Breathing has become a thoroughly painful experience. Somewhere in the train car, he can pick out a steady drip, drip of water. It manages to take precedence over all other sounds, going on steadily. Like a clock, tick, ticking away the time he has left.
Illogically, its would-be incessant drip-dropping is… quite pleasant. Likening it to a clock isn't the right idea, Cooper decides hazily. It's too… natural, too rounded of a sound to be sharp. Inevitable. Yes, that's the word.
…some more aware part of him frowns at these listless thoughts. That part of him urges him to move, begs him to get up and try again.
Cooper remains huddled in the corner, breathing too wet to mean anything good. This helpless immobility, this sensation of never being able to fully pull in a breath of substance, brings him back, long back, to a childhood spent half in hospitals and half a patient in his own bedroom. If he could pick, right here, which torture he'd rather endure, he'd pick the asthma; a thought that would never have crossed his mind when he was enduring that hell.
His child-self would understand, he tells himself with some bemusement.
Hours – or minutes, he can't really tell – pass.
Cooper begins to wonder if it would be worse to be stuck in this unchanging limbo, or to face another one of Leland's – no, Bob's – beatings.
He's cold. Exhausted. In pain… afraid, with whatever last scrap of awareness he's managed to hold onto. Simply existing is an agony, but that terror comes back when he reminds himself that nothing can be worse than letting Bob win.
'Wouldn't it be so much easier if you just let me in?' Bob had hissed through Leland's teeth.
In many ways, it would be. But for what, argued that rational side of him. Life is fleeting, death forever. But on earth, there would be no hell greater nor more permanent than having Bob in his head.
He's certain now that hours have melted into days. Has Bob simply abandoned him here? Found another, easier target?
His mind drifts to Laura. He almost swears he can sense her in this train car, where she spent her last moments undoubtedly terrified, all alone with her killer. With her father. Is Cooper so out of it, that he imagines a soft, unviolent hand brush against his face at one point? That he hears her voice humming, or perhaps speaking so distantly he can't make out her words, and words they are, not the mangled speak from his dreams of her?
Perhaps he is dying. Perhaps it is Laura, coming to soothe him. Him, who couldn't put the pieces together until it was too late. Him into whose ear she had whispered the name of the man who killed her, him whose mind had locked that precious, precious secret away so far he'd only found the key when it no longer mattered.
I'm sorry, Laura, he whispers, not sure if his mouth forms the words or if it's a murmur lost in the nothingness of his thoughts.
He can't hurt me anymore, her voice whispers back. You haven't lost yet.
A door opens, allowing light to flood into the train car.
For a moment, just for a moment, he allows himself to see Harry standing in that door.
Then his friend fades away, leaving no one but Bob.
The door slams shut with a heavy clang, leaving him locked in with his captor.
His gun is a heavy weight in its holster. The steering wheel hums beneath his hands, setting him on edge. His gaze drifts to the rearview mirror, where he can see the car behind him, Albert at the wheel, Gordon in the passenger seat. Behind them, other patrol cars holding various officers.
He turns his attention back to the road, clenching his jaw anxiously.
The radio crackles.
"Harry. I'll be coming from the other side of the bridge. There is something calling that I cannot ignore any longer."
"Just hurry, Hawk," Harry urges, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. "If we're right about this, we're going to need every man we can get."
"You got it."
He's driving ever so slightly too fast, but he doesn't care. A prayer circles through his mind like a mantra – only, he doesn't know what he's praying for. That's he's right, so that this nightmare will finally be over? Or that he's wrong, so that he doesn't yet have to face the terrible burden of knowing? What if reality is too terrible?
He makes the turn up into the depths of the forest on the little road, trying to weigh which would be worse, still not coming up with an answer even as he drives closer, closer.
HARRY—
The scream in his head makes him jerk the wheel, and he fights to stay on the road – the wail grows louder and he's forced to slam on the brakes and pull over, clutching at his head, unable to make a sound through the sheer agony. His head's going to explode, that's what it feels like.
Follow the iron path or it'll be too late, the voice in his head booms.
That's what he's doing! The iron path have to be the train tracks, and there's only one place along them they could be.
NO. Bellows the voice, driving what feels like a spike into his head.
A knock on the window. The pain abates long enough for him to glance up to see Albert, actual concern written all over his face. His voice is muffled as he says, "Harry. What's wrong?"
Harry grits his teeth, rolling the glass down. "Nothin'. Sorry. Migrane, or something."
"Maybe you should sit this one out—"
"No," he snaps. "I'm going up there. If that bastard's got Cooper, I ain't stopping till I've bashed his face in."
Albert nods, but there's a glint in his eye that Harry suspects is worry. "I get it. But don't be a liability."
Just have to get to the train car, he thinks.
NO. THE BRIDGE.
As if it'll help, Harry drops his head into the steering wheel, relishing the relief of the slight physical pain over the cacophony in his head.
"Fine," he growls under his breath. Immediately, the din in his brain stops. He takes a moment to breathe, burying his face in his hands shakily before looking up. "Albert, you take the rest of the officers up to the train car. Be on alert. I'm gonna call Hawk in, and I'm going up the tracks towards Ronette's bridge. There's something I gotta see. Keep me posted."
Albert nods warily. "Be careful, sheriff."
Albert returns to his car, and Harry lets the others drive on before he even risks pulling back out onto the road. He drives behind them for a while before taking a turnoff, and then exiting the car and trudging as quickly as he can through the woods. He debates just turning back to the train car—
NO. The voice immediately booms.
"God!" he swears, turning his attention back to his task. Whatever is happening, there is something that very much wants him to go to the bridge.
Resisting the urge to grumble the entire way, he keeps his torch beam low, some quiet instinct in him telling him that he should. He's getting closer, he knows that. The radio crackles.
"Sheriff Truman?" Andy's voice comes over the radio.
"Yeah, Andy? You guys at the train car?"
"Yeah," Andy's voice is shaky. Harry's stomach drops. "They're not here, but they definitely have been, sheriff," Andy informs him tearfully over the radio. "Cooper's jacket is here. There's—there's blood everywhere. Oh god."
Harry holds a fist to his forehead, trying to still the shaking. He forces his voice to be level. "Okay. Thanks, Andy. I'll be there soon."
Footsteps…
He can hear indistinguishable talking. At least two sets of feet, one set more uneven. Over gravel. He reaches for his gun, ducking low, trying to see through the foliage to the tracks, hiding the beam of his torch.
He can see two vague shadows, almost seeming to be one, moving along the tracks. He squints, trying to make them out. Is that one of their own officers, or—
Suddenly one of the shadows jerks away, sending the other stumbling backwards. The escaping shadow tries to run, hunched over, but the other leaps forward, catching its arm, and—
"HARRY!"
The desperate scream makes his stomach drop. It's Cooper's voice.
Or, Harry gets bullied into going the right way. Will at some point be making adjustments to previous chapters - I've already done so on this fic on AO3.