It did not take long for Nancy to make a recovery after clearing out the contents of her stomach. There was a serenity about her now, and the pale shade her face had taken on made her look almost glowing. Some sort of sickly angel.
It took even less time for Wart's grip to loosen, with Luigi's own strength and holding on the only reason for his hand being propped up.
"He's not-" Luigi stopped, a shuddering breath, "he ain't really gonna die, is he?"
Nancy refused meeting his gaze, looking away guiltily. Implying she had something to hide, and Luigi could believe that, because the lie could be much more easily digested than the truth.
"Don't you hold out on me!" A little bit of him condemned his shouting at Nancy, but not enough for him to stop. "We can bring him back..bring the guard back..bring 'em all back..You've been 'round this dream circuit before, there has to be-"
He tried to continue but the words choked in his throat, and the more he fought to speak, the closer the tears felt.
Has to be another way, he finished internally. Has to be.
Luigi kept on tricking himself into believing Nancy would suddenly come up with a solution, right up until Wart's very last moments. Wart gripped him with an ironlike clamp before his hand slipped through, devoid of all strength. He looked Wart in the eyes, while his eyes were still open, but they'd long since glazed over even before him being on the absolute brink.
Luigi sniffled. His heart thrummed violently in his chest and his vision was beginning to blear but he continued to stay at Wart's side even as he tortured himself, so close in proximity to death yet again.
Wart's eyelids fluttered downwards, halfway open.
The morbid thought of how many more times he would watch a man die today crossed his mind. And then Wart did, his eyelids dropped, the curtains of his life closed forever with none of the flourish the man deserved. Slow and agonizing had never been Wart's way. But he was dead, dead as he sat there with closed eyes and a bloated stomach filled far past maximum capacity. No getting around that fact now, no seeing it as a fakeout solvable with a glowing pendant or the prowess of a dream-travelling young woman.
Very few time in the life of Luigi Mario, after his move to the Mushroom Kingdom, were there ever occasions where the compulsion to cry came up. Mostly it was limited to birthdays and get-togethers, because Bowser never gave him any reason to. They always won out against the Koopa Troop, him and Mario. Outright crying of a non-joyful kind? Rare. Downright impossible.
This lack of prior experience, and Wart being in his current state, meant Luigi had little defence against the waterworks. He wrapped an arm around Wart's left shoulder and rested his head against the other one before failing miserably to choke out a sob. Luigi burst into tears. Wetness streaked down his face in tracks, and his vision clouded over again. He blinked, but that only meant clearing space for another stream to follow and stain his cheeks.
"It- it ain't fair," Luigi stammered, the rhythm of his speech reduced to a child's, "why's he gotta die, huh? What's so special about us that we gotta go on livin'?!"
He recognised the presence of Nancy hugging his shoulder; all three of them huddled close together in a strangely familial manner. Nancy said nothing. Luigi thanked her in his own way for that, silently appreciative.
"And you were just comin' around," he whispered softly. "Would've made one heck of a good guy, Wart."
While the stench of the rotting guard had persisted long enough for Luigi's nose to turn a blind eye, the thought of having to be around Wart as he slowly drained away made him want to hurl just as Nancy had. Everyone he had come across, in the last few hours had ended up dead. Or in the pilot's case, close enough to where the spectre's shadow would follow him always if it didn't outright catch up.
Except for Nancy. Nancy, and…
"You."
"Guilty as charged." Freddy smiled, otherwise unreactive.
His blood brought to boiling point, Luigi let go of Wart and set his attention on Freddy. For each step he took, the anger built, and the guilt weighed heavier, equal parts a blessing and a burden. On the one hand it meant a greater desire to kill the beast, but such recklessness also placed his own life in jeopardy.
It was no less than Freddy deserved, and as a wave of terrible anger swelled inside him, making his head and fists throb, Luigi knew what had to be done.
Nancy could have held him back, but he was glad she stayed off to the side. This was deserved.
A raw scream leapt out of Luigi's throat as he threw the first punch, a hammering blow headed for the demon's midsection. There was his own screaming, and then Nancy's adding to the chorus. She might have said something important but he failed to hear her, white noise against the thrumming pulse in his brain. Or it was in his stomach.
Wherever, it wanted blood.
"This one's for Wart!" He yelled through a sob, tears speeding down.
A second punch landed, a white-knuckle fist crumpling Freddy's sweater. And then another blow, and another crashing impact, to little effect despite the amount of energy he was exerting and the darkness he channelled through his fists. Violence begets violence and sometimes, in his case, violence is warranted.
Sometimes violence is not enough.
Freddy looked down, his lips curling into the twisted grin that had become his signature. Luigi found that it served as more motivation as blow after blow reigned to the point where his hands moved too quickly to fully make them out in front of himself.
And then something strange happened. Something that took Luigi himself by surprise, if he were being honest. Freddy staggered back, only in increments less than an inch, but that gave him more reason to continue even if now his knuckles were chalk white and he had to gasp after every few punches.
Freddy stopped smiling and for once, lacked that look of being lost in amusement.
"Different when you're the one gettin' pummelled, eh, Krueger?"
Those words may have been spoken. Nancy had since stopped pleading for him to stop but he struggled to hear himself above the gasping for air and the excitement his brain generated; an adrenaline high far surpassing any drug. There would be no talking sense to a man like Freddy Krueger. Words were a useless weapon, always had been. Fists with enough conviction behind them, though, worked wonders, because Freddy was groaning, the muscles in his face squeezing together as the wind flew out from his lungs. That meant he could only be so far from doubling over and admitting something like defeat. No doubt it would be without dignity; it was Freddy, after all, and Luigi did not plan on giving him the chance to grovel either.
Freddy snarled. He grabbed his hand out of the air, cold metal wrapping around warm skin. Luigi made to slip out from Freddy's grasp, but the shift in dynamic came as too much of a surprise, a reaction coming too late.
"You had your fun. But I've entertained this for long enough.."
Luigi failed to comprehend the danger he was in, not entirely convinced he couldn't brute force his way out. It was the unfolding of his fingers, Freddy unfolding them one at a time, that prompted the exchange of excitement for white-hot panic.
No, please, he mouthed, knowing the futility.
"How about we start here? Then it'll be your other hand…and then it'll be her turn." He looked at Nancy from the corner of his eye, a twinkle in it. "Don't think I've forgotten about you, juicy little bitch."
He pulled them back, and Luigi's fingers broke to a noise like snapped twigs. Luigi full-on shrieked, burning out his vocal chords.
"One down. One to go." Freddy whispered.
Tears filled most of Luigi's now bleary vision as he dipped, not quite kneeling, knees hovering above the ground. Never did Luigi think himself capable of making a sound so high and feeble in pitch. He never imagined being in so submissive a position either, the totality of the pain forcing him into the position of complete and utter surrender. Not even Bowser had managed that, not in the same way.
His heart was still threatening to jump out of his chest when Freddy lost interest and let him go. Not even bothering with the other hand. Luigi dropped sideways, the pain that immense, laying on a bruised part of his stomach close to his ribcage.
He watched from the floor as Freddy plodded over to Wart and Nancy in his shabby boots, caked in mud and dirt.
Freddy reached over to Wart's neck, to grab something, to choke him for his own sick amusement, until it became apparent to both him and his one audience member that what he was looking for was no longer there.
The pendant. It drifted through Luigi's mind and he repeated with the necessary alarm:
The pendant!
The look of utter confusion Freddy wore was the sort of thing that had to be photographed to be believed.
Circled around her ring finger, Nancy kept the pendant seemed an imposing object from Luigi's floor-level perspective. Freddy's face, already a horrific caricature of humanity, further contorted with rage. Luigi was still breathless and aching like hell, but he found himself caring a lot less about his broken hand.
Nancy swung the pendant, sending the red and gold gleam of the gem spinning around the room. Purposefully careless, she had positioned the chain at the very end of her pinky finger, just within the range of her control.
Krueger was scowling, and instead his two still living captives were the ones with the smiles.
"Looking for this?"
She continued her taunt with the pendant, reminiscent of a spinning basketball. Luigi laughed. It was a laugh of the airless sort, with a vague outline of amusement, but a laugh nonetheless.
"You're a jokester now, huh? You think that's funny."
Nancy quirked a brow to say yes, and only spun the heavy chain around faster until it was a blur of red and gold. Freddy was still, staring, watching. Suddenly she did not feel so confident or else she would not have brought her taunting to a stop.
Nancy was motioning to fit the gold chain around her own neck when the ground shook. It was only a slight shift in rhythm, and Luigi felt it too, but it was enough for her hands to part ways with the pendant.
The next few seismic shifts, however, were exclusive to her, and Luigi wondered why Nancy stumbled and used her arms as balance boards when he remained fine. As fine as one can be with a broken hand, anyway. The horrible pain dulled slightly when he didn't think about it.
What moments before had been solid ground had turned to wet cement, pooling on and around her feet. Her natural instinct to struggle to run for her life only meant being further entrenched in the mass of grey sludge. Her shoes had sunk low enough to where they disappeared, and the rest of her, fighting through the anxiety, followed.
"Who's laughing now?"
Freddy answered his own question, laughing with his usual cruelty.
Luigi's shoulder ached from being stuck in position for so long. Inaction, letting Nancy squirm and squirm until the cement sucked her in past the point of return, never occurred to him. It was never a matter of saving her or not. The question was how it would be done, how likely were the chances of joint survival, who'd pick up and continue the fight if they both happened to perish.
Knock on a coin block it doesn't come to that.
The conclusion he did come to? Flopping on his stomach, dragging himself along with the strength in his right arm. Every push brought with it the stinging friction of his elbow against gravel, but Luigi kept on, knowing that there could be no other way.
Nancy had sunk waist-deep, with her face covered in a sheen of liquid panic.
"Go away," she squeaked out. "Leave me behind. You can still save yourself!"
Luigi didn't stop, though he groaned a teeth-wincing groan, and he was fairly sure that had come from his one good arm. Oh well, he thought, which helped rationalise and compartmentalise it. He could check the damage later.
"Don't you get it? It's me he's obsessed with, he- he doesn't give two shits about you!"
Luigi, despite Nancy's protests, had closed in, within distance of grabbing. So that was exactly what he did, pulling on her arm as if he were in the world's direst tug-of-war match.
"No," he said, looking her straight in the eye.
"Luigi, please. Just let this end with me."
"We go down, kid, we go down together."
There had always been a sense of not being there in Nancy, a vacancy in her eyes; some of that still remained, but for a brief time she appeared to be living in the moment. Steeling herself, she nodded, gripping Luigi's hand in return. Even as the cement rose up to her chest.
The force dragging Nancy down also took hold of Luigi in spite of his best efforts to reverse the momentum. His shoes were starting to lose their grip and, while not on the level of being slippery, clumsily slid along the tiles.
Nancy, swamped up to her neck in cement, panted for air, every breath a throat-squeezing struggle.
That was, really, what clued Luigi in. He didn't have to, and absolutely would not, let Freddy kill Nancy, but he did have to let gravity take its course. Freddy loved himself too much to off her with so simple a snare. Paraphrasing Nancy's own words, he was too obsessed with her to find that gratifying.
Luigi dropped the idea of trying to get her out and instead allowed the motion of a sinking Nancy to carry him away, down into unknown depths. The last of Nancy was a choked gasp, head bobbing on the surface. Cement in her mouth, trying to cough it up, sputtering…
Luigi and Nancy passed through a tunnel of cement, liquid enough to allow movement, solid enough for their getting out to be a slow process. Luigi had since learned not to question the fabric of reality in dreams and so accepted this, no questions asked.
He did know for certain, however, it had felt a lot like drowning. Or being mummified, a hundred lifetimes spent trapped in sand understood in a matter of seconds.
Solid ground greeted his landing. Upon closer inspection part of that solid ground was Nancy, half underneath him, half sprawled across the concrete.
Nancy slipped out from his unintended embrace. The first thing she did upon getting to her feet was hack up the cement that got in her mouth beforehand.
"If I have to do anything like that ever again," Nancy said. The vacancy made a return, meaning Luigi couldn't tell whether her anxieties about the experience came close to matching his own.
When he got up, bending the ache out of his good arm and stretching his back, he found no evidence of the tunnel. When he looked up, there was only a milky haze of a black sky. Buildings nearby, an established community of houses, but out of focus.
He did focus on the fact Nancy's clothes were no longer covered in grey sludge in fact, her pink sweater and her khaki pants were far cleaner than they had been when he first met Nancy. The same went for his overalls, save for where Freddy stabbed him near his ribcage and the puncture wounds the Clawgrips had left behind. No clean-up there. Krueger couldn't be that gracious.
It dawned upon Luigi, when he took himself out of his own thoughts, where Krueger had spat them out.
A dilapidated sign on the corner of the street read Elm Street. Freddy's macabre sense of humour seemed no less undying than the man himself. But the shell of a suburb he'd breathed death into, an American suburb to be specific, had no basis in Nancy's world.
Mayor Street, Brooklyn. The far side of Bay Ridge, where the moneymakers rolled around in their cash. It was Mayor Street in the seventies, all right. Down to the surrounding houses, arranged in rows with a surgeonlike precision. Each of them identical in the same way, in that they were a different shade of bright pastel.
This was the case for all of the houses except the only one that mattered.
The overgrown lawn of the lone mansion mocked him, looming over, bare trees pointing at him with their naked arms.
Someone turned on the lights and, this time, Luigi needed no confirmation in the form of making eye contact with his hand. That implied he could look away from the mansion at all. He was caught all over in a shudder, shaking from his head to his toes. They seemed to call out to him, the stairs leading to the door, an endless flight of moss-covered steps.
"Luigi?"
He could almost hear Nancy's blinking, feel her unease burning a hole through his back.
"Are you-"
"I'm fine," he said, smiling. Luigi took a deep breath, trying to console himself, but that did not work because then he was forced to reckon with the fact he could hardly breathe.
"Are you sure you're fine?"
Yeah, what's'a matter, chicken? Ya scared?
A chill crept over Luigi, not from the darkness, not from the night air. He recognised a voice that wasn't Nancy's. He recognised it very well, in fact. It was Mario, though in a brash, more juvenile register.
Thinking he had felt a presence, Luigi turned to look at his shoulder. By then, his brother had disappeared, if ever he was there at all.
"What happened? Did you see something? Was- was there a-"
Wordlessly, Luigi went ahead of her and approached the boundaries of the mansion, beginning up the same set of dilapidated stairs that a naive teenage Luigi had once ascended in order to prove himself. Nancy followed a few steps behind him.
In some ways, the mansion on Mayor Street served as the nexus of childhood with his own personal nightmare; puberty. Mario flowered in his adolescence. Of course he did. But what came so easy to his brother seemed impossible for Luigi, and he could only make so many excuses, could only leave so many times on account of a nonexistent headache, before that secret was brought to light.
They were on the last flight of stairs, and Luigi knew to step with added apprehension because entire chunks of brick were missing.
"Watch your step," he said. Those chunks had been missing for over ten years. There were no railings, either.
Something cracked. Luigi turned around. Nancy had put her foot through where a tile formerly existed and was screaming as she fell backwards, arms whirling.