliar man, with long, dirty dreadlocks and calloused hands.
"Who are you?" he rumbled. His eyes locked on the gun in Gerard's hands.
The boy wet his lips. "Killjoy Party Poison," he said, a slight tremor in his voice.
Gerard's finger tightened on the trigger. But then a voice stopped him. A voice than, despite it all, he remembered.
"Gerard?" Lacey asked.